behemoth, meet the opposition

[mrglam]

Sadde doesn't seem quite able to focus on homework at the moment. He's fidgeting, and sometimes stares off into space for long periods of time before James has to snap him out of it.

Comments

[thinkering]

"It'd require very good reaction time to make tactical use of that but it's good to know."

[peterxy]

"Mmhm."

[thinkering]

"Make a note of anything else you want to test. For now, we've had a long day, and I bet you could use a nap or something."

[peterxy]

Pause. "Uh, yeah, actually. Wow I'm tired, I didn't even notice that."

[thinkering]

"It'll sneak up on you."

[peterxy]

"Mmhm. Yeah, I'm gonna."

[thinkering]

"Sleep well."

And Lorica leaves her be.

[msglam]

A few days later, Glam is loitering in Lorica's workshop, as, you know, one does. She's upside down, which is slightly more unusual, except not for her. She's reading a book.

"So. Got anything planned for today? I don't have patrolling scheduled 'til night."

[thinkering]

"Power testing with Rewind this afternoon."

[msglam]

She closes the book, using a finger to mark the page. "Ooh! Sounds interesting. What are you gonna test?"

[thinkering]

"How she works underwater and whether the limit's exactly ten minutes and stuff with blowing up balloons and anything else that's occurred to her."

[msglam]

"Can I come? I wanna help testing!"

[thinkering]

"I didn't think anybody else would want to - well, want to be booped, anyway, if you have ideas I want those for sure."

[msglam]

"I haven't thought about it, no ideas, but being booped sounds fun, too."

[thinkering]

"You didn't like losing time in the fight."

[msglam]

"Well, it was a fight, and out of my control, and not for Science." Somehow, she manages to say it like the S was capitalized. "Under controlled conditions, and especially with you around, it actually sounds interesting."

[thinkering]

"Okay, you can come along if you like." Lorica emails Rewind to let her know.

[msglam]

"Rad!"

Rewind emails back expressing bemusement but saying she's fine with it.

[thinkering]

"It'll be fun."

[mxglam]

Later: power testing!

Rewind's limited to exactly ten minutes, not a second more. When someone's rewound, their colors become shorter, so someone who's been rewound ten minutes is effectively immune to her power for another second or so. She has arbitrary precision; she doesn't actually need to know how much time back she's sending anything, just where in its colour.

There seems to be a Manton-like limitation in how her power interacts with fluids. Rewinding a balloon blown full of air doesn't make the person who filled it feel anything different, but rewinding one whose air came from another inanimate container causes that air to return to said container. If said container is filled to capacity, or such that it would be beyond capacity upon rewind, however, the extra fluid merely disappears. All such considerations apply to water, as well, and she can only see the colors of fluids in those cases.

Momentum is rewound, body and brain states are rewound, and the whole thing corresponds very neatly to an intuitive understanding of the power. Solid objects can't intersect, but fluids get displaced (or, perhaps, replaced) to allow their rewound trajectories. Something counts as "only one thing" when most "reasonable" external interactions would keep it in one piece. That does mean that, for instance, if you tie a piece of rope around someone and then she rewinds them, the rope gets rewound as well.

It also probably means she could de-amputate recent amputees, if they managed to properly and securely attach the amputated bits together. There'd still be some leftover damage from minuscule bits of tissue and fluids lost, but the end result would probably be better than nothing.

Glam watches all of this on video later, because they have only very few memories of the whole thing. They are amused by it.

[thinkering]

"I want to figure out an efficient way to get her working with paramedics."

[msglam]

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. But there's the problem that anything she rewinds basically undoes stuff... I mean, I guess it's still better than nothing in many many cases."

[thinkering]

"Even if all she can do most of the time is make it effectively ten minutes sooner they get to the hospital, it could be a big deal for things like heart attacks and strokes and bleeding out, and if she can get onsite fast enough for traumatic injuries she's a perfect cure."

[msglam]

"Mmhm. Though, when would she do it? Her free time? The Youth Guard would be on us like dogs."

[thinkering]

"No, I'd want to call it a patrol - she'd be bopping around, interacting with emergency services, if she did happen to run into any crimes she could address them."