simurgh, meet your nemesis

[mxglam]

So Glam tests their power some more, and then has a meeting with Piggot where they explain the Siberian. She listens carefully, then asks them not to demonstrate, and says she will communicate that to the appropriate people. That takes a while, and then Lorica is asked to confirm this, and then Glam is asked to demonstrate to very few people with very high clearance.

This should not get out, it would be a PR nightmare, but if the Sibarian copy does what it looks like it does, its help will be invaluable in the upcoming Endbringer fights. When Glam decides to use that power, the story will be that a power copier has grabbed the Siberian's and is using it against the Endbringer, that people should not panic, and that she is an ally. Glam mentions, since they're all being so cooperative about telling everyone on the comms, that the Siberian copy doesn't have to look like the original, so people can know whether to panic or not based on her shape.

That leaves, of course, Glam's own willingness to face the Slaughterhouse Nine. Even if they don't know that Siberian is them, they will likely cause problems, and this will need to be carefully planned.

Careful plans tend not to survive contact with reality, and that is doubly true when the next Endbringer attack happens only two months and nine days after the previous one.

Not that it would matter much: Glam is definitely not going to a Simurgh fight, not yet.

Comments

[thinkering]

"The thought has crossed my mind that it might be a net positive if cats went extinct."

[msglam]

She cracks up.

[thinkering]

"He spends so much time on cats! It's infuriating!"

[msglam]

Nope. Giggling too much.

[thinkering]

Lorica snorts and eats her burgers.

[msglam]

The giggling subsides. "Yes, he does indeed. It's stupid, what the duck is even going on in his head?"

[thinkering]

"Couldn't begin to tell you."

[msglam]

"...what if I made a Scion-copy?"

[thinkering]

"Well, nobody'd expect him to massacre innocents. Holy shit, why didn't I think of that?"

[msglam]

"But wait, don't people kinda keep track of where Scion is all the time? Would they freak out if he started showing up in two places at the same time?"

[thinkering]

"I mean, sure. The people who track that, would notice. But most people aren't watching that at an Endbringer fight."

[msglam]

"I meant more like the- aftermath? As in, what will happen to people's expectations after a fight in which a Scion-copy appears simultaneously with the Scion being somewhere else."

[thinkering]

"I mean - does it matter how nearby the people not-expecting a thing are? There's certainly dozens of people monitoring what Scion sightings there have been at any given time, but they aren't going to be on site at an Endbringer fight, by and large."

[msglam]

"I'm... not sure, actually?"

[thinkering]

"Okay, like... no one except optionally you and me thinks Scion would be in this room. It's way less likely as a class of possibilities than any Endbringer fight, and certainly is incompatible with wherever he is right now -"

"Thailand," says the base station bot.

"- thank you, so, gimme a Scion."

[msglam]

Well, that's a Scion alright. She blinks at him.

[thinkering]

"...What can Scion and pretty much only Scion do besides put the hurt on Endbringers..."

[msglam]

"...he's the fastest speedster on record, he can do that thing where everything stops, he has super telekinesis, and he cured that one guy's cancer when he showed up?"

[thinkering]

"I have no cancer patients handy, nothing much is moving... try the teekay thing." Lorica tosses one of the golf balls that is around for testing exactly this.

[msglam]

No go.

[thinkering]

"Okay, so maybe he can't get around your fundamental nothing-doing problem areas like telekinesis," says Lorica. (No bots catch the golf ball. The flock is all waiting still and silent on the floor, except for shoulderbot, which is too small to catch a golf ball.) "Although we should still test that next time you're under. But blaster shit is well within your power set. And Scion's more impressive-looking than a big gun on the blaster front. If you can blow up an Endbringer with a fake Tinkertoy you can do it with a Scion."

[msglam]

"Yes. Definitely. If I can do it at all, a Scion-copy should be able to."

[thinkering]

"So roughly the same set of people who know about the Siberian idea should hear about the Scion idea too."

[msglam]

"Should they? Mightn't that lower their expectations about the powers? Diminishing returns could get this Scion to be much weaker than it otherwise would if even a handful of people know he's a fake. The Siberian's power is pretty qualitative; Scion's isn't."

[thinkering]

"I bet you at least one of the Triumvirate is getting mid-combat updates on Scion's location. You don't think that'll tank it?"