peterverse | simurgh, meet your nemesis

mxglam posting in

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

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.

From:

msglam

No go.

From:

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."

From:

msglam

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

From:

thinkering

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

From:

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."

From:

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?"

From:

msglam

"...okay, that's fair."

From:

thinkering

"Maybe test the Siberian first, get a solid reputation in with the applicable people of being able to copy really heavy-duty powers."

From:

msglam

"Yeah, that sounds sensible. ...except for the part where using the Siberian first does mean facing the Nine."

From:

thinkering

"They don't have anybody who could necessarily figure it was you..."

From:

msglam

"If you were Jack and thought like Jack and you saw a Siberian fighting an Endbringer, what would you do?"

From:

thinkering

"...Massacre even more people than usual until the Siberian came out of the woodwork, probably."

From:

msglam

"Yeah. It would be just like him to decide to kill the people the Endbringer never got around to, out of some warped sense of fairness or something."

From:

thinkering

"Yeah. It's not guaranteed he'd hear about it, though - people don't exactly spectate - I wouldn't put it past him, but still."

From:

msglam

"Right. But I'd still feel responsible if it happened, and I do very much want to kill him."

From:

thinkering

"I'd even say you've got a decent shot at it, but I'd say that about lots of people and he is still alive. I don't get it, he doesn't have the Siberian riding piggyback at all times."

From:

msglam

"Yeah, and his power's pretty useless, too, but apparently his thing is being a master manipulator or- something."

From:

thinkering

"It might help that you and I don't have to actually be nearby to fight someone."

From:

msglam

"He has managed to survive various other ranged capes, too, though. Maybe not as ranged as us, I guess."

From:

thinkering

"We don't have to be in the same state. As long as I have bots, and you can replace bots as long as I have any real bots. I'm still working on and off on cloaking, but I'm not sure whether that'll go anywhere."