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]

"...I'd actually say go with higher-up decisionmaking on this. They've got more strategic data on the Nine and they're more likely to support anti-Nine attempts if they signed off on the provocation."

[msglam]

"Yeah, I guess."

[thinkering]

"Not my usual line of thinking but it matters here."

[msglam]

"Mmhm."

[thinkering]

"...You okay?"

[msglam]

"Yeah, just, the prospect of facing them does not exactly fill me to the brim with confidence."

[thinkering]

Nod.

[msglam]

"How's the... software stuff coming along, there?"

[thinkering]

"It'll take me a couple hours. I've never found anything really troubling, but since I'm dealing with a precog that doesn't mean I can just skip it."

[msglam]

"Yeah. Do you need me out of your hair while you do that?"

[thinkering]

"Nah. I'm not even properly fugue-ing. But more small talk than heavy strategic consideration?"

[msglam]

She nods. "Sorry."

[thinkering]

"It's okay. Were you seriously just fretting and hugging your shoulderbot the whole time I was gone?"

[msglam]

"Of course."

[thinkering]

"Are you going to do that every time I'm off fighting the Simurgh? I'm not totally sure she can even tell I'm there, you know."

[msglam]

"Why not?"

[thinkering]

"It's speculated that she can't, you know, see, she can only precog - and I'm not sure that doesn't require checking likely decisionmaking if the target's a person. Even when I'm in the middle of everything, stuff does not fall on me at the usual rate - even when bots are dropping like flies."

[msglam]

"Hmm. But if she can precog herself, can't she... use... that?"

[thinkering]

"Lots of precogs have blind spots. I spend most of Simurgh fights making arbitrary decisions about things other people are planning at the last minute in case I'm really hers. Nothing conclusive yet."

[msglam]

"What kinds of decisions?"

[thinkering]

"I say 'now' a lot to have people launch attacks at unpredictable moments. 'Left' and 'right' come up sometimes. I often don't actually know what I'm deciding."

[msglam]

"That's actually pretty cool. But the bots didn't detect any differences in her patterns of dodging and blocking between you-attacks and not-you attacks?"

[thinkering]

"There's so much going on at once that if I say 'now' six things happen or are in progress, I can't tell who was listening to me and what's coincidence."

[msglam]

"And they didn't tell you afterwards."

[thinkering]

"I'm told someone's keeping track of it. Technology in general is kind of unreliable around the Simurgh so I don't try to have the bots track it in case she caught on and flipped a bit, they do more evac type stuff."