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]

"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."

[msglam]

"Fair enough. Ugh I really want to Siberian her. Or Scion her."

[thinkering]

"From a safe distance, you should absolutely do that. After you've bumped off the other two."

[msglam]

"Mmhm."

[thinkering]

"...It's possible that if I was hypnotizing you at the time you'd come in under the blind spot."

[msglam]

"That's... actually a really good idea. That's a really really good idea."

[thinkering]

"The blind spot itself is largely speculative, it won't protect you from the song, etcetera, but yeah."

[msglam]

"I don't need to be within reach of the song, and if the blind spot is real... well."

[thinkering]

"Right, so we'd need a good place to put you, this should still wait until you've killed the other two in case she flips out and leaves standard operating range because she tracks the bot video and makes a mental leap, etcetera."

[msglam]

"Yes. Of course. And I would very much like not to die, even if the Simurgh is the worst of the Endbringers I think I do want to at least kill the Nine before her if we can't figure something out."

[thinkering]

"If we can't...?"

[msglam]

"If we can't figure out a way for me to go to a Simurgh fight after killing the other two that has a suitably high chance of keeping me alive."

[thinkering]

"...If you kill the other two I think you've kinda gotta go for her. You'll have - you'll have demonstrated they're killable, which is not a known fact about the Siberian."