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

[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."

[msglam]

"...okay, yeah, I guess."

[thinkering]

"And the Siberian is a human-sized thing who gets around at almost human speeds - I mean, maybe she can fly a plane, but still. She'd have to try really hard to match Endbringer levels of destruction on her own even if she went completely unhinged without Jack and worked on it every single day. She's not a natural disaster in the way people understand Endbringers as natural disasters, so the casualties feel less statistical, but she's legitimately not as big a deal as an Endbringer."

[msglam]

"But how sure are we that she's limited to human speeds? I mean, if she's an unstoppable force and such, she might be able to go much faster. The Nine are holding back just like the Endbringers are, if at a smaller scale."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, that's possible, but if we're going to speculate that the Siberian might turn up with unprecedented powers we'll never do anything that has anything to do with her, like have a copy kill an Endbringer while wearing stripes. What if the Siberian gets mad and tunnels to the center of the Earth and blows it up, oh no, better stay home and play video games."

[msglam]

She giggles. "Well but there's reasonable speculation! Having stuff like super speed sounds like the kind of thing she could have, just like the Simurgh actually just pretending you're immune to it does."

[thinkering]

"The Siberian could totally tunnel to the center of the earth, bringing some protected bullshit Tinker bomb which we could just as easily hypothesize."

[msglam]

"Yes. And I think that is a thing we should maybe be worried about if Jack isn't there to properly guide her murderous instincts!"

[thinkering]

"Does that mean you're planning to leave him alive?"

[msglam]

"No, that means I have absolutely no plan at the moment and this fact terrifies me."

[thinkering]

"Yeah."

[msglam]

Sigh. "Not that I don't appreciate that she gave me the idea but why does the Siberian have to exist."

[thinkering]

"I assume she had some suitably horrifying trigger event."

[msglam]

"What kind of trigger event would even do that," she wonders. "She's not like a regular Brute or Breaker, if she has a regular human form she doesn't ever even show it."

[thinkering]

"She might be a case 53. In which case she doesn't so much have the trauma excuse, but."

[msglam]

"Yeah."

[thinkering]

Sigh.

[msglam]

"And how'd Rewind do at the fight?"

[thinkering]

"Really well. She hung way back, medic-ing people as fast as they could be brought in, she was amazing. It's hard to be sure if she reversed song effects too, but the observations were consistent with that. As soon as my bots are up one of them is going to bring her ice cream."

[msglam]

"She's a serious trump card, we should throw her a 'Rewind is awesome' party."