brockton bay heroes, meet plant tinker

[msrewind]

Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison- er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.

And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and-

"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.

Comments

[mrglam]

"...yeah. Um. I'll need to plan out my decision contingent on stuff like that."

[thinkering]

Hug.

[mrglam]

Hug!

"So, what-all can they take if you're not around? Bots, comms - if they take the comms they're really stupid, those things are awesome."

[thinkering]

"They probably won't take the comms. They're the same model used in the Endbringer fights and there's no good reason not to use them between Endbringings."

[mrglam]

"Yeah. Well, they might think you're spying on them or something."

[thinkering]

"It depends on how paranoid they get about it, ranging from 'I guess Lorica just really wants to be a trillionaire but still supports heroism and loves her dad' to 'oh no the Simurgh got her after all'."

[mrglam]

"Do you? Support heroism?"

[thinkering]

"On the whole. I think there should be a lot, a lot, more parahuman focus on non-combat applications like Rewind's paramedical thing, but as long as some people are going to commit fly-by shootings and turn cities into monster pits it's important to have a significant number of opposing field-experienced capes on it. The Protectorate has many terrible flaws as an institution but does surprisingly well all things considered."

[mrglam]

"That's a good description of how I feel about it, too."

[thinkering]

Kiss.

[mrglam]

Eeee kiss!

[thinkering]

"Honestly the Protectorate is welcome to most of my actual usefulness, because most of my actual usefulness can be offloaded entirely onto a heavily parallelized bot. It could probably run a fight as well as I could now while I was programming in some expensive penthouse office. I do still want to maintain Dad's suit, and Rewind's since she'll have one soon. I just don't want to account for my time or my money to them."

[mrglam]

"Maybe they'll be reasonable around you due to just how useful you are. They do keep pretty good relations with New Wave and the Guild and such."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, that's the best case."

[mrglam]

"Also who knows what other useful things you'll invent in the next year."

[thinkering]

"Any suggestions?"

[mrglam]

"Well, I had one but you did say Armsmaster was likely to disapprove..."

[thinkering]

Snort. "I don't think the Protectorate is going to lease an automatic edging machine or whatever else I'd wind up with if I stared at an electronic sex toy long enough, Sadde."

[mrglam]

He laughs. "Well, I guess that can wait until you're independent."

[thinkering]

"I might be able to do it on a shoestring budget, I made my first Tinker thing out of a cellphone and random things I found on the ground, but it'd involve cutting corners, so I don't know that you want to put the result near any form of genital."

[mrglam]

"After you're rich, then. I'm sure we can keep coming up with more things to do that don't involve electronics."

[thinkering]

"We're very creative people."

[mrglam]

He laughs again. "That we are. Best girlfriend," he says, and kisses her.

[thinkering]

Eeee.

[mrglam]

Not getting too carried away, though, because the door's open.