lung, meet rewind

[msrewind]

She gets the note just before lunch. She's in the PHQ in less than twenty minutes, then she knocks on Piggot's door politely.

Comments

[msrewind]

"He's... all about fear. He says, fear of the known and the unknown, something like that, and you have to balance them? But he's not really very smart, and he's really proud and kinda relies on being the scariest motherfucker around."

[thinkering]

"So he might try to hold out on you if he's having a 'fear of the unknown' day, but there's 'not smart' and then there's 'kidnap parents, do not deploy them as leverage'."

[msrewind]

"What I mean is that most people don't defy him, and he won't really make the smartest move if someone does, so if at some point the smartest thing he could do is 'keep my parents alive' that may not be the thing he will do."

[thinkering]

"Well," says Lorica, "if your copy shows up to the meeting and doesn't get evidence they're alive at that time, we can abort - but if he does produce the evidence we need something intelligent to do with it."

[mxglam]

"Hmm, where does the address Rewind got lead anyway? I bet it's a warehouse."

[thinkering]

"Yup," confirms the bot.

[mxglam]

"Okay, so, Rewind arrives, is Lung waiting for her?"

[msrewind]

"He could be waiting and big..."

[mxglam]

"But then that's no leverage at all. He has to show you your parents are alive and can be hurt, otherwise you have no reason to whatever. Unless he just wants to bait you."

[thinkering]

"Which he might!"

[mxglam]

"But in that case it doesn't really matter, does it, we send a copy, he'll be big and evil, the copy disappears, he gets nothing. Unless he makes you wait ten minutes before showing up to try to tear you to shreds."

[msrewind]

"He can't really show up big unless he was already in a fight. But there's no plan there, right? If he just wants to bait me then nothing I do will save my parents."

[mxglam]

"Okay, so, if he's just baiting you, sending a copy loses us nothing and gains him nothing. If he isn't, he'll need to show you your parents, and he'll either bring them with him or, like, get you in communication, like via video or telephone or something."

[thinkering]

"Don't settle for a recording. Has to be real-time demonstrated somehow. I don't want to assume anyone's too dumb to record prisoners for a while before disposing of them."

[mxglam]

"Yeah. He needs to let you interact with them somehow, and preferably via video or in person."

[thinkering]

"Maybe we can get a location off the video feed, if it's a feed. I've been working on better teleport pathing for Dad, might be able to get him in there without too many false starts."

[mxglam]

"If it's a feed I can just conjure something through it that we'd be able to notice and they wouldn't, like a locator or something."

[msrewind]

"Okay but if it's in person he can just fry them right there the second he notices something's up."

[thinkering]

"Does he have enough reaction time to fry Dad popping in and out again? Dad can take two passengers at once unless your parents are jointly more than four hundred pounds."

[msrewind]

"I don't know. He might."

[mxglam]

"Supposing Lung brings your parents in person, it's probably better if you arrive, boop him away from them, boop them healed of any damage, and then let them be carried off by Transit, I think."

[thinkering]

"Rewind's touch-range and Dad's not. And Lung has complete control of where he spends the prior ten minutes."

[mxglam]

"She just needs to make him confused enough that she has time to heal them and Transit can get them. But what do you mean, he's not touch range?"

[thinkering]

"Dad has to be theoretically able to pick up whatever he's taking. He doesn't have to actually pick it up or actually touch it - he has to be very close, to the point where he often touches passengers just to make sure he's closed the distance, but technically he has a couple inches or I'd have had to make his armor thinner."

[mxglam]

"Oh. I didn't know that. That's really cool."