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

[thinkering]

"More copy-powers? Geez, I hope I never have to take point on strategizing without you on hand. You've done breakers, can you do strikers that grant breaker states?"

[mxglam]

"Like, what, a copy that makes someone else become a breaker temporarily? I can't really affect things I haven't conjured like that."

[thinkering]

"Inconvenient. Work on it," says Bella again. "Hm."

[mxglam]

"I could try to conjure something to protect them that's shaped like their body? Like, some sort of diamond encasing between them and whatever the thing-of-danger could be. That will be hard to do, though."

The unstated reason, whose implication Rewind will hopefully miss, being that the less people are expecting things to appear the bigger their resistance to it.

[thinkering]

Glam's shoulderbot whispers very softly, "You could reveal that you're 'there' a split second in advance."

[mxglam]

"Hmm, but yeah, I could do it I think," they say after hearing the thing. "I could even get a me-copy there and use it to distract people from Transit's arrival."

[thinkering]

"If we want to go 'distractions' route you've got a million tricks. Smoke bombs, flashbangs."

[msrewind]

"Wouldn't that make it more likely that he'd kill my parents, though?"

[mxglam]

"If they're far enough from each other that Transit can't pick the both of them up at the same time, some degree of distraction will be necessary anyway. It'd be walking on razor-wire no matter what we do."

[thinkering]

"Yeah. I don't think we can get this guaranteed safe, Rewind."

[msrewind]

"Still better than whatever'd happen if I just showed up there with no backup, or worse, if I didn't show up at all."

[thinkering]

"Yeah."

The bot draws in the surrounding-parents-with-diamond and distract-everybody options.

[mxglam]

"Okay, so, how does that plan fail? Other than the already-discussed problems with walking on razor-wire."

[thinkering]

"Deadman switches. Decoy parents who pass cursory inspection, maybe they're blindfolded or something to make them harder to recognize."

[mxglam]

"Deadman switches? We're not gonna kill anyone, are we?"

[msrewind]

"I'd sure love to kill that psychopath."

[thinkering]

"Deadman switch is a catchall for 'thing that won't do its thing unless somebody stops doing something', whether they stop because they're dead or evil or knocked out or what."

[mxglam]

"Okay... and how do we fix that? I don't think any of us can fake a signal without actually knowing what it is."

[thinkering]

"Might be we have to just hope he doesn't do it."

[mxglam]

"Yeah... If we come up with a good idea we'll use it but for now I think that branch's done. As for decoy parents-"

[msrewind]

"I can recognize my parents. I can just ask them something only they would know, Lung knows me well enough to know I'd do something like that."

[thinkering]

"But does he have to let you? If they're gagged or on a video feed."

[mxglam]

"If he doesn't that's pretty much the same thing as not offering proof they're alive at all, and we're back to the first branch of the tree."

[thinkering]

"I don't think we can count on Lung having sane standards for what constitutes proof that someone's alive. I can imagine him producing her actual parents in no condition to talk."

[mxglam]

"Right, but that's not what I mean. I mean, in terms of what we can actually do and plan for, incomplete proof that they're alive which Rewind can't get him to complete is pretty much the same thing as no proof at all."