glam, meet your new best friend

[mrglam]

With Armsmaster's death, Miss Militia is promoted to team captain. Even with the losses, however, the Protectorate ENE doesn't get new capes - all teams got hit hard by the last Endbringer attack, and even though it was by all accounts a major victory, it did not cause capes to start lining up to join.

Days pass, and winter hits Brockton Bay. It's pretty mild, as winters go, but it's enough to drastically reduce criminal activity. The heroes have an altercation with white supremacists the following week, but nothing much comes of it, as cape muscle seems to prefer to remain comfortable inside. Capes nationwide are somewhat subdued, perhaps as the aftermath of the victory against Behemoth. Nothing much seems to change, however - the Simurgh continues to fly around in her unpredictable pattern, Leviathan continues to be impossible to locate, lurking in the depths of the ocean. The public gets hopelessly contradictory information about what really happened during the fight from unofficial sources, secretly fed from official ones to make sure people don't jump to the right conclusions, and the topic loses its momentum.

And all of this completely fails to distract Sadde, who seems to not be getting better from the post-battle funk. Or, at least, not straightforwardly better. The depression and fatalism turn - maybe not completely, but at least a bit - into unease and anxiety, or perhaps stir craziness. It is, after all, true that, other than for class, Sadde doesn't really leave HQ a whole lot, not since they reached the comfortable position of being able to patrol from the comfort of the console - of, in fact, being more effective when doing that, for the average uneventful patrol.

Fatalism, depression, anxiety, and unease, all combined into a Sadde-shaped ball, are currently floating upside down in Lorica's workshop, failing to read a book while she fugues.

Comments

[hold_dear]

"But you're a person and therefore one of the most important and most interesting things in the world," she says. "I'm not tired of it at all."

[mrglam]

He grins. "Sure, but so are you, so."

[hold_dear]

"All right, you got me; what else do you want to know?"

[mrglam]

"I dunno, I've more or less told you random things about me, you could do the same!"

[hold_dear]

"Oh, let's see. I'm an only child but I always wished I had a big family. I like movies and museums and I used to do a lot of hiking but I've fallen out of touch with my hiking buddies and it's no fun alone."

[mrglam]

"I'm sorry about the hiking buddies. I never went, the only place anywhere near here one could do that is Great Bay National and it's tiny." Does it count as a date if he asks her to go see a movie with him? Perhaps a museum is safer, but Brockton Bay is fairly short on those, there's only- "But Brockton Bay has a boat museum a bit north of here, actually."

[hold_dear]

"Ooh, a boat museum!"

[mrglam]

"Yeah! It's really a Brockton Bay history museum, but said history has lots of boats in it, so. The shipping industry used to be the backbone of this city. It's one of the reasons it's gotten so much cape attention over the past couple of decades."

[hold_dear]

"Ooh, you did say you were a cape geek. Do you have a favorite?"

[mrglam]

"Here in BB, I used to really admire Armsmaster, and the way Glam and Lorica team up and combine their powers to deal with stuff is really awesome." He glows a bit inside when he says that. "Less locally, I think Narwhal is awesome, and Alexandria, too." Pause. Sheepish grin. "I did say I was bad at this whole 'favorite' thing. How about you?"

[hold_dear]

"I was a big Alexandria fan when I was a little girl. Pajamas and action figures and all."

[mrglam]

"I never was one to collect action figures and pieces of clothing like that," he muses. "I was more the kind who read up on them a lot and would think about who'd win in a fight, how to best apply a given power to a certain situation..."

[hold_dear]

"A tactical cape geek."

[mrglam]

He grins. "Well, yeah, a bit. It's all in the same package, really, I like figuring stuff out, how things tick, how people tick, how powers tick, how strategies tick... I'm a ticking guy. Sometimes a ticking gal. Other times a ticking enby."

[hold_dear]

"So - let's see, what's a classic - how do you beat Eidolon?"

[mrglam]

"Well, what do I have in hand? Just in general, throw Scion at him. Gimme constraints!"

[hold_dear]

"No Scion, no attacking him in his sleep unless you put him to sleep during the fight, pick any two capes under class S."

[mrglam]

"What's the battlefield like? Is it an ambush or does the fight start with everyone fully aware of the others?"

[hold_dear]

"Call it the latter."

[mrglam]

"Okay, so, hmm, when you said no class S capes did you mean to also include heroes who routinely fight class S threats like Alexandria and Legend or do I exclude those, too?"

[hold_dear]

"Mm, leave them out, make it a challenge."

[mrglam]

"Alright... So Eidolon's big thing is that he's both versatile and powerful, but he can only hold on to a few powers at a time and they're not under his own power, and take a while to settle, hmm..."

(Slurp slurp ice cream.)

[hold_dear]

She laps at her own cone and listens attentively.

[mrglam]

"The trick to dealing with him will always be being unexpected enough and vary fast enough that he can't respond appropriately. A head-on confrontation is bound to be doomed, need to approach this from an oblique angle, use his habits against him. Can I use heroes, villains, and rogues, or am I limited there?"

[hold_dear]

"Oh, take your pick. But they have to win, he can't escape."