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

[mrglam]

"Right in front of it. It's really tall, and looks awesome. And there's the light bridge between the ground building and the floating dome which is pretty rad, and shines in a million colors."

[hold_dear]

"Sounds gorgeous."

[mrglam]

"It is!" He looks around the gift shop and hmms. "I guess the PHQ's gift shop probably has postcards and miniatures."

[hold_dear]

"Probably does."

[mrglam]

"Then, shall we go? I know just what bus to take."

[hold_dear]

"Sounds great."

[mrglam]

To the bus! The PHQ is more or less halfway between the Boardwalk and the Shopping District.

[hold_dear]

"I always find buses in a new town very confusing, I'd probably be hemorrhaging cab fare if it weren't for you."

[mrglam]

"I got them more-or-less memorized last year. Except not really memorized but I more-or-less know the web of buses and can find my way from anywhere to anywhere else."

[hold_dear]

"Is this not a good place to have a car?"

[mrglam]

"Well, on the one hand it doesn't have a subway system, but on the other the streets weren't very well planned and can sometimes be a pain to drive around in. I myself like walking and taking the bus, see the sights, occasionally meet people, even when I'm not as aimless as today."

[hold_dear]

"It is a bit of a maze, isn't it."

[mrglam]

"Yup, part of the whole 'grew organically' thing, stuff just started appearing in places where people needed it, and local optimization almost never reaches global optima."

[hold_dear]

"Why not?" wonders Chelsea.

[mrglam]

"Imagine you're in a field with hills and you want to get to the lowest point of the field. A possible strategy to do so would be always and only taking steps that take you somewhere lower - that's local optimization. Eventually you'll reach the lowest point that strategy can get you. However, there might be a point that's lower still, somewhere else, and the only way to get there would be to climb some of those hills and get higher before getting lower again.

"That's the same principle, if you only do things that make your immediate situation better you will almost never reach the most desirable place you could've designed with planning and forethought."

And eventually they reach the PHQ. They go on one of the tours, conveniently starting soon after they arrive, and Sadde provides commentary on the tour guide's description with information that's technically-public but would need some digging to find out. They visit the gift shop at the end, and Sadde buys her yet another souvenir. They chat more, walk around aimlessly, he points Arcadia out - another fine example of architecture - and eventually he invents an excuse to have to go, because he needs to go patrolling that evening. Which he can, of course, do from the console.

[hold_dear]

Chelsea bids him a murmured goodbye and leaves him be.

[mrglam]

And he'll order some food and man the console and eat the food while manning the console and making a Glam-copy patrol with Silica.

[thinkering]

His shoulderbot sits on his shoulder.

[mrglam]

"Hi, love."

[thinkering]

"Hi. Have a good day?"

[mrglam]

"Yeah, I needed that."

[thinkering]

"Good." The bot nuzzles up to his cheek and settles down on his shoulder.

[mrglam]

He opens his mouth to tell her about it but... does she strictly need to know? Well, of course not, but he doesn't just tell her things she needs to know, and he never really hides anything from her. On the other hand, she's not really likely to care much about it, is she? So he met a random new person and they hung out and he played tour guide. Sadde's sociable enough that the names of people he spends time with, like from school and such, are probably getting mixed together in Bella's brain by now. Or, well, not really, because her bot is a very good memory aid, but the point is that it's not really noteworthy.

Instead, he asks, "How about you?"

[thinkering]

"Lot of fugue. Bot is now authorized to moderate more sections of the forum."

[mrglam]

"Oh, that's nice, what changed?"