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]

"If you do...?"

[thinkering]

"- then I'm annoyed if I can't for some reason."

[mrglam]

"Yeah, I'm not," he shrugs. "Past a certain - baseline, I guess, my desires and ambitions are more the prosocial kind than anything to do with me having or experiencing things."

[thinkering]

"Okay."

[mrglam]

"I love you."

[thinkering]

"I love you too."

[mrglam]

"...also uh, do you object to my hanging out with Chelsea just as friends?"

[thinkering]

"If you're sure you can keep it that way, no I don't."

[mrglam]

"Okay. Thank you. And we'll probably not hang out that much, she's just a tourist anyway."

[thinkering]

"Okay."

[mrglam]

"So, anyway, any plans for today?"

[thinkering]

"Nothing special. Although I'm toying with the idea of building a duplicate of myself-in-armor that wouldn't rely on you for its existence, now that people have caught on to what we're doing."

[mrglam]

"Ah, yeah, that's actually a pretty good idea!"

[thinkering]

"It'll keep me occupied."

[mrglam]

"How long d'you expect it to take?"

[thinkering]

"Week or two, probably."

[mrglam]

He nods. "I'm not sure it'll change a whole lot, though, it's not like people knowing I'm responsible for copy-you changes much about their strategies."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, I'm not completely sold on the idea, just crossed my mind."

[mrglam]

"But on the other hand I am legitimately limited by how much attention I can pay to things and how much stuff I can have conjured, so it might be a good idea anyway."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, but I'm not sure if that's a good reason to have a Lorica instead of just another standard bot chassis which is easier and cheaper to make and maintain."

[mrglam]

"True. You know, the other day I was trying to think about names for the bot, and Bot Only Talks To Lorica came up and it's a terrible name not to mention untrue but B.O.T.T.L."

[thinkering]

"That is in fact a terrible name, congratulations on your discernment."

[mrglam]

"It'd be funny! And I think acronym names are the way to go. I've been trying to find one for B.O.T. with no success."

[thinkering]

"I don't really like acronym names, I mean, I get the punny appeal but I don't want to name my bot based on it."

[mrglam]

"Oh. No acronym names, then. Hmm..."