secret identity | Glowfic Constellation

imeanforever

Promise looks: apparently it's "Mimi" and "Gramme". Click click. Nod.

wormcan

And that's two of the eight Nine, with a minimum of syllables.

"The next most urgent thing is that Shatterbird is likely to sing in the near future. Nearly all glass in the city will explode. We have people spreading warnings, but it could happen at any time." The windows are all blocked, presumably to minimize injuries.

"We have the ability to fight most of them, but no information on where they are. We do know some of their targets: Panacea and Glory Girl have informed us that they have each been nominated for a space on their team. Denying the Nine access to their victims is a priority."

imeanforever

"Is there glass in my flatteners? - And I got a visit too. And I can stash a small number of people in Fairyland as long as they bring all their own food and don't leave the tree."

wormcan

Most of the people present start, but no one implies it means she's anything less than heroic. After all, Glory Girl and Panacea got the same.

"No glass. How many can you hide? There is presumably a candidate for each current member, even if we only know of three."

imeanforever

"...That depends on how absolutely they can be relied on not to leave the tree. And to a lesser extent how well they get along, I suppose. I have a few trees, and some of them are in worse neighborhoods than others, and if I have to cram everybody into an especially safe one they're going to be extremely crowded even if I force-grow it for hours."

wormcan

"Without knowing who they are, I can't promise that. But some may insist on fighting no matter how much we recommend hiding, and the more villainous nominees might not even trust the offer. You probably won't be hiding all eight. Make space if you can, and the heroes will pass along the offer and conditions during the truce meeting."

Armsmaster and the woman next to him in the military-like uniform both nod.

imeanforever

"Speaking of fighting versus hiding, apparently the Nine like to 'test' nominees? I don't understand how they intend to jump from there to enthusiastic participation, but I was offered a sort of 'pretest', which I delayed - to buy time to look Jack over more and to save the person he had hostage - and his offer to convince me he was operating in good faith was that he could show up to the next Endbringer fight and help to demonstrate he can follow through on agreements, after which time he will presumably find another hostage and reiterate his curiosity in the nature of my moral opinions. He agreed it doesn't count if he doesn't get there during the fight and in time to help, so I'm hoping I can just drop the blasted thing into space before he has time to tie his shoes, but this makes my reaction time more important than ever."

wormcan

"Jack Slash at the next Endbringer fight. That sounds like a nightmare. I'll notify the Chief Director." She looks around the room. "Should Jack appear, we will have to hold to the truce. Or at least not attack first, even if we can't trust him not to sabotage us. Other allies might not know we classify the Nine on the same scale as the Endbringers, or care if they did, and if he comes in the first place it means he's prepared for an attempt. Turning the battlefield into another battlefield is the worst outcome.

The tests are, essentially, them tormenting the candidates however they feel like. Some more creative than others. The Siberian's is always to directly chase them down, mutilate them the first few times she catches them, and then kill them. Nothing short of being somewhere else can stop her. It's a large part of why being in Fairyland would be safer for the nominees, even the ones other than you."

imeanforever

"I didn't detect enough psychological sophistication for whimsical torment to add up to functional loyalty. How does this group even persist, let alone fill itself in when there are gaps?"

wormcan

"They survive because their core members are very hard to kill, and the group is notorious enough that potential recruits often seek them out. They are usually at fewer than their stated number. It may be that with their current eight members they consider it less urgent to find people who are likely to join."

imeanforever

"Fair enough. Anyway, I can hide people in my tree if they'll stay put, but I need to be in the mortal world somewhere to be alerted and ready when the Endbringer shows up. I am willing to be in part of the mortal world on another continent if that would make everyone more comfortable, but if they show up to the Endbringer fight we'll be in the same city again anyway. That understood, I'd like another ride to the site of the Fairyland end of my gatebox to make some backup gates. If the Siberian chases me I can just fly; for that matter if she catches me all you have to do is throw the biggest chunk of me to Panacea to patch up; if she lures me down by attacking other people I want to drop her in a black hole."

wormcan

"You'll have your ride to the gate box. Elsewhere on the planet should be indistinguishable from off it as long as you don't do anything newsworthy. They've been very effective at finding people at range, but nobody can do it at that kind of range.
Some of that video is the Siberian 'testing' other nominees, don't underestimate her ability to chase fliers. If you can get her off the planet, do.

Once we find out where they are, we have two main possible strategies. One is a head-on attack, hoping to succeed where other teams have failed. We would bring in external support for this, our allies wouldn't be happy about it this close to an Endbringer attack but they'd help. The other option is to try to draw them out, put a smaller team at risk, and then hit them with all the explosives we captured from Bakuda. Judging by what she used on the city, some of them are very exotic and may be able to kill Crawler or even Siberian."

imeanforever

"I would expect to be able to handle the ones whose names I have myself, but Jack was obviously acquainted with how long it takes me to learn a person well enough to cast on them; it would be strange if they accounted for that with some kind of shapeshifting preparation that extended to body language and didn't have an intervention for orders. Is there anyone who stacks with Velocity? If we accelerate me enough I can snail them all in thirty seconds - Crawler maybe excepted. All I have to be is conscious and sensate, if there are ways to do this with other drawbacks."

wormcan

"It is a bad idea to rely too much on specific combinations of powers, especially against serious threats. Things have a way of going wrong. But there probably is someone, I'll look into it while you're in Fairyland."

imeanforever

"...Maybe Crawler and the Siberian excepted, I don't know how her invulnerability would interact. Black holes for them. Anyway. Do Panacea and Glory Girl want to go to one of my trees? Or I could just make a gate to Aleph or something, that might be more comfortable than being cooped up in a tree trunk for days."

wormcan

"A gate to Aleph would open a can of worms that to be honest I would rather not have to handle along with the larger priorities. If—"

She's cut short by the entrance of the Dallon sisters, escorted by uniformed PRT officers. "Panacea and Gl- her sister, ma'am."

imeanforever

"Why did -" She's heard the cape name before, it's not -

Promise smacks herself in the forehead. "That didn't click until you made me think about it."

wormcan

"You've heard her cape name before and didn't know? I had the impression that if a nickname you heard was too similar to the real one it would count immediately."

imeanforever

"Not if it's a word and I'm not trying and nobody draws my attention to it. I don't speak English. Everyone here could start speaking a pidgin of - of Greek and Chinese, and I'd wonder if you had colds, maybe. 'Glory' is a word. With Oni Lee I was trying."

wormcan

Another English word is "pig." Probably this just means Shadow Stalker was specific enough with her insults, but the other possibility is ugly.

"Glory Girl, you will have to use some other code name around Promise. She already has your name, or enough of it, but acting as if it no longer matters would give the false impression that that degree of overlap is safe."

imeanforever

"I - yeah," frowns Glory Girl, "okay, how about, um, Aura. ...Do you still mind if I'm in the room with you?"

"No; doesn't affect me anymore. Sit wherever you want. I don't think anyone but you and your sister knew to begin with that it upset me so that shouldn't be an additional intel risk."

wormcan

"Presumably if you're upset by powers of that kind in general someone might wonder why hers is an exception, but that's not a priority problem.

Aura, Panacea. Promise can hide you in her world, or anywhere in this one if it's far enough to evade however the Nine are tracking people. I strongly suggest that you accept."

imeanforever

"If you come to my world you absolutely must stay inside my tree. It's safe there. It is not safe outside it."

"...how long exactly would we be staying inside a tree, and what if the Nine kill you?" asks Aura-y Girl.

"I can leave an open gate inside the tree with the other end in Australia - they speak English there, right? - or something, if you're worried about being stranded. But that would make it a somewhat less secure hiding spot. They can't actually kill me, but if I take a year to recover from being smashed flat because Panacea's not available that wouldn't really help, I guess."

wormcan

"Australia, some place other than the cape headquarters where you already put a gate. Just in case."

Panacea asks the other question, "Are you offering this to the other targets? I don't want to share a tree with the kind of people who get picked for the Slaughterhouse Nine."

imeanforever