The grownups are all very busy, but the children are all bored.
Bored or having nightmares. But Tasárinon was not on a ship and did not see the people dying and has only heard it thirdhand and can't exactly have nightmares about the look in his mother's eyes - well, he probably could, but he hasn't - so he's bored, and he is drawing on the floor. It is an absurdly intricate drawing. He has been embellishing it for three days.
He shakes himself like he's drying off and the test bubbles littering the room all fall to the ground in shreds. No. Your capabilities are very interesting.
"There's lead in it, no one who isn't a Maia had better eat that," Cam adds.
"Noted," says Maitimo wearily. "Well, it'll work for quarantining orcs, at the cost of making more of your capabilities known to the Enemy but I have to assume he has spies in Brithombar or Doriath."
"It seems like the next thing that's not politics, and it'll take me a while to give you a read on how long politics is going to take."
"He always gets what he wants," Fëanáro says carelessly, "but we can't afford for this to be one of the rare instances where it takes him a century."
"I also was not really trying most of the time in Valinor," Maitimo says. "Nothing at stake, you know. It won't take a century. Can you drop us in Brithombar on the way to take orcs prisoner?"
And they load up to go.
Maitimo bites his lip. "That'd be convenient, yes. Do we want the locals to have the impression we work for you? Do we want the Enemy to have the impression you work for us, because he knows us too well to find the opposite plausible..."
"I think probably not to the first, we're not scary powerful and it sounds like that's not something that inclines them favorably. If Alqualonde comes out you can credibly promise to stop us from doing that again with or without being in charge of the alliance. I don't know what I want the Enemy to think. I'd rather he believe his efforts to divide us more successful than they were, and I'm taking steps towards that end, but beyond that - suppose we want to avoid him thinking he can get to you through us -"
"I'm not personally attached to any of you, he's got loads of people already."
"Yes, obviously, I was not under the impression he could just that it'd be unfortunate for us if he got the idea."
"Yes it would. If you think of a good way for me to credibly signal that let me know."
"Because Oaths exist I have never put much thought to other ways of credibly signaling things to hostiles who don't know me and who I can't talk to."
"He'll probably go after us anyway. My father is brilliant and probably will have FTL within a year or two and I can only imagine what the Enemy'd do with a copy of his brain - not even to torture, just to delete all memories since the Enemy was paroled and then let him invent things..."
"...so the chip I have in my brain is for restricted access to my computer. It's mostly a demon thing but it's had some human trials. A basement dweller won't be able to operate it but will be able to confirm that if I place it where it'd go in a human it won't cause a brain bleed or anything. State of the art in my world can't spoof the signature; I could give you an exact duplicate of my chip and your brain wouldn't handle it the way my brain does so you wouldn't be able to access my files. I'm thinking one of those, and something that can melt your chips on a signal from that, so that's two installations."
"I think it would be a good idea to start testing that right away."
"Basement dweller test subjects coming right up."
He makes some. He chips them.
They don't die of brain bleeding.
If nothing else is going on with them either, he whips up a design for something melty and chiptriggered and tries placing it near their "naturally-occurring" cyborg bits.
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