"That sounds like a good idea," agrees Rete.

"Probably some variety in any weapons she makes, the Sentinels are really adaptive."

"She can build that in pretty easily because her specialty is software-controlled tech and giving a weapon more settings it or I can sift through will make it simpler for her to do."

"...Huh. That's...unintuitive."

"It is. Lorica does not have engineering abilities or knowhow outside of her power per se, though, so when it stops helping her, she can't proceed. The thing it helps her with is making software with options, which is why I was easy to create and she had to get very roundabout to program a calculator app."

"Huh. Is there any reason she hasn't studied engineering since getting her power?"

"She has had the power for only a couple of years, is required by law to attend high school, and has much of the rest of her time filled with her responsibilities to her team."

"Oh, yeah, high school...exists. I guess her high school probably wouldn't have engineering classes."

"It has more than an average public high school, but it would become difficult to hide her power in a classroom setting."

"Hide her power?"

"The overwhelming majority of parahumans maintain secret identities. She attends school as her civilian identity and is not known therein to have a power."

"...They're all closeted?"

"The term isn't used. The intent is to protect civilian family members from spillover of the conflicts capes enter."

"The conflicts?"

"Most parahumans are either superheroes or supervillains. Rogues are officially encouraged but rare."

"...Rogues?"

"Rogues are capes who are not supervillains or superheroes. I'm sorry, I thought context would be sufficient."

"It's just very weird that they're called that."

"I'm afraid I can't look up the etymology from here."

"So why are they uncommon?"

"Theories include that the traumatization of Triggers tends to produce extreme personalities, that the legalities of use of parahuman powers in a civilian capacity are intractable, that the Protectorate recruits aggressively enough to turn most people it reaches into an ally or an enemy, and that it's something about the sort of person able to trigger in the first place."

"...Huh. What about people whose powers are no good for combat, d'you just not have those?"

"As far as we know, all powers have some combat applicability."

"Huh. We have people whose powers are, like, 'hyper-efficient digestive system' or 'doesn't sleep.'"

"There are parahumans who don't sleep or have unusual digestion but not who have no other power."