"Well, I can look into it, but I'm not a precog and they know that. I guess I could claim it manifests weirdly in some way I wouldn't have noticed..."
"Not being able to plausibly tell people about Milliways must suck. That having been said, I've never heard anyone else mention Yellowstone exploding, and I've met lots of people from Earths later than 2003."
"It's entirely plausible. Is there anyone you could tell about Milliways and expect to be believed, Bar could probably sell you something to help with the ash problem."
"I mean, if I bring home enough weird little robots maybe someone would believe that something happened. Milliways in particular is pretty unbelievable."
"...I know you're phobic but being able to just show someone that you're not lying or joking is so useful."
"Phobia is an irrational fear. If I were irrationally afraid of telepaths, I would, say, not be able to comfortably believe your claims to have ever met an ethic or to have your power under decent control. I am rational amounts of afraid of something that happens to be something most people do not consider particularly important, in much the same way someone who is immunocompromised would have to be warier of sneezing people than I am because they want to be more careful about managing the genuine threat represented and I can just make Alli heal me if I get a cold."
"I apologize for misusing the word. I didn't mean that it was irrational, but apparently I misremembered what phobia meant."
"Good. I'd be phobic if I weren't immune, Ziz'll do that to people. ...Ziz is an alternate name for the Simurgh."
"Anyway, if one of us could just telepathically convince the Junebugs or whoever that we really went here, we'd probably have to do it a bunch of times. There are a lot of Junebugs, long chain of command."
"I...really do not work well in a chain of command. I work well on teams with one or maybe a few leaders whom I personally trust. The people I consider myself answerable to at home consist of my parents. And I was less referring to the fact that I was a telepath and more to the fact that Papa was."
"We're not answerable to the Junebugs unless we're participating in their operations. We're minors and went for partial membership. They handled the evac well though."
"My chain of command is kind of shit," acknowledges Lorica. "I'm probably going independent when I age out of the Wards. It's badly organized, I think - parahumans as a group are psychologically damaged high-powered people, the Protectorate basically has to accept any would-be members who register on the powers scale and haven't recently eaten more than four babies, and you have all these sharp edges rubbing directly against each other until something breaks and someone destroys a city block. If I were running it every cape would get a nonpowered personal assistant with a compatible personality to run interference for them. I'm trying to compensate as best I can with robots, myself, I have a smart little software 'bot that I trained to handle most of my correspondence and scheduling and I'm trying to get people to talk to it instead of me if there is the least hint that we aren't going to be best friends."
"That is actually better than my reason. Not that my reason isn't perfectly good, but wow, that's pretty terrible."
"It almost certainly depends on how well-publicized the baby-eating was and whether they think they can sell the public on a new cape identity. I mean, if the Protectorate thinks they can control the cape. I don't think they'd recruit Nilbog, he'd go in the Birdcage. I have my suspicions about anybody lower down on the threat level who promises to be good. Which, you know, would be sort of admirable if they were doing it because they wanted to be reasonably merciful."
"It's worlds like yours that make me almost wish I was a less ethical person so I could make everyone behave better. ...I never would, but everyone has massively inappropriate fantasies sometimes."
"Join the club. I actually wouldn't stop you if you wanted to, say, go after the Slaughterhouse Nine from a nice safe distance. Some things justify that."
"What is the Slaughterhouse Nine? And if they're evil enough to justify brainwashing, do you have any idea where they are, my sister can fly pretty damn fast."
"They're a rotating-membership group of nine appallingly destructive capes. I don't know where they are but I could find out where they were last causing mayhem. They've all got a kill order on them and as a group they're classed in the same tier as Endbringers. But if I block you whatever they've got to keep native Masters and Strangers and such from doing the same thing might give you a problem too."