"You're on record as a shaker-blaster-mover with a Tinker subrating 'so no one underestimates your potential versatility'."

"Awww you're gonna make me blush!"

"Sorry. Anyway, what's my suspected power so far? ...actually what have you told them it was?"

"I told them you can conjure things up temporarily, they're solid but only mostly obey physics, and you can do Tinkerlike effects on the fly but nothing technically sophisticated, just sometimes like at Acapulco big."

"Okay. So if I were to say what caused all this, I'd say—tell me if you spot any obvious flaws or a better way to word this or something—that I could, like you said, conjure things up. They're not temporary as long as I actually pay attention to them at least once every half an hour. I can grow in sophistication with time, the more often I conjure something the easier it is to do it and the more complex I can make it in the future..."

"Yeah, if you say you improve with practice that helps a few different things."

"Yup. Any suggestions? Anything I overlooked—oh, yes, actually, I have limited ability to affect things I didn't create that also grows with time, and my stuff doesn't like being looked at too hard. I don't think that's a weakness I can afford not to mention here."

"Is it literally just vision or any attention?"

"...I don't actually know? I mostly dispel things I'm not looking at, except Santuario's stuff kept working even while it was hidden by the casing—I didn't even think about it at the time—so it's not exactly vision. I have about forty-five more minutes, we could try testing some stuff. If you want."

"Is this really the best time?"

They shrug. "Maybe not? I just really don't feel like facing Chevalier again right now, even if my answer will be the one he wants."

"What I mean is if you wanted a while to think maybe you should think, not do powers testing. If you want to stall you can stall, I guess."

"...I don't know if I need to think any more than I have, really. I've been thinking about this for weeks now, it's really unlikely I'll think of any new arguments in the next 40 minutes, and I won't be able to contact anyone from New Wave probably which was my next step in information collection and in any case they probably don't have the legal power the Protectorate does even if Chevalier did exaggerate the risks."

"I think one of them is a lawyer, but yeah, point."

"I think tonight proved that you don't just need attention, you need the right kind of attention, and you need to nail that before you get lots of it. Look, even if all you can conjure without bolstering are small mundane objects you could still outclass Miss Militia but for experience and your need to sleep. You need solid tactics and a reputation for not killing people or you will aim a gun at an Endbringer and annihilate half a continent."

"...so basically just let it happen."

"That's not what I said."

"Well, I mean, it's not, but it also kinda is. The Protectorate knows a lot about making heroes get the kind of attention I need, and I'm not telling them about that part of the power unless I absolutely need to, the desire to be understood and to have someone else who can back me up in that particular dimension is nicely satisfied by you, so other than being extroverted and nice and particularly cooperative with Marketing and Branding I'm not sure there's a whole lot I can do?"

"Yeah, more or less. Not all heroes get spotlight. You'll be sidelined to a greater or lesser degree if you aren't media-friendly, mission-friendly, or audience-friendly, all of which are different things. I'm not media-friendly because engaging on that level seems like a waste of time to me, Boots isn't mission-friendly because he shoots off at the mouth, Dad isn't audience-friendly because his power is boring and mostly not good for showy fights."

"Which means if you say something the Protectorate doesn't like, like 'I got off attempted murder charges by being press-ganged into the Wards', that is the last time you see a camera for a year."

"I think I have more sense than that."

"You have sense, I'm just trying to impress on you how consistently you have to use it. Like, say tomorrow afternoon you meet a reporter who wants to know why you decided to join up, what you were doing before that, etcetera."