"I was trying to be nice to her and convince her of not presenting me as either gender. She was not very polite. I said that being not-very-polite around parahumans wasn't good, she said I shouldn't be threatening her. I said I didn't mean it as a threat and I just wanted amicable conversation to happen, she said it wasn't a conversation between peers. I asked her to explain to me why she was right, she said she didn't have the time for that and didn't care what I thought, I'd either do what she wanted or not go out at all."

"Oh dear."

They are still hugging the ceiling. "I don't want to make it look like it was a close call because it wasn't, I was perfectly under control all the time, but the fact that my power is possibly the deadliest amongst the Wards at the moment kept crossing my mind."

"Jesus. She's just a desk job with nail polish, don't let her get to you like that."

"That... depends on how bad you pissed her off. If I'd known it was going to go that badly I'd have gone with you."

Sigh. "I have no idea which part of it was the wrong one. And the worst is I'm genuinely curious about why she thinks it's such a bad idea for me to present as nonbinary."

"Did she say?"

"Market segmentation, apolitical stance, relatability," they recite.

"Those sound like actual reasons. She's probably mistaken about relatability, but I'm not really floored that she's not up on current social categories, I had to look things up about you and I'm at least fifteen years younger than her."

"I mean, I believe they're actual reasons, and I believe she has a structure behind them, I think I can guess her arguments, I just wanted to hear them and be able to engage with them and see if we couldn't squeeze out a cost-benefit analysis or some such."

They turn their head back some more to look at Lorica. Still hugging the ceiling. "What am I supposed to treat her like?"

"I don't have a super precise analogy for that."

"Use an imprecise one?"

"Buggy computer program?"

"...send the log to the devs and hope they fix it soon?"

"The devs only speak Chinese and their email address is dead."

Giggle. "Come on, walk me through this, what am I supposed to do with a buggy computer program?"

"I - maybe that wasn't the best bad analogy. Like... you're trying to treat her like a person and to her, this sounds like backtalk. Treat her like a - puzzle? A video game boss? I don't know. The object of interacting with her is not to achieve mutual understanding, it's to get you out the door and ship posable figurines. You have to figure out what buttons to push to get that result and those are not the same buttons you push to have a sincere interaction with a fellow person."

"You are absolutely not supposed to threaten her. Are you desperate to get out ASAP or can you give her a day to cool off and bring me with you to mediate tomorrow?"

"Second thing. I was willing to sit with her once a day and listen to her smugly explain how much of an idiot I am for weeks."

"I don't think that would do anybody any good."

"No, it probably wouldn't," they agree.