"Yeah. You sure you want to let her name you? She wasn't complaining that I heard about 'Glam'."

"Piggot said she'd actually complimented Glam so our tastes aren't directly opposed. And Glam only really makes sense because of my actual powerset, I'd have to think about what I'd name a subpowerset and honestly I'm lazy."

"All right then. I have an excuse to be the one to write in about this because I'm administering power tests, if you want the buffer between you and them."

"Yeah." Pause. "Has Piggot mentioned the two mes idea to Yates, do you think?"

"Maybe, probably depends on how busy she is today. Might be waiting for me to report in."

"'Cause if she knows about it beforehand it might be harder to convince her of going for another solution that wouldn't involve having two of me with more limited powersets."

"That ship might have sailed."

"That's a possibility, but I don't want to make it more likely. I'm trying to think of arguments that I might use, if I start the conversation saying that she's the final authority yadda yadda will she maybe consider doing something I suggest if she thinks it's not bad?"

"Do you have another idea...?"

"One is sacrifice some of the relatability and play up the strangeness. Mysterious character, featureless costume, all-concealing mask, kinda similar vibe to Myrddin, make the interest in me be more because I'm not easy to read, somewhat like you. Another to address the market segmentation is just having two lines of products that are different somehow, she'd know how better than I could."

"If you go to her with that, then if she doesn't reject you out of hand she'll want you to not talk in costume or something like that."

"I am perfectly okay with not talking in costume! The snark and taunting are nonessential parts of the experience."

"Well, then it's worth a try, I guess, but do be ready to abandon it even if she doesn't explain in a way you agree with why she doesn't like it."

"It's a long shot, I'm okay with being dismissed, but I would like to think of new stuff to try before defaulting to the being-two-people idea. Thoughts?"

"Make it a secret identity thing as much as you feasibly can?"

"...okay, this will limit the scope of my social interactions with people in HQ some, and I kinda already told Chevalier it wasn't a secret identity thing, but I can roll with that, and he won't necessarily remember I told him that."

"Yeah, I don't know how Chevalier will jump on that even if he does remember. But you can have a secret identity thing that isn't an identity-in-HQ thing. Miracle Max is intensely cagey about personal anecdotes and information with the public but when he's just hanging out he'll show you pictures of his grandchild."

Lorica snorts.

"Anyway," both say as they look at Lorica. "Any other ideas? I'll keep thinking about this after we're done power testing anyway so if you think power testing is a better idea for now then we can go do that instead."

"I never did catch you with a bag of unconjured golf balls on hand, did I?"

"Nope! And we never tested my effective conjuration range and what counts as 'paying attention.'"

"So there's a few different ranges that could be good to know," says Lorica, pulling out a golf ball. She hands it to a robot. "Bots are gonna play catch while trying to do a few different things. Till further notice your job is to make sure they catch the balls whether they want to or not and not watch 'em. Anyway. There's range at which you can conjure a thing - if you have a good view of something a mile away can you put stuff there, does it matter if the stuff is big enough to see at that distance, etcetera. There's range you can get away from your stuff - or send it away from you, which might be different - once it's already made, within half an hour, before it poofs. There's range at which the opinions of others matter, which unfortunately there's no discreet way to test that I can think of. And it is possible although not overwhelmingly likely that your stuff can't have any effects at all from far enough away - can't be seen through a telescope, say."

"That's why you're not looking, you won't know how the bots are throwing them in the first place."