"What crawled up your ass?" James wonders.

Sadde considers saying 'unfortunately nothing' but thinks that will not be terribly productive. "I'm—kinda anxious," he admits instead.

"What about? You have the test in the bag if you stop drifting off."

"No, not about this. It's just. Been almost four months."

"Oh. Yeah, any day now."

"I'm trying to psych myself up, convince myself to go if it's the Behemoth, but then I think about it and I have to focus not to hyperventilate."

"They're not gonna make you. I don't go for anything farther than Eastern Seaboard, I'm not worth hauling past that, I can just do a little evac."

"I know they're not, but I still really should. I mean, even the evac help I can provide is pretty good, but. You know. Big gun."

"Sure, but can you actually? If you're gonna be all wobbly."

"That's why I'm psyching myself up, or trying to anyway. I think I'll be able to, but the wait is kinda nerve-wracking. It was like, a few days ago I noticed that it's been over three and a half months and now it's all I can think about."

"You can go next one. This one might not even be Behemoth."

"I'm going this one," he says, more firmly. "I spent ten years saying, maybe next one, maybe the next, I need to know my powers better, control them better, then I could and I spent a year saying I should wait, be sure, go out in costume." Sigh. "If it's him, I'm going."

"I mean, dude, you can make a bunch of copies with their own powers totally different from yours, you're a big deal. You could just sort of hang out way back and let them do all the work even."

"Do cameras work around him? I do need to be watching the copies to have them really do anything power-like."

"I mean if they were too close they'd melt. Farther away maybe, I'm not sure."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's—that actually makes me feel much better about going."

"Sure. Send the copies with one of Lorica's thingamajigs."

"Yeah."

"And like then you'll get cancer when you're fifty but capes don't live that long anyway."

"Gee, so encouraging. Legend and Eidolon are about that old, though."

"Eidolon can just do a healing power if he gets cancer and I don't think lasers get cancer."

"He gets pretty close to the Behemoth, too, considering."

"Why are you saying the?"

Shrug. "Dunno, feels weird to just go 'Behemoth.' Maybe I'm just used to 'the Simurgh' and transferred it over."

"Oh."