"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."

"You planning to come to the fight, if it's him?"

"If it's nearish. No point to hauling me all the way across the world. More people you try to put on the plane the slower it leaves."

He nods.

"I went to Leviathan once. I got like - ten people, maybe, and a broken arm."

"That's ten people who are only alive now because of you."

"Somebody else might've got 'em."

"Yeah, they might, and tomorrow a plane might crash on your head but I'd still save your life today if it needed saving. Just because we haven't figured out immortality yet doesn't mean the extra days we buy each other aren't worth living."

Blink. "I didn't say anything about immortality."

"I know you didn't, I did. I'm just saying, life's worth living, and every person you saved matters."

"Yeah," mutters Boots.

He puts a hand on Boots' shoulder.

"...What."

Shrug, remove hand. "Nothing. Just felt like it was a thing I should do."

Snort. "You feel like you should do a lot of things, don't you."

"To be fair, I can usually figure out where the feelings come from if I try." Pause. "You saved ten people, then. You're worth taking to fights, a twenty-second delay in boarding the plane is worth ten lives."

"Is it? I figured somebody else did the math already."

"I don't think they really do a whole lot of math when it comes to Endbringer fights. It seems mostly like 'everyone who can come is a helpful addition.' And that's a point. Even if you don't save anyone, just showing up, boosting morale, convincing other people who might be able to save even more people, to drive those creatures away even a second earlier. I think it's worth it."

Blink. "Um. They probably wouldn't notice but... I mean, if people started doing that then that'd be a morale hit, people would be more reluctant to come to the next fight. It's why we have the Truce." Pause. "Why, though? You get your full salary, don't you? I mean, it's not as much as an adult hero, but it's still more than me."

"...um."

"...um?"

"I mean, yeah, they - they pay me."

"So...?"

"You—what? Wait, what?"

"He doesn't know I'm a cape, okay, but he noticed I had like video games and could go with people to the movies and didn't have to fucking ask him for textbook money and now I don't fucking get to keep it, okay?"

Boots looks away.

"...can I help? Can't you, like, emancipate? Get the Protectorate to help you, like, leave?"

"He doesn't know I'm a cape and I'm pretty sure the minute he finds out he's going to actually kill me. If I had money he didn't know about I could just move out. I don't think he'd follow me to school."

"Kill you? Why? And—can't you just stay at the PHQ, tell someone about it and not go back home?"

"You know the Youth Guard is a parents organization, right?" Boots shakes his head. "I don't - I don't know why I just have a feeling. He's not made of fucking diamond like that breaker you made up, anyway, it's mostly okay these days."

"Wow. Shit. That—fuck. Can't you—no, that wouldn't—argh."

Boots shrugs, looking at his hands.

"...when do you turn eighteen?"

"In like a year and a half."

"Shit, that's a long time." Think think think. "Would he go after you, if you disappeared?"

"I don't know. Probably not if I just kept sending the checks."

"Hmm. What's the non-cape law like, in New Hampshire, about emancipation of minors, do you know?"

"Dunno."

"I could try to look into that, for you, maybe there's legal aid available. I'm, um, emancipated myself, I have some experience with that, the fact that you have a source of income helps a lot, but I'm not sure how that interacts with the Protectorate. And with your power, too, I don't know if he leaves many bruises or scars that could serve as evidence of abuse?"

"Not unless he's really pissed off. And I don't want to - go around proving it, anyway, I'm not some cute little victim, the kinda people who help snotnosed six-year-olds with shit parents don't feel good about themselves for helping people like me."

"Right, didn't mean proving it in the future, just, maybe you had something on you already that could be used. And yeah, you have a point there. This is... complicated, I'd have to maybe talk to a lawyer or something, not mentioning you of course, not until I was pretty sure of what I was doing and you agreed and gave me your permission."

"You have a lawyer hiding somewhere? Anyway you can't say the part where I'm a cape or it'll be really fucking easy to narrow down."

"I don't, and obviously not mentioning the cape part. I think I'd just look into precedent and stuff, see if anything like this has happened before. I mean, surely it has, the Wards program has been around for twenty years."

"Something like that. The part where I'm a cape is kind of a big deal though." Pause. "I never told anybody before. Figured the first thing you'd ask would be, like, 'why don't you kill him' or something."

"...I'm generally against killing people, even horrible people. I mean, if their horribleness includes killing more people, then sure, but, in general. Also there'd be the thing where, you know, you could be arrested and stuff."

"You killed a guy. And all that happened to you was you had to join the Wards and I already joined 'em, on purpose and everything. I think about that a lot."

"It was an accident," they sigh. "I'm—not sure how that would go, honestly. They might cover for you, but it's slightly different, your dad isn't a drug dealer—is he?"

"Don't think so," says Boots thoughtfully.

"In any case, let's try not to go for murder, because in addition to being a crime, it is also wrong."

Boots looks away.

"...what?"

"That's not why I don't kill him."

"Why is it?"

"I don't fucking know but a couple times I decided to do it and the shithead's still alive anyway!"

"What? Why?" Pause. "Is he a parahuman?"

"Don't think so. I just - didn't move."

"Oh."

"He can't have some kinda people-trying-to-kill-him-don't-move power, he gets into fights with other people and comes back all beat up."

"Mmhm. Do you live with anyone else?"

"No."

He nods and is about to say something when an alarm starts sounding in the entire building. His eyes widen slowly, his mouth still open, and he barely catches the announcement telling all heroes to convene... somewhere. He's not really paying attention.

He closes his mouth and shakes his head, but quickly, to clear his head. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm coming."

And they're off.

Lorica's going. Windflower isn't.

"Yeah. Should've practiced this. It's okay, I can fugue on the fly, gimme an interface for the bots."

"Alright, what should the interface be like?" If they're speaking a bit louder than the strictly necessary for only Lorica to hear, that's certainly only due to nervousness or something like that.

"As much like another bot as you can manage, they'll fill in all the gaps."

It is done.

Surely all the fancy-looking parts are upgraded versions of the originals, capable of more oomph. This time there's proper casing, with a minimalistic white design reminiscent of Glam's costume.

Behemoth isn't very far away. Lorica has to stop adding things to it after a while.

"How heavy is it?" comes a reply.

"Glam's warning you in case you have hearing protection you can use," Lorica adds helpfully.

Glam's little robot pal scrunches up against their neck.

"Hit him again!" hisses the little robot in Lorica's voice.

"Pushing a hotfix software update!" Lorica says. The little robot leeches itself to the base of the gun.

(Meanwhile, Lorica's coordinating another force and Transit's got his radiation shield up and he's hauling dead capes one by one out of the radius so Rewind can try -)

"Good, just keep it up," says Lorica's voice in their ear.

"GLAM -"

The last thing the shoulderbot sees is the ball of magma.

"Jesus fuck, you asshole!" the robot says to Glam.

"I'm sorry! Chew me out later, do we make another gun? Real me's hiding elsewhere."

"Yeah, fine, get a casing and all my parts set up and I'll be there in a sec."

They do that, picking a spot farther away from the Endbringer, who's currently being slowed down by a cape with ice powers—or rather, entropy-lowering powers, as it turns out.

Lorica flies in presently and starts assembling things and having robots assemble things.

"Good to know."

"I'm sorry. This was—Boots gave me this idea, actually, we were talking about it just before the alarm, then there was the alarm, and I guess I didn't catch up with my brain and just started implementing ideas."

"Mmhm. So I guess when you picked up the bot once you were in costume that was already a dupe."

"Yeah."

Assemble assemble assemble.

"You can keep a nonspecialist bot after I split off again."

"Alright. And by the way, real me is..." They turn around, then point at a building a ways off. "Over there." Lorica's suit's zoom will be able to see real Glam waving and holding binoculars from the top of another building.

"They want a bot too?"

"Don't know, but might be better? To keep track of? They won't actually know what we talk about here until and unless one of us tells them."

"They get a bot, then."

"Announced."

After ten seconds, it starts loading again, loud noise and all, and then it hits the Endbringer on the chest where the previous wound had been. It doesn't damage him as much. "Does he get tougher on the inside? I'm gonna aim for a leg, now."

Lorica's off elsewhere.

Somebody comes along to scoop it up and haul it elsewhere.

"It's a new version. The charging up thing isn't getting that much attention even with the noise because everyone is too busy to pay attention to you. Skip straight to the continuous blast and don't bother with the technobabble."

(And Lorica maneuvers Rewind and Transit around and flies students who didn't make it to the shelter out beyond city limits -)

(Evac still needs to happen, Scion's good news but Behemoth may cause a quake on his way out, go go go -)

Glam dismisses the copy and the gun, and then makes a bunch of copies—ten, a safe number, they should last the full half-hour—and starts helping with that. They follow the copies around with the binoculars, but the copies return to the building original's occupying every twenty or so minutes to make sure they won't blink out of existence.

The robot can't follow them all and just picks one.

Scion dishes out the hurt, grabbing Behemoth whenever he tries to escape and continuing to slap him down. He sends waves of stilling around the damaged parts of the city, causing fires to cease, radiation to decrease and then disappear, dust to settle. And eventually Behemoth escapes his grip and burrows back into the earth, too damaged to retaliate.

Neither does Glam, and Rewind is working like she never did before. But eventually the ten minutes are up, and a further ten minutes because who knows, and then they're boarding the plane back.

Glam... decides they will talk to her once they arrive, or maybe later if she doesn't want to.

They've still got a robot with them. It's a little too big for a shoulder and sits in their lap.

The robot pats their knee.

"I'm not sure what my copy told you. I have a theory but, you know. It was an idea Boots gave me before we came, like not ten minutes before the alarm sounded, and it was in my head, and I guess with all the stuff I forgot to warn you."

"That's what the copy said," says the bot.

"Mmhm." Pause. "Where's Boots, by the way? I didn't see him board." They look around, trying to spot him.

"We lost Beneficence too."

Glam hides their face in their hands, leaning forward, their elbows on their knees.

Lorica pats her dad's shoulder and goes over to Glam and hugs them.

The plane ride is pretty short. Need will be.

Hug.

And eventually they land, startling Glam out their misery.

"There's a therapist on staff, if you didn't know."

"...I did know. I'm not sure that's—that'll be necessary."

"Voluntary unless somebody thinks it's affecting your performance, so if you don't want to go, uh, look out."

"Okay." Sniffle. "I'm being kinda selfish, here. Are you—how are you?"

"I'll be fine."

"So will I. How are you right now?"

"Planning on being fine."

Sigh. "Okay. If you wanna—talk about it, or chew me out about that thing, or to be hugged back, or something. Um. You can tell me."

"Next time you tell me when you're a copy."

"Yes. I promise."

"Right. I'm going to go congratulate Rewind, that was her first Endbringer fight."

"Oh, right." An undefined mess of emotions well up inside them. Why didn't she save—but they know they can't blame her for it. She couldn't've saved everyone. "This must've been the fight with the lowest casualty rate, huh."

"Not quite. Below average but not a record, not even for Behemoth. Getting her around is a problem; Dad helped but I want to see later if you can do flying suits that other people can control."

"Mmhm. Yeah, okay, we should definitely test that. I" can't go talk to Rewind right now, I'm going to blame her and it's not her fault, it's mine, all mine "'m going to my room to take a shower."

Rewind is in the Wards' little common room, looking electrified, and lost, like she's crashing from the adrenaline high and doesn't quite know what to do with herself.

"Hey. How are you holding up?"

She opens and closes her mouth several times before saying, "He was so big."

"Yeah." Lorica sits next to her. "Yeah, they're big and he's biggest."

She nods, and falls silent for a few seconds, then says, "I think I understand why people become heroes, now."

"That's good."

She nods. "It's kinda hard to get back to normal after that."

"You'll adjust. If you want, there's a therapist, but that's optional."

"Nah, I'm cool. I won't get fucked up, or anything."

"I'm glad to hear it. I wanted you to know that you made a huge difference out there. Not just saving lives, but saving lives who could then go on to save more lives. I ran an estimate and today alone there are about a hundred fifty people who are still walking around because of you, and that's to say nothing of the ripple effect when the capes are there at the next fight and the next."

She blinks. "Cool! I kinda don't remember a bunch of that, though."

"You're not immune to your own memory loss? I was going to ask but the alarm went off before we could schedule something."

"Immune? No, everything rewinds, why would my brain, you know, not?"

"Some people are immune to parts of their own powers. I'm immune to your memory loss, by the way - and my robots can compensate because they're a distributed architecture - so you can be a little freer about bopping me and them for transport or healing than you might with other teammates."

"Oh. Aren't you a Tinker though? How come you're immune?"

"Secondary power. Did you read your handbook yet?"

She makes a pained face. "Not really."

"Well, whenever you get around to it, under 'Master/Stranger protocols unique to this HQ', there's a bit that says 'trust Lorica above your own senses while protocols are in effect'. I'm generally immune to mind-affecting anything."

She nods, seriously. "I have a secondary power, too, but it's, like, to complement my primary. I can—sort of—see where stuff was."

"Oh?"

"It's hard to explain. It feels sorta like colors? Everywhere, like this shadow behind everything, and I can tell just by looking where a thing was and what it was doing and how it was moving, and if I concentrate a little bit I can even replay the events in my head. It's how I know I used my power on myself, the colors change suddenly."

"Huh, that's really useful and explains how you can land so precisely when you're porting around."

"Yeah. I can see stuff even from when I wasn't around. Like, I know you were talking to someone for a bit just before you came looking for me."

"I don't exactly look very different when I'm talking; do you see a shadow of the other party or are you guessing?"

"It's not just seeing, it's like, watching it happen. I can hear stuff, too, so I know you were talking. It's been more than ten minutes now, but when we started talking I could've figured out what you were saying if I tried."

"That's really interesting! The ten minute limit decreases the effectiveness some, but like - could we give you a phone and tap it for the last ten minutes of conversations on it?"

"I dunno. I mean, I could prolly figure out the last ten minutes of stuff the person on the other side said, sure, but not this side, I think."

"Half a log might be better than none, and that's the half that would usually be harder to get, anyway. By default my bots are recording anything that happens to them and you can use them as transcription if you want to relay something you see or hear to the rest of us."

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"I mean if you're listening to a phone, you can say what you pick up from the phone to a bot, and then we'll have a record, instead of just saying it to a person who might forget."

"Oh! Yeah, I can do that."

"I also wanted to ask how you decide what gets rewound. Like, you rewound me with my suit; is that optional, could you have gotten the suit and not me if you had nastier intentions?"

"No, it's like, my power kinda decides that stuff counts as one thing? Like if I poured water in a glass and then I touched the glass, both the water and the glass would return to where they had been, even if that means separate. So, like, your suit and you counted as one thing, to my power, I could only choose to affect you separately if you were, you know, actually separate."

Lorica loosens a glove. "So if I detach part of it but it's still on me, how does that affect it?" She holds out her hand.

"Um, what do you want me to do? Boop the glove?"

"Yeah, just a little ways. I don't lose memories, I'm a reasonable experimental target."

She squints at the glove. "Can you, like, stand up, walk around a bit, then come back?"

"Sure." Lorica stands up, walks around a bit, and comes back.

Rewind watches, then squints at the glove again, and nods. "Yeah, like, the glove counts as separate from you if it's not, you know, around you. Like, if I try to rewind the glove five seconds, I'll rewind all of you, but if I try it far enough that you were standing up, then I rewind just the glove." And she demonstrates, touching the glove with a finger and causing it to appear mid-air somewhere Lorica had been.

Lorica catches it and puts it back on. "That sounds almost like a safety - if you rewound somebody's outfit and it had previously been somewhere they were now intersecting - can you get anything to appear intersected with anything else under other circumstances?"

"No. The colors disappear if there's something in the way. Or, not disappear, but just, um, the part of them that's... in the way? Like..." She stands up then starts gesturing around to indicate the places Lorica had been. "If I put something here," she says, occupying one of those places, "then I can't rewind you so you'd be in this specific place, but I can rewind you before or after this."

"But air's fine. If I... blow up a balloon... then I assume you rewind it as a unit? Would the air rewind back into my lungs or would that be blocked off?"

Shrug. "Dunno. Never tried that."

"Do you know how you work underwater?"

"Newp."

"Well, I know what we're doing when we block out some time for power testing, then."

"Sounds cool!"

"It'll be fun. Do I seem odd to your power in any way at all that might mean I don't make a good example, besides the fact that I remember it?"

She squints. "No, not really. I mean, it's really weird that you remember it, but the colors work the same way."

"Okay, good, no need to comb the other Wards for people willing to experimentally lose memories. Me and robots and balloons."

"And water!"

"Yep! Ooh - if you rewind someone who's been, say, shot, does the bullet appear in motion again or just pop into place where it was with no momentum and fall?"

"If I don't rewind it far back enough that the bullet hadn't been shot yet, it'll be in motion."

"It'd require very good reaction time to make tactical use of that but it's good to know."

"Mmhm."

"Make a note of anything else you want to test. For now, we've had a long day, and I bet you could use a nap or something."

Pause. "Uh, yeah, actually. Wow I'm tired, I didn't even notice that."

"It'll sneak up on you."

"Mmhm. Yeah, I'm gonna."

"Power testing with Rewind this afternoon."

She closes the book, using a finger to mark the page. "Ooh! Sounds interesting. What are you gonna test?"

"How she works underwater and whether the limit's exactly ten minutes and stuff with blowing up balloons and anything else that's occurred to her."

"Can I come? I wanna help testing!"

"I didn't think anybody else would want to - well, want to be booped, anyway, if you have ideas I want those for sure."

"I haven't thought about it, no ideas, but being booped sounds fun, too."

"You didn't like losing time in the fight."

"Well, it was a fight, and out of my control, and not for Science." Somehow, she manages to say it like the S was capitalized. "Under controlled conditions, and especially with you around, it actually sounds interesting."

"Okay, you can come along if you like." Lorica emails Rewind to let her know.

"It'll be fun."

"I want to figure out an efficient way to get her working with paramedics."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. But there's the problem that anything she rewinds basically undoes stuff... I mean, I guess it's still better than nothing in many many cases."

"Even if all she can do most of the time is make it effectively ten minutes sooner they get to the hospital, it could be a big deal for things like heart attacks and strokes and bleeding out, and if she can get onsite fast enough for traumatic injuries she's a perfect cure."

"Mmhm. Though, when would she do it? Her free time? The Youth Guard would be on us like dogs."

"No, I'd want to call it a patrol - she'd be bopping around, interacting with emergency services, if she did happen to run into any crimes she could address them."

"I suppose," she says dubiously. "Would Piggot be on board with that? Especially... you know, with the reduced contingent."

"We are down to four, but we were down to four when Dauntless graduated, and there weren't any special adjustments to patrolling requirements then."

"True, I guess."

"And patrols usually don't find anything anyway. The cops call us if there's actually capes involved, if there aren't we're not at much of an advantage, I think it's much more constructive to do paramedical work."

She nods. "I mean, I agree with you about being constructive, but. Um."

"Um?"

"'Um' is 'I do not have the impression that the people in charge are the very best at agreeing with you.'"

"Well, what kind of resistance do you think I'll encounter?"

"No clue. For all I know I'm being paranoid. I mean, Piggot could say 'no that's not the best way to use her' and that would be that."

"True. But the downside potential of suggesting it is pretty low."

"Yeah, for sure."

"And if I want to be really sneaky I make a call to the paramedic department first to ask if they'd be interested in the guise of not wanting to waste Piggot's time..."

"Would she even buy that?"

"If I don't commit to anything with the paramedics? She might well pretend to."

"Heh. Yeah, sounds like a good idea."

Yeah, comes the reply almost immediately.

Cool, I'll keep you posted. "Rewind's on board."

"I wonder why she even started out villain. I mean, she's taken to this heroing thing pretty quickly."

"I'm not sure. You could ask her if you like."

"Yeah, probably will."

Alarms go off, of course, and alerts to all the patrolling heroes and Wards go out, and the PRT squads on call erupt from the building. Glam's newly replaced shoulderbot relays more detailed information as it comes in.

"You might want more than one, with Crusader!"

A couple of Lorica's robots are of all-plastic casing designs for almost exactly this reason; one sneaks up on Kaiser while another makes a more obvious assault as a distraction. Other bots grab foam sprayers and try to encase Hookwolf. Encasing Crusader will barely slow him down; she concentrates her forces for now.

Armsmaster and Miss Militia are all well and good but what they need is Rewind. "Rewind I need you back at HQ what is the holdup!?" Lorica says, as robots continue to try to maneuver to tranquilize Crusader.

Lorica reverses course. "Rewind, if you hurry you can fix the PRT guy missing a hand, I'm bringing the hand. Transit's still trying to intercept you for a ride back."

"Just fix it."

"Oh thank god you're alive. Rewind, go see if there's anybody with less dramatic injuries in the PRT who you're in time to help."

Lorica scoops Glam up and hauls him to his room.

Sadde blinks and looks at the source of the sound.

It's Lorica. Taking her helmet off.

"You keep almost dying and I keep thinking 'they don't even know my name'," she shrugs. Off comes the helmet.

"I know you were expecting spider mandibles and everything but I don't think I warrant quite this much puzzled staring," she says, raising one eyebrow.

His mouth opens and closes many times, like a fish out of water. Then his brain catches up with what's going on, and he closes his eyes. "Are you sure you want to do that? This is maybe not the best..." Then his brain connects what he's about to say with just who he's saying it to (damn it blood loss sucks), so he opens his eyes again and amends with, "Wait, I mean—"

"Am I sure I -?" She blinks. "...Nope. No I'm not. I will have to think about it some more. For a year." Her helmet snaps back on.

"No! I mean, sorry, that's not—my brain isn't—the blood loss—"

"Well, clearly you are too blood-deprived for it to be remotely acceptable for me to kiss you, you're practically insensate, what was I thinking."

"But then I realized I might not be sure of what I was doing! Because I frequently do things without meaning to! And you saved me. Thanks ever so."

"That's not what I meant! I mean, it was what I meant, but it's not what I should have meant, because, you're you, and, and I know you're you, and I'm definitely not too blood-deprived to be kissed, and you know I know you know what you're doing, kisses?"

"Too late. You will have to recuperate without. There's iron supplements in the breakroom medicine cabinet."

"Nnnnnnooooooooooooooo! I'm soooooooorrrryyyyyyy!"

"I might reconsider. For a year."

"Uuuuunnnnggghhh!" he says, falling forward onto a pillow that hadn't been there before. "...at least tell me your name?"

"Bella. Don't cozy up to me at school, everything's still hush-hush elsewise."

He nods into the pillow, and turns his head to the side again to be properly heard: "You're amazing and have a beautiful name and are gorgeous. And you actually wanted to kiss me oh my god." He makes more pitiful noises into the pillow.

"I actually like 'Lorica' better than my real name."

"The eyebrow thing? I guess I do it pretty often?"

"Oh my gooooooooood," he says into the pillow, hugging it close to his body and starting to float and twirl around while he does it.

Snort.

He rotates in the air a bit more, sitting cross-legged on nothing while he hugs the pillow. "I am so in love with you," he sighs, turning so his right cheek is resting on the pillow and he's looking at her, upside-down. "And yes, this was partly intended to try to soften you into kissing me even knowing it's hopeless."

"Well, hopeless is overstating the case, but I'm definitely no longer in the oh-shit-Glam's-dying-and-I-didn't-kiss-them panic mode or its immediate aftermath."

"As you've pointed o—whoa, head rush," he says, landing onto his bed again. "Anyway, as you've pointed out, you do not do things you weren't planning to do." He pauses, trying to organize his thoughts and remember why he started this argument. "Sssoooo..." He fails. "I'm sure you can draw appropriate conclusions about the appropriate conclusions I drew from this. Also I mostly meant hopeless now though if it isn't I'd definitely like to be told."

"Hopeless is overstating the case," she repeats. "But maybe I just want to see what you do if I tell you that."

"Oh my goooood you're so evil to me." He hugs the pillow again, and accidentally opens his eyes to look at it, causing it to disappear. He grabs a real pillow now, and hugs it instead, making more noises into it. "I have no idea what to dooooo, also I'm curious about things but I dunno how to phrase them."

"I can be less evil, but this involves more conservative behavior in general and my guess was you'd prefer the evil. Curious about what things?"

"Mmmm yeeeeeah evil is good. Though kisses are better. Unless it's kisses-and-then-not-evil, that's not better. Best is kisses-and-evil. Evil-and-kisses works as well." He lays back onto the bed, looking at the ceiling and hugging the pillow, then he closes his eyes. "Curious about. You know. Why."

"Why what?"

"I'm not sure. Why, why me? Or, why did—when, maybe is the better question, when you changed your mind. And how. And what. You know, I want to know the things you think, I like hearing the things you think."

"I like you," she shrugs. "And it's not like I didn't seriously consider the proposition when you first told me you had a crush on me, it just hadn't come together yet, it's not so much a change of mind as a development of circumstance." Pause. "Would you seriously rather have me be evil to you and not kiss you over kissing you and not being evil to you?"

"...I mean, I guess that depends on how I define 'evil' here. And, the way I define it, it's... pretty much just being, you know, you, more or less, maybe with slightly more effort put into the messing with me part. If you kissed me but then weren't evil, that'd... kinda mean... you weren't being you? Um. I'm confusing myself." Pause. "The thing where you could squish me if you felt like it," he starts, tentatively. "That was there before I told you I liked it and you started doing it more. It's—you know, kind of a consequence of you being you, so if that didn't happen anymore, that'd... mean... you're not... you?"

"I think it's more a consequence of like, our comfort level with each other? And I'd back off if you didn't like it without that necessarily having implications about that comfort level."

"Well. Then. It's kinda the same? I mean... what would it mean if you're comfortable enough to kiss me but not to be mean to me? Knowing that. I like it? Um? I may be refining my previous opinions, though, I think kisses may be better."

"Might they."

"Yeah. Yeah I'm—I'd definitely rather kisses."