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To Glam's continued delight, more kissing sessions happen on the following days (when they're feeling like a boy). They haven't met her parents as her official boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever yet, and don't mind it too much.
News about Purity's escape surprises exactly no one, but the Protectorate's reputation suffers a blow because of the attack; after all, the heroes were beaten on their home turf. The PHO forums are abuzz, though rumors of Glam's death at the hands of Hookwolf (probably started by same) prove largely unfounded.
And Glam really should get to their webisodes and start building a steadier rep. And that's (one of the reasons) why they're in Lorica's workshop a few days later.
"So what should I do? I haven't posted anything since Purity, should probably make this more of a habit."
Yes to all, but squinting at the space-distorted trees works from a greater distance than it does on regular objects. Furthermore, this accidental squinting clearly disturbs the trance, as Sadde frowns and expresses confusion about the absent trees before another one replaces them.
"The trees are fine," Lorica tells her. "The trees are just how they should be."
Lorica lets robots look at everything for her and focuses on Sadde. She grabs a decommissioned plate of Transit's armor which she's replaced. "In the forest," she says, "is another you. The other you is white with black stripes, and won't go through the floor, or hurt anyone or damage any equipment, but when I give them something, they can destroy it, going through it like it's not even there."
The other her appears there, amidst the trees, half-hidden. She doesn't really do anything, not even blink.
Lorica gingerly hands the stripey copy Glam the old armor plate.
The stripey copy takes and looks down at the armor plate, but doesn't actually do anything to it.
"When they clench their hand the armor plate they're holding will fall to pieces," Lorica predicts.
And that is, indeed, what happens.
Lorica starts rummaging around for other things to offer the Siberian-copy. She comes up with some scrapped robot bits she couldn't salvage and repeats the experiment.
The Siberian copy drops the stuff it's destroyed and grabs new stuff, destroying it with just as much ease.
Lorica says with perfect confidence that whenever Sadde conjures a stripey copy, that copy will be able to destroy things just like that, however big they are, no matter what they're made of. The copy will have [insert list of the Siberian's known power parameters], whenever the copy has stripes like these, but Sadde will always be in perfect control of what things will and won't be destroyed. Etcetera etcetera. She rambles a bit, you're supposed to be sort of lengthy according to the internet.
And then she says that when she counts down from ten to zero, with every number the forest will fade away and Sadde will feel awake/refreshed/aware/more adjectives.
"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero."
The forest slowly disappears, and Sadde blinks, looking around, then at the stripey copy and the remains of... stuff... at its feet. "It worked," she breathes.
"Nnnot... exactly. Vague memories. There was a forest? But mostly," she gestures at the remains of destroyed things.
"Yep. I'm very glad I told you it was a forest. The example I was working from said beach and you'd probably have flooded the workshop."
"The space distortion was not traversible," reports the bot. "It was an illusion, but when I tried to send a chassis to investigate the ceiling was where it normally is."
"Yeah, a video would be cool. Did you record the illusion from up close?" she asks the bot.
"Yes." It projects several cameras' views of the entire thing, overlaid with Lorica's voice as she talks the forest into existence and the bots start to investigate.
She notes the suggestion at the end. "So... Then it could actually work, now. Wow."
"I don't know if the suggestion about stripey copies will hold up out of trance, especially without being reinforced, but - yeah, your power amps up considerably when you're under, looks like."
"Yeah, there was nobody else who even knew we were doing this."
"...I wonder if I can harness that. Maybe induce something like a trance or whatever on myself, at will."