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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."
"Um, I dunno, I'm outsourcing all my Simurgh-related reasoning to you. Also can you even do that, how does it work, what's it do?"
"Uh, I was imagining the robot would show you your own copies but edit out the Simurgh and her activities except insofar as you needed them to aim. In real time."
"Yeah, but, like, you know the fact that she exists, etcetera, we don't have a complete information vacuum. Narrowing it down to really low bandwidth is the compromise position that lets us get anywhere."
"True. Well, you could work on it, if you like, but I think we should still probably stick to the no-engaging-the-Simurgh-until-her-older-b
"Yeah. And it won't take me that long to write, pure software's firmly my comfort zone and pure software that tells my software how to decide to do things is even more so."
"It's more likely to be her next. But maybe it'll be Leviathan again and you can get your stripey copy's rep established."
"Well, a lot of the stuff we talk about is just assumptions, really. Like, we don't know if she can read minds or not, we don't know how far into the future she can plan stuff, we don't know the extent to which her scream can affect anything, whether she even needs it. Leviathan's been around for eight years, Behemoth almost twelve, even if we don't know exactly why they're holding back, whether it's some inherent limitation or what, we still know a lot more about them."
"Well, and they're less complicated. They might be holding back but they're probably holding back on the same theme; the Simurgh's theme is farther-reaching."
"Anyway, what should we do first, shoot a webisode or try to test the whether-belief-has-to-go-through-me thing?"
"I feel like there must be a better way to design the latter experiment and we have time until the next Endbringer. Webisode first. What do you need me for, though?"
"Well, you can sit in here with me while you work on it if you like but I'm going to be programming the bot and please don't have any of the projection screen in the shots."
"But first I should shoot it! I could explain the public face of my power on the first webisode, before actually cutting a boat in half?"
"Awesome!" They grab their shoulderbot so it's "looking" at them and ask, "Can you record?"
"Alright, camera, lights, action!" they say to themself. "Hi! I'm Glam. I'm a Brockton Bay Ward that joined about three months ago. I also caused quite a bit of damage against Leviathan and Behemoth in the past two fights! I'll publish some more footage of it later, but here you can enjoy a snippet of me making lizard butt burn." They grin at the camera, probably giving it some time to display the snippet they'll add when editing later.
Lorica's giggles are silent through her helmet filtration.
"So, the thing I can do is conjure things, things that do whatever I want them to do. This mirror reflects energy and light blasts. This is a seeking stun gun whose bolts follow its target. This is a golf ball. It floats." They conjure the named things, demonstrating the floating golf ball.
"The more I do something, the better it gets, and the more it can do, forever. When I invented this gun, it wasn't a seeking gun. And even if I don't do something, doing other things helps, too.
"The goal, here, is of course to kill the Endbringers. The plan: practice enough that I get to do that! So I'm gonna do that, and show you guys my progress, and keep fighting them, until they're dead and gone. Aaaand cut."