So Glam tests their power some more, and then has a meeting with Piggot where they explain the Siberian. She listens carefully, then asks them not to demonstrate, and says she will communicate that to the appropriate people. That takes a while, and then Lorica is asked to confirm this, and then Glam is asked to demonstrate to very few people with very high clearance.
This should not get out, it would be a PR nightmare, but if the Sibarian copy does what it looks like it does, its help will be invaluable in the upcoming Endbringer fights. When Glam decides to use that power, the story will be that a power copier has grabbed the Siberian's and is using it against the Endbringer, that people should not panic, and that she is an ally. Glam mentions, since they're all being so cooperative about telling everyone on the comms, that the Siberian copy doesn't have to look like the original, so people can know whether to panic or not based on her shape.
That leaves, of course, Glam's own willingness to face the Slaughterhouse Nine. Even if they don't know that Siberian is them, they will likely cause problems, and this will need to be carefully planned.
Careful plans tend not to survive contact with reality, and that is doubly true when the next Endbringer attack happens only two months and nine days after the previous one.
Not that it would matter much: Glam is definitely not going to a Simurgh fight, not yet.
She suits up, disengages her bot hivemind from the home base software, timestamps it, and gets ready to leave.
Sadde is... fretful. That's a good word. And today is a girl day, but Sadde needs to at least kiss Lorica once before she goes because. Well.
He can kiss her helmet; he didn't catch her before she left areas she's willing to unmask in and she's gotta scramble. He can keep his shoulderbot.
Luck!
(...Sadde hugs the shoulderbot.)
Unfortunately, it cannot update Sadde on the progress of the fight because the bots aren't allowed to talk to the base station while in Simurgh range.
...
She continues hugging the shoulderbot.
It will not object to being hugged. It makes cute soothing noises.
well, they actually do help, and she hopes they will start making upset noises if anything happens to Lorica, she'd rather know than wonder.
"Will you make any upset noises if anything happens to Lorica?"
"I won't know any sooner than you will," says the shoulderbot. "The flock and her suit don't send any messages back until she's clear and then she goes over all the records by hand redacting things before updating the base memory."
"Oh. That... makes sense, I guess," she says, not very reassured at all.
"So far there hasn't been anything that really worried her in the deployed flock code or the suit software but she doesn't want to be careless."
"Mmhm. Ugh this is awful."
Snuggle goes the bot.
(It occurs to her that it wouldn't make sense anyway, since the Simurgh could fake any signal sent to the bot, but.)
Well, soothing noises with no basis in knowledge are all the shoulderbot has to offer right now.
Yeah, she'll take that. Soothing noises and no knowledge is better than no soothing noises and also no knowledge.
Lorica is gone for hours.
She keeps telling herself.
"The plane is back."
Blink. Process. "And you're not freaking out," she says as soon as she's done. "Is she alright?"
"I don't know yet. She can't send a message while her suit's cut off."
"But the plane's arrived!" they say, out their room in a flash, carrying the shoulderbot with.
- and Lorica, walking off of it.
"Oh thank god," they say, not throwing their arms around her yet because. Maybe not the best time and place.
"I'm fine," Lorica tells Glam tiredly.
"Okay. Good. Is there—can I do anything? Do you want me to do anything?"
"...I could use dinner and can't send a bot for takeout any time soon."
"Can do. Do you want anything in particular?"
"Burgers. Thanks, I love you." She pats their head.
They go after burgers.
When they come back Lorica's in her workshop, softwaring - there's no projection in her screen, but she's typing, presumably in response to projections in her helmet.
"Hey you."
"Hi, love. I brought burgers," they say lamely.
"Awesome. Did you get any for you or are you going to awkwardly watch me eat?"
"I got some for me," they laugh. "How're you?"
"I'm okay. It's really not that bad for me. I listened to annoying music and coordinated things and the comms worked."
Her mask disappears so she can eat. "Someone hearing that description might even think Endbringer attacks are no big deal."
"I mean, a lot of people died, some of them exploded by their own armbands because they took too much dose and didn't bail in time, but I'm not running in emotions mode when I'm there."
"Ah. That—makes sense. I'm sorry. Did people figure out what her target was?"
"If they did I didn't hear about it."
"Hm. Who won? I mean that's a silly question with the Simurgh but. You know."
"Fight was about average duration, average Simurgh casualties."
"No, I meant. Did Scion show up or?"
"Oh. Yeah, he showed and vaporized half her leg and she was gone."
Munch.
"I don't understand him."
"Who? Scion? Who does?"
"Nobody, but it particularly bothers me that I don't."
"Why?"
"...It bothers me in general when I don't understand things?"
"Oh. Fair enough. I—mostly slot him in a similar spot in my head to the one the Endbringers occupy."
"Yeah. I don't understand them either but it's less... frustrating? It is reasonably likely that there's no profitable communication to be had with them. Scion is doing, you know, good things, twenty-four seven, but he doesn't prioritize and he doesn't work efficiently."
"Yeah. I do wonder why he doesn't—I mean, he talked that one time he said his name, why did he never say anything else after that?"
"I don't know."
Sigh. "What annoys me or disheartens me the most is that... he doesn't kill them. I mean, if he could, wouldn't he? Does that mean not even he can?"
"It doesn't look like he tries. It looks like he hits them enough that they'll leave, and then he doesn't chase them or fire at them as they go, or anything."
"That may be because he knows he can't. But on the other hand, the more hurt they are, the longer it takes for them to appear again..."
Burgers, om nom. "Or maybe something bad would happen that we don't know about if they died, but he's never had the courtesy to say..."
"Maybe he's too busy rescuing kittens from trees or something."
"The thought has crossed my mind that it might be a net positive if cats went extinct."
She cracks up.
"He spends so much time on cats! It's infuriating!"
Nope. Giggling too much.
Lorica snorts and eats her burgers.
The giggling subsides. "Yes, he does indeed. It's stupid, what the duck is even going on in his head?"
"Couldn't begin to tell you."
"...what if I made a Scion-copy?"
"Well, nobody'd expect him to massacre innocents. Holy shit, why didn't I think of that?"
"But wait, don't people kinda keep track of where Scion is all the time? Would they freak out if he started showing up in two places at the same time?"
"I mean, sure. The people who track that, would notice. But most people aren't watching that at an Endbringer fight."
"I meant more like the—aftermath? As in, what will happen to people's expectations after a fight in which a Scion-copy appears simultaneously with the Scion being somewhere else."
"I mean - does it matter how nearby the people not-expecting a thing are? There's certainly dozens of people monitoring what Scion sightings there have been at any given time, but they aren't going to be on site at an Endbringer fight, by and large."
"I'm... not sure, actually?"
"Thailand," says the base station bot.
"- thank you, so, gimme a Scion."
Well, that's a Scion alright. She blinks at him.
"...What can Scion and pretty much only Scion do besides put the hurt on Endbringers..."
"...he's the fastest speedster on record, he can do that thing where everything stops, he has super telekinesis, and he cured that one guy's cancer when he showed up?"
"I have no cancer patients handy, nothing much is moving... try the teekay thing." Lorica tosses one of the golf balls that is around for testing exactly this.
No go.
"Okay, so maybe he can't get around your fundamental nothing-doing problem areas like telekinesis," says Lorica. (No bots catch the golf ball. The flock is all waiting still and silent on the floor, except for shoulderbot, which is too small to catch a golf ball.) "Although we should still test that next time you're under. But blaster shit is well within your power set. And Scion's more impressive-looking than a big gun on the blaster front. If you can blow up an Endbringer with a fake Tinkertoy you can do it with a Scion."
"Yes. Definitely. If I can do it at all, a Scion-copy should be able to."
"So roughly the same set of people who know about the Siberian idea should hear about the Scion idea too."
"Should they? Mightn't that lower their expectations about the powers? Diminishing returns could get this Scion to be much weaker than it otherwise would if even a handful of people know he's a fake. The Siberian's power is pretty qualitative; Scion's isn't."
"I bet you at least one of the Triumvirate is getting mid-combat updates on Scion's location. You don't think that'll tank it?"
"...okay, that's fair."
"Maybe test the Siberian first, get a solid reputation in with the applicable people of being able to copy really heavy-duty powers."
"Yeah, that sounds sensible. ...except for the part where using the Siberian first does mean facing the Nine."
"They don't have anybody who could necessarily figure it was you..."
"If you were Jack and thought like Jack and you saw a Siberian fighting an Endbringer, what would you do?"
"...Massacre even more people than usual until the Siberian came out of the woodwork, probably."
"Yeah. It would be just like him to decide to kill the people the Endbringer never got around to, out of some warped sense of fairness or something."
"Yeah. It's not guaranteed he'd hear about it, though - people don't exactly spectate - I wouldn't put it past him, but still."
"Right. But I'd still feel responsible if it happened, and I do very much want to kill him."
"I'd even say you've got a decent shot at it, but I'd say that about lots of people and he is still alive. I don't get it, he doesn't have the Siberian riding piggyback at all times."
"Yeah, and his power's pretty useless, too, but apparently his thing is being a master manipulator or—something."
"It might help that you and I don't have to actually be nearby to fight someone."
"He has managed to survive various other ranged capes, too, though. Maybe not as ranged as us, I guess."
"We don't have to be in the same state. As long as I have bots, and you can replace bots as long as I have any real bots. I'm still working on and off on cloaking, but I'm not sure whether that'll go anywhere."
"Couldn't maybe we get that from some other Tinker? Surely there's some Tinker or other specialized in cloaking devices."
"Maybe, but integrating it so the bots could use it would be a separate and possibly harder problem. And so would inter-cape diplomacy."
Sigh. "Couldn't it be, like, some cloaking device they just—switch on? I mean, you're not the person I should be asking this of, are you."
"Hey, if you find me a cooperative cloaking device tinker who wants to outfit a large flock of bots..."
"'Cooperative' being the keyword here."
"Yep."
Another sigh. "At some point before the next Endbringer fight I need to figure out a strategy for taking on the Nine. And how to deal with the other Siberian."
Nod. "I'll let you know if I think of anything."
"Should I Siberian the next Endbringer, even if we don't come up with something?"
"...I'd actually say go with higher-up decisionmaking on this. They've got more strategic data on the Nine and they're more likely to support anti-Nine attempts if they signed off on the provocation."
"Yeah, I guess."
"Not my usual line of thinking but it matters here."
"Mmhm."
"...You okay?"
"Yeah, just, the prospect of facing them does not exactly fill me to the brim with confidence."
Nod.
"How's the... software stuff coming along, there?"
"It'll take me a couple hours. I've never found anything really troubling, but since I'm dealing with a precog that doesn't mean I can just skip it."
"Yeah. Do you need me out of your hair while you do that?"
"Nah. I'm not even properly fugue-ing. But more small talk than heavy strategic consideration?"
She nods. "Sorry."
"It's okay. Were you seriously just fretting and hugging your shoulderbot the whole time I was gone?"
"Of course."
"Are you going to do that every time I'm off fighting the Simurgh? I'm not totally sure she can even tell I'm there, you know."
"Why not?"
"It's speculated that she can't, you know, see, she can only precog - and I'm not sure that doesn't require checking likely decisionmaking if the target's a person. Even when I'm in the middle of everything, stuff does not fall on me at the usual rate - even when bots are dropping like flies."
"Hmm. But if she can precog herself, can't she... use... that?"
"Lots of precogs have blind spots. I spend most of Simurgh fights making arbitrary decisions about things other people are planning at the last minute in case I'm really hers. Nothing conclusive yet."
"What kinds of decisions?"
"I say 'now' a lot to have people launch attacks at unpredictable moments. 'Left' and 'right' come up sometimes. I often don't actually know what I'm deciding."
"That's actually pretty cool. But the bots didn't detect any differences in her patterns of dodging and blocking between you-attacks and not-you attacks?"
"There's so much going on at once that if I say 'now' six things happen or are in progress, I can't tell who was listening to me and what's coincidence."
"And they didn't tell you afterwards."
"I'm told someone's keeping track of it. Technology in general is kind of unreliable around the Simurgh so I don't try to have the bots track it in case she caught on and flipped a bit, they do more evac type stuff."
"Fair enough. Ugh I really want to Siberian her. Or Scion her."
"From a safe distance, you should absolutely do that. After you've bumped off the other two."
"Mmhm."
"...It's possible that if I was hypnotizing you at the time you'd come in under the blind spot."
"That's... actually a really good idea. That's a really really good idea."
"The blind spot itself is largely speculative, it won't protect you from the song, etcetera, but yeah."
"I don't need to be within reach of the song, and if the blind spot is real... well."
"Right, so we'd need a good place to put you, this should still wait until you've killed the other two in case she flips out and leaves standard operating range because she tracks the bot video and makes a mental leap, etcetera."
"Yes. Of course. And I would very much like not to die, even if the Simurgh is the worst of the Endbringers I think I do want to at least kill the Nine before her if we can't figure something out."
"If we can't...?"
"If we can't figure out a way for me to go to a Simurgh fight after killing the other two that has a suitably high chance of keeping me alive."
"...If you kill the other two I think you've kinda gotta go for her. You'll have - you'll have demonstrated they're killable, which is not a known fact about the Siberian."
"...okay, yeah, I guess."
"And the Siberian is a human-sized thing who gets around at almost human speeds - I mean, maybe she can fly a plane, but still. She'd have to try really hard to match Endbringer levels of destruction on her own even if she went completely unhinged without Jack and worked on it every single day. She's not a natural disaster in the way people understand Endbringers as natural disasters, so the casualties feel less statistical, but she's legitimately not as big a deal as an Endbringer."
"But how sure are we that she's limited to human speeds? I mean, if she's an unstoppable force and such, she might be able to go much faster. The Nine are holding back just like the Endbringers are, if at a smaller scale."
"Yeah, that's possible, but if we're going to speculate that the Siberian might turn up with unprecedented powers we'll never do anything that has anything to do with her, like have a copy kill an Endbringer while wearing stripes. What if the Siberian gets mad and tunnels to the center of the Earth and blows it up, oh no, better stay home and play video games."
She giggles. "Well but there's reasonable speculation! Having stuff like super speed sounds like the kind of thing she could have, just like the Simurgh actually just pretending you're immune to it does."
"The Siberian could totally tunnel to the center of the earth, bringing some protected bullshit Tinker bomb which we could just as easily hypothesize."
"Yes. And I think that is a thing we should maybe be worried about if Jack isn't there to properly guide her murderous instincts!"
"Does that mean you're planning to leave him alive?"
"No, that means I have absolutely no plan at the moment and this fact terrifies me."
"Yeah."
Sigh. "Not that I don't appreciate that she gave me the idea but why does the Siberian have to exist."
"I assume she had some suitably horrifying trigger event."
"What kind of trigger event would even do that," she wonders. "She's not like a regular Brute or Breaker, if she has a regular human form she doesn't ever even show it."
"She might be a case 53. In which case she doesn't so much have the trauma excuse, but."
"Yeah."
Sigh.
"And how'd Rewind do at the fight?"
"Really well. She hung way back, medic-ing people as fast as they could be brought in, she was amazing. It's hard to be sure if she reversed song effects too, but the observations were consistent with that. As soon as my bots are up one of them is going to bring her ice cream."
"She's a serious trump card, we should throw her a 'Rewind is awesome' party."
"You think she'd be comfy with a party about her?"
"Dunno! We should ask. My hunch is 'yes' and I tend to get those right."
"Emailing," says the base station.
"Speaking of which, your birthday's in a month."
"Yeah?"
"So how do you feel about having a party thrown?"
"I don't have really strong feelings about it either way."
"Who should I invite?"
"This seems like one of those things that might be a problem if you didn't invite all the Wards, sort of like elementary school Valentines..."
"Unless no Wards at all were invited and only your school friends were, if it's more of a secret identity party thing."
"If it were, you couldn't throw it for me," Lorica points out.
"...point. I guess we couldn't be secretly dating?"
"All the Wards know who you are and that you-qua-Glam are dating me-qua-Lorica."
"Yes. Fair enough. Would you want to invite the Wards? You know, they're pretty nice, all of them."
"I'm not socially close with any of them except you but it's honestly a pretty similar situation with my school friends," shrugs Lorica.
"I know, this was me trying to subtly nudge you into becoming socially closer to them."
"Why? I thought I was managing okay captaining with my current level of interaction."
"...because they're nice?" she tries again.
"Okay, but... if that were a sufficient reason for me I would have done it already."
"I guess," she sighs.
"I do quite like Rewind compared to most people I meet, but this is significantly because she's receptive to ideas like 'liase with paramedics', and on an absolute scale I consider that kind of thing to be very bare-minimum standard. If I felt the need to make more friends I'd make friends with her, sort of like if I lived in the Colonial era and wanted friends I would find the nearest abolitionist."
"That... is an interesting comparison. Do you still consider it 'weird' if I take that as a compliment?"
"You may feel free to take that as a compliment."
She giggles. "Why did you find it weird the first time I said it?"
"I thought you were reading too much into it."
"Hmm, I think I was reading exactly the correct amount, eye ee I am a nice person to interact with according to your personal estimation."
"Then perhaps I was wrong."
Grin. "I love you."
"I love you too."
Rewind is:
patrolling.
in some bizarre technical sense, supervising her, because Windflower isn't probationary and Rewind is.
"They should get us flying tinker suits or something."
"Lorica makes one for her and one for her dad," nods Windflower. "She could do more, probably."
"I wonder why she doesn't. We should ask. Running around on feet is just too lame."
"Yeah."
Patrol patrol.
Patrol patrol patrol.
"Hey guys, someone reported a disturbance on," and she gives them an address, "and you two are the closest, can you go check it out?"
"What kind of disturbance?" asks Windflower, checking the nearest street sign to see which way to go.
"Something like fighting, they weren't very clear."
"Do you at least know if there's capes?"
"No, sorry."
"Well, okay," sighs Windflower, and she heads in the direction.
They go, all sneaky, and upon approaching the address, the signs of disturbance become clear. Fighting noises, to be specific. Someone roars, and Rewind freezes. "That was Lung."
"...Uh, can we take Lung?"
"No we can't. Call it in," she says, and sneakily sneaks to the corner around which the fighting sounds are coming from. She quickly comes back. "Shit they've been at it for more than ten minutes."
"Hi Echo it's Lung we need help?" says Windflower into her comm.
"Acknowledged. Getting reinforcements, do not engage."
"Fuck that," Rewind whispers, and sneaks back to the corner to watch the ongoing fight. "Stormtiger and Crusader are there, too. Lung's winning," she calls on the comm.
"Careful," Windflower says of the sneaking.
"Miss Militia, Dauntless, three Glam's, and Lorica's bots are en route," Echo informs them.
Rewind doesn't seem to hear that. She watches the ongoing fight, looking increasingly anxious, then repeats, "Fuck that, if he gets bigger we're screwed," and turns around the corner towards the fight.
"No, come back - Rewind!"
Oop, she's gone already.
"Rewind get back here!" They've still got Lorica's fancy comms, it should be getting through...
"They haven't seen me yet I'm gonna boop him."
"He's not the only cape there!"
She doesn't reply.
"Echo how long until reinforcements get here?" Windflower says. "Rewind ran in ahead she wouldn't stop -"
"Two minutes," Glam replies instead. "What is she doing?"
There is another roar, though this one sounds less monstrous than the previous one. "I got him, he's smaller," Rewind says in the comm.
"She backed Lung up ten minutes to shrink him," says Windflower. "Rewind, you have to get out!"
The fighting noises continue for a few seconds before she replies: "Don't wanna lead him to you."
"I'll - I'll go hide, you just teleport out and the comm'll fill you in -" Windflower turns tail and runs.
"You two ran into Lung fighting Stormtiger and Crusader, you decided to go send Lung ten minutes back."
"Oh. Yay me! I'll just—" Another roar, and Lung appears, bounding from the direction they came from. "Oh shit he's fast," she says.
"We'll be there in thirty seconds!" says Glam.
And in thirty seconds, the place is swarmed with robots, a fraction of which are real, there to protect Rewind and hassle the villains. One of the fake bots has a foam sprayer and guns for Lung.
The Crusader clone chooses this moment to stick his lance into Lung's stomach. Lung apparently ignores this and generates an explosion around himself, possibly disabling a number of the 'bots. He looks at Rewind's unconscious form, prepares a fireball, throws it-
—and Dauntless arrives with his forcefield in time to weather the blast and protect his teammate.
The three Glam copies are not far behind: one tall muscled copy, one with a grey suit, and the third holding a tinker-looking rifle.
The explosion takes out the bot with the foam sprayer. Another contingent is chasing Stormtiger and company; the enemy of their enemy is not their friend.
Miss Militia, ferried by a Glam-copy of Lorica herself, has taken up a roof position and is firing on Lung. When he takes the lance to the belly and shrugs it off she switches to lethal ammunition.
The Glam with the rifle reforms it into their more familiar-looking gun and goes after Stormtiger & co. with the bots. The muscled copy starts wrestling with Lung, who roars and explodes again, throwing himself bodily onto it. The other copy hugs Lung and becomes a statue, much like the one they'd used so long ago when training with Boots.
And he's getting larger.
The Lorica copy makes for Rewind to scoop her up and get her clear so Transit won't have to try to land in a firefight.
The fleeing Crusader and Stormtiger managed to lose their pursuing bots and Glam-copy by using two more clones (Crusader looks exhausted) and releasing a blade of compressed air to create a gust strong enough to knock their pursuers wildly off-course.
Dauntless' forcefield brightens when hit by some of Lung's fire aimed at Lorica, but it holds.
The Lorica copy shields Rewind; bots prompt Glam for a replacement. "Transit's on his way but we need to get Rewind clear!" bots say into the comms.
A replacement is provided. "Gonna turret him," real Glam says into the comms, watching the fight from HQ, and a turret similar to (but visually less powerful than) the one that blasted Purity is conjured pointing at Lung. He notices it and jumps toward it before it can fire, tearing it to pieces. The two Glam copies on the battlefield hold onto Lung, and the returning blaster copy shoots at him with its gun several times as a second turret is formed. Lung explodes, but too late: the second turret blasts him away from Rewind toward the open street, and he rolls a few times before stopping.
The Lorica copy takes the opening to pick up Rewind and run her to Transit, who's a block away; they meet and as soon as Transit's in range to passenger Rewind he's gone.
Lung gets up and looks at the battlefield, then roars again, spitting fire then jumping toward the flying Glam copy with a gun. They dodge easily, but Lung explodes in fire again, burning the copy. Lung lands, and throws enough fire at Dauntless' forcefield to shatter it, then runs towards the hero—
—who uses his enhanced boots to run out of the way perpendicular to Lung's momentum.
Lorica bots spray foam straight at Lung's face.
Lung's face isn't the most human of faces at the moment. He spits fire at the foam before it hits him, not letting it stick, but the fire is slightly less hot than it was just before. The Glam copies start harassing him again, restraining him and shooting at him. He breaks free once more with some difficulty, exploding yet again.
The bots don't restrain their foam spray to avoid Glam copies, which can after all just vanish; they continue relentlessly as fast as Glam can supply sprayers.
Glam has to divide their attention many places, but they do manage to supply sprayers and get their copies to continue giving Lung grief. His fire is colder still, though, so he decides to cut his losses and throws the muscled copy at the bots. Another explosion sees him bounding away from the scene.
Bots give chase, firing tranquilizers and foam, until he's picked them off sufficiently that Glam can't replace the lost without losing ground.
Where'd Transit take Rewind?
He doesn't have a good path; he can roof-hop but only so far in a go.
Finally, he pops into HQ and sprints her to the tinker's lab to be woken up. If it's fast enough.
It isn't.
Well, Miracle Max has other things. He can keep her alive, at least.
She has apparently broken or cracked a few ribs, her left arm and leg, has a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and is terribly lucky none of her vertebrae are cracked. She'll be down for a while.
Well, at least she's on the reaaaaaaally good Tinker drugs.
And the bots have footage of the Lung fight, showing his clear intent of burning her to a crisp. That, coupled with just how much damage he could do and how much he could take, gives him a one-way ticket to the Birdcage.
If only he could be made to redeem it somehow.
"I wonder if we ought to throw her that 'Rewind is awesome' party to lift her spirits," Glam muses out loud to Lorica a couple of days later. "Like just get a few balloons and bring her food."
"I think flowers are traditional for people in the hospital."
"We give her flowers and cake."
"Sure. Although we should probably ask the medical staff if she's on any kind of restricted diet - I wouldn't expect it but you never know, especially if she's got internal damage."
"Oh, yeah, good idea, we should ask. But I bet she's just dying of stir craziness there."
"I mean, if she's stir crazy I'm not sure receiving visitors who aren't there to break her out will help."
They giggle. "It'll probably be better than not receiving visitors, though."
"I'll grant you that. As soon as the nurse gets back to me about dietary restrictions we can get her something to eat and a bouquet."
Also Glam has decided not to throw Lorica a birthday party so there's a party-throwing urge in their soul that's going unsatisfied.
"I've never quite gotten the point of balloons."
"They float and are colorful!"
"I mean, this was not unknown to me..."
"Yes, well, people like colorful things and things that float." Pause. "I do, at any rate."
"Well, maybe Rewind does too."
"They can be imaginary balloons that will disappear half an hour after the party."
"That seems very efficient."
"Much more than real balloons that will eventually deflate and need to be thrown away."
"I think Mylar ones occasionally hang around for years."
"Really? I don't like balloons that much."
Snort.
"Did you email the nurse?"
"Bot did. Basically any time I mention emailing anybody about anything, assume that the bot composed a draft, I approved or edited it with gaze-tracking in my helmet, and it was sent."
"Your efficiency is really hot."
Giggle.
"Can you email the other Wards? See if they'll want to come, too."
"Done."
The nurse chooses this moment to email Lorica back, saying that there aren't any dietary restrictions but that she does need rest so they shouldn't bother her for too long.
"Annnd she can eat whatever she wants but should not be visited for really prolonged periods because she needs rest and visits are apparently not restful."
"Oh well, it can be a short party, imaginary decorations are good at that," they concede agreeably. "The important part is the cake."
"Cake's very important. Do you know if she likes chocolate?"
"I have nnnno idea," they say. "Maybe we should ask her, but that'd ruin the surprise."
"A bit. Well, most people like chocolate and I can get backup cake."
Echo replies to Lorica's email, saying she'd definitely like to go to the party.
"Echo's in. Lemon poppyseed, do you think?"
"Sounds good! And ooh I wonder if baking counts for Echo's power, I bet it does."
"I was just going to buy it, but I can ask if she wants to bake the cakes..."
"If Echo can do it she can do one of those fancy super expensive cakes for much less!"
So Lorica emails Echo asking if she bakes, if not Lorica will be happy to buy the cakes.
She does in fact bake! She'd be happy to, was there any specific cake they wanted?
And Lorica relays that they can't ask Rewind if she likes chocolate without spoiling the surprise, so she was thinking one chocolate one lemon poppyseed.
They can count on her!
"Echo'll bake."
And Glimmer's reply arrives, saying that depending on when they do it she could show up as well.
The time is undetermined; when is convenient for Glimmer?
During the week, while they're not patrolling.
And eventually Lorica (well, the bot, mostly) figures out a time that works for all the Wards, and the party has complete Ward buy-in.
"Have I told you you're the best girlfriend? Because you're the best girlfriend."
"Because I made a robot that can organize parties?"
"Among other things, yes," they giggle. "In this case I'm just feeling fuzzy feelings that you did it and that the party is happening and stuff."
"I see."
"I'm very suggestible to fuzzy feelings when I'm around you also."
"I have noticed that."
Grin. "Can you blame me?"
"No, I'm pretty awesome."
And so it is that a few days later, Jeannie is sulking in her room in a PRT medical ward when there is a knock.
"You know I can't get off this bed, what's the point of knocking?" she calls.
So Sadde opens the door, and suddenly: balloons.
"...what," Jeannie asks.
"Hi are you okay?" asks Windflower anxiously.
Willow walks in, carrying one of the cakes, and Sadde uses an imaginary plate to float in another. Glimmer's there, too, hanging back somewhat.
Jeannie gapes, then says "YesI'mfineisthatcake?"
"Yes," Sadde giggles.
"Oh my gosh! Gimme!" She makes grabby hands.
"Echo baked. We couldn't ask if you like chocolate without sacrificing the element of surprise so the other one's lemon poppyseed."
Sadde conjures a knife and supervises its cake-slicing process.
"Why the party, though?"
"Well, I had been planning on throwing you a 'Rewind is awesome' party for a while now, what with half of us owing you our lives."
"You are very awesome," agrees Lorica, dishing cakes onto plates for others as soon as Rewind has hers.
"Thanks!" grins Willow.
"Are they making you eat hospital food?" asks Sadde, and she nods, mouth too full to create an appropriate verbal answer.
"Oh, you poor thing. I can have bots bring you takeout."
Her eyes widen and she actually tears up a bit. She swallows her cake and says, "Oh my god would you? Thank you! I'm so sorry Silica and I thought you were a robot!"
"...You thought I was a robot?"
"...uh, I shouldn't have said that, it's the meds, not really? We were just joking around to pass the time on patrol. We also discussed the possibility that everyone but us was actually created by her," she says, pointing at Sadde.
"All right," snorts Lorica.
"You didn't," she admits. "That's part of the reason why we came up with everyone being made by you. First we thought maybe Transit was a really specific Tinker that made Lorica, then that you made them both, then that you made everything!"
"Glam is not secretly God," giggles Windflower.
"I might be!" she protests.
"If you're secretly God we're going to have words," says Lorica.
"Aaaaawwwww!" Rewind and Echo say at the same time.
Lorica giggles.
"I love you," Sadde says.
"Love you too."
"Aaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwww!" Rewind and Echo repeat, then Rewind adds, looking at Lorica: "So you're into girls?"
"No, but it seems really labor-intensive to adjust not only whether I am kissing her but also whether I'm in love with her based on whatever she's presenting as at the moment, so I don't."
Rewind looks like she's Thinking Thoughts, but for once she manages to hold them back in spite of the meds.
"I talked to your paramedic contact," Lorica tells Rewind, "and he says once you're off bed rest they can accommodate you even if you need mobility help, so you can still handle emergency civilian patients."
"Oh that's awesome," she says, meaning it.
"I thought so too."
"So, after this, I think I kinda want a flying suit, too."
"Rewind, what exactly do you think happens when I jump off a building?"
"...you hover?"
"No. My software figures out - based on my posture, what I'm looking at, what's going on around me, my feedback from past building-jumping occasions, and its own personal opinions - whether and where to float me. There are situations where it'd drop me to the ground. Or rocket me into the sky. Or waft me to the next building. Or hover me in place. Or juke me suddenly in some other direction. Or spin me around and put me right back where I was. And I do not, in the moment, control that. I can't make things that I control on that level. If I try to make something that point-and-click, my Tinker knowledge deserts me and I am a regular non-engineer sixteen-year-old girl staring at parts and code that doesn't make sense anymore. Have you noticed that my dad doesn't fly? He hovers sometimes; he doesn't try to fly."
"Oh. Why can't other people use the same software?"
"They could. In theory. My dad could work on building enough understanding with the program that he could fly, say; he hasn't bothered because teleporting and running together usually does the trick. His suit works as well as it does because I'm working from a very good base model of what my dad is like. I could probably build Glam a flight suit if they needed one, because Glam goes around with a robot practically all the time and the bot has a good base model of what Glam is like. But I can't make them for just anyone. They have to be extremely well-customized, and to use them, you have to trust something that has no controls to take you for a ride."
Sadde butts in: "Does your suit upload data in real time to the main AI?"
"Yes. It's slightly ratcheted - my implants talk to the suit, and the suit talks to the bot, but outside of emergencies the bot only controls some of the suit functions - can't move my arms and legs for me unless I'm unconscious or something - and nothing is allowed to talk to my implants."
"Couldn't Rewind get one of those suits and rewind if it ducks up so that the suit would know in real time when it did something wrong? She already stutter-rewinds her movements all the time."
"Mmmmight work. She'd still have to practice a lot outside of live-fire conditions."
"I'll do it! Can it have a cool sleek rewind-y design?" Pause. "Not that yours isn't nice too but it's not really me."
"Do you want a shoulderbot like Glam's so it can learn about you?"
Sadde grabs her bot and hugs it, and it chirrs.
Jeannie giggles. "That's super cute!" But she furrows her eyebrows, looking at it. "You won't be, like, watching what I do all the time, will you?"
"Me, no, the bot, yes. That's the point. And I'd be able to watch through it, I just generally have other, less sketchy things to do."
"Hmm. Yeah, I'm fine with that."
"Okay. I'll make you a shoulderbot and start contemplating design, although I don't want to finalize it until I know better how much motion of your own you're going to wind up getting back."
"What do you mean, getting back?"
"You... got pretty seriously hit. Even if you can wiggle your toes you might have long-term problems running or bending in certain ways. I don't want the suit to twist you in ways you shouldn't twist."
"...oh. Yeah. That. Can the bot tell?"
"It can ask your doctor."
"Okay." She beams.
"And yes, I can put your symbol all over it and smooth out the armor some. I assume you do want it armored?"
"Yes!"
"Cool. You'll have a shoulderbot tonight and a suit in a few weeks probably."
"Thanks! You're the best, and totally not a robot," she giggles.
"I am not and have never been a robot. I am, technically, a cyborg."
Sadde beams. "I'm dating the best cyborg."
Giggle.
Jeannie grins. And then pauses, and gauges Sadde appraisingly.
"...what?" Sadde asks.
"Does she watch you through shoulderbot?"
Lorica cuts herself a second slice of cake.
Sadde grins but doesn't answer.
"She does!" Jeannie cackles.
"I actually don't know if she does," Sadde explains, and hugs her bot again.
Lorica eats cake innocently.
"'Caaaaause," Sadde giggles. Rewind smirks. "Oh shut up, isn't it bed time for you?"
"I'm only two years younger than you!"
"We shouldn't actually be here too long, the doctor says Rewind needs rest."
"You still have your laptop," Sadde points out.
"It's not enoooough!"
"The shoulderbot can bring you a deck of cards if that will help."
Sadde giggles. "I'll come visit you more often, if the nurse allows it."
And speaking of the nurse: knock knock!
"I meant, the bot could play cards with you," says Lorica. She gets the door.
"Oh! Okay playing cards with the bot sounds way more fun," she says.
The nurse walks in, and blinks in surprise, then folds her arms. "And just who do you expect is going to clean this mess?" she asks.
Sadde shrugs and the balloons are gone. "Me."
The nurse blinks, and shakes her head. "In any case, Ms. Eoh needs her rest, so it's time you leave."
And everyone shuffles out.
"'Bye," says Rewind a bit lamely.
And that evening a shoulderbot that looks like Glam's but in black casing instead of white buzzes into her room.
"...hi."
"Hi," says the bot, using its own voice and not Lorica's. It produces a deck of cards.
She looks at it. "What do you wanna play?"
"Whatever you like!" the bot says.
"Okay... How about Go Fish?"
"Okay." The robot shuffles and deals with its little robot hands.
"Okay you're kinda really cute," she says, getting her cards. "D'you have a five?"
"Go fish!"
"Damn." She draws a card.
The robot contently plays Go Fish as long as Rewind wants, and does not count cards.
And Rewind is totally endeared by the end of the game. "Can I pet you?"
"Of course."
She pets it, smiling.
It's not very soft, but it chirrs.
She giggles. "I'm keeping you!"
"Okay," says the bot.