The Big Bad is... complicated. It's the source of their powers. What they know of it is gleaned from visions filtered from many different sources, but it's running some sort of experiment, on their planet, with the powers, and when it's done, it's going to destroy their world across every parallel universe and move on to a new star system to do the same thing all over again. But something went wrong, when it came to their planet, and half of it was crippled. So the other half is sort of dormant and that's why they have a chance at all. But it's going to wake up soon, or turn on them—the precogs aren't clear on it—and then their world will end anyhow.

The world calls that living half Scion. It's pretending to a superhero. Not even pretending very hard. The original plan, they gleaned from the vision, was that Scion and his other half would pose as... gods, of sorts, of two sides of a war. Heroes, leaders. But when the other half died, Scion didn't have much cognition left, they think, so he's still running that subroutine on autopilot. Playing hero, but in a haphazard, undirected way. He'll... there'll be an Endbringer attack going on somewhere, and he'll be rescuing a cat from a tree elsewhere. No prioritization, and he doesn't communicate, doesn't plan; for thirty years he's been doing the same thing.

Scion, that mindless thing, is the most powerful "superhero" in the world.

That's why they're keeping the truth secret. They don't know how the world will react, or how Scion will react to the world's reaction.

That certainly sounds like a lot to deal with.

He might not be as good at fighting as she is - he only has the basic programming for his model - but he probably knows enough to follow a conversation about it, at least, if she wants someone to talk to about all that.

...She appreciates the offer. She might take him up on that some day.

For now, she's... mostly trying to forget about all of that. If she had to characterize how she felt about it at home, it'd be not distressed, maybe frustrated, maybe stressed, but mostly... exhausted. There was just so much to do, all the time, and even after it all they weren't winning... It's like sometimes you can see how a game is going to end, but giving up would be even worse, so you keep playing, but it still wears on you, you know?

So right now she's taking some space to distance herself, but when she's ready to think about it again... yeah.

And Nine can talk to her any time as well, of course. Maybe once she learns Binary so they can communicate more directly.

Only to Nine: She knows it can be harder to talk through some things with people who are... close to a matter themselves, but relate to it strongly in a different way. She doesn't know if that's applicable here but it sounds like it could be.

That makes sense. The offer is open if she ever wants to take him up on it; it's neat that she's thinking about learning binary. He doesn't think he has that other problem but he might just not have noticed.

She nods.

How's the book going; should she try and dredge up something in English now?

If she's ready, yes, Daisy will be done before the book is but she can get started on the translation while it's printing.

Okay, she'll need to dip into a room.

She changes into the garb of an English professor holding a book...

...well, she changes into the garb of an English professor. Apparently the "holding a book" part does not work. Inconvenient.

Can she get a bookbag with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations in it? No? Just a generic bookbag, and she feels strongly it has a book in it... no.

Damn.

That puts a wrench in a lot of her plans.

Her backpack from the fall of 1987, when she was auditing political science at UCLA. She can picture it clearly in her mind: brown with a silver buckle, the left strap frayed and with a faint stain of mustard. Inside is her pencil case containing a yellow highlighter, a blue pen, a black pen, an unsharpened pencil, a sharpened pencil and a tiny black pencil sharpener; and with it is a blue pocket notebook with a black ribbon bookmark and a horizontal black line instead of her name on the cover; and finally there's Political Science: An Introduction, Second Edition, Michael G. Roskins. She carried exactly to class every Monday, Thursday and Friday for ten weeks without fail. She's now wearing it.

She takes it off and opens the flap.

There it is.

Maybe there's an easier way. Armsmaster's helmet has translation programs loaded in; she hasn't worn it before, but she's seen it. Is that enough to work off of...? No. She can make something which looks like it, but which is clearly lacking a lot of features and doesn't have the right software loaded.

She pokes her head back out.

This turns out to be harder than she thought. She has a political science textbook; is that good enough? Oh, and she also made this tinkertech helmet which might not actually be tinkertech and doesn't contain the translation program she was trying to get, but they might find it interesting anyway.

Daisy expects that Dusk will be interested in the helmet if it's all right to take it apart. And one book should at least get her most of the way to having the language, she just might be a little short on vocabulary if it's particularly focused.

Yes, it can be taken apart and she can create more whenever Dusk wants. Is Dusk interested in tech? She can create a lot of other samples of tinkertech and derivatech*, many of them probably more interesting; this helmet is a bit of a bust since she was trying and failling to get its translator specifically.

She'll hand Daisy the book and pop back in to, after some struggle, produce her copy of The Lord of the Rings she used to bring to her chemotherapy appointments.

Those two combined should have reasonably good coverage, she thinks.

*tinkertech-derived reproducible technology.

Dusk is an engineer, yes - she usually works with things a little simpler than microchips, so Daisy isn't sure that she'll be able to do anything interesting with the helmet, but she expects she'll at least want to take it apart and have a look.

She gets to work on the books; she's very fast at reading, taking each page in at a glance.

(Well, that's one way she might be able to get in Dusk's good books.)

While Daisy's doing that, she will generate:

• Hero's jetpack, jetboots and the helmet control system, the last of which comes with his homebrew fork of BSD which looks shockingly primitive now, despite how ahead of its time it was. No media or saved project work, but the software is there.
• A full set of Masamune's Thunderstorm 1.12 power armor.
• Two of the Swords' high-calibre force field bracers.

She sets down a black sheet in a clean corner and piles the gear there.

Does Nine want copies to play with?

He can't wear most things designed for humans, but if there's anything he can use he's interested, yes. (Daisy is a little slower to translate for him, and it slows her reading down a little, but she does keep going with it as she translates.)

She'll put an extra of each in the pile so he can poke through them. The force field bracers might work; with humans you activate them by tensing your forearm, but there's also a manual activation. The jetpack also looks like it'll work with some adjustment if he wires up his own control system. Maybe they and Dusk can figure it out. Nine looks below the jetpack's maximum carrying capacity so it'll be slower than Hero could go with it, but it'll still work.

Oh, what might be useful is cannibalizing the lasers and shock prongs from the armor? Both can be set to stun, which might be useful for aggressive wildlife. Rebecca knows how to take them apart, and they should be easy to mount on something and hook up to a correct power source, which she also knows the specs for. She doesn't know if it's redundant with what Nine already has, though.

He does have a stun option and force shields, but the jet pack sounds interesting, he'll ask Dusk to have a look at it. He also asks Daisy what she thinks of the possibility of him copying Dusk's lightning aura with the shock prongs and she says it's safer not to, right now.

Alright. Does Dusk's luck, or danger sense—she's assuming it's something like that, which Daisy mentioned earlier—apply to messing with technology? Tinkertech can be unintuitive and sometimes volatile, so otherwise Rebecca should be around to supervise at first. Most accidents aren't going to hurt a droid, though, or even a reasonably durable human if Dusk is like that which sounds like she is? It's closer to shocks and fires than explosions as long as you're sensible and not pointing the business end of weapons at yourself..

Nine has to think about that one for a moment but concludes that Dusk will be fine at least four times over - luck and durability and precognitive danger sense and also sensory powers that mean she doesn't need to touch things to examine them. And he and Daisy are pretty shockproof and fireproof, yes.

Excellent, then. She is interested in what they make of it.

How are the books going?

Omniglot plays very nicely with Daisy's preexisting language-acquisition programming, as it turns out, so she's just limited by how fast she can turn the pages. She's not done yet, though.

Is conversation fine or should she be letting Daisy focus? The ship has sailed a bit with Daisy translating for Nine, but...

She's not really up for conversation per se but translating is fine and she can answer questions if Rebecca has any without slowing down significantly.

She might just practice crafting a bit more until the book translation is done, unless Nine wants anything?

He's fine, thanks.

Daisy isn't too much longer with the books; she's slower at translating the new one but still manages to catch up to the printer when it's about two-thirds done.