patrol

[thinkering]

When Lorica's been a Ward for a few months they start pushing her to go out on patrols. She still hasn't finished the suit for her dad, although hers is good until it gets field-tested and she knows what to add - and there are other projects she'd like to spend PRT money on - but she's playing the game, so she goes patrolling. She's an exemplary member of her little team, mostly because by luck she gets along with the fellow who's appointed leader; they start letting her go alone with a little flock of scout robots.

She's doing a sort of aerial parkour, flying but touching down on roofs and jogging along occasionally to get a closer look at anybody wandering by, in a zigzag over a nest of side streets. Her suit's a little louder than she'd like, some kind of joint deterioration. She can fix that when she gets back in.

Comments

[thinkering]

"Second thing. I'm solo, you are not my specialty, potential backup is occupied, don't even know your sub-ratings, I'm not going to start a fight over overpriced diamonds unless you decide you want to attack first or go through civilians on your way out of town. I do seriously question your life choices though."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"Yes, that I've gathered. Working for the protectorate doesn't put you in much of a position to judge me."

[thinkering]

"I take their money and entertain cancerous children who're into superheroes and wander the city like a supplement cop and when I have enough little robots maybe they'll relax on making the twelve-year-old and the PTSD cases patrol," she says. "Judge me if I'm still doing it when I'm eighteen."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"They're still using technology you've made for them. Everything you do gives them more power, more legitimacy. And you know that. You may shortsighted, but you don't seem stupid."

[thinkering]

"Between child labor laws in the private sector, the fact that the PRT has had my identity since the minute I triggered, and my philosophical objections to stealing random people's possessions, rock and a hard place. Wards are the best of seriously mediocre options."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"I suppose that's reasonable, if naive. Unless you really think the benefits of some arbitrary person retaining their property make up the cost of keeping your employers in business. At least admit you're working for them because it's the easiest alternative."

[thinkering]

"It is that, and I never pretended otherwise, but the PRT, while decidedly imperfect, still does some good sometimes, which is more than I can say for jewel thievery. If the Simurgh strikes, oh, Canberra, the PRT will get me on a fast plane and put me somewhere I can shoot at her. That's an unambiguous good."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"If the Simurgh strikes Canberra, the PRT will not kill her. I won't deny that they're buying us time, but you have to weigh all the harm they've done against an extra five or ten years, at most, before the endbringers win. We can do better."

[thinkering]

"Do you have specific PRT-related grievances or do you just have it in for The Man, to the point where chasing Ziz away from Canberra barely registers? And - what, are you planning to do better in your basement or your Toybox lair with shoplifting proceeds?"

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"Specific PRT-related grievances and yes. I am. Ideally, I'd like more resources, but it's not a critical problem."

[thinkering]

"You wanna share with the class?"

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"Get the villain to monologue about his evil plans, that's a classic. I'd love to, but I'm not getting the sense you'd care about anything I have to say."

[thinkering]

"No, no, I wanted you to monologue about your backstory, that's different, but apparently you aren't in a self-disclosure mood. Whether I'd care and whether I'd be able to do anything useful are different questions, though."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"I'll just say that there's a lot the triumvirate isn't telling us, because I don't expect you'll believe me. Not unless you're willing to do your own homework."

[thinkering]

"Well, that's neither specific nor particularly surprising. They're high-level government operatives with large quantities of exceedingly complicated shit on their plates and a constant not-enough-resources problem, if they put it all on the wiki for public consumption they'd be doing PR and operational security and time management way the hell wrong."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"I was thinking more in the area of kidnapping, human experimentation, and torture - if you don't think that so much power coupled with so little oversight is a problem in and of itself."

[thinkering]

"I'm, uh, against the listed behaviors, but forgive me if I don't storm HQ solo on your say-so - do they have reasons, in the scope of your - theory? The oversight thing is realistically an issue in practice but I don't so much have principles against it."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

He shrugs. "Good enough ones, I suppose, if you think that what they're doing to our mutual enemies is working. None worth the name if you don't. Not that it matters, since there's another way. A better way."

[thinkering]

"Is this the part where you propose, I don't know, sending us into space or invading Aleph or something? I know they successfully evacuate at least some people from the sites struck, I've been on the ground while they did it - and you have yet to convince me that there's more to be done short of abandoning the entire planet, which has some appeal but serious coordination issues."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"That's awfully fatalistic. And I highly doubt that displacing the residents of Aleph would be net beneficial, to any of us. You know, they can be killed. The endbringers, I mean. Presumably also the residents of Aleph, but that's significantly less controversial."

[thinkering]

"I don't know that. About the more controversial of your assertions."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"I wouldn't have expected you of all people to assume the contrary. It is, in any case. I've made significant progress in that direction already."

[thinkering]

"Saying I don't know something doesn't mean I claim to know its negation. I'd be fascinated to hear about your progress."

[tenn_ambar_metta]

"I - I can do better. I can show you."

[thinkering]

"Really?"