[M&M 3e] Defying the Future IC

[Quellian-dyrae]

"Hm. Apophis has the fewest guards, but is the hardest to find. Manchineel's saplings seemed a bit stronger than the other minions at the warehouse, and she had a fixed base, so while she's easiest to find, we can probably expect her to be the hardest target." There were certainly no biases that might have been influencing Lily's threat assessment and any claims to the contrary are vicious, hateful lies! "Lockdown...seems to be in the middle on both. Mmm...and it seems like taking them down may have value that scales similarly; defeating Apophis may or may not do anything to stop the Suneaters. Neutralizing Lockdown will at a minimum deprive the Chain Gang of leadership and new members. And...I'm speculating some, but I expect Manchineel's creations will be the most adversely affected by neutralizing her. We can't necessarily bet on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they became anywhere from disorganized to entirely latent without her giving direct orders."

She didn't bother addressing Doctor Proxy. Unless Watcher gave them more information on them, they were strictly lowest priority as a matter of simple practicality. Really based on everything they did know Lily considered it more-than-marginally likely that Doctor Proxy was safe and sound and heavily guarded in the Obelisk, with no need to ever personally leave there. Heck, she wouldn't have been particularly surprised if it turned out that Doctor Proxy was in fact some sort of alternate personality of the Watcher himself. Between the pigeonbots and the Proxybots they certainly had a similar modus operandi. Although maybe everyone in the future operated through drones, what did she know?

"That all said...I feel like there's a fairly high-priority target in Raphael. She wouldn't be as strong as any of the three villains themselves, and though she can summon saplings, her operations require her to remain mobile, which somewhat restricts available guards and precludes most fortifications. She also should be relatively easy to find; Watcher, I assume your birds allow you to keep track of the growth of Manchineel's forest, right? We can use that to track her movements. And neutralizing her halts Manchineel's primary objective. Probably not permanently; Manchineel created her once so presumably could do so again. But with any luck that will at least take some of her attention, and might prompt her to s-send forces after us directly." There was a slight stutter in Lily's words there, but she pressed on. "Which...which is a good thing. Definitely a good thing. Because it gives us an opportunity to weaken her forces away from her fortifications, maybe even prepare the battleground ourselves. And it means her forces are going after people strong enough to take them, rather than civilians."

"I'm not married to the idea or anything, but that would be my suggestion for a starting point."