Zot! goes the glove, tapping the bot gently.

The glove retracts the zotted thing. "I'm going to make that retract faster," Lorica says, "but this sufficed to make sure it'd work at all."

"I'm gonna need to practice timing with this thing, I had meant to send the bot a bit before that. And I don't know if it needs to retract, 'cause—" She points at a wall.

Zot.

Then she "touches" the glove, aiming for it—and the zotting stringy thing attached to it—to rewind back to the coiled state.

"Okay," says Lorica, "but you don't necessarily want to have to do that all the time, especially since both gloves will have zot things and you might have a lot of targets."

"I might do that all the time anyway, my M.O. was booping someone else and then immediately booping myself away from them, it's not that different."

"It'll be easy to make it quick-retracting anyway. Unless there's a reason it shouldn't I'll just go with the design I have."

"Okay," she shrugs. "How far will it go?"

"Ten feet. I can get it longer if you want but it'd involve switching to a gauntlet instead of a glove."

"Longer would be cool, but maybe you could make, like a gun for that, instead of the glove?"

"Sure."

"Cool! I'll have to practice a lot."

"Yep. Every time you zot a thing the bot will learn more about how to anticipate you."

"Awesome, no way that fucker Lung will escape me now."

"Uh, well, he'll have a harder time closing and the suit will hold up against a modest amount of fire but please don't be rash."

"With the gun, I don't even need to be close enough for him to notice me."

"He'll know something's happened when suddenly the things around him are ten minutes ahead of where they were."

"Yeah, but I'll still be pretty far from him and can retreat and stuff, he can't just literally swat me aside like he did."

"I guess. But please don't get yourself killed overextending something I gave you, I would feel guilty."

"Fine. But I still want to get that fucker."

"That's understandable."

She grabs a pen and reaches to scratch under the leg cast. "Hate this. Can't wait to get it off, but they said I shouldn't go out for at least a week after that. Ugh."

"Well, at least you won't be itchy for that week."