"Should we get Armsmaster? I know technically Piggot outranks him but..."

"For strategic purposes or because you've got an idea for deploying him or because he's got more practice arguing with her?"

"...the last part."

"Any point to bringing him in before we have something for him to argue, then?"

"I guess not."

"Glam, hurry up," Lorica adds, and their shoulderbot relays that, "we're on a deadline."

And with the speed of narration, Glam shows up.

"Okay, so, I've got as far as 'how not to ignore the message nor actually send Rewind in person to Lung', shoulderbot should've told you, but I need some exciting bullshit for what to do after that, what've you got?"

"Um? Well, what's the actual goal here? Rescuing Rewind's parents, right?"

"Right."

"So... we need to figure out how to get Lung to show us them."

"Well, he probably has to produce evidence they're alive on demand if he wants her to cooperate on anything."

"Yeah. Okay, let's see, you know Lung best, what can you tell us about him?" they ask Rewind.

"He's... all about fear. He says, fear of the known and the unknown, something like that, and you have to balance them? But he's not really very smart, and he's really proud and kinda relies on being the scariest motherfucker around."

"So he might try to hold out on you if he's having a 'fear of the unknown' day, but there's 'not smart' and then there's 'kidnap parents, do not deploy them as leverage'."

"What I mean is that most people don't defy him, and he won't really make the smartest move if someone does, so if at some point the smartest thing he could do is 'keep my parents alive' that may not be the thing he will do."

"Well," says Lorica, "if your copy shows up to the meeting and doesn't get evidence they're alive at that time, we can abort - but if he does produce the evidence we need something intelligent to do with it."

"Hmm, where does the address Rewind got lead anyway? I bet it's a warehouse."

"Yup," confirms the bot.

"Okay, so, Rewind arrives, is Lung waiting for her?"

"He could be waiting and big..."

"But then that's no leverage at all. He has to show you your parents are alive and can be hurt, otherwise you have no reason to whatever. Unless he just wants to bait you."

"Which he might!"

"But in that case it doesn't really matter, does it, we send a copy, he'll be big and evil, the copy disappears, he gets nothing. Unless he makes you wait ten minutes before showing up to try to tear you to shreds."

"He can't really show up big unless he was already in a fight. But there's no plan there, right? If he just wants to bait me then nothing I do will save my parents."