>Heraldmode
>Success, Success, Failure

The first thing you do, the obvious thing, is to reach for the skin of the Herald. Feel it papery between your mind-fingers. You could put it on and be her and #301's snake brain would ooze out of his snake nose and Ramsey would... be nonplussed, probably, until you reached into the future and found her corpse and brought it into the present and dropped it on her head. Something like that.

You think about that and you rub the skin and you hang it back up neatly. It would be good for you to be the Herald, and it would be useful. It might be the only way to truly change #301's mind. But what do you care about his mind? He poses no threat to you. He's already being fired. And Richard seems satisfied with that, oddly enough. (Shouldn't he be more vindictive?)

«His humiliation will be twofold. First, he is removed from his post by the Director Itself. This is entirely unprecedented. Entirely. But he will not yet be recycled.»
«Instead, he will sit by impotently as you destroy his prized client, reclaim the Object, absorb the Wyrm, and, in your parlance, 'save the whole entire world'.»
«Oh. And I forgot. As <I> am granted the highest honor for a Correspondent possible.»
«I do not care if he grovels. If you do not cow him he will be removed nevertheless, and, in his hubris, will grow angrier and angrier. Perhaps he will do something reckless to me or my property. Perhaps his status in the eyes of our peers will be permanently reduced. Better, perhaps he will be recycled for his outburst, and our last shining memories of Correspondent #301 will be of his arrogance and idiocy.»
«I would like this very much.»

Oh. You take it back. So he doesn't want #301 to die or anything? Because you could—

«You would allow him to escape the inevitable?»

Okay, you get it. Not killing him. Check. You really shouldn't be the Herald, then, or you might have strange lizardy impulses and kill him. Or humble him so much it isn't fun anymore.

«Well. You must put in some kind of effort. For #2 and the rest, if not him.»

Um. The rest?

«There may be certain additional spectators.»
«...Not the entire department. But the residents of our neighboring cubes have taken it upon themselves to stand around and rubberneck. It is frivolous. Do not let it influence you. They are hopeful that the end of our ordeal is at hand, is all.»

And they want to see Richard and #301 tussle by proxy? Don't lie.

«That as well.»

Okay. Okay, you— this is good! Positive thinking! You hope you've been putting on a good enough show for everybody, but now you have to put on a great one. They're not inside your mind, are they? The other agents?

«Not at all.»

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