The Rules Manager also said that if there is no chosen number for any reason, it does not have any protection at all because the abilities are linked.
Well that's interesting. I'm not seeing a rule in the "Linked Abilities" section that covers this sort of thing. I would've assumed it just had protection from everything in that circumstance.
Edit: I found the original tweet, and a follow-up tweet refers to this rule, which I didn't find because it's in the "copying" section.
Quote:
706.7a If an ability causes a player to “choose a [value]” and a second, linked ability refers to that choice, the second ability is the only ability that can refer to that choice. An object doesn’t “remember” that choice and use it for other abilities it may copy later. If an object copies an ability that refers to a choice, but either (a) doesn’t copy that ability’s linked ability or (b) does copy the linked ability but no choice is made for it, then the choice is considered to be “undefined.” If an ability refers to an undefined choice, that part of the ability won’t do anything.
Here's the tweet for reference:
https://twitter.com/EliShffrn/status/12 ... 5415804929