brockton bay heroes, meet plant tinker

[msrewind]

Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison- er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.

And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and-

"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.

Comments

[thinkering]

"Well, that sounds familiar. Let your bot out. Glam, give it some company."

[mxglam]

Some company is provided! Now there are more bots.

[thinkering]

And Rewind's shoulderbot goes back to her, since the rest of the flock can send back video enough to self-sustain Glam's "presence", and they chase the leafy monkey.

[msecho]

While the leafy monkey's chased, Echo reports: "There's this bizarre plant-bat thing flying around here. It's not really doing anything. Gonna follow."

Echo's location is really nowhere near Rewind's.

[thinkering]

"...Be careful, it seems like he's really got them spread out and may be able to suddenly reinforce an assailed position."

[acanofworms]

Almost immediately after that, the heroes receive two similar reports. "Follow but do not engage if they do anything," Armsmaster overrides over both teams' channels on the comms. "There seem to be several of these creatures, we wait until we have more information."

[thinkering]

Lorica's real bots start spreading out over the city, multiplying with Glam's help whenever they spot anything, making sure there's a presence to coordinate at each site heroes are accumulating.

[acanofworms]

Not all of the reports include actual sights of bizarre hybrid creatures, but they do all lead to various buildings in various states of disrepair with variedly boarded windows. Seven buildings, to be exact. Two of them are known to contain leafy monkey things, one has at least one bat, and the other four just produce very strange noises of the sorts associated with bats (one of them) and probably bears (the remaining three) or something.

Armsmaster calls a video-conference with the non-deployed heroes. "Drupe, Miss Militia, Dauntless, and I are here, Velocity is watching one of the buildings. How do you believe we should we best deploy the Wards?" he asks Lorica.

[thinkering]

"Me and Glam held back for coordination and copies respectively, if you feel the need to deploy Rewind even though she doesn't have her armor yet give her Glimmer as a tank, Windflower with Silica and a lot of bots."

[mxglam]

"I'm limited on the number of copies I can effectively have fine control over, but I think I can interface them with the bots too so they're not too limited while I'm not actively helping them. Could send one with each group," Glam suggests.

[thinkering]

"Yeah, do it, the bots can handle it. Make me-copies too."

[mxglam]

"Can do."

[acanofworms]

There's a moment of silence from Armsmaster, and then: "I'll send a Glam and a Lorica copy to each location, then. Miss Militia, Drupe, and I will go only with the copies. Best not to use Rewind-"

[msrewind]

"Oh, come on!"

[acanofworms]

"-so Glimmer will go only with the copies," he ignores her. "Silica and Windflower are a group, Echo and Dauntless are another, and Velocity will go only with the copies, too. Objections?"

[thinkering]

"Are all the targets priorities? Bots could watch them in case something changes and we could concentrate force more."

[acanofworms]

"We do not yet know these creatures' capabilities, I'm relying on Glam and your versatilities to cover anything we don't like, but other than that none of the targets are particularly significant and all have the same priority. Given their number, assume master five for general strategies, mover two for the monkeys, mover four for the bats. If anything changes, I'm counting on your bots to inform us and adapt."

[thinkering]

"Okay."

[mxglam]

So the various copies are produced, with their respective bots transmitting their environments so Glam can keep track of everything, and the different teams are deployed.

[msrewind]

Rewind grumbles but deals, and goes all paramedic here paramedic there etc.

[thinkering]

And Lorica's bots operate themselves and copies and Loricas and, whenever Glam's too occupied with one battle to focus fully on the others, they operate Glams too.

[peterxy]

When they engage, this is what it looks like:

Miss Militia, Armsmaster, and Silica and Windflower enter a building that has half a dozen very eight-feet-tall bears with thick bark covering their skin. Except one of these bears, staying in the back, seems to be... performing mitosis.

Glimmer and Echo and Dauntless enter two buildings with lots of those leafy monkeys. Lots of them. About three dozen. Furthermore, every thirty seconds one of them does the mitosis thing, becoming two monkeys.

Velocity and Drupe each find a building with a swarm of bat-plant hybrids, with thick leaflike wings. Those don't seem to self replicate.

And what all the buildings have in common is perpetually active sprinklers causing all of the creatures to be wet, and a large tank filled with goop in the back.

Oh, another thing they have in common is that all of the creatures attack the heroes as soon as they step inside.

[thinkering]

Drupe has an advantage against plant hybrid creatures, although it's not as good as it would be with pure plant creatures. Lorica has bots attempt to shut off the sprinklers and investigate the tanks.

Silica's golems cannot be poisoned and Silica is watching via robot from quite a ways away and there's no people in the building. Windflower cuts loose, compared to her usual, while golems cover her.

[mxglam]

So, it turns out the bat-plant hybrids do self replicate: whenever they take enough damage, they split off into two smaller bats that starts slowly growing to full size. Also they spit acid. Such charming creatures.

The monkeys simply mob the heroes, duplicating quickly and constantly, wave after wave of them. They're not hard to take out, but they are lots.

And the bears have thick enough skin that Miss Militia and Armsmaster do need to turn to their more lethal weapons in order to take them down. When they do, another bear brings its fallen comrade to the replicating one, who absorbs it and replicates that much faster. To top it off, once the replicator is taken down, another bear takes its place.

The good news is that they're not immune to Windflower's poisons, even if they take a while to be affected, so that group is the first one that leaves the Lorica bots alone for long enough that they can actually disable the sprinklers and explore the tanks - every other group is attacked by monkeys or bats or debris thrown by bears so they have to dodge and abandon their targets before getting much information.

The tanks, apparently, contain a goopy substance that's being treated and sent to the sprinklers, some sort of nutrient soup perhaps? Given how fiercely the creatures defend them, it might be a good idea to disable them somehow from that alone.

[thinkering]

Bots start attempting various disabling methods on the undefended tank-and-sprinkler-system to apply elsewhere.