rogue, meet hero

[peterxy]

Most of the time, patrolling is a dull, uneventful affair, somewhat akin to the Ankh-Morpork City Guard ringing their bells and calling "All's well!" at night.

Sometimes, it's not.

Dauntless was not expecting to run into two unpowered Asian gangs (Japanese and Korean? that's what it looks like at a distance) duking it out in the middle of the street. Granted, it's the evening, and it's not quite the most well-frequented of streets, but still.

He decides to call for backup, not because he wouldn't be able to take them on, but because he's supposed to do that whenever confronting another parahuman or a large number of non-capes, at least until he graduates. He turns the comm on and describes the situation - a bit over a dozen people on each side, arguing and brandishing blunt weapons and in some cases guns - then waits and watches.

Comments

[thinkering]

"Isn't that on the wiki?"

[mxglam]

"It is, but I haven't had a reason to look them up before trying to consider how to create a strategy against a teleporter-copier using them."

[thinkering]

"Wards are me, Echo, Dauntless, Boots, Windflower, and Althaea. Protectorate is Transit, Armsmaster, Miracle Max, Beneficence, Miss Militia, Velocity, Antares, Chevalier, and Drupe. That jog your memory?"

[mxglam]

"...I've heard about Echo, met Dauntless the other day with you, know about Althaea, Armsmaster, Beneficence, Miss Militia, Velocity, Chevalier, and Drupe."

[thinkering]

"Transit's a long-distance low-precision teleporter. Boots kicks people. Windflower's airborne poisons, assorted. Miracle Max is a chem tinker, Antares is a fire breaker."

[mxglam]

"Okay. Hmm. Can people be made preemptively immune to Windflower's poisons?"

[thinkering]

"Why?"

[mxglam]

"Well, if we engage teleporter guy while immune to her poisons and then poison the area around us, he might inhale some of that and since stuff on him gets copied with him eventually the poisons should affect him."

[thinkering]

"Windflower can't actually immunize people but I can air filter and so can Armsmaster, Antares burns it off before it gets near him, and Miracle Max can make it tolerable for another couple people if he gets taken off his usual work for a while. Don't know if Beneficence can boost people against it but she might be able to."

[mxglam]

"Alright! So, how will that plan fail?"

[thinkering]

"Well, for one thing, a rogue came up with it and it will therefore meet political obstacles, and for another we'd have to choose our ground to not poison random passersby."

[mxglam]

"A rogue came up with it? Nonsense, it came to you in a flash of inspiration while you were patrolling."

[thinkering]

"Aren't I clever. Why am I your point person for this?"

[mxglam]

They shrug. "I just happened to run into you today. Also, I like tinkers, and the fact that you didn't try to convince me to join was a big plus."

[thinkering]

"It still means that we'd have to know when and to expect the mover to pop in and start stabbing and expect to be able to get him to do it where we wanted him, somewhere clear. Even if everyone were on board with it."

[mxglam]

"Yeah. Are all of Windflower's poisons deadly? No stun-poisons or anything like that?"

[thinkering]

"Far as I know, but she's new and hates her power."

[mxglam]

"I can understand that."

[thinkering]

No comment.

[mxglam]

"Okay, other than that, limiting his visibility is the obvious thing, probably. Also putting trackers on him, maybe if we could predict where he was about to land...? Or maybe one of your robots, a very fast and discreet one, could perhaps attach itself to him and try to tranq him?"

[thinkering]

"I did land a tracker on him last time but it didn't help that much. Maybe I could rig something up that could do gaze-tracking through his mask and tell where he'd land and have something ready there but it'd need split-second timing."

[mxglam]

"Hmm, maybe a tracker designed to deal with him, hooked up to lot of people's visors or comms or something so everyone knows where he and his copies are all the time."

[thinkering]

"Transit's the only one who wears something with an HUD that's me-friendly. Armsmaster might be able to figure out an interface, I guess."

[mxglam]

"Can't you design one for the other heroes?"

[thinkering]

"Branding doesn't like it and I'm not particularly good at 'inconspicuous' to get around that, and it's hard for other people to get along with my tech anyway."