peterverse | brockton bay, meet glam

mxglam posting in

It's the anniversary. Glam would very much not like to celebrate.

It’s their last day on Winslow High - they’re being transferred to Arcadia on Monday - and also their last day without a patrol schedule assigned.

And the PRT released a small announcement on its website about Glam joining the Wards. Now their wiki page doesn’t get erased, of course - they’re no longer speculative. They wonder what it’s got on them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mxglam

"It didn't actually come up, I was just talking to him and it occurred to me that he's graduating so there won't be as many opportunities in the future." Pause. "I mean, I wouldn't even be thinking about it if past interactions didn't lead me to believe he'd be willing, but."

From:

thinkering

"I've never known Dauntless to be a casual makeouts person."

From:

mxglam

"He probably isn't, I don't think it'd be as easy as coming up to him and asking, but before I decided to actually, you know, invest any time in it, I wanted to ask."

From:

thinkering

"Gotcha."

From:

mxglam

"Let it never be said that I'm not at least trying to think about things before doing them."

From:

thinkering

"This isn't exactly the same as previous recklessnesses, but noted."

From:

mxglam

"True, I suppose."

From:

thinkering

The party goes on pretty late. Then everybody goes home.

From:

peterxy

A few days later, a woman checks in to a hospital with very severe withdrawal symptoms, but the tox screen does not find anything. Once she's coherent enough to communicate what happened, she says she has not voluntarily taken any drugs, but was dosed against her will with something very strong while walking back home.

She also got a note with a time and a place she had to be if she wanted to get more of that drug.

From:

thinkering

And that's why Lorica's sitting on the roof near the intersection in question, frowning at it.

From:

mxglam

And it's why Glam's waiting there, looking exactly like the lady from the hospital, and imitating the symptoms she'd been showing after the worst of withdrawal was through.

At the exact time written on the note...

No one shows up.

However, a bizarre winged half-rat-half-plant hybrid creature comes from an alley, flying low and dropping a syringe with a note attached to it in front of Glam before starting to fly away between the buildings, keeping to the shadows.

From:

thinkering

A robot chases it.

Lorica drops to the ground beside Glam to look at the note.

From:

mxglam

The note contains another location, a time closer to now than now was to the day the woman was dosed, and names a considerable sum of money.

The creature goes through tight alleys and stops to hide a lot before checking with echolocation whether the area's clear. On one of those checks, it notices Lorca's bot and starts fleeing.

From:

thinkering

The bot chases it faster.

"Somebody must've made that thing. I don't think it fits any known villain powersets. Or for that matter rogues."

From:

mxglam

When the thing notices it won't be able to escape it runs headfirst onto a wall. It does not survive impact.

"I didn't see it very well, what was it? I thought it was a bat."

From:

thinkering

"There's plant in there, and a rat tail. The wings might be bat wings. It self-destructed when it noticed it was being chased and couldn't lose the bot so it's at least slightly intelligent."

From:

mxglam

"Hm. Weird." Glam looks like their costumed self again. "We should probably have Miracle Max look at this thing," they say, grabbing the syringe.

From:

thinkering

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly."

From:

mxglam

The hybrid soon dissolves into liquid, leaving little evidence of its existence. Someone thought this through.

They report their findings and return to the PHQ with the note and the drug.

From:

thinkering

Miracle Max takes the drug and disappears into his lab with it.

Lorica paces.

From:

mxglam

"...you alright?"

From:

thinkering

"Yeah, I'm fine. Thinking about how to stealth a bot better."

From:

mxglam

"Oh. Aren't there, like, magical Tinker things that can make it invisible or something?"

From:

thinkering

Snort. "It's slightly outside my specialty. I'm mostly a software Tinker and invisibility is thoroughly hardware; that I can do robots at all is very much constrained by the extent to which this constitutes indulging my specialty better by giving the robots more free rein for decisionmaking. I'd need to make a really complicated cloaking device or try to figure out how to collaborate with Armsmaster on it."