brockton bay, meet glam

[mxglam]

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.

Comments

[mxglam]

"Either bio-tinker or some kind of Master. Dunno about who to call, but Master protocols are in effect, might be best if we call the Wards just 'cause we have more practice training with each other and coordinating."

[thinkering]

"Yeah. Miracle Max doesn't make sense in the field however much he likes it... others might be useful, might not. You and I can go armored and airfiltered, and Boots and Windflower can take the drug antidote. Windflower might not even need it but it's not a good risk. Echo - not sure this is really her speed, but I guess we can get another prophylactic dose if she wants to come."

[mxglam]

"Kicking monster butt, pretty sure she'll like it." White armor starts appearing around their body, and their mask is now embedded in a helmet as opposed to just stuck onto the costume's fabric. "Could outfit your bots with tiny foam sprayers."

[thinkering]

"The foam won't last, will it?"

[mxglam]

"Well, it'll last at least while I'm around it, as long as it's not so much foam I lose track of it."

[thinkering]

"And I guess you could make a little tunnel in it for a bot to tranquilize the person, too, couldn't you?"

[mxglam]

"Yup!"

[thinkering]

"All right, sprayers for bots, other Wards along. Maybe we should go in at night when the cape might be asleep, although they've probably got critter guards, might not matter that much, probably depends on whether the critters are impaired by darkness or not."

[mxglam]

"I would bet they're not, but might be a good idea anyway, easier for us to sneak the whole team there."

[thinkering]

"...Remind me next time we have a block of free time to see if you can do invisible things. But Echo and Boots and Windflower have no dark-related adaptation at all and it's the tinker's turf, they can just cut the power if they want it too dark for most of us to function and might expect it to impair you too."

[mxglam]

"Yeah. Although, I mean, I could just make spotlights or something appear dangling from the ceiling and undo that. Even with diminishing returns, the rest of the team should be enough to overwhelm them unless their critters are people. In which case we need to stop them immediately."

[thinkering]

"They don't have to be people to be able to do some independent cunning stuff."

[mxglam]

"I was talking mostly about them being able to expect that I'd fail harder than the rest of our team would expect me to succeed."

[thinkering]

"Ah, right. I don't think that's likely and even if it's true it doesn't make them any more of a danger than any other opponent who doesn't know your secret."

[mxglam]

"No, not a danger, just not all that morally okay, if they're sending sapient critters to die when they're detected."

[thinkering]

"Yeah. I don't think it's likely, though."

[mxglam]

Shrug. "Me neither."

[thinkering]

"I'll ask the other three how comfortable they are operating in the dark and go by that."

[mxglam]

"Mmhm."

[thinkering]

Lorica stations a couple of bots in unobtrusive places near the warehouse and they head back to HQ.

[mxglam]

So they do.

Echo prefers not going when it's dark, but can deal with it. Dauntless gets wind of it and is tempted to offer to come with but decides he would be stealing Lorica's show there.

[thinkering]

Boots can't maneuver very well in the dark and Windflower is already worried enough about friendly fire, darts or no darts, so a daytime attack it is.

[mxglam]

Daytime attack it is. They strategize and decide on a time for the operation. Glam speculates that the Tinker/Master is probably annoyed at the fact that the money disappeared.

[thinkering]

Probably, yes.

They all suit up. Windflower has darts, Lorica's bots have Glam-supplied foam sprayers and decoy friends, Boots has feet, Echo has tranquilizer guns.

Bots report on what they have seen of warehouse activity.

[peterxy]

Strange hybrids coming and going at irregular intervals. Almost invariably looking like plant-animal combinations, with varying proportions of each. But for all their aesthetic differences, they don't look all that functionally distinct: low fliers that echolocate, stealthy bipeds that move surprisingly fast.