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]

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.

[thinkering]

So they have a general idea of the kinds of critters they'll be dealing with.

Everybody who needs one takes a prophylactic.

"Last-minute anything?"

[mxglam]

Heads are shaken.

[thinkering]

Right then.

Lorica tries the door.

[peterxy]

It is locked.

[thinkering]

No shit. "Echo, can you pick it? Glam, supply her."

[mxglam]

Glam: supplies.

Echo: picks. The door clicks open.

[thinkering]

Lorica goes in first.

[mxglam]

Glam follows, floating silently.

The area closest to the door is empty, but everyone else is-

busy.

The whole warehouse has been turned into a crude lab. There are three desks right in the middle of the open space, with various weird-looking tools. Large crates fill the corners and are pushed against the walls, open, with large metal containers that could be called vats if you squint. Most of them contain plant-like stems that end in hybrid creatures, as if they were fruit. No such plant has more than two such creatures, and the creatures themselves are somewhat foetal, underdeveloped.

Several fully formed hybrids are walking here and there, though, checking up on these vats, bringing substances here and there, filling vats with liquid or emptying them of same.

And one man in a lab coat is leaving one of the large crates and blinking in surprise at the armor-clad heroine who has just appeared.

[thinkering]

Heroine and robots. Lots of robots, some of which are even real. They go after the tinker.

"Boots, take out the critters." He starts bounding around stomping on things. "Windflower, Glam, poison the vat critters and put lids on the vats. Echo, spot assistance where needed and shooting at things in between."

[mxglam]

The Tinker doesn't wait for her to finish giving the orders before he starts acting. "Press the button!" he calls as he runs towards his desks, reaching into his coat for a syringe he uses on himself. 'The button' is apparently, obviously enough, a large red button by one of the more hidden crates that one of the hybrids presses.

Glam has started obeying Lorica's order when several rat or bat things start attacking them en masse, forcing Glam to shoot them as they come. The lids do appear above the vats, though.

And after a second the purpose of the button becomes pretty clear as many of the more bizarre creations in the vats start coming to life. Some die before getting the chance to, but a few either weren't poisoned enough or are resistant enough that they manage to topple and break their vats upon waking.

[thinkering]

"Windflower, aim escaped poison -" Lorica can hit things, in her suit. She hits critters. Boots stomps critters. Her robots attempt to spray the tinker and the critters who are away from Wards. "Glam, get Echo a gas mask so she can cover Windflower!"

[mxglam]

Glam provides, and Echo is really really good at shooting things.

Flying critters throw themselves at the spraying robots, disrupting their aim, and two eight-foot-tall gorilla-like hybrids appear from two out of the way crates. The Tinker reaches one of his desks and throws one vial with a clear liquid on the ground at his feet then starts throwing several other vials with a pinkish one at the Wards' general direction. When the first one breaks, the more bizarre hybrids start becoming much more focused and violent.

[thinkering]

"Glam, get the big ones, I want them disintegrated!" says Lorica loudly. "Boots, cover Glam!"

Boots leaps over, landing heels first into a couple of critters.

Robots foam! Oh how foamy are the robots!

Windflower contains her lethals, inhaling them safely into herself as best she can when she can't get them into the systems of attacking critters.

[mxglam]

That was music to Glam's ears. "Disintegration ray coming up," they singsong before conjuring a mean looking gun that takes a second to charge with a loud bzz noise before shooting a beam of blue light that makes one of the large monsters glow before crumpling to tiny burnt pieces.

Echo continues shooting things and disabling them with close combat techniques when one slips through. Meanwhile, the Tinker tries escaping, slips on a strategically placed vial that had definitely not been there before, and is hit by foam. Glam makes sure that his head isn't covered by it - not that he couldn't breathe in it, but it wouldn't do to have him able to peer too closely at the stuff. His head is secured so he won't be able to move it much, either.

Now they only need to deal with the rest of the swarm.

[thinkering]

Windflower can kill things, but if it's already on her that means contact poison delivered direct, and her costume's mostly wire mesh under the flower decorations, lightly armored. She shrieks when something scrabbles at her collar. Robots, no longer chasing the Tinker, come to her aid.

A bot tranquilizes the Tinker and foams something that was about to collide with Boots's head.

Lorica mostly squishes a pair of vine-snake-things and leaps into the air to get a flier and take stock of the battlefield.

[mxglam]

Echo isn't really hit by anything, her reflexes are too good, but she's still kept very busy. Glam doesn't have such luxuries, and a creature jumps on them and makes them fall, grabbing their head and banging it against the ground several times. They try ineffectually to pry the creature loose before floating up, turning around, and driving themself onto the ground, sandwiching the hybrid.

The remaining colossus roars and goes after Windflower, knocking the desks over and causing various liquids to spill, some of which in turn start smoking enough that the room looks like it's filled with fog.

[thinkering]

Lorica grabs Glam with one hand and the squashed critter with the other and points Glam at the big critter. "DISINTEGRATE THAT! Retreat out of the warehouse, pick off escapees, PRT's on the way!"

[mxglam]

Bzzzzzz. The thing has been disintegrated.

Echo has managed to clear her immediate neighborhood of creatures, and shoots a few more through the fog as she retreats, and Glam follows soon after.

In spite of everything, most of the creatures didn't seem like they were made for combat, other than the two giants. Several were pretty incapable of anything, and it was mostly sheer numbers that had made the fight last as long as it did.

[thinkering]

The door is left open to discourage escape through other avenues; critters are picked off by guns or kicks. Lorica assesses Windflower's injuries, says she should see Max in case the claws had anything on them but will be fine otherwise.

PRT trucks and PRT agents with gas masks and airtight suits arrive to take in the Tinker.

[peterxy]

...who is not there. The foam looks like something dug - or ate - its way through it, and the Tinker is nowhere to be found.

[thinkering]

"Ah, fuck," says Lorica. Bots spread out over the neighborhood looking for tracks or fleeing critters/tinkers.

[peterxy]

There is a track, which can be followed as far as a manhole but no farther.

Papers in the warehouse indicate that the Tinker was naming himself 'Blasto' and that his specialty seems to be a form of accelerated guided evolution of hybrid creatures. There are various half-legible notes scrawled on the edges of pages with new ideas, but it's very clear he was just starting to test his capabilities and hadn't explored much what he could create, yet. A few more notes indicate that he discovered the drug accidentally when working on a plant-plant hybrid (whose broken vat and dried dead body can be found in the mess).