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]

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).

[thinkering]

Wards go back to HQ. Lorica distributes careful praise for Boots's squished-critter count, Echo's marksmanship, Windflower holding it together under pressure, and Glam's disintegrations. Lorica accepts praise from Chevalier for a no-casualty mission that almost worked.

[mxglam]

'Almost worked' sounds way too negative for Glam, who thinks there was no way they could've accounted for a containment-foam eating monster. They wait until Chevalier's gone to make that comment, though.

[thinkering]

"I could've been watching him. Armor was airtight."

[mxglam]

"Between watching all the other critters, managing the battlefield, and making sure none of us were eaten, squashed, melted, turned into goo, or otherwise maimed or killed, after properly applying two tools that when properly applied have almost zero escape rates, I don't think you can reasonably blame yourself. Do better in the future, sure, but this was still not bad at all."

[thinkering]

"Thanks."

[mxglam]

"You're welcome for my only stating the facts and very reasonable conclusions drawn from them."

[thinkering]

"Heh."

[mxglam]

Glam edits footage of the Purity fight, with some advice from the Boston branding person. Heroes getting their hineys whopped are edited out, but slightly kicked is okay; people don't like it when heroes are too infallible. The self-deprecating humor is used, with Lorica's line ("I don't remember this part but it probably hurt.") being used verbatim.

It's published a couple of days later, and a link is posted on the PHO Brockton Bay message board.

[thinkering]

Lorica's bot is only discreetly partisan. Commenters are delighted to have this footage and speculate that the bot took it (the bot admits this) and have various mostly approving remarks about kicking Nazi ass, various mostly approving remarks about the shape of Rewind's ass (Lorica's bot removes these for perving on a cape of unknown age), and the occasional decent suggestion for how to use Glam's power (drop things on people, trap them in boxes).

[mxglam]

Ooh, dropping things on people is a nice idea, though have to be careful not to hurt them too much. The boxes would have to be pretty durable, though, especially with someone like Purity inside.

[alicornucopia]

Line it with mirrors! If it's somebody like her I mean.

[mxglam]

Yeah, I like that idea. Though she's pretty well captured, now, so wrt her it won't matter much :P

[alicornucopia]

People who think Glam is faking are somewhat thin on the ground. Purity's capture was announced and video editing is difficult, after all.

[mxglam]

And technically they're not faking it, since they did in fact do those things. Isn't it nice how easy it is to believe in things that actually happened?