philadelphia, meet chevalier

[peterxy]

The next few days proceed as normal.

Until they don't: the Philadelphia and Brockton Bay teams have been talking, and they're thinking of trading Chevalier with a couple of Wards. Philadelphia has quite a selection of them, including a couple who triggered during the Behemoth attack on Pittsburgh, while Brockton Bay has the opposite problem.

The current Philadelphia Ward lineup is:

• Laser Tag, a Tinker who specializes in weapons that have cumulative effect. He has a laser gun that causes various conditions on its targets each time they're hit, usually taking them out on the third or fourth hit.
• Clasp, a Breaker-Blaster-Striker who can cause objects to be almost weightless and much more resistant to damage for as long as he's holding them. He can only do that to one object at a time, and the weightlessness of the objects he holds means he can both throw them very far or use them to hit things. He can also apply this property to his costume, rendering him much more resistant.
• Mirage, a Mover-Stranger who can toggle invisibility for a very short time when no one's looking and can teleport within her line-of-sight while in that state.
• Glimmer, a Brute-Mover who can create a forcefield around her own body that makes her glimmer and become very resistant and slippery.
• Transfer, tentatively rated as a Blaster-Striker who can draw heat from a source and then dump it somewhere else, or conversely dump extra heat somewhere that he'll later have to replenish.
• Blockage, a forcefield Tinker whose forcefields can absorb any impact but disappear upon doing so.
• Lightbulb, a flying-artillery type of Mover-Blaster that can shoot balls of kinetically charged light whose path he can influence as it flies through the air.
• Iter, a Thinker precog who can see where objects are slated to be up to ten seconds in the future, similar to the way Rewind sees the past.
• Silica, a Master who can animate statues made of sand. There's no limit to how many statues she can animate, but there is a limit to the volume of sand she can control at a given time.

Comments

[mxglam]

Glam doesn't even wait for the bot to finish before a copy has conjured smelling salts to bring to Rewind. She doesn't even stir - apparently the squinting kicks in before they can have an effect. They keep watching the feeds, because someone has to, Night is still too threatening, but- "It'll be fine, it'll be fine," they repeat to themself over and over, whispering, not using the comms. "Do you have any ideas?" they ask the bots.

[thinkering]

"Just Transit. He's on his way with Max's kit."

[mxglam]

"Ugh!" The two other Glam copies are around Lorica, looking flustered. On the battlefield, Kaiser noticed the huge beam of light that threw Purity away and is quickly disengaging, and soon Fog starts draining himself away from the building.

[thinkering]

The bots coordinate making sure that none of them think it would be a good idea to turn around and get a few more hits in, but don't send anyone to chase them.

[mxglam]

And eventually they're gone, and the real Glam tears their eyes away from the fight and zooms towards Silica - she's mostly fine, apparently, just unconscious - then Rewind - same - then Lorica - who is definitely not fine.

"Oh god oh god Lorica oh my god where is Transit?!"

[thinkering]

"He overshot, he's doubling back, I'm trying to find him good series of appropriately angled roofs he can hit with his hover off," reports the bot.

[mxglam]

Glam looks around anxiously - there must be something - is she breathing? "Is she breathing? Is the armor functional? How long has it been?"

[thinkering]

"She's breathing but I'm helping. Some of the armor is still working and where it is it's applying pressure to the wounds. Seven minutes forty seconds."

[mxglam]

They start hyperventilating. "Will she survive without Rewind?!"

[thinkering]

"Maybe. I'm figuring a path to the hospital from here if Transit's not in time for Rewind."

[mxglam]

"You're robots, you're supposed to be smart, tell me what to do, there must be something I can do!"

They float over to Rewind and- what? What could they do? They'll hurt her more if they shake her or something, she probably has a concussion-

[thinkering]

"Considered and discarded fake blood transfusion," says the bot.

[mxglam]

They float over to Lorica and-

crumple next to her. The copies vanished at some point, they weren't paying attention. They just... look at her. "You won't die, that fucking Nazi didn't kill you, she didn't, I need you-"

They dissolve into incoherence punctuated by sobs.

[thinkering]

Transit appears and forces a wodge of something between Rewind's teeth and her cheek. Without stopping to see how fast that works he kneels by Lorica, shoulders Glam out of the way, touches a catch on her helmet and passes another something in to the moving parts inside.

[mxglam]

Glam is shouldered aside, in a daze, and Rewind takes a couple of seconds to wake up, feels pain, and is standing where she'd arrived when Purity blasted her. "Save her," Glam says in a pained voice, and Rewind's already on the move before even fully understanding what happened, running towards Lorica. She doesn't even bother talking to Charlie - they don't have time to waste - and she touches her-

[thinkering]

"Jesus fuck," gasps Lorica.

[mxglam]

Rewind's already on her way to Silica-

And Glam's arms are around Lorica's neck, and they're sobbing openly, and there aren't enough words to form a full sentence except by inference from "alive" and "lost" and "you."

[thinkering]

Lorica hugs back, and leans her head on Transit who's behaving low-key similarly, and catches her breath while bots catch her up on what she missed.

[mxglam]

"What the fuck happened here?" Rewind asks. "Did I get back twice?"

Glam's not letting go anytime soon.

[thinkering]

Glam's shoulderbot tells Rewind what happened. Lorica squeezes Glam.

[mxglam]

"Jesus fucking Christ that Nazi bitch," Rewind breathes. "I should go see if anyone needs my help downstairs." She looks at Glam, who seems to have given up on words, then at Silica and says, "Probably not a robot."

[thinkering]

"Probably not," says Silica.

The bot reports on the situation downstairs for Rewind.

[mxglam]

Rewind rewound herself back to the rooftop before they'd evacuated everyone, and given how long she spent up there and how soon after she arrived Fog left, she won't be able to help much, but it's still not zero help, so down she goes.

Eventually Glam regains enough coherency to ask, "Are you okay?" and sniffle.

[thinkering]

"Woozy. Otherwise fine," Lorica assures them.

[mxglam]

"I thought you were going to die," they murmur.

They are still hugging her, uncomfortable armor be damned.