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

[mrglam]

"Mmhmmmmm!"

[thinkering]

"Good."

[mrglam]

"You keep making these faces," he accuses.

[thinkering]

"What faces?"

[mrglam]

"Those! They're, like, the face equivalent of, of rope."

[thinkering]

"What does it mean for a face to be the face equivalent of rope?"

[mrglam]

"That when you make them I can't move and feel all warm inside and want to kiss you and you can do whatever you want with me."

[thinkering]

"I see."

[mrglam]

"Seeeeee, those faces!"

[thinkering]

"I can't see, I am behind my face."

[mrglam]

Mirror:

appears.

[thinkering]

Bella attempts to replicate the face. "...Wow, I look like I'm planning to eat you or something."

[mrglam]

"Yeeeeeees," he says, in what's the verbal equivalent of his pleased noises.

[thinkering]

She snickers, squints the mirror away, and kisses him again.

[mrglam]

Yaaay anniversary kisses!

[thinkering]

"So, for secret identity reasons we can't just go kiss in the breakroom. Do you want to just let people know as it comes up in conversation or what?"

[mrglam]

"Yeah, and I'll maybe be more obviously in love than I currently am when in public. Rewind has been teasing me about it since she joined the team, she won't be surprised at all and is probably the first one with whom the subject will be raised."

[thinkering]

"She has? I didn't know this."

[mrglam]

"Well, it's mostly something like what Boots used to do but less malicious and more playful, and also she's fifteen. Stuff like 'so when's the wedding?' and similar when I show up in the break room coming from here, that kinda stuff."

[thinkering]

"We are not planning a wedding."

[mrglam]

"No, we've only been together for a month, I'm not that prescient."

[thinkering]

"I'm glad I don't have to disabuse you of any overconfidence there."

[mrglam]

"My overconfidence does have some limits," he laughs.

[thinkering]

She kisses him again, then puts her helmet back on.

[mrglam]

He pouts but floats off her lap.