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]

"Hmm... And variations? Spirit, core, center, mind, self, I?"

[thinkering]

"Do you know what any of those are in Latin, because I do and they all suck."

[mrglam]

"I don't, I'm just brainstorming. What about Greek?"

[thinkering]

"Not as bad but still not actually good."

[mrglam]

"Hmm... What is it that Lorica has and the other things don't, or vice-versa, that makes you like it and nothing else?"

[thinkering]

"It sounds namey. It sounds pretty, even. It doesn't directly evoke the English word for the same thing like 'spiritus' or 'ego' would."

[mrglam]

"Anima sounds namey to me," he shrugs. "I'm gonna look stuff up later. Oh, what about mythological figures?"

[thinkering]

"That would be fine if they were good mythological figures with good names."

[mrglam]

"Yeah. I don't know much mythology either, though, will have to look that up later, too."

[thinkering]

"Be my guest."

[mrglam]

"You could name it after meeeee..."

[thinkering]

"Do you really want me going around with a software assistant named after your civilian identity?"

[mrglam]

"Probably not," he admits. "Besides, it might get confusing."

[thinkering]

"A bit. And, no offense, but your name is not the most mellifluous of names."

[mrglam]

"I think that might've been the best way anyone's ever called my name weird."

[thinkering]

"It is weird but that wasn't what I was commenting on."

[mrglam]

"Not being mellifluous is one of the ways my name is weird."

[thinkering]

"Lots of people have normal names which aren't especially pretty. 'George'. 'Hortense'. Whatever."

[mrglam]

"I suppose."

[thinkering]

She scritches his hair. "So I'm not going to name it after you for various reasons but you're very cute."

[mrglam]

He closes his eyes and makes both a noise and a face that are probably the human equivalent of a puppy wagging its tail. "I'm very happy you think so!"

[peterxy]

Glam leaves Lorica's workshop and hovers over to the common room where Echo's watching some video on her phone and mimicking a movement here and there and Rewind's on the console.

"Oh look, it's half of the superhero couple of the year. Makeout session go alright?"

[mxglam]

"Yeah, it went pretty great, though a bit shorter than I'd hoped."

[peterxy]

"Sure, su- wait, what? Seriously?"

[mxglam]

Glam grins and nods, and Echo pauses her video to look up.