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

[thinkering]

Lorica yawns awake about an hour later.

[mrglam]

Which wakes him up as well, smiling. "Mrng."

[thinkering]

"I don't think it's morning." Kiss. Oh look, cookies. She opens her packet of cookies and eats them.

[mrglam]

Mmm kiss! "Yeah, guess it's not," he says, sitting up. "How're you feeling?"

[thinkering]

"Slightly weak, otherwise okay. What time is it?"

[mrglam]

A copy appears to reach for the phone, say, "Five seventeen," put it down again, then disappear.

[thinkering]

"Dinnertime. Be sort of awkward to go in costume or I'd suggest we make it a dinner date."

[mrglam]

"Neither of us is in costume?"

[thinkering]

"Narrows down who exactly would have to run into us, but only to 'anyone who knows either of us from school or knows you from the team'."

[mrglam]

"Hm. We could order something and eat it here, with," and he conjures floating candles. "Maybe even," and he conjures a floating violin playing something mid-air.

[thinkering]

She giggles. "I can send the surviving bots for Jewish deli, does that sound fun?"

[mrglam]

"Yeah! What should the restaurant be like? I'm terrible at decoration."

[thinkering]

"No need to go overboard. What deli stuff do you like?"

[mrglam]

"Dunno. Surprise me?"

[thinkering]

"The bot will guess, then."

[mrglam]

And now there's a table and a couple of chairs over there by the window. Not overboard; still nice.

[thinkering]

"Fifteen minutes," estimates shoulderbot.

Meanwhile: snuggle.

[mrglam]

Snuggle! Snuggle to the sound of violins. And neck kisses.

[thinkering]

Eee!

[mrglam]

The sound of violins and eees! Sadde knows which one his favorite is.

[thinkering]

Before they can get too carried away a bot knocks and, when let in, proves to be carrying delicious sandwiches on rye (one corned beef, one tuna) and knishes and cookies.

[mrglam]

He disentangles from her and leaps off the bed, probably aided by temporary antigrav attachments to his clothes, then offers a hand and asks, "Shall we, my lady?"

[thinkering]

She giggles and obligingly is led to the table. The bot puts half of each sandwich on each of their plates and distributes knishes similarly.

[mrglam]

He smiles at her. "I love you," he says, before even looking at what the bots served them.

[thinkering]

She leans over the table, and kisses him, and then sits back and says, "I love you too."