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

[peterxy]

"You think you came from Philadelphia, but what if your memories are lying to you, huh? Huh?"

[alicornucopia]

Giggle. "I have a family too though!"

[peterxy]

"All Glam's!"

[alicornucopia]

"Why would they even bother making my family instead of having me think I was an orphan?"

[peterxy]

"They can't be having everyone be an orphan, or it'd get suspicious."

[alicornucopia]

"Does Lorica have a mom or is it just Transit?"

[peterxy]

"Dunno. She never talks about her if she does." Pause. "Not that she really talks about Transit either but."

[alicornucopia]

"Hm."

[peterxy]

"Well-" Pause. "Was that a scream?"

[alicornucopia]

"I - maybe?" Silica poises her hand over the cap to the jug of sand on her back.

[peterxy]

Rewind taps her comm to say, "I think I heard a scream near Dawson and Laurel, we're gonna investigate."

"Acknowledged," Glam's voice says over the comm.

[alicornucopia]

Silica makes a few golems and heads screamward.

[peterxy]

Screamward is:

A building. Kaiser's standing in front of it, covered in metal, his hands clasped behind his back, which is turned to them. The building's windows and doors are all blocked by metal spikes, and there's the grey mist suggestive of Fog escaping from every opening on the building.

Rewind quickly retreats around a corner. "Kaiser and Fog attacking a building, Night's probably inside. They've been there less than three minutes."

[msglam]

"Copy that. Do not engage, getting reinforcements ASAP."

Sadde messages everyone from the console, and gets Echo to replace her there.

[alicornucopia]

So Silica hangs back with Rewind. "How do you know it's been less than three minutes," she whispers.

[peterxy]

"I have a Thinker power, I can see stuff's past ten minutes."

[alicornucopia]

"Ooh."

Wait wait.

[mxglam]

They don't have to wait much - Rewind and Silica were close enough to the PHQ that: 1. the other heroes arrive pretty quickly and 2. they suspect this may be a trap. They arrive en masse: Glam (plus three copies), Lorica, Drupe, Dauntless, Miss Militia, Velocity, and Glimmer. Glam provides everyone with imaginary air filters because of Fog, and the heroes who had exposed skin also covered it for the same reason.

They get on a roof a couple of blocks away.

[thinkering]

Robots pass out comms to tuck in everyone's ears.

[mxglam]

And Glimmer justifies her Brute-Mover rating. Her body's covered by the forcefield, and she jumps from the roof down onto the ground before taking off, skidding towards Kaiser as if she was on rollerblades except much faster. Her momentum is enough that, even with the heavy metal suit, he's thrown a few feet before hitting the ground and rolling a few times.

Glam provides the other non-flying capes with floating platforms that bring them to the building before vanishing, and Rewind boops the metal spikes covering the door, freeing the way for Glimmer to get in. Two Glam copies follow close behind, and Dauntless soon after.

[thinkering]

And a swarm of bots, some real and some not, and a troop of golems, with Silica like Glam commanding her minions remotely through a bot's projection, follow too.

Lorica directs Glimmer to locate Night if possible; bots are searching but may or may not count to get her out of monster form. Drupe steps in to attack Kaiser with vines and rapid-grown trees, trying to regrow them faster than Kaiser can cut them away.

Sand golems, tailed by robots, accompanied by Glams, stomp into the building and spread out. Velocity and Miss Militia go in too, ready to follow up on any sightings of further E88.

[mxglam]

The third Glam copy hangs back with Drupe, as well. Kaiser's armor protects him from tranquilizers and, apparently, Glam's stun gun as well, so they use something more similar to Purity's blasts, kinetically charged lasers to try throwing Kaiser around and knocking him out physically. Kaiser creates various sharp things to cut Drupe's plants and to try to block Glam's shots as well as hit them (is he focusing more on Glam than on Drupe? maybe), but between the two of them he's busy all the time.

Inside the building, Fog isn't the thickest he can be, he's spread out too thin, but it's thick enough that you can't see one end of a hallway from the other. Night is nowhere to be seen, although the occasional scream may be indicative of her location at any given time. The heroes find people, huddled together and in a much larger quantity than should be living in these buildings, and after Rewind boops them back to health (after a quick explanation on what she's going to do), they can be brought out.

And then something suddenly covers the camera of one of the bots following a Glam copy.

[thinkering]

When the bot is destroyed a moment later, Lorica says: "I think bots count and copies don't for Night!"

Real and fake bots adjust their swarming patterns to accommodate this, with fake bots covering the backs of the real ones to make them harder to sneak up on and each key area having at least one real bot on site.

[mxglam]

The engagement continues in this vein for a few more minutes. When people of various ethnicities start leaving the building, Kaiser tries to attack them, but Drupe and Glam use moments like these to knock him around a bit more, so he gives up on that.

And then, back where Silica, real Glam, and Lorica are watching the fight from, there's a blast of light-

[thinkering]

She must have been hiding behind the water tower or the handful of bots Lorica kept back would have seen her glowing -

- Lorica doesn't have time to think, because her armor's not built for this and all it can do is clamp down where it has enough parts left to try to stop the bleeding.

Silica falls unconscious, less gore but no less efficient at taking her out of the fight. Sand golems collapse into heaps.

Lorica's bots go insane. They report on the comms efficiently and without stridently raised voices, but they go insane, and they're looking for Rewind.