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]

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.

[mxglam]

Glam had their costume mirrored, just in case, but Purity was waiting for that, she hit them with a blast large and wide enough that the reflection wasn't very effective at blocking it, and even though that means it was less concentrated and destructive than it could have been, Glam was still thrown at a wall with enough force to dent it.

And when they open their eyes, what they see is an unconscious Silica and Lorica-

Lorica-

Her armor shouldn't be dented like that, twisted like that, that's not a natural way for a human body to be, and Glam's seeing red. They create a huge mirror from floor to ceiling between Purity and them to look at the feeds, and the bot that had been with the second copy that had entered the building was destroyed as well, "Fuck, the bots only block Night if someone's watching the feed," they say into the comm, so now they have three problems:

One, Purity is here.

Two, Lorica is dying.

Three, they need to watch the feeds.

The huge-ass mirror disappears and is replaced by two Glam copies with mirrored costumes who are both throwing themselves at Purity like bullets, and Glam keeps half an eye on that and the other eye and a half on the feeds. "REWIND GET THE FUCK HERE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!"

"Just a minute!"

[thinkering]

"NOW," snap the bots into her comm. "Glam, get me a Lorica copy and I will drag her if I have to!"

[mxglam]

The two Glam copies are pressing the attack, Glam glances at Lorica - no, don't look at her, there's no use looking at her, her back shouldn't be positioned like that - and then Rewind is there because it's not been ten minutes yet.

And Rewind turns to look at the scene. She's fast at understanding what's going on using her Thinker power-

-but not fast enough. Purity blasts her and she drops unconscious.

"NO!"

[thinkering]

Bots attempt to tranquilize Purity. Other bots coordinate the rest of the fight as best they can, which is pretty well; but they bleed off extras to fly back to hover over their hurt creator and try to take out her assailant.

[mxglam]

That does it.

Metal clasps appear near Purity and throw themselves at her, holding her arms together against her body and her legs against each other, hitting her with enough strength that she stumbles. They're on the roof of a building, the small construction with the roof access stairs behind Glam, and the freedom of the sky behind Purity. Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and then that's replaced by recognition when she sees a turret -

- (Glam's released footage of the Endbringer fights, properly edited to make them seem awesome, and with quite a lot of emphasis on the huge gun) -

- fully formed, not taking any time to be built. It looks much weaker than the ones used in those fights, smaller, it wouldn't do for Purity to expect to die, but that flicker of recognition is enough for Glam. "Don't worry, it's nonlethal," Glam says with venom in their voice as the gun charges much too fast for Purity to really escape, and she's blasted into the sky with a loud noise.

[thinkering]

"Calling Transit to bring Miracle Max stimulants but he doesn't have a reliable path, if you can get her up before then -" says the shoulderbot.

[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.