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 hugs back, and leans her head on Transit who's behaving low-key similarly, and catches her breath while bots catch her up on what she missed.

[mxglam]

"What the fuck happened here?" Rewind asks. "Did I get back twice?"

Glam's not letting go anytime soon.

[thinkering]

Glam's shoulderbot tells Rewind what happened. Lorica squeezes Glam.

[mxglam]

"Jesus fucking Christ that Nazi bitch," Rewind breathes. "I should go see if anyone needs my help downstairs." She looks at Glam, who seems to have given up on words, then at Silica and says, "Probably not a robot."

[thinkering]

"Probably not," says Silica.

The bot reports on the situation downstairs for Rewind.

[mxglam]

Rewind rewound herself back to the rooftop before they'd evacuated everyone, and given how long she spent up there and how soon after she arrived Fog left, she won't be able to help much, but it's still not zero help, so down she goes.

Eventually Glam regains enough coherency to ask, "Are you okay?" and sniffle.

[thinkering]

"Woozy. Otherwise fine," Lorica assures them.

[mxglam]

"I thought you were going to die," they murmur.

They are still hugging her, uncomfortable armor be damned.

[thinkering]

"Well - I didn't." Pat pat.

[mxglam]

Sniffle. "Good." More sniffling.

[thinkering]

"Dad, can you haul us both back?"

"Mm," says Transit. There's a series of pops.

[mxglam]

So they're back.

Glam looks around, and gingerly lets go of Lorica. They're not sure what they're supposed to do, there, whether Transit will want to spend time with his daughter-who-almost-died or what.

[thinkering]

"You need to lie down?" Transit asks Lorica.

"Yeah. I'll be in Glam's room hogging their bed if you wanna bring me some juice and stuff for the blood loss."

Transit nods and disappears. Lorica's armor floats her towards Glam's room.

[mxglam]

And Glam goes with, and opens the door for them.

[thinkering]

Lorica's armor departs her of its own accord except the helmet, which she has to detach herself.

Flop.

"I promise my dad won't kill you if he catches you snuggling me."

[mrglam]

"Okay."

Snuggle!

(He has clearly been crying. That is. Pretty obvious.)

[thinkering]

Snuggle.

"Rewind needs like a fucking medal."

[mrglam]

He nods, burying his face in her hair. "I think both of us owe her our lives, now."

[thinkering]

"Yeah."

[mrglam]

"Relatedly, we really need to figure out a way to deal with the Empire without almost dying so often."

[thinkering]

"That'd be nice."

Transit knocks.

[mxglam]

A copy floats over to the door and opens it.

[thinkering]

In comes Transit. He gives Lorica grape juice and cookies and an iron pill.

"Thanks, Dad."

"No problem," he says. "Let me know when you want to go home."

"I will." She props herself up to swallow the pill with a swig of juice.

[mrglam]

Sadde watches this and somehow manages not to look incredibly, terribly guilty of some unspeakable crime against Bella's virtue or- something, with Transit there.

[thinkering]

Bella chugs the rest of the juice, then flops back down on her boyfriend. Transit pats her head and departs.