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]

And like most normal days, there's patrolling.

Today, she'll be patrolling with Glimmer, who should have a few rounds with everyone else so she can get to know the team and the city better.

[thinkering]

Yep.

A couple minutes before they're due to go out Lorica finds her to make sure she's suited up and ready to go.

[peterxy]

She is! The last thing she does is put her glasses away and put on her contact lenses because god she hates those things, but glasses are only partially covered by her forcefield and it's really annoying and hard to see with them when they interact, ugh.

[thinkering]

And they're off, surrounded by spaced-out robots humming through the air.

[peterxy]

Glimmer's fast, but she can't fly, so they're close to the ground.

[thinkering]

Suits Lorica fine. Some of her bots range high to compensate.

[peterxy]

Patrol patrol. Glimmer's pretty quiet, and when she does speak it's to ask, "What can you tell me about the city?"

[thinkering]

"Layout, culture, criminal activity...?"

[peterxy]

Shrug. "All of it, sort by relevance to our current activities."

[thinkering]

"There's several major gangs, many with associated capes. Rewind can tell you more about the Asian ones than I can; Empire Eighty-Eight you've met but I don't expect to see them again so soon -" She summarizes the others. "The city's been getting poorer since all the boats wrecked in the harbor and cut off the place's status as a trade hub but nobody has a plan to fix that. I'm sure you've seen a map; we mostly confine patrols to higher-crime and higher-villain-activity in particular regions, although today we're taking a pretty low-trafficked route because you're new and I'm down a couple pints of blood."

[peterxy]

"Mm."

Patrol patrol.

[thinkering]

Patrol. Patrol.

[peterxy]

"So I had read somewhere you guys had captured that Purity."

[thinkering]

"We had. Then the rest of the Empire came and pried her out of lockup. It's lucky we had Rewind by then or Glam would almost certainly be dead."

[peterxy]

"Damn. These Empire people are tough."

[thinkering]

"Very."

[peterxy]

Patrol.

"Why did you say Rewind knows more about Asian gangs?"

[thinkering]

"She worked with one briefly and was nearly forcibly recruited by another."

[peterxy]

"Oh." That gives her pause. "And she joined up just like that?"

[thinkering]

"She wanted protection from the forcible recruiter and the Protectorate provided. She's technically probationary, but I have no complaints about her performance since she signed on."

[peterxy]

"Did she say why she was with a gang before?"

[thinkering]

"You'd have to go to her for details, but apparently the gang saved her from an Empire Eighty-Eight attack once."

[peterxy]

"...we really need to find a way to deal with them."

[thinkering]

"I'm open to suggestions."

[peterxy]

"I'll tell you when I come up with any."