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]

That's weird, some aerokineticists can move stuff around... whatever. If he can't do it hypnotized he probably can't do it.

He's being a boy this time so she pops her helmet off and kisses him, then puts it back on and snaps him out of it.

[mrglam]

Probably most aerokineticists have enhanced senses related to detecting the air they're controlling that Sadde doesn't, or something. In any case, he slowly returns to the surface, blinks, and looks at her. "Video?" he asks.

[thinkering]

The bot plays it.

Lorica assembles comms.

[mrglam]

"Okay, that's interesting, especially the teekay thing. And did you kiss me there?"

[thinkering]

"Was I not supposed to?"

[mrglam]

"You won't see me complaining."

[thinkering]

"I didn't think so."

[mrglam]

"You're making one of those faces right now, aren't you."

[thinkering]

"Maybe."

[mrglam]

"You aaaaare!"

[thinkering]

"I still can't see myself, but you're probably right."

[mrglam]

"I love you," he says. "Have you talked to any higher ups about using those comms in Endbringer fights yet?"

[thinkering]

"Yeah, that's why I'm making so many."

[mrglam]

"Oh awesome. How will distribution go? Lots of bots and bot-copies flying around?"

[thinkering]

"For anyone who doesn't get one early - I'm sending them around in advance to people who go to all the fights."

[mrglam]

"They really should allow you to figure out a way to mass-produce these. Can your bots keep track of where each comm is?"

[thinkering]

"They're not explicitly forbidding me, I just worry they'd become unhappy in some way if I demonstrated the ability. And the comms track each other and I have the master comm which hooks up to the bots, but not directly."

[mrglam]

"Might be useful to give them that ability, so they'll be able to survey the battlefield and know when that cape in the distance doesn't have one so they could go and give it to them."

[thinkering]

"The entire point of having the comms on their own network is so people don't have to worry too much about me spying on them if they take them home to bring back next time. I can do the thing you're describing, just not so omnipresently."

[mrglam]

"Yeah, not omnipresently is better. How many are you making?"

[thinkering]

"Five hundred. They don't take very long and I can read at the same time."

[mrglam]

"I have such an awesome girlfriend."

[thinkering]

"What, because I'm a tinker?"

[mrglam]

"Among other things."

[thinkering]

"Yes, but I wanted to know what prompted you to say that right then."