brockton bay heroes, meet plant tinker

[msrewind]

Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison- er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.

And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and-

"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.

Comments

[mxglam]

So, it turns out the bat-plant hybrids do self replicate: whenever they take enough damage, they split off into two smaller bats that starts slowly growing to full size. Also they spit acid. Such charming creatures.

The monkeys simply mob the heroes, duplicating quickly and constantly, wave after wave of them. They're not hard to take out, but they are lots.

And the bears have thick enough skin that Miss Militia and Armsmaster do need to turn to their more lethal weapons in order to take them down. When they do, another bear brings its fallen comrade to the replicating one, who absorbs it and replicates that much faster. To top it off, once the replicator is taken down, another bear takes its place.

The good news is that they're not immune to Windflower's poisons, even if they take a while to be affected, so that group is the first one that leaves the Lorica bots alone for long enough that they can actually disable the sprinklers and explore the tanks - every other group is attacked by monkeys or bats or debris thrown by bears so they have to dodge and abandon their targets before getting much information.

The tanks, apparently, contain a goopy substance that's being treated and sent to the sprinklers, some sort of nutrient soup perhaps? Given how fiercely the creatures defend them, it might be a good idea to disable them somehow from that alone.

[thinkering]

Bots start attempting various disabling methods on the undefended tank-and-sprinkler-system to apply elsewhere.

[mxglam]

They're pretty resistant tinker tech (someone's been buying from Toybox...), but a good go is foaming the sprinklers shut. And if Glam invents a bullshit EMP turret that "disables distribution," well, who's to say that won't work?

...apparently that thing is a bit less electronic than they'd hoped, so yeah, that doesn't work. Freeze ray? Does a freeze ray stop the goop? After a few seconds, it turns out it does!

[thinkering]

All right. "Freeze rays for the bots," Lorica directs, and more goo is froze.

[mxglam]

They'll have to first deal with the problem of the many self-replicating creatures that keep hitting them to protect the tank, but yes, that's the spirit.

And while they're at it, there's a police report saying that apparently these weird hybrid creatures are holding a bank hostage, isn't it weird what capes get up to these days?

Except it turns out to be New Wave jurisdiction. Cue the administration calling them up to see if they're on top of it or need help.

[thinkering]

Lorica sends some bots in that direction just in case they do. She has them to spare.

[mxglam]

New Wave, apparently, can deal just fine.

Lorica's teammates, however, can't. Even after shutting down the tanks, there's still some replication left in some of the creatures, and by that time the monkeys were pushing a hundred in each of the buildings and the bats about eighty.

Glimmer's forcefield protects her from damage, but she can't really get much momentum with the numbers. Echo is pretty useless, and Dauntless has to balance protecting her and damaging them. Armsmaster has pretty much dealt with his bears, and after he's sure the PRT is coming, he jumps on his motorcycle to go help someone else.

[thinkering]

Lorica suggests to Glam and Echo that they try giving Echo a Lorica suit.

[mxglam]

Right now?

[thinkering]

So she'll be armored up and better able to punch things. If Glam's attention's spread too thin or Echo doesn't want to try it...

[mxglam]

Nah, Glam can focus there for a minute, with some cooperation from Echo, and eventually she's armored up.

[thinkering]

Good, now Lorica can worry less about her and so can Dauntless.

[mxglam]

Yup! Though some help from Windflower would be appreciated wherever she's closest to, to speed the process up.

[thinkering]

Windflower and Silica are pretty much mopped up here. Windflower whisks as much of the poison as she can through an air filter she carries with her treated with some of Miracle Max's stuff, makes sure the PRT knows not to go in there for a while and keep civilians back from the perimeter, and jogs along with the sand golems to the next site.

[mxglam]

The closest site is Velocity's, but he's dealing fine, more efficient to go to Drupe's.

[thinkering]

Drupe can wear a plant on his face and tolerate the poison as long as she goes with a milder version. Windflower turns up there and helps.

[mxglam]

And on it goes. The creatures do require most of their attention but that is enough to deal with them. Almost as if they were a distraction from something, like the failed bank robbery.

Except Blasto wasn't there, either.

[thinkering]

Which is suspicious, but there's no other reports in....

[mxglam]

Unless you count a guy whose jewelry store was completely ransacked while he slept soundly on the counter, his last memory being of a bizarre plant creature dropping in front of him and squirting something on his face. Somehow his alarms weren't activated, and his vaults were apparently melted by acid.

[thinkering]

...Yep, that sounds like the thing this was a distraction from.

[acanofworms]

Armsmaster says they still did the best they could, curtly saying that dealing with self-replicators definitely takes precedence over securing material goods. He even sounds like he believes it.

[thinkering]

Ah-huh.

Lorica inquires if she has permission to have bots patrolling the city twenty-four-seven looking for anything suspiciously Blasto-y, so they can try to nip him in the bud before Brockton Bay looks like Ellisburg.

[peterxy]

Does she have a way to do it without civilians seeing the bots?

[thinkering]

She has a prototype cloaking device that sort of works... at night...

[peterxy]

Then after the prototype passes review she may, at night.