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

[thinkering]

"Are all the targets priorities? Bots could watch them in case something changes and we could concentrate force more."

[acanofworms]

"We do not yet know these creatures' capabilities, I'm relying on Glam and your versatilities to cover anything we don't like, but other than that none of the targets are particularly significant and all have the same priority. Given their number, assume master five for general strategies, mover two for the monkeys, mover four for the bats. If anything changes, I'm counting on your bots to inform us and adapt."

[thinkering]

"Okay."

[mxglam]

So the various copies are produced, with their respective bots transmitting their environments so Glam can keep track of everything, and the different teams are deployed.

[msrewind]

Rewind grumbles but deals, and goes all paramedic here paramedic there etc.

[thinkering]

And Lorica's bots operate themselves and copies and Loricas and, whenever Glam's too occupied with one battle to focus fully on the others, they operate Glams too.

[peterxy]

When they engage, this is what it looks like:

Miss Militia, Armsmaster, and Silica and Windflower enter a building that has half a dozen very eight-feet-tall bears with thick bark covering their skin. Except one of these bears, staying in the back, seems to be... performing mitosis.

Glimmer and Echo and Dauntless enter two buildings with lots of those leafy monkeys. Lots of them. About three dozen. Furthermore, every thirty seconds one of them does the mitosis thing, becoming two monkeys.

Velocity and Drupe each find a building with a swarm of bat-plant hybrids, with thick leaflike wings. Those don't seem to self replicate.

And what all the buildings have in common is perpetually active sprinklers causing all of the creatures to be wet, and a large tank filled with goop in the back.

Oh, another thing they have in common is that all of the creatures attack the heroes as soon as they step inside.

[thinkering]

Drupe has an advantage against plant hybrid creatures, although it's not as good as it would be with pure plant creatures. Lorica has bots attempt to shut off the sprinklers and investigate the tanks.

Silica's golems cannot be poisoned and Silica is watching via robot from quite a ways away and there's no people in the building. Windflower cuts loose, compared to her usual, while golems cover her.

[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.