blasto, meet official opinions on self-replicating minions

[peterxy]

The PRT catches wind of a strange increase in disappeared domestic animals in the downtown area. Given that the people who live there are the rich and powerful, this is clearly a problem that needs to be investigated and solved immediately. The PRT, of course, agrees that this is of utmost importance, and not just because of precedent about mass abductions of pets, of course not, why would you think that, they are so very worried about Fido, even Scion recognizes the merits of rescuing lost pets.

(Lorica's asked to maybe keep a few more eyes there than she has been.)

Comments

[peterxy]

The monkey is fairly strong and heavy. And, apparently, not altogether stupid, because once it sees it won't be able to really reach the bots, it starts spitting vine-seeds at them in fast succession.

As for Hookwolf, he's moving pretty fast, but once he notices the bots, he starts going through narrower alleys and trying to lose them by doubling back or zigzagging.

[thinkering]

"Glam, I could use some extra cape power on the scene," Lorica says; bots dodge and swirl around in unpredictable patterns while maintaining a view of the scene as the sand golems continue to batter the monkey.

[mxglam]

The monkey's hits are strong enough that a single one is enough to completely destroy a golem, but the golems themselves are numerous and resistant enough that the monkey can't make much progress.

"Okay!" Pause. "Can you send a bot to a hidden corner or something?"

[thinkering]

"Here." A bot hides and its feed is routed to Glam.

[mxglam]

Two copies appear, one holding a large gun and another equipped with two sharp-looking blades. They join the fight, and as soon as the monkey notices them it tries to go through the golems to flee.

[thinkering]

Silica forms the golems up into a larger golem that's a little harder to plow through. It forces the monkey to the ground.

[mxglam]

The Glam with the gun starts shooting at the monkey as soon as it's within view, and the one with the blades starts tearing at it. Its skin is covered with bark, and its interior is entwined with vines, so that does much less damage than one would expect.

The monkey spits some vine-seeds onto the ground and they grow through it, piercing holes through the golem pinning it down. The monkey then has to get up, but the vines it's used to weaken the golem are pining it to the ground enough that it has some trouble with that, and it's somewhat out of balance when it succeeds.

The copies continue tearing through the regenerating plant matter.

[thinkering]

The sand golem divides in two and re-forms into one with no vines in it. It tries to give the gunGlam a clear shot. Bots signal Glam to turn them into Loricas and assist.

[mxglam]

Glam asks Lorica to have the first couple of them be turned "off Silica's screen" so she'll be primed for that so she'll be expecting that to happen and not pose a problem.

The gun Glam switches their weapon to something more concentrated and starts shooting at the monkey, burning through its thick exterior so that blades Glam can start hacking into its inner parts.

[thinkering]

Bots can move where Silica's not looking, no problem.

[mxglam]

So they'll be turning into Loricas!

A well positioned vine sprouts from the monkey and pushes blade Glam away, but gun Glam shoots at it until it's cut off from the monkey and blade Glam gets back to it. Between the constant assault and Silica's golem the monkey is having a pretty hard time dodging, each of its movements hampered by the sand brute and important plant tendons being severed by gun and blade.

[thinkering]

Loricas join the attack, holding and striking and zapping the monkey.

[mxglam]

And the monkey holds for a surprisingly long time under the continued onslaught, but it wasn't made to withstand that. Blade Glam gets enough of an opening into the monkey that they climb into it and start slicing at internal organs, and after causing enough damage the monkey starts drying up, crumbling into an indistinct mess of blood, gore, and plant matter.

[thinkering]

Well, that's repulsive.

Has Hookwolf lost the bots?

[peterxy]

Yep.

[thinkering]

Damn. And there's no figuring out where the monkey came from either. But they can step up the patrols in the area... Lorica tries to get her cloaking device working well enough to function in daylight to no avail.

[peterxy]

So there won't be bots during daylight. Other than the pets, there haven't been any strange occurrences, so the civilians might as well not be told that anything's amiss to that point.

(And Downtown is Empire territory, as far as gangs go, so if these monkeys give the nazis trouble like the big one was giving Hookwolf, that is also no skin off the Protectorate's nose.)

[acanofworms]

There is a bit over a week of relative peace. Oni Lee is sighted but there's no engagement, and the heroes arrest a couple of drug pushers on the Docks, nothing out of the ordinary. Until, that is, the Protectorate gets wind of the monkeys again, living in...

...a zoo.

They seem to have appeared overnight, and to be behaving just like regular monkeys would. The visitors find them fascinating, but the workers are alarmed - no condition they know of would cause monkeys to cover themselves with bark and other plants, so this is clearly cape-related. The Protectorate is informed of the situation, so they mandate calm evacuation (the zoo is being closed earlier due to whatever issues they manage to invent to cover it).

Of course this all goes to hell when the first hybrid monkey starts eating a non-hybrid one. And it goes a bit further into hell when the monkeys start going after the civilians and manage to snatch a couple. Armsmaster calls all the available heroes (Glimmer, Dauntless, Velocity, Drupe, Miss Militia, Glam, Lorica, and himself) to move in at once.

[thinkering]

In go heroes to usher out zoo visitors, set up a perimeter, and contain/destroy plant monkeys. Miss Militia suggests fire. Well, "suggests". "Tries aiming a flamethrower at a plant monkey" more like.

[mxglam]

By the time the heroes have arrived, there are far more monkeys than there were at first. The monkeys are somewhat spread out, and they seem to be eating animals and then... duplicating, each resulting monkey slightly different from its "parent," having mutated upon reproduction. The monkeys are divided in two groups: one attacking and distracting the heroes, and another obtaining biological matter for further duplication.

This is, of course, terrible.

The more mobile heroes - Glimmer, Dauntless, Velocity, and a bunch of bots and bot-controlled Glam- and Lorica-copies - surround the zoo to make sure none of the monkeys escape. Drupe, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, bots, and Glam-controlled Glam-copies spread around the zoo to try to take down as many monkeys as they can.

And it turns out fire does work.

[thinkering]

Glam-flamethrowers for everyone, especially the bots. (Bots note without relay that Piggot is swearing a lot while she reviews incoming fight data.) Fortunately, a lot of the zoo's biomatter is locked up. Unfortunately, some of it's open enclosures and the monkeys are more mobile than your garden variety penguin. FIRE.

[mxglam]

They really are! But they're significantly more flammable than your garden variety penguin, what with all the wood.

They keep self-duplicating as fast as they can consume matter, even consuming their own dead, and mutating whenever they do, with most changes useless or worse: some monkeys born with an extra digit, an extra arm, an extra head, differently-colored fur, slightly taller, slightly shorter, only one eye, dead, but mutate they do.

And yet, fire continues to consume them. The Glams switch to fire suppressors, making sure it's only the monkeys that get burned instead of the whole zoo, and the heroes continue tearing through them.

[thinkering]

Bots, at Lorica's instruction, start paying attention to making sure the dead monkeys are actively on fire and therefore unappetizing to eat. Others help Glams contain the flame.

[mxglam]

Burn eat duplicate mutate burn eat duplicate mutate burn burn burn eat duplicate-

-mutate-

-eat. It's one monkey, eating a burnt comrade and then duplicating, and then both monkeys are eating burnt comrades and the fire isn't doing anything.

[thinkering]

"We've got flame-resistant monkeys, if you've got other tricks concentrate force there," says Lorica, and bots shine a spotlight on the lineage. "Don't let them eat anything! Glam, foam sprayer some bots!"