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

[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!"

[mxglam]

Glam provides foam sprayers and switches to laser guns. Armsmaster burns the remaining few monkeys around himself and gets his halberd, using its sharp blades and metal balls to tear through the ranks of the hybrids.

[thinkering]

Foam sprays on the flame-resistant monkeys. Drupe, who wasn't using fire to begin with, beats feet towards the site and applies plant control.

[mxglam]

Plant control is useful! While the monkeys can resist it some because they're not completely plants, it still limits how fast they can go and how much they can spread. There aren't that many flame-resistant monkeys, anyway, and they're susceptible to more mundane forms of extermination.

[thinkering]

And now there are zero flame-resistant monkeys. Well, one that isn't going anywhere because it's foamed.

The force un-concentrates and burns the other monkeys.

[mxglam]

And fire continues being an effective weapon against the other ones, until they're all dead or foamed. None seem to have even attempted to escape.

[thinkering]

And now it's cleanup time. Well, that's not the capes' job, although the bots don't mind helping the PRT.

[mxglam]

And Glam can spare a few bot-controlled copies with appropriately conjured cleaning tools to help, too.

[acanofworms]

News spreads. Self-duplicating creatures in Brockton Bay. An explanation to the mystery of the missing pets. Did the Protectorate know? Who's responsible for this? Was this engineered, or the result of an out-of-control cape? What are the heroes going to do about it?

In a word: panic.

High-profile heroes give statements about measures being taken and about how the Protectorate's on top of it already. They know the culprit: a tinker named Blasto, specialized in plant hybrids, current whereabouts unknown. The Protectorate reassures the population that, should it be found that Blasto's actively creating out-of-control, self-replicating minions, they will do everything in their power to stop him, including placing him on the list of most wanted parahumans, a spot he'd share with people such as the Slaughterhouse Nine.

It is implied but not said that the kill order would be part of the deal.

In order to demonstrate how seriously the Protectorate takes this matter, robots controlled by an artificial intelligence that has been used on battles against Endbringers will be roaming the city twenty-four/seven, concentrating on the downtown areas where the latest sightings have occurred, but being spread around every district.

[thinkering]

Lorica gratefully turns her attention to matters other than the cloaking device. Robots fly loose, looking around. If civilians address them they will even pause to make polite small talk and then move on.

[mxglam]

Not very many civilians do, at first, but some, and the reaction is at least somewhat positive.

Over the next couple of days, there are no new sightings of any creatures with more plant in them than usual. And after recording a webisode where they finally show their ability to create copies, Glam floats over to Lorica's workshop. Knock knock!

[thinkering]

A bot opens the door. Lorica's having lunch. "Hey you."

[mxglam]

"Hi, love. How're you?"