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.)

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[peterxy]

Drupe will find it simultaneously easier and harder to control these hybrids: they have more plant matter than animal in them, but they're also stronger and more capable of resisting his control. Still, he manages to reduce and eventually stop the outflow of flying monkeys if he keeps concentration.

The Protectorate has pressed full panic mode now, however, with two dozen trees growing downtown in many different places, and monkeys protecting them from the kamikaze-bots. The higher-ups have called New Wave, who will be joining the fight shortly, and Glimmer, Silica, and Velocity are to come at once.

PRT officers have sectioned off the area and are busy evacuating civilians from all nearby buildings, and some of the downtown air raid sirens are sounding so they can evacuate their buildings and go to Endbringer shelters. The higher-ups message Lorica and tell her if she can find a way to burn that building down without damaging the other ones and making sure Armsmaster and the villains aren't in it she should do it.

[thinkering]

Lorica promptly solicits from Glam more foambots. She coats adjacent buildings in a protective layer of foam and sends in Lorica-copies to evac E88, comms Armsmaster to be ready to get out on her signal.

[mxglam]

Foambots: are provided.

The Empire's in bad shape. Purity's mostly unharmed but she's definitely outnumbered. With Drupe's help slowing monkeys and vines down she's managing to get the upper hand but it's slow going. Hookwolf isn't having a whole lot of success, and has been trying to escape for a while now. Crusader's pretty much okay, if exhausted from using so many duplicates. Stormtiger, Krieg, and Cricket are having Lots Of Trouble doing anything other than surviving, and even Fog's only still Fog-shaped because that's better than being a human. Only Night's been met with undeniable success, though both of them return to human form when Lorica directs them outside.

Evacuation starts but is slow.

[thinkering]

Lorica-copies are willing to fly villains out of the conflagration-to-be if necessary to get the place empty stat.

[alicornucopia]

Here come Miss Militia and Windflower.

[mxglam]

"Lorica, don't burn the thing, I have an idea," Glam says into the comm for everyone to hear. "Windflower, if we manage to evac everyone, I could conjure a containment thing around the building and you could poison everything. Think you could do it?"

[thinkering]

"Yeah," says Windflower. "I can poison the heck out of everything if it's contained real good. ...Can it be see-through so you can have copies in with me in case something doesn't die?"

"Of course they can," Lorica says.

[mxglam]

"Yup, sure. Okay, evac evac, come on stupid nazis get out."

New Wave has arrived! Not on this scene, they've scattered around to fight other monkey-trees, as have the other heroes. Armsmaster leaves the building and gets on his bike to reach the closest non-burnt-down tree, and after all villains have been removed from the building Glam makes a copy say, for the Empire's benefit, "Get the heck out I'm gonna contain and she's gonna poison the place!" And after they've done it: transparent containment dome.

[alicornucopia]

Once the containment's up Windflower lets loose with a combo of the most lethal, corrosive stuff she's got as fast as she can make it.

[mxglam]

And the monkeys start perishing in contact with the poisons - nowhere near as fast as humans would, but still pretty damn fast.

"Okay, we got a bunch of other trees to do this to, we should move."

[thinkering]

"You want to Windflower all of them? ...Oh, of course, you'll just make the containment thing selectively permeable to Windflower alone and check on it every half hour."

[mxglam]

"Of course," they say, having planned nothing of the sort.

[thinkering]

"Wait, so I can just walk out?" Windflower asks.

"Is the place full?"

"Yeah."

"Then yep, you can just walk right through and a bot will show you to the next tree."

So Windflower walks out.

Meanwhile, the bot flock continues kamikaze and ranged operations against monkeys and trees and monkeys attempting to emerge from trees and trees attempting to emerge from monkeys.

[peterxy]

Monkeys, trees, monkeys emerging from trees, and trees emerging from monkeys abound. Dead monkeys are carted back to trees by other monkeys for raw biomatter, and these monkeys are pretty dense with lots of redundant biology, so they apparently can duplicate even without having to eat anything.

And there are still so many.

[thinkering]

"Look, this isn't solving the underlying problem, which is that Blasto made these things. This - this outbreak is a disaster and he'd need a fragment of one of the organisms to start a dozen more just like it. He was using pheremones last time we busted him, he may still be doing that, can we - track those and find him and get him a ticket to the Birdcage?"

[acanofworms]

"If these things were on purpose he already has a ticket to the Birdcage or worse," Armsmaster says between blows with a dozen monkeys. "If you have a suggestion on how to track him I'd love to hear it."

[thinkering]

"If we can catch a monkey alive Miracle Max might be able to reverse-engineer the pheromones and get somewhere with that?"

[acanofworms]

"Not a bad idea, think you can get one to him?"

[thinkering]

"Yeah, if I can get one alone so bots can converge on it and lasso it."

[mxglam]

"I could help!"

[acanofworms]

"Then do it."

[thinkering]

"I want enough real bots carrying the thing that if you glitch again it doesn't fall," Lorica tells Glam, "but yeah, help me catch..." The swarm picks one. "That. And mind you keep an eye on the containments for the trees Windflower's killing."

[acanofworms]

"Glitch?"

[mxglam]

"There's a fuzzy limit on how much stuff I can have out at a time, but it's in the several dozens so don't need to worry. And I'm keeping an eye on them," they say, and provide them with a Glam copy they're controlling to help catch the monkey.

...why would they even need that. "I'm just gonna conjure binds made out of something really hard," they say, popping that copy and creating striped binds around the monkey, gagging it, blindfolding it, and tying it up.

[thinkering]

"Thank you. Can you put it in a bag or something, I don't want to discover it shits tree seeds halfway to Max's."