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]

"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."

[mxglam]

"Done!"

It is done.

[thinkering]

Robots zoom the monkey to HQ for Max to vivisect or whatever it is he'll wind up doing.

[mxglam]

Glam continues aiding in the various fights, containing monkeys with Siberian-binds so they won't escape and so Windflower will be able to kill them. ...do they need to? Maybe if they squeeze a bit... nope, bad idea, tree sprouting, be on fire.

The bots reach HQ without further trouble - apparently whichever mechanism the monkeys use to kill themselves or become trees cannot be activated if they're bound and gagged. That, or this particular specimen lacks that ability.

[thinkering]

The specimen is handed off to Max, who does horrific things to it as fast as he can.

[peterxy]

And after about half an hour, during which the heroes slowly but surely continue taking down those trees and chasing monkeys and reducing their numbers, he'll have something to show for his work: while it's not possible to reproduce pheromones themselves, it's possible to manufacture something that mimics the monkeys' receptors and indicates the presence of said pheromones in even pretty small quantities in the air.