witch's cape, not hat

[characterquarry]

Grendyne groans and starts pulling on her boots when the alarm goes off. Again. She quick-marches to the broom hangar, sits on her machine and is handed a plethora of loaded weapons by attentive corporals.

"Two flyers in one day? They're getting way too common."

"It's worse," the commander informs them, "South Karlsland got hit with three at once. We're taking Lytee's express and sleeping there. You can sit out if you absolutely need to, but Freya's still recovering so we could use you as a comms relay."

"No, I'll come. I just reserve the right to complain about it."

The 42nd United Forces Witch Wing takes off and assembles into a perfect synchronized formation as Lytee charges her teleport power.



...This is not South Karlsland wilderness.

[note: halfway through this thread I created a unique account for Grendyne. Do not be alarmed by the change in account. -Rockeye]

Comments

[witchwatcher]

She decides to post on that cape forum, after the patrol and paperwork is done, it's amusing in small doses.

Caught Uber and Leet today. Anybody know what an Arwing is?

[wormcan]

It is known. Obscure, but information on Earth Aleph video games exists and Uber and Leet fans are used to digging it up. It's from a series of games about a flying fox.

Relatedly, Uber and Leet have fans. Threads about them often devolve into arguments about whether they're Not That Bad or Just Like the Rest, and the former faction isn't happy with Gren and the Wards. But it's more in the sense of their favored sports team having suffered a loss than actually thinking she should have let them go. Usually.

[witchwatcher]

She's used to the internet having a few... Extremists. She keeps her replies diplomatic and signs off before too long. After some other recreational uses of the internet and some homework, it's time to sleep, and then back to the usual schedule.

[wormcan]

A notable feature of the usual schedule is, inconveniently, school being weird. (There's less of it for Wards, but still.)

In the cape context, the current usual schedule involves the ABB attacking another gang every few days. During the last time Lung was involved, Armsmaster arrived in time to fail to capture Lung. The dragon apparently knew about the tinker's tranquilizers in advance, and was able to avoid being captured.

The Director asks some of the Wards with useful powers if, this being strictly optional and with other choices available, they'd be willing to join the next effort.

[witchwatcher]

Gren would be more than willing to help. As long as she's allowed to flee if things go too far south.

[wormcan]

The Wards are strongly advised to do exactly that. They're backed up by the PRT, Armsmaster, Dauntless, and Battery—most of Brockton Bay's speedsters were killed pulling people away from Behemoth's kill aura, but Armsmaster should be able to stall Lung for an evacuation if necessary. Gren and Clockblocker are the main chance for actually succeeding, with Vista supporting Clockblocker.

[witchwatcher]

Gren still can't reliably copy Clockblocker if he leaves her line of sight. And this fight is going to cost a solid chunk of her stored mana.

As long as that's understood, she's perfectly happy to go over plans of attack and discuss tactics and wait for the best opportunity to swoop in.

[wormcan]

The ideal case is that Clockblocker freezes Lung and the target gets buried in containment foam without having a chance to ramp up. Everyone else is redundant. But this is unlikely. Lung's position is most obvious when he's fighting, which means he'll already be partially transformed. (Whoever he's fighting, likely the Empire Eighty-Eight or Merchants, maybe the Travelers or Undersiders, is not the current priority unless they attack.)

The two ways to end the fight are to freeze Lung and have everyone appear to leave, so that his power wears off, or hit him with enough stun bolts that he goes down. If neither works, they should evacuate.

[witchwatcher]

Gren is unsure if the stunbolts can beat him once he's keyed up, but it's definitely worth a try.

Can she have a containment foam sprayer integrated into the spare compartments of her Steelwing?

[wormcan]

Most of the containment foam will be coming from vehicle-mounted launchers. Anything portable enough for a Steelwing isn't likely to do much against Lung, but it's not like it'll hurt.

[witchwatcher]

And it gives her another nonlethal option other than stunbolts and elemental manipulation.

She's ready to go whenever Lung is located next.

[wormcan]

Later that evening, Lung is spotted in Empire territory. The PRT got called early, when he was just barely starting to ramp up. The sooner the first responders get there, the less outgunned they'll be. The relevant capes get notified as soon as possible and the vehicles head off right away.

[witchwatcher]

Gren flies high above the city and locates the exact area with enhanced vision. She mutters information about who's fighting and exactly where while waiting for the rest of the capes to arrive.

[wormcan]

She doesn't have long to wait. Armsmaster's motorcycle is fast, especially when Vista is one of the passengers.

Lung, still humanoid but two feet taller than usual, is fighting a group of Empire capes. Stormtiger is on the ground injured, Cricket is dodging Lung's blasts of fire, and Hookwolf is matching him blow for blow. Cricket and Lung notice Gren just before the other capes arrive on the scene.

[witchwatcher]

She descends enough for most of her powers to be in range and hits him with everything she can, all at once.

The area where Lung is, is now extremely difficult to move in. Everything slows to a stop - bullets, debris flying through the air, people. It won't immobilize Lung, but it should at least slow him down since he can no longer put momentum behind a punch or run. At the same time she starts sending down a steady stream of stunbolts. Not a huge burst of them, but a pace she can keep up for a while. And she tries to disorient or blind him with flashes of light.

[wormcan]

Hookwolf leaps at Lung, and falls short. His opponent launches a burst of fire, which also doesn't get anywhere. What it doesn't do is slow down either of their regeneration. Lung is still getting bigger and Hookwolf sprouts more metal. They're both good to keep going for a while. When the bolts start coming down, they stop striking each other and start staggering outside the area of effect first.

Cricket, outside the immediate combat area, jumps up at Gren. She bounds from the ground to a fence to a roof, and grabs for the Steelwing. Meanwhile, Gren gets disoriented and hit by a wave of nausea.

The Protectorate and Wards head toward Lung and Hookwolf, and the PRT backup starts to pull up.

[witchwatcher]

Cricket gets an undirected telekinetic shove, but Gren is distracted enough that the immobilizing field drops out. Cricket is doing some kind of - sound, so a sphere of silence is the way to shut her down.

After she recovers a bit, Hookwolf and Lung can both have improbably well-aimed (in reality, guided via a power) containment foam from her Steelwing's launcher gumming up as many joints and limbs as she can manage. And the immobilizing field and stream of stunbolts starts back up.

[wormcan]

Once Cricket is silenced, the disorientation shuts down. And the telekinesis means she hits the ground instead of the Steelwing. She sticks the landing and resumes the some kind of sound from outside the sphere of silence.

Hookwolf staggers and goes down after a few stunbolts. Lung staggers and doesn't. While Lung dodges Armsmaster's Halberd, Vista gets Clockblocker behind him and increases her teammate's reach. But between the immobilizing field and the intense heat around Lung, he doesn't manage to touch him.

[witchwatcher]

She can put a field of intense cold up instead, copied from the very Witch who did the same thing to Behemoth's heat attack.

(Cricket gets enough stunbolts, tracking ahead of her attempts to dodge, to go down and stay down, because maintaining the silence-sphere is annoying)

[wormcan]

Cricket is inhumanly good at dodging, but that just means it takes longer until one of the guided bolts hits her. Gren is free to focus on Lung.

Lung is unable to lay a hand on Armsmaster, but is also keeping his distance from the gray blur forming a haze around the end of the capitalized Halberd. A sudden move from Battery gets Clockblocker within touch range, much easier without Gren's momentum-dampening field. Lung manages to get an arm in her way, and both heroes sprawl across the ground.

[witchwatcher]

This is getting annoying. She holds still for a good ten seconds as she copies Clockblocker's power (It's a little easier to hold on to, now, but it still takes significant effort), and protects herself as best she can with her composite Witch-Lady Photon shield, and zooms up to Lung lightning fast and taps him on the slowest moving appendage.

[wormcan]

In those seconds, Lung burns Battery and Clockblocker. Less badly than it could have been without the cold, at least. Vista and Armsmaster shield them.

When Gren comes after him Lung throws a punch, not at her but at her Steelwing.
But she can freeze him with or without that. He stops where he stands. Containment foam starts burying him as soon as she gets out of the way.

[witchwatcher]

The Steelwing caves in all along one side, but is still sufficiently objectlike to wrench clear and crash on the other side of the street. She abandons it.

After a little swearing, she tells Armsmaster, "I can try to rig something to help keep him down. A shield, inside-out and exactly the shape of his current body. Might help stop him from smashing his way out of the foam."

[wormcan]

"Can you hold it long enough for him to give up? If he stops fighting, we win. If not, it might be better to save your power."

[witchwatcher]

"That depends on how long it takes him to give up. Ten minutes, definitely. An hour, probably. Three would be pushing it."