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

[wormcan]

"Oh, you're that Copycat," Ballistic doesn't say. Sundancer at least has the decency to look awkward about it.

"Convince these people to let us and we'll help you do it," she says. "We had three reasons to work for him, none of which apply anymore, and it's not like he doesn't deserve it."

"No." Ursa Aurora is adamant. "I haven't heard them deny what that clone said. No way is anyone going in with Simurgh puppets at their back. They should be in quarantine for the rest of their lives."

[witchwatcher]

"Don't thinkers interfere with each other? And a precog made this two hells of a lot less terrible. Seems like they might be clear, or clear-ish."

[wormcan]

"That was why we were working for him," Genesis agrees. "He said he had a precog working for him who would help. He didn't mention that 'working for' meant 'enslaved by,' for some reason."

"If it were that easy, quarantine wouldn't exist," the hero counters. "I'm not even saying it's their fault—though, you know, notorious mercenaries—but they're not exactly trustworthy." But it's not up to her anyway.

"We can let the PRT and the Brockton Bay team decide if they want the Travelers' help," Legend says.

[witchwatcher]

"Anybody know where Lytee went? I've got a feeling she was involved in this somehow. Ech, nevermind." She sighs. "I'd better go watch that Siberian-clone. Kept her alive so I could watch her exist for twenty minutes and copy that ridiculously invulnerable projection permanently instead of temporarily, but nobody wants her to wake up. She should be out for hours, but better safe than sorry."

She zips over to a roof past the edge of the battle-zone. The clone is still unconscious.

[whole_new_can]

"The Siberian clone is alive?"
Pause.
"The Siberian is a projection?"
Pause.
"You left a Siberian clone unattended?"

Legend zips there before she does; he can spot an unconscious person on a roof and is very good at zipping.

"Do you still need her alive?"

[witchwatcher]

"I need her alive for twenty minutes, maybe ten but it's slippery."

"...Look, I'm not that reckless. I can kill her in less than two seconds. Knight and Flechette go through the invulnurability, Flechette more than Knight, the master is ordinary human and I hit her with enough stun to knock someone out for days and if she woke up and started Siberianing again anyway I'd have teleported directly behind the master and deathtouched her."

[whole_new_can]

"It was her being rescued that I was worried about. Unlikely, but not a risk I'd want to take.

Do you think you could do that to the real Siberian's master? If she has one, that is. It might not even be necessary, now that we know to look we'll find her eventually even if you very reasonably want to stay out of it."

[witchwatcher]

"Yes, I could probably do that. I'd want backup though, and I don't want to be near Jack and Shatterbird and Burnscar for one second longer than I have to."

[whole_new_can]

"You'd have it. But this should be more planned. We only just found out about one member's weakness.

Would it be safer to get her to where the others are?" The clone that Gren is staring at isn't going anywhere, but one does not take chances with this.

[witchwatcher]

"No difference, I think. Maybe it'd creep them out?"

[whole_new_can]

"Not compared to everything else today." Legend detaches his cape to wrap around the clone, and starts flying back. "But us disappearing to go find her and then not coming back right away might."

[witchwatcher]

"Good point. I'm too used to either working alone or being on comms." She follows.

[wormcan]

They can both fly fast.
They'll return to find the Protectorate capes getting more information out of the Travelers, despite Ursa's insistences about their credibility.

[witchwatcher]

The UDF is already beginning cleanup. Burning the bodies, lifting rubble out of the streets, counting the dead.

"I'll be good to take everyone back to New York when I'm done with that Siberian-clone, by the way."

[wormcan]

"Can you take her with us? She's not exactly dangerous, at the moment."

[witchwatcher]

"I meant it as a matter of timing. I'll be rested enough when I'm done. Big teleport, nasty-hard battle, and another big teleport right after is skirting too close to mana burn. Sorry guys but you'll just have to wait fifteen minutes or convince some of the UDF 'porters to take you back." She's taking notes on the Siberian's power, now.

[wormcan]

The UDF teleporters are less available than that, and it's not an emergency any more. They can wait.

[witchwatcher]

And then she touches the Siberian clone and it dies, and everyone groups up as she focuses and - bip, they're in New York again.

"Well that was quite a scene and I think we all need a shower and some time alone. Legend, I'll come back in three hours for briefing or statements or whatever they call it."

[whole_new_can]

"All right. And thanks for your help; it could have gone a lot worse without you there."

[witchwatcher]

With a little wave, Copycat teleports to Lytee/Places amd extracts a mostly-true explanation. She's not happy at all that Places was part of the cause of that, in an indirect way.

She also has Places try to contact Toybox. Copycat is interested in getting some tinkertech and Places should have the right contacts to open negotiations.

And then she has a shower, changes, and pops back into New York for whatever discussions or paperwork they demand. (Queen Elizabeth Memorial Hospital is not happy their healing session is delayed, but they can deal.)

[wormcan]

Toybox is a group of rogue tinkers, currently seven. They tend toward the villain side of the spectrum but want to stay mostly out of the cape world. Places can get her a list of members and their specialties (fire manipulation, freezing and stasis, glass, brain scanning and alteration, pocket dimensions, building-building drones, powersuits) to see if any of those fields or any combination looks useful to her. It'll cost either a lot of money or some useful service for the tinker in question, which might or might not be legal.


The Protectorate asks for very little paperwork from non-affiliated heroes. Not that they wouldn't like to, but capes (like everyone else) tend to dislike that, and when they set their rules they didn't want to drive away allies. Mostly the local PRT people just want her version of the story. It matches up with what they got from other witnesses, though the connection to Coil is unique to her side.
There are also questions about her current set of capabilities and how easily she can acquire more, and even a request to demonstrate the Siberian one, but these are fairly transparently less about today than about knowing just how powerful she has gotten since when she was Citrine Mage.

[witchwatcher]

She doesn't want to demonstrate the Siberian power - it appears naked and looks like her. She has... Quite a lot of capabilities by now, even more than the number of capes she's visited since combining aspects of different powers is a thing she can do. And can usually pick up or invent new ones with a solid half hour's effort. Optimizing them to use as little power as possible takes longer. Oh, and she has access to much more power now.

Can the brainscan tinker make a mind shield, or at least a becalmer?

[wormcan]

If there's a particular type of mind power that needs defending against, Cranial can probably come up with something. (Fully general immunity is a no, and there's always the chance of a stronger cape just overwhelming whatever she gives Copycat.)

Calming would be easy, if ineffective against the scarier powers, and to the extent shielding one's mind is a learnable skill she can throw in a copy of someone else's memories of learning it. If Copycat can find someone who has and convince them to share; Cranial doesn't have this one on file.

[witchwatcher]

What she wants a defense against is: Heartbreaker. Canary. Valefor. Regent. Gallant. And similar. As many of the above as possible.

Mental resistance is a learnable thing on her world, she has learned a small amount. She might be able to find someone with more but that would be later.

In terms of payment, she has money, but would prefer to pay in work if there are enough minor non-illegal favors or one major non-illegal task Cranial needs doing.

[wormcan]

Heartbreaker is very much the one of the scarier powers. And emotions aren't what Cranial's best at. She could manage something to shut down all emotions following an unprecedentedly massive shift, and leave it that way until she can manually undo whatever Heartbreaker did. If she can undo it. Without knowing exactly what he'd do, any less extreme defense would be even less reliable. Better advice: stay away from Heartbreaker.

(Cranial has to look up the others, but her reply will contain as little sign of that as possible.)
Most of the information on the effects of Canary's power comes from her ex-boyfriend. Based on his accounts, it'd be doable. Something to forcibly insert "IS THIS REALLY SOMETHING I WANT TO DO" into her train of thought whenever she's unusually suggestible. It'd have false positives of course, but being forced to think twice in harmless situations might be worth the protection.

Canary is even easier to stay away from than Heartbreaker, what with being in the Birdcage. But the same should work against Valefor if the public explanation of his power as super-hypnotism is accurate. And she can certainly offer a device to record the client's thoughts and replay them on demand. That ought to counteract Valefor's characteristic order to forget having met him.
The other villains she tries to look up and fails. Not enough information on the details of their powers.


Should Gren decide this is worth doing, Crainial's first thought for payment would be money. But the Toybox tinkers all owe each other favors, and Toy Soldier has heard of Copycat's (questionably deserved but widely believed) reputation as the next Eidolon.... If she's willing to compromise on the non-illegal bit, they promise the tinker tech they'd ask her to steal was already stolen in the first place and it's from villains anyway.
Or money. If she'd rather not, money still works.