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]

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.

[witchwatcher]

She was planning to stay far away from all these people already, this is just in case one of them takes it into their minds to find her.

Copycat herself is liable to be able to undo anything Heartbreaker does, given access to an unconscious Heartbreaker for a few hours. The point would be freeing her from its effects long enough to escape/reverse it. She'll want both the emotion-thing and the anti-suggestion thing. Something to replay thoughts would be useful in more ways than getting around Valefor, too, if it's accurate enough to recreate the detailed sensation she gets when investigating or using different powers.

Whether she wants to go with money or the heist job depends more on the exact details of what and from whom.

[wormcan]

Cranial can promise accuracy as far as information goes. This particular gizmo is usually used to upgrade people's memories. A detailed sensation based on a power is a different story; she'd need some brain scans to say one way or the other.


The proposed job is about the world's best tinker. Dragon's tech is pretty much the gold standard, but she lost some suits to a group called the Dragonslayers. They manage to be successful high-priced mercenaries even without powers of their own; Toy Soldier thinks this tech would fit much better around a parahuman tinker with a relevant specialty. Suitably scaled up of course. If Copycat can bring at least one suit to copy, she'll get her defensive superpower upgrades.

The Dragonslayers should be assumed to be competent and well-equipped. They have an impressive track record against Dragon, but have been known to lose fights occasionally against lesser opponents when caught by surprise. And, possibly relevant here, their reputation has them as mercenary enough not to hold a grudge. They won't retaliate against Copycat if she wins unless someone hires them to.

[witchwatcher]

She's willing to make the attempt mostly because the suits are already stolen, and she can probably manage the whole shebang nonlethally. But without more intel on the Dragonslayers - a location, or enough detail about at least one of their members to serve as a teleport target - she won't be able to find them.

And she's not going to be able to hack these suits or even know how to shut them down without completely destroying them, she's no Tinker. But she's willing to operate on comms with Toy Soldier pointing her at his preferred piece of tech and telling her how to disable it once she's in.

[wormcan]

There isn't enough information to be had, but rogue tinkers tend to know people who know people. If the Dragonslayers receive a message from a prospective client who wants an in-person meeting, Copycat will get her chance to knock them out and take their stuff. Wouldn't be immediate, but in a while they can have at least one of them in a known location.

[witchwatcher]

No, that seems like a bad idea. If nothing else they'd have incentive to retaliate against whoever set up the meeting.

She can't do a job without usable intel. She's just going to pay cash.

[wormcan]

Toy Soldier insists on being willing to take that risk, but Toy Soldier's bad decisions are safely irrelevant. Cranial can pay him back some other way.

Which means that Copycat will get her defenses sooner and more easily anyway. Exchanging money for goods and services: the best superpower.

[witchwatcher]

In short order, an amount of cash that would seem very large to most non capes (and even to many capes) is transferred. It's the first half of the agreed sum. She has plenty - it turns out high-output healers can earn quite a lot of money.

She'll do brain scans if there's a chance it could make a device that improves her ability to recall powers. Cranial knows that it would end very badly if she decided to betray 'The Next Eidolon' by messing with her brain somehow, right?

[wormcan]

Some people are more skeptical about subsequent Eidolons than others. But betraying clients is a great way to stop having clients. Cranial isn't going to mess with her brain in any way that isn't prearranged.

She'll need scans of what's going on inside when Copycat copies a few different powers, and then she'll be able to predict whether the memory implant will extend that far.

[witchwatcher]

That won't be a problem. Are they going to meet in person, work through an intermediary, have Cranial send her a device that will do the scanning by itself, or what?

[wormcan]

It'd have to be in person.
The message includes a time and a place that is not the Toybox's current location but is close enough that Cranial can have her equipment set up.

[witchwatcher]

Copycat is there at the designated time, writing in an old-fashioned paper notebook. Since it's a relatively isolated place, she's in full costume, carrying the Steelwing on one shoulder.

[wormcan]

"You're Copycat?" Cranial doesn't appear worried about coming alone to meet a client who's powerful and more heroic than not. "The scans will go quick, the other things might take some alteration to fit your brain."

[witchwatcher]

"Yep, that's me. I organized my powers into eight broad categories based on how they feel to use. I'll just go down the list when you say when?"

[wormcan]

The tinker straps some things that are presumably sensory devices around various parts of Gren's head, and fiddles with the dials attached to a nearby screen. "When."

[witchwatcher]

"First category, basics. All Witches get flight and strength and starbursts." She tosses the obviously heavy thing she was holding high into the air, then catches it effortlessly, then points an arm and a short burst of light arcs into a wall, leaving a little scorch.

[wormcan]

Cranial works for capes a fair amount. And she has brain scans of most of them, including the capes. The most important thing from Copycat's is, she doesn't have a corona pollentia. At all. Copycat: secretly not a cape.

"Are there more of you?" A few beeps and whirrs from the machinery. Not actually necessary, but sometimes it goes better if the client is thinking of everything as obviously tinker-y. "OK, you can go on down the list."

[witchwatcher]

"Yeah, one in five hundred girls back on my homeworld are Witches, like clockwork. I'm a whole lot stronger than most, mostly because copying's my special. Second category, thinker stuff. You'll have to take my word that I'm actually doing anything, but I can tell those beeps and whirs aren't actually accomplishing anything... Is it really that surprising I don't have the same stuff in my brain? I thought Earth Gimel and Witches had made the public consciousness by now."

She goes down the rest of the list. Non-thinker sensory powers, energy manipulation, physical manipulation, transformation and projection, 'weird stuff' that includes many Breaker effects and teleportation, and combinations of two or more powers.