this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[wormcan]

He does, thanks largely to the efforts of one Campbell Swan in getting this planet up to a civilized standard. His computer is probably the only one in who knows how far that's still in a state to connect to the satellite wifi, but it's there to be connected to.

The Slaughterhouse Nine are a group of parahumans who travel the country seeing the sights and killing people. They are very good at this. Ever since Shatterbird joined their method of announcing their presence has been to make every piece of glass in the city violently explode.

The Nine aren't the only capes ever to have a kill order placed allowing anyone who can manage it to legally kill them and collect a reward. But the longer-term members are among the very few to survive having such an order for any length of time. Reading the list of their powers, the fact that Shatterbird isn't the scariest may have something to do with this.

[from_scratch]

All right. Seems like it might be time to go kill some people.

Cam gets aloft again. Shatterbird can fly. Any chance she's doing it now?

[wormcan]

She probably is, somewhere, but she has a lot of range. No sign of her.

[from_scratch]

Cam overflies San Francisco. He can't do a whole lot about the damage on the scale it was dealt.

[wormcan]

Thousands of people flood the streets, there are screams and alarm bells ringing, and a few flying capes. And yes, there, one of the capes has decorative stained glass wings.

[from_scratch]

The decorative stained glass cape is now unconscious.

[wormcan]

The humanoid falls. The wings fall with her, slightly faster.

And then she slows and resumes flying. Her background reassembles, and she starts looking around for who might have done that. Glass shards speed toward Cam.

[from_scratch]

Well, they can't hurt him but they could trap him. How the heck did she -? Cam tries various methods of neutralizing shards to see if any of them work. Encased in plastic? Supercooled? Melted?

[wormcan]

Melted and plastic both work. There is a surplus of glass to replace anything he neutralizes, though. Pieces are moving fast and from every direction.

[from_scratch]

Melting's easy to do en masse. Melt, glass, melt. (He makes a chilly layer of air below him so anything that hits someone beneath will be room temperature.)

[wormcan]

If Cam keeps up enough heat to melt the projectiles in the fraction of a second they take to reach him, he can be splashed with molten glass instead of slashed with solid. If that's better.
Shatterbird considers it worse, at least. She amasses a larger volume of glass, several times the size of either combatant, and throws that at him.

[from_scratch]

Melt. (Colder cold layer of air.)

Shatterbird can melt. He can't avoid hitting pedestrians forever like this if anyone's got too much of a broken leg to scurry indoors and she could use killing.

[wormcan]

It takes a lot of heat to melt that much mass that quickly. But Shatterbird is too distracted to do much with what remains of her weapon.

The armor supporting her melts, as does she. And she is unpleasantly on fire. This time she hits the ground.

[from_scratch]

Does she stay there?

[wormcan]

She's not moving.

[from_scratch]

Right then, time to hunt down all her friends.

[wormcan]

This was Shatterbird's dramatic entrance; the rest of the Slaughterhouse aren't flying around with brightly colored wings pointing at them.

[from_scratch]

So this might take a while.

Cam produces, inspects, and burns the current outfits of the other members so they'll be easier to spot from a distance.

[wormcan]

Most of them do wear clothes. But trying to just spot them from the sky is a long shot; they could just be inside anywhere.

[from_scratch]

Still. He flies. Maybe killing one will get their attention? He can hope.

[wormcan]

If so, they don't approach him about it.

[from_scratch]

Any chance they keep written plans?

[wormcan]

No luck there. The Slaughterhouse Nine aren't the type to keep diaries. Their tinkers have written some blueprints for projects, in the fashion of tinkers everywhere, and that's obviously potentially useful. But nothing points to location.

[from_scratch]

License plate? Scribbled address of a bolthole? What do supervillains eat, if he conjures up Jack Slash's last breakfast does it look like it came out of a Dennys'...? It hardly matters if he has to drop ash and slag with all the glass shards and glass dust everywhere.

[wormcan]

The license plate of the last car they used is 528491. More conjuration can show that it was destroyed a while ago.
If he makes a copy of the Siberian's last meal, it might be possible to check against missing persons reports. None of the others have any obvious clues to geography.