It's the anniversary. Glam would very much not like to celebrate.
It’s their last day on Winslow High—they’re being transferred to Arcadia on Monday—and also their last day without a patrol schedule assigned.
And the PRT released a small announcement on its website about Glam joining the Wards. Now their wiki page doesn’t get erased, of course—they’re no longer speculative. They wonder what it’s got on them.
"New cape might be able to adjust her own position with her power too, don't know if she has the memory thing, I'm sending most of the swarm to keep an eye out."
They also miss Hookwolf with the reflected blast Purity shot their way, and once she realizes they can make new mirrors appear anywhere on their person she flies away from them, and they promptly give chase.
"Don't follow her to the ends of the earth if she's trying to escape, we're breaking it up, not taking them all in," says the robot on Glam. "It's us versus three capes and a bunch of unpowered and our backup is not here yet."
"I know," Glam says, but they needn't have bothered—Purity doesn't try to escape the fight, just Glam themself, and the way she's doing it is by flying towards Hookwolf, sending a few blasts off at random gang members, who shoot at her and miss.
"I need to figure out a way to get a foam sprayer under my weight limit," mutters Lorica. Robots, no longer chased by striker cape, start stealing gang members' guns. One gets shot badly enough that it can't fly; it starts creeping about on the ground instead.
Purity veers up rather than get herself in the way of the new cape, so the new cape tries to boop the snarly mass of metal shaped like a wolf a whole ten minutes into the past.
Hookwolf dodges; his paw catches Lorica's disabled robot, which hits the striker in the face.
The robot hits the striker full on, but she rewinds herself about two and a half seconds to an injury-less state and goes after Hookwolf again.
Meanwhile, Glam keeps Purity occupied, both capes with white costumes zigging and zagging this way and that in the sky. Glam stops the whole 'using hands to hold things' schtick they had going on with the shield and makes it float in place while they conjure their stun gun. "This is a stun gun, not an actual gun, by the way!" they call out, making a neon sign temporarily appear above their head with the words 'STUN GUN' written and an arrow pointing at the gun.
Another bot carries the bot that can't fly to Glam's shoulder so that it can play to its current strengths. Robots try to sneak up on and tranquilize Purity. Others start tracking the path-over-time of the striker so they can be ready to stab her if she backs up.
The striker, for now, does a lot of unpredictable zigzagging punctuated by short bursts of rewinding. She apparently either has some practice reacting to changes on the battlefield on the fly or the memory part doesn't affect her. Whichever it is, she uses as much of that as she can to dodge Hookwolf and bots, to try to boop a bot into the past, or (her current main goal) boop Hookwolf into the past.
Robots diligently track how far into the past they are sent each time.
Purity shoots more blasts at her, but the ease with which she dodges the blasts—and, when she doesn't dodge, restores herself to a previous condition—is uncanny.
"Suspect ten-minute limit on the striker," Lorica says to Glam and the adult heroes on the way.
And at some point, a new person appeared from amongst the gangbangers. A tall man, muscled, shirtless, his torso covered in tattoos, wearing jeans and a dragon mask. When the striker notices him, she starts putting distance between herself and Hookwolf.
"Tangle her up in wires!" suggests Lorica to Glam, and then she reports in about the new arrival.
The new arrival starts running towards Hookwolf and roars before throwing a fireball at him.
Armsmaster says he and Chevalier will be there in two minutes, and Velocity might show up any second.
Velocity shows up. He joins Lorica in trying to knock the gang members out too quickly for the striker to get them back up again. Meanwhile, Hookwolf roars right back at Fireball Dude; he dodges the projectile and closes the distance to try to sink his teeth into the blaster.
The blaster... is taller? He definitely looks a bit taller. And he throws another fireball at Hookwolf from a closer range. This fireball's definitely larger than the previous one.
Purity continues zapping this way and that, and Glam keeps making mirrors appear here and there, but she doesn't blast them, and they futilely try to keep up with her movements.
Lorica's armor might hold up against a Purity blast or a Hookwolf bite or one of those fireballs but she doesn't want to try it unless something her bots can't lift - like, say, an unconscious teammate - needs to be hauled out. Bots continue tracking the striker's position over time, but the fight's moving pretty fast and a full ten minutes' history will take a full ten minutes to get -
Purity finally catches an opening and blasts Glam to the ground—
—(a second's thought has Glam conclude that the fact that they used a shield made everyone watching expect them to be vulnerable to the blasts without one, so the suit-absorbs-blast thing didn't quite work)—
—and then the striker cape is there, and she touches the top of Glam's head—
"-another cape's not gonna be fun. Any idea on whose side they are?"
"You're missing -" HUD provides. "Seven minutes. Black-and-white's a time manipulation striker. Can - can you get me a swarm of decoy bots?"
"Duck. Alright, here."
Swarm of decoy robots is a go!
The loud sound of Armsmaster's motorcycle can be heard in the distance, and Glam is now personally annoyed at the striker cape. "Velocity, if I give you some wire can you try to tie it around the striker?"
Real robots dive into the swarm of decoys and spread out and form a dispersed cloud approaching Purity.
"Worth a shot," says Velocity.
Armsmaster and Chevalier both arrive on the former's motorcycle, and take the scene in. Fireball dude charges towards Hookwolf, now eight feet tall and with scales covering much (but not all) of his skin.
Purity gets a couple of real robots, but misses some, and one of them manages to get close enough to tranquilize her in the thigh.
The remaining robots break off from the herd and project a path onto the ground of where the striker's been recently. "Velocity, she might teleport to any of the lit places -"
"Got it," says Velocity, and he starts snarling up the striker in wire, only as substantial as he has to be to hold the loop.