Mage Among Superheroes

As it turned out, Scrying Iron Shell was literally the easiest the spell had ever been. It snapped right to her with literally no effort. She wasn’t even resisting as far as I could tell, even though people had a natural inclination to resist magic cast upon them. Iron Shell was even moving around without reservation, instead of trying to go somewhere nondescript.

“Strange,” I commented aloud. “I feel Scrying anchors but…” It went so smoothly I thought for a moment that I had latched onto a decoy.

It took a few moments to realize what was really happening. I rotated the image of Iron Shell, trying to find something useful. Calculator could pick up myriad hints from even a slight glance at the surroundings, and… we saw none of that. It was literally just Iron Shell.

“Well this is different,” Calculator commented. He voiced the same concern I’d had. “Is this a decoy?”

“I am fairly certain this is the real Iron Shell, with a Scrying anchor built into her for some reason. Maybe multiple? They’re not individually strong, pretty much like Doomsday’s first iteration.”

There was a very clear image of Iron Shell striding in front of us. Nothing was hidden. Except… I couldn’t see anything else.

Calculator walked around the cube, observing the form of the woman that was more robot than person from various angles. “It appears the connection to Iron Shell is so strong that we cannot see anything beyond her.” He crouched down. “A small trace of concrete beneath her feet, perhaps.”

We decided to continue the spell for the full duration, during which we spotted a door handle as she grasped it, heard part of a sentence from someone else and her reply, and otherwise simply watched her move in what felt like a void.

Or at least, that’s what I thought we got. Calculator had backed away early on, perhaps to avoid interfering with the cameras, but I didn’t really hear much more commentary from him.

“Too bad,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll get much from that.”

“On the contrary,” Calculator said. “Your spell was not rotationally locked.”

“Uh, should it have been?” I asked. “I could have changed it while we were observing.”

“No, that was exactly what we wanted,” he nodded. “We were able to see her turning this way, you understand?”

I pondered. “I guess, but all we know was that she was walking around an area mostly unrestricted.”

“There’s much to learn. The size of the area, among other things. We have the location of a door, and can discern a relative position where minions spoke to her. Besides, Iron Shell keeps herself in extremely good shape.”

I knew he wasn’t commenting on her muscles or anything, especially because literally none of what made her human was visible. “Does it matter that her lasers and stuff are highly functional? That sounds worse for us.”

“She’s incredibly shiny,” Calculator said. “Her ploy to minimize information collected may have worked directly against her, if we can recreate the images. Come look at this,” he said. I looked over his shoulder at his tablet, where he was displaying the video feed from the various cameras stationed around the Scrying ‘orb’. He focused on one, enlarging it to fill the whole screen. Then he zoomed in, and in, focusing on a still frame of Iron Shell’s thigh.

I saw reflected there… a bunch of gibberish. “Is that a rug? Or someone’s face? A hand, perhaps?” I squinted and tilted my head. “A couch?”

“That is something our reconstruction algorithms will determine. With multiple angles shot in sufficient quality, and a deep understanding of the topography of Iron Shell’s frame, we will be able to recreate much more than she wished to let on. We will give it some time, then I’ll ask Midnight to assist with another recording. You two can alternate until we have built up sufficient data.”

“Shouldn’t you see if any of it is useful first?” I asked.

“I know it will be,” he said. “And our technicians can begin processing this first set of data right away. We might try to get some sense of her schedule later, but for now additional samples will be sufficient.”

-----

I hadn’t heard anything about our Scrying just yet, and given that we were still patrolling that meant it was still inconclusive. It sure sounded difficult to get anything useful.

Our current patrol was during the evening, which meant the streets had a decent number of people walking along. As long as we weren’t actively engaged in an incident civilians weren’t required to give us priority along our path, but they tended to anyway. First because they weren’t always certain about whether we were on a mission, and second because they just didn’t want to get in our way.

I guess that made sense. We had an orc, a cyborg, and a ‘bear’. Zeb was still directing Fluffy remotely, though she didn’t need to give him many orders. I found his target acquisition skills quite sufficient. It was likely he got some subconscious understanding from her as well, even at a distance. This was her class, so if she were unable to control her companion in a reasonable manner she wouldn’t be much of a Beastmaster. More of a Beastassociate.

Technically our patrols were a success already, as people seeing us made them feel more safe. The city was primarily interested in that result, and would be quite happy if no villains did anything at all since they would only have to pay the Brigade the minimum rate. And less crime was always preferred.

I wasn’t going to say I wanted there to be crime. I really didn’t. But… if there was, it was convenient for me if I got to fight. That was the only way I got experience, after all.

Something tingled as I walked along. A feeling I had felt before, pressing up against my defenses. Specifically, a spell I had added to my preparations in the morning and now did only via habit. Nondetection, which meant someone was trying to look at me. I would say they were trying to Scry me, but it really worked against any sort of divination spell. Probably even a lot of powers that might learn things about me.

I didn’t sense anything happening nearby, so I figured it was something long range. That didn’t resolve anything, but it was at least a useful point of information.

Midnight looked towards me, likely noticing my emotional change. His tail swished evenly as he rode on my shoulder. I just nodded, acknowledging there was something, but trying to communicate it wasn’t an issue. At least at current. I felt my spell still had more power, so they shouldn’t have gotten anything useful.

I thought I spotted a familiar individual ahead. A good sort of familiar, not the kind where I recognized a villain strolling around. That happened sometimes too, but this time it was one of my friends. Or at least a person I was fond of, because I wasn’t quite sure ‘apprentice’ fit into the same category. We didn’t hang out a lot or anything, most of our time was spent training. With Jerome taking college classes remotely, it was only a few times per week for a couple hours.

That said, I could tell he practiced a lot on his own time. He was getting pretty good at light magic and his various utility spells. He did practice Force Armor too. He’d even learned the more difficult techniques like Multicasting and Assistive Familiar Casting. The latter was pretty much required for the first, except for the cheapest spells.

I watched the storefront he’d gone in. It was a Laser Den, the kind of place that carried all sorts of useful parts. I was pretty sure they didn’t have any actual lasers, though, unless one counted laser pointers. I did not.

As we walked past, I considered saying hello. However, I decided against it. While it wasn’t a problem to do so on duty, it might trouble him. There was already only a thin separation between my public identity and my identity as part of the Power Brigade, and Jerome really didn’t need to be drawn into danger due to my enemies. I’d just mention seeing him later.

“Fluffy, no.” Zeb’s firm words came from the little band around the rust mole’s head. I turned to see him poking his head into the Laster Den. “None of that is for eating. Follow the others.”

Fluffy reluctantly turned towards us and continued walking. It was about that time I heard a loud bang. No, three of them evenly spaced apart. The sound came from inside the store and was tinged with… mana?

I instantly swiveled, and the others rapidly followed. Fluffy seemed confused but somewhat happy about going into the building. Just as I managed to look through the windows, I saw Jerome looking into the back, then a laser shot past his head. He ducked around the corner, though at that point it had already missed anyway.

His first reaction was to cast Energy Ward, so at least he’d been listening to what I said. I don’t think he precisely matched a proper sort of laser protection, but it was closer than generic fire or heat protection.

There was yelling and screaming as I made my way down one of the aisles. Various sorts of alarms went off. “Everyone, please make your way out the front!” I called loudly. I saw Jerome look at me, but instead of following my instructions he gestured to the wall behind him. My determined stride got me to him before any of the others, though I heard their footfalls behind me. “Sir, please make your way out of the facility.”

“Rob’s in there!” Jerome protested. “I’m not just gonna leave him!”

A flash of synchronized emotion flowed through myself and Midnight. While Jerome’s familiar was a construct, there was still a very real connection between them. “Get to safety, we’ll retrieve him,” I said.

Midnight cast Energy Ward on our usual targets, the only reason we didn’t already have it active being its relatively low duration. About ten minutes, nowhere near enough to recover the relevant mana. Especially not with the other things we were keeping active.

I used Haste, getting everyone but Shockfire from our group. Was it better for him to be fast? Yes. But it didn’t change the amount of energy he could absorb or return, and he didn’t need to get into melee.

I wasn’t certain if Fluffy noticed he was going faster. He simply kept running, intending to go around the corner. Hmm, Zeb might have trouble relaying commands to him like this. But that would only be an issue once there weren’t lasers.

I ducked my head into the back. There were a handful of goons, with several blasting lasers towards our entrance. Especially the ‘bear’. Fluffy didn’t seem to mind too much. One of them had a round and flat robot clutched in her hands, lights flashing and beeping madly. On that note, Jerome hadn’t left and was peeking behind me. Slowly.

He shouted towards Rob, slowly. “Protocol 3!”

I felt Jerome gather mana. With how little it was, I assume it was a minor spell. But I was wrong in two directions. First, the spell was more insignificant than I imagined, with Rob gathering just a single point of mana on his own. Jerome was faster, so he was only slightly behind his robot familiar.

Light rose out of the top of the little guy, sticking to the face of the woman holding him. I let Jerome finish his own version, casting Light at four more of the Mod Squad. Two avoided his efforts, but two more got direct facefuls of Light. Then I yanked him back as a laser clipped him. Good thing he thought about defenses first.

I was pretty sure the Mod Squad was not supposed to be in this storage room. Rob certainly seemed to think that it was an issue. I wasn’t sure how he’d made the sound he did, but I was quite pleased with his efforts. He was making quite a lot of noise, his brush and wheels spinning full force as he seemed to be trying to wrestle himself out of his captor’s hands.

Sorority was already deep inside the room, and reached the woman a moment later. She didn’t seem to recognize Rob’s significance, however, as she completely ignored him when she tackled the woman. One of her, I mean. She split up into several parts, each of which were moving to engage in grapples. Fluffy swapped his target to the next closest Mod Squad member and was soon chewing on an arm.

We had a decent advantage already, with the Mod Squad clearly not having expected mercenaries to show up in under thirty seconds. They had probably been intending to get in and out silently, I’d imagine. Even so, I locked my eyes on the ones currently carrying boxes out a rear door and cast another spell. Several of them stopped moving entirely. No, that wasn’t quite true, but the difference in speed between Haste and Slow was enough that they might as well have not been moving at all.

My tactic was further justified compared to simply blasting one of them when some of their number tried to repeat. “Move, idiots!” I heard the shout, slurred from my point of view. No doubt the Slowed individuals were confused by how fast the others were talking.

As the pile up began at the door, I cast Grease across the threshold.

A moment later, someone punched open the wall nearby, bricks scattering. A quick reaction, and a metallic arm reached through as kicks scattered the wall further. Iron Shell? No, somewhat smaller. But clearly on a higher tier than the random Mod Squad members.