Mage Among Superheroes

As we had approached the area, Midnight had cast Energy Ward on everyone and I cast Stoneskin. Neither Shockfire nor Fluffy got Energy Ward, while Sorority had indicated she would perform fine without Stoneskin. We obviously had to protect Fluffy from physical assaults. Just because he could probably eat a metal bat given time didn’t mean it couldn’t hurt him when moving at high speed at his poor little head. I used little here as a relative term, compared to… actual bears, perhaps. He was probably the largest mole on Earth. Or at least, the largest actual mole. Molemen didn’t count, and I honestly didn’t know how big they were.

I began absorbing mana crystals. I was still confident that it was fine as long as I didn’t overuse them, which meant staying below a certain threshold in a given day and trying not to use any more for a week or so. It had been more than a couple since Mars, so I should be good to regain somewhere around twenty mana. Either slower with small, efficiently created crystals or faster with the larger ones. The total quantity appeared to be the issue when overdone.

As we entered the manhole, Fluffy sniffed his way right towards a hidden door, and Shockfire confirmed it through the electrical signals in the walls before we actually rounded the corner, and we used a small mirror to visually confirm the door. Fortunately Zeb had been able to stop Fluffy from trying to go forward and chew on wires immediately.

“We’re in position,” Sorority reported. “Shockfire ready to flood the system when other teams are ready.”

Kick grimaced. “I wish I could be confident that one of their hookups wouldn’t screw me up. I could open it properly with the right gear…”

“I could probably do it if I was there,” Fluffy said. Or rather, Zeb said from his collar. “Not that I’ve done any breaking and entering!” she said in a somewhat unconvincing manner. “It’s just mandatory training in the engineering corps. This stuff has to be less sophisticated than Celmothian tech.”

“Agreed,” Midnight said. “Unfortunately, it is that very difference that would prevent me from doing anything. I’m not really trained for that, and my suit would take too long or risk setting off alarms.”

“I could maybe tell you how to do it?” Zeb said uncertainly.

“How long would that take?” Sorority asked.

“Fifteen minutes? Maybe.”

“Risk of exposure?”

“Pretty high…” Zeb admitted. “Especially if it has cameras.”

Shockfire nodded. “I assume so. I haven’t detected any equipment at our location, but no doubt the entrance is covered with that stuff.”

We didn’t have any proper infiltrators with this team, but that was why we were one team of several. Revealing our location might actually be an advantage to others if the timing was right. Of course, Great Girl would draw a lot of attention once she was actually active as well.

I reviewed my plans for fighting Flasher. That was one of our objectives, if we happened to come across him. If we ran into Iron Shell, we were supposed to flee. None of us wanted to die.

First, limit damage. Energy Ward to block his lasers would only last so long, though he might not know that so he might delay and try to figure out what was happening. If those were his only danger I could probably repeatedly cast it and achieve pretty good efficiency. Slow would also be optimal, because throwing off his reflexes and processing would be advantageous. Then I wanted to get Dimensional Anchor in there, though if he teleported away before I got to that point it might actually be better for us.

I took a moment to discuss with Midnight. “I think you should focus on Slow. Familiar Bond is high enough that you can still cast that at maximum power.” Actually, that was true for everything we had- 10 total improvements was the maximum we were at. I’d probably spent too many upgrades on Haste at Shockwave’s insistence, but now that it was combined into Alter Time Flow it was pretty good.

“What about other enemies? Should I try to catch them as well?”

“Only if they’re immediately available,” I said. “Flasher is most important. We’ll have to hope that some of these spells work through Bunvorixian barriers as well.”

“We can always Blizzard him,” Midnight said. “Collateral damage here is fine, right?”

“... As long as we don’t hit anything structural,” I agreed. Blizzard probably wouldn’t damage walls to any significant extent, though it would make them brittle enough that anything else might be able to. And rapid freezing might still be a problem, even if it was just once. I wondered what Ice Guy would think of the spell.

It didn’t take too much longer to get the confirmation everyone was in place. Then we moved in. If what I had heard was correct, a tiny Great Girl was probably crawling through their air ducts right now- and they had to have some of those, because otherwise even the best cyborgs would suffocate in an underground base. Even if it was a self contained air purification system, it would still need ducts of some kind.

Obviously any good villain would try to make them too small for a person to crawl through, but there were capacity requirements. Thus, tiny mercenaries would be valuable. I snickered. Even better if said tiny mercenaries also had the power to shrink. I’d never say any of that to Great Girl’s face, obviously. I liked being three dimensional.

Shockfire crackled with lightning before stepping around the corner. He blasted what looked like a wall, and Fluffy charged forward, scrabbling at it. Sorority quite helpfully found an edge and began to pry it open, with just one of her.

Unlike what I expected of cyborgs, the door itself was completely tech free. Then again, automatic doors on the outside of your base were a liability for several reasons. They could lock up and be almost totally unusable for entrance or escape.

Obviously the Mod Squad knew where we were, now. Shockfire probably couldn’t hold enough juice to fry the entire system, and we didn’t know for sure if they were tapped into the local grid or not.

When the door was ripped open, Fluffy was the first through… and thus the first to get hit. The sound was atrocious, and reminded me that the Mod Squad wasn’t solely reliant on lasers. Automatic gunfire slammed into Fluffy repeatedly, causing him to angrily leap forward and try to snatch the barrel of a gatling gun in his mouth. Fortunately he didn’t try to bite it directly on, as I didn’t think Stoneskin worked on the inside. Though maybe…?

There was a horrendous sound as his teeth ground on the rapidly spinning barrel. I was surprised his teeth didn’t break, but maybe Stoneskin helped there. Or maybe it was the rust part of his name finally coming into effect. I’d seen him chew on the bits of Mod Squad members, but this was the first time I saw something actually change in real time. The spinning multi-barrel crumpled in its midsection, causing the bullets to ricochet around inside the device.

I saw what looked like a hundred years of rust all concentrated directly on the middle of the barrel. I also peeked at Fluffy’s teeth and saw they were gray. Good to know. I’d have to remind Zeb to train him to make better decisions, though. Being a Beastmaster’s pet might toughen him up, but he was still quite low level.

I had to imagine that the Fluffy took would have hurt, but he seemed pretty content as he crunched on the gatling gun for a few moments, tearing out some wires before sniffing down the hall- there were two directions we could go.

“Fluffy smells something!” Zeb said helpfully as he began to scamper off in one direction. Well, it shouldn’t hurt to go towards the greatest concentration of tasty tech, right?

“I’ll watch our back,” Sorority said, even as she immediately also moved to the front to chase after Fluffy.

This wasn’t the sort of ‘infiltration’ where we were going to be walking down the corridors to begin with. Moving at the best pace we could maintain would help us avoid getting swarmed.

Lasers blasted into the walls, reassuring me that the Mod Squad still preferred futuristic weapons. Our group was much better suited to dealing with those. The lasers immediately stopped after hitting Fluffy, and it was likely that the Mod Squad recognized him now. Unfortunately for them, it would have actually been better to keep shooting so he was busy licking laser residue off his fur. Instead, he was going to occupy himself with chewing on their delicate mechanical joints.

Kick ran up to the corner but didn’t go around, and I had to assume he had some way to target things with his leg being held up around the corner. Or maybe he assumed anything he hit would be fine, but the targeting thing was more sensible.

It was just a small group of flunkies, and they were taken out quickly. However, hearing alarms and the stomps of more feet I figured now was a good time to Haste the team. Sadly we didn’t have enough targets for Multicasting, but Midnight picked up Sorority for me. It was best for her to have the full power version anyway.

We rushed forward until we could identify part of the surroundings based off the reconstructed map- the seemingly useless Scrying on Iron Shell had paid dividends. Enough that we had some idea of where to go, and we’d actually seen the storage room with Rob.

I was second into the room, and the first to clock the two jerks who’d dismantled Rob. By which I of course meant punching them in the jaw. I also saw them first, but that was unrelated.

Whether it was the funny nerves in the jaw or a concussion, the two of them went out like lights. They didn’t have any fancy cyborg upgrades to help with that, it seemed.

Sorority began securing them- though ultimately it was faster for Fluffy to bite important parts of their cyborg bits to render them nonfunctional. If these guys weren’t in a supervillain lair it might have been considered excessive, but they should just be happy we were going for nonlethal. Mercenaries only had to do that when it was reasonable, and leaving healthy foes who might come after you from behind while you were in the middle of a raid was not reasonable.

“I found Rob!” Midnight called.

“Start scooping!” I said. “Let’s hope he counts!”

The most important piece of Rob was his chassis. All the other bits could be replaced, but his computer parts were still in there. Midnight placed his paw on the round body and… it disappeared. Good, Storage worked. With that secure, things were easier.

“Now we start yoinking any sort of alien tech,” I said.

Zeb was directing people. “That little square thing is bad! And that- okay, good job Fluffy. Can you turn your head? Those are standard laser cores but they probably shouldn’t have them. Oh! In the back corner! That’s a teleport crystal! Artificial, of course.”

I snatched it up. The moment after I threw it into Storage I wondered if it might be a bad idea to put a teleporty thing into extradimensional space, but it was totally fine. Well, it shouldn’t have been active or anything.

“He’s here!” Sorority called, spinning towards the door. “It’s Flash Circuit!”

Oh good. I was really wanting to deal with Flasher. It wasn’t that I hated losing, but he just left instead of actually defeating us.

The instant he was through the door, a laser drilled into Shockfire who was front and center. Ooh, bad choice buddy. Sure, Shockfire wasn’t that efficient at absorbing actual lasers, but… he would still come out unharmed. At least if he was prepared.

Midnight and I gathered mana together. This guy wasn’t going to know what hit him. Hopefully literally. Slowed reactions could really screw with you. And lasers suddenly stopping would probably be a bit of a surprise too. Assuming his barrier didn’t stop those things.