Mage Among Superheroes

The Portal Squad was a pretty balanced group with utility members, support, and combat focused individuals. They might not stay as a squad forever, but having trained together they were acting as one of the newbie squads. They weren't that new anymore, but it was possible for new recruits to spend over a year in such positions. Midnight and I didn't end up in that situation due to my rapid growth from Aspect of the Barbarian and generally just getting involved with a lot of incidents.

Plus I wasn't able to maintain a permanent position in a squad with frequent extradimensional travel, some intentional and some not. I just ended up around a lot of things where I had to be away from Earth for days or more. Now I could more reliably return from pretty much anywhere, but even when we'd ended up on Bunvorix there had been reasons that kept us longer than absolutely necessary.

Ultimately, Midnight and I had been patrolling with the Portal Squad for the last week. The name might not stick forever because there were more people with the same origin trickling in, though they weren't fortunate enough to have unlocked points. Extra would probably be miffed if I suggested they pass through Rocky's portal without reason. That was fine, because the Brigade was interested in seeing what people could do with pure training. I rarely gave any direct advice to people outside of the Portal Squad, because most of their questions had already been answered.

Most patrols were boring by design. We were meant to show our faces to discourage villains from causing trouble and to remind civilians that we were there to protect them. Villains caused trouble throughout New Bay every day, but New Bay was huge. The number of petty criminals was fairly high as well… though anyone without powers didn't tend to last long unless they linked up with a proper villain to run things, becoming a minion.

Villains weren't always successful either. Heroes dealt with the most public problems if they could, while mercenaries picked up whatever trouble fell through the cracks. Supervillains could make a modest living if they were conservative and had a team with good powers, but they usually got greedy and stretched too far for their own good.

Today we were dealing with someone that wasn't going to last. Her power was interesting, but not good. She was a second rate villain, so second rate that what she did was only sort of illegal.

No, it was fully illegal. It was only somewhat villainous and entirely pointless.

"What's her name again?" I asked Midnight.

"Conflagration."

Right. So Fire Lady was one of those villains that almost definitely fell under the mentally ill category. Not psychopathy. Not even pyromania, really. Just not… right.

I took another shot with Water Blast. It struck a floating ball of fire and sizzled, putting it out.

That was what Fire Lady did. She left behind fist sized balls of fire that just… burned. She didn't set things on fire most of the time. If she did, it seemed more of a coincidence that they happened to be too near to where she happened to want to place one of the orbs.

The problem came in that her placement was often along city streets. Sidewalks sometimes, where civilians walking along could pretty easily spot the trouble and walk around. Other times she left them in the middle of the street. Or rather, in crosswalks because she seemed to properly follow the rules of the road. There, pedestrians or cars could accidentally run into the balls of fire which were quite hot. Brushing too close could set alight hair or clothes, running directly into one could crack windshields or cause heavy burns.

Midnight blasted the next one. Then it was Bolster's turn. She had less power in her Water Blast and a bit less accuracy, barely failing to take out the orb. It was much diminished, but Honey Badger had to disperse it with his weapon. It might be possible for him to use his Bunvorixian enhanced axe to slap it away. The reason he didn't exclusively handle them was a concern about his weapon overheating.

Nobody knew what problems that could cause with Bunvorixian technology. It wouldn't be easy to repair, probably requiring tech supers. Furthermore, if he failed to destroy an orb he might move one around and we really didn't want to end up knocking one into a nearby building and setting it alight. Nor did we want to pay for street repairs.

The thing about Fire Lady was that she left an obvious trail. We just had to maintain a faster pace than her and we would eventually catch up to her. Or she would stop setting the air on fire at some point, but that didn't seem to be something she did.

There had been numerous previous incidents with her in our data, but she was difficult to actually catch. If we could at least tire her out, we would be alright. As for Fire Lady herself, she often used a disguise to blend into the crowd instead of openly causing villainy. It honestly seemed as if she didn't care about anyone else. She didn't want to hurt anyone, but she also didn't not want to hurt them. Or at least that was my interpretation.

"Ugh," Bolster complained. "I can't believe she can make fire that just lasts forever. Shouldn't it run out of energy?"

I shrugged. "It's not that weird. Well, I guess it's weird that it's hot but endless flames are nothing new."

Bolster looked over at me. "What do you mean?"

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"Well, we could create a Continual Flame if we wanted. But since it outputs light it's still constantly releasing energy, the heat is just a higher intensity. So it's just a strong version of that, really."

"But we can put it out," she said. "It clearly doesn't have infinite energy. No, that would be absurd to begin with."

"I think Continual Flame draws on ambient mana. If the spell is disrupted that connection unravels. It's the same thing here, maybe."

"Maybe?"

"If there's one out of the way we can leave it for study. But we don't really have time to stop and look."

I wondered if I could put one in Storage. Unfortunately, I had flammable stuff in there and didn't want to learn the hard way that it worked… too well. It might. I should test that later. Maybe I could make separate spaces.

We moved along at a brisk walk, just short of a jog. Fire Lady's path was inconsistent and full of zig-zags. We didn't want to miss something, and since it was day looking for the light produced wasn't that useful.

It was a good chance for people to practice their power sensing. It would be a great training exercise, but if people missed one I had to go grab it. I shaped my Water Blast to be a wider spray, annihilating another burning spot.

I wondered what I needed to do to get an elemental mastery, if such a thing existed. If I had the choice between individual elements and a combined one, I'd absolutely go for the latter. I was only slightly partial towards lightning. My hair could be ignored, because that came about from using Shocking Grasp at extremely low power. A spark of fire could still burn down a shop. A tiny zap was just an annoyance.

It was probably good I hadn't known I could get experience from breaking stuff or I might have damaged a lot of the forest. Even as a kid I'd generally been wise enough not to cause a wildfire, but I could have still caused a lot of damage.

… Was it possible to break dirt? It was a very serious question I had that would matter probably precisely once. I couldn't imagine getting much repeated experience for that, if any.

I sensed Fire Lady now. However, I didn't inform anyone just yet. If someone else could sense her that would be good, and we didn't want to spook her off. They should be able to pick her out from the patterns of the surrounding civilians. We hadn't evacuated the area because we didn't even know what area to cover before now. It was a big project. Random citizens of New Bay were all smart enough not to touch floating fires by now.

There was a scream of pain from up ahead.

Twirl reacted first. "Someone's hurt!" He dashed off, easily slipping past people on the sidewalk.

Okay, most random citizens were smart enough for that. Maybe whoever that was thought they might get a power from the random flame. It did work out once in a while.

I cast Haste on most of us, snagging Twirl as he ran off. Bolster got herself and her brother. It wasn't the most efficient, but there wasn't any optimally efficient mix with the numbers we had. I would have to have vastly more proficiency in Multicasting to hit seven distinct targets- counting Midnight and myself as one, of course. Something like 15 upgrades where I had 6, and they couldn't be bought with points.

We already had Energy Ward going, so we rushed forward after Twirl. I left Midnight to catch the lingering flames, as he was probably the next best after me at finding them at the moment.

I apologized in my mind to the old lady who wasn't entirely at fault for getting burned by the fire. There was a ring of people standing around looking at one of the flames, and from what I could tell she'd been jostled into it. Well, she hadn't had to stand close to the flame though.

But it was Bandage's job to fix her. She wasn't on fire or anything, so I put out the fire and left the cleric to that. Twirl was trying to catch Fire Lady but I don't think he'd actually spotted her. However, he did a good job of intuiting the direction she was fleeing in.

"Out of the way!" Boom called. His powers weren't much good for putting out fires, but he could be loud. "Power Brigade coming through! Please step to the sides of the walkway!"

I wasn't sure if it was magic or not, but people actually listened. It was magic that his voice went far without being overly loud for those up close.

I thought about tossing a Grease spell in the area of the fleeing villain, but decided against it. I wasn't completely confident I could be accurate, and I would need it to be large scale. If I couldn't also make it non-flammable, it would be a terrible idea.

Instead, I followed after Twirl who almost bypassed the villain. Then he pivoted, holding out his electrical baton. He should have just hit her, but maybe he wasn't confident she was Fire Lady.

Until she leapt back and created a giant wall of fire out in the street. I had the choice between chasing after her by following a trail of angry honking cars or putting out the fire.

It only took a couple moments to reach the fire. I carefully tuned a Blizzard to be widespread but weak. A few people got frosty eyebrows, but the wall of fire went out. With Haste, it should be easy for myself and Twirl to catch up to Fire Lady. Except…

"I lost Conflagration," Twirl said. "Do you have her?"

I didn't. "Her power signature disappeared." That was odd. It shouldn't be so easy. "Did you catch what Fire Lady was wearing?"

"Umm, a coat and striped shirt? Civilian clothing," Twirl shrugged.

I pulled out my phone. I didn't unlock the screen, though. Instead, I used the dark reflective surface as a medium for Scrying. I wondered if I could take a screen recording… but that would require the system in the phone to actually be displaying things. Maybe with a special piece of tech. For the moment, "Record this," I ordered Twirl.

The swirling mists parted easily to a woman panting. She reversed her jacket, changing to an entirely different color, and put on a beanie. It wasn't cold enough to need one, but it wasn't hot enough that it would stand out.

I caught a street sign as I swiveled about the viewing area. "Got her. I'm going to try to maintain this. I'll cast Disguise on us, and maybe we can finally catch her."