Mage Among Superheroes

I had nothing in particular against aliens with blue skin and shiny black eyes- actually shiny as if 'neon void' was an actual, disturbing color- but this guy was robbing a bank. That wasn't the worst sort of thing people could do, but it was very high profile.

He had just teleported onto the street, with the vault. I could tell he wanted to do that more, so I gathered mana for something I had just been practicing. Dimensional Anchor. And while that didn't always work, Multicasting it to be five instances was certainly much more capable of tripping people up. In this cast, I aimed three at the guy on the back of the vault and two at the vault itself. In the worst case scenario, the vault wouldn't be going anywhere and the guy would get away.

The bank would have to figure out how to deal with it from there, but they would hardly be able to say I didn't stop the robbery.

It almost happened. The guy nearly dodged my spell, even though it didn't look like anything. It was like he saw something- could he see magic? Dimensional… stuff? Well, they did have aura dampeners so it wasn't weird they had things that could detect powers.

Anyway, I threw three of my five beams at the guy precisely so he couldn't dodge. I just had to clip him, and I did. Sadly it was just one, but that would make any teleporting much more difficult.

It didn't seem he knew that, as he smirked and… did nothing. Ok, that wasn't true. Some devices he had attached to the vault and himself certain amped up with super tech power and then did nothing. That was about the time Great Girl vaulted over the vault, tackling him.

Grasp hadn't ever focused on the guy at all. Instead, she had beelined for the bank itself, stepping inside. A few moments later I saw a bunch of guns fly out of the building, carried by her telekinetic hands. I said they were guns, but they clearly weren't normal types. I had no idea how she stopped anyone from shooting her. How could she disable such complex- oh they had triggers. I guess she probably just held the back of the trigger in place so she didn't have to know how the rest of the guns worked, huh?

There was a reason triggers were standard, they were quite intuitive for humanoids once they got used to it. That extended to super tech like the Neon Void had. After all, super tech was just someone making something function beyond what it should, why should it be uncomfortable?

Well, there were some villains that liked having 'unique activation methods'. Most of them were just copycatting Doctor Doomsday who actually had a good reason to make his stuff harder to use.

I was able to think about this stuff a lot because Great Girl was already holding onto a guy who couldn't teleport. Besides, he was already on the opposite side of the vault. I did move around to make sure I could take a look inside in case Grasp needed backup, and Great Girl might have.

But she had already disarmed the guy and was choking him out. It didn't take too long before Grasp was carting out various thugs- mostly humans, which was typical. It would be strange if the Neon Void were entirely aliens from Venzul Prime. There weren't a whole lot of aliens who could consistently get to Earth except for Martians. Though I heard that maybe there were some reclusive aliens from other planets in the Solar System.

The guy looked really mad about not being able to teleport, but it might have been the neck constriction that was causing his coloration. He was lucky that Mono hadn't needed to do anything to him. I did learn later that Mono had targeted a few thugs that ran out the back alley- like we had anticipated- but obviously I didn't hear anything at the time.

As the guy began to slump over, I started looking over various devices he was holding. "I should toss some of these in Storage in case they try to explode." I couldn't necessarily react to things fast enough to stop it after there was a change, so I just grabbed everything that felt the most dangerous. More power meant more danger, and that was true of super tech. Maybe not actual advanced tech, but super tech that had to break more rules to work needed more power, though it varied by the creator's affinity.

Normally, we would go right back to our patrols. This time, especially because of Great Girl, we got held up. Lots of people wanted her autograph. A couple people wanted mine. Midnight was a bit more popular than me, because people liked cats and watching him sign things with magic or his battle suit's graspers. Grasp had a longer career than me, even if she wasn't the face of the squad, so she was in between. Mono kept up a mysterious image, so unless anyone could fly up to the roof he was free from autograph duties.

At some point, a monster crawled out of the bank. Of course, properly discerning threats was an important part of mercenary training. Since this monster was wearing things vaguely resembling a suit and tie and none of the bank personnel were panicking, I figured the six legged hairy beast belonged. It must be hard to be so divergent, since some people already hated me and I was human shaped.

"Excuse me." The individual spoke English with an accent- which was pretty impressive for the lack of standard anatomy. He was clearly addressing Great Girl, while Midnight and I just happened to be nearby. "I am the bank manager. Could you help put the vault… back?"

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Great Girl smiled pleasantly. I knew her well enough to know that was the sort that she used when people were being stupid. "Unless you want me to knock a hole in your building, I believe that will be impossible. However… I can at least move it off the street. Should save you some trouble for later."

"Umm, yes. That would be great."

Great Girl gave me a meaningful look. I had no problems with improving her image by helping her out a little. Of the options I had, she probably would have asked for Enlarge. Her exact maximum height wasn't public, but people had seen me do that enough to understand what was happening. I inferred she wanted a physical Enhance.

"Alright, everyone back away! I'll set it beside the doors for now. There's nothing in here that can't be jostled a little, is there?" She asked the bank manager.

"There… shouldn't be."

"Good enough, then." Great Girl stretched to near her maximum size, squatting down carefully as she slipped her fingers under the armored vault. It really was just a whole room that had been taken away. It was heavy. Even Great Girl staggered during her few steps, but we kept everyone well clear of her path as she 'gently' set it down in the small plaza in front of the bank. Even if we could teleport it back into place they probably couldn't expect the repairs to be easy, but that wasn't our problem. That was for them and their super insurance to deal with.

The crowds eventually thinned out, and a squad from Extra came to pick people up. Most of the thugs would probably eventually be transported into the care of municipal police- but with an alien involved it was Extra's jurisdiction. Though since the Neon Void used super tech, it wasn't like they were particularly more qualified than the police forces rated for supernatural matters.

I recognized the one to show up. An angel- but not Malaliel. Instead, it was… Inasyah? I didn't remember that- she just had a name badge. She had been infected with Lycanthropy because of Great Girl. Nobody would have known that based on the way they acted.

"Yo, Inasyah!" Great Girl waved. "How's it going?"

"I'm doing fine, thank you. What's the problem here?" she looked around. I gestured to the devices. "Super tech, huh," she commented. "Any others?" she gestured to the ones taken off the vault- I was pretty sure those weren't dangerous, so I'd left them out of Storage.

"I'm holding onto a bunch," I said. "I can come with you to drop them off."

-----

Half of the stuff blew up, but only in the normal way super tech did. People trying to keep others from dissecting it and figuring out weaknesses, that sort of thing. Some of it was clearly too expensive to explode, though, so we retrieved those pieces from the containment units I was dropping stuff into one by one. I was asked for my professional assessment of what things did, so I did my best with Arcane Sight.

If the stuff was actual advanced tech, it would do nothing. How funny.

"This seems to be the main part of the teleportation stuff," I said, commenting on a disc about a quarter inch thick. "It's got a bit of spatial stuff, but it's mostly a controller of some sort." There were a bunch of buttons someone else would have to figure out. Extra didn't actually need me, I just happened to be there.

Midnight and I waited a bit and…

"How rude," I said. "No ambushes today either."

Midnight shrugged, "It's not like we can expect our enemies to be ready every day of the week, can we?"

They could have come after us- not at Extra HQ but potentially on the way. Alternatively, they could have gone after Great Girl- we were ready to Teleport back for that. I had a sweeping video recording of the area, to make up for lack of actual familiarity. Eventually, I might get good enough with the streets of New Bay to Teleport everywhere. I hadn't been interested in such memorization before, but it might be useful.

Most people shouldn't be aware I could Teleport within the city- interdimensional travel didn't necessarily have anything to do with other things. It wasn't impossible for people to guess I had it, but keeping it mysterious should actually cause people more trouble than if they actually knew. Planning around things I might be able to do would make people's lives difficult. There were a few benefits to frequently showing up with new powers.

I sighed. "Maybe it will work next time." This wasn't our only plan, of course, but it would be preferable to draw people to us instead of fighting them in their base. Then again, we could bring more forces to a secret base if we were certain it existed. As long as we didn't have to put together a team on short notice, the Power Brigade had plenty of forces even without outsourcing to other mercenary groups or worse heroes.

Heroes were fine, really. People like Darkstargirl were more the exception. However, they were supposed to hire us instead of us needing to ask for their help. I personally didn't end up working with heroes very often- at least not in organized scenarios instead of spontaneous events- but that was probably a coincidence. Sure, I was indirectly responsible for the fall of one of their most prominent people but that was really their problem. I would never have had a problem with Stargirl if she wasn't terrible to me first. Well, or to people in general.

The toy companies might have hated me more than the heroes association, though. Might have because it was easier to get away with not paying a supervillain for their image. Obviously there were risks for that, but even most petty villains didn't have time to break into toy factories.

"What should we try next, you think?" I asked Midnight.

"Some more irregular Scrying," he suggested. "We can also look for members of the Mod Squad who get picked up for anything and try to use them as a conduit or something."

We had no idea if that would work, of course, but it might be worth trying. Then again, we couldn't bring them into the Scrying Chamber. One good kick and a meter cube of perfect diamond would shatter, and the city would not be happy if Vilhelmiina caused blackouts again to make another one. Assuming she was even willing.