Mage Among Superheroes

Dozens of lasers focused in on Fluffy, all at the same time. They hit him everywhere- head, neck, chest, and even his forelimbs and paws.

Fluffy was ecstatic, his tongue flailing everywhere as he began to lick up the laser residue that his fur created. I still had no idea how that worked and while there was a maximum amount he could safely absorb, each of Rodentia's minions were fairly low power on their own.

Rodentia was yelling behind her, presumably at her robotic minions which didn't need verbal orders. "Well if they're not coming, set out the bait!" Her head snapped back. "Hey! That mole thing is still fine. What were you guys doing?" Her eyes narrowed behind the mask as she looked at me. "It was you, wasn't it!"

No. It was not. Fluffy was a rust mole, but I didn't need to inform a super tech individual as to the weaknesses of our current team.

"You'll never find out!" I said. "Today, we'll be bringing you in."

Or not. Rodentia was pretty slippery, so just driving her off was usually sufficient.

Today we seemed to have an advantage, as Zeb's many squirrels were attacking Rodentia's robots, but weren't getting attacked in return. I supposed she actually meant what she said about not attacking the squirrels. Unfortunately, even if they could take down a few at a time quite consistently, Rodentia's swarm was rather absurd in size. She even had more inside- along with… some that had weird powers. Actually wait…

"Everyone, brace yourselves for trouble!" I said. "There's something big incoming!"

There were hundreds, no, thousands of powered individuals just out of sight. Who could say exactly how powerful- oh they were just mice.

"... the mice?" Midnight asked as mice chased after some of Rodentia's rat robots.

"Don't underestimate them!" I said.

I considered my nonlethal options. I had so many that I could use on a large group of foes, you know. Like, uh, powering down wide area spells. And maybe something else.

It wasn't my fault. Normally I fought humans, or things as durable as humans. I had a pretty good sense of how hard I could blast them. Mice were… not the norm.

So I tossed Grease at them. Clearly, that was the sensible solution. Presuming these mice came from the labs, they'd want them back unharmed. I just forgot my own caution. Or rather, I hadn't expected quite the results I got.

Dozens of mice suddenly flew into the sky- some with wings, some by glowing with various sorts of energy. Many more suddenly dashed forward, out of the area. Then there were the splitters. Nobody should have made mice into splitters. A few dozen mice suddenly became a few hundred, a few thousand, tens of thousands of mice that poured over the entire area of grease, climbing over each other rather than touching the ground.

That forced others into the ground, which cause some of them to tear up the concrete with what I could only assume were both stone kinesis and bruiser powers. Then came the pyromancers and, well… it was chaos. A few moments later, the thousand or so base mice had exploded out in all different directions, scattering over a thirty foot wide area. The vast majority of them appeared to be healthy still.

Some of them turned to flee- the speedsters might have already escaped the compound. The fliers would soon. Funnily enough, the teleporters might be slower. Oh yes, they had a few of those- I could feel the spatial distortions. I also couldn't do anything about it.

I was more concerned about the small portion that was rushing towards us, as if we were the source of the problem. Some of the mice also turned on Rodentia's minions, not really understanding what was going on.

I threw out the first thing that came to my mind when dealing with a large variety of powers. I just wanted to stop it. Dispel should hopefully be valuable, as I just threw out a bunch of antimagic. Or anti-ability, as the case was.

Dispel was generic and because of that not particularly powerful- but each mouse seemed pretty individually weak. I actually managed to blast about half of those coming towards us- the middle chunk- momentarily disrupting their abilities. Which meant there were still a bunch of mice running, but generally much more slowly for the moment.

Something bit my ankle- from outside my suit. So it didn't really hurt, but I rapidly noticed a string of bites climbing up my side. I kicked my leg, sending something flying.

Zeb's squirrels began to combat the first wave of mice.

"Be nice to the mice!" Zeb yelled. Her words probably didn't matter, but her intentions were properly conveyed. Her various squirrels didn't begin to cuddle the mice or anything, but they resorted more to tail slaps brushing them away rather than chomping them- which they had absolutely been doing to the robots.

Midnight had coated himself in ultra-weak Shocking Grasp, which I copied a few moments later. Less than a point of mana, and not meant to affect a single target but disperse over time. A perfect solution, especially for him. I also noticed his suit molding around some of the paws of the super mice climbing onto him, keeping them in place. Adaptive nanotech was so neat, I needed to snag more stuff like that. And it would be totally fine because I was best buddies with a Celmothian.

Fluffy was having trouble, though his fur was dense enough the mice really couldn't do much. Mostly, he was running around chomping robot rats while ignoring the mice, since that was something he could do.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Jim was psychic blasting groups of mice… gently. He was erring on the side of caution, so most of them were just getting pushed around a little or becoming unsteady on their feet for a moment. His actual body was more accessible than mine, with various tentacles shoved into the bottom of his suit. But the mice only ever tried to bite him once or twice. Maybe he tasted really bad.

Rodentia was still around. "I won't let them treat you like lab rats!" Presumably, she was yelling at all the mice. Lab mice were more common, in my understanding. They were smaller and had faster life cycles. "Go, run free!" She gestured grandly. "Stop biting me!"

They did not stop biting her- though the vast majority of them were ineffective. For example, the speedster mice certainly could get in a lot of bites, but they weren't actually any stronger. Her shields could handle bullet, so tiny teeth wasn't an issue. Though there were a few mice that seemed to be troublesome- both for her and for me.

One of them grabbed my shoe and tossed me… just like a foot, but the fact that it could move all of me was exceptional. I made sure to snatch that one up with Mage's Reach, grabbing it around its midsection. A tiny bit of mana to shut off just one mouse's power, and then I had to find somewhere to set it. Shouldn't the lab have cages? For the moment, I tossed it into a water fountain in the middle of the plaza we were fighting in.

Then I summoned Ignis. "Get rid of all that water!" I said. "And toss as many mice in there as you can. Alive and as healthy as possible."

Ignis saluted. He was just his little form. Well, all of them were equally little. His minor form, with no moustache or hat. Moving around water would still be easy enough, and it was about half the cost. It would have been less than that, but with Advanced Spatial Magic subsuming basic they now had the same upgrades.

Hmm. Speaking of Advanced Spatial Magic, maybe I could do something here. Thirteen mana appeared to be the limit for such a task, but I could improvise something useful. What I wanted was something like Dimension Door… but both more and less. I needed to move a lot of mice all at once. Were they reasonably 'one thing'? Not at all. But some spells had limits not based on total individuals, but total amount- sometimes larger individuals counted for more.

I waved my arm and… about half of the mice in the area I had intended were teleported into the rapidly emptying fountain. The other half I either had failed to properly include or they resisted the pull- without direct contact, it was hard to forcibly teleport things. Even mice with relatively weak wills were able to resist, which was kind of embarrassing. Or maybe I'd hit my total limit for the amount of mana I used- though if we were going by mass I got maybe two humans worth so that was unlikely.

"HQ, warn the city that there is an ongoing outbreak of superpowered mice from Super Labs," I found the time to give a few details as I assessed the ongoing situation. I grabbed a few flying mice with my ongoing Mage's Reach spell. I apparently should have brought some plastic tubs with me today, not like I could have known this was going to happen. Individually negating mice power was a pain, and it wasn't going to last more than a couple minutes at best.

"I declare victory!" Rodentia said. "See the freedom I have achieved!"

"Yeah, we're going to have to-" before I could even tell her we were bringing her in, a giant drill- about six feet high and three across- fell out of the sky and crashed into the plaza. Somehow, it peacefully pushed away rats, mice, and squirrels- though Fluffy was near the impact and was sent tumbling with a pained yelp.

I was gathering mana for some sort of attack when the drill instantly started, throwing huge chunks of rock into the sky and rapidly descending. Rodentia had already leapt onto it.

I had one shot. If I maximized my power, I could probably obliterate it… but I might also damage the facility around us. Also, kill Rodentia- and she hadn't done anything worthy of death. Then again, maybe her adaptive RAT shielding would save her. I went for a Sonic Lance, beyond its normal maximum power but less than the theoretical limit I would have had with Advanced Energy Magic. Both for safety and to maintain plausible power deniability.

It blasted her off course- Instead of going straight down, I tilted the entire drill about thirty degrees. She still zipped into the ground, but instead of going straight down she angled through the ground beneath me. I could feel it, even as her rats swarmed in after her. And a few mice, but they might have just been lost.

"We have to contain the mice!" I declared. "Catch as many as you can!"

Chasing supervillains through the ground was only a good idea if we had the right powers, which we didn't. And the public was in danger. They didn't have mousebite proof clothing.

-----

It took a couple hours to catch all of the remaining mice on the lab grounds. For some reason, the Lab Head was really upset that we tried to help them. I didn't quite catch his name. Louis or Larry or Loser or something like that. Anyway, he complained about being tied up for two hours, and how we didn't protect them, and a million other things.

He had no fear for supers, apparently.

But then the auditors showed up, and he instantly paled.

It wasn't my problem if they ate him, or whatever he thought they were going to do. He was the one who only had a single non-powered security guard at a lab involved with power experimentation. I was pretty sure that giving thousands of mice powers was something that required bigger permits than he had.

"This one is named Squirrley!" Zeb said enthusiastically. Probably nobody would notice if one or two superpowered mice disappeared from the bunch.

"... Is that even a lab mouse?" I asked.

"I think she's a shapeshifter," Zeb explained. "That's why she looks like a dormouse right now! It's so cute!"

"I see."

I kind of got it. But I wasn't sure if Zeb could actually form a companion bond with super mice. Maybe if they were weak enough it wouldn't count?

Mostly, I was thinking about how we could have handled Rodentia better. The mice had been a confounding factor that took too much of our focus, but without them- or even before them- we might have had an opportunity to batter Rodentia herself. She might have responded with some weird cheese ray or something if she felt threatened, but surely we could have caused some damage. She was always weirdly strong, and she knew how to run. Maybe I should always just toss Slow at her, though I imagine she'd develop temporal shielding pretty quickly so we'd have to catch her sooner rather than later.

The whole thing had been a decent scrap, but I would have liked more experience. At least Rodentia was often fresh enough to be worth good experience every time. Fully defeating her would be pretty great- and based on the track record of various holding facilities, she might break out to be fought again. I felt like they had been particularly bad as of late, but maybe they were always bad. Someone should check those statistics. Maybe when Calculator wasn't busy. Hah.