Crow and I continued our patrol for another two hours before I finally had to go fulfill my other duties. We passed the patrol baton on to Manpower and Laserdream while Crow found a nice tall building from which to keep watch. From there, she could see and hear a lot of what was happening in the area, including keeping an eye on our teammates. Both Manpower and Laserdream were warned that we felt something was happening, most likely soon, and they both agreed to signal for help from Crow if they needed it.

I teleported to the hospital, where I was greeted by a relatively busy day, only made more busy when a car accident brought several people in need of emergency healing. Thankfully, no one was killed, but there was a young boy who got awfully close to changing that. The Doctors did a wonderful job stabilizing him until I could get to him, and I put him back together again. I pointed out that, in the future, that was exactly the kind of emergency they should call me in on, especially now that I was only a single teleport away.

When I finished with the hospital, I teleported to the PRT. As usual, I was promptly escorted to the small hospital inside the building, where I was met with the usual group of PRT agents as well as Kid Win, who was in costume. The young tinker perked up a bit as I walked in, but any attention I got was quickly swept to my golems as they followed in behind me.

"Are those your golems?" He asked as I approached his bed, focusing on the injured kid first. He winced after he realized what he just asked, mumbling self-deprecatingly until I cut in.

"They are my golems, my newest version in fact," I answered with a smile. "What do you think?"

"I think they confuse me and Armsmaster," He admitted, watching as one of them stepped to the side to let a nurse through. "We couldn't make heads or tales of the one you gave to us."

"Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think our styles of tinkering line up very well," I responded with a smile. "I bet I have all sorts of people scratching their heads."

"Uh... no comment?"

"Good answer," I said with a chuckle before looking the Ward over. "Alright, so what's got you here instead of school?"

Kid Win winced and rubbed the back of his head before pulling his other hand out from under the blanket, revealing a pretty significant amount of bandaging on it. I could see a minor amount of swelling and some redness peeking out from around the bandages.

"Well… I went into a tinker fugue last night working on a new power source for my- well, for some of my gear," he explained. "An alarm went off for a security check and startled me out of it when I was heating something up. I ended up splashing some of it onto my hand."

"Hmm, okay, shouldn't be an issue, as long as the material wasn't anything exotic?" I asked, smiling when he shook his head. "Great. I'm gonna start by numbing your hand, then we can remove your bandages, then I'll do a scan. Once that's done, I can most likely heal you up. If not, I can at least keep you numb so you aren't in any pain, much better than popping pills, and I can be a lot more specific about what is being numbed."

After he nodded in confirmation, I got to work, following the exact outline I had just given the kid, starting numbing his hand and taking off the bandages. One of the nurses stopped by to help me with that, which helped speed things up. His hand looked more than a little rough, with some significant damage done to his palm and fingers. Without Panacea or me getting involved, he was looking at at least a three-week recovery time, with some not-so-fun physical therapy to keep the scar tissue pliable. Thankfully, I was able to heal the kid completely, casting a couple of spells to wipe the damage away like it never existed. I finished off with a general healing spell to make sure everything was cleared up before nodding.

"Alright, you are fully healed," I said with a smile and a nod. "Just let me remove the numbing effect. It would have faded on its own in about an hour, but there's no reason to make you wait...

I snapped my fingers, mostly for dramatic effect, and the numbing spell fell away a golden sparkle. Noticing the sparkle, Kid Win looked down at his hand, the feeling slowly returning to it, now with absolutely no pain.

"Thank you, Arcanum... that was interesting to watch. Your powers really picked a theme, didn't they?" He pointed out, squeezing and making a fist with his hands, testing his newly healed limbs.

"They very much did, but I'm having fun with them, so I can hardly complain," I admitted with a smirk. "It was good to meet you, Kid Win. Stay safe, and maybe consider some safety procedures that will prevent this from happening next time."

He snorted and nodded, still experimenting with his hand, before I continued on, moving to my next patient, a trooper with a concussion from a training exercise. It was a pretty mild concussion, my scan barely picking up on anything. Still, concussions were no joke, and repeat concussions, even minor ones, were dangerous.

I was just finishing up my scanning spell when my cell rang, and my stomach dropped out just a bit. Very few people had my number, and I had just left one of them by herself to keep an eye on a potentially violent situation. I cursed and picked up the phone, Crow's anxious voice instantly coming through.

"Arc, it's happening," She shouted, catching the attention of a few nurses. Manpower and Laserdream just found a good-sized group of Merchant thugs, but I'm seeing a couple of groups in total. There's a whole moving through the streets."

"Sit tight. I'm coming to you," I responded, wordlessly casting a general healing spell that should be more than enough to fix the PRT agent's minor concussion.

"Take it easy for a few days. You should be fine," I warned the agent before pulling my coiled staff out from under my overcoat. "I'll be back to finish healing eventually. Looks like Merchants are making their move on ABB territory."

I stepped away from the PRT agent's bed, mentally pulling my spellbook from my hip and unwrapping my coiled staff to its fully extended form. I took a deep breath and began chanting, knowing fully well this was the closest look the PRT had gotten to my high-level magic. In a flash, I was once again standing on the building I had left Crow on, the cloaked cape peering over the edge of the roof to watch.

"Okay, so Laserdream and Manpower are still working on their group still, but they seem to have that handled. "But there is a group to the north that is significantly bigger. I say we focus there and clean up later."

"Done and done. PRT should know what's going on soon anyway," I added. "We might get an assist from them… but don't hold your breath."

As we talked, Crow pointed out the large group she was talking about. It took me a moment to spot them, but sure enough, as they crossed an intersection, I caught a flash of several large vehicles and a flash of yellow.

The constant horn honking and gunfire was also a dead giveaway.

"Okay, take my hand, I'll get us close."

She nodded, stood, and grabbed my hand while my golems reached out and gripped my shoulders and forearms. Again I teleported, this time ahead of the caravan of vehicles that I had spotted and Crow had been tracking. Looking down from the building I had landed us on, I could see the vehicles clearly now, heading directly towards us.

Four armored trucks drove in formation with what could only be called the school bus from hell. Half of the trucks were armed with machine guns and plated with scrap, but the bus was something special. Its wheels were replaced with tank treads, with rusty metal spikes running along the sides. I could see two turrets on it, as well as plenty of slots to shoot out from in the armor. Its paint job was crude, and it somehow managed to look ramshackle and sturdy at the same time.

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"Alpha, Beta, go stop the forward trucks, Gamma, Delta, disable the bus," I ordered, and all four of my golems moved, vaulting off of the building and running forward.

"I'll head down to pick off any runners and keep them contained," Crow said, pulling out a crowbar and following after the golems, though she dropped into the alleyway and out of sight, probably looking for shadows to blend into.

"I'll give you some cover," I called out after her, the pages of my spellbook flipping over, quickly settling on a spell.

"Fumus et umbra caelum colligant, colligant et praebeant operculum, terram a luce tueantur, terram tenebrarum inferna contegant. Tenebras, umbram tene, donec te ab hoc loco depellam."

As I chanted, I raised my staff, slowly swirling it in the air in a circular motion. After a few rounds, a glowing black circle appeared, following the line I drew, before four arcane sigils appeared inside. As I finished the last words, I thrust the staff through the circle, and like a punctured balloon, thick, black smoke poured through the hole. It shot up into the air and quickly formed a swirling and billowing barrier between the sun's light and the ground, almost drinking it in and spreading heavy shadows along the ground. I could hear Crow's laughter as she faded away, disappearing into the ample cover.

Meanwhile, as I cast my spell, I watched as my golems intercepted the vehicles, following my orders. Alpha and Beta ran straight towards their targets, bullets pinging off their metal bodies, barely leaving scratches as the Merchants tried to take them down, right up until the shiny golems slammed into the front end of the trucks. They were thrown back, of course, but not before absolutely decimating the vehicles. When they landed from the collision, Alpha and Beta just stood up and dusted themselves off. The trucks, however, looked like they had slammed into telephone poles.

Perhaps it was my difference in wording, but Gamma and Delta took a very different approach, instead running down along the sidewalks, passing by Alpha and Beta. They then cut in after the trucks before undercutting the bus, systematically tearing the treads off completely. It skidded and sparked to a stop, just pushing one of the totaled trucks to the side as it did.

I clipped my staff along the ground, quick cast a spell, and brought the gold-imbued amethyst crystal of my staff to my mouth, a pale yellow circle growing just above the pointed tip. As I spoke, a wavelength bounced up and down inside the circle as a pair of arcane symbols slowly spun around it.

"Merchants! Surrender now before we are forced to pacify you forcefully," I ordered, my voice amplified to reverberate over the street. "If you surrender, you will not be harmed. Again, this-"

Before I could repeat myself, I spotted movement on the top of the bus. The emergency escape hatch opened, and rather than a person, a large object was pushed out and locked forward. My brain barely recognized it as vaguely cannon-shaped when Alya shouted in my ear.

"GET DOWN"

I flung myself forward, off of the roof, just in time for a spherical object, a fucking bowling ball, to whistle through the air just where I had just been standing. It continued on to slam into the building behind me, punching through at least the first layer of brickwork before I was too far down to see it anymore.

I continued to fall before managing to get my feet under me and conjure a platform using my boots, burning off my momentum and leaping forward, away from the building. I conjured a second and third, jumping forward with each one until I was only about twenty or thirty feet from trashed trucks.

"Golems, disable weapons on the trucks and focus on apprehending any Merchants who fight back!" I called out, and all four of the golems were moving immediately. "Leave the capes to me!"

The golems ignored the few Merchants climbing out of the ruined trucks, as they were stumbling and clearly not in the fight. Instead, they began smashing and tearing at the truck, disabling the weapons before running back to the other trucks, which had stopped behind the bus as the caravan came to an abrupt stop.

As they were disabling the truck weapons and Merchants, more of the gangsters poured out of the bus, armed with pistols, cheap hunting rifles, and shotguns. I saw two military-esque rifles, and neither of them looked to be in good condition. Half of the gangers seemed to have the shakes, and two of them were facing the wrong direction.

Finally, someone else came out of the bus, shoving and pushing to get in front of the crowd, knocking a few people over in the process. A cape, presumedly Skidmark, with a blue mask covering the top half of his head and a blue shirt and black jeans, all of it covered in stains and tears, started immediately cursing at me.

"Who the fuck are you, shit licker!? You mother fucker, shouting at us an-"

He didn't get to finish, as while he wanted to run his mouth, my golems had no such desire. Screams and gunshots echoed from behind him as the goons in the trucks tried and failed to fight my support off. Hearing his men getting pummeled while he was trying to monologue did not sit well with the drug-addled cape, his face going dark.

"You fucking jizz sucking shit pusher!" He shouted. "Squealer! Paste this piece of shit!"

I could hear the internals of the bus shifting and clunking before the bowling ball cannon raised up slightly and aimed down at me. Not willing to wait and see if I could dodge the next shot now that I was closer. I aimed my staff at the turret and quickly chanted.

"Fulgura meum!"

The powerful blast of electricity, at one point my most powerful lightning spell, now ridiculously easier to cast with two levels in quick cast, fired off from my staff. The beam was even more powerful than usual, focused and fired from a proper arcane focus. The sparking bolt of electricity slammed into the turret with enough force to wrench it off target. The energy sparked and cracked between the weapon and the rest of the vehicle, sending out showers of pyrotechnics as the electricity did its damage.

Then the cannon exploded upward, its ammo or charge cooking off and rending a considerable portion of the weapon off and tossing it to the sidewalk. When the final piece of the cannon scattered across the ground, I lowered my staff, aiming it directly at the large crowd that had pulled in around Skidmark.

The two facing the wrong direction had even managed to get spun around and were now facing the right direction, though neither of them were focused on me.

"Right. Anyone willing to surrender now?" I asked my staff, who was at the ready, watching the stunned Merchants closely.

"No, you shit stain! Ain't no one surrendering to you, sissy ass mother-"

I jab my staff out, a spark of electricity zapping out from the tip of my staff and lancing out across the distance, slapping into Skidmark's shoulder. He was flung back against his gangster subordinates, barreling over a few before slumping to the ground, smoke rising from where I hit him. I slowly stood up straight, the iron cap at the bottom of my staff clicking on the asphalt as I pulled my staff back, staring down the rest of the crowd.

"How about now?"