“You understand, right? Your target is the armoured car driving three clicks north of your position. You are to capture the targets, not kill them, and you are to do so in as flashily a manner as possible. Make sure to keep property damage down though.” The voice crackled through the radio as the man sighed, unstrapping it from his chest and speaking into it.

“Understood… you know, when we made this deal, I was under the assumption that I wouldn’t be called in for bank robberies.” The man spoke back to the radio, no longer pressing the button so as to receive a reply as he ran his hand through his messy black hair…

‘I think I’ll need a cut soon’ the man absently thought as his radio crackled once more and he focused on it, trying to ignore the bright lights of New York at night as he focused on the voice.

“Normally we wouldn’t call you in, but this has to do with Jack. I’m sure you can understand why it’s good if you’re the one to capture members of his organization.” The man sighed, incapable of arguing with the voice behind the radio, before he could speak though, it crackled once more.

“And for the record, you know I could destroy them from where I am positioned.” the man thought for a moment, acknowledging his words… the man on the other side of the radio, Shaun Fife, was quite dangerous and the man could believe that Shaun could stop the armoured car from his base…

Not that he would. He’d see it as a waste of publicity and as a way of outing himself as being something more dangerous than he appeared.

Though with his title as ‘American Head of the Babel Investigation Unit’, he was already plenty scary, even if most had not realized how scary he was.

“Hey, you two don’t need to keep talking anyway. Michael’s about to take his shot, we need to move out.” The man holding the radio sighed once more, feeling himself age as he wondered what happened to the life he used to have, where he could be lazy and zone out through classes on Architecture of all things…

Oh yeah, that life vanished when he, Arthur Clive, became more than human…

“Got that Emilia, I got that. Right, call it in, Einherjar Squad is moving out.” The man named Arthur rolled his head, causing a nice cracking sound to come out of his neck as he gave a quiet sigh in relief, looking out into the city, estimating the area his mission was in…

With focus, he felt energy flowing through him, culminating in sparks suddenly bursting from his feat, and though he couldn’t see it, he knew his hair was spiking backwards from the electrical charge flowing through him, and his eyes would be glowing yellow.

“So glad I’m a Lightning Mage…” Arthur said slightly as he crouched slightly, before jumping off of his position on the Brooklyn Bridge, shooting into the sky as he willed the energy flowing within him to shoot him forward in a manner reminiscent of a horizontally moving lightning bolt…

The energy in question was one which all humans now possessed, something straight out of fantasy, magic.

A streak of red light signalled Michael Grave, the sniper of Einherjar, attacking the armoured car. Arthur didn’t even question if he had hit it or not… it was Michael, the car was definitely damaged, whether it was enchanted or not.

Arthur landed, skidding on his boots across the tarmac for a bit, slight puffs of smoke leaving his body, though his spell was still active, leaving his hair now slightly shining yellow and spiked back similarly to a certain Monkey King from a vegetable planet.

Next to Arthur was a tall man holding a massive curved tower shield, his other hand holding a war-hammer as he looked to Arthur with a grin.

“Hey, the boss is pissed, told you not to use that spell while holding the radio remember?” the other man, Matt Jacobson warned the leader of the Einherjar Squad as Arthur waved him off.

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“Not like it matters, we can just get another one… they should really learn how to insulate those things.” Arthur complained, his voice crackling through the electricity covering his body as he and Matt walked forward, Matt shrugging in agreement as he looked at the spell covering Arthur.

“You finally reach the point where you can keep that spell on constantly?” Matt asked as Arthur nodded, his face twitching into a smirk as he spoke.

“Yeah, though the control is still iffy… I have to actually focus to speak at a speed you can understand me, and to not walk at the speed of a car.” Matt whistled in appreciation for the power.

“Well, my Metal Magic can’t do stuff like that, but defensive wise I’m happy.” Matt said, grinning savagely as they came across the armoured car, now tipped over on its side.

From the red lines running across it, it was enchanted for sure, fire… likely to increase speed or defence against fire element attacks…

Judging by the arrow pierced into the side of the car, caving in that side as if it had been slapped by an angry god, the enchantment had been worthless against Michael, even if he had fired a fire element arrow.

The people in the car were out now though, none daring to pick up a gun and shoot, instead rushing forward with daggers and swords and one guy had a spear.

“Do I need to even step in at this point?” Arthur wondered as Matt stepped forward, slamming his shield into someone and watching them fly off into a wall, cracking said wall as Matt shrugged.

“Probably not, one of us is already enough for most people under level three hundred, and there are very few at that level.” Arthur acknowledged Matt’s statement, watching as someone tried to run away only to turn back around screaming in fear of nothing…

“Yeah, that’s a very exclusive club right there… there are what, about a hundred, two hundred people out of around five billion at that level?” Arthur asked the new person to appear from where the scared robber ran away from, a man in a jacket and jeans with sneakers, a staff in his hands as his skin went through numerous colours before settling on its natural darker colour.

“Yeah, there are very few over all at that level. The hundreds represent quite a large gap after all.” The new person was also a member of the Einherjar Squad, named John Collins, his surname was so generic it was usually forgotten though… oh, and he was the medic for their group, or to be more accurate, the Cleric, due to his Healing Magic.

“Yeah, we’re really strong… by the way, was the illusion really necessary, I mean Emilia and Alice would destroy them anyway.” Arthur had a point, as they looked to see someone appearing once in a while with flips and vanishing again after stabbing someone in the legs or arms, and another just running in and punching the hell out of them.

Both were female by the way, with Emilia being blonde with a supermodel level look, despite being an Assassin, and Alice was their heavy hitter, despite being the shortest one in their group.

Fun fact, there were four guys and two girls in the Einherjar unit, and both girls were high powered damage dealers.

“Hey Alice, that one’s a regenerator!” Arthur called out as Alice turned and cut the leg off of the guy whose wounds were closing at a visible rate, leaving him screaming, but hey, he’d probably get another leg in a week or two.

Very soon the enemy was all defeated as Michael Grave, brother of Alice Grave and their sniper, finally appeared, walking with his bow vanishing from his hands as he high fived Arthur on approach.

“Excellent, our job is done here everyone, Agent Shaun will solve all the other issues. Let’s go chill.” Arthur gave an ‘order’ as they walked away, some pictures being taken for tomorrow.

As they left, Shaun Fife palmed his face, watching the video footage of the group leaving, before cancelling the Light spell he had been using to see what they were doing.

“What’s wrong boss, didn’t they finish the mission?” Shaun turned to his second and third in command, Dante Vasquez and Grey Vincent as he pointed out into New York.

“Oh they finished the mission alright, but Arthur broke another radio and didn’t even fight. Meaning this was a waste of resources for some publicity for America’s Strongest.” Shaun was understandably annoyed, but he had long since gotten used to disliking Arthur, and he couldn’t stop now, even if they could work together easily.

“Boss… is this about you not liking Arthur?” Grey asked as Shaun scoffed at the accusation, looking out into the city, before turning to glance at the obsidian stone, two by two metres with a small pedestal to its side.

“It’s not so much that I don’t like our top Adventurer, our ‘hero’, in so much that I am afraid of him.” Shaun admitted, Dante sighing at this old argument while Grey raised an eyebrow at his boss’ admittance to disliking Grey’s old friend.

“Every other top adventurer has reasons for why they fight. Ichiro because he nearly died and he doesn’t want to feel helpless again, Albert because it’s his job, Jade has her sister and that crazy Head Agent of England telling her to fight, but each one has a reason…” Shaun glanced away.

“He doesn’t have a reason… he’s just doing it because it’s there to do… Honestly, he’s a monster in human form, not a hero.” Shaun wished he had some alcohol at this point… or a lot.