Due to various reasons, I’d never been assigned to a permanent squad. Now I had various duties that could call me away on short notice, like having to deal with things in my previous world, so it seemed like that situation wasn’t going to change.
I didn’t mind it too much, though. Training with whoever was available and going out on patrol with Great Girl’s squad or Captain Senan’s new group were both good. Plus, I was available to be called to active combat situations.
Senan- Ice Guy at work- now had a squad with himself, Jim, Mace, and Rocker. Shockfire and Acid Man were doing well in their new squads, from what I heard from them, but I hadn’t been assigned to work with either group just yet.
Usually, Midnight and I went together but sometimes we were called to separate situations. Our spell options had a lot of utility, so unfortunately we didn’t always go to active combat situations.
I already felt like I had enough on my plate, but things about Portal Powers kept coming up and helping more supers reach a functional level of effectiveness in the Power Brigade might be good. Though I could only half train people if I wasn’t allowed to shove them through a portal, so there was some ongoing discussion with Extra about that.
The knowledge that Handface had returned led me to focus my training on bolstering Stoneskin, which was my best defense if he continued his previous attempts to snipe me for no reason. If he came after me with claws I wasn’t really concerned, but for the sake of that I made certain my training with Shocking Grasp was solid. Though he would likely have stuff to try to resist that, I could just throw a Sonic Lance at him if it came down to it.
-----
During the middle of the day, I was called in to help deal with a conflict. Specifically, a supervillain conflict. It wasn’t that a supervillain had shown up and needed to be dealt with, but rather two groups that were clashing.
In this case, it was the Mod Squad and Rodentia, though the Mod Squad might have been absorbed into Doomsday’s whole thing. Either way, it didn’t show other signs of Doctor Doomsday.
If it weren’t in the middle of the city, just letting supervillains duke it out would be the normal policy. If they chose a nice park or abandoned lot, or were in the warehouse district, then letting things settle down would be best. But they were in the middle of the city.
“Several heroes are already on scene, but they requested further backup,” came the information from the dispatcher. Of the available personnel, you are judged to be the most familiar with those involved, along with the others you will meet up with in the garage.”
I’d only dealt with the Mod Squad a couple times, but Rodentia had been a pretty frequent appearance for a while. “Come on Midnight,” I said. “We’ve got some robots to bust.”
“The rats?” Midnight asked, hopping onto my hand and then up to my shoulder.
“And the people.”
“People with robot parts are called cyborgs.”
“But… they’ve got robot parts.”
“They’re still people though.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” I frowned. “I guess cyborg is shorter than calling them half-robots. Or unknown-proportion-robots.”
“Hmm,” Midnight pondered. “How to explain this… does your world have golems?”
“Yeah, though I haven’t seen that many.”
“Well, it’s like putting golem parts on people. If you did that, would you call them a golem?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I would. Or a half-golem. But also there’s some part where you’ve replaced enough that they’re just a golem, since some golem parts are just… other people.”
“I regret bringing this up,” Midnight said.
“It’s super forbidden, obviously,” I shrugged. “And I don’t know why you would bother with it anyway.”
There was a transport waiting for us, obviously. And once I opened the back, I saw Shockfire and… some other guy from his squad who had a name.
“Hey you two,” I said. “Looks like we’re fighting cyborgs and robots.”
“Mage,” Shockfire nodded.
The other man waved.
“I think it was Kicks?” Midnight whispered in my ear. “Look at his legs. Subtly.”
Ah. So he was a cyborg too. Was this… profiling?
I was never good at subtle, so he obviously noticed. “I was actually part of the Mod Squad a couple years back,” he commented. “Now I go by Kick.” Midnight had been so close. Frankly, Kicks fit better because both legs were cyborg replacements, but I wasn’t in charge of naming things. Not that the conventions would necessarily improve under my leadership. But maybe someday the Power Brigade would have someone actually good at that task.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Rest of your squad isn’t coming?” I asked as the door shut, and we drove off.
Shockfire shook his head. “We were in for training today, the others are on a short vacation.”
I’d heard that word before, but I still didn’t understand it. Days off I got, because people needed to rest, but a bunch of them in a row? I’d get so bored. Especially if a day or two was spent on planes going somewhere. Ugh. My one flight was already too much.
“So they said there were heroes already on the scene,” I commented. “Do we know who?”
Our dispatch operative answered that one. “There are only two… Chuck and Sprint.” Neither of those names were familiar to me. Then again, I really only knew the big name heroes. If they were on the scene, we probably wouldn’t be needed. “Chuck has super strength and telekinesis.” That didn’t sound too bad. “Sprint has super speed.” Oh, like Shockwave. Nice! “Unfortunately, it seems that Sprint is incapacitated.”
“What happened?” Kick asked.
There was a pause. “Without trying to advertise weaknesses, he used up his available energy.”
“How unfortunate.” I said, “He must have been working hard.” The situation would obviously be too much for even a guy with super strength to handle, and there was a good amount of variety there to begin with.
We got as close to the scene as we could, emergency sirens clearing the road, but as expected there was a crowd of people and cars not far from the battle site. We got out of the transport and began to push our way through the people.
The first thing I noticed was a blasted storefront, glass shattered everywhere and even the doors twisted off their hinges. I could see a handful of guys outside, blasting beams of energy through the shattered windows. Part of the Mod Squad, then. I did see a few robo-rats gnawing at their legs, so presumably Rodentia was inside and not some overzealous workers trying to endure a siege.
One of the cyborgs was suddenly lifted up and tossed towards… well, between the others. I followed the flow of energy to a large man in red waving his arms around. No… grabbing at the air? And then another cyborg got tossed, this time towards the building and inside the window. Well, that was probably a worse spot for them. Maybe.
Next to the guy who was presumably Chuck, I saw a thinner man all dressed in green- with pools of sweat that were extremely obvious in his outfit. He was leaning against the base of a stoplight, breathing heavily.
“Power Brigade, here to provide assistance!” Shockfire announced our presence, and the two turned to look.
“Good!” Chuck declared loudly. “We aren’t enough to hold them off, and that building… I don’t think it’s going to stand up to too much more damage.” Even as he said that, there was an explosion and the ground trembled.
“Are you alright?” Kick asked the other who could only be Sprint.
“Yeah…” the man breathed heavily. “I’m just… out of juice.”
“I see. Well, rest up. We’ll take over from here.”
“I mean it… more literally,” the man said. “Juice… a sports drink… even soda…” he shrugged. “It’d get me back in the race. But I can’t even… stagger over to a corner store…”
Too bad I didn’t carry any of that in Storage.
Midnight, rather than lamenting that, hopped down from my shoulder. “I can go get some. It’s always valuable to have a speedster.” With that, Midnight began to scurry off, running through the crowd towards a corner store we’d passed a couple blocks back.
“Thanks buddy!” Sprint called. Then he looked to me. “Wait, can he even carry anything?”
“As long as he reserved some space. Or leaves behind some tuna,” I shrugged. Hopefully the message about ten or twenty pounds of tuna being a sufficient backlog was enough. Given the situation I’d first found him in I wasn’t going to begrudge him carrying food, of course. There were just reasonable limits to such things. Especially when we were never far from a corner store.
“I can’t really get in there to make use of my super strength,” Chuck mentioned. “Their laser beams will tear me up,” he gestured to a burn on his arm.
Ah. So super strength, but not so much durability- at least against energy attacks. Not a proper heavy, then. “I’ve noticed your telekinesis has enough range,” I said. “Is that not enough?”
“Well… I’m just… not that accurate,” he admitted. “Look,” he reached out to the air, grabbing. I felt the link of power and observed nearly invisible hands grab one of the remaining outdoors cyborgs, who was then tossed over the head of someone. “He was… supposed to hit that guy next to him.” Chuck squinted. “That is another Mod Squad guy there, right?”
“... Do you need glasses?”
“Whaaat? No, of course not. I’m totally good, man. I’m just better up close.”
He needed glasses. “Well, good news for you, I can protect against their beam weapons.” If I recalled correctly, it felt like fire and light. “Shockfire, I presume you don’t need protection?”
He shook his head. He could at least partially absorb it, given its firelike properties.
“What about you, Kick?” I asked. He was one of them, but that didn’t make him immune to the beams necessarily. Just like having a gun didn’t make you bulletproof.
“It would be appreciated,” he said.
Alright. That was myself and Midnight, Kick, Chuck, and Sprint. One Multicasting of Resist Energy. I realized halfway through that Midnight might have been too far, but apparently Familiar Bond was ranked up enough to still affect him a block away. It wasn’t that surprising since it had the most improvements of anything I’d learned. We should probably test the limits again, just for ease of use.
“So what’s the plan then?” Chuck said. “Go in, take out the Mod Squad from behind, then squash Rodentia?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Our job here is to prevent civilian casualties.” I looked back at the crowd, and at least most of them were smart enough to stay across the street while filming the situation on their phones. “We just need to take out one side of the conflict, and the Mod Squad will most likely be the weak link.”
“But Rodentia is just one woman,” Chuck said, then coughed. “One person.”
“That’s exactly why she’s a threat. She’s mostly an independent villain, so the fact that she survives without any permanent minions or allies should tell you something,” I said. “Also, I can only do so much against a cheese ray. But cyborgs we know how to handle.”
“So we just go in there, take out the cyborgs and… let Rodentia go?”
“Right,” Shockfire confirmed, solidifying my position. “If it seems like it will turn into a brawl in there, it would be dangerous for us and the stability of the building. But if she’s sufficiently weakened, we can try to capture her.”
Around that time, I heard a vaguely familiar cackle from inside. “Yess! Bring me more parts! But don’t think you’ll walk away!” Rodentia’s voice was amplified by some artificial means. “Unless you remembered to bring your natural legs!”
“... I think that’s our cue to get a move on,” I said.