On the ground in front of me lay my friend, bleeding. As a mage, I had no access to healing in any form. Injuries were also something I couldn’t hit with my staff, which left me stumped.

Midnight’s panic was much more visible than my own. He was running around in circles. “He’s bleeding! What do we do? Should we pick him up? Should I-”

Fortunately, we were saved by our dispatch coordinator. “Do you require an ambulance?”

“Yes,” being prompted with a practical response made me able to speak. “Preferably also someone with… coagulating powers. Serious bleeding.” A moment passed. “And avoid the street of the incident. There’s a sniper.”

Normal, sane villains wouldn’t shoot emergency services personnel. That was the way to get sent to the very top of the kill-on-sight list. But it wasn’t that far below that to directly attempt to kill mercenaries. Heroes might have their image to be concerned about and a strict code about how they dealt with people. We just had to get villains off the streets in a reasonable manner. And when they were high threat, more things became reasonable.

I knelt down next to Shockfire. “Hey buddy. Stay conscious.”

He grunted. “Trying.”

“You’re bleeding a lot.” I looked at where his hand was, just now realizing he was already wrapped in gauze. Sprint had been busy. It made me feel slightly less stupid about not having pulled my first aid kit out of storage. Shockfire looked like he probably needed second and third aid, though.

Kick looked down at Shockfire, grimacing. “Should I try to… cauterize it or something?”

“Bad idea. I’d prob’ly absorb it. Or… you could overdo it.” Then his brow furrowed. Flames billowed around his hand. “Raaagh!” he cried out in pain. “Can do it to myself, I guess. Help… flip me over…”

I did so, carefully. The exit wound was… much worse. I could tell that by the way the gauze had no traces of ever being white. “I don’t know if this will help. You’ll still have internal bleeding.”

“At least now… only one exit…” he grunted as he lay on his belly.

Looking at the area, at least he didn’t have any vital organs there. It was his belly, and the only thing that could be there was… his liver, or kidneys maybe. Okay, actually both of those were kind of important.

A screeching sound of someone sliding to a halt on the pavement made me swivel my head. There I saw Sprint, leaning against the wall, hacking and coughing. “That sniper… room full of freaking poison…” Then he fell to the ground.

“Uh… this seems bad,” I said, looking over at Chuck. “You work with him right?” In the half second I looked away, Sprint had gone from pale to a greenish blue hue on his skin.

Chuck reached over towards the pile of sports drinks. One bottle exploded as he crushed it, but the rest were tossed vaguely towards us. I managed to catch a couple- Kick got several more. “Get as much of that in him as you can! And some food!”

“Tuna coming right up!” Midnight said.

“... I thought you got rid of all your tuna to fit these drinks?” I said as I lifted Sprint into a sitting position, trying to pour the drink into his mouth. Oh good, he swallowed on his own. I didn’t want to have to figure out a weird magic way to make that happen. The drink disappeared as fast as I could dump it in his mouth.

“I got rid of all my unnecessary tuna,” Midnight clarified. “The last few cans, clearly, were necessary for emergencies.” He already had one out, had opened it with Mage’s Reach, and was shoveling fingerfuls into Sprint’s mouth. “Hey! Don’t bite the fingers!”

Sprint looked worse. And then… he started looking better. He coughed up a bunch of blackish gunk. Way too much of it. Was this guy okay? No, obviously not. Was that blood? How much blood could someone lose? It might be more than Shockfire was losing.

“Hey, don’t stop!” Chuck said, walking over with his arms full of retrieved sports drinks. “He’s probably processing all that poison he talked about right now, so he needs fluids. And calories.”

Shoveling stuff into the man’s mouth was much better than sitting around worrying about my buddy. At least I was only half thinking about that. And then…

I felt someone appear. At least I was getting used to that particular power. It was still startling, but not frightening. “Movebrain!” I said. “Thank goodness you’re here.”

“Yep,” the man said. “I’m snagging Shockfire.”

And then, he was gone.

“What was that?” Chuck asked.

“One of the higher ups in the Brigade,” I explained. “He teleports. Obviously.”

“I wish I could do that,” Chuck sighed.

That was silly. Not that he wanted to, but because he already had a completely unrelated power. Teleportation and telekinesis were only related linguistically, and I wasn’t even sure if they should be. Then I remembered Movebrain had both. Well, whatever.

“He’s looking less green,” I commented about Sprint.

Chuck frowned. “Why didn’t that guy take him too?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m sure there was a reason.” Could be limited in number of people he could teleport, or he was going somewhere secure or… any number of things.

Sprint groaned. Then he sat up. “I’m taking a vacation,” he announced.

“Come on man,” Chuck said. “Sick days.”

“I’m using one then the other,” Sprint declared. “I uh… my body was not prepared for that fast. Shows I still have a lot to improve.” He made a face. “Why does my mouth taste like fish?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“You’re welcome,” Midnight said.

“Uuugh, now I have to worry about mercury for a while,” he complained. He looked around. “Where’s your friend?”

“Hopefully being teleported towards an ambulance or other similar destination,” I said. “Hey, you saw the sniper?”

“Saw is a loose word,” Sprint said. “I picked out what building and room he was in from the second muzzle flash, and ran to that floor, but the whole thing was lousy with green gas. Which is like… ten steps better than invisible poison because otherwise I would have killed myself. But it was still bad. Pretty sure he’ll have skedaddled, though.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Are you really alright now?”

“Nope, not at all. Hey Chuck?”

“Yeah?”

“Carry me to the nearest restroom.”

“On it, buddy.”

-----

With that, the situation was resolved. I would have said with only minor side effects, but there was a whole collapsing building. And much worse than that, Shockfire was hospitalized. Private medical wardized?

He was in a bed with only half a liver, and unfortunately the half he was missing was the middle. He was hooked up to a bunch of tubes and junk putting things into his body and pulling other things out. That was all I could see from outside the room- nobody was allowed in while he was being worked on.

“Today sucked,” Kick said. “I was all ready to walk all over the jerks I used to run with, then Iron Shell showed up. I have a long way to go.” He looked down at himself. “Do I need to replace the rest of me?”

“I wouldn’t jump to that immediately,” I shrugged. “Fleshly bodies are really good at a lot of things.”

“Where’s your buddy Midnight?” Kick asked.

“Negotiating with a store owner for the release of his tuna. But he has to get someone to pay for the sports drinks first.”

“I assume that either comes out of the hero association’s budget or Sprint’s.”

“Something like that,” I nodded.

A throat cleared down the hall. “Gentlemen.” We turned to see Calculator. “Since you can only wait on the developments in there, how about something to get your minds off of it? Like an end mission report.”

“Uuugh, fine,” Kick rolled his eyes.

We first gave a verbal summary of things, from our own perspectives- just the audio from our headsets wasn’t a good picture of the situation on the ground.

“I see. Deimos again. I wonder how he found out you were at that particular site…” Calculator frowned. “And you said Chuck held up the central pillar of the building?”

“For a few moments, yeah,” I nodded.

“That’s far outside of the bounds of his rating.”

“Well, you know,” I shrugged. “It’s all about adrenaline and lying to yourself.”

“What?” Calculator tilted his head.

“... Motivational words?” I finally came up with. “I told him he could do it, and he believed me.”

“I see. Perhaps he has a mental limiter in place. The hero association will be eager to know about this development.” Calculator nodded. “Now then. Let’s talk about the building falling.”

“We didn’t do that damage!” Kick immediately protested.

“There were two serious villains there,” I added. “I think that result is acceptable.”

“Well, don’t,” Calculator said. “I can admit it’s not the worst possible outcome, but it’s far from reasonable. However, you did arrive in a timely manner and properly assist the heroes, as required by mission parameters. But it’s never okay to accept property damage on such a scale.” The man was always looking at his tablet- and probably doing five other things on it. “Oh, interesting.”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, I think Kick will be interested in what we pulled out of the wreckage.”

“Is it Iron Shell’s corpse?” he asked.

There was a moment. Then all of us laughed.

“Good one,” Calculator said. “If only it were so easy. Do they still use that line in training?”

“It came up at some point, I think,” I said. “Something like… ‘Collapsing buildings will kill you but never your enemy’.”

Calculator nodded. “Obviously that’s not perfectly true. But people need to keep safe around such things.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We only went in the building at all because we were hoping to finish the battle in Rodentia’s favor quickly. Which was about to work until Iron Shell smashed through the back wall.”

He continued to ask various questions about details, including the powers of the heroes. Knowing that Rodentia was back to her own rat based tech for defenses instead of using repurposed Doctor Doomsday tech was also of interest to him.

-----

The Power Brigade knew that typical hospital chairs were uncomfortable for those waiting, especially if you were lying down on a row in the hallway trying to sleep. Which was why they kept them. To encourage people to go back home and sleep, instead of lingering in despair.

It didn’t work though. I had already given up on my back, but at least my belly was comfortable with Midnight napping atop it. Down from me in either direction were Ice Guy- Captain Senan- and Acid Man.

“Dude, I can’t believe you’re all still here,” said the final member of our one time squad. Now, Rocker was no longer on probation but a proper member of the Power Brigade. “I just got off my job.”

“You haven’t slept either, though,” I pointed out. “We were just worrying here instead of there.”

“Fair enough,” he said, sitting down against the wall. “It’s crazy. Being a super and still having to worry about this stuff. Like, don’t we have access to the best medical crap in the city?”

“That’s why he’s still alive,” Ice Guy said, standing up to walk over. “Trauma like that isn’t so easily survivable.”

Acid Man didn’t comment, but he was probably glad his organs turned to goo automatically. That’s what I would have been thinking, at least.

Instead, I was thinking I should have also cast Stoneskin on him. What was mana, compared to this? And it could have been any of the others instead. Then again, conserving mana had saved lives before, and we couldn’t have predicted Handface showing up just then, there really wasn’t anything that could be done. My therapist would tell me that later. And I would pretend to believe him.

The door opened, and we all turned. It was Doctor Martinez, the one with scanning powers. He shook his head. “Our surgeons had to remove the last of his natural liver. We installed a synthetic replacement, but it seems his body is rejecting it. Or more likely, his power. We might have to remove it to prevent it from melting inside him.”

“What if he was conscious?” Ice Guy asked. “Would that help?”

“We’re not sure,” Doctor Martinez admitted. “However, he is stable. You’ll probably be able to talk to him in the… afternoon,” he said. “After you all go get some sleep.”

He could make me go home, but he couldn’t make me sleep. Which was too bad, because it would have been nice. Should I get magic to make myself sleep? Sounded like a really bad habit to get into. And hopefully, things like this wouldn’t come up too often.