The removal of the big Bunvorixian ship from the battle hopefully meant there wouldn’t be any giant death lasers blasting our positions. The actual consequences of Doctor Doomsday running away with it would have to be worked out at another time, as that didn’t suddenly make things safe.

I could no longer hear it, because I basically couldn’t hear anything after the sonic boom following the ship’s disappearance, but I knew the battle between Extra and the Bunvorixians was still continuing downhill. Meanwhile, Great Girl was still fighting Darkstargirl- and she was quite on fire. Lots of blackness surrounding her. Oh, right. And Gloom was approaching. I should probably mention that to someone, just in case they hadn’t felt the wave of despair yet.

“This is Mage,” I said into my comm. “I can’t hear anything, but I sense Gloom coming from the southwest.” I turned towards Great Girl and yelled, because even if her ears weren’t busted she might need me to be louder. “Gloom is coming!”

I think she heard me, though it was difficult to say for certain. Either way, she slashed her claws at Darkstargirl, blasting the supervillain away. I could feel her roar in frustration as she tumbled on the ground to try to put out the black flames. Hopefully it was that and not pain. Actually, while I didn’t have mana for Blizzard, I could still cast Water Blast.

Huge bursts of steam came off her as I used Water Blast several times. The power of each spell was more about the force of how it could hit a normal person hard enough to knock them out than any specific fire dampening abilities, but it was still water. It took three to actually put Great Girl out- and that was probably only possible because Darkstargirl was still tumbling away and not close enough to sustain the power. Though in truth, we didn’t know entirely how her power worked, only that it was black fire and it was bad to be on fire.

Midnight came charging towards me, trying to say something.

“I can’t hear,” I said, pointing to my ear.

He nodded, and his suit displayed Celmothian writing. Fortunately, I had seen it before on the trip to Celmoth, and we constantly had Translate active so that Midnight could speak English. He had full comprehension without magic, but his vocal chords simply didn’t work well for humanoid languages.

“What should I do? I have some mana left.”

I pushed the feeling of Gloom’s approach onto him through the link, then gestured to my head.

“Mental Freedom?” the words appeared over him.

I nodded, gesturing to me and him- and then Izzy and Great Girl.

“I have just enough for two,” he said as he gathered mana. He cast Mental Freedom on the two of us- since we shared it, it was simply the most efficient. “Who else?”

I shrugged, then gestured to Great Girl. Then I looked around for Izzy, fortunately spotting her. I waved her off while telling her to run for safety, and while she disappeared into the trees I wasn’t sure she actually heard me. I barely heard me, which was a slight upgrade from moments before.

Midnight and I couldn’t afford to have a long chat, and I felt Darkstargirl charging back into the mix. I turned towards her, leveling the Bunvorixian weapon and squeezing the ‘trigger’. Now, shooting lasers might be a bad idea when targeting a star and light powered super, but she was dark and edgy now so I hoped it would do something.

She certainly seemed to think it could have some effect, as she blocked it with her arms, power splattering around her. Not quite the sort of thing that would take her out, but at least it was something. It was also enough to make her charge angrily at me, and I heard just the hint of some words I probably wouldn’t repeat in polite company.

I ducked down, propping my staff against the ground like a pike as she charged towards me. Black flames struck it, but didn’t catch it alight. She attempted to fly past and punch me, and was half successful. Which is to say, she hit my staff head on, at which point I released all the remaining dispelling energy in it. But her momentum carried on, knocking my staff away and sending her directly into me. I slammed into a tree, and only thought about trying to grab her after she had disentangled herself.

When I caught sight of her again, she was being blasted by several lasers at once- that would be Midnight and Izzy. So Izzy hadn’t actually run away. Well, I wasn’t able to explain why so I shouldn’t have expected anything else.

She was behind trees before I could fire my stolen laser at her, so I looked around for my staff. Even without dispelling magic it was still a practically unbreakable weapon. I would need whatever I could get for the incoming supervillain.

I felt a pulse of magic, and realized that Spot was still active by Gloom. How annoying.

The next few things happened quite quickly. Gloom and Spot charged directly towards Midnight. My Celmothian buddy blasted both of them with weapons formed from his special adaptive suit, but they resisted with a rather familiar spell. And it appeared that Spot was familiar enough with Celmothian tech to tune the Energy Ward spell properly.

In turn, Gloom’s spooky semi-physical body passed over and through Midnight, and Spot clawed at Midnight, his paw glowing a sickly green. I could feel the pain as Midnight toppled over.

Gloom continued on towards Izzy, and while I shot the spooky figure in the back the Energy Ward worked quite well against Bunvorixian lasers as well. It was possible Gloom chose randomly, or Gloom might have known that Izzy was the only one unprotected by Mental Freedom. Either way, Gloom made a straight charge towards the halfling… who disappeared a moment before they made contact.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Izzy turned and ran- but her movements were so fast it was difficult to follow. I felt sorry for her, having felt Gloom’s power undefended, but at least she was able to put on a functional retreat. I could feel her power pulling away quickly, and Gloom was rapidly falling behind.

Spot had converged on Great Girl with Darkstargirl, and together there was a weird purple-black swirl of energy around them. I had no idea what spell Spot was casting, but it was clearly powerful- somewhere around the level of Blizzard and Chain Lightning.

Spot made contact with Great Girl’s fist, which while clearly not intentional still seemed to be required for his spell. I could see some of her glove melted away, and what was beneath that looked pretty bad before it was covered in fire. Meanwhile, Spot went flying into the air, and that stopped Darkstargirl from doing more than the single blast coating Great Girl.

Stolen novel; please report.

A moment later, two powers appeared right next to me. I recognized Movebrain’s power the most easily, but from up close the steady power of Captain Punch was clear enough as well. I heard them say something, vaguely. “Still can’t hear,” I commented.

I saw Movebrain extend his hand towards the flying Darkstargirl, while Captain Punch took off into the woods after Gloom. Just about the time Darkstargirl caught Spot, she suddenly stopped in place- but before a boulder tossed by Great Girl could reach her she tore out of whatever was holding her back. Well, the boulder was kind of off target anyway, as Great Girl’s right arm was dangling limply at her side.

Darkstargirl didn’t hesitate, picking up speed as she left a trail of sparkling darkness behind her. That wasn’t something I could follow after without Haste, but Movebrain could, teleporting step by step and occasionally catching her in his… telekinesis? Was that one of his powers?

Captain Punch I knew was very strong, and while he ran fairly quickly that was only at the level of normal humans who ran quickly. Barely into super territory in that regard. I saw him try to push faster, but he mostly ended up spraying dirt everywhere and stumbling forward. It seemed like he might have trouble catching Gloom, but his endurance might win out.

I heard a high pitched noise and looked up into the air, and briefly glimpsed a short haired tiny dog flying at my face. And then I was out.

-----

For once I wasn’t the one with the worst wounds at the end of a battle, but that didn’t particularly make me feel better. I woke up to Midnight’s pain as he lay on my chest, while I was being carried away on a stretcher.

“Ugh… how was the battle?” I asked the medics.

They seemed to know that telling supers with concussions to shut up and relax didn’t work, so they just answered me. Their words sounded like they were coming from underwater, but I still understood them well enough. “Your companions are all alive. The Brigade made it through alright.”

“And uh… the villains?”

“Many of those dogs… Bunvorixians? They were mostly captured or taken out, except a few smaller ships. Unfortunately, it seems one of those managed to pick up the primary villains. I heard they escaped but I don’t know the details.”

I grunted. “Is Midnight stable? I think he got poisoned or something…?”

“We injected him with a stability booster. The damage was all done before we arrived. Oh right, the chihuahua was also caught.”

My head hurt. “A what now?”

“The little dog that slammed into your face.”

“Oh. How’d he get in the sky, anyway?”

The medic shrugged.

I spotted Great Girl as they were trying to coax her to get into an ambulance. “Mage!”

“Just concussed,” I said. I stayed on my back because Midnight was comfy- as much as one could get when also in great pain. I looked at Great Girl’s hand, and it looked way worse than I’d initially seen. Aside from being burnt black- like large parts of her body- it also looked shriveled. “That was a nasty spell, huh.”

She looked down at her arm, grimacing. “Yeah…”

“Wanna hear a secret?” I said. “I know a really good healer.”

-----

Despite being the one who best knew the not-particularly-secret existence of Ceira, we were not first on the list. Most of the healers in New Bay were constantly active, but Ceira was a special case. While she could provide emergency healing, there were many others better for such a task. Regenerate provided her with a fairly unique healing ability that was more useful for long term recovery rather than emergencies.

Rather than disrupting her list, Ceira had us brought in midday when she would normally be reserving her mana for her own purposes. Well, I in particular wasn’t brought in. I just showed up. Midnight and Great Girl were the ones being healed.

We didn’t just show up at her apartment, but instead came to a special super healthcare facility. We did break normal protocol by having unnecessary individuals- i.e. me- in the room, but the rest was kept.

It was weird, knowing that it was Ceira who stepped into the room when I saw only a vague shape covered in some sort of white cloth. I couldn’t even feel her power, just something from the covering that prevented me from even accurately determining her height.

Her voice was weird too. “Alright, what seems to be the prob- whoa. I was not ready for that.” Her way of speaking was familiar enough, but if I hadn’t known it was her I might not have been able to figure it out.

“... It’s that bad?” Great Girl asked.

Ceira cleared her throat. “Whaaat? No, of course not uh… miss… I can definitely… I’m just going to start with this cat here.”

I frowned. She was acting weird. They’d met, right? It was just the other week… with Ceira in the park. When Great Girl furiously ran by chasing after Darkstargirl and Spot. So maybe not a clear meeting.

Ceira had been around Ice Guy for a while when we were in the other world as part of the rescue mission, but maybe she hadn’t been around Great Girl at all. Even though they both hung out with Izzy. I found it unlikely that they never met, but it might have been Ceira and Sophia instead. Well, I didn’t need to force any sort of revelation at this exact moment.

Midnight trembled in the pain of healing for a moment as Ceira cast Regenerate, and while I recognized the effects it was weird to barely even sense the workings of mana. That was a pretty good anonymity thingy she had.

“Thank you,” Midnight said. “I feel much better.”

“Right. And now for… this arm. Looks like necrosis?”

“That’s what the docs said,” Great Girl confirmed. “... How bad is it?”

“Well, in the worst case we can cut it off and I can just grow you a new arm,” Ceira said.

“Hah, funny,” Great Girl replied.

I was pretty sure that was serious. But I didn’t mention that.

Power swirled into Great Girl’s arm, and I saw it begin to fill out. Pinkish flesh appeared where there was once only blackness, and her arm looked less skeletal.

Great Girl winced as she suddenly got feeling in her nerves. “Whoa, that’s… intense. And amazing.”

“Thank you,” Ceira said. “It looks like you’ll need further sessions for full restoration, but the results are promising. What caused the damage?”

“A combination of Darkstargirl’s weird black fire and… some sort of bad magic,” I shrugged.

“Shouldn’t you know what it is?” Ceira prompted.

“Some sort of illegal necromancy junk,” I shrugged. “Pretty sure it’s not even the sort of stuff that would be on my list to begin with. Spot is a cleric so they get all the most horrifying stuff.”

“... Aren’t clerics supposed to be healers?” Ceira asked.

“Oh no,” Great Girl said. “They can be, but he’s right. They have all sorts of bad stuff. I feel like that was some sort of death spell… but I’m still alive so maybe not. Or I could have just made my save. I mean uh… my innate durability… something…” she trailed off.

“If death spells just automatically killed people, my world would be run by a cabal of liches,” I said. “Which it’s… probably not,” I added.

I should probably find out more about who actually was causing all the problems though. That had sort of slipped with all of the supervillain stuff and the aliens and all that.