Normally, I took any situation that Calculator explained to me in stride. They all made enough sense, at least for villain plots. However, he said something odd this time. “... Run that by me again?”
Calculator nodded, as if having predicted his words wouldn’t make sense. “Rodentia is attempting to steal Halloween.”
“How and why?” I asked.
“No idea how,” he admitted. “Except that it is her declared intent. As for why, most likely because nobody ever successfully steals Christmas.”
What was the overlap between things Rodentia liked and Halloween. “... Milk candy?” I tilted my head.
“Could be. But more likely she’s going after the concept. And no, that’s never worked.”
“So… I’m supposed to go stop her?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” Calculator looked perfectly offended. “Just because Halloween is a high business day doesn’t mean it’s best to keep it. If Rodentia can somehow steal the concept of Halloween, spooks won’t come out and cause harm. The world will be a safer place, and we do care about that. Right now she doesn’t appear to be causing any damage, so it’s better to direct you elsewhere.”
“Like where?” I asked. Before he could respond, I sensed something. “Hold on.” Something big. “There’s some sort of magical thing… that way,” I pointed.
“How precise?” Calculator asked. He knew I wasn’t the sort to gesture vaguely when I could do better.
“Exactly along that line. I’m not sure about the exact distance. More than a few kilometers.”
Calculator frowned, his fingers moving rapidly on his tablet. “What sort of event?”
“Magical? Not like mana, but not powers. It’s familiar somehow…” Where had I felt it? It seemed extremely appropriate for some reason. “It’s halloween!” I said.
“Like a spirit of Halloween or…?”
“No, sorry. It’s blood magic, I think. It’s probably easier to do whatever that is today.”
“I see. Can you look here and give me your impression?” he held up a section of map with a line drawn on it. It was just part of the city. “Would you say it’s closer or further than the salt ponds?”
I shook my head. “I wish I could, but I don’t have any powers like that. And the distance and size of the event could throw me off if it was more powerful than expected. Probably not beyond, though. Wouldn’t that just be in the bay?”
“If there’s powerful blood magic happening in the bay, we need to know,” Calculator pointed out.
“I think it’s almost done. I’d need to get Midnight’s opinion but I think… portal?” I tilted my head. “He’ll be in here in a second.”
It was actually more like ten, but Midnight rushed through the doors. “Have we been assigned a destination yet?”
“Not yet,” Calculator said. “Your flexibility makes it better to focus on teams that have a clear advantage. Like Ice Guy and the flaming jack o’ lanterns. We very much do not want fires during an event like this.”
“Midnight,” I said. “Second opinion. Did you feel that magic?” I gestured.
“Vaguely,” he admitted.
“What do you think it was?” I asked. It had faded away, so whatever it was shouldn’t be enduring.
“Well, I was thinking…” he was obviously distracted by the same thing that I felt. If the first thing was blood, this was… a desert sun? “A portal.”
“So you agree with Mage?” Calculator asked.
“I don’t know what the first thing was,” Calculator shook his head. “But that has to be a portal.”
“Totally,” I agreed. “Probably pretty close to the other place. Could be a coincidence.”
“Give me one minute to get eyes on the situation,” Calculator said. “Unless you want to Scry it?”
“That depends on what we want my mana for.”
Calculator sighed. “We need to get that thing to store some of its own mana, like your staff.”
“Oh, good idea,” I agreed. “I’ll suggest it to Vilhelmiina.”
Calculator frowned. “We can’t afford to requisition things from her all that frequently.”
“I was just hoping she’d make it herself,” I pointed out. “It’s not like we paid for the diamond ‘orb’.”
“Huh. I never took you for much of a manipulator.”
I crossed my arms. “There’s nothing wrong with getting people to do something both parties want.”
He grinned. “I didn’t say there was.”
“He’s quite good, actually,” Midnight said. “When he actually wants something.”
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Calculator suddenly spun around his tablet. He seemed able to watch it upside down just fine. “We’ve got visuals.”
There it was. A giant blood circle. Familiar. And some kind of hell portal with angels pouring through. Why would angels come through a hell portal?
They seemed to be looking for something. Then they seemed to find it. Or at least, they found a target. The image quality was not great, and it whited out as they launched some sort of light based attacks from their flaming swords, but a few moments later after the camera adjusted a figure of darkness was flying among them, blasting them out of the sky one at a time.
“Huh,” I said. “That doesn’t look like blood magic. In fact, it looks more like-”
“Dark Star,” Calculator confirmed.
“So. Is Great Girl still here?” I asked. “Or do we want to just let that keep happening and assume it will work out?”
“We’re contractually obligated to warn her of nemesis activity,” Calculator admitted. His fingers tapped on another device while still holding the tablet steady with one hand. “She’ll be here soon.”
“Here?” I asked. “We’re not going to head to the garage?”
“It’s too far,” Calculator said. “Dark Star could fly off at any moment. I want you to Teleport her team.”
“Into… that?” I gestured.
“I’m trying to get into contact with the person filming. Hopefully, we can get them to swap to a lower angle. Mono and Map need to stay back. The situation has to be approached delicately.”
I looked at Midnight. He shared my thoughts. “Great Girl is absolutely throwing herself into that immediately.”
“I know,” Calculator said. “Delicacy isn’t her job. That’s why she has a squad.”
A few moments later, I heard the sounds of claws scraping on the floor as Great Girl dragged herself to a stop. She mostly returned to human as she shuffled in the door. “Where is she? I’m gonna destroy Kourtney!”
“You’re supposed to call her Darkstargirl,” I corrected her.
“She’s a villain. Her real name isn’t restricted. That’s not her proper moniker. And I don’t care. I’m gonna punch her!”
“Yeah, you and like a hundred angels,” I shrugged. “How do they even have so many angels? They need to close that portal. This is excessive.”
Great Girl waited impatiently for the rest of her team. Grasp would be ready to go in with her. Map would be more functional on-site, providing greater battlefield awareness. Mono was a sniper, but our plan was to remain at a distance anyway. Even Great Girl accepted to not run in immediately.
“Oh, it’s Gloom,” I said. “The angels look unimpressed.”
“I swear if those feathery f- if those angels take down both my nemeses without my involvement I’m going to be so mad,” Great Girl said.
“Maybe avoid wolf stuff,” I said. “They might not like werewolves.”
-----
CalamityChaser7083 was so lucky. Everyone always said that the big stories happened in the dense city, which meant pretty much anywhere but where he lived. He was planning to go across the bridge to the peninsula, but then out of nowhere some sort of blood thing appeared right on the road.
Yeah, he’d rolled his car into a ditch but like, who cared about that? A stream titled blood portal would have been enough. But then, the angels appeared. Now he could tag #Angels and #Demons along with #NewBayHalloween. The viewer numbers weren’t as big as they would like, but they’d have to go up. Even if this was hard to watch.
Then Dark Star and Gloom appeared. The second made Calamity Chaser literally wanted to run away, but where would he go on foot? So he planted his feet. He couldn’t update the hashtags on his stream fast enough.
A donation sound came in $100. That already made the whole evening worth it. And it would encourage more people to donate and subscribe. “Thanks so much, ChairMan13. His donation says… zoom in on the nearby hill and I promise you’ll see something cool?” That was weird, but… “Well, alright. Camera needs a second to relax anyway.” The hill was pretty boring. “Doesn’t look like much, is this the right hill? Did you see something I missed?”
With a flash, five figures appeared. It wasn’t as great of a contrast as the whole battle happening between light and darkness, but it was clear enough against the night sky. Light suddenly clung to two of them, revealing Great Girl and Grasp. And a much smaller sixth figure.
“It’s Great Girl! And her team.” Calamity Chaser rapidly added new hashtags. Just #GreatGirl and #PowerBrigade. There were already too many. But Great Girl, Gloom, and Dark Star was huge. The view count was going wild. He just needed everyone to get in the same frame. That was going to be difficult. It wasn’t like Great Girl could- “Wait, since when can she fly?!”
-----
“If we’re going to cast it on three people, we might as well cast it on everyone,” I explained. “Mono might not want to fly right now, but it wouldn’t hurt. Same with Map.” Technically 21 points of mana was within my fatigue threshold now, but I split it with Midnight anyway.
Relatedly, Midnight never wanted to fly. But if he had to, he would. He actually enjoyed it near the ground, though.
“I’m not going to get involved in… that,” I gestured broadly. “Unless you need me to. But I’d probably just hit angels with whatever I threw in there. I’m going to go check out this portal until I hear otherwise. Just one more spell before we go. Midnight, one-third split for Mental Freedom.” We’d already loaded up on Energy Ward, but it hadn’t been clear if Gloom was going to hang around for more than a few moments.
Map nodded. “I’m going to go somewhere less exposed. And try to find where those two were hiding out. If there’s a base near here… we need to log it. Oh, and figure out what they did with that whole… blood circle.”
“Probably nothing,” I commented. “It’s probably just some vampires. If you see any, ask if they can lie.”
“... I’d rather deal with the angels.”
I shrugged. Mono was setting up nearby.
“They do seem pretty weak,” I admitted. Angels were getting punched out of the sky one after another. They probably thought that Darkstargirl would be weak to their light stuff, but as far as anyone could tell she still had light powers so she was probably resistant. Gloom didn’t seem super happy though. The angels weren’t easily afraid, it seemed.
While I could go directly underneath the battle, I circled around with Midnight, looking down at the big blood circle. “That looks like Rositsa’s, doesn’t it?”
“In that it is a large circular blood thing? Yes,” Midnight said. “Except for the scale. Hers was but a few meters across.”
“Do you think Darkstargirl sacrificed some of her fans?”
“Unlikely,” Midnight said. “I’m not saying that she wouldn’t. Just that it’s not really her modus operandi.”
“Yeah. So why haven’t we seen any vampires or anything?”
We continued to drift along, keeping proper distance from the battle above. It seemed that the angels had pretty quickly figured out that the incoming pair were against the same enemies, and that would really tip things away from the evil pair. Though Great Girl wasn’t particularly proficient at combat while flying.
Should I be trying to throw spells at the two balls of darkness in there? Actually, Dispel would probably be better if I did. Stopping their powers for a moment could be useful.
But I had other things to pay attention to. Like the guys hanging out in the brine whispering. “Hey!” I called down towards them. “Can you lie?”