The next few in-game hours were some of the most hectic Kaleb had experienced. If they weren’t stomping out figurative fires, then it was literal ones. The calls came from all over, and Kaleb answered over a dozen of them. Not all of them were exciting as gang fights and shoot-outs, but they still were legitimate calls from the citizens. So one of them was assigned to take on the job.
It was around eight at night before the police started to respond to calls again. At that point, Kaleb and the rest of the SG were called back to the base for debriefings and paperwork. All the loot they collected needed to be declared, and various events had to be tagged for further consideration. Thankfully, when Kaleb and Vivienne pulled into the Hangar’s parking lot, it looked like the others were already there. Kaleb’s last job was a search and rescue with Vivienne in a collapsed building. Some Villain Supe had blasted their way through the building. So while Claire and the others chased down the Supe, he set about rescuing people.
He was still dusty and scraped up from the evening’s escapades. But Kaleb felt a sense of satisfaction at how much they had gotten done. Vivienne was equally dusty and tired-looking as she opened the door for him and they both stepped into the hangar. The low hum of people working filled their ears, and they moved around the office and Kaleb’s workshop area. He grasped at the vial still in his pocket from the thugs he and Claire had dealt with.
He wanted Daivor to look at it before he did anything else. Making sure that whatever was left in the vial wasn’t magical was paramount to Kaleb. If their SG was dealing with another magically enhanced threat, he wanted to know as quick as possible. Of course, that was after the copious amounts of paperwork he had to do.
He and Vivienne took their seats in the Command Center next to the others. They were all seated at a long white table filling out forms. Occasionally, they’d share a muted conversation, but at the moment, everyone was focused on writing. Farrah and her team had gotten the papers as ready as they could, but the meat of the paperwork needed to be done by the reporting Super. Kaleb kept his head down and proceeded to fill out the forms in the order that they occurred. From the bar fight after his college lesson to the search and rescue assignment. Kaleb was writing about pulling a small alien from the debris of the building when he noticed one of the drone screens was still active.
Looking at their table, he spotted each of the members of the SG and was confused. Until he remembered Roy. He sat a little straighter in his chair and put his pen down. The screen was facing slightly away from him, but he could still see the image of a warehouse. He caught Farrah’s eye as she patrolled her domain. When she gave him a confused look, he waved a hand at the still recording screen.
“Is Roy still out in the field?”
Farrah looked at the holo-screen and rolled her eyes. “Yes. He followed your ‘cops’ to that warehouse and is now staking them out. They are apparently waiting for something.”
“Shouldn’t a registered Super, such as his mentor, be there with him?”
“We are still within the bounds of what a sidekick can do by themselves, Professor. And you have paperwork to fill out.”
“Not while the boy is out on his own!” Kaleb argued.
“He’s doing surveillance. He will be fine.” Farrah said calmly.
“Until he isn’t. Then I have to race out there to save my sidekick.”
The rest of the table fell silent as they watched Kaleb argue with the rabbit-woman. He didn’t know if any of them agreed with him. But Kaleb didn’t care. He was worried about the boy. NPC or not, he liked Roy and didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. Farrah’s face softened as she seemed to read his mood. Moving closer and maintaining eye contact, she said.
“He will be fine. If we need to do a hot extraction, I’ll go. I can be there and back again before you could even leave your chair.”
Kaleb sighed and unclenched his hands. That placated his feelings somewhat, but he would still have preferred to go himself. But Farrah was the next best thing. He carefully picked up his pen again as his eyes wandered back over to Roy’s screen. He began idly filling out another report as his mind kept going over everything that could go wrong with Roy’s job. The others at the table began writing again too, but Claire spoke up in the silence.
“Did you discover who those cops were?”
Farrah shook her head. “Nope. They aren’t in any of the databases we have access to. I also sent their images to the police. No one knows who they are. Roy reported they parked their car in the warehouse and are currently waiting for something. He’s maintaining his position until we spot who the two are working for and then he will pull back.”
Kaleb kept his hands moving as he listened. The two oddly similar cops had been the strangest part of Kaleb’s evening. He was curious about their origins, but he had so much other stuff to do as well. He needed to repair their gear, resupply himself, and get that sample he’d found analyzed. Thinking about the vial, Kaleb pulled it from his pocket and set it on the table. As he did, he asked.
“Anyone else see anything like this out there?”
The flecks of orange in the vial had collected at the bottom, creating a small pool of whatever concoction was in there. Two Gun was shaking his head as Claire looked down the rest of the table, curious. Abby reached for the vial and Kaleb almost lunged for it. But he stopped himself. She knew to be careful with it, right? Then he saw her shake the small glass vial, and he almost lost it. But Jar-lock gingerly took the vial from the young woman’s hand and examined it.
“What is it?” asked the big mage.
Kaleb gave the man a withering look as he spread his hands. “How am I supposed to know that?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“You haven’t examined it?”
Kaleb set his chair on its back legs as he spread his arms wider, confused. “When the hell was I supposed to do that, Jar? We just got back, and contrary to popular belief, I can’t identify potions with my eyes.”
Kaleb’s own words made him stop talking as Jar-lock and Vivienne nodded understandingly. Kaleb slapped himself in the face. Down the table, Jar-lock whispered a few words under his breath. The vial in his hands glowed blue, but quickly dimmed to nothing. The big mage shook his head.
“It’s not a magical potion. Seriously, professor, you have to remember your magical abilities.”
“In his defense, he was just punched into a wall and almost crushed to death.” Claire defended.
Kaleb reached out for the vial again as Jar-lock passed it down. “Not to mention the angry Not-Cops showing up and demanding the damn thing.”
“Wait, Roy is following the people that tried to take this from you?” Abby asked, nodding at the vial.
“Yep. Showed up as soon as the fight ended. I assumed they were cops until they rushed off, when it became clear I wasn’t handing it over. Also, Claire spotted something odd about them as well.”
“They were nearly identical. Could’ve been twins or something, but it was uncanny. How much they looked alike.”
Farrah nodded. “We’ve confirmed that.”
She waved a hand at the back wall of the hangar, and a large screen appeared. Two males appeared on the screen. Both were tall with short black hair and wearing black suits. Both were also wearing dark sunglasses. Images and short videos of them leaving their cop car and walking toward the warehouse flickered across the screen as Farrah explained.
“At least to our drone cameras, the pair are perfectly identical. They never removed their glasses, so we can’t confirm their eye color. But everything from their gait to their arm's length is the same.”
“Twins could still account for that.”
“Oh please, Jar-lock. Are you seeing how those two move? It’s eerie.” Abby said.
Kaleb could only agree as on-screen, both men walked across the street in perfect synchronicity. It was beyond creepy. Then the screen shifted to a first-person view and Kaleb got confused. It was a recording of someone crawling through a warehouse window and looking down on the warehouse floor from above. Both suited men moved to the center of the room and sat in two chairs that were waiting for them.
“Is that footage from Roy?” Two Gun asked.
“Yes, he installed a camera in the rigging of his armor and used it to get us a camera inside.”
Kaleb slapped his face again. “Body cams! I’m a damn idiot.”
“But we still like you anyway,” Abby snarked.
Kaleb ignored the snark and started to think about ways to pin cameras to everyone’s gear. It wasn’t a requirement, but with the local PD and HLO screwing with them constantly. Having more footage wouldn’t be a bad thing. Meanwhile, Farrah switched Roy’s footage to live, and the screen shifted to the two men still sitting in a half dark warehouse staring at one another. Kaleb didn’t know how long they’d been sitting there, but he was sure it was a few hours at least.
Kaleb stuck his head back down and hurriedly finished his paperwork. He felt a notification go off, but he ignored it as he pushed the papers across the table to Farrah. Standing, he was about to hurry off to his lab, when Jar-lock stopped him.
“Professor, we need to go over new leads for tonight.”
Kaleb rubbed his face in exasperation. “We’ve got the vial, Abby’s contact turning on her, and the HLO interfering with the cops. I think we’ve got enough on our plate, Jar.”
Jar-lock sat against the long white table as he nodded along with Kaleb’s words. “Yes, but you need to share with the rest of us. What is that vial? Why did Abby’s contact turn on her, and are we sure it’s the HLO dicking around with the cops? We all need the same information before we can attack the problem together.”
Kaleb tried to find an argument around Jar-lock’s thinking, but he couldn’t. The big bastard was right. They all needed to know the same thing so that their Super-Group could handle group issues. Grumbling to himself, Kaleb walked back to his seat and started at the beginning of the day. He briefly went over his college gains and the new people he had met. Then he lead into Abby’s contact and the bar fight that ensued. Abby and Two Gun added their own points of view while the others listened. When they were done, Jar-lock and the others posed questions and possible leads.
“Is it possible Gort was lying?” Vivienne asked.
“Unlikely,” Jar-lock answered. “I was contacted by one of my CIs as well. He came at me with a mage-killing knife.”
“Can’t have been that good of a knife, then.” Two Gun smirked.
Jar-lock shrugged, grinning. “Mage-Killers are a double-edged sword. They make the user feel invincible because once they stab a mage, it’s harder for them to do magic. But what they forget is that we can still defend ourselves without magic. Once I had taken care of the knife, I questioned my CI. He said the same thing as Abby’s Gort. The cops are buying off our contacts and ordering them to come at us.”
“Smart.” Kaleb said, angrily. “If it goes to shit, they still pull a criminal off the streets and we take out our own information network.”
“But we still don’t know if the HLO is doing it or if the cops are of their own violation.”
Kaleb scoffed, but remained quiet. He made his stance clear on who he thought was holding the cop’s leash. He didn’t want to get into it again. Not while there were other things to discuss. Like his and Claire’s dust-up with the juiced aliens. Claire went in-depth about how strong the gangsters were, while Kaleb described the effects he had seen.
“I don’t know if the increased muscle mass was a side-effect or the intent of the potion. But it was clear that the guy I fought had already taken some. Otherwise, the effects wouldn’t have been so deadly.”
“Those punks I was punching did feel a little more packed together.” Clair said, flexing her fist.
Jar-lock scowled in thought before asking. “So it’s some kind of biological accelerant? Making people stronger overall?”
Kaleb shrugged. “I need to examine the sample I got. But I can only do so much here. Tomorrow I’ll head over to the college lab and use the equipment there. But my best guess is it’s some kind of power enhancer.”
Farrah shook her head. “Swing and a miss, Doc.”
She tapped away at a nearby keyboard, bringing up his fight in the street with the gangsters. In the image, Kaleb was squared off against the roided-out alien while Claire was ducking and weaving around her own fight. Farrah tapped a few more keys and all three alien species were brought up.
“Each of those aliens is not known for their strength. In fact, two of them are classified as mundanes.”
Kaleb pulled the vial up to his face again and stared at the orange liquid inside. “So this somehow gave them super strength?”
“Enough to throw down with me,” Claire added.
“Professor, you have to get into your lab and figure out what that is,” Abby said excitedly.
Kaleb nodded as he stood from his seat. But Jar-lock, once again, coughed authoritatively.
“We haven’t finished the debrief. We still have the other missions we all went on, along with any leads we may have.”
“Jar, come on, this has to be more important.” Kaleb whined.
“Protocol is important, Doc. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to examine your specimen. But first, we need the full view of everything happening in our contracted area. Now, on to Abby and Two Gun’s missions. I see that you got called to an ATM heist?”
Kaleb smacked his head against the table and closed his eyes. It seemed that his night had only just begun.