Mage Among Superheroes

Chapter 472 472

Light Woman got off easy- or at least alive- because she wasn't actually trying to imitate Lady Light. She did previously have similar powers, though, which was probably an issue. Not my issue, but certainly someone's. Super Labs really screwed things up with their whole everything. The executives likely had serious concerns about whether or not Lady Light's power was actually included in the serum. So far, we didn't really know much about how it worked.

Maybe I should have asked Rodentia more. She at least knew something about it. Maybe I'd take the chance next time I was on Bunvorix. My help hadn't been needed yet- though I did occasionally contact Zeb with Sending just to make sure. After all, if something went wrong they might not be able to reach me. From Zeb's responses, though, they were causing plenty of problems for the Bunvorixian government. It was still on the scale of a large city and quite a bit short of planetary, but they were having trouble responding to Rodentia's mad science. Plus all of Zeb's squirrels.

I looked over all the related news to L'Evilclub as I was treated. The lightning wound and my busted shoulder were the worst of it, but they would take time to heal. At some point Bandage showed up to help. Among the healers the Power Brigade had, she had some of the fastest results. Obviously we had outside options as well, but Bandage's form of healing was just right considering that most of my damage ended up being from class based magic.

A few beds away from me was Honey Badger. He didn't let anything stop him at the time, but the blood control guy had been trying with all his might. That left Honey Badger with a lot of damage to his blood vessels, though I suspected his natural healing would take care of it. Part of durability was recovering, after all.

Worst case we could call Ceira, but that would require a favor from a friend. She didn't really need money and would prefer to heal people who couldn't afford other options… or take time off.

Midnight came to visit, of course. "Here you are again… strapped to a hospital bed."

I shrugged, "I can get up and walk around whenever I want this time. I'm just feeling lazy."

Personally, I didn't think I'd engaged in anything reckless so there wasn't any reason for me to feel bad about the results. This was an acceptable level of injury after a big mission. Though it seemed things weren't quite over.

"We didn't catch the mastermind, huh," I looked at the results. "At least we secured the whole batch of serum in the vending machine. The production facilities in the warehouse, too."

Midnight hopped up onto the bed next to my head, taking a look at the report alongside me. Though he had his own display he could flip though separately. "There's no way those production facilities were set up easily," Midnight said. "This must have been a tough project. No connections found to the Neon Void yet, though. And thus, no indication how the super serum got into these hands."

I nodded. "Copies. Villain on villain corporate espionage. Special powers. Government corruption. Aliens… different aliens than the Neon Void, I guess. Umm…" I'm sure there were a few more options. "But yeah, they'd need experts and maybe a construction super to put this together in just a couple months. I doubt you can use generic drug facilities to make super serum."

Midnight shrugged. "There must be some overlap, but I'm sure it's a low percentage of the least important components. Super serum has to require specialized stuff… right?"

"One would hope," I commented.

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Divination magic had answers to all the questions in the universe… maybe. I did only have advanced divination magic even if that grand speculation was true. One must also know what questions to ask and how to get the proper answers one was seeking.

In short, if we wanted to know who the leader of this whole thing was, we needed more than speculation. We did learn that the merc working for them went by the name "Rotary". Apparently they had appeared recently, and were technically classed as a villainous organization. They just didn't do any evil schemes of their own. But if you only worked for villains, officially registering with the city as a mercenary group didn't work out. You'd have to have listed leaders… who could be held responsible for the actions of their people.

There were some groups that lived in the territory of plausible deniability. Technically, the Power Brigade did some missions for people that might have been villains- but we made sure we stuck to what was actually legitimate. Sometimes that meant butting heads with heroes.

Anyway, Midnight and I did our best but we didn't have much to work on. It felt like the whole city was covered in scrying anchors- which might actually be close to true at this point. Even when we found some vials, whether they were super serum or not didn't really indicate they were connected to our current project. Nor did it tell us where they were. Calculator could often find locations through tiny details, but Scrying didn't directly reveal the location that it had found. I was pretty sure that master Divination magic could do it, but honestly it was luck that I had gotten good at Divination magic to begin with.

Relatedly, the three casters of the Portal Squad had various levels of success with similar masteries. Boom only really had Basic Sonic Magic and Basic Rallying Magic, plus his individual spells. Bolster was a mage like me, but she didn't focus on Spatial magic at all. She did work diligently to get Basic Energy Magic, and she also had learned many paired spell combinations like Haste/Slow, Mental and Physical Freedom, and the like.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Bandage's magic was least related to my area of expertise, but she had Basic Healing Magic- plus a number of advanced spells she was working on mastering- and Basic Abjurative Magic. Clerics didn't create quite the same defenses as a Force Armor spell, but they were still at least as functional with their abilities in that regard.

Since none of them had the same background of class abilities it wasn't weird if they took a bit longer to get advanced masteries. Level might help with that, and I fought a lot so I was growing fast these days. Sadly, this latest mission hadn't given me enough experience to grow to level 48, but I was already far past where I had ever dreamed of reaching so spending a while longer to hit the next milestone was more than acceptable.

One thing we did have to go on was animals with powers. Searching for people with powers in New Bay was like searching for cars on a city street. You'd find them, but it wouldn't mean anything. Distinguishing those with serum powers wasn't feasible either, not when standing miles away in front of a transparent cube. Midnight and I could spend all day for months looking at various supers and violating privacy and probably never interact with someone relevant to our current mission.

We did eventually find a relevant avenue for our search. In the lowest level of the warehouse base, they had been experimenting on animals. Probably to make sure that their version worked… but maybe because they were crazy. Apparently, there had been signs of some sort of fighting arena as well which was messed up. Not everything wanted to fight. Obviously I did, but animals didn't deserve that.

So we had the option to search for animals with powers, which was great. Yeah, there were still hundreds of mice with serum powers throughout the city so that didn't help. We'd caught a lot, and many of their powers had faded- and some of the mice probably died- but enough kept their health and had powers that stuck strongly enough not to fade.

There were a few false flags we found in our search, though. It was New Bay, so it was to be expected.

First, we stumbled upon a pod of scaly reptiles.

"That's just the Gator Gang," Midnight commented.

"You sure?" I asked. "What if it was other powered sewer gators?"

"Nah, see that scar?" he pointed with his paw. "That's Phil."

"Alright," I said. "We'll try to tune them out."

The Gator Gang was, as far as sewer dwelling power denizens went, pretty tame. According to what I had heard, alligators were pretty 'chill'. The fact that alligators weren't native to California and a whole group had powers was certainly a concern, but the Gator Gang was one of those local things that you could generally ignore safely. Even as a mercenary who frequently ended up underground looking for supervillains.

It was pretty difficult to keep track of everyone we didn't want to find. We couldn't just add things to a blacklist… though maybe that would be a good spell to put together. Like some kind of sensory database. We'd need more than one technologically inclined spellcaster, though. Midnight wasn't an inventor. I supposed with the inclusion of various Celmothian artificers they might actually have the potential, but they had better things to work on for their people.

Our next Scrying spell ended up spotting Raglubithex. Obviously there was no way anyone would mistake it for a powered animal, it was just coincidence that it was looming over a mouse.

"Yeah," I said commented. "We should probably just delete that video. Or at least add a note before people open the files."

Midnight handled that. He was just faster with computers, especially when using familiar input devices. Celmothian ones, not mage related ones.

Raglubithex hadn't been doing anything but watching. Probably it had been trying to keep still so as to not bother the creature. Suppress its terror aura and all that. Even so, it wasn't good to look at. It probably added a whole order of magnitude to the time people had to worry about mental damage, but it was simply polite. It wasn't relevant anyway. That had been one mouse.

If we excluded rodens… apparently, there had been some cats and dogs in the mix. Yeah, cats and dogs hated each other but I had to reiterate that didn't make it okay to put them in fighting rings. Also, Bunvorixians and Celmothians could get along when they got past government propaganda.

Looking for a combination of cats and dogs with powers should very much narrow down the potential locations. While it did, it also seemed to take enough magic that a base level of the Scrying spell- or nebulous scrying-related divination- was insufficient.

So we tried one more time with additional mana. If it still didn't work, we'd come back later with Calculator's guidance- he always knew what to do. But even he needed time off. Or at least time without more tasks being added to his plate. I really hoped he got to sleep, but I couldn't say I was sure he'd ever done that willingly.

We found it. However, the scene wasn't quite what I expected. Yes, there was a dingy arena with a concerning quantity of bloodstains in the concrete, but the rest wasn't quite right. Over the arena was a large glass dome- or maybe some more durable material. Surrounding it I could just make out fancy clothes. Suits and dresses. Unfortunately, that was already the limit of the range- the fact that anyone was displayed at all with the scene focused on a cat and dog was a testament to how much it had grown.

This battle was basically a kitten against a tall, thin dog. Maybe a hunting breed with tan fur? That wasn't what stood out the most, though. What stood out most was the glowing red energy blades the dog made.

I really didn't want to watch. Midnight actually turned away.

A rain of blades that seemed impossible to dodge flew towards the kitten, with the dog not far behind, snarling.

The kitten- or perhaps adolescent feline- was hit by none of the blades and skillfully dodged through the charging canine's legs. Claws swiped towards the belly, then it was out before more red blades appeared.

I wasn't going to watch the rest of the fight. Instead, I picked up Midnight and rushed out of the room.

Time to grab whoever was next door. No time to wait to recover mana or finish healing from injuries.