Mage Among Superheroes

Chapter 475 475

Feeling Midnight's stress, I was tempted to go punch some people in the face. Sadly, that tended to not be a viable solution for his woes. If it was, he would have already brought it up. Given recent events, I merely had to assume that it was some sort of trouble on social media related to our actions.

I couldn't think of why, though. Yeah, we had arrested a whole bunch of people but it would be pretty stupid of them to be saying anything before their court dates. Then again, I was well aware that people were stupid.

Speculating would only get me so far, but I didn't really want to know. Then we would both feel bad. It was my job to be a stabilizing force. "Don't worry about whoever it is. They're just idiots."

He sighed. "That's probably accurate."

"Doesn't the Power Brigade help manage the worst things?" I asked. "If anyone says anything actionable…"

Midnight shook his head. "At this point, it would just convince people of our 'tyranny'. So it's best not to."

"Do they want to meet a tyrant?" I asked. "I might be able to introduce them to one."

"That would depend upon the definition used," Midnight pointed out. "You're not friends with anyone cruel."

That was a fair point. The king of the many-colored had absolute power, but his citizens didn't seem to be concerned about that. He was only a tyrant from the perspective of The Six who weren't even his subjects. They were the ones who sucked.

"I could try to teleport someone into a local dictator's house," I commented. "Or I could just send them into Zuresh's castle. Unfortunately, I don't think that would actually benefit us in any way. It would just create a small chance of that dumb princess causing us more trouble."

Midnight pondered for a few moments. "Could be fun, but I think we should avoid abducting people."

"Maybe we could get them to agree beforehand somehow…"

I wasn't serious, of course. If I had a good enough reason to throw someone into another world, I wouldn't bother with niceties. Mostly I was just being a distraction.

Speaking of which, we did have things to do. "What do you think of this Gilded Liar guy we heard about?"

"Gildas Lyon," Midnight said. "You were actually closer before."

"Do we have a picture yet?" I asked.

"We do," Midnight confirmed. "That should probably be our primary task for the day. Unless you have something else…?"

I shook my head. "I don't even know where to start for our secondary task."

Seriously, should we just wander around HQ looking for suspicious people? That would make us the most suspicious ones. We didn't even have proof that there was still ongoing subterfuge. For an influential group like the Power Brigade there would always be attempts, but the particular individual involved in this instance might not even be around still. We might need access to personnel records or something. Plus a lot of luck.

"Do we have any lucky members?" I asked.

Midnight tilted his head. "You're the one who reads that stuff for fun. Shouldn't you know?"

"I could have missed something," I said. "All I really remember is that those powers are high risk. People don't always bring good luck."

Midnight nodded. "You're just as likely to get attacked by associated individuals than to stumble upon directly useful information."

"Hmm… really?" I asked.

"... or have a piano fall on your head."

Bleh. That probably wouldn't even give any experience. "Fair enough. We'll start with trying to find this guy."

-----

Our scrying orb was good. Honestly, I had to attribute at least half of our successes to the excessive nature of Vilhelmiina's gift. It was fortunate for us she'd gotten an itch to make something like that, because I would never have thought to request it- and paying for it would have been impossible. Sometimes tech supers just had to do stuff, though.

Usually the orb and our numerous upgrades were sufficient. Divination was still a good handful of upgrades behind energy magic, but it was still among the top proficiencies we had.

Today, it just wasn't working out.

"It doesn't feel like a Scrying Anchor," I said when I failed once more. "More like a barrier. It's just not forming."

Midnight considered for a moment. "We would expect a proper supervillain to have some precautions. People must know about the possibilities by now. And there were oracles before us."

"True," I admitted. It was a shame that Doctor Doomsday had brought about a sudden surge of proficiency in the area of scrying defense. I wasn't sure how much he was directly responsible for, but he'd certainly sold some of his tech. Others might have copied him in some manner- though it was unlikely that most people could actually dismantle his tech and survive. Just having the idea might be good enough, though.

Rodentia was one of the exceptions. Maybe I should ask her how much she sold her stuff to others. We weren't exactly friends now, but she was being a problem for other people. And despite the chaos she caused, she wasn't that bad of a villain. Far from innocent, but she generally didn't end up killing people. Then again, that was probably a practical thing rather than some sort of internal morality. Heroes and mercs had very different rules of engagement with wanton killers.

"My attempt," Midnight said. I watched him form the spell. Obviously there weren't any flaws. We hadn't suddenly forgotten how to cast Scrying in the last couple of days. I didn't even know if that was possible. "Okay, yeah, I feel it," Midnight said as his power sputtered out. "A pretty decent barrier. But we know this one."

Did we? "It doesn't feel like any tech I remember…"

"That's because it isn't. It's magic, right?" Midnight said it as if it were obvious.

"Ah… well, I guess we haven't actually dealt with it since Spot…" I was kind of embarrassed though. "Nondetection, right?" We also knew that spell.

"Unless I'm reading it wrong, yeah."

"In that case, I have the solution."

"Really?" Midnight asked. "What's that? We already increased our efficiency with somatic and verbal components…"

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"Nondetection isn't infinite, you know," I said. "Ours has run out before. I would be surprised if Giblet Lake hadn't already had to recast the spell once or twice. Or whoever is doing it for him, I suppose. Anyway, I can just throw more mana at it."

Midnight didn't think that would work. "Aren't defensive spells more efficient? We stood up to Zentha Qitris briefly."

"She was being lazy," I said. "We should have the advantage here because we're higher level."

"You might be," Midnight said. "I'm like 15 levels behind you."

"Assuming our target is from this world, they shouldn't be higher level than you," I explained to Midnight. "Because you started before anyone with portal powers, and I know you don't slack off. But even if they grew rapidly or are from my old world… I can probably beat them. Because I broke my magic."

"It's better not to do anything unstable…"

"The orb can handle it," I said, patting the cube. If I didn't have gloves on, I would have had to clean it. "It did when I was trying to find you."

"Can you handle it?"

"I'm not going to mess up a Scrying spell so bad I hurt myself. Also, I doubt we'll get anywhere close to the actual end of my mana pool. And there are two of us. I'll do a big swing, and then you can make a normal attempt. We'll alternate like that until we find this Gilbert fellow."

Midnight agreed, not that he could have stopped me if I wanted to do it anyway. But I preferred to be on the same page, because it felt bad to be at odds with my familiar. That could lead to a truly unpleasant cycle, though we never let any conflict last long.

I had to assume that if I had Master Divination Magic our task would be easier. Even without further upgrades, there was an inherent power level in there that even overcasting spells wouldn't make up for. Still, I was confident that throwing a good 20 mana at an 11 mana spell should do well. Or I could do 22. Yeah, that sounded better. A full double. It would be somewhere between twice and four times as strong.

The way I focused my spell, I was willing to accept a shorter viewing window. I simply needed to see something. We had a digital picture of our target- with the person who took a selfie with Grimer cropped out so that we couldn't accidentally confuse the target.

He was just a guy. Clean shaven, black suit. Maybe it was just me, but I felt like it didn't quite fit his frame. Something about the shoulders…?

Yeah, that was it. Now that I could see him moving around, he definitely had some shoulder extenders. Didn't he know he could just work out and get bigger shoulders that way? Fake wasn't a good look.

"Seriously, that worked the first time?" Midnight asked.

"Yeah. But he'll notice pretty soon and cut us off," I said. There probably wasn't much of the original Nondetection spell left, because I didn't feel too much resistance.

I was proven wrong. This guy was oblivious. I hadn't been focused on subtlety at all, but here this guy was just walking around talking to people without a care in the world.

"Is that the mayor's office?" Midnight asked.

"I don't see signs of Mayor Demciri," I commented.

"No, I mean the building," Midnight said. "City hall, I guess."

"How would we know?"

"... by remembering it?"

Had I been there? Eh, it probably wasn't important. "We were only there like… once, right?"

Midnight rolled his eyes. "Yeah. I guess you forgot. It was for Celmothian business so you weren't really paying attention."

"Oh! The permits," I nodded. "Otherwise we would still be waiting for construction to begin."

They'd still done all the checks they were supposed to perform, I believe. The project was simply prioritized instead of being worked on at the normal pretty slow pace. Then again, I didn't care if they skipped stuff because I knew the Celmothians wouldn't allow sloppy construction. It had already been tested in an attack, and even if the Bunvorixians weren't strictly trying to blow up the place, surviving incidental superpowered battle damage was good enough.

We watched the guy walk around, taking note of who he spoke to. He did actually end up in the permitting office. I wondered if he somehow had permits for the stuff in that warehouse… and the underground fighting ring. If so, someone was in big trouble.

"Boring," I said. "None of this is interestingly illegal." It might have been boringly illegal, but even if it was we couldn't do much to act on it. Apparently, this guy was well connected.

Everyone seemed friendly with Grand Lawn or whatever his name was. It was weird.

"He's not even nice," I commented. "Do you think it's because he's rich?"

Midnight understood the context even without me explicitly saying it. "I don't know. They seem fairly genuine."

"I'm bored. Wanna teleport over and snag him?"

"Please don't. We don't have a warrant."

I sighed. "Warrants are annoying. Can't we just say we saw him doing something illegal?"

"We haven't! That's part of the reason there are rules."

I thought about that for a moment. "Actually, we might have."

"He was just talking to people. We didn't see or hear evidence of illegal action."

"Was he just talking?" My spell was about to run out. "Your turn. If he recasts Nondetection, I'll break through again. I have enough mana for at least two more attempts."

"I'm ready to cast whenever it ends. Anyway, what are you implying?"

"Magic," I said. "Maybe he'd magicked them to make them like him."

"Oh. That would actually be… super illegal."

I nodded. People really didn't like mind control magic, with good reason. That was part of the reason my spells stayed away from that stuff. Plus I didn't like it, and mages weren't the best class for such things. Bards were, but Boom didn't focus on that stuff either.

"We'll show up after he leaves," I suggested. "To scan for any lingering magic."

"If there is anything, we have to bring someone else in instead of just removing it. For official records."

What a pain. Wasn't our word trustworthy enough? Though Midnight and I being bonded didn't lend it to appearing as two objective positions, so I could see people wanting another opinion. But once we had some information, we could just snag the guy.

I couldn't think of a single issue that might arise.

Fortunately he was very efficient about he moved around. I was also glad to see that he mostly talked with lower level people. "He sure has a lot of appointments, doesn't he?"

"Indeed," Midnight said. We'd just watched him effectively kick someone out, and they apologized to him. "You might be onto something here."

He could of course be doing this via regular old influence, which wouldn't technically be illegal so far. It felt a bit unlikely, though.

Midnight proved he knew what he was doing with his next suggestion. "We should talk to Izem. Mr. Demciri. Schedule an appointment or… a tour?"

"Good idea," I said. "If he brings us around to meet people, we won't look so weird."

Midnight's Scrying lasted about 15 minutes. No resistance at all, it seemed. I didn't bother overcasting again for my next shift… and fortunately that was the last one before L'Clubowner left the building.

"Let him know we'll be showing up in a minute," I commented.

"Or… we could take a car," Midnight pointed out. "So that our arrival looks normal."

"Ugh. You're right," I admitted. It would be slower, but it was better to not be seen appearing in random alleys. Even if most of our enemies probably already knew we could Teleport, we didn't need information to get out, especially if we weren't in a big rush. Though… we didn't want to delay if we could help it. Which was why Midnight already had our ride waiting.

I had no idea what our driver's name was, but I probably hadn't forgotten it because he didn't say anything. Thus, no introductions. Just a guy taking us to our destination. I did know some of the people who chauffeured us to dangerous locations, but the mundane drivers weren't as interesting.

It was nice to know the mayor, and even better that he was willing to immediately drop whatever he was doing to help us out. Though we might also be helping him out, so it wasn't that selfless.

Immediately upon entering the lobby, I noticed some signs and had Midnight call for someone to verify our information. Fortunately, the mayor didn't have any lingering magic, but the secretary in the lobby did. It wasn't his fault, as he was just a mundane individual, but no doubt the secretary was going to have to deal with some annoyances now. And we could only presume that similar remnants of magic would be on people further inside.