The first step had gone off flawlessly. I had to admit that there was a bit of trouble I had picking out what people should look like. If I had to pick what I thought a casual group might look like it would have involved more elves, dwarves, and orcs. Or any amount of them and still several humans. But that by itself wouldn’t matter if I didn’t get the clothes right. Since I was basically around supers all day, my sense of style was off. I was given some specific forms to copy, and that worked out quite well for us. We basically just walked up to the warehouse without anyone noticing.

Succeeding on this mission by virtue of stealth would be the best possible result, since it would avoid having to deal with any high powered rifles. Swarm was supposed to be out so we’d only have to deal with Sirine and some mundanes. Not that it was good to underestimate non-supers. I was already well aware of what they could do with a rifle, and they had at least one piece of super tech. It was possible they would have more. Our plan of attack was to go in through one of the rear loading doors. Normally that would cause all sorts of problems, but we had some methods.

Shockfire pressed his hand against the metal. “No electronics,” he determined.

Acid Man was next, turning into a pool and squeezing under the roll-up door. While liquids might not easily flow under the sealed surface, he could squeeze through slowly since he was self-mobile. If there was a handle to easily unlock it on the inside he would use that. Otherwise…

A few moments passed and then the door sprang up a couple inches. There was probably some sound in relation to that but Rocker was doing his job suppressing the noise in the area. I could see the melted pieces of metal that had once been the lock holding it down.

We slid the door halfway up and ducked inside, nearly closing it again behind us. This warehouse wasn’t just one big open section but also contained a number of interconnected rooms on one side. It was probably illegal to set up living quarters in such a place, but that was less illegal than all of the other stuff. Like being criminal supers with illegal weapons. And no, it wouldn’t be any better if they properly licensed the weapons since they tried to kill me with one.

We crept forward, keeping an eye on each other and behind us since we could barely hear anything. Rocker’s power worked both ways, after all. We managed to make our way to two guards we knew were consistently positioned and gently shocked them unconscious. It was easy to get something like that wrong and kill someone so we went extra light. In actual combat holding back was usually not the right call, but they couldn’t make noise anyway- and we had extra people to hold them still.

Everything was going fine until we spotted an enemy group at the same time they spotted us. There were a few we could pick out as the thugs manning the warehouse as well as someone dressed head-to-toe in silver. I saw the shockwave of a massive blast of sound travel through the nearby shelves- mostly empty- but Rocker negated it.

Everyone sprang for cover and a bit of sound returned to the area as I moved away from Rocker. Shots were fired at us as the thugs drew guns, but Ice Guy formed a structure over and around the shelves to improve our defenses. Rocker was split off by himself but at least his defenses included bullet protection. Sort of. What his bubble of sound didn’t disrupt his generic outfit would stop.

“Someone needs to take care of that sonic user!” Ice Guy said, immediately following with who. “Mage and Familiar, you deal with that. Acid Man, go after those gunmen!”

We were the right choice. Rocker seemed to be able to match the opponent, but that made him the worst option to deal with that opponent. Fighting someone with similar powers simply resulted in drawing out the fight which wasn’t in our favor since this was enemy territory. “I’ll get us protected,” I said to Midnight. I gathered my mana for a nice Energy Ward and covered Midnight and myself. “Alright you sneak around and- watch out!” I yanked Shockfire away from long tentacles reaching out to grab him. I couldn’t bring him far since that would take him out of cover, but I at least turned him around.

Ice Guy had been keeping tabs on the situation and threw ice at various points, little orbs that expanded to freeze around bits of the shelves and the nearby tentacles, locking them in place. Sort of. They were unable to move freely, but they began to shrink, pulling out of the confines of the ice and leaving behind a hold. Even so, they continued to pull back further, disappearing behind a pile of crates where they seemed to originate.

“Tch. More enemies,” Ice Guy shook his head. “Familiar, you still focus on that sonic enemy while Rocker and Shockfire distract him. Mage, can you reach around behind those crates to shock that one?”

“I should be able to.” I didn’t know if a writhing mass of tentacles was shock-resistant, but it was time to find out. I just had to keep track of how much mana I had. Mage’s Reach went out and I charged it with Shocking Grasp, moving it up and over towards the center of the power I felt. I touched something, but a moment later I heard a voice in my ear.

“Mage, you’re out.”

“Aww, dammit,” I said as I fell to the ground and let Mage’s Reach fade away.

“Sniper behind us!” Ice Guy called out, expertly creating more cover there as well.

As I lay on the ground I got to watch the rest of the spar. Nemesis was replicating Rocker’s ability, but I hadn’t expected Jim to show up. I kept my shock low just like for the two guards who were also playing dead. For the real mission we’d go a bit harder but obviously we didn’t want to kill training partners on accident. Or seriously harm them, even.

Midnight ultimately managed to take down Nemesis by sneaking around behind him. Since he was wearing a proper uniform Midnight was able to do a proper shock without even bringing him down. I felt something extremely unsettling as Nemesis copied Midnight, but the actual results were less than inspiring. He countered against Midnight with a Shocking Grasp of his own, triggering at the same time Midnight swiped him- but Force Armor negated that one. Midnight fake his next swipe and dodged the responding kick. I felt him preparing a Firebolt, but Nemesis suddenly fell over, unconscious. It wasn’t even a fake, like me.

Eventually the battle ended and we got together to discuss how things had gone.

“Hey Jim,” I waved to the writhing mass of tentacles we called Jim, even if his real name was --------. Obviously that was impossible for our vocal chords to replicate, and even with the help of Translation it was easier to refer to him as his common name.

“Hello there, neighbor” he bowed his form towards me. “You didn’t have to hold back so much with the shock. I do have a protective suit in here.”

“Got it,” I nodded.

“So,” Captain Senan looked around. “How did this happen? Was this a random occurrence, or did we give ourselves away?”

“The latter,” Nemesis explained. “Deimos has a device that can detect power usage, after all. It’s not unreasonable for him to have noticed the approach once you were at the door.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Well, that’s why we have training after all. I didn’t think we were spotted so I wasn’t looking at our flanks either. Sorry about that guys.”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry captain. None of us thought of it either.” It wasn’t strange that I had been the first target of ‘Deimos’ either, which was really just someone with a laser scope on a rifle and a connected mic to let us know we’d been shot. There was some live ammunition from the ‘thugs’ but we couldn’t risk a real high powered shot. One slip up and we’d be dead before healers would be on the scene. Even the live ammo was the ‘less lethal’ kind.

We hadn’t known Nemesis would be present, but it made sense that he was the vague representation of Sirine. It wasn’t so simple to get someone with a sonic mind screwing power on short notice. Jim’s presence… well, he was just a random variable since we couldn’t know that there wouldn’t be any other supers.

I was willing to bet if they could find a splitter the next scenario would involve Swarm not being away as our intel said. Power Brigade’s intel would have high accuracy, but we knew it wasn’t possible to be completely accurate. We’d do at least a few more rounds of training, then look for an actual opportunity to assault the warehouse.

-----

After the day’s training I sat up on the roof of the Power Brigade, looking out on the world. The area was actually restricted, not because there was much of anything directly important but because it was a possible infiltration point.

“Good evening, Turlough!” Khithae said in much improved English. Being around more people willing to help her practice was helping, though her mouth would never be perfect for the language. “What are you doing here?”

“Counting,” I said as I looked down at the timer on my phone. “Trying to recover mana.”

“Seems an odd place,” she shook her head as she walked over to one of the big metal boxes on the roof. “I hope some noise won’t throw that off. I have to fix this HVAC.”

It was kind of relaxing to see her disassemble the outside and tinker around with electrical boards, though I wasn’t sure why there were so many for a spinning fan. Then again, everything was run by electronics so perhaps it made the most sense.

After an hour I used exactly six mana on spells and continued to wait, noting my fatigue levels. I could tell when I was full or nearly empty, but in between it was more vague. The difference between nine and ten mana was basically undetectable, but over the course of a few hours I would know if my mana was staying in the middle or rising. Or falling, if somehow this lowered my mana regeneration rate. It was possible.

“It wouldn’t help you to be bigger right now, would it?” I asked Khithae.

“No, it would not. Actually, being smaller might sometimes be useful. Some things are hard to reach and I’d like to slip around…”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have that one.” I’d like to have it, but I would also like to know every spell, so Reduce wasn’t exactly the highest priority. I had the feeling it would be useful against many enemies though. It was only a question of whether or not they could resist it.

I was staring out over the city when I noticed a bright light. That wasn’t especially odd, given there were many buildings that could have lights on. But this one was wavy and not the pristine white of artificial light. Fire.

I always had my comms device on my while at the HQ. Getting texts was a fine method of communication but some places I wasn’t allowed to bring a cell phone for security reasons. I activated the little device that fit in my ear and spoke. “Dispatch, there’s a fire on a building two blocks north of HQ. Has that been called in to the city?” They would be able to deal with that faster than I could do it myself, and there was more.

“Thank you Mage. It hadn’t been called in yet.” Then following that, “All free personnel, a fire has been spotted two blocks north of HQ. Please make your way there to assist if you have suitable abilities.”

I imagined individual people were being called out individually as well, but the general call could include me. I wasn’t entirely sure what I could do, but I could think of a couple options. I had no points to suddenly get a new spell for putting out a fire, but my current thirteenish mana could provide several useful options to support others. I hurried down the stairs towards the nearest elevator. I didn’t have a fast way of getting down just yet.