The cloud coverage thinned revealing the moon. A bright, blue-silver, dinner plate that rose over the city of Prospero.

As evening set in, people working the day shift drove or rode home. The people night shift stepped out of their houses and apartments. Heading down into the subway, or waiting on the curb for the buses and self-driving taxis.

Down in the industrial part of the city, near the warehouse districts to sets of sleek black automobiles drove up the opposite ends of the same road. Both sets of cars were headed towards the same destination.

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Coming up the southern end of the road was the Inoue family. A small clan of mages that hailed back to the eighteenth century as governmental onymodo.

They were pushed out of Japan by rival families with stronger magics. Then they intermarried with a couple western orthodox clans in the early half of the nineteenth century and built a steady influence over the passing years.

Ultimately, they ended up going completely underground by selling their services to various gangs till they’d built enough influence to stand on their legs as an underworld powerhouse.

Now they were using that influence to rise to prominence within the hazy corridors of the gray industry, and step back into the world of light as the BlueWell Corporation.

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A stream of light hit the streets near the warehouse district, becoming a pool of glowing silvery mist. The mist spread out, covering the entire city block. Obfuscating the space that was occupied by the light.

Up above, on a rooftop stood the source of the glowing mist. A lean, athletic figure, dressed in a form-fitting, gray and white, armored costumed. His face covered by a round white mask.

He stood on the rooftop. A gloved had pressed to the earpiece he was wearing.

“Cloudy Midnight reporting in from observation point C. I’ve got the streets around the east-side of the warehouse district closed off.” said the man in white mask.

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Coming down the northern end of the road was the Albani family. They were the family behind one of the state's largest suppliers security mechs. The family patriarch was a super with heightened intelligence and an affinity machine.

Nicholai Albani put his first transistor kit together when he was five years old and never looked back.

He never stopped building, even when the Italy’s economy tanked in the middle of the early rebuilding....

He never stopped building, even when the mars-earth wars started up and he was drafted into the service of UN army…

He never stopped building, even when he immigrated to the US to find that it too was going through a major rough patch….

Even as he found himself hundreds of thousands of miles away from home with no place for him and little to no job opportunities...he never stopped building and never looked back.

He kept on tinkering. He kept playing with various pieces of tech that he’d cut his teeth on back when he was an army engineer.

Pulling yourself up by own bootstraps is physically impossible, but when you were a man with an IQ nearly as high as the average zip code, and you were willing to get your hands dirty, doing the impossible wasn’t all that hard.

That was how Albani Electronics became a major provider of household goods in mid-western part of the US and certain parts of Europe.

That was how the Albani gang became a major name in the superpowered underworld and the paranormal gray industry. All they needed to do was to play smart and be willing to get their hands dirty.

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On another rooftop stood a man in a black and red costume. He wore a cat-shaped cowl with the ears replaced with rectangular devices.

He tapped the side of his cowl and his view was occupied by a series of AR screens that showed live recordings from a variety of angles. Recordings that were being taken by cameras and spy devices that the man had put in place in preparation for tonight.

“Copy that. This is Sly Cheshire at Observation point B. Local Law Enforcement are on standby. We’ve got traffic patrol redirecting traffic outside of the buffer.”

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Being a superhero both was and wasn’t like what you saw in comic books. Heroes did indeed go on patrol but for the most part they didn’t do as much beating up of random thugs as you’d think.

Unless a life was in danger, if a hero saw a crime in progress they’d generally just call it in. Regular police still had to do their jobs. Supers were meant for handling supernatural tasks and threats that ordinary police couldn’t handle safely.

The average superhero would generally only fight other superheroes, monsters, and the more supernaturally gifted amongst the non-human populace. Honestly, it was kind of a toss up, whether heroes, or players, were more similar to the traditional fantasy adventurer.

I’d say that players won by a hair because heroes generally didn’t get as much of the busy work and crap jobs that players got. Heroes were also better regulated, better trained, and better paid.

The more famous ones even tended to provide a public relations boost for the local government and various corporate interests. Resulting in a hero industry where a lot of money was sunk into powerful, popular, heroes because they made the best mascots.

For the most part however, as disappointing as it might be to hear it, in the current age superheroes were just another part legal system.

A system that now put slightly more focus on the order part of “law and order”, relaxing its concern about the actual law.

Worrying less about what was in the legal books because the nations of the world now had to deal with the fact, that there were individuals running around that it’d be just too costly to try and police, if it wasn’t absolutely necessary for them to do so.

That was what the three heroes were there to do that night. Instead of patrolling, they were on a mission to keep the peace. Assuring that things didn’t fly off the handle and that the civilian populace didn’t get caught up in what was taking place in the city’s warehouse district.

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Within a certain non-descript warehouse, crouched, hidden on a rafter, was a woman in a mottled brown costume. She wore a short cape with a white, fur-lined, collar. Instead of a mask, she wore goggles. Multi-faceted goggles that her eyes look like bug’s eyes.

“Math Moth at Observation Point A. On standby. The targets are pulling in.” said the woman in brown.

She studiously watched as two lines of sleek black, luxury, automobile drove through the open doors of the warehouse.

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I watched from yet another vantage point in a place that was neither near nor far. I didn’t intend to interfere unless I absolutely needed to, and found myself conflicted as to whether it’d be better if nothing came up or not.

One the one hand, for Cass’ sake and her niece and nephew’s sake it would be better if I didn’t end up having to step in. On the other hand, seeing all this cloak and dagger shit had gotten me in the mood to get mixed up in a good old fashioned super fight.

As I watched from my hiding spot, I read the akashic flow and found a smirk crawling onto my face.

I clucked my tongue and toyed with the umbrella I was holding. Humming beneath my breath as my mind used the data to build predictive models of how the night was going to end up going.