“Familiar! Grease the left side!” I called out as somewhere around a dozen orcs charged towards our squad. I didn’t know what the barrier was that had blocked my Firebolt, but I was fairly certain it would have issues with pre-existing ground hazards. Unless it was consciously controlled, but I couldn’t imagine they were smart enough to perform magic like that. Unfortunately, it also meant I likely couldn’t use my new spell.

Captain Senan also threw up some ice walls to funnel them towards the grease- either they would completely stop their charge and take the long way around the walls giving us time to prepare, or just continue straight towards us. Which is what they did. On either side of me, Shockfire and Rocker blasted the orcs. The same barriers protected them, though I thought I saw them shimmer unevenly for a moment. That made sense, everything had to have a limit. But since I had easy options besides just blasting them, I went for those.

Puddles of blackness flanked by ice walls didn’t seem to deter the charging orcs, and they continued to rush towards us in a fury. Some of them vaulted over the grease- or at least attempted it. Others paid it no heed. Those who failed to jump far enough and those who didn’t jump at all unilaterally found themselves on the ground. Whatever skill and natural balance they had was more than overcome by their lack of caution.

Before the front enemies reached us, I made sure Midnight and I had Stoneskin. Captain Senan ordered Shockfire back. Rocker stayed in line with the captain, Midnight, and myself blasting the approaching enemies. Acid Man charged forwards towards one of them. Whatever barrier they had didn’t seem to stop him from entering- it wasn’t possible to stop everything.

An axe cut straight into Acid Man’s shoulder, slicing down to his waist. The open part of his body only showed green goop, and he fully shifted into his acid form as he leapt on the orc. I couldn’t imagine that going well for the guy, since he was already inside whatever weird barrier they had- and the screams of rage and pain seemed to agree with me as the orc clawed at his body. Acid Man could theoretically dissolve the guy, but more likely he was minimizing that aspect of himself and focusing on his fluidity. He stretched around the guy, pulling taut and yanking the orc to the ground. Sometime during that process the axe was yanked out of the orc’s hands.

Ice Guy formed another wall of ice to slow the prone orcs, surrounding himself in an armor of mobile ice. I was fairly certain he could take the overhead chop coming for him directly, but he stepped forward to grab the orc’s wrists. The handle of the axe hit him on the shoulder with a thud, chipping some ice as our captain’s powers worked its way up to the orc’s elbows. With wrists and elbows locked, the power and flexibility of the orc’s attacks were greatly diminished. At the same time, the captain tossed a few globes of ice towards other orcs. They splattered on the inside of the barrier, dissipating away instead of treating it like a solid barrier and growing into crystals.

That was something useful to know. Whatever sort of barrier the orcs had, powers wouldn’t work out of it as well as in. And if the orcs were anything but barbarians, that could matter for them too. But they weren’t, as their attempts to fight directly against Acid Man’s grapple and furiously smashing frozen arms against the ground to break it away indicated.

Pathetic. I stepped towards another orc, watching my outstretched hand to make sure my magic wasn’t canceled. I still had my Stoneskin, so I confidently matched steps with the orc in front of me. His reckless swing with his axe opened him up to my Shocking Grasp, though he did scrape along my ribs. Even so, I reached right for his barely protected face, a mask that provided probably even less anonymity than my own.

Electricity coursed through the orc’s head sufficient to take out any normal person. Barbarians were generally resistant to some sorts of damage, but electricity coursing into their body was generally on the lesser end of that. In this case, my attack was basically successful. The orc was stunned for a moment and dropped his axe, which I kindly took off his hands. Having seen no crimes sufficient to justify killing, I nicely thwapped him upside the head with the back of the axe. Even though his powers would likely protect him more against that damage, he went down.

Elsewhere, Midnight was having decent success with more Shocking Grasps. The ankles and lower legs of the orcs were still armored, but he was able to swipe at them a couple of times to achieve the same effect. In return, the orcs couldn’t do much but kick at him or wildly chop their axes towards the ground, both of which he was quite ready for. Even if they did manage to hit him, he had the full effects of Stoneskin. That wasn’t so easily overcome with just a couple swings of an axe.

Shockfire had watched the effectiveness of powers inside their barrier, extending perhaps five or six feet from each individual. Thus, when one came for him he was ready with a cone of fire, blinding his opponent and forcing him to protect his face. Shockfire might be most effective when there were enemies that used electricity or fire for him to rebound, but he still had the ability to absorb quite a bit of power ahead of time. He was capable at range, but also up close.

Rocker wasn’t so willing to engage in close combat, instead blasting away at the shields of one charging him. Through significant effort he managed to overcome it and blast his opponent back. A useful thing to know, though I knew how strong Rocker’s undiluted power was. I wasn’t able to expend enough mana to keep up with him in a direct competition. It did take our squad teamwork to bring him down- though partly because we were trying not to kill him.

By the time the orcs who had fallen into the grease trap were up and around the walls of ice, the course of the battle was clearly against them. Showing some unexpected reasoning skills, they tore away back to their vehicle, leaving our squad to finish taking care of the handful we were already engaged with. Ice Guy locked their arms and legs to the ground and each other sort of thrown into a pile in a manner he assured me would hold up against some level of super strength. Especially against injured opponents.

Then we ran over towards the escape van, which was just tearing off down the road. “Familiar! Haste the Captain!” I ordered as I prepared my own move.

I stretched out my hand, thinking about how annoying it was when people got away. And also about the complexities of distorting time. As my spell intruded upon the area around the van, I felt something resisting it, but I pushed the magic through. The spell should have normally applied to both the van itself and most of the inhabitants inside, but I had to narrow my focus to the vehicle itself.

Slow was not as impressive as Haste. It didn’t make the van suddenly a third or less of its speed. It just cut off a third or so. But combined with Midnight boosting Captain Senan’s speed, the vehicle that should have been pushing fifty or sixty miles per hour was below forty. Meanwhile, Captain Senan was able to outpace it, snagging the wheels with spikes of ice as he circled around it. The driver inside the vehicle seemed to be confused at how sluggishly the thing reacted, and though the barrier seemed to prevent some of Captain Senan’s attacks it ultimately was insufficient.

The rest of us were not too far behind, but the Captain’s hasted movements had already frozen the van shut, turning it into one big ball of ice. The people inside wouldn’t freeze- at worst they would get chilly unless they insisted on rubbing their faces against the ice. Which they sort of did, though instead of faces it was axes.

The orcs managed to chop their way out of the getaway van, but it was clearly exhausting. Their barriers had some sort of time or power limits as well, meaning they weren’t up to stop the rest of us from acting as we pleased. Soon enough we were sitting next to an extra large pile of orcs, furiously struggling against their restraints but too exhausted to do any real damage.

There was a lot of what I presumed was cussing coming from them. “What are they saying?” Captain Senan asked.

“No idea,” I admitted.

“But you’re-” he coughed suddenly. “I mean, you have Translation, right?”

“Oh yeah!” I clapped my hands in realization, casting the spell on myself and Midnight. I was nearly tapped out on mana now, but proper restraint squads were on the way and one more Shocking Grasp was probably unnecessary. I decided not to consume any crystals.

As I had expected, it was mostly profanity. It took a bit to get Translation to actually tune into things fully. Then I heard something like, “What are you doing fighting on the side of these paleskins, broken tusked witch?”

I shrugged, “Same thing as you, I presume,” I gestured to the driver, who was clearly not an orc. “I just picked the good side.”

“Hah! You have only petty powers compared to the great warlock who brought us here. Your stone city will fall!”

“Wow, you really have no idea what you’re up against, huh?” I raised an eyebrow. “Probably should have thought about that before you assumed you were invincible.”

There wasn’t anything else productive that happened. I explained the exchanges to the captain, but he was clearly more interested in the exploding belts on their waists. Presumably that wasn’t their primary function- they looked far too complicated to have such nice controlled explosions that didn’t even do much damage to their wearers. Someone could have gotten a bigger explosion out of that if that was the intent.

“Looks like Doctor Doomsday’s tech,” Captain Senan surmised. We’d only tried removing a couple belts- the rest went off in a chain reaction, apparently realizing they were compromised. With that, any lingering feelings of the barriers were gone. I felt I might recognize them in the future before Firebolting one, but I couldn’t be sure. Though it was a reasonably cheap way to pick out out regardless. “I think they were each equipped with an AEGIS, which is concerning.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s an AEGIS?”

“Amplified Energy Guard Independent System,” Captain Senan spouted random words.

I quickly took him by the shoulder, looking into his eyes. “Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

His eyes seemed focused and conscious, but slightly confused. “What?”

“You just started spouting nonsense!” I said. “That wasn’t even proper technobabble!”

“I swear it is,” he chuckled. “That’s the official name.”

“But that’s… why not just say Power Barriers or something not garbage?” I frowned.

Captain Senan shrugged, “Ask Doctor Doomsday. He was the one who first shouted the name at people.”

“... It has to have been some sort of diversion tactic,” I said. “That’s not a name people would use.”

“AEGIS sounds fine though,” he pointed out.

“Ehhhh…” I shook my head. “Not knowing where it came from.”

Reporters began to descend on the scene like flies. Attempted bank heists were common in New Bay, semi-successful ones were not. And unlike containment squads, anyone could be a reporter. Sure, the good ones had qualifications and stuff, but there were also the kind that only had cell phone cameras. A ‘real’ reporter with a good camera behind them shoved a microphone in my face. “How do you feel about arresting orcs like yourself?” he said.

I frowned, looked down at the pile of orcs, back at him, and punched him in the jaw so hard he flew into the camerawoman.