New Bay was currently decked with Christmas displays all over the place. I had little understanding of Christmas beyond what I saw- everything indicated it was a time of gift giving. And… snow? I hadn’t seen any actual snow yet, but apparently it was coming. It seemed crazy that there was going to be a whole month of this, yet I learned that it had once taken up more time. It had taken great cultural pushback to confine it inside December, allowing previous holidays such as Thanksgiving to have their own space between the other popular holiday, Halloween. It seemed I’d missed Thanksgiving with all that was going on, though it had no personal importance to me.

But a big event coming up didn’t mean that villains stopped doing their thing. And though a good part of it was Doctor Doomsday’s work, apparently the rates were even higher than normal. That meant more patrols- but with occasional scuffles it also meant more experience. Fighting new and different people, even when they were weak, was valuable to me. Plus the fact that they were real fights and not just spars. There wasn’t always something big happening around our squad, but we were certainly kept busy.

A message came in to our captain. Technically, we could all get information directly, but unless it was an emergency situation the Brigade liked to speak through the captains. That was their job after all. “Sounds like a break in at a local corner store,” Ice Guy said. “That would be something for cops, but villains of some sort are involved. People in fancy outfits, though details seem vague.”

“Danger level?” I asked.

“Unclear,” he answered. “There doesn’t appear to have been a physical conflict. They could already be gone by the time we get there.”

“Got it,” I nodded. Midnight and I had cast Force Armor on our squad before the patrol began. It would last the whole time, unlike Stoneskin. It was also much cheaper than the latter. It wasn’t possible for Midnight and I to maintain Stoneskin for any real duration except as shared between ourselves, with it lasting about an hour and costing around eight and a half mana. It felt selfish, but that was most powers. Even if they could be used to augment others, there were limits to what people could do. With some increases to the rank of Stoneskin, maybe we could manage something better.

I had been the one to cast it about half an hour ago, and I was now at about twenty-six mana out of my maximum of thirty-one. I could cast Stoneskin on the rest of the squad excluding one person… and then have no magic for anything useful after that. Midnight’s mana pool was ten lower than me at twenty-one, so even if we split the task we’d be quite low on mana. I always wanted them to be safer- but taking enemies out of a battle might be more impactful than increasing someone’s defenses. Everyone had their own methods anyway.

We stepped into the corner store. The lights were off, the street lights outside providing only a trickle of light inside. But of course, I could see just fine.

“Mage?” Captain Senan asked.

“I don’t see anything…” I shook my head.

“Light it up for us then.”

That I could do… and rather cheaply. I didn’t have to do anything fancy with my Basic Light Magic- Dancing Lights was already the right thing for the job. It didn’t even take a single point of mana to spread four light sources out over the room, revealing wrecked shelves and little else. The proprietor of the establishment was nowhere to be seen.

Acid Man was the first to go deeper. The rest of us spread out, looking around. The place wasn’t large, so we were all still quite close. He was the one who checked behind the counter. I saw him bend down, “Hey I found-” Then he staggered back, a dagger in his gut. There was no time to respond to what was weird about that, though.

After the fact I liked to imagine that I sensed the magic before I got stabbed, though in the moment it certainly wasn’t clear what order they happened in. A knife slipped right through my Force Armor, not shattering it but simply slicing through it. It jabbed into my thigh, the tip poking into me. That was as far as it got with the stoneskin, but I was still very surprised as I turned my head. I expected to see someone with arms the size of my torso or some sort of power, but it was just a dark shadowy figure. The figure and blade withdrew as the shadows spread around us, swallowing up my light magic.

Simultaneous attacks came for most of us. Midnight was not a target, perhaps because of the extreme awkwardness of trying to stab a cat sized figure. Or maybe they didn’t notice him. Ice Guy had a layer of ice- flexible at the joints- covering his body. He actually managed to react to the attack and turn his body, causing the dagger to impact his torso head on instead of stabbing into his armpit. Some of the ice melted into nothing, but the momentum of the attack stopped. Shockfire was positioned closer to the door where he was difficult to reach. Rocker was the final one, a figure leaping out at him and piercing through his sonic barrier. Rocker managed to duck to the side, though- the blade merely slicing his cheek instead of cutting his neck or chest.

As the magical darkness finished consuming my light I saw Acid Man pull a bloody dagger out of his gut. That was absolutely not supposed to happen. I could still feel the magic, there and around us.

“Assassins!” Ice Guy called out. “It’s a trap! Make for the door!”

Shockfire reacted by coating himself in fire, pushing back against the magical darkness before I could determine if I wanted to use my efforts to wrestle with it. It wasn’t exactly clear but I at least caught figure shifting around beyond the edge of the light. If only my earlier magic had been a bit more we might have spotted the enemies.

Rocker needed the most help, or at least he was closer than Acid Man. Just because he didn’t exactly choose to be in the squad didn’t mean he wasn’t a part of it. “Go!” I called to him as I reached out and cast Haste. I took a step towards the counter, squinting my eyes to try to see through darkness that was darker than a lack of light. Stupid magic darkness. Rocker’s hand pressed against my chest, then he spoke in a manner I could only barely comprehend because of interactions with Shockwave at extreme speeds. “I’llhandlethisI’vebeeninknifefightsbefore.”

If he thought he had it I wasn’t going to stop him. Nor could I, with him already over at the counter. I was only a short distance away from the exit, but as I turned to make my way there Midnight hissed and ran past my legs. I felt the flow of lightning magic, though I couldn’t tell if he hit his target or a shelf or something. I held my left hand over the hole in my Stoneskin so I didn’t get a real wound there as I stumbled out past Shockfire, who was uncomfortably warm as his flames pushed against the darkness. Midnight had spun around and was only a moment behind me.

Rocker actually made it out with Acid Man before our captain, despite the greater distance and half-dragging someone. His head was tilted at a funny angle and I felt his power encompassing the area around him- though strangely not his normal defensive barrier. Could he not reactivate it?

The soft sound of rubber soles on concrete nearly broke my eardrums as it was amplified beyond all reason, but Rocker twisted on his heel and kicked towards the darkness. I expected a tremendous boom, but all I heard was a muffled sound, a slight crinkling sound maybe. The sound was all wrong. Rocker was around the other side of Acid Man under his shoulder and scurrying out the doors in an instant. It didn’t look comfortable, but Rocker steadied Rasmus on his feet outside. “Hahagottem. Howsthecaptaindoing?”

I didn’t fully comprehend his question, but the answer still made itself apparent anyway. Ice Guy was not far behind us, running with a trail of ice behind him. The ice armor coating his chest had its hole reformed. “Get ready!” he said.

I nodded, watching the door with everyone else. We all waited. I had magic held ready, a specific spell nearly formed. I saw a slight bit of movement out of the corner of my eye, just a speck through the corner windows of the place that weren’t quite inundated with magical darkness. I reached my hand out, the Slow spell just catching something. “There! Around the corner!”

Rocker was still Hasted, and was over to the side a moment later. “Wowtheseguysarefast,” he commented. I was angling myself that way, still keeping an eye on the door to the corner store. Rocker stretched his hand out, a blast of sound striking something in front of him.

Captain Senan was at the corner before me, lobbing a ball of ice. I managed to see it catching the ankle of a figure, spreading to anchor it to the ground. He was dressed in dark clothes but wore no facial coverings, revealing dark blue-purple skin, pointed ears, and weirdly black hair. “I thought drow had white hair?” I frowned.

I had no idea what I was saying as the guy began flinging sharp objects at us, but in slow motion. The movements were smooth and precise and still not actually slow, the spell only reducing his speed by about a third, but the effects lingered on the weapons in travel for a moment as well. That difference was sufficient for my training to easily avoid them, along with the others. Captain Senan simply marched forward and coated the guy in ice, just in time for a half dozen daggers to stab into them from a nearby alley.

I didn’t have mana built up nor a clear enough visual to target anything, so they were gone before I could act. I didn’t sense any more magic around, and as Ice Guy dragged our frozen prisoner around the corner, sliding him easily along the ground and using him as cover, I threw more Light into the corner store. It quickly dispelled the uncontrolled darkness remaining. I carefully peeked around to make sure the corners were lit up, but saw nothing from my position outside.

“What happened?” Ice Guy asked Acid Man.

Rasmus held his hand on his gut. “I got stabbed… somehow.” He turned into a puddle, then back into his normal form- but he was still bleeding. “It won’t go away.”

“They had enchanted weapons,” I said. “I think. There wasn’t a lot of time to go over them while we were in there.”

Speaking of which, there was the one that had stabbed him. Just to be cautious, I used Mage’s Reach to bring it over from its position next to the counter. While I did that, Ice Guy reported the situation. “Seems like it was an intentional ambush for supers,” he explained to the Brigade. “I’ll discuss more when we get back.”

Before going back in- and we did go back in- Ice Guy made a solid wall over the other side of the corner where they’d cut through the glass to escape. Rocker also amplified the sounds inside, listening for breathing or heartbeats or… anything. There was only the mechanical hum of freezers. Ultimately, the only thing we found was the dead body of the store owner… which was actually a big concern. People died when supers were involved, but usually villains wouldn’t kill casually. If they didn’t have a reason, it was a good way to get pushed up the list, where stronger supers would come after you… and not worry too much about capturing you.

I frowned as I looked at the dagger, and the drow- who was finding out exactly how good our captain's control over his ice was, avoiding freezing him while making holes large enough for the man to breathe, but make no other motions. If the man was a drow- which the black hair made less certain- then chances were he was working with Doctor Doomsday. So these daggers could be meant to target any super… but it felt rather too effective. Able to stab our formless acid guy and pierce through everything else? Though there were some limits, it was still very worrying.