Midnight’s explanation for how well things had gone didn’t make much more sense when he repeated it after sleeping. “Pretty much a bunch of Bunvorixians teleported in with Gloom and Dark Star to reclaim Spot. So it went well.”

  “How is that a good result?” I asked. “I was really hoping that Celmothians would have a more secure system than the solar system… too many villains here already get out.”

  “It’s good,” Midnight explained, “Because it was the plan. It let us knock out several problems at once. Like, for example, figuring out which of our defenses had been compromised and who had been bribed.”

  I made a face that pressed my cheeks into my tusks. “It’s not sounding great.”

  “Celmothians aren’t perfect,” Midnight said. “We’re still people. And even if the vast majority of us wouldn’t even dream of betraying the planet, there are always going to be a few. They’ll be made an example of by the rest. Honestly, it will be tougher stopping the citizens from ripping them apart before a trial than convicting them with the evidence we gathered. Speaking of gathering things, we were able to scan both Gloom and Shooting Star.”

  I considered for a moment. “Can you get functional data from supers?”

  “With Extra’s involvement? Yes. One of the pillars of our cooperation was the necessary knowledge to counter superpowers. We have very few restrictions on how we can use our technology on people we’re at war with, so we learned quite a lot. Like that Shooting Star has a bad shoulder.”

  “Hmm. Which one?”

  “Her left. And while you already have a decent analysis of her energy, Celmothians will better be able to deal with it now. Speaking of which, any action taken against them will involve some of us. Even if some people of Earth are treating this as a New Bay problem, at least Extra is taking it seriously. And they’re glad to have our assistance.”

  “This is all great,” I said. “But is it worth losing Spot? He’s their only real access to something like Gate, their best chance of both bypassing your defenses in the future and the best chance at suppressing our magic.”

  “Well, we’re going to get him back obviously. We didn’t put a universal tracker in him for nothing.”

  “Oh.” Of course they would do something like that. “That makes sense. Won’t the Bunvorixians find it, though?”

  “It’s still registering,” Midnight said. “So the enchantments I placed on it- combined with our own stealth tech- most likely worked. Speaking of which, are you ready to go on a mission?”

  “Right now?” I shook my head. “I just talked to Raglubithex.” I could think the name just once. Like a three dimensional humanoid.

  “Well, we have to gather people first anyway. We already have messages going out.”

  “Extra wanted a report, too.”

  “They’ll have it.”

  -----

  Later, we found ourselves at Power Brigade HQ.

  “We weren’t sure what the ethical implications of trying to drain someone’s mana were,” Midnight said. “And the power suppressors we had likely have already been removed. So presumably Spot already has his powers back and is doing stuff. He likely has Nondetection up already but-”

  “He might not be able to do that,” I pointed out. “Hasn’t it been mostly tech?”

  “... But he has Scrying,” Midnight said. “We’re sure of that, right?”

  “We can ask Bandage to be nearly certain,” I commented. “If it’s not on her list, he’d have to have some sort of special domain.”

  “Domain?”

  I tilted my head. “It’s a cleric thing that I can’t explain very well because I didn’t study it. But essentially they can empower certain spells or learn more, within certain categories. Relatedly, Bandage has chosen healing.”

  “Or she was told to choose healing.”

  “My influence was only sort of biased. Anyway, it will probably still be difficult to Scry Spot but it might not be because of magic.”

  “Right,” Midnight agreed. “That’s the important point. And this should make it easy,” Midnight held up… a chip? Not the edible kind. The tech kind. Or maybe it was a little circuit board. I had limited familiarity with physical tech components except as it came to how to destroy them in potential traps or inside cyborgs. They were all protected against electrical discharge, which meant more electricity was always the right answer. But so was a tiny bit of electricity and some water. “It’s tied to the thing inside Spot.”

  “Oh! Good idea. If they have Scrying anchors and stuff, we can just re-anchor it on our target.”

  “Yeah. It’s not just digital pairing either. There are quantum entangled particles.”

  “That has to be good! Show me your magic!”

  “Behold!” Midnight gathered mana and gestured broadly at the Scrying cube. “... just give it a minute.”

  Obviously. Scrying wasn’t usually instant. It took a bit of picking through the mists of endless dimensions. Sometimes it could take several minutes, though it rarely took long with the cube.

  Midnight showed a bit of strain, and the image very briefly showed irrelevant corners and cordoned off areas. But then we saw Spot. “I gave it extra juice so that he shouldn’t notice,” Midnight said. “I figure that’s better than actually trying to contend with his willpower, right?”

  “The less they know, the better. Okay, so we have a couple careless Darkstargirl fanatics without masks. We’ll reference the database and add them if we haven’t seen them.” It might not be sufficient for legal purposes, but the Brigade could certainly use our database for valuable reference. “Wait, was that-”

  Midnight spun the image. Cameras would have gotten the other angles, but we could only see from one angle at a time. “Rat mask.”

  “They’re working with Rodentia? And wait, is that…”

  “One cyborg doesn’t mean anything,” Midnight said. “... But the second and third are kind of telling… and there’s the official Mod Squad marks.”

  “Did they just gather together all of our frequent foes?” I asked. “This is… a pain. Just tell me they’re not working with Doomsday.”

  “They’re not working with Doomsday,” Midnight said. “You think we’d manage to actually see inside one of his bases without problems?” What we saw next caused Midnight to hesitate for a moment. “And there’s an orc.”

  “No Doctor Doomsay tech,” I noted. “And it’s just the one woman so far. Also, wow is Spot really walking up to a whole lot of people.”

  “He’s confident,” Midnight said. “Why would he hide?”

  I nodded. “Now we just have to figure out how to get to this place. You think he’ll walk by a clearly marked exit?”

  “Oh, we already know where it is,” Midnight pointed out. “Remember the tracking thing? It just does that. Ooh! Turrets!”

  -----

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Calculator was likely already working on an analysis of the base. Midnight and I were putting together a preliminary attack plan, thinking about who to call in.

  The door was flung open. “I heard you found those bi-” Great Girl stopped herself. “Villains. Those villains.”

  I just looked at her. “You don’t have to censor yourself here.”

  “It’s a bad habit,” Great Girl said. “I have to keep up my public image as a good girl.”

  “You’re not good. You’re great.”

  “If you were someone else I would punch you in the face for that. But you’d just turn it into xp.” I still didn’t like getting punched in the face. It hurt. “You found them, right?”

  Midnight nodded. “Yes. We were going to call you over. But we don’t have much of a plan yet besides bringing a lot of people. I wonder how many executives we can get on board?”

  Probably all of them… except that they were frequently busy. As it turned out, there was never just one thing happening in New Bay. And while I personally had the most run ins with the particular villains in question, the Power Brigade had many members and numerous enemies. The city as a whole had seemingly endless villains… and some mercs who were more than simply competition.

  Among those we wanted to bring along were Zeb- who had personal stakes in making sure Spot was permanently taken out of the picture- and Magnet Man. He had been quite instrumental in taking down Iron Shell the first time. The one where we made her into basically just a head. Sadly, Flasher had gotten her out and the Mod Squad had rebuilt both her body and their numbers. They would probably want to kill me, and even if I for some reason didn’t get involved the two of them were strong. We needed all the help we could get.

  The combination of these groups was too much. While Great Girl talked about how she would be punching her rivals- as if she could actually restrain herself from straight up mauling them- I considered the scope of our actual mission. “I doubt we can take down a combined group like this. Midnight, what are the chances that this is a shared facility versus… just a bunch of extras inhabiting the base of… what do they call them? The Spook Team?”

  “Darkness Rising, these days,” Midnight said. “As far as I can tell, that’s the only thing that pair could agree on long term.”

  “Right. Well, as much as I want to take down Iron Shell and Flasher… that’s probably infeasible. No way we also get Rodentia, no matter how much support we have. We need to prioritize. We want to take down Darkness Rising and destroy the Bunvorixian foothold in New Bay. Does that sound good?”

  “Let’s crush them!” Great Girl shook her fist.

  Midnight agreed with somewhat less enthusiasm. “It would be best to deal with one problem at a time. This does mean assigning a target priority. The Celmothians would lose face if we weren’t able to retrieve Spot. Then the next most dangerous is… Gloom?” He checked in with Great Girl.

  She nodded. “Gloom’s been a villain the whole time. Dark Star might be more powerful, but Gloom is a menace to the city. Well, Kourtney is too but she doesn’t focus on terrorizing people.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Does terror pay well?”

  “If you can scare people away from a jewelry store, sure,” Great Girl shrugged. “Gloom also hires out her services to other villains.”

  “I think we have the basics of a plan, then,” I said. “Darkstargirl would be third on the priority list, unless the Brigade has something to say about that. We’ll have to wait for Calculator, but I think we can convince him to focus on eliminating one whole group. It’s got to be good for our image to wipe out a whole gang. And then they really can’t break each other out.”

  -----

  We had more people gathered together now- though some people were calling in via video. Other than that, we were in a meeting room with a quarter of it bathed in shadow.

  Calculator mumbled to himself. “I’m pretty sure the janitor is messing with us at this point…” then he cleared his throat. “Welcome everyone. Some of you are in-transit from distant locations, but I wanted to get everyone on the same page.”

  He had pretty much agreed to go along with the basic priorities we suggested. For one thing, it seemed to be a Bunvorixian/Gloomy Gang hideout that we had found, with support by other groups. If we could simply drive off their support, that would be good enough.

  “I will remind people not to underestimate Rodentia despite her aesthetics,” Calculator commented. “I have developed several counter plans depending on what she has available. We have spotted some number of masked minions and robo-rats, but there might be powered rodents in her command. Relatedly, we might expect some injected powers among the minions. Possibly hers and Darkness Rising.”

  Oh right. Injected powers were a thing now. When people didn’t die from them. Well, technically they always got powers and sometimes died. Rodentia might have been one of the ones who could do it right, though.

  “My suggestion for dealing with Rodentia,” Calculator continued, “Is to make it clear that her losses would outweigh whatever she would gain via continued cooperation. It’s easier if she simply retreats on her own so we don’t have to deal with… I don’t know, rat traps or an endless maze full of cheese rays.”

  Ooh, Maze was a good spell. In theory. I heard it worked wonders against stupid people. And it was useless against certain savants. That was high ranking spatial magic, wasn’t it? It might be what I needed to get my first ‘master’ proficiency. Or maybe that and some upgrades of Summon Major Elemental.

  I certainly had the points for it. I hadn’t spent many recently, as I was trying to get most of my upgraded naturally. That meant it was almost exclusively for new spells, but with Advanced Magic in different categories I’d been getting a lot of variety for free. Or paid for.

  Zeb put her paws up on the table. She apparently didn’t like sitting in the chairs, so it was the only way to see people properly. “Why are we fighting her again?”

  “Because she’s working with them,” Calculator said. “And she’s a well known villain who has committed many crimes.”

  “I know all of that,” Zeb said. “But we should just have her work with us.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Calculator said. “We can’t just offer her a truckload of dairy products. Presumably, she’s already getting paid like that.”

  “Tell her that the Bunvorixians wiped out their squirrel population!”

  Calculator blinked. “That’s… hmm…”

  This guy’s superpower was thinking. If Calculator took more than an instant to come up with a well thought out reply, it meant the gears inside his head were really churning.

  He leaned forward, propping his head up on a hand. I could see his face going through various expressions. “... That has a decent probability of success. But we’ll need to prepare plans in case it doesn’t.”

  Zeb looked slightly disappointed. “I’m sure it will work!”

  I cleared my throat. “What is the probability, do you think?” I asked Calculator. I knew he would have specific numbers, and they would be shockingly accurate- depending on the information he was aware of, obviously.

  “Depends on what you mean. If we combine the probabilities of turning Rodentia with her simply withdrawing her support for the Bunvorixians, I’d say over seventy percent. But her morals could easily be compromised by sufficient payment.”

  “No!” Zeb said. “Squirrels triumph over all!”

  “I admire your passion, Squirrel Swarm,” Calculator said. “But not everyone thinks like you.”

  “Rodentia might.”

  Midnight backed her up. “She ordered her robotic minions not to harm squirrels even when they were actively being attacked by them.”

  Calculator shook his head. “Even if we were nearly certain, we still need counters for Rodentia. Magnet Man?”

  Magnet Man shook his head. “I can’t focus on everything at once. Robo-rats, cyborgs, and Bunvorixian tech? I’d need a power boost.”

  “Would processing help?” Calculator asked, looking at me for a moment.

  “A little. But I only have so much energy.”

  “We’ll rely on others then. Relatedly,” Calculator gestured to some unrecognizable individuals who were calling in. It wasn’t just bad lighting on their faces, because even I couldn’t make anything out. “Agent Bovidae, could your squad contribute to this matter?”

  All I could tell of the man was that he was well dressed, in a nice suit. I had to assume it was on a similar level of functionality as what Francois made. Probably not as good, but if this guy was going to wear it in combat it couldn’t be a typical suit. Though maybe they would change after they arrived.

  “Making her participation a loss in value? Yes, we can manage that,” Agent something or other responded. Did his eyes look like a goat? “We can also make it clear that is what is happening. Though I personally believe I would be best suited to distracting Dark Star.”

  “Let’s hope Rodentia is manageable, then,” Calculator commented. “As for the Mod Squad…”

  We sure had a lot of people participating. Aside from Metal Man and Kick who either had great compatibility against or beef with the Mod Squad, there was Swiss Arms. Another cyborg, though she was also close to a power user given her ability to hold more augments than physically possible in a given space. At some point, cyborg stuff usually hit the power exclusivity rule anyway.

  Beyond that, Calculator would be personally participating. Great Girl and her squad, Zeb, a bunch of Celmothians, Martians- both from Extra and outside of the organization- the Portal Squad, and these federal agents… plus various members of the Power Brigade.

  This was a huge mission. It would be a shame if we screwed it up. So I should probably not use it as an opportunity to experiment with Maze, and I also probably shouldn’t use Meteor Swarm regardless of whether or not the base was underground.

  Some of our success would hinge on Rodentia at least bowing out. Maybe I could bribe her with fancy cheese. I did have some room in storage, and Gift was a spell I knew now.