Mage Among Superheroes

Chapter 476 - 476

Infiltrating city hall- or counter-infiltrating it perhaps- wasn't the sort of thing I usually did. If I had been doing things alone, I would have directly gone to all of the affected individuals to give them a good look over with my senses and a bit of Arcane Sight to enhance any lingering auras. However, I had people with good heads working around me, and Midnight had suggested we disguise our entrance as a sort of tour. Even if the mayor wouldn't normally be leading random mercenaries around personally, it was a great excuse to see people without drawing much attention.

The most effective part was just walking past people without talking to them. It didn't seem like a big difference on the surface, but it would be great for avoiding specific suspicions. If we only ever talked to the same people Garbo Lion had gone up to, surely someone would find it odd. It was difficult to say to what extent they were magically compromised, though. I didn't sense much active magic on most of them. A temporary charm, perhaps, to maneuver information out of people without them suspecting anything.

"This is the construction safety commission," Mayor Demciri gestured as we walked past.

I wondered if they were as devoted to their job as those guys I saw in Yew-Kay. There was one guy completely without powers- or weapons of particular note- that still got involved with the whole Grey Gunners situation. Because they built tunnels without authorization. Usually I would expect such people to come in afterwards to gather information, not to show up while there was an active raid. I had a lot of respect for that kind of person.

Midnight could take notes more easily without making it obvious, so he was in charge of most things. Though we did come across an oddity in the records department. "We'll have to check the recording after," I commented to Midnight after we passed. "But I believe Leo Grande received some documents from that balding fellow. He doesn't have any signs of magical influence, though."

By the time we were finished, that guy was the only one that stuck out. Dayton Montana… I wouldn't remember that name, probably. I merely happened to be looking at it.

We didn't have much else in the way of explanations for the mayor immediately, but we told him we would have a report soon. The additional inspector we asked for was a woman from the hero association. It was unlikely she would be an expert on class based magic, but she should at least be able to detect something. That was her job, after all. She also took a subtle approach, based on what I saw while we were leaving. The woman barely even glanced at me as we passed, but I could tell she had an active scanning power going. From a quick encounter, I imagined that was her only power. Not everyone was lucky enough to get highly adaptable powers with growth capabilities. Though maybe it shouldn't be luck, since an entire world had them. And others had something close.

Once we were in our car on the way back to HQ, Midnight and I were able to more openly discuss what we saw. There was some miniscule possibility that our particular driver was compromised somehow, but the chances were even lower that it was by someone connected to L'Clubber.

"Do you think we'll be able to secure an arrest warrant with this?" I asked Midnight.

He just shrugged. "Depends on the other assessment. I think the Brigade will still want to catch him in the act somewhere. Something bigger than subtly influencing city bureaucrats."

"Bleh. I feel like that's already too much. We're not in a tiny town, this is New Bay. City hall here is probably more important than the capitals of most countries."

"I agree," Midnight said. "But if he's as well connected as he seems, we'll need something stronger to pin him down."

"Dozens of witnesses not good enough?" I asked.

"Only if we can get them to testify. Easier to catch him with his hand in the cookie jar."

What a pain. Even if everyone knew he ran L'Someclub and that it had engaged in supervillainous activities, it might not stick. Well, we already had a bunch of rich people to deal with so I supposed the Brigade and any city lawyers connected to the whole situation would prefer we make their jobs easier if at all possible.

"We both agree that this Donald guy is the most suspicious, right?"

"The one who had no magical influence?" Midnight nodded. "Absolutely. Though we might need to find out what information the others shared, willing accomplices are the greatest risk."

"I'm gonna see what he's doing," I commented. I pulled out my phone- mirrors provided better picture quality but phones were better for Scrying in other ways. It was a connected focus, so even if the other end wasn't intentionally part of a network it still helped.

I still needed Midnight to record regardless, because I didn't actually route any images through the phone's electronics. They were just displayed on the blank screen.

City hall had some scrying anchors, but they weren't set up to deal with me in particular. They were just meant to deal with similar powers. Since we had already accidentally bypassed them when watching the club guy, it was pretty easy to do it again for someone who had no personal defenses. There wasn't a Nondetection spell that we had to break past.

"... Watching people flip through filing cabinets is boring. Why do they even have physical filing cabinets these days?"

"Because," Midnight said. "Anything on a computer is easily compromised."

"I bet there's someone with long distance paper copying powers," I countered.

"Someone? Probably. But it's not a recognized category of power, unlike technomancers."

Twenty minutes was enough to tell us that watching this guy wasn't going to do much good. We did take note of a couple folders that seemed to be empty, but we probably wouldn't pick out any important details ourselves. Calculator could probably watch through the recording on ten times speed and determine if there was anything important. He had a lot of stuff to go through, though, so he might need some Enhance Mind. Support magic was very effective, but he tried not to make it a habit so that he didn't 'get sloppy'. I was glad for that, because I didn't want to get called over all the time. Then again, Bolster should know the spell too. Since she didn't have Aspect of the Barbarian, she would actually benefit from doing something like that. Or rather, get experience and work towards greater upgrades and proficiency.

-----

I never wanted to be an investigator. It was terrible. I'd rather just have some information on the target to take down and then go do it. Sadly, someone had to gather info and we were some of the best available. Seriously, for some reason other people didn't get as much effect from the crazy Scrying orb, maybe because it was made for me? And of course, Midnight was my familiar so he was basically me.

It was a good thing I had some influence over the Portal Squad's training, because I could get all the casters to grow their Scrying abilities. It was the sort of thing most spellcasters had access to, though they tended to use different mediums for viewing. I could confirm that using big magic lakes worked just fine for mages even if it was more of a druid thing.

The worst part about what we were doing? It wasn't even hard.

"Seriously?" I said. "He can't tell that Nondetection wore off? Does he have no magical sense whatsoever?"

"You're abnormal there," Midnight pointed out.

"You can tell if we're being Scryed by most people, though. You started closer to average."

Just so that I didn't look foolish later, I took special note of the strength of our own Nondetection spell. It didn't seem that anybody had been looking for us today, though that was expected. It certainly wasn't the club guy because he was always busy with other stuff.

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"Too bad we can't just arrest him and everyone he talked to."

That would be so easy, but many of the people he interacted with would have been magically influenced so not really at fault for whatever happened.

I continued to watch with a frown. "Masterminds should be more… clever."

"I don't think he really understands magic," Midnight pointed out. "Likely he just used the internet to pick out some spells via their names and fictional descriptions. No wait, he might not even have an interface."

That was an excellent point. "So he instinctively manipulates people and tries to hide. I'm not a fan."

Midnight was amused. "I was quite aware of that."

We got as many recordings as we could, but we only had occasional notes of details we picked out. Hopefully someone else would manage something more.

Or we could get lucky and Mr. Clubguy could go visit his next location, preferably with his pockets full of illegal super drugs.

-----

We might have been too eager with our club raids, since there didn't seem to be any meeting at new L'Pretentious locations. On the other hand, leaving active crimes to happen when they were known wasn't a good look for the city. Some people might have different options about certain drugs available, but it wasn't my job to argue about that. It was my job to tell them that the super serum was awful. It was both laced with other stuff and didn't give stable powers. That was just awful.

I could solve half of the problems if Extra would just let me offer empowering services. Or build a big ladder to a sky rift in the forest. That might get people close enough to my old world to get powers. It was kind of a pain with the world currently sealed for those without active magic, because it might not work. Maybe I could find somewhere similar.

Extra wouldn't let me get away with doing it en masse, though. I also didn't want to have to deal with vetting people. Maybe if Extra actually seemed willing I could get Madame Multitude's help. Or just a private investigator firm.

Days passed without any relevant updates. It was boring. I was glad that someone called for my aid even if it wasn't really work.

Izzy was the one who asked for aid. I was disappointed that it wasn't to go fight some thugs, but glad that she wasn't being bothered by thugs. Instead, her needs were far more mundane.

"I'm moving to a different apartment," she said. "And I need your help."

That would explain why she also invited Sophia. Midnight and I could move plenty of things with Storage, but some stuff would be too big. Probably. Actually, if Izzy only had halfling sized furniture we could probably get all of it.

"How many times have you moved?" Sophia asked. "It feels like a lot."

"Not everyone stays in one place as long as possible," Izzy said. "I like variety."

Good for her. I was going to stay neighbors with Midnight until my apartment complex was compromised somehow… then we would move to another similar place.

"I'm not actually that great for moving stuff, by the way," Sophia commented.

"Sure you are. You're buff as heck."

Plus, she could grow bigger and stronger. Though I supposed she might not want to show off her powers where random people might spot her. Sophia had plenty of separation between her civilian identity and Great Girl, whereas I was relying more on a thin veil of people not being able to tell orcs apart. It actually worked pretty well, and any incidents connected to Doctor Doomsday didn't count because he cheated. We hadn't butted heads in a while, but I heard he was pretty active in some parts of the city. No portal incidents for a while… and I wasn't worried about that thought triggering another one. Because if it did, I would eat the portals for breakfast and grind any monsters into raw experience.

But seriously, I was so much better at spatial magic now. Closing portals should be easy. I could probably even seal that sky rift off in the forest. I wasn't going to point that out to anyone, though.

Izzy had a fairly reasonable amount of stuff. She seemed to have kept some habits from her nomadic life. Much of the stuff she did have was human sized, though. She could use martian sized things, but it had to be admitted that oversized couches were probably better.

We couldn't just shove everything into Storage because of weight limits, though we could create temporary versions with alternative magic for the biggest offenders. It was better not to have to shove lamps into a moving van if we could take them with us. Other than that, we mostly kept small breakable things in regular Storage.

Maneuvering pieces of a multi-section couch was like a puzzle. A puzzle that I didn't want to do properly. "Maybe I should teleport it," I suggested.

"If it ends up in the middle of the street I'm going to be mad!" Izzy called from the other room.

Sadly, we weren't close enough for the accuracy of Dimension Door. And 99% accuracy wasn't good enough if we were going into residential districts. Ending up in the street or private dwellings even for a moment was a good way to find endless trouble.

"Okay," I said. "What if we take everything to Earth #2 through a portal. Then we move it from there. Two castings of Gate. Easy."

"That's… crazy," Sophia said. "Maybe we should just unscrew the legs? If only I could shrink things I was carrying…"

I furrowed my brow. "Can't you? Your clothes…"

We were currently in the safety of the apartment, so the discussion was fine. We hadn't even gotten to the front door of the apartment, let alone the stairs.

"They resize. Well, these are just a bit baggy," she gestured. "But the other ones change with me."

I tilted my head. "Do you think Francois knew you could shrink?" I was glad we hadn't had any problems when discovering that aspect of her ability, but it seemed like a potential problem point.

"Eh. Size matching is probably not that specific."

"You know," Midnight butted in. "We can shrink things, right?

Oh. Right. "That's a good point." It was a pain to use in combat because it didn't have much range and it was fairly resistible, but it should just work on objects. It didn't even need to be very much or for very long. On the other hand, it wouldn't be too suspicious if we used full power. Helping Izzy carry small sized furniture would seem pretty normal, as long as nobody knew what it looked like before.

She nodded as we finally managed to start getting things towards the truck. "This is why I wanted you all." She might have said more, but we were now out in the halls. People knew magic existed, but it was better not to give away that we were associated with magic or powers. Midnight tried to look like a normal cat, but he probably didn't get in the way of our steps enough.

It still sometimes took two of us to maneuver bits of the couch, but the weight was so much less. It wasn't quite as low as the one-eighth volume we should have been getting to might suggest, but if I couldn't carry a single section like that I would be ashamed. Sophia was weaker than me at her true height, but if she subtly bumped herself up to five foot six or so, she was potentially stronger than me at a foot shorter. Anytime we matched heights she was significantly stronger. Along with her training in hand-to-hand combat, I never really stood a chance.

Then again, that made it better training. If I only fought people I could trivially beat, I wouldn't grow. That included both in the broader sense and also in terms of gaining experience.

We had to make sure that the various pieces were at their normal size when we put them in the moving van, otherwise there would be consequences later. Then we had to drive the van. And of course by 'we', it was Sophia.

"I could technically drive," Izzy commented from the middle seat. Midnight just sat on my lap. "But rigging things for it to actually work is a pain. It would be ten times worse if Martians weren't kinda common here, though."

Traffic was bad, but friends were good. I kind of liked being relied on, and I had the feeling Sophia did too. From what I understood, she didn't show off her strength in front of her more mundane friends. Thus, even if helping someone move was traditionally considered one of the negative sides of friendship… it brought us together.

Or something. I did kind of wish all the magic I was using would give me experience, but I couldn't convince myself that I was actually fighting the couch pieces. There was probably some objective requirement of danger for Aspect of the Barbarian anyway.

Pulling a full lamp out of nowhere was fun. "Maybe I should become a magician," I commented.

"Maybe I should," Izzy commented. "Technically, I'd be better at it."

"Hmm. True."

She had fast hands. All I had was magic. There was a weird thing that the sorts of magicians who did tricks didn't always get along with people who actually did magic. Some people might want to watch actual magic because it was impressive, but apparently knowing something wasn't actually magic could be more exciting. I wasn't sure where Izzy would fall in that spectrum, because her speed was kind of magic.

I wondered what job Izzy currently had. She tended to bounce around a lot… but at least she was staying in the city. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to hang out as much.