Got the Grimoire, Chapter 43

Chapter 43

Between both of our power sets, Assault and I were able to cross wide swathes of the city in short order, circling around the Bay itself to get to the Docks portion. The Docks was a sad state of affairs, sort of a satellite city and slum rolled into one. It had it’s nicer portions where some business and commerce from the more affluent parts of the city helped bring in money, but it was extremely common for people from other parts of the city to look down on you if you were from the Docks.

I wanted to do more to help the city of course, but I felt like I was always being pulled away to do other things. Other threats and concerns. Maybe that’s how Legend felt about letting Brockton Bay himself, just letting it decay further while he held out in New York. Or maybe he knew about the Cauldron experiment here? I couldn’t remember and it wasn’t like I was going to ask him any time soon.

Assault interrupted my inner thoughts. “Magus, get in the air and start finding those firefights and Empire groups. Prioritize civilian safety while I take down any perps.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he just gave me a raised eyebrow. “Your powers are way more versatile and yes, I’m sure you can attack and defend at the same time, but I want you on defense completely just in case things go sideways. Let’s get to it.”

He had a point unfortunately… “Aye aye.” I flew up into the sky and quickly found our first squabble of the night. It wasn’t too hard, considering all the gunshots and screaming going on. “Five blocks to the west. At least a dozen of them.”

“Right. Boost me on three.”

He counted down on one hand and as the last finger dropped, I pulled back fist and struck him in the center of his back as he jumped and tucked his legs in beneath him, sending him off into the air like a human cannonball. We’d practiced the maneuver before of course and he had lots of similar practice with Battery, but this was the first time using it in the field. Luckily practice made perfect and both my aim and power were on point, sending Assault in almost the exact right trajectory that he needed. I flew after him at a little under the speed of sound and caught up just in time to see him land right in the middle of a pack of Neo-Nazi bastards.

They weren’t even in a proper shootout, instead they were just randomly shooting around and calling out racial slurs. I didn’t need powers to guess that they were probably either on drugs or drunk out of their minds. Brockton Bay was full of racists of all stripes thanks to the two large ethnocentric gangs, so it probably wasn’t hard for Kaiser to just hand out some firearms and tell them to go nuts. All of their rage and resentment, unleashed in an orgy of violence upon the part of the city least able to defend itself.

But it was the duty of heroes to defend those who could not defend themselves. Assault landed amidst the group with a burst of diffused kinetic energy before laying about him with both fists and feet. Each blow was perfectly landed and imbued with extra energy thanks to his powers. I did my part as I raised a barrier of pure energy in a cylindrical shape around them, keeping the bullets flying contained within a small space. Good for Assault as he could simply absorb or redirect their kinetic energy, but a little bad for the gang members inside as some of their own ricochets caused inadvertent casualties. That earned me a bit of a reproachful look from Assault, so I tweaked the barrier to also absorb kinetic energy, letting missed bullets simply strike the shield and then fall to the ground. This also gave Assault a convenient place to punch Nazis into, hitting them quite hard, but letting them just slide to the ground in a pained heap.

It took less than a minute to disable them all. Another couple to make sure they were all properly restrained and their weapons piled up nearby, the ammunition stripped from them of course. I felt frustrated by Assault holding me back, I could be off single-handedly ending every single fight we were hearing about in a matter of moments, but he had a point about collateral damage. My multi-tasking abilities were middling at best really. Clones were an option of course, but I didn’t wish to reveal that ability, as it was how I was able to produce reliable alibis when acting as Kage and they took a lot of magical energy to maintain.

I took to the air, sound manipulation and enhanced vision giving me a clear bead on the next target and I launched Assault in that direction. Once we arrived and we began our routine, I scanned around for any other signs of life in the Docks. I felt my spirits lift at some of what I saw.

“Heh, got some good news at least,” I said to my partner.

“And what would that be?” Assault asked casually as he slipped aside from a knife thrust and punched the guy back into my barrier. He didn’t even sound out of breath, the in-shape jerk.

“I think some independents are helping.”

“Oh yeah?” Assault’s interest was piqued as he stopped a pair of gunshots with the palm of his hand and then kicked the offender in the gut. If it wasn’t for his powers and my barrier working in tandem, the Nazi probably would have had a broken spine. “What do your magic eyes see?”

I paused with a faint smile. Had to get my amusement where I could. “Was that a Tolkien reference?”

“Maybe… Earth-Aleph did them better.”

“Oh no doubt,” I agreed. “Way too much CGI and magic blasts being thrown around. I didn’t realize Gandalf was a Blaster on par with Legend when I read those books.”

Assault snorted, catching a baseball bat with his forearm, then redirecting the resulting energy into a bone shattering rib punch that sent the Nazi sprawling. “Yeah, Battery wasn’t happy about that.”

“Really? Is she into that sort of stuff?”

“Oh yeah. She may act more serious when we’re in costume, but she’s got a geek streak a mile wide.”  He picked up a gangbanger by the collar and used him as an improvised bludgeon to take down another two without any critical injuries. Once again, physics took a backseat to his shenanigans. Kinetic energy manipulation was seriously weird stuff.

“Huh. I may have to talk to her more often… Anyway, I’m seeing a pyrokinetic a few blocks to the North and Winslow is having some interesting issues…”

“The high school?”

“Mhmm. Swarms of insects are passing around the outside of the building and I’m seeing multiple downed Nazis. Empire might have sent some groups over there for a little cleansing of the next generation or something,” I said with as light a tone as I could muster, though my insides were churning with rage. Targeting kids, really? How low could you go?

Assault must have similar feelings if the look on his face was any indication. “Should we head that way?”

“Maybe call in a few squad cars to pick up the mess, but it looks like whoever is controlling the bugs has got defense on lockdown.”

I took a moment as Assault was cuffing gang members to send Taylor a message.

K: You alright?

A: Fine. What’s going on?

K: Empire went nuts. Bombs all over the city, but mostly in the Docks. Kill squads everywhere.

A: Do you need me out there?

K: BBPD and PRT are out in force. Better stay put with the other students and keep them safe. Let me know if any of the Empire’s capes show up.

A: Will do. Stay safe.

K: You too.

“Is this really the time to be checking your emails?” Assault asked sarcastically as he flung one last assault rifle into a pile.

“I know someone at Winslow. Just making sure they’re okay.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t happen to mean the bug girl, do you?”

“Arachne. And yes, I do know her. Kind of hard not to know someone’s face when you helped heal it from third degree burns.”

He winced. “Yeah, makes sense. She’s part of a new team now or something, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are they at then?”

“Well the fires I’m seeing are probably the pyrokinetic, Firestorm,” I commented, already checking Mimi’s location on my phone. And… Yep, right where I was looking. “Arachne is a Winslow student… No sign of shadow guy. Maybe because it’s daylight?”

“Yeah…” Assault gave me a look. “Say, you have shadow powers too, don’t you?”

Shit…

“Yeah, a few.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah. Weird,” I said in a casual tone.

“You’ve got a shit poker face, dude.”

“You gonna tattle on me to Piggot?”

“Pft, hell no, not after all the good you’ve been doing. Especially when theres nothing to tattle about as far as I’m concerned,” Assault snorted.

“...Thanks, man.”

“Of course. Now lets go kick some more Nazi ass.”

We stopped half a dozen groups of armed Nazis, some of them also in gunfights with ABB members. Part of me wondered if fending off  the Empire might keep the ABB united a little longer than it might otherwise. Nothing helped solidify ties like a common enemy. And then if another Asian cape or two triggered during this gang war… Well we might not be rid of the ABB as easily as the Think Tank thought in that case.

We were just wrapping up the last group when I frowned thoughtfully. “Hey Assault…?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s been kind of a while since we’ve heard from Console, hasn’t it?”

It was Assault’s turn to frown, checking a watch he had sewn into the sleeve of his costume. “Ah hell. Assault to Console, you there?”

Static.

“Magus to Armsmaster,” I tried.

More static.

I let out a vicious curse. “Of course comms are down… And we haven’t seen a single Nazi cape on this side of town.” I yanked out my phone from it’s spot on my belt, not having thought to check the thing since texting Taylor. Nothing from anyone that might be at the Rig, but I had one concise “Communications are down. Moving to the Rig,” from Armsmaster and about four or five messages apiece from each of my New Wave friends. What they were all saying made my blood run cold and I once again took to the sky and looked in the direction of the Rig, enhancing my vision with magic so that I could see…

“Goddammit,” I cursed and dropped back down to Assault’s level. “Force field around the Rig is down too. I’m seeing more than a few smoke trails.”

Assault gave me a few more words for my vocabulary. “Well get us there-” I grabbed his shoulder and dragged us both through the realm of shadows and then back out within the corridors of the Rig. “-now! Oh. Cool.”

I gave him a grin. “High level Mover. Let’s figure out- Oof!”

The breath left my lungs as something punched into my back with enough force to shove me through several walls. I picked myself up out of some debris and glanced around what looked like my own Tinker lab. Bastards. Krieg came stalking through the ragged hole I’d left, the air shimmering with his own field of weird kinetic bullshittery.

“You have made a mistake, rousing the wrath of the Empire,” the Empire cape said in that obnoxious German accent of his. I didn’t care if it was fake or real, it was annoying as hell either way. “This would have gone much better for your colleagues if you’d simply died as planned.”

“Yeah, tried that once. Not to my taste.” I stood and threw out a quick bolt of crimson electricity, but Krieg redirected a large plate of metal to absorb it. “You think this will help your cause? All this will do is bring down more trouble on your heads.”

“Kaiser can call upon forces from across America to aid our righteous cause,” Krieg laughed. “And failing that, I have friends overseas who I can ask for help. The Empire 88 is not just some petty gang of criminals that you can kill, Magus. We are an idea, a movement, and we are more than willing and able to spill blood in the pursuit of our goals. We will end you, as we have all enemies of the master race.”

“You’re bootlickers of an ideology that lost and should have died, decades ago. Do the world a favor and disappear,” I snapped and sent out another bolt of lightning.

Krieg caught it with another piece of debris and then charged, the air growing thick and heavy as he approached me, fist pulling back to deliver another haymaker. I surprised him as I caught the blow full stop, only reinforcement magecraft keeping my bones intact.

“That hurt,” I growled, mostly to myself.

Then I pulled back my fist and delivered a punch to his sternum. Krieg was sent flying backwards out of the room and I began to follow, massaging my arm. He was lucky. If I’d put more force into the blow, he might have been misted, even with his kinetic manipulation. I knew that was one of the ways to contain him, though other energies could also do the trick.

I found myself in the hallway I’d originally teleported Assault and I into and glanced around with some concern that Assault wasn’t around. No Krieg either, the bastard having fled upon facing an opponent outside his weight class. I spotted a foot peeking out of a doorway and stepped forward to nudge it. Nothing. I glanced inside and grimaced as I saw the face of a PRT trooper with a bullet hole just above one eyebrow. I threw up a sound amplifying field and began to hear the screaming and gunshots a lot more clearly over the general racket of machinery. Dammit all…

Seeing as Assault was probably tied up, I dipped into a nearby shadow against the wall and spat myself back out into the containment cells. The heavy duty ones for parahumans. I just had to hope-

They were all empty. Even Oni Lee and Lung’s.

Well fuck all kinds of duck.

I found myself half running, half flying through corridors lined with dead and wounded, both PRT and Empire alike. Kaiser was really throwing everything he had at us. Or Valefor was making him. Either way, lives were being lost and I was tired of it. I used Lunatic Eyes and began to scan ‘frequencies’ so to speak, looking for something, anything that might be blocking…

And there it was.

I made myself intangible with a thought and began to rapidly fly through walls. I spotted PRT operatives and troopers in running firefights with the Empire, but I hardened my resolve and didn’t slow down. More lives would be saved in the long run if I restored communications.

After what felt like too long, I reached the server room, easily spotting the strange device, probably tinker-tech, that had been latched onto the wall, blocking incoming and outgoing signals, creating a deadzone of communication. I fried the thing with a quick burst of electricity.

“This is Magus, Theta-Alpha-Charlie-Eight,” I recited. “I’ve destroyed the jammer here on the Rig, does anyone copy?”

“Armsmaster here,” I heard my team leader grunt, clearly out of breath. “Tango-Gamma-Beta-One. Just one moment.” I overheard another grunt of effort then the thud of a body hitting the floor. “Crusader is officially down, I repeat, Crusader is down. What’s your position, Magus?”

“Server room, sir. What’s happening?”

“Mass attack and jailbreak,” he replied. “Obviously. Downtown HQ is under attack as well if Console isn’t responding.”

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

“Sir, what are the rules of engagement now?” I asked quietly.

Armsmaster didn’t hesitate. “They’ve attacked us in our home and have shown they have no compunctions about casualties. All due force is authorized. If the Director has any issues with that, then the Protectorate will find itself lacking a leader for the ENE.”

“This is Assault!” I heard through the earpiece, his voice panicked. “Magus, I could use you here, now!”

It must have been urgent if he was ignoring the M/S passwords. Plus the sheer panic in his voice. Then again, I thought they were bullshit anyway for the most part. I closed my eyes and searched for a moment before feeling the familiar signature of Assault’s shadow. I let myself drop into the nearest pool of darkness and reemerge at his location. I found him cradling Battery, his wife leaking blood from numerous puncture wounds to her torso, more fluid dripping from her mouth. A quick glance took in the numerous iron and steel blades sticking out of the walls and ceilings of the corridor. Kaiser had done this himself. I kneeled quickly and began to run healing magics through my comrade, her weak pulse quickly strengthening under my power.

Assault let out a small breath of relief as my magic did it’s thing. “Thank you. If we have a kid, I’m naming it after you.”

“Please don’t. Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

“Dauntless is still helping on the streets. Miss Militia is MIA. Triumph is fighting in the corridors, doing what he can without hurting our own. Velocity just had the day off of all things,” he laughed somewhat bitterly. “Lucky him.”

“Yeah, lucky him,” I agreed.

Golden power flowed out of me to continue healing Battery, but Assault gently moved my hand away. “I got waylaid by Krieg too, but broke off when he told me what happened here. Plus, you know, matching powers and all that. Would have been useless. Most of the Empire left after the cells were emptied, but they’re heading toward PRTHQ now. They’ll need you there.”

Well shit. The Wards. “You got things from here?”

He smiled grimly. “Sounds like Crusader is already taken care of. I’ll help mop up the mooks and take on Krieg if he shows his ugly mug again, but I’m betting he’s probably retreating with his tail between his legs after what you did. Go!”

I obeyed without another second’s hesitation, diving through the nearest patch of darkness and praying I wasn’t too late.
***
A/N: It's summer, which means more social obligations, which is nice and fun, but it also means less time to write. Oh and also several new games dropping Clair Obscur has been wonderful. I blame it for the lateness of this post. You have my apologies. Hope everyone has a great week and enjoys the chapter, things are really starting to hit the fan here as enemies aren't just static and don't just wait for you to come to them. Catch you all later :)