Based on how the first guy was toppling to the floor- being Slowed slightly reduced the rate gravity affected him and being Hasted myself gave me significantly more relative perception of the event- these guys weren’t tough. Not that I should have expected otherwise, since speedsters weren’t known for their durability. Crappy speedsters even less so.

  Obviously I’d only interacted with Trigon Terror for a short duration, but there were so many flaws in how they did things I figured they must have stuck to petty crime and even then they would have had to be lucky to avoid trouble. Because only moving quickly in bursts kind of meant that they could still just be shot. And you didn’t need to be a super to have a gun.

  The second one fell shortly after the first as I whacked him with a good two-handed grip on my staff. The third one was already howling in slow motion as Midnight zapped him with Shocking Grasp. Jim stood guard at the front of the market… but he ultimately hadn’t needed to act.

  A minute later we had the villains cuffed hands and feet, waiting for someone to come pick them up. We hadn’t used any power-suppressing cuffs because those were expensive and, well…

  One of the guys sprang to his feet and then took off with their super speed. Which was to say, he stumbled forward with sudden momentum and faceplanted extra fast. That’s what I figured would happen, but I wondered how he didn’t know that was what would happen. He didn’t even do a fast shuffle, which would at least have been a good attempt.

  “Enough of that,” I said. Since we had them in custody, we were technically responsible for them. I didn’t want any of them running out into the street and getting hit by the car. Think of the damage to the vehicle! And the paperwork.

  So we interlinked their arms and re-cuffed them. One of them tried to use their crappy super speed to yank away when one hand was briefly free, but I had a proper grip so the only thing he managed to do was dislocate his wrist. Faster was not always better.

  If this guy was actually a splitter, it would have been a terrible idea to shackle ‘him’ all together. That could have produced situations where he dropped the cuffs rather easily. But with triplets using crappy superspeed, it was quite different. My senses told me they had not a single hint of actual splitter powers, and the triplets thing was easy to confirm when we de-masked them and checked their IDs. Relatedly, I thought it was probably a bad idea to bring your ID to a crime.

  They looked pretty similar, but they weren’t perfectly identical. I took notes on how to distinguish them in case it mattered in the future. Supervillainy would land them behind bars for over a year for just this incident, and they had other incidents to account for.

  -----

  There was something disconcerting about putting a bag into Storage. Unlike the worries that Great Girl expressed, the bag itself wasn’t magical nor did it actually contain anything. I wasn’t going to cause any dimensional rifts. It was just weird.

  Relevantly, without having the messenger bag available I couldn’t fit some of the larger and heavier items in Storage, nor take them out, due to how it functioned as a focus. But I also didn’t want a bag flopping around all the time, as it could easily be damaged by random attacks and get in my way during battle.

  I now had various knick-knacks and baggies of stuff that made up material components and focuses for the majority of my spells. If I had time to plan out my moves, I would use them. Otherwise, I only kept the most necessary accessible. I didn’t want my pockets to be overflowing with tinder and ice cubes. Obviously I couldn’t just keep out the larger things- like a broom for Clean. Likewise, I never needed to cast Shelter in a hurry so having to retrieve the small model house wouldn’t be an issue.

  I hadn’t figured out a good option for every spell, even with the vague guidance from divination magic and my understanding of the spells, but overall I would be… slightly more efficient. Unless I was willing to consume proper focuses instead of just using them in a repeating fashion. If I had a bunch of lighters I could make fairly powerful Firebolts, and if I was willing to consume sapphires I could make Blizzard quite a bit stronger. I had the feeling it would be very strong if I had some sort of enchanted ice crystals to consume, but that was a bit outside the realm of feasibility.

  So overall, I was stronger, and with preparation I could greatly increase my effectiveness. I still couldn’t be certain if this was how material components and focuses were supposed to work or not. It was possible that not everything I had found different from the norm was intentionally hidden. Living in another world long term might have influenced magic.

  I needed to talk to some mages. If only I could figure out how to do it without being at risk. Some people were definitely hiding some of this stuff.

  -----

  There hadn’t been a Doctor Doomsday portal incident in so long that I almost forgot that they were a thing. I had kind of thought he might be done with whatever he was trying to gain from all that.

  Then most of the Brigade was called to a meeting. Obviously we couldn’t shove all of our supers into one meeting room, so we were each assigned to a particular area. I was in a briefing room, with Swiss Arms. On some screens to the side, I could see others with Telescope, Movebrain, and even Lady Light. Other rooms seemed to have non-executives taking the lead.

  “Where’s Calculator?” I asked.

  “Calculator is… on assignment,” Swiss Arms said, waving her arms vaguely.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  So he was doing something secret. Or maybe he was captured somehow and they didn’t want people to panic. Though if that was the case they probably would have sent for Midnight and I to get Scrying directly.

  “Right,” Swiss Arms said. “We’ll answer questions as we can after, but I’m sure most of you already know why we’re here.”

  I looked at Midnight, sitting on the table in front of me. He nodded. Oh, it was probably a social media thing. If anything was really important, though, he’d tell me. Or the Brigade would alert me.

  Swiss Arms gestured, and a video began to play. I wondered if the other rooms were getting a recording of people standing in front of the video, or just the video directly.

  It was Doctor Doomsday addressing people from one of his official accounts- it was a subject of much debate whether to allow villains to have official accounts because of the chaos they could cause, but ultimately it had come down to them following certain rules. Ultimately, Doctor Doomsday had to follow less of those rules because if people tried to stop him he just hacked into official city accounts which was quite embarrassing.

  “... so-called portal powers. They could be available to everyone, if the government was willing to give up their stranglehold on supers!”

  I kind of agreed, at least on a top level. But I also knew that Doctor Doomsday didn’t have the best interests of the public in mind. He certainly hadn’t ever seriously advocated for others to have powers.

  “Thus, I have decided to announce my plans in advance just this once. The map you see behind me will be where the portals generate. Do with that information what you will.”

  The video feed was cut. It seemed like there was more, but maybe it hadn’t been deemed relevant. Swiss Arms stood resolutely at the front of the room. “He’s planning to cause chaos,” she said. “No, he already has. People are flooding towards the locations in question, hoping to gain powers. And if this is anything like the other portal incidents, monsters will come out. It’ll be a bloodbath. We’re preparing assignments involving defense, crowd management, and portal negation. I will now collect questions, and we will try to provide answers to them all.”

  “Shouldn’t we just be out there?” I asked.

  “Heroes have already been sent,” Swiss Arms explained. “Mostly, they will attempt to keep the crowds relatively calm. Since people are already gathering, it’s too late to head them off.”

  Midnight was next. “How does this benefit Doctor Doomsday? Despite how much villains might like chaos, it’s usually a distraction for something else.”

  “There are several options,” Swiss Arms explained, pulling up a slide that was obviously quickly prepared. Her arm popped open to reveal a laser pointer, which seemed like an unnecessary addition to me- but I supposed her mods didn’t necessarily care how much space they took up. “Distraction is obvious. He might be intending to open more portals while there are distractions, worsening our response times. There could also be other crimes planned. Heists, perhaps. It could also be a long-term ploy to lower the confidence in the hero and mercenary system.”

  People had a bunch of questions, but mostly I wanted to know what I was supposed to do. And the answer was to head out, disguised, and try to see if I could do something about some of the portals before their official opening time.

  -----

  “... Why a parrot?” Midnight asked.

  “Because,” I explained. “Parrots sit on shoulders and can talk. It makes the most sense.”

  “Parrots don’t actually talk, though. They just repeat words and phrases with minimal understanding.”

  “It’s that or risk getting your tail stepped on,” I said. “Very few cats ride around people’s shoulders out in the city, so you’d be too obvious even if you changed looks.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll make a good parrot,” Midnight said. “But hopefully the illusion will take care of that.

  It did. At least, when he wasn’t moving much. The different number of limbs didn’t help things, but we weren’t expecting people to be looking all that closely anyway.

  Getting to our target location took some work. The target was a park, and it was already packed with people. Cars were parked at random spots around the area. Traffic was blocked for several blocks out.

  People really wanted powers. Maybe I should just call Extra and give the people what they wanted so they could leave safely.

  Not everyone was there for powers. Some just wanted to watch, which seemed pretty foolish. There were news crews, including one familiar Channel 72 group. I would have stopped to speak with them, but we were disguised. I looked like… some guy. Just some random human dude. There was no reason to get complicated with that sort of thing.

  Some people were trying to leave, it looked like. But the press of people was making it difficult for anyone to go anywhere.

  The noise of the crowd was intense, but one voice was easily heard through a megaphone. “I doubt anyone will listen to reason at this point, but New Bay is officially warning you that this is a danger zone.” I looked to see Castle floating over the crowd.

  I didn’t know all that much about her, except that she was one of the heroes that could have a proper slugging match with Doctor Doomsday. Catching him was something else, but she was pretty high tier. I think her power was… density control? Flight wasn’t on there, and I didn’t think she could reduce her density to be similar to air. Ah, that was it. I could feel another power. Telekinesis.

  “The lot of you might not care that you’re now in violation of city ordinances. After all, as heroes we refuse to harm anyone,” she continued. “But I’m just making a public announcement now that all of your illegally parked vehicles are going to be tossed over to the impound lot. If you can get back to your car and drive it out, that would be best. If not, we can carry you to clear streets. But if you don’t care about your cars, feel free to ignore this advice.”

  Great Girl would have enjoyed tossing cars to the impound lots. She might not fit in the crowds without knocking people over, though. She was assigned to some other location, since there were two high profile heroes here. There was Castle, of course, and there was also Captain Control. I was pretty sure I could feel him lifting some cars, proving that it wasn’t a bluff on their part. He was also the one responsible for Castle’s ‘flight’.

  I cast Arcane Sight for Midnight and I, so we could pick out any potential problems. Maybe pre-portals? We’d never had the opportunity to spot Doomsday’s stuff before, but it wasn’t always him firing a portal gun in random directions. He’d definitely set up some of them beforehand with hidden devices.

  It would be easier if we could fly… but that would kind of lose all subtlety. So I had to carefully push my way through the crowd. If I was going to put a portal, it would be near the middle of the park.