Robert Meta
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Brockton Bay's Marvelous Mage - Chapter Sixty Two
🕑 Added 2024-11-28 16:10:13 +0000 UTCWhile Eric relaxed and recuperated, I first helped Lady Photon, Glory Girl, and Laserdream with their gear, since they were up next to go on patrol. It took me a while to realize that it must be the weekend, a concerning thought since I had no idea. I made a note to put a calendar in the compound and start marking the days, if for no other reason than to keep track of holidays and the like.
First up, now that her son was satisfied and declared safe, was Lady Photon, who happily accepted a bracelet, a simple band of low alloy gold, that was easily hidden under her costume. Before she put it on, I stopped her so I could explain my general methodology.
"So, my goal with each of your pieces of gear was to give you a rating in a new category," I explained. "Since you, Lady Photon, are already a blaster and a mover-"
"And a shaker for my shields," She added.
"Right, well, you said you were interested in anything that would let you lead better, so I decided the best way to help with that was to give you a thinker rating," I responded, getting a surprised look from most of the group. "Your bracelet should give you an understanding of someone's condition and current drive or primary emotion. Its range is about fifty meters, but for people you care about and consider important, that should be a bit further. It works on allies and enemies, so with a quick thought, you should be able to tell how badly someone is injured, or whether someone is leading you into an ambush."
She seemed shocked by my description and, after a moment of looking down at the bracelet, quickly pulled it onto her wrist. She then looked around at her family, smiling as she saw each of them was okay. She was silent for a while as she absorbed the new source of sensory input, so I continued to speak.
"It shouldn't be anything too invasive, unless they are having some really intense thoughts," I explained before anyone could complain. "It's not mind reading or anything that precise, though she will likely be able to push deeper the better she gets with the ability."
"It's true. I can feel that everyone is in good condition, though a bit nervous and excited, though Shielder's is still exhausted," the superhero mom agreed, giving her son an unhappy look before continuing. "Nothing invasive unless it's life or death, I promise."
That seemed to mollify everyone, and Glory Girl quickly stepped up to the proverbial plate. She also received a new piece of jewelry, a palm or hand cuff, which was a piece of jewelry that wrapped around your hand to accent your fingers or palm. It was very extra, especially the gold one I got for Victoria, but having a second option for something on your hand other than gloves was valuable enough to me that I bought a few of them from the market stall at the Lord Street Market.
The palm cuff allowed Victoria to fire energy blasts similar to Lady Photons. It also gave her her aunt's protection against flashing bright lights. The cuff was actually a double-stacked ritual, as I first reinforced the hell out of it so it would survive being in Glory Girl's fist as she used her super strength, something she greatly appreciated.
Last from the first group was Laserdream, who received a necklace that gave her shields the ability to blend in like a chameleon, giving her a stranger rating. It was not invisibility, but she could make it pretty hard to see her up against a wall or up in the sky. I assured her that as she got better at visualizing the color shifting, the quality would get better as well. She smirked and said that maybe she could finally get some alone time at the library without people pestering her for autographs.
Before the three women left to go on patrol, I brought up some of the stuff Crow and I had discussed during our own patrol.
"First off, watch out for Merchant tags," I asked. "We spotted one along the line of the ABB and Merchant territories."
"They really plan on pushing in?" Lady Photon asked, frowning and shaking her head. "That's bad news, Merchants are hard to predict at the best of times, but with a situation like this…"
"We definitely need to keep an eye out for more," Manpower agreed. "Depending on where they are, it might even indicate where they plan on pushing in. They aren't exactly the brightest bulbs, even without the drugs."
"Not that we should underestimate them," Lady Photon added, giving the other adult a tired look. "Especially their cape leader, Skidmark. All reports show him being a pain to deal with."
"Great, then we can keep track of that and look out for issues," I agreed. "Crow and I also discussed what is happening to the ABB."
I spent a few minutes passing on what Crow discovered before finally bringing up the issue of the Farms.
"I'm pretty sure I can figure out where they are," I assured them. "But we need to work together to take them down, as there is no way they are undefended. They may not have parahumans, but that doesn't mean we can just start phoning it in because we assume we can handle them."
"If you can locate it, we will absolutely help," Lady Photon said with no hesitation. "Even if Lung was still around, we would have helped shut them down."
Most of New Wave had faces of disgust or frustration on their faces, most likely because the Farm's location was something that had stumped them and the PRT for a long time.
Once I promised to keep them in a loop, the women left for their patrol and I focused on Manpower, Flashbang, and Panacea. Manpower received a pair of boots very similar to mine, allowing him to jump multiple times in the air. With his super strength, this gave him some incredible air time and a relatively high mover rating. Rather than giving him steady feet, his boots gave him a subtle slow fall effect he could engage so he could have more control over his descents.
Flashbang's gear had been a bit more difficult, because I honestly wanted to give him multiple things. His blaster power was pretty powerful, but unlike everyone else on the combat team, he lacked a mover rating and a way to protect himself from injury. I could have attempted to give him both, but that would just make two weak improvements rather than two strong ones.
In the end, I went simple but effective, giving him an ablative shield like I had on my cloak, attached to a reinforced under-armor shirt. His was actually probably stronger than mine since it was reinforced by samples of the shield of New Wave. It also lacked the turtle shell ability mine had, but it did seem to recharge a heck of a lot faster.
The final creation was for Panacea. Part of me wanted to make her something like what I made for her adoptive father, but another part of me wanted to make her a mover since she was not really supposed to be in combat. A way to retreat sounded better than a way to fight.
Then I realized there was nothing stopping me from doing both for her, as I didn't think anyone would complain about me making sure the team healer was taken care of. So I gave her a nearly identical copy of her father's protection, tied to a necklace rather than a shirt, as well a pair of bracelets that improved her stamina, flexibility, and just generally agility and dexterity. A handy ritual I would have absolutely used for myself if my permanent geomantic absorption didn't already give that to me and more. I warned her that she would need to learn how to do the actual things, but she was basically now the most talented athlete on the planet. I then proved it to her by teaching her to do a forward handspring in a few minutes.
"Your shield should keep you safe from most things, including messing up if you're running around, learning, and practicing," I explained. "Feel free to call me otherwise. With my new Teleport, I can be anywhere I've been before in just a few seconds, a minute or two at most. That goes for patrols as well. I'm almost always going to be ready to back up a group if they run into trouble."
With their gear distributed, everyone expressed their thanks before eventually heading off. Shielder was the one giving everyone a lift, with Panacea, Manpower, and Flashbang all riding on one of his shields as he flew away. They were, apparently, heading off to do some training so they could get used to the new abilities I had given them. I was pleased to hear that they were taking it seriously, and I was happy to see they enjoyed my gear. With them armed and prepared, I felt considerably better about dragging the Parahuman family into this potentially large-scale conflict.
When they were gone, I let out a long breath before heading off to the hospital and the PRT to do my daily healing. I was also happy to see that the PRT had come through for me on an earlier request to pay in materials. When I was done with my healing, I walked out of the government building with a few bags of gemstones, enough for me to make the golem they wanted to run tests on and at least four or five more, considering just how simple I planned on making the PRTs version.
Rather than teleporting back to the compound, I rode Troy through the city, heading for one of the few scrap yards. After a long conversation with the manager and a wad of cash, I was left alone in one of the larger open areas, surrounded by scrap and trash. Ignoring the cloying, metallic, slightly chemically smell that permeated the area, I pulled out my spellbook. I flipped open my spell book, and after a moment of re-reading the spell, I began to chant.
“Metallum, sanguis terrae, fundamentum humanitatis, vocationem magicae meae sentio. Te voco, quod moderni mirum est, ut sequaris mandata mea. Egredere, metallo, et finge te in figuram quam cupio.”
The piles around me shook and shifted slightly, rattling as seven circles appeared ahead of me, all connected by a circle. Each circle had two arcane symbols, and as I chanted, they began to spin. Tendrils of magic erupted from the spell, spreading through the piles around me, making various objects throughout them glow. After a few seconds, I could feel the link to the metal, and with a pull, they began to liquefy, pulling through trash and plastic until I had a huge pool of iron, copper, and aluminum in front of me. I had been focusing on a vague ratio of aluminum brass, heavy on iron, for flexibility, toughness, and speed.
Before I could start to shape the metal, the magic of the spell faded, leaving a massive chunk of golden brass in front of me. I had definitely underpaid for how much copper I was using, but considering there was no way the owner would have been able to pull the copper out of the electronics and piping as efficiently as I did, I considered it a fair trade.
Quickly, before the owner could come back and start to question how much money I had given him, I cast the spell again. As the glowing circles appeared again, this time, all of the magic poured into the substantial solid chunk of metal in front of me. It quickly became amorphous again as I forced it to grow into four different frames. Each of them followed my standard golem shape, a humanoid frame with a hunched, headless upper torso. Then, as the magic began to fade, I let the interior harden and focused on adding some basic designs on the surface, deciding that since these golems would be traveling with me a lot, they should look good as well.
By the time the magic finally slipped away, the golems looked like they were armor-plated, with "seams" along their thick, shiny plates. They were a good five or six inches taller than me, with thick limbs and a sturdy chest, meaning that they looked ready to take on whatever you could throw at them. Of course, at this point, they were basically just metal statues, I needed to get home and make them into golems.
Luckily, I knew that going in, so all of the statues were close by, meaning I could get Troy, use a quick plant manipulation spell to uncurl some of his body to tightly grip onto the statues, and then I could tightly hold on to him as I teleported us home. Between Troy and the statues, I was really pushing the Teleportation spell limits, but I managed to cast it just fine, even if it drained me almost completely.
Once we were back at the compound, I immediately got to work, moving the statues around by hand before turning each of them into high-functioning golems.
By this point, I was a practiced golem maker. Even better, with the frames already built and ready for charging, it only really took about an hour and a half per golem and another forty-five minutes for the simple super living wood golem, which I promptly delivered to the PRT. They were a little unsure of what to do until Assault finally showed up and took custody of it, letting me leave without the security officers complaining.
When I returned home, I got to work getting used to my golems, ordering them around the compound, having them push over things and lift up boulders, and doing my best to get a sense of just how fast and strong they were. The short answer was "very," with the longer answer being that they were better than any of the other golems in every way due to their superior material. The only issue they had was that they could not regenerate on their own, and they were on the heavy side. They contained a lot of aluminum, which helped keep their weight down, but each one still weighed considerably more than me. "Walking lightly" Was not one of their various selling points.
These golems were explicitly designed to accompany Crow and me on our patrols. They were more than capable of handling even the most heavily armed thugs, and with a command word could raise their strength to levels that would let them go toe-to-toe with a decently powerful brute. They were by far the most advanced golems I had made so far, and with plenty of time to modify them in the future, they would likely get better over time.
After a round of sparring with them, the metal golems putting my own buffs to the test, I finally settled down by the fire again. Not to design a spell or to design a ritual. It was finally time for me to make my primary spell focus, a staff that would blow my previous one out of the water. I was excited to get started, so I quickly ate a simple meal, before diving into my notes and starting to plan.
Comments
Pearl of the Orient
That would be a knowledge level much higher than the OC currently is. That's Mage Guard of Netheril levels of power. He's currently a very talented, self-taught, beginner apprentice with a very spotty and sparse knowledge base.
AlthePal
Very high chance of getting Contessa’d if he gets something like that. It would be a huge red flag for her and they value their secrecy and might put their plans at risk if he comes anywhere near a Cauldron cape or someone who’s in the know.
Michael Rojas
A thousand yes's. Screw it all, teach them what fear really means..
Bishop7053
Or TK. Nonmanton limited telekinesis is probably one of the most powerful abities you could get with the sheer versatility and power. Oh that's a nice building you got there be a shame if I yeeted it into the atmosphere, or just rripped a mofo in two from the otherside of the city, or hey brain aneurysm time from a few miles away. Ripping the air outta a dudes lungs and causing a vacuum collapse internally to turn someone into a pink mist. The murder options go hard the fewer morals you have. TK is scary
Primex
How powerfull would the MC become if he invested 3 levels into Mind Magic or Telepathy? Most people in Brockton don’t have defenses against mental intrusions, this would up his power level considerably. But being outed as a powerfull Master would turn most of the city against him too.
Mr Mouse
Make them out of a combination of Druidcrafted Australian Buloke and Chitin, they'd be tanky as all hell, and fully capable of making a grown man cry at a hundred paces Bonus, with the chitin, you might be able to have them count as arthropods, for Miggs' Warlord Skitter idea
Mr Mouse
So, first, TFTC, the brass golems seem rad as shit Second, the amount of sleep he is already missing can only have good outcomes, I'm sure
PeaceMaker03
I was hoping the metal golems could power up by morphing together into a Titan. With a signature move, via Loki/Hulk, called “puny Villain smash”
Commander Miggs
Going for nightmare fuel? How about some more? Give them a reduced weight enchant and enhanced grippiness so they can run along walls and ceilings. Want more nightmare fuel? Make Warlord Skitter and enchant her for extended range. The city will be bathed and cleansed with nuclear fire.
Hazel D
Thanks for the update!
Hiram
True, but would probably scare the sh... out of the city.
Michael Rojas
The golems would have looked cooler if they looked like Xenomorphs..
