Brockton Bays Marvelous Mage

After double-checking to make sure my hands were in the proper position, I slowly fed my magic into the ritual. I could feel the mana being drained away, feeding into the red chalk lines, the ritual slowly taking shape. In total, it took about fifteen minutes to fill up completely, the lines pulsing as the ritual activated. As it spun up, the now aligned magic beginning to move, I leaned back, watching it swirl and pull at each individual piece of sacrificial material. As all of this was happening, I could also feel Kali poke and prod at the process, her presence heavy on the platform.

One by one, the materials disintegrated, particles fading and feeding into the overcoat, until the last one, the turtle shell, finally vanished completely. As the magic faded, I felt a touch from Kali. There was a question from her presence, and as I stood, I nodded.

"If you don't mind..."

I could feel a short, happy feeling before a wave of her magic washed away the burnt-out ritual circle, cleaning the platform thoroughly.

I quickly stepped closer and grabbed my coat, holding it up and turning it over in my hand, looking over it for any changes. The most obvious change was the color, the standard black replaced by a dark brown, almost auburn. The material also felt more sturdy, almost like a natural cloth leather. The back of the coat was a bit thicker, with turtle-like panels that ran down my spine. They were still made from the same leather-like cloth but somehow felt sturdier, despite not losing their flexibility. Not seeing anything else worth noting, I quickly pulled the coat over me.

I could feel it the second the coat folded over my body. It was the perfect fit. It felt like someone had tailor-made it to fit me, like it had been specifically designed down to the last stitch to match my body completely and fit comfortably. I moved and shifted, trying to find the spots I knew would bunch up or a position where it was tight or loose, only to realize they didn't exist anymore.

"Well… if all else fails, I can do this to the rest of my clothes to make them perfectly comfortable," I said, looking at Alya as she walked around me. "How do I look?"

"The color suits you," She responded. "It matches your mask better. Does… it do anything?"

"I'm pretty sure, yeah?" I responded. "Give me a second..."

I closed my eyes and focused, trying to find the sort of mental hitch that Olivia had described feeling from her cloak. It didn't take me long to find one… only to find a second immediately after. The first was more of a mental image, an understanding of a layer covering my body. I knew it was there, fully intact and charged, even if I couldn't see it.

"Okay, I can feel something… it's definitely like a barrier around me…" I said, frowning as I tried to figure out exactly what I had given the overcoat. "Hey, do me a favor? Grab a small rock or something and drop it on my arm from up high?"

Alya snagged something from the ground and floated upwards, her bottom half flickering and fading as she went partially incorporeal. Once she was high enough, she dropped the rock, which smacked into my outstretched arm, hitting me just below the elbow. For a moment, a green barrier, the same color as the painted egg, sprung up around my arm, absorbing the impact of the stone, which fell off and hit the ritual platform below. The impact was completely negated, and I hadn't felt anything.

I could, however, feel the impact site in the mental map I had of the barrier. I could instinctively feel that the shield was slightly damaged on my arm. When, after a few seconds, the damage didn't fade, I frowned.

"Okay… well I can feel it, the barrier protected me," I explained. "It absorbed the full impact. But now it's damaged, and it's not regenerating. Maybe the other hitch does that?"

I mentally reached for the second hitch, but it resisted my attempts to activate it, almost like it was a heavier, more intensive process. Finally, I gave it a hard mental yank.

A massive dome of a shield, a huge translucent turtle shell the same green color as the barrier, appeared around me, growing outward from me. It was easily ten feet tall and fifteen feet wide, with the edges forming over and around the roots of the storage trees around me. I stepped forward, and the shield remained stationary, not moving even as I reached out and touched it, my fingers passing through without effort. Once I was outside it, however, I could not get back in, the shield resisting several punches and lightning spells.

We spent an hour testing both the turtle shield and the barrier, letting Alya, and later Kali through her wolves, try several different methods to damage or get through them. We quickly discovered that the barrier protection was ablative, meaning that the barrier took damage as it protected me, eventually cracking and failing completely. Once that happened, rather than the whole protective barrier failing, only that specific spot was now vulnerable.

On the other hand, the turtle shield seemed to be all or nothing, a barrier that took damage anywhere, eventually snapping and disappearing when it was too much. As it took damage, it slowly started to crack, eventually shattering when the cracks reached the center of the dome roof. Despite being ominous, the cracks did not make certain areas of the shield any less durable. It also disappeared after a minute and could be dispelled with the coat, as long as I was still inside. Rather disappointingly, I could not cast magic from the inside out, as the shield seemed to absorb it.

We also learned that both of the abilities recharged, they just took a while. The ablative barrier took a full minute start to refill, with it taking another full minute to fully recharge. If the barrier was damaged again during that time it would start over again. That meant, in all likelihood, I would only get one full effect per fight. Still, the fact that the wolves chewing on my arm as hard as they could only slowly grounding away at the barrier was a good sign. On the other hand, I could only cast the turtle dome once every five minutes.

I wasn't about to run through a gun range without my absorption, but the barrier meant that if I got caught out after it faded, I wasn't as helpless as a baby. When we were finally done experimenting, I let out a long breath, shaking myself off a bit, feeling the barrier healing itself slowly, the cracks and chips we had made in it slowly filling in.

"This went well, but I don't have time to do another today," I said, Kali feeling disappointed as I pulled off my newly ritualized coat and folded it over my arm. "I'm gonna have some dinner, then start designing the modifications for the permanent absorption."

I made my way to the living space and hung up my coat, changing out of my uniform and into something more comfortable. When I was done, I plopped down into my chair and had "dinner," which consisted of a few granola bars and some apples. I needed to design some sort of ice box. I didn't mind living off takeout, not when I didn't have rent to pay or other bills, but I would still like to have some sort of place to keep some food fresh.

I managed to make a fair bit of progress on the modification to the absorption partional, which was at its base just a complicated and extremely specific ritual. I'm pretty sure that I could use the current partional that I had, set up on the ritual platform as the ritual heart, then draw another ritual outside that to reinforce the absorption and make it permanent. I would need five pounds of each metal I wanted to use, which so far was tungsten, copper, titanium, mercury, and nickel. There were some other metals that had interesting effects, but for now, I wanted to stick with the basics.

When I was done for the night, I asked Kali to dim the candle vial lights before crawling into bed and falling asleep.

The following morning, I was up early, quickly getting ready for the day before heading into town. The first stop, as it was the day before and would probably be for the next few weeks, was the hospital. Despite complaints and a few attempts to convince me otherwise, the parameters I had set out were being followed, which meant that I was only there for two hours and when I left, everyone who needed to be healed was as healthy as I could make them.

I was just about to start making my way to the Docks community when something clicked in my head. I almost fell off Troy at the sensation, shaking my head to clear it and focus.

I had gotten a new quest.

I frowned, letting Troy guide us through the streets as I focused on what was happening. Just as the previous quest did, I got a sense of what I needed to do and why I needed to do it, though it didn't go very deep. Across town, somewhere near Winslow High School, a female student would be chased by a group of boys with who knows what kind of intentions. The young woman was being badly bullied, and she needed help.

Unlike my previous quest, which was more open, with fewer specifics about time and place, I had a pretty good idea about when this was going on.

Namely, sometime today.

I cursed and leaned down over Troy, urging him to speed up, and guiding him into the bike lane. Soon, we were galloping down the road, Troy's eyes glowing as I fed him low amounts of mana. At that level, Troy could hold together for a while, so there was no reason to stop, my mana regenerating as fast as I could feed it to him.

I wasn't exactly sure how much time I had before the young girl was going to be chased, but I was absolutely not going to allow it to happen. When we started entering less populated areas, I urged Troy to go faster, pushing him to his limit. We thundered down abandoned roads and alleyways, jumping over quite a few fences and barriers, cutting through to the Docks South. That was where Winslow High School was located, which was as good as any place to start looking.

Eventually, after a while of galloping and feeding my mount mana, I finally felt that we were at least in the right general area. I knew from my research of local maps that Winslow was only about two blocks away. In fact, I could see it as I started patrolling the streets, back and forth, making sure to keep an eye on everything, even as Ayla watched a huge portion of the area in her non-corporeal form.

"What do we know about the mission?" She asked, her voice just barely reaching me with how stretched out she was. "Any clues?"

"The inclusion that she is a student makes me think she is running from the school," I guessed, frowning under my mask. "But there is no guarantee."

"That's very different from the information you got for the first one," She pointed out, and I couldn't help but wince.

"I'm aware, but the quest concept has always been the… least concrete out of all of this," I responded, gesturing to myself. "I'm pretty sure now that we get one per cycle, but beyond that… I don't know the rules."

We continued to patrol as best we could, staying close to the school while basically making a large circle around it. From what I understood of this area, it was deep in ABB territory, which made me very nervous. Still, I had a mission to complete, so I kept wandering around the area, relying on Alya to keep me out of trouble and watch over the school.

It wasn't until a few minutes past three that Alya finally spotted something.

"I believe school is finally out," she said. "Quite a few people have left on foot."

"Just watch out for a girl and a group of guys," I reminded, getting a confirmatory pulse through our connection.

I started to make my way back around the school, following the same general pattern as before, when after a few minutes, Alya finally spoke up again.

"There is a young woman currently being followed by several young men," She explained. "She hasn't seen them- Wait, no, she is running…and they are chasing after her."

"Guide me to them," I responded before kicking my heels against Troy and taking off, feeding him as much mana as he could take.

We thundered down a long road, skidding into a turn and heading down another. It didn't take long for me to catch up, cutting through an alley to come out in front of the young woman. She skidded to a stop barely a few feet away, but I spun on Troy's back and leaped off, landing on the other side of her, hand out and sparking. The five large teenage guys chasing her skidded to a stop, two of them falling on their asses in the process. They were looking at me with wide eyes, flicking between my mask and the sparking electricity in my hand.

"I think you boys should go ahead and sit down," I said, standing up straight, gesturing to the curb with my non-sparking hand. "I don't know about you, but five guys chasing after a single girl is not a good look."

For a moment, it looked like the furthest two were going to run, and I could tell that if they started, the rest would follow. I flicked my finger out and slammed a quick cast bolt of electricity into a nearby sign, leaving a thumb-sized dent in it.

"I said, sit. Down."

One by one, the high school boys all slowly sat on the curb, quite a few of them looking pale. When the last one was finally sitting, I pulled out my prepaid phone and took a quick series of pictures before finally turning to the young woman.

"Hello, my name is Arcanum. What's yours??" I asked, trying to be gentle with the clearly shocked young woman. When she didn't respond at first, I tried again. "Are you injured? I can provide healing if you need it."

"I-my name is Taylor... I'm fine, I think..."

"Well, Taylor, do you mind if I check?" I asked. "My healing abilities were declared officially safe by the PRT, and I frequently heal at Brockton Bay Hospital."

For a moment, I thought she would decline, but she nodded slowly, so I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder. She pulled away slightly at first, but stopped after she appeared to realize what she was doing.

"Just a fair warning, my healing is a bit glowy, and I will chant a few words," I explained. "That's normal, and the chanting helps me focus."

She nodded, seeming to steel herself for a moment before I quickly scanned her.

The first thing I noticed was that she had been healed relatively recently by Panacea, or perhaps some other parahuman power that was similar. There was a layer of unnatural perfection that Panacea left behind in her healing, which I had picked up on after healing several people that Panacea already had, specifically her father, as well as a few other patients who had brain injuries on top of other issues. She had fixed the other issues, but I had been called to heal their brains.

I also noticed that she had a few bruises on her shoulder and legs. The legs could have been from a recent fall, but the shoulder was almost certainly some sort of punch. Between being chased, the bruises, and what my quest was telling me, it was clear that someone had it in for Taylor. Considering that Panacea would only have been involved if she had been sent to the hospital, this was potentially not the first time they had gotten violent.

"Taylor, why don't you sit down?" I asked, guiding her up onto the sidewalk to a set of stairs. "I'm going to call the police, but you just relax and recover."

She seemed uncomfortable, but after a moment, she sat down and nodded. I nodded back before pulling out my phone again, quickly dialing for nine one one, waiting for the call to connect.