It seemed there weren’t any missions in spooky old mansions for Shockwave to pick up, so Midnight and I ended up going out on various other missions. We practiced with material components and focuses, though we avoided any offensive spells.

  We were patrolling with just us and Jim when Trigon Terror chose a nearby grocery store to rob. It didn’t seem like a great target to me, but he wasn’t the first villain to do so. Rodentia was the most frequent offender, given her particularities.

  “What do you know about that guy?” Jim asked, even as he was likely looking up the villain’s data. He was quite pleased to be able to speak his native language around us, so he did so. Midnight and I constantly had Translation going for Midnight to be able to speak English properly.

  “Let’s see…” I tapped one of my tusks. “I think he was a splitter? Three bodies that he can sort of… teleport? Chain into new positions as he creates and uncreates them? High mobility and annoyance,” I explained.

  “How annoying,” Midnight commented. “We’ll have to watch for collateral damage.”

  That meant no lasers, among other things. Jim should be fine, though. He was able to focus his attacks on a particular area. Even if he missed, it shouldn’t damage other things if he was careful. He did some sort of psychic assault thing, which should probably be good against Trigon Terror as he should take significant concentration to use his abilities. Assuming we could connect.

  The target was a local Super Market, which despite the name was not a supermarket but a rather modestly sized store that carried mostly goods with superhero brand deals. And other supers, of course. I was pretty sure they sold Power Brigade energy bars, though I would never buy those because I could just have as many as I wanted. They weren’t particularly tasty, but they were convenient during training and they weren’t bad either.

  “There are three of us,” Jim commented. “Which corresponds to the theoretical maximum number of bodies Trigon Terror can manage. Should we split up and try to restrain one each?”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound useful. If he can just teleport out of our hands it wouldn’t even matter if we caught him. And if he can’t… we should just have someone block the door.”

  I looked at Jim. Of the three of us, he was the best suited to blocking a door. He could spread his mass of tentacles to the side to cover the whole thing. While that wasn’t actually the amazing physical barrier it looked like, it was a great psychological barrier. People didn’t like interacting with uncommon physiology.

  “I will gladly take on this task,” Jim said. “If you could herd our target into my attacking range, I will contribute as I can.”

  “Great. Assuming he hasn’t already run off-”

  The shouting coming from ahead indicated we were approaching our target. We had been moving at a quick pace- a slow jog so as to not arrive out of breath. I was pretty sure Jim had to breathe. Either way, I did.

  “More broccoli!” the shouting resolved into individual words, coming from several places. “And chicken! Don’t go putting any turkey in there, either! I know my fowl!”

  “Oh good he’s still there,” I commented. I couldn’t look directly at Midnight hanging out on my shoulder, so I just sort of tilted my head. “You think Dimensional Anchor would stop this guy?”

  “We’d have to hit him, so maybe,” Midnight said. “But Haste is always good. I doubt it would take us more than a minute.”

  A minute and a half, now, at something like quadruple speed. Even if we couldn’t cast more spells during that time, we could aim them more carefully. And a focus could bump that power up a bit. Since Shockwave had brought it up, I was now carrying a tiny hourglass. The quality wasn’t great but it would be better than nothing. This didn’t seem like a situation where it would be worth it to try to consume a focus, so the boost would be relatively small. Consuming focuses was probably a bad idea regardless, since I had no idea what other consequences there might be aside from permanently deleting some matter. Or converting it into magic, but from the perspective of most people that wasn’t different.

  Did it matter that I turned the hourglass over when I cast Haste? Probably not. It felt like a thing to do, though. I first targeted Jim, then Midnight and I. Multicasting was only good for more than three targets, so individual was the way to go. Especially since we counted as two total.

  The automatic doors of the building crept open slowly. I slipped through, and Midnight scrambled down my arm and jumped to the floor. Jim took his position at the door.

  The first thing we needed to do was assess the safety of civilians. Trigon Terror seemed to have brought a knife, which was… vaguely threatening. Weapons combined with certain powers could certainly be dangerous. The specific powers in question made a big difference in whether it counted as ‘armed supervillainy’, but it didn’t really matter to me. Our job was to keep people safe first, then infrastructure, and of course if we could catch the guy it would be best.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  It seemed that Trigon Terror had set up around the direct middle of the store. All three of him were standing around while staff filled a few shopping carts with the requested items. Trigon Terror was waving around his knife in a way that made me think he didn’t know how to use it. I had a good view of his costume, which involved three white triangles on simple black cloth. He clearly didn’t know a super-tailor as Francois would never have let that level of effort slide.

  I was pondering whether or not it was appropriate to call a triangle a Trigon, and whether this guy even thought about it at all, when Trigon turned to look at me. One of him, anyway. “Stop right there, heroes!” he said slowly. Well, probably normal speed.

  Interestingly, his other heads turned. Did his bodies not share processing information? How curious. Especially the way his power felt… inactive? Did he make true clones or something? I couldn’t think of any way it wouldn’t be doing anything otherwise.

  “Trigon Terror. You are under arrest for supervillainy and stuff,” I said. I gestured with my staff. “Turn yourself in and it will be considered in your sentencing.” Hopefully I spoke slowly enough.

  Two of Trigon Terror’s bodies looked towards the third. That would have been a good time to smack them upside the head, but I wasn’t that close yet and something was weird.

  What I could only presume was the main body responded. “No chance, copper! W- I’m gonna take you down!”

  The other two of him suddenly flickered. I saw a connective blur as they were… recreated? I could only watch one as it stretched around the shelves and ended up in the aisle next to me. So however that splitter ability worked it required a connection of some sort. Weird. It also felt… different. I could see the main body of Trigon Terror turning towards a civilian, but Midnight was over there now so… he’d deal with that.

  I immediately swung my staff- one handed, but it would still be a solid bash on the head of the repositioned guy. There was no way he could-

  He immediately used his power again to recreate himself further back down the aisle. Even though my attack should have been solidly at the limits of human processing time. My arm continued moving, jabbing behind me. I felt another surge of power as the one behind me did something.

  … What sort of splitter power was this? I suppose it was possible for it to come with a secondary reflex power but it was still annoying. I felt Midnight cast Shocking Grasp. A small spell, but if he could tag the legs of the main body we’d be set. Yet I also felt powers activate there, rapidly displacing Trigon Terror.

  I couldn’t pay too much attention to that as I had two guys to deal with. Rather than chasing one down the aisle and letting myself get trapped, I decided to test his abilities. I took a stance in between two shelves, so that they’d have to transmit through solid shelves. I could at least determine if they required line of sight.

  Two figures immediately appeared in front of me, stabbing outward. It would have been a bit tough to dodge them both if I wasn’t Hasted, but only a bit. As it was, I tried to whack the wrist of one body with my staff and he zipped backwards.

  Why would a spatial displacement ability leave blurs? That didn’t make any sense. Nor did the costumes these guys were wearing. This guy? Did splitters care if they were pluralized?

  Whatever. The costume wasn’t just the triangles but also now that I saw it closer… a bunch of pleats. Inside those folds was white instead of black. Why? That made no sense. I was beginning to gather mana for another spell. I thought about using Grease, but honestly Slow made so much more sense. I’d have to predict where they would pop out for Grease, and if I could lower their reflexes with Slow I’d pretty much have this in the bag.

  I heard loud and strangely in-sync cussing behind me. It sounded like the main body had something very rude to say about fire. Presumably the Fire Shield Midnight had just cast. I was facing away from there, so I couldn’t quite tell. Then something happened to trigger our Contingency, activating Stoneskin from Midnight’s end.

  I had my staff angled across the aisle when one of the splitter’s bodies tried to recreate past me… the blur got shorter. That meant something, probably. The other one stabbed towards my front at the same time I knew another stab would be coming from my back.

  I let Slow settle down around me. I was ninety-nine percent certain I could avoid including myself or anything I didn’t want to. In my left hand, I was still holding the hourglass. I probably should have put it in my pocket. Holding it might have been what made me decide on Slow, though, and it sure worked.

  I knew that if I let the guy in front of me complete his stab, it would still harm me just about the same. Which was to say, not much because my suit was extremely stab resistant and they hadn’t gotten through Force Armor yet. Even if they did, could they break through Stoneskin? I doubted it.

  It was as I watched this guy stab towards me at a comically slow pace that I realized I had already figured it out subconsciously. That wasn’t quite enough for me to completely avoid the sudden acceleration of the attack, but I did avoid taking a direct hit to my gut. His attack slid off my jacket as I cracked him in the chest with my staff. A simultaneous attack from behind finished off my Force Armor which showed how hard these guys were stabbing- enough to really kill someone.

  I slipped the hourglass into my breast pocket and took my staff in two hands, properly wielding it to strike the two slowed speedsters. Because that was what they were, even if they only moved in weird bursts. It was why they blurred and traced a path around the aisles, and also why they had the reflexes to avoid my attacks. If they were focused on that, at least.

  I swept the legs out from underneath the guy in front of me, spinning around to handle the second.

  I shouted a warning for the sake of Midnight and Jim. “They’re not a splitter but a trio of crappy speedsters!”

  “Hoooooow- dare you?!”

  That was the third guy, probably. I could see him out of the corner of my eye even as I completed my backswing towards the second.