Disclaimer: I own nothing here you recognise (and depending on what fandom drew your interest to this fic, I may not own some things you don't recognise); you know how it goes.

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The Guardians of Magic

As he looked around the city, Nick wasn't sure if he should be impressed at the scale of what he was looking at or be disturbed at his knowledge of what this society had apparently done to achieve all this. He was trying to remember that he still had no way of verifying everything he and the others had been told about this place, so he couldn't let himself make any snap decisions, but the fact that so many of his new acquaintances had been attacked as soon as they arrived in this world didn't speak well for the rulers of this civilisation.

For the moment, Nick was choosing to focus on this as though it was an investigation of a crime scene, even if he doubted any cop had to face the idea of analysing an entire city to determine if its people were guilty of this kind of crime. The warehouse they had rendezvoused at seemed to be located on the outskirts of the city, so at least they seemed to be out of the way of any civilians, but that left them with the challenge of investigating what they were up against without provoking a fight they weren't ready for.

Keeping in mind that their goal was to remain discreet while still taking precautions, as the first step in their campaign Nick was currently out with Emma, Bo, Kenzi, Tommy, Billy and the Vision, the android using a holographic disguise to give himself a more human appearance. Nick, Emma, Bo and Kenzi were all carrying discreet weapons under their clothes, but Tommy had ultimately agreed to the decision to leave his morpher behind. If they got into trouble this early on, escape was a more important priority than fighting, and they didn't want to expose all their cards too soon.

"You're sure these are what they're wearing here?" Kenzi looked over at Vision as she tugged at her tight collar.

"I checked the public databases thoroughly," the android affirmed. Like the rest of them, he was wearing a high-collared coat that came down to around his knees over a dark pair of trousers. The attire was relatively similar across both genders and the general population as far as they could tell, with tight long-sleeved jackets and equally tight trousers in various dark colours. The clothes were of various colours, ranging from black to shades of purple or blue, but it wasn't hard to see that nobody was wearing anything patterned or obviously light. Lighter colours like yellow or sky-blue were conspicuous by their absence, and there was a certain grimness to the way these people walked that made the group feel subtly uncomfortable even if nobody was obviously looking at them.

"It's all a bit… samey," Bo observed, looking down at her own jacket. "I mean, I like black for style, but what's wrong with tossing something lighter into the picture?"

"I know what you mean," Tommy observed, indicating his own dark green jacket. "I like the shade, but there are times when you want to have the option of changing it up…"

"In my experience," Nick observed grimly, "any time people start dressing alike and following a specific goal… well, things get unpleasant."

"You have experience with that?" Billy asked. He and Emma were wearing similar jackets in dark red, the two sticking close to give the impression that they were a parent and child to at least avoid drawing attention to Billy's youth.

"Even if you're not dealing with… well, the kind of things we deal with… you can see some unpleasant things when you're a cop," Nick clarified. He wished that they could have avoided bringing Billy along this early in their 'campaign', but given their understanding of what the Empirikuul were capable of, he was the most powerful magical asset they had who might not be detectable by their anti-magic sensors until they were ready. "Gangs of all kinds tend to dress up when they're 'on duty'; it's as though they feel this need to reinforce their disdain for what isn't like them by becoming conformists to each other."

"But did they have to make their clothes this uncomfortable?" Kenzi asked, reaching up to her collar again. "I mean, seriously-"

"Careful," Tommy said, grabbing Kenzi's wrist and lowering her arm as another group walked by. "Be normal, OK? People are starting to look at us."

"…Right," Kenzi nodded cautiously at him as she lowered her hand. "Be discreet; got it."

As the group kept walking, Nick observed that they seemed to be moving from the residential areas to what seemed to be the business centre of town. The tower blocks they'd passed by earlier were informal enough that they reminded him of apartment buildings back in Portland, whereas these places had the glass-and-steel walls that made him think of more elaborate office complexes from big cities such as New York. The people around him still struck him as a mix of casual and business, and a few of them even seemed to be wearing something around their necks that Nick would assume was the equivalent of a tie, but they all retained a certain rigidity in their manner that made Nick feel increasingly on edge.

"This is…" Billy muttered.

"Yeah," Emma patted him cautiously on the shoulder. "It's the way it's so similar to our worlds that really throws you off…"

"Just keep walking," Bo said. "If you look like you belong, nobody will notice."

After a few more moments of walking, passing through the business area and another residential section, the group reached a large building that seemed to be on the outer edge of the city. Unlike the constructs they'd seen so far, this one was distinctly separated from the other buildings around it by a large open area, although people still walked past it, occasionally looking through the gates. As the group gathered in front of one set of gates, it was easy to see that the open area around it was a kind of parade ground, full of people wearing the same white armour that had been worn by the group that attacked them earlier.

"Oh God…" Bo whispered as she looked at the large building. The armour worn by the people marching in front of the building mostly matched the armour that had been worn by their earlier attackers, but these soldiers were carrying larger guns. Bo guessed that the group that had caught her and Kenzi were some kind of crowd control where these guys were the active military, but that raised the disturbing question of what these larger guns could do.

"That is… a lot of people," Tommy said, looking anxiously at the others. "Can we… I mean, if we're expected to stop them…?"

"This is a military campaign, Tommy Oliver," Vision observed with a reassuring nod. "We do not need to defeat all of our enemies' forces; we simply have to ensure that their leaders are too discouraged to continue that campaign."

"That's one option, anyway," Emma observed, grimly studying the army before them. "If these people hate magic like Strange suggested, we could have a lot of people to beat to get that far."

"Right…" Tommy said, shrugging awkwardly. "I guess I'm just used to dealing with Putties…"

"Putties?" Billy asked.

"Rita's primary foot soldiers," Tommy explained as the group continued to walk around the fence. "From what Zordon's told us, most of her monsters are made out of some kind of enchanted clay, but Putties are the most basic ones. Her stronger creations are pretty varied, but Putties are just featureless grey man-shaped things that attack in large groups until we fight them off."

"Ah," Bo nodded in understanding. "Sounds strange."

"Hey, at least the psycho witch isn't going all Necromancer on you," Kenzi pointed out.

"Necromancer?" Billy asked.

"As in this Rita person isn't sending a bunch of corpses after Mr Green and his friends."

"Come on," Vision said, indicating down the side of a kind of alley near the barracks. "This way should lead us to their vehicle storage."

"Which we aren't going to try and steal or anything like that, right?" Kenzi put in as they began to walk down the street. "I would like to go on record that my cousin is the one who stole cars; I never really went for that…"

"Yeah, I think it's safe to say that if we're doing this we're going to avoid provoking a large-scale attack this early," Emma nodded, as they reached the end of the alley and looked through the gate at the other side. "Sabotage is one thing, but an outright attack is something else…"

The area around the fields was mostly surrounded by stronger metal walls, but just like around the barracks, the gate was a fairly standard design of metal bars rather than a solid surface. Nick wondered if part of this was a psychological thing to make people wonder more about what was on the other side, but the result was that it felt all the more intimidating to look through the bars and see the sheer scale of the forces their new enemy controlled. There were some that basically everyone in the group recognised, such as tanks and planes that looked fairly similar to what they knew from their worlds, but there were larger vehicles that were less familiar in form. A few of the group tentatively recognised some of the vehicles as resembling a kind of flying aircraft carrier, but even if they didn't recognise the nature of what they were looking at it was still easy to see that it was big. The yard stretched out as far as they could see, putting most of them in mind of a vast airport, an analogy further aided by the large towers dotted around at various points.

"We're not going to beat these people in a fight, are we?" Billy said, looking apprehensively from the yard to the rest of the group around him.

"Not in a straight fight, anyway," Bo said with a grim nod. "We just need to find the best way to strike back…"

"ATTENTION!" a loud voice suddenly blared out. Looking up at the nearest tower to their position, the group realised that what they had taken for a window was actually a kind of broadcast screen, which was displaying a series of images.

"The next target for our campaign to remove the corruption of magic from the multiverse has been chosen," the voice said, the images showing a series of elaborate temples that put some of them in mind of Chinese structures. "This reality has a collection of sorcerers in the city known as Kamar-Taj, with outposts in other parts of the world that reinforce their influence. Their long-standing leader, who sustained herself far beyond natural means through the power of what they term 'the Dark Dimension', has been killed in a civil war, and their new authority figure is a relatively new practitioner known as 'Doctor' Stephen Strange. Other forms of magic exist in this world, with a history stretching back to the Salem Witch Trials, but these sorcerers are the most potent threat to this world's purity at this time. This world possesses other self-proclaimed 'heroes', but they have no magic…"

"Uh…" Emma looked anxiously over at the rest of her group as she indicated the screen. "Sorry to get picky, but did that announcement just declare that Strange's world is their next target?"

"Yep," Kenzi nodded before she looked at Nick. "Although if we're talking alternate worlds, you think maybe they're going after a different Stephen Strange?"

"Well, he didn't tell us much about himself, so maybe…" Nick nodded in acknowledgement at Kenzi. "But on the other hand… maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but that just doesn't feel right to me."

"Yeah; if another version of him was their next target, wouldn't they mention how they stopped the last one of him to give everyone incentive that they'll win again?" Billy asked.

"Good point…" Bo nodded in thought. "We've obviously not being told everything…"

"What are you all doing out here?"

Nick cursed as he turned to look at a pair of men dressed in rougher clothing than the rest of the people they had seen so far. They were still wearing dark clothing in the elaborate leather-like attire of most of the people, but unlike most of the people they'd seen so far, these two gave off a warning edge in their stances that Nick didn't like. There was also a gold mark on the side of their chests that made some of the watchers think of a sheriff's badge from the Wild West, and a slight bulge under their jackets that made them think of weapons.

"…Good afternoon?" Emma said, moving to stand close to Billy; he might be here as their strongest asset, but right now he was still a vulnerable teenage boy.

"Afternoon," one of the men said, nodding at her as he seemed to put something away in his jacket pocket before indicating Bo. "Good on you for bringing her; we'll take her off your hands-"

"What?" Bo looked at the men in shock. "What are you- I'm not-!"

"Yeah, you're not the biggest catch, but no prize too small," the other man said, as they both raised their weapons to point at Bo. The heroes briefly noted with relief that at least these two weren't holding the larger guns they'd seen earlier, but the fact that people were pointing guns at them in the first place was still uncomfortable. "Now then, if you'd just hand her over we can-"

Tommy cut the man off with a kick to the side that simultaneously sent his target off-balance and knocked the gun out of his hands. The other man just had time to turn to point his gun at Tommy before the green-clad teenager was able to pull the gun out of his hands and strike his opponent in the head with it. The blow just sent the man staggering back, the armour apparently cushioning the full force of the blow, but that was enough for Nick to move in and deliver his own suitable punch to the man's face that apparently finished the job. Emma had already picked up the two fallen guns as Nick turned to kick the first man Tommy had knocked down in the head, rendering the second man unconscious just like the first.

"OK," Tommy said, looking uncertainly at the fallen guards. "That was…"

"Quick?" Kenzi asked, as Emma passed their new guns around to the rest of the group.

"…Disturbing," Tommy said. "I mean, I'm used to fighting monsters; I haven't actually fought people for real since…"

"At least we got a chance to see what we're up against," Bo observed, looking thoughtfully at the weapon she currently held. "There might be a few more questions about where Strange fits into all this, but the basic threat stays the same."

"And now we have these men as an example of what the hunters wear," Vision observed as he indicated the men before them.

"Hunters?" Billy asked apprehensively.

"Men like these," the Vision explained. "They are not part of the military forces, but they have authorisation to carry weapons and track potential supernatural incursions to this world."

"And they could detect me?" Bo asked.

"Probably because of this," Kenzi put in, having reached into the jacket of one of the men and pulled out a device that Nick think of a tricorder from Star Trek. "Some kind of magic scanner, do you think?"

"Possibly," Vision nodded as he took the device from Kenzi to study it himself. "I may be able to study this back at the trailer and work out a way to shield the rest of you from such sensors…"

"You can do that?" Billy asked.

"I am a highly advanced being in many regards, Billy Batson; I cannot say for sure what I can do with unfamiliar technology, but I can make the attempt."

"OK, so that's something else to work with," Emma nodded as she slung her own new acquisition over her back. "Let's get back to… base… and see what we can find out on other fronts."