Chapter Text
Breaking into the warehouse, it turns out, was the easy part. Whatever super-cool magic wards are keeping out sorcerers and witches and other non-divine magical types, they apparently aren't calibrated to block the Fist of Khonshu.
The hard part is when Marc finds himself standing in front of a shelf with like fifty little jars, and Khonshu only wants one of them.
Steven, please say you can tell the difference between these things.
What, you mean you can't?
Just help me out, here, implores Marc, and the Khonshu-given ceremonial armor turns into the plain white suit Steven came up with on his own.
Steven looks the shelf up and down, comparing hieroglyphs and animal-head-shaped carvings and, Marc doesn't even know, stone quality or something. After a few minutes, he scoops one of them up.
Still no wards, no blaring alarms, no sign of anybody about to stop them. Marc thinks it feels way too easy. He doesn't swap back -- Steven's gotten good at the quiet sneaking part of the job -- but he's on high alert as they sneak back out.
Sure enough, out of nowhere the passage lights up with a whirl of red-orange sparks, irising outward into a portal big enough for a guy in a red cape to hop through.
Marc takes back the body, his own (bigger) cape swirling out behind him, and uses his free hand to draw a crescent dart.
"Oh, come on, let's not do that," says the sorcerer, flicking his fingers.
A band of bluish light clamps around Marc's wrist and drags him backward, then up -- not far, just enough that his feet leave the ground. It's painfully similar to the time he tried to throw a punch at Harrow in the Great Pyramid, and a god cuffed his hand to force it away. The dart clatters to the floor.
Clearly, this is Jake's moment to shine. Marc is having a bad time, and Steven doesn't have the core strength to draw his knees up to his chest, ready to give the sorcerer one hell of a kick if he comes any closer. The creepy Egyptian mummy outfit dissolves into Jake's way-cooler mostly-black armor.
"Another new outfit? Geez, you really have one for every occasion," says the guy, who is (as Steven helpfully feeds into Jake's mind) the famous Doctor Strange. "What are you stealing? Gold? Jewels? Artifacts of indescribable magical power?"
"Jar," says Jake, holding it up. "Of, uh, rock, I think."
Doctor Strange raises his eyebrows. "Seriously? That? Never managed to make that do anything. Before we put it in storage, we were using it as a paperweight."
If Khonshu sent us all this way to fetch his favorite paperweight, Jake informs his headmates, I'm going to murder the bird myself.
The sorcerer starts throwing some kind of whooshy magic all around them, which Jake knows he's probably helpless to stop, but kicks his foot through just in case.
Apparently it's just the dramatic superhero equivalent of those metal-detector wands they run over you at the airport: "Wow, you actually did not grab anything else. Um...look, if you really want that? I guess you can have it."
Jake doesn't trust this at all. "...What's the catch?"
"No catch," says Doctor Strange. "Just one question," he adds, like that isn't a catch. "How did your costume instantly change like that?"
Jake stares at the sorcerer.
The sorcerer stares at Jake.
"Magic," says Jake.
A couple seconds later, Doctor Strange shrugs and says, "Checks out." He lowers them to the ground and banishes the cuff. "No further questions."