Mage Among Superheroes

It seemed like I was going to need to get better at Sending if I was going to be frequently contacting people extradimensionally. At least, if I wanted to have mana to spend on things. Sure, it didn’t seem like much to spend 10 mana a couple times per week, but that meant each cast was somewhere around 5 hours of recovery. A bit less if I was active about it. And that meant I was spending a quarter of a normal workweek recovering from Sending alone.

It wasn’t quite right because it wasn’t like I only recovered mana 40 hours per week, but essentially I would be increasing my expenditure from 3% of my total mana recovery to 6%. I could ask Midnight to do part of that, but he had his own expenditures to handle, like contacting Celmoth. Though I heard that Extra was approaching a technological solution that would be feasible for non-diplomatic use. I.e. not expensive.

“I don’t suppose any magical girls have the ability to contact people in other dimensions?” I asked Eglantine- because the guardians seemed to be the most reliable source of knowledge about their powers and I was most familiar with the porcupine.

“No. We haven’t even had anyone to contact,” Eglantine pointed out.

“Could they?” I asked.

“It might be possible, but effort to develop such an ability isn’t being spent on fighting the Scouring. We can’t really afford that.”

“Unless I bring through a few hundred Humuruns,” I pointed out.

“Well… yes,” Eglantine admitted. “If that is actually possible, it would be worthwhile for us to be able to initiate contact ourselves.”

I nodded. “It is. So assuming the transportation is your limiting factor, I can help a lot.”

Eglantine wiggled her quilled body slightly. “At that point the bottleneck would be identifying those with proper potential. We could accept those with less potential- though they might be bitter about the gap between them and others.”

“I’d focus on their character,” I said. “But you could also be upfront about their power potential. That should help.”

“Merely having to worry about those factors would still be a great boon,” Eglantine concluded.

With plans made for the future, Midnight and I would be returning to our own Earth. We just had to stay until late in the local evening, after which we returned to… a fairly similar time of day. Weird, wasn’t the Pacific time zone supposed to be about eight hours off? Then again, it wasn’t that odd for a different dimension’s planet to be offset.

-----

“You should have asked for payment for your services,” Calculator commented.

“You already said that,” I pointed out.

“I most certainly did not,” Calculator replied. “At least, not connected to this incident.”

I shrugged, “Well, sure, but I heard your voice in my head saying that exact thing.”

“Am I really so predictable?” Calculator asked.

“When you’re not trying to be unpredictable? Absolutely. Anyway, I ignored you. I have enough money.”

Calculator shook his head. “It’s not about money. Payment could be in the form of supernatural favors, for example. From the perspective of the Power Brigade, it would be quite useful to be able to call upon extradimensional aid in an emergency. Extra could not fault you, if it was a true crisis. Even if you intend to interact with this world on your personal time not associated with the Brigade… you have much potential to make powerful enemies.”

“Speaking of which,” I asked. “What happened with Flasher?”

“Flash Circuit is still at large,” Calculator shook his head. “However, Iron Shell is… incapacitated.”

“Seems dangerous, to keep a cyborg in a prison. She could cause a lot of damage if she got free.”

“It is against New Bay’s policy to execute anyone who has been properly captured without a trial… and said trials usually end up veering away from capital punishment. Regardless, Iron Shell would be unable to break out on her own and would not be functional should she be freed. You saw how little of her was left.”

“So is she just a brain in a jar or something?”

“The justice system here is not so cruel as to do something so cruel except for those who it is entirely necessary. And usually the city prefers that such people don’t have to be placed in the system.”

Right. Those were the people we killed. Like Doctor Doomsday, if anyone got the chance. Handface had been one as well, though the city likely could have handled him. The Brigade was quite done with him, though.

Midnight had something to say after that. “Would it be possible for Flash Circuit to retrieve Iron Shell’s parts and then free her?”

“Possible,” Calculator admitted. “But there are contingencies in place. Such as not all of the key components being kept in the same locations. And others that I will not speak aloud.”

Ooh, secrets. Maybe they put bombs or trackers or tracking bombs. That’s what I would do.

No wait, I’d probably just disintegrate it all.

I wondered who had the parts. Did the Brigade get to keep them since we took her down? Was Iron Shell super tech or something that could be replicated? If the Brigade had her parts, I doubted Calculator would tell us. We didn’t need to know that, and he’d basically said he wouldn’t admit to anything there.

-----

I recalled that sometime in the past Midnight and I promised Izzy a tour of Celmoth. It had only been a few months, but it felt like forever. At some point in time, that offer had spread to more of our friend group. Khithae wanted to go, because she was from a dimension with real advanced technology and could have a better exchange of knowledge in person. Jerome wanted to come and even if the planet was technically at war it should be his safest excursion away from Earth.

Zeb wanted to go because she wanted to go everywhere but… we had to deny that.

“It wouldn’t be politically appropriate yet,” Midnight explained.

“Oh yeah! The war.” Zeb nodded. “But I could tell people to stop it!”

“Do you think the Bunvorixian commanders would listen to you?” Midnight asked.

“Why wouldn’t they? They-” she caught herself. “Aren’t really all they made themselves out to be. And they don’t have our interests at heart. Or give us treats! And they killed the squirrels!”

“Your passion will be valuable later,” Midnight said. “But for now, the citizens of Celmoth would be… scared.”

Ceira kind of wanted to come along, but she couldn’t bring Bun and Cel for somewhat obvious reasons. It would be awkward, if nothing else. Plus, she was busy with healing people. This was also the first opportunity Zeb would have to move around New Bay while not on probation, and Ceira was probably her next best friend on Earth. Not that it was hard for Zeb to make friends, but we wanted to avoid her ending up with bad ones.

But if we were going to be on our way to another planet, Extra wanted us to bring some people through. And so we got a few of them. Oh, and Great Girl. She was part of the friends list.

-----

For some reason, people thought it was weird when I suggested we be more efficient by going through Strife’s world. It made perfect sense to me. We were going to head back there at about the same time- if we went there to help them get some more people to Earth and then back to our Earth, even splitting things between Midnight and I we’d be fully drained. But it would save us 20 mana to not have to go back and it should be easier to go from an alternate dimension to Celmoth. Though interplanetary Gates were functional, that wasn’t its main thing.

“It’s not really any weirder,” Midnight said in support of my plan. “It’s like… a layover in Japan. Just a couple hours at most.”

“See? He gets it!” I said.

Great Girl rolled her eyes. “He gets you,” she pointed out. “And he seemed to have learned that it’s easier to just go along with your dumb ideas.”

“They’re not dumb if they work,” I countered. “Until some other mage is level 35 or spends a whole lot of points on Gate or messes with recently closed portals, I’m the main option though.”

There were other people who could travel to their own dimensions or worlds- usually alone but sometimes with others- but they couldn’t generically go wherever they pleased. But obviously Extra wouldn’t have a whole place for it if the entire potential was exclusive. There were just reasons why I wasn’t being called on to bring people everywhere. There were a lot of dimensions.

“Just give me… ten years maybe,” Jerome said.

“I’m sure you can do it earlier, if you work at it. Maybe a couple years, if you continue to avoid combat.” Combat wouldn’t be as fast for him, so it wasn’t as good of a plan. Though a little combat sprinkled in was valuable extra growth if he was willing.

“Eh,” Jerome shrugged. “They probably wouldn’t let me do anything for four more years anyway.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“I’ll be eighteen.”

“Oh yes. The age when you are old enough to vote and engage in mortal combat.” I stroked my chin. “But you can drive at sixteen.”

One of the members of Extra coughed. “We’d prefer to authorize extradimensional travel on an individual basis. As a native of Earth, he wouldn’t have any particular need so… we’d prefer to keep it to a minimum.”

“And they’d prefer we didn’t just go wherever we want,” Midnight whispered in my ear. “But I think we sort of shoved out way past their normal process.”

That was totally fine with me. “Anyway,” I said. “We’ve already cleared it with the other end. And I’m sure most of you are curious to see Magical Girls.” Maybe not the people from Extra? Great Girl seemed interested, though I think we had a few local to New Bay she’d met. Or maybe those were just people with the same aesthetic. None were a high threat rating so I didn’t really pay close attention.

I didn’t really get any further complaints when I pointed out we’d have to delay by at least half a day if we didn’t follow the plan… and thus we made our way back to the private base from earlier.

-----

Having properly memorized the location and the required frequencies, returning to Strife and Eglantine’s world was straightforward. We stepped out from the end of a hallway that probably led to some sort of secret exit for the civilian identities of the magical girls, and we had a few people waiting for us. Though they did look a bit startled, not knowing the exact moment of our arrival.

“Hello!” I said. “Nothing changed in the last couple hours, right?”

“The darkness has not pushed beyond its boundaries,” Strife confirmed.

Great Girl suddenly coughed, stumbling over to the side.

“Hey, you alright?” I asked.

“Yeah, sorry. Just uh… something caught in my throat.” She was hiding her face from the people down the hall. “... probably that edge,” she whispered.

One of the members of Extra, an older woman, was already introducing herself. “I’m Angelica,” she said.

Strife and Eglantine introduced themselves, of course.

“I’m Pink Angel,” Wand commented. “And this is Pink.”

Oh neat. I did get the name right. I wondered which of the pair had their name first. I would assume the Humurran, but maybe they changed their names after bonding with a magical girl?

“A pleasure to meet you,” said Angelica. “We love to have neighbors who are pleasant. If you don’t mind, we will have some questions about the Scouring. It would be concerning if it could spread to our Earth. But of course, you aren’t required to answer us.”

While they went over that, I was busy looking up a picture on my phone, comparing it to Angelica. “Oh! I thought I recognized you!” I said.

She turned to me with a smile. “Oh?”

“Yeah. You’re Ceira’s manager. Is you being on Celmoth going to be an issue for that? I hadn’t heard about any sort of return trips within the next few weeks…”

“Don’t worry,” Angelica bowed her head. “Her schedule is in good hands.”

I probably should have called Ceira ‘Regrowth’… but the only people present already knew Ceira, were part of Extra, or were magical girls from a different dimension. That makeup of individuals potentially made it a bigger breach of etiquette but also not something risky.

“Mage, if you would,” Eglantine called me over. She brought me to a table where they had laid out some pictures. “This is the location where we would like you to open a portal to Humurun. Given the time of your arrival, they will not necessarily be ready for another half an hour.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “We don’t mind waiting a bit.” Midnight was having a good time talking with some of our friends. Normally people we met once would be acquaintances, but fighting alongside someone sped up that process greatly, as long as it came with cordial or better interactions at other times..

“You are Mage’s apprentice, yes?” Strife asked Jerome. “What is it that you are carrying with you?”

“Oh,” Jerome unslung his backpack. “This is my familiar.” He unzipped the bag, revealing Rob.

“... That looks remarkably similar to a cleaning robot,” Strife said.

“Oh, he is a cleaning robot.” Jerome looked around. “It looks pretty good here already, but I bet he’d enjoy looking for hidden dirt in the back corners, if you don’t mind him roaming around.”

“That… won’t be a problem.”

Rob wiggled his wheels and beeped, quite happy to search out and eliminate dirt. Though instead of making a loud vacuuming sound, he was using a small but steady flow of mana. I was pretty sure he still could clean normally, but he seemed conscious of the conversations going on. Plus, if I had the choice between putting dirt inside of me and completely eliminating it with magic, I’d choose the latter. Though I wasn’t a cleaning robot so maybe he didn’t mind that.