Mage Among Superheroes

Something had been missing for a while, and I didn't even notice because things had gone so far back into the correct direction. Midnight had been gone and now he was back, so what else could matter?

Well, there was my staff. Midnight commented on that. Probably everyone else thought it was in Storage.

"If we're going to start going on missions again… you'll probably need something. Unless you're changing up your combat style?"

I thought about that. "I could. But I feel like having a melee option would still be correct."

"What happened to it?" Midnight asked.

It took a while to come up with the answer. It was part of the fog, and it hadn't been important. "Some jerks in Adrela took it. Speaking of which, remind me never to go back there."

"... Because they're jerks?"

"Also I'm probably wanted for… nothing. But also fleeing imprisonment. Even though they didn't do anything to stop the kidnappers or anything."

"Yeah, I didn't much enjoy my time there either," Midnight said. "It was worse than that whole underground elf war."

Of course it was. We chose to be around that war. War was fine.

-----

My first thought for getting a replacement was to go to the source. Vilhelmiina didn't answer a call, so I ended up trying to get into her secret base while Midnight trained back at HQ. I knew where a few entrances used to be. The third one worked, a dumpster opening up and dropping me into a long tunnel that might tear me to pieces if I was an intruder. I presumed that had to be the case, at least.

I was met by a robot that was made entirely out of guns.

"Hey Frank," I said.

"Mage. You have not been invited."

"If I wasn't allowed in the door shouldn't have worked," I countered.

I had five cannons pointed at me. In short, Frank was doing his best to avoid a threatening posture since it was only that many.

Frank seemed to be pondering. Maybe he was using some sort of secret communication method. Like radio. Or wifi. Or one of those teeth things?

"Your entry authorization has not been revoked. This is a security oversight."

I shrugged. "That's not my fault. So can I see Vilhelmiina?"

A few more seconds of thought. "I cannot leave you unsupervised. I must contact Vilhelmiina in person. Therefore, you will come with me which will involve seeing her in person."

"Great!" I said. "Let's go."

The various hallways I walked through didn't tell me much. Even the doors that were labeled didn't provide much information. I wasn't even sure what a macguffin dismantling room would do. I could guess at the purpose of the room 'transdimensional chess club', but I couldn't be sure whether the chess was transdimensional or the people playing. I was rather baffled by the room labeled 'not phasmotron amplifier storage'. Was it not storage? Did it not have phasmotron amplifiers? Why would those even come up again? I thought they were pretty unique, but maybe not.

Then we came upon a door labeled 'big empty room'. It was a lie… probably. Because the room was big and a lot of it was empty- but there was also like half a flying saucer in there. And a third of Vilhelmiina.

"Resident Mad Scientist Vilhelmiina," Frank spoke into the room. "You have a visitor."

There was no response, except some banging and metal scraping on metal. Then, "Behold!" Vilhelmiina's long coat extended down as her boots hit the floor, revealing about half of her for a moment. "I said-" I heard the sound of arcing electricity and tearing wires. "Behold!"

Vilhelmiina's momentum dropped her out of the flying saucer onto her back, lying on the concrete floor. Various bits of metal rained down on and around her, along with black oil. She was holding up some sort of sphere.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A teleportation core." She leaned her head back until I could see her goggles, and presumably so she could see me. "Oh! I wasn't expecting visitors."

"I'm still on some list," I said.

"Ah. I was going to take you off of that last week."

"... Why?"

"I'm not supposed to leave anyone on there for more than a month without reason."

"It's been more than six months," I pointed out.

"I've jumped through time again?!" she startled.

"... I'm pretty sure that this," I gestured to the ship in general, "Is from a few months ago. You've probably just been busy."

"Correct," Frank said. "No unexpected time anomalies detected."

I frowned. "Are there… expected time anomalies?"

"Oh yeah, sure," Vilhelmiina picked herself up off the floor. "Some people do this crazy thing where they change their clocks twice a year for no reason. It costs billions of dollars and kills people. Anyway, I assume since you're here you want something."

"You do make good things," I said. "And you didn't answer your phone."

"Can't do that when waist deep in tech."

Frank the cannon bot butler corrected her. "Incorrect. You have hands free options."

"Don't just tell people that! The government will want me to answer them." I hoped she did occasionally. Otherwise she'd get shut down and I wouldn't have access to weird stuff. "Need more bullets?"

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"I-" She pulled something out of her pocket and threw it at me. I caught a clip. "That's not actually what I'm here for." Did I have to pay for these? I'm not sure if I was ready to spend so much right now. "I was hoping you could replace my staff."

"Ah. Nope. It died. And I lost my biomanipulation licence. And you also barely use your googles."

"I'm pretty sure that information is classified." I also wasn't sure if that mattered.

"Not so!" Vilhelmiina waved a large wrench. "It's secret. Classified is for government stuff. Even when other people put things in secret categories via classification, it doesn't count because the government likes things fancy."

I wasn't sure if that was correct. But she was the magically smart person. Superpowerly smart. Mad scientist.

"I don't think that changes my point." I feel like the Brigade might be upset that the goggles had been sending her information. "... Why do you have that information on the goggles?"

"You don't think they can calculate all that on their own, do you?" she said. "I guess you wouldn't think about it because you don't use it enough."

"... I have recently become more incentivized to know the masses of some things. I just got busy." After I learned about dropping things with Storage, I had various plans. They weren't really good enough yet. And I really needed to get good at other space magic still.

Also, I totally thought they could calculate that on their own. That was implied. Wait, did they work cross dimensionally? Was she lying?

Maybe she was just crazy. In a different way than I already knew.

"Anyway," I said. "A staff?"

"Not without more of that metal and the wood, and if you have those you can do it yourself."

I really wasn't sure I could put a metal core into a piece of wood without breaking one or both of them. Was this some special insight, or just overconfidence at the craft skills of those around her?

"Alright. Do I just… take these?" I looked down at the clip.

"We're discontinuing that version."

"Why?" I asked.

"Not enough armor piercing capability."

What kind of standards did they have? Should I be concerned?

Maybe. I did have one heavily armored powered enemy. "Do you have anything that can hurt Flasher?"

"The cyborg or…?"

"I don't know any other one," I said.

"I do. For just a million dollars I can install a capture field anywhere you want!"

"... Maybe the Brigade will be interested," I said. Getting him to come to a specific spot might be troublesome anyway. I needed to get faster with Dimensional Anchor… though being able to spray it with Multicasting wasn't bad. It was much more affordable now.

And it would be even more affordable if I got some sort of spatial mastery. "Hey. You don't happen to know any elemental planes that are easily accessible, do you?"

"Of course not," Vilhelmiina said. "And if I did, I couldn't give access without approval from Extra." Oh. Maybe I should ask them. If I could get to some other type-F world, I should be able to do something with Summon Minor Elemental. "Frank, can you stop by room RS-17 on your way out?"

"Yes."

I supposed that was my signal to leave. "Okay, thanks for meeting me. Oh, let me know if you have extra teleportation cores."

"Not currently," Vilhelmiina said. "I have like thirty more varieties of destructive testing for these babies to undergo."

Too bad. But I wasn't sure if a teleportation core made from advanced tech would actually be a good focus. It just sounded like it, so I wanted to try.

I followed Frank until he stopped suddenly. I almost ran into him. An automatic door opened to my right. This seemed extremely unsecure. Idly, I scanned the room. The label outside was 'misc. portals'. Inside were… portals.

"I'm just gonna step in here for a second." Frank didn't acknowledge anything. Had his literal interpretations of Vilhelmiina's orders become more flexible, or was this the literal interpretation?

Eh, whatever.

One of the portals was on the ground. Actually, a number of portals were on the ground, and I could see why. One of them was full of water. I wasn't quite sure how the pressure didn't still push it out, but I wasn't going to complain. Rather than the portals I was most used to, these did have structures around them. They weren't magic, but they were super tech. Not to be confused with advanced tech, because these ones didn't work. At least, not according to the laws of physics. They obviously worked, because I could see into them.

I sat down in front of the water portal. It seemed like a good option. Alright. I carefully gathered mana. I wanted an elemental. Six mana. I called upon the spell and… nothing.

At least, that was what I thought until I heard crackling behind me. I felt a bit of warmth as I turned to see a waist-high fire elemental. A humanoid shape without any definitional features of any sort, made entirely out of fire. It waved.

"Hi," I said. "I was actually looking for a water elemental, but you look eager to make a contract."

It bowed. Crackling sounds… didn't quite resolve into words. Did this kind of elemental not have a language, or did Translate need more time? It seemed to understand me, though.

"Can I summon you in the future?" Nodding. "Great. I do want to get other elementals too, so for now you can go back." The fire elemental waved vigorously before poofing away in a burst of magic. There wasn't a proper portal or anything, it was just like a fire going out for having no fuel.

Since I'd been between water and fire, I moved to the far side where I was closest to water for sure. I wanted a water elemental. Fire was probably the least friendly to the Brigade's operations.

I pictured water in my head as I cast Summon Minor Elemental. The spell quickly resolved, and I heard sloshing. I turned to see… the same fire elemental standing there. With a pot. The pot sloshed back and forth, spilling water onto the arms of the fire elemental. It dropped the pot, then flailed wildly. I noticed that the pot was spilling… a whole lot of water. Fortunately, it drained into the convenient portal in the floor. I stood the pot back up, and was surprised to find it hadn't all spilled out, with some still sloshing around in there.

After a little bit, the fire elemental had calmed down and stopped sputtering, then picked up the pot again.

"Listen, I was trying to get a water elemental."

It nodded, pointing into the pot with one arm as it clutched it with the other arm.

"Alright, uh… I might call upon you later."

It nodded enthusiastically.

Maybe I was still too close to fire. Over in the corner there was a very stony place. I tried for an earth elemental.

I was slightly confused but not surprised to get the same fire elemental again… holding a red-hot rock, while also wearing stone pauldrons somehow. I had many questions, such as how. Was it just standing around a bunch of things waiting to be summoned?

"Oh look. A uh… real earth elemental. Can I… summon you later?"

Obviously it enthusiastically agreed.

I at least had to try air.

What I got was probably the most dangerous version. A fire elemental rapidly flapping its arms. It was making wind currents but… they were quite hot.

Maybe I needed to find better portals.