Mage Among Superheroes

Following after someone who wasn't running was actually pretty easy. Fire Lady thought she had covered her tracks… and if she hadn't swapped her coat as we watched she might have been right. Her power signature had disappeared as she fled, so once she was out of eyeshot we'd have had to go grab someone with tracking abilities and it would be easy to lose her for good.

Scrying probably counted as a tracking ability. I wasn't planning to highlight that in my resume, though.

Using Disguise, we hurried through the streets. Bandage was taking care of the few injured civilians, hurt by Fire Lady's weird floating fire. The rest of us were going to catch up to her. Midnight got ahead in the form of a small dog, since it was easier to weave through people. Twirl also caught up but stayed back to keep her in his sights.

Honey Badger and Iron Hawk moved in while the rest of us prepared to block off her retreat. They waited for the crowds to thin slightly before Honey Badger revealed himself. That included me dropping Disguise.

"Power Brigade." He identified himself immediately. "Conflagration, you are under arrest for serial arson, reckless endangerment of civilians and-" She shoved at him with her arms, creating a wall of fire that covered his outstretched hand. "- multiple counts of assault," he finished as she twisted and sprinted away.

Directly into Iron Hawk, the monk's knee striking her right in the gut and causing her to double over. Fire Lady fell to the ground, limp. It took Iron Hawk only a moment to slap some power restraints on her. I sprayed the wall of fire around Honey Badger with a diffuse Water Blast, noting that Fire Lady's power had been detectable again the moment she used her ability.

Whatever she had, it only muted her presence when not active. That was good for us.

Iron Hawk had the lady over her shoulder in a second, walking along. "Out of the way. We need to get to our vehicle." Fire Lady groaned. She clearly wasn't that durable, though Iron Hawk did more than just a simple knee to the gut. She could have stunned much tougher foes, at least for a moment.

Civilians were always interested in powered engagements, but there wasn't any more to see. They gave us enough space to move towards the nearest main street where we had a waiting vehicle. Obviously we weren't tailing her with it directly or it would have been too obvious. Still, having a villain pickup within a few minutes of capture was the optimal situation. Leaving people on the streets for a while- even restrained- was inconvenient.

Though if they were in some sort of outfit, that was a good chance to get publicity. Fire Lady didn't seem to want fame, she just liked the chaos. Or the fire or something, it wasn't my job to figure that out. Just to stop her from causing more trouble, which we had done.

Not every villain operation actually resulted in taking them in. If we could be efficient about it like this time without risking civilians, it was optimal. Otherwise, the main priority was to avoid anyone getting hurt or anything getting busted. Heroes were the ones who had to catch people and be flashy.

-----

Inside Fire Lady's pockets was some sort of tube thing that seemed to be the source of her power hiding. It had a few buttons nobody was going to press, but it was pretty obvious once it was no longer on her. It was pretty effective, because I could barely feel her from right next to her when it was active.

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

"Hah, as if I would tell you pathetic lot anything!"

I presumed the words were meant to be hurtful or something. Fire Lady was the one who was in trouble, though.

She was being pretty uncooperative, and it wasn't my job to change that. Just to haul her in.

-----

Midnight and I frequently used Contingency to improve our readiness against potential threats. Setting up Stoneskin early in the day could save a good bit of mana at a critical point. If its duration were longer simply casting it would be better, but it was decently expensive at the moment. Occasionally we tried out Contingency and Multicasting together, and it worked fine as long as we could predict the targets. It wasn't flexible enough to pick up new targets, even with a more active trigger.

Overall it cost more mana- but if it meant having 10 or 20 extra mana in a critical situation it was very much worth it. Even if it wasn't triggered, however, it still consumed any material components. That wasn't such a big deal for Stoneskin itself since industrial diamond dust was pretty cheap, but Contingency itself had a troublesome component. Magical eyelashes, and the most magical people I knew didn't live on earth.

Well, there were probably some people that worked, but class based powers didn't seem to and I wasn't aware of the Brigade having any angels or things like that. If I was going to go asking around among different groups, I might as well just go to Earth #2.

Rather than bothering magical girls to pluck out some eyelashes every time I showed up, they were just gathering ones that naturally fell out. I probably got some eyebrow hairs mixed in or whatever, but if so they seemed to work fine.

I made sure my Gate was as safe and stable as possible when I went through. It wasn't so difficult, going somewhere familiar that wasn't sealed off. Maybe they would want to do that, but I didn't know how and they had their hands full with fighting The Scouring. Not a ton of time to go around tucking in the edges of their reality, or whatever you had to do. Presumably it involved magic.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Actually, something like what had been done in my old world wasn't a great option. It still allowed certain types of things through, whereas Earth #2 wanted to keep out very specific things. Not that they had the option, because I didn't know how to do it and I wasn't going to ask just yet. Maybe I'd talk to Wrickle about it at some point, but contacting her might bring more attention to me- or to her. She had to know, though. She was the dimensional magic expert. Unless, of course, there were people outside of Graotan who were better.

That could be the case. I knew less about the power structures than I thought I should, but archmages didn't always advertise themselves. I wondered what was required to be an archmage. Level 50? Level 100? No, it should be purely based on that. It was politics. 50 would be pretty low anyway. I could easily be there in another year, effectively my second or third active year.

I was hanging out at one of the hideouts for a while, waiting for Strife to show up. Ultimately, I got Momo. The same person, but also kind of not.

She handed me a tin. "Here are your components, mister Turlough. I hope they serve you well."

"Thank you," I immediately took it into storage. "How are things going here? Any issues?"

In exchange for helping me, I had offered to aid Earth #2 when I could. Obviously I couldn't just pop over for emergencies- they didn't have any way to proactively contact me- but I could do things like bringing over more Humuruns from their home planet. Just because one of those incidents had come with turmoil didn't mean it wasn't a valuable opportunity.

Momo stood with her hands clasped in front of her. Very formal. She also seemed to be troubled by my lack of a surname… and my lack of calling her by a surname, sometimes. But I could get away with that sort of stuff because I was kind of American. Also an orc from another dimension, but the American thing was a significant factor.

"Everything is going well here," Momo explained. "We are still acclimating to the increased numbers of companions. There are fewer incidents that each squad has to deal with."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Midnight sighed. "Most people don't want to fight things all the time."

"Oh yeah," I nodded. "I guess that's good, then."

Momo smiled slightly. "Yes, things have been going well. We have been able to establish some official connections to the local government. Though… it seems there have been some intrusions in other locations. It's not just Japan that The Scouring attacks. Australia in particular has been having some trouble."

"Hmm. Do I need to visit?"

Lady Eglantine, the rainbow porcupine, shook her head. "That won't be necessary. The Humuruns have arranged for transport for themselves. Furthermore, there are some magical girls on loan for a sort of cultural exchange."

"Hmm. Must be tough," I said. "There's a lot of space to cover."

"It's not that bad," Lady Eglantine said. "The Scouring prefer to assault populated areas. Thus, we can fairly well manage to place people that are necessary."

"Additionally," Momo said, "We have been improving our techniques to predict potential intrusion points. It helps to have some amount of official resources."

"That's great to hear," I said. "It would have been a pain to get to Australia anyway."

"Ah," Momo held her hand to her lips for a moment. "Yes, I suppose it would be. You do not have a valid passport in this world."

I barely had a valid passport on Earth. The main time I'd actually used it, I'd gotten it in an extremely expedited manner. I could remember how long it was valid for. "And Australia is pretty far. It would take like… three or four Teleports to reach it. Assuming there were good stops along the way."

At that point, it would be easier to bring someone from Earth #2's Australia back home via casting Gate twice. Though I could probably go directly with a good picture, since I was familiar enough with the world. I just needed to be careful not to end up in some other Australia. A famous building that was only in this version would be optimal.

"You certainly have a unique view on transportation," Momo commented. "I do think it would be better to minimize how much extradimensional travel you engage in."

"Yeah…" I frowned. "Any luck determining how they were ready before?" The time at the gym had made me wary. I hadn't even gotten to fight all of them. Right now, I was just doing my best to make my Gates 'subtle'. I wasn't sure how much that was coming through, since I only had basic spatial mastery. "Any more trouble with weird intruders?"

Momo pondered for a few moments. "There have been some unusual incidents. Though the magical girls have no intention to be a peacekeeping force, we have been attempting to solve any supernatural incidents on our own. We can't rely on you and your Earth, after all."

"Certainly not without a more reliable travel method," I agreed. Personally, I didn't think it would be too bad if we got some interdimensional tourism going, but some people didn't like that idea. Extra already had a lot on its plate trying to establish a proper connection to Celmoth long term, and they probably had other stuff they were dealing with. Tourism wasn't as high on the list as critical diplomacy.

Earth #1 would probably love to have magical girls visit, though. Good for morale. Maybe also good for money. Then again, I didn't have any intention to get involved with marketing. I'd stick to safe and simple stuff like extradimensional combat.

"... I suppose we should get going soon," I commented. If I was lucky, I would run into some combat when I came to Earth #2. Maybe the locals didn't appreciate it as much as it might seem like I was a bad omen, but aside from one time I probably hadn't contributed to any danger at all. And we totally didn't know about the potential when the whole gym incident happened, so it wasn't really my fault.

I lingered for a few moments. It would have been a good time for something to happen. But alas, I had to go back to Earth and learn whether or not Fire Lady revealed anything or if they were just going to toss her in a deep, dark hole. Or both I supposed. Cooperating on probably illegal devices carried only got people so much leeway.