Mage Among Superheroes

Sometimes, I looked at my official profile to see what the Power Brigade thought about me. Internal documents were quite lengthy now, though it didn't seem absolutely everything had been logged. I wasn't hiding any of my abilities from the Brigade, but I imagined they also didn't want certain details to get out. Obviously my public profile was significantly shorter. Extra probably had different details entirely- they would care more about my portal related abilities than everything else.

"Hmm," I frowned. "I only fall under a mid-threat rating. And you're less."

Midnight shrugged. "Is that supposed to bother me? I don't think you should be too bothered by that. Threat isn't usefulness."

"I'm just wondering how it's calculated," I said. "Also, it's kind of a problem because several people who would want to try to kill me are higher threat. Mostly Great Girl's rivals."

"I don't think that's a problem," Midnight said. "I imagine we're rated lower because we aren't crazy. Besides, isn't it inexact for a reason?"

"Maybe. But we need to be able to defeat Darkstargirl."

"Can't we?" Midnight asked. "I mean, I don't know what her growth rate is like. But you're way stronger than last time we faced her and we beat her then."

I tilted my head. That didn't sound right. "No we didn't. When have we ever?"

"Halloween?"

"We didn't fight them. The angels did all of that."

"Then when she tried to murder us at the park."

That sure was forever ago, wasn't it? "We didn't beat her."

Midnight was indignant there. "What about her running away makes you think we didn't?"

"She was still fine! I don't think she got hurt at all. And Great Girl was there."

"Only at the end."

I shook my head. "I still don't think it counts."

"People don't have to be lying bloody on the floor to be defeated. Actually," Midnight drew out the word. "It's possible Dark Star would skip that step once her powers ran out. She probably wouldn't be much more durable than a human once she actually started taking visible damage, so anything that could cause her significant trouble would probably just kill her."

"You're speculating."

"That's what we do here. We can't call her in for a sparring match to try it out."

"Gloom is trouble too," I said.

"We could work on Mental Freedom more. I think that solves most of the trouble there."

It was good that Midnight was confident, but I still had some concerns- even if they weren't my rivals, they hated me. Spot was… whatever. By himself, the guy didn't matter. He could be an unfortunate addition to them, and he had sufficient subordinates or random allies to be a problem.

He'd also been responsible for Midnight being abducted so he was going in the garbage next time I got a chance. Which meant dealing with those two. "Our odds go down significantly if we have to face them together. Obviously I'm assuming you're with me for most scenarios, otherwise it doesn't look good at all."

"I have lasers now," Midnight pointed out. "That could help a lot."

It might. That was true.

-----

It came to mind that I would be far more powerful if I had material components for every spell. Not excessive things like converting a proper focus into power, but small things that were meant to be consumed in reasonable quantities. The issue was holding all of that stuff. I had a number of things stuffed into my pockets, and more in Storage. However, it was impractical to use any of the latter except when I had plenty of setup time.

There was always the option of using Storage to pull something out immediately before, but there was a problem. I couldn't be spending an extra second to think about pulling something out in the middle of combat. Rapidly retrieving precisely the right thing for the spell I wanted… wouldn't it just be better to spend an extra point of mana on what I was already doing?

That was a thing I could do now, after all. Up to my fatigue limit I could push more mana into spells than they were meant to have, effectively making them higher rank. That brought in some of the better scaling as well.

However, that wasn't always correct. For more powerful spells, a single point of mana was less of a proportionate increase than a proper component would be. The problem of time was still an issue. Even if I could rapidly withdraw a material component, I needed a free hand. Technically I could use them from anywhere on my body, so maybe I could reserve a particular pocket- trying to improvise where I stored something for a moment was way too crazy.

But even if I could do all that quickly, the time lag between spells would be too much.

"Possible solutions…" I pondered with Midnight on the couch in my apartment. "Carry everything."

"Obviously that doesn't work for me," Midnight commented. "I barely have room for a few things."

He was just smaller, so space was a bigger issue than weight. A small amount of material components for over forty different spells would probably be at most a couple pounds, but they all needed to be stored properly. Yes, we had experimented with mixed piles of material components and it was awful. It worked half as well less than half as often as it ought to, with more concentration required.

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"Option two, have some guy follow us around carrying everything."

"I think that's slower than using Storage, right?" Midnight pointed out.

I nodded. We'd have to say what we wanted, have him hand or toss it to us, and not die in the process. If there was such a person who could contribute merely by standing around, it would be better to have them stand as a wall between us and our enemies.

"Option three, narrow our focus."

"That's not a bad idea," Midnight admitted.

"I don't like it," I crossed my arms. "I've gotten used to fighting by jumping between diverse spells. It's also antithetical to the masteries I've gotten."

"Can you have a single component for a whole mastery?" Midnight asked. "Spatial magic I get. But energy?"

"Maybe crystals?" I tilted my head. "But probably not, no." Even proper gemstones would have their preferred energy types.

"I think it's a bit much to use material components for every spell anyway," Midnight said.

"Unless we did it automatically," I countered. "As part of the process."

"Presuming we didn't run out. What happens if you try to use components that aren't there?"

"Nothing," I said. "Which might be disappointing. That does mean there would be some waste for my theoretical idea."

"Which is?"

"Drawing directly from Storage."

"Didn't we already decide against that?"

"No, see," I tried to explain. "We just… take the stuff from Storage. It's connected to us, right? We shouldn't have to cast the spell."

"Does that work?" Midnight asked.

"I don't know. It's my day off."

"... You don't have to do nothing on days off," Midnight said.

"The Brigade complains about it if I go in too much," I said. "Something about balance."

"There are some spells you can do here," Midnight pointed out.

"Defensive spells?" I suggested. "We can't really test any of them, though."

"There's always clean," Midnight said.

I frowned. "Shouldn't have learned that one." What was the point of paying for someone to come clean if I did it myself?

"Ooor," Midnight suggested, "We could always cast anything and Dispel it. That's a good way to test defensive spells, right?"

Midnight had a good point. And we didn't have enough practice using active Dispel. Not from my staff, I mean. The staff I used to have. Maybe it still existed, but I didn't want to go back to the country that had taken it. They'd be expecting spatial shenanigans.

I wondered if I could summon my staff. Probably not with Basic Spatial Magic.

I held out my hand. I was pretty sure 6 mana was the limit for a basic mastery. I could increase power beyond that point, but not utility. At least, that was my general understanding.

I wanted my staff. Either it didn't want to come, or my desires and attempt at improvised magic weren't enough.

"Yeah, we should practice Dispel," I said. "And anything else."

We didn't have everything we needed, but we also didn't want to go out to get stuff. So we ordered a whole bunch of feathers and a bolt of military grade cloth. The latter was far more expensive, but I only needed a small piece. There was an appropriate amount of material to use as a component, and I needed about a square inch. So ten yards of stuff should serve me for the next decade or so.

Yes, I had tested Force Armor with such a component before. The stuff I could get was less robust than whatever Francois used as a base for Power Brigade stuff, but beyond a certain point material components didn't get much better.

Who would have thought that diamonds were cheap? Actually, my initial estimates for diamonds were much closer to what I was spending now- before I knew about industrial diamonds. And that would have been for a small baggy. Now I ordered tons of the stuff.

Same day delivery was expensive. Same hour delivery required supers. Being a superpowered mercenary paid well and I wanted to support local laborers. Or something. Anyway, it wasn't long before we had a huge bag of feathers and a bolt of cloth.

"I expected it to be heavier," I admitted.

"Which?" Midnight asked.

"Both." The whole bolt was barely ten pounds- and that was because it was very dense. There were denser clothlike materials, but not easily available. Anyway, with some effort devoted to deconstruction we split the bolt and a torso sized bag of feathers between us, tossing most of our portions into Storage. Only a bit was kept outside for our initial tests.

For the rest of the afternoon, Midnight and I took turns casting Force Armor, Fly, Stoneskin, and Dispel. It was unfortunate we didn't have a material component to augment Dispel, but we did what we could. Because I had more than double mana capacity and twice Midnight's effective regeneration, much of the time I ended up dispelling things on myself. It was easier, so it wasn't as good of a metric of whether or not we properly used any material components.

We could have theoretically checked for missing material after every cast. Even a low mana usage of Storage was sufficient now, due to the way its levels had scaled. It was never expensive to begin with. However, it was still more efficient to do a handful of attempts first. We were testing it anyway.

It took over ten attempts on my end before I thought I'd had a few successes, and the missing material seemed to agree with me. But it was possible. Just as I could use materials in a pocket to some extent, I could do the same with things in Storage. Midnight too. How excellent of a thing to discover. It would save us a lot of fumbling around, though having some failure rate was a problem.

We practiced until we were out of mana, rested, and then practiced until we were confident in properly using material components every time.

I dropped about a foot to the floor as Midnight dispelled my final Fly spell for the afternoon. Going higher than that was a problem for various reasons- one of which was that there wasn't room inside. But also because falling was bad. Just a few feet was fine, but without magic I couldn't say I hit a supernatural level. Brigade equipment only helped so much with falls, as stopping kinetic energy throughout the whole body wasn't really the point of armor- and our outfits were armor.

Midnight's adaptive nanobot stuff was better about it, though. Not that he'd go more than two or three feet off the ground unless it was to reach my shoulder.

We earned improvements for both Fly and Dispel, as well as our unmeasured gains in using material components from within Storage. Storage wasn't near us, but it was connected. That was the important thing. I'd have Jerome and Rob test, plus maybe Bolster, to check to see if it required a spatial magic mastery. I could add the information to my book. I doubted I'd ever get a chance to publish it in my old world, but I was still preparing Spell Mastery: Now You Have Access to Natural Upgrades and Combined Spells, written in both English and Common.