Mage Among Superheroes

Every once in a while I tried to Scry a dragon. Keeping tabs on people that were enemies with me was important. Unfortunately, most of my enemies seemed to have ways to resist Scrying. High willpower did it. Special technology made my life more difficult. Finally, magic resistance also seemed to be a factor.

The particular dragon I had in mind kept showing up in forests, which didn't tell me much more than normal rumors. I also didn't get particularly long glimpses of Faceeater's activity. There was some possibility that I could teleport out into the wilderness with a short glimpse of an area- it was recorded- but the problem was that Scrying was limited in area. I could easily end up in a very similar copse of trees if I didn't have a wider area to take in.

The same sort of thing was true with attempts to Scry on the Mod Squad. I had seen only the tiniest of distinctive features to work with. Technically, that was similar to how Extra's teleportation chambers worked- but that wasn't better for randomly teleporting. That meant we could be guided to somewhere we did not want to go. It might still be worthwhile to fall into a potential trap if we brought the right forces, but that wasn't so easy to pull off. The Power Brigade didn't just have a bunch of free mercenaries sitting around at all times.

We could plan a specific mission, of course, but we might just invade a base when nobody was there, tipping them off. Then they would be more cautious. No, the current plan was to use other methods to continue to search for where the Mod Squad had a base while waiting for them to give themselves away with their next move.

-----

Midnight was spending more time away from Earth. That had been happening for a while, really. I always heard about it later, if it was important.

According to Midnight, Celmoth had taken advantage of the chaos of our departure from Bunvorix to make contact with the Bunvorixian Freedom Initiative. The chaos, and the lack of teleportation nullification. Given that they could have used the opportunity to fire terrifying weapons at the planet, I maintained my confidence that they were in the right. Precisely because they didn't just kill Bunvorixians when they could, despite being long term enemies.

They still killed them, of course. They were at war. They were attacked, and Midnight mentioned taking out their outposts. However, as Celmoth had grown more aware of certain details of Bunvorixian organization, they were better able to exploit certain weaknesses. They had long suspected that the conflict stemmed from the top down, but before Zeb it had been difficult to get any reliable information from captured prisoners.

It was possible that was because the war had started before they came to really know their neighbors, and how susceptible they were to promises of treats. They hadn't known about the squirrel thing, either.

Midnight had consulted me about a particular mission that involved going to Bunvorix.

"I know it's a risk," he said. "But they need me. I'm the only one that can reasonably disguise Celmothians without it being picked out technologically."

"I could," I pointed out. "We could both go."

"You're the wrong shape. With Disguise, I can be a small dog that moves slightly weird. You still don't fit in. We don't want to give away that we can return, either."

"About that," I said. "How does that work? How can you get out?"

"Technology," Midnight said proudly. "Anything they can block, we can unblock. We just needed an opening. Well, we also have local accomplices which helps significantly. But we need Celmothian techs to help install some additional necessary pieces for further operations. And covert communications that don't involve me using Sending to talk to Flopan."

I nodded. "I suppose that is a pretty significant limit, given you're not even usually on Celmoth. Did any of those random Celmothians we saved and ported through my old world become mages?"

"They mostly fell into tech classes, like Khithae," Midnight explained. "Either way, without proper training they can't do much. And they haven't been the Bunvorixians or been to the planet, which is kind of important."

"I was just thinking we can make some."

"The plane is sealed to people that don't already have magic," Midnight reminded me.

I shrugged. "We can just take them past Rocky. Have your people negotiate with Extra. I bet Ethus would agree to allow something given the favors we've been doing for them lately, if they need kingdom approval."

Sir Kalman was local, but he didn't represent a country. Just the Order of the Lion, who were trying to do the right thing in a confusing world. One that had lied to me about how much violence there was- though it was probably true that violence was lower than in the past.

Midnight pondered for a while. "I'll put it on my list of tasks. I still have to do this, though."

I wasn't going to tell Midnight not to help out his home planet, and thus his family. Also most of the friendly Bunvorixians we knew. If he couldn't take me though…

"You should take Zeb."

"Um, but… huh." Midnight blinked. "It would be good to have a native, wouldn't it?"

"She's a zealous advocate against the propaganda of the tiny dictators," I added.

Midnight would later relay to me how his conversation with Zeb went. "You can't bring all these squirrels!" Midnight said. "Aren't they extinct on Bunvorix?"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"That's the whole point!" Zeb countered. "But fine. How about half?"

"Wha- it wasn't about how many there are!" It was partially about how many there were. Zeb's current companions were large monsters and loads of squirrels. "You can't bring a-"

Midnight could be firm, but there was only so much one could do against real puppy dog eyes.

"Look, maybe you can bring one," Midnight said. "So that you can prove to the Freedomers that they exist. It might lend strength to them as they try to counteract the local narrative about Celmothians wiping out your squirrels."

"It's such a sad story!" Zeb whimpered. "It's worse to know that we did it. Hey, it would be better if they were Celmothian squirrels!"

"... Squirrel," Midnight said firmly. "Just one."

Summarizing how that went was fairly easy once they returned and Zeb introduced them to me as squirrels N+2 to N+5. "They're all best friends! From different regions! I couldn't just leave them alone," Zeb explained.

"... What about that numbering?" I asked. She also mentioned their names. One of them was Spot, which was both appropriate and not at all helpful.

"Oh, well, you see," Zeb explained awkwardly. "I might have found some twins somewhere. Or maybe I didn't. So I lost count."

And that was that.

-----

A Bunvorixian with four tiny Bunvorixians randomly hanging off of her was a strange sight, but it was ultimately believable. It was fortunate that Zeb and companions counted as a single target for Disguise, or Midnight would have been spending a ton of mana. I felt like there had to be a limit, but I didn't want to push the universe's stability so I would not be asking Zeb to help test that.

Celmothians were closer to the right body type than squirrels, so they looked more natural. Zeb ended up wearing some sort of lumpy cloak with tiny Bunvorixian faces poking out. Midnight decided that was good enough, and the Bunvorixian Freedom Initiative ultimately agreed.

"I heard about the suppressing tower," Zeb commented to Flopan as the Celmothian techs talked to some of the Freedomer's people about what they had to install. Midnight was carrying most of it in Storage, giving up precious tuna space. He had far more than a small team of Celmothians could normally carry without exosuits. "I mostly worked with ships before, though. I heard you guys blew up a bunch of them with Turlough."

"Yes, though the humans did most of the work."

"Not Turlough? He has big magic spells."

Flopan tilted his head, his dangling ears waving around. "He is human, though?"

"He's an orc."

"What's an orc? Isn't he human? He had two hands with opposable thumbs, wore the same clothing and footwear, he doesn't have a snout… They're practically the same."

"Well, I do get that they're very similar," Zeb admitted. "But it turns out that the big giveaway is that he's green and has tusks. Humans don't have that."

"Are you sure he isn't human? They're so similar!"

"Apparently orcs are bigger too," Zeb commented. "But he seems pretty normal to me. It's not even a twenty percent height difference."

"Truly insignificant," Flopan agreed. "Can they have children together?"

"... huh. I think that was implied in some things. But I don't think Martians can even though they're also green and 'humanoid'."

"Oh! So human and orcs are like long-ears and chasers?"

"Maybe! I really wasn't paying attention to that stuff. Look at these squirrels!"

"They're all from Celmoth? I want to take so many pictures but it's such a big risk to distribute them! The propagandists might twist things and say that Celmoth stole them from us."

Zeb nodded. "They'd say it was a new discovery, like always. I don't know how I didn't suspect the sudden changes in position."

"It's okay. Everyone has to wake up at some point," Flopan said. "So you live on The Earth now?"

"Yes! Earth is good. It has many types of squirrels and the people are so nice. I think Bunvorixians would be good friends with Earth once we get rid of the bad people making us do bad things."

All of this was recorded in the background of Midnight's technically more important work. But I really didn't know how human tech worked, so Celmothian tech was far over my head. I was going to skip it all until I heard the background conversation and focused on that.

This time, there weren't any infiltrations of important places, or attacks on military bases, or secret facilities, or even tossing towers through portals. I was beginning to wonder if things like that mostly happened when I was present. On the other hand, it seemed like maybe things like that would come up again in the future.

… I was glad I didn't have to chase Midnight to a far planet again. At least my mana would have been stable this time, since I knew what I was doing. I had really wanted to tell him not to go into danger, but I wasn't such a big hypocrite that I could actually say that. I was glad to know that progress was being made, and simultaneously glad that Midnight didn't need me while sad that he didn't need me.

But we weren't going to stop being great friends. Magical bonds weren't the sort of thing that faded just because someone was busy. Actually, Familiar Bond actually improved somewhere around that time. It hit 10 natural upgrades, for a total of 15. Because of how Basic Spatial Magic had combined, there had been a brief time where that was higher. Now they matched again, so Midnight was ever so slightly more efficient with that stuff.

Midnight didn't have to say anything, but I had the feeling Spot was going to be a big problem for whatever the Bunvorixian Freedom Initiative and Celmoth wanted to do in the end. Spot the Bunvorixian. I wasn't going to call the squirrel that because frankly I might have given up on their numbers even before Zeb.

Nothing they were doing was going to come to fruition in the short term- they were fighting for the next generation, not the next year. Even so, dealing with Spot sooner would be better. If we could catch him on Earth or force him to come to Earth, that would be best. All we had to do was deal with two high threat supervillains at the same time. Plus maybe a bunch of portal power Darkstargirl fanatics.

I wondered if Ignis could eat spooky dark fire. Maybe it would have to be Major Ignis, but I didn't even have that spell.

I resolved to overcome Gloom's spooky horrible anti-scrying aura. Great Girl would certainly appreciate dealing with them, whenever we got a chance. And Darkstargirl wasn't fun to fight. She didn't come, engage in a moderate conflict, and leave. She always wanted to kill me just because I made her look bad for being a terrible person.