Mage Among Superheroes

Smart people didn't ignore foreign tech supers in their lairs. Rodentia had obviously been responding to the intrusion before us, but now our paths had crossed. We could fight but…

"Nearest exit?" Swiss Arms asked.

Rodentia shook her head. "Nice try. I'm not giving away my tricks. Go back the way you came!" she gestured with the weapon in her hand.

"Leaving was the plan," our leader concurred. She gestured for all of us to get moving, with her standing just on our side of the hallway until it was clear Rodenia wasn't following us.

A couple of traps we hadn't fully disarmed had recharged before we made our way out, but for the most part it was a direct path.

"Ugh, I hate missions like this," Sorority commented.

"Failed missions?" Zeb asked.

Swiss Arms cleared her throat. "It wasn't a failure. We obtained certain information. But keep the talk to a minimum until we're in friendly territory."

There were a few tense moments as we passed by where we'd run into Faceeater, but it didn't appear the dragon had come back. Then again, she shouldn't be expected to want to fight in an underground area. It was a disadvantage for her, though we hadn't been able to fully exploit it. I thought about the battle and wondered how I could have done things differently. It might have been possible to narrow the scope of Energy Ward even more. Maybe I could target wherever the acid breath was going to come from. Though that would make it more likely to be resisted.

I needed to get a book on dragons. Surely people in my old world liked killing dragons and wouldn't mind giving me a book. I could pay them. If they accepted cash or card instead of just precious material coins. Maybe I should look into getting some currency like that. Sir Kalman could probably help.

Though there really wasn't supposed to be anyone going back and forth between worlds, it wasn't my fault if their protections didn't fully work. And that wasn't even counting the big hole in the sky. Fortunately nobody in the park could just stumble into that.

-----

We didn't get attacked by a dragon, which was good because I didn't have enough mana for a good fight. Or rather, I would get into unstable mana pretty quickly so… it wasn't great for fighting in tunnels. I supposed I could also research powerful spells that didn't have any collateral damage, but like half of those would be necromancy. I didn't need to go draining the life from a bunch of people just to save some roads most of the time.

Swiss Arms did the debrief, simple as it was. "We'll keep an eye out for Neon Void activity. Most likely, Bolster will be Scrying to see if we can pick up careless members. Beyond that, the city has been notified of their acquisition."

"Do you think they will be upset?" Midnight asked. "Even if it wasn't really a failure, they might blame us."

"That's their own problem. They could have sent some heroes but chose us. Well," she shrugged. "They could still be a headache. But let us executives deal with that stuff. Just continue to do your best on your missions."

-----

"Turlooough, make me stop looking at social media!"

Midnight provided great value to our teamwork by willingly trudging into the morass that was public commentary, but apparently it was difficult to pull himself away sometimes. Like a real swamp, trapping people.

"Stop it," I said flatly. "Bad. No listening to the opinions of dumb people."

"You don't know they're dumb."

"They either don't know what they're talking about or are intentionally antagonizing a superpowered individual," I said. "That's dumb."

Midnight pondered for a moment. "But they know I won't blast them with magic."

"You have lasers."

"They also know I won't shoot them with Celmothian tech. That's a good way to lose my high tech privileges."

"Well, I don't have any way to shut down your phone with magic so you're going to have to do the hard work yourself." I thought for a moment. "No way to do that safely."

"Please don't fireball my communicator."

"I would just negate the electrical flow."

"That's… an interesting idea," Midnight said. "Can we do that?"

"If we can't do that with Advanced Energy magic then we should turn in our magic diplomas."

"We don't… have diplomas."

"Oh, too bad. Guess it doesn't matter then." He was still bothered, but not quite as much. "Is there anything the dumb people are saying that I should hear about?"

"Not really. Just nonsense. Like saying that I'm hunting and eating mice."

I frowned. "Is that racist? I think that's probably racist. Also, if you were… I don't think that would be a problem?" I had to think for a moment. "It's definitely rude. Like saying you're barbaric, maybe?"

Midnight shook his head. "That's not really their intention. They like the super mice and we've been seen stopping several of them."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"People hate the super mice," I said.

"People may hate them, but the internet loves them."

"Of course." People on the internet weren't always people. And I didn't mean they were bots. Usually those got taken down pretty quickly- and not always by who you might think. There were a few tech supers that really didn't like them, and everyone else was quite willing to overlook whatever they did to completely crash out bots. Sometimes a tech super also worked on the other side, but that was a good way to get heroes and villains to come after them together. Some things were just that important. "We could record a few videos of how we very safely and nicely capture them. Usually it's sleep anyway."

"Eh, they kinda look dead sometimes that way. But maybe we could Clean them up? Make them all shiny? And if they do get hurt, maybe we can get them healed before sending them somewhere. Not that anywhere seems safe, with how they keep getting out."

"Maybe New Bay should just accept we have superpowered mice now," I said. "How long do mice live anyway? Not that long."

"Unless they have powers," Midnight pointed out. "And assuming they can't reproduce with powers."

"Eh… I don't think there have been that many sightings," I said. "With how many mice there were, we would know if they bred babies with powers. Well, if most of them could."

"Please don't say it like that. Only a few have to."

-----

The Celmothians were building a whole embassy in New Bay. It made sense of course. That was the sort of thing aliens did when they had a reliable way to interact with a foreign group. At least, if they weren't constantly at war or something. The Bunvorixians and Celmothians had never gotten to any sort of proper diplomatic stage.

There were a few other aliens who could officially reach Earth with consistency. Martians technically counted. I was pretty sure Venzu, like the main people of the Neon Void, should have been able to get something like that, but they didn't. Apparently they were just happy to be villains, which was pretty garbage. Well, there were also a number that lived peacefully, but the thing about supervillains was it wasn't always easy to tell if someone was one unless they were actively doing something.

New Bay wasn't the only place such embassies could be built. Most were on Mars, because they were higher tech there already. There were a few other places on Earth that had some extraterrestrial embassies- anything large enough to not just be a few people working with Extra.

Midnight and I were really good at Gate… but that wasn't enough to count as a reliable travel method. The thing was, Celmothians were already really good at teleportation. So were Bunvorixians. Anyway, our feline buddies just needed an opportunity to set up some teleportation infrastructure on Earth. It took a while to get approved- though maybe it was fast since it was less than a year since serious diplomatic efforts began. Either way, Bunvorixians had already dropped a bunch of similarly advanced tech into the hands of supervillains so it wasn't such a gaping security hole to have more such tech around. There were probably other factors as well.

"Wait, they want us to make magical wards?" I asked Midnight incredulously.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Where else did you think we were going to get magical wards?"

"Well there's the, um… hmm…" He had a point there. But I didn't know how to make wards. "I don't know how to do that stuff."

"We have some anti-teleportation stuff that already works," Midnight said. "We just need magic to make sure it doesn't get disabled. We won't be doing the primary functions."

"That's still a lot of pressure."

"We'll be testing on Celmoth," he said. "If we really can't manage, there are other solutions but… I'd really prefer if we managed it. I know you don't like spending a lot of mana on training that can't get you experience but-"

"It's fine," I said. "If it's what you want, I don't mind." I made certain he could clearly feel the truth of that. I really didn't like doing utility stuff, but since it was important to Midnight it was quite different. Just like I would gladly spend large amounts of mana to help train Jerome. Plus, it wouldn't hurt to try to learn about this stuff. It would be better if I had something to base our efforts off of, though.

-----

"Gimme books," I said, poking Spellshot. The other orc was the best access I had to magely stuff. Sir Kalman and the Order of the Lion could only do so much. I could also try to pester some important mages from Granbold, but I didn't like most of them and Wrickle had said she wasn't able to provide any assistance at the moment. Maybe if I had something she wanted or I could pay her, but I don't know if she was implying anything like that.

Either way, Spellshot- and more broadly Ethus- owed me some favors.

"It's not so easy to come across such things, you know," Spellshot said after I explained what I wanted. "Those with sufficient power don't like others who know how their security functions."

"Sounds like a good way to get hacked when your primary security specialist dies," I said.

He tilted his head. "Hacked?" The word didn't translate- I didn't mean chopping with a weapon, so it wasn't going to translate that way.

"Yeah," I said. "If there's someone decently knowledgeable about such things waiting for an opportunity, they could get past defenses without anyone knowing until it was too late. You've gotta at least train up some ward specialists…"

"We do," Spellshot said. "But I don't think you're planning to commit to working directly for Ethus for the rest of your life."

"I am not," I said. "We could do a Geas though."

"You'd sign a magical contract?"

"After I had it looked over by lawyers, yeah," I nodded.

Midnight cleared his throat. "And if you don't let us take it to be looked over, we definitely won't be signing anything."

"I'm sure we can come to reasonable terms," Spellshot pondered.

I didn't let him know that I could probably annihilate a magical contract- if not through skill then by using far more mana than a simple Dispel or similar magic should be able to use. And if not… well, I wasn't anticipating needing to try. Thus the point of reviewing any contracts to see if I could just handle it. Because I didn't want a country of orcs trying to kill me. I already had like, a third of a country doing that for Doctor Doomsday. Though they hadn't actively come after me for a while, I was certain next time we crossed paths it would happen that way.

"It will take some time to arrange," Spellshot said. "But we can certainly work on it. And it will be faster if you can transport me."

See, that was the problem with being a fancy class like Spellshot. It was harder for him to do big, fun spells like Gate. Then again, most people from normal spellcasting classes didn't have Gate. I'd saved up for a few levels to purchase it and barely managed to fudge my way into using it the first few times before eventually being able to pull it off with regularity. Most people stagnated before that… because the world told them to. Maybe a mix of propaganda and active suppression.

Oh right, and one of the alternatives was conjuring a fancy mansion with tons of rooms and magical feasts. So if you could only do one spell near the top ranks, things like that were often chosen. But also the other reasons.