Mage Among Superheroes

With little further direction than to show magic, I used Storage, pulling out a spare mana crystal. The response from the crazy woman- Vilhelmiina- was less than impressed. “Bah!” she waved her hand, “Extradimensional storage magic is so last week. Show me something new!”

At this point I remembered why I had come, briefly distracted by the whole part where I fell through the ground into random tubes to be pulled into this secret? base. “Wasn’t there a box I was supposed to look at?”

“No no no,” Vilhelmiina waggled her finger. “You’re supposed to look at it… with magic!”

“What magic?” I asked. “I don’t have a lot of spells for looking at things.”

“Don’t you?” she raised an eyebrow. “What is a Firebolt if not looking at something with fire?!”

“... It’s anything else?” I tilted my head. “An attack or whatever. Firebolt would actually make looking at something more difficult.”

“Then maybe you’re using it wrong.”

“I’m not going to claim I have a perfect understanding of magic, but… you don’t know how magic works,” I said.

“I do not,” the old woman admitted. “Which is why you’re here! And because they wouldn’t let me keep your apprentice!”

“I’ll have to thank whoever they are later,” I said. “Anyway… what spell?”

“I heard you had a Scrying spell these were screwing up,” Vilhelmiina said.

“Oh! That kind of box.” I nodded. “It doesn’t really work like that though. I can only lock onto people, and those just sort of yank me away.”

“Fine, whatever. Now begin!” she gestured grandly.

“... I need a mirror,” I said. That was something I was supposed to have put into storage a while ago, but honestly a proper sized mirror would probably take the majority of my capacity. And I didn’t think it was that useful.

“Then I shall forge you a mirror of the finest platinum!” she gripped a fist tightly.

“Do you not have a mirror?” I asked. “Is platinum even a better material for mirrors? Also it could be any sufficiently large, flat, reflective surface. Mirrors are just the best for that.”

“In that case, you shall use… THE WALL!” she pointed grandly towards a brick wall.

“Uh. Brick isn’t reflective.”

“Or is it?” she leaned towards me.

“It’s not. Also why do you have a single brick wall down here?”

“I wanted some bricks for something,” she said, then pointed to a corner of the wall where there were… glass shards and wires everywhere? “Then I remembered that it is merely a screen!” With a wave of her hand the bricks disappeared and a plain white image appeared- now discernible as a large electronic screen. “Is this sufficient?”

“Probably? I’ve mostly used real mirrors.” I looked around, “Is the thing vaguely around here? Because I need to scry someone near it, which would presumably be you. And if you aren’t near it then I’ll probably just see you. And me.”

“It is vaguely near here. In a sense, everything is vaguely near here.”

Not very helpful. “I’m going to need some specifics,” I said. “Is it within like, a hundred feet? Because I don’t know how far they work.”

“It is not!” she said. “But try it anyway!”

“... Fine, but I can only do this like three times. Then you have to wait like five hours.”

“It should work,” Vilhelmiina assured me. “Your apprentice indicated the scrying anchor was interfering with him from a much greater distance.” I took note of the term she used for it, finding it reasonable enough.

“Fair enough,” I said, moving to stand in front of the wall sized screen. I certainly wouldn’t be using all of it, as the visual range I had to work with would just make everything weird and distorted if I did. But it would basically sort itself out if I let it settle naturally.

I gathered mana and injected it into the surface in front of me, swirling mists forming over the whole screen. I reached out, attempting to find Vilhelmiina herself. It wasn’t simple to reach her, despite there being nothing between us. First I felt a pressure, a resistance from an ever-shifting source.

“I can feel the tendrils of your soul seeking me out,” Vilhelmiina declared. It seemed she could sense magic, then? Though I was also using it right in front of her.

Then that pressure dissipated and I found myself yanked away into a wall of lightning. My initial reaction was to release my grip on the scrying, but I chose to fight. Power coursed through me unpleasantly, but it was nothing compared to immersing myself in Gloom. It was not conscious either, and I found my way through the cage. There my focus remained, regardless of my intentions.

Upon the wall slowly formed the vision of what I had presumed to be a metaphorical cage of lightning, but it was quite real. It made it difficult to see the device in the middle. “Well, there it is. It definitely pulled me in. Though this lightning cage also kinda fought me off.”

“Oh, of course! The suppression field would also inhibit magic,” Vilhelmiina nodded. She wasn’t taking notes or anything, but I could hear the gears turning in her head. Not as a metaphor either, I actually heard gears. They might have been in the various bits and pieces of random gear covering her, but some were awfully close to head range. “Hmm, it’s difficult to see.”

“Well, we’re just looking at a scrying grabbing thing and a suppression field, so there’s not much to see. I can kind of adjust the angle,” I said, picking out the floor beneath and the ends of several mechanical arms that came in from multiple angles to form this suppression field.

Vilhelmiina clicked her tongue. “No, this is no good. No good at all. Cease your spell.”

I did, since I had already stated my restrictions. “What’s wrong with it? This is all you see. It is kinda weird on this white screen with the backlighting that intense but…”

“It’s just no good,” she said. “You can go home now,” she waved. “I’ll call for you soon.”

“Okay, but…” I frowned. “Look, I’m happy to try to help you with stuff but I need something. Either explanations or money or the like.”

“Explanations might be classified,” Vilhelmiiina frowned, “And I am not allowed to have money since the incident.” Then she snapped her fingers, her face lighting up. “I shall pay you in gadgets!”

“Actually if I’m helping you gather information I’m pretty sure I can know it, especially if it’s about magic.”

“Gaaaaaaadgets!” she drew out the word, and I wasn’t sure if she heard me anymore. She was already wandering off, leaving me alone in what seemed to be a very expensive and dangerous looking lab, wondering how to get out.

Fortunately, a nice security robot made almost entirely out of cannons came to escort me out after a few minutes. His name was Frank. I got to take a normal elevator to the surface. I did end up in a back room of some ice cream shop, but they just waved and asked if I wanted some ice cream. And I did, so I took some home with me.

-----

PR troubles didn’t resolve themselves that easily. Funny enough, Great Girl punching Stargirl wasn’t that big of news because it wasn’t on camera, but me punching an annoying reporter was. Though Calculator and the general Power Brigade PR team were working hard, I was still on administrative leave for… a while. Which was quite nonspecific. But it did give me time to practice some magic, since there wasn’t much else to do. There were frequent power outages for a few days so I couldn’t do much searching on the internet. That downtime also allowed for Vilhelmiina to drag me back to her underground lab a few days after the previous visit.

I don’t know why she sent Frank instead of just telling me to show up again, but he was content with holding onto my sleeve with a pair of mechanical pincers and walking along. “I have been instructed to drag you to see her, so this is required.”

“Can you not take her orders literally?”

“I cannot not do so,” Frank said. “Required legal safety protocols allow me to circumvent the worst interpretations, but some literalness is required.”

Fortunately there weren’t a lot of people who paid attention to the mass of cannons ‘dragging’ me along. Or rather, they very specifically tried not to look at it. Frank was helpfully labeled with New Bay approved logos to indicate he was not some sort of villainous construct, but that didn’t really make people comfortable about cannons being pointed at them- and there were always cannons pointed at them, with no discernable front to Frank.

We did not enter the same ways I came or went to the lab, but instead entered a random apartment building and went down the stairs to the basement, except before reaching the bottom Frank flipped a hidden switch and the stairs turned into a slide that went through one of the walls. It was pretty straightforward compared to the tube entrance, and brought me casually back into the same section of the lab I’d seen before.

“We are here,” Frank said, letting go of my sleeve. “I will inform the resident mad scientist of your arrival.”

A minute or two later, I heard the building around me shout “This way!” A moment later it focused itself into an actual direction I could follow, and since it was Vilhelmiina’s voice I presumed it was probably not going to murder me immediately should I follow. The Power Brigade knew where I was. Also, she was more obsessed scholar crazy than murder crazy. Frank seemed like a nice guy.

The corridors gradually grew darker, which was perfectly fine with me. Sudden shifts screwed up my vision, but I could make my way around in the dark just fine. “Behold!” Vilhelmiina yelled from inside a dark room, where she stood next to a cube.

“I have beholden it,” I said. “A cube.”

“Not just any cube!” she said. “A special cube.”

It was a little more than half my height. “What’s it for?”

“Scrying, obviously!”

“It’s… a cube though. Scrying uses flat surfaces. I can’t Scry six… five things at a time. Seems unnecessary. Also dark.”

“Just do it! But put the magic inside instead of on the surface!”

I frowned. “Is this supposed to be a… Scrying orb?”

“Exactly!”

“Orbs are spheres.”

“Orbs are whatever you want them to be in your heart! Now do it!”

“Alright, whatever,” I shrugged. “Same thing?”

“Yes!”

I stepped closer. Would this work? It shouldn’t work. But then again, Scrying orbs worked. They weren’t flat mirrors. And this one was extra flat. Yeah, sure, this could work. Though was this huge thing glass? I could vaguely tell it was translucent, but without actual light I couldn’t tell how much. Just an oddity of darkvision.

Was I supposed to touch it? I decided not to, but I did wave my hands generally near it as I summoned up my magic. Swirls of faintly glowing mist filled the cube, revealing that it was indeed fully transparent. The resistance I expected from Vilhelmiina was minimal- less than even reflex should have provided. I did indeed find myself tugged towards the scrying anchor, or whatever it should be called, but I felt like I could resist it. That wasn’t the stated intention yet, however, so I let it pull me. Instead of crashing into the suppression field, I gently drifted into it. I had been ready, but it was more than just my improved proficiency. Speaking of which, that had shown itself as an actual increase in rank. Presumably I would have more by now if I had believed it possible, since I’d actually been practicing Scrying on difficult targets.

Either way, I easily navigated to the actual target, though Scrying on a scrying anchor was generally pretty boring. That was the whole point, after all. The room lit up as I could suddenly see another room. Not all of it… but I could clearly make out more than just the eleven feet my spell should have allowed. Maybe… fifteen or sixteen before the fogs began to take over. I tried to shift the angle, and found that I could not.

“Hmm, there’s a problem,” I said. “I can’t change the angle.”

“Of course you can!” Vilhelmiina said. “Look!” she walked around it.

I tilted my head in confusion… then saw what she was talking about. The slight change in angle showed me that the face of the cube I was looking through saw directly into the area, it was not a flat projection. I walked around the edge, the hard corners suddenly shifting to a perspective ninety degrees removed, providing different angles as if I were looking through different, impossible windows. Because I could see more than just what was inside the cube, but what was beyond it at the sides, where other surfaces should have been. “How did you know this would work?” I asked.

“Intuition!” she yelled. “It’s literally my power! And most tech supers.” She let out a deep sigh, “Well then, now that that is done with, cease your spell.” I did so, and a moment later the lights flickered on through some intention of Vilhelmiina. I squinted, and she staggered around for a moment before removing some goggles she was wearing. “Take this thing out of here,” she waved. “I just had to build it to see it. It doesn’t serve any purpose anyway.”

“... Weren’t we using it to scry on the anchor?”

“We did, and now it’s done. I just wanted to see how it works. I want you to actually look at the thing in person. Like with Detect Magic. That’s a spell, right?”

“Well, sure…” I said. “I don’t know it though. Also this thing is huge. No way I can carry it.”

“Put it in Storage!” she said.

“It’s like, a three foot cube of glass. It has to weigh an actual ton.”

“Excuse me,” Vilhelmiina said. “It’s a one meter cube. That’s totally different. Also it’s diamond and weighs three and a half long tonnes.”

“... okay?” I tilted my head. “I still can’t fit it in Storage though.”

“Oh, of course there’s a limit,” she nodded. “Well, I’ll ship it to your apartment then.”

“... I do not want this in my apartment. I don’t think I could ever move it. How about… to the Power Brigade? They have to be able to handle this.”

“Well, alright.’ Vilhelmiina nodded. “I’ll do that.”

I quickly sent a text to Calculator. ‘Vilhelmiina Koskinen plans to send a 1 meter cubic diamond to Power Brigade. Sorry. Put somewhere it can be used for scrying.’

After I finished that, I frowned. “How did you find a diamond this big? There’s no way they come like this.”

“Obviously,” Vilhelmiina rolled her eyes. “I just made it.”

“Oh. Okay?”

“Anyway come look at this Anchor with your unprotected wizard eyes,” she said as she started walking off, putting on a different pair of goggles. The floor began shifting, moving the cube of what was apparently diamond like it was going to the end of an assembly line. I watched that move while I wished I had whatever goggles she was putting on so my ‘wizard eyes’ wouldn’t be unprotected. Was that a warning, or just an observation? Troublesome either way.