Mage Among Superheroes

Being away from Turlough wasn’t normally a problem for Midnight, but in this peculiar situation he didn’t feel good about it. He went with Swiss Arms to a different room, where she began asking all sorts of questions… and occasionally staring off into space. Obviously they were suspicious of something, but he couldn’t quite figure out what.

Eventually, he had enough. “What’s the point here?” Midnight asked. “Do you think we’re… not us?”

Swiss Arms sighed. “Well, something like that. Calculator is trying to prove things one way or another with Mage.”

“Would it help for me to say that it’s really him?” Midnight asked.

“Not really. Since your identity is in question as well. Unless you can prove it somehow. Calculator’s trying to be all complicated about it… but I don’t have the skills for this,” she shrugged. “So? Got anything?”

“I suppose my identification doesn’t matter. How about showing you magic?”

“Could be an illusion.”

“Telling you about when we met?”

“Could have been interrogated. Or had your memory read.”

Midnight’s tail flicked back and forth. “That does make this difficult. If that’s possible, anyone could be replaced.”

“Ugh, never say that in front of Calculator. He’ll go mad. I’m willing to accept something tangible that others might not think is important.”

Midnight pondered for a moment. “I have tuna,” he said. He cast Storage to pull out a few cans of tuna.”

“I mean…” Swiss Arms shrugged. “That’s something I guess.” She paused for a moment. “Do you have… more?”

“Turlough told me to stop worrying and carry less. So I only have… 15 cans,” Midnight said, piling them in front of him in batches. “Does this help?”

“It does,” Swiss Arms said. “Though I’ll have to inspect it.”

Midnight stared at her soulfully.

“You can afford to buy more cans of tuna. Or someone will pay you back, if it really matters. But I have to take a look at these elsewhere.”

“Alright,” Midnight said. Then he was left to wait for… either a long time or just a few minutes.

-----

I nodded, “Hmm, that makes sense. It’s something only you would carry around in quantity, and if an impostor could perfectly replicate all of our abilities, it would be a problem. Plus, there would have to be a range limit or similar on illusions, so having something they could take away was quite valuable. Either that or they would be facing someone of such power that they couldn’t possibly see through the illusions and we shouldn’t have even been suspected in the first place.”

“Something like that,” Midnight said. “I would suggest we don’t come to HQ with Nondetection on anymore.”

“Ugh. I suppose we should be fine inside HQ, but that means expending more mana when we go out. Which is just another thing to factor into our mana costs.”

“We might be able to cast it after we arrive,” Midnight said. “Though we’d want to consult Calculator.”

“And probably be subject to tests,” I agreed. “Well, they learned it’s possible to break Nondetection with power… and Calculator is a bit less worried since there’s no proof that any security measures failed. Because even us not registering anything had safeguards in place to warn them.”

-----

Before we got into any more trouble, Midnight and I had a discussion on how I was spending my points. Since it affected him, I had to at least consult him, even if I didn’t agree. There was one thing we debated on for a while, but I ultimately had to give in.

Turlough (No surname)

Level: 34

Experience: 3025/3150

Storage +8 (6|2)

Firebolt +4 (3|1)

Shocking Grasp +6 (4|2)

Grease +3 (2|1)

Force Armor +8 (6|2)

Mage's Reach +5 (3|2)

Translation +3 (1|2)

Alter Time Flow +6 (4|2)

Disguise

Familiar Bond +8 (4|4)

Enlarge +3 (2|1)

Energy Ward +4 (2|2)

Sonic Lance +4 (3|1)

Advanced Divination Magic +6 (3|3)

Shield +1

Stoneskin +4 (3|1)

Mana Crystal Deposition +4 (1|3)

Water Breathing

Variable Freedom +3 (2|1)

Basic Light Magic +2 (1|1)

Alter Portal +2 (0|2)

Gate +3 (2|1)

Sending +2 (0|2)

Chain Lightning +5 (3|2)

Clean +1 (0|1)

Shelter +1 (0|1)

Assistive Familiar Casting +3 (0|3)

Multicasting +1 (0|1)

Enhance +1

Nondetection

Remaining Points: 17

From the top down, it was Storage- the ability in most debate. But ultimately Midnight convinced me to put two more ranks, and since it only cost 4 points total… it wasn’t that big of an expense. Shocking Grasp got an upgrade as well, because Midnight used it quite often and so did I when I ended up in melee. It was quite efficient for taking someone down. Saving a bit of mana and having a bit more oomph behind it when we needed it wouldn’t hurt. Mages Reach was a frequently used utility as well, and Midnight needed it for manipulating things.

One of the biggest changes that didn’t cost any points directly was Advanced Divination Magic. It folded in Scrying, Arcane Sight, and the two Locate spells, ending up with more point upgrades somewhere in that process.

Stoneskin was a consistent defensive option, and since it cost more than just mana it didn’t hurt to have it last a bit longer. Chain Lightning got a lot of the point expenditures, since it was the highest level spell I knew. Two upgrades at a full 13 points each. But that would save us somewhere around a point of mana each cast, and make it hit harder too.

A single point of mana might not seem that big, but it could easily be a difference between another cast or not having the ability. It was also bigger for Midnight, who only had 28 mana maximum versus my… 50ish. Strictly by level I should have 39, so my work overstuffing myself with Mana Crystals had paid off.

More than a few things had gotten natural upgrades as well, the most notable being Familiar Bond. It didn’t matter for literally anything except Force Armor, since it was a limiter on total upgrades, but it was still nice. For the future.

I had 17 points saved, which was much closer to optimal than how much I had built up. I might train some things slightly slower naturally now, but I needed to balance that with actual effectiveness at the current moment. It wasn’t like every day was training without practical use. We literally fought dragons the other day.

What I needed to train most was Multicasting, which would allow me to use more upgrades and thus be more efficient with applying group buffs. I literally couldn’t spend points on that, and while there was some chance it was a mental block of some sort- I really needed to get my hands on someone who knew this stuff- attempting to force it seemed like a bad idea. I might just waste my time, or I could break my magic or destroy the points. Some of the theoretical consequences I could imagine were serious enough to push me away from that.

-----

“Time for training,” I said. “If only we had more people around. I’d really like to cast something like Haste to see if I can make that better. It’s a short duration so we can let it run its course. But alas, it would be so inefficient to cast with just myself, Midnight, Great Girl, and Jim here.”

“Isn’t that four?” Jim asked, his voice like a hole in reality.

“One of Midnight and myself don’t count if applying things to both,” I said.

“Okay so… message Shockwave?” Great Girl said. “They’ll totally show up. Probably even if they’re on shift.”

“I know,” I said. “I was just wondering if merely speaking about it would be enough. Sometimes it is.”

I pulled out my phone and prepared a text. “Hi, I got a text that said something about Haste?” My finger hit send as the voice appeared next to me. I was pretty sure things happened in that order, but maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me. Such things were actually less reliable than people thought. Like the stopped clock effect. Your mind would project a still image into the ‘past’ to make things seem smooth.

“Hi Shockwave,” I waved. “You’re really improving. Nobody’s eardrums broke and you came through a closed door.”

“I know right?” Shockwave stood proudly in all of their blue glory. “It’s still really useful to blast people off their feet though. So, Haste?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Though it will be significantly less than the maximum you have experienced. Which is the point of this exercise.”

Shockwave sighed. “The sacrifices I make for the Brigade. Very well, I’m ready.”

“And the rest of you?” I asked. “Midnight and I will be focusing on the casting.” I could multicast it all by myself. Midnight was just short of being able to do that, and we could train Assistive Familiar Casting at the same time by splitting it. So it was just more efficient to split things. Though speaking of that, it was upgrading quite well since we used it so frequently.

Everyone indicated their readiness. We cast Haste, distributing it among all of us.

Shockwave, of course, began to run around the room- but only a little bit on the walls, because they didn’t have Physical Freedom and it was also weaker.

Great Girl’s intention was to practice her size changing abilities at speed. While physical movement were accelerated, many power activations were still limited to how they functioned in real time. It depended somewhat on the limiting factor- if it was simply mental processing speed, Haste could work. But for things like gathering mana, it still took the same time. At best, Midnight and I could be more efficient by releasing the exact moment we gathered enough mana. But we weren’t planning to expend unnecessary mana here.

Jim was also practicing his movements. As a writhing mass of tentacles, his body had some amount of distortion involved with movement. Beyond that, he also had some sort of mental powers. He also had to see if his outfit could keep up with his changes during Haste.

It lasted just over a minute, with only a single upgrade counting. A relative time of somewhere around three minutes for the users. During that time, Midnight and I mostly discussed what would make Multicasting more efficient.

“I think it’s something about our distribution of mana,” I said. “We’re probably losing some between people. I don’t know if they actually need to be closer or if that would just make things easier.”

“Probably just easier,” Midnight said. “Which means we might want to try the opposite. Test the limits of range. Have people stand further apart, or be moving around while we cast.”

I nodded, “Good point. We might also have to take into account the specific individuals we’re affecting. Somehow.”

Between Midnight and I, we could manage five rounds of Multicasted Haste- which was effectively casting the spell twenty times total, which would have been out of our reach by a good margin. It was the difference between having about 8 points of mana left, not counting our bit of regeneration, and being 8 points short even with 6 total upgrades involved.

Unfortunately, we neither got an upgrade to Multicasting or Haste… but what else could we expect from ten minutes of our time and a single mana pool? If it was so easy to get natural upgrades to things, we’d have hundreds. And we’d already gotten the first one, which was the easiest. Even if we didn’t have an actual upgrade, we understood more… and I could imagine it wouldn’t be too far. Maybe a few days or a week, but that was fine.

Since we were low on mana, returning to the gym for part of the day would be the plan, and then we might gather more free people for another round. Ambient mana levels were still climbing, but it was still over two hours to recover Midnight’s full amount, and nearly twice as much for myself given our relative mana pools.

It was a cause of concern that it had increased again, but it wasn’t really a surprise with Doctor Doomsday throwing out more portals. Was that his intention, or a side effect? Or it could be many things all at once. Nobody really knew what he wanted, just that he didn’t care how his goals were accomplished.