Mage Among Superheroes

There were some pretty decent spots surrounded by trees available so that there wouldn’t be any nosy parkgoers snooping on us as we tried to learn new magic. Or to use magic that was already learned in a new way… or whatever it should be called.

“I suppose Regenerate is the only spell you have that’s too high for you,” I said. “Which means we won’t be able to experiment with much. But at least it’s one that should be mostly safe if we screw up.”

“Mostly safe?” Ceira asked. “I’m not going to make anyone grow a third arm, right?”

“No, you’re not,” I said without any evidence. “It’s just if the mana for the spell ends up without a target, it can dissipate wildly.”

“You mean it explodes.”

“It only explodes a little bit.”

“That’s not particularly reassuring,” Ceira said.

“It will be fine,” I said. “It is something Force Armor will easily take care of, should it happen.”

Midnight was currently fulfilling the important role of keeping Bun and Cel distracted. He wasn’t a young animal like the two of them, but his form was suited for running around and he kept up with physical training for the Brigade. And if necessary, he could cheat a little bit with magic.

“Alright, so you’ve seen Midnight and I cast spells together with our bond a few times.” Most notably with Gate to return home. “We obviously don’t have that sort of magical connection, but we can try to work together towards the same task. You try to cast Regenerate, and I’ll try to add my own mana to support you,” I said. “Try to aim for half the mana you need for the spell so you don’t pass out.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll try.”

I could feel her gathering mana, and while I had no trouble matching her in quantity, the particular form it took was much more difficult. I also failed to establish a connection, so our gathered mana just leaked out of us like water through a sieve.

“It didn’t work,” she said.

I nodded. “The connection was missing, among other things. We’ll try to focus on a combined target. How about… that flower? It should be a valid target for the spell.”

We tried again. And again. Unfortunately, that was it for Ceira, because her maximum mana pool was limited by her level. That was over twenty-two mana spent, and while she could recover quickly here in the park, it still wouldn’t be a short wait.

“I can’t do it,” Ceira shook her head. “... Sorry.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s your fault. Neither of us really made any progress on a connection between our magic. And…” I shook my head. “I wasn’t even close to replicating the feel of your spell forming. I think it’s a problem of class incompatibilities, if it’s not simply impossible. So really, I suppose it’s my fault for having you waste your points to begin with.”

“They’re not wasted,” Ceira said. “They’re just… pre-apportioned for something I’ll be able to use later. And it was for a good cause.”

Around that point, Midnight jumped onto my head- which wasn’t very high since we were sitting in the grass. “Watch out for-!”

At that time, I got tackled by a cat and dog at the same time. I was surprised they actually knocked me down- I was pretty strong after all.

“Easy, guys!” Ceira commanded. The cat and dog turned towards her voice. “They’re still getting used to being stronger,” Ceira explained.

“I think they did pretty well,” I said. “I wasn’t hurt, after all.”

“I overestimated my capabilities,” Midnight said. “But magic practice is done now, yeah?”

“Unless we want to wait around for half an hour,” Ceira said.

I frowned. “Well, it’s not enough to conclusively determine what we were trying is impossible. But… I don’t think it would be possible in a short time. So we can look into other options.”

“What other options do you have?” Ceira asked.

“We’re… still figuring that out,” I admitted.

-----

“A power rejecting artificial organs?” came an excited voice through the phone. “I’d love to look at the test results from that.”

“That doesn’t sound like you have a solution, Vilhelmiina. Or even that you think you could come up with one.”

“Oh no. Certainly not. Organic compatibility isn’t my forte,” the woman replied.

I’d wanted to try talking to her at least, but that was about what I expected. Tech supers weren’t always able to do everything.

Unfortunately, the Power Brigade didn’t have every sort of imaginable super working for them, and specifically medical supers- or tech supers who worked on medical devices- were not terribly common. Not even money could solve everything. The few medical supers known to be able to regrow organs were booked pretty much indefinitely, and skipping ahead in a line was either impossible or too costly for even the Brigade.

I wasn’t the only one looking for solutions, either. Ice Guy and the rest of the squad were probing their various contacts, and the Brigade itself was still putting out feelers to try to find something. But the sooner we could find a solution, the better off Shockfire would be. As it turned out, people weren’t meant to be hooked up to machines to survive. Though it was nice to have the option, because back in my old world he might not have made it if we couldn’t immediately get him to a high enough level healer type.

Speaking of that… Sir Kalman also didn’t know anyone of sufficient level in the right sorts of classes to regrow organs. Surely there were some people, but finding them was another matter. He at least said he was willing to look for someone, and that I should keep in contact regularly.

-----

Given that what I wanted to do was going nowhere, work was a nice reprieve from depressing thoughts. I had kind of been hoping for something where I would get to beat someone up, or just get punched in the head myself, but instead Zorphax wanted me as a translator for a situation Extra was dealing with.

The martian was still small and green with surprisingly large pupils. Not that I’d expected any changes there. “Good to see you again, Mage, Familia,” he nodded his head to the two of us. “We’ve had a few people pop up that we have trouble communicating with. They’re not troublemakers, but we can’t really send people home or set them up here without knowing some things about them. But it will take a moment for us to set up the first meeting room. How have you been?”

“Personally?” I asked. “I’ve been fine, physically. But one of our former companions… he’s injured,” I shook my head.

Zorphax frowned. “I think I heard about that. Nasty business. A damaged liver, was it?”

“Destroyed, more like,” Midnight said. “And he’s rejected artificial organs. So it’s a wait for someone compatible and hoping his powers don’t fry organic ones too…”

Zorphax sighed. “That’s awful. And Earth organ cloning tech being only in its budding stages of development, growing him a new one is likely off the table. Mars wouldn’t do him any better. Permission to travel there is a pain in the neck, even for natives, and all the organ cloning devices are tightly tied to martian genetics.”

I frowned. If it wouldn’t do us any good, why even bring it up, then? No, he was just trying to be sympathetic. Helpful. But I got a weird tingling in the back of my head. Looking at Midnight, I could tell he had it too. There was something we were missing. It felt like it should have been obvious, but neither Midnight nor I had been sleeping that well. I knew, because we had apartments across the hall from each other and the bond was pretty strong at that distance.

I talked to some sort of thing made of fire, while Midnight had a chat with some sort of bird person. We were actually able to figure out their worlds of origin, and it seemed Extra had methods to return both of them home. So that was nice, at least.

-----

I couldn’t get the thoughts out of the back of my head, and the cleverest fellow I knew was Calculator. Since he was probably already busy wracking his brain about this problem along with a billion other things related to the Brigade, I figured it shouldn't hurt to bring it up.

“I just can’t help but feel there was something, you know?” I shook my head. “Like, about martians.”

“You’ve worked with Zorphax quite a few times,” Calculator said. “Plus, there was that job where Shooting Star tried to kill you.”

“Oh!” I said. “Right. I totally forgot about that. What with the almost being murdered part. There were a number of Martians working for that nice lady. Uh, Rolly and Olly? I don’t remember her name, though,”

“Kendrux,” Calculator said.

“Right,” I said. Pieces were fitting together in my tired brain. What had we been protecting there?

I looked at Midnight, and he answered my unspoken question. “Some kind of martian tech… the supers thought it was illegal or something.”

“But it wasn’t, though,” I said. “Since, you know, they were Martians. Unless the laws about that topic got updated since then?”

“I am not aware of any such change,” Calculator commented.

“Right. And the thing was… an organ replicator?”

“Selling organs is quite illegal,” Calculator added.

“So they could be handed away for free?” I asked.

“I can direct you to the relevant laws if you wish. Explaining it all myself would take too much time and rely on my own potentially flawed interpretation,” Calculator said.

“... Yes please,” I said. “Telling us where to find this, I mean.”

-----

Midnight and I were figuratively buried in books. Obviously we didn’t actually pull out law codexes, when they were easily available in digital forms. But I sure felt buried.

“This is a lot,” I said.

“Agreed,” Midnight said. “I don’t think… these laws are good like this.”

“Well,” I shrugged. “It makes a lot of sense. Like, you don’t want anyone grabbing a guy and selling their organs to someone else. So it’s doubly illegal.” I frowned, “I don’t see anything that makes it illegal to buy organs if they’re otherwise legal.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“This is our chance to help Shockfire. Though we might need to gently bring it up with the docs here, to see if they could actually, you know, put it in him. And then figure out how much this kind of stuff costs.”

-----

Somehow, setting up a meeting with Kendrux was easy even though she was maybe a mob boss. But she was very straightforward and to the point when I started getting into things.

“We don’t sell organs,” Kendrux said.

“Well, I mean, obviously you wouldn’t do anything illegal but-”

“We especially don’t sell organs to mercs.”

I frowned, “We worked for you, you know.”

“And you got paid. Association over.”

I was not good at negotiations. But I wasn’t going to not try. “Okay but, without us going above and beyond you wouldn’t have had your device. And then where would things be? Don’t you have some gratitude? Couldn’t you, I dunno, just give us something?”

Kendrux shook her head. “I’m not ungrateful. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. But it’s not a thing we could or would do.”

I looked at Midnight, hoping he had some ideas. “Well…” he flicked his tail. “Obviously you wouldn’t sell such things. But what if we traded some things with each other? Things the other person might need? You trade things, right?”

“Well, sure,” Kendrux shrugged. “But nothing of direct monetary value. Or I’d just buy it.”

Was that a hint? I wasn’t very good with hints.

“So do you have something I’d need?” Kendrux asked.

“... You don’t happen to be in dire need of tuna?”

“Nope. Got some.”

“Uh…” Midnight frowned. “What if I got you a cool souvenir from Celmoth?”

“I’m not much for novelty items. And anything valuable would probably be illegal for me to own, though perhaps not for you.”

“Oh. Right.”

What did I have? Books on magic- valuable, but not to her I was fairly certain. Diamond dust, which was extremely purchasable with money and not even that expensive. Power Brigade outfit, which obviously wasn’t something I was allowed to exchange. My gun. A couple pieces of tech from Vilhelmiina.

… special bullets.

I pulled out one from Storage. They were all in a clip for an emergency situation, but I could grab individual ones since they were still just in Storage. It was just awkward to use them. “I got a few of these from a tech super,” I said, displaying the bullet between my fingers. “Having seen you were attacked by some unethical supers, you might be interested to know that these things can counter powers. Punch through special defenses, disrupt attacks. That kind of thing. Standard caliber. Even with my special deal, I can’t really buy these,” I said.

“And you expect me to trust you on that?”

I shrugged. “I am an extremely trustworthy individual.” Then I rolled it across the desk to her. “But you can take a look at it if you like. Or bring it to people for testing. Whatever pleases you.”

I wondered if I should have made use of those during the incident… but no, it never really made any sense. Iron Shell was the biggest threat there, and still made of metal even if I shot her. And she hadn’t been the cause of Shockfire’s injuries. It was simply showing up at a job that did it. Being publicly visible, and perhaps randomly close enough to Handface that he was prepared to respond in time.

“Come back tomorrow,” Kendrux said. “If this is legitimate, I might be interested in a trade.”