Mage Among Superheroes

Before we could really start on our project of bombarding Handface with Scrying spells, we figured it was best to check out known associates. We started with Rodentia, which would be the most problematic of the bunch because she was really good at what she did, which fortunately wasn’t focused around killing people or widespread destruction. If they were working together, it would make it much harder to hunt him down.

The ‘orb’ began to clear as I focused on her, and a rat appeared. Well, not a real rat obviously. Its eyes immediately began to glow red, and it screeched in an unnatural manner. Clearly, an alarm of some sort. I dropped the spell, both because it was annoying and because we couldn’t really get more information. At best, we would annoy Rodentia if we kept trying and that could easily backfire.

“I’ll review the footage from all angles,” Calculator commented. “But I doubt that will reveal anything of use.”

“At least it’s fairly certain Deimos isn’t working with her,” Midnight commented.

I nodded. “A good start, overall. Just to be clear, the draw to that was stronger than the first generation Doctor Doomsday scrying anchors. It’s hard to compare to current ones because of the risks.” I didn’t want to draw the attention of Doctor Doomsday again, obviously.

Next on the list was Sirine. I was first drawn to an odd box, but then the vision flickered to Sirine herself. We actually got a decent amount of time before she seemed to notice and tried to push back against the spell. It seemed she was working at some kind of docks.

“Get anything from that?” I asked Calculator.

“Most likely still working with Kendrux,” he said. “That looked like martian tech.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“There are certain aesthetic choices made,” he shrugged. “Though I would hazard a guess it was produced locally. For a few reasons, chief of which is that they wouldn’t need those elsewhere.”

“Yeah, hey, why does everyone suddenly have Scrying anchors?” I asked. Calculator just stared at me. “What? Am I that big of a problem?”

“You could be,” Calculator said. “But it’s not just you. There are all the various portal powers to consider. Many of them have had a good amount of time to develop. They might have reached the point they can cast Scrying, or at least use lesser versions of divination spells. But the biggest threat is from Doctor Doomsday and his minions. He has been recruiting individuals from your world. That would include others with similar powers, most likely. Everyone will want to protect themselves from that. Speaking of which, we still need help testing ours. Most likely they are imperfect, but it’s better to make sure they’re at least functional against casual attempts.”

“Right,” I nodded. “Midnight, can you get the next one?”

“Sure thing,” he said. “Swarm, right?”

“That was the plan,” Calculator confirmed.

I could feel the flow of mana from Midnight, and the spell began to fall into place. For once, the image went directly to the person in question, seemingly without too much fuss. And what an image it was, a mask half on. Swarm froze in place for a moment before shoving the mask the rest of the way on and swiveling around. And then the image flickered. Something about him changed and then… the image was gone.

“Hmm,” Midnight said. “I lost it. There was certainly a shove of willpower there, but also something else?”

“His body twitched oddly,” Calculator confirmed. “As if it was suddenly receiving different muscle signals.”

I didn’t know if I could have confidently stated such a thing from that little information, but my power wasn’t information processing. “What could that mean?”

“There are several possibilities. All most likely relate to his power. Splitters are known for creating multiple bodies in different fashions, but one key component is they must control them all. Those who are lower tier seem to guide them only with one primary thought pattern. Swarm is more effective than that, so he should have some sort of mitigation. Either parallel thoughts within a single consciousness, or split consciousness- most likely on a temporary basis while the power is functioning. But normally they wouldn’t be able to swap those between ‘bodies’, so there should be something else going on.”

“He didn’t look like he was anywhere special.”

Calculator fiddled with his tablet. “Indeed. We may have caught him off duty, so to speak. Though it seems he was smart enough to keep concealment available, we had very fortunate timing. Even a partial facial match could be useful in the future.”

“It wasn’t clear if Handface might be there,” I said. “Since we haven’t been able to see stuff around him very well.”

“I do believe it unlikely, but still possible. We may wish to test Swarm again in the future.”

“Why not now?” Midnight asked.

Calculator smiled. “Because now you get to start your campaign against Deimos. I imagine within a day or two we will learn whether bypassing his resistance through experience is possible.” My phone beeped. “I have sent the two of you the prepared schedule. You will more or less be alternating, taking into account shifts for sleep and mana pools. If you recover more mana via meditation or the like, I suggest you use it for other training.”

“Why does it only show one time?” I asked.

“Because you only need to know the next one. And information cannot be leaked if it is not given.” Calculator held up a hand, “I know the two of you would not leak it. But no network is perfectly secure. I will be manually adding the next time to the schedule as they come up for the next segment.”

“Okay, but… if that’s the case, when will you sleep?”

“A good question,” Calculator said. “I ask myself that very frequently. And the answer is whenever I can.”

-----

“This was a terrible idea,” I reported to Midnight as we finished our first eight hour stretch of moving between the scrying room and the various lounges or training rooms. “It’s hard to get anything done. We can’t just start anything.”

Midnight nodded. “At least we have a bit of advance warning. Hopefully, it’s worse for him.”

I grimaced. “I sure hope so. But we’ve barely gotten more than a glimpse of him. We need something more.”

“... We could try casting together? Maybe that will throw off… whatever it is.”

“I guess we could try,” I said. “But we’re already casting at full power. It would still be just one of us guiding the efforts, and then our concentration split.”

“Then what if we just… both cast it?”

“What like, twice in a row?”

“We’ve basically done that,” Midnight said. “I mean at the same time.”

“But wouldn’t that- if we got an image at all they might be offset in angle or. Hmm…” I furrowed my brow. “I guess we really don’t know what would happen. I think we should ask Calculator to be there in person, though.”

-----

Ultimately he had us wait until between sleep sessions to be in an optimal crime time. Though I don’t think he said ‘crime time’, but something like ‘higher than average rate of criminal activity’.

“It’s good that you thought of this idea now,” Calculator said. “If it was after another day, it would be suspicious. You might notice that I basically skipped a cycle. That was to indicate to him your fatigue- or your choice to give up. Now, he might still be on guard for such a thing, but the timing is still best to catch him performing some sort of activity. And if he is spending all day doing nothing at all…” Calculator shrugged. “That would not be the worst result. Though it’s a rather expensive way to deal with a single villain.”

“Yeah, I’d rather not spend forever just hanging out inside.” I couldn’t get experience like that. But more importantly, we couldn’t get revenge for Shockfire.

“So how do we do this?” Midnight asked.

“It was your idea,” I pointed out.

“Well, yeah. But do we stand on the same side? If I’m on your head, will we get a tilted angle? On the opposite side, will we get things backward?”

“Only one way to find out,” I said. “Where do you feel most comfortable?”

Midnight hopped up on my shoulder. “Here.”

“Great. Then we’ll synchronize our casting. It’s just like splitting a spell, we watch each other’s gathered mana. But we just… don’t split anything.”

It crossed my mind that, since this was an entirely untested thing, there was some chance it would cause unintended side effects like breaking our scrying focus. Which happened to be a massive piece of artificial diamond. But I figured it would be fine. Probably.

Scrying at 11 points of mana each. We weren’t really trying to combine the spells so much as we were throwing two things at the same point. And the only real thing we were supposed to return was light and sound, so it should all fit in the area.

Were the mists thicker, or was that just a coincidence of their particular arrangement? They certainly didn’t begin to clear any faster. But what was revealed was not only a view of Handface with his green scales, but also some of the room around him. A more limited view than normal, it extended perhaps a few feet around him. But it was there.

His reaction was about as expected. He certainly could sense the Scrying, but he might have been thrown off by the double. He pushed back against me, but not hard enough for me to lose my connection. I could feel some strain from Midnight as well. I wasn’t really looking at the image so much as simply holding my concentration.

I was the one who lost the connection first, and I could see the image degrade from what it was to basically just the man in question, and an unclear picture at that. It was only a second or two more before Midnight lost his connection as well.

“Hmm, interesting,” Calculator said. “That certainly proved useful.”

“I’m not gonna lie, I really didn’t see much,” I said.

“That is what the recordings are for. Come look.”

I did, and what I saw gave me a headache. “Ugh, the images are doubled up and slightly offset.”

“Yes. But you can still see some of the area around him. And what’s more, with some image compositing tricks we might be able to regain clear quality.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh yes. It might take our techs some time, but I’m certain we can get something. And look here,” he pointed.

“That’s uh… a couch?”

“It’s not just any couch. It’s a couch with a tag.”

I squinted. “I guess. I can’t read it though.”

“Me neither,” Calculator admitted. “But there’s enough of it that we can potentially figure out where Deimos has been shopping or heisting from. Or some of his associates.”

Well, this was why it was Calculator’s job to track him down from a few random cracks on walls of warehouses, and not mine.

“Good luck with that.”

“We shouldn’t need it,” he said. “But if you do have some magic for that…?”

“Nah. Fortune effects are more in the cleric area of expertise,” I said.

It was Midnight’s turn to sleep, which meant it was my turn to stare daggers at the large crystal, wishing I could punch people through Scrying. I just wanted some experience for all this work!

But I suppose I could punch people. In a place like this, someone had to be down at the gym training at all hours. And indeed, though it was odd hours, Meztli was there. Just perfect, we could train weapon skills. And she could also help us sort out our bruises when everything was over.

“Hey. Fight me,” I said.

“You mean spar with you?”

“Yeah. That.” I really had to admit that Comghall’s orcs had some great ideas in that field. Too bad all the ones here worked for Doctor Doomsday. No wait, that just meant I didn’t have to hold back to avoid people losing teeth. It just wasn’t good timing to fight any of them. Later, though. For sure.