Mage Among Superheroes

Despite acting as if I was an expert, throughout the course of all of my testing I only managed to properly identify two of our new portal power recruits, specifically the brother and sister. One was a barbarian, the other a mage. Beyond that, I determined one of those remaining were spellcasters and two were not. The final one hadn’t demonstrated any abilities in my presence.

That said, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out something about those non-spellcasters. The punk had put on a serious burst of speed while running, which didn’t fit many archetypes given the way that it happened. Clearly neither of the two were barbarians like the short guy. I was able to tick paladin and related things off the list as well. As for the asian guy, all I could say for sure was that he was some sort of stable martial class.

Looking at his records, they didn’t actually reveal much more. I was worried I might be biased towards a certain option, but… ‘moved with unnatural precision’ and ‘general fitness increase’ were not smoking guns. I’d get back to him eventually.

The punk was fairly clear, given her inciting incident. Apparently she had ‘punched through a tree’. The initial images I had looked more like she had punched into a tree leaving a significant crater, but the notes clarified that the image was of the backside of the tree, and the crater was actually bits that had been pushed out. Which would make her a monk. Simple enough.

That brought me to the pretty boy who was still a mystery. His initial incident was… ‘yelled loud enough to shatter a shelf full of booze in a bar’. Well, that sounded like an expensive way for it to go, but they weren’t too upset as he’d also broken some sort of crystal creature at the same time. Besides, super awakenings were usually covered by the city- which was a good reason for people to self-report instead of hiding things.

Technically, I could probably do a spell that would have the same results. It might even be the same spell- but he clearly wasn’t a mage. Further testing would be required, but I was definitely biased towards something with the totality of the circumstances added together. I’d have him try Sonic Lance if I thought he had enough mana for it. Or fatigue limit, really.

Then there was the tough looking lady. Her first thing was ‘creating an invisible barrier around another civilian’. That was the sort of thing that wasn’t easy to report, but the other circumstances helped significantly. First, she felt herself do it, and saw the effects as a small dragon lunged towards her protected stranger. A security camera happened to pick it up too. Most importantly, she’d been able to replicate it so it wasn’t the other individual involved. The chances of them picking up a portal power too seemed pretty high though, but that wasn’t my business.

Protecting people was one thing, enhancing herself was another. We confirmed that it was a different spell than Force Armor- and I didn’t find myself able to replicate it, which implied some things.

My new path of discovery started with her, as I had the feeling the Brigade would be most interested if I was right. “Have you ever tried to heal someone?” I asked.

“What like… with band aids?” the woman asked.

“Like with magic,” I asked.

“Well, it hasn’t really come up,” she admitted.

I nodded. “Alright. Midnight, if you could.”

“Yeah?” he asked as I took off my glove.

“Scratch me here,” I said, gesturing to the outside of my palm. There wasn’t really anything important there.

“... Alright,” Midnight said after only a short hesitation. Most likely, he’d considered the various routes for recovery that were available should this woman fail. “Good luck, Anielka.” There went my name ignorance again.

The scratch was not deep, but he was firm enough with his claws to make me bleed. I held my arm up so the woman could see it clearly. “So yeah. Try to fix that.”

“Huh. You just did that,” she said, her arms folded.

“Oh please, it’s not like I cut myself with a knife or something. This will go away on its own pretty easily. I’d still prefer you to try to heal it though or it will be slightly inconvenient for a few days.”

“So I just… heal it?” she tilted her head. “How would I even do that? Do I like, think about stitching together the skin or…?” she mumbled to herself, but I felt her naturally gathering mana… which then failed to resolve into a spell. “Dangit. I almost had that.”

“Careful,” I said when she seemed about to start again. “Don’t forget you can only do this stuff a couple times.”

“Yeah it sucks,” she said, sighing. “How do you function?”

“With ten times your mana pool,” I replied.

“I think I have enough for another attempt,” she said.

“I’ll catch you if you pass out,” I said.

“...” for some reason, that didn’t seem to reassure her. Maybe she was the sort that didn’t trust new people easily.

But ultimately, she managed to cast something resembling a spell on her second attempt. And it… almost completely fixed my clawmark.

I wiped away the blood. “Yeah, that’s definitely a healing spell.” Everyone else crowded around, interested in seeing- but there wasn’t much to look at. The parallel marks showed skin that was in its stage of regrowth, a lighter green than normal. I expected in a few days it would look like nothing ever happened. I think I’d skipped the scarring phase. “Pretty sure it should be able to do more than that even with your mana pool, but not everything is going to be perfect your first time.” I looked to the other guy. “You. You’re next.”

“Armin,” Midnight said unhelpfully. Though maybe it was better for him to know someone knew his name.

“Right. ’m not sure I can do that,” he said as he stepped forward. “I was able to feel the magic, but that was true with other stuff before and I couldn’t replicate it.”

“Which things?” I asked.

“The speed enhancement thing,” he said. “Except for her thing,” he pointed to the punk. “And well, his,” he pointed to the asian guy. “But I feel like that’s not magic in the same way.”

“Firebolts?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he shook his head. “Nor the electricity thing.”

“Right,” I said, removing my other glove. “Midnight, this side.” I held out my hand again.

“Good thing I know pain doesn’t really bother you. I don’t really like hurting my friends.”

“It’s just like exercise,” I said. “Except I probably won’t end up healthier after this.”

Another set of parallel lines, all done in a careful motion. I knew he could dig far deeper than that, but he also didn’t chicken out and only go for the top layer of skin. I radiated pride to my buddy.

The pretty boy stared at my hand. And stared. And did nothing. “Hey, you alright? You’re not squeamish around blood, are you?”

“Oh, no,” he shook his head. “I just don’t know how to start making magic happen.”

“You gather mana,” I said, demonstrating. “Then you form it into the spell you want,” I cast Mage’s Reach, as it was a rather safe spell.

“Okay, but I don’t really know how to do that. Aside from the one spell that’s worked, I mean.”

“How does that one work?”

“Well I- hold on.” He stepped back. “It’s dangerous up close. And it will still be loud…” he looked around the training room.

“We can turn on the sound dampening mode,” I suggested. That was enough for the room to subtly change a moment later. I could feel it, since it was super tech. I didn’t know if there was someone watching or if it was an automatic response, but it didn’t really matter too much.

“Right. That should do it I guess.” He still stepped back a few more steps. “To do this spell all I have to do is…” he took a deep breath. “Haaaaah!” he shouted, and the effects were clear, being much more than a loud noise. It was also clear to me when he gathered mana.

“Yeah, so, you’re gonna have to talk.”

“Was I not explaining things clearly enough?” he asked.

“I mean to do magic,” I said.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he admitted.

“Speak to activate magic.”

“What, like…” he gestured towards me. “I just yell ‘heal’ and…?”

I looked at the side of my hand. “Try again with more intent.” He’d definitely gathered some mana though.

“Be healed!” he said.

I hadn’t actually meant louder, but if it made sense to him… that was all well and good. “Yep. That’s it,” I said.

“Wait, really?” He staggered forward, clearly close to running out of mana. “I have to… shout to make magic happen?”

“I bet you could sing,” I said. Either way, this guy was definitely a bard, which didn’t actually make my job training him any easier. Because frankly, I only knew surface level details.

“I’ll… consider it,” he said.

I looked around the room. “Bard. Barbarian. Mage.” I passed over the asian guy. “Monk. Cleric. We have a pretty good diversity of classes here.”

That one guy frowned. “And what about my class?”

“Well, it’s only a guess for you. But probably warrior.”

The bard frowned. “Hey, don’t tell me we’re all going to be named after our classes, like you?”

“It’s not up to me,” I shook my head. “But probably not.” I shrugged, “They’d have to make her Mage II or something if they did.”

Mage II clearly didn’t like that idea. “We need to sign a group petition to get decent monikers before it’s too late.”

“Good luck with that,” I said. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. Anyway… now that we have some idea about your abilities, we can give you guys some training plans. I’ll also try to make sure each of you are able to measure your mana properly so we can keep track of your level, since you don’t have status windows. Unless any of you walked through the portals?”

Everyone shook their heads. That was probably a good thing. Otherwise, they might not have made it back. Inconvenient for their personal growth from now on, however.

“Now, I am going to go with the assumption that none of you have any Aspects,” I said. “If you experience a complete lack of progress, we’ll reassess. But otherwise we’ll have a core training regimen of fitness and sparring, with other activities tailored to your particular classes.”

“And mine would be?” the skinny warrior asked.

“Probably more fitness.”

“Alright,” he nodded. Well, at least he didn’t seem to mind that.

“What about Aspects?” Mage II asked. “What are those? Where do they come from?”

“Good question,” I said, nodding.

“... are you going to answer?”

“Oh. Right. Aspects indicate an area where your experience growth is increased, usually at the exclusion of other potential training areas. So we’ll just hope you don’t have those.”

“And where do those come from?” Mage II asked again.

Orcs were more prone to having Aspect of the Barbarian. That was my only real information. So I didn’t answer directly. “It seems to be some combination of genetics and culture. And you might have to be born in my old world for that to mean anything.” Or the old dimension, I supposed, since it wasn’t just the material plane where people got Aspects. Or maybe there were a bunch of portal powers with Aspects running around right now.

“So what about my training?” asked the small barbarian. “Am I supposed to… get angry?”

“You’d probably want to learn to control it so you can use it when it’s most valuable,” I said. “You’ll also experiment with what forms that power can be channeled into.”

“What about me?” asked the punk monk. “Do I… meditate and junk?”

“Potentially, yeah,” I nodded.

“Sounds dumb.”

“So you don’t like punching holes in trees?” I asked.

“I’d rather just bash someone’s head in with a pipe,” she said. “Villains, obviously.”

Obviously. Though I would be willing to bet she could do that too. And that we could get her something better than a pipe.