Mage Among Superheroes

“Wow, this thing is smaller than I imagined,” I said as I stepped out of the vertical cylinder that had been our anchor point to Celmoth the last several times we had connected to the planet. I had to duck my head to get in through the portal and sort of slide out sideways.

“You’re lucky that you fit at all,” Jet commented. “Since it is not made for vertically oriented individuals.”

“Yeah… why is it taller, then?” I asked.

“Practical considerations,” she said.

“Right.” Midnight hopped down from my shoulder. The current room was just tall enough for me to stand up, but it wasn’t comfortable. I felt like my head would brush against it quite easily. “How do the mana levels feel, Midnight?” Having a second opinion was always good.

“We’ll have to close the Gate to know for sure,” Midnight said.

I nodded. That was true, we could easily be influenced by the connection to Earth. Since the two of us had brought everything we expected to need, we let the Gate close. What was the worst case scenario anyway? I could get trapped on a planet with my best buddy, just like he had been with me. Except I already knew people here.

“It feels pretty good?” Midnight said, tilting his head. “A bit low.”

“Let’s get out of this room to be certain,” I said. It didn’t look like it was going to get any more open, so I cast Reduce, cutting my height in half.

“You know,” Jet commented. “I at least expected a hello.”

Midnight scurried up and rubbed his head against his mother. “It’s good to see you mother. It’s just… whether or not we can return is kind of a big deal.”

I nodded. “If we can’t recover mana here, we will need to be very careful.” Then there was the small chance that magic wouldn’t work properly here- despite casting Reduce, which might have been possible due to the ambient mana coming with us. “But it is good to see you again, Jet.”

The hallways we were walking down were perhaps four and a half feet tall. For the two Celmothians ahead of me it was several times their head height, which was quite spacious. For me, it was a bit close. But at least I didn’t have to crouch or crawl. That said, I couldn’t keep Reduce active indefinitely. It would be somewhere around 18 mana per hour when natural recovery was 6. Even pairing with Midnight, that would leave us at a deficit. Assuming this place had ambient mana available, which it certainly seemed to now that we were away from the Gate location.

The hallway had windows on one side- though they were mostly on the lower third of the wall. I caught a glimpse of the outside, but it was when we got to a two-thirds high window that I had a proper angle to see Celmoth for the first time.

The buildings… well, they were indeed recognizable as buildings. I realized that even glass windows weren’t actually a guarantee, I’d just gotten so used to them on Earth that they seemed natural. While the general shape of buildings seemed to fit- rectangular prisms were fairly good for fitting things in- the Celmothian structures weren’t as obsessed with smooth outsides. I wasn’t just talking bricks, but significant protrusions. And lots of balconies, even on what I was pretty sure weren’t residential buildings.

In fact, there were even a few individuals climbing around on the outside of buildings. Not a ton compared to the ones I could see down on the surface streets below, but since the only time I saw people climbing on the outside of buildings on Earth or my previous world they were either committing or preventing crime, it was still a stark contrast.

I also noticed that there weren’t any cars on the streets, only Celmothians walking about. Which made sense, because why would they have cars… when there were flying things? All sorts of them were zooming about over the buildings, though they seemed to follow predetermined routes to some extent. At the very least, they weren’t cris-crossing with each other everywhere.

“How do those work?” I asked.

“Which things?” Jet asked, turning to look out the window.

“The flying things. Are they helicopters?” I thought I saw blades in them.

“Oh, it’s just standard antigrav tech. The propellers are backups in case of power failure,” she explained. “Autorotation allows them to descend with minimal harm. Even if the power grid has a simultaneous failure to individual vehicles, they can have soft landings.”

“I don’t get why the power grid matters,” I said.

“Well, the nets, obviously,” Jet said.

I furrowed my brow. “I don’t see any nets.” I looked at Midnight. “Is Translation working right?”

“They’re gravity nets, so you wouldn’t see them,” he replied. “They, uh… usually catch anything falling.”

Midnight was slightly nervous. It felt like… “Oh,” I nodded. “I understand. You sure have some pretty amazing technology. How do you get power for it all?”

“Cold fusion,” Jet commented.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. I didn’t understand it, of course, but I knew it was a theoretical- and not actually that cold- way to produce large amounts of energy. New Bay wasn’t too far away from it, and it seemed the Martians had cracked something big in terms of power generation, so it wasn’t weird that Celmoth had something like that. Well, it was weird, but to me it was the same kind of weird as cell phones.

“Your friend is difficult to impress,” Jet commented.

“He’s actually too impressed,” Midnight replied. “But also we live in a city which ranges from lower technology to… one guy who makes sustained portals all over to different dimensions. So unless you have a big mana geyser, he’s just going to smile and nod.”

I smiled and nodded. “It’s true. A year ago, the biggest piece of technology I knew about was full plate mail. Or perhaps specialized magical staves.” Well, it was a bit more than a year now, but still far short of a year and a half.

“I understand,” Jet said. “Many of our plans involve displaying such things, but if you are uninterested…”

“Just don’t expect me to understand,” I said.

“And what impresses him will be unusual,” Midnight said.

I shrugged. He was the one who seemed to be obsessed with canned foods. Then again, I could understand the reasoning behind that one.

Jet nodded, turning to address Midnight. “There are a lot of people who want to see you. I kept your arrival fairly private, but you should at least see some of them. And they’d no doubt like to meet your friend Turlough.”

“As long as it’s not too many at once. Turlough isn’t great with people.”

That was actually almost an overestimation of my social skills.

We passed by some other Celmothians as we came to what looked like another teleporter. Though I realized upon stepping inside that the internal arrangement was quite different. As it turned out, the one we got on was just an elevator carrying us upward.

“It is a good thing you can shrink yourself,” Jet commented. “There aren’t many vehicles that would have been… comfortable… at your normal size.”

We exited onto the roof, where there was a vehicle waiting. It looked quite like the drones people flew about, with four enclosed propellers around a central platform which appeared to mostly be a padded floor. There were a few metal poles sticking up from the platform as well. The central area was maybe five feet across and had an open top.

As we approached, Jet stretched out her paw, and the side of the vehicle seemed to peel away. I hadn’t yet gotten used to the suits that the Celmothians and now Midnight wore. While they were sometimes clearly visible, at the moment Jet’s seemed to blend in with her fur. Midnight’s, meanwhile, was incorporated into his Power Brigade outfit. Francois seemed to have done a grand job with that complicated task. It still retained the functionality to change its appearance, but only so much.

While it was weird from my perspective, Celmothians weren’t cats. The suits functioned as clothing more incidentally, since they had fur. Instead, they were clearly meant to be extra arms and the like. Jet was at the controls, using her front paws to perform some tasks while extra silvery ones tapped a few buttons.

I hadn’t even realized that we were already in the air until I turned to look. There had been no jerk of acceleration, we were just suddenly moving. Midnight and I were standing in among the various metal poles and I looked at him questioningly.

“They’re for grasping if you need it,” he said. “But again, mostly for emergencies given the inertial dampening.”

“You guys seem to have everything,” I said. I had also expected some sound from the vehicle, but it moved more or less silently- the main thing I heard was the wind passing us as we flew.

“For me, this is normal,” Midnight shook his head.

“No wonder you had trouble on Earth.”

I had expected the bustling city center to go on forever, but now that we were up above I could see quite a bit of natural terrain left. In some ways, it made sense. Individual Celmothians were bound to take up less space than humans, even if they had proclivities for vertical space.

“Not everyone likes being in dense city,” Midnight said. “And it’s easy enough to alternate between things.”

“I feel like Earth could make great use of a lot of this technology.”

“Or use it for harm,” Jet pointed out. “The supervillains in New Bay are not the only ones who cause harm. Not that I wish to imply that Celmothians are perfect, but that fellow from Extra has stated many good points about gradual adaptation. A rush to adapt could easily end up with things in the wrong hands.”

“Pretty sure that happens anyway,” I pointed out. “But it isn’t really my job to figure that out. Just to stop people when they’re being dumb about things.”

“You enjoy your life as a mercenary?” Jet asked.

“It is my main path to self-improvement, after all,” I replied.

“Yes. An odd conundrum. However, I am not one to say that martial prowess is not valuable. Especially as we are at war.”

I looked around. “I honestly could have forgotten that. It really doesn’t seem like it.”

“Most of the fighting happens away from the planet,” she pointed out. “And actual attacks are infrequent. It is a long term war, and neither side is willing to commit enough resources to finish things once and for all.”

“That sounds… troublesome,” I said. “Most people would not be happy with the threat of danger hanging over them all the time. It’s why New Bay has heroes.”

“It would be nice if we had some of those. Well, figures people could look up to. Our soldiers are all heroes in their own way, but they can’t get the recognition. Instead, people like me get far more recognition than we deserve.”

“People like you?”

“Generals,” Jet replied.

“Oh, that makes sense. I thought you were a queen or something.”

“... is that so?” Jet replied questioningly.

“Well, Midnight felt like a spoiled prince or something so I just kinda…” I shrugged. But hadn’t someone called him a prince as well?

“Aww come on I wasn’t that bad!” Midnight said.

“It took forever for you to properly accept food from me.”

“You were big and scary! Now you’re just… big.”

“Still, you couldn’t do much for yourself. Hey, why didn’t you have one of these suits on?”

“Because they’re not really necessary most of the time,” Midnight said. “Our doors and technology are made for Celmothians. I was just going to visit family, not to end up on another world.”

“Indeed,” Jet said. “It would be like you going around clad for battle at every moment.”

I understood what they were saying… but I didn’t get it. I literally got modifications from Francois so I could always wear my Power Brigade stuff. And their planet was the one at war!

Still, that explained why not all of the Celmothians I passed had their fancy suit things, or at least not anything obvious. Maybe they had something less complex for everyday usage. But if it was effectively combat gear… “Are you expecting an attack?”

“We were attacked during my visit to Earth,” Jet pointed out.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I understand you are the sort that draws trouble. I am not bothered, I just intend to be ready for it.”