Mage Among Superheroes

One thing I very much appreciated about Celmoth was high ceilings and low furniture. In fact, I shouldn’t even necessarily call some of it furniture, as it was more like cushions and pillows spread about on the floor. That wasn’t to say they didn’t have taller pieces of furniture, but rather that they arranged things in various different levels of verticality.

And so I was able to sit while we met Midnight’s father and one of his brothers. It was good that I wasn’t sitting on anything that had limited weight it could support, or it would have doubtless buckled under my weight. As it turns out, most furniture isn’t made for having twenty people on it at once, and that multiplier of twenty might have been counting heavier Celmothians.

I was able to move into position easily enough with Reduce- which also minimized my weight for ten minutes or so- but as it turned out most social interactions were longer than that. Most of everything really.

“I’m Leaf,” said an individual who clearly missed out on the family naming conventions.

“And I’m Ebony,” said another.

Both were black furred. If I recalled correctly, the second one was his brother. I didn’t really have an instinctive way to determine which of them were older, as my experience with both cats and Celmothians was relatively recent. Strangely, we didn’t tend to have familiars around the tower. Was there a reason for that? Mine was that I didn’t have the money or inclination to care for an animal. Which is why it was nice I didn’t actually end up with an animal.

“I’ve heard you took good care of my son,” said Leaf, confirming his position. “I’m sure Jet has already said it enough, but we appreciate it.”

“Thank you,” I replied, instead of saying that I didn’t know that they existed or really care at the time. I saw Midnight and I helped Midnight. That was all.

“So…” Midnight helped direct the conversation. “I haven’t had much chance to hear about what you’ve been up to lately.”

“Oh, you know,” Leaf flicked his tail in a manner quite like Midnight. “Just dealing with the normal bureaucracy. Nothing as exciting as… learning magic?”

“Something like that,” Midnight said. “Though at first I just kind of knew it. Then we continued learning together. And what about you?” he turned to his brother.

“We’ve been refining some of the prosthetics,” he said. “Some of them were a bit rough on their users.”

I frowned. Apparently, my question was clear enough to Midnight, so I didn’t even have to ask.

“Regrowing limbs isn’t as easy as organs,” he explained. “They can be grown independently. And even if we grow a limb, it’s difficult to connect properly. Or something like that,” he looked towards his brother.

Ebony nodded. “Realigning biological nerve growth to match the subject is more difficult than constructing adjustable prosthetics. It’s much cheaper to make one, and they’re not particularly worse than biological versions.”

“Well of course you would say that,” Jet joked.

“So, we’ve heard most of what you’ve told your mother,” Leaf said. “But how have things been with you?”

“I can shoot lightning,” Midnight said. “And together we opened a rift in space that brought us here from another planet. So uh… weird. It’s been weird.”

“Wow that’s uh… that’s a lot,” Ebony replied.

“I can also store things in an extradimensional pocket,” Midnight said, demonstrating by pulling out a can of tuna.

“Hmm.” Ebony’s initial reaction was little more than that, but the way he flexed his claws indicated a greater reaction. “That’s… not supposed to work here.”

“Magic works just fine here,” Midnight said.

“Yes, but dimensional distortions… should not.”

Midnight shrugged, “It does, though.”

Jet nodded. “Indeed, the greater concern would be the ability to travel here from outside.”

I frowned. “Do you have problems with… people teleporting here?”

“Bunvorixians have teleportation technology too,” Midnight said. “So there are systems in place to reject outside interference with our systems.”

“It’s more than just that,” Ebony added. “For security reasons I won’t go into too much detail, but access to our network isn’t the biggest concern. Freestanding teleportation is, deploying troops into our secure facilities.”

“Yes,” Jet confirmed. “We mostly believed ourselves proof against such things, until your initial experiment with Midnight’s room.”

“Well, it’s a different method,” I said. “Extra could probably provide you with something, though? They have to deal with power based things and there’s overlap with magic.” I furrowed my brow. “... Why doesn’t anyone have powers here?”

“What do you mean?” Leaf asked. “We’re not from or associated with your world.”

“I mean like on Earth. And… how have all the accidents been one-directional to Earth?”

“A good question,” Jet said. “One I will be consulting with our mutual acquaintance Zorphax about as much as possible.”

“How’s that going?” I asked. “I heard you set up communication somehow.”

“Yes. However, it is delayed significantly. More than your ‘Sending’ magic, but with greater throughput.”

Ebony shifted. “Well, it’s probably not that big of a concern considering your unique abilities.”

Unique is not what I would have called myself. “Any mage could do this eventually. Or several other classes.”

“Then is it a good thing we don’t have any conflicts with your people,” Leaf replied.

Jet nodded. “And the one issue is locked up in an Extra facility where they can actually contain magic.”

My initial impressions had been that people on Earth weren’t good at containing magic, but that was because they had assumed I was non-powered and I’d gone with regular police. Extra had only shown up later.

“They can handle Spot unless someone tries to break him out,” I said.

“I believe he’s being kept in an Extra facility off-planet,” Jet replied.

“That probably makes it harder for Darkstargirl to get there.” Could she fly through space? More specifically, could she breathe in space? “Well, I don’t think anyone wants to piss off Extra anyway.” They had access to all of the special stuff.

Eventually our conversation wound down. People asked about what Midnight was up to, and he asked about them. I might have checked out somewhere along the way, though.

“Speaking of unique abilities…” Jet commented as we seemed to be wrapping up. “Tomorrow, we were hoping you could meet with the rescuees. They’ve been exhibiting strange abilities and… communication from a distance has not been very helpful for figuring out what’s going on.”

I already had one group of trainees, but I supposed we could get this group set up independently as well. And frankly, I found it more appealing than being a tourist, even though I probably should want to see the world and the technology here.

“Alright,” I nodded. “They should have status windows to help, though,” I pointed out.

“Status windows?” Jet asked.

Had we not told them about that? I could have sworn that was part of the explanation we gave with Sir Kalman. But that was a while ago, so maybe it wasn’t. “Well, it lets people know what class they have, experience, unlocked skills or spells, and available points,” I said. “It’s quite useful.” I looked at Midnight.

“I thought we said it too! I just… don’t remember specifically doing it.”

Jet shrugged her whole body. “They were quite overstimulated from the various events. Perhaps it was simply a detail that they glossed over.”

Or we forgot. But there wasn’t anything we could do about it now if it was our fault.

-----

There were more people in the Celmothian group we had rescued than there were in our group of trainees back in the Power Brigade. And even though some of them apparently were unable to show up- they could have been from very different parts of the planet, after all- they still maintained that lead.

There was quite a variety of looks among them, including some patterns I hadn’t seen on Earth cats… which didn’t mean much. Celmothians weren’t cats, and I didn’t even know if these were natural fur patterns.

This time, it was Midnight’s job to take charge, with me guiding him. Mostly because I didn’t want to, but also because the Celmothians would feel more comfortable with him.

We were meeting at a large outdoor training field. A military one that had required us to pass through multiple checkpoints to arrive- on the ground, no less. Flying in seemed likely to get anyone shot down instantly.

“Prince!” said the one I had formerly dubbed Steve, who had tiger stripes. “We would like to express our gratitude once more for rescuing us!”

Aha. I knew someone said it. Jet was escorting us everywhere, which made me more comfortable since Midnight was occupied. “See?”

I felt a third hand shimmer of emotion, though it was not that strong. “I think it’s this particular fellow’s proclivities. We did have a monarchy some generations ago, however.”

“He said something about wizards. Did you have wizards?”

“Those are old tales,” Jet said. “I’m sure you have some fairy tales in your world.”

I was fairly certain that ‘fairy tales’ wasn’t the literal meaning, but it fit.

“I’m not going to say all of the old tales are true,” I replied. “But I would like to remind you my old world just has magic. And fairies. Frankly, I’m more surprised what things that people don’t have stories about.”

“Hmm. Well, as far as reliable history goes,” Jet continued. “Celmoth has never had ‘wizards’ or ‘magic’. The only supernatural feature we have would be the bonds.”

Oh yeah. That totally counted. In that way, everyone had powers. But clearly they weren’t exclusive of class abilities, since Midnight got them through being a familiar and others got them… the abnormal way. Which was to say, without first being born in that world.

“Alright!” Midnight said. “We’re going to provide a series of tests for you before we ask what abilities you have managed to access previously.” Rather than trying to figure out their class unbiased, it was to see what sort of style people leaned towards. Since they had the status window, we could just ask them that other thing.

I shifted, and Jet swayed on my shoulder though I didn’t feel there was any risk of her falling. “I find it hard to believe my son rides on your shoulder,” she commented.

“It’s not that high up,” I said.

“It really is,” she replied. “Not a concern for most Celmothians, of course, but near the limits of our typical falling heights.”

“He did need steps down from the counter,” I agreed.

“He trusts you. And you trust him.”

“We’re buddies,” I agreed. “I don’t think anything can take that away from us now.”

While I had pictures in my head of all cats being good at running around through obstacle courses, just like humans some were less fit than others. Many probably worked office jobs or something similar.

At the end of the day, we learned there was a higher rate of artificers among them than I would expect… anywhere else, really. But in this place where technology was so prevalent, consciously or subconsciously connecting to that thing made sense. I was kind of surprised there were no mages among them, since they’d seen Midnight and I using magic.

However, Steve was a paladin. Maybe the others got inspiration from different supers who had been with us? I could vaguely make connections… but it really didn’t matter. All of them had classes. The only real anomaly was that one of them had an Aspect. I had been fairly convinced that couldn’t happen.

It was one of the artificers, and apparently he had Aspect of the Tinker. Which was… something I hadn’t heard of. I could only shake my head when Midnight asked. “Most likely it will mean an experience boost in a particular area while lowering others. Most aren’t all or nothing like Aspect of the Barbarian.”

Perhaps we could figure out what his aspect was. With proper status screens we could see and measure experience for them, so at the very least we could determine if things were worth no experience over the course of a few days.

Most of this crowd wasn’t really equipped for any sort of sparring, though a couple of them would most likely be taking it up if they wanted to improve their combat related classes. Or they could just… continue their normal jobs as accountants or whatever. That wasn’t something I had to concern myself with.