Mage Among Superheroes

“Why did that work?!” Midnight asked, after having frozen a Bunvorixian disc, toppling it and causing it to snap behind us as we scurried away. “They’ve got universal barriers!”

“I highly doubt they’re universal,” I said as we ran, Haste making it much easier to keep track of the two remaining ships. I was currently angling towards Jet because she was barely avoiding an assault by another ship hovering over her.

Midnight leapt forward from my shoulder, and I decided it was probably unnecessary to follow him into the danger zone. Thus, I focused my attention on the ship while he rushed forward. Since it worked moments ago, I cast Blizzard on the next disc. Once again I saw a large vehicle immediately become coated in frost, though they seemed to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors and didn’t continue blasting their attacks.

That bought them a few moments as they hovered unsteadily. I cast Firebolt, hoping to create more stress in the metal hull- but the barrier properly stopped that spell. Still, the ship wasn’t able to do much more than hover and Midnight had already reached Jet, casting Haste on her.

They were already out from beneath the disc, and Jet had fired a series of shots from her suit. Once again orbs of light exploded in cross shaped patterns. With the ship’s limited mobility, they were able to impact the same location and break through the barrier- cracking both the ice and the ship’s hull.

There was one more threat circling towards us, until a beam nearly half a wide as it cut through it at an angle, completely obliterating it.

I couldn’t hear Jet’s radio, but she was clearly responding to some sort of communication. It took her a couple moments to calibrate her speaking pace, and she ultimately repeated herself. “Yes, we’re all fine here.” A pause. “We’ll gladly take an escort on the way back.” Jet trotted over towards me with Midnight. “I’m impressed. Those may have only been smaller ships, but they’re still difficult to defeat.”

I shrugged, “Eh, Midnight was the one who figured out the right thing.”

“Indeed,” Jet said, looking towards her son. “How did that work anyway? Ice projectiles should be blocked by the barriers as much as everything else.”

“Well you see,” Midnight said. “I have no idea.”

They both looked at me.

“Blizzard doesn’t throw ice,” I replied. “So I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Where did the ice come from, then?” Jet asked.

“Oh, we just made things really cold. And so ice forms naturally on such a surface.”

“You just… made things cold,” Jet said.

“Yeah. With cold magic,” I nodded. “That’s how it works. If it threw shards of ice it would mostly puncture things instead of doing cold damage.”

“That's…” Jet narrowed her eyes. “How do you even protect against something like that?”

“Good insulation. Energy ward. Get behind cover. That sort of thing.”

“Concerning,” Jet said as we got close to the vehicle that had carried us to this park.

“Oh. We forgot the picnic stuff,” I said.

Midnight shook his head. “Pretty sure that was one of the craters.”

“Too bad,” I replied.

“A quite acceptable loss,” Jet replied. “Though I have many concerns. Especially how and why they chose to attack here and now.” We climbed into our vehicle and set our destination back towards the city. “The two of you are once again quite calm. You must have seen a lot of battle.”

“Oh yeah,” Midnight said. “At least weekly, aside from daily sparring. Except for the rare exceptions.”

Jet nodded. “I’m glad you have the tools to survive. That Haste is quite convenient, though I found my suit seemed sluggish to react.”

“Hmm. Well, usually equipment should be sped up…” I pondered.

“Aren’t there user safety restrictions?” Midnight asked. “Speaking of… I couldn’t get my suit to activate weapons.”

“I’ll show you later,” Jet said. She furrowed her brow again. Another incoming message? “I have just received foul news.” She looked towards the two of us. “The Bunvorixians have just a few hours ago launched an attack to free Spot from his containment facility on Mars.”

“That’s… significant,” I said. “And a stupid idea.”

“The attack seems to have been successful,” Jet noted.

“Yeah, but now Extra’s gonna be really mad,” I said.

“I’m more concerned about something else,” Midnight said. “Like, how did a sufficient amount of Bunvorixian forces get there or even know about it?”

Jet seemed to find that troubling as well. “They must have more advanced interstellar transportation options available…” she grimaced. “It is not merely a short hop over to the Sol system. And of course the security breach here… it’s not impossible for a few small ships to slip close unnoticed, but their ability to target this location? Very few know those plans.”

“Yeah, though Spot might have been able to find you.”

“Explain,” Jet said imperatively.

“Did you feel someone watching you before they showed up?”

“I felt something when we entered the park,” Jet confirmed. “But I thought little of it since we were in public.”

“We need to find a mirror,” I said. “Because if it was that, you need to fight against it next time.”

She flicked her tail. “I have not previously encountered circumstances where not wanting people to watch you actually stopped it.”

“Yeah well, magic,” I said. “Of course, it could be something else. But with Spot being freed and having met you, it’s not crazy. Assuming they could send a message quickly from wherever they were.”

“If they reached Mars, a message would be trivial,” Jet said. “Though I am concerned about both. We only recently established a connection through your help. What advantages do they have that they managed such earlier? I am also concerned for your safety with this enemy combatant being freed.”

“Eh, it’s not a big deal. It’s just one more guy trying to kill us,” I said. “Also, it will be very difficult for him to do stuff now that he’s caused direct trouble with Extra.”

“I hope for your sake that you’re correct,” Jet replied.

-----

“Alright, this is a pretty simple test,” I said. “In a few moments, you should feel someone watching you. Try to determine if it’s similar to that feeling you had before, and then resist it. We’ll try a few times so you can get used to it.”

Celmothian mirrors weren’t exactly the same as on Earth or the ones in my previous world, but none of that actually mattered. After all, the best Scrying devices were decidedly not mirrors. Of course, we weren’t going to get a stupidly sized artificial diamond here so a simple mirror was good enough.

Jet was left in another room as Midnight and I worked, just to avoid biasing her senses. Midnight went first, causing the swirling patterns to reveal his mothers. She twitched and looked around, then I felt the pressure second hand as she resisted. It only took her a few moments to completely negate the spell.

“Pretty good,” Midnight muttered. “But I can do better.” Midnight went again, and the wrestling match indeed lasted longer- though the image never took its clearest form.

I was next, and while Jet now had some practice resisting a Scrying spell she only had the experience of tangling with Midnight. While our actual power was the same, our exact technique was not. She held off for a time in between our first tests.

Then we swapped back to Midnight to keep her off guard. He had managed to improve his mana pool significantly with the new practice techniques, making his maximum pool just enough to manage the third attempt at full power.

We finished with one more from me, at which point it only took her a few moments to counter me. We couldn’t really do much more except attempt again at a random time of the day to try to catch her off guard.

“That’s quite odd,” Jet said when we came out. “But it is indeed what I felt before, except clearly a different presence.”

“You can feel who it is?” Midnight asked. “That’s great.”

“Well, not exactly. But we’re family so… it was easier to make the distinction. And that extends to you indirectly, Turlough.”

“I wonder if it would be easier to Scry on you, if you didn’t resist,” I said. “I know for certain that as my familiar, I would gain more information about the area around Midnight.”

“I’d rather not need to know,” Jet said. “But it is something useful to know. My concern is his ability to target other generals or important personnel.”

“Unfortunately,” I admitted. “He probably can. Though it will be more difficult for those he hasn’t met. And if he’s still hanging around Earth instead of here, I would expect a certain failure rate and time lag.”

Jet nodded. “Indeed, if we hadn’t been taking a relaxed picnic we would have been gone before anything could come of it. But we still need to do something about this.”

“Ask Extra,” I said. “People on Earth have just started dealing with this issue. Protective equipment is probably something they would be willing to share or exchange or… however they do that kind of stuff. Worst case, the Brigade would probably sell you some schematics. I think they can make that stuff without powers.” I wasn’t actually sure, though, because almost everything in New Bay I interacted with had powers associated with it. And by almost everything, I meant except coffee shops and other places where I got food.

“Or the trainees,” Midnight pointed out. “Since most of the casters can probably use Nondetection.”

Oh, good point. I should have thought of that, since we were using that on ourselves every day. Then again, I might have been just moments away and Midnight got there first.

-----

Two weeks wasn’t much to visit an entire planet, and frankly we didn’t try. I got to see some of Celmothian culture, meet some of Midnight’s family, and get into a life and death battle. So overall an excellent trip. Could have done without the low ceilings, but magic helped with that.

“I wish you could stay longer,” Jet said.

Midnight rubbed his head against hers. “You know we can’t. I’ve set up a whole new life. But we can still visit occasionally.”

“I don’t want to become a needy mother,” Jet replied. “And I suppose it’s not much worse than you moving to the next town over… but you have to remember to keep in contact.”

“I know,” Midnight said. “Though you can still keep working on official connections.”

“An excellent motivation.”

While we could almost certainly just Gate from anywhere, it felt more correct to return to where we had arrived. For consistency and stability, if nothing else.

Midnight and I shared the cost, and a moderately sized portal opened up. We didn’t need something overly large, after all.

I noticed something odd as we began walking through, and after fully stepping into the hall it was more obvious. There were a half dozen armed soldiers standing ready in the hall- including some martians with odd but doubtless quite effective gear. They took a careful look at Midnight and I as we arrived, seemingly ready to act if we didn’t check out.

Oh right. The thing with Spot probably had Extra on their toes. While I doubted anyone would want to come uninvited to their fancy portal place, it still made some sense to improve security. That increase seemed to include the rest of the building.

As we left the receiving hall, an assistant came up to us. “Mage and Familiar. Zorphax wished to speak to you upon your arrival.”

I nodded. “Of course. We’ll go see him, if he’s available.”

“He said as soon as you arrived. I’ll just send a message ahead.”

I knew where his office was already, though this time a pair of guards escorted us. Possibly for our safety, maybe for his. Hopefully for both.

“Good, you’re back,” Zorphax said. “And we appreciate you keeping to your stated schedule. Especially in times such as this.” The small green man was almost completely hidden behind piles of paper on his desk. “I’m sure you’ve heard about Spot?”

“Yeah,” Midnight said. “He escaped.”

“Something like that,” Zorphax nodded. “Which means that Extra, Mars, and New Bay might be officially at war. That’s still being decided, but… Bunvorix didn’t attempt any diplomatic methods to have their citizen released. Not that we would have done so without some sort of major penalty, given his criminal convictions.”

“Is he still around Mars? Or Earth?” I asked.

“A good question to which I have no answers,” Zorphax said. “Their cloaking systems defeated even Martian technology, which is a problem for… reasons I won’t be getting into. Anyway, I just wanted to warn you. Other than that, I am sorry to say that we’ll have to be restricting travel for the moment. It will likely take longer to approve any trips. I know, it’s not your fault things are this way… but making it look like we have control of something will appease the higher ups.”

“Sounds to me like they shouldn’t have let their secure facility get broken into,” I replied. “So how did it happen?”

“Classified, I am afraid,” Zorphax said. His eyes were pure black and thus difficult to read, but his tone of voice made it very clear that was the end of things. “But don’t worry. We’re handling it.”

“So this bumped Spot up the danger ratings, right?”

“... We’d still very much prefer if he was brought in alive,” Zorphax said.

“Don’t worry,” I replied. “Unless he goes too far like Handface, it won’t be an issue.” As for Darkstargirl, obviously we wouldn’t be holding back in the slightest if we even wanted to cause her a headache. She was too strong… maybe we needed to come up with some specific counters. Though if we got through any more fights with her or Gloom we could expect boatloads of experience, which would narrow that gap.