Mage Among Superheroes

After returning to Earth, Midnight and I got back to our schedule fairly quickly. “Is it weird?” I asked. “Visiting home again after so long?” This wasn’t some sort of cosmic insight I had, nor would the idea have come to me naturally. Instead, the bond made things more clear.

“In a way,” Midnight said. “I think the weirder part of everything is how normal everything here has become. I only felt like things were normal when we were getting attacked. Not sure how I’m supposed to react to that.”

“Well, half of that is probably me,” I shrugged. “But you’ve had over a year to get used to this lifestyle. Suddenly going back to something else will always be weird. Plus, we were doing touristy stuff instead of whatever you normally did.”

“... I’m not gonna lie,” Midnight replied. “It wasn’t that important. I was still trying to figure out my purpose. Now I have one here, protecting people. Except… I also want to do that for my homeworld? I guess I never really thought that much about the war because it never reached the cities.”

“You’re in luck,” I said. “They might be bringing the war here. Or to Mars or something,” I shrugged. “But if the Bunvorixian military bothered to free Spot he must be important somehow, so dealing with him will solve two problems.”

“Only if it doesn’t involve him getting broken out again.”

“We just need to make sure it costs them a lot to get him out. Also, Extra will be more prepared for military involvement.”

“We should learn more details about how he got out…” Midnight said.

“Too bad it’s classified, for now,” I shrugged. “We can tell Extra and the brigade that ice magic is good against some of their ships, though.”

“Hopefully it will apply to other ships,” Midnight agreed. “Though if it becomes a persistent problem I would expect them to build around it.”

“Let’s say they can,” I nodded. “Super tech is pretty amazing, so I wouldn’t doubt it. Or I guess it’s just properly advanced tech. Anyway, how much do you think it would cost to apply to all of their ships?”

“... It would either be trivial if it’s simply an algorithm update to the barrier functionality, or unbearably expensive if it requires modifying the structure in any major way.”

“Right?” I nodded. “All for what, a handful of specific people? That said, we might expect that any ships specifically meant to come after us will fix those weaknesses. Though they’d have to report back for that.”

“There’s probably some sort of limited automatic transmissions,” Midnight pointed out. “Though whether it would be valuable or not is a different question. I imagine the Celmothian military is keeping things pretty well under wraps on their part.”

So they had some information. None of their ships returning would make it more difficult to figure out what happened to a couple specific ones. We only had to be concerned if they specifically modified ships to come after us. Which I actually thought was pretty likely. What other spells would be difficult for tech to respond to?

-----

Being invited back to Coon Meadows by Ceira was unexpected considering what had happened last time. I said as much when Midnight and I arrived, finding her already there with Cel and Bun.

“Yeah, I’ve already thought about this stuff a lot,” she replied. “What kind of danger I’m in by associating with you. There was the whole Doctor Doomsday thing and then this thing with Dark Star.” She shook her head, then gestured to the dead patch of land. “Then I think about this, and how it’s not weird in New Bay. It’s the city that is dangerous, not my friends. Though I didn’t exactly come to this conclusion on my own. Cel and Bun were a big part of things.”

“Oh, in what way?” Midnight asked.

“Well, after the incident… Bun was hurt pretty bad. I was able to patch him up, but I didn’t want to go out again. Then they literally dragged me out so they could train to get stronger.”

“Great,” I said. “Want some help with that?”

“I do, actually,” Ceira said. “But before you say what you’re probably going to say, I’d prefer to stay away from a career doing it. They want to be able to protect us and friends, but I’m not really ready to take on some sort of responsibility for the city. I know it might not make sense but-”

“Okay,” I said. “You want to train together but not be a hero or mercenary.”

“Yeah basically,” Ceira agreed. While we were talking, she was bending down and using small amounts of magic throughout the burnt area of the park.

“So what’s your schedule like?”

“Well, I’m busy like… two hours per day with my new work and the rest is pretty much open. Though I can’t use much mana near either end because of that same work.”

“Did you take up the offer for healing work?” Midnight asked.

“Yeah…” Ceira nodded. “It’s uh… I have no idea how regular people in the industry handle it. I don’t really deal with emergencies, mostly anonymous supers with old injuries for the most part. On my end it’s not that bad because I get to see people come away healthy but… sometimes they’re pretty bad. Did you know it can take multiple Regenerate spells to regrow limbs?”

“I did not,” I admitted. “Though to be fair it’s quite far from my area of expertise.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Older injuries are harder to get started too. Some days I only manage to heal one person. I don’t deal with my waiting list but I hear it’s booked out for like six months. That’s like a thousand people!” Ceira waved her arms above her head. “It’s crazy.”

“So how many people is that per day?” Midnight asked.

“It’s three people in the morning and three at night,” Ceira explained. “I have enough mana for two casts in a row, then I wait to regenerate enough mana for a third.”

“There are ways to improve your efficiency,” I said.

“Yeah, I know,” Ceira said. “More improvements will help, but only so much.”

“Well, I actually mean Multicasting. Though I guess that would require you to have a fatigue point far beyond what I’ve seen. Though if you could split the costs with your animal companions you might be able to manage it. If they have mana.”

“No luck with that so far,” Ceira shook her head. “I can cast anything I have on all three of us at once, but they don’t seem to work like familiars in terms of casting spells.”

“Well, nobody’s supposed to be quite like Midnight anyway,” I admitted. “Rob is more typical.”

“Rob…?” Ceira asked. She reached down into the soil with her magic and a small tree sprouted to knee height almost immediately.

“It’s Jerome’s cleaning robot,” Midnight clarified. “He made Rob his familiar.”

“Cool, I guess,” Ceira shrugged. “How does that work?”

“Constructs receive a certain level of imbued intelligence,” I explained. “Other than that they’re like animal familiars. That means having their own mana pools and assisting with spellcasting and the like.”

“Seems like cheating,” Ceira said. “Doesn’t that just double your mana pool?”

I shook my head. “Only someone like Midnight who has the initiative to train on their own will grow quickly, and with the caveat that they’ll always be weaker than the Mage because of experience sharing.”

“Not to be rude, but doesn’t that mean Midnight is kind of worse off as your familiar?”

Midnight shook his head. “I wouldn’t say so. I don’t think my progress is hindered in any way, and instead I get to feed off of Turlough’s upgrades, not to mention the other benefits of the bond such as sharing spells cast on us. If my experience is slower somehow, that only really limits my mana pool which is already becoming less of an issue.”

“Anyway,” I said. “It does seem that Regenerate will be difficult to Multicast even if your companions could do it. So I suppose you’re mostly limited by upgrades and mana pool. Speaking of which, you had methods to improve that?”

“I have a skill called Plant Attunement that I’m fairly sure contributes to my maximum. And I regenerate mana faster in places like this.” She looked down at the burnt ground. “Or at least like this park is supposed to be. I’m hoping to tend this place back to health pretty soon.”

“Do you heal people here?” I asked.

“Uh, no. They want things done at a secure facility. As you can imagine, crippled heroes tend to have more than a few enemies… though that’s not entirely the case.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, not everyone I heal is a combat super. Some of them aren’t even supers at all but just rich people. It kind of pisses me off that I’m treating them but I guess everyone has a price for them to sell out and I found mine. I’m not going to tell you how much but it’s a lot.”

“Okay,” I said. “So why is that a problem?”

“Because other people deserve treatment more!”

Midnight cleared his throat to share his thoughts. “You shouldn’t be faulted for choosing what you want to do with your own powers. Especially not by yourself. If you feel bad, then simply make sure you charge them enough to earn sufficient income for yourself while also using that money on projects that will help more people.”

“Or I could directly help people…” Ceira said, hanging her head. “Also you don’t have to worry about me being paid enough. It honestly feels like too much.”

“Don’t burden yourself with being unable to solve all of the world’s problems,” I said. “The world is big and has many faults… even from those who overall seem to have the best interests of the people in mind. You remember my friend who was hurt?”

“... I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” Ceira said.

“That was entirely not the point,” I said. It was already too late, so I continued with what I had intended. “There is technology available that could and in fact did help him recover. And yet, usage of it is restricted by Extra. They have reasons to forbid things, of course, but it’s still imperfect. But more than that, look at my old world. Literally everyone there has the potential to be like me or you, but they aren’t. And that’s not an accident.”

“... Was that supposed to help me feel better?”

“It didn’t?” I tilted my head. “I’m not very good at this.”

“Why don’t we look at positive things?” Midnight said. “Like, everything that the people you heal are doing for the city.”

“Right!” Ceira nodded enthusiastically as she sat down in the dirt, seemingly finished with her magical plant bolstering for the moment. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I healed someone famous. I can tell you, but you can’t tell anyone who, alright?”

“Okay,” I nodded.

“It was Madame Multitude! I’m pretty sure, at least,” Ceira beamed.

“Okay,” I said, pulling out my phone.

“Turlough! I literally just told you not to tell anyone!’ Ceira complained.

“I’m… not?” I tilted my head. “Just looking up who she is.”

“What do you mean? It’s Madame Multitude!”

I pulled up a picture. “This one?”

“Yes, obviously!” Ceira grumbled.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay? It’s Madame Multitude! She was literally the most famous hero in the city! She helped so many people with everything until her career suddenly stopped like five years ago. Ah.”

“Yeah, that would explain why we haven’t heard of her,” Midnight said.

“She seems nice,” I said, looking at the public info on her. “Not very strong, though.”

Ceira shrugged. “She didn’t need to be strong. She helped people with pretty much everything. She helped so many people in trouble, big or small. When I was little I saw her patching up a kid who scraped their knee on the playground.”

“... useful public information is very limited,” I complained. It seemed Madame Multitude was a splitter. Estimates on her maximum number of bodies ranged from ten to a thousand. “Seems pretty active, but I can't figure out how many villains she took down?”

Ceira shook her head. “That’s because she didn’t do that. She didn’t even stop petty criminals. And yet, people loved her. She was the sort who would always stay with people after something happened. Until the injuries…” Ceira shook her head. “Everyone was devastated. She was in a fire so bad that she lost use of all four limbs. I… don’t actually know if it was her, though,” Ceira admitted. “She was one of the first, but she hasn’t popped back in the news. Maybe it was just some other woman who suffered similar injuries.”

“Does it matter?” I asked. “You still helped someone. Everyone deserves that. Even rich folk. Oh, if that still bothers you then I suggest you tell them to do something good for other people.”

“Do you think that would work?”

“If not, you still have their money,” I shrugged. How much would what Ceira was doing cost, anyway? Considering how much one organ was, I imagined quite a bit. Hopefully she was getting paid appropriately, though she certainly seemed to think so which meant I wasn’t too worried.