Mage Among Superheroes

Natural portals were opening up in Graotan. Was that a coincidence, or a sign of some bigger issue? I literally had no idea. I felt like I would need a whole other me to keep up with all the different places I had to keep track of.

And no, I couldn’t make one with magic. Or at least not one that solved my problem. Time was one issue, but mana was a bigger one. I’d have to imbue anything that acted like me with as much mana as I wanted it to be able to use which was little better in practice than just doing it myself. I guess the material costs for a Simulacrum weren’t that bad, if people also made artificial rubies, but they weren’t generally as good as the fictional versions I’d read about.

A familiar like Midnight was way better, since he could just do stuff. And he was the reason I cared about one planet we were entangled with, so he could handle all the Celmoth stuff. We both lived on Earth, so we could split that and I could continue to coordinate with Sir Kalman. And try to figure out if there were permanent portals intentionally set up by natives and maybe if anyone was working with Doctor Doomsday besides those he’d brought through.

Normal things.

But to continue with all of that, it was best for us to get back to Earth. I might need to hop back to help control the natural portal to the Plane of Earth sometime, but hopefully local mages would have a reason to care about that. Though the hill dwarves might also want to let a few elementals through? Sometimes they had gems in them. Well, none of that was my problem.

“Alright,” I said. “We have our bear-”

“So cute!” Zeb said, looking at Fluffy’s Disguised form.

“And all the rest of us. Midnight, be prepared to supplement my Gate.”

He nodded. We gathered mana, myself a full 20 mana for Gate and him 10 for Alter Portal. The Martians had screwed around with portals, and Graotan was feeling weird too. It was just better to be certain instead of having to recover again.

I returned us to a previous base of Handface. He was dead, so he wouldn’t miss it. His associates were either in prison or… not annoying enough to bother. Like Sirene. She’d helped save a kid in a lake and she was friendly with Kendrux so she couldn’t be all bad. That second thing was probably a reason we should want to bring her in, but I hadn’t seen any of them doing anything illegal I wasn’t also involved in, so it was easy to just sweep under the rug.

I was glad we had an executive with us, because I didn’t really want to have to risk my station on Earth and flee to Celmoth. Sure, Midnight and I probably wouldn’t be extradited but it would hold back the burgeoning relations with Earth and the rooms were too short. Plus they didn’t have any supervillains there yet.

The Gate opened, and Zeb dashed through. “Come on, Fluffy!” she called. The bear-disguised rust mole plodded through. People would be quite surprised if they shot lasers at that bear, but if they did that they’d probably have worse problems than it eating the lasers. Like their ankles being bitten by Zeb and maybe some Martian gangsters with lasers of their own. Or laser-adjacent blasters.

The Gate was stable, but we still didn’t want anyone to hesitate. The Martians went through next, then Khithae and Swiss Arms, then finally Midnight and me.

“... The building inspectors are gonna be mad about these bricks,” I commented as we walked out. “I don’t think this place is up to code anymore.”

Kendrux spun in a circle, panicked. “Did you see someone from the Building and Safety Division? You gotta tell me if you did.”

“I’m pretty sure they mostly work over in Yew-Kay?” I tilted my head. “Someone must do that here, though.”

Kendrux relaxed. “I was worried they went multinational. The restrictions here are currently… tolerable. Well,” she waved. “We ought to be off.”

After the three of them walked away, Swiss Arms looked at me pointedly. “If super powered Martian gangsters suddenly become an issue, guess who’s going to have to deal with them?”

“Is it us?” I asked. “Because I’ll do it.” I just hoped Kendrux would have used the bullets I… traded with her before we fought. “They’ve gotta be worth more experience to fight now, right?” I pondered aloud.

“... So what class did you pick?” Khithae asked. “Or have you not done that yet? Or is it secret?”

Swiss Arms shook her head. “Can’t get one. Power exclusivity.”

Khithae made a face, as much as she could with her lizard-like features. “You have a power?”

Swiss Arms looked at her and held up one of her arms, which split apart into a saw, two mirrors, a laser beam, a fold out shield… and several other weapons. “What do you think this is?”

“Technology?” Khithae tilted her head. “Is it… not?”

“If we could shove this much super tech into people on a whim we’d run SSI out of business in a day. And no, it’s not about expense because if it’s worth it once I don’t see why it wouldn’t be worth it again.”

I hadn’t really thought about how that worked. “So being a cyborg is a super power?” I asked.

“Obviously,” Swiss Arms nodded.

“... did you try to open the class window?” I prompted.

Swiss Arms sighed. “I did. Just in case. But I got the expected results.”

“So… the Mod Squad all actually has super powers?”

She shook her head. “They have a feasible amount of legitimate tech inside them. Except for Iron Shell, their leader, they all fall into a similar category of enhanced humans. They’re not supers, but super mercs get called to beat them down. It’s a rough deal, but they didn’t have to be criminals. Quite literally, they could have bought the same mods and gotten licensed.”

Midnight flicked his tail. “So your power is having more tech inside of you than should fit?” he asked.

“And making Super Tech from different vendors play nice,” Swiss Arms explained. “None of this is really secret. I would expect Khithae to not have looked at the personnel files but…”

“It said you were a cyborg and some of the stuff you could do,” I confirmed. “But it didn’t say that it was a power. How do you discover something like that?”

Swiss Arms shook her head. “You take an interest in mods and push too far. And if you survive? Bam, you have powers.”

“I have a lot of questions about that actually,” I said. “Also, should we just be standing around here?”

“A vehicle is on the way to pick us up. And the ‘bear’,” she explained.

“Okay. So did you always have that power?”

“It’s a good question, isn’t it?” Swiss Arms shrugged. “Nobody’s quite sure. Some people think you can ‘pick it up’, but my experience says that’s… probably not true. Or at least not very likely.” She shook her head. “There’s a reason the Mod Squad is mostly below a certain tier, and it isn’t because they lack the enthusiasm to keep adding. Mostly we heard that people died. When you’re young, you think it won’t happen to you. And if you’re very lucky… you’re right.”

I frowned. I remembered hearing something relevant about the Mod Squad and the Brigade before. “What about… Kicks?”

“What does that have to do with…? Oh, Kick.” Swiss Arms nodded. “We’re being careful with his enhancements. It’s not really easy to test for that kind of power.”

“Sure it is,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? You have a foolproof way?”

“Sure. You just saw it today.”

“Ah. Well, that wasn’t previously an option, might get Extra mad at us, and while it might confirm a power it would also cut off that route if they didn’t already have it.” She shrugged, “Methodical upgrades let people test their natural or supernatural augmentation limits.”

“... Should I get cyborg parts?” I asked Midnight.

“Why?” he asked.

“So I can shoot lasers from my eyes.”

“That’s… uh…” Midnight frowned.

“Oh, come on. You have lasers.”

The discussion ended with our ride arriving. But I kind of wanted to see if Vilhelmiina would do something. Then again, I kind of liked having arms and she had a bot made entirely out of cannons. She might not be willing to limit her creative freedom.

-----

The six of us ended up in a room with Zorphax, Malaliel, and Calculator.

Zorphax had his head in his hands. “That was a disaster. They recognized Kendrux.”

“So?” Calculator raised an eyebrow. “Seems like a positive to me.”

“How so?” Zorphax asked.

“Known criminal Martian shows up in a secure facility… on Mars. And they got the data.”

“They got some kind of data,” Zorphax agreed. “We haven’t looked at it yet.”

Calculator flicked his finger on his tablet, then held it up for Zorphax. “Suspicions confirmed.”

“What kind of suspicions?” Zeb asked, bouncing up and down. “Were they working with bad guys?!”

Zorphax looked at her. “You do realize you are one of the ‘bad guys’?”

“But… but… Mage said I’m a good girl!”

“He may have,” Zorphax frowned. “But he’s not an authority of any sort.”

Malaliel cleared her throat. “Technically, she completed the mission. So she has a clean slate.”

“... Right,” Zorphax said. “Let’s deal with that first. Do you, Zeb, swear to follow all of the laws of Earth and New Bay specifically?”

“Yes!” Zeb said. “I don’t know the laws but I’ll definitely do it!”

Zorphax flicked his eyes over to Malaliel, but she would have likely reported if Zeb was lying already. “Very well. We’ll still have to determine your status…”

Calculator began muttering something.

“Oh!” Zeb perked up. “That guy sa- sorry. Someone I definitely know who they are said I should ask for political asylum due to class discrimination.” Her tail stopped thumping- usually it was a constant motion. “Maybe Bunvorixians don’t like Beastmasters…? I didn’t even know classes existed until recently.”

“... What?” Zorphax asked. He looked around the room, then at me for some reason. “... what did I miss?” Calculator helpfully held up another part of the mission report- Swiss Arms had put most of that together really fast. “I-” he stopped. “I’m just going to blame all of that on the Mars branch. Or whatever portion of it we figure out is responsible.”

“There are only a few names tied to the reduced security schedule,” Calculator commented. “During a period that turned out very critical… and after which they were still slow to ramp up security. We’re going to have people blaming each other for everything. Which is an excellent excuse to get them all in a room, here. On Earth.” He looked pointedly at Malaliel.

“This is going to be so much stress,” Zorphax said. “And I haven’t even asked about the bear.”

“Fluffy is my friend!” Zeb said. “And even though he looks like a bear now, apparently, he’s actually a rust mole!”

Zorphax looked over at Malaliel. “Tell me she’s lying.”

“I would love to,” Malaliel replied. The two of them looked at each other for a few moments, but she said nothing else.

“Why is there a rust mole here?”

Zeb answered eagerly. “We’re friends!”

“It’s part of her power now,” Calculator said.

“... The Brigade is responsible for keeping that hidden for the foreseeable future. And no, Extra will not be paying if it eats your wires.”

“It’s okay, Fluffy is a good boy! He only attacked us for a while!”

Calculator looked at me. I raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to actually ask.”

“How much control does she have?”

“Enough that feeding him properly should be fine. As long as they’re together,” I shrugged. “It’s not like I know how they work, but I assume he’d only chew through stuff when bored with too much energy. And with Zeb around… that can’t happen.”

“... Maybe we can have them in a training room.”

“Ooh!” Zeb bounced up and down. “Are we doing bomb threat simulations? Flight training? Circuit board rewiring?”

“It’s a combat training room,” I said.

“That sounds fun!” Zeb said. “But I’m not allowed to fire the lasers because I’m too small!”

“You’re not actually going to be fighting there,” Calculator said.

“Oh,” Zeb hung her head.

“Why not?” I asked. “She could train with the other class people. They’re all low level still.”

The gears in Calculator’s head turned. I knew he was working on that, even as he tried to cheer up Zorphax.

I didn’t have to do anything except answer occasional questions. I pondered about everything we had done. Reduced security, huh? That would explain why things were so easy. We were not expert infiltrators.

Mars-Extra was gonna be so mad. Then again, if they really were in on Spot’s escape, maybe they hadn’t thought there were going to be further intrusions within the next couple of weeks.

I decided I should practice Fly. Stoneskin wouldn’t stop me from being a puddle on the ground if I fell off a skyscraper. Then again, there was also a spell for that specifically. Were those the same kind of magic or different? Combining spells was way more efficient for points and stuff.