Mage Among Superheroes

“You’re going to fight laser-people?” Zeb hopped up and down excitedly when we ended up in ‘her’ training room. “I want to come too! Fluffy can eat their lasers!”

“Mhm,” I nodded. “But can he protect you from all angles?”

“Don’t be silly. Fluffy is big but he can only be in one place at a time.”

“Right,” Midnight said. “So, you don’t have any way to protect yourself against them, then.”

“... I’ll stand real far away?”

Midnight shook his head. “It would be better for you to not come personally in that case. Maybe you could ask for Extra to release your defensive gear to you? That should function fine since we’ll be up against Bunvorixian weaponry.”

“Defensive gear?” she shook her head. “Oh no, engineers never get assigned anything like that.”

I could feel Midnight’s emotions twist. I had the feeling he wanted to say something like ‘Bunvorixians suck’, but he couldn’t really do that in front of Zeb. Even if he whispered, if I could hear it she probably could as well. “... But the soldiers and commanders do?”

“The soldiers need it the most!” Zeb explained. “And the commanders are important!”

I wondered if Doctor Patenaude had any openings. Someone really needed to have a good think about her people. Or former people.

“I don’t think you can go anywhere without defensive stuff,” I said. “And Fluffy would need you around to control him.” Based on my understanding he’d probably be friendly towards us or at least docile without Zeb around, but he was still very new to… everything. New people, new planet, and all of that. Actuall, being around people at all was probably new since he’d been wild.

“But laaaasers~!” Zeb complained. “All Fluffy has had to eat lately is normal food. He started chewing on some wires and- I mean, those wires chewed on themselves and he cleaned up the damaged bits. He needs more variety in his diet. Probably.”

“Khithae’s gonna have to fix those wires, you know,” I pointed out.

Zeb gasped. “But she’s the nice lizard engineer!” She swiveled her head. “Fluffy, don’t eat wires!”

Kick, who hadn’t said anything, looked down at his legs. “That guy eats… wires?”

“Baseless rumors,” I said. “I’ve only seen him eat lasers. Now then, we were going to test whether my defenses interrupted outgoing attacks from your abilities.” That shouldn’t happen, but most magic created the effects beyond the caster. The lasers would originate inside a cyborg and pass through the defensive barrier layer. I didn’t have that much experience with that, so it was something we had to test before patrols. I’d never protected Shockfire from the elements he could use, so it could use more testing there as well.

It was difficult to have a neutral perspective on casting a spell that I was specifically testing for a certain interaction, but I tried my best. In the end, I cast Energy Ward on Kick three times. I had learned how to more directly target nontraditional elements, as I’d come across lasers and laser like things often enough. For example, I could protect specifically against Darkstargirl’s energy. That didn’t make the spell more effective, but instead brought it up to the normal effectiveness since it was always supposed to be narrowly tailored.

Though since the base category of ‘fire’ was so broad, focusing on just ‘weird black fire’ made it less effective against other fires, similar to how it worked if I protected just against fire for her. In short, it wasn’t exact in what it protected against but it wasn’t universally effective like Force Armor. Stoneskin also protected against most attacks, unlike what local logic said, but it was certainly much less effective against ‘elemental’ stuff compared to ‘physical’.

The first and second tests were effectively the same result with Kick. First I tried to just cast the spell to resist lasers. His abilities worked just fine. I noted that his laser augmentations probably fit inside of his legs, which meant he might not be a cyborg powered person. Someone must have studied that threshold. Would getting other powers make cyborg parts stop working, or just mean he was limited on upgrades? It was probably the latter, but might depend on the power.

Anyway, versions of energy ward where I didn’t care about whether his lasers in particular got through and where they were intentionally let through acted the same. But that could have been bias from me already thinking about it.

The fun part was when I tried to intentionally stop his lasers. I saw him kick up his leg, pointing his knee at the target. Then I saw a sparkly light as the laser was absorbed into the spell or otherwise diffused.

Kick frowned and tried again, and again. Eventually the spell gave out, but it lasted long enough that he was effectively doing nothing for a fatal amount of in-combat time. “I don’t like that at all,” he commented.

“Interesting,” Midnight said. “So we can use Energy Ward… offensively?”

“Well, it’s not like it hurt him,” I pointed out. “But if we want to shut down one person, it’s more effective than casting it on everyone, I guess. The downside being some people will probably bypass it, they’ll probably be maximally effective against something up close and eat through it faster, and getting it on them in the first place. It requires getting pretty close.”

Then again… if someone was theoretically going to punch me with black fire, wouldn’t they be close enough? How would this affect non-offensive abilities? Did Darkstargirl’s flight have anything to do with her other star powers? I messaged Calculator about that.

Does Darkstargirl’s flight use her not-fire stuff?

Why?

His response was short, but I doubted it was meant to deter me.

Because I can stop it if that’s the case

Not for long, but she might crash into the ground

She’s just typical-super levels of durable without her powers, right?

That aspect of her flight power hasn’t been thoroughly analyzed

At least not in our database

I’ll look into it, and we’ll speak more about this when I’m not busy

Hah. Good one.

Calculator was always busy.

I wondered if we had any mental supers who I could test things on. Could I put Mental Freedom around them to prevent their stuff from going through? Probably not, but that might depend on how the particular power worked.

What else could I use offensively? Physical Freedom pretty much shut off Shockwave’s… shockwaves. Though that left them a super speedster, and it would be easier to just cast Slow- except for how fast speedsters tended to rip that spell apart. Most people didn’t have powers that would interact with it so they were stuck for the full duration.

I started from the top. Storage… I’d already used it, before. Snatch something and yank it away to another dimension. I couldn’t see how Force Armor could hurt an enemy in almost any situation, except maybe if I was paired up with someone who had no control over and was worried about killing someone. Low priority.

Translation…? If they were very mentally busy, it might add some more junk into their heads if people yelled at them in different languages.

I got back to Alter Time Flow and almost went past it, since it had an obvious offensive version. Using Haste offensively was a terrible idea, except in extremely specific circumstances. It came with faster reactions, so only the novelty of speed and interactions with friction at exactly the right moment could be relevant. And if I screwed up, I’d have a Hasted enemy mad at me. Better to not.

Would I ever want to use Slow on an ally? Not in combat, I thought, but maybe if they were bleeding to death and we needed somewhere around thirty seconds desperately. Or if they were poisoned?

I noticed Midnight was speaking to someone, but I didn’t let that distract me. Especially since his feelings were currently trying not to distract me.

Disguise could mess up enemy teamwork, if they suddenly looked or sounded like someone wrong.

Familiar Bond… was literally only usable for myself and Midnight. Though attacking someone else’s familiar was a valid course of action, if it came up.

Size Shift was fairly obvious. Someone who wasn’t strong or good at physical combat might do very poorly when big, and being small was often a disadvantage. But like many spells, it required being quite close where I could just… attack someone.

Energy Ward I’d already considered. Divination was too slow. Shield intentionally couldn’t block anyone’s vision or movement. But maybe I could make it worse? I shook my head. Maybe later.

Stoneskin didn’t make anyone heavy or inflexible, so it was kind of a bust. Though maybe if it absorbed their punches like I was doing with Energy Ward?

Water Breathing… didn’t make people not breathe air. It just worked. So it wasn’t going to cause anyone more confusion than being dunked in water and not being able to breathe.

Variable Freedom… maybe I could do weird stuff with that. I’d need to find the right people to help test.

I needed to throw Light on people’s eyes more. It was cheap, and I could make it sticky.

Gate… was probably too slow and too expensive to hurt people with, unless they were chasing me through one and I closed it on them.

Sending might distract someone, but it would be expensive and imprecise in its timing.

Clean would be good against people with garbage powers. By which I meant ones using actual trash. Or dirt, maybe.

Shelter couldn’t drop on people, and it was pretty flimsy. Good for visual cover, maybe. Or if people really wanted a nap.

Enhance would just make people better, so unless I could reverse that it was kind of out.

Nondetection could hide them from their allies. Good for all sorts of nefarious purposes, I supposed.

Fly… would only be relevant if they were clumsy or if I could cancel it on purpose. I was pretty sure if someone had some sort of falling power it would at most distract them once. People just had control of their movement naturally with the spell, it didn’t force them to actually fly.

That was the end of the list. Though I could consider other options from spells I didn’t have.

“And he’s back,” Midnight said. “Did you think of anything useful?”

“I have a whole list of potential tactics,” I said. “Most of them are probably worse than zapping people with lightning.”

“Turloooough!” Zeb ran circles around me. “I mean, Mage Mage Mage! You can talk to Khithae right? Ask her if she can make an immersive conveyance rig!”

“A what now?” I asked, giving up on keeping the black and white blur in my vision. I would just get a neckache.

“Can you call her here? I can explain it real good!”

“Pretty sure she’s working,” I said. “But I can ask.”

Five minutes later, Khithae was in the training room. Midnight was going over other spells with Kick to show how we could support him and the team- it was better for people to see it than just read it from a list.

I gave Khithae Translate, since it was better for her to speak in her native tongue if she was doing technical stuff. Then she was speaking with Zeb using almost entirely untranslatable words. Or at least, some of them were. Some I just didn’t seem to know. Technical jargon. They seemed to be getting something, though.

A moment later, Calculator came into the room, shuffling over towards me quickly. “Tell me how you can shut down Dark Star’s power.”

“Well, only briefly,” I clarified. “But I would just cast Energy Ward on her and stop any of it from going anywhere. Would that stop her from flying?”

Calculator just held up a hand for a moment. He said he didn’t have any actual gears in his head, but I could still feel them turning. “You’re saying you learned a new way to use your magic?”

“I mean, it’s just the same. But I just stop all energy of a certain type instead of only enemy stuff?”

“Can you show me?”

“Look up the recordings in here ten minutes ago,” I said. “But it just looks like lasers not lasering.”

“... How did this come up?” Calculator asked.

“Well, I was going to stop Kick from getting lasered and I wondered if it would stop his lasers. And the answer is no, unless I make it.”

“So you can make it stop certain forms of energy in both directions?” he asked. “What about just… outward?”

“Would that matter?” I pondered.

“You can get hit with lightning,” he pointed out. “Or other mages who can cast such spells.”

“Most of my stuff isn’t that type of energy until it’s outside,” I said. “Though Shocking Grasp would be an exception, I think.”

“We’ll test it,” he said. “And see if we can get some vaguely equivalent supers to stand in for Dark Star.”

“And mentalists,” I said. “To see if I can block that stuff in.” Now that I had seen a spell do something weird, I wondered if there was more magic could do while still doing the same thing.