Mage Among Superheroes

The eyepatched face of our new buddy Strife looked back at me, perhaps confused at how a great number of individuals seemed to be slower. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just make use of your speed.”

Once more Strife reached up towards her eyepatch, but just barely touched it before her arm dropped back down. She dropped into a stance, her arms extended. Sparkles of light swirled together, forming large prismatic needles. No, quills- like Eglantine, her porcupine companion. Those seemed like pretty vicious melee weapons.

As I had directed, she charged towards the left flank of our incoming enemies. Two of those there raised lasers… which she blocked with her needles. Having the extra reaction speed from Haste likely helped, but she had pretty good dynamic vision for someone without depth perception.

Her weapons began to glow brightly as she held against the sustained beams even as the enemies tried to wave their attacks around her guard. She was clearly doing more than just following their movements or reacting. Aside from the fact that I could feel her mana being activated, it was pretty much impossible to block a sustained beam that was waving back and forth- though perhaps the enemy could have been more aggressive in that regard.

We had a large number of Hasted companions rushing the other end of the pack. Flower rushed right over the heads of the dark elves, screeching and causing several of them to recoil. The dire bat wasn’t as fast, but with Haste and Energy Ward Miss Flutter bowled over several of the enemy as she flew into them. Fluffy chomped on a couple lasers as he rushed in.

I took note that the enemy didn’t all have laser weapons. Maybe a handful in the group that Flower had estimated to be fourteen. I wasn’t going to attempt to verify that precise count in combat. Instead, I focused on the magic they were using. One of the spells was extremely familiar given that I had cast it literally one moment before. Haste was cast on a man wielding daggers… and I didn’t like that.

So I countered it with Slow, focusing on disrupting the enemy’s magic. In my opinion it worked quite well, as the man ran forward at nearly normal speed from my perspective for only a moment before suddenly staggering and moving slower than before. It was like the enemy caster didn’t even have ten upgrades in Haste. Which… they probably didn’t. I’d been bribed into getting additional levels and I had several points from training.

With Haste and Slow combined together into Alter Time, it was fairly efficient to just make that better. Clearly these people had some access to extradimensional shenanigans and thus maybe improvements beyond what they got from points, but it might not be as long as mine. And my actual level wasn’t too bad either, now that I’d spent over a year constantly getting into battles. It really helped me catch up and even surpass the expected level for my age- though these dark elves might have been older. None felt like they had crazy high levels, though.

I noticed the caster using Haste was doing it one at a time, so clearly she hadn’t learned Multicasting. Haste didn’t let me cast spells faster as my mana gathering rate remained the same… but I was able to gather the mana and target whoever they did the instant afterwards, not wasting a beat. Some of them never even looked like they sped up at all, instead getting just slightly slower.

Around that time, Midnight blasted some of the people in the face with Light. It seemed he had been holding out for a good opportunity, and that opportunity was several moments before our melee combatants reached the enemy.

I watched as Strife stabbed her two targets in the gut with the quill. Instead of pulling them out, she let go and formed two more in her hands. I wasn’t sure if it was more brutal to leave them impaled or to try to pull out the quills. Either way, I wasn’t really getting the vibes of a magical girl. Weren’t they supposed to do stuff with hearts and rainbows?

No wait, the quills lit up with rainbow light and sparkles as she stabbed people. So maybe that was normal. Plus she was wearing a dress in battle, so that might have covered it?

When several more enemies tried to engage her in melee combat, she didn’t follow their pace and instead tossed the massive quills she was carrying- which split with sparkles into a shower of smaller ones that rained down on them. Even with some amount of defensive magic and armor, enough of her attacks found purchase that they were looking like reverse porcupines a moment later.

They tried to chase after her, but one of them had a punctured thigh… and with her being Hasted, they couldn’t have kept up even if they could run properly.

Somewhere out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone at the back of the enemy group get dragged away. There was Lyklor again. He wasn’t flashy, but he was a spry old man and clearly adept at taking down enemies.

The battle didn’t go completely perfectly in our favor- indeed, several people had new holes in their gear, burns, and cuts- but we still came out with a clear victory. I wasn’t sure what I would have done if anyone on our side died… but it was certainly a possibility. That was why we always made sure to protect everyone with Energy Ward and Force Armor between battles.

We were alive, and Bandage was going around patching people up. But we clearly weren’t so dominant that we could win more than a couple such battles in a row. We needed to clear out again. Strife’s presence had already caused a significant complication.

“Will you be able to lead us to where you came through if we leave and come back?” I asked Strife- and of course Lady Eglantine.

Strife turned around, standing tall. The quills turned into sparkles in her hands, fading away into nothing. “I-” Her stern features softened. Then her eyes rolled back as she fell to her knees. Sparkles of light surrounded her as her black and red dress reformed into a traditional kimono… which was even more impractical than the dress she had been fighting in.

Her hair shortened to shoulder length, though it maintained its deep blackness. More importantly, her eyepatch faded away, leaving two perfectly normal looking eyes. All in all, she looked very un-Strife-like.

“My apologies,” she said. “I require time to rest. Whether I can remember the way when we return I am uncertain.”

“Want me to carry you?” I asked.

She looked horrified at the very thought. “I… can walk…” she said.

I was waiting for her to even stand up, but she seemed quite incapable. When I went to help her up, she reluctantly took my hand. She kept her face turned away as I pulled her to her feet. “You alright, Strife?”

She pursed her lips. “I… am not Strife like this.”

“Sure. But that’s the only name I know.” She took only faltering steps. “If you’re worried about your identity, don’t be. You already know my real name. And the rest of us are trained to handle such protocols.” Except for the people from this world, but they weren’t going to cause her any trouble either. “Where’s Eglantine?”

“She has taken an insubstantial form to aid in my recovery.”

“Ah, gotcha,” I nodded. A much less confident individual walked along with us. We weren’t able to capture many people this time, but we took everything we could easily carry so that it couldn’t be used against us again- especially the guns. Hopefully, they had a limited supply. “Want a mana crystal?” I asked, pulling one out of my pocket.

She took it and looked at it curiously. “Concentrated mana in physical form? How odd.”

I shrugged. “You might be able to absorb it. Or maybe not. Too many is unhealthy, though.”

She seemed to have some sort of instinctive understanding, as it fell apart in her hands, turning into sparkles that flooded into her. She looked a bit less haggard, but not particularly more comfortable.

We headed straight for the nearest exit to the surface we were aware of, moving as quickly as we could manage. Midnight gave not-Strife some food as well, though she was quite timid about actually consuming it. Nor was she particularly speedy with her movements afterwards.

Still, we eventually made it to the surface, where a squad of elves was guarding the area. After that, we were able to relax slightly. And once we were out of sight of the underground entrance, Eglantine appeared in a shower of sparkles, sitting on not-Strife’s shoulder.

“We very much appreciate your assistance, even if Momo here is unable to show her appreciation.”

“Lady Eglantine!”

“What?” The porcupine held her head high. “Do you think people from another world are going to reveal your name to those they shouldn’t?” With the outside light, it was much easier to tell she was not a standard porcupine- unless there was a variety I was unaware of that happened to have shimmering rainbow quills instead of brown or black.

I decided not to bring up potential weird magical stuff involving names. That wasn’t really relevant in this world anyway.

Not-Strife gave a long but quiet sigh. “Very well.” She turned towards the rest of us. “I suppose I should properly introduce myself. I am Momo.”

“Turlough,” I said. “The Power Brigade named me Mage which is extremely unhelpful in this world.” Most people ended up re-introducing themselves as we walked. “So, are you and Strife different people or something…?”

Before Momo could answer, Eglantine spoke up. “Oh no. It’s just a very minor personality tweak.”

“Th- that’s not true!” Momo protested. “Strife is… very different. Violent and barbaric. A grim caricature of myself.” Translation was helpfully working in full swing for her words now.

Eglantine hopped over to my shoulder, almost running on the air. “Truly the tiniest mental barriers changed,” she stage whispered into my ear.

Momo went red, trembling with frustration. Oh good, she was easy to read. “That’s not… you’re wrong! “

“So is the eyepatch some sort of super secret magical thing?” I asked. “Because your eye is clearly fine in this form.”

Momo frowned. “It is… a dark curse that has afflicted Strife. Such a thing should never be revealed to the world.”

I nodded. So it was a super-special power of some sort. “Yeah, I know how it is with curses and stuff. I can’t level up at all without combat. And some of my friends are werewolves.”

“I see. You understand the dangers, then.”

“Yeah. Though once the werewolves got good at controlling themselves it ended up mostly good.” Like Curse of the Barbarian allowing me to level up quickly… once I had the opportunity. “So how did you end up in this world…? And what’s this about a ‘Scouring’?”

Eglantine grew quite serious at that. “We followed some new troublemakers, presuming they had merely run through a gate to one of their secret lairs. We did not expect to find ourselves in another reality. As for the Scouring… it is an alien invasion, of sorts. They are twisted monsters that seek to eradicate the inhabitants of Earth.”

Iron Hawk nodded. “And you’re other aliens who came to give power to chosen individuals like Momo to fight them off.”

“... Yes. How did you know?” Eglantine tilted her head.

“It’s a pretty typical magical girl story,” Iron Hawk shrugged. “At least, from what I’ve heard.”

“I see,” Eglantine said. “Sir Turlough, you mentioned something about the Earth you are from? And… coming here to fight these elves?”

“First,” I said. “I’m not a knight or anything. I’m just here to help Sir Kalman, and because we heard about these lasers.” I turned to Malaliel.

“I am from an organization responsible for protecting our reality from external threats… and protecting them from us. Such as advanced weaponry getting through to a world like this. Unfortunately, this world appears to be sealed from entry by non-magical individuals… so our effect has been unfortunately limited.”

“So I suppose you came through one of these portals as well?” Momo asked.

“Nah,” I said. “I just made a temporary one.”