Mage Among Superheroes

“So why are you sitting in the dark?” asked a man with the insignia of a fist emblazoned on his chest. “I thought that problem was fixed.”

“Yes, it’s fine. I just have a headache,” said the older man sitting on the far side of the large table.

“It’s nice to see you back,” said the younger man, previously referred to as Calculator.

“I’m sure we will all have plenty of time to catch up after we finish up with business,” Telescope commented. She looked at the tablet in front of her, “First order of business is Mage, again.”

“I don’t get it,” Captain Punch admitted. “Isn’t this just a spreadsheet? There’s like, a dozen things at the top with a check mark, one labeled ?!?!? and…” his finger kept swiping continuously for a while, “Over a thousand total rows with just single question marks. What is this?”

“A list of potential abilities,” Calculator answered helpfully. “The first dozen are confirmed to be things he can do. The oddity is one that… wasn’t directly analogous to anything. One second…” he messed with his tablet for a second. “Forgot to update it with the latest one.”

“Crying?” Captain Punch asked. “Is that insinuating some emotional weakness, or is it some kind of incapacitation ability?”

“Scrying,” Calculator corrected. “It means farseeing, in essence.”

“This guy’s a wizard, right? So like, a magic mirror?”

“... actually yes.” Calculator admitted.

“So who’s the fairest one of all?” Captain Punch asked.

“That’s not… it probably doesn’t work like that,” Calculator said. “So far it’s been confirmed to work pretty much like expected. Most things conform pretty well to a specific category of Type-F world. Except for the levels and mana, I suppose. Those are less directly associated with what we would expect.”

“Okay. So? Kid’s got some different abilities. Good to hear.”

“The purpose of this discussion,” Telescope commented, “Is to determine whether we spend additional resources on his growth. Beyond standard training. There are a number of very useful abilities he could pick up.”

“I’m all for it,” the man reluctantly called Movebrain said from his shadowed section of the room. “Just this ability is pretty amazing. Tracking down anyone with no way for them to know it’s coming? Absolutely astounding.”

“It can be resisted,” Calculator pointed out.

“So? Maybe it takes a few days to track down someone unfindable. That’s a million times better than never. There are many other useful things on the list.”

“I agree,” Calculator nodded. “As long as we keep him loyal to us, this could turn into something big.”

“He did just move closer,” Telescope noted. “He seems to be committed to some extent, and is friendly with many of the others here. Even if he only gets a small handful of these things, he’ll be a big boon. I’m in support.”

Everyone turned to Captain Punch. “... I object,” he said flatly.

“Why?” Calculator asked. “His history is short but his psych evaluations check out… It wouldn’t even be that expensive to find a good rotation of sparring partners for him to… level up.”

“Yeah, see, that’s where I disagree,” Captain Punch shook his head. “This guy only gets stronger by fighting, right? I don’t feel like babying him will be good for him in the long run. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be allowed to spar, but he’s got to grow on his own. Or we focus on him and he picks up half these abilities and never has a moment to rest.”

“It just seems like he could benefit from special training the most right now,” Calculator pointed out. “He was literally almost killed just the other day.”

“Was it the moles?” Captain Punch asked. “Are they back?”

“No?” Calculator raised an eyebrow. “We’re pretty sure you wrapped up that whole… moleman thing. He just got shot.”

“Like with a gun?”

“Some kind of high power sniper,” Calculator responded. “No one was able to get a close look as he fled.”

“But he’s alive now,” Captain Punch responded. “Seems fine to me. If he can’t get over little hurdles like nearly dying, seems like a waste of investment. Not that I’m uninterested to see how this Wizard fellow grows.”

“Mage,” Telescope corrected him. “Well, since I doubt you’ll change your mind anytime soon, onto the next point of business.”

-----

I stood in front of a nice full-length mirror. It didn’t span wall to wall like the ones in the bathroom, but those were honestly too big. Scrying only used so much space and the rest was wasted. As for the rest of the room… it was full of boxes and shelves. Clearly a storage closet before being ‘retrofitted’ for my use. Aside from the rest of the Elemental Magic squad, there was one other person present. A man with mid-tone skin and a nice suit. A dress suit, not a super suit. He was apparently a calculator, even though phones did that just fine. A deprecated job.

“This is going to be really disappointing if it doesn’t work,” I pointed out. “But here goes.”

It was a boring ten whole minutes of waiting. I was concentrating on my target, but it was more like waiting for something to happen than actively involving myself. It still took effort though, kind of like jogging. If I had a better connection it might have been faster, but it would still take the full amount of mana.

I was relieved when a fuzzy picture began to take place. The first thing to become visible was the shape of a hand. An electrical burn scar, caused by me. I hadn’t intended for it to do that much, but if I’d known more about this guy I would have wanted to also kick him in the head to keep him knocked out. “There’s Handface.”

“Deimos,” Calculator said.

“Yes, that too.”

The rest of the man came into focus a bit at a time. He was sitting at a table tinkering with some sort of headgear. No, tinkering was a bit too strong. Fiddling. Moving about randomly, as if he were bored.

“Looks like a warehouse,” Calculator commented as he held up his tablet in front of the mirror. “Is this the limit of what we can see?”

“Yeah, sorry,” I shrugged. “I can rotate it around a little bit.” I showed him other angles, but distance from the target limited what could be seen. “That’s about it.”

“Can you get a closer look? That thing on the desk…”

I concentrated. Seeing less was actually a lot harder than it seemed, but at least it was close to him. The viewpoint slowly moved closer, until it was like we were standing near it instead of floating up near the ceiling. “That’s all I can do.” I focused on keeping the image steady.

“Hmm… that has the stolen Phasmotron Amplifier in it for sure. I wonder-”

There was a beeping- and a curse. Not from our side of the mirror, but the other. The device was suddenly snatched out of our sight. “What is it?” I refocused the image to catch a better view of Handface, with the device on his head. Somehow it looked familiar, like I’d seen it before. Then again, I’d seen that hand imprint sticking out from behind stuff in several videos. “Spatial distortion? What does that even…?”

I felt a yank, trying to pull me away. “He’s fighting back. He might have picked up what’s happening somehow…” I shook my head. “No, that’s not quite it. Maybe it was him randomly lashing out. Not sure if I can hold it.”

“I’d hoped we could see more,” Calculator said.

“I’ll try.”

Fortunately he began to move. Following him was basically automatic, as I was pulled along for the ride. There were more than a few random crates and ladders and junk scattered about the area getting in the way, but I couldn’t really avoid that. I barely was able to move the view to begin with, since this was basically my first use of the spell. Scrying Midnight didn’t count, because we hadn’t done anything fancy.

Handface was running now, though rather quietly, his boots only causing a small racket echoing through the warehouse. Then he abruptly turned, and my view with it. For half a second the view was outside the wall before snapping back into place. “Sorry, almost lost him.” I held onto the image, but Handface just stopped by a large door, not getting close enough to any window to see out. Not that ten feet would get us much.

“Can you do that again?” Calculator asked.

“Do what?”

“The thing where you go through the wall?”

“Uh… I can try.” I focused, spinning the view and pulling away. For an instant, I saw a boring wall. Then I saw my own face, and the rest of us. “Sorry. I lost it.” I breathed out slowly. “I think that counts as a break. Probably won’t work again today.”

“It’s alright,” Calculator said. “Maybe there’s something we can use.” He held up his tablet. “I’ll review the footage in detail and let you know what I find.”

“Now what?” the captain asked.

“I don’t think I’d suggest going on patrol,” Calculator shrugged. “But it’s up to you. You’ll have to do it soon enough, but it’s not immediately necessary. A bit of training might do you good, maybe a course on cover. If I recall correctly, there’s one on how to stand in the public view while being under cover. Adapted from techniques as used by heroes, of course. We don’t need to be seen, but we can’t look like we’re skulking about.”

-----

I had to admit there was a lot of good advice available, and a nice training course. There was some sort of sensor thing that gave us a rating on how we were standing. I was right next to a car, just casually standing around, but it gave me a high concealment factor. I was covered from an entire side, and even those with elevation would have to deal with the car getting in the way of their shots on that side. Yet it didn’t look like I was hiding at all.

Shockfire was leaned up against a street lamp. That got him a poor rating, but it was apparently better than nothing. Good points for casual. Ice Guy was actually sitting on some stairs, and was rated better than either of us. Even the side that was a row of houses behind him basically had no angle on him, and there were brick railings on either side of him. Sitting also lowered his profile, though it in turn limited his mobility.

Acid Man had two ratings. The first was him going for casual cover, where he took shelter in a covered bus stop. The rating there was mixed, as he was visually covered by advertisements but not structurally protected from most angles. Then there was his active hiding attempt and… well, it was hard to do much better than looking like some sludge at the bottom of a dumpster.

“Yes, I can actually make use of that one,” he commented after the exercise was over. “I don’t have a sense of smell while I’m transformed. And since I can control what I damage, I’m generally fine to do so. Though I’ll admit it feels gross, and it’s mostly unnecessary.”

“Mostly unnecessary is all well and good if someone’s shooting you with bullets,” Ice Guy admitted. “But you’d be less happy if someone whipped out a plasma gun or something like that. Obviously highly illegal and unstable, but dangerous.” Our captain’s eyes flickered to Shockfire. “For you.”

The exercise got me thinking about cover- and creating it. Our captain was obviously familiar with the concept due to the fight on the docks. At the moment I couldn’t do it, but eventually… well, I suppose everything was an ‘eventually’ these days. But putting up a sheet of rock seemed like it would be pretty good cover. It was more expensive than Stoneskin though, so I had to consider if I wanted something that required active setup that could protect the party, or just more defense for myself. Once I had more than four points left, of course.