Mage Among Superheroes

Since it wasn’t an emergency, meeting with Doctor Martinez was easier than Doctor Mishra. We didn’t need super healing, just someone to check on things. He took a look at Midnight first, since that was recent. I could feel his power moving over Midnight, a plane of energy scanning back and forth much like some machines apparently did. Only he was faster and more complete than any technology I was aware of. At best, there might be a few pieces of super tech that matched him.

“Looks like you have some bruised ribs. Not much we can do for that without involving powers. If Meztli has some spare juice her power would do just fine, otherwise just rest. Best to let things heal naturally.” Then he turned to me. “You should have come in here days ago.”

“Maybe,” I shrugged.

The same sort of energy scanned through my hand, a slightly smaller plane of energy for the smaller area. He spent a bit more time on me before finally nodding. “It’s fine enough. Everything in the right place. I’m still going to put a cast though. I wouldn’t suggest you try to get Meztli’s help though.”

“Why?” I frowned. Her power should work so it had to be something else. “What did I do?”

“You’ve been pretty unhelpful the past few days. She never stays angry long, but you should probably say something to patch up, now that you’re feeling better. You are feeling better, right?”

“I think so?” I looked at Midnight.

“Why are you looking at me? I only feel your emotions secondhand!”

Hmm. He felt decidedly less worried. “I’m probably fine.”

“We have a lot of things we need to talk about,” Midnight said.

“Yeah, probably.”

“So,” Doctor Martinez commented, “You mentioned some sort of attack being the result of Midnight’s injuries?”

“Oh yeah, there were some sort of… crappy supers. Maybe discount paladins?”

“What happened with them?”

“With everything that happened I forgot to call it in. They’re probably gone. I don’t think anyone was hurt badly enough not to walk.”

“In a way, that’s good, but… it’s a problem if supers randomly attack you.”

“There were looking for Mage, maybe?” Midnight brought up. “Or someone with a black cat. But when I told them I wasn’t a cat they seemed more sure they wanted to beat me up so they were probably after us.”

“This isn’t really my job but… any distinguishing marks?”

I tried to picture them. The fight was relatively short and I wasn’t paying close attention, but one thing stood out. “Uh, they all had… that stupid woman’s face on them. Stargirl?”

“Shooting Star,” Midnight confirmed.

“Yeah, her!” I nodded vigorously.

“That’s probably important. I would suggest you bring that information to the right people.”

“Like… Calculator? He seems to keep track of things.”

“Sure.”

-----

“That’s somewhat concerning,” Calculator admitted. “Especially given certain things on social media.”

“I’ve heard about that,” I said. “That uh… social media thing. What is it?”

“It is an interactive feature of communications technology that is both extremely helpful and unhelpful at the same time,” he explained.

I looked to Midnight. “What?” He tilted his head. “Why would I know more about this than you?”

“Aren’t you from a world with technology?”

“Well, yeah. So what?”

“Ahem,” Calculator drew our attention back to him. “I can provide further information on social media, but I would for the moment suggest minimizing your interactions. In fact, I would suggest that for everyone. Much trouble occurs there, and public image is quite important for some. Even if everything you say is unequivocally true, people might get angry. But I should say that in general the public outlook on heroes is better than mercenaries like us.”

“Even though heroes still get paid and are inefficient.”

“That’s right. The important thing is not the general public opinion for us, however. Just how the leadership of New Bay finds the Power Brigade in particular.”

“And?” I asked.

“They know we’re good. Back to the matter at hand. Being attacked by people with powers. You called them discount paladins?”

“I couldn’t really think of anything better. They were pretty weak.”

“Weak supers were still a concern. And six of them…” Calculator frowned, “It could be related to recent events. There’s been a flood of strange powers popping up. People suddenly awakening powers, relatively insignificant but widespread. A large number of them have been collapsing with no signs of damage afterwards.”

“Like mana exhaustion?”

“Do you know something?”

Did I know something? I thought for a few moments. “My apprentice got powers he wasn’t supposed to have. Powers like mine.”

“When was this?” Calculator asked.

“Right after the portal incident. Or rather, during it.”

“And he has powers like yours? And these… discount paladins, you describe them as such because they appear like powers from your world?”

“Definitely. They were using mana and everything.”

“What do you know about the portal incident, and what caused it?”

“Portals appeared and monsters came out. As for what caused it… nothing?”

“Guess.”

“Probably something related to Doctor Doomsday. That was how I got here in the first place.”

“I have a theory,” Calculator wrote something on his tablet. “I am not sure how to confirm it without asking leading questions. So I am instead going to ask you for more details about what you observed during the incident. Whatever you observed.”

“Okay, like what?”

“What monsters did you see? Any detail is important.”

“It started with the one literally next to my apartment. Wyverns came out.”

“You recognized them?”

“Well, from books, yeah. I obviously hadn’t seen any in person.”

“I see.” He continued to take notes, though that seemed to be a constant fact of his life. “Anything else? What about the portal? Anything strange or familiar?”

“Uh, I don’t really know anything about how the portal worked. But a lot of mana came through it.”

“Interesting. Go on.”

“That was kind of it. It eventually closed up. Oh, the portal wasn’t magic though.”

“What about other monsters?”

“Shadows. Stargirl was very effective against them.”

“Do you do that on purpose?”

“Do what on purpose?”

“... So about these shadows. How would you describe them?”

“They’re shadows. The monstrous kind. Not,” I gestured around us, “This kind. They uh… steal people’s life force and stuff. Very weak to light powers.”

“So, familiar.”

“Yeah. Then there were uh… needle blights and assassin vines.”

“Did the other portals have abnormal amounts of mana coming through?”

I nodded. “That’s right, how did you guess?”

“I’m fairly certain they weren’t random. You said something about your mana regeneration rate being constant. Is it higher in your world?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.” Calculator’s face didn’t change much, but he looked disappointed. “So these aren’t all portals to your world.”

“Oooh. You know, they could be.”

“But you said the amount of mana coming through was higher.”

“Yeah well, monsters like to live in high mana areas.”

“I thought you said the levels were the same here?”

“Sure. It’s basically the same everywhere people live, except directly on a mana well or something.”

“I see that I need to be more specific in my questions.” He didn’t seem particularly annoyed. In fact, he smiled slightly. “I’ll have a few more questions about this, then quite a few about these new powers that are popping up.”

-----

Ultimately, I couldn’t tell him why anybody would suddenly have access to class abilities, but it seemed to be something that was happening. It should require interaction with a status window to function, and people didn’t even have points. It was crazy. But Jerome had managed to learn new things anyway. Calculator set up some of my time for some sort of consultation on the matter on the presumption that I could help, but I really didn’t know if I could. He also suggested we get back to Scrying things, and I totally agreed that we should. Soon.

But first, I had other things to do. “Hey Midnight, you were with Izzy right? Do you know how to find her?”

“I do. Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I believe the last time you interacted for more than five seconds, she tried to kill you and then you broke your own hand on a wall. And you said that you weren’t friends.”

“... Yeah? So?”

Midnight jumped on my shoulder and put his face right in front of mine. “You are hard to read, Turlough. If I did not have a magical connection I would find it very difficult to know what you’re thinking about.”

“It’s usually magic,” I said.

“Right. Well, I can tell you’re much more calm right now, but can you assure me things will stay that way?”

“Of course.”

“And if I had asked you before you first saw Izzy, would you have said the same thing?”

“Uhh… well…”

Midnight sighed, “Why do you want to see her anyway?”

“Well, she came to find me right? I assume there was something important.”

“Is that it?”

“Should there be something else?”

“You’re not friends anymore, by your own admission. So maybe not. Perhaps this would be a proper end to things.”

“We’re not friends, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t be friends.” I jerked my head back as he bit at my nose. “Why are you angry now?”

“That’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to say the first time you meet long lost friends again! I can’t believe I have to be the responsible adult here.”

“Nobody asked about that.”

“That’s the sort of information you are supposed to volunteer in normal social interaction!” Midnight said, exasperated. “Don’t you… ah nevermind. I can bring you to where she should be, as long as you promise to avoid fighting. I have to go see her anyway because she can’t communicate without me.”

“Oh yeah! She doesn’t have Translation! That’s gotta suck. Let’s go,” I stood up, pulling a couple baggies of diamond dust out of a drawer.

“Why are you preparing like we’re going to a battlefield?”

“You literally got attacked in the alley behind the apartment earlier today,” I pointed out.

“That’s fair,” Midnight nodded.

“Also last time she punched me hard enough to start breaking through Stoneskin.”

“Maybe if you used some tact in your speech you wouldn’t have that problem,” Midnight said.

“Mages don’t have a spell for that,” I pointed out.

“... not everything has to be done with magic.”

“Well, I don’t know another way so…”

“Ugh, fine. I guess I’ll start the talking and set things up so you two don’t kill each other. But you really need to get this settled at some point and waiting even longer probably isn’t going to help.” As we walked out of the apartment and along the street, Midnight commented, “You know, even though you’re literally twice as tall as her you walk slower.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m just confused, that’s all.”

“It’s a class feature, I think. I’m pretty sure she’s a scout.”

“What kind of spell is that?”

“It’s not a spell. Scouts don’t do spells.”

“Isn’t it magic though? She definitely used mana when she moved.”

“Not everything done with mana is a spell,” I explained.

“... what?”

“It’s an important distinction, actually,” I pointed out. “For example, I can’t dispel things that aren’t spells so… there’s really no point.”

“I thought I understood a lot about this but apparently I do not,” Midnight said. “So what about those paladin kids.”

“Uh, some of that should have been from spells. I can’t say I performed deep dives on paladin abilities though. That kind of information wasn’t really publicly available, or relevant.”

“You seemed pretty unperturbed by news of more than just Jerome gaining powers. You aren’t concerned about a large number of people developing powers?” Midnight asked.

“Literally everyone in my world who isn’t a kid has a class, and thus powers,” I pointed out. “Frankly it’s kind of weird when people don’t have any. It seems difficult to get things done with just… a human body. Or non-human, for non-powered aliens.”

“That’s why we invent technology, and use it. Though I’ll admit I like having magic.”

“Magic is good,” I agreed. “I’m glad I’m able to level up properly here.”

“... Don’t start a fight with Izzy for experience.”

“I wouldn’t do that. We’re not enemies or friends so it’s just weird.”

Midnight’s emotional reactions to things I said were weird. This one felt like a mix between confusion and acceptance.