Mage Among Superheroes

A battle was ahead, and we rushed towards it. I was able to take in first the brightly colored magical girls. One in pink was shooting golden light from a wand of some sort, another was really short and had a fire bow, and the third had a shield with all sorts of gizmos and gadgets.

Shield was standing in front of the others, unsurprisingly, and I saw something that looked like a dire wolf with an extra pair of bear limbs slapped on crash into her. Clearly she was cheating physics, because the larger beast bounced back instead of her being the one sent flying.

Frankly I didn’t see what made these Scouring creatures look like Jim and Kyle except for the extreme abundance of extra appendages. Okay, and there was something like a weasel with long flailing bits but things like that were pretty standard aberrations.

Midnight picked a target first, focusing on one with too many eyes. That just meant there were more targets for Light, and it was large enough he actually managed to spray it with several orbs from Multicasting. Light was so cheap that it was kind of a waste of time to do just one.

I reached into my pocket to make sure I had my baggies. I tried not to leave home without them, but sometimes they were in Storage. Having just been paid, the relatively small expenditure didn’t bother me as much as the mana. I gathered nearly as much mana as I could- more than I was aware could be spent on any single spell. Stoneskin covered not only myself and Midnight, but also all four magical girls and hopefully their companions. I knew Eglantine preferred to stay out of battles, but it was better to be safe. And as a magical porcupine, perhaps she could afford to take some hits this way- the enemy would find out how unpleasant retribution could be.

“You go girl!” shouted the pink one with the wand. Probably she was talking about Shrimp blowing a smoking hole through the suddenly blind ball of eyes.

From what I could tell, most of the enemies were physical threats- thus prioritizing Stoneskin. Some had spines of their own and even shot them in like Strife, but she was currently Hasted so her maneuverability was far beyond what they could handle.

I found my theory slightly thrown off by some sort of dragon the size of a car crawling out of the mass of monsters and breathing fire all over Shield. But she seemed prepared enough for that eventuality, something spinning around the edge of her shield and creating some sort of… air fan? Eh, it was magic acting like super tech so I guess I didn’t have to understand entirely why it worked, but the point was all of the flames were stopped. Except for what hit the streets. The cleanup was going to be a mess.

“Where are all these things coming from?” I yelled in annoyance. Then I gathered another big chunk of mana and lobbed it in the general direction of the monsters. I might have given these aberrations the benefit of the doubt if not for Strife’s explanations, but the most important thing for me to make peace with monstrous looking individuals was them not attacking.

The spell I launched was my best area one since I hadn’t bought Meteor Swarm and also had to avoid hitting these people in front of me. Chain Lightning was quite happy to start at the front and work its way back until it ran out of juice. There was still a pretty constant horde of monsters, though that was counterbalanced by flaming arrows, beams of sparkling light, and quills. Oh, and spinning blades on the edge of Shield’s shield.

I was pleased to discover that the majority of aberration blood wasn’t red. Goopy greens and yellows were the stars of the show, and that meant I could rest easy that my magical companions were mostly unharmed.

“Turlough!” I heard Midnight’s shout from afar. “Portal!”

Ah, that would explain it. I probably had only a handful of seconds left on Haste, but that was enough to let me rush over towards a park just off the side of the road, batting away a few smaller things rushing at me as I did so.

The first thing I saw was a paw about five feet across with claws tearing foot deep gouges into the concrete, then a bit of snout through the ten foot wide or so portal behind it. Midnight was dancing around near the portal, letting the paw slap at him. I wasn’t sure if the thing could squeeze through, especially not with the other things crawling over it, but this wasn’t a situation where I wanted to wait and find out.

“Let’s try to squeeze that portal shut!” I called to Midnight. He would have been aware of me coming up behind him, of course. I smashed some sort of leech with spider legs that had teeth all the way around the inside of its mouth. Then I began gathering mana, focusing on the portal. The good news was I felt an instant response. This wasn’t one of those difficult portals.

Midnight leapt back and began to add his own efforts, and in a few moments the portal was no bigger than the radius of the giant paw slipping through- which meant we had stemmed the tide of other monsters. The paw wiggled around angrily and then began to pull back- but Midnight and I weren’t done yet. We continued to close the portal. When it reached the edge of the paw, it didn’t just stop. It also didn’t cut through it, technically. It was just that suddenly, certain parts were no longer physically adjacent to each other.

This one’s blood was orange- and highly acidic, from what I could see happening to the concrete.

“That’s a neat trick,” someone said behind me. In Japanese, of course. I turned to see Wand looking over the nearby fence. “You’ve got a unique aesthetic miss…” her eyes finally reached past my torso. “Huh. A dude.”

Before we could really converse, I heard shouting behind her. Fortunately not the panicked and dying sort. Instead it was the kind that came with a surge of mana.

“Phoenix Rain!~”

The foliage at the edge of the park made it difficult to see everything that was going on, but I saw enough of the flaming arrows falling into the remaining aberrations, sending burning bits flying everywhere.

“Wow,” I said. “It must be expensive to clean up after Shrimp.”

“... Who?” Wand turned to look, then snorted. “Ah, don’t let Burning Cupid hear you call her that.”

“... Fried Shrimp?”

“That’s even worse!” Wand said, rolling her eyes. Now that we weren’t in combat, I saw she didn’t look… traditionally Japanese. Which wasn’t to say she looked foreign either… and it was difficult to quite tell with Stoneskin throwing things off. The pink hair was probably a magical trait and not worth mentioning, and that showed through easily. “So I don’t mean to be rude, but you are a man, right?”

“Yep,” I said. “I was just here to bring Strife home.” I looked at the burning treetops just above my conversation companion. “Shouldn’t you put those out? I’d imagine the extra damage comes out of your pay.”

“Pay?” Wand tilted her head. But she did look upwards, waving her wand to create a stream of water. Which then somehow turned the charred and black leaves back into fresh green ones. “Can you help clean up?” she asked. As she began waving her wand, mana began to flow over the surroundings- both from her and the others. The burned and pitted streets began to reform, while the bodies and other remains of the aberrations melted and then vaporized into some sort of black smoke, which then broke down until it seemed to be nothing at all.

“I literally can’t, I don’t think,” I said. Unless there was something about this world that inherently allowed for repair magic. Just in case, I tried to replicate the effect, but my mana kind of just didn’t know what to do.

Fifteen minutes later, the area was cleaned up and civilians were flooding back in. And then they were taking pictures of (and with) the magical girls.

“Excuse me, are you new?” asked a feminine voice. I turned my head, and got a similar look as what Wand had given me- surprised and confusion, mixed with curiosity. “Oh, you’re a… man?” Probably not a lot of magical girls had beards. Or green skin and tusks, I’d bet.

“I’m just a bystander,” I lied.

“... But you have a companion,” the woman said, gesturing to Midnight sitting on my shoulder.

“Meow,” Midnight said poorly. Then he remembered that if he just wanted to speak Celmothian he could, and it was much more convincing. “Go away lady we don’t need any more attention.” As long as he didn’t want it to be interpreted to Japanese, Translation wouldn’t give him away.

I considered casting Disguise but… it was already pretty late for that, wasn’t it?

The woman looked unconvinced. I considered trying to pretend to be a fan, but given the number of odd looks that were already being passed around they probably didn’t need me to cause more trouble.

“Alright, that’s enough!” Strife was the one who gave in first. “Us magical girls need to have a strategy meeting. And we’ll be bringing our new butler.” Eglantine whispered in her ear. “I mean our chauffeur. Or whatever.”

-----

Another ten minutes later we were in a safehouse. I knew what they were like, since the mercs in New Bay needed them occasionally. Plus villains liked them too.

“Whoa, you’re totally trending already,” Wand commented. “A new Magical Man!? Details you won’t even believe~!” she made a funny voice as she read what I presumed was a headline from some sort of internet article from her phone. “As if anyone got anything. You stonewalled them pretty good. Speaking of stone,” she looked down at her arm which had a fading granite color. “What kind of ability is this, huh?”

“It’s magic,” I said, shrugging.

“Strife~” Wand turned to the other magical girl. “Explain your new boyfriend.”

“He’s not my-” Strife twitched. “We’re just new friends. You remember those elf ninjas causing those break ins?”

“Oh, totally,” Wand agreed.

Shrimp looked up at me. “He doesn’t look like an elf.”

“I’m an orc,” I clarified.

“Not an oni?” Shrimp tilted her head.

“... Do those even come in green?” I asked.

“... Every color,” Shield said, her words minimal.

“Okay. Well, I’m an orc.”

Wand nodded. “Great. So where ya from?”

I looked at Strife.

“What?” she asked. “I was already confused when you said everything before, why would I be better at explaining?”

“Good point,” I nodded. “I’m originally from a type-F world, I moved to New Bay when I found a portal, and now I work as a mercenary usually fighting supervillains.”

Shrimp sighed. “You could have just said you didn’t want to tell us. I haven’t heard of a man with magic before but I’d recognize a Humurun native anywhere. Even as a black cat, the talking kind of gives it away.”

A red-orange bird manifested next to her. Where had it come from? I should have been able to see companions, like Eglantine. Well, this one didn’t seem to be made of physical stuff, but instead flames. “That one is not one of us.”

Midnight nodded. “Indeed. I’m almost the opposite. I got powers from this guy, not the other way around,” Midnight said, patting my head with his paw.

Shield seemed to be hiding behind her trademark defensive item. “... opposite world?”

Strife actually explained that one. “No. They don't even have any magical girls at all, though they have lots of people like Mage. I think. Except for in the other world and…” Strife covered her other eye. “It’s actually a big headache. It’ll take a while to explain.”

“We do have time though,” I said. “The mana levels are pretty good here, but it will still be a few hours before I can go back.”

“Wait,” said the short one. “Strife finally found a friend and you’re just going to abandon her?”

“I would never abandon my friends, Shrimp.”

Before I could react, a fist was coming for my jaw. Enhanced by the power of a magical girl… I was glad that I had invisible head projection. It also helped that she had to extend her arm to its maximum length and then rise to her tip-toes. It still hurt, though.

“Not bad, Fried Shrimp,” I nodded. “Maybe you don’t even need a bow.”