Mage Among Superheroes

Fried Shrimp was still glaring at us while Wand was patching us up. Healing magic was something I was always glad to have.

“You didn’t help at all, Caroline!” she complained to the mini phoenix on her shoulder.

“It was not a situation that required magical assistance,” the bird said. “Nor did his own companion intervene. Also, you really shouldn’t be attacking civilians.”

“He’s not a civilian! He’s got magic and stuff!”

“Attacking a fellow guardian is not any better,” Caroline pointed out.

“You know,” Midnight interjected. “It’s possible he might actually call you what you want if you were actually introduced.”

That was true. It was possible that I might. Certainly, I couldn’t do it if I didn’t have a proper name.

“I’m not giving him my name!” she protested.

Eglantine was doing her best to smooth things over. “I believe he means your moniker. You know, none of the rest of you really got introduced.”

“Oh.” Fried Shrimp folded her arms in front of her. “Well, introduce us,” she said to her companion.

“As you may have heard,” Mini Phoenix said, “My name is Caroline. And this is Burning Cupid.”

What an odd name. Were these people named by the same people from the Power Brigade?

Next was Wand, who had just finished closing up a cut on Fried Shrimp’s fist where she’d actually managed to hit my tusk in our brawl. “I’m Pink Angel,” she declared.

Shield hid behind her device, just her eyes poking above. “... Gizmo Girl.”

Good, now that that was done with, we could continue. “So you fight a lot of weird monsters here?” I asked. “Are they from space, or another dimension? I saw the portal but that didn’t really make things clear.”

Wand’s companion- a pink cat with two tails- began her explanation. Well, she probably wasn’t a cat, but that wasn’t the important part. “We don’t really have a clear understanding, but it should be another dimension. What we have seen through the portals is a realm of only monsters and little else. Though perhaps they come from a planet overrun by their kind and they wish to expand here next. In the past they tried to attack our homeworld, Humurun, but we sealed them away.”

“Cool,” I said. “Maybe do that again? If you want to stop the attacks, I mean.”

“There are not enough of us here to manage such a monumental task,” Eglantine explained. “Especially not with the constant intrusions.”

“So… bring more people over,” I said.

“Perhaps you underestimate the difficulty of travel between planets,” Eglantine said. “It takes many of our number to send one of us here, and our own powers are weakened. Thus why we focus on empowering local magical girls.”

“I have tons of questions about that. Why girls?”

Eglantine paused for a moment. “Girls- or women- tend to have higher magical potential and receptiveness to random animal-like individuals suddenly appearing.”

“I suppose,” I shrugged. “Is there really such a big difference in potential, though?”

“Yes,” Eglantine said. “It is about a factor of a thousand times more likely that a woman will have sufficient magical potential for us to awaken.”

“Weird. In my world everyone has exactly the same potential. Probably.”

The porcupine tilted her head, her quills shimmering different colors as the light hit at different angles. “... What do you mean?”

“Well, everyone gets classes and levels apply to people in the same way. Sometimes people choose a class not really suited to them and they’re not motivated but I don’t know if there’s really potential or not. At best, we have the Aspects?”

“Aspects?” asked Mini Phoenix.

“Yeah. Things like Aspect of the Sage improve growth from study. And my Aspect of the Barbarian… means I don’t get experience from anything but combat. But I get like, double.”

The short one glared at me, using some magic to remove blood from the collar of her shirt. “That explains why you’re so violent.”

“Whatever you say, Grilled Shrimp.”

“That’s not even the same-” her head turned to Midnight. “You said he’d remember my name!”

Midnight shook his head back and forth. “I said he can’t call you by it if you’re never introduced. Not that he would actually do it.”

“It’s okay Burning Shrimp,” I said. “Names aren’t important, it’s whether or not you can set monsters on fire.”

“Graaaah!” Fried Shrimp leapt forward, but Shield was holding onto the back of her collar. Were all magical girls full of untamed rage? At least Strife seemed to get that. “Lemme at him!”

“Bad.” Shield said. “Ally.”

“Anyway,” I said. “If your actual issue is not having enough of your people here to juice people with magic powers, I can just open a portal to your planet.”

Shield’s titular device suddenly wiggled and deformed into something like a metallic face. “Impossible.”

“Not a permanent one,” I pointed out. “But I already opened a portal there a couple days ago.”

“It’s true,” Eglantine said. “We saw it.”

“It only lasts like a minute though,” I clarified. “So you’d need to have people ready and all that. It would take a while to set up, I bet.”

The pink cat was clearly quite interested. “How large of a portal?”

“Well, something like 15 feet across.” I saw only a confused expression. “Like four and a half meters. I forgot this is Japan.”

The cat’s two tails twisted together. If she was anything like Midnight, that meant she was thinking deeply. Or bored. Or… well, there were probably a lot of things it could mean. “What is the price for the use of such a tremendous ability?”

“20 mana,” I said. “Well, I’ve spent like 81 points on it too. So like a tenth of my total so far.”

“There is a… numerical value?” the pink cat tilted her head.

“How else do you measure things?” I asked.

“Is 1 mana the same as those crystals?” Strife asked. “That would be quite a hefty price indeed.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Those aren’t even close to 1 mana.”

Strife nodded. “Of course, it must be much greater.”

“Yeah, those are like 6.6 now,” I said. “They cost a lot more to make, but they’re good when you need a little boost. But 20 is… well, 20 hours of recovery something like… maybe eight here?” I looked around. “You’ve got pretty decent mana density around here.” For some reason, she looked surprised. “What? I already explained this to you previously. This is why we stopped by Earth for a bit. My Earth, I mean.”

“... I assumed you had some sort of way to amplify your abilities from there.”

“And the other portals I opened…?” I asked.

This time Eglantine joined in. “Wasn’t part of the cost people going through…?”

“Why?” I asked. “With a Gate open, whatever goes through just goes through. It doesn’t somehow get more expensive. So it’s just based on how many people are around at the right time to cram ‘em through. Though I’d suggest not cutting things too close to the edge. You saw what happened to that big thing.” I squeezed my fingers together. “But if the rest of your people are about the same size you could probably get a few hundred through.”

The metal face that seemed to be Shield’s gizmo and also her companion spoke in what I could only describe as a ‘blorp’. “Midnight… grants such power?”

“I need to remind everyone,” Midnight said. “That unlike all of you, I get my powers from this guy. Not the other way around. So he knows literally everything I know, and more.”

“Not that much more,” I said to Midnight. “You’ve learned tons! And you’ve been around for most of the experiments.”

“Anyway,” Midnight shrugged. “I can confirm he’s as accurate as possible about what our powers can do.”

“... Hundreds?” Eglantine still seemed to be stuck on that point. “We’ve had difficulty finding that many with the potential but… if it was that easy to bring everyone through…”

While she wondered about that, Midnight whispered in my ear. “So is this a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I replied.

“... Hundreds of people gaining powers?”

“They’re literally being invaded. Besides, do they even have villains here?” That was a good question, actually. I raised my voice. “So like… do you ever get magical girls who turn into villains?”

“What?” Eglantine laughed awkwardly. “Of course not. That would be… crazy.”

“And if there were any,” the pink cat said. “They would be dealt with swiftly.”

“Their guardian could take away their powers,” Mini Phoenix said. “So obviously it’s never a problem.”

“Unless there’s a corrupt Humurun,” I said. “Anyway, probably think about what proportion of your new people will become villains if you want to make a bunch at once. If it’s less than a quarter it’s probably fine though.”

“A quarter?!” Pink almost hit herself in the head with her own tails flailing. “What kind of- obviously if there were villains it wouldn’t be nearly that high!”

“Really?” I asked. “New Bay Statistics sometimes get that high.”

“Hmm,” Midnight said. “Is that counting Portal Powers? Because Dark Star’s fanatics probably throw off those numbers.”

“Nah, they’re an outlier and the statistics are still being compiled for the last year. And lots of others got Portal Powers and just didn’t really join the super community.”

“Wait one moment,” Strife said. “So you’re telling me in your world… a quarter of the people with powers become villains?”

“Exactly,” I said. “So after you take out another half to balance out the chaos they cause, you have a good chunk of people remaining to deal with extradimensional intrusions. So more supers appearing is generally to the benefit of the community.”

For some reason, Strife seemed to think that was weird.“How many villains does your world have?!”

“I mean, they obviously lie on the census,” I said. “So the numbers aren’t gonna be exact. But like I said, about a quarter. Rarely more than thirty percent of all supers.” I paused. “We’re not counting mooks, right? Only powered individuals?”

“How does your world function?” Strife said, exasperated.

“Surprisingly well, actually,” Midnight said. “I know, I was shocked too. But you kind of get used to it.”

“Wait a second,” Strife narrowed her eyes. “Weren’t you originally not even from that world? How long did it take you to get used to that?”

“Well I’ve been living on Earth for a bit over a year,” I said. “The time it took me to get used to the whole super dynamic… maybe a month?”

People looked to Midnight for answers he didn’t have.

“Anyway,” I said. “Is there somewhere in one of the safehouses you wouldn’t mind me making portals? Because I should probably get back to New Bay and I’ll be way more accurate if I memorize a specific place to come back. Portals on the streets aren’t great. Oh, and I’d need a specific spot on Humurun, if you want a Gate there. I figure it’ll take a few days at least to set that up, so I should probably get home.”

“... How will we contact you?” Eglantine asked.

“Well, assuming you don’t have magic of your own, I’ll use Sending to contact one of you. Probably you, Eglantine,” I said to the porcupine. “It’s just a few sentences, but you’ll be able to reply with the same amount. Actually, we might as well demonstrate… if we’re able to stay a bit longer. We’d probably need to get lunch or dinner or whatever. But I doubt our money works in this world. Or country.”

Shield’s companion had fully embraced the natural? form of a metal slime and was moving around the room. She was using one of the couches as cover. “... Will pay,” she said.

How nice. I wasn’t really feeling like canned tuna. And Power Brigade energy bars got old very quickly. Maybe they could make some with infused mana. Would that cause mana poisoning like absorbing the crystals? Eh, whatever. That was for another time.