Mage Among Superheroes

Mists swirled, parting to reveal… darkness. That would normally not prevent me from seeing to some extent, but it appeared to be murky depths. I held onto the image, trying to wait for something to change. For movement. Rotating the view gave a different angle of murky water. But after time passed, there was nothing.

"What does that mean?" Calculator asked. "Is Deimos dead?"

"Dead?" I shook my head. "No, that shouldn't be the case. If he was, then I should uh…" I didn't actually know. "... Either see his body, or get nothing at all. In this case, I felt a strange resistance. Not like normal, where it fails. Nor was it violent like Gloom," I shuddered as I thought of the shadowy villain. "If I had to guess, it was redirected somehow."

"Is that possible?"

"Everything is possible, I think," I shrugged. "I'd presume some sort of spatial distortion or something? Handface has had enough experience being scryed on that he could have come up with some sort of counter."

Calculator nodded, "Distance manipulation, maybe. We'll have to test at different times to see if the location moves."

"He could also be invisible in the water," I noted.

"Wouldn't that leave some visible signs?" Calculator asked. "Like a distortion?"

"It might, but not if it's magic. At least, not something my eyes could pick out. That's not really my area of expertise."

"I see. Well, that should be enough for today, though we do have plans for something more. Given what happened with Gloom, we are leery of having you attempt to scry powerful figures, but the particular powers at hand are quite different. So I have some preliminary questions," he held up his tablet and read from it. "Do you think it would be dangerous to scry Doctor Doomsday, based on what you know of him?"

"Uh, I'm not really sure. I suppose it could be. Does he have resistance to mental abilities?"

"Yes, but not in the same way as Gloom. Is Scrying… mental?" He shook his head. "I suppose it must be, based on what happened with that."

"That's right," I nodded. "At least in part, it relies on the connection to a person's self. Knowing their name, having met them, having things they owned or part of them… it at least requires a mental component, which is why it can be resisted. And given what I've seen here, I wouldn't doubt that Doctor Doomsday could do something about it… if he knew it was coming."

"He doesn't usually have any sort of mental retaliation, so the most we could expect would be failure… but we'll be holding off on making any attempts for the moment. Perhaps if you gain more proficiency?"

I nodded. That involved both actual practice and spending points to increase its power. I technically had points available, but I wasn't going to spend half of my recent level- technically more than half- for an upgrade that wouldn't help in the way I wanted at the moment. That was, as always, fighting to get more experience and thus more points to spend.