Mage Among Superheroes

"You're going to fight laser-people?" Zeb hopped up and down excitedly when we ended up in 'her' training room. "I want to come too! Fluffy can eat their lasers!"

"Mhm," I nodded. "But can he protect you from all angles?"

"Don't be silly. Fluffy is big but he can only be in one place at a time."

"Right," Midnight said. "So, you don't have any way to protect yourself against them, then."

"... I'll stand real far away?"

Midnight shook his head. "It would be better for you to not come personally in that case. Maybe you could ask for Extra to release your defensive gear to you? That should function fine since we'll be up against Bunvorixian weaponry."

"Defensive gear?" she shook her head. "Oh no, engineers never get assigned anything like that."

I could feel Midnight's emotions twist. I had the feeling he wanted to say something like 'Bunvorixians suck', but he couldn't really do that in front of Zeb. Even if he whispered, if I could hear it she probably could as well. "... But the soldiers and commanders do?"

"The soldiers need it the most!" Zeb explained. "And the commanders are important!"

I wondered if Doctor Patenaude had any openings. Someone really needed to have a good think about her people. Or former people.

"I don't think you can go anywhere without defensive stuff," I said. "And Fluffy would need you around to control him." Based on my understanding he'd probably be friendly towards us or at least docile without Zeb around, but he was still very new to… everything. New people, new planet, and all of that. Actuall, being around people at all was probably new since he'd been wild.

"But laaaasers~!" Zeb complained. "All Fluffy has had to eat lately is normal food. He started chewing on some wires and- I mean, those wires chewed on themselves and he cleaned up the damaged bits. He needs more variety in his diet. Probably."

"Khithae's gonna have to fix those wires, you know," I pointed out.

Zeb gasped. "But she's the nice lizard engineer!" She swiveled her head. "Fluffy, don't eat wires!"

Kick, who hadn't said anything, looked down at his legs. "That guy eats… wires?"

"Baseless rumors," I said. "I've only seen him eat lasers. Now then, we were going to test whether my defenses interrupted outgoing attacks from your abilities." That shouldn't happen, but most magic created the effects beyond the caster. The lasers would originate inside a cyborg and pass through the defensive barrier layer. I didn't have that much experience with that, so it was something we had to test before patrols. I'd never protected Shockfire from the elements he could use, so it could use more testing there as well.

It was difficult to have a neutral perspective on casting a spell that I was specifically testing for a certain interaction, but I tried my best. In the end, I cast Energy Ward on Kick three times. I had learned how to more directly target nontraditional elements, as I'd come across lasers and laser like things often enough. For example, I could protect specifically against Darkstargirl's energy. That didn't make the spell more effective, but instead brought it up to the normal effectiveness since it was always supposed to be narrowly tailored.

Though since the base category of 'fire' was so broad, focusing on just 'weird black fire' made it less effective against other fires, similar to how it worked if I protected just against fire for her. In short, it wasn't exact in what it protected against but it wasn't universally effective like Force Armor. Stoneskin also protected against most attacks, unlike what local logic said, but it was certainly much less effective against 'elemental' stuff compared to 'physical'.

The first and second tests were effectively the same result with Kick. First I tried to just cast the spell to resist lasers. His abilities worked just fine. I noted that his laser augmentations probably fit inside of his legs, which meant he might not be a cyborg powered person. Someone must have studied that threshold. Would getting other powers make cyborg parts stop working, or just mean he was limited on upgrades? It was probably the latter, but might depend on the power.

Anyway, versions of energy ward where I didn't care about whether his lasers in particular got through and where they were intentionally let through acted the same. But that could have been bias from me already thinking about it.

The fun part was when I tried to intentionally stop his lasers. I saw him kick up his leg, pointing his knee at the target. Then I saw a sparkly light as the laser was absorbed into the spell or otherwise diffused.

Kick frowned and tried again, and again. Eventually the spell gave out, but it lasted long enough that he was effectively doing nothing for a fatal amount of in-combat time. "I don't like that at all," he commented.

"Interesting," Midnight said. "So we can use Energy Ward… offensively?"

"Well, it's not like it hurt him," I pointed out. "But if we want to shut down one person, it's more effective than casting it on everyone, I guess. The downside being some people will probably bypass it, they'll probably be maximally effective against something up close and eat through it faster, and getting it on them in the first place. It requires getting pretty close."

Then again… if someone was theoretically going to punch me with black fire, wouldn't they be close enough? How would this affect non-offensive abilities? Did Darkstargirl's flight have anything to do with her other star powers? I messaged Calculator about that.