Mage Among Superheroes

We ended up in a different safehouse from before. The reason was quite sensible- bringing us back to the same place might allow our detection. The Bunvorixian resistance was confident in their own protections, but that didn't include magical search methods. I was pretty sure that we were protected against that.

I did make Midnight use Nondetection for us though. Because I wasn't certain I wouldn't actually turn it into Detection. Had I so far invented the very meaning of a spell? No, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I was ninety nine point nine nine percent certain I hadn't hurt anyone. I was absolutely certain I hadn't been hit enough to get the thirty or so points of experience that had happened on the mission. My conclusion was that I could probably get experience for breaking things. Maybe only weapons of war like the ships, or possibly any sort of destruction. This was a pretty good place to test that, if the resistance kept giving me targets.

"Do you want any gear upgrades?" Flopan asked. "I can't guarantee we can do whatever you want, but there are quite a number of things we can do. Like lightweight armor."

"I have lightweight armor," I pointed out.

"Isn't that… clothing?" he asked. "I only have heard about humans through propaganda, and how you somehow started a war with us while we were peacefully on your planet. It wasn't even a very good lie, they could have claimed you shot down something in space. Anyway, they mentioned clothing is meant to be protective but not that much."

"What he has," Midnight explained. "Is made by an individual with powers. It is more equivalent to my own suit, though less adaptive. It has one set form with transparency features."

"Fascinating. Could we get scans of it?'

"You'll find the design incomprehensible," Midnight said. "Not that there is no value to be gained from it, but it simply doesn't work according to the laws of physics."

"Ah. I see. Upgrades would be quite difficult, I imagine. And everything similar we have is very tuned to the Bunvorixian form. Perhaps you would want weapons? It seems you would be able to use them."

"While we're here I could use a gun of some sort," I admitted. "In case I need to fight. Conserving mana would be good. I don't think I could keep it back on Earth, though."

"How problematic," Flopan said. "Your cyborg friend seemed less concerned, however."

"It's harder for them to take away something integrated into his power, legally speaking." I wasn't quite certain how people went from 'someone with advanced prosthetics' to 'cyborg', but it seemed to be a sort of activated power, maybe an inherent feature of humans that once brought to the forefront took over power exclusivity. Theoretically, because Flasher was pushing the limits of what made sense even for a high compatibility cyborg and seemed like he might have something more.

With no offense meant to Kick, he was just a worse cyborg. His compatibility factor was significantly less, either because he couldn't or didn't attach as much random junk to himself. It was sort of like training any other power- the more cyborg bits were used, the more capable a user became. Up to a limit, probably. Iron Shell had been particularly high, and Flasher might be even more so. He was worse than her, but the Mod Squad would have been a serious menace if both were still on the streets.

Of another planet. We really needed to get back to that.

Flopan continued. "Your other friend is getting a ranged addition to his weapon. Normally we wouldn't be able to manage that, but the techs think they can fit a power source inside the body of the weapon because he has hands. Um, that is to say we require a more complex and space intensive firing rig."

"I've seen it before," I nodded. These Bunvorixians weren't carrying around back mounted cannons with mouthpieces that they squeezed, but even before the guys at the military base I'd seen some Bunvorixians on Earth. Personally, I thought the Celmothian solution was more elegant, but it was probably more expensive to make self moldable material like Midnight's suit. Though it could get cheap enough that most people seemed to have it to some extent.

"We'll provide what we can, as promised," Flopan said. "We're still working on locating the dimensional suppression hub. While we would like you to remain for longer… we don't intend to take advantage of you like that."

I looked at Midnight. "We should figure out a way to remain in contact. Aside from Sending, I mean. You wouldn't be able to initiate that."

"What is 'Sending'?" Flopan asked.

"Long distance magical communication," Midnight explained. "Limited by audio length, among other things."

"Interesting."

"Can you send messages to Celmothian tech?" I asked.

"Not safely. Our transmitters are short range to avoid interception by the government," Flopan explained. "And they would likely reject any transmissions that reached them."

"Not quite," Midnight said. "But they wouldn't likely respond. Once I get back there, we might manage something."

I nodded. I was tired. No, I'd only been awake for a couple hours after sleeping… enough. I was… low on mana. Which often felt like being tired, but more so now that I was at incorrect amounts of mana. Rather than being 'negative', I think I was learning it was more 'traditionally inaccessible'. "Do you have a safehouse anywhere high up?" I asked.

"Of course not. That would be reckless," Flopan said. "Why? If you want a vantage point, we can access some cameras…"

"Mana gathers naturally in higher places. Or it's more easily accessible, at least."

Could mana be somewhere and not accessible? Was there more here?

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Since the Bunvorixians didn't have a solution, I spent much of the day meditating to try to speed my recovery. It helped, but not proportionately more than normal. So if there was some secret flow to tap into, I wasn't figuring it out.

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As it turned out, incorporating high tech upgrades into foreign cyborgs and super tech weapons took time. I was surprised to hear that the Bunvorixians planned to have the work done within twenty-four hours, but that was still a long time to be waiting around. People were probably still looking for us, and I knew that because Midnight and I sensed strain on Nondetection. That meant Spot or perhaps other Bunvorixians with magic.

Normally my mana would have filled up several times over in a day. Here, it was just… so bad. Still, I was close to full and pondering if I should try Gate. I didn't sense any deception about the perils of the dimensional suppression hub, though. Even if it worked, if I couldn't immediately grab the others it might not work twice.

Plus, Midnight was still working out how to remain in contact. The Bunvorixian resistance wasn't worried about Celmothians, because they had a better understanding of the propaganda fed to them and how it twisted things. They were, however, a very small part of the population. There was a lot of work to get anything done.

Aside from blowing up a bunch of ships. Though I guess they also couldn't easily do that. I could, and I even volunteered to help more. I wanted to test my destructive powers somewhere appropriate. If I could get another level… well, it wouldn't hurt to test Meteor Swarm too would it?

I pulled up the status menu. It was sluggish.