All it took to enter Vilhelmiina’s lab this time was pressing twenty-seven bricks in the correct order. Presumably, mistakes would come with consequences. But since she informed me how to enter, it wasn’t an issue to follow instructions. Upon pressing the last one, the wall folded away and led to some stairs. I began to walk down, Midnight on my shoulder, when the stairs folded down, collapsing into a slide.

An uncontrolled descent hadn’t been on my list of plans for the day, but just like all of her weird entrances it ultimately involved coming to a mostly safe stop. This time, Midnight and I were caught by some sort of slowing field, depleting our momentum and dropping us to the floor gently.

Moving around in the area was like swimming through water, but ultimately we found our way over to the cannon bot, Frank, who led us towards Vilhelmiina. The place was both extremely familiar and completely unknown, and I wondered if this woman spent more time rearranging her lair than actually doing other stuff. Then again, I was aware that she was quite efficient with her results when it mattered, so some eccentricities could be excused. And might make sense, if she was worried about her safety.

“Good, you’re here,” she handed me a pistol. “Use this.”

“On what?” I asked. “And why?”

“On that,” she pointed to a target. “Because I want to see what happens.”

The room wasn’t really a proper firing range, but there was nothing close around the target at least. Though it did feel like it was protected by something. And the gun… no, the ammunition was something special. “Ear protection?” I asked.

“Yes, fine,” she waved her hand, grabbing a pair of earmuffs from somewhere and shoving them onto Midnight and me. “Now get shooting,” she said, her voice coming through the muffs that also seemed to double as headsets.

I held the gun up, taking careful aim, then squeezed the trigger a few times. The bullets hit right in the center of the ‘torso’- though there shouldn’t be any other results considering the distance wasn’t that great. Before it hit, however, I felt the struggle of magical forces. “Is that it?” I asked.

“Hmm. Why did that happen?” Vilhelmiina asked.

“Well, I assume the bullets dispelled a portion of the protection around the target.”

She clicked her tongue. “Tch. You knew? There go the blind results.”

I shrugged. “Sorry, I felt it.”

“Well, at least I confirmed that it works. And that there is some reason they don’t work for people with the wrong kind of powers.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “They’re just bullets.”

Vilhelmiina gestured, and I handed the gun to her. She aimed the pistol at the target with one hand, squeezing the trigger. I wasn’t certain about her stance, but her aim was accurate enough. However, instead of the soft sound of hitting the target there was a clear plinking sound as the bullet deflected off of something hard. “That,” she said, tossing the weapon towards me without even engaging the safety. “I would assume it to work with for anyone with portal powers.”

“Interesting,” I said as I lined up another shot. What was different? I squeezed, and another bullet hit vaguely clustered with the others, slipping through the barrier with only a vague feeling instead of a clear contest.

“Well, that’s basically it for that experiment. You can keep the rest of the clip, might be useful against Doomsday’s minions or the like. After that, it’ll cost you ten thousand per.”

“Per clip?” I asked.

“Per bullet,” Vilhelmiina corrected me.

I suddenly felt a little bit wasteful. “Why so much?”

“The materials aren’t exactly abundant here, and I’m not the only tech super in the city interested in working with it. If you can get me some of Doomsday’s stock out of the hands of his assassins it’s another story. Oh, and try to retrieve the bullets,” Vilhelmiina gestured. “The material is at least partly reusable.”

“Good to know,” I said. Looking at the weapon in my hand, it certainly seemed usable. However, I also didn’t like that it existed. How much magic could these bullets punch through? “What’s their limit?” I asked.

“A good question,” Vilhelmiina said. “I calibrated them around the most recent AEGIS,” she gestured towards the target. “But I haven’t seen them work without you.”

“There have to have been people with portal powers you could have had help test you.”

“Certainly, there are a lot of individuals that would be technically capable. However, the vast majority are random civilians. Very few chose to go into super business. And a good portion of those went into villainy.”

“Darkstargirl’s stupid fan club?” I asked.

“Among others, of course,” Vilhelmiina shrugged. “Now then, I do have other tasks I could use your help with.”

“What do you need?” I asked.

“Frank!” Vilhelmiina yelled. My ears twitched as her voice was amplified next to my head. I turned to see the cannon bot come into view… after which he aimed a significant portion of his cannon-self at the target. Several simultaneous explosions went off at once, eliminating the rest of my feeling of the barrier. Vilhemiina walked forward into the smoke and dust, coming back out with a belt. “I need you to figure out how to charge these things.”

“I assume you just inject mana,” I said. “I can’t right now but…”

“No no no, it’s no good if I need you or someone else. Perhaps Doctor Doomsday uses his minions for such purposes, but those portals are another matter entirely. He must have some understanding of manipulating mana through alternate methods. I’ve been attempting to replicate something but… well, let me show you.”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She yanked off our headsets and tossed them to the side. Then we were effectively dragged along through cris-crossing corridors until we came to a room labeled ‘juice lab’. She slapped the belt in front of a bulbous machine that looked like it should produce some sort of death ray. Then she yanked a lever.

I could feel the mana in the room being drawn towards the device. The whole contraption then condensed it into a beam that began to fill up the AEGIS before shuddering to a halt. “And that’s what happens. This thing is about half juiced at best,” Vilhelmiina complained. “Now why would that happen? I can measure the total ambient mana should be sufficient, but…” she gestured.

“Most likely some of it was wasted,” I said.

“How?” Vilhelmiina asked. “And why?”

Midnight flicked his tail. “If I had to guess, it probably hit its fatigue point.”

“What do you mean?” Vilhelmiina asked.

“Well, just looking at it… wouldn't you say that’s about five mana, Turlough?”

“Vaguely,” I admitted.

“But there’s no buildup,” Vilhelmiina said. “It just suddenly stops.”

“That’s about right,” Midnight said. “There’s a very thin margin between functional and unconscious for mages.”

“It’s not a mage. It’s a machine.”

I nodded, “Those are both good points. Anyway, have you tried gathering only in smaller chunks?”

“I haven’t,” the old woman admitted. “It just didn’t seem necessary. After all, the throughput was sufficient and it wasn’t overheating or anything.”

“I’ll be honest that I haven’t had the opportunity to work much with enchanted objects,” I said. “But most of this device isn’t particularly mana conductive, is it?”

“Only certain parts. Otherwise it would go every which way… right?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged. I pondered for a few seconds. “Wanna test something?”

“Always,” she said. “Oh, you mean right now? You have an idea?”

“Well, I can’t make much of anything happen here.” Feeling the depleted ambient mana was… weird. I’d never run into that before, but it was fairly obvious what happened. “But yes. I can provide you a short boost.” I looked over at the old woman, whose lab coat was covered in all sorts of odd devices. “As long as none of that will try to stop me.”

“One moment,” she fiddled around with some dials on her coat. “You have ten seconds.”

Knowing her, it was exactly that precise, so rapidly gathered my internal mana. It was only 5 points for Enhance Mind, which put me well under the time limit. I could tell exactly when it came into effect not just from my end, but from the way her eyes widened.

She immediately wandered over to the edge of the room, waving her arms around- at which point a projected image appeared on the wall. Through some arcane method of waving her arms and moving her body- or perhaps more- words and images began to rapidly fill the available space. Ten minutes elapsed, and her frenzy slowed down. The whole time she didn’t say a single word to us. “That was interesting,” she said. “Again.”

“I can’t keep something like that up long term except in the most mana dense area I’ve ever experienced,” I said. The old plane had been something special. So much power… why had people been willing to give that up? Or perhaps they didn’t have a choice.

“Bah,” Vilhelmiina said, turning back to the screen, her arms flailing and tossing away about half of what was there.

“Are you… deleting your notes?”

“If they weren’t clear enough to be understood in my normal state, who can say what other flaws there might be in the reasoning? I’d rather not distract myself from more fruitful pursuits.”

That made sense. Personally, while it was useful I hadn’t felt like I achieved the same leaps in logic and insight that the tech supers had. My thoughts were just faster. Then again, Tech Supers were known to get flashes of inspiration over time so perhaps that was exactly what they needed sometimes.

Vilhelmiina stroked her chin, muttering to herself. “If I gain an increase in cognition… hours per day… time spent achieving goals…” Eventually, she nodded. “Thank you for your assistance. I may be able to make my juicer more functional. I might also ask for more assistance in the future.”

Frank escorted the two of us to a perfectly normal seeming elevator that came out of the ground in an alley, shoved us out, and then sunk into the ground as if it had never been there. Abrupt entrances and exits weren’t that odd when dealing with that particular tech super, and I got a commission fee. Not enough to pay for even a single one of the bullets I’d come away with, but quite significant compared to my everyday income.

-----

“How do you feel about teaching?” Calculator asked.

I shrugged. “Teaching what?”

“Magic,” he declared. “Specifically, to those with portal powers.”

“Eh,” I shrugged. “I already have an apprentice.”

“Yes. It is unfortunate he is too young to get involved with the Brigade. It would be relatively simple, since his mother already works for us. But no, I meant others of course.”

I frowned. “Complete or incomplete portal powers?”

“What do you mean?” Calculator asked.

“Have they been through a portal, or just next to one?”

“Ah, that particular distinction had passed my mind. There were very few incidents where people actually passed through… and returned here.”

“Yeah, well, it’s important,” I said. “Because if it’s the incomplete type, mostly what I can tell them is to look at wikis and screw around until they succeed at something. I guess I could help people pick classes. But if you’re thinking of more mages, they’re going to be really hampered by the complete lack of magical tomes here. Though I suppose other intellectual reading is abundant enough to make some progress. For normal people, without an aspect. Growth will generally be slow, though.”

“I see,” Calculator nodded. “I had made some assumptions based off of your rate of growth.”

“That’s no good,” I shook my head. “Even if they got in constant fights they would grow less than me. Which would make fighting less motivating, resulting in even slower growth.”

“How long would it take people to be capable?”

“If you just want street thugs with tricks, that kind of happens right away. We’ve seen it with the fan club. But for someone properly effective… usually it takes a while. Perhaps 3-5 years of training?” I shrugged. “That would get them to be more effective than my initial arrival, but significantly behind where I am now I think.”

“You’ve given me things to think about. Still, it might be worth it. Are you willing to give it a try?”

“As long as it includes combat training. I don’t want to give up my own advancement rate for others.”

“Certainly not,” Calculator agreed. “And you wouldn’t need to be present at all times, if I understand correctly. Just give people guidance on where to start.”

“Then yeah. I can do that at some point.” I shrugged. “Or Midnight could.”

The Celmothian flicked his tail. “Are you sure…?”

“You know more than they would, at least. Don’t forget you have over a year of practical field experience now. And the basics of training are pretty easy. Do stuff that fits your class.”

I wasn’t interested in being in charge of anyone… but I didn’t mind helping people get better. Especially if they were struggling. The fewer people like myself who were stuck going nowhere, the better.