For some reason, Midnight was more concerned about myself than I was. That was the norm for us, but still. “It’s not like I knew I would… end up off target,” I pointed out.
Midnight’s tail flicked. “Something about the way you said that makes me suspicious. Even though I know you aren’t lying.”
Lying was silly. Especially to my own friend and Familiar. “I don’t have a detailed manual for Teleportation like Portal Theory.”
“Huh,” Midnight settled into his position on the flying transport- we were being brought away from the ‘incident location’ that way instead of using more portals because they wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with me. But my body only hurt a little bit. “You know, I didn’t really think about that. I would have thought Teleportation would be included, but it wasn’t.”
“They’re different things,” I pointed out. “Portals and Teleportation aren’t the same.”
“They’re both space manipulation, though,” Midnight said.
“Well, maybe.”
“They have to be, right?” Midnight tilted his head.
I looked at my lengthening status window. Well, actually, it was technically one entry shorter than before but there were still a lot of things. “Can’t tell,” I shrugged. “It hasn’t ranked up yet.”
“Why would that matter?” Midnight asked as our ride began to slow.
“Because then it might fuse with Gate. And we’ll know.”
-----
As it turned out, Celmothian hospitals were not made for orcs. However, after some conversation with the doctors it was decided that my vital signs should probably be the same when Reduced. That meant I could fit in some of their scanners, though only barely. They would probably be quite roomy for Celmothians normally.
I did make use of the most powerful version of Shift Size I could. That made me a little more than two feet tall which Izzy found hilarious. Even though Jerome was still shorter than me with a normal-power cast of Size Shift.
Great Girl was still pretending to be getting Size Shift from Midnight regularly, but Jerome seemed to be getting suspicious about that. Well, he was getting used to sensing mana usage and since her power was more of a constant output than a burst, it really was suspicious. But he was smarter than to say anything about it. Izzy… might already know. She knew Great Girl as Sophia, after all. I wasn’t her only friend on Earth. In fact, she more or less had all of my friends. Except obscure ones like Rositsa.
I thought a lot about Shift Size while I was being scanned. I couldn’t focus on the scanner because it wasn’t magic at all. Or super. It probably used x-rays or gamma rays or something. Nobody told me and I didn’t ask. Khithae did, but to understand what she was saying with Translate I had to know what the words that were translated meant to begin with.
There probably weren’t supposed to be so many people hanging around for medical tests, but our circumstances were unique and people stayed out of the way.
Celmothian doctors apparently had utility suits. So while they probably didn’t transform into laser guns and stuff, they did look quite similar to Midnight’s battle suit before Francois got his fingers on it. Now, Midnight was shinier. And probably more durable or whatever.
A three dimensional chart of what I assumed was my body given the tusks appeared out of nowhere. Well, as a function of the doctor’s suit thing. She had introduced herself at some point but… Doctor was good enough. “As you can see, there are no surface level injuries.”
“Mhm,” I nodded.
“Do you still feel pain from the incident?” the doctor asked.
“He does,” Midnight answered for me. Rude. I mean, it was true but… it wasn’t serious pain.
“Just a little.”
“It’s like a broken limb spread out over the whole body,” Midnight emphasized.
The doctor nodded. “That would be consistent with our results, then. It won’t be obvious on the scans, but there is minor inflammation throughout your whole body.”
“That’s probably fine, right?” I said.
She gave me a serious look. “I wouldn’t say anything like this is fine. We never encounter anything like this. You blacked out, didn’t you?”
“That was from mana fatigue,” I explained. “It had nothing to do with any injuries,” I said.
“It might have. You have symptoms of a minor concussion. The damage occurred throughout all of your body.”
“But it’s minor, right?”
She hissed slightly. “How often do you get concussions?”
“Not very. Francois is very good about that.” I had changed into a sheet of some sort since they didn’t exactly have medical gowns for humans. My normal clothing would have interfered with any scans. I flicked the head covering- which was still invisible. “I have magic head protection.”
Great Girl supported me. “We’re very careful about concussions at the Power Brigade. We have ways to confirm that they are fully healed before letting people return to action, to avoid compounding issues.”
I was also pretty sure that Regenerate would be able to fix some of that stuff. But not having to bug Ceira or run off to another world was probably better. Though our in-house healers were quite helpful with speeding such injuries along. Even Meztli, who wasn’t really a healer, helped with stuff like that.
-----
I wasn’t allowed to do anything interesting or Teleport for the next few days, so plans were to explore the local city. It wasn’t any more geared towards humanoids than anywhere else, but every city had interesting locations.
Before that, however, Jet and some of those working with the Teleportation tests had a bunch of questions.
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“So you ended up inside the teleportation chamber?” one asked.
“Directly inside,” I confirmed.
Jet looked quite concerned. “But it was deprecated. Unpowered. It’s no longer part of the network.”
“Sure, but that didn’t make it a less valid Teleportation chamber, right?” I shrugged.
“The spell was supposed to fail,” Jet said. “Since there was nothing attached to the network in the area.”
I tilted my head. “But you know I’m not actually using the network, right?”
“Our teleportation restrictions applied to you though,” she pointed out. “If it’s not part of the network, there should have been nothing. The fact that you could end up there… implies holes in our security.”
I stroked my chin. “Maybe you didn’t take it off the list?”
“The network doesn’t work like that. There are authorized departure and arrival locations. If they’re inactive, they’re just… not.”
“It’s made of special materials though, right? In a particular way?” I asked.
“I do believe that’s part of that,” Jet said, confirming with the specialists. “This means we might need to fully dismantle deprecated teleportation markers or risk security holes.”
I shrugged. “It might just be because it’s magic.”
“Spot has magic,” Jet pointed out.
“Oh, sure. But he shouldn’t be able to Teleport. Just Gate eventually.” Their defenses hadn’t really been preventing Gates. But they’d made some adjustments and now their teleportation network rejected extradimensional access as well. “I suppose if it’s using the same network, those might be holes.”
“We certainly can’t risk it,” Jet said.
Well, it wasn’t an issue for me if they wanted to try to fix that. I wasn’t the one who had to do all the work.
-----
There was one final thing we had not tested with Teleport, at least of the ideas I’d immediately had. For some reason, Midnight was being stingy about letting me try.
“The doctor said all the swelling has gone down over the last few days,” I said. “Come on, I just want to see if we can sneak into the network or go further than we’re supposed to!”
Okay, so it was two things. I had just thought of that second thing.
“You might still have microscopic damage,” Midnight disagreed. “We’ve given them plenty of work for the moment, we can make those attempts on a later trip. At least we can be certain a Gate is working or not before going through.”
“But if they have to make modifications anyway, wouldn’t it be worse to learn of new vulnerabilities later?” I asked. “Even if they might be strictly magical.”
“Well, yes, but I still don’t think you should do it.” He paused for a moment, clearly gearing up his bravery. “I will.”
I took a serious look at him. “Are you sure about that?” The whole reason he got stuck on Earth was a teleportation accident. Though they hadn’t found any cause, so it was most likely due to interference outside of their technological range. Aside from him, their modern teleporters were completely safe. Same with the few Celmothians who had ended up on Earth with their ships, despite clearly not having traveled towards Earth. Earth was just a hot destination like that.
“I am certain,” Midnight said. “I have enough mana. I am fine with using the teleporters normally. And you are right that we need the information.”
“Alright. You know I was tapping into the network. You can kind of feel it when the spell is going, so don’t worry about that. Though, if you’re trying to hop in from the outside, you might have to push through. I doubt the defenses are inviolable. Like the Scrying Anchors.”
“Oh. I see,” Midnight said. “Should I try a localized point-to-point?”
“Without upgrades?” I shook my head. “I don’t think we have the oomph.” That was a good English onomatopoeia. Oomph. A grunt like you were pushing something, vaguely. “Also, I think you’d want a bigger mana fatigue limit before trying weird stuff. I went past my limit when the accident happened.”
“But… you can’t use more mana in a single spell than its level. And your fatigue limit is like one and a half times that.”
“Both correct,” I said. “Maybe I ended up inside something and I had to correct?”
“... What?”
“I mean obviously you never actually stay inside something. Teleport is a safe spell. If anyone stayed inside things we’d have lost so many high level Mages. But magic is safe so people get pushed out.”
“That’s an option?!” Midnight was suddenly far less calm.
“Well, obviously it’s preferable to overlapping with an object.”
“I mean the part where you can even end up inside things to begin with!”
“... There’s a lot of planet,” I said. “But don’t worry, spells are safe.”
“Why didn’t you mention that possibility to begin with? We wouldn’t have done the same tests!” Midnight sighed. “Please tell me it wasn’t so you could be sure.”
“Nah. I just forgot it was an option. Remember how Mage’s Reach was the biggest spell I had when I came to Earth? I read everything I could, but the spell encyclopedias weren’t perfect in detail for every spell, and I assumed I’d have years to brush up as I got closer to the higher tier spells.”
“... I don’t know how you survived youth.”
“Master Uvithar was very helpful. And I couldn’t cast any big spells because my mana pool was nearly nonexistent.”
“... Maybe you should take finding that guy more seriously.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to be the cause of him being found by whoever he’s hiding from by leading them to him.”
“... maybe find some other mages you can trust.”
“Yeah, I’m still not sure about that gnome,” I said. “Maybe we can do more spying later. For now… teleportation. Or not, if you don’t want to.”
Midnight thought about it for a few minutes. “No, I still should. Our defenses shouldn’t have a weakness to technological teleportation. And I can be located more easily than you.”
“You found me just fine.”
“But I could have rescue personnel active immediately,” Midnight noted. “Instead of waiting for me to Teleport after you and stand above you. Also, why were you so calm?”
I tilted my head. “Why wouldn’t I have been calm? I wasn’t hurt, I was recovering mana so I could probably Teleport out, I can see in the dark and I’m not claustrophobic. Besides, I knew you would help. And if you get stuck, I’ll obviously come for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Related to that, I have something I want to try eventually. But it involves us being in different dimensions or whatever.”
Midnight frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I just want to know if I can create a Gate to wherever you are. Even if I don’t know where that is.”
“I… suppose that’s useful knowledge.”
“Right? But teleporting first!”
Midnight managed to slip into the network and arrive in one of the normal teleportation destinations. Which was actually a fail state the Celmothians intended- if someone broke through, they’d rather have people end up somewhere predictable. As for teleporting ‘too far’, for reasons of safety Midnight took some precautions that ended up with him not going anywhere particularly exciting. Just a bit out of bounds of what we expected, but it was hard to say if that was incorrect or not because Teleport got an upgrade.
It hadn’t combined with Gate though. How disappointing. I wanted… Advanced Spatial Magic? No, ‘Advanced’ was mid tier. Maybe it would be called something else.