My days quickly went from ‘occupied’ to ‘busy’ after the latest portal incident. At the moment I was working with Calculator once more, as we had been gearing up for the assault on Handface and his crew. Scrying on Handface himself was annoyingly inconsistent and generally told him when we were watching, so I targeted the easiest of his minions. He was the big guy that someone had called Boyan before.
He was working out, not particularly strange for the man but I didn’t recognize the room. Calculator made a note of that as well. He was on a bench press, doing reps without a spotter. The sort of risky thing I’d expect a thug to do, though maybe that was just prejudice. He was mumbling to himself, but unfortunately even focused close it was impossible to make out what he was saying. Not that we expected this guy to have any important intel.
It was kind of boring for the first handful of minutes, but Calculator had me rotating around the room, especially when he walked over to grab more weight and thus provided us a different view. “That’s a lot of fifty pound weights,” I commented.
“They’re forty-five,” Calculator corrected.
“... but we have fifty pound weights at that size,” I replied.
“Standard is forty-five. We just use the super scale, so fifty’s are more convenient for adding a hundred at a time. At some point the length of the bar gets to be a problem otherwise.”
“That makes sense,” I nodded. “Wow, he’s adding more. He was already at 320, and now he’s going for 410?”
“Is that a problem?”
“He doesn’t look that much bigger than me and I can only do 300ish.”
Calculator nodded, “That’s because you spend only a portion of the day on physical training. And that’s significantly up from when you first came here.”
“Well, I didn’t really have much to train with back in a tower full of mages. The books were only so heavy,” I shrugged. “And I really didn’t have any intent to use brute force.”
“I understand,” Calculator nodded. “You are interested in displaying your magic and intelligence. Your world has some prejudices against orcish intelligence, correct?”
“... Yeah,” I nodded.
“That’s quite normal for any society,” Calculator commented. “Not correct or necessarily a good idea to perpetuate, but common. Humans here are likely to make the same sort of judgments. Perhaps you could use that against us.”
“Maybe,” I sighed, “But it might not even be wrong. I want to use my brains to fight, but I ended up just making myself big and strong and bludgeoning wyverns into the ground.”
“Why?”
“It was the most efficient use of mana,” I shrugged.
“Sometimes the smart move is raw muscle,” Calculator said matter-of-factly. “Besides, fighting well requires intelligence. Great Girl isn’t just muscle. If she was, she’d never outmatch Shockwave.”
“Yeah I know but…”
“You care about what people think,” Calculator cut straight to the heart of it. “But the question is, which people’s opinions do you care about? Because everyone here who knows you knows better.”
Who did I care about? Great Girl, Shockwave, Khithae, Midnight, my team… my friends. Maybe Master Uvithar, but he wasn’t around so there wasn’t much to say there. I guess Jerome too, though it was hard to tell what he really thought about me with him so down on himself. Now that he had magic we’d be working on that.
“Looks like he’s having some trouble,” Calculator commented as Boyan struggled to continue lifting the bar. “A convenient mark.” He added some more notes.
Boyan’s arms trembled as he was lifting the bar- still at 410 pounds. Then he yelled with exertion… and the bar slipped out of his hands. Not falling onto him, but rather the way it suddenly shot up made it slip from his fingers at the top, where it slammed into the ceiling. From the sound, anyway. The angle was wrong to see it, and by the time I turned it was already falling back down. It hit him in the head, and Boyan cursed. Then he grabbed it with one hand and threw it into the wall.
Scrying’s duration was already up, and soon enough the image faded away to display a simple mirror looking back at us.
“So, um, unless I’m misremembering this guy was judged to be a non-super, right?” I looked over at Calculator.
“That was what our information suggested, yes.” He wasn’t looking over at me, but instead focused on his tablet, where he was replaying the last part of the recording. He paused it. “Look here. It’s hard to see, but the bar bends slightly when it hits him. A shame the camera was swinging about.”
Tracking the right angle with Scrying was hard. Especially when the action changed so quickly in ways I hadn’t expected, so I only had about half of what we wanted in view. But the sounds at least informed us there was serious weight on that bar and it wasn’t some sort of weird trick.
I frowned, “That’s… weird. Did he just awaken his powers?”
“It could be. He didn’t seem to understand his strength. Unfortunately we couldn’t watch him after.”
I shrugged, “Sorry, that’s the limitation of Scrying for the moment.” I would need 12 entire points to upgrade it, way too many to consider for a tiny improvement right now. It’s not like I wanted this to be my job.
“That’s alright. Everyone has their limits. Now then, it appears we have some things to look into regarding Deimos and his crew. If we missed something like this, it’s inadvisable to attempt anything right away.”
“Yeah…” I nodded. “I have a lot of stuff on my plate anyway.”
-----
One of those things was another gun course, but this time I was actually working towards a license. My previous training counted, but there were still some requirements to fulfill- especially for supers.
The instructor stood at the head of the class. He was half the size of a man, green, and with big black eyes. It was Zorphax, from Extra.
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“Now, I’m sure some of you are wondering why you’re all here. After all, you’ve displayed your understanding already. You took gun safety courses and know how to fire a gun without hurting yourself. But while many people are getting a license for purposes of self defense, everyone here is much more likely to actually shoot someone in the line of duty. We’re going to start off with something simple. Easy target practice. Focus on accuracy and precision for this one, more bullets isn’t better. Go ahead and line up.”
Everyone had their own lanes, and I took my position.
“Oh right, one warning. This is the monster focused course. Don’t shoot people. You’ll lose points.”
The first thing to pop up was a white dude with a fancy cloak. A few seconds passed with no shots before the targets quickly flipped to the next one. A lion? I shot it right between the eyes. Next came a black dude brandishing a knife. Then a writhing mass of tentacles. There were a lot of shots from around me, but I was ninety percent sure this was an actual picture of Jim. Next was a Martian pointing a gun at us. A couple isolated shots. Everyone else shot the giant bat.
From that point on I held my gun steady without shooting until we got to a wyvern. I thought about shooting the thing that looked like a ball of spikes, but I hesitated a moment too long and the target flipped away.
By the time we reached the end I hadn’t even reloaded my clip. And I was pretty sure I had messed up.
Once everyone had their guns safely set down, Zorphax had us turn back to him- and we took off our ear muffs to listen. “Well then. I’m going to give a couple of you the benefit of the doubt about that Martian. We’re here to shoot monsters, not threats. And yes, if someone points a gun at you it’s probably appropriate enough to shoot back.” He looked around the room. There were mercenaries like myself, somewhat distinct from the heroes by the style of our dress, though the line certainly blurred in some places. However, there were also individuals without a mask or costume. “Nobody from Extra made that mistake, but before that… can anyone tell me what this is?” he pointed to the wall behind him where an image was displayed.
“A tentacle monster?” someone said questioningly.
Zorphax shook his head, and got a couple more answers before finally pointing to me with my hand half raised. “Mage?”
“That’s Jim. I think.” I felt a lot of people looking at me. They looked quite confused, but I stuck to it. “We work together and he lives in my apartment complex.” I frowned, “Is it not him?” I hoped this wasn’t one of those ‘they all look the same’ things.
“Actually, this is his brother,” Zorphax commented. “We were having trouble getting a photo of him to process so he sent us this.”
“That’s a person?” one of the heroes asked. “...Dammit.”
“That’s right,” Zorphax nodded. “So now, this one…” he brought up the picture of the giant bat. Everyone remained quiet. “Mage has an advantage here, I think.”
“Rositsa?” I said questioningly. “I could be wrong because I’ve only seen her like that twice, it might be a dire bat.”
One of the unmasked trainees looked back at her gun. “Uh-oh.”
“Soon enough everyone should understand,” Zorphax continued.
“... Was that not a lion?” I muttered to myself. I didn’t think it was terribly loud, but apparently he heard it.
“It was, in fact, a lion. The wyvern was real too. What about the thing with the spikes? I notice you didn’t shoot it.”
“Honestly I just didn’t know where,” I admitted. “So was it a monster or…?”
“It’s an artist’s interpretation of a dream. Who knows if it’s something real,” Zorphax shrugged. “So now we get to part two. This is something you all need to keep in mind, especially if you’re in the department. We’ve got all kinds of people here now, and that variety isn’t going down. Some things to consider before you take a shot- with a gun or a power or anything else. Do you know it’s a monster? It could be a person. I know it’s not something simple. What if you hesitate and someone gets hurt?” Zorphax shook his head. “I can’t tell you. All I can say is to think. Are they actively doing something criminal or attacking someone? Doesn’t matter if they’re monster or villain, though I’ll note the latter isn’t our job at Extra. If you have time to take a photo, we have a database of images that can automatically be compared to.” Zorphax snorted, “And if you have time for that, chances are you should be working to keep civilians away from possible accidents instead of opening fire. I know it’s a bit unfair to spring this on you without even telling you why, but I just want everyone to remember to think. Next time will be boring but important lessons in a classroom. Don’t miss it, because that knowledge is required. We can at least get you to know all of the most common mistakes made. You’re all dismissed.” Zorphax paused, “Mage, if I could have a moment.”
I walked up, “Yeah, what is it?”
“We haven’t had that much success with that interpretation job. Seems to be someone lost, maybe through a portal like you. We’d like to get you to talk to her. Your magic works on anything right?”
“It should. I mean, it works for this world’s languages, and Jim. So you’d have to have something pretty strange for it to not work.”
“Oh, yeah, nothing super weird. Just like a… whatcha call it? A gnome maybe? Looks like a human but my height.”
“Ok, sure. I’m free right now.”
“Great. I’m sure she’s not happy just sitting in a room. It’s not a cell, but we did have to take her weapons away.”
-----
Extra had multiple facilities, but it wasn’t far to the one we needed. Just a short walk.
“It takes a minute for your magic to start working, right?” Zorphax asked.
“Yeah, depending on various factors,” I shrugged. “Shouldn’t take long if she’s willing to talk. Like Rositsa.”
“Great. This one is much less threatening, but just be ready. We think she’s peaceful but you never know.”
“Got it.” Force Armor was ready. I looked into my pocket. Hmm. “How much am I getting paid?” Rositsa was a special call in the middle of the night with hazard pay involved. Normal interpretation…?
“Depends on how long things take. Though if you can use that magic on her the way you did with Rositsa, there’s hourly pay at a lower rate for indirect involvement too.”
Well, that was fine. I honestly had pretty good pay from my job so far, and I’d saved up plenty before moving into my new apartment. A small expense for safety might save me a few hours of recovering in a hospital. Tiny people could be dangerous even if they didn’t look it. Honestly the expense of mana for Stoneskin was more concerning, but I wasn’t planning to use my mana for much else for the next couple hours anyway.
I cast the spell, coating myself in a layer of gray rock. It was a bit sparkly. Then I stepped into the room. I had been planning to speak in English, but recognizing a halfling I tried common just for fun. I was going to be randomly talking anyway. “Hey, I’m here as an interpreter.”
There was a pause, with the halfling woman looking at me intently. There was something familiar about her… but whatever it was I only had a distant memory. It had been a few months since I’d been around halflings after all.
Then the halfling suddenly rushed forward, grabbing at me. I twisted out of the way, but I wasn’t fast enough and she grabbed ahold of my trailing arm. Then she… squeezed it? I was pretty sure Stoneskin didn’t really do that much against such attacks, but it really didn’t feel like she was going to be able to hurt anyone with that. Maybe Zorphax? I sort of wiggled my arm and she slipped off. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“What do you mean, Turlough? It is you, right?” The voice was what made me remember. I knew her face, of course, but the angle was all wrong. “It’s me, Izzy.”
“Oh. When did you get here? Why did you grab onto my arm?” Something didn’t seem right about her expression, but I couldn’t quite place it. People were difficult.
“What do you mean? Can’t I give my friend a hug after not seeing each other in a long time?”
“We’re not friends, though.”