If I let the air pressure handle the lifting and pushing, and just slid through the air, I could pick up a lot of speed without much effort, but naturally control suffered as speed increased.

Also, Repulsing forwards created a nigh-frictionless bubble, which was nice for keeping the bugs out of my face. However, I still needed to breathe, which meant I had to siphon off the airflow coming forwards to do so, at least until I could make up a mask that would allow me to rebreathe or which would give me Adaptation and just renew the air in my lungs without needing to breathe at 100+ mph.

This was not a Fly spell, which provided free lift... and which I could also use now. That kind of flying was easy and useful, and if I Cast it concurrently, my maneuverability was basically flawless in control, and my speed kicked up a notch, too. I just didn’t want people to catch on that I was a Caster, so alternatives time!

Ergo, powergliding for fun and profit. The downside was, I couldn’t fly and blast at all, and hovering without using magic for backup was plenty awkward, as I couldn’t stay in a natural vertical position, I had to stay splayed out horizontally for the air pressure to keep blowing past me precisely.

Those who could sense magic would sense a Fly spell at work, even if I was Warded, so ixnay on that, if possible.

Needless to say, I also wasn’t immune to winds, updrafts, downdrafts, and crosswinds of any kind, being blown about like I was.

I effectively had three different skill sets to exploit at this time, maybe four.

I had a pretty good stealth/burglary set going, based around Stealth, Disable Device, and Pick Locks. Vampire’s Veil and Face of the Mage would do wonders for keeping me off most security devices, and my totally unnatural agility made me a perfect creeper this side of intangibility... which wasn’t off the table with a Wraithform spell.

I had the whole base Totem kit of enhanced strength, agility, and wall-creeping. The hope I didn’t have any connections to spiders through my Tat absolutely died after I got my Warlock Blast/3, and instead of something nice like Forked Wrath or Eldritch Spear for range or something, I got webs.

Yes, webs. For both my Blast and my Ward Wall.

The Web spell is a Valence II spell that creates a Burst of webbing in a twenty-foot radius... although said web immediately collapses unless there’s something to anchor it to.

The Webbing was tough and strong yet flammable, which was perfectly normal, and I could literally create unlimited amounts of it, although it would only last for ten minutes times my Caster Level.

To my utter dismay, as I pushed Warlock Blast up to /4 and /5, there were no modifications of the energy side of things for my Blast. Instead, the webbing side of things got stronger, more flexible, more useful, and more resistant to damage of any kind.

Ugh! The Mountain had an underground tunnel he’d excavated for testing out some of his ammo and keeping his firearm practice in, and I’d filled it with webs of all kinds and styles and just slapped my head in utter disbelief.

Yeah, okay, my base Blast was still at +5d6+Con of bio-electricity. That energy fueled everything else. But converting it all into webbing-!

Ahg! Whatever. Okay, I was a Spider-Totem Warlock. Sure, fine, deal with it...

And... there was another spider-guy over in New York City now, according to the papers. NYC finally had some supers who weren’t just Core users slumming from the TN lands, or Shielders visiting. All of the latter were generously made by The Great Bear, after all... Some true American heroes had finally materialized after WW II!

Multiple heroes? Yes, yes, indeed...

Reed Richards, one of the most lauded young geniuses in America, had attempted to win back some status for America in the space race by taking a ship he’d built himself into orbit. Nobody knew exactly what went wrong, but the radiation wave that hit the ship had totally overwhelmed its shielding, and the whole crew had somehow mutated into true superhumans.

The Fantastic Four, the New York papers were calling them. Reed Richards, now Mr. Fantastic, who could stretch like nobody’s business; Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman; Johnny Storm, the second Human Torch after Toro retired; and The Rock, Ben Grimm, the new strong man of the team, changed to a very elementalish appearance he was no doubt anxious to be able to control and be rid of. He supposedly had been undertaking some urgent Core lessons so he could regain his human form, as it was not a rare problem among mutants and mutates in places over the last couple of decades.

More to the point, there’d been a weird incursion in New York, of some subterranean race of intelligent beings coming up into New York, wrecking shit and making a scene, which the Richards group had turned out to address. People were calling them invaders from below in New York, a fantastically one-sided look at things.

There were intelligent subterranean races down there! The Tribes had immediately set up a call for a dialogue with these underground nations, instantly seeing in them the same kind of native tribes and clans they themselves came from. The US’s reaction to these ‘Mole Men’ races had naturally started becoming rather convoluted with the Tribes’ interest in them, and there seemed to be some sort of movement developing to see what other nations might exist under the continents, and if some sort of dialogue could be made with them, if only to avert violent interactions like this.

The US’s standard capitalist exploitation model didn’t make them the best diplomats for this kind of stuff, and the Tribes had actually offered their services to set up a dialogue, much to the embarrassment of the US. Suddenly the specter of all those broken treaties with the native Tribes came rearing its head again, and they realized they were facing the same situation... and reacting with blunt military perspectives in exactly the same way as before.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Quite stinging, it seemed to be. When your continental neighbor is the #2 superpower in the world, you unfortunately have to listen to the words they say somewhat seriously...

So, in the midst of all this, there was also a young man in red and blue and a spider motif running around, beating up small-time crooks and muggers, and lo, miraculously more costumed fellows with criminal tendencies had come crawling out of the woodwork to confront him, as if his appearance had triggered something.

Above and beyond that, there was ANOTHER new supergroup in New York, making the whole city giddy with pride that something homegrown was finally evolving. Ferrus Industries had a new champion, a red and gold fellow in power armor called Iron Man, and no doubt Tony Stark was smiling from ear to ear now, long after his father’s company had been bought out by Aurum, Inc., and Howard Stark had ended up going to work for The Hag after the War.

Perhaps Tony’s experience in Sinochan, helping contribute to a fight he had no part being involved in, had done something to him. But Ferrus Industries was definitely entering the limelight, able to field such a sophisticated suit of power armor, which no doubt many others would want to buy off of him...

The Brute, a grey-skinned Brick-type mutate who had come out of advanced weapon testing of unclean atomic+ grade weapons, had been involved in their formation. The papers crowed about the actual Norse god Thor being involved, playing up a rivalry with the Greek god Hercules who was with the Champions down in San Francisco. The Patriot had thrown his shield into the group, which bespoke well for how it was going to be organized. Two size-changers, a Giant-man and a Wasp, helped round out their initial numbers, and NYC’s pride was showing right through at the fact THEY had such a group, and no other US City.

I had looked at the classic formation of the Avengers, and just slowly shook my head as I read on. The Age of Marvels was beginning, and there was going to be an explosion of mutants and mutates. Who exactly was poised to take best advantage of such things?

The nation who wanted to militarize them, or the one that had been teaching them and helping them find a place in society for decades?

Avengers. A very reactive name. Who were they avenging? Why was the Patriot, a man of high morals even by the standards of the Tribal Nations, involved?

I knew the answer, even if others didn’t, was the huge and heavy hands of Sama and Briggs having swept across the world. The odds they weren’t talking to Steve Rogers and getting him involved in that effort were slim to none.

But the Marvel Age was definitely going to run into problems with the mechanisms that the two of them had put into place. They were playing a high-level game I wasn’t privy to, but it had definitely changed the world.

Dr. Erskine had vanished? I’d eat my shorts if he wasn’t in New Israel, refining the Super-Soldier program that was no longer limited to the US in this world. Shielders were part of SHIELD from countries across the globe.

All Good men. All patriots for their homelands, and for the world. All geniuses who could see and comprehend the international state of affairs, and bend it to make things work for everyone, together, as an aspect of being what they were.

The US did not dominate SHIELD in this world, Russia did. That Steve Rogers had been tapped to be its first Director was a source of great pride nonetheless, and that Nick Fury had succeeded him when he retired was also a source of ego. The fact that the Shielders had agreed to the move was far more important than the fact the US had two Directors, because both men had bought into SHIELD’s message.

The Strategic Headquarters International Enforcement and Logistics Division was about bringing the world together for the benefit of everyone, a mostly-independent arm of the United Nations run by super-soldiers. Sama and Briggs had stuffed it with Good men from many countries, patriot super-soldiers who wouldn’t take half-ass benefits , using the Erskine Standard of first, his super-soldiers needed to be Good Men.

Countries believed in SHIELD because of the Shielders, who were considered heroes by their homelands, and acted like it in other countries. Warriors, defenders, ambassadors, model soldiers, ferocious combatants... the Shielders lived up to their tropes, and got along famously well with one another, their array of unbreakable Shields in the home colors of their native countries as famous as they were.

So was their Neutrality to one another. If they fought, it was always out of the public eye. Two opposing Shielders on opposite sides of a conflict would sit down and play a game of chess while Hell was going on around them... probably to the best interests of all the soldiers around, who would likely die if they got to fighting.

The whole East vs West and Capitalist vs Socialist diatribe had never really gelled here, mostly because it was so broken up. Russia stood atop the world, nobody doubted it, and everyone wanted something from it. But after WW II, Russia’s Imperial ambitions had been more like courses in self-help, and countries that accepted their aid and went off-track into tyranny learned what the Shielders were actually there for. So many Shielders had mustered out of service and right into presidencies or prime minister positions it wasn’t funny, and they were perfectly willing to put themselves behind their words.

They also tended to be much, much smarter than those around them, geniuses in social, tactical, and strategic maneuvering, and could run rings around career manipulators in political circles at the local and international level.

The success of the Tribal Nations coalition on the international level, with so many allied nations behind them opposing the policies of Europe and the US, was the other factor, and the fact Russia got along fine with the Tribes was no secret at all.

Russia made all the Shielders. Lots of people had tried to duplicate the process, never perfectly, and often with great problems. Those problems were things Shielders often had to solve when they went violent. Still, nobody believed that the Shielders were ultimately loyal to Russia, that was ludicrous on the face of it... although there were definitely factions that argued that way.

Of course, those factions usually had other forces behind them... of which a few were a surprise.

With the Cold War being more of a lukewarm war for technology than a political conflict of the Left vs the Right, international violence was actually much lower than the history I remembered. Covert ops, however, had entered other stages, and that was because of the trans-national espionage services that had condensed after WW II.

The Crux, from the Christian movements of Europe and the US. The Askar, from the revolutionary movements in Africa. The Zodiac, formed by renegade intelligence agents and Powered. The Ten Rings of the Mandarin. The Yellow Claw, ancient and stepping into the light in mainland China. The Hands, scattered ninja clans who sold their skills to any bidder. The Knot, working from the darkness of India. The Courts of the vampire clans, living and dead families alike. The Fangs of the scattered werewolf mercs and their bloodlines.

Hydra? There was no Hydra. When The Great Bear had rolled into Berlin, neither the Red Skull nor Baron Strucker had managed to get out in time, much to their horror. The whole Nazi core of what had been the nucleus of Hydra in other worlds had been captured, summarily sentenced to death, and hung ignominiously. Pointedly, Adolf Hitler had ended up next to Arnim Zola, so no new bodies for him or the other Nazis.

A great effort. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop other rabid ideologies from growing, but that was just par for the course in comicdom...