Heavy breaths came from Movebrain once he allowed it. He could show exhaustion directly in training, but as an executive he couldn’t just wander around HQ looking like he was going to collapse. But now that he was somewhere appropriate he didn’t have to put on airs. “You were watching?” he said as he stumbled onto a couch.

  Calculator looked over from his work setup, a collection of monitors filling a corner. “Obviously.”

  Movebrain sighed. “I’m trying to imagine if we didn’t hire him. That kid is sure something.”

  “He’s twenty-six, I believe,” Calculator said. “Not exactly a kid.”

  The other man shook his head. “Of course he is. Even if he’s one of the unlucky supers that doesn’t get an extended life naturally, he’s got so much ahead of him.”

  “You talk like an old man yourself, but you’re far from it,” Calculator pointed out.

  “Still older than I look. But that’s not the point. We could have totally missed Mage if he hadn’t come to us first. Any idea why he chose us first? I can’t imagine anyone turned him down.”

  Calculator shook his head. “He wasn’t that impressive when he first showed up. Meztli commented that he had a grab bag of minor abilities, useful but not exceptional. But as for why he picked us… I believe he randomly ended up near Great Girl during an incident.”

  “... That’s it?”

  “I think he liked that she threw a car,” Calculator said. “And she was famous enough that even he was able to look her up with no technical expertise. But enough about that. How was it?”

  Movebrain made a face. “It’s one thing to be able to pick up an ability to restrict movement techniques. It’s quite another to get significantly better within the course of a single training session.”

  “He works well with resistance,” Calculator nodded. “How much better would you say?”

  “How should I know? It just got harder.”

  Calculator looked over his glasses. “Closer to fifteen percent or thirty percent?”

  Movebrain sighed. “I have no way to quantify that. Why those numbers?”

  “It’s just to determine if he gained one or two ‘upgrades’.”

  “Why not ask him?” Movebrain pointed out. “He’d tell you.”

  “Probably. That’s how I know what the numbers would be. It’s very… formulaic.”

  Movebrain nodded slowly. He was glad Francois made suits that could breathe. He didn’t end up a sweating, stinking mess. “It didn’t happen all at once. He was experimenting, and sometimes it was less effective. But ultimately it ended up more.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “It was definitely harder, and not just because I was getting tired.”

  Calculator shook his head. “I meant everything else. Unless he reduced the mana he used, it shouldn’t be able to get ‘worse’. At least not according to what we know.”

  “Isn’t everything we know from him? What if he lied?”

  “You already said that’s unlikely. Unfortunately, he might just be… wrong. He’ll admit to being under informed in certain areas. We may need to find an opportunity to gather some extradimensional info if we want him to be more effective.”

  “He’s growing fast enough, I think,” Movebrain said.

  “Both us and he would prefer that the process be more efficient,” Calculator said. “But you’re right. He clearly has talent. We didn’t have anything to compare to without prying into the life of his apprentice until we got Bolster. Given her rate of growth- even after the Portal Squad was fortuitously able to unlock their full potential- she’s not likely to be able to catch up. Not that her or the others have a disappointing rate of advancement.”

  “You think that has something to do with the Celmothian?”

  “If it does,” Calculator pondered. “There’s not much of a good way to test. We can’t just ask someone to form a supernatural bond with Bolster for the sake of an experiment. Well, we could, but so many things could go wrong. We might still encourage her to invest in a familiar, however.”

  -----

  Midnight and I spotted an angel in Extra’s lobby, and it wasn’t Malaliel. His eyes lingered on the two of us for a moment before flicking away. “Do you know him?” I asked Midnight.

  “Who?”

  “The angel.”

  “No,” Midnight shook his head. “He’s probably one of the ones from Halloween. Though I didn’t expect any to be walking around in public yet. She mentioned something about a long process.”

  “Could just be another one,” I shrugged. “He just stood out because of recent events.”

  “And the wingspan,” Midnight said.

  Our goal was, as always, to pass through to the travel area. Today, Midnight was going home. For a test, not long term. Though he was very close to being able to Gate alone, at least to ‘easier’ locations. In fact, with a level gained from the whole angel incident his fatigue point should line up exactly with Gate at our current 5 total upgrades- but considering what that meant, it wasn’t exactly an encouraging way to travel. We wanted something more reliable than ‘might not faint while halfway between planets’ if we were going to be sending people alone.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  As for why we were testing with Celmoth, that was because they were one of the easiest places to get permission to visit that was also the safest. There was that whole war thing, but most of the time it didn’t reach the planet itself and most importantly it was his homeworld where his family was.

  Midnight and I split the cost for Gate for regeneration purposes- and practicing our teamwork was always a good idea. It was best to make sure Assistive Familiar Casting kept up with the upgrades of our high cost spells so that we could retain maximum efficiency.

  “I’ll be hearing from you in a couple hours, yeah?” I asked Midnight.

  “That’s right.”

  “Expect a time lag up to half an hour,” I said. “After that point, I should be using Sending in return if the experiment fails.”

  The portal closed behind him. I made my way back into the lobby, since standing around in the transportation room for an hour was weird but it also wasn’t enough time to go and do anything else. I certainly couldn’t be using up mana.

  I couldn’t get proper meditation going in the lobby, so I just hung out there for a while. I was surprised to hear someone call out to me.

  “Turlough?”

  I looked up. It wasn’t some random person from another world… unless Basant was from a parallel Earth and I didn’t know it. “Hello, Basant. Are you from this Earth?”

  He grinned. “I am. I’m a second generation immigrant from India.” He easily took my words in stride even though I realized afterwards they were probably a bit unusual. “Why are you waiting here in the lobby? Are you waiting for someone?”

  “I don’t have any business with Extra directly. Midnight and I are experimenting with some travel stuff, but I need to wait for a bit.” I looked him over. “You look a bit less harried. Even though it was recently Halloween.”

  Basant had helped me when I first arrived, mostly dealing with paperwork and other necessities. “I was on vacation. So I haven’t had time to get overworked again yet.”

  I pondered. “Maybe Extra should hire more people.”

  He sighed. “There isn’t a lot of money in extradimensional or extraterrestrial border protection.”

  “There could be,” I said. “But maybe there shouldn’t be. You’d think New Bay at least would hire enough people for this branch, considering the number of incidents.”

  “The city wants heroes. Or mercenaries. Even though calling us is ten times cheaper, if it’s something we can handle.”

  “If you were willing to bend your rules I could get everyone powers,” I said.

  Basant blinked. “What?”

  “I guess that does kind of defeat the point,” I shrugged.

  “Well, I suppose so? How would you even do that?”

  “Hmm. It might be secret?” I tilted my head. “But it involves extradimensional travel and one side hasn’t provided general permission.”

  “I see,” Basant nodded. “Well, it’s not like powers would help with paperwork.”

  Should I tell him? I decided not to tell him. Even though messing with complex paperwork all day was probably an optimal way for a mage to do stuff. If they could get experience from it, obviously. And if they only ever wanted to use Enhance Mind, they could probably get really good at it.

  At my level, someone could have it active all day if they poured enough points into it. Though that might have weird side effects. I didn’t actually know about side effects from my sort of magic aside from overusing mana and especially mana crystals, but everyone was convinced that there had to be some. The one actual flaw I could think of would be growing reliant on mental enhancement, but reliance on an ability you actually could use constantly should be fine. Then again, guaranteed powers without side effects probably sounded pretty sketchy to people of this world instead of just… normal.

  “Good luck with your experiments,” Basant said.

  “Thank you.”

  Well, that was three minutes. Time to wait more. I was getting into a decent mental flow when something tried to look at me. I didn’t want that… but it apparently didn’t matter what I wanted. Someone was watching me.

  It was a weird thing to say in a lobby full of people, but I was sure of it- and also that it wasn’t any of them. I had to check that Nondetection was active, but it was and I was still fairly certain a Scrying spell was active. Because of that, I did… nothing. I might have reacted when I first noticed, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. I couldn’t tell who or what it was, though.

  When it faded away, I texted Jerome and confirmed it wasn’t him. If he wanted to try to Scry me at random times that wouldn’t actually be bad for the sake of practice- for both of us- but that wasn’t how it went this time. Which meant it was someone in my old world. Or someone with a portal power. Or someone from my old world but currently here. If it was Doctor Doomsday- or rather some imported crony of his- I very much needed to get even better at Nondetection. Anyone else… I’d still probably prefer that. So I might ask Jerome to help me out. Potentially Bolster too, though her fatigue point wasn’t quite good enough for spells of that level last I checked.

  Twenty minutes later, Midnight’s Sending still reached me properly. Because of Master Uvithar I knew that it was possible for certain forms of concealment to prevent that from working, but it didn’t stop Midnight and me from doing it through the bond. Which was kind of what the experiment today was about.

  I almost replied to the Sending with something like ‘by the time you get this message you may have already seen me face-to-face’, but I had one more thing to test. I left the reply magic lingering, and made my way into the transportation room. It was large enough and there were few enough people who could use it that there were almost never lines of any sort, and indeed the only people I saw were familiar faces.

  I got my designated departure zone at the door, taking half a minute to walk over. Then I gathered the mana to cast Gate. Even maximizing it for stability I had two and a half points of leeway in my fatigue point, which was plenty. It was still real effort, but I wasn’t straining to briefly reopen a previous portal or anything.

  My target with the Gate was not a place, but rather a feeling. I wanted a receptive place near Midnight. We were ninety-nine percent certain that targeting Midnight directly couldn’t end up with a portal opening in him, but focusing on near Midnight was still the right call. I reached through the connection and attempted to form a modest portal.

  Turns out it worked just fine. “Hey,” I said. Then I sent the Sending return message mentally. “This return message might reach you faster if I’m looking at you.”

  To be honest, I only ever used Sending for interplanetary or interdimensional purposes- because it was strictly worse than texting otherwise. Or at least worse than voicemail.

  “Hmm. That was fast,” Midnight confirmed. “Portal looks stable, yeah?”

  “It is. Wanna come on through?”

  This was a success. Being able to Gate to an unknown location with Midnight there opened up a lot of options. Now we might try something like Teleport… on Earth, away from anything that might interfere. I wasn’t looking forward to ending up in a forbidden underground again. Better to avoid teleportation network issues entirely.