We could have technically tried to scry handface on a smaller mirror, like one of the ones on the cars. And then it would have been very small and difficult to see, along with distortion and other complications. Waiting until we were back at HQ with our captures being secured was reasonable enough.

Calculator asked me to scry Handface first. Normally I would only perform a single scrying, but that was when we had time. Now we needed to make use of my abilities as much as possible… though after a battle that was only two in the short term. Consuming more crystals was a bad idea especially with Doctor Martinez waiting, so that would be the limit.

I gathered mana, concentrating on the large mirror in front of me. Calculator was recording as usual, while the rest of the squad and people on backup watched. Shockwave was around as well, in case there was a place they could run to quickly to snag Handface. The mists swirled, soon to reveal to me a familiar face and hand imprint.

That was the plan, at least. I was ready to push my way past another diverting device, though realistically I couldn’t expect Handface to have access to them everywhere he went. What I didn’t expect was to have someone looking directly at me. Some sort of guy in a long brown coat. A plain ceramic mask that only had holes for eyes covered his face. He looked familiar for some reason, but I definitely hadn’t met the guy. Oh, that was it. I’d seen pictures of Doctor Doomsday before, and this was him.

The coat wasn’t exactly brown either. That was just the general color the various splotches of whatever were on his coat averaged out to. Whatever sort of super-tech it was made out of, anti-staining was not one of its features.

“Hello,” said Doctor Doomsday. Calculator gestured for me to try to turn the image or something, likely to scope out the surroundings. From this angle we could only see a poorly lit Doctor Doomsday, after all. But when I tried to do anything, I was met with sharp resistance. I shook my head. “I expected that you would be looking in soon. Deimos is in my custody for the moment, while I analyze this device. You will not be able to retrieve him before I am done.” Then he waved casually and walked out of the view of Scrying, leaving me stuck looking in a corner. I tried pushing to change angle, to swap to Handface’s actual location, or anything but…

“I can’t do anything,” I said. “It’s stuck like this.”

“Unfortunate,” Calculator replied. “But it is not unexpected where a super of this power comes into play. And he seems to have been involved with portals to your world so he does not seem to be stymied by the novelty of magic.”

We continued in silence for the rest of the duration of my spell, trying to pick up any visual or auditory hint coming through. The sensor remained locked in place, and only the faint background hum of machinery could be heard. Then the mists swirled, and it faded.

“This is bad, right?” I looked over at Calculator, then the rest of the squad outside.

Captain Senan had a sour look on his face. “I thought we had this. I’ll try to fix this… somehow.”

Calculator shook his head, “That won’t be possible now. And the fault does not lie solely on you. Our watchers let him slip away… though perhaps it is more relevant to say that Doctor Doomsday was more prepared than us. He has to have been monitoring Deimos for some time to be prepared to act on short notice.”

“Could someone have tipped him off?” Captain Senan asked.

Eyes drifted towards Rocker, who held up his hands, “Hey, I know Doctor Doomsday is an awful dude. No way I’d work with him. I’m trying to not get in deeper trouble. And I wouldn’t know how to contact him even if I wanted to.”

“He has email,” Calculator said flatly.

“Really?” Rocker raised an eyebrow.

“That makes sense,” I nodded. “He is a tech super.”

“Does it though?” Midnight tried to provide a voice of reason. “Just because email uses technology doesn’t mean it makes sense.”

“In this case,” Calculator said, “His abilities are sufficient that he can receive communication through such methods without being disrupted. At best, some careless individuals have their messages intercepted, but nothing gives away his location, nor have any outgoing messages been collected. There may be other methods, or it could be some tricks we don’t understand.” He shook his head, “Regardless, it is unfortunate that we did not foresee Doctor Doomsday’s involvement. The technology that Deimos had could be problematic if it spreads, or simply in Doomsday’s hands.” He looked down at the tablet in his hands, “It is unfortunate, but we cannot always win engagements as cleanly as we would like. Next on the list is Sirine. Her capture might provide some insights to where Deimos may flee upon release from Doomsday’s ‘custody’. And clues to finding Rodentia, who has outstanding bounties.”

I nodded. I had enough mana to scry someone else. “What about Swarm?” I asked. “He wasn’t present at the base.”

“It is likely he has split off from the group,” Calculator said. “And he’s likely somewhere safe. Plus, there were the difficulties with scrying him before.”

“Oh yeah,” I nodded. “He’s not hard to find but…”

“There are many of him, if he wishes,” Calculator nodded. “Catching a copy walking around is a waste of our time. So Sirine, if you would.”

The mists swirled and produced an image of a woman comfortably at the bottom of the ocean. “I forgot about her other powers,” I said.

“Where is she?” Calculator asked.

I gestured vaguely, “Bottom of the bay, I think. Oh right, you can’t see that. What about the camera?”

“It is recording multiple spectrums,” Calculator said, “We should be able to salvage something. Anything distinctive?”

“Mostly sand,” I said. I turned the sensor around to pick up every direction I could, but unfortunately I was still limited to a small visual radius. Anything beyond ten feet or so simply didn’t appear, despite what one would expect. Upgrades would help that slightly, but they were rather small improvements for quite a price. I didn’t want to spend half a level on a tiny upgrade for something that didn’t contribute to leveling. “If we could find her, it wouldn’t be too hard to get to her. I can cast Water Breathing now.” For some reason. I needed to figure that out. Nothing I knew about the world indicated that I could get a spell without spending points. Mana Crystal Deposition wasn’t an actual spell so it made sense, but Water Breathing was a standard option. Eventually the image faded.

“Would be nice to catch the other assassin type,” Ice Guy said. “A dagger isn’t a big deal, but associated powers?” he shook his head. “Unpleasant. You look pretty drained though, Turlough.”

“I’m tapped out,” I nodded. “I’d need at least an hour and a half…”

“I could try,” Midnight volunteered. “I’m not… high enough level to do it easily. But I can try.”

“What level are you now?” I asked. “Oh, 12. Nice. If you want to try, I suppose you could. But it’ll take nearly two-thirds of your total reserves, and the safe threshold is below half.”

“If it doesn’t work, I just pass out, right? Like Mana Exhaustion?”

“It’s worse,” I said. “But I don’t believe it’s actually dangerous. Just very unpleasant.”

“I would like to try,” Midnight said. “Can you crouch down? I would like to be midway up the mirror.”

I crouched down and he hopped up onto my shoulder. His fear of heights was strong enough that being at more than a few feet was too much for him, though when on my shoulder he didn’t seem to have that issue, even when I stood at my full height.

“The other stabby lady, right? I kind of remember her face…” Midnight’s face squished in concentration.

Mana flowed from Midnight. I didn’t want to interfere, but I found myself automatically stabilizing the flow. He was still doing most of the work, but he hadn’t really used this spell before.

The mists swirled, but instead of fully clearing they revealed a foggy image of a woman hustling along a street, constantly looking over her shoulder. Then the image flickered- darkness, so total that even my darkvision could not see anything. “I think I lost it…” Midnight said.

“Hold onto it,” I said, gently resting my hand on his paw. “That might be one of the decoys, buried underground.”

Midnight held his focus, and thirty seconds later we were rewarded with a snippet of an alleyway, with the woman surrounded by rats. Then some sort of door opened… and a moment later the image returned to blackness. Well before the end of the ten minutes, the mists swirled and left us with a mirror. “Ugh,” Midnight said. I could feel he was dizzy, and I stabilized him with my hand. “That’s awful.”

“Those decoys really are trouble,” I nodded. “And overusing mana isn’t great either. Speaking of which, I have an appointment with Doctor Martinez.”

“You should get to it,” Calculator nodded. “I will compile the information we have. Interrogations will be done on those already captured. I believe we have done what we can for today. And despite some of the results… I can say the mission was successful. No civilians or employees harmed, a base captured, plans disrupted. The involvement of a top tier supervillain was a problem, but the mission still worked. Squad cohesion was reasonable. I will allow your squad leader to fully debrief you later.”

-----

“Well,” Doctor Martinez said, dramatically holding up some charts that I couldn’t see. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“I believe we have done this already,” I said. “Please give me information in the most useful order.”

He rolled his eyes, “Fine. Crystallization did build up inside you slightly, but it is rapidly fading. So whatever amount of crystal stuff you did was…”

“Safe?”

“Not immediately dangerous,” Doctor Martinez said. “I’d suggest a few days of avoiding any and all use of mana crystals. Long term effects might be unclear, and obviously this builds up fast enough that the regular monthly checkups might be insufficient. People shouldn’t have any amount of crystals growing inside them, and I stand by that.”

“Technically they’re shrinking,” I said. “They just kind of get put inside, then shrink.”

“A useless technicality,” he said. “And maybe incomplete. So we’re going to keep studying this thing. Especially if you want to teach it to that apprentice of yours. No way should a developing body have weird magic interfering with normal growth.”

“Magic isn’t-” I stopped myself. Magic wasn’t weird, but… “I suppose this particular form of magic might be weird.” It certainly wasn’t common or well known. It was beyond the normal set of what I expected as well. And then there was Water Breathing with it now which was concerning. I wasn’t sure who I could talk about that with, though. I didn’t want to admit not understanding my own powers, and nobody knew how things were supposed to work besides me. Not in this world. Except maybe Doctor Doomsday, but I had the feeling he’d dissect me if we ever met. Further research on powers was required.

-----

It was thus that I found myself at the library once more. The Power Brigade library, specifically. There was a lot of not publicly accessible information in the database. And obviously they were interested in knowing about superpowers. I found a number of research papers, but upon reading through them I determined that while powers could be described and there were even explanations on where they came from, nobody really knew how they worked. Not in the way I wanted, anyway.

For example, powers generally came with secondary powers required to make the original work. Shockwave could run quickly, but if they only had such an ability, then slightly placing their foot wrong should result in a twisted ankle, much beyond the limits of normal possible injury. As Shockwave was not crippled, nor did they pass out upon making sudden accelerations, there were other powers or components of one larger power there.

Pretty clearly my power was the mage class. That was normal for my world, and everything made sense. I got levels and points and I spent them to get abilities. Getting abilities without spending points was not only outside of the bounds of what was expected, but the exact opposite of how it was supposed to work. Exceptional circumstances meant it was rather hard to test as well. I was quite happy to fight for experience, but I didn’t want to nearly die. Perhaps almost drowning and unlocking Water Breathing was some weird exception, but I didn’t understand it and that was annoying. I logged that not understanding something triggered annoyance. That was normal, of course, but Patenaude wanted me to be thorough.

It was weird. What, did I get a portal power? People couldn’t have two sources of powers! Typically. Further research indicated there were rare exceptions. And then, of course, having two methods to do the same thing made no sense. This world was weird. Maybe I should find a way to contact Master Uvithar. He had to know more… right? I even had points to spend to learn magic to attempt that. First I would re-read the book he sent me, but I certainly didn’t recall anything like that.