Something was still bugging me about Gate and Teleport not fusing. It meant I didn’t understand something, and the worst part was not knowing what I didn’t understand. Were they not both spatial manipulation? Going by my currently fused abilities, I couldn’t see what was so terribly different about them. I had Basic Light Magic and Advanced Divination magic which covered broad categories, while Alter Time Flow, Variable Freedom, and Enhance each fused two related spells. Then there was Mana Manipulation which was a combination of several non-spells.

  So the possibilities were first that the spells were not actually both spatially related. Second could be that they were beyond Advanced and there simply wasn’t a fusion category for that. There was some chance I needed more upgrades in Teleport, but that hadn’t necessarily come up before. So ultimately, I felt like I simply didn’t understand space magic as much as I thought I did, because I thought those spells were both spatial magic and they thought at least one of them wasn’t. Or something.

  What other spatial magic did I have? Starting at the top of my list… Storage definitely had to be spatial manipulation. That was the entire thing it did, taking something and putting it somewhere else that maybe didn’t exist previously.

  I almost skipped past Mage’s Reach because it created something, but it allowed me to touch things at a distance so was it space magic? Not entirely, given that people couldn’t cut my actual hands through it. So I would put that in the ‘maybe’ pile. I needed to get access to a magic library. Maybe Sir Kalman could do something about that. Or Zenfer, but I wasn’t sure if we were actually friends or anything.

  Next I hit Alter Time Flow. I supposed it would be foolish to ignore the potential spacetime mastery instead of space, but that didn’t fit my understanding of how things worked. Then again, maybe what my previous world knew wasn’t actually the limits.

  I was able to make it about halfway down the list to Alter Portal after that, which was obviously spatial magic just as much as portals were. Creating a connection and severing it had to be related. Gate, obviously, immediately after that. Sending was… a thing that sent magic over a long distance. That could be spatial manipulation, though it certainly wasn’t only that. It might even have elements of divination so that it could find people.

  Of the remaining spells, Dimensional Anchor which was strictly anti-spatial and Teleport were the last ones. Which was actually a surprisingly strong theme, given that the most I had of anything else was like, two lightning spells. I was surprised my hair hadn’t become space colored. Then again, I wasn’t sure if my hair was supposed to change color to begin with. That wasn’t something I’d seen a lot in my old world. On Earth… it was difficult to tell if someone had naturally different colored hair or not.

  Asking for advice, I got various different recommendations.

  “Of course spacetime is the proper way to see things,” Khithae said.

  She didn’t count. She wasn’t looking at things from a magical perspective.

  Midnight sort of agreed with her though. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens, though I would imagine having individual mastery would be more effective. And your time magic isn’t quite like that yet, since it’s just a fusion.”

  “Yes, I would expect Basic Time Magic or, um… slightly less basic. I can’t imagine it’s advanced since Advanced Divination Magic is rank 11.”

  “Maybe we should try to get other combinations at various levels?” Midnight asked. “Though that might be a waste of points or time if we don’t really need any of them.”

  That was the limiting factor. And while I wasn’t currently in a rush, I could see how spreading too widely could lead to no growth at all.

  At least Great Girl was on my side on the spacetime thing. “Obviously they’re different magics,” she said. “That’s just tradition.”

  “Right?” I nodded. “Clearly.”

  “Right. So you should learn Dimension Door.”

  “... I guess that makes sense,” I said. “Though I’d need to improve other spells of a similar rank.”

  “And then you can be a space wizard!”

  “I guess,” I shrugged. “The one issue is… it seems extremely inefficient.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I feel like I should be able to go 500 miles for that cost instead of 500 feet. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Great Girl frowned. “Hmm. Maybe Dimension Door is safer? Like… you probably wouldn’t end up inside anything and then being shunted into the nearest relevant space. But that pretty much happened on Celmoth, right?”

  “Allegedly.” Not actually knowing what went wrong was annoying. “I’ll add that to the list of things I need to test. But I feel like downcasting Teleport should work just fine. At the same distances, ending up 5 feet off target really doesn’t matter does it? And it should cost like… one five thousandth as much if it scales directly.”

  “There’s no way you can Teleport for a fraction of a point of mana. I’d be really careful with that.”

  “I was going to cast Fly on myself and teleport over empty fields.”

  “Good plan. Sounds like you’re in for some away training. Again.”

  I shrugged. “Hey, I worked Halloween and pretty much everything else has been job related.”

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “That’s a good point. Do you take any actual vacation time?”

  “And what, stop practicing magic?” I made a face. “No thanks. Sounds terrible.” I did take days away from combat training. Calculator said that was probably enough.

  -----

  Surprisingly, the first source of training I got to try out was the one I thought would be hardest to arrange, since it involved one of the Executives. They were pretty busy- it was just that I bugged Calculator all the time because that was the business he was dealing with.

  Movebrain was a distinguished gentleman with a terrible moniker. I wasn’t sure who in the Power Brigade was responsible for naming people so it was potentially his own fault. Either way, he was usually quite busy teleporting about and whatever other stuff he did. Telekinesis, I think. He had this whole vague psychic suite of powers going on, though I was pretty sure mind reading wasn’t in the list even though people generally tended to lump that in with everything else that started with ‘tele’.

  Actually, teleportation and telekinesis together was one of the weird combos. They were unrelated, right?

  “Does your telekinesis manipulate space?” I asked.

  “An interesting question,” Movebrain said. “Does it?”

  “... Shouldn’t you know?”

  “Should I?” he raised an eyebrow at me.

  There was no way he didn’t understand how his own powers worked. Not if he was one of the Power Brigade executives. They weren’t just people in fancy suits, they were also very good at what they did. Even if that thing happened to be brute force.

  “I’m going to need you to demonstrate your powers,” I said. “All of them, if possible. Unless I don’t have clearance or whatever.”

  He’d already agreed to help out, so I couldn’t imagine he’d be too reluctant. “That’s fine. It’s probably better you see yourself if you’re trying to learn… though the methods through which we manipulate space might be quite different.”

  HQ had all sorts of protections against teleportation, but moving strictly within the confines of specific training rooms was possible. We didn’t have a ton of people who could teleport, and even fewer who could do so effortlessly, but it would be a shame if Movebrain had to go out into random parks to train.

  Midnight and I watched with rapt attention- we could see recordings later, but we could only feel his power in person. Even if it wasn’t a spell, we might learn something.

  In the simplest terms, he went from place to place without moving or being anywhere in between. There were no complicated motions or sounds or much of anything. Just a blip of power usage and then he was in a different place, leaving behind only a lingering idea of spatial distortion which faded away within a few moments.

  He also kindly demonstrated telekinesis which felt the same, though that could be just because it was his powers and not because it was using the same mechanisms. Sometimes, people got grab bags of powers from unclear sources.

  Movebrain waved his arms around as he tossed things about- including me, with permission. It was weird to be lifted up and not feel anything touching me. Relatedly, I was ninety percent certain he didn’t need to move at all for it to work, but he probably wouldn’t confirm or deny anything so I just kept that in mind.

  “Can you teleport us with you?” I asked. “Just so we can know if it feels different.”

  “I can,” Movebrain agreed. “But first, my final power.”

  He looked at me, and I looked at him. Then I looked down at Midnight, who had a look that was equally as confused as myself. Of his various powers, this one was the least well known. It filled his body and did… something. Exactly what had been hotly debated, but one time someone had shot him in the head and he didn’t even pass out. It was theorized he had shapeshifted his brain to a different location. Feeling it in person I wasn’t quite convinced that was what was happening and I couldn’t really test it as I didn’t have anything that really interacted with brains. Except things that would boost his.

  “Can I try Enhance?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he shrugged.

  I cast the spell and… I felt a flicker of distortion. I was pretty sure the spell should have worked. Maybe it did work, but I had no sense of it anymore. Which either meant that it didn’t work or it was working… somewhere else. I compared it to pulling something out of Storage. Unsurprisingly, it felt different. One was magic, one was a super power. But everything he did felt like spatial manipulation, though I could be projecting what I wanted it to be. I hadn’t dealt with many other spatial powers, though there was at least one other executive with them. I needed to get time with Telescope too.

  “Alright,” I said. “Now’s the part where I try to stop you from doing extradimensional stuff. You might want to make sure your brain is in your body, if it’s not.” He did something with his powers, though whether it was to put things back or to throw me off I couldn’t be certain. “Are you ready?”

  “Any time,” he nodded.

  I hadn’t actually used Dimensional Anchor. The point was to use it on Flasher, the teleporting cyborg, but I hadn’t expected him to immediately pop away when we found him again. That was my fault, really. Though I couldn’t have been certain it would have worked, since nothing was guaranteed.

  It took a moment for magic to form into an invisible shape that latched onto Movebrain. If he’d been quick on the draw, he probably could have avoided it- if he was sensitive to such things. Which maybe he wasn’t, since he was just watching me. “It’s done,” I said. “Try to do stuff, I guess.”

  And he did. He built up his power then teleported right behind me- but I could tell that not only because of the magic attached to him but also the way he fell on his face. “Huh,” he said. “I haven’t gotten a bad angle in forever.”

  I was slightly disappointed that he straight up bypassed my restrictions, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected it to completely negate his abilities. And it had taken him a bit longer to go, I thought. A fraction of a second could be huge if you were expecting to teleport out of the trajectory of an attack.

  It seemed like a risk for him to show me what this spell could do to him… but it was also a risk for him to not have experience with anti-teleportation measures. Also, we were allies so I wasn’t going to use it on him unless he turned supervillain.

  Once he got used to it Movebrain was still clearly able to move around, but notably slower and less accurately. Then we tested his telekinesis, and I was glad there were things to throw about other than me because they more tumbled than floated. I had no idea if Movebrain tried to use his final ability, and I would have recommended against it anyway. The potential to have less access to your brain seemed dangerous.

  Now, how could I make this better? The point was to get good at the spell, and just flinging it at people wasn’t going to result in any improvements in a short time. Did I need to coat him with restrictions from head to toe? Should the magic be… heavier? I also needed to test how it worked with Gate, which was going to take an afternoon’s worth of regeneration. Maybe Flasher would show up somewhere and ‘help’ me test it. Or I could research other teleporty villains.