At base, Teleport cost me 15 mana and Dimension Door cost 9. But one of them went a distance measured in miles, and one went a distance measured in feet. I was trying to figure out how that made sense. I understood that higher level spells tended to be more efficient, but rarely to such an extreme. Thus, Midnight and I were out in an empty field testing things. Finding an empty field within the borders of New Bay was pretty much impossible, except for parks. And we weren’t planning to test these abilities in public view, given our enemies. Specifically, Doctor Doomsday didn’t like me but he also wasn’t much good for a proper fight.
I wasn’t sure about the whole thing with Gloom and Darkstargirl since they were someone else’s rivals, but I didn’t want them learning info about me regardless. Thus, empty field. It was still pretty difficult to find one, though.
The Power Brigade’s training rooms weren’t good enough. They had versatility or distance, but not both. Plus there were various teleport restrictions I didn’t want to deal with at the moment.
Between Midnight and I, we had about 100 mana. Unless we were interested in waiting around for hours, that was about the best we could hope for. Relatedly, this far out of the city mana levels should be closer to the norm so recovery would be slower than we were used to.
Ultimately, that meant we could do something like four casts of each spell if we wanted to split evenly. Or eleven uses of Dimension Door if we wanted to maximize uses, but that was not the plan for the moment.
Though we ended up in an empty field, it wasn’t a flat one. Just a bit of that, and then some hillside which was somewhat less empty with a few scraggly trees. Good enough for our purposes, though.
First, I took us across the field with Dimension Door just to feel it. I’d picked it up with points at Great Girl’s suggestion. Among other things, I was trying to get some sort of low level space magic mastery to see if that even was one. Though Dimension Door was more mid level anyway. How inconvenient.
We were one place, then there was a brief moment where my vision blurred. I saw a tree I had aimed for in front of me up close, then it came solidly into focus. “Whoa. Not like teleport at all,” I said. “Or… is that why there are similar departure and arrival locations?”
Midnight shook his head. “Not quite. It’s for consistency first, comfort second. People seem to do fine suddenly seeing something else around them, like when you open your eyes. Or at least, I think so?”
“How about you test it?” I asked. “Bring us to in front of that rock.”
“Right,” Midnight said. Teleport was comfortably within his capabilities, leaving one mana free beyond his fatigue point. And since the effect was instantaneous, even if he did pass out it probably shouldn’t cause any issues.
The first thing I noticed was that it took longer. I also lost my balance at the other end, reaching out to steady myself on the rock that suddenly was closer. Midnight dug his claws into my shoulder to hold his position. “Hmm. That’s closer than I meant, but that’s alright.”
Midnight tensed slightly. “I also meant to be another step back. How close to where you targeted can we get with Dimension Door?”
“Pretty close, I think.” I paused for a moment. “Do you think we can change our facing? I don’t want to teleport behind a guy and then have to spin around.”
“I can’t imagine it’s much harder than bending space to begin with, right?” Midnight asked.
“Let’s see.” I aimed for the back of the tree, about arm’s length from it. The first thing was that Dimension Door was faster- obviously. It used less mana… but from what I’d felt Midnight had taken longer to solidify what happened than just the extent required by gathering mana. I’d have to test if that was true for myself as well, or if his hesitation was caused by previous teleportation related trauma.
Midnight was nervous, but resolute. We ended up facing what I had to assume was the back of the tree. I almost reached out to touch it before we were there. I kept my balance. But we didn’t have enough data points.
“Seems to work,” Midnight commented. “Though I wonder… what happens to the grass?”
I looked down, looking at the long brown grass. I lifted my feet, and some of the stubborn grass straightened. “Looks like I stepped on it. Do you think the same thing happens with Teleport?”
“I guess we have to try.”
The two of us took turns swapping who used which spells and then splitting the final Teleport between us for the last bit of our mana. Along the way, Midnight suggested dismounting from my shoulder and trying to swap facings. For Teleport, it didn’t work, but Dimension Door we could turn to face wherever we wanted, at least to the limits of our understanding. If we had more mana, I would have tried seeing if we could change our relative distance from each other.
I almost twisted my ankle on the last Teleport up the hill. It did a much better job of making sure that I didn’t end up inside something than it did of a comfortable landing. It also didn’t seem to care if my feet ended up on the ground- just that some part of my foot was touching.
Teleport was also inaccurate. Not like we ever went far from where we targeted, but we never ended up precisely positioned. So there was a reason for the cost. “Well, that’s all of our mana,” I said. “I have lots of ideas, but there is one we could try with less. We’d have to wait a bit.”
“How long?” Midnight asked.
“Half an hour,” I said. “Maybe less, since we’ve been here for a bit.”
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“We could schedule a ride,” Midnight said. “That will take a bit anyway. What’s the plan?”
“Well, we were being cautious with Teleport and using the full cost. I figured we could try downcasting, since we’re going a much shorter distance. Somewhere along flat ground, so we don’t have to worry about the weirdness.”
Midnight sighed. “I guess we have to try that eventually for the sake of mastery.”
We shared the cost of that as well- since my timeline was based on our combined mana regeneration. I gathered mana, formed it into something like the Teleport spell, and got… nothing.
“Huh,” I said. “You’d think that a less precise and versatile teleport could operate at the same cost… but it really just doesn’t work. Though it was close, I think. We probably needed a full 10 points or some more upgrades.”
Speaking of which, Dimension Door had gotten its first natural upgrade with just that bit of practice. That was always the easiest. As for Teleport, despite me feeling like we learned a lot… it was also still at a single upgrade.
Midnight’s thoughts were going. I could feel it. I waited for him to come up with his insight, since they were always useful. “It’s like Gate,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It tears open space in a way meant for long distance travel. That’s more complicated, but Gate can’t even open a portal on the same planet. Or plane, or whatever. I think it’s specialized for the potential of distance in a similar way, so it just doesn’t work for cheap.”
I nodded. “Sounds solid. We’ll go with that for the moment.” But did that mean we could come up with a spell that was short distance and lacking versatility that was cheap? Or if not a spell, a proficiency or mastery or whatever we should call them, since spells might be set things.
-----
“Zorphax, do you have powers?”
“Hello to you too, Turlough,” he said. He thought for a moment. “Why is that question relevant?”
“I know some Humuruns who are in an experimental mood. They kind of want to see if they actually could bond to someone from Earth. And you’re like the only person I know who doesn’t have powers.” I paused to think of a better pitch. “And you know how that might happen responsibly.”
With their eyes, Martians couldn’t really see if someone was rolling their eyes so they had an equivalent which involved throwing back their head- though I wasn’t sure if that was native or just a thing that the ones on Earth learned. “It would be extremely irresponsible of me to accept an extradimensional contract of some sort given my position.”
“What about Basant?” I asked. He might actually be the last non-powered person I knew.
“Stop trying to give people from Extra powers!” Zorphax said in exasperation. “We’re supposed to be responsible about these things.”
“Testing if it’s safe sounds responsible to me.” Oh, what about the news guy? I don’t think he had powers. “You think Frank could get powers?”
“... Who?” Zorphax asked, furrowing his brow.
“Vilhelmiina’s turret bot.”
“I sure hope not,” Zorphax said. “And while I can’t stop you from going to alternate dimension with an invitation, I can say you shouldn’t arbitrarily bring people from our Earth for experimentation. If they really want to… we can work something out.”
“Yeah. It’s difficult to communicate, though,” I said. “It’s kind of up to me and Sending. Do you have any cross-dimensional radios?”
The way he looked at me said I had stumbled onto something, or close to it. “We are responsible for responsible use of advanced technology and extradimensional influence,” he repeated.
I had to know someone else. What was her name? Doctor Rose? She probably didn’t want to be a magical girl and it might require moving dimensions. I guess we’d really have to test it, but still. That alpaca had been so excited about the potential Izzy had- even if it was filled.
-----
The first batch of Humuruns had been a test. So far, they had been successful with their efforts so they had asked for a proper transport of more people. That was what Midnight and I were going to go do now, obviously. Even if Zorphax was a downer.
Strife was waiting, with her eyepatch, when we showed up in the little safe house. “We’ll be changing locations,” she said. “It is inconvenient to filter through such a confined space. To that end, we’ll need you to make use of the disguise capabilities you mentioned.”
It was one thing for me to go around fighting The Scouring alongside magical girls, it was quite another for me to be walking around in public with an unknown persona. They didn’t exactly have a lot of orcs here. And thus, I completed my genius disguise of a tall human wearing janitorial clothing.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“A collegiate gymnasium,” Lady Eglantine said helpfully as she hopped up onto Strife’s shoulder as the person in question transformed back into her ‘normal’ form. Her eyepatch faded away, and she was left wearing… a t-shirt and jeans.
“... Are you also in disguise?” I asked.
“It is highly impractical to wear formal clothing to school,” Momo commented. “And quite liable to stand out. As I shall be directing you, I also need to not draw too much attention. I have reserved the gymnasium, but we don’t want people getting too curious.”
“Won’t they notice hundreds of Humuruns?” I asked.
“Only if they already have a connection to magic, remember?” the rainbow porcupine commented. “Otherwise they would see me and everything would be given away.”
“Oh, right,” I nodded.
I thought Momo might drive, but even though she was a native to a world with cars, driving wasn’t as common as in New Bay. We took public transportation. A few people looked at me oddly, since I had a cat on my shoulders, but Midnight looked normal. He shouldn’t be connected to Humuruns unless he spoke.
Nobody asked me to put my ‘pet’ in a carrier, though I did get a lot of judgemental looks on the train. Unfortunately for them, I was highly resistant to peer pressure and also didn’t have either a real pet or a proper carrier.
I got off at the same stop as Momo, though we weren’t exactly walking together. We ended up on a college campus soon after, and I wondered if people might wonder about the giant janitor. But I just did my best to look like I belonged and everyone played along- not that the halls were brimming with people during this after class period.
Soon enough we reached our destination. Then we just had to wait for precisely the right time when Humuruns should be ready and lined up. Momo would have a proper picture for me to focus on. I steadied myself, anticipating soon being overwhelmed with sparkles.
