"You're going to fight laser-people?" Zeb hopped up and down excitedly when we ended up in 'her' training room. "I want to co too! Fluffy can eat their lasers!"
"Mhm," I nodded. "But can he protect you from all angles?"
"Don't be silly. Fluffy is big but he can only be in one place at a ti."
"Right," Midnight said. "So, you don't have any way to protect yourself against them, then."
"... I'll stand real far away?"
Midnight shook his head. "It would be better for you to not co personally in that case. Maybe you could ask for Extra to release your defensive gear to you? That should function fine since we'll be up against Bunvorixian weaponry."
"Defensive gear?" she shook her head. "Oh no, engineers never get assigned anything like that."
I could feel Midnight's emotions twist. I had the feeling he wanted to say sothing like 'Bunvorixians suck', but he couldn't really do that in front of Zeb. Even if he whispered, if I could hear it she probably could as well. "... But the soldiers and commanders do?"
"The soldiers need it the most!" Zeb explained. "And the commanders are important!"
I wondered if Doctor Patenaude had any openings. Soone really needed to have a good think about her people. Or forr people.
"I don't think you can go anywhere without defensive stuff," I said. "And Fluffy would need you around to control him." Based on my understanding he'd probably be friendly towards us or at least docile without Zeb around, but he was still very new to… everything. New people, new planet, and all of that. Actuall, being around people at all was probably new since he'd been wild.
"But laaaasers~!" Zeb complained. "All Fluffy has had to eat lately is normal food. He started chewing on so wires and- I an, those wires chewed on themselves and he cleaned up the damaged bits. He needs more variety in his diet. Probably."
"Khithae's gonna have to fix those wires, you know," I pointed out.
Zeb gasped. "But she's the nice lizard engineer!" She swiveled her head. "Fluffy, don't eat wires!"
Kick, who hadn't said anything, looked down at his legs. "That guy eats… wires?"
"Baseless rumors," I said. "I've only seen him eat lasers. Now then, we were going to test whether my defenses interrupted outgoing attacks from your abilities." That shouldn't happen, but most magic created the effects beyond the caster. The lasers would originate inside a cyborg and pass through the defensive barrier layer. I didn't have that much experience with that, so it was sothing we had to test before patrols. I'd never protected Shockfire from the elents he could use, so it could use more testing there as well.
It was difficult to have a neutral perspective on casting a spell that I was specifically testing for a certain interaction, but I tried my best. In the end, I cast Energy Ward on Kick three tis. I had learned how to more directly target nontraditional elents, as I'd co across lasers and laser like things often enough. For example, I could protect specifically against Darkstargirl's energy. That didn't make the spell more effective, but instead brought it up to the normal effectiveness since it was always supposed to be narrowly tailored.
Though since the base category of 'fire' was so broad, focusing on just 'weird black fire' made it less effective against other fires, similar to how it worked if I protected just against fire for her. In short, it wasn't exact in what it protected against but it wasn't universally effective like Force Armor. Stoneskin also protected against most attacks, unlike what local logic said, but it was certainly much less effective against 'elental' stuff compared to 'physical'.
The first and second tests were effectively the sa result with Kick. First I tried to just cast the spell to resist lasers. His abilities worked just fine. I noted that his laser augntations probably fit inside of his legs, which ant he might not be a cyborg powered person. Soone must have studied that threshold. Would getting other powers make cyborg parts stop working, or just an he was limited on upgrades? It was probably the latter, but might depend on the power.
Anyway, versions of energy ward where I didn't care about whether his lasers in particular got through and where they were intentionally let through acted the sa. But that could have been bias from already thinking about it.
The fun part was when I tried to intentionally stop his lasers. I saw him kick up his leg, pointing his knee at the target. Then I saw a sparkly light as the laser was absorbed into the spell or otherwise diffused.
Kick frowned and tried again, and again. Eventually the spell gave out, but it lasted long enough that he was effectively doing nothing for a fatal amount of in-combat ti. "I don't like that at all," he comnted.
"Interesting," Midnight said. "So we can use Energy Ward… offensively?"
"Well, it's not like it hurt him," I pointed out. "But if we want to shut down one person, it's more effective than casting it on everyone, I guess. The downside being so people will probably bypass it, they'll probably be maximally effective against sothing up close and eat through it faster, and getting it on them in the first place. It requires getting pretty close."
Then again… if soone was theoretically going to punch with black fire, wouldn't they be close enough? How would this affect non-offensive abilities? Did Darkstargirl's flight have anything to do with her other star powers? I ssaged Calculator about that.
Does Darkstargirl's flight use her not-fire stuff?
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Why?
His response was short, but I doubted it was ant to deter .
Because I can stop it if that's the case
Not for long, but she might crash into the ground
She's just typical-super levels of durable without her powers, right?
That aspect of her flight power hasn't been thoroughly analyzed
At least not in our database
I'll look into it, and we'll speak more about this when I'm not busy
Hah. Good one.
Calculator was always busy.
I wondered if we had any ntal supers who I could test things on. Could I put ntal Freedom around them to prevent their stuff from going through? Probably not, but that might depend on how the particular power worked.
What else could I use offensively? Physical Freedom pretty much shut off Shockwave's… shockwaves. Though that left them a super speedster, and it would be easier to just cast Slow- except for how fast speedsters tended to rip that spell apart. Most people didn't have powers that would interact with it so they were stuck for the full duration.
I started from the top. Storage… I'd already used it, before. Snatch sothing and yank it away to another dinsion. I couldn't see how Force Armor could hurt an enemy in almost any situation, except maybe if I was paired up with soone who had no control over and was worried about killing soone. Low priority.
Translation…? If they were very ntally busy, it might add so more junk into their heads if people yelled at them in different languages.
I got back to Alter Ti Flow and almost went past it, since it had an obvious offensive version. Using Haste offensively was a terrible idea, except in extrely specific circumstances. It ca with faster reactions, so only the novelty of speed and interactions with friction at exactly the right mont could be relevant. And if I screwed up, I'd have a Hasted enemy mad at . Better to not.
Would I ever want to use Slow on an ally? Not in combat, I thought, but maybe if they were bleeding to death and we needed sowhere around thirty seconds desperately. Or if they were poisoned?
I noticed Midnight was speaking to soone, but I didn't let that distract . Especially since his feelings were currently trying not to distract .
Disguise could ss up enemy teamwork, if they suddenly looked or sounded like soone wrong.
Familiar Bond… was literally only usable for myself and Midnight. Though attacking soone else's familiar was a valid course of action, if it ca up.
Size Shift was fairly obvious. Soone who wasn't strong or good at physical combat might do very poorly when big, and being small was often a disadvantage. But like many spells, it required being quite close where I could just… attack soone.
Energy Ward I'd already considered. Divination was too slow. Shield intentionally couldn't block anyone's vision or movent. But maybe I could make it worse? I shook my head. Maybe later.
Stoneskin didn't make anyone heavy or inflexible, so it was kind of a bust. Though maybe if it absorbed their punches like I was doing with Energy Ward?
Water Breathing… didn't make people not breathe air. It just worked. So it wasn't going to cause anyone more confusion than being dunked in water and not being able to breathe.
Variable Freedom… maybe I could do weird stuff with that. I'd need to find the right people to help test.
I needed to throw Light on people's eyes more. It was cheap, and I could make it sticky.
Gate… was probably too slow and too expensive to hurt people with, unless they were chasing through one and I closed it on them.
Sending might distract soone, but it would be expensive and imprecise in its timing.
Clean would be good against people with garbage powers. By which I ant ones using actual trash. Or dirt, maybe.
Shelter couldn't drop on people, and it was pretty flimsy. Good for visual cover, maybe. Or if people really wanted a nap.
Enhance would just make people better, so unless I could reverse that it was kind of out.
Nondetection could hide them from their allies. Good for all sorts of nefarious purposes, I supposed.
Fly… would only be relevant if they were clumsy or if I could cancel it on purpose. I was pretty sure if soone had so sort of falling power it would at most distract them once. People just had control of their movent naturally with the spell, it didn't force them to actually fly.
That was the end of the list. Though I could consider other options from spells I didn't have.
"And he's back," Midnight said. "Did you think of anything useful?"
"I have a whole list of potential tactics," I said. "Most of them are probably worse than zapping people with lightning."
"Turloooough!" Zeb ran circles around . "I an, Mage Mage Mage! You can talk to Khithae right? Ask her if she can make an imrsive conveyance rig!"
"A what now?" I asked, giving up on keeping the black and white blur in my vision. I would just get a neckache.
"Can you call her here? I can explain it real good!"
"Pretty sure she's working," I said. "But I can ask."
Five minutes later, Khithae was in the training room. Midnight was going over other spells with Kick to show how we could support him and the team- it was better for people to see it than just read it from a list.
I gave Khithae Translate, since it was better for her to speak in her native tongue if she was doing technical stuff. Then she was speaking with Zeb using almost entirely untranslatable words. Or at least, so of them were. So I just didn't seem to know. Technical jargon. They seed to be getting sothing, though.
A mont later, Calculator ca into the room, shuffling over towards quickly. "Tell how you can shut down Dark Star's power."
"Well, only briefly," I clarified. "But I would just cast Energy Ward on her and stop any of it from going anywhere. Would that stop her from flying?"
Calculator just held up a hand for a mont. He said he didn't have any actual gears in his head, but I could still feel them turning. "You're saying you learned a new way to use your magic?"
"I an, it's just the sa. But I just stop all energy of a certain type instead of only enemy stuff?"
"Can you show ?"
"Look up the recordings in here ten minutes ago," I said. "But it just looks like lasers not lasering."
"... How did this co up?" Calculator asked.
"Well, I was going to stop Kick from getting lasered and I wondered if it would stop his lasers. And the answer is no, unless I make it."
"So you can make it stop certain forms of energy in both directions?" he asked. "What about just… outward?"
"Would that matter?" I pondered.
"You can get hit with lightning," he pointed out. "Or other mages who can cast such spells."
"Most of my stuff isn't that type of energy until it's outside," I said. "Though Shocking Grasp would be an exception, I think."
"We'll test it," he said. "And see if we can get so vaguely equivalent supers to stand in for Dark Star."
"And ntalists," I said. "To see if I can block that stuff in." Now that I had seen a spell do sothing weird, I wondered if there was more magic could do while still doing the sa thing.
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