The analysis on Midnight’s suit was not available until the next day. “That seems pretty long, doesn’t it?” I asked. “They didn’t make it seem like it could take that long. Maybe something serious happened.”

  “Or they found nothing,” Midnight said. “And decided to repeat the process just to be safe. Because I’m related to someone important.”

  They should just try to get things right the first time. But I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to double check their work for something important.

  When we were called back to the facility, Jet was waiting. That didn’t really mean anything, because she liked to show up for everything Midnight was involved in. Being brought into a fancy briefing room made it significantly less likely that things were just normal.

  The same Celmothian who took Midnight’s suit for analysis- Marlin- was leading things. There were a few others aside from Midnight, myself, and Jet. That finalized the idea that things weren’t normal.

  Marlin didn’t engage in preambles. “The suit was affected by a Bunvorixian damping field.” Bunvorixian was bad in this context. I could only make assumptions about what a damping field did based on the translation. Presumably, it made stuff work less. “Considering that this technology seemed to be in the hands of a human villain, it is a significant concern.”

  “Flasher teleports too,” I added. “I don’t think that’s tech the Mod Squad should have had access to.” It certainly didn’t seem like a power, but it was difficult to tell with cyborgs since there was a little bit of supernatural stuff going on for their bodies not to fall apart. At least once they got to the extremes like Iron Shell and Flasher.

  “Now that you mention it,” Midnight commented, “Flash Circuit appeared on the scene after the big Bunvorixian incident.”

  Jet growled slightly. “Concerning. Fortunately our efforts to empower Extra against the Bunvorixians should bear fruit soon.”

  Marlin once more took control of the meeting. “The extra time was required to make certain that no permanent damage was done. Fortunately, perhaps, the damper makes use of the suit’s overload resistance protocols. The damper would have kept the suit disabled almost indefinitely while active,” Marlin explained. “But that’s better than the alternative of a short burst rendering it inoperable. They generally fell out of favor because of the close range required, but they have seen use in special operations… and abduction attempts.”

  I grimaced, the action emphasizing my tusks. “He certainly tried to grab Midnight. If he’s working together with the Bunvorixians…”

  “We will scour their world of all life!” Jet declared.

  Midnight sighed. “Please don’t.”

  “... It’s not like we actually could,” Jet admitted. “Or we’d have done it a while ago.”

  I nodded. Certainly someone would have wanted to go that far in a multi-generational war. “You should just assassinate their leaders.” For some reason, people gave me a weird look. “What? I know it’s not that easy, but it’s way more efficient and less bloody. And their people don’t necessarily want to fight.”

  “That could work,” Jet admitted. “Or it could drive them into a zealous fury.”

  People were cowards. They just refused to be efficient. Not that I knew any good assassins. Except maybe Shockwave. Or Movebrain. Mono, maybe. Possibly Izzy, if she was motivated and properly equipped. At most a couple others, so really not that many.

  “You need to come up with a method to screw up their propaganda,” I commented. “Because if Zeb is any indication, they might be close to the edge.”

  Or maybe Zeb was an exception in that she’d been willing to listen. Could I magically override propaganda? Probably not without screwing with people’s heads in problematic ways. Unless they happened to be using some sort of active mind control instead of just regular propaganda.

  “Believe me, we’ve tried,” Jet explained. “So, the suit doesn’t have any lingering issues…?”

  Marlin shook his head. “I merely took extra precautions. It should work fine. Even if reintroduced to a damping field, it should be temporary. Those of you here to observe merely needed to be informed that the tech is in use again to some extent, since training fell out of favor when they stopped using it on their side.”

  At that point, people had questions. I did too, though they were different and not the sort Marlin could answer. Like, why would anyone want to kidnap Midnight? Aside from him being cool. And important to the Celmothians to some extent.

  Okay, there were reasons. But why would Flasher want to abduct Midnight? The question had already come up previously. Maybe he’d been trying to kill Midnight, but I feel like a good laser while Midnight was lacking suit abilities would have been a good start instead of trying to grab him.

  Midnight and I were part of the Brigade, and we’d helped take down Iron Shell. So it could simply be that. Maybe he stumbled across Bunvorixian tech. Or they were working together. Flasher might be working for them, since a villain wouldn’t care how he got paid. I doubted that Bunvorixians had much Earth currency, but they did have access to a lot of tech cyborgs would like to get their hands on, even if it needed some… translation.

  Unfortunately, none of the options were much more solid than my previous speculation. We’d gotten a question of how, but not why. Nor did we know if it might happen again.

  It wasn’t great for my worry. Or for Midnight’s worry. Which meant we were in a very uncomfortable worry cycle. Fortunately our emotions didn’t amplify back and forth to infinity… but that was only a small comfort. I needed to punch someone, and Midnight might need an actual vacation.

  -----

  When I suggested that as we were preparing for our return to Earth, Midnight was not fully on board.

  “If I’m trying to not worry, I also don’t want to worry about you being attacked all alone.”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I shook my head. “There’s no way I’ll be alone. I’ll be part of a squad, and they usually have me set up as some sort of support. With some other continge-” I stopped.

  “What?” Midnight asked, looking over his shoulder. “Did you forget something? It’s not cheap to come back here, you know.”

  “Contingency.”

  “Do we need to make some sort of plan or-”

  “The spell I was going to learn forever ago. And didn’t, because we didn’t have ivory or gemstones.”

  “Is that important?” Midnight asked.

  “Depends. Do you want to always be carrying around a spell that can protect you against someone that can turn off your suit?”

  “Uh… yes?” Midnight tilted his head. “I’m not really sure with the way you said it, but I’d like to not worry about that happening again.”

  “It’s not perfect,” I admitted. “You’d have to pick what you wanted to happen ahead of time. It might make you paranoid about one particular thing or you might feel overly safe.”

  Midnight thought for a moment. “It has to affect just me, right? I can’t zap someone?”

  “I don’t think you can. Though Shocking Grasp kind of targets you. I don’t know if I’d bother with something relatively weak like that, though.” I thought for a moment. “Do you have elephants here?”

  “... we have large tusked animals?”

  Presumably the large applied to both the tusks and the animals themselves. “We’ll just get some ivory on Earth.”

  Why did we need ivory? I had no idea. Though I did understand why it would be tiny statues of us.

  -----

  Back on Earth, we now had a quest that involved taking a few days off, minimum. It would probably be pretty easy to get ivory and gemstones. Getting them fast would just cost more money.

  “Should we get diamonds?” I asked. “Ivory is already white. Diamond doesn’t sound right. What about rubies? How many?”

  “Do you not know?” Midnight asked.

  “I feel like it was… nonspecific?” I waved vaguely. “And now I don’t have the book.” Good thing I remembered most of the requirements, at least.

  “How did people figure out the requirements to begin with? Did that spell not exist until someone killed an elephant?”

  I really wanted to delve deeply into that subject. “I doubt anyone remembers,” I admitted. “I haven’t tried to use any spells without material components they require.” Or in this case, a focus. The difference being that it would not be consumed upon use. Otherwise Contingency would be far more expensive than Stoneskin.

  -----

  Ivory was not easy to get. It wasn’t a matter of money, either. Or maybe the problem was money in the wrong way.

  “I hate that terrible people from previous generations are making it hard for me to do magic again,” I grumbled.

  I could probably get it because I needed it for magic stuff, but it would take permits and official power-business related effort. That meant time.

  “Do you think Ceira would raise elephants for me? Would tusks regenerate?”

  “I’m not really sure that’s a good idea,” Midnight said.

  “Fine. I can make a new druid. And buy an elephant. That still might be faster than the permitting process.”

  I could probably import some through… various means. Some countries were less strict, after all. Not everyone cared about people killing off animals for a tiny percentage of them. The real problem was that it had never gotten to the point it was worth it for people to raise their own elephants, but still expensive. Thus it was only ‘worthwhile’ to poach.

  Now I was pretty sure there were some superheroes that were prepared to instantly obliterate anyone trying to poach endangered animals. The population of elephants on Earth was still currently recovering.

  My money wouldn’t efficiently become gold, and if I walked around my old world and tried to exchange non-standard gold bars I’d get way too many questions. So now it was time to ask the real questions.

  “How much of this do you think we can fake?” I said to Midnight. “Can people make artificial ivory?”

  As I asked the question, I was looking up the answer. It was yes. The problem was I didn’t know if I was looking for a white carvable substance or ivory. While I had no doubt that someone could replicate the material properties, I couldn’t tell if any of the substitutes available were made from the same things. People just cared about what it looked and felt like, if they would even accept substitutes. Not a word on whether it functioned with magic.

  “We could try a few things,” Midnight said. “If we make sure the gemstones are reusable, we can get people to work with various materials and try them out. We can also ask other people for suggestions.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  I began to go down the list.

  Malaliel said she was not aware of any ‘elephant dimension’.

  Vilhelmiina expressed that she would absolutely make me synthetic ivory that was as good as the real thing… once her backlog of more important things was done. So never, unless she suddenly became fixated on the idea for some reason.

  Great Girl asked me about the other material components.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, my friends-”

  “Nobody is listening to this conversation,” I pointed out. I’d gotten her time because I was helping her try out a new form of weightlifting. She’d been complaining about how hard it was to get heavier stuff, so I was… making her smaller. That was the excuse for my presence, anyway. She did that part on her own, and she simply didn’t want to advertise the ability to random people in the Brigade.

  “Doesn’t it also take like, mercury and magic eyelashes?” Great Girl said between sets.

  “... It might?” Mercury I could get. What were magic eyelashes? How would I know? “Does shrinking make you weaker?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Proportionately weaker?” I asked. “Like with your growth?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “If you become, say, two and a half feet tall, do you have noodle arms?”

  “It’s sure harder to lift these,” Great Girl pointed out. “But… I don’t think it quite works that way. Or I wouldn’t remain functional. I’m just trying to get more strain so this is good enough.”

  “Alright. Would your eyelashes work?”

  “What?” she almost dropped the barbell. It was light enough that I could act as her spotter though, so if she had it wouldn’t be an issue. That couldn’t be said of her in pretty much any form larger than her true size, though. Certainly not when we matched heights.

  “Because they need to be magic.”

  “I think yours would be better.”

  “Hmm.” It was possible this wasn’t a real requirement. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t tell if Great Girl knew of it because of proper cross-dimensional inspiration or because I’d read the versions of things from this Earth. “I’ll need the other things first. Any ideas for ivory replacement?”

  “Dragon bone?”

  “Probably harder to carve. And I didn’t get to keep any.” It had to be good for magic though, right?

  Next on my list was Jerome. He was my apprentice, so I should at least involve him in magical conversation.