Spotting the portal was easier than getting to it. Even though it wasn’t active, once Midnight and I got close enough it stood out as a vague shimmering area. I would say it was on the small end of mid sized. I supposed portals could probably be whatever size someone could afford the power and technique to set up, but there was a limit to practical sizes. Below that, a standard humanoid couldn’t easily fit through so the starting range in my mind was about one human wide.

  This had enough room for three people to fit comfortably. You could probably shove a handful through in parallel without too much trouble. A bit less than ten feet wide made it smaller than Gate started out. Relatedly, smaller than most portals Doctor Doomsday made. Hopefully that meant it would fit fewer monsters through when everything went wrong.

  “Well, there it is. Or at least… there’s one,” I commented. We needed to report back to the Brigade. Saying things straight up could tip off people in the crowd, but trying to hide that I was talking remotely would be a pain. Maybe I should use Sending? It wouldn’t be a good report, but it would be something.

  “Just hold up your phone,” Midnight suggested. “People will barely be able to hear you anyway.” It was a good thing he could pick out what I was having trouble with, and that he was right next to my ear. Because people were loud. It was super crowded. Or maybe just regular crowded, since a super might be able to compress more space into the area somehow.

  “Oh right. I’ll do that.” I pulled out my phone while making sure my mic was transmitting to the Brigade. “Yeah. Hi. Lotta people here, I’m sure you can hear them. I found something really interesting at the park.” I sent some coordinates. Technology was great. Also, I suppose I could have texted. “I might find some other neat things if I keep looking, but I’d also like to see things up close and see if I can do something. The problem is there are so many people.”

  In short, I wasn’t certain there was just one portal. There could be more. It would also be difficult just to get to the one I knew was there to try to… close it? It wasn’t even open yet, so maybe locking it would be more correct.

  “Continue to check out the wider area,” came a reply into my ear. “We’ll try to arrange someone to manage that location if you can’t get to it in time.”

  We had probably half an hour now, assuming the timing was exactly as Doctor Doomsday declared. That was enough time to go anywhere between two steps and a half loop around the park. Castle and Captain Control were doing a good job of clearing people out around the edges of the park and traffic was able to flow away, but some people were being idiots and trying to drive into the restricted area even as cops put up barricades.

  Great Girl would have probably stopped being nice with people’s cars. Despite what she said, Castle wasn’t actually tossing people’s cars. Then again, they’d only had a minute or two of notice and honestly might not have been able to reach them yet.

  “That way,” Midnight gestured with his ‘beak’. He was currently a parrot, after all. Not an actual parrot, just the looks of one plastered over a cat. Imperfect, but there were so many weird things in this city that it would probably be fine.

  I followed Midnight’s advice, and he actually navigated me through the flow at a fairly quick pace. After about a quarter circle, I had the feeling there weren’t going to be additional portals. “We should just make it to the center now, yeah?”

  “Absolutely,” Midnight said. “Go behind that guy.”

  I wasn’t sure how much was his natural instincts and how much was his suit doing some sort of calculations or whatever, but it was very helpful. We actually got to the location with nearly five minutes to spare, instead of going nowhere. “Alright. Now then, how would we go about…?”

  It was then that space tore apart in front of me. I instinctively reached out with mana, but without gathering any ahead of time it was pretty much just ripped away as the portal opened exactly as intended. I presumed.

  I was then shoved through the portal by the press of bodies.

  “It’s open! This is our chance!”

  What the hell were these people doing? They didn’t need to go through the portal! Just be near it. Though for full unlocks… whatever. If they went through they’d just end up… on random city streets?

  With cars. Good thing these cars were small and had good brakes. It didn’t leave a lot of room for more people to come through. At least there weren’t any monsters. This was just Japan, which was safe.

  Well, Japan had some monsters. It was one of the supernatural hubs for whatever reason. But it shouldn’t have too many. It would be fine as long as-

  “This is Earth #2 isn’t it?” I asked Midnight as I looked around. There wasn’t anything that actually looked different but… “The mana is too plentiful.”

  “It might not be. Either way, we should probably deal with… that,” Midnight gestured with a ‘wing’ towards the mass of people coming through the portal. They managed to squeeze a dozen at once.

  “Time to drop the disguises?”

  “I guess so,” Midnight said.

  “Great. Do you wanna do the speech?”

  “Well, I would but… you’re so eloquent. By which I mean blunt and I don’t think this is the situation to talk to people nicely.”

  I couldn’t close the portal with people actively moving through it. Well, I wouldn’t. If I had Wall of Stone I could fully block off the portal. I’d use Fire Shield, but not everyone was fully responsible for their own movements. If I could get some room, a Shelter would look like it blocked things off, but I doubted it could stand up to a couple people kicking it for long let alone a crowd.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I dropped Disguise, intentionally unraveling it as I stepped up on the hook of a car. “Everyone, listen up! You’re not going to get any more powers for pushing further into this place, you’re just going to get lost in a parallel dimension. So get back to the correct side of the portal and everything will be fine.”

  There were a bunch of people yelling complaints. I couldn’t really make out most of them, but some were from the other side of the portal. Probably people who thought it was unfair they wouldn’t get powers.

  “You don’t need to pass through the portal! It works with proximity!” Revealing truths some people would probably prefer be unknown was better than chaos. “Just walk past it! Anyone who ends up on this side is going to get buried in paperwork by Extra! Spread the word!”

  Fewer people were pushing through, and some were actually leaving. Everything was going so well until the other portals opened up. And if they had been to Earth #1, that would have been inconvenient but fine.

  Instead they were obviously portals from The Scouring. Maybe they could sense the heightened emotions? Monsters did that sort of thing. I blasted a Sonic Lance into the first pack to poke through.

  “Dammit. Midnight?” He had leapt off my shoulder before I got on the car.

  He replied through our shared comms. “I already got in contact with the magical girls. Swapping from civilian chaos to monster chaos will be fine for them.”

  He had a series of Firebolts in response to some more monsters. Component enhanced, probably. He could carry a little bit of stuff in his suit.

  There was a big swarm of monsters coming. At least they chose one side for their jumble of portals to be on, so I could vaguely aim a Blizzard at all of them. Just before I finished gathering mana, I noticed a vending machine. With ice in it.

  I did the sensible thing and only drew upon a fistful of it as I pressed my hand up against the machine. I was quite concerned about damaging the city’s infrastructure or myself if I tried to consume too much.

  A vending machine was just a thin box like anything else, and I managed to use some of the ice. It was a good thing that the local civilians were very good at fleeing from dangerous situations for the most part- something I kind of wished New Bay’s had picked up. About half a block was coated in ice, with my targets in the middle being quite a bit thicker. Some of them actually faded away into smoke as they instantly died, leaving behind only an icy outline.

  There was a loud sound as pavement suddenly exploded. I just barely saw something slip through the top part of the portal- the one from Earth #1, not the monster portals. Captain Punch stood up. “Hey! Civilians! This guy already told you to run, didn’t he? Get going!” he literally tossed a pair of people through the portal, over the heads of others. That was… not my problem.

  Fortunately, he immediately followed up by charging towards the next monster out of the biggest portal. It had too many eyestalks- there was a responsible number of eyestalks to have and it was way beyond that. He grabbed the largest two of them, ignoring the spikes all over the thing as his hands squeezed down. Then he swung it at other creatures, shattering icy statues and previously undamaged monster bodies until his improvised weapon fell apart.

  Captain Punch then shoved his fist straight through the torso of some sort of demon cow.

  As far as I was aware, he was the most bruiser anyone could get. He hit fast, he hit hard. It looked like he was fighting an army of paper the way he tore through them.

  With all of the monster gore- even if it didn’t last long after the deaths of The Scouring- he was really good at getting people to run. Too bad only about half of them went back through the portal. More of them scattered.

  Captain Punch actually found the time to toss a series of cars to block anyone else from exiting the portal as things were dying down. Some other supers had secured the far side.

  “Go through and close it,” he said.

  “With you here?”

  “Still got civilians on this side. I’ll round ‘em up. You go back through.”

  “Um, do you speak Japanese?” His face told me he did not. “I’ll leave Familiar with you. In case it wasn’t obvious, when the magical girls show up they’re on our side. Including any cute and colorful fellows with them, if you can see them. Very helpfully coded world.”

  “Great,” he said, grabbing me and tossing me through the remaining clear space in the portal- over the hoods of two cars facing each other.

  I wondered about the cars. The Power Brigade Executives should probably care about collateral damage… but also that might be the perfect reason to intentionally make use of things instead of letting people get hurt. The cross-dimension thing might be an issue though. Maybe the magical girls could repair busted cars like they did sidewalks.

  Castle was angrily glaring at a mob, as if daring anyone to step closer. Some idiots were still trying to move past her, but she literally just moved an arm in front of them and they couldn’t push forward an inch.

  I began closing the portal. I figured announcing it wouldn’t help, as people might be desperate. Even though it went to the wrong place. We might have to educate people on Portal Powers now that Doomsday was using it for chaos.

  The portal resisted me. I had pulled out my staff to back up Captain Punch- mostly to block monsters from fleeing- and I still had it out. I looked around annoyed for whatever was blocking me, as I was certain this portal didn’t naturally want to exist. Arcane Sight was still active and picked out a small something buried in the dirt, and I jabbed my staff there, pushing out the stored Dispel.

  The portal collapsed quickly- though I think it wouldn’t have gone so well without my active encouragement. Most likely, it would have lingered for a while.

  “No more portal,” Castle said. “Clear out.” She turned to me. “You afraid of heights?”

  I shook my head. Midnight wasn’t with me, so it was fine. “Not at all.”

  Castle reached out and grabbed my wrist. “Try not to resist.”

  It was a good thing she said that, because I absolutely would have. I felt really weird for a moment, and then she tucked my arm over her shoulder and jumped. I normally expected more resistance to acceleration, but it was like my body wasn’t weighing me down at all. Which maybe it wasn’t.

  We fluttered down gently onto a rooftop, which was weird because if our mass was reduced enough that air friction slowed our movement then how did we gain height? Was it some sort of constant manipulation? A secondary power? I should have had my goggles on. Either way, it was clearly all Castle.

  “We’re not done,” she noted. “We’ll need multiple jumps. But it’s faster than trying a car. There’s more portals to handle, and you’re one of the city’s most reliable sources of closing them.”

  If the city got a bunch of level 15 mages, they could probably do it too with training. Though having more than the ‘standard’ 10 mana available was quite helpful. Bolster was strong enough that I should teach her. I could make my own portals for her to close with Alter Portal, after all. Jerome too, since he liked utility things like that and he might need it in the future.

  But that was for when I wasn’t busy dealing with a chaotic city.