Project: Gamer Ver. 2 (Young Justice/Gamer/Multicross OC)

Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 2.9.9

Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.

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20/07/2003 (TT)

Garfield openly scratched his armpit as he lounged on the couch in the little cabin and waited for Raven to finish her shower so he could take one himself. The rooms downstairs had small bathrooms attached with a toilet and sink, sure, but nothing else.

Honestly? It was actually a pretty nice little setup. Totes better than the tiny living space he'd shared with his parents in the wilds of Africa. It had an actual oven in the kitchen!

Sure, it was a smaller unit with just two burners on top. But it had a baking chamber thing! They could make a tray of cookies without burning them in a cast iron skillet! They could do way more with that than a tiny little propane camp stove!

Alright. Beast Boy would admit that he was, maybe, a little bit easy to impress. His childhood had involved traversing the wilds of Africa with his parents and having actual utilities wasn't a guarantee. Heck, one of his earliest memories involved being taught by his dad about how to dig a hole so he could go to the bathroom.

Beast Boy looked up from where he'd been examining a cartridge stuck into a strange little game console called a 'Super Nintendo', the game had a couple of anime styled kids on the front fighting some kind of monster. Some dude with red hair was swinging a sword while some blond girl was casting fire on it and there was a giant frog on the ground between them.

Chrono Trigger?

Eh, if it wasn't on a Waynestation, it probably wasn't that good. Garfield had tried playing some Lexbox knockoffs and they just weren't any fun.

Beast Boy frowned as the sounds of metal hitting metal kept distracting him.

Starfire had gone outside to see what all the clanging and banging was but she hadn't come back.

The youngest Titan turned his head to look at the wall, beyond which the noises seemed to be increasing in both volume and frequency.

Shrugging as he failed to divine whatever was going on through the wall, the boy got up and walked out of the building to actually see what was going on for himself. What he found was, in its own way, absolutely amazing.

With a clangorous Bang!, Starfire was sent flying up and into the air, both of her hands wrapped around the hilt of a black sword. On the ground, mostly unruffled, was the Kar'Yashlan chick. She had a sword, too, but she only had one hand wrapped around the handle.

Starfire righted herself and screamed, shooting back down towards the older woman. She swung the blade in a wide arc-

And it met the edge of Kar'Yashlan's sword. It stopped Starfire's blade in the air... But Starfire swung around her weapon, slamming into the ground with a loud "Oomph!" as the air was ripped out of her lungs.

"...How long have they been doing this?" Beast Boy asked as he approached the dragon that was just... lying under an apple tree.

The creature opened its mouth, massive teeth on display for a second as it prepared to respond before clicking shut. Instead it raised one claw and snapped its digits before it began to speak without actually talking. "A few minutes, now. Starfire requested a weapon that could hold up to her strength and I think Kary wants to make sure she actually knows how to use it."

"...Huh," Beast Boy muttered as he turned around and watched Starfire pick herself back up. The girl was smiling. A big, wide smile. The kind she only really wore around the tower, around the Titans. "...Huh."

"How are you holding up?" the dragon asked. It was probably the first question the creature had sent their way, at least that Garfield could recall.

"Ah, y'know, alright? I mean, for getting kicked out of my house." Being fair, Beast Boy could think of a dozen ways that things could've gone worse. "So, like, thanks for not kicking us back out?"

"It's not really a problem," Alchemist told him. Beast Boy's eyes darted across the creature's face but he couldn't get a read on the man. Reptiles weren't usually too expressive, not with their faces, and Alchemist didn't seem to be an exception. "I hope none of you were too stressed because of Tiffany? She's earned her trust issues."

"...Naw, I get it." Beast Boy turned to look at the fight for a moment, to see Starfire grinding the edge of her blade against Kar'Yashlan's. Seeing that the stalemate wasn't going anywhere, the boy flopped down on the ground next to the dragon. "...So, like, Starfire asked for a sword? Is she gonna get it?"

"Probably," Alchemist told him, a faint note of amusement in his voice. "She's doing a lot better than I did, back when I started swinging steel around."

"...I don't think most folks would just do that," Beast Boy admitted as he leaned back, the rough bark of the apple tree pressing into his skin. "Usually it's, like, you only get new gear if your team has a scientist or something on it."

And Beast Boy didn't even get that much. The only piece of equipment he really had was his suit, a costume that could sort of shift into a thin, tiny band that would stay on him somewhere.

Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to get Chief to make him more than one pair of transforming underwear and the suit chafed like nobody's business.

"I don't think offering you a traditional weapon would really work," Alchemist mused. The dragon's scales rasped slightly as he turned his head and Beast Boy could feel its breath tickling at his hair. "But I might have something for you, if you're interested."

"...I'm not gonna have to stand around in a tube wearing just my boxers, am I?" Beast Boy asked, playfulness belying his nervousness at being offered, well, anything.

"Not at all," the dragon said as it reached forward, its claw sinking into something that wasn't there. It came back after a moment with a yellow orb clutched between two claws. It tossed the big, glowing marble into its mouth and visibly swallowed before reaching back into the non-space. The second time around, it came back with a tiny toad statue. "I've seen the video where you've transformed into a Chocobo. Brilliant birds, you know? Intelligent, powerful, downright magical..."

"Hah, yeah..." Beast Boy agreed. He reached up to sheepishly scratch at the back of his head. "It does feel pretty awesome to use that form."

"But they have their limits," Alchemist continued as he tossed the toad in front of him. "The lack of fingers is a problem, I'd wager. And much of their power relies on either using their beaks or else picking up a good bit of speed. Sometimes, size and raw strength can be far more important."

The dragon snapped its claws again and the toad statue... suddenly wasn't.

It was replaced with a massive, hulking grey figure. There was a sparse amount of fur on its limbs and Garfield could count the creature's ribs. There was a thick crust of red gore around its mouth and the boy could see confusion inside of its blank, empty eyes.

Beast Boy was frozen in place as the creature slowly stood up from its crouching position. Garfield's chest burned in need as his lungs failed to work, as the hindmost portion of his brain demanded he remain very, very still and hope that the ape-like creature didn't notice him.

Beyond it, both Starfire and Kar'Yashlan had also stopped what they were doing. The older woman had raised a single eyebrow, watching the proceedings with naked curiosity. Starfire stared for a long moment, her pupils contracting in fear before she rocketed straight up until she hit the ceiling of the place they were in with a dull, muffled 'thump'.

"An Elder Ogre," the dragon explained. The creature's head snapped to the side and it sniffed at the air, its gaze slowly slipped from the dragon and down to Beast Boy. "Monstrous beasts. Carrion eaters that have a preference for men."

At its full height, Beast Boy estimated that the creature stood somewhere between five and six meters tall.

Garfield's heart was hammering in his chest as the creature looked at him. He felt sweat beading on his skin as it bared its teeth in a wide, bloody smile.

"Ooh!" The creature slapped the ground with its giant, meaty hands and hopped in place in excitement. "Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh!"

It lunged, covering the distance in an instant! It swung down with one massive paw, ready to crush Beast Boy's frozen form-

And froze in place as Alchemist snapped his claws a third time.

"Massive," Alchemist said as the creature... sat down. It crossed its legs and just stared down at Beast Boy, its vacant expression somehow even emptier than before. There was no animalistic hunger. No bestial intent. Just... nothing. "Powerful. Excellent night vision and surprisingly dexterous for its size."

"...How are you doing that?" Garfield whispered, so terrified he could barely speak.

"The creature is largely unintelligent," the dragon answered him. "Subjugating its will isn't terribly hard."

Garfield raised a trembling hand and closed it into a fist before swallowing heavily.

"You think I can turn into that?" he asked, pointing at the man-eater with one shaking hand. "Seriously?!"

"...There are stronger chocobos out there," the dragon said with an indifferent shrug. "If you don't want to use such a form, that's fine. The choice, of course, is yours."

"...Yeah," Beast Boy quietly mumbled. "It's my power. My choice. I don't... Why is it so terrifying? It's not- I should-"

"I've watched one of these creatures beat a drake to death," Alchemist cut in, shrugging once more when Beast Boy looked at him like he was crazy. "I'm certainly not suggesting you try and repeat such a feat, not at all. But you are afraid of it for a very, very good reason."

Garfield turned from looking at the Elder Ogre, sitting placidly as it just stared at him, then back to Alchemist. Sitting placidly as he just stared at him. The way both creatures were focused on him with a singular will was just... eerie. Like, super eerie.

Beast Boy breathed in once, deeply, as he took in the musk and stink of the creature. The massive beast was somewhere between man and gorilla, then amplified in all of the worst ways. Sure, Alchemist did a decent job talking it up but Garfield could see the muscles rippling under its skin. He could feel the heart-stopping menace even as it did absolutely nothing.

The green teen swallowed slowly. He hadn't been afraid of taking on the form of the giant bird... so why did the Elder Ogre make him so nervous?

"...I think I'll pass," Garfield eventually said. "I don't think it'd be a good look for a hero, y'know?"

The teeth? The claws? The hunger?

"Fair enough," the dragon agreed as it snapped its claws and the massive beast was replaced with an itty bitty toad. "I doubt you'd be interested in the other creatures I've collected, then."

Beast Boy shook his head as he felt the undercurrent of discomfort start to fade away.

If the other creatures Alchemist had collected were the same way? Then Alchemist was right, the answer would be no.

A hero was supposed to inspire hope, a hero was supposed to make people feel safe.

A hero wasn't supposed to inspire sheer, primordial terror just by existing.

-----

Alchemist sent one of his gauntlets to collect the toad as they waited for Starfire to regain her courage. He couldn't personally blame either of the teens for having a severe fight or flight response to seeing an Elder Ogre.

They used to terrify him, too.

The hideous, mangy creatures were huge and powerful. Physically intimidating in a way that inspired the kind of ancient fear that few modern humans would recognize as coming from the presence of an apex predator.

Holding a claw out, Alchemist caught the toad as it was dropped by his floating gauntlet and cast Break on it, turning it once more into a statue that he could store in his inventory.

With that taken care of, the dragon rolled its eyes upwards to where Starfire had retreated to the farthest possible corner of the demi-plane. Her hands were glowing green with restrained energy but it seemed more like... maybe how a scared cat might fluff out in an intimidation display rather than an actual threat?

"...Why do you have, like, a zoo of literal monsters?" Beast Boy asked. The way the teen hesitated, Alchemist wondered if he was afraid of asking or afraid of the answer.

"Because my method of capture used to be far safer than a direct fight," Alchemist honestly answered. "The place I was trapped in was filled with countless such creatures and fighting them wasn't always an option. Not within pitch-black corridors and tight, narrow hallways while I was knee-deep in literal filth."

Alchemist shuddered, a combination of remembering the feeling of being ambushed by literal plague hounds and the mako coursing through his stomach from eating the Manipulate Materia he'd used to take control of the creature.

"So, like, what else did you capture?" Garfield asked. The boy was getting a bit of color back to him the longer he talked. He'd looked about like wilted lettuce a moment before but his complexion was darkening back to a healthy, verdant green. "Unicorns and griffins and stuff like that?"

"...Something like that," Alchemist agreed. He sighed quietly as his stomach began to churn and burn. With a shake of his head, he opened the Game Shop to try and distract himself. "Some cockatrices, a few varieties of hydra, a bunch of lizard creatures called 'Saurians', rabid hellhounds like Ash and Cinder, some even larger hounds that breathe toxic, blinding fumes. I used to have even more variety but a god-eating cannibal tore through them like butter when I tried to use them as a distraction."

The wizard was tempted to see how Beast Boy would take to the Arch Hydras he'd collected but for two things. One, the creatures were simply too large to just be let out in the demi-plane. Two, perhaps more restrictive, he had no idea how the child's shapeshifting would handle a creature with multiple brains.

The mage tapped his claws in thought, idly reading a message atop the Game Shop banner about an update expanding the selections available.

"You fought a... How does that even work?" Garfield asked as Kary began to approach and Alchemist typed 'Materia' into the shop's search bar.

There were a lot of the usual suspects, mostly filled with entries to things Alchemist already owned copies of, but his eyes did catch on a few new things. Fire and Ice Materia? As in, one singular object that did two things?

That was new to him.

There were numerous other unusual entries as well. Things like Magnify, Subversion... Poison and Petrify?

"One of the gods from the cannibal's reality created a host of fragmentary lesser gods out of itself," Alchemist explained as he scrolled through the entries and took the time to read on what they did. "They could eat each other and grow stronger because of... reasons? I don't actually know why Akatosh made that a feature for the lesser bits of his soul, sorry."

"Like as not, it kept them too busy fighting among themselves to challenge the machinations of their deity," Kary said as she approached the chatting duo, snagging an apple from overhead as she got close. "It would be rather embarrassing for a god to be overthrown by his own creations, wouldn't it?"

"Hmm..." Alchemist hummed as he started to make purchases. A ReRaise Materia had finally been added, which was interesting. There were some nifty support Materia, too. Swiftcast, which cut casting time even further. Magic Focus, increasing potency and duration. Magic Efficiency, reducing cost without reducing power-

Alchemist wondered how that would pair with something connected to Turbo MP?

-but the real prize was something called 'Darkside'. It would activate a sort of perpetual skill boost effect that would eat HP, something Alchemist didn't like but had grown used to, and would improve the power of skills by as much as twenty-five percent with a per use five percent HP cost.

The immediate comparison that came to Alchemist's mind was a function from Persona Three, where a character named 'Aigis' had something called 'Orgia Mode' which basically did the same thing.

Those were the Materia that Alchemist could purchase from the shop without a quest. A surprisingly large list of potentially potent, or at least interesting, new capabilities. The new Gilgamesh Materia, however, would require a quest and the wizard just wasn't interested in doing that.

The mage was about to run another search when he was rather thoroughly interrupted.

By a scorched tennis ball smacking him in the side of the face at speed.

Alchemist, lying down and thoroughly distracted, had no defenses active. He'd been caught entirely unaware! The ball bounced off of his angular head, flying up high into the air as Alchemist fell over from the vicious sneak attack!

"Play!" Ash demanded with a sharp bark.

"...Did that dog just talk?"

"Play!" Ash repeated as the tennis ball, dropping swiftly, was caught by apparently nothing.

Alchemist shook his head and stood up, glaring at his familiar for a moment before sighing and looking up at the ball, at the hand-shaped construct of magic that was holding it in the air, only visible because Alchemist still had Arcane Sight active as a permanent spell.

"Ball," the dragon demanded as he stretched one claw out.

"Yes!" Ash cried out in joy, her tail wagging furiously behind her before she dropped into a lunge and then began to run around in a hyperactive circle around some of the trees.

Overhead, the Mage Hand construct began to spin in a circle, slowly picking up speed until it was a whirling dervish of bouncing destruction!

The spell could only exert five pounds, or about two point two-five kilograms, of force. But given time, and a lack of serious resistance, that could still turn into some serious acceleration.

After about ten seconds of wind up, the Mage Hand dispelled and the ball was released, tearing through the air directly towards Alchemist's face. Again.

This time, however, he was ready for it! The dragon raised his claw, ready to-

-miss, and have the ball impact his forehead and bounce off into the distance, Ash furiously chasing after it.

"...Are you alright, love?" Kary asked, mirth in her voice and a smile on her lips.

Beast Boy wasn't even trying to pretend he wasn't laughing.

"...Yeah," Alchemist told her as he rubbed at the spot where the ball had hit. "It really only injured my pride."

Far above, Starfire seemed to have gotten over her instinctive fear and was holding her sides as she laughed at the scene, too.

The wizard sighed and shook his head as Ash came running back, the smoldering ball in her mouth.

Oh no, children were laughing at him.

How would he ever recover?

-----

Eventually, the Teen Titans did leave the demi-plane.

Robin had taken the time to try and memorize everything he saw. To try and piece together what, if anything, it all meant.

Like the fact that the door to the strange realm was situated in a laundry room in an apartment complex. A room full of what looked like brand new, coin-operated washers and dryers. Across from the laundry facilities was a wall full of little mailboxes, all gleaming and polished. The lights were on and the fixtures were clean.

He'd wanted to go and explore the upper floors but the whole team was heading out and some part of him felt it might be unwise to split apart from the group, at least within the territory the dragon had claimed.

The problem came when they were about half a block away. Robin could have sworn he felt a pair of eyes glaring at the back of his neck but, when he turned around, he couldn't find them. Or the apartment building that Alchemist had claimed!

He hadn't panicked, not then, but his efforts to locate where they'd come from had probably eaten a good fifteen minutes and turned what was supposed to be a short walk into a slow slog.

Around the time the group reached the good side of town, they'd split apart. Starfire and Beast Boy headed towards the Tower. Beast Boy would be doing some light infiltrating, using whatever method he had to get back in. Starfire would be acting as support, keeping track of communications and making notes about anything Beast Boy relayed back to her.

Which left Cyborg, Raven and himself as the second group and they had a very different goal in mind. They needed access to a handful of basic facilities to accomplish their own tasks. Computers, printers, telephones and... that was basically it, actually.

Robin had a cell phone, though it was kept disassembled on his utility belt and inside of a foil-lined bag. Once upon a time, it had been given to him by his mentor. And that meant that it was absolutely riddled with tracking devices and software.

Most of which he was sure he'd found.

Most.

The precautions had been worthwhile, at least Robin thought so, while he'd been traveling across the country. It had, he hoped, limited the number of nasty surprises that would have otherwise tracked him down or tried to drag him back to Gotham.

But he'd settled down in Jump City. He'd been there for a significant amount of time already. He'd joined up with Cyborg, Beast Boy and Raven to help Starfire fight off the Gordanians that had been keeping the alien princess as a war trophy.

Robin had been in the news. If the people he was worried about didn't know where he was? Then he wouldn't have needed to worry about them in the first place.

"We need to borrow a room."

The trio had quickly found their way across town and to one of the few facilities that would actually meet their needs.

The public library.

"We have a few private rooms that you can reserve," the old, nearly blind woman behind the front desk of the Jump City Public Library told the trio. "We usually keep those for college students."

The imperious glare the old crone sent the mismatched trio through her coke-bottle glasses was probably supposed to be intimidating.

"Great." But Robin wasn't interested in stroking an old woman's ego. Her glare just didn't match up the discomfort that came from a dragon looking in his general direction. "Do they have phone jacks? We're going to need to send a lot of emails."

"...Yes," the old woman admitted. It wasn't a begrudging admission, though. Rather it looked as though she really did just have a hard time remembering the answer. "We actually got a grant just last month from the Wayne Institute to help modernize the facilities..."

"Hoo, that's good," Cyborg said, his boisterous voice breaking the tension. "I have gotta reach a bunch of different tech companies and I did -not- want to spend hours on the phone trying to get through the secretaries. Them ladies are mean."

"Well... alright," the woman mumbled before she pulled a drawer out of her desk and looked through a few sets of keys before selecting one. "Rooms one and two are reserved already, so you can use room three. Please remember that food and drinks are prohibited. There is a water fountain down the hall, across from the restrooms. The facilities will be closing at eight o'clock and we ask that you clean up after yourselves."

"Thank you," Raven said as she reached forward to take the key, dangling from a little plastic placard. "We'll make sure to pick up when we're done."

"Before you go," the librarian called, getting the group's attention before they could depart. "The party for room two will be here around four. They can get a bit... loud. Strange people, coming here wearing cloaks with their foul, filthy books..."

"Do you... loan out rooms to cultists?" Robin had to ask.

"What? Lord no!" the librarian exclaimed. Then she leaned over her desk and finished in a conspiratorial whisper, "it's worse than that. These kids play the Dungeons and Dragons!"