Life Ore Death - DC Feruchemy [Young Justice]

[Great Velocity]

Was she watching RWBY? I think I recognise that line from somewhere.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Escalation - part 7
* August 29 [Renka PoV]

"Freaky. I mean, she almost seems more like a piece of furniture," Artemis commented. My eyes tracked her waving hand a little, but I didn't bother to offer any further acknowledgement.

"The differences in Ferris's personality in these periods are quite striking. I was unnerved the first time I saw this."

"You said she's storing away her sense of identity? That can't be healthy," she commented to Aqualad.

'And my spiritual connection,' I mentally corrected, but there was no reason to vocalize that. I was more focused on trying to store away as much of the traits as I could manage. I could feel that there was more I could do, and if I'd had a stronger sense of my own identity as a capable Feruchemist, my inability would have been frustrating. As it was, it was merely a goal that I was supposed to achieve before I moved on to other things.

"I felt the same, but it works, and she recovers as soon as she ceases her storage." Aqualad moved his shoulders. A moment later I realized he had shrugged.

"What else can you store?" Artemis asked. "I don't think I ever heard the full list."

"None of us have been told the full list," Aqualad said as my mouth creaked open.

"Queen Mera has heard the whole list. She may not remember it, but I revealed it when we first spoke." I recognized that if I had been at my full capabilities I would either have kept that to myself, or felt the need to justify my slip. As it was, there was no desire toward either option. The two said nothing, and I focused back on attempting to force my rates of Feruchemical identity and connection storage to increase.

"…So, are you going to tell us?" Artemis asked.

"…Why," I replied dully. I saw no need to anything else. Artemis finally took the hint.

"…I guess just because I'm curious. Aaaaannd I could help? If there are still things you could improve or discover, having someone with a different point of view couldn't hurt. And, Kaldur knows Atlantean magic, right?"

"Ferris has already entered into discussions about her abilities with Queen Mera. The pieces that I understood are still beyond my ability to contribute meaningfully on. Also, this is not a decision that Ferris should make while her judgment is impaired by the storage process."

I did not particularly wonder about why he insisted on that, but the memory of what we had once discussed, and what I had once revealed, came to mind. Even as I was, those thoughts stirred up a seething darkness beneath my calm façade. If I released my storage now, then I would be in a foul humor. I saw no reason why I should not, nor a reason that I should. The time limit I had established to practice my storage of these traits had not elapsed, so I continued as I was; eventually, the emotional murk resettled.

Artemis and Aqualad continued to discuss things, among which were bits of what he had seen me perform, as well as the differences between Feruchemy and Atlantean sorcery, but I did not pay close attention. Words washed over my mind and out again as I focused on the feel of Investiture gathering in my two bracelets.

Finally, distantly, I noted the ringing of a bell, and the feel of a hand on my shoulder. I released my metal-minds.

Eyeing my teammates, I considered the past discussion.

"I am… willing to discuss my Feruchemy," I decided. "I want my notebook, and a place like the White Reef Hall to speak."

"I remember seeing a whiteboard in one of the rooms off the hall of the library," Aqualad said. I nodded and left. I loped through the halls, considering.

'Am I really considering this? Revealing everything? On the other hand, Aqualad already knows more than enough… no, that's not what I mean. He knows so much about me that revealing this shouldn't be significant, I think. And there shouldn't be any reason for me to seriously worry about being betrayed. I'm far in enough to know that they are more restrained than I am used to.'

I scooped up the notebooks with my scribbles about theories and experiments, and I picked up a few extra metal-minds to help me get my points across. I also grabbed a thesaurus, because those are always useful.

'Starting with just the two of them is the best way to handle this. I'm still a bit skittish about information control.' My thoughts continued to whirl until I strode into the room where Artemis and Aqualad stood waiting. Well, sat waiting. 'He brought a notebook too? Maybe I should be flattered.' I grabbed a marker and, in careful English, I scrawled down the first set of metals.

PHYSICAL: IRON=WEIGHT _______ STEEL=SPEED _______ TIN=SENSES _______ PEWTER=STRENGTH​

"Feruchemy uses sixteen metals, divided into four groups of four, as metal-minds to store investiture," I began. 'I'm tapping a lot of duralumin-mind connection, but getting through this is as good a reason to as any.'

"Do senses really count as physical? I would have called them mental," Artemis pointed out.

"There is always a little overlap," I acknowledged. "Speed is also a little mental," I began and then I grabbed the thesaurus and flipped through to M. "Cognitive," I pronounced carefully. "Cognitive is a better term than mental."

"Right. Got it," Artemis agreed.

"I have seen you use all of these at one time or another, although I did not know for certain what each one was," Kaldur noted. I nodded at him.

"Yes. The physical metals are the best- the most useful for a fight. We fight a lot," I observed, and they both chuckled wryly. I pause. "I may have begun too early with the metals. First, the rules and limits of Feruchemy?" I suggested.

"Yes, please," Kaldur said. I hummed and ordered my thoughts.

"Okay." I quickly counted everything off. "There are six big, um, six primary rules for using Feruchemy. Rule one: Feruchemy stores traits as investiture inside metal-minds for, ah, to later be tapped." I increased the rate at which I tapped my duralumin-mind in the hopes it would stop my stuttering. "Thus, I need metal-minds to store and to tap. I cannot tap unless I first have a metal-mind store."

"Is there anything special about something that makes it a metal-mind, or is it just the metal?" Artemis asked. I smiled.

"Rule the second," I announced. "A metal-mind is just a piece of metal with investiture stored in it. But, it must be the right chemical make-up to work, or else my Feruchemy will not work. For iron, Feruchemical iron is pure iron with no other metals. It is the same with tin, but Feruchemical steel has to be eight percent carbon mixed into the iron, and Feruchemical pewter has nine percent lead mixed into the tin." I nodded sharply to show them I had finished.

"How accurate must the measurements be?" Kaldur asked. "If the iron is slightly polluted, or the steel has too much or too little carbon, what effects will occur?"

"There is loose slack-," I paused. "There is wiggle room," I remembered the English phrase was, "of about two or three percent. If it is three percent off, three percent wrong in any way, it will not work. Pewter will not work at all with six percent lead, with twelve percent lead, or with three percent of anything else mixed into it.

"If there is less than three percent, then it will not work as well, but it can work. If I try to store weight into an iron-mind with one percent nickel, then it will fight me. If I try to store half of my weight, the metal-mind will only have two-fifths of my weight stored, and the rest will be lost. Then, when I try to tap that two-fifths weight, I will only get one-third of my weight, while the rest is lost again."

"I see," Kaldur mused, and Artemis nodded as well.

"Rule three: I must touch my metal-minds to use them."

"That one seems pretty obvious. Otherwise you'd just leave them behind in your room, right?" Artemis observed.

"But you do not need to touch all of them, correct? Your metal-minds touch your skin, or your hair," Kaldur glanced at the rings I customarily wove into my hair, "but you may use them only touching a part of the surface. …Would sympathetic resonance have any effect? If you chipped off a small piece of a larger metal-mind and carried that, could you access the whole?"

"No. If I cut a metal-mind in half, it will be two metal-minds with two stores of investiture that are half of the first." 'There… might be some way to finangle it, if I can play around with a metal-mind's connection to its past pieces, but that would be incredibly complicated and I doubt it would work like I wish it could, and there wouldn't be much point because I rarely make stores too big to carry with me.' I dismissed the hypotheticals.

"This is a little gruesome, sorry, but if your… if your hair got cut off, could you still use the metal-minds touching that?"

"My hair or my hand?" I teased Artemis, who blushed that I had guessed what gruesome thing had been her first thought. "No. It must be toching a part of my living, connected body. Otherwise I could leave my metal-minds in my room wrapped in cut off locks of my hair."

"Got it," she muttered, not meeting my eyes.

"I have lost my hand once before, and needed a gold-mind to heal, so it is a good question," I consoled her. "Rule number four: I cannot store all of a trait in entirely. Mostly this is because of safety. If I stored all my weight, my density, I would not have a body except for air. If I stored all of my speed, I would not move at all to breathe or have a heartbeat."

"Wait, so you can't store away sight until you get blind, or hearing until you go deaf?" Artemis asked.

"I can store so much that it may as well be, but never everything. A Feruchemist more skilled can go closer and closer to the limit, but never all. But if you store ninety-nine percent of your hearing, I think you may as well have no hearing, yes?"

"There are fish in the deepest parts of the ocean who have evolved eyes that can see with even the smallest amounts of light, but overall, yes, I take your point," Kaldur agreed. I resolved to look up these fish.

I had no intention of allowing Hemalurgy to become known to the general public, or anyone ever, but the hypotheticals of tin spikes charged from those fish were still an idea I would like to chew over.

"Rule five: I can tap as much as possible, but the more I tap, the more the returns decrease." That threw them, I saw.

"Decreasing returns… I believe you mentioned this before," Kaldur told me.

"Is it like what you said, about impure metal-minds?" Artemis guessed.

"Yes." I pointed at her with a sharp nod. "As long as it is up to an increase by one baseline, there is no loss. I can spend four hours at one-hundred twenty-five percent, two hours at one-hundred fity percent, or one hour at two-hundred percent for no problems at the same pool of investiture. But if I want to increase by more than one baseline, then I lose a little investiture to make them stick together. Two-hundred percent strength is fine, but three-hundred percent loses a little four-hundred loses a little more, one-thousand loses more… Eventually it will cost more energy to add energy than energy is added."

"That seems a little unfair," Artemis complained. "…Okay, that sounded a lot more reasonable to say in my head."

I chuckled at her. "I take what you mean, and thank you. But it is less unfair than no powers?"

"Hey, which of us was kicking the other's butt?" Artemis countered with a smirk.

"No metal-minds for me."

"You'd have run out by the third round, right? I'd totally dominate you in a best of ten match."

"Probably," I agreed, to which she preened slightly.

"What is your limit for increasing?" Kaldur asked. "I have seen you do many impressive things, so I am not certain."

"It varies by the metal-mind. My limit is highest with brass-minds, then zinc, steel, tin, gold, bronze, iron… so on."

"I see."

"The last rule is number six: my Feruchemy can only change me."

"Which is why you store weight by changing mass, not gravity. Gravity is a force outside yourself," Kaldur noted.

"Correct."

"But, when you increase your strength, can't you use that to lift things and break things?"

"That is not what I mean," I told Artemis. "I can make me stronger, but I cannot make someone else stronger, or weaker. Also, when I increase my weight, my body also becomes able to support my weight, but if I am too heavy the floor will not support me. So when I lay down and tap an iron-mind, my heavy ribs will not crush my lungs, but I may break the floor."

"If you tap your iron-mind and you fall, will your legs break?" Artemis asked.

"Maybe. They would break when heavy if they would break when I did not use a metal-mind, but if I store enough weight my air resistance will… no, not air resitance… I need to run a few experiments," I admitted.

"So that's how it works," Artemis considered.

Similarly, I considered if I wanted to add, 'I am protected from my own Feruchemy,' as rule. Since it was complicated and I had already covered the basics, I decided to leave it.

"Back to the physical metals. I talked about them a lot, so should I move on? Any questions?"

"Does tin use all fo your sense at the same time?" Kaldur asked. "I think you have said not…"

"I wear many small tin-minds," I fingered the stud in my nostril idly, "because I store a different sense in each one."

"Can you store more than one sense at a time?"

"Yes, but in different tin-minds," I clarified. "Any more questions?"

"…Nope."

"Please, proceed." I nodded and wrote down the next quadrant.

COGNITIVE: ZINC=ACUITY _______ BRASS=WARMTH _______ COPPER=MEMORY _______ BRONZE=AWAKE​

"Acuity is how quickly you think, right?"

"A mix of how quickly and how well. Steel-minds also make me think more quickly, so I can think while I move, but… well. I said there is sometimes a little overlap." I shrugged.

"So does storing acuity make you stupid, or does it just change how slowly you think about things?"

"A little of both," I told Artemis. "Kaldur, any questions?"

"I do wonder why warmth is considered a cognitive trait. Is it also connected to emotional warmth, or are they separate?"

"There are two answers I could say, I think. The first is that the divisions and names are made by humans, and may not work perfectly with the world as it is. Or, it was because Ruin pulled a trick on Preservation when they worked together to create Feruchemy for people to use. I prefer the prank from a god explanation, myself."

We digressed briefly into a talk about Ruin and Preservation, but that was not what I wanted to talk about, so I got us quickly back in the current again.

"Brass-minds store my body heat. This is almost an exception to the rule about not changing other things, because our heat changes naturally."

"Yeah, you cooled down Aqualad and Miss Martian in the Tower of Fate, didn't you? But that's just because heat naturally flows to colder places, so you just got colder and sucked out their excess heat, was that it?" Artemis asked.

"Yes, like an ice pack," I agreed. "Also, when I tap my brass-mind, the extra heat flows out into the world, so I can make things hot." I considered demonstrating but decided not to.

"So, can you cook an egg on your bare skin or something? Start a fire?"

"I have never made a fire, and I am not sure about the egg… but I can hurt people with burns. I have boiled a cold lake into bath water, once," I recalled.

"Cool. Or, you know, hot," Artemis quipped.

"I heard you once mention that you do not like to use copper-minds. They store memory? Or memorizational skills?"

"Memories," I told Kaldur. "If I read a book, I can put my memory in a copper-mind and forget what the book was about. Later, I can pull my memory out again and remember like I just read it."

"So could you just read a dictionary cover-to-cover and tap that to help you learn English?" Artemis asked. I wrinkled my nose.

"Not exactly. It would take forever, and I would need to look through all the memories to find any one at any time. Also, there is no English-to-Scadrial dictionary, so it would only work for finding what a word is, but not for what word I should use for a meaning. Also, copper-mind memories degrade a little when they are tapped, so I would lose a little clarity everytime I looked through. It would be better if I just carried a dictionary with me all the time. I prefer just to ask people."

"Yeah, I can see that. It still seems like having a magical memory jump-drive would be pretty useful."

"Many Feruchemists think so. I think they think so too much. The Bands of Ascension did help Harmony fix the world, but… I will talk about that much later, never mind." I shook my head. "I do not like losing memories to store for a copper-mind."

"There are positive and negative aspects to many powers. I am visually distinctive, and I dehydrate easily," Kaldur observed to us, fingering his gills with his webbed fingers. I smiled at him.

"Yes. Now, bronze-minds store… English does not have a good word for it. I become sleepy when I store into a bronze-mind, and alert and do not need to sleep when I tap it."

"Wakefulness," Artemis suggested.

"Thank you! I store wakefulness in a bronze-mind. Now, when you sleep naturally, you regain wakefulness until you wake up. Because I am losing wakefulness, I do not regain it while I store. If I store my wakefulness to fall asleep, I sleep until I run out, and then I stop storing and sleep for real until I wake up." I had a mathematical formula and graph to describe this phenomenon, but it didn't look like Artemis or Kaldur were particularly interested, so I moved on.

HYBRID: CADMIUM=BREATH _______ BENDALLOY=FOOD _______ GOLD=HEALTH _______ ELECTRUM=DETERMINATION​

"Breath like oxygen, or is it something like the breath of life?" Artemis asked.

"I would presume oxygen, similar to the materials I loaned you for visiting Atlantis, only requiring time to charge."

"Yes," I told Kaldur. "To be safe, I wore cadmium-minds to Atlantis, but they were not very big. I need to breath deeply and quickly to store, so it is annoying to store for a long time."

"Hyperventilate," Artemis volunteered. "So is it all the gasses in the air, or just oxygen? If I shot a knock-out gas arrow at you, you could probably tap your cadmium-mind and not breath it in, but could you also store the gas away by breathing it in on purpose instead." I pointed a finger at her.

"Good idea. I will need to experiment and see." 'The possibilities are small, but getting new ideas about using metal-minds is well worth telling people I trust about how they work. I wonder… I would guess that I could store different mixes of gasses in different cadmium-minds, the same as I do with tin-minds and bendalloy-minds. Which are what I cover next.'

"If they are organic poisons, I think I can store poisoned food and drink in a bendalloy-mind, but I am not certain."

"Just remember to have people watching you if you want to experiment," Artemis suggested weakly.

"I would suggest you experiment in the medical ward with the antidote at hand, if at all," Kaldur put in. I was unexpectedly pleased when he added, "Atlantis has a number of venomous and poisonous sea creatures, as well as the corresponding antidotes. As long as members of the League provide oversight, I would be willing to provide them."

"Thank you," I told him sincerely. "Bendalloy is a little like tin; I can store food and drink in bendalloy-minds, but only in separate bendalloy-minds."

"Do they have to be separate bendalloy-minds for the separate food groups?" Artemis asked.

"Food groups?" 'It looks like another useful thing I didn't know.'

"Fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, grains, and junk food? Or, since those are things humans made up, it might be more like carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, and water?" She saw I still didn't get it, so she borrowed Kaldur's notebook and sketched out a quick copy of the food pyramid.

"…No? I think… it is only solids and liquids… except…" 'Would milk and cheese need separate bendalloy-minds? Would oils and water go in the same one? Eating fruit versus drinking a fruit smoothie?' "Thank you, Artemis," I told her softly, and offered a smile. "The more I know, the more I still have to discover, I think."

"Ah, sorry to cause problems."

"No, this is good," I answered. "But, it will wait. So, the next is storing health in a gold-mind."

"It seems simple enough," Kaldur considered.

"Except, do you heal without scars? If you heal more quickly that would make sense, but fast or slow some things should leave scars. Though it is magic healing," Artemis said uncertainly.

"It is… life power? Magic?" I flipped through the thesaurus. "Vitality?" 'There's an element of imposing my cognitive self-image over my physical body, and an element of reverting my body to the way it was before I was injured, at the time of the storage…'

"It is something to be explored later?" Kaldur suggested gently. I glared at his faint smile and then acceded.

"Yes. So, the last hybrid metal is electrum. This is a little like what you said about brass-minds and emotional war-,"

<Aqualad, please report to the briefing room. There is a situation in Atlantis. >

All three of us started at Red Tornado's announcement. Kaldur stood hurriedly.

"Am I allowed to come?" I asked, following.

"Yes. Please." Artemis slid after me. I noticed idly that her steps made almost no sound. She wasn't as quiet as Robin, but she managed a decent second place. M'gann was quieter if she floated, and I might have been more quiet if we were sneaking through woodlands, but in general she was the second best on the team.

'I wonder if that's another bonding point between them.'

Red Tornado descended from his room in the ceiling as the three of us entered the room.

"Red Tornado. What is the situation in my home?"

"A wide-scale terrorist attack by the criminal Black Manta caused significant damage to the city's defenses and infrastructure. It caused the Zeta Tube in Poseidonis to fail and cut off communications to the surface. Aquaman is quickly arranging to return, and he instructed that you should be sent ahead to assess the damage and provide whatever aid necessary."

"Of course. Ferris, Artemis, please make my excuses to the rest of our team. I have responsibilities I must fulfill."

"I can get my fish scale clothes," I offered. 'I'm not quite sure about what happened, but I'm worried all the same.'

"Not immediately. The enchantments may have degraded, and your lack of connection to Atlantean government may prove problematic, even with my and our Queen's willingness to vouch for you. If you are still willing, I can speak with a quartermaster and arrange equipment for you and any other members of the team who wish to assist tomorrow."

"Yes, please," I agreed immediately.

"Atlantis? Yeah, I'd be willing to help," Artemis seconded.

"I am deeply grateful." He smiled just a little in acknowledgement. "If possible, I will return to the mountain some time tomorrow morning. If not, I will endeavor to send someone else through with a message."

<Recognized: Aqualad, B 02. >

 

[Zephyrosis]

Infodump wow

 

[Sckarred]

So, what is that prank that Ruin pulled in Preservation?

 

[Obloquy]

So, what is that prank that Ruin pulled in Preservation?

Click to shrink...

Out of universe, Brandon Sanderson made a typo when writing up the Ars Arcanum for the back of Mistborn: The Well Of Ascension. He accidentally swapped the Feruchemical traits of electrum and brass.

Brass-minds should have stored determination to fit in with the other cognitive metals - memory, acuity, and wakefulness - while the electrum-minds should have stored heat to fit with the (health, breath, nutrition) other metals in its quadrant.

No one caught the error until after Hero of Ages was already printed with the same typo, so he canonized it with the explanation that the cognitive-physical-hybrid things are names applied by humans and reality doesn't quite work that way.

I'm adding in-universe that Ruin was feeling petulant about Preservation spoiling its fun, so it pulled a prank and swapped the two while Preservation wasn't looking (because Preservation was too busy making sure copper-minds would function as Sazed needed).

Was she watching RWBY? I think I recognise that line from somewhere.

Click to shrink...

I've never seen RWBY, but I don't see why not. I figure there has to exist something like that somewhere, or at least Earth-16 and its derivative universes' pop culture aren't all the same as ours.

Infodump wow

Click to shrink...

The original version was about twice this length or more. I trimmed it down because that was a serious info dump.

Said trimming-down came any the cost of discussions about 1) speed & acuity & health's ties to time, 2) Ferris's decision to challenge KF to an eating contest, 3) questions about whether electrum-minds stored the chemicals/endorphins/hormones connected to emotions and determination and that was why it counted as a second physical metal, 4) Ferris doing a brass-mind storage demo where she actually got frost to coalesce on her body, and 5) whether increasing muscle mass or nutrition from iron-minds and bendalloy-minds also caused her weight to increase.

...Yeah.

Anyway, I'll try to get another update out before I go to sleep, or failing that because I have things tomorrow and just finished work you can expect it within the next 24-hours.

Cheers!

 

[DarthThrawn]

I'm adding in-universe that Ruin was feeling petulant about Preservation spoiling its fun, so it pulled a prank and swapped the two while Preservation wasn't looking (because Preservation was too busy making sure copper-minds would function as Sazed needed).

Click to shrink...

And Preservation got right back at him afterwards by swapping Electrum for Atium when he was setting up Mistings.

 

[Hestia&theCourt]

Not sarcastic, it's a genuine question. Did I miss something on SV's rules and regulations? Do I just write things that no one wants to talk about after they read? Not even to complain?
I've got like half a dozen plot hooks and butterfly things by now, and anyone watching the dates should have an idea about what just happened in Atlantis and how big it could prove to be, and no one's said anything.

Click to shrink...

I mean, it's a combination of an info-dump chapter and a hook into an event that we already knew about in YJ canon. Until we see how you diverge from what happens normally, there's not much to talk about.

 

[Leonidas333]

Spoiler: Ego-Damaged Head-Scratching.

By the way, I see that even my boring info-dump post got 35 likes/etc in the past 24 hours, but only two comments? Have I accidentally locked the thread against replies? Is there some etiquette I just am not getting?

Not sarcastic, it's a genuine question. Did I miss something on SV's rules and regulations? Do I just write things that no one wants to talk about after they read? Not even to complain?
I've got like half a dozen plot hooks and butterfly things by now, and anyone watching the dates should have an idea about what just happened in Atlantis and how big it could prove to be, and no one's said anything.
I know SV is supposed to be more active for quests and stuff while Spacebattles has more active story-telling populations, but I'm getting the same or less reactions when I cross-post on Spacebattles too.

Am I just throwing a pouting party, or is there genuinely a part of thread culture I'm not getting? Because I have no experience with this type of thing, and I've made plenty of social gaffes in real life, so now I'm feeling like someone knows something I don't.

If it's just my imagination and I'm freaking out over nothing, just don't say anything and I'll double-back and delete this spoiler bit in an hour or two.

Cheers!

Click to shrink...

I find it a general rule of thumb that the lurkers outweigh the commenters by a significant margin. In addition, if someone doesnt feel that they have something to contribute, but wants to support you, they will use the like button instead of commenting, as a stand in for a short comment of "Keep up the good work" or something similar. I lurked on SB for 2 years before making an account, and I've commented 138 times over the 2 or so years since I've joined.

 

[NemoMarx]

5) whether increasing muscle mass or nutrition from iron-minds and bendalloy-minds also caused her weight to increase.

Click to shrink...

Wait, did it? Because nutrition should, at least if you tapped it super hard? I wonder if she could use that for body sculpting, sort of. Diet and feed in nutrition while exercising really hard, to speed up muscles and things.

 

[Zephyrosis]

I find it a general rule of thumb that the lurkers outweigh the commenters by a significant margin. In addition, if someone doesnt feel that they have something to contribute, but wants to support you, they will use the like button instead of commenting, as a stand in for a short comment of "Keep up the good work" or something similar. I lurked on SB for 2 years before making an account, and I've commented 138 times over the 2 or so years since I've joined.

Click to shrink...

I'm pretty sure that the general rule of things across most internet forums and social media is that 90% of people lurk and don't interact, 9% like/upvote etc, and 1% actually comment. Changes depending on the site and the community, but that's a real rough idea of things.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

Escalation - part 8
* August 29 [M'gann PoV]

Biting back the instinct to choke, I yanked my head back out of the water and reformatted my form. For one breathless, uncomfortable moment my lungs scrunched up like I'd grabbed them in a fist and squeezed.

Water spewed out my nose and mouth, 'and I'm so glad Superboy isn't around to see me looking like this. It would be so humiliating.' I shook my head once to get rid of the excess, but we planned to be doing this so many times there was no point in drying off completely or fixing my clothes.

"Well, that failed," I announced obviously. Renka turned from the screen to look at me. I tried not to squirm. "I mean, Hello Megan, of course it was going to fail the first time, you have no idea how to do this," I berated myself, sparing her the need to do so. "That's the whole point of learning and experimenting, right? Making mistakes?" 'But yeah, I definitely couldn't make gills right just by knowing how they look,' I was about to continue when she interrupted me.

"I think, I need you to help, please."

"Really!" I had floated over to her side in an instant. "What can I do?"

"I do not search rightly. Correctly," Renka admitted with a frown. She gestured helplessly at the screen.

"You can't find things about fish?" I asked, surprised.

"Not about how fish breath is," she grumped. "The first I did search for 'fish breath' showed me this 'digital photography review' person," she sounded out carefully. "Then, there are sicknesses involving fish breath, as well as bad smells."

"Let's try, 'fish gills,'" I typed in for her.

"What are gills? On their neck?"

"Yeah, gills are the slits on a fish's neck used to breathe."

"Ohh," she breathed. "I thought those were, um… either used to taste water like a nose, or other little fins to move. Don't fish breathe through their mouths? They always," and her gaping fish-out-of-water imitation startled a burst of laughter out of me. She smiled and laughed too.

Together we sorted our way through three sites that claimed to explain how fish used gills to breathe water, with different sets of pictures, diagrams, and details. I ended up unsuccessfully dunking my head another four times while we read.

"I think I can make another try," I finally decided, after we reviewed yet another site and learned nothing new.

"If it fails, my option is still on the table," Renka reminded me.

"And you still haven't explained how eating a fish is supposed to teach me how to become a fish. I can't make my stomach work like that!" On impulse I added, "I mean, Hello Renka!"

Thankfully, she took it well.

"Yes, yes, okay," she griped with laughter in her eyes. "So, try again?"

"I think so." I sighed. "And my shirt had just started to dry out again, too." Renka shrugged.

"Can't you just shape shift it dry?" Her question startled me. 'Wait, does she think-?' "Make it not get wet…?" Renka tried.

"I'm not-," I started, except that I wasn't sure whether or not she was accusing me of being naked, because she had seen me shape shift my clothes in the past. 'And she's turned back to the screen and isn't paying attention, either way.'

"Waterproof! Like oilcloth, or like a… wetsuit," Renka determined, looking back up from her hasty computer search.

"Oh, that. I guess I can, but it will feel really greasy on my skin," I answered. "I'd rather just be wet." Renka shrugged, but the look in her eye told me she was having more ideas about my shape shifting. I stuck around.

"If you made your wet hair not be, and then grew hair again, would it still be wet?"

"You want me to be bald?" I asked. Impulsively, I ran a hand through my red locks. That was something I remembered a lot of Earth girls doing when discussing hair. Even Renka had done it several times. "Earth girls are supposed to have hair. I mean, where would it go?" A certain very special episode of Hello, Megan came to mind. "Unless you want me to get sick and have my hair all fall out from the medicine." I tried to laugh the idea off, and I sounded too nervous even to my own ears.

'I still can't decide whether or not Renka's comfort with shape shifting is a good thing or not. On the one hand, she isn't freaked out by it. On the other hand, she's more comfortable with freaky and disgusting shapes than I am, and it's my body. Knowing that she's comparing me to shape-shifting cannibals isn't exactly flattering.'

"Where does your hair go when you turn into a snake," she pointed out mildly. There was that sharp, attentive gleam in her eyes again, but…

'That's not a bad point,' I admitted silently. I certainly knew how my body and biomass reformatted when I changed, but it was different from how Renka was used to. 'If she was only curious… it wasn't a bad question, really. She has seen me do a lot of animals without hair.' It was uncomfortable now that we were talking about it like this, but… "A snake? I can do that."

I shifted, slimming down, twisting, and rearranging. The scales were more difficult than mammalian skin, but easier than feathers or most mammals' hair. Changing from warm-blooded to cold was more difficult, but I already had a handle on those exchanges since my actual Martian body was sort of in the middle. Muscle-wise, curling into a coil in a snake's body was the human body equivalent of half lying in bed and sitting cross-legged.

I didn't hold the body, because I'd skimped on the shape's small details a bit since I didn't need to stay very long, and holding the body wasn't the point. A single hiss of breath, a flicker of a forked tongue, and then I could be Megan again.

I sprouted back up and plumped back out, and enjoyed being in the familiar form, however foreign it was.

"My hair is dry," I noted, combing my fingers through it again. "I never thought about that before. I guess I don't need that blow-dryer in my room after all." Not that I ever really needed it, but it was nice to have and to use: a symbol of being a human that a Martian wouldn't need. So I was still planning to keep the pink plastic device.

"You are dry," Renka agreed. She reached out a hand. I leaned over a bit to give her better access to my hair, and I was startled for a moment when that wasn't the first thing she grabbed.

"Ah-,"

Amusedly, Renka fingered the collar of my blouse, next to my right ear, before she moved to my hair.

The collar of my dry blouse.

Um.

'If she's not going to say anything about it, I'm not going to bring it up,' I decided.

I did not want to have that conversation.

Humans were good at not talking about things, after all. That was, obviously, the whole point of what secrets were all about.

"So, time to try the gills again," I announced instead quickly. She stayed in the chair while I returned to the edge and escaped any need to talk by quickly soaking my head. A little too quickly. 'Wait, wait, what was my schema to make gills again?'

I couldn't get it quite right, so I pulled my head up, sucked in a deeper breath, and dunked myself again.

And it took me a few moments, but I got it. Cold water lapped against the slits in my skin, and it refreshed instead of pressed. The weight in my lungs disappeared. I was relieved of the pressure to focus.

I inhaled.

Exhaled.

Inhaled.

I was renewed.

I raised my head out of water and sealed the gills.

"I did it!" I called, and Renka clapped and joined me in celebrating.

"Woo, hoo! Woo hoo!" she tried to cheer. "May I please get my fish jacket?" she then asked.

"The one that lets you breath underwater? You don't need my permission," I reminded my friend with a bounce. "You want to go swimming with me?"

"We need to practice. What if there is a fight?"

'She makes a good point… but drat it all, I am going to make her have fun with this too!'

"You get your jacket and I'll hide. Underwater hide-and-go-seek sounds like fun, doesn't it? Do we want to get any of the others involved? Robin said he had useable re-breathers, right?"

"Ah, okay." Renka shot me a quick smile and a nod. When she was out of sight, I dove back into the water, recreated my gills, and opened my eyes.

'Not the best place for hide-and-go-seek… it looks pretty sparse in this part. Maybe I can make some more cover? I don't think I've ever tried using telekinesis underwater before.'

________________________________________________________________________________________________​

* August 30 [M'gann PoV]

<Recognized: Miss Martian, B 04. >
<Recognized: Superboy, B 05. >

"Mbuh. Huh? Hello! How did going to Atlantis go?" I saw Renka shake off the effects of her meditation from her seat on the couch when she realized we had returned. I shared a look with Superboy. He smiled back a little when I smiled at him, at least.

"Not so good," Superboy said, beating me to it. "M'gann was a big help to everyone; her telepathy let her find trapped people's minds so we could recue them. But a lot of buildings were destroyed, and a lot of people were injured."

I wanted to preen, but I was too down from the events of the day, because no matter how successful we'd been it was still search and rescue. "They just didn't have time to put up any non-essential wards, and the stocks of magic supplies were one of the heaviest places hit. Most Atlanteans can withstand the pressure at the sea floor, and anyone who couldn't was either already dead," my stomach churned because I had found several people who died that way over the course of the day, "evacuated, or kept in a small area where they had raised water pressure wards. Redoing the pressure wards for the whole city will be one of the last things on their list, so it won't be until next week or so that you can join us in helping." Renka grumbled something in her mother tongue.

The indignant frustration she'd voiced – that I had felt her feel earlier in the morning – over the news that Superboy and I were the only two who could safely come to Atlantis to help, was gone. The most I could feel from Renka without violating her privacy was simple resignation.

"Hey, did you stay on that couch all day?" Superboy asked. Which… well, she had plopped down about there when we'd left, and here she still was almost ten hours later.

________________________________________________________________________________________________​

* August 30 [Superboy PoV]

"Hey, did you stay on that couch all day?" I asked. I mean, she had plopped down about there when we'd left, and here she still was almost ten hours later.

"No? I meditated and stored," Ferris listed, "went out to eat with Robin, Artemis, and Kid Flash – he has challenged me to an eating contest as soon as his parents are willing to foot the bill," Ferris added with a chuckle. 'I'm not sure why she thinks that's funny. She has seen how much and how quickly he can eat, right? Though, I guess she wouldn't be paying for it, so it is free food.' "Then I-," I caught her quickly flick a Significant Look at me and I wondered, "-spent the afternoon in Metropolis-," I stopped wondering, "-came back to work out again, and did more meditation storing."

"Have you had dinner yet? I can cook if-," M'gann offered.

"I want to cook with you. Share together a recipe," Ferris agreed. I remembered how I had ended up covered in food and bit back-

"Just remember that she doesn't have telekinesis," I teased.

-and failed to bite back a comment about it. I felt like a heel, but at least M'gann didn't get too angry or upset.

But she wilted and her shoulders curled in, and I had no idea how to make it better.

'Way to go, weapon,' I grimaced. 'You're so good at hurting people that you do it even when you don't mean to, and so bad at it that they don't get really hurt at all. It feels like those should cancel out, but they just make each other worse.'

"I'm not going to make that mistake again. Uh, long story," she told Ferris. "Would you like to join us?" She asked me. "Three cooks should still fit in the kitchen, right? We could try again?"

'I'm a weapon, I don't think I'm made to do nice things like cook good food,' is what I didn't say. I couldn't think of anything else to say instead. Ferris stepped in just as I was about to grunt and leave, although I'm not sure if what she said counts as that social 'saving me' thing.

"Connor, I wanted to talk to you too." I did a double take at the name. Yeah, I'd chosen to go with it and be Connor when M'gann gave me the name in the Tower, but none of us had been using it a lot. It was just like when I'd had to break in my first ever pair of sneakers that Kid Flash got me: too new to fit quite right. "It would be nice, I think, if you stayed to help and to talk."

"Oh, yeah?" I challenged, though I didn't mean to be quite as aggressive as it came out. "Talk about what?"

"The Superman pointed out the CADMUS building today." My ears caught the change in her voice caused by using her magic. The rest of me flinched at the thought of the place and clenched in simmering anger. "I did not go inside, but we had a little talk." She didn't say about what, but I found myself guessing even though I did not want to know. "We never finished our talk in the Tower. We you and me."

"So? That was then."

"I could talk more about Scadrial, and then you and M'gann could, if you wanted, talk about Mars and CADMUS."

'I did tell her that CADMUS was not a planet, right? No, she just said she saw the lab building, thickhead.'

"Are you actually going to talk, or just lead us around with words?" I knew she did that, I had caught her doing it and enjoying it, and I just had no idea how to handle it. 'Hey, she's pretty much doing it right now! I bet she could write a script of what I've been saying.' She made her shrug-hum combo gesture.

"I can talk first, and then you can tell me as much as you think I told you? Or less," she offered. "Kaldur knows some things, Wally knows some things, Artemis knows some things… I have no idea what Robin knows, but I think it is something."

"…If you were trying to make a pun or a joke, it translated pretty badly," I told her. I'd probably guessed right, since she frowned and pouted. Her body temperature did that down-up-down thing again.

"Yes, okay. Two questions. What are we going to cook, and what do you want me to talk about?" M'gann and I shared a look.

"Let me get my recipe books," she said, and hurried off. I sighed, followed the girls into the kitchen, and tried to think up what I wanted to say.

________________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________​

AN: This is the end of Escalation. Next up is Bialya, the episode a bunch of people have been waiting for!

 

[NemoMarx]

"I'm not-," I started, except that I wasn't sure whether or not she was accusing me of being naked, because she had seen me shape shift my clothes in the past. 'And she's turned back to the screen and isn't paying attention, either way.'

Click to shrink...

I'm trying to remember if Kandra could do clothing, or not. I think they couldn't?

M'gann really has better shapeshifting, once she practices it, she just doesn't have the shortcut of eating things to copy them immediately.

"Woo, hoo! Woo hoo!" she tried to cheer. "May I please get my fish jacket?" she then asked.

"The one that lets you breath underwater?

Click to shrink...

Is this just a jacket that she can tap breath from, or is there something else about it?

 

[Tirfarthuan]

Next up is Bialya

Click to shrink...

If this is the episode I think it is, then... Well, it will definitely be interesting, however it turns out. Not good necessarily, but interesting to watch from outside the splash zone.

Loved all of this so far!

 

[Khona Moshr]

Is this just a jacket that she can tap breath from, or is there something else about it?

Click to shrink...

Its a Atlantean jacket enchanted to let the wear breath underwater

AN: This is the end of Escalation. Next up is Bialya, the episode a bunch of people have been waiting for!

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure if Psimon would love or be disappointed in how easy Renka will be to mind control.

 

[EnygmaSoul]

Seeing Renka revert to desperate-survival-induced paranoia after she's finally started to trust the others and let them in is bound to be heartbreaking. I hope Psimon gets smacked down even harder than he eventually does in canon.


Edit: Wait, I got a funny rating for this post? But....I ....was being completely serious....

Are people so conditioned to think I'm making a joke or snarky smart-ass comment now that they automatically Funny vote my posts on REFLEX? Have I somehow transcended to some sort of sublime level of comedic enlightenment? Will the world ever recover from this humor-pocalypse? Can humanity be saved, or is it doomed to spasmodic laughter for all eternity (or at least until their lungs give out?). My god. This...this is....this is MADNESS. THIS. IS. SPARTA.

Edit, Postscript:
Ok. Done hyperventilating now. Clearly my self-conscious anxiety issues have caused me to read far too much into this response. I....I am going to go take a nap now, I think. Yes. A nap. That seems....wise.

 

[Darth Locutus]

I hope her recipe books are actually a coppermind.

 

[DarthThrawn]

I hope her recipe books are actually a coppermind.

Click to shrink...

Unlikely, given how much she dislikes using copperminds.

 

[Darth Locutus]

Unlikely, given how much she dislikes using copperminds.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, but a recipe book is one of those things where it makes perfect sense.


Also, Hello other Darth!

 

[Obloquy]

And Preservation got right back at him afterwards by swapping Electrum for Atium when he was setting up Mistings.

Click to shrink...

Cadmium, actually. And bendalloy. The two external temporal metals were swapped for atium and malatium. Supposedly, there actually were malatium mistings in the Final Empire, but like the Gnats, no one ever had the chance to find out about being one.

I mean, it's a combination of an info-dump chapter and a hook into an event that we already knew about in YJ canon. Until we see how you diverge from what happens normally, there's not much to talk about.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough.

Spoiler

Escalation - part 6
* August 28 [Renka PoV]

Click to shrink...

Escalation - part 7
* August 29 [Renka PoV]

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure if I was being too subtle, or if people just didn't catch the implications, or people didn't care, so here's a hint. And if there's still no one who gets it or cares, I'll just wait for it to pop up in the plot.
But the divergence has finally begun and will keep happening. The next episodes will bear very recognizable resemblance to canon. Then the Targets equivalent will be way out of left field, and it isn't even spoiling it to tell you that.

Wait, did it? Because nutrition should, at least if you tapped it super hard? I wonder if she could use that for body sculpting, sort of. Diet and feed in nutrition while exercising really hard, to speed up muscles and things.

Click to shrink...

One of several things Ferris will get around to playing with. Similarly, if you store nutrition while tapping youth,, then stop storing nutrition and start storing youth, can you fake being an adult who suffered childhood malnutrition? That type of thing.

The haxx are many, if somewhat limited in applications.

I'm pretty sure that the general rule of things across most internet forums and social media is that 90% of people lurk and don't interact, 9% like/upvote etc, and 1% actually comment. Changes depending on the site and the community, but that's a real rough idea of things.

Click to shrink...

Thank you. I'd heard things like that but was never sure, and I don't have a lot of publishing experience.

I'm trying to remember if Kandra could do clothing, or not. I think they couldn't?
M'gann really has better shapeshifting, once she practices it, she just doesn't have the shortcut of eating things to copy them immediately.

Click to shrink...

Kandra cannot do clothing. Skilled kandra can do hair and fur with enough time, but no clothes. Even basic Martian shape-shifting is exponentially more powerful than the kandra version, as per usual for DC versus Mistborn. I'm actually nerfing/worfing Martian shapeshifting by making her need to practice gills, since we never see her doing that type of research and practice in canon.

Clothes, inanimate objects, rigid skeletons, near-instant transformations, mass variations...

I personally head-canon that M'gann was self-consciously faking her inability to do male bodies when she did her display in Welcome To Happy Harbor, because female bodies are as alien from her default form as male bodies.

Edit: Wait, I got a funny rating for this post? But....I ....was being completely serious....

Click to shrink...

I think people thought the idea of Psimon getting smacked down even harder to be funny. I certainly do.

I hope her recipe books are actually a coppermind.

Click to shrink...

Oops. It was actually M'gann running to get her (M'gann's) recipe books. Renka was the "Yes, okay," bit in the paragraph before.

 

[DarthThrawn]

Cadmium, actually. And bendalloy. The two external temporal metals were swapped for atium and malatium. Supposedly, there actually were malatium mistings in the Final Empire, but like the Gnats, no one ever had the chance to find out about being one.

Click to shrink...

Malatium mistings?

Huh. Learn something new every day.

 

[Obloquy]

Omake Time!
Expect a proper update within the next 12 hours. This bit takes place before Filtration, by the by, if you check the dates.

* August 2nd

"...what?" Wally blinked at Renka incomprehensibly.

"Ahhh..." Renka fought down the urge to look away. 'Apparently I just said something very wrong, very stupid, or... well, it was very something.' "I was wondering... if... there was a place I could go see these? You said the zoo had animals to visit, and there were other wild-life pre-serves," she pronounced carefully, "where animals with small numbers lived. Is there one I could go to because I want to watch these? Meet these? See these?"

"See them," Wally idly affirmed. He frowned, chewed his lower lip for a second, and then realization clicked. "Oh. Okay. Well, I'm happy to take you to see them, but there aren't any live ones left so the only place we'll see them in the museum. Dinosaurs have been extinct for a loooonng time now."

{Scene change to Central City Museum, looking up at dinosaur skeleton fossils.}

"They are all dead?" Renka clarified somberly, even as her eyes drank in the stone bones.

"All dead for a loooonng time. Millions of years before humans ever evolved," Wally agreed. "Pretty sad. I don't think there's a little boy who hasn't dreamed of seeing a dinosaur in the flesh, but the closest we'll ever get are these bones and Jurrassic Park. It's a movie I can grab for our next movie night," he added.

Renka was bothered by something else, though. "...Evolved? What do you mean, humans ever evolved?"

"...You don't have anything like the Theory of Evolution, do you?" Wally realized as they crossed over to the triceratops exhibit. Renka shook her head. "Charles Darwin? On the Origin of Species? Evolution by survival of the fittest?"

"Nope." She's popped the p-sound and made an inordinately pleased expression about it.

"Man. Yeah, with what you said about your home, you probably grew up believing in divine creation and intelligent design, didn't you?"

"Yyyessss," she answered slowly. "That is about how I think what happened, happened. Ruin and Preservation cooperated to create life, and Preservation put in more power to make people intelligent and sentient. Did it not happen like that on Earth?"

Wally gaped at her for a bit. "Nnnnooo, that's really not what happened here. Do you seriously believe humans were divinely designed and created?" Ferris hummed.

"Humans on Scadrial, yes," she answered. "I do have experience talking with the gods who did it," she pointed out. "But they were not on Earth to create people here, so it did not happen like this on Earth here."

"B-but... okay." Wally took a deep, calming breath. "Um, do you mind if I ask a few questions?"

"I may not answer, but you are always free to ask," Renka invited. She leaned over to read the fine print on the Brontosaurus placard.

"Right, thank you. So, how long ago do you think your gods created humans?" Wally asked.

"About... six thousand years ago?" Renka calculated. 'Ruin agreed to let that round of humans exist for 4,096 cycles around their star before wiping them out. When the deadline drew near, Preservation double-crossed and imprisoned him. 1,024 years later the Well filled for the first time and Rashek took its power. 1,024 years after that, Vin released Ruin and the end began to draw near. 6,000 years is a good enough rough rounding.'

"Six thousand... How long did it take them to create humanity? Seven days? Because this is sounding a lot like something from, um, from one of our religions," Wally said.

"Seven days? No... It took Preservation years of boredom and stalemate to convince Ruin to co-operate. After that, I do not know. Time passes differently for gods than for humans. A few seconds can extend to hours or days, or they can peer through time like a century is the blink of an eye."

"So, there was no, 'Let there be light,' and them creating the world and the sky and the people over seven days?"

"Oh, no. And Ruin and Preservation did not create the world. Scadrial the planet already existed before they came to settle on it," Renka elaborated. Her eyes drifted back to the fossils and took on a distant look. "It is possible... there may have been life before they came to Scadrial, but it not not survive long after Ruin arrived. I wonder if there are old fossils buried deep in our earth."

"Wait, your planet already existed? And... if you don't mind me asking, if Ruin and Preservation created the human species, then how are there humans here on Earth? Did they create us, too, or something?" Wally asked far more tentatively. 'Please don't bite my head off. Please don't bite my head off. I'm not trying to make that sound rude.'

"I do not understand changing dimensions, but some gods do. Maybe humans spread between dimensions. Maybe there is an idea of the existence of 'humans' that many gods like to borrow and use for creating." Renka shrugged, and something else occurred to her. "I should say, Ruin and Preservation did not create humans. They created humans on Scadrial. Other humans already existed on other worlds, and the two just re-used the... mold? the instructions? The blue-print?"

"I think any of those terms would work," Wally assured her as they rounded the Stegosaurus to see the Ankylosaurus skeleton. His mind wandered to the thought of two glowing beings, surrounded by web-works of tightly controlled energy, discussing at electric speed the creations available to them. He imagined tanks of chemicals and growing masses of flesh, and the telepathic imparting of some basic survival skills and teaching.

If his thoughts strayed to resemble Civilization IV or other similar computer games, well, it was a format he could understand.

'An intelligent design theory that sounds actually intelligent. And its proponent is about as far from Christian as someone can get.'

"Renka, your religion actually sounds like it makes a lot more sense than most of them," he complimented with a chuckle. "I don't suppose it would be possible for this heathen to convert to the True Teachings of your Gods?"

When his comment processed, Renka spluttered with laughter and pulled him into a one-armed hug before they continued with their tour and their talk.

But hours later, in bed before he slept, Wally would remember that she never actually answered his question, and he would wonder.

 

[NemoMarx]

But hours later, in bed before he slept, Wally would remember that she never actually answered his question, and he would wonder.

Click to shrink...

She knows she'd have to give you a cool earring if you joined up, and she's hoarding them for herself!

Stand strong, Wally.

 

[Interregnum]

Renka is a Young Earths creationist

 

[Lokpik89]

She knows she'd have to give you a cool earring if you joined up, and she's hoarding them for herself!

Stand strong, Wally.

Click to shrink...

Hmmm would harmony have any trouble keeping up with a speedsters thoughts? Foolish of me I forgot he is also a ferochemist. But really how would that conversation go lol

 

[Markala]

the telepathic impairment of some basic survival skills and teaching.

Click to shrink...

"the telepathic impartment of some basic survival skills and teaching."

I think, impairment of basic survival skills is like, the opposite of what one would need for a growing, self-perpetuating species.