Life Ore Death - DC Feruchemy [Young Justice]

[Darth Locutus]

And now you get a taste of your own medicine!

HA!

 

[Dark as Silver]

and good-natured heckling as was appropriate.

Click to shrink...

Heckling is always appropriate.

 

[Obloquy]

The Team: Ten Truths - B01

1) Robin was first called such after he and his cousin John sang a Mother's Day duet for Mary and Karla. John held the tune okay, but Dick turned out to have a voice like an angel. Afterwards, he ran with the name, climbing trees to perch 'like a robin,' and making a show of flapping his arms like a bird mid-jump.


2) His favorite animal is the elephant, despite shoveling Haly's elephants' poo being a common punishment in his childhood. He does not, in fact, have a stuffed elephant anymore - about four months before his family's fall he passed it on as a Christmas/going-away present to a heavily pregnant retiring clown, for her baby.

Dick has, however, been known to visit Build-A-Bear and create stuffed elephants to gift important women in his life. As of Jan 1, 2011, the list of in-order recipients will be: Diana Prince, Donna Troy, Marilyn Nichols (a Wanye Manor maid), Barbara Gordon, Delia Etheridge (a teacher at Gotham Academy who had a baby), Talia al Ghul (as a peace offering the Christmas before Batman broke it off), Wally West (a more manly version), and Zatanna Zatara.


3) Among Dick's most prized possessions, (and the gift which inspired Robin to break into Build-A-Bear on Christmas for KF's emergency elephant,) is a set of carved ivory charms, one of which Wally whittled by hand (under his father's supervision). Dick ended up telling Wally his whole identity and back-story when he was down over the newspaper-reported death of one of Haly's elephants, Elaine, in November 2009.

Nothing happened in time for his birthday, but on Christmas he received half-a-dozen ivory charms in total from his collective of closest friends (Pop Haly, Bruce, Alfred, the Wests, Diana & Donna, the Gordons,). They were made from Elaine's tusks, and it had been Wally who had the idea and wrote Haly's Circus about it.


4) There is more than a little Romani blood in the Grayson line, but not enough for a staunch traditionalist to acknowledge. The reason Dick Grayson will self-identify as ethnically Romani when asked is partly as a stubborn 'fuck you,' toward one Social Services agent: she stuck the 9-year-old new orphan in a 12+ juvie center because, 'It's not like the filthy little gyp is going to end up anywhere else.' It was only for a week before Jim Gordon took him in as a temporary foster while Bruce was filing, but it was exactly as bad as it sounds.


5) Between Joker and his case worker, Dick is actually more afraid of his case worker. He at least knows for certain that Joker wants to torture and kill him, but even Batman isn't so sure what could be going on in the head of self-proclaimed "Corny Bill" the case worker. The man has absolutely no social skills, (Batman himself said so, because it takes one to know one,) which he covers by inserting those obviously rehearsed corny-as-a-cob jokes into everyday conversation. Robin first looked up sounds clips from the Joker, practiced imitating them, and actually gave himself a small dose of Joker Venom, all in the hopes of scaring Corny Bill into stopping the jokes with his laugh. No dice.

The man acts freakishly possessive of Robin when they meet - referring to him as Dear Boy or My Boy, and trying at least twice per meeting to pat Dick's arm or ruffle his hair - yet he has never once shown any inclination to remove Dick from Bruce's guardianship, not even after The Mistake. In fact, Corny Bill has pleasantly gone to war against the few people who tried, dismantling their attempts with testimony, psychological arguments, and video records (from Wayne Manor, sure, but also his own from Gotham Academy and even hiring a Private Dick ["if you'll pardon the pun"] to observe for signs of abuse or neglect).

Batman has flat out admitted that Bruce Wayne couldn't bribe the guy to be any better at his job, and that only in part due to a rarely touched fund begun by the Crowne family dedicated to outbidding and reimbursing any child's case worker when they successfully turn in someone for bribery. (Other forms of corruption, petty malice, bigotry, and incompetence remain prevalent, but bribes have played a negligible part in Gotham's child services for as long as the city as had that institution, due to this fund.)


6) Dick Grayson has attempted suicide once in his life. He mostly regrets it for how badly it hurt everyone in his life at the time, and how much worse the situation could have been (talk about a reason to take him away from Bruce!), but a small part of his mind still can't shake the fact that it did, in fact, make everything a little better in the aftermath: Corny Bill got the whole smoothed over as an acceptable level of problematicness that was exacerbated

The Mistake occurred on February 26, 2007, due to the unfortunate coinciding of several unpredictable variables. It was less than a year after Dick had been taken in by Bruce, and while he had begun his career as Robin the Boy Wonder, he was unaware that the period from Feb 16 - March 2 had been dubbed Hell by every person to interact with Batman during that time (March 1 being the anniversary of the Wayne murders).

Worse, Corny Bill had brought a strain of the flu with him on an impromptu Valentine's Day visit ("Sorry about this, *sniffle* I know we're scheduled for next week, but I'll be out of town then and hey, we're all bachelors here, aren't we?") and while Dick shook it off quickly, Alfred was hit especially hard, leaving Batman's batman out of commission for the better part of Hell, which put Robin mostly alone and unforewarned with a Batman who was not only at his year's nadir, and increasingly grumpier from his own bout of illness, but unsupported by the man most able to handle Batman's moods and translate for Robin's benefit at a time when the Grayson Anniversary was also looming near the horizon.


7) Add in a poorly timed experiment by Scarecrow with allergenic fear dust, and it took as many coinciding variables to prevent Robin's death as had nearly caused it. Dick Grayson just happened to be in civilian guise running errands with Marilyn when he caught a two-bit mugging in an alley while she was searching out specialty produce. The mugger just happened to be a total incompetent who got intimidated into running when Dick recklessly jumped in and dared the guy to hurt a kid. Mary Turner not only just happened to have been powdered with experimental fear dust earlier that day, but she just happened to have developed a resistance after previously being a victim of fear gas twice in her life. She just happened to insist on walking the ten-year-old back to safety after she hugged him, just happened to have stuck around, and just happened to have been there as the fear dust started kicking in, inducing hallucinations in Marilyn and prompting Dick to jump off a nearby bridge.

But jumping into the late-February river after him, and dragging him to shore after a ten minute struggle to stay afloat? There was nothing but purpose in that, and it remains one of the finest examples of everyday heroism he's ever encountered. Dick has a stuffed elephant with her name on it (literally), and really wishes he could find her to deliver it, but she appears to have fallen off the face of the planet not long after.

It's sketchy as all get out, and everyone in Wayne Manor knows it, but even Batman has had to tentatively let the case go cold, because there is no idea of who would be behind it or what they were trying for. But not knowing about her fate remains one of the biggest regrets in Dick Grayson's young life.


8) Kid Flash is his best friend, beating Babs (instead of tying her for the position) solely because Robin hasn't been allowed to tell the Commissioner's daughter his identity. The scale would skew a lot more in her favor were it not for Robin's ease of access to Zeta Tubes in Earth-16, meaning he and KF can meet in uniform or civvies 2-3 times a week without issue.

Robin looks to Roy Harper as not quite an older brother or cousin (his cousin John was his older brother) but as very close. (Renka will one day give him a vocabulary lesson and identify it as a "mryk trahn" relationship, a lesser fraternal equivalent of Mauslen and Dwynra, not dissimilar from the sempai-kouhai of Japan.) He wishes Roy would come to the Team, approves of the name-change to Red Arrow (despite sniggering for the same reason as Renka), but wishes Roy had chosen his suggestion of Arrow Wonder; prior to meeting KF and Kal, he had a dream of the only three JL sidekicks forming a Wonder Trio of kickassery.

Donna Troy has spent the longest amount of time in the position of Robin's closest friend, before graduating to non-blood honorary sister (or "Zimallu," as Renka will tell him). He's only known Babs longer and not by much at that; when Wonder Woman heard Bruce Wayne was taking in a ward, she got him to listen to her advice about children's needs and received the okay to bring Donna over (with the warning that Dick hadn't been told about Batman at that point), since Zeta tubes were already installed in the Batcave. Donna's work under Wonder Woman is what inspired Dick to get aggressively proactive about becoming Robin (the Boy Wonder), and in turn he inspired Donna to take up Wonder Girl and enter the field against Diana's wishes, becoming the second JL sidekick and the other half of the Wonder Twins.

They've drifted briefly out of touch due to her dropping the heroics in mid-April, 2010 (it had been building for a while but she held on until they passed that year's anniversary of the Fall), but if pressed Dick will still stutteringly admit that she counts as the most important/influential girl/woman/female in his life. He will never admit, because he hasn't yet realized, that their association is also responsible for his status as the only male Grayson out of a recorded 12 to express interest in non-redheaded girls. It is no coincidence that his first crush missed the immediately available Babs and instead settled squarely on Zatanna. It won't be until Halloween 2011 that he gets any inkling of why, when Zee's Troia costume reduces Robin to a blushing, incoherent mess of hormones. (Troia's presence in fishnets and tux will not help at all, and from inside his Tempest costume Robin will not-quite-rue the day he suggested that the Team should costume-swap).


9) Robin knows he is too damn good to settle for being a Jack-of-all-Stats (ignoring the Jack/Joker similarities), but the presence of people better than him at any given skill keeps Ace-of-All out of his title list, and the one time he tried out King it sounded disgustingly arrogant. While he's never gone around announcing it, ever since his cross-dressing and disguise lessons Robin has considered himself the queen of all trades (he's looking for a cooler way of saying it), counting empowered specialists as the Aces and more mundane masters as the Kings.

Acrobatics? There are plenty of people who can actually fly, and maneuver with far more grace than him, as well as professional performers in other shows and circuses he's seen pull off tricks he knows are beyond him (though the Quadruple Somersault is still all him).

Martial Arts? Batman has a list of half-a-dozen super-dangerous metas with enhanced physiques who are super well-trained, too. Not to mention people like Kobra, Shiva, Deathstroke, David Cain, Ra's al Ghul, Sensei, Sportsmaster... no need to go on.

Smarts? Wally alone is the science guy, able to out-math Dick Grayson any day (on a full stomach), as well as super-intellects and mad scientists like Morrow and Ivo.

Hacking? Close, but not quite. In the beginning, Batman taught Robin the ropes, and Robin started edging out the master in certain areas. Defense is easier than offense, so there are places Robin still can't hack into, especially with unique coding and obscure builds. But Robin also knows a huge part of it is Batman's gift of the highest tech hardware available (not to the general public though), which gives him a tremendous edge. On even ground, he can match Batman due to familiarity, but there's one person who always out-codes him.

Dick taught Barbara Gordon almost everything he knew about coding over one dreary winter, and come spring she was the one teaching him things. It got to the point that he was genuinely worried about her ability to hack the Batcave, and felt he had to go to Bruce about the monster he may have created. Babs held one heckuva grudge when Bruce Wayne went over both their heads (on top of Batman bugging her computer) to confide in Jim his worry that young Barbara was developing an unhealthy obsession, not getting enough excercise, and maybe he would consider having her sign up for some athletic activities?

(Dick isn't interested in the World's Greatest Detective title, but if he were, his attempts to claim it would be stymied by his inability to realize that Barbara's hacking obsession and her subsequent decision to sign up for gymnastics on top of self-defense classes were both prompted by a drive to impress the focus of her burgeoning crush.)


10) Yes, Dick's original Robin costume included short-pants and pixie boots. He insisted, despite Batman's counter-insistence, and Bruce Wayne's attempt at peer-pressure by showing the pictures to Donna and some of the JL. The latter attempt drastically back-fired; it prompted Superman to relate the circus strong-man image that led to his infamous 'underwear on the outside,' followed by Wonder Woman's story about the origin of her own 'glorified one-piece swimsuit'. (These events are totally the origin of Dick's Superman-pattern Underoos and his preference for Wonder Woman PJs.)

Both senior heroes had to admit that Batman had a point about Robin's legs being less than bulletproof, and with mediation they agreed on two points of compromise. One, if Robin (not Dick Grayson!) ever took a gunshot wound (not knives, crowbars, claws, bite wounds, or bruises) in his exposed legs, he had to switch costumes. Two, if Robin ever chose to switch away from his short-pants uniform, he could not return to them.

They made this agreement in mid-July after The Fall, when Robin had not yet learned Batman's madness to his methods, so he took the bait of arguing down the first condition and mostly ignored the toss-it-in one Bruce added at the end. Bruce just sat back and smiled.

The short pants last almost half-a-year (more if the time before their agreement is included), before Robin threw in the towel after a midnight blizzard hit their patrol for the third time in two weeks. Less than a week later, Bruce gave him a Batman-approved uniform with warm, kevlar-weave pants for his 10th birthday, and Robin never looked back.



** I'll be doing these as the mood strikes me, in the Team's Zeta designation order (Kaldur'ahm, Wally, Conner, etc). Hope you enjoyed this!

 

[NemoMarx]

Robin first looked up sounds clips from the Joker, practiced imitating them, and actually gave himself a small dose of Joker Venom, all in the hopes of scaring Corny Bill into stopping the jokes with his laugh. No dice.

Click to shrink...

Honestly the level of dedication for this is super impressive, considering his experience with the Joker?

6) Dick Grayson has attempted suicide once in his life. He mostly regrets it for how badly it hurt everyone in his life at the time, and how much worse the situation could have been (talk about a reason to take him away from Bruce!), but a small part of his mind still can't shake the fact that it did, in fact, make everything a little better in the aftermath: Corny Bill got the whole smoothed over as an acceptable level of problematicness that was exacerbated

Click to shrink...

This feels really probable, in a painful way. No one on the bat family is ever entirely fine.

While he's never gone around announcing it, ever since his cross-dressing and disguise lessons Robin has considered himself the queen of all trades (he's looking for a cooler way of saying it), counting empowered specialists as the Aces and more mundane masters as the Kings.

Click to shrink...

Aww.

 

[Dark as Silver]

** I'll be doing these as the mood strikes me, in the Team's Zeta designation order (Kaldur'ahm, Wally, Conner, etc). Hope you enjoyed this!

Click to shrink...

I like how much you've integrated the rest of DC to the Young Justice specific canon.
Do you have plans for these and stuff like the Babara hacking was going to come up in story eventually or is this all just done on the spot for fun?

 

[Obloquy]

I like how much you've integrated the rest of DC to the Young Justice specific canon.
Do you have plans for these and stuff like the Babara hacking was going to come up in story eventually or is this all just done on the spot for fun?

Click to shrink...

The truth is, I'm actually not a huge JL comics nerd - I've read far more fanfic about it than any of the original source materials by a good order of magnitude - but because of that I enjoy going through comic wikis cold to look for ideas or incorporating things/people I don't start off familiar enough with to have preconceptions about.

I can pick up some great ideas first- or second-hand for mixing together new story elements that are lot better than anything I would have the gall to come up with on my own.

I mean:
If I tried to just create a new Gotham-based secret society, the Conspiracy, centuries old, influencing or controlling almost every aspect of the city for centuries, assassinating people who get in their way, with access (even three hundred years ago) to alchemical alterations capable of creating near-immortal super-soldiers and the tech to keep these guys in suspended animation, and the members are all rich people in high society who are mostly public figures, moving in known social circles, often followed by paparazzi...

And then I say they're so secret that Batman had specifically investigated for them, been successfully tricked into believing they don't exist, and kept that conclusion for a whole decade+ until they directly sent an assassin after him and his son...

If I tried that, everyone would call bull****. And good on them for doing so; it wouldn't just break the SoD, it would sledgehammer disbelief into powder, and grind the corpse's bones to make some bread.

...

My gateway Batman (and from there JL) fanfic that got me interested was Bruce Wayne Has A Problem, and I read it with very little background in the Batman series. And I'd go look up characters or plot references I didn't understand as I read, and it was really enthralling with how everything mostly tied together in odd combinations.

In one of the later arcs, when I knew a bit more about the al Ghul family issues and Damian, I read about Damian confronting his replacement clone his mother had grown, with all his old personality issues except worse, and I just rolled my eyes so hard and wondered what the author(s) had started smoking.

And then I went on, and read several more fanfics completely unrelated to to the Problem-verse, from which I learned that no, that actually happened, there was an actually printed and serialized comic with that clone plot.

...

I had a realization then, related to the 'truth is stranger than any fiction,' and 'crime, once exposed, has no refuge save in audacity'. It's hard to put into words, but you can imagine.

I've realized that if I want mysterious societies or crazy, non-sensical villains, I don't need to make (most) of them up. I just need to troll comic wikis and take notes.

If I think of some cool ideas for a conspiracy that no sane reader should imagine they can pull off?

Tweak a few details, and my crazy conspiracy plot becomes totally believable, because I can use the Court of Owls, and my ideas still make more sense (in my mind), and are less audacious, than the plots those guys actually pulled off in canon.

...

So I'm very glad you (and other people) like how much and how thoroughly I'm integrating everything. Some of this may get really complicated, but I promise there are payoffs plotted out ahead. I write stuff out a long ways in advance, exactly so I can plot out foreshadowing and references ahead of time.

They're sometimes done on-the-spot for fun, sure, but the trick is to take the fun, and run with it all the way as far as you can, until it reaches another fun idea to tie it in with, and make this big tangled weave of awesome.

Barbara? Am I the only person who got confused about how she could go from field-agent, face-punching Batgirl to the World's Greatest Hacker once she got stuck in the wheelchair? I'm not a huge Batman nerd, but I've never seen her portrayed as a super-nerd computer expert while she still has her legs.

This? This is me fixing that. In YJ we've seen Robin, who'll become Nightwing, is a masterful hacker. (Heck, I'm nerfing him by having him have any trouble hacking Morrow's systems in Sapience.) YJ cannon hasn't brought out Oracle, but the potential is supposedly there. If Oracle beats Nightwing in hacking, why wouldn't Batgirl have been better than Robin, or Babs better than Dick, back while she still has her legs?

When Batgirl eventually comes onto the scene, the hacking will play a part; I consider it a part of her character. But because Dick is the only one she's connected to in the central cast, and she doesn't yet know about Robin, I feel the need to lay some groundwork and plant the seeds, even if it'll take forever for them to sprout.

But I've already planted a bunch of similar seeds (that no one's commented on, so I assume they're still hidden) by this point in the story, and I am anticipating so hard the reactions when I drop some bombs, and people can go back and re-read how far in advance I was foreshadowing. I'm just totally preening at the imagined reactions.

Enjoy!

 

[nmWarden]

But I've already planted a bunch of similar seeds (that no one's commented on, so I assume they're still hidden) by this point in the story, and I am anticipating so hard the reactions when I drop some bombs, and people can go back and re-read how far in advance I was foreshadowing. I'm just totally preening at the imagined reactions.

Enjoy!

Click to shrink...

I just recently heard of this wonderful story. Now I'm finally caught up and you're trying to get me to read through it all again just to hunt for details? Best assignment ever! If only time wasn't an issue.

 

[stsword]

Barbara Gordon was always a huge nerd- a librarian with a photographic memory.

As for why she wasn't a computer whiz before her crippling- Because she was crippled in 88, three years before the internet became publicly available.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

** Episode 19 _ Tidying up

* October 11 [Renka PoV]

Despite the doldrums Earth usually suffered on a Monday, today had been a good day so far. Most of it had been spent storing to begin to refill my metal-mind reserves. I had waited until everyone had returned to the mountain in the evening to give my talk, but it was good to get it off my chest.

To be thorough, I'd gone again through the other three quadrants first, and I had walked away with half a dozen ideas from Wally to try.

Investigate: double-check effect of caffeine while storing bronze; storing heat in a sauna or furnace room; inhaling pure oxygen while storing cadmium; storing other gases than oxygen into a cadmium-mind; storage of vitamins, drugs, and toxins into bendalloy-minds; smoothies stored in food or drink bendalloy-mind, or separately; ability to store gold faster when hooked into medical life support systems; more specific effects of electrum-minds on using/resisting telepathy.

Some of those had been on my to-do list already, a few were new, but altogether they'd pushed me to announce, "Wally, the next time someone says you are not a genius, tell me and I will punch them for you." He'd complained about school and people not long ago.

It had gotten a few laughs from our team before we got back on topic.

"So the last one is the spiritual quadrant, right?" Robin checked. I nodded.

"Aluminum, duralumin, chromium, and nicrosil," Wally summarized.

"Yes," I agreed, writing that on the board. "First is aluminum."

"That's what you use to resist telepathy, right? Or was that electrum?" M'gann wondered. "You've used both…."

"Both have effects," I answered. "I store my spiritual identity into my aluminum-minds."

"That… sounds slightly dangerous," Kaldur noted, slightly startled.

"It can be. Mentally, I become made less unique. More blank… more bland," I explained. "My opinions are weaker, softer felt, and my emotional reactions are less, when I store. I like mustard and fruit less, insults anger me less, I feel less responsible, less content or not, and less driven. The traits that make me Renka become weaker."

"Definitely sounds dangerous," Artemis said. "So it works the other way when you tap? More feelings, stronger?"

"Yes. And I am less easily changed by outside influences. Telepathy to make me calm or angry will have less effect, and I will be more confident and emotionally strong. Even small opinions become forceful."

"So," Wally wondered, "when you tap, does it change you like you are now, or like you were when you stored? I mean-,"

"Good question," I cut in. "Again. It makes me the way I was when I stored." Mostly. "One time, I was worried the Green Lantern would change me if he healed me, so I stored before he helped me, then tapped after to see if anything had changed in me."

"So if you've never had blueberries when you store, tapping won't change your opinion about them after you've had them and formed an opinion?"

"Close," I told Artemis. "If I form a strong opinion, it will not be changed, but it will seem weaker compared to the other opinions that grow stronger while it was not. Or if I have the opinion of not caring, then later start to like them, tapping from when I did not care will make me not care again. Clear?"

"As much as magic ever is," Zatanna agreed. "Do you control what parts of your identity you store? Like just storing food preferences, and not any of the other things?"

"No." I shook my head and searched for a good metaphor. "Imagine all of my different opinions like…" I drew three sloppy bar graphs labeled 'mustard,' 'blueberries,' and 'insults,' in yellow, blue, and red with values of 4, 5, and 7.

"Times a few thousand for all of the other opinions," Robin quipped.

"Yes," I agreed. "Times a few hundred thousand."

"So you'd store two from each bar at the same time?" Zatanna asked.

"Yes."

"What happens if you try to store five from each bar, even though mustard is only four?" M'gann asked.

I hesitated. "Wait, Zatanna, no. Sorry." I quickly erased and redrew the bars as rectangles – then as grids of squares – equally four measures high but four, five, and seven measures wide. "Zatanna, I would not store two from each bar at the same time, I would store half of each bar," I corrected, and erased the top two rows from each rectangle. "See? Half stored, but different total amounts."

"That makes more sense," Wally agreed. "And when you store you're more vulnerable to getting messed with in the head? And you said it just made you less self-confident too, right?"

"Correct," I agreed. "If I do not want to go to a restaurant, storing makes it easier to bully me into going, while tapping makes it more difficult, as well as the telepathy problems."

"Got it. Then, duralumin is what you use for your language?"

"Close. This is the awkward one. I use duralumin-minds to store spiritual connection." I let my breath out, waiting to see whom if anyone would get it.

"Is this like sympathetic bond type of connection?" Zatanna asked. "Like, if I tried to do voodoo with your hair while you were storing, there wouldn't be a connection for the spell to use? Ooh, but then tapping would make it stronger." She winced.

"Yes, but it is also social and emotional connection." I waited. "When I store, it makes people forget that I matter, but when I tap, I form emotional connections to you more quickly and strengthen the ones I have?" I prodded.

"Oh, so it like speeds up you making friends with us," Wally figured. Then, "Yeah, I can see why that would be awkward to bring up right when we met, but you know we're here to stay now, don't you?"

The knot in my stomach relaxed. "Yes," I sighed with a smile. "I do."

"Sooo… does getting to know people faster also cross with getting to know languages faster?" Artemis wondered.

Conner grunted a denial. "Nah. Or she'd talk to everyone whenever, but she can't a lot of the time. You speak the main language there, not the language of whoever you talk to, right?"

"Right. But connection is not just between people, but between places and things and ideas."

"Like to a country? But if you don't have the connections to a place, how would they get stronger?" Wally wondered.

"Another excellent question, Wally. Physical location is also a connection, you see. That is the reason I build connections with people I am close to when I tap, but not random people three blocks away. Furthermore, the spiritual metals have interesting interactions. Regular duralumin-mind connection does not usually improve my language skills."

"So you mix it with one of the others?"

"Connection and identity, right?" Robin asked.

"Yes. By storing connection while I store my identity, I store connection without it being connected to anything," I confirmed. "Then when I tap the unidentified connection, it latches on to the land around me, and connects me to that country. It is… I am 'hacking' my history into believing that I have come from here instead of Scadrial. So my language skills do not change, but it exchanges English and Scadrese as my first languages, since my spirit thinks I grew up speaking English."

"You still speak with an accent, and make some mistakes," Conner put in. "Or do you do that in Scadrese, too?"

"I am still growing in how well I can store identity and connection at the same time. If I have only stored half my identity when I store, or three-fourths, the effects will be different when I tap that connection. And even if I am connected to the country here on earth, my spirit-web still remembers that my parents came from Scadrial, so I have that accent and culture as well."

"Are you at risk of damaging yourself from this?" Kaldur asked.

'It makes sense; he is the one most familiar with magic beside Zatanna, and it is part of his culture, not a quirk of family.'

"No. I might be damaged by other things while using metal-minds, but in the worst I can stop tapping and I will return to normal. It is not ever supposed to be permanent."

"Even though the bonds you form while tapping connection remain?" he prodded.

"Yes. Those bonds grow faster with a duralumin-mind, but everything is connected to more or less amounts. It cannot create bonds where there could be none," I summarized.

"Is there other stuff storing identity can do with other metal-minds?" Wally asked.

"Yes. For instance, if I try to store into a gold-mind while I am wounded-,"

"Yeah, it won't heal the wound, you said. But without identity it will?"

"It will. Also, I have said my metal-minds are mine, and no other Feruchemist can use them?"

"Yeah… Oh! So will… uh… Will storing identity let you use someone else's metal-minds, or let them use yours? I don't think it would be both."

"Any Feruchemist can tap an unidentified metal-mind," I answered. "It is like a lock and a key. My identity is the lock and the key to my metal-minds. When I store, I make other metal-minds without a lock. But I also put aside my key, and cannot tap a metal-mind that requires someone else's key."

"So does that mean you can't tap your own metal-minds while you store identity?" Wally finished.

"No, but close. Because I cannot store to zero, so I always have some identity. Or rather… Imagine a line of ten thousand numbers."

"A ten-thousand digit number?" Robin checked.

"Yes. It is unique for each person. When I store my identity, the more I store makes more digits blank. If the digit in last is four, and I store a little for that digit to be blank, any person with the same other digits can use the metal-mind, even if the last digit is different. Two, or three, or nine…" I scribbled some numbers and blank spaces on the whiteboard to illustrate.

"Then even if you store down to one digit, if that first digit is different then they still can't use it?" M'gann asked.

"This seems like the opposite of what you just told us about storing opinions when you stored identity," Zatanna said.

"It is complicated, difficult to explain to humans who cannot measure it. But also, M'gann, the digits do not need to be stored in order. Instead of a line, think of a ring of numbers that can change and spin around. So if identity is stored so much that only one digit, a number nine, is not blank, anyone with that digit nine anywhere in the number of their identity will match." I nodded.

"That makes a little more sense. But it's still different from what you said about storing opinions."

"It is difficult to human minds," I apologized to Zatanna. "We are limited."

"Yeah, fine," she sighed.

"Pity there aren't any other Feruchemists," Robin commented. "If one of you just stored all the time and the other used those metal-minds, that would be pretty sweet."

"Aluminum was more expensive than gold in the Final Empire, so it was rare to have an aluminum-mind," I reminded him. "The Synod had a few, but… well, they were rare and valuable," I repeated.

"So, chromium?" Artemis asked.

"Yes. Currently, I do not use a chromium-mind, but I should start to, now I am more safe. Chromium… stores fortune."

That got a reaction from them.

"Luck? So you can make yourself super lucky? Oh, but you need to be unlucky first, right?" Artemis winced.

"But could you, like, tap it and make a guy you're fighting get struck by lightning?" Robin wondered.

"No," I cut in immediately, even if he had barely been half serious. "Remember, Feruchemy can only change me." I slapped a hand to my clavicle for emphasis. "It is not the world being nice to me, it is my tendency to do acts with good outcomes."

"Ah, I think I get it. So if you have a lottery ticket," Wally summarized, "tapping fortune won't change your odds of winning, but if you tap while you buy a lottery ticket there's a better chance the numbers you choose might be the winners."

"Wouldn't that be like seeing the future?" Robin wondered.

"Burning atium does allow her to see the future," Kaldur reminded him, "so it is not surprising that this is possible. I remember the Spiritual Realm for which these metals are named is a place where time and space are of less import."

"Yes," I agreed. "But there are limits on chromium-mind fortune. First, if I overthink it, I can potentially trip my own feet." I remembered that from what I learned in the Shardpool, even though I'd never really used a chromium-mind. "Second, becoming two or three times as likely to pick good choices at random can still be bad odds when the odds are one-hundred to one. Third, the good outcome is not always what I think it is."

"You mean, you might unluckily trip down the stairs and break your leg because it will keep you from being more unluckily blown up in a fight with a villain an hour later?" Wally guessed.

"Yes. Also, the fortune only affects whether I, Renka, get a good outcome, and it cannot change the world, only how I move through the world. If I am being chased and tapping fortune, and I run into an alley, I may be lucky enough to escape because there is already someone innocent in the alley, and the criminal chasing me will stop to hurt them while I flee. But if there is no police officer in the area, then I will not be lucky enough to run into one on patrol. Is this understood?"

"Yeah. Hey, does the decision to tap fortune count as something you can be lucky enough to do?" Wally asked. "Like, you tap a little, and then you get the urge to tap more, and luckily tapping more prods you to make a lucky choice you wouldn't have made tapping the first amount?"

"It can. It is complicated, very complicated. There can be many good and less good outcomes, and there is a limit to how far into the future the fortune can affect at various depths of tapping a chromium-mind."

"Right, I'll just write it off as complicated for now, and we can maybe experiment later."

"Later," I agreed. I looked around the room to get my teammates' attention again. "The last metal is nicrosil."

"You don't use that one either, do you," Artemis commented.

"Not yet. I think I will once I have more experience storing my identity."

"Another metal-mind that works well as a combination," Kaldur noted.

"Yes. I use nicrosil to store investiture." Immediately, Wally's hand shot up once more.

"Waitwaitwait, isn't that what you said Lerasium stored, except you weren't sure?"

"Different meaning of investiture. It conjugates differently in Scadrese, but in English, an investiture can be magic power used for an effect, the act of using magic power for an effect, and the inherent ability to use magic power for an effect."

"Ah, and Lerasium stored raw magic or something, right? Wait, then…"

"Yes. In a nicrosil-mind I can store and tap my ability to use Feruchemy. When I store, I lose the ability to use Feruchemy and become more normal as Robin and Artemis. Tapping investiture is less useful, because Feruchemy is end-neutral. If I could store Allomantic ability, the results would be far more powerful."

"Wait, then could other Feruchemists tap an unidentified nicrosil-mind to… become Feruchemists? Except they already are, right? So… what's the effect?"

"Between Feruchemists, not much. But once I can make an unidentified nicrosil-mind, there is a way to make people who are not Feruchemists able to tap it." They all began to gasp and fidget as they got it. "After a few more months, I hope I can temporarily give you Feruchemy for a few hours at a time. Useful, yes? But I cannot now store enough identity at once."

From there we broke off into further discussion, muttering, and some other rallying of ideas. I explained what Lerasium was and went into more detail on how atium stored age. Wally backtracked and handed me another idea about fortune as well.

It served as a good excuse to play a few games of poker among our team that night, at least.

Twenty minutes of talking later, when we were packing up to disperse to our own activities, Wally asked me a question.

"Hey, Renka?" he wondered as we packed up and I erased the board.

"Another idea?" I asked, grabbing a notebook.

"Yeah, kind of. So you can't store enough identity to make a one-hundred percent unidentified metal-mind, or however little it needs since you can't store to zero, right?"

"Correct," I confirmed.

"Is it a matter of practice or a matter of being a powerful Feruchemist?"

"Both. It is like being a powerful weight lifter; I have the muscles, must practice to become skilled and strong, but no matter how much I practice there is some strength I will never grow to have. Right now, from the beginning, I can store enough identity to make an unidentified metal-mind, but I am not practiced enough to store that much identity and to store into another metal-mind for making the unlocked metal-mind. Not without letting something slip."

"But if you need to lift weights, you can store strength to do it, right? So can you store your aluminum Feruchemy and then tap that to get better at storing identity and multi-tasking? …Uh, Renka?"

I just stared at him. Stared flatly, blankly, judgmentally, for no less than sixteen seconds by the clock.

Then I began beating my head against the Rusting wall and calling myself twelve types of Rusting idiot for not thinking of that myself.

 

[Blackshard]

"But if you need to lift weights, you can store strength to do it, right? So can you store your aluminum Feruchemy and then tap that to get better at storing identity and multi-tasking? …Uh, Renka?"

Click to shrink...

...how, exactly?

The purpose of the scheme is to be able to store Aluminum and Nicrosil at the same time. Tapping stored Aluminum Feruchemy would be tapping Nicrosil. Tapping Nicrosil would seem to preclude storing Nicrosil, as per earlier discussions on the subject. Or is there something I'm missing here?

 

[InterstellarHobo]

From what I gathered, the purpose of this scheme is to train the ability to use feruchemy by artificially decreasing ability to do feruchemy- Akin to decreasing your strength to get more benefit from lifting weights.

 

[Blackshard]

From what I gathered, the purpose of this scheme is to train the ability to use feruchemy by artificially decreasing ability to do feruchemy- Akin to decreasing your strength to get more benefit from lifting weights.

Click to shrink...

That specific method was brought up earlier in the fic. As I recall, it was established that it's possible to train that way, but it hadn't been demonstrated as being more effective than ordinary training. More to the point, your speculation doesn't fit the suggestion; the method you're thinking of would only involve storing, not tapping.

 

[Dark as Silver]

Was the suggestion to store and tap into the same metal mind at once to get more practice storing aluminium at higher investitures as well as doing other things at once?

 

[Blackshard]

Was the suggestion to store and tap into the same metal mind at once to get more practice storing aluminium at higher investitures as well as doing other things at once?

Click to shrink...

My understanding is that simultaneously tapping and storing from the same metalmind is an impossibility on the same level as lifting yourself off the ground by your bootstraps. I had thought that Obloquy had specifically mentioned this, but the post I was thinking of was where he actually mentioned an extension of that principle instead:

I'm following the rule that Investiture (the actual mana carrying the trait) cannot be moved from one metal-mind to another.

So no, what you're thinking of wouldn't work.

Click to shrink...

...that said, the no in question was specifically referring to another tap-and-store scheme, so unless I'm misreading him, there's still no advantage to be had here.

 

[Dark as Silver]

My understanding is that simultaneously tapping and storing from the same metalmind is an impossibility on the same level as lifting yourself off the ground by your bootstraps. I had thought that Obloquy had specifically mentioned this, but the post I was thinking of was where he actually mentioned an extension of that principle instead:



...that said, the no in question was specifically referring to another tap-and-store scheme, so unless I'm misreading him, there's still no advantage to be had here.

Click to shrink...

I was thinking of a time that it was brought up that maybe if you tapped to put your strength to 150% then tapped 50% you'd store 75% of your natural strength. Hahahahaha infinite powah.

Spoiler: Genius

Anyway that got shut down as the maths wasn't how the maths works but it seemed to imply that it was possible to both tap and store the same metal, it was just a bad idea if you were trying to hack the system for more power.

 

[Blackshard]

I was thinking of a time that it was brought up that maybe if you tapped to put your strength to 150% then tapped 50% you'd store 75% of your natural strength. Hahahahaha infinite powah.
Anyway that got shut down as the maths wasn't how the maths works but it seemed to imply that it was possible to both tap and store the same metal, it was just a bad idea if you were trying to hack the system for more power.

Click to shrink...

If you check the post I linked, you'll find that you and I were thinking of the exact same post, and Obloquy said that didn't work.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

* October 12 [Renka PoV]

[You know what to do if any problems occur.] The Martian Manhunter's voice echoed in my mind before he slipped away, his shift on watch having finished. I resisted the urge to finger the device with the panic button, which would give away its location. Instead, I checked that Dr. Roquette was still walking well, readjusted my canvas bag, and got the door for her.

"Fire. Miss Crenshaw," I greeted. "Doctor Roquette, this is the Fire of the Fire and Ice hero pair of Norway. And this is Tyler Crenshaw. Miss Crenshaw, Miss Fire, this is Doctor Serling Roquette, expert in nano-robot-icks."

"Also previously kidnapped by the Shadows," Dr. Roquette commented, giving a nod to the unconscious inhabitants of the room. Fire brusquely nodded, and Tyler Crenshaw huffed.

"Yeah. I keep thinking that could'a been me if I hadn't run across half-a-dozen countries. And none of this Miss stuff, Ferris. I just go by Tyler." She shook Dr. Roquette's hand after the doctor was settled in a chair, and then mine.

"Do you count as a Justice League watch? You're pretty much Superman's sidekick, right?" the Fire asked.

"I am on watch for now. It is less urgent because you are here, and I do not have great fight ability, but I do not need to."

"Great, so if more Shadows show up you aren't going to be fighting much."

I scoffed. "Shadows I will fight fine." I flicked a guilty eye to Doctor Roquette. "Mostly. But you are here, yes? That is why the Wonder Woman said it was good for you to use the Zeta Tube to arrive here. I have you for back-up, and I can call League."

"Black Spider is still locked up, isn't he?" Dr. Roquette checked. She smiled and nudged me with her elbow, so I took it as a joke and did not repeat another apology for letting him harm her.

"Yes, with Hook. Cheshire is free," I grumbled, "still, but I hope to fix that. But we can fight most of the Shadows. And when I do not have the Superman's power, I am very-sat-tile."

If the League of Shadows sent anyone after the Icemaiden or the Kelvin couple, I would happily exercise excessive force.

This was a hospital. I felt I would probably be forgiven.

Probably.

…I glanced at the row of half-a-dozen pods and the people in various states of wholeness inside.

'And maybe I don't Rusting care about forgiveness,' I decided cheerfully, imagining the snap of a faceless Shadow's neck.

"And you have good ideas, you just don't do well with surprises," Dr. Roquette summarized, eyes vague in memory.

"Yes, but we are expecting the Shadows," I agreed pleasantly. "Have they tried anything before now? Or Brain?"

"Brain?" Fire wondered.

"We ain't seen hide or hair of anything sneaky. Are these guys the type to give up that easy?"

"No, but they may not have cared enough to attempt anything to get their cattle back," I commented. I assumed my manic, toothy smile keyed the others into my use of disgusted sarcasm for cattle. "There are many more meta-humans."

"Back to the involvement of the Brain, the super-science baddie whose been popping up in a few places," Fire intervened. We looked at her. "I've trashed two of his smaller labs in Brazil and Norway, with Ice," she added. "But he didn't much care."

"Brain and Ra's al Ghul are in an alliance with several other super-villains," I explained shortly.

Fire began swearing calmly.

"Are- will we... are we going to have to worry about more technology villains showing up?" Dr. Roquette worried, hunching in on herself.

I noted the way her eyes had not stopped flicking around the room.

"You should not have to worry." I phrased carefully. Because should not was different from did not, but said it with as much casual confidence as I could fake. "And I am here, and I have interacted with Brain before. I tore off parts of his… um… the machine where he keeps his brain." The other three stared at me. "And I destroyed many of his robots. And I ignored his bait."

"The machine… where he keeps his brain? Wait, so-?"

"It is in a file. Play me for it in poker?" I challenged cheerfully, and drew the materials from my bag.

The others boggled, and I got at least one laugh.

Tension defused? Check.

Killing time on watch? Check.

Practicing storing fortune with a harmless way to suffer from my lack of luck? Check.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________​

* October 13 [Renka PoV]

"May I join?" I requested of the group playing chess in a Metropolis park.

"Oh, yeah, we have an… odd… uhhh…"

"Is there a problem?" I asked sweetly, ignoring that he was probably surprised to see the Superman's sidekick.

"Nnnoooo… Uh, is there going to be a super-villain attack anytime soon?" He asked glancing around. A few of the others in the group looked nervous at that, but while no one else approached me, no one really slunk away, either.

"I do not think so. I have heard of none. I have no place to be today, and want to be in air and sunlight with people."

"Ah. Okay then." He gave me a more confident smile, and I rattled through greetings with a few other brave people while everyone else went back to playing or setting up the pieces.

For the first round, I ended up playing black against an elderly woman.

She was kind enough to go through the rules with me again after I lost three times linear, though they took some time.

I let her be kind, rather than tell her I was comparing my baseline playing to when I stored acuity, and then those to when I stored fortune.

It was a very interesting experiment to run, albeit imprecise. I was not notably skilled at chess even when I did not store any traits, but how quickly I lost and how easily I could read ahead of my opponent's choice still were changing variables.

'Personal enscription: sitting in my armor for too long is something my coccyx does not find amenable.' It was the third or fourth time I'd thought so, but it was never important enough to get around to trying to address.

"Good game," my second opponent offered after my second grouping of three losses.

"Good game," I agreed with a smile.

"Hey, uh," another young man – one of about six group to audience my games – started. "Are you losing on purpose, or doing some kind of personal challenge or something? Or are you just not good at chess."

I flicked a grin at him. "I am bad at chess, I am trying to win, but I am also doing a personal challenge."

"There goes my plan to politely throw the match," my third opponent joked as he settled down across from me.

"Please do not," I confirmed to the gray-haired man. "I learned to play not long ago. I will not become better if I am cuddled."

"I think you mean coddled," a pimpled boy commented with a laugh. "'cause it would be a shame if cud-!" He cut off when the girl using a ponytail beside him elbowed him. His apology and her face suggested they were courting.

"Um, do you just walk around and hang out when you aren't fighting crime? If you don'tmindmeasking."

"I do not mind polite questions," I answered, sliding a bishop across the board. I frowned for a moment and squeezed my thoughts for a certain phrase… "No camera or video recording, please," I repeated from when we'd gone to a movie theatre.

A few people hurriedly put things back in their pockets.

"Um, how old are you?" One young man asked.

"I am twenty years old," I pronounced carefully, losing a rook but capturing the offending knight.

"I heard you don't have a secret identity, same as Green Lantern Stewart or Giovanni Zatara?"

"It is correct," I told the woman. "My name is Renka, Ar-Ee-En-Kay-Ay, but right now I am Ferris."

"Last name?"

"I do not use one."

"Do you know many other members of the Justice League?" I thought that was a question I should be careful about.

"Some," I answered, taking a moment to pretend-count on my fingers. "I know the Red Tornado very well."

"What's your favorite band?" Someone asked, the group beginning to feel more comfortable.

"I have not made that decision."

"Favorite food?"

"Almost any fruit. Mustard. A food that does not have a name in English. But not together at one time," I added, smirking.

"How did you meet Superman?"

"Are you and Superman dating?"

"Are you dating anyone?"

"I asked Miss Lois Lane to help me meet the Superman. He is, I think, dating Miss Lois Lane," I answered, losing a pawn.

"Are you dating anyone?"

"That is not a polite question. Do not ask again, please," I replied, castling my king.

"Where are you from? Are you an alien, like Superman?"

"You don't fly, so you're not from Krypton, right?"

"I am human. I will talk about my home on some day, but not today."

"Ah, sorry."

"I accept the apology," I told the man with a quick nod.

"Checkmate."

"You win," I agreed, and we began to reset the pieces.

"How long have you been playing chess?"

"I learned the rules… not much a long time in the past," I translated carefully.

"Why do you talk like that?"

"English is my sixth language. I have been speaking English for less than five months."

"What other superheroes do you know?"

"I have met and made friends with the Icon and Rocket. I have asked the Wonder Woman for a few favors in the past. The Green Lantern has given me help in the past." I did not add the help from the Batman because I suspected he valued privacy more.

"Which Green Lantern?"

"What help?"

"The Green Lantern with similar skin, and it is private."

"Can I have your autograph?"

"I will not sign an autograph while I am playing chess."

"What are your sizes? Ow!"

"Asshole," someone grunted at him.

Several other people made similar comments and the offender back away from the hostility.

"I do not know what sizes are. It is an insult?" I mused to them, taking a pawn, losing a rook, and capturing that knight.

"Um, dress sizes? You know, hips, waist?" the younger woman using the ponytail awkwardly explained, arresting whatever hand gestures she habitually tried to make with the words.

"Clothing." I nodded, absently capturing a pawn. "I am not still familiar with the… the sizes used in the You-Ess-Ay."

"Wait, but you would have told us if you were? Gh! Sorry, sorry, not a polite question, I wasn't thinking," the young man who had made the coddled/cuddled correction pleaded.

I moved my knight to threaten both a bishop and a pawn, only for a rook to take it.

After quick take-take-back exchange of pawns I turned my head from the board to look at the young man.

"What are your sizes?" I inquired blithely, rather than accepting the apology. I carefully kept my gaze disturbingly even.

He shrunk in on himself, which was quite amusing to watch.

"Um, guys don't really have that stuff," he muttered voice growing weaker.

I resisted the impulse to raise one eyebrow.

"No?" I queried. "Not on the tags on the shirt on the neck?" I reached back and pinched my black undershirt at the appropriate place to illustrate. He tried to weakly chuckle and relax, but my continued gaze just made him shrink back again a second later.

"Oh, right. Yeah, I wear a men's medium. Uhh… jeans are thirty-two, thirty," he added weakly. Those numbers meant nothing to me, but I nodded as though I was satisfied and returned to playing the game.

"I apologize, I made you wait," I added politely to my opponent.

"Oh, I always like to see the next generation get some manners hammered into their skulls," he replied with a smile.

We exchanged nine further moves before someone became comfortable again and asked a new question.

"Hey, if it's okay… what are your powers?"

"Mm… Check," I told my opponent for the first time that day. "I do not talk about my powers."

"What, really? Why?"

"It is stupid, not good, to let the world know my powers, because the criminals are part of the world to know my powers."

"Yeah, but a lot of the Justice League doesn't seem to care. They win anyway."

"A lot of the Justice League is-…" I realized my comment was not good English and rephrased. "I am not as confident as a member of the Justice League. The Superman is so strong, has very much power, that he can tell the world about kryptonite-," Robin had helped me look up past Justice League press conferences, and the one where the Superman told everyone about kryptonite had Rusting boggled my brains until I had the chance to ask him about it. "-and he will still feel safe. Kryptonite is rare, and because he can fly and use heat vision the Superman can melt kryptonite safe in the high… in the sky."

"Huh. He could, couldn't he?"

"Has he ever actually done that?" another woman asked.

"I've never seen it reported if he did."

"That's cause super-villains won't take out kryptonite until he's close enough to get hurt," someone dismissed.

"If the Superman is serious, he is so strong and fast that the criminals should not have time to use it," I replied blithely.

It was a discussion I had begun with him during one of our thrice-weekly patrols among the roofs of Metropolis.

"So why does he get hit with it?" One person challenged me.

"Check," I murmured, already predicting I would lose in a few more moves despite it. "Why do you think?"

That got my audience to be quiet as people though it over.

"…Is there something we don't know about Superman's powers?" a voice finally wondered.

"Like what?" a different person dismissed. "Some other secret weakness? We can see how strong and fast he is."

"Maybe he isn't always that strong and fast? Or he needs warm-up time?" a woman with blue and pink hair wondered.

"Or a time-limit?" an older man mused thoughtfully. I restrained a smirk; he was at least closer to my powers in his guess.

Then, "Well? What is it?"

"I know what you know about the Superman's powers," I replied, leaving out what I knew about his disguise skills, etc.

"And you wouldn't tell us differently if you did know anything," someone added. I shrugged and hummed.

"Is there anything you are willing to tell us about your powers?" a brunette woman wondered.

"They are related to my religion," I said.

"Oh, so, you're like, a paladin or something?" one of the young men realized.

'That better describes Spook, or any Allomancer, than it does Feruchemy. And… I'm getting the feeling that I once knew something with an even better connection to that idea, but I have forgotten it in the time since the Pool. Rusts. Ah well.'

"From the game Dungeons and Dragons? It is close," I lied mildly. "Do you play?"

"Uh? I used to. Wait, you know Dungeons and Dragons but you only started to learn chess?"

"Yes," I answered simply. A set of beeps had my opponent pull out his phone and frown.

"I'm afraid I need to leave," he apologized.

 

[Kurkistan]

I liked the pacing/writing of the Q&A bit, felt realistic of how people act when they get to ask questions of a celebrity, how the crowd react when one of them inevitably acts like an ass or puts his/her foot in their mouth.

 

[Hestia&theCourt]

That's... a weird place to end the chapter. Is she playing chess with the Shade or something??? Because otherwise, I'm having difficulty seeing what plot threads you're laying out here.

 

[NemoMarx]

"Yes," I answered simply. A set of beeps had my opponent pull out his phone and frown.

"I'm afraid I need to leave," he apologized.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, this seems mildly suspicious.

 

[Grigori]

More of Renka's casual awesome. She's such an entertaining perspective. She approaches everything so earnestly but with such self assurance. Like she's just there to take it all in, so calm and collected. Suppose it's kinda what she's here for, to observe.

 

[nmWarden]

Poor Lois Lane. Everyone else gets an interview first. Quite the amusing chapter.

 

[Obloquy]

Life Ore Death​

* October 13 [Renka PoV]

"I'm afraid I need to leave," he apologized.

"I can step in. I would have been next line anyway," the brunette woman offered.

"I will just say you have won. Thank you for playing." He smiled at me before he jogged away.

"Merci," she said as we began to reset the board. I smiled, recognizing one of my few known French words, and passed the pieces into her waiting palm.

"I don't speak much French, but I remember that," I affirmed, puffed up with a little pride.

She looked a little confused, and held out her hand again after we finished putting the pieces in place.

"No, my name. Mercy Graves."

"Ah," I breathed, a touch embarrassed. "I thought it was French for please." We shook. Her palm was a little sweaty and sticky, as though she'd eaten a fruit juice popsicle an hour past and not washed since. 'That was a fun beach day…' "Ferris, currently. Or Renka."

"Ferris; you are in uniform," she decided. We began to play.

I continued bantering a few other questions back and forth with my opponent and audience, but people began to break away after I suffered my first defeat at her hands.

Once we were down to less than six pieces each in our second game, Mercy paused and made a show of sniffing under one arm. I followed her eyes as we glanced at the empty spaces around us.

"Ah?" I prompted.

"We both appear to practice adequate hygiene. I was wondering what we were missing that appears to have driven everyone away." Two tables each on both of our sides had been abandoned, our audience had vanished, and people outside the affected radius were now beginning to peel away.

"They left behind the chess sets," I noted. "I do not know all the records. Is there a super-villain to do this?" The fact that she had proactively commented on it after ignoring it for so long had me mostly convinced that she was responsible, but I did my best to behave otherwise. There was no reaction when I tapped a trickle of health in case she had smeared a contact poison on me when we shook hands, so it didn't appear to be that.

'Perhaps whatever it was made us both immune, instead?' I considered. That the effect was spreading out from our position at the center suggested she was responsible, but obscene coincidences could occur.

Especially on Earth.

"No one has left the park. The players just wandered away. More than a few are lined up at the toilet," she murmured.

"Is someone listening?" I whispered. "Keep playing. Cover. If no one has noticed, we stand out." There was so much wrong with that statement it wasn't funny, but if she thought I was stupid enough not to suspect her, (though she could assume I suspected her and was now smart enough to hide it, or she could be innocent,) I wanted to encourage that opinion.

"You would know… wait…" Mercy pretended to surreptitiously scratch at her arm.

'What?' She appeared to have opened up a rigid flap of skin like a small door, revealing metal inside.

"There. Wait. Ah, that should-!" Her cell phone immediately went off, and she scrambled to answer. "Mercy here. Sir? You have-? There appears to be a malfunction or side effect in my newest upgrade that- yes, effects are similar to that, sir. My apologies for the mistake, I'll be in im-," she began to stand up, then sat back down. "-mediat-? Sir? That isn't necess- yes, sir."

"Robot? From Doctor Morrow?" I inquired as she hung up. Then I remembered I had a zinc-mind, and tapped quickly.

"Cyborg," she corrected. "It was one of the reasons I approached you. I don't interact with many… abnormal people."

"I did the same thing to Miss Lois Lane," I mused, giving the appearance of relaxation and understanding.

"Yes, I found the issue…" She fiddled a little more and closed the latch on her arm. "My apologies. Today is my day off, medical leave, because I had an update to my equipment yesterday." I nodded encouragingly, monetarily confident she was lying.

"Update? Software or hardware?" I still couldn't remember which was which, or what the difference was, but they were both technology terms, which was good enough to, I hoped, assuage any suspicions she had about my suspicions.

"A little of both. I believe one of my new systems interacted badly with an old one. According to-," she gestured at her phone, offering a little blush on her cheeks that absolutely convinced me she was acting. "Well, there was a side effect generating a sound frequency in an odd way. It blocked off cell phone and the trackers I wear, and probably made everyone nearby feel like they needed to excrete. I… no longer have those organs, and your armor probably protected your torso? I'm not certain, you might have a power that makes you immune."

"It is not even in my top five strangest power mistake stories," I dismissed with a laugh. "Have you seen in movies where heroes will jump off a bridge and land on a moving… car? Truck?"

"Vehicle is the general term. You tried it once?" she prodded. I folded my hands in my lap and leaned forward.

"Several times are successful. But once, I jumped and it blew up." With my hands out of her sight and her eyes on my face, I did my best to unnoticeably scrape off the stickiness on my right palm with my left thumbnail. 'Or am I just imagining it?'

"Oh?" She smiled. "Well, if you're still unharmed, I assume your powers include a healing factor, then?"

'She should have an excellent copper-mask for if I accused her of lying, no doubt,' I assessed, 'but she is not so skilled at reacting to unexpected variables in her scripted lies. Assuming it was unscripted, she neglected to account for my previous opponent's phone going off… no, she could probably offer a range limit, or claim the problem hadn't begun then… People didn't begin peeling away until after our first game. But a genuine civilian should have asked about the people in the car at the time, or what it was carrying to explode, instead of jumping to guess at my abilities.'

"They do," I acknowledged because enough people probably seen it to guess, then to be safer anyway I added, "I was still in the hospital for three days. Is all hospital food that bad?"

"Ever since my accident, I've always made a point of bringing my own supply of snacks when I need a tune-up," Mercy agreed. "It isn't even always as healthy as what you get outside, which strikes me as shameful." I nodded.

"Do you get fixed at a hospital, then? Not a… ahh… machine, building, technology…" I gestured helplessly.

"Some of my parts can't be reached without minor surgery, and I need periodic checks for how my body is handling the stress from the additions," she agreed. It made enough sense that it was probably true, I guessed.

"Is the system that is a problem an… ah… one that is important? Do you need to hospital?" I intentionally lowered my speaking ability instead of doing anything with a duralumin-mind, and whether or not she called me on it would point to some more things about her mentality.

"Just a new monitoring for my vital signs, and a new battery pack." I had no idea if those were capable of having the effect she had described, but I nodded to pretend I did, or let slip I seemingly felt the need to pretend I knew.

"Vital signs… Different from food? Vittles?" Mercy huffed a short laugh at me. "Vittles is in books… Be it different-ing said? Ah." I quickly pulled off a glove, plucked off a bronze-mind ring, and held it to my lips while quietly reciting a list of vocabulary from three different pre-Deepness languages. Then I replaced it, and tapped a bit more connection. "My apologies. My translation spell was running out."

Blatant lies and misinformation, but I did not want her to know my real abilities and limits.

"Ah. Should you be using a translation spell, if you're trying to learn English properly? Or does it do that on it own?"

I wasn't sure if she'd bought my imitation of a 'paladin' praying to invoke magic, but it was of minor import.

"It only translates what I say, not what I hear. First one, then I will practice the other," I told her.

"I see. My ride has arrived," Mercy told me, standing. I stood as well, and she let the three men come to us.

"Mercy-,"

"I'm terribly sorry about the confusion, sir," she said to the bald man in the middle.

"Quite alright, these things are part of the process of discovery. So long as no harm is done." He shrugged, taking her hand. The other two men fell into position as bodyguards.

I let them act without interference, because this did not seem to be the prelude for a public ambush.

"All is well, sir."

"Well, we'll still need to bring you in to make sure of that. And… you are Superman's new sidekick, yes? Ferris?"

"Off duty, my name is Renka," I agreed shifting to shake his offered right hand. The world slowed down as I began to tap, and my vision distorted and centered in on his hand, because I knew what my plan would be if my assumptions about him were at all correct. My tin-enhanced eyes probably saw some thin layer of substance spread on his palm, with a different shine than skin oils or sweat.

'I will need to look at other people's palms to compare, later.'

I took his hand and shook. As long as it was not a potent drug, explosive, or poison, I should be fine, I hoped.

My guess, from what Wally had told me about baking soda and vinegar experiments, was that it was something to wash off any agent that Mercy had put on my hands, assuming she had, as that being noticed by a Justice League sensor would be something he'd want to prevent. And refusing to shake or offering my other hand would be a giveaway of my suspicions.

If I was not ridiculously paranoid, at least. But Earth powers had proven ridiculously versatile and capable thus far.

He might have had some way to prevent violence in the park from being noticed if I triggered his suspicions, or he might have more people on standby to assault me – potentially even a hired super-villain criminal to cause a ruckus and draw me into a trap, since he was obviously a wealthy and powerful man – after we parted, for the sake of plausible deniability.

"Alexander Luthor," he replied as we shook, and my stomach swooped. "outside of business deals, however, I prefer to be known as Lex. A pleasure to meet someone of such strong moral character, Miss Ferris."

It took a large amount of self-control not to show how much I was reacting mentally as I tapped several pertinent metal-minds in a rush. My mind took off in fears and possibilities in a rush, and I was overcome with the wonder of whether I had been anywhere near paranoid enough.

'Lex Luthor has access to nanobots, I bet, and they could have entered through my skin and I have no clue if tapping a gold-mind would affect anything they did to me. Rusts, rusts, rusts and Ruin!'

I knew I had let a little of my recognition show on my face, and I rallied to let a little more show through, because I had a perfect cover that had nothing to do with the Superman's assertions that he was a very well-hidden super-villain organizer.

"I have heard of you," I said with an affirmative nod. Then, "Miss Mercy, are you the bodyguard that shot Sportsmaster in Tai… Taiwan? Taipei? Well, at the… when the attack happened. I am friends with Aqualad, and he spoke of you, after when he was with Red Arrow."

"Nothing too bad, I hope. Yes, Mercy saved my life from that madman at the end, there," Lex Luthor confirmed, rather than letting her speak. "Of course, if not for Aqualad and Red Arrow holding most of them off, even she would have been overwhelmed." I turned to Mercy.

"I have fought Sportsmaster in the past. It was not a fun experience," I complained dramatically. "Whenever you have a free day again, let me know and I will buy you dinner." Then I realized I was stupid and tapped my zinc-mind for damage control.

'And my mouth is moving faster than my brain again, because the question she's about to ask is how she should let me know. I know computer viruses and hackers exist, so do I want to give Lex Luthor's bodyguard, or Luthor himself, my email address? I could never check it on a Justice League computer again in case of a virus… Maybe? I do not know right now, and I do not want to guess wrong.'

'I have no phone number… Give her a wrong address? Deny having an address? Claim I cannot remember it? I have given my email to other people, so she might know I was lying if Lex Luthor has good spies, but she would not call me on it without breaking our politeness cover, and if she knows I have one she would know what it is anyway so lying would not keep it secret only let her know.'

'Give her a complicated, wrong email and rush to a computer to make a new email account before she can check it? Ruuusts…'

"Do you have an email address?" I asked preemptively. "If you do, I have one you can reach me at." I gave her my email address, except I swapped 16 with 61 in the address. If I got an email anyway, she knew the actual things from spies, and in the time it bought me I planned to ask the Batman about the severity of email attacks or other options Lex flipping Luthor could take, and go with his advice from there.

 

[guyfromtheplace1]

Is she still tapping fortune for this whole thing?

Also this chapter was confusing on the first readthrough, but made much more sense on the second, apparently my eyes skipped over a paragraph.

 

[spiritualatheist]

Well shit. That isn't good. By the way, how does she know that Luthor is a villain? I wouldn't think Superman would talk much about him