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Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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For Yuffie, adjusting to a different world was... Interesting?
She was stuck with Alchemist. Tracy Whittaker, according to the paperwork she saw after he cast a spell on her so she could read and speak the language.
He'd only wasted a bit of time getting around to teaching her how to write. The language 'Eenglisch' was weird. Simple, though, in some ways. It only had so many symbols... But they combined together to create complete words.
She hadn't been looking forward to the lessons. She'd hated learning the scripts for Wutaian, just hours and hours of papers and little symbols and brush strokes- No thank you!
But he broke up the lessons with something really cool! Ninja-Wizard lessons!
Taken from some place called Fish Cake. Weird, but whatever.
Tracy- And she was sticking to Tracy, since that's what she was supposed to call him when they were out in public- Tracy actually was really, really...
Bad.
The whole list of scrolls he had from the Fish Cake place all demanded a combination of physical and magical energy, and they'd both spent a while puzzling it out.
Yuffie had been more than happy to rub it in his nose that she figured it out first!
Heck, it had been a while and he still couldn't figure it out at all!
All he had to do was scrunch up the muscles in his tummy and push with a good solid 'Hnng!' and then, when the energy started to trickle out, think really hard about cycling your magic all like 'Whoosh!' and it would make the chakra stuff!
(Alchemist's body, being artificial and not made of the right kinds of rare and conductive materials, did not in fact channel chakra at all.)
It was weird, here... When she wasn't dealing with lessons, she was allowed to play with his doggy Ash as much as she wanted to. She could explore the mountains around the cabin he called home. There was even a spot he'd set up where she could practice her magic as much as she wanted, or work with her mother's shuriken or...
It was weird, here. Tracy didn't have a very solid structure of things. His lessons weren't focused on making her sit down and demand she listen. If she just had too much energy, they'd go outside and do something that way before coming back in to work on things. Usually that involved him reading things to her from a computer before putting in whatever answers she worked out, and then walking her through the corrections it needed.
He would ask her what she wanted to eat, then actually make it if he could.
He wasn't the greatest cook... But the food was never burned, and he insisted on lots of vegetables.
And... He never seemed disappointed with her. When she would struggle with something, he wouldn't yell at her, or demand she spend hours and hours memorizing things. They just worked on it, breaking things down into smaller and smaller pieces and walking her through the steps.
'Real world math.' He explained to her, a few different times. 'Is just more and more complicated ways of adding and subtracting. Everything else just matters for insanely smart people doing jobs with things like imaginary numbers or calculus. Astronomers and engineers.'
For the other activities? Sometimes he brought her with him back to that cave... And one time, he gave her and Jinx a great big roll of wire, a pack of markers and told them to 'Trap everything. Remind the kids they're not safe, especially when they think they are.' which seemed kind of mean... And then she remembered that Alchemist- Tracy, she had to remember that- Tracy had burnt down the Pagoda of the Five Gods to cover a distraction in the heart of Wutai.
Today? Today he had her and Jinx and himself all wearing protective clothes and big stupid helmets while he pulled out a pair of Shinra brand all terrain motorbikes! The expensive ones!
"I promised I would teach you how to ride a motorcycle, and I'll be sticking to that." Alchemist said to Jinx. "But we're going to be starting with something a bit lighter. If this falls on you, it's less likely to leave you seriously hurt."
"Okay. I get that. But why all the protective gear?" Jinx asked him, holding up her arms to indicate the full outfit he'd told them to put on.
He was wearing one, too.
"Habit." He answered. "Might not want to expose the fact that Protect, well, protects us from things like getting stung by a bug hitting you in the face at a hundred kilometers per hour."
Yuffie absolutely loved that! He trained and practiced, and then actually explained why he hid things, or how to hide things! He was like some of her dads old shinobi, the ones that could go anywhere, do anything and didn't need Materia to do it! The few times she could pester lessons out of the old men, they always told her 'It's about how you think. Hard work and practice beat those newfangled Materia and them durned trained monsters!'.
Then her dad yelled at her about wasting her time and she wasn't allowed to meet old Master Roshi anymore.
"Yuffie." She perked up, zeroing all of her attention right on him. "I've got some nausea medicine in the cabin if you need it. Don't be afraid to speak up, throwing up in these helmets is nasty."
She saluted, the helmet hiding her grin.
There was a world of difference between how he taught, and how her instructors taught.
And Yuffie was loving every minute of it!
-----
Jinx had a strange gray box in hand with a handful of different wires connected to it.
She'd been really curious about the place they visited, and Alchemist eventually acquiesced to helping her learn more about it...
By giving her a knockoff Wayne-Station that he called a 'Playstation' and a multi-disc jeweled CD case. It had some blonde guy on it with really spiky hair and a giant sword in the middle of what looked like a blizzard or some other kind of white-out.
It took her a few minutes to get everything set up, but there were two wires in the back of the game system, a controller hooked up to the front and Alchemist had given her a little square box that plugged in just above the controller that he called a 'Memory card. With space for fifteen different save files!'.
Which... Was that impressive? Back in Nineteen Ninety-Seven? She didn't know. She'd been, like, two years old.
After she had everything hooked up she pressed the power button and sat down.
"Oh!" A voice, Dinah, piped up from behind her as she came in. "I didn't know you like video games, Jinx!"
There was a second where the system went through some kind of bootup phase, for some reason a sense of dread welled up in Jinx' chest when the screen hanged for a second on the P symbol before turning black.
"I've never actually played any before, but Alchemist said this is the world we just went to." There was a sword embedded in the ground with two options. New Game and Continue.
"So what was he after in this world?" Dinah sat down on the couch behind Jinx, looking at the screen as though it would let her puzzle out the answer.
"I wanted us to go on a vacation. Since he kind of runs himself ragged and won't ask for help most of the time." Which worked out great! No problems at all! She wasn't developing a sarcastic streak a mile wide!
"...How did that work out?" Dinah asked her, both of them watching as a short video played. Something about people on a train.
Like. On the top of the train.
And floating green motes of light in front of some really cartoonish brun-
That was Aerith. Aerith was in the game!
"It was not as relaxing as I hoped it would be at first, and things got really rough in the middle, but we actually spent a few weeks relaxing in the end. It was kind of nice, then." The hot springs resort had been absolutely fantastic! They got to relax, eat whatever they wanted, not have to worry about what was going on or who was doing what.
"Where all did you go?" The cutscene was coming to an end, the spiky blonde with a sword summersaulted off of the top of a train.
"Tried a theme park, but apparently it was more like a money-laundering scheme. Then a beach resort, but that was actually a military landing point for the de-facto expanding dictatorship run by a mega-corporation. Eventually ended up at a hot-spring hotel way up north in these frozen mountains." The blonde guy was apparently named 'Ex-SOLDIER', which was a terrible name. But he swung around a sword bigger than he was and could kill the Shinra Security Forces in one hit.
"Did you have fun?" Dinah finally asked after watching Jinx play the game for a bit longer, waiting until the younger girl was asked to give the Ex-SOLDIER a name.
She just stuck with Cloud.
"It was a mixed bag. Things did not go according to plan." Barret was the leader of the little group in-game. A big black man with a machine gun for an arm. He was giving Cloud a lot of grief, and Cloud was snarking at him.
That... Kind of reminded her of Alchemist. The blase attitude as people were giving him grief and he just didn't care about their opinions.
She wondered if he learned it from these kinds of games?
Things were silent for a while, barring the catchy music in the game. Cloud and Barret went deep into the reactor, which looked a lot different from the one in Nibelheim, fought a giant scorpion... And planted a bomb.
"...Are you playing a terrorist in this game?" Dinah must have been paying attention. The woman was leaning forward, her eyes locked on the screen.
"Looks like it." And suddenly some of what Alchemist had done over there made a little more sense. "But the people in charge are murdering whole villages and experimenting on babies to make super soldiers, so I guess everyone sucks?"
The two were silent for a long minute, just watching Jinx play the game, meet up with Aerith and escaping from Shinra Security forces.
"...And you went here for a vacation?" Dinah... Sounded kind of horrified, actually.
"Yep!" Jinx answered her, almost bubbly. "It was really exciting!"
-----
Kaldur'ahm was stressed. Tired. He'd had a long, long week.
The day after they came back from Bialya, he'd finally just decided to bite the bullet and talk with his parents.
Ocean Master, Prince Orm, had tried to kidnap the Queen and derailed absolutely everything. He, Superboy and Miss Martian had to figure out a way to resolve the mess, all the while they were pretending to work with Orm.
It was stressful, grating in the extreme that he couldn't act. That watching the Prince, he saw countless small things that he would have likely considered inconsequential if he hadn't been looking for them.
The monster hadn't just tried to kill the queen! He'd been trying to extract her life force! To what ends, Aqualad didn't know. But it didn't truly matter. That was not a magic used for benevolent purposes.
They dealt with it. They resolved the situation... But they couldn't pin anything on the Prince. He'd gotten away with it, smirking victoriously at them as they had to leave, to attend to their own lives and responsibilities.
...Kaldur hated politics.
Throughout the last week, things had mostly settled into a semblance of peace in the base. There was still tension, Alchemist had actually gotten weirder, if that were at all possible.
And he kept bringing along a little girl, perhaps about nine or ten that he said he'd adopted!
By itself, that wouldn't be a problem... But the girl was some unholy combination of Robin, Batman and Alchemist himself! Just a few days back they'd discovered tripwires and ink-traps almost everywhere in the base! Trying to run away or escape just made things worse, easily a hundred-fold!
Today, Saturday, was supposed to be something different, at least. Everyone on the team had been offered some additional, optional training.
By Alchemist, which was quite the surprise. According to his King, Batman had gotten the mage to agree to teach a basic magical primer to the various apprentices.
Including a healing spell.
Aquaman hadn't made it an order for him to attend, but he had stressed that it may be a good idea, in case outside help would be unavailable if something like the Bialyan incident occurred again.
Aqualad was hardly about to argue!
And judging by the other members of the team that were all situated around the rec room? He wasn't the only one.
Robin was here, Player One was too, and Power Girl made up the last member of the team. Then there was another girl here, Giovanni's daughter Zatanna Zatara.
Kid Flash, Super Boy and Miss Martian were all absent. Kaldur didn't know if was due to personal obligations or simple choice. And, really, he supposed it wasn't really his place to pry.
Or... Maybe it was? The team didn't have a structure in the same way the Atlantean military did. Knowing how much he could demand, how much he could push, would be particularly useful.
Aqualad snapped to attention when Alchemist walked in, followed immediately by Captain Marvel.
"Hello, everyone. I'm glad you could make it, and I'll try to not take up too much of your time. I understand how valuable the weekend is during the school year." Alchemist had a handful of thin books in his hands. He gave the stack over to Captain Marvel, who kept one and then passed the stack on to the nearest person.
The cycle continued until everyone had a booklet and there were a handful of leftovers that were simply placed on the table in the middle of the room.
"Before we get into the meat of what we'll be doing, I wanted to go over a few things. Originally, Doctor Fate was intended to be here to assist with an explanation on a specific branch of magic, but sadly it seems he's dealing with a personal issue. Captain Marvel has graciously volunteered to take his place, however!" The large man in red smiled shyly and waved at the team. "Please make sure to thank him for offering his insight before we're done."
"Magic." Alchemist himself sat down on the couch, next to Kaldur. "Is a tool, a way of life and, more importantly, a means of defining reality. There are entities throughout the world that can only exist because of magic in one form or another. Kaldur'ahm and the rest of Atlantis are actually a fantastic example. Without magic, an intrinsic and important part of his blood and history, his entire culture would not exist."
Captain Marvel sat down in an unoccupied chair, his eyes locked on the mage.
"That being said." Alchemist grabbed the rest of the booklets off the table in the center of the group and hid them away in his pocketspace. "Magic is also a lens through which the world can be seen. Knowing one or two spells, a few basic cantrips, won't redefine the world for you. But delving deeply into it, you'll find a veil is removed from your sight. You will see things, see people and monsters and so many things that can't decide which one they are, that you may well decide you were better off without this tool."
Kaldur was waiting to ask a question, but it didn't seem the wizard was done speaking yet.
"The majority of established family lines of mages are, thankfully, over in Europe and Britain. This is a positive and a detriment. A positive in that it means that most of the older evils they've cultivated are still over there. Vampires are uncommon in the states, but actively run blood farms in just about every European country. Baba-Yaga is an old and likely immortal nightmare, but she has a well-defined hunting ground that we, all of us, need to be aware of so we can avoid it. The Brits, mostly the nobility and their servants, think that demon summoning and child-sacrifices make for a fine weekend activity. Some of this does go on over here." Alchemist admitted at the sickened looks the team were sending his way. "But it's thankfully uncommon."
"You..." Robin, Boy Wonder slowly swallowed as they digested that. "Said that those are the good things?"
"Astute." Alchemist... Praised? "The Americas have the largest number of un-tamed, wild spirits in the world. Some of them are powerful enough, they were considered Gods by the people here. And for some of them, they were right. Very few mages make their homes in the Dust Bowl because it's been crippled. The Rocky Mountains are pretty much uninhabited by mages because the things there are numerous, dangerous and simply inhuman. Skinwalkers and Wendigo hunt indiscriminately up north and to the west, but they especially go after people that are aware of them."
"To a much more mixed note, however... The majority of the Old Ways here in the States have mostly died with the Native Americans and their places of power are often lost or forgotten. This limits the number of people that can repeat something like the formation of the cannibalistic Skeleton Man, but conversely it also means that important spirits names, or locations, as well as the rituals and methods to appease them are also gone." Alchemist sighed and shook his head. "There are always those who would abuse knowledge to attain personal power, but without that knowledge we are left blind and weak. Prey for spirits, beasts and whatever other things are hiding in the dark."
Alchemist leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, intertwined his fingers so he could hide his mouth as he continued talking.
"There is a sort of passive field on most of these creatures. You'll find your eyes just slide over them, normally. That you can't quite focus on them, that you'll forget them shortly after you see them. This is no defense against them, make no mistake, it just means that you're prey. Unaware and unknowing. When you can see them. When you can hunt them. You're no longer just prey, you're now potentially dangerous. And these creatures, each and every one of them, hate feeling fear." A collective shiver ran down the spines of those present.
"So you may consider this your opportunity to back out. When you've learned how to properly see, gained the Insight to properly experience the world, you cannot go back." Alchemist swept his gaze across the kids. Lingering especially on Zatara.
"There's no shame in picking your battles." Captain Marvel said from where he sat. A painfully serious expression on his face. "My city is a hot-bed of supernatural activity. I've seen things I certainly would not inflict upon anyone else. However..."
The super hero licked his lips, momentarily nervous before he rallied his thoughts.
"As Alchemist has mentioned, a single healing spell is unlikely to fully lift the veil from your eyes. And it may well save your lives, or the lives of those you try and help. It's unkind of us to spring this on you, to inform you of the things crawling in the shadows like this. But... This is a losing battle, as we've been fighting it. We need every light that's willing to help us battle against the darkness. Not just the shining beacons, like myself or Giovanni, but every willing candle. Even a flickering flame can push back the night. If any of you wish to back out, to limit your contact with the nightmares crawling in the waking world, you may do so now. There is no shame, none here will blame you."
Kaldur... Looked down at his knees. He didn't have the choice, not really.
Magic flowed through his veins. These things, these monsters, these nightmares... They would hunt him regardless.
"...I came here to learn." Player One spoke up from where she sat. "You said these things will hunt us regardless of whether or not we know magic?"
"Yes." Captain Marvel said simply.
"Then teach us." Power Girl answered him.
"So we can fight back." And Robin finished for them.
Kaldur wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel. But right now, this moment?
He was impossibly proud of his team!
-----
Reading through the pamphlet Alchemist had handed out, Zatanna was a little bit confused.
The spell was... Easy? Too easy.
Every book in her father's library agreed that healing magic was especially difficult and strenuous, though!
So why was it that it felt like the spell worked when she cast it?
"Excuse me, Alchemist?" The blonde girl- Karen?- asked him after a few moments. "I'm trying to follow the instructions but I just don't feel it working."
"That's alright." The man, who wasn't a dragon at the moment, stepped over to her. "You don't feel anything at all?"
"Maybe?" Zatanna didn't understand how she was struggling. The instructions were incredibly simple! "I don't know if it's magic or nerves, I think."
"Alright..." The man trailed off in thought for a moment, just flicking his finger in the air as though it helped him. "I've got an idea."
He pushed his hand through a hole in the air, one that had definitely not been there a moment earlier! And brought it back out with a green orb.
One that positively radiated magic. More than most of the artifacts her dad told her to stay away from in the house!
"Here, just put your hand on this, alright?" Alchemist waited a moment for the strange, quiet girl to place her hand on the orb, then covered it with his own. "I'm going to use this to cast a spell. Tell me if you feel anything, okay?"
There was a bare trickle of magic in the air, enough that she could only just feel it. It was quickly followed by green sparkles surrounding Alchemist.
"I think..." The blonde was staring at the green orb. "I felt something."
"Just focus on that." Alchemist gave her a soft smile. "We don't have to get it down today, we can work on it as much you need to."
He put the orb away and moved on, checking on Robin.
Zatanna pursed her lips, a question on her mind. Not about the magic they were practicing, but what they said earlier.
"Hey." She got the attention of the older man in the red costume. "Mister Captain Marvel, Sir?"
He looked up and away from Player One, the girl that had done something with her copy of the book that made it go up in smoke and just instantly knew how to cast the spell.
"What can I do for you, Zatanna?" He gave her a big, wide smile and covered about half the distance between her and the other girl.
"You guys... Why isn't the Justice League doing anything about those other big threats? Like the vampires or skinwalkers? Why hasn't anyone done anything about the Old Crone?" She knew there wasn't any risk in saying Baba-Yaga but still, most people preferred to use her other titles.
"If we thought we could succeed in doing so?" Captain Marvel's eyes held an ancient wisdom in them. Far older than he appeared. "Then we would do so. But many of those creatures can harm even Superman or myself. And giving them an opportunity to turn one of us may well kill all of us."
He stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder, smiling warmly at her.
"I was quite excited to hear that someone was offering to teach magic, especially healing magic for those very reasons!" She hadn't ignored the way that Captain Marvel had actually read and experimented with his own spellbook. Pamphlet.
"Was... This your first actual spell?" There was no way that could be right! The man leaked magic like, like, like something that leaked a lot!
"Ah-hah!" He chuckled nervously and scratched the back of his head, acting embarrassed over being caught out on some secret. "The little free time I have is usually spent on the various pursuits needed by the Justice League. Tomes carrying proper instruction are rare and actual teachers are... Often too demanding for my schedule."
She'd been around Captain Marvel for less than an hour and he'd shed more magic than her home did in a day! How could he not know any real magic?!
"Alright everyone!" Alchemist didn't shout, but he did project his voice to be heard. "You're all doing especially well! Yes, Karen, even you! Starting out, magic can be surprisingly exhausting! Take ten, relax, grab something to eat or drink. We'll pick back up after a short break."
The various teenagers didn't even protest, mostly just slinking off to the attached kitchen.
Zatanna, though, had stopped next to Alchemist who'd grabbed Captain Marvel by the arm.
Not, like, forcefully or anything. Just hard enough to get the man to stop next to him.
"-more books I'd like to work with you on, if you can find the time." She caught Alchemist saying to the man, though she'd missed the start of the conversation.
"...I think I'd like that, actually." And Captain Marvel looked incredibly serious. His eyes were dark and focused.
"Excuse me?" Zatanna felt more nervous now that it was the two of them and just her. Even though the rest of the teens were only about six or seven meters away.
"What'ya need, Z?" Alchemist, instead of getting upset at being interrupted, just leaned down to meet her eyes.
"I'm done." She held the booklet out to him. "Do you have anything else I can learn?"
Rather than immediately answer, he stuck his arm into that weird hole in reality again and put away the booklet. Then pulled out another, thinner one.
"I was hoping someone would ask!" He handed it to her, a wide smile on his face.
She flipped it open and- "Woah! This one is way more complicated!"
"It is." He agreed, ignoring the numerous curious eyes aimed at him from the kitchenette. "But I know you can figure it out!"
She flipped through the various pages, detailing how the spell worked. What it could and couldn't do.
"How are you so sure I can do it?" This Esuna spell, it didn't directly heal any harm... But it could clear up poisons and diseases and so many other things it kind of made her head spin.
"Because." The way Alchemist was smiling at her was the same way her dad did. Warm and proud. "I believe in you."
