Chapter 165
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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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Black Canary had a lot of mixed feelings about today.
Most of them were bad.
Some of them were just confused.
Things had finally started to settle down from the paperwork nightmare that was the U.N. Security Council throwing a fit and she'd tried to take the day off. She'd been playing that old game that Jinx had, enjoying the gameplay even as the story felt incoherent and poorly translated.
The Cloud character just... It almost felt like he knew less about what was going on than she did!
Then she'd been interrupted by Jinx. Apparently, Alchemist had sent her a message about problems at the mountain.
A training simulation gone wrong, she'd discovered upon arriving. Most of the team didn't actually remember much of what happened while they were all connected to J'onn.
Most of the team. There were two exceptions. One that she'd been expecting and one that she hadn't.
Miss Martian and Superboy.
Getting the two of them calmed down enough to talk had been... Stressful.
She would've liked to talk with the Martian Manhunter but he'd barely been coherent when she arrived and quickly passed out not long after.
The story the two teens had told her, of wolf-like aliens infecting people with their blood, turning humans into blood-hungry monsters... Or the rare few unlucky ones turning into greater beasts akin to the aliens, monstrous beasts that would actively hunt and devour uninfected people?
It was likely for the best that everyone else could only recall snippets at most. Like Robin being eaten alive, or the shifting weapons the monsters used to butcher people being used on Kaldur. Player One supposedly had lasted the longest of the team, aside from M'gann herself, because the girl had been able to take the abuse and just keep going.
Dinah was not qualified for this kind of mess. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But she didn't know who else she was supposed to turn to! At least, not while maintaining confidentiality and the secrecy needed for a team of underage superheroes in training.
Aside from offering an ear to listen, there genuinely wasn't much she could do in this situation. And she hated it.
"-And I'm telling you, the spell should work. Fabricate lists the base materials as a 'Material Requirement' and Limited Wish specifically says that it covers up to one-thousand GP of material requirements." Dinah could hear Alchemist talking in the Operations Center, out of the way of everything else that had been going on.
Opening the door, she even got to see who he was talking to. Her ward, Jinx.
"But that shouldn't work!" The pinkette was half bent over a terminal, looking over a few sheets of paper. "It's just too open for abuse!"
"Well, feel free to test it." Alchemist said before he dropped a black rock on the table next to the papers. "Adamant ingots have a value of ten GP per pound in Churt according to one of the books I'd read, so if I'm right you should be able to just wish up about ninety-nine Adamant daggers out of one diamond."
"Wait, ninety-nine?" Jinx looked up, confused. "If it can cover one-thousand GP, shouldn't it make one-hundred?"
"Leather." The man answered her. "To wrap the handle and make a sheath."
"Alchemist." Dinah interrupted, though she almost wished she didn't have to. It was good to see Jinx talking to someone, having an animated conversation about something.
On the other hand, it was Alchemist. He and Dinah... Did not get along.
"Hmm?" Alchemist turned around, away from the two spell scrolls he'd been arguing with Jinx over. "Black Canary. What can I do for you?"
"I needed to get your report on what happened." Short, succinct and direct were the easiest methods she'd found to deal with him. The man refused to engage in small talk and floundered terribly if he was forced to deal with it.
"Not a whole lot I can offer." The mage admitted. "Batman requested that I stay on base during the training session in case something went wrong. Red Tornado and I were in here as the team and J'onn were running their simulation. When something went wrong, Speedy came and got me, then I teleported to the training room."
So far he was right. There wasn't a whole lot there for him to offer, his involvement being relatively brief.
"Once there, I cast a mental defense spell on each individual member of the team. The last two, Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian, were done concurrently. I assume Miss Martian was in the middle of a panic attack and tried to flee, but I caught her, broke the spell isolating her mind, broke the spell keeping my mind private and just sat with her until she calmed down." The man shrugged towards her, as though implying some measure of uncertainty. "I sent a message to Jinx to go get you around then."
"Megan did mention that she felt... Deaf, when she woke up. I'll have to assume that was how she responded to the spell." Dinah sighed and grabbed one of the chairs, sitting down. "...Alchemist, she mentioned something I want to ask you about."
"Sure, whatever you-"
"Can I use some of the diamonds?" Jinx interrupted the wizard as he was answering Dinah. "I'm going to prove you wrong."
"Go for it." Alchemist said over his shoulder before turning back to Dinah. "Sorry, what were you going to ask?"
"Megan mentioned that you sang to her?" Which... Considering how difficult the man found it to put significant inflection into his voice, she just couldn't really imagine him doing that. "And that she saw some other kind of psychic of significant power in your memories. I was wondering if it was someone that we need to be worried about."
"Ah, no. For a variety of reasons." Alchemist shook his head and sat down at a nearby desk. "That psychic I was remembering was an individual named Giygas. Or Giegue. While they did have psychic powers that could travel through time, Giygas itself was killed through the efforts of a quartet of time travelers. Well, if the mad, screaming creature was alive enough to die at the end."
"...That's not particularly reassuring, Alchemist." So far as she was aware, even J'onn was limited to the present and he was the most experienced and now second most powerful psychic that the League was aware of.
"I don't know what to tell you." The man shrugged helplessly. "I could lie to you, if you want?"
"No..." Dinah inhaled and leaned back, closing her eyes and trying to forcibly relax the muscles in the back of her neck. "I... Appreciate that you're honest with me. I just struggle to make sense of it half the time."
"...Yeah, that's fair." She heard him admit. "It's an insane world. Trying to make things make sense? Just makes things worse."
...She hated that he was making far too much sense in saying that.
"...Do you mind if I ask you something personal?" Dinah asked after what felt like a few minutes of silence. When he didn't respond, she continued. "I keep expecting you to be hostile, given our history, but you're not. I can tell we don't like each other-"
"Actually-" He interrupted. "I'm okay with you. I mean, I think you're irritating and need to learn better timing but you're trying to do right by Jinx and that's worth a lot in my book. At the least, I can be professional with you."
"...Thanks. I think." And now she actually felt bad. She still didn't like him but... She could be professional, the same as him.
There was a loud crash in the room, sounding like someone dropped a silverware drawer. It was sudden and startling, Dinah leapt from her chair-
And saw dozens upon dozens of black knives all over the stone floor in front of Jinx. Some of them were buried tip-first in the rock!
"Umm..." Jinx slowly raised a hand, one finger in the air. "I had to cast a few things first but... I got the spell working?"
"Nice!" Alchemist congratulated the girl before he stood up and stretched, grabbing one of the knives. He held it up in the air and Dinah could see a dull green sheen where the light reflected off of it. "Yep, looks right so far. One sec-"
He raised his hand in the air and snapped his fingers, a small orb of white mage-light forming over his head. It changed the reflection from green to purple-white.
"B.E.A-utiful! Congratulations, Jinx! You've violated the laws in regards to the conservation of mass!" He shifted his grip on the handle of the blade and then handed it over to Dinah, hilt first. "One nearly-indestructible, masterwork knife. Courtesy of Jinx. Think the rest of the League would want one?"
Dinah looked at the weapon, then up at Alchemist, then over to Jinx...
"You know what?" She finally said after a long moment of thought. "Sure. Why not."
This wasn't even the craziest thing she'd seen today.
-----
Dinah had left some time back and Jinx had decided she wanted to go outside and get some fresh air.
Alchemist, however, knew things weren't done. Batman hadn't talked with him yet, the two hadn't spoken since the mage had left the all-too crowded room filled with loud, stressed teenagers.
Having a moment alone, he'd chosen to spend it practicing. He'd read Fabricate before he and Jinx had gotten into their discussion about the spell, he'd wanted to make sure which rules he was bending.
With a quiet 'Ping!' Alchemist noticed he'd gotten a new message. Opening it, he found a response to something he'd sent off a while back, inside the world of Bloodstained.
~~ From: Ultra-powerful best goddess Terra-Tan! ~~
~~ Congratulations! If we had a bugfinder title, you'd be a shoe-in for it! Or if you had titles.
First off- We've updated the experience algorithm for use in Illusion Dungeons. It goes (Enemy Experience X Total Equipment Modifier X Race and Perk modifier) X (Difficulty level - Character Level) + 1.
This technically means that a player may get boosted experience for going to areas that outlevel them. This also sets the minimum experience gained from any enemy to 1 instead of 0. It's been noticed that, during playtesting, getting minimum rewards tends to encourage people to move on better than offering no rewards.
Second- Player GP is now flagged and held separate from Enemy GP in the event that the Player encounters an enemy that steals your money. Player GP regained from such enemies will no longer be subject to +GP effects.
Third- Renaming 'Intelligence' into 'Magic' may work to alleviate some of the consistent Gamer issues. I'll run it past my other playtesters. What would make for a good alternative to 'Wisdom'? 'Will'? 'Resistance'?
Alright! Keep up the good work and always remember!
If you're about to do something stupid, send me a text and tell me in advance! ~~
That was... That.
Alchemist just closed the message and got back to work. He had a project that he needed to finish up before the Twentieth of November. To accomplish it, he'd picked up another spell, Telekinesis. It was a fun spell, had great range, the utility was immense...
He was using it to pick up the various weapons and other items he was manufacturing by leveling up Limited Wish. The daggers with Jinx had been a nice touch, simple and straightforward. What he was working on now, though?
"Alchemist." Batman's gravelly voice, coming from the doorway, broke the wizards attention and caused him to drop his spell. "Are those... Kunai?"
"Yeah." Alchemist answered, drawing another of the makeshift weapons to his hand and dropping it into the inventory. "Grab a chair and tell me what's up."
Another individual was made apparent as Batman's silhouette stepped into the room. The Martian Manhunter was stumbling in just behind him.
"We need you to break the spell isolating J'onn's mind." Batman told him as he sat down. "Then we need some answers."
"That... Is why I'm here." Alchemist caught another adamantine kunai and dropped it in the inventory before he held a hand up and snapped his fingers.
J'onn, who'd been swaying almost drunkenly, slowly stabilized and let go of the chair he'd been holding on to for support.
"Thank you." The Dark Knight said without even bothering to look at the Martian behind him. "Why didn't you do that before you vacated the training room?"
"I was a bit preoccupied." Alchemist admitted. "Miss Martian looked like she was about to have a panic attack so she was my immediate focus. After that? Martian Manhunter passed out and I don't know how you all feel about having me cast magic on you in your sleep."
There was a long moment of silence in the room as J'onn sat down as well, the two heroes simply watching him as he telekinetically collected the repurposed masonry tools he'd created.
"Why did you have Jinx make knives while you made ninja weaponry?" Batman eventually asked after a few minutes had gone by and the majority of the tools had been stowed away.
"That was more of a lesson than anything else." Alchemist admitted after the last kunai had been put away. "Some of the magic I'd like to share with her is incredibly flexible, but only if it's considered as such. Using it like this?"
Alchemist extracted a diamond, one worth one-thousand, five-hundred GP from the inventory and held it up. He focused on what he wanted, the materials they were made of, their cost and how the spell would use them-
The diamond dissolved into dust and shurikens, a lot of them, rained down on the ground creating a massive pile. The clinking and clattering of the metal rain was loud enough to drown out the sound of the door opening once again.
"It's actually wasteful. The raw materials cost two-thirds what the spell demanded of me. It's not actually a concern, we have more than enough to spare- I wanted to try and show Jinx that the way the rules are written can offer a lot of ways to exploit them, rather than just limit us." Shuriken, in Pathfinder, were made in groups of five and weighed half a pound in total. Or point two-three kilograms. So he could get ten shuriken for ten gp of materials. He should have made one-thousand, or right close to it. "She struggles a bit with Conjuration and Transmutation spells, the ones that can really redefine reality. Uses a lot of illusion spells instead, most of the time she doesn't bother transforming into a human form anymore, just throws up an illusion and lets people talk to the space above her head."
Alchemist shook his head, exhaling slowly and shrinking into his chair as he did so.
"I prefer to redefine reality, she's more inclined to change how it's experienced... I'm hoping I can get her to break out of thinking that she has to hide who and what she is. If she wants to be a dragon, she should be one without having to worry about how the mayflies around her feel." Which was a bit hypocritical of him. He barely touched illusion spells and he didn't have anything from the enchantment school of magic. "I trust her to watch my back and I'd like to make sure she has whatever tools I can give her."
Wait... Going by the look the Martian Manhunter was sending his way...
Alchemist had no idea what he was thinking.
"...Right." Batman just said, likely to move things along as Alchemist got back to work summoning the small mountain of shuriken he'd made. "On to more... Relevant... Matters. J'onn mentioned that the form taken on by the hostiles in his simulation were based on something from your memories that Megan had seen. I determined that getting answers on what, exactly, they were was a priority."
"Al... Right? Were they blonde businessmen in red suits or ugly, greasy little scientists wearing lab coats?" Considering Alchemist hadn't been in M'gann's head, he had no idea what they'd dealt with in the simulation.
"No." J'onn finally interjected himself into the conversation, looking a bit more green than when they started. "Wolf monsters."
"...Okay? Are we talking lycans? Werewolves? God-infected? Mutants? Space-predators?" Alchemist asked, trying to remember the various different things he'd seen. "Old ones? Come on, I need a bit more to go off of."
"...What was the one in the middle?" J'onn asked, the man still seemed a bit out of sorts. "God infected?"
"Scourge Beasts." Alchemist nodded as he spoke, the memories sharpening as he put them to words. "Twisted and warped by a disease transmitted through blood ministration. Fast and dangerous, though relatively basic. More advanced forms would often be seen in members of the Healing Church, the ones that had access to purer blood. Possibly sourced from Ebriatas, the Daughter of the Cosmos."
Alchemist held his hand up and gave it a wiggle.
"Maybe. Any which way, they were hungry monsters and killing them could spread the disease if you weren't careful. Fire was a good way of dealing with them." And guns. Fire and guns.
Those monsters were frighteningly good with their claws.
"How... Did you come to know of such monsters?" J'onn whispered, reliving whatever horrors he'd seen.
"The dream that connects to the world housing Yharnam is held aloft by the Archtrees, in the same greater reality as the one I took Wonder Woman and Kar'Yashlan when we tried to fight Wotan. It's a bit higher up, if I remember right. All the way up top there's the Lands In Between, not exactly on my to-do list." As a point of fact, Alchemist wanted nothing to do with the Elden Ring.
"That..." J'onn sounded horrified as he tried to put his thoughts into words. "There are more worlds like that?!"
"At least four." Alchemist felt for the man, he really did... But J'onn didn't actually have to deal with the tragedies of Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro or Elden Ring.
A snowball of tragedies, repeated over and over until, at the bottom, it bowled everything over and there was nothing left.
"Is this why you keep your mind sealed away from us?" J'onn asked, placing his hands on his knees. "These terrible things you've seen, have you been trying to spare M'gann and I from witnessing them?"
"Well..." No, Alchemist had done that to keep M'gann from seeing what he'd done in the world of Final Fantasy Seven. To keep her from feeling his shame, among other things. "If you'd like to accept that as the reason, you're welcome to."
Batman was about to ask something else when there was a loud 'Whoa!' coming from the door. Almost as one, all three adults turned to see Robin standing there and staring at the slowly shrinking pile of throwing stars.
"Dude!" He shouted, picking one up. "Why are there so many of these things? Where did they even come from?!"
"I traded reality a diamond and it gave me a bunch of these in exchange." Considering Alchemist could literally make a valuable enough diamond out of scrap and garbage, they were worth as much to him as they were to the children mining them in Africa.
"O... Kay? Can I have some?" Robin asked as he picked up several of the weapons and held them in between his fingers.
Alchemist looked over to Batman, who nodded slightly.
"Sure. Take as many as you want." Alchemist really only needed five or six. The rest had been made for the sake of getting as much value as he could out of Limited Wish as he tried to level it up.
Up next? Caltrops.
"Sweetness!" Robin picked up several more and jumped into a ninja pose. One that caused Batman to quietly sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose. "What are you even doing with all of these?"
"It's Yuffie's birthday next month." Alchemist answered him. It was also why he'd picked up and was working on leveling Telekinesis. "I'm planning on giving her a set of throwing knives and throwing stars."
"...Alchemist." Batman spoke up, drawing everyone's attention. "Bring her to the cave tomorrow morning."
The man picked up one of the throwing stars, the overhead lights reflecting green on the metal.
"Someone should teach her how to use these properly before you give her such a dangerous set."
On the one hand, Alchemist kind of wanted to argue that the ninja girl already knew how to use throwing weapons.
On the other hand?
Watching Batman learn that for himself would be hilarious.
-----
Just a ways down the hall and hidden under invisibility, Jinx had been listening.
The dragon-girl bit her bottom lip and thought about what had been said. What she'd heard.
Deciding it would probably be best to sleep on it, Jinx teleported home.
She had her own projects, after all...
And she really wanted to show one of them to Alchemist when it was done.
-----
Diana Prince had been having a positively great day.
No villain attacks, the United Nations was calming back down. Her mother was even making some noise about sending a few more of her Amazon sisters to assist her in the embassy they had in Man's World.
Unfortunately, it seemed that she was one of the few in the Hall of Justice that had an enjoyable afternoon.
Batman was at the main terminal in their planetside headquarters, glaring at the monitor as though it had done him a personal offense. J'onn was functionally asleep while sitting in place, his form and posture rigid with stress.
Superman was sitting at the central desk with his head held in his hands, a stricken, horrified look on his face.
The only other person that didn't seem to be too concerned was Black Canary, though the woman did have a particularly large mug of coffee in her hands.
It was likely a good thing that tours of the facility had already ended for the day.
"I take it that something went wrong with training today?" She asked the room, gauging the reactions from those present.
Batman's typing slowed down. Superman slumped further down into the table. J'onn startled awake and Dinah just took a long draw from Batman's personal mug.
"Yes." Was the simple, direct answer from the Caped Crusader.
Diana waited for a moment but the man didn't elaborate.
"Apparently." Dinah continued for him. "Megan has gotten a lot stronger as a psychic than we would have guessed. When she panicked, she took control of the simulation and was running it off of her fears."
The woman took another long sip from the oversized mug.
"Which she picked up in Alchemist's mind, back during the Bialya mission. Apparently he has the knowledge of a reality filled with alien outer gods infecting humans and turning them into monsters." Dinah sounded... Like she was just done, dealing with things.
"He asked me..." Superman mumbled, almost too quiet to hear but for Diana's excellent, superhuman hearing. "He sent me a text and asked me to check their brains. To make sure they weren't growing eyes. On their brains."
Superman sat up, the stricken look on his face unsettled something in Diana's core.
Seeing him struggle against something he couldn't defeat was always painful. He was a shining beacon of hope, he should not look so helpless.
"He said it was a symptom of having too much Insight- The brain still knowing what the mind rejects. That it needs eyes on the inside, eyes to look within." The man shuddered. "He was completely serious, Diana. What kind of madness could he have seen that let him discover such a thing?"
"There... Are many things unfit for mortal minds." Diana hedged, trying not to think of them herself. Such as the fact that, when she'd followed up with Hades, she'd gotten confirmation that Hastur was well and truly dead. Slain at the hands of a true enemy.
Even the god of the underworld hadn't known, not until she'd asked and his Domain fed him the information.
"Did he explain anything else about the phenomenon?" She asked instead, curious to see what other madness the mage had spread in his wake.
"...Yes." J'onn spoke up, running a hand down his exhausted face. "He claimed that, by itself, a small amount of Insight, Eldritch Knowledge that has been seen but not understood, was harmless. Helpful, even. Every mage, sorcerer and psychic has some. It assists them in making connections between facts, people and events that seem otherwise disconnected."
"Intuition, basically." Batman interjected, closing the document he'd been typing and turning around. "He also claimed that too much Insight, aside from the eye-growths and increased intra-cranial pressure, could cause an individual to make connections that may be true but not necessarily correct."
"He referenced The Question." Superman put his head back down on the table. "He told Batman that the Question is a prime example of someone that has enough Insight to see the world beneath all of the lies and seemings. He just lacks the raw ability to make sense of it all."
"So... The rumors about him and aglets...?" Diana led, curious as to what the others thought on the matter.
"We don't know." Batman admitted. "And that's really not important at the moment. The team was exposed to a potential infohazard, one we were only vaguely aware of. Just as dangerous, though, would be the other person that was exposed to it."
He turned around again and clicked a few keys, dragging up an image of a young man.
That was wearing a glass dome on the top of his head, exposing his brain for all to see.
"Psimon, formerly active in Bialya. Sightings prior to the mission the team went on had him pegged as working for Queen Bee." Several screens opened up, pictures of the woman in question.
With the psychic lingering in her shadow.
"After the mission, however, he disappeared and hasn't been seen since. At the moment, all we have is supposition and hearsay. However, assuming he was the psychic that the team encountered, Megan's report specifically states that she dragged him through Alchemist's memories of a place called Yharnam." The pictures were replaced by a photo of a text document, several paragraphs highlighted in yellow. "A place we now know to be connected to those outer gods and that, not just their blood but even the knowledge itself is an infection vector."
"Oh. God." Superman grumbled into the table. "Please tell me we're not dealing with a memetic hazard?"
"I don't know." Batman admitted, news articles from the recent war between Bialya and Egypt brought up on-screen. "Queen Bee has always been erratic and we know she wasn't the one to strike first. If there's more going on than we've seen, we don't know yet. We'll have to keep watching, see if anything comes up."
Batman turned back around, his eyes on the various articles written about the escalating conflicts in the Middle East.
Dinah sat down next to Superman and Diana sat across from him.
"I know how you feel, big guy." Dinah patted the man on the shoulder, sympathy in her voice. "It's a big, crazy mess and it sucks that you got dragged into it."
"No, it's not that." Superman sighed, looking to the women around him. "I actually appreciate the reason I was called in. It's just... I've sat and talked with Alchemist in the past. I'm having a hard time reconciling the kid that told me to go talk to my parents about Connor and the man that explained the growing stages of madness that could come from interacting with those Outer Gods. He sounded so... Calm, really, when he talked about the two paths that people would mutate through. Beasts, he called them. Beasts and Kin."
"He... Does tend to undersell things. Just a bit." Diana admitted, remembering the explanations he'd offered whilst in the Firelink Shrine.
"Unfortunately." Dinah groused, draining the rest of Batman's mug of coffee. "That makes it hard to tell when he's trying to tell you something important. Jinx is starting to pick up on it, too..."
"So..." Diana looked over to the exhausted Martian, then at the back of Batman's head before turning to Superman. "Did you find anything?"
"Find any what?" Superman asked, sounding as tired as J'onn looked.
"Eyes. On the inside?" Diana clarified. "It sounded like it was kind of important."
"No..." Superman sighed and shook his head. "Thankfully not. You don't want to know what Alchemist offered to do if I had found some, though."
"Come on, Clark." Diana tried to smile at the man though it fell flat since he'd leaned back and closed his eyes. "You know me, I'd love to hear what crazy plan he had in mind."
"He offered to go to Yharnam and hunt down a Brainsucker, Diana. Some kind of mutated madman that can literally eat the Insight out of someone's skull." Bruce answered for Clark, though he didn't bother turning around.
"...The same place that's full of madmen and mad gods?" Diana tried to clarify.
She sighed in exasperation when Superman nodded.
"I... Can't tell if that's insane or horrifying." Wonder Woman admitted, her mind going to the battle she'd participated in to free Gwyndolin from Aldrich and what Alchemist had done.
"Both." Dinah said as she stood up and started to make her way to the kitchenette doorway. "Definitely both."
AN/ I'll have to spend a bit of extra time working on the character sheet. I've spent a long time working on a massive chapter that will be posted in a few weeks so I need to refamiliarize myself with everything in these last few chapters.
Fabricate- He's using the pathfinder edition, not 5e. The difference in wording is pretty important for his desires to abuse the spell.
www.d20pfsrd.com
www.d20pfsrd.com
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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Black Canary had a lot of mixed feelings about today.
Most of them were bad.
Some of them were just confused.
Things had finally started to settle down from the paperwork nightmare that was the U.N. Security Council throwing a fit and she'd tried to take the day off. She'd been playing that old game that Jinx had, enjoying the gameplay even as the story felt incoherent and poorly translated.
The Cloud character just... It almost felt like he knew less about what was going on than she did!
Then she'd been interrupted by Jinx. Apparently, Alchemist had sent her a message about problems at the mountain.
A training simulation gone wrong, she'd discovered upon arriving. Most of the team didn't actually remember much of what happened while they were all connected to J'onn.
Most of the team. There were two exceptions. One that she'd been expecting and one that she hadn't.
Miss Martian and Superboy.
Getting the two of them calmed down enough to talk had been... Stressful.
She would've liked to talk with the Martian Manhunter but he'd barely been coherent when she arrived and quickly passed out not long after.
The story the two teens had told her, of wolf-like aliens infecting people with their blood, turning humans into blood-hungry monsters... Or the rare few unlucky ones turning into greater beasts akin to the aliens, monstrous beasts that would actively hunt and devour uninfected people?
It was likely for the best that everyone else could only recall snippets at most. Like Robin being eaten alive, or the shifting weapons the monsters used to butcher people being used on Kaldur. Player One supposedly had lasted the longest of the team, aside from M'gann herself, because the girl had been able to take the abuse and just keep going.
Dinah was not qualified for this kind of mess. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But she didn't know who else she was supposed to turn to! At least, not while maintaining confidentiality and the secrecy needed for a team of underage superheroes in training.
Aside from offering an ear to listen, there genuinely wasn't much she could do in this situation. And she hated it.
"-And I'm telling you, the spell should work. Fabricate lists the base materials as a 'Material Requirement' and Limited Wish specifically says that it covers up to one-thousand GP of material requirements." Dinah could hear Alchemist talking in the Operations Center, out of the way of everything else that had been going on.
Opening the door, she even got to see who he was talking to. Her ward, Jinx.
"But that shouldn't work!" The pinkette was half bent over a terminal, looking over a few sheets of paper. "It's just too open for abuse!"
"Well, feel free to test it." Alchemist said before he dropped a black rock on the table next to the papers. "Adamant ingots have a value of ten GP per pound in Churt according to one of the books I'd read, so if I'm right you should be able to just wish up about ninety-nine Adamant daggers out of one diamond."
"Wait, ninety-nine?" Jinx looked up, confused. "If it can cover one-thousand GP, shouldn't it make one-hundred?"
"Leather." The man answered her. "To wrap the handle and make a sheath."
"Alchemist." Dinah interrupted, though she almost wished she didn't have to. It was good to see Jinx talking to someone, having an animated conversation about something.
On the other hand, it was Alchemist. He and Dinah... Did not get along.
"Hmm?" Alchemist turned around, away from the two spell scrolls he'd been arguing with Jinx over. "Black Canary. What can I do for you?"
"I needed to get your report on what happened." Short, succinct and direct were the easiest methods she'd found to deal with him. The man refused to engage in small talk and floundered terribly if he was forced to deal with it.
"Not a whole lot I can offer." The mage admitted. "Batman requested that I stay on base during the training session in case something went wrong. Red Tornado and I were in here as the team and J'onn were running their simulation. When something went wrong, Speedy came and got me, then I teleported to the training room."
So far he was right. There wasn't a whole lot there for him to offer, his involvement being relatively brief.
"Once there, I cast a mental defense spell on each individual member of the team. The last two, Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian, were done concurrently. I assume Miss Martian was in the middle of a panic attack and tried to flee, but I caught her, broke the spell isolating her mind, broke the spell keeping my mind private and just sat with her until she calmed down." The man shrugged towards her, as though implying some measure of uncertainty. "I sent a message to Jinx to go get you around then."
"Megan did mention that she felt... Deaf, when she woke up. I'll have to assume that was how she responded to the spell." Dinah sighed and grabbed one of the chairs, sitting down. "...Alchemist, she mentioned something I want to ask you about."
"Sure, whatever you-"
"Can I use some of the diamonds?" Jinx interrupted the wizard as he was answering Dinah. "I'm going to prove you wrong."
"Go for it." Alchemist said over his shoulder before turning back to Dinah. "Sorry, what were you going to ask?"
"Megan mentioned that you sang to her?" Which... Considering how difficult the man found it to put significant inflection into his voice, she just couldn't really imagine him doing that. "And that she saw some other kind of psychic of significant power in your memories. I was wondering if it was someone that we need to be worried about."
"Ah, no. For a variety of reasons." Alchemist shook his head and sat down at a nearby desk. "That psychic I was remembering was an individual named Giygas. Or Giegue. While they did have psychic powers that could travel through time, Giygas itself was killed through the efforts of a quartet of time travelers. Well, if the mad, screaming creature was alive enough to die at the end."
"...That's not particularly reassuring, Alchemist." So far as she was aware, even J'onn was limited to the present and he was the most experienced and now second most powerful psychic that the League was aware of.
"I don't know what to tell you." The man shrugged helplessly. "I could lie to you, if you want?"
"No..." Dinah inhaled and leaned back, closing her eyes and trying to forcibly relax the muscles in the back of her neck. "I... Appreciate that you're honest with me. I just struggle to make sense of it half the time."
"...Yeah, that's fair." She heard him admit. "It's an insane world. Trying to make things make sense? Just makes things worse."
...She hated that he was making far too much sense in saying that.
"...Do you mind if I ask you something personal?" Dinah asked after what felt like a few minutes of silence. When he didn't respond, she continued. "I keep expecting you to be hostile, given our history, but you're not. I can tell we don't like each other-"
"Actually-" He interrupted. "I'm okay with you. I mean, I think you're irritating and need to learn better timing but you're trying to do right by Jinx and that's worth a lot in my book. At the least, I can be professional with you."
"...Thanks. I think." And now she actually felt bad. She still didn't like him but... She could be professional, the same as him.
There was a loud crash in the room, sounding like someone dropped a silverware drawer. It was sudden and startling, Dinah leapt from her chair-
And saw dozens upon dozens of black knives all over the stone floor in front of Jinx. Some of them were buried tip-first in the rock!
"Umm..." Jinx slowly raised a hand, one finger in the air. "I had to cast a few things first but... I got the spell working?"
"Nice!" Alchemist congratulated the girl before he stood up and stretched, grabbing one of the knives. He held it up in the air and Dinah could see a dull green sheen where the light reflected off of it. "Yep, looks right so far. One sec-"
He raised his hand in the air and snapped his fingers, a small orb of white mage-light forming over his head. It changed the reflection from green to purple-white.
"B.E.A-utiful! Congratulations, Jinx! You've violated the laws in regards to the conservation of mass!" He shifted his grip on the handle of the blade and then handed it over to Dinah, hilt first. "One nearly-indestructible, masterwork knife. Courtesy of Jinx. Think the rest of the League would want one?"
Dinah looked at the weapon, then up at Alchemist, then over to Jinx...
"You know what?" She finally said after a long moment of thought. "Sure. Why not."
This wasn't even the craziest thing she'd seen today.
-----
Dinah had left some time back and Jinx had decided she wanted to go outside and get some fresh air.
Alchemist, however, knew things weren't done. Batman hadn't talked with him yet, the two hadn't spoken since the mage had left the all-too crowded room filled with loud, stressed teenagers.
Having a moment alone, he'd chosen to spend it practicing. He'd read Fabricate before he and Jinx had gotten into their discussion about the spell, he'd wanted to make sure which rules he was bending.
With a quiet 'Ping!' Alchemist noticed he'd gotten a new message. Opening it, he found a response to something he'd sent off a while back, inside the world of Bloodstained.
~~ From: Ultra-powerful best goddess Terra-Tan! ~~
~~ Congratulations! If we had a bugfinder title, you'd be a shoe-in for it! Or if you had titles.
First off- We've updated the experience algorithm for use in Illusion Dungeons. It goes (Enemy Experience X Total Equipment Modifier X Race and Perk modifier) X (Difficulty level - Character Level) + 1.
This technically means that a player may get boosted experience for going to areas that outlevel them. This also sets the minimum experience gained from any enemy to 1 instead of 0. It's been noticed that, during playtesting, getting minimum rewards tends to encourage people to move on better than offering no rewards.
Second- Player GP is now flagged and held separate from Enemy GP in the event that the Player encounters an enemy that steals your money. Player GP regained from such enemies will no longer be subject to +GP effects.
Third- Renaming 'Intelligence' into 'Magic' may work to alleviate some of the consistent Gamer issues. I'll run it past my other playtesters. What would make for a good alternative to 'Wisdom'? 'Will'? 'Resistance'?
Alright! Keep up the good work and always remember!
If you're about to do something stupid, send me a text and tell me in advance! ~~
That was... That.
Alchemist just closed the message and got back to work. He had a project that he needed to finish up before the Twentieth of November. To accomplish it, he'd picked up another spell, Telekinesis. It was a fun spell, had great range, the utility was immense...
He was using it to pick up the various weapons and other items he was manufacturing by leveling up Limited Wish. The daggers with Jinx had been a nice touch, simple and straightforward. What he was working on now, though?
"Alchemist." Batman's gravelly voice, coming from the doorway, broke the wizards attention and caused him to drop his spell. "Are those... Kunai?"
"Yeah." Alchemist answered, drawing another of the makeshift weapons to his hand and dropping it into the inventory. "Grab a chair and tell me what's up."
Another individual was made apparent as Batman's silhouette stepped into the room. The Martian Manhunter was stumbling in just behind him.
"We need you to break the spell isolating J'onn's mind." Batman told him as he sat down. "Then we need some answers."
"That... Is why I'm here." Alchemist caught another adamantine kunai and dropped it in the inventory before he held a hand up and snapped his fingers.
J'onn, who'd been swaying almost drunkenly, slowly stabilized and let go of the chair he'd been holding on to for support.
"Thank you." The Dark Knight said without even bothering to look at the Martian behind him. "Why didn't you do that before you vacated the training room?"
"I was a bit preoccupied." Alchemist admitted. "Miss Martian looked like she was about to have a panic attack so she was my immediate focus. After that? Martian Manhunter passed out and I don't know how you all feel about having me cast magic on you in your sleep."
There was a long moment of silence in the room as J'onn sat down as well, the two heroes simply watching him as he telekinetically collected the repurposed masonry tools he'd created.
"Why did you have Jinx make knives while you made ninja weaponry?" Batman eventually asked after a few minutes had gone by and the majority of the tools had been stowed away.
"That was more of a lesson than anything else." Alchemist admitted after the last kunai had been put away. "Some of the magic I'd like to share with her is incredibly flexible, but only if it's considered as such. Using it like this?"
Alchemist extracted a diamond, one worth one-thousand, five-hundred GP from the inventory and held it up. He focused on what he wanted, the materials they were made of, their cost and how the spell would use them-
The diamond dissolved into dust and shurikens, a lot of them, rained down on the ground creating a massive pile. The clinking and clattering of the metal rain was loud enough to drown out the sound of the door opening once again.
"It's actually wasteful. The raw materials cost two-thirds what the spell demanded of me. It's not actually a concern, we have more than enough to spare- I wanted to try and show Jinx that the way the rules are written can offer a lot of ways to exploit them, rather than just limit us." Shuriken, in Pathfinder, were made in groups of five and weighed half a pound in total. Or point two-three kilograms. So he could get ten shuriken for ten gp of materials. He should have made one-thousand, or right close to it. "She struggles a bit with Conjuration and Transmutation spells, the ones that can really redefine reality. Uses a lot of illusion spells instead, most of the time she doesn't bother transforming into a human form anymore, just throws up an illusion and lets people talk to the space above her head."
Alchemist shook his head, exhaling slowly and shrinking into his chair as he did so.
"I prefer to redefine reality, she's more inclined to change how it's experienced... I'm hoping I can get her to break out of thinking that she has to hide who and what she is. If she wants to be a dragon, she should be one without having to worry about how the mayflies around her feel." Which was a bit hypocritical of him. He barely touched illusion spells and he didn't have anything from the enchantment school of magic. "I trust her to watch my back and I'd like to make sure she has whatever tools I can give her."
Wait... Going by the look the Martian Manhunter was sending his way...
Alchemist had no idea what he was thinking.
"...Right." Batman just said, likely to move things along as Alchemist got back to work summoning the small mountain of shuriken he'd made. "On to more... Relevant... Matters. J'onn mentioned that the form taken on by the hostiles in his simulation were based on something from your memories that Megan had seen. I determined that getting answers on what, exactly, they were was a priority."
"Al... Right? Were they blonde businessmen in red suits or ugly, greasy little scientists wearing lab coats?" Considering Alchemist hadn't been in M'gann's head, he had no idea what they'd dealt with in the simulation.
"No." J'onn finally interjected himself into the conversation, looking a bit more green than when they started. "Wolf monsters."
"...Okay? Are we talking lycans? Werewolves? God-infected? Mutants? Space-predators?" Alchemist asked, trying to remember the various different things he'd seen. "Old ones? Come on, I need a bit more to go off of."
"...What was the one in the middle?" J'onn asked, the man still seemed a bit out of sorts. "God infected?"
"Scourge Beasts." Alchemist nodded as he spoke, the memories sharpening as he put them to words. "Twisted and warped by a disease transmitted through blood ministration. Fast and dangerous, though relatively basic. More advanced forms would often be seen in members of the Healing Church, the ones that had access to purer blood. Possibly sourced from Ebriatas, the Daughter of the Cosmos."
Alchemist held his hand up and gave it a wiggle.
"Maybe. Any which way, they were hungry monsters and killing them could spread the disease if you weren't careful. Fire was a good way of dealing with them." And guns. Fire and guns.
Those monsters were frighteningly good with their claws.
"How... Did you come to know of such monsters?" J'onn whispered, reliving whatever horrors he'd seen.
"The dream that connects to the world housing Yharnam is held aloft by the Archtrees, in the same greater reality as the one I took Wonder Woman and Kar'Yashlan when we tried to fight Wotan. It's a bit higher up, if I remember right. All the way up top there's the Lands In Between, not exactly on my to-do list." As a point of fact, Alchemist wanted nothing to do with the Elden Ring.
"That..." J'onn sounded horrified as he tried to put his thoughts into words. "There are more worlds like that?!"
"At least four." Alchemist felt for the man, he really did... But J'onn didn't actually have to deal with the tragedies of Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro or Elden Ring.
A snowball of tragedies, repeated over and over until, at the bottom, it bowled everything over and there was nothing left.
"Is this why you keep your mind sealed away from us?" J'onn asked, placing his hands on his knees. "These terrible things you've seen, have you been trying to spare M'gann and I from witnessing them?"
"Well..." No, Alchemist had done that to keep M'gann from seeing what he'd done in the world of Final Fantasy Seven. To keep her from feeling his shame, among other things. "If you'd like to accept that as the reason, you're welcome to."
Batman was about to ask something else when there was a loud 'Whoa!' coming from the door. Almost as one, all three adults turned to see Robin standing there and staring at the slowly shrinking pile of throwing stars.
"Dude!" He shouted, picking one up. "Why are there so many of these things? Where did they even come from?!"
"I traded reality a diamond and it gave me a bunch of these in exchange." Considering Alchemist could literally make a valuable enough diamond out of scrap and garbage, they were worth as much to him as they were to the children mining them in Africa.
"O... Kay? Can I have some?" Robin asked as he picked up several of the weapons and held them in between his fingers.
Alchemist looked over to Batman, who nodded slightly.
"Sure. Take as many as you want." Alchemist really only needed five or six. The rest had been made for the sake of getting as much value as he could out of Limited Wish as he tried to level it up.
Up next? Caltrops.
"Sweetness!" Robin picked up several more and jumped into a ninja pose. One that caused Batman to quietly sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose. "What are you even doing with all of these?"
"It's Yuffie's birthday next month." Alchemist answered him. It was also why he'd picked up and was working on leveling Telekinesis. "I'm planning on giving her a set of throwing knives and throwing stars."
"...Alchemist." Batman spoke up, drawing everyone's attention. "Bring her to the cave tomorrow morning."
The man picked up one of the throwing stars, the overhead lights reflecting green on the metal.
"Someone should teach her how to use these properly before you give her such a dangerous set."
On the one hand, Alchemist kind of wanted to argue that the ninja girl already knew how to use throwing weapons.
On the other hand?
Watching Batman learn that for himself would be hilarious.
-----
Just a ways down the hall and hidden under invisibility, Jinx had been listening.
The dragon-girl bit her bottom lip and thought about what had been said. What she'd heard.
Deciding it would probably be best to sleep on it, Jinx teleported home.
She had her own projects, after all...
And she really wanted to show one of them to Alchemist when it was done.
-----
Diana Prince had been having a positively great day.
No villain attacks, the United Nations was calming back down. Her mother was even making some noise about sending a few more of her Amazon sisters to assist her in the embassy they had in Man's World.
Unfortunately, it seemed that she was one of the few in the Hall of Justice that had an enjoyable afternoon.
Batman was at the main terminal in their planetside headquarters, glaring at the monitor as though it had done him a personal offense. J'onn was functionally asleep while sitting in place, his form and posture rigid with stress.
Superman was sitting at the central desk with his head held in his hands, a stricken, horrified look on his face.
The only other person that didn't seem to be too concerned was Black Canary, though the woman did have a particularly large mug of coffee in her hands.
It was likely a good thing that tours of the facility had already ended for the day.
"I take it that something went wrong with training today?" She asked the room, gauging the reactions from those present.
Batman's typing slowed down. Superman slumped further down into the table. J'onn startled awake and Dinah just took a long draw from Batman's personal mug.
"Yes." Was the simple, direct answer from the Caped Crusader.
Diana waited for a moment but the man didn't elaborate.
"Apparently." Dinah continued for him. "Megan has gotten a lot stronger as a psychic than we would have guessed. When she panicked, she took control of the simulation and was running it off of her fears."
The woman took another long sip from the oversized mug.
"Which she picked up in Alchemist's mind, back during the Bialya mission. Apparently he has the knowledge of a reality filled with alien outer gods infecting humans and turning them into monsters." Dinah sounded... Like she was just done, dealing with things.
"He asked me..." Superman mumbled, almost too quiet to hear but for Diana's excellent, superhuman hearing. "He sent me a text and asked me to check their brains. To make sure they weren't growing eyes. On their brains."
Superman sat up, the stricken look on his face unsettled something in Diana's core.
Seeing him struggle against something he couldn't defeat was always painful. He was a shining beacon of hope, he should not look so helpless.
"He said it was a symptom of having too much Insight- The brain still knowing what the mind rejects. That it needs eyes on the inside, eyes to look within." The man shuddered. "He was completely serious, Diana. What kind of madness could he have seen that let him discover such a thing?"
"There... Are many things unfit for mortal minds." Diana hedged, trying not to think of them herself. Such as the fact that, when she'd followed up with Hades, she'd gotten confirmation that Hastur was well and truly dead. Slain at the hands of a true enemy.
Even the god of the underworld hadn't known, not until she'd asked and his Domain fed him the information.
"Did he explain anything else about the phenomenon?" She asked instead, curious to see what other madness the mage had spread in his wake.
"...Yes." J'onn spoke up, running a hand down his exhausted face. "He claimed that, by itself, a small amount of Insight, Eldritch Knowledge that has been seen but not understood, was harmless. Helpful, even. Every mage, sorcerer and psychic has some. It assists them in making connections between facts, people and events that seem otherwise disconnected."
"Intuition, basically." Batman interjected, closing the document he'd been typing and turning around. "He also claimed that too much Insight, aside from the eye-growths and increased intra-cranial pressure, could cause an individual to make connections that may be true but not necessarily correct."
"He referenced The Question." Superman put his head back down on the table. "He told Batman that the Question is a prime example of someone that has enough Insight to see the world beneath all of the lies and seemings. He just lacks the raw ability to make sense of it all."
"So... The rumors about him and aglets...?" Diana led, curious as to what the others thought on the matter.
"We don't know." Batman admitted. "And that's really not important at the moment. The team was exposed to a potential infohazard, one we were only vaguely aware of. Just as dangerous, though, would be the other person that was exposed to it."
He turned around again and clicked a few keys, dragging up an image of a young man.
That was wearing a glass dome on the top of his head, exposing his brain for all to see.
"Psimon, formerly active in Bialya. Sightings prior to the mission the team went on had him pegged as working for Queen Bee." Several screens opened up, pictures of the woman in question.
With the psychic lingering in her shadow.
"After the mission, however, he disappeared and hasn't been seen since. At the moment, all we have is supposition and hearsay. However, assuming he was the psychic that the team encountered, Megan's report specifically states that she dragged him through Alchemist's memories of a place called Yharnam." The pictures were replaced by a photo of a text document, several paragraphs highlighted in yellow. "A place we now know to be connected to those outer gods and that, not just their blood but even the knowledge itself is an infection vector."
"Oh. God." Superman grumbled into the table. "Please tell me we're not dealing with a memetic hazard?"
"I don't know." Batman admitted, news articles from the recent war between Bialya and Egypt brought up on-screen. "Queen Bee has always been erratic and we know she wasn't the one to strike first. If there's more going on than we've seen, we don't know yet. We'll have to keep watching, see if anything comes up."
Batman turned back around, his eyes on the various articles written about the escalating conflicts in the Middle East.
Dinah sat down next to Superman and Diana sat across from him.
"I know how you feel, big guy." Dinah patted the man on the shoulder, sympathy in her voice. "It's a big, crazy mess and it sucks that you got dragged into it."
"No, it's not that." Superman sighed, looking to the women around him. "I actually appreciate the reason I was called in. It's just... I've sat and talked with Alchemist in the past. I'm having a hard time reconciling the kid that told me to go talk to my parents about Connor and the man that explained the growing stages of madness that could come from interacting with those Outer Gods. He sounded so... Calm, really, when he talked about the two paths that people would mutate through. Beasts, he called them. Beasts and Kin."
"He... Does tend to undersell things. Just a bit." Diana admitted, remembering the explanations he'd offered whilst in the Firelink Shrine.
"Unfortunately." Dinah groused, draining the rest of Batman's mug of coffee. "That makes it hard to tell when he's trying to tell you something important. Jinx is starting to pick up on it, too..."
"So..." Diana looked over to the exhausted Martian, then at the back of Batman's head before turning to Superman. "Did you find anything?"
"Find any what?" Superman asked, sounding as tired as J'onn looked.
"Eyes. On the inside?" Diana clarified. "It sounded like it was kind of important."
"No..." Superman sighed and shook his head. "Thankfully not. You don't want to know what Alchemist offered to do if I had found some, though."
"Come on, Clark." Diana tried to smile at the man though it fell flat since he'd leaned back and closed his eyes. "You know me, I'd love to hear what crazy plan he had in mind."
"He offered to go to Yharnam and hunt down a Brainsucker, Diana. Some kind of mutated madman that can literally eat the Insight out of someone's skull." Bruce answered for Clark, though he didn't bother turning around.
"...The same place that's full of madmen and mad gods?" Diana tried to clarify.
She sighed in exasperation when Superman nodded.
"I... Can't tell if that's insane or horrifying." Wonder Woman admitted, her mind going to the battle she'd participated in to free Gwyndolin from Aldrich and what Alchemist had done.
"Both." Dinah said as she stood up and started to make her way to the kitchenette doorway. "Definitely both."
AN/ I'll have to spend a bit of extra time working on the character sheet. I've spent a long time working on a massive chapter that will be posted in a few weeks so I need to refamiliarize myself with everything in these last few chapters.
Fabricate- He's using the pathfinder edition, not 5e. The difference in wording is pretty important for his desires to abuse the spell.
Fabricate – d20PFSRD
www.d20pfsrd.com
Telekinesis – d20PFSRD
www.d20pfsrd.com
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