Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build Sidestory: Spell: Awaken Construct
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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Alchemist walked back and forth before a couch inside Mount Justice, agitation evident in every step. Next to him was an easel covered in sheets of paper.
On the couch, five figures sat and watched.
"Your goal is not simple." Alchemist told the seated figures. "In fact, each of you have a list of goals to accomplish. Each of you have been specifically tailored to match the expected needs to complete them, too."
The mage swept his yellow eyes across the small figures before shaking his head and turning toward the easel and pulling back the first sheet.
Underneath was a pair of photos of a man. Tall and powerfully built, he had short white hair with a ponytail, a mustache and wore an eyepatch over his right eye. The second photo showed a man wearing an all-concealing orange and black costume.
"This is the overall target of your mission. Slade Wilson, also known as Deathstroke the Terminator or that jackass that made a deal with a Lord of the pits." Alchemist explained, lifting another sheet to reveal what lay beneath.
A list of bullet points. The overall goals he'd crafted his team to perform.
"Chica." Alchemist pointed to a small cloth doll made of yellow velvet with a little bib around its neck that said 'Let's Eat!'. "Your duty is simple. Disrupt the order of his day to day life in small ways. Rearrange the kitchen, move things around the bathroom. Write messages in soap on the mirrors and windows. When you're not busy, please do your best to assist the others."
"Bonnie." Alchemist moved his hand to another doll, a rabbit made of purple felt wearing a little red bow tie. Each of the five dolls had taken a painstaking amount of effort to manufacture, culminating in hours upon hours spent in a handicrafts store. Their hands, especially, had taken a significant amount of time. "You have two main tasks. Whilst Chica is busy disrupting the man's privacy, you will be doing the same to his electronics. Remove the batteries from his devices, replace them with dead or dying ones if you can. Unplug things, or replace them with something else. If at all possible, please find any passwords or accounts the man uses. Your secondary task is to encourage fear: Find something that Slade is preternaturally scared of and utilize it to unsettle the man."
"Foxy." Alchemist dropped his hand but turned to face a stuffed red fox. Its right hand was replaced with a hook and it, like Slade, had an eyepatch over its right eye. "You'll be keeping the man awake. Make noises, run up and down the halls, turn on the television at odd hours- Whatever you choose to do, however, you must make sure you are not caught."
The last two sat beside each other. Both of them were stuffed teddy bears, the both of them had the same accessories. A bow tie and a little top hat.
"Freddy." Alchemist turned his hard gaze to the first of the two bears. Freddy was a brown teddy bear, his tophat and bow tie were both solidly black. "You will also have two main goals of your own. The first and simplest will be as a counterpart to Bonnie. Where they are searching for pre-existing fears, you will be manufacturing one. Inside of you is a small music box, pre-loaded with Carmen. Play it whenever the man starts to get spooked or unnerved. Your side objective is to acquire any and all information regarding the man's past victims. Names and the locations of their graves would be key but I'll gladly take anything available."
"Finally. Goldy." Alchemist's gaze on the small cloth bear was distressingly serious. "Your compatriots have all been equipped with the needed gear and enchantments to survive anything I could think of Slade using should you be discovered. You, however, are the emergency response should my preparations fail. Unlike them, you have had Teleportation stitched into the very fabric of your body. Should it be necessary, you are to extract them back here to safety."
Alchemist turned away from the couch, flipping over another sheet to show a basic blueprint of an apartment. "Now, critical points of egress have been-"
"Oh my god!" A girl's shrill voice shouted, interrupting Alchemist as he began to prepare his team to infiltrate the home of the world's most expensive assassin. "Alchemist, did you make these!? They're adorable!"
"...Yes, M'gann." Alchemist sighed and turned around to see the redheaded Martian picking up and smooshing her face against Freddy. "I did, actually. Please put Freddy down, we were working on something very important."
"Important?" The girl asked, looking from the stuffed cloth animal and over to Alchemist with his presentation board. "Alchemist, are you preparing to give a speech or something?"
"Or something." He agreed, glaring at the girl until she set Freddy back down on the couch. "Now, if I could resume-"
"Hey, Megan? Did I hear- Oh, wow, these things are so cute!" Shrike exclaimed, having followed M'gann to see what the commotion was. "I had no idea that you were into this kind of thing."
Alchemist ran his tongue across his bottom teeth, breathing deeply to get his irritation under control.
"Normally, I'm not." Alchemist admitted. He wasn't about to tell the girls that he privately felt that stuffed animals were simply unnerving and unpleasant in the extreme. "However, the crafting of Golems and then Awakening them requires a personal touch rather than anything mass-manufactured."
"...Excuse me?" Another voice spoke up from the doorway as Robin entered. "Are you saying you made more golems?"
"...Yes." Alchemist sighed and shook his head, turning his gaze back down to the five stuffed animals. "I trust you'll be able to figure things out on-site. Remember, keep hidden and, should you need evacuated, Goldy is your ride out. Stay safe, you five, and do your best. Executing phase shift in three, two, one..."
Alchemist snapped his fingers as the quintet stood up and sent him a salute, sending them to the same closet that Slade kept the Dennis the Menace doll in.
"You have to make one for me!" M'gann shouted, rocketing over to hover right in front of Alchemist's face as Shrike and Robin walked around him to look at the presentation he'd put together.
"I'm not going to make sentient beings for you to treat like toys." Alchemist focused a half-lidded stare on the girl, dropping her back to the ground. "Stuffed animals should be doable so long as you don't mind something like a patchwork rabbit."
"Yes!" The Martian pumped her arm in victory. "Thank you! I can't wait to-"
"Is this Slade?!" Robin shouted, cutting M'gann off. "Did you seriously just send a bunch of stuffed animals after Slade?!"
"...Yeah?" Alchemist looked to the other two people in the room for support as Robin looked about ready to hyperventilate. "I'm already tracking the man."
Because Slade was trying to figure out who the mysterious supplier was of Lex Luthor's burger addiction and kill them.
"And I've already got a doll over there to keep Slade busy with, anyway." Casting Awaken Construct on the Dennis the Menace doll had been the best/worst thing Alchemist had done in weeks. The doll had woken up with the personality that Alchemist remembered Dennis having from the comics and cartoons.
Pure, unbridled mayhem.
The only thing Alchemist had needed to do was instill the doll with Fire Resistance and Mending. After that... After that, it basically turned into a force of nature.
"Well, I've got stuff to get back to." Alchemist stretched his arms overhead and stood on his tip-toes for a moment before relaxing and grabbing his easel. "Later, guys."
-----
It only took two weeks for the stuffed animals to get found out and nearly destroyed.
It was two weeks where Slade Wilson was losing his mind, jumping at shadows and firing blanks but Freddy and the gang did get caught. And nearly incinerated.
"You did a great job!" But Alchemist was rather happy with most of the results. The near-destruction before Goldy had managed to teleport everyone back to the mountain was problematic, but...
Squirming in his hands, Bonnie mimed giggling as Alchemist's Mending put the last of its stitches back together.
All of them had some measure of success. From something as simple as ruining Slade's morning coffee by replacing the sugar with salt, or dunking Slade's toothbrush in the toilet to the more complex, such as Freddy having a long list of the deceased that had been hidden inside of himself. Each of the Constructs had proven themselves capable of what they'd been sent out to do. Bonnie had even come back with the man's personal banking details as well as the I.D. and login information to his email!
Alchemist was tempted to donate all of Slade's funds to a hospital but managed to keep himself contained. Barely. Watching where the murderer's money came from and went to would be more... Not valuable, because it -was- money that could be better spent, but tactical. It would offer up critical metadata for Slade's clients and his own equipment.
"I am very proud of you." He told Bonnie, then swept his gaze over the other lingering stuffed animals. "All of you."
With the information Freddy had gathered, Alchemist could track down the gravesites and use the location in part of a spell. A bit of necromancy and illusion magic would send a vengeful spirit after its killer and Alchemist now had a laundry list of those killed by Slade himself.
Carefully, Alchemist set Bonnie back down on the floor and turned his gaze to the others. Most of them were fine, though Goldy did seem worn out.
Being a construct, its very ability to move was based around its magic and Goldy had spent a considerable sum to help everyone escape Slade when the man discovered his daughter's newest stuffed animals may have had it out for him. The stuffed animal would recover, in time, but it may take quite a long time indeed.
"Especially you, Goldy." Alchemist reached down to the cave floor and pressed a finger against the little black nose in the middle of the golden bear's face. The stuffed animal fell backwards, fully exhausted. Alchemist went ahead and picked the bear up, placing it on the kitchen counter. He was about to walk away to get started on digging through everything his little team of monsters had dug up when he felt something pulling on his pant leg.
Looking down, Alchemist saw Bonnie tugging at him, one hand raised up to where its mouth was to cover it as Bonnie looked up and into his eyes bashfully. The little white dots deep in the black orbs stared directly into his face, unwavering.
"What do you need, Bon-bon?" Alchemist asked, leaning down to the small construct. Each one was about twenty centimeters tall, though Bonnie seemed the tallest due to its ears which added an extra ten centimeters straight up.
For a moment the doll plucked at its side, wearing away at a seam that hid a fold that Alchemist had intended for each one to use as a secret pocket. Once the thread holding it closed had been loosened, Bonnie pulled out a flattened, black object and then swung it up and down in the air a few times, re-inflating it.
After a few swings, the shape started to fill back out. Bonnie had a tiny stuffed animal, not unlike itself albeit quite a bit smaller. Fifteen centimeters at most.
It was roughly made, vaguely human shaped with claws that were crudely stitched in the 'Paws' at the ends of its tube arms. On its back were two flaps of black fabric, blending in a bit too cleanly with the rest, meaning it had probably come from the same source. It looked about like a dragon-ish themed sock monkey... That had probably been stitched together out of one of Slade's shirts.
It was also covered in bits of glitter.
"Is this supposed to be me?" Alchemist asked, gently plucking the object from Bonnie's paws. He turned it over in his hands a few times, taking note of the little spots where the construct had tried to imitate his scars using a pen or marker.
Bonnie placed its hands behind its back and swung from the left to the right a few times, scuffing the ground with one foot before shyly nodding.
"It's very impressive." Alchemist said, smiling down at the rabbit.
Internally, however, he was beginning to have some serious doubts about the mission he'd sent them on. He'd been focusing on what he could do, methods he could take to work around Slade's counter-surveillance efforts.
He hadn't stopped to think about the consequences of creating life...
Bonnie looked up to him and placed both paws against its mouth, hopping on its tippy-toes in excitement for a moment before placing both hands against its head and then pointing one at the cloth doll in Alchemist's hand.
Alchemist blinked in confusion, looking at Bonnie and then back down to the doll.
Head... Brain? Doll?
Brain into doll?
"Do you want me to possess the doll you made?" Alchemist asked, genuinely confused at the suggestion.
Bonnie placed both hands against its mouth and began nodding excitedly, its purple ears flopping up and down rapidly.
"Well..." An odd request, yeah, but Alchemist was honestly just confused at this point. "Alright?"
Fishing a diamond out of his Inventory, Alchemist focused for a moment before casting Wish to cast Greater Object Possession. There was a brief moment of disorientation and Alchemist could legitimately feel that his limbs weren't the same size anymore before his vision stopped swimming and he could see.
"...Huh." Alchemist's voice came out high-pitched and squeaky as he got to look at Bonnie from the same height as it and the other Anti-Slade units. "It's taller than a toad... And I sort of have hands..."
So saying, Alchemist held out the tubes of cloth and flexed the mitts. The cotton fabric felt weird, too stretchy.
While he'd been adjusting, Bonnie had been watching with rapt fascination. It reached out with one hand and ran its felt fingers down Alchemist's face before latching on with both hands.
"...Okay?" Alchemist tried to back away but the rabbit was holding on with a lot more force than he'd expected.
He'd Maximized each casting of Awaken Construct, which he knew should have optimized their randomized statistics... And he hadn't actually considered the consequences of that action, either.
"...Bonnie?" Alchemist asked, trying to back away further. The rabbit just stepped forward to match his shorter steps. "Okay, this isn't funny. You can let go now."
Instead of letting go, Bonnie leaned over until its face was next to his own, its mouth right next to his ear. With the quiet sound of crinkling fabric, Alchemist felt hot air against the side of his head as Bonnie whispered, its voice maddened and feminine- "Mine."
Had Alchemist a heart, it would have frozen.
One beat and Bonnie's hands pressed into the fabric of Alchemist's face.
Another beat and she backed away, staring into his drawn-on eyes with her own pitch black orbs. A tiny white glow barely visible within.
On the third, Alchemist tore away and began running.
-----
"Help!" A tiny voice shouted as M'gann walked down the halls of Mount Justice, groceries in hand after a shopping trip into Happy Harbor. "Don't let her get me!"
Curious, M'gann looked down and watched as a black doll ran down the hall, screaming with Alchemist's voice.
Behind it, chasing casually, was the adorable purple rabbit stuffy that Alchemist had made and then made alive to bother Deathstroke. Having a significant height advantage, the purple rabbit wasn't sprinting like... Alchemist? Was.
It did stop briefly to look up and meet M'gann's eyes. The expressionless face was tilted forward, covered in sinister shadows for a moment before the rabbit slowly shook its head and then brought one hand up to its neck-
Dragging it slowly to the side, then raising one hand in front of its mouth-
"Nope." M'gann said, looking away from the nightmarish creation.
"Nope." She continued, stepping around Alchemist as she continued making her way into the kitchen.
"Nopity, nopity, nope-nope-nope." She chanted as she put away her groceries.
She hoped Alchemist wouldn't be upset that she would be returning the stuffed animal he'd made for her.
Suddenly, they just didn't seem so cute anymore.
