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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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By her reckoning, it was near enough to evening when Diana and Billy both returned to the demi-plane.
Opening the door to the house, she could barely stifle a yawn. The day had been unusual, interesting but unusual.
Billy had shown himself to suddenly be capable of lifting his weapon and controlling it. A full feat that had previously been beyond the boy's abilities given his small and seemingly undernourished frame.
There was something about the child. Not magic, no, it was similar but so impossibly different. Where magic disregarded reality's desire to be itself, what had briefly filled the boy felt more akin to a willfull concentration. It was almost divine, really.
"Kary?" Diana called into the silent house, absent the usual quiet sounds of life that usually filled it. Jinx was not shifting about on the couch, lounging in some impossibly uncomfortable position as teenagers were wont to do. Kary was not polishing a sword or perusing a scroll of arcane secrets. Alchemist was not cleaning one of his guns or playing some juvenile video game.
"Jinx?" She tried again, walking up the stairs and seeing the bedroom doors ajar. Diana was almost tempted to look into the room used by Alchemist and Kary. Even from two floors down it was all too easy for Diana to hear the woman. Kar'Yashlan could be very... Enthusiastic.
Nothing. Not even the familiars were in the house.
Returning to the ground floor, Diana ignored the lights flickering on in the cabin she'd once slept in which now housed Billy and looked at the one a bit further away. The lights inside the workshop were on.
They often were. Alchemist spent a significant portion of his time in there.
With little else to occupy herself with? Diana made her way over.
What she found inside was... Discomforting. Alchemist, Jinx and Kary all three were bent over tables and working on things. Before Alchemist was a mess of wires and circuitry, the purpose arcane and alien to Diana. Jinx held a soldering iron in hand and was working away at an exposed circuit board within a plastic shell. Kary was slowly and methodically polishing a ring, dabbing a bit of some kind of powdery goop on it before getting back to work.
All of them had a blank, empty look to their eyes.
Diana was familiar with the effects of possession and this looked all too familiar.
The titan backed up, one hand reaching for the doorknob when Jinx looked up, life returning to her eyes. The girl opened her mouth-
"Oh, god damn it!" And started cursing as the object in her hand reassembled itself. It took on the form of the blocky laser gun that Alchemist had used in the past. "Again?! Stupid freaking- Ugh!"
The girl pulled her hand back, ready to throw the gun in hand against a nearby wall before she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and just dropped it on her workbench.
"Swear to- This is so annoying!" The girl whined, poking at the air for a moment before reaching into one of those magical windows and beginning to extract bottle after bottle of some kind of purple liquid.
"...Jinx?" Diana asked, tense as she approached the girl. "What's going on? What are you doing?"
"Wonder Woman?" Jinx looked up and blinked slowly, her eyes shifting between wide and narrow slits as she adjusted to the titan's presence. "Oh, uh... We're... Well, uh... Some of the stuff we can get can be, uh, 'refined'? They've got these special properties that can kinda change and we all picked up this skill to do that..."
"Did things go... Poorly?" Diana asked, conspicuously edging away from the front of the gun in the girl's hands.
"Yeah. Yes. One of the properties on the gun will somehow multiply the strength of monsters ten times over but it also multiplies how much money they drop." Jinx dropped the laser pistol on the table in front of her and grabbed a piece of chalk from a tray- A well used piece of chalk, Diana noticed. Jinx began to draw an alchemy circle on the table as she continued to speak. "We're trying to get rid of it but it just won't go away! And it costs a freaking fortune to use the skill!"
"The skill... Uses money?" Diana had always been told that wealth is power but this seemed a little too... Literal.
"Every damned time." Jinx groused, putting the gun into a circle at the top of the cardinal point and then loading thirty of those purple bottles, ten on the other points. The girl snapped her fingers and the bottles all disappeared but it left the gun behind. "And every time it screws up, it costs almost thirty grand to reset it. Then we have to buy another kit of tools to try and work on it-"
"I'm done." Kary's voice called out. The woman sounded fatigued, more so than Diana would have expected given the simplicity of her task. "Twelve rings, forged and then empowered. I hope the boy appreciated this."
Boy?
"You made something for Billy?" Diana asked, swinging away from Jinx to look at Kary.
Who'd apparently made not one or two rings but a full dozen? How did she expect the boy to wear them all?
"What?" Kary asked, looking away from the ring she'd been polishing with tired eyes. "Diana? When did you get here?"
"Not long ago." Diana said, turning to look at Alchemist. The man was still huddled over his own mess though he now had a soldering iron in hand. "...None of you noticed when I walked in?"
"It's a side effect of the skill." Kary complained, dropping the ring she'd been working on into a tray, right into a pile of identical rings and an untouched piece of chalk. "It puts us into a trance-like state as our bodies work to automatically attempt to manufacture a selected item. The results are not guaranteed, sadly. Though some are more forgiving than others."
"That seems... Unsafe." Diana pursed her lips, looking back at Alchemist with a thoughtful gaze. "What if you were attacked? All three of you performing this... Thing. Who would defend-"
Diana's words were cut off when she felt something furry twine its way around her leg. Looking down, she saw a black kitten with horns looking up at her with deceitfully innocent green eyes.
The familiars.
Diana had forgotten the familiars.
"Son of a-!" Alchemist roared, the sudden shock sending Diana into the air. She whirled around, her eyes taking in everything as fast as possible.
Only to see Alchemist holding a laser pistol identical to Jinx's in both hands, the unknown material of its shell cracking in his grip.
He inhaled heavily before dropping it on to the table, golden motes of light sealing over the fractures he'd left in the weapon.
"Enemy strength?" Jinx asked, drawing a hiss and a nod from the man as he grabbed a small nub of chalk and began to angrily draw on his table.
"I'm down to it and attack power." The man's hands worked with a slow smoothness that Diana wouldn't expect given his clear agitation. It seemed as though he'd had practice separating his emotions from his work.
"It is progress, at least." Kary offered, standing up and stretching, her arms reaching well over her head and her chest jutting forward. "I've finished up on my side of things."
"Alright." Alchemist inhaled slowly, still obviously angry. "Alright. Thank you, Kary. Would you take two of them over to Billy when he gets in?"
"He's already in." Diana spoke up, watching as Alchemist's hand froze in place and he looked up. Tired yellow eyes met hers and she could clearly see his frustration in them.
"I... Didn't hear you come in." Alchemist admitted, pursing his lips. "That... That's good. Those should, hah, those should offset the drain in his magic. Hopefully enough for him to keep a few blessings active at a time."
Blessings?
Blessings?!
"Billy is god-touched?" Diana very carefully kept her voice neutral as she asked that question. It explained so much... And created so many more questions!
"...Shit." Alchemist made an attempt to stand up, then sat back down, then stood back up before just dropping on to his stool. "...Diana, I -cannot- tell you about that."
"...I see." Diana did, yes, but she felt irritation bubbling in her chest. Billy's powers felt familiar. And she'd seen lightning, a sad echo of it, when he'd been depowered.
The boy was a demi-god! That was the only explanation she could think of!
And his father was all too obvious...
"You know what?" Alchemist stood up and walked over to Kary's station, grabbing two of the rings from the tray. "No. We're not doing this. I'm not doing this. Come on."
The man was heading for the door, both rings in hand and a frustrated look on his face. One that only grew more severe as Diana stood frozen in place as he passed her.
"Come on, Diana." Alchemist sighed, frustration evident in his posture. "We're going to go talk to Billy."
"...I'd have thought you would be more hostile to the child, Alchemist." Diana began, her tone brusque. "Given who his father is."
"You're thinking of Cassandra Sandsmark. Not Billy Batson." Alchemist opened the door and turned to face her again. "Now, are you the Titan of Truth, Diana? Or the Titan of making assumptions?"
"Hah!" Jinx's sudden laugh, followed by the sound of the girl clapping her hands over her mouth, quashed the burning fury the woman had been building up.
"...Very well." Diana sighed as she began to follow the man. One new question did burn at the forefront of her mind, however. "Who is Cassandra Sandsmark?"
"Zeus's most recent child in our reality." Alchemist's words were damning, all the more so in how thoroughly he believed them. "I think she's, like, ten or something right now."
And offered another nail for the coffin in which Diana would be burying her belief in the god-king of her people.
-----
"You lose!" Blared over the speakers of the television, once again telling Billy something he'd already figured out.
He knew, okay? He'd been there.
Billy almost threw the controller down next to an open bag of chips (What even were 'Cheetos' anyway?) and glared at the screen where the words were written, outrageously large as though to hammer the point in.
He was pulled from his pouting by a trio of knocks on the door of the cabin, pulling his attention to the right and towards it, and then by Alchemist and Diana walking in.
Diana pursed her lips, displeased by what she saw.
"Yo, kiddo." And Alchemist didn't seem to care. The man just stepped around the clothes that Billy had left lying on the floor, pushed Billy's shoes to the side with his feet and dropped down on a chair that was facing the screen. "Got somethin' for ya."
"What's up?" Billy asked, his bad mood forgotten. Whenever Alchemist said he had something, it was always either really cool or really useful. Or both.
"Here." Alchemist said, pulling something from his pocket and then holding whatever it was out on his open hand.
A pair of simple, unassuming rings.
"Had Kary work on these earlier- Be sure to tell her thanks, alright? -They're called the 'Rings of Mental Power' and they both increase your magic regeneration by six percent every six or seven seconds." Billy reached out and took the rings in hand as Alchemist continued to talk. "Do you want me to enchant them? I could also curse them so they never come off."
"...How's that a curse?" Billy asked, sliding one ring on to his left pointer finger. He didn't feel anything happen, didn't feel anything different.
"It's usually combined with some other things. Bad luck, ring of thorns, gravelord armor, things you wouldn't want to actually wear." Alchemist shrugged as he spoke but Diana crossed her arms, looking about as lost as Billy felt. "The Curse of Binding is pretty much just a mage's way of saying 'Gotcha!' since it's not usually too hard to dispel. Makes for a fun prank if you put it on a jack o' lantern though."
"Oh... Uh, alright?" Billy asked more than stated. "What would you even enchant them with? I'm kind of... I mean..."
A glance in Diana's direction and Billy winced when he saw her shift uncomfortably. Her face looked like it was made of stone and he wasn't sure what he did to make the normally so welcoming woman lock up like that.
"A gentle giant in Captain Marvel form. I know." Alchemist held out a hand and accepted the ring that Billy hadn't put on yet. The man did that thing where he poked at the air for a moment before reaching elbow-deep into nothing and coming back out with a small diamond. The man flicked the ring into the air like a coin and the diamond dissolved into black sand before the ring came back down to rest in Alchemist's palm. "And done! It's had Regeneration added to it, so it'll slowly heal up any injuries you get so long as you don't lose your head over it. And the way the Curse of Binding works will help with that. Even if someone cuts off your hand, the ring will just appear on your other hand. Or maybe a toe. Possibly pierced through your nose. Any which way, put it on and you'll never get it off without breaking the curse."
Something tickled at the back of Billy's brain as he accepted the ring, an almost palpable aura of Danger surrounded the innocuous item now. It forced him to ask "Did you put anything else on here?"
"Good question. Very good question." Alchemist smiled in a way that bared all of his teeth. With the way his eyes glowed, it was distinctly unsettling. "Not this time, no. There's a time and place for pranks, I've got a good one planned for Batman when we get back, but I don't intend on tampering with anyone's equipment. At least, not any of our equipment."
Yeah. That wasn't ominous at all.
Shrugging, the boy slipped the ring onto the index finger of his right hand and he could swear he felt it clamp down jealously. Idly twisting it, he found that it rotated freely... And he could actually take it off.
Blinking in confusion, Billy glanced up at Alchemist. The man just grinned and pointed back down at his hand.
The ring had somehow slipped out of the hand holding it, just to return to the spot Billy had worn it.
"Yeah, that's not creepy at all." It totally was.
Cool though.
"Well, that's the good bit done with." Alchemist leaned back, his expression shifting from grinning and amused to a smaller grin that looked apologetic instead. "Diana wants to ask you something. I accidentally mentioned a little bit about how your power works and she wanted to know more. That's up to you, though."
"Alchemist..." Diana uncrossed her arms, her expression softening. She shook her head, her black hair swaying gently and focused her eyes on Billy instead. "Marvel. Alchemist mentioned that your powers come from blessings. I'd thought, perhaps, you might be a demi-god. The child of a god. He was rather insistent that such is not the case, however."
"Uh... No?" Billy felt confused as Alchemist leaned over and grabbed the controller next to the cheesy chips. The boy glanced at the screen as the man returned the game to the character select screen but forced himself to focus on Diana. "My parents were both normal. Married, too. I got my powers from The Wizard, he, I dunno, made a deal with some gods? I never really asked how he did it to be honest."
"A... Wizard?" Diana looked lost and Billy really didn't know how to make things any clearer. "Made a pact with gods- Multiple gods-"
"And a dead king." Alchemist cut in, his hands flying across buttons while the character he'd picked, some girl in a nurse outfit named Alice was beating the crap out of her opponent on-screen. "No idea how that one worked."
"Gods and a dead king." Diana pinched the bridge of her nose, looking like she was fighting with a headache. "And that somehow gave you your powers?"
Put like that, it sounded kinda bad to Billy, too.
"...Yeah?"
"...This makes very little sense." Diana sighed and stepped around Alchemist and Billy, picked up the open bag of chips and then sat down next to the boy.
"If it helps any?" Alchemist said, though Billy did not turn to look at him. He was entranced with the screen, watching the older man use the girl- Who turned into a bunny? -to beat the ever-loving hell out of the opposition. "When he said 'The Wizard' he literally meant -The Wizard-. Themyscira should know of him, he's been around longer than they have."
"...I'd thought that to just be a legend." Diana said, leaning back on the couch and watching the screen, the same as Billy was. "A great hero-sorceror who called upon the power of gods predating even Zeus and his kin?"
"Yep. Voldar, Lumien, Arel, Ribalvei, Elbiem and Marsosh." Alchemist listed off while his character literally used her transformation as a form of offense, knocking the opposition back. "I think they've faded away for the most part. When I saw him, The Wizard was looking his age."
"Hey!" Billy turned an angry eye on Alchemist, upset that he'd say anything negative about Shazam. "He's..."
"Older than the pyramids." Alchemist didn't let the boy's anger deter him, however. "And he's tied to the Rock of Eternity. His children are literally in charge of Hell."
"...I had no idea." Diana sounded like that was too much to take in.
To be fair, Billy felt the same way. He'd known some of that, kind of, but The Wizard had never said anything outright about anything.
"I was actually thinking about talking with him sometime after we get back." Alchemist said, his bunnygirl locking a werewolf into a long combo. "You alright with passing that message on for me, Billy?"
"Uh... Sure?" Billy said, watching in envy as Alchemist dominated the computer opponents. "But only if you teach me how to play like that!"
"...You drive a hard bargain, kiddo." Alchemist did pause the game this time to turn and look at Billy. "But I think we can do that. I have to warn you, though. My training regimen is intense."
"It's video games." Billy snorted, pointedly not commenting on Alchemist's choice to play as a bunny-girl when he could've used a werewolf or tiger-man. "How hard is it gonna be?"
"You say that now." Alchemist turned back to the game, a malicious grin on his face. "But we'll see how that holds up in the face of doing one-hundred super jumps, one-hundred timed hits and one-hundred freebies in a row in Super Mario RPG!"
"...Is that supposed to be hard?" Billy found himself asking. He had no frame of reference to whatever Alchemist was talking about. "Because it doesn't sound very hard."
"...Kids these days." Alchemist grumbled, his grin dropping from his face. "It took me weeks of practice to get the super jumps down, Billy. This isn't some Mystic Quest handholding spree. This will teach you precision, timing and focus. Something that only Batman and Robin seem to bother with."
"I... Believe I feel insulted." Diana sounded confused, something Billy empathized with whole-heartedly.
"Have you seen what Batman can do with a bat-a-rang?" Alchemist fired back. "Because I can't do half of what he can without using magic to cheat."
Thinking about it, remembering the times that he'd worked with the caped crusader?
Billy reluctantly found himself agreeing.
Judging by the way Diana was nodding, a pensive expression on her face?
She was, too.
-----
Much as he wanted to be, Alchemist wasn't terribly upset about the failures he and Jinx had experienced in dealing with the Dragoon Laser. They'd mostly succeeded in fixing the numerous problems, they just had a few left.
The crafting duplication shards, along with the passive skill he'd obtained in consuming one, had proven incredibly helpful. It allowed the success of one person to become the project of both that were working on the device.
The ultimate weapons from Star Ocean Three were all littered with deformities, curses that rendered them either risky or outright unusable. Given the ability to move around item factors, they weren't quite as desirable as, say, the ones from Final Fantasy Ten but their raw power was a good foundation for various in-game modifiers to work off of.
His Synthesis: Fusion skill didn't function within the same limitations as the Item Creation: Fusion skill from the game did. He could move around more and more factors, stacking them additively within whatever limit existed per individual type based on source but he couldn't have one specific item be the recipient more than once.
A longer road, albeit a bit more narrow.
Alchemist squeezed slightly, pulling his left arm and Kary a bit closer against him as the two lay in bed.
Clothed in their nightclothes. They'd been too tired for much else.
If not for the improvements to his own alchemic skills, learned bit by bit in the world of Bloodstained, Alchemist wouldn't bother with those weapons at all. Their power came with the severe risk of permanent defects with no way of knowing if the previous, potentially repairable ones had been removed. Alkahest and the method of using it, reversing a crafting result to its prior stage, had been a game changer.
It didn't count as crafting a new item, unfortunately, so the various perks and passives didn't come into play but it allowed him to fix his mistakes.
So many mistakes.
Alchemist yawned, his jaw cracking, and he blankly stared at the ceiling as he tried to plan his next move. They'd been in Hades for a few weeks and they were probably going to be there for a few more. The odds of Zagreus overpowering his father too soon were slim, even if the godling began using Drain. Hades, the man, was an old monster who'd fought in a literal war of the heavens. He'd fought creatures that could re-write reality as easily as breathing and come out the victor.
The mage did need to check on Theseus, see how effective Soulsucker had been. During the fight, the spell had rendered the demi-god too weak to wield both of his miniguns. The spell, a permanent level drain, should ensure the god stayed too weak.
Unless Theseus put in the effort to train himself back up, regain what had been stolen from him.
Alchemist brought his right arm up to cover his eyes, wishing he could actually sleep. He missed getting proper sleep. He missed craving food and really savoring it. He'd been able to, before selecting the race change that made him even more of a space-faring abomination shaped like a dragon.
Now, now he still got hungry and still got tired but food just wasn't satisfying and sleep was a struggle, he just ended up laying in bed, tired. Sometimes for hours at a time.
The wizard silently sighed and held Kary against his side, feeling her breath tickling against his neck. He'd have liked to roll over to try sleeping on his side but she was holding one of his arms down and Ash was on his other side, pinning him in place.
He had variables that he could test... Form of the Dragon would make him a full dragon for the duration of the spell, which he could tune to being permanent until dispelled. He could try eating and sleeping in that form, see if it worked out better.
He could also cast Sleep on himself, twisted with Pierce to get through his own defenses.
Alchemist decided he'd rather try the dragon option first. He was fairly sure the problem came from the extremes represented in his racial options compounding each other. Void Dragons did not -need- to sleep or eat, though they could still do so. The Holmcross was in a similar position, it could eat and sleep to maintain the illusion of humanity but both were optional.
Alternatively, and something Alchemist idly toyed with but knew he couldn't presently do much about, he was just depressed. Things with Batman had gotten heated and needed time to cool before the two could really hash things out again. King Orin was a meat-head on a good day but underneath of everything, he was a good man. Robin and Aqualad were both in a difficult position of their own, at the age where they wanted independence and too young to know how to find it.
Though, Aqualad was a lot more mature. The boy was willing to stand up and stand out, even if it put him at odds with his king. Alchemist knew he needed to do something for the boy.
Perhaps tracking down Black Manta and forcing the man to sit down and communicate, honestly, would be an appropriate gift? It would at least offer Kaldur a bit of closure in regards to his sperm donor.
Alchemist rubbed at his forehead and kicked his blanket down to the foot of the bed. Sandwiched between Kary and Ash, he was getting too warm to be comfortable.
Robin... There wasn't much Alchemist could do for Dick Grayson. The boy had already claimed his vengeance, done in such a way so as to cement him to Bruce Wayne. That was hardly a bad thing. It spoke highly of the boy, choosing integrity over satisfaction.
Well... There was something he could do for the child. Alchemist wasn't incredibly familiar with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons but he'd read about a spell that would've been in the Necromancer's Handbook. Summon Spirit wasn't quite what he wanted to do, it had a few too many risks but it was a good starting point. It...
Alchemist could literally just cast Gate and use its other, often less useful property. He could sacrifice some experience and offer the boy a chance to speak with the spirits of his family.
He could even do the same for Bruce.
But that particular ability getting out would be disastrous...
Well, Halloween was coming up. He could tell the dynamic duo that he was only willing to perform the spell on that night. Let them draw their own conclusions as to how or why.
Alchemist shifted slightly, his clothes clinging too close to him due to sweat. Ash grumbled in her sleep.
"Still awake?" Kary asked him groggily, wrapping her arm over his chest.
"Yeah, hon." Alchemist answered, squeezing her against him gently. "Just got a lot on my mind."
"Mmm." She hummed, her head buried against his neck. The woman was taller than him, now, but she still preferred to feel like the little spoon. At least she didn't have horns anymore. "Is there anything I can do?"
"You're doing enough, hon." Alchemist told her, listening to her hum again before her breathing evened out when she dozed back to sleep.
Alchemist listened to her breathe, felt her heart beat against him.
She was doing more than enough. She and Jinx and the familiars.
He didn't want to imagine what he'd be like if they weren't helping to keep him grounded.
AN/ It is wednesday, my dudes.