Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 2.7.6
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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27/11/2010
Yuffie giggled maniacally as her hands twisted through a series of symbols, an old fashioned pump-watergun dancing around in her hands as she used it to focus her energies.
"Suiton!" the manic little ninja shouted as the wooden toy disappeared in a burst of water, releasing a series of orbs to fly out and surround her target. "Ichi!"
The water elemental ninjutsu slammed into Yuffie's enemy, a floating ball of fire with a wide maw full of sharp teeth and a pair of stubby little arms, and did...
Minimal damage.
The ninja magic that Yuffie had hunted down with her dad's help didn't hit really hard, but it also wasn't supposed to. The cool thing about it, though, was that it would make something weaker to another element for a little bit.
As a point of fact, that was really the whole point.
"Thunder!" Jinx screamed, calling a bolt of lightning down from the imaginary sky of the strange place they were in.
The living ball of flames, a Bomb, jerked and spasmed for a moment before fading away.
Yuffie took a moment to preen, smiling broadly because her role was critical in the teamwork that made the dream work.
Ninja magic didn't use actual magic. It used tokens, infused with little bits of elemental energy that would be sacrificed to power the spell. And, with it being able to reduce the resistance of a monster, it meant that Jinx could use smaller spells and still cause big damage!
"Why is it so hot, here?" Jinx whined from the spot where she'd cast her spell.
The two of them currently stood in an open field... where the 'soil' was parched dry and cracked in quite a few places.
"'Cuz it's the fire crystal," Yuffie explained, clearly the intellectual superior of the two. "Duh."
"I know that," Jinx complained, the gray-skinned girl wiping her arm across her sweaty forehead. "But does it have to be this hot? I thought I was supposed to be fireproof!"
Yuffie shrugged, unsure of how to answer that.
Magical fire could be weird. Like the flames inside the Da Chao statues where some of her people's treasures were supposed to be hidden. Nothing could put them out except the scales of Leviathan...
Of course, her dad had just put on some fire-immune gear and stolen the stuff anyway. There weren't too many people who would even do that. Fire Armlets were supposed to be, like, super rare. And nobody actually had Elemental Materia!
"I'm taking a break," Jinx declared after quickly surveying the floor they were on. "I'm sweating buckets and the water has to come from somewhere."
"Ugh, fine," Yuffie didn't see what the big deal was. The sooner they got done, the sooner they could go back to sweet, sweet air conditioning. "Gimme some water, too."
Jinx extracted a few bottles from the inventory and threw one to the little ninja in a big, overhead toss.
Which Yuffie caught. Easily. 'Cuz she's the best ninja there ever was.
Chugging half of it in record time, Yuffie fired off a loud belch and threw herself back on the parched ground to wait for Jinx to finish up.
"...What do you even want with some kind of super-charged Materia crystal, anyway?" she eventually asked.
She hadn't really thought about what Jinx would be doing with the thing, earlier. Honestly, Yuffie had just been excited for something to do.
Now that she was getting a little bit tired, though, it was getting a little easier to focus and think about stuff.
"I'm setting up my own demi-plane," Jinx told the girl. "And the crystals pump out a lot of magic that makes them grow really fast. I figure a perfected crystal will be even faster."
"Huh."
Well, that was cool enough. Yuffie didn't understand why Jinx wanted to make her own when her dad was happy enough to let Jinx and Kary use his, but whatever. He didn't seem to mind.
Actually, he'd been kind of happy when Jinx had shown off the dinky little room that she'd made.
Yuffie set the cool bottle of water on her forehead so it stood up and she thought about that.
Her dad was just... really happy whenever she showed him something. Or whenever Jinx showed him something. Or anybody, really.
It was kind of weird, really. Her father hadn't ever acted like that. Godo would always get grumpy about her wasting his time, or how she wasn't acting in a way that fit her station.
Lame.
"...Hey," Yuffie called out, imbalancing the water bottle that was cooling off her head. "Jinx. Ji~inx, hey!"
"What?!" the teenage dragon shouted.
"Geeze," Yuffie complained. "No need to be a grouch. I just wanna ask something."
"What is it?"
"...What's dad so scared of?" Yuffie asked. She didn't bother trying to be subtle about it, though she totally could be.
"...What makes you think he's scared of something?"
"'Cuz he mastered some Darkness Materia," Yuffie explained as she lifted her head up to look over at Jinx. "Not, like, just one. The legends in Wutai say that anyone who masters that Materia? It'll eat their soul! So, like, only sensei Roshi ever used them. He said their power isn't worth the cost but wouldn't explain what he meant."
"...Hang on," Jinx told the younger girl. Yuffie could see her open a window and start looking through it, then she started to move her lips as she read something. "Okay, yeah. Eats twelve and a half percent of total hit points on use. I remember that one..."
Jinx sighed and propped herself up until she was actually looking at Yuffie. The young ninja didn't know what to make of the look on Jinx's face but it wasn't a happy one.
"Yuffie? Your people worship Leviathan, right?" Jinx asked.
Yuffie nodded but didn't verbally answer. She was in the middle of drinking some more water.
"Alright, well, imagine that Leviathan was angry at you. Specifically just you. Maybe you stole something from him-"
"I would never!" Yuffie immediately denied.
She did not include 'get caught!' in her sentence.
"Just... imagine it, okay? Leviathan is angry at you, specifically, but he's waiting. You're not sure for what, you don't know when he'll finally decide to strike, but you know that right now, he's not doing it. So, what do you do?"
Yuffie... tried to think about it.
She wanted to start off by saying that she'd totally kick his scaly butt and send him back into the sea...
But it was -Leviathan-. The rainbow lord of the coral throne! Even if there were a hundred Yuffies, she wouldn't...
"Oh," Yuffie mumbled as things slotted into place. "Ohh, I see. I gotcha."
If she had to fight Leviathan, she'd be digging up dark and forbidden powers, too. That totally made sense... Except for one thing.
"Why's dad fighting Leviathan?" Yuffie asked.
"...He's not."
"But you said-"
"He's worried about something bigger than your sea serpent, Yuffie," Jinx said, cutting the princess off. "That's just the closest comparison I could make that you should be familiar with."
But... Leviathan was the god of all the seas. The bringer of storms and lord of the rains.
What could possibly be bigger than that?
And how was her dad supposed to fight something like that?
And... how was she supposed to help him with something like that?
The princess fell uncharacteristically silent as she processed what she'd been told.
"...We should get moving," Jinx said after several more minutes of uncomfortable silence. "Maybe he'll be back from working with the brat brigade by the time we're done."
"...Yeah," Yuffie agreed, feeling much, much smaller than she had when they'd started. "Let's... go."
-----
Alchemist was pretty much done in Mount Justice for the day.
He'd poured the various different parts he needed to make some bullets and put away the tools he'd used.
Some of which... might have technically been illegal for him to own. Especially in a handful of states.
In total, Alchemist only had the parts to produce a dozen bullets. The large, lead 'cushion' that the penetrating core sat upon and the halves of the jacket that would encase the two pieces. They just needed to go through a tumbler, get cleaned up, have the core converted into whatever material he needed it to be and then have everything pressed together after some final measurements and adjustments.
There was also the cartridge, propellant and primer to worry about but those were comparatively simpler. He'd literally just bought those.
There had also been the expenses within the mountain that Alchemist needed to collect, collate and send off to Batman. There had been an uptick in consumed food, a minor increase to the utilities, pretty much all to be expected with Mount Justice housing multiple guests for various amounts of time.
Nothing terribly complicated or difficult but it helped to keep things lined up if the information was actually put together in a coherent manner!
There wasn't anything else for him to do. Tiffany was hanging around with M'gann and her brother M'comm. They'd come in to check on the bio-ship, the young lady wanting to introduce the two, and Alchemist's presence made that... uncomfortable.
Apparently, smacking someone upside the head with a board made for a bad impression.
Who knew?
So, after Alchemist hit send on the email with the report and several bills and receipts attached to it, he just... left.
Listing a bit, Alchemist felt the magic more deeply as he teleported home. There was discomfort, more than a bit to be honest, but the wizard almost felt as though he was experiencing the magic with another sense.
It prickled; plucked and itched at something deep inside of him... but it did so in a specific way. And the transformation spell that let him look human felt entirely different.
He was tempted to try and feel how different spells felt while he was still hypersensitive but he remembered how it felt to cast Heal and that nixed the plan rather thoroughly.
If his other spells currently felt like he was running his hand down a sunburn, metaphorically, that had felt about like slapping it. So he was going to wait. Chill out. Work on something that wasn't too magical for a bit.
Not like he was lacking in options.
Alchemist looked up from where he'd appeared, dragged out of his thoughts by a childish voice on the television. Ash and Cinder were sitting and watching an Australian children's cartoon show about some dogs. And plopped on his couch, finally awake after being out for more than twenty four hours, was M'ree.
The mage's mouth twitched, jumping between a grin at his familiar and a grimace at M'ree for a moment before he got the reaction under control.
"So," Alchemist called out, getting the woman's attention. "I'm not especially familiar with Martian biology. Is that about the normal amount of sleep for you?"
M'ree turned her head to stare at him. Her face wasn't expressive, especially with the whole missing lips thing that the Martians had going on in this reality.
"...I do feel like I've overslept a bit," M'ree admitted before turning her head back to the show. "I don't think I've seen this before. When did it start airing?"
"It's from a foreign reality, so..." Alchemist ran a quick search through his inventory to hunt down the first season of the show she was watching with the hellhounds. "Eight years from now."
"...You're from the future?" the woman asked, turning once again to look at him.
"Well. A future. And a foreign reality. My experiences and knowledge aren't exactly useful, here. Neither is my media library." He didn't know what stocks to invest in, any lottery numbers, anything like that.
Alchemist turned towards the hallway, with the extra door set into it that didn't lead to another room in the house. "Come on. We can talk while I work, if you want."
He left the door of his demi-plane ajar as he walked through it. Everything had been cleaned up, his Workers doing a wonderful job in his absence.
Alchemist needed to do something for them. He knew some of them had started developing bits and pieces of personality. He'd like to encourage that.
Especially if he could direct it in a way that didn't lead to a golem uprising. That would be great.
He could feel M'ree walking up behind him as he entered his workshop. He could feel the woman watching him as he began to extract bars of steel from his inventory. He did wonder what she was thinking about as he cast Fortify Skill: Smithing on himself but she was the mind reader, not him.
He didn't know how much metal he was going to need, not really. The weapon he was intending to forge was intended to be in two parts. One part that was most of a sword, the fuller, grip, pommel and guard all worked into one part. Well, once it was assembled.
The second would be the blade. Well, the blade, foible and point. Basically all of the sharp or stabby bits.
Two materials. One metal and one... not.
"What are you doing?" M'ree asked as Alchemist began to extract a few planks while the metal heated through.
"Relaxing," Alchemist explained as he started to make markings along the plank with a wax marker. "I like to make things, when I have the chance. Smithing and woodworking make for some good hobbies."
And the secrets he'd glimpsed inside of the shadow of the spear, Gungnir, would demand a sword. Something made of materials more potent than iron and steel. Something purpose-built to be a killing tool.
And the most important part of such a weapon would be the sheath.
"Smithing?" M'ree asked. "With... fire?"
"Controlled fire," Alchemist calmly told the pyrophobe. "Yes."
"Well. Martians don't really do... fire."
"I'm aware," the wizard told the woman. "You can stay by the door, if you like. I know that your people have never really gotten over the fear of fire the Guardians put into you."
"The... what?" M'ree asked as Alchemist began to grab the tools he would need off of their racks along the walls. "You believe someone implanted the fear of fire into my people?"
"I know they did," Alchemist told the woman, surety in his voice as he ran a critical eye over his plans. "And I can't say I blame them. Your ancestors, the Burning Martians, were a galaxy-spanning nightmare. Lunatics that burned themselves alive and wanted to burn everything else along with them."
Sure, what the Guardians did might have been a bit extreme but, well, the Burning Martians were a bit extreme.
Alchemist tapped at the board for a bit as he debated how he wanted to make the weapon. With the size restrictions the mixed materials would impose on the inner piece, he couldn't add a whole lot of Materia slots.
Four, perhaps? He'd give that a try and see how it worked out. He didn't want to try and force too many into the weapon and risk them coming in contact with the non-metal he'd be turning the blade into.
"Hmm..." Alchemist made a few notations on the board, adjusting his plans. If he expanded the width of the fuller and hammered the blade over it as a sort of sleeve, he could forge weld some rivets in to hold everything together.
"...Is that why my people are so passive?" M'ree asked after a long, long moment. Alchemist turned his head slightly, catching sight of her with one eye to see that the two fingers on both of her hands were clenching and unclenching into fists. "Is that why so few of us are willing to brave the stars? To grow beyond the limits of our society?!"
"Probably not," Alchemist said, cutting the angry woman off. He ignored the incredulous glare she sent him and instead pulled a bar of steel out of the fire with a set of tongs, then pulled out a rod he'd set in as well. "That was millions of years ago. You can blame them for the issue with fire, that's fair, but the rest? That's just evolution. Working together and not killing each other ended up being a winning strategy. Who knew!"
Alchemist clamped the white-orange bar down to his anvil and held the rod, its end aglow, just over it to begin hammering the two pieces together.
"...I want to be angry at the perceived manipulation," M'ree very plainly stated, earning an incredulous glance from the wizard. She just shrugged and crossed her arms, looking down at the ground. "...I'm just angry. And I want to feel justified in aiming that somewhere."
"...Y'know what? That's fine." Alchemist certainly wasn't going to tell someone what they could or couldn't feel. "The Guardians have made a mess of a lot of things. Happens to groups that are old and powerful."
Putting the bar back into the forge, Alchemist began the process again with another bar. He'd start with about one and a half kilograms of metal and he'd cut the weight down as it went.
"If you want to get back to Mars, I've got a few options for you," Alchemist told the woman as he kept working. "I'm not up to opening a Gate at the moment but I've got a ship. Should be able to reach your planet in about... six or eight hours, if it's on this side of the sun. Or I can try and speak to one of the Green Lanterns hanging around Earth to get you home? It'd probably be about fifteen or twenty minutes with them. Their FTL is, frankly, amazing."
And they had better sensors in their rings than Alchemist could get his hands on.
The wizard's sigh went unheard over the ringing of steel on steel.
He still couldn't get the Harlock to effectively comprehend the sensory suite he'd pulled from a Starfleet Danube Cruiser. The issue, as most computer problems did, irritated the piss out of him.
"...What if I wish to stay here?" M'ree asked. Alchemist tilted his head slightly to focus on her as she spoke. "Your... people seemed rather open and accommodating. And you seem quite willing to share your arcane secrets. What if I wish to study them? To learn how to do what you do?"
"Okay."
"...That's it?" M'ree asked as she hesitantly stepped into the room.
Alchemist could feel the woman trembling. He didn't need to look to see the hesitation in her every step.
"That's it," Alchemist agreed as he placed the last bar back into the elemental furnace. "You don't actually have to stay with my people if you don't want to. I can put together a handful of books and drop you off with your uncle. Stick with M'gann and M'comm if you'd prefer."
"...I will consider it," M'ree didn't sound particularly excited by the suggestion but that was fine.
All the wizard had done was offer her some options. Whatever she chose would be up to her.
The woman was silent for a long, long moment as Alchemist began to sketch out the rough length and shape he would need for the scabbard on the plank of wood he'd been using.
He didn't know why she was just watching. Or what she was thinking.
But he did recall that the woman was a scientist. Kind of a bitch, too, but an actual scientist.
The wizard swallowed heavily as he pulled out his bars of metal and reached down, latching on to his magic. With a feeling not unlike pulling off a sheet of dead skin, the white-hot bars began to shape and mold themselves to his will. Being heated through as they were, they were already soft, dramatically reducing the strain felt through Transmutation as he shaped the metal.
The fuller and tang as one piece came from one bar. Out of the sides, all the way up and into the tip, twenty-five little holes wormed themselves out of the metal and crawled to the side of his anvil. Next was the guard and pommel. Neither were complicated or adorned. Just simple and functional.
The wizard grabbed the metal in his bare hands and began to assemble the heart of his blade, his hit points actively regenerating as the heat tried to burn him.
As transmutation fused the pieces together, the wizard turned his gaze on to the last bar. At the moment, it was simple steel. Soon, however, it would be something more.
"...I had no idea that magic could do this," M'ree whispered to herself as she watched the process. "I thought it was limited to unreliable attempts to summon forth rain to our parched lands."
"That's actually not that difficult of a spell," Alchemist admitted as the metal bowed and bent into an arch that snugly fit itself around the fuller. "Upscaling it is increasingly expensive but a moderately trained wizard could probably make a good living just off the basic use of the spell."
"...I could learn to conjure water?" M'ree sounded incredulous and Alchemist really didn't get why.
It was a first level spell. Not typically in the wizard's repertoire, true, but there were clerics and druids who could cast the spell by accident and barely notice.
"Sure. It wouldn't be too hard to teach you. Get you started with a few cantrips, stuff that cleans or fixes things, that'll get you started on feeling the magic inside of you. Once you've got a decent grounding, we can move on to more comprehensive spells."
Taking some of the cast-off metal, Alchemist turned them into several dozen rivets and began the process of using them to affix the blade to the fuller.
Normally he'd be against making a sword out of multiple parts like that but he absolutely needed to keep a measure of distinct distance from the blade itself.
Once he'd finished, Alchemist cast Prestidigitation and cleaned off the weapon, removing the rust and scale that had formed over the cooling steel, and doused the blade in oil. He kept a critical eye on the tool as it hissed and sizzled.
It had another round to go. He still needed to re-heat the blade and douse it in water to harden the exterior...
But he would soon have a weapon fit for the arts that had been designed to kill the unkillable.
"Come on," Alchemist said to M'ree as he turned to leave his project to cool. "Let's see about getting you set up somewhere and I'll hunt down a few beginner spells for you."
"That was... fascinating," M'ree told him as they left the demi-plane. "I've seen some craftsmen who would combine their psychic talents with their handiworks but only the most experienced made it seem as effortless."
"Practice," Alchemist told the woman, deferring her praise as he closed the windows notifying him of Smithing and Transmutation leveling up. "Take the tools you have and practice with them, whatever they might be, and you'll be just as confident."
-----
Jinx felt exhausted by the time she and Yuffie finished up their trek through the Fire Crystal.
Straight combat wasn't too bad. She was actually pretty used to that.
The heat sapping at her, draining away at her energy a little bit more with every second that they spent traversing the Item World? That had been torturous and it had only gotten worse the deeper they went.
Nothing had worked to mitigate the heat, either. Life Bubble had helped at first but it stopped really doing anything by the sixtieth floor.
The 'Item God' had been some kind of giant made of red crystal in an arena that was practically on fire from the word 'go' and Jinx felt like she'd sweated out every drop of water she'd ever drank in her life.
The giant beast had stood on the tips of its toes in a crouch with long, wicked looking claws at the ends of its too-long arms. A trail of blue flames had run down its back and turned into a red, lizard-like tail. Atop its strangely canine head, a pair of horns held up a crown made of blinding, white fire.
Jinx, even half-delirious from heat stroke, had still come out on top. The fire elemental hadn't been immune to ice magic and Deep Freeze, even with its potency reduced, had still caused the crystal to crack.
Then Yuffie, struggling equally as badly as Jinx had been, threw the first thing she could grab from the inventory into the giant, crystalline beast.
It had ended up being a kitchen sink. An old fashioned one.
The other half of the kitchen sink set that Alchemist had stolen from the old Shinra mansion.
Between the extreme (very extreme) temperature shifts and the deep cracks, the living crystal actually ended up shattering...
...When it went to slam the ground in some kind of intimidation display.
~~ Enemy Defeated: Ifrit Unleashed ~~
~~ Experience + 255,000 ~~
~~ GP + 510,000 ~~
~~ Obtained Items: Fire Crystal X4, Fire Synthesis Crystal (Unlimited) X4 ~~
Jinx hadn't had the energy to have words. She was hot, she was sweaty and she was tired. She'd spent a few minutes collecting some of the broken crystal shards before she just gave up, selected her boon for beating the Item God-
Doubled output, which she figured would work great for her goals of dropping it into her demi-plane.
-and Gated out.
The blast of scorching heat against her back bowled her over, knocking the dragon to the ground the second she placed a claw on the ground. Turning around, Jinx had to squint and cover her eyes to vaguely make out the brilliant white tower crystal that was floating in the air and letting off more heat than a fully-powered Fire Elemental.
"...Woah!" Yuffie cried out as she fell down right next to Jinx. "What the heck- Is that supposed to be doing that?!"
"No!" Jinx shouted, a fair amount of whine in her voice as the grass in the clearing she'd selected caught on fire. "This is way too much!"
Closing her eyes, Jinx had to rely on her other senses to approach the overpowered Fire Crystal. Tapping a claw against the impossibly hot surface, Jinx could read the notification through her eyelids about absorbing some fire damage as HP just before the crystal dropped into the inventory.
The following silence, the cold and darkness, were stifling.
"...Still gonna use that to power your pocket reality thingy?" Yuffie asked.
Jinx inhaled slowly before exhaling tiredly.
"No," she mumbled as she turned back towards the cleared region that the houses had been set up in. "It's too strong. It'd just cause anything I put in the demi-plane to burn up."
So she'd wasted three hours. And now she had heat exhaustion. On top of normal exhaustion.
"...You want some ice-cream?" Jinx asked as they crossed from jungle and into the developing village. "Because I want some ice-cream."
"Yes!" the ninja shouted, then coughed and repeated herself at a more normal volume, "yes. Yes, I would like some ice-cream."
They passed by the mostly-featureless blocks that Alchemist had put together-
Except one. One apartment was covered on all sides by images that had been painted on to it by the still-nameless painter girl that Alchemist had kidnapped from the world of Dark Souls. Jinx had sort of expected someone to yell about it but Gael had actually been helping her and Alchemist had even given her a few buckets of different colors of paint.
Jinx hadn't really personalized her own apartment. She kind of needed to get a home somewhere inside the same county as Star City if she wanted to keep her emancipation. And she wanted to keep that because, well, society actually had a lot of nice things in it and she wanted to keep on doing stuff there.
The hermit lifestyle actually wasn't enticing. Go figure.
Stepping into Alchemist's apartment, she didn't see anyone inside so she just went straight for the kitchen and opened the freezer.
"Score!" the dragon said with some small measure of cheer as she saw a box of Neapolitan ice-cream. Pulling it out of the freezer, it didn't even feel light!
Ripping the lid off, she saw it hadn't even been touched!
Yes!
"Gimme some strawberry and vanilla," Yuffie demanded as she actually climbed up onto Jinx.
"Fine," Jinx grumbled as she set the snack aside and started to hunt down the scoop, bowls and spoons. "I was gonna go for chocolate and vanilla, anyway."
She had Yuffie's bowl ready and half of her own set up when Alchemist stepped out of the hallway with a sheathed sword held in his hands. Even over her own sweat and soot, she could smell that Alchemist had been in his workshop. There was a certain odor to it that was just unmistakable, at least now. A bit of magic, fire, rust...
And there was the Martian walking with him, several books that looked downright tiny in her overlong arms.
"Ice-cream?" Alchemist asked as he caught sight of her. "Sounds pretty good. Let me get a bowl when you're done."
"...I could just get you some," Jinx offered as she pointed the scoop at him, one large ball of vanilla sitting in it.
"No, no, get yours and sit down. I'll take care of my own."
Jinx waited for a second, giving her friend an opportunity to change his mind but he didn't, so she went ahead and plopped her snack into her bowl and got out of the way as Alchemist took her place at the counter.
And she might have wrapped her tail around the new sword he had and pulled it to herself while he was distracted.
"Hmm..." Jinx hummed, a scoop of chocolate melting in her mouth as she pulled the blade free of the scabbard. It didn't look at all special, just a steel longsword- wait, it had a series of dots that were almost invisible along the sides... like, an inch in from the edge of the blade.
Pulling the sword further and further out, she counted twelve on each side and then one up top, right in the middle underneath the tip.
It also had two pairs of linked Materia slots near the base of the blade, just over a wide cross-guard, but they were currently empty.
"What's with the new sword?" Jinx asked as Alchemist sat down at the relatively small dinner table he'd put in his kitchen.
It could technically seat four people but they'd be elbow to elbow. Which really wasn't great but the man seemed to prioritize his counter space over his table space.
"Got some new materials," Alchemist explained. He held out one hand and Jinx awkwardly handed the blade over.
And Alchemist actually handed her a ring in return.
Frowning in confusion, Jinx looked down at the broken Green Lantern Ring!
"Where did you get this?!" she asked, her voice edging into a shout.
"Off of a zombie in Player One's I.D." Alchemist told the girl as he moved aside a handful of papers and laid the sword flat on the table. "I was actually going to ask if you could do me a favor and use Conversion on the metals of the sword, here."
"What?" Jinx looked up, confusion written clear on her face. "Why can't you do it?"
"I asked the devil to put some safeguards on my soul," Alchemist placed a hand over his chest as he explained. "And he was not gentle in doing so. My magic has been really sensitive all day, just using Transmutation felt pretty weird."
"...Okay," Jinx looked between Alchemist and the sword, then ate a spoonful of vanilla ice-cream.
Touching the ring with Transmutation, she got a brief notice about Will being added to her list of materials.
"So, do I just turn the whole thing into whatever the ring is made of?" she asked as Alchemist took the ring and put it back in his inventory.
"No, no. Actually, I only want the blade Converted into Will. All the rest of it, especially these dots? I'd like them to be made of Adamantine."
And, as Alchemist explained that, he pulled a small bar of black metal out of the inventory.
With a quiet, put-upon sigh, Jinx touched the ingot with Transmutation and got another notification about another material being added to Convert.
With that done, Jinx pressed her claw against the steel of the sword and watched as black spread out to consume the grey. Then she tapped each of the little circles punched through the blade, turning them into Adamantine as well.
Alright. Jinx would admit, it looked kind of cool.
Finally, touching the side of the edge she used Convert again and focused on the strange Will material. The end result, after a few minutes of work, was a brilliant green edge wrapped around a black sword and studded with little black dots.
"So, what's the point of this thing?" Jinx asked as Alchemist picked the sword up and looked over it.
He was silent for a moment, running a finger along the length of the long sword.
Jinx took the opportunity to help herself to more ice-cream.
"...Do you know who Alan Scott is?" Alchemist asked as he sheathed the weapon she'd transformed.
"Nope."
"He's the original Green Lantern, well... The original 'human' Green Lantern. And he's getting on in years."
"So you made a sword for some old guy?" Yuffie asked.
"Not quite, no. I made a sword for myself, but I got quite a few duplicates once it finished up. I figured I could... experiment a little bit with one. And it certainly succeeded. The question, then, becomes what should I do with what we've made?" Alchemist sent the two girls a small smile as he leaned the sword against the table. "And I've been thinking about trying to get Alan Scott to come back into the game. The thing is, the man is actually pretty partial to the whole 'knight in shining armor' theme. I was thinking that, if I offered him the tools to 'rebrand', it might be a little easier to get him out of retirement."
"Huh. So, you want to give a willpower sword to some old guy with a willpower ring?" Jinx could see that. Kind of. "Why him and not one of the Green Lanterns that are, you know, not retired?"
"Alan is magic adjacent. Stewart, Gardner and Jordan are all very much on the technology side of the divide." Alchemist paused briefly in his explanation to eat a scoop of chocolate. "He's also got experience in warfare that the others don't. He doesn't have to follow the same rules that they do. Besides..."
Alchemist leaned forward, as though he were about to impart some great secret. Jinx and Yuffie both leaned in to hear whatever it was that he had to say.
"We can fix old age, provided he's willing..."
Jinx opened her mouth to say something else when the front door slammed open and Kary sauntered in.
The woman's entire body was slick with sweat and she had an absolutely enormous smile on her face.
"You have to join me in the world of a Fire Crystal, love!" the fallen angel practically shouted.
Jinx felt her jaw drop slightly as she put two and two together and realized why she hadn't seen Kary at all since she'd finished up with her own Item World.
"The temperature is absolutely fantastic!" Kary crowed, quite unaware of the fact that Jinx and Yuffie had experience that was incredibly contrary to her own. "It felt just like being back in a volcano!"
"...You're all crazy," the Martian in the living room stated, drawing four sets of eyes to her. "Alchemist? I think it might be for the best if I do stay with Uncle J'onn."
"...Alright," Alchemist agreed. "Yeah, let me just finish up and we'll get you taken care of. Do you want a bowl before you go?"
"No."
Jinx tapped the side of her bowl a few times with her spoon as she looked at the various people and listened to the snippets of clear conversation between them.
Yeah, they were all crazy. M'ree was right on the money with that one.
Jinx wouldn't have it any other way.
