I just find it amazing that it's been around for twenty years. Monte's first anime girl-fight videos are still on my favorites list, as are some of the music videos made off songs in RWBY. Red Like Roses, for example...
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 (Young Justice/Gamer/Multicross OC)
- Thread starter Mister Ficser
- Start date
- Location
- Whadjuk Noongar boodja
Huh, in that case I'm left wondering why it felt naggingly familiar, as I know pretty much nothing about Kryptonian lore. Hell, it wasn't until a few months ago that I even knew that Dick Grayson chose his second persona's name from Krytpon's mythology.
Those decades sure do sneak up on a person, don't they? 😰
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Chapter 286
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 2.8.6
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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?/??/????
Alchemist limped along quietly. His body ached, a deep burn that came from muscles that, currently, he didn't actually have.
He didn't know how long he'd flown through the void between dimensions.
There wasn't anything to keep track of time, not in that infinite non-space. The little creatures that were trying to attack him had proven both infinitely numerous and so incredibly feeble that their mindless efforts hadn't been worth worrying about beyond the fact that the swarm had proven capable of blocking his sight.
The tunnel through the void did have a current, one that initially kept Alchemist from simply going too fast and ramming his way out through a wall, but that had only helped so much.
Whatever the Ideas were, aside from infinite beyond reason, they hadn't been able to push through Alchemist's Mana Wall and, once he'd gotten a brief reprieve to cast Dread Spikes, had functionally killed themselves against him en masse without offering up a single experience point or GP. He'd still gotten skill experience for both spells, a significant enough amount to master both, but overall Alchemist hadn't found it worth his time to deal with the entities.
Haste... Alchemist had been casting Haste on himself to get through the swarms faster and that spell had reached level twenty-five. Which was... fast.
So, Alchemist's armor was currently a mess of white and gray goo from the shoulders up. It rather looked like it had just been the centerpiece to a particularly strange adult video. As such, the second he'd been able to? He'd sent it back to the armory so he didn't have to feel like a pornstarlet until he could take a few minutes to clean it.
And he had no idea how long he'd spent flying. Not in real time. Not in subjective time. Which, in a timeless place, was basically the same thing.
So... the itching and burning that had plagued his soul like a bad case of lice after Lucifer got done sticking his fingers into it? That was gone. A lot faster than he'd anticipated but, well...
Time magic.
Even the most basic uses of it could completely change, well, everything. Haste, Slow and Stop were just the equivalent of getting one's feet wet. Meteor was also time magic, technically, but there were also spells out there that would reset a fight to the beginning or the Quick spell which would instantly complete any sorts of charging or chanting for the target.
Alchemist kept his eyes open as he crossed a set of railroad tracks, dipping a toe into the 'bad' side of Jump City. He didn't know the layout of the city, no, but there were certain rules that held true regardless of where someone was in the United States. And that was that the majority of a city's industry was on the east end, along with the various parts of the city that would be considered 'disenfranchised' or 'economically struggling'.
So, railroad tracks in the city would almost invariably be found next to a bunch of warehouses, abandoned houses and, Alchemist grinned as he found a suitable target, empty apartment complexes.
Jump City was a thriving, successful city in the early two-thousands in California. Which meant that it was transitioning into a lot of technical, knowledge-based or logistics jobs as the local politicians slowly taxed and outlawed the various factories and industries throughout the state to death.
Testing one of the doors that led into the abandoned apartment complex, the fact that it was locked was honestly surprising. The outer windows on the big, box-like building were boarded over and the realty sign out front had long since faded, so Alchemist had expected the locks to be broken.
Shrugging, the wizard snapped his fingers, cast Knock, and just walked on in. There were no lights and the building reeked of mold, the walls were cracked with age and parts of the ceiling were sagging down. It was...
Well, disgusting. Alchemist was absolutely unsurprised that the building was abandoned and nobody had ever been willing to buy it. The cost to get it repaired would be absolutely ruinous and, with its spot next to a set of active train tracks, the price to rent would have to be low just to attract the kinds of people that would be desperate enough to live in the place.
Taking an abrupt turn to the right, across from a bank of in-wall mailboxes, Alchemist opened a door that led into a room that had a row of coin-operated washing machines along one wall and another row of coin-operated clothes driers along the opposite wall.
That was what he'd been searching for. A building just on the line of innocuous and sketchy, then an easily accessible room that would be overlooked by those not in the know. The perfect place for him to set up the door for his demi-plane.
Or... alright. Not 'perfect' but the best Alchemist could do with no resources.
Which was going to be a minor inconvenience to fix.
"Alchemist!" Kary called on seeing him step through the door and into the fresh, clean air of the demi-plane. "We were worried!"
"Sorry about that," Alchemist told the woman, adopting a small grin as he saw everyone had come out to see about him. Jinx waved, once, while Yuffie was excitedly waving her arms around. The dolls were watching him from around the doorframe of the house while the hounds had run up to sniff at him and Reis was just glaring at him from around the corner of the house. Tiffany even looked a bit better, though she was sitting on the steps into the house and blocking the view of half the dolls. "How long was I gone?"
"Almost a week," Kary quietly said as she pulled him into her arms. Alchemist certainly wasn't fighting her, though. "We had begun to worry that you had been obstructed or that the spell had failed."
"The spell held out just fine," Alchemist told her as he pulled away. "Though there was definitely an obstruction. There were these worm-looking things that bored into the Gate and tried to swarm me."
"Are you well?" Kary asked. The various onlookers cleared a path as the two walked into the house and Alchemist made a beeline for the kitchen.
"I'm hungry and I'm tired," the mage admitted. "So I'm going to get something to eat and pass out for a bit."
He wasn't just tired. Alchemist was exhausted.
As a void dragon, he technically did not need to eat or sleep. As a void dragon, he was also technically capable of looking at the divine oversoul of a god and it wasn't supposed to give him a splitting headache.
The reality, though, was that just because he was capable, that did not mean he was used to doing either of those things. He didn't know if the issue came with his age or if he was just unused to those aspects and he needed to practice them.
But, really, Alchemist also didn't care. Those weren't the sorts of things that he was too interested in getting used to.
"...This is fair, I suppose," Kary said with a quiet sigh as Alchemist opened the fridge and pulled out a loaf of bread. "Were you able to determine when we are in this timeline?"
"I pulled a newspaper out of the trash," Alchemist told her as he smeared butter over one slice of bread. "And that said we're currently, or maybe a little after, July first of two-thousand and three."
"...So we actually traveled into the past?" Jinx asked from the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room.
"Kind of. Sort of." Alchemist opened a jar of peanut butter and smeared a knife-full of that on another slice of bread. "It's more like we... entered this reality at an earlier point of time. Traveling any direction except forward will be pretty hard. Hence the whole Gate spell shenanigans. If we'd traveled horizontally instead of at an angle, the travel time would've probably been cut in half."
"...What are we going to do, here?" Tiffany asked.
The girl was wearing one of Jinx's outfits... which was just a pink hoodie and a pair of black sweatpants.
So she probably still didn't have access to her own inventory.
That was fine.
"I don't know," Alchemist admitted as he moved around the girls, a peanut butter sandwich on his plate and a glass of lemonade in his hands. "That depends on how long it takes to get the suit Jinx wants. In the meantime, however, there are a lot of things I wanted to work on. And I figured this would be a good time as any to enroll Yuffie in a physical school."
"What?!" the little ninja shouted, forcing her way around the older girls so she could stick her finger into Alchemist's face. "Treason! I never agreed to that!"
"I know you didn't," Alchemist idly agreed as he gently pushed Yuffie's finger away from his nose. "And I know you don't academically excel in a normal school environment. But I also remember how bored you were back during our last extended trip."
Yuffie put her hands on her hips and glared at Alchemist. The effect was... unimpressive, given that she was standing just as tall as Alchemist when he was sitting.
"So, I figured that giving you a chance to actually get to know people and show off to normal people about how awesome you are would be a good thing."
Alchemist took a bite out of his sandwich as he watched Yuffie fight an internal war over the situation.
On the one hand, he wasn't expecting her to get good grades. Yuffie was hardly stupid but the girl simply did not excel at anything that involved sitting still and waiting. But she was loud, rambunctious and friendly. He could handle tutoring her to deal with the grades but Yuffie needed to be around people and that wasn't something she could really do, hiding in the demi-plane.
"And what about me?" Jinx asked as she walked around to sit at the table to Alchemist's right. "Do you have any plans for me?"
"...Not really," Alchemist admitted after he swallowed what was in his mouth. "I figured you'd have some idea about what you want and we could work out the details afterwards."
"So if I wanted to go to Hive Academy?" Jinx leaned forward and placed her elbows on the table, interlocking her hands under her chin. "How would we make that happen?"
Alchemist took another bite out of his sandwich and let his tired mind mull that over.
"...Probably the same way I deal with most villains," the mage admitted after almost a minute of thinking. "Through a combination of threats, bribery and disguises."
"Perfect!" the havoc dragon exclaimed, a fanged smile on her face. "Ooh, I can't wait! Local-me is going to have no idea what's going on!"
Alchemist just shrugged and watched Jinx hurry off, heading upstairs to the room she shared with Yuffie. He had no idea what that one was planning.
"...What about me?" Tiffany asked, her voice low and quiet.
"What do you want to do?" Kary asked in Alchemist's stead as he worked on his lemonade.
"...School, I guess?" Tiffany asked, rather than stated.
"Then we'll get that figured out," Alchemist said as he began to gather up his dirty dishes. "We're probably going to be here for a bit, so if you're not comfortable with something, let me know."
"...Alright," Tiffany quietly agreed as Alchemist got to work on washing things.
Alchemist didn't have to turn to be aware of Tiffany walking away.
She was looking better. Less desperate, that was certain.
"...Love," Kary whispered into his ear as she wrapped her arms around Alchemist from behind him. "I've missed you while you were gone."
"...I've missed you, too," Alchemist admitted to the woman as he held one of her hands in his.
For her, it'd been five days. One whole work week.
For him?
He didn't know how long it had been. Just that it had been much, much longer.
"...Hurry on to bed, love," Kary continued, her voice deep and husky, right into his ear. "And I'll show you how much."
Alchemist grinned as she let go of him and he gave her a moment to get a head start before he cast Prestidigitation and finished the dishes in an instant.
Kary had no idea what she was in for.
-----
02/07/2003 (TT)
Jinx hadn't ever really gotten to enjoy the motorbikes that Alchemist had bought on Gaia, in the world of Final Fantasy Seven. He had his Hardy Daytona, 'won' after throwing a match against some bald creep, but there were the two 'sports bikes' that he'd bought just before they departed.
They'd been kind of fun to ride around on the mountain but the terrain was just kind of... technically doable but overall there were just too many trees to really pick up any speed.
She still remembered the sales pitch.
'This here model is the Shinra All-Ground Motorbike, the AGM, model number seven! Everything from the ground up has been made to the high standards set by Director Heidegger himself, back, err...
You'll note the sheen here? This was made using the most resilient yet lightweight mithril alloys, developed by Shinra's own science division! Every bolt and fastener has been specially machined to ensure the greatest level of durability and precision currently available on the market.
Just as capable of getting through shallow marshland as it is able to traverse the deserts of Corel, this bad boy is the same make and model currently used by our armed forces for both scouting and high-speed pursuits!
Even better, making use of advancements pioneered by the Space and Materia divisions, you'll note that the engine barely even rumbles below ninety kilometers per hour. These whisper-quiet features are made possible by utilizing lightning materia as a power source in place of the traditional fire materia, though you'll still find that explosive strength in our more rugged Hardy models.
Err... SOLDIER? I'm sorry, sir. Those models aren't currently available to the public. However, if you're still interested, I can add you to the mailing list as a priority customer so you'll get notified first-hand when a new model is released!'
And Alchemist had bought two of the things, kitted out with the best options available by the official dealer. The total price had come to an astounding forty-eight thousand Gil, the local currency, per bike.
And Jinx was riding one at the moment.
Well, technically she was sitting on one and waiting in an alley across the street from a local pawn shop.
They needed cash if they wanted to get anything accomplished and Jinx kind of wanted to get out of the demi-plane. Alchemist had passed out yesterday after... some stuff. And he hadn't woken back up yet. Kary had been wearing a massive, shit-eating grin and everywhere she went the room got a little darker because she was having a hard time controlling her aura.
Tiffany... Jinx didn't know what to make of Tiffany.
The girl had spent the first two days of transit just lying in bed. She didn't eat, barely drank, just barely even moved. Hunger had gotten to her by day three and the smell alone had made Jinx frog-march the girl into the bathroom to force her to take a shower.
Jinx knew enough to recognize depression. She didn't know enough to know what to do about depression. On the street, you either got up and did something or you went hungry. And feeling sad about something wasn't an excuse.
Or, Jinx wanted to say that. But she'd known enough people who intentionally drank until they wouldn't wake back up again.
She didn't know what to do about Tiffany and trying to deal with the girl left her... uncomfortable.
Yuffie had listened to Jinx offering to drive around town for about five words before vehemently rejecting the offer. They could medicate the worst of Yuffie's motion sickness but they still hadn't figured out how to get it fully under control.
So that left Jinx to her own devices. And she'd had enough sitting around and doing nothing for a good, long while. She wanted to get out, to go and do something, anything.
That had led to Jinx trying to explore Jump City, just to discover that her cellphone didn't have any signal. Which meant no data. Which meant no GPS.
Getting around a new city was actually a lot harder than she'd expected.
After more than an hour of wandering around, she'd finally been directed to the local library. And she'd... kind of tricked the front desk attendant into letting her print off a dozen sheets without paying the paltry twenty-five cents per page.
That actually felt a lot worse to Jinx than any of the times she'd shoplifted. Three dollars from someone who was being earnestly helpful felt a lot heavier than twenty bucks from a big box store where 'Shrinkage' was already factored in.
But she could pay that back, now.
Jinx had printed off the locations for a dozen pawn shops around the city, less than a third of what could be found around Gotham, and had been systematically making her way across town. She'd use True Creation to make a solid gold neck chain, the same weight each time, and she'd seen which pawn shops would offer her a fair price and which ones would just try and rip her off.
Then she just... waited.
Only one pawn shop had reported an 'underweight, nervous girl selling stolen jewelry' to the police so far.
Jinx leaned forward over the handlebars of her bike and sighed. Jump City was weird.
In Gotham? She'd have been reported by every pawn shop! Not to prevent crime or anything, but so the cops could steal her cash and whatever else she had to pawn off.
The girl twisted her mouth into a scowl under her helmet and revved the accelerator. Twelve pawn shops, four hours of work, six if the fact-finding was factored in and she was up a little more than two grand.
It was a lot more than what she'd started with, that was true, but it was also not really a whole lot.
Following the traffic laws, Jinx just let herself drift throughout the city streets. The sounds, the sights, the people...
Jump City was a lot like Star City. Clean and bright and modern but it wasn't futuristic, not like Metropolis. The total opposite of Gotham. Aside from the massive letter 'T' sitting out in the bay, Jump City just felt... lacking. Everything was boxy and square, nothing had any history or personality.
But she understood. Those simple, empty shapes were easy to put together. And Jump City had apparently been the victim of an alien attack, not too long ago. At least, that was what Jinx had been able to put together before she'd dispelled the half of herself that had been at the library earlier.
Which, if she recalled the show correctly, meant that they'd shown up not long after the Teen Titans had come together. Aside from a handful of robberies and other minor crimes, the teenaged crimefighters hadn't done too much yet of note.
Slowing down to idle at a red light, Jinx leaned to one side and propped her ride up with one leg. The girl looked to the side, to the west where the sun was setting on the ocean. The titan's tower looked like a black silhouette on the side.
Jinx tried to smile, under the full helmet she was wearing, but the effort felt hollow.
They hadn't had any solid plans because they simply didn't know when they would appear in the timeline. She and Alchemist had spitballed ideas, from being heroes to antiheroes to just skipping off to do whatever they wanted but they hadn't really settled on anything.
But...
The hollow grin under her helmet filled out, her fangs hidden behind glass and plastic.
Jinx was looking forward to Hive Academy. Cultist Blood and a school full of itty bitty baby villains. Geniuses and magicians and brutes and countless other odds and ends...
Jinx didn't know what she was planning, not for sure... Not yet.
She was going to learn what they had to offer, sure. Learn it and see if it would help her break into the tower when Robin finally put away his unstable supersuit. Because, yeah, she could just magic her way into the tower. Invisibility, Alchemist had told her about a spell he picked up called 'Bypass Password', her own acrobatics skills and maybe a bit of transmutation...
But Jinx was, honestly, kind of really curious about how the villains would teach someone to break through that security. And she sort of wanted to know if she could do it, too.
The girl was broken out of her reverie by the sound of honking coming from behind her.
"Get a move on!" one random driver yelled at her, some blond guy wearing a white, long sleeve shirt with an orange ascot in a tye-dye hippie van. "The light's green!"
Jinx swiftly confirmed that, yes, the light was green.
"Sorry!" she yelled back, throttling the accelerator as she did.
Under her helmet, Jinx's face flushed red.
Well. That was embarrassing.
-----
03/07/2003 (TT)
Yuffie woke up to the sound of knocking on her bedroom door.
"Yuf! Come on! I'm making breakfast!"
Yuffie woke up to the sound of her dad knocking on her bedroom door.
With a groan, the ninja began the difficult job of untangling herself from her bed sheets. This was a task made all the harder by Ash laying overtop of her.
"C'mon!" Yuffie whined as she pushed at the heavy dog. "I want to get up..."
Ash, however, was quite dead to the world. Her tongue had lolled itself out the side of her muzzle and the dog was rather happily dreaming of dog things. Chasing cats, playing fetch, eating...
Probably eating.
Yuffie flopped back dramatically, a pout on her face as Ash refused to move.
"That's it," Yuffie declared as she looked around the room for a suitable target.
Her dad hated stuffed animals- No, no, that wasn't quite right. He had a phobia of stuffed animals. A minor fear that he'd never explained but it was something that had kept him from ever offering any of them as a gift unless Yuffie directly asked. So that was what she'd done.
Thus, in the corner of her room sat a rather large stuffed raccoon-dog creature. She would have liked to get a moogle or a chocobo plushie but those just didn't exist in her dad's world.
Calming her mind and trying to do what her mother had taught her, once, Yuffie quelled the forces inside of her and focused.
Magic was flesh was truth was real and...
Yuffie felt an intense sense of vertigo and blinked in confusion, seated against the far wall of her room and looking at her bed. At Ash sleeping on top of the tanuki doll her dad had gotten for her in Japan.
"Oh yeah!" Yuffie cheered as she got up and headed for her wardrobe. "Brumal Form, super awesome!"
Dressed and headed downstairs, Yuffie passed by the door that Jinx had installed in the hallway and saw that it was halfway open. Poking her head in, she saw the little demi-plane that Jinx had made, with a nice little bed that was a mess just sitting out in the open air. No Jinx, though.
The smell as Yuffie walked into the dining room had the girl's mouth watering.
Jinx and Kary could both cook, and they were both good at it, but her dad was something else. His traditional foods were always a little off, there was something wrong with the soy sauce, Yuffie was sure, but 'western' food?
Yuffie might have felt a bit more than a little excited at seeing a stack of waffles on a large platter in the center of the table. Along with a bowl of freshly picked fruit and... packages of yogurt?
"Hey, hon," her dad called. His back was to her as he set the table. Knives and forks and spoons and plates, a space for everyone. "You sleep alright?"
"Uh-huh." Yuffie flopped down in the chair that would be on her dad's left when he finally sat down himself. "But you slept all of yesterday! I finally got a trick my mom showed me figured out and I wanted to show you!"
"You did?" Alchemist asked as he snapped his fingers and created a duplicate, who quickly disappeared towards the kitchen. Probably to go wake up Tiffany. "What did you figure out?"
"It's this super cool ninja trick!" Yuffie was quick to explain as she started to load her plate with golden-brown goodness. "I can use it to swap places with something if I can see it!"
"That is a super cool trick," her dad agreed as he grabbed two waffles, a cup of yogurt and an orange. "You said your mom taught you?"
"Yeah! She was all, like, super serious that I had to learn it before she..." Yuffie trailed off into silence as she remembered the rest of that sequence of events.
Her mom had been really important. Anyone marrying into the Kisaragi family had to be, after all. Kasumi Kisaragi had passed from a 'mysterious illness' and Yuffie had believed it, back when she'd been seven and young and naive. Now that she was ten and older and wiser...
"...Yeah," Yuffie mumbled as she mechanically began to pour syrup on her waffles. "Mom really wanted me to learn it but I couldn't figure it out. Then, with those ninja scrolls you gave me? I, um, I figured it out."
The ninja barely paid attention as more people began to filter into the room. Jinx did give her a glare for taking her seat next to Alchemist but Yuffie stuck her tongue out at the girl in response.
Then came an elbow. And Yuffie had to respond.
"So," her dad said, interrupting the little elbow war that Yuffie was definitely winning. "What all did you manage to work out, Jinx?"
"Well, Jump City had an alien invasion a little while back," the purple dragon began to explain after sending Yuffie one final glare. "Like, less than two months ago. So the heroes here haven't really had to deal with a whole lot, yet. They kind of just formed. Somehow. Front page in the newspaper, though! Made it really easy to find."
"So, no supervillains yet?"
Yuffie paused at her efforts to cut her waffles into perfectly even squares to look up at the byplay.
And to wonder why her dad had made a stack of waffle, yogurt, orange slices, waffle, yogurt and more orange slices.
Would that even taste good?
"Not yet," Jinx said as she snagged fruit and yogurt but didn't touch the waffles. "Nothing in Jump City. And the internet is a lot less... informative, now."
"...I guess that gives us time to decide on how we want to deal with things, going forward."
"What's the big deal?" Yuffie asked around a mouth full of waffle and sticky syrup. Swallowing thickly, she continued, "Can't you just, like, join them the same way you did with the other group of kids?"
"...Simply put? I don't want to do that," her dad admitted. "I don't want to get caught up in dealing with another group of super-kids in any kind of professional capacity if I can get away with it."
"Then what are your plans, love?" Kary asked. The woman had a couple of apples on her plate and she was methodically slicing them into wedges.
"Harass them from time to time when I get bored," Alchemist admitted. "Shoot at Robin with a paintball gun when he's training, summon Phoenix or try out the Kujata materia I harvested off of a boss weapon to frustrate Beast Boy, buzz Cyborg in the Harlock... I've got options. Mostly I was just intending on working on a few personal projects."
Yuffie didn't pause in chewing her food but she would definitely admit that sounded a lot more fun than hearing about her dad babysitting another group of teenagers.
"...Okay. So low-key villainy," Tiffany mumbled. The girl only had a single waffle on her plate and she was moving it around instead of eating it. "If me and Yuffie and Jinx are all going to school, how are we going to pay for stuff? If this is a different reality, will they still take our money?"
In response, her dad reached into the inventory and pulled out a gold bar.
A big gold bar.
"I'll go hunt around the New York gold exchange and see what I can turn up. Moving this thing under the table will probably only get us a third of its value but it'll still be more than we had before. Jinx?"
Alchemist reached into the inventory again and withdrew another gold bar. This one was pitted and looked like it was poured badly, then never polished or buffed. Yuffie had to lean forward to see what was special about it and saw that it was stamped with some words and numbers.
'999.9 g, 206-1951 Property of the Treasury'
...That meant nothing to the ninja.
"I believe this will cover your tuition in Hive Academy."
...Okay, that sounded sort of spooky. It probably meant something but Yuffie had gotten kind of bored and sort of wanted to go outside, now.
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 limped along quietly. His body ached, a deep burn that came from muscles that, currently, he didn't actually have.
He didn't know how long he'd flown through the void between dimensions.
There wasn't anything to keep track of time, not in that infinite non-space. The little creatures that were trying to attack him had proven both infinitely numerous and so incredibly feeble that their mindless efforts hadn't been worth worrying about beyond the fact that the swarm had proven capable of blocking his sight.
The tunnel through the void did have a current, one that initially kept Alchemist from simply going too fast and ramming his way out through a wall, but that had only helped so much.
Whatever the Ideas were, aside from infinite beyond reason, they hadn't been able to push through Alchemist's Mana Wall and, once he'd gotten a brief reprieve to cast Dread Spikes, had functionally killed themselves against him en masse without offering up a single experience point or GP. He'd still gotten skill experience for both spells, a significant enough amount to master both, but overall Alchemist hadn't found it worth his time to deal with the entities.
Haste... Alchemist had been casting Haste on himself to get through the swarms faster and that spell had reached level twenty-five. Which was... fast.
So, Alchemist's armor was currently a mess of white and gray goo from the shoulders up. It rather looked like it had just been the centerpiece to a particularly strange adult video. As such, the second he'd been able to? He'd sent it back to the armory so he didn't have to feel like a pornstarlet until he could take a few minutes to clean it.
And he had no idea how long he'd spent flying. Not in real time. Not in subjective time. Which, in a timeless place, was basically the same thing.
So... the itching and burning that had plagued his soul like a bad case of lice after Lucifer got done sticking his fingers into it? That was gone. A lot faster than he'd anticipated but, well...
Time magic.
Even the most basic uses of it could completely change, well, everything. Haste, Slow and Stop were just the equivalent of getting one's feet wet. Meteor was also time magic, technically, but there were also spells out there that would reset a fight to the beginning or the Quick spell which would instantly complete any sorts of charging or chanting for the target.
Alchemist kept his eyes open as he crossed a set of railroad tracks, dipping a toe into the 'bad' side of Jump City. He didn't know the layout of the city, no, but there were certain rules that held true regardless of where someone was in the United States. And that was that the majority of a city's industry was on the east end, along with the various parts of the city that would be considered 'disenfranchised' or 'economically struggling'.
So, railroad tracks in the city would almost invariably be found next to a bunch of warehouses, abandoned houses and, Alchemist grinned as he found a suitable target, empty apartment complexes.
Jump City was a thriving, successful city in the early two-thousands in California. Which meant that it was transitioning into a lot of technical, knowledge-based or logistics jobs as the local politicians slowly taxed and outlawed the various factories and industries throughout the state to death.
Testing one of the doors that led into the abandoned apartment complex, the fact that it was locked was honestly surprising. The outer windows on the big, box-like building were boarded over and the realty sign out front had long since faded, so Alchemist had expected the locks to be broken.
Shrugging, the wizard snapped his fingers, cast Knock, and just walked on in. There were no lights and the building reeked of mold, the walls were cracked with age and parts of the ceiling were sagging down. It was...
Well, disgusting. Alchemist was absolutely unsurprised that the building was abandoned and nobody had ever been willing to buy it. The cost to get it repaired would be absolutely ruinous and, with its spot next to a set of active train tracks, the price to rent would have to be low just to attract the kinds of people that would be desperate enough to live in the place.
Taking an abrupt turn to the right, across from a bank of in-wall mailboxes, Alchemist opened a door that led into a room that had a row of coin-operated washing machines along one wall and another row of coin-operated clothes driers along the opposite wall.
That was what he'd been searching for. A building just on the line of innocuous and sketchy, then an easily accessible room that would be overlooked by those not in the know. The perfect place for him to set up the door for his demi-plane.
Or... alright. Not 'perfect' but the best Alchemist could do with no resources.
Which was going to be a minor inconvenience to fix.
"Alchemist!" Kary called on seeing him step through the door and into the fresh, clean air of the demi-plane. "We were worried!"
"Sorry about that," Alchemist told the woman, adopting a small grin as he saw everyone had come out to see about him. Jinx waved, once, while Yuffie was excitedly waving her arms around. The dolls were watching him from around the doorframe of the house while the hounds had run up to sniff at him and Reis was just glaring at him from around the corner of the house. Tiffany even looked a bit better, though she was sitting on the steps into the house and blocking the view of half the dolls. "How long was I gone?"
"Almost a week," Kary quietly said as she pulled him into her arms. Alchemist certainly wasn't fighting her, though. "We had begun to worry that you had been obstructed or that the spell had failed."
"The spell held out just fine," Alchemist told her as he pulled away. "Though there was definitely an obstruction. There were these worm-looking things that bored into the Gate and tried to swarm me."
"Are you well?" Kary asked. The various onlookers cleared a path as the two walked into the house and Alchemist made a beeline for the kitchen.
"I'm hungry and I'm tired," the mage admitted. "So I'm going to get something to eat and pass out for a bit."
He wasn't just tired. Alchemist was exhausted.
As a void dragon, he technically did not need to eat or sleep. As a void dragon, he was also technically capable of looking at the divine oversoul of a god and it wasn't supposed to give him a splitting headache.
The reality, though, was that just because he was capable, that did not mean he was used to doing either of those things. He didn't know if the issue came with his age or if he was just unused to those aspects and he needed to practice them.
But, really, Alchemist also didn't care. Those weren't the sorts of things that he was too interested in getting used to.
"...This is fair, I suppose," Kary said with a quiet sigh as Alchemist opened the fridge and pulled out a loaf of bread. "Were you able to determine when we are in this timeline?"
"I pulled a newspaper out of the trash," Alchemist told her as he smeared butter over one slice of bread. "And that said we're currently, or maybe a little after, July first of two-thousand and three."
"...So we actually traveled into the past?" Jinx asked from the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room.
"Kind of. Sort of." Alchemist opened a jar of peanut butter and smeared a knife-full of that on another slice of bread. "It's more like we... entered this reality at an earlier point of time. Traveling any direction except forward will be pretty hard. Hence the whole Gate spell shenanigans. If we'd traveled horizontally instead of at an angle, the travel time would've probably been cut in half."
"...What are we going to do, here?" Tiffany asked.
The girl was wearing one of Jinx's outfits... which was just a pink hoodie and a pair of black sweatpants.
So she probably still didn't have access to her own inventory.
That was fine.
"I don't know," Alchemist admitted as he moved around the girls, a peanut butter sandwich on his plate and a glass of lemonade in his hands. "That depends on how long it takes to get the suit Jinx wants. In the meantime, however, there are a lot of things I wanted to work on. And I figured this would be a good time as any to enroll Yuffie in a physical school."
"What?!" the little ninja shouted, forcing her way around the older girls so she could stick her finger into Alchemist's face. "Treason! I never agreed to that!"
"I know you didn't," Alchemist idly agreed as he gently pushed Yuffie's finger away from his nose. "And I know you don't academically excel in a normal school environment. But I also remember how bored you were back during our last extended trip."
Yuffie put her hands on her hips and glared at Alchemist. The effect was... unimpressive, given that she was standing just as tall as Alchemist when he was sitting.
"So, I figured that giving you a chance to actually get to know people and show off to normal people about how awesome you are would be a good thing."
Alchemist took a bite out of his sandwich as he watched Yuffie fight an internal war over the situation.
On the one hand, he wasn't expecting her to get good grades. Yuffie was hardly stupid but the girl simply did not excel at anything that involved sitting still and waiting. But she was loud, rambunctious and friendly. He could handle tutoring her to deal with the grades but Yuffie needed to be around people and that wasn't something she could really do, hiding in the demi-plane.
"And what about me?" Jinx asked as she walked around to sit at the table to Alchemist's right. "Do you have any plans for me?"
"...Not really," Alchemist admitted after he swallowed what was in his mouth. "I figured you'd have some idea about what you want and we could work out the details afterwards."
"So if I wanted to go to Hive Academy?" Jinx leaned forward and placed her elbows on the table, interlocking her hands under her chin. "How would we make that happen?"
Alchemist took another bite out of his sandwich and let his tired mind mull that over.
"...Probably the same way I deal with most villains," the mage admitted after almost a minute of thinking. "Through a combination of threats, bribery and disguises."
"Perfect!" the havoc dragon exclaimed, a fanged smile on her face. "Ooh, I can't wait! Local-me is going to have no idea what's going on!"
Alchemist just shrugged and watched Jinx hurry off, heading upstairs to the room she shared with Yuffie. He had no idea what that one was planning.
"...What about me?" Tiffany asked, her voice low and quiet.
"What do you want to do?" Kary asked in Alchemist's stead as he worked on his lemonade.
"...School, I guess?" Tiffany asked, rather than stated.
"Then we'll get that figured out," Alchemist said as he began to gather up his dirty dishes. "We're probably going to be here for a bit, so if you're not comfortable with something, let me know."
"...Alright," Tiffany quietly agreed as Alchemist got to work on washing things.
Alchemist didn't have to turn to be aware of Tiffany walking away.
She was looking better. Less desperate, that was certain.
"...Love," Kary whispered into his ear as she wrapped her arms around Alchemist from behind him. "I've missed you while you were gone."
"...I've missed you, too," Alchemist admitted to the woman as he held one of her hands in his.
For her, it'd been five days. One whole work week.
For him?
He didn't know how long it had been. Just that it had been much, much longer.
"...Hurry on to bed, love," Kary continued, her voice deep and husky, right into his ear. "And I'll show you how much."
Alchemist grinned as she let go of him and he gave her a moment to get a head start before he cast Prestidigitation and finished the dishes in an instant.
Kary had no idea what she was in for.
-----
02/07/2003 (TT)
Jinx hadn't ever really gotten to enjoy the motorbikes that Alchemist had bought on Gaia, in the world of Final Fantasy Seven. He had his Hardy Daytona, 'won' after throwing a match against some bald creep, but there were the two 'sports bikes' that he'd bought just before they departed.
They'd been kind of fun to ride around on the mountain but the terrain was just kind of... technically doable but overall there were just too many trees to really pick up any speed.
She still remembered the sales pitch.
'This here model is the Shinra All-Ground Motorbike, the AGM, model number seven! Everything from the ground up has been made to the high standards set by Director Heidegger himself, back, err...
You'll note the sheen here? This was made using the most resilient yet lightweight mithril alloys, developed by Shinra's own science division! Every bolt and fastener has been specially machined to ensure the greatest level of durability and precision currently available on the market.
Just as capable of getting through shallow marshland as it is able to traverse the deserts of Corel, this bad boy is the same make and model currently used by our armed forces for both scouting and high-speed pursuits!
Even better, making use of advancements pioneered by the Space and Materia divisions, you'll note that the engine barely even rumbles below ninety kilometers per hour. These whisper-quiet features are made possible by utilizing lightning materia as a power source in place of the traditional fire materia, though you'll still find that explosive strength in our more rugged Hardy models.
Err... SOLDIER? I'm sorry, sir. Those models aren't currently available to the public. However, if you're still interested, I can add you to the mailing list as a priority customer so you'll get notified first-hand when a new model is released!'
And Alchemist had bought two of the things, kitted out with the best options available by the official dealer. The total price had come to an astounding forty-eight thousand Gil, the local currency, per bike.
And Jinx was riding one at the moment.
Well, technically she was sitting on one and waiting in an alley across the street from a local pawn shop.
They needed cash if they wanted to get anything accomplished and Jinx kind of wanted to get out of the demi-plane. Alchemist had passed out yesterday after... some stuff. And he hadn't woken back up yet. Kary had been wearing a massive, shit-eating grin and everywhere she went the room got a little darker because she was having a hard time controlling her aura.
Tiffany... Jinx didn't know what to make of Tiffany.
The girl had spent the first two days of transit just lying in bed. She didn't eat, barely drank, just barely even moved. Hunger had gotten to her by day three and the smell alone had made Jinx frog-march the girl into the bathroom to force her to take a shower.
Jinx knew enough to recognize depression. She didn't know enough to know what to do about depression. On the street, you either got up and did something or you went hungry. And feeling sad about something wasn't an excuse.
Or, Jinx wanted to say that. But she'd known enough people who intentionally drank until they wouldn't wake back up again.
She didn't know what to do about Tiffany and trying to deal with the girl left her... uncomfortable.
Yuffie had listened to Jinx offering to drive around town for about five words before vehemently rejecting the offer. They could medicate the worst of Yuffie's motion sickness but they still hadn't figured out how to get it fully under control.
So that left Jinx to her own devices. And she'd had enough sitting around and doing nothing for a good, long while. She wanted to get out, to go and do something, anything.
That had led to Jinx trying to explore Jump City, just to discover that her cellphone didn't have any signal. Which meant no data. Which meant no GPS.
Getting around a new city was actually a lot harder than she'd expected.
After more than an hour of wandering around, she'd finally been directed to the local library. And she'd... kind of tricked the front desk attendant into letting her print off a dozen sheets without paying the paltry twenty-five cents per page.
That actually felt a lot worse to Jinx than any of the times she'd shoplifted. Three dollars from someone who was being earnestly helpful felt a lot heavier than twenty bucks from a big box store where 'Shrinkage' was already factored in.
But she could pay that back, now.
Jinx had printed off the locations for a dozen pawn shops around the city, less than a third of what could be found around Gotham, and had been systematically making her way across town. She'd use True Creation to make a solid gold neck chain, the same weight each time, and she'd seen which pawn shops would offer her a fair price and which ones would just try and rip her off.
Then she just... waited.
Only one pawn shop had reported an 'underweight, nervous girl selling stolen jewelry' to the police so far.
Jinx leaned forward over the handlebars of her bike and sighed. Jump City was weird.
In Gotham? She'd have been reported by every pawn shop! Not to prevent crime or anything, but so the cops could steal her cash and whatever else she had to pawn off.
The girl twisted her mouth into a scowl under her helmet and revved the accelerator. Twelve pawn shops, four hours of work, six if the fact-finding was factored in and she was up a little more than two grand.
It was a lot more than what she'd started with, that was true, but it was also not really a whole lot.
Following the traffic laws, Jinx just let herself drift throughout the city streets. The sounds, the sights, the people...
Jump City was a lot like Star City. Clean and bright and modern but it wasn't futuristic, not like Metropolis. The total opposite of Gotham. Aside from the massive letter 'T' sitting out in the bay, Jump City just felt... lacking. Everything was boxy and square, nothing had any history or personality.
But she understood. Those simple, empty shapes were easy to put together. And Jump City had apparently been the victim of an alien attack, not too long ago. At least, that was what Jinx had been able to put together before she'd dispelled the half of herself that had been at the library earlier.
Which, if she recalled the show correctly, meant that they'd shown up not long after the Teen Titans had come together. Aside from a handful of robberies and other minor crimes, the teenaged crimefighters hadn't done too much yet of note.
Slowing down to idle at a red light, Jinx leaned to one side and propped her ride up with one leg. The girl looked to the side, to the west where the sun was setting on the ocean. The titan's tower looked like a black silhouette on the side.
Jinx tried to smile, under the full helmet she was wearing, but the effort felt hollow.
They hadn't had any solid plans because they simply didn't know when they would appear in the timeline. She and Alchemist had spitballed ideas, from being heroes to antiheroes to just skipping off to do whatever they wanted but they hadn't really settled on anything.
But...
The hollow grin under her helmet filled out, her fangs hidden behind glass and plastic.
Jinx was looking forward to Hive Academy. Cultist Blood and a school full of itty bitty baby villains. Geniuses and magicians and brutes and countless other odds and ends...
Jinx didn't know what she was planning, not for sure... Not yet.
She was going to learn what they had to offer, sure. Learn it and see if it would help her break into the tower when Robin finally put away his unstable supersuit. Because, yeah, she could just magic her way into the tower. Invisibility, Alchemist had told her about a spell he picked up called 'Bypass Password', her own acrobatics skills and maybe a bit of transmutation...
But Jinx was, honestly, kind of really curious about how the villains would teach someone to break through that security. And she sort of wanted to know if she could do it, too.
The girl was broken out of her reverie by the sound of honking coming from behind her.
"Get a move on!" one random driver yelled at her, some blond guy wearing a white, long sleeve shirt with an orange ascot in a tye-dye hippie van. "The light's green!"
Jinx swiftly confirmed that, yes, the light was green.
"Sorry!" she yelled back, throttling the accelerator as she did.
Under her helmet, Jinx's face flushed red.
Well. That was embarrassing.
-----
03/07/2003 (TT)
Yuffie woke up to the sound of knocking on her bedroom door.
"Yuf! Come on! I'm making breakfast!"
Yuffie woke up to the sound of her dad knocking on her bedroom door.
With a groan, the ninja began the difficult job of untangling herself from her bed sheets. This was a task made all the harder by Ash laying overtop of her.
"C'mon!" Yuffie whined as she pushed at the heavy dog. "I want to get up..."
Ash, however, was quite dead to the world. Her tongue had lolled itself out the side of her muzzle and the dog was rather happily dreaming of dog things. Chasing cats, playing fetch, eating...
Probably eating.
Yuffie flopped back dramatically, a pout on her face as Ash refused to move.
"That's it," Yuffie declared as she looked around the room for a suitable target.
Her dad hated stuffed animals- No, no, that wasn't quite right. He had a phobia of stuffed animals. A minor fear that he'd never explained but it was something that had kept him from ever offering any of them as a gift unless Yuffie directly asked. So that was what she'd done.
Thus, in the corner of her room sat a rather large stuffed raccoon-dog creature. She would have liked to get a moogle or a chocobo plushie but those just didn't exist in her dad's world.
Calming her mind and trying to do what her mother had taught her, once, Yuffie quelled the forces inside of her and focused.
Magic was flesh was truth was real and...
Yuffie felt an intense sense of vertigo and blinked in confusion, seated against the far wall of her room and looking at her bed. At Ash sleeping on top of the tanuki doll her dad had gotten for her in Japan.
"Oh yeah!" Yuffie cheered as she got up and headed for her wardrobe. "Brumal Form, super awesome!"
Dressed and headed downstairs, Yuffie passed by the door that Jinx had installed in the hallway and saw that it was halfway open. Poking her head in, she saw the little demi-plane that Jinx had made, with a nice little bed that was a mess just sitting out in the open air. No Jinx, though.
The smell as Yuffie walked into the dining room had the girl's mouth watering.
Jinx and Kary could both cook, and they were both good at it, but her dad was something else. His traditional foods were always a little off, there was something wrong with the soy sauce, Yuffie was sure, but 'western' food?
Yuffie might have felt a bit more than a little excited at seeing a stack of waffles on a large platter in the center of the table. Along with a bowl of freshly picked fruit and... packages of yogurt?
"Hey, hon," her dad called. His back was to her as he set the table. Knives and forks and spoons and plates, a space for everyone. "You sleep alright?"
"Uh-huh." Yuffie flopped down in the chair that would be on her dad's left when he finally sat down himself. "But you slept all of yesterday! I finally got a trick my mom showed me figured out and I wanted to show you!"
"You did?" Alchemist asked as he snapped his fingers and created a duplicate, who quickly disappeared towards the kitchen. Probably to go wake up Tiffany. "What did you figure out?"
"It's this super cool ninja trick!" Yuffie was quick to explain as she started to load her plate with golden-brown goodness. "I can use it to swap places with something if I can see it!"
"That is a super cool trick," her dad agreed as he grabbed two waffles, a cup of yogurt and an orange. "You said your mom taught you?"
"Yeah! She was all, like, super serious that I had to learn it before she..." Yuffie trailed off into silence as she remembered the rest of that sequence of events.
Her mom had been really important. Anyone marrying into the Kisaragi family had to be, after all. Kasumi Kisaragi had passed from a 'mysterious illness' and Yuffie had believed it, back when she'd been seven and young and naive. Now that she was ten and older and wiser...
"...Yeah," Yuffie mumbled as she mechanically began to pour syrup on her waffles. "Mom really wanted me to learn it but I couldn't figure it out. Then, with those ninja scrolls you gave me? I, um, I figured it out."
The ninja barely paid attention as more people began to filter into the room. Jinx did give her a glare for taking her seat next to Alchemist but Yuffie stuck her tongue out at the girl in response.
Then came an elbow. And Yuffie had to respond.
"So," her dad said, interrupting the little elbow war that Yuffie was definitely winning. "What all did you manage to work out, Jinx?"
"Well, Jump City had an alien invasion a little while back," the purple dragon began to explain after sending Yuffie one final glare. "Like, less than two months ago. So the heroes here haven't really had to deal with a whole lot, yet. They kind of just formed. Somehow. Front page in the newspaper, though! Made it really easy to find."
"So, no supervillains yet?"
Yuffie paused at her efforts to cut her waffles into perfectly even squares to look up at the byplay.
And to wonder why her dad had made a stack of waffle, yogurt, orange slices, waffle, yogurt and more orange slices.
Would that even taste good?
"Not yet," Jinx said as she snagged fruit and yogurt but didn't touch the waffles. "Nothing in Jump City. And the internet is a lot less... informative, now."
"...I guess that gives us time to decide on how we want to deal with things, going forward."
"What's the big deal?" Yuffie asked around a mouth full of waffle and sticky syrup. Swallowing thickly, she continued, "Can't you just, like, join them the same way you did with the other group of kids?"
"...Simply put? I don't want to do that," her dad admitted. "I don't want to get caught up in dealing with another group of super-kids in any kind of professional capacity if I can get away with it."
"Then what are your plans, love?" Kary asked. The woman had a couple of apples on her plate and she was methodically slicing them into wedges.
"Harass them from time to time when I get bored," Alchemist admitted. "Shoot at Robin with a paintball gun when he's training, summon Phoenix or try out the Kujata materia I harvested off of a boss weapon to frustrate Beast Boy, buzz Cyborg in the Harlock... I've got options. Mostly I was just intending on working on a few personal projects."
Yuffie didn't pause in chewing her food but she would definitely admit that sounded a lot more fun than hearing about her dad babysitting another group of teenagers.
"...Okay. So low-key villainy," Tiffany mumbled. The girl only had a single waffle on her plate and she was moving it around instead of eating it. "If me and Yuffie and Jinx are all going to school, how are we going to pay for stuff? If this is a different reality, will they still take our money?"
In response, her dad reached into the inventory and pulled out a gold bar.
A big gold bar.
"I'll go hunt around the New York gold exchange and see what I can turn up. Moving this thing under the table will probably only get us a third of its value but it'll still be more than we had before. Jinx?"
Alchemist reached into the inventory again and withdrew another gold bar. This one was pitted and looked like it was poured badly, then never polished or buffed. Yuffie had to lean forward to see what was special about it and saw that it was stamped with some words and numbers.
'999.9 g, 206-1951 Property of the Treasury'
...That meant nothing to the ninja.
"I believe this will cover your tuition in Hive Academy."
...Okay, that sounded sort of spooky. It probably meant something but Yuffie had gotten kind of bored and sort of wanted to go outside, now.
CivilReader
Reader of stuff
- Location
- Land Of Books And Civilization, Sweden
The true dragon/cat experience.
LordofTentacles
Surprisingly Sturdy
- Location
- Louisiana
Not bad, honestly I was hoping alchemist would get cut off from the rest of the group and have a solo adventure where he learns more about himself. Plus I really don't care about Tiffany. Any way should be a fun adventure.
I find it hilarious that Al could just... melt a highly suspicious gold break from Fort Knox into a less suspicious gold brick, but pointedly decides not to
- Location
- United States
That's why it looks badly poured and not polished. The stamp claims 2 things, purity and ownership. If it looked perfect people would doubt the purity, by looking like crap they are willing to accept the purity and suspect the ownership. Probably thinking its melted down stolen jewelry.
NexysDhyArchen
Throne Breaker
Having a 'provable Treasury' gold brick would do more to get Jinx into the Hive than its value as gold. The Villains running Hive Academy would be more interested in someone who could rob the Treasury than someone with cash.
... and on further consideration, it would be really funny if Yuffie fell backwards into a Hive Academy education.
... and on further consideration, it would be really funny if Yuffie fell backwards into a Hive Academy education.
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Given that the gold is supposed to pay for the tuition to HIVE Academy, the fact that the gold is from Fort Knox is a bonus. It's a stamp of 'I'm appropriately shady for this school.'
Yay! Jinx at HIVE Academy!A whole school of "socially acceptable targets" to vent her pent-up mischievous impulses upon, playing pranks and mind-games on teenaged villains-in-training.
Bonus points if Jinx uses illusion magic to create thunder sound effects (*KRAKTHOOM!!!*) whenever she makes a dramatic pronouncement.
Example:
Jinx:
😈 "Mwa-ha-ha!!!"*KRAKTHOOM!!!*
Headmistress: (nods in approval) "Nice ominous introduction."
Jinx:
"Thanks!" Yuffie has learned the Substitution jutsu!She has been studying "Naruto" techniques for months, so it's great to see progress with the Academy Three jutsu: Substitution, Disguise/Transformation, and Illusionary Clone.
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
Almost a week multiplied by Haste and Accelerate, modified by temporal malleability from being outside normal reality. Over a year +/- unknown.
I do not envy him.
Well, they've got several weeks before Robin makes, uses, and retires the Red X suit. And several months before the unknown person who stole it first showed up in canon, over a year before their latter appearance.
Good thing they're here specifically to get more time, because they've got some waiting to do.
I love this nonsense so much
- Location
- Texas
I want this part of the story to be a mini spinoff, it's gonna be so good.
RottenSuccphagus
ⴉⴀⴞⴀⴁⴄⴐⴈ
- Location
- Georgia
Al in TT universe: "we do a bit of trollin"
The only thing I'm hoping for right now is that sometime soon in the future FF Gilgamesh appears. That or Fate Requiem.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
The exact same Gilgamesh ("The Big G") is canon to all Final Fantasy universes. He's a multiversal traveler, and opening portals to get into places he shouldn't be in order to challenge heroes and villains to steal their weapons is basically his M.O. Tracking down Alchemist across time and space to take his absolutely ridiculous arsenal? Totally on brand. Especially if it results in an epic fight for the ages.
Which, of course, will leave the League (and basically everyone else) completely flabbergasted, especially since these two warriors basically appear out of nowhere before disappearing just as completely. And when Batman eventually manages to track Alchemist down (as Gilgamesh has long since vanished through another interdimensional portal), he finds the man basically just living a relatively mundane life, despite having universe-shaking levels of power.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
I imagine that, while he will be tinkering and trolling the Titans, he might also deal with some of the more unpleasant threats in the setting, or at least keep them from getting up to the worst stuff they did in canon.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Beast Boy: "Why is there a frog colored like Deathstroke outside the window making finger-across-the-throat gestures at us?"
Robin: "I think The Joker's been making new batches of experimental Smilex again."
Raven: "Just ignore it. It'll croak eventually."
Cyborg: "Did you just...?"
Robin: "I think she did."
Starfire: "Whoa."
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Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
He already has access to Heroes' Feast, which is actual meat made from 100% magic, no animal-kills required.
That's vegan, right?
I know it's mostly in banter, but it's ultimately how it gets defined. If someone is vegan only because they don't want to eat something that had to come from an animal, then Heroes' Feast would be vegan and they would have have no issues. If they take it as they don't want to eat anything that has a connection to an animal, then Heroes' Feast, unless specifically curated, will be a hang-up for those people.
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
how the heck was that 5k words.
it went by way too fast
it went by way too fast