Chapter 313, Legaia 11
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??/??/???? (Legend of Legaia)
Jinx knew that she wasn't always the smartest girl in the room. That wasn't always a bad thing, and that didn't mean she didn't have insights to contribute.
But she didn't -need- to be the smartest girl in the room to notice that her best friend was acting wrong.
It was the little things, really. When he was talking to them about Yuffie wanting to go to the Item World, sometimes he paused a little too long. Sometimes he stumbled over a word-
Which was normal, to an extent, but there was normal and then there was a little too much.
A brief glance at Kary saw the two meeting eyes and the fallen angel nodded, once, subtly.
So, she wasn't the only one to notice.
They followed Alchemist back into the demi-plane as Yuffie chattered at him, telling him about how Ash and Cinder and Reis had all tricked Beast Boy into the ocean to the south of their position, and Jinx immediately noticed what was wrong.
The demi-plane was too big.
The place grew, hers did, Kary's did, they all did. It was part of their nature. It was also something that could be seen, could be measured.
A foot or so would have gone unnoticed.
Almost three additional meters of bare, empty grass did not go unnoticed.
Initially, Jinx didn't know what to make of it.
Then she opened the System menu and saw that Alchemist's level had skyrocketed to three-thousand, two-hundred and the GP bar was full of glitched letters.
...He'd been busy.
"So," Jinx finally decided to ask as Alchemist was busy extracting a green Materia orb from his sword. "What happened? I thought you weren't supposed to go on a second Quest while we were in the middle of one."
"...It seems my Administrator doesn't care to follow the rules she puts on us," Alchemist answered through Ghost Sound as he swallowed the green orb whole. Jinx watched the bulge slide down his throat, her own stomach turning. "If you don't mind? It was... not a pleasant experience."
"Do we need to worry of the same happening to us?" Kary asked, her hand sliding down to the blade strapped to her hip.
"...I don't know," Alchemist admitted. "Honestly? On some level, I doubt she's even aware that either of you exist outside of your connection to me."
That was... not a comforting thought.
Uncertainty never was, though.
Jinx shivered, once, as she imagined a set of puppet's strings attached to Alchemist's limbs. Of them pulling and jerking him in whatever direction his unseen benefactor saw fit. She was forced to wonder if that was part of why he asked the Devil himself to burn Alchemist's talents into his soul.
A deal that, suddenly, sounded a lot more appealing.
"Shall we seek revenge?" Kary asked, her voice oddly calm. "You understate things, Love. How unpleasant was this 'trip' of yours?"
"I'll let you know when the nightmares settle in," was Alchemist's glib response. "If it's all the same, I'd rather focus on the task at hand. There are a handful of things I'd like to test."
"Such as?" Jinx found herself asking, curious as to what fresh ideas Alchemist had come up with.
"I just ate a ReRaise Materia specifically because I want to test it in the item world-"
"You cannot seriously expect us to let you -die- to test a spell!" Kary began to argue, vehemence in her voice.
"...No, actually," Alchemist began to explain, visibly taken aback by Kary's tone. "It's... for the bosses. The generals, kings and gods. When those 'die', our items get a significant bonus. So I was... thinking that I could hit one with ReRaise and we could see what happens if we manage to 'doublekill' the bosses."
"...Do you think I could fill multiple Soul Gems this way?" Jinx asked, her eyes narrowed in thought.
"That is a very good question," Alchemist praised her. "We should find out."
Jinx nodded, mostly to herself. She wasn't soothed, not really, but she was starting to feel a little better about things.
She didn't like that Alchemist wasn't telling her where he'd gone or what he'd done but it wasn't hard to notice that he didn't like it. So, she could wait.
He'd talk. Eventually.
"...Very well," Kar'Yashlan eventually said with a quiet sigh as Alchemist began slotting yellow Materia into his sword. "Yuffie wishes to practice with a new weapon. You seem intent on practicing a new spell. Dear Jinx has found a new idea she wishes to work on as well. If we are to explore the Item World- Which item shall we be enhancing, Love?"
"I was thinking about enhancing a piece of Ebony ore," Alchemist said as he began working on his bracer and the Materia within. "It's not 'legendary' but it is 'rare', so it'll have about sixty floors inside. I wanted to see if we could increase the Enchanting threshold, if I could enhance it, enhance the ingot made from it, enhance the rings or knives made from those so I could put larger enchantments in them."
"Then I shall practice the Dark Arts that you have taught me, Love," Kary said with a confident nod. "Is there anything else of major note that we ought be aware of?"
"I'm about to Transmigrate- Prestige- my level because I've been testing something," Alchemist admitted to them, drawing Jinx's eyes away from her Spell Menu.
She didn't need to check it, really, but she wanted to see if there were any limitations in the wording of the spell that would keep it from working the way she wanted it to. Which she didn't see but, well, she'd never tried to re-kill something for experience or profit so she had no idea how that would go.
"Something important?" Jinx asked. "This kind of throws off the whole balance thing we've got going on, you know?"
"...I wouldn't say it's important, really," Alchemist said as he ran a claw over a purple Materia in his bracer. "Our attributes, HP and MP, they haven't really mattered much since... what, our third cycle? Once we got the Genji Helmet in Yuffie's world?"
Had it been that long? Once they could cast their spells without any limit, things had definitely changed.
The Cave of Wonder had still been a nightmarish slog. And Boletaria hadn't been easy, even if they'd had the power to handle everything.
But he was right, she supposed. 'Power' was removed from the equation and they just had to worry about opportunity and position. And from time to time they still had to try and puzzle out how to handle something that couldn't die by conventional methods.
"So, what's the point?" Jinx asked as she considered the matter. "Why not just stay at whatever your highest level is?"
"Well, one part curiosity. One part is that it fits together with some of my other abilities. One part..." Alchemist's giant shoulders just shrugged. "A part of my brain is just trained to find satisfaction with higher numbers. So, to elaborate, I've been using the spell Mana Shield. It shunts any damage I would take to my MP instead of my HP. This works with self-inflicted damage, too, like the Darkness Materia or some of the arts of the Dark Blade."
Which... were things that Jinx had no interest in using or learning. But she supposed Mana Shield might be a good idea. When Alchemist had it up? He didn't even flinch when he got hit!
"Unfortunately," Alchemist continued as he opened his System and began to poke at it. "All of those eat up percentages and they aren't reduced by leveling up Mana Shield. If my MP was restored at a flat rate instead of in percentages based on Wisdom, having more MP would actually be detrimental because it would take longer and longer to refill."
"...I really must master that spell as well," Kar'Yashlan muttered. Turning to look at her, Jinx saw that the fallen angel's eyes were narrowed in thought. "Tomorrow? No. Love promised to take me to the beach... The day after, then."
...That sounded like a plan, Jinx decided. She and Kary could work on it together.
"So, that's the background," Alchemist continued, heedless of the distraction both Jinx and Kary were experiencing. "Here's the theory- Some of the equipment that I picked up a while back offered bonus HP upon leveling up. I have had, for the entirety of this level cycle, a Materia called HP to MP equipped. Currently, all of that bonus HP is sitting in the current 'HP pool' which should be my MP. I want to see if, upon resetting my level, the bonus value is retained in my MP or locked to my HP."
"...How big of a bonus are we talking about, here?" Jinx asked as she thought on what he was saying.
"Six-hundred HP per level."
"So, six-hundred times three-thousand, two-hundred-"
"Three-thousand, one-hundred and ninety-nine," Alchemist corrected. "Level one doesn't count."
Jinx accepted the correction with a nod. Then, after almost thirty seconds of trying to run those numbers in her head, she plucked her phone from the Inventory and opened the calculator app.
"...That's almost two-million points," Jinx said, her eyes wide as she looked at the figure.
"It is," Alchemist agreed as he pressed a claw against the floating screen. "And now it's one-tenth of that."
Swapping over to the Party menu, Jinx looked at Alchemist's attributes while he was busy extracting the purple Materia from his armband-
And saw that the ludicrous sum swapped fully from HP to MP.
"...It worked," Jinx said aloud as she considered whether or not she should do the same.
"I don't really see why it wouldn't," Alchemist told her as he put the Materia back in place, as his HP and MP swapped again. "Unless the 'Bracelet of Zoe' was creating a special pool of 'Bonus' HP? Then the simpler solution is just to add the number directly to whatever is sitting in the HP value."
...Next cycle, Jinx decided. She would look over her system when they got done in the Item World and she'd work out how she wanted to do things. But that exploit was definitely going into her next cycle.
"Hey!" Yuffie shouted, drawing three sets of eyes to the girl as she shouted into the workshop. "Hurry up! Come on!"
-----
The preteen ninja wasn't sure what she was initially expecting.
Epic foes!
Awesome samurai!
Ooh! Speeches! She loved speeches!
'No!' her foes would cry in dismay. 'We are too weak and unworthy to fight you, great and amazing Ninja Princess Yuffie!'
Yuffie... forgot what the Item World was like. The silent, almost creepy looking shadows of what might have been people. They did shout, sometimes, but it was never anything cool or epic. Just stuff like-
"Skyrim belongs to the Nords!"
"Die, N'wah!"
"Some may call this junk. Me, I call them treasures."
-and it got kind of old. Kind of fast.
The fighting when they all went into the black rock that her dad pulled out went pretty smooth. Her dad started things off by freezing all of the shadows in place.
Then he stole all of their stuff!
Then Yuffie picked out a tough looking person-shaped shadow and she let her new shuriken rip-!
The skill that was inside of the weapon was kind of weird. So long as Yuffie used it, so long as she focused on it, the shuriken would circle around and around the enemy instead of hitting them or flying off.
By itself? That... kind of sucked. It might work out okay as a distraction, Yuffie guessed, but what was more important was what the flying shuriken could do!
It could be used as a medium for Yuffie to fling cantrip-level magic at a target! Like, really fast! And she could switch the element from fire to ice to wind to lightning with barely a thought!
While Yuffie was working on that, Kary had been doing a thing that caused a red sword to come flying out of the ground through one of the shadows and Jinx and Dad were working on some kind of magic...
Some kind of reset magic? Yuffie wasn't sure and she was busy having too much fun to ask!
She'd barely even noticed when her target disappeared until she was nearly hit in the face with her shuriken, the throwing weapon returning to her of its own volition.
"That was awesome!" Yuffie shrieked as she spun around and bounced on the balls of her feet to burn off the momentum of her returned weapon. "Wait-wait-wait! I saw another skill! It's gonna be so cool!"
Ducking underneath of an ethereal fist coming from a phantom that had come back to life, Yuffie crouched down and opened the shop menu. She swiftly slid her fingers over the interface, drawing through the history to her previous searches so she could purchase the newest weapon to catch her eye.
The Bird of Prey; a massive, curved axe that was inexplicably meant for throwing.
Rolling under a clumsy grab-
"I'll gut you like a horker!"
-Yuffie withdrew the weapon, held it in her hand and said "This calls for more Yuffie!"
Juking to the side to dodge a punch, Yuffie swung-
And noticed that an ephemeral afterimage repeated her actions, a phantasmal copy of the Bird of Prey dug into the same gut she'd just buried her weapon in, hammering into the wound and deepening it.
"No more! I submit!"
The girl heard the words, of course, and knew them to be a lie. A horrible lie, one meant to trick her into letting the shadow rally and attack her again when her back was turned.
She jerked the Bird of Prey loose and twisted, spinning around-
And slammed the edge of the sharp, wicked weapon into the other side of the shadow.
Just like her dad had taught her.
'...Your talents are more formidable than I'd thought,' Mule whispered against Yuffie's mind, her words dripping with faint praise.
"I'm awesome, I know," Yuffie agreed, faux humbleness in her voice that wholly disagreed with her words.
The shadows were kind of tough but they weren't really that dangerous. Especially since her dad did that mass Steal thing to start with.
Each floor they went down, they did it again. Her dad was definitely working on some different magics. Some floors, ones with smaller populations of things like living tree women or minotaurs with big hammers, he just did the Stop spell and then he Mugged everyone! All at once!
Yuffie practically felt herself vibrating in her skin. If she could do that? Do even half of that?
Wutai would never have fallen!
If she could use a Time Materia to cast Stop on all of the SOLDIERs, they wouldn't have been able to burn down the villages along the coast. If she could Steal or Mug all of the infantry, or Genesis and Sephiroth? They wouldn't have been able to gun down or cut down the villagers.
If...
'So. You, too, are a child of war...'
"Hey!" Yuffie called out as they approached the deepest recesses of the Item World. "Hey, Dad! Can you show me how you're Stealing from everything? Please?! I know All Materia doesn't work. I tried!"
Her dad was normally pretty quiet. Usually in awe of Yuffie's own amazingness.
But the long stare he gave her had Yuffie feeling really uncomfortable for a second.
Then he blinked-
"Yeah, actually. Come here and let me see your bracer, I'll show you." And her Dad was back to normal. She got close to him and held out her hand, the one that didn't have Mule's blue glove on it, and her Dad's hand shook for a second before he began pulling Yuffie's Materia out.
Dark Fire, Dark Thunder, Dark Blizzard, Darkness- which she didn't use but it was super cool anyway! -Steal, Throw, Restore and Seal.
And they were all Mastered, because she was cool like that.
"This," her Dad said as he pulled out a purple Materia orb, "is called 'Mega-All'. It works with almost everything, even Steal or Throw."
He slid that one into her bracer, then began to carefully put her Materia back.
Except for the Darkness one.
"Hey!" Yuffie whined as her Dad put that away in the inventory. "I really like that one..."
"And it's very useful. But it doesn't work with Mega-All because it's already an 'area of effect' attack," her Dad explained, nice and calm and not frustrated with her for not getting whatever he was doing without him explaining anything. "All of these will work with it, though, so you can get a feel for how to target everything versus when you want to target just one thing."
"I know how to use an All Materia," Yuffie argued, though her voice was small and the words were empty.
"It never hurts to practice," her Dad argued, a small smile on his lips. "Come on, there's just one floor left. How about you rob them blind this time?"
Yuffie nodded, putting her serious face on.
She was going to steal -everything-!
"I smell weakness!"
She totally stole everything!
-----
Finishing up the Item World of the Ebony Ore wasn't actually especially difficult. Alchemist's team was simply at a level where echoes and representations of the 'generic' foes from any of the Elder Scrolls games simply weren't a threat.
Even the false Daedra on the final floor, a sort of Outsider that was commonly referred to as a demon within the setting, wasn't a serious threat. Especially not after Yuffie stole the whole suit of armor off the thing, along with the saw-toothed greatsword it was swinging in their direction.
Alchemist couldn't decide if he wanted to examine the equipment or not.
Ebony, from the realm of Nirn, was an unusual and magical material. As far as he had been able to figure out, it was the proto-material of that reality, Chaotic Creatia, that had passed through a 'divine' entity and, after being extracted in some way, achieved metastability. This gave it its incredible affinity to magic and its extremely high enchantment capacity.
Daedric Equipment was made by taking that Ebony and impregnating it with the still-living remains of a Daedra. The process required that the smith have a vat of molten Ebony sitting under the darkness of a new moon when they would literally drop the heart of a greater Daedra into the material. The resulting piece of equipment, and it was limited to just one distinct piece at a time, could be hideously malformed and yet would still serve its role because it was, not just physically, but conceptually a helmet, or sword, or shield.
The half-step up from physical to metaphysical -did- expand its magical attunement... but it also meant that, somewhere in the greater wheel of Nirn's cosmos, there was a pissed off Outsider and you were swinging around a literal chunk of its presence.
How that worked with a suit and weapon that was formed within the chaotic nexus of an Item World?
Alchemist had no idea. Alright? His best guess was that the set was made-up wholesale and that, while it had all the -properties- of a Daedric suit of armor, there -shouldn't- be a cabal of pissed off Daedra out there in the infinite cosmos of the multiverse that wanted to get their power back.
...Regardless of the hows or whys, Alchemist had a set of the edgiest armor in existence sitting in his inventory and, immediately following his foray into the Item World, he didn't want to deal with it. He had a number of other concerns that required his attention.
First off was getting a reluctant Yuffie to go and take a shower -before- she crawled into bed. She'd exhausted herself learning her new weapon arts and wanted to pass out, which was fine, but she'd been working hard and sweating for a good two hours. She'd argued up until he threatened to make her do her own laundry, then gave him a petulant '...Fine.' and stomped off to do what he told her to do.
Jinx had grabbed a sandwich and disappeared off to her demi-plane. She seemed alright, but there was definitely something on her mind.
Kary, once she'd cleaned up and changed into a fresh outfit, had curled up on a chair in the living room with a scroll to read through. After a few minutes, Nostradamus had claimed her lap. Then, a few minutes of petting the horned kitten saw her nodding off.
Alchemist was tempted to do the same but, after casting Bilocation, he had a bit of work to do.
One of him was in the workshop and putting together the tools to smelt down the Enriched Ebony Ore he'd made. The process for turning raw Ebony into an ingot demanded intense magical heat, at least if he wanted to do it in any kind of a reasonable time frame. Or he could try normal methods which would take an entire month according to books written by actual experts in Ebony smithing.
Thankfully, his forge was heated by a trapped Fire Elemental. He wouldn't need to personally oversee the smelting process. He just needed to put together a funnel that would drain into a crucible large enough to catch the molten metal. Considering the magic and temperature involved? Normal materials wouldn't survive the process. Darksteel would, which was wonderful, but Transmuting Darksteel was a slow process and would take a bit of time.
Which left one final Alchemist, sitting in his living room and thinking. He didn't remember where the current crop of heroes were supposed to be in Legaia. He knew they were in the Karisto Kingdom, the northern continent, but he couldn't recall if they were heading towards the tower of Sol or were hurrying towards Buma to get to Uru Mais, the temple of Tieg, so they could get to the Seru Kai.
There was a two-month interruption to what he'd been doing and he needed to get caught up. But he couldn't directly handle the issue himself, not if he was going to get the Ebony ore handled.
Alchemist's eyes slid over to Kary's dozing form and he softly shook his head, casting Gate and opening a pathway to an area he was familiar with, the plains outside the ruined remains of the 'Absolute Fortress'.
Which had clearly not been as 'Absolute' as advertised.
Without a snap of his fingers, six copies of Alchemist formed around him. They were each less than him, with a quarter of his own mastery in skills or magical potential, but that was hardly an issue when they were being tasked to act as scouts.
The lesser copies of him silently stepped through the Gate and transformed, revealing their true forms as pitch-black dragons before taking off into the skies.
Wraith King. An ability he'd acquired in his most recent, unwanted venture. There was no 'memory transfer' ability attached to the duplicates and, unlike his spell versions, they were not limited to acting within the same plane as himself.
They were a valuable force multiplier but using them prevented Alchemist from gaining experience with whatever he tasked them with doing, and he needed them to report in if he wanted to learn whatever it was that they'd discovered.
Useful. Incredibly useful. But they had their limits and those could be rather strict.
Dismissing the Gate, Alchemist considered what else he had to work on. His eyes slid over to the still-dozing form of Kary before slipping to the television and he silently sighed.
No games or movies, then.
Well, that was alright.
The mage stepped into the dining room and he instead pulled a quartet of whiteboards out of his inventory to set down on the table. He pulled out a quartet of markers in different colors and labeled each board.
Stone to Flesh
Flesh to Stone
Flesh to Iron
Flesh to F.Ebony
...It'd been a while since he'd done any kind of research, hadn't it?
-----
Robin felt uneasy as he stood in front of the door to their host's home.
He did not agree with the choices the mages had made. At all. And the fact that he had to rely on them for food and shelter on top of that was just...
It was frustrating. He regretted coming with them on this 'trip'. The friction that had formed within the team because of it was even worse.
The only person who seemed to understand where Robin was coming from seemed to be Cyborg. Everyone else, when they heard what Alchemist and his team had to say about Goblins, seemed to just take the man at his word.
And maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe the Goblins were monsters apeing at intelligence to sate some kind of cruel, natural evil.
Or maybe he was lying. Maybe Alchemist had some kind of hatred for them and dehumanized them for the sake of killing them with a 'clear' conscience.
How did they know if he was telling the truth? None of them had any experience with the red-skinned people that didn't also have Alchemist looming over their shoulder, telling them what to think, telling them what the mage thought of the goblins.
Maybe they were hideous, mindless monsters that wanted to kill and eat everything.
Or maybe Alchemist had done something to them, or them to him, and all the Titans got to see was some kind of horrific grudge.
Robin didn't know. And he hated not knowing.
The caped crusader('s sidekick) shook his head and knocked on the door. He was running around in circles and it wasn't going to accomplish anything.
Asking questions. Making observations. Confirming data. Those would accomplish something.
After almost thirty seconds with no answer, Robin knocked on the door again. Louder this time. A few seconds after he did so, he heard the door click and it opened, revealing... Alchemist. Wearing a pair of black sweatpants, a red tee-shirt and no shoes.
He stepped back and away from the door, an obvious invitation to come in, but he didn't say anything.
"Alche-" Robin started to say before the man put a finger up to his own lips in a 'Hush' motion and then pointed to the side.
Poking his head in, Robin saw... Kary, her head lolled a bit to the side in a plush armchair and snoring.
Alright. That was fair.
Alchemist turned around and headed deeper into the house, waving for Robin to follow after him. Which the Boy Wonder did after closing the door behind himself.
The wizard didn't lead Robin too far away. Just to the next room over where the man had a number of old scrolls spread across a table, along with a trio of whiteboards that had a number of circles full of odd scratchmarks and letters on them.
At least they were labeled in English?
Stone to Flesh and Flesh to Stone were both made up of six rings with an increasingly complex string of figures written inside of them. A third board had Flesh to Iron and it was made up of seven rings, the outermost ring being the most complex so far.
There was also a fourth board but it looked like it was in the process of being assembled, having a number of supplementary notes and several other sheets of paper next to it along with a mortar, pestle and several unusual ingredients that Robin couldn't recognize.
"What are you doing?" Robin asked, his voice kept low.
"Writing out the spell structure to a handful of similar spells and trying to build a new one based off of them and a magical poison," Alchemist answered. Readily. And clearly. "What can I do for you, Robin?"
"...Cyborg and I burned the leftovers from yesterday," Robin admitted. He didn't mention that it was because the two had gotten caught up in arguing over something. "So we're kinda... we need something to eat."
"...Alright," the man agreed after a second. "I'm not up to doing anything else too complicated today..."
Robin quietly cursed. Part of why he didn't want to have to rely on Alchemist was specifically because the man could cut off his-
"I think I can put together a few pizzas for you guys, though. Is pepperoni and mushroom for one and plain cheese good for the other?" Alchemist's words cut off Robin's dark train of thought, derailing the teenage crime fighter.
"That'd be great, actually," Robin said to the man as they headed towards the kitchen. "Do you need any help?"
"A second pair of hands won't hurt," Alchemist told him as he started pulling things out of his fridge. A bag of pizza dough from the bottom, a package of pre-sliced meat and a bag of shredded cheese. Then he opened a cupboard next to the sink and came back with a jar of sliced mushrooms. "Can you set the oven to four-hundred degrees?"
Next was a pair of round sheets from another cupboard, one of which he handed to Robin after the boy got done pressing the beeping buttons on the stove.
"...So," Robin quietly began to speak, breaking the silence in the room. "What do you need some new spell for?"
"I'm trying to figure out a way to make legitimate money back in your world," Alchemist explained as he divided the dough in half and dropped one ball on the pan in front of Robin. The former acrobat pocketed his gloves and began to knead and stretch the dough towards the edges of the pan as the man explained himself. "The intention is to buy stone in bulk from a quarry, convert it to flesh, then turn that into another, more valuable material. A ton of granite, for example, is pretty cheap. That same volume in scrap iron, however, is several times that. And it can be even more valuable if it's sold in a state that's ready to be worked."
That... was actually a coherent and sensible explanation. At least, sensible when Alchemist's capabilities were kept in mind.
"Most Metahumans tend more towards... violence," Robin said, voicing his confusion. "Like, robbing banks or mugging people."
"Most Metahumans that you're aware of," Alchemist said. It took a second for Robin to realize that it was a correction.
"You think there are more out there? People who have powers and don't use them?" Robin asked as Alchemist poured a thin spiral of sauce on the dough he'd been working before he handed the jar over to the boy.
"Maybe they do," Alchemist rebutted as he began to spread his sauce with a spoon. "Construction workers with a little bit of super strength. Long-haul truckers who don't need to sleep. Welders with a little bit of fire control. A lot of minor powers could make a lot of jobs more convenient, it just takes a little bit of thought."
Robin... hadn't ever really been given a reason to think like that. So far as he knew, and he'd never had a reason to actually check, all of the people with superpowers in Gotham were villains.
Or Jason Blood. But his transformed state came with some kind of mental issues and didn't care about collateral damage so he was at least villain-adjacent.
The two worked in silence for the rest of the preparation and the pizzas were both put into the oven for a surprisingly short fifteen minutes.
"...If there are more powered people out there, why don't they help?" Robin found himself asking as the timer ticked away and Alchemist pulled a pitcher of lemonade out of the fridge. "There's something like five supervillains for every hero out there. We're outnumbered."
"How can a single gunman keep fifteen or twenty people under control when they only have ten bullets in a gun?" Alchemist asked in turn as he poured out two glasses.
At first, Robin didn't think they were related.
But, about halfway through his glass of surprisingly sweet lemonade, he realized what Alchemist was getting at.
Most people with powers weren't bullet proof. Most people with powers didn't know how to fight.
When something happened, most Metahumans were just as scared and helpless as their neighbors. Most of them probably just wanted a normal life with normal concerns.
Was it fair to demand more of them? Just because they were born different?
Robin didn't think it was. Maybe people with dangerous or uncontrollable powers, yeah, but if most powers were basically just tricks...
Robin ended up leaving the house, one pie in his hands as Alchemist carried the other, with more questions than he'd entered it with.
And, despite the answers he'd gotten, he still didn't know what to think of the older man.
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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??/??/???? (Legend of Legaia)
Jinx knew that she wasn't always the smartest girl in the room. That wasn't always a bad thing, and that didn't mean she didn't have insights to contribute.
But she didn't -need- to be the smartest girl in the room to notice that her best friend was acting wrong.
It was the little things, really. When he was talking to them about Yuffie wanting to go to the Item World, sometimes he paused a little too long. Sometimes he stumbled over a word-
Which was normal, to an extent, but there was normal and then there was a little too much.
A brief glance at Kary saw the two meeting eyes and the fallen angel nodded, once, subtly.
So, she wasn't the only one to notice.
They followed Alchemist back into the demi-plane as Yuffie chattered at him, telling him about how Ash and Cinder and Reis had all tricked Beast Boy into the ocean to the south of their position, and Jinx immediately noticed what was wrong.
The demi-plane was too big.
The place grew, hers did, Kary's did, they all did. It was part of their nature. It was also something that could be seen, could be measured.
A foot or so would have gone unnoticed.
Almost three additional meters of bare, empty grass did not go unnoticed.
Initially, Jinx didn't know what to make of it.
Then she opened the System menu and saw that Alchemist's level had skyrocketed to three-thousand, two-hundred and the GP bar was full of glitched letters.
...He'd been busy.
"So," Jinx finally decided to ask as Alchemist was busy extracting a green Materia orb from his sword. "What happened? I thought you weren't supposed to go on a second Quest while we were in the middle of one."
"...It seems my Administrator doesn't care to follow the rules she puts on us," Alchemist answered through Ghost Sound as he swallowed the green orb whole. Jinx watched the bulge slide down his throat, her own stomach turning. "If you don't mind? It was... not a pleasant experience."
"Do we need to worry of the same happening to us?" Kary asked, her hand sliding down to the blade strapped to her hip.
"...I don't know," Alchemist admitted. "Honestly? On some level, I doubt she's even aware that either of you exist outside of your connection to me."
That was... not a comforting thought.
Uncertainty never was, though.
Jinx shivered, once, as she imagined a set of puppet's strings attached to Alchemist's limbs. Of them pulling and jerking him in whatever direction his unseen benefactor saw fit. She was forced to wonder if that was part of why he asked the Devil himself to burn Alchemist's talents into his soul.
A deal that, suddenly, sounded a lot more appealing.
"Shall we seek revenge?" Kary asked, her voice oddly calm. "You understate things, Love. How unpleasant was this 'trip' of yours?"
"I'll let you know when the nightmares settle in," was Alchemist's glib response. "If it's all the same, I'd rather focus on the task at hand. There are a handful of things I'd like to test."
"Such as?" Jinx found herself asking, curious as to what fresh ideas Alchemist had come up with.
"I just ate a ReRaise Materia specifically because I want to test it in the item world-"
"You cannot seriously expect us to let you -die- to test a spell!" Kary began to argue, vehemence in her voice.
"...No, actually," Alchemist began to explain, visibly taken aback by Kary's tone. "It's... for the bosses. The generals, kings and gods. When those 'die', our items get a significant bonus. So I was... thinking that I could hit one with ReRaise and we could see what happens if we manage to 'doublekill' the bosses."
"...Do you think I could fill multiple Soul Gems this way?" Jinx asked, her eyes narrowed in thought.
"That is a very good question," Alchemist praised her. "We should find out."
Jinx nodded, mostly to herself. She wasn't soothed, not really, but she was starting to feel a little better about things.
She didn't like that Alchemist wasn't telling her where he'd gone or what he'd done but it wasn't hard to notice that he didn't like it. So, she could wait.
He'd talk. Eventually.
"...Very well," Kar'Yashlan eventually said with a quiet sigh as Alchemist began slotting yellow Materia into his sword. "Yuffie wishes to practice with a new weapon. You seem intent on practicing a new spell. Dear Jinx has found a new idea she wishes to work on as well. If we are to explore the Item World- Which item shall we be enhancing, Love?"
"I was thinking about enhancing a piece of Ebony ore," Alchemist said as he began working on his bracer and the Materia within. "It's not 'legendary' but it is 'rare', so it'll have about sixty floors inside. I wanted to see if we could increase the Enchanting threshold, if I could enhance it, enhance the ingot made from it, enhance the rings or knives made from those so I could put larger enchantments in them."
"Then I shall practice the Dark Arts that you have taught me, Love," Kary said with a confident nod. "Is there anything else of major note that we ought be aware of?"
"I'm about to Transmigrate- Prestige- my level because I've been testing something," Alchemist admitted to them, drawing Jinx's eyes away from her Spell Menu.
She didn't need to check it, really, but she wanted to see if there were any limitations in the wording of the spell that would keep it from working the way she wanted it to. Which she didn't see but, well, she'd never tried to re-kill something for experience or profit so she had no idea how that would go.
"Something important?" Jinx asked. "This kind of throws off the whole balance thing we've got going on, you know?"
"...I wouldn't say it's important, really," Alchemist said as he ran a claw over a purple Materia in his bracer. "Our attributes, HP and MP, they haven't really mattered much since... what, our third cycle? Once we got the Genji Helmet in Yuffie's world?"
Had it been that long? Once they could cast their spells without any limit, things had definitely changed.
The Cave of Wonder had still been a nightmarish slog. And Boletaria hadn't been easy, even if they'd had the power to handle everything.
But he was right, she supposed. 'Power' was removed from the equation and they just had to worry about opportunity and position. And from time to time they still had to try and puzzle out how to handle something that couldn't die by conventional methods.
"So, what's the point?" Jinx asked as she considered the matter. "Why not just stay at whatever your highest level is?"
"Well, one part curiosity. One part is that it fits together with some of my other abilities. One part..." Alchemist's giant shoulders just shrugged. "A part of my brain is just trained to find satisfaction with higher numbers. So, to elaborate, I've been using the spell Mana Shield. It shunts any damage I would take to my MP instead of my HP. This works with self-inflicted damage, too, like the Darkness Materia or some of the arts of the Dark Blade."
Which... were things that Jinx had no interest in using or learning. But she supposed Mana Shield might be a good idea. When Alchemist had it up? He didn't even flinch when he got hit!
"Unfortunately," Alchemist continued as he opened his System and began to poke at it. "All of those eat up percentages and they aren't reduced by leveling up Mana Shield. If my MP was restored at a flat rate instead of in percentages based on Wisdom, having more MP would actually be detrimental because it would take longer and longer to refill."
"...I really must master that spell as well," Kar'Yashlan muttered. Turning to look at her, Jinx saw that the fallen angel's eyes were narrowed in thought. "Tomorrow? No. Love promised to take me to the beach... The day after, then."
...That sounded like a plan, Jinx decided. She and Kary could work on it together.
"So, that's the background," Alchemist continued, heedless of the distraction both Jinx and Kary were experiencing. "Here's the theory- Some of the equipment that I picked up a while back offered bonus HP upon leveling up. I have had, for the entirety of this level cycle, a Materia called HP to MP equipped. Currently, all of that bonus HP is sitting in the current 'HP pool' which should be my MP. I want to see if, upon resetting my level, the bonus value is retained in my MP or locked to my HP."
"...How big of a bonus are we talking about, here?" Jinx asked as she thought on what he was saying.
"Six-hundred HP per level."
"So, six-hundred times three-thousand, two-hundred-"
"Three-thousand, one-hundred and ninety-nine," Alchemist corrected. "Level one doesn't count."
Jinx accepted the correction with a nod. Then, after almost thirty seconds of trying to run those numbers in her head, she plucked her phone from the Inventory and opened the calculator app.
"...That's almost two-million points," Jinx said, her eyes wide as she looked at the figure.
"It is," Alchemist agreed as he pressed a claw against the floating screen. "And now it's one-tenth of that."
Swapping over to the Party menu, Jinx looked at Alchemist's attributes while he was busy extracting the purple Materia from his armband-
And saw that the ludicrous sum swapped fully from HP to MP.
"...It worked," Jinx said aloud as she considered whether or not she should do the same.
"I don't really see why it wouldn't," Alchemist told her as he put the Materia back in place, as his HP and MP swapped again. "Unless the 'Bracelet of Zoe' was creating a special pool of 'Bonus' HP? Then the simpler solution is just to add the number directly to whatever is sitting in the HP value."
...Next cycle, Jinx decided. She would look over her system when they got done in the Item World and she'd work out how she wanted to do things. But that exploit was definitely going into her next cycle.
"Hey!" Yuffie shouted, drawing three sets of eyes to the girl as she shouted into the workshop. "Hurry up! Come on!"
-----
The preteen ninja wasn't sure what she was initially expecting.
Epic foes!
Awesome samurai!
Ooh! Speeches! She loved speeches!
'No!' her foes would cry in dismay. 'We are too weak and unworthy to fight you, great and amazing Ninja Princess Yuffie!'
Yuffie... forgot what the Item World was like. The silent, almost creepy looking shadows of what might have been people. They did shout, sometimes, but it was never anything cool or epic. Just stuff like-
"Skyrim belongs to the Nords!"
"Die, N'wah!"
"Some may call this junk. Me, I call them treasures."
-and it got kind of old. Kind of fast.
The fighting when they all went into the black rock that her dad pulled out went pretty smooth. Her dad started things off by freezing all of the shadows in place.
Then he stole all of their stuff!
Then Yuffie picked out a tough looking person-shaped shadow and she let her new shuriken rip-!
The skill that was inside of the weapon was kind of weird. So long as Yuffie used it, so long as she focused on it, the shuriken would circle around and around the enemy instead of hitting them or flying off.
By itself? That... kind of sucked. It might work out okay as a distraction, Yuffie guessed, but what was more important was what the flying shuriken could do!
It could be used as a medium for Yuffie to fling cantrip-level magic at a target! Like, really fast! And she could switch the element from fire to ice to wind to lightning with barely a thought!
While Yuffie was working on that, Kary had been doing a thing that caused a red sword to come flying out of the ground through one of the shadows and Jinx and Dad were working on some kind of magic...
Some kind of reset magic? Yuffie wasn't sure and she was busy having too much fun to ask!
She'd barely even noticed when her target disappeared until she was nearly hit in the face with her shuriken, the throwing weapon returning to her of its own volition.
"That was awesome!" Yuffie shrieked as she spun around and bounced on the balls of her feet to burn off the momentum of her returned weapon. "Wait-wait-wait! I saw another skill! It's gonna be so cool!"
Ducking underneath of an ethereal fist coming from a phantom that had come back to life, Yuffie crouched down and opened the shop menu. She swiftly slid her fingers over the interface, drawing through the history to her previous searches so she could purchase the newest weapon to catch her eye.
The Bird of Prey; a massive, curved axe that was inexplicably meant for throwing.
Rolling under a clumsy grab-
"I'll gut you like a horker!"
-Yuffie withdrew the weapon, held it in her hand and said "This calls for more Yuffie!"
Juking to the side to dodge a punch, Yuffie swung-
And noticed that an ephemeral afterimage repeated her actions, a phantasmal copy of the Bird of Prey dug into the same gut she'd just buried her weapon in, hammering into the wound and deepening it.
"No more! I submit!"
The girl heard the words, of course, and knew them to be a lie. A horrible lie, one meant to trick her into letting the shadow rally and attack her again when her back was turned.
She jerked the Bird of Prey loose and twisted, spinning around-
And slammed the edge of the sharp, wicked weapon into the other side of the shadow.
Just like her dad had taught her.
'...Your talents are more formidable than I'd thought,' Mule whispered against Yuffie's mind, her words dripping with faint praise.
"I'm awesome, I know," Yuffie agreed, faux humbleness in her voice that wholly disagreed with her words.
The shadows were kind of tough but they weren't really that dangerous. Especially since her dad did that mass Steal thing to start with.
Each floor they went down, they did it again. Her dad was definitely working on some different magics. Some floors, ones with smaller populations of things like living tree women or minotaurs with big hammers, he just did the Stop spell and then he Mugged everyone! All at once!
Yuffie practically felt herself vibrating in her skin. If she could do that? Do even half of that?
Wutai would never have fallen!
If she could use a Time Materia to cast Stop on all of the SOLDIERs, they wouldn't have been able to burn down the villages along the coast. If she could Steal or Mug all of the infantry, or Genesis and Sephiroth? They wouldn't have been able to gun down or cut down the villagers.
If...
'So. You, too, are a child of war...'
"Hey!" Yuffie called out as they approached the deepest recesses of the Item World. "Hey, Dad! Can you show me how you're Stealing from everything? Please?! I know All Materia doesn't work. I tried!"
Her dad was normally pretty quiet. Usually in awe of Yuffie's own amazingness.
But the long stare he gave her had Yuffie feeling really uncomfortable for a second.
Then he blinked-
"Yeah, actually. Come here and let me see your bracer, I'll show you." And her Dad was back to normal. She got close to him and held out her hand, the one that didn't have Mule's blue glove on it, and her Dad's hand shook for a second before he began pulling Yuffie's Materia out.
Dark Fire, Dark Thunder, Dark Blizzard, Darkness- which she didn't use but it was super cool anyway! -Steal, Throw, Restore and Seal.
And they were all Mastered, because she was cool like that.
"This," her Dad said as he pulled out a purple Materia orb, "is called 'Mega-All'. It works with almost everything, even Steal or Throw."
He slid that one into her bracer, then began to carefully put her Materia back.
Except for the Darkness one.
"Hey!" Yuffie whined as her Dad put that away in the inventory. "I really like that one..."
"And it's very useful. But it doesn't work with Mega-All because it's already an 'area of effect' attack," her Dad explained, nice and calm and not frustrated with her for not getting whatever he was doing without him explaining anything. "All of these will work with it, though, so you can get a feel for how to target everything versus when you want to target just one thing."
"I know how to use an All Materia," Yuffie argued, though her voice was small and the words were empty.
"It never hurts to practice," her Dad argued, a small smile on his lips. "Come on, there's just one floor left. How about you rob them blind this time?"
Yuffie nodded, putting her serious face on.
She was going to steal -everything-!
"I smell weakness!"
She totally stole everything!
-----
Finishing up the Item World of the Ebony Ore wasn't actually especially difficult. Alchemist's team was simply at a level where echoes and representations of the 'generic' foes from any of the Elder Scrolls games simply weren't a threat.
Even the false Daedra on the final floor, a sort of Outsider that was commonly referred to as a demon within the setting, wasn't a serious threat. Especially not after Yuffie stole the whole suit of armor off the thing, along with the saw-toothed greatsword it was swinging in their direction.
Alchemist couldn't decide if he wanted to examine the equipment or not.
Ebony, from the realm of Nirn, was an unusual and magical material. As far as he had been able to figure out, it was the proto-material of that reality, Chaotic Creatia, that had passed through a 'divine' entity and, after being extracted in some way, achieved metastability. This gave it its incredible affinity to magic and its extremely high enchantment capacity.
Daedric Equipment was made by taking that Ebony and impregnating it with the still-living remains of a Daedra. The process required that the smith have a vat of molten Ebony sitting under the darkness of a new moon when they would literally drop the heart of a greater Daedra into the material. The resulting piece of equipment, and it was limited to just one distinct piece at a time, could be hideously malformed and yet would still serve its role because it was, not just physically, but conceptually a helmet, or sword, or shield.
The half-step up from physical to metaphysical -did- expand its magical attunement... but it also meant that, somewhere in the greater wheel of Nirn's cosmos, there was a pissed off Outsider and you were swinging around a literal chunk of its presence.
How that worked with a suit and weapon that was formed within the chaotic nexus of an Item World?
Alchemist had no idea. Alright? His best guess was that the set was made-up wholesale and that, while it had all the -properties- of a Daedric suit of armor, there -shouldn't- be a cabal of pissed off Daedra out there in the infinite cosmos of the multiverse that wanted to get their power back.
...Regardless of the hows or whys, Alchemist had a set of the edgiest armor in existence sitting in his inventory and, immediately following his foray into the Item World, he didn't want to deal with it. He had a number of other concerns that required his attention.
First off was getting a reluctant Yuffie to go and take a shower -before- she crawled into bed. She'd exhausted herself learning her new weapon arts and wanted to pass out, which was fine, but she'd been working hard and sweating for a good two hours. She'd argued up until he threatened to make her do her own laundry, then gave him a petulant '...Fine.' and stomped off to do what he told her to do.
Jinx had grabbed a sandwich and disappeared off to her demi-plane. She seemed alright, but there was definitely something on her mind.
Kary, once she'd cleaned up and changed into a fresh outfit, had curled up on a chair in the living room with a scroll to read through. After a few minutes, Nostradamus had claimed her lap. Then, a few minutes of petting the horned kitten saw her nodding off.
Alchemist was tempted to do the same but, after casting Bilocation, he had a bit of work to do.
One of him was in the workshop and putting together the tools to smelt down the Enriched Ebony Ore he'd made. The process for turning raw Ebony into an ingot demanded intense magical heat, at least if he wanted to do it in any kind of a reasonable time frame. Or he could try normal methods which would take an entire month according to books written by actual experts in Ebony smithing.
Thankfully, his forge was heated by a trapped Fire Elemental. He wouldn't need to personally oversee the smelting process. He just needed to put together a funnel that would drain into a crucible large enough to catch the molten metal. Considering the magic and temperature involved? Normal materials wouldn't survive the process. Darksteel would, which was wonderful, but Transmuting Darksteel was a slow process and would take a bit of time.
Which left one final Alchemist, sitting in his living room and thinking. He didn't remember where the current crop of heroes were supposed to be in Legaia. He knew they were in the Karisto Kingdom, the northern continent, but he couldn't recall if they were heading towards the tower of Sol or were hurrying towards Buma to get to Uru Mais, the temple of Tieg, so they could get to the Seru Kai.
There was a two-month interruption to what he'd been doing and he needed to get caught up. But he couldn't directly handle the issue himself, not if he was going to get the Ebony ore handled.
Alchemist's eyes slid over to Kary's dozing form and he softly shook his head, casting Gate and opening a pathway to an area he was familiar with, the plains outside the ruined remains of the 'Absolute Fortress'.
Which had clearly not been as 'Absolute' as advertised.
Without a snap of his fingers, six copies of Alchemist formed around him. They were each less than him, with a quarter of his own mastery in skills or magical potential, but that was hardly an issue when they were being tasked to act as scouts.
The lesser copies of him silently stepped through the Gate and transformed, revealing their true forms as pitch-black dragons before taking off into the skies.
Wraith King. An ability he'd acquired in his most recent, unwanted venture. There was no 'memory transfer' ability attached to the duplicates and, unlike his spell versions, they were not limited to acting within the same plane as himself.
They were a valuable force multiplier but using them prevented Alchemist from gaining experience with whatever he tasked them with doing, and he needed them to report in if he wanted to learn whatever it was that they'd discovered.
Useful. Incredibly useful. But they had their limits and those could be rather strict.
Dismissing the Gate, Alchemist considered what else he had to work on. His eyes slid over to the still-dozing form of Kary before slipping to the television and he silently sighed.
No games or movies, then.
Well, that was alright.
The mage stepped into the dining room and he instead pulled a quartet of whiteboards out of his inventory to set down on the table. He pulled out a quartet of markers in different colors and labeled each board.
Stone to Flesh
Flesh to Stone
Flesh to Iron
Flesh to F.Ebony
...It'd been a while since he'd done any kind of research, hadn't it?
-----
Robin felt uneasy as he stood in front of the door to their host's home.
He did not agree with the choices the mages had made. At all. And the fact that he had to rely on them for food and shelter on top of that was just...
It was frustrating. He regretted coming with them on this 'trip'. The friction that had formed within the team because of it was even worse.
The only person who seemed to understand where Robin was coming from seemed to be Cyborg. Everyone else, when they heard what Alchemist and his team had to say about Goblins, seemed to just take the man at his word.
And maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe the Goblins were monsters apeing at intelligence to sate some kind of cruel, natural evil.
Or maybe he was lying. Maybe Alchemist had some kind of hatred for them and dehumanized them for the sake of killing them with a 'clear' conscience.
How did they know if he was telling the truth? None of them had any experience with the red-skinned people that didn't also have Alchemist looming over their shoulder, telling them what to think, telling them what the mage thought of the goblins.
Maybe they were hideous, mindless monsters that wanted to kill and eat everything.
Or maybe Alchemist had done something to them, or them to him, and all the Titans got to see was some kind of horrific grudge.
Robin didn't know. And he hated not knowing.
The caped crusader('s sidekick) shook his head and knocked on the door. He was running around in circles and it wasn't going to accomplish anything.
Asking questions. Making observations. Confirming data. Those would accomplish something.
After almost thirty seconds with no answer, Robin knocked on the door again. Louder this time. A few seconds after he did so, he heard the door click and it opened, revealing... Alchemist. Wearing a pair of black sweatpants, a red tee-shirt and no shoes.
He stepped back and away from the door, an obvious invitation to come in, but he didn't say anything.
"Alche-" Robin started to say before the man put a finger up to his own lips in a 'Hush' motion and then pointed to the side.
Poking his head in, Robin saw... Kary, her head lolled a bit to the side in a plush armchair and snoring.
Alright. That was fair.
Alchemist turned around and headed deeper into the house, waving for Robin to follow after him. Which the Boy Wonder did after closing the door behind himself.
The wizard didn't lead Robin too far away. Just to the next room over where the man had a number of old scrolls spread across a table, along with a trio of whiteboards that had a number of circles full of odd scratchmarks and letters on them.
At least they were labeled in English?
Stone to Flesh and Flesh to Stone were both made up of six rings with an increasingly complex string of figures written inside of them. A third board had Flesh to Iron and it was made up of seven rings, the outermost ring being the most complex so far.
There was also a fourth board but it looked like it was in the process of being assembled, having a number of supplementary notes and several other sheets of paper next to it along with a mortar, pestle and several unusual ingredients that Robin couldn't recognize.
"What are you doing?" Robin asked, his voice kept low.
"Writing out the spell structure to a handful of similar spells and trying to build a new one based off of them and a magical poison," Alchemist answered. Readily. And clearly. "What can I do for you, Robin?"
"...Cyborg and I burned the leftovers from yesterday," Robin admitted. He didn't mention that it was because the two had gotten caught up in arguing over something. "So we're kinda... we need something to eat."
"...Alright," the man agreed after a second. "I'm not up to doing anything else too complicated today..."
Robin quietly cursed. Part of why he didn't want to have to rely on Alchemist was specifically because the man could cut off his-
"I think I can put together a few pizzas for you guys, though. Is pepperoni and mushroom for one and plain cheese good for the other?" Alchemist's words cut off Robin's dark train of thought, derailing the teenage crime fighter.
"That'd be great, actually," Robin said to the man as they headed towards the kitchen. "Do you need any help?"
"A second pair of hands won't hurt," Alchemist told him as he started pulling things out of his fridge. A bag of pizza dough from the bottom, a package of pre-sliced meat and a bag of shredded cheese. Then he opened a cupboard next to the sink and came back with a jar of sliced mushrooms. "Can you set the oven to four-hundred degrees?"
Next was a pair of round sheets from another cupboard, one of which he handed to Robin after the boy got done pressing the beeping buttons on the stove.
"...So," Robin quietly began to speak, breaking the silence in the room. "What do you need some new spell for?"
"I'm trying to figure out a way to make legitimate money back in your world," Alchemist explained as he divided the dough in half and dropped one ball on the pan in front of Robin. The former acrobat pocketed his gloves and began to knead and stretch the dough towards the edges of the pan as the man explained himself. "The intention is to buy stone in bulk from a quarry, convert it to flesh, then turn that into another, more valuable material. A ton of granite, for example, is pretty cheap. That same volume in scrap iron, however, is several times that. And it can be even more valuable if it's sold in a state that's ready to be worked."
That... was actually a coherent and sensible explanation. At least, sensible when Alchemist's capabilities were kept in mind.
"Most Metahumans tend more towards... violence," Robin said, voicing his confusion. "Like, robbing banks or mugging people."
"Most Metahumans that you're aware of," Alchemist said. It took a second for Robin to realize that it was a correction.
"You think there are more out there? People who have powers and don't use them?" Robin asked as Alchemist poured a thin spiral of sauce on the dough he'd been working before he handed the jar over to the boy.
"Maybe they do," Alchemist rebutted as he began to spread his sauce with a spoon. "Construction workers with a little bit of super strength. Long-haul truckers who don't need to sleep. Welders with a little bit of fire control. A lot of minor powers could make a lot of jobs more convenient, it just takes a little bit of thought."
Robin... hadn't ever really been given a reason to think like that. So far as he knew, and he'd never had a reason to actually check, all of the people with superpowers in Gotham were villains.
Or Jason Blood. But his transformed state came with some kind of mental issues and didn't care about collateral damage so he was at least villain-adjacent.
The two worked in silence for the rest of the preparation and the pizzas were both put into the oven for a surprisingly short fifteen minutes.
"...If there are more powered people out there, why don't they help?" Robin found himself asking as the timer ticked away and Alchemist pulled a pitcher of lemonade out of the fridge. "There's something like five supervillains for every hero out there. We're outnumbered."
"How can a single gunman keep fifteen or twenty people under control when they only have ten bullets in a gun?" Alchemist asked in turn as he poured out two glasses.
At first, Robin didn't think they were related.
But, about halfway through his glass of surprisingly sweet lemonade, he realized what Alchemist was getting at.
Most people with powers weren't bullet proof. Most people with powers didn't know how to fight.
When something happened, most Metahumans were just as scared and helpless as their neighbors. Most of them probably just wanted a normal life with normal concerns.
Was it fair to demand more of them? Just because they were born different?
Robin didn't think it was. Maybe people with dangerous or uncontrollable powers, yeah, but if most powers were basically just tricks...
Robin ended up leaving the house, one pie in his hands as Alchemist carried the other, with more questions than he'd entered it with.
And, despite the answers he'd gotten, he still didn't know what to think of the older man.
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