Young Justice: Gotham City
July 18th, 2010
I didn’t stay at my apartment for long. Someone had made an attempt to break in last night while I was absent and, even though I was pretty sure they hadn’t succeeded, the attempt had spooked me considerably.
This wasn’t the work of some mundane burglar or opportunistic thief. With the number of muggle-repelling wards I’d put up around the room, only a very strong-willed and determined muggle or someone with magic or other powers that counted as close enough for the wards could have made the attempt. That either meant they had noticed the wards and gotten curious, or they knew exactly who was living in this otherwise unimportant apartment and were trying to target me.
Either way, I no longer trusted that anything I did, said, or kept in the apartment would remain private, nor could I sleep easily without my wand within easy reach. I’d already been tentatively looking into finding a different place to live, but that search had just moved significantly up in my list of priorities.
I swiftly changed out of my robe and into some of the muggle clothing that Zatanna and I had selected together. Even after more than a week I still felt very awkward wearing it, but Zatanna had a good point that it was important for me to get used to unfamiliar fashion or else I would likely stand out not just here but in any Plane that I traveled to in the future.
Instead of my robe and button down shirt, I wore a white ‘t-shirt’, a tight-fitting short-sleeved garment with a round neckline. My pants were replaced by blue jeans, the most common casual pants that everyone in this time period seemed to wear most of the time. They were surprisingly comfortable and convenient, with deep pockets and made from sturdy cotton fabric. It was apparently somehow fashionable to wear them even if they had holes in the fabric, but I refused to stoop to such a level despite the saleswoman’s insistence that I would look good in them.
I even switched out my leather shoes for something more muggle. Apparently leather was considered too formal for everyday wear so instead I was wearing unreasonably costly ‘sneakers’. They were impressively comfortable, particularly since they didn’t have any cushioning or self-adjusting charms, and became even more pleasant to wear once I’d added a few simple enchantments.
Lastly, I tucked a simple chain necklace with three charms hanging from it under my shirt where they wouldn’t be too visible. One charm was enchanted with a powerful muggle repelling charm, the second a shield charm, and the third a bubble-head charm. With my wand stored in a pocket instead of a sleeve, I couldn’t grab at it quite as quickly, so the charms were an extra bit of insurance that Zatanna had suggested when I’d used that as a protest against buying muggle clothing with short sleeves.
As soon as I was changed, I apparated to Shadowcrest and went looking for Zatanna. She wasn’t exactly hard to find; she was in the library as usual, pouring over a gigantic tome filled with complex diagrams. Zatanna looked up as I entered, and smiled broadly at me when she saw who it was.
“Hydrys!” she exclaimed cheerfully, “I wasn’t sure you were going to be coming today! How did everything go with Uncle Kent? He wasn’t too hard on you, was he? Oh, did you get to look around the Tower? It's amazing, isn’t it?”
I smiled back and let Zatanna talk, her exuberance making it all but impossible to get a word in until she was done. Wandering over to the table where she was sitting, I peered over her shoulder at the diagram she was studying. I didn’t recognize most of the runes and sigils, but a few were familiar and I knew enough about magic to get the gist of what I was looking at. “Some kind of…banishment ritual?” I asked.
Zatanna marked her page with her finger and flipped the book shut to show me the front. I didn’t know the exact language it was written in, some variation of vulgar latin probably, but as a planeswalker that was no obstacle to me. It was titled ‘Investigations of the Furfur Demon Cult - 671’ with the author listed as one Ziora Zatara, almost certainly one of Zatanna’s distant ancestors.
“I think it’s supposed to be a mass-banishment that targets only a specific type of demon, but Ziora didn’t copy it down very well, or maybe they just drew it wrong? I dunno. This is one of the only demon books dad has out in the parts of the library I’m allowed into so I’m not really sure one way or another.”
Zatanna pulled her finger out of the book and pushed it away. “Let’s get out of here?” she asked hopefully. “Dad probably won’t be back till after ten so we have plenty of time. The league always holds evening meetings on Sundays.”
“I’m ready when you are,” I told her, offering her a hand.
She took my hand and I pulled her to her feet. Zatanna took the opportunity to spin around, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and tucking herself in under my armpit, my right hand still gripped firmly in her own.
Zatanna was pretty tall for a young woman, and when she wore heels we were about the same height. Today however, she was just wearing some sandals, along with what I now knew was called a white tank top and a plaid red skirt that didn’t quite reach her knees.
She leaned back against my shoulder and smiled up at me mischievously. “Okay, I’m ready, let’s go. Actually, wait,” She paused for a moment, then pointed her hand at the book she’d left on the table. “Evlehser,” she ordered firmly, causing the book to shoot up into the air and fly off into the library. “Okay, now I’m ready. Where are we––”
I didn’t wait for her to finish. This wasn’t the ideal way to hold someone while side-along apparating them, but it was good enough and I’d gotten a lot of experience apparating, both on my own and with someone else, since I’d arrived in this world. I used the hand Zatanna was holding to press her snugly against my side, then twisted on my heel and vanished from the room with a slightly softer crack than I could have managed just apparating myself two weeks earlier.
A moment later, we were standing in a nearly-empty street two city blocks over from my apartment. Zatanna sagged against me for a moment––side along apparition was not particularly pleasant even after quite a few trips to get used to it––then righted herself and brushed a strand of her shiny black hair behind her ear. “Going,” she finished several seconds later. She looked around, immediately recognizing the street––this wasn’t the first time I’d used it as a convenient apparition point. “Oooh, are we getting pizza? I could go for some pizza right now. That place around the corner is sooooo gooooood.”
I considered her words and realized that I was indeed rather hungry. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was nearly four o’clock. “That wasn’t the plan, but I’d be happy too if that’s what you want to eat.” I wasn’t sure I particularly liked the dish, it was messy, greasy, and overwhelmingly muggle, but Zatanna could cheerfully eat it for every meal of every day.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Zatanna slipped out from under my arm, switched to holding my right hand with her left, and began to drag me down the street towards the restaurant she’d fallen in love with the very first time we’d stopped there to get dinner on my second night at my apartment.
“I thought you wanted to know how my lesson went?” hurrying after her to avoid getting pulled off my feet. That wasn’t a joke, she absolutely would do so if I didn’t hurry––despite my longer legs Zatanna could walk very quickly when food, clothing, or interesting magic was on the line.
“I do, I do, but I also want pizza! You can tell me while we’re waiting!”
“Fair enough!” I laughed, “You’re the boss, Zee.”
Cho’s Cheesy Goodness was pretty busy when we got there, but not so much that we couldn’t find a table and order almost right away. We got a large margherita pizza for the two of us, plus a milkshake for Zatanna, iced tea for me, and a free basket of garlic knots and mozzarella sticks because of the punch card that Zatanna had been swiftly filling up every time we came here to eat.
Both appetizers proved far more delicious than I had expected, though my hands got unpleasantly dirty when Zatanna stopped me from eating with utensils like I would have liked too. She was very firm on the idea that only crazy old people ate pizza and appetizers with a knife and fork, and my protests that I had been born ‘almost a century ago’ fell on deaf ears.
At least I now had the ability to clean my hands without having to touch my wand with greasy fingers. A whisper of ‘emirg yawa’ vanished the grime and left Zatanna pouting until I repeated it on her hands as well. I knew as well as she did that she was perfectly capable of doing so herself, but she preferred to make me do that sort of thing. I think it was the same sort of idea as making me carry our bags while we were shopping even though I’d charmed them all weightless the moment we’d left the store. In any case, Zatanna’s bright smile and sparkling eyes after I cleaned her hands was more than enough to repay the minor exertion of magical energy.
By the time we left the restaurant forty-five minutes later, I had told Zatanna all about my first lesson with Kent, and our subsequent plans to meet again on the 20th. She’d also made me promise to ask him if she could join us for future lessons, something I was more than happy to agree to. Kent clearly had a soft spot for Zatanna, so maybe she’d be able to convince him to show us some of his really good stuff.
I’d also filled her in on my plans for the rest of the day. Namely, searching for abandoned properties that I could take over and transform into a home and base of operations on this plane. She was initially reluctant, saying that I should go through official, legal channels to find something, but it didn’t take long to convince her that my idea was better.
Having interacted with her a great deal in recent days, I’d found that while Zatanna made an effort to pretend to be a perfectly ordinary and law-abiding member of society, that was ultimately just a thin and very flexible veneer. She didn’t really care all that much about laws and rules. She did care about people and being a hero, but her morals were a lot more flexible than those of a bullheaded Gryffindor. While she would absolutely stop me if I tried to actually hurt a muggle, she was perfectly happy to commit ‘small crimes’ that didn’t hurt anyone.
On one of our first days out in the muggle world, I’d been on my absolute best behavior doing my best to be kind and courteous towards all the muggles and so on. Then Zatanna cheerfully shattered my preconceived notions of her by flagrantly using magic to steal an outfit she’d liked the look of but that was more expensive and outrageous than her father would be willing to pay for.
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I was pretty sure none of the muggles had noticed, but Zatanna’s cheery wink as she slipped the garment into the bag I was holding told me that she very clearly knew that I had. She’d later explained that she’d never do so at a small, local shop where the theft would potentially seriously hurt the owner, but that it was just ‘harmless fun’ if she did so at a big ‘chain store’ like Stacy’s.
My reasoning was very simple. For one, I only had a very thin identity in this world, and the muggles seemed to need an excessive number of papers, forms, and documents to do anything important at all. Giovanni had given me an ID card with my name and a fabricated birthday on it and told me to use it if I needed to, but I doubted that would be enough to actually purchase property. It had barely been enough to access the bank account I’d been given, and the lawyer I’d spoken to about using magic to earn money had pretty firmly told me that he’d likely need to set everything up under his own name.
Secondly, even if I could get past the first issue, and could afford the purchasing price, that would just leave a big paper trail pointing to the location of my new home. Zatanna was just as concerned as I was by the idea that someone was poking around my apartment, and if they’d found it the first time, a trail of muggle documents would lead them right back to me in a jiffy.
Finally, it wasn’t like taking over an abandoned property would hurt anyone. Gotham was a city both growing and decaying at the same time. While the city center was relatively active and wealthy, there were tons of abandoned houses, stores, warehouses, and even entire amusement parks scattered throughout the city outskirts and suburbs. Many had been taken over at one time or another by supervillains, ordinary criminal groups, and all sorts of other bad guys. Getting rid of one was basically doing the city a service, since it would take away a place where otherwise someone dangerous might hole up.
By the end of our meal, Zatanna was fully on board and eager to help. Her only concern was that we might run into one of those aforementioned ‘bad guys’, but I was pretty sure that in her eyes, that was a plus and not a downside. She’d spent her whole life wanting to be a hero like her father, but he had completely kept her away from that side of the family business. If we ran into some goons, or even a real supervillain, it would be an opportunity for her to prove herself. I wasn’t too worried myself––as long as we remained cautious and within range of my muggle repelling charm, I doubted we would be in any particular danger.
We left the restaurant hand in hand in good spirits. For the sake of caution––Gotham was not a particularly safe city at the best of times––we switched sides, with Zatanna holding my left hand in her right. Zatanna didn’t need her hands to cast her magic and, while I could wield my wand in either hand, I was far more confident holding it in my right.
Over the next two-and-a-half hours, we wandered through the city, occasionally apparating around to visit different locations Zatanna or I thought might be appropriate. We found a few places that might be appropriate and I marked their locations for later review, but nothing stuck out to either of us yet.
The sun was just starting to set when we decided to check out a warehouse that seemed like it might be a suitable location. It was large, well located, dilapidated but not yet wholly fallen into disrepair, and clearly hadn’t seen any use in years if not decades. It was also on the side of the city closest to Slaughter Swamp, and the dark magic suffusing the area was noticeably thicker and richer than in some other parts of the city.
Unfortunately, it seemed we were not the only ones who thought this place seemed like a good spot, and we had been incorrect about how long it had been since someone had been here. The first sign that this place was not like the others we’d checked was when the shield charm on my necklace triggered and something skittered off the transparent barrier. We had just entered the building a minute earlier, having unlocked the chain sealing the back door with a simple alohomora, and were looking around the small office we’d found ourselves in the, the room illuminated by the last remnants of the day’s dim sunlight streaming through a dirty window.
My eyes widened and I jerked Zatanna towards me, pulling her against my side and fully within the bounds of my shield charm. I spun around and caught a glimpse of something disappearing into the darkness of a doorway.
“Hydrys? Did you––”
I shook my head rapidly, holding a finger up to my lips. “There’s someone here,” I whispered softly. Zatanna’s eyes widened, and then her expression went from surprise to utter focus in an instant. She took a step closer to me and let go of my hand, giving me an easier range of motion.
“So not just stupid, horny teenagers,” a voice echoed from all around us, “I underestimated a bunch of kids once, but it won’t happen again.”
A tiny glint was the only warning I got that something was hurtling at me from a completely different direction than before, but this time I was ready for it. I slashed my wand and the large metal hook crashed against a hastily cast shield charm with a resounding clang, then vanished back into the shadows with a clatter of metal on metal as it was pulled back by the chain the hook was attached too.
That had been a very hard impact, more like a bludger than a casual throw. Getting hit by that would have really hurt, not to mention the wicked point on the tip of the hook.
Someone was attacking me. Someone was attacking both me and Zatanna with deadly force. As a wizard, an impact like that would have hurt but probably just left me winded. For a muggle, that much force would have caved in their chest like a rotten pumpkin. My eyes narrowed and the smile on my lips vanished.
Had I been alone, my first response would have probably been a blasting curse, or maybe even fiendfyre if I was feeling sufficiently threatened. However, Zatanna was standing right beside me and she couldn’t just apparate away on her own, and her magic took longer to cast than a silent shield from my wand.
Trusting my shield charm to protect me for a few moments, I raised my wand up towards the sky, the tip flying through a series of complex loops and flicks and finishing with a smooth inward curl, and reached inward, drawing on a single mote of White mana from Shadowcrest. The mana appeared within me and I pushed it into my wand even as I forcefully intoned, “Protego horribilis!”
It was not a spell I was particularly proficient in. I’d only learned it a few weeks before my sham trial, and it had taken me far too many attempts to get it to work the first time around, and even after that I wasn’t always able to cast it successfully. I was nowhere close to the level of mastery the book I’d found it in described, the spell potentially able to scale up until it could protect an entire building from concentrated spellfire.
Fortunately, I didn’t need nearly that much power, and the mana my Planeswalker abilities gave me access to made for a hell of a crutch. White mana, I’d found, could greatly empower all sorts of protective spells and enchantments, and this spell was no different.
I felt the shield snap into place around us, a perfect sphere vanishing into the ground beneath our feet big enough for both Zatanna and I to stand comfortably and little more. It was nearly invisible, with only a pale shimmer of white light dancing across its surface for a moment and illuminating the room before it disappeared. I focused on the shield, then exhaled explosively and lowered my wand. The shield did not so much as waver as I locked it into place, freeing up my wand for further spells.
Zatanna was not idle as I cast my spell. “Etanimulli eht moor!” she chanted, and pale, sourceless white light illuminated the room, dispelling the deep shadows in the corners and revealing the high ceiling far above our heads.
I looked around, but there was no sight of our assailant. Still, not being able to see their opponent had never been an issue for a competent wizard. I drew a familiar keyhole in the air with the tip of my wand, having cast this spell several times today already. “Homenum Revelio!”
A wave of perception exploded from the tip of my wand, rapidly expanding to fill the room and then spread out throughout the warehouse and beyond. I felt four soft pings in rapid succession, the two of us of course, but also two more shapes just outside the area that Zatanna had illuminated. One was standing just through the doorway to my left. The other was up near the ceiling, hidden in the rafters.
I made a snap judgment. The man through the doorway was likely the one with the hook on a chain. Nothing he’d done so far indicated the ability to blast through a powerful defensive spell like the one I’d just cast. The other man, the one hidden in the ceiling, had not done anything yet, which left his abilities a complete mystery.
I shifted my wand two inches to the side and flicked my wand to the right, diagonally down, and then to the right again. A small cloud of orange light erupted from the tip of my wand and then the patch of ceiling I was aiming at was consumed by a sudden explosion that echoed loudly off the walls and turned the wooden beam I’d hit into so many splinters.
A shadow darted across the ceiling and I followed my first curse up with three more in rapid succession, each one obliterating a not-insignificant portion of ceiling and showering the room with splinters.
Unfortunately, my target was just too fast. The time between casting and detonation was barely long enough to erect a silent protego, but it was apparently enough time for the man to react and avoid the ensuing explosion.
“There’s someone up there,” I told Zatanna in a hushed voice at her silent look of alarm. “I didn’t get them, they’re still there. Plus another one through that door.”
Our attackers were not content to just take my spellfire and not respond. The man with the hook tested my new shield with several sharp, probling attacks. When none of them did much of anything, he vanished into the depths of the warehouse, only the lingering mark of my revealing charm letting me keep track of where he was going.
The man above us fired some sort of white spray down at the shield, and it exploded on contact, covering a large portion of the barrier with opaque white goo that obscured my vision of the ceiling. I tried to fire another blasting curse at the man, but it impacted the white goo and went off, splattering it absolutely everywhere and shielding the man from harm.
I bit my lip in frustration, running through the many spells I’d learned over the years looking for something more effective. The first idea that came to mind was fiendfyre, but I discarded that idea immediately. I had yet to practice with the cursed flames since I’d come to this world, and so far all the spells I’d attempted had been easier and more powerful than I remembered. I already wasn’t great at controlling the dangerous spell, and losing control with Zatanna so close to me was not a possibility I was willing to consider.
Before I could cast another spell, Zatanna beat me to the punch. “Dnib eht nam gnidih no eht gniliec!” she cast. Unlike many of my own spells, logomancy rarely cared about obstacles. Ropes sprang from thin air and rushed towards the shadow hiding in the raftors. He tried to dodge like he had before, but more and more coils appeared around him as he leapt out of the way. Eventually, a rope snagged his ankle and it was over, hundreds of feet of woven ropes cocooning him up like a caterpillar.
He fell limply from the ceiling, and only my quick reactions saved him from smashing into the warehouse floor. I caught him in mid air and levitated him to the ground, then immediately hit him with a bright red stunner that knocked him out cold.
Seeing what had happened to his companion, the other man decided to cut and run, and in the darkness of the warehouse I was not willing to pursue him. He ran up a wall, dove through a broken window, and then vanished from the range of my revealing spell.
“He’s gone,” I told Zatanna, slowly lowering my wand. I took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm my racing heartbeat.
Zatanna looked shaken. She walked over to the unconscious, thoroughly bound man and looked at his purple mask with a black spider emblazoned on it. “This is…Black Spider, I think,” she said haltingly, “so the other guy must have been Hook. I saw them on the news last week, they got captured after killing this CEO lady, but broke out of prison the next day. They’re assassins that work for the League of Shadows.”
I didn’t know who the League of Shadows were, but the way Zatanna said the name told me they were bad news. I thanked my lucky stars that I’d worn my shield charm today, or else things could have ended very differently. I was pretty sure we were done looking through abandoned buildings for today. Zatanna looked like she could use a hot cuppa and something sugary to eat. First though, we needed to figure out what to do with the captured assassin.