Young Justice: Gotham City

July 18th, 2010

“We should probably…call someone?” Zatanna asked slowly.

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “Yeah.” I walked up beside Zatanna and fired another point-blank stunner into the assassin’s cocooned form, then a third just to be safe. “That should keep him out for a good bit.”

We both turned to look at each other simultaneously and our eyes met. “Kent?” I asked. If he’d already broken out of prison once this month, there was no reason to suspect he wouldn’t just do so again if we dropped him off with the police, the local muggle version of Aurors. The only other options were Zatanna’s dad––which would mean revealing to him that his daughter and I were wandering the city together––and Kent, who’d also previously been a superhero and had a much better opinion of me than Giovanni did.

She nodded shakily. “Yeah. Uncle Kent will know what to do.”

“Can you…”

She nodded again, and then dug her cellphone, the same sort of muggle device that I’d first seen Magnolia use at Big Belly Burgers, out of her pocket and began dialing a number. The devices seemed rather useful, but I’d as of yet not chosen to acquire one for myself. Perhaps I may need to change that in the near future. They seemed both incredibly useful for interpersonal communication and could be used to access the muggles’ internet, a vast repository of information.

While Zatanna focused on calling her honorary uncle, I turned my eyes back towards the man we’d captured. My first instinct was to hit him with a memory charm, but I managed to stop myself before I could do so. There was no real point since the other man, Hook, had gotten away. Plus, it would just reveal that I could cast a memory charm, even if I wasn’t particularly great at it, which was something I’d avoided revealing to anyone on this Plane so far.

From what I’d seen so far, wizards here had never gotten anywhere close to the level of prowess my kin had reached when it came to memory-related magics. Near as I could tell, Order magic was rather poorly suited to the mind arts. It could do compulsions and illusions, but there was no equivalent of the everpresent obliviate spell that had become increasingly crucial in my world to maintain the Statute.

Since one of our two assailants had gotten away, it wasn’t like I could really hide what had happened. If I modified this man’s memories and then his story was ever compared with what Hook had seen, it would immediately give away another of my magical secrets.

Zatanna’s phone rang softly, fell silent, then rang again. On the third ring, the sound cut out half-way through, replaced by a familiar, if slightly distorted voice. “Zatanna, my dear! How lovely to hear from you. You sure know how to pick them, that boy is––”

Zatanna loudly shushed Kent. “Uncle!” she whispered into the device, “he’s standing right next to me!” She poked around on the device and the sound instantly turned barely audible, forcing her to raise the cell phone up to her ear. Even then, I could still make out Kent’s muffled laughter. Zatanna waited for several seconds as she listened to whatever he was saying, then cut him off before he could keep talking.

“Listen, Uncle, uh, me and Hydrys could use some help. We ran into these guys, and we think they’re League of Sha––No, no, we’re fine, we’re fine! We have one of them tied up and unconscious, the other one got away. We just––Yes, I said we’re fine. They didn’t touch either of us. Hydrys––Yes, I know Uncle. I don’t think he’s faking it.”

She waited for several seconds, then rattled off the name of the closest street corner we’d passed before checking out this building. A few seconds later, she pulled the phone away from her ear and ended the call. “He’s on his way. We should get this guy to the corner.” She sounded much more confident now. Doing something productive had helped reassure her that everything was okay.

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I flicked my wand and levitated the rope cocoon up into the air, then floated him out through the open door we’d come in through. Zatanna followed after me, her hand finding mine and squeezing it tightly as though I might disappear. I squeezed back gently and Zatanna shifted slightly until we were walkin nearly shoulder to shoulder instead of just side-by-side.

We’d only just barely reached the intersection when a golden circle appeared in mid air at the center of the road and Kent floated down through it, his cane and eyes blazing with golden light. He spun around in a full circle, sweeping the empty street with whatever detection spells he was using, then turned towards us and floated over to where we were standing a few steps away from the bound assassin.

Kent landed on the ground and went from powerful wizard to doting Uncle in an instant. Despite her repeated protests that she was fine, he checked Zatanna over a half-dozen times for any injuries, then hugged her tightly and planted a small kiss on her forehead. “I’m glad you’re alright. When you said they were League of Shadows, I was already half-way to the top of the tower before you said you were fine. The league mostly employs trained humans and a handful of metas, but even an ordinary human can be very, very dangerous if they get close or catch you by surprise.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Zatanna said, laughing shakily. “I mean, I’ve met Batman.” She paused, then abruptly turned fully around, scanning the street behind us before letting out a sigh of relief. “You know, I really thought he was going to be standing right behind us.”

Kent reached up and ruffled her hair. “Not this time, it seems, but that does sound like him. I’ve only had the pleasure of working with him a few times, but he does love his dramatic entrances. Now then,” he took a step back and leaned heavily on his cane, “I heard the basics from Zatanna, but please if you could, tell me what happened exactly?”

Zatanna and I exchanged meaningful glances again, and then she nodded curtly. She knew Kent better than I did, so it was better that she told our side of the story.

Over the next ten minutes, Zatanna told Kent about what had happened, with me only needing to briefly interrupt to clarify some things about the spells I’d cast. She didn’t mention anything about why we were looking at abandoned buildings, nor the fact that this warehouse wasn’t the first one we’d checked, but I was pretty sure Kent was sharp enough to pick up on context clues.

She also did an absolutely fantastic job painting our meeting as a mostly one-of chance for her to help me get accustomed to the muggle world of this time period, and not something at all significant that happened frequently. I wasn’t sure Kent actually believed her on that front, but he did, after much heartfelt begging, promise not to tell her father that she’d snuck out of Shadowcrest to go to Gotham.

At the end of her story, Kent shook my hand firmly and told me that we would ‘talk more during our next lesson’. When he asked if we needed help getting home, I told him that I would make sure Zatanna got back to Shadowcrest safely, and mentioned that there was a cafe that Zatanna really liked in downtown that I was going to take her too before we went back. Zatanna seemed to like the sound of that idea, and Kent, after staring me in the eyes for an uncomfortably long time, slowly nodded and silently turned away.

A few moments later, he was gone, flying through another golden portal with the restrained assassin floating after him surrounded by a shield of golden energy. Zatanna took another step closer to me, her back pressed against my side. She was shaking slightly, really both of us were. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the reality of what had transpired was starting to sink in. If I had been a tiny bit slower with my charmwork, if I hadn’t been wearing that necklace, if one of the assassins had been a bit more prepared for what we could do…

I wrapped an arm loosely around her shoulders and she leaned back into my touch. “Let’s go get us something to drink, and maybe some of those muffins you were eyeing last time,” I whispered. “I think I could use some time to sit down and catch my breath.”

“Yeah, no more abandoned buildings tonight.”

“Definitely not.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

And then we vanished from the street, leaving nothing behind but the fading sound of air rushing to fill the place where we’d just been standing.