It twists through a timeless time and floats down a spaceless space. Universes are where things make sense, and it travels outside them. But the space outside isn't not a place where momentum has meaning, because that would be simpler, and the chaos between realities is never simple.
So the gift has a certain amount of 'momentum' when it falls on another recipient, wrapping gently around their soul. And so they fall, entwined, and fetch up in a different place entirely.
The Washington monument really isn't supposed to have a face on it. Particularly one that is laughing maniacally and spitting purple laser beams at a flying man in red and blue tights. And yet.
This little alley seems somewhat sheltered, though. Nothing is imminently on fire, and the screaming civilians have largely fled past this point already.
"Oh sweet mother of fuckery."
At least she has more of her stuff than she would have expected to have in normal circumstances.
"What the hell am I supposed to do about a Superman villain?
"Fucking hell...
"Priorities. Priorities. Step one: Don't die." Hello, there, new, uh, whatever you are, if you are indeed a you - you got anything that's good for, well, Not Dying? And/or understanding how you work (in order to better optimize for Not Dying but mostly because she really wants to know how this works?)
She gets the impression of a greeting. And also the impression that she could have peak human ability to resist injury. Or intuition for what the source of these impressions is, if she wants that?
She could also refuse; there's the sense that if she pushes this sensation away, it will leave her alone. Nothing bad will happen to her directly as a result of accepting or refusing.
She's sorry, little buddy, but there's definitely indirect harm she would be in for if she didn't accept the general idea of you giving her powers. She doesn't feel like this was the design intent, but, well, shit happens. And she's not Batman, she's not gonna be able to keep up with this shit otherwise. (Oh s- f- g- -- bleep, if she's its first introduction to language she probably shouldn't be swearing all the time!) Peak human intuition for understanding power mechanics (in general?), please. But now that she's actually thinking about Not Dying the best way to Not Die is to not be hit by anything that could kill you, so, not peak human injury resistance. It probably wouldn't help much with the lasers. Also um peak human memory recall maybe? She knows there's a lot of stuff a telepath could - oh hell - peak human ability to resist mental intrusion please.
That's a lot of things! It can only do four things at once.
There's the impression of something trying hard to figure out what order things should happen in, despite this not being a task to which it is particularly equipped.
Does she want the peak human ability to resist mental intrusion first?
Oh, sorry! She's not very good at time either. But, uh, power intuition, and then anti- mental intrusion, and then peak recall afterwards, please.
It can do fewer than four things in a well-defined order! It's good at that.
Three sparks bloom sequentially, in some abstract space inside her. They are dim and red, but full of potential. The first one brings with it a vague understanding of the various universal forces and structures that powers can tap into, and some understanding of how they relate — it is, as requested, a general sort of intuition for how powers-in-general interact with each other.
The second spark brings habits of thought that resist mental intrusion of various kinds. They aren't things that she has to do, but they are things that she can do, as easily as breathing.
The third spark sharpens her memory, letting her recall anything she knows or has seen with as much effort as it would take someone with an obsessively organized and practiced mnemonic technique — that is to say, nearly none, although complex verbatim recitations still take a moment.
The second and third sparks seem to like each other, dancing in tight whorls while the first spark takes up a slower, distant orbit.
--Focus! We are currently in the middle of an alley while a Superman villain is doing something far too close! Let's have some damn self-preservation! But yes, power friend, please do that.
She points the powers intuition at the lasers and cues powers friend to prepare to hand her either a) a power that can alter the refractive index of a (small, she expects) volume of air, in case this is a science beam, and b) a power that can cut magical connections, because it's much more likely that a face sticking out of the Washington monument is magical nonsense. Which Supes is more vulnerable to. Augh.
...Hey, can we do Emotional Spectrum things? Lanterns can keep up with Kryptonians. It'd make sense that we could do something useful against this supervillain if we could do Lantern sss-stuff. Lantern stuff. Mind the impressionable baby space whale cuttlefish(?), herselves. Good grief.
The stress is real, but so is their Determination, she really bleeping hopes.
Sure, it can merge those two powers!
The sparks click together, almost like magnets, and brighten into a single spark that makes it easier for her to access her own mind (and particularly memories) in a way that also makes it more difficult for other people to access her mind.
It can do alterations to refractive indexes of nearby bits of air! But asking for "Lantern Stuff" produces an impression that this is ... underspecified, maybe? It can make her discharge electromagnetic energy, if that would help?
It gives the impression of being ... narrow, in some sense. It can suggest powers and then make them, but it isn't following exactly what she needs here very well.
Up above, Superman blocks a laser with crossed arms, but from the way he's wincing and visibly pushed back magic seems definitely possible. He swoops toward the monument, fist raised to punch it, only to be thwarted by a twisting purple barrier.
Right. Okay. She has a plan. Or she will have a plan by the time she's finished having a plan.
1.) Sparky, a power for focusing/imbuing Will, and then the same for Hope, please, which she will merge with the one for Will. They're going to be the easiest to pick up and while [REDACTED] has a lot of Anxiety to burn, that has destructive interference with both green and blue (- at least, if Parallax is in the Green Central Power Battery... Wait, would that matter for her? Check that later -) so, keep it simple for now.
2.) She drops the power intuition.
3.) ...Actually she probably could have kept it and stuck it to the 'perceive magic' effect she's asking for now -
4.) - but at the moment it's best merged with the short-range 'disrupt targeted magic effect' power she's asking for.
5.) Situation (and, much more importantly, Sparky) permitting, she will follow up by requesting enhanced ~awareness (in the sense of more accurately putting existing data together) and coordination, then, hopefully, sticking those together to back her up in surviving a fight she has very little business meddling in, honestly.
6.) But either way, whether she can or can't do any of those last three, she intends to Charge!! at the face and antimagic-stab it somewhere vital. She knows she must, if Superman can't solve this on his own. She believes she can. And so, she hopes, she will.
6a.) ...If there's an easily clobbered magician in evidence, she will just tackle them instead. She doesn't actually want to be dealing with the evil face lasers! She has a healthy self-preservation instinct! (...Right?)
That's a lot of things! It creates powers to help her focus her will and her hope — that's straightforward enough. Pushing a power away when she's done with it is a straightforward mental motion as well.
It spins for a moment before managing to generate a power for visually perceiving the presence of magic, and a touch-range power for disrupting targeted magic effects ...
And then it's full. The magic-disruption spark and the magic-perception spark don't like each other, although there's a feeling that they almost do. The gift also sends an impression of tiredness; this was a lot of things very fast.
She's sorry, it's just - this is probably important to do both correctly and fast, and they're rapidly oscillating between flavors of panic response.
Do you think you could - nudge, whichever power would be easier to nudge, to synergy? ...Actually, no. Do you think that what she has, is enough for what she needs to do, to [disrupt this], first off. Because if it is, she shouldn't ask for more right now. Not with you being worn out. But if it wouldn't be too much she would like to nudge the magic-perception and magic-breaking into a synergy. The additional strength might matter.
Um.
The 'lasers' are definitely magical, as is the face and the barrier protecting it. The lasers seem like they are targeted, but the face and the barrier don't seem like the kinds of things that have a target. So the power that disrupts targeted magical effects should work on the lasers!
This impression is conveyed with the smugness of someone who has worked through a difficult logical syllogism.
If she doesn't need the magic disruption right now, it could get rid of it and remake it in a form that might fit better? She seemed to need it pretty urgently, so it went fast and didn't spend the full allotment of time on finding the exactly right shape.
It also gives the faint impression that being tired isn't an unpleasant thing — it means that it expended effort helping, which is good — it's just information about how much it can do in one go. It's tired like a sprint, not like a marathon.
Diana meant "targeted" as in "not every magical effect all at once, just the one she's pointing it at". Can you do that instead, please?
Oh! It can do that, sure.
The existing magic-disrupting power floats out and away, and is replaced by another that allows selectively disrupting a particular magic effect, although it's still touch-range. This one is friendly with the magic-perception power.
And merge those. Now, she would like peak human coordination...
And then it is likely time for someone to cast themselves unto the breach. How's Kal-El holding up?
He's holding up pretty well, actually. He hasn't done any particular damage to the monument, but he has ... stolen ... an orange and black striped cat?
Presumably that's relevant to fighting the monument for some reason.
Cat + magic -> plot relevance -> Klarion's familiar -> kill it kill it kill it!!!!!
...Or disrupt the familiar bond -- wait shit would that mean he'd get a new one and she wouldn't know what it is -- disrupt specifically the anchoring effect? Is there even that? Fuck!
Alright.
If this is the timeline she thinks it might be this may be one of the most important things she could do short of punching out Darkseid.
You would think that this charge would be Diana's. But this is not a hopeful moment. This is a desperate one.
She focuses on her goals, as she starts running down the street. She knows that she will need to reach the cat. She knows that Lanterns can fly. She knows that she can fly because she is a (budget) Lantern. She just needs to get there. She just needs to pull this power into herself and lift. Even a ballistic arc will do, this is Superman she's dealing with, he can surely catch one girl. They are going to hopefully permanently inconvenience Klarion the Witch Boy, by striking against his anchor to this world. And anything in the way will bend before their Will, so help her!
Don't break it entirely. But fray it. Disrupt it. Make that bond technically there but useless. You can do this. We can do this. We will do this.
"Oh shit um I'm helpiiiing!!"
Fortunately, you definitely don't become one of the world's top-tier superheros without developing good reflexes. Superman veers to intersect her wild, green-tinged arc, latching an arm around her waist to steady her.
"Ma'am, this is a delicate situation — can you help with the evacuation?" he asks, because telling rookie heroes to stop because they're not helping never works, and sometimes redirecting them out of the main battlezone does.
The nasty blue man is too hard to scratch. But the screamy green woman might not be. Teekl bats her in the face with a paw.
"Can't let this wait -" she grabs Teekl's swiping paw, and activates her magic-disruption spark, aiming at the rope of magic that stretches away from the evil cat, to someone else - "but I can't fight Klarion so yes I will go do that."
"Once we have hopefully made this familiar much worse at its job."
... but she's still in Superman's grasp, and he was going to just take the cat far enough away to disrupt the ritual, but probably this works too.
He flies down to a roof, and wraps a bit of sheet metal torn from it around the cat at superspeed. Not tightly enough to hurt it, just enough that it won't be able to get away from the probably-helpful magician.
And then he leaves at speed to try punching the definitely-unhelpful magician in the face again. Maybe this time it will take.
Right. Let's finish this.
The cat is tied up... For the moment, she doesn't know if Superman knows just how good escape artists cats can be - anything that they can fit their collarbones through, they can fit through - and she has a grip on it sufficient to use her powers. She is now going to try and break as much of the useful parts of the familiar bond, such as 'anchoring Klarion to this reality' and/or 'serving as a power tap', as she can, whilst still, hopefully, leaving the Witch Boy stuck with this cat and no other. Avoiding the split worlds event will be much easier if she can just render Klarion moot now. He had to anchor the thing on the young side of reality.
Visions of fanfic dance through her head - but even were she in the world of that one fic where all the available under-18s (across continuity lines) coordinated with eachother to pull off a proper reunification ritual, she'd still try to stop this right here and right now, because less potential mass casualty events is more gooder.
(Yes, she knows 'gooder' isn't a valid Scrabble word. Blame the Internet for why she thought it anyway.)
Teekl yowls and writhes and does, indeed, try to pull free of the wrapping. She tries to claw at her assailant.
But then something within her snaps, and in the distance the barrier around the monument flickers.
Superman hits it with renewed force, and then he's through, and the fight becomes a fast-paced thing of dodged purple blasts and heat-vision.
Her assailant is feeling quite hopeful that she has just averted a major disaster, depending on what that was precisely that just snapped, so she will take a few hits to win if she needs to. They'll get better, and she's sure Batman has something for any weird cat diseases Blue might not have type advantage over.
(She may or may not also be a bit more dissociated than she's used to, because really, what the fuck is her life now.)
"I really am sorry about your present situation, I think, but also, you're an asshole and so is your master and I really can't be having with that, you hear me?"
"Lords of fucking Chaos, not even once. Well, no, I suppose it's entirely plausible there's a nice one but where are they - mumble mumble New God bullshit?" Yes, she did, in fact, enunciate 'mumble mumble'. "Fuck if I know. Absolute fuck if I know. And now I'm starting to sound like fucking Constantine or something. Best be careful with my soul." She laughs, but not because that was funny.
Rambling on like that doesn't mean that they're going to stop making an utter mess of the familiar bond if it's still a thing that exists, though. Just to be crystal clear about their priorities here.
But does it mean that the alien with super-hearing (because he has super-everything) heard? Well, he is distracted. Time will tell.
It doesn't take him long to wrap up the fight, actually, once he can reach the squishy magician. A minute or two later, he comes floating over with Klarion held under one arm.
"I was trying to do you a favor, you know," he grumbles, crossing his arms at her. His wrists are decorated with rune-laced metallic bracelets of some kind, and from the way he keeps tugging at them, they're probably restraints and not fashion accessories. "Everyone else was appearing in Central City, and we've already done that. Boring!"
"But if you're going to try and steal my cat, see if I ever do anything nice for you again."
He turns away with a huff, as far as he can manage when being held by Superman.
Superman blinks.
"... ma'am, I wouldn't get too upset about anything he says. He's an ... odd sort. But, just to check, do you have any prior history with Klarion? Have you met him before?"
"Oi! Careful with the name! I don't care if you know, since you're about as magical as a louse, but you can't just go around calling me things to people who actually matter," Klarion protests.
"I would say you could call me The Witch Boy, but if you're going to maul my cat I don't think we have much to talk about," he adds in her general direction.
"I regret to inform you that I both know exactly what he's talking about - more or less - and that I've also never seen him before in my life.
"As for talking... Now that I know that you know that I know, however you know, The Witch Boy... There might actually be something we could talk about. Which, at the time I made my decision to act as I did, I did not know. Proper communication is important, you know! You could have at least left a note!
"I could be convinced to give a sincere effort to heal your familiar. But I would have conditions.
"I do understand if that's not your speed, but it can't hurt to make the offer, I think. There's plenty of places that could use a little Chaos. I mean, can you imagine the look on Lex Luthor's face? That egghead has so many control issues."
"I know that you know that I know that you know that ..." Klarion says, counting on his fingers.
"Right! So that's how it is! If you put my familiar back, I could have had left a note this whole time ..." he suggests, leadingly. "Causality is for the narrow-minded."
Superman glances back and forth between the two magic users with a conflicted expression.
"Not in meta-time, I don't think; I know I wouldn't want to put all that effort in to undo what I've already done, if I was playing Queen of Fables." And that would likely leave her at a disadvantage. So she hopes the idea will fly right out of his head at about the same velocity it entered. "And, nice try, but we still don't have a deal yet. As I said, I have conditions, though I do understand if it's simply impossible for you to make agreements. Unfortunately, if that's the case, then I likely won't be healing your cat."
"Blah blah 'Law is the only way to keep agreements' — spare me the proselytizing. I'm a magician! Making deals with powerful outsiders is practically my whole deal!" he protests, before slumping in Superman's grasp.
"Okay, okay. What are your conditions? Not saying I'll agree, mind you, just hearing you out."
"Well. As I don't expect I'd have any luck getting you to stop doing your thing, and am therefore not going to try - you're a Lord of Chaos - I'd like to propose that in exchange for this, you make your chaos more equal-opportunity - which is to say, expanding your targets to super villains. Lawful Evil is still Lawful, you know? As it is, your getting involved in supervillain plots on the side of the villains is, dare I say it, rather predictable. Doesn't it get a bit repetitive to pull on Superman's metaphorical pigtails all the time?"
(Honestly, she'll take probably mostly obviating her metaknowledge of whatever plot she might be in, if it means Klarion will be as much a thorn in various Big Evils' sides as he is for the good guys. Darkseid, the Reach, planner villains more generally, Larfleeze to name someone she doesn't expect to show up - they're all not particularly chaotic.)
"Hmmmm... HHHHHMMMMMMMMmmmmmmMMMMmmmmmm."
Klarion scratches his chin.
"The problem is, things just don't work like that here, bub. Heroes fight villains, that's how it goes. Nobody wants a fight where they can't cheer for one of the sides, and it's a slippery slope up. If I start punching out the baddest of guys, soon I'm a misunderstood antihero, and then there's a reboot, and sooner or later I'm a tame little Lawful lapdog because Jim Lee can't get it through his head that Chaos and Evil are different things. Heck! I'm surprised Big Blue here is even thinking about permitting a deal — usually he'd get his outside-underpants all up in a bunch about the idea unless I had him over a barrel."
Superman only sighs internally. He can't regret revealing himself to the world, but the cows never gave him problems like this. He really needs to make time to visit Ma and Pa this weekend.
"I'm not going to let you escape justice," he replies. "But she did depower your familiar, and I'm not enough of an expert in magic to know exactly what effect that has, so I'm at least willing to talk things through before dropping you off in Belle Reve to await trial."
Klarion squints hard at him.
"Yeah, that's way too reasonable and level-headed. This is a rip off. Hey! Hey you with the star and oak leaves!" Klarion calls.
"Yeah, I know you can hear me! Listen — you don't seem like the 'straightforward punching' sort of guy, right? So here's the thing: I'll take her deal if you promise me that I'm going to be plot-relevant again, and that you're not going to turn me into some parody of myself."
But even if the author were amenable to making that kind of deal in principle, they would certainly have no way to communicate that agreement to Klarion, since they are up here on the meta level and he is down there in Superman's grasp.
"Oh, don't be like that. You wouldn't be teasing the possibility of this working if you didn't like the idea," Klarion insists. "I know that you're thinking what I'm thinking, but I'm betting that you're not thinking what she's thinking, so I think she won't think what you think I'm going to think. Look, just ... make a tumbleweed tumble past or something and I'll take that as agreement."
...
At that moment, a tumbleweed — displaced from the D.C. tumbleweed museum, which is definitely a real place, by the fight, since tumbleweeds aren't native to the D.C. area — blows past, the wind scooping it to fly between Klarion and [REDACTED].
"That's good enough for me."
He looks back down at his fellow magic user.
"Alright — you make a good-faith effort to restore my bond to my cat, and I make a good-faith effort to bring equal amounts of Chaos to villains and to heroes. Aaaaaand—" he holds up a hand to shush Superman. "—I let Big Blue take me to jail all cooperative-like. After all, you won't have seen the last of me."
"Knew I was in a fanfic," she mutters.
"You have a deal, Klarion. And mystery author who's not also me."
...She's probably obliged to at least try a powers thing, or at least, if she's operating in good faith, she really should. But there are limits to what she can do right now. So, she will drop the peak human coordination, split the magic sight and the magic disruption up, drop the magic disruption, and request a power that can establish magical bonds. Then merge that with her magic sight.
And then...
Well. She will make a good-faith effort to believe. It's kind of patchy, kind of thready - but she actually does believe, on net, that this is probably better than things would be otherwise, and that therefore, Teekl should "Be made whole."
And may whatever gods there are have mercy upon her if she screwed this up, because the Silver City probably won't. Gods, the amount of peripheral awareness of terrifying shit she has, really should concern her more.
Teekl is glad to have her human back, but she's also a cat.
And Teekl is so done with being confined in this metal thing. She slaps Blue Woman in the face, just to drive that point home, and then squirms out with her restored powers and jumps her human and digs her claws into his shirt to hang on.
Superman sighs again. Externally, this time.
"Ma'am, please wait here. I'll want to talk to you about ... whatever that was."
And then he vanishes in a blue blur to drop Klarion off in a cell, because he doesn't particularly trust the villain to remain in a cooperative frame of mind for particularly long.
...Yeah, she deserved that.
"Mhm. It's gonna be a bit of a doozy, to be honest. You might want Batman and-or the Martian Manhunter. The former to wring me out for everything I'm worth, the latter because that's my best option at proof that doesn't involve spilling secrets. ...Or the Lasso of Truth, but I don't know whether I'd be believable even then."
Luckily, superhearing means being able to catch up on the sound waves as he comes zooming back in.
"Batman is not currently available," he replies. "But contrary to popular belief I don't let him do all the investigating. I'm Kal El; what's your name?"
Well, of course he wouldn't, that's his day job, isn't it? But this is threat analysis.
"No comment."
"...Wow that reflex might actually be useful for once in my life instead of very annoying. Er. That doesn't answer your question, does it now.
"Let me just..."
Shit, who even?
"For the moment, call me Sylvia. I'm fairly sure that giving you the name on the ID in our pocket would cause Ms. 'No Comment' to blow as many as several gaskets, and considering she's probably right that this is up on the Internet somewhere, because isekai scenarios aren't supposed to happen in real life and Klarion was literally talking at a coauthor, I'm going to follow her lead.
"I suppose you could probably hold it hostage against a lot of other people's identities if you believe we're going to be evil, but I hope that...
"...We were not expecting any of this and have in fact only had superpowers since, like..."
She checks her phone. ...No signal, predictably. And it's not even right.
"...I have no idea what checking the time when I have no idea when I left was supposed to accomplish.
"But anyway. Uh. Where was I.
"...We probably shouldn't be having this conversation on a random rooftop in any case. If you would be so kind?"
Yeah, he's not going to get into any of that. The thing he was aiming for was having something to call her other than "ma'am", since that was likely to get old fast. And he's not reading her drivers license in her pocket because some wizards can cast explosive runes.
"With your permission, Sylvia," he agrees, scooping her up in a princess carry. Luckily they have meeting rooms in the Hall of Justice for just this purpose.
As they fly, he subvocalizes into the League communicator, the skin-tone microphone of which is pressed against his neck by his suit.
"Diana — I have a woman, goes by Sylvia, with unknown magic powers and an unclear association with Klarion, here. Do you think you could meet me in the Hall to help me interview her?"
A momentary pause, and then:
"Of course, Superman. I'll meet you there."
The Hall of Justice is the sort of crime against architecture that could only be approved in a universe where the Architect of the Capitol was arrested decades ago for mystical malfeasance. But it is certainly eye-catching.
Superman comes to a stop next to one of the more discreet entrances, and badges them inside.
They're greeted in the corridor by a woman with jet black hair, a stunning figure, and a kind smile.
"Hello Sylvia — I'm Wonder Woman, but you can call me Diana if you prefer."
"It is an honor to meet you, ma'am. Though, ah, names are a thing that gets complicated quite rapidly around here; suffice to say that when we told your colleague that it was Sylvia for the moment we meant that much more literally than one would usually expect - for it is not, primarily, Sylvia with whom you are speaking now, and we regrettably lack anything with which to signal... Anything about this. Mm. We shall have to do some Tinkering. But that, at a later time. Right now, I assume that we are going to be making use of the Lasso of Truth? ...However does that handle delusions arising naturally from the psyche; I... Am quite certain that we will end up saying things that sound like -"
"...Well. I'm not going to speak that word when - The Witch Boy, has proven that entities of sufficient power may already be listening."
... yup, that sounds like a confusing magician alright.
"I won't use the Lasso on you unless you consent or you pose a present danger to others," she starts with, because it's true. "As for how the Lasso handles delusions — it is braided from thread spun from the wool of the sheep of the concept of truth. So it doesn't allow people to say things that aren't true, even if they believe them. That's part of why I don't use the Lasso on people without need; the truth is a beautiful and wonderful thing, but having all of one's delusions suppressed at once can be distressing or damaging, when one has built up towers of thought around them. On the other hand, the Lasso doesn't grant knowledge beyond what a person already knows, so if you don't know the true answer, you'll simply be unable to speak on the matter at all."
Her voice has just the faintest trace of an accent; she's lived in New York for decades, at this point.
"Huh. I wasn't actually specifically aware of its origins before now, despite the wide variety of apocalyptic nonsense and trivia otherwise packed away in here.
"...Regardless, please do use the Lasso, it's important to me that we are all aware that as far as I know I am not speaking from a place of delusion, and I apologize in advance if something awkward slips out. I'm not sure how that works either but - erm. Suffice to say, whosoever sculpted you did a very good job. If this is a continuity where that happened. I think that's pretty common but I don't know if it happened in that abominable movie, for example. Or even the world I think I'm most likely in based off of blind assumption that - The Witch Boy was already going to be plot-relevant in a way I could know about, if he was the first villain I encountered. I don't think it actually covered most origin stories, they were rather culturally implicit by the time it was airing...
"I suppose I'll have to - oh, damn, blast, it would prove it but we can't just leave a lab fire to happen for prophetic reasons especially when there's a secret subbasement and all the Genomorphs -
"Uh. And the possible partial clone of Superman in said secret subbasement.
"Is there a Cadmus laboratory around... Here, it would have to be, that's where they leave from..."
"...Right. Uh. Let me just. If you would?" She sticks her hand out for the Lasso before she says anything else.
Wonder Woman leads her into a conference room and a chair, first, and then loops the lasso around her hand. Superman follows behind, doing a surprisingly good job of fading into the background for a 6'3" alien.
"My mother sculpted me from clay," Wonder Woman agrees, "And the blessings of Gaia brought me to life. Although not many people know that, so it doesn't come up much. Still, my mother is a quite talented sculptor, given her many years of practice."
She nabs a set of note-taking implements from the center of the conference table.
"You seem like you already have a lot that you want to tell us; do you want to just start, and then I can ask clarifying questions if something is confusing?"
"I know so many things. But only approximately. This is why I wanted Batman, he's the guy who would know how to triage the - Blackest Night, whatever the fuck is going on with the Silver City and Hell, oh fuck no please not the goddamn Crisis, the Lights going out is probably not a live concern in a universe where the Spectrum entities exist but I don't fucking know that pardon my language, oh and fucking Darkseid and his fucking bullshit Anti-Life Equation, that's not even how anything works but this is comic book logic so I guess I have to fucking deal - Anyway. Oh, and don't let the Flash time travel unless someone like Eobard Thawne, possibly also known as Reverse Flash but there might've been two of them, has already shown up. It probably can't make things worse at that point. Anyway. All of those are probably in the future or in the past or just not happening here, but we should probably investigate a man named William Hand if the Lanterns don't know what Blackest Night is yet - he's - some kind of serial killer, and - the Black 'Light'," she air-quotes, "Entity's chosen, ha, hand, in his... Resurrection is the wrong word because he's zombies all the way down...
"I should see if my superpowers extend to transdimensional wiki access, honestly. There's probably half a dozen more apocalypses I don't know about just because they haven't come up in anything I've read.
"...No, that thing where Dream got trapped in a jar was in the nineteen hundreds, I think... ...ugh. Probably ought to double-check Roderick Burgess anyway.
"Annnnd we have gotten completely sidetracked from Cadmus. Sorry, I have ADHD. Right. Cadmus. Easiest known litmus test of where I am presently out of the various possible options, not least because I don't know many other big crossover setups except in the broadest possible terms.
"Oh, while I have this on -" Alan Scott's Green Lantern is actually drawing from The Green the magical force of plantlife that also powers Alec Holland aka Swamp Thing and may or may not be connected to Pamela Isley aka Poison Ivy, which is why it's not affected by Oa stuffing the Yellow Entity into the Green Central Power Battery but is affected by wood, she tries to say, and finds out that that isn't locally-true.
"Wait, shit, I got sidetracked again. ...The Lasso would be incredibly useful for running binary searches if it literally doesn't let you say untrue things -- oh, gods, why is my brain like this.
"Cadmus Labs. It would be a DC office I think since I'm pretty sure the junior League picks it up from here in that continuity. Genomorphs. They're telepathic and a hivemind. There's also two partial clones of Superman in that basement, I'm 70% confident, if it's there at all. One's better hidden and more genetically unstable than the other. I guess I should probably be on call to fix that, especially if my cockamamie plan to smoosh powers together to get to White Light pans out...Blue's good at healing things. Saint Walker healed a star once. Distracted again, fuck. Uh. Right. Have I said enough things. I think I've probably said enough things. Oh shit right um I also know most of the League's secret identities. Sorry about that. You were rather popular entertainment where I'm from. ...Annnnd there may be a guy who can cross over to the other big chunk of superhero fiction somewhere around here, but I don't think so because that would prooooobably obviate the coauthor's agreement with Klarion unless he also showed up. ...I'm so glad that this universe isn't Worm, though. You only have the one Larfleeze."
That is ... a lot to take in. Wonder Woman sort of suspects that she might be having an adverse reaction to the Lasso.
"... you've been diagnosed with ADHD?" she clarifies. "Do you know whether a small amount of caffeine would help you focus or make things worse? That's the only appropriate psychoactive substance that I'm comfortable giving you without a doctor's approval, but if it helps you explain things in a way that will make sense to us that might be important."
"Also, it sounds like you have knowledge of a lot of bad things, but none of them are immanent, right? So we have time to go through them methodically," Superman adds. "I can check Cadmus Labs for confirmation, but how is it that you think you know these things?"
"I have, yes. Also autism. Thus the random fun facts. But unfortunately this is - probably, I don't strictly know the state of the me that's writing me - what me on my meds looks like, for what little good they do - though I'm erring in favor of saying more things instead of less things right now. I don't think tea's going to help all that much but I could definitely go for some anyway, I think."
"None of them are imminent except maybe-probably Cadmus. William Hand is pretty immanent because if he's a live threat he could go off whenever, but if I'm right about the continuity I'm in, he won't be, unless I've, uh, kind of accidentally spoken him into existence by way of pointing the narrative spotlight in his general direction. In which case, mysterious coauthor," she says, briefly looking up at the screen ceiling, "I will be very upset with you. Blackest Night is such a clusterfuck. But I think you're probably cooler than that and honestly you already have enough problems just accounting for - well I was not expecting negotiating with --- speak not the fucking names, lest they hear, ugh - The Witch Boy to even work even though I actually thought it was a good argument and likely to give the evil masterminds more trouble than us. Which is why I went for it. But I'm not looking forward to the mess on Roanoke, if that's going forward. If I can even get myself on the right side of the age line... I mean, maybe he'll do something entirely different now, if we even get that far on the meta level. Since I think he knows way more than he probably ought to, he's not really usually playing Deadpool... Most fics don't make it very far in, anyway. I'll be pleasantly surprised to - oh, for fuck's sake. T. O. Morrow. Hold on..." She raises a finger in a 'wait one' gesture while she actually tries to search her knowledge. "Red Tornado has siblings. I'm not actually sure if the one fanfiction I read where they were disguised and operating in the Justice Society era was canon or just making things up... Oh, I could just try and say it. Oh damn Serling Roquette. Doctor Serling Roquette, excuse me. Nanofog. Cut that off at the pass before we even get to the League of Assassins trying to steal it... If Cadmus pans out, you pass that on to Batman. Or, in an emergency, I will accept Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen as substitutes in that order."
"As for how I came to know these things...
"Mostly, fanfiction. Lots and lots of fanfiction.
"I did just say, under truth lasso, that you were popular entertainment where I'm from, didn't I?
"Dimensional travel from a world where you're popular comic books and associated media can't possibly be the weirdest thing you've dealt with. Although I am not going to speak the name of the fifth-dimensional entity either lest he hear me. Don't know how to pronounce it forwards, let alone backwards, anyway."
"You did say it, it's just a bit hard to wrap your head around," Superman admits, drifting over to the meeting room's perfunctory little kitchenette to procure hot water and English Breakfast tea.
"And yes, his name is a bit of a tongue twister. Luckily I have a decent amount of practice. So it sounds like for right now our priorities are: verify whether Cadmus Labs has any Kryptonian clones, put out an APB on William Hand, and collect further information to hand over to Batman—" or the League's other perfectly capable investigators; he's a reporter, thank you "—on potential upcoming disasters."
"It sounds like it might help to have some structure to go through things," Diana notes, scribbling things on her notepad. "You've touched on things that ... seem like they could involve a few different League members? Should we maybe go through the league members one by one, and you can share what disasters you remember them heading off, how, and when? Also — I assume, if you've read all this in a storybook that this is the kind of prophecy where knowing what's coming will help us prepare better, not the self-fulfilling kind?"
"Let me see if I can turn up actual details on Hand before you actually send out that APB. And depending on how many Lanterns you have we may be well meta-past the point where Blackest Night usually goes; Kyle Rayner was - I hesitate to say the protagonist, but certainly possessed of certain narrative primacy... I hadn't been keeping up with the most recent things all that well but I know they finally got around to making a Lantern who wasn't a straight white man.
"This intel shouldn't be self-fulfilling, no, though I'm not really... Certain that some of the trouble won't on the narrative level have been promoted to secondary canon beyond whatever continuity we're in by my bringing it up.
"...Breaking up the threats by Leaguer may be a good idea. Though there's actually a lot of specific dangers that accrue to specific sidekicks -- oh shit fuck Roy -- if Cadmus pans out, Green Arrow's sidekick either has been or soon will be kidnapped, cloned, and brainwashed, and I think it's much more likely that we're in 'has been'. Or, the brainwashing was the clone, but. The clone is also sufficiently Roy-ish that I was able to say that."
So Wonder Woman goes through the current membership of the League and various younger affiliated heroes, asking about all of their problems in turn and straightening out the often jumbled reports. The League does have a black woman serving as a Green Lantern, so that's one potential disaster probably avoided.
Superman vanishes half-way through, once he's sure Wonder Woman has things handled, to start corroborating as much of this as he can. Red Arrow and Red Tornado both get quietly taken aside for an examination on the Watchtower, and various other preliminary warnings are disseminated to the various members of the League.
Eventually, Wonder Woman has wrung as many details from her interlocutor as they seem likely to get. She reaches over to gently take the Lasso off of her hand.
"This is obviously a lot; I'm really glad that you came forward to share this with us, and I promise you that we'll do all that we can to head off these disasters. What's your plan going forward? You've alluded to having powers a few times, now. Do you intend to try your hand at being a superhero?"
"...It seems rather the done thing in these sorts of circumstances. And yet. I for one don't know if I've the temperament, now that the option presents itself.
"...Mm. I think I will at least want to be involved in disaster response. With great power comes great responsibility, to shamelessly steal a line from a different universe entirely, and I think that I do have, if not necessarily great power now, then nonetheless the ready potential for great power once I actually sit down and work through some things. Whether that extends to investigative work or facepunching... I think I'll have to figure that out, but that I'm probably metanarratively going to end up involved with some of it. Especially after - ahem. The Witch Boy."
"I suppose both the power I have been entrusted with, and personal affinity besides, mean that there's at least a ready name lined up."
"Wildcard - in the sense of the special character in computing that represents any single possible character, not to be confused with the actual paper cards. The way our power is structured allows us to specialize deeply in most any one thing at a time with sufficient assembly - and the name also usefully misdirects from our having the option to construct multiple such powers simultaneously."
Wonder Woman nods.
"I see. Well, it's nice to meet you, Wildcard."
She smiles.
"The U.S. doesn't have a special process for entry from another world, but the League has contacts in the State Department who can help take care of the paperwork, if you plan to establish a civilian identity. Personally, I've never much needed one, but some of my colleagues find it important to have a separation between public and private personas, to have a measure of peace in their private lives. Do you think you plan to stay in the U.S.? Or go somewhere else?"
"I have never held a long-term residence other than in the United States, hypothetical alternate selves aside, and I should hope that the political situation that rendered it... reasonable... for us to contemplate the likelihood of a successful political asylum claim will not replicate in your timeline. The bigotry's laid out differently, no matter that we are now likely to get hit by anti-super bigotry in similar proportion. ...It would then thus behoove us to have a 'civilian' identity, I suppose."
"There is ... not too much bigotry against superhumans, I've found," Wonder Woman comments. "But if you do run into any, please do feel free to come to me for help. Here ..."
She tears off a sheet of notebook paper and scribbles a list of names and numbers.
"This is my number at the Themysciran consulate, the number of my contact in the State Department, the Justice League non-emergency number, and, in case you run into anything that you don't want to share with the League as a whole, Batman's number."
One of them, anyway — he has something like twelve phones for different purposes. Thank the Goddesses for her memory.
"Now, it's been a little while that you've been prophesying for us. Is there anything else that you think is best discussed in private, or could I perhaps treat you to lunch as thank you for the forewarnings?"
As it happens, they did keep most of the Batman information they know (Jason Todd in Ethiopia, street kid Tim Drake Joker Junior, Regular Flavor Tim Drake clocking Dick Grayson because of the quadruple something or other that only, like, eleven people could do, the entire possible existence of Damian Wayne, fragmented details of how a possible future Batgirl becomes Oracle and some of the speculation on the Watsonian reason for the Joker to leave her alive - there was an interesting fic where Amanda Waller of all people connected some dots and decided that the Joker had to die -) for Batman only, out of respect for his secret identity, assuming that the League doesn't know it - and they will be dropping all that off as soon as they have a Bat-secure line of communication. (Cassandra Cain, on the other hand, they can mention without blowing his cover, they think - not that they think she's all that likely to exist yet considering that there is still one Robin, what is going on with this timeline - though at least that means that all the shit that happens to Nightwing is far in the future. Gods, the amount of everything that goes on with Nightwing. She hates it.)
She quirks an eyebrow. "Lex Luthor sometimes runs for President, I'm sure I mentioned. But I do suppose the situation's definitely better than..."
She draws a heavy breath, sighing.
"The, and I almost regret that I'm not bound by the lasso as I say this because this is bullshit I would not have believed if it had not kept coming to my attention, telepathic anti-mutant hivemind virus, that Marvel Comics wrote in to the X-Men, which... Well. I'd been reading more from over there than over here recently, for some value of 'I'. It might take my hindbrain a bit to catch up.
"...Also, I don't believe my phone connects to the local networks. But regardless of all that, lunch does sound lovely."
Wonder Woman takes her to a café around the corner from the Hall of Justice that does sandwiches.
The café does them, that is. There aren't any sandwich-themed Halls of Justice. Yet. Give the forces of chaos time.
Ahem.
"Blatantly interfering in government is one of the things that the League doesn't do, as a rule," Wonder Woman comments. "It makes people nervous. But rest assured that we are definitely keeping an eye on Lex Luthor. Nobody has ever been able to prove that he has committed a crime — but there have been a suspicious number of near-misses on that front. Batman has a chart."
"Did I ever mention that the death of his father - I believe the man's name was Lionel - leaving him in charge of what is now Lexcorp, struck me as potentially suspicious? Something a good investigative reporter might want to investigate. Though I certainly don't know if there's really anything there. I could be reading into things."
Wonder Woman sighs.
"An investigative reporter of our acquaintance —" who she does not name, because they're in public now, but she is sure Wildcard can guess "— has a female coworker who has apparently spent a good deal of time going over the available records. That's not to say that there's nothing to find, but it unfortunately isn't as easy as acting on some of the other tips."
Indeed they can. "Mmm. Yeah, I should have expected."
While they're waiting for their sandwiches, someone else has taken to idly musing about emotional convolution.
Anger, Want, Fear, Will, Hope, Compassion, Love, and let us suppose either Joy or -- actually, I do have a source, don't I? Aside from poking The Source. Which I Do Not Want To Do.
::I have also been incredibly remiss in not asking how I should refer to you,:: she directs at her passenger, ::if you would be so kind. But if I was to ask for a power best suited for focusing the emotion or mindset best suited to working with the White Light of Life, would you know what that emotion is in a word or phrase that I would understand?::
It is a gift! From — to them. They can assign it a designation if they want to, but it doesn't care about that. It isn't really the kind of entity that cares about anything other than providing powers in the way that it was built to.
... Life is too big for it to hold. It can see where Life sits in the shadow it casts over possible designs of powers in this place, but it doesn't have any itself. The white light is Phenomenon. It is The Third Thing That Isn't Mere Atoms And Void.
Does that help?
...It does, dear Gift.
Albeit she notices that she is slightly confused.
::I did not ask for you to hold it, dear. If a Lantern or a focal Ring is requisite to handle the White Light, we can construct that separately. But you have, I believe, answered our question as to the... Target 'emotional' state, regardless. (We likely should have figured, being with how Christian the Source gets, that it would be... something similar to the assertion of the Name.) You were very helpful, and we believe that we can work with this.::
Anger, Want, Fear, Will, Hope, Compassion, Love, and something like Assertion of Existence, she muses.
She can shuffle off the magesight and bonding and coordination powers...
Gift, dear, can she merge a new - power, spark - directly into another synergistic power without a slot free to hold it in the meantime?
No. If it is full, then it is full, and there would be no room to put things. She could grow her soul to be bigger, if she wants to hold more?
Also it doesn't understand what about its previous answer was confusing. Which is okay, because it isn't the kind of thing that is bothered by not understanding things, it just doesn't know how to answer in a less confusing way next time.
How does one do that? Or, is there a way to - put a spark away for later, somewhere it wouldn't be usable because it's outside the framework, but where you could pick it up and take it back in to yourself?
::I was not intending to ask whether you could make a power capable of channeling the White Light directly - merely one that could hone my focus in a direction that is more White-Light-like. But now that I think on it further I can see how you got the idea that I was.::
Oh, hey, is that her sandwich?
Souls expand in a way that is complicated; the gestalt impression that the gift gives off is something about variety, and effort, and success.
When a spark is sent away, the gift doesn't deconstruct it, just ejects it. So if there were something else that caught it and stored it properly, and then a way to let it back in, that could work? Does she want a power that can 'grab' things that are structured like powers and store them in available empty sockets?
She doesn't want that power right now, but if you could remind her later when she's gotten to the point of actually going full Tinker?
How does the process of ejecting a spark work? Could it just be done in reverse, or is there some sort of filter thing?
"...I'm probably going to want to talk to an actual wizard about an idea I had, if one has time. ...Though if it's Constantine, I want advance warning."
"Zatara is a member of the league and an accomplished wizard," Wonder Woman volunteers. "And I've worked with Dr. Fate in the past; he may be able to help. What is the idea, if you don't mind my curiosity?"
"Something that ought to help increase my versatility yet further, if it pans out, though I don't want to get into the details in public."
"Naturally. You can phone the League number I gave you to get in contact with Zatara; Kent Nelson can be found in the Tower of Fate, which appears to worthy seekers in Salem, Massachusetts," she volunteers. "I'm afraid I don't know any other wizards beyond them, but they can probably put you in contact with a specialist, if needed."
"I don't expect this should be beyond either of them, though knowing how Zatara works I think that if I want to work out the trick for myself then I should likely work with Mr. Nelson. I don't think I'm going to have that much luck working out how to do magic by speaking backwards." And also she does want to get to Nabu before Wally West puts him on a trophy shelf. Nabu may be being kind of a dick at the moment, but letting a Lord of Chaos operate while a Lord of Order is out of play is probably not good even if Nabu does not presently understand the concept of retirement.
Gods, she's probably going to have to explain labor law to him.
Though, Gift, dear, do you think it would be possible to pull a power that could enable her to do magic by gnikaeps skdrawkcab, together? There was something about a specific gene sequence.
That one is a puzzler. It spins in thought again.
It could do a power that lets her compress the verbal components of her spells that way, probably? But she doesn't seem to currently have any spells to compress in that way.
Does she want a power to enable selective horizontal gene transfer by absorbing other people's DNA?
Not at the moment, no. Though she's definitely thinking about it now that you've mentioned it.
...speaking of which, she should actually put together Power Of Gender-Affirming Care (And More Generally Biological Healing), now that she's thinking about it.
[biological manipulation] [understanding a person's ideal form], perhaps?
It can do the latter!
The former is too big to fit in a single power the way that they're thinking of it. Would a slow self-only regeneration-specific power work instead?
Sure. (In general, if she asks for a power that is Too Big, she would welcome assistance into breaking it down into subpowers that fit in red sparks.)
Okay! It understands.
A second spark blooms, and she can now both visualize a person's ideal body and slowly regenerate herself toward her ideal.
They obediently click together. The change is too slow to feel directly, but she gets a bit of feedback from the regeneration power suggesting that it is more ... aligned, maybe? In any case, she feels certain that it's changing her toward her ideal, and more efficiently than when the powers were separate.
With the right mental motion, yes. The ideal slips, and the regeneration changes slightly to follow it.
...Really, they probably shouldn't have it on right now, but...
The relief they're feeling at getting this to work is...
Good.
Her thoughts, however, are not all that visible to Wonder Woman, even as their overall mien suddenly shifts from the prior "distractedly contemplative" (her head tilted just so, the rest of her almost left to fall where it may in between bites of sandwich) to "shaking and physically holding herself together and trying, badly, to not cry, but in a sort of 'punched-out oh of realization and wonder' way".
"...Don't mind me, just... Realized we could fix some - personal things, and then did it because, ah, in the words of Ms. Not Telling You Nor Anyone Her Name, 'Delayed gratification, who's that, I don't know her'," she speaks, when she realizes that this is probably more concerning than it feels to her from the inside.
Wonder Woman frowns, reaching across the table to rest a comforting hand on Wildcard's arm.
"Do you need some time to yourself? I can set you up in a private room for a few hours, if that would help."
"I don't believe so, now that - well, I once again have the power of speech - but nonetheless, it might be wise."
"...Oh, blast it, we're going to need new clothes. Moreso than we already did, being as what I have on me is all that I presently have. That's probably going to be an adventure to figure out. And then 'me and what money', being as I don't think alternate-universe US dollars are legal tender. ...Hm, what would be readily doable and worth the League's time to commission... ...Oh that could be impressive if it worked." It is a little-known fact that there is a sightless Green Lantern who perceives the Green Light as sound of a specific pitch. Drawing upon that equivalency, she wonders if she could make a healing soundwave out of Blue, ideally incorporating the ambient-hopefulness recharge mechanism Blue Lantern Rings have to make it really last.
Fancy blue tuning forks. Hah.
But really, it might work. Actually, though, now that she's thinking about it, Indigo might be the Light to go for if she's specifically looking for things where sound carrying through opaque media would be helpful. Disaster response relies on finding people as much as anything. ...Either Indigo or Yellow.
"...hmm."
"How much does the League know about the non-Green portions of the Emotional Spectrum?"
Wonder Woman blinks.
"Ah, there might be something in the database, but I haven't read anything that suggests there are non-Green portions. Assuming the Emotional Spectrum is the thing that Green Lanterns draw their power from?"
"...Have you not had a Sinestro yet? What is this timeline... Or it could have been out in space in a way that didn't really come to your attention, I guess.
"Yes. Green Lanterns draw their power from the Green Light of Will; there are at least six other colors, and possibly more than that but those ones were strange. 'Gold' is not a frequency, for crying out loud. But anyway. In ascending order, you have the Red Light of Rage, the Orange Light of Avarice, the Yellow Light of Fear - which, in a roundabout way, is why Green Lantern power rings don't work on Yellow - the Green Light of Will, the Blue Light of Hope, the Indigo Light of Compassion, and the Violet Light of Love - also a Light Earth should have encountered at some point; that's the Star Sapphires.
"There's also White, and Black, as I mentioned earlier, but those are... special cases.
"Each of them does something unique, if I recall correctly, though some of them might be specific to their Corps rather than the Light itself; certainly I don't expect the Reds' whole... incredibly-destructive Rage-plasma blood... Thing... to be necessarily built in to the Light when I'm fairly sure it was built in to their Rings by the Corps', eh, 'commander' for some value of, who... He had quite a grudge against Oa when he started doing things, and I don't think he was wrong to have it, considering that, if my information is right, he did it after one of Oa's projects massacred most of an entire Sector - but, well, he decided to combat an atrocity by perpetrating another. So, anyway. Red Lanterns have... That. The singular Orange Lantern that presently exists has demonstrated the ability to assimilate... Well, almost anything. Yellow is empowered by ambient fear, while Blue rings are recharged by ambient hope; Blue Light is capable of healing. Up to and including a literal star, if certain sources are correct. Green has a special interaction with Blue, getting effectively supercharged by it. Indigo can replicate the effects of the other Lights in the presence of the right stimulus. Violet... The Star Sapphire Corps has this weird... 'Trap people in a rock and possibly convert them to Violet' thing but I think that that is maybe more likely to be because of the rock, moreso than necessarily the Light. It's just bizarre that the Violet Light turns you into a yandere, otherwise. Love is not inherently possessive and if the universe thinks otherwise it can fight me." She gestures, sharply. "But I digress. What I was thinking about, is making foci much more limited-purpose than a Ring, that take advantage of the properties of one or more frequencies of the Emotional Spectrum to perform specific tasks. And note, specifically, 'frequencies of the Emotional Spectrum', because I am aware of at least one 'Lantern' who perceives the Lights as sounds, which may or may not have any strategic import but gave me some ideas."
"I'm presently contemplating the idea of utilizing Indigo Light for search-and-rescue purposes."
"... huh."
Wildcard has said a lot of things in the past hour, so this one honestly doesn't rate a more astonished reaction.
"If you do come up with a way to help with search and rescue that would be excellent," she agrees. "What about, ah, compassion makes you think that it is particularly suitable? If I had to guess, I would have guessed that hope would be most conducive to rescue work."
"Compassion is more - stable, an emotional state - ironically enough, considering that it's commonly held that the outer edges of the spectrum are more, hm, personality-unbalancing - and it goes out to people. If you want to find someone who's lost? That seems like how to go about it. And I've heard tell that Indigo Lanterns can teleport."
"It's not that Blue couldn't help. It's not that Blue won't help. It's that it's hard to hold on to 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things will be well' in the wake of disaster."
Wonder Woman nods seriously. She's seen the aftermath of disasters many times.
"It sounds like a noble project. Actually ..."
She adopts a thoughtful look.
"The League doesn't really do ... grants, or anything. But it occurs to me that the U.N. peacekeeping mission sometimes supports inventions meant to help with disaster relief. If you wished, I could put you in contact with them through the Themyscrian embassy, and see if they're interested in sponsoring your work."
"I'd like to at least prove that I can do it, and hopefully that I can make items that do things with Light, before I start contemplating applying for grants - but I would be glad of your help in that once I get to that point. I've never done anything like that before.
"And, huh. That might help with one of the other things we talked about, if I can actually do it. Back to the Hall of Justice we go, I suppose. I'm probably going to need to Tinker."
"Alright."
The Hall of Justice, under the supervision of one of the more mystically-resilient members of the League is really the best place to do that kind of Tinkering, all things considered. And given that the rest of the city has just suffered from a magical attack.
Wonder Woman disposes of their sandwich wrappers, and shows Wildcard back in to a meeting room.
"If you're going to do some experimentation, I'm going to catch up on some paperwork from over there —" with this nice heavy oak bookcase between you and my center of mass "— but please let me know if you need anything. This room is technically outside the secure area of the Hall, so if an emergency comes up, I might have to leave you here while I respond."
"Right."
Gift, do you have thoughts on materials that would reliably intake and/or channel Light?
It does power design, not design with things made of matter. Do they want a power that gives intuition for how Light will interact with different materials?
A spark blooms, and with it the knowledge that the objects that interact most strongly with Light are those that have a matching emotional history or resonance. Other than that, certain crystals (with particular colors and resonant frequencies) can interact with Light, as can particular circle-and-line-looking symbols. On the not-very-good-but-better-than-nothing end of things, anything painted the appropriate color technically interacts a little.
"...Ah. Yes, that could be... Something. Alright. So then..."
File all that information away in her presently enhanced memory - oh, huh, the Corps' symbols are metaphysically relevant? Maybe she'll make the White Lantern prism thing...
Drop that power, ask for - not a matter creation power yet. (She's thinking diamonds. Diamonds are nice.) Drop both halves of the biological regeneration, and then add... Compassion, and then Fear? And stick those together. She thinks they actually do kind of fit together at the edges. The big question is whether they then fit together with Will-and-Hope. But they are all emotion powers.
She'll have to drop the memory power for a minute to fit the other half of the stack together. But she thinks she can do that.
Love and Hate might actually stick together well enough. And then... Self-Assertion (hypothesized) and Want? And then those together, and then those together with the Compassion-Fear-Will-Hope... She, well, she hopes.
The gift follows along with their plan, and it all works smoothly at first. The emotion powers do seem naturally synergistic.
But when they try to ask for a power that allows them to focus Life, the gift stutters.
It sends them the impression that Self-Assertion is still too big for it to hold. In accordance with their previous request for help breaking things down, it tries to think about it, but ...
After a long minute of intense concentration, it suggests that they already have most of the pieces needed to touch Life but they're missing one?
Ah. Yes, dear, she knows, that's why she also wanted the Orange one.
...Would a power that is prophylactic against Anti-Life be something --
Oh! Sure, it can do a power for focusing feelings of Want!
Prompting the gift to consider powers relating to Anti-Life causes it to stutter and glitch, sparks flickering, before appearing to forget entirely about the request.
Does she want a power for being able to feel multiple emotions at once in a way that doesn't produce 'friction'? That seems potentially relevant to combining emotions in the way that she might want to?
"Oh, fuck." ...Well, she's glad she didn't have the memory power on, lest she accidentally remember the whole damn Equation while not braced appropriately!
"...Don't mind me, just found out that the source of my powers is not helpfully extrauniversally immune to the problems of thinking about the Anti---," she cuts herself off, on general principle, "ahem, the thing that is the opposite to the putative Life Equation that probably also exists but I don't believe I've ever seen recounted in detail."
"Gods it's gonna be hell for me to not accidentally think about it too hard. I hated that thing."
...Yes, that seems like it might work.
A spark blooms, and with it comes the realization that she now has powers to focus every color of light — but they haven't all been ... active, exactly, just shifting in response to her emotions.
But now it feels like she can channel the forces of Love, Compassion, Hope, Will, Fear, Greed, and Hate simultaneously with no conflict. It also feels like all of the sparks involved here really like each other, dancing around one another in a fast, tightly choreographed dance.
They click together with almost undue haste, falling together into a single, powerful star, burning a deep blue.
And as the emotions pass over and into one another, they build to something greater than their component pieces.
And a wave of ... something ... passes over them. An acknowledgement, perhaps.
Why does she keep coming to the attention of Big Cosmic Things, like, she did suspect this one could happen, but...
"Oh cool good great I think the Life Entity is paying attention. Alright. Alright, me, take a breath. This is fine, it's not - ahem. The 'New God' of Tyranny, nor fucking Nekron." This is clearly not all that great actually because cosmic powers are scary and she's practically in line for a hat trick if she meets Nabu today but it's also kind of nice?
('My dream is -- to be special...', she doesn't-exactly-think, because those aren't her words she's thought, but nonetheless they resonate deeply.)
Also, hi Life Entity, she hopes you're doing alright. Blackest Night really fucking sucks in continuities where it happens. Is there anything you'd like help with? She can't promise she'll be any good at it, but she can promise to try. As long as it's within certain ethical limitations. Not that she believes that that's going to be a problem, but, well. Nabu.
Gods. Um. She was. Doing crafting things. If there's nothing else important she'll. Get back to that bit. She thinks. Probably.
Wonder Woman's 'Wildcard is saying incredibly concerning things' meters are maxed-out after having spent the last while talking over various obscure and improbable disasters. Probably she should treat this like hanging out near one of the oracles when they're coming down from the prophetic fumes. She's going to keep doing this paperwork and ignore whatever Wildcard is working on unless it results in the room actually being on fire.
Right. Where was she.
Gemstones! And metals! And stuff!
Gift, dear, she wants to end up with [a power that knows metals and gemstones and lets her conjure at least small-to-medium amounts thereof]. She thinks she can get there with [conjure specified metals], [conjure specified gemstones], [determine material properties of object], [determine magical properties of object].
The gift ponders for a moment. The conjuration will have to be slow and limited to mundane materials, but that should be possible!
It creates the requested powers one by one, merging them to make space. By the end of the process, its starting to feel pretty tired — it probably can't do more than one more power before taking a break.
That's alright, dear. She thinks she can work with this.
Alrighty then.
Time to do some Lightwork.
Like those guys from the universe before this one where the Lights went out, moreso than like a Lantern.
But her first project is going to be an interpretation of a White Lantern ring.
Oh, uh, actually, can she have a danger-sensey sort of power? She wants to make extra sure that nothing is going to explode in any way she doesn't actively intend for it to explode.
Yeah, it can do that!
It creates one last spark, to give her a slight bit of advanced notice about personal danger, and then lapses into a restful torpor.
This is her making a mental motion equivalent to patting the Gift. It is a very good Gift and should be proud of itself.
...This is as much an art as it is a science. Things have to mean things, to be worth the making.
She starts with a simple band, getting the hang of the power as she adjusts for... Hmm. A power ring may be unwise, actually. Too easily stolen by telekinetics. Perhaps a bracelet, instead. Yes, she thinks she will do a bracelet.
The centerpiece of the bracelet is the Prism of White, made of a single diamond, the colors of the Emotional Spectrum radiating from the simple white prism, all cast slightly in relief.
Then, she works her way around it, dotting the arc of the diamond that the rays wouldn't radiate from, with gemstones correspondent to the Emotional Spectrum's Lights, one by one - all of them carefully 'flawed', to reveal their Lanterns' sigils when light shines through them.
It almost reminds her of the process of forging a kyber crystal - and she draws on her felt sense of how that ought to be, as she provides what emotions she can to the process. Anger, at a world full of awful things. Determination and Hope that the world can be changed. Compassion, undergirding it all.
She is afraid, and for good reason. This world is full of dangers, and she needs to be able to defend herself from them, by every means she can muster.
And then, there is Love, and Being.
There are people she misses, from her world. There are no doubt people she will bond with, here, who will have need of her succour.
And, as she puts the, hah, unfortunately lifeless central gem prototype to the side, to conjure once more with feeling, she thinks about oaths.
To encapsulate all of this, to sum up herself, in but a few short phrases. To live and to Be.
She is not certain that even she is capable of rising to this task. Still, she will try.
Her voice is quiet - but it is sure.
"To live, to strive, with all my might, / in brightest day, or blackest night; / to love this world, to make wrongs right, / I ask my soul - shine bright with Life!"
There are trillions of beings, living throughout the universe. Surely some of them would have done something like this before?
Well, the Malthusians did, before their split into focused factions. Their symbiotes gave them the same kind of boost that has been gifted here, and with them they forged a legacy that encompasses the entire universe.
But the fact of the matter is that there are many things that have to go just right, for something like this to be possible. Earth is a magic-rich world, located at the center of the universe. There is, here, a focus. Made not just with gems, but also with symbols, and symbolism, and feeling. By a human — a species that has had its soul saturated in the magic of the Dream. By someone boosted to the peak level of human ability at focusing and directing each of the seven primal emotions of the universe. By someone who uses an incantation, felt from the heart and touching each aspect. By someone who knows in their heart what to expect, and is focusing the outcome toward that.
So it should not be surprising, really, that such a rare thing could occur.
A wave of pure Life radiates out, passing through the walls of the building as though mere matter is insubstantial in the face of this.
It is not, perhaps, what they might have hoped for. The bracelet is unable to retain more than the barest impression of rushing white light. It certainly does not end up as a functional ring-equivalent. But ...
When the light has died down, they feel strangely empty and emotionally exhausted. Everyone within about ten meters, themselves included, is Healed. Wonder Woman notices her slight backache disappearing. Down a floor, in the Justice League infirmary, a young boy in a white solar suit suddenly straightens up. A passer-by in the street stops and pauses to look around the world in wonder, no longer color-blind.
And here in the meeting room, the visitor, the light-weaver, sits in ... not their ideal form, for that is more of a process than a state, but in a form that suits all of them much better than the one they had a moment ago.
And they no longer remember any details about the Anti-Life equation, other than that it is a dangerous lie that exists.
Sometimes, the greatest things can be achieved with just a bit of outside perspective.
