Jinx slipped through the crowded amphitheater, hype music vibrating her very bones. As catchy as the song was, it paled in comparison to the sounds of a sleeping forest, a raging river, a windswept plain. The crowd cheered as they danced, nothing more than a mosh pit of Goths, outcasts, and edgy teenagers who had nothing on her. They were all posers who had little reason to be so mad at the world compared to her.
An older teen carrying a hotdog nearly ran into her, while her feet crunched a discarded plate of nachos when she evaded him. Cursing under her breath, Jinx nearly tapped into the mana around her just to center herself to avoid frustration - there was not enough nature in Gotham, but there was certainly enough life to touch. She'd improved the trick over the years, but it was not her greatest focus and sometimes made her weary.
Regardless, she avoided the impulse and pushed past the adoring fans chanting, "Earth, Wiiiind, Fire and Air!" She aimed for the backstage area and it was a paltry bit of magic to jinx open the door with a flash of pink – she hadn't expected the door latch to turn into a firework sparkler, but she wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Slipping inside the empty corridor, Jinx reached into her belt and pulled a small rod of lead, wrapped in pure golden filigree. It was an arcane trinket from Jason Blood's vault, nothing more than a divining rod to amplify other spells capable of finding information. She'd ignored the fancy Phoenician name for it and instead called it the Find-It-Stick. What made it interesting was that it worked, mostly, when you were in close proximity with another object of magic.
Jinx channeled a bit of her power, focus, and intent into the gimmicky tool, and the thing barely responded in kind. The end of the rod dipped once, twice, thrice of its own accord, then shifted to the left.
"Huh. Looks like you are more than you seem," Jinx mumbled under her breath.
Long before she worked with Kent, Jinx had honed the ability to remain unnoticed without even a hint of magical subterfuge to assist her. It had been useful to learn, because she may not always be near a place where she can draw power. More often than not, she had the muffling chaos of urban environments stifling her abilities.
Regardless, it was easy enough for her to sneak through the venue's back chambers and avoid encounters with security, managers, or crew. One particularly precarious moment involved her acrobatically holding herself between two walls near the ceiling, so that the passerby would only see her if they looked up.
The Find-It-Stick gestured toward the leftmost hallway, and she turned and then bypassed a closed door to the lead singer's room, conjoined with the other two members of the eco-goth trio.
The words of Jason Blood echoed in her mind. "This path will lead to ruin."
Yet he still gave her the stick.
Sadly the tool was only so accurate. She searched the room for anything and everything, hoping to find a connection to the ancient sash she had found, a mantle designed to be worn around the next of a spellcaster. Jinx searched high and low, forward and backward, over and under. The contents of the singer's suitcase lay sprawled across the bed, and she…
Herbs.
Spices.
Pickled animal parts.
Crystals.
Jinx blanched at the sight of a New Age fraud.
Or, one highly likely to be a fraud.
There were certainly witches who practiced simplistic magic to contort the elements to their whims, using sympathetic bindings, concepts, and trappings. The kind who believed practical, physical magic in the Old Ways would benefit those in the now. Jinx was not an expert at how all of this worked, because she had never had to rely on such practical craft.
Regardless, the lead singer of this band was the contact she wanted to find. The one she'd been in contact with.
Jinx waited until the concert was over within the dressing room, listening to their set list and annoyed at how easily she tapped her foot along to the catchy beat. When the singer finally entered, alone, Jinx lay on a sofa leisurely, like she owned the place.
The shocked red-haired woman held a fist tight to her chest in shock, gripping something that might have been a talisman on a better witch. The singer made to scream, but Jinx held a placating hand.
"Hey, hey, listen – they call me Jinx. You and I have spoken over email?"
The woman stilled as recollection hit her. "You're jinxemall?"
"Yep. I hope you don't mind that I'm here."
The lead singer crossed her arms in front of her chest, fingers gripping the silver ankh chain tightly. "I do, actually. I suppose it's nice to meet you, but why didn't you just go through our people?"
"Thorn, this is not the kind of conversation that happens publicly," Jinx assured her. "I am looking for a group of trinkets. You-"
"You avoided my security and tried to ambush me in my dressing room over a trinket?"
Jinx shrugged and twirled the stick in her hands. "When you put it like that, it sounds sillier than it is. Honestly, I was hoping to just find it here, take it off your hands, and avoid you altogether."
"… so you'd steal from me?" Thorn challenged. "You're determined to make me call the cops, security, whoever-"
Jinx flared a bit of magic, pink light drifting from her fingers. Where it touched, misfortune would follow. The singer, Thorn, stilled.
"A series of misaligned rituals for finding information led me to you, a 'Hex Girl' with a talent for magic. I'm looking for a series of runic charms. Have you run across anything like that?"
"… What?"
"… you don't have a clue."
"Not a one, Jinx."
The girl sighed as Thorn had the decency to look apologetic.
"I thought the bits of craft magic you had meant it was a real lead," Jinx murmured and gestured toward the front pocket of a suitcase. "Are you telling the truth?"
Thorn rose a hand. "Hey, all that witch stuff is just something I picked up in college. Thought it fit the vibe of the band. Helps me get a night of sleep, sometimes."
Jinx flared magic again. "So you can't… do any real magic?"
"Unless you count the time one of my candles nearly burned a dorm down, I doubt it? Not like the, uh, pink light."
Jinx, frustrated, felt like she was back to the drawing board. Was this not the right Hex Girl?
"Sorry for barging in," Jinx muttered finally. "I'll leave you to your evening."
The teenager strode from the room, ignoring the singer's attempts to call her back. Jinx didn't think anything the band had would connect her to the Charms of Bezel. The drawing board was rather vast with potential possibilities, and Jinx resolved to clear some of them off of her list.
THANAGARIAN SPACE
JULY 1, 16:12 UTC -0
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"Man your battle stations!"
The command settled across the ship, and the wingbeats of Thanagar's best and brightest responded to the order of their commander with discipline. It was a sight that might have stilled confidence in a normal engagement against a known foe, but their assailants were unknown to them.
The commander listened to the reports of his underlings, watched video feeds, surveyed data readings and sensors. What or who were they fighting?
A series of pods launched from deep space landed hard against the side of their command frigate a few moments ago. Their sensors didn't notice until it was too late to avoid them, and the breaches in their hull from several angles all at once were more than concerning. The tech they used must have been able to slip past their ion shields, and the number of known galactic polities capable of such a feat were few.
The commander listed several possibilities in his mind. Gordanians. Bounty hunters from the Core. Unmanned drones to scout their defenses. Perhaps enemies from the Citadelians?
Hmm. The commander noted the lack of radiation from Apokaliptan tech.
"Defenders in the aft quadrant have engaged!"
The commander of Thanagar's sixteenth fleet made the executive decision to move in force, gripping his nth metal axe in hand. Wings unfurled, he and his personal honor guard descended toward the aft, clearly the most concentrated of the attack vectors.
He'd respond in kind as only a warrior could. Tactical genius and home field advantage would win the day against any foe.
When the security doors pulled open, the sight of a pure blue blast of energy burning a hole in the chest of a bright young recruit would be added to his regular nightmares. The young Thanagarian fell at the feet of a mere boy – though you could never tell with aliens – wearing a shimmering, segmented visor over the top half of his head. The visor hummed to life once more, and another concentrated beam of power tore through another defender and the nearest interior wall of the damn ship. A crumpled, smoking wall sputtered with electrical static, its internal mechanisms as compromised as a bleeding wound.
"I demand you cease this attack at once!"
"Commander Talak, he does not respond! There is no reasoning!"
Then he would respond to the damn axe.
Hro Talak cleared the distance, bladed weapon in hand, and the boy merely turned his head and unleashed certain death from his eyes. It was all he could do to twist his axe up to divert the blast, nth metal strong enough to divert the flow of power and slice its strongest flow in twain.
"Boy!" He tried once more to reach the alien, less to convince him to stop and more to grant a possible opening.
The assailant did not answer.
Hro Talak issued orders to his guard, who moved to flank the boy. Multiple attack vectors were surely needed to win against a foe with a directional blast weapon. Sure enough, the boy unleashed energetic carnage, tearing through Thanagarian flesh and tech alike, and Hro silently admitted to himself that he was glad this attack had hit a fleet command ship and not a smaller cruiser. The laser weapon from that visor – or perhaps from the boy? – tore through sheets of metal and material as easily as it did skin and muscle. Give the boy enough time, and he could disable the command vessel and leave it adrift in space.
"Lepidopterrans!" someone barked into his communicator.
What was this boy doing with a group of bastard insectioid flying creatures? Lepidopterra had been one of Thanagar's earliest foes in its days as a spacefaring race, and whenever they appeared, trouble was sure to follow with their trail of acid spit.
A single Thanagarian from his guard managed to make purchase, nth metal knife attempting to cut into the alien's shoulder. A spray of crimson blood, and the boy showed almost no reaction across his face. Was… he even there, mentally?
The boy whipped his head around, ignoring the pain, and released utter devastation from his eyes everywhere he looked. Commander Talak pulled back from his own attack vector, barely swiping at the blast with the axe in time to keep it from blasting away his entire left arm.
The one who had cut him? Honored Lieutenant Damara Kol fell in two pieces to the ground, bisected from right shoulder to left hip.
Plasma rifle fire tried to grant them a moment of peace, and this was the first true reprieve they had had during the confrontation. The alien ducked behind cover, narrowly avoiding a sizzling burn or worse. Talak made a mental note to give these men and women the highest of awards in the Thanagarian military.
"Take him aliv-"
A buzz interrupted the statement. Three Lepidopterrans flew on their insectoid, segmented wings into the chamber from the opposite side. Their speed was notable, but more dangerously, they spat their sticky acid in a torrent down the hall and created distance. The honor guard pulled back, firing their own weapons back and managing to take one of them out with a splatter of superheated goo on the wall behind its head.
The other two diverted to grab their ally, who clung to their back and loosed another line of destruction. Everywhere the blue energy touched exploded with heat, melted, crumpled to slag.
The… damage was extensive.
"Life support systems failing!" A voice from the bridge shouted. "Commander, please advise!"
"How long do we have?"
"A half an hour, sir," replied the woman. "Oh, wait. No! Make that th-three minutes."
Talak froze.
"Crew," he commanded from his communicator, "divert all essential personnel to the escape pod hanger. Non-essential? Buy us time." Several on the comm channel started to chatter all at once, many of them arguing the point. "Dissenters need not bother. If you survive, know the full might of the Thanagarian empire will crash upon you and yours."
Talak abandoned his honor guard.
He would make a new one.
As he arranged for those who mattered, those who held sway, those with necessary skills to join him in their escape, all he could wonder was that someone would soon face the wrath of Thanagar.
OSMOS V
JULY 3, 08:07 UTC -0
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"…and that, my students, is the primary reason for the rise of tbe prominent families in the current era."
"This is boring!"
Marcilia froze as snickers burst through the room. The man at the front of the room was the eldest Osmosian they'd assembled to steward the new academy in the Capital. His horns were prominent and wrapped almost around his ears, hair reaching the small of his back behind him. Marcilia had noticed Master Declenos had no scars, no signs of healed bruising, no blemishes to his skin beyond the wizened wrinkles of age.
He hadn't fought for them.
Declenos turned to the boy who challenged the lecture. "Listen, child, history is not always entertaining. Sometimes, it is-"
"Boring!"
"Tell us about the bug people!"
"My friend said they had these big tanks that could shoot lasers!"
The chorus of voices drowned Marcilia's thoughts, and all she could do was hug her knees tighter in her chair in the back of the chamber. She could barely see Declenos and his display through the throng of assembled children, but she mostly agreed with the ones who thought the assembly was boring. She had much better things she could be doing, and really just wanted to stay home and play with her s-sjsters again.
But…
Her sob did not break the din.
They did not notice her shuffling to her feet and angling for the exit door mere feet away.
They did not notice her tears trailing after her as she pushed her way into the antechamber of the auditorium, a foyer leading down to the Capital streets below.
It was not until she pushed through the door and into the open, sun-kissed sandy street that anyone bothered to call out for her. One of the front office clerks – a nosy little woman who stank of cheese – shouted for her to turn back.
Marcilia ignored their cries.
They wouldn't understand.
The girl soldiered on through the city street, bypassing a shiny new security checkpoint issuing orders to those who wished to pass. They ignored her and those who passed it on this side, and she was grateful to find a sand-covered bench in the shade, tucked away from prying eyes.
Marcilia had no one to talk to.
The device in her bag, a communicator terminal that could easily reach Horatio or Jula, felt immensely heavy. She considered pulling it out but instead let it rest, too tired and emotional to think about what to do.
Her… her family was gone.
She tried to dry her tears, but the wetness only brought forth the memory of her eldest sister's open chest wound she'd tried to hold shut, the warmth of her life pulsing through her fingers and dripping onto their mother's favorite rug.
Her Exception – if she'd had it then, maybe Lugilla would be alive.
Maybe…
Maybe a lot of people would be alive.
The vibration of the comm terminal in her bag against her hip cut through her thoughts. Fingers wet with tears, she pulled the large device and frowned at the live video feed of Horatio. Oil smears covered the elder Osmosian's scarred face, and a storage warehouse of tools stretched behind him.
"Marce, you can't just-"
"Come get me."
The man hesitated.
"You can't make me go back there t-today."
Horatio's lip tightened. "Marcilia, this is a good thing. Normalcy. It's -"
"Bad!"
"You must give it a chance-"
"I have, Horatio," she countered, a sob pouring through. "All those girls do, those kids do, is make me think about the stuff I wanna forget. Please come get me."
The girls were the worst.
The ones who hadn't seen war.
The ones who'd benefitted from the Capital avoiding direct conflict.
The ones who still had sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and parents.
"I cannot, in good mind, allow you to do this."
Marcilia froze, a post forming in her mind. The… There was no way he was going to -
"Let me go to the hospital then."
"You must go back to the Academy. You need to see-"
She stopped listening but did not end the call.
Marcilia considered the street, where she would need to go, what she would need to do.
The school would send someone to find her. She did not have much time.
Marcilia pushed herself to her feet, stashed the shut-down terminal into her bag, and then scurried northward.
The packed hospital – still overstuffed with people suffering war injuries – was so desperate for someone with a healing Exception, even someone as young as her, that one of the nurses escorted her back with very little fanfare to a patient who'd suffered a direct hit from a Reach plasma staff. Half the woman's face was covered in thick bandages, seeping with bodily fluids and healing medicines.
Marcilia focused on what she could, even as the nurse tried to tell her that she cannot blame herself when the Exception did not work quickly, immediately, or at all.
"This might itch," she said to the somewhat conscious woman below her fingers, tracing the burn wounds. "Tell me about your family."
Marcilia did not feel jealous as the woman described cousins. A niece. A nephew. Three young children. Two doting parents. A quartet of siblings. A half-delirious description of their careers, their own families, their names later, and Marcilia's Exception began to work.
She didn't know how it all worked. Something about body parts shifting from one place to another to spark healing. The stitching and shuffling of the woman's healthy flesh into unhealthy flesh was hard for her to watch, but Marcilia did not mind.
She was helping someone.
She had done this before – one of the nurses frantically raced toward the room when they realized she was here, and she was ushered from one room to the next.
Every ache, every bruise, every broken bone was another moment she did not have to think about the life she'd lost. About the school she did no want to attend, about the family she missed, about the peace that felt unearned.
Marcilia would come to realize that she was just as wounded as these patients were, yet she did not have a scratch on her.