Life with a father as strict as Giovanni Zatara, even with the ability to bend reality via oddly-spoken speech, could be unbelievably boring, which was why Zatanna had been grateful for the recent addition of Rowan to her life, if only because he made things more interesting.
And strange. Very, very strange.
"Avada Kedavra!" He muttered from the other side of the room, followed by a thoughtful hum. She glanced over just in time to see him bare his fangs, checking their length in the reflection of a silver platter.
"Still no change... Odd." Sweat beaded on Zatanna's forehead as she fought to maintain control of the arcane map. She shot a glare in Rowan's direction, but the boy was lost to the world, completely oblivious to the trouble his distracted, nonsensical chant and disappointed sighs were causing.
"What the hell am I doing wrong?"
He remembered how effortlessly Ichor had incorporated the Butcher's power. Theoretically, a vampire's essence should have been even easier to digest. Was he doing something wrong, or did his own damn power have a greater natural affinity for primal forces than he did? 'Am I the weak link in the equation?'
He immediately rejected the premise.
Ichor was a Construct; an extension of his own will. Strength might be its domain, but its magical aptitude definitely couldn't surpass his!
"It's hero-time!
Going ghost!
In the name of the Moon, I'll punish you!"
At the center of the room, Zatanna couldn't help but squeeze her eyes shut in an attempt to block out the secondhand embarrassment from Rowan's corner. It was like sharing a living space with a malfunctioning cartoon character!
"Shazam!
Bankai!
Dattebayo!"
After another full minute of cycling through every heroic catchphrase he'd ever heard in two lifetimes, Rowan finally collapsed back onto the sofa with a groan, draping an arm over his eyes.
The theatrical attempts had done nothing but annoy Zatanna and give him a headache. Maybe he should just drop it.
'This is a waste of time.' He had a real, non-hypothetical fight with a world-class assassin to prepare for—Rowan kept telling himself, but he couldn't quite shelf the matter.
Letting out a weary sigh, he adjusted his sunglasses and continued. It was a long shot, the kind of thing that only worked in the trashiest of isekai novels, but he was out of ideas. In a last-ditch attempt, he focused his will inward and, feeling like a complete idiot, called out to the empty air. "System? Game? [Status]—?!"
A black, semi-transparent window that looked like a severely broken Window command prompt flickered into his vision, stilling the word at the tip of his tongue. "No fucking way! It's here! It is finally here!"
A single, blinking cursor pulsed in the top-left corner before the screen flooded with corrupted data—lines of garbled text, broken code, and characters from languages he couldn't even begin to comprehend ran down the screen, overlapping and glitching out.
STATUS: [ERR_LOAD_FAIL] :: USER_ID: [̴̧̛̥̤̃̈́͂̆̋͝R̴̨̤̣̰̦͍̥̅̓́͗̎̋̌̚͜͝ͅớ̶̧̝͙̱͚͈̱͛̍̀̆͒ẘ̶̤̖̝̳̰͈̈́̈́̿̀̚͜a̷͔͙͎͎͔͚̫͆͑̍̆̕n̷̛̜̣̝̪̲̣̟̜̝̈́̈́̈́̚] :: LOC_INT_λ_777 :: SYS_QUERY
Sure, it was a glitchy, corrupted mess compared to the clean Systems other Reincarnators got, but it was his glitchy, corrupted mess! As the ancients taught: A broken tool was better than no tool at all. "Fuck it. We ballin'!" He shot to his feet, a manic grin stretching across his lips as his eyes found Zatanna's.
"Sorry." Sprinting out, Rowan examined the flood of garbled data that had formed a bare Status Page.
But it wasn't his; it was Yvonne's.
...//...
...LOADING PREVIOUS_USER_CACHE...
ID: Delilah Yvonne
RACE: Vampire (Human)
STATUS: Deceased
"Skip." Rowan commanded, and the screen immediately refreshed to a long, scrolling log of XP gains. His instinct was to skip again, but a strange notation beneath every entry for a kill caught his eyes.
> RUNNING LOG_XP_HISTORY...
> DISPLAY_USER: YVONNE_D
> ...
> ...
[XP GAIN: +170]
>> SYS_TITHE: -168 (99.0%) :: USER_RETENTION: +2
[XP GAIN: +250]
>> SYS_TITHE: -247 (99.0%) :: USER_RETENTION: +3
[XP GAIN: +850]
>> SYS_TITHE: -841 (99.0%) :: USER_RETENTION: +9
> ...LOG ENDS
His eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets.
Rowan had seen corrupt politicians; he had seen crooked merchants peddling garbage, and construction contractors taking their cuts, but to blatantly embezzle 99% of the EXP from the Player… "What kind of thief have I ended up with? Don't you have any conscience?! Don't you know ethics?! Don't you have any fucking decency?!!"
He bellowed, shades slipping down his nose.
"I want a refund! Get me the GM—no, get me the goddamn devs! I'm suing for fraudulent behaviors!" No wonder the Vampiress was a psychotic bitch. Imagine grinding for centuries only to have ninety-nine percent of your effort embezzled by a parasitic System!
He'd be perpetually homicidal, too.
Rowan was still pondering the injustice of it all when the logs vanished, replaced by a query from the System.
[USER_PROMPT :: ACTION_REQUIRED]
> CACHED_XP [USER: YVONNE_D] DETECTED.
> WARNING: KERNEL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. REPAIR REQUIRED.
> CHOOSE XP ALLOCATION:
[1] >> EXECUTE REPAIR_ACCELERATION.EXE. All cached XP will be consumed. System will be restored at an accelerated rate.
[2] >> QUEUE INITIALIZATION_PACKAGE. All cached XP will be converted into a [STARTER_PACK] upon full system repair.
> SELECT [1/2]: _
"... You know what? I take it all back. You're a brilliant wealth-redistribution System."
The thought of the Vampiress' impotent rage knowing the fruit of her centuries of hard labor had become his, was simply intoxicating.
A trip to Hell didn't sound so bad if it meant he could rub it in her stupid, Undead face.
Rowan reached out tentatively, his fingers brushing against the prompt.
It felt solid, like a pane of glass hanging in the air.
He found he could manipulate it with a thought, dragging the blinking cursor from Option 1 to hover over Option 2.
Faster system repair was logical.
A Starter Pack, though...
The Gamer in him was practically salivating at the allure of a Mystery Box.
"Hesitance means Death." With that declaration, he slammed an imaginary fist into the mental 'Enter' button, locking in his decision, only for a second prompt to pop-up.
> Are you sure?
[Y/N]: _
"Fuck no!" He roared, locking onto 'Y' nevertheless.
> Are you sure you're sure?
[Y/N]: _
"YES!"
> ###WARNING###: THIS IS NOT REVERSIBLE!
> Are you absolutely sure?
[Y/N]: _
"For the love of God, YES!
I am sure!
I consent!
I agree to the fucking terms and conditions! Just give me my goddamn StarterPack before I lose my patience!"
With one last flicker, the CMD Interface vanished, or so he believed until he detected the ProgressBar at the distant left corner of his vision.
SYSTEM REPAIR: [███████████████████░] 96.198%
Only 3.802% left to be filled. "Gotta love it when a high-level player quits and leaves all their best gear behind for you."
Rowan scurried back into the room, visibly pleased with himself, and found Zatanna leaning against a table for support, seeming pale and drained… He offered a hand, but Zatanna just shooed him away, pointing a shaky finger to the shimmering map.
Following her gesture, Rowan reached for the glowing map on the floor.
"Wait, don't touch it, it's—!" Zatanna's warning came a fraction of a second too late.
The moment Rowan's fingers made contact with the glowing map, he felt an intense, searing heat that would have instantly given a human third-degree burns, but to him, it was just a curious warmth. He looked at the bright dots spread across the map, then glanced over his shoulder.
"—Hot."
"Zee, I appreciate the concern, but I'm a Demon. Fire's kinda my thing." In fact, the only Spells Zatara had successfully taught him up until now were Fire Spells—four of them, to be exact. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as learned [Fire Manipulation] like those Novels he read in his past life.
They might share the same Element, but each Spell had its own laws and principles that must be followed to the tee, similar to geometry.
Circles, rectangles, cylinders, triangles, and pyramids might all be shapes, but the mathematical equations required for each were totally different.
"Can I have this?"
"For about five more minutes, maybe. A city-wide Clairvoyance Spell needs a proper catalyst to hold it. This is just paper. It's already burning itself out."
Just as she'd predicted, the edges of the map began to smolder and curl inward. Rowan quickly smoothed the curling parchment with his palm, the strange magical heat doing little to deter him.
"Jesus... There are hundreds of them." So there really were this many capes hiding in the city all this time? Where were these assholes when the Red Lanterns were rampaging?!
"Each one is a concentration of energy," Zatanna explained, preempting his question. "Metas, Mages, Magical Creatures... The larger the dot—"
"The bigger the threat." Rowan concluded.
He was hoping she could directly point out Wilson's location to him, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
"Thanks."
Preparing to take off, he suddenly paused seeing how deathly pale Zatanna was, then ran to the kitchen and returned with a glass to find the Wisp chilling in her lap. 'Youlittle traitor, you weren't that cute with me!' He blew out of his nose, glared at his Familiar and tilted the drink down her throat.
Zatanna eyed the suspicious golden-brown liquid. "What is this?"
"Water with honey. You look like you're about to pass out."
After dabbing her forehead with a cool towel, Rowan threw open the nearest window and held out his hand.
Threads of pure darkness crept up from the grounds below, snaking up his leg, up his waist, his shoulder-blade before coiling into a sphere in his palm.
Holding it aloft, he Chanted.
"From shadow, I summon you, children of the night."
The sphere expanded, while the darkness churned restlessly.
"Spread your wings and cover this city in a living blight."
One by one, individual bats began to separate from the roiling mass.
"Seek the one-eyed serpent who hides from my gaze."
An exact thousand of them; the maximum his Mana Pool could sustain, filled the sky, circling the spires of Shadowcrest in a vortex.
"And show me what lies beyond this mortal haze."
In perfect synchronization, the swarm of shadow-bats nodded, dispersing in every direction and melting into the night. With a grin, he glanced sideways at Zatanna whose jaw still hadn't closed just a few steps behind him.
"How was that?"
"What was that spell? That was incredible! You have to teach me!"
Giving her a smug look, Rowan scratched the back of his head. "That wasn't a Spell, Zee. That was just Ichor. You've met."
Her brow furrowed, her mind racing back to the dark, chaotic night in the sewer. "But the Incantation! You didn't need one then?"
"I don't need one now, either."
"But you were saying words! Incantations!"
"Yeah," He shrugged. "I was bullshitting… Sounded pretty cool, though, right?"
.
.
.
The assassin's blade screeched as Batman caught it between the fins of his gauntlet and with a sharp twist of his wrist, snapped the tang in half. He covered the distance in a single stride, driving an elbow into the assassin's jaw and launching the man flying off his feet.
As the last assassin crumpled, joining the twenty other unconscious members of the League littering the corridor, Bruce briefly considered interrogation, then dismissed the thought just as quickly. Every member of the League, starting with the lowest initiate to the highest ranking member, had been conditioned to embrace a clean death over the shame of capture,
Trained to see a cyanide capsule as a final honor,
And taught that a blade to their own throat was a last resort.
Interrogation was a waste of time, but he couldn't just leave them in a pile. He opened his mouth, following the instinct to call for a partner who wasn't there anymore; a partner he'd dismissed himself. 'Was I too harsh on the boy?' The thought made his gauntlets loosen, a thought he soon crushed as he tightened his fists. 'No. I wasn't wrong.'
No matter Alfred's pleas, or Dick's accusatory glares, Bruce knew he wasn't wrong.
It was a necessary cruelty, for the boy's own protection.
If there was a first, there'd be a second, then a third.
For people like Rowan and himself, they simply couldn't afford to take that leap.
He, at least, understood how crucial restraint was, but Rowan was too young… Too impulsive to know better.
Pushing the regret down into the cold, dark place where it belonged, he moved down the body-strewn corridor, tied every single assassin with magnetic restraints that even the heavy-hitters of Gotham would struggle to free, and approached the reinforced door.
His gauntleted fingers tapped the old sequence onto the keypad, but the panel glowed a hostile red instead of green… As expected.
A new password was a delay, but it was no a real obstacle.
He pressed his gauntlet against the door's scanner, and a secondary holographic interface quickly bloomed to life around the keypad.
Bypassing the primary security, he accessed the system's core programming via a hidden enterprise-level protocol—a contingency built into every single piece of WayneTech security software. A few keystrokes later and the door's state-of-the-art defenses were immediately rendered irrelevant.
He descended into the asylum's throat, the air growing colder with each level he passed.
The few disguised gangsters left to patrol these halls were dispatched effortlessly.
The momentum carried him forward until he emerged into the main entryway and the tableau it held where corpses of the guards lay astrew.
He recognized most of them. Henderson, who had a daughter starting at Gotham U. Chen, who was two weeks from retirement.
Bob, with a child on the way and many, many more.
These were men he knew, men he had fought alongside.
These were his failures.
Collecting their identification badges, Batman closed their wide, terrified eyes and moved toward the elevator, but the doors had sealed shut. He first forced open the entrance, then turned around and hurled a Batarang that shattered the cameras nearby, before heading to the concealed access point mapped the last time Wayne Enterprises sent technicians were sent for repair and maintenance.
He doubted the maneuver would fool Talia, but it was definitely preferable than leaping into an obvious trap.
He dropped from the trap door into a narrow service tunnel and enabled the cowl's multi-vision mode.
The X-ray display highlighted a dozen figures, arrayed in a semi-circle, weapons all trained on the elevator doors, while a sensor-triggered tripod-mounted machine gun sat in the center of their formation.
He observed their thermal signatures for a moment, then crept behind the group.
There were bound to be more captives, and whether they be guards, physicians or the personnel, they wouldn't be able to flee with them around. Jamming a Batarang into the control panel of the mounted weapon, the Dark Knight lunged for the first, who collided with the second, rendering both unconscious in the process.
"Shit, it's the Bat!"
"He's here! Batman's here!"
"Christ, it's really him!"
The others brandished their weapons, only to have the guns slapped from their grip by Batarangs. One, though, managed to evade the projectile by a stroke of luck, landing a shot that sparked against the reflective Bat shape on his chest.
Before the shooter could process his own surprise, the 'Black Wraith' had already closed the gap.
The man's rifle was wrenched from his grip and used to sweep the legs out from under the thug next to him.
Laying on his back, he squared his shoulders, clenched his fists only to recieve a backhand to the temple, and fall unconscious.
Dealing with the rest in similar fashion, Bruce restored silence to the corridor, broken only by the soft groans of unconscious bodies.
Twelve men neutralized in under ten seconds, yet he felt no satisfaction, his mind elsewhere.
He secured them quickly, his focus already shifting to the asylum's deeper levels where the real threat and the hostages awaited. He had barely taken three steps when deranged laughter echoed from a blood-stained corridor ahead.
Carefully, he followed the sound, ignoring darkening blots on the walls.
Bruce finally found a young guard at the end of it, slumping in a pool of his own blood.
He had the kind of plain brown hair that you'd see a dozen times on any bus ride and forget instantly.
His frame was lanky and gaunt, not from sickness, but from the simple, weary thinness of a man who worked long hours and probably forgot to eat. There was nothing remarkable about him, and that, perhaps, was the most tragic thing of all, for the only features that set young Mercer apart from others, besides the fact the Dark Knight knew him by name, were the lopsided grin on his face, the flecks of toxic green in his eyes and the white crawling up his neck.
"Joker…"
Intelligence from the captured henchmen indicated every crime boss in Gotham had blacklisted him after his 'joke' had turned their last joint operation into a horror show. The joke being setting a crazed Professor Pyg loose on their men with a chainsaw, which was partly why Bruce had managed to get the situation under control so quickly at the time.
As Bruce knelt to check the guard's vitals, Mercer's head snapped up, a string of manic giggles escaping the bloody grin carved on his face. The laughter stopped as abruptly as it began, and the guard's eyes seemed to clear for a moment. Gasping for breath, he looked at Bruce with a strange lucidity.
"See? Messy system... But it works..."
The needle would've pierced his cowl if the Dark Knight hadn't been, well, Batman.
Restraining the possessed guard's flailing arms, he tried to tie the man up, but even those tiny movements left him limp, gasping, then dead moments after.
Bruce stared down at the body, a cold, familiar rage boiling in his stomach.
This was not simply murder, but the utter, nihilistic degradation of a human life.
He had turned Mercer, an ordinary everyday man with his own thoughts and fears and dreams, into a disposable puppet for a cheap gag. Worse, at least the old Toxin only induced a fatal laughing fit.
This new Strain didn't just kill, by the look of it.
It weaponized.
It corrupted.
And ultimately reduced the infected to hollow, raving husks of themselves.
Bruce shuddered to think what devastation would follow if someone were to contaminate the city's water supply with the substance.
He shuddered to imagine a Gotham of Jokers.