The Clock Tower September 29th 2010 4:00 PM EDT

I was exhausted. A month. A month of nearly non stop grinding trying unsuccessfully to use as few of my points as possible. I'd officially hit level thirty yesterday, with a daily income of a hundred and fifty points, and I'd dumped the extra fifteen in dexterity, bringing it up to thirty. We were on level thirteen now, having just entered, and we'd hit a wall. Hell was, as one might imagine, hellish. The monsters down there were the strongest they could get from the concentration considering how far ahead we were, and even going all out I could barely take one or two of them at a time.

Which brought me to where I was now. I had thirty one hundred points banked. I'd planned to wait and use them for my lair, but I was genuinely worried we might die if I didn't take the devil transformation. We'd been ambushed by a Storm Lord when we first got down there and only Artemis and Zee's dominance over lightning had save me. Even my king's sword couldn't do much real damage to it. I sighed and looked across the table, glancing up from my phone at my best friend and girlfriend. "Are you two sure about this?"

Zee nodded, and I found my train of thought derailed by her insanely high charisma. Madame Xanadu had been working overtime on teaching her finer glamour control, and she was doing a damn good job, but when it was the three of us she didn't bother. She and Artemis were at thirty like I was, putting my girlfriend at a whopping three hundred thirty charisma, and despite being mostly used to it it could be a bit distracting. Still she didn't hesitate. "You being ok is the most important thing, hell is too much for us as we are, you need to be stronger. We all do."

I sighed. She was right. I was only at thirty one hundred points because I'd been dumping literally dozens of them into the dungeon. Which was what they were for sure, but it also meant I didn't have them to spend of getting new powers and abilities. Hell was a watershed, and this close to making it through the dungeon and getting to Annabel we couldn't afford to slack. I had the weirdest feeling that things were only just starting to take off and even pulling in hundreds of points and being fast enough to cut bullets out of the air with my King's Sword of Haste wouldn't be enough.

Not to mention the income from my points would probably spike at least a hundred with the race evolution, plus all the new powers and abilities I would have. The description of the heart of the ultimate devil made it clear it would synergize incredibly well with my powers, apparently devils used magic based on imagination, I wasn't sure why but I felt like that would work well with my powers. I would even get a unique ability with the transformation. A bloodline of my own to pass down to my kids.

I wasn't clear what that bloodline might be but I was excited to find out, there was no options listed but apparently I would be able to feel it. Honestly though, I was scared. My last physical upgrade had been agonizing, and this was any actual race change. I couldn't imagine the pain. Zee seemed to notice the hesitation because she walked over to take my hand. "I'm worried too baby. But you have to trust your power, it's never given you anything you can't handle before and it won't start now. I'll be right here with you whole time anyway."

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes to try to center myself before I hit the button.I felt the energy in my body drain away, but with a hundred points still left I wasn't exactly drained. Of course, a second later there was a knock on the door to my room, and I walked over and opened the door. Sitting in the hallway was a huge black wicker casket. The thing was sealed with what looked like melted gold, and there were images engraved on the top in gold tracery. I picked it up and carried it inside to set it on the table in my room as Zee closed the door.

The thing was heavier than I expected. At twenty five strength I was two and a half times stronger than peak human and I still had trouble lifting that damn casket up and thumping it down on the table, which creaked ominously under the weight of a box that was only supposed to have a literal heart in it. I wondered if my heart would get heavy like that, or if this was some kind of magic fuckery. The melted gold looked pretty thick, but luckily I still had my trusty tanto, even if it didn't see as much use these days.

I had my demon slaying dagger too, but putting it near a devil heart just seemed like asking for trouble so I slipped the tanto from it's sheath and pressed it against the gold, slicing right through the stuff with the insanely sharp and durable material. In this instance not being magical actually helped I think, because the wards keeping the heart fresh might have reacted badly with a magic item. Once the gold parted a hiss of darkness wooshed out of the case, like pressurized air, but more goth.

Lifting the lid after that was shockingly easy given how heavy the box was, and when I saw what was inside I was...a bit torn. It WAS a heart. A literal body part, but it was also weird. It looked like it was made of some kind of shiny black material so dark that it ate the light around it, and I could feel a sense of weight and power rolling off it as we all stared at the organ. When I reached down to pick it up I confirmed that the box had been most of the weight, the warm, oddly sticky piece of flesh being even lighter than I would have expected from a heart, nearly weightless in fact. I grimaced at the thing then raised it to the girls in a toast, and before I could reconsider said "Bottoms up" and bit into the item.

To understand the experience of eating the heart I would need to explain it in stages. First stage, the squelch. When I bit into the heart I felt a massive rush of juice flow into my mouth, so I naturally assumed in that split second that it was mostly full of liquid. This led to stage two, the surge, where my momentary relief at not having to chew the thing turned to confusion as the entire rest of the heart became liquid in my hand. Which led to stage three, the smothering, when the acceptance that I'd end drinking the thing turned to horror and the black sludge it turned into was drowned out (no pun intended) by the substance shooting down my throat like a living entity and surging through my whole body.

I'd been expecting pain, and that was in there, and I'd been expecting the taste to be awful (which it was), but I had not been expecting the thing to try to suffocate me from the inside while it was burning its way through my whole body. My muscles all locked up, but luckily this time the screaming couldn't happen because of the toxic sludge blocking my airway, so Zee and Artemis just got to watch worriedly as I flopped down on the floor like a fish, twitching as my entire body got overwritten. It was almost a relief when I finally blacked out from the pain.

Or it would have been, if my slowly clouding vision didn't clear suddenly. On the upside I now officially no longer hurt, but unfortunately I couldn't feel my body at all, which made standing up and looking around disconcerting. I wasn't in my room anymore. I was in A room, but not mine, and I wasn't alone. This entire thing had been so fucking weird already I literally just sat frozen for a minute, contemplating what was going on , before the girl on the couch playing videos said "Can you talk? I could have sworn you could talk."

I jumped at the sound of her slightly dreamy voice. She never looked at me as she spoke, just staring at her game. She looked...weird. She had shaggily cut blonde short hair, a white tank top, and her arms were festooned with multicolor glow stick bracelets and leather cuffs and bands. Her incredibly thin, pale legs were wrapped in a pair of cargo shorts and she had them against her chest with her feet up on the couch, her toenails painted rainbow colors. She looked like a very high raver girl, but I got the impression she absolutely was not to be fucked with.

I cleared my throat. "Um, hi. Yes. I can talk. I don't think we've been introduced, though you do seem weirdly familiar." Which was true, she did seem familiar. But not like I knew her, more like Deja Vu, but without the impression of something forgotten. It was hard to explain. I looked around. "If you don't mind me asking, where are we? Is this my brain? If so how exactly did you get in here?" I didn't really want things coming into my brain, even mostly harmless looking raver girls I somehow kind of knew.

She shook her head quickly, her blonde hair flying around. "I'm Del, and I didn't get in anywhere. This is my place. You're the one who showed up." She flicked her eyes to me in a sort of apathetic curiosity. "Which is strange. You do seem to be between consciousness and unconsciousness, so you could be considered Delirious, but mostly people need an invitation to visit. I must have invited you. Or maybe I haven't yet, it can be hard to tell with me. Would you like to sit down?" She gestured to the couch next to her with a jerk of her head.

I shrugged and did that. "So, you said I'm delirious? I take it that means I'll wake up soon? Not that your place isn't nice, I just kind of want to get home. I left my girlfriend and my bestie alone with my body, and once the shock of seeing me pass out in a mouth foaming mess wears off there's a non zero chance of my best friend drawing something on my face in permanent marker." I doubted Zee would let her, but if she was annoyed enough it was possible, and I'd rather not risk it, since I knew Artemis would take pictures.

She waved a hand casually. "Nah, you'll wake up in a little under a minute. Still, nice meeting you. I think I can see why I picked you. You have an interesting power. Good luck with that." For the first time she turned and fixed me with her gaze, her heterochromic green and blue eyes spearing into me, the silver flecks in them shining. "Also, you might want to slow down. Changing yourself too quickly can mess with your head." I realized as she said this that her outfit had changed. In fact it had changed three times while she was talking.

My eyes were wide as I opened my mouth to ask what she was talking about and if my powers came from her when she flicked her eyes back to the screen. "Looks like you're waking up now. Say hi to my brother and Barnabas for me. It'll be nice to meet you. It was good seeing you again for the first time. Bye now." The experience of your eyes flying open while they're already open was enough to shock me back into the awareness that I was in my room again with Zee and Artemis on either side. What the fuck had that been about?

The Clock Tower September 29th 2010 4:30 PM EDT

Once again, upon waking I felt fucking amazing. Despite all the energy though my muscles still felt a bit weird and twitchy. Almost hypersensitive as I stumbled to my feet. The girls caught me on either side, holding me up as I got my balance, and of course I headed straight for the mirror, because I am a vain son of a bitch. It took me a few steps to figure out how to walk, and i couldn't understand why, until I got close to the reflective surface and realized my mistake.

My wings were out. Now if you've never suddenly got wings that might not sound that weird, but trust me. Having that strange extra limb really throws you off. It's like when you do something on reflex all the time but then you think about the steps and your brain kind of skips a beat and messes it up, or like saying a word over and over and suddenly it stops making sense. The introduction of those strange new muscles threw off my whole groove, and weirdly my reflexes made it way worse. Like every weird muscle twitch fired at max speed and just screwed me.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, then focused every ounce of my attention on banishing my wings, and then poof. They were gone. Despite their absence however, the me in the mirror looked...different. For one thing I was hot. Like weirdly, seductively man pretty, in a sort of dark sexual way. My hair was black. Like glossy black, so deep I could almost see blue undertones in it, and my eyes were emerald green. I don't mean in the way people usually mean when they say that, I mean it looked like someone literally chiseled emeralds into rings and set them into my eyes.

My jaw was defined as hell, and my bulk had sort of compacted. I wasn't big anymore, just dense, but very lithely muscled, like a swimmer. My teeth were white as porcelain and my canines were weirdly sharp for some reason. I opened my character sheet to take a look and my eyes went wide. My name was the same, but that was pretty much it where it had previously said I was a rogue, my sheet now listed "High Class Devil". My resistances were all higher for the most part, lightning and fire resist were both at thirty percent, though there was a new resist box for light that was at negative forty.

My stats were...nuts. Fifty for all my physicals. Vitality, strength, dexterity, all now five times the human max. Along with that I had gotten a cool hundred point bump to my point total, bringing me up to two hundred and fifty points of daily income. I was in awe (though I had been expecting more points than that, greedy as it sounded). This was insane. I'd never been this strong before. Physically this made me one of the heaviest hitters in Gotham. I'd be a joke in Metropolis sure, but for my town I was a tough son of a bitch now. But that wasn't the important part. The important part wasn't on the sheet at all. I could just feel it.

I turned to look at Artemis, who was gaping at me alongside Zee, and grinned. "I'm going to hold up my hand, I want you to zap it." I put my hand in front of me and focused. A black circle of energy, somehow the same as my shadow porting but different, opened in front of my hand, and I felt a wave of dizziness as all one hundred points went into making a circle of darkness the size of an hors doeuvres plate. Artemis looked at me uncertainly, but after a nod she cast a small bolt of heavenly punishment lightning at my hand. A bolt that vanished into the circle completely.

I could feel it. Inside my power. Waiting to be let out. I knew what it was, what this strength made me. Abaddon clan devil. Power of Hole. The Abaddon clan were a noble devil lineage, though I didn't know much more than that. The Power of Hole was our bloodline. Because I was an Abaddon now. I was still my parents son, somehow, but I was a pureblood noble devil. Regardless the Power of Hole was our noble birthright, and it was perfect for me. The dark energy meshed with my shadows, creating an entirely new and even deadlier power. Black Hole if you will.

I let it dissolve, though I still had the power inside me, being held in some strange place I hadn't possessed before. I could open that same hole again as long as the energy was inside me. It wouldn't take more points, though once I released the attack I would need to spend more to absorb another. I couldn't do too much right now, I was still getting used to it. But once I had some time to get stronger, once I put more stats into my points total, I knew I'd get more use from it. Eventually able to fully manifest my powerful shadow constructs with the power of hole imbued inside.

I turned to the girls and grinned. "It worked. I feel...amazing. Stronger than I ever have. Hell better watch out, because there's no way I'm going down with this kind of power." I glanced down at myself awkwardly. "Although...Zee could you maybe make me a quick glamour charm? Something like the last one that fades over time. My new devil sexiness is like movie star level, but still humanly possible. It'll take some acclimating but I shouldn't start any riots or anything." plus I'll admit I kind of wanted to show off. I'd never been hot before. It felt kind of amazing.

Zee clearly thought so too because she was kind of drooling, which given her insane charisma looked gorgeous anyway but it was still very pleasant to look at. I didn't have a charisma stat on my sheet sadly, but based on what I'd seen I was sitting at a solid fifteen. Not mind breaking or unnatural but still damn good looking. It took her a minute to notice I'd been talking to her and she flushed a bit. "What? Oh, yeah of course." She held out a hand and muttered a string of incantations, handing me a necklace. "This is temporary. I can make you a new focus with Artemis's help in the forge and it'll be done before this one wears off in a few days ok?"

I slipped the thing on and jumped a bit as what felt like cold sticky water flowed over me, clinging to every inch of my body. I glared at Zee. "Jesus, why does this feel so awful? I feel like someone rolled me in egg so they could batter and deep fry me?" Artemis snickered and held out a hand, into which Zee placed a small bag of gold as she glared at me. I gaped at both of them. "Did...did you do that on purpose just to see if I would complain? That's so fucked up." I turned to glare at Artemis. "She used to be so sweet. Look what you've done."

Zee rolled her eyes, trying to hide a smile, then stood up on tip toe and kissed me on the cheek. "Sorry baby, it happens to everyone. The bet was just on whether you would complain. Artemis said you never miss an opportunity to bitch, and I said that you would never berate the love of your life because her hard work was momentarily inconvenient." She raised an eyebrow at me archly, but giggled at my unamused expression. "It's good to know that even as a hunky devil you're still a huge baby. So, tell us what you ended up with. You said there was a random bloodline possible, was that black circle yours, or did you just teleport the lightning away with shadows. Wait could you do that before?"

Seeing my girlfriend go full magic groupie wiped out the urge to even pretend to be mad at her. Zee was at her most beautiful when she was passionate, and the only thing she was more passionate about than magic was me during the occasional bit of fun times. Knowing I wouldn't get away with hiding anything I told them about my new details, my new bloodline, and even the weird girl I met when I was half unconscious. It took longer than expected to fill them in. Hell, it took longer to tell them the story than I think it technically took to actually happen to me.

Artemis looked intrigued. "I've never met any of Teague's siblings, but I've heard of Del. She was Barnabas's person before Teague was, I think he actually mentioned you reminded him of her. Weird that she was just waiting there for you. I've never gotten a straight answer from Teague where he actually came from though, so who knows what he can do." Which was actually a really good point. What the fuck was Teague if his sister could randomly pop up in my brain, or vice versa I guess. There had been a few weird things about him but I hadn't paid much attention given all the madness that had happened since.

Looking back though Teague was one big unanswered question. How was someone like that just...around, especially somewhere like the narrows. Everyone important I'd met seemed to know about the guy, but no one even considered fucking with him. He was basically a surrogate uncle to Artemis, but the court never even hinted at targeting him, and Kent, Jim, Blood, and even Madame Xanadu treated his name with a ton of respect, just waving away Artemis's new skills when they heard he was involved.

Regardless it wasn't something I could worry about here. I decided to focus on the now. "As for what Del said, she might be right honestly. I've been pushing from one new power to another pretty quick. Granted some were for you guys, which is cool, but it also means I haven't been committing those points to actually refining my active skills like shadow dancing. Especially with the new points income once we get the lair committing short term to putting more points into training seems like a smart call. Have to push my limits to find them."

Because I could feel that I hadn't even touched them yet. There was some kind of synergy between hole and shadow dancing and my ninja skills, some kind of way to merge them into a single skillset that I could feel but not utilize because I had been lowballing my powers to save up for new trinkets. Now that I was pulling in a thousand points every four days though I had the freedom to really push some of the higher end aspects of my powers and figure out the most efficient ways to use them. It was like poker. If you go in short stacked you lose a lot less if you have to fold or get a bad beat, but you also have less leverage and it makes it harder to win. Difficult to bluff or bully when your all in bet is a drop in the bucket to whoever you're up against.

Really giving my powers a workout after we got the lair would make a huge difference in how I could use them on a smaller scale. You can only push your limits after you find them. I was excited to see what I could do. Sadly it would have to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime I decided to kick Artemis out to spend time with my girlfriend. Kent let us close the door because she was in here with us but I wanted some cuddles damn it.

Gotham Academy September 30th 2010 1:00 PM EDT

I was going out of my fucking mind having to go to school. I had re upped my point total to the full two fifty at noon, but hadn't been able to test anything since I had school. I'd skipped during that mess with Zee and while grades were laughable to me, I knew for a fact Robin was in this Academy and if I just dropped off the face of the earth I'd have to deal with him, and then through him Batman, and then through him the League. I didn't want any part of dealing with the League, not for quite some time to come.

I acknowledged how lucky I'd gotten with the Zatanna thing. I hadn't been thinking straight. I'd seen my girlfriend upset and I'd taken the easiest (at the time) path to fixing that, and I'd very nearly touched off a literal war between two magical factions in the process. I'd expected Jim to get pissed and yell at me, but he never had. He had my back because that was the way Jim lived. In his mind I hadn't done anything wrong, I'd wanted something so I took it. Which on the one hand was pretty neat of him, but on the other made me take a look at where Jim was in life.

No friends, no girlfriend, no stability. Jim was a force of nature, the gentleman thief. He was larger than life, which meant he didn't really get to have one, and while I envied him in lots of ways I personally didn't want to become him. Jim didn't think things through, and I'd been internalizing that far too much. There were a hundred ways I could have helped Zatanna without going full Peter Pan and just taking her home to my base, and in retrospect that was easy to see. Just because it worked out doesn't mean I shouldn't be aware of that.

If Zatara hadn't felt so guilty or if the magic factions weren't so isolated from traditional capes I might have completely fucked everyone over, and that impatience and recklessness wasn't something I liked about myself. In some ways it was the Falcone in me, imposing my will on the world, and I didn't like the comparison much at all. It was a hard thing to address though, just saying "I'm going to think more" was easy. Actually doing that was harder. But I would at least try to take consequences into account, even if I wasn't sure what I would have done different given the chance. Hence my current attendance of school despite not wanting to be here.

I sighed, tossing the thoughts about my nature and how I handled life around in my head for the thousandth time in the last month. I was chasing this whole thing in circles and I knew it. But in some ways that felt like it's own answer. Thinking about my mistakes and keeping them in mind might prevent me from making another one. I was snapped out of my reverie by a kick to the shin, and I winced and glared across the table at Reggie. He just shrugged. "That was the fifth sigh in the last twenty minutes. It was getting annoying. Either talk about it or move on."

I snorted a bit at that, but he had a point, these concerns weren't going anywhere. I opened my mouth to respond but I was cut off by the intercom. "Attention students, please proceed in a calm and orderly fashion to the emergency shelters. There has been a large scale villain attack, so we will be taking refuge until the League sorts out the issue." I glanced at Reggie as we both got up to slip out and we pretty much immediately decided to go and figure out what was going on. No way Robin wasn't going to be dipping out to go place justice bro, so it wasn't like he would notice us not being around, plus I was betting a dozen or so other people would use the chance to slip out.

We met up with Artemis outside and I fished out my phone to call Zee. She answered on literally the first ring. "Morgan? Oh thank god you're ok. I was scared you might have been hurt in an attack. Are Artemis and Reggie there?" After she confirmed everyone was ok she let out a sigh of relief. "Good. This whole thing is a mess. If you're in school I'm guessing you don't know. Some group of asshole villains calling themselves the injustice league unleashed a horde of plant monsters on the planet to try to ransom the world for ten billion dollars. There are some scary people working with them."

I winced. That was a hefty payout, and if they had managed this kind of response then they must have the muscle to back it up. I glanced at Artemis and Reggie. "I'll head to the penthouse to check on mom after I suit up. You know I'm not really the hero type but Gotham is still my town. Nuclear dumpster fire or not I can't just ignore things here." I glanced to Artemis. "You think Paula will be able to help keep herself safe?" I didn't want to count on Gojo, even if I suspected he would handle it without an issue. He'd proven that he didn't really care about what happened around him unless it affected him or mom directly.

Artemis nodded. "Mom will be fine. Since she got her spine fixed she's been getting back into her training. She used to be kind of a big deal, so I wouldn't worry too much." She grabbed the phone, putting it on speaker. "Hey sis, give is the inside dish on these things. I'm sure you know more about what's happening than the stuff people are seeing on the news." Which was a good thought. Even if the cause wasn't our business knowing more about what was going on could only help us out with dealing with things.

Zee made a small noise of agreement. "I do know a bit. Daddy is working with the justice bros this week." She had picked up my name for them at some point and it always made me smile. "I don't have too many details as usual, he's been really trying in our sessions with BC but understandably he isn't going to share any info with me that isn't pertinent to my health or wellbeing. Luckily this kind of is, so I was able to get a bit of inside information. Basically the plants were mutated by some crazy venom agent to be more powerful and they regenerate crazy fast."

She went on to fill us in on the technical details she'd gotten out of her dad, and even mentioned a few important factoids about the people behind the attack, including our old pal Black Adam. Apparently the justic bros, along with their buddy Red Arrow (derivative much?) were being sent to deal with the bad guys while the League took care of the plants, but that left Gotham with Batman running point and as scary as the big bad Bat could be he wasn't exactly an army killer. He was going to need a hand.

On the upside I felt way better about being a villain, because if heroes sent their sidekicks to solo Black Adam level bad guys I had absolutely no interest in joining up. I mean, I was reckless and impatient, but I was a teenager. What the hell was Batman thinking sending a group of rookies to deal with those monsters? Artemis looked...upset. I took the phone from her, leaving it on speaker. "The justice bros have backup right Zee? I can't imagine the League would send them into this solo?"

She seemed to pick up what I meant because she gasped. "Oh no, sorry Arty, yeah they have backup. Captain Marvel and Uncle Kent went with them." She grumbled under her breath. "After he locked me in the damn tower for my own safety." She sounded pissed and I didn't exactly envy Kent, but I could tell she wasn't looking at it like the last time. There was big shit going on, and locking the tower of fate down during a worldwide attack was different from the last time a father figure stuck her in a room.

We thanked our resident girl on the inside, promised to stay safe and call once this was over, and then hung up. We then slipped out of the school via shadow porting for the low low price of twenty points, and headed for the tower to gear up. I personally felt naked without my weapons. I slipped into my gear with practiced ease. I'd traded in my Victorian finery for a legit suit of armor from the dungeon, A breastplate called the Scavenger Carapace which boosted my dex by five and gave me lightning resist.

It was part of the horde of gear we had laying around, but I could just barely use the stuff because it required over forty strength, something I wasn't even close to before my devil upgrade. It would be solid upgrade from my last set. I also strapped on my King's Sword of Haster, my demonic dagger, and my tanto just in case, with my shuriken in a pouch on my belt. Reggie and Artemis were both rocking new gear as well with Reggie wearing Naj's light plate which had no requirements and gave fifty armor and Artemis in the Sparking Mail.

The Sparking Mail was a huge thing for Artemis actually. It required thirty strength, which she'd made sure to get, because aside from being sturdy armor it added a native amount of lightning damage to all her attacks, and with the anvil and her smithing know how she'd managed to upgrade the thing to use her Heavenly Punishment Lightning. It was a dangerous combo and stacked well with her Blitzen bow, which just hurled straight lightning bolts on its own, since she didn't even need to infuse them with power and could focus on pumping out shots faster.

Kit had obviously suited up with us, and we filled her in on everything that had happened. She just shrugged. "Meh, giant plants of demon spawn, who cares. Monsters are monsters, we've fought enough of them that I'm not too worried about it." Which was fair enough. I was having trouble being freaked out over evil plants myself. If anything I was excited to really let loose with my new powers, less the hole ability and more the wings and physical power. I was excited to see what the extra dimension of movement would do for me in battle.

Once everyone was ready we headed out. Jim wasn't here, most likely using the opportunity to rob someone who normally paid attention half blind, and Madame Xanadu was at the shop during this time of day, so we were on our own. Getting to the penthouse was easy enough. We took the shadows as per usual, bringing me down another ten or so since it was closer. I felt like my ability to move in shadows had improved with the qualitative boost from my hole bloodline, something to look into later I supposed.

Arriving at the penthouse we saw...something. The plants obviously, raining down blows on everything, and they had wrapped around the building and were squeezing it tightly, clearly trying to destroy it, but it absolutely wasn't working. The whole building seemed to be fine. In fact looking closely I could legitimately see the plant's stopped a few inches from the surface, as if there was some invisible shield around the thing, which worked out great for me. I assumed this was Gojo's handy work. I turned to the others with a grin. "New plan. Looks like our moms are safe as houses, and it seems a shame to waste the target practice. Let's go trim the hedges."

O'Malley Penthouse September 30th 2010 1:30 PM EDT

I was having so much fucking fun. I'd gotten so used to big waves of tiny annoying creatures or even tanky mid sized boys that I hadn't realized how fun it was going to be to fight these big fuck off plants. The mechanics of fighting in my new form were pretty novel, but I was acclimating fast, and my reflexes made even small slips manageable. Oddly, the thing I'd been most worried about, flight, was probably the most intuitive power I'd gotten yet. I could just feel how I was supposed to fly, like using a limb that I'd always had but never noticed.

I darted in between the massive vine stalks as they tried their best to smash me flat, and drew as many of them to me as possible as I weaved in and out of the gaps, trying to get them tangled up in each other or just generally bait them into ignoring my team as they rained down damage from afar. As I went I did my best to deal some serious damage to the plants themselves, but my swords were too small for any of the giant stalks to worry about.

Luckily I still had my shadow power. I was summoning condensed wheels of shadow with sharp teeth about five feet across and spinning them like chainsaw blades, swinging them through the tentacles as I sped past and cackling madly as they tore apart the plant fibers. Each one only cost me about ten points, but unfortunately while my ability to manipulate them was casual and without cost, the actual attacks weren't and the shadow constructs started to weaken after a few stalks had been torn apart and eventually broke under enough use.

Still, I was pulling off some serious damage here, and it was more than distracting enough to let Artemis, Reggie, and Kit do their sweet funky. Artemis and Reggie were teaming up to blow portions of the thing apart, with my lab partner kicking a soccer ball out toward the thing and then swapping it with huge chunks of dangerous unstable explosives he'd grabbed from his workshops, which Artemis set off with well places lightning bolt from the bombs blowing chunks out they also showered the thing with white phosphorus or magnesium.

Reggie had spent the last month learning how to make bombs and his work shop was full of huge chunks of random mixtures and concoctions. Granted they weren't all battle ready, but when you had a lightning bolt to put into a charge it didn't really need to be pretty, just packed enough to go boom. I had offered to get him an "expert my dad knew" to teach him as a cover for finding a way to cheat him the skill, but he actually loved studying explosives and turned me down saying he was enjoying the learning process.

He seemed to have a real flare for it, pun intended, because the two of them were doing even more damage than my psychotic gun nut cousin, who had grabbed a duffel without me noticing as we left and was currently setting up a mortar launcher she was using to take chunks out of the plant thing. All in all between us we were taking serious bites out of this thing, but it was regenerating incredibly fast and I didn't have the points to put into something huge and flashy. I had some amazing ideas for using my new powers in concert but I would need a few days savings to use them.

I landed on a nearby roof after I dodged around a corner having used a single point to create a shadow message I could alter at will to communicate to my crew to pull it back while I rested, because dear gods was this tiring. Flying may have been instinctual, but it still took energy. Even if the energy was somehow distributed evenly across my whole body instead of in my back muscles like you would expect. I was starting to get exhausted. I heard a whistle next to me. "Wow, that's pretty nasty. Have to say kid, I'm impressed you managed to put up such a fight, you don't feel that strong."

I jumped and spun around to see Gojo sitting cross legged in mid air next to me, looking down over the scene with casual interest. He grinned at my yelp, throwing his hands up. "Don't shoot kid, I come in peace. And don't worry I'm not here to steal your kills. Last thing I want is to start making noise here like I did back home and get dragged into all the power games. Still, you and your peeps aren't too bad and I've always been something of a teacher plus your mom would be bummed if you got ganked right in front of her, so I thought I might offer some advice."

I glared at him. "Ok, ignoring your complete refusal to help because we don't really need it and you ARE protecting my mom...somehow, how do you even know who I am? I'm wearing a mask and very thick armor. Plus I have fucking wings like this? Who the fuck are you?" Because despite being in the middle of a city block under attack by a giant regenerating plant monster the bastard was just floating around amicably without a care in the world. Even I was keeping a weather eye out for the nearest tentacle but Gojo looked completely unconcerned.

He just shrugged. "You're you. My eyes don't work like most people's, things like masks and armor aren't really an issue. As for who I am well that's easy." He gave an exaggerated wink I could see behind his glasses and shot me two finger guns. "I'm your moms super cool honey bunny. Just the guy who takes care of her now." He could clearly tell I was unamused because he let his head fall back and groaned. "Awww, am I officially old now? Did the kids leave me behind on the road of cool and now I'm just an out of touch fogey?" He threw his hands up in the air, clutching at the space like he had claws "How do I reach these kids!?"

I just...stared. Ok. So Gojo actually was much of a spaz as he seemed around mom. Good to know he was being up front with her at least. I'd kind of expected that to be some kind of cover identity, but it seemed like he just gave zero fucks. "First off, you're weird. You're a weird dude who does weird things. Second of all as amusing as all of this is to you I'd personally like to finish this fight before I run out of energy, so if you have some sort of insight to share that isn't bad cliches or subtle insinuations about your sex life with my mother I would love to hear them."

That surprised a laugh from the floating madman, who literally fell over cracking up in midair, and somehow kept falling in a complete circle until he was upright again. "Gotcha, I'll make sure my insinuations about my sex life with your mother are as blatant as possible. But fine, buzz kill. You're doing this wrong. I was going to ignore it because you're doing your own thing and if I hold your hand you'll never get strong, but you've done more than enough damage to actually kill the thing if you weren't being an idiot, and watching people be stupid gets on my nerves."

He pointed at the plant. "As you can see the thing is clearly regenerating from all the damage you're doing, except your boy's cool fire bombs which are slowing it down, kudos on that by the way. But you just keep hacking away at it like morons, despite getting almost no long term results. Seriously even basic critical thinking skills would have ended this fight like twenty minutes ago, you're bad at this and you should feel bad for making me watch it." He adjusted his finger, indicating a specific spot on the plant. "What do you see there."

I looked, rolling my eyes because he was clearly trying to find some kind of central power source, but I'd been staring at this thin in aura sight for like ten minutes and there was no...I froze, leaning forward to get a closer look at something. Gojo cackled and slapped his leg. "And look at that, he can be taught. Man life is so much easier with people who can pay attention. You saw that I take it?" I nodded absently. I had seen it. A flash of concentrated power past the spot he pointed out, sort of like the core I'd been looking for but moving.

I glanced at him again, even more warily. "I didn't even notice that until you pointed it out. How can you see that kind of detail in the energy? Seriously what are you doing here? I've been ignoring it because you make my mom happy, but someone as strong as you just sitting around doesn't make much sense. Hell if you were really so into my mom I'd have expected you to step in during some of our fights. But you just sit at home with mom goofing off and being kind of a freeloader. Not that I'm annoyed about the money I have plenty, but you make me nervous."

Gojo shrugged. "I don't make a habit of playing babysitter. If you're too weak to stay alive that just means you're an idiot for getting sucked into the fight, and I don't save stupid. This is just me pointing out something that's right in front of your face because watching this nonsense was getting old. As for why I'm here?" He just shrugged. "Back home I was always the go to for peoples problems. 'it's so strong, we'd better call Gojo, he can save us' it honestly made me sick. I made everyone so lazy and weak. I hated being a crutch. So I stopped caring."

That did sound annoying. He must have seen that in my body language because he laughed. "Yeah see, you get it. But still I had a person or two I liked so I usually got sucked into a fight here or there, and despite how good I was at it it still bored the shit out of me. Like what was the point?" He smiled a bit. "But then I met Marie. I'm used to women falling all over themselves, I'm strong and pretty damn handsome, and it's usually easy. But Marie wasn't impressed. I had to work to get her to agree to go out with me. Work to make her happy. And it was hard. For the first time I stopped being bored. My life is so much better with her than just fighting. It's interesting and surprising."

He just left it at that. Like it was enough just to not be bored. Which honestly, for someone like him I guessed it was. I wondered if I'd ever get to that point? Being so strong that my strength literally became meaningless because it was so overwhelming. I could see his point. I sighed and stood up. "Ok, fair enough. Just...don't hurt her. I can find a way to kick your ass old man, if I really have to." He just laughed and waved me off and I rolled my eyes, heading back for the edge of the roof. "Anyway thanks for the advice, you should head back inside. You probably told her you were going to the bathroom or something, don't want her to get suspicious."

There was no answer, and when I looked back he was nowhere to be seen. Rather than impress me it made me roll my eyes again. He was such a show off, but still, I could think of worse guys for mom to be dating. I walked up to the edge of the roof and hopped up on the railing, using my powers to manipulate the shadow message I'd left on the small square of white cardboard I'd had Artemis bring just for that purpose, telling my friends the plan as I called up a twenty point saw blade on either side with a grin. Now that I knew what to look for I was going to finish this once and for all. Then maybe I would get some pizza. Flying made me hungry.

O'Malley Penthouse September 30th 2010 3:00 PM EDT

I slumped down on my couch in exhaustion. Paula, mom, Gojo, Artemis, Reggie, Kit, and I were all sitting in my living room safely. Well, mostly safely, and mostly sitting. Paula was standing by the window, looking through the blinds to see if any more of the plant tendrils were going to try to get in. Gojo's wards or whatever the fuck he was doing kept the thing out to this point but since no one knew what they were they were loathe to trust them to keep working. Gojo himself was sitting on the love seat across the room with my mom in his lap and I was trying my best to avoid looking over at their cuddling.

Once I'd found out the way things worked with the plant thing we'd gone to work. I'd poured my points into those saw blades and used aura sight to pin down the core or whatever before attacking as best as I could. My best apparently wasn't that great, because I ended up having to just pour my points into an ice spell to pin it down. My Devil transformation came with something called demonic power, which basically let me cast any spell I could imagine, but only if I had the power, imagination, and basic understanding to use it.

Ice magic, it turned out, was within my wheel house, if barely, but the spell took an insane amount of points. After killing the one near my place (turned out there was a half dozen cores across the city, and the one we killed was just this regions threat) and shadow porting the duffel bag Kit had lent us to help stuff our gear in back to the tower, I was sitting at only about a hundred points. Demonic power was complicated and expensive, but it was one more thing on my list of powers to master. Del had been right, I was diversifying too much. I needed to slow down and learn to use what I had.

My mom was overjoyed to see us, and was sitting in Gojo's lap gushing about how happy she was that we were safe. "I'm so glad you're all ok. What were you kids thinking coming out in this mess? You're lucky our new building is so sturdy, that plant monster hasn't been able to make a dent in it. Paula come away from the window that's dangerous, what if you...I don't know get it's attention or something?" She seemed flustered and jittery, a common enough reaction to stress and high emotion. I was kind of twitchy myself, hell the only person here who wasn't was Gojo.

Paula just shook her head. "No. I don't even see the thing anymore. There was some commotion outside twenty minutes or so ago and the plant disappeared pretty soon after that. I can't really see much from this angle but still, it looks like things are calming down." She glanced at her daughter. "What did you see out there on your way in?" It took Artemis a second to react. Since we got inside she'd been calling Wally over and over again trying to get through. She knew he was busy since Zee told us where he'd be but she was terrified for him and trying to get in touch seemed to be helping at least a bit.

I elected to answer for my best friend. "Not much. Something cut a bunch of those tentacle things up but it looked like they had already grown back. Whatever did it seemed to be aiming at the ones by the doors first though because there was a gap for us to run though." I turned to my mom, leaning hard on my Devil nature which seemed to make deception a bit easier, something I would worry about later, but mixing in some truth too. "We were worried about you guys. Plus the school isn't actually any safer than here. It's better for us to be together." If I knew my mom she wouldn't dwell on the stupidity of running through those vine things right now since she was so relieved we were safe.

Sure enough, she gave a slight nod, though she frowned a bit. "Well, it did work out ok. Just...be careful next time something crazy happens Morgan." She gave me a sharp look, one that implied she wasn't as trusting right now as I thought and might be holding back because we had company. "No matter how impressed you are with yourself you aren't invincible. Your father was always like that too. Reckless and arrogant. It wasn't his best quality. That Falcone drive to impose his will on the world got him into more trouble than it got him out of."

I winced at the comparison. She must have been pretty pissed. Mom never talked bad about dad to me. She had always insisted that he loved us and that I should think well of him. Making an unfavorable comparison like that, one that pained us both in a bad light, was pretty much the closest she would come to expressing actual disappointment with me and it hurt. Artemis looked up from her phone. "Don't be too mad at him Ms. O'Malley. He was really worried about you. I know he can do stupid stuff sometimes but even I was on board with coming here. I was scared for my mom too so I get how he felt.

My mom looked at Artemis with a sad smile. "I know dear, but my safety doesn't mean as much to me as his does. Nor do I imagine Paula's means more to her than yours. It's sweet of you both to worry but I couldn't bear it if something happened to my boy. No mother should have to outlive her son, no matter what Gotham's cavalcade of lunatics has to say about the matter." She turned back to me. "He knows I love him more than anything, stupid decisions or not, but I won't pretend not to be upset when he risks his life." I felt myself actually tear up a bit at that, though I looked away to try to save my image.

Not wanting to get into this more I stepped away from the group, and mom let me go as I fished out my phone and dialed a familiar number. Zatanna picked up on the first ring. "Morgan? Baby is that you?" Her voice was laced with anxiety, and I suddenly felt a bit bad for running out into the city to play weed killer. Coming back to the penthouse was a reasonable decision, but fighting the plant monsters kind of wasn't. I could have snuck us in with my shadow porting and bypassed this whole thing, but I'd wanted to test out my new abilities. Reckless and arrogant wasn't a bad description. I really needed to work on that.

For now though I just smiled, glad to be talking to her. "I'm fine Zee. Me and Arty got home fine." I got a loud throat clearing sound from Reggie and rolled my eyes as I amended. "Me and Arty and Reggie got back to my place. We even stopped to pick up Kit and our building seems to be sturdy enough not to get messed up by the plants." I was trying to avoid the subject of Gojo's weird shield thing in front of mom, and it seemed to be working. From inside they couldn't even see it, and with the plant monster nearest us dead it was less of an issue. "How about you, any news on your dad or Uncle?"

Honestly we shouldn't be parked here like we were, we'd been planning to go out and help Batman with the plants, but since our first stop was here and one of them was nearby we ended up coming in to check on our moms and there was no way they would let us leave. Still we dropped one of the six or so plant bastards around so I didn't feel too bad staying in. Zee however was in a less desirable situation, stuck in the tower of fate with no clue where her loved ones were. She mad an affirmative sound. "Daddy checked in, Uncle Kent is with the justice bros and Captain Marvel so he should be fine. The biggest threat there is Black Adam and Captain Marvel is the best equipped to deal with him."

I actually wasn't sure what the connection was there, no one had ever explained it to me, but seeing as they dressed in matching outfits with a slightly altered color scheme it made sense there was one. Honestly I knew fuck all about Captain Marvel, he'd kind of showed up on the scene recently. I made a sympathetic noise. "How about you? How are you doing? You must be going stir crazy in the tower. You read a book, or maybe two or three? Add a few new paintings to your gallery?" I immediately knew my joke had worked as she burst into giggles, and I could almost see some of the tension draining from her as she laughed.

Zee and I had gone to see Tangled in theaters recently and we had both fallen in love with the movie. With her living in the tower of fate I had been making Rapunzel references for weeks, and the familiar banter had helped put her at ease. "You're a dork, and now I'll have that song in my head all day. I'm...I hate this Morgan. You, Uncle Kent, Daddy, everyone I love is running around in the middle of a worldwide villain attack and I'm stuck here twiddling my thumbs. I know Uncle Kent means well, but I never want to feel like this again. I never want to feel this weak."

I understood. "I know baby, I get it. But you're overlooking the obvious. Being worried is only natural, but if you want to get stronger you can't do much better than being alone in one of the largest repositories of mystical knowledge on the planet. The only way this doesn't happen again is if you get strong enough that your Uncle Kent doesn't need to worry about you. Put your energy into studying while you're stuck with no supervision." Honestly that was a risky thing to suggest. Zee could go slightly nuts about magic, and unleashing her on Dr. Fake's library might be asking for trouble.

That said, I didn't care. My girlfriend was hurting and scared and if telling her to go do magic to some books helped her feel better then she could blow up Salem for all I cared. She made a noise of realization. "Huh. You're right baby that's a great idea! I have so many books in here I could be looking into. Hell I could even sneak some out to share. Some of them are under lock and key because they're dangerous but I have access to a ton of different magical texts, I mean gods just last week I was research tantric ma-" She stopped, clearly having not meant to say that and cleared her throat. "Good idea is all I meant to say."

I grinned to myself at the idea of my sweet blushing girlfriend trying to comb through a tantric sex magic primer. Zee could be bold during our alone time but she was still a sheltered little princess when it came to hearing or talking about anything sexual outside the bedroom. I was surprised her head didn't burst into flames from the blushing, but I made a mental note to absolutely go over her research with her. "Well I'm glad I could help. I'm going to let you get to your studying baby. I love you and I know everything will be ok. Call me with updates ok love?" She promised she would and said she loved me and we hung up, the knot in my heart easing slightly. Seemed like this crazy day might almost be over.

The injustice league incident is over now, but I kept them out of the swamp fight because I want the team to walk their own path. Meanwhile in the advance chapters our boy gets his base, and we see a bit of basebuilding going into the next arc because boy will they need it. /malcolmtent has the advance chapters, so let me know what you think.