Chapter 52: This is why I hate Magic!
Disclaimer: All things Supergirl/Superman belong to DC. No infringement is intended.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Las Vegas is proud to present the master of magic, the wizard beyond compare, the amazing JOHN ZATARAAAAAAA!"
The audience erupted into thunderous applause as a man dressed in an old-fashioned tux, complete with top hat and coat tails, appeared in an explosion of smoke and light, taking a deep bow. He gave a brief speech about the wonders of magic and illusion and how nothing would be as it seemed tonight.
Kara barely listened, instead watching Kona beside her. The young girl was amazed at the glittering lights and pageantry of Las Vegas and enjoyed every single minute of it. It had been Martha's idea, actually, reminding Kara of a road trip that the two Kent women had taken when Kara had still been a teenager in order to bond and show Kara more of the world. Now Kara was doing the same thing with Kona, and thankfully Clark had been all for it, though Kara suspected he just wanted to go and hang out with Wally again.
Anyway, Kona had been a bit hesitant at first to leave the sheltered tranquility of Smallville behind, still not quite over the worry that someone would stick her back in a cage again. It was good for her to see more of the world, though, and instead of flying, they had taken a car and simply headed towards the open road.
The stay in Las Vegas had been Bruce's idea and he had supplied the two of them with reservations in a luxury suite, as well as tickets to this show. Giovanni "John" Zatara was an old family friend of the Waynes, it seemed, and Bruce had even stayed with him for a while during his own trip across the world, learning about escape techniques and sleight of hand from a master of the craft.
Hearing and seeing Kona's amazement at the stage show, Kara was happy that they had decided to do this. Kona was settling nicely into the Kent home, but it would still take some time for her to let her guard down completely and accept that she was part of a family now. Right now, though, she was just a kid having a great time, which made Kara very happy.
"A big applause for my lovely assistant and daughter, the amazing Zatanna!"
Kara looked up as Zatara introduced his daughter to the stage. The girl seemed to be about Kona's (apparent) age and was dressed in a miniature version of her father's costume, the top hat almost larger than her head. Despite her youth, she moved with the practiced ease of a stage professional and gracefully assisted her father in some of his tricks.
"How is he doing that?" Kona asked, amazed, after Zatara disappeared from a locked box, only to reappear on the other side of the stage in a burst of smoke. "Can you see how he is doing that with your X-Ray vision?"
Kara shrugged, smiling. "I could, but that would be cheating."
Kona huffed a bit, clearly still irked that she was still lacking the vision-related powers of her mother and brother. Her other senses were every bit as enhanced as those of the full-blooded Kryptonians, but her eyes seemed to be the exception for some reason.
"Isn't it more fun to pretend that it's magic?" Kara asked her, giving her a side hug.
"Didn't you tell me that magic is actually real?"
"Oh, it is," Kara nodded, clearly remembering her encounter with Mordru the Merciless, never mind that one time Diana had proven to her that her Golden Lasso of Truth was truly unbreakable and did indeed force one to speak the truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how embarrassing. "But this here is just a show, Kona. Illusion, distraction, and trickery, woven together into an amazing display."
The two of them kept watching as the show went on, amazed at the spectacle Zatara was putting on. Suddenly, though, most of the lights in the hall went out and an eerie red light spread to encompass the stage.
"ZATARA!" a gravelly voice rang out across the hall. "I have found you at last!"
With a flash of light a third person suddenly appeared on stage. It appeared to be an older man, at least judging by his white beard, and he was dressed in a dark cloak with a hood. The hood had... were those horns?
"Wow," Kona whispered. "He's really pulling out all the stops for the grand finale!"
Kara frowned. Was this really part of the show? There was a creepy sensation on her skin and from what she could see, Zatara had lost the charming smile that had been on his face during the entire show.
Giovannia Zatara, John to his friends, had wanted to be a stage magician as far back as he could remember. He had started training under the tutelage of his grandfather as a kid, but it hadn't been until his early adulthood that he had figured out that he was capable of working actual magic.
Zatara was a Homo Magi, a human with a rare genetic quirk that allowed him to access the exotic energies that comprised magic. Very few people had it and even fewer people ever discovered they had it. He had stumbled upon it by accident himself and it had taken him years to perfect his control of magic.
Zatara was not a humble man, he freely admitted to himself, so he did not give up the glitz and glamour of the stage, quite the contrary. He became one of the most celebrated stage sorcerers and illusionists in the world, though he was always very careful never to perform actual magic on stage. Instead, between shows, he used his magical powers to protect people from those threats that hid in the shadowed corners of the world.
Fifteen years ago, he had nearly died doing just that. A magical duel in Turkey with a sorcerer calling himself King Inferno (which would have been too corny a name even in Las Vegas, he figured) had left him near-death. Until today, he had assumed that his opponent had actually perished in that battle, but it appeared he had been wrong.
"ZATARA!" King Inferno growled upon materializing on stage. "I have found you at last!"
"Zatanna, go behind the stage and hide," he told his daughter without ever taking his eyes of his opponent.
"But dad, I can...", she started to say.
"DO AS I SAY!" he thundered. Zatanna had inherited his talent for sorcery (as well as that of her mother), and he was certain that she would one day easily eclipse his own prowess in the realm of magic, but that day wasn't here yet.
"I have waited fifteen years for my vengeance," King Inferno hissed, slowly stalking closer. Eldritch flames were gathered in his hands, twisting into horrific, monstrous shapes over and over again. Zatara had been burned by those flames before and had no desire to repeat the experience.
"I wasn't exactly hiding," he replied with a calm he didn't feel. "I'm here three nights a week. What kept you?"
Instead of answering, King Inferno threw a ball of flame. Not at him, though, but rather in the direction of the watching people. Reacting quickly, Zatara threw out his hand and yelled "Ecneidua eht Tcetorp!". A shimmering curtain of energy came down between the stage and the rest of the hall, King Inferno's fireball splashing harmlessly against it. The audience applauded, clearly thinking all of this part of the show.
A second fireball came at Zatara this time. The magician quickly ducked, intending to preserve his strength as best he could. Inferno would no doubt target the audience again the moment he no longer protected them. The whole venue put Zatara at a distinct disadvantage, but there was no helping it. He did not intend to let any innocents perish.
"Today I will feed your soul to the pit," Inferno growled, approaching.
One minute into the fight, Kara knew that she was not watching a show. Despite her earlier words to Kona, she had indeed resorted to using her X-Ray vision and could clearly see that there were no wires, no hidden explosives, no conceivable source of the flames and lights the two magicians were currently throwing at each other. In addition, there was that tingling on her skin, the one she had come to associate with magic.
Rao, she hated magic!
"Kona, stay here," she said, rising out of her seat.
"What?" the girl asked, looking at her. "Where are you going? You'll miss the best part of the show!"
"This is no show, Kona," she replied. "This is real. I'm going to see whether I can help Zatara."
Kona began to rise out of her seat, too, but Kara stopped her in her tracks. "I said stay here! Our powers don't protect us against magic, Kona! You're vulnerable. It's too dangerous!"
"But... but that means you're vulnerable, too!" Kona said, looking worried.
"I've faced real magicians before, I can handle myself. Stay! Here!"
Not waiting to see whether her daughter obeyed, Kara quickly left the hall and dashed through several corridors at super speed. If possible, she wanted to avoid Superwoman being spotted in this building, seeing as Karen Kent's name would be on the list of attendees. Well, she had spent over a year being an unseen guardian angel before debuting as Superwoman, time to see whether she still had it.
Super speed took her backstage within moments and she clung to the shadows, peeking out at the battle going on between the two sorcerers. Even a casual look quickly revealed who was the bad guy in this confrontation. The guy with the horned hood was flinging flames and lightning every which way, including in the direction of the audience. Zatara was clearly on the defensive, busy shielding the spectators even as he tried not to get hit himself.
Kara had learned her lesson when it came to battling sorcerers during her time with the Legion of Superheroes. The force field around her body, the source of her invulnerability, didn't work against magical attacks, but that didn't mean she was helpless. She was still super-fast, super-strong, and had heat vision at her disposal.
Waiting for an opportune moment, she finally let loose with a blast of heat vision when the horned hood guy was busy recharging his fire balls. The searing red beams stopped half a foot away from him, though, fizzling out against an unseen barrier surrounding him.
"I hate magic," Kara muttered.
"Ah, so you have friends helping you, Zatara?" horned hood guy growled. "They will not save you!"
He gestured and suddenly the floor under Kara's feet came alive. She jumped upwards, intending to fly out of range, but the wooden planks of the stage had become some kind of tentacles and wrapped around her legs with a speed that rivalled her own. She let loose another blast of heat vision, severing several of them, but immediately more of them appeared.
"I really, really hate magic," she cursed, trying to keep herself from being wrapped up completely, even as the battle of the two magicians continued unabated.
Kona waited all of three seconds before she jumped up from her seat to follow Kara. There were still many things in her young life she was deeply uncertain about. There were two things, though, that were not on that list: one, she had super powers, so it was her responsibility to help people. And two, she had just found a family, she would not abandon it. So she sped after Kara (she still had trouble calling her 'mom', even in her own mind), making sure to stay far enough back to go unnoticed (she hoped).
When she made it backstage, she froze, seeing Kara fighting against some weird-looking tentacles that seemed to grow right out of the wooden floor. The two sorcerers were still throwing thunder and lightning at each other, seemingly paying no attention to anyone else. Her first instinct was to rush the bad guy with super speed, but she hesitated. If he had managed to get the drop on Kara, who was so much more experienced with her powers than her...
"Who are you?" someone hissed beside her, causing Kona to jump with an embarrassing little 'eek' sound. Looking to the side, there was no one there.
"Huh? Who said that?"
"Elbisiv emoceb," the same voice said and a moment later a dark-haired girl shimmered into visibility beside her. It was the girl she had seen on stage earlier, the daughter of Zatara.
"Wow, how did you do that?" Kona asked. Not even her enhanced senses had noticed anything. "Wait, let me guess: magic!"
"I asked who you are," the girl said, sounding angry and frightened in equal measures. "If you're here to help King Inferno..."
"King Inferno? Really?" Kona asked. "Wow, that's so… anyway, no, my... my mom and I were in the audience and wanted to help."
The girl – Zatanna, had that been her name? – looked over to where Kara was still just managing to stay ahead of the evil tentacle trap. It didn't look like she would get free anytime soon and Kona was torn between wanting to help her and taking out the bad guy.
"She's your mom?" Zatanna said, lowering her voice to a whisper. "Is she... I mean, I saw her shoot beams from her eyes, so... is she…?"
Kona groaned. So much for anonymity. This whole secret identity thing was a lot harder than it looked. "She's here to help, just like me. But... magic is not really our specialty, you know?"
The girl looked over to where her father was still fighting the bad guy, biting her lip in worry and fear. Zatara was holding his own, but not getting much of an offence in. "Dad told me to run away, but..."
"Yeah, she told me to stay behind, too," Kona said, gesturing towards Kara. "But here we are, so what can we do to help?"
The girl looked down, concentrating, even as Kona was trying her best not to fidget with impatience. "Okay, dad explained this to me. All mages need some method of focusing their magic, either an object or some kind of mantra. Dad and I use Logomancy, but King Inferno doesn't seem to speak when unleashing his spells, so he must be using some other focusing method, like a staff or wand. I can't see him carrying anything, either, though."
Kona had no idea what Logomancy was, but she focused her enhanced senses on King Inferno. Zatanna was right, he had nothing in the way of objects on him except for his hood and cape. When he threw yet another fire ball at Zatara, though, she caught the tiniest of movements behind him. A moment later she saw it again, a short flash of light hailing from the floor further back and behind him. Focusing her eyes, she saw that something had been painted on the floor near the rearmost entrance to backstage, all the way on the other side from them.
"There is something painted onto the floor behind him," Kona told Zatanna. "Can't see it properly, the angle is too steep."
Zatanna briefly mused this over before nodding. "Could be he is using some kind of arcane symbol to channel his power, or at least augment it. We should try taking it out, it might weaken him at the very least."
She rose to her full height (which wasn't much, to be honest, even with the heels she was wearing as part of her outfit), held out her hand and shouted "Lobmys eht yortsed!" An impressive-looking bolt of light flew from her hand and towards the point where Kona had spotted the symbol. Unfortunately, the bolt impacted against some kind of barrier several feet short of the target.
"Blast," Zatanna muttered.
"Children trying to help you now, Zatara?" King Inferno growled, clearly having noticed them now.
"Zatanna, I told you to get out!" Zatanna shouted at her, his eyes still focused on his opponent. With a muttered word he blocked a fire ball that had been aimed at the two girls.
"My magic is far greater than yours," Inferno laughed. "None of your paltry tricks will help you!"
Kona narrowed her eyes; she was really getting tired of this guy. Dropping to her knees, she put her hand on the floor and concentrated. Ever since her arrival at the Kent farm, Kara had put her through rigorous training to help her get the most out of her abilities. She still couldn't get the heat vision to work and was beginning to doubt she even had that ability in the first place, but together they had discovered that Kona had another ability that neither Kara nor Clark shared.
It seemed to be an extension or mutation of the energy field that constantly surrounded a powered-up Kryptonian and allowed them to defy gravity and lift enormous objects without tipping over or breaking them apart. In Kona this ability manifested in a form of tactile telekinesis, allowing her to manipulate things as long as she was in contact with them. Kara theorized that Kona might well develop into having full-blown telekinetic powers one day, but so far she could really do just one thing with it.
The symbol was all the way over on the other end of the stage, protected by some kind of energy field, but it was on the same floor that Kona was touching right now. Pushing her power, she caused a ripple that travelled along the stage like a wave over a still ocean. Floor boards broke and exploded upwards, wood splinters flew every which way, and when the ripple finally reached the spot where King Inferno's symbol was, it exploded upwards like a miniature volcano.
The fire surrounding King Inferno's hands suddenly winked out and the bearded sorcerer stumbled, clearly taken off guard. The tentacles that had threatened to overwhelm Kara transformed back into mere wood, clattering to the floor, leaving a very pissed-off looking woman behind.
"That was so awesome," Zatanna said excitedly, clapping Kona on the shoulder.
"Having problems, old chum?" Zatara smirked, approaching his clearly weakened foe.
"Curse you, Zatara," the other sorcerer growled. "You haven't seen the last of me!"
An explosion of smoke obscured him from view and a heartbeat later he was gone. The audience was stunned into silence for a long moment, only to explode into cheering and applause. Zatara, apparently never one to miss a beat on stage, quickly turned towards his audience and took a bow, Zatanna quickly scrambling forward to bow beside him. Kona and Kara faded into the shadows.
"That was a terrible risk you took, young lady," Zatara scolded his daughter.
"I distinctly remember telling you to stay where you were," Kara reprimanded her daughter.
"I'm sorry," Zatanna and Kona said almost at the same time, near-identical looks of contrition on their faces.
Kara and Zatara's eyes met over the heads of their daughters, sharing a look every long-suffering parent of teenagers would recognize.
"Well, they did help save the day," Zatara admitted.
"They did," Kara reluctantly agreed. Looking down at Kona, she added "and excellent use of your powers, too. I'm proud of you."
Zatara cleared his throat. "Well, I think we can all agree that, at no point during tonight's excellent show, any actual magic was performed and no world-renowned superheroine showed up to help out, either. Correct?"
"Certainly not," Kara nodded vigorously. She made a mental note to super-speed into the ticket booth on her way out and erase their names from the computer, just to be on the safe side.
"Excellent," Zatara clapped his hands, making a bouquet of flowers appear. "In that case, will these three lovely ladies grant me the pleasure to invite them to a most fabulous Las Vegas dinner? My treat, of course."
Kara sighed, though with a smile on her face. She would have preferred to leave Las Vegas behind as quickly as possible, but saw that Kona was already deep into conversation with Zatanna. The two girls seemed to have hit it off instantly. She didn't have the heart to tear Kona away from the very first friend she seemed to have made.
"I really hate magic," she muttered, accepting the flowers and putting her hand into the offered crook of Zatara's arm, two chattering girls trailing behind them.
End Chapter 52
Author's Note: Well, we now have four teenagers with super powers in this story. How long until the first official gathering of the Teen Titans? You'll have to wait and see. I kind of like the family dynamic of the Zataras and Giovanni "John" Zatara having been one of Batman's teachers is canon. Zatanna was, at the time she joined up, the youngest member of the Justice League, so she should probably be younger still at this point in the timeline, but I wanted to introduce a friend for Kona (Kara has Diana, Clark has Wally) and Zatanna was the first heroine that came to mind.
King Inferno is also a canon DC character, but I think he appeared but once in a flashback and was never given more than "evil sorcerer, foe of Zatara" as a character description, so he was pretty much a blank canvas for me. The rule of Homo Magi needing some kind of focusing tool or method is not canon to my knowledge, but rather something I wanted to introduce as a natural limitation for magic users. As for my portrayal of Zatara, to me he is basically Mandrake the Magician from the "Defenders of the Earth" cartoon.