"Mmm…Zatanna. You said that Dr. Fate is in the team with us but where's he?"
13 asks her mentor.
"I don't know but he will show up eventually. He must be gathering information on his end before meeting us"
"And what are we doing in Central City?"
Kaldur wasn't sure what they could find in Flash' city.
"Robin said that there was someone here that could help us and we are here to recruit him"
"In a high school? Who are we looking for?"
"Marcus Sun. He just moved into this school a couple of days back. His parents change jobs a lot so he doesn't have time to settle in correctly but Batman and Robin crossed path some time ago"
"And what's special about him?"
As of cue, they see a monkey riding a cloud.
"That must be him. Etativel!"
Zatanna flies alongside her sentinels and puts herself in front of the young hero.
"Monkey Prince. I'm Zatanna"
The young boy goes brain dead watching Zatanna up close.
"I-I-I know who you are. I'm Marcus Prince…I mean Monkey Sun"
The sentinels laughs at the boy's reaction.
"Yeah. I know, Robin told me about you and I could use your help"
The monkey starts jumping in excitement before controlling himself.
"Sure. Whatever you need, I'm in. Who's ass are we going to kick?"
"I will tell you later but there's more recruitment to do"
"Why? I'm more than enough to fight whoever we are against. This little staff is the legendary Ru Yi Bang, weights over a tone and gets as bigger as needed. I can crush anyone with this"
Marcus show cases his mastery with the staff.
"Sure but wouldn't you like to meet Dracula's son?"
Seeing that the only thing bigger than the magic staff is his ego. Zatanna plays her cards and distracts him with the opportunity of meeting someone as mysterious as Alucard.
"I always say the more, the merrier"
"Why are we here? I thought we where going to Dracula's castle"
Mary wasn't sure what they were doing in Harlem.
"Coming for someone you should know…"
"Nimue isn't here"
A tall and pale male approaches them.
"Alucard! So good to see you after this we were going to your place"
The magician hugs the half vampire.
"It's a pleasure to see you as well. How's Dick?"
"The same as always"
"That bad, huh?"
Zatanna and Alucard laughs.
"Y-y-you are…you are THE ALUCARD. I'm the Monkey Prince"
Marcus was shocked to meet the vampire.
"Just Alucard. Without THE…Hi, Traci, Leroy, Khalid, Mary and Monkey Prince"
The sentinels greet the man.
"What was that about Nimue not being here?"
The backwards speaker remembers Tepes' words.
"Just like you, I sense the change on the air and start digging about what could've possibly caused it. The night creatures are going wild and are really hungry…a lot of persons might want to take this opportunity to bring my father back to life. I was about to call you but your chaotic brother in law and his crew show up at my door step and fill me in"
"And you came here to meet us halfway"
Adrian nods at Khalid's comment.
"But Xanadu isn't here and I don't have any idea where she might be…the same with Jason Blood, I call him using the mirrors but he didn't answer me"
"You call him? Using a mirror? A vampire?"
Trace nudges at Mary for her comment.
"Sorry, sorry. I didn't meant to be rude"
"Don't worry. It's a special mirror, it works like a video call but with magic instead of technology. Zatanna. We are going to have to deal with this ourselves"
As of cue, the ankh of Fate appears in front of them and with it, Nabu himself.
"Child of magic!"
"Nice timing. What do you know about this?"
Everyone feels the tension between the two.
"Hey! Trace, was it?"
Marcus whispers to the magician.
"Yeah. What is it?"
"What's between these two? I thought everyone on the League were friend or something like that"
"That's something really complicated with Dr. Fate"
"There's nothing complicated with him. He has my father as a hostage and just allows me to see him once a year for one hour"
Zee spits venom with her words.
"You know that Fate must maintain the balance and-"
"Sorry for interrupting Dr. Fate but the time isn't in our side and we need to keep moving"
Alucard tries to stop the argument before it could get worse.
"Fine but you must follow my lead. Are we clear?"
"Sorry but that won't work. She recruited me and I'm going to follow her lead"
The Monkey Prince puts his foot down and glares at the Lord of Order.
"Same here. I came here to save the world but I just follow Zatanna's lead"
Dracula's son tells the lord of Order. Fate glares at the young magicians.
"She's our mentor. We do what she says"
"This is my team, Nabu. Wether you liked or not, you are going to follow my LEAD"
Nabu growls before taking the Sentinels to the next location.
"This place is bananas…you get it? Bananas?"
Trace was the only one that smiled at Marcus' joke.
"We are in the Library of Babel. Every book ever written is here and everyone's book as well"
Alucard recognizes the place from his father's books.
"What do you mean by everyone's book? I haven't even write my essay"
Nabu growls at the Monkey's remark.
"Your life story is being written in these books…some of them have a glimpse of your future but it's for the best if you don't look into it"
Alucard warns the team.
"And what are we doing here?"
Marcus asks.
"That's exactly what I want to know! What are you doing here?! In my library! You better go somewhere else, I don't want another incident"
A man in a hurry approaches the heroes.
"Who are you?"
Mary asks.
"Roxas but you can call me the Man of the Book. This is my place, I put order on this place and the last time I got a visitor, he made a mess of it and it took me 2 hours to fix his mess!"
"How did the guy looked like?"
Zatanna steps in front of her Team.
"Mmm…he was a really old man, white hair, beard…good looking too. He found whatever he was after and disappeared"
"I've been here looking for the same as you. You took longer than expected"
A young man in a rag suit comes from the bookshelves.
"Rory? So nice to see you"
Zatanna hugs her friend.
"Nice to see you too. It's been so long"
"And who is this guy?"
Khalid couldn't recognize the man, who didn't look like much, he seemed pretty normal.
"Rory Reagan aka The Ragman"
The sorceress makes the introductions.
"I own Zatanna big time. These rags are magical and get stronger with every soul that it's feed to them and I couldn't control it but she help me to regain my life and now the Rags and I work together"
"So you eat people?"
Marcus enters in fighting stance.
"No, I eat souls but they can be from dead people and stuff. I try not to use the suit as much so I always have some souls of the damned on stand by…in any case I'm glad that you are here. We can find the book faster"
The heroes split and starts looking through different shelves while Nabu stays in one place and meditates trying to weight all the damage that Merlin already caused.
"You kids better put my books back on their place and without a scratch!"
The Man of the Book screams at the intruders. Khalid was working in one shelf when he accidentally knocks a couples of books down.
"What did I tell you?!"
"Sorry!"
The young Egyptian pick ups the books and open his eyes in surprise realizing who the book belonged to. He found Zatanna's book and opened to see if he could find the part of them beating Merlin or his whereabouts but he found something else that shocked him. He decides to place back the book on its place.
"I found it!"
Zatanna was using her magic skills to read multiple books at the same time while walking and talking. The rest of the Team sprints to the magician.
"What did you found? How to beat him? Where he is?"
Trace, Marcus and Mary swarms her with questions.
"Yeah, he's looking for his Knights and he's in the most obvious lo-"
Zatanna stops mid sentence.
"Khalid? Are you alright? Why are you looking at me like that?"
That's when Nassour realizes that he was caught lost in his thoughts staring at the magician.
"Huh? Nothing, I got lost in there for a second…"
He tells a half lie and Zee notices that.
"It's just that I just remember this place from my dreams…and now my dreams feel more like a premonition"
"What do you see?"
Dr. Fate breaks his trance and comes closer to Khalid.
"Everything is blurry and I can't focus"
Zatanna places her hand on Khalid's shoulder.
"Don't worry. We will work on that together but first, we need to go wherever the Sword in the Stone is…"