"Come on mom! He said there were teeth and eyes and…"

Sindella internally sighed, STOPPED rushing towards the library, and turned to comfort her daughter. "Sweety, dear, my darling baby girl… Hush."

"BUT!"

"Shh!" She gently gripped the girl's shoulders, over the pouch bag her daughter was holding with her unborn dinosaur familiar. "Calm down. Center yourself. Try and be logical about this… Now, why are we rushing?"

Zatanna was vibrating with anxiety! "Because John said there were things LICKING our house and…"

She held up her hand. "That is why YOU are rushing, yes. But there are larger concerns here, one of which is the cause of my OWN urgency."

Interrupting her child before she could get started: "Calm. Peace. Think, THEN act: What do we know about the situation?"

Zatanna tried to not yell in frustration. "John said that he felt everything was 'icky' because of the things outside, but I can't…"

Sindella gently gripped her girl's shoulders. "Was he scared?"

That actually brought her little girl to a stop. "Huh?"

She smiled slightly. "Was John scared? Did he look concerned, or worried, or frantic?"

Zatanna looked more than a little stunned. "I… No?"

Just as she thought. "Then we don't need to worry about being attacked or invaded most likely… And honestly, as I believe these are spiritual entities of divine origin, Shadowcrest has been able to easily resist such things for decades now."

…Which made her start 'speed walking' towards the section of the library that her daughter said John was last 'shelved' on. "That said, while whatever is outside isn't actually that concerning at the moment… John's REACTION to those things is another matter entirely."

Zatanna blinked even as she kept up the pace. "What do you mean?"

Sindella snorted. "That boy found a location unknown, shattered his own ability to interact with time and space, defied tainted energies considered unstoppable, opened a box intended to be immutable and used to coerce our family for your return, and brought you to my arms all within a few hours or less… And that doesn't even bring into consideration what he accomplished while treating me as well."

They turned down another shifting row of bookshelves as her daughter struggled to process all that. "You mean when he was healing you?"

If only. "John didn't heal me, for I was unhealable. He somehow preserved my Soul, Crafted a new Body entirely from almost nothing that was MORE compatible to me than the one I was BORN with, then merged my existence back together beyond perfectly in moments WITHOUT USING MAGIC."

Which was only MORE concerning the longer you think about it. "So, to sum this up: Why are we rushing towards John? To make sure he DOESN'T overreact to whatever he's seeing before anything…"

[[Eh crytufc taab, frana calnadc mea… Y cbyng uv sykel cdyndc du vmo.]]

"WAIT! COME BACK! I NEED TO R̬̩Ḛ̷̬̙̯́Ś̷̭̦͕̼̯̳̮ͅE̛̠͙͈̤͔͉A̠̤̜͎̫͓̮̖Ŗ̺̪͔͚̳͈̥̖͔͘͝C̝̮̹̱̀H̶̡̡̖̬̠̻̻̺ͅ YOU!"

Oh dear. They should have run faster… "JOHN!? IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT!?"

[[Ed tyhlac, kmaysc, y fuhtnuic cekrd! Emmisehydehk dra tyngacd hekrd.]]

"STOP! SLOW DOWN… Huh? AH! SINDELLA DEAR, CATCH IT!"

And suddenly a [[Spark]] of M̸̵̲̹͟á̬̘̭͟ǵ̝͇̪̲̤͓̠̲̙͟͝í̘̹̮c̰̘̥̹̘ was flashing towards her face and…

Ting!

As if time stood still, Sindella felt the world freeze as a tiny fleck of light, almost too small to even see, gently floated around her. Past, towards her daughter. Drifting, flying, singing, dancing…

But for good or for ill, the mote of power ignored her little girl as well.

Mostly.

Until it found the egg.

Then they touched and…

[[From darkness to light, a World reborn…]]

The egg softly glowed a soft pink within Zatanna's shocked arms.

…Then John slid into the same aisle, breathing heavily! "DID EITHER OF YOU SEE IT COME THIS WAY!?"

The egg seemed to chime in laughter, drawing John's attention to it.

And the boy slumped. "Damn it, that's just… That's just cheating!"

Just… Why? Why, John? "I think we should all have some snacks and some tea. Then perhaps John could explain…" Ugh. "...Whatever just happened. Yes? Yes. John, please join us. Come along dear, I'm sure we could all use a bit of time to calm down a little."

Behind her she could hear her daughter whispering with concern to her glowing egg, which now seemed far too pink and smug for something that wasn't even born yet.

Sigh.

~~~Pocket System~~~

John awkwardly sipped his drink.

It was nice. "This tea is lovely, Sindella Dear."

Zatanna grumbled for some reason, but didn't actually complain.

The woman smiled. "Thank you John, it's one of my favorite blends. And again, feel free to have some of the small sandwiches… I personally enjoy the cream cheese and cucumber ones."

…Alright.

Om nom nom.

Slurp.

"So… John."

Hmm? "Yes, Sindella Dear?"

Another odd noise from his friend hugging her dino egg for some reason, but whatever.

The woman had a serious expression this time. "Could we talk a little about the… Events we just went through? That… That [[Spark]]? The one that is making my daughter's egg glow."

He glanced over at the pink smug egg in his friend's arms. "Well, uh…" Where to start?

Eating his first Magical construction? The endless testing of spells and raw Magic and such? His odd relationship with reality and how it influenced his testing methodology? The attempt at establishing a universal baseline of what defined Magic between all Realms and realities? Pretending to be a book?

Or should he focus on the teeth/eye/tongue things that caused him to avoid conversation and dive into all this recent research in the first place?

Best go high level and then answer any questions they have, honestly. It would hopefully be less confusing that way, if John was lucky. "Right, you know that I travel a lot?"

She nodded.

Good. John began to absently Craft charts and graphs and data with sheets of cardboard and prop them up to one side as visual aids. "So… I realized that despite being able to use most of the spells and stuff that you shared with me, there was a problem."

He pointed at some re-evaluated data scans from prior Realms. "Not every Realm contains the same frameworks of magic or spellwork. Sure, they all are related to the overarching core of Magic, but even when reinforced with Concepts and Lore and Faith and stuff? Well, every Realm, every reality? They do their own thing."

Which was STILL annoying! "Oh, there is tons of overlap and duplication and echos of familiarity and simultaneous spontaneous similarities and stuff, but basically? Each Realm has its own local accent or dialect of magic that comes from some grander thing, M̗á͕̟̳͉g͔͓̣̤̯̖i̳c."

The boy missed both of his tea party companions flinching.

John nibbled at his sandwich. "Obviously I COULD research local spells and stuff every time I travel somewhere new… But that would mean that anything I learned would be useless later on. I would have no common base to build off of, and any advancements would be shallow and then discarded with the next step of the journey."

Which, clearly, was unacceptable. "So INSTEAD, after getting into the mind of how a spell book would consider the issue, I thought it would be best to define and research all this mess from basic principles. The original core of M̗á͕̟̳͉g͔͓̣̤̯̖i̳c…"

He paused, seeing Sindella wince? "...or at least my best interpretation of such a thing, and how it interacts with everything else."

Yes, that was physical pain… Clearly both women's magical nature allowed them to hear just a touch too much when he used the True Meaning of certain words.

Thankfully he noticed before anyone started bleeding or worse this time. Progress!

Hmm… Best avoid speaking raw Concepts entirely for a while then. "So instead of just memorizing all the books in your library and calling it a day, I've had my sister's agents document it all for future reference while I've been attempting to investigate the M-word more directly."

Ha! Not even a problem! This was too easy, really. "So I took the most basic spell framework I could find, carved it down until it was nearly unfunctional, added as many non-physical catalysts and boosting effects as I had available, and carefully avoided as many penalties, demerits, and efficiency problems as possible to cast THAT!"

John pointed at the egg. "A [[Spark]] of actual M-word! So pure, so untouched, so untainted… It doesn't even require local reality to exist, it needs no environment for stability, even time is optional!"

Then his arm fell as he slumped, going for another nibble on his sandwich. "I was planning to study it, and observe how it interacted with the Realm to create a very rough translation framework that my Pocket modules could use to sort of act as a middle layer, a shim or conversion tool."

Not that it had worked out like he had planned, because why WOULD things work out on the first try? Damn it. "But I made one big mistake: I've already researched this world's local M-word dialect BEFORE casting [[Spark]]."

He took another bite in frustration. "So instead of fighting against all of reality, and observing existence itself interact with the [[Spark]] itself forged through my struggles and careful calculations… I whiffed."

Damn it all, this was so embarrassing! "It's like trying to tackle a massive boulder only to realize it was a balloon! It was easy, TOO easy! All that power and effort I shoved into forcing this single [[Spark]] to exist was no longer needed to brute force the casting, because I had ALREADY ADAPTED TO LOCAL MAGIC!"

He glared at the glowing egg, which was ACTUALLY taunting him with smugness. Somehow. "So instead? All that raw potential sort of gave the stupid thing self autonomy. Not actual intelligence or a Soul or whatever, but the ability to make decisions and choices and stuff."

Which all the PRIOR research said was impossible, but whatever. "Then it began playing tag or keep away or something, it's honestly hard to tell when the [[Spark]] can't actually talk or think or whatever, and I'm pretty sure it just decided to wander away. And now it's being born."

That caught the attention of BOTH mother and daughter!

Zatanna was still holding the little egg brat. "What do you… Is my familiar alright!? Will this hurt…?"

John huffed. "I think technically the baby dinosaur will be like, THE Avatar of Magic for this Realm. Or at least a prophet for the concept indirectly?"

His friend stared at him. "...I am going to go take a nap. Maybe this will make more sense later, or… Or something." She stood slowly, still hugging the egg.

Then she left with the unborn pink egg containing the future magical dino messiah, leaving just John and Sindella Dear to enjoy the tea snacks.

…Damn it. "I probably should apologize to her or something, right?" Was there a card for 'Oops I just magiced your dino' already in his Pocket somewhere?

Sindella Dear sighed. "Learning how to adapt to impossible and unexpected events is just… Part of growing up, really. I still remember how odd it was when I met versions of our favorite heroes from another reality where we were all super-powered gunslingers, marshals and frontiersmen. Cowboy magic was ODD magic, believe you me…"

She sipped her tea, then looked at John with a side eye. "That aside, I was under the impress that you had people on your side overviewing your magical research? The agents, you mentioned your sister, etc? Did none of them catch onto this issue when you were attempting to cast [[Spark]] initially?"

This time it was JOHN flinching. "Well, they've been working hard, and I don't really need to sleep like they do, but they wanted to support this because my sister was really fascinated by M-word stuff too like I am…"

He slumped in his chair. "Both Grace and my sister are currently asleep. As for Temptation…"

John glanced at the data feed…

[[Temptation: THAT WAS SO COOL! DO IT AGAIN! No, wait, let me make sure all the data sensors are actually recording this time, give me a bit…]]

He sighed. "Well, she also thought it was a great idea? Probably?" Oh yeah! "Plus we DID get some awesome data for the project! Now I should KNOW if my new spells are about to explosively collapse or fracture into cascading duplicates or, you know, basically shift towards being alive!"

The magical woman just raised an eyebrow. "And do you believe that your sister will be equally as thrilled with your actions when she wakes up and discovers all this?"

…No. "Maybe?"

Sindella Dear gave him a small knowing smile. "I've seen that look before on MY little girl… Guilty conscience, hmm?"

He slid back into his chair, defeated. "I blame my Body being messed up temporarily. That and all the new security modules making it REALLY hard to stabilize my emotions and hormones… I've been VERY impulsive recently. More so than usual."

And she was serious once again. "Are you alright?"

He nodded, and the mother looked relieved. "Good. Although I did actually have a few more questions… Will the [[Spark]] and my daughter's unborn egg be alright? Will they become twins or merge or…"

John grumbled. "I have no idea! It's why I wanted to BE there when the stupid thing decided to interact with something! And it only JUST escaped me by a hair's breadth on PURPOSE! If I had been only slightly faster or if it had taken only a MOMENT longer…"

Something unseen in the distance twinkled… "I CAN STILL HEAR YOU MOCKING ME!" Stupid mote of raw potential, all smug in that dino egg. "It's lucky I didn't find some way to spank the mischievous thing… Maybe I should make a magical spanking spell?"

Zatanna's mom was pouring herself another cup of tea. "Should be two rows that way, fourth shelf down and five books over."

John blinked. "What?"

Sindella Dear froze with wide eyes. "Oops… Um, nothing?" Then with confidence, she nodded once more. "Nothing."

But didn't she just say? "Two rows?"

Sandwiches were shoved onto his plate. "Eat more, dear. You are far too thin."

Before he could say anything else an egg sandwich was pushed into his mouth.

Mmm! This was pretty amazing… Oh! Roast beef with mustard! Yes please!