15 Treasure Hunt (1)

Now that my martial art training is underway, I will have to prepare some things if I want to learn magic.

The Magic system of DC Multiverse is very complicated, keeping aside its origin, the way to practice it is more tribal or voodoo.

You need a magical source in the form of artifacts, pacts with higher beings or talent to use the surrounding mystical energy. The higher the mystical energy, the easier it is to cast magic.

The pacts with higher beings always end badly, as the best case scenario is that they keep it as an equivalent exchange. For the amount of magic, given equivalent price must be paid, whatever it is.

Worst case you are tricked by the contract you signed and are forced to become that being's slave for eternity.

Artifacts mostly make you corrupt or mind control you, in extreme cases there are living souls trapped within it, who will take over your body with your soul in their hands.

You are born with talent, but you can also acquire it through technology, or by inserting blood of a magically potent being. Each method has its own cost.

There are easier ways to acquire magic like gaining the power of 6 Gods, and becoming Shazam, but it needs specific requirements, including race and morality.

Even if I do acquire a source, I will have to find someone who can teach me and thus choose the magical path I would take.

Most of the magicians on earth won't teach you if they find out that you are an alien, and the rest use black or chaos magic, which I don't wanna dab into.

Some of the most famous users of magic in the comics like Constantine are still kids.

What I want to learn is Order magic, which is still considered very dangerous to the soul if used wrong. Specifically Legomancy or Backward magic.

It literally means to speak words backwards, it's the simplest and the most versatile magic but if it is miscast then it can threaten the objective reality.

And the best user of legomancy is the famous magician John Zatara, real name Giovanni Zatara who is also a real mystic art user.

There is another reason why I chose him, his daughter who would be around my age is Zatanna Zatara. She will go on to become one of the most powerful magicians in the DC verse and a member of my Justice League.

But I know that John would not accept to teach me readily, and so I have to go on a treasure hunt.

You can say that my body is weak to magic, but almost all non magic users in DC are weak to the unnatural force that is magic.

So I would be needing things which could effectively negate magic. There are many of such things scattered on this planet earth at this timeline but few of them I can use without any training and fewer without any price.

Instead of going back home from Detroit, I flew to Gotham city.

I went straight to the top floor of an old building, dropped down on the balcony and knocked on the glass door.

"So Superboy did you miss me, or you came to lecture me again?" Selina, still wearing the same black jacket and tight leather pants opened the glass door.

"For how long are you gonna live in someone else's abandoned house Selina … Look I know you are smart and I know you don't wanna spend the rest of your life as a thief, why don't you just let me help you." Now 14 her body has started getting quite in shape and those leather clothes, ughh why am I still 10.

"Ok shut up and just come inside." She massages her temple and proceeds to drag me inside the apartment, I close the door behind.

Over the course of 2 years, we have grown quite close. She told me all about how her childhood went. Her brutalised mother committed suicide and her violent father drank himself to death soon after.

She and her younger sister Maggie were separated in the juvenile center, which was an abusive state home for delinquent girls. She escaped that place and was caught pickpocketing outside a Carnival in Gotham.

She learned all her skills in her time at the Carnival and when its owner died in an accident, she decided to live independently in Gotham.

I found Maggie, her sister who was adopted into a family in Gotham. After confirming with her own eyes that her sister was living happily among her new parents, she chose not to meet her.

That night she cried in my arms and kissed me deeply asking me to never to leave her alone, after I promised she would fall asleep exhausted.

She bounced on the sofa among her 2-3 cats stretching lazily, "So did you come by just to nag me? … Or maybe you wanna meet my friend we talked about?" She asked me strangely excited about the meeting.

I looked around to see the increasing number of cats which surely she brings from all over Gotham,"Nope, I wanted to go and steal something tonight, as it's nearby I thought to invite you … so you in?"