[Book 2] Chapter 09: Team Trust (Part 2)
[Clock - 07:06 | 07:06 AM]
[Calendar - 18/06/2010]
[Location - Mount Justice, Happy Harbor, Rhode Island]
---
This is, technically, chapter 69... Nice.
---
3rd Person POV
Through the entire 10 days from the 8th of July to the 18th of July, Adam was messing with Wally.
It started with him putting rainbow stickers on his Kid Flash suit, which he only found out because he and Megan were talking about a few aspects of the culture of their homes and Adam explained to her that Pride Month is something that iis very important for the people of Beastialis, because it is a month where the suppressed, dejected, and thrown away are celebrated, and those who have been lost are remembered! He also explained that since humans aren't shapeshifters, they have to do cirgury to change their physical genders appearance, which is free on Beastialis alongside a few other procedures that he did not explain nor told her about. She then saw Kid Flash walk (rare sight) by them and saw the rainbow sticker on his clothes, which Adamm had told her was the Pride Flag. So Megan asked Wally about his sexuality and was so proud of him for coming out on the month of pride.
And you know straight teenage boys. The security in their sexuality is as thin as hair, so Wally literally screamed: "What!? I'm not gay!" which had Adam snickering and laughing. He lifted a hand and inches above it, a spectral hand appeared- this was the most basic cantrip that he had to spend and entire month to learn, the [Mage Hand] cantrip. It tookk him a whole year before he could manipulate it as easy as the Empress can, but now he can use it like his own hand! He then went on to explain to Megan about the Flumphs-
"Oh, so they're like G-Gnomes!"
-and Wally was still there.
"G what now?" Adam lifted his eyebrows. Flumphs were brought into this world by the Empress after he returned from the Underdark in the Middledark areas of the plane. In fact, now that he thinks about it, he is a bit bummed that he'll probably lose the next expedition to the Elemental Plane of Air, or the Boundless Blue as it is called. "Sound like something out of a sci-fi novel made in the 60's... I still remember when the Empress made me read Stranger in a Strange Place as punishment for breaking his favorite flying ship." He shuttered just thinking about that book... the blatant homophobia and objectification of women alongside the whole chapter trying to excuse cannibalism was way too much for him. "Though, now I grok the whole Martians thing- Wait, Megan, promise never to read that book. It is very racist to your people!"
"Uhm... Okay?" Confused, Megan agreed. Her hands could not stop petting the soft and squishy Flumph, that whenever they touched, the little thing would make flumph sound out of happiness. "You're so cute, Mr. Wiggles!" She clearly loved the little thing, and who could blame her? She is far away from her home planet, and she misses communicating constantly through telepathy with her family, and Mr. Wiggles invited her to take a look on the Hive Mind, and she was so surprise to connect to all of the Flumphs back in the Beastialis Empire before she was kicked out with a "Please don't try this again" warning from someone she could only assume was the Empress, their mind was very powerful and she couldn't even register that she was kicked out before she found herself lost inside her ow mind and body before Mr. Wiggles apologized to the Empress.
"Oh, G-Gnomes. They're these little goblin things that were used in Cadmus to keep Superboy in check." Wally shrugged as he licked his hand to clean the chocolate off of it. Adam wondered how was he able to eat so much at all times and yet still be hungry... Is he secretly a Homo Beastialis Balaenoptera, otherwise known as a Werewhale? They eat a lot! "...you just thought of something rude about me, didn't you?"
Adam didn't respond. He was too busy thinking about the advanced techniques taught only to the Royal Guards Homo Beastialis to allow them to change forms... Human forms and full forms. Mr. Giant (that's his nickname) can turn into a massive blue whale, Captain Alamos can turn into a huge wolf, and even the Emperor can become a massive black dragon.
By the second day of the now fully fledged Prank War, Adam planted pink magical glitter on Wally's entire room while also temporarily painting everything pink with his [Choloromorpho] cantrip. The best part? He dismissed the spell the moment Wally went to get Kaldur and Robin to look at his room. He was right behind them too!
"Here, everything is sparkly and pink-" The moment he opened the door, everything was back to normal. "-....what!?"
"Oh, would you look at that?" Adam carelessly tilted his body back, allowing his Meta power to flow so he could do one of the most badass things that the Empress taught him. He shifted his weight, concentrating so he didn't fuck it up, but as he deposited his entire weight down, he felt the firmness of the condensed air beneath him, allowing him to sit on air. He leaned back, aware of the eyes on him as he looked at his nails, uninterested. "It was almost like..." He turned to look at Wally, willing his magic- as weak as it was -to reach out and touch him, and like that he casted [Choloromorpho] on Wally's body, willing his hair to change colors to a bright shock of pink: "...Magic." Finishing his sentence, he threw a pocket mirror towards Wally, who with his super speed easily caught it.
As Adam walked away, he could hear the "WHAT!?" scream from Wally.
The third time, it was actually Wally that pranked him... or tried to, at least.
He was sitting down in his room, reading a book by his own Empress- [So, You Think You're Ready for Interplanar Travel? By Atlas Jones, Empress of the Beastialis Empire, Archmagus of Reality, and Planeswalker]. This was a complete guide with everything you'll need to travel to another planes of existence, with spells listed for specific planes alongside tips and tricks for getting to know the locals and not dying on the way. He wasn't afraid of reading it because it was written in Common, a completely different language from English, but a spoken and written language in the other planes of existence. He is still learning how to speak Primordial, but he's got Sylvian down after a long time. As he closed the book, he felt a tingling sensation across his electric senses- he was taught by the Empress to always keep a part of himself aware of his surroundings, and he was taught that by being constantly attacked every single day at random for one entire year. Nowadays he is constantly aware of an area of 30 feet around him, his mind will always know what is happening around him.
So he wasn't surprised when something entered for a second and left his area of awareness faster than he could react or do anything about it. What didn't leave, however, was the tiny little spider. Well, tiny compared to the spiders of the Monster Island back in Beastialis! Those are the size of rhinoceros. He looked down at the tarantula when he opened his door, allowing it to go inside: "Huh, hello little guy...?" He pulled out a pinch of incense as he channeled his electricity on it, letting it burn: "I think you'll be an awesome familiar." He started a ritual, and after 10 minutes of him slowly channeling his mediocre magic around he reached out, touched the little guy, and casted [Find Familiar] on the tarantula.
He checked it. It was a girl.
Wally woke up later with a spider on his face- but when he screamed, the spider simply vanished in a burst of smoke and appeared on top of Adam's head, who acted nonchalant about the whole thing.
The next prank happened didn't quite happen because Superboy came to him and made him a question (while he tried not to stare too much), and it was a question that made him pause: "...Do you know if there's ghosts in this place? I saw a kid before, but that was a hallucination caused by a G-Gnome, and that made me think... do you know about ghosts?"
And that was when he stopped.
"O-oh, yeah, I know about them." That seemed to intrigue those in range of hearing- that being Megan and Kaldur -as he started speaking about a tradition in Beastialis: "Every last week of the month of October, in Beastialis, we have the Festival of the Dead. You know Dia de los Muertos in Mexico? Think that, but for a whole week and the dead actually come back."
That had Kaldur, Megan, and Superboy surprised and confused. That was when Wally appeared, he apparently had heard that too: "Wait, what? For real? Is that not some sort of light trick to imitate a ghost or something?"
Adam immediately glared at him- not a friendly glare, but an aggressive one. Immediately Wally took a step back as Adam seemed to close himself off a bit: "No. You idiot. The Empress made a deal with Death to allocate souls in the afterlife he created for the believers on the Gods of Beastialis. It's a paradise, everyone that worships at least one god of Beastialis ends up there and they have parties, relax, and have a good time." Adam closed his eyes for a moment: "...I was there for a while, when I died too, but the Empress brought me back. That was when I met my uncle for the first time, he's cool. Every year, on the Festival of the Dead, we go out and play baseball. That was his favorite sport." He flickered a tear off of the corner of his eye as he smiled- he loves his uncle. Very much: "...Anyway, ghosts are... well, souls of people who have some sort of unfinished business. The dead from the Festival of the Dead come because they're invited, but normally ghosts just are either really sad, confused, or angry about something."
"Huh, that's cool." Superboy smiled and Adam's heart melted a little: "Are they, like, translucent like in the movies?"
"Oh, some of them are- Here!" From his ring, Adam pulled out a photograph, showing him the photo of him and his uncle: "They appear in photographs if they want to! Here's my uncle." They were almost identical, it was like looking at an older version of Adam, but Adam had dark hair and his uncle had this rugged dirty blond hair and th e start of a beard. He was also somewhat translucent too, but mostly physical.
"This is so cool!" Megan smiled, turning upside-down to look at the photograph too. Adam then remembered that there were other people in the room, so he just let everyone else look at the photo. Surprisingly, Wally didn't accuse the photo of being tampered with. "Ooh, who is that?" She pointed at the photo- there they could see him, his uncle, his mother, the Empress, the Emperor, Miss Pamela, Mr. Fries, Miss Fries, Lonnie, Mr. Langston and his wife, Captain Alamos, and a few others. This was a family photo, Adam considered every single one of them his family. Megan was pointing towards the Emperor: "He looks like a dragon on that site you were thinking of when you were explaining furries to me... e622?"
Adam froze.
"Megan, that is the Emperor of Beastialis." Adam felt like he had violated some sort of rule by unknowingly teaching Megan about the existence of e622, the furry site. "Just because you asked me and I had to explain to you why some humans are very attracted to the citizens of Beastialis and are dying to join Beastialis, it doesn't mean you can snooping in my head, we talked about this." She looked apologetically towards him, and he sighed... The others looking at the picture seemed taken a bit aback by the sheer presence of the Emperor: "He is like a father to me... And the Empress is like a second mother. They taught me everything I know."
Which was why, the day they met Mr. Twister, Adam split him in half with a sword.
Right. Down. The. Middle.