Issue #7: The Magician's Daughter

Astride one of the more stable windowed cabins of the humongous hastily made Ferris wheel that overlooked the dreary skyline of the coastal city. My eyes could not help but admire the trails of black smoke puffing out of Gotham's north-western industrial plants.

Its fumes snaked the skies of Gotham like a void centipede. Poisonous smog forms its carapace, intermingling with the low clouds that will soon bring acidic rain to the children of this godforsaken city. Its tiny, thousands of limbs were the workers, crawling like ants, devoid of hope and life, merely chugging along to bring what they could to their family. Before they, too, die, that is.

I do not know when I had such morose thoughts, but given the state of the land below me, such thoughts were not uncommon amongst its populace.

I sever my morbid musings and instead gaze towards the features of my companion.

Amazement and anticipation, the two dominant expressions I can distinguish when my eyes catch sight of his face leering below the cabin. His face sticking to the window, pressing his cheeks against the barely cleaned glass.

It's a wonder how such an excitable child would become a force not to be reckoned with in no less than a decade. To adapt to the darkness is a feat that changes many strong-willed men, much less a child.

I snicker at my thoughts turning dark once more, earning Richard Grayson's attention.

"What's so funny?" He asks, merely furrowing his eyebrows as his gaze never left the view.

I give a weary sigh, slumping my head against the dirty headrest of my seat. "Just.. how dark the city is… up here."

He moves his eyebrows up and down as if in agreement. "It's dark down there, too."

Dick, too, lets out a sigh, slumping down his own seat and crossing his arms as he sets his sight upon the highest building in the city. "Do you think… maybe, you know, that we can't do this?"

'Was he having second thoughts? Or just the jittering nerves of a groom?'

My lips turn upwards into a soft smile as I relax my shoulders, having seen many people question their decisions.

"If we can't, then Batman will stop us himself." I say with as much confidence I could muster. "I haven't known him long, but I think he's the type of guy that goes all in or doesn't go at all."

"No half measure." He says, a look of steady footing burgeoning behind his dark blue eyes. He smiles, not like those half-grins he has earlier, but a real one. "Thanks, dude."

I give one back, closing my eyes to not get nauseous from the swerving ride. "Anytime."

Soon, my problems were second in priority as Dick's voice grew alarmed, his foot leaping away from one point and landing on another.

"Look at that! It's Claymore!"

"Clayface." I corrected hastily, before my eyes split open in surprise. "What the fuck?"

Atop an old water tower that supplied a tenth of Gotham's residents with drinking water and E. coli, a gelatinous monstrosity consisting of mud, muck, and mire swirled around its bulbous body and wreaked havoc amidst the crowded streets of Gotham Square.

Clayface, one of Batman's infamous rogues, apparently didn't get the call that Batman's out of town or, more possibly, he did get the message and was now using this opportunity to go to town. 

I mean that in every definite variation of the phrase.

"S-Should we do something? I think we should do something." Hearing Dick uttering complete idiocy, I smack him lightly in the head.

"We're on top of a Ferris Wheel. The biggest problem is, how do we get down without me using you as a landing cushion?" I glare at him.

He merely chuckles, steeling his eyes as he scans the cabin. For a brief moment, I can feel gooseflesh from my arms, but pay it no heed as I, too, look for a way out.

By now, the operators would probably be in panic, forgetting the fact that they just left two kids to their eventual death. The ensuing rampage of the panicking crowd would also negate any shouts for help up in here.

'Only way out, I guess.'

"We'll climb out of here." Dick beat me to the punch.

I smile at him with a knowing look as I kneel down the door of the cabin. "We're inside the wheel, so we can use the metal beams as a ladder. Help me remove these bolts."

With a swift pass at the soles of his left shoe, Dick produces a swiss army knife and helps me twist out the remaining bolts that seals us in our airborne coffin.

The chaos continues outside as we remove the last of the bolts, forcing the door open. Barely, it seems.

"The outside handle locked us in." Dick tries to pry the lower door open with his hands, but only gets a welt from the act.

What's worse is that our movements are swaying the halted cabin, amplifying my nausea and Dick's further unrest.

"Shoot! What do we do? Let's break the glass!" See. Total wackadoo.

"No, seat- ugh, my god.- take the seats off. Metal might be thinner there." I pound my lithe body against the door one last time, but the only progress I make is removing the indoor handle. 

'I'm not gonna pay for that, by the way.'

Dick set about removing the seat cushions, handling his army knife with such care and precision that I became jealous of Starfire when he got older.

On the other side of the cabin, Clayface is now being fired upon by GCPD helicopters while their land troops assisted the search and rescue operations.

"Done!" Dick shouts, removing the thin leather cover and revealing the metal sheet that separates us from our freedom.

He arch back his hands before thrusting forward, the blunted miniature knife piercing through the sheet. Sawing back and forth, creating a hole large enough for us to fit through one by one.

I briefly pat him on the back, earning a smiling nod from the sweating future boy wonder. I remove my jacket, tying up both sleeve ends and giving one end to him. 

"You go first, I'll follow. Grab my sleeve if you fall."

He nods, nimbly exiting through the hole without getting cut by the jagged metal jaws. Not that we cared, since getting tetanus is better than plummeting to our deaths.

Considering the Flying Grayson's reputation, Dick overwhelms my expectation when his foot reaches the first rusty metal bar that runs across our cabin. His face has the look of utter determination as he uses the sleeved jacket as a crutch to get a more stable position.

For my end, not once do I let go of the jacket as I leverage the jacket against the hole to give myself more strength. Basic physics makes my arm hurt like hell.

"I-I'm done. You can go down now." He screams against the billowing wind, letting his free hand snake firmly against the relatively large metal beam and securing a handhold.

Seeing his hair fluttering wildly, I know I'm in for a rough descent as I place both my feet down the hole. Careful not to cut myself, I place my hand on a handhold Dick told me about and swing my foot towards him.

As soon as my foot touches the metal beam, Dick lets go of the jacket and takes a hold of my foot, pulling me closer to him as we perform a very delicate dance of death.

One that he was awfully familiar with.

Thankfully, I plunk down next to him in a heap of pain, having been subjected to contortionist training in the middle of a spat between Clayface and GCPD. I sit on the metal beam, tightly clutching the metal beam that runs across the other end of the wheel.

"What do we do now?" I ask in a scream, the wind gushing towards us with ill intent, like we killed its mother.

Dick exhales, calming his taut nerves as he looks at me with his crazy eyes. 

'Oh no.'

"We jump." His reply makes me doubt his sanity. 

"What?"

"I said, we jump down there." He points towards an outcropping, a metal platform next to the emergency ladder. 

Most probably used by the operators whenever there was an emergency, if they weren't running for their lives.

Without waiting for my response, Dick pivots his left foot and places his right foot against the metal beam that runs vertically, before he pushes off both his footholds and leaps towards the other end of the wheel.

His body soars through the air and, for a brief moment, I thought he will follow in his parent's footsteps, before he lands nimbly on the other side. Barely missing the landing as he uses his arm and presses it against the upwards metal beam as a stopgap.

'Are you fucking kidding me? I can't do that.'

"Shit." I curse out in a laugh. I either do that or die here. "I know you can't hear me, but on the off chance that you do… Save me and I'll tell you where to find the lost city of Kandor."

For a brief moment, I allow myself to hope. Hope that, once again, he will save me. 

But he didn't come. 

I know that. 

In a world full of eight billion shouts, who am I but an echo in the wall.

With a renewed smile on my face, I recreate Dick's movements. A foothold here, a metal beam there, before pushing off with all my might.

My body feels the wind caressing it gently, as if to silently mutter that everything would be alright. My hands go wide in a bid to grab Dick's outstretched hands, but I know what will happen next.

I misplaced my weight, my jump was tilted, and my form was terrible. 

Although I have crossed the halfway gap, half of my body is already below the metal beam. I would only be a burden to Dick if I grab his hands. My added weight would force him out of his stable footing.

I retract my hands as my head smashed against the metal beam, Dick reaching out to me in a futile attempt. The head bang didn't hurt, not as much as the ritual, I suppose. What hurt was the look of shock and sorrow on Dick's face.

"NO!" Looks like he's remembering what happened to his family right now.

I give him a smile, brief enough as to not have my fate haunt him for eternity. A parting gift from a brief but close friend, I suppose.

My fall happens to be brief. While easily crossing to the lower half of the wheel, I observe that most of the cabins are occupied by screaming children and their terrified parents.

Parents. Something within my brain caused memories from my current childhood.

I remember my mother pushing me on the swing; the wind caressing my hair, her joyous laughter free from the yoke of my father. 

It was… bliss. Yes, pure happiness.

I would have liked to experience it more, to protect it more, but I guess this is it for me.

"Until next time, mom." were my last words, but not the last words I heard.

"Ylf ekil a rehtaef!" A cute voice resounded in my ears. The world who had passed by me in a flash crawled to a lurch. "See, dad! I could do it, too."

"Yes, yes, honey. You're obviously the best," a deep voice of a man compliments the cute one. 

'Looks like a father and daughter tandem. Wait. Father and daughter, backwards words.'

I gazed towards the voice and couldn't help but guffaw at the sight of Giovanni Zatara and his teenage daughter, Zatanna Zatara.

Dressed in his usual tailcoat, bowtie, and top hat, Giovanni flies around the Ferris wheel and waves his wand around. "Tel lla snibac hcated dna yelfas dnal no eht dnuorg."

His words brings life and hope to the Ferris wheel, with cabins detaching from the machinery and floating down to the floor like paper lanterns. Dick nimbly jump atop our cabin, holding onto the railings on the roof.

When he sees me floating like a butterfly amidst a prairie, he grabs my hand and brings me to him, before giving me a warm, tear-filled embrace.

"W-why did you let go?" He ask in barely a whisper, his hands gripping the back of my clothes as if not wanting to let go.

"You would've died, too, Dick. You have so much to live for." I say. 

It was true. He would save so many people in the future and here he was, trying to waste his life on little old me.

Dick didn't have any reply to my answer, merely tightening his hug on me.

As soon as we landed, we disembarked on our ride–Which, by the way, the worst ride of all time–and met the teenager Zatanna.

Much like her father, she's wearing a tailcoat suit and bowtie with black shorts and a black stocking. Her red lips were shaped into a sweet smile as she uses her mystical words to rescue the people trapped in the rides and nearby office building.

"There you… go. Happy trails!" She waves away the trapped office workers, before looking at our approaching figures. "Oh, honey. Did you lose your mommies?"

'Okay. That is… wow.'

"How can we help?" Asks Dick as I grapple with the fact that I, apparently, look like a lost child.

She gives us a perplexed look."Help?"

"Yeah, we, uh, we've been training our strength. I'm sure we can help." Dick explains his reasoning without making out Batman as a child abuser.

As Zatanna hem and haw her way out of Dick's very excited expression, her father quickly deals with the greater matter at hand.

"Come now, Clay. Let us finish this, so I may do my show." Giovanni twirls his mustache as he waves his wand, a flow of esoteric energy billowing out of its tiny tip. "Nrut dum otni enots!"

Clayface's humongous muddy form crashes against a building, smashing it apart like it was paper mache. Just as Clayface is about to smash another patrol car, his hammer-like hand begins turning rigid. 

Slowly, but surely, Clayface's hands turn into gray-hued stone that immediately falls off his body. He tries to supplement it by sucking the wastes below Gotham's sewers, but Giovanni's magic is much faster than he.

In the next ten seconds, we watch as Clayface turns into a large stone sculpture. The city now resting in peace as another one of Gotham's infamous criminals is stopped by the greatest magician alive.

I couldn't help but comment as I look at Zatanna's twinkling eyes. "That's your dad? Damn, I pity your suitors."

...

This is the last daily chapter. Next week's chapter will be published at Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thank you for reading and hope you stay with me!