With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

20th October 2017
16:29 GMT

I set Zita down next to one of the settees and then walk over to the window while she gets herself under control. I've noticed her do this before, after emotional 'releases', and I know that she prefers to be left on her own to regain her equilibrium. Since that's not practical here the most I can really do is avoid looking in the reflection in the glass while she does breathing exercises and wipes her face dry with a handkerchief. Leaving her to do that feels wrong, but everything I've read and all the parenting advice I've gotten -admittedly from supervillains- is that letting them get it out of their system without rewarding it with attention is the right thing to do.

Unless they do it in a public location, then you're supposed to strangle them.

I hear the 'puff' of air as she gets up onto the settee, which is probably the sign that she's ready to start. I turn around and… Hm. Walk over to the floor in front of her and sit there, so that our heads are roughly level.

She makes eye contact and gives me a small nod.

I'm not exactly sure where to start.

"How much do you remember?"

She thinks for a moment.

"About as much as if I was remembering something I lived through that many years ago."

"Oh, um. In that.. case, what do you want me to call you?"

She blinks in confusion.

"My name is Zita Zatara."

"Ah, yes, that's what we called you, but if you've… Lived a normal life being called something else, then-."

"My name is Zita Zatara. I remember being someone called Suzuki Kenta and I remember being someone called Tanya von Degurechaff-"

She remembers two lives?

"-but neither of them are who I am now. In my second life I thought that I was Suzuki Kenta pretending to be Tanya von Degurechaff, as if I was controlling her with the.. control pad of a games console. As if Tanya von Degurechaff was someone else. I believe that it is called 'disassociation'. It took me many years to accept that who I had become was not the same as who I was, and I do not wish to repeat my early mistakes in this life. Zita Zatara grew up in a loving home with regular meals, and that is quite different to how Tanya von Degurechaff grew up."

I nod. I'm not sure that nodding is helpful, but what else could I do?

"My genetics are different now, and because my upbringing is different the structures of my brain would be different even if my genes were identical. Isn't that right, Dad?"

I nod again. "Yes, I think that's right. The.. only issue would be how neural pruning will work given that you're exercising different portions of your brain to normal five year olds."

"Will that be a problem?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say that it will result in you being mentally more similar to your past selves. But I don't really know." I reach out with both hands and take hold of both of hers. "But that doesn't matter to me or your mum. You're our daughter this time and we love you."

"Yes, I realise that." She turns her hands and grips my index fingers. "I think that in my first life there was something wrong with my brain. I couldn't understand certain types of human relationships. In my second life, I could understand them but I was so used to behaving as if I couldn't that I didn't stop to reconsider my own behaviour. I just kept going with an approach that I knew wouldn't work while I criticised the people around me for doing the same thing. This time I want to be different."

I nod. "From the sounds of things I hope so too."

"Still… I am concerned that I appear to be part of an international crime family, and associated with American super criminals."

"Yes, I would be too."

She regards me for a moment.

"I take it that you are not an undercover police officer."

"No. None of us are." If only that had been an option.

She nods. "I suspected, but I thought that I should ask."

"I've moved the Syndicate out of America and into an area of the world which was lawless anyway. The sort of people who make up the Syndicate actually do less harm here than the people who used to run it. I hope to get them invested in the wellbeing of the local people -or at least to feel proprietary about them- and transition to a lawful oligarchy with the next generation."

"I have wanted many things, Father, and that sounds like something that a person can want that is unlikely to happen."

"Yes." I sigh. "I know. I've thought about all of the decisions I made, and as far as I can tell the only realistic alternative was moving the Syndicate off-world and turning it into an interstellar mercenary company, but the attitude shift required would have been too great."

"And it has nothing to do with the fact that you had normalised their outlook because you spent all of your time with them?"

"Sort of. I defined myself as being the man who made them all less harmful. It's quite possible-. No, I did have opportunities to jump ship, but that would just have gotten me out. It wouldn't have helped anyone in the Syndicate or anyone who has to go on living in a world with the Syndicate in it. To say nothing of the police state President Wilson was turning America into."

President Luthor is in his second term now. Not sure who will succeed him, but while we've had the occasional clash both his people and the Syndicate are mostly avoiding direct confrontation. None of the likely candidates are making a big deal about us, so I doubt that we'll have any new problems from that direction. I am planning on sending him a bottle of wine after he leaves office, though.

"Yes." She nods. "Despite the example set by Washington, few American presidents have been willing to give up new powers they have accrued. Luthor surprised me in that regard."

"Almost all of Wilson's new powers technically had sunset clauses. I imagine that he intended to extend them indefinitely once everyone was used to them, but Luthor just stopped using them and let them expire." I smile as she appears to remember that she's holding onto my hands and immediately lets them go. "Can I interest you in a bring-your-daughter-to-work day?"

"Once, I dreamed of a peaceful retirement. I tried to retire peacefully twice, and both times I died long before I could achieve it. I do not think that becoming manager of a firm of supervillains would give me a better chance." She frowns, looking down at her hands. "Particularly given that I do not appear to have any magical ability in this life."

I shake my head. "Anyone can use magic. According to Zatara family tradition, your magic education would start in about three years."

"It may be true in this world that anyone can use magic, but family tradition aside I doubt it would be a profitable avenue to pursue unless I had some natural talent. I have tried using the basic formulae of my last life-."

I move my hands, enveloping hers. "Zita, it's very important to me that you stop doing that unless you've got someone around to spot you. Zataras have died before by doing something they didn't mean to."

She looks at me for a moment, then nods. "If magic here works differently to how it did in my previous life, that is a reasonable request. How does it work?"

"Ah, well, broadly, magic works through the manipulation of conceptual links. I don't use it myself, but if you want to hear about magic theory I can get John Constantine to lecture you. I can't think of anyone more knowledgeable on our side." She gives me a small nod. "But for the Zataras in particular, quite a few can just make things happen by talking backwards."

She blinks, then closes her eyes for several seconds before opening them. The animation fades from her face and she just looks sad.

"That's really all there is to it?"

"There are limitations. Some Zataras can only change certain classes of thing, and they have a finite amount of power to draw on."

"What language?"

"I've heard Zataras use English, Italian and Latin."

"By syllable or by letter?"

"By letter."

"Hn." Faintly, she starts to smile. "Heh ha hah. Ah hahah hah!"

Unable to contain herself, she collapses onto the settee, arms wrapped around her chest.

"That's so-! Irrational!"

I shake my head. "No one ever claimed that the universe was obliged to be rational. Do you want to talk to your mother about it?"

"Once I've calmed-. HAH! Calmed down. Heh-hah!"

 

Day 17
23rd March 2013
23:44 GMT -5

Sunset grunts faintly as she finishes laying out the cable which forms the runic circle she's using for this operation, and I… Find myself growing a little maudlin. With her work in the school and with Circe I don't see her anything like as much as I used to. She doesn't even live in the mountain most of the time, though of course I've left her room and workshop in place-.

"What?"

"Sunset, you know that I'm proud of what you've achieved since you arrived on Earth-"

Her eyes narrow suspiciously. "What?"

"-both in terms of your magic and the way you've forged a new life for yourself." I smile, and open my arms in an invitation for a hug.

"S-. Seriously? Now?" I broaden my smile and crouch down a little. Not that much. She's not much shorter than me, though she's far less massive.

She keeps staring at me, then accepts that I'm serious and walks up to me, rolling her eyes. I hug her, my greater mass basically enveloping her. She sort of hugs back.

"What's this about?"

"I just realised how little I see you, and how much I miss seeing you."

"You know where the school is."

"Yes, I know I can visit, but it's not really the same." I release her, much to her relief. "And I really appreciate you helping me with this."

"Doing this, you mean. And you haven't even told me what we're doing."

"I'm afraid that I am under a magically binding contract which prevents me from explaining exactly what I'm doing-."

"Because you were looking for a way to help the souls of your children's brothers and sisters. And then you disappeared for two weeks."

"I suppose that a rational person might reach the conclusion that those two facts were related. I couldn't possibly comment."

"And we're spying on Newstime because you don't like their editorials?"

"I hold Newstime in contempt because they fail to offer a useful service. Their analysis is surface level, their evidence-finding is lazy, they accept citizen journalism uncritically for anything other than moment-by-moment coverage and I've yet to see a single issue without a glaring grammatical error that took me right out."

"And we're in a tunnel under their parking garage because you want me to magic them better editors."

"No, we're here because I want to find out if anything magic is happening in that building using purely passive monitoring and without being detected by any protective magics at work on the building and you're one hundred percent of the people I believe can do the job."

She frowns thoughtfully. "How good are the defences?"

"No idea."

"Okay, how good are the people who made the defences?"

Hm. Now, I knew who and what Colin Thornton was before I accepted the First's offer, but I can't share anything that I learned since. I'm able to call in Sunset because this is covered by my law enforcement responsibilities and is necessary to complete my infernal assignment, so…

"You may assume that the defender is highly skilled and patient, and is most at home with demon magic." Though since he's Jebediah's son… "And possibly order magic."

"Demons aren't supposed to be big on order." She looks thoughtfully at the magic cable. "Though I guess there could be exceptions."

"Remember Teth Adom's sponsor?"

"The Lord of Order who murdered him and bound his soul to an amulet that got stolen by a serial killer to get super powers? What about him?"

"Your opponent will be his son."

"His son… Who uses demon magic?" The corners of her mouth turn down. "Wait. You were looking for a succubus, who was the mother of demon-vampire hybrids, and we're looking for a demon whose father was a Lord of Order?"

Huh. "Yes?"

"Is this a… Thing?"

"How do you mean?"

"Look, I'm from Equestria. We have mules, and I know where they come from. But most ponies don't summon up umbrum and try breeding with them."

"What about kirin?"

"I.. don't think they do either?"

"No, I mean, kirin are dragon-pony hybrids, right? And adult dragons are quite a bit bigger than ponies." Hm. "Except Princess Celestia, but I doubt that the entire species-."

"No-." Sunset gags, cringing and holding her stomach as if she's worried that she's going to be sick. "Uh."

"Actually, that's a point. I know that regular mares have finite eggs in their ovaries, but do alicorns have the same limitation or do they magically replenish?"

"Why? Why?"

"Luna's in her forties. If she were a human woman the chances of her conceiving naturally would be pretty low, even allowing that she was otherwise in excellent health. And then there's you. Career women in western society have developed a habit of leaving child-bearing until their late thirties or early forties and unsurprisingly struggle to conceive. I want to make sure that you've thought about things and haven't just assumed that since you're ageless you can just leave it as late as you like."

"Hah!" She grins triumphantly, and points at my face with her right forefinger. "That isn't a problem. I gave myself the same fertility control that Lynne and Barda Free have. I can save all my eggs for as long as I want."

"Agree to teach Luna that and I'll stop talking about it."

"Done! So, this guy."

"Colin Thornton, aka Satanus."

"Isn't Satanus a big deal in human religion?"

"No, he's just named after him. But I want to make sure that his terrible magazine isn't using magic to get people to buy it, and if it turns out that he's up to anything else in there, well, if we find it while doing something legitimate then it's still admissible."

"Can you narrow it down?"

"Ah… No. Sorry."

"Fine. At least you're honest about it." She walks over to the centre of her rune array and wiggles her fingers. "Do you want to know how this works, or will that make a problem for whatever rules you're complying with?"

"Oh, go ahead and tell me. I know you want to."

"I'm the Alicorn of Magic. As long as I don't interfere with the spells directly, I can push and pull the energy flows so that they move around my detections spells. It's harder to tell what they're doing like that, but it's still possible and it's basically impossible to detect someone doing it. And since the structure of his spells are effectively coming outside of their own effect area, I should be able to follow around the whole structure without the spells reacting at all." She smiles smugly. "It's a little like how the planet Earth moves around the sun without anyone falling off the planet."

I nod. "Good show. Let me know what you find."