Young Writers Society

Mireya was distracted from the bat spotlight by two things: the vines, and a couple of conversations happening somewhere around her.

She'd noticed the vine tangling around a weakly flickering lamp post to her right, squeezing and climbing it as if it was trying to choke the light out of it. It trailed off into another alleyway along with others sneaking over the pavement cracks or covering the brick walls. She wasn't sure what to make of it, but for now it didn't seem to be a threat— unless one of them wrapped around her.

Her eyes went to the lightbulb in the post, still flashing on and off dimly. No, that's not strong enough to be of any use to me.

She'd just have to make sure she didn't walk over them. Mireya couldn't tell if they'd sense a presence and try to fight it, but it appeared to be magic, and if it was there was a good chance the vines were under someone else's control.

Haven't seen anyone who could do that in a while, she thought.

Mireya decided to listen to the conversations instead. One of them had more voices from what she could tell— three speakers instead of two— so she followed that one. Avoiding the vines, she crept along the sidewalk, pausing at the alley where the sound was coming from.

Sure enough, there were three people there, two men and one... very small girl? For one brief moment she worried that she should have been more careful and hidden behind the corner instead of standing in plain sight. Cyrin was no teacher, but clearly she had a bit to learn from him. She scolded herself silently since they couldn't be there to do that.

But one of the men called himself Dresden and asked a question about not being local, and she didn't regret it anymore as she understood that they were in the same boat.

"I'm not," Mireya said, stepping forward. "I don't recall trying to get here, either."

Bobby kept to the shadows, watching cautiously as a group formed at the edge of the battle. He knew what to expect from the heroes and villains of Gotham - really it wasn't so different from home - but these guys weren't acting like the civilians in the comic books, or the ones in real life. They didn't look like them either. Most of them looked like heroes or villains themselves, but in their terrible civilian disguises. Like Clark Kent-level bad if not worse.

Bobby skittered around the edge of the battle, using the chaos of Ivy's swirling vines to get closer without drawing anyone's eyes. He ducked back into the shadows and listened to their conversation.

Vankous

Vankous took a step back at the newcomer. He'd been expecting a trap but this was potentially worse. Something about his general signature screamed abnormal, but also he was friendly enough so Vankous gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was just about to step protectively in front of...he had to ask her name soon...before he realized this was Harry...Harry from a long time ago, but still Harry, not Susan. She could probably wipe the floor with everyone here in her sleep.

"Cerebro," said Vankous, deciding he was not trusting this one enough to use real names quite yet. "And that's Doctor Cerebro. Also I certainly hope not. This is not a very pleasant location. Are you from around here?"

Katherine

Kate sized up the man in front of her. She could also hear at least three others, two in conversation and one who thought they were quiet. She decided to ignore them for now. There wasn't any hostile behavior around. The man in front of her was the pressing issue here.

"Hmm...and why would you want to know that?" she asked, making sure she only sounded curious. She didn't even acknowledge the name. She wasn't telling anyone who she was unless there was no other choice. Names were powerful things in the wrong hands.

"Because," Dresden said, not pausing for dramatic effect but pausing because he was trying to figure out if he had accidentally run into another group of magicians, "I'm also not from here."

He thought for a moment. He should keep things simple. Explaining the whole Minecraft situation was going to make things complicated. While Dresden did like some chaos here and there, that wasn't the goal right now. He was so close to catching Cassius. He needed to work with these guys if he wanted to get back to his capturing attempts. Bringing up Minecraft was going to make him seem like he had lost his mind.

Not that losing his mind was out of the question. His essence was tingling in a way he didn't really like, and he had heard horror stories about what being restrained like this had done to others during the revolution.

Dresden jumped over another vine that went swinging his way. He could have stood on it, but he had a feeling Poison Ivy would sense that and suddenly realize she had canon fodder that could be used to threaten Batman.

"And if you're not from here, and I'm not from here, it makes sense that we were all brought here by the same thing and should work together to get back to our homes."

And to avoid Batman, who Dresden was deathly afraid of running into right now.

“I’m, uh, sorry about your spleen. But are you alright?” The assailant replied. She was wearing a large green coat–which could be hiding any number of nasty weapons–and had a rather large pack, bulging with whatever it contained. That could hold even more stabbing implements!
Risius decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and took a deep breath.
“It’s alrighty-o, kid. I’m ay-ok don’t you worry. And I’m sure if you wanted to stab, shoot, torture, gouge, or harvest my organs, you would have done so by now, so…. The name’s Risius. No last name, like you humans.”
The stranger looked rather confused already, especially when Ris mentioned the spleen he did not actually have. Demon physiology was often confusing, and so he wouldn’t go into why he had said he actually had a spleen.
She also had some funky hair, that was one of the fashion trends of Azeria several decades ago, but it didn’t look dyed to Ris.
Hm, he thought, this is interesting.
But before she could respond to his first statement, he hit her with another slew of words.
“Now, you might be wondering, ‘you don’t look like any of the Demon Sects, so who are you?’ and that’s really just not important. What is important is that you tell me where I am so as I can get the high heaven out of here.”
He blinked.
“Please and thank you.”
This was going splendidly!

Tempest Briar blinked. “I’m Tempest Briar. With a last name because I am definitely human.” He laughed nervously. “And you are on the street. In a city. On Earth.”

He looked Risius up and down. “But you’re non-human. That’s-“ A phrase that’s supposed to be comforting. “-interesting. I’m not sure how to help you leave.”

She stepped slightly past Risius. Somewhat in the distance, there was a group of people, all looking shaken. “But they might!”

He took a deep breath and approached them, hands deep in his pockets. “Good evening! Would you mind helping this gentleman and me?”

Tempest Briar smiled, suddenly painfully aware that all of these people would use strange words she’d never heard before. And that meant there were phrases she knew that they were unaware of. Speaking to them could be like listening to Artemis speak Spanish. But Artemis knew he only spoke English. Artemis knew he didn’t understand many of her sayings. But these people would expect her to talk like them. And Tempest Briar wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep up.

But he had survived human Englishmen. He might make it out of this one too.

Vankous

Vankous absolutely had no choice but to smile at that response. It was 100% the response he would give in a situation like that and he knew from experience that people who gave such responses either genuinely meant it or had genuine reasons to hide their actual reasons and weren't just trying to be annoying. He could be wrong on both those counts but Vankous wasn't keep on being specific about anything at the moment either so he had no grounds to fault this Dresden for doing the same. And it seemed like he was in a similar plight to them too. Generally speaking anyway. Vankous was pretty sure Dresden was not standing next to the teenage version of his billions of years old immortal mentor/captain. A thought struck Vankous, given how long Harry had lived for and the ridiculous number of places and times he'd been in he might as well actually have been a mentor/captain to this Dresden person in some reality at some point in time. OKay this was getting trippy. He needed to focus on surviving these horrifying colored vines with the terrible smell and do his best to avoid recommending his favorite cough drop to Batman when they inevitably did meet.

"Very well then Dresden, I think working together is in fact the way to be going forward," said Vankous. He couldn't believe he was doing this but something about this situation felt more professional than most. He extended a hand.

Katherine

Kate was about to jump in on this budding alliance, having decided it was the best course of action when two others very loudly made their presence known. She shuddered. It wasn't that they were giving off particularly bad vibes. In fact most of the vibes were rather good and almost friendly. The part she didn't love was the volume and air of "I need to be and loud and friendly as possible" the tone of voice was giving off. In her experience those people other had too much money and wanted to make you dance for their amusement or worse, they were being genuine about it which means they'd grown up on a silver platter with a velvet cushion on top. She didn't want to judge anyone too fast, that was another thing she'd learnt over the years, but maybe it would do to be a teeny bit extra cautious here.

"We are in fact all looking for help here," she said keeping her voice neutral with just the tiniest hint of an edge to it. Most people wouldn't pick it up, but the ones that did pick it up would be people who knew what they were doing, so that was a win win for Kate. She finally turned back to Dresden.

"And I do agree, larger numbers seem favorable against what this world may throw at us," said Kate. "And I suppose since it would be hard to call me if you had no name to go with, the name's Hardy. Katherine Hardy. But you can call me Kate."

Next to her Vankous seemed to almost let out a mild shudder before hix expression shifted back into a smirk. "Yes, we will need backup against whoever decided wearing that perfume and attacking people with vines was a good idea. And don't even get me started on the makeup on the other one."

Finally, something that Dresden actually felt confident about doing. He was by no means an expert on Gotham, but he had seen enough Batman things to know a thing or two about its villains and vigilantes.

"That," he said to the whole group, after giving Vankous the briefest of handshakes, "is Poison Ivy. Don't ask me how we're in Gotham. I don't know, either. But our best bet is to run away so we don't get caught up in the fight. Harley's her girlfriend and the one with the hammer."

He thought for a moment, eyeing the area around them. Pres would have said to go to Batman. He would have said that would help them all get back home faster, and that he didn't need to worry about getting caught.

But Pres wasn't present anymore, and Dresden wasn't willing to take the risk.

"There," he said, pointing at an alleyway that the vines hadn't entirely covered. It was also the alleyway, though he didn't know it, that Bobby was standing in the shadows by. "That's our best bet. If we avoid the vines, we should be able to get to another area of town."

He wasn't entirely sure on that, but it didn't look like a dead end. It didn't feel like a dead end when he carefully released a burst of air in that direction.

Bobby listened to the conversation carefully.

They were the same as him. They'd been taken too.

When the one person who seemed to know where they were gestured to the alley where Bobby hid, he froze. They were going to see him, or he was going to have to move. But, they could find the way back before him. He might need them.

He shoved down the knot of anxiety and slipped out into their group. "Wayne manor is our best bet," he said. The fight was intensifying around them, and Bobby flinched at every sound. His heartbeat thrummed in his throat where stirring bile threatened to rise. He had to run. He had to run. He had to run.

If someone saw Dresden jump a little when the boy suddenly appeared from the shadows, no, they didn't. Dresden had an image to maintain, both before becoming and as Dresden, and that image absolutely didn't involve being scared. Pres and Bartimaeus would tease him for weeks.

"Wayne Manor is our worst bet," Dresden was quick to argue. He needed something more to that argument, though. He couldn't bring up his secrets. He needed to address all of the elephants in the room instead. "Batman has a no meta rule—and there's several people here who look like they could be metas."

He pointed at the girl that Doctor Cerebro had been with.

"She's obviously not human," he said, knowing he didn't even have to bring up her very obvious patches or skin. He pointed at the guy with the gray skin and gold eyes next. "He's not either."

He turned his attention to the teenage girl with the dyed blue hair. "Standing near her feels weird, so my bets on meta, too." He pointed at the person with blue roots, and then at Doctor Cerebro. "And you two both have hair or eye colors that aren't normal, so I'm sure you'd get lumped together with the others at first glance."

He crossed his arms. He didn't even have to check the other planes to know that, which was good—he wasn't ready to reveal that card yet if he didn't have to.

"In conclusion," he said, "it makes more sense to look somewhere else, and to save going to Batman as a last resort."

"Unless you want to go all the way to Metropolis, where else do you think we'll find the resources to fix this that isn't in the hands of a villain?" Bobby protested.

Dresden faltered.

He hadn't actually thought that far. Pres had said for a long time that his lack of forethought was one of his biggest flaws, but Dresden was rarely forced to face it like he was now.

"There's other people in Gotham," Dresden weakly said. He awkwardly coughed and drew himself up, trying to make himself feel like he was more sure of himself when he wasn't. "And if whatever brought us here is because of villains, we can take it from them."

Dresden knew a thing or two about stealing. It had been his charge, occasionally, to steal artifacts. He was by no means the most experienced person at it, but he knew enough to get by spirit-less defenses. In comparison to those thefts, stealing something from one of Batman's rogues would be easy.

You don't know that, Bobby thought bitterly. They didn't know how they got here. It could have nothing to do with any villains.

A vine swung out in their direction and the group scattered out of the way, Bobby hopping back further into the alley. "We can talk elsewhere."

With that, he turned around and dashed down the alley.

Vankous

Vankous was still trying to recover from the confirmation Kate had just made not too long ago making it quite certain she was exactly who Vankous thought she was when the whole conversation about Wayne Manor started.'

"Okay, I have to ask one quick question...umm...Kate. Do the world's batzilla plantains mean anything to you?"

The girl looked mildly concerned for his sanity. "No. Should it?"

"No," said Vankous, turning to the rest of the group. "I don't think we've got anyone in this group that can convince that particular moron...I mean superhero to help us out. I do love the idea of stealing, I'm sure we'll be plenty capable of doing that. Umm...Kate, this is going sound weird again but does the Prince of Darkness or maybe Princess of Darkness sound familiar to you?"

"Its the name of this myth that's floating around school, but why would that be important?" asked the girl now looking even more confused.

"We are in deep trouble," summarized Vankous. "Let's avoid heroes if we can. Also for future reference, this is a very normal hair color, where I'm from."

"Curious," said Kate, next to him. "You seem fragile enough to be one of the beings from a planet as weak as this. Although I must confess I haven't been to too many ones this fragile so all the younger species just blend together after a while."

"Zenomian, " supplied Vankous, not sure why he was even revealing information like this. "On paper our species is weaker than the average human...but I assure you, I have many other skills."

"Oh I can see those," said Kate.

"This?" said Vankous, a tiny flame flickering to life in his palm. It was a ghostly grey and it existed only in the twentieth transitional plane, something that would work as a warning light for an emergency teleportation. It should be invisible to all but those who could see the higher planes.

"What?" asked Kate. "Your hand?"

"Nothing," said Vankous, quickly stamping out the flame. "Let's focus on solving this problem."

Mireya wasn’t sure what the one called Dresden had meant by a meta, but she was going to find out. It would have to happen on the move, though, because the vines had found them. Maybe they were sentient after all or something.

She followed the newest of them, not quite as hurried as him, but she was keeping up. Mireya only paused to ask Dresden a question.

“What’s a meta? You pointed at me when you said it.”