Mettle, Metal, Meddled - Chapter 21 - Preparation (Patreon)

Sorry everyone, my tired ADD brain shorted out just long enough for me to miss title and tag this post. 

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Both M’gann and I took a few steps forward when Superboy called for us to start, but we both felt that it would be better to start by being defensive. Aqualad and Kid Flash headed straight for us, the latter zipping to us but stopping and running around, just out of reach. On a whim I stepped forward and flicked my hand up, loosening the stones under his feet. He slowed down almost immediately, wobbling a bit before picking his way through the now unstable footing.

M’gann, already understanding what I was doing, lifted her own arm and snagged a couple dozen of the small stones I had just freed, lifting them with her TK. As she did Kid Flash managed to stay up right long enough to run off of the unstable area/ The delaying tactics had worked though, keeping him from pincering us with Kaldur.

“Keep him dodging.” I said to her, though she had already picked up the gist of what I had in mind.

She spun, moved and generally whipped the stones around to keep Wally busy, the yellow clad hero having to focus entirely on dodging rocks. While she was doing that Kaldur continued rushing forward, his water bearers out and in the shape of two maces, though they lacked their usual spikes. I slid my foot forward, stomping hard and pushing up a wall of stone just tall enough for me to punch. I hit it four times, each time firing chunks of rock out the other side of the wall, flying at Kaldur. He shattered each rock as he ran, smashing them aside with his water maces.

Before I could continue my barrage I got a strong urge from M’gann to move. Without even thinking I reached out and flung myself up and over the barricade I made, dodging a bolo thrown by Robin. I shifted the rock forward, using its momentum to boost me over Kaldur, landing behind him. He shifted with me, keeping his eye on me as I landed. However, he didn't expect me to use my impact to sink him into a pit a few feet deep, causing him to stumble over. I turned to Robin, who was already jumping at me, his foot aiming for my chest. I had just enough time to pull my arm up and knock his kick aside, grabbing him and throwing him. He tumbled on the ground before kipping back up to his feet.

As he was recovering from his first knock down I spun and used my energy to pull a pillar of stone from the ground. Instead of pummeling it into the recovering Atlantrean I slammed it next to him, which he saw and looked at me, nodding as he saw my expression. I could have easily drove him into the ground with the large chunk of rock, but had spared him because this was a friendly spar. He recognized this and went back to his knees, before starting to stand back up again.

I had already turned back to Robin, only to watch as Wally, driven by a rock that had slammed into his gut, got slapped against him. Robin managed to roll and flip out of the impact, but Wally stumbled and rolled, getting up slowly. M’gann landed next to me, feeling happy to have caught Kid Flash as she did. The other three regrouped as well, all down a single knockdown.

“Offensive?” M’gann suggested mentally, which I responded to by sending a confirmation, adding that I was going for Kaldur.

We both moved at the same time, M’gann flying a few feet off of the ground while I leaned forward and used a slab of rock to launch myself. I flew across the small arena at a low angle, catching Kaldur off guard. We started trading blows and though he had me beat with both strength and skill I was able to keep him off center by manipulating the ground under his feet. M’gann focused on Robin, using her TK to block one of Robin's disk weapons. I sent a wave of warning, having done my research on Robin’s weapons. M’gann immediately understood, flying backward as Wally blurred past. She used her TK to attach Robin’s disc to the speedsters back, the weapon releasing an electric shock.

Wally cursed as his muscles locked up, which caused him to stumble at a serious speed. He tumbled, rolled and slid almost a dozen and a half feet before stopping, very much out of the circle. I could feel M’gann’s excitement and I sent a wave of my own before tempering it with an expression of warriness. We weren’t done yet.

M’gann agreed and flew to me, and suddenly we were both fighting Kaldur, slowly pushing him back. Pinning him from both sides I could feel M’gann monitoring Robin with her mind. With a mental nudge I showed her an idea, which she nervously agreed to. She moved left, purposely leaving herself open, which Kaldur immediately reacted to, stepping left and swinging with one of his water maces. Expecting this she flexed herself, showing the progress of her own training by shifting far out of normal human shape to dodge the mace, using the momentum of the dodge to turn and focus on Robin, who I had also been keeping an eye on.

While Kaldur was over extended I stomped and lifted my leg, a pillar of stone firing from the ground and knocking against his leg, allowing me to get in his personal space, grab him by his uniform and spin, throwing him clear out of the ring. Superboy sprinted, blurring slightly as he ran around the ring, much faster than humanly possible. He managed to catch his teammate  before he could tumble across the rocky ground.

I barely made a note of that however, as I was now focusing directly on Robin. I sent a questioning wave to M’gann, before shifting to a warning as Robin stepped back and pulled out one of his discs, throwing it at the ground between them. It detonated in a cloud of smoke and a concussive blast, stunning M’gann, causing her to fly back slightly, covering her eyes. I nudged her presence, letting her see through my eyes. I was just in time, as Robin leapt through the smoke, foot extended in a kick, expecting the Martian to be blind. Instead she reached out, caught his leg and threw him outside the ring.

For a second the quarry was quiet before M’gann let out a happy shout, zooming over to me.

“We did it!” She said, her feet off of the ground as she had her arms around my neck. “We actually did it!”

“We did! That was… that was exciting.” I responded with a big smile. “Fighting with my earthbending is a lot of fun.”

“I know, I could feel it.”  She said happily as she let go of me and floated back down to the ground.

Before she could continue Wally zipped back to the ring, stopping right next to M’gann.

“Not bad, beautiful.” He said, still brushing off the dust as the rest of the team made their way to us. “You really threw me for a loop with that mind moving stuff. With a little more polish…”

I blocked out what Wally was saying, doing my best to ignore the spark of annoyance he brought out of me. M’gann immediately reached out and gave my arm a squeeze without looking, as she politely responded to the speedster. I could sense her own feelings of both dismissal of Wally and appreciation of how I felt.

“It is certainly difficult to account for.” Kaldur said, now standing beside Wally. “You both fought well. Skarn, your small bending under my feet was increasingly frustrating. And I appreciate your mercy for my first knock down.”

“No reason to hit you like that when it's avoidable.” I said with a shrug. “And it's actually more difficult to do those small things than it was to do the wall punching. More precision means more concentration.”

“How big could you go?” Robin asked curiously.

“It's not a one to one kind of thing.” I said, gesturing up and down with my hands. “There's a fair bit of mind over matter involved. A lot of it has to do with my own willpower and stubbornness. I would struggle with larger amounts and I do have a finite amount of internal energy, but I’m honestly not at the point where I’m testing those limits in one go.”

“Well, either way, it is an impressive ability, one I can imagine will grow more impressive as you train.” Kaldur said with a nod before looking at M’gann. “You did very well as well M’gann, it's clear your shape shifting is getting more flexible.”

“Thank you.” She said with a smile. “I’ve been training with Uncle J’onn.”

We chatted a bit more while we all recovered before giving it another shot. This time M'gann and I struggled a bit more, with myself getting knocked down twice. Despite that M’gann was able to pull out a victory in that round as well. Our final match up showed the other three pulling out all of the stops. M’gann was knocked out of the ring after managing to get Wally out, leaving me to handle Robin and Kaldur. I managed to knock Robin out of the ring and knock down Kaldur once, but he managed to blast me out of the ring after shocking me with his magic. When we had finally recovered from that ordeal M’gann brought up how we would fight in front of the Justice League if I couldn't earthbend in the base and Robin just smirked.

“You won't have to.” He explained, pulling up a small screen on his wrist mounted computer. “Wally and I set up cameras earlier to catch some footage. We can cut it together and show it at the end of the presentation.”

Sure enough as he talked a replay of the last fight, specifically when Kaldur was stunning me with a touch of electricity. Of course he tapped the controls and put it on loop. Wally laughed just a bit too hard at it. I laughed as well, but only because of how annoyed M’gann got at him when he did.

“That was a good call.” I said, when I was done chuckling. “I guess that means we can head back and start putting this together. I would like to present this to the League as soon as possible, maybe even tomorrow or the day after.”

After we talked a bit the team piled back into Bioship, the spaceship quickly getting us back to the cave. Robin was about to start bringing things up in the central computer before I stopped him.

“Let's go have some lunch, recover for a bit and then head to the library. It's the same system but it's much more comfortable.”

Wally in particular supported this idea, and the crew headed to the kitchen area, where M’gann and eye washed up and brought out some cold cuts and made some tuna fish sandwiches. Wally whipped up four whole sandwiches for himself, finishing them all before anyone else had even taken a bite. He leaned back in his seat and claimed a bag of chips for himself.

The rest of us put together a sandwich each, took a handful of chips and sat down at the table. The group made some small talk, chatting about various things before Robin perked up and looked at me.

“Oh! Batman wanted me to tell you that your costume is done, and that Green Lantern is coming back from an off-planet mission in a few days and agreed to grab you a metal heavy asteroid on the way back.”

“Jeeze, talk about solid timing.” I said. “I was hoping it would be done before we presented our plan. When will it get here?”

“Probably by tomorrow or the day after.” He answered before Wally cut him off.

“Wait wait wait, what the hell do you need an asteroid for?” Wally said through a mouthful of chips.

“I’ve mentioned that eventually I’ll be able to metal bend on top of my earth bending?” I asked, getting several nods from everyone. “Well canonically meteorite metal is the easiest metal to start learning that with. Metal bending with training wheels basically.”

“Why? What type of metal do you even need?” Wally asked, looking skeptical. “What difference could it make where the metal came from, we could just replicate the alloy here.”

“I don’t know the answers to either of those questions.” I answered with a shrug. “I just know it's supposed to be easier.”

Wally scoffed and rolled his eyes, crunching on more chips. I looked at Kaldur with a raised eyebrow, the Atleantean sighing.

“Wally stubbornly believes that magic, or anything mystical, is fake.”

I pause for a moment, my brain working through what he said before I started laughing. It took a bit before I finally stopped.

“You don't believe in magic?” I asked, still chuckling. “I come from a world where there actually isn't any magic, trust me, this world has magic.”

“What?” Wally asked, looking confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean my home dimension, where I come from. There was no magic.” I explained. “It's very different from this dimension.”

“But how do you know that's due to magic?” Wally said, shaking his head like I was an idiot in this scenario.

“I don’t. But I’m not gonna argue with the people who know better.” I said with a shrug.

“It's all just tricks and abilities. Just because something is flashy and you can't explain it doesn't mean something is magic. Plenty of people manipulate energy and they don't call it magic.”

“They do if it's magic!” I said, rolling my eyes. When I first got here I did a lot of research about magic, considering it had been the most likely way of me getting home. “Wally, magic isn't unexplained. People here have dedicated their lives to studying and understanding it for millennia. Hell, that's only on this planet! Just because our recent culture has attached it to sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors, doesn't mean the people who have been learning it are suddenly charlatans. Look, here is an example.”

I grabbed the salt shaker from the center of the table and held it in the air.

“What would you call this Wally?” I asked.

“A salt shaker? Just salt?” He said, talking like I was a small child.

“That's right, salt.” I agreed before looking at Kaldur. “What would you call it in Atlantean Kaldur?”

“Háls.” Kaldur said, looking a bit confused.

“Right. Wally, do you think Kaldur is wrong? That it’s not háls, it’s salt?”

“What? No, we are both right.”

“That's right. In fact, I would say that since Atleanteans trace their history back…” I said, looking at Kaldur to fill in the blank.

“ About twelve thousand years.” He responded.

“About twelve thousand years, that he is more correct than you.” I finished. “Magic has been around since way before people started looking at the world even remotely scientifically. Magic is the original science.”

“They were just attributing science to magic though since they couldn't understand it.” He argued, crossing his arms.

“They do understand it dumbass. You think Zatara doesn't understand what he is doing? Or that Dr. Fate didn’t? Just because they call it magic doesn't mean it's all wishy washy mumbo jumbo. Magic is just a word.”

“I think perhaps we should focus on something else.” Kaldur said, cutting off Wally’s annoyed response. “We have a task to complete, and I believe we are done with lunch.”

I was about to add something else, despite Kaldur’s suggestion, but M’gann’s mind brushed against mine, encouraging me to take a deep breath. I did, before finally nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, alright. Let’s agree to disagree for now and move this to the library.”

The group lightly cleaned up from lunch before heading off to the library. I followed behind everyone, M’gann stopping to walk beside me.

“You okay?” She asked. “You were getting a bit upset.”

“Yeah, he just gets on my nerves.” I said, letting out a deep breath. “I’m sure he is a good guy or whatever but… Well you can feel what I mean.”

M’gann nodded, blushing a bit as I pointed out the feelings we were both clearly feeling.

“But thank you for getting my attention like that.” I added, giving her a mental hug. “I shouldn't let him get under my skin.”

“Any time.” She said with a smile, both physical and mental. “I’ve got your back.”

“And I’ve got yours.”

The group stepped into the library and quickly  found some comfortable places to sit before we started cutting down and putting together a presentation. Turns out Wally knows a bit about video editing, at least enough to work together some basic cuts, claiming that he had a computer class the previous year. Over the next hour or so we worked everything down to a short presentation and a few minutes of video, mostly of our sparring, but also several clips of other things. Kaldur and I practiced giving the presentation twice, each time fixing a few things before everyone was finally completely satisfied.

With our project done the group went their separate ways, with Robin promising to tell Batman that we were ready.