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Alchemist didn't expect to see results of his request in a day. He didn't even expect to see them in a week.
Seeding the idea for a conspiracy in a much more fertile mind tends to take time. It wasn't a skill he'd ever bothered working on, requiring much better people skills than he had, but it was something he was aware of.
That his suggestion would be mutually beneficial was probably the biggest selling point, at least for him. Mera hadn't been told why Alchemist wanted her to get their god involved in a particular matter but, well, doing so would more than meet her own goals as well.
It would probably upset Aquaman, though. Not something Alchemist actually wanted to do. Despite all the jokes about him, King Orin was a genuine powerhouse and not someone to take lightly. The man's power extended to the control of all aquatic creatures.
Even Cthulhu.
Whereas Alchemist's control extended to... One hyperactive dog? Sometimes?
Alchemist's thoughts drifted along that topic as he listened to Mera explain bits and pieces of Wall of Force to her team of researchers that were all 'Working' on the burnt out 'Remains' of the 'Collector Ship' that had been found on the bottom of the sea.
He had an army of summons that he could try and work with. He'd only called a few of them and each instance had involved a large-scale fight.
Alchemist let that thought percolate for a bit as he cast Life Bubble on himself and then extracted a cup of cocoa from his inventory. Caught within the envelope of 'Habitable' environment, the liquid within didn't simply float up and out.
"...How are you doing that?" Shark asked, her voice incredulous within her helmet.
"Doing what?" The wizard asked after taking a sip of the hot, sweet beverage.
He knew there were more than a few methods to summon any of the spirits he'd found. A quick shot of magic to 'Frame' the spirit and it would show up, throw an attack at something and disappear.
Useful, but only inside of a place where collateral damage was acceptable. He hadn't heard anything from Player One about her Illusion Dungeons and she seemed particularly tetchy, lately.
"I don't even know why I asked." Shark shook her head, the red tassel on her helmet drifting in the water like blood.
"I'm not even sure what you asked." Alchemist admitted, half of his attention on Mera as she demonstrated her new spell. The woman had seemed to fixate on the material component for the spell, a small amount of powdered quartz.
His explanation that most such items were wholly unnecessary didn't quite seem to stick.
It was hardly a large or expensive thing. He had a few chunks in his inventory from... He really wasn't sure. Some days he felt like the main character in Graveyard Keeper, always having to deal with one thing just so he could deal with the next. All the while he was struggling against time constraints and he was never sure if he had all of the right materials on hand. Or where he'd stuck them.
Similar to Beardy McBeardface, money was the cause and solution to some of those problems.
Unlike Beardy McBeardface, Alchemist wasn't willing to resurrect an army of the undead and task them with menial chores and intense manual labor jobs. Most people suffered enough of that while alive, he couldn't justify doing that to them after death.
Alchemist took another sip of his cocoa and leaned against the wall next to the door, opposite of Shark. Mera was handing out her edited copies of Wall of Force, transcribed on stone slats alongside small silk bags filled with rock dust. He was honestly eager to see how well they managed the spell.
As to the summons... Alchemist knew there was a way to manifest them in lesser forms. There was also a way to sustain one indefinitely by tethering it to his life and yet still another method that would allow him to channel a summon and manifest it at its peak power through him.
Something called an... Egi? At least for the more basic elemental summons. Which he didn't have. He remembered there was a demi-summon of Phoenix and another for Bahamut.
Was there a way for him to adjust the summoning parameters to let him do that? If so, would the summon still grow stronger and gain experience? A demi-Eden might be cute. He'd have to answer a lot fewer questions about it, too. He wasn't entirely certain how he would explain away her whole 'Turn the world into a spellglyph full of Ptolemy celestial sigils and shoot a beam into the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy' thing.
Doing that with Knights of the Round would be abjectly hilarious before the mayhem started. Thirteen little chibi knights, running around with swords, axes and miniaturized super-powerful magics.
Jason Blood might have a heart attack if he had to deal with a little King Arthur and his pocket-knife sized sword, Miniscalibur. Or he could send them after Morgan le Fay and the brat-prince, Mordred.
"Could you stop doing that?" Shark spoke up again, irritation in her voice.
"Doing what?" Alchemist had been standing against the wall and thinking. Occasionally enjoying his drink.
"Giggling." The woman grunted, her one eye glaring at him through her helmet. "It's creepy."
"Oh." Alchemist thought about it for a moment. "No."
The woman was the right hand for Queen Mera, a natural-born politician. If Alchemist giggling innocently at his mental imagery was enough to upset her, she'd have long since been replaced.
"...You must be swimming in friends." Shark commented, crossing her arms and turning her head back towards Mera.
"Just a few good ones." Alchemist responded back, an easy smile on his face. He was tempted to fire back but, honestly, it wouldn't serve any purpose for him. The woman had been irritable ever since she'd found out that Orm had tried to trick him to the idiot's cause.
Whatever snark the Shark had for him was cut off by a loud, heavy 'Bang!' on the outside wall of the room, at the giant door leading out to the oceans beyond.
The room went silent, countless fishy magicians stared at the door as the room filled with a sour combination of dread and nervous energy.
"...Dul'ar, did you void your bladder?!" One of the magicians, a woman with an angler's light on her head screeched as she held her hands against her gills.
And urine.
"Sorry!"
Another impact and the hinges on the walls, each one half the size of Alchemist himself, began to buckle.
"...This is your fault, isn't it, mage?" Shark hissed as the two of them got close to the Queen.
"Probably." Alchemist agreed, reviewing the spells he had available that would both work underwater... And not kill everyone.
He... Might have an idea.
A wonderful, terrible idea.
An especially simple idea. One that could well accelerate his agreement with Mera.
The mage grinned. It was not an expression that made the surrounding Atlanteans at all comfortable.
-----
Orm quelled the nervous flutter in his heart as he rallied the purists behind him.
He'd been trying to get into the Queen's chambers in the Conservatory since he'd first heard that they'd extracted the remains of the unknown ship that interfered in Bialya. None in the Light knew about the group or what they had been doing with the team of junior heroes.
That was unacceptable.
It was hardly unheard of or even uncommon for new factions to crawl out of the mud but a group that included what appeared to be a demon, a spellcaster and... Well, nobody was quite sure what to make of the Minimiser. Mad mage or mad meta, there was hardly any difference.
There had been some noise about using Psimon to find out but the man had gone missing, leaving a trail of eyeless corpses behind himself. He'd hardly been subtle but a psychic that didn't want to be found, wouldn't be. At least, not in person.
Savage had made some uneasy noises about possibly firebombing his potential locations, something Queen Bee had balked at.
She may not have cared about her people, no, but Psimon had been lingering around economically important areas. Destroying them would have made things... Difficult.
Of course, Orm had seen firsthand how that decision had turned out. Psimon had ambushed the woman in her palace and his spine had entangled itself about the woman's neck, the two of them fusing into some unholy abomination.
They needed answers. The psychic had left the school after the encounter with the junior league and these Collectors. The heroes obviously had nothing to do with it, destroying one of the Light's assets in such a fashion was not in their methodologies. Meaning it likely had something to do with the trio that had re-captured the apprentices before they made yet another escape.
Personally, Orm was assuming that Psimon had tried to get into the head of that 'Wallmaster' demon. The one covered in spikes that had set up impenetrable barriers, capable of withstanding direct fire from the main cannon of a tank.
Demon summoning was forbidden within Atlantis and all of its territories for a reason. Something even he was not willing to casually tamper with.
Orm was not privy to the full details of the mage that had come to Atlantis. His half brother had talked about him, yes, and he'd had some rather curious things to mention. This 'Alchemist' had made some kind of novel material infused with some kind of healing magic. Orm hadn't felt it necessary to listen further.
The mage called himself Alchemist. He was doing alchemy. It could not have been any more blatant unless the eccentric had chosen to dress up in a bat suit and call himself 'Batman'!
The prince did not know what reason Mera had for summoning the mage. Not beyond a nebulous understanding that his magic may have some relation to what was found.
Or, considering the man was reputed to be a great healer, they may have uncovered something else. Something alive, to some degree. Perhaps the demon had not fully died, perhaps the ship itself was a living creature of some kind. Whatever the answer was, he would claim it for himself!
...Or for one of the other members of the Light. He was not above making trades, making deals.
A future king must know how to best get the most value for his actions, after all.
"Prepare yourselves!" Orm shouted, his voice distorted through an enchantment in his helmet. "Most are feeble scholars but the Queen herself is hidden within! And with her, her guard!"
Behind him, fifteen men and women were arranged. All wore masks to hide their identities, a necessary precaution given that some of them were of noble standing.
The Trident of Neptune hummed in anticipation, the great weapon was eager to once more see bloodshed. He held it out before him, the points aimed at the great steel door on the back of the conservatory and the waters around them flowed. First back and away before swirling in a great circle and slamming into the barrier.
The doors held but they did not do so unscathed.
Orm spun the trident about, the water following his actions as it swirled and churned violently, spiraling into the doors once more.
This time, they did not hold. They buckled, one tore free of its hinge and dropped into the conservatory with a heavy 'Clang!' that the prince could feel in his bones. The other crumpled, ripping free of one hinge and hanging weakly on the other.
"Forward!" Orm shouted, leading the charge. "Leave no stone unturned, no eddy unexplored! The secrets they've uncovered shall be... Ours?"
He'd expected the scholars to be a quivering mess, whatever little courage they had would be failing them. That the royal guard would be arranged in front of the queen, their weapons drawn and ready.
And they were. That was planned for. Expected, even.
The mage from the surface, however, stood at the fore.
How very unfortunate for him.
"Stand aside, landwalker!" Orm shouted, his trident aimed at the mage in his white shirt with red triangles. "And I may consider allowing you to leave with your life!"
"...Aww." The man's voice crooned in Orm's ear. The way he grinned, plainly at ease whilst he somehow drank from a cup under the sea, it sent a shiver of disquiet down his spine. "You're adorable."
"Seize the research!" Orm shouted, shaking his head to try and dispel whatever sorcery had been inflicted upon him. "And you! You were warned!"
Orm spun his weapon about in a grand flourish that ended with the points aimed directly at the magician's heart. With an act of will and focus, Orm activated one of the trident's key functions.
The ability to siphon magic and life. An aspect he'd once turned upon Mera before he'd been interrupted.
Orm quickly felt his own reserves, partially drained from his grand manipulation of the waters, quickly bloat to full.
And then further beyond, the magic expanding within him and leaking as a dense, yellow miasma that poured from his armor and the trident alike.
Orm grunted in discomfort, struggling to maintain his focus.
Alchemist, meanwhile, stood in place calmly whilst the Puritans... The Puritans...?
The prince's concentration broke, the spell failing as he looked behind him. His cohort was stuck outside, their hands beating uselessly against an invisible wall.
"What...?" Orm asked, his mind quickly putting the pieces together as he turned back to the man from the surface. "What is-"
Orm flinched in surprise upon finding the man was not still standing where he'd left him. No, the man was directly in front of him. He reached out with speeds far surpassing what Orm had expected, grabbing on to the Trident of Neptune.
The divine weapon raged in the hands of the unworthy. It belched magic and lightning, the concentrated power of storms into the man... Who was unphased.
"Release my weapon at once!" Orm shouted, his fist impacting the mage.
It felt like slamming his hand into solid stone. Orm barely managed to avoid cursing aloud as his fingers screamed at him in pain.
"Hmm..." The interloper finally released his cup, brown liquid floating into the water as it fell from his hand. Instead, the mage grabbed on to Orm's helmet. "No."
The prince panicked, truly, when he realized what the man was planning. His identity as Ocean Master needed to remain secure, it was a tool he needed to drive the masses and harry his brother!
With Alchemist holding on to the Trident of Neptune, Orm couldn't use it to teleport. But holding on to it, he could not escape, could not make some effort to maintain his secret identity.
Orm released the trident and twisted away, free of the man's iron grip. The mage did not pursue, did not attempt to follow him. Instead, he leaned the trident against the ground and raised his other hand.
The hand holding the helmet of Ocean Master.
"You!" Mera screamed, her voice rich with magic and fury. "Orm! You will not escape, not today! Guards!"
"You dare!" Orm shouted desperately as he tried to swim around the men and women that were closing in on him. He failed, unfortunately.
With the magical barrier blocking the outside entrance and Mera's guards between Orm and the doors within, he'd nowhere to go. Crab was quick to wrap his arms around just one of Orm's hands, Shark took his legs. Octopus wasted no time in grabbing his other arm.
Between the three of them, he was forced to the ground.
"I!" Orm knew he had few options left. He'd played his hand and been found wanting. "I am of royal blood! You have no right to detain me! No right to judge me!"
"...Perhaps." He heard Mera say before she twisted one hand into his hair and forced him to look up at her. "Perhaps this is true."
"Ha!" That... Orm hadn't expected that to work! "Here I never thought you'd see reason! Release me!"
"No." Mera's voice was frigid as the Arctic flow. "If we've no right to judge you? We shall call upon one who does."
"...What?" Orm had no idea what she was blathering on about. "Who could possibly judge me?! I am descended from the first kings of Atlantis!"
"Take him to a holding cell!" Mera shouted, not answering him. "No- Take him to one of the experiment containment chambers. The ones that disallow spatial tampering. I would not see him teleported to freedom."
The woman stood up and began to walk to the exit. She spared a final glance at Orm as Alchemist, now wearing the helmet he'd stolen, walked up to her.
"Ensure he is treated as his station deserves. It would not do for Poseidon to accuse us of maltreatment."
-----
"Don't forget to check your side mirrors." Alchemist told her, casually sitting in the passenger seat of the small red sedan that he, Jinx, Yuffie and Kary were in.
"I'm checking." Jinx grumbled, her eyes flicking back and forth between the side mirror and the rear-view. "I can only do so many things at once."
"It's alright, take your time." He had a soft smile on his face, obviously calmer than she was.
They were in an empty parking lot for some big box store outside of Metropolis. Jinx had asked Alchemist to teach her to drive a while back and he finally found the time. Time that was split between a second copy of him having an undersea adventure which... Didn't sound very exciting, really.
He'd made a handful of orange cones that he stuck small flags in and arranged them in what he said was the basic maneuverability configuration.
It was a box.
"What's going on in Atlantis?" Kary asked from the backseat, securely buckled in to keep from jerking around when Jinx would slam the brake.
"Well, the inbred fishstick is getting dragged into a jail cell. I'm thinking I should add a few wards, some basic stuff. Anti-teleport, anti-scrying, anti-evil and chaos, maybe throw a Black Spot at the asshat..." Jinx flinched when she heard the plastic cone crunch into pieces under the tire of the car. "Go ahead and pull forward, I'll fix that real quick."
Jinx did so, lurching the car forward before hitting the brake hard enough that everyone inside the vehicle jerked in their seat. Alchemist opened the door, leaned out the side of the car, snapped his fingers and leaned back in.
"You're good to go." He told her. "Go ahead and keep trying. Driving is a skill that you have to practice at, it's hard to get a feel for a vehicle since it's so big and you've got so many blind spots."
Jinx grumbled quietly and got back to practice. It wasn't at all exciting like she thought it'd be. Just a lot of repetition, checking her mirrors and trying to keep an eye on the various dials and buttons all over the place.
"...You've been preoccupied all day." Kary spoke up from the back seat, distracting Jinx as she tried to back up between two of the cones. "Has something been on your mind?"
"A few things." Alchemist admitted. "I mean, water world is demanding a lot of focus but I've been trying to think of a way to fix something I screwed up."
"What did you-" Jinx paused as she heard another cone crunching under a tire. Yuffie laughing at her was definitely not appreciated. "What did you mess up?"
"My hydra." Jinx heard him admit as she pulled a bit forward and checked her driverside mirror. The shattered plastic cone was briefly covered in golden sparkles as it reverted to its prior, pristine shape. "I put in a few enchantments when I got a bit too greedy. It makes the weapon pretty strong but it literally hurts to shoot. Which is... Manageable, I guess, but I didn't think ahead when I also fed it a Drain Materia. Now the weapon might kill me if I use it to shoot something undead."
"That... Is something of a problem." Kary agreed.
"And kinda dumb." Yuffie also shared her opinion. "If that's a problem, why did you stick it in there in the first place?"
"I thought it would offset the first problem." Alchemist admitted to the girls. "It does heal up the damage it causes but it doesn't stop it from hurting to begin with. I guess I can learn to deal with it, I'd just need to stop flinching after every shot."
"...Geeze, Al. What did you even put in there?" Jinx asked as she nervously wiggled the steering wheel back and forth.
"One of the Darkness Materia." He told her. "I'm pretty sure it's why the bullets could pierce god-flesh."
Normally he'd drag out his weapon to show her but they were in a small car and it was cramped enough.
"Don't those eat like, one-eighth or one-tenth of your life?" Yuffie asked from in between the front seats, her head poking in between Alchemist and Jinx's. "I remember I used to have a teacher that loved those things! He said SOLDIERs never expected it!"
"They do, yes. Which is why I added the Drain Materia. It solved one problem, didn't touch another and actually added an even worse one." Alchemist quietly sighed and leaned his head against the cold window. "I know of a few substitutes but they'd be really time consuming to deal with."
"Is this a 'I have an idea I'm going to run off and do without help' kind of thinking or are you genuinely stuck debating different methods of resolving your problem?" Kary asked, still firmly buckled into her seat.
"...The second one." Alchemist rolled his eyes, something Jinx caught while she was checking the passenger side mirror to avoid running over the cone. Again. "If I pick up the scroll of Drain from the world of Vana'diel, that particular spell simply fails against the undead. Similar spells from the connected multiverses typically reverse in effect, instead. There is, however, a spell called Drain Touch. Which is a very high-powered drain spell and isn't affected at all by whatever the condition of the target is."
"...It really sounds as though the second option is clearly superior. What is the issue with it?" Kary continued, obviously thinking through what he'd said.
"Not entirely true." Alchemist disagreed. "The higher levels of Vana'diel Drain can give the user some overflow HP. Every little bit is nice, after all. That's just one scroll and I can purchase it for a little under eleven grand."
"That's not bad at all." Kary admitted, lurching in her seat as Jinx adjusted the car. "So what's the problem with it?"
"I'd have to level it through three spells before it's done." Jinx fidgeted in her seat as Alchemist spoke, she wanted to offer her opinion but she was also trying to focus on her driving. "Simple, just time consuming."
"What about Drain Touch?" Yuffie asked, only slightly phased by the lurching and jerking of the car. The girl's ninja training had paid off, her balance was fantastic. The Chakra training was even working to soothe her motion sickness!
"A great big quest that's a pain in the butt." Alchemist told the girl. "We'd have to go to a sort of quasi-plane outside of reality, break into a sealed temple, beat up the Necromancer, Enuo inside and that would unlock the Necromancer class. Then we have to go and tear apart some of the worst monsters that exist and piece together the Dark Arts from the lingering fragments of their souls."
"...Seriously?" Jinx asked as she pushed down the brake and put the car into Park. "Why would we even consider that?"
"...Why is 'Enuo' familiar?" Kary muttered quietly from the back seat.
"The class does come with an assortment of valuable spells." Alchemist answered. "Elemental attack spells that have greater base power than anything similar that we have, a version of Dark Flare that outright ignores any defenses and its own version of Ultima called Doomsday which bases its strength off of your attributes rather than the spells you know."
"So, I can cover the first set with 'Maximum Powah'. The second one, you can already do with 'Pierce'." Jinx countered those benefits piece by piece. "As to Ultima, have you tried learning any of the other spells that would empower it? Or did you just stop because you hit the limit that was in the original game they came from?"
"...I have not, no." Alchemist admitted after a brief moment of thought. "I guess I never really-"
"I bought it!" Kary exclaimed, interrupting Alchemist. "I, uh, I bought it. With a Quest Ticket. It gave me these four black crystals? I can- Oh!"
There was a brief flash from the back seat and Jinx had to actually turn around to make sure she was seeing things correctly.
The imp, previously wearing a rather normal outfit of loose, modified shorts and a tee shirt was now wearing something... Less.
Her shorts had been replaced with a thin, semi-transparent black sash. Her shirt had been replaced by an equally thin but solid black strip of fabric. While she hadn't been wearing shoes before due to her hooves, she now had a set of these strange, silver sandals tied to them. Her wrists now held a pair of silver bangles studded with red gems.
From her horns dangled some silver chains and, in between said horns was a miniature goat skull. That had glowing red orbs in its eye sockets and even more silver loops dangling from its horns.
"...So!" Kary continued, grinning at the eyes that had locked on to her. "I've got the whole spell list but I don't actually know them, so I'll have to activate them through the Menu. Will, uh, will you guys be able to learn them?"
"...Yeah." Jinx tried not to feel envious at the way Alchemist's eyes trailed down the imp's body. "I have a mimic skill. Jinx can use the Mime Materia to do the same thing. It's part of how I learned Soulsucker."
"...You found the legendary Mime Materia?" Yuffie whispered, stars in her eyes and awe in her voice.
"...Why?" Jinx asked, waving at Kar'Yashlan's... Everything. "Just... Why?"
"...I don't -think- anyone ever accused Gen Kobayashi of being a pervert." Alchemist's answer really didn't clarify anything for Jinx. "But I don't think anyone has ever accused him of -not- being a pervert."
AN/ Gen Kobayashi was the art director for a number of games. He also is listed as the art designer for the remaster of FFV, where Necromancer was introduced as a playable vocation.
Typos corrected by the incredible infinityDivided.