bb

For the next few days I made a living carving stone, dividing my time between getting rocks from the beaches, jogging, visiting the library, and working in the shop. I learned a lot about the magic I was using and the world I was in.

I was literally surrounded by magical books and scrolls, a few written by honestly evil wizards, witches, demons, and monsters, did not stop me from trying to devour them whole with my eyeballs. After all I could learn magic now.

I trained with my Gentle Shadow Magic to develop the superpowers that I was sure that I'd need in the future. They were a useful all-round utility magic that I was more than happy to abuse all over the place. If I needed something I could manifest items made out of shadow. If I needed to store something I could slip it into and out of my shadow to carry it with me or put the item into the Shadow Realm directly. It also allowed me to walk through shadows and act as a form of teleportation. If I was being attacked I could use it to manifest dark Shadow Metal armor on my body or hold up walls and shields made of shadows.

I soon had one corner of the shop dedicated to stone carving, with furniture made out of stone that I wasn't afraid to chop up with accidents, with a little wall around my work area slowly filling up with chips and dust that was a result of what I was taking out of my latest masterpiece.

When asked I even did custom jobs. A slab of rock became a Chinese checker board and a few more bits of rock became new chess pieces to replace some that had been broken. I also worked on carved stone animals and candle holders.

As the date got closer to Wednesday I was finding that my skill with by abilities had increased.

Inside of a week I had gone from an amateur in Gentle Shadow Magic to someone who could do dozens of things at once. My cuts were always straight and perfectly angled.

I bought some tools to measure the distances and angles on paper. I even cut graph paper blindfold to test out my theory.

My curves were perfect circles or gentle slopes, of the kind usually requiring computer precision. A cube of stone I created for dice was perfect. Even the letters I cut out of stone could slide back and forth in their slots as if cut by machine precision and water wouldn't flow between the cuts.

I liked to believe that I was being inspired by the shadows on items and other artworks around the world; that I was somehow using the memories of shapes sensed by other shadows.

One of my newer and more useful pastimes, which I had only just acquired the skills to do so late at night when it was full dark, was that I could use the shadows to look into other areas where it was dark and shadowy. I could extend my senses through my shadows and use shadow hands to manipulate things in other places. I couldn't immediately travel into Fort Knox, but any place I had set my eyes on was available and I could easily hop my viewpoint from shadow to shadow until I was clear across the state.

The only limitation was that I couldn't go into a shadow that had a soul in it. That included people and most animals. This wasn't a limitation exactly but more of a matter of the natural protections of the soul. I felt like I could possess a person if I tried hard enough. But I wasn't ready, not yet.

Appearance wise my stone work looked like reproductions of the perfect and impossible stone carvings found around the world and in the ruins of Ancient Peru.

For fun I used my shadows to build my stone wall around my work area. I'd need something to keep potential customers out of my work area anyway.

I started with one stone and cut the bottom so it would lie flat on the floor. Then I took another stone, cut the bottom off of that one using shadow magic, using shadow magic to make the next rock to be added appear out of the ground and slowly fitted the two together. For some reason I found it perfectly fine to use the shadow between the two of them to disappear the rock between them until they fit together perfectly. After I had a few of these fitted together in a six foot long row I started adding more on top. With the overhead lights it was easy to manipulate the shadows between the rocks so I could remove material from the new piece and the already established stones both at the same time.

I had to go slowly cause otherwise I didn't want all the rock to disappear into the Shadow Realm all at once.

When I was done I had a nice wall with blocks made out of the oddest angles of perfectly flat cuts so perfectly aligned that water couldn't flow between them.

For some reason I was finding it perfectly understandable that those giant rocks should be cut to fit into place, which the next rock should be cut to fit into place while the stone that's already there should be further cut a second and third time so the two can fit together. That each stone to be added would be cut to fit into place while the rocks already there should be cut a fourth and fifth time so more additions could be made.

I wanted to phone this in to somebody and let them know that I had solved one of the great mysteries of the ancient world. Maybe get some prize money or something.

But hell, I bet there were already plenty of people in the archeological community that were shrugging their shoulders and saying "A Wizard did it." Once you were presented with proof that superheroes were a thing the idea of ancient civilizations using magic to build suddenly wasn't a crackpot.

Heck, it wasn't stranger than supermarkets and clothing stores issuing credit cards. I'd gotten my Bank Americard verified so I could charge things now. I'd actually learned quite a bit reading up on the banking industry in this era. I had no idea that the car industry or that the oil companies had their own credit cards once. I'd had a rewards card but that wasn't the same thing. But it kind of made me wish to know why they had stopped issuing credit cards after the millennium back in my world.

If I had to guess it probably had something to do with imports and the price of oil.

Not important.

Do you want to know what's great about living in the past? There are fewer distractions. I wasn't really interested in what was on TV except for the news and weather reports. I did note the now alive actors. I was interested in seeing them alive on stage and in their prime.

So do you want to know what's so bad about living in the past? The lack of information! No internet, and no increasing communications networks, and no video cameras to be found anywhere that's not in a shop selling photography equipment. You can get away with all kinds of stuff because there are no records at all.

I was quietly in awe of this.

Lookit, with just a few spells I had a weapon that I could sneak into any country and use to cut tanks in half. The military would find that damn useful. There was a war on in Vietnam you know.

But nobody seemed interested.

Which was really weird?

Maybe it just wasn't that heavily remarked upon?

Could I be in one of those worlds where it wasn't that big of a deal?

Since the newspaper people never showed up with questions I guess I was in the clear.

-000-​

May 23, Thursday, 1968

I planned my jogging route to take me by the library on the way back when I power walked to cool myself down in the mornings. So I go visit and have a drink of water as I wait for my heart to calm down from the exercise.

One more thing...

I'm not out of breath. I should be, but I'm not. I'm still fat thou.

In addition to training in the morning to enhance my growing familiarity with the martial arts and lose my fatty gut, I was an avid reader in my past life. I was as interested in history as much as the next guy. I read the whole history book in school at least once. So it wasn't like I wasn't totally clueless. The history books matched up pretty well with what I remembered. There was a long period of events that happened before World War Two, during it, and afterwards.

The newspapers and history books are right where I expected them to be in the building. There were also a few magazines I'd never heard about. There was this magazine called Ancient Runes that talked about all the magic mentioned in old legends right there on the magazine rack. As far as I knew no such magazine had ever existed in my world. I assumed this was because I was in another Realm.

I made a note to subscribe when I could.

There are no computers. But there was a microfilm machine and I had to ask the librarian to show me how it works.

Later I bought a newspaper. A new one, with news from Asia.

On May 22, 1968, at precisely 12:40 PM Greenwich mean time, the sun seemed to have been replaced by a blue-white version of itself. The sudden increase in solar energy heated the temperature of the earth's surface upwards by 22 degrees over the course of five minutes. After which the sun seemingly returned to normal. All agreed that this had been a good thing.

I should say so! If the sun had remained a blue-white giant we would have been cooked in our juices.

Did I do this? Did I arrive at a cataclysm?

I wouldn't know until later.

-000-​

May 27, Monday, 1968

Another newspaper. I bought every one I could find. But this one was concerning details that began on the 5th​ earlier this month. I guess I was in the clear.

The scientists of this time were so stuck up it took the sun briefly turning into a super-giant to knock them out of their complacency. There was a vast amount of roaring in the scientific community. No scientist was catapulted upwards in fame or fortune. The only thing everyone could agree on was that the possibility of being struck by a meteor was more probable. They were demanding more money for more telescopes of the heavens.

So now all these other details were coming out. I guess someone found their courage.

The first documented of the evidence of the apocalyptic event that was to come appeared at the Bronx Memorial Park but was not limited to just this location. The caretakers on site noted that a singular male giraffe from Africa had stopped eating and drinking. They called for veterinarians, who then made calls for more help. Over the course of twelve days the animal slowly changed into a quivering mass of flesh. The tail, limbs, neck and head seemed to have grown backwards in time, leaving behind an egg-shaped mass of skin with not a hair on it and no orifices from which to take in nourishment or to defecate from.

A day later the flesh-egg divided itself into two pieces. Over the course of the last few days the two masses of flesh then grew lumps on its skin and fur, from which emerged legs and tails and necks and heads.

For all appearances and to the limits of scientific study there were going to be two new giraffes.

I shook the newspaper away from me, surprised that something like this had remained a secret for so long.

But then again there was no internet. No cell phones. All the zookeepers had to do was put a tarp over the bars of the exhibit and keep people away using construction and maintenance excuses.

If I was right, and these creatures were cloned, or the result of some event, than what should emerge are two kits. It would be the same creature, smaller by about less than half the previous mass of the adult animal. Both would be male. Almost as if requiring only a few more months to achieve their full growth.

With my knowledge of science fiction and things from the future, I'd bet money on it.

-000-

​

May 29, Wednesday, 1968

There was no indication that there were any superheroes in this world.

There were plenty of magicians however. They were exactly the kind of people I was looking for.

I must confess, for the best, that it took me a while to find them.

I did something I otherwise wouldn't do: I started looking at people. I watched as people walked around. I watched them shop. I watched them start their cars. I watched them walk their dogs. I practically stalked their every footfall.

And there were hints that the world was not what it seemed.

I used my Gentle Shadow Magic to follow this girl. She had been reading a book in the park resting against the backrest of a bench with her arm draped across a stone chess board. She was flickering this quarter. Normally I wouldn't have been aware of it at all. I'd found it entertaining to follow people's shadows rather than staring at them with my eyes like some creepy stalker guy. So that was when I noticed that the shadow of the quarter never stopped turning.

Oh, the girl did a good job pretending. But she was too interested in her book and she forgot about her little spinning quarter for minutes on end. And never you mind that the chessboard of stone wasn't perfectly level so it should have fallen into the grass following gravity, but didn't.

I spent my time sitting in the shadow of my shop following people around by looking through shadows. The area underneath cars was a particular favorite of mine. Especially when the sun starts to go down and I could race along the road with a giant long mobile viewpoint.

Yet, there was always this point where I lost sight of people. They'd take a turn and I'd go to follow them. But by the time I switched my viewpoint to another shadow I found that person was gone.

Like she vanished from the world.

How strange it is to go down a street called Charleston to get milk one day and find someone who doesn't need a car to get their groceries home!

As for the mundane the people were really stirred up now.

Of course I knew that if the phenomena could appear in the Bronx Memorial Park it could appear in other places.

In the African Lion Safari, which had only opened early this year, had a whole herd of elephants undergoing mitosis. The Buenos Aires Zoo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, had entire flocks of birds transformed into balls of fluff. For the visitors of the Hangzhou Zoo it was a pair of red pandas that underwent sudden division.

Not all of these places occurred under scientific study. One household wife in a depression over the loss of her only son in World War 2, her parents to old age, and her husband into the bottle, was ecstatic to wake up one day in the body of a ten year old with a brand new twin sister.

There was a standing $50,000 dollar reward for the discoverer if they could find more places like these.

While understanding was limited people were quick to put them to use. There were plans in the works so that species of animals on the verge of extinction could be saved.

Like all people who don't buy the newspapers regularly I had to wait for the late additions to get all the details I wanted and thus engage in Reeesearch.

What connection is there, if any, between the sun turning into a blue white star last Wednesday for a breif moment and a bunch of areas able to make animal clones? How does that fit into girls who can make quarters spin without end that can turn corners and disappear from the world?

Inquiring minds wish to know.

Last week everyone knew the earth was special.

This week the scientists were having a crisis of faith.

Can you imagine what things will be like next week?

-000-​

Originally this chapter of world building was to be much, much different. However at the last moment I found myself not caring for the rant, and found myself in the position of telling, not showing. So I rewrote it into this.

My plan is to have at least one chapter coving the CYOA or Jumpchain he gets, then with a few more chapters covering the week between then and the next Wednesday.

By the way this is a crossover. But I doubt most people will make the connection before I reveal it. I think it makes things more interesting that way.

Last edited: Sep 21, 2020

87May 30, Thursday, 1968, 12:01 AM

When Wednesday night turned into Thursday morning I was amazed.

I could have taken any one of five CYOA that were presented to me. One of them was the Young Justice Jumpchain. I have five options available to me, and they were all nice, but I took this one anyway.

I only got the freebies.

Still overpowered, however.

Apparently I was now both a DROP-IN and a VIGILANTE.

Drop-In was an unremarkable origin. No new memories or anything to mess with my head. It's usually the same in each Jumpchain and CYOA. Nothing to see here.

The Origins of Vigilante was supposed to give me technology, skill, experience, and put firepower on my side. I was supposed to have received training from the best-of-the-best as well, whatever that is.

But what the heck did that mean? I already had mystical powers and I was well on my way to getting superhuman abilities. What the heck was I supposed to be trained in? It never says what.

I could feel that the martial arts skills from Everyone Is Doing It increase by what felt like another decade of experience. From going to someone who spends the first two hours in the morning stretching and who hasn't gotten his black belt yet, I was now pretty sure that I could wipe the floor with three of the average black belt at the same time and give the vast majority of the thugs in a mob their own ass with the Ancient Art of Butt-Whop.

The same what felt like an additional decade's worth of training also applied itself to my stone cutting skills, my Gentle Shadow Magic skills, my amateur Chi Wizard skills, my business skills from running a shop, my tea making skills, my efforts in Research and Reagents, and so on. Toru and Jade had both done some pretty impressive stuff with their magic and blossoming martial arts skills and they had only been practicing with what may be a year or two between seasons of the show. Now I was pretty sure I could trump them both.

I quick attempt at carving a small box had the thing done so fast I actually scared myself. I dropped the stone box and it shattered on the ground.

"Holly shit!" I exclaimed at what I'd done. I had to check my hands over to make sure I hadn't cut off a thumb or something.

No scratches, thank gods!

I summoned a blade of darkness intending to trim one of my nails and found my hand motions smooth and perfect with no wasted movement at all. I couldn't cut myself either. As my skill with manipulating darkness had grown to the point where I could sense what I was touching and could decide on the moment weather to cut something or not.

I grinned.

I summoned a paint brush of pure darkness and held it out to the world, "Lookout world, for I am an artist!"

I'm such a geek.

I had to wait a few hours to test a few things. So I tried some martial arts to exercise out some of the adrenalin I had running through my body from all the excitement I was in. Then I was off to the library.

A quick morning run through the city to the library revealed that both my physical form and my skills with pretty much everything had increased as well. My clumsy run had fewer wasted movements and I knew where to step to avoid the pitfalls in the roads and get the most out of the traction of my shoes.

One more thing…

I was going to need to get a new pair at some point. I was NOT looking forwards to wearing 1968s shitty shoes.

We Must Do Reeesearch had allowed me to figure out the machines and use them as an amateur user of this universe. But I wasn't at all used to them. Yet in another two hours after my latest power up and I already felt like my skills were the equal to anyone in the City of San Francisco. My attempts at using microfilm were good enough that I could adjust the machine better than the librarian. Heck, my fingers had even stopped cramping from trying to hit the oddly places controls as everything was engrained into muscle memory.

One more thing…

I had new perks.

Whenever a major battle or mission has ended I'll always walk away with a little SOUVENIR. Win or lose, I'll always have some sort of prize.

As my recent run through the city showed I was now in PEAK CONDITION. I was still quite overweight but my genetics was "good" and moreso now. Whatever was possible for a human being, whatever that meant for this universe, I was now going to reach that ability. All I had to do was keep up with my stretches and early morning runs. And while I wasn't smarter it did increase my brain's processing power to handle all that, with great memory recall and improved my senses as well.

One more thing…

It also included humans from other worlds.

What would it mean to be in Peak Condition with magical abilities?

Does that mean that certain magics can be lost if you don't exercise them regularly?

In the next few hours my eyes went a little weird on me and I gained a new ability to see colors. Even the extremely tiny type setting wasn't beyond my new eyeball powers. I was pretty sure I wasn't color blind before but with people like comic book heroes around and magicians I wasn't willing to bet against possibly being in the same city with some people that had strange eyeball powers that might include post-cognition and different arrangements of the cones and nerves in their eyes. I could smell things better, sense more things, and handle that information much better.

One more thing…

I found myself picking out several "bad" beans out of the bag the next time I made soup. That also increased my ability to cook mung beans and tea.

BASIC MAGIC was next. What felt like a blue stream of light had descended from the heaven right on top of my head and filled my brain with knowledge like a wine cup. I could now include minor magics and cantrips into my list of spells. These were different than Chi magic. They seemed more… I don't know generic and utility wise? So long as they had the right bloodlines nearly anyone could use it. Combined with Vigilante and it seemed like I had a few years' experience playing around with the stuff.

I also got a primer in ATLANTEAN SORCERY. It felt like I had experience using the same skills as that universe's Aqualad. I didn't have any tattoos, but I knew how to make my own. I also got the idea that I knew as much as any student of the Conservatory of Sorcery would be expected to know upon graduation. I can manipulate water at the same level as Aqualad himself, but I can't create ice without more practice. The skill even came with a free pair of Water-Bearers, which will also be returned to me if ever lost or destroyed thanks to my Returned Broken perk.

I can't breathe water. I'm not actually an Atlantean.

What this means to me is that I should be able to take these Water-Bearers apart using We Must Do Reesearch and Basic Magic and Atlantean Sorcery to figure them out. Even if I damage them they'll come back to me brand new and perfectly fine.

To go with my own rising physical prowess I had KNOWS HIS OWN STRENGTH. No matter how strong I become I'll always know how much force to use to beat up bad guys. This means that I can throw a two by four around all day and rest easily knowing that I won't kill anybody!

One more thing…

Superpowers were now officially available.

The most common of these was MOST COMMON POWERS were looks. I was now becoming Comic Book Pretty. Well, that wasn't what it was called on the CYOA, but that's what I'm calling it. Even though I was fat in all the wrong places I was still going to end up in the top 10% of some of the best looking dudes on the planet. Even if I stopped working out and didn't have my other physical enhancement perks I was going to be looking good. The effect even translated to my companions.

If I ever got any.

There was also the REQUIRED SECONDARY POWERS perk. This means that when lifting heavy objects I won't sink into the ground or set my hair on fire from friction when I run at super speeds. Since I seemed to be aiming at being some kind of kung-fu master and mystical warrior combo I wasn't sure how that was going to affect what I do. Everyone Doing It was a kung-fu perk based on Jackie Chan so I was assuming that I was going to be getting an action movie vibe going for me.

Next?

Um, okay, I had to check this, but apparently Martians get several free superpowers just because they come from another planet. This was good because I didn't gain a weakness to fire but also kind of sucked since I didn't get their 300 year lifespan. I wasn't a Martian, I am a bonafide human being but I still got the same abilities.

Just because they were freebies.

One was ANIMAL TRANSFORMATION and straight up SHAPE SHIFTING. What it allows me to do is to transform into any non-supernatural animal or person I've directly observed. This includes both their clothes and any extra appendages and their voice if heard. It even takes care of my clothes when I become an animal so I won't suffer any wardrobe malfunctions like the kids in the Animorphs series experienced. This means if I come up with some kind of magical armor I could absorb it into my animal form and appear perfectly clothed when I become human again.

The third was CELLULAR REGENERATION: A superpower that allows me to heal all damage I receive in minutes or seconds. Small cuts, abrasions, burns, and the like all heal within a few seconds. It'll take minutes to recover from losing a limb, being blown apart, seriously burnt, and other such injury. In addition, so long as more than 50% of the heart or brain remains, it'll regenerate the missing parts without technically dying or having any memory loss.

That was so unbelievably overpowered I didn't know what to do with it but say, "Thank You Rob!"

The fourth Martian superpower was DENSITY SHIFTING. On the one hand I could alter the bonding elements of molecules to either make myself several times denser and heavier than I should be, like stone, or on the other hand I could make myself and my clothes intangible so that conventional matter like sticks, stones, punches and bullets pass right through me. This probably won't work too well on armor and doors with comic book levels of armor or anything made of supernatural materials. It is an advanced technique however, so I'll have to practice and get some training to do it reliably, if it all.

MARTIAN TELEKINESIS was a common Martian ability freely given. And for some reason I couldn't use it on an organism's internals even when the guy is right in front of me. The superpower specifically explains that I couldn't do that.

Gods damn ass kids show. They never had this much trouble in anime.

MARTIAN TELEPATHY was basically thought speech with a few upgrades that allowed the user to plug themselves into the brains of other organisms so they could abuse meat brains like hackers on a computer. It's what the Martians use instead of words. This also required experience and training to prevent your own mental health from being affected and to protect yourself from others.

FLIGHT was also freely available to various origins so now I had that as well. Of up to 700 mph, which was nice? I wasn't so sure about traveling in a vacuum however. Nor was I to too crazy about bugs and birds getting in my face.

SUPER DURABILITY allowed me to tank bullets and tank mayhem on the battlefield in nearly all its forms, including extremes of temperatures.

SUPER SENSES was an odd one. It honestly made me think of Martial Bravestarr more than anything. So now I can, at any time, concentrate on one sense that my body has to increase its ability all out of proportion to what should be possible with the normal laws of physics. It shouldn't be possible to hear a spider spin its web from a mile away, but I could do that now, apparently?

One more thing…

I got more gear.

The first was my very own COSTUME which I got for free and LIGHT ARMOR and a bulletproof CAPE which I got for free for Vigilante. It just appeared on a mannequin in a brand new room in the basement! It was currently a blank white generic super suit with armor on the shoulders and some impressive gauntlets and boots. Since I could customize and enhance it however I want I was hoping to include some abilities from the magical armor of the Lotus Temple and the Armor of the Eight Immortals into it.

I also got one free CUSTOMIZED WEAPON. I was going to have to think about exactly what I wanted for that one. While I could ask for it to have one very special ability my knowledge of magic should allow me to incorporate several special abilities on my own and use the freebie when I'm done.

I also got a UTILITY BELT full of non-lethal takedown options that were probably all batman gadget knockoffs, like miniature bomb dispenser, Taser, cuffs, and gas mask. The grappling hook that came with it was the same one used in the 1980s movie. It might even be the same one the Batman uses in the TV show. It also came with a free can of shark repellant.

And if any of my new toys gets destroyed or lost I'll get a new one.

I took a day off to adjust to that massive change in my own abilities.

In addition to my own two hours of martial arts workouts I now had to figure out how to Fly, train my Super Senses, Super Durability, Telepathy, Telekinesis and Animal Transformations and Shape-Shifting. The Cellular Regeneration wasn't something I can control.

And now I have a super suit that I have to customize and a weapon that I needed to figure out and then forge. I still don't have any super tech abilities. But calm! They will come in time.

I actually needed to put together a daily planner.

-000-​

Young Justice jumpchain:

Origins: Drop-in, Vigilante

Skills: Souvenir, Peak Condition, Basic Magic, Knows His Own Strength, Atlantean Sorcery.

Powers: Martian Animal Transformation and Martian Shape-Shifting, Martian Cellular Regeneration, Martian Density Shifting, Martian Telekinesis and Martian Telepathy, Flight, Super Durability, Super Senses, Most Common Superpower: Comic Book Pretty, Required Secondary Powers.

Items: Alternate Costume, Light Armor, Bulletproof Cape, Martian Bio-Suit, Customized Weapon, Utility belt with Shark Repellant.

-000-

I'm actually a bit on the fence with Atlantean Sorcery. It's supposed to be for free for someone with both a Mystic and Atlantean origin. However I've made it available under the rules of "If it's for Free, its for me!" I admit I'm playing fast and loose with this.

76

NitroNorman

Sep 20, 2020

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