3

Leslie stepped out of the recycling center at the edge of Gotham's northern district. It had been nearly a week since he'd interacted with Bruce Wayne, and that meant they were two weeks into Summer Vacation.

It was time he'd been using productively.

He'd ended up using the stolen money from the mob to purchase basic supplies, a folding cot, electric heating element, blanket and other odds and ends. Between that and food, he'd burned through a third of the money all too quickly. And finding a means of income as a thirteen year old child with no documentation was... Honestly, an effort in futility.

He'd managed to luck out after a few days in coming up with a plan that met multiple goals at once, and actually succeeded. It had taken him almost a full day of legwork to find a recycling center that would pay him under the table to convert aluminum cans into cast aluminum.

His cut was half the normal cost for the material. Using transmutation, even at level one, that had offered him a decent amount of money in a day. And after it leveled up? The owner of the facility was buying up the materials the other centers in town had lying around.

After the five days he'd been doing this, transmutation was level thirty-seven. Between this and the money from the dogfighting ring, he was sitting on almost seven thousand dollars.

Which would be great, if he could spend it. As is, that was almost a side-effect of his other goal.

Goals.

He had accrued nearly forty-thousand GP for doing the same work. Well, forty-thousand after he'd made another purchase from the game shop.

The Creation, Calibration and Care of Advanced and Unique Homonculi by Dr. C. Grande.

It had been an expensive book, and between the page count and ludicrous amount of technical jargon Leslie wouldn't be finished with it anytime soon.

And it was the cheaper of the two books he needed to read on the subject. De Le Metallica was another book on a similar subject, but it focused on the creation of living steel and using it to make a kind of homonculus called the Holmcross.

That one would cost one-hundred thousand GP.

And if Leslie could use it the way he planned, it would still be cheap.

BRR-BRR

Leslie was pulled from his thoughts midway to the abandoned apartment he'd been squatting in by his phone going off.

BRR-BRR

He swiped up, accepting the call from an unknown number.

"Hello?"

"Alchemist." The voice on the other end sounded like it had been gargling gravel.

"Ah, Bart. How are things?"

"Our organization has determined that they will not be contracting your services."

Leslie stopped walking, his expression shifting into a frown. He'd known this was a gamble, but this meant he was going to have to review his other options.

"I understand." He wanted to ask 'Why?' but pushed that urge down. It wouldn't change his next set of actions, whatever he chose to do. "Thank you for informing me."

He was going to have to either get into the black market and have an identity made, or he was going to have to see if the legal system could be manipulated as he needed.

"Alchemist. Would you be willing to consider a different offer?"

Leslie closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.

First the stick, now the carrot. Of course.

"I'm certainly willing to entertain a different offer. Whether or not I accept it is a different story."

"I'll call you again with a time and date for a face to face meeting."

He pocketed his phone after Batman hung up.

This was... Not ideal. Less worrisome than his eyes glowing yellow after he picked up the second half of the 'Bright and Shining Soul' perks, but that was all in perspective.

Being rejected by the Justice League was an immediate concern. Magically tampering with his soul was, hopefully, a long term issue.

He shrugged and got moving again. It's not like he was done tampering with his soul, anyway.

-----

He'd almost made it back to the empty apartment building when he felt something. The hairs on the back of his neck had risen, something cold crawling down his spine.

He came to a stop. The nearby windows were boarded up, no glass to check behind himself. The only sound he could hear was the wind drifting through empty alleys.

Giving up on being discreet, he finally looked behind himself.

Nothing.

Nobody on the sidewalks near him either.

Up?

There.

It had been only an instant, but he'd seen movement. Someone had ducked under the ledge of a building across the street.

One of the Robin's? Leslie wasn't sure. Teleport was at level eight, and still left him half-dead when he used it, so he was absolutely not going to use it to try and ambush a potential ninja kid.

Or adult ninja, if the League of Assassins had found out about him.

Leslie inhaled slowly, and then exhaled slower. He was not going to work himself into a panic. Not here. Not now.

He looked down a nearby alley, and then checked the walls. Fire escapes and dumpsters, meaning broken line of sight. Great for people trained for ninja ambushes. Not for him.

He started walking again. Whoever it was, they knew they'd been made. They weren't jumping down and attacking though, so they had something else planned.

A prepared staging point? Reinforcements? Leslie wasn't sure.

He turned a corner opposite of the direction his watcher had been and started jogging.

He needed to break line of sight without giving them an advantage. He didn't think his ability to teleport had been noticed by anyone yet, and he'd certainly never mentioned it...

An arm reached out from an alley he was passing and grabbed his wrist. They tried to swing him in, and even partially succeeded.

And were fully turned into a toad.

Leslie managed to stop himself after a few more steps and turned around. He hadn't seen the person who grabbed him, but he didn't see anyone else in the alley.

He picked the confused toad up and looked around. He still felt something off, an uneasy weight in his stomach... But he was used to that, that was just nerves.

Still, he spent a solid minute looking over everything, every speck along the roof lines and the entrances on both sides of the alley with a paranoid eye.

He didn't feel safe. He didn't feel secure.

He teleported home anyway.