9

"Or what? You'll send me to my room? And I'm not your son! I'm not even his. I thought I was his partner, but not anymore. Guess they were right about you three. You're not ready." Speedy berated the other three sidekicks.

He didn't even feel the need to include Player One or Leslie in his tantrum.

Likely a good thing, Leslie had far more important things to worry about. Like catching up with the breakfast he'd missed out on.

Judging by the contents of his inventory and the access he had to utilities here, his options were... Granola bars.

Player One was just... Staring at Speedy's back as he stormed out the door. Completely silent. Completely still.

Leslie was relatively sure he knew what was going on here, and he didn't like it.

Just one or two clues to confirm, and he'd be certain that-

Ooh! He forgot he bought blueberry breakfast bars!

He pulled the box out of his inventory and opened it.

"Hey, uh, new guy. You gonna share that?" The kid in the yellow outfit, with red hair. Kid Flash, that was it! Kid Flash asked him.

"Help yourself." Was probably the wrong thing to say in hindsight. Leslie was left with just the two bars he had in his hands.

He was two bites into his first bar when alarms started going off and an image popped on to the oversized screen. A man with a strong jawline, finely coiffed short black hair and somewhat small baby blue eyes was onscreen.

"Superman to Justice League. There has been an explosion at Project Cadmus. It's on fire."

"I've had my suspicions about Cadmus. This may present the perfect opportunity to in-" Batman's incredibly unnecessary and leading statements were cut off when another face popped up on screen.

"Zatara to Justice League. The sorcerer Wotan is using the amulet of Aten to blot out the sun. Requesting full League response." The man, Zatara, looked incredibly sharp. Especially that mustache.

"Superman?" Batman asked, looking for his input to compare the issues.

Leslie wasn't sure what the comparison was. Some corporation owned by the evil league of evil burning down versus a one-thousand year old transgender sorcerer trying to blot out the sun.

If Batman was struggling to figure out his priorities this badly, Leslie might have made a mistake in choosing his employer.

As the sidekicks started arguing about going to the fight, Leslie just opened his second granola bar.

A bunch of kids seriously trying to convince some adults that they should change their minds? What did they think this was, a cartoon? That'd just be crazy!

Leslie got a fair few dirty looks when he started choking on his granola bar mid-laugh.

It didn't take very long before the heroes managed to leave, their sidekicks moaning about the Justice League's decision to leave them behind.

About the time Robin was doing something to the computer, however, his good mood soured.

--QUEST ALERT!--

--THE CORNERSTONE OF FATE!--

--You've survived the relative peace of the tutorial, now it's time to act!--

--Use your skills, determination and wits to carve a new path to victory!--

--Rewards: 20000 GP, +1 to all stats--

--Failure: The Light obtains a super weapon. Potential death.--

Good news! He finally knew which continuity he was in.

Bad news! The Light. That... That was a problem. Wealth, experience, unadulterated brilliance and Klarion.

Not the heroic one, who'd go on to become Klarion the Witch Man. The chaos lord one. Who only worked for the side of evil. And only fixated on Nabu.

Crap. Nabu.

Alright! Leslie could work with this! He could. Absolutely... He was going to have to exploit the ever loving hell out of everything he could, wasn't he?

"Alchemist, Player One, come on." The two followed along mutely.

Alchemist in a bid to think of whatever leverage he could that -didn't- involve summoning The Spectre when Nabu went off the rails.

And Player One was simply silent.

-----

Finding out the two story lab used by Cadmus was mostly fake? Not at all surprising. Finding an express elevator going straight down? Incredibly too convenient.

Leslie used the time to dig through the shop. Signature weapons? Too expensive. Powerful spells? He needed both kidneys, thank you much. Familiars? Either worthless or outside of his price range.

He did send the Blue Dragon egg to his wishlist, though. They were the most gifted in magic of the chromatic dragons, and forty-five thousand GP was doable. Could take him the better part of a week doing a repeat recycling quest, but doable.

The cost of some things had been bothering him for a bit, and he'd finally managed to get an idea why after a bit of digging. Things that were more expensive? They were more immediately useful. There was no learning curve, he didn't need to escalate through levels of near-uselessness to make them functional.

As an example, there was the Blue Dragon egg. It would take time to hatch, take years to mature and would need to be taught everything. From how to speak to how to cast spells, even how to shapeshift if it had such a gift.

On the opposite end of the scale, well, no, not really. Closer to the middle of the scale. On the opposite end were insane things like God Seeds and Sapient Time Rifts. In the middle of the scale, at two-million GP, was the Iron Golem. It was fully functional at purchase, was a master of one and two handed swordsmanship and could be taught to replicate mundane skills at any level of mastery they were shown.

In the end he had to settle on buying a one-handed sword that was well within his price range. It was worthless as a weapon, technically causing as much damage as his bare hands, but it was a fantastic parrying tool and it had the ability to turn those struck by it into toads.

He was beginning to worry that he was becoming a bit too thematic... But toad conversion therapy still counted as defeating an enemy without the whole -killing- thing.

And... The sword only cost ten gp.

The Nagrarok was something of a joke weapon in Final Fantasy Tactics, buried behind a hideously powerful enemy on a map that could only be played once and was filled with far superior items.

Far superior items he couldn't afford.

He'd checked.

As Robin hacked the door open on the twenty-sixth floor, Leslie tried to mentally prepare himself. This was it. This was the top of the avalanche. If he was going to make a change that mattered...

It had to be here.