10

You kids have gone far enough." Guardian was a well built man wearing a blue and black suit with gold highlights. And a shiny golden helmet. "Now you can come along with me and leave peacefully, we'll work something out with the Justice League."

He also had an imp on his shoulder. A little thing with greyish green skin, red eyes and a pair of horns.

A G-Gnome, Leslie recalled from the show. An artificially created life form with a wide variety of shapes and psychic powers across the whole board.

The show never really went into their origins, not that he could recall, but looking at it he was fairly sure there was some Martian in there.

Which would mean one of two things. Cadmus got its hands on J'onn J'onzz D.N.A... Or they got one of the many, many samples from J'onn J'ackson, the Martian Womanhunter.

Clearly the reference was painful enough that even the gremlin on Guardian's shoulder shuddered too.

"And what, just forget about the weapons you're breeding?" Kid Flash chose his words rather poorly, but being fair it's not as though he knows the G-Gnomes are psychic. Yet.

"Weapons? What are you.. What have I... Ugh. My head! Take them down hard no-" Guardian slowed down, his words coming out as a struggle.

Leslie snapped his fingers.

"What?" Guardian's eyes cleared, his head turning wildly to look at the G-Gnome on his shoulder. "What was I doing? What were you-"

The other G-Gnomes in the hallway froze, their orders becoming confused as the first link in their chain was broken.

Leslie snapped his fingers again, casting Esuna once more and breaking the Confusion the man was under. He pushed his way to the front of the group, grabbing the little creature off of Guardian's shoulder.

"You try that one more time, you lose thinking priveleges." The gremlin stared up into Leslie's eyes with its own. Red and blank, empty. Just a tiny living node for something greater. Something deeper...

And then it bit him.

-- -8 HP!--

"Aww, aren't you just adorable!" Leslie simply smiled as he pushed the meat of his hand deeper into the little monsters mouth. Just like a cat, it realized quickly that biting that hand had been a mistake, and started trying to back away and flail its head.

"Alchemist, you know what these things are?" Leslie put the G-Gnome on the ground and turned to face Robin. The creature made it about three steps before it was turned into a toad, alongside about half of the other G-Gnomes in the hallway.

"Clearly, Robin, it's a toad."

"Kid? What was that? Who are you?" Guardian seemed to finally be coming back to his senses. For it to have taken this long, these things must be rooted pretty deeply into his brain.

"We're with the Justice League, the junior division." Aqualad said as he stepped forward, putting out his hand. Guardian shook it mostly as a reflex. "We came because there was a fire upstairs, but we've since found ourselves... It seems we've been led here."

"Probably one of the gremlins." Leslie piped up. "Probably got tired of being a science project. Or slave. Or whatever else they're being used for."

"The Genomorphs are -not- slaves!" Guardian growled when the kids started pushing forward. He needed to talk to the Doctor. He needed to know why his personal G-Gnome had been tampering with his mind.

"Have they ever seen the sun?" It was a surprisingly insightful question for Player One to ask. And it was incredibly telling that Guardian didn't have an answer.

"...Come on. The doctor is probably downstairs. We'll get some answers and then you all need to leave." Leslie tilted his head slightly at that answer.

He exhaled in a strong, amused huff.

This man had to have a WIS score lower than Kain from Final Fantasy Four if he was -already- back under the control of another Genomorph.

Still, the longer it took for the next attack to come, the more MP he could afford to spend on it.

-----

This had very clearly been a mistake!

Whose bright idea was it to follow a mind controlled puppet into a trap?!

Oh. Right. His.

Project Kr, a hodge-podge'd Superman clone, was taking the team apart piece by piece.

Leslie would love to just turn the artificial teen into a toad, but he'd already used up most of his MP just on healing the team! He had just enough left to use teleport, and that needed to wait.

Instead he was stuck relying on his sword-shaped club and he'd discovered two things. The first being that Superboy was simply too fast for him to hit.

The second being that, while the weapon did a very good job intercepting the hybrids punches, it did nothing to stop the sheer force from sending him falling after blocking said punches.

Guardian was just standing in the background, doing nothing. Possibly drooling a little. Leslie had wasted the magic to try and break the mind control on him once. The man's freedom had lasted an astonishing three seconds.

The other team members were actually figuring out tactics, though. Which was the one good thing here!

Kid Flash kept moving, being the one thing too fast for the clone to catch. He'd close in whenever Project Kr was distracted and try a haymaker.

Cool idea, but kidney shots would have been better.

Robin was all distractions and acrobatics. The genomorph would get too focused on either Player One or Aqualad and then Robin would come in with a smoke bomb or a flying kick that would launch off of the berserking boys brain-case.

Aqualad was... Incredibly ineffective.

Water swords. Cool idea, splish-splash hits like trash.

Leslie was going to buy that boy a copy of Blizzard.

And then Player One.

"Power strike!" They'd screeched early into the fight. Then they'd swung their bat with significantly more force than he'd seen them use at all before then.

The bat broke, by the way. Splintered into two sharp, uneven pieces.

Player One was another Gamer. Judging by the fact that they were wearing Zombie Leather armor and using the most common gamer skills in existence, they were also unrestricted.

This... Was unfortunately what he'd been suspecting earlier. It threw a wrench into things, though. He'd never heard of there being multiple gamers in one setting at a time.

"Alchemist, we need some help here!" Leslie shook his head and stood up at Aqualad's urging. Readying his dull, blunt, curse-rotted sword he...

Got knocked back over when the doors to the chamber Project Kr had been found in were ripped open.

Getting up on his elbows, he froze when he saw what had done it. Giant, hulking elephantine figures.

There was definitely some Martian in them.

Hiding his sword back in his inventory, he slowly, obviously stood up. His hands above his head.

"What are you doing!" Robin yelled as he ducked under another strike from the super-powered clone.

"Robin. I need you to understand something. I never negotiated for hazard pay!"

Stats!

Name: (@**&@%$#%) Leslie Winters

Race: Human

Level: 11

GP: 525

USD: $17000

Stats-

HP: 380

MP: 165

-STR: 9

-VIT: 19

-DEX: 5

-AGI: 9

-INT: 22

-WIS: 22

-LUK: 6

Abilities:

-Alchemy

--Transmutation (50)

--Conversion (1)

--Advanced Homonculus Creation (1)

-Divination

--Scrying (4)

Spells:

-Esuna (8)

-Life (10)

-Teleport (9)

-Cure (10)

-Blink (6)

-Protect (6)

-Toad (4)

-Flare (1)

Inventory:

-Weapons

--Nagrarok (Atk: 1, Evade +50%, On-hit: Toad)

-Skillbooks

-- Transmutation (read)

-- Scrying (read)

-- Advanced Homonculi by C.Grande (read)

-- De Le Metalica (Unread)

-Spellbooks

-- Esuna (read)

-- Protect (read)

-- Cure (read)

-- Teleport (read)

-- Blink (read)

-- Life (read)

-- Toad (read)

-- Flare (read)

Perks:

-Bright Soul (MP regen +50%)

-Shining Soul (MP +50%)

--Combined effect! Magical attunement is now visible!

-Metamagic: Expand (Double spell area of effect OR double spell duration)

-Metamagic: Lock (Persistent spell effects are more difficult to dispel based on level)

-Magically Apprenticed (Spell values are increased by 10%. Spell costs are reduced by 10%)