22

Leslie didn't really get any sleep after his experience in the Illusion Dungeon.

He wasn't anxious, or nervous, excited or some such thing, he'd been busy. He'd rekindled the fire from a few dying coals so he could get enough light to read by.

His eyes might glow in the dark, but they aren't that bright!

He'd tried that.

He had a lot of spellbooks he needed to read, but after getting a pocket nuke picking up the petrification spell had turned into a high priority.

The failure rate of the spell was truly abysmal but luckily Zombles wasn't going anywhere. He'd wondered if he was getting it right, but the spell had been leveling up even as it missed, up until it midway through level four when it landed.

He hadn't been able to put a toad into his inventory, apparently it couldn't hold living things. A toad -statue- on the other hand suffered no such restrictions.

After that he'd idled away a few hours before sunrise, burning his MP periodically to convert his metal scraps into living steel and sorting out the loot he'd gotten.

One-hundred thousand GP for his 'Boast' quests in dropping the raid bosses in under a minute each, as well as ten free stat points to put where he wanted. Absolutely worth it, and definitive proof that the metamagic perks were amazing.

The normal rewards were received as well, which had been an additional fifty-thousand GP and a lot of very unpleasant items.

Like Zombie Tongues.

And Rotting Teeth.

And the blueprint for a weapon called 'The Plaguebreaker' which was a bat studded with rotting teeth and he just noped on out of that one.

He'd also gotten a blueprint for a piece of Zombie Leather gear and discovered why Player One was so hard to hear. The set bonus was a ninety percent reduction to all sound, and a twenty-five percent reduction to overall detection.

The real kicker had been the experience. Like Player One had said, the normal zombies didn't offer much experience.

Or, well, any experience. They probably couldn't give any to a Gamer at or above level twenty. The bosses though?

Eight levels.

Eight levels, putting him up to twenty-nine. Which meant forty stat points from those. Fifty in all. He bolstered his vitality by ten points, and then put twenty each into his Intelligence and Wisdom. Forty-five vitality, so nine-hundred HP. Sixty-three intelligence, four-hundred and seventy-two MP. Wisdom was the same, skyrocketing his MP regeneration up to ninety-four percent per hour.

Finally, he picked up the last of the metamagic perks. Entanglement. It would let him cast a spell on part of an object to have an effect on the whole of an object.

As an example, if he had the license plate of a car, he could cast haste on the car from anywhere in the world, so long as he had the license plate on hand. Or as another way to say it, this was the perk that would let him use the 'Voodoo doll' effect.

At this point, he wasn't actually sure what else to get.

Summoner's Pact? It would double the duration of any magical minions, or else cut the perpetuation cost in half. That could be amazing... If he had any magical minions.

Crafter's Luck? A twenty-five percent chance to get a duplicate item when using a crafting skill...

Yeah, Leslie got that.

Once the sun started coming up, he got moving. He could overthink about what he wasn't planning to get later.

Cooking breakfast for a bunch of kids over a campfire wouldn't exactly be hard, but he'd need more time to cook for Kid Flash too.

Luckily all he needed was a single cast-iron dutch oven...

-----

"Robin come on, breakfast is ready." Were the first words that Dick really heard that morning.

He rolled over and grabbed the sunglasses he'd been using to try and mask his identity. He rolled his shoulders as much as he could in the small space, trying to get sore muscles to loosen up, and crawled out of the tent.

He was the second person up.

Well, third if you counted the cook.

Power Girl was apparently helping Alchemist get the others up to eat. She was trying to get M'gann to get out of bed.

It didn't look like it was going too well.

"Hey Robin, wanna get Kid Flash? I'll wake up Kaldur." It was a simple enough request, and Robin couldn't really complain about it.

A few moments later, Robin wanted to complain about it.

Kid Flash was apparently a heavy sleeper.

Robin tried talking at him. Yelling at him. Shaking him!

Nothing worked!

"Hey Robin!" Alchemist yelled from outside the tent. "If he's not out in ten seconds, I'm giving his food to M'gann!"

And Robin got knocked over by Kid Flash rolling out of his sleeping bag and running out of the tent at superspeed.

He should've thought of that!

Alchemist handed him a thin metal bowl filled with eggs with red and green chunks in it once he'd gotten back out and sat down. It had a crushed biscuit sitting on top.

"What's in this?" For camp food it didn't exactly look bad, but Bruce had a thing about knowing what you were putting into you.

"Eggs, peppers, bacon and sun-dried tomato." Alchemist said as he offered him a jug of milk.

Robin shook his head no and took a bite.

Salty, greasy but it was pretty tasty.

After everyone else was served, Alchemist sat down with his own bowl.

"Hey, Kid Flash. Been thinking about something." He was using his fork to tear apart the biscuit and mix chunks of it into his egg.

" 'bout wha'?" The speedster said around a mouthful of food.

"The whole Garrick formula thing I offered yesterday." Robin put his fork down when he heard that. Batman -needed- to hear about this, so he was going to listen carefully.

"You're backing out." Sounded like an accusation.

"Nah, that's not it." Alchemist didn't even slow down.

Which was an odd dynamic, because Kid Flash had stopped eating.

"So what is it then? Decide you -do- want to use it for yourself? 'Cuz that ain't cool buddy."

"Kid Flash, he-" Aqualad tried to interrupt.

"Actually, I was going to ask if we should maybe get some lab mice and test it first." But Alchemist interrupted him instead.

"What do you mean? Why test it?" Now Wally sounded confused, but he started eating again.

"Well, it's been used three different times and gotten three different results. Similar, sure, but different." Alchemist paused to take a bite and chew his food. "For all that you guys say it's scientific, it hasn't actually been put through the scientific process."

Kid Flash finished his bowl and got seconds while the team digested that.

"So." Robin had to be the one to ask the obvious question. "You're suggesting we give superpowers to mice?"

"Yep." Alchemist put his fork down. "And then we spend a week recording how much they eat, how much they poop, how energetic they are. All that good stuff. Then we use the corrected formula and spend another week doing it again."

Wally seemed to spend a good deal of time thinking about it while he ate. "I don't think the Flash will like that."

"I don't think I care." Well, there wasn't a lot Robin could really say about that.

"Okay, so... What are you trying to figure out with this?" M'gann asked from where she was sandwiched between Superboy and Powergirl.

"Well, the scientific method starts with a question. Then we gather data, develop a series of tests, record our data and see what relation it has to our question. On that front I have two very simple questions that I think need answered before we move on to near-human experimentation." Here Alchemist waved at Kid Flash.

"Hey wait! What are you trying to say with that 'Near Human' crap?!"

"Well, I mean, you -are- a ginger." Almost as one everyone turned to look at Wally before turning back to stare at Alchemist.

"Okay, you know what? That's fair." Wally held a straight face for just a moment before snickering into his hand.

"But seriously" Alchemist continued. "We've got two important questions. The first being 'Will the corrected Garrick formula fix Kid Flash'."

"What?" For the first time since her deprogramming, Robin heard Power Girl speak out loud. Her voice was surprisingly soft, and clearly uncertain. "What's the second question?"

"I'm so glad you asked, Power Girl." Alchemist was lacking the sarcastic air he normally held when he said those words. "The second question is probably more important than the first. It goes 'Will double dipping on superspeed be harmful to someone's health'."

"That's not what you were gonna say!" M'gann practically shouted.

"So? She finally spoke up and I'm trying to encourage that!" Alchemist sounded indignant, but he was smiling.

So was M'gann.

"No! You were going to say 'Will too much superspeed give Kid Flash super ass cancer'!"

"It's the same question!"

"Wait, wait, dude. Stop! Why were you thinking about my ass?" Kid Flash managed to get their attention back on him instead of yelling at each other.

"Oh. Huh, right. Kid Flash, I need you to understand something. It's really important, and I hope you aren't uncomfortable around me after this, but..." Kid Flash was already looking more and more uncomfortable as Alchemist was talking.

M'gann, on the other hand, was trying and failing not to laugh.

"I need you to know. No Homo." There was a moment of collective silence...

And then Wally threw his empty bowl at Alchemist and shouted "You ass!"

AN/ A little early, but you all deserve a present from time to time.