Arcane Meeting (Part 5)

--- Jon ---

(Well that was… a thing…) He sighed before picking himself off the ground.

“Ha, that was a beautiful fight!” Someone laughed loudly.

“Uh, thank you?” He asked as much as he said, turning towards a large red headed man.

“That’s right you showed off some True Grit out there!” The leader of the Mad Dogs complimented before beating a fist to his chest. “Enough that even I thought so, and True Grit is my name!”

“Uh, yeah…” He nodded, taking a step away as he could swear he heard something somewhere laughing. (The Cheshire is messing with me again isn’t he?)

Just because he couldn’t sense any Madness did not mean that wasn’t the case.

“Which is why I wish to make you an offer!” The gang leader told him.

“I don’t want to join your gang.” He shut down immediately.

“Uh, what?” True Grit blinked.

“I really don’t want to join your gang.” He repeated, before trying to come up with a reason to make the gang leader drop it. “I mean, uh, my Ma is a cop and if I joined a gang that would just be… bad… I er, I don’t want to… disappoint her…”

He couldn’t help but grimace when he realized he was trying to use his Ma’s feelings as an excuse to stop a hardened criminal from press ganging him.

“Oh, yeah, if she’s a cop she’d probably be really disappointed if you joined a gang.” Said gang leader agreed with a surprising amount of sympathy.

“Uh, yeah…” He nodded slowly, trying to find anything other than sympathy in that statement and failing. (He genuinely thinks disappointing my ma would be bad?)

“Luckily, I wasn’t going to ask you to join my gang!” True Grit assured him happily with his hands on his hips.

“You weren’t?” He ventured cautiously.

“No, I was going to ask you to join my fight club!” The Mad Dog smiled, thrusting a flier into his face.

“Your fight club?” He frowned taking the (surprisingly professional) flier showing a silhouette of the man before him with a number of other fighters as it advertised ‘Tru Grit’s Fight Pits!!!’. (So his name has no e, good to know.)

“Yes!” True confirmed crouching just enough that they were eye level. “You’ve got more grit than half the contestants I’ve had at my pits combined, and unlike them actually deserve to be called a fighter!”

“Um, thanks?” He smiled nervously as he took a step back from the excited man.

“You’re welcome!” True laughed, clapping his shoulder. “If you ever feel like getting your knuckles dusty feel free to stop by, based on the looks everyone here I just know you’ll put on one hell of a show!”

(Looks of everyone… here?) It was at this point he awkwardly realized just how many people were staring at him and began to blush as he also realized just how many people had been watching him fight.

“The address is on the flier, just show it to the guy at the gate and he’ll let you in! I can’t wait to see your matches, man!” True told him as if he’d already accepted before turning towards the Sanctuary agents and adult heroes with a harder smile. “Now I need to go chew someone out over poor show safety!”

“Okay…” He nodded, still distracted by the people occasionally looking at him and talking to their friends to really acknowledge the large man walking away with a few sparks dancing along his skin.

Deciding that he very much did not like being the center of attention he quickly turned and made his way back to Pix and Melon.

“That. Was. So. Cool!” A voice practically squealed as he neared the pile o’ fluff he’d left his contracts with.

He blinked before glancing to the side where he found the kid hero from before staring at him with stars in her eyes and her chaperone watching him warily.

(Which is fair given what she just saw.) He knew he had a tendency to get… (violent) when fighting anything even tangentially related to the Corrupted and their cult.

What he couldn’t understand was the younger hero’s reaction.

“You were running, and jumping, and stabbing, and it was swinging, and shooting those tentacle things at you, and couldn’t even touch you, and, and that was so cool!” The girl rambled.

“Um… it wasn’t that much?” He denied, knowing full well that his Ma could’ve taken that thing easy, let alone if it had been Miss Edna, DeSade, or Rogers who had been fighting it.

“But you fought a Demon and it couldn’t touch you!” The girl argued.

“You shouldn’t use violence to solve your problems.” He frowned, really hoping he wasn’t being a bad influence on such an impressionable young mind.

For some reason the teen hero snorted while covering up a laugh.

“But heroes beat up the bad guys.” The kid hero told him with her own frown.

(Ah, that’s what’s happening here. She thinks heroes are-)

He crouched on his feet so that he was roughly eye level with the child. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m Stella Star!” The girl told him, striking what he guessed was supposed to be a heroic pose that he thought would look… odd on anyone who wasn’t a child playing around.

“Well then Stella, tell me, what is a hero?” He asked her.

“Um, a hero is someone who protects the weak and stops the bad guys!” The girl told him.

“Mmhm. Heroes do, do that.” He nodded. “But tell me now what makes a superhero super?”

The girl frowned. “Uh, super powers?”

He clicked his tongue and wagged a finger through the air. “No little one, what makes a hero super isn’t that they have powers.”

He considered how to get her to understand what he wanted to say. “Alright. What would you do if you saw someone who was being bullied? Would you fight the bully or help the person who was being bullied?”

“Wouldn’t fighting the bully save the person being bullied?” Stella frowned as if she didn’t quite get what he was asking. (Which is fine.)

“How about I re-word that?” He began deciding to try again. (Because this is important.) “What would you do if you saw someone shoved to the ground? Would you help the person knocked down first, or chase down the guy who shoved them first?”

“Um, I’d help the person back up before chasing the one who shoved them.” The young hero answered after a moment to consider it.

“Good.” He smiled, before throwing out another question. “Now, heroes do patrols, right? Well, what would you do if you were on patrol and saw a child crying?”

“Mm, I’d try to cheer up the crying kid.” Stella nodded.

“What if you were tired because you’d already had to stop a bunch of bad guys?” He asked with a concerned frown. “You’d already done your job as the hero, and it’s about time to go home to rest. Why should you stop to help some random kid?”

The girl gave him a more serious frown. “Because a hero’s job is to help people!”

He gave her a thoughtful ‘hmm’. “But didn’t you say a hero’s job is to fight the bad guys? And you’ve already fought the bad guys, so why would you bother helping them if there are no bad guys to fight?”

“Because a hero’s job is to help people not just fight bad guys!” The girl practically shouted.

“Exactly.” He smiled.

The child blinked at him in confusion. “Huh?”

“You want to know what makes a superhero super?” He asked her curiously. “Any Mask can put on a silly costume and fight people while calling themselves a hero, but a real hero… It’s not about fighting bad guys or just protecting the weak, a real hero is someone who takes the time to help someone when they don’t have to, who cares more about helping those who’ve been hurt than simply fighting the next bad guy.”

He gave the child a soft smile. “Remember, a hero’s job isn’t to fight, a hero’s job is to help the helpless. And the fact that you would choose to help someone even when you’re tired and you’re job is done, well that just means you’re going to be a super hero Stella Star.”

---

Leaving Pix and Melon with Stella and the other Flufflepuffs he again tried to make his way towards the counter where Sanctuary was handing out those pamphlets on all of the Creeps supposedly invading over the next few weeks.

He wasn’t really that good at speeches, but he was hoping he’d gotten his point across to the impressionable young hero. Maybe he’d overreacted a bit assuming that she thought heroes were all about fighting bad guys, but given how much of their media presence was a mix of Mask fights and showing off at PR events he didn’t want to really risk it. Which is why he tried to reinforce what he thought actually made a hero, and sure she hadn’t actually stopped to help a kid while exhausted, but he was still hoping that reaffirming that answer would give her a nudge in the right direction should that situation ever pop up.

(Honestly, I’m just disappointed that teen hero didn’t have anything to add.) From what little he’d seen those two seemed close, so he’d been hoping the other teen would back him up on this but instead she’d seemed fit to leave him to it.

(I just don’t get other teenagers sometimes.) He sighed.

“You are looking way too introspective for someone coming off a fight with a demon.” A masculine voice told him.

Glancing to his side he found a man in his late twenties with brown hair and stubble on his face lighting a cigarette, while keeping in step with him.

“Uh, can I help you?” He frowned, glancing around a bit.

“Not particularly.” The man admitted. “But Sarah and Alan said they talked to you, and after seeing your fight, I was mildly interested myself.”

“Oh… You’re the one who was talking to Guy’s friend about magical cooking.” He realized.

“You’ve got a problem with that?” The man scowled, his tone hardening.

“How do you do it?” He asked. “I mean is it just like potion making, or is it an application of anima during the cooking process or maybe you apply it to the ingredients beforehand.”

The man blinked before smiling. “It’s a mix of all three actually. The entire concept is about how the flavor changes when you use magic at different stages of the process, and when it's best to mix those into things. Like with a lot of dairy products you’re going to want to mix the magic in before you actually start cooking with them. While at the same time -for more general baking- you’ll want to rig the oven to saturate the food with magic while it’s cooking.”

“Wouldn’t the oven thing change the cook times on everything though?” He wondered. “I mean the anima would heighten the flames if the saturation isn’t measured real low, which would make everything more likely to burn on any level that isn’t a slight zesting.”

“That’s actually how the baking trick became so popular with spell chefs, since the process accelerated cook times letting them get more work done faster without making their customer wait.” The man explained with a grin. “The actual influence on the flavoring was discovered later, as well as the method of using spell concepts as their own flavoring ingredients.”

“Ooh, I’ll have to try that.” It’d take some work to enchant his oven to work right, but (I wonder what Moon enchanted mooncakes taste like?)

“Ah, just realized I never introduced myself.” The man admitted before offering his hand. “Travis Bellwether at your service.”

“Jon Whitaker.” He nodded, shaking the man’s hand.

“Hey, if you’re interested, me and Daisy, we’ve got this cooking club we like to do every so often.” Travis told him ,pointing towards a short woman talking with Guy. “If you ever feel like it you’re welcome to join us.”

“Sounds like fun.”

---

Having finally gotten his hands on the file from Sanctuary, he started looking for Ms. Delacroix in the hopes of wrapping this evening up before anything else could go wrong. (Because knowing my luck something will.)

This is when he felt the Madness and Insanity reaching for his mind.

His eyes snapped to this pale young man that he’d seen staring at him on and off through the evening, currently wearing a manic smile, and with a man and woman on each side.

“Whatever you’re doing, stop.”

The Madness and Insanity immediately pulled back, and the young man’s smile seemed to grow wider even as his companions looked at the man curiously. “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help myself after what I saw earlier.”

“And what exactly did you see, because I know you’ve been looking at me since before that fight.” He frowned, the beast in his head growling.

“Heh, sorry, it’s just I see things a little differently than most.” The man explained with a grin. “And what I see when I look at you…” The man leaned forward, “Fucking terrifies me.”

Both of his companions seemed extremely alarmed by that.

He narrowed his eyes. “Then why are you acting so happy about that?”

The man seemed to consider that for a moment, before his eyes flashed pitch black as Insanity tainted the air. “If you knew my old man, you’d know exactly why you scaring me is so impressive.”

“Who exactly is your old man?” He asked, trying not to make it too obvious that he was reaching for his knife.

The man narrowed his eyes now with a considering look before grinning as he offered his hand. “The name’s Jack.”

He frowned, meeting ‘Jack’s eyes. “As in a Cheshire Jack?”

Jack gave that a laugh. “Nah, but my old man knows Jack Remnant fairly well.”

He could not decide if that was a good thing or not.

Jack rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m only interested in you because you can scare me, and well, ‘what’s life without a good scare’.”

He blinked. “Did, did you just quote disney at me?”

Jack shrugged, before looking behind Jon. “Oh, you are a big fella.”

Glancing behind him he found Guy towering over all four of them, before meeting the eyes of Jack’s female companion. The two stared at each other for a moment before they both nodded and the woman tapped Jack’s shoulder, motioning for them to leave.

“Aww, and things were just getting interesting.” Jack legitimately whined before shaking his head and giving Jon a smile. “See you around kid, and make sure you give me a good jumpscare when you do.”

He couldn’t help but think, (that was both weird and concerning.) before realizing that Guy was now staring at him.

“Uh… Did you need something?”

Guy pointed at him before pointing at the middle of the field and then at the girl who’d summoned that demon from earlier.

“Um, something about me fighting the demon?” He guessed, fairly used to being the only one ‘speaking’ during his conversations with Pix and Wolf.

Guy nodded decisively, before just standing there.

“And, uh, what did you want to say?”

Guy continued to stare at him with an intensity that was beginning to make him deeply uncomfortable, before giving him a thumbs up and walking away without any further explanation.

(Well… that was equally weird but much less concerning.) He decided, before shaking his head and making his way back to Pix and Melon, so that he could find Ms. Delacroix and finally wrap this evening up.

(Hopefully this book will be worth it.)