25 Chapter 25: A Magical Birthday (3)
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"Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing."
—Ron Swanson, (Parks and Recreation)
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"That was a little weird, wasn't it?" Alfred murmured to himself with a confused face after both the magical father-daughter duo left.
The butler was confused by some of the things that Giovanni had said in the conversation especially whenever he joked about things like magic. Who the hell jokes about the death of their wife being caused by a war with demons?
Bruce on the other hand wasn't confused at all because, unlike Alfred, he knew that the Zatara family was not ordinary at all but a magical one. So he knew exactly what he was talking about. But Bruce still had a certain doubt in his mind.
Giovani seemed really protective of his daughter. He didn't even let her talk with Bruce much, let alone allow her to play with him alone. Even though he himself asked Bruce to be her friend to which Bruce immediately agreed, he still left with his daughter after some time, not letting her freely talk or play with him.
Giovanni told Bruce that he had some important work to do and thus had to leave for the day. He took Zatanna with him too even though Bruce told him that he wanted to celebrate his birthday with her along with his other friends.
'Is it purely because he is an overprotective father or is it because he was here for something else? Whatever he said he would send her to play here next week anyway, so I'll get my answers then' Bruce thought to himself frowning.
"Yeah, it was a little weird," Bruce replied as he took out a small machine the size of a TV remote the moment the Zatara family left the mansion grounds.
He then began to roam the entire room with the tool in his hand like he was looking for something with it.
After a few minutes, the lights on the device began to blink and rapidly change from white, red, green, and blue until a couple of seconds later, the green light glowed slightly more than the other lights and finally, the white light turned on.
"Interesting, so he did some sort of magic while he was in the room since there are traces of paranormal energies here but there is no active spell right now," Bruce muttered to himself as he frowned.
"What's that Master Bruce?" Alfred couldn't control his curiosity despite his best efforts and finally asked after some time.
"This my capable guardian is a pk-meter I made recently. It can detect various supernatural energies and events. Red light means ghosts or other demonic entities are detected nearby, green means the detection of any paranormal substance or energy, blue means the detection of a cursed object, and white means everything is normal." Bruce explained but looking at Alfred's face, he doubted how much the butler was believing his words.
[{Image}]
He wasn't lying. He made the PK meter after he remembered the iconic device from Ghostbusters. It was the only device he currently had that could detect supernatural stuff around him. It detected ectoplasmic energy as well as the unique radiation signature of mana and could basically detect any supernatural entity that was nearby.
At first, he wanted to name it the bat-meter but that sounded too dumb for him, so he just stuck with the original name. But he would change it if he got a better idea for it. He was even working on trying to integrate it into his bat-tool so that he doesn't have to carry a weird-looking remote with himself all the time.
"Do you think allowing the girl to come to play with you next week will be safe?" Alfred asked as he wondered if he had contacts with any demonologist or wizard to help them if the situation required it.
"Yeah, it would be alright. I don't know about Giovanni but Zatanna definitely didn't seem like a bad person. Hell, even her father seemed like a good person to me if he didn't act so suspicious. I am sure that we will know more about this later. I don't want to list them off as an enemy so soon but we would need to be more on guard." Bruce said as he thought if he could make any other machines through his knowledge of science that could block or nullify magic.
"Sure Young master. I will make sure to write Mr. Zatara on my people to watch out for list." Alfred said with an expressionless straight face, not making clear if he was joking or not.
"I don't get it. Are you joking? You know what? It doesn't matter. I need to get back to the girls. They have been alone for a long time now. I just hope Helena is calmer than before." Bruce said as he began to walk away.
He had three girls to get back to and entertain and also a few remaining hours of his birthday to enjoy.
***
"Hey, where were you? You were gone for like an hour. We thought that you ditched us. We even played an entire game of Monopoly in that time." Vicki puffed up her cheeks and complained.
"Not even in my wildest dreams I would ever ditch you guys. I was just making sure that two of my guests were comfortable enough. They were a little more 'special' than the others." Bruce smirked.
"Even more special than us?" Selina asked without looking at him.
"No, of course not. There is no one more special to me than Alfred and you three. You are my oldest and closest friends." Bruce said as he gave them a brilliant smile.
"Huff, it better be," Vicki said. She was the most immature among the three girls, probably because she hadn't experienced even a fraction of the stuff that Helena or Selina had experienced in their lives. Compared to them, she was just a normal girl in a happy family.
"By the way, they told me about your inventions. Is it true that you gave birth to Cortana?" Helena asked with stars in her eyes.
"Gave birth is too far-fetched a word but yes, I made Cortana. You wanna meet her?" Bruce asked.
"Yeah of course I do. She is the coolest person I have ever met." Helena fangirled.
"Thank you for the compliment." The watch on Bruce's wrist buzzed as Cortana spoke through it and responded to Helena.
"I think she meant Cortana was that you were the coolest after me, right Helena?" Bruce asked shamelessly.
"Yeah yeah, sure," Helena said, not caring about Bruce's hurt sentiments at not being called the coolest kid among them.
"Okay, you wanna see my cool Batcave?" Bruce asked. Helena already knew a lot of stuff about Bruce just like he knew a lot of stuff about her. He knew that Helena would never betray him at this point. Even if they were young, their bond was too strong for them to backstab each other.
"Yeah, of course, I do. Vicki told me all about it. She even said that we could use a computer to play a racing game in another world." Helena revealed.
"Really Vicki? After all the time I told you to not reveal anything about the Batcave to anyone." Bruce narrowed his eyes at Vicki.
"What, you said to not tell it to any adult or stranger. But Helena is our friend. You said yourself that you trust her." Vicki argued, not able to look him in the eyes.
"*Sigh* Fine. Let's go to the Batcave. But if you tell about it to anyone else ever again without taking my permission first, I swear I will delete all your memories and make you believe you are a chicken." Bruce threatened half-heartedly although he didn't even have anything to make true on his threat.
As Bruce led them to his Batcave through one of the many secret entries, this one being the classic opening of a hidden door by twisting a certain statue's hand in a particular way, Helena was gobsmacked after seeing the inside of the cave.
The entire cave was decorated with LED lights in a cool dark design. There were assortments of various machines and tools lying all around with the most noticeable being a giant computer at the front of the cave.
"That's a pretty big computer," Helena commented.
"Yeah, that's the bat computer. You can't even imagine what playing PlayStation feels like in there. It's almost as good as Bruce's digital world." Vicki couldn't help but reply.
"Wait you call your computer the Batcomputer? And you also call your cave the Batcave just like you call that gadget you gave me the Bat-tool? What's with you and your obsession with bats?" Helena asked, raising one of her brows.
"I have a problem okay? You will never understand the addiction of sticking to a theme. It's like you can't stop once you start. So, stop judging me." Bruce said with an aggrieved voice.
"Sure," Selina said as she just smiled. She knew it was one of the very few bad habits that Bruce had and truthfully she even liked it somewhat. She herself had started something similar to that after she started naming everything she had with the theme of cat. She even named her own pillow as soft pussy although Bruce for some reason always laughed whenever he heard of it. That was annoying for her. After all, she never laughed at his names.
"Wow, what's that blue pill? I didn't see it before. Did you make a new candy or something?" Vicki said as she went toward a small box containing a few dozen attractive transparent pills.
"Wait no, don't touch those. They aren't for the consumption of regular people." Bruce yelled and snatched the box away from in front of Vicki.
They were NZT pills that Bruce had made with reference to the film Limitless. They were supposed to let anyone use a hundred percent of their mind's capacity, giving them photographic memory and perfect recall. But Bruce more or less already had those two abilities through his power.
What he really wanted from these pills was the Sherlock Holmes-like genius observation and deduction skills they could give him when consumed. However, the pills weren't perfect. For some unknown reason, maybe due to the fact that he was making these pills from the resources available in the DC universe, these NZTs were stronger than the ones in the movies and even lasted longer for approximately twenty-four hours before they lost effect.
But in return, they had more negative effects on the user's mind like the elimination of empathy, severe addiction, slow breakdown of neurons, dependency on the drug, and other harmful consequences.
So Bruce right now was working on a booster dose to counter those negative impacts. He wasn't an idiot. He was not going to consume those nor let anyone touch them till he developed a method to eliminate their negative results completely.
The only unfortunate thing was that it would probably take a few years to develop it since Bruce still hadn't found an element substitute good enough to replace the main component of the booster drug. In the limitless world, there was a special plant whose chemicals were used in it but in DC there was no such thing. So he has to keep looking for a good enough if not a better substitute.
"So I can't have one," Vicki asked as she looked at the attractive pills.
"No, you can't. You should always listen to me, Vicki. Stuff in my lab might be really dangerous for you." Bruce said as he seriously began to consider developing a Neuralyzer and neuralizing Vicki. She was too innocent and childish but he still couldn't deny that she was probably the most entertaining among the three.
"So you admit that I am more responsible than Viicki," Selina said as she puffed her chest proudly like she had just been praised by the teacher.
"I guess I do, especially since you don't try to eat the very first thing you see in the lab." He said as he carefully stored the box full of NZT pills safely into a secure storage device.
"Okay, how about we now play the game Vicki was talking about." Helena interrupted at which Vicki who had become downcasted again beamed with happiness.
"Yeah, sure. Let's go. Cortana, turn up the NerveGears and start Sugar Rush."
The rest of Bruce's Birthday passed away for Bruce as the four friends just played games all night and happily chatted among themselves while having a sleepover.
Life truly was going well for Bruce Wayne.
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