27 Gotham's curse

(Bruce POV)

I am currently inside the Wayne manor and enjoying some tea and marvellous food that Sebas made. He has gotten truly good at creating all the recipes I gathered over the years of training. I am glad about that. My thoughts are not here though and I think about the curse of Gotham. My meta-knowledge doesn't seem to help much. There have been no records of a tomb which used to belong to some sort of Warlock. So it is unlikely that there will be a Dr. Gotham in this universe.

"Is there something bothering you, Master Bruce?", Sebas asks.

"I wouldn't say troubling. I see it as a brain teaser. My brain rarely gets teased, so I am enjoying myself."

"I understand that, sir. I was talking more in terms of, whether you would like to talk about it?"

"Sure. So here's the deal. I am sure that the entire city of Gotham is cursed. When I created the 'Universal Programmer', I noticed how much Doom or Crisis energy seems to be gathered here. So I got curious. I did some digging but that yielded no results. There are no records of evil sorcerers or rumours of any kind. So that leads me with two options now."

"You mean going to Giovanni Zatara, Sir?"

"That is the first option. John should have a lot of knowledge about that, so it could work. And the other is of course to just create a curse locator of some sort. I could also increase my experience with magic that way. Although I did that already, it can never hurt to gain more experience."

"I agree, Master Bruce. How was the food by the way?"

"Marvellous Sebas. Thank you very much."

.

I went to visit John again after we separated when my 'training' was finished. It would be nice to meet him and Zatanna again. Although last time she messed up the spell and bound us together in a strange way. I took care of that though. Otherwise, we would have had to meet once every ten years or something. I'm not sure.

I entered the Batgarage and grabbed my Portal Gun. I opened a portal to Las Vegas and saw that Giovanni was just giving a show at the moment. So I bought a ticket and then went to watch. Giovanni is a master at his craft. Be that stage magic or real magic, I can see that he is very proficient in both of them. He is dangerous though, if he were to go rogue, so I already have multiple contingencies ready for both him and Zatanna.

I watch as Giovanni finishes with his act and then Zatanna takes the stage. The two see me and then smile mischievously. I know what they're planning but if they want to play, I am more than ready to play. You don't mess with me, I already told them that and after the thing with the evil spirit or whatever it was, they shouldn't forget that. But it was all in good fun, so I guess I'll go along with it.

.

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(3rd Person POV)

"And now ladies and gentlemen, for our last trick tonight, we are going to do a classic disappearing act!", Giovanni announced.

"The only thing we need now is a volunteer. Now who would be so kind as to volunteer for our harmless trick? Hmm? Oh, if it isn't Mister Bruce Wayne. All the way from Gotham, here to see our show. Well Mr Wayne, are you interested in volunteering?", Giovanni said.

Everyone in the audience looked at Bruce who was sitting relatively in the middle. He just smiled but didn't say anything. He then stood up and walked on stage.

"A big round of applause for Mister Wayne everyone.", Zatanna said and everyone began to clap. Who wouldn't want to see a famous and rich man get embarrassed? Well, they would have to wait a while longer to see that.

"Well then Mister Wayne if you would just enter this box. Don't worry, it is not a dangerous box. As everyone in the audience can see, it is completely empty and there are no holes or any other things inside. Now we will ask you, Mister Wayne, to enter the box and we will then make you ... disappear.", Giovanni explained and made a dramatic pause for the audience. Bruce just smiled knowingly but little did they know what was going to happen.

Bruce entered the box and Zatanna closed it. They sealed the lid and then they began to conjure different swords. No one knew that they truly conjured them and thought it was a visual effect. One after the other, the swords pierced the box and made the audience gasp. Then to top it off, the two conjured an elephant and had it stand on the box, breaking it in the process. This made some in the audience scream.

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After that came the grand reveal. The elephant disappeared as fast as it appeared and the box was once again fixed without anyone being the wiser as to how. Giovanni artistically opened the box and showed everyone that Bruce was gone. There was a twitch and a stained smile to show that this was all part of his plan.

"And that's how you make a rich person disappear.", Giovanni said and got a few laughs for that.

After the show, the father and daughter pair went backstage only to find Bruce sitting there and waiting for them. He didn't seem to be sorry about his disappearance during the act. The truth was that he shouldn't have disappeared but only gone down a hatch and then come back up. But for some reason, he was gone entirely. The hatch was empty.

"Bruce!", Zatanna said and ran into his arms. She smiled very brightly and even Bruce had ... not even the slightest smile on his face. He was still wearing a neutral look underneath the angry glare of Giovanni.

"It's good to see you again. How are you?", Zatanna asked.

"I'm good thank you."

"You cheeky brat. Disappearing on us during the show. How did you do it?", Giovanni asked now with a smile. He wasn't truly angry at Bruce, since he had begun the game and Bruce had only played them better.

"A magician never reveals his secrets.", Bruce said making Giovanni's face twitch again.

"You're not even a magician!"

"I might be."

"Why are you here Bruce?", Zatanna asked.

"I wanted to ask you whether you have any knowledge about a curse or curses in Gotham. I thought to come here first before creating something for it. You might have some history book about it.", Bruce explained.

"Hmm, there might be something. Come let us have a look together.", Giovanni said.

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The trio went over many books in the library of the Zatara household. But couldn't really find anything concerning a curse in Gotham. But then after a few hours, there was something that Bruce found that concerned Gotham and he was interested. Apparently, there was one Dr. Thomas Wayne who was the black sheep of the family, who was an occultist. This was strange in his opinion as that would mean that this could only be one person.

Bruce was confused for a moment. This person was connected to ... was this one of the things that made being a 'former' Earth from the dark Multiverse? But he checked everything, the crisis energy had been collected and ... oh. Bruce had an epiphany. He understood now what it meant to be from a Dark Multiverse.

He might have to begin preparing for things that wouldn't be possible now. What happened was this. The Dark Multiverse was one formed of every fear and bad decision ever made or dreamt. Worlds in the Dark Multiverse are fragile and constantly deteriorating, inevitably doomed to destruction by their own malformed construction.

What Bruce did was isolate his Earth, Earth (- 69) from the surrounding Multiverse and its Crisis Energy and then later turned the lingering Crisis Energy into Anti-Crisis Energy. That meant that he stopped the inevitable destruction of his Earth. But the after-effects that the Crisis Energy and the Dark Multiverse had, were still there. This is like staying inside a computer tomography for years and then you decide to leave it. While there is no longer any radiation, you still have to deal with the tumour that already formed.

So Bruce had to deal with all the tumours which had already formed. And one such tumour was Darkseid. Even if the Events of 'Final Crisis' hadn't happened and will never happen since he is not the original Batman, he still has to deal with the fear of that happening. This made Bruce mad. He was basically a trash collector at this point who had to deal with all the shit that was left behind from the original Batman and his fears and nightmares. F*cking wuss.

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"Thank you for helping me with this. I think I know what I have to do now.", Bruce said after he was finished with his thought process. That took him about 1 second to complete.

"Are you leaving already?", Zatanna asked.

"Yes. There is something I have to take care of back in Gotham."

"Couldn't you stay with us a bit longer? You know it's not bad if we spend some time together now. You know ... because of the spell.", she said shily.

"You mean the spell that bound our souls together and needed us to visit at least once every ten years? Yeah, I already took care of that."

"What?! How?", Giovanni said.

"The concept of the soul isn't as complicated as you think. In tandem with my training, I developed a technique I call the Hercules Method. It allows my body, mind and soul to focus on one point and therefore centering me perfectly. After that, I removed the connection our souls had with a small device I made. Nothing special.", Bruce explained it casually.

"..."

"..."

"Are you ok?", Bruce asked. The other two seemed to be perplexed. He forgot sometimes that others weren't as smart as he was. It really wasn't that complicated and it took him a day after he had completed the Hercules Method to separate his soul from Zatanna's. He would never allow something like that to exist. Although he thought about using the connection as a backdoor and using it for one of his contingencies, he didn't in the end.

It was too risky as it was a double-edged sword and he didn't like double edges.

"You separated our souls? But that should be impossible.", Zatanna said.

"Zatanna's right. That shouldn't be possible, especially not scientifically. How did you do it?"

"Well created a device that calculated the frequency of my mental wave and then calibrated it to include the strength, brightness and soul joule of my soul. Then I began to .........."

...

...

Bruce went on to explain what he did and all of the technical mumbo jumbo went into one ear and out of the other. Neither of the two sorcerers understood what he was talking about.

"Aha. Well if it's like that, then I guess I can understand ...", Giovanni said after Bruce had finished his explanation. He could listen to the recording of what Bruce said later and see what that was all about. Little did he know that Bruce only told the truth in the first sentence. The rest was all made up and would yield to a very special machine that he had created ... for fun.

"Alright. I better get going now. Thank you for your help with the curse. I'll see you when I see you.", Bruce said and began to walk out.

"Bye Bruce. Please come to visit sometimes.", Zatanna said with a sad smile. She really hoped that she could spend some time with him but he had removed the connection she and him had, with science. He was truly a magnificent man.

"If you want that man then you will have to grow more powerful. You will have to get something that interests him. Become the most knowledgable sorceress and have the information about the arcane when he needs it. If you stand still ... I'm afraid he will leave you behind. His mind is truly a wonderful thing.", Giovanni said to his daughter.

"I will!", Zatanna said with conviction. She would become stronger and use that to get closer to Bruce.