Raven watched the man Doctor Fate had stopped with a careful gaze.
Truthfully, she had been on edge from the moment this stranger had descended like a god of wrath to rescue them from the vampire ambush. During the chaos of the fight, there hadn't been time to analyze him, survival had taken precedence over scrutiny.
But once there were within the sterile, golden confines of Kandor, his presence was impossible to ignore. His power unsettled her.
The man radiated magic, And It wasn't the faint aura that most human sorcerers had, hell, not even humans who had spent decades buried in dusty grimoires, and practiced magic had this amount of power in them.
This was something entirely different, he was different.
To Raven's senses, it felt like standing at the edge of a cliff staring down into the ocean, the mana had a certain weight to it that she could not quite explain.
The only beings she had ever felt this from were higher entities, like beings made of magic, gods, or her father, Trigon. That only said something about the man.
Every breath he took seemed to cause ripples in the local ether. It was like the mana of the world just wanted to be embraced by him that it surrounded him with every step.
Beside her, she felt John Constantine stiffen. He was on edge, though he hid it behind a practiced mask of cynical boredom and tobacco smoke. His eyes, though, showed just what he was feeling, they were sharp and cynical as they looked at the man. He had surely sensed the same thing Nabu and she sensed.
"Who are you?" Nabu demanded. The Lord of Order's voice was a dual-toned resonance, echoing with the cold, metallic authority as he held the wall in place, not letting the man pass.
Raven glanced at the golden helm, then back to Kenji. She didn't like this. The way they were cornering him reminded her far too much of her first days on Earth. how people looked at her not as a girl, but as a ticking time bomb, a gateway for a demon king.
Funnily, it was Nabu who had told the Justice League not to help her then, too.
She saw the same flash of weary annoyance in Kenji's eyes that she used to see in her own mirror, and she felt for him too.
But in this world now, where a single vampire infiltrator or a suspicious "hero" in their midst could mean the extinction of the last human sanctuary, she had to push those personal feelings down into the dark corners of her mind.
She could see John already weaving a subtle binding spell between his fingers, his movements hidden by the thick, acrid smoke of his cigarette.
"I'm surprised you were actually able to sense me," the man said. His voice was casual, almost lighthearted, which only made the tension in the room spike. It was like the tone of someone who was being polite to a barking dog.
He reached up and removed the smooth, white porcelain mask.
The change was immediate and staggering. The "mask" seemed to not have just been an accessory, because as it came off, it was like a dam holding back a flood. As soon as it was removed, the pressure in the room seemed to double.
"My name is Kenji," he said, his expression calm. "I'm from another world, trapped here for the time being. It's nice to meet you all."
"What are you?" John asked, his voice sharp and rude, cutting through the pleasantries.
"Human," Kenji replied simply.
Constantine took a long drag of his cigarette and exhaled a plume of grey smoke, his eyes narrowing into slits. "Human? Don't pull my leg, mate. I've seen humans who've sold their souls for a drop of that power, and even they couldn't light a candle to you."
"Another Earth," Kenji clarified with a small, patient smile.
"How did you get here?" Raven asked, her voice soft, trying to bridge the gap before John said something that made the man stop being cooperative.
Kenji shrugged, a gesture that seemed far too normal for a man of his stature. "Not really sure. One moment, my friends and I were talking, then, bam. Here we are."
'Friends'. Raven noted the plural. If he were the benchmark for their power, this world had just received either its greatest salvations or more problems.
"There are more of you buggers?" John asked, his hand twitching toward his inner coat pocket, likely reaching for a sigil.
Raven understood his fear. People with powers were a dime a dozen, but magic people, on the other hand, were different. If there were others like him wandering around, then she could only hope that there were cooperatives like him.
"Where are the others?" Nabu demanded, his golden form glowing with an intensifying light. The gem on his chest pulsed.
Kenji's smile faltered slightly, replaced by a cold look. He looked at the Lord of Order with a sense of annoyance. "Last I saw them, they were with Batgirl somewhere in Gotham. They're helping the resistance. They're the reason you still have a Gotham from what I've heard." He tilted his head, his eyes locking onto the blank face of the Helmet.
"Not that I'm not enjoying the interrogation, but why exactly am I being cornered? I did just save your field team from being turned into juice boxes, remember?"
"Well," John said dryly, "it's not every day we see a bloody magic nuke strolling around, is it? In a world like this one, one had to be careful, you know. We like to know who's holding the detonator before we let them in the living room."
Kenji looked genuinely confused for a second, then realization dawned on him. He hadn't realized how he appeared to them.
In his own world, but he was surrounded by monsters, devils, and gods of his own scale and despite Dc being a higher class world than his the humans at the very least are the same in a way and He often forgot that his mana reserves had long since surpassed the limits of what both this world and his world considered "human.".
"You do not belong here," Nabu said suddenly. The words seemed to come out of a left field, which took him by surprise.
"Yeah, I thought that was already established," Kenji replied, rolling his eyes with a scoff that bordered on sacrilege.
Raven noticed the shift in his stance. His feet moved an inch apart, his weight centering. He was getting ready to fight, she noticed.
"I sense chaos around you," Nabu continued, his voice rising in volume until it vibrated the crystalline floor beneath their feet. "Your very existence is an anomaly, you must be removed."
"Are you shitting me?" Kenji growled. "Where the hell did that come from? I'm helping you, you golden tin can!"
He had expected a little friction with this guy, but a 180-degree turn into an execution order was a step too far. He knew Nabu was a heavyweight in the magical world, but Kenji had survived a conversation with Death of the Endless. He had looked into the eyes of the ultimate ending and walked away. He wasn't about to be bullied by a spirit trapped in a piece of junk.
Before Raven could intervene, before Constantine could finish his binding spell, Nabu fired.
A beam struck Kenji's center mass. The impact hurled Kenji through the crystalline wall of the hub like a cannonball. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the silent, empty streets as Kenji was blasted out into the open plaza of Kandor, a streak of purple and gold across the skyline.
Kenji hit the ground hard, rolling once before his boots scraped against the crystal surface, carving deep gouges into the pavement to kill the momentum.
He straightened slowly, his clothes tattered but his expression chillingly neutral. Above him, Doctor Fate descended, his cape billowing in a non-existent wind, his golden armor reflecting the artificial sun of the bottle.
"Okay," Kenji muttered, his voice low. "That's it. I'm killing him. It's not like the world needs another arrogant bastard telling people where they belong."
He reached into his inventory and pulled out the Yamato.
Fate raised his hands, a massive ankh of golden light forming in front of him, glowing with the power to incinerate the "anomaly."
Kenji didn't wait for the charge. He vanished.
Blasts of golden energy tore through the space where he had been standing a microsecond before, vaporizing the crystal into fine dust. But he was already a blur of motion, moving faster than the eye could track. He reappeared directly in front of Fate, within the Lord of Order's personal space, and drove the Yamato.....into the ground.
LAW: No magic allowed
Kenji whispered.
A dome formed into existence, encompassing the entire area with him and fate inside.
Kenji felt his own mana pool lock, but he had prepared for this. He saw the exact moment Fate felt it too. The golden glow around the armor sputtered and died like a flickering candle. The Lord of Order, suddenly robbed of his flight and his magic, dropped from the air and hit the crystalline pavement with a heavy, ungraceful metallic thud.
In this space, there was no more chanting. No mana. No reality warping. If the man focused and tried, he could escape, but he wouldn't get the time.
Kenji moved.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
He didn't need magic to kill. He had hands
And mother fucking Nen
His fists, augmented by Ten and Ren, crashed into Fate's golden breastplate with the cadence of a funeral drum. Each blow sounded like a church bell being struck by a sledgehammer, hammering the Lord of Order deeper into the shattered crystal ground until a crater formed beneath him.
Kenji grabbed the helmet with both hands. He slammed his knee upward into the faceplate. The helmet groaned.
With a final, savage wrench, he tore the helmet from the head of whoever was wearing it.
The golden armor vanished instantly, dissolving into harmless sparks of light that drifted away in the recycled air. In its place lay a bloodied, unconscious man, looking small and fragile in the ruins of the plaza.
Kenji stared down at him, his breathing steady, his eyes still glowing. He tossed the Helmet of Nabu lightly in his hand, feeling the angry, impotent vibrations of the spirit trapped inside.
"Not so tough now, are you?" he muttered, shaking the helmet like a piggy bank to see if it would rattle. "Easy when you have the biggest gun. Not so fun when someone takes it away, is it?"
Footsteps crunched on the ground behind him. Constantine and Raven stood there, their expressions a mix of genuine horror and begrudging respect. Their hands were raised, magic flickering at their fingertips, but they didn't fire. They knew they were outclassed.
"Drop the helmet, kid," John said, his voice unusually serious, stripped of its usual bravado. "I know Fate's a massive, sanctimonious ass, and believe me, I've wanted to do that for years. But we need that helmet."
"He tried to kill me," Kenji replied flatly, raising an eyebrow as he looked at the Hellblazer. "In my world, that's a one-way ticket to the afterlife. I'm being generous by letting him keep his head, so to speak."
John shrugged, though his eyes remained locked on Kenji's hands. "Yeah, well, he's tried to kill me, too. More than once. As I said, he's an ass, but he's a useful ass. We need him."
Kenji studied the Hellblazer for a long moment. With a flick of his wrist, the golden helm vanished into his inventory. Constantine and Raven got into fighting stance as they readied their spells.
"Relax," Kenji said, holding up his empty hands. "I'm just keeping him 'safe' for now. Storing him in a locker so he doesn't do anything else stupid while I'm actually trying to help you. I'll give him back when the real fighting starts, and we actually need him. Think of it as a cooling-off period."
Raven hesitated, her dark, violet eyes searching Kenji's for any signs of lies or anything that Nabu had warned about. She saw no malice there, which was a good thing. Slowly, sensing no malice or tricks, she and John lowered their guard.
"...Fine," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the city.
"What happened here?" a voice yelled from the hub.
The others emerged from the building.
"Fate," John said, lighting a fresh cigarette with a hand that trembled just a fraction and sighing. "Being Fate. Picked a fight with the wrong bloke and got his bell rung."
Huntress sighed, looking around for the golden armor and finding only the battered man on the ground. She didn't know what was going on, but she really didn't want to know. "Whatever. Come on. They're finally making a decision on what we're doing next."
"Oh, joy," John muttered, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.
Kenji followed them back inside, glancing once over his shoulder at the empty, golden spires of Kandor. Why were things so bothersome, and He had a feeling things were only going to get worse before he found his way home.
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