[center][h1][color=darkslateblue][b]Z A T A N N A[/b][/color][/h1][/center][hr]

[indent][center][sub]"... The brief conference between the two world leaders marked the first official, in-person meeting at the White House since the pandemic swept across the nation..."

"... Hundreds gathered today in Jump City to celebrate the unveiling of popular development team Control Freaks' newest..."

"... Tensions between Bialya and Corto Maltese have been reported as having escalated..."

"... Musk's tweet sent stocks spiraling as..."[/sub][/Center]

The television set, an analog relic from the days of dial-up internet, displayed a multitude of low-resolution images as the screen switched from station to station at a rapid pace. Not staying on any single channel long enough to matter, the dying remote control with its worn-out buttons that barely depressed was put to the test as Zatanna used the 'channel up' button as quickly as she could manage. Her eyes dead ahead, not even glimpsing at the device before her, seemingly swapping from program to program without care or meaning. Finally, after cycling through the limited selection of channels repeatedly for several minutes, the young woman selected the off button, allowing the fuzzy tv screen to wink out. 

Letting out a slow, drawn-out breath, she returned the remote to its perch, watching as it freely floated across the four-foot gap from bed to tv stand, where it settled down with a soft clunk. Her hands, having been neatly folded in her lap the entire time, separated as she leaned back in the hotel bed, satisfied with her improvement. 

This was the fourth night since Zatanna had arrived in Los Angeles and she had only left her hotel room once to revise her length of stay with the manager. Making use of food delivery apps and copious amounts of caffeine to maximize her hours awake, she had spent every possible moment from morning to night training and learning. 

Teaching herself how to once again access her natural, magical abilities that had been forsaken for the better part of a decade had been surprisingly simple, she found. Or, at least, less exhaustive than she had initially feared. Once she had fully dived back into her childhood lessons, reliving the instructions her father had ingrained in her at a young age, Zatanna found the skills and techniques returning to her as if they had never truly vanished. Reembracing her mystical prowess proved to be more akin to riding a bike than she ever would have guessed. Muscle memory, she supposed, translated just as well to the arcane. 

Levitating the remote control and using her telekinetic power to activate the buttons on the device was a trivial task to her now. After several days of practice, Zatanna was confident she could do as much with barely a thought. Just yesterday, after all, she had tried and succeeded in mentally lifting the bulky television set itself, raising it a foot above the table it sat on until its power cord began to strain in protest. And, demonstrating a significant improvement from that first night, the budding sorceress could now sufficiently manipulate the mostly intact cheap ashtray that had nearly bludgeoned her previously. Whipping it around the area with great speed and finesse, and causing it to perform aerial feats in the process. 

Zatanna had moved on from practicing her telekinesis after the first day, next beginning to redevelop her control over the elemental forces. Controlling the water in her drinking glass and then the shower had been the easiest to grasp. Redirecting the stream from the faucet and pulling the water into various, simplistic shapes had felt natural to her. After only several hours of practice, she had felt comfortable with that element and had resolved to move on to the next. Growing up, she had constantly used her gifts to conjure slight gusts of wind, and so, while it took her slightly longer to reach the same level of affinity, manipulating the air had also proved to be relatively uncomplicated. 

Fire had been next and it had taken well over a day for Zatanna to become adept at. While the previous two elements she had been able to wield already-existing sources of, with fire she had to generate her own. And, as she had quickly learned, conjuring flame was difficult. And dangerous. The singed fringes of the sheet she had tucked underneath the mattress were testament to that. But, even still, by the previous night, Zatanna had also conquered that element. 

Even now, as she sat atop the hotel bed, three small puffs of orange and yellow floated in the center of the room, held aloft with only her mind. The flickering orbs warmed the already poorly circulated space and caused tiny shadows to dance across each of the walls. Occasionally, the three would become one before separating again in a display that reminded Zatanna of old slides shown during middle school of cells dividing. 

Once she had readjusted to the basics of her powers and regained moderate control over them, Zatanna had decided to dedicate the rest of her week-long stay at the hotel to learning how to handle multiple abilities at once. The use of telekinesis to change the tv stations while simultaneously maintaining steady control over the summoned flames was only the first step in her newly planned regimen. Tomorrow, she aimed to add water to the mix. 

But familiarizing herself with her powers hadn't been the only thing Zatanna had set out to learn. She spent hours every day scouring the documents, journals, and notes she had photographed in her father's private study. Piece by piece she had been methodically and patiently reading and studying everything she had stored in her phone, occasionally resorting to Google to translate certain texts or provide missing context to obscure occult terms she hadn't been familiar with. Having only originally scanned through them in a panicked hurry, she paid close attention to the notes her father had taken regarding his investigation here in Los Angeles. Now, with time and a more focused mindset, Zatanna had been able to uncover several key bits of information left behind by her father. 

The City of Angels had been beset in recent months by a string of suicides. Something that ordinarily might not have been looked at too closely by local law enforcement, especially as it was during the height of the virus pandemic in the States. Giovanni Zatara, on the other hand, had found them quite unordinary. Enough so that he had made several trips to the city since the start of May to investigate the circumstances surrounding each suicide that he had deemed unusual. According to his final notes on the subject, the elder Zatara had narrowed down the cause to what he had described as "coerced soul forfeiture," which apparently would result in severe, unavoidable depression culminating in the victims taking their own lives in brutally painful ways. 

The singular suspect Giovanni had settled on for this magical crime was one Eldon Peck. Zatanna had done some digging on the man online and discovered he was originally a businessman based out of the San Francisco Bay area before just two years ago opening a popular nightclub in Los Angeles - Club Bewitched, which Zatanna felt was a little [i]too[/i] on the nose. Several unsubstantiated reports had tried to link Peck to various criminal endeavors and the De Cecco crime family, but details on those rumors were scant, to say the least. 

Regardless of Peck's past and the rumors surrounding it, Zatanna knew the man would be her only lead into her father's disappearance. Giovanni's notes and his journal indicated that this had been the last investigation he had been working on, and Los Angeles had been his final destination. This meant that as soon as she finished her week-long self-training, Zatanna now had a solid, albeit limited, plan.

Partake in the L.A. nightlife and get into Club Bewitched. 

[/indent]