[INDENT][COLOR=SLATEGRAY][CENTER][sup][h1][center][img]https://static.dc.com/2025-02/2025_02_24_Zatanna_Marquee_3x1.jpg?w=1200[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] Z A T A N N A   Z A T A R A[/color]
[color=#1E90FF]Z A T A N N A   Z A T A R A[/color][/center]
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[color=#1E90FF][sup][i]"Strange Southern Happenings"[/i][/sup][/color][/CENTER]

[b]|| Nowhere Important — Rural Louisiana[/b]

[COLOR=darkgray][color=#F5F0A8]"What about Dennis? He is nice."[/color]

[color=#1E90FF]"Dennis is also a creature of a Nightmare realm with twelve eyes."[/color]

[color=#F5F0A8]"So judgemental, how is that being his fault?"[/color]

[color=#1E90FF]"I'd like to keep us to options that are generally humanoid, if you wouldn't mind."[/color]

[color=#F5F0A8]"That is your problem, you would really be having less of an issue if you would just —"[/color]

[color=#DAA520]"LADIES."[/color] Khalid's cry of alarm and frustration, turned both metallic and several tones deeper by the helm across his features, cut through the bickering conversation between Zatanna and Ilyana. Both women were standing atop the relatively ramshackle roof of what had once been a gas station. Rural Louisiana, even no great distance from the sprawl of the city, was dotted with the detritus of abandoned human habitation. Feelings of loss and shattered dreams were often a draw to some of the more nefarious magical denizens the Academy deemed itself the authority on, and so they often found themselves out these sort of ways.

Ilyana was a more recent addition to the team of mature students the Academy often wielded as enforcement and retrieval team, although despite her bellicose nature when it came to most of the Academy and other students, she got on well with Zatanna. Probably a little too well in this situation.

[color=#F5F0A8]"Are you having trouble, Domehead?"[/color] The blonde woman called down from her perch. She was leant forwards on the crossguard of her oversized weapon. Her soulsword was a physical manifestation of her abilities, a mighty and feared tool of destruction — it was currently relegated to a prop of convenience.

[color=#DAA520]"I can manage, but this would be done a lot faster if you two would actually help."[/color] Khalid was on ground level and was rather far from bickering about the rest of the student body. He weaved to and fro as haunted spirits began to leech out of the physical surroundings and sped towards him. It was certainly not one of their most exciting deployments, but it was also meant to be more than a one man job.

Ilyana let out a sharp, dry bark of a laugh, the kind that didn't reach her eyes. [color=#F5F0A8]"He is practising his 'measured response.' Strange would be so proud. He's becoming a very shiny, very obedient battery."[/color] Despite her continued efforts to aggravate the man actually doing the work, Magik vaulted over the side of the rooftop, soulsword in hand. [color=#F5F0A8]"Come along, Thighs."[/color] She called back over her shoulder.

[color=#1E90FF]"Wha — Hey!"[/color] Zatanna took but a moment to catch the term, her own descent to the ground a little more elegant as she muttered [color=#1E90FF][i]"Rehtaf e sa thgil."[/i][/color] While Magik landed in a heavy crunch of force which went some way to dissipate a materialising spirit, Zatanna touched down with barely a noise.

[color=#F5F0A8]"It is a compliment, how much are you training?"[/color] Ilyana smirked as the soulsword lashed out, banishing what remained of the spirit she had partially landed on. Traditional violence wasn't usually an effective approach with incorporeal magical threats, but the Academy's more recent hire had an almost unique ability to do so thanks to the gifts of both her upbringing and her mutation.

[color=#DAA520]"She doesn't, it's carbs and genes to survive a Medici siege."[/color] Unfortunately for Zatanna it seemed her companions, previously diametrically opposed foes, had unified over ribbing her.

She definitely didn't want to be in the room where this happened.

[color=#F5F0A8]"Ah, like that meme. Everything you see, I am owing to Spaghetti."[/color]

[color=#DAA520]"Near enough."[/color]

[color=#1E90FF]"Can we focus?"[/color] Zatanna couldn't quite keep the huff out of her voice as she intoned her next enchantment. [color=#1E90FF][i]"Sreyarp dna sthguoht."[/i][/color] A burst of soothing magic erupted from the casting focus in her hand, the energy engulfing one of the spirits in a wave that, while pleasant for most, was the bane of Spirits of Loss, banishing its hold on the mortal realm.

[color=#DAA520]"My point exactly, before you started bullying poor Dennis."[/color] Khalid continued, even as with a flash of golden energy he collapsed the form of another spirit. On deployments like this it seemed like more and more of the vibrant person she had grown up with returned. It was one of her main reasons for always volunteering for such duties.

[color=#1E90FF]"Have you both stopped to consider that, to him, I also have the incorrect number of eyes!?"[/color] While she continued to take the bait, Zatanna couldn't quite hide the good humour from her tone. Even if she was the required focus, it was a good feeling that her two best friends were actually getting along. Secondly, the good mood helped with dissipating the haunting.

[color=#F5F0A8]"Psht, like he is looking at your ey —"[/color] Magik was truly interrupted this time, a burst of negative energy rocking her backwards as the spirits finally responded in appropriate vigour to the assault of three powerful wielders of magic.

They began to coalesce together, a mass of grey flickering static that looked less like ghosts and more like a wound in the world. The true source of the magical disturbance they had detected, and thus their target.

[color=#1E90FF]"Khalid, now."[/color] Zatanna instructed with the easy authority she wielded among her fellow students. Khalid and his helm began to emit a golden light so total in its brilliance it seemed to leech colour from its surroundings, the uncompromising splendour of its power making short work of any limitations on its radiance. The effect on the swirling mass of negative energy, no matter its threat to the stability of magic and the mortal world, was immediate — temporarily holding it in place.

Magik's blade arced outwards, not at the target but behind it, the soulsword splitting reality itself. The wound it left was a clean thing, easy to seal, but that didn't entirely hide the horror from beyond the skein of the world. Where these things had come from, the foulness of it. The power of Khalid's binding was not just to keep the disturbance in place, but also to prevent yet more horror following through. As her allies did their job, Zatanna prepared her own.

She gathered both her power and her wits, long years of magical study and the great gifts her parents had bestowed on her pulling together into a spell that would rectify the situation. In the end, it was simple enough.

[color=#1E90FF][i]"Rednes ot nrutes!"[/i][/color]

For a moment there was no response, then her power unleashed in a gale. A torrent of airborne current that seemed to ignore the three magic users entirely, focused wholly on the ghostly mass they fought against. It struggled to anchor itself in the mortal plane, but in the next moment was cast back into the Nightmare. With another flick of Magik's wrist, the way was sealed once more.

Silence held for a few moments before Ilyana spoke up.

[color=#F5F0A8]"Hooray, another victory. The rodents of this abandoned town will be troubled by nefarious spirits no longer."[/color] Her cheer, obviously sardonic, was matched by a slight woo from Zatanna.

[color=#DAA520]"You know that these things build up, and can threaten reality itself."[/color] Khalid mused with little of the good humour he had shown a moment prior.

[color=#F5F0A8]"Do I know this? Or have I been told it?"[/color]

[color=#DAA520]"We are dealing with more and more of these disturbances, getting closer and closer to the academy, and you don't think that's cause for concern?."[/color]

[color=#1E90FF]"Enough, you two. There's a good crawfish place a little way over, let's stop by before we need to return home."[/color]

[color=#F5F0A8]"Ok there, Honky Tonk."[/color] That was enough to have both of them laughing at her once again.

[color=#1E90FF]"I regret ever knowing the both of you."[/color][/COLOR]
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