ᴢᴀᴛᴀɴɴᴀ ᴢᴀᴛᴀʀᴀ (annatazarataz) wrote in wtnvgame, @ 2020-12-14 00:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | !action/thread/log, -player: r, ₴inactive player: rae, ₴inactive: bruce banner, ₴inactive: zatanna zatara |
LOG: zee + banner
She felt a presence approach the front door, not necessarily magical in nature but.. unique nonetheless. A massively powerful but buried aura. With a wave of her hand and a few words, she finished clarifying the area before going to meet her guest.
“Dr. Bruce Banner, I presume,” Zatanna said in greeting as she opened the door with a flair of showmanship and smile to match. It was complicated to place him upon first glances. Yet, given the information he’d already spoken of over the network, he certainly fit the whole cross between rogue genius scholar and kicked kitten motifs.
Numerous trips to Hell would do that to a man.
She had witnessed the toll it’d taken on John over the years - but she didn’t let her thoughts wander much farther into the subject and any possible remedies that she could offer. “There’s tea if you’d like,” she said as she motioned to the setup waiting on the glass table in front of the couch, walking over to the clearing in the living room she’d made.
“Though do get comfortable, as I’m not sure how long this is going to take,” the Homo Magi warned honestly. For her, portals weren’t usually a big deal. A sigil here, a specific incantation, a little blood there… Here in Night Vale, though, Zatanna was without the massive collection of arcane items that Shadowcrest held - meaning things would have to be done the old school way of relying on just skill and experience.
Hell, Bruce thought to himself after he tapped on the front door of the home that Zatanna had built for herself, was a series of doorways.
Gamma radiation, it seemed, functioned as some sort of gateway between life and death. When the bomb had first hit him and sent him into oblivion; the gamma energy had brought him back. But it didn’t bring him back alone. As some kind of sadistic wish-fulfillment, the gamma energy gave him his Hulk, the dark protective creature of chaos that used to loom in the recesses of his mind. Since that day, Hulk had a terrifying physical form that could walk the earth, leaving a trail of childlike violence in his wake. It was only recently when Bruce kept dying from one thing or another - Clint Barton’s arrow, SHIELD, the Hand, then Thunderbolt’s cronies - that he learned more about the true nature of Gamma. It hadn’t turned him into the Hulk, not really; the Hulk was always there. And as the cycles of death stripped Bruce more and more of his compassion and empathy, it was the Hulk - not Banner - who was now keeping the two of them human.
He wasn’t the genius-optimist that Stark had known in their youth, and he wasn’t the heroic founding Avenger he used to be. He was leaning closer and closer to the idea of just throwing up his hands and letting the inevitable happen: letting humans destroy themselves so the earth could start over. Start better. Setting his sights on the destruction of capitalism was more a compromise with himself to keep the Avengers in his corner than rooted in some ideological leftist-leaning crusade. But it was getting harder and harder to convince himself people were worth it.
Which was why he was here. After all, Zatanna did somewhat resemble someone that he used to know. Someone who used to love Bruce Banner for what he was.
After a quiet greeting, Bruce followed the magician into her home. He had to smile a little at the delicate tea set, settled on the glass table. It was impossible, these days, for him not to look at objects in terms of how breakable they were. He looked at people the same way; it’s why he had such a hard time talking to Stark now: Stark was already broken. He was a little burned out from taking too many chances and making too many mistakes. Bruce couldn’t exactly say he understood, but the scientist in him craved experimentation, which was the other reason he was here.
He turned his teacup on its saucer with his pointer finger so that the handle faced towards where he was sitting on the sofa before he gingerly picked up the pot.
“You’ve got my undivided attention; I’ve nowhere else to be.” He said with a bit of a shrug. He was interested in what Zatanna planned to attempt. He was significantly invested because his new understanding of gamma made him more interested in what exactly magic -- a subject he’d long dismissed - had to offer. “Just tell me if there’s anything I need to do or anywhere I need to stand.”
It wasn't so much that she was a continuous cheerleader for all things magic - Zatanna truly was baffled with Night Vale. Ideally, it shouldn't be possible to hold her in any dimension, given her magic, yet she couldn't freely leave the strange little desert town. And not knowing why was becoming a problem, even if there wasn't any immediate threats of genocide or mass experimentation. Banner seemed just as intent to figure out the unanswered questions and so.. the least she could do was offer up a little magic to try and jumpstart those answers. Besides, testing her boundaries with John not around was something she'd been aching to do since she arrived. For aloof as he pretended to be with most, the facade always seemed to fail around her - for reasons that weren't nearly as obvious as she would like, but still. He would have talked her out of it, or insisted on helping which.. would have done nothing for her concentration. So - having the excuse of scientific inquiry and Banner around, who was basically a stranger, was at least something more convincing to tell Constantine should something go wrong.
"Just.. be ready to duck," Zatanna told him with a gentle but optimistic smirk as she lowered onto the floor, folding her legs into the lotus position and resting her wrists atop her knees. "Etativel" she spoke her spell in order to hover off the floor, closing her eyes as she prepared to enter a meditative state. "You can move around, touch whatever, just not me," the magician warned. "It'll ruin my focus." At least, it was a nice way of saying it would pull her out of her meditation so abruptly, that he may get hurt in the process. Or in Banner’s case - slightly inconvenienced.
Her eyes shot open only to cloud over, entering a more obvious form of trance. It took almost half an hour of Zatanna's constant chanting for a spark to happen. The suspended area just a few feet in front of where she was crackled as a portal was forced. She hadn't expected the amount of resistance, and were she able to voice such realizations, she would have told Banner that the likelihood of her being able to summon an object through alone would take far too much from her.
She was still going to try, however. Call it pride from her family's legacy or a stubbornness she got from hanging around the likes of John Constantine too much.. Zatanna wasn't one to back down easily. The area wasn't much bigger than a book, and it flickered and pulsed almost like a heartbeat, regardless of the instability from her fighting to keep it open. Her chanting got louder as her fingers twitched randomly, the house rumbling from the consequences of disrupting the town's already unstable atmosphere.
Banner had seen things like this before. Years around individuals like Doctor Strange and Wanda Maximoff had seasoned him to the mystic arts, even if they were primarily still something he turned his nose up at. Yet, at some point, he’d slid so far forward on the sofa cushion that he was essentially balancing on the frame of the couch, barely sitting at all. Zatanna’s magic enthralled him, and he stared at the portal that was beginning to phase into existence. Eventually, he gave up on the sofa entirely and rose to his feet.
Idly, he wondered if his connection to gamma radiation would let do something like his as he moved around the table. Keeping his distance from Zatanna, he side-stepped along the edge of the room to draw himself closer to the portal without disrupting the magician’s focus. He decided that no, not even with Strange’s teachings, could he accomplish something like this. Focus had never been something in his wheelhouse. All he could do was summon destructive forces, point, and pray for the best.
His chest tightened a little as he watched the flickering portal, his attention darting back and forth from Zatanna to the product of her work. While he wasn’t incredibly familiar with her particular level of talent, he knew the relative ease with which even those less experienced with the mystic arts could open doorways between realities. This made her struggle indicate the resistance this place was was throwing back at her. It worried him (because colliding energies were always dangerous) enough to draw him in a little closer. If something went wrong, there was a strong possibility he could launch himself between Zatanna and the portal and turn his flailing Hulk body into a type of makeshift shield. It wouldn’t be ideal, and it would almost absolutely mean the death of the living room furniture, but, unlike people, chairs could be replaced.
“Steady,” Banner thought to himself, attuned enough to the situation to keep from speaking less it break the magician’s focus. While he couldn’t be entirely sure if she was in the process of achieving everything she’d set out to, it looked to him like they were already bordering on success.
Touch was just about the only thing that could sacrifice her focus, as she wasn't aware of Bruce carefully moving around to get a better look at the portal. Was her living room a controlled environment? Not by any scientific means. Were they able to actually take data from any of it? Not at all. But it was the common interest of wanting to experiment that had brought them to this moment - and the results were hopefully something the scientist could work with and expand on somehow.
In terms of success, the fact that she could visualize her home, Shadowcrest, and seemingly send herself down the halls and locate her library - was something. Although, Shadowcrest itself existed outside of normal time and space, so it wasn't necessarily difficult to find the mystical house she'd inherited. It did give her hope, however short-lived that was.
It didn't take long to realize that in her ethereal state she couldn't easily bring anything with her and breaking her focus to summon anything from the portal was out of the question. With others who were skilled in magics? Possible, but one probably should question the ramifications of disrupting the town’s agenda. If it even had a true agenda? Regardless, it was all very frustrating for the magician; who normally used portals to check-in on family and friends alike, even in other worlds. There was nothing very normal about Night Vale, however.
Zatanna made a reach for one of her grimoires but giving up her defense against the portal itself was just enough to tip the delicate balance of magic. Abandoning her goal, Zee withdrew as quickly as she could - her hands reaching out as if trying to contain the energy from the portal as it crackled louder.
A startled gasp as she realized control was no longer an option, Zatanna managed to breathe out "John" in a tone that wavered with worry before collapsing onto the floor. By the time she hit the rug she was out cold, the amount of magic needed to accomplish such a feat unquestionably draining, even for her, and sending her into a sort of self-healing comatose state. The portal remained for a few moments after - wildly sputtering and threatening to grow larger before the unstable energy needed to dissipate.
It wasn’t until the portal was gone for several seconds that Banner’s heart rate slowed to a non-dangerous pace. When Zatanna fell back away from the portal and the magical gateway continued to will itself into existence, Bruce allowed himself to lose focus -- just a little, just for a moment, just in case. The irony wasn’t lost on him: that the magic wielded by individuals like Zatanna or Stephen needed focus and restraint, whereas gamma energy and its ‘magic’ required nothing but the opposite: unbridled, unrefined rage and chaos.
Bruce took a deep, steadying breath and then moved to the magician’s side to make sure that she was all right. A swift check of her vitals reassured him that she was not in any real danger, but he didn’t want to move her for fear of interrupting some magic protection circle or something else of that nature. So, instead, he harvested a pillow and a woven throw from the sofa and did his best to make her more comfortable. Banner might be a doctor (among other things) but his bedside manner left much to be desired.
He took out his phone and scrolled to his list of network contacts, his finger stopping over Stark’s name as if by habit. Tony was always the first person his mind went to when he needed something, even though Stark had let him down more times than he’d ever been of any use. He kept scrolling, after all -- Zatanna had all but directly told him who the right person to call would be.