As it turned out, Billy had got himself an apartment in what may literally be the worst complex in town, because they didn't ask questions if you paid rent in cash. "Billy." Tanya deadpanned. "What am I looking at?"
"...My pantry?" Billy said, unsure.
"You cannot live on just boxed mac and cheese, pasta, and cereal, Billy." Tanya said slowly. "I saw your fridge, it's not much better."
"Sure I can." Billy said, "Stamina of Atlas, it takes care of everything like that. I don't need to sleep after turning back, either. It's like I just woke up every time." He rubbed the back of his head bashfully. "I just like the taste…"
"...That explains so much about how you were able to fake having adult supervision so well." Tanya mused, "If your magical empowerment compensated for your real body's needs… I'm quite familiar with the concept, actually. My own demon form does something similar."
"It does?" Billy asked, surprised.
Tanya gestured to her still demonic teeth. "If I went without food for too long this started happening, and I had to use magic to revert it, but yeah, it does." When she was having her accelerated growth phase, 'too long' was about three hours. Alfred really kept on top of things.
"The teeth and eyes and everything?" Billy asked, keenly interested in, near as she could tell, someone else having experiences similar to his.
'
Wait. Eyes? Tanya immediately took a makeup compact out of her dimensional storage. Her eyes were slitted like a cat's, and glowed with an inner infernal light. It was objectively golden, but it definitely gave more of a 'hellfire' impression than 'heavenly light'. It looked pretty cool, actually. "The eyes are new." Tanya admitted, "I don't think I've ever been that angry before." She suddenly had the temptation to flash some hellfire into Shazam's prison. No, that would be wrong.
"I still don't see what the big deal is." Billy said petulantly. "I did fine."
"Your competence isn't the problem." Tanya said, "The problem is that the wizard put the defeat of his old friend on your shoulders alone, when he should have brought it to the attention of the Justice League. We might have even been able to handle it without the warning, depending on just how powerful Teth-Adam is."
"Wouldn't have made such a big deal if it was Superman." Billy grumbled.
"Billy, if Superman heard about some magical powerhouse on his way to Earth, the first thing he'd do is tell everyone about it." Tanya insisted.
"You're lying." Billy asserted.
Tanya stared at Billy. Well, she was planning on calling Clark anyway… Tanya took a moment to figure out which phone she should use. On one hand, this is Justice League business. On the other hand, this request requires him to act as Clark. On the first wing, this is very much non-urgent. On the other wing, she really does need him to pick up immediately for her point.
…Personal phone it is. Taking out her rarest-used phone, the one whose number was only passed out to those who knew the fullest truth of herself that she allows others to know, Tanya opened up a contact that's merely labeled 'Clark' with his logo as an emoji. Billy's eyes widened as he saw the secret.
"Little busy, Tanya." Clark said, his voice unnaturally clear with no background noise. That meant the phone had so much background noise that Clark has to use his super-ventriloquism (as he likes to call it) to make his voice hit the receiver. "Did you kill someone?" The way he said it was as casual as if asking if Tanya had made any other mess, gentle and understanding. Tanya had heard him use that exact same tone before when she had accidentally spilled juice on herself.
"He was dead when I got there!" Tanya said, the excuse coming reflexively. Billy choked. "Call me back when you can, I have something important to talk to you about, but quick question: If you heard about Captain Marvel's Evil Big Brother coming to Earth in a few months, what would you do first?"
"I'd call Bruce." Clark said immediately. "He'll know what to do."
Not exactly what she was going for, but sure. "So you'd tell everyone." Tanya reiterated.
"Yeah, once I know the day so I can clear my schedule, coordinate with Diana, Arthur, Wally, if it's someone as strong as Captain Marvel, I should bring backup." Clark replied, demonstrating that he has finally learned all those lessons about fighting fair and how he should avoid doing it when lives are on the line. If there is a possibility that you can lose, you stack the deck further in your favor. "Probably need to talk to Dr. Fate about it, or you. You're good at divination." He paused. "Wait, is that actually happening? Where- Hang on." He hung up.
Tanya put the phone in her dress' physical pocket, the existence of which required far more effort than it should have. Taking out her Tanya Wayne phone, she opened the SuperApp, a web trawler that allows you to know what newsworthy thing Superman was doing most recently. "Looks like there's a hurricane in Vietnam." Tanya said idly. "He'll be busy for hours." Idly, she switched to one of her Rhine phones. There were a few documents she needed to review. "Hang on Billy, this won't take long."
Approve that, authorize that, not gonna fall for that one again… and pass that one to the current disaster response authority. Open Perch…
"Is that the Official Justice League account you're posting on?" Billy asked, looking over her shoulder.
"Yes." Tanya said, typing out "@therealsuperman, @therealdianaofthemyscira, @greenlanternofficial, and more are doing their best to save lives in the face of Hurricane Minh, currently devastating Vietnam and Cambodia. We cheer on their efforts with enthusiasm! -HR". Later, she'll have to go over the reports and chirp out some individual commendations, but for an as-it-happens announcement, just saying which founders are currently hard at work will suffice.
Billy looked at the phone like it was an ancient mystical artifact of tremendous power. "You're HR?" He asked in a whisper. "You're the one who writes all those stuffy corpo-talk chirps?"
"I don't understand why that's shocking." Tanya said honestly, "You do remember how our first conversations went, do you?" She can be a very fun person, when she wants to be. But at the same time, she can be a very boring person, when the need arises. The world needs boring people, who show up, do their tasks, and contribute to society without making a production of it. "Also, some of those chirps are jokes."
"They're not very funny."
Tanya pouted at the condemnation of her sense of humor. "I'm not putting my A material on this account." Tanya lied. She thought that running gag where Booster Gold is constantly getting called into the metaphorical principal's office like a class clown was hilarious. Michael was in on it, too. They laugh about it twice a month at the tabletop roleplaying game that J'onn runs.
"They let someone my age do all that?" Billy asked, incredulous.
"I'm only technically ten years old." Tanya said dismissively. "In much the same way you have magical wisdom letting you fake maturity," Even if, in hindsight, there were plenty of hints. Did Bruce suspect it? She'll have to ask him before she tells him. "-I have memories of other lives, that were born, grew up, and died. It's no magical wisdom, but it gives me the perspective that you lack."
"So you're not really a kid." Billy said, disappointed.
"Yes and no." Tanya corrected. She was massaging the truth here, but… "My old memories are… somewhat distant. A lot of the time, they don't feel like me. They used to, but there's many things I am now that I'd never think I'd ever be back then." Like a billionaire. Or, less facetiously, a social worker. If someone had told her, when she was in the trenches, that she'd eventually spend so much time making sure that superpowered children had proper caretakers, she'd have thought that they were crazy. Even ignoring the money factor, the idea that she could connect to these children? Sympathize with them and communicate effectively with those little balls of trauma and emotion? "Either way, I know what it's like to be a child thrust into war, thinking that it was the only sensible choice." In hindsight, it still was.
"...You do?" Billy asked quietly, immediately understanding the implications of her words.
"I joined the military at age eight, Billy." Tanya said, "I was a mage, of course. There were no age limits for conscription for mages, in either direction. The only way I'd ever be spared from war was for there to be absolutely none of them for my entire life, from the day I got tested to the day I died, even if I lived to a hundred." She chuckled drily. "So I volunteered, of course. Just. Like. You." Ah, she isn't even trying to cry right now… "I died six years later, at age fourteen. I still use the body, it's what's underneath the Rhine costume when I turn human. The body's grown up a bit more, filled out, but that's why I don't blame you for accepting Shazam's deal." Tanya sighed, "I still don't see any other choice that would have ended better."
Her execution needed work, but the fundamental gamble of entering the military early was a solid cost-benefit analysis. The only flaw in the reasoning was that Being X probably would have thumbed the scale to make any of her decisions be the wrong one, so choosing the option that put her on battlefields gave him the latitude to just force her into metaphorical and also sometimes literal foxholes, to see if the truism about atheists held true.
His mistake, of course, was that she was never an atheist, who insisted on the absence of the divine. She was an apatheist, who did not consider questions about the existence or absence of a divine being worthy of consideration. Until she met one, of course, and then she converted into staunch maltheism, which she remains.
"So… what now?" Billy asked, subdued.
"The reason I wanted to see your living situation is to see how involved of a guardian you need." Tanya explained, taking out a clean handkerchief to dab at her eyes. "With your magical stamina making traditional childrearing skills less useful, I can't just toss you at any old foster parent and expect that to end well." Billy looked pleased at her assessment. "At the same time, you are clearly not ready for independent living: you still need guidance on how to balance life as Billy Batson with your work as Captain Marvel, you cannot adequately fake the knowledge that any competent adult possesses," Yes, there are tons of people who are incompetent at the whole 'being an adult' thing. That is not an excuse for that ignorance to remain. "-and you need a new source of legal income. On a related note, your uncle needs to be brought to the cops for kicking you out of the house. That's very illegal."
Billy was not happy about her list, but when she got to his uncle he opened his mouth to object, then paused. "...It is?" He asked.
Tanya's face twisted in horror. "Wait, you don't know?" She asked. At his quizzical look confirming that he wasn't just messing with her, she coughed. "Okay, you'll need extensive lessons on how to properly superhero, on top of all that. You've had basically zero complaints from local law enforcement," There were some complaints about how they should get Cap to sign on so they didn't need to use the more elaborate 'non-JL meta' comment/complaint form. It was one of the reasons she went to so much effort for the man, although more important was her, apparently quite justified, concerns about his mysterious backer Shazam. "-so you've clearly not made any major mistakes yet, but that should be remedied as soon as possible."
Looking guilty, Billy murmured inaudibly, but it was probably "Well, I wouldn't say that…" or something along those lines.
Still, Tanya finished looking through his apartment, noting that while Billy was responsible enough to not let obvious trash pile up and there were signs of spot cleaning, probably places he spilled something, he probably hasn't done any proper cleaning: grime had accumulated in the bathroom and kitchenette, the carpets were filthy, there was dust everywhere out of sight, and… "You can do laundry?" Tanya asked, looking at the clean clothes in his drawers. They weren't folded, just thrown in a series of four laundry baskets: From the looks of things, they were 'clean shirts', 'clean pants', 'clean underwear/socks', and 'dirty clothes'.
Billy laughed nervously. "Freddy's mom taught me how to use the laundromat… I told her that my Uncle gave it to me as a chore and I didn't think it'd be so complicated."
"Good." Tanya said. It was important to not dismiss the things a malingering employee does correctly. "It's important to admit ignorance, it's the first step of learning, and learning is what civilization is built on. Learning and the shovel."
"The shovel?" Billy asked, baffled.
"The shovel is the greatest tool of civilization." Tanya said with emphasis. "It has a blade and it gives leverage. With the humble shovel, humanity shapes the earth itself to suit our purposes. If you had but one indestructible shovel, you could build a city." For emphasis, she brought out her strongest entrenching tool that was not made of Nth metal. She can't store Nth metal in her soul, even unenergized, which was quite inconvenient. There were lesser forms of magical storage she could use, but those were less reliable long-term. So she could only have it on hand if she anticipated needing it and went through the effort of equipping it at the Batcave before soujorning out. "If you had the knowledge to use it, of course."
Billy looked at her like she was insane. Fair, it was a bit of a non-sequiter. "...Okay?" He said, not having anything else to say to that.
"I think I've seen enough." Tanya said, now finished with her inspection. "Now, we wait. In the meantime…" Tanya took a deep, calming breath. She's about to go outside, she needs to act like a normal little girl. "-let's get some dinner." She said, leaving not a trace of her earlier anger in her voice.
Billy blushed at the declaration, thrown by the shift in her demeanor. "L-like a date?" He stammered.
Tanya's first impulse was to say no, but… she's never been on a date before. Not as a girl, anyway. Some of her business meetings have been suspiciously similar to one, but… "Sure, why not?" Bruce is going to have a heart attack. This is going to be hilarious! "Now hang on, I need makeup."
"Really?" Billy asked, his voice cracking. "Wait, I thought the eye glowing was new." He seemed confused as Tanya went into his bathroom and stood on the stool that was already there.
"It's a better excuse than anything else I can think of." Tanya lied, opening up a dark portal and taking out her cosplay makeup kit. It was large enough that it was only man-portable in the sense that you didn't need mechanical assistance to carry it. It was absolutely too big for his counter, but the bottom had a fold-out stand so it could be deployed independently. "I may have never used the blue fake contacts, but I bought the full set, I still have them." She explained, scanning the selection for the closest shade to her normal eyes and placing it on. Batman's lessons on quickly changing disguise were largely superfluous, but they did make her have steady, practiced hands when applying cosplay as well as normal makeup. "Pick a color." Tanya said as she cleaned her face of the evidence of her previous emotional outburst. She could do this with magic, but not only did Bruce grumble when she used magic for personal convenience, he said it made her less connected with the human experience, it set a bad example for Billy. Besides, there was another reason she'd want to be careful with using magic on herself for a while…
"What? But you already have the eyes…" Billy said, confused.
"Pick. A. Color." Tanya repeated, applying some concealer customized to her odd skin tone to cover up her still slightly puffy eyes. Too many emotions today…. should she use some mascara? She doesn't usually in her younger body, but if she's on a date? Bruce would absolutely not fail to notice that, hehehehe.
"Yellow?" Bill offered.
Eyelashes now emphasized, Tanya took the golden, glitter-laden nail polish and double-checked her newly lengthened nails. Hm, are they human enough if you ignore the color? …Not really. Fortunately, the nails are the easiest thing to fix, as she needs to trim them pretty frequently. With a burst of will, her demonic claws shattered, leaving still lengthened but relatively normal fingernails, and as usual she swept the obsidian shards into her dimensional pocket. Spare shrapnel may be useful one day. "While you're there," Tanya said idly, "-check my back for any silver patches of skin, will you? Just the exposed parts, please."
"Does this happen a lot?" Billy asked, pushing her hair to the side so he could look at the back of her neck before stepping back and kneeling to look at her shins.
"Not as often as it used to, but this is pretty bad." Tanya said, deftly applying the nail polish. "You'd think metallic skin patches would feel weird," to have them, not to touch them, "-but they don't. I'll check the rest in the shower later, it usually happens to my stomach first." Specifically, her belly button. Her abs were reflective at the moment, near as she could tell from peeking down her dress earlier.
"Why does it happen?"
"Because I'm a demon shoved into a mortal body." Tanya said simply. From Raven's physical, she knew that it had more to do with the rituals that caused her rapid maturation, they were intended to optimize her body to channel demonic power, and the shortened childhood was just a welcome, from their perspective, bonus. "The more magic I use when in my true human form, and more critically the more I use magic to supplement or replace basic biological functions," Tanya had, back in the early days, attempted to apply and remove a constipation curse in an attempt to temporarily control herself when in her older form. This accelerated her demonic mutations by what she thought was an incredibly unfair ratio, but testing with long-term usage of body reinforcement magic had even more extreme results. "-the more my body mutates into a more demonic form. I can contain and even reverse the changes, but only if I respond within a few days. It's why I still have the fingernails. That was one of the earliest changes." She waved her now-painted nails. "The only time I'm not wearing painted nails outside is when I'm pretending I painted them black."
"I don't think my magic does anything like that…" Billy murmured.
"Your empowered form is human enough, and you don't use magic in humans form except to transform, so you probably didn't notice. But there's probably some changes, given how you've been using it to replace sleep and food. You'd probably like the changes if you noticed them, too." Tanya replied, "While the mutations don't precisely match my demon form, that's because my demon form doesn't eat food, and my half-demon form would need to. So I get the carnivore teeth." Wait… why is the mirror fogging like that? Tanya exhaled on her hand. Hmmm… "Check my forehead for a fever?" She asked.
Billy obeyed, and flinched back. "You're burning up!" He said, panicked.
"I'm fine." Tanya said, waving off his concern as she took her matching lip balm and applied it. Once finished, she added: "My internal body temperature's just spiked. It's probably higher than usual, but it's not the first time this has happened." With a smack of her lips, she put the makeup away and closed the massive kit before shoving it back into her pocket dimension. "Nothing I can do about the teeth on short notice, but no one should be looking at that." Idly, she gave her mouth another spritz of her special breath spray to neutralize the brimstone scent. "Let's go eat!"
"Right!" Billy said, somewhat excited.
Tanya looked him up and down. "...You're not wearing that, are you?" She asked, only half-joking. "Put this on." She said, tossing some old clothing of Richard's at him. If she's going to make Bruce believe it for half a second, small details are important. "I'll wait outside."
"...Right?"
-----------------------
It was not difficult to get a table at a middling restaurant; while she could flex her status and get into a place that normally was reservation only or had a dress code that they would then flout, as she only gave the boy a simple button up and slacks, but Billy would probably make a fool of himself in a place nice enough for that.
While Tanya wasn't completely sure whether or not her mutations had advanced enough to make her an obligate carnivore, it had also never advanced to this degree, so to be safe she ordered as if it did anyway.
Conversation was light; they already talked about a lot of heavy stuff, so they kept to safe topics: mostly, the Justice League. Tanya had already concocted a story about meeting online in a fanfiction forum to sell the lie, so it gave her more material to work with. "Batgirl absolutely writes fanfiction." Tanya asserted. "She wrote Batgirl fanfiction before she was Batgirl. I've seen them."
"Really?" Billy asked, already laughing. "Are they any good?"
"Absolutely not." Tanya replied, giggling at the memory. "She started when she was eleven, so her early work is just garbage. Her current stories are pretty good, though." Barbie also had a tendency to try and tease Tanya through her depictions of Rhine in her fanfics, having Batman's demon be extremely gullible and childish. Much like her attempts to do so in person, or through her babysitter's authority, Tanya laughed it all off.
"What's her screen name? Maybe I've heard of it." Billy asked, sipping at his apple juice. It was in a wine glass, because this place was willing to indulge the rich ten year old. She drank her preferred mocktail, primarily watermelon but also with citrus and mint. The smell of it didn't disturb her stomach, so she figured it was fine.
"GothamOracle." Tanya said idly. She had erected a subtle privacy spell, it was far from foolproof but it would subtly let their words go beneath the notice of anyone overhearing, as long as they weren't actively eavesdropping. She had a detection spell going for that, though. "She's expanded her repertoire from Batman shipping," She deleted all of her works that shipped him with her own self-insert, mind you… "-but it's still mostly vigilante drama." And villain drama, can't forget the villain drama. "Oh, the brucewayneissuperman stuff she not-so-subtly endorses is a little competition between me and her. Ignore that." One she was losing. Tanya was not so prideful that she'd refuse to acknowledge Barbie's superiority in the art of making insane conspiracies. Particularly because she tanked her own credibility with that Batman face reveal.
Tanya's phone buzzed. Ah, Clark must be done with the hurricane. "I have to take this, sorry." Tanya said, before standing up and walking to the ladies room. "Clark?" Tanya asked.
"What's this about Captain Marvel's evil big brother?" Clark asked, seriously. "Also, are you on a date? Does Bruce know about this?" So he was going to just show up if she wasn't in public.
"More important than answering any of those questions," Tanya said, erecting a much more potent privacy spell once she entered the stall. "-is this: you know how you keep saying you're not jealous about how Bruce has children and you don't?"
"I'm not jealous." Clark lied.
"Well, how would you like to fix that? One superpowered orphan, who needs guidance that only you can provide, and also idolizes you." Tanya thought she was selling this pretty well.
"What's wrong with his current situation?" Clark asked.
"He was living alone at ten years old because a wizard conscripted him to fight Captain Marvel's evil big brother when he shows up later this year." Tanya deadpanned.
Clark sputtered. "T-ten years old? To fight someone like that?" After a moment he asked. "I'm going to ask you again, and I want the truth: Did you kill the wizard?"
"He was dead when I got there." Tanya reiterated.
"I choose to believe you." Award