Chapter 27: The Songbird and the Doubt
Metropolis on a Sunday morning was, in itself, a work of art. The sunlight, clean and optimistic, reflected off the crystal peaks of the city's architecture, turning the streets below into canyons of golden light. Unlike the perpetual gothic night of Gotham, Metropolis always felt like the beginning of something.
In the "Soliloquy Café," a trendy spot in the New Troy district, the air smelled of expensive roasted coffee, vanilla, and the hum of light chatter. It was the kind of place that had abstract art on the walls and served food on rustic wooden boards. And at a sun-drenched corner table, three of the most powerful young women on the planet were attempting, with varying degrees of success, to have a normal brunch.
"This... croissant..." said Koriand'r, examining the flaky pastry with almost scientific fascination. Her green, pupil-less eyes shone with wonder. "It is a culinary paradox. It is full of... nothing. Of air! And yet, it tastes of solar butter! It is delicious!" With a cheerful laugh, the alien princess took another delicate bite, scattering crumbs all over the table.
"It's called lamination, Kori. Layers of butter and dough. It's one of the few things the French got right on the first try," said Barbara Gordon, without looking up from her phone. With one hand she typed furiously, while with the other she held her latte. An almost invisible earpiece in her ear buzzed with data. "Sorry, girls. It's just that Dick thinks he found a new Man-Bat nest in the subway tunnels, and..."
"Babs! Forbidden!" interrupted Kara Danvers, with a playful but firm smile. "We made rules. No capes. No comms. No bats. Just brunch. You're halfway to putting the cowl on over your coffee."
Barbara sighed, but a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She put the phone away. "Okay, okay. You're right. 'Oracle' is out of service for the next hour." She looked at Kara, her sharp detective eyes softening. "It's good to see you relaxed, Kara. Really. After... well, everything... you had us worried."
Kara nodded, stirring her own coffee. "It feels good," she admitted. "To be back. To have a routine. Being 'Kara Danvers, the rookie reporter who always spills coffee,' instead of... you know. The other thing."
"Speaking of 'the other thing'," said Kori, finishing her croissant and moving on to a plate of exotic fruits. "We haven't seen you much on the Watchtower. How is your... consulting work going? With your mysterious new friend?"
Kara tensed. The mere name of Kisuke was like a switch. Barbara noticed it instantly.
"Oh, the farm guy?" asked Babs, her interest now at one hundred percent. "The one you met in... space? The one who is two thousand years old?"
Kara let out a growl, a sound so uncharacteristic that Kori blinked.
"Ugh, don't get me started on him!" she said, stirring her coffee so hard it almost spilled out of the cup. "He is... he is so infuriating."
Barbara and Kori exchanged a quick glance, the classic "oh, this is going to be good" look.
"Infuriating how?" asked Barbara, resting her chin on her hand, her interrogation mode barely disguised.
Kara leaned back in her chair, preparing to vent. She believed she was complaining. Sincerely.
"It's just... he's a monster!" she began, her voice a little too loud. "An absolute monster in a bucket hat! Do you know what he did last week? After all that Doctor Destiny madness? As payment! As payment for saving the world, he made Batman...!"
She stopped, as if the word were too horrible to say.
"Made him do what?" asked Kori, leaning in, her eyes wide with curiosity. "Did he challenge him to ritual combat? Did he take one of his caves?"
"Worse!" said Kara. "He made him sing! Blues! At the Iceberg Lounge! And he recorded us!"
There was absolute silence at the table.
Kori blinked. "... Sing? Like... with music? Bruce's grim warrior? Why? Was it a punishment?"
Barbara had frozen, her coffee cup halfway to her lips. Her face went from skepticism, to disbelief, and then to an expression of horror and delight so deep she almost choked.
"Wait," whispered Babs, her voice trembling. "Batman. Sang. The blues. And you... you saw it?"
"Yes! And I recorded it!" said Kara, pulling out her phone to prove it.
"Kara," said Barbara, her voice now dead serious as she grabbed Kara's wrist. "Give me that recording. No. I'm not joking. I need it. I need it for... for posterity. And for the next time he tries to cut my budget."
"That's not the point!" said Kara, putting her phone away. "The point is that he did it! Just for fun! What kind of person does that?"
"A person I want to party with," muttered Babs, before getting serious again. "Okay. He's a monster. What else?"
"It's just... it's impossible to talk to him!" continued Kara, on a roll now. "The other day, Livewire almost fried me. I get to the shop, hair smoking, complaining about how annoying it is trying to punch electricity. And do you know what he says? He stares at me and says: 'Hmm. What poor design.' As if she were a defective appliance!"
Kori let out a giggle. "That is funny!"
"It's not funny, Kori! And then...!" Kara raised a finger. "Then he proceeded to explain to me, in full detail, ten conceptually terrifying ways he could steal my powers without even touching me, most of which involved 'rewriting the wavelength of solar radiation' or 'convincing my cells to get bored of energy'. He's... he's weird! He's a weirdo!"
"Sounds... intense," said Babs cautiously.
"And he is," agreed Kara. But then, her face softened. Her agitation faded, and the fury in her eyes was replaced by something much warmer. Her voice dropped, becoming almost a whisper.
"But then... last night. I arrive late. It had been a horrible day, dealing with Parasite... ugh... and then Clark wanted to train, and Lois had questions... I was exhausted. And... I walk into the shop, ready to complain, and he... he's not there. There's just a note on the counter saying 'On the porch. Keep it down. The customers are sleeping.'"
Kara looked at her coffee, a small smile forming on her lips without her realizing it.
"So I go to the porch, and he's there, sitting in the dark, looking at his stupid nebula garden. And next to him, on the table... was a bowl. Hot. It smelled like..."
She stopped, her throat tight for a moment.
"It was Targ-beast stew," she whispered. "I haven't smelled that since... since Argo City. He said he 'found the recipe' in a Kryptonian data file he recovered. It tasted... it tasted exactly like the one my mother used to make."
The silence that followed this confession was very different.
Kori watched her, her face no longer playful, but full of gentle understanding.
Barbara Gordon looked at Koriand'r. And Koriand'r looked at Barbara Gordon.
They exchanged "the look."
It was a look that transcended cultures and species, a universal silent communication between female friends that said: 'Oh, dear. She's gone. Completely gone.'
Barbara was the one to break the silence, her voice kind, but with the edge of a lawyer closing her case. "Kara."
"What?" said Kara, snapping out of her reverie.
"You've mentioned 'Kisuke' seven times in the last ten minutes," said Babs, counting on her fingers. "And you haven't mentioned Superman once. Except to complain."
"I... well, he is... he is relevant..." stammered Kara, feeling the ground disappear beneath her feet.
Kori leaned over the table, her large green eyes full of an innocent and direct honesty that was more piercing than any interrogation.
"Friend Kara, you speak of this 'hat-man' with much passion. Your emotional energy... 'glows' when you say his name."
Kara went rigid. She felt a wave of heat rising up her neck that had nothing to do with her powers. "What?! No! It's not like that! That's ridiculous!"
"Your eyes sparkle when you talk about how he infuriates you," added Babs, with a bloodhound smile. "Totally."
"You are in love with him!" concluded Kori with a cheerful and definitive slap on the table.
Kara Zor-El's brain, an organ capable of processing multiversal equations and speaking thousands of languages, suffered a total short circuit. The idea was so... so... strange! So impossible! So... so... weird!
"I AM NOT IN LOVE!"
The scream wasn't a denial. It was a sonic boom. Supergirl's voice, unchecked, resonated in the small, trendy café.
Fifty diners, amidst their eggs Benedict and mimosas, froze. Forks stopped halfway to mouths. Waiters dropped trays. The entire restaurant, which a second before was buzzing with chatter, fell into a deathly silence, everyone staring at the corner table.
Kara turned a bright Kryptonian red, a shade of beet that Urahara would have found fascinating.
Slowly, very slowly, she sank into her chair, covering her face with both hands, wishing she could burrow a tunnel to the Earth's core.
"I am not in love..." she whispered, her voice now barely a mortified squeak.
Kori and Barbara looked at each other. And then, they burst into uncontrollable laughter, their mirth filling the silence of the restaurant, which only made Kara sink lower.
The seed wasn't just planted. It had just been watered with public humiliation.
And as she sat there, with her two best friends laughing at her, a new and terrifying question began to take root in her mind, a question she couldn't answer with her fists.
'Am I?... No. It can't be. He is... He is... He is Kisuke. He is... complicated.'
It was three days of mental agony.
Three days in which Kara Zor-El, the woman who could juggle moons, discovered she couldn't handle a simple brunch conversation. Her friends' words had lodged in her brain like a piece of shrapnel, radiating a confusion that contaminated everything.
"You are in love with him!"
She tried to work. She went to the Daily Planet. She stared at her monitor for four hours, writing and deleting the same sentence about a town hall meeting. Perry White yelled at her for looking like a ghost. She barely heard him.
She tried to be Supergirl. She went out on patrol and, when a group of bank robbers shot her with an energy rifle, she responded... by hitting their armored truck so hard she sent it through three abandoned buildings. It was excessive force. She was unfocused. She was angry, but she didn't even know at whom.
She spent the night in her Metropolis apartment, pacing back and forth, Krypto following her with his head tilted, confused by the wake of anxiety his owner left behind.
'It's ridiculous,' she thought, clenching her fists. 'He's an old man! A two-thousand-year-old weirdo! He's infuriating! He treats me like a child! He makes fun of Batman! He is... he is...'
She stopped in front of the mirror.
'...the one who made me Targ-beast stew.'
There was the problem. The knot of the paradox.
She couldn't reconcile the two versions of him in her head. There was the Kisuke who listened to her complain about her day, the one who brought her glacier water and taught her to play Go. The one who treated her with patient, almost paternal kindness.
And then there was the Urahara she had seen in the House of Mystery. The being who had played with a Lord of Chaos as if he were a pawn. The manipulator who had blackmailed Batman with a song. The scholar who had looked cosmic terror in the face and laughed.
Her friends... Babs, Kori... they only saw the first version. They only knew the story of the kind, weird shopkeeper. They hadn't been there. They hadn't felt the cold.
Was she in love with a peculiar friend? Or was she developing a sort of cosmic Stockholm syndrome for the smartest monster in the universe?
The confusion was unbearable. She needed a second opinion. But not from someone who only knew the surface. She needed someone who, like her, had been in the trenches with him. Someone who had also seen his... terrifying side.
She picked up her communicator. There was only one person who fit that description.
"Zatanna," she said to the device. "Hey... are you busy?"
The answer took a moment to arrive. Zatanna's voice was professional, but there was a nuance of caution in it. "Kara? What's wrong? Is it... mystical? Is it him?"
Zatanna's first guess was Urahara. That, somehow, made Kara feel worse.
"No. Not a crisis. Not exactly," stammered Kara. "It's... personal. I need... a favor. As a friend. I need your professional opinion on... well, on Kisuke."
There was a long silence on the line. Kara could hear Zatanna taking a slow, controlled breath.
'My opinion?' thought Zatanna from her study in Shadowcrest Manor. 'My opinion is that we stay a solar system away from him. My opinion is that he is the scariest thing I have ever met, and that includes the demons I've dated.'
"Kara..." said Zatanna aloud, her voice carefully neutral. "What kind of opinion?"
"My friends think I like him!" blurted Kara, the words rushing out in a torrent of frustration and embarrassment. "Like, that I like-like him! And it's not true! It's ridiculous! But... I can't stop thinking about it. And you are the only other person who has seen him in action. You saw what he did in the House, what he did to John... what he did to Bruce. He isn't... normal. And I need to know. I need someone who understands what he is to tell me... if I'm crazy."
Zatanna's tone softened instantly. This wasn't a magic crisis. It was a crisis of the heart, a much more dangerous territory. And her friend was lost in it.
"Oh, Kara. Honey," she sighed. "You're not crazy. You're... confused. And with good reason." Zatanna closed her eyes. She hated what she was about to say. "Okay. For you. I'll come. Where do we meet? Oblivion Bar?"
"No," said Kara, her voice becoming small. "That's the problem. You can't... you can't judge him unless you see him where I see him. You have to... you have to come here. To my apartment. You have to come... to his shop. With me."
Panic seized Zatanna. 'She wants me to go to his shop. To his lair. Voluntarily. By Hestia, this girl is playing with fire she can't even see.' She swallowed hard. "Okay," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "For you, Kara. I'll be there in ten."
Ten minutes later, Zatanna Zatara appeared in the middle of Kara's living room with a discreet pop of teleportation magic. The apartment was beautiful: glass walls overlooking a view of Metropolis worth a fortune, clean modern furniture, and bright sunlight flooding everything.
"Nice place, Kara," said Zatanna, her professional gaze scanning the room. "Very... clean. And bright."
"Thanks," said Kara, wringing her hands. "Um... it's this way. And... be prepared. It's a little weird."
Zatanna raised an eyebrow. "Weirder than a Batman blues concert? Because that's my new benchmark."
Kara didn't smile. She led her to her bedroom. Zatanna followed, her confusion growing.
"Kara, if this is a closet fetish... I'm not that kind of magician," joked Zatanna, but her joke died on her lips.
Kara opened the door to her main closet. On one side hung her civilian clothes. On the other, a single Supergirl uniform. But the back wall... was empty, except for a small, simple blue silk charm hanging from a hook.
The instant Zatanna saw it, her breath hitched.
Her magical senses, which were always buzzing, tasting the air, reading energies... went silent. As if someone had pressed a cosmic mute button. The omamori didn't emit magic; it erased it. It was a hole in her world.
"Kara... what is that?" she whispered, taking an instinctive step back.
"It's the key," said Kara, oblivious to her friend's mystical panic. She took the charm off the hook. "He gave it to me." She turned and hung the charm on the inner knob of the closet door. "Close your eyes. Sometimes the shift is a little... jarring."
Kara closed the closet door, plunging them into darkness for a single beat.
Click.
And then, she opened the door again.
The Metropolis apartment had disappeared.
The bright city view, the modern furniture, the sunlight... everything was gone.
The other side of the door was no longer her bedroom.
It was a hundred-year-old Japanese shop. The air smelled of cedar wood, green tea, and an ozone that tickled the nose. The soft shhh... shhh... of a broom sweeping rhythmically came from the front of the shop.
Zatanna froze on the threshold, her hand gripping the doorframe. It was worse than the House of Mystery. There, magic had been wild, chaotic, but present. Here... there was nothing. It was a void. It was the absolute silence she had felt with the Censor. Walking into that shop, for her, was like walking voluntarily into her own annulment.
But then, Kara sighed.
It wasn't a sigh of fear. It was a sigh of relief.
The tension she had been carrying for three days evaporated from her shoulders. A genuine, relaxed smile drew across her face. The smell of the shop... was the smell of home.
"Kisuke!" she shouted, with a joy that made Zatanna look at her as if she were insane. "I'm home! And I brought a friend!"
With the total confidence of someone who owns the place, Kara walked into the shop, left her shoes at the entrance, and jumped onto the worn green sofa in the corner, curling up on it. "Whew! What a day! Make tea, please!"
Zatanna, meanwhile, was still on the threshold, paralyzed, her heart pounding against her ribs. She felt like a mouse that had just followed another mouse into a cobra's den, only to see the first mouse curl up in the snake's coils.
Urahara Kisuke appeared from behind a shelf, broom in hand. The smile on his face was lazy, genuine, and absolutely welcoming.
"Ah, Kara-san! And Zatanna-chan! What a lovely and welcome visit," he said, his voice a melody of hospitality. He seemed genuinely happy to see them. "You arrive just in time. I just prepared a new blend of Sencha from the mountains of Shizuoka. It is divine. Tea?"
His normality. His perfect and quiet normality. That was the scariest thing. He was a black hole shaped like a human, offering them cookies.
"I... uh... thanks," whispered Zatanna, forcing her feet to move. She took a tentative step into the shop, feeling as if she were stepping on very thin ice over a bottomless abyss.
Urahara moved with his lazy grace, heading to the teapot. Zatanna sat stiffly on the edge of a cushion, as far away from him as possible, but as close to Kara as she could get. Her eyes scanned the shop, every object a potential threat: the candy jars (trapped souls?), the scrolls on the wall (infernal contracts?), the cosmic bonsai in the corner (a prisoner universe?).
"So," said Urahara, handing Zatanna a steaming cup. Her hands shook so much she almost spilled it. She didn't dare drink. "Zatanna-chan. It is a pleasure to have you in my humble establishment. What brings you here? I don't think it's a simple social call. Your aura..." He paused, pretending to squint. "... well, if you had one, I'm sure it would be screaming."
Kara, who was already drinking her tea, laughed. "Kisuke, be nice! She's nervous."
"Nervous? Of me? A simple candy seller?" he said with false innocence.
Zatanna watched the interaction. She watched Kara's absolute ease, the way she leaned back on the sofa as if it were hers. She saw the way he looked at her, with affectionate, paternal amusement. And she saw her friend's panic, hidden beneath her exasperation.
And the tension. The tension of being in the presence of this being. The tension of Kara's question. The tension of the domestic charade. It became unbearable.
She couldn't go on with this pantomime.
Zatanna set her tea cup on the table with a dull, definitive thud. Liquid splashed over the rim.
"Kisuke."
Her voice was steady. The voice of the Stage Artist. The mask of power she used when she was scared.
Kara stopped laughing instantly, realizing the "intervention" had just begun.
"Kara sees you as a friend," said Zatanna, her blue eyes fixed on his gray ones. "John sees you as the devil reincarnated. Batman sees you as the ultimate tactical problem. And I... I saw you disarm a conceptual guardian with a logic paradox."
She leaned forward, her fear turning into a desperate need to know.
"I can't stand the doubt anymore. You are a ghost. You have no... magical presence. You don't use magic like I do. Please."
"What are you?"
Zatanna's question hung in the air, absorbing all sound in the shop. 'What are you?'.
The soft shhh of Urahara's broom had stopped. Kara, on the sofa, went still, her own romantic troubles forgotten instantly, replaced by the sudden and intense gravity of the situation. She realized she hadn't brought a friend for a chat. She had brought a premier magician to the lair of an enigma, and that magician had just challenged the enigma to reveal himself.
Urahara Kisuke remained with his back to them for a long moment, his bucket hat hiding any expression. The silence stretched, becoming so tense it was almost painful. Zatanna held her ground, though her heart beat so hard she was sure he could hear it.
Finally, Urahara turned.
He wasn't angry. He wasn't offended. He was... delighted. A slow smile, that of a professor seeing his brightest student finally ask the right question, drew across his face.
'Ah, and there it is!' he thought, a wave of genuine amusement rushing through him. 'The million-dollar question. Or, in this case, the two-millennia question. They always, always get to it. The bat thinks it. The cynic screams it. And the mage asks it with terrifying politeness. Everyone wants to know what's in the box.'
He raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. "What a direct question, Zatanna-chan! I love it! But hasn't Kara-san already told you?"
He rested his chin on the top of his broom, striking a lazy pose. "I am a simple and humble shopkeeper. I sell candy to the elderly and offer a sympathetic ear to overworked superheroines. It is a quiet life."
Zatanna's eyes narrowed. "Stop," she said, her voice a low hiss. "Stop the games! Stop the masks! I saw what you did in the House of Mystery. I saw Bruce's recording. You are not a shopkeeper!"
"Hmm," muttered Urahara. "A harsh critique. I guess my customer service needs improvement."
"Stop doing that!" snapped Zatanna, her panic beginning to turn into frustration. "I'm not asking for your resume! I'm asking for a truth! My magic... doesn't work right around you! I feel you like a... like a void! A hole in the world! If you aren't a mage, if you aren't a demon, if you aren't a god... what are you?"
Urahara studied her for a long moment, his smile fading, replaced by intense academic curiosity. He saw her fear, but beneath it, he saw her intellect, her lineage, her power tied to rules and words. And in that moment, he made a decision. Kara had brought him here for this. It would be rude not to offer them a lesson.
"Okay, okay. No games," he said, raising his hands. He put down the broom. "You don't want the easy answer. You want the true answer. Very well. You are a mage, Zatanna-chan. One of the best on this plane, from what I've read. You understand the rules. So... why don't I demonstrate it to you?"
He walked to the low table and picked up the untouched cup of tea he had served Zatanna. The liquid inside was a perfect, clear emerald green, and still steaming slightly. He held it up, between them.
"A simple exercise," he said, his voice becoming that of the teacher Kara knew so well. "To illustrate the fundamental difference between your 'toolbox' and mine."
His gaze turned sharp. "Here is a simple test. A spell that your rules, your father's rules, Nabu's rules, tell you is fundamentally impossible. Turn the tea in this cup... into a living songbird."
Kara, on the sofa, straightened up. 'Oh, no,' she thought. 'It's the falling cup lesson. But much, much worse.'
Urahara continued, his voice cheerful. "A canary, if you like. Something cheerful. Something that sings. Not a tea golem, not an illusion. A living, breathing creature with a soul."
Zatanna looked at him as if he were crazy. Then, a look of disdain crossed her face. She had fallen into some kind of logic trap.
"That is... that is absurd. It's a parlor trick, and not even a good one," she said coldly. "Even you must know that is impossible. It's not a transmutation trick! You can't create life from nothing! It's the Law of Conceptual Conservation! The First Law of Magic! You cannot create an Anima—a soul, a vital essence—from nothing! You cannot take an inanimate object and give it a consciousness! The universe forbids it! It is the fundamental rule!"
"EXACTLY!" exclaimed Urahara, his face lighting up with the delight of a professor whose student has just recited the lesson perfectly. "You can't! Your rules forbid you! Your rules say the universe will punish you if you try! Your rules say it is impossible!"
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whispering challenge. "So, please... prove it to me. Prove it to Kara. Prove it to yourself. Try. Concentrate. Use all that power you keep tied up with words and rules. Force reality. Come on. Try to do the impossible."
Zatanna felt cornered. It was a challenge to her lineage, to her power, to her very identity. She knew it was a trap. She knew it was impossible. But her pride, the pride of a Zatara, would not let her back down.
She stood up.
The air in the small shop changed instantly. The cozy warmth vanished, replaced by the smell of ozone and ancient power. The dust in the sunbeam stopped dancing and froze in the air. Kara felt the hair on her arms stand up from static electricity.
Zatanna closed her eyes. She placed her hands on either side of the tea cup, not touching it. She gathered her power, not that of a stage performer, but that of a Mistress of the Mystic Arts, the heir to the lineage of Arion. She felt the connection to the fabric of reality, the rules her father had taught her. And she was going to try to break them.
She put all her will, all her soul, all her intention into the words.
"EMOCEB A EVIL YRANAC AET SIHT!" (THIS TEA BECOME A LIVE CANARY!)
She shouted the words.
And reality shouted back.
The porcelain tea cup vibrated so violently it cracked instantly. The tea inside didn't transform; it boiled. It exploded upward in a geyser of dark green liquid, defying gravity for a second. The tea smoked, swirled, tried to obey her command. The shape of a wing, of a head, tried to form...
And then, with a psychic groan that made Zatanna cover her ears, the magic collapsed.
The failed tea fell back into the broken cup. But it wasn't tea anymore. It was a thick, bubbling, blackish-brown sludge. It smelled of sulfur, burnt tea leaves, and failure.
An absolute failure. Humiliating.
Zatanna opened her eyes, gasping from the effort. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She looked at the bubbling sludge and then at Urahara, her expression a mix of fury and exhaustion.
"I told you..." she panted. "It is... impossible."
"Yes. It is," said Urahara calmly. He approached the table, his face showing no mockery, but a kind of academic compassion. "It is impossible... for you. Because you are an excellent mage. You are a loyal subject of the rules. You tried to force reality, and reality, naturally, hit back. You stained it. You dirtied it."
Kara and Zatanna watched, mesmerized, as he picked up the broken, smoking cup containing the sludge.
He didn't sing. He didn't recite backward words. He didn't make mystical gestures.
Simply, he looked at the sludge.
And spoke to it.
"Excuse me, cup-san," he said, his voice polite, conversational, and incredibly kind. The voice he would use to apologize to a customer for being out of their favorite candy.
"What a mess," he continued, examining the sludge. "What a terrible story you've been given. 'A failed spell'. It's so... sad. What a disappointing ending. You'll be cleaned up, forgotten. An unimportant footnote in the day of a great mage. What a waste."
The sludge stopped bubbling.
"But, don't you think it would be much more interesting to be something else?" he whispered, tilting his head. "Sludge is... temporary. It is an end. But a bird... ah, a bird is a beginning. A bird can sing. A bird can fly. A bird can... have a story of its own. It is a much better narrative, don't you think?"
"Wouldn't you like... to sing?"
Zatanna couldn't breathe. Kara covered her mouth with her hands.
The black sludge in the broken cup began to swirl. The brown color faded, as if washed away by invisible light. It was replaced by a bright, vibrant yellow that seemed to push from within. The formless mass contracted, solidified...
And feathers sprouted.
Tiny, perfect yellow feathers. A small head formed. Tiny wings unfolded, shaking off the last remnant of sludge.
CHIRP!
The sound was sharp, clear, and triumphant. A small canary, perfectly formed, a little damp but vibrant with life, hopped onto the rim of the broken cup. It tilted its head, looked at Urahara, and then opened its small beak.
And began to sing.
It wasn't a simple chirp. It was a complex, beautiful, joyful melody that filled the silence of the shop.
Kara was completely jaw-dropped, eyes like saucers.
But Zatanna... Zatanna was pale as a ghost. She stumbled back, hitting the shop wall, her body shaking uncontrollably.
"You..." she stammered, pointing at the bird with a finger shaking so hard it looked blurry. "You... didn't... didn't cast a spell. You didn't transmute anything. You didn't force reality."
Her eyes, now wide with a terror that eclipsed anything she had felt in the House of Mystery or the Dreaming, locked onto Urahara's.
"You... talked to it," she whispered, the horror of realization hitting her. "You... you convinced it."
'My magic,' screamed her mind, her entire world, her legacy, her whole paradigm, collapsing in a second. 'My magic follows the rules of the universe. His magic... is writing the rules. He isn't a mage. He...'
'...he is the author.'
The realization was too much. It was like looking directly at the sun. It was a truth so big her mind couldn't contain it.
"I..." she gasped, groping for the wall. "I... have to go. I have... a show. A rehearsal. I'm sorry. I have to..."
She didn't wait for an answer. She couldn't stay in the same room as him for another second. She stammered her teleportation spell backward, "Tropsnart!".
It cost her visible effort. Her magic, her rules, struggled to function in a place that operated without them.
With a dull pop and a smell of sulfur and fear, she vanished.
Silence returned to the shop, broken only by the bird's cheerful song.
Kara was left alone on the sofa, pale and silent, looking at the canary, which had now flown from the broken cup and perched happily on Kisuke's extended index finger.
Urahara scratched the little bird's head with his fingernail. "Well," said Kara finally, her voice a weak thread. "... I think you scared her."
"Hmm," said Urahara, examining the bird with a smile. "What a pity. I was going to offer her a discount on candy for her visit. How temperamental."
He turned to Kara, the mischievous smile returning to his eyes, and offered her the bird.
"Congratulations, Kara-san. You are the proud mother of a very musical tea. Do you want to... call him 'Zatara'?"
Kara looked at the songbird. She looked at the man who had created it... by talking to it.
And her confusion about her feelings for this impossible, terrifying, and strangely kind being, became a thousand times deeper.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Hello everyone.
Just stopping by to let you know that if you want to read ahead, the story is already at chapter 40+ on my Patreon.
Thanks for reading!
Mike.
@Patreon/iLikeeMikee