Clean Sweep Ch. 34 (DC Comics) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Lunch time! Surely nothing will go wrong!

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“Hey… I think we can all agree that today went better than yesterday. How about letting me treat you both to lunch to celebrate?”

Cole has to admit, part of him is still caught up in his own thoughts when Zatanna offers to take them out to lunch. Not so much that he can’t nod his head in easy agreement though.

“That sounds great. Right Raven?”

The half-demon at his side simply nods silently, causing Zatanna to clap her hands together.

“Wonderful! Let me just… get a little bit more comfortable then and we can head out. I know this great little Italian place.”

Sounds good to Cole. And it gives him a bit more time to… come to terms with all of this. He’s still reeling a bit from what he’d just done to Zatanna’s finger. The healing bit, that is.

Funny… he’d been told multiple times now by multiple people that what he did was far more than just ‘Cleaning Magic’. Raven, Mystery, and Zatanna had all tried to make it clear to him that he was far more powerful than he’d initially thought and his innate magical abilities were a lot broader than he’d first assumed.

And to be clear, it wasn’t like Cole didn’t believe them or something. Rather… it was just hard to internalize what they were saying. Until now. He hadn’t just cleaned things up today, he’d outright repaired that target and mended the flesh of Zatanna’s finger. He could not only remake destroyed items, he could heal flesh wounds… even if he had a feeling anything beyond flesh was also still beyond him.

Still, this was huge. It was the first real sign that Cole had gotten of the true nature of his magic. If he had known about this before… he could have repaired the shattered windows at the Jewelry Store yesterday, instead of just sweeping the shards of glass into neat, orderly stacks off to the side.

Or hell, could he have saved the shopkeeper after Greed killed her?

… No… no, probably not. Cole suspected she’d been dead before he even registered they were under attack. Still, this changed everything. He was more useful than he’d ever thought. Which left him wondering…

“What should I do next?”

He asks that about a half hour later, after the three of them have sat down at the Italian Restaurant that Zatanna has brought them to. It’s a nice place and Cole doesn’t hesitate to order a delicious sounding pasta dish off the menu. Sure, it’s a bit pricy… but Zatanna is good for it. And if he had even inkling that she wasn’t, he would be good for it instead. Funny to think that money was such a massive part of his life for so long and these days he barely even thinks about it.

To his question, Zatanna tilts her head to the side, smiling slightly.

“Well… what do you want to do next, Cole?”

Frowning, Cole sits back in his chair and thinks for a moment. There were the obvious bits, of course. He wants to keep learning about magic and he wants to keep protecting Raven from her father and his agents. But beyond that… he doesn’t have a clue.

“I don’t know. But… I mean, shouldn’t I be doing something to help with my magic? Like you do with the Justice League.”

Before, when he’d still thought of his magic as little more than cleaning magic, it had been easy for Cole to sort of ignore the call of heroism. Oh, he’d still wound up involved in a couple of incidents here and there, but he wasn’t planning to put on tights and call himself ‘Mister Clean’ or anything as ridiculous as that.

He was just a guy with a niche set of cleaning abilities trying to make his way in the world.

Now though… he saw far more clearly. Cole had been lying to himself ever since meeting Raven. It had become distinctly obvious that he was a bit more than just ‘some guy with cleaning magic’. And while his magic still didn’t seem very offensive in nature, being able to heal and repair things was… well, it was big. Wasn’t it?

“First and foremost… you should not feel obligated to do anything you don’t want to do Cole. Just because you have magic doesn’t mean you have to use it to help other people.”

Blinking, Cole peers at Zatanna owlishly. She’s changed out of her (extremely hot) ‘strict professor’ attire and into something a bit more casual. Somehow, despite not wearing a mask when in her ‘costume’, she looks almost nothing like she does when she’s out fighting crime as a member of the Justice League.

She just looks like a normal, raven-haired woman out for a lunch with two friends. That doesn’t change who she is though… and to hear such words from her…

“How can you say that, given all that you do for people?”

But Zatanna just shakes her head.

“I do what I do… because I want to, not because I have to. Not everyone is meant to be a superhero, Cole. There are thousands of magical practitioners all around us, living relatively normal, quiet lives. They don’t run around shooting fireballs or casting lightning bolts at alien invaders. Why? Because they know they can count on the Justice League to do so on their behalf. Just as you can.”

It’s the exact opposite of what he would have expected from her. By now, she should have been trying to make him a sales pitch… right? Instead, she seemed to be trying to talk him out of it.

Which didn’t help him one bit given he was still kind of at a loss for what he should do with his newfound magical versatility. She was supposed to be giving him a clear path to follow! Not telling him to do whatever he wanted, so long as he wanted to do it!

“… You guys get hurt a lot, don’t you? Couldn’t my magic help out there? I could heal League members, maybe.”

Zatanna’s smile falters a bit at the mention of ‘getting hurt a lot’. In the end, the smile turns sad at his offer.

“You’re not wrong, Cole. Your magic, with a bit more training, might very well be able to help us out. But then… what sort of burden does that put on you? As things stand right now, you can only really heal scrapes and bruises… hundreds of which happen to dozens of League members pretty much every day.”

Cole’s mouth opens… and then closes as he realizes what she’s saying.

“See? You just pictured it. You, in some medical room at a League base, taking care of superheroes’ minor injuries every second of every day. You’d get no rest, Cole. You’d burn out in months.”

Brow furrowing, Cole frowns. On the one hand, she had a point. On the other hand…

“I don’t want to do nothing. There has to be a way for me to offer my services without being on-call twenty-four-seven.”

Before Zatanna can reply, the food arrives. They all wait for the plates to be placed properly in front of them and begin to dig in for a moment. Zatanna was right, this place is delicious. Cole’s pasta dish is out of this world and he thinks he might come here again sometime… probably sometime soon.

After a few bites, Zatanna slowly nods.

“You’re probably right about that. For starters, definitely consider it a ‘service’… it’s not an obligation, no matter what. Nor should you be available for every small cut at all hours of the day. Rather… you should focus on expanding your understanding of your own magic above all else, Cole. Because once you can heal real injuries… that’s when things will get serious.”

They continue to eat for a bit longer before Zatanna elaborates.

“There are heroes by the dozens out there who would still be fighting the good fight if not for some sort of injury. Lost limbs, lost mobility… the original Batgirl is confined to a wheelchair because of the Joker, for instance.”

Cole’s jaw drops open at that. He’d heard that the Joker killed the original Batgirl… she was still alive?! Zatanna, seeing his mouth agape, rolls her eyes.

“Suffice to say, don’t go spreading that around. It’s not the biggest secret imaginable, but it’s also not public knowledge, obviously.”

Right… obviously.

“Still, imagine if you got good enough with your magic to fix her spine. Just… wave your hand and repair it. We don’t have anyone who can do something like that. Not even me. I can do minor injury healing like you can… but I think you might be capable of so much more than me given a bit more time and effort.”

Right… he just had to be careful and do a lot of testing and experimenting first. Because he really didn’t want to even think about some of the ways his magic could potentially be taken to its absolute limits. After all, Zatanna had taught him an incredibly valuable lesson today about how to alter his own perception and the effects it could have on his magical capabilities.

“The important thing, Cole, is for you to be happy and safe. And I’m not just saying that because you’re helping Raven here hold back her Demon Lord father from invading and destroying our world.”

She says it teasingly and even Raven smiles a bit as Cole chuckles. Yeah, in a way he was kind of already doing a lot, wasn’t he? Even if it didn’t feel like it…

“You really don’t have to do everything. What’s important is that you do something… when you can.”

Some might argue that Zatanna’s words felt a bit too generalized and vague to hold much meaning. And yet… Cole felt like they had meaning to him, if nothing else.

Of course, that’s a bit of a moot point because the next thing he knows, an explosion rocks the entire restaurant, sending their food on the floor and bringing them all to their feet.

No rest for the wicked, it would seem…

“Stay here!”

Zatanna throws that order back at both him and Raven, along with a hand tossed in their direction as if that would be enough to make them stay put. And then she runs out into danger like they’re just going to watch her do so.

Cole stares after her for all of a moment before glancing at Raven, who in turn looks back at him expectantly. Yeah, she already knows him far too well…

“Come on.”

She doesn’t try to convince him otherwise either, merely nodding sharply in agreement and following him out of the restaurant as he chases after Zatanna. Outside… things are a bit chaotic. People are running away from something and it’s not immediately obvious what it was. While the restaurant had been rather roughly shaken by an explosion, the explosion doesn’t seem to have been nearby… or at least isn’t anywhere out on the street.

As Cole and Raven are stepping outside, Zatanna is looking back and forth for a moment before casting one of her backwards spells and levitating up into the air. As she ascends above the nearby buildings in mere moments, Cole looks to Raven again.

“Raven, get us up in the air.”

Soon, they’re ascending as well… and Cole realizes he’s never really figured out if he was afraid of heights or not. Luckily, even as they rise twenty, thirty, forty feet off the ground… it’s not so bad. He just doesn’t focus on what’s beneath them, instead looking out over the city.

Raven quickly has them following after Zatanna as Zatanna in turn flies towards a pillar of smoke in the distance. Cole sets his jaw as they get closer, wondering what they could possibly be about to find.

‘What’ turns out to be a ‘who’. And ‘who’ turns out to be a red haired alien woman, at least from what Cole sees. She’s wearing futuristic-looking armor and is causing quite a bit of wanton destruction as she bashes through buildings and cars.

Cole frowns, even as Zatanna moves to intercept her.

“STOP! Whoever you are, cease your wanton destruction immediately!”

At the same time… a shadow suddenly covers them all. And when Cole looks up… it’s to find a literal alien spaceship has descended over the city.

Shit… he knew aliens were real and all that, but he hadn’t expected to find himself in what looked to be an alien invasion all of the sudden! He should never have left the house today…

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A/N: Throw me a comment if you can but please leave a Like if you don’t want to, it’s the main metric I use to track whether a story is doing well or not!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X4H9yZXBO4S8shotuLYuC0awgbY7wfutT4pgHK2SlxU/edit?tab=t.0