UnMasked Nomad

2

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I opened my eyes, and stretched slowly. I was still tired, but at least my muscles didn't feel like they'd all been... I frowned at the reflection in a mirror on the wall, and then looked down at my body. My muscles, usually pretty unnoticeable on my large frame, their size and uniformity making me just look a little thicker than most women, were all visible, as the layer of baby fat that had covered them was gone entirely, revealing every sculpted, ripped curve that I'd tried to hide.

"Fuuuuuuuck..." I groaned, and pulled the oxygen and IV out, (careful with the vein, which had expanded visibly, and moved closer to the surface).

Zatanna stepped in quickly. "What's- O-OH god you're naked, sorry! Hey, OUT!" She snapped at someone, shoving them out as they'd apparently tried to walk in behind her.

I chuckled and wrapped the sheet around me, using my gun belt to make it look like a robe, then carried my clothes with me to the door. "Hey, Zatanna, any chance I can do some laundry? These smell like puke, but they're all I've got at the moment..."

She held out a hand, still with her back to me. "I'll wash them now, actually... and did you get more... uhm... more, last night?"

I sighed, handing them to her. "Yeah, unfortunately. My insulating layer of baby fat is gone, revealing my annoyingly buff body, Yes."

"Wait, annoying? You don't like being buff?" She asked, then whispered to my clothes, to my confusion. "Sehtolc eseht naelc!" Before I could question it, though, the clothes visibly steamed themselves and pressed themselves into the proper shapes, smelling a little like ginger.

I accepted them, amazed, and then laughed. "Wow! You rewrote reality with an audible code?!? Very impressive!!!" I pulled the clothes on under the sheet, then returned it to the bed while she considered her answer.

"So... you don't believe in magic?" She asked slowly.

"Well... I think magic is an incredibly advanced method of altering reality, that has its roots in physics and our understandings of the universe. I don't think it's nonsense, or anything, I just think it's a science, like any other." I answered carefully, attempting to get my point across as succinctly as possible.

She hummed. "I see... I suppose that's better than being entirely non-believing."

"You misunderstand again. I believe in magic: I love magic, in fact; I just don't think it's unexplainable. I don't accept anything as unexplainable, I just accept that I don't currently understand the thing enough to explain it. It's just the next step that will eventually be explained. Maybe not by me... but someone. Hopefully me." I grinned, and checked my gun, realizing it must be soaked in liquid shadows too.

The metal was dyed a deep umbra, leaving the ivory grip a shocking bone-white against the metal, making the tarot card, 'XIII-Death' with the accompanying skeletonized reaper, clear as day.

She glanced at it, and paused. "I see... you believe in the Tarot, then? No one would carve a tarot card into a weapon without knowing what it means."

"That... I don't know. My grandmother believed she could read the cards, but she could never read mine properly, so maybe that's where it started for me. The need to understand magic. Also, the weapon was my grandfathers, in WWII." I shrugged, loading the bullets back into the clip and then holstering the weapon.

She raised an eyebrow. "In what?"

"World War Two? You guys didn't have any World Wars?" I asked incredulously.