The Scouter and The Wand Chapter 1 (DBZ Crossover)
I have had this written for at least a year or two. For some reason I cannot upload to fanfiction.net. So I will consider this a test run here. When I do figure out the upload process I shall fix the grammar where needed and edit the chapter a little more yet. I have a second chapter mostly written, and an outline for the rest, with various other parts of lore or story written or already in mind. Based on reception I will decide if this has merit enough to continue into a full story. I must thank Harry Potter and The Prancing of Ponies for giving me an easy way to cross these over. If they CAN be crossed over, remains to be seen. I cannot say when the next chapter will be posted but I have been in a writing mood as of late. (I will need to rewatch some of DBZ to stay coherent between the two.)
I hope you find it enjoyable.
Chapter 1
The transition had been instant. Faster than a blink.
Tom Riddle's manic laughter slowed and transformed into a sad chuckle at his own expense. He had celebrated too early. Rule #12...
Just a moment ago he had been holding the stone of permanence. He had forced the the old fool to turn his trap against himself. In retrospect that was a little too easy.
Tom looked around and found that he was in the middle of a forest clearing, next to a small lake. Mr. Potter was not with him. He could sense that much... Or rather could not-...
He did have his wand with him. So he cast the Deathly Hollows indicator, none of the 3 artifacts were near him. He rubbed his forehead with his hand.
"Mr. Potter" He spoke, "If you are with me here in this place, it is to our advantage to work together." He added, "I sspeak true, alliess are better than enemiess in new place..."
Nothing.
Did his magic even work, wherever he was?
Tom Riddle raised his wand and flicked it at a nearby tree. The tree exploded into a deadly wall of splinters which propelled themselves through the forest. The vortex shredded the trees in it's wake, and carving a large corridor out of the dense patch of trees.
Interesting...
He was not in a frozen instant, he was completely aware. He seemed to be alone. He had his clothes, his pouch, his wand and most importantly he had his magic still.
As a matter of fact, as causal as he had just preformed that bit of powerful spell work he had felt no dip in his power at all when he cast that curse. As he looked admiringly at the clean even edges of the path he cut through the forest, he could not help but to notice it's effects where more potent than they would have been normally. He felt magically stronger.
Time to contemplate that later.
Was Mr. Potter's absence an indicator that he had somehow been in on the trap?
Riddle thought deeply for a moment, but that felt like a wrong answer. However; the question itself was likely significant in figuring out what exactly had happened, he would have to think about this, later...
The main priority was...
Tom closed his eyes and reached out into the void. He found nothing to latch onto. He could not connect to his horcruxes...
Tom Riddle was currently mortal.
He was an exceedingly clever and powerful mortal, but he could be slain.
Tom looked around again. The risk assessment that always ran in the back of his head started to spike.
This was a strange place he knew nothing of.
A strong gust of wind rippled through the canopy of the forest.
Tom needed a moment. He turned himself invisible just as a precaution. Then he hovered a dozen feet in the air. Broomstick bones still worked. Flying actually felt somehow more natural in this world.
He was not pleased with how things had apparently turned out. However, he did have to give the old meddler due credit. He had played his part to perfection. Tom had assumed that the process of the timeless was the only way to seal things away. Yet, he was not in a frozen instant. The ancient carvings he had found were likely still true, simply lacking in information. Dumbledore had led him to believe he had figured out the trap until it was too late.
Unless... Is it possible Dumbledore did not use the mirror properly? Yes, but doubtful. The mirror after all was said to be created with the greatest care to NOT be used improperly. So Dumbledore had NOT used the process of the timeless, but had allowed Tom to think he was using it, while evoking some other power of the mirror completely.
Some power which could apparently access the other worlds said to be contained in the mirror. Contained in the mirror... CONTAINED IN THE MIRROR!!!
Tom remembered tales of other things said to have been contained in the mirror... His threat estimation grew by several orders of magnitude...
He observed his new surroundings further. He reached down and picked up a hand of soil, it felt real.
At a glance it seemed earth like enough. After a moment of mindful careful observation several things started to leave an uncanny sort of feeling. It seemed like earth, but not quite. The sky was too blue, it had a greenish purple tinge. Occasionally, a bright meteor would catch his eye shooting up or across the sky. That was concerning.
The clouds that floated there had strange formations. Shapes he had never seen in his prior universe. They also had a bizarre uniformity. He also did not recognize any of the type of trees that surrounded him. Tom looked down at the lake and casually cast a diagnostic spell on the water. It was drinkable regular water, if a bit dirty with sediment that had been stirred up recently.
Not that he needed to drink from a lake. He confirmed this by flicking his wand and shooting a jet of water from the tip. The force of the jet pushed back on his arm. He had to expend a little muscle power for a moment to regain his exact position. The spell fizzled out and Tom looked down at his wand with a note of confusion on his face. He now had 2 indicators that either his own magic had increased in power, or this world was simply more powerful in magic itself.
In retrospect he only had some knowledge of the lore behind the mirror.
He KNEW that was all that he knew about the mirror...
It had still been foolish to try and overcome magic so powerful, when faced with someone who plausibly knew secrets he did not. He had nobody to blame but himself for his banishment. He would not sulk, there was hardly a less productive use of ti-
There was a distant "boom" sound. An explosion? Quick flashes of concept like; volcanic activity and tectonic plates filled his mind first, but these did not feel like correct answers. The following wind which swayed the trees in one direction to wave at him was another good piece of evidence of an explosion. It was far away, if the difference from the sound to the wind was anything to go by. Potter would have known how to calculate that distance to within a few degrees of variance... It was worrisome... He had to think yet.
He could think while he flew; up and up until a normal wizard would be uncomfortable enough to cast a warming charm, and anyone would need a bubblehead to get the appropriate amount of oxegen to the lungs. He had established a strong apparition point high enough to avoid any conceivable threat. He now only had the inconceivable to worry about. He popped back to his original position.
At least he had a good deal of supplies on him. Some he would need, and others which he did not know enough yet to optimize to the new situation. He had been planning to leave the school that night anyway. Anything he could carry was on his person still. He had now pulled a few items from his pouch, he looked over each for a moment. He placed a few in his robes; where there were no visible pockets, and put most of the others back into his pouch.
He held onto a golden chain and a ring.
The chain remained linked no matter how it was twisted. Even though each link was an open letter "S", which did not lock any two links together. He donned the chain and felt a glow of power. Even if he was mortal, he did not have to be 'vulnerable' to all but the most extreme forces of magic.
He also put the bronze ring with very old runes carved into it on the index finger of his wand hand. He rotated the ring three times and it produced a faint glow before returning to normal. Several spells were cast one after another. The wand was a blur in the air, and the speech so fast and precise that the incantations for all 14 spells sounded like a a simple phrase. Tom frowned, he seemed completely safe at a cursory glance, for the moment.
The first priority was to find a living being, assuming there were any here. He would have to slay one to secure his own lasting life. This could be complicated given the circumstances. Tom pointed his wand in the air once again and concentrated.
With a word, a blue spark appeared for a moment and then blinked out, as it disappeared a ripple in the air spread out like a pebble dropped in a pond.
Tom could only assume, but he felt certain this spell was invented on a battlefield for war purposes. He frowned at the results again...
The spell was an old one, used to detect human life within a rather large radius. Unless you were specifically warded against the spell, and nobody was likely to be, there were only a handful of exceptions to it's detection. Tom had tested it and it could detect a person within 10 miles, give or take given the surroundings. It would also give you a rough estimate of how many sentient beings there were in it's zone of influence. The spell had told him that within the radius, there were significantly more people than existed on the earth he knew.
Tom made a note of the anomalous results of the spell to ponder later then moved his concerns onto more immediate things. For instance, there was another boom in the distance. There was also the fact that there had been minor earthquakes causing waves in the lake from the moment he arrived, which he was only now updating to his explosion hypothesis. He had noticed, but not paid attention. It had his attention now, the sound of that explosion was much louder than the last one.
Tom continued to rise though the air and flew high above the forest. As he rose into the air he aimed his wand downward, drew a small circle and felt the magical trace take hold. It was simply stupid to not mark the physical location of a door you walked out of and into a new 'world'. The area in which he appeared may also hold a key to escape. It did not seem likely, but the trace cost him little.
He floated high above the forest, he could see the shape. Looking around he observed that this patch of trees was one of a few in an otherwise barren and alien landscape.
He flew higher and saw that for the most part the area was covered in sandy desert landscape. The ground had so many mesas poking from it that earth looked like a cactus here. The sky did not look right, already noted, but he couldn't get past that. It shouldn't be THAT blue, or green. He flew through a cloud. He did not get wet as he was shielded in a few basic ways. His magic did tell him there was much ordinary water vapor in them. He only now had realized casting a bubble head charm would have been smart to do first thing. He could have just flown into a cloud of toxic gas. It seemed redundant for the moment, as this world seemed match the old world well enough to not be toxic. If the lake water was safe, the clouds were likely to be as well; though that was just a hypothesis he shouldn't have accidentally tested. He must be careful of his assumptions.
He noticed another meteor and he could have sworn this one went from the ground up into space. Thus likely NOT a meteor after all.
He saw something he was familiar with however and it chilled him.
He started weaving the magic of 4 different shields together as his wand frantically cut through the air. Salazar's Chain could protect him from most harm. He doubted it accounted for radiation, if this was a nuclear blast. A rainbow colored ball encased him in it's rippling colors, blue, orange, white all flickering together. Two of the spells were of his own modifications, and the other two were several times older than he was. He SHOULD be safe...
He watched off in the distance as the clear ring expanded through the clouds from the point of the mushroom cloud in the near distance.
The overpressure wave of a large yield explosion rapidly made it's way toward him. His shielding took the blast. The chain did not even warm slightly on his throat. Though the patch of trees below him was leveled. The pressure knocked them down as though they had been quills balanced on their tips. Once the blast had past him, Tom pointed his wand toward the mushroom cloud and spoke a variation of a well known incantation. This spell was originally used by the incurably blind to detect specific lights. Tom's variance could detect high levels of radioactivity, it wasn't hard to modify after reading one of Potter's science books. He detected none.
The blast seemed to large for conventional muggle explosives he knew of but also seemed too large for magical destruction known to most.
Perhaps if he and Dumbledore cast the destructive ends curse together in harmony, they might create a blast of that magnitude... Otherwise he knew of no arts to produce such force. There were insane ways, ways which always ended in catastrophe now. Magics like elemental channeling could strike more destruction than that blast. It was said to be able to strip the world of it's earth, or unleash the powers of volcanos. There was little else known. Rituals gone wrong could also do damage on this scale, or worse. Yet if it had been such, nobody should have survived the first accident to cause a second.
It seemed the epitome of stupidity to go towards whatever had detonated.
On the other hand, high level non magical explosive use indicated there were people in that general direction anyway. He did need to make a horcrux. His anxiety about that had grown dramatically in the last few moments. It was totally in line for the mirror to put him into a world in which destruction was either on the near horizon or inevitable. If the mirror could show you your desired world, could it not show you one undesired? It was said to be two sided.
Now that he was a mortal in a possibly doomed world, the fear was beginning to become a panic in the back of his mind.
Explosions of various colors were tearing the landscape apart.
Mesas were being knocked down like a child's stacking blocks.
The shockwaves were pushing the limits of his own shields even at this distance.
He watched as a particularly large shockwave was uprooting the bedrock on it's way towards him. He spun his wand arm in a circle, which produced a golden ring 20 feet in diameter and sprung out in front of him. The large chunks of heavy stone veered away from it's radius and continued on. Tom was strangely excited.
As an immortal who could possess people there was no real risk in his encounters with danger. Nor had there been any real reason to use creativity on the fly like this for a long time.
Oh... His mind had confused excitement with fear, as the later was rarely felt in the last decade. After watching the scene for a minute he knew which spells and shields to use, and which so far appeared redundant. He felt a good deal safer knowing these were not nuclear explosions. In any case, he could always apparate back to the spot he arrived, or the point he established in the lower atmosphere, though neither seemed nearly far enough now.
Once in a while a dust cloud would be parted by a streaking object with blinking light. It would carve out a clean line of landscape through falling rock and dust. These objects would fly faster than the eye could catch. They would strike a mesa and pass through it as though it were not there, as it continued along it's flat trajectory along the landscape.
Sometimes it would come to a direct stop and shoot straight upward, or sideways at a similar speed. There were flashes of light which would have blinded a regular unprotected person. Winds which would have sent that person tumbling, and overpressure waves which would have liquified the insides of that person. The same way parts of the earth itself seemed to turn fluid in places hit by what Tom had thought to be meteors at a distance. He could now tell they were directed attacks of some horribly primal fashion. He also knew none of his protections were sufficient for a direct hit from one of them.
Tom pointed his wand between his eyes and muttered something in lost Latin. It was a temporary enchantment. The original version of the Omnioculars spell. Whatever part of his brain procced visual information was much faster now, and could adjust itself as a camera may focus. He dared not get closer to the expanding and unpredictable circle of destruction.
He shouldn't be this close, not at all. Yet the spectacle of it was awesome in the literal sense of the word. He could actually see what was happening as though it had been slowed down. Even after what seemed a full minute, he still failed to comprehend the how behind the what of he was seeing. Repeat viewings in a pensive may not even make sense. He had already cast an anti confundus on himself, but he did so again and got no results.
There were two men. Well, there were more but they did not seem to matter as they looked 'defeated' already.
There were only two that mattered for the calculations at the moment. They were the the cause of this destruction... One of the 'men' was wearing a torn bright orange Japanese styled gi, and posed in a fighting stance Tom actually recognized. The other was wearing some sort of futuristic composite armor, it was blue and white with long extruding shoulder pads. Both of them had hairstyles that did not seem right for a human to have without being highly stylized, and would certainly not stay in that spikey fashion in these winds.
These men were the cause of the explosions... They could also both fly of their own accord. They could do so at speeds Riddle could not hope to match, not even rockets accelerated that quickly... These men could set off explosions at will, they aimed direct energy with their hands. No wands, only a slightly magical tingle; which he felt was more life force magic than actual personal magic.
These men were actually engaging in a literal muggle styled fist fight, if both muggles were highly trained in martial arts.
Riddle saw Japanese influence in the style of the man in the orange gi. The other was less refined but was suited more for brute force. The styles complimented each other in a terrifying resonance. When their punches hit each other, they were the cause of some of the explosions. When an effective blow was struck, one man would become a bullet which obliterated all in his path. The flashing lights were beams and balls of non 'magical' energy of some fashion. Some were countered and nullified. Some were dodged and left a small mushroom cloud in the distance moments later. Some blasts were re-directed up. From Riddle's observation, the man in orange was trying to avoid destruction as much as he could. The other did not care.
This was putting the man in orange at a disadvantage.
They threw around this unknown energy as casually as Tom wielded magic.
This was insanity. Riddle apparated back what should be a temporarily safe distance. There were several charms to direct or amplify selective hearing. Tom simply cast the first that came to mind.
He could see with the enhanced vision that the futuristic dressed man had sustained severe damage to his amour. He was panting heavily. The concerning thing was the manic look of contempt his eyes projected as he flew higher and higher in the air.
The man in orange was even more tired, more broken down. Yet he still radiated a confidence and power Tom could not name.
With the amplified hearing Tom heard the thing he suspected he would eventually hear in this world, if his mirror theory held up.
"I am going to destroy the entire planet!" The armored fighter was now even higher in the air than Tom was. His eyes were no longer manic, there was a great relief and destructive resolve in them. He moved through a couple simple poses and started to apparently build energy between his hands.
The lightning that snapped around and carved illegible signatures in the ground seemed to emanate from him and have no effect on himself. Wind was blowing from him. It started as pulses of gust, but the gust had turned into an increasing pressure of consistency. The wind seemed to be lifting layers of soil off of the ground. It blew them away to leave a great crater under where he hovered.
He's hovering in a static position... The tactical part of Tom reasoned. He also seemed to be fully concentrated on his blast, yes he would; if retaining that pose was a requisite for the output. Hypothesize later. Tom smiled a grim smile. He fully believed the man's statement. Riddle could not estimate how much TNT you would need to replicate one of their simple punches. Tom's rough estimation based off of observation alone and comparison to muggle explosives he had dabbled with in the war... It was too much to believe.
If a man can punch with potentially kilotons of energy, what happens when that energy is concentrated and directed at the earth... A man who is bluffing does not laugh in the cadence that the armored man (in the same position still) currently was. It would be highly amusing if he created his first horcrux as a literal act to save the world. Dumbledore would still argue with the math behind it, but Tom Riddle chuckled.
He apparated to within 1000 meters or so of the flying man. It was too close for comfort, but his act should only take a moment.
On the ground the other man was charging his own attack. A blue glow started as a dot in his hands, and grew until it the brightness was hard to look at and it encompassed the mans grasp. It gave off a light very reminiscent of Potter's patronus...
Tom noted a hint of confusion in the back of his mind, this all seemed... Sort of contrived... He raised his priors on the theory this world was the one he was least likely to wish to inhabit... Now was not the time to puzzle the nature of his entrapment.
It seemed both men were "charging" their attacks. They had drastically different stances to do so, his mind noted absently. Interesting...
Think later... The apparent defender, the man in orange, was preparing an attempt to counter the earth destroyer's output.
Tom wondered if either man had considered what happens when TWO earth ending attacks strike each other...
Perhaps the man on the ground could succeed. He seemed the more confident one, but he was far more worn down than the other. His ego may be clouding his judgement of the situation.
Tom couldn't risk the world when this was solved simply. Hopefully...
He summoned an ordinary stone from the ground to his hand. Once it was in his grasp, he carved at the air above it with his wand in practiced strokes. The stone begun to glow with a sucking anti-light Tom was fond of.
With his enhanced eye sight he was quite sure his aim would be true even at this distance...
As quickly as he could, he chanted a phrase three times. A spell to ensure he struck the target that was aimed at. It was not useful in normal battle due to casting time. For assassination on the other hand, it was one of his favorite spells. Tom apparently had at least a few moments to spare before critical mass. He had to be sure the first attempt was successful. The man had not moved as of yet.
Tom cast a quieting barrier. Normally did not need to speak this next incantation. For the output, control, and result he needed he projected his voice loud and fast. Though he knew both men were faster than his spell. Over and over as a fluid one syllable phrase he repeated. "Avada Kedavra", as he teleported around the sky.
The crossing grid of green was far more elegant and efficient than anything the men could do... Tom paused that thought, and wrote it off as it having not been proved efficient yet.
Tom slowly took a breath. The green lines streaked toward the man, he had still not moved but now was quicker in his waxing of power.
Tom was prepared to apparate back to his atmospheric retreat on the instant the man noticed the rather slow moving lights converging on him and noted the direction they came. Or when death struck, incase of catastrophic results. The man also had a tail. Tom had just noticed as he watched the grid continued to contract. A tail was oddity not worth the time at this moment, noted for for later. Target remains in the same place. Target has moved his arms into a new position. He had begun to cast his own incantation apparently. Something "ballot". His curses were close, and finally had all converged in the general direction the man floated and one of them struck him.
Tom was floating in the upper atmosphere now. He had instantly cast a bubble head charm wordlessly the moment the curses struck. He had moved from his firing position moments before the curses landed. He looked down, and observed a green and blue world. The expected flash of light and atmospheric disturbance did now appear. No new mushroom clouds to encasing the globe in darkness.
So... He had not caused the worlds destruction by interrupting the mans attack. Either the attack was nothing like rituals in principal, or he had crafted his attack as to not-
Tom cut off his thoughts, he felt a connection in his mind like the lyrics to a song he had forgotten years ago.
The stone in his hand had become a Thing Of Power. An anchor for his spirit and mind to possess anybody who laid hands on it in this world. He would not be able to move free he did not think, not without the resurrection stone. It would be reckless to have carried it on him, but in this instance it had clearly not worked out for him. Logistics later.
For now... He hesitated. Very few magics could harm the device, but he had witnessed casual energy levels which MAY actually affect it. He'd never brought himself to testing the actual destruction of his horcruxes. It seemed counter intuitive, even with a redundant number of them. He was certain conventional muggle explosives could not harm them. Nuclear devices were another thing... Alien principals that were untested and unknown to all of histories magic until this point were even more concerning.
Tom apparated back to the lake he appeared by. It was covered in broken trees. All for the better. He quickly placed an emergence spell on the horcrux. He could retrieve it and have it in hand at a word no matter the location 'in this world' his mind added. He brushed the thought off and pointed his wand at the lake. The trees moved aside to allow for a hole, an absence of water. He pushed his magic a little more and dug into the earth under the lake. It was a small hole in diameter, but it stretched for thousands of feet down. This was not nearly secure enough. While geologic processes should eventually return it to the surface, there was no saying if there would be a surface when it was required. Tom figured from his observations that it would not matter either way, under ground or in close space; apparently there is a threat which can destroy it. Process later. He dropped the stone and sighed as the water closed in on itself again. He floated there a moment, his mind in a strange state. It reverted to something familiar and known. The spell he had used was an old drilling spell, incredibly useful in certain situations. Tom's favorite history books always were the obscure "day in the life of" stories. Almost every profession, no matter how mundane, always had a little bit of magic too niche to be widely known, but useful to a creative mind.
His horcrux was as "safe" as he could make it at this moment... No, that was not true. A few enchantments later, he could say it was safe as he could possibly make it, and retrievable on the instant; if he had to hand it to a stooge before a threatening situation.
Riddle frowned.
Something felt off about this particular situation. What were the chances, that the mirror would randomly throw him into a universe where the world is minutes from destruction?
Was it even timing or had this world, moments from destruction just all appeared at once? He shuddered.
The timing certainly fit the hypothesis that where ever he was, it was a deliberate choice on either Dumbledore's part, or the mirror itself.
He was within 5 miles of the battle zone, and the fight seemed to be over. His horcrux had activated, which confirmed that his curse had struck his victim, and that the curse had the intended results. Now that his anchor to this world was as safeish, and the main threat seemed to be averted for the moment. He felt as safe as he could to return now and finish the remaining threat.
The would be destroyer of worlds was laying dead on the sandy earth. No more purple energy surrounding him. No fancy stance, he was simply laid out on the ground. His eyes were blank.
The man in the gi had abandon his own attack, apparently.
Tom would have seen it streak into space like one of those "meteors".
(Second part to follow in comments)