The lid opened up to reveal not straw packed around a fragile object like Cass expected, but a large dark gray box, painted with ornate swirls of gold and silver, a large glistening ruby positioned off-center on the box.
"Please tell me this isn't a coffin," Cassandra muttered nervously.
"Far from it, actually," Zatanna reassured her. "This so happens to be what we in the business of magic call a Traveling Cabinet."
"Really?" Black Back leaned in to look closer. "Seems a little bulky to take with you on trips."
"Not if you know the right spells, but that isn't what I meant," Zatanna turned the ruby like a doorknob and tugged the door open, revealing an inky black interior that the warehouse lights were unable or unwilling to illuminate. "I mean you could set this to any destination you want and you can get there by just hopping through. Course I can do that without a cabinet, but back in the day when teleportation charms were a roll of the dice, these things were a necessity. My father had a dozen of these in his workshop for emergencies."
"Maybe I should let Bru...er, the big guy know about this," Cassandra said, glancing towards one of the unconscious thugs. "I'm sure he could get some use out of this."
"Probably not this one, if the sheer amount of magical energy coming off this thing is accurate, it could potentially go quite a distance."
"What, you mean to other planets or something like that?"
"Not even close."
Before Zatanna could explain however, there was a sudden bang as the nearby double doors were kicked in by a burly looking man in an armored vest, clearly a late arrival in the Deacon's entourage. The two woman spun around and backed away as the man lifted his gun, but Zatanna was fastest on the draw.
"Ezeerf!"'
The goon looked briefly surprised before he was suddenly frozen in a large block of ice like a caveman in a children's cartoon. Zatanna let out a sigh of relief before she heard a panicked squeak.
"...help!"
She spun back around to see Cassandra arm-deep in the cabinet's interior. Realizing she must have backed away in surprise and brushed the inside of the box, Zatanna reached out to grab her far too late as Black Bat was visibly stretched and pulled inside, the door slamming shut behind her as the magician's eyes bugged out of her head.
"That's...not good." Slightly panicked at the thought of losing Cassandra God knows where, she quickly recalled the old incantations her father taught her to use on traveling cabinets, smacking the side of this one as she cast the charm to lead her to the last traveled destination. To her shock and relief, it worked as the cabinet shuddered and opened again, the black interior now a swirling mass of colors. "You boys stick around," she warned the bound and now frozen villains in the warehouse. "I have a Bat to find."
Then with a graceful exit she'd be proud to end her shows with, Zatanna leapt inside the cabinet.
---
The trip was over before you could say "Zatannaverse", yet she still felt like she spent a couple hours getting tumbled around in a clothes dryer. Landing roughly on her rear, the magician picked herself up, dusting off the lapels of her suit and her lacy stockings as she got a look around. It appeared to be somewhere in Gotham, which immediately made her worried as she felt the air for the latent magical energy. It was distinctly unfamiliar, meaning that the cabinet hadn't put them on a different planet, or even a different galaxy.
It put them in a different universe.
And looking around, Zatanna became acutely aware of how different this world was.
Earth-topia: The buildings are futuristic and high-tech, there's not a criminal or vagrant in sight, and the streets are so immaculately clean you could eat off of them. This version of Gotham is a utopian paradise!
Earth-pocalypse: Gotham looks a lot worse then usual, which is saying something. Most of the city is bombed out and broken, and it looks like civilization has completely broken down. Should Zatanna break out her Ink Spots tapes?
Earth-plus: This Gotham looks fine, which can't be said for the people living in it. Zatanna can't see a single person who weighs less then three hundred pounds! What's really going on here?
Earth?: This Gotham...seems suspiciously normal. It's definitely not the same universe she's from, but there's something different here Zatanna can't quite put her finger on.
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