The city was bustling, never allowing for a moment's pause.
A chaotic metropolis that sat off the eastern seaboard of the state of New Jersey. It was unlike its sister to the north, the City That Never Sleeps, New York, as Gothamites are welcomed by a near-endless cloud cover that never breaks. The shadows cast by the towering skyscrapers had only been magnified by the death of the lights of Gotham, the Waynes. Since Thomas and Martha Wayne were murdered in cold blood on the streets, the city itself has wept in grief and desperation.
Is it no wonder the denizens' state is in such despair when the walls and soil are in such despair?
Gazing out the window, Ethan was glad to leave it all behind.
"Excuse me," a woman's voice called over the speaker. "Please buckle your seatbelts and turn off all devices; we will taxi to the runway."
Okay, it may be ironic that Ethan was leaving using Wayne Airlines. He couldn't help smirking at that thought.
Turning to his right, his foster sister was playing a game on her laptop. She had a pair of earbuds in, utterly oblivious to everything going on.
Ethan shook his head in amusement at the sight. He looked back out the window as the plane taxied onto the runway, reflecting on his new life. So much had happened since walking through that door of light.
Being reborn, Ethan's first year was an absolute nightmare of embarrassment. Unable to do anything for himself and relying on others for the most basic functions was mortifying. He repressed those memories to the deepest parts of his mind.
Except his parents in this world.
Thinking of them never fails to bring down his mood. He could recall every fight. He could remember every hit. He could recall every night he went hungry. It was only his father dying from a fire that he, himself, started cooking up drugs that gave Ethan an escape.
The lurching in his stomach as the plane tipped up into the clouds broke the not-so-fun trip down memory lane. He quickly turned away from the rushing images from the glass so Ethan wouldn't get vertigo and ruin the rest of his flight.
He appreciated the trip his foster family had taken him to the East Coast after the mandatory period the state of New Jersey requires for foster parents to stay in-state with the child. Ethan wanted nothing more than to get out. Being in an orphanage within the City of Crime is just as bad as it sounds, if not worse.
Constantly, he would see children taken away by suspicious characters to never be seen again. A constant rotation of staff cycled through as, time and again, individuals would wind up on the local news in a ditch somewhere. The children had lost any will, knowing the likelihood that they would just as quickly be another statistic.
Once the plane had leveled out, Ethan brought his iPad back out of his bag and connected it to his Wayne Tech brand touch keyboard. Why? It was the only way he could openly use his magic without suspicion.
Archive Magic is judged solely based on its database. The more data he possesses, the stronger his magic becomes. From his memories of watching the anime, Ethan vaguely remembered that a side character of the Blue Pegasus Guild in Fairy Tail could use Archive Magic to create shields and speak to others using Telepathy, but that was really it. Ethan has been left to his own devices to determine what he can do with his new ability.
Conjuring a thin magical shield over the keyboard and screen of concentrated data. These magical screens allow him to directly input commands to his Archive in a far more simplistic and automated manner than a programmer to their data storage. It was the only way he could think of to do something productive without drawing attention to himself.
No one would question why someone is typing on an iPad.
"Hey, where can I find Surf?" Ophelia Morne, Ethan's foster sister, asked. She has been pestering him constantly the last few days since finding out that he made video games. It was the best way he could think to experiment with his database in the modern world.
"It's in the Safari Zone. You have to find a house and talk to the old man." She nodded and returned to her game. It was simple, sweet, and did not spoil anything.
Using his Archive to simulate most of the coding from his previous life, Ethan recreated the first iteration of the highest-grossing media franchise to ever exist- one that has not been created within this new world- Pokemon.
Now, he can't say that everything was a smooth transition. Ethan could use his magic to recreate the game from his old life and the various stats and dialogue by downloading every moment he played or watched the series. However, actually making the code was a different story.
See, in the anime, Archive Magic is stated to turn information into magical data. The problem is that the terms needed to be appropriately defined and took a bit to figure out.
Data is information.
Magical data is still just information at the end of the day. His Archive uses English to extrapolate everything as that is the language Ethan understands the most. Which means that he has no clue how to code anything.
Ethan first discovered that about his magic when he became capable of utilizing it when he was 10 years old. He learned it took so long because his young body simply couldn't handle it. Because his magic does not originate from the DC Universe, the ambient mana has to be broken down and transformed into the compatible energy source, Ethernano.
DC's mana is too high-quality, which would overload his magic. His Archive had to subconsciously transform the container within his body to facilitate its own process. Naturally, something based on data being asked to work with no one was extremely time-consuming and inefficient. It had to analyze the ambient mana, explain why it was insufficient, and then construct a manner to make it function.
Ethan learned about this going on behind the scenes because the Archives logs were the sole recorded data when he first explored his mind library. From there, he ordered the magic to download his memories and saw the language issue.
It was disorienting, as there was no real organization like what he had initially imagined- just raw text with no punctuation, indentation, or organization.
Ethan's first 10 years in this world had been downloaded and recorded over the course of his middle school years. By the final year, it could adequately transfer the daily memory in real time without using up all the processing storage.
Finding out that when getting impatient and asked how he could improve its efficiency even more, the Archive suggested he learn programming. The description it gave him was based on how there were multiple software languages that Ethan knows are used, none of which it currently utilizes.
Going on YouTube, Ethan discovered a large pool of videos to pull from. Most had recommended Python to start with as they claimed it was the most developed and used for a wider variety than others. After a few months of using an online testing website, he could adequately code in Python with easily fixable errors.
At the time, he had zero prospects of getting adopted as he was no longer the 'adorable age' and was now a teen. And he most certainly didn't want to resign himself to stay among the horrors. So he ordered his Archive to write a code to run Pokemon Red and Blue. Occasionally, he would check on the progress by creating a small screen under his body at night, briefly glance at it, and then make it disappear before anyone could notice.
In March of his final year of junior high, a man came into the orphanage. He was older, middle-aged, with salt grey streaking through his black hair. The man was tall and thin but had a strong gait that demanded the attention of the weak.
Clearly, he wasn't among the clientele they usually dealt with, from the narrowed, suspicious eyes of the matrons. However, they also could not turn him away without giving them a reason to be inspected by the police. Ever since the rise of Detective Gordon within the GCPD, fewer dirty cops could be bought, and decoy agencies had to do their actual jobs rather than just launder.
He knew, and so did they. If any of the staff turned him away, the detective would be there within the hour with a team to upend their operation.
Or they could do their job.
The man took his time speaking with each child. Eventually, he took a liking to Ethan.
Later, the boy would learn his name was Blaine Morne, a businessman who built up a rental property company that now owns over 10,000 locations nationwide. A family man who now dedicates most of his time to his children following the death of his wife. Apparently, the last thing the couple had spoken about was adopting, and Blaine felt he would fulfill her final wish.
Seeing the opportunity, Ethan took it without a second thought.
His new sister, apparently obsessed with his creation, was an interesting turn. Especially since he needed Blaine to complete most of the paperwork when Ethan was ready to publish Pokemon to Steam. The two had managed to keep it quiet for all three days before the gossip found out her father's name was on it from her friends and grilled them both for hours.
Eventually, they gave up, but it led to some good bonding with the strangers he was now living with.
Mentally, he thanked God for remembering to update the graphics. Even with the severe deficit in creativity in this world's media, an 8-bit colorless RPG in the 21st century would not have been given a chance, much less well received. So Ethan updated it with a similar graphic style to the later gen3 iterations.
Doing all this helped him tremendously in expanding his Archive Magic into simulating faults within data as well as transferring data streams to modern electronics. Making something that works is different than something that works well. Eventually, he managed to get the file size for each to 11 megabytes from the original 36.5 kilobytes of Red and Blue, but it was far more manageable than the 25-megabyte file for Diamond and Pearl.
Now, he just wants to return to working on Silver and Gold in peace.
"Alright, everyone, you may now move about the cabin. Thank you for flying Wayne Airlines. Next stop is Happy Harbor, Rhode Island."