Devil's consultancy 33

While driving along the American Interstate on a road trip from one side to the other was on Tanya’s lifetimes-old list of vacation ideas, any actual novelty wore off after the first few days. 

“That’s a lot of cows…” Tanya commented idly, watching the thousands of bovines idly graze the day away. Idly, she wondered how much magic could be wielded by sacrificing the whole herd? There was this really nasty famine spell from India in ArcWayne’s library that required the mass slaughter of cattle, but that one only required one hundred and eight heads… 

Actually, from the descriptions… was the Dust Bowl… nah, probably not. The causes behind that were perfectly explicable by science. 

“Yep.” Richard said, just as bored as his eyes stayed on the road. “How much further until the exit?”

Tanya checked her phone, the navigation program already active. The car had one too, but it interfered with his depressing, the-world-sucks-so-I-must-yell music. Not something Richard was willing to compromise on when he had his little sister around to handle such tasks. Fortunately, he was willing to compromise on his crappy music’s volume. “Just another three miles.” She said, “But we need to turn left.” She added. 

“Yeah, yeah.” He said, taking another sip of his caffeinated soda. “So can you feel the weird magic thing yet?”

“A little.” Tanya said, “I’d need to assume demon form to really take its measure, though. I’d say this area’s got… maybe half again as much magic as Kansas City had?” It was the most recent city they passed through. “It’s definitely nothing like the magic in Gotham.” 

Richard grunted in a ‘tell me more’ way, not in a ‘wrap it up’ way. 

How to put it? “Like… when I’m a demon, breathing the air in Gotham energizes me, it’s a bit like methamphetamines, to be honest.”

“...You’ve taken meth?” Richard asked, alarmed. 

“Back in the army, yeah.” Tanya said idly. She abused stimulants quite heavily in those days, both magical and chemical. She only learned what she had taken four days after taking the first dose, having not slept a wink that entire time. “I don’t use the word lightly, but the doctors of the Empire were real miracle workers.”

“So you’re constantly high in Gotham as Rhine?” Richard pressed, not calmed one bit. 

“It’s weaker than real meth!” Tanya clarified, “But it’s the same kind of high. It’s pulse pounding, but also focusing. Sugar highs make my attention span even worse, caffeine and cocaine give me a kind of calm focus,” Well, assuming she has something to focus on. Fortunately, she rarely was without something productive to do. “-magical stimulants gives me kind of an out of body experience where I don’t consciously process half the shit my body’s doing, but meth?” Tanya chuckled. “Meth makes me angry and violent. Again, it’s at a low level, but floating around Gotham in demon form pisses me off more than anything else, makes me want to do something about it, stop thinking about how to make Gotham less of a shithole and just go out and fight to make it happen.” She was fairly good at shaking the compulsion, but it did mean she put in a little bit more effort to help Batman when she shadowed him, throwing around all sorts of minor magics instead of holding back and acting only when she was needed. 

That full explanation seemed to calm Richard down. “...Yeah, Gotham makes me feel that way too.”

“Exactly.” Tanya said, glad that she got her point across. “That’s the feeling that permeates Gotham, that I feel when I breathe in the magic of the city. Rage, bloodthirst for violence, for vengeance, a self-perpetuating cycle that feeds the city power with every death. It’s quite different from meth in the smaller details, though.” It actually had a lot in common with that time she checked out that quirky ‘oxygen bar’ that opened in Gotham before Firefly exploded it and took deep breaths of air that was just barely safe levels of oxygen concentration. Doing that, eating candy, and taking a tiny amount of meth all at the same time probably was a reasonable approximation of how Gotham mana made her feel as a demon. “More importantly, I have a fair amount of self-discipline, so I can control the impulses most of the time.”

“Well if that’s all…” Richard said sarcastically. “So you had a point somewhere?” He asked. 

“Right.” Tanya replied, “When I’m a human, I don’t take in magic with every breath like I do as a demon. I need to actively intake it with what I like to call mana fixation.” There were hundreds of names for the process of gathering environmental magic for established magical traditions, the highly exclusive kinds that only take people who can work magic with their will alone and only need paradigms to allow for more complicated effects. She just liked the term the Empire used, even if mages in that dimension couldn’t do it like they could here. “When I’m a human, those smaller details I mentioned? Different than when I’m a demon. Closer to real meth. Not something I want to do on a full stomach.” it wasn’t as bad when she immediately channeled the magic into spells; she barely noticed, to be frank. 

“Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.” Richard said, trying to fit this information into his understanding of magic and demons. “What about here?”

Hm… Tanya took a moment. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou.” She chanted. Instead of trying to manifest a specific magical effect, she went through the mental equations she learned in the Empire, the ones necessary to interface with computation orbs. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou.” She repeated, before continuing  her mantra to intake and fixate the local magical energy. 

It was thin, not even a twentieth the magical density of Gotham. But… what little there was responded to her call with… ease wasn’t the right word… familiarity? No, that wasn’t right either. It was easier in a way that Tanya couldn’t quite define, despite the slower accumulation. It settled better, maybe? 

After about the thirtieth time she repeated her mantra, she stopped. Something that Azarathian meditation techniques, like the ones she learned from one of the first books of the cult that she read, was that it was pretty good at letting you distinguish foreign influences from your own thoughts. Not perfect, of course, but when the influence was from something as foreign to her as this energy was, it was quite simple. 

That didn’t, however, mean she could put what she was feeling into words. “It’s… hard to describe.” Tanya admitted, “I’ve gathered enough that the low intensity should be compensated for, but… It’s soft. Subtle.”

Richard chuckled, having already taken the exit while she was meditating. “What does that mean?” He asked, clearly setting up for a joke. “Is it too similar to your sparkling personality?” he let the implication linger for a beat before finishing. “Nah, couldn’t be it. You’re too much of a cynic. If it’s the opposite of Gotham, it must be something you’ve never felt before: truth, justice, the American way?”

Tanya looked at the boy disappointedly. “Superman jokes, really?” She asked, gesturing around them. Clark said that in an interview once and he’s been made to regret it so many times since. 

“I mean, if Gotham’s the way it is because of mana pollution or whatever, then the Big Blue Boyscout being the way he is due to the runoff of good vibes makes sense.” Richard said, defending himself. 

Tanya’s eyes snapped ahead. “Stop the car.” She demanded. 

Richard’s eyes returned to the road and immediately focused on what she saw: a broken car with a spray of blood staining the road in front of it; Tanya couldn’t tell exactly what had happened but assumed it was a stray cow or something similar. *Ouch.” He commented, even as he started slowing down to stop nearby the wreck. 

“Call emergency services.” Tanya commanded as she left the car, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Bruce is not going to like us doing this.” Richard said idly while taking out his phone. 

Tanya ran to the site of the accident, and assessed the situation. She had guessed correctly: there was a dying cow in the front of the damaged vehicle, surprisingly still moving. Within the car, a beat up model that was probably thirty years old, there was an unconscious teenager wearing a fast food restaurant’s uniform with an obvious head wound. Brow furrowed in concern, Tanya used a jolt of will to open the door, breaking things always coming easy to her magic. 

Oddly, the door just opened, unlocking itself instead of tearing apart further. Ignoring that, Tanya checked the teenager’s pulse. Still alive. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou.” Tanya intoned, gathering even more power and bringing out some of the previously gathered magic. “Restore this boy’s wound, so he’ll recover soon.” 

Normally, Tanya wouldn’t go straight to healing magic. She’d try and bring out one of her foci and work with what she had, usually by inflicting pain or taking on a small portion of the injury onto herself. However… it seemed to work perfectly, and the boy even woke up immediately, seemingly uninjured. “What the?” He asked, getting out of his vehicle and looking at the cow. “Oh. Oh shit. Dad’s gonna kill me.” He murmured, clearly dismayed at the state of his car. 

Still, she wasn’t done. She took out the wand she had attuned to The Red, and used it to feel out the cow’s injuries. She could probably heal her… but it would be a bit heftier of a spell than she’d limited herself to while operating as a little witch. 

…She couldn’t do nothing, though. The very idea was disgusting. She took out the Metal attuned wand as well. “Rhine! Berechnung! Mahou!” Tanya shouted, gathering up even more power. “This tragic event breaks man and beast, undo this harm, for crows, no feast!” Both wands shattered as she fed her demonic magic through the filters, supplementing it with additional environmental magic that practically leapt to assist her. 

However… the spell worked. Both cow and car were in pristine condition, the clock turned back for both of them as she hit the magical ‘undo’ button. While naturally turning back time on a universal scale was nigh impossible, if the conditions were right temporal manipulation could very well be the easiest way to achieve your goals,  and this was one of the more favorable situations for such a thing: in the middle of nowhere, where there were very few temporal lines to interfere with. In a way, it was good that the boy was unconscious; even so much as calling someone to inform them of his crisis would have ensnarled it into the timelines of everyone who knew, and that would have anchored the event far too firmly into reality for her inexpert magic to fix. 

“Holy crap!” The teenage boy exclaimed. The cow mooed, confused. It couldn’t remember the impact. “You’re a miracle worker!” He looked at the shattered remains of her wands. “I’ll replace those.” He promised. 

Tanya chuckled. “You can’t afford them. They’re worth more than that car.” She said, waving them off. Each of her focus wands cost about five thousand dollars to make. “Don’t worry about it, though. I was happy to help, just… go. I’m sure your family is worried about you.” Idly, she waved a hand and, with a slight magical nudge, the cow walked forward, crossing to the other side of the road and wandering off. The cow should be trying to find ‘home’, if she did that right. If she did it well, it’d get an intuition on where that was. She had a good feeling about that spell. 

The teenager smiled widely, and got back in the car. “Thanks, girl.” He paused, and rolled down his window to say something else. You know, when I heard the door open? I thought Superman had come. He saved me before, a few years back. Near Christmas.”

Of course Clark did. He couldn’t hold back from a rescue on his wedding day. Lois was furious. Fortunately, John Stewart was willing to run interference so Clark could enjoy his day. 

“Just don’t tell anyone.” Tanya said, scrambling for a reason to shut him up. “My Dad still thinks I’m stuck with party tricks.” She lied. 

“Secret’s safe with me.” The teenager solemnly swore before driving off. 

“Okay, just thought I’d report it, bye.” Richard said, and hung up his phone. “You really should have warned me you were going to do that.” He said, “You’re lucky I had to wait for someone to pick up, so I just reported a lost cow.”

Well, she supposed she did indulge in a bit of hypocrisy there… “I overdid it, I’m sorry.” She said, bowing in apology. 

“What the hell was that, anyway?” Richard asked, “I thought you said you couldn’t heal.”

“I said my normal magical affinity isn’t suitable for healing.” Tanya corrected, “But the magic here, on the other hand…” She trailed off. “Also, I didn’t heal the cow. I turned back time, which is a lot harder to do in the middle of the city.”

“You can turn back time?” Richard asked incredulously. 

Tanya looked at him like he was an idiot. “I’ve told you a thousand times, magic can do basically anything. Time manipulation has a lot of caveats to it, but it’s well within the realm of possibility.”

“What, caveats like ‘I can only mess with time when it doesn’t do anything’?” Richard asked sarcastically. 

“Actually, that’s a pretty good summary.” Tanya confirmed, “In the grand scheme of things, saving one cow and car doesn’t do anything. There’s no weight of consequences that my magic needs to lift to do it.”

Richard frowned. “Then why do it at all?” He asked rhetorically. 

What a stupid question. “Because it mattered to the cow. And to the owner of the car.” Even if the cow won’t remember. 

“...So remember when we first discussed this magic runoff stuff?” Richard asked, changing the subject. “You asked me to tell you if you started acting weird?”

That did ring a bell, yes. “What?” Tanya asked, somewhat offended. “Helping costs me nothing important. I don’t care about the lost wands, I have dozens.”

“If you were thinking clearly, we’d be long gone and that guy’d be waiting for a tow truck.” Richard deadpanned. 

Tanya was still rather offended at the implication, but took a deep breath and tried to consider his words objectively. It was true, healing just the boy and calling emergency services would have helped him adequately, cost less in both time and money, and wouldn’t have risked their cover. It was also logical that, as she deliberately fixated a large amount of ‘anti-gotham’ magic, any potential mental contamination would be amplified, potentially even beyond her ability to control herself despite the influence. 

But… what was wrong with putting in a little extra effort? Her thoughts were unimpeded, she felt no shame for her actions, she only apologized because Richard was annoyed that she bent her own rules, which she did admittedly usually avoid doing… Okay, maybe her judgement was compromised. But… no big deal. She used up all that mana she fixated anyway. 

Still, she should say something. “Now we know, I suppose. Don’t forget to get more gas while we’re here.”

-----------------------

Smallville, Kansas, was about twenty miles away from the interstate, and the exit gave absolutely no indication where it went beyond the fact that someone decided that the middle of nowhere was a good place to open a fast food restaurant, which is presumably where the teenager was going home from. 

Fortunately, while Smallville was not a large place, it was still a place that was put on maps, so their GPS programs had no problems directing them to the correct area. The Kent farm, on the other hand…

“So good!” Tanya gushed as she ate the chocolate cake donut. A few months ago, the Justice League founders were talking about trivialities, and the more well-traveled of the group started talking about their favorite foods from around the world. Naturally, Clark had strong opinions horribly biased by nostalgia about certain things from ‘back home, in Smallville’. “It’s like a brownie but fluffier!”

The donuts made by the wife of the gas station’s proprietor was top of the list, and it did not disappoint. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.” Richard agreed like it was being pried out of his mouth, his teenage brain having ratcheted back to ‘tsun-tsun’ mode. 

“Well thank you!” The woman behind the counter said happily, clearly pleased at the compliments. “What brings two kids out here to Smallville? Do you need directions? I know those fancy GPSes don’t like our little community much.”

Richard looked away, lost in thought. “Actually, how long would it take for Bruce to deploy a drone to map this place?” He asked. 

Tanya considered the question. Naturally, WayneTech is a world leader in any technology that helps him with his vigilante activities, so flying surveillance drones that use advanced cameras and sensors to create usable map files are what backs WayneTech’s amazing navigational programs. “The town itself’s only a couple square miles without a lot of detail, so… call it twenty minutes for a basic workup with roads and clearly labeled buildings after the drone’s deployed? Most of that’s going to be the time it takes to physically fly over everything, and electronic records are spotty, so you’d need to manually label the properties that don’t have big signs and draw property lines. Verifying everything would take weeks.” After a moment, she thought through the logical loadouts. “This far away from Gotham, though? It’d be faster to use one of the satellites.”

The aged woman giggled. “Oh, kids these days. I can tell you two how to get anywhere around here, dears.”

Right. Tanya curtseyed to the woman. “Thank you, Miss. I’m here to visit my friend, Kara. Can you direct us to the Kent farm?” 

“Kara?” The woman asked, surprised. “Well, she did just come back from that fancy school in Metropolis, last I heard…” She took another look over Tanya and Richard’s expensive clothes and glanced out at the even more expensive car at the gas pump. “Guess it’s fancier than I thought it was.” 

“‘Course it’s fancy, Leanne.” The old man who had pumped the gas said as he walked back in. He had taken one look at the New Jersey license plate and immediately insisted on pumping the gas for them, assuming they had never done so before. Which, given that Richard had absolutely spilled half a gallon of gas on himself a few days ago, ruining his favorite set of leather pants before she magically fixed it… fair. “Kara’s one of them geniuses.”

Kara did actually attend a highly placed STEM program at the University of Metropolis, one created by Lex Luthor himself to create scientists and engineers that could, charitably, “usher in the world of tomorrow”, although he’s more privately referred to them as “children who can at least attempt to keep up with me”. Normally the program had quite high tuition, waived in return for a work contract with LexCorp… but the Justice League also had a scholarship program for xenotechnology majors, which Kara is, and Clark was persuaded to not object as long as Kara earned the spot fairly. 

Leanne took another look at Tanya. “Wait a minute, aren’t you a little young to be going to college?” She asked. 

“I’m the one going to college early.” Richard corrected, “But our dad knows Clark, and Tanya kind of hit it off with her, got an invitation, yadda yadda.” 

“Now, about those directions?” Tanya asked, trying to move things back on topic. 

“Now, you’ll want to go down the way,” The old man said, gesturing in the appropriate direction. “You’ll want to turn left at the Longhorn Barbeque, it’s got a statue of a bull, can’t miss it.”

“That statue got destroyed, Bob.” Leanna interjected, “They sold the place anyhow, it’s been the Smallville Smokehouse for seven years.”

“Ah, right.” Bob said, clearly remembering it. “Those fellers running it drove it into the ground on day one.”

“They did not!” Leanne protested, “All they did was clean the smokers.”

“Which ruined the flavor!” Bob insisted. “They might as well have replaced them.”

“The health department insisted, Bob.” Leanne said, clearly an often repeated argument. “Take it up with them.”

“Damn government.” Bob said, before remembering what was happening. “The Kents, right. So you turn left at where the Longhorn used to be, then you go right at the football field. This time of day they’ll be practising, my grandson’s the quarterback, fastest boy you ever did see.”

Tanya resisted the urge to sigh. After a rather meandering set of directions, Tanya selected even more donuts, Richard paid for gas and the refreshments, and they started driving. 

After about twenty more minutes, they were finally approaching the Kent farm, and were met with a very surprising greeter before they could even stop. 

“Hahaha! This is great!” Tanya said as the white dog licked her face after having leapt into the car. The car that had been going at forty miles an hour. Pizza irritably was batting at the wagging tail, and losing the fight. 

“Krypto!” Kara said, flying up to them with a concerned look. Richard didn’t even slow down until he was within an unreasonably short distance to the beat up truck, but as usual his daredevil driving worked perfectly. “Well… welcome!” Kara said, now that the excitement was over with. Krypto barked and was floating around. 

“When did you get a dog?”