Devil's consultancy 32

Of all of the Justice League, the Flash’s powers had fascinated Tanya the most. Sure, Superman’s everything was interesting to contemplate, but the effect of it basically just made him an aerial mage, so there wasn’t much to imagine about it; she could simply use her considerable magical power to emulate his super-everything and can gain a reasonable facsimile of what it’s like to be him. 

The Flash, though? He was empowered by one of the many magical realms that overlapped this universe in varying levels of euclidean correspondence. In her research, she heard it referred to as ‘Infinity’, ‘The White’, ‘The Wind’, ‘Hermes’ domain’, ‘Inside the Lightning’, ‘Lei Gong and Dianmu having hot monkey sex’, ‘The Bolt', and many other stranger appellations, but the Green Lantern’s database referred to it as ‘The Speed Force’, and Wally likes that one the best. Given that magical attempts to restrain it seems to work best with that name, it was either the most accurate or most popular, but that was an academic distinction that she wasn’t interested in fighting about. 

Fundamentally, wielding the Speed Force allowed you to accelerate your frame of reference via time. In theory, this meant that Wally perceived his dash alongside Richard’s car as if he was running at normal speed, and the car was just slow. Every word exchanged and gesture emoted would be similarly glacial. 

Not so! Much like an aerial mage using a mental acceleration formula to make precise adjustments to their flight formula, his physical acceleration and his mental acceleration did not have to be at the same rate. Therefore, he could move his body fast enough to keep pace with the car, which was now traveling at a leisurely thirty miles per hour as Wally directed them to the street with the skate park, which was more of a roller rink, as it was indoors. But it was called a skate park, which was the kind of irritating inaccuracy that either doomed a business or cemented it as a treasured local fixture that outsiders could not understand. This apparently was the latter. 

Anyway, despite his body keeping pace with the vehicle, his mind was operating at more or less a normal pace. Tanya knew from experience that you could practice and adjust to operating at twice the speed as a normal person without any outward sign of it, and Wally’s had enough time to play around with his powers that he might be able to double that again, but to all appearances he was chatting at a normal pace while walking at thirty miles an hour. 

“So that’s the old skate park, it was actually more of a nightclub, I guess? My parents met there.” Wally chattered as they drove, but paused. “You hear that?”

Richard stopped the car and they listened. There was a child screaming for help; kind of odd, but Tanya couldn’t quite put her finger on what felt off. 

The car was parked immediately, and Wally ran off to save the child. Presumably, this would take a few seconds to calm her down if she was not in immediate danger, so Tanya took the chance to take out some tiny roller skates for Pizza. Fully functional, of course; you didn’t need to be a billionaire to afford bespoke clothing for all of one’s dolls, animate and otherwise, but it sure helped. Particularly because there is one gossip website that is obsessed with finding and publishing evidence of rich people spending way too much money on silly luxuries, and it did a lot of good for her childish image to spend large amounts on such trivialities. 

Within the minute, the ‘old skate park’ suddenly engaged metallic shutters, which led Richard to give Tanya a look. “Suit up?” He asked. 

Hmmm… Tanya took out a silver coin. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou. Danger lurks while we lay low, in five minutes more what will we know?” She flipped the coin, and magic sparked as she divined the result of this decision. It wasn’t a particularly reliable trick, but with specially prepared coins dedicated to a specific binary dynamic, she could pretty consistently spy small distances into the future. 

The coin fell into her open palm with the Wayne Enterprises symbol. The other side had the Silver Wings Assault symbol on it. This coin was one of seven; it was attuned specifically to the branching paths of the future related to whether or not she revealed her demon form. “Wait.” She said firmly. 

True to her divination, Wally phased out of the building, annoyed but hale and hearty. “I don’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved that Mirror Master didn’t even bother to take a real hostage.”

“Relieved.” Richard said immediately, “But I know the feeling. Penny Pincher pulls the fake hostage trick all the time.” 

“I’m sure we can find it on our own, go chase him.” Tanya instructed. 

“He used remote stuff for everything, I got nothing.” Wally said, giving an annoyed look to the sealed building. 

Oh? “Then, Mr. Flash, it’s quite fortunate that you’ve come across a genuine witch. Give me something wrought from Mirror Master’s genius and I will find you its maker.” Tanya said, affecting her new-ish ‘haughty’ persona. 

Flash blinked in surprise, but dashed away into the still-sealed building and brought out a half-broken disco ball. “Will this do?” He asked. 

Tanya dug through her purse full of magical catalysts and took out something made out of concentrated Metal energy; it was the technological counterpart to The Green, and it would be the best choice for this kind of spell. “Rhine, Berechnung, Mahou.” Tanya incanted, gathering power. “Strip away the weapon’s disguise, mirrors will become my eyes. The maker’s mind is my prize, show me through his web of lies.” The mirrors of the disco ball floated away from the compact laser weapon, the batteries thoroughly drained through the seconds of operation, and gathered into a clear pane that showed her a bird’s eye view of Central City. It zoomed into a specific building, some kind of bar. 

“Hey, I know that place!” Wally said, “It’s on 4th street, they go drinking there all the time. If I’d have gone looking I’d have checked there first.”

“He’s at his usual haunt?” Richard asked incredulously. “Smells like a trap.”

“Nah, that doesn’t sound like-” Wally paused. “Actually, that does sound like something Mirror Master would do. I just don’t think Brenda’d allow it.”

Richard nodded seriously. “Villain bars are serious business. They don’t bring plots there lightly.”

Tanya guided the image to look within the bar, and it seemed to be open for business. Mirror Master was talking angrily on the phone with someone. “This image through the looking glass, shows us only things with mass.” Tanya intoned, and the picture shifted; the visible Mirror Master was a mass-less hologram, while the real one was hiding underneath a table surrounded by a hologram of an empty space. He was holding some kind of laser rifle. 

Wally hummed, impressed. “Oh wow, if I don’t show up, he’ll just stay there until…” He pauses, “I mean, I’m getting the key to the city in a few hours, so maybe he’ll try something else then?”

“No one knows how hilarious it is to screw with villains by not capturing them more than us.” Richard said, “But you should probably just give the asshole a sucker punch and drag him into lockup.”

He may have been wearing a mask, but the expression on Wally’s face did a good job of conveying how uncomfortable he was with the idea of doing that. “I guess it is Flash Appreciation Day, and he did try to ruin it…” He sighed. “Back in a Flash…” He said unenthusiastically before running off. Within seconds, Wally was on the scrying mirror, dragged a now-unconscious Mirror Master out from the table he was hiding under, and the image shattered as the target of the scry moved far too fast for the spell to keep up with, which should have broken several bones but due to the magic of the Speed Force, Wally could take a passenger that he could physically lift without worry, and Wally was not a weak man, so in practice he could carry all but the heaviest members of the population. 

Tanya probably could have re-established the scry, but she decided to conserve her catalyst and let it end, telekinetically shoving the shards of mirror into each other and melting them into a glass sphere, which she tossed into her pocket dimension. She had zero plans on what to do with it, but you never knew when scrap glass could come in handy. She examined the tip of her Metal wand, in specific the carefully constructed tungsten wire sculpture of intricately arcane design. It seemed to be undamaged, which was good; she paid good money to get one that could withstand her going all out; a moderately advanced tracking spell damaging it would mean she was deceived as to the level of function she could expect from her tools. 

Wally rushed back to them right as she finished her inspection and returned the wand to her purse. “Okay, that’s handled. Now, the skate park is just down the road here. You’re going to love it.”

The indoor skate park was about as impressive as Tanya expected from Wally’s description: there was a flat, round section for more sedate skating, there was a section with ramps and bowls for skateboard tricks, and there was an ice rink that was currently set up for hockey. As it was summertime, the place was packed with older children, with few parents in sight. 

Naturally, such a crowd was ecstatic to see The Flash, and Wally parted ways with them to say hello to everyone, sign some autographs, and overall prevent people from asking too many questions why The Flash was being extra friendly with these random rich kids.

Still, a few routines on the ice was a good way to spend the hours until the next Flash Appreciation Day event. It wasn’t like they hated figure skating, after all. It’ll earn them points with Alfred. 

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

The Flash’s key to the city ceremony was fairly low-key, pun intended. It was in front of an office building, with a small crowd of no more than a hundred people. Camera crews were sure to catch it, but after the presentation of the award by the Mayor, she stepped aside and let Wally say a few words thanking everyone… and it was over. 

Despite how modest the event was, Wally seemed pleased enough at the award… until he was assaulted by tiny bomb drones that were shaped like boomerangs, followed by a much larger jet-propelled boomerang-shaped drone that caught the speedster and flew off. 

As usual for fights involving the Fastest Man Alive, it was over before anyone else could so much as tie their shoes, much less change into vigilante uniforms. Unfortunately for the criminals, Captain Boomerang was just as easily tracked with magic as Mirror Master was, and was captured with similar ease. As it turned out, when The Flash was the one with the element of surprise, there wasn’t much the Australian bomber could do about it. 

“Man, is this why Bats is so on top of things?” Wally asked between sips from a very large soda. They had reconvened in Wally’s apartment and had started playing video games as they waited for the Flash Museum opening. “No need to do detective work, just ring you up and get you to point out where they’re hiding?” Tanya had already played this cooperative puzzle game with Richard, so she was largely following Wally’s lead. 

“I wasn’t always this good at it.” Tanya admitted, “Back when I was still new to the more freeform magic of this universe, I could only muster compass tracking with direct biological samples. I had to sit in the car with a dowsing pendant whenever the trail went cold and I offered my assistance.” Back then, Bruce was still less than five years into the whole ‘Batman’ thing, so he tended to take it personally whenever he lost track of a criminal he was chasing. She didn’t really sleep through the entire night most of the time back then either, so him being around when she was having a midnight snack was evidence enough that he could use assistance, most of the time. “I’ve gotten lots of practice since then.”

“Bruce says that relying on magic will create unacceptable blind spots.” Richard said, “Also, it’s harder to get a trail of evidence that way, so he avoids calling on Tanya to help with his work.” He was playing around with his new throwing weapons, getting used to the subtly different balance in comparison to the bat-themed shuriken he had spent so long using. 

“Which I appreciate.” Tanya said easily, “I’m not Batman, obsessed with his mission to save Gotham one beaten up criminal at a time. I help out at times, but only to ensure that he doesn’t get himself killed.” Truth was, there was very little need for her intervention, she helped him patrol the streets of Gotham maybe one night in twenty. “At least my dear brother’s making an actual career of it.”

Wally looked confused. “Wait, what?” His little robot fell off a cliff into a hazard, getting destroyed in a cartoonishly thorough manner. 

“I know Central City’s tried to talk to you about setting up a Titans initiative branch.” Tanya deadpanned. 

“Oh, that.” Wally said, waving off the idea. “I love this city, but I don’t wanna be tied down when stuff goes down, you know? Besides, there’s more than one way to catch criminals.” He finally seemed to figure out the solution, placing his portals in the right spots to allow them to finish the level. 

Tanya nodded approvingly. “Forensics is very important work, I agree.” Wally startled. “Batman knew who you were before the League formed, don’t be dramatic.”

“...I guess that makes sense.” Wally paused. “Actually, do you know who everyone in the League is?” He asked.

“Yes, actually.” Tanya said, “It's an internal policy to not admit members unless we know who they are. It’s not a very well known policy, but only because we don’t ask people who they are, we just go and find out.” Feeling that this level would take a while, Tanya decided to get an infinite fall setup to goof off while Wally figured things out. 

Wally took a minute to digest that information. “...You know, I feel like I should get mad, but that makes way too much sense. I can’t imagine Bats trusting anyone who he couldn’t dig up dirt on.”

“It’s mostly so we can screen for infiltrators.” Tanya said vaguely, “As you can imagine, there are plenty of villains that would love access to the alien technology on the Watchtower.” For emphasis, she tossed another portal in the video game and let her accumulated terminal velocity launch her directly to a place where a button was, and pushed it. 

“Hey, that opened it!” Wally said, walking through the door. “So what do you do if you can’t find anything?”

“I ask them straight out.” Tanya replied, “Pretend it’s just a requirement that everyone has to do. Assure them of privacy protection, etcetera.”

“Anyone refuse?” Wally asked. 

“Yes, actually.” Tanya said, frowning. “Just a few weeks ago there was this one man, a total ghost. Have you ever heard of Captain Marvel?”

Wally took a moment to think. “...Yeah, Fawcett City?” He asked, “Superman knockoff?”

“Got it in one.” Tanya confirmed, “He doesn’t exist. What I have managed to dig up is that his appearance is a magical transformation, much like my own. Furthermore, while he doesn’t seem to be much of a practitioner, whatever or whoever is empowering him has a lot of magical mass backing him; I got the impression that he’s using mythical magic, drawing on collective belief to shape his magic so he doesn’t have to, and probably drawing power from some ley line intersection or other magical wellspring slash confluence.”

“What makes you say that?” Wally asked, checking the time compulsively before once more getting his virtual robot destroyed. 

“I may be biased; it’s the same rough magical structure I use to empower Bruce to augment his work as Batman. The difference is that I’m working off of and building power around the myth of the Batman, while Captain Marvel isn’t obviously aping any particular myth, so what he’s doing is a little different.” Tanya sighed; “From the conversation I did have, he knows basically nothing about magic. He let slip, barely, that he had a backer that handled that stuff, so he’s the catspaw of another practitioner. I tried to probe further, assess the motivations, and he shut down that line of inquiry, seeing through my ploy and insisting that he was there alone, and that I had read into nothing.” Tanya huffed. “He did ever so slightly wince when I was listing off the fact that there are actual requirements that he needed to pass, like being over 18 and being either a citizen of Earth or undergoing a strict background check with the Green Lanterns.” Which was their best attempt at forestalling another Thanagar without being too restrictive on hypothetical asylum seekers. “So he may have been trying to get in while being a dimensional immigrant, which would explain his total absence from databases.”

“We’d have helped him out if it was that, though.” Wally pointed out. 

Tanya huffed. “Apparently, he got a bit too spooked about his privacy and retreated. I left him a message through the usual channels,” see: requesting that the Fawcett City police department to pass on the message, “-in an attempt to get him to come back on board, implying that I was in a similar boat to him, but his reply was simply: But you’re not a member either, and I don’t have anything to respond to that.”

“Wait…” Wally said, “Is the reason you’re not a member because you’re really ten years old?”

“No.” Tanya said, “I have adult bodies, one of which has legal paperwork indicating a number below my total age, and I’d be using that one if I ever did become a Justice League member.”

Richard chuckled. “No, Bruce told me that he’d stop you from signing up if you tried before you’re 18.” It did not take a lot of imagination to figure out how this topic had come up. “It’d be unfair to all the sidekicks if they budged on that, and seeing as how all the founders know your real age...” He trailed off. 

Tanya sighed. “Okay, I guess my age is why I’m not a member of the Justice League.” She had the bizarre mental image of getting her identity revealed in the early days of the League. Given how many teasing jokes Diana has made on the subject of her previous act, she felt safe in declaring that there absolutely would have been a room in the original Justice League base designated for her nap times, with the only question being whether they’d put in a mat like a daycare or an actual crib. She had gotten a lot more used to the magical environment outside of Gotham, so she didn’t get nearly as fatigued from being outside of the hell-like city in demon form as she used to, which was also another reason that she started using her teenage form with a costume instead of her demon form when managing League bureaucracy, but back then… 

“I think I’ll have a talk with him.” Wally decided, “Keep an ear out for incidents he’s involved in and run over, have a few words.”

“I’m genuinely concerned about that mysterious practitioner that’s handling his magical enhancements.” Tanya admitted, “Explain to him the bigger picture, try and get a meeting with his partner so we can get on the same page.”

“What if I can’t?” Wally asked, perking up as he figured out the puzzle and executed it, Tanya silently cooperating to finish the level. 

“I suppose I could find an open day in my schedule and fly around Fawcett to see if I can find any wellsprings of magical energy that he’s tapping into.” Tanya said idly, “Sivana Industries’ opening of a rival to ArcWayne complicates me using those resources to survey the area, unfortunately.” SivMana was one of the only ones that seems to have someone with enough magical talent and knowledge to actually get anywhere with magic; from her corporate investigators, rumor has it that Sivana had secured a substantial cache of Egyptian magical lore, but the information was tightly locked down; Tanya couldn’t even contact the Archeologists involved, because both Dr. Batsons were mysteriously killed shortly after their discovery. It stank, but she never brought it to Bruce’s attention; he had enough on his plate with Gotham and the Justice League to go investigate random murders halfway across the country. 

The fact that there was a non-zero chance that such an event would lead to their orphaned son, Billy Batson, being adopted by Bruce, was only further incentive against digging up old graves. Fawcett City was another place they would have passed through if they had taken the direct route, it was in Pennsylvania, one of the outlying cities of Pittsburg that haven’t quite yet been enveloped by urban sprawl. It would not take very long to get there and start looking on her own time. 

Ah, but maybe she was just being paranoid. After all, Bruce hasn’t exactly made a habit of adopting black-haired, blue-eyed orphans after the first, even if he did almost adopt that other one. What were the odds he’d do so again? 

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

The opening of the Flash Museum went well; Tanya manifested a puppet copy of Rhine and stayed largely quiet in her real body, hugging Pizza tight and focusing on not looking too stoned as most of her brainpower was used directing the demon projection. 

Yes, two more of Flash’s regular enemies tried to crash the party, Captain Cold and the Trickster working together to “Kill The Flash” or some nonsense like that, but while unexpected surprises, patches of slippery ice, and the erection of barriers are quite effective weapons against Wally… Tanya’s dealt with Mr. Freeze and The Joker before, and while The Trickster had an eerily similar voice, he was no Joker. One spell to melt all ice in the area and another to transform Trickster’s suit into a straightjacket, and the fight was over quickly. 

The actual museum was also pretty cool; the Justice League section even had a picture that was taken from that silly rocket launch, one of the rare times Rhine could be seen wearing clothes. 

But a day spent on Flash Appreciation, while well-earned, could only be that much; after another night in the city’s nicest hotel (which was minimally acceptable; Central City wasn’t exactly a place where big spenders congregated) they were on the road again, this time to check out the other reason they sought to swing a bit further south than the straight shot: 

What the heck is going on with that Gotham magical runoff, and would it really make everyone nice?