Devil's consultancy 51

Gotham’s crime rate has spiked again. Normally not really notable, but this spike was unusual: it wasn’t provoked by any of the known rabble rousers, and all of Batman’s criminal contacts seem to either know nothing… or have gone to ground, unreachable. There was just… a surge in the confidence and competence of the common criminal. It was weird. 

“Perhaps it’s time for Matches Malone to return…” Bruce mused as he looked at the data on the Batcomputer, annotated with a lot more question marks than was usual even for weeks where Nygma decided to stir the pot. 

Tanya was currently getting in more exercise hours, doing a little gymnastics on Richard’s equipment. With how rapidly she was growing, it took a lot more practice to make sure she retained the acrobatic skills she spent so much time honing already, it would be tragic to lose that. “Absolutely not.” She said, using her veto, acquired by the power of controlling the magic that gives him so many extra hours in the week. “You are not a cop, you’re literally just committing minor crimes in the hopes that it will eventually lead to a major crime being stopped.” One of the side-effects of Bruce having children to take care of is that he had to cut the time he spent doing that from somewhere, and one of the casualties of that reorientation of his schedule was that he had to stop occasionally pretending to be a low level gangster that was technically still wanted for serial arson: Bruce did burn down one building he owned (which was insurance/tax fraud, so still a crime) for the initial charge, but Malone is the top suspect for some unsolved arsons since then. “We have other avenues.”

“We do?” Bruce asked, raising an eyebrow. “What?”

“The Question… is who?” Said a droll voice, every syllable measured precisely. The Question walked out from behind the giant penny, briskly walking towards Bruce. “I finally get to see the fabled Batcave. I expected less souvenirs, I’ll admit.”

Bruce was not currently wearing his cowl, so his expression of amusement was clearly visible. “Nice to meet you, Vic.” He said, casually dropping the real name of Vic Sage, also known as The Question. His expression hardened as Bruce slipped back into The Batman’s mindset. “Report. What have you found?” He growled. 

“It all began thousands of years ago.” The Question started, “Or, at least, that’s what they want you to think.”

“Who is ‘they’, in this context?” Batman interrupted. 

“The authors-” The Question replied, “-of the Crime Bible.”

Batman stared blankly. “The what.”

“It all began-” The Question reiterated, continuing his original briefing. “-thousands of years ago, when The First took a rock to the back of his brother’s head. Since that time, the Dark Faith has flourished by recording the tales and lessons taught throughout history, each author becoming divinely inspired to write the next book.”

Ugh. The only thing worse than Being X’s nonsense is removing all possible idealism and benevolence that the faith of madmen could produce. Kind of like how one of the only things worse than the authoritarian despotism that has always been communism’s bitter fruit is the authoritarian despotism of fascists, as the despotism is the explicit goal instead of just the inevitable result.

“So there’s a source of institutional knowledge about being an effective criminal going around?” Tanya asked, “Far be it from me to discount the value of such things, but that doesn’t seem like enough.”

“Intergang is the current face of the Dark Faith.” The Question explained. Intergang was an international criminal syndicate, whose name was in direct opposition to Interpol, that’s been around since the late 1940s. “Or, perhaps… the only face.” The Question continued, “There’s… some evidence that suggests that the National Crime Syndicate was the face before that, with the Sicilians before them, but it’s suspicious. Inconsistencies, eerie consistencies, odd obscurities, odder clarities. Was it fabricated? Or is someone trying to hide something deeper with this smokescreen?” The Question paused, musing on the matter. 

Bruce hummed. “Ra’s Al-Ghul might be able to lend some insight.” He said, thinking out loud. “Or Vandal Savage.” He snorted. “Not that we could trust either to be honest to direct questioning.” True. It would be completely in character for both of them to lead whoever asked them anything on a wild goose chase for their own amusement. 

Tanya flipped off of the bar she was using for her exercise and struck a pose. Finished for now, she grabbed a hot chocolate from Alfred, who was silently setting a tea service. She sat down and sipped at the mug, sighing in satisfaction. “Still, religious nonsense aside,” Tanya said, as she was passingly familiar with how difficult it was to keep Question focused, “Intergang making a major move into Gotham would explain some of the patterns we’ve been seeing, although the fact that we didn’t already know that is telling on their level of commitment to this push.” She actually didn’t know whether this was a sign of them committing serious resources or only spare ones they can afford to lose, but saying that made her sound more insightful on the matter than she was. 

“It would explain the odd gang conflicts.” Bruce acknowledged. 

“I took a walk before I came here.” The Question said, his non sequitur hopefully relevant this time. “The religion of crime tends to follow certain patterns distinct to them, a mark as clear as any fingerprint.” The Question accepted a teacup, already laden with sugar, from Alfred and put four additional sugar cubes in it, stirring. “Each mugging an act of devotion, vandalism as prayer. The references are easily mistaken for bible verses, but only those who possess a true Crime Bible can decrypt their messages.” He drank deeply of his tea-laced sugar water, his blank face mask being much more porous than it initially appeared. 

“Do you have one?” Tanya asked, sipping at her hot chocolate. It wasn’t quite bedtime, but it was close enough that she wasn’t going to drink coffee. 

“No.” The Question growled. “They guard their secrets jealously. Multiple times, I’ve gotten one, and had it destroyed by an Intergang agent before I could move it to a secure location. They have trackers, subtle ones. It could be that it is composed of matter that has a color at a wavelength that we can no longer perceive, as our eyes have been tainted by the secret compounds in America’s drinking water.”

“Or they could be using magic, or alien technology.” Bruce offered alternative explanations that weren’t stupid. 

“Perhaps.” The Question acknowledged. He placed his empty tea cup back down, and subtly nodded when Alfred lifted the teapot, prompting the butler to pour him another cup, with eight sugars. 

Tanya finished her hot chocolate, eating the large marshmallow last. “Do you have any remains?” She asked after she finished. 

The Question nodded as he added even more sugar to his tea. Alfred’s eyebrow twitched minutely. He took a sip of his twelve sugar monstrosity, giving a pleased hum, before reaching into his trenchcoat and pulling out an evidence bag filled with some ashes, a strip of not completely destroyed leather poking out of the pile. 

Bruce stood up, pulled up his cowl over his face, and took the bag, taking it thirty feet to the cave’s forensics equipment, beginning his assessment. “What tests have you performed?” He asked, beginning by placing the material on a scale. 

“The equipment you gave me has been destroyed, my safehouse was compromised and destroyed by an Intergang bomb last week.” The Question replied, “So my means were limited.” He brought out five other evidence bags. “On that topic…”

“After this.” Bruce promised, analyzing the sample. “I don’t have any more safehouses in Hub City, have you gotten a new one?”

“I’ll manage.” The Question said, sipping at his cup of wet sugar again. 

A professional camaraderie emerged between the two detectives as they worked to analyze the various samples. The Question apprised Bruce of the cases they were for, his theories, both mundane and extraordinary, that the evidence inspection would shed light on. 

Meanwhile, Tanya went upstairs and changed clothes for bed, before coming back down for her part. She had outgrown all of her childish pajamas, unfortunately, so she instead replaced them with some ordinary silk pajamas that had designs celebrating her favored anime. This one was designed around her newest favorite: It was about tanks. 

“If you will, Tanya.” Bruce said, presenting the first sample. 

“Pig leather.” The Question said, not even looking up from the spectrometer that he was running a vial of mysterious clear liquid through. “The pages are standard bleached paper, this was a copy printed with modern technology. Interesting that they didn’t use pleather…”

“Plastic is one of the worst things you can use in magical anything.” Tanya offered, taking her time in placing the ashes and scrap of leather on a floating magic circle on her spell desk. 

Tanya’s spell desk, which was more of a large lab table like the forensics station, was the product of years of iteration and refinement: It had a two-layered top, the bottom layer being structural while the layer above was composed of modular panels that held spell circles, stands, the occasional fixture like a small faucet or burner that needed to be hooked up to tanks, everything one needed to construct an ideal ritual environment that could be changed out as needed. Even the floor around and under the table could be removed and replaced with tiles that allowed for specific effects. 

With a gesture, the ring of tiles isolating the magical environment were removed, collecting in a stack. One of the walls of the Batcave opened up into a gigantic cabinet, and the stack of tiles slid neatly into an empty cubby. With another gesture, a different, larger, cubby of tiles slid out and, with the central circle of the floor underneath the spell desk receding, the floor was replaced with the new tiles, a full circle for this function was necessary instead of a ring. 

More gestures swapped out the tiles on the top of the spell desk for another set, and then the floating disk she placed the ashes on winked out of existence, yet more gestures guiding the ashes to settle inside the grooves of the centerpiece of this particular spell. 

“Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou.” Tanya incanted, the ashes glowing as the leather scrap floated off of the magic circle. The light spread to fill every etched mark on the spell desk. “Though they may try to hide, futile efforts shan’t slow our stride, no matter the camouflage they’ve tried, show me the one who’s burned their pride!” Tanya shouted. The outer ring of the circle on the floor flashed with light, the magic spreading inwards through the ritual circle on the floor. Once it finished, the two circles synchronized, and Tanya’s awareness was shoved into the past. 

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

Hub city, Illinois. A little to the east of St. Louis, it was one of the competitors in the contest for ‘most crime-ridden hellhole (per capita) in America’, competing with Gotham, Bludhaven, and Detroit. There’s probably others, but she was too busy having visions to do demographic research right now.  

In the vision, Hub City was being painted with the blood of the innocent by men in robes. An alien language was written, an address on a galactic scale. The moon, an alien grey and cracked face rather than the white craters of Earth’s, opened a pair of red eyes, looking right at her, and with that gaze came a great weight, as if her spell was being witnessed by an entire planet. No, multiple planets. It reminded her of the gaze of Being X, when he was at his most wrathful, but even this made that weight pale in comparison. 

The full moon waned, showing its dark side. The gaze was turning away, disinterested. She was unworthy of his attention, Tanya suddenly understood. Still, she rallied, intuitively adjusting her spell to be subtler, to slip underneath the magical defense that this powerful entity has cast upon the Crime Bible. Was this… Cain? 

Questions for later. She witnessed the device that destroyed the copy of the Crime Bible that she was scrying, just a second after The Question threw it away from him, sensing the explosive right before it blew. Hm, she should offer him some healing magic… she could feel an echo of familiarity to that piece of shrapnel that penetrated Vic’s abdomen there; she had been in that metal’s proximity before casting this spell. 

Still, she directed the spell to peer further into the past, hopefully seeing something useful. The Question acquired the Crime Bible fairly violently, invading a burglar’s apartment and brutally taking down the criminal, breaking several bones, before he could get his wits about him. But before then, the man was reading the intact book. 

“Behold, the vile person will speak villainy, and His heart will work iniquity, to practise the four, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and cause the drink of the thirsty to fail, and for this shall he be most praised.” The man said, reciting the passage he was reading. “In devotion shall come one with fists like unto stone, who strips flesh from bone, and who leadeth them of His kind that also serve the First, bow before him, and following in all things the high madame of His teachings.”

The spell couldn’t focus more on his specific words, blurring as it moved on to the next relevant detail. The burglar received the book from another man, whose face Tanya memorized. That man, in turn, printed the books from a printing machine that Tanya immediately knew was not from this world; it had too many embellishments and the metal appeared to be a space alloy that was usually used for interstellar craft’s internals, an earth-made machine would use thin steel instead. 

As the spell faded, Tanya got another view of the moon-face, a pair of red lasers shooting out from the eyes and making illogically jagged turns as it fired and homed in on… something. Whatever that entity is, he’s busy. 

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

“Restrain Question, bring him to the operating table.” Were Tanya’s first words after her scrying spell completed. Alfred and Bruce immediately seized the man and, despite his struggling, got him strapped to the table in question in short order. As they did so, she double-checked her previous spell’s findings with a new spell… yes, he did have a sharp piece of metal in his gut. Five of them, actually. Plus at least four bullets that have been in his body for longer periods. “You know, you’re a member in good standing.” Tanya reminded the detective. “You could have gotten a medical screening, free of charge. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“You sound like Huntress.” Was his petulant response. “I have work.” He insisted. 

“Ah, memories.” Alfred said as he removed The Question’s shoes. “Master Bruce was just like this before he learned better.” He used a set of enchanted shears (a custom order Tanya made for him three Christmases ago) to cut away the man’s clothes. The pieces were placed in a pile, and once he was done, leaving the man in just his pants, socks, and mask, he picked up the coat, magically back in one piece, and placed it on a nearby rack. “Will we be needing this for its original purpose?” Alfred asked. 

Tanya shook her head. “No, I can get this without needing to spool out his intestines.” Magic was useful like that. “I don’t suppose you’d want some painkillers for this? We have frankly illegal quantities of ketamine and propofol, and Alfred’s fully trained in their use.“ The Question shook his head emphatically no. “We have some fentanyl if you’d like to be half-conscious as I’m ripping metal out of your body?” Another shake. The Question’s faceless glare dared her to operate without painkillers. He clearly didn’t know her very well… “Then he’ll need a bite bar for this. Alfred?”

“Right away, Miss.” The Question’s mask was removed, the aforementioned bar was shoved in his mouth, and additional straps minimized his struggles. 

One of the things magical healing had in common with modern medicine was that dealing with old injuries was a completely different beast compared to more recent trauma. The scale was a bit different, true, but after an injury healed and scarred without magic, the vast majority of magical healing simply failed outright to bring it back to proper order. 

Fortunately, demonic torture-healing spells were not one of them. Bruce learned pretty quickly that… Well, this was what would happen if he dared to hide injuries from her for too long. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou.” Tanya incanted, using the type 66 to scan for the metal and then cutting each piece out, the injuries healing immediately as she removed her mage blade coated hands that were holding the metal sliver. Within twenty minutes of screaming, he was clean, and Tanya dosed him with some magic using her wand attuned to The Red to shove the pain into the back of his mind now that the actual damage was restored, returning his focus to the matter at hand. “Done. Now, I’m overdue for bed, so while you’re getting dressed, I’ll go straight to the debriefing.”

“Efficient.” The Question complimented as he re-affixed his mask. “Best doctors I’ve ever been to.”

“You need to raise your standards.” Tanya deadpanned before going into the explanation of what she found. 

After her debriefing was done, both of them looked disturbed. “Alien technology used to print books? Troubling.”

“How literal is your vision?” The Question asked. 

Tanya waved a hand vaguely. “It varies. The moon-face entity looked important, it was the start and end of the vision, and that usually means it’s relevant.”

“The alpha, and the omega…” He seemed to be reading into that a bit more than needed. “Revelations. Perhaps this is the god that the Dark Faith worships? The First?”

“We’ll need to keep that in mind, but we should see if the alien printing machine is still there. I hate to leave Gotham when it’s like this, but…”

“I’ll go alone.” The Question insisted. 

“Take backup.” Batman countered, his words a clear order, “Someone strong, and preferably mystical. I’ll assign someone if you don’t pick before you leave.”

“Tch. I suppose Huntress wouldn’t be enough?” The Question asked. 

“Absolutely not.” Bruce went to the Bat Computer and sent a message over the Justice League’s internal messaging program. “Hawkgirl will go with you, she’s comfortable playing backup to someone else’s investigation.” In theory, Shayera had investigation skills. In practice, she was happy just following the person doing most of the actual work while providing color commentary until it was time to hit something with her mace. 

Meanwhile, Tanya yawned as she walked back up to her room. She’s going to need her sleep if there’s going to be another alien invasion, and that was where her gut was saying this was going to go. Not that she seriously thought it would, but her mind does like going to the worst case scenario. 

Bruce is perfectly capable, it’ll be fine. 

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

“...Huh. Memphis? Weird.” Tanya murmured, putting her phone away. “No one ever talks about Memphis as a wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

“What’s that?” Bruce asked over the radio. 

“Nothing.” Tanya said, “Can I play now?” 

“Cameras are ready, the battlefield is cleared, the drones are in position.” Bruce confirmed, “You can play with your new toy now.”

Cackling, Tanya ducked into the interior. “Ace, Zatanna, Barbie? Raven? It’s time.” Clearing her throat, Tanya started speaking in Francois, although she simultaneously used magic to ensure she was understood regardless. “They may have trampled Pairsee, but these Third Reich fools will rue the day they trampled our spirits!” 

Ace grinned as she stomped on the pedal, sending the tank forward. “Viva la France!” She shouted, without even trying to say it in the right accent. 

One of the anime that may or may not have existed in her previous life, she certainly didn’t remember hearing about it, was about a world where tank battles were a traditionally feminine sport. 

Naturally, Tanya loved this idea. So, being a billionaire that needed to be seen wasting money on frivolous things for image purposes, she decided to get some WWII replica tanks made up and play around with them. 

This did bring up a problem: as any WWII buff would, Tanya wanted to play with the Tiger tank most of all. The issue with this was that it was a Nazi tank. The solution to address this problem was simple: the French Resistance made use of the tank, turning them against their creators, so a paintjob and some roleplaying, along with having the drones that were playing OpFor be panzers, and suddenly she got to run the overengineered tank, the best kind to play with, without any image concerns. 

“The enemy is right over that ridge!” Barbie, the radio operator, shouted. 

“I see them.” Tanya said, standing proud in the command position. The drones sprayed some machinegun fire, but none of the paintballs impacted her barrier. “Raven? Zatanna?”

“Main gun ready to fire.” Raven asserted. 

“I have them in my sights.” Zatanna added. 

“Fire!” Tanya said, and just like that, the Panzer was destroyed. They had live ammunition, only the drones got mockups. “Then, evasive maneuvers!”

“Right!” Ace shouted, spinning the steering wheel to take a rough turn before the other drones could finish swiveling their guns. 

The final accounting of the day was kept well within the fifty million dollar budget. The Tiger was three million, each of the forty drones, engaged no more than five at a time so that everyone got to have fun, was half a million, and all of the miscellaneous expenses, like the mannequins mocked up to look like the anime characters, the land, the restoration afterwards, etcetera, was less than ten million. 

Needless to say, a good time was had by all.