TOTALLY NOT DRUG TRAFFICKING

 28th January

13:12 GMT -5

"I am not answerable to human law. Unhand me!"

Officer Danvers stares for a moment at the blonde woman in the female Superman costume and then turns his head towards me. "You wanna explain to me what this is?"

"Your daughter's room mate."

He frowns, then shakes his head. "She didn't say anything about having a room mate."

"Sorry, I'm being poetic. They're literally sharing a body. Or.. something similar to that. Not entirely sure why or how, reversing it is one of the things we're going to be working on."

He blinks. "What?"

"She says that she's Noriel, the Fire of God. A presently-disempowered angel."

"Then why is she-?"

"Assuming that she's not just crazy, because on New Year's Day she tried to kill me. And earlier today she tried to kill a group of suspects, two of my colleagues, four or five of yours and me again. I rather hoped that the whole 'sky is on fire' thing had rather got people out of the 'angels equals good' mindset, but if it hasn't then I'm just going to have to ask you to do your job and take this suspect to the police station."

"If my daughter's in there-."

"She's uncooperative and loyal to the leader of the group probably producing the Devil Jizz, who is her boyfriend. We can't control the shift between the two individuals stuck in there, so I'd much rather leave it set to the one who is being helpful. Once Buzz is in custody, then, if we can't immediately undo the spell, we can sort out a timeshare."

He hesitates then nods, holding the rear door of his car open. "Ma'am?"

She shoots me a venomous look, but enters the car of her own free will. Officer Danvers closes the door behind her before getting into the driver's seat and pulling away.

I raise my left hand to my ear, taking a look at the knife Ms Danvers dropped. My rune stone shows that it's definitely enchanted, though I don't know what it's supposed to do beyond 'something demony'. "Orange Lantern to team. Linda Danvers is in custody. She appears to have been merged with another individual and they're alternating control of their shared body."

"You sure she's not just crazy, Oh El?" Richard sounds more amused than the situation really warrants. "Because that sounds a lot more likely."

"The transition is accompanied by a physical transformation."

"Rose Canton changed physically when she switched over to Thorn."

And produced observable magic effects which her alter ego couldn't. Was she just feeding me a line about being that angel? Was anyone actually watching that fight?

"True, and it's possible, but the individual in question claimed to be the one angel I stabbed with the Sword of the Fallen, and not a lot of people know about that. If exactly what's going on in her head really matters, we can investigate further. In any case, Noriel -that's the name the other individual gave for herself- informed me that Buzz performed the ritual which bound the two of them together. Tempest? Cornwall? Is that something we can track?"

"Ah… We could track her back to the ritual site. I do not know if I could track the individual who performed the ritual."

"Huh. I probably could. Fire magic's not that hard to track. I've actually got more experience with it than anyone else on the team."

"Aqualad, if you wouldn't mind detaching Cornwall Boy? We can make a start on hunting down Buzz."

"I agree. We have not yet encountered enough resistance to justify our presence."

"I'm not complaining." Roy sounds rather pleased with himself for some reason. "The fewer fights break out, the less collateral damage, right?"

"Or they could all be getting ready to ambush us." Beryl sounds just as cheerful, and I find myself smiling at her attitude. "We've only got evidence of one person using Devil Jizz to pick a fight. According to the police interviews, all the rest of them were just getting high off it."

I rise up into the air, looking around with empathic vision to find Robert. As I sight him I note that he's a lot happier with his place in life than he was when we first met. He really likes being on a superhero team.

"Drug addicts are not known for being honest." Leonid sounds less amused. "Is not the demon threat significant enough that we are allowed to use truth compulsion magic upon them?"

"Demons as a whole, yes. But we haven't actually seen any demons yet. Just people using magic. There are dozens of augmentation drugs that dwarf could have taken to murder that man. Heck, Rag Doll could have done it with a knife. It's not really special."

I hear Wallace exhale. "I'd vote for someone who wanted to make truth magic part of police interviews. Y'know, if I wasn't going to miss the election by five days."

"Cornwall Boy, I have your location." I put one zeta tube construct down next to him and another in the burned street. "Transport to a site where Noriel used her magic available."

"Going through it now."

Transit in progress.

"Huh, yeah. Shouldn't be too hard to follow this."

I dismiss the zeta tube constructs, then transition myself to his location. "Cornwall and I will track Buzz down. I'll let you know when we find him. Orange Lantern out."

Robert nods at me, eldritch sort-of-fire flowing from his hands. Then he rises into the air, supported only by his conjured winds as he heads to where Noriel bombarded us from. "Up here, right?"

"Quite correct."

"Appreciate you giving me the chance to do this, but… How come you didn't get Doctor Fate on it instead?"

"Our mission is to prevent the distribution of Devil Jizz. Not to fight Triskele."

"But we could, right?"

"No idea. I can tell you her history and some of her better recorded feats, but exactly what her limits are? Pass. Don’t know. I don't think any fight is hopeless- "

He raises his hands over his head and slowly turns to take in our surroundings.

"-but it isn't a fight we're really geared up for, so I'd rather leave it for Doctor Fate and Angelica."

Or Mammon. I didn't think for a moment that he'd cut off the flow of Devil Jizz, as it's the thing keeping Rosacarnis on-side. But I did think that he'd prevent visible spill over. If Triskele has been bypassing his supply chain, he might be able to justify coming down hard on her. I imagine that Rosacarnis would appreciate getting rulership over the Succubae once she's gone. Or… Really, I don't have.. much of a problem with demon pacts as long as the people signing up know what they're getting into. Triskele doesn't even follow the letter of her pacts, but… If the people using Succubae Jizz got consent from their clients in advance and knew what they were giving their demonic sponsors, that's… Really no worse than most business contracts.

"Okay, those… Those are places we already checked with Aqualad. Did Noriel say anything about where this happened?"

"In a forest. Could be at the 'S'' marked site Robin found, but-."

"Yeah, that's her magic. But there's another place." He activates the holomap on his arm computer and points. "Right.. there."

"Right then." Ring scan shows nothing much at the site. "Transition in two, one."