ic Demonization (IC)

[Electra]

"I just want to know about the spell," Raina replied with a deliberately casual shrug. "I'm sure you've had to answer all kinds of stupid and obnoxious questions about everything else already. I'm not gonna get you in trouble or anything, but that was some dangerous magic going on in there. I've heard tell that you're into magic, but that was no solo practitioner spell circle." She leaned against the wall, her eyes interested, but devoid of either condemnation or pity. "Did they leave you behind on purpose, Rhonda, or did they just run away when the circle broke?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

The girl looked at Raina for a moment, seeming to take her measure, before replying, "What do you want me to say, huh? That I got stupid? That I let them-" Tears stood out at the corners of her bloodshot eyes as her voice roughened with barely suppressed emotion. "They told me the cords on my wrists were to show my submission to the Circle." She raised one arm, thin bruising visible at her wrists. "Good thing I had the marks on me, I guess, or heroes'd have locked me up in Blackstone for what they did to me." She stared harder at Sparkler. "I don't know you. You're not one of the famous ones, but I don't think you're one of them, either. Who are you - really?" 

[Electra]

Raina smirked a little. "You feel stupid about that? My parents did evil magic my whole life and I didn't even notice until I wound up fighting on the wrong side of a supervillain battle. The Freedom League threw me in superhero reform school instead of jail because somebody realized how completely ignorant I was and felt sorry for me. I know how it feels to get taken for a ride." Raina couldn't help but glance towards the door, making sure Riley was out of earshot. Even now, that wasn't anything she'd say aloud in front of any of her classmates.

 

She sat down in the visitor's chair so she could look Rhonda in the eye. "Feeling stupid is sometimes even worse than the betrayal, or the physical pain, or not knowing what's going to happen to you next. I understand you don't want to talk about it. But anybody who'd do it to you might do it to somebody else, too. Or they might unleash something that doesn't get put down in time. Help me stop them." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"I found them on the Internet. They said they were the Misfit Circle of Magik - for everybody who didn't fit in with a regular white-girl coven. No offense," Rhonda added Raina's way. "My folks don't approve of anything I do and they stopped caring a long time ago, so it was easy  to slip out and make it to some full-moon covens. They seemed nice, everybody was legit, and they could...they could do real magic! I've seen people do it on TV, I've felt it inside," she added, putting a hand over her heart, "but I saw them do it! Summoning spirits, binding them, playing with fire and water...they said I was just the kind of person they wanted. After a couple of months, we were doing an soul-unbinding, and I told them what I wanted - and they promised they could help me with it. They...they told me things, their craft names, where they lived, but they were lying about everything else - why not lie about that, too?" 

[Electra]

"Names have power," Raina explained, not quite ready to go into magical theory right now. "Giving you fake names when they were making circles and calling magic would've made it harder. Even craft names have to be something true about a person. Did they ask you for anything in exchange for doing the spell with you, or explain how dangerous that sort of magic is?" It was easy to feel sympathy for Rhonda, wanting magic so badly that she'd trusted the exact wrong people, but Raina tried to keep too much of that out of her demeanor. She had a reputation to uphold, and she kind of suspected Rhonda didn't want her pity anyway. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"No, they said they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts - that I could pay them back once I had what I wanted and came into my true power. They never really asked me for anything." She shook her head. "They were supposed to be summoning an earth spirit, like we've done before. I didn't know there was any danger until I saw what it was - and it stepped out of the circle-"  She swallowed hard. "I didn't see them leave. I was...busy," she added in a shaky attempt at humor that she didn't seem to entirely believe. "Seven and Bowman said they didn't see anybody there but me. I guess they're looking into it. I can...I can give you all the craft names I know." 

[Electra]

"Doesn't matter what they saw, the magic doesn't lie," Raina replied with a shrug. "That spell couldn't have happened without six people, Seven will see that once she pulls her head out of her ass and takes a good look at the circle." She pulled out her phone and prepared to take notes. "Whatever names and descriptions you've got, places you met them, times of the month you got together, stores they sent you to pick up your supplies. We'll find 'em." It was easy to sound confident, she was confident. Between she and Merlin, there wasn't a lot they couldn't find out. "So the spell didn't sound weird to you until the thing appeared?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'd seen them summon things before. Nothing like that." She gave Raina as detailed descriptions as she could of a group of about half-a-dozen - two men who were a couple, with Crowley-ite beards and pentagram necklaces, a dark-skinned woman who she thought was Native from the style of magic she used, a couple of suburban pagan types, and an older, distinguished-sounding man who she said "sounded like one of those old actors, you know, like playing a Senator or something." They met at the full moon every month, and come to think of it, the attack had happened on the full moon too. When she was done, cursing herself all the while for not paying better attention, Rhonda asked Raina, "What are the heroes gonna want out of me, when all this is done?"

[Electra]

"Somebody might need to talk with you again," Raina told her, "maybe even try to get a magic trace off you if we can't track these folks down right away. It's a pain in the ass to do, so we'll try and crack it with regular detective work first. The Freedom League's got a sort of survivor's fund going for victims of paranormal and metahuman violence, you might want to look that up if the hospital bills are crazy bad. You're gonna want to find a magic healer, the hospital's probably got one they can refer you to, give your aura a tune-up and make sure you haven't got anything nasty clinging to you from what happened, and then that person will probably refer you to a therapist, if you haven't gotten one already, to account for the whole almost-dying-from-magic thing. In the long run, if you want to keep up with doing magic, be real careful when you pick out a coven. Lots of crazies out there."

 

She took a couple last notes and nodded, pleased at herself for remembering so much from hero class. Her teachers, Raina suspected, would be very surprised. "So anyway, where do you buy your magic supplies?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

Outside the hospital room, having steered Rhonda away from an online supplier that provided low-quality goods at high-quality prices, Raina found Riley standing inside the door of the empty room opposite - the closest thing to a dark corner he was likely to find in the brightly lit hospital corridor. When she stepped out. he moved to join her. "Kept expectin' somebody to show up and cause trouble while we were here," he admitted, "but nobody's done a thing. The cop down there even got backup before he went to take a leak. You get what you needed?" he asked Raina expectantly, without probing for the gory details. He'd seen plenty of those already. 

[Electra]

"I got the start of it, anyway," Raina confirmed. "Some clues to track down the other people we're looking for. I'm gonna see if I can get in touch with Seven and rub her nose in this a little, then give them what we've got so they can try and track these people down, too. I don't know enough about the magic scene around here to be very fast about it, and they sound like douchebags who shouldn't be anywhere near magic. So." She shrugged. "Anything else you wanna do?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"...bring me along?" asked Woodsman, more hesitant than he normally would have been about tagging along with a classmate. Raina was pretty social - but, he had to admit, not usually with him. "I started the thing, wanna finish it." He would not have known how to find Seven if he didn't go looking - or go through channels that weren't always reliable for Claremont students. "Won't make you look bad in front of the queen of magic," he promised, teeth set in a hard smile. 

[Electra]

"Pfft, I can do that by myself," Raina assured him. "You can come along if you want, though, back me up on the investigation and wave the pictures around. First I've gotta find her, though." A couple of phone calls to Claremont and the League got them an appointment with Seven at Freedom Hall, to Raina's evident displeasure. "That place is like some World War II big blocky building monument to Great Heroes of Our Nation. It's creepy. At least I won't be doing a perp walk through there this time," she sighed, throwing another handful of feathers onto Riley's motorcycle. "Let's go." 

[Avenger Assembled]

After they'd landed, Woodsman looked at the outline of Freedom Hall and shrugged. "Seen it lookin' worse," he commented dryly. He didn't like being here much, but he wasn't about to admit that to Raina, not when he'd invited himself along in the first place. The Hall (no one had called it Freedom Hall in a decade and a half) had meta-Feral nests - and lots of them. Woodsmen didn't go near it but armed and in numbers - and he wouldn't have gone inside to save his life. They'd spent a hard evening at this and it was definitely nighttime now - but with all the streetlights and building lights here in the heart of the city, this hardly felt like nighttime at all - hardly felt like the time of monsters. Still, he felt better with his weapon on his back as they headed inside the building, unbroken as it was. 

 

If Riley had expected some kind of magical sanctum like Huang's parents' house, he was disappointed inside Freedom Hall - the conference room where Seven was waiting for them looked like any generic office space, albeit with more high-tech stuff than you were likely to find even in a government installation. A little self-conscious at first, (he wasn't sure exactly how much he should be yelling at this point and in this place) he hung back as Seven greeted them - she was floating in mid-air, cross-legged, with what he guessed were mystic runes hovering in the air behind her. "Sparkler, Woodsman, come in," she offered, not 'getting up' from her position. "You said you have information about a case?" 

[Electra]

"We're looking into something, yeah," Raina nodded, letting Merlin climb out of her backpack and up onto her shoulder. "The summoning in Greenbank the other night, you and Bowman broke it up and got an injured civilian to the hospital? She's a friend of Woodsman's brother, so he asked us to look in on her and see how things were going. We talked to her and took a look at the warehouse, and I was wondering what leads you guys are going to be following up on." She was in her most laid-back mode right now, deceptively mild as she tried to get her opponent to lay more cards on the table. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ah yes, the goetia," said Seven sympathetically. "I'm sorry about what happened to your friend, Woodsman," she added, looking over Raina's shoulder and at Riley, "and I can promise we're doing everything we can to figure out exactly what happened." 

 

"She got tied up like a hog and nearly killed because some sonsofbitches set a monster on her," hissed Riley, who didn't have Raina's knack for the social graces. As usual, he wasn't yelling - but his words were clear enough. "What the hell are you gonna do about it?" 

 

Seven frowned slightly and settled 'down' onto the top of the conference table. "Yes, we found evidence of additional summoners at the site so we've taken the standard precautions against a broken coven - she's being watched in the hospital and will be under surveillance once she's out. We won't let her circle track her down again. What have the two of you uncovered?" 

[Electra]

"She wasn't a member of the coven, for one thing," Raina began, crossing one leg neatly over the other in her chair. "An initiate if that, but more likely just a patsy they were cultivating. She didn't even know their names." Seven would understand the implications of that as easily as Raina did. Some of the wind had gone out of her sails at the revelation that Seven had seen the additions to the circle, but hardly having a leg to stand on had never stopped her before. "We got some descriptions from her that I wanted to run by you, see if they match up with any known baddies. I'd be kinda surprised if they bothered with her again, unless they didn't get hold of her because they wanted an easy sacrifice and it was actually because they don't like something about her personally. So probably better safe than sorry." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Riley did not like listening to conversations he did not understand - and the subsequent conversation between Raina and Seven was not a conversation he understood terribly well. He had the idea that Seven was using 'magical resonance' to trace people by the descriptions Raina was providing her - which mostly looked like chanting and making gestures in the air to him, but what did he know? He'd seen enough of Sparkler in training and other magic people in classes to know that they were tapping into forces beyond his understanding of reality - forces with great power that could accomplish great things. Should at least write this stuff down. What if she gets taken out and nobody else can look it up? That was one thing he understood only too well. At least the conversation seemed to be going well, from what little he could understand of what Seven was saying. 

 

Once the conversation moved to hunting matters, that was something he could follow. "All right, I should be able to find these people in the next day or so. I don't want to rush into a fight with people this dangerous - we need to make sure we have the right targets before we move." Seven studied Sparkler and Woodsman, looking at them both with perhaps a bit more respect than she'd had when they came in. "I could use magical backup, Sparkler - and Woodsman, I know you have a personal stake in this." 

 

Woodsman blinked a few times, trying to sort out Seven's words. "Supposed to go easy when I have a stake in it," he commented, remembering his Tactical training too. He didn't comment on how this was the first time an adult hero, even a younger one like Seven, had actually invited him to do anything other than follow along or go to school. 

 

"It's different with magic. If you care, if you really care about what you're doing, that can mean as much as the sharpest bolt or the biggest bomb." Huh. So she does know something about me, Riley guessed. 

 

[Electra]

"Sure," Raina said offhandedly, concealing her unease with the idea. Doing a little magical detective work where she could show off her knowledge was one thing, but following a superhero into a possible confrontation was quite another. Still, she'd come this far and put herself out there, she certainly wasn't going to back down now. "Just call into the school and clear us when you find anything, we'll come along with you." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Thanks," said Riley, once they were back at school at the end of what had turned out to be a long night. "Owe ya one. Hope we get bastard hunting soon..." 

 

Sure enough, Seven was true to her word - the next afternoon both Sparkler and Woodsman were called out of their final class periods to a "uniform meeting" in the Administration Building. There they found two Freedom League members waiting for them in the outer office. Seven, floating in her dark cape and cowl, was joined by a figure Riley recognized right off. "Hello, Woodsman!" said a cheery Bowman, who shook Riley's hand in a firm handshake that made the younger boy's back briefly stiffen. It wasn't that he disliked Bowman, who was an OK guy and good shot for all that he was from rich and fancy stock, just that Bowman tended to come on...stronger than Riley preferred. "Seven said you did great. You think you can handle fighting people who hurt your friend?" 

 

"Yeah, I'll be fine," said Woodsman with a nod, "feel better if I put an arrow in somebody, but I'm not gonna ruin the hunt for these guys because I got crazy." 

 

"Once I had a description of their physical resonances to tell the dark spirits," Seven was telling Sparkler, "it was easy to track them down. We've got other League members hitting the homes of other coven members - but we thought the two of you would appreciate a chance to go in after the leader." 

[Electra]

"Yeah, let's go for it," Raina replied, doing her best to sound entirely confident but also not too excited to be going out on assignment. It was a fine line to walk. "It'll be good to get guys like that off the street, and Rhonda will be happy to hear they can't get at her anymore." She checked her bag to make sure all her supplies were in place, then unstoked her collapsible broom. "How do we wanna get there?" she asked the other three heroes equally. 

[Avenger Assembled]

When they arrived at the scene of the 'crime', Woodsman was skeptical - it wasn't that he disbelieved that creepy witches would hang out in a house in North Bay, especially the old Saltonstall place with its fortress-like architecture and overgrown gardens, but he had a hard time believing that supercriminals were operating under the nose of Wander and Midnight. "You're right - they probably don't operate here at all," said Seven with a slight shrug. The foursome had taken shelter underneath a large, overhanging tree at the edge of the property next door, letting the giant willow conceal them from view before they made their own way across the fence and towards their destination. "Fouling their own magical den would only attract attention, especially with North Bay's super-population - but a well-defended house like this, far away from prying eyes, is a perfect lair for sorcerers who just want to enjoy their ill-gotten gains." 

 

"Whatever the crime, you can bet somebody's usually making bank off it," agreed Bowman. "All right, this is a big place. If we all make our separate ways towards the front door, we can probably beat any security they've got." 

 

"Kinda miss the flying motorcycle," commented Woodsman to Sparkler as the two Claremont students checked their gear one more time. "Catching 'em with their pants down'll be more fun, though."