Devil's consultancy 42

This one really fought me.

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“This is an OUTRAGE!” Bruce shouted, slamming his fist on the Batcomputer. “There is no way that Lex Luthor, the most high strung egomaniac in a C-suite, would ever let a single shred of mockery like this pass!”

Tanya, on the other hand, was too busy trying not to pee herself as she laughed uproariously at the news headline on the screen. ‘New movie announcement: The Muppets Take Metropolis.’ There was a blurb about the plot, where the Muppets take over Lexcorp and, misunderstanding the company’s mission statement, promptly attempt to humiliate Superman. As she understood things, they succeeded where Luthor failed. 

“Is there a reason you’re so upset about this?” Diana asked, idly fighting Jason with a series of improvised weapons common to Gotham thugs. Currently, she was using a crowbar. Ace was somewhere upstairs, doing… something. Alfred was keeping an eye on her, probably. 

Wheezing, Tanya took a deep breath. After regaining control over her voice, she started talking. “Okay, so the Muppets are kind of a cultural phenomenon.” She explained, “But honestly, their popularity’s kind of dipped in my generation? So I never had to pretend to be obsessed with them, not like that other show I have all the posters and toys for, or the magical girl stuff.” She was reasonably sure the only reason Bruce still insists that she’s playing coy with her interest was to tease her. “They were way bigger when Bruce was a kid, so he does like them.”

“Ah, I understand.” Diana said, going on the attack and lightly tapping Jason with the crowbar in several areas, which would have crippled him severely if not for the magic circle against injury. “If he went to these famous puppets now, he’d be seen as copying Luthor.”

“On top of that, Clark’d never let him live it down.” Tanya confirmed. 

“Can you imagine Bruce Wayne sharing a stage with Miss Piggy?” Bruce asked rhetorically. “Self-important, flirtatious, gold-digging Miss Piggy?”

“Eh… Would have worked better if you had done it before I came into the picture, I think.” Tanya said after picturing it. “You know how you toned down the stupid when you were responsible for a child.”

“It’s for the best: while playing the fool has its place, this you is more honest, and you need that, as someone who wears a mask so much.” Diana said, stepping to the pile of weapons and testing the heft of a cinderblock on a chain. “This seems flimsy.” She commented, vaguely worried. 

“It is.” Bruce confirmed. “It’s why Tanya enchanted that one separately to not do any permanent damage to whatever it hits.” It was a little more complicated to do that to a weapon directly than creating a zone, but she liked the results. 

“Do people actually use this?” Diana questioned. 

“Yes.” Bruce said, still hate-reading the article about the new muppet movie. “There was a martial arts movie a while back that featured it, and ever since it became popular among Gotham thugs.” He sighed, recalling the frustration. “Unfortunately, the sheer collateral potential of the thing means I need to prioritize them, which somehow got into a rumor that I was threatened by the thing, which led to Slade Wilson making some money creating an actual fighting style with it based on kusarigama forms and teaching a few classes… It's a headache.”

“Most criminals are just idiots with poor impulse control and more chutzpah than skill.” Tanya explained, “They will absolutely do stupid things in a fight because they don’t know any better and they think they’ll look cool when they pull it off.”

“That’s not really my experience…” Diana said, thinking. “Most people who fight me have a pretty good idea what they’re doing…”

“You don’t face common criminals.” Tanya retorted, “You’re an immortal demigoddess of war, mere mortals without guns or combat skills worth noting just surrender or flee.”

Diana took a moment to think back. “...I suppose that does sound more like my experience.” She said, “The ones with guns always seem so sure that it’ll work this time…” Twirling the cinder block via the chain, she started to launch it at Jason in basic, predictable patterns. 

“It’s because you block them.” Bruce replied, having finally torn himself away from Lex Luthor finally doing something that ruffled his metaphorical feathers. “It means that you respect the danger of the bullets, that they can hurt you if you fail to block.”

“Are you bulletproof?” Jason asked, ducking underneath a swing. “Why do you block them?”

“They’re not dangerous to me.” Diana clarified, “But all but the smallest bullets will still sting, leave welts, things of that nature. Powerful bullets can still injure me, to be certain.” Tanya wondered what threat level a twelve gauge slug rated…

“Huh.” Jason said, stepping to the side to avoid another cinderblock swing. “Guess Dan was wrong.”

“Something tells me that I don’t want to know what a teenage boy thought was the reason I deflect bullets.” Diana said teasingly, before sending the cinderblock forward again. 

Jason opened his mouth, froze, and promptly got cinderblock straight to the chest. “Holy shit that hurts!” He half-shouted, rubbing at his magically not-broken ribs. He did just feel them break, after all… “Yeah, you don’t want to know what he thought.” He agreed after the pain faded. 

“Villains like to talk, Jason.” Bruce said, standing up and picking up a length of pipe. “It’s important that you not let their words affect you. Focus.”

“Tanya, can you help me out here? It’s two on one!” Jason said, visibly nervous. 

“A team exercise sounds wise.” Diana said, “Boys vs. Girls?” She proposed, glancing Bruce’s way. “He’ll be fighting at your side more often than not, after all.”

Bruce made a thoughtful grunt, before making a decision and dropping the pipe. “I’ll suit up.” He said. 

Diana turned to Tanya. “That said, Jason does still need practice against large, aggressive thugs.” She smiled sweetly, letting the implication linger. 

Tanya frowned, but couldn’t fault the logic. Diana had been finding more and more excuses to suggest that she assume her first life’s form, ever since they had explained the full story behind Selina’s poor reaction to understanding that particular dark secret. 

In a way, her poor reaction was vindicating: while Bruce was patient and understanding, the cat-obsessed woman had exactly the reaction one could expect from learning that the demon disguising themselves as a developmentally odd (to say the least) little girl was secretly a middle-aged man all along: disgust. She was the fifth person trusted with that secret, after Bruce, Richard, Barbie, and Alfred, and Tanya had started to think that she was crazy for expecting people to think of her as a pervert for the whole thing. 

Fortunately, Selina was at least sensible enough to keep things secret; while they weren’t sure whether or not it was necessary to threaten the woman with a nice cell in Arkham right next to Mother for spouting such ludicrously insane stories about the heir to the Wayne fortune, she sure took it seriously enough to leave Gotham entirely, accepting the modest bribe of ten thousand dollars a month for her NDA-enforced silence, with further understanding that Bruce would not give her any special treatment if she returned to crime. 

Still, that large, powerful body was at least as much hers as the petite, somewhat curvy one she used to conduct business, so her hesitance to exploit this fact was mostly irrational. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou.” Tanya incanted as she walked from her position near the Batcomputer to the sparring ring, pausing only during the actual transition, one leg raised, before confidently stepping back down with his now much longer legs. Normally, this body was wearing its own Batsuit, but that had long ceased to be a meaningful limitation to him, so he was instead garbed in his old suit, short one jacket, tie, along with the sleeves rolled up and collar unbuttoned, to give a classic Yakuza look to his old appearance. 

“Hey, looks like yer in trouble now, Boy Wonder.” Bruce said in an impeccable Gotham dockyard drawl. “This guy’s just got outta the slammer, and he’s real angry.” Bruce chuckled as he went behind the Batsuit’s case and used the machine incorporated in the rear of it to quickly change his clothes. 

Jason looked surprised, recognition flashing as he saw the face that had, for a few weeks, been touted as The Batman’s face. “You?” He asked, before putting things together. “Wait, Bruce was a hostage then.” He laughed, “So that’s how you did it! So Tanya, or Rhine, or whatever your name is-” 

“Tenko.”

“-Tenko.” Jason continued, “You going to be playing fair?”

“If by ‘fair’, you mean will I use magic to augment myself?” Tenko said, picking up a baseball bat. He scoffed. “I won’t need to.”

Jason scowled, but put up his fists anyway. While Jason did learn how to use Richard’s escrima sticks, he seemed to prefer copying Bruce’s fighting style more directly, using his fists and feet with only limited usage of gadgets. In time, he’ll likely be able to incorporate greater usage of Bruce’s ninjutsu tactics, bringing out the technological and magical surprises seamlessly between more conventional combat moves. 

Until then? He’s still quite the dangerous combatant up close, five foot nine (notably shorter than nightwing, but he was still growing) and one hundred and ninety pounds. 

Unfortunately for him, Tenko was six foot seven and weighed two hundred sixty-five pounds, as of a month ago, when all of his bodies got a full physical. With a weapon? Well, Jason’s only saving grace here was that while Tenko had a vague idea on how to use a baseball bat in a fight from training in other weapons, he had never actually done so in his life; which will approximate the average skill level of a Gotham thug. 

Batman emerged, sending his own considerable weight, with his gear adding a fair bit to that figure, crashing feet-first into Diana’s only half-prepared stance. Tenko moved to punish Batman’s reckless attack, but Jas-Robin intercepted by attacking the larger man’s legs. 

The battle commenced. 

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One of the big things that Tanya did to help WayneTech was to recount everything she knew about smartphones. Including the marketing genius that is the word ‘smartphone’. 

That wasn’t to say that Tanya knew anything about the technology, but she did possess vague memories, the recollection enhanced by some memory enhancing magic, of the features possessed by smart phone three to five generations advanced from the start, which was better market research than could be devised on the subject. 

This was not the only thing: Tanya had also explained about how big social media was about to become, as by the time he had died, it had leapt to a massive enough influence that even notoriously stubborn Japanese executives were discussing how to do marketing in the changed landscape. 

As such, the first major social media platform (they didn’t quite manage to be the absolute first, unfortunately) in this timeline was WayneTech’s platform, Perch, with the logo being a gargoyle with a bird saying something on the head. It was basically twitter, with a 200 character limit on posts, referred to as ‘chirps’, identity verification for public figures and organizations, and enough advertising revenue that it split off into its own subsidiary so that the executives that normally have to deal with cutting edge technical products and military contracts can continue doing that, leaving the new company’s C-suite to be staffed with people promoted from within Wayne Entertainment, who were used to dealing with advertisers as their primary customers. Content moderation was a nightmare, but it was a nightmare that was the problem of someone other than her, so Tanya didn’t care. 

Naturally, LexCorp and others developed their own. Lexicon, LexCorp’s search engine, produced something similar to Facebook by the name of Lextern, a pun on ‘Lectern’. It was, appropriately for something created by Lex Luthor, far more invasive to the user’s privacy than Perch, but several of its features, including its downright predatory games, allowed it to compete with Perch quite ably. 

There were plenty of others competing, of course, she could go on for hours weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each platform, particularly as ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ were among those competitors. But while particularly large organizations tended to pick up an account on every single social media platform just on principle, it was Perch that had cornered the market on commercial social media accounts, their robust verification system allowing for official communication to be issued safely and allowing for said organizations to view useful analytics (a premium service) for how their announcements are received. 

Granted, this popularity was heavily contributed by Perch being the only social media that every official member of the Justice League had an account on, even if they didn’t do much with it. Many of the more tuned-in heroes maintained other accounts on other sites, and if said heroes wanted to, they could allow the Justice League’s media team to manage those as well, but by default the Perch account was created by the League so that anyone who wanted to know announcements related to that specific hero could follow that account and receive any official statement relevant to that hero. 

More recently, though, was the infrastructure available, both technologically and societally, to now allow for the development of short videos without being ruinously expensive. This was referred to as a ‘Spout’, which Tanya didn’t like quite as much as chirp, but it did seem to pick up adequately, and did fit the gossip wordplay theme with gargoyles. 

Tanya still wasn’t sure whether or not the new option made it harder or easier to maintain her public identity as the Wayne heiress. On one hand, it allowed her to more easily prove that it was actually her doing things, and she could schedule releases with spoofed timestamps to further confound matters. Something being difficult to fake made it all the more convincing when it was pulled off. 

On the other hand, it was a lot more effort to make a video than it was to type out an inane sentence or two in response to something someone else said. 

“Welcome to part four of my video series on magic!” Tanya said cheerily to the camera, dressed in her witchiest outfit that wasn’t the Witch Girl outfit: bare feet and legs (she was indoors and liked this room’s carpet), a knee-length skirt on a black dress, and a comically tiny witch hat kept on her head via a hairband. Her long black hair was kept in a pair of loose pigtails for this, each one brought in front of her shoulders and hanging over her still-nonexistent chest. “In the last videos, I talked about what magic is, what magic is not, and a bit about Daddy’s magic company, ArcWayne.” She smiles mischievously. “Daddy said I could become the Vice President of ArcWayne when I grow up!” This was something she had said in the relevant video, but it was important to portray herself as intelligent, but still somewhat immature and distractible. 

Tanya waved her finger and drew glowing lines in the air, making a little heart. “Today I’ll be talking about Magic users! Why can Gods and Demons and Angels and certain people just wave their hands and create magic?”

Pizza, Visha, and Weiss the toy golems came on screen, each dressed differently: Pizza  had a toga and was holding a plastic lightning bolt, Visha had demon horns and a pitchfork, and Weiss had a magician’s hat and cape. 

“The usage of magic is, as I said before, imposing one’s will on reality. Regular magic, the kind that anyone can use, gains the weight needed to overcome the laws of physics by gathering power, either through sacrifice or in other ways.“ Tanya held up a piece of paper that had a nonsense ritual circle drawn on it; anyone who attempted to decipher it would find a message saying ‘you didn’t think I’d show you a real one, would you?’ in Greek. ”Ritual directs this power, as a normal person lacks the strength to lift that weight, even if they can gather it.”

Tanya took out her pre-prepared lump of clay- well, it wasn’t really clay but a colorful and theoretically edible (and thus child-safe) substitute made of flour- and presented it to the camera. “Imagine magic like it’s clay. You spend all that time getting more and more of the stuff, but to get enough you need…” She tapped the fake clay with one of her wands and, after tossing it away, it grew to ten times the size, the single kilogram that came from crushing nine of the four ounce cans together now weighing a literal ton. As the square cube law was a harsh mistress, the lump started to sag outward. “-this much. You can’t lift that much magic! So you do it a little at a time, shaping it into what you need it to be.” With dozens of swishes of yet another wand, Tanya warped the pile of fake clay into the shape of a life-sized giraffe, each motion warping the pile in just the right way. “That’s what rituals do. They let you guide the magic into what you need it to be.” 

She snapped her fingers, ending the growth spell and letting the faux clay shrink back down. Pizza grabbed the now 1/10th scale giraffe and handed it to her. Showing it off to the camera, she continued: “The difference between a skilled magic user, either through natural talent or by training, and a witch who just dabbles, is how much magical muscle they have, to force the magic to their will. The difference between a magical being like a God or Demon and a mortal is that they have a fair bit of magic that they can throw around just for being them.” 

This was, strictly speaking, inaccurate. Magical beings generated magic in the same way a human body generates heat: it’s a side-effect of their magical metabolisms, but the magic enters their body somehow: either from Faith and Belief of their followers, by eating souls or whatever else, allocated to them as part of their duties to the guy upstairs, or simply by gathering magic with conventional methods and just… swallowing it. Needless to say, revealing this would make her enemies among the Gods, at the very least. 

“They can’t pull magic out of their bums forever, of course.” Tanya continued, “But it means that if they’re sitting on the couch and don’t feel like getting up, they can magic themselves a soda from the fridge without needing to do things like pay thousands of dollars for a wand that has a magic battery I can have fun with.” She took out all of her wands. “ArcWayne makes these, you can just buy them.” This required things like a background check, registration on ArcWayne’s database, and other inconveniences, as they were dangerous items in the wrong hands. They were also largely made by contracted practitioners rather than in-house, but that was mostly because practitioners, as a rule, were still allergic to the concept of regular employment, instead preferring ‘gigs’ with limited responsibility and timeframes. 

“There’s also this bloodline of mortals that have enough magic to be worth noting,” Tanya said, “Daddy said they like calling themselves Homo Magi, but that’s just them being silly.”

Pizza popped back into the camera’s view and tapped its wrist. “Oh, right!” Tanya said, backing up from the camera and giving a cute pose. “That’s all for now! Next time, we’re going to talk about cosmic energies!” That is, an overview of the magic that could be harvested from stellar phenomena like the sun and moon. “Buh-bye!”

With the video secured, Tanya moved the file to her computer and sent it to Barbie for editing. The girl was still attending college, and while she did know that she could just ask Bruce for money and get it, both because she’s Batgirl and because she’s Jim’s daughter, Barbie was far more comfortable getting her pocket money by doing computer side-jobs. It was respectable, to not wish for charity: if Tanya didn’t have similar opinions, she’d have let Bruce get himself killed long ago. 

Now, she had a meeting at ArcWayne to get to: apparently someone made a breakthrough on getting the ritual that enchanted blades to never go dull to work, and they had a presentation on how it was done to beg for permission to move on to the next phase: stress testing. 

A demon’s work is never done.