Devil's Consultancy 23

WIth the whole ‘Joker’ matter being handled by the foremost occult expert that can both be swayed by a few million dollars and also will take Tanya’s calls, doing her own research wasn’t likely to do anything but waste her time. 

Which is good, because while perusing ancient tomes did have a visceral appeal to the history otaku inside her… dealing with the actual magical… programming, she supposed was the best term, made her head spin. It’s still a big part of her job with ArcWayne, but once the translation work was done she took a step back and let her growing cadre…no, it was a cabal… of magical researchers handle the gritty details. After years of work, actual practitioners saw the money flowing and started signing up like any academic with a nose for grants would. 

The Justice League was experiencing, for the first time, steady growth in membership instead of it being in fits and starts. This was largely good, but it did mean she needed to shift how she handled the inflow. 

That is, she scheduled interviews a half hour after her workday, one at a time, spent soaking in all of the information the Batcave’s resources (see: Barbie’s cyberstalking) can provide beforehand. “So… Amazing-Man.” Tanya said, in her Rhine costume instead of being in demon form properly. “Ambitious name.” To be fair, Will Everett was hardly something that could be used to make a good pun. 

“I can live up to it.” He said confidently. 

Eh… he did have some claim to fame on that front. Olympian strongman before whatever incident gave him his powers, which given his pattern of behavior was almost certainly the lab accident he was caught up in when he worked a temporary job as a janitor. Olympians didn’t actually get paid that much, and he won a grand total of one silver medal so sponsors weren’t exactly banging on his door. Actually… didn’t Wayne Enterprises have a protein supplement or something? It would have been a good sponsorship, she wondered who they had doing it instead. “It says here you can take on the properties of matter.” She said, gesturing with the resume. 

“Yep.” Amazing-Man said proudly, “I usually use it to become metal.”

“A solid choice.” Tanya said, quirking a smile at her pun. “Can you use liquids? Gases? Energy?”

“Yes to all of them.” Amazing-Man replied, “This one time, I absorbed Superman’s heat vision and kicked Overmaster’s butt.”

She saw the footage, but she needed to ask the guy something. “Well, you clearly have potential, and you do have Superman’s recommendation…” She saw him preen at the words, bursting with pride. “-so he’ll complain if I reject you out of hand.”

That pissed him off. “The fuck? What do you mean, reject me?” He stood up, setting both hands on Tanya’s desk, looming over her. 

Tanya scoffed. “Just getting you off your high horse. I’m a demon, it’s kind of our thing.” She set the resume down. “Look, Superman recommends anyone who can pass his cold reading. Which, in his defense, is quite effective at screening out spies and double agents.” Tanya asked Clark to keep track of the attempts. According to his report, there were an average of five per month. That was just the ones who tried to go through Superman, mind you. “What it doesn’t do is screen out people who are vulnerable to opportunistic blackmail or other pressures.”

To his credit, Amazing-Man did catch on quickly to what she was talking about. “What, is there something wrong with being a family man?” 

“Do you know what the most common misconception prospective Justice League members have coming in?” Tanya asked, “That we get paid. We don’t.” She had tried to amend this, but Bruce refused to present it in the founder’s meeting because he was sure it would fail, currently. “You should be dedicating your time to your family, both in supporting them and in simply spending time with them.”

Amazing-Man slumped back into his chair. “Of course.” He muttered, “Number one gig for mutahumans, it’s an fucking internship.” He was currently lacking stable employment, although given that he gained his powers about three months ago she assumed he had found some under the table gigs to tide his family over, there was a few thousand dollars of cash deposits in his finances. 

“Look, I can still give you an affiliate membership.” Tanya explained, “You’ll be on the website, you’ll get the company emails, and if either an all-hands gets called or if your specific powers are needed, we’ll ring you up. It’s enough to call yourself a member of the Justice League.” A full half of the League’s membership were affiliates, as quite bluntly most metahumans couldn’t spare the time to do active heroics in addition to their personal lives and jobs. The heroes who tried always fell short on at least one of them, and she respected the affiliates who acknowledged that of the three, the heroics were the least important for their well being. “But a full membership, with voting power, security clearance, and access to certain communal amenities like the Zeta Tube requires certain commitments that you aren’t in a position to offer.” After the Thanagarian invasion, the Justice League’s scope had expanded; and there were now required ‘on-call’ hours for events of large enough import to call in the Justice League, usually natural disasters. 

“I guess that’s fine…” Amazing-Man groused. “What am I going to tell Gwen…”

“Relax.” Tanya said, putting on her best human resources face. “While the Justice League can’t help you, that doesn’t mean that you can’t walk out of this place with employment.”

Amazing-Man chuckled. “Okay, here comes the Deal with the Devil. Lay it on me.”

“Nothing so crass.” Tanya said, waving him off. “Here’s the thing: nowadays, SWAT teams are incredibly expensive, you can’t just spring for Cold War military surplus anymore and expect that to be anything but a waste of money. Many major cities are seeking to replace their underfunded Special Weapons And Tactics departments with contracted metahuman groups. Amnesty Bay, Bludhaven, Calvin City, Cosmos, Crucible…. That’s just the ABCs in America. One of the services that I provide under the table, as it were, is to connect interested parties for these ventures.”

“...What about Gateway City?” Amazing-Man asked. 

Tanya merely picked up her desk phone. “Deputy Mayor Marn? It’s Rhine. I have Amazing-Man here to speak with you.”

“About time.” The Deputy Mayor of Gateway City replied, “Am I on speaker?”

“You are now.” Tanya replied, pressing the button. 

“Great. Amazing-Man? Big fan. Let’s get on the same page here: I want you to lead our city’s new super-cops. Anything big goes down, you get a call and come running to save the day. Sounds good?”

“What’s the pay?” Amazing-Man asked firmly. 

“For you? Two hundred G’s a year plus all the benefits. You’ll have better health insurance than I do.” Marn said, putting all his cards on the table. “Plus we’ll set you up with an image manager, get some merchandise going, you’ll get a cut of that too.” Bruce’s not-so-secret superhero merchandise empire has several competitors now. 

“I’ve seen the contracts.” Tanya idly commented, she actually had some of Bruce’s lawyers write it up and presented it to the interested city governments. The income level was dependent on the hero’s scale, mind you, but even a powerless vigilante with the skills to compete with metas with reasonable gear costs could earn a cool seventy grand a year, the minimum. “It’s a good deal. You might be able to get more money if you shop around, but not a lot more.” One of the fun things about being an organization backed by volunteer vigilantes is that few people even try to do anything squirrely, under the accurate impression that doing so will lead to Batman breaking a few bones while their malfeasance gets thoroughly documented and sent to the relevant authorities. 

Faced with the prospect of commanding a salary greater than anyone in his known family tree had ever earned (a safe bet, given his ethnicity and country of origin) without even needing to move to a different city to do it, Amazing-Man seemed like he was waiting for the catch, but couldn’t see it. “Alright, if this is all as good as you say it is, count me in.” Excellent hedge. This was a man that’s seen unscrupulous employers operate before. 

“Then let me welcome you to the Titans Initiative.”

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

Due to the fact that Tanya didn’t need to spend a whole lot of time doing important magical research, she could instead spend her time on unimportant magical research. 

ArcWayne was split among four product categories. First, there was pharmaceuticals. Alchemical substances could, if properly prepared, have consistent enough effects and are sufficiently understood by their experts that they can pass FDA regulations. To be completely honest, some of those items didn’t even need to pass FDA regulations, because the current laws surrounding certain ‘not medicine’ things were inadequately weak. 

Second, there were the medical procedures. These were conducted at their facilities, which were legally medical clinics and staffed with real medical doctors on top of the occultists and witches. Staffing issues limited their rollout, but they did have some non-Gotham branches set up to enact their medical rituals. 

Third, there were the industrial products. It was the smallest department, but certain alchemical products allowed for economic gains, and due to production limitations that department’s customer base were strictly other Wayne Enterprises subsidiaries. 

Finally, there were the consumer products. Tanya’s personal favorite department, to be honest. There was nothing like magical consumerism to stoke her entrepreneurial spirit. Well, also the fact that she got to play with all of the magical toys. 

For example, she had finally managed to use a ritual for making golems into animating pretty much anything built into the shape of a living thing. Like her stuffed animals. The toy golem line was obscenely popular, production could not keep up with demand despite charging obscene prices. Production was also limited by the fact that they didn’t pre-enchant anything, it was all the animation of toys that were brought into the offices. 

There were, unfortunately, a few… ethical issues with production. It was a sacrificial ritual, where the quality of the sacrifice determined the power and intellect of the golem. The good news was that the toy golems could be made with animals, and there was a substantial supply of animals to be slaughtered in the country, far more than they could take advantage of. While some magical rituals spoiled the meat of the sacrifice, this one didn’t. 

Furthermore, the ritual also severed the reformatted soul from The Red, so the golems didn’t have any residual instincts beyond what was programmed into them. Animals didn’t reincarnate coherently, so there wasn’t any real disruption of the afterlife; animal souls become soul soup before getting strained and scooped back out no matter what, so preventing the melted soul-goo from rejoining the rest of the soup didn’t cause any material damage. Even in massive numbers, at least until you get to the numbers that don’t even come close to fitting on a calculator display. 

But not everyone enjoyed as thorough an understanding of soul mechanics as she did, so there were… a lot of protestors. Also thieves. 

There were, however, some awesome opportunities created from this. 

“Go Spike!” Shouted Glenn, a ten year old Gothamite who had been selected for this special event. The toy golem shaped like a quilled yellow fox bounded through the little obstacle course that was set up, going notably faster than they usually were supposed to. 

The toy golems mostly functioned by absorbing the magical or physical energy of the one they were bonded to, a link created by investing attention into them, or if the golem was to be absolutely bound to a single person the enchanter could do that too, and used that connection for cues on how to act. It was a rather efficient transformation, actually. It drained approximately the same amount of caloric energy from a child as it would to physically move the golem with their arms, puppeting them with their minds without realizing it. This was billed as a feature, as playing with a toy golem was twice as exhausting as playing with an ordinary stuffed animal, so children with them ran through their batteries in a much more convenient time frame for the parents. 

As a billionaire, Bruce was obligated to do something expensive and elaborate for Tanya’s birthday, so for her ninth birthday they organized a toy golem pet show. Well, sort of a pet show. It was actually based on that super popular monster catching game, where one of the side gimmicks were essentially beauty contests combined with pet shows. 

Naturally, the toy golems didn’t have elemental powers, so it was a lot more similar to an actual pet show than the event nominally was. As that game wasn’t owned by Wayne Enterprises, there was a representative from that company as one of the judges, of course: the American branch’s COO, a man who publicly just asked people to call him Reggie. He wasn’t exactly thrilled to be here, but he found a way to contribute without needing to actually pay attention. How? He said the same thing to every routine: “Remarkable!” The kids loved it. 

There were twenty contestants, each assigned a golem and given about an hour to develop a routine; even Tanya had to get a fresh golem for this event. “Hey Princess.” Bruce whispered, holding a sticky note informing him of this from the judges. “You forgot to give your plushie a cheesy name.” 

Tanya looked at her large orange jerboa-esque golem. Oh yeah… “Cheesy, huh?” Tanya smirked as she got an idea. “Okay. His name is Pizza now.” Bruce overacted his amusement with a snort of laughter, and gave her a thumbs up before writing something on the sticky note and passing it back to the aide that was waiting behind him. 

Pizza squeaked in curiosity. “Yes, you are now Pizza.” Tanya instructed. Pizza squeaked happily, his whip-like tail slapping on the ground as he hopped in place. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Pizza was led by her subconscious expectations. It could also get a surprising amount of range from the simple rubber squeak toy in Pizza’s throat. She attributed it to her magical “talent”. 

The next one shown was an orange-ish red monkey named Spider. Pauline, the girl who had trained it, stretched the limits of the contest by singing personally, and having her monkey’s own squeak-box belt out a surprisingly precise accompaniment. Hm, she probably has some magical talent of her own then, if she was able to get that complex of vocalizations. 

Pizza seemed fired up, joining the song, but a reproachful look from Tanya stopped the interruption in favor of an apologetic hug. 

The guests were sourced from Gotham Academy, and thus were a combination of high society and intelligent underprivileged, plus one guest each, and their parents. As such, they numbered in the hundreds, so many that Bruce had also taken the step of renting the normal amenities required for large events, porta potties, some EMTs in a medical tent, etcetera. 

After the song recital, there was a somewhat energetic applause, and Tanya, from her birthday girl throne, which was not a metaphor, joined in politely. Pizza clapped more enthusiastically. 

The party as a whole was held in Wayne Manor’s expansive grounds, of course. There were caterers providing a buffet of unhealthy food, there was a cake large enough to feed a slice to everyone, Zatanna and her father were present in their capacities as show magicians, although they weren’t performing during the golem contest. Other games were scattered about, both traditional party games and other party amenities, like a ball pit and bounce castle. 

Notably, there were no clowns. Joker was safe in Arkham, and the last three nights included divinations to hunt down all at large criminals who would have motive to disrupt the proceedings. Instead, the event was fully themed after the monster trainer franchise, and there were a few character actors with their own toy golems. 

As Tanya had buckled down and personally created these particular golems, there were plenty to spare. She could use her own magic as a shortcut, so all she needed was some animal soul matter and the target and could brute force the rest. For this batch, she invented a spell that scooped out the soul matter directly from Parliament of Limbs’ gigantic soul soup, but it wasn’t nearly as scalable as the normal ritual. She did have men working on adapting the ritual to accept the more fermented souls, as well as researching a way to tap the Red without needing a powerful practitioner and wilderness to do it. The good news was that exploring her powers in this way revealed a novel way for her to draw easily consumable magical energy from places where the Red was relatively accessible, which probably has combat potential somewhere, but for now, sacrifices it is. 

She had already had plenty of fun running around playing, but the toy golem contest was the main event of the party, so she rested happily with Pizza as they watched the next contestant, who had a blue penguin plushie named Pengi that slid around on its belly as a major part of its display. Pizza tried to copy it, but instead ended up awkwardly rolling around. The only reason it even managed that much was because of the flexibility it got from the fact that unlike his namesake, Pizza did not have any bones. None of the stuffed animal dolls animated into golems did. It was one of the reasons why they were laughably weak. 

“Enjoying yourself?” Zatanna asked, leaning against the throne. Pizza jumped up onto the armrest and presented his head for pats. The magician flinched back, but took a deep breath and pet the plush jerboa. “Aren’t you bored?”

Tanya blinked uncomprehendingly. “...I have living stuffed animals, a gigantic party thrown in my honor, and I’ve eaten enough sugar to cause a normal child to go into hyperglycemic shock. Why would I be bored?” In fact, several children have overindulged in the food and required medical intervention, but the support staff quickly spirited them away to the medical tent to join the kids who got themselves minor injuries on the more physical play activities. Giovanni had put a spell on the tents to support rapid recovery, so most of them were out of the tents in twenty minutes or less. 

“Y’know, all this kid stuff. You’re really old, aren’t you?” Zatanna said, gesturing to the whole party. “Don’t you want to grow up?”

Right, Zatanna doesn’t know about her and ‘Tanya Degurechaff’ being the same person. Secret identities can be really annoying sometimes. “...No.” Tanya said honestly. “To be honest, even before I died I’d have spent a large chunk of my savings if it meant getting one of these.” Toy golems are like the perfect pet. They don’t eat, excrete, or suffer when left alone for extended periods. They are a delight and she will fight anyone who says different. 

Pizza squeaked with pride, tapping its own chest and inviting adulation. Zatanna flinched again. “Okay, the weird puppets are pretty cute I guess” She acknowledged, doing a good job of keeping her fear under control. Zatanna had a traumatizing experience with puppets when she was young, and while she was mostly over it, seeing actual living puppets was bound to be uncomfortable. Tanya wished she knew about it before hiring the girl. “I meant more… the other stuff. You don’t really care about pin the tail on the donkey, do you?”

“No, I don’t care about half the stuff in this party. But look at them.” Tanya said, gesturing widely. “This party is just another way for Bruce to flex his money and status, and keep people from getting accurate ideas on what he does with his free time. There’s enough activities here that it would be nigh impossible to enjoy them all, so… I don’t. I partake in what I do enjoy, like the ball pit, the pony ride, the food, the card game tournament,” She thought her deck was pretty good, but against the literal children? She won too easily. “-and this contest, and let the real children enjoy everything else. Even if Dick thinks himself too cool to join in.” Tanya pointed at the newest contestant, a boy named Chase whose golem was a small brown bipedal bunny. “You should know this, as an entertainer, but children having fun and being happy does tend to be quite pleasing to watch, and playing with them is also fun.”

“I don’t really… like performing.” Zatanna admitted, “It’s why I wanted to join in on the crime fighting so much. But I don’t really know how to do much else besides magic. You should see my grades.” She huffed, laughing at herself self-deprecatingly. She needn’t be so harsh on herself; Tanya had seen her grades and she was comfortably passing all of her classes, even if she had yet to declare a major. 

“Well, there’s always becoming a professional occultist with ArcWayne.” Tanya said, “Or, alternatively, taking a position in a professional superhero team. Lots of cities are forming them.” 

“I guess…” Zatanna said, clearly not enjoying the topic of her future career. A fairly normal sentiment among 19 year olds. 

Oh, it was her turn now. “We can pick this up later, if you want.” Tanya offered, picking up Pizza. “I have a contest to win.”

As it was her birthday, Tanya was dressed a little fancier than her usual: she had a new white dress with red accents and a line of the iconic ball symbol of the monster catching game along the hem, with her black hair pulled into a ponytail that trailed down to her lower back. It was adorned with a gold tiara with diamonds and rubies in the shape of that same symbol. 

Pizza began the routine by passing the lightning bolt shaped tip of his tail to Tanya and curling up into a ball, pulling himself up by rolling up the long tail and grabbing the bolt with his tiny hands. Tanya flicked the golem, causing Pizza to unroll and pose when he was at the apex of the maneuver, before rolling back up. 

Tanya repeated this yo-yo impression a few times in different directions, Pizza taking a different pose each time. Then, she launched Pizza between her legs and the golem didn’t miss a beat, rolling behind her and climbing up her back to jump into the air, posing again. Tanya did a dance of her own, adapting her figure skating to continually catch Pizza by a single limb, or one of the large ears, and smoothly tossing Pizza back up into the air. 

Subtly altering the plans in consideration of Pizza’s new name, Tanya mixed up the ‘toss Pizza at obstacles while having him bounce back’ routine with some upwards tosses, deliberately spinning the plushie as if he was his namesake before assuming the same planned ending, which never would have worked if the golem was a real living creature and thus was capable of getting dizzy. Tanya assumed a ballerina’s pose, on the toes of one leg while having her other leg outstretched. Pizza assumed a similar pose while standing on that outstretched leg. 

Naturally, the judges gave her a perfect score. She wasn’t the only perfect score, mind you, and there wasn’t a ‘winner’ per se, every participant got a ribbon for their golem. 

Being rich was great.