***Marigold Zauberer***

“What’s taking so long?” Marigold demanded as Andre poured over the spellwork keeping her trapped inside her clinic.

They were seperated by a thin wall of causality at the front door, and nothing else. People came and went, casting the two of them curious glances as the queen of Manita paced back and forth in the doorway.

Andre himself could enter and exit, but Marigold was trapped.

“It’s just going to…take time.” Andre said, her general scowling at the snarl of nearly indestructible essence programming. “This looks more like a motherboard than an actual spell. And I don’t know shit about motherboards. Not to mention…”

A flash of Magin-gal turtle essence speared out from his fingertip and scattered off the wall’s exposed essence circuitry.

“This essence is so sturdy that we would have to invent entirely new technology just to cut it.”

Marigold’s eye twitched again. “Put someone competent on it, then. And get me some delivery if I’m going to be here a while.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been held hostage.

“Yes ma’am.”

“And I’m going to need you to investigate Elijah Methas. I need a disposable patsy, and the disgraced golemancer would be no great loss.”

“Is that what this video is about?” Andre asked, pulling out his phone.

“What video?”

Marigold’s eye widened in horror as Andre played a video on his phone revealing…herself, speaking from her own office.

“My fellow Manitians. Many years ago, I did things I am not proud of. I did them to maintain the strength of our people. To keep us indivisible in the face of great adversity.

The fake laced her fingers together.

“Recently, however, information about some of these things have come into the hands of some of my detractors, who would use it against me. To that effect, I would like to request one of you to volunteer to become a scapegoat. If you’re interested and above the age of sixty, please call the number on the bottom of the scree-”

“THAT’S A FAKE!” Marigold shrieked, absolutely affronted at the gall on her grandchild.

“Obviously, but if you set someone up to take the fall now, people are gonna know.

“I KNOW!” Marigold said, reining in her voice at the last second. A queen does not lose her composure.

That literal bastard of a grandson.

“How did he even make that? What spell would allow him to-“

“A deepfake and a voice synthesizer aren’t that hard nowadays.” Andre said with a shrug.

“I don’t know what that is, but… set that phone on the ground. Away from the entrance.”

Andre nodded and set the phone with the video playing far away from the entrance and plugged his ears.

A moment later the phone screeched a horrific death wail, and the AI-generated video of Marigold Zauberer began twitching violently before clawing it’s way across the desk towards the camera before pushing out of the phone, her body taking on full size and color as she pulled herself out of the phone.

The screen cracked violently and went dark as the last bit of her shoe left the screen, as if it’d been subjected to a rapid change in temperature.

In the distance, the Marigold inside the clinic turned pixelated and translucent before collapsing into dust.

“Annoying,” Marigold muttered, straightening her clothes.

Claudette’s spellbook didn’t have all of her tricks.

***Paradox***

“Okay, I’m gonna say something, and I want you to listen to everything I have to say and save any ‘killing me’ until after I’m done.” Perry said, air quoting.

Solaris raised a brow but simply nodded, leaning back in his chair. The two of them were surrounded by Anchors, watching Solaris’s every move.

“So, I noticed that you’ve got a brain condition at my wedding.”

Solaris stiffened for a moment.

“I did some digging and figured out what the story was, and I wanna help.”

Truthslayer nodded so minutely that Perry was convinced that she didn’t even notice she was doing it.

Freddy Steel was giving Perry the Stink-eye, but without a bad-guy Vs Good-Guy setup, he couldn’t really start anything.

Guile was hiding in the corner, Nocturne wasn’t present, and Hexen was wearing a dummy magical body without the other Anchors knowing.

Chemestro was invisible, hovering behind Solaris.

Being able to allow photons to pass through him had become a valuable skillset recently.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“You want to help…huh?” Solaris asked, his arms crossed. “What makes you think you can help?”

“I can make the diagnostic equipment that we’ll need to figure out exactly what’s going on with you. If we can get a sample of your blood I can take scrape’s virus and make something that’ll patch you up. At the very least, I can make a cure and buy us time to find a way to heal your brain.”

“And who are you again?” Solaris asked.

“Paradox?” Perry said.

Solaris shrugged.

“Paradox Zauberer?”

Solaris’s eyes widened. “Claudette and Darryl’s kid?” He glanced over at Hexen.

“Your kid’s all grown up. How come you still look just shy of thirty?”

Hexen shrugged with a blush.

“He all right?” Solaris asked directing the question towards Hexen. The implied question was ‘is he going to betray me?’

“He’s a sweetheart.” Hexen said.

Perry buried his face in his hand.

“Nevermind, wrong person.” Solaris said, turning to Truthslayer. “He alright?”

“He’s telling the truth about wanting to help you, and the manner in which he will try to do it,” Truthslayer said, a pained expression faintly crossing her face. She did not seem to enjoy watching Solaris forget people.

“Alright, what’s your plan?” Solaris said, turning back to Perry.

“Step one: We need a blood draw.”

“That never goes well,” Solaris said, shaking his head.

“That’s why I got together with Lightshow and made this.” Perry said, reaching down and pulling out a massive cuff with short tube connected to what appeared to be a pitch-black brick.

“Lightshow specializes in stabilizing light into Hardlight, and I specialize in making things work better than they should.”

The cuff was milky white with a dash of blue down the center, a retro fifties car feel to it, the style that the light-based tinker favored.

“Her cuff is going to keep your blood looking like blood for a moment, even if it becomes light, while my analyzer will test your blood a million ways from Sunday and digitize the results instantly, sending them off before they have a chance to destabilize and destroy the machine.”

Solaris considered for a moment before nodding.

“Alright. Let’s give it a shot.” Solaris said, revealing his hands as his arms uncrossed.

Instantly, Perry saw the tremors in the older Super’s hand as he extended his left arm. The twitching was constant and worrisome, but even more concerning were the occasional flashes of light and heat from the super’s hands. They were small enough to be nearly imperceptible, but they were there, almost looking like glitter.

Solaris was having trouble controlling his powers. When you could erase a city with a sneeze, that was a problem.

Best get this done quick, then, Perry thought, scooting around the table to put himself at Solaris’s side. The heat radiating off the ailing super was like stepping out onto a sun-baked road.

Perry slipped the cuff over Solaris’s arm, raising it up until it was at the crook of his arm. Perry was pleased to note that his patient’s hand stopped glittering below the cuff.

“Alright, you guys may wanna stand back,” Perry said. The box was designed to analyze a couple drops of blood in a fraction of a second. A couple drops of blood turned into light was…a decent amount of energy.

Perry could’ve made the brick way smaller if he didn’t have to build so much energy dampening into it in preparation for the inevitable explosion.

“Alright, you good?” Perry asked.

“Just do it,” Solaris said, his heartbeat slow and steady.

“You’re gonna feel a pinch…”

Click.

BOOM!

The brick exploded, as it was intended to do, but most of the force of the transformation to light had been dampened.

“Told ya,” Solaris said with a shrug.

“Nah, we got it.” Perry said, scrolling through his phone, inspecting the results.

“What?”

“Here.” Perry said, turning it over to show Solaris. “Your first blood test in fifty years. You need to lay off the cholesterol.”

Solaris broke into a chuckle as he slid the cuff off his arm. The puncture wound where the drops were taken hissed and sizzled, spitting out white-hot material as it sealed itself closed.

Truthslayer grabbed Solaris and squished his face into a hug.

“Now what?” Solaris asked around her, patting the Anchor on the back.

“Now I feed these results to my modelling software. The information in here includes the changes the Scrape’s virus has made to your DNA, so we can use it to both reverse-engineer the virus itself and narrow down what kind of damage is being done up here,” Perry said, tapping his skull.

“The only thing we need after that is a brain scan. I’ll work with Lightshow to make that happen.”

“Before you go,” Solaris said, his tone changing as he pulled away from Truthslayer. “Give Truthslayer the data straight from your phone. It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

“It’s that you don’t trust anyone?” Perry hazarded.

“You’re a smart kid.” Solaris said, eyes narrowed in appraisal.

“So I’ve been told,” Perry said, handing Truthslayer the phone.

“I gotta ask, if you’re Darryl and Claudette’s kid, you’ve got a serious pedigree, and you’re showing up out of nowhere with a solution to my problem. Seems kind of convenient. How come I’ve never heard of you working in our world?”

“Because you’ve got virally induced Alzheimer’s?” Perry said before motioning between the two of them. “We’ve met before, on several occasions. You’ve had several opportunities to pull the plug on me and no one would’ve blamed you for it. I wanna return the favor.”

Solaris bit his lip in thought, his eyes shuddering in place as his damaged brain tried to process what Perry said. Perry could see the man’s thoughts going in a spiralling loop as he struggled to find connections that were no longer there.

Solaris’s expression began to darken with suspicion, his eyes still shuddering. His body tensed, and Perry spotted a raise in the concentration of tiny bursts of light emitting from his hands.

The silence in the room was complete.

Perry could see the super’s heartbeat was still slow and steady in his neck. Solaris thrived on stress.

“Hell, you were at my wedding,” Perry offered, trying not to tense himself. He could tell Solaris was considering a pre-emptive strike against someone who may or may not be messing with his head.

A lightbulb went off behind Solaris’s eyes.

“Oh right, the girl slipped me a twenty to let her kiss the bride first.” Solaris chuckled, covering his smile with his fist, tightly clenched to prevent the tremors from overtaking it. “It’s details like that Minders forget to include.”

“Hey.” Perry said, drawing Solaris’s attention back to him. “We’re gonna fix you.”

Solaris smiled, a hundred years of pain behind a thin veneer of stoicism. “Good luck.”

“Let’s see, meet you back here in…ten days?” Perry asked.

Due to time dilation, it would feel like no time at all had passed for Solaris if he stayed in light-form the whole time. It would be easier if he travelled to and from a distant landmark like Sedna, but travelling outside the earth’s atmosphere was a great way to expose yourself to The Tide, and Solaris didn’t need any more of that destabilizing influence.

How did the moon-men get here, anyway?

“Gotcha.” Solaris said, nodding.

Paradox got his phone back and sent the data to Hippocrates before hustling out the door. He needed to talk to Lightshow and bring her fully on board.

She wasn’t fully aware of what the light-stabilizing cuffs were for, but if he commissioned a full-on MRI machine that momentarily rendered Solaris mortal, she would have questions Perry couldn’t answer without spilling the beans.

Perry’s mind was already working a mile a minute, thinking about how he could incorporate her expertise into an MRI that send out tiny bursts of stabilization just before the Electromagnetic pulse.

It was an interesting engineering problem, and not an impossible one.

Once he left, Solaris heaved a sigh.

“Truthslayer.”

“Yes?”

“Did we know that Lightshow’s machines could be used like that?”

Truthslayer shook her head.

“Well, get somebody watching her back. Information like this has a way of popping up independently. If they figure out she can make machines that allow me to take damage, however temporary, she’s going to become a target.”

“I’ll get on it.” Freddy Steel said, nodding.

“I didn’t tell you to get on it.” Solaris said, eyeing the G.I. Joe lookalike from the side before glancing over at Hexen and Truthslayer.

“Who is he again? And the kid standing behind me better move where I can see him before I do something drastic.”