Josie appeared on the roof of her target building. She took a moment to look for

sentries as she looked for a way inside without teleporting. She didn’t want to appear

in the middle of a mob, and be taken right off the bat. She looked at her watch and

saw the flow was faster than what she expected.

Someone had turned the place into a mana charger. And that was filling up her watch

almost as fast as Zatanna was draining it. She decided to clear the building with her

birds. She sent them out to a random location miles away. Once they reached their

destination, the guards and staff would quietly start disappearing.

Then all she had to do was open a door and walk inside.

She felt the first pop of her spell dragging its victim out of the way. She smiled. By

the time they got back, things would be decided one way, or the other.

She let the Zatanna persona go. She wanted to be able to use other things if she ran

into trouble. The transit would still happen until the birds ran out yanking the guards

and staff out of the way.

She found a ladder leading into the building from one of the steeples. She had entered

the door as a guard vanished. He didn’t have any time to alert anyone to her presence

before he was gone.

She slid down the ladder and looked around when she reached the bottom. She

frowned at the converted second floor being turned into a hospital ward. Dozens of

women were strapped to beds. Crude hoses took the blood from the women and

carried it to a tank in a corner of the room.

Josie thought she might have let Zatanna go too soon. How did she fix this? What

was going on with the blood? How did she stop this?

This might be something she could use Doctor Occult to stop if she knew what was

going on.

She took her pad out of her messenger bag. She put it on a rolling table. Little dots

were forming into two waves. One wave was heading out to where the quinjet to try

to stop Jack from doing what he did best. The other was coming right at the makeshift

hospital.

The first thing she had to do was keep everyone else out of the building until she

could do what she had to do to stop things in their tracks.

She could do that simply enough with Zatanna. Then she could move on to a plan to

stop things in their tracks.

And a book of knowledge might give her something she could use in such a

hypothetical plan.

She summoned her master magician. She decided the easiest way to keep people out

was to construct walls over the openings to seal the building. She sent out her

minions to get the job done. The fire birds reached the exits and sealed them with

summoned rock.

By the time someone got a battering ram to the front door, this would be over one

way, or the other.

She held out her hands and an invisible pen wrote out facts to tell her what was going

on as the building blocked off anyone trying to get at her. She frowned at what she

read.

Maybe she should let the Shemmarians in so she could inflict what they deserved on

them.

She decided that she had to do something about the women losing their blood on the

tables around her first. Then she would see what she had in her bag of tricks for

anyone who happened to cross her path.

Quick executions were going to be the order of the day in her opinion.

She decided that Doctor Occult was what she needed. Then she could move everyone

outside. She sent the book of knowledge to Jack. He would be busy for the minute it

took for him to take apart any advance on him, but once he was done with that, he

could think about what had to be done to take the operation apart.

She switched bodies. Her delay tactic had bought her some time. She doubted they

could get at her while she was working on their victims.

The first thing she had to do was assess her sudden patients. She let the magical scan

reach out to tell her what she needed to know. It gave her information like the book

of knowledge spell she used extensively, but it was directed at what she wanted to

heal, and how best to do that.

Josie checked her watch as she went over each scan. She had to take the plugs from

the hoses out of each neck, close the wounds, and speed up the healing. She had to

do that before the woman on the table died while she worked to save her.

She could do it. The watch was recharging faster than it should, even with the

alterations that she had done to the building, and the Doctor Occult persona was

specialized for this sort of thing.

If she tried anything with Zatanna, there was a chance that she would cause the event

she was trying to prevent.

Wishing things into working sounded great, but if you weren’t precise, you could

inflict unintended consequences on yourself like a monkey paw.

Josie started work, cutting off the flow of blood and reversing the effect. She

perceived that the tank was there to keep everything fresh for what they wanted to do.

She was not going to let that happen.

Once she had the ladies’ blood back where it belonged. She disconnected the hoses

one by one. She created a seal over their wounds and asked the magic to heal it up.

They would need care when she was done, but they wouldn’t be lab rats unless the

enemy took the building back from her. She made sure the women remained asleep.

Now she had to get them out of the building and in the hands of someone who could

help them.

Josie did one more scan to make sure she had fixed everything. She frowned at the

seed she found. She paused. She couldn’t send any of these women away until she

figured out what had been placed in them.

The book of knowledge had said that the seed of holding would keep things under

control. This had to be what the spell was talking about. Were there other seeds

waiting to be planted?

She could extract them. How much time did she have? Did she have enough time to

do the job? She looked at the pad. Jack and Fass’s Fighters were coming right at her.

Enemy combatants were dropping like flies. The other persona user might be using

Death again to get to her.

He could have teleported to get inside the building. She doubted he was going to

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leave their helpers outside to face the music themselves. And he was probably

looking for the brains behind this so they didn’t have to come back to do this again

down the road.

She had time to extract the seeds. She turned her persona off. She wanted to have full

power in case something happened before Jack got to the building.

She watched the numbers go up. She listened to the sound of the building. How much

did they take from the women who had come before the ones she was operating on?

And why were they trying to fill the tank on the other side of the room?

She needed to do something about that before things were done. That tank had to be

the key to creating the lich queen.

She could do something to it once she was done with the main effort. She could send

the women to Hawk Ridge and have Jane’s crew do whatever they could before she

got home.

She heard a bang under her. Red dots flowed into the building. Someone had blown

a hole in her defenses.

She couldn’t do the operations while dealing with people rushing to take the subjects

back to finish the job. She frowned as she dialed through the names on her watch.

What did she have to stop a crowd from trying to take her position?

She had to get in front of the biggest portion of the crowd. Then she could use

Bulletgirl on whomever she saw.

She grabbed the pad and called on Quick. She flew to the stairs leading to her floor.

She knew there were two more, but she had to worry about the one with the most

enemies on it, and then try to take the others when she was done.

She paused when a bolt of red light leaped at her from the bottom of the staircase. She

backed up. Someone had grabbed an artifact to use against her.

Jack had said they might run into a magician to try to stop them. It looks like he had

been right about that. How did she counter this new enemy and get the women out

without losing everything?

She doubted that she could move the women without taking the seeds out. That might

trigger some kind of transformation. She didn’t want that to happen if she could help

it.

Josie turned into the Green Arrow. She took aim with her invisible bow. She began

to send glowing arrows down the steps. She nodded as she saw the missiles ricochet

off the stone railings and walls of the staircase.

She heard a couple of dings as she got lucky and killed members of the Montrose

among her enemies. If she killed others, they didn’t trigger the quest completion.

A blast of red light answered her volley. She stepped back. She didn’t want to face

anyone with potential problems in the way. She let go of Green Arrow. She had to

move the women out of the way before she could engage in a magical duel with her

enemy.

She wanted to put an end to this before things moved out of control. The last thing

she wanted was undead women rising up to destroy everything around them. How

long would it take for them to work their way to Hawk Ridge and her Ducklings?

She was not going to let that happen whatever it took to get the job done.

She checked her watch. She nodded as it recharged faster than normal. She had to

hold things in place until Jack could strike from behind. She would like to take the

guy down, but she didn’t know how her wish magic would stand against someone

else’s own knowledge.

She turned into Zatanna. She decided to move the women to the roof. She could get

them back on their feet when she was done dealing with the magician trying to rush

her.

She sent up birds for each of the sleeping women. She waited until they reached the

targeted level. Then they were gone. She hoped that hadn’t been a mistake.

She hoped that she hadn’t killed them and started them on the road to lichdom.

A red blast brought her back to her current situation. She needed to do something

about the Shemmarians.

The first thing she needed to do was seal the room so she could buy time. Then she

could think of something since she didn’t want to trade magic bolts with another

magician.

She swiped the doorway with rocks like she had at the Hole in the Wall when she first

arrived in Hawk Ridge. She needed a solution for her problem. She wanted to use the

Human Bomb but if she did she would be locked down until she came back to herself.

Could she kill the enemy magician with the blast and then evade the soldiers that

would be waiting on her to become solid again.

She had a lot of personas that might be effective. She just didn’t know what would

be effective in this situation. Maybe she needed to come up from behind and try to

smash them against the closed doors.

She decided to do one thing to wreck things before she engaged with the enemy. She

turned to the tank full of seeds and blood. She wished for it to burn up so it couldn’t

be used to create the problem she was trying to stop.

A loud scream echoed through the building. Josie covered her ears with her hands

long enough to block the sound with her magic. She hoped she had done the right

thing.

She wished to get down to the ground. She paused as the crowd of guards were all

around her. She had to move before they tried to take her for the magician and her

birds weren’t going to be a big help at the moment.

It was time for speed.

She switched to Quick. She had the speed to get away, but why do that? She could cut

down the odds while waiting for Jack to show up.

Josie started kicking the armed men with her super speed. She broke bones while

letting the swords go by. She found a baton hovering in the middle of the fight.

Suddenly she had a drum stick to use on the heads of her enemies.

She paused when she ran out of faces to smash. Six seconds had been enough to clear

out the space around her. She spotted fighting in the street. Should she join that? She

heard a noise and jogged behind a column in a blur. Red light missed her.

Josie looked around. The soldiers she hadn’t put down tried to get out of her

battleground. They didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire, and that told her they

knew what the light did to people.

Did she turn back into Zatanna to use her wish magic against the red light? Did she

try something else? What would happen if she called up Fate? Would his magic work

better than her usual spells?

The only other magician she thought would be helpful was Shazam. Would the old

man give her what she needed? Did she want to test it?

She wondered if Bulletgirl would do things in this. She didn’t want to sling bullets

and hit a shield she couldn’t shoot through while he was shooting at her.

She decided that maybe Shazam was the way to go. She touched her watch and hoped

she wasn’t making a mistake. A mistake now would get her killed and leave her kids

with Jack.

That was a fate worse than death in her opinion.

She touched her watch. A form made of magic and lightning took over her body. She

felt stronger and the world seemed ready to bend to her will.

Red light reached for her. She dodged the beam. She flashed forward. She wondered

if this was what Geoff Johns wanted, but was too incompetent to write as a story.

Captain Marvel had been a flying brick. He accomplished great feats with his powers

lifted from the gods. Adding on magic must have seemed like a good idea. He just

wrecked the greatness of the character for his personal wants.

The magician tried a continuous beam slicing through the air. He held a book in one

hand. The light leaped from the pages. His skeleton glowed through his skin with

every second of power displayed.

Josie zipped through the barrage. She brought her fist in his face as hard as she could

swing her arm. Lightning blasted through the red glow. The magician flew into the

nearest wall. He dropped the book out of his hand. The aura protected him from the

full force of her blow.

It didn’t protect him from the second one that crushed his face to paste.

Josie changed into Fire and set the book on fire. She stepped back from the explosion

that resulted. It almost blew out her fire. She stepped back and let the furnace roar

back up to full power.

She looked around and let Fire go. She still had to get those seeds out of the women

on the roof. That would be easier without having someone trying to blow her

operating theater up while she was working.

Zatanna was still going to be her workhorse, with Doctor Occult as her medical expert

and paramedic for special cases like this. Shazam would be her personal force against

anyone who got too close to her with beams of light, and other magic.

That had been a surprise to run into someone who could match up with her for just

a bit. She had to worry about that in the future and plan accordingly.

One hit from that red beam would have been enough to kill her. She knew that from

the way it had blasted through the wall. She should have kept the book, but

destroying it seemed a better idea.

Jack had to know there were more exotic weapons than Warner’s old ring, and the

watches, and they were in unfriendly hands.

She doubted that would stop him from doing crazy things to get one over.