Mettle, Metal, Meddled - Chapter 87 - Chocolate god (Patreon)

Once we had all returned to Bioship, lifting off the ground to about two hundred feet, called Nightwing, who put me on a video call. I could see him and the rest of Alpha team, Wally zipping in from somewhere else in the cave.

"How did it go?"

"It went well. Mauser was definitely here, and we have proof. The neighbors had some security cameras, and we caught him teleporting in and back out," I explained. "He traded some gold for the pistol but messed with the guy's mind to keep him from asking questions or demanding paperwork. It's faded, so he is back to normal, but it scared him enough not to report it."

"...Did you find anything else?"

"We did, a pack of cigarettes, not from the U.S. as far as we can tell, that Mauser threw aside when he was leaving," I said. "I'm hoping some of the barcodes or details on the package might lead you to something?"

"It's possible magic might be able to help, as well," Tula added, causing me to turn and look at her. "If he enjoys smoking enough and had the pack on him for long enough, it might let us track him… Honestly, I don't know much about divination magic, which is what this would fall under."

"Okay, Nightwing, I'm going to send you some pictures. Do what you can with them," I said, the young hero nodding in understanding. "We are going to pay a visit to Kent Nelson and talk to him in person. He is more likely to need the actual object if there is anything he can do. Call us when you get any information."

Nightwing confirmed the plan, and I hung up, using my phone to snap a dozen pictures of the partially crumpled paper and plastic trash. I also sent him the photos of the gold I had taken, though after having looked at it for a while, I was pretty sure it was part of what was stolen from the armored bank truck that Mauser robbed. While I was sending pictures to Nightwing, M'gann piloted Bioship back up into the atmosphere, then past that, already charting the trip to Massachusetts, to a small town not too far from Salem, where Kent Nelson's new home was. I called ahead before we landed in his driveway. Tula, Artemis, and I stepped out of Bioship and headed to the front door, where Kent awaited us.

"Good to see you. Come in," He said, stepping to the side and rushing us through his door. "I wish I had better news for you, but chances are, this isn't going to work as well as you hope."

I frowned, watching the older man as he walked around us, heading straight for a heavy wooden door not far from the main entrance. He opened the door, which shimmered and flashed with blue floating runes for a split second. He continued to talk as we followed him down the stairs into the basement.

"Generally speaking, magic doesn't work very well garnering information from more modern things," He explained, tapping a crystal as he stepped into the basement.

As he tapped the clear crystal, a ringing sound filled the space, and the clear chunk of rock started to glow. Other rocks across the surprisingly large, open room began to flicker and shine as well. After a few seconds, the room was lit up just as if regular lights had been installed in the glowing crystals instead.

"Mass production and overly processed materials don't carry magic essence very well, which means pulling information from them is difficult," He explained, grabbing an incredibly detailed globe and moving to a central stone table. "But we can give it a shot. The fact that Mauser uses so much magic might make it easier."

He spent fifteen minutes setting up a ritual, drawing runes with a red chunk of chalk onto and around the globe before drawing a circle and gesturing to it.

"Put it down here, Warren."

I nodded and put the empty cigarette pack on the table, stepping back to let Kent work his magic, literally. He stepped closer and put both his hands on the table, muttering a long string of Latin. When he finished, the red chalk lines pulsed with energy, which pushed up and into the globe, which was the center of the whole ritual. The globe seemed to absorb the energy before starting to spin. I half expected it to whirl around wildly, but it only rotated slowly, its base glowing white before it stopped.

"Dammit. Well, that's about what I expected," Kent said, hobbling closer to the table, having stepped back after starting the ritual.

The globe's base stopped glowing, the light seeming to shift to the globe itself. The glowing energy bounced around for a few seconds before eventually settling on a large chunk of Central America. I looked closer, and from what I could see, it covered the bottom end of Mexico, past Mexico City, all the way down to the start of Nicaragua. Guatemala was almost completely covered, save a chunk on the western side, touching the Pacific Ocean. I quickly took a picture of the globe, saving it to send to Nightwing.

"Looks like he is somewhere around here," Kent said, pointing out the space. "Or he is spending a lot of time in that area, at least… Probably both. Morden's Globe is a powerful artifact but can only do so much with literal trash."

"Would Dr. Fate be able to do more with his Order magic?" I asked.

"Most likely not, especially because his most powerful divination tools are being used in the spell to monitor for spikes in Chaos magic," Kent said, shaking his hand. "And you're better off convincing Batman to take off his cowl on national television than getting Dr. Fate to suddenly change his plans for such a small chance."

I nodded in understanding, reaching down to grab our evidence and putting it back in its bag. I sealed it up and nodded to Kent. We quickly said our goodbyes to the old magician, who understood the lack of pleasantries. As we climbed back into Bioship, I got another video call from Nightwing.

"So I was able to check the batch number," He said, jumping right into it. "But unfortunately, it went to several places. Mexico, Panama…. Some spots in Nicaragua…"

"I'm going to send you a rough image of what Kent was able to narrow down for us," I replied. "Overlay the two as best you can. It might help you narrow things down."

I quickly sent the images of the globe, and I could see Nightwing as he tapped away at the holoprojected computer, sifting and working with the data. After a few minutes I got an image back, showing what spots overlapped.

"It looks like the northern end of Guatemala and the southern side of Campeche is our best bet… a handful of stores and gas stations sell this brand. Not a lot in that location because it's a dense jungle space…"

"There's no way to know exactly without going to each location…" Artemis said from behind me. "And that's only if they have security footage that goes back long enough. He might go back frequently if he is a heavy smoker, but otherwise, they might have cleared their footage."

"Okay, then we need to move quickly," I said, Kaldur nodding from beside Nightwing. "It would take us a little over five hours to take the Bus."

"Not for me. I can make it there in an hour or so," Wally pointed out. "I can join them and help."

"Take the Zeta-Tube to Mexico City, and it will take you even less. You can meet Superboy and work with him since he is the only one nearly as mobile as you." I said, Wally nodding and zipping out of sight, returning with his costume, only to dash out of sight again to the caves Zeta-Tube. "The rest of you should take the Bus. You might not make it to us in time, but at least you'll be in the area if we need support."

"Agreed," Kladur said simply before turning to his team. "Let's go Alpha team. We leave in two!"

"We will start with the most southern locations and work our way up." I finished, Kaldur turning back to me through the screen. "Good luck."

He nodded, and I hung up, turned to M'gann, and nodded, the ship shifting under us as she got us going. We all quickly sat down in our seats, which buckled around us.

"Superboy, we will let you out in a high atmosphere so you can head straight for the first location. I'm sending it to your phone."

Once again, we traveled across the globe, passing up through the atmosphere and back down, heading for our first target. Superboy left once we were low enough for him to breathe, the half-Kryptonian heading for where he would meet Wally. We continued for our first target: a roadside gas station at the border between Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Unfortunately, the location didn't have security cameras installed, and with what little we could communicate with the people working, they didn't recognize the image we had of Mauser, so we quickly left. This continued for an entire hour, with most locations not having security cameras and not identifying the criminal. The mood was getting sour when Nightwing contacted us again.

"Ek Chuaj!" He shouted, clearly energized about something, his eyes focused off-screen.

We could see that he was still in the cockpit of the Bus, but Aqualad was piloting from the copilot's seat. Meanwhile, Nightwing was tapping away at his portable access point for the League systems.

"What?" I asked, slightly confused. "What is that?"

"Not what, who!" He responded. "He is the Mayan god of chocolate!"

I shared a look with Snapshot, who was sitting next to me. I looked back at Nightwing, still very confused. I looked back to see Nightwing taking a deep breath and visibly collecting himself.

"When we started shrinking the possible area, I set up a search routine for anything interesting in the area," He explained. "There was a spike in searches for "Ek Chuaj" after it was announced a pyramid that was just discovered that was dedicated to him! It was in the jungles of Guatemala!"

"Okay, so why are you so excited about that?"

"Because Mayan gods have multiple aspects to them, Ek Chuaj is also the war and Chaos!" He explained. "I missed it earlier because it's not nearly as popular an aspect. Most people just stop at "patron of chocolate!"

The following five minutes were spent frantically communicating with Nightwing, who desperately tried to find the pyramid's location through his League resources. After a few minutes, he cursed, nearly throwing his phone.

"We need to kick this up the chain. The Guatemalan government is keeping its location a closely guarded secret so that looters don't start tearing everything apart," He said, shaking his head. "We know it's in the area of the country we want to search, but we don't know where exactly."

"Okay, it's about time we got the League involved anyway," I said, shaking my head. "In the meantime, we will start scanning the area from Bioship. Now that we know what we are potentially looking for, we might get lucky."

"And we will continue our way to your location," Kaldur said from behind him. "We are nearly four hours away."

"Superboy and I should keep checking store locations. We might get lucky, too," Wally suggested, and I nodded in agreement.

"Good idea, Kid. Contact us if you find anything."

We began scanning the jungle for the next hour, no longer bothering to head to the nearest location where they might be selling cigarettes. Nightwing kept us updated with the League's progress and who else was scanning the jungle. Fifteen minutes into the second hour, we found something.

A sizeable sprawling ruin entirely hidden by the jungle. At its center was a giant pyramid, which at one point must have been fully covered by trees and vegetation despite being about seventy feet tall. Instead of being covered, however, the surrounding jungle was almost completely cleared away, with a large circular clearing all the way around it. The wireframe scan also showed three or four dozen people walking around the ruins.

"How far out?" I asked, looking over at M'gann.

"About half a mile," She responded. "And we've been cloaked the whole time."

"Good. Set Bioship down. Artemis, let Alpha team know we found it," I said, studying the display. "We will attempt to get closer, get a read on what sort of forces are in play, and report back to the League to lead a combined assault."

Bioship slowly descended, weaving and shifting to fit down inside the forest cover. In the end, the ship had to change its shape to finally land, forcing us to stand and get much closer together. Once we touched down, I turned to my team.

"This is surveillance only. As much as I wish that we could smash in and grab Mauser, the chaos ritual is more important," I said, getting a series of nods in return. "M'gann, hook us up."

Once we were all mentally linked, we climbed out of Bioship to the jungle floor. Vegetation was incredibly dense and difficult to move through, so every foot was a battle, especially since we were attempting to be as quiet as possible. Still, with Snapshot in the lead, we made good progress. After ten minutes, we hit the first signs of the ruins, chunks of stone and small, mostly crumbled structures peeking up from the ground.

As we got closer, Tula jumped past me to stop us suddenly, reaching forward and grabbing Artemis by her uniform, preventing her from moving any further. She stepped forward lightly, raising her hand and summoning a ball of blue cloudy energy. Quietly, she blew on it, the magic pushing forward like dust, before latching onto something invisible in the shape of strings running across the path in front of us.

"Magical wardlines," She explained. "Quick and dirty sensors for a ward. If we trip them, they will know."

"How high would they go?" I asked, looking upwards. "Could they go to the tops of the trees?"

"The caster would need to go that high first," She answered. "If M'gann can carry me up, and I can look for a gap…"

"Go," I said with a nod, M'gann quickly grabbing her under the arms and carrying her up.

M'gann carried her all around, first testing the height only to realize that they went high enough that going over them would make spotting us easy. When that option was discounted, M'gann carried her back and forth before eventually stopping.

"There's a gap here. It looks like a tree branch fell and snapped the contact point."

"Carry her through M'gann, then come back for us."

They spent a moment floating in one space before moving forward slowly, M'gann taking Tula through the lines and down on the other side. M'gann quickly returned, carrying us through the mass of crisscrossing wardlines and working us through the small gap. When we had all landed, I gave Tula and her a nod.

"Good job, you two," I said. "And good job spotting it before we walked into it, Tula."

"My mom used to use one to keep me from sneaking out after bedtime," She admitted with a blush. "I learned the detection spell so I could get past it."

Resisting the urge to laugh, I gestured for Artemis to retake the lead, this time with Tula just behind her. We quickly found that the ruins made the jungle easier to traverse, with the fallen chunks of stone creating a decent path through the deep vegetation. Eventually, after slightly faster progress, we finally met the treeline, the massive pyramid on the other side.