weldedtomyspine | Orla, Texas, Early Saturday Afternoon

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Orla, Texas, Early Saturday Afternoon

Dinah and Jaime had gotten up early, and Dinah had helped walk Jaime through an actual plan for investigation. Which was much better than his "plan" of going back out to Orla and "trying to find something helpful".

So they were back out in the desert, driving old, mostly abandoned roads. Jaime didn't have much to say, and Dinah seemed willing to let him think. So the silence drew out between them until they finally arrived. "There's Mrs. Wilson's car," Jaime said as he pulled in behind it and stopped the car. "I found her phone a couple of dozen feet away, just lying on the ground."

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Jaime nodded. "She's usually pretty good about time estimates, so 'a few minutes' is probably five to ten?" He glanced over at Traci. "And someone should probably keep an eye on her, so... yell if you find anything?"

Wow. He felt really useless right that moment.

"Or call." Dinah held up her phone with a grin, because having both her and Momoko disappear from the same place would *so* not look good for Jaime with the police.

She made her way out around the tiny town in a grid pattern, center to north, north to west, west to south. Abandoned buildings, abandoned cars... a tumbleweed blew by.

"This place just needs the soundtrack from a Sergio Leone movie," Dinah muttered.

...did she hear footsteps? Above her?

And there was another one. Definitely coming from a two-story building with all its windows blown out. And maybe a flash of red coming from one of those windows.

Dinah froze, then slowly crouched down behind an old oil barrel, watching the window. Approach, or wait? Had whoever it was spotted her? Friend, or foe?

Approach.

Dinah soft-footed it to a window near the one where she'd seen the movement, and waited for another noise to confirm that someone was still there.

There was a crunching sound from behind Dinah as a tall woman wearing some sort of armored suit stepped through a broken window. Some sort of metal staff dangled almost casually in one hand as she looked Dinah up and down.

Dinah leveled a stare at her, and tilted her head. "And who would you be?"

No weapon, but she set herself, ready for a fight.

"Huh. Oracle said someone else might be out here investigating. I take it you're with them?" she asked, jerking her head toward where Traci and Jaime were still standing.

Some people weren't very good at answering questions.

Well, it was an indirect answer. Although Dinah didn't go off guard just yet. "You take it right." She paused, and added, "Got anything to prove Oracle's the one that sent you? I mean, I know she doesn't exactly give out business cards..."

"No," the woman agreed, "but she does give out IDs and licenses when necessary."

That made Dinah relax at the same time she looked more concerned. "So Oracle doesn't know where she is?" Dinah grimaced. "I was really sort of hoping she knew exactly what was going on, and just wasn't saying yet."

That got a wry twist of the lips. "That does sound like the sort of thing she'd do. But she asked me to come out here and take a look around, and she knows I don't like having my time wasted, so she better not be playing any games on this one."

The woman swapped her baton to her left hand, then extended her right. "Manhunter."

Dinah took it in her own for a firm shake. "Dinah Lance." Since she knew about the documents, she'd know that much anyway. "Friend of Blossom's. Alternate dimensions, it's a thing." She paused and added, "And hopefully not what vanished her."

"Right."

Manhunter looked around again and frowned. "Well, whatever it was, it was something weird. No signs of a struggle, or even another vehicle." She shrugged. "I don't think there's much I can do here to help. All this crazy stuff is really outside my area of expertise."

"Stick around a little bit," Dinah invited her. "Our magic-user is trying a tracking spell of some kind, we might need back-up sooner than you'd think."

He kept to the shadows, silent, his mind full of what he was overhearing. He'd just barely managed to make it through the desert to the reservoir, drawn by the need for water to refresh his powers, only to return and find humans were suddenly in the town where he'd been transported. And now to hear that there was a magic wielder among them... Tynan was fairly sure this was not news that would help him get back to his own world and his mission.

Manhunter switched her weapon back to her right hand and nodded. "I suppose I could stick around for another half hour or so." She looked back toward where Dinah had come from. "Group up?"

"Works," Dinah said, and started retracing her steps back to Traci and Jaime, eyes still wandering to catalog her surroundings.

Traci was still standing right where she'd been when Dinah wandered off, and Jaime hadn't shifted much, his own eyes sweeping the area. He caught Dinah's gaze and nodded slightly, arching an eyebrow in Manhunter's direction.

"Blue Beetle, Manhunter. Manhunter, Blue Beetle," Dinah introduced them. "Oracle sent her to investigate what happened to Blossom. And Traci 13, who's in the middle of doing the magic assessment." She paused and added, "I didn't see much else that looks suspicious, but I didn't finish the sweep completely."

"The residual magic stuff is keeping me from getting a complete scan, but I haven't picked up anything yet, either." He gave Manhunter a polite nod. He might have been about to say something when Traci's staff stopped glowing and she let out a long breath.

Dinah perked up noticeably. "What've you got?"

"Okay, so this is weird," she said without further preamble. "This area was some sort of local nexus point for a really weird inter-dimensional spell of some sort. A number of worlds... overlapped, for want of a better term, for a short while."

She frowned. "The energy here is all chaotic from that, but my best guess is that anyone here probably got sucked into one of those other worlds." Her frown deepened. "But I would have expected someone to be sucked from another world to here in order to compensate for the energy..."

Well now. That made a lot of sense to Tynan as he listened in from his hiding place in the shadows and he hissed slightly.

Amusing, really, when he thought about it: he'd been kept on the guard teams because his magic had been determined too weak.

Blue Beetle frowned. "But we haven't seen anyone, or even signs of anyone, since we got here," he pointed out, looking around again, wondering if they'd somehow missed something.

"So they either left, or... hid somehow?" Dinah offered, then added, "Frankly I'd think leaving would be smartest, this place has nothing to offer, but then, I don't know much about the fae."

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