Ameliorate

Chapter 18: Meanwhile...

Technopath slunk along a rooftop, scanning to find a security camera. Once he set his sights on one, he placed his hand in his pocket. His eyes flared green before the green glow spread to the outline of his body, and he reappeared under the camera.

Technopath sat with his legs crossed, hand still in his pocket, and closed his eyes.

The sounds of the city around him faded away.

While Sherlock Holmes may be the most popular character in modern media with a mind palace, Technopath liked to think that his was much more impressive.

He opened his eyes to see a pitch black void surrounding him with dim white lights beckoning to him.
Technopath walked forward and the lights revealed themselves to be five computer monitors, one large one in the middle and four in the corners.

The monitor on the top right fizzled into static before showing the view of himself from the security camera that he had sat under.

He looked at the bottom right monitor. Two pictures faded into view with some text on the right side of each picture. The one of the left showed Protector in action, with his right hand up and a yellow shield in front of him.

If someone didn't have the same suspicions and a picture of Wilbur Soot up next to him, there would be no reason to consider them to be one and the same.

The picture of Wilbur was of him and one of his friends, someone that went by TommyInnit online, and it was of the two of them on a beach. Will was holding a travel mug and looked mildly disinterested while Tommy offered a grin and a thumbs up.

Technopath glanced between the two pictures as a desk chair appeared behind him. He sat down.

What looked like a screencast of a messages app popped up on the middle monitor.

The keyboard popped up and someone started typing.

Hey, call?

Technopath connected the call. "What do you have?" He asked, his voice warped as it went over the phone.

"Skipping the pleasantries, are we?" Lightbringer's voice was chipper.

"Ah, yes, hello, how are you, I'm on a tight schedule, what do you need?"
Lightbringer chuckled. "I just wanted to check if you had anything."
Technopath sighed quietly. "Well, Will's pretty solidly who I think is Protector."

"We had that idea after the tweet we found," Lightbringer agreed.

"Yeah. Double Trouble's living up to their names," Technopath continued, sitting back in his chair with his arms crossed. "I did end up looking into Firefly and Snow Lion. They're both someplace in Wisconsin, and Firefly lives in New York. Other than that, her socials are clean."

"What about Snow Lion?"

Technopath scoffed. "She's literally got a dozen posts to Instagram, barely any of them are pictures of humans. Her Twitter's purely business, but she does follow some fanartists"

"So...that was a bust?" Lightbringer asked.

"Not quite. If we can figure out who's staying with who..."

Lightbringer thought for a few. "We can try to figure out the whole team up thing?"

"Yeah."

A few moments passed in silence before Lightbringer said, "Have you checked their amazon accounts?"

Technopath blinked.

"I'll take your silence as a no."

The left monitors changed from the blank white to the front page of an Amazon account. The top one had several sets of dice across the front.

The bottom had a green jacket with the Wings of Freedom from Attack on Titan on the back.

"So we've got two nerds," Lightbringer remarked.

"It appears so." As he scrolled through the code something caught his eye. "Wait."

"What?"

"There's another account that has a private list, it's got stuff like a stab proof shirt, grappling hook-"

"That's probably something. Does she have a roommate?" Lightbringer asked.

Technopath glanced at the security feed and then back to the top left monitor. "No, there's nothing to indicate a roommate. Or even a sister."

"So do we think Firefly could be...fuck, who's in New York? Hurricane?"

"Well, more information's gonna be my next move," Technopath stated. "I'll keep you updated."

"Alright." A few moments passed. "I should mention no one on my end had anything. No one's seen Negotiator or Undying since last Friday. Not even Jake, and you know he frequents the security feeds."

"Is that even legal?" Technopath asked, faintly amused.

"Probably not, but he claimed he wanted the challenge. Who wants a challenge of hacking into the city's security cameras?"

"Tony Stark?" Technopath offered.

"Maybe. I'll keep asking around, you'll be the first to hear anything."

"Gotcha. Might talk to the Theorist later, see if he's got anything to share."

"Alrighty. Say hi for me."

The call disconnected and Technopath was left to his research.

Leave theories here if you have them :3

Have a good day/night!