8467/Birthright: Cairo Connection

Birthright: Cairo Connection
Date of Scene:	29 October 2021
Location:	Cairo, Egypt
Synopsis:	The Outsiders and Zatanna Zatara manage to break onto a truck, destroy the appropriate cursed objects
Cast of Characters:	Phoebe Beacon, Tim Drake, Conner Kent, Bart Allen, M'gann M'orzz, Zatanna Zatara

---

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    BEFORE HALLOWEEK:

    Phoebe Beacon -- AKA the Outsider known as Balm -- has been stuck behind the wards of her mentor and care of her adopted father following the attack at the Gotham Fireman's Gala, where MICKEY ROGERS returned from prison only to be found all over the place -- a little here, a little there, blood and hair and a piece of bone or a tooth. That night, Tim Drake had destroyed a good amount of Witch Bottles containing the ingredients to create monstrous versions of the former -- now assumed deceased -- Gotham Gate editor who was thought to be behind Pheobe's kidnapping and torture in the Montana cult compound called The Silo.

    Justice didn't really have a chance to prevail. Phoebe was injured, and in concern for her powers which prompted her to grow a molar from the bottom of her heel rather than healing a papercut, she had been kept in magical isolation.

    Thank goodness for the internet. She almost felt like she was there when giving a mission rundown, wearing a headset to pass it off as a computergame.

    "So," Balm's voice comes over the coms in the Egyptian night, "There is a shipment of potentially fake and blood-enhanced items that are going to be moved via truck into Cairo, and then they're going to be transported via train from Cairo, destination is going to be Moscow in the end." Phoebe states, flipping through print-outs on her end.

    "Thanks again Bart for dropping this off for me. I'm pretty sure the printer that's in the bar is older than I am." Phoebe comments, and she breathes out.

    "So, luckily because she used biological materials sourced from yours truly, DNA markers should be present and the stains themselves should react to blacklight. Ideally, you should be able to destroy anything that shows a stain and leave the rest of it alone." she explains, looking to a camera trnasmission.

Tim Drake has posed:
    High in the air above Cairo, Red Robin sits in one of the seats of the Bioship, one hand pressed to his chin as he consults the layout of the streets and roads below, as well as the handful of likely routes for the cargo they're pursing. The others on the team will probably be looking at a screen in front of their seat or a tablet, but for Tim it's right in front of his eyes, projected onto his HUD.

    Phoebe will be seeing that from her view, tapped into his feed, as well.

    "Okay. Let's find this truck."

    Normally, Tim would already have a tracking beacon on the thing, but sometimes you just have to get down and dirty, hit the streets yourself, etc. Well, not Tim. Tim is staying in the Bioship, because he's still on light duty as he recovers from an injury. But he's here to support, nonetheless.

    He turns to look at the others aboard. "Anyone who wants to start canvasing from the air or the ground, you know your search coordinates. Miss Martian, I can take over controls if you think you might be able to pick up on the driver through a mental scan."

    And then he looks to Zatanna. His mouth opens once, then closes.

    "Can you... scry for it?" Oh god he has no idea if that's a thing. Play it cool, Tim. You totally know stuff about magic. Yeah! He sells it pretty well at first, but the faint grimace and light shrug kind of undercuts the whole effort.

Conner Kent has posed:
Conner has been wondering what was Phoebe up to, and he is not disappointed. Field trip to Egypt? Blood magic? Ancient relics? He needs a fedora. And some Nazis to punch. "Has anyone figure out yet why Pheeb's blood is in Egypt and used to counterfeit antiquities? It gotta be a good one."

He stands up from his seat when they reach the suspected area, "want a ride, Imp? We can cover more ground with him on the streets and me in the air, I think." He nods to M'gann, so she can tell the bioship to open a 'door' out.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen nods, and looks over to Conner "Evil relative, trying to do nasty magic stuff with her blood. Eww nasty blah things." He walks over to stand next to Conner, and says over the com. "Oh Balm, when we finish, could you see if the UPS guy dropped off a package for me?"

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
M'gann sits in the central seat of the BioShip, both hands on the glowing half orbs emerging from the arm rests that pass for the BioShip's 'controls'. In reality all they really do is enhance the user's telepathic link with the ship which does most of the real controlling.

A door in the side of the ship opens for Conner and Bart without any outward sign of movement or command on M'gann's part. Though her glowing eyes return to the here and now, rather than seeing out of the ship's external sensors, when as she nods in agreement with Tim's proposed plan.

"That shouldn't be too difficult." She gives the console an affectionate pat, like one might an old family dog as she rises from the seat and steps forward toward the wide viewscreen. Placing the index and pointer finger of each hand on her temples she casts her mind outward in a wide net, searching, filtering, looking for this antiquities delivering truck driver.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    Guilty! Would be Zatanna's answer if asked if she colluded in keeping Phoebe at home while her healing powers were stitched back together, to borrow a medical term. Doubly guilty, if she didn't tip anyone off to Phoebe not playing an MMO with the headphone and mic set. What some people don't know won't hurt them.

    Tim's question turns her face from the window where she was watching the City through wisps of clouds.

    "Scry? Cast for the shipment?" Amused, she gives him an abrupt nod. "Show me a map, please. It's easier. Blood objects," she muses half to herself. "Though looking for magical objects in Cairo might be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

    She gets out of her seat to settle next to him where she can see his map display.

    "Right, here we go." After a moment of concentration, in a perfectly normal tone of voice she talks backward, ".cigam doolb eht dniF" (Find the Blood magic.)

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Oh... ah... that's because this necromancer is trying to create a larger network to capture souls. I think. It's a little dicy with my knowledge and -- is... that Zatanna? Zed, when did you--" Phoebe begins over the coms, and with a breath decides that this is a Good Thing. And she's not about to question it.

    "Give it a shot. Can't hurt." she states.

    Below them, the desert stretches beyond the slums of outer Cairo, the pyramids are lit up along the edges of the city, the Sphinx in repose.

    The map lights up in many different places -- it *is* Cairo, after all, and refinement of 'show Phoebe's blood' might not have worked as well -- but there is an incoming dot.

    A tired looking eighteen-wheeler truck making its way towards Cairo, carrying blood-magicked artifacts on it.

    It joins the main road from an off-road, and makes its way towards the city.

Conner Kent has posed:
Conner is not staying to watch the magical procedure because he has this bad relationship with magic in general that has taught him not to be around mystic rituals. Instead he leaves Bart on the ground and flies up. How many thousand trucks can possibly be in Cairo? Probably not enough Bart and himself cannot check all of them out in thirty minutes tops.

Besides, he gets to see the city. If only briefly.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Of course they have maps! They even have legit paper ones for consultation, because A. Tim is over-prepared for everything, and B. sometimes technology failed (see exhibit A). So while the map is rolled out for Zatanna's perusal, Red Robin flashes a thumbs up at Superboy's suggestion. Him as an eye in the sky and Impulse on the ground can cover a whole lot of land, real fast.

    "Okay, great. Just take it easy--between the city and its outlying areas, there's nearly 20 million residents. And that doesn't include tourists." Red Robin hobbles carefully over to the command seat, and says "Don't mind me, Bioship," politely as he takes Miss Martian's usual seat. It's not like flying the Outsiders jet, but Tim will manage just fine.

    He tries to think compliments at Bioship especially hard in his mind. Good ship! So fast! Very stealth!

    Okay it's an old meme, but Tim's Gen Z, his brain is basically hard-wired to think best in meme format.

    "Let me know if you need any help narrowing things down, Zee," he says.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen will start to run once he hits the ground. He does have to move a bit differently on the sand than normal ground, but he has trained for this. He will start heading towards the railway and starts spiraling out from there. "Do we know how big a shipment we are looking for? Like a Tractor trailer, big van, or what?" He asks as he will phase through one trailer checking it out on the run, finding foodstuffs, he is off to the next one.

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
"This city is full of smugglers hauling artifacts, it is like it is their local specialty industry." M'gann reports. This might be at the point of well duh to those raised on Earth, but that is not M'gann and it doesn't seem she paid a huge amount of attention in the high school history classes that she did take. Luckily Z's magic succeeds where her telepathy cast too wide of a net.

The talk of the nature of the blood magic seems equally difficult for her to follow. Magic is still poorly understood by the Martian girl, even if much of what she does would seem pretty close to magic were all of the trappings to be stripped away and they do occupy similar space in the Astral Plane at times.

Now that the target is known and with Tim staying with BioShip, M'gann walks towards one of the walls. She gives a nod to Tim, "I will step out and assist them in stopping that truck." And then the wall just seems to open for her and she steps out into the sky like it's a perfectly normal thing, the hole closing behind her as she streaks off towards the truck.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    Expecting nothing more than over-preparedness from her ultra-nerd Bat nephew, the magician zeros in on map, concentrating on finding traces of Phoebe among the millions living in Cario. Zee's face clears from the trance of her spell, a mischievous grin lighting her face at the sound of Phoebe's voice.

     "Nothing cooking in New York at the moment, Phoebe. No shows. Tim asked if I could come along. Anything to help my nephew or you, don't you know." Zatanna is dressed in her version of streetwear - sensible shoes, a modified morning coat over a white shirt, vest, and bow tie. Her famous hat is nowhere to be seen at the moment.

    Catching a blinking icon on Tim's screen; she leans forward and asks over her shoulder, "Could that be it?" She points to something moving along the outskirts of Cairo. Oddly there are other points on the map, too. Someone seems to have been liberal with Phoebe's blood.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    The city opens up for Conner as he takes to the air; he could see the flow of traffic, the way some of the late night shipments are coming from the south. and for Bart on the street level. The thoroughly modern city, with ambling streets that are full of people even late at night hawking 'genuine' shabti or mummy's hands, amylets of protection, pieces of The True Cross or scraps of The Prophet's Cloak to tourists and any passers by, but most don't seem to notice Impulse as he goes from place to place.

    The truck with the Phoebe-touched items rumbles its way.

    THe driver? Well. He's a blank spot. A hole. There's something wrong there.

    M'gann would be able to pick up on the 'wrongness' on a psychic scan as the ship passes over the truck.

    Bart's process of elimination of the shipments results in a couple of trucks carrying fruit and veggies, another carrying meat. A refridgerated truck carrying ice cream, until he gets to That Truck. It's a old blue Mack, or maybe some knock-off Toyota flat-front. It grunts along like a heafty sow, pulling an unmarked trailer behind it.

    The trailer is carrying boxes. The boxes, some filled with straw, some filled with packing peanuts, and some even filled with sand, bare stamps from the Cairo History Museum and the Gotham Museum of Antiquities, but their destinations are listed oddly -- Moscow. Oxford. Gotham. Buenos Ares. All manner of deliveries are going to be made.

    "I may have underestimated how much blood was taken from me in Montana -- the good news is most of the reserves of it were destroyed already. The bad news is... we really don't want her to have my blood once I get out of these wards. My tattoo's only going to do so much." Phoebe gives a soft hum of peturbedness. "Bart, what kind of package were you expecting? I don't think they would have brought it to the fourth floor. It's probably by the couch with the tape deck thingie."

    Phoebe, meanwhile, is in her apartment in NYC, enjoying the sunlight coming through the windows, wearing PJ pajama pants and wearing a wireless gaming headset.

    She probably borrowed it from Tim.

Conner Kent has posed:
Conner is only on his sixth truck when he hears about the position of the right truck. Hmmm, he was in the wrong side of the city, but it will take him only a couple minutes to get there. Avoiding sonic booms and all that, there are some laws of physics he needs to respect. And it is not as if they are in a hurry, anyway. Or are they? "Wait, multiple hits? How many vehicles? Or are they still?"

Tim Drake has posed:
    Indeed, it's a bunch of Tim's personal tech that Pheebs is now outfitted with. So what if he can't play EVE Online for the time being? It's fine. He'll probably just lose a couple thousand dollars worth of ships.

    Don't ask. It's a wild, wild game.

    "I'd wager an 18-wheeler of some sort, but that's not conclusive," he tells Impulse, over comms. And then when an icon on the screen in front of him syncs up with Zatanna's scrying (at least, that's what Tim's best guess is) he sits forward slightly.

    "Alright, team, we might have something." The coordinates and relative directions from their respective locations are given out as Red Robin steers the Bioshop towards it. He nods to Miss Martian as she departs the ship, and then sends a worried glance at the other markers of Phoebe's blood just being out in the wild, before he looks up at Zatanna. "I'm glad you're here," he tells her.

    Because even a complete magical noob like Tim can tell something is up with all of this. "Be careful on approach. If D&D has taught me anything, magical traps are the *worst*."

    And then he toggles off comms so it's just him and Zatanna (and Bioship!). "How dangerous is blood magic like this?" he asks. Tim is already thinking of another situation where he saw blood magic being used, and that was... painful. For both he and Zee.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen will come at the truck from behind it, to keep out of sight. He phases through the back doors as he climbs up into the truck. Once inside, he will pull out a flashlight to see what he can see, reading off labels. He will start to check the Gotham ones first, since that is where Phoebe and they are from. "It is a couple of heat rocks, and should be some plants coming in to, that the different types like to give them more feeling of home."

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
M'gann fades from sight as she swoops in, shadowing the truck from above. <Something's not right here.> Her voice comes across the comms as she makes an effort to actually use them rather than talking straight into people's minds which is not always appreciated. <The truck driver ...has no mind? Something is there but not there, like a hole... This is very very wrong.>

Swooping down from the above, the translucent Martian girl flies up along side the truck in order to peer in the window and get a better look at this mysterious driver.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    "What is it with this jet...this ship, Tim?"She gestures vaguely around her. "It feels different."

    Confirming his suspicion with the delighted smile of a master to a student, "D&D has taught you well, Tim. Did I just sound like a Jedi?" She chuckles at herself.

    "You can do some terrible things with blood. And magical blood like Phoebe's or mine is the most dangerous because it contains power. A bit like the difference between uranium and plutonium for results. It's more dangerous to Phoebe, I'd say than to us. But they could potentially harvest her powers through it."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Bioship, Zatanna. Zatanna, the best Bioship ever. I used to keep up a garden on the rooftop for her." Phoebe gives a wry introduction "Aunt Z's got the right of it." Phoebe replies over the coms. "Whatever is being done with my blood over there, it's bad news. It's what prompted the sudden extraction at the Gotham Museum. My cousin's the one who's been abusing it, probably because I can regenerate and there's a likelihood that she... doesn't. Those witch bottles at the Gala? They were made with my blood and Micky Rodger's ... ah. Remains. I'm pretty sure he's not coming back after turning into a giant scorpion with a bunch of heads on his back." Phoebe replies dourly over the comms.

    "Wait -- did M'gann just say that he has no mind--?"

    The truck driver is driving, but his dark eyes are glassy. They stare ahead, unmoving, unblinking. He's got a very fashionable scarf wrapped around his neck, but otherwise wears a T-shirt and khaki pants.

    Impulse could try and read the labels. Everything except the place names are in Arabic, but some have pictures. Mirrors. Chairs. More makeup=grinding pallets like at the museums. Some weaponry.

    A man aiming a gun at Impulse's torso, and firing at the flashlight-baring lad. A couple of others raise weapons -- they at least look normal!

    

Conner Kent has posed:
<Maybe the driver is a robot> offers Conner as alternative. Or magical robot. Would that make him a golem or a zombie? His D&D knowledge is failing him!

<Anyway, should I stop the truck now? Because once it goes into the city it will be more dangerous,> and then he realizes he is hearing are more people inside the truck. Where Bart went. <Bart, get out, now!> Too late.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen hears the guns as the guys are cocked, moving to look just as SB gives him the heads up. "Don't you guys know guns are dangerous, and even more in enclosed areas." He is already moving to dodge out of the way of the bullets, but then he thinks about it and starts moving to catch the bullets not letting them hit the crates "They are shooting inside the trucks, so guessing either the blood here is just a bit, or activated when it is broken."

Tim Drake has posed:
    As Zatanna gives him the Cliff's Notes version of blood magic and its ills, Red Robin nods once. As he suspected: very much not good. He's taken to idly patting the arm of his chair since Phoebe explained Bioship's nature to Zatanna, though it's less to soothe Bioship as it is to soothe Tim himself. Because Tim is anxious in the face of something he has very little experience with, and only enough knowledge to know how much he's outclassed. "The Bioship and M'gann were a package deal when they joined the team, thankfully. We're lucky to have them both."

    "I can send you my resume and several references to become your Padawan," he jokes at Zee, though there's an underlying tension in his voice as his thoughts remain with his team, outside the Bioship. He watches as the blip of Impulse's location disappears and reappears, because is there really a tracker in existence that can keep up with Bart? Unlikely, in Tim's opinion. "There might be legitimate artifacts mixed in with the fakes, Impulse. We'll send scans over to Pheebs and take a more thorough accounting of it all once we've--." Annnnnnd things start popping off.

    The driver has no mind, says M'gann? Worrisome. Conner calling out for Bart to get out of the truck? Even moreso. "Superboy, what is it? Miss Martian, what are you seeing?" he asks over comms.

    Once Bart calls out about the hostiles aboard the truck, Tim tips his head up and exhales lightly. "Are they mindless as well?" He stops, shakes his head. "I mean--what's the reading on their brains?"

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
<I don't know. This is very strange.>

Looking in through the trucks window, M'gann takes advantage of a direct line of sight to focus and sharpen her will through her eyes to try and penetrate whatever this strange void of a mind is and figure out what they are dealing with.

The sound of gunfire proves to be distracting though, <What?! How did I miss them... Bart are you okay?> Even without a psychic link, M'gann's concern is palpable across the Comms.

She doesn't break away from her probe of the driver just yet, but she's definitely slightly distracted thinking about it.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    "That's Phoebe for you! Bioship, then," Zee softly pats the wall of the ship with admiration. "Am I just behind the times, Padawan Tim or is this alien technology?" she muses aloud with a sideways glance and a smile for Tim, well aware of his tension.

    She drops any pretense of joking when M'gann's report comes through, "With blood magic in play, we need eyes on what they are doing if I'm going to be of any help." She sits tensely forward, "Was that gunfire?!? I can port if need be or you can drop me off if that's doable."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    The driver's glassy eyes stare out over the road. The truck is coming up to a turn into the city, and it begins ti speed up.

    How did M'gann miss them? The psychic may have a hard time penetrating the truck's back to monitor. The driver yawns, it's not a natural action, the jaw stretches too wide, and the head turns with a sudden SNAP to regard M'gann, fist coming up and smashing through the window as the driver makes a grab for the martian girl!

    Inside, Bart grabs at the bullets. There's a few more rounds of fire, but Impulse is too quick for them.

    "--Warding? On the truck? -- n-no, there couldn't have been -- we didn't give any indication, and all of the odd stuff only activated when I was the--"

    Phoebe hitches a breath and a curse of breath, and there's movement from her side of the comms "I... I can get there if I go through--" ttcch. "Ow, ow... okay. So the truck might be warded. THe more of my blood is there is, the more likely there can be weird effects. IF the ward can be broken it might make it easier. Zee -- I'm counting on you for that. Impulse, keep them busy but everyone's safety is one hundred percent more important than any of the artifacts!"

Conner Kent has posed:
<I heard people other than Bart inside the truck, Rob> explains Conner, a bit too late. <I am going to stop the truck. Short out the weirdness later,> he decides, flying past the vehicle and then reaching with the hand to the front. Then he spreads his tactile telekinesis over the truck.

Now, this is for two reasons. One is to 'map' everything in the truck, including maybe the insides of the boxes. The second is to make slow it down less dramatically than just standing in front of it and pushing. That tends to break things too much and there are people inside. Or if not people, there is Bart.

An eighteen wheeler is a lot of mass and kinetic energy, and his telekinesis is not powerful enough to stop it instantly, but the truck lurches and slows down. But it will take it about a fifty yards and ten seconds to come to full stop.

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen hears Conner say he is fixing to stop the truck, and does try to keep people safe including those in the back of the truck with him. He will move grabbing cargo netting, padding and what not, trying to wrap it around the men, as he pulls any bullets and clips he sees on them as he does. He does look closer at them as he does this seeing if they are people, things or other.

Tim Drake has posed:
    There's a tracker on the screen now, in the corner, showing the decreasing distance to the city as the truck continues along the road. "Greener thumb than I'll ever have," Red Robin says to Zee, in agreement. He does not mention the amount of succulents that he's unwittingly killed.

    He waits to hear back from the team down below as the Bioship stays in lock-step with the truck, an invisible presence in the sky. "Alien tech." Another pat on the arm of his chair. Over comms, he adds, "If there's magic at play it might be messing with their heads? How many hostiles do you see in there, Impulse?" Again, theorizing with little evidence, here.

    "Good idea, SB. We'll drop in close so Zatanna can deal with the warding as soon as it's stopped." And as Conner deploys his TTK, the Bioship begins to match the decreasing velocity of the truck until they're both standing still. A moment later, Tim brings the Bioship around so it's off to the side of the road, and he imagines...

    Hmm, how to...

    Okay, the mental image he conjures up is the Resident Evil door-opening animation, but he tries to mentally project that onto the wall of the Bioship next to Zatanna. With an added "Please" thought especially hard at the Bioship.

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
<Okay that definitely isn't natural..> M'gann's voice over the comms is cut off by a yelp of surprise as the driver lunges for her.

The Martian girl fades back into the visual spectrum since camoflage doesn't seem to be doing much against whatever this is, or maybe it just noticed her completely non-subtle attempt to bore a hole into the abyss where a mind should be. Either way her reactions are at least fast enough to phase through the thing's grasp.

<Whatever this thing is, it is definitely hostile!> After stating the obvious and with Conner already stopping the truck, M'gann does what she probably should have done from the start. The glowing red of her eyes intensifies as Martian telekinesis the atomic particles within her eyes before focusing them through the lenses of her corneas and sending forth a searing blast of Martian heat vision.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Focused intently on the map, the next best thing to being there, Zatanna touches a spot between her eyebrows. A magic user would see the third eye open as she hones in on the magically warded truck, "Of course, it would be warded. They are not amateurs and expected an attack."

    Magically it is a question of knowing how the ward was made or more prosaically, finding the key. Out loud, she narrates some of what is happening through her sight to Tim, "It is like the truck is wrapped in chains. A ward. And, I'm not finessing this." Palms upward, she mutters, ".selkcahs eht kaerB" (Break the shackles) "There, that will show that witch."

The wall that she had patted earlier begins to move, forming an orifice. Cold air blasts through the portal. "Is this an invitation to leave, Tim? I can port you know, glad I dressed warmly."

     Under her breath, she whispers, "nnag'M oT" And is gone to find herself crouching on the roof of a moving truck. Wind whips her black hair wildly into her eyes.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Tactile Information: The truck is old and is in DESPERATE need of an oil change. The driver is not just a hole in the psychic sphere, there's not much to him. He's a shell.

    The people on the inside though -- the three of them are definitely still living people, for now anyway.

    The driver no longer is in control of the truck. The truck gives an angry lurch, and then squeals when Superboy puts his hand to it. Even with his TK, there was enough weight to the truck and its trailer to push him forward, the trailer swinging dangerously to the side. Another truck pulls to the side, trying to get around the trailer.

    The creature that the driver has become begins to climb out of the window, reaching to M'Gann -- luckily, Egyptian-made undead are just as burnable as their American counterparts, the creature is sliced in half with ease by the heat vision, and is rendered to ashes, crumbling in the seat.

    Inside the warded truck -- the three men are jostled about inside, and wrapped in blankets, foam, packing peanuts -- even one man in straw!

    Bart experiences it in slow-motion as the trailer slides and turns, knocking things about, crates and boxes rolling over as on the inside of the truck, the whole of the sides light up brilliantly in black and red. A pulse, showing strange text and symbols, and to the front, the appearance of a young woman suspended -- and then the flash is gone, and the wards on the truck are broken.

    M'Gann would be able to clearly feel the three men inside, their guns disassembled and clattering to the floor of the trailer.

    And with the wards down, Zatanna would be able to feel the low-grade magic, blood magic waiting for activation.

Conner Kent has posed:
<Damnit, this truck is a rustbucket,> grumbles Conner, trying to keep the trailer in place with telekinesis. Without breaking anything. Gun-armed thugs included. He sends a quick mental image to M'gann about the 'hollow' driver, so she doesn't feel bad about incinerating him (it?).

<You know what? I think he was a mummy!> No, he has no idea, but it would be cool, wouldn't it?

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen will try to make sure none of the boxes slide around to much, as he rides the wave till the truck stops and then he is opening the back door and getting the men out from it and on the road away from the truck, making sure not to put them into traffic. "Ok, there was a flash, with a lot of glowing writing and symbols, and then a girl just floating there but they were gone again, even before I could get to her.

Tim Drake has posed:
    It's thanks to Zatanna's third eyesight that Tim gets a good idea of what's happening down below. Well, that and M'gann briefly going silent post-yelp, before she's back on comms. Extrapolating from various fight-noises is just something you kind of learn to do, in the biz.

    "Is this just a precaution given the value of the items inside," and he means the ones with Phoebe's blood, not the regular artifacts Tim assumes are mixed up with them, "Or were they expecting us." It's a thought that begins to run roughshod across his mind as he plays out the scenarios in his head.

    Red Robin just grins at Zatanna, despite the turn his thoughts have taken. "Just trying to be helpful!" Though yes, sometimes he does forget that Zee can just port to where she needs to go, in the heat of the moment. Even someone like Tim, used to the wide range of abilities represented on his team, can occasionally be caught flat-footed like that.

    Though Superboy's mention of a mummy driving the truck only has Tim shaking his head, commiserating mentally with Bioship. What will they throw at us next? It's probably a good thing that he doesn't ask that aloud, just keeps it between him and Bioship.

    As Tim sets Bioship down, the description Impulse gives of the magical vision or brief glimpse into the Astral plane he's experienced makes him pause. "That's. Okay, uh." He bites the inside of his cheek. "We should start scanning the contents." And though in this instance the mystical scanning Zatanna can do is the main objective, there are a couple of hand-held scanners ready for the team to start feeding various visual and sensor-information back to Phoebe.

M'gann M'orzz has posed:
No sooner has the strange construct of a driver been incinerated and crumbled to ash than M'gann is in motion, zipping around towards the back of the truck to help Bart however she can, while lending her own telekinesis to help Conner stabilize the rickety vehicle.

"Impulse are you okay?!"

There is considerable relief on her part when he does seem to in fact be fine and the situation as a whole seems pretty much in hand, outside of all the hocus pocus. She really needs to learn a bit more about this Earth 'magic' sometime.

Conner Kent has posed:
If there are no more mummies or weird magical constructs, it takes only a few seconds for the Outsiders to subdue the three gunmen and make way for Zatanna to secure the magical stuff.

Which Conner will give wide berth, thank you. "What about the other blips on the map, do we go for them too?" Question for Tim and Phoebe, mostly. If it is a nay, he is going to visit the Pyramids. See you later, guys.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Unaware of what is causing it, there is a sudden shift under Zatanna that nearly throws her over its rusted side. It's bull riding without a rope. The truck comes to a sudden stop under super-powered impetus.

Under its leprous appearance, the truck smells of magic. It is akin to a whiff of gasoline caught on a breeze, here again, and gone as the blood magic rests quiescent, waiting to be activated. Zee drops over the side of the truck next to M'gann and Impetus with a glance for the men tied up on the road. She feels nothing magic about them.

"We need to pull this stuff out." She holds up a hand. "I might be able to do this differently." Clambering into the truck, Zee squeezes between the cases, some toppled over, contents spilled into its bed. One case, opened in its fall, has a nest of blood amulets wrapped in silk spilling out of it.

    Zatanna studies them for a long moment, "I would just as soon destroy them, but for now," she says undramatically, "draW mehT." (WARD THEM.)