Case File 2: The Profiler

Author’s Note: This is a sequel to my story “Case File”. You might want to read that one first.

Chapter 1

It’s not often my team adds a member. The last one we added was Ross, our teleporter. But when the Boss asked me to do the “welcome to the team:” thing, I do my job.

I go to the small conference room not far from my small office, and find her waiting for me.

“Hi. I’m Joseph.” I said, and offered my hand.

“Megan” She replied, and took my hand and shook it firmly.

“The boss says you can be a profiler for us?” I asked her as we sat down.

“Among other things, yes. I have ... a talent for getting into the heads of the sort of people you must deal with.”

“Can you give me a demonstration?” I asked.

“Certainly.” Megan replied, and a made a gesture. A moment later, a file was in her hand.

“I mentioned you might need convincing to your boss, so he let me take a look at one of your unsolved cases.” Megan said as she spread the contents of the file on the table.

I glanced at the pictures, and remembered the case. People had begun to report being magically coerced into performing actions that ranged from the embarassing to traumatizing. So far, we had no idea who was behind it.

“The first thing I noticed was your guy is acting out addictive behavior.” She said.

I must have looked confused, because she continued, “It’s not just drugs or alcohol you can get addicted to. You can get addicted to almost anything. And the signs are there that this guy is an addict.”

“What signs?”

“One of the principles of addiction is the law of diminishing returns. When you’re addicted, you find it takes more and more of the thing you’re addicted to to get the same result. You can see this for this guy in how each report has each victim treated worse than the last. Mild embarrassment isn't enough for this guy. He’s gone further each time.”

“We thought that was because he was growing in power or confidence.” I stated.

“Well, there is another couple of things. The time between attacks is getting shorter. He went more than two months before he went after his second victim, and since then there has been a pretty steady decrease of how long he can go without striking again.”

I looked at the dates of the complaints, and realized she was right. “And the other sign?” I asked.

“The first few attacks were against one person. Then he did two people a couple of times, then three people. The last attack involved four people at once.”

“So if you’re right, he’s going to keep increasing the number of people involved, and shortening the time between attacks?”

“Yes. I’d say that was nearly a certainty.” She replied.

“Great” I said sarcastically.

“It may end up helping find him. The shorter the time between attacks means he has less time to prepare and gives a better chance of catching him. And if he needs a larger group, that also increases the chances to catch him.”

I had to admit to myself that I had been impressed, and I said, “You’ve convinced me. Are you willing to help us catch this guy, and the others like him?”

She nodded. “I told your boss I wanted to help. So yes.”

My curiosity got the better of me, and I asked, “Do you ... know the boss well?”

“We met a long time ago. Has he told you much about himself?”

“Not much. He’s old, he’s powerful, and he wants to help protect the innocent from magic abuse.”

“All true. This little group of his isn’t the first time he’s created a force to defend the innocent. The last time he did it, it was called the Round Table.”

“You mean, King Arthur and all that stuff? They were like knights, though, and not real.”

“Wrong on both counts. They were defenders against magic abuse. They used the title of ‘knights’ because nobody had come up with the idea of ‘policemen’ yet.”

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“Because, I was there. On the wrong side, but I was there.”

“You mean you used your powers on people? How did you ... why are you helping us then?”

“Because I was a lot like the man in this file. I was an addict - addicted to power, to control. And your boss stopped me, and made me feel every horror I’d inflicted on others. So when I ... woke up in this age, and discovered your boss had also returned and created your group, I came to him asking for a chance to make up for my crimes.”

I looked at her carefully. My own abilities were mostly about being able to charm people, but I was pretty good at reading them as well. I said, “I believe you. Let me introduce you to the team, and we can get started.”

“Good idea. This attacker will be striking again soon, so we should prepare.”

I nodded, and we left the conference room together, to meet the rest of the team ...

To be continued ...

Case File 2: The Profiler Chapter 2

Author's note: This chapter contains a scene of forced sex. While I have done my best to make it readable, I leave this warning here for my more sensitive readers in case I have failed.

Once the team was together and introductions were made, we began to go over the outstanding cases.

Then I said, “looking at what’s outstanding, I think we need to focus on the case Megan mentioned. Megan, what does your profile mean in terms of what this guy will do next?”

“He will strike again within two days, three days at the latest. He will look for a group of people, probably six to twelve in number, but possibly higher. For some reason he has not tried to go to different city at least not yet, so chances are good his next target will be in the same city as the others - this city, as it happens.”

“So what can we do? That still leaves a lot of ground to cover.” O’Brien, our healer, commented.

“Which is why we’re going to need help.” I stated, “Each of you should talk to your friends, neighbors, anybody you can, and see if you can find a group that would fit. Check online for any announcements of any gathering that might be a target. I know it’s a long shot, but we have to try and stop this guy, if we can.”

The next couple of days were frustrating. Not that we got too few possible targets, but too many - far too many for us to cover all of them. Megan worked tirelessly, going over the file over and over, and trying to narrow our search, but despite her best efforts, we simply didn’t know where our perp would strike.

And then, we ran out of time.

Anderson, our magic detector called the team, saying there was a huge spike in magic around a gallery downtown, which had been repurposed for the night as the scene of a fundraiser and dance.

Ross began teleporting team members to the site, but as soon as we got there, we realized our first problem. A massive magic shield surrounded the building, blocking us from entering.

I called on Conners, who normally was our shield generator, to break the shield down, but it was soon clear he couldn’t do it alone. So Megan began pumping him with power, until after almost an hour, the shield was down, and we were through.

What we saw inside remains one of the worst things I have seen on this job, and that’s saying something.

Not everybody was naked.

There were several guys who had been stuffed into women’s clothes, from a guy in panties and a bra to a couple in cocktail dresses. There was a girl wearing only cake icing, and another who had apparently been given every necktie in the room and wrapped them around her arms and legs.

To make things worse, several of the guests had apparently been “booby-trapped” - told to complete whatever degrading thing they were doing or their bodies would shut down and they’d die.

Figuring out a way around the booby-traps fell to me, and so I went all over the room, finding the best work-around so people could stop hurting themselves and let us help them.

The worst case was a woman in her 50’s who had a teenage girl between her legs who couldn’t stop ... doing what she was doing unless the woman, who was her mother, climaxed.

I finally had to put the mother into a dream state where instead of her daughter it was her ideal lover pleasuring her so she could relax enough to climax, allowing the daughter to stop.

Needless to say, I had O’Brian, our healer, make those two a priority.

The other frustrating case was one of the men who was wearing women’s clothes. Nothing I could come up with freed him, as he seemed to have been given what I could only think of as a kind of allergy to male clothes. So finally I sent him off with the EMS when they arrived, hoping that maybe we’d be able to help him later.

Once we had finished with the victims, and started gathering evidence, Megan came up to me, and said, “I’m sorry. We didn’t consider this event because I assumed this was too big a jump from the small group he’d done the time before. He’s escalating even faster than I imagined.”

“Not your fault, Megan. But let’s get everything we can here, and go back to headquarters to see how we can stop this guy.”

Once back at headquarters, we poured over every scrap of info we had collected. At first, it seemed like our perp had been too smart, as none of the victims could remember clearly what he looked like, and even Patterson at first had troubles getting a solid image of him from her ability to make walls talk.

But then, we found something.

He’s slipped in through a service entrance with the wait staff, but he must have been slightly drained from having to pass the magical barrier the owners had set up - which he had repurposed as the shield that kept us out for so long. In any case, his image was clear enough for me to run through our database, hoping for a hit.

And we hit paydirt.

A man named Alan Campbell. He was in our system because of a magical face off that amounted to him getting a disturbing the peace charge for trying to summon a hail storm on someone who had almost run him over while Alan had been riding a bike. Fortunately, the hail storm fizzled out without doing much damage, or he would have had more serious charges against him.

But it seemed he’d come a long way since then.

I decided that Megan and I were going to have a chat with Alan ...

Case File 2: The Profiler Part 3

As Megan and I drove to the address we’d pulled up, I had some questions, so I asked Megan, “How did this guy go from minor nuisance to all out super-villain ? "

“I suspect he has an artifact. Which could make things more dangerous for us but also for him.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Did you ever read the Lord of the Rings? In the book the wizard Gandalf says any of the mortal race who tried to use such an artifact would eventually be possessed by it.”

“You like Lord of the Rings?” I asked with a smile.

“Why not? It’s an excellent book.” Megan replied.

I smiled, and then said, “So if it is an artifact, what should we expect?”

“Depends on how much of Alan is left after a stunt like he just pulled. If Alan is getting tapped out, the artifact will be on the lookout for a new host. You must guard your mind carefully not to fall victim to it yourself.”

“Understood.” I stated, and we drove the rest of way in silence.

We got to the house, and of course it was shielded. I considered calling Conners, but before I could, Megan called out to me from the side of the house.

“Look here.” she said, a small hole in the shield, and a mouse hole into the house.”

“Too bad we aren’t mouse-sized.” I said.

“We could be. I can temporarily transform us both. Long enough to get inside without alerting Alan by bringing down his shield.”

“Okay, do it.” I said.

A few moments later, we were a couple of small white mice, and we slipped through the hole in the shield and entered the mouse hole.

We made it inside, and were in the kitchen when Megan’s spell wore off, and we were ourselves again. Megan pointed to a door, saying “There. He’s in there.”

I nodded, and kicked in the door.

But I pulled up short when I saw what was inside.

Alan was there sitting on his bed, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He looked like a famine victim, almost completely skeletal covered by paper thin skin.

In front of him on a pedestal was a large red gem.

Then the gem spoke, saying “I wondered who would come. Hello, Joseph. I’m glad it’s you they sent, because your power is so similar to mine.”

“So that’s why you attacked the dance. So we would come after you?”

“Of course. This body is soon to give out, and I was going to need a replacement anyway, so why not a powerful one such as yourself?”

“No chance.” I said, firmly, “I use my gift for the good.”

“Oh, but I could help you do good. I could give you enough power to build a better world. A world without crime, or hunger, or hate.”

I felt my willpower slipping, but I managed to say, “A ... world without freedom, you mean. Not ... interested.”

The next thing I knew, the almost skeletal arm of Alan had me by the throat, and was dragging me closer to the gem.

The gem said, “Say yes, now. Or I will take you anyway, and use you to make those you care for suffer.”

And in the gem, I saw a vision of myself doing just that - torturing my teammates with the gem’s power while my mind and soul watched helplessly.

I was about to break, to take the gem, when suddenly, the hand on my throat fell to the floor, severed at the wrist.

“Not today, Mordred.” Megan said, and then she took the sword she had manifested to save me, and pierced the center of the gem, shattering it.

There was an unholy wail, and then the body of Alan fell over, dead.

Megan held the sword up like she was saluting someone, and said, “Thank you, Excaliber.”

The sword seemed to flash a bright light in response, and was gone.

The two of us walked out of the house, and I asked, “Mordred? Like Arthur's son from the stories?”

Megan nodded. “As soon as I saw the gem, I knew for sure it was him. His body died when he and Arthur killed each other, but he must have transferred his soul to the gem at the last moment. So I managed to keep myself from being seen by him, while he focused on you, until I could summon Arthur’s sword to save you.”

“Where did it go?” I asked.

“To wait for the right person to wield it.” She said.

“Not you?”

“No. I could use it this once, because you could say it owed me a favor. But my soul is far too dark to use the blade. Only someone pure of heart can.”

“Okay.” I said. “Let’s go back to headquarters, I have a report to write up.”

“I’ll help.” Megan said, and we drove into the night.

End.