lobbed them different distances, you could leave it firing over a long period of time. And maybe put it on some sort of spinner. Then, when you came back, even if someone had stolen the catapult you’d be able to tell where it was located—by the pattern of grapes it launched. It’s the same here. Only Regalia’s projections are the grapes, and her base is the catapult!”
“That … almost makes sense,” Exel said.
“Can I be the one firing the catapult?” Mizzy asked. “Sounds like fun.”
“Colorful description notwithstanding,” Tia said, “this will work if we can get enough data points. And we won’t need nearly as many of … uh … the grapes David mentions. Here’s what we do: We pick predetermined locations and set up situations we’re sure will provoke Regalia to appear via one of her projections. If she does appear in that location, we get a data point. If she doesn’t, that might be outside her range. Do this enough times, and I’m sure I’ll be able to pinpoint her location.”
I nodded, understanding. “We need to go make some noise in the city, and see if we can make Regalia come out and interact with us.”
“Exactly,” Tia said.
“What about the range on her other powers?” I asked. “If she’s raised the water around the city, can’t we use the limit of those abilities to pinpoint her?”
Tia looked toward Prof.
“Her water manipulation powers come in two flavors,” he said. “The little tendrils, like you’ve seen, and the large-scale ‘shoving’ of massive amounts of liquid. The small tendrils can only go out as far as she can see, so yes, spotting her using those will work for our plan. Her large-scale powers don’t tell us much—they’re more like the movement of tides. She can raise up water in a vast area, and can do it on a massive scale. This ability takes less precision—and she can do it from a lot farther away. So there’s no telling from the shape of water in Babilar where exactly she might be hiding.”
“That said,” Tia added, “we’re fairly certain Abigail doesn’t know we discovered the range limit on her small-scale powers, so we have an edge. We can use them to find her. The trick is going to be coming up with ways to draw her attention—events so compelling that she’ll either come confront us, or we’ll be reasonably certain from her absence that she wasn’t able to.”
“Surefire ways to draw her attention?” I said.
“Yes,” Tia replied. “Preferably done in a way that doesn’t make it obvious we’re trying to get her attention.”
“Well, that’s easy,” I said. “We hit Epics.”
The others looked toward me.
“Look, we’re going to have to kill Obliteration eventually anyway,” I said. “Regalia’s using him as some kind of gun to our heads, a threat to the entire city. If we remove him, we remove one of her primary tools—and so a hit on him is really likely to draw her out to try to stop us. If we succeed, we’ve hindered Regalia, stopped the killing, and gained a point of data that we can use to further pinpoint her base. Plus, we avoid looking suspicious, since we’re doing what the Reckoners always do.”
“He has a point, Jon,” Tia said.
“Perhaps,” Prof said. “But we don’t know where Obliteration will strike—we’ll have to be reactive, which makes it difficult to lay a trap for him. It also makes it harder to pick a location that would give us information about Regalia, if she appears.”
“We could try Newton instead,” Exel offered. “She and her flunkies tend to do patrols around the city, and those are reasonably predictable. Newton’s kind of become Regalia’s right-hand woman. If she’s put in danger, Regalia will show up for certain.”
“Except,” Val said, “Newton really isn’t a threat these days. Her gangs are in check—they might bully a little, but they haven’t been killing people. I agree with Steelslayer; Obliteration is a serious issue. I don’t want to see Babilar go the way of Houston.”
Prof considered for a moment, turning to look out through the shimmering blue water. “Val, does your team have operational plans for bringing down Newton?”
“Yes, but …”
“But?”
“That plan depended on having Sam and the spyril.”
“The spyril?” I asked.
“Broken now,” Val said. “Useless.”
From her tone, I sensed it was a touchy subject.
“Work with Tia and David,” Prof said to her. “Revise your plans and present me with several scenarios for bringing down Newton, then devise another set for bringing down Obliteration. We’ll move forward with