"Hidden quite well, huh, Alex Wesker."
After wrapping up the Glenn incident, Daniel turned his attention to tracking down Alex Wesker's whereabouts. Naturally, he delegated this task to a shadow clone—hardly worth his personal time. However, the trail went cold after his clone only managed to uncover two contacts before losing all leads, possibly due to Alex going deeper underground following Glenn's defeat. Eventually, Daniel abandoned the pursuit. One lone Wesker wasn't worth disrupting his schedule, especially with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Chris Redfield's faction already focused on tracking her down.
"Time to move the resources over to the world of the Titans," he thought.
In the following days, Daniel coordinated a transfer of resources from his off-world operations. He decided to base his expanded arsenal in the Titan's world and made a few return trips to the One Piece universe to set up production lines for his peacekeepers. These units, while less versatile than Stark's Iron Man suits due to their lack of flight capabilities, were well-suited for maintaining order in the turbulent One Piece world. He entertained the idea of a day when the world government might unleash their own army of peacekeepers against him, only for him to deploy an equally massive force in response, just to see the looks on Sengoku and Garp's faces.
"Anything notable going on here, Wong? Where is everyone?" After mostly completing the setup on Titan's world, Daniel returned to the New York Sanctum, only to find it sparsely populated. The sanctum had lost several of its sorcerers during the recent chaos caused by Kaecilius.
"Out hunting spirits," Wong, the Sanctum's stoic librarian, explained as he set aside a tome. Since Dormammu's departure, the sorcerers at Kamar-Taj, like in the days of the Ancient One, were free to either roam in search of spirits or remain within the sanctums to study.
"Spirits, huh," Daniel nodded, unconcerned. For seasoned Kamar-Taj sorcerers, handling spirits posed little challenge. Spirits might terrify ordinary people due to their invisibility and intangibility, but to a trained mage, they were mere nuisances.
"Dolls again?" Daniel remarked with a sigh as he scanned the briefing. Dolls seemed to be the vessel of choice for haunting spirits, although some were more problematic than others, particularly those that inhabited rag dolls.
"If anything happens, give me a call," he told Wong as he turned to leave. With Dormammu gone, the Sanctum's next big concern would be the arrival of the universe's so-called "population control administrator." Beyond that, Kamar-Taj had few pressing issues.
"Wait," Wong interjected, handing Daniel a slip of paper. "We've got a spirit-related disturbance here, but we're short-handed. If you're free, perhaps you could take a look."
The Sanctums' dimensional barriers were highly sensitive to other-dimensional threats but less effective against local anomalies unless the entity was particularly powerful. Nowadays, the sorcerers benefited from the internet, which helped filter potential spirit sightings, though many turned out to be hoaxes concocted by bored thrill-seekers.
"This isn't just one location," Daniel said, noting the three locations listed on the slip and wondering if Wong was lacking in basic counting skills.
"They could all be false alarms," Wong admitted. Most were simply leads he'd gathered online, and without direct investigation, they could all turn out to be duds.
"I'll check it out." One spell could take Daniel to each location in seconds.
After visiting the first two sites, which turned out to be hoaxes, Daniel sighed. "People have way too much time on their hands. Last on the list: Oak Street, Springwood, Ohio."
In contrast to America's bustling urban centers, remote towns like Springwood had limited development and services, with the local police often working with little oversight. Daniel thought of Spencer's Behavior Analysis Unit, which had once uncovered a town where the entire police force was corrupt.
Springwood's Oak Street was a quaint little place, with just one high school—the one where Wong's lead had come from. According to the students, several classmates had allegedly been attacked by an unknown entity.
"Time for a little high school recon." Altering his appearance, Daniel observed as students left the building in pairs, mostly a boy and a girl, causing him to shake his head with an amused smile.
"Freddy… that name sounds oddly familiar." While other Kamar-Taj sorcerers might have required more time to investigate, Daniel's partnership with Red Queen allowed him to swiftly access local records, unearthing the town's hidden history.
It turned out that years ago, Springwood had been terrorized by a serial killer, notorious for targeting children. The man, who went by Freddy, had evaded conviction thanks to claims of insanity and bribery, inciting the townspeople to take matters into their own hands. They captured him and burned him alive in retribution, a vigilante act that went unreported due to the involvement of several police officers.
"If there's an evil spirit haunting this town, it's probably Freddy," Daniel mused. Spirits didn't form easily. Ordinary people rarely became spirits upon death—only those filled with profound malice could return as vengeful entities.
In a way, this phenomenon mirrored the power of conviction. While abstract to most, conviction could manifest tangibly. Captain America's renowned resilience and righteousness stemmed from his unyielding conviction. Those with intense conviction, whether for good or evil, could wield it as a formidable force.
"The nun… what a tragic figure," Daniel murmured as he examined Freddy's background. Freddy's mother had been a devout nun, tirelessly working at an asylum housing over a hundred criminally insane patients, many with violent histories.
One fateful day, she'd been accidentally locked in the asylum, left to the mercy of the inmates who subjected her to horrific abuse, eventually resulting in Freddy's birth.
"The whole story is full of holes." At first, the nun's ordeal stirred feelings of horror and anger, but upon closer inspection, Daniel noticed discrepancies. Why were there no guards? And how could a hundred inmates move freely? The situation was suspicious, to say the least.
It was akin to popular narratives that often omitted critical details. Edison's genius, for instance, overshadowed his shrewd business dealings. Likewise, while Madame Curie was often portrayed as impoverished, few questioned how someone "so poor" had the means to acquire restricted materials. Such stories were crafted to inspire awe but crumbled under scrutiny.
"A company called Mobius? Ouroboros, huh? Intriguing name." Daniel tracked down records linking the asylum to Mobius Corporation, a vast conglomerate specializing in mental healthcare with facilities worldwide.
It was hardly surprising the asylum's scandal had remained buried, given the backing of such a powerful entity.
"Not unexpected," Daniel thought. Many multinational corporations operated below the public's radar. Even among Fortune 500 companies, only a handful were widely known, while most remained faceless entities to the average person.
"The trail's too old to yield much now." The nun had long passed away, and the asylum had shut down. Despite his suspicions, Daniel lacked concrete evidence to investigate further. He wasn't here to solve a cold case but to deal with an unruly spirit.
As he waited, Daniel observed high schoolers milling around after hours, some moving between houses, and couldn't help but chuckle. "It's definitely an open-minded country."
In a nearby car, a young couple, oblivious to the recent murders, were wrapped up in each other. The sight prompted Daniel to shake his head. This was the sort of "extra-curricular activity" more common in movies than in real life.
"Spread-out housing does have its perks," Daniel noted as he observed the students sneaking around to each other's windows, staging late-night "study sessions."
He wasn't one to intrude on their privacy, but his observational haki picked up on certain activities in real-time, painting an occasionally awkward picture.
"Ah!"
Suddenly, a piercing scream shattered the quiet, snapping Daniel back to focus. "There it is," he muttered, racing toward the source of the sound.
Inside the room, a bloodied figure was thrashing in the air, twisting unnaturally as if defying gravity.
From a mundane perspective, it seemed like a terrifying display. But Daniel saw things differently.
"Quite an eyesore," he muttered, eyeing the grotesque spirit. The specter's right hand bore elongated metal claws, while its face was a patchwork of burns and scars. A tattered black hat completed its menacing look.
Summoning a golden sword, Daniel thrust it into the spirit, impaling it as the dark, twisted apparition dissolved into a cloud of smoke.
"So this is where you were hiding." Following the smoke trail, Daniel found an old, rusted clawed glove in the basement furnace—a vessel for Freddy's malevolent spirit. Earlier, he hadn't detected it because it lay dormant, only surfacing when Freddy decided to attack.
"They kept this thing in the house? Unbelievable." If it had been up to him, he'd have incinerated the glove long ago rather than storing it in the basement.
"Goodbye, Freddy." Judging by the burns, Daniel confirmed this spirit was indeed Freddy, a notorious entity that had survived numerous attempts to exorcize him. Against Daniel's skill, however, he had no chance of revival.
The spirit finally vanished, extinguished by Daniel's powers, leaving the town at peace once again.
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