"Not in an American city!" Kid Flash points out. "What would you need to try tracking Venom down with divination?"

"I'd need a sample, or something strongly associated with Venom, a map of Gotham, a pool of clear water, and about an hour," Kaldur replies.

"Okay, so Miss M. needs someone who's used Venom before, Topaz needs that or some kind of emotion sensing or a small target area, Kaldur needs a sample, and Robin needs financial data and statistics. How about we split into two teams — Topaz, MM, and Superboy could start by investigating a hospital, and Robin, Kaldur, and I will stay back here. Robin can send me out to quickly grab data as things come up, and Kaldur can use the pool room for scrying," he suggests.

"Sure. Do you have one in mind? Before we go, anything I could potentially fab up for scrying - not sure if say, a particular kind of mirror would help or if just the pool should be as good as you'd expect to manage without a proper tool." 

It's a little weird to include Superboy, but it... should be alright? 

"The pool will take care of the scrying surface, but could you make me a hollow pendant that could hold a small sample? Amethyst or quartz, if possible."

Kaldur goes on to describe the necessary shape and dimensions.

"Kid Flash, would you go requisition a sample from S.T.A.R. labs?" Robin asks, and Kid Flash leaves behind a saluting after-image as he disappears through the teleporter.

"As for which hospital — I'd recommend starting with the Martha Wayne Memorial Hospital. It's not the biggest in the city (that's Gotham General), but it handles a lot of lower-income families and drug abuse problems."

Quartz is available as ordered! She'll make it a purple-y color, because purple is good, purple is life. 

She nods along, and is happy to step off and away to go do that post-haste! Or at least, after they've done the initial file review for anything potentially pertinent? 

The initial review doesn't turn up anything obvious, so soon Miss Martian, Superboy, and Topaz are off to the hospital.

Miss Martian winces as soon as they step out of the teleporter in Gotham.

"Eurgh. Do you guys feel that?"

She glances about as she walks out, a furrow in her brow. It's a dusty and musty place, and there's a certain lingering scent of smoke that makes it feel like a place you should be careful to tread. And... it's not quite that it feels wrong, but - 

There's less hope in the air then she'd expect, in a city this dense. 

She frowns. 

"...Not really? I think my empathic sense is a bit more targeted and less sensitive than your telepathic ones, but I can't imagine this is a great place to be." 

"I'm not even sure how to describe it. Everyone just feels—"

She relays the feeling of the anger and helplessness that underlies Gotham, filtered to avoid overwhelming them.

Superboy clenches his jaw.

"It feels like a place that needs heroes."

"...Yeah." 

That's an... interesting feeling alright. She's... grateful that past her didn't get into the red light too much, even if this is honestly something plenty good to be angry about. 

They have presumably figured out arrangements for actually arriving at the hospital, which she is comfortable to just go and follow now, if the rest of the group is game? 

The (non-Batcave) Gotham Zeta tube is in a disused warehouse that is convenient for a lot of caped crime, and only mildly inconvenient for the hospital. It's a ten minute walk, and then they're checking in with the receptionist. Robin called ahead.

"You understand that nobody has to help you? And that you absolutely cannot be arresting these people — they came here for help?" the receptionist asks them, glaring mildly over her half-moon reading glasses.

She glances over at them briefly, then nods. 

"I understand. We're just hoping that we'll be able to talk to and maybe take a look at someone who's been suffering from the after effects of venom, so we can get a bit better a sense of what that looks like, and maybe get some information about what the distribution system looks like. Punishing people for getting in over their heads is... not something that we're looking to do, and of course we'll do our best to respect their confidentiality as sources as well." 

She's not really sure how involved the logistics here are. Certainly it's possible that this could end up being whack-a-mole but... she really does hope there's a better way then just rounding up people at random, and working on destroying the logistics or the demand another way. Someday, she'll be able to scale her healing to help with things like chemical drug dependence, and help people in other ways but... for now...

Superheroics and a gentle touch (and... that project, if he green lights it) are the best she can do right now. 

She nods.

"Good, good. In that case, it's visitors hours, so you're free to see who is willing to talk to you. Head up to floor four, up those stairs. I'll have a nurse meet you at reception and show you around the ward."

She follows along obligingly and quietly, though she occasionally catches herself looking down at her hands and fussing with two of her rings. 

The hospital is a study in contrasts — well funded, but struggling to stretch that funding over a large population, in an old building. The ward the nurse leads them to is quiet, other than the occasional passing cart and bustling nurse.

It takes 15 minutes to find someone willing to talk, but eventually a thin woman with an unpleasant-looking bandaged wound across her cheek agrees to talk to them.

"'m Simone. I don't recognize any of you, though, because you're not wearing black and looming."

"Hello, I'm Topaz, and these are my teammates, Miss Martian and Superboy. We're hoping to see if we can find out a little more about Venom - we've got some basic information about what it looks like, but we haven't heard much about how it's distributed. Me and Miss Martian also have some exotic abilities that might be helpful for getting us next steps, if you're comfortable with that." 

She'll try to speak softly, here - hopefully they can follow along with the tone. 

She's looking to get a sense of what the dealership situation is, where she expects they'd find venom users, anything unusual she's seen from the drugs, and maybe if things are looking good, if she'd consent to a (tele)empathic look over to see with their supernatural senses what being on it was like. She's also interested in seeing if she knows what the injuries tend to look like, or if there's any intermediate stage betweeen 'normal' and 'grey hulking behemoth with tears in their skin'. 

Simone proves unwilling to name specific names, but she's willing to talk about the effects of the drug and give tel-empathic impressions.

There is something of an interstitial stage — sometimes you can bulk up just enough for your skin not to tear. But it's hard to moderate your use like that, because when you're on Venom the pain is less important than the idea of being stronger. The tears in the skin tend to form along pre-existing scars, "although they're not shy about making new ones if you haven't got any."

For distribution ... that's somewhat hampered by Simone being unwilling to turn in her friends, and somewhat hampered by not knowing the big-picture details. But based on a comment her dealer made, she thinks the shipments are coming in by river, probably.

Hm. 

That's something. And if it comes with that much on an emphasis on being strong and that - aggression... 

How does the gift feel about being able to detect someone who has that sort of empathic profile, loosely speaking? Honestly, she should arguably just get a red light sensing power and see if she can feel where the people of Gotham are angry. 

...Also, she's not sure if she has a fine enough sense to it to tell, but does it feel wrong, feel like - magic or the lights or something more esoteric was warping her feelings, beyond mere biology and hormones? 

On the river is... something. It probably wouldn't be that infeasible to just pick a port to camp with a relatively insensitive power and see if she can detect it. She'd want to wait to see if  Kaldur got anything first to do that, probably - no use wasting her time on a stakeout that probably wouldn't give her anything that they won't get sooner. Maybe Kaldur could get here and do a finer scan here - it probably wouldn't be too hard to find a more detailed local map if needed, and range is... probably non-zero a consideration? 

Unless they have any other questions, she's happy enough to just thank her for time and move on - there might be someone else to talk to, and she might as well text the team back at base to see if they've gotten anything yet? 

It can do a divination power for fuzzy matches to that emotional state, sure!

She can't pick up anything unnatural about Venom's effect from Simone's memory. Maybe chemicals just do that.

They give their thanks to Simone and move on. The other people willing to speak to them provide similar information. One man mentions that he thinks the guy in charge of local distribution in Gotham might be Catholic, because his friend overheard him praying to Saint Prisca.

The rest of the team doesn't have any information to share, yet — scrying takes a while, apparently. Miss Martian suggests that the three of them fly through the riverside area and see what that turns up.