The Scanner
Series Metadata
Listing Series
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The Diagnostic by InForestPlace
Fandoms: DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Superman (Comics)
25 Feb 2026
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Summary
Lex Luthor invites a journalist from Hub City to Metropolis because the structure of the man's articles is unusual. He expects a useful idiot or a potential asset. He does not expect to meet the only person who can read his in-conversation strategy back to him in real time.
This is not about intelligence. It's about what happens when the filter is missing.
Series
- Part 1 of The Scanner
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The Model by InForestPlace
Fandoms: DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Birds of Prey (Comic), Justice League - All Media Types
25 Feb 2026
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Summary
She comes through the zeta tube at 14:07 and his system locks on before he's processed her face. He spends the next thirteen hours taking apart her entire life and putting it back together. She'll never know he knows her. This is the loneliest thing about the way his brain works.
Notes: Companion piece to "The Diagnostic." The scanner doesn't choose its targets.
Series
- Part 2 of The Scanner
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Acceptable Output by InForestPlace
Fandoms: Justice League Unlimited, DC Comics, The Question (Comics)
25 Feb 2026
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Summary
He went after Luthor because the model said the optimal outcome for saving the world was the one where Vic Sage dies. She's sitting next to a man who is functionally incapable of putting his own survival above a completed pattern. She's the only variable that almost broke the model. That's why he didn't tell her.
Notes: Set immediately after the events of JLU "Question Authority." Companion piece to "The Diagnostic" and "The Model."Series
- Part 3 of The Scanner
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Pairing Analysis by InForestPlace
Fandoms: Justice League Unlimited, DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
25 Feb 2026
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Summary
Bruce runs the numbers on Sage and Bertinelli. The numbers rank a broke journalist from Hub City and a schoolteacher from Gotham as the most specifically capable focused unpowered human pairing on the planet. He's including himself and Robin in that ranking. He doesn't like it. He sits with it anyway.
Notes: Companion piece to "The Diagnostic," "The Model," and "Acceptable Output." Bruce Wayne plans for everything except the possibility that two people might be more effective together than he is alone.
Series: Part 4 of The ScannerSeries
- Part 4 of The Scanner
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Known Better by InForestPlace
Fandoms: Justice League Unlimited, DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Superman (Comics)
25 Feb 2026
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Summary
Cadmus is burning. The man who lit the fire is in a hospital bed in the Watchtower. Lex cannot even be angry at him because Sage did exactly what Sage said he would do. Lex had the data. Had the demonstration. Had the explanation. He had known better.
Notes: Companion piece to "The Diagnostic," "The Model," "Acceptable Output," and "Pairing Analysis." The filter that makes you functional is the same filter that makes you blind.
Series: Part 5 of The ScannerSeries
- Part 5 of The Scanner
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The Frequency by InForestPlace
Fandoms: DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, Martian Manhunter (Comics)
26 Feb 2026
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Summary
J'onn J'onzz has spent three years learning to live inside the noise of human minds. Every one of them has the same architecture: signal, filter, social module, signal, filter, social module. Then a man walks into the Hub City field office and J'onn encounters a mind with no filter at all. The signal is deafening. He hasn't heard anything like it since Mars.
Notes: Prequel to "The Model." Set during the League expansion following the Thanagarian invasion. J'onn doesn't recruit Vic Sage because the League needs an analyst. He recruits him because the alternative is leaving him out there alone with a mind nobody else on the planet can hear correctly.Series
- Part 6 of The Scanner
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Threat Assessment by InForestPlace
Fandoms: DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, Batman - All Media Types
26 Feb 2026
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Summary
he new recruit has been on the Watchtower for nine days. Bruce has been watching him for nine days. He's built the model. Low-level telepath, undiagnosed, self-medicating with conspiracy fixation. The model is comprehensive, evidence-based, and wrong about everything that matters. They've never spoken. They won't speak today.
Notes: Set between "The Frequency" and "The Model." Bruce Wayne and Vic Sage are in the same room for the first time. Neither says a word. One of them walks away with a complete and accurate model of the other. It isn't Bruce.
Series
- Part 7 of The Scanner
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The Clock That Isn't Ticking by InForestPlace
Fandoms: DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, The Flash (Comics)
26 Feb 2026
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Summary
Wally West perceives time at a resolution most people can't imagine. He's used to seeing things nobody else sees. Micro-expressions. Muscle twitches. The tiny involuntary eye movements every human makes three times a second. Every human except the new guy, who is sitting in the commissary with cold coffee and eyes that don't jump. Wally doesn't know what it means. He mentions it to the wrong person. Then he mentions it to the right one.
Notes: Set between "The Frequency" and "The Model." Two people who process the world at unusual resolutions sit in the same commissary. One of them is the fastest man alive. The other one's eyes don't move right.
Series
- Part 8 of The Scanner
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Source Materials by InForestPlace
Fandoms: DC Comics, The Question (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, Superman (Comics), Supergirl (Comics)
26 Feb 2026
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Summary
He went after Luthor and came back broken. She sits down across from him in the commissary because Bruce told her to keep him alive and because he broke Cadmus and she respects that. He looks up and starts listing every source she studied to learn how to be human. Nobody has ever seen the construction before. Then he tells her to turn it off.
Notes: Set after "Acceptable Output." Companion piece to "Foreign Architecture." The scanner can't read Kryptonian. But it can read construction. Kara Zor-El is the most elaborate constructed performance on the Watchtower and the loneliest person in the room and nobody knows either of these things except a man with cold coffee who can't stop looking.
Series
- Part 9 of The Scanner