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"So the book's related to this Carcosa thing." Sam casually took the toothpick out of her mouth and stowed it in her pocket. "And it made this guy start carving up his own back. And he got it from some creepy theater down on the bay? Yeah, this does sound a little on the dangerous side." God forbid we do something dangerous. "Still..."

 

There was no question in her mind that they were going to need to pursue this through their usual slightly extralegal means. She was, however, undecided about how much to trust the tattooed man, supernatural healing powers or no supernatural healing powers. While he had helped the injured hippie, and certainly seemed trustworthy enough on the surface, she tried to make a point of not revealing her identity to anyone unless he absolutely had to. 

 

Still, he had known what Carcosa was. A little extra information never went amiss, and neither did a little extra muscle. She hesitated, then moved over to stand by Asli's side. "What do you think, solid smoky lady?" she murmured into her ear. "We should probably tell him, right?"

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Asli considered the book in her hand. She didn't have any illusions about abandoning the book; it had already almost killed one person, and chances were that whoever was behind this was just as crazy and a danger to themselves and others. They needed to be stopped, and right now only a few people in the city were in any position to do it. Sam would probably come along whether Asli wanted her to or not, which only left one big question.

 

Asli stepped out of the hippie's line of sight and checked outside the shop, making sure there were no pedestrians to glance inside at an inopportune moment. She took a breath and let it out with a mummer of Arabic, and a cloud of colored smoke. Her coat lengthened until it hit the floor, the layers merging together and changing colors. She met and held Ray's eyes for a moment. "I'm going to find out who is behind this book," she said. She flipped up the mantle of her robe, her features instantly hidden from sight. "You know about Carcosa and I'd like your help, but I'm not going to force you."

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Sam shrugged. "Works for me." Full disclosure didn't seem unreasonable in a situation like this. Best to get everything out in the open if they were going to be working together. There was a time not that long ago when no amount of persuasion would have convinced her to reveal her secret to someone minutes after meeting them, but spending more time among her fellow heroes had made her at least somewhat less paranoid about safeguarding her identity.

 

Lacking the ability to change her clothes quite so dramatically as Asli, she headed for the back room, unzipping her bag and reaching inside for her mask. "I'm going to suit up in the back," she said as she brushed past Ray. "You coming with us? If so, if you have tights, get 'em on."

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"Ah, well then," Ray said after a long pause as he watched the smoke swirl up and the transformation occur. His gaze slid over to Sam as she went to head into the back, amusement finally kicking up the corner of his mouth, "I don't do tights. There's a bathroom off to your right, though. Help yourself."

 

He crossed over to the hippie to help him out of the chair and towards the door. It wasn't as if the mood was dangerous to the man. It just left him... mellow, but not incapable of getting out of the way of traffic. "Shame about your coat, man. Why don't you head home, sleep it off?"

 

Giving the man a gentle nudge out the door, he flipped the sign to 'Closed' and began the process of locking the shop up, "Of course I'm coming with you. I'd be looking into it regardless. It's one of the things that I do. Let me just grab my jacket while your friend changes. You two have names you like to go by, I assume?"

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  • 3 weeks later...

"I'm Starlight," Sam said over her shoulder as she headed for the bathroom Ray had indicated. "She's Miras. I control light and shadow, she does magic." That seemed to about cover it to her, and she pushed into the bathroom and set her bag down on the floor. With the speed that came of long practice, she laid aside her jacket, then pulled off her jeans and T-shirt, revealing the uniform black bodysuit beneath. She donned her boots and gloves, buckled on her belt, then picked up her jacket and carefully reversed it. The inside of the jacket was not black, but light grey, and she shrugged back into it. Finally, she took from her bag the hard black mask that obscured the lower half of her face, and put it on, fastening it securely at the back.

 

She glanced in the mirror and, satisfied with the effect, strode back out into the store. "Ready when you are," she said, nodding to Ray and Asli. "You want me to beam us over, or you want to provide your own transportation?"

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"Pleasure's mine." Ray still hadn't put his jacket on although he had it under one arm. Fighting crime was a hell of a lot easier during the spring and summer. One of these days he'd have to see if he could find a way to not notice the cold anymore. "What sort of magic?" Ray asked with a scholarly sort of curiosity. "Inherited or taught?" 

 

As Sam asked the question, he gave a small shake of his head, "I can get there under my own power," he offered as the elaborate red and gold wings that covered his back lifted from his skin to take up a little too much space in the tattoo parlor although he kept them close to his body as they manifested. "Though I can carry someone along the way - its not a trip I'd really recommend as an experience for other folks."

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"I sing and do magic," Miras said, correcting her roommate automatically as she checked the jacket again. There wasn't a wallet or keys in the pockets, so she went back to flipping through the book. Unfortunately a note with the villain's address failed to materialize between the pages. She was running out of leads short of waking up the hippie and grilling someone under supernatural sedatives. She dropped the book on the counter in a burst of frustration, and watched as it fell open to the back of the cover. Where she could see a stamp with an address that was inside Freedom City.

 

She picked up the book again and squinted at it, trying to place the street in her head. "So," she said conversationally, "did anyone know there's an honest-to-god typeset printing house in this city?"

 

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"Typeset printing?" Starlight looked over Miras's shoulder at the stamp. "Huh. I...did not know that. I didn't even know those still existed. I mean, who still does that when you can buy a way better printer at the store for like thirty bucks?" She paused to consider. "The same people who make playbooks that make people try to skin their own backs, maybe?" It was admittedly something of a leap of logic on her part, but leaps of logic were sometimes necessary in a line of work where there were no coincidences. "Or at the very least, there might be something there that could help us find whoever is behind this thing."

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"Didn't know there was one in Freedom City but technology tends to overlap. Some types of artwork demand more than an inkjet or laserprinter - you see it in certain books, especially art books, but most of the time its wedding invitations and that sort of thing for high end clients," Renegade offered, the idea of high end art perhaps incongruous with his presented appearance. "Its not like typesetting has been around all that long in the grand scheme of things."

 

He gave a small slight shake of his head then, "But it's a good place to start, I suppose. Especially since anyone spending that much time to put together the manuscript is likely to have suffered deleterious effects themselves."

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  • 3 weeks later...

Three bright points rose above the city, descending towards the West End. The suburb of tiny, ethnic shops and inwardly-turned neighborhoods didn't even glance at the trio of brightly colored people touching down in front of a particular boutique. The scrolled, gilt letters on the door proclaimed it to be BOOKERS AND POOLS TYPSETTING; when Miras reached out and pushed on the front door, it turned out to be unlatched and opened inwards. The magus looked at the other two and shrugged, walking inside.

 

The door opened into a narrow hallway hung with different examples of typography. It was a well-laid out example of what the shop could do, but with what Miras was expecting to find it felt oppressive and claustrophobic. It might also have been because her shoulders brushed either wall and she had to advance almost sideways. "Hello? Is there someone in here?" She listened; there was a regular, metallic sound coming from within. A heavy, ringing sound every five or six seconds that reverberated down the hallway. "Is there anyone in there? I'm looking for someone who printed a book!"

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"A very bad book," muttered Starlight under her breath, uneasily taking in her surroundings as she sidled into the shop behind Miras. Her narrow frame fit more easily into the hallway than her friend's did, but she still felt uncomfortably confined in the tight space. The regular clanging sound that emanated from the end of the hall did nothing to ease her apprehension - she eyed the direction the sound was coming from warily. She dropped one of her hands to her side and let her fingers curl halfway, a small mote of white light igniting in her palm. Never hurts to be on your toes.

 

"Somebody's home," she said quietly, gesturing to the unlocked door. "And somebody's making that noise. Or something." The observation came out sounding slightly more ominous than she had meant it to.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Landing, Ray's wings vanished back into the tattoos on his skin and he went to pull his tank top back down. Regretfully, he tucked his jacket under one arm. Probably was going to need more than the skin on his hands if everything went south. His boots were solid on the floor boards behind the two ladies as he pulled up the rear. "Well, this place is dreary," Ray commented from the back in a low drawl. He lifted one hand, tossing a ball of light towards the ceiling with a twitch of his fingertips. "Could just be a machine left to run but that seems really unlikely."

 

He paused and then asked, "Do you want me to go first?" 

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