Talyesin's Tales

So we go to bed angry - not a great way to go to bed - and next morning we both call in sick to work. I’m Senior Partner of Mr. Accountant, Ron can handle the clients and everything else today - besides, Stretch more than half suspects who I am when I’m not at my day job. Kimmy’s a marketing analyst. I’m not sure what excuse she gave, but we suit up and head out through an air duct behind a wall. It leads straight to the basement and behind the old furnace there’s a door I had put in - it leads to an access tunnel for the subway. From here we can pretty much get anywhere in Lower Uptown in a few minutes. Faster, if we actually catch a train. Another access tunnel leads to a shaft that leads to a rooftop blocks away from my place. We’re out in the morning light, running along rooftops, jumping over the chasms of alleys.

Ragdoll’s red pigtailed wig gleams in the early morning light, and she looks almost happy for the first time in days. Truth be told I’m pretty happy myself - using my abilities for, you know, justice and all that... well, it’s a rush to be honest. More of a rush than meeting with new clients and saving them all kinds of money with creative accounting. More often I find myself losing concentration in meetings, thinking about the cases I’m working on as Squirrelman rather than the day job.

In a few minutes we’re at 1313 Miller Crossing. It looks like a rundown old warehouse, the kind they built apartments on top of to generate more revenue. It’s essentially a big empty storage room on the first floor with truck bays running the length of opposing sides, with three floors of apartments above. Today it wouldn’t pass code, but in the days following the Destruction of Indianapolis, when the country came together to build Action City, they were busy trying to house everyone and store everything, so all kinds of weird buildings got built.

So we watch the building for a couple of minutes and a familiar voice comes up behind us.

“Hey lovebirds.”

Ragdoll just rolls her eyes. I turn around. It’s Ace - he’s riding his anti-grav playing card. He’s just a little jealous Ragdoll picked me, not him. But we’ve worked lots of cases together, he’s saved my life, I’ve saved his. I keep saying to Kimmy that we should team up, but she’s not a big one for teams.

“Ace,” I say, bopping fists with him.

“What’s up?” he answers, looking over my shoulder.

“Sight seeing,” Ragdoll answers.

“Case, huh?” Ace says. “Me too.”

“Yeah?”

“Pixie Dust.”

“Really?” Ragdoll asks. “We’re after Boost.”

“That place runs Boost too?”

“Boost and Pixie Dust... shit.”

“More bad news,” I tell him. “There’s an old access to Downtown.”

Ace shoots Ragdoll a look and says, “If our job was easy everyone would do it, I guess.”

“So you’re coming?” Ragdoll asks.

“You know it, hon,” he smiles at her. She rolls her eyes again, but she’s smiling a little too.

We hitch a ride on that flying card of his and fly over to the building. Ragdoll can fold herself into some very interesting positions, so she can basically squeeze into any hole big enough for her skull to fit through. She gets into the building and opens a roof door for Ace and me. He sets his hover-card on standby and it soars off. He pulls out a couple handfuls of his razor-sharp steel cards. I concentrate on the hot squeezing feeling of forcing my claws out my fingertips. We’re armed and ready, so we head into the building. The apartments could be described as “squalid slums” and they’re deserted. Action City doesn’t have many homeless or runaways, but they must exist, because there’s evidence of residents in some of the lower levels. I climb down the wall of a stairwell that doesn’t have any more stairs. Ace has a card with a swingline and lowers himself down, while Ragdoll does a very neat backflip somersault and lands limp on the ground. I’ve seen her do that before and it still stops my heart every time. But she gets up and dusts herself off and smiles at me a little.

The warehouse itself is mostly empty too. Old crates piled in one corner, a nest of newspapers in another, an old metal barrel nearby. The old Shipping Office has no more windows, just half-walls and empty frames. Sunlight slants in the windows set high in the walls, dust motes floating in the still air.

“If they’re shipping out of here, they must be using invisible trucks,” Ragdoll says, her voice pitched low.

“Or an illusion of an empty warehouse,” Ace adds, not really catching on that Ragdoll is kidding. Of the three of us, he’s got the most experience with the occult. Not surprising he’s after Pixie Dust pushers. Pixie Dust gives the user the power of flight, but induces massive hallucinations too. It’s made by cremating pixies.

“Where’s the basement door?” I ask.

“Probably over by the office.”

We head over and she’s right, it’s behind the shipping office, a door heading downstairs. Ace pulls out a card, touches the ace, and the card starts to glow a little.

“Better low light than no light,” he says. I nod and open the door.

Behind is a normal staircase. The basement floor is wet and a stray cat or dog probably crawled in here at some point and died. I’m pretty glad for my full face mask, but Ragdoll and Ace get a full whiff of the stink. Ace makes a face but Ragdoll just looks at me, pissed off. I point over to a corner and Ace lifts his glowing card to shine light on what looks like a bricked-up doorway. Ace tosses a card at the bricks and it makes a thudding noise as the edge sinks in.

“Psssh, amateurs,” he smirks, walking around a puddle toward the doorway. He pulls out the card and knocks softly on the bricks. The sound he makes sounds like someone knocking on wood, not brick. “Basic illusion spell... Looks like brick, feels like brick, sounds like wood. They forgot to add the illusory sound.”

“How do we open it?”

Ace feels around and twists something about hip height. He pulls and nothing happens. He pulls again and still nothing. His shoulders slump and he pushes, and his arm disappears through the bricks.

“Oops,” he laughs. “After you.”

I walk through the brick illusion and they follow me down.

Downtown was created in 1975 when Lord Hades and his Shade Army attacked Action City and sank a big chunk of it below the surface. Most of the residents were saved but it was declared a disaster zone and abandoned. The reason why Action City doesn’t have many homeless or runaways is because they pretty much all wind up in Downtown. It’s also a great hideout for a lot of criminals, gangs, and assorted freaks. Action City cops don’t patrol it - way too dangerous. Costumed crimefighters tend to have enough to do in Uptown and Lower Uptown, so they avoid Downtown too.

The Mole is Downtown’s only crimefighter. He had a sidekick for a while - a mutant named Earthworm Edith - but she died and he’s been alone ever since. So he’s made deals with some of the gangs and has busted some heads and basically brought law to the lawless. But he doesn’t like interference from surfacers - it upsets the delicate equilibrium he’s established - and so if any crimefighters come down, they go to see him first.

Which was where we had to go.

Behind the brick illusion there’s stairs. The stairs lead to a cavern tunnel, which ultimately leads to the back of an old brownstone building. It’s very weird finding an example of mid-twentieth century architecture so far under the ground, but then, I run around dressed like a squirrel, so who am I to judge weird? I climb the side of the building and get to the roof. Ace’s swing-card wraps around an old fire escape support - the actual escape is gone - and he and Ragdoll climb up after me.

It’s dark in Downtown, but there are some fires and some actual electric lights, and that glow-in-the-dark moss is growing in lots of places, so there’s enough light to see by.

“So where do we go?” Ragdoll asks. “How do we find him?”

I look at Ace. Ace looks at me.

“I thought you knew,” he says.

“Great, so we have to talk to the Mole, but no one knows where to find him?”

“Fear not, my pretty,” says a nasally voice behind us. We turn and face him - a fat little runt in a dirty trenchcoat, wearing thick goggles that magnify his beady eyes. He’s grinning an unpleasant smile.

“The Mole has found you.”