The Mysterious Miss Direction vol. 02

You fly out of the mirror and land on the tiled floor of the women’s restroom. It takes a moment to collect yourself. When you exit into the hallway you get a look of mild curiosity by an officer, but they continue on like this kind of thing is a common occurrence.

Not far away, you hear at least a half dozen people break out into applause. You walk around the corner into the lobby and see Fortuna with her back to you; arms stretched out as she takes a bow. She is very obviously winded from rushing to get here first. The look on her face when she turns around and sees you is priceless. "How!? I think we have to call this one a tie, right? I mean you clearly cheated." She smiles and laughs. "I didn’t realize you were so competitive. Glad to know I have a friend I can count on to push me to my limits."

---

SLAM! Everyone gathered around the kitchen table breaks into cheers. Gregory, a former carnival strong man, gets up from his seat and shakes the aches out of his arm. Natalie leans back in her chair with a smug expression. She cracks her knuckles and says, "Anyone else care to step up to the challenge?"

For the past 15 minutes your CrossFit instructor sister-in-law has been arm wrestling anyone who is willing. So far, she has put away every challenger. Gregory was the only one to even get her arm to move toward her own side even a tiny bit.

A couple of the guys try to push Patrick into the challenger’s seat but he protests. "This is a real lose/lose situation for me guys."

"Not to mention I’ve beaten you about a 100 times," Natalie chimes in. She scans the room to see if there are any other worthy opponents. Her eyes land on you. "What do you say, Holly? Obviously you can't hope to beat me, but you could at least show up these guys by doing better than they did."

Holly holds up her hands at first to deflect the challenge, but Natalie was quickly running out of opponents, and she'd rather participate in this than in whatever other forms of entertainment they end up producing later on. She certainly wasn't going to try and beat Patrick in a drinking contest (though she thinks her mother would sooner die than let her two children try and drink each other under the table in her own kitchen), but the problem with this is that she could reasonably beat Natalie.

She ran across the rooftops of Crowfall and beat up bad guys on a regular basis. Not to mention being a "former" acrobat gave her incredible upper body strength. She concedes though, and takes a seat, bringing much cheering to those gathered. Natalie smirked at her in that overly self-confident way that had always gotten under her skin.

Wonder how long that'll last, she thought to herself as she brought her arm into position.

Natalie’s smile quickly fades as the contest gets underway. Her face becomes one of concentration and then worry. She was expecting another quick and easy win and is getting anything but.

Alternating cheers breakout in the kitchen which becomes more crowded as anyone that wasn’t watching makes their way inside to see what all the commotion is about. After a solid minute of struggle the tide of battle finally starts to turn. Natalie’s arm starts to waver and you slowly push it toward the other side of the table. She puts in every bit of effort she has left, but it is no use. You slam her arm down on the table and the room erupts into cheers.

Natalie leans back in her chair and gives you a look of begrudging respect. "You are deceptively strong, Holly. Next time I see you we’re having a rematch under fair conditions instead of having to face you after beating all these chumps."

Some of the guys she beat try to rub salt in the wounds and call her a sore loser. She waves them off as total losers.

---

Back in the police station, Fortuna has dropped her usual playful demeanor. She is all business as the two of you look through the two way mirror at the perp sitting alone in the interrogation room.

The lead detective agreed to let the two of you talk to the suspect. Their brief interactions with the men from the vans indicate that this is the guy that was in charge. The cops were unable to find anything of value inside the vans. Whatever they were transporting appears to have vanished into thin air.

"I know these guys are pawns of the Court; I just don’t know what they had, if anything. We might have gotten to them on the way to the pick up. I’m not sure. We need to find out what, where, and who. What they were after, where it is, and who they were getting it for. You want to be good cape or bad cape?"

Holly does her best to make a good show of struggling against Natalie. She even lets her sister-in-law gain some ground every once in a while only for her to get a second wind and bring it back to a stalemate. But in the end, it is Natalie who decides the victor, and Holly has to be thankful that most of the goons she fights don't go to Natalie's gym.

---

Miss Direction folds her arms as she looks at the perp. "I take no pleasure in it, but I should probably be bad cape. I mean, I do have a scary mask and the ability to mess with people's perception of reality." She purses her lips as her eyes refocus and look at her own reflection. "Then again, I am dressed like a jester complete with a jingly hat..."

She grits her teeth and gives Fortuna a sidelong glance, "What're the odds he's scared of clowns, do you think?" she asks.

Fortuna smiles. "The Order of the Eternal Court has a mask on at all times rules. Part of their shtick is that not even members know the real world identities of other members. More than a few of them wear jester masks that look a bit like yours. If this guy really is dealing with the Court then I have no doubt he’s scared of people that look like you. No offense."

Fortuna motions for you to follow her. She stops and fills two cups of coffee before heading into the interrogation room. The thief tries to play it cool when he sees the two of you walk in but it is clear that he is already intimidated by two superheroes being sent to question him.

"How you doing?" Fortuna asks with a sweet and sympathetic voice. She takes a seat across the table from him and places both cups on the table. She takes a sip from one and slides the other across the table. The crook eyes it with suspicion. "It’s good. Dark roast, little cream but no sugar. Hope that is ok." She takes another sip and really plays up how much she is enjoying it. "You know we’re the good guys, right? You really think I’m going to poison you? Inside of a police station, no less?"

The man caves and reaches forward. He is clearly thirsty and downs the cup very quickly. Fortuna smiles. "I told you it was good. You ready to talk about what you and your boys were up to tonight?" He still looks unsure. His eyes flick over to you for just a moment and then to Fortuna.

"Who's she?" He asks about you. Fortuna smiles and leans back in her seat, waiting for you to introduce yourself.

Miss Direction, having donned her mask and standing in the corner to observe from afar, hardly moves when she is addressed. On the outside, she is calm and collected, watching with a disinterested focus, while on the inside she is cursing herself for signing up to be "bad-cape". Why on earth did she think this was going to be a good idea? She wasn't threatening! She was entertaining! She was foolish!

"I'm not your concern," she says placidly, the dark eyes of her mask concealing her expression, and her flat tone contradicting the vaguely cruel smile of the Jester. "I'm just here to make sure you behave."

The man backs his face away and for a moment it looks like you have successfully intimidated him. Then he responds with, "Why are you dressed like a clown?" Fortuna has to bring a hand to her face to cover a laugh.

"Jester, honey. There is a difference," Fortuna informs him. "Please don’t ask me what it is, though."

He slumps down in his chair. "What do you want?"

"We’re just here to talk. You guys put up one heck of a fight. Why’d you run in the first place? What was the job?"

He looks uneasy and doesn’t want to maintain eye contact with Fortuna. It is clear he is thinking over how he should respond, or whether he should at all. Eventually, he raises his handcuffed hands and shakes the empty coffee cup. "Throat is still a little dry. Think I can get another?"

Fortuna smiles and takes the cup. "Sure thing. Be right back." She pats you on the shoulder on her way out and closes the door; leaving you alone with the suspect.

Miss Direction steps forward after the door closes, taking the seat vacated by Fortuna. She moves slowly. Languidly. Using her supernaturally enhanced acrobatic ability to move with a smooth grace that bordered on unnatural, all the while letting him look into the vacant pits of black where the mask hid her eyes.

Behind her, the door vanishes. There's no sound of locking, or supernatural chains to bar Fortuna's entrance. The door just fades from existence to become part of the wall of the interrogation room.

In reality, the door was there, and that can clearly be seen by the camera and by anyone on the other side of the door. In fact, to heighten the ruse, she mentally places a small sign, reading Do not disturb until this sign is gone. If you must, please bang on the glass so that he knows you are trying to get inside. Thanks! signed with a little smiley face at the bottom.

"It'll be some time before she gets back," Miss Direction explains monotonously, after letting him take in the fact that there was seemingly no escape. "Why don't you tell me what you know... in the meantime."

The man loudly gulps. His eyes keep flicking back to where the door should be, and then looking past you to the two way mirror as if he is pleading for someone to help him out. He tries to hold out but the beading sweat on his forehead makes it clear that you are getting to him.

"Alright, alright," he finally breaks, and kicks the leg of the table in frustration. "I don’t know who exactly hired us. It was one of you types though. They wore this whole weird get up at the handoff. Real big guy, or at least the suit made it look that way. Black billowy clothes with gold trim. A short top hat, if that is a thing, and you know those weird frilly collar things you see people wearing at like Ren-faires? This guy had one. Then there was the mask. Looked like it was made of metal and covered his full head. It was shaped like... like a happy fat guy? Ever see that overweight Buddha? He had a face kind of like that.

"They told us to bring three vehicles. In case of trouble we could split up... we messed that up, I guess. We met them inside the parking garage on 8th. I don’t know what the cargo was. They didn’t say. Big Fat Mask Guy had his men, they were all dressed like... I don't know, monks maybe? Long dark robes with hoods hiding their faces. It was a real freak show. They loaded a crate into one of the vans and told us to deliver it to this abandoned farmhouse a couple hours outside city limits. That’s all I know... Can you, like, bring the door back from hell or whatever?"

Miss Direction compiles the information she gave him, trying to commit it to memory as she continues to stare intently at him as he speaks. She hardly moves for the entire duration and is slightly shocked with herself at how easily this is coming to her. She's tries not to think on whether this guy is just already incredibly nervous, or if the mask is having some influence, but it reminds her too much of her battle with Matchstick, and his mental breakdown at the end.

She stares for a few moments longer, seemingly peering into the man's soul, but truly just lost in thought at all of the information. When she finally exits her own head, she can see just how much the poor guy is sweating and trying to look anywhere but at her. She stands smoothly, and the door begins to re-materialize as if emerging from a mirage.

"Since you asked nicely," she tells him coldly, as she heads toward the door. "Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back."

She exits the interrogation room, closing the door behind her and rips off her mask to take a few deep breaths.

Fortuna walks out of the observation room, sipping on coffee, a moment after you enter the hallway. She has a second cup and offers it to you. "Nice job in there. Glad to see that my intel paid off. This is certainly Order of the Eternal Court business. I have a sneaking suspicion that I was set on a wild goose chase though.

"The cops didn’t find a thing in those vans. No crate. Nothing suspicious. Nothing illegal besides a few unlicensed firearms the crooks had on them. I hope this isn’t one of those situations where I go to bed thinking we did a good job only to find out in the morning that the real crime was pulled off across town while I was punching two bit crooks."

The frustration in her voice is clear. You get the impression that Fortuna doesn’t frequently have to rely on sharpened investigation skills. Her luck based powers are a double edged sword and have ingrained some bad habits into her superhero work. She breathes out an exasperated sigh. "You think we should press him for more?"

Miss Direction puts on her thinking face as she sips her coffee. "I don't know. I don't know if he'll have anything more to tell us..."

A thought occurs to her and she smiles knowingly at Fortuna. "But you do," she giggles, and waves her fingers until a thick, golden coin can be seen rolling between them. "What do you say, Lady Luck? Heads we go back in and drill him for more info, or tails, we go with what we got?"

She lets the coin stop rolling and holds it out for Fortuna to take.

It takes Fortuna a moment to get what you’re trying to do. When she figures it out a smile spreads across her face and she unveils the coin.

"Oh come on! I thought we were done," the crook moans when he sees you walk back through the door. Fortuna sits down and places her half finished cup of coffee in front of him. He looks disappointed but downs what is left.

"You’ve been very helpful and I cannot thank you enough." Fortuna places her hands on the table and leans forward. "You’ve told us what happened but not how or why. You were hired for this job, right? Did you fill out an application? Were you hand picked? Clearly you had some means of communication with these people before the pick up." The man refuses to look anyone in the eye. He stares down into the empty coffee cup like he wants to crawl inside and disappear.

"I plead the fifth." He still will not look up. It’s like he has shut down. Fortuna looks at you expectantly. Time to do your thing.

Miss Direction looks at the crook, letting out a disappointed sigh that grows deeper, and deeper, and doesn't seem to end as the sound of her exhalation fills the entire room. As this continues, the fluorescent light begins to flicker, growing weaker as it threatens to plunge the room into darkness. All the while she looks at him, hoping that he will look up to see her staring at him intently.

Finally she lets the sound and the flickering pass, and calmly informs him, "I'd like for you to reconsider that."

The crook throws his arms up. At least as much as he can with the chains and all. "Alright, alright! I’ll talk." He shakes his head and sweat literally drips onto the table. He starts off with an address. The grounds of the original University of Crowfall.

The entire campus was relocated across town after a hurricane ripped through the state in the late 1960’s. Most of the neighborhood that the University was located in was damaged beyond repair. Even decades later, the water has never completely receded. The coastline was inexplicably changed during that storm. It is a Halloween tradition for kids to dare each other to venture onto the old campus grounds and explore the flood damaged buildings. There are so many stories. Some of ghosts while others warn of a vengeful sea god. Urban legends are rarely consistent.

The crook tells about a rumor that has been making the rounds telling of one of the dilapidated buildings being used by the mob to store illicit goods. His crew went in expecting to find drugs or stolen merchandise but instead wandered into a meeting of the Order of the Eternal Court. In exchange for allowing them to leave unharmed, the Court recruited them for this job tonight.

"That’s it! Full story. This is really messed up, you know. You’re breaking like so many laws pressing me like this."

Fortuna gives him a pouty face as she gets up from her chair. "I’m not so sure about that, honey. We’re just three private citizens brought in for questioning. I thought we were having a friendly chat before the cops come in to do their thing. Nothing you say to us can be used against you in a court of law." She looks to the two way mirror and then whispers to the crook, "I think you gave them plenty of ammunition though. Good luck."

The door opens and a uniformed officer waves you out. "Fortuna. Miss Direction. We have decided not to press charges for vigilantism. You are free to go."

You exit the room; leaving the officer alone with the slack jawed thief. "Feel like going on a school trip?" Fortuna asks as you fight to suppress a yawn. The sun should be coming up in another hour or so.

Miss Direction rubs her eyes as she skews her mask again. It was getting late, but that part of her that convinced her to even do this hero thing urged her forward. "Always," is her response.

Though she does lean in as they're leaving the station to playfully whisper, "You know, even if he did want to press charges, nothing that I did would show up the cameras. They saw a completely different image of a mentally unhinged man spurned by his guilt at his misdeeds to confess his wrong-doing to a couple of polite young heroes." She finishes this explanation off with a sleepy giggle, unsure of how much of her and the crook's conversation Fortuna overheard, but nothing she said could be really taken as a threat, despite her tone. She had not pressed for information, and, as far as the cameras had seen, simply stood or sat, until the silence around them made the man talk.

She contemplates creating another mirror portal to cut down on their transport time, but she had never been to the Old Campus district. She needed to be able to see a place, to really picture it in her head, to get herself there that way. She also decides that her bus pass was not going to be useful in getting them to one of the more run-down areas of town, and thus has to ask, "You wouldn't happen to have a good way of getting us both their quickly, would you? I mean, I'm always up for a race through town, but I'd rather not exhaust myself more than I am already without knowing what we might run into."

Fortuna laughs. "Do I have a way of getting us across town? Come on! Who do you think you’re talking to? Give me one minute." Fortuna walks back into the station. There is no way her connections and admiration runs deep enough that the cops are willing to turn over a cruiser to her. Right?

She walks back out and gives you a wink, but doesn’t say anything. For a few moments you both stand on the sidewalk. When you try to speak, she shushes you. A few minutes later, a cab pulls up. Fortuna opens the door for you as if she were a chauffer. "Our chariot awaits."

Fortuna introduces you to the driver named Travis. He’s apparently a fan of supers and is always willing to go out of his way to help flightless heroes quickly get around Crowfall during his overnight shifts. Twenty minutes, later after dropping you off just outside the campus, Travis rolls down the window and calls you over. "Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets," he mumbles at you monotonously. "Until then, we got to do what we can to back up folks like you." He holds out a card with his number on it in case you want to use his services in the future.

Travis drives away, leaving you and Fortuna alone on the dark street. Before you is the 10 foot floodwall that has surrounded the campus for decades now. Beyond the wall is a jungle of weeping willows which sprung up out of nowhere after the hurricane and now choke off any sunlight that attempts to reach the campus. The sun might be just around the bend, but you are looking at darkness for as long as your stay here lasts.

According to the thief, the Court met in the basement of the old library. This just so happens to be at the very center of campus. There is a considerable amount of water between here and your destination. Fortuna scrunches up her face. "Huh. I didn’t really think ahead too much. We probably should have rented a canoe or something."

Miss Direction is thankful for the occasional elbow nudge from Fortuna, who always seemed to know when Travis's monotonous voice was about to lull her off to sleep. She wasn't trying to be rude, but the minutes were ticking by closer and closer to sunrise. She was really going to pay for this tomorrow.

She stretches a bit when they stop, trying to get the blood flowing to keep herself awake, and she politely thanks Travis for the ride, sending a mile across his face as she makes the business card disappear before his eyes with a subtle flick of the wrist. She slipped it into her deck, knowing that she could easily pull it back out with a thought if she needed.

She feels a smirk of her own spread across her face as she folds her arms and assesses the situation with Fortuna. "Rent a canoe?" she asks in the same mockingly shocked tone that Fortuna had used with her. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

Her smirk grows into a grin as Fortuna playfully scowls at her, and she casts her arms out and the cards start flying between her hands. A few quick gestures, and they are already forming into a small raft, growing more and more elongated until a beautiful gondola floats before them, the printed faces of the cards fading as the illusion takes over and it suddenly seems to be pristinely painted black.

She steps on as Fortuna tries not to gawk at her magic, but she knows the heroine had not seen Miss Direction's wardrobe change slightly, her mask replaces by a black hat with a thick red ribbon that matched the satin sash around her waist. Her Jester's uniform had suddenly become a black and white striped shirt with black pants. Gripping the oar that had just appeared in one hand, she mounts one half of the flat-bottomed boat and beckon's Fortuna foward.

"Vieni, bella eroina. Insieme cerchiamo la verità," she calls out in Italian. She tries not to let on that even she doesn't know what she just said.

Fortuna lays back and mimes sipping from a glass of wine like an old Venetian merchant prince. "I could get used to traveling with you, Missy."

The gondola easily takes you through the flooded streets of the campus. The eerie silence along with constantly shifting branches of willow trees quickly drains the joyous mood. Soon enough, both of you are on full alert and constantly looking over your shoulder for something to leap up from the dark water of this ghost town.

You steer the boat right through the missing front doors of the library and bring it to a stop along the staircase leading to the second floor. The entire first floor is flooded. It is a wonder these buildings are still standing at all. The longer you are here, the more it seems that magic is at play all around you. "He said the Court was in the basement. I don't suppose those cards can conjure up some scuba gear."

The two of you depart the gondola and start to look around a little. The floor is littered with mucky footprints from humans and animals alike. Many of the book shelves are turned over and graffiti covers large portions of the walls.

Fortuna pulls out a pistol and twists the barrel. It lights up like a flashlight. "I got a few tricks of my own." She waves the light around through the dark library with no clear purpose. The extra light does allow you to spot something. You have Fortuna redirect the light to the elevator shaft which has one door partly open. On a hunch, you slide it a little further and take a look inside.

Fortuna shines the light down the shaft. It is bone dry all the way to the bottom. The light next shines on a series of symbols written along the walls of the elevator shaft. Some you recognize as Celtic, Norse, and even Egyptian hieroglyphs. At least a dozen more ancient writing systems are represented on these walls, including some you have never seen before. You have no doubt in your mind that there is a magical purpose to these symbols being here, but do not recognize what the exact purpose is.

Miss Direction shakes her head with worry, the light jingling of the bells returning now that her costume has resumed its default appearance. "I don't like the look of this," she informs Fortuna, whom she can only assume is feeling the same way. "All of these symbols. Clearly they are magical, but for what purpose I can only speculate. An alarm? A trap? The best case scenario is that there's no purpose behind them and their just meant to scare off the superstitious, but I highly doubt that that's the case."

She looks around quickly, trying to discern any other routes to the basement in the dark, but she finds nothing. Not even when she asks Fortuna to point her light at a few things.

Sighing, she comes up with a plan. "Neither of us are going to be satisfied until we go down there and have a look around. Now, I think going down at the same time is a terrible idea. If it is a trap and it doesn't just vaporize us, we'll be stuck waiting for someone to come free us, which will likely be the Court... Now, normally I'd volunteer you, since your whole schtick is being lucky, and I don't want to do it, but I actually have experience with magic, and I'm a bit of an escape artist..."

She takes a second for Fortuna to absorb the plan, and nods sourly when Fortuna doesn't object. Bring her hands together, she pulls them apart slowly, her card whip suddenly appearing in the space between. With a quick flick of the wrist, she snaps it onto a support pole in the shaft and, provided nothing explodes, lowers herself down the shaft, allowing the magically extending whip to support her descent.