Detroit

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

Even by Detroit standards, it's not a great part of town. Most of the buildings surrounding "Descent," the bar where Palmer's supposed to be able to find Sabastian Faust, are abandoned, and the streetlights seem to all be malfunctioning as they near the place. The street's dark, save for the bar itself.

There, there's light and activity. Rough looking men in leather and chains, Goth girls vamped out in black lipstick and white face powder, a few gangbangers in the mix, all loitering outside, the sickly green neon of the sign barely shining through the haze of cigarette smoke. Thrash metal's playing on the stereo, audible even from the outside.

Ray park's the rental car and looks over at the crowd.

"Looks like a fun place," he says to Sue.

Comments

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

"I know enough to know that the real deal have simple doors." She looks away from that and to Ray. "And that wannabes are always more dangerous because they're just that."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

Ray nods to a pair of punks who've wandered away from the crowd to talk. One of them cups a cigarette in his palm, where flame appears to light it.

"Not a lot of wannabes here. Way it was explained to me, this is a hub for a whole underclass of metas and mystics who want nothing to do with the men-in-tights scene."

He nods to her and exits the car.

"A whole super-powered subculture I never knew existed."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

Sue eyes them cautiously. "No one to teach them how not to blow things up. I've read up on these folks. Most of them are normal 9 to 5ers in their own way, but there's like one in five that become our problem in some way eventually even if most don't becoem big problems."

Thank you Jordan. The Circle occasionally buys these bars.

"Either way, they aren't our issue tonight. Only one guy we need to talk to is." She smiles. "So it's showtime."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"Exactly. But there's reasons he frequents bars like this."

Sue and Ray garner attention as they walk through the crowd to the door. The doorman stops them at the front, but steps aside quickly when Ray flashes his driver's license. He might be at full height, and not wearing a costume, but The Atom's ID is public knowledge. Sometimes that comes in handy.

"We don't want no trouble," the doorman says, paying far too much attention to where his own hands are, trying not to be threatening.

"Not looking for any," says Ray, cool as ice now. "Just looking for a friend. Faust. The younger one."

The doorman looks nervously from side to side, and then gestures to a thin, dark-haired young man in black leather and sunglasses at the end of the bar. Ray presses some bills for their door fees (and a little extra) into the doorman's hamhock hands.

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

The man in the black leather jacket doesn't look up from the the glass in front of him.

"The Atom. Funny, I remember you taller. And Sue Dibny. I'm flattered."

It'd be more convincing if he'd bother looking up.

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

She can't help but sing a little, with a smirk. "Sometimes you wanna go/Where everybody knows your name..."

Kidding stops when they get to the door and produce ID. Yeah, not like Sue isn't public either, but she doesn't have the same fame in her native country as she and Ralph enjoy in Europe. Sue adds her own tip and follows Ray into the dimly lit bar.

Then Faust and the tone. Great...

"You know after the whole death thing with your father, you'd think I'd take objection to the tone," she says jokingly.

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

That does seem to get his atention. Or at least, he swings around to look at his visitors.

"You'll have to forgive me," he says, a growl low in his voice. "I don't really take any responsibility for dad's actions. Got over that a long time ago. The upside of not having a soul? Guilt? Not so much."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"We didn't come here to fight, Faust," says Ray, still keeping his voice level. "Daniel Cassady told us how to find you. We need your help."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

"Sorry, wanted your attention. Now that we have it." She smiles, and her tome is soft. "We can make it worth your while, since I know this stuff isn't what you like doing."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

His gaze focuses appraisingly on Sue for a moment.

"I think a babe like you could definitely make it worth my while," he says, not smiling. Then, he turns his attention back to Ray.

"Dan's a good guy," he says. "But sometimes he's got a big mouth."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

"Well, I could get you the phone number for a supermodel, but cash won't get you a restraining order," is the fast reply.

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"Heh. Good answer," he says. "Hey! Barkeep! Get my friends some glasses."

He follows up by draining his own glass.

"And another bottle of Jack!"

Finally, he looks back at Ray.

"So Dan thought it was important enough to rat me out, even though he knows that every time I hook up with the JLA, it ends badly. So what is it you need?"

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"It's the Enchantress," says Ray. "She's out of control, and we need to stop her. And you're the only one we can find that she's got ties to."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

A beat goes by, and Faust's expression doesn't really change. But the air around him grows colder.

"I really don't. You just think that because I killed her."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

Sue steps in and pours a drink for him from the bottle.

"Well, for a start, this really isn't JLA, so no real worries on that front. Second, she's back. We don't know how or why. what we do know is that she's not the one you killed. Not all the way at least." she grimaces. "We know about one half. We'll pay you for what you know about the rest."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

A small sneer pulls at Faust's mouth.

"You know nothing," he says. "You have no idea."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"Then why don't you tell us, Faust."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"Careful, Ray. I don't take the sanctimonious crap from Batman, I won't tkae it from you."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

Ray bristles, and then steps back.

"Please," he says finally. "We need to understand what she is. How to stop her. She's ..."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

Faust silences him with a wave.

"Fine, I'll do better than tell you. I'll show you."

He puts some money on the bar, and rises ... a little drunkenly ... to his feet.

"You two up for a walk?"

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

Sue has been eyeing him coolly trying to determine how much liquid courage is driving his actions at the moment.

"Sure. Need a car?" It's a stupid question to ask a mage, but teleporting drunk is just one of those things she's learned can screw a mage over. Zee once screwed up one of her backwardws things and teleported to her bathtub instead of her bed - and that was lucky.

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"Nah," he says, walking toward the door. "It's just right here. Follow me."

He walks through the door, and disappears from view.

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

Ray casts Sue a sideways glance, and then shrugs.

"Well, we've come this far..."

And without another word, he walsk through the door and disappears.

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

"When in Rome..." And through the looking glass.

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

They emerge ... somewhere. A room in some sort of private hospital, by the appearance.

Faust is standing over the bed of the room's sole occupant -- a blonde woman who's lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She's awake, but completely unresponsive. She doesn't seem to notice the visitors at all.

"Here's your big bad villain," says Faust, whispering. "Go ahead JLA, take her away."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

"The hell? This isn't the same woman."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"It is," says Faust, his voice low and sounding suddenly, surprisingly sober.

Gently, he reaches down and brushes her hair out of her eyes. She doesn't react.

"Name's June Moone. Once upon a time, some magical ... entity gave her magical powers to fight evil. And she did, for a while. She called it the "switcheroo-witcheroo" -- she was Pollyanna-nice June by day, and the dark and mysterious Enchantress by night."

He pulls his hand back, but doesn't take his eyes off her.

"But I think the the 'mystical force for good' that gave her her powers wasn't all it said it was, because June started cracking up after a while. They call it Multiple Personality Disorder these days, but it was always a little more complicated with her. The bottom line is, The Enchantress started to become dominant, and The Enchantress wanted to be bad."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"So the Enchantress somehow ... separated from June?" says Ray, his face knit with concentration. "How? What happened?"

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"I happened," says Faust, the words passing his lips like an Arctic wind. "The Spectre was out of control, and Hell literally froze. The whole A bunch of us mystic types were tapped to go down into Hell with the JLA to re-ignite the fires of Hell, to save the mortal world."

He looks up at Sue.

"And hey. We did everything we were supposed to, and it sill didn't work. Because we were in Hell, and all the shining, pretty superheroes didn't get that you didn't re-ignite Hell without a sacrifice. So I killed The Enchantress."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

Sue looks him dead in the eye and her voice is low and as chilly as that place ever was. Her eyes filled with the kind of iron that only comes from pain.

"I'd watch your assumptions about what we do and do not get, kid. She's not dead. Magical things like that don't die generally. It's like energy not being created or destroyed - only diverted. In this case, you diverted it away from June."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

The air in the room suddenly stabs at the skin like tiny icicles -- sharp, electric, dangerous.

Faust is impassive, even his scowl barely moves.

"You weren't there, Ms. Dibny. A lot of things happened down there. Blue Devil came back to life, and for one brief moment, I'd managed to get my soul back. The one my father sold for power when I was a kid."

He still makes no movement, threatening or otherwise, but power now crackles around him.

"But the world was going to end in minutes, and only I knew how to fix it. I think Zee might have known, too, but couldn't bare to face it. She was always smarter than the rest. It had to be a sacrifice. It had to be a murder, so I cheated, and killed the Enchantress, because I thought that would free June, too. It worked. I saved the world, but managed to lose my soul again, and turned the only woman I've even come close to loving into a vegetable in the process. So please don't lecture me on how magic works, Ms. Dibny."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

She watches him for a moment, her face is neutral. She them pulls out a picture. "Okay, what's this then? Same powers, same name, same attitude problem." A beat. "We wouldn't be barking up your tree unless she was already barking up ours." She nods to the bed. "And maybe there's a way out for her, too. I don't know."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

Ray furrows his brow as he listens. This is obviously sitting none too well with him.

"There's a lot of this that doesn't jive with what we know about her. About what happened with Nightshade."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"Yeah"" says Faust, seemingly unconcerned. "I can't help you with that. I don't know what's up there. But I tell you all this because you need to know it."

He reaches into his jacket, and pulls out a dagger, which he hands to the Atom.

"Because I know whose body the Enchantress is walking around in these days. And there's only one way you're gonna free her again."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"What do you expect me to do with this?"

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"Sword of the Atom, dude," says Faust, smirking mirhtlessly at him. "When you love a girl like that, the only way to save her is to kill her."

[mrs-dibny.livejournal.com]

Long look to the kid, then long look to Ray.

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

Ray contemplates the knife, his face blank.

"Tell me you're kidding."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"Never really got the hang of kidding," says Faust. "That's the knife I killed her with the first time. If everything works right, it should seperate the Enchantress from your ex, putting her back in June's body."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"And if it doesn't work?"

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"Then she's gonna be either very dead or very pissed off. Possibly both."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

"This is insane," says Ray, his gaze locked on the knife in his hand. "No way am I going to ..."

[og-outsiders.livejournal.com]

"....slash her throat," says Faust, interrupting him. "You're going to have to slahs her throat to separate the two.

Winter descends on his face, and the air around him chills.

"It has to be a murder, and it has to be someone who loves her. That's how it works."

[reducing-ray.livejournal.com]

Ray stares at him blankly ... but he doesn't hand back the knife.