You and Bones find out what's the files (It's something lewd and perverse (because of course it is))

20 minutes later you're crouching in a cheap motel room duck tape holding the broken lock outside in place and hopefully not being too obvious from a distance. The woman calling herself 'Bones' is laying on the bed next you, with her arm in a splint made from a broken chair. She's barely said a thing to you and you genuinely can't tell if she's mad or not, though making any wordplay on the fact that she's got some 'broken bones' seems unwise.

"Idiot. You worthless, blonde, propaganda puff piece fucking amateur bimbo." Well, in a way it's a relief to hear Bones say that and not to be left in suspense any more.

"Hey, I was... I was trying to save him!" you whisper hoarsely. "I didn't mean to almost kill you like that, I just reacted without thinking and-"

"You think I care about a busted arm?!" her voice rises to a raw shout, and when you shush her, she continues with softly seething anger instead. "Fuck my arm AND your shitty driving! You just got the man who taught me everything killed! Because there is no way I believe the weak, garbage security that lets the League of Losers get infiltrated by every costumed criminal in the world got tripped by Al-" she catches herself and bites down on her tongue. "I mean, Jokester."

"We were both in the same room, I didn't move a muscle the whole time!" you go for one of the most useful life skills that the army taught you, more vital to survival than clearing a jammed weapon or evading snipers: deflecting blame onto a third party. "There must have been someone else who sold us out ahead of time! That wasn't a hero that threw Jokester, he said, he knew that this guy was out to kill him!" Your mind races. "What about the fixer who set me up with him, he seemed to know what Jokester was planning!"

When Bones calmly reaches down and draws her pistol off her belt, aiming the ugly, large-caliber hunk of metal right between your tits. You're too shocked to move a muscle. "Yeah..." the scantily-clad super-commando rasps at you. "What about him. Got you working for the CIA, huh? Those pieces of shit... Naturally, it must have been their **** he was on the trail of." Tears start welling up in her eyes, causing her black eyeliner to start running. "Damn.. oh damn it... Jokester never had time to tell you the absolute farce those maniacs made of the Lunar Landing. He was right, I never looked at a gorilla the same way."

You have a strong instinct to reach out and give her a hug. The woman just lost a team member, mentor, and close personal friend of hers. And... maybe he was more than that to her? It's hard to tell exactly how old she is since she's clearly a supe. Though, heck, even if she was a little too young for him, she's probably not as too-young-for-him as you are and you were thinking about it... You swallow. Much as you might think she needs a hug right now though you can't do anything that might make her trigger finger twitchy. "Um... well, since we had to run off... the League has some pretty impressive medical facilities, maybe they were able to save him? We can't be sure... maybe he'll be able to vouch for me...?" Your words don't look like they're giving Bones any hope.

"Ok, I can prove to you I didn't do it later, Bones," you say, keeping your hands raised, "but listen, I've got the bank number. His Swiss account, he said. It was on a tattoo. He trusted me with it." She chuckles and curls her lip, shaking her head. "Well, good on you that he trusted you, but he could never say no to a pretty girl. I already know that number." Her thumb dramatically cocks back the hammer.

The white noise of the vent softly blowing above you is deafening in the following seconds of silence. She can't be serious, can she? You decide you had better say something all the same. You do what your drill instructor taught you, squeeze your buttcheeks together, and speak slowly. "Are you sure about that?"

Bones purses her coal-black lips. Her blu-ish black, short-trimmed head bobs subtly. She sighs. "He would just love the fact that I can't say 'yes'. Guess I'll just have to wait until you try something and shoot you then. Jeez. And the same night that he had to go and burn the local black market supply of dope and pills, too. I could really use some of that right about now. Go find me some aspirin would you?"

A few tense minutes pass. No sirens can be heard approaching. "So, uh, about these files he got. Joke-"

"Listen," Bones interrupts with a sigh. "I don't figure it can do any harm at this point... and it's tearing me up enough thinking about this without having that stupid code name. I'm not fond of mine either but I still have a secret identity to protect. Ugh... it was him that gave me that one when I joined the 'eXtra Judicial ****' eight years ago. I originally wanted something else, based around the game I discovered my powers while I was playing... but he said he'd never stop making jokes about how I was named after a pizza restaurant so I went with this instead. Kind of a double reference because my mutant blood means that I'm roughly the same color as a skeleton. So instead of jokes about pizza I got eight years of jokes about what every guy presumably wanted to do with me." she sniffs and smiles sadly. "Anyway. His name was Alan, so let's call him that, alright? If you've already the info of where he hid his entire slush fund I guess that I'll have to trust you until you prove that I need to take you out."

"You had better either be darn sure of that, or make sure it isn't a fair fight! And I can't blame those horny guys. You look pretty great for your age." Her eyebrow raises and you stammer a second. "Uh, um, whatever that is, I mean. I'll go with... uh... twenty... six? Based on the number you gave me?"

Bones sighs heavily. "Uh-huh. Yeah. I can see why Al took such a shining to you right away." You smile thinly, hoping that you're making some progress charming your way into her good graces. "Right so, about those files..."

You go over to the case and open it slowly, making no sudden moves. Inside, underneath a lot of casing and padding, are 13 video cassette tapes. 9 of them have one or several names written on them in silver sharpie, and the other 4 have titles in red sharpie with smaller subtitles in silver. All of the ones written in silver have both a real name and a 'costume name', the kind of title associated with supers. "Huh... some kind of interview tapes..." you mutter as you look through them, Bones watching with quiet interest. You still haven't told her exactly WHO Jokester/Alan wanted you to find, and you feel like it might hurt her feelings (plus you still need leverage). "Whoever this that he wanted us to find was, she was very important... so we'll, you know, have to look for him on the tapes." You pull up one of them and glance at it, seeing a photo of a pretty black woman with a short pixie-style haircut, vivid red lipstick, wearing a cleavage-baring yellow vest and a necklace of some kind of animal claws. "He said he might be anywhere in them from the beginning to the end, but that's all he could manag- oh, hey. This one has a sleeve on it." you say, putting the first one away and looking at the jacketed tape to see if there's a hint to all these.

You pull up the tape up to the light. The jacket is generic looking, bright red with a movie screen and a pretty, blue-eyed woman's face on it. It is labeled 'M-Files volume 2 (Accidents, Surprises and Misdeeds), Chapter 1: Excellence Girl'. "TOP SECRET" is rubber-stamped over the title and picture. On the back are several bordered text boxes left blank, with a sticky note in its place which says: 'Let me know if you ladies and gentlemen change your mind about having properly-designed covers with summaries for these. I'm not saying that we should sell them but doesn't every film deserve a proper marquee? P.S. these are made directly with my power, so the film itself will be almost indestructible and difficult, if not impossible, to make copies of. P.P.S. DO NOT let the bad guys get hold of these. -signed, Celluloid Crusader'. Folded up inside the sleeve is some kind of notarized official-looking slip with 'Department of Vigilante and Superhuman Oversight, clearance level 'S' and above only'.

As you shuffle through them you find that all of these (most don't have photos attached) have superheroine names written on them... A blush starts to rise in your cheeks. An inkling of an idea is starting to form in your mind, and your stomach tightens. You've never watched one of those 'dirty movies' sold in the kind of shops with no windows but you have a hunch that what is to be found in these records isn't exactly family-friendly. "Well..." you say, trying to keep a quaver out of your voice. "since we need to lay low for a while here before we move, maybe wait for the morning rush hour to give us some concealment when we move... I'm gonna start checking these out. They look like standard VHS, I imagine this motel VCR will probably play them ok?" You feed the casette into the slot, and it accepts it without any issues.

"Hey!" Bones hisses at you. "Are you trying to get us killed? You aren't checking those for booby traps or anything?"

Your blush deepens. "Give me a break already, I think we got bigger risks to worry about! Right now, I want to find out where we need to start looking as quickly as possible, since the spandex patrol is gonna want these back. You can start checking the other ones for bombs or bugs or knockout gas or whatever, but I'm not backing down now!" You slam your finger against the play button. "HOOAH!"