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Sara was impatiently tapping her staff against her foot. For once, they were not going on a dangerous mission - at least as far as she could tell - but she still wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
"Ray, what's taking so long? It's not like we're going to a costume competition", she called out through the door of the Waverider.
"Just a second!", came the answer from a room at the other end of the hallway, followed by a loud crash and a stifled curse.
"I'm fine!" Ray exclaimed. "Everything's fine. Just some minor breakage, but nothing I can't fix, I promise! It'll be as good as new."
Jefferson, who had been sitting on a cargo box next to the entrance, jumped to his feet and rushed to the room where the noise had come from.
"What did you...", he started, but abruptly stopped when he turned around the corner. One of Ray's newly developed, and therefore extremely failure-prone, automatic plasma rifles was stuck in the ship's engine, right next to the time drive.
"You are not fixing anything. Don't even touch it. Just... go and find that old guy." He grabbed Ray by the arm and pulled him out of the room and towards the exit.
Grudgingly, but also excited at the same time, Ray walked towards Sara while still fumbling around with his suit-turned-costume.
"Nice outfit", Sara remarked. "What exactly are you supposed to be? An angry, horned Martian with a glowing stick?"
Ray stopped fumbling and stared at her with a shocked expression. "I'm a Sith Lord! Darth Maul from..."
"Relax, I was just joking. I did watch Star Wars as a kid, you know?" She handed him a large orange bag. "I don't think you will have difficulties acting like a child. Ready?"
"Almost." He pushed a few buttons on his suit and shrunk to the size of a 6-year-old boy. "Now I'm ready", he declared. "It's been so long since I've last been trick-or-treating. My parents told me that I was too old to go when I was just ten. I mean, come on, ten?"
"Yeah well, remember that we're not going for the sweets. We're going to get the information about Vandal Savage's operation that this mercenary's message talked about. Just once around the block, that's it", Sara reminded him.
It took them less than 5 minutes to get to the block where the Time Masters' former mercenary now lived. The streets were full of parents and kids in costumes, even more so than they had expected.
"Let's hope he still has the information and hasn't given up hope and thrown it away", Sara mumbled to herself while they were approaching the first house of the block.
Most of the people answering the door seemed somewhat annoyed by 'yet another kid' asking for sweets, but they were all very generous, giving away big handfuls to everyone. The sixth house they came to was the one where the mercenary was supposed to live.
"Trick or Treat!", Ray shouted enthusiastically, the voice changer of his suit making him sound like the kid he was disguised as.
The man opening the door was in his late 70's. He gave a short nod towards Sara, then turned to the apparent child. "Now look at you! That's what I call scary. I guess I shouldn't make an enemy of you, should I? Come here and grab some chocolate." He took a big bowl from the shelf behind him and presented it to Ray.
Sara and Ray both crossed the front yard, but instead of taking anything out of the bowl, Sara reached into her pocket and took out the Time Master ring Rip had given her. It took the old man a few moments to recognize the symbol, but when he did his eyes widened.
"I see", he breathed, relieved and scared at the same time. "I had started to believe my message had gotten lost or stuck in the time stream."
Without looking, he pushed the shelf a little to the side and reached for the small Smarties tube hidden behind it.
"Here you go, my dear", he said with a slightly forced smile as he carefully let the tube slide into Ray's bag. "I hope you'll be successful."
"Thank you very much! We will do our best", Sara assured him before taking Ray by the hand, swiftly turning around and making her way back to the street. By the time she looked back, the door was already closed and the light in the entry hall turned off.
Sara insisted on skipping every second of the remaining houses, much to Ray's chagrin, but he understood the need to get the information back to the ship as soon as possible.
Jefferson was still hard at work when they came back. Ray had apparently done more damage than he had originally thought.
"Now, let's look at what we got", Sara said after locking the ship's door.
Ray fished the pack of Smarties out of his sweets bag and opened it. Inside was a rolled-up piece of paper, which he pulled out and started unrolling.
"Well, this is anticlimactic", he declared, looking a bit confused. Sara took the piece of paper from him and examined it closely. It was rather old painting depicting Vandal Savage, Kendra and Carter Hall in ancient Egyptian clothes. At the bottom of the painting, written in cursive handwriting, were three names.
'Hath-Set, Chay-Ara and Prince Khufu'
"That's it?", Sara asked, not wanting to believe it. "That's very meagre and not even anything new." She stared at the painting a while longer, then lifted her eyes off the paper and looked at Ray. "We went trick-or-treating in 1940 for this?"
He shrugged. "I guess that means we're back to square one."
"Yeah, or square zero. I'll better tell the others." Sara sighed and turned to the hallway.
"Hey!", Ray called out, making her turn her head back to him, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
He held up the orange bag.
"At least we got treats, right?"