EggHead & I Chapter XLIX

Chapter XLIX
by General (Uncle Claude) Xxaxx
& General (E.J. Gold) Nunan PFC 1st Class Ret.

Just as Woo had suspected, Ja Mere’s window was latched and locked tight, or so it would appear to any casual observer. With latch in place, the window had all the look of being firmly closed — of course no one could enter or leave. What the casual observer was not meant to see was the cut deep within the latch mechanism rendering it nonfunctional except as misdirection.

Pushing the window up, Woo slipped into the room quickly, rolled to the left and made herself into a discrete ball in the corner. With her abilities, no one would notice her unless they were actively looking for someone and gazing directly at her. It was not for nothing that she earned the nickname, “The Chameleon” in her university courses. If Woo did not want to be found, she was one difficult egghead to locate.

Woo sat in the corner nestled between the outside wall and the end of the couch. It is here that she took a moment to catch her breath. Sudden and explosive movement was very taxing when one was making every effort to move silently between heartbeats. It was just in-between such a heartbeat that Woo made her move toward the bedroom door, when she pulled herself short snapping a few small muscles by the abrupt change of momentum. Appearing in the middle of the living-room floor was a blue shimmering veil of light. Within the scintillating curtain partially obscured by dancing colors of light was the image of Ja Mere, Littler Roy and seven bosspersons — images not very distinct — looking very much like mirages in the heat waves on a hot day.

This was the first time that Woo was mistreated to the displeasure of seeing a bossperson in the flesh, albeit indistinct and mirage like. For this she was thankful. One was given to understand that bosspersons resembled citizins. A bossperson is reminiscent of a bubbler in the same way that a maggot-ridden apple core is reminiscent of the healthy fruit that preceded it. Bosspersons are slightly taller than a Citizin — three to four inches taller than the standard bubbler. Other than this slight resemblance, a bossperson looked more like an egghead dressed in a prune suit from hell than a bubbler. A bossperson’s bubble was black, wrinkled and deflated hugging the body closely in great sagging wrinkles that ran mostly vertical in massive head to foot folds. The dull-witted absence of intelligence in the eyes — the norm for a Citizin — was missing. Replacing it was an evil cunning that truly scared Woo. Each bossperson exuded an uncontrolled malevolent force that was not bound by any convent, bubbler or egghead. There was no regard for life in those eyes.

Woo was thankful that she only had to view the phase-shifted image — poor Ja Mere and Little Roy. No egghead has ever reported back to Cownsil after a visit by bosspersons. Ja Mere’s encounter with the bosspersons was scheduled to be a one way trip unless Woo could do something about it. In instinctive anticipation of just this type of eventuality, Woo had placed Project Levity in the capable hands of Stan Lee. Woo was determined to help her two friends to the fullest extent of her capability.

Woo’s stomach crawled as she watched the scene unfold before her. The bosspersons were picking and pawing over her two friends in a perverted kind of body search. It was obvious that their search was designed more to torment the hapless prisoners than to find anything.

Woo had a sudden pang of sympathy for the poor goobers. Of everyone on the planet goobers were the only ones that were forced by virtue of their jobs to have regular contact with the bosspersons. As an adept in dragon-lore, Woo has taken an oath to not interfere with local lifeforms. Nevertheless, Woo was resolved to do something about the bosspersons. Judging by their maleficence, these creatures were not local in origin. They came from somewhere else and somewhen else. The hate in those eyes was too deep to have evolved in the natural course of events on this planet. It was something far older and fetid. Citizins and eggheads alike easily display aggression and the brutish nature of their primate relatives. This was to be expected. How could one expect the humans to have any other base behavior than that of a carnivorous ape habituated to tribal living. No one could expect any different.

These bosspersons were not an example of hunger and dominance, the total antipathy for life that these creatures emanated was not engendered in something as short as the evolution of a species. This hatred for all that was light came from trillions of years of festering hate. This is the force that Samantha Foley and the Troika were looking for.

For Woo, this night was going to be very long. She knew that the Sun would not truly rise for her until she had done something about this infection in the Creation.

The sight of the bosspersons hovering around her friends, tormenting them, sickened Woo. “How could the nature of bosspersons have eluded me all this time? Is the rest of the Cownsil just as naive? I know that Dragon Lords volunteer little information, but why has the subject of bosspersons never come up?” Woo scolded herself for not intuiting the true nature of the bosspersons enabling her to do something about them earlier. But even now, as much as she wanted to help, she knew that she couldn’t — not now, this was not the time. Even if she dared to move on the bosspersons, they were within a phase-shift, and not actually in the room at all. They could be seen and they could see her, if she was foolish enough to let them, but they were not actually in the room. Least not so that one could reach them with spell or weapon. Woo was uncertain in which of these ways she could tackle her newly sworn enemy. She had taken a vow to not spill the blood of any creature in lust or anger. And when it comes to matching magic for magic, she had no idea where their talents and abilities may lie. Translocation through planes aka, phase-shift, was a moderately advanced technique. These bosspersons were not pikers. Somewhere along the line they had learned some fairly advanced magic. The ease with which they maintained the difficult phase-shift belied their expertise. However, Woo would not let this slow her hand. However, for the moment, she had to find out more of their intentions before she risked her friends in a foolish frontal attack.

With a shimmer and a pop the tableau in front of her was gone.

Scanning her body to ascertain the source of the strange tingling sensation in her extremities, Woo realized that she had stopped breathing while the bosspersons were in the room. With a gasp, Woo took an in-breath deep into her lungs. This was a mistake; the room was filled with a foul stench such as one would expect from gangrene of the soul.

Diary Note — Etheric Odors: Not a physical smell in the molecular receptor sense. An etheric odor is given off as a by-product of magical workings — a common phenomenon in magic. Each magical operator has an etheric perfume unique to himself or herself. Whenever a magical working was performed, this perfume would permeate the nearby ethers.

Diary Note — Woo’s Unique Odor: According to reference 133423 filed internal timestamp 556-5445, Woo has been told by Drak (see cross-references to Dragon-Lore Instructor) that the perfume from her workings was not unsimilar to that of peaches. Insofar as no living Citizin, goober, or egghead has ever made any reference to these things called peaches, it is not possible to ascertain the truthfulness of Draks reference as reported by Woo. (see cross-reference Gene-wars of ‘73 and plant extinctions)

Woo brought her will to bear, pulled her physical self together and made her way across the plush carpet of Ja Mere’s apartment. “If I can reach the spot where Ja Mere had been sitting before the residue of his psychic emanations has dissipated, there is a chance to psychometrize something useful.” Crawling around the spiritually blackened spots left by the bosspersons, Woo made it to the blue/green impression left by Ja Mere. Pausing for a moment to center into the now of his reading, Woo continued, “He was deeply worried about something. It wasn’t capture, he was resigned to his death. He was worried that they would . . . they would . . . find something.” Scanning further, Woo realized, “It’s his sekrit laboratory. Ja Mere, you ninny. You shouldn’t be thinking so loud, and you shouldn’t have visualized the entrance so explicitly. Well, at least we know that either the bosspersons care nothing whatsoever for your laboratory, or they have no talent for field reading. At the moment it looks as though the bosspersons have gaping holes in their training and/or talents. Perhaps this is the chink in the armour we will need.”

Before the psychic image left by Ja Mere faded completely, Woo was able to extract a full description of his laboratory and how to circumvent his security devices. “What a relief. At least I won’t need to use magic to gain entrance into his lab. Can’t count on bosspersons being complete dummys.”

Diary Note — Sigil of Warning: Magical spell used to create an etheric detector and astral alarm — designed to trigger in the presence of any magic use. Taught as a compassionate measure to first year magic students — a partial precaution against the practical jokes of upper classpersons. Even the most flamboyant and subtle of practial jokes lost its flair when accompanied by the aggravating bells and whistles from even a novice’s sigil of warning.

“If I was phase-shifting in and out of rooms, torturing hapless eggheads and goobers, undoubtedly I would leave a sigil to entrap any pursuit. Come to think of it, I would never be phase-shifting in and out of rooms, torturing hapless eggheads and goobers, so I’m not sure what I would do in that event. In any case, I’d better double check Ja Mere’s psychic impression as not to make any mistakes while penetrating his Sanctum Sanctorum.

continued

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