Sean turned his head back toward Samita, frowning. “I know where their room is.”
Vaughn raised an eyebrow, and cocked his head backwards to see Sean’s face. “Sounds like you’ve got a story.”
Sean shook his head. “Yeah, a stupid story. You remember how we tried to keep that alien spaceship in the air while Nick and the others took out its engine?”
Vaughn snorted. “It’s hard to forget.”
“Yeah,” Sean said, taking a breath. “Well, lots of people got video of it, and it looks like the two of us are keeping it up, you know? We know it was mostly Izzy, but she was inside, so no one saw her. Anyway, I’ve been getting piles of attention from that. Like people are calling me and offering big money for me to form a super team.”
Vaughn glanced back in our direction, probably wondering what Haley and I thought.
I had no idea what I thought.
Haley muttered something I didn’t catch. She didn’t sound happy.
Turning his attention back to Sean, Vaughn asked, “How big?”
Sean stopped walking. “Seven figures. We’re talking NBA player money.”
Vaughn gave a whistle. “That’s crazy. Are you taking it?”
Samita cleared her throat. “Sean, could you please show us where we’re going while you talk?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s this way.” He started walking again, his footfalls echoing in the nearly empty hall.
“So anyway,” he said. “I feel weird about taking it because I didn’t even hold the ship up in the first place, but the money guys? They don’t care. All that matters to them is that I’ll be visible, you know? I’ve got a name now. I haven’t signed anything, but I will if I get the right offer.”
Vaughn blinked. “Whoa. Yeah, I get that. You’ve been worried about your mom since your dad died.”
Sean kept on walking, pointing right as we came to an intersection. “My mom’s got some money. Dad had life insurance, and he saved. Plus your uncle said he’d help if we ever needed anything, but I’d feel a lot better with several million, you know?”
I was wondering how this all connected with Hunter, and evidently Vaughn was wondering the same thing because he asked, “What’s Hunter got to do with it?”
“Shit,” Sean grimaced. “I was talking with him and his mother happened to drop by. She knows one of the money guys. So she told me I ought to sign with him, and all that. I ended up talking with her about it forever. Look, if I’m going to put together my own team with other people’s money, I’m going to bring in people I like—Dayton and Jody for sure—not Diva’s kid and his friends, right?”
Before Vaughn could reply, Sean held up his hand. “Fourth door down.” Turning he asked Samita, “How do you want to handle it, knock or break down the door?”
Samita opened her pouch and began fishing around inside. Looking up from whatever she was trying to find, she replied, “Knock first.”
Shaking his head, Sean raised his hand to knock on the door. “You got it.”
He knocked, giving the door a solid hit each time. No one inside could have missed it—which most likely meant that no one was inside.
Samita pulled a bronze colored key out of the pouch. It wasn’t an unusual key. It could have been bought from any locksmith shop in the country. What made it odd was that the door like all the rest of the dorm rooms’ doors had a key card reader, but no place to insert a key.
She stuck it in the card reader, and with a click, the light on the keycard reader turned green and the door opened.
Sure, why not?
Samita had taken her staff out of the pouch along with the key, so as the door opened, she stepped back, hands on the staff, and probably readying a lightning strike.
Nothing jumped out at her. That, at least was what you’d normally expect out of a room. Their room was neat—beds made, nothing lying on the floor, drawers shut. Without the pile of books stacked neatly on the dresser, it would be easy to believe that the room was unoccupied.
“I’m going to try to find something I can use to track them.” Samita stepped through the door, staff still in hand. She’d dropped the key back into her pouch.
Haley, Amy, and I looked at each other, and I asked, “Do you want to follow her? Wait, does she even need to go in? Haley might be able to find them by scent.”
Amy smirked. “Do you really want to try to go in there? We’re already marching in place just to keep this spell working.”
Haley didn’t say anything. She had her eyes closed, and was sniffing the air. After a few moments, she stopped, frowning. “I can smell everybody. I think they had everyone in the halls when they left. It was about an hour ago… You know, they may have all left in the same direction. I’m not sure…”
She was still sniffing the air and thoughtfully biting her lip when Samita came back.
“Good news.” She pinched a few pieces of hair between her forefinger and thumb. “I was a little worried when I saw their room, but I managed to find a few pieces of hair caught in a comb.”
She pulled out a basin out of her pouch, and poured water into it from a water bottle. Then she said a few words, and a picture began to form in the water. It showed the park outside the foothill’s rocky top, the park we’d seen as we drove in on the first day.
Instead of playing children, it appeared to to be filled with students. Adam and Hunter stood in the middle of the group.
As you can see, I changed the design of the site around. I limited myself to what I could do in an hour or two, so there are definitely still things I want to change. It’ll happen eventually.
Feel free to read the sidebars, but I’m putting the TWF link down here for your convenience:
http://topwebfiction.com/vote.php?for=the-legion-of-nothing
I like the new site design. It looks much more impressive now, and it looks more like the book cover design.
I was going to say. I saw it on mobile first, and was confused.
Whoa, that’s new.
Heh, I would have loved to see Nick’s face when he was thinking “Sure, why not?” as Samita used a magic key in a card reader.
Poor Nick. Magic wrapping his head in knots.
Actually seems to be taking it rather well. Its like if it is “non-tech” it doesn’t engage his need to dissect it AS strongly. (though still a little)
I hope he gets the idea to contract to Samita in the future for “bags of holding” compartments to be used as roach bot bays in the Rocket Suit of the future! Though that would require some tinkering on both their parts so that he could contact them inside the bag and also its possible that nothing inside the bag can easily come out without a sentient being willing them out? Still if you could get it to work then poof ENDLESS AMMO! XD
Yeah, you know that isn’t gonna happen for story destroying reasons.
I like the new layout. It is easier for me to see and read the story itself. Which is good, because the story continues strong as always.
The layout looks nice but I will say that I remember that when I increased the zoom factor in older versions I quickly ended up with large type that covered the entire page from left to right. It still eventually does that if I increase it a lot but now its at a magnification that makes for lots more scrolling than I remember.
Not really a strong negative for most folks but for those of us poor of eyesight who like to read till the late night hours it is easier on the poor old eyes if it becomes wall to wall at a lesser magnification to allow less scrolling (making it bigger makes it easier to read but scrolling too much can also be hard on the eyes if you are actively reading it while trying to keep new sentences popping up). Probably nothing you can actually do about that and most folks have better eyesight then me I suppose but I thought I’d mention it in case that is something you bump into in the advanced options somewhere. *shrugs*
I wonder if there’s a plugin I can install that makes text larger or smaller? I take that back. I’m sure there’s a plugin like that, but I wonder if there’s one that works well enough for it to be worth installing?
I really like the layout!
I like the new layout.
Just a little nitpick, Jim, but your web address is ‘In my daydreams’ and your left side margin header is ‘In My Daydream’ with no ‘s’
I think that’s how your device is reproducing it. On my tablet, it’s there with the “s”.
There’s an s on the end now. You didn’t have to fix anything? Weird.
My theory is that whatever device or browser you were using interpreted the html such that it placed something over the “s.”
Maybe Psychopomp Gecko stopped by and borrowed the ‘s’ for a while? 🙂