Moonlighting part 3/3

Joe Miller
I got a phone call in the middle of the night from Leah. She told they had captured two more ninjas, but the rest four had made an escape with the crate of Objects.

Upon my arrival Mike held a briefing: "We are sure the old guy living up here did not dig the passage through all that rock. The ninjas must have had some stone-digging Object with them. Also having an Object with them solves the why they had it so easy to pinpoint Objects at the camp site".

This Jake McKinnon guy surely seems a tough opponent, and is well informed about the Objects. The team is still too new to this to have assumed the ninjas had any Objects with them. They must be prepared better the next time.

Surely Leah was right it was easy for me to track such an intense stash of Objects on the move. Apparently they had left their vehicles behind and stole another car from nearby.

They were heading east. "Well they were hired by Jake MacKinnon, who lives in Michigan. They are headed there, by fastest route. All they need is to drive to the Waukegan harbor and take a boat or small plane across Lake Michigan" Mike worried "We have to catch them before that".

Mike raised his secretary again and told her to arrange a helicopter to the nearest airport. Jimmy took the key and leaped to a gas station quarter-way towards Waukegan and begun driving like a madman, scanning for the Objects and trying to spot the ninjas.

I took the team to the helicopter, but headed back to the Ziggurat Complex after that. Could not bear to go so close to such amount of Objects in the same place.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jacob Erez
Being the Occupant means you are indestructible. That does not mean a guy becomes any less a whimp. Well, Joe did recruit us to do the job for him, so I guess he retreating back to ZC is minute.
Jimmy had taken a spike belt along and we hoped he would be able to stop the vehicle the ninjas had with it. We just flew there to give him backup.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jimmy Spencer
It was consuming to focus on the scanning and driving at the same time. Many cars I passed by until I came to an ice-cream van that yelled being infested with Objects. It was driving in no hurry. I stepped on the pedal and bypassed it, looking casually in the cockpit. There was only one guy with a huge stetson driving the van. I reported to Mike with my earpiece and accelerated.

I drew fast onwards, trying to find a suitable place to lay the spike belt on. Soon I came to a spot with a sand pit on both sides of the road. I hurriedly left the motorbike in the pit and laid the belt across the road. It was good Brock had insisted Mike to buy a belt with a radio-launch.

So I waited until the van was close enough to have no time to hit the brakes and launched the spikes. The van rolled a little longer and then came to a halt.

The cowboy-hatted guy came down from the cab cursing aloud in Japanese. Hollers were heard from inside the back of the van, as the rest of the ninjas were startled.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Brock Storm
It was a good thing we were already so close to the site. Jimmy had managed to seize the van and a guy with a stetson was taking a run for it. I had loaded my shotgun ready with salt ammo so I slid the window aside and took a shot at the running guy -and managed only to drop his hat. Darnit!

He was running towards Jimmy and took a quick turn on his heels when he spotted the bike. All the other ninjas had already managed to climb out from the back and were collecting the crate.

Mike commanded the copter to land and I jumped out as soon as it was down enough and begun my way after the ninjas.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Jimmy Spencer
Good shot from Brock! Too bad the huge hat was in the way. I was ready to trip the guy over, when he turned around and went in the opposite direction. The bike was close enough so I went after him. Two of the ninjas had taken the crate and were running, awkwardly towards the gravel bank. The third close behind them with a long staff, something shiny duct-taped at the tip.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Leah Maddoc
They are for the same stunt again!!! That must be The Object taped on the stick they had brought with them. I pondered while I continued my run to aid Brock. Good thing Jimmy had the motorbike, it took no time to seize all four ninjas.

Indeed the one with the staff tried to make an escape route, only to find himself in a trench, surrounded by us.
We left the ninjas in the ice cream van, tied in the piping with cable ties, and returned home.


"Where does the sand go?" Mike was perplexed. "An another dimension, perhaps?" Jacob pondered "Or perhaps it rains dirt somewhere in China"

Where-ever the dirt went, it worked fast. As if the Medicine cabinet Shelf, tied on the staff was engulfing it... like hot knife to butter. "Maybe it sublimates stone, same way the Clock sublimates brass" Brock threw in.

We opened the crate and found the Objects all to be there. Jacob stretched his fingers and was ready to read them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jacob Erez
The Pants
As soon as I touched the pants I was overwhelmed by the agony of the old man killed at the fest. Apparently he was wearing them when the ninja came in. That spoiled me from getting any more knowledge out of them.
Why he was wearing pants at nudist camp, I do not know.

We wanted more info, and figured it can not be too deadly as the old guy had used the Pants, so Jimmy pulled the Pants on. As soon as he did that he felt very light-footed. "These Pants seem to give some kind of bonus to agility. The old guy must have felt young again wearing these".

The Shaving Mirror
Very good thing the ninjas did not know how to use this. The Mirror amplifies any light-source into a beam of energy. If you give it fire, it will beam fire. A simple match is enough. Brock tested it with a laser pointer aiming a raw fish and the thing exploded by the heat!
You need to know how to use it and focus to get the effect. Only a little bad thing is the fact the glass is shattered, so the beam bursts into two directions. However Jimmy figured we can cover the other part using duct-tape.

The four Drinking Glass Covers
This is the most important find so far! It took a good measure of figuring it out, but they all need to be put on a tight-fit vessel, anything that has bottom and fits will do.

The first one creates a 16 ft radius bubble, that consists of solid air, or something. Inside the bubble you are safe at least from bullets and rain. We have not tested it against microbes or radiation yet, but the air supply is limited inside it. We named the cover to the Cover of Airshield

The second cover caused me ominous flashbacks but it did cause some kind of de-ja vus to the others too. We named it to The Cover of Anticipation

The third one made me feel angry. It had so much negative energy on it. It's effect destroys any item put inside the vessel it covers by disintegrating it's molecules. Nasty thing. Although I do not know whether it is much of use, unless you manufacture yourself a huge jar that fits men, but has only small mouth. The Cover is naturally called The Cover of Disintegration

The fourth was the most interesting of them all. In the aspect of science. It cools the item put inside the vessel by 10 degrees. And you can do that as many times you want, until the thing reaches absolute zero point. The Cover is thereby called The Cover of Freezing

But that is not all folks! These four covers work together too! And that is the most exciting ever! You set them in a square (order does not matter) and a bubble of air is formed in-between of them. That was a peculiar thing in itself, but we wanted to know whether the bubble had other qualities, and it did!

Brock took an another dead fish to put it in the event horizon. As it turned out, time runs backwards in the square! At same rate it normally would, but placing any other Object (that fits) under the Cover of Anticipation time runs twice as fast backwards! Finally something we can help Anna with!

We did series of testing with mice and many other combinations of Objects in the jars. It did not matter if it was the Key the Paperclip or the Soap-Wrapper we put under the Covers, result was always the same. But if we put an Object under TWO of the Covers we got TWO results.

If we put an Object under the Cover of Airshield, it turned the covering shield into a solid mail. If we put an Object under the Cover of Freezing it heals injuries. I think it also heals diseases, but I am not sure. Putting an Object under the Cover of Disintegration made our mice die... so we have to be careful testing more of that.


The Coat Brush
This seems to be either good fun or pain in the ass, depending on who is cleaning. As it was learned, the Brush creates dust & human hair. Yuck. Brushing gently against a surface it is subtle, but to tap it against your hand you create a thick cloud of residue. Enough to completely spoil a crime-scene.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Leah Maddoc
I had called the FBI to come to investigate, as there was a murder and some Asian guys involved. So we also had to go back to Springfield. The FBI arrived few hours later and begun to investigate. We had already told everyone no-one was to leave until the FBI had said so.

I took advantage of the situation and figured we could interview the rest of the Object-holders in order to figure out what they had. To make long story short: they all had few things in common: their trailers were made in the early sixties and the original owner of it were from New Mexico. Not a coincidence I am sure.

They were all relatives to hippie-community members, and inherited or borrowed the trailers from them for the event. They had no clue whatsoever what they had in their grasp. We never told them either. It was always the same plan: some of us requested access to use the trailer's toilet, and used the Key or Soap-Wrapper to locate the Object inside.
He or she would then see if the thing was mundane enough to be replaced. If it was, we would go buy similar item and someone else would use the toilet and replace it. If it was not, we claimed it was antique and Mike made a ridiculous offer for it.

We managed to get our hands on to 5 more Objects:

The Soap Case
It rezzes 10 dried peas inside of it. Do that enough many times, and you can make soup.

The Newspaper
We already knew what it does: it opens and closes to a certain tune.
Interesting enough the owner of the trailer had it stacked in a pile of other newspapers, from various decades. Although it was the only not-yellowed one, the owner did not have a clue what he had there. I offered to take the old papers to trash.

The Sock
Do not know which foot it is supposed to go, but whichever foot it is on, that foot stays comfortably dry. Jacob also stated he thinks it makes rain in Thailand. I am sure he is just exhausted.

The Shoehorn
This is the one Object Joe pointed to us when we begun this whole thing. The guy of the couple was wearing it in his shoe the whole time! It was very tricky to get our hands on it, it involved some Spirit-Walking for scouting their motel room. Jimmy managed to swap the shoehorn to similar one.
Later Jacob told us the thing makes you smarter, if you keep it in your shoe. So it is very likely the guy knew what it did and will notice it's absence.

The Letter Opener
This thing was not so easy to get! As it soon became very obvious it was impossible to say a lie around it!! So we called the Mike-card and he bought it into his collection. Which was not a lie at all.

P.S. At the end of the day we were able to return home. The News were on and we begun feeling relaxed again, when the scope struck right at our face!
"Irish man rises from the dead" I kept on listening "A man was found dead in his trailer in Lansing, Michigan. He was pronounced dead and was left for three days to wait autopsy in the freezer, because the coroner was absent."
The camera turned to the coroner being interviewed: "I was petrified when I returned to my office! There was this guy banging the inside of my freezer door, wanting to be let out at once. First I thought it was one of my assistants, but it was not".

"So the Table Lamp does not kill permanently afterall" Mike looked serious.

Case report no 5 by Cattrina