VW Tales: Unwelcome Guests

Unwelcome Guests
Guilty Party: Jason Christian
I: May Day:
Hamilton Residence
Day 1: 0312 hours

Madelyn Hamilton, M/PDS (Registered Mage Class)

The rain lulled Madelyn "Elf-Gurl" Hamilton and her daughter LIl Tiff to sleep at night -- a steady, pounding beat that came down on the roof of the POS tract house where they lived, and dripped through the two dozen holes in the roof with an almost musical pattern.

She awoke when one of her NARC beacons went off -- a 1 inch round ball that triggered if anything larger than a small animal crossed it's path.

One of the crusto monitors that she'd bought from SpeeDee Pawn -- an ancient, black and white CRT monitor that was older than her grandmother showed her that a merco team was just about to break into her house.

As with all mercenary teams, these wore black, nondescript cammies and head gear that looked like some rebuilt '90's era military hardware. Of course that worked to preserve the real identities of the operators. And this was something that Madelyn, as a fellow mercenary knew too well.

The place she currently rented was nothing to brag about -- a jury-rigged flophouse and money pit with a mostly intact structure and a leaky roof. But it had what she needed most -- a legit mailing address. Bands of OHARS, Organ Harvesters, had been on the rise lately. Those without a mailing address were prime targets because of a secret law passed recently that listed anyone who didn't have one as an official Non-Entity, thus making it open season on every homeless person out there. Squatting in a house no longer worked as a loophole because of the fact that a street address no longer doubled as One's mailing address.

The mercs would be in her room within a matter of seconds.

Madelyn weaved a spell called Ghosting and hoped that it would succeed. Spell casting was a very demanding and capricious art, and at times seemed to have it's own warped sense of humor.

It worked.

Now that she was actually just inside the ethereal plane, she could pass through anything solid unless it was Chaos-Metal or lead.

She touched her daughter and the both of them now had the same consistency as smoke from a camp fire.

She took Lil Tiff by the hand and the two of them stepped out of the bedroom and into the kitchen before leaving the house through it's back wall. For once she was thankful for a house that had sub-standard wiring, because she was prone to electrical damage while ghosted out, and of course a maintenance crew who avoided the house like it was cursed.

Thank God for Slum Lords!

We need to run now. She sent to Tiffany, who nodded silently that she understood. Telepathy was not a spell, it was channeled through an astral city-state called the Valley of T'Leeyuh, and so was never prone to failure.

They ran down the street and into the night.