A Werewolf In Under-Town

Shaggy was a little disappointed. After the guard in the hallway was dealt with, he and the Professor managed to get away easily. No mad dash to the car, no epic fight with a sudden wizard headmaster, not even an awkward run-in with some wizard teens. They made it across the quad, around the dormitories and back out the way they came with no issue. Sure, there were a few guards wandering around. But the Professor led them around the outliers easy enough. Then it was a quick jog through the tall grass and back into the car.

Now they were slowly driving down a dark road back to Austin. Well, Shaggy was driving. The Professor had a marker out and was writing some runic nonsense on the ceiling. Shaggy had wanted to ask, but he was afraid of breaking Prof’s concentration. He figured it was something to help them get away, like a speed rune or an invisibility glyph. Some magic nonsense. When the Professor was finished drawing, he placed his non-robotic hand against the roof and closed his eyes. Shaggy could almost feel the magic as it poured into the car, and he readied himself for a burst of speed. Instead, the Professor finished whatever he was doing and slump in his seat.

Shaggy gave it a few seconds, but when nothing explosive happened, he had to ask. “What was that all about?”

“Should help us avoid scrying until we get back home. The Hangar has enough protections to keep me safe.”

“Will they already be able to Scry us?”

The Professor shook his head. “No. But you can never be too careful. My Taser Eggs don’t knock people out for long. So one guard we knocked out could get up and raise the alarm. But with the rune on the car, we should be safe. As far as I know, anyway.”

Shaggy dragged his eyes to the mark on the ceiling of the car. But he could barely make it out in the dark. “You don’t sound too sure, Doc.”

“Cause I’m not. I haven’t really read much on anti-scrying runes or spells. Jar-Lock just got his study situated. Not to mention he is stingy as hell with his books.”

“So, roughly, how much time would you give us? Should I be going faster in case your chicken scratch doesn’t help?”

“Well, we collected the wires from both guards, closed the door to the lab, moved the guards to less suspicious areas. So if we get VERY lucky, we won’t have to worry until morning.”

“And worse case scenario?”

“The guards have already woken up and alerted the Wizards that something fishy is going on. They’ll investigate, see your handiwork on the door, perform a search for any hair follicles or skin flakes. Once they have some, they’ll start performing a mass scrying spell…”

The Professor trailed off and Shaggy cut his eyes to the passenger seat. The lizard player had his chin in his hand and was tilting his head from side to side. Shaggy waited impatiently for the Professor to finish his thought. But the moment dragged on, so Shaggy urged.

“Then…?”

The Professor snapped out of his musing and looked over at Shaggy. “Oh sorry, was just trying to remember what I read about Scrying. It’s not really an exciting subject. Not quite the same as remote viewing or any other sensory power. But still powerful. I was trying to guess the likelihood that they’d try for a remote viewing spell. It’d take longer, but this little rune ain’t going to help with Remote Viewing.”

“Why not?”

“Remote viewing is like putting a physical, invisible eye somewhere. Scrying is more like a satellite in the sky. The rune masks us with interference. But that would be useless for Remote Viewing.”

“We’d have to find and poke out the eye.” Shaggy said, nodding.

“Gruesome, but not untrue. For now, let’s assume that they go with the easier option and start a scrying spell. They’ll want it to cover a large area, so they’ll either need multiple Wizards or a large artifact to help them. Then they’ll begin the ritual which takes…”

The Professor scratched his scaly head. “Was it forty-five minutes or an hour?”

Shaggy grit his teeth. “Work with the smallest timeline ya got, Prof.”

“Oh good idea, so let’s say thirty minutes. We will have thirty minutes after they discover what we’ve done. My Taser Eggs can knock a person out for fifteen minutes at the low end, and I punched that first guard in the head. So let’s add another fifteen there.”

The Professor leaned down to get a look at the clock in the car’s dash. “So, as of now, we have twenty minutes before the guard wakes up. Add in time to report his findings, the Wizards investigation, and the search for clues. That means we have an hour to get as far away as possible, as safely as possible. So slow down.”

Shaggy jolted and eased his foot off the pedal. As the Professor was doing his mental math, Shaggy had been practically stomping on the gas. The car slowed and Shaggy blew out a breath as he kept his eyes on the dark road ahead. They had a decent drive ahead of them. The last thing they needed was to get pulled over by the cops. He heard the Professor sigh and glanced over to see the big lizard player closing his eyes.

“Oh, no! Don’t you dare pass out on me, Doc. I have a long drive and I’m already amped from the escape. This was more nerve-wracking than just running in and breaking shit, then running out. If I gotta be up, so do you.”

The Professor snorted and kept his eyes closed. “Calm down, I’m not sleeping. I’m going over the formula in my head and trying to get all the chemicals down. Like I said before, whoever you got it from had to use a lot of random chemicals to get it to work. I want to know if those are required or if we can actually replace them with better variants. It also contains a lot of stuff I can’t identify.”

“Maybe it some magical game-mechanic stuff that makes the mixture work? By the way, do you want to write it down for me? My wolf is happily asleep.”

The Professor nodded quickly before diving into the car’s glove compartment looking for something to write with. As he came away with a pad, he asked Shaggy his own question.

“You’ve mentioned that before, YOUR wolf. Do you have like an alter ego or something because you’re a werewolf?”

Shaggy sighed. “It’s a long story, but you’re not far off. The short of it is that I have a cantankerous mutt inside of me. Whenever I wolf out, we kind of share the driver’s seat. But when I’m human, the damn thing stays inside and growls or barks at whatever is going on outside.”

“Do all Were’s have it?” The Professor muttered as he hunched over his paper.

“Not as far as I know. I haven’t met any other Player Weres, though. According to my wolf sensei, it happens. But only in Pure-blood Weres. I’m a Mutant, so having one is odd. But probably not unheard of.”

“Man, Pure-bloods are apparently a huge thing in this game.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, ‘pure blood’ is incredible important to some magical families. It’s a way from them to exclude the more Mundane. So they can focus on creating the strongest magical lines.”

“Hehe.” Shaggy chuckled. “Well, people were always going to find ways to exclude others. It’s what we do. If the game was a utopia, there’d be nothing for us to do.”

“Fair. It’s just interesting to see how the game grew. I mean multiple magic families, differently tiered magical societies, not to mention the Were communities. Everyone is slightly separated, yet still a part of the whole.”

“Also, you have your little Hunter community out where you are. What’s up with that?”

“Just a group that were in Austin before the HLO moved in and turned being a hero into a business. They aren’t too happy with the HLO, so they are giving our group a chance. Which is great, but means a lot of paperwork.”

“I really don’t envy you heroes. I play games to get away from the paperwork.”

“Meh. It ain’t so bad. Fill out a form here, stop a demonic incursion there. It all evens out. It’s all a part of living and playing in this world.”

Shaggy nodded, and they fell into silence. The sound of the Professor scribbling out the formula was the only noise in the car. Shaggy was getting worried about how long the professor was writing. But when he glanced over, he realized the studious lizard was writing something else now. A section of paper had been torn off and placed onto the car’s dashboard and Shaggy could see a writing on it.

“So now what are you working on?”

“Just seeing if any other chemicals in my, admittedly limited, knowledge could work with this formula. But I think your were right. Some of these reactants are liquid, but I don’t recognize the molecular formulas. Then there’s the catalyst. It’s annotated here by the spectrometer, but I’m out of my depth on what the hell it is, or even if there is only one catalyst.”

“Is all that implanted knowledge is some of that you, Doc? My head already hurts listening to you. Hopefully Vlad has already found an egghead to do this for us.”

“It’s all the game. I mean, I know basic chemistry from school. But this is leagues over that.” The Professor said, tapping his pen against his lizard lips.

Shaggy nodded and reached for the slim strip of paper on the dash. Better to have it on him. It was when his hand grabbed the paper that a large body slammed into the road ahead of them. Shaggy eyes went up to the rune draw into the ceiling as he slammed onto the brakes. The car jerked to a stop and the Professor’s seat-belt caught him roughly. Shaggy, however, went headfirst into the steering wheel. He grunted as the hard steering wheel stopped his momentum for a few seconds, then snapped under his heavy head.

“Fucking what!?” The Professor yelled angrily as he out the windows of the car.

A man in armored clothing pulled himself from the street and gave them both a half-hearted smile. Shaggy bared his teeth as he rubbed the spot where his forehead hit the steering wheel. The Supe in the street grimaced as he looked at their car, not knowing what to do. Which cost him, as a green energy beam came screaming out of the night and caught the poor guy in the side. He tumbled off the road as Shaggy and the Professor looked at each other.

“Have no fear citizens. The malcontent has been taken care of,” called a woman’s voice from the night sky.

Shaggy merely grunted as he got the car rolling again. The Professor stuck his head out the window and gave the flying Supe a wave. Which Shaggy thought was completely unnecessary. Thankfully, the hero didn’t make them wait around as they got back on the road. Shaggy jammed the paper with the formula into his pocket and placed his hands on the now bent wheel. He heard the Professor swear again as he collected his notes from the car’s floorboard. When he was finished, he glanced over at Shaggy.

“Your paying to fix the wheel.”

“That wasn’t my fault. Some dingus came flying out of the sky. What was I supposed to do? Keep driving?”

“Then you’d be paying for a whole car. You could have worn a seat-belt and not fractured a damn steel steering wheel.”

“Who’s to say the seat-belt would’ve caught my heavy ass? I may be short, but I’m dense.”

“Pfft. I’m aware.”

“Not what I meant, ya scaly bastard.”

“Seriously, you're paying for the repairs.”

“Oh, come on, dude…”

The pair continued to argue as they drove into the night. Wizards forgotten and ill-gotten gains safely secured. As they argued, Shaggy mind drifted to the note in his pocket and all the possibilities for his crew. An army of serum-powered Lackeys. It was going to be a hell of a game changer.