* * * * *
"Yes, I know this one," replied Kadroojina: "I met him exactly one hundred winters after the destruction of our beloved home, beneath Mount Uluru. Following which, I led my children here, where the mighty Queen of Fire-breathers graciously allowed us to live."
Drysni Darkscale grinned and bowed in acknowledgement (which, in her quadrupedal draconic form, was not that easy).
"Do you recall what he gave as the reason for his visit, Your Excellency?" asked Agent 679.
Kadroojina nodded again: "He told us of another world that had been similarly decimated. And, of cold-blood clans--the Eryopsii and the Kongamatos--in situations similar to our own. He said all we need do, to help them, is to partake of a magic meal at the place called the Wishbone Inn. And, simply by wishing it, those displaced ones could be brought here, to our new home! Thus, we did...and thus we have continued to do, for the past four winters."
"A truly noble endeavor, Your Excellency," replied Agent 678: "Do you know where we might find this mortal, now?"
"Yes! He and some of my children have recently founded a settlement near the Mount Uluru of yet another parallel-world. They named it after a beloved daughter he lost, twenty-one winters ago. It is called...Alice Springs."
* * * * *
NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA
EARTH-DXM (AUGUST 14, 2009)
The Phantom Voyeur slowly inched his away behind the nearest bank of electronic equipment. He had teleported here, all the way from Wisconsin. And, even at his presently small size, the thirty-four hour time difference still threw him for the proverbial loop.
But, Scott and Sarah needed additional intel. If only to verify what they had been told by Natalie and Samantha. Namely, that the CGI battles in "Sizecraft" had actually occurred!
In Natalie's words: "It had previously been thought that a GTS-goddess could only be killed by being decapitated by another GTS-goddess. After which, the victor would absorb the bio-cosmic essence of the vanquished."
"It sounds like one of those sword fights on the HIGHLANDER series," Scott had remarked.
Samantha had nodded: "Only on a grander scale! But, the sizevamps changed all that. By feeding on super-witches, they gained enough power to feed off a GTS-goddess, and shrink her! Her body could then be assimilated by a Morpher, while her power could be used by the sizevamps to teleport crosstime, without need for a wrist-mounted activator. And, the purpose for all that teleportation? To holographically record genuine GTS-goddess duels throughout the multiverse!"
"The only trouble with that," Sarah had observed: "...is that the websurfers playing this game don't know they're re-enacting these duels in the real world."
"Bingo!" Natalie had replied.
"We've got to shut down these transmissions at the source," Scott had declared.
"How?!" Sarah had exclaimed: "The radar station at Alice Springs is jointly owned and operated by the American and Australian governments. We go in there, guns metaphorically blazing, and the JTF has the perfect excuse to close us down for good!"
"Then, we only send one guy in. Our resident master of subtlety."
And, that is how the Phantom Voyeur had come to be here. Searching for the computer console, controlling the holo-projective satellite; and with orders to sabotage it, anyway he could. Samantha had done some further scrying, in the conference room water cooler, before he left. And, she had told him that he was to look for a terminal being run by a woman with red hair and green eyes.
There was only problem with that, however. The control room was entirely staffed by green-eyed redheads!
Each one of them, a dead ringer for the ex-girlfriend of the Society's founder.
tbc