Magic World (working title): Chapter 4

Today wasn't my best day ever, with hay fever, and my eyes feeling like they're on fire. If this seems a little lackluster, let me know, I may have to re-write parts of it. 

Comments and suggestions yada yada. 

Thanks for Reading.

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Chapter 4:

The smoke smell continued to get stronger as Davin and Rachele continued through the gravel of the storage park. It was mostly woody smoke, but underneath there was something else, familiar, but Davin couldn't quite identify it. It was... bitter... tangy? He didn't have the words to describe it, it was a very chemical smell.

They turned the corner into a row of storage units and Davin saw it. One of the storage units, and large portions of the ones surrounding it, was blackened and hollowed. Scorched. The gravel and the walls of the surrounding area had been blackened as well, in a pattern that looked like a perfect circle. 

A blast radius. 

Then he. Noticed the yellow police tape. "Are y... you aren't... uh..."

"You have a hard time using your words sometimes don't you?" She smirked at him over her shoulder. "No we're not cops."

"We?"

Rachele shook her head "Apparently," she said with mock enthusiasm, "I get to babysit a whole posse of amateurs. And they just won't shut up."

 Davin could hear them now, the voices coming from inside, a cacophony of cross purposes. The Sun has gone down behind the storage units, so they stood in shadow and look into the burned out unit. The inside of the unit was lit with floor based flood lamps. Inside was a very strange assortment of people. 

The first one to stand out was the orc with the East London accent the Davin recognized as being similar to the character Mickey from Doctor Who. He was fixing old English looking car half of which also looked like it had been damaged by whatever blast had blackened the rest of the area . 

He was arguing with a gnome who was sitting behind ... Some kind of portable computer networking station the likes of which Davin had never seen. 

They were both being shouted down buy a cute looking half elf with pink pig tails , wearing a tank top the bore the legend "Ryne City Rollers" who was covered in equal measure by tattoos and bruises and wore skates draped over her shoulders and a pair of guns in shoulder holsters under each arm. 

But then realized he was wrong to think of her as the last since he has almost missed the tall thin man standing in the corner wearing an impeccably fitted black suit. He found it was hard to judge exactly what the man looked like. His face seemed almost entirely forgettable and placid. It was a little unnerving. 

Davin couldn't tell what it was they were arguing about, but it seemed as though the argument had been happening for a while, and it was getting heated.

"No dude! Even his contemporaries said it wasn't real, just a fantasy, like the Easter Bunny, or Santa, or a secret ending to Lost where all the crazy island shit is explained," said the gnome typing away at his keyboard. "Just something to tell the grandkids when you start getting older, like 'Hey kids guess what I saw!?'"

The pink haired girl retorted, "Well of course they did, because it was HID-DEN, just like your tiny little-"

"It's hard to keep somfin' like that dat hidden for quite that long love. People tend to get in everywhere and root things out." The voice came from under the hood of the car. "Someone would have heard of it by now."

"Sure!" she flounced in a satirical bimbo pose. "Even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were found thousands of years after the bible was written, you can't hide something for THAT long."

"Not out in the open like that, you'd-" the orc was cut off abruptly.

"It's just a piece of ART-WORK handed down through the generations, and sold to a collector about five years ago or so to pay for some greedy little trust fund brats new camero." The gnome was pointing to his screen, turning it to the others. "Here it is on his Facebook page. 'Bought by Art' it says."

"Exactly," agreed the Orc who was walking around the car. "It's just a gimmick. Conspiracy nut-jobs and crackpots from all over the world have examined the damed thing."

"Well then they didn't know they were doing!" the girl was smiling, obviously enjoying the debate. "Obviously Raul though it meant something."

"Maybe," said the gnome. "But I have no way of figuring that out. How do you even going about the process of making something like that?"

Rachele stepped into the floodlights at that moment, and Davin followed her closely. "Now that is a good question," she said. "So lets see if our new friend can't give us the answer."

The all stopped talking and looked at Rachele, then at Davin. 

The pink haired girl bounced over and said, "Ooo, Rachele! You've brought me a new toy!" 

Davin felt his face go very red, and she giggled. 

"'Oo's this den?" The orc looked him up and down.

Rachele nodded, and said, "Everybody, this is Davin Quickly, TA to professor Merriwether, who just went in vacation to Tahiti. Davin, this is Miranda," she gestured to the pink haird girl, "Bernard," to the Orc, "and Gary." to the gnome. "It's probably best for you if you don't know their last names right now." She paused and added. "Oh yeah, and Bob." She gestured vaguely in the direction of the thin man, who Davin realized for the first time was an elf. His hair his his ears very neatly. 

"It's Robert actually, but your attempt to goad me is not un-noticed." He gave a small polite smile, and nodded in greeting to Davin, then his face melted back into a passive mask, and it was like he was gone again.

'That is so creepy,' thought Davin.

Gary the Gnome was whining now. "A Teachers Aid? That won't be nearly good enough, the complexity of something this is astounding! Not to mention it was probably conceived of by a crazy person." The others all stopped and glared at him, but he just waved them off. "Oh, you know what I mean. He believed this ...THING... was real! That's like believing in little green men, or the stupid Bengal Tiger Cave."

Davin looked at Gary. "Oh dude, A or H?"

Gary looked mildly offended. "For the Horde!"

"Lok'tar Ogar bro. Zul'jin?"

"Illidan. PVP." Gary was grinning now. 

"Sweet, I've got a sevent-fi-"

"Well this is all very touching," said Rachele, "But we've got to move on now. You two can speak your secret little love language later. Right now we've got some work to do." 

"Hang on," said Gary. "He might know his Wow lingo, but that doesn't mean he knows about magic, or at least not on the level we need. Raul was..." he stopped for a moment, and looked like he wasn't going to continue when Miranda stepped in. 

"So? Why not just test him or something?"

They looked around at each other. Robert did not look at anyone, and Rachele just sighed and rolled her eyes.

Davin nodded too. "That should be fine, I should be able to tell you just about anything you'd like to know."

Miranda smiled at him, and Davin felt himself blush again. 

"Okay," she said. "How about if we start off with an easy one and see how it goes from there. Besides I've always wanted to know the answer to this question."

Davin nodded. 

"So. What is Magic exactly?"

Davin paused a moment taking that in. Then he chuckled a little and  started grinning. "Oh my. Miranda is it? That's one hell of a question.  I thought you said you wanted to start simple?"

********************************* Chapter 5