The circle is drawn. Nootix stands back, and does the chant.
Ms. Ijo's not sure how she feels about this... So, she turns around. Plus, a bunch of ACME agents are trying to apprehend Paper Star downhill...
A flash of light later, and a trident-like weapon appears. Nootix grins, and takes it up.
"It's the trishula," he tells Ms. Ijo, "an ancient weapon of the Hindus. It's the long arm of Shiva, god of destruction. Or rather, it's a variant of the same. It'll address the problem that Paper Star poses...with sacred dignity."
"I don't know about this," Ms. Ijo admits. "I've heard stories. Shiva has used that trident to destroy entire civilizations!"
Nootix studies Ms. Ijo, and grins. "If I was afraid of taking risks, I wouldn't be an ACME agent. Now, if you'll excuse me..."
Downhill, Paper Star's still hard at work. It's so funny how fast she can make new origami shuriken and throw them at her attackers, it's not funny. It's also not funny how often her origami decapitates its targets...
Nonetheless, it's all the more reason Professor Nootix must act. Using the barrage as a screen, he aims the trident. He calms himself, points the three prongs at Paper Star...and fires when ready, with pure willpower...as Shiva himself would fire the weapon.
Three orbs of energy leave the trident's prongs; one from each prong. As they're airborne, they line up in a perfect sequence...and get bigger, as they move. As they move past Paper Star, they become a vacuum of sorts. Before Paper Star can do anything to resist-and as she's got another paper shuriken chambered for throwing-she falls into the bigger of these three portals. She comes out the back end of it, smaller than before, and falls through the second. She's even smaller, when she falls out the middle and through the smallest.
One flash of light later, and she's gone. Hence, ACME ceases fire.
Professor Nootix gapes, and lowers his weapon...as if he didn't expect the outcome. The goal was to take Paper Star alive...and now she's vanished.
Behind him, Paper Star covers her mouth. She's, perhaps, even more flabbergasted than Nootix is.
Offshore, the crew of a yacht has seen the whole thing. They're VILE spies. Some of them are RoboRobbers. Hence, if Gunnar Maelstrom isn't aware of what's happened...he soon will be.
ACME withdraws, of course...for their mission has now gone MIA. Hell, as far as VILE's concerned, she's KIA.
Months pass. As a result of his catastrophic error in the field, the Chief of ACME has suspended Nootix indefinitely.
He flees to a monastery in Sikkim. The Sikkimese are Nepali. They're surrounded from three sides by the Himalayas...the largest mountains in Gōlaka. Gangtok is the capital. Every neighborhood has a Hindu temple...of sorts. Rice terraces are a common thing here...as are brewers, distillers, tanners, and watchmakers. And naturally, there are mines; copper, dolomite, and talc seem to be the most valuable things the ground has to yield up here.
Nootix's monastery is near a network of rice terraces. If you're near it at just the right time, you'll hear chanting coming through its archways.
Nootix shares this monastery with nine other monks. Only one of them is local. ACME helped relocate everyone else from afar. Some are ACME agents; others are just conservatives who couldn't fit in with the relatively socialist societies they're native to. Nootix is both; he's a misfit conservative and an ACME agent.
Despite growing up a misfit in socialist Massachusetts, Nootix somehow managed to clinch a PhD from Harvard, in Cambridge. But of course, what is the Ivy League...but a den of misfits who a lot of the rest of society often mistakes for gods among men?
Nootix can't go back to Cambridge now. First of all, he'd be unpopular, despite being native. Second of all, ACME has received intel that suggests that VILE has put a price on Nootix's head...for having allegedly killed Paper Star, one of Gunnar Maelstrom's best students...if not his favorite...if Maelstrom even has a favorite other than himself...
As Nootix very-well knows from his religious studies, the Christians believe pride to be a sin. Nootix can't swear that Maelstrom has committed all of his atrocities out of pride...but let's just say that that's a common topic of discussion in this monastery.
Ivan Idea, ACME's top tech nerd, sends faxes to Nootix each week. The faxes are forwarded to him several times by an ever-changing network of Crime-Netters. The faxes are a detailed report of Agent Idea's every attempt to locate soft spots in reality that Paper Star might've fallen through when Nootix shot her with the trishula. Naturally, though, Nootix knows more about how to translate Sanskrit than he does how to translate nerd jargon, which is why Agent Idea always leaves a layman's summary at the bottom of the report...which, of course, is the ONLY parts of these reports Nootix ever reads.
It's the same thing each time: either there are no such portals to such dimensions, or Agent Idea's technology is not yet mature enough to locate them. But of course, Idea has promised, several times, to notify Nootix if there's ever such a breakthrough in his own gadgetry.
Alas, Nootix often worries that because Idea is a man of science, and because the trishula was a tool of mysticism, Idea might take longer to find any portal to where Paper Star is now...if she even still exists.
Hence, Nootix spends a lot of time in the restricted section of the monastery library. Whenever he goes online, he uses an alias. And he uses one of a plethora of aliases with each visit; VILE, after all, has no shortage of cyber-spies...and not to mention such software in their RoboRobbers...as well as RoboCrook in Indo-Iran...as inept as he tends to be where that is...
Warrick the Warbot helps Nootix out with that, wherever he can. Alas, Nootix often fears that Warrick is a warmonger first and a cyber-defender second...hence his name. But of course, Nootix is PRETTY sure that if Warren the Warrant Robot were protecting him, he wouldn't stand a chance at all...
Nootix researches the trishula...and many variants that've cropped up over the history of Hinduism...as well as several centuries before Hinduism was invented. Many have turned up, and few have been used. And the few uses of them that there've ever been are more legendary in nature, than real.
Nootix his screwed. Needless to say, he's been on VILE's hit-list for a while. He's just...never seen VILE so eager to cross him off it.
Some day soon, VILE will send ninjas and RoboRobbers to the back doors of this monastery. Hell, they'll probably have Taupe tunnel into its dungeons, while le Chevre takes a shot at him from the rooftop... Until then, only luck, it seems, will ensure Nootix's safety now.
Shadow-San might not be among the ninjas who execute Nootix... But then, from what Nootix has heard, VILE's ninjas won't necessarily need Shadow-San on their side to stand a chance at killing ACME's top historian and philosopher.