Part 3
Rich suddenly got an idea. He zoomed upstairs calling some excuse over his shoulder.
"Dude, where you goin?" Demanded Hal. But Rich didn't answer him. He left everyone downstairs in front of the door. Hopefully they would wait for him.
He had no idea what was happening to them. The strange magic effects that seemed to happen at random. But he could just ask Jeremy. Simple. Jeremy would know. He grinded to a halt in front of Hal's door, and swung it open.
He stood there in the door, gaping. When it rains, it pours.
In the back of the room, sitting on Hal's strangely opaque window, was a …creature. It was ghost-white, strangely transparent, about a foot in length, and… a chameleon. It had an oval head, two bulging eyes on either side of its head, and a ghostly whitish tongue that flickered out of its mouth every so often, tasting the air. And it was stuck to the top of Hal's bedroom window by its little suction feet. And it was watching Rich with one of its eyes. Rich didn't have time for this. He crept towards the window, watching the creature carefully. It didn't move. Its one eye shifted a little towards the back of its head, one small bright white pupil trained on his position. Suddenly Rich burst forward diving through the window superman style, hands stretched out in front of him. He tucked himself into a roll once he got through the window, and landed on one knee.
He was about to look around, feeling proud of his little maneuver, when a hand swung out in front of him, hitting him hard in the chest and making him fall over clumsily, sprawling on the floor. After a moment Rich shook his head, clearing it, then looked up.
There was a man crouched over him. He wore black VR goggles that blinked soft green light. Draped around his neck were several wires that attached to little boxes hooked onto his chest.. All blinked various colors, and made different ranges of beeping noises. The man reached out an arm flowing with red, blue and green wires, and flipped his visor up.
"Yo little dude, sorry I didn't see ya there!" Micheal said, grinning goofishly. "You know you should let people know when you're going to dive jump at them ninja-style like that."
He put himself into a mock-ninja pose, and then chuckled, jumping back onto his rolling chair and caroming back through the room, ricocheting off walls and sending several furious-looking old men holding papers flying, the papers lightly soaring through the room. Rich grinned. What a freak.
He ran across the room, spotting Jeremiah on the other side, looking like he was rushing somewhere.
He caught him just before the stairs.
Jeremy turned. "Hello Rich. I'm sorry I can't help you at the moment, I am very busy."
Rich rapidly told Jeremy the happenings in his apartment, saying that all he wanted was some quick advice.
Jeremy smiled. "Well then, that much is easy. Simply relax."
Rich looked taken aback.
"Sometimes, when Awakened humans get nervous, they change reality around them without realizing it. When this occurs, because the individual is not in control of the action, he may perform feats that he could not do normally."
Rich nodded slowly, trying to understand. "Oh ok. That is odd. I wonder who created the ghost-chameleon."
Jeremiah stared up at the ceiling, looking very distracted. After a few moments, just when Rich was about to say something further, Jeremiah looked at him sharply. "Did you just say a GHOST chameleon? " Rich nodded. "Oh. OH. Well isn't that interesting." Jeremy looked up again, his eyes glazing over.
After a moment he turned to Rich. "I'm sorry Rich I can't help you at the moment, just hang tight and I will come by in a while to see how I can help. I have pressing matters to attend to.". And with that, Jeremy hurried up the stairs.
"Don't bother the chameleon" he added over his shoulder, before disappearing upstairs.
Rich moved back through the library and carefully past the Chameleon in the door. It still hadn't moved, and was at the moment still just watching Rich.
Rich ran downstairs and grabbed Hal, telling him that he needed to see something. Adrian and Collin look at him suspiciously, but Collin caught on, and began talking to Adrian about something. Probably something inane.
When Hal walked into his room, his jaw fell open.
"What the HELL is that doing in my room?" After a brief argument with Hal concerning whether belting a small supernatural reptile was really a good idea, Hal relented and slammed the door shut, locking it from the outside.
After that they all hurried to the bar.
After they arrived at Vertigo, Adrian had to go to the bathroom, so Rich took the opportunity to tell Hal and Collin what had happened while he was gone. Collin looked excited when Rich mentioned the chameleon. Collin really was a lunatic. Hal looked like he was thinking furiously when Rich mentioned Jeremiah's explanation. After a moment he grunted.
"Figures the punk would blow us off. Something is definitely going on here, and he ain't telling us jack."
After that, Adrian came back in the room, and Collin gestured them all to the back of Vertigo, to a table. Rich sincerely hoped Collin wasn't going to do anything stupid.
"It's very simple. It's been me, the whole time." Said Collin, grinning mischievously.
Adrian looked at him skeptically, and also, a little drunkenly. They had spent the last few hours drinking, and Collin had done what he could to keep Adrian's mind off of all the events of the day. Collin figured that the moment he had been waiting for was just about here now- the moment where Adrian was drunk enough to be most apt to believe some pretty dubious claims on Collin's part, but not so drunk that he wouldn't remember it in the morning.
He sat at the back of the bar, with Adrian across the table from him, and Hal and Rich on either side of him. In front of them was a candle. Collin dug into his pockets, and pulled out some string, a television remote, a plastic child's toy wand, and a butane lighter.
"Using only these humble items, I was able to achieve all of the effects that you observed back at our humble abode" Collin said with a grandiose flourish. Rich rolled his eyes. What an ass.
Adrian leaned forward. "What? What are you talking about? How? How can you make tools run around and sing using all that crap?"
. Collin looked nervous. "I, um well-". Abruptly the flame on the candle lifted off into the air, and began tracing a furious path through the air, pulling off a few figure eights, and generally not behaving like a candle flame.
Adrian stood up, pushing his chair back in the process, it tumbled over and crashed to the ground. He pointed a finger at the flame. "Like THAT! How are you doing that! Stop screwing with me!"
Collin fumbled desperately on the table for the wand. He took it up and stood up as well. He pointed it at the rampaging flame, and began twirling the wand around and saying nonsensical things like "Flame, go around and fly and-" Suddenly the flame swooped down and landed on his light brown jacket.
"And land on my jacket! Heh heh, yes perfect, great." He jumped back from the table and took off his jacket. He threw it on the ground, stamping on it. "Heh, excuse me I have to um, fix my, uh broken wand." He ran off, carrying his smoking jacket, in the direction of the rest room.
Adrian glared at them suspiciously from the back of Hal's car all the way back to the apartment. Adrian hadn't had any more to drink after the incident at the bar, and now seemed determined to get to the bottom of what was going on in Apartment 104.
When they got back to the apartment, they all turned to try talking to Adrian once. But he froze, and looked up at the stairs. His eyes got wide and he turned white.
"What… what is that?" Adrian said, pointing up at the stairs. As one group, Hal, Rich and Collin turned to look where he was pointing. There was nothing there. Adrian didn't even bother explaining. He just raced up the stairs, the rest of the apartment in tow.
He stopped at the top. He looked scared. "Wait- Guys- I, I just saw… I saw myself walk down the hall, and into this room." He pointed to Hal's door.
Rich stepped in front of him. "Heh heh, no um you don't want to go in there, we put booby traps in it. See we've been having this thief, the last few days. And-"
Hal growled at him. "Shut up Rich. There's no point at this point."
Rich bristled. "Hal, we need to-"
While they were arguing, Adrian stepped to the door and grabbed the handle. He turned it. It was open.
Hal, Rich and Collin all looked at one another. They reached forward to stop Adrian, but it was too late.
He walked into the room. He saw the chameleon. It was directly in front of him.
"What in the name of-". He stopped abruptly as the chameleon looked at him. It tasted the air, its tongue stretching out unnaturally to lick Adrian's forehead. Its double eyelids blinked twice, and then it moved, faster than light. It dodged to the right, and then flew through the air, directly into Adrian's chest. He cried out and turned around, his eyes wide and staring at everyone.
"Help" he croaked, falling to his knees.. "It's…hot." He said, sleepily. The white ghostly chameleon faded into Adrian's chest, and disappeared.
"Dude, What the- Adrian are you alright?" Hal asked..
Adrian sat up from where he had fallen over after the chameleon hit him. "I… It's weird, I feel like standing up and kicking all of you in the crotch, but I feel like someone injected me with morphine. Something just jumped into my chest, something that looked like a tiny pasty white gecko, but I feel calm, like, like… " He drifted off sleepily, and then passed out on the floor.