Mythlands: THE HEIST

A Chicken Stumped.

The nightmares were getting worse and so were the headaches.

Professor C Licken of the University of Domain City was at his wits ends. He had cut back his lectures to the bare minimum but even so, he had almost lost his thought track this morning right in the middle of a discourse on the Relation of Human history to Myth and Legend.

Fortunately the professor was a well known brilliant if erratic small fluffy yellow chick and so none of his students had noticed, not even when he had trailed off for several minutes. He had left the lecture hall and returned to his luxuriously appointed offices, determined to set his mind once more upon the task that was before him.

He had recently been visited by a former student of his and she and her companion had told him they believed his visions were connected to a nefarious scheme concocted by a cabal of ne'er do wells led by the Norse trickster god Loki.

Professor Licken had listened with growing disquiet as young Jessica and her companion had caught him up with the goings on, culminating in the tale of the purloined data. Miss Bunny had begged him to decrypt the information and contact them with his findings immediately.

'But my dear,' he had replied. 'What will you be doing?'

It transpired that Jessica would be accompanying The Hare aboard his jet, that very night, bound for Celesteville, the capital city of Elephantland.

'Professor,' she had said in urgent tones. 'If we can work out where they're heading, we might be able to prevent them from breaching the Vault of Myth and unleashing ... whatever will bring about the apocalyptic event forseen by the Magic Mirror.' The same fragmented terror that he himself had been seeing in his dreams!

Chicken had pledged his aid in their quest and before they had departed, he had almost cracked the additional bit of encrypted code brought by The Hare, the one that dealt with this team of eleven that was supposedly being recruited to action the break-in. Jessica seemed to think that with The Hare acting as a double agent - a sort of inside man, that gave them an advantage.

While the plane was still in the air, Professor Licken had unscrolled more of that code and spotted a name on the 'to be recruited list,' that he believed would give the good guys a further advantage. A friend of Jessica's, another of his students from when he taught Archaeology, was also on the list.

The Professor communicated this fact to Jessica and advised her that if she contacted her friend ahead of time and convinced her of their cause, there would be a second double agent to work with The Hare.

'Miss Lochs may be of a mercenary bent, but she is first and foremost a pragmatist. I believe she will consent to work with us if you point out two pertinent facts. Firstly the entire Mythlands are under threat of destruction and secondly ... there will be loot enough to enrich and satisfy, even her ambition for monetary gain.'

Jessica had contacted Chicken to inform him that so far the plan had been a success.

Now the Professor sat in front of his screen, attempting to crack the original encryption. So far he had been unsuccessful.

He was, for the moment, quite stumped.

***

Across the way, a small black cat with white markings sat by a window in a quiet corridor and focused his keen eyesight across the quad. He could see the Professor's yellow fuzzy head but couldn't quite make out what was on the screen.