Six

Dale was now positively annoyed.

He looked at his monitor very irritably as the scene inside the cafe began to unfold. The burly dude got up from his table and went over to sit at the other two travellers' table. A small discussion followed with mainly the burly dude talking. Then, the lanky person obediently got up and followed the burly dude without another word. The girl waited patiently at her table till the rogues had cleared out of the cafeteria and then exited from the back door.

So much for their friendship.

Truth be told, Dale had been monitoring the duo since the second they had stepped into his dimension. Edmond, Dale's superior, had warned that there would be visitors. Dale had been reprogramming his projectors when the notification had come in the form of an electronic telepathic transmission straight to his brain. At first, he thought it was a bug. After all, what was the chance that a door that had not been opened for the past decade or so would open that day?

But it had, bringing two strange visitors to his dimension. Dale had decided to monitor them day and night to see if they were a risk to his world. He had immediately dispatched his surveillance and projection drones and had started editing local surveillance cameras so that the state authorities won't bother the duo. He was their guardian angel in this dimension and they couldn't even have known about it.

The 'plan' was progressing smoothly and Dale was even contemplating meeting the two in a few days' time when the second batch entered. These guys were foul. The first thing they did was to strip the room of anything they found useful. Food cans were emptied, toolboxes pocketed and chemical vats spilled all over the room. Dale was sure that they hadn't realised where they were till they had got out of the staircase. Still, their expressions were priceless. When the savages saw his world with its high rises, flying cars and hologram projectors, they were dumbfounded. Several knelt and started offering their prayers to the modern utopia. They were disoderly and could not be controlled. Dale had never felt so stressed in his entire life. His projection drones and cover-up softwares had been working non-stop on these guys for the past few hours and yet the word had reached the authorities that a certain group of Halloween crazed individuals were making a mess on Downworth street.

Finally, to make matters even worse, the gang had discovered the duo and even seemed to have no trouble identifying them. Now one of the two concerned was being escorted by a gang of ruffians to a portal that wouldn't open while the second was seemingly fleeing out of the town.

Dale pressed the palms of his hands on his eyes and meditated for a minute. The girl seemed to be in no imminent danger, so he decided on following the boy first. He studied the reality projectors that he had been working on and decided to take them along.

It was time to teach the ruffians a lesson.