Breaking and Entering
Gus had Luz had been hiding under one of Gus’s illusions all day, waiting for Jacob to leave his house. So far it seemed like he was going to spend the whole day at home.
Gus smiled once his watch (A human watch! He was still excited about that.) turned to 3. They would have to be home by 5 to meet Camila when she got back from work, so it meant that he had a chance to try out a new trick he wanted to try.
“Plan B Luz?”
She just sighed and turned to him. “Go for it you little trickster.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
He then took off his ear ring mirror and then walked over with Luz to Jacobs front door. The two then stood to the side and Gus rang the door bell before making a illusion of a Harry from “Harry and the Hendersons” appear in front of the door holding a brief case while wearing a bowler hat and a plaid tie.
When Jacob opens the door, the illusion spoke. “Good afternoon, sir.” He then brought up the brief case and opened it, showing a large collection of DVD copies of ‘SVTFOE.’ “Would you like to buy some boot legged copies of Star vs the Forces of Evil? I have season 4, obviously the best season.”
Jacob’s eye just twitched at that and he pulled out a baseball bat from a umbrella stand next to the door. “What did you say?”
‘Harry just took a step back to make room for Jacob. “I said that I have boot legged copies of SVTFOE season 4 for sale.”
Jacob then sent outside, then closed and locked the door behind him. “No, the other thing.”
“Oh, you mean about Season 4 being the best one of the series?”
Jacob just yelled in rage at that. “THAT SEASON WAS THE WORST!” He then took up his bat and started hitting Harry with it.
“Ow, Ow, stop it!”
Harry then ran away from the porch with Jacob close behind, chasing him with the bat.
Luz and Gus then stepped forward, looking at them as they ran.
“How long will the spell on Jacob keep up?”
Gus just smiled. “Normally, I could only make someone do those hallucinations for a minute before they stopped. But with this toy from Adrian, he should be chasing that bigfoot around for the next hour. And he should be spouting every flame war inducing phrase you got from the message boards he posts on.”
He then turned to her. “Thanks for that again, by the way. I am still trying to figure out how to get the spider on the inter-web to like me. No matter how many flies I put in its mouth, the computer still won’t connect me.”
Luz just stared in shock at him before sighing and turning to the door. “I’ll explain it later, but for now we need to get inside.”
“How, he locked the door! As much as I hate to say it, I am impressed with how much he kept a calm head to actually lock the door behind him before he charged off in a fit of rage. Breaking a window to get in would let him know that someone is onto him, we can’t pick the lock-“
“I just picked the lock.”
At that, Gus just looked up at the open door and Luz crouched in front of it holding some pieces of metal in her hand. She then looked back at him with a smile on her face.
“I spent the summer with Eda, remember? I could pick these locks in my sleep. I just needed to be sure he was out of the house first.”
The two then made their way into the house. The living room was small and backed right into the kitchen. In front of the door was a small table with one clear space for eating and the rest of it covered in files. The wall closest to the table had a massive cork board with multiple pictures and newspaper articles attached to it, connected to each other with red string.
“OK, you focus on the first floor and keep an eye out if he comes back. I am going to check out the basement, and then the second floor if there is nothing there.”
Gus just nodded before heading to the table and checking out the files. They were mostly just records of paranormal sightings around the town. To Gus, about 90% of them were fakes or had normal explanations. The other 10% however were pictures of Eda and things tied to her.
The cork board on the other hand was entirely devoted to Eda, Vee, and the Hex squad. There was even a section on Luz and Camilla to the side, with pictures of the animal clinic and school.
“If this is how creepy it looks like from the other side, I am glad that Luz convinced me to take down my human board back home.”
He then held up his ear ring again and began to focus, summoning ghostly forms of all the documents around him to fly out of the originals before circling him in a tornado. They then began to slowly shrink until each page was the size of a postage stamp before going into the bag by his side.
“One room down, the rest of the floor to go.”
Basement
Luz expected the basement to be creepy, either containing the more disturbing parts of Jacobs surveillance stalking of her family or his adult anime collection (there are some things a teenage girl should not see).
Luckily for her, it was just being used for Jacob’s storage, weapon training, and “Research.” There were two bookshelves in a corner filled with Earth books on the supernatural, with a small table in front of them. to the side was a punching bag with a blurry picture of Eda in her owl beast form on it and a wooden target filled with stab holes with a picture of Vee in her basilisk form on it. His armor and dagger were on a rack next to them, all shiny and ready to go.
The other half of the room was filled with boxes that just contained the normal stuff you would find in a basement.
The only really interesting thing that Luz found were a recipe for 3 video cameras that was being used as a bookmark. There were three locations on the back of it. “In the cabin, watching the cabin, and undecided.”
Luz panicked a little at the 3rd one until she saw the 3rd camera siting out of its box on top of the book shelf. She then sighed in relief before putting the bookmark back in the book and leaving it on the table where it was before going to the 2nd floor.
1st floor office.
Gus just looked at shock at the set up inside. There were three different computer monitors with multiple pages up.
There were two accounting spread sheets showing that he was embezzling money from the Flat Earth Association to fund his exploits towards exposing witches, maps of the school and animal clinic with multiple locations for a camera to be hidden, and multiple e-mails written out about all Jacob knew about the Hex squad ready to be sent to multiple federal and state agencies (along the lines of “there are shapeshifting witches from Mars here living in a Dominican Women’s house, they have obviously replaced her with a robot already.”)
Gus looked at it for a bit before he just smiled.
“Luz, can you come over here and show me how to do something with computers?”
Luz stopped on her way to the 2nd floor and looked at the computers with Gus.
“How would I set it up so that the stuff on the first two screens were sent with the e-mails when he sent them?”
Luz just smiled and walked over with him.
“Step one, put on gloves so that we don’t leave finger prints behind. Step two…”
2nd floor
Since the first floor and basement were both cleared, the two decided to check out the top floor together. Gus would search Jacobs room while Luz searched the other rooms.
So far, neither had much luck. The bathrooms and closets were normal, the bedroom had several posters but nothing they were interested in, and Luz just opened the guest room slightly before slamming it shut and telling Gus to never look inside.
“Please tell me there wasn’t an autopsy table with a witch on it.”
“Believe me Gus, I wish that was what I saw.”
They were about to head down before Gus noticed something odd about a picture on the wall of Jacobs bedroom. “Why are all the other decorations here just posters taped to the wall and this is a full frame.”
Luz just looked at the picture of Nami from One Piece bathing in gold before her eyes widened. “Please let him be that dumb.” She then reached for the picture and swung it on its hinges, revealing the safe behind it.
“Yes. He really is that dumb.”
She then turned to Gus. You look around and see if he left the combination lying around, I am going to try and crack this.”
Gus just looked at her. “You know how to crack a safe?”
Luz just smiled. “Thank you, Eda; she might not have been the best magic teacher, but she was an amazing mother figure and crime teacher.”
Gus looked around the room and at every piece of paper he could find. “So, how many crime skills do you have?”
“Lets see? Pick pocketing, reverse pickpocketing, lock picking, safe cracking, cleaning up murder sites-”
“Wait, isn’t that last one just part of home ec at Hexside?”
“that is just the basics, Eda showed me the extra steps related to not reporting it to the cops. Luckily, I never had to put that into practice there and hopefully I won’t have to do it here.”
Gus then saw that there was an autographed picture of him shaking hands with a high member of the Flat Earth Society with a date next to it.
“Hay Luz, I think I found it.”
At that, he heard the sound of the safe opening. “No need, I have this.”
Gus then went over to the safe and looked inside. There was a number of documents, (social security card, birth certificate, ect), a bundle of cash, and a USB drive labeled “backup info.”
Luz then grabbed the USB, took her lap top out of her bag and popped it in. She then started to look through the files. In it were hundreds of files, pictures, and more about everything Boiling Isle related that had happened in Gravesfield; though the lens of a paranoid Flat Earther thought.
“Jackpot, it even said that it was updated yesterday.”
She then copied everything on the drive onto one she brought with her and left the original in the safe. “Let’s get out of here and see if there is anything we need to worry about on here.”
Gus just nodded before twirling his finger to dismiss the illusion copies he made before. Before Luz closed the safe, he stopped her and made an illusion copy of the money in the vault.
“Might be a good idea to replace this with some counterfeits later.”
Luz just smiled. “Good idea.”
The two then left the house, locked the door behind them, and then went home.
Later
“I told you officer; I was chasing a bigfoot through the street with the baseball bat.”
“Right, the bigfoot with the hat, tie, briefcase full of DVDs-“
“SVTFOE season 4 DVD, and he had the gall to say it was the best season.”
“You forgot to mention that he was invisible to everyone else.”
“In my defense, I only realized that only I could see him when you mentioned that there was no on where I was pointing when we were talking.”
“You were yelling at me to arrest the bigfoot for saying that the prequals were better than the original trilogy of Star Wars.”
“Are you going to honestly tell me that I was wrong for that?”
“I actually prefer the sequel trilogy.”
“…”
“Do you mean Rogue One?”
“Hell no, hated that move.”
“HOW DARE YOU! THAT WAS THE ONLY GOOD ONE OF THE BUNCH!”