The Innkeeper

Chapter 1133  TSA

They had sacrificed entire planets for blood rituals and captured tens of thousands of souls to nurture their treasures or for other purposes. People would scare their children with horror stories, and the creatures in those horror stories would scare each other by mentioning those on this bounty list. Among them now was Lex\'s name.

Lex really wanted to go back and show this list to Moon, but chances were high that she was still asleep. To wake her up and show her his awesome side poses on these posters, he needed to get his hands on those feathers.

"When will the teleport be ready?" Lex asked Powell.

"It takes time. There\'s a queue. Dunya is not some random planet that you can just teleport onto whenever you wish. Anyone teleporting to the planet will automatically be directed to a few specific terminals, and then go through immigration. It takes a while because the TSA is really annoying, as you can imagine."

"TSA?" Lex asked, refusing to believe that the folks from JFK airport had found their way out into the universe.

"Teleportation Safety Authority. You know, the guys who oversee that everyone who teleports over is not carrying anything dangerous. Stuff like that."

"Oh. Uh, yeah. Make sense."

"Your teleportation is scheduled for two hours from now. You can wait in the waiting room, if you want."

"Two hours, right? I\'ll head out and be back in time."

"Well, don\'t be late, or else your teleportation will be rescheduled."

Lex returned to the Midnight Inn, where time moved slower, and took the opportunity to run some errands. There were already millions of guests in the Inn already, with more coming every day. It seemed he would need some help, so he configured the Midnight Games 2, which would start in a couple of months. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

For now, he just started advertising for it, and used the event panel to hire some extra help around the Inn to handle the massive influx.

With everything set up, he returned to Powell with ten minutes to spare before his teleportation.

"Excellent. So you\'re going to have a small layover on a planet called Phuqauf, but that\'s only because Dunya automatically rejects teleportations from non-registered portals. So basically, you\'ll just move from one teleportation formation to another. It shouldn\'t be a problem. By the way, the Infinity Emporium has a special privilege of keeping its clients\' identities private when they send them over, so if you wish, you can take this mask and put it on. As long as you don\'t break any rules, you\'ll be fine, and no one will inquire about your identity. Also, take this identifier token so you know which terminal to go to."

Lex raised an eyebrow, but accepted the mask and went over to the teleportation formation, ready to move on. He could not help but notice the oddly nervous expression on Powell\'s face. He was sure it would be fine. Contrary to his expectation, the teleportation was actually quite smooth, and only lasted a dozen seconds or so, bringing Lex to a large, well designed building. The walls could somehow resist his spirit sense, but he supposed that made sense.

Lex didn\'t spend too much time looking around, since he was holding up the teleportation formation and stepped forward to an oversized Red Panda holding a clipboard.

"You from the Infinity Emporium?" he asked without looking up.

"Yeah, that\'s me."

"Welcome to Phuqauf. Your teleportation to Dunya is scheduled in 12 hours at terminal 31. Please don\'t be late or your teleportation will be rescheduled. Do not try to leave the teleportation facility, you will be detained. There\'s a 20% sale on insect repellent pheromones producer in the duty free. Have a pleasant day. Next."

Throughout the process the Red Panda did not look up from his clipboard, though Lex could sense countless spirit sense tracking his every move, so he supposed the Panda didn\'t need to.

Lex stepped out, curious as to what this teleportation facility was like. In all his years, this was his first experience with public teleportation. He had used the army teleportation before used by the Jotun empire, but this was different.

Perhaps getting a better understanding of the average experience would allow him to understand how he might improve his own guests\' experience. He began exploring the place while looking for directions to terminal 31.

"What do you mean my luggage was teleported to hell by accident?" he heard someone yell, and flinched. Fortunately, he had no luggage. He glanced at his spatial bangle, and it was still with him.

Maybe spatial treasures weren\'t so common, or maybe people moved around with a lot more stuff than him. Either way, lost luggage seemed to be a common theme here.

Not wanting his innate ability to attract trouble to be triggered, he scurried away before the fight escalated.

That\'s when he entered the duty free, and stopped when he noticed a restaurant with a giant yellow \'W\' in front of a red background selling burgers! The popular fast-food chain commonly featured in anime, WacDonalds actually had an inter-galactic presence?

Unable to help himself, Lex got in line and eventually ordered a Big-Wac to try to see if it tasted the same. It did. Goddamn, the capitalists were rich even out in the universe. He was also impressed by the mask that Powell gave him, which parted at the lips whenever he tried to eat, so that he didn\'t need to remove it.

He continued to explore the duty free, and ended up buying himself a lot of chocolate as well as colognes. How he was getting sucked into these tourist traps he did not know, but at least he smelled good doing it.

A twelve hour layover was both very long and very quick, depending on the situation. Since Lex kept himself entertained exploring the place, time went by fast, and he had no trouble finding the terminal.

But ten minutes before it was his turn to teleport, the banner above the room changed, indicating that the formation was out of order, and that all teleportations had been shifted to other terminals.

Unsure if his ten-minute deadline had been shifted or not, Lex hurried to a help desk and quickly found out that his terminal had been changed to 7777779b, and that the schedule was still set for ten minutes.

Unwilling to be bested by the teleportation facility, Lex began Blinking from one place to another, searching for his terminal, right up until he was caught by the TSA agents. Apparently Blinking interfered with the teleportation formations, and he was suspected of being a saboteur. He tried explaining his situation, but they insisted that he needed to go through certain checks. Lex looked at the agents, and then his watch. For a split second, he wondered if he should risk making the situation worse by trying to interfere with their thoughts. If he got caught, then there was no way he\'d make it in time. He\'d have to resort to using the Inn to go there, not to mention he\'d have to explain to Powell how he literally made more enemies when Powell literally asked him to play nice.

Then he looked back at the three agents, and interfered with their thoughts anyway. The next thing he knew, Lex was riding a hovercraft as the TSA agents rushed him through the facility towards his terminal, hopping lines and flying over security gates.

Eventually, Lex reached his terminal with only a few seconds to spare. Without a second thought, he leaped forward even as the countdown continued towards 0.

The hovercrafts behind him could not stop in time and crashed into a separate room. Sirens went off and a fire alarm began to ring. But a fraction of a second before any of that happened, Lex had managed to teleport away from this place.

Every other teleportation formation in the whole facility underwent a schedule change, and every alien in the galaxy started to curse the unknown man who had caused the facility to stop working.

The Infinity Emporium received an official notice of discontent, though a large donation was made that made it go away. Lex, however, was unaware of any of it. A few seconds later, he appeared on Dunya, finally reaching his destination.