Episode 18-4: The Closer You Look, The Less You See

We must have traveled two miles on foot before Sandy decided the trail ended here. It's a storage lot, about medium-sized, and has plenty of staff walking around. Sandy stops at a locker, saying this is most likely where Jack and Abby are being held. I put my ear to the door, but don't hear anything. They must be passed out and tied up, but it sounds like they've been left alone.

"Go on then," Sandy tells me, "pick the lock, you sly fox."

I nod and bend down, but I don't find a lock anywhere. "Clyde, small problem here. There's no lock."

Sandy tries to lift it upwards but fails. "But it won't budge, of course, it's locked."

"Hello?" a womanly voice calls out behind us, "Excuse me? Is this your locker?"

We all whip around quickly, trying our best to act like we weren't doing something illegal. An Anthro dog is the owner of that voice. Small and petite, actually quite pretty.

"Yes," I speak up, "it is."

"Oh," she says, "I figured when I didn't recognize you walk in. That locker has been jammed before I was hired here, haven't seen the owners come by ever. Well, until today that is."

"Yep," Sandy says, "here we are. Now, about getting inside..."

"Oh," her friendly smile sinks away, "well it is jammed shut, there's no lock to unlock. We contacted you to see if you'd like to change lockers or stop payments, but you said you liked it just the way it was. Are you wanting to change the payment plan on your account?"

"No," Clyde says, "it's fine the way it is. Just need to use a little muscle."

He squats down and grabs the handle of the locker. He breathes in deeply, then he stands up with ease, the locker door coming up with him. He gets it to his chest and then heaves it up the rest of the way. Looking at the exposed rails on the inside shows that it jammed because the rails were crooked like someone smashed them on purpose to keep the door from opening. No Jack or Abby in there though.

The dog starts clapping, applauding Clyde's amazing muscle display. "Wow, you're very strong! Not even Emilio could get that door open, and he's our heavy lifter."

Clyde smiles and flexes his biceps. "Heh, just gotta use that puppy power. Dogs rule."

She smiles brightly, curling her leg up in a cutesy stance. "Yup. All dogs are strong dogs!"

Are they flirting? Eck!

"Okay," I say, cutting off whatever the mutt was about to say next, "back to business. Thank you for your help, Ms..."

"Belle," she responds, her eyes on Clyde, "Tiffany Belle." She finally breaks her googly eyes off of Clyde and addresses all three of us. "Well, I suppose I'll leave you to it then. Call me if you need me, I'm here to help."

I stop the urge to physically shoo her away. "Yes, yes, we'll call if we need you. Thank you." She walks off and leaves earshot, then I turn to Clyde. "Puppy power? Gimme a break."

"What?" he asks, acting like he has no idea what just happened.

"Did you guys hit it off because you're both dogs? That's one thing in common, just one."

"Hit it off?" Clyde crosses his arms like he's got the right to be mad, "It was just a joke between two dogs. Not everything has to be between you and me, and not everyone I talk to is hitting on me."

I place my hands on my hips, turning my sass on to 100%. "Oooh, and what was with the flexing? You don't throw your sexy body around as a joke, Clyde."

He rolls his eyes and enters the storage locker without me. "Whatever. You're being unreasonable, Troy. You didn't see me acting like this when that guy pinched your ass."

"Excuse me!?" I chase after him. "You looked like you were ready to snap him in half, it's the same thing."

"Wow," Sandy says, interrupting us, "you two are funny. By the way, your friends aren't here, but it looks like they were. Good thing too, dunno what Tiffany would've thought if she saw some old geezers tied up in here."

Inside the locker was a small setup that looks reminiscent of an interrogation room. Two chairs in the middle, a barren table off to the side, and a bucket in the corner. If interrogation is what this place was used for, no wonder the locker rails are smashed to never open. Teleporting makes doors optional for them. No physical way in or out; the perfect hiding spot.

"Oh boy, a chair," Sandy says, approaching it to take a seat, but is immediately ejected by Clyde's strong arms.

"Careful, you might contaminate evidence. Go stand in the corner over there, we'll deal with this."

Sandy stomps over to Clyde's directed spot. "Jeez, you didn't have to manhandle me."

Clyde looks at me, the annoyance is now gone. "Troy, get out the forensic scanner. We need to know if Jack or Abby have been in here."

I check my holster, only to find a missing slot on the belt. "Oopsie."

"Oopsie?"

"I think I might've forgotten it."

"You forgot the forensic scanner!?"

"Yelling at me won't make it magically appear, Clyde!"

Sandy bleeps from his corner, "Speaking of magic-"

"Stuff it, Sandy!" I tell him. Boy, I am aggravated today. "What about Jack and Abby's Travel Cube? Maybe they brought theirs."

Clyde takes it out of his holster. "Worth a shot, I guess." He presses the button on the face of the cube, and a beam of holographic light appears not too far from the surface. It displays a number of gadgets that most units standardly get, including the forensic scanner that we need. He clicks it, and the device regrows it back to normal size for regular use.

"Neato," Sandy says meekly, not wanting to be yelled at some more.

Clyde uses one of the scanner's lenses to review the floor and walls. It should reveal any traceable fluids even if they've been scrubbed clean. He finds a spot of something next to one of the chairs and scans it. He finds some more spots in the empty bucket and logs it in with the other. The scanner begins to process the fluids, but it takes some time.

"Magic, huh?" Clyde asks openly, mostly directed to Sandy.

Sandy lifts his head to meet Clyde's eyes. "Lemme guess, you're a skeptic too?"

"We've dealt with 'magic' already, it only turned out to be unknown technology like always. I believe your cult will have the same outcome."

Sandy crosses his arms. "Not a cult, it's a coven, and there's no technology. It's all-natural energy from the mind and body. It's real, as real as science."

"Oh please," I say condescendingly, "magic isn't real, and we'll expose your coven in due time while simultaneously rescuing our agents."

Sandy shakes his head. "You two just don't get it, and I'm wasting my breath trying to convince you otherwise. You'll just have to see for yourself."

Beep!

The forensic scanner finished its analysis, and Clyde checks it with haste. "The blood belongs to them, they were definitely here."

I approach Clyde and the scanner. "Lucky break! Where do we go from here?"

Sandy chortles, "Good question."

Clyde scratches his chin. "The only way to exit the place is to teleport. Sandy, think you can track the residue again?"

"No go," he says, "this is a confined space, and the aura needs fresh air to linger around; otherwise its essence perishes quickly; like a flame without oxygen."

My eyes wander around the room making sure we found everything of interest. "I don't suppose there's a DNA trail for us to follow either?"

Clyde looks at the scanner's screen again, shaking his head. "Now that would've been too easy, huh?"

"Only the hardest cases for the hardest agents," I jokingly say. In a way, I do mean it, I feel like we never get a break or an easy case to close. I address Sandy, "So... any other tricks you can do?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Are you making fun of me again?"

I scratch the back of my head sheepishly. "No, but you seem to hold some... perks, technology or not, that are phenomenal. You traced an invisible source for a couple of miles, you teleport, and you can also...?"

He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his eyes intensifying to add weight to his words. "I can do plenty of miraculous stunts that normal people would gawk at and call me a god, but I can't do advanced spells with drained mana. I need more if we want to access the more powerful knowledge."

I roll my eyes. "And just how do we speed up your mana process?"

"We need a font. A sculpture or an intricate object that holds the beliefs of Zooh, but that's not something you'd find outside in the public. It's at our sanctuary, and we can't get there without teleporting."

"So you're saying we're screwed? Why tell us all of this if it gets us nowhere?"

A sly grin pulls at the corner of his mouth. "Besides Zooh sculptures, there are other existing fonts. They reside in people, magical or not."

My hands go to my hips. "What're you getting at?"

"I can absorb your mana, and that'll give me the energy I need to perform spells."

"Ha!" I laugh. "As if I'm about to let you drain me with some weird technology I've never heard of. That could kill me for all I know. No chance."

His smile gets replaced with a frown. "I told you, it's not technology, and it won't kill you. I promise."

"Oh boy, a promise from a criminal, how valuable."

"A few things," he says, raising a hand to count his fingers, "1: You don't have another option. Your trail is cold, and I can get it back. 2: I know it won't kill you, because it's literally impossible to do so without also killing the user. 3: I've been observing both of your essences, and Clyde holds more. I'll drain you to keep me limited, and I won't have enough power to teleport away."

I cross my arms, my eyes looking Sandy up and down with disgust, my lips perk, and my tail wags furiously. Clyde puts the scanner away, not saying a single thing. Sandy's smile comes back, he knows that our hands are tied and we're too short on time to think of a different way.

My eyes narrow on Sandy, and I spit out the word, "Fine."

"Excellent," Sandy says.

Clyde grabs Sandy's shoulder. "This won't hurt him, will it?"

"No, no, it's perfectly safe. No pain, but you may feel lethargic afterward. Are you ready, Troy?"

"Go on, my body is yours," I say, dropping my arms to my sides.

"Okay, um... just hold your arms in a T-formation."

I do as he says. "Like this?"

He approaches me slowly, "That's perfect."

He raises his hands up, scrunching his fingers in and out like a cartoon villain who's ready to steal some treasure. The hands start to go lower, descending closer to my waistline. I only watch with disinterest, allowing him plenty of time to do his ritual as slowly as he wants. Finally, his hands touch my skin, squeezing my waist in a flirty tickle kind of way.

"Hey!" I squeak, flinching harshly and reflexively slapping him across his face.

He stumbles back a few good feet. "Ow!"

"Sorry," I apologize, "I'm super ticklish. I can't help it."

Clyde nods. "It's true. He could throw me off."

Sandy rubs his cheek, a small handprint scorched on the skin. "Oof, for a petite thing you've got a strong arm. Okay, let's try again, but without hitting, yeah?"

My cheeks grow red from embarrassment, and I return to the T-formation once again. He approaches me, much faster this time, and places his hands on my hips. I flinch again but restrain myself to not flail around. A faint glimmer of streaming light appears, and as time passes, it becomes less and less transparent. I can tell from the waves it makes that it's coming from my body and flowing into Sandy's. It keeps streaming gracefully, but the more of it that comes out, the sleepier I get. Sandy lets go of my hips, his eyes glowing a beautiful light brown for just a fraction of a second, and then fades back to normal.

"Troy," Clyde asks, "are you okay? Feeling tired?"

I nod and rub my eyes. "Uh-huh. How long does this last, Sandy?"

His hands flex with unseen power. "You'll be fine after a quick nap. Did you wanna go back to the motel? This power doesn't leave me until I use it."

I shake my head. "No, I'll be fine. It just feels like I've done an all-nighter, it's not so bad."

"And so we press on," he exclaims, cracking his knuckles and rolling his neck.

Both his hands open up, each having a hovering light above his palms. He closes his hands around the orbs, crushing them and making the particles scatter around the air. Phantoms enter the storage room, two we can immediately identify as Jack and Abby tied to the chairs. There were three more, each showing their face but none of them look familiar to us. We watch silently as the phantoms act out a scene that I'm guessing happened some time in the past.

Jack was receiving multiple punches to his face by one of the larger phantoms, while Abby appears to be screaming loudly as another phantom held up a glowing finger to her forehead. The punches stop, and the finger gets pulled away. Jack spits on the ground where we found the blood, and Abby coughs up blood on her shirt. The bucket is sitting next to her leg, most likely catching the flying blood off of her.

"This is surreal," Clyde says, "how come we can't hear them?"

"This is only a projection of the past, there's no sound," Sandy explains.

"How will this help us get back on the trail?"

Sandy walks closer to the projection. "It's a lot like the first spell I used to track the teleportation residue, but this one helps me track a phantom's past."

"A phantom?" I blurt out. "They're not dead, are they?"

Sandy shakes his head. "No, a phantom is just what we call projections from the past. Ghosts aren't real. I can lock onto one of these phantoms and follow their life essence. Like how a dog sniffs out food. No offense, Clyde."

Clyde scoffs. "Me offended? You're our own personal bloodhound."

Sandy blows off the insult. "So, which phantom would you have me lock onto?"

Clyde points at the buff cheetah in the chair. "Jack, follow Jack."

"He kinda reminds me of you," Sandy says with a sly smile, "must be the muscles." He concentrates heavily on Jack's apparition, watching him suffer until the ending of the scene where both Jack and Abby are teleported away by the three interrogators. "I've got him."

Clyde is the first to walk out of the storage room. "Let's go, there's no more time to waste."

I follow both of them outside, feeling sluggish and lazy. Don't worry guys, we're coming.