#also warning for semi-graphic descriptions of chronic wasting!

[doodlebeeberry]

String Theory

‘Did he try traps?’ ‘They didn’t work. It just came back.’ Which happened. Conventional animal traps weren’t designed for magical creatures, after all. They  needed a bit more hands-on fitness. Even still, she weighed her options: paperwork or deadly beast? Which was worse? ‘This won’t take long, will it?’ Goldie asked. Feather emphatically shook her head. ‘Course not! An hour or two, tops.’ It wasn’t even a contest.

In which Goldie and co. take on a fairly standard case: deal with a rogue manticore

considered keeping this an ao3 exclusive but then i decided that You Will read about my non-object ocs actually because i like them.

warnings for some graphic animal death, blood, teeny bit of gore, violence, and discussions of string theory by someone who doesnt really understand it

(ao3 link in source)

  Among its six whole staff members, the P.I.T Investigative Agency proudly bolstered a diverse lineup, at least in comparison to other, similar groups scattered throughout the system. Bell, CoCo, and Runnings—shapeshifter, robot, and river spirit respectively—all made for both good friends and good assets in a profession in which long-dead souls and mythical beasts were as much the norm as broken vents and squeaky doors, while Marnie’s status as a witch gave her an in with nearly every coven in the region. Even Feather, magicless and human as she may be, brought to the table years of passionate study and knowledge, alongside the ability to smack sense into two-bit spellcasters with her cane.

 Goldie decided some time ago that her own unique perspective, human as she herself was, was two-fold. First was the deafness, obviously, which made sirens and know-it-all clients a breeze.

 The second, maybe relatedly, was an intimate command and connection with reality: an ability that, like every other listed, no one else in the group shared.

 —

 14:37 on Tuesday found Goldie seated at one of only two desks in the agency’s home base. Even calling it a desk was overdoing it, really: a strip of counter divided what was once a teeny kitchenette from the den. In converting the place from an apartment no one wanted to an office only they wanted, the den had become a meeting space for clientele and, sometimes, ground zero for the problems they could bring in. Meanwhile, the kitchenette pulled double-time—overhead cabinets stored snacks and drinks for clients, (in theory, anyway; if or not Goldie and her friends tended to snatch them up first was, in her view irrelevant) while below was mounds of paperwork sorted by type and section and year. Receipts, complaints, inventory notes, case files—loads of case files. In-office cases, local cases, intra- and inter-region, the work kept them well afloat, sure, but an absolute downside to being the region’s best (read: only) mystical investigative agency was the seemingly endless paper trail they had to pave for themselves as they went.

 Somewhere along the line they’d set their phone up on the counter, alongside the requisite speech-to-text screen, followed by pencils and pens and a stack of blank case file docs waiting with bated hypothetical breath for their time to shine. Once, after several long days of headstrong clients with distinctly non-magical issues, she’d concluded that one of the other girls—likely Marnie, the bureaucratic witch that she was—had cursed it to never run empty. Even now it mocked her as she toiled away at the last details of a recent case. There’s always more paperwork ahead, it seemed to tease, tomorrow and next year and likely even after death    .

 It didn’t help that the current case in question had been a drag.

 Another call from old Mrs. Duolin’s neighbors, the fifth in about as many months, about her trying to resurrect her husband. It would be sweet, had she not been a bad wife and an even worse necromancer: she couldn’t even conjure up a fragment of a human soul, or anything of similar stature. Instead, she’d called upon the ghosts of a nasty ant infestation from some years ago, who’d descended upon the building with a vengeance. While Runnings had dealt with the insects rather quickly on her own—much to her slightly disgusted consternation—she’d been sent along to check for additional damages and tell Mrs. Duolin in no uncertain terms to at the very least take some basic summoning classes before she tried again. It was just a matter of bad luck that Feather had seen her return first, sticking her with the dreaded title of paper pusher for the afternoon.

 She’d just dotted the last I on the report when someone leaned on her head, arms crossed. A paper in their hands flopped down, obscuring her view. She couldn’t read it, not when it dangled an inch from her nose, but so long as it kept her from seeing her paperwork she couldn’t care less. The leaning, though, was a different issue. She shook them off, huffing a bit, and craned her head back to just catch a bit of Feather’s pink hair, behind her. She turned to face her fully, noting her cane leaning against the counter and the long sleeves she only ever wore for more outdoors-y jobs.

       ‘Don’t do that’ Goldie signed. Feather at least had the sense to look a bit sheepish.

       ‘Sorry’

       ‘No you’re not’

       ‘Yeah, no, I’m not’

 Goldie rolled her eyes warmly as Feather handed her the paper. A newly started case file. Intra-region. On sight. Actually magic related this time. Goldie wanted to kill her.

       ‘Mind some field work?’

 Maybe not kill, but smacking was still on the table.

       ‘No’ she set it in her lap, ‘When?’

       ‘Tonight’

       ‘Who with?’

       ‘The whole group’

 She blinked at that, skimming the details already provided. A farmer near the outskirts called some days ago about a beast—a manticore, based on his descriptions. What exactly a manticore was doing on New Kindling, of all regions, she had no idea, but it had apparently already taken the liberty of picking off many of his chickens.

       ‘Did he try traps?’

       ‘They didn’t work. It just came back.’

 Which happened. Conventional animal traps weren’t designed for magical creatures, after all, they needed a bit more hands-on fitness. Even still, she weighed her options: paperwork or deadly beast? Which was worse?

       ‘This won’t take long, will it?’ she asked. Feather emphatically shook her head.

       ‘Course not! An hour or two, tops.’

 It wasn’t even a contest.

 —

 The simplest analogy she could find for her abilities was string theory. Everything that was was made of threads, tucked in between the folds of reality, like the mess at the back of framed needlepoint. They existed however they needed to: thick suspension cables to wispy strands of smoke, deeply representational things running parallel to the senses, forming and connecting all that was, had been, and likely would be.

 She considers it a sixth sense (or fifth, to be more accurate), the ability to perceive them. A sort of sight behind her eyes, sensation beneath her skin, flavor within her tongue. Seeing without seeing, feeling without feeling, sensing without sensing—all false perceptions in the pages of reality but very, very real beyond them. Real enough, in Goldie’s hands, to be played with. To change existence with a twitch.

 —

 The six of them reach the farm just a little past 18:00, finding the farmer in question pacing out front of his old barn. Late-day light blanketed everything in picturesque doze-worthy warmth. A few red beetles drifted through the air, too lazed by the oncoming evening to whiz past her nose quite like they would at midday. The air was clear, more so than it was back in the city or aboard the stuffy little train they’d taken to get out here. The breeze wove around them in gentle greeting, trying and failing to shift the hair tied tightly in a bun on her head. On approach, she noted a couple of speckled chickens seated outside their barnside coop, dozing. Thick layers of chicken wire separated them from the outside world. Palm flat, she could feel the threads tethering everything to everything else, thick and thin and soft and metal, some loose, some tense, a few about to snap. She couldn’t be bothered to parse where most of the connections went, but even still wondered idly where the chickens fell on that spectrum. Did they understand what happened to their brethren? Did they even care?

 One of them cracked open an eye, staring at her a moment. It tilted its head, clucking curiously, before abandoning the endeavor and going back to sleep.

 No, she decided, probably not.

 The farmer himself was a portly man, older, almost matching the stock image for ‘average farmer man’ to a perfect t, with the exception of his hair, styled into an awful approximation of a mullet. She figured the stress over the manticore had gotten to him. Beyond that, she couldn’t really explain the choice.

 Marnie and Feather led the pack, exchanging quick pleasantries before the latter lifted her cane in a wide, somewhat over-dramatic gesture towards the rest of them. A thick, already tense string somehow tensed further against her thumb once he saw them, if only for a second. She held back a bit of snark, instead simply nodding in greeting when Feather pointed at her. At least now she knew which one was his.

 After giving her own greeting CoCo nudged her, taking note of her slight twitch in expression. She forewent sign, as per usual, displaying,

        What’s up?

 In pale text against her dark screen, just above her little pixelated face. Goldie waved her off. These sorts of reactions from clients were normal, after all. Despite how far across the region word of their group had spread, many were still a bit shocked by the not-quite-humans dropping in to help. Hardly a moment after, he turned and brought the lot of them around the side of the barn.

       ‘What’d he say?’

        It came back again, just earlier.  

   Killed one of his sheep, apparently.  

 Killed was putting it lightly.

 Behind the barn was a wide stretch of fenced-in hills, woodlands wrapped around it on all sides like a wall of its own. A massive, jagged hole had been smashed through the fencing, wooden shards and massive bloody claw marks littering the grass. Several sheep mulled about, leaving a wide berth around the destruction, including the dead sheep the girls and the farmer surrounded. It seemed less like any kind of targeted attack and more like the manticore had just been playing with its food: what wool was still intact was drenched in slowly drying blood. Patches of it were torn out and strewn around hither and thither, while more fluff still was lost in the mess of giant, disorganized slashes that covered it. Anything in their path—skin, muscle, bone, organs—was rendered a homogenized, gorey pulp, glinting awfully in the sun. Kneeling beside it, Goldie ran her fingers softly along its limp threads, cold and shiny behind her eyes, that stuck out from its body. Torn up, just like everything else. A single bite mark sat below its eyes, wide and empty. They seemed to watch her from beyond the grave. Withholding something.

 When she looked up, she found Bell looking elsewhere. Goldie stood and patted her arm gently. Bell had taken the form of an orange lizard today, a head above her despite her bent posture, thick tail pressed close to her leg and hands pulled close to her chest. Bell smiled back despite her own distress. The death, Goldie knew, never got any easier for her.

 Marnie looked away next, catching their eyes.

       ‘It didn’t eat anything ’ Bell translated as Marnie, an awful signer, spoke. ‘It just killed it and left’

 ‘Rough play?’ Goldie offered.

 ‘Maybe’

 Runnings jumped in at Marnie’s right, shaking her head, ‘But manticores are nocturnal, it was killed during the-’

       ‘Cathemeral’ Bell corrected. Runnings blinked at her.

       ‘What?’

       ‘They’re awake during the day and night’

       Runnings shook her head. ‘Manticore? No, that can’t be right’

       ‘It’s true!’

       ‘How?’

       ‘It just depends on circumstance’

 Marnie elbowed Runnings as she lifted her hands, forcing her back on track before her soul-deep need to bicker kept them there all night. She rolled her eyes, but relented.

       ‘Fine. Whatever. What do we do?’

 Marnie shrugged.

       ‘Normal plan?’

 The idea didn’t sit right with Goldie. She was no beastly expert, that distinction fell to Bell and Marnie any day, but she couldn’t remember seeing one make a mess like this before. It looked like the aftermath of a fight rather than a hunt. But, a fight against what? The sheep? A manticore has poison just as much as strength, would it really have needed to near-liquify the poor thing either way?

 She looked into its eyes, almost hoping it would come alive and spit out the answer, sate or confirm her suspicions, give her instinct a better guide than they had. Death withheld it.

 Bell nudged her lightly.

       ‘Goldie, normal plan?’ she asked her. CoCo and Feather had joined the conversation during her musings, seemingly, six pairs of eyes now on her. Five alive, one dead, all awaiting her decision.

 Something sickly tinged the air, something wavering. A kind of static ran along the back of her hands: torn threads, returning to fuzz, trying fruitlessly to keep it together.

 Something was wrong with that manticore. Deeply wrong. But, even still,

       ‘Sure’

 No reason it shouldn’t work.

 —

 Traditionally, string theory states that the vibrations of strings alone bring everything into reality, at least according to what she’d read. It assumed reality was a consequence of action, which was only half-true—passivity and the strings themselves, she’d found, played just as much of a role. Twisting them, turning them, tensing them and loosening them all changed aspects of the world they formed, from little twinges of emotion to taking on a whole new nature. Changing them on a less active level, breaking down ropes or braiding threads, had an effect on the outcome too, even if not set in active motion. There were countless different ways to manipulate them for countless hypothetical outcomes, and Goldie had spent much of her life playing with the possibilities, bumping into the limits, making even the saltiest water sweet.

 —

 The normal plan was an invention from their first manticore encounter years ago and had only been improved with time. It was a bit shoddy (a lot shoddy, really), and probably always would be, but it got the job done so they didn’t complain. It helped that it was fairly simple, too:

They attract it with fresh catnip and meat. It would slink in cautiously, sharply aware and sniffling for threats, but the temptation of a good meal, if nothing else, would almost always lower its guard.

Marnie and Runnings whip up a magic sedative, a slurry of fresh herbs, ph-balanced water, and about two pages of memorized incantations that could knock it out in small doses and kill it in larger amounts.

She and CoCo administer it. Goldie hated this part, none too keen to get close to its teeth.

Feather and Bell keep it distracted and/or still long enough that it wouldn't try to maul them in the process. Or, more accurately, Feather distracted it until it nearly clawed off her arm, at which point Bell stepped in in the form of something strong enough to keep it still.

And, though it wasn’t an official step, call animal control, because they, as they always had to remind themselves, were not really qualified to care for big cats.  (If she dwelled on that fact long enough, she’d begin to wonder why they were taking cases they were so unqualified for. Beyond the prospect of pay and maybe notoriety, she didn’t really know. But that had never stopped any of them before.)

 Unpleasant as it was, it worked well enough. It was just a matter of waiting for it to show up, provided it showed up at all.

 Night crept up on them just as they finished laying the bait, followed by hours of waiting and watching and waiting some more. The occasional wild critter tried to steal some of the meat, and one of the other girls would make a great show of leaping from behind their hiding spots—piles of old wood taken from the barn—and chasing it away. It seemed to make the whole affair take much longer than it should.

 She turned to CoCo, yawning. Bell had already dozed off at her other side.

       ‘Time?’

        01:28  

 She wrinkled her nose. Two hours tops, she’d said. Feather was full of shit.

    ‘Sure is taking its time’

     It would seem so.  

  I wonder what it’s up to.  

 ‘Sleeping, probably’ and great All That Is how she envied it. She closed her eyes if only to get a taste. CoCo prodded her side. Goldie shooed her. She prodded at her again, several times, until Goldie shot her a sharp look.

  No falling asleep.  

          ‘Bell’s asleep’

           Bell is a light sleeper.  

  You’d sleep through the end of the universe.  

          ‘So? Sound like a good idea to me. Who’d wanna be awake for that?’

          That’s not what I meant and you know it.  

 Goldie snickered.

 ‘Fine, fine’

 She pondered how best to fill the space.

 ‘Ask out Feather yet?’

 CoCo’s screen blinked.

     …  

  You’re mean.  

 She snorted. CoCo and Feather had a strange song-and-dance going, both entertaining as it was wholly stupid. They both liked each other,  and  knew the other liked them back, but despite both being open to a relationship neither one of them made a move. It was like some kind of strange war of romantic attrition, waiting for the other to relent for a few years now at least, out of nervousness or respect for professionalism Goldie didn’t know. It made for great teasing fodder on both sides though.

       ‘You should. She’d bite, you know'

           I know  

       ‘Do you?’

       Please stop.  

  I’ll let you sleep if you stop.  

 Goldie hardly finished reading before CoCo sat up straight, staring out into the woods. Goldie had just enough time to wake Bell before the creature strode out into the open. Spotting it in the moonlight, her stomach twisted.

 It was massive, nearly three meters tall at the shoulders at least, likely more, but it lacked the bulk to back it. It wasn’t just thin, it was gaunt, almost sickly looking, like it was wasting away, its fur unkempt and patchy, matted with mud and dried blood. Shaggy, tangled mane blocked its face from view. It stumbled oddly on its paws, lacking the creature’s normal dexterity in favor of jerking itself from pawstep to pawstep erratically like a poorly manned puppet. She didn’t even need to try to find them—broken strings in freshwater blue, forced to life. An acrid, rotting stench hit her nose, though whether it came from the manticore or its strings she didn’t know. Likely both.

       ‘We might not need the sedative’, she signed, brushing CoCo’s arm in the process, ‘catnip alone might be enough to knock it out’

   Even without that, it’ll probably pass out.

 Poor thing.  

 It stepped on a piece of raw beef. Reeling back, it thrashed about at the shock, ripping the meat apart in a few uncoordinated strokes of its claws. It slipped further in the process, tearing up the catnip and slipping on the mess it made, trapping itself in an awful cycle until, with seemingly much effort, it finally wrestled back control of itself and stilled.

 Bell ducked back behind the pile. Goldie was more than happy to do the same.

       ‘What's wrong with it? Is it starving?’

 Bell’s tail moved through the grass slowly, from one side to the other like a snake. Her lips pressed together, brows knitted.

 ‘Don’t think so. It has food, but it's not eating it’

 ‘Is it sick then?’

 ‘Maybe,’ Bell glanced back in its direction, watching CoCo watch the creature. Goldie felt purple brush her arm, flour-fine warmth in her sight rising up, reaching peak, about to leap into action. She imagined, if the little bot could, that CoCo would be holding her breath.

 ‘But with what?’

 CoCo dropped back between them suddenly.

     It saw me.  

 They had just enough time to scramble back before the beast crashed through the wood.

 —

 It was by no means an unlimited power, quite the opposite, actually. The hypothetical possibilities were limitless, sure, but more often than not it was a matter of condition after rule after condition. Many strings, for example, were resistant to change, and would drop back into their original state once she stopped actively manipulating them. She couldn’t command someone’s strings to bring them back from the dead, and rarely could she use the strings to kill—for whatever reason, they hated playing with the cycle of life. Gravity and similar laws tended to be non-starters (though there were a few ways to work around them) not to mention that a string could be more or less delicate than whatever it represented, and breaking a string hardly led to anything good. She could learn a lot about the nature of something from messing with its strings, but making more permanent changes was a whole other matter altogether.

 —

 The thrill of the chase was much less fun when you were the one being chased. Goldie knew this, but running away always seemed to hammer in how much she hated it. Even worse was the sheer lack of places to hide, tied only with the manticore’s erratic nature. It would burst to life, less running so much as jerking itself about, tripping over its limbs but still pushing on until it just stopped. Listless, still as a statue, suddenly enough for its latent momentum to make it stumble. It watched after them, and only then could she get any kind of clear look at its face.

 Its jaw hung open, limp, drool dripping from its mouth in cloudy globs into the dirt. Its eyes were wide and vapid and empty; the lights were off, nobody home. Old blood stained its chin.

 Manticores as a whole were swift, skillful things. Under normal circumstances, they were bright as they were strong.

 This was not a normal circumstance. This was none of those things.

 Feather, Runnings, and Marnie were quick to meet them once it stilled, their hiding spot having been just as quickly destroyed.

       ‘Wasting,’ Marnie concluded, ‘I think chronic wasting is making it act out, or something similar’

         ‘How do you treat it?’ Feather asked quickly, struggling to properly sign while holding her cane.

       ‘You can’t treat it’

 Goldie took Bell’s hand, if only momentarily as a brief stillness lapsed between them. The manticore, a small distance away, twitched.

       ‘How do you kill it, then?’ Feather asked.

       ‘We can’t touch it, first off. I’m not sure if it’s transmissible,’ Marnie began digging through the pockets of her skirt and her apron, pulling out small bundles of herbs, ‘I could maybe make something to-’

 It shot to life in a mad scramble towards them, remembering suddenly that it was still alive. Goldie did the only thing she could think to, pulling them off towards the barn.

 It didn’t really help much. She didn’t even have time to think of shutting the door before it barreled inside, let alone do so. Just as quickly, though, it crashed into a hay bale near the entrance, struggling to get itself free.

 Feather caught her attention, wide-eyed in realization.

       ‘The strings,’ she asked, ‘can you do anything with them?’

 She reached out for them, taking the manticore’s tattered strings in hand. They flared in her grip, connections crossing, sending along low rumbling warnings. She sought out a safe spot to tug at, hoping to pull them free, make the thing drop dead, and actually have it stick. Nothing. She twirled them around her palms. Nothing. It rose, and she let go. The two of them backed away. She shook her head.

       ‘Nothing’

 They retreated further. Between two beams, stretching from the floor high overhead to the ceiling, the six of them clustered together, Goldie poised defensive at the front. It turned until it saw them—saw her, breath still. Skin itching. Impossible hickory ropes tangled around her fingers. Watching. Waiting.

 Runnings drifted in her periphery.

 ‘We need some time’

 Goldie nodded. It lunged.

 Yanking right, the floorboards pulled out from under its feet, sending it skidding away. She glanced back just long enough to spot Marnie tearing up herbs before darting back into its sights.

 She pinched the ropes. The wood softened, sandy. It left deep claw marks behind as it stood.

 It swiped. She leapt back, letting the floor go hard again. Its tail lashed at her. She caught it in the wood, wrenching sharply left, breaking off its tip. She imagined, by the look, that it howled.

 It stumbled. She shifted. It smashed. She fell back. Raised. Fell. Left, then Right. Desperate motions, both its and her own. No plan. Hardly any rhyme or reason. She wasn’t even fighting, so much as following a single thought: Just keep your eyes on me.

 She caught its rear ankles between soft floorboards. Dropping the ropes, they solidified, trapping it. It flailed, just out of reach.

 Risking a glance, she checked back on the others, gathered in a tight half-circle, Marnie at the center. She watched her mouth move, a messy mix of smashed plant life glowing slightly before her, spurred on by some kind of green witchcraft. A thick floral scent hit her nose.

 The sedative. They were making the sedative. Not much of it either. Definitely not enough.

 The floor shook. It broke free, scraping against the jagged remains. She tumbled back unsteadily as it darted forward, stopping short. Twitching. Looking away. Turning.

 Shit. Shit shit shit—  

 In quick harsh motions, she sought out the floorboard’s thick ropes, driving her nails between the braids and separating them. Blindingly singed-wood scented, she wrapped them tight around her fingers and lashed them like whips, crossing the strings, thick floorboards turning to thin, sturdy netting that tethered itself between the beams, between the girls, staring, terrified, and the beast rushing towards them. It collided with the netting, but didn’t break through, biting at it with no strength. They looked to Goldie, already straining a bit under the effort, before throwing themselves back into work.

 Resistance sprouted up through her fingers: this was not natural, this was not right. Upon release, the netting would drop again to wooden boards, already fighting to return to its previous state, but she held firm, refusing, thinking. For a moment, she let the manticore itself slip out of her mind.

 Goldie sought out a replacement, something a bit less resistant to intervention. The hay bales weren't really within her reach, still stacked near the entrance, and even still, she’d hardly ever worked with hay threads before. They were brittle though, from what she remembered, more so than the hay itself; she feared the process would snap them. A small sack or two of chicken feed slumped against a nearby wall, a non-starter based on quantity alone, let alone strength. She shifted on her feet, slightly more panicked than she’d admit, sweeping desperate glances that gave her nothing good to work with. She nearly cursed out that All-forsaken farmer. All this space and he couldn’t even store anything useful in it. Nothing adaptable, nothing suggestable, nothing particularly open to bending its nature while still remaining strong. Typical.

 She didn’t see it move, but felt the awful thump through the boards as it hit the ground behind her, startling her out of her internal frenzy. Even in the low light, she saw the shadow grow around her. CoCo’s screen shone like a beacon, halfway across the barn, stretched in an expression she would never read.

 Six pairs of eyes were on her.

 Drool hit her back.

 It reared up.

 She turned, and—

 —

 As a point of comparison, string theory wasn’t great. It was limiting and overly-complicated, depending on the angle, and made for a very flat picture of a thoroughly 5-dimensional thing. But Goldie was so much a product of her reality that only the picture-view seemed to matter. Or maybe her reality wouldn’t let her see past it. Maybe she was too beholden to her perceived limits to break them on her own, or maybe her own abilities really wouldn’t let her break them, not even just for the sake of knowing. Maybe, just maybe, some solitary, deeply-freeing aspect of herself was smart enough in its pursuit of privacy to keep its pretty mouth shut.

 Or maybe she was just dense. She didn’t know. In that moment, Goldie couldn’t care less.