VANTABLACK

CD—known to his coworkers and friends as Disk—sat in his office chewing his fingernails to nubs. His office was his palace, an impenetrable fortress full of loyal subjects, computers and monitors and keyboards all sat in the exact, perfect way to improve his workflow. No one could operate this room as well as he. No one could even begin to understand the intricacies of its layout, of the ever-so-slightly old equipment and their quirks.

And now…

And now he had to leave it in the care of someone else.

No, worse. He had to go out into the world, into Media, with two random strangers, a backpack, and his wits. 

No, even worse! He had to investigate a murder.

Who did his superiors think he was? He was no detective. He wasn’t cut out for this.

But he was in no position to say no either. It was this, or be fired. Or demoted. Either way, that meant his beautiful office would be stripped from him, put in the hands or paws of someone else. Perish the thought.

The langur monkey had been an official, verified Median for a while now, and in that time he’d proven a quick study when it came to monitor work. Hence, his very own, private workplace. He’d cleaned it up a bit, sorted some odds and ends used in drone repair, arranged his tools by size and use, tucked away all his favorite trinkets in hopes that his room-sitter wouldn’t mess with them, and so on. He supposed he could have made an effort to dust and sweep a little, but there wasn’t time.

This murder investigation business was sprung on him out of nowhere. He had scant time to dedicate to preparation, and sadly, cleaning wasn’t something he could devote much of the budget to. He had no clue what he’d need. What did detectives use? If only he’d played more of those murder mystery games or read more of those books… he hadn’t done much of that since he was a child.

His backpack was, so far, filled with a bit of money, a bit of food, a tablet, and a mini multi-purpose toolkit. It wasn’t too full, to account for anything he might need to carry along the way, and he was currently staring into it, fretting about whether his selection of items was good.

“Um. Disk?”

Disk jumped. A tabby cat had entered without his noticing.

“Hey. Hi,” the cat said, “Your partners are here. It’s time to go.”

“Are you going to watch my room?”

“Yeah.”

“You?”

The cat snorted, offended. “Yeah.”

Disk wrinkled his nose. “Don’t shed on any of my sensitive machinery.”

“I won’t,” the cat rolled his eyes, “You should get going now.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Disk closed up his bag, slung it over one shoulder, and hurried out his room. He glanced back to get one last look, but the tabby had already shut the door.

Classy.

The building he worked in was nice, not too large, not too small, a facility dedicated to the repair of various machines Media created. He was going to miss it and all its temperature controlled comforts. But it wasn’t too cold out yet, so that was one nice thing about this trip so far.

Out front, there was a carriage pulled by a large, stout-bodied serval. It was a simple, tiny construct, made of weathered wood and metal, containing enough space for two or three cat-sized creatures.

On top of that carriage was a species of bird Disk had never seen before. A black and white bird with webbed feet, a little shorter than himself, with a beak in four colors—starting from the tip and moving back, red, orange, blue, and yellow. His lower eyelids had blue, featherless skin.

Beside that carriage was the most giant creature Disk had ever seen. She was over twice his height, a towering figure of white-and-grey fur and muscle. And a wig. A wig of long purple locks that covered her right eye, fastened to her head with a black hood. He was so distracted by this he nearly missed the impressive scar that followed the curve of her right thigh. It was thicker than his arm. All in all, she would just barely fit into the door of his workplace. She could probably crush the carriage under her bulk. Not that she could even begin to squeeze inside.

The wolf greeted him with a nod. “You’re Compact Disk?” she asked. Her voice was deep, but that seemed fitting for a beast of her size.

“Most people say CD, but you can just say Disk—I mean, yes, that’s me. And you’re Fast Forward. And you’re…” Disk glanced at the strange bird, “Rewind?”

“Yessir,” the bird saluted with a wing, “At your service.”

“Right. Nice to meet you. Are you…” Disk turned to look at Forward again, and gulped, “…just going to walk next to us?”

“That’s the plan. Not much else I can do,” Forward replied, “I’m not gonna be offended that you two get a carriage ride or whatever. I’m built to walk long distances, y’know.”

“If you say so,” Disk said.

There wasn’t time to waste. Rewind flew down to the ground and stepped inside the carriage with Disk. Forward closed the door with her nose, and they were off.

“So,” Disk said, “This is all happening super fast, right?”

“Oh, very fast,” Rewind nodded, “And it’s not just on your end. You didn’t hear it from me, but apparently even the super superiors are scrambling to figure out what all this murder is about. There’s a bunch of rumors and speculation, but a lot of it is technically classified stuff, so yeah, we should probably keep it under wraps until it’s officially revealed.”

“Right. What do you know so far?” Disk had read over the report, but he had no idea what this weird bird’s job was, or if he was good at preparing for his work.

“So there’s this family of cats, some of them verified, and their house was broken into. The youngest cat died. And now the body is missing. Poof! Like it got up and walked away. And now they need a monitor, a guide, and a bodyguard to go out and see what’s what.”

It wasn’t the most professional summary, but it was mostly accurate. Disk nodded. “Alright. So maybe you understand my anxiety, then.”

“It’s not like we’re going to see a dead body or anything,” Rewind said, “Well. I mean, not in person.”

“I don’t want to see someone die, period! It makes my skin crawl.”

“It’s a murder investigation. It’s gonna happen.”

Which is why I absolutely did not want to do this, Disk thought.

“Hey, it’s not so bad,”Forward’s voice seemed to rumble in Disk’s chest, “You’ll still be doing the stuff you do in the office, just in a different office.”

“That’s the problem,” Disk whispered to himself. Then he switched topics, to the interrogation of his new partners. “So, Rewind, you’re our guide?”

“That’s right,” Rewind nodded, “I know most of this land like the back of my wing, and I know a lot of animals on top of that.Oh! So I’m your smooth-talker, too, actually!”

“I think my job is pretty self-explanatory,” Forward said.

“Yes, definitely.” Assuming they didn’t run into any mages, Forward would scare off any animal with ill intent with her presence alone.

Still, his previous fears stood. He was in no mood to see someone die. He was in no mood to be here at all.

💙

The rest of the carriage ride was carried out in silence. At least, Disk was silent. And so was Forward and the carriage driver.Rewind was a chatterbox, his beak never stopped moving for the whole trip, not as they wound between rolling hills and towards the border between forest and plains, not as the sun started to set and warm yellow streetlights lit up the horizon.

Mountains towered in the distance.Disk focused on their jagged silhouettes as Rewind continued talking. He supposed this could be worse. He might’ve been over-eager,but he was friendly. Friendlier than that shedding machine left to care for his room—

“Disk?” Rewind nudged Disk with his beak, “You look a little tense.”

“Sorry,” Disk said, “I was just thinking about… work.”

“Like what we’re about to do or what you were doing?”

“What I was doing. My boss left some cat in charge of my stuff, and I’m just thinking, they shed everywhere right? What if he breaks something, clogs all the wires with fur?”

“Uh. Well, I’m sure he’ll respect your space. You’re coworkers and all, and after we figure this out, he’ll want to be on your good side so work goes smooth. Right?”

“You’d think so, right?”

“That’s how society should work.”

The carriage slowed to a stop. The driver’s gruff voice followed shortly after, “We’re here.”

“Oh, alright,” Disk said. He pulled his bag close, opened the carriage door, and stepped out. Before them was a small town—no, more like a village. Not the type of place Disk imagined verified animals to live, given its… rustic nature.

But it had streetlamps. That was something.

Rewind followed him out, bid the carriage driver an enthusiastic farewell, and perched atop Forward’s head.

Disk, meanwhile, was irritated. How was he supposed to help here?There didn’t seem to be a piece of (advanced) tech in sight. Was he supposed to put his nose to the ground like a wolf and find the culprit that way? Agh! This was miserable!

A huge nose bumped into his rear, and he yelped. “What?!”

“Look alive, grumpy guts,”Forward said, “The house we’re looking for is down that way.”

Disk stood on two legs to get a better look. His head came up to Forward’s shoulder. Out in the center of the village, there was a simple mud and wood house that had been sequestered from the rest, a house that still had smears of red staining the grass at the entrance. A scraggly fence had been erected around it, little more than metal rods with rope strung between them.

“Oh dear,”Disk murmured.

“Can you handle blood, little guy?” Forward asked, “Some of their surveillance system is probably hidden on the lawn. You know, in rocks and stuff.”

Disk grimaced. “You do it. Has the inside been…?”

“It’s clean. Some detectives already inspected the scene while it was fresh.”

Fresh. What a way to describe it. “Okay,” Disk said, “I’ll go look around. And Rewind.”

“Yessir?” Rewind asked.

“How about you poke around and talk to some people?”

Rewind saluted and flew off. Disk approved of this ally, but Forward had yet to prove herself.

The two of them headed towards the house, bypassed the fence, and began their inspection of the area. Disk beelined for the entrance,averting his eyes from the remnants of gore on the grass.

The interior was clean as promised. There was a disconcerting smell of blood and cleaning product in the air, but there was no sign of the murder that had taken place, except that some furniture had been removed, and there were no rugs on the floors. Thank goodness.

According to the report, the monitors living here had hidden their surveillance station behind a wall of family pictures. Those pictures were now taken from the house, either for cleaning or because the family wanted them back—or both. So, if he just went through the living room, out into the individual bedrooms, into the master bedroom…

Ah!There it was.

A series of monitors, all oddly shaped so they would fit behind a certain picture frame, loomed over a small, recently cleared desk. With the pictures and the mechanisms that kept them in place pried from the walls, Disk was free to work his magic, although he wished he could be doing this under nicer circumstances. From there, it was a simple matter of using the password he’d been given, inspecting the last forty-eight hours of footage, and investigating whatever other files he could find.There was some physical damage to the system, and potentially magic-based tampering,but with his deft hand, he should be able to do what he needed without locking himself out.

And yet, he found himself moving slowly, delaying everything for as long as possible. Disk was dreading this. Dreading seeing what had happened in this house. Dreading the inevitable anxiety spike it would cause.His heart skipped a beat as he found the security footage. When he clicked to open it, that one action seemed to last an eternity.

The first thing he noticed was that the footage had been tampered with or corrupted.It consisted of obvious, large smears of glitching and discoloration that jumped and flickered across the screen so much that Disk’s eyes hurt. It would be possible to restore somewhat, he thought, but even then the colors wouldn’t be accurate, and some images would be blurry or incomplete.

That might be for the best, in this case, Disk thought. He scrubbed through what he could with the time given. There were flashes of the intruder, but they were too obscured to see properly.The only sure thing was that the creature was massive,about Forward’s size, actually. They hadn’t entered so much as wedged as much of themselves as they could, and it just so happened that the youngest of the family was within reach.

Disk fast forwarded past that. Everyone already knew what had happened, after all, and there were detectives tracking down clues and suspects and motives.What Media,and the victim’s family,needed to know was what happened to the body.

He sifted through the other footage from different cameras hidden around the house until he found the ones from outside, and…

There was nothing.The footage was an error screen.

Disk went back as far as he could. He even braved glimpses of the murder taking place.

Still, nothing.

One moment there was a little paw lying there, the next it was twitching, and then right as it started to move, the footage cut out. Had the murderer destroyed the cameras? Why?

Well, Disk could guess the answer to that question, actually.The cameras would have revealed the location the culprit fled in. It seemed inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but he’d never committed a murder, what did he know?

He also noted that final scene, right before the camera had cut. It had almost seemed like the victim was about to get back up again, although that could be footage corruption… Once it was cleaned, by him or someone else, it might tell a different story, but that’s what it looked like to him. If there was a mage involved, it very well could be the case.He didn’t know a lick about magic, but maybe it could bring people back to life, maybe the murderer had killed the victim and brought her to life again… but to what end?

Disk sighed. This was a detective’s job. He collected the rest of the data off the computer, corruption and all,and left to check on Forward.With luck, once he had finished inspecting all this stuff, he could be back home before the week was up.