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Detective Khargana, female green Wocky and Space Station
Technological Institute graduate, woozily woke to find herself incapable of
movement. Wait, that's wrong. She could move, just barely.
She couldn't see—that was a total no-brainer.
She was sure she wasn't blind, though she was so unreasonably tired, she could
barely open her eyes. So, logically then, the room was pitch black. That was
not a good sign. Something wasn't right... But she was too woozy, and everything
was blurry.
She had to think calm. Okay, her paws, fore and
back, were all tied. They seemed to be tied against something stiff, smooth,
and yet very hard.
First things first... She flexed her paws and
toes just so she could feel what was holding her in place. She had just barely
enough room to feel what she was tied with. It felt like wire. Wire? Where...
? How... ?
Wire, she thought, tying me to whatever.
She was lying down, and not tied upright. But what was she tied too? Where was
she? Why couldn't she remember what had happened? Ohh, too many questions.
Okay, she thought, I've gotta think
calm. But it’s hard to when things are so blurry and thinking hurts...
So, so tired...
Her head ached, and she could hear her ears hum
in the absolute silence. No, not absolute, and not her ears. Was that a computer
humming in the background? But, the only place in Neopia where there are computers
is--!
Her heart started thumping. No, she thought,
I will not panic. I haven't gotten this far as a detective by panicking.
She forcefully slowed her breathing, and tried to think. What had she done?
Why was she here? She couldn't think straight. Her head really hurt.
Just as she drifted off into unconsciousness,
she thought of two silly facts: 1) whoever it was had taken her vest, where
she stored all her detective/inventor junk, and 2) Tigersquash, she had one
mean headache.
*****
(Flashback)
Stand_Off, a sweet Blue Zafara that goes by Tanny, for obvious reasons if you
know what a standoff is, walked into her best friend's well kept and very organized
Private Investigator’s office. Well, it was usually well kept and organized...
"Khargana!" she gasped, glaring around at the
huge mess that her friend was standing in the middle of, staring at something,
her green back towards Tanny.
The Wocky's office had been completely trashed.
Everywhere Tanny looked there were bits and pieces of this and that, trash,
papers, smashed glass, etc.
Every file had been pulled open and sorted through,
the obvious method having been throwing on the floor anything whoever-it-was-that-had-done-this
didn't care for. The wastebasket had been overturned and it's contents scattered.
Sakhmetian vases had been smashed on the floor to reveal hidden contents, which
for some reason had not been taken despite their obvious value.
Even several cabinets the Zafara knew from experience
should be locked had been smashed into, by an obviously strong felon, or machine
come to think of it. Even the coat/hat rack, on which Khargana would hang her
signature ground-length, light brown suede vest when she wasn't wearing it,
had been broken in half and thrown on the floor.
Nothing appeared to be missing, just utterly
destroyed, except the furniture itself, which had been scratched and ripped
open with half their contents scattered about. So, why?
Khargana didn't seem to hear her friend's summons;
she just stared at her desk in the midst of the wreckage.
"Khargana!" shouted the blue Zafara.
The green Wocky shook her head to clear it before
whisking around, her vest whirling behind her like a trench coat without the
long, bulky sleeves. She was still obviously in apparent shock over something.
But it couldn't just be the office. That had
been trashed before. Not too many times, but enough so it shouldn't shock a
hardened P.I.
"Snap out of it, Khar!" said Tanny, trying to
relax her friend's frazzled nerves.
She couldn't let on how truly worried she was.
Khargana the Wocky Detective was known for keeping her cool and always knowing
what to do in any situation. (And I mean any situation. As in, can stare down
the Snowager into obedience to answering routine questions when looking for
a lost Lupe pup.)
In all the years that Stand_Off (the blue Zafara)
had known Khargana, she'd perhaps once before seen her shocked like this. It
was a very rare thing.
Khargana shook her head again and turned to stare
at a large empty spot on her desk, which she had been blocking Tanny's view
of, oblivious to the rest of the vandalism.
Stand_Off walked up to her friend's side, and
found herself staring.
"They got that wacky briefcase of yours! That
thing that won you honors at that school-thing you went to on the Space Station!
The invention you chose to create for you final whatever test, err, whatever!"
she managed to gasp.
Tanny frowned in disgust over her choice of words.
"Um, that thing that means so much to you that stores all that information and
junk for you..." She seemed to like that description even less, even frowning.
Khargana nodded, still lost for words. Her memo-briefcase,
that could store anything and acted as a sort of computer itself, since normal
Space-Station computers are way to huge, bulky, and advanced to be mass-manufactured,
or even made at all, here on Neopia Prime. The very thing she treasured most
because she had made it herself. It stored all of her projects and files...
everything. And it was gone, stolen from her own home.
With that last thought the Wocky Detective shook
herself all over, like a Lupe after a rainstorm, and seemed to snap back into
her former self.
"Stolen," she whispered to herself, and growled
dangerously, revealing pointed teeth in an very primeval facial expression.
"Nobody," she whispered dangerously, "nobody
steals from Khargana the Wocky Detective and gets away with it. I didn't get
my investigator's license for nothing!"
Tanny shuddered from head to toe. Something was
definitely wrong. No one in their right mind stole from a detective. Especially
not one as good as Khargana at investigating and throwing criminals in the slammer.
Not to mention her scary array of little gizmos she had put together from old
and spare parts her Space Station and Alien pals sent her. (You know, the ones
that make things for Central Intelligence and The Underground.)
"But why, Khar? You're a detective! Why would
anyone steal from you?! They'd know you'd come after them. I've a really bad
feeling about this... Should I get my sisters?"
(Stand_Off had two sisters. One was a complete
'girly-girl', Adriana_Flyer, a red Uni who rarely thought of anyone but herself.
The other was a, well, I suppose street-kid is a rather crude description, but
nonetheless accurate. CarissaOfire, blue Shoyru, ridiculously happy-go-lucky,
and extremely clumsy. Because of her 'bad upbringing' she could never speak
basic Neopian properly.)
Khargana shook her head, giving a negative answer
to Tanny's question, as she searched through the pockets of her long vest. Her
logic was momentarily shoved aside, she was so mad at the jerk who had stolen
her special one-of-a-kind briefcase. Her whiskers twitched and her teeth ground
together in held back fury.
"Bad enough you know of this, Tanny. Whoever
did this is no pushover. They could probably smash three little girls, especially
since none of you can fight worth Tombola beans."
She found the thing she was looking for and pulled
it out with a flourish. She flicked it on and a blue mist flowed out of it,
covering every surface.
"Hey! We've knocked some toughies in our time,
Khar! I think you need all the help you can get!"
Then she glanced around at the fading mist. "And
what on Neopia was that?"
The Wocky smiled proudly, her anger retreating
slowly. "Professor Chani sent it to me! She didn't need it after she discovered
Spyders don't leave oil-prints. It's called a blue duster, after that one scientific
process Chan invented involving--"
Tanny blinked, not comprehending whatever it
was her friend was talking about. Khargana sighed, again wishing her friends
were more in-tuned with scientific proceedings.
"Okay, it's a print-oil tracer. She used it to
trace these invisible Spyders. It traces and covers oil from any live, um, 'thing'
with a special harmless chemical I asked Kauvara to whip up for exactly this
purpose." The Wocky frowned, obviously not pleased with that plain, simple explanation.
She pulled a small handheld from the same pocket
and plugged it into the mist-release device. Pressing a button and the screen
lit up red.
"Flick off the lights, will ya, Tanny?" The Zafara
reached over and did so.
Suddenly the room was lit much like one of those
photographic developing rooms. "Only revealed under infrared," said Khargana
softly, as purplish paw prints appeared on the floor. Too many paw prints.
Khargana pressed a button that deleted her paw
prints and Tanny's. Now they just had one trail to follow.
Well, one trail, several prints.
Khargana smiled and pulled out a small notepad.
As she took notes, she mumbled facts to herself.
Tanny stood still so as not to mess any tracks
as her friend mumbled things like "Maybe... no, no, too small. Perhaps... no,
to large. But this one... It resembles... no, there are traces... That's odd,
but maybe... "
Finally, the Green Wocky stood up straight and
smiled in that wicked way she gets right before some criminal is about to get
busted.
"Got it!" she whispered. She whipped around to
Tanny, forgetting she had wished the Blue Zafara wasn't there a minute ago.
"It's gotta be--"
*BANG*
The client door slammed open inward. Unfortunately,
Khargana was standing right in front of it. Caught unawares, she door slammed
her in the back with a force strong enough to blow her across the room into
a wall. Very hard, may I add?
"Anyone got the number of that train? Whoo-weee!"
babbled the detective, as she crashed from the wall to the floor.
The huge shadow pulled something drastically
resembling one of Khargana's stolen gizmos out of its pocket, and, before Tanny
could react, a beam shot out of it. Traveling at the speed of light, it instantaneously
hit the Zafara, who slumped to the ground unconscious.
Dizzy, Khargana lurched shakily to her unsteady
paws. She couldn't move fast enough to aim a single kick. Her brain was spinning
to fast for her to do much anything. The huge figure walked over toward the
Wocky, and slammed something very hard on her head.
*****
(Sticking with Tanny)
A few minutes after that sudden episode (Khargana's stun beam doesn't last
very long, normally it doesn't need to), Stand_Off woke with a start. The blue
Zafara, feeling perfectly fine, jumped to her feet and glanced around.
Everything was exactly the same, even to the
lights being switched off. Except that Khargana was gone.
Khargana, ace-detective, had been abducted. Because
no way would she have left Tanny without a clue, alone, unconscious, on the
floor of her office. Especially if she knew the Zafara would wake in just a
minute or two.
Now it was Tanny's turn to growl, granted it
was not nearly as loud or dangerous as the Wocky Detective's. Stand_Off was
a shy girl. The sweet, goody-two-shoe type. The one who always brought teachers
apples and made cookies for picnics. The responsible oldest of three sisters
that interrupted fights before they started. I mean, for goodness' sake, she's
a girl Zafara! Her uncharacteristic growl lowered and got louder.
"That's IT! No one messes with my best friend
and gets away with it! I'm certainly not named Stand_Off for nothing! Even though
I do hate confrontations. And I haven't been Khargana's friend this long without
picking up a few tricks…" she mumbled ferociously to herself.
She looked around the room. Nothing here could
be of any use. That huge figure had moved to fast to be easily traced, and her
knowledge of footprints was zilch. She couldn’t tell a Uni’s from an Ixi’s.
Couldn't even tell a human's from a Grundo's, and these appeared as if they
could be either, both, Buzzes, umm, and whatever else had long feet. Paws? Whatever...
the stupid things didn't even look the same...
She growled and slammed her fist onto Khargana’s
bare desk. She was ridiculously annoyed with herself. There had to be something
she could do. A real detective could think of something. Khargana could’ve…
Then she saw two tiny gadgets on the ground where
Khargana, and her precious vest of treasures, had slammed into the wall. "Bingo,"
she whispered, and carefully walked towards the wall and knelt to examine them.
To be continued...
Stay Tuned! Let me know what you think and feel free to ask me questions!
P.S. Can you guess what the gizmos are?
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