Minnie prowled perilously across the pavement. She noted every creaking breath of wind, every putrid city night-scent, every glancing ray of moonlight and touch of cool stone beneath her comfy shoes— her senses alive with the night.

She was investigating a series of robberies. They had been stealthy, like herself, but they’d made one mistake. It was the flaw of hubris— they’d left a card, a black and white selection of stationary with an owl imprinted onto it.

There had been other clues, of course, namely several feathers, and bird turds. They all pointed to a bird themed villain. Minnie found this refreshing. It was past time these losers got some style.

It was this card, though, that gave Minnie the lead she needed. She’d thwarted an avian robbery, taken a card, and brought it back to the lab.

While most kinds of tests yielded nothing, and certainly nothing standard, Minnie found that, with enough finiggleling, she could find that the chemical composition resembled the stationary made in Germany. The rest was just tracking the migration habits of birds, travel time, analyzing the patterns in avian feces and feathers, and other standard legwork.

She had been listening in to the conversation of local construction workers when they’d mentioned the place she was prowling towards now.

“Some weirdo living in that old warehouse,” the first construction worker had said.

“Yeah, that guy really gives me the creeps, with all his birds and electronics.”

“You’d think he was a technic Cinderella,” said the first.

The second gave him a funny look. “Okay...”

That was all they’d said, but it was all had Minnie needed.

She crept towards the old warehouse, staying invisible, her carefully steady breath practiced and silent. She avoided three fairly obvious traps, then a few less obvious ones. She went slowly. A flock of birds flew into the warehouse, carrying fiddly little machine parts.

Then she sprung a surprisingly imperceptible trap. A giant, spherical cage slammed up around her from the ground. Minnie ground her teeth and got out her lockpicks. There was no obvious lock, though. In fact, the cage was of an ingenious holistic design. Minnie searched for weak points, carefully pushing and pulling each part of the cage, but none of them had any give.

“Ah. I see we’ve caught a creature, Carl,” a nasally voice said. It came from a silhouette outlined in the doorway of the warehouse.

A second figure appeared beside it, and a bored voice said “Yes, master.”

They came out of the warehouse, revealing themselves as two men. One was rail thin and twitchy, and the other was a shorter man with a hump.

The first came up to the bars of her cage, looking fascinated. “There’s nothing here, Carl,” he said in the same nasally tone.

“Fascinating,” Carl said, though his eyes remained dull and uninterested.

Minnie felt a sneeze coming on, and fought hard to swallow it.

“What could have triggered it?” the nose said. Minnie realized he seemed perpetually fascinated.

Then the unfortunate thing happened. The terrible thing. She sneezed.

“Ah!” the captor cried, comprehending at once. “It’s invisible.”

“It’s a ghost!” Carl shrieked.

The nose stroked Carl’s hump comfortingly. “It’s alright, Carl. This is simply a specimen of fantastic genetic experimentation. Cutting edge— beyond cutting edge, no doubt, in its day.” He rubbed his hands together. “Drag the cage inside, Carl, we’re going to have to study this fascinating thing.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Carl was much stronger than he appeared. He simply lifted the cage— Minnie inside— and walked with it through a large garage door. The nasally man waited inside.

He rubbed his hands together maniacally.

“First things first, we have to make it appear,” he explained to Carl. “Which we should be able to accomplish—” He put on a gas mask. “By simple reduction to unconsciousness.”

“Okay,” Carl said, watching his master turn on a spigot, releasing white mist into the room. The nose was protected by his gas mask, and Carl seemed simply unaffected.

Minnie gasped, grasping at the bars of the cage. “I’ll get you,” she whispered to the nasally man dramatically. But he didn’t hear her.

Rori frowned deeply at the scene before her. This Radio Shack was the twelfth in a long chain of machinery thefts. There had been avian evidence at all the sites, but all the police had bothered to collect were these weird business card things. But this site seemed different. The evidence seemed… less. There was an odd depression in each of the gray-white splatters, the trademark business card was missing, and there wasn’t a feather to be seen. Unless Rori was much mistaken, someone had beaten her to the scene. So she settled for collecting data on what had been taken.

When she left, her sense of accomplishment was steadily dropping. It seemed like she was only getting further from catching the bird weirdo.

“What’s the owl for?” Alfred, the young intern, asked Rori later, as she sat in the office examining the card.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she answered tiredly. “Maybe whoever left it thinks it’s just the best animal ever.”

“Well, they’d be wrong,” Al said. “The obvious best animal is a bat. That’s why Batman chose it.”

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I’m nearly graduated, you know,” said Fred (or Al). “ Soon I won’t have to be in school ever.” He ducked his head. “Also, I’m suspended for setting the tech lab on fire.”

“Why would you do that? I thought that was your favorite class.”

“I was trying to sauter a bundle of wires,” Al(or Fred) said. “I figured I could just do it quick— no biggie. But it was a biggie.”

Rori sighed loudly. “Did you have something to tell me?”

AlorFred squirmed. “Can you be my wingman?”

“For what?” She sounded apathetic, but this seemed like it might be a lot more interesting than this dead-end puzzle.

“Well, you know the local lab?” He shifted nervously. “There’s this really hot girl who works there, and it’s almost five o’clock, which is when she gets off work— and I was wondering, could you come with me and help me talk to her?”

“You’ve been stalking a research scientist?” Rori had to see how this ended. Very, very badly. No doubt about it. She stood, stretching.

“Not stalking!” FredorAl argued. “Just... watching. Batman watches people.”

“Well, let’s go tell her that.” She strode towards the exit.

“Well, I— okay!” And he followed Rori out of the room.

“What do you mean, she’s not here?” Alorfred demanded of the suspecting scientists.

“I mean,” one of the scientists replied. “She’s not here. She was supposed to be back from her vacation yesterday, but nobody’s seen her.” He scratched his head. “We’re actually kind of worried.”

As they argued, Rori looked over the lab. There were various types of chemical safety equipment and beakers. The variety of beakers was especially interesting, with all the different bulbs and cones and swirls, but Rori felt drawn to a space with a microscope and a centrifuge. There, on the counter, were some very out of place items for a chemical lab: several different kinds of feathers, and a black and white business card with an owl.

“Hey!” the researcher said, properly upset by now. “That’s Minnie’s stuff— what do you guys want with her, anyways? She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“That remains to be seen,” Rori said. “Where did this card come from?”

“I don’t know— Minnie is always collecting stuff. Fiddling with it in the laboratory. I think she just gets bored. She doesn’t mean any harm by it.”

“You said she went on vacation?”

“Yeah,” the researcher said distrustfully.

“Where?”

“I’m going to need to see some credentials.”

There was a moment of silence. Rori pulled out her badge.

He eyed her suspiciously, then said, “Katzeburg, Germany.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Come on, Al.”

“We still haven’t found Minnie,” FredorAl whined.

“Don’t worry, we will.”