"I bring you…!"

Vicente Xaxalpa set his glasses into a pocket and pulled a monkey-tailed girl out of a duffel bag. He held her up to his chest for a moment and set her upon a metal table. She balled her fists.

"Sol Yulaan!"

[https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/358adaa8-4b0b-48dd-894e-f19e4aa9655d/deqh25d-d2fdff24-1d47-4888-82f7-280424578738.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1600,q_75,strp/pulling_yulaan_out_of_a_duffel_bag_by_yuli_ban_deqh25d-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTYwMCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzM1OGFkYWE4LTRiMGItNDhkZC04OTRlLWYxOWU0YWE5NjU1ZFwvZGVxaDI1ZC1kMmZkZmYyNC0xZDQ3LTQ4ODgtODJmNy0yODA0MjQ1Nzg3MzguanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.j0n1bGg76JzY6rBD7hXwpIVYe50P4h2jxP_Bdj2l6ac][https://www.deviantart.com/yuli-ban/art/Pulling-Yulaan-out-of-a-duffel-bag-890992417]

Dr. DuBarry blinked. He blinked again.

"Vicente, what is this? What did you get yourself into?" He went full Travolta, looking back and forth at Vicente and nothing in particular.

Yulaan huffed and looked away. The dirty skin and wildness of her hair gave both men the sense that she had been dredged up from some savage primeval age or perhaps the pages of a blood-and-thunder paperback, but it was the guttural noises and grunts that convinced them. The girl's tail dipped over the edge and wrapped first around the main support leg of the table and then into the bag, and she pulled from it a bone-cast scimitar. The doctor stepped back and raised his eyebrow at the miasma of motion threatening his face.

"Yulaan," snapped Vicente. "Put the sword down." He slipped his hands into his pockets for a brief moment, then with a hurried gesture, Yulaan lowered the scimitar with a huff and dropped it back into the bag where it fell to a dull 'thunk!' And then Vicente snickered and said, "She's a wily one. She loves messing with me as is."

Dr. DuBarry slouched in a hearty chum's laugh and said, "Where did you find her? Or is this one of your cousins?"

Flatly, Vicente said, "A flamboyant blue-skinned elf-eared man from another universe gave her to me." He locked eyes with the doctor, his mouth pulled into his dimples.

He pulled his own mouth in and turned his head down as he snickered. "Okay. Sure. What's the tail made of? It looks really good, almost Hollywood-tier." He stepped forward to feel its texture, and flinched when the appendage lurched away from his hand.

The doctor's eyes grew glossy and voidlike as he ran his fingers across Yulaan's leathery pelt. Repeatedly he met Vicente's gaze and said, "Oh, it's real. So she's a cryptid, then?" Dollar signs flashed in his eyes. Such a humanoid creature, with such a peculiar trait!

Yulaan curled herself up into a ball on the table and aimed her head towards DuBarry. Was she looking at him? Where were her eyes? Hidden behind long bangs of hair that reached her cheeks. How did she see? Yet the uncanny vibe DuBarry felt gave him a need to reassure himself, for he could not rule out the possibility that he'd lift those black bangs and see flesh where this girl's eyes should have been.

No, that was silly.

"That tail, though..." DuBarry stood as if in the presence of an atomic bomb, criticality unknown. The tip of Yulaan's tail flipped and thumped on the narrow side of the table in ways that unsettled him.

Or was this all still an elaborate prank? Blinking red lights appeared in his peripheral vision constantly— the silly wink of a prank camera that vanished whenever he turned to look. A tension festered between him and Vicente: at any second, the Man in the Zoot Suit's mouth would move and give him the all-clear to laugh and begin treating an actual exotic animal. The girl would comb her hair, pull off her tail, and leave, and then something like a Bili ape or El Chupacabra would walk in, as per normal.

No such luck.

Nothing except the jagged blade made of bone, one which he noted even in the shadows of the bag seemed to have many off-colored splotches.

"It's crazy how feral she looks, isn't it..." Vicente took a seat in one of the blue plastic chairs and crossed his arms and legs. "Especially that cloth she wears."

"It's a pelt," Dr. DuBarry said, rubbing his chin.

Vicente laughed at the blank observation and heavy tone. "Indeed! Yeah, it is."

The vet stepped forward to examine the copious crisscrossing scars along her arms. "Huh, I didn't even see the one on her cheek." He ran his thumb across her cheek under her right eye, and Yulaan bore her teeth again. Suddenly, a spark of static electricity shocked his thumb. He recoiled with a yelp. "Okay, okay, little miss savage! Don't eat me."

He wrapped his finger in a towelette, then approached again. He stopped and focused on her mouth. Her gums seemed fine, but they had the strangest pallor. Indeed, the more he studied her features, the more obvious the faint blackness became. "So she has white skin, right?"

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Vicente blew his cheeks and shrugged. "She looks gray to me."

"That's what I thought, but I noticed her gums and lips have a faint dark hue to them." He grabbed a magnifying glass and peered in as close as he could without invading her personal space. "I don't see any fleshy coloration on her, but I don't see any blueness on her fingers or lips."

"What're you hypothesizing, doc?"

DuBarry pulled himself back, flicking his bloodied hand under a faucet. "She may have black blood, but I'm unsure."

"Insane. Purely insane if true. You know, it would be interesting if it turned out she's actually an aswang and I was bamboozled."

With subtle smacks of his lips keeping him calm, the doctor brought over a stethoscope and listened to her heart as best he could with his own pounding in his ears. Nothing sounded distressing, at least at first. Yet as he listened closer, he had the faintest sensation that the girl's heartbeat was an octave too low, as if it was enlarged or pumping ten times more blood than should exist in a body her size.

Studying Yulaan's clothes closer, Vicente said, "It's like a classic caveman pelt. If only it had a tiger or leopard print." His fingers squeezed and admired the leathery texture. "Not entirely sure what the substance is, but..." Vicente's voice became low. "I don't think I want to know."

With haste the doctor pulled the stethoscope away and rushed to the other side of the room to log the results. "132 beats per minute. Extremely high, but..." He pulled the sides of his mouth in and coughed. "I can't tell you if that's healthy or not, at least for… whatever she is."

Dr. DuBarry stepped away to again run cold water over his wound in his stainless steel sink. "That vertebra, though. Why is she wearing it? It doesn't look like it's doing anything for her eyes, surely."

"I dunno, good sir. This hair though! Ever heard of Siouxsie and the Banshees?"

The doctor laughed. "My little sister was the biggest fan of them and the Cure. Of course, of course. I think I get what you're saying."

"Yeah, it's like if Siouxsie Sioux stuck her finger in an electrical outlet. I never thought I'd see hair like that in real life outside of a, you know, a goth club or an anime convention. And you know, now I think I know why." He looked at the doctor's hand and back to her.

After tending to the wound further, DuBarry brushed aside her bangs, checked her flaming golden eyes with a light, and saw that they did not respond to any increases in brightness, nor did she flinch. He did, however, note that a massive scar ran the length of her forehead.

"I can't say just how old she is, but she's more heavily scarred than Peter the lion. And he was both a hunter Alpha and poached multiple times. Craziness."

Next he asked, "May I get you to step on that scale over there?" Yulaan quickly jumped to the floor and hobbled over.

"See, she understands English. I have no idea why. Why would interdimensional aliens know English?"

This was brushed off for another question. "So why does she do that anyway? You mentioned some injuries, but this is a fairly pronounced limp."

"I'm not entirely clear on it myself. But it doesn't take much imagination to guess."

At the very last second, both men heard the sound of extreme tension and it came straight from where Yulaan stood. She lifted a foot and set it down atop the scale.

"Yulaan! Yulaan, wait, stop it!" The machine collapsed inwards as if made of aluminum foil. "Stop it! Stop it!"

She had, in fact, not stopped it. Rather she put her other foot on the scale, completing the machine's total destruction. No number registered. And where she stood, she left broken tiles and deeply depressed plaster as if her weight had suddenly octupled.

Vicente ran his hands across his head. "Goddammit... Sir, I'm so sorry. I should have told her to not bother with the scale."

"Ah, it's alright. Though I'm... confused."

Vicente shifted about in his chair and said, "Yulaan, get off the scale and come back up here. We told you, you can't weigh so much. Things can't handle your true weight."

"True weight?"

She saluted him, and DuBarry's face scrunched as if a clown materialized in the room.

"Oh, a comedian," Vicente spat. "You're doing this on purpose." He turned. "This is my new burden. See that? This is what I have to deal with."

He turned back and his eyes boggled. DuBarry's eyes boggled. All four eyes boggled until they nearly fell out their sockets.

Yulaan was floating— her body suspended in midair as if by wires. She slipped over to and above the table, and all 'round her also floated various medical instruments in a maelstrom. Electricity crackled around her body— little static sparks dancing and sizzling in her hair, off of her pelt, as she herself cackled at the mayhem. Then it stopped.

She set herself down to curl herself back into a ball. All the instruments and notes and papers and debris rained done, none out of place from where they hadn't been before. Dr. DuBarry clutched his notepad as a shield, staring agape.

The tempest subsided at Yulaan's will, her grin all fangs and wild triumph and her tail lashing.

This brought down a stubborn lump from DuBarry's throat. "Well...!" The pleasantness and contentment finally broke as he once again felt the uncanniness win. "Screw that!"

"Yeah." Vicente threw himself back into the chair with enough force to slide into the wall. His exhale mimicked the one from before. Maybe it was loud enough that passersby outside still turned their heads. Vicente ran his hands through his hair and kept his gawking eyes hard on the supernatural entity sitting before him. "Actually, you know what she looks like?"

Yulaan turned her head towards him as if she too had become interested in this gossip, while Dr. DuBarry scrambled towards his desk. "Phew, um... I can't say I expected a girl with a monkey tail to float in front of me today."

"She's like a Yahoo. A superpowered Yahoo. Maybe we found one. Think I'll fetch a Lilliputian next?"

"You know what?" Dr. DuBarry packed his satchel. "It's time for a vacation for this old man." With that, he strode towards the door. "I'll leave the cryptid trade behind for now— riches are worthless if one isn't alive to spend them. I think I'll go to the Bahamas, lay low with a young bird or two— very posh." Vicente watched him go, Yulaan smirking. The door slammed shut. They exchanged a glance, with Yulaan's smirk widening to a full grin.

Vicente rubbed his hands against the bridge of his nose and sighed. Yulaan's tail slapped the edge of the table.

"I told you he'd run."

"That you did, Yulaan. That you did."