by Ethagon

The sky was especially turquoise today. Even for the Backdoor this intensity was quite unusual.
A man looking outside the window of his mansion briefly considered changing his suit, but decided against it. If he'd go out today it would be in white, matching the family's fell colour. Apart from the sky he also glimpsed two pedestrians making their way to his mansion.
He got to the door just a moment before they rang the bell. The door opened to two surprised human faces. It wasn't clear to him if they were surprised by the premature opening or if they were novices to the occult art world and were wondering why the man who opened had the head of a goat.
"You're speaking with a member of the Whytefel family. To whom do I owe the pleasure?"
The left face answered "Lannah" while the right one took a moment to respond "Allison Chao."
"We're searching for Edvin Whytefel. Something was stolen", said 'Lannah'.
A spark of interest went through Edvin's eyes. "Come in."
He led the two ladies to the room he had designated for the few clients he got and started to serve his guests and him from the wine in the room.
Only after his guests had been seated and provided with drinks did he start to talk.
"So what is the stolen artwork?"
Ms Chao narrowed her eyes. "How do you know it's artwork?"
He chuckled, glass in hand. "This is the Backdoor. Everything worth stealing here is art."
'Lannah' continued. "We lost a collection of three-dimensional cogs in pop-art style."
Ms Chao took out a sketch of the cogs in question while 'Lannah' kept talking. "They can move although we're not completely sure when they do it and in what direction they go."
"Put them in any liquid and they will cause increasingly strong currents in it. There seems to be some sense to the direction of the current, but we haven't figured it out yet.
Whytefel nodded and ate a piece of his glass. "Is the Artist known?"
No direct answer. Now he was certain that both were new to this world or they would not be so surprised by him eating something that would be inedible to the unoccult.
He raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
"Sorry. Honestly, we don't know if he's known in this universe. He was known under 'COG' in hers." 'Lannah' indicated Ms Chao.
Maybe not completely new if they were aware of universes. Perhaps just unfamiliar with the artistic side of things. "I haven't heard of him. How long have you both been in this universe?"
"We both arrived today in the Backdoor. I've been here before briefly, but it's Allison's first time."
"Does the artwork have any special meaning to you?"
"Why should I tell you that?", said Ms Chao, arms folded.
"Well, the more details I know about this case the faster I can solve it."
"You haven't even said yet if you'll take the case."
"If you wish we can talk about that first. The theft seems interesting enough that I'd be willing to look into it. I'm sure whoever recommended me told you about my rates?"
"We were only told the garden is the serpent's place," said 'Lannah'.
"Oh." They were Serpent's Hand. "Oh, of course. Under friends, I of course have different payment options. This wouldn't by any chance be a favour from White Crow you're calling in?"
'Lannah' shook her head. Shame.
"In that case, I can offer you to pay me with art, as long as it's of a certain quality."
"Are you going to do the same with the art as you just did to that glass?" Ms Chao asked.
Whytefel let a slight smile on his face. "Likely. I think art is best appreciated through its culinary qualities."
They hid their reactions better this time.
'Lannah' continued. "What art would be acceptable?"
"I haven't had extra-universal in quite a while, so let's take one cog from the collection you're searching for as a reference point, yes?"
He could see the refusal in Ms Chao's eyes, so he quickly continued. "If you find me a better artwork I would accept that as payment as well. Of course, I only expect to be paid at all if I'm successful in finding your thief and the stolen goods."
'Lannah' kept silent. It was up to Ms Chao, after all. "How fast can you get it back?"
"I'm confident I can get it done by the end of this day."
"And we don't have to pay you if you exceed that deadline?"
Whytefell left out a slight laugh. "That is the least I can do."
Ms Chao nodded. "I think those are agreeable terms."
"Wonderful. So where did the theft occur?"
'Lannah' took the lead again. "We rented a place at Bob's. The Collection was inside a locked box that was part of a," she glanced at Ms Chao. "setup we had running -have running still."
"The box wasn't just locked, there were tricks to it," Ms Chao added. "If you tried to open it normally the box would just glide through your fingers and flush around the whole room and leave behind this sticky trail. Doesn't matter though. They took the whole box."
"I must say it's quite the surprise this happened at one of Bob's apartments. Normally it ensures relatively strict security."
'Lannah' scoffed. "Yeah, well. Bob hasn't lived up to that."
"It should be the best in the city outside of Do-It-Yourself, so I'm afraid I can't recommend a different staying place for the time. I'd advise you, however, to stay away from the Deep End. All apartments there are owned by Kqälig, some Shark Guy. Uses the place to trap Boxers that visit this universe occasionally."
Ms Chao nodded in thought.
Whytefel stood up. "That will be all for now. If you have any more details to share with me, you have my card."
He saw his guests off at the door and they went their separate ways. Edvin Whytefel walked directly to Bob's apartment complex. He was thrilled to have a case again.

It didn't take long after he arrived at Bob's apartment complex before Bob turned up. Whytefel wasn't sure how it did it, but it had an uncanny sense of anything happening near its apartments.
Bob wasn't the real name of the creature that now stood before him. Rather it was an uncreative nickname, likely based on how much Bob resembled a Blobfish albeit with more arms. The landlord was about to reach into its mouth before Whytefel interrupted it.
"We can talk about business later. I'm here on behalf of a client. Could you bring me to the room of a 'Lannah' and a Ms Chao?"
The creature looked at him for a moment. Then it gave in and led him to the apartment without Whytefel having to say anything else.
The whole apartment complex could be described as one big artwork based on the noble idea of artists being able to pay rent with their artwork. Bob, an integral part of that artwork, was one of the few in this city who knew how to truly appreciate art. A lot of the 'rent' ended up in its belly. But an apartment complex had costs to cover so if the landlord deemed the art of high enough quality it was sold to the likes of him, Marshall Carter & Dark Ltd. and very rarely the Medician Academy of Occult Art. The last one usually had the artist also getting something out of the deal.
Naturally, as one of this apartment complex sponsors by proxy, the landlord had no real justification to not let him inspect the apartments.
The landlord didn't let him out of its eyes when Whytefel entered the apartment. That burglary had occurred in this room was evident. Most lockers were only closed half-heartedly and the whole apartment looked rummaged through.
There were no signs of entry through the window.
He also saw the setup that 'Lannah' had spoken about. Some kind of spell matrix encircled around a botch and a still-spinning globe. He touched the botch with a spare pencil and sure enough, it was sticky.
Nothing else in the apartment was sticky, so the box must have been stolen without trying to open it.
He looked closer at the spell matrix and the globe. He thought back to the Unified Thamautology books he once ate. This would be a scrying spell, trying to reveal the position of a specific person. Given that the spell had used The Cog Collection as its focus, it was obvious what the spell was searching for.
With both the focus and the target of the spell being extra universal it would be a matter of seconds to find the target's exact location if both were in the same city, and a matter of hours if both were on the same earth.
That was with the focus. Now that the focus was gone the spell would take days if it didn't turn up empty entirely.
"How long were they gone between their last visit and the one before that?"
The landlord held up three fingers.
"Three hours?"
The creature nodded.
"Did you notice anything notable in that time?"
The creature remained still.
Whytefel sighed. "Mind if I eat that door handle? I'll pay you double the price plus our usual business."
The creature remained still for a moment. Then it nodded.
"Much obliged." Whytefel took out his special set of knife and fork and began to slice the door handle. He put the slices on a plate he brought with him and began to eat.
Unsurprisingly you could taste the handle being mass-produced, but he didn't have high expectations for the taste of a door. There was however a tang of occult skeleton key, the one they mass-produced on the streets and scammed tourists into buying. They weren't built robust in any way and usually broke after opening one door.
Now to focus on the flavour of fingerprints left on the doorknob. Most recent was the landlord, having opened the door for him right now, a bit older were two sets of what was likely 'Lannah's and Ms Chao's hand. Before that the landlord. He couldn't taste any deeper as older fingerprints were erased by someone having cleaned the handle.
"That settles this matter. Now let's talk about business." The two discussed a bit longer before agreeing on artwork to sell to the Whytefels and Edvin took his leave.

Whytefel was sitting in his car. Backdoor SoHo wasn't built for cars. This problem was solved by having the car transform into graffiti when it intersected with walls. On the more busy streets his driver just drove slowly.
The car windows were see-through from his side, but he tried not to look outside too much. Too many pedestrians looked somewhat angry at his car instead of minding their own business.
That was until he found who he was looking for. "Lavender. It's been too long," he said while stepping out.
Before him stood a human person behind his booth. Lavender was startled after the door opened.
"Good day to you, Mister Whytefel."
"A good day to you too, Lavender. What have you been up to in the last time?" Whytefel had bought art that Lavender had created a long time ago. That was before Lavender had accumulated a heavy debt to the Shark from the Deep End. Now he was just selling tourist traps of souvenirs. Like skeleton keys among other things.
"Oh, you know. The usual. Just selling my stuff like always."
"I can see that. Anything worthwhile?" The booth had no skeleton keys. That was in and of itself not unusual, a booth like this could afford like three in a week, but it was worth noting.
"You tell me," Lavender chuckled nervously.
"Hmm, what about the thing in your hand?"
Lavender had some kind of dough in his hand that stretched like multiple yoyo's everytime he swung it.
"What, that? I mean if you want it it's yours. That will be 50 bucks."
"I'll take it for 10."
"You're the boss. Enjoy!"
Whytefel ignored the fallen artist and went back into the car before he ate the scam article in one gulp. Better to get it over fast.
Every artist leaves something of themselves in their art. This style can even blend somewhat through when absolutely no effort was put into the piece. He was sure that that thing he had just eaten was of the same design as the flavour of skeleton key he had found at the apartment. What he also tasted was the micro-backlash of a scrying spell.
Lavender was no spellcaster. Either somebody had cast a scrying spell on his right hand or he had held a trinket of it for at least a few hours on this day.

His next point to visit required Whytefel to leave the Backdoor. He let his driver paint a sigil on his forehead, which would lead anyone who saw him to dismiss the possibility that that person had a goat head. The sigil's effect didn't need to be strong.
Some parts of the Serpent's Hand often wondered why families like his were part of the group. In their mind, the Hand was nothing more than a ragtag group of misfits. But it was only sensible to join the Hand if you were not part of the 108. Where else did you get such great connections across the multiverse and such great access to the knowledge of the Wanderer's Library? Besides, his family was just as much oppressed by the veil as anyone else.
He left the Backdoor and crossed a street in bland New York to get to the Medicean Academy of Occult Art — New York Branch. The Academy was itself too fine to take residence in Backdoor SoHo proper. Admittedly, having to cross just a stretch of veiled New York where the Jailors would more willingly apprehend you, if needed, provided just a bit more security to the place.
As always, he was stopped before he could enter the place. This time it was Andrea Hammer, chief of the branch's restoration team.
"We're not letting you in, Whytefel."
"I'm not here to eat The Epiphany," one of the most famous occult artworks in the anomalous community, " as I have said time and time again, I will not do so until I acquire the rights to it."
Hammer scoffed. "That will never happen."
"We'll see."
"Why are you here, Whytefel?"
"Have you heard about an anartist named 'COG'?"
"Occult artist. And of course I have. Claims to come from 'another universe' where they have a 'Sharkic Empire'. What's your point?"
"That's where he's from? To think those universes can produce anything of worth. Or that you'd know about an artist from somewhere so secluded."
"You don't actually believe that, do you?"
Whytefel deflected. "I've only heard about him recently. And that got me thinking about the marine exhibition you have soon."
"What about it?"
"I was thinking about sponsoring it."
Hammer raised an eyebrow and tilted her head. "That would be great. Quite a few of the pieces that are supposed to be animate are missing the moving— Ah I see what you're doing."
"Oh? Enlighten me."
"You think you can get into a legal position where it becomes easier for you to justify eating our art."
"That is not at all why I'm here. Say, Ms Hammer. Have you been to the Backdoor today?"
Hammer turned away. "Leave, Whytefel. You're not getting in."
With nothing left to say, Whytefel went back to the Backdoor. The circumstances of the theft began to crystalize themselves to him more clearly.
He had a hunch where the stolen goods were and he would follow that hunch.

The Deep End was a more literal term than you might expect in other cities. Backdoor SoHo was built three-dimensionally, the whole place being one giant artwork of impossible paths. Yet the sky was visible for most of them.
Not so for the Deep End. Being at the very bottom of the Backdoor, the sky was mostly blocked by high-up apartments, roads and walkways. Only rare slivers of Backdoor sunlight could make it through.
That didn't make the Deep End a less lively place. This play of light and shadow in the Deep Ends atmosphere lent itself perfectly to its own kind of artwork, there even was an often well-visited platform for performances that used that atmosphere.
It was also where Kqälig, apparently a "Sharkic", had his apartment complexes. Once in his maw, you would have trouble escaping the debt to him and were forced to work it off by creating anart that Kqälig would sell to Marshall Carter & Dark Ltd. who in turn sold it to their gullible veiled customers.
As he got deeper into the Deep End he found a blind alley that looked like people had died there quite a few times. There were leftovers of a boxing glove. Whytefel ate it and followed the taste of the sympathetic link to where the rest of the boxing glove would be.
He found a building that had a completely black car parked in front of it.
He walked in and was immediately yelled at to not get further inside. Then multiple people tried to shoot him.
Their bullets served as a nice hot dish for the evening.
In the building proper he was just about to witness Kqälig giving a cog in a pop-art style to somebody who did not at all represent Marshall Carter & Dark Ltd.
Seeing Whytefel walk in, he said: " I see you have other things to deal with, Sir." And stepped back.
"I am here on behalf of a client." Whytefel pointed to the cog. "Let me return the stolen good and we can all be on our way."
Kqälig ate the cog, sail and all. The Half-Shark chuckled. "What stolen good? You have no ground to stand here, goat. Better return to the surface before you get hurt."
"Oh, I have plenty of grounds to cover. You come from the same universe as this artist 'COG' and his collection. This made scrying for the collection incredibly easy for you."
"Your point?"
"My point being that even that blatant display of the stolen good right now aside, I can prove that you ordered the Cog Collection to be stolen and would be more than happy to share the results of my investigations with the Unusual Incidents Unit. Unless we can come to an agreement, of course."
"That would require you to have anything to show them."
"Correct me if the following timeline is wrong. You kept an eye out for the collection to appear in this universe. As soon as it appeared, you ordered one of your 'pets', Lavender, to retrieve said collection with the help of a scrying spell. Lavender would have been found by Bob immediately, but luckily for you, someone else required the landlord's attention. You must have told the Academy about the collection at an earlier point as a backup you could always buy it back from. They had an interest in the cogs as generators to kickstart their marine restoration efforts." He was guessing a fair bit for the last part.
"What does the Academy have to do with-"
"Andrea Hammer demanded from Bob to let her into Ms Chao's room. Bob eventually agreed so the Academy would still exhibit pieces from its complex. In the meantime, Lavender used one of his skeleton keys to open the door and stole the whole box with the collection. With the scrying spell, the box's content was clear. He left the apartment, whiped the door handle and brought you the collection." Hammer then later rummaged through the room without success, but that wouldn't interest the shark.
"That's a nice story you have there, but that's all it is."
"You think I'm not thorough? I have testimonies from all involved," Whytefel lied. While getting those testimonies would be easy if he worked with the UIU it also sounded tedious, so he hoped this would be enough.
"Plus I can always testify before them under oath. My past experiences with them would add weight to it," he added. This much was true.
Kqälig grinned a shark's grin. "How about we make a deal instead? I think neither of our families wants to really enter a feud."
"On that, we agree. Do you have something in mind?"
"A very simple game. I always wanted to test a goat's stomach against mine." One of his henchmen gave him a set of vials. "Drinking from these vials makes you regurgitate one of the things you ate in full form. I'd say we each take turns. Whatever comes out of one, the other one owns. We stop when we both don't want to continue. No grudge is held afterwards."
"Let's put it under oath."
Whytefel took off his velvet gloves and bit into his palm, the shark did the same. Both recited the agreed-upon terms while making specific hand movements ending in a handshake.
"I'll give you a small mercy and take the first sip." The shark said and drank from the vial. "One of the lesser known sharkic arts is the control of your stomach's contents." A pristine hamburger landed on the table in front of Kqälig. "It's going to be a while until you get that damned cog."
"A commendable ploy." Whytefel took a sip from his vial. "However, I regret to inform you that my family's gift entails enjoying the culinary qualities of everything without consequences." Nothing else happened. "Be it glass or magic vial."
"You may have a sturdier stomach, but I'm sure you will give in."
And so they took turns. Kqälig giving nothing of interest and Whytefel giving nothing at all.
"Let's finish this farce. Stalling will bring you only misery."
"Nonsense" answered the Half-Shark through gritted teeth. It was at that point that the first of the Boxers came out of the shark's mouth.
The Boxer immediately resorted to pugilism, until Kqälig's henchmen tried to apprehend them.
"Was that the only one?" said Whytefel after another sip.
"Fine, have your damn cog. It's useless without the full set anyways." Kqälig left the cog on the table to focus on the Boxer, who had since KO'd his henchmen.
"Much obliged." Whytefel took his leave.

"As you can see this is the only part of the collection I could recover." There would have been enough time to pay someone for a scyring spell himself to find the rest of the set, but that sounded too tedious. He had his fun.
"So I won't demand payment."
Ms Chao visibly relaxed.
"I can of course offer to eat this part of the collection for you. It would be simple to pinpoint the location of the rest from there and I could uncover things about the artwork you do not yet know."
"No, I think we're good. Thank you for the help."
"You're welcome. On Farewell, a word of warning: This 'sharkic' went to great lengths to get the collection out of your hands. Be prepared that he will disrupt you further on your journeys."
"We will. Thank you again."
"Always for a fellow Hand." He saw his clients of a second time.
What an eventful day. How to cap it off? A painting for dinner would do.