Chapter Text
Logico suspected it was all some kind of big joke. Sure, send the only reasonable one on the team to investigate the ‘fairy migration’ that supposedly happened out in the old woods this time of year. Logico huffed as he stomped his way through the trees. It was an absolutely ridiculous assignment. But if he didn’t at least prove he was here, Ivory would have his head. So Logico took some random pictures of branches, made a few notes about the temperature and the wind. And then he prepared to head home and try to ignore how little his colleagues thought of him.
But just as he turned around, he heard a soft voice. He knew it couldn’t be fairies, but it had to be someone. And if someone was out here in the middle of the night, then they had a story. And if Logico could at least get a story out of this evening, he’d be happy.
As Logico followed the sound of the first voice, other voices joined in. It sounded like they were chanting something. A mysterious group of individuals chanting out in the dark woods near midnight? That was the kind of story that sold.
Logico started to see lights through the trees. Definitely candles. It had to be some kind of cult ritual or something. Logico slowed to a creep as he got close. Fairies weren't real, but cults sure as heck were. He looked down to watch where he was stepping, careful to avoid any dropped leaves or branches. He had never been a particularly quiet walker, but he could be sneaky enough if he was paying attention.
Logico hid himself behind a tree and peeked out into the opening. A circle of candles illuminated the space. Seven bodies, each covered by a large, purple cloak, stood in a half circle with their backs facing Logico. An eighth body, also covered by a purple cloak, but this one with ornate gold trimmings, stood on the other side of the clearing. They faced the rest with their arms outstretched, the light of the moon glistening off the designs on their cloak.
Perfect.
Logico pulled his camera out of his bag and started snapping away. He got some wide shots of the whole group, and then pulled out his zoom lens to get some good close-ups of what seemed like the leader of the group.
The chanting stopped abruptly. Logico froze, his vision still trained on the zoomed-in image of the leader. Then the eighth figure reached up and pulled down their hood. The light of the moon reflected off their darkened skin. A splattering of freckles across their nose accentuated the brilliant green shine of their eyes. Thick, wavy locks of black hair flowed down over their shoulders. Whoever they were, Logico thought they were stunning. He couldn’t tear his attention away.
The leader tilted their head down slightly, eyes looking right through Logico’s lens. He startled and jumped back. Something thick and warm blocked his path. Logico gulped and looked back at the circle. One, two, three, four, five, six... A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Logico knew he was in trouble. He quickly stuffed his camera in his bag as the seventh figure led him into the clearing.
“Hello there,” the leader said. His voice was light and airy, yet requested full attention with its being. “Bit late to be out, no?”
Logico licked his lips and looked around. What was the best play here? One wrong move and he’d be sacrificed, he could just tell.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Logico said. Maybe talking back wasn’t the best choice in this situation. But something about this leader guy made him want to argue. It was weird.
The leader chuckled. “We’re just performing a little ceremony among friends. Perhaps you’d like to join us?”
Logico was about to answer, but one of the other figures stepped forward. The voice was a bit feminine. “Sir, we can’t let him be a part of this! We don’t know anything about this stranger!”
“He could be a spy,” the figure holding Logico said. Another man it seemed, by the tone.
“Are you a spy?” the leader asked. Logico shook his head. Sometimes his work made him feel like a spy. But he certainly wasn’t a fan of that part of his job. He just liked learning things. He wasn’t fond of tricking people into learning said things. “What’s your name and who do you work for?”
“My name is Logico. I work for Jessica Ivory.”
The leader squinted softly and then looked over at the others. “Do we know an Ivory?” They all shook their heads and mumbled no’s. “Alright then” The leader shrugged. “He can stay.”
The figure that had spoken out seemed particularly upset with this decision, but said nothing as the bodyguard figure walked Logico over to the others. He stood with Logico in front of him, both hands holding him in place.
Well, since he wasn’t going to be going anywhere, Logico could at least try and get some information. “So, what are you doing?”
“Shhh,” the figure next to him said.
The leader spread his arms back out and turned his face to the sky once more. The others started chanting again. A meteor streaked across the sky. Light shone from below. Logico glanced down to find runic symbols painted on the grass now glowing. It had to be some kind of fluorescent paint that activated when the right amount of moonlight struck it or something.
Logico slowly reached for his bag. If everyone was distracted, maybe he could get a few shots in. But the figure behind him grabbed it first. He sighed as it was pulled from his body and handed to another figure.
After a few more seconds, Logico felt a strange tingling at the base of his feet. He wondered if maybe he had stepped on something that broke through the sole of his shoe. But as the tingling traveled up his legs, he started to suspect foul play. Maybe the figure behind him had pricked him with poison when he was distracted talking to the leader.
A high pitch started to squeal in his ear. He started seeing black spots before his eyes. Just before he passed out, he caught a glimpse of the leader looking at him with a big smile.
-
Logico could tell he hadn’t been out too long. When he came to, he was being carried through the woods, thrown over someone’s shoulder. He could see three figures walking behind him. They had all removed their hoods. Two of them were women, and one was a man. They talked amongst each other in hushed voices.
Light started spilling on the floor below them, and then the dirt and roots gave way to smooth stone. A cave of some kind.
“Just set him down over there,” the leader’s voice said.
The person carrying him carefully placed Logico on the floor. He huffed when he saw Logico’s eyes wandering around the space. “He’s awake.”
“Already!?” The leader rushed over, an excited look on his face. “I knew I felt something coming from you!”
Logico shook the last bit of drowsiness from his head. “What just happened?”
“A bit too much power for your first time,” the leader explained. “But you handled it much better than most.” He smiled and looked Logico up and down, like he was a lab rat that had just successfully gotten a piece of cheese.
“Uh, boss, we have a problem.” One of the women that had been trailing behind them was digging through Logico’s bag. Shit. She held out his ID card to the leader.
The leader studied it with a soft frown. He turned to Logico with wide eyes. “You lied to me?” He sounded like the concept of a stranger lying to him in the middle of the night in the middle of the woods was unheard of.
“I didn’t lie,” Logico said. He had made a very specific choice not to lie.
“You said you worked for Jessica Ivory.”
“I do. She’s my editor.”
The leader closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tilted his head back slightly as he forced it out though his nose.
“I say we just kill him,” one of the men said. He stood to the side with his arms crossed, staring Logico down with piercing blue eyes.
“No.” The leader held a hand up to them. “We aren’t killers.”
“Maybe for him, we are,” the woman holding his bag said. She had long brown hair tied back into a tight braid.
“No, no. In fact, this could be the perfect time to test out our newest invention, hm?”
One of the other men stood up straight with a big smile. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he had broad shoulders and intense green eyes that spoke of wisdom. “I’ll go grab it!”
Logico started to worry. He wasn’t feeling dizzy anymore, but the tingling was still in his feet. He might not be able to run if needed.
“I believe some introductions are in order,” the leader said.
“Uh, sir?” the woman with the bag asked.
“He won’t remember,” the leader whispered, although he didn’t try very hard to make it a quiet one. “Besides, we don’t want to be rude to our guests.”
The others gave little sighs, a few even rolled their eyes. But none of them tried to stop him.
“My name is Inspector Irratino,” he said, giving a sweeping bow. “And these here are my good friends and colleagues: Cloud, Onyx, Aubergine, Umber, Night, and Raven. Flint will be back in just a moment.”
Logico looked them all over. “You’re all named after colors, except you.” He looked back at Irratino. A strange name for a strange individual. It fit him perfectly.
“Gee, he knows his colors,” the man with the blue eyes, Night, said. "Hurrah." The other man in the room, Cloud, chuckled.
“Are you sure we can’t just kill him?” the woman with the bag, Raven, asked.
“I’m sure,” Irratino told her.
Aubergine stepped forward, giving Logico a strange little look. “Perhaps we could wait to deal with him until after our post-seance meal? It’ll get cold if we don’t eat soon. And I did work so hard making it.”
Irratino patted her on the back. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. We’ll be quick.”
Aubergine grumbled and walked away. Logico started looking around for anything he could use to get away from this situation. He had no idea what experiment it was they wanted to run. But he didn’t like the implications that he wouldn’t remember anything.
“Got it!” Flint announced as he jogged back into the room. He carried a strange bike helmet looking thing that would have fit in right at home in a science fiction movie. He flipped a switch and it powered on, blinking all kinds of lights and making a loud vibrating noise.
Logico really didn’t like the look of it.
“We call it the brain scrambler!” Flint said, a big smile on his face. “Guaranteed to erase all memories.”
Logico’s heart started to pound, pumping adrenaline through his veins. He didn’t really believe such a device existed. But if they put something electric on his head, brain damage was bound to occur one way or the other. He had to get out.
Irratino walked over to investigate the device. Umber was working with Raven to continue digging through his bag. Cloud and Night were invested in a conversation with Onyx. And Aubergine was off in the corner, pouting to herself.
Logico looked at the exit to the woods. Most of them stood between him and freedom. But only Irratino and Flint stood by the other exit, a chamber that seemed to lead deeper into the cave system. The cave system that was all lit up despite not having any light source.
Logico took a deep breath, then forced himself up and took off running.
“Wha- Hey!” Irratino called after him. But they had all been too shocked to grab him before he made it out.
Logico ran down the chamber. He turned left at a fork. Then right at the next. Ran straight through an intersection. He wasn’t sure where he was going, just following his instincts. They led him to a wrought iron door. Footsteps approached from behind. With no other option, Logico pulled the door open and raced through.
He was in some kind of…mansion? A beautifully polished marble floor spread out before him in a grand entrance. Two rounded staircases reached up, and fancy, ornate doors lined the walls. Logico heard a voice calling out on the other side of the door. He didn’t have time to be confused. He ran around the perimeter of the entrance, pulling at doors until he found one that opened.
He stepped into a large dining room. A long table stood in the middle of the room, a roaring fireplace at the head the only source of light. Once Logico took a step in, however, the chandelier lights above flickered on. Eight seats had been laid out, each already filled with plates of food. Why would the food already be out?
Logico walked slowly around the table. Little place cards designated who was sitting where. Irratino was set to sit at the head of the table, with three places on his left, and four on his right. Logico looked at the meals before him. They were all different. Half of them seemed to be vegetarians, including their leader himself. But there was something odd about Irratino’s setting that Logico couldn’t wrap his mind around. It was so puzzling that all he could do was stare at it until the dining room door opened.
Logico looked up to find Irratino standing in the doorway. Logico looked behind him, but there wasn’t another exit. Which was weird. Most dining rooms were attached to the kitchen or a butler’s pantry or something for easy serving. Everything about this place was just plain illogical.
And Logico just realized what was wrong with Irratino’s meal.
“Look, I’m sorry, but we can’t have you telling our secrets to the world. There’s no point to having a secret society if everyone knows about it. You understand, right?”
Logico shook his head. “If I was you, I’d be less worried about my secret getting out, and more worried about the fact that my chef was trying to kill me.”
“...What?”
Logico nodded down at the place setting before him. Irratino raised an eyebrow and wandered over. “I’ve got to admit, you get points for style. This is the most interesting way someone’s tried to escape.”
“How often have you kidnapped people?”
Irratino shrugged. “Only a few times.” He stood next to Logico and looked down at his meal. He shook his head. “Looks perfectly normal to me.”
Logico pointed to the feta cheese over Irratino’s salad.
“It’s…cheese,” Irratino said. “I’m not allergic to cheese or anything.”
“Just wait.”
Irratino crossed his arms and looked down at the salad. If Logico was him, at this point, he would be convinced that this guy was stalling, buying time while the police or something arrived. He was very glad that Irratino was not him, because he wasn’t stalling for time, and no one would be arriving to help him.
It only took a few seconds, however, for Logico’s accusation to make itself true. The cheese quickly shriveled up and turned into a deep yellow color. Irratino furrowed his eyebrows. “Huh. That’s weird. Never seen cheese do that before.”
“That’s because it’s not cheese,” Logico explained. “It’s a fungus. A highly toxic one. It’s white and crumbly when harvested, but within an hour, it turns into that.”
Irratino’s frown deepened. He looked at Logico. “But how did you know?”
Logico pointed to all the other salads on the table. “Everyone else had shredded cheese. Yours was the only one with feta. She didn’t want to accidentally get your meal mixed up with someone else's."
Irratino looked absolutely crestfallen. And Logico felt a little bad for the guy. Sure he had kidnapped Logico and planned to scramble his brain, but he had just been betrayed by someone he called a friend. Logico figured that had to hurt.
“I found him!” Aubergine called out, racing into the dining room. She stopped as she saw what they were looking at.
“How could you?” Irratino asked. He looked up at her with a face torn between anguish and anger.
“How could I…what?” Aubergine asked.
Irratino just stared at her. So Logico said, “You were planning to kill him.”
“I was not!”
“Then why were you so eager to eat quickly?”
“B-because I didn’t want the food to get cold!”
Logico gestured to the table. “None of this food is hot.”
Aubergine opened her mouth and looked around at the plates of food. “Shit.”
The others filed into the room not long after. They could clearly sense something was wrong. But Irratino didn’t seem to be taking the lead. He just kept staring at Aubergine with a bewildered expression.
“Your friend here was trying to kill your leader,” Logico informed them. Maybe, if he could get some in-fighting going, he could escape.
“Really?” Cloud asked.
Aubergine huffed and stomped one leg. “He’s awful at this,” she explained. “He keeps letting random people just wander in and join up! That’s not how a secret society works!”
“Hey,” Umber said. “I was just some random person who wandered in.”
“Me, too,” Cloud added.
“Exactly my point!”
Umber and Cloud looked at one another, then nodded. They grabbed Aubergine and dragged her out of the room. Irratino watched it all with a stoic expression. Logico had been so wrapped up in the drama himself that he forgot he was supposed to be trying to escape.
“Night,” Irratino said, just as Logico started to run.
Night blocked Logico’s path, grabbing him in a tight hold. Logico struggled, but he couldn’t get free. Night forced him into a chair and Raven tied him down. They were pretty good knots, unfortunately. Logico kept pulling at them, but he suspected they wouldn’t give.
“You don't have to do this,” Logico said, trying to appeal to their humanity. Irratino, at least, had to have some, given the way he reacted to what just happened. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. You can just let me go.”
“You can’t trust a journalist,” Onyx said.
Irratino held a hand out to Flint. He handed over the device. Irratino walked around behind Logico and leaned over. “Did you ever play pretend as a child, Logico?” Irratino whispered. His breath tickled against Logico’s ear, making him shiver.
“Not really,” Logico said. He had made an honest attempt a few times. He was just never any good at it.
Irratino chuckled. “Well,” he patted Logico on the shoulder, “give it a try, hm?”
Irratino stood back up and Logico truly started to panic. Irratino placed the device over Logico’s head and flipped it on. Logico heard a deep whirring and felt something vibrate against his skull. He closed his eyes and focused on his most important memories. If he could just hold onto at least a few of them…
“There,” Irratino said. The whirring died down and the vibrations stopped. “All done.” He pulled the device away and Logico blinked his eyes open, wondering why he still remembered anything. Irratino patted him on the shoulder again. “How are we feeling?”
Did you ever play pretend?
Logico let his mouth hang open. He worked up a bit of drool and let it pool to the side of his mouth. An uncomfortable, sticky drip slipped down his chin.
“Looks like it worked to me,” Irratino said with a cheerful smile.
“Maybe a little too well,” Raven said.
“Ahh, he’ll be fine. I’m sure a good night’s rest will help.” Irratino undid the ties, grabbed Logico’s arm, and pulled him up. Logico pretended to stumble, leaning his weight against Irratino. Irratino wrapped an arm around his waist and started walking him out of the room.
“He’s staying here?” Night asked.
“Of course,” Irratino told them. “It’s much too late to send him out on his own. I’ll have Benson drive him home in the morning.”
Logico kept up the bit as they walked along the grand entrance, heading up to the second floor of the mansion. Logico even stumbled a bit on the steps, almost making them fall over once. Irratino walked him slowly along to a bedroom. As soon as the door was closed, Logico stood back up straight and wiped the drool off his face.
“Marvelous acting job,” Irratino said. “I was even a little worried it had worked.” He laughed a bit.
Logico studied the strange, eccentric man before him. “Why did you do that?”
“A mind like that would be such a terrible thing to lose.” Irratino shrugged. “Plus, you saved my life. It wouldn’t be very nice to not return the favor.”
Logico nodded. “That makes sense. Thank you for that.”
“Of course.” Irratino gave him a warm smile. It made him feel…interesting. Irratino had a nice smile. One that reached his eyes and made it clear he was actually happy, not just pretending. But he had looked so depressed just a moment ago... “There should be some extra clothes in the closet if you want something to change into.” He crossed the room and opened the wardrobe. He eyed Logico up and then pulled out a few pieces. “These should fit.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Logico said. “But since I’m not actually brain wiped, can’t I just leave?”
“Oh, goodness no.” Irratino laid the clothes out on the bed. “It really does get very dangerous around here at night. I wouldn’t feel right sending you out alone. But I promise as soon as Benson returns, he’ll give you a ride back into town. Unless…” Irratino tilted his head and stared at Logico without blinking.
For quite some time.
“Unless…what?” Logico asked.
Irratino shook his head. “Nevermind. Have a good night.” He gave Logico another smile and another pat on the shoulder as he left.
Logico waited a minute, then tested the door. It was open. He could just leave. But it was late. And he was tired. And the bed looked awfully comfortable. So Logico dragged a heavy chair over to the door. It wouldn’t completely block anyone from coming in, but it would alert Logico before they could do anything about it.
Logico studied the clothes on the bed. They were a little too rich for his tastes. So he put them away and took off his own clothes before climbing into bed. It was even more comfortable than it had looked. As soon as Logico’s head hit the pillow, he was out cold.