Chapter Text
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[MUMBO]
Er. Yes, hello. Um. This is Mumbo Jumbo recording case file- um, wait, archival assistant, I probably should have said that after my name- oh, now I’ve messed it up. Um. Let me try again.
Mumbo Jumbo, archival assistant, recording case file 0171221, statement of H. Bomb, regarding the actions of a friend during a game of tag. There we go.
I’m… filling in for our head archivist today while we try and figure out where he’s run off to. You know, I hope he feels bad about not being here for this statement, after Impulse spent weeks trying to find it again for him.
(Sighs)
Honestly, it is weird. It’s not like he’s been the most committed to work the past few years, but I don’t think he’s missed a day since he started this job.
Er- anyways. Statement begins.
[MUMBO (STATEMENT)]
I should start by saying that everyone involved in this incident is still friends. For reassurance, mostly, but also to emphasize how weird it was when False got that look in her eyes.
I'll begin at the beginning, though. My friends and I — that’s me, False, uh, False Symmetry, she’s what this story is about so I guess you’ll want her last name, Fruit, Ren, and a few others who aren’t relevant to what happened — are members of this loose group of people who meet up every few months to do fun stuff. Think of it like a group outing, but for adults: we've gone to a ropes course, to the LEGO store, we've run marathons, we even went skydiving one time.
This time, we were playing a massive game of what was basically tag. Well, tag is as close as I can get in a single word. Tag where everyone's it, and if you get tagged you're out, is a better description. Plus a lot more intricate rules involving loot, and how many times you could get hit by a nerf dart, and that sort of thing. We like our games complicated.
Oh, and we were all in teams of four. Our team, the four of us, False, Fruit, Ren, and I, we were the Blue Bats.
The activities group itself doesn't have a name, per say, if you’re going to try to hunt it down later. We just have an invite-only email group called something like “activities planning” and that’s enough for us. But we do have team names, just because- well, it’s fun! And it means you can dress up in team colors and come up with cheers and that sort of thing.
The game itself started off pretty normally. One of the group members has a ranch, and he offered use of the property to the rest of us for the event, so we all met up, and started off the game, and it was all the same as usual, same people, nothing out of the ordinary. My team and I split off pretty much immediately to let the rest of the bunch thin each other out.
We scoped out the territory, joked around, talked strategy. False and Fruit were by far the most athletic of the team, so they were pretty much guaranteed to end up taking point. I’m more of a strategist, myself. Ren, well, he was self-proclaimed moral support. Which is a very important role!
It took at least ten minutes before we saw anyone else, out by the fences. It was just one guy, missing or separated from the rest of his team, and as soon as she noticed him, False just… focused.
There’s really no other word for it. I wasn’t next to her, I was trailing a bit behind — remember, not as athletic — but Fruit told me later that he saw her eyes narrow, and her fingers clench, and all her muscles tense.
And then she was just… off.
One second she was there, the next second she was fifteen feet away, chasing this poor friend of ours through the grass like a lion after a gazelle.
We chased after her, obviously, although only Fruit actually managed to catch up at all. From his words, he only got anywhere near her because she’d slowed down when the guy she was chasing slowed, keeping pace with him like she was trying to kill him from fright. Or exhaustion. Fruit just cut an angle and tagged the guy out, and that snapped False out of it well enough, so he grabbed her wrist and dragged her back to us.
That seemed to be it, at the time. She was a little out of it, and she couldn’t really tell us why she’d decided to run off, just that it had seemed like something she had to do so desperately she hadn’t thought it through. But she wasn’t acting weird otherwise, so we just made a joke about her being swept away by her animal instincts and moved on with the game.
Until, of course, we ran into another team.
That time, I was standing right next to False, and I saw her eyes focus, and narrow, and glint… the only way I can describe it is golden. Like an eagle’s eyes, that light yellow-gold the color of honey.
False’s eyes are blue. I know this, we all know this. She’s made jokes about being blonde and blue-eyed before. They’re not yellow. They’re not even golden-brown.
But I swear, her eyes in that moment before she took off were as yellow and full as an eagle’s.
When they saw her coming, the other team scattered. False, with equal immediacy, spun on her heel mid-stride and just bore down on the the least athletic member of the team. Well. I guess I should say, she bore down on the easiest prey.
Because she was… I have to say she was hunting. There’s no other word that can describe it. She was using the pursuit predator strategy of going after the weakest link in the herd, and she was hunting, with those sharp yellow eyes.
Fruit, of course, took off after her immediately, and managed to tag the poor guy out of their misery before too long with a well-aimed nerf dart. False didn’t argue. She didn’t say anything at all. I just watched her lose interest in dead prey and immediately hone in on the next-weakest member of the team, not quite out of sight.
She ran. Fruit took off after her. Ren and I exchanged a glance and awkwardly jogged after them, because what else could we do?
The thing is, and I’d suspected this with the first guy she chased but the second one confirmed it, is that as soon as she started… hunting, she wasn’t even playing the same game as the rest of us. She could have tagged both of them within seconds of catching up to them. Before that, even. She had a nerf gun herself, and I know for a fact that her aim is awe-inspiring when she gets going. Instead, she just chased them. And chased them. And chased them.
Maybe I should have been scared that she’d come after us, next. I never was, though. I don’t know why, but whenever she looked back at us, she wasn’t even scary. Her eyes weren’t even yellow. She was just False.
I think that was what I was afraid of. Not that she would hurt us, because she wouldn’t, but that she’d look back and the False I knew would be gone, and whatever predatory thing was left would be looking back with those sharp, cruel eagle’s eyes.
And, uh, that Fruit wouldn’t be able to catch up to her in time and she’d actually run one of our acquaintances to death, but that didn’t seem like nearly as pressing a concern at the time. Now I keep thinking it’s all I should have been worried about, but at the time I was mostly just worried about False.
We won the game.
How could we not? Ren and I even fell into Fruit’s rhythm a little by the end, and managed to grab False or tag out her prey a few times, although Fruit still did most of the work. And then we went for dinner, and False ate an entire platter of ribs on her own, and we just… went home.
We were worried, obviously, but what else could we do? False was fine. She was back to acting like her usual friendly self, especially once she’d eaten. Nobody had been seriously hurt, and I guess we all just wanted to celebrate our victory and move on.
I still called her every day for a week though, afterwards. And I know Ren did too.
I just don’t think anyone really wanted to consider the what-ifs, and I can’t blame us, either. Nobody wants to think about how they or their friend could have killed someone. And False would have killed, if Fruit hadn’t stopped her. I think we all knew that. I think it was only afterwards that we realized how scary that was.
As for how she’s doing now… This all happened a few months ago, and I've seen her a few times since, for activities and whatnot. I’ve caught her gaze going a little distant sometimes, focusing in on people we pass, but she hasn't gone off chasing anyone or anything, as far as I know. Which is a relief. I’m not strong enough to hold her back, if she gets like that again. I don’t think anyone is.
And no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise, that she just got really into the game, or that she was just having a weird day, or whatever… I know something happened to her that day, and I know that whatever it was, it turned her into something predatory. Something that wanted to hunt. Something animal.
Human eyes don't shine that shade of yellow.
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[MUMBO]
And that’s… the statement! Yes. I don’t… really know how Grian likes the follow-up research to be done? So I think I’ll just leave that for him to do. When he gets back.
Whenever that is.
I hope he doesn’t take too long. Between you and me, I’ve never been terribly comfortable being alone in this office. Something about it just feels a bit… creepy. Especially when Grian’s not here.
Quite glad X didn’t offer me this job, honestly. I don’t know if I could stomach spending every day in here. Grian seems to have taken to it quite well, though.
…I’m sure he’ll be back soon.
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