#beasts without burden

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A black and white comic page with bits of color.

The top left and top middle panels are separated by a blue lightning bolt, which breaks apart in the middle when a speech bubble appears.

In the top middle panel, we see Martinez from the waist up in profile as she opens the door to the room, saying, “Hello, hey!” She is an average-sized Puerto Rican woman with a somewhat beaky nose, light skin and wild dark hair pushed partially back with a white ribbon to keep it mostly in check. She wears a professional outfit; a dark grey blouse with a ribbon tied around the neck and ribbons tying her sleeves to about her elbows and a white pencil skirt with a staff badge around her neck. She holds several books in her arms and the phone between her shoulder and ear starts to fall.

The top left panel shows Dante, Eva, and the Secretary reacting to Martinez’s entrance. Both Eva and Dante look to her with slightly wide eyes as, in the background, the Secretary jolts with two exclamation points over their head, holding up a tablet. The blue phone chord connecting the tablet to Martinez’s cellphone in the middle panel is dissolving.

The top right panel shows a close up of Martinez’s face as she asks sheepishly, “Did I keep you waiting long?” She catches the phone in her hand.

“Not at all!” Dante says in the middle row panel. The middle panel shows Martinez extending her hand to Dante for a shake, revealing her to have long, seemingly acrylic nails. Dante tilts her head as she continues, “It’s good to meet you, Miss… Martinez?”

“Yes-! And I suppose you’re Mrs. Smith, and here’s Ms. Xing-” Martinez says excitedly. In the background, Xi lowers his monocle and looks indifferently at Martinez’s excitement as she breathlessly continues, “I’ve actually been following your work for a while now! About the types of celestial graves and Hell, and– and,”

In the background, Eva is depicted as a doodle with two dot eyes and no mouth, humorously looking on with an air of bafflement.

Secretary interrupts from off-panel, saying, “Martinez!”

The bottom left panel shows the Secretary from the waist up as they check the tablet, a scribbly grey cloud above their head and slight panic in their compound eyes as they say, “Miss Barrett says she’s… waiting?” 

Xi raises the monocle to his eye again and gives no further reaction.

“Right away, ma’am!” Martinez says in the bottom right panel. We see her from the waist up as she turns around and raises her badge, reopening the door to the office while looking slightly frazzled herself. In the background, Eva watches on with a raised eyebrow while Xi lowers the monocle again, not seeming to have found something.

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Blue wires from the top of the page cross into the top left panel, which shows the same top-down view of the party following the wires, with Xi still bringing up the rear, Nora striding in front of him, and Eva and Dante bringing up the front. 

Nora says, “She’s been making deals ‘round here lately. Have you heard the Hexley leak yet?” 

“Yeah-” Eva says, “pretty damning stuff.”

“Literally.” Nora quips. 

The blue telephone wires suddenly curve around Nora, as though cutting Xi off from the rest of the group, before traveling through the rest of the panel. It speeds past where Dante stands in the right middle of the page and disappears into the phone lines above a large building in the bottom left panel.

The middle top panel shows only a round geometric shape of a wheel, like wires and nodes, or like twelve equally spaced sewing pins with round tops. All glows faintly blue against a dark navy background as a second, smaller circle, like the pupil of an eye, looks down toward the right middle of the page.

The top right panel of the page shows a medium close-up of Dante as she looks on in mild shock and awe, two faint blue lights reflected off of her eyes. She holds the umbrella against her chest. In the background outside the panel, there is another flash of Sir Puff Puff’s cat body as he darts behind the panels.

The middle right of the page shows Eva and Dante from the knees up as they stand free-floating from any panel, looking on as the telephone lines cause Dante’s braids to sway in the wind. With one hand, Dante holds onto her messenger back, and with the other, she slowly lowers the umbrella to her side. She says, “Think we found ground zero.”

We see Eva in profile as she looks to Dante, still mildly concerned. To the left side of the bottom left panel, Sir Puff Puff’s body contorts and disappears back behind the panels.

The bottom left panel shows a large strip-mall esque building of several stories. A sign out front displays the various shops and stores inside; the most prominent name at the top reading “FuzzBee”. The building itself is labeled with the sign, “beework”. There are blue lights on the security cameras mounted high up on nearby telephone poles, pointed towards the entrance, as well as on the peaks of telephone towers. The round geometric wheel from the top middle panel is seen in full above the entrance, and in the sky, the monochrome sun becomes the pupil of the giant blue eye in the sky staring down the protagonists.

In the foreground, we see all four from the back. Dante reaches a hand back to hand the umbrella off to Eva. Eva raises a hand to shield her eyes against the bright sun and Xi takes out a small blue device. Nora stands indifferent to the scene.

The bottom right panel shows Xi from the thighs up as he holds a blue-rimmed monocle to his eye, looking up at the celestial sight. Nora stands in the background with their hand on her chin, musing, “Makes sense.” Behind them, there are two blue points shining on nearby telephone poles.

“There’s been more disappearances, lately,” Nora says, “Lots of interns.”

[Image ID: The top left panel shows a medium close up of Xi from the diaphragm up, a Chinese-American young person wearing a sleeveless cheongsam with a high neckline and a shawl around his shoulders. The shawl holsters six brush-like wands, three on each side, making the symmetrical framework of wings on either shoulder. His medium-short dark hair is slicked back and his smile is disarming as he says, “Eva. Dante. You’re doing well, I presume?”

From off-panel, Dante says, “Never been better.”

Xi holds a cloth bag with a mysterious blue glow emanating from the opening in one gloved hand. He asks, “And the honeymoon?”

“Never wanted it to end!” answers Eva cheerily in the top right panel. There is a medium close-up shot of both Eva and Dante as they sit in their respective seats and Dante looks fondly at Eva. Eva is a large Filipino woman with a muscular build, medium-short black hair to the nape of her neck held back by a black headband, and her hands and forearms permanently stained with what appears to be black ink. She sits backwards in her chair, resting her crossed arms over the back of it. As she makes a loose peace sign with her left hand, it’s possible to see her wedding band.

Dante is a chubby black woman of average height, medium-dark skin, and braids pulled partially up into twin-tails on either side of her head. There are white beads scattered throughout the black braids and she holds onto the back of her own chair as she leans ever so slightly into Eva’s space.

Eva laughs, eyes closed and smile wide as she says, “But when the Xings call…”

“Strictly between us,” Xi says in the middle panel, raising a hand to cover his mouth scandalously, “The Xings didn’t call.” 

“Oho?” Eva asks from off panel.

Xi leans forward shown from the waist up across the table as he sets the cloth bag on the table. He says, “I did.”

“About the demon you saw,” Dante says, shifting into professional mode. We see her profile from the waist up in the foreground as she sits across from Xi, her eyes directed toward the cloth bag Xi has set precariously close to his still very full cup of coffee. The bag opens more, revealing its contents to be strange, bulbous, and glowing electrically blue.

The bottom left panel shows a close up of the contents of the bag. There is the lightest bit of eyestrain as the contents of the bag take on a strange, bismuth like consistency, though it’s impossible to tell where the sharp lines and angles begin or end. Xi says, “And more besides.” in a speech bubble in between the bottom left and right panels.

Xi continues, “There’s been a certain material I’ve been collecting for personal study…”