If you said that Brooke was a stylish and undeniably sexy deer few would argue. With her dark neck length locks perpetually hanging over one eye and an assortment of piercings and chains over her nose and ears, she looked like the typical bad girl and acted the part well. So well, in fact, that she had opened a successful pub with her old boyfriend years ago and was now its owner.
The Night Hawk itself wasn’t a dive. It was a classy dance bar with exquisite wooden furniture and a well blended sense of old tradition and new culture. It was popular with the local district, patronized by normal people looking to cut loose after a hard day’s work, and their chef was on top of her game. It was a formula for success that had worked for half a decade. Just add booze.
The night was winding down. The doe and her two employees Sam, a tall iguana girl, and Trish, her bubbly Blue Jay bartender, were in the process of closing up for the night. The only two patrons left in the bar were an incredibly drunken equine divorcee and her old friend Marcus, a human who tended to stay to close on Friday night to chat with the girls as they locked up.
As the deer weighed out the bottles on the shelves her avian bartender hummed away while she wiped down the bar. The big old horse looked absolutely miserable, slamming the last of his whiskey down his throat and staring at the top of the bar with despondant and weary eyes.
“Poor horsey,” Trish whispered as she walked by to wet her cloth. “Should we call him a ride?”
Brooke chuckled and regarded the wavering stallion with a sympathetic sigh. “Give the big guy a little longer to dry up. I don’t want to send him out like that.”
Somewhere in the kitchen, plates clattered as their night cook finished up his dishes. He was a perpetually smiling old German Shepherd, occasionally leaning out the swinging doors to take a look around.
“About time to shut it down, kids?” He called.
“Pretty much.” Sam called from a booth, swaying her reptillian tail below her short skirt as she cleaned.
“Hey, so, Brookie!” Marcus called across the bar.
The deer rose from the bottom shelf and turned, putting her hand on her side sarcastically. “Yes, Marc? Can I help you?”
“You got a sec?” The human smirked. He was attractive for a nerd. Big glasses. Weird. The deer loved him, though, in the sense that he made her night a little better with his antics.
“Yeah, sure.” The deer shrugged. “It’s not like I’m doing anything.”
“Thatta girl!” Marc motioned with a wave of her neck. “I got something to show you.”
The deer rolled her eyes to Trish’s chuckle as she exited the bar and clopped over the wooden floor to Marcus.
“Check this out!” The human smirked. He produced a phone sized device from his pocket and wagged his eyebrows.
“Oh, cool. A device. How interesting. Well, I’ve got to get back to it!” She leaned back and moved toward the bar.
“Wait, wait, I have to show you what it does. You’re gonna love this.”
“Sure.” She smirked.
The human leaned in conspiratorially to the doe and laughed diabolically. “You know what a PTFD is?”
The doe’s ears instantly perked in alarm and her eyes widened, the dark lashes rising in concern. She looked around nervously, uncharacteristically so. “Tell me you don’t have that shit!” She whispered, gulping.
“In my hand.” Marcus whispered back. “It’s so simple. Like, we’ve got it down to button presses now. See, this fucker picks up organic matter, like, say, us, right?”
The deer stared at the little device in her friend’s hand and her eyes widened in horror. “No...”
“Yes.” Marcus grinned, laughing. “You don’t even need the big machines anymore. It’s got this coil in there that generates the right frequency and an emitter. All you have to do is point it at your victim, lock them in, and just type in what you want to change and by how much. The parser does the rest. It’s genius!”
“Holy shit.” The deer gaped, leaning in for a better look in both horror and fascination. Somewhere, Sam the lizard spied the two of them chatting quietly and raised an eye ridge in interest.
“So, what, like... is there any limit to it? Like... what you can mess with?”
“You don’t really get quantum physics, do you?” Marcus deadpanned.
“Fuck. I don’t like that shit near me at all, Marc. Put it away.”
By this point, Sam had wandered over like a curious puppy and was wagging her long elegant tail. She leaned in with hands behind her back and blinked.
“What are we doin’, guys?”
Marcus looked over at a terrified Brooke and with a dingle he switched the device on.
“How about a test?” Marcus winked.