Wiping the sweat from her face, Nala Garsten finished her workout in the gym.

Despite her responsibilities at Dyna-Span Research, she always had time to follow her fitness regimen.

More than enough time actually. She was on the clock right now. But she'd finished everything she was supposed to do today and then some.

Early in her career, when she was a Junior Business Liaison Facilitator, she couldn't believe how lucky she was to have a well-paying job that only required light desk work and didn't fill up the rest of the work day with busy work.

Now she was a Senior Business Liaison Facilitator. She was older and wise enough to know what too good to be true looked like.

But between now and then, she had developed a reputation at work as frivolous. Someone who took long lunch breaks, clocked out early, and goofed around at work. At Dyna-Span, they called that being a team player.

Nala was very good these days at seeming like a team player for Dyna-Span.

Hence why she was working her buns on the company dime. That and they were nice buns that had never let her down so she was going to treat them right.

Nala wiped the equipment she used and walked to the locker room.

She sat down and organized her toiletries and said to the empty locker room, "Maybe I'll get a fruit cup after I shower. I hear the gooseberries are doing good this year. And so are the mangoes."

There was a thud, as if someone startling awake after dozing off from boredom, and then a pregnant raccoon in a STAFF shirt spilled out of one of the lockers.

"I don't have a lighter, smoke is bad for the drapes! Wait, no, that was last time's code phrase," mumbled the Ringtail Rascal to herself. "Well whatever, you know its me."

When Nala began to suspect that something shady was up with Dyna-Span Research, she'd weighed her options. She doubled down on being a frivolous employee and got a promotion out of it.

So Nala decided to follow the money.

She decided to secretly look into Dyna-Span's financial relationship to Science Laboratories. She picked them mostly because the generic name stood out on a list of Dyna-Span investments. But also because for all the money Dyna-Span invested in them, their primary output was lab accidents.

Nala had visited Science Laboratories multiple times by now, to secretly investigate. This mostly resulted in infuriating the head scientist who had happily just cashed the checks up until now. And at one point, resulted in Nala getting sneezed through a wall.

So her visits had all been hugely entertaining. Nala may not be the frivolous face she presented to the company but she still had her sense of young adult whimsy.

She also had a professional industrial spy on her payroll. To professionally spy.

If Nala was honest, and her problem with Dyna-Span was that deep down she was, her inner young adult was thrilled that she'd reached a point in her life where she was hiring a professional spy to professionally spy for her.

And since Nala had a reputation for visiting the gym during her work hours, meeting her professional spy in the gym showers made tons of sense.

Nala unscrewed the top of her shampoo bottle and pulled out a tightly rolled wad of cash.

"Ah the green stuff that keeps me healthy!" the Rascal said. She took the cash from Nala and happily rubbed it against her cheeks.

The Ringtail Rascal had a reputation of being a peerless thief despite her idiosyncrasies. When Nala had hired her, through an intermediary, she was warned that the Rascal may not be taking any jobs as she was on a break. But the raccoon ultimately took the job, saying she wanted money to pad her nest. Then went on to explain that wasn't an idiom, that she sometimes slept on a pile of money.

Nala hadn't asked but it had been a fascinating insight into the person she was hiring.

"And the documents?" Nala asked.

The raccoon thumped her tail against the locker she'd fallen out of. "An entire box of the dullest locker reading I've ever stolen. Personally, I feel like I came off better in the exchange as I got a fistful of dollars and this neat shirt."

Nala bid farewell to the Ringtail Rascal and contemplated what to do next. She wanted to dig into the documents now but the shower called to her after her workout.

---

Nala Garsten owned by me
Art by  szaris