3~Sixteen - The Truth
Headline Today: Grimmsnarl’s Storm set to hit Noe Town, Paradise, later in week
The first major winter storm of the year is projected to make landfall at Noe Town on Mist’s southern coast this Friday, setting a new record for earliest winter storm. “Grimmsnarl’s Storms”, as they are referred to by Air and Grass natives, are immense, violent storm systems that form over the sea between the Air and Water continents, and often strike the eastern coast of Mist during the winter.
“We’ve observed strange behavior from this system compared to others,” remarked meteorologist Espeon. “Most of these large storms develop out on the waters where hot and cold air combine, then quickly move north propelled by the wind. As they continue towards land, they weaken and eventually peter out. This storm, however, has been consistently staying in one place for weeks, and as it moves towards the coast only seems to be gaining in strength.”
Residents of Noe Town are being ordered to move inland, and travel to the coast is highly discouraged. In an unprecedented move, the storm is projected to head towards Paradise in the days after making landfall at Noe Town.
~ The Daily Pelipper
A single touch of her ribbons was all it took. Just a light press on the back as he walked through the hallway, a few black sparks zipping out of her and into him, and the poor, oblivious sentry braixen was hers. He slumped backwards almost immediately; there was barely time to catch him before he landed. She nearly dropped him anyway; he was much, much heavier than she’d anticipated, nearly too much to carry. But she made it work, lugging him through a round wooden door and into a side room before anymon could pass by to notice.
She sat him down in a chair, inspecting him as he snored. He'd fallen asleep so easily… just how tired was he? Hopefully not too tired for her to work her magic. She only needed him around for a few questions anyway.
Then, he changed before her eyes. The violet fur that seemed to fuzz up strangely when she wasn’t looking rippled away, leaving before her something much larger, heavier, and shaggier. A zoroark.
Sylveon Sparkleglimmer took the realization without letting any of her surprise show. Only a satisfied, wry smirk crept its way across her muzzle, the only thing her professional persona allowed her to betray.
The Voice had told her this braixen would be helpful when they’d first had him stationed outside her quarters. It had pulled a few strings just to make it happen, in fact. Now she remembered why he was familiar: this was Primarina’s lackey.
To think this was the big secret he had that couldn’t come out at all costs. Not the forgery and theft she’d known was happening, this. It was almost humorous.
She propped him up further in the chair, making sure she had a ribbon on him at all times to keep him under. Putting somemon in a trance was easy; keeping them in one was much harder. Especially when you needed to move them around. Though, granted, he was so far under she didn’t have to do much as it was.
He would’ve slumped over in his seat, if not for the deceptively strong ribbon keeping him in place. Clearing her throat and amplifying the soothing pulse she was sending through him, Sparkleglimmer whispered her first question into his ear.
“Do you hear me? Nod if you do.”
A nod. After years of flawless manipulation she shouldn’t even doubt. But it never hurt to be thorough.
“What is your purpose here?”
Though addled, the zoroark told her without hesitation.
“To find a home.”
A less skilled interrogator wouldn’t have caught the way his lips moved as if to say something else, the way he tensed up a little before relaxing them. There was more.
“Continue,” she told him.
The words nearly escaped. But still, his mouth stayed shut. Considerable willpower; she was nearly impressed. But she would break him yet. Her ribbon pressed into him a little harder, the dark current coursing out of her and into him increasing.
“Continue.”
“And to spy,” the zoroark spat out, like releasing a breath he’d been holding for minutes. Sparkleglimmer’s heart jumped, her body didn’t; she was trained to conceal such moments. So this was their spy…
“Spying on what?” she asked, doubling the soothing, hypnotic current from her ribbons just to be sure. “Who do you work for?”
“My… he’s a scyther. He makes me do things for him, get things.”
“What does he make you do and get?”
“Files,” the zoroark muttered. “Information. Plans for things.”
It took less than a second to put two and two together. The files that had disappeared from the room of records had been plans for the Paradise Expansion Project. Whoever this scyther was… whatever trouble they were looking to cause must have had to do with that.
“Tell me about your employer’s motives,” she said. “What is his end goal?”
The zoroark tensed up. Her ribbons were still sensitive to emotion; she could feel the blend of anger and fear that ran through his veins.
“He wants… he wants to hurt,” the zoroark growled. “He wants to stop the houses at the edge of the city from being torn down. He’ll do… whatever it takes.”
He was slurring his words now. The trance she’d put him in had balanced him on the edge between waking and sleep, and ever-so-slowly he was tottering towards dreamland. She’d need to wrap up quickly.
“What has he sent you for now?”
“He wants supply locations,” the zoroark responded laboriously. “And…” some hesitation. He was gritting his teeth. Too bad. A pulse of dark current zapped his resistance away. “He wants me to burn down the room of records.”
Sparkleglimmer restrained her surprise. Sabotage in the room of records.. he’d be in for a surprise if he expected there to still be anything in there right now. Regardless, this was all valuable information she could use to determine who she was fighting, and how they could be used.
There was just one last thing she needed to ask.
“Before you came here, did you work with Ambassador Primarina?” she asked him.
A sluggish nod told her yes.
“Where is he now?”
She expected something with more fanfare, maybe for him to make her press him harder than she already was. In hiding? In captivity? Had he finally gotten on the bad side of enough lawmakers that they were doing something about it? But the response was immediate, and it was one word:
“Dead.”
With that word, Sparkleglimmer couldn’t stop herself from stiffening up. It was a possibility she’d entertained after he’d gone completely off the radar, but hearing it confirmed before her was surreal.
“How did he die?” she managed to ask levelly.
“The…” the zoroark trailed off, and for a second she worried she was losing him. “The Exeggutor was destroyed.”
“By pirates?”
A shake of Zoroark’s head.
“What destroyed the Exeggutor.”
What had killed her most agreeable politician.
“A sea serpent,” Zoroark said. “A gyarados, a red one. It was… big. Outside the storm. Between Air and Water.”
A moment of silence. Sparkleglimmer, for a rare moment in her life, was struggling to process the facts that lay before her. Her most reliable piece on the board, killed in a freak accident?
Her mind flipped into damage control mode. It was the only way she knew how to process in the moment. The first thing she needed to do was confirm what she’d been told. Send a team out there to search for scraps of the Exeggutor and any mentions of a red gyarados. Yes, tomorrow she would do that.
“When you wake up from this, you won’t remember our talk,” Sparkleglimmer told the limp, nearly sleeping zoroark. “You will reinstate your illusion, head back to your quarters, and take a well-deserved rest. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
The zoroark could only lazily nod, the power of the suggestion worming its way even further into his brain.
Deftly, another ribbon wormed a file folder into his claws, making sure he grasped it. He’d carry it all the way back with him towards his room.
“And I want the address of your boss. The one he sent to spy on me.”
She watched from the doors of the room as the zoroark walked off like a zombie, checking the halls around her to make sure that no-mon had caught any glimpse.
She had a few letters to send.
It was happening again.
Or maybe it had been happening all this time, and she just hadn’t realized until now.
It was that feeling she got, the one that said something just wasn’t right, the one that almost always had a plain cause she was just ignoring for some reason or other. Not this time. This time, she could see it in front of her plain as day: Something was wrong with her partner.
Again.
She’d told herself to stay distanced for this reason, because if something happened to go wrong, if something just wasn’t adding up… Why couldn’t she just stay professional?
No. She had to keep herself calm for now. She didn’t know anything was wrong with him yet. All the word around the base about spies was spurred on by the tighter security they’d been assigned guard duty as part of. Pokemon from Grass had burned down a guild affiliated with HAPPI, and now some important records had gone missing from the company archives. Word from the higherups was they might be here too, everymon had been on edge since the wall blew up. She couldn’t make any assumptions yet. But when your partner started acting like he had something to hide right when this began to flare up… she had to come to some kind of conclusion. And she was running out of good ones.
He tromped out after her once everymon else had retired to their quarters, after doing something in that bedroom that only seemed to make him more stressed than before. Maybe it was the one hour of sleep that made his eyes look haunted, his body limp, his fur slightly strange in ways she couldn’t put her paw on. Maybe he just had bad nerves from his new environment. Maybe he couldn’t handle the schedule. Maybe it was the cold. Damned if she knew. All she knew was that she didn’t want to take chances.
“You look peppier today,” she said, trying to make small talk. It was a complete lie. He looked like he usually did, except worse.
It was like speaking to a zombie. He jolted like she’d wrenched him out of a trance, looking at her with those weary, sunken eyes.
“Got some sleep,” he said, going back to staring straight ahead.
“Well, I hope you make the most of it,” she told him. “We’ve got an early day patrolling streets tomorrow.”
She could see him slump a little further than he already was.
“It’s an early night after that,” she continued. “But brace yourself for a lot of walking.”
“Looking forward to it,” he said with no enthusiasm at all. And she didn’t blame him.
They stood in silence for a minute longer. That might have been as long as an eternity, or as short as ten seconds. Guard duty tended to make time relative.
“I know my maps, by the way,” she continued. Best to just cut to the chase.
“What?” he asked, the tone in his voice indicating confusion.
“Swanna Inn,” she said. “It’s only a block away from the HAPPI building, and shifts get off an hour before you showed up.”
“I don’t know what this is about,” he said dully, with that same lack of emotion he’d had during all their talks.
“Something had to have happened in between you leaving and you arriving tuckered out at this building an hour later,” she said.
Something that happened just around that time, just in that area, with a pokemon who could very well be—
“What does that matter?” Braixen asked grouchily. “One slipup doesn’t matter.”
“It does when you act like you have something to hide,” she continued. “So what’s the deal? What’s going on that’s got you acting like you’re a criminal?”
“Like I said,” Braixen said firmly. “It’s nothing.”
She wanted to believe it.
“And you know I’m not going to take that for an answer,” she told him.
“You don’t have a right to question me!” Braixen suddenly exploded. It took her aback. He was so meek, and then all of the sudden…
He seemed to realize how aggressive he’d just been. Calming down, he pulled back into his position, diverting his gaze towards the floor. He was breathing heavy.
“It’s…. it’s just the nerves,” he said, boring holes into the stones once again with his gaze. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
They both knew, she thought, that it wasn’t the nerves. But she could tell he wasn’t in the right condition for her to keep pursuing it. So, for the time being, she let it rest. They stood at their posts, and silence filled the gap between them.
She knew.
There was no other explanation. Either she knew, or she was catching on, and one way or another he wasn’t going to be able to keep a lid on it much longer. Berry crackers, he wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t, he wasn’t a thief! He wasn’t…
Who was he kidding? He’d told more lies this past week than he had in the last several years. And stealing… well, this place was swarming with guards now because of him, wasn’t it?
But if there was one thing he wasn’t, he wasn’t a murderer. Despite what those wanted posters said, he wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t want to be a murderer. But when push came to shove, he’d broken more boundaries than he thought he could. And if it came down to Alice finding out the truth… he didn’t know if he’d be crafty enough to find another solution. And what then? That was a question he couldn’t afford to discover the answer to. He just couldn’t.
“What do you mean I can’t apply for reassignment?” Zoroark-as-Braixen complained agitatedly to the front desk of the lobby. It was so early in the morning that the sun still hadn’t come up yet, and the hall was sparsely lit by emera-lights. This was right when he should be sleeping. But he had to do this now, while there wasn’t a line for the desk or anywhere he was missed.
“With exception of extenuating circumstance or sufficient reason, all HAPPI teams must spend a minimum of six months together before any members can apply for reassignment,” the glameow monning the desk recited wearily. She looked up at him with bored, tired eyes. “You have four months and a week left to go.”
“But…” Zoroark-as-Braixen stammered. “Are you sure you can’t make an exception?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” the glameow said. “Unless you can provide a valid reason for reassignment, then you’re plumb out of luck.”
Oh, he could provide several valid reasons. If they wouldn’t land him in jail.
She waved him off after that. And with her coily, spring-like tail, she waved away his last chance of a clean escape. It was dawning on him that it hadn’t even been a whole two months yet. It didn’t feel like that. It felt like it had been a whole year here. How could he make it through five months more of this?
Scratch that. He had a day.
One day to decide whether he’d attempt Amadeus’ impossible job, or if he’d cut and run and hope that the scyther couldn’t find him before he left. Which just left him with the same problem: Where would he go after that?
A newspaper read that a severe winter storm was slated to hit Noe Town in just a few days, and would be moving up towards Paradise. Travel between the two was heavily discouraged, and the city gates were shutting down ahead of the storm anyway. So that was that out of the question. He set down the newspaper he’d have to pay for with his spare change if he read any more of it, and sullenly continued towards the mess hall for an early meal before the first rays of sunlight crept in. Given he had to head out in half an hour, there was no point in sleeping now.
With the amount of fatigue he was feeling, he sure hoped the cafeteria was giving out chesto berries.
He was poking around again. He didn’t know why.
Well, with complete honesty in mind, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it, but ever since Cloud Nine and Director Sparkleglimmer had turned up, he’d been smelling something fishy. He couldn’t kick the feeling the Director was up to no good.
So here he was, digging around in her office while she wasn’t there. Off the books, the sort of thing that no-mon was ever going to hear about. Luckily for him, the Director was off doing some publicity stuff for the press, and he had enough clout to order the day guards away. He seized the chance while he could.
He’d started with her desk. Any important documents would be in there, not the fancy oval frames on the pink walls that had been collecting dust for ages, or the upholstery that looked like it had been pulled out of a Noe Town décor shop thirty years ago. Anything to give him a hint about what was going on would suffice.
Before long, he found something. It was an envelope, addressed to him. And under it, a similar one for Elliot. Why would she keep this?
The top was already partially torn apart, so he used a letter opener in the drawer to tear the rest of it. Then he took the paper out, unfolding it and spreading it open in his paws.
Dear Alexis,
It has come to my attention that both you and Elliot decided to abstain from your judging positions on the date of Cloud Nine’s second Entercard trial. Considering we had previously aligned on the fact that HAPPI’s shutdown of our entercard production was not in the spirit of the law, I found this decision peculiar.
Perhaps we can arrange a date to talk? Umbreon and I will be stopping in Paradise when Cloud Nine lands, and there are a few fish restaurants here I have been interested in trying.
Best regards, Espeon of Paradise
The entercard case… he’d heard about it in the news. Sparkleglimmer had insisted he didn’t testify that day, for reasons that seemed obvious. Espeon’s attempts to keep skirting the law couldn’t go on forever.
Keeping the letter didn’t prove anything on its own, but it confirmed that the Director was hiding things. Why else would she keep mail addressed to him? He kept rifling through her desk, opening a new cabinet as soon as he’d meticulously put away the contents of the last. What else could he find in here…
Espeon didn’t like cold things. She never had. Her species was designed to thrive in hot climates, sunbathing on sand and ventilating the heat through her large ears. Not trudging through the snowy weather, freezing her paws solid by walking through yesterday’s frost. She felt hairless in this climate, and it only got worse the further north you went.
“You sure you don’t need a cloak?” Umbreon asked her. Unlike her, he was much more at home in this weather than she could ever hope to be. A shaggier coat tended to do that for you. Espeon noticed by now she was shivering lightly. No wonder he’d asked.
“Going back to get a cloak will just slow us down,” she said through gritted teeth. She would like a cloak. She didn’t want to admit she should have just sucked it up and bought one when they’d entered the city like Umbreon had advised. “What should we be looking for?”
“Mail wagon,” Umbreon replied. “They deliver to the Daily Pelipper each dawn.”
He pointed with a paw across the street, where a somewhat fancy, three-story complex sat. This was the more business-y district of town, so the streets were mostly free of litter and the buildings had been kept somewhat clean. Lit up in emera-powered lighting above the roof were the words “The Daily Pelipper”.
“We got here early,” Umbreon continued. ‘They could arrive in the next ten minutes, or the next hour, all depends on their route. We could be waiting here a while.”
Espeon sighed, watching her breath freeze in the air. An hour out in the cold… now she was really wishing she could go back for a cloak.
It took the mailmon about a half hour to show up. The cold was beginning to numb the tip of Espeon’s tail by the time the wagon rolled in, still carrying enough parcels and letters that the snorunt had to dig through the cart just to get the package they needed. She’d taken to lazily trotting in place, creating motion just to keep her a little warmer. Umbreon shook the snow that had fallen on his ears off, rising and stretching.
“Showtime,” he said.
The two of them carefully crossed the street, slipping in through the doors of the building while the mailmon snorunt was still gathering the package.
The transparent doors closed behind them, and with the inside of the building came a temperature change that nearly made Espeon trill in delight. Less ‘freeze your tail off’, more ‘cozy fireside’. The building must’ve had one of those heavenly emera-powered heaters she’d sunned herself next to back on Cloud Nine.
Undoing the flap of Umbreon’s satchel with her psychic grip, she pulled out of it a parcel that was wrapped identical to the ones they’d sent out back on Cloud Nine. It was weighted the same too—filled with common candies and other junk that they’d purchased at a low-value mart. If anymon asked, it was a present for a relative’s kit.
The doors behind them slid open again, admitting the snorunt they were waiting for. It was time for them to make their move. Faking a stumble forwards, Espeon ‘accidentally’ tripped over Umbreon’s tail and crashed into the mailmon.
Just like she’d hoped, packages flew everywhere. Her parcel and the one the snorunt was carrying flew, intermingled, and landed on the ground.
“Oh, so sorry!” Espeon said, pulling herself to her feet dizzily. Beside her, the snorunt was picking himself up, rubbing his cone-like forehead. “Mr. Clumsy over here was letting his tail wag all over the place again.”
Umbreon managed in response to look suitably abashed.
The snorunt looked down at the two packages, unsure of which one was which.
“Uhh… which… did you have a…”
“My package!” Espeon cried out, diving for the parcel she was pretty sure was the right one. “Oh, it would’ve been a mess if I lost this!”
She sure hoped she’d played up the drama enough. By the looks of the snorunt’s sheepish face, at least, she’d played her part to a tee.
“Well, uh,” he grunted. “Just take it so I can get on my way. Lots more stops to make today.”
Espeon quickly snatched up the package and returned to Umbreon. It went in his satchel, all safe and sound, and then they quickly made a beeline for the exit. The doors slid open to admit them, and before the pokemon at the counter could realize the slipup, they’d slunk into an alleyway to check they had the right one.
“That felt too easy,” Espeon said. At least, after they’d waited a half hour in the cold. It was quickly beginning to bite at her again. She shivered.
“It’s not that much trouble for us to loop back and buy you a cloak,” Umbreon said.
“I can deal with the cold for a few more minutes,” Espeon said, puffing out a breath. “Let’s just make sure we have the right package.”
Standing back slightly, Espeon used her psychic grip to untie the strings and throw the package open…
The package gave in from the bottom, and something hard and heavy hit the ground with a clunk. Immediately both of them huddled around it, scrabbling through the dirty street to pick it up. They disappeared from the alley seconds later as quickly as they could.
It sat on the table in front of them, barely a foot long on any side. The disk was square, nearly flat, with a slight silver dome at the top. Intricate engravings neatly carved into the metal ran up and down its frame, the machinery underneath blood red. To anymon who couldn’t read the machinery, it would have looked unremarkable. Only Espeon and Umbreon knew its true power.
“So what now?” Espeon asked. They’d brought it in through the door, barely even daring to open Umbreon’s satchel until it was locked and latched and all the curtains were drawn. She’d been staring at its cold, motionless form on the table for a couple of minutes, almost unwilling to believe it was in front of her.
Umbreon flicked his tail against a switch on the wall, and the lights in the apartment clicked on.
“We open it,” he said. “Let’s figure out what makes this tick.”
They pried the top off easily. Whatever these were, they weren’t made to be as durable as the prototypes. The inside was even more fragile; as soon as they had the top off the whole thing seemed to be holding together by the barest threads. Espeon was always better with technology, and used her expert psychic grip to undo the wires and the boards in ways that wouldn’t break or accidentally set off the machine. It wouldn’t do to have a dungeon-creating device suddenly begin working within their rented hotel room.
When they were done, they were able to conclude that aside from the materials and a different configuration, there were only a few major differences from their original prototypes.
“What’s the verdict?” Umbreon asked. He’d been standing off to the side and handing Espeon tools for most of it. Clumsy paws didn’t work well for a delicate job like this.
“In most ways, it’s the same,” Espeon said, raising the goggles she was wearing as she turned away from the table. “Just one thing.”
“A good thing, right?” Umbreon asked.
She wished.
“They removed the power inhibitors,” was all Espeon said. She watched as Umbreon’s face twisted into disbelief, then confusion.
“They…” he trailed off. “But why? What ‘mon in their sane mind would remove that?”
“You said HAPPI wanted us off the entercard project because we didn’t get along with their ethics,” Espeon said. “Maybe this is why.”
Work dragged on and on. He’d gone to the cafeteria, but they didn’t have any chesto berries. It was wintertime, and there were fresh food shortages around the city due to the weather sinking a worrying amount of Grass Continent supply ships. He took the tasteless muffin and the dried berries he was handed and went on his way.
The noise of the room echoed around his ears, other rescue teams sharing lively, animated conversations over the bricks of bread. A closer look revealed the cracks in the smiles, the way everything was barely holding together. Whispers of the coming winter storm and how they’d never seen anything like this before, and half the buildings in town might not hold up against it. How the price of everything was rising ever since ships had started sinking, and soon some of them weren’t going to have enough to eat. How there was a reported murderer on the loose so soon after the gates had been brought down, and if the two were connected. The conversations were all fraught and gloomy. Did any of them enjoy their life here? Or were they all just trying to get by?
Sentry duty started just half an hour after he ate. The skies of the city were grey and gloomy even during the morning, snow dancing around in the air, the chilly wind a bit stronger today. He adjusted his violet HAPPI scarf, carefully checked his illusion for inconsistencies, and trudged down the street wherever Alice guided him. Step after step, one foot after the other. The pavement was so icy it froze his paws. Every block felt like a battle, and if they had to intervene somewhere he didn’t know if he would have the energy to do it.
Alice trudged ahead of him, her steps just as labored as his were. Her movements were chilled by the wind, her legs so stiff she had to jerk them every time she moved. She walked faster than he did even though she’d had less sleep, and she did it without a single complaint. He couldn’t see her face now, but he’d seen it back when they left: brows furrowed, expression stony, snout pulled back into a labored grimace. She was fighting to get through the day, just like him. But she’d just resigned herself to it. To living her life here aimlessly. She wasn’t living. She was just waiting for it all to be over.
Their route took them into the run-down section of town, where he’d been the day he arrived in the city. He’d seen the locals around here and there – a chansey who tended to look after the neighborhood kits while the other pokemon were working, a leavanny who made just enough cutting things to get by, a marshtomp who pushed around a cart of warm treats. None of them had seen him nearly as many times as he’d seen them. When he was in disguise, they just avoided him. They were trying to enjoy their lives here, the best they could when everything around them was falling apart and the chill crept between the cracks and patches in their walls.
Today they were packing up and holing away, reinforcing their houses with whatever they could. The neighborhood kits were huddled up around the chansey and a few others, staying in one place as the adults worked. The leavanny was helping cut things until they fit the different houses, pieces of discarded wood and cloths that were then added to walls and roofs. The marshtomp hadn’t brought out his cart today and was helping with moving the heavy materials. When the storm hit the city, this block would be hit the hardest. They all must have known, and they were preparing earlier than most. Were they preparing because they thought this was home, or were they just trying to get themselves by?
He passed Amadeus’ house on his way. It stood imposingly on stilts that were covered in a brittle coating of ice, its walls and shingles covered in frost, its windows dark. Zoroark-as-Braixen looked up at it as they passed, almost fixated. The windows were too dark and too covered in frost to see through from the outside. Was he in there, watching him right now?
No. He was out further down the block, helping the local shopkeeper hole up their store. Gone was the stern face he always addressed Zoroark with, the stiff, rigid way that he held himself with his scythes behind his back; his movements were relaxed and he was cheerful. He chatted with the lucario shopkeeper like they’d known each other for years. No-mon would have guessed what he got up to by nightfall. He must have considered this block of ramshackle houses home.
They circled around to the base again by noon, when the sun was high enough to almost poke through the clouds. The halls of Headquarters were deserted at this time of day, nearly every other rescue team out on a chosen mission by now. The storm prep was happening here too, the hall staff packing up the easily broken things like decorative vases and picture frames trapping the portraits of Paradise higherups. Alexis’ formal pose, Elliot’s grin and wave, the Director’s stern face, all were taken down from the wall and wrapped in cloths for storage.
The tables in the mess hall were completely empty, and the mission board, always drowning in requests, was as deserted as the corridors. A quiet sense of gloom settled in with the building silent and dead, leaving Zoroark with his thoughts as he split away from Alice and headed up to their room.
He passed the hallway leading to the Room of Records on his way up. It seemed to stretch out before him, the end of the corridor dark in a way only he could see.
What about him? Could he grow to consider this place home? Halls as magnificent as these made a wonderful house. He could count on a meal twice a day, stale as they were, and a bed at night. All he had to do was pitch in around the city once or twice a day. It was a dream job, it should have been a dream job. A dream life. If only he wasn’t—
His back was up against a wall now, breathing heavy. The hallway wasn’t a place to break down, he knew it. It didn’t matter, he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t come so close to having a normal life here and then have it snatched away from him all over again.
He couldn’t buy a life here. Why would he ever think that he could have a life here? He was wanted for murder. He was a zoroark, a pokemon that wasn’t wanted. No-mon who knew would want him, not even his own partner. Not after yesterday.
His knees shook. He slid to the bottom of the wall, his snout clasped in his claws. He looked at the corridor ahead of him. An impossible task. An unwanted task. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. Woe turned to anger, and anger turned to a determination he hadn’t felt in weeks. He pulled himself up from the floor, steeling his claws like fists.
No. He wouldn’t do it. He was done with all of this. Living here wasn’t worth this. He’d grab all of his spare change and belongings, wait out the storm, and once it had passed he’d be out the city gates and down to Noe Town as soon as he could. He’d find somewhere he was wanted.
And as for Amadeus… with the storm on the way, it would be days before anymon realized he’d lied. By then he’d be long gone.
It was getting dangerous to keep poking around in here. These were the Director’s most personal files, the papers no-mon but her ever saw. Morbid curiosity had driven Alexis to read the first one, but duty compelled him to read the rest. Tear out the desk drawers and gut them for everything they had, then it was on to the fancy wooden cabinets against the walls.
He figured anything she really didn’t want anymon to see would be hidden better than that, so he started searching for secret compartments in the wall or under the floor. Pull up the rug, move the desk, take every infuriatingly pink oval mirror off the wall and feel for crevices behind it. His efforts rewarded him – on the middle mirror in the third row from the roof, above where most ‘mon could reach but doable if you were a pokemon with long limbs about an eon’s size, the plaster was cracked, attached to a stone that slid out of the wall and revealed a box.
The office was well and truly torn up by now. He’d tried to keep it neat at the beginning, but it didn’t stay that way once he got frantic about his search. Oh well, he could put everything back to rights in five minutes. Right now, it was time to open this wooden box in his paws.
The bottom was dusty, but the top wasn’t, as if it had recently been opened. Alexis slid off the top, watching it pop off neatly into his other paw. Inside, there were several different papers, all sealed up and folded up so that they’d fit inside. He hesitated to touch these, unsure if he’d be able to fold them up the way they were later… but he was so far in now that if he didn’t just take them out now, he’d be back again later. In for a penny, in for a pound, it was best to finish snooping while he still could.
As he read, he felt his heart sink into his stomach.
It started with Entercards. Sparkleglimmer had shut down the company on dubious grounds and shelved the project, and officially that was supposed to be the end of it. If that was true, it didn’t explain why she’d contracted another company to continue working on them on Cloud Nine, and why she’d gone to such lengths to keep him and Elliot out of it.
His first thought was fraud. For some reason, she must not have wanted Espeon and Umbreon involved in the entercard project, so she’d rigged this whole loop de loop to take it for herself. If that was everything, it would have been small beans. But it didn’t stop there.
A folder sat within the box – a copy of the Paradise Expansion Project, with certain districts marked in red. Sparkleglimmer’s own writing filled the margins – when all the houses at the edge of the city were knocked over, they’d be replaced by large company buildings and fancy mansions. The mass displacement was designed to herd pokemon who “couldn’t earn their keep” out towards Noe Town… she’d planned this?
He rifled further and further, sifting through the small papers in hopes of reaching an answer. He found a letter.
Director,
Your correspondence with this project has been of the utmost importance and help, and for that I cannot thank you enough. I you intend to make a demonstration of the entercards’ might with Traveler’s Demise before our next meeting. When we convene once more to decide the Air Continent’s next Guildmaster, I should look forward to seeing your update on the project – and, of course, transferring you the funds you are due. Boltund Industries’ construction company will handle development of the project’s other side, as promised.
~ Your Business Partner
Like nothing had happened, he put everything back exactly the way it had originally been. Letters back in the box, mirrors on the wall, the rug back in its place, the drawers all organized and shut, the dust he’d unearthed swept from the floors. It was like the office had never been touched.
But he knew what he’d seen. That couldn’t be plucked from his mind, that couldn’t be set back to rights just like everything else was.
He couldn’t just let her get away with it. But what would she do to him if she knew he’d found it?
“Hmm.”
The noise startled him. He was disciplined enough not to let it show. Looking behind him, he saw that Sparkleglimmer had entered the room. Her teal spinerak-silk cloak, one of many she owned, danced above the floor with every step as she strode towards him.
“Did you need something?”
Oh, how he wanted to question her right there and then. How he wanted to ask her what the meaning of all this was.
“I thought better of it,” was what he said.
She looked at him through sharp eyes for a few seconds. Then she walked past him and took a seat at her desk, carefully studying the things strewn about on it.
“Did you move anything here?”
Alexis had put everything back the way he remembered it, but no-mon was perfect. Maybe he’d forgotten the positioning of something…
“I bumped into the desk by accident,” he said. “Something probably got jostled around.”
“That must have been quite an accident,” Sparkleglimmer mused. In one of her lower ribbons, she clutched a letter opener. “I’m pretty sure this was in one of my drawers.”
If Alexis didn’t know how to keep a cool head, he would have froze there. The game would have been up. She would have known.
Instead, he shrugged.
“Never seen it before.”
More silence. If Alexis didn’t know better, he would have said the Director was spacing out. Then she ‘hmmed’. A second lower ribbon opened the drawer under her desk, and the first slipped the letter opener within. With a slam, the drawer was shut.
"Remind me, have you gotten the names for those vote counts yet?” she continued. Alexis felt the tiniest amount of his high-strungness leave him. She must either have not noticed, or decided to dismiss the thought.
“Not yet,” he said. “Still trying to track them down.”
“Get them for me by tomorrow, please,” Sparkleglimmer instructed, going back to studying an unsigned sheet of paper on her desk. “I’ve scheduled a press meeting on the topic in a day, and I want to get that expedited. Missing files or not, this project moves forward.”
Alexis nodded. “I’ll do that.”
As he walked for the door, a thousand thoughts raced through his head. When he’d heard it, Elliot’s plan had sounded farfetched, silly even. But now it was beginning to make more sense than it did before. Was it possible to do that in just a day? Maybe if he was smart about it.
He closed the door of the Director’s office after him and walked down the hall. His own office was on the other side of the building, so he had a walk of at least five minutes ahead of him.
But before he’d gotten far, a subtle sound made his ears twitch. He looked behind him, paws twitching as if ready to grab his scalchops at any minute. He’d expected to see another HAPPI member, or a mouse or rat.
Instead, a familiar form seemed to blend out of the shadows. The emera-light in the corridors reflected off lime-green feathers and cloak-like wings.
“Hello, Alexis,“ said the xatu.
Her partner liked to slink away on his own when they didn’t have a mission. Sometimes, he skulked around in the corridors. Other times, it was the mess hall. Their room was where he went when it was late, but never when she was there. Often it was somewhere outside of the building, after the sun had set. She didn’t know where he went when he took those trips, but they happened at least once a week.
She hadn’t followed him before, because normal pokemon didn’t stalk their partners out everywhere. Normal pokemon didn’t have to think about what their normal partners were doing when they weren’t looking. So given she was a normal pokemon with who she really hoped was a normal partner, she didn’t really want to think about why she was preparing to do it now, as he started heading off on one of his signature outdoor disappearing sessions. Could she count it under criminal investigation? That probably lessened the initial blow a little.
Was that an excuse? She didn’t want to think about that.
It started out pretty normally. If you could call any of this normal. He left their quarters with a pouch that he wouldn’t disclose the contents of, then started down the hall. Once he was pretty far along, she discreetly tailed him. Once he’d left the building, he suddenly seemed to vanish.
Luck was on her side. The snow was heavy, and he wasn’t good at sneaking away – he didn’t even know how to properly cover his tracks. He’d made a hap-hazard effort, but there was still a clear trail she could follow. Normal pokemon didn’t try to cover their tracks. She padded after him, ignoring the little ways her joints froze up and her legs felt stiff and limber. Cold weather would kill her one of these days.
The path led her further out into the city, down snowy streets that were lit by streetlamps, past trash blowing out in the wind across the street in tumbleweeds, down, down as the houses slowly grew less pretty and more shabby. Eventually it took a turn down the very street they’d been patrolling on earlier that day, footprints leading down a completely deserted street. All the buildings had been boarded up and shuttered in preparation for the storm, and there wasn’t a single other soul about. At least they’d have privacy.
She caught up to him halfway down the street, where the house on those rickety stilts stood. Hiding in a nook between the buildings just a little ways back, she watched as he finished trudging towards the house and finally collapsed against a wall for his breath. He looked one way, then the other. Then, everything changed.
His fur rippled in a disorienting way. Her first thought was evolution – did he come out here just to evolve? – but quickly she realized that wasn’t what was happening, as purple fur gave way to a shaggier grey coat, he grew two feet in height, and a wild red mane sprouted from his back. Her eyes widened, her jaw felt slack. She was completely stiff, and she knew it wasn’t just from the cold weather.
She knew it. She knew it. She knew something had been wrong, and how she didn’t want to be proven right… but here was the truth right in front of her.
And she had to do something. She was an enforcer of the law, and he was a murderer. If an outlaw was right in front of her, she had to catch him.
He was an outlaw. He was an outlaw, not her partner. That was what fueled her charge forward. He probably never had been her partner. To think that he had been was too complicated for now. For now, he was just a criminal.
“Stop right there!” she yelled, charging out from her hiding place. His head snapped around to look at her, his eyes wide in shock. He couldn’t have been more shocked than she was.
They stood several meters apart. It was like time had frozen, even the blowing of the wind had died down.
“Partner…” Alice began, barely able to stomach the word. “You are placed under arrest for the murder of three pokemon.”
Her partner stammered incoherently, apparently still too shocked to say anything.
“You will proceed with me to the nearest location of law or risk possible deadly force in capture,” she continued, loudly talking over him.
“But, but I,” he broke off, trembling. He looked scared to death. And she already didn’t want to do this. Why did he have to make it so hard for her?
“Anything you say from this point onward can and will be used against you when deciding your sentence,” she finished, stepping closer. She didn’t know how a water move would work in temperatures this cold, but she was ready to freeze his feet to the ground if she had to.
He suddenly bolted.
And she didn’t do anything to stop him.
Music of the week!
The Fallen – John Lunn
The first major winter storm of the year is projected to make landfall at Noe Town on Mist’s southern coast this Friday, setting a new record for earliest winter storm. “Grimmsnarl’s Storms”, as they are referred to by Air and Grass natives, are immense, violent storm systems that form over the sea between the Air and Water continents, and often strike the eastern coast of Mist during the winter.
“We’ve observed strange behavior from this system compared to others,” remarked meteorologist Espeon. “Most of these large storms develop out on the waters where hot and cold air combine, then quickly move north propelled by the wind. As they continue towards land, they weaken and eventually peter out. This storm, however, has been consistently staying in one place for weeks, and as it moves towards the coast only seems to be gaining in strength.”
Residents of Noe Town are being ordered to move inland, and travel to the coast is highly discouraged. In an unprecedented move, the storm is projected to head towards Paradise in the days after making landfall at Noe Town.
~ The Daily Pelipper
~\({O})/~
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE TRUTH
~\({O})/~
The Night Before
~Sparkleglimmer~
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE TRUTH
~\({O})/~
The Night Before
~Sparkleglimmer~
A single touch of her ribbons was all it took. Just a light press on the back as he walked through the hallway, a few black sparks zipping out of her and into him, and the poor, oblivious sentry braixen was hers. He slumped backwards almost immediately; there was barely time to catch him before he landed. She nearly dropped him anyway; he was much, much heavier than she’d anticipated, nearly too much to carry. But she made it work, lugging him through a round wooden door and into a side room before anymon could pass by to notice.
She sat him down in a chair, inspecting him as he snored. He'd fallen asleep so easily… just how tired was he? Hopefully not too tired for her to work her magic. She only needed him around for a few questions anyway.
Then, he changed before her eyes. The violet fur that seemed to fuzz up strangely when she wasn’t looking rippled away, leaving before her something much larger, heavier, and shaggier. A zoroark.
Sylveon Sparkleglimmer took the realization without letting any of her surprise show. Only a satisfied, wry smirk crept its way across her muzzle, the only thing her professional persona allowed her to betray.
The Voice had told her this braixen would be helpful when they’d first had him stationed outside her quarters. It had pulled a few strings just to make it happen, in fact. Now she remembered why he was familiar: this was Primarina’s lackey.
To think this was the big secret he had that couldn’t come out at all costs. Not the forgery and theft she’d known was happening, this. It was almost humorous.
She propped him up further in the chair, making sure she had a ribbon on him at all times to keep him under. Putting somemon in a trance was easy; keeping them in one was much harder. Especially when you needed to move them around. Though, granted, he was so far under she didn’t have to do much as it was.
He would’ve slumped over in his seat, if not for the deceptively strong ribbon keeping him in place. Clearing her throat and amplifying the soothing pulse she was sending through him, Sparkleglimmer whispered her first question into his ear.
“Do you hear me? Nod if you do.”
A nod. After years of flawless manipulation she shouldn’t even doubt. But it never hurt to be thorough.
“What is your purpose here?”
Though addled, the zoroark told her without hesitation.
“To find a home.”
A less skilled interrogator wouldn’t have caught the way his lips moved as if to say something else, the way he tensed up a little before relaxing them. There was more.
“Continue,” she told him.
The words nearly escaped. But still, his mouth stayed shut. Considerable willpower; she was nearly impressed. But she would break him yet. Her ribbon pressed into him a little harder, the dark current coursing out of her and into him increasing.
“Continue.”
“And to spy,” the zoroark spat out, like releasing a breath he’d been holding for minutes. Sparkleglimmer’s heart jumped, her body didn’t; she was trained to conceal such moments. So this was their spy…
“Spying on what?” she asked, doubling the soothing, hypnotic current from her ribbons just to be sure. “Who do you work for?”
“My… he’s a scyther. He makes me do things for him, get things.”
“What does he make you do and get?”
“Files,” the zoroark muttered. “Information. Plans for things.”
It took less than a second to put two and two together. The files that had disappeared from the room of records had been plans for the Paradise Expansion Project. Whoever this scyther was… whatever trouble they were looking to cause must have had to do with that.
“Tell me about your employer’s motives,” she said. “What is his end goal?”
The zoroark tensed up. Her ribbons were still sensitive to emotion; she could feel the blend of anger and fear that ran through his veins.
“He wants… he wants to hurt,” the zoroark growled. “He wants to stop the houses at the edge of the city from being torn down. He’ll do… whatever it takes.”
He was slurring his words now. The trance she’d put him in had balanced him on the edge between waking and sleep, and ever-so-slowly he was tottering towards dreamland. She’d need to wrap up quickly.
“What has he sent you for now?”
“He wants supply locations,” the zoroark responded laboriously. “And…” some hesitation. He was gritting his teeth. Too bad. A pulse of dark current zapped his resistance away. “He wants me to burn down the room of records.”
Sparkleglimmer restrained her surprise. Sabotage in the room of records.. he’d be in for a surprise if he expected there to still be anything in there right now. Regardless, this was all valuable information she could use to determine who she was fighting, and how they could be used.
There was just one last thing she needed to ask.
“Before you came here, did you work with Ambassador Primarina?” she asked him.
A sluggish nod told her yes.
“Where is he now?”
She expected something with more fanfare, maybe for him to make her press him harder than she already was. In hiding? In captivity? Had he finally gotten on the bad side of enough lawmakers that they were doing something about it? But the response was immediate, and it was one word:
“Dead.”
With that word, Sparkleglimmer couldn’t stop herself from stiffening up. It was a possibility she’d entertained after he’d gone completely off the radar, but hearing it confirmed before her was surreal.
“How did he die?” she managed to ask levelly.
“The…” the zoroark trailed off, and for a second she worried she was losing him. “The Exeggutor was destroyed.”
“By pirates?”
A shake of Zoroark’s head.
“What destroyed the Exeggutor.”
What had killed her most agreeable politician.
“A sea serpent,” Zoroark said. “A gyarados, a red one. It was… big. Outside the storm. Between Air and Water.”
A moment of silence. Sparkleglimmer, for a rare moment in her life, was struggling to process the facts that lay before her. Her most reliable piece on the board, killed in a freak accident?
Her mind flipped into damage control mode. It was the only way she knew how to process in the moment. The first thing she needed to do was confirm what she’d been told. Send a team out there to search for scraps of the Exeggutor and any mentions of a red gyarados. Yes, tomorrow she would do that.
“When you wake up from this, you won’t remember our talk,” Sparkleglimmer told the limp, nearly sleeping zoroark. “You will reinstate your illusion, head back to your quarters, and take a well-deserved rest. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
The zoroark could only lazily nod, the power of the suggestion worming its way even further into his brain.
Deftly, another ribbon wormed a file folder into his claws, making sure he grasped it. He’d carry it all the way back with him towards his room.
“And I want the address of your boss. The one he sent to spy on me.”
She watched from the doors of the room as the zoroark walked off like a zombie, checking the halls around her to make sure that no-mon had caught any glimpse.
She had a few letters to send.
~\({O})/~
~Alice~
~Alice~
It was happening again.
Or maybe it had been happening all this time, and she just hadn’t realized until now.
It was that feeling she got, the one that said something just wasn’t right, the one that almost always had a plain cause she was just ignoring for some reason or other. Not this time. This time, she could see it in front of her plain as day: Something was wrong with her partner.
Again.
She’d told herself to stay distanced for this reason, because if something happened to go wrong, if something just wasn’t adding up… Why couldn’t she just stay professional?
No. She had to keep herself calm for now. She didn’t know anything was wrong with him yet. All the word around the base about spies was spurred on by the tighter security they’d been assigned guard duty as part of. Pokemon from Grass had burned down a guild affiliated with HAPPI, and now some important records had gone missing from the company archives. Word from the higherups was they might be here too, everymon had been on edge since the wall blew up. She couldn’t make any assumptions yet. But when your partner started acting like he had something to hide right when this began to flare up… she had to come to some kind of conclusion. And she was running out of good ones.
He tromped out after her once everymon else had retired to their quarters, after doing something in that bedroom that only seemed to make him more stressed than before. Maybe it was the one hour of sleep that made his eyes look haunted, his body limp, his fur slightly strange in ways she couldn’t put her paw on. Maybe he just had bad nerves from his new environment. Maybe he couldn’t handle the schedule. Maybe it was the cold. Damned if she knew. All she knew was that she didn’t want to take chances.
“You look peppier today,” she said, trying to make small talk. It was a complete lie. He looked like he usually did, except worse.
It was like speaking to a zombie. He jolted like she’d wrenched him out of a trance, looking at her with those weary, sunken eyes.
“Got some sleep,” he said, going back to staring straight ahead.
“Well, I hope you make the most of it,” she told him. “We’ve got an early day patrolling streets tomorrow.”
She could see him slump a little further than he already was.
“It’s an early night after that,” she continued. “But brace yourself for a lot of walking.”
“Looking forward to it,” he said with no enthusiasm at all. And she didn’t blame him.
They stood in silence for a minute longer. That might have been as long as an eternity, or as short as ten seconds. Guard duty tended to make time relative.
“I know my maps, by the way,” she continued. Best to just cut to the chase.
“What?” he asked, the tone in his voice indicating confusion.
“Swanna Inn,” she said. “It’s only a block away from the HAPPI building, and shifts get off an hour before you showed up.”
“I don’t know what this is about,” he said dully, with that same lack of emotion he’d had during all their talks.
“Something had to have happened in between you leaving and you arriving tuckered out at this building an hour later,” she said.
Something that happened just around that time, just in that area, with a pokemon who could very well be—
“What does that matter?” Braixen asked grouchily. “One slipup doesn’t matter.”
“It does when you act like you have something to hide,” she continued. “So what’s the deal? What’s going on that’s got you acting like you’re a criminal?”
“Like I said,” Braixen said firmly. “It’s nothing.”
She wanted to believe it.
“And you know I’m not going to take that for an answer,” she told him.
“You don’t have a right to question me!” Braixen suddenly exploded. It took her aback. He was so meek, and then all of the sudden…
He seemed to realize how aggressive he’d just been. Calming down, he pulled back into his position, diverting his gaze towards the floor. He was breathing heavy.
“It’s…. it’s just the nerves,” he said, boring holes into the stones once again with his gaze. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
They both knew, she thought, that it wasn’t the nerves. But she could tell he wasn’t in the right condition for her to keep pursuing it. So, for the time being, she let it rest. They stood at their posts, and silence filled the gap between them.
~\({O})/~
~Zoroark-as-Braixen~
~Zoroark-as-Braixen~
She knew.
There was no other explanation. Either she knew, or she was catching on, and one way or another he wasn’t going to be able to keep a lid on it much longer. Berry crackers, he wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t, he wasn’t a thief! He wasn’t…
Who was he kidding? He’d told more lies this past week than he had in the last several years. And stealing… well, this place was swarming with guards now because of him, wasn’t it?
But if there was one thing he wasn’t, he wasn’t a murderer. Despite what those wanted posters said, he wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t want to be a murderer. But when push came to shove, he’d broken more boundaries than he thought he could. And if it came down to Alice finding out the truth… he didn’t know if he’d be crafty enough to find another solution. And what then? That was a question he couldn’t afford to discover the answer to. He just couldn’t.
“What do you mean I can’t apply for reassignment?” Zoroark-as-Braixen complained agitatedly to the front desk of the lobby. It was so early in the morning that the sun still hadn’t come up yet, and the hall was sparsely lit by emera-lights. This was right when he should be sleeping. But he had to do this now, while there wasn’t a line for the desk or anywhere he was missed.
“With exception of extenuating circumstance or sufficient reason, all HAPPI teams must spend a minimum of six months together before any members can apply for reassignment,” the glameow monning the desk recited wearily. She looked up at him with bored, tired eyes. “You have four months and a week left to go.”
“But…” Zoroark-as-Braixen stammered. “Are you sure you can’t make an exception?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” the glameow said. “Unless you can provide a valid reason for reassignment, then you’re plumb out of luck.”
Oh, he could provide several valid reasons. If they wouldn’t land him in jail.
She waved him off after that. And with her coily, spring-like tail, she waved away his last chance of a clean escape. It was dawning on him that it hadn’t even been a whole two months yet. It didn’t feel like that. It felt like it had been a whole year here. How could he make it through five months more of this?
Scratch that. He had a day.
One day to decide whether he’d attempt Amadeus’ impossible job, or if he’d cut and run and hope that the scyther couldn’t find him before he left. Which just left him with the same problem: Where would he go after that?
A newspaper read that a severe winter storm was slated to hit Noe Town in just a few days, and would be moving up towards Paradise. Travel between the two was heavily discouraged, and the city gates were shutting down ahead of the storm anyway. So that was that out of the question. He set down the newspaper he’d have to pay for with his spare change if he read any more of it, and sullenly continued towards the mess hall for an early meal before the first rays of sunlight crept in. Given he had to head out in half an hour, there was no point in sleeping now.
With the amount of fatigue he was feeling, he sure hoped the cafeteria was giving out chesto berries.
~\({O})/~
~Alexis~
~Alexis~
He was poking around again. He didn’t know why.
Well, with complete honesty in mind, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it, but ever since Cloud Nine and Director Sparkleglimmer had turned up, he’d been smelling something fishy. He couldn’t kick the feeling the Director was up to no good.
So here he was, digging around in her office while she wasn’t there. Off the books, the sort of thing that no-mon was ever going to hear about. Luckily for him, the Director was off doing some publicity stuff for the press, and he had enough clout to order the day guards away. He seized the chance while he could.
He’d started with her desk. Any important documents would be in there, not the fancy oval frames on the pink walls that had been collecting dust for ages, or the upholstery that looked like it had been pulled out of a Noe Town décor shop thirty years ago. Anything to give him a hint about what was going on would suffice.
Before long, he found something. It was an envelope, addressed to him. And under it, a similar one for Elliot. Why would she keep this?
The top was already partially torn apart, so he used a letter opener in the drawer to tear the rest of it. Then he took the paper out, unfolding it and spreading it open in his paws.
Dear Alexis,
It has come to my attention that both you and Elliot decided to abstain from your judging positions on the date of Cloud Nine’s second Entercard trial. Considering we had previously aligned on the fact that HAPPI’s shutdown of our entercard production was not in the spirit of the law, I found this decision peculiar.
Perhaps we can arrange a date to talk? Umbreon and I will be stopping in Paradise when Cloud Nine lands, and there are a few fish restaurants here I have been interested in trying.
Best regards, Espeon of Paradise
The entercard case… he’d heard about it in the news. Sparkleglimmer had insisted he didn’t testify that day, for reasons that seemed obvious. Espeon’s attempts to keep skirting the law couldn’t go on forever.
Keeping the letter didn’t prove anything on its own, but it confirmed that the Director was hiding things. Why else would she keep mail addressed to him? He kept rifling through her desk, opening a new cabinet as soon as he’d meticulously put away the contents of the last. What else could he find in here…
~\({O})/~
The Daily Pelipper Headquarters
~Espeon and Umbreon~
The Daily Pelipper Headquarters
~Espeon and Umbreon~
Espeon didn’t like cold things. She never had. Her species was designed to thrive in hot climates, sunbathing on sand and ventilating the heat through her large ears. Not trudging through the snowy weather, freezing her paws solid by walking through yesterday’s frost. She felt hairless in this climate, and it only got worse the further north you went.
“You sure you don’t need a cloak?” Umbreon asked her. Unlike her, he was much more at home in this weather than she could ever hope to be. A shaggier coat tended to do that for you. Espeon noticed by now she was shivering lightly. No wonder he’d asked.
“Going back to get a cloak will just slow us down,” she said through gritted teeth. She would like a cloak. She didn’t want to admit she should have just sucked it up and bought one when they’d entered the city like Umbreon had advised. “What should we be looking for?”
“Mail wagon,” Umbreon replied. “They deliver to the Daily Pelipper each dawn.”
He pointed with a paw across the street, where a somewhat fancy, three-story complex sat. This was the more business-y district of town, so the streets were mostly free of litter and the buildings had been kept somewhat clean. Lit up in emera-powered lighting above the roof were the words “The Daily Pelipper”.
“We got here early,” Umbreon continued. ‘They could arrive in the next ten minutes, or the next hour, all depends on their route. We could be waiting here a while.”
Espeon sighed, watching her breath freeze in the air. An hour out in the cold… now she was really wishing she could go back for a cloak.
It took the mailmon about a half hour to show up. The cold was beginning to numb the tip of Espeon’s tail by the time the wagon rolled in, still carrying enough parcels and letters that the snorunt had to dig through the cart just to get the package they needed. She’d taken to lazily trotting in place, creating motion just to keep her a little warmer. Umbreon shook the snow that had fallen on his ears off, rising and stretching.
“Showtime,” he said.
The two of them carefully crossed the street, slipping in through the doors of the building while the mailmon snorunt was still gathering the package.
The transparent doors closed behind them, and with the inside of the building came a temperature change that nearly made Espeon trill in delight. Less ‘freeze your tail off’, more ‘cozy fireside’. The building must’ve had one of those heavenly emera-powered heaters she’d sunned herself next to back on Cloud Nine.
Undoing the flap of Umbreon’s satchel with her psychic grip, she pulled out of it a parcel that was wrapped identical to the ones they’d sent out back on Cloud Nine. It was weighted the same too—filled with common candies and other junk that they’d purchased at a low-value mart. If anymon asked, it was a present for a relative’s kit.
The doors behind them slid open again, admitting the snorunt they were waiting for. It was time for them to make their move. Faking a stumble forwards, Espeon ‘accidentally’ tripped over Umbreon’s tail and crashed into the mailmon.
Just like she’d hoped, packages flew everywhere. Her parcel and the one the snorunt was carrying flew, intermingled, and landed on the ground.
“Oh, so sorry!” Espeon said, pulling herself to her feet dizzily. Beside her, the snorunt was picking himself up, rubbing his cone-like forehead. “Mr. Clumsy over here was letting his tail wag all over the place again.”
Umbreon managed in response to look suitably abashed.
The snorunt looked down at the two packages, unsure of which one was which.
“Uhh… which… did you have a…”
“My package!” Espeon cried out, diving for the parcel she was pretty sure was the right one. “Oh, it would’ve been a mess if I lost this!”
She sure hoped she’d played up the drama enough. By the looks of the snorunt’s sheepish face, at least, she’d played her part to a tee.
“Well, uh,” he grunted. “Just take it so I can get on my way. Lots more stops to make today.”
Espeon quickly snatched up the package and returned to Umbreon. It went in his satchel, all safe and sound, and then they quickly made a beeline for the exit. The doors slid open to admit them, and before the pokemon at the counter could realize the slipup, they’d slunk into an alleyway to check they had the right one.
“That felt too easy,” Espeon said. At least, after they’d waited a half hour in the cold. It was quickly beginning to bite at her again. She shivered.
“It’s not that much trouble for us to loop back and buy you a cloak,” Umbreon said.
“I can deal with the cold for a few more minutes,” Espeon said, puffing out a breath. “Let’s just make sure we have the right package.”
Standing back slightly, Espeon used her psychic grip to untie the strings and throw the package open…
The package gave in from the bottom, and something hard and heavy hit the ground with a clunk. Immediately both of them huddled around it, scrabbling through the dirty street to pick it up. They disappeared from the alley seconds later as quickly as they could.
~\({O})/~
Apartment Room
Apartment Room
It sat on the table in front of them, barely a foot long on any side. The disk was square, nearly flat, with a slight silver dome at the top. Intricate engravings neatly carved into the metal ran up and down its frame, the machinery underneath blood red. To anymon who couldn’t read the machinery, it would have looked unremarkable. Only Espeon and Umbreon knew its true power.
“So what now?” Espeon asked. They’d brought it in through the door, barely even daring to open Umbreon’s satchel until it was locked and latched and all the curtains were drawn. She’d been staring at its cold, motionless form on the table for a couple of minutes, almost unwilling to believe it was in front of her.
Umbreon flicked his tail against a switch on the wall, and the lights in the apartment clicked on.
“We open it,” he said. “Let’s figure out what makes this tick.”
They pried the top off easily. Whatever these were, they weren’t made to be as durable as the prototypes. The inside was even more fragile; as soon as they had the top off the whole thing seemed to be holding together by the barest threads. Espeon was always better with technology, and used her expert psychic grip to undo the wires and the boards in ways that wouldn’t break or accidentally set off the machine. It wouldn’t do to have a dungeon-creating device suddenly begin working within their rented hotel room.
When they were done, they were able to conclude that aside from the materials and a different configuration, there were only a few major differences from their original prototypes.
“What’s the verdict?” Umbreon asked. He’d been standing off to the side and handing Espeon tools for most of it. Clumsy paws didn’t work well for a delicate job like this.
“In most ways, it’s the same,” Espeon said, raising the goggles she was wearing as she turned away from the table. “Just one thing.”
“A good thing, right?” Umbreon asked.
She wished.
“They removed the power inhibitors,” was all Espeon said. She watched as Umbreon’s face twisted into disbelief, then confusion.
“They…” he trailed off. “But why? What ‘mon in their sane mind would remove that?”
“You said HAPPI wanted us off the entercard project because we didn’t get along with their ethics,” Espeon said. “Maybe this is why.”
~\({O})/~
Zoroark-as-Braixen
Zoroark-as-Braixen
Work dragged on and on. He’d gone to the cafeteria, but they didn’t have any chesto berries. It was wintertime, and there were fresh food shortages around the city due to the weather sinking a worrying amount of Grass Continent supply ships. He took the tasteless muffin and the dried berries he was handed and went on his way.
The noise of the room echoed around his ears, other rescue teams sharing lively, animated conversations over the bricks of bread. A closer look revealed the cracks in the smiles, the way everything was barely holding together. Whispers of the coming winter storm and how they’d never seen anything like this before, and half the buildings in town might not hold up against it. How the price of everything was rising ever since ships had started sinking, and soon some of them weren’t going to have enough to eat. How there was a reported murderer on the loose so soon after the gates had been brought down, and if the two were connected. The conversations were all fraught and gloomy. Did any of them enjoy their life here? Or were they all just trying to get by?
Sentry duty started just half an hour after he ate. The skies of the city were grey and gloomy even during the morning, snow dancing around in the air, the chilly wind a bit stronger today. He adjusted his violet HAPPI scarf, carefully checked his illusion for inconsistencies, and trudged down the street wherever Alice guided him. Step after step, one foot after the other. The pavement was so icy it froze his paws. Every block felt like a battle, and if they had to intervene somewhere he didn’t know if he would have the energy to do it.
Alice trudged ahead of him, her steps just as labored as his were. Her movements were chilled by the wind, her legs so stiff she had to jerk them every time she moved. She walked faster than he did even though she’d had less sleep, and she did it without a single complaint. He couldn’t see her face now, but he’d seen it back when they left: brows furrowed, expression stony, snout pulled back into a labored grimace. She was fighting to get through the day, just like him. But she’d just resigned herself to it. To living her life here aimlessly. She wasn’t living. She was just waiting for it all to be over.
Their route took them into the run-down section of town, where he’d been the day he arrived in the city. He’d seen the locals around here and there – a chansey who tended to look after the neighborhood kits while the other pokemon were working, a leavanny who made just enough cutting things to get by, a marshtomp who pushed around a cart of warm treats. None of them had seen him nearly as many times as he’d seen them. When he was in disguise, they just avoided him. They were trying to enjoy their lives here, the best they could when everything around them was falling apart and the chill crept between the cracks and patches in their walls.
Today they were packing up and holing away, reinforcing their houses with whatever they could. The neighborhood kits were huddled up around the chansey and a few others, staying in one place as the adults worked. The leavanny was helping cut things until they fit the different houses, pieces of discarded wood and cloths that were then added to walls and roofs. The marshtomp hadn’t brought out his cart today and was helping with moving the heavy materials. When the storm hit the city, this block would be hit the hardest. They all must have known, and they were preparing earlier than most. Were they preparing because they thought this was home, or were they just trying to get themselves by?
He passed Amadeus’ house on his way. It stood imposingly on stilts that were covered in a brittle coating of ice, its walls and shingles covered in frost, its windows dark. Zoroark-as-Braixen looked up at it as they passed, almost fixated. The windows were too dark and too covered in frost to see through from the outside. Was he in there, watching him right now?
No. He was out further down the block, helping the local shopkeeper hole up their store. Gone was the stern face he always addressed Zoroark with, the stiff, rigid way that he held himself with his scythes behind his back; his movements were relaxed and he was cheerful. He chatted with the lucario shopkeeper like they’d known each other for years. No-mon would have guessed what he got up to by nightfall. He must have considered this block of ramshackle houses home.
They circled around to the base again by noon, when the sun was high enough to almost poke through the clouds. The halls of Headquarters were deserted at this time of day, nearly every other rescue team out on a chosen mission by now. The storm prep was happening here too, the hall staff packing up the easily broken things like decorative vases and picture frames trapping the portraits of Paradise higherups. Alexis’ formal pose, Elliot’s grin and wave, the Director’s stern face, all were taken down from the wall and wrapped in cloths for storage.
The tables in the mess hall were completely empty, and the mission board, always drowning in requests, was as deserted as the corridors. A quiet sense of gloom settled in with the building silent and dead, leaving Zoroark with his thoughts as he split away from Alice and headed up to their room.
He passed the hallway leading to the Room of Records on his way up. It seemed to stretch out before him, the end of the corridor dark in a way only he could see.
What about him? Could he grow to consider this place home? Halls as magnificent as these made a wonderful house. He could count on a meal twice a day, stale as they were, and a bed at night. All he had to do was pitch in around the city once or twice a day. It was a dream job, it should have been a dream job. A dream life. If only he wasn’t—
His back was up against a wall now, breathing heavy. The hallway wasn’t a place to break down, he knew it. It didn’t matter, he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t come so close to having a normal life here and then have it snatched away from him all over again.
He couldn’t buy a life here. Why would he ever think that he could have a life here? He was wanted for murder. He was a zoroark, a pokemon that wasn’t wanted. No-mon who knew would want him, not even his own partner. Not after yesterday.
His knees shook. He slid to the bottom of the wall, his snout clasped in his claws. He looked at the corridor ahead of him. An impossible task. An unwanted task. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. Woe turned to anger, and anger turned to a determination he hadn’t felt in weeks. He pulled himself up from the floor, steeling his claws like fists.
No. He wouldn’t do it. He was done with all of this. Living here wasn’t worth this. He’d grab all of his spare change and belongings, wait out the storm, and once it had passed he’d be out the city gates and down to Noe Town as soon as he could. He’d find somewhere he was wanted.
And as for Amadeus… with the storm on the way, it would be days before anymon realized he’d lied. By then he’d be long gone.
~\({O})/~
Sparkleglimmer’s Office
Sparkleglimmer’s Office
It was getting dangerous to keep poking around in here. These were the Director’s most personal files, the papers no-mon but her ever saw. Morbid curiosity had driven Alexis to read the first one, but duty compelled him to read the rest. Tear out the desk drawers and gut them for everything they had, then it was on to the fancy wooden cabinets against the walls.
He figured anything she really didn’t want anymon to see would be hidden better than that, so he started searching for secret compartments in the wall or under the floor. Pull up the rug, move the desk, take every infuriatingly pink oval mirror off the wall and feel for crevices behind it. His efforts rewarded him – on the middle mirror in the third row from the roof, above where most ‘mon could reach but doable if you were a pokemon with long limbs about an eon’s size, the plaster was cracked, attached to a stone that slid out of the wall and revealed a box.
The office was well and truly torn up by now. He’d tried to keep it neat at the beginning, but it didn’t stay that way once he got frantic about his search. Oh well, he could put everything back to rights in five minutes. Right now, it was time to open this wooden box in his paws.
The bottom was dusty, but the top wasn’t, as if it had recently been opened. Alexis slid off the top, watching it pop off neatly into his other paw. Inside, there were several different papers, all sealed up and folded up so that they’d fit inside. He hesitated to touch these, unsure if he’d be able to fold them up the way they were later… but he was so far in now that if he didn’t just take them out now, he’d be back again later. In for a penny, in for a pound, it was best to finish snooping while he still could.
As he read, he felt his heart sink into his stomach.
It started with Entercards. Sparkleglimmer had shut down the company on dubious grounds and shelved the project, and officially that was supposed to be the end of it. If that was true, it didn’t explain why she’d contracted another company to continue working on them on Cloud Nine, and why she’d gone to such lengths to keep him and Elliot out of it.
His first thought was fraud. For some reason, she must not have wanted Espeon and Umbreon involved in the entercard project, so she’d rigged this whole loop de loop to take it for herself. If that was everything, it would have been small beans. But it didn’t stop there.
A folder sat within the box – a copy of the Paradise Expansion Project, with certain districts marked in red. Sparkleglimmer’s own writing filled the margins – when all the houses at the edge of the city were knocked over, they’d be replaced by large company buildings and fancy mansions. The mass displacement was designed to herd pokemon who “couldn’t earn their keep” out towards Noe Town… she’d planned this?
He rifled further and further, sifting through the small papers in hopes of reaching an answer. He found a letter.
Director,
Your correspondence with this project has been of the utmost importance and help, and for that I cannot thank you enough. I you intend to make a demonstration of the entercards’ might with Traveler’s Demise before our next meeting. When we convene once more to decide the Air Continent’s next Guildmaster, I should look forward to seeing your update on the project – and, of course, transferring you the funds you are due. Boltund Industries’ construction company will handle development of the project’s other side, as promised.
~ Your Business Partner
Like nothing had happened, he put everything back exactly the way it had originally been. Letters back in the box, mirrors on the wall, the rug back in its place, the drawers all organized and shut, the dust he’d unearthed swept from the floors. It was like the office had never been touched.
But he knew what he’d seen. That couldn’t be plucked from his mind, that couldn’t be set back to rights just like everything else was.
He couldn’t just let her get away with it. But what would she do to him if she knew he’d found it?
“Hmm.”
The noise startled him. He was disciplined enough not to let it show. Looking behind him, he saw that Sparkleglimmer had entered the room. Her teal spinerak-silk cloak, one of many she owned, danced above the floor with every step as she strode towards him.
“Did you need something?”
Oh, how he wanted to question her right there and then. How he wanted to ask her what the meaning of all this was.
“I thought better of it,” was what he said.
She looked at him through sharp eyes for a few seconds. Then she walked past him and took a seat at her desk, carefully studying the things strewn about on it.
“Did you move anything here?”
Alexis had put everything back the way he remembered it, but no-mon was perfect. Maybe he’d forgotten the positioning of something…
“I bumped into the desk by accident,” he said. “Something probably got jostled around.”
“That must have been quite an accident,” Sparkleglimmer mused. In one of her lower ribbons, she clutched a letter opener. “I’m pretty sure this was in one of my drawers.”
If Alexis didn’t know how to keep a cool head, he would have froze there. The game would have been up. She would have known.
Instead, he shrugged.
“Never seen it before.”
More silence. If Alexis didn’t know better, he would have said the Director was spacing out. Then she ‘hmmed’. A second lower ribbon opened the drawer under her desk, and the first slipped the letter opener within. With a slam, the drawer was shut.
"Remind me, have you gotten the names for those vote counts yet?” she continued. Alexis felt the tiniest amount of his high-strungness leave him. She must either have not noticed, or decided to dismiss the thought.
“Not yet,” he said. “Still trying to track them down.”
“Get them for me by tomorrow, please,” Sparkleglimmer instructed, going back to studying an unsigned sheet of paper on her desk. “I’ve scheduled a press meeting on the topic in a day, and I want to get that expedited. Missing files or not, this project moves forward.”
Alexis nodded. “I’ll do that.”
As he walked for the door, a thousand thoughts raced through his head. When he’d heard it, Elliot’s plan had sounded farfetched, silly even. But now it was beginning to make more sense than it did before. Was it possible to do that in just a day? Maybe if he was smart about it.
He closed the door of the Director’s office after him and walked down the hall. His own office was on the other side of the building, so he had a walk of at least five minutes ahead of him.
But before he’d gotten far, a subtle sound made his ears twitch. He looked behind him, paws twitching as if ready to grab his scalchops at any minute. He’d expected to see another HAPPI member, or a mouse or rat.
Instead, a familiar form seemed to blend out of the shadows. The emera-light in the corridors reflected off lime-green feathers and cloak-like wings.
“Hello, Alexis,“ said the xatu.
~\({O})/~
Alice
Alice
Her partner liked to slink away on his own when they didn’t have a mission. Sometimes, he skulked around in the corridors. Other times, it was the mess hall. Their room was where he went when it was late, but never when she was there. Often it was somewhere outside of the building, after the sun had set. She didn’t know where he went when he took those trips, but they happened at least once a week.
She hadn’t followed him before, because normal pokemon didn’t stalk their partners out everywhere. Normal pokemon didn’t have to think about what their normal partners were doing when they weren’t looking. So given she was a normal pokemon with who she really hoped was a normal partner, she didn’t really want to think about why she was preparing to do it now, as he started heading off on one of his signature outdoor disappearing sessions. Could she count it under criminal investigation? That probably lessened the initial blow a little.
Was that an excuse? She didn’t want to think about that.
It started out pretty normally. If you could call any of this normal. He left their quarters with a pouch that he wouldn’t disclose the contents of, then started down the hall. Once he was pretty far along, she discreetly tailed him. Once he’d left the building, he suddenly seemed to vanish.
Luck was on her side. The snow was heavy, and he wasn’t good at sneaking away – he didn’t even know how to properly cover his tracks. He’d made a hap-hazard effort, but there was still a clear trail she could follow. Normal pokemon didn’t try to cover their tracks. She padded after him, ignoring the little ways her joints froze up and her legs felt stiff and limber. Cold weather would kill her one of these days.
The path led her further out into the city, down snowy streets that were lit by streetlamps, past trash blowing out in the wind across the street in tumbleweeds, down, down as the houses slowly grew less pretty and more shabby. Eventually it took a turn down the very street they’d been patrolling on earlier that day, footprints leading down a completely deserted street. All the buildings had been boarded up and shuttered in preparation for the storm, and there wasn’t a single other soul about. At least they’d have privacy.
She caught up to him halfway down the street, where the house on those rickety stilts stood. Hiding in a nook between the buildings just a little ways back, she watched as he finished trudging towards the house and finally collapsed against a wall for his breath. He looked one way, then the other. Then, everything changed.
His fur rippled in a disorienting way. Her first thought was evolution – did he come out here just to evolve? – but quickly she realized that wasn’t what was happening, as purple fur gave way to a shaggier grey coat, he grew two feet in height, and a wild red mane sprouted from his back. Her eyes widened, her jaw felt slack. She was completely stiff, and she knew it wasn’t just from the cold weather.
She knew it. She knew it. She knew something had been wrong, and how she didn’t want to be proven right… but here was the truth right in front of her.
And she had to do something. She was an enforcer of the law, and he was a murderer. If an outlaw was right in front of her, she had to catch him.
He was an outlaw. He was an outlaw, not her partner. That was what fueled her charge forward. He probably never had been her partner. To think that he had been was too complicated for now. For now, he was just a criminal.
“Stop right there!” she yelled, charging out from her hiding place. His head snapped around to look at her, his eyes wide in shock. He couldn’t have been more shocked than she was.
They stood several meters apart. It was like time had frozen, even the blowing of the wind had died down.
“Partner…” Alice began, barely able to stomach the word. “You are placed under arrest for the murder of three pokemon.”
Her partner stammered incoherently, apparently still too shocked to say anything.
“You will proceed with me to the nearest location of law or risk possible deadly force in capture,” she continued, loudly talking over him.
“But, but I,” he broke off, trembling. He looked scared to death. And she already didn’t want to do this. Why did he have to make it so hard for her?
“Anything you say from this point onward can and will be used against you when deciding your sentence,” she finished, stepping closer. She didn’t know how a water move would work in temperatures this cold, but she was ready to freeze his feet to the ground if she had to.
He suddenly bolted.
And she didn’t do anything to stop him.
~\({O})/~
Music of the week!
The Fallen – John Lunn
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I still don't know what to make of these demons (void shadows?). The hidden messages keep saying to embrace them, but I wonder if there's something limiting where they can go in the real world, which is why they're limited to targeting her in the dreamscape.