Author's note: Pokemon and related trademarks are the sole property of Nintendo. I only own the original characters in the story.

For the record, I wish I could be more sure of when this becomes now. Because I need to adjust the ages of some of the people in the story and any future ones, including some from the games and anime and manga that will be brought in. Also for the record, I'll be following the games and what I remember from the anime far more than the manga.

Violent content warning:

Then, 1985

Andrew Caldwell rubbed his eyes as he looked over the photos of the remains again. Of all the cases, this had to be the most unpleasant.

It was what was left of a tiny, decomposed, and half burnt corpse. An infant. Could not have been more than a few months old. There were still several scraps of blue cloth attached to it.

It hit him rather close to home. He had a son that had to be the same age as the victim. It terrified him to think of what could happen, what monster could do such a thing to a child like that. This was a level of cruelty he never thought could exist in Saffron City, or anywhere else in Kanto for that matter.

He looked at the photo of his child on his desk. Your mother and I would be devastated if we lost you, he thought.

He turned his attention to the stack of missing persons reports in front of him, trying to find someone that would match the description of what had been officially called Baby Doe but was dubbed Little Boy Blue by the press. It had been a fruitless and wearying process thus far, and it wasn't getting any better. He hadn't thought there'd be that many people missing from the regions of Kanto and Johto, but there were.

A man with a thinning hairline came up to him. "Not having any luck, Drew?"

Caldwell shook his head. "None at all, Eddie. No infants reported missing in the past two weeks."

"Well there has to be someone out there who would file a report, right?"

"Not always, but most well-adjusted people would."

Then, from another part of the room, they heard the police lieutenant's voice.

"Hopfmar and Caldwell," Mack Herndon said, "could you come to my office for a minute, please?"

The two detectives wordlessly walked into the office.

"Any luck on Baby Doe?" Herndon asked.

"None," Caldwell replied. "I've searched most of the files and can't find anything that'd come close to his description."

"What about you, Eddie?"

"No luck on my end either, sir."

"Great." He leaned back and shook his head. His dark gray hair seemed to kill all the light that hit it. "The last thing I wanted was for this to go in the cold files, but right now we're going to need a miracle to prevent that from happening."

Caldwell sighed. "We're doing what we can, boss, but there's only so much we can do with what we have."

"Well, try to get more. That's your only option at this point."

"Yes, sir."

Caldwell walked out, leaving Hopfmar standing there. "Sir, I-"

"Drew's not taking this well, is he?" The lieutenant asked him.

"I guess not, no."

"I can't exactly say as I blame him. He's got a kid about that age himself. I know if I were in his shoes I'd be a bit of a wreck too."

Caldwell failed to find anything else in the evidence available to him that would give him a new lead or another clue. He struggled to avoid accepting the fact that he was likely never going to solve this sickening yet baffling murder. He was never one to just give up easily like that, yet it seemed like there was now no other alternative.

He watched the clock as it counted down the minutes before his shift was to end. Outside, a heavy snowfall was steadily blanketing the city in white.

He hadn't expected this when he walked to work that morning.

He glanced back at the photo of his son. Had it really been a few months since he had first gotten to hold the newborn in his arms in the hospital, amazed that the little one seemed so much at silent peace with the world around him?

He sighed again and leaned back in his chair, leaned so hard, in fact, that he toppled over backwards. He quickly got back up and straightened his chair out. Nobody around him so much as blinked.

Soon, his day was done, and, still frustrated over his inability to come up with anything during the investigation, started out for home.

The snow swirled around him like a noisy whisper as the winds picked up. He had at least thought to wear a warm coat to work, but he found that it wasn't exactly doing him much good as he trudged through the snow collecting on the sidewalks and the roads.

The lights from the street lights and the houses guided him on his way towards the outskirts of town, where his wife and child awaited him. After a bad day like today, it would be a comfort for him to come home to something considerably more soothing than what he always had to deal with at work.

He forgot to watch where he was going and walked right into a snowbank as the snowplow made its way through the streets of Saffron, dropping a thin layer of salt and sand as it passed. Pulling himself free, he continued walking, watching the ground to make sure he didn't get stuck again.

It was only a few blocks away now as the lights grew somewhat dimmer. The wind coated his hair with snow, and only a small amount of it melted before more landed.

After several minutes of staring mostly downwards, he looked up, and the expression on his face changed to one of startled confusion.

The sound of gunshots rang out in the air, and Andrew Caldwell collapsed to his back, staring with dead eyes towards the heavens, three dark stains in his chest slowly merging into one, the snow beneath him becoming more and more pink. The footsteps leading towards him and away from him soon became like the man himself as the snow covered up any evidence that someone had left the detective's wife a widow.