A/N: Before we start, I just wanted you to know that this is a mystery, and your job is to figure out who the thief is ;)
Disclaimer: I do not own Total Drama.
For Kilometer Mart standards, it was a fairly busy afternoon. Noah Patel sat behind the service desk, sarcastically greeting the customers who bustled throughout the store, while reading his book and ignoring the phone that constantly seemed to be ringing. The teenager wasn't the best employee to ever grace the box store; in fact, customers seemed to complain about him on a daily bases, and it was a mystery to most as to how he kept his job.
People would often wander up to him, asking the teenager dumb questions that he did not know the answer to such as: "Ohmigosh, your Drama Brothers line is, like, totally cute! Does Trent Adams ever come to the store?" or "This shampoo that you guys sold sucks, man. Is there a way that I can return it, even though I don't have a receipt on me and it has already been used?". Noah would typically handle these customers by insulting them, and sending the idiot in the direction of someone who cared. If he was going to make minimum wage, then he was going to do the bare minimum.
This was going to have to change pretty soon, however. After someone raided the store of a couple thousand dollars worth of the brand new Z-box gaming system, the manager, Chris Mclean, was more paranoid than ever. It was no secret that thefts were coming in Kilometer Mart. Noah would often hear his coworkers complain about finding popped tags and discarded boxes of stolen goods in the breakroom. This lasted robbery was more serious.
The systems and their games were stolen without anyone noticing, and because it happened around a week ago, the tapes with the evidence on it had been discarded somewhere as a result of bad management. Chris always said that the only footage of the store needed was the one for the current day, and now he was on the brink of being fired because of it..
Feeling the pressure from his boss, Chris took it upon himself to hire a person to deal with the shoplifters: Izzy Pickard. She had a self-proclaimed IQ of 188, and there were plenty of rumors floating around that the girl was wanted by the Federal government. Nearly everyone that came into contact with the girl found her to be insane, but Chris didn't really care. As long as she did her job and found the missing Z-boxes, the girl could be as crazy as she wanted.
The redhead had spent the last couple of days stalking throughout the store, even sneaking back in one night and sleeping in one of the kayaks that was on sale. Noah, the laziest employee in the superstore, found her to be a freak. Izzy had narrowed down a list of suspects, and one of them had walked in. This meant, that she was hovering around the service desk, irritating Noah in the process. When her suspect got too close, she jumped behind the counter and crouched down, as close to her coworker as possible.
"Excuse me, weirdo, what are you doing?" The nerdy boy asked, looking up from his book with a disinterested expression on his face. The girl next to him was practically shaking from excitement. She pulled out a large pair of binoculars from seemingly out of nowhere, and continued to spy.
"I'm catching a thief!" she said, rubbing her hands together and cackling before going serious again and yanking Noah down to the ground with her.
"What ar-"
"Shhhh! He could come up any minute with some loot in his hands!" The crazy girl chastised, before peering back into her binoculars and whispering 'code punk' on a walkie talkie to God-knows-who.
"Yes, because no one manning the service desk doesn't look suspcious at all," he quipped before curiosity won out. Noah glanced up to see what dumbass would even bother to steal the crappy stuff from this store. He rolled his eyes when he saw her suspect.
It was the guy with the mohawk; Duncan Evans. Noah saw him as some loser who flunked a grade and is scared of Celine Dion standees, but Izzy saw him as the mastermind behind the Z-box heist.
"Listen here, Mohawk over there seems like the type of guy to pull this off."
"Yes, the guy's whose graffiti looks like bunny rabbits is always the first criminal that I would question too."
"Sush! I did some investigating, you see?" she said, trying her best to sound as dramatic as possible, "and this punk has been to juvie three times and his parents are coppers! If anyone would know how to pull off a robbery like this, it would be him!" Izzy started rubbed her hands together, ecstatic that she had come so close, before mumbling another code on her walkie and tossing a spare one to Noah.
"Uh, no thanks, looney."
"E-scope didn't say it was a choice! You're on the squad now with Eva and I, because I like the way you think."
"E-scope? Eva? You mean the She-Hulk in the backroom?" He questioned, looking around. "I thought that the pitbull wasn't allowed in the front of the store." Eva was easily the bulkiest person that Noah had ever seen. She could single handedly lift crates upon crates of the merchandise that was shipped to the store without breaking a sweat. Her aggressive nature, however, didn't make her a crowd pleaser.
"Oh, she isn't, but E-scope doesn't really care!"
"Great. I always dreamed of working with two people who belong in straight jackets." Izzy shushed him again as Duncan passed by.
"Great! Our suspect is going towards apparel, probably to steal again," she said going dark. "It's going to be easier than ever to catch him in action now!"
"Right. Duncan totally seems like the kind of person that wants to wear stuff from the Trent Adams clothing line!"
"You think?" Izzy asked, failing to pick up on her unwilling partner's sarcasm. "I thought he would be more into death metal or something, but if you say so…" Instead of wasting his breath explaining to Izzy what he meant, Noah just rolled his eyes.
"Hey, Fluffy, you there?" Izzy asked into her walkie.
"Yes Sergeant E-scope?" a butch voice replied, ringing in Noah's ear.
"I have shrimpy here. Meet us over by the baby stuff and I'll tell you my plan on how to take down Juvie." She commanded, laughing like a maniac in the process. Before Noah could protest, the redhead yanked him from the ground and dragged him to the meeting spot.
A/N: This is a weird idea for a mystery, I suppose, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve.
It's tentatively going to be five chapters, excluding the intro.
And, after drafting the next couple of chapters out, I found this the second easiest story that I've ever written.
They say to write what you know, and I know my job pretty well ^^
So, thanks for reading the prolog, and let me know if you enjoyed it, and maybe who you think the thief is.
Any TD character is a suspect until proven otherwise ;)
Jenna~