Ch. 8: Sleuthing
It was morning at the Zero residence, as the sun's rays shined in Penn's bedroom and falling on his face, forcing him to wake from his slumber. He also felt the pain on his left shoulder tingling as he got up, but it was not as bad as it was since yesterday.
"Ugh! That's going to take a while to get use to," Penn muttered under his breath. "Oh well, I might as well deal with it."
After carefully getting off of his bed, Penn looked at his clock and noticed that it was 8 a.m. Phyllis was going to contact him should a mission be available for him, Sashi and Boone any time now. For them, Sundays were a hit or miss opportunity, depending on whether Rippen was planning his latest scheme or taking a day off once in awhile, usually doing some non-villainous activities.
"Never thought I would say this, but I hope Rippen won't be doing world dominations today," Penn said to himself. "He should be doing something more enjoyable...like gardening."
As soon as Penn said this, he laughed at the mere idea of Rippen doing gardening as an activity on his day off. There was no way that Rippen would plant his flowers correctly and even if he did, they would withered within seconds. Just the idea itself would make a rather good horror film.
"Rippen doing yard work? Like that will ever happen!" Penn continued to laugh at the idea, before calming himself down. "I might as well get ready for the day," Penn then pulled out his usual clothes, ready to put them on...or at least he was about to.
"This is going to be problematic," Penn sighed, realizing that changing into his outfit was going to be challenging, especially with one working arm. He took a deep sigh, before looking at them. "How hard could it be?"
Ten minutes later and Penn was still trying to get dressed. Due to his dislocated left shoulder, pain kept shooting through his arm as he put his sweater on starting with his left arm. He cringed every time he felt the tingling sensation, but he ignored it long enough to fit the long sleeve over, before putting on the sling. Once that was done, he had to wiggle his right arm to fit through his other sleeve, before using it to secure his pants on. Finally, he was able to put his socks by wiggling each of them, before putting his shoes on, eventually putting on his outfit, even if it took longer than usual.
"Man, that was tiresome, but at least I did it," said Penn. "Looks like it'll be wash, rinse and repeat until my left arm is good again."
Once he was fully dressed, Penn left his bedroom and headed downstairs for breakfast. By the time he reached down, he already saw his aunt, uncle and the Kobayashis at the table, already eating their breakfasts.
"Hey everyone," Penn greeted them, making his way into the kitchen.
"Hello, Penn," Chuck greeted his nephew. "You're just in time."
"How's your arm doing?" Sylvester asked him.
"It's sore, but it wasn't bad as yesterday," Penn replied.
"Do you need any help sitting down?" asked Tia.
"No thanks, I got this," Penn insisted, as he pulled up a chair for himself and sat down at the table, just as Rose handed him a plate of eggs, bacons and toast on the table.
"Need any help with your meal?" Rose asked her nephew, putting the plate on the table.
"I can do it on my own, but thanks," Penn appreciate his aunt's concern. He grabbed a fork with his right arm and began chowing down on his meal. Penn then looked at Sashi, who was having cereal for breakfast.
"So Sash, how are you today?" Penn asked, trying to start up a conversation with her. Sashi stopped what she was doing and briefly glanced at Penn.
"...G-Good," she stammered, before eating her cereal once more.
"...Alright then," Penn simply said, weirded out. Normally, she would give him a blunt response, but the way she had greeted him just now was quite off.
'What was that about?' Penn pondered for a moment, but simply shrugged it off and went back to eating his breakfast. 'I shouldn't think about it right now.'
Sashi, meanwhile, was a bit tired from last night, not getting any sleep at all. She tried to close her eyes, but she simply couldn't. All she could think was the conversation Chuck and Rose had with each other last night about her and Penn, or rather, Penn's feelings for her. Sashi just couldn't understand what Penn saw in her.
'Why would someone like Penn love me?' she thought. 'I'm not a very pleasant person to hang out with, I always attack first and I never ask any questions later. What kind of boy would like that kind of girl?'
Sashi stopped for a moment, glancing at Penn, still eating his breakfast, before going back to her thoughts once more.
'I know Penn could do better than that. There has to be a girl out there better than me.'
"Sashi, are you feeling well?" Penn asked, interrupting Sashi's train of thought, as she faced him immediately.
"Yes, I'm fine," Sashi lied. She hated herself for lying to Penn like that, but it was not the place nor the time to talk about her friend's feelings for her, especially in front of her family. It would never be the end of it should they find out.
Penn, for his part, just stared back at Sashi in response. She was acting off again, just like she did seconds ago and on the same day too.
'She's been saying that for a while now and she's been wrong every time that happens,' Penn remarked in his thoughts. 'I should talk to her about why she's acting like this when I have the chance.'
With this in mind, Penn resumed eating his breakfast once more, with Sashi doing the same thing.
After finishing up their breakfast, Penn and Sashi excused themselves out from the kitchen and headed to the living room. Just then, a message appeared from Penn's MUHU, no doubt coming from Phyllis. Penn looked back, making sure that the Kobyashis weren't looking. Once he was certain that their backs were behind him, he opened up the message to see what Phyllis had to say.
"Morning Penn, how is left arm of yours? You better take good care of it because I will not fix it for you again. However, I have good reason to sent you message. There will be no mission for today, so and your friends could have free time. Until then, have nice day."
Once Penn read her message, he felt quite relieved to hear this. He was still a bit irked of Phyllis' remark about his left arm, but for the most part, it was good news.
"Thank goodness for that. I could use a break after the last one," Penn said, before he pondered. "What should I do, though? I can't do anything else in my current state."
He pondered for the longest time, trying to figure out what to do for today. Eventually, the answer became quite clear to him.
"Of course, Sashi's apartment!' Penn excitedly thought. 'This would be a good time to help Sashi by investigating her place and find out what caused the fire! I can talk about her weird behavior later.'
Having made up his mind, Penn turned to see Sashi heading outside, prompting him to go after her. He needed to tell Sashi of his idea right away.
"Sashi, wait!" Surprised to hear her friend shouting at her, Sashi stopped in her tracks and faced Penn.
"What is it, Penn?" she asked curiously.
"I have an idea on what we can do for today," Penn explained.
"And that would be…?" Sashi asked further, as Penn took a deep breath before answering her question.
"I was thinking that we should do an investigation at your apartment and find out what caused the fire."
Sashi was stunned by this and stared back at Penn, not saying anything right away. After a few seconds of silence, she took a deep breath, ready to give Penn her answer.
"Sure Penn, we can do that. Besides, I also want to find out what happened on that night."
"Alright," Penn then pulled out his cellphone and dialed in Boone's number. "Hey, Boone, are you available? Meet me and Sashi at the park. It's very important."
Penn and Sashi left the Zero residence and made their way to the park. After a few minutes of walking, they reached their destination and spotted Boone near the park's entrance, waving his hand at them. Penn and Sashi were thankful that he showed up on time, as they made their way up to their friend.
"So, where should we begin?" Boone asked nonchalantly.
"The ground floor," Sashi replied. "That's where the fire started."
"So that's where we start then," said Penn, before he and his friends went to the burnt remains of Sashi's apartment, with nothing but rubble and scorched woods in its place. By now, the firefighters and the police officers were done with their investigations on the site, having come to the conclusion that the fire was merely an accident. The only thing that stood between them and the area were a few barricades that were put in place to stop any trespassers. Penn and his friends, however, have other ideas.
"Like those blockades are going to stop us," Penn retorted, before he, Boone and Sashi went over them and headed to where the fire had supposedly started. Once they spotted several scorch markings at the center of the area, Sashi activated detective mode on her specs and began the investigation.
"I'll scan over here and see if I can find any clues," Sashi explained, looking around. "I should find some that the police officers and the firefighters might have miss."
"Who in their right mind would even burn down an apartment?" Boone stated the obvious.
"That's why we're here to find out," Penn simply said.
"I'm just saying," Boone defensively said, before he started searching through some nearby debris. "Hey Penn, how long would the roof hold up?"
"Roof? What roof?" Penn curiously asked, prompting Boone to point upward. Penn looked up and saw the remains of the roof. Most of it was burned away, leaving a gaping hole at the center, with only a few remaining girders holding the roof up, but even they look like they would collapse any minute now.
"Oh, I see what you mean," Penn said, feeling a bit worried from what he saw, before facing Boone. "It's best that we just leave them alone. If we disturbed them, we might do more harm to this building."
"Gotcha," Boone understood Penn's reason, before resuming his search through the debris once more. Penn, meanwhile, wandered around the ground floor, searching for any room that would have suffer the most damage from the fire.
'If I could find which room suffered the most damage, it can offer more clues for us to find and show us whether or not it was an accident, even if some of them were burned away,' Penn reasoned to himself.
Penn continued to search in each room on the ground floor, while he and his friends remained as silent as possible. Since the area was considered off-limits to everyone, they needed to avoid making a lot of noises in their investigation. Thankfully, though, they have their cellphones with them and they can simply text back to each other, in case one of them had got something.
"Sashi, did you found anything yet?" Penn texted to his friends. A few seconds later, he received a response from Sashi.
"Just some burnt marks that the fire left."
"But nothing important so far?"
"No, but I'll keep looking and I'll let you know."
"Same here," Penn send his text message to Sashi, before he put his cellphone away and continued with his search once more. He eventually made his way to the back, as Penn looked inside and let out a gasp. The room at the back...it was totally wrecked, especially the back wall; it was completely burnt off.
'I wonder…' Penn cautiously made his way inside and approached the back wall, touching the black substance with his fingers and rubbed it. Something about it doesn't feel right.
'Better let Sashi and Boone know about this,' Penn pulled out his cellphone and began texting his message to them. "I think I found something very important. Meet me at the back."
Penn then send the message to his friends and waited patiently for their arrival. A few seconds later, Sashi and Boone arrived at his spot and they both entered inside the nearly destroyed room.
"Sashi, I need you to scan this black substance," Penn then showed his fingers, still containing said substance, in front of her, as she used her specs to scan them.
"So...what is it?" Boone asked.
After a few more seconds of scanning, Sashi faced her friends of what she had found, with a grim expression on her face.
"This black substance is a combination of every flammable materials: gasoline, lighter fluid, oil, the works."
Boone and Penn were stunned to hear Sashi's answer. If what she said was true, then there was only one logical conclusion: Sashi's apartment didn't burned down by accident. The apartment was burned down on purpose.
"H-How could someone do something like that?" a shocked Boone asked.
"I don't know, Bonne. I'm surprised about this as you are," Penn admitted, just as shock as his friend was.
"I don't care," Sashi angrily said. "I can't believe some moron would burn down a building full of people on purpose."
"The police said that it was an electrical fire that caused the blaze…" Penn began. "Which means that the flammable liquids were there to make the apartment catch on fire real quickly. Still, it doesn't change the fact that what the arsonist did is wrong. We need to know who it is and why."
"We should find out where the fire started," Boone suggested to his friends.
"Good idea, Boone," Penn agreed.
"Then let's head back and find out," Sashi suggested, before leading her friends out of the room and back to where they began their investigation. The trio looked around once more, hoping to find any clues they might have missed. After a few minutes, Boone spotted something on the ground.
"Guys, come over here. I think I found something," Boone called out, as Penn and Sashi headed to where Boone was and noticed footprints on the ground. They then noticed a trail of them leading behind to the back of the building.
"How could the police officers and the firefighters miss something this important?" Penn asked in disbelief.
"Let's worry about that later, Penn. We need to know where they lead to," said Sashi, as she and her friends follow the trail of footprints, before they eventually come across an electrical socket...or what was left of it. Penn was the first to approach the damaged socket, inspecting it closer in person.
"Looks like someone banged it up real badly," he commented.
"This had to be the one that caused the fire," Sashi concluded.
"But what's a socket like that doing out here?" asked Boone.
"It had a cover around it to protect it from any damage," Sashi replied.
"Until our arsonist ripped it out of its place and tampered with it," Penn interjected.
"Who would be stupid enough to tamper with a socket?" Boone questioned this claim.
"Someone who thinks they can get away with this and not care about the consequence," Sashi answered, clenching her fist tightly.
"Normally, we wouldn't find any evidence at all, since they would be burned away. We were just lucky to find some," Penn remarked.
"I guess that is good," Sashi agreed, before examining the socket with her specs. "Looks like there are knife marks on it."
"Could you explain that last part again?" Penn clarified.
"You heard me, Penn. There are knife marks on it," Sashi reaffirmed.
"No one can be that stupid to jam a knife in a socket without risking injury," Penn pointed out.
"Maybe someone use the knife to remove the socket by force," Boone suggested.
"It's a nice theory, but that wasn't the intention…" Sashi began. "I saw several markings on the socket. My best guess is that someone threw a few knives to hit the socket from a distance."
Using her specs, Sashi examined the markings much closer, before spotting some that caught her interest.
"Looks like some of them are quite deep, but there are some divots on it as well."
"Divots?" asked a confused Boone.
"They're traces that knives usually left when they bounced off of things," Sashi explained, before looking at the deep markings. "Judging by how deep they went, this must be how the fire had started."
Sashi then turned off her specs, having found the actual cause of the fire, before becoming serious.
"Now we just need to find whoever it did this and stop them."
"We did find enough clues around here. We can use them to find out who the arsonist is," Penn suggested.
Suddenly, the trio heard the sound of a car pulling out in front of the burnt apartment. Startled and worried about getting caught, Penn, Boone and Sashi immediately got over the barricades as fast as they could, before spotting some nearby bushes and ducked into them for cover.
"W-Who could it be?" Boone nervously asked, before he and his friends slightly poked their heads out of the bushes for a better view. Two people came out of the car, both dressed in blue uniforms and have badges on them as well. It was clear that they were police officers and were looking around the burnt apartment.
"Why did we come here again?" a disgruntled officer asked his colleague.
"Apparently, some kids were spotted in this area. What they're doing, I don't know, but they should have known better than to trespass," the other officer replied.
"Kids these days. Don't they have anything better else to do than explore in abandoned properties?"
"That's why we're here to find out."
While the police officers were having their conversations, Penn, Boone and Sashi looked on from their hiding spots, clearly worried of their presence.
"Who would have called on us?" Boone asked his friends.
"One of the neighbors around here must have spotted us entering the apartment," Penn concluded, looking at some of the nearby buildings in front of the burnt apartment. "We should have been more careful with our surroundings."
"This isn't the time to berate yourself, Penn. We should get outta here before we get caught by the police," Sashi reminded her friends.
"Agreed," both Penn and Boone simultaneously said.
The three waited for the police officers to head into the apartment, making sure that they didn't turned around for even a second. Once they went into the building, Penn, Bonne and Sashi quietly got of the bushes and snuck away from the area as quietly as possible, as they headed back to Penn's home.
It seemed like forever, but Penn, Boone and Sashi arrived back home safely, as they made their way to the living room and sat on the couch. Even though they didn't find out who burned down Sashi's apartment, they did gather up some clues that could help them find the identity of the arsonist.
"What are we going to do now?" Penn asked his friends. "The police will have that place in lockdown and with tighter security."
"Aw man, that will make our investigation much harder," Boone complained.
"Not to mention that it'll be more difficult for me, especially with my left arm in the sling," Penn added.
"Don't worry, Penn. We'll be more careful the next time we do this," Sashi attempted to assure her friend. "Right now, we-"
Suddenly, Penn's MUHU began to ring and for Penn, he knew where that signal was coming from, as he answered it immediately, before an image of his parents showed up.
"Mom, Dad!" he happily greeted them. It had been a while since he had last seen them.
"Hey Penn, how's it goi…" Vonnie trailed off when she and Brock noticed the sling on their son's left arm. "Oh my god, what happened to your arm?!" a shocked Vonnie yelled, while Brock was left speechless.
"I dislocated it after Rippen knocked me off from a cliff," Penn replied, shocking his parents even more.
"I swear, when your mom and I get out of here, we'll make Rippen regret doing that!" an enraged Brock vowed, before calming himself down. "But anyway, it's nice to know that you're safe. Did you get a metal from Phyllis?"
"Metal?"
"Yeah she gives out metals for... "achievements". "First serious injury", "First time eaten by creature with more than six arms than successfully fighting you're way out without dying", "First-""
"Thanks, dad, that's enough!" Penn shouted, which cause Brock to just shrug.
"So what's been going on lately?" Vonnie asked, changing the subject.
"Sashi and her family are staying at my place after their apartment got burned down," Penn replied, to his parent's surprise, before they turned their attention to Sashi, expressing their condolence.
"We're sorry to hear that happened to you and your family," said Brock.
"You have our sympathy, Sashi," Vonnie assured her.
"...Thank you," Sashi quietly thanked them.
"So Mr. and Mrs. Zero, how are you doing in the Most Dangerous World Imaginable?" Boone asked.
Suddenly, a loud roaring came from the background, as Brock and Vonnie turned around and saw a huge lumbering beast charging right towards them.
"Not on my watch!" Brock leaped onto the large beast immediately and began to wrestle with it, while Vonnie was facing the teens.
"I'm afraid we have to get going now, but it was nice talking to you and your friends again," Vonnie sheepishly said, before she hung up, as the image of her and Brock disappeared.
"That could have gone better," Penn joked, before a smile formed on his face. "But it was nice seeing them again."
Soon, he, Boone and Sashi sat on the couch in silence, unsure of what to do next. Then, Boone spoke up to his friends, if only to break the silence.
"We should find out who the arsonist is," he suggested.
"We know that whoever did it wants to make it look like an accident, using the electrical fire as a cover," Sashi brought up what she and her friends had gotten so far.
"It has to be Rippen. He lives nearby and would do something like this," Penn pointed out.
"As much as I want to believe Rippen was responsible for burning down the apartment, we need to be sure that the evidence we gather all points to him," Sashi countered.
"So let's see what we got then," said Penn.
Sashi used her specs to display the clues they had found at the burnt apartment. But the more they examined them, the more they realized how off they were. The footprints were rather big for Rippen, they couldn't find any fingerprints anywhere and the markings they found on the socket couldn't match any knives around the area. Even though they knew exactly what caused the fire, they couldn't figure out who started it and the evidence themselves made it clear that they don't belong to Rippen..
"Maybe we were quick to rule out Rippen as the arsonist, even if he is a bad guy," Boone admitted. "The clues we have didn't point to him."
"You're right, Boone. We shouldn't have jump to conclusion like that," Penn agreed.
"Looks like that rules Rippen out," said Sashi, as she turned off her specs in disappointment from the results.
"So what do we do now?" Boone asked again, as their investigation had gone nowhere. Sashi took a deep breath, before answering his question.
"We'll put our investigation aside for now. We should gather more clues to continue it some other day."
"If you say so," Boone accepted Sashi's suggestion.
"I guess that's it then," Penn accepted it as well.
With everyone in agreement, the trio decided to just hang out with each other, having done as much as they could on their investigation.
A/N Hey would you look at that! I'm still doing this story! Yes after another unplanned hiatus that I'm seriously trying not to make a regular thing. My birthday was today and I thought as a weird reverse birthday gift, I would release the next chapter. Happy Birthday to me and all of you.
5 guest reviews to go over:
redlinvcr: I feel like we're having two different dialogues here…
Rainbowlopez: I want to break out a Daniel Bryan chant. YES! YES! YES!
Luigi S Mariano: Nope. *Neck extends a full foot*
xXBlack-HauntXx: More humor? I could try but I don't want to shoehorn what doesn't come naturally. Allso I doo engish wel cuse I in colege and it my mageor. And thank you for taking the time to read it. :)
Dr. Guest: Yeah it's easy to stand out when there's not many Penn Zero fics period. I will keep trying my best, Doc.
I have no idea when the next chapter is coming out but know what the likelihood of my just dropping this story aren't very high. Like one percent and that's if my computer spontaneously combusts.
