Side Story Ch 2: Where it all began

Legosi headed back to the club building with Bill following close behind. The wolf figured that spending time there would do him some good and it could possibly lead him to at least a hint of where to start. He thought that if he looked through whatever remained of Tem's things such as any projects he worked on, the pair could find a clue. He remembered how Tem was working on something for the stage before he died and figured it would be a good place to start.

As the two made their way to the store house, they saw someone standing by the entrance. They slowly approached the stranger from behind before realizing it was Gon, the school principal.

"Hello principle Gon," Legosi called out.

The older tiger turned around and saw two of his students approaching him. "Oh, Hello Legosi, Bill. What brings you here?"

"We just thought we'd look at some of the old designs," Bill explained.

He pointed at Legosi with his thumb. "This guy needed some inspiration and thought he could get some ideas by looking at everything the club has made so far."

"A hard worker even during break I see," he said with a smile and a nod. "If that's the case I'll get out of your way. Just be careful not to over exert yourself alright."

"Don't worry, we won't," Bill responded.

As the principal walked past them, Legosi spoke up. "Sir, before you go… may I ask you something?"

Gon turned his head and smiled. "By all means"

Legosi looked down as his ears folded back. He took a deep breath and spoke. "Sir… why… why haven't we heard anything about Tem or Louis?"

The older tiger's eyes widened as he let out a small gasp.

"It's been months and we haven't had any new information about what happened to Tem at all," Legosi said.

His body shook a bit as he continued pushing himself to speak. "It's also been a month since Louis disappeared and we haven't heard from him either."

Gon turned his head away from the two students and looked at the floor. He adjusted his glasses and spoke.

"I understand how you boys feel, losing two of your friends so suddenly. But you have to understand that the police have already done all they can for Tem and his family at this point. As for Louis, his father explained that he will be out of school for some time because of some personal issues."

"Personal issues? What personal issues?" Legosi asked.

The older tiger shook his head. "He didn't go into too much detail about that I'm afraid."

Gon turned his head back and smiled. "Just know that Louis is alright and that he'll be back to school before you know it." The principle started walking away, leaving the pair by themselves. "Try not to get into too much trouble you two," Gon called out as he walked further out of sight.

"Well… that was weird," Bill said with a confused look on his face.

Legosi looked at Bill with a deadpan face. He rolled his eyes and walked past him into the storehouse.

"What?" the tiger asked as he followed the wolf inside.

Legosi and Bill entered the stage set room where the wolf turned the lights on and the two looked around. Legosi went straight for Tem's section of the room while Bill wandered around looking at everything the art team had made over the years.

The tiger looked over at the different sections the room was divided into. He was honestly impressed with everything the art team made. From the props for the stage to the various backdrops. He looked over Kai's section, then Kibi's, and so on until he made it to Legosi's section.

"So this is his stuff huh?" Bill asked himself as he looked up at the sign with Legosi's name on it. "Well, might as well see what he made. Who knows, maybe I'll learn a little something about my new partner."

The tiger looked around as he walked through the display and couldn't help but be blown away by Legosi's work.

He saw everything from the set design the club used for the 'Adler' play, to all the minor and major props the wolf made for the club. These included hand painted prop walls, sets for the insides and outsides of fantasy, medieval, futuristic, and Victorian settings, and even props for festivals.

As Bill continued looking through Legosi's section he found several props that he'd never seen before; several prop weapons, a couple of custom made stage lights, and even some old costumes that in all honesty weren't so bad.

Upon looking a little closer, the tiger found small hand made wooden figures, on top of a small table, that had been chiseled and painted to look like various animals. He took a closer look and realized that all the figures were in fact the animals in Legosi's life.

There were figures of the drama club members, figures of Legosi's roommates, and one strange figure that he could help but take interest in since it was someone he didn't know. The wooden carving resembled an old komodo dragon and for some reason it was off to the side away from the others. But what really got the tiger's attention was the fact that none of them were covered in dust. This probably meant that either Legosi made them recently or that he used or perhaps maintained them often.

Bill wanted to pick them up and examine them more, but decided against it. He figured Legosi wouldn't appreciate his snooping and since he was still on thin ice with the grey carnivore it would probably be best to keep his knowledge of the figures to himself. Still, Bill was blown away by how well everything was made and it gave him a newfound respect for his partner.

"Man, the wolf's got more credit than I thought," Bill said to himself.

He crossed his arms. "Too bad he's such a wallflower. He should really have more pride in himself as a carnivore. Especially if he can make things like this." The tiger made a deadpan face. "Not to mention the fact that he knocked me clean off my feet and nearly broke my spine."

While this was going on Legosi wandered through Tem's section of the storehouse. He sniffed around all the old props his friend made in the hopes of finding anything that could help. It was honestly hard to do so however because of all the dust and lingering scents of plastic, paint, and other odors props tend to have.

"We should really clean in here more," Legosi thought as he continued sniffing the air. "There doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. All the props and sets are exactly where we left them and there isn't anything here that tells me someone was hanging around when they shouldn't have been."

As he continued walking through the displays he heard something slide across the floor. He looked down and saw that there was a clean spot in the dusty floor and a skid mark leading away from it. Legosi knew that this meant he had kicked something without even feeling it. He learned something else. Whatever he kicked was round and small, but more importantly it didn't belong here.

He kneeled down, sniffed the ground where the small object was, and quickly realized that whatever it was had no scent.

The large gray carnivore found this strange because everything had a scent. He got down on all fours and closed his eyes. He then sniffed everything around him, allowing all the different scents to fill his nose. He smelled everything from the paint used for the props to Bill's spoor across the room and all the different paths those scents made.

It was here that he found the odorless trail cutting through the other pathways. He tracked the scent to the far side of the room where he found a white cap. It was too big to be a cap for something like a water bottle, but it was still pretty small nonetheless. He picked it up and cleaned it with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket.

Legosi sniffed it again, fully expecting it to have his scent and the scent of dust. To his surprise however, the cap remained odorless.

"No way!" the wolf said in surprise.

"Whatever was inside the container this cap belonged to must have stored something important. After all, getting something that has no scent to it is extremely difficult."

At that moment, Legosi felt something approaching him. He turned around and saw a figure reaching out to him. As if by instinct, the wolf lunged at the figure and pinned it down. After he calmed down he immediately realized it was Bill.

"You know, we really gotta stop meeting like this," the tiger said jokingly.

Legosi growled.

"Damn it Bill, quit sneaking up on me like that!" the wolf said as he stood up. He reached out his hand to help his new partner up, to which the tiger graciously accepted.

"Did you find anything?" the large canine asked as he pulled the orange feline off the floor.

"No I didn't," Bill responded as he stood up. "Also, I wasn't sneaking up on you. I hadn't heard anything from you so I came over to make sure you were ok."

The large feline shook his head. "What about you? Did you find anything?"

"Actually I did." Legosi nodded and showed the bottle cap to Bill.

"I don't know what this is for, but it's completely odorless. You can't get something like this anywhere so I'm thinking that it must be the lid of something important! Even though it's a long shot, I think that whoever it was that attacked Tem may have dropped it. I know it was here for at least that long because it was completely covered in dust and it just happened to be right where Tem kept his sets."

"Is that thing really scentless?" Bill asked with a confused look.

"Just check it yourself," Legosi answered.

Bill took whiff of it and just as Legosi said, the cap had no smell to it. The tiger wasn't convinced however and opened his mouth as wide as he could.

"What are you doing!?" Legosi barked as he jumped back in surprise.

"What do you think? I'm Flehmening," Bill answered.

"Fleh-what?" the wolf asked as his ear flickered.

"You know Flehmen. That thing we felines do in order to get a better smell of something," Bill said, looking at Legosi like he was a strange person.

"I've never heard of that," Legosi responded.

Bill was honestly not all that surprised. This reflex isn't shown all that often so he understood why the large canine was confused.

"Ok look, we felines have a sensory organ in the roof of our mouths... Kind of like snakes. It's actually much stronger than the ones inside our noses so when there's a smell we want to identify we open our mouths and breathe in so we can get a better chance of identifying it."

"This reflex is called 'Flehmen' and it's something that we only do when our noses aren't strong enough to identify an unknown or very subtle scent."

Bill scratched his head. "So now that you know what I was doing, can you put the cap in front of me again?"

Legosi nodded. He held up the cap and Bill went right to work. To the cat's surprise, it really was as the wolf had told him, the bottle cap had no scent to it.

"Well that's strange," Bill answered. "You don't find something like that just laying around.

"I know," Legosi barked. "Stuff like this is next to impossible to find."

Bill shook his head. "I wouldn't say next to impossible. It's certainly rare, but not that rare."

He looked down at the bottle, "Whatever was in there must have been some kind of drug."

"A drug?" Legosi asked with a surprised look on his face. "Like… something illegal?"

"Couldn't tell ya," Bill answered as he scratched his head. "But if nothing else at least this proves that someone in the club is on something."

Legosi nodded in agreement. "You're right about that. No one outside the club comes here so I doubt it could have come from anyone else."

Legosi clenched his fists and exclaimed, "Bill!"

"Yea what's up?" the tiger asked.

"Even though we have no proof this bottle cap belongs to a carnivore… if it turns out that it does… then it will prove that it really was one of us that killed Tem."

"Now hang on Legosi," Bill said as he held a hand up.

"Let's say this does belong to a carnivore in the club. We don't know what it's for or if it's even illegal for them to be taking it."

The tiger put his hand back down and calmly spoke. "Let's just focus on one thing at a time here and try to figure out who this cap belongs too or at least what exactly an odorless cap like this would be for."

Legosi once again nodded in agreement and the two headed out with their new clue in hand.

The pair walked through the campus for a bit trying to figure out their next move. Bill suggested that they could ask any of the students who stayed for vacation if they knew who it could belong to. However, Legosi thought that approach was far too vague for anyone to give a definite or useful answer.

The wolf also explained that it would be best to keep their clue hidden. Just in case someone who they couldn't trust or didn't know, caught wind of what they were doing. Legosi then suggested that they should tell principle Gon what they found, but Bill argued that Gon could confiscate it if he had the mind to. Besides the cat reckoned that Gon wasn't someone who they could trust just yet. The two continued walking until they came across a bench and decided to rest a bit.

Bill looked up at the sky and sighed. "Damn! We find a clue and we have no idea what to do with it. We can't ask anyone who stayed for break and we can't tell the faculty about it either."

The tiger turned to Legosi. "Any ideas of what we should do."

"Mmm," Legosi grumbled as he thought to himself. "Well… I was thinking about going to the nurse about it, but because of what you said about someone confiscating it that's probably not the best idea."

"Tell me about it. Although I do get where you're coming from," Bill admitted. "Asking someone who knows a lot about drugs like the nurse is a good idea, but as long as there is a threat of someone taking away our only clue we won't be able to get any kind of help."

Bill crossed his arms and turned his head. "What we need is someone who knows a lot about drugs, but who won't steal our only evidence."

Legosi closed his eyes. He thought about someone who could fit Bill's criteria and after a little bit of thinking he came up with someone. The wolf was hesitant to tell Bill who it was because he wanted to keep this person a secret. However, Legosi also knew that if they were gonna get to the bottom of this they needed help.

"I think I might know someone," Legosi answered. "But I think it would be best for me to go by myself."

"Why would you go alone?" Bill asked as he raised a brow.

"Well… The guy I'm thinking of is a pretty private person and I don't think he'd like it if I brought you with me," the wolf answered.

Bill shrugged his shoulders playfully with his hands open and smiled. "Come on bro, we're partners! I'm sure your friend won't mind if it's just me. Besides, safety in numbers. That's what you wolves are all about right? Sticking together and doing whatever it takes to get the job done?"

"… Yea," Legosi answered reluctantly. "I just don't know if he'd like it."

"Look Legosi, I get what you mean, but we need this guy's help and there's no point in me staying here," Bill explained.

"We're in this together right?" the tiger asked as he raised his fist.

Legosi looked down at Bill's fist. He let out a small laugh to the side then looked back at the orange carnivore.

"Right," the wolf said as he gave Bill a fist bump.

"This guy is in the city so we're gonna have to take the bus. He's also in the same area as the black market so we're gonna have to be careful!"

"Wait! Mister goody-two-shoes Legosi, Mister I-will-never-eat-meat-in-my-life, is friends with someone who lives near the black market?" Bill said jokingly.

Legosi rolled his eyes. "Look, make jokes all you want but it's not like that. My… friend is a back alley doctor who specializes in helping carnivores. If anyone would know anything it's him."

"Alright, sounds like a plan," Bill said happily. "We just grab a bus and we're on our way."

Legosi shook his head. "Look Bill, if we do this you can't go to the black market! I know you say you'll help me with this and I want to trust you... If you agree to that then you can come, but if not then I'll be going alone."

Bill let out a sigh. "Ok! No black market. We go in, get help from your friend, we get out."

Legosi smiled. "Alright, we have a deal. Let's go get ready and meet up at the bus stop in an hour."

Bill nodded and the two went their separate ways. Legosi still wasn't sure how he felt about all this, but if Bill could keep his promise then it would prove that he was really someone the wolf could trust.