Why even build a palace so big if it was just going to be empty most of the time?

Panne glared up at the vaulted ceiling, reclining against the indoors evergreen tree that had been planted along the main court. For how little natural light Paradise seemed to get, the throne room had clearly been build to maximize its efficacy, almost appearing brighter than how it looked out the windows. The greens and blues that practically littered the place stood out in a pleasant sort of way, though it was still cold as shit in here. A pair of knights ignored the Delphox all the while and continued to guard an empty throne. What, so she wouldn't decide to sit in it or something?

She idly swallowed and felt a brief pang of pain in her throat. Her hand went to the scarf around her neck. That bruise hadn't quite gone away yet. Damn Weavile. She should have seen it coming, too. That animate window pane practically handed her a vision of that exact scenario happening on a silver platter and she still managed to fall for it. That creepy ice dragon just up and told her she was going to be an idiot before it even happened. Though, after thinking about it, the last part of that vision didn't quite match up the same as what happened. It didn't...have the same feeling. Whatever. It's not like she knew how this shit worked in the first place.

A fluttering broke the Delphox's concentration. It was that Ribombee with the exceptionally tiny spectacles. Alexander's little helper, right?

"Mrs. Panne," the fairy huffed, presumably from searching all over the palace for her. There was a note that was nearly as large as they were in their hands, which they pointed towards her. "Master Alexander left a message for you."

"Oh, how thoughtful. Maybe he's congratulating my efforts and couldn't bear to stoop down to the level of doing it in person?"

Turns out that wasn't what Alexander had written about. In fact, the letter was almost scolding, going on for several flowery paragraphs that she should be careful and avoid directly dealing with gang activity, which was almost certainly referring to the fact that she helped take down and arrest like a dozen fucking members of The Family while that Kommo-o took all the credit. It was just Alexander waggling his vine at her, after all. She crumpled up the paper and flicked it into the soil she was sitting in.

"Really, Ribombee? How can you work for a guy like Alexander? He just made you fly through the entire palace to give this to me, and it would've hardly been worth thirty seconds of time if it had just come from his own fat mouth."

The fairy kept a straight face. "Master Alexander is not presently at the palace. He is at his courthouse, where he is currently processing a great number of arrests and property issues, and has been doing so for the past week."

With a stretch of her working limbs, Panne snapped up her staff from the side of the planter and hoisted herself into the air. "Oooh, so busy. As if I wouldn't have been doing the same shit back at Nexus right now. Well tell him whatever, I guess. I'm just going to keep doing what it was I was doing. I, uh. I think I have somewhere to be, anyway."

...

Panne's sideways fist banged on the door two more times, shaking the blinds behind it. The faded white logo mocked her in the ensuing silence. She dismounted her staff in a huff, immediately regretting her actions as her foot came down on the rickety stairway, and sighed once she was certain everything wasn't about to collapse beneath her.

"Nibby! I know you're in there! At least I'm going to assume you are because I don't know where else you would be." She could clearly hear the hustle and bustle of the marketplace not more than a few blocks away, but nothing from behind the door. "...What? You're just gonna leave a poor, crippled Delphox to freeze out in the cold? That's too cruel, even for you."

There was finally a shuffling from within the office. Panne didn't exactly hold her breath, but after something like a minute and a half, the lock reluctantly clicked open as a muffled fluttering came and went. She rolled her eyes and pressed in into the relative darkness.

"Took you long enough!" Panne said, kicking the door closed behind her and nearly tripping as a result. "Sheesh. You really were gonna leave me out there, weren't you?"

The Noibat had already flown back to his desk to turn his back on her. "You're far from crippled, Panne."

"So? I could say I was and people'd probably believe me. I just hate it when people assume I am, that's all."

Nibby's office was a goddamn mess. There were papers everywhere-on the floor, on top of half-opened cabinets, and even in the potted plant. All the drawers on the other side of his desk were left hanging open, too. In fact, one of the drawers was filled with little blanket scraps and tiny cotton pillows.

"...Is that your bed? Do you sleep in there?"

"Do you see a bed anywhere else?"

The Delphox settled on a shrug. "Fair. You do fit in there, I guess. Might not be too uncomfortable now that I look at it."

"Why are you here, Panne?"

She hopped up on her staff and leaned forward, her back end hanging off the other side. From the inner fur of her sleeve, she pulled out a tiny brass pin engraved with some symbol she hardly cared about, twirled it through her fingers with her telekinesis, then flicked it onto his desk. "You forgot that back where everything went down. Probably fell off at some point when you got grabbed."

Nibby shot a glance over at the badge before he sat down in front of an unfolded newspaper and hummed. "Thanks."

Peering over the Noibat's head, she squinted at the article in the newspaper that was front and center on the desk. Unsurprisingly, it was about the night that The Family collapsed, and the sum of the ensuing damages. All that was left were three broken survivors, a burnt-down cabin, and the corpse of a Mandibuzz with her throat ripped out by another beak. Panne's face went sour.

"Well at least you won't have to worry about anyone coming after you anymore."

He groaned. "Sure. I guess not. But seven civilians were killed, and around thirty were injured. Thousands upon thousands of gold in property damage alone. Sixteen members of the guard were slaughtered or taken out of duty permanently. Many more than that were injured, but that number's been omitted on purpose. And now there's a power vacuum that Shardurr is immediately present to fill. But yeah, I guess I'm off the hook for now."

The office went as empty as it was when she was waiting at the door. She let her arms fall to her sides. "That's what happened, yeah. It's not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination, but what can we do about it? What else were you gonna do with those warrants you were given? Not turn them in? Hell, I blasted through like a fourth of their members in an afternoon! We sped up the process, but they were on a downward slope regardless."

"That doesn't make it any better! This ain't a lateral move, Panne! That Weavile of yours just took another slice of the damn city for herself in the matter of a month! We're already well beyond downward slope by now. We're on a crash course with the deepest pits of hell and there's no slowin' down."

Her tail flicked. "Psh. Glad to see you're safe, too. Yeah I made it out fine as well, thank you for asking. No need to worry about me."

"There's a heap of things to worry about as it is." The Noibat threw his head back to the shadows on the ceiling. He stayed there for a time, blinking on occasion, staring off into space while a storm of thoughts swirled behind his glazed eyes.

"You're an enigma, Panne. A real piece of work. Your legend spins you as this wide-eyed little Fennekin with a heart of gold, but the pokemon floatin' in front of me is anything but. You're crass and careless. You've got the appeal of a bramble bush. Hell, just look at what you did to those gangsters. But none of that changes the fact that we almost died back there. That YOU almost died back there. And it was your idea to walk right into that trap!"

Ears flung back, she placed her hands on the sides of the desk and glared a brief flurry of daggers. "Newsflash, detective. It turns out that I'm not dead, and neither are you. The world I explored can be as cold and cruel as anything this city has thrown at me so far. And you never fucking explained to me why you felt so obligated to come with me in the first place!"

That shut him up. The Noibat turned his head to gaze into the paper's headline for another half minute, organizing the obvious facts she'd just shoved back into place. "...Why are you here, Panne?"

"Because it's my mission to be here. Hey, running a university takes a lot of money. I'm not gonna get snooty over-"

"I mean in my office. Why'd you come back for me?"

She frowned. "You got some comprehension problems, buddy? Did that Carnivine bop you on the head on the way down? I gave you back your badge!" The Noibat continued to stare at her. Her shoulders slumped with a deflating sigh. "Right. Fine. It was something that wasn't really bothering me too much, but if you really wanna know. It's about that vision your stupid ghost friend gave me."

Nibby's expression immediately seized up. "What? What about it?"

"When I was down in that ice cave or whatever it was, I saw...well, it doesn't really matter what I saw. It's just it looked similar to what just happened-with The Family collapsing and me nearly getting offed by that Weavile and all-but I can't shake the feeling that...that what I saw in the ice hasn't happened yet."

"Panne. What did you see in the ice? Tell me." The Noibat crawled up to the edge of his desk.

She backed a few inches away. "Well that's the thing! I don't really fucking know what I saw. It was- it was a really weird experience, and frankly my memory's a little hazy around it, but for whatever reason I just kinda know it hasn't happened yet. And I figured you were in with that kinda crazy mysticism shit at one point, and I've already worked with you for a while now, so I thought I'd come back and work something out."

Nibby puffed out his chest and shuddered through his wings. An unintelligible grumbling in his throat, he let the air hang for a few seconds as he contemplated something. "Was it about Shardurr's Weavile, at least?"

"That, I'm certain," she said. "And it wasn't something good. Not at all. When we rode out of there it felt like I was waking up from a nightmare."

"Damn!" Nibby seethed under his breath. With his next huff, he turned to her again. "So that's why you're back, then? Our business with looking into that Weavile ain't quite wrapped up, you think?"

The Delphox shrugged. "I mean, unless you don't want in anymore, I guess. Not that I'd be able to blame you after what happened. But I am pretty damn sure that this situation with Paradise is only going to get worse, and I don't want to be blindsided by it, and I figure you don't, either."

Another long paused went by. A range of emotions flashed over Nibby's face, most of which weren't particularly pleasant ones. His ears twitched, his nose tensed up, and his eyes rolled the full circumference of the room. It took nearly half a minute for him to finally huff in exasperation and take off the desk into the air.

"You want to know why I followed you? Let's walk, then."

"What? Can't do it here?" Panne had to ask, but he was already fluttering towards the door. She shrugged and transferred from the desk to her staff in one deft motion. Guess not, huh? Well, back into the cold, Panne thought to herself with a groan.

The weather hadn't gotten much better, because it never did. Rather than the typical huge clumps of snowflakes that came in droves, today's flavor of winter was strong winds and dust-like particles of ice that formed into uniform piles of powder. Little vortexes danced across the roads as the gusts swept at the glittering ice. Pretty back home, maybe, but immensely annoying at present.

Nibby didn't hop onto the end of her staff or hitch a ride on her shoulder like he normally did. The Noibat had a destination in mind, and he was hell-bent on getting straight there, regardless of how far behind she fell while trying to slam his creaky door shut.

"Hey! You know when people say they wanna walk and talk, it's usually supposed to be a calming sort of thing! Nobody's running and talking!" the Delphox shouted after him, catching up with a brief exertion of her telekinetic powers, squinting at the particles that caught in her eyes.

He grunted. "This ain't a calm sort of subject. If we're working together, you're gonna get what you get, and I'm gonna give it how I want."

The not-so-pleasant stroll at least had the benefit of avoiding that crowded bazaar entirely. Nibby had taken her around that part of town and through an even seedier, though admittedly quieter route. The passage that she couldn't quite call a road seemed more useful to city workers trying to squeeze through the background than pedestrians. A great deal of the snow that rolled off of surrounding rooftops ended up down here, too. Thank god she didn't have to actually wade through it.

When they emerged from the shortcut, an eyeful of half-forested sheer slope awaited them-par for the course with this side of the city. This particular street would slowly ascend along the side of that gasp of nature and bring them around the top. They passed a few bundled-up pokemon along with a hapless cart that was struggling not to slide down the slippery cover of loose snow.

Then, Nibby spoke up. "I never used to do my job solo. In fact, this wasn't even originally my business. This city's a dangerous place, and it's been that way as far as I remember. Knights come in pairs. Guards come in packs. Businesses all clump together for security. Rusty Mountain Mercantile wouldn't be half as successful as it is now without that added edge bringing pokemon together. Otherwise- Well, you've already seen what happens to pokemon like me."

"Yeah, I get it. So you had an actual partner at one point."

"I was the partner, more like. An apprentice at best if you really wanted to scrape the bottom of it."

"Potato, potahto," she said with an impatient roll of her wrist. "What are you trying to get at here? They up and disappear and leave you with their dirty work or something?"

And then Panne looked up to see that they had walked along a metal fence for half a block, then turned past some wrought-iron gate. Standing like wave-beaten spires off the coastline in a sea of white were a great many headstones, and past those were small mausoleums that obscured the true depth of the cemetery.

"...Oh. So it's that kind of story."

The forlorn expression on the Noibat's face said enough. He guided her deeper into the maze of tombs and burials. Very few of the headstones had faded, probably because the major city of Paradise hadn't actually been around for too long. Still, that didn't help much to preserve the identity of those buried here. Species, title, occupation, and perhaps a few quotes from family members or beloveds were all that really set the dead apart. And this was just the pokemon who could afford it, surely.

Nibby broke away from his front-facing stare. "What's with that look? You never seen a cemetery before?"

Panne scoffed. "I've seen the fucking world, Nibby. Of course I've seen one. Hell, I've seen whole catacombs. My own hometown has enough history to have a barrow smack in the middle of it. I'm just not fond of what goes on in these sorts of places. And, well…" she trailed off a moment. "I may be letting this miserable town get to me more than I'd like to admit."

"Winter'll do that to you around here," Nibby said and offered a weak smile. "Not that this is a very happy place in the summer, either. The blooming flowers can only do so much to lighten up fading memories."

They passed into a corridor of those stone mausoleums. The gruesome imagery of the Hollow adorned most of the graven fixtures, though sometimes there were more pleasant works of art amid the constant renditions of the draconic beast. Even quotes about Kyurem seemed overly grim-what with the whole inevitable progression of fate garbage.

"Why is this faith of yours so damn depressing?" she openly expressed the question.

"Because destiny is a crawling glacier that will sweep up even the sturdiest of oaks."

She thought back on the turmoil that the Runerigus priestess had shown her. The panic, the rage, and the fire. Still hazy, but still somehow so clear. "Yeah. I guess that's one way to look at it. Maybe if you freaks got some more sun you wouldn't be worshiping your eventual deaths so much."

Nibby came to a stop. He couldn't land on the headstone without first knocking away the snow that had accumulated on top. Panne dismounted and planted her foot into an ankle-deep crust of ice. Wincing, she sucked in her discomfort and knelt down beside the lonely engraving.

"This is your old partner, then?"

"Was. Now she's just a pile of rot and bones buried in the frozen ground. A lesson learned."

The Delphox wiped away at the intrusive coating of snow to get a better look at what was written. A Lucario was apparently laid to rest beneath her feet. It came to no surprise that she was an investigator. No immediate family, though it did say she originally came from a town in the south of Mist Continent. And there was something else, but she had to paw at the snow near the base to reveal it. What was-?

"Even a wayward soul finds its home," the Noibat effortlessly quoted the epitaph without looking. "She never found hers, but that didn't stop her from trying. It's aggravating, really. You two would've gotten along terribly well. Between your reckless abandon and her stupid courage, I reckon the both of you would've taken the town by storm."

She frowned. "What happened?"

"The same thing that always happens. Shardurr wins and gets away with it." Nibby furrowed his chest fur, brushing a dusting of snowflakes away. "We were this close to putting that fateless Druddigon behind bars. The evidence was there, the plans were laid-everything was set. Lucario just couldn't leave it at that, though. Druddigon wasn't the type that wiggles out of trouble or tries to pull fast ones. She was absolutely certain that the bastard wouldn't have gone down without causing as much damage as possible. She tried to stop him, and that was the last mistake of her life."

"Stop him from doing what?"

"Going on a murderous rampage in the middle of Post District's markets the next day," he answered coldly. "Just like you, Runerigus offered to take her down into temple's cloister. She saw...something down there. Something that she made her mind up about without ever talking to me. I suppose she did manage to stop that Druddigon, after all. Instead of trying to tell the guards and getting turned away without any basis, she confronted him the night before. Her aim was to incapacitate the beast to assure that everything went smoothly the next day. Instead, she was unceremoniously torn apart in some back alley somewhere, and the Swellow stopped by to destroy every trace of evidence that we had left. That I had left."

The Delphox ran her fingers over the name again, her claws catching on the rough-hew texture. This wasn't the marker of somebody wealthy or famous. It was simple and hollow-a gesture that Nibby had to scrounge up from the bottom of a coin purse. A long pause fell over the cemetery, where there was only the tinkling sounds of ice battering against stone.

"You didn't go with her," Panne softly surmised.

"I left her for dead."

"You would have died too, you know. Just like when you came with me."

"There's no knowing that. I could've been enough to tip the scales. I know I'm not the strongest kind of pokemon around, but I could've at least tried. Maybe that's asking too much. Maybe I...maybe somewhere along the line I decided that I wasn't going to let anyone else that leaves my office march off towards their death anymore. I thought you were a fateless lunatic back when you first showed up at my office. But when you tried to leave, it reminded me of-.."

Panne held onto her staff and let it pull her to a stand. "Hey. You know, I really didn't plan on dying. I've got a score to settle with a crooked snake and another one to come home to." She stuck her chest out towards the Noibat and tried to part the fur in just the right place. It took a few tries, but she finally found the scar.

"See that?" she said. Nibby nodded slowly, sniffling as he stowed his emotions. "It doesn't look too bad now that I've evolved twice, but that wound was fatal when I got it. It wasn't even half a year after I pacified Dark Matter that it happened. And do you know who caused it? That fucking Master of Law of yours."

"Alexander?" Nibby mouthed, squinting at the faint patch of pink, hairless skin. "He really tried to kill you?"

"Oh, he was trying to kill a lot of pokemon. I was just in the crossfire. Though to be fair, that was after the bastard broke my leg, kept me in a cell all night, and tried to drug me. But yes, we are talking about the same guy. There's a reason he's all fucked up like he is now, and it's because he was playing with fire in Water Continent and got burned like a dumbass."

"What was the Master of Law doing in Water Continent?"

"Some bullshit, I don't know. Fucking with the natural heirarchy of a mostly-peaceful mystery dungeon. Val's got a better idea of what he was trying to do than I did, but at this point it doesn't matter to me. 'Cuz here we are again, trusting that slimy snake with our lives and just hoping real hard that things don't turn out like they did before."

The Noibat tilted his head, settling down on the gravestone. "Val? Who's Val?"

"Oh. Shit. He's, uh. Vallion. The other scarf. The human turned Snivy in the legend that you picked me out from. You know, the person I'm married to." She flicked herself on the ear. "Well damn. I really wasn't supposed to talk about this, but I guess I fucked up and said the wrong thing. See, Val's the one that recieved the mission from Alexander, and I just came along for the ride."

"So the Snivy from your legend's here in the city right now, as well? I suppose they'd be a Serperior by now." Nibby blinked. "Wait. Hold on. I've heard rumors of Serperior that-"

Panne quickly spoke up. "Yes, yes! I'm sure you could figure out where Val's been, since there's only ever two Serperior in all of Paradise at any point it seems. You must've read about him in that paper. The only reason that three of Mandibuzz's children survived was because he saved them. I know it was him, it has to be."

The Noibat coughed. "So your partner's been actin' with Shardurr this whole time? That was Alexander's mission? Merciful Hollow, this city's upside-down."

"Maybe, but it's gonna be inside-out and spilling blood if we don't figure out what the hell's going on. So what do you say, Nibby? I know you're busy wallowing in misery and all that, but why not help me figure out what's going on with that Weavile? As long as, you know, you never speak about what you just learned about Val to anyone. Please."

"I won't. Don't have anyone to say it to, anyway." The Noibat glanced down at the grave marker he stood on and thought for a while. Despite the angle, his eyes darted between the engravings and read them again and again, silently mouthing the words as he stood.

"...What? Should I be asking her, too?" Panne suggested.

Finally, Nibby's concentration broke with a snicker. "Oh, don't do that. She would've pushed me right out of the way to join you herself. If her restless spirit ever manifests itself, I'd be out of a job." He extended a wing towards her. "Why not? I'm sure it's what she'd want, even if it's just to remind you not to walk into traps."

Though the handshake was certainly far from what she'd call firm, seeing as she was holding the bend of a tiny bat wing and barely moving her hand, the meaning was very much present. It was shockingly reassuring compared to the first time. Maybe it was just that the air had finally been cleared. Or maybe Lucario really was watching.