A single guard tower stood in the center of the concrete square. A narrow but vertical building, starting as a stout bottom floor and extending into the sky at least a story above every surrounding building. The very top of the tower flickered with candlelight as the watchful eyes of Paradise looked down over her people. There were many posts like this scattered throughout the city, but this one was particularly redundant because of how close it was to the main headquarters of the Order of the Guard.
Not a single soul stationed in that tower would ever expect trouble to break out in this part of town, and not a single one knew that they would never see the light of day again.
It took minutes of waiting for the guards in the tower to both look away. This had to be quick. Brute stayed behind in the shadows, but a blur escaped the alley and dashed through the light of the lanterns, barely leaving prints in the fresh snow. The Weavile came to the simple lock on the gate and made short work of it with a shard of ice.
A Bagon had gotten up from their seat on the bottom floor. They had approached the door with a degree of apprehension, silently cautious of what the noise might have been. That was their last mistake. Chenza burst through and didn't even give them a chance to cry out, kicking off the side of the wall and pouncing on the first pokemon she saw. She and the Bagon hit the floor, her claws already embedded deep into their windpipe.
Chenza twisted her talons as she stood up, dragging as much sinew as she could on the exit. The dragon thrashed to strike at her, but only managed to glance off her leg. She shrouded her foot in mist and silenced the Bagon as she stomped down on their face. Jagged crystals of ice erupted from the limb and reached out in every direction, including down through the soft tissue past the dragon's eyes.
A silence ensued. The guards at the top hadn't noticed the struggle. Satisfied, the Weavile broke her foot free of the crystalline structure and stamped against the floor to shake off the residual ice. She looked to the ladder and began to ascend.
At the throat of the tower she peered up over the top at the two guards that were stationed there. A Gallade by the torch and a Noctowl perched on the edge. Her pupils went narrow, then widened up again. Seconds ticked by like heartbeats. Her muscles like springs, Chenza lunged for the Gallade's spine, digging in with her claws so that she could twist her head and bite down on their thin neck. The SNAP of bone giving way to her jaws sent a shiver down her spine.
She fell along with the Gallade, crashing against the side of the window and collapsing to the ground. The Noctowl took to the air in surprise, twisting their head before their body. With their attention on Chenza, there was no time for them to react to the Swellow that responded to the sound. The two avians crashed together in a tangle of loose feathers and screeching. It was a one-sided struggle, though admittedly still clumsy. It took Freak much too long to deal a deciding peck and end the Noctowl's life.
Chenza licked the blood from her lips, wishing she had the time to go in for seconds on her prey. "Fool. They could have alerted the others if they screamed loud enough."
The Swellow shuddered and hopped away from the body. "I did what you asked! It turned out fine! Isn't that enough?!"
"There's still so much to do-so many lives to end. We can't get caught this early. I'm not interested in fighting the entire population of the barracks nearby. Are you?" With a hum, Chenza pulled her arm back and slashed her mark into the wall, trails of blood like ink in the impression. She only managed to make a single third of the etching before Freak stopped her.
"What are you doing?" The Swellow spat out. "Chenza, I thought we were going to make this ambiguous! Now they'll know without a shadow of a doubt that it was us! They won't suspect Rusty Mountain at all!"
"And? I want Paradise to know exactly who slayed her sons and fathers. I want the rest of Shardurr to know what I am capable of. I want them to know how simple it really is. Is that so wrong?"
"Yes, it is! Why did we start putting pressure on Persian at all if we were just going to redirect it all back to ourselves?! What about the plan we made?"
Something shifted in Chenza's eyes. Freak wanted to freeze up, but reared back just in time for two javelins of ice to embed themselves in the floorboards where he once stood.
"The plan?" she muttered, slowly crawling towards him on all fours, still holding that wicked expression. "Our plan has failed. And our next one after that. And the next one after that. And so on, until we run out of plans. We are not planning anything more. Tonight, we act. We kill. We take our explosives back. And when Paradise flinches in fear?"
The Swellow struggled to hold his ground as the Weavile came inches away from his face. It felt as though her instincts would kick in if he so much as tried to run. There was no recognition in her eyes anymore. No particular emotion crossed her face. For a moment, Freak was almost certain he was about to die.
Chenza whispered to the side of his head. "Then I will become king."
There was a crash downstairs. A growl reverberated through the floorboards, followed by Brute's lowered voice. "What are you two doing?! We have to get moving! Stop wasting time!"
The Weavile's expression returned to normal when she turned back to him, traces of blood still in her smirk. "Well, Freak? You heard the Druddigon. The wagon's here. Let's find something nice to fill it with."
...
The last stop. A night of the mundane came close to an end. First light was just beginning to show through in the grey of the clouds overhead. Nibby hated when he saw morning come. It always reminded him of the tightness in his chest and the heaviness over his eyes. He dipped through an alley to dodge a southbound gust of wind that rolled above the rooftops. It had been another night of mundanity. Scoping out a Venomoth someone believed was macking on their wife for somewhere near five hours, looking for stolen goods in a junkyard for the rest.
But the mundane could never stay that way. Not now, not ever again. His last stop was an order from the Swellow. Another cache to confirm. Another business to report. Another gear turns in Chenza's machine. He wished the exhaustion could override the dread in his heart-he really, truly did-but it never went away.
It was a glassblower this time. Not that it mattered what kind of shop it was. The name in the window never changed the contents of the secret that the place kept. Nibby gave the door a solid knock and came to perch on the knob until he heard someone approach. A Darumaka sheepishly glanced out the other windows before finally opening the entrance for Nibby.
"Hey! We ain't open yet! Unless you- You're here for that."
"Of course I'm here for the cache. Just bring me in already so we can get this over with."
The Darumaka coughed. "Great! Oh, great. Good. Yes. Uh, but I don't see it anywhere? You couldn't have brought it. You're- Well, you're a Noibat. You couldn't carry something like that."
Nibby grimaced. "What? I'm just here to make certain that you still have it. Just let me in already!"
He flew through the crack in the door and entered into the dimly-lit building. He didn't have the patience for subtlety tonight. "Where are you keeping it, then? Hopefully not somewhere moronic and in the open?"
"No, no, you're not getting it!" the Darumaka pleaded and walked after him. "I ain't got the bombs yet! I thought this was the meeting where I got 'em! There's nothing here!"
The Noibat nearly choked. He spotted the path into the inner workings of the shop and zipped through, mostly using the echo of his voice to get around in the near-pitch black. He must have passed over three different rooms and encountered all manner of strange tools and specialized workstations, but there was no sign of the contraband. Not even a crate out of place.
"What do you mean you don't have it?!" Nibby's voice edged on panicked now. He swallowed the feeling and exhaled, zipping back out into the main hub of the shop. "I got the order to confirm it was here. That was my only job. Where. Is. It?"
"I'm telling you! I thought this was when I got it! I swear to you that's what I thought!" The fire type put a hand over their chest. "The Weavile told me she'd get it to me, but it never came when it was supposed to!"
What was this? A clerical error? Some petty mistake? It didn't matter to the Noibat. It wasn't his place to care. With a sigh that bordered on a sob, Nibby sharply exhaled and shook his head.
"Then I was never here, and this never happened. Forget about it. Go back to bed."
He flew past the door and took to the sky in a hurry, eager to leave the scene behind him as quickly as possible. That's right. He should forget about it, too. This was the end of a night of busy work-just another paycheck earned so he could keep on living for another week. That was all. Never mind the fact that this kind of thing had yet to happen. It probably was just a simple mistake. Or perhaps that Darumaka had him fooled and kept the cache to himself.
Idle flights weren't the greatest for warding off bad omens. Nibby never seemed to be able to clear his mind, and any attempt at meditation in his life had been an utter failure. It was impossible to shake the feeling that something was wrong, and even when he managed to think of something else the sunken feeling in the back of his mind persisted. It was going to be one of those nights.
Fighting against the weight of his bag, he swooped the last bit of distance between the end of the block and his front door, landing on the railing. It was with the same difficulty as ever that he set his pack down and fished inside for the key to his office. The door didn't get any easier to push open on his own. His bag didn't slam down into the corner any softer when he tossed it. The lock wasn't any easier to set back into place in the dark. It never got any better.
The least he could have done was take his notes out of the bag to place on his desk for later, but Nibby didn't even bother to do that. He sloppily brushed the ice crystals off his coat and returned to what was supposed to be his home with a shuddering breath. He just had to forget about it and get to sleep. That and pray to the Hollow that he was destined to be as numb as he needed to be tomorrow.
Still damp from his flight, the Noibat yanked open one of the lower drawers in his desk and crawled inside the crack into a bed of old fabrics. He'd shut the drawer on himself if he could, but it was impossible from the inside. Instead, he had to live with a partial dimness as he curled up in the far corner of the drawer and shut his eyes.
Sleep didn't come like he wanted it to. His heart continued to slam into his chest a thousand times a minute. The fuse was already burning, like a chemical reaction concocted in his mind, ebbing through its potential energy. Motionless as he laid, eyes shut tight against the world, it still felt like he was falling through space at terminal velocity. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't control his breathing.
It always got worse in the quiet. In the stillness, where everything else settled to the bottom but the worst of it rose to the surface. Where the heaviness sat on his frame and refused to let him get a decent gasp of air. Panic bubbled up from nowhere, but he forced it down as he usually did. It was only a matter of time before the feeling passed, because it always did. It always passed.
…
"Lucario! It's suicide, I tell you! Please just be patient and wait it out 'til tomorrow morning! With what we got on 'em, we've got all the time in the world to act on this!"
"Oh, Nibby...You know that's not how this works. The fact that we've cornered them is the very reason there's so much danger in the first place. Not just for us, but for everyone unlucky enough to cross that Druddigon's path. I'm sorry. I'm the one that went too quickly and put us in this mess. Can you count on me to be the one to get us out?"
"No! Absolutely not! Wipe that look off your face this instant! Stop...Don't look at me like that!"
"You know I have to, little guy. Either the market's a bloodbath by noon, or there'll be no trace of them in a hundred miles when the city starts looking. Don't worry, I'm only gonna rough him up a bit-make sure he can't go nowhere. I'll be out and back before you know it."
"No you won't! Don't even try it! I'm telling you to shut that door!"
"Just hold down the fort, Nibby. They might come for the papers. Make sure they don't get 'em. If anything goes wrong for either of us, we'll meet by the tracks. And I swear I'll treat you to the best damn smoothie joint in town after this is all over. Quit worrying so much. You know I don't go back on my promises."
"...You know that's not how this works…"
"...Before you know it. I'll be back before you know it…"
"...You know I don't go back on my promises…"
The irregular beat of wings. A thud on the railing outside his door. Nibby's eyes shot wide open. Swellow was here. He was here. He was here. It was over. Where was he supposed to go now? What was he supposed to do? What? What? What?
"Detective Noibat?" a nasally voice said outside his door.
No. Not Swellow. Someone else. That's right, it's morning now. Last night was the Venomoth, and that junkyard. Even as Nibby forced himself to breathe normally, his heart refused to cooperate and ached like death. The Noibat, still trembling, stuck his head out from the crack in the drawer.
"What?! What is it?!"
The avian pokemon tapped their beak against the window of his door. "Urgent message for you!"
"Oh, just shove it through and leave me alone! I just got home, I'm trying to sleep!"
"I don't think you understand the kind of urgent I'm using, Noibat sir! Direct summons from the knight captain Kommo-o himself! It's a fate-forsaken mess back down at the station! There's been a huge string of murders!"
"...Ah. Well then-..! In a second I'll-..!"
There weren't any excuses to find. It was time to get to work. It always was.
...
Panne drummed her fingers on the side of the mug, glaring at the murk of the coffee for a few moments before turning back to the Zangoose.
"So you haven't heard anything else about what's up with Rusty Mountain? Nothing at all?"
The waitress shot her a bemused look. "Dear, if a business I knew was hiding a crate of bombs in the back, I wouldn't be gossiping about it to customers. You seem to know as much about the buzz as I do."
Groaning, the Delphox took an angry swig of her coffee and fished through the fur of her tail for a roll of coins. "Fuck investigating, man. I'll have another cinnamon roll."
The Zangoose gave an affirmative grunt and took the fare and her empty plate. Panne propped her head up over the table, staring off into space. To be fair, breakfast probably wasn't the best time to actually do this sort of thing. Not that she could enjoy any breakfast these days without her mind wandering back to that blurry vision. A Weavile and fire, and a city full of firebombs. It didn't take an oracle to figure this shit out, but it took a genius to do fucking anything about it.
The clatter of a plate being placed on her table broke her concentration. These things were still addictive, even if Swirlix hadn't made them.
"But it sure is buzzing these days," the Zangoose continued with a click of her tongue. "Can't go a day without hearing about that mess. Half the shops getting arrested say Rusty Mountain gave 'em the bombs. Other half say Shardurr did. Don't really know who's right at this point, but damn is that market gonna be empty by the end of it all."
"Or a pile of charcoal," Panne added before taking a bite.
"Or that." The waitress frowned. "I sure hope not. I live around there. Been having a lot of neighbors move out these last few weeks, so that isn't exactly inspiring any confidence. But the Order's probably caught most of 'em already, right? Yeah, those boys definitely got 'em all."
"Ha!" came some boisterous voice from across the cafe. With only three or so customers in the building at the time, the source was clearly a Seismitoad sitting at the counter. They turned towards the two of them. "Ya really think the Order's worth that much ova' damn?"
"Don't you be starting trouble, now!" The Zangoose put her claws on her hips. "You wouldn't want me calling the guards. Word on the street is you're not so good at paying your tabs, and since you've been going here for a week I'd say you're really starting to push our patience!"
The water type snickered. "Go ahead! Call 'em! They ain't comin' today! They're too busy swarmin' around their own to care about worthless shit like this! Us folk get slaughtered and they don't bat an eye. A handful of theirs go down on the line o' duty and suddenly it's they're all ballin' they eyes out!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Panne's ears pivoted around.
"Y'know they let The Family fall on purpose, right? Didn't bother to stop it one bit. They wanted Shardurr to win. 'S one problem they don't gotta deal with after it's all said and done. Now look at 'em, crawlin' on their bellies all morning over some corpses. It's gonna be just like last year, where they rushed off 't protect the rich and let us get gutted in the streets."
"Keep spewing garbage and it's gonna be a cold morning for you!" said the Zangoose.
Panne scrambled to a stand, snapping up her staff and balancing herself. "No, wait a second. What are you saying right now? What corpses? What about this morning?"
"Oh! You ain't heard?" The Seismitoad said. "Big shitshow happened last night. Buncha the Order got cut down in their own headquarters. They're sayin' Shardurr did it, made off with the bombs Rusty Mountain lost. Good riddance, I say! If the guard can't even protect themselves, they ain't fit to do anything for us!"
The waitress huffed. "It isn't illegal to spin tall tales, but I'm almost certainly not in the mood for another of your long-winded rants, dear. And they scare away customers! So zip your lips or-"
Panne brushed past the Zangoose on her way out, a half-eaten cinnamon bun and the rest of the coins left on the table. She barely cared to swallow the bite that was in her mouth before she barreled out the exit. That sure didn't fucking sound like a tall tale, did it? How did Panne not hear about something like that when she left the palace this morning?
The order's headquarters wasn't even that far away. It was a short flight for her, speeding along streets that had yet to fill up with the bustle of the midday. A couple dozen minutes and some frost-tinged whiskers and she had already gone through half of Post District. Along the way, she really started to wonder if she had just unwittingly believed the empty ramblings of some random bum in a cafe.
Motherfucker. There was a line of guards blocking off the end of the street. They weren't lying.
It was obvious which pokemon was in charge of the blockade, since a knight's garb was much more boisterous and flowing than the Order's regular uniforms. Panne went up to the Escavalier and tilted her staff to the sky, hanging off the side.
"Halt! Only authorized persons may pass!
Panne already had Alexander's ridiculous little writ in her hand, unfolding it for the knight to see. "I'm very authorized, thank you! And frankly I've done enough work for the Order in the few months I've been here to not need this stupid thing."
The Escavalier stared at her for a second, then raised their lance. "You only really needed the writ, lass."
Outwardly, the area around the guard post showed no sign of a struggle. A fresh snowfall did away with any visible tracks, but there was a caped Houndoom nearby whose nose was working overtime to find a lingering scent to follow. Panne made sure not to drag her lame foot along the ground as she glided over to the tower. There, she saw the towering form of a Kommo-o covered in natural colors, and a tiny figure fluttering not far from their face.
"Nibby!" she butt into the conversation, then shot a sour look at the dragon. "And you. What the fuck's going on here? What's this I heard about a bunch of murders?"
The Kommo-o returned an even worse glare. "You are not authorized to be here. Leave now, before I have you removed."
She shrugged it off and crossed her arms. "I just put away the writ, you walking noise complaint! You know I have it! You've seen it before! And besides, I've been digging into this shit just as much as you have. Remember those dozen members of The Family I laid out for you?"
"Panne, just give it a rest," Nibby muttered. He sounded like he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep in years, and his flight pattern was all scattered and uneasy. "I was just getting filled in, too. It's a mess. Three dead in the watchtower. Six more in the headquarters. No witnesses left alive."
"Branches of life…" Panne said beneath her breath. "In your own fucking headquarters, too? What, did nobody raise the alarm?"
"Nobody had the chance." Kommo-o leaned over and blew smoke over her face. "They were slaughtered. Their blood is freezing to the floor as we speak. That is why I called Noibat here. I did not, however, call you here. Leave."
Nibby cleared his throat. "Captain. Let her stay. It's a waste of time trying to keep someone like her out. And besides, she's competent. I can vouch for that. You can use her for a situation like this, so you might as well."
"Noibat, don't tell me you associate yourself with this ingrate."
The Delphox scoffed. "Oh. Ingrate, am I?"
"Focus!" Nibby projected his voice, as he so rarely did, drawing the attention of every nearby guard. "Just tell me what happened. Give me the details. What do we know about the killers, and why do we think they were here?"
Kommo-o swallowed their pride and growled, then turned to the watchtower with as deep a frown as their hooked snout could provide. "It's as I've already said. Three in the post, six more in the facility itself, including Lieutenant Arcanine. The murders seemed to be secondary to a greater act of theft."
"Did Rusty Mountain come take their bombs back?" Panne guessed off the top of her head.
The dragon locked eyes with her. "Perhaps. Somebody took them."
"...They did what?"
The knight captain nearly struck her with their tail as they pivoted around and stomped off towards the main compound. Panne tried to shoot a worried glance at Nibby, but he was too busy staring off into the distance with this shell-shocked expression. The clattering of metal plates reminded the both of them to follow along.
The carnage was front in center as soon as they entered the building. A Sudowoodo, cracked down the middle and discarded into a wall. A Jynx still gripped at their lacerations even in death. And that was just the entryway. Even in the dead of night, it would have been impossible to sneak into a place like this unnoticed, but that didn't matter if everyone that noticed you was immediately killed.
A few pokemon shot the Kommo-o brief salutes and sauntered off to the side so that the investigation could be underway. The scene itself needed less actual examination than their probable escape route, since the brutality was fairly self-evident. Vicious assassinations with where the pools of blood mixed with melted ice. Limbs wrenched and torn away were typically accompanied by massive bite wounds and burns. And in the backs of heads, many repeated piercing blows dealt by a beak.
"This had to be Shardurr, right?" Panne said, regarding the shattered corpse of a Glalie with a frown. "A Weavile. A massive dragon, and an avian. The injuries tell as much. And I don't know if Persian would ever stoop to these levels when he's been trying to lay low all this time. But…" But where was Val?
"But it could have been Rusty Mountain, couldn't it?" Nibby spoke up, almost sounding hopeful. "All sorts of pokemon could have made these wounds. And it would make more sense that the paramilitary group Persian controls would know the layout of this building well enough to raid it. Shardurr's being framed, right?"
Panne crossed her arms. "That's a bit of a stretch, I think, but I suppose it's possible. I wouldn't put it past that asshole. But I also wouldn't put it past the Weavile to lack subtlety at all."
"She hid in plain sight for years."
"Ah, well…" the Delphox rolled her wrist. "Fuck it. Whatever. So did they take the bombs or what?"
"They did," replied the dragon, stomping past the Jynx into the corridor they were apparently guarding. "The target of the heist was clear. The murderers took a path straight down to the basement floor, infiltrated the armory, and escaped with more than just the explosives we confiscated as evidence."
The Noibat hesitated. "Oh threads of fate."
"Well that fucking blows, doesn't it?!" Panne shouted, trailing after the Kommo-o. "I don't know how it was you were guarding an entire vault of volatile shit, but there's pretty clearly something wrong with your methods! Now the worst gang in the city has their hands on block-leveling firepower!"
Kommo-o stopped midway through the hall, turning a hateful eye towards her. "And who are you to speak ill of the pokemon that gave their lives to protect that firepower? Keep talking, Delphox, and I'll be forced to teach you the meaning of that sacrifice."
"Well it's not just these guys! Rusty Mountain had to get all of these bombs into the city in the first place for this to even be a problem! And I doubt you managed to find them all. What's it going to look like when the Persian and the Weavile start lighting off fireworks at each other?"
Following the trail of carnage eventually led to a stairwell somewhere near the back of the facility. More doors were gracelessly torn off their hinges as they descended into a maze of cold stone and dark corners. A great deal of the building's foundation and supporting pillars were revealed down here, as opposed to the proud colors that appeared in the decor above.
Two more corpses guarded a broken vault. The Arcanine lieutenant and an Absol, both nearly unrecognizable from the severity of their injuries. Bits of bone and flesh matter were scattered throughout the dark chamber, occasionally joined by the charred scales of Shardurr's Druddigon. No Serperior scales, though, and none of his spinal leaves. And no survivors, for that matter. Val couldn't have been part of this raid.
But then, where was he?
The iron door to the armory was all but ruined. No obvious acid or other supernatural power had been used against it, just enough raw stress to pry the metal from its hinges. The joints didn't quite share as sturdy of a design as the door itself, so the force was enough to cause them to give way.
The shelves inside of the armory offered her and Nibby little else in terms of evidence. The smears of blood did little to tell any tales they didn't already know, and the absence of boxes on the shelves was obvious. It didn't do anything to help the boulder that kept on growing in Panne's stomach.
"And here lies the end of the trail," Kommo-o went on to say, scowling still at the mangled mess that was once their inferior. "The tracks that came inside must have left the same way. You say that the injuries and behavior are congruent with Shardurr's elite?"
Panne left the vault and grimaced. "Ah, I mean- Yeah, I suppose! But now that I'm looking at it, if it was Shardurr's main group, I can't find any trace of Val anywhere. I'm starting to think that maybe Nibby was right. This could very well be Rusty Mountain trying to frame Shardurr."
"But you sounded so certain before. I cannot afford misleading information at a time like this. What happened, Delphox? Did the prospect of your mate being a killer cause you to reconsider?"
She whipped around. "What?! He's not a killer! That's what I'm getting caught up on in the first place! The only blunt trauma is people's skulls getting obliterated, and he would never slaughter anyone like this! He's the reason three of The Family's flock survived at all!"
"Bold claims. Biased claims. Why should I believe in your change of heart?" The dragon's metal plates clashed together as they twisted towards her. "What wounds on the bodies of these brave souls couldn't have been caused by a Serperior? Or better yet, what in Persian's roster could have so easily replicated these injuries?"
"I just know Val didn't do it, you piece of shit! I would know more than any of you, and I'm saying without a drop of doubt that he wasn't involved! I don't- I don't know where he was last night, but it wasn't fucking here!"
Kommo-o snarled. "You don't know? Then how could you be so sure? Perhaps you do not know that Serperior as well as you think you do."
Panne rose to attention, wrapping her leg around the length of her staff and letting a breath of fuel rest at the bottom of her lungs. "You don't know either of us at all."
"And why wouldn't he have been here, Delphox? Why wouldn't he have been with his comrades on this mission? Unless, perhaps, he was found out and disposed of. It would save me the trou-"
A stream of red flames left Panne's mouth in a shout, pointed down towards the ground. She sucked in another breath and steadied her arial stance. "You're not going to lay a claw on him. This city's going tits up and Val's the only one of you fucks actually trying to stop it. So burn, then! Let Shardurr tear through all your people! See if I care!"
She didn't wait for the dragon to respond. The Delphox pulled her staff along as hard as she could, passing over the crime scene and up the gore-covered set of stairs. It probably wasn't the best decision to do that. Still, she found it difficult to care, her heart pounding up a storm in the hollow of her ears. That asshole didn't understand anything!
What if Val really was found out?
Panne burst out into the cold, her sigh pouring out of her as a rising cloud of steam. A few of the guards that were mulling about searching for clues looked her way, but she ignored them all and pulled a roll of willow bark out of her sleeve and lit it up. Fucking bastards.
The bark helped her headache somewhat, but did nothing to actually calm her nerves. A couple minutes of hyperventilation with little relief passed. The door to the compound was permanently cracked open, making it difficult to hear when a fluttering sound emerged from it until it was right upon her. Nibby landed on the end of her staff and said nothing.
"Can you believe that fucker? It had to have been Rusty Mountain." Panne spat, flicking ashes into the snow. "That shitty prophecy's a match away from coming true, and he's still going on about how Val's a piece of shit. God, I hope he's okay."
"It was Shardurr, Panne. You were right."
Her expression scrunched up. "Really? Then why'd you even suggest Rusty Mountain?! And where was Val if it was?!"
"It was a slip of tongue. A lapse of hope. I wanted it to be Rusty Mountain just as much as you did, but I know it's not. Chenza is the one that took those bombs. I do not know where your Serperior husband is, and I wouldn't be able to tell you."
"You know for SURE it was Shardurr, huh? What did you get from those corpses that I didn't? We all saw the same things!"
The Noibat snapped. "I know because-!" he caught himself, and spoke again in a hushed tone that nobody else around could hear. "I know because I'm involved with it, Panne! I know exactly what that Weavile's doing! She's started hoarding every last explosive she can get her hands on. The vision you received was right. Paradise is going to burn. It's all going to go to hell because of that fucking Weavile!"
Panne lowered herself to Nibby's level, sliding down her staff. "What do you mean you're involved? Why would you know that?"
"It's obvious, Panne! Shardurr's got me by the balls! They've owned my fucking soul ever since the night Lucario died. It wasn't good enough that they destroyed the evidence we had against Druddigon. They turned me into a puppet-a way for them to use the dirt they dug up on their enemies. It was that or I'd be buried in a wooden box next to Lucario! You gotta understand, I don't have a choice!"
"So when The Family tried to take you hostage..?"
"Shardurr's Swellow was the one that gave me the evidence to use against them. That old Weavile had me figured as a snitch and tried to take me out. It was the same thing with the bombs. I was the tool they used to frame Rusty Mountain, giving me places to coincidentally inspect and report to the guard. It was me all this time."
"You're telling me that snobby ass of a Persian's been innocent this whole time?"
He nodded.
"And you-! You little shit! You fucking lied to my face, right there and then! You got me so heated on the idea that Rusty Mountain was starting shit and you knew it meant nothing this whole time!"
The Noibat took to the air. "What was I supposed to do, Panne?! Haven't you been listening to yourself?! If I told you the truth, you would've gone straight to Shardurr and blown my cover! They would've killed me if you got involved! I couldn't afford to tell you anything!"
"Do you honestly think I would've done something to put you in danger if I had known? Shit, you could've just told me you were working for Shardurr in the first place and I could've done something to help! Do you know how long I've been doing this kind of thing?"
"Adventuring isn't the same. These aren't outlaws hiding out in the mountains. No one could know," he muttered. "There's nothing you could've done. There's nothing anyone can do. My fate was decided for me years ago. I'm already dead."
"You goddamn idiot! What are you saying? I could've definitely-..." she stopped, breath caught in her throat. Her next words were barely audible above the wind. "Oh no. No, no no. Fuck. I told you about Val."
"W-wait a minute. Panne, hold on. Hear me out for just a-" The Noibat tried to gain altitude on her.
She easily levitated to his level. "Even after I opened up, you still lied to me. And now Shardurr knows. If the others were clearly in this raid, then where was he? Where's Vallion right now?"
"I didn't tell them about your husband, Panne! I swear on my life, I didn't tell a single soul!"
"But what if you're just lying again?" She pivoted and slammed her staff in the wall, not caring how loud it was. "Oh, son of a bitch! I'm so stupid! Why would I even think to say that to you?! What made me think I could trust you with something like that?! Me and my big fucking mouth! I wasn't supposed to tell anyone!"
"Chenza doesn't know! None of them do! I don't know how I can be any more honest about this!"
Panne squeezed at her forehead, a stress migraine erupting into existence all at once. "You better fucking hope they don't know, Noibat, because if anything's happened to him, I'd…" She clenched her fist and pressed it to her lips, eyes squeezed tight. She shook her head. "You know what? Fuck you. None of this is worth my time. Go ahead and say whatever you want to commander dickhead down there, I really don't care anymore. If this city burns it was never my own damn fault."
"Panne, wait!"
Nibby called out to her, but she was already well on her way down the street they came in, frigid winds whipping through her fur as she sped off. All the worries she'd had about him being alright came rushing back. Now they had foundation. Now they were real. If Val was still out there, she had to find him, and fast.