I left the party before it ended. It seemed to be the safest idea. I took a tram car to my office/house and fell asleep in my desk chair. I either forgot to lock the door or someone found the key under my doormat because in the morning, Lieutenant Firesign woke me up with a glass of water in the face.

"PFF! Sheesh Lieutenant Fiersign. Do you always have to do that?"

"It's my way of letting you know that it's me."

"Ay, did I forget to lock the door?"

"Yes."

I huffed, I was glad that he didn't find my hidden key. Only a genius or a really lucky person would be able to find it. "Ugh... so what? I didn't do anything bad, and I'm not working on a case. Why did you come?"

"I'm gathering witnesses that were at the wrap party last night."

"Why is that?"

"Wreck-It Ralph ended Richard Morning's game last night."

-[+]-

The drive from my place to the TobiKomi studios was neither a long nor bumpy one, but I still felt sick. To think that a game character would kill a human is mind numbing. It has only happened once before, and I should know.

My brother was the victim.

We arrived at the prop warehouse and I saw Felix walking out of the building to his repair truck and he drove off. The police must have finished questioning him.

Aside from game acting, characters take up other jobs for extra money. The classic example is Mario being a plumber.

The Lieutenant and I walked in to the warehouse. It was a cavernous space containing anything you could imagine. Officers and forensic team members were searching the area for clues. Some opened the crates that contained the props.

"I've never seen one of these before." An officer picked up a large white gun from a crate and looked at it. It said "Aperture" on the side.

"HEY STEVE!" Yelled a voice from the catwalk above us. "Can you get me the fingerprinting kit?"

The officer with the gun shot a hole near the yelling officer. An orange oval appeared on the wall. He shot the gun again and a blue hole appeared. He put the fingerprinting supplies through the hole and pressed a switch to turn the gun off.

"Wow, it seems like they get things from studios all around!" I said.

We walked to the body outline and saw a bloodstain on the floor. The late director was already on a gurney.

"What supposedly happened?" I asked

"Apparently after Ralph wrecked the cake, he went to his dressing room. After that, he entered the director's office. Inside the director's desk in bottom right drawer was a gun. Ralph took the gun, went to the warehouse, found Richard, and shot him. After that, Ralph hasn't been since."

"How do we know that Ralph shot the gun?" I asked.

"Ralph's fingerprints are on the gun and the bullet that shot him is the same caliber of the gun that Ralph touched. All we have to do is find Ralph."

I puffed out a breath. Something didn't seem right, yet I couldn't put my finger on it. I the turned around and saw the gurney being carted away. As it was leaving the building, a crate fell over. The crate broke and a large number of Pokéballs fell out. People, including myself, started scrambling to pick the up before anything worse happened. Unfortunately, even if the balls did not fall, something bad did happen.

I was picking up some nest balls, when the feet of a person caught my attention. I looked up and saw a man who looked disapprovingly at me.

"Dropped your balls sir?" He asked.

"How do you think I became a bass singer?" I asked as I got up. "Who are you?"

Lieutenant Firesign came over. "Now let's remain calm here. Martin, this is Thomas Weston a private investigator like you. Thomas, this is Martin Luke. I apologize for his behavior."

"I completely understand the reason for his verbal smite. It seemed like it was the booze talking." Said Thomas.
"Well what are you doing here?" I asked.

"Me and my two associates, Ty and Ryan, were also bodyguarding at the party. I was also hired by Mr. Empura to take the case for him to find Ralph, convict him, and permanently ERASE him."

I looked in amazement as he motioned his friends. One rolled a steel barrel apparently filled some substance. The other brought in a Koopa shell and a simplistic water pistol made of PVC pipe.

"The key to the elimination of a game character involves two parts. The character's life, and the character's programming. Life is the easy part, all one ends to do is to mix up either two deadly substances from two different games, of find a substance used in two different franchises. The main ingredient for this is Dark Matter, found in the Mario universe and the Kirby universe. Programming is harder, yet I was able to find an appropriate material to use. Very strong magnets often cause characters to glitch out, and when magnets are mixed with Dark Matter, it becomes a deadly chemical."

Thomas picked up the PVC pistol and placed it into the vat of...

"What do you call that stuff?" I asked.

"I was going to call it The Death Dip, but I have a feeling that someone else may have taken a similar name. I currently call it The Goo."

Thomas pulled back part of the pistol to load it and aimed it at the shell.

"I usually test this on living characters, but for laughable 'Humane' purposes, I must do it like this."

Thomas fired the gun at the shell. The shell instantly dissolved into a cloud of zeros and ones.

"What are those?" Asked the Lieutenant.

"It's part of the character's code, I found it out during testing. Another important piece of info that I found out is that it is fatal to normal humans. Don't play around with it." Thomas said with a self satisfied smirk.

I left the warehouse with a lump in my stomach. If The Goo could erase characters permanently, whose hands would lust for it? I didn't feel good about it being in the hands of Thomas. Just then, a car drove by and parked right next to me.

"Need a ride, mister?"