Mesogoza
The weekend was in full swing; as Auronaku, Nanda and Brisallan navigated the markets of Mesogoza, they could see how lively the place really was. In the corner of Auronaku's eye she could see a man stagger out of a bar, clearly drunk. The sounds of brawling inside could be heard; they came from humans and Pokémon alike.
"That bar has been a nuisance for decades," Brisallan noted darkly as they gestured to it, "My dad and mom met there when he defended her from some drunks harassing her because they were horny and looking for a good fuck."
"The Iron Mudsdale?" Auronaku read the bar's name out loud.
"Yup. No matter how much the city tries to shut the blasted bar down, it still stays open," a local shopkeeper commented as she looked over her wares.
"Yeah, there's been rumours that the owners have been bribing the city authorities for years to keep his business running," her husband said.
"If these things are true..." Nanda thought out loud as she looked at the building.
"Then there's going to be one heck of a political scandal once the truth comes out," Brisallan commented, "My dad says that he believes the owner and the mayor are long time buddies, so that explains the bar's longevity."
"They say sunlight is the best disinfector, and what's better to get that bar shut down than outing the relationship between the two?" Auronaku observed.
"Make sense," Brisallan shrugged.
"Let's get to work," Nanda nodded.
Auronaku and her Rowlet snuck through the hallway of the Iron Mudsdale's office. It was far too easy; her Demon Hunter training had provided her with pretty good stealth skills. As the teen moved forward, she could hear snippets of a conversation.
"I hear that there's a mysterious barrel in the basement. I wonder what's in there?" One male voice asked a question.
"Don't even ask, or the boss'll shoot you and feed you to his herd of Oinkologne!" Another man's voice snapped back.
Auronaku was intrigued. If the owner was willing to kill to keep the contents of the barrel a secret, it probably involved foul play of some form. The most likely scenarios were a secret affair that was about to be outed or the murder of someone who was about to blow the owner's cover off.
But to do this indicated that he was either callous and/or desperate enough to do such a deed. Especially because offences of this severity were taken seriously by the International Police to the point that the trials of the accused were matters of public record.
Moving along, she could see the sleeping security guard in the corner. Lying around him were empty beer bottles, which indicated that he was probably drunk when he nodded off.
"Rowrow!" Rowlet flew to a door and indicated it.
"You want me to go there?"
"ROW!"
Auronaku reached for the door handle. Pushing it aside, she could see stairs which led down to the basement. Moving silently and stealthy, she transversed them to find the basement.
It was a non-descript room, really. The brick walls were stacked with beer casks halfway up to the ceiling. But there was a steel drum barrel in the corner that looked strangely out of place; it was painted a fire engine red. The hazardous symbols on it had faded out years ago, while the serial numbers 12JP-BVF23-0902Y-97BY was etched on the top part that faced up.
"Rowrowrow!" Rowlet landed on it.
Auronaku took her Rotom phone out of her pocket and snapped a couple of pictures of it, taking note of the serial number on it.
Returning to the hallway, she let the shadows embrace her and Rowlet as she moved to the head office.
"Rotom, could you hack the key card access?" Auronaku asked Rotom, and the phone complied, moving up to the keycard lock. As the Rotom inside it broke through the firewalls in it, the light turned green.
Pushing the door aside she could see the office. It was a grand affair, with wood panels made from expensive (and probably illegal) wood. It probably came from the rainforests of the southern regions. The carved wooden desk was one of those precious Sanz family heirlooms that had been auctioned off to pay off their debts after their downfall.
Taking out a hairpin, she picked the lock on the desk. Upon opening it, she found a treasure trove of evidence. There were printouts of receipts of dinners with the mayor, a book of ledgers recording bribes paid to him and the city authorities overseeing the operations of all dining establishments, and correspondence with the leader of Team Rocket.
As her Rotom phone photographed all this evidence, Auronaku added her annotations to it. After she had located a nearby escape route in the window behind the desk, she opened it and leapt out of it. Carefully closing it so as not to alert anybody, she hopped down the fire escape, her Rowlet following her.
Nanda took out the paper pad which always held her shopping lists. Flipping it to a blank page, she took out her pen.
"My friend told me about the problems with the Iron Mudsdale," She approached the shopkeeper.
"Oh, yeah! I'm Mrs. Leila Rosedale, and this is my Galarian husband, Bernard," She gestured to the man behind her, "For years, we had had rowdy drunks from there vandalize our storefront. Some even broke into our shop."
"The Iron Mudsdale also has been the scene of several homicides during the years it has been open," Bernard added, "The most recent being a double murder a year and a half ago. The victims were stabbed to death by the perpetrator after their group was kicked out of another bar farther down the street. They began brawling in the front of the Iron Mudsdale, and one man pulled out a butterfly knife, which is illegal everywhere except Orre."
"Did you catch the incident on security camera?" Nanda's question was expected.
"Yes. The whole shebang proves how little the Iron Mudsdale cares for its patrons' safety," Bernard replied, "It should have been shut down years ago. But your four-eyed friend's dad is quite an observant individual."
"It's a vital skill for a funeral director, from what they've told me," Nanda shrugged as she took notes.
"True," Bernard nodded in agreement.
"Poppo!" Nanda's Popplio gestured to her to move along. As the duo walked down the market, they saw a newly opened opened shop.
"Lucky's Lace, Trims, and Notions," She read the sign out loud. In the front window there was a display of various laces and trimming. A few caught her eye, and Nanda was instantly intrigued.
Pushing the door aside, she could see thousands of trims on sale. Some were delicate lace; one caught her eye. It was a filigree lace in gold and white thread, with holes for a ribbon to pass through. Picking that spool up, Nanda put it in her basket. A spool of coin trim also went into it along with a recycled sari trim from the bargain bin.
"New customer?" The shopkeeper, a rotund woman who looked to be in her late fifties asked.
"Yeah, I found your store today," Nanda took out her spools and let the woman measure out the requested portions. She had requested six yards for the lace trim and 10 for the coin trim.
"Business has been pretty slow for the last few days," The woman commented, "I'm Letitia Ruiz; This store was named for my late husband, who went by the code name Lucky during his brief time with the International Police."
"Interesting. Did he know somebody who went by Looker?" Nanda's question caught the woman off guard.
"Yes, the guy was in the class that graduated the year after my husband's did," Ruiz answered, "My husband died of a malignant brain tumour three months after we wed. The diagnosis came out of the blue and he declined pretty quickly. Took a week between diagnosis to death."
Nanda then noticed a picture behind the woman. It depicted another woman; She had curly raven-hair in an outdated hairstyle, and she wore a glimmering dress that showed off her curves quite nicely. Her big blue eyes looked quite sad, and Nanda had judged her to be in her early twenties.
Letitia had noticed Nanda's gaze.
"That was my maternal second cousin. She aspired to break it big in show business. But she disappeared 31 years ago after an audition. The last call I shared with her was that she told me she had won a part in a new TV show that was to debut soon," The woman explained, "But this series never appeared."
"That's definitely fishy," Nanda's suspicions were aroused, "I realize that this might be a real possibility that she was the victim of a sexual trafficking ring. My health teacher at my old school mentioned that there are fake auditions that lure young girls and women desperate for a shot at fame and force them into the sex trade."
"When I think about it, it does make sense. Fake auditions were also common back then, and it was a way to lure unsuspecting young women; my husband had told me about them and how he was trained to identify them by using undercover techniques to unmask these scams," Letitia answered.
"And what was your cousin's name?"
"Carolyne Munroy," Letitia replied, and Nanda wrote the information she had collected down in her notepad. Picking up the wares, the grayette paid for the wares.
"It's good talking to you! See you again!" she waved to Letitia as she left the shop.
Brisallan tottered clumsily through the marketplace, Misdreavus following them as he hovered over their shoulder. As much as they liked their life at Naranja, they admitted that their clumsiness had made for some pretty awkward situations at school. Gym class was the worst; they frequently stumbled and tripped through it. And it was a well-known fact that their myopia was also a common co-morbidity among people with development coordination disorder.
"Hey, the music's pretty creepy!" Bonnie Tesla's voice rang out. She was listening to a music piece on her orange Rotom Phone alongside Max Maple and their Pokémon.
"Even if the pianist tried to match the mood of the music, he failed epically!" Max shuddered.
"Yeah, I don't think he is gonna make it to the big time," Bonnie replied.
"Whatcha's talking about?" Brisallan's question interrupted the duo.
"There's this aspiring concert pianist who is putting out his renditions of classical pieces like Mozart and Beethoven, and he keeps making it unintentionally creepy," Max answered.
Brisallan instantly recognized the description. Sitting down opposite the duo, they took out her Rotom phone. Tapping it twice, it turned into a tablet. They went to the photo app and tapped on it, and it opened. Selecting one photo of their siblings they showed it to the two.
"The pianist you're talking about is my second eldest brother. Yes, he aspires to be a world-famous concert pianist," Brisallan said as they indicated the second to the left, a tall and pale boy with a mop of messy dark purple hair. His gray eyes were almond-shaped, and he had a mole below his left eye.
"Your family is pretty big," Bonnie commented.
"I remember one of my travelling companions had a family that was bigger," Max replied, "His name was Brock Slate, and he was the former gym leader of Pewter City."
"Yeah, the names of my older siblings are from oldest to youngest, Kalan, Felix, Meranda, Masato, and Nikos. Meranda and Masato are fraternal twins," Brisallan answered, "I'm the youngest."
"Interesting. What are your other siblings doing?" Bonnie's question was expected.
"Kalan and Masato are doing apprenticeships under my father, Meranda is training to be a medical examiner for the International Police, Nikos is into computer programming; he is working on a large project that aims to integrate the death reporting into a single unified system across the regions," Brisallan answered, "Felix and I are the odd ones out."
"It would make sense that the regions would need such a thing," Max observed, "Every region has its own separate regulations for reporting deaths, be it humans or Pokémon."
"Nikos has been advocating for this for years. He says that the patchwork regulations hinder the International Police's work in investigating homicides, and I fully agree," Brisallan noted, "Especially when some of these regulations encourages a lack of transparency in the regions they are codified in."
"Like Fiore for example. There's been rumours that the Fiore governmental organizations aren't so forthcoming regarding the deaths of some of their citizenry," Max added his two cents in.
"Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some political corruption there that keep covering some of them up, perhaps for decades," Bonnie tilted her head, "My dad was there on business once. He swore never to go back."
"It was the same with my dad, as well," Brisallan nodded.
Ten years ago
The quiet Alolan night was in full swing; Alin Aryth had put young Auronaku and Nanda to bed a half hour ago. She had turned the donated kitchen table into a makeshift workbench. Laid out on it were her hand crossbows; they had been disassembled so she could begin the painstaking process of repairing them.
She was able to get the replacement components from some historical reenactor in Rota, who was more than happy to get in touch with a local blacksmith there. From there, the delicate components required to repair them were carefully forged with her exacting specifications in mind; she had carefully photographed the hand crossbows, then wrote down the measurements in the standardized measurements that the Pokémon League had created nearly three hundred years ago.
As she began working on her project a knock on the front door resounded, interrupting her concentration on the task at hand.
"Damned local pranksters raising hell at this unholy hour," Alin mumbled underneath her breath; it was common knowledge among the locals in the hamlet the trio now lived in that the teenage sons of one of the local councilors always played pranks on people at night. Plenty of stories had been passed around regarding their antics.
As she approached the door, her spine tingled. Pulling the door aside, she could see a tall, skinny man clad in all-black clothes, save for a silver skull pendant. The clothes in question consisted of a pair of trousers, a turtleneck and a blazer. On his feet were longwing brogues. His silver hair was slicked back in a low ponytail.
The presence the man carried marked him as one of the Priests of Rathma, although most of the common populace in Sanctuary called them necromancers. Alin could recognize the sensation right away, she had recalled working with the famed necromancer Xul to defeat a particularly dangerous demon that had killed several adventurers, including a few fellow hunters and another necromancer.
The one-stand night Alin and Xul had was memorable in many ways. For one thing, both were drunk; The inn they had retired to had heavily discounted drinks, which probably contributed to the situation at hand. Secondly, there was only one room available, and it had a double bed. Thirdly, the inn was on a major pilgrimage route in the kingdom of Westmarch, which explained the occupancy of the place.
As Xul and Alin's tongues wagged, both had found out interesting things about each other. For Xul, he had told Alin he had been born in the swamplands of Hawezar to a pair of deranged serpent cultists. The local necromancers there had slain his parents when they attempted to offer him as a sacrifice to the nangari there; he had been only a few weeks old at the time. Xul was taken to the local enclave of Rathma for his own safety and was reared there before being apprenticed at age eleven.
Alin had told Xul about her own village, her betrothal at age nine to the local chief's son, who was twice her age, and how the Zakarum priest who had arrived in the village the day after it was announced ended it and removed Alin from her parents' custody with the intent to train her as a crusader. But it too came to naught as the monastery he brought her to was besieged by demons the same day she arrived there and was subsequently wiped out. Alin was the sole survivor of the attack; the demon hunters took her in and trained her in their ways.
"When I sensed a large surge of magical energy, I realized something had happened to disrupt the fabric between worlds," The necromancer explained, "My name is Marzuq Ul-Ziamed."
"How so?" Alin's question was expected, "Mine's Alin Aryth. Demon hunter here."
"Where to begin..." Marzuq sighed.
"You can come in," Alin gestured, "I'll prepare some tea for us."
"Thanks," Marquz sat down on one of the couches. Looking around, he could see children's toys stacked in the corner and a few drawings scribed by little hands. One depicted two little girls with their mothers. The first woman was holding a hammer and to her right the drawn object looked like an anvil. The child looked to be a curly-haired girl; the hair had been drawn in with some sienna brown crayon. The other woman was gray-haired; she looked to be carrying herbs. The child next to her was also female; straight gray hair had been scribbled in a style vaguely resembling a ponytail.
Marquz was confused, but then the pitter-patter of little feet resounded from the hallway. He saw two little girls holding hands; they resembled the ones in the childish scribbles.
The auburn brown-haired girl definitely was part Barbarian in descent, judging from her coloring and build. However, when Marquz's eyes met the girl's, he could see the faint glow of one who had gazed into a demon's soul without going mad.
'The kind of horrors she probably endured probably marked her for life,' He thought.
The second girl was part Kehjistani, judging by her olive skin tone. Her bright blue eyes darted back and forth shyly, before she settled firmly on Marquz's presence.
"The tea's ready," Alin entered the room, carrying a teapot of Kitakami genmaicha tea. The hunter poured the steaming hot beverage in two teacups. Upon seeing the two girls she sighed.
"Now's not the time for pussyfooting around, Auronaku and Nanda. Go back to your room!" She barked out an order.
The two reluctantly obeyed, as Marquz could see that the duo were intrigued by him.
"These two are the only two survivors of a goatmen attack on the village of Wathiram," Alin answered the question on Marquz's mind.
"It's bad enough that the Vizjerei bastards inadvertently created them in their lust for power, but to take advantage of innocent people make it worse," Marquz said darkly.
"The fact that Auronaku peered into one of these bastards' souls make it worse. She resisted it, but it left a scar of hatred on her," Alin answered, "I'm taking her as an apprentice."
"I've been eyeing one amongst my descendants as an apprentice for a few months. Her name's Brisallan. She can see the flow of essence and has been seen talking to spirits of the dead in the graveyard a few times," Marquz answered, "She's also the youngest child in the Mortimer family."
"Ah. If I recall correctly, children with these aptitudes are scouted out at an early age by your order," Alin observed, "I've met Xul during my travels and he was the one who told me that fact."
"XUL!? One of the legendary heroes!?"
"Yeah, I had a one-night stand with him. It's fortunate that I didn't end up bearing his child, it would be awkward explaining it to the Ordermasters and the Deathspeakers what happened," Alin blushed brightly.
"Yes," Marzuq shrugged, "I recall when I was a young child, I was always overhearing one of my uncles, a Zakarum priest, chewing my other uncle out frequently for his sexual escapades. The entire neighbourhood knew about the individual's prolific sex appetite."
"Let's get on to the story," Alin added, "How did you get here?"
"It's a long story. To understand this, I need to explain what a Deathspeaker really is," Marzuq pointed out, "They are powerful necromancers who have been selected to lead a contingent of Rathmites. Most are selected from the ones who are most reluctant to lead, as they are the best equipped to handle such power. I was among these selected; I was content to live my life in Caldeum near my biological family. At the time I was chosen to undertake the trial to become one, I was a caregiver for my dying father. He was old and feeble."
"Interesting," Alin remarked, "I can see the wisdom in that principle."
"After my father passed, I handled his final disposition myself. It was the best I could do with the man who raised me and my two half-siblings. My mother died in childbirth of puerperal fever. He remarried when I was five years old. At the time of his death, he was predeceased by the uncle who couldn't keep it in his pants. That individual had his life force sucked dry by a succubus in disguise some thirty years back. My Zakarum uncle was right about the idiot's fate," Marquz continued.
"When I went back to my old village, I found out the person who I was slated to marry met the same fate two and a half years after I left," Alin commented darkly as she sipped her tea, "I was going to be a child bride. A Zakarum priest intervened to keep me away from that fate."
"After the traditional seven-day mourning period had passed, I headed out for Rathma's temple. It was a truly dangerous journey. Bandits and Khazra besieged the roads, and it was a well-known fact that some of the roads were prime hunting grounds for cannibals," Marquz explained, "It was on one section that I encountered a particularly dangerous cultist of the Triune. An individual called Giorgion. Once a herald of the Cathedral of Light, he had become disillusioned with the organization and turned to evil."
"That's disturbing; the fact that he did that indicates that something was going on in the Fractured Peaks," Alin's observation was spot on.
"Exactly. At the time this occurred, the current head of the Cathedral of Light had promoted one of his nephews to Grand Inquisitor. This was the first clue that something was amiss," He sighed before he took another sip of his tea.
"Nepotism. That's not a good thing," Alin noted, "from what I've learned under my master's tutelage, organizations that tend to practice things like that fare worse than their peers when it comes to fighting evildoers,"
"Exactly. My master taught me the same thing," Marquz answered.
Auronaku, Nanda and Brisallan sat down at the Ichiran counter. They had paid for their usual at the machine in front of the shop.
"It's nice to see new regulars coming in," Ishikawa Ryuji, the chef of the shop, commented as he saw the trio.
"Thanks. Your ramen is heavenly!" Nanda answered.
"It's better than the one Jade Palace Garden carries," Auronaku commented, "I've tried that one and it didn't have that spark."
"Yeah, it didn't feel authentic," Brisallan added.
"That's high praise coming from Naranja students," Ishikawa blushed in embarrassment, "I recently moved here from Kitakami because one of my children just begun studying there, and my father passed last year. I decided a change of scene would be good for the family."
"Interesting." Brisallan commented, "I can see your father's spirit behind you. He says that he is proud of what you've become and that he has no regrets."
Auronaku and Nanda blinked in confusion. That was definitely a new one.
"You can see the dead?" Auronaku's shocked reply made Brisallan turn their head toward their new friends.
"Yes. I've had this gift even since I was a wee baby," they said, "My parents said that I was cooing and babbling to the dead at that age."
"Your classmates probably thought of you as that weird kid," Nanda added.
"Pretty much," They nodded, "But one day I told one of the teachers at my school her son had died. She didn't believe me until the news came that he had indeed died. It was a freak accident; a tree branch fell on his bike while he was biking in the mountains. I was eight at the time."
"And your classmates were pretty freaked out over that incident?" Auronaku asked.
"Yup. They pretty much avoided me after that,"
"That's interesting," Ishikawa added, "I heard rumours that the Saffron Gym Leader Sabrina Metatron awakened her psychic powers through some very traumatic childhood experiences. People subsequently saw her as a freak afterward, and it cause her to shut herself off from the world; she became obsessed with perfecting the control of her powers afterward."
Nanda could see Auronaku wince in recognition. The way she stiffened as she began relieving the dark memories that led her to gain the Hunter's Sight scared Brisallan and Ishikawa a bit. Rowlet quickly nudged Auronaku out of her memories.
"Thanks, Rowlet. I really needed that," Auronaku stroked Rowlet's head.
Popplio leapt up on the counter and let Nanda stroke her.
"You must've had some very dark experiences in that noggin to react like that," Ishikawa added.
"Understatement of the century," Auronaku snorted, "Most people wouldn't be able to cope well with the shit Nanda and I went through. Our village was destroyed by demons and we were the only two survivors."
"That reminds me of Demon Slayer. That's a Kantonian anime," Ishikawa added, "I watched it with my son, and your story sound eerily like that of the main character, Kamado Tanjiro."
"Good recommendation. I'll watch that one," Auronaku picked up the bowl of ramen Ishikawa placed in front of her and began eating.
"Me too." Nanda added.
"Me three!" Brisallan chimed in.
As the trio chowed down their ramen in companionable silence, they thought back to the day's events.
'What the fuck was going on with that barrel?' Auronaku thought. She had tapped the serial number on the barrel into an app she downloaded on her Rotom Phone that traced things, and it came back as being from a factory in southern Kalos that produced high-end silk fabric for couturiers that had shut down thirty years ago.
"Whatcha's doing?" Nanda's question broke her out of her thoughts.
"I found a mysterious steel drum in the basement of the Iron Mudsdale. When I traced it, it turned out that it had come from Kalos. There was this fabric manufacturer that was known for their high-end silks. I need to do some more research on this business," Auronaku explained.
"I just had a strange conversation with a shop owner. She told me about a relative who disappeared years ago. Was lured in by a fake audition for a TV show," Nanda added, "The young woman's name was Carolyne Munroy."
"I was talking with Max and Bonnie today about the patchwork regulation for reporting deaths, and it has been an oft-repeated complaint among the International Police that it hinders timely investigation of homicides," Brisallan pointed out.
"Makes sense," Auronaku answered, "I also overheard an interesting conversation between two individuals talking about that drum. One of the people involved mentioned the owner shooting anybody who dares asks about it and feeding the carcass to his herd of Oinkologne,"
"What a way to get rid of evidence," Brisallan commented, "I once read about a news story in the D'Ital region; a local Mafia boss there was fed to the local Oinkologne by his rivals."
The following day, Auronaku was in the Naranja computer lab. Tapping in Cepero Couture Fabric, Limited in the search engine, she found 1,428,922 results. Clicking on the Wikipedia article of the aforementioned business, she brought up the page.
"Cepero Couture Fabric, Ltd. was established in 1920 CE by one David Cepero. His ambition was to create an empire of fine couture fabric stores, and the first factory outlet store opened in Kiloude City in 1921. But as much as he tried, his venture was plagued with allegations of tax fraud and political bribery by rival competitors at the time," She read quietly.
'Interesting,' Auronaku's thoughts were leading her down a Raboot hole, and she made a new tab. Entering tax fraud in the search engine, she brought up another 1,231,113 results.
"What are you doing in the computer lab?" Director Clavell's voice broke Auronaku out of her thoughts as he entered the room.
Tapping on her Rotom Phone, Auronaku proceeded to the photo app.
"I believe that the long-time mayor of Mesogoza is corrupt as fuck," she spat out as she showed Clavell the evidence she'd found in the Iron Mudsdale.
"I had the same suspicions for years. You pretty much confirmed them," he nodded as he crossed his chest.
As she opened the Wikipedia page on tax fraud, Auronaku read the explanation of tax fraud and it various forms.
"Tax fraud is the willful entry of misleading information on tax returns. It often is represented as the gap between the amount expected on forms and the actual amount paid. It is often associated with political corruption and criminal activity," Clavell explained, "A friend is an agent with the Paldean Tax Revenue Authority, and he was the one who taught me that information last year. Apparently, Director Harrington was doing exactly that. Penny's parents blew the whistle on him, and they got a substantial reward after he cheated them out of a profitable contract."
"And the sentence?"
"Ten and a half years in prison," Clavell answered.
"In essence, don't piss people off or they'll dig up dirt on you and air it out," Auronaku noted.
"Exactly."
"In 1994 CE, Cepero Couture Fabrics, Limited shut down mysteriously after 74 years in business. Upon investigation it was discovered that the owners had misrepresented their earnings and that the business had accumulated large debts during the previous three years. The CEO and his underlings were sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for their role in a Ponzi-style scheme," Auronaku continued to read the article on the first tab.
Printing the article off, Auronaku added it to her pile of information.
Turning her attention to the word processing app on her Rotom Phone, she began tapping out the information she had been gathering on the three mysterious barrels which had washed up on Galarian beaches in the last two decades. This one had intrigued her, and with the discovery of the fourth barrel in the Iron Mudsdale, it was no doubt that all four were connected.
The three had mummified bodies inside that had no identification and it seem the killer went as far to cut out any identifying marks that might reunite the victims with their loved ones and bring whoever did it to justice. The most disturbing aspect about it was that all three victims were young women.
And that was when a lightbulb moment went off in Auronaku's head.
Brisallan had the ability to see the spirits of the dead and talk to them. And their Essence vision could be useful as well to determine if there was really a dead body there. It would be worth the time to bring them along. But there was one little problem; they were a veritable klutz. And that trait could be a potential hindrance.
But it was worth a try.