Pokemon (Detective Pikachu)
A Legendary Search
37. Return the Favour
The Disaster Pokemon looked terrible. His fur was singed and dirty, and dried blood caked his right shoulder where a gash was visible through his fur. As he limped inside, his eyes fell first on Meiko, as he passed, then on Emilia, where they lingered.
"Absol, what happened to you?" Emilia put a hand on his head, then moved to the side to look at his shoulder. "This is going to need treatment…"
Meiko circled around him, taking in his terrible state, then froze, staring at his back as her face drained of its colour. "Um… I don't want to panic anyone here, but… it looks like Absol went through a fire, and… it looks like someone was on his back at the time…"
"What?" Emilia bolted to where she stood, and realized what she meant; while most of his fur was singed, his neck and shoulders were still pure white, as well as stripes that went down his sides just behind his shoulders.
Exactly where Tim would have been sitting.
"Oh my gosh…"
"Indeed there was." Holiday sighed, and Emilia looked up, fear choking her. Holiday recalled his Barbaracle.
"What? What do you…"
"Please. Let's talk privately. Mr. Graham, you said something about there being somewhere we can go?"
"I… yes. Please, call me Ethan. I've got a room I've been using for private meetings, we can go there."
"What about Absol?" Meiko asked, and Mr. Graham nodded.
"Becca, could you contact the nearest Pokemon center? Tell them to send a nurse here?"
One of the receptionists nodded. "Of course, sir, right away."
"I'll take a look at him, too, right now." Amanda chimed in. "I know a few things about treating injuries… I know the situation already, so- hey, where are you going, mister?"
Absol had begun to follow the group after Mr. Graham. He stared at Amanda, then gave his head a jerk towards the group.
"I don't think so. You're going to stay here while I look at that shoulder."
Absol snarled, then again jerked his head after the group. Fletchling landed on his head and began chattering; Plusle and Minun jumped off Meiko's shoulders, where they normally seemed to be permanent, chatty fixtures, and ran in front of him to join the conversation. Pikachu, too, called out, but stayed where he had been sent by Harry before Absol had come in. Absol grumbled something back, his voice a deep rumble that went on for a couple long moments, and both Plusle and Minun retreated to Meiko, seeming alarmed. Pikachu ran back to Harry's side, while Fletchling flew back to Amanda to sit on her shoulder.
"Fletch fletch." He announced.
"Let's go." Inspector Holiday said. "The sooner we do this, the better."
"Just this way." Ethan Graham gestured down the hall.
However, as the group moved, Absol followed, completely ignoring Amanda. He was large enough that there was nothing she could really do to stop him from following, despite the fact he was limping. Once the finally reached the office, however, and everyone found positions in the room, he settled on the floor at the side, injured shoulder facing the room. He looked pointedly at Amanda, who had followed when he ignored her protests, and jerked his head towards his shoulder as if to say, "Well, go on then." When she came hesitantly forward, he allowed Amanda to approach him.
While she set about cleaning Absol's shoulder injury, Inspector Holiday and Tim's father stepped forward.
"We came here because we have something we need your help with. The station received this video, along with… well, we'll show you the video first."
Tim's father had been tapping at a tablet while Holiday spoke; now, he flipped it and faced it towards Emilia, Meiko, and Mr. Graham.
The video showed the outside of the building they had just spent the last fourteen hours covering; for a few long moments, nothing seemed to happen. Then, the camera shook badly, but not badly enough to obscure the what it filmed- a large white and red shape darted away from the base of the building visible in the camera as orange lit up behind it, then swallowed it. There was a brief moment of seeing nothing but orange flame, then something liquid suddenly sprayed across the camera face and the orange flames began to die down a little.
"I'm sorry… what was that exactly?" Mr. Graham asked.
"This video is from a security camera from an office building next to the one that exploded. It caught someone, or rather, you could say two someones, seemingly fleeing the blast. Harry, play it again and slow it down?"
In answer, Tim's father flipped the tablet, tapped on it a few times, then flipped it back and played the video again in slow motion. They stared at the building as it sat there, then the figure came barreling out again. Moving more slowly, it was clear that the figure was Absol, with Tim astride his back, leaning over his neck. The building exploded behind them, and as the orange flames swallowed the duo, Mr. Graham's jaw went slack, Emilia gasped, and Meiko actually dropped her ever-present camera, its lens cracking as it hit the ground.
All three of them turned to look at the singed Disaster Pokemon. He lay still on the ground as Amanda dabbed at his shoulder with a cloth, gently cleaning it, and eyed them all back. Emilia's ears roared… she could barely even hear the shrieking of the Cheering Pokemon who had both leapt off Meiko's shoulder to crowd around the fallen camera.
"Now, having Absol suddenly return to us is very… unexpected." Holiday started. "Until he came here to GNN just now, we had no idea if either he or Tim… had even survived the blast, though we were hopeful based on the footage..."
"No…" Emilia whispered. "This… it can't be…"
"I wish we could question him." Mr. Baker muttered.
"We can." Harry Goodman crossed the room and knelt in front of Absol.
"Harry, what-"
"He understands." Tim's father said, cutting off Holiday, then said, "Absol. We need you to tell us. Is Tim hurt?"
Absol blinked at the man, then shook his head no.
Emilia heard a sharp intake of breath. She wasn't sure if it was her or not.
"Is he in danger?"
This time, the Disaster Pokemon nodded, and Emilia felt her heart drop.
"Is he safe for now?" Tim's father's voice cracked a little.
Absol hesitated, then nodded.
"Do you know where he is?" Emilia broke in. Absol looked at her, then shook his head no.
Emilia covered her mouth, trying to hold back tears.
Tim's father sighed, seeming to deflate. "Well, that's… that's something. That's good. He's… he's just fine."
"Absol is… able to communicate?" Mr. Baker said.
"I… it's complicated. You remember coming across Mewtwo when you found me at the hospital in Stanza, right?"
Harry looked at Mr. Baker, waiting until he nodded before continuing. "Well, Mewtwo was meddling in things because it knew its cells were being used to create R. It meddled situations with me, which was how I survived in the first place, and it meddled with Tim, too, until it was satisfied. And I… think it might have meddled with Absol too. I mean… I've got no evidence to provide for that. But the way we ran into Absol… how Absol came just in time to help when we- when it was needed… and he's smart. Everything we've said to him, he understands. I mean, he seems to. And he answers, as best he can. He can't speak, obviously, but I'm pretty sure he knows… uh, probably everything we do. He's not ordinary. Ah, as far as I can tell, he knows exactly what we tell him. But… that never leaves this room, you understand? I'm telling you all because I believe you'll keep it to yourselves. The story is crazy, but… it's the truth. He understands. Absol, show them. If you understand me, tap your left front paw three times and then blink twice."
Everyone in the room froze and looked at the Disaster Pokemon, who glanced around the room- to make sure they were all watching?- and tapped his front left paw on the ground three times, then locked eyes with Tim's father and blinked twice.
The room was silent for a few moments except for Meiko's muttered, "No way…" Everyone seemed to be trying to process the information. Certainly, there were some Pokemon able to perfectly understand human speech, and Emilia knew Absol had been a clever one… but to think he had a perfect grasp of the language? It felt like a lot.
But Tim's father had no reason to lie about it, and they'd all seen Absol answer his questions in a very deliberate way.
"Very well." Inspector Holiday said at last, rubbing his temples as if he'd started getting a headache. "Now, about that video. As I said, we received it at the station. I was one of the last to get word of it, and it seems like it was deliberately kept from me until the last minute, but… there's a team leading this investigation in the direction of Tim having set off the explosive that blew the building."
"WHAT?" Meiko's voice rose above everyone else's by a significant volume, though she wasn't the only one voicing that sort of protest. Emilia herself was silent; her mouth was open, but she couldn't find any words to say that could possibly describe how outrageous that was. Shock had stolen her words.
Inspector Holiday held up his hands.
"I know. I agree. Anyone who knows Tim at all knows there's more of a chance of finding a Cryogonal in a volcano than there is of Tim having set off that bomb. The thing is, that's the narrative that arrived at the station with that video. And since a team was sent out to investigate in favour of that narrative before I even heard of the video, I think that this is being done deliberately."
Tim's father stepped forward. "This is very serious. We know already that Tim had an enemy with some strings available for them to pull; someone broke Keith Norman out of prison and sent him after Tim. It seems like it's even worse than we feared. Tim mentioned back when he was in the hospital that he thought someone connected to R was still out there, someone that everyone kept referring to as "H." We have no idea if this is connected or not, but we have to consider it a possibility. Someone has been able to set Tim up as a frame for this incident, and they were able to keep it from getting to any of his potential allies until it was too late to stop it from getting out."
"This is why we're here." Inspector Holiday said, frowning. "I can't investigate. Anything I could come up with will be thrown out- I'm too close to the person in question. It's police protocols. So I went to Harry, first…"
"I will, of course, be investigating. It's my top priority- they can't stop or blame a detective trying to prove their son's innocence, though I'm still going to have to be very careful about protocols surrounding any evidence or information I uncover. But you see, there's going to be two sides to this case. This has been made very public, very quickly. That means that there are two problems- proving Tim's innocence in a court of law, and proving his innocence to the court of public opinion. Even if we find the proof that he didn't do it, if we can't convince the public, Tim's not going to have an easy time with anything. The person who wants Tim out of the way is going to be doing everything they can, and we still don't know who that is or what influence they might have. So that's why I insisted we come here." Tim's father put in. "What we want in this situation is while I investigate the explosion and why my son might have been there, we want you to start building a public case in his favour."
"Other TV stations have already started broadcasting that Tim is a wanted suspect in the investigation." Mr. Baker sighed, speaking up for the first time since Absol had proved he could answer questions. "We need this one… Rhyme City's most popular station… to make a case for why it's not him."
"Right… like starting with character witnesses?" Mr. Graham joined in, nodding. "We'll find plenty of those, I'm sure. Tim helped people and made friends everywhere he went."
"Yes, that would be a good start." Tim's father nodded. "And I'm counting on you to also show any evidence I find that either proves Tim's innocence or shows that it was someone else."
"Of course!" Meiko sounded almost insulted. "You can bet your last pokedollar we'll do everything we can to prove it wasn't him!"
"Yes… that's why we came." Harry Goodman nodded. "However, I need to warn you… it's very possible that anyone targeting Tim might come after anyone who's trying to clear his name. You might even face pressure to stop trying to support him, and even to push the narrative that he set the bomb… this is going to be dangerous. We don't know who we're opposing or what they're capable of… what they might try to do to get what they want. But we wouldn't be here if we didn't think it was needed. While I look into what the real cause was, the reason my son was there, and for evidence that will prove it wasn't him, we need someone else making sure that people do not get it into their heads that he is guilty before being proven innocent, especially because someone else is going to be working to make sure that people think just that. We may very well not be able to find definitive proof that it wasn't Tim; proving a negative can be a difficult thing to do."
Emilia glanced over at Absol, who was staring at her, dark eyes solemn. "What… what will happen to Absol? They… the investigative team wouldn't take him away, would they?"
"I believe I should be able to make a case for that." Inspector Holiday said. "As long as Absol's, ah, level of intelligence isn't known by anyone outside this room, I should be able to make a case for allowing him to remain, well, remain free. The only thing anyone can prove him of doing is carrying Tim out of an exploding building, which any partner would try to do. The investigative team will probably want to look him over, take samples of his fur and perhaps try some testing to see if there's anything else they might be able to learn from his current condition, but I don't think it will be difficult to convince anyone that he, at least, is innocent of wrongdoing until proof can be found otherwise. Tim, if he were here, would be detained, regardless of what anyone here had to say, and we already know that whoever's after him has reach inside prison…" Holiday sighed. "But Absol, being a Pokemon, should be able to be spared from that. I'll put a word in."
Emilia huffed out a breath. Her chest felt like something icy had a tight grip on it, and breathing was harder than it normally was. She knelt down next to Absol's head and wrapped her arms around his neck.
"What happened to you…?" She mumbled. She could feel tears coming again. She felt Absol lean his head against hers silently, and the tears fell faster. Pulling away, Emilia tried to speak.
"We… we have to do it! Tim has helped us so many times…" Her voice broke. Absol shifted and leaned his forehead against hers.
"Indeed." Mr. Graham murmured. He came over and put a hand on Emilia's shoulder. Solid. Grounding. "Every time we have been in our hour of need, Tim has come. It's time we returned the favour."
A/N: "It's time we returned the favour."
This one's a shorter one. Yet, still a lot packed in here. Tim is missing, Absol is hurt, and the narrative that he set off the explosion is being pushed. Tim's going to need some help getting through this one.
Good thing he's got plenty of friends.