Pokemon (Detective Pikachu)

A Legendary Search

30. Wielders of Sharp Objects

Tim grunted as his shoulder collided with the wall. His Law Enforcement classmate that had kept glaring at him the first day had not improved his opinion of Tim. In addition to the hard looks in class, the boy, named Tyler, had taken to shoving Tim into the wall in hallways and muttering less then polite comments to others, particularly after Tim answered or asked any questions in the class. He had approached Tim outside, once, angrily advancing and telling Tim that he wasn't "so great" and he would be sorry.

Completely caught off guard, Tim had barely managed to sputter a response of not knowing what the boy was talking about before Absol chased him off, snarling. It wasn't until almost a month into his classes that anything else happened.

The day had started normal enough, for the most part. Tim's Law Enforcement teacher, whom he had his first class with on Thursdays, had announced that the school would be running their annual fundraiser; it seemed that each year, the school held, through the month of October, several bake sales and garage sales of donated items, ending with a sort of festival with a few events and games at the end of the month. The money raised would afterward be counted on the first of November, and given to a predetermined program to purchase new equipment and other needed items. This year, the funds raised were going to the Graphic Design program.

The only other out of the ordinary event that caught Tim's attention that morning was when he passed the office for the school's administrator on the ground floor and overheard the words,

"Third locker broken into this month!"

He paused, glancing around. Few other people were in the hall; none were paying attention to him, all hurrying off into classrooms or down the hall. Tim listened.

"What was stolen this time?"

"Another bracelet. No one saw the thief."

"So that makes two bracelets and a necklace stolen from the insides of lockers… and you said no one saw anything?"

"Nothing at all. Two of the thefts were lockers near each other, in the same hall. 3414 and 3427. The third was on a different floor."

Tim yanked out his notebook and scribbled down what they were saying. His writing wasn't as good as his right hand had once been, but it had improved enough that he didn't feel completely embarrassed if others saw it now.

"If this continues, we'll have to install cameras in the hallways… for now, teachers not actively teaching need to patrol the hallways. I'd also like to speak with the three students who've had their things stolen. I'll need their names and contact information."

"Of course ma'am. I'll email that to you after my last class."

"Thank you."

Tim heard someone approaching the door then, and hurried away, jamming his notebook into his pocket as he went. He had a feeling the teachers wouldn't want him meddling, so he walked away when what he really wanted to do was stop the person coming out and ask for all the details, but turned it over in his head. If there was a thief at the school, maybe he could help catch them.

He didn't have a lot to go on, though… only two of the three locker numbers. Still, that would have to be a start. Once his classes were over for the day, he could try finding the lockers… there might not be much they could tell him, but he could take a look. Finding the lockers might give him some way to find the people who had been using them, too, so he could ask them a few questions.

Rounding a corner, he nearly ran right into another person.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" he cried. "I wasn't looking. I'm so sorry."

The girl, startled, relaxed. "Oh, don't worry. It happens."

Tim recognized her, then; she was in both his Law Enforcement and his Criminal Justice classes. He was pretty sure her name was Jane.

He moved aside, letting her go by. The brunette gave him a brief, nervous smile before continuing on. Tim started moving again himself, being more watchful of where he was going, and left the building to join Absol for lunch.

He mentioned what he'd heard to Absol, and the Disaster Pokemon immediately proposed that while Tim was in class, Absol could try to determine who the administrator was meeting with about the thefts to see if that could help figure out which people had had their lockers broken into. The building had a lot of windows, Absol pointed out; they could maybe try determining which windows would show the admin's office. Then Absol could watch through them.

"I don't know, is that a good idea? If they see you staring through the window all the time, won't they get suspicious?"

"Pokemon on the campus is not an uncommon sight." Absol pointed out. "Since there are no Pokemon allowed inside, many of the students have a partner or two roaming around. If you're worried about me attracting attention, though, I may have a couple friends I could ask to look into the situation as well. I've made a couple of connections with some of the other Pokemon while we wait for our human partners."

"That might work, then. So after my last class I'll leave through the closest door to that office and we'll see about tracking down which room it is from the outside. But first I'll take a quick look at the lockers that I know of that were targeted and see if I can get anything from them. I don't know if there will be anything there, but I won't know until I look." Tim murmured, voice low as it always was when he spoke to Absol on campus.

"Yes. I'll see about watching for you when you came out. This will be interesting. The first real case I've worked on with you. That runaway Meowth didn't really count."

Tim chuckled, then thought of something. "Actually, Absol, if you speak to the other Pokemon, can you tell them to let you know if anything else goes missing? Given that I'm sort of investigating this without letting other people know, it might make it hard to find out about new thefts or unusual incidents. Maybe you could ask the other Pokemon to keep a look out for what's going on?"

"An excellent idea. I will."

"Thank you."

His afternoon classes passed as normally as his morning classes did. After his last class, Tim headed to the third floor. He was a little nervous about being stopped, but mentally shook his head; that was an irrational fear, at least as far as the idea of someone stopping him to demand what he was doing on the third floor. Plenty of students didn't leave immediately after their classes finished, and wandering the halls looking for friends or teachers to ask questions was far from a rare occurrence. Tim's classmates had gotten more used to him over the last month, too, and he attracted far less attention, which Tim was relieved and grateful for.

Subtly checking a couple of the nearby locker numbers, Tim headed down the hall in the direction of the lockers he was looking for. Once he reached the right area, Tim glanced around to make sure no one else was watching. Thankfully, the halls were empty, so he figured as long as he made it fast, he could see if any clues were left.

The lockers themselves looked fine, aside from both now being empty and open. Tim wondered if both students had stopped using them now that they'd been broken into- if they had, that would make the people who had used them harder to find. Checking the first one more thoroughly, Tim saw no sign of anything odd until he checked the lock itself, and even that looked fine at a quick glance. It was when Tim tilted the padlock and saw where the key went in that he stopped. The bottom of the lock looked badly scratched; the keyhole looked damaged. No wonder the locker was now open and empty; the lock was completely unusable. It would have to be replaced. Checking the second locker and padlock, Tim found it in the exact same condition. The scratches on the padlocks were very deep, and it looked like the locking mechanism inside had to have been completely destroyed.

Tim left the hallway, making a note about the scratches on the destroyed padlocks. Trying to figure out what would cause that, he came up empty. He knew that lock picks could certainly put scratches on the locks, but simple lock picks wouldn't cut deep grooves like that into the metal, and they wouldn't destroy the lock mechanism inside like that, even if being used by someone who had never used them before. Lock picks were designed to open locks, not destroy them. So what had caused the damage?

Then it occurred to Tim that if the damage had made two of the lockers unusable so that the students had to remove their stuff, the other locker might be in the same condition. If he could find the other locker and check all three of them, that would be ideal. He could keep note of which lockers, too, to see if he could find out who had been using them. But where to start looking for the third locker?

Tim thought back to the conversation he'd overheard. He had one definite clue- it had been mentioned that the third locker was on a different floor. So he didn't have to search floor three. But, this building had four other floors; Tim was not looking forward to strolling through all of them. One trip down a hall wasn't likely to attract much attention, but walking around to search the entire building might. But he didn't have any other clues.

Except, maybe… the teachers had said that no one had seen anything, meaning the hallway had likely been empty. The ground floor was by far the busiest even in between classes, as there was a recreation center- two, in fact- in this particular building that students, even ones that had no classes in this particular building, liked to come to play sports or lift weights with friends. So the likelihood of the last locker being on the ground floor was low. Not nonexistent, but low.

Which meant that Tim's best bet was to start on the fifth floor and work his way down. He thought about doing the search now, but decided it may be best to wait. Teachers were being told to patrol the halls between their classes; if Tim was noticed roaming them as well, he might become a suspect himself. If these two lockers had been left as they were, chances were that the third would be left a few more days as well. Tim might be able to avoid some suspicion if he searched one floor per day until he found it.

He just hoped the decision wouldn't backfire on him.

Double checking his book bag to make sure he had everything, Tim headed down to the first floor. Reaching the administrator's office, he walked a little more slowly, counting the rooms he passed. Reaching the door to outside, he went out, stepping a few paces away, and wondering how he was going to find Absol.

Tim stood there awkwardly for a few moments before a Starly began squawking above him. "Over here! This is your friend, isn't it? I found him, he's over here!"

Tim looked up at the shrieking bird Pokemon, startled, and a moment later, Absol leapt down from the roof, landing several feet away and padding over to join him.

"Thank you." Absol said simply, and the Starly flew off.

"You had them looking for me?" Tim asked, not sure whether to be amused or not.

"They said they would help. The local wild Starly love to gossip quite a bit. Everything that comes and goes, they talk about."

"Really? Did they mention anything about theft or anything odd?"

"I asked, but they have not noticed anything out of the ordinary. People and Pokemon come and go, all of the time. They've seen nothing that they would call unusual."

"Oh. Alright, then. That's too bad…"

"Did you find anything? Which direction to the office?" Absol asked him then, and Tim snapped his attention back to what they were doing.

"Uh, yeah. Passed thirteen rooms from the office to the exit- well, fourteen but the supply closet I passed won't have windows. So we need to go this way, and go past 13 different rooms. I couldn't go inside them to count windows, so…"

"So we have to go by room. That's fine. And the lockers?" Absol prompted as they began walking. Tim told him about the conditions of the locks, and the Disaster Pokemon nodded. "So maybe someone tried to pick the lock, but used entirely the wrong tools? Maybe something very sharp?"

"Maybe. I wish I could talk to the owners of the lockers."

"Well, we'll do our best to find out who they are."

Tim and Absol continued along the side of the building, Absol doing most of the looking in through the windows since it would be less unusual for a Pokemon to peer inside through each one they passed, until they found the right room.

"Alright, this is it. Will you be able to remember this window without any trouble? I never even thought to bring something to maybe mark which was the right window." Tim muttered.

Absol hummed, then put a large paw on the windowsill, peering in. He dug his claws into the stone sill as the woman inside the room looked up, startled.

"Absol, what are you doing?" Tim cried, instinctively reaching an arm over to pull Absol away. The Disaster Pokemon deliberately scratched the stone with his claws as he pulled away from the window, leaving three grooves.

"Absol, what was that?" Tim cried, aghast.

"Now the window we need is marked. Don't worry too much about it, ambient things get damaged from a Pokemon's uses and antics all the time. No one will take much notice of a few claw marks in the windowsill, the hole that a Sandshew dug in the middle of the parking lot of building B this afternoon will be their worry long before my claw marks."

"Oh, man…" Tim ran his hand through his hair. "Well, I guess… I guess we're done for today, then. I'd like to have that window open, too, but someone would notice it open even if I was able to get in there to open it without anyone seeing me."

"Don't worry. One of your Paralegal classmates has a Sentret I might be able to trade favours with. Their ears are good enough to hear without the window open. He might have some trouble understanding all of the speech, but we can do our best."

Tim smiled. "Don't know what I'd do without you, Absol."

Absol glanced at Tim, looking like he was going to say something, then changed his mind and nodded his head in a gesture forward. "Our friends are here."

Looking where Absol indicated, Tim realized that Meiko and Emilia were in fact in the parking lot, leaning against the car they both tended to use for work. Tim realized with some dismay that they were talking to his unpleasant Law Enforcement classmate, too. Tim sighed.

As Tim got closer, the first to notice him was Meiko.

"There! Tim, hello!"

Emilia and Meiko both smiled as they looked at him; his classmate's expression, however, darkened into a scowl. Tyler turned back to the two girls and made a gesture; what he said, Tim didn't hear, but Emilia nodded. Tyler gave an odd jerk of his head, turned back towards Tim, and this time Tim did catch part of what he said "-going then. Bye."

Both Emilia and Meiko's expression changed to confusion. "Bye then." Meiko said

"Have… have a nice day." Emilia told him.

As he reached Tim, he stopped, glaring.

"It's always you, isn't it? Always. You better watch your back, because everyone will see what you really are some day, and they'll know you're not so special."

Tim met the boy's dark gaze with his own confused one, not having a clue what the boy was talking about. After a moment, Tyler's gaze traveled down, and the boy gave a scoff and a smirk.

"Nice trembling. You should be scared of me, because I see right through you. You better be careful though, or everyone will figure out your nervous tell." Tyler walked off.

Tim realized then that his right hand was trembling again, and tucked it into his pocket, staring after Tyler. He felt more confused than anything, although there was definitely some annoyance. He wished his hand would stop doing that; the tremors, of course, were from nerve damage and nothing more, but he hated that it happened at all.

"What is he talking about?"

"I don't know. But if we're looking for sharp tools, we may want to consider his tongue."

That made Tim chuckle, glancing at his partner.

Ahead of them, Tyler called out, "Come on, Dustin!", and a Sandshrew ran out from between a few cars a moment later.

"Hm, that's the one that dug the hole in that parking lot." Absol noted.

"Well, that figures. Like trainer, like Pokemon."

"I digress. Sandshrew dug a hole because he could smell food underground. Bad place for the hole, but dug for a reason. There's no reason for that boy's attitude as far as I can tell."

"Tim?"

Tim turned back, suddenly realizing that he'd forgotten that Emilia and Meiko were there. "Oh… hey. What are you guys doing here?"

"Never mind that now… what was that all about? He seemed really nice, and then… sudden attitude change." Meiko asked. She waved a hand in confusion as she mentioned his attitude.

"I… don't really know. He doesn't seem to like me much, but I don't think I've ever done anything to make him upset with me."

"Well, of course not." Meiko asserted. "You're nice to everyone. That guy's just an idiot."

"He's grieving." Emilia's voice was soft and startled both Meiko and Tim.

"Huh?" Meiko looked confused.

"I mean. It's no excuse for his behavior, but… you didn't recognize him, Meiko? I've never spoken to him before today, but his father worked at GNN. I've seen him visiting. When Lugia went on a rampage, his father… didn't make it. I happened to be at Mr. Graham's temporary office when he came in… he was angry. He wanted to know why Lugia wasn't stopped before it went on rampage if we knew it was in there. Mr. Graham was able to talk him down, but… he was trying to blame something, I think."

"Ah, of course." Absol mused. "Human nature. It's easier to find something to blame, even when nothing is to blame. Easier to blame it on someone than to accept the way things are. And grief makes that irrationality worse."

"And I'm his target now, because it's easier to blame me than anything else." Tim murmured.

"You had nothing to do with it! You're the reason there aren't a lot more deaths!" Mieko protested.

Tim sighed. "But blaming someone is easier. An easy answer. Just… not the right one. Don't worry about it; grief takes time to work through. Now that I know what the problem is, I don't mind so much. Thanks for telling me."

"You're welcome."

"Now, why are you guys here, if you don't mind my asking?"

Emilia smiled. "Oh, the school wanted to promote the October fundraising activities this year. When Meiko and I heard that they wanted to run an ad on GNN, we volunteered. The school is letting us use their studio during days they don't have classes in there, so I think GNN and Rhyme University are trading favours."

"I see. So you'll be around for a few days?"

"Yep! We're going to get a couple shots from the first bake sale in a couple days, pick a good spot to film a clip of some of the administrators talking about the school and its fundraiser, and bring it back to GNN to put together an ad." Meiko said cheerfully. "Today we were just scoping out the best places for filming. When we finished, we figured we would wait for you. Your classes finished?"

"Yeah, my last class for the day is done. I was just going to go to Pablo's café like I normally do… did you guys want to, uh, join me there?" Tim swallowed, eyes drifting over to Emilia. She smiled.

"We would love to! Which parking lot did you park in, Tim?"

"Actually, I ride Absol…" Tim trailed off. He felt strangely relieved.

Meiko grinned. "Oh, nice! We'll take our car, then, and we'll meet you there."

"Yeah, sounds good!"

A/N: Misplaced grief... and someone's stealing from lockers. Hmm...