Story - Side B

Extra chapters. The summary of the RP itself can be found on Story.

Day 8
Day fifteen of what came to be known as The Hell Weeks continued with the particular brand of normalcy such a name would imply: the sound of glass shattering followed by someone cursing every single deity Jules could name and a few more to be safe. After everything they had been through, this was nothing. A minor inconvenience. It'd only take a few minutes to replace the pot and make a new batch. So, nothing to worry over.

He tried to take a sip of his cup, and was met instead with the empty bottom.

...Scratch that, this was the end of the world.

Glaring at his cup for the next fifteen minutes was very tempting, but would solve nothing. In his sleep-deprived state, he wondered if trying to lick the few precious drops of brown liquid clinging to the interior would help, but one look at Coral told him that if he gave in he'd only be giving the other man something to tease him about for the rest of his life.

Jules groaned, massaging his eyes. Screw this. Screw the pot. Screw the project. Screw Lamorak. Screw everything. The pay wasn't worth it, let him go back to Castelia.

Next to him, Coral seemed to be having the same thoughts, judging by how the redhead moved the keyboard forward enough distance to be able to smack his head on the desk.

"I. HATE. This," Coral declared, giant headphones slipping down and uncovering one of his ears.

"Another dead end?" he asked conversationally, staring at the 'Processing request' that was displayed on his own screen.

"You know, I don't mind working. I actually like working. But this is not what I had in mind when I accepted the damn transfer," he groaned, jabbing a finger at the screen at each stressed word.

Jules could relate.

Fifteen days. It had been fifteen days since the select group Jules and Coral belonged to had received a notification saying that everyone was to drop everything they were doing and concentrate on Project A.S. (or 'Project Ass', as the majority of the division called it when Storm wasn't around to scold them), and no one had found anything yet. Fifteen days, and everything had been dead end after false alarm after screw up. And it was so, so frustrating, to have put so many hours and slaved off for something and not have any kind of progress to show for it. Zero. Not even an answer to what had caused the problem in the first place, or at least a plausible one that didn't involve elaborate conspiracies with Legendaries as the culprits.

Then again, who knew? Maybe they should just blame it on Palkia and go on with their lives. Heavens knew weirder things had happened.

Coral leaned sideways to rest his head on Jules' shoulder, staring at the screen. "No luck on your side either?"

"Nothing yet," Jules replied in a bored tone. A glance to the clock told him it would only be half an hour more before they could start charging for extra hours.

"Maybe, for once, we could actually stop at 6 and go home. You know, instead of staying until midnight like slaves."

"The sooner we find something big enough to dump the responsibility on someone else, the sooner we can go back to doing something actually productive."

"We're not going to find anything like this! And if I have to watch one more recording of people walking by not doing anything interesting I'm going to jump out the window. Do you know what was my highlight of the day? Someone taking eleven Furfrous for a walk. That's how boring things are."

"You counted them."

"Gave them names too. The leader was Fluffytail, the one that kept trying to go the other way was Sassgirl, the one with the red cut was Majesty, the-"

Coral interrupted himself and stopped counting on his fingers, as the two of them glanced up at the man who had just come back from the hallway leading to The Bossman's Chambers. It was difficult to catch Storm with a stronger emotion than 'slightly exasperated', so both of them stared at his aura of passive murder until the blond noticed and looked back (‘stormy expression’ passed through Jules’ mind, and he had to suppress the snort).

As if it was rehearsed, Coral leaned further into Jules as Jules turned just enough to be able to loosely hug Coral, chin resting on red hair. "I'm detecting a high level of Doneness here, mate. What are your readings?" Coral asked in an overly exaggerated cowboy accent.

"The charred coat implies an encounter with the Yandere Moth gone wrong, partner. I'd give it an 80 or higher," Jules answered in the same fake overly serious tone.

Storm marginally narrowed his eyes. "My coat isn't charred."

"Border behind the left shoe."

Jules and Coral both smirked as the man placed the papers he was carrying on a desk to be able to take a better look, and muttered something under his breath upon seeing the small burn mark on the edge of the white lab coat everyone working there was required to wear.

"I bet you a soda he changes it before the end of the day," Coral whispered.

"I bet it'll be by tomorrow morning."

Storm shot them a look. "All I'm hearing from you two is 'We are finished revising the security footage, please give us more work'."

Coral opened his mouth to protest, but as he leaned forward his swivel chair finally decided his balance was bad enough and rolled away. Whatever he was about to say was replaced by a loud yelp as he fell to the ground, Jules letting him go so he didn't get dragged down too.

Storm stared at the upturned chair, Coral on the ground rubbing his lower back, and Jules trying his hardest not to laugh too loud. He sighed and raked a hand through his hair, most likely regretting all the decisions he had made that had led him to this point in his life. "Please don't break any furniture."

"Shame on you, Storm. You're a terrible boss. What a way to drag the morale to new lows, being told I'm lower on the priority list than a chair. Not any 'Are you alright, Coral?' or 'That must have hurt, Coral', or even a 'Your back could have broken, maybe you should take the rest of the day off, Coral'?"

"It was pretty funny."

"Et tu, Jules? That's it. I want a divorce."

"Back to work. The two of you," Storm ordered, in the tone of someone who was very frustrated with everything around him but didn't want to take it out on an undeserving party. The other two saluted, Coral dragging his chair back to put it in the right position.

Storm had barely picked up the papers again when his communicator rang. Making a nearly inaudible noise that loosely sounded like 'what now', he put them down yet again and rolled up his sleeve just enough to reveal the watch/PDA hybrid. A small tap and the call was answered with audio only, probably so the others couldn't snoop too much. "Eisen speaking."

The voice that came from the other side of the line belonged to a woman. "Scout Vaila, ID 59573, reporting from Kusba."

A man's voice followed Vaila's, not one Jules recognized. "...Hang on, wasn't that Sidley's number? Who's that guy?"

"Leslar if you say one more word I swear I'll ditch your body on the side of the road."

"Eep?"

Jules and Coral snickered quietly, watching as Storm shot them a 'be quiet' look as he tapped some things on the touchscreen. "I bet he's a rookie," Coral whispered despite the blond’s look. Jules had to agree; no one who had spent more than a few days working for the King of Extreme Sleeping Schedules wouldn't know about Storm's job.

Storm shot them another look and raised two fingers. Second warning. "It's not a problem. Allow me a moment... Leslar Savio, correct? Designated as Vaila's partner five days ago?"

"Er, yes?"

"Could you confirm your ID?"

"59245."

"Alright. Please understand we'll need to leave the formal introductions for when we meet face to face. All you need to know at the moment is that I'm responsible for standing in for Sidley whenever he's unavailable; any further questions will have to be directed at Vaila once we end the call."

Vaila spoke next. "I'll get to the point then. Less than an hour ago we encountered a Category One. It consisted of an Umbreon carrying the same item we had seen in a human's possession. We decided to investigate because the human showed abnormal behavior, but retreated when we got the information about the village."

"Understood. Thank you for your report."

'Booooooring,' Coral mouthed, making Jules cover his mouth to muffle any snickers. Luckily for them, Storm had been too busy tapping some more things into the device to notice.

The call took a turn for the interesting, though, when Vaila was about to say something else and was interrupted by a very frantic Buneary. It sounded like the Pokémon was yelling directly into its trainer's phone, voice loud and clear even though none of the humans could understand what it was saying.

Good thing humans weren’t the only ones working there.

One of Storm's Poké Balls opened, and an orange and blue blur shot from it into the computer Coral had been using. The computer glowed for a second, before it opened a word document on its own, letters starting to appear on the document without anyone touching the keyboard.

"Buneary? What's gotten into you?"

Storm shooed Coral away so he could read what was being written. "Don't hang up yet. Your Buneary has requested Rotom to be a translator."

The Buneary kept talking, as Storm's Rotom hurried inside the computer to translate Buneary's words to a language a human would understand. It even colored the letters brown, the show-off, switching some sentences to a light blue when a Rufflet started talking too.

By the time both Pokémon paused, probably expecting an answer, a small crowd had gathered around the workstation, everyone staring at the words on the screen with mixed feelings of hope and excitement.

'Category Three. I repeat, Category Three. A woman understood what I had said, I'm sure of it, and the man with her might be in on it too.'

'Not all. She used a move. And the man clearly changed from a Pokémon to a human.'

It seemed everyone was holding their breaths, all their gazes resting on the blinking cursor at the end of the translation. Storm took a few seconds before answering in a controlled voice. "... They're saying they have reasons to be certain they encountered two Category Threes."

Whatever had happened, it seemed only the Pokémon had noticed, judging by Vaila's exclamation of disbelief before Storm continued. "Did you cross paths with two people recently? A man and a woman?"

This time it was Leslar who answered. "The guy dressed like a Lucario that tried to punch me and the one with the Absol hairstyle?"

The awkward silence lasted for the few seconds it took the man to realize what he had said. "........Oh."

"I request permission to murder him."

Storm answered without missing a beat, accustomed as he was to members threatening to kill each other. "Request denied."

"Orders then?"

"The proximity of Kusba means we cannot be certain of the validity of the claims yet. You were spotted; so, keep heading out of Kusba. I'll send you directions to the next location."

"And about those two?"

"We'll investigate further and keep you updated. Good work."

Leslar piped in with something about a promotion, but both Vaila and Storm ignored him in favor of ending the call. Storm glanced at the small gathering around him, everyone's eyes on his, and straightened up. "We might have witnesses, but the sighting was still in Kusba. All of you know that place and Alqind have special circumstances."

The room erupted into chaos as everyone started complaining at the same time.

"That bird saw it happening!"

"This is the first clue we've found in two weeks!"

"Slave drivers!"

"Can't we make an exception?"

"Kusba doesn't even have any security cameras!"

"Two at the same time!"

"Slaaaaaave drivers!"

"Enough," Storm commanded. Everyone fell silent, thought they were still glaring or pouting as Rotom came out of the computer and allowed its trainer to return it. Pocketing the ball, the blond looked at a young woman with freckles. "Nathalia, summary on the situation at Kusba."

"Two main circuits, no secondary ones," she piped in, playing with a stray strand of silver hair. "The first is the Pokémon Center. Covers the door, mart, storage, and recovery rooms. No audio, low quality. Anyone from here could access it if we have direct contact. The problem is the second, which covers the inside of the Gym. League security is high enough that hacking it comes with an extreme risk, and that's without taking into account the Leader's Pokémon. I recommend we leave that one alone unless we have proof the targets asked for a battle."

Everyone stayed quiet for a while. Eventually, someone spoke up. "Should we wake Sidley up?"

Storm seemed to think about it, but then he shook his head. "There's no need yet. I'll contact the SC team and tell them to relocate and be on standby. Vaila should be sending the descriptions and pertinent information shortly; I want everyone here to memorize it. Nathalia, ask for a Natu to Kusba and get the footage from the Pokémon Center. We won't touch the Gym for now. I'll send some Scouts to see if they can get more information, and if those two weren't Pokémon with the Illusion ability, we'll find out where they went by tomorrow."

"What about us non-Nathalias? What should we do?"

"Try to recall if you saw anyone that fit the descriptions on your respective assignments. Beyond that, we won't be able to do much until we have more clues."

Jules watched as everyone slowly went back to their respective places. Storm was already out of view, coordinating everything with everyone. Well, at least that had been much more revitalizing than another cup of coffee.

"You think we'll find anything today?" Coral asked, arms draped over the back of the chair.

"Depends. Storm was right in that we can't comb through info we don't have yet."

"True enough. Wanna go home after we confirm we haven't seen the Mystery Punch Guy and his sidekick, Absol Hairstyle? Who knows, we might make it back before midnight for once."

"Only after we're sure," Jules agreed. He stared at his mug - he'd need to wash it now before refilling it, so he stood up to do just that.

Tomorrow was going to be a very busy day, but finally, after fifteen days of nothing, fifteen days of staying extra hours every day until their free time was practically nonexistent, fifteen days of combing for information on this region...

They had found a lead.

And when he forgot that someone had dropped the pot in the kitchen and slipped on the yet-to-be-cleaned puddle, Coral's loud laugh resonating through the room, that liberating feeling of making progress was the only reason he didn't attempt to commit homicide.