I Want To Lay the Very Best!

53 – Pokémon Crimes? Elementary!

"So why are we detectives now?" Sparky asked Calcine when they were out of earshot of the Swkovet. 

"We're going to be looking for clues of where Mercury went anyway and, failing that, be sitting about waiting for a new sighting of her. Doing something nice while we wait seems noble."

"Noble!" Sparky gasped. "Lenna rubbed off on you. You think your dick will grow three sizes if you copy her?" 

"I'll save Evolution for that," Calcine said, poking her tongue out at Sparky. "Now, use those eyes for something useful and help us spot anything out of the ordinary."

Sparky and Calcine weren't fighting properly, just some friendly needling, so Brandy didn't feel she had to break them up. Letting them tease each other was only sensible, else they might think they could only tease her, and she'd never hear the end of it. Calcine had brought up an interesting point, though.  

"How big is a Carkoal, anyway? Should I be doing stretches in preparation?"

"Don't tell her," Sparky said quickly. "Spoil the surprise."

Calcine grabbed Sparky and Brandy by the shoulders and pushed them down a new lane of Berry bushes as the distracted pair nearly turned back on themselves."Not telling is your thing. I'm happy to explain anything." 

"Hrm," Sparky tapped her chin. "Brandy, do you really want to be spoiled? Or do you want to unwrap that present when it happens?"

Brandy knew Sparky just wanted to surprise her, but it was a good point. Did she want to know beforehand? Or would it just make things awkward? 

"I'd be happy either way," Brandy said, leaving it up to Calcine to decide. That seemed like how it should be anyway. "I guess we have to get Calcine her cloak first anyway, so it's too far ahead to worry about."

Sparky pumped her fist, grinning to herself. A minor victory for future surprises. 

"Stretches would help anyway," Calcine said, ignoring Sparky's glare. "Just in general. I'm not saying anything about future Evolutions. Training the body is important for all of us. You were sporty in school, and we keep you active, but it's still good to have a routine. Your body will be changing and adapting to our bonds, humans don't have the sudden bursts of growth an Evolution gives, but you'll feel just as strange in new skin if you don't work to adapt to it."

"Four arms is going to be weird." Sparky nodded. "Though I can't really train for that. Never met a Galvantula, so I never go to ask them what it's like. You think we should try to find one sometime?"

Brandy was about to answer when they turned into the next row of bushes and saw that every one of them was stripped completely bare, so many broken-off branches littering the ground that it was hard to know where the debris ended and the bushes began. Berry juice smeared the ground, and there was a bread-like smell in the air, not freshly baked but still quite pleasant. 

"Oh wow, someone fucked this place up," Sparky whistled. "Were they crazy hungry or something?"

"Maybe, it sure doesn't look like a theft for profit. You'd want to be at least subtle about that," Calcine said, looking at the trashed row of bushes. "Sparky, you want to climb up me? See if the rest are like this"

Brandy knelt down to examine some of the branch breaks, the breaks on the branches were messy tears, so it wasn't a blade Move that did this. It looked more like they'd been crushed aside. They were driven into the dirt in the same direction, so something went past grabbing and ripping.

"Oh yeah, they messed up a whole bunch of rows," Sparky said as she stood up on Calcine's shoulders, using her Agility to balance with one foot on Calcine's head and one on her shoulder. "Damn, they knocked a few stones out of the wall, too."

Curious, so moving fast enough they'd bounced off the walls to come back. Or they were too lumbering to slow down and used it to stop. Calcine was watching Brandy as she thought things through, orange eyes fixed on her as Brandy tapped her chin. Visually, it was something barreling about. What other clues did she have? 

"Sparky, let me smell your breath." 

Sparky dropped into Calcine's arms, legs hooked around her neck as she hung upside down off the Rolycoly, Calcine giving a huff as she took Sparky's weight. "Terror"

"She asked." Sparky shrugged, which was a pretty fun motion to watch upside down as her whole body bounced with it. "What you want my breath for?"

Brandy leaned in to take a huff of it rather than answer. Vaguely sweet? 

"You both smell that bread smell, right? Sparky's been chewing on the berries, but her breath smells a bit ... nutty? Earthy? Not bread anyway."

"I love Detective Brandy," Calcine grinned. 

"Oh, so that's why you agreed!" Sparky said, pointing back up her body to Calcine's face. "You wanted her to show off her weird problem-solving skills!" 

"Brandy's brain is sexy," Calcine nodded. Brandy didn't even know if she should blush. It was such a weird compliment. Nice, but she could not have put it in any less sexy way. 

"Ignoring your obvious kink for a moment, there's a problem. It smelled like bread to me," Sparky said, licking her teeth and trying to poke out her tongue to smell it, going cross-eyed as she stared down her nose, which, when you had four eyes, was a real tangle. 

"Trust me! It does." Brandy laughed, stroking a finger over Sparky's tongue and then holding it up for her to smell. She didn't, mainly because she was blushing at the stroke instead. 

"Weird, it does," Sparky said, nose twitching as something fell into it while she was upside down. "Why, though?"

"Maybe the spit?" Calcine said, disentangling Sparky and putting her back on her feet. "We could test. Go chew a new one?"

It was easy enough to do, there were a few berries that'd survived whatever had crashed through, and Brandy chewed down on one. Sparky wasn't kidding. The things were horrendously dry. It was like she'd stuffed her mouth full of crackers, something she'd done more than once as a dare. Yet somehow, she'd had girls pining after her in school? That story had so many holes. Chewing was not fun. The Berry didn't taste awful. It had a slight peppermint taste and a chalky texture, but it wasn't easy to eat. 

"Well, they definitely didn't steal them for their taste," Brandy mumbled as she huffed on the back of her wrist and sniffed it. "Weird, no bread smell. Why'd Sparky smell it, and we didn't?"

"Maybe it's different for Pokémon?" Calcine said, "No, wait, that doesn't make sense, or you wouldn't smell it. Hmm."

They tried a few more but couldn't work it out. Sparky swore she really smelled it, and Brandy believed her. Usually, her lies were more obviously funny. Sparky enjoyed being a pest but not a full-blown annoyance. She tapped a note into her Poké-dex as her Partners sunk deep into thought. 

"We're getting distracted," Brandy said, "It's weird, but we might find something else that explains it. We know someone rolled through here and stole a bunch of food. We know they didn't do it because it tastes good, so they're either doing it to be spiteful,"

"So, a Poison type?" Sparky said, still not over the ambush in the Poké-center. 

"Or because they're ravenously hungry." Brandy finished.

"So a Snorlax." Calcine said, "But they wouldn't escape, and we'd find them sleeping here. They're not exactly good at rolling away after a big meal, and I guess we're ruling out humans because they rolled through?"

"Unless they're a Trainer using their Pokémon to steal a bunch of nuts. Could be spite," Brandy said. "Not every Trainer is lovely like me?"

"Aw, come on, Brandy!" Sparky punched Brandy's arm playfully. "We'll do a crime together someday. I know you'd do it for me."

They went over the scene again, and Calcine was the first to spot the thing they'd missed. Mainly because it wasn't there to be seen.

"No tracks," Calcine said. "Someone running through here would dent the ground, but it's smooth."

"Smart!" Sparky said, reaching down to rub the ground. "Really smooth, that's weird. Why would Connie smooth her paths?"

"Who's Connie?" Brandy asked.

"The Swkovet? Wait, you didn't all know her name?"

"Why would we know her name!" Brandy stared at Sparky suspiciously.

"Because a Squirrel Berry Farmer is funny? She's a local legend!"

"She's not anything of the sort. I'd have heard," Brandy said, "Are you stealing my Poké-dex again?"

"We're dating! What's yours is mine. " 

Brandy was going to have to check her messages after this. The havoc Sparky could wreck under her name didn't bear thinking about. Hopefully, she was just stealing it to look at the pictures. 

"Honestly," Brandy sighed, "I got a Rolycoly who likes being a Trainer and a Joltik who wants to be a Rotom. "

"Oh, hell yeah, I would! That'd be cool!" Sparky nodded. "I could possess a bike and ride us about. That'd be great!"

The idea of Sparky rolling them about was even more terrifying. They'd end up pasted over a wall before the day was out. Although...

"Big bike," Brandy said, to looks of confusion. "The ground, it's flat because something flattened it. With a gigantic wheel."

"Oh shit, like a Venipede?" Sparky said, bouncing about excitedly as they formed a theory. "It's a Bug and Poison, and it rolls about. Wow, that'd fit really neatly, actually."

Brandy didn't have the heart to say it wouldn't be big enough. It was an excellent guess, and it could have gotten bigger somehow. That would explain the hunger too!

"So we can follow it," Brandy grinned. "If it's flattened out the ground, we just follow the lack of a trail. Go where the grounds been all smoothed out. Calcine, can Rock Polish detect smoothness?"

"I wouldn't put it that way, but I get what you mean. I can try? We can get on the trail of this thing. Though it's probably not going to like us chasing it."

Brandy was okay with that. Putting together the puzzle had actually been rather fun. Now she wanted to see if they'd got the correct answer!