Dull. That's the best way to describe spending two hours at a coffee shop, watching the endless stream of nothing broadcast on the television. Wasting the minutes away before being pulled into the monotonous task of work.
8:47
It's a wonder how I spend most of my free time doing the same ritual over and over.
Walk in, order a cup of coffee, occasionally sipping the caffeine filled substance before eventually leaving it half untouched and spending the rest of the time watching TV while subconsciously stacking dominos.
8:48
Currently there's a match going on between Flint and some other guy. It’s Flint’s Steelix against this poor schmucks Piplup. I don't know why they bother to broadcast these fights, most of them end with some rando getting wiped across the floor. “People” these days will watch anything, as long as it is bright and flashing.
I barely take in half of the noise coming from the small speakers, not even bothering to read the captions. Most of my attention is on the small numbers plastered on the corner of the screen.
8:49
While dull, this place is quiet. The noise from the TV and the occasional customer are quiet enough to become white noise. I like it when it's quiet, it allows me to get lost in my thoughts and reflect on what's happening in life, which isn't much, but it's better than going through pointless cases or pitting on a show for some self righteous suits.
8:50
I turn my attention to my stack of dominos. It seems that I made a mini replica of Mt. Pyre. I take a second to admire my unconscious work before scraping the set of dominos into my bag and standing to leave. Trudging toward the entrance I took in the near silence of the shop one last time, wishing I could spend at least five more minutes sitting down, staring at television lost in thoughts that at the end of the day mean nothing. I make a mental note to try to come here earlier tomorrow before opening the door.
As soon as I step out there's an explosion of noise. A combination of voices drowning out every other audible noise, all while fighting each other to be heard. My thoughts are taken over by the multitude of conversations that surround me.
While I make my way toward the Hearthome police station I hear conversations about the recent Aether Foundation Incident from two shopkeepers, a story about the Old Chateau from a group of kids, and a constant back and forth between two Murkrow.
“When boss gets here you’re dead!”
“No, our boss is way stronger than yours, this place is ours!”
Ah, another fight over territory. I guess it’s in their nature. It doesn’t make their pointless argument any less annoying. I hear a nearby kid tell one of their friends that the two Murkrow were friends talking about their day. I had to stop myself from telling them the reality of the situation and ruining their world views. It would be funny as shit to tell them that the Murkrow would probably rather kill themselves than be “friends”, but I don’t need a deduction in my pay at the moment because some angry mom told the chief I scarred her kids for life.
I get to the station doors, but I'm stopped by a flyer for the Hearthome pokemart, stapled on the nearby board. According to the advertisement there's a 50% off sale on medicine items today until 3. I stand idly by for a few seconds debating if grabbing some stuff is really worth being late by a few minutes. The dumbass part of me takes over as I turn to make a quick detour to the market.
…
The conglomerate of noise stops as soon as I enter the station. It's not as quiet as the coffee shop, but it's bearable enough to get me through the day. I head towards the offices, prepared to start my shift. As I pass the rows of my coworkers. I once again pick up on their and their pokemon’s conversations.
If all I was going to do today was sit at a desk and work, then I'd prefer it to be an unremarkable day, a day I could cruise through without needing to put much thought into what I was doing. Sadly, that hope didn’t last very long. As I make it to my desk, I’m greeted by a man whose presence I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Ben stands next to my desk taking a sip from a tacky Valentine's Day coffee mug. “So, what took you so long to clock in today?”
Ben was a tall guy in his early thirties. He has been on the force for about eight years in which he managed to get transferred to the boonies for two of them due to an “incident”. His overall performance on the job could only be described as sloppy. He barely passed the written exam which explains why he’s violated procedure on multiple occasions. Just by looking at him, someone who didn’t know him could tell that Ben was indeed an asshole.
“You know, this can’t keep on happening. I’m sorry but I gotta report this.” He says with the biggest shit-eating grin “You need to learn to take some responsibility, I’m just trying to teach you these lessons early so you don't fall into bad habits, okay.”
I doubt that the higher ups will do anything since I'm three minutes late, but that doesn’t stop me from getting pissed off. I’ve been this guy's target for a good amount of time now, mainly since I'm the youngest person on the force to be a detective and actually accomplish stuff, at the very least more than he has. That has actually put me at a bit of a celebrity status, if only briefly. “Young Prodigy Alvis Volpe Becomes a Detective at Age 17” It was all over the newspapers back when I was first appointed a detective, but the popularity was more of a fad since it didn’t take long for the news to be drowned out by the next big thing, in this case the Team Flare Incident.
That left my accomplishments as just some fun facts to bring up and my experience and age as leverage Ben could use. Just because he’s a talentless, brain dead Komala doesn’t mean he needs to take out his anger on me. Although he's been here longer, by no means does he outrank me so it’s hilarious that he thinks that reporting me will do anything.
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“Thank you, I will keep that in mind going forth.” I say while giving my most convincing smile.
He gives a satisfied look like he just saved a bunch of orphans by reporting my ass and walks away. As I watch the ungifted and moronic failure leave, I sit down to review the information of the latest case. This one was about an incident that happened three weeks ago. According to the document an someone's Lucario, Toxicroak, Infernape, Sableye and Rotom, went on a rampage and destroyed some stuff over at the Veilstone mall. Dumbass kids can't keep their own shit together.
This is a waste of my time. I don’t know why Looker wants me to go through these cases when I’ve worked on more pressing things before.
While reading the information, I lose track of time, but after a while the chief of police walks into the room.
“Volpe! In my office now!”
Everything goes completely silent.
There’s no fucking way.
I get up, walking toward the chief's office. On my I sneak a passing glance at Ben. The guy is grinning like a mad man. If this is what I think it is, I’m going to break that coffee mug over the empty skull and force him to swallow the shards.
You know what? It's probably not that. I’m sure the chief has better things to do than split hairs over one guy being a few minutes late.
I enter his office and take a seat. I spot the chief Arcanine at the side of his desk, staring me down. Arcanine are known to be on the more intimidating and powerful side when it comes to the pokemon commonly used by police. Usually they’re used to keep people in line as they can be pretty vicious. But we are currently in a police owned building which pretty much reduces all the risk of it doing anything to zero. So I wave to it as I lounge in the chair, taking a coin out of my pocket and flipping it, occasionally switching from hand to hand.
I hear the door close and watch as the chief makes his way to the back of his desk. The chief’s a bit on the heavier side. He himself doesn't see too much action nowadays, but apparently the guy has seen his share of events. Hell even now he could probably kill someone with a single punch to the head.
As he sits down the Arcanine adjusts position, sitting at attention. There's a long silence as the chief adjusts the nameplate on his desk.
Ripley Aaron
“Well sir, you called?”
He takes a second before answering.
“Volpe, I have an assignment for you.”
Thank Arceus almighty this isn’t about something as retarted as being late for three minutes.
“Yea, sure lemme hear it.”
“I want you to investigate the old Team Galactic warehouse.”
The Team Galactic case was taken on by Looker just a year before I joined. Not a lot about them has come up since their leader threw himself into a portal to who knows where. We managed to arrest a few before they completely jumped ship. One of the cases that put me in the spotlight was the arrest of the admin Jupiter.
“So did you find one of the other two in the area? I’ll be happy to-”
“No, that's not it”
I pause scanning his face, it looks a bit more grim compared to when he first sat down.
“There have been reports of figures spotted inside the building. From the surveillance footage, it seems that no one has entered or exited the building.”
“So I'm hunting ghosts?”
The chief is starting to look agitated, so I shut up in hopes of not getting punched through a wall.
“The silhouettes of the figures resemble those of Giovanni’s group.”
I miss the coin on its current flip. I watch it fall to the floor and roll away.
Team Rocket. That piqued my interest. Just mentioning them brings back some pretty bad memories I’d rather forget, but a part of me is curious about the current status of the organization. As much as I would rather dissociate from them as much as possible, a few questions have been eating at me. Maybe this is a chance for me to look into things privately.
“Rocket? Like the guys that used to be somewhat capable of things, but went to shit after their Giovanni left?”
“Yes.” The chief answers in a dry tone.
“With all due respect sir, the only thing these … “people” accomplished after Giovanni left was an attack on a radio station in order to beg for him to come back, and he didn’t. They haven't been seen ever since, if they were doing something in there, I doubt it would hurt anyone”
The chief gives me a stern look.
“Our job is to protect the people, it does not matter if you view them as competent or not, if these criminals have even the slightest chance to become dangerous or a threat to the public, we need to make sure they don’t.”
Protecting people, it’s definitely a part of the job. It may sound completely terrible to say, but whenever I do work like this, the amount of people I could save or help is never at the forefront of my mind. It’s almost always just an afterthought. What comes to mind first is usually the accomplishment of solving the odd case that no one else could or wants to do. It probably makes me selfish, but if the general public benefits from it then I don’t see the moral issue of the motivation not being noble.
“Well if you say so. I’ll do it, but I doubt I’ll need anyone other than myself to do the initial investigation.I think it would be more productive to send in the rest of the force once we have enough information. Plus if there are people inside the building that can be a threat, a smaller group is less likely to turn them hostile, wouldn't you say?”
The chief scoffs and looks away for a few seconds, pondering his decision.
“You will investigate the building two days from now. On that day you'll be given a search warrant. You will report back in 24 hours, if not I will immediately send people in. Do you understand?”
Sounds fair.
“Yes sir.”
“Dismissed”
As I exit the office and walk back to my desk I see Ben giving me the same shit-eating grin as before. This time I smile back at him and his expression changes immediately.
Once I'm back at my desk I look at the clock. 3:36pm. About two and a half hours before I can go home. I turn back to the stack of files cluttered around my desk.
Team Rocket
White rooms, blinding lights, painted clouds, children's toys, numbers, crying, lab coats, metal tables.
This is definitely going to be an interesting encounter.
…
It's 7:48pm when I finally make it back to my apartment. It's not much, just one main room, a bedroom and a washroom, but rent isn’t bad. As I enter I’m hit with the familiar fleeting scent of last week's air freshener. Trying to permanently get rid of the smell of wet clothing is an ill-fated task so buying cheap air freshening products is the only way to get by.
After I lock the door, I slump down on the floor trying to figure out how I'm going to deal with what's about to happen. After a few minutes of shooting down my own ideas, I decide to just leave myself to my own fate.
I take out the six poke balls from my bag and release all of them. Before me appear an Infernape, a Sableye, an Inteleon, a Levanny, an Umbreon, and a Galvantula. Then like the passengers of the Titanic, I'm drowned in a sea, a sea of endless complaints. Some are about how I should have let them out, some about how I can’t do anything without them, and a few about how they would rather be with Ben. That last one seems a bit extreme even if it wasn’t serious.
Their tones quickly change once I tell them they have free rein over the fridge. I'm nearly trampled to death in a race between five blood thirsty contestants. The only one that doesn't use me as a carpet is Juno. The Levanny drags me to the couch, placing a blanket over my now barely functioning body, and calmly walks toward the war happening in front of the fridge.
That's gonna leave a mess I'm gonna have to clean in the morning.
Before I pass out from a combination of exhaustion and pain I fish around my bag. It takes a bit, but I find the protein capsule I bought from the market earlier. I scan the battleground formally known as my apartment and see Ashley my Infernape, wielding a leftover fried Combusken leg from a few days ago while fending off Nubbins the Sableye.
It’s a tough shot but… THWACK. The capsule hits her on the side of the head, she instinctively grabs it before it falls checking the thrown object. As soon as she realizes what it is she drops the piece of meat which Nubbins grabs out of the air with his mouth and scampers away.
Ashley’s eyes begin to dilate, she holds the protein like she finally achieved her life's biggest goal.
Fuckin addict, are my last thoughts before drifting into sleep.