As she strolled down the hallway of the Eterna City Police Headquarters, Detective Jenny reviewed her notes. Her incoming interrogation was looking to be the biggest of her career, and it could make or break the finishing touches of rooting the evil of Team Galactic out of their region.

Jenny approached INT-5, or Interrogation Room 5, rapped her knuckles across the solid, hearty wooden door, and then slid inside with practiced confidence. Inside the room, a tall, slender, purple-haired woman—approximately thirty years of age—was sitting down at the singular table in the room, cuffed with her hands behind her back. She wore a typical orange jumpsuit of those held down in the jailhouse, but this was no mere criminal. They didn’t even know who this was, and that was concerning, given that she owned a legendary pokemon.

She grabbed the one other free chair in the room, casually pulling it aside to sit in between the suspect and the only door leading in and out of the room. A typical tactic that she’s used time and time again to give suspects a sense of being caged, closed in, or otherwise defeated.

Detective Jenny set her small notepad on the desk they both now sat at, and calmly introduced herself. “Hello, I’m Detective Jennifer Jenny of the Eterna City Police Department. I’m just here to ask you some questions today regarding an event that took place on October 7th. Before we begin, I am going to read you your rights.”

After having done hundreds of interrogations in her career, she didn’t even need to use the small laminated card held within her suit's breast pocket. Frankly, she only carried it around as a formality. “You have the right to remain silent, and the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. At any point during questioning, you have the right to stop answering questions at any time. Do you understand your rights?”

The suspect, who was rumored to be named Sird, nodded once, but that wasn’t good enough.

“I’ll need your verbal confirmation for the record.” Jenny additionally said, as she clicked the top of her pen and pressed the tip to the pages of her notebook.

“Yes.” Sird said, just before blowing purple strands of unkempt hair out of her face.

“Great. So, I assume you know why you’ve been brought in today?” Jenny asked while casually throwing a leg up to rest her left foot on her right knee, earning a simple shake of the head from Sird. Sird stared into the plain white wall ahead of her, and not at Jenny, which was telling. “We have some evidence which is pretty damning, but I’m here just to get your side of the story. People are talking, and it’s not looking good. Tell me about what happened on the 7th. Why were you in the hidden Galactic base?”

Sird scoffed, then continued to remain silent. Jenny paused, then placed her pen down onto the table. The simple sound of the action echoing in the silent room. “Look, I’m not here to point fingers, appoint blame, or anything of the sort. I’m just here to get all the pieces of the puzzle. Find out who’s who, that sort of thing. Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn have had very interesting things to say about you, but that’s just their side of things. They’re pretty tight knit, so perhaps they’re throwing you under the bus? Was the bomb one of theirs? The poisons? The drugs? The rampant and detestable abuse of pokemon? Or was it all you like they’re saying and the evidence is saying?”

“I had nothing to do with any of those.” Sird said simply, but Jenny latched on.

“Then what part did you have something to do with? You were there, we know that for a fact. You’re also supposedly ranked above Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn from all the evidence and testimonies we’ve collected. It would make sense that maybe they were just following your orders as you said…”

Sird remained silent again, which was her right, but Jenny needed a confession to lock her down for good. “Look…” Jenny leaned forward, putting elbows on the table as she folded her hands. “We’ve already got you for more than enough to put you away for life.” She lied, “I’m only here to sort through the facts and to see who did what. Do you really wanna go down as an abuser?”

“I don’t abuse my pokemon.” Sird bit out, the first bit of emotion leaking through her stoney facade.

Jenny calmly swatted the air. “I never said you did, but that’s not what we’re seeing. I need your side of the story. Those cages we found? Those pokemon locked away for experiments? Some of those pokemon didn’t make it. Whatever you pumped them with was too much for some of them to handle.”

Sird finally turned her grey-eyed gaze toward Jenny, and she would have flinched from the cold-blooded and murderous eyes locked onto her if not for her training. Her cold tone sent a slight shiver down her spine. “I didn’t give any pokemon drugs. That wasn’t me.”

Jenny rallied back. “Then what did you do? Help me understand. How about we start at the beginning. Start fresh? What were you doing at the hidden base?”

Sird replied, but it wasn’t with an answer. She looked away and stared into the blank wall once again. “You have no clue what you’re messing with.”

“That’s exactly right. That’s why I am here. I’m just trying to understand.” Jenny flipped open her notebook, flipping the pages to a drawing of a pokemon. She slid it across the table and watched as Sird’s eyes trailed down to look at the proffered picture. “This is one of your pokemon correct?”

Sird’s lips turned upwards in a knowing smirk. Her second hint of emotion so far. “Having some troubles with him I suppose?”

They were in fact having an extremely rough time controlling and detaining what was learned to be a Darkrai. From what investigators have been able to gather, there was only a singular known trainer of a Darkrai currently in Sinnoh, and Sird wasn’t them. Nobody could casually catch a legendary—and those that did have them, like Brandon from the Battle Frontier—were carefully watched.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The only reason Sird has been kept in custody so far was for her failure to register her pokemon. If Jenny wasn’t able to extract some other crime today, she’d be released. It wasn’t a crime to be around criminals, and they had absolutely nothing on her to implicate her in the atrocious acts of Team Galactic other than her location.

Realizing that this line of questioning was a good side track to gather information about her suspect, Jenny continued her line of questioning. She needed more information. “It’s an unruly pokemon—Strong and dangerous. Did the injury from your leg come from handling Darkrai?”

A flash of fury and anger crossed Sird’s face at the mention of her injury. She shifted her body, clenched her fists, and then answered. “No. A pokemon wasn’t responsible for that.”

“Oh? When did that happen? Was it an accident?” Jenny asked.

“A few years ago.”

“Was it an accident?” Jenny asked again, earning her more silence.

Seeing as she’d been stonewalled, Jenny moved onto other topics. “Recently, there’s been some vandalization around the city. Cult like iconography of Galactic has been found painted around the city. Do you happen to know anyone who might be responsible? I know this wasn’t you, as you’ve been here, but perhaps you might know someone?” Jenny grabbed her phone, then slid it across the table.

The picture was depicting the side of a local business. The side wall, in the nearby alleyway, was painted in vibrant orange paint in an artstyle similar to graffiti. It was a painting of the Team Galactic insignia, found by the business owners that morning when they had come to work.

Sird leaned over the table and glanced at the phone. Surprisingly, she raised an eyebrow in what Jenny could read as genuine surprise. “No. Whoever or whatever pokemon it was is a great artist though.”

Jenny hastily wrote down the mention of pokemon. It could maybe be a clue. “Tell me, have you ever been in Kanto, Johto, or Hoenn before?”

Sird once again refused to answer, so Jenny decided to put her mind at ease. “You aren’t a native of Sinnoh. We’re just trying to figure out where you’re from.”

“I’d like my lawyer.” Sird’s request for a lawyer was the final straw. Legally, Jenny couldn’t ask her anymore questions, and by the time she’d be allowed to continue her interrogation with a lawyer present, Sird’s jail time would already be up and over with. She’d be free, unless they could find something that they could use to keep her under arrest.

Jenny nodded, picked up her things, then stood from her chair. “I understand. Someone will be right here to come take you back to your cell.”

Jenny left INT-5, then walked down the hallway into the monitoring room. When she opened the door, seven sets of eyes swiveled towards her with understanding nods and frowns. She carelessly threw her things onto a nearby table, then collapsed into the comfortable cushioned couch set-up in front of the monitors linked in with the cameras stationed into the interrogation room. She rubbed her eyes, took off her cap, and slumped her shoulders. Her aunt, the Chief of Police, came over to give her a gentle pat. “You did all you could. We didn’t have much hope.”

Jenny sighed, then gestured towards the perfectly still and stone faced Sird who was on the monitors. “We don’t even know who she is. We got nothing on her, and the vandalism around the city is getting worse. She honestly didn’t seem to know who was doing them either… It could be another group trying to continue off where Team Galactic failed.”

Jannise, her aunt, gave her another gentle, comforting rub. “We didn’t get what we wanted, but he got something. She mentioned pokemon. I’ll get Sherry to do a sweep of the registry for artist pokemon and see if we can find out who’s responsible.”

Jenny waved her off. “I’ll do it. Now that Sird—if that's who she really is—is getting let go, I have nothing else to do. She was the last piece of the puzzle, and the others are going away for a long, long time…” Jenny trailed off, then finally asked the question that’s been nagging at her for the past few months. “Now that this is all over, can you tell me who our informant is?”

Her aunt sighed loudly, having already been asked this question nearly a hundred times so far. Jenny never got an answer, always being told that ‘it was reliable’ and to stop questioning it. It had been suspicious, doubious, and very much out of protocol. “No. Just drop it Jen. It’s over.”

Frustrated, defeated, and tired, Jennifer got up from her seat, grabbed her things, and prepared to exit the room. She paused at the doorway, turning her head to look at her aunt one final time. “I deserved to know.”

Her aunt looked to the floor in defeat. “Yes, you did. It’s out of my hands.”

Jenny left, and as she walked down the white plastered hallway, she passed by Sird and two officers who were escorting her back to her cell. Sird needed the help, as her leg had a grisly wound that arc’d up from her foot, all the way up to her thigh. She wasn’t allowed the use of a cane, as it could be used as a weapon, but she’d definitely need one when she got out.

A short time later, Jenny was sitting in her office. Paperwork was strewn about the top of her table, filled out with hastily written notes that would no longer be needed for the case. Not wanting to file them right away, she grabbed her laptop and began looking for people or pokemon that could fit the description of their vandalist.

Since it was graffiti, Grafaifai were at the top of her list. Sadly, there hadn’t been a Grafaifai known to be in the city or registered to anybody in Eterna or the surrounding areas. The closest one was in Jublife and was owned by a teen just preparing for her journey.

The next obvious choice was Smeargle. While it wasn’t a common pokemon, it should be more common than Grafaifai here in Sinnoh. Luckily, by the registry, there were four Smeargles owned in or around Eterna City. The first was nicknamed Smudge, owned by Kakari Shino, an elderly lady. It was an older Smeargle, well on in its years, with a blue tail.

Second, was a Smeargle owned by Tina Costow. Everything looked on the up and up, and the Smeargle was actually working in a nail salon down in Floaroma town. It had a bright green tail, which it deftly used to paint the nails of its customers.

The third was owned by a wandering trainer, who was traveling through Eterna City on their journey. The trainer in question, Jerome Butler, had an outstanding civil record, but his battling record could use some work. He’d only arrived three days ago, so that quickly marked him off as a suspect.

Next, and most recently, was a Smeargle registered to one Max Reclant. Max had been in Eterna City for nearly two months, after failing to conquer Gardenia’s 6-badge team. It was written that the Smeargle in question was still registered to him as the last previously known trainer, but was pseudo-released into the care of one Ethan Reed. The Smeargle in question also had an orange-tipped tail…

Smelling the hint of a trail, Jenny brought up all known information on Mr. Reed, only to find that she… didn’t have authorisation?

“What the fuck? I’m a detective!” Jenny exclaimed, then threw out a pokeball. Out from the pokeball, the small cute form of one of her partners materialized, ready for orders. “Larry, find aunt Sherry. Tell her to come here.”

As Larry, Jennifer’s Espurr, waddled out of the room with glowing eyes. Somewhere, across the region, a small alarm went off on an International Policeman's desk.

Someone had tried to access Ethan Reed's files.