Chapter Five
“Natu, you’re now at the spotlight of this murder. Not only did you have the ability to poison Victini, having Psychic abilities, but you could have easily Teleported to Cinccino, you could have used Psychic on that chain,
and you were possibly at the scene of the crime. What do you have to say for yourself?” you ask.
Natu sighs. “Me? The murderer? Everyone had the ability to poison Victini. I had no reason to kill Cinccino, that chain was rusty in the first place, and you really are dense for a cop. As for my Teleportation, I’m a news reporter. It’s my job to be there where the news happens. I can’t bother with something as trivial as stairs because my timing must be impeccable. Why would I try to interview Sneasel and then kill her?”
“You’re an idiot,” Smeargle replies while dangling his feet over the couch. “You know, this not cooking thing is kind of fun.”
“Not now, Smeargle,” you say. “Then why were you harassing everyone in the first place?”
“I’m a
reporter. Reporters report. My job is more important than yours because I tell the truth while you’re sitting here accusing everyone. Maybe after all this is over I can write a report about how crappy a cop you truly are,” she chuckles.
“Do what you want, but then if it isn’t you, who did it?” you ask, repeating the same question as before.
“Smeargle was licking red icing off his fingers? What a
coincidence. He also washed his whole body instead of just his hands…”
Smeargle walks over to Natu clears his throat and begins stroking his tail with his hands. “I’m a dog. Dogs get dirty.”
He walks away and sits in one of the chairs in the corner. He dangles his feet and watches them kick back and forth.
As the whole scene rolls out, Purrloin sneaks away to this lone door in the hallway. She extends one of her nails and uses its jaggedness to force the doorknob to allow her in. She carefully twists the doorknob and opens the door a little bit, and the door creaks slightly as it opens. She looks around, sees no one noticing her, and goes into the room, shutting the door behind her. She finds herself facing a set of downward stairs to what seems to be a basement. Perhaps that’s where she’ll find it.
She reaches the ground and begins prying through boxes and containers for the relic of her childhood. She searches high and low, but she just can’t find it. Where did Victini leave the item?
Back up the stairs, a curious Roselia opens the door quietly and slips in to see what the mysterious burglar originally came here for.
“Smeargle, why did you make a cake with red icing in such circumstances?” Natu asks, holding the candlestick up to the cook.
“I made it for the party and I was going to get it out after our tea! Victini’s a fire type--he likes red things! I had it in the fridge to get cool for later in the party. However, a certain someone just had to die in my work-space,” Smeargle says.
“Does that make you angry? Angry enough to kill Victini?”
“Yes, his dead body makes me angry enough to kill him. Happy?”
“I think we have our suspect all figured out, Croagunk! Leave it to the real muckraker to figure out the murderer,” she beams.
You roll your eyes and press your back against the wall.
“What’s going on with you, Nidoking? It’s like I don’t even know you,” Togekiss sobs into her wings.
Nidoking, who sits on the couch with his crushed legs, moans at the topic. “I told you to leave it alone. You can’t know about the--” he stops, leans in closer to her, and whispers, “about the mob.”
“The mob?!” Togekiss squeals, causing everyone to look over at her.
Slowpoke, still recovering from the attack, looks over at his tail, which is now mostly healed. He listens to the bickering of the couple and gives a sympathetic smile for Togekiss. He knows what it’s like to be ignored, to be made ignorant, to want to understand but be publicly shamed for it. He feels bad for her.
“I wonder what I’m going to do with Victini gone, now,” Smeargle says suddenly. “I don’t have either employer now, so maybe I’ll dabble in the arts of cooking further. I’ll open up a restaurant called ‘Le Smear’ and mix cooking with art.”
You stare at him and shake your head in disgust. How can some people be so inconsiderate?
Blissey stands in the kitchen and cleans up the egg she found. It was ragged and cracked, but she smoothed it out and healed it up. She comes out from the kitchen and tells Smeargle their future seems unlikely at this point.
“In only about twenty one hours we have lost four people and accused probably double that. No one’s guaranteed a future at this point,” she cries.
“We’ll have to figure out who the murderer is at some point,” Smeargle reminds her.
“But who will be left to do so?” she rebuttals.
You glance over to see Toxicroak staring into nothing, yet into everything. He seems to have his mind set in some memory, or perhaps the future, or perhaps some other world...or maybe even on his next victim. You feel a shiver down your spine upon the thought and put it away for now. You just sit there, in the middle of the living room, watching.
“Maybe we should all sit and do nothing,” he suggests.
“What? That’s stupid,” Natu says.
“I get antsy when I do nothing,” Blissey whispers.
“Sure, let’s do nothing,” Smeargle says, feet still kicking, mind still moving on.
Slowpoke gets up to use the bathroom and begins walking fine. He goes up the stairs slowly and you hear a door shut soon after.
“Well he recovered fast,” you say.
“He has healing powers,” Blissey reminds you.
Purrloin searches the rest of the floor and sighs. She slumps against a wall, just for her to hit this large portrait of Victini, who is wearing some sort of necklace, lying on the couch in some famous pose. The painting topples over and you dodge the object on its fall. As it slams into the ground, you see a small square safe built into the wall.
“Only Victini would hide important objects behind a picture of him,” she mutters.
Purrloin outstretches a claw and Slashes at the keycode panel, causing it to short circuit and the safe to crack open. She smiles in satisfaction and opens to the safe door.
“Purrloin, are you okay?” Roselia asks.
The cat jerks its head back and hisses at her, causing her to step back a little. She slashes out at Roselia, slicing a petal off of one of its roses. Purrloin opens the safe and gets out a small red shard, a fragment of some sort of plate.
“Wh-what is that?” she wonders.
“This,” Purrloin sighs, “was the last token of friendship I had with Victini before he decided to destroy me. While we were kids, we dug up this relic that was divided into two weird-looking fragments, and so we kept the shards as a small ‘friendship bracelet’ of sorts. Or, at least, I
thought it was a friendship bracelet.”
Roselia pipes up and starts asking more questions. “Is this the only reason why you snuck in? Did you feel any remorse for Victini?”
“No and no,” she replies. “Not the only reason, at least…”
The two Pokemon exchange glances and then start back up the basement with Purrloin still in possession of the shard.
“I also came for blood,” she whispers, much to Roselia’s horror.
“Did you….?”
“Well,” Purrloin begins, but she then falls down and starts coughing.
“What’s wrong?” Roselia screeches.
“Poison Point...get me a healer,” Purrloin wheezes.
Roselia jumps into the hallway of the first floor after knocking the door clean off with a Petal Dance. Rose petals fall in the floor elegantly.
“Help! We need some medical attention over here!” she screams out to the living room.
Croagunk jumps up and has everyone except Slowpoke, Nidoking, and Togekiss run to the hallway. They see Purrloin on the staircase wheezing. Slowpoke hears the commotion and quickly inches down the stairs, but he then falls on his back and writhes around.
“I have minimal medical training, but maybe enough to save her!” Blissey yells, knocking others back with her largeness. “Take her into the kitchen!”
Nidoking sits on the couch all worried, but as he tries to move off the couch, he bellows in pain. He frowns, curls back up on the couch, and decides to take a nap.
Meanwhile, Togekiss rummages through that same drawer that contained the picture of that gang. She looks through papers and finds notes on a court case dating back to the time Nidoking was supposedly in this group. She sees charges such as theft, assault, and then, the case with the most notes and papers,
ability genocide. She remembers Blissey mentioning that they wanted to...
“...turn regular abilities into moves like Synthesis or Moonlight.”
How did Blissey know, though? Yes, she was a lawyer, but still. Togekiss looks down lower on the sheet of paper and sees a circled phrase: “not convicted of charges filed against them.”
She looks around and finds the name of the lawyer who backed the defendants--Ms. Blissey, a relatively new politician fresh out of law school. Blissey was in on this scheme the whole time? Togekiss frowns and shuts the papers away.
“Find anything interesting?” asks a voice from behind her.
Togekiss yelps and unleashes an Air Slash that sends Smeargle flying against the wall. Nidoking looks over the couch at the two of them and Togekiss waves with a smile. She apologizes to Smeargle.
“No, I didn’t find anything interesting, but I have a question for you: how much do you know about this gang your boss was in?”
Smeargle’s face drained of color and he begins to fiddle with his tail. “Well, I, uh, knew he was in one, but I wasn’t in it.”
“Well I know that,” she says.
“You do, eh? What kind of papers are you looking at, then? Are those documents of some sort? Gimme!” Smeargle reaches out for the drawer.
“Look, I’m trying to catch a criminal here. If you’re trying to take the documents, you’ll be making yourself look pretty guilty.”
“I have no business with whatever Victini did in his past. I just made him cakes and tea, really. I can also make a mean pizza, but I never told Victini that for obvious reasons.”
From behind the wall, Natu listens to their conversations. She thinks about the gangs, the lawyers, and the pizza. She writes down the notes in a little memo book and stashes it away under a wing.
“It’s time to catch Smeargle red-handed,” she whispers.
“You actually already caught me red-handed from the icing,” calls out a voice from the other side of the wall. “Oh, and these walls are really thin, so don’t speak if you don’t want to be heard.”
Natu hears the smug dog laughing on the other side of the wall and she beats her pencil against it, causing the graphite tip to snap off and fly into some unoccupied corner. She sighs and attempts to sharpen it with her nails.
Toxicroak looks in as Blissey attempts to heal the poisoned cat. He shakes his head and steps in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Can I speak to you for a moment?” he asks Blissey, but she shakes her head and shoos him away.
“Can’t you see I’m saving a life here?” she fusses.
“I see you trying to slow it down, but you can do much better than that,” he smirks.
Blissey freezes. She looks at the unconscious Purrloin and sighs, turning her back to it. She looks up at Toxicroak and leans against him with her arms stretched out. She puts her arms around his neck and looks him in the eyes.
“Look, Toxi,” she whispers. “She was down in the basement looking through Victini’s things...there’s no telling what she could have found. Should I really try to save her if she knows too much? She could rat us out and ruin everything...”
Toxicroak pets the back of her head. “Don’t let her die soon, then. Keep her going so no one expect anything.”
They both exchange a smile, and Toxicroak rips away from her, sliding his body out first and keeping their hands interlocked until that was their only method of contact. He then lets go and walks back out into the living room with Croagunk.
“Oh, Toxi….” she whispers while looking at the dying Purrloin.
Natu teleports over to Roselia to ask her about the situation in the basement.
“Did Purrloin find anything interesting? Why did she go down there? Do you have any idea of the killer’s identity?”
Roselia pauses, biting her lower lip. “She went down to find the last bit of friendship so she could destroy it. I have no idea who the killer is, but I do know Purrloin did not have any intention to kill anyone.”
So I lied, but that’s okay. Purrloin was going to tell me something, and I’m not sure if she killed Victini and the others or not. She definitely had the opportunity in the beginning, and she could have easily slashed Cinccino up. But causing Gardevoir to die? Or Sneasel? Hmm… Roselia thinks with several different conflicting feelings.
Slowpoke hears the voices in the kitchen and puts an ear to the wall:
“Don’t let her die soon, then. Keep her going so no one expect anything.”
He quickly removes his ear from the wall and sits against it in disbelief. He peeks his head in but jerks it out once he catches a glimpse of Toxicroak walking out. Slowpoke makes a run for it and stops at the couch. He pretends to be going to sleep when Toxicroak arrives in the living room. Slowpoke nervously shuts his eyes in fright. He can’t be noticed.
You sit on the couch beside Nidoking and then get a sudden message from your bladder. Annoyed, you jog up the stairs and rush to the bathroom. You do your business and wash your hands and then your face. You glance in the mirror and see your sunken-in expression. You turn off the faucet and open the door.
Blissey slowly uses healing moves on Purrloin, but without enough strength to heal it completely. Purrloin moans in pain and Blissey makes a wordless “aw” sound from her throat. She feels her stomach start to hurt and pats her belly.
“Oh, my egg is missing! Where has it gone?” she asks herself, bending down to look underneath the table Purrloin lies on.
Blissey crouches down and then gets smacked to the floor, though her puffiness causes no sound to be heard. She rolls over to see the cause and gasps in surprise. The killer has the egg in both its arms and smacks her face with it over and over until Blissey’s top half becomes mutilated and bloody. She turns over on her belly and the killer finishes the job by smashing the egg into the back of her skull, causing her body to become limp and the egg to be squashed.
The murderer darts out of the room and enters the mini pantry where the bodies have been placed. It opens a second door that has been placed on the opposite wall that enters out into the hallway, and it comes back into the living room before Croagunk has time to reach the bottom of the stairs and see anything out of place.
It’s nighttime again. The twenty-four hour mark has been passed. No one notices anything; Togekiss is reading, Nidoking is in pain, Purrloin is unconscious, Roselia is speaking with Natu, Slowpoke is asleep beside Smeargle, and Smeargle is dozing in the same chair he kicks his feet in. Toxicroak is sitting beside Nidoking, though he is wide awake and slightly paranoid.
“Hey,” Croagunk says with a small wave.
“What? What’s wrong?” Toxicroak panics.
“...Nothing. I’m going to go check on Purrloin,” you tell your partner.
You walk inside the kitchen and smell a heavy odor of eggs. You walk around the table and see Purrloin still unconscious. You keep walking around the perimeter and look for Blissey. Under the table, you see the top half of an egg that has been cracked.
“Ah, Blissey must be making some sort of remedy,” you say quietly to yourself. You look under the table and see the corpse all mutilated.
You vomit. Purple, poisonous sludge from your stomach come straight out of your mouth like a Gunk Shot, though you do it in the trash can. You clear your mouth and run into the living room.
“Toxicroak, you better come in here,” you say.
Toxicroak walks inside and says aloud, “It just had to come to this.”
You lead him inside and he sees the corpse and vomits in the same way you do.
“‘It just had to come to this,’ huh? Toxicroak, you have some explaining to do, and you better make it fast.”
Dead: Blissey (GM Draclord)
Accused: Toxicroak (Drohn)
Will this gore settle you for now?
Not too gory of a death, but still a pretty messed-up one. Thoughts? I've made so many plotlines because I've found a way to intertwine them all together. Let me know if it's confusing at all!
Also, in the main post, the first 4 of the list of members have now died. This was not intended; I randomized this list of killings and have showed no favoritism in deaths whatsoever. Just an interesting coincidence.
