Frontier Town Mayoral Residence – Ground Floor

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

"Pokémon," she said, quietly. "Folks who nobody'd miss."

"Interesting," she hummed. "Now, that's something I almost wish you'd've opened with when some of our team spoke with you. I'm guessing nobody would have believed you without proof..." Mhynt eyed the mansion. "There's likely even more proof in this mansion that we haven't uncovered."

It took a moment for Steven to realize the conversation he'd stumbled into when he'd darted up to Odette.

"W-wait," he stuttered, still trying to process what Sonora had just explained. "Maybe--maybe we do have proof."

He tilted upright, fumbling with the notebook for a moment, trying to hold it and thumb it open at the same time. But he was still too shocked, and he didn't really have thumbs anyway, so he dropped the book on the ground and opened it that way.

Lucien had warned him about the book, about what it contained. Was this what he'd meant? It was one thing to have dealings with money. It was entirely another to have dealings with people's lives. Steven was having a hard time trying to bury the horror growing in his chest.

"I saw something in here..." he flipped through the tabs as best he could. "Here."

The notebook had no formal index, of course, but coloured dividers split its contents into neat categories. Trade wagons, property purchases and land freeholds, ledgers of wages paid and donations received...

The section he'd landed on had the header 'Trade Wagons.'

 

[Shadow Serenity]

With the ralts getting medial attention, Kimiko allowed herself rest. She sat back against a wall with her eyes closed, listening in on the conversations nearby. Some of the group had even suggested going out for ice cream, as if anything they'd done here was worth celebrating, like a sports team who just won a championship. Between the battle and the 'I hope so' reply from the cloud, she didn't have the energy nor the desire to join in.

But then she heard something that left a knot in her gut.

"Pokémon," she said, quietly. "Folks who nobody'd miss."

That was her reply when asked what was in the caravans she'd hit. Pokemon were an odd thing to steal in a world full of... oh. She meant 'set them free'.

This entire time, Kimiko had been feeling like this battle wasn't their fight. But then... this was harder to ignore. And then Sonora had hesitated to answer, seemingly on the basis of being worried someone might go looking for them... For the first time, Kimiko opened her eyes to look at Sonora and didn't see just a bandit. Maybe ousting the mayor had been the right call.

Dave grimaced. "What exactly was the mayor hoping to do with these people?"

Thankfully, a familiar poochyena asked the important question she'd immediately wondered.

A beldum carrying a book of some kind mentioned having proof. Kimiko sighed and heaved herself up off the ground to peek at this book...

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"I am Prinplup Lucien," said the marshal, to Gladion. "And I am who you think I am," he added, to Wes as well, "and you may interrogate my character and aims tomorrow. For now all I want is to remand this 'mon to town gaol and go home... so that I might have time to myself to think. I have much to consider."

I am who you think I am?

Okay, yeah, Gladion knew what that mean. And why wanting to interrogate 'his character and aims' might be on the table for... other people. Personally, he would have felt a little dirty doing it himself— Lucien wasn't the only one not keen on being tied back to his family.

He waved a talon. "Lucien's all I expect of you... I can concur on getting this over with. I've had enough of today for two days."

 

[Tetra]

Koa watch, rapt with sick horror as Ignatius was escorted away. In front of Lucien. His son. He wondered how Lucien was feeling right now... Was he happy? Good riddance. His attention shifted wearily to the commotion around Sonora, and he edged closer. Despite his exhaustion and apprehension of Sonora, he felt at least sure based on how she fought she wasn't trying to hurt anyone. Maybe he could figure out what this was all about.

"Pokémon," she said, quietly. "Folks who nobody'd miss."

Oh. Oh. His stomach churned, his thoughts flashing back to that cave, full of cages. Cages crammed with pokemon. Poaching. Kidnapping. That's what this was all about? He wanted to ask more, ask why and what but fortunately the poochyena (David?) beat him to it. Probably better to let someone else speak anyway.

 

[Jackie Cat]

"Lucien's all I expect of you... I can concur on getting this over with. I've had enough of today for two days."

"That sounds agreeable enough to me," replied Lucien, as they exited the ballroom.

He looked around, as if searching for something. Or someone. Rin and Raul were not where they had collapsed earlier.

"Please do let me know if you spot those heads of security. I have questions for them."

They left the mansion, Ignatius still furiously silent, not looking at his son, the heroic spirits, or his guests, as he was walked to the jailhouse.

---

"And not a clue as to why? What may have become of them?"

"What exactly was the mayor hoping to do with these people?"

“Oh so it didn’t just stop at the fucking lying and embezzlement? He a slave trader too?”

Sonora grimaced. "...I don't know too much about what was waitin' for 'em, to tell ya the truth. And I don't much fancy talkin' about it at length. Not right now. But alright... The short of it is that a while back, I found out some of the folks in county jail were vanishin' outta town, and I staked out the bird's goons takin' care of it. Looked to me like those wagons were always headed somewhere nor'east, up Blaguarro way, but I never followed 'em to their destination, and the drivers never knew shit about it. All hush-hush."

She eyed a couple of the party with a defensive look.

"And before you go assumin' it were just some prison they were off to – it ain't right that a 'mon should get put in the cooler fer the night after havin' one too many whiskeys, and find 'emself spirited off to Saints-know-where in the middle of the night without so much as a bench trial."

The Floragato's whiskers twitched with emotion, and her paw played at her hip, as if reaching for a holstered weapon – though her only 'weapon', if you could call it that, was the hard seed she'd used for some of her elemental attacks during the fight.

"Coulda been me," she muttered, putting space between her and the throng of pokémon.

"I saw something in here..." he flipped through the tabs as best he could. "Here."

"Excuse me."

Laura seemed to have developed a feline talent for appearing soundlessly behind people. She took the notebook with a soft thanks to Steven for safeguarding it, and flicked through with her greater dexterity.

"There's a lot of coded language here," she observed, her pupils dilating as she focused on the text. "And I don't know anything about Commonwealth law, so who knows how many taxes or tariffs or whatever he was evading with this. But some of these numbers are definitely dates, and a lot of the ones that mention subjects have been crossed out..."

"Those'll be the ones my crew hit," offered Sonora, glancing over her shoulder at the dates and routes. "Yeah. They're all listed as bein' bound fer the same place, wherever the fuck 'Terminal Two' is. Never heard of it."

Laura nodded, grimacing at the lurch of dread in her stomach. She kept looking.

"Some of these dates are for future expeditions. Which means... there are some that haven't happened yet."

 

[windskull]

With the the fight passed and the addrenaline dying away, Nip found himself suddenly slammed with a bout of exhaustion. It was no surprise; he'd taken a nasty beating, and gone all out in the fight.

As the mayor was led away and the group started to disperse, he stuck around long enough to listen to Sonora's explanation, a sick feeling churning in his stomach. The story was... Horrifyingly familiar. To him, his "eating other pokemon" theory was sounding more and more likely.

Deciding he was too tired to deal with this, he dipped his head to the other pokemon around Sonora and left without a word.

 

[Phoenixsong]

It had taken a while for the adrenaline rush to subside, for the background chaos to settle into something sensible. They'd won. She'd fought like a pokémon, as a pokémon, and so had everyone else, and they had won. Something in the very back of Leaf's mind wasn't much interested in stopping, either. Running and training and accidentally spooking that fletchling that one time was cute and all, but that, that sensation of fire and flow, that she had to do again. Someone else in the group would definitely want to get more real practice in after all this, right? Of course they would.

The rush had since faded, though, and the more the world had sunk back toward boringness normalcy, the worse the mood in the ballroom had gotten, even with that asshole mayor finally out of the way. Everything Sonora clarified, every fancy new awful thing someone found in those crooked books... well, it was looking more and more like they had an angle on what they'd been brought here for, maybe put it that way.

"Hey, Sonora," Leaf said, approaching the floragato with her head down and ears turned back. "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. If there are still people who he might've landed in trouble, though—" she shot the gray meowth a worried look, but then stood up as straight as she could now that the aches were catching up to her "—then I wanna make sure they get out of it. If there's anything we can do about those 'future expeditions'..."

 

[Jackie Cat]

The outlaw managed a grim smile. "My crew and I are pretty used to hittin' these wagons by now. Small wonder the bird had it out fer me specifically so bad. But will these wagons even run the route now that the king's outta play?"

Laura bit her lip. "Well, they might. If everything's prearranged, I'll bet whoever's making the trip will still expect to do their job and get paid. And, uh... I know this sounds risky, but what if we trailed the wagon to find out where these people were being taken...?"

"No way." Sonora shook her head, ears flattening. "What if by the time they get within shot of their destination, there's too much security to bust 'em out? I've never wanted to take that risk."

"Well, there might not be much time to figure out what to do," murmured Laura. "Next one's tomorrow night."

 

[Tetra]

"We have to try and do something," Koa said wearily. "What if we pretended to be one of these mons being taken away?" It was the first suggestion his tired brain could come up with, but it made sense, right? Infiltrate whatever this was by pretending to be part of all this.

 

[Shadow Serenity]

Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. As exhausted as she felt, Kimiko doubted she'd be out of bed for a full week after this evening's battle.

Gods, she really needed to train more, didn't she?

She wasn't entirely sure how she'd gone from 'we shouldn't be involved in this' to 'train me in your bandit ways' in the span of five minutes, but there was no denying that she'd regret not helping rescue the 'mon in this caravan if they were able. And maybe having more than just Sonora's crew doing it would send a message to whoever was receiving the caravan, too.

Of course, that would go against their 'keep a low profile' agenda... but she supposed that's probably out the window now anyway, what with having beat up the local mayor and all. Kimiko was still half expecting to wake up tomorrow morning and find herself on a brand new wanted poster.

"What if we pretended to be one of these mons being taken away?"

"What would that accomplish?" she asked of the blue electrike, her voice weary. "Other than turning a relatively routine hit-" she cast a sideways glance at Sonora, "-into a far more risky one. If we just sneak a man inside and let them go, who knows if we'd be able to get anyone out." Sonora herself had already admitted to never waiting that long.

 

[Inkedust]

Bellatrix paused, a thoughtful frown on her features. "Terminal Two," she repeated. "A name like that indicates that its some sort of research facility. But if that was the case, what kind of business would they have with non-feral pokémon?" she asked, not expecting an answer.

There was a pause, then something clicked the moment she remembered something. "Hold on, did you say Blaguarro? Because I and a few others had been around the area about a week ago and the locals were distrusting of us due to seeing some odd creatures in the darkness." Could that have been related? It would've been an immense coincidence if it wasn't. "'Witching beasts' they called them."

She then shook her head at Koa. "It's a rather sizable journey," she added. "It took us from afternoon to the end of sunset just to reach the end of the incomplete tracks alone. A wagon will take much longer and I doubt we'll be able to pass ourselves off as captives after what happened tonight."

 

[Tetra]

Koa nodded, grumbling under his breath in frustration at the situation. "You're right, too risky probably."

He turned to Sonora. A day ago he never would have considered this, but there weren't a lot of choices anymore. And her true colors as far as he could tell, had shown through tonight. "What do you suggest then?" He glanced around the group. "Could we assemble a group big enough to stop some kind of security, or will you try and abush another wagon?"

 

[Jackie Cat]

Sonora exchanged a glance with various of the other 'mon.

"...I honestly don't know. And I don't know that I'm willin' to try it."

She took her hat and briefly pressed it to her chest, and made a slight bow.

"I thank y'all again fer what you've done tonight, but I gotta talk to my crew 'bout what comes next, and get some rest. Reckon you folks should do the same."

Then with a tip of her hat, the Floragato neatly hefted herself over the balustrade, dropped to the floor, and walked towards the exit, followed by members of her gang.

The various moneyed guests had, by now, either filtered out of the house, vanished elsewhere within it, or were simply gawking at the fighters.

Laura turned back to her allies and sighed.

"I can think of a few different ideas for this, and my gut is screaming at me that this is important somehow, but..." She waggled her notebook. "I've got work to do, sorry. Maybe let's all just... get some sleep. Those of us that can, at least."

 

[Inkedust]

Bellatrix nodded. "I don't believe much else can be done at this point." She was already starting to make her way towards the manor's entrance. She spared a glance towards Laura. "Inform me if you find anything else interesting because I believe we may have found ourselves a lead."

 

[Sinderella]

But alright... The short of it is that a while back, I found out some of the folks in county jail were vanishin' outta town, and I staked out the bird's goons takin' care of it. Looked to me like those wagons were always headed somewhere nor'east, up Blaguarro way, but I never followed 'em to their destination, and the drivers never knew shit about it. All hush-hush."

Odette's ears perked. Blaguarro, she meant like the Blaguarro her and her landing crew had stowed away out of? How fucking convenient was that.

"Next one's tomorrow night."

"What if we pretended to be one of these mons being taken away?"

"What would that accomplish?" she asked of the blue electrike, her voice weary. "Other than turning a relatively routine hit-" she cast a sideways glance at Sonora, "-into a far more risky one. If we just sneak a man inside and let them go, who knows if we'd be able to get anyone out." Sonora herself had already admitted to never waiting that long.

Gods and here she thought she'd have a moment of downtime. The electrike sounded like a kid halfway through puberty, but his reckless sounding idea got some gears turning in her head...all up until the snivy spoke.

She turned to her, brow raised. "No, but if we're not stupid about it, playing stowaway might get us some information we might not typically get if we just barge in all bandit-like. Playing the part of one of those unfortunate 'mon might get us insight into this 'Terminal Two' before we mad dash to the rescue. And it's clear we need all the information we can get."

"'Witching beasts' they called them."

Considering she had been accused of being a Witching Beast, she was quite stunned to realize she'd forgotten about that detail.

"That did come up," she said sheepishly. "But if that's where the 'shipment,'" she added air quotes around the word, "is headed, how far off is it that the two might be related?"

The name "Terminal Two" reeked of "we do illegal and unconsented experimentation." And if there were unknown creatures running around at night in the place where this ominous-sounding institution was...

She shuddered involuntarily.

"I thank y'all again fer what you've done tonight, but I gotta talk to my crew 'bout what comes next, and get some rest. Reckon you folks should do the same."

"I can think of a few different ideas for this, and my gut is screaming at me that this is important somehow, but..." She waggled her notebook. "I've got work to do, sorry. Maybe let's all just... get some sleep. Those of us that can, at least."

Odette supposed that was fair. They'd been through a lot this evening, and making bold decision with a head still full of what, and the, and fuck probably wasn't ideal. She gave a small salute toward Sonora's back as she left, before nodding at the meowth.

"I'm with you on that gut feeling," she said. "But lets take the one night of down time we can before rushing head first into more shit. Gods know we probably need it."

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

"Tomorrow night?" Steven couldn't hide the incredulity in his voice. He glanced around the ballroom, at the members of their group in various stages of exhaustion, and shook his head. "That's too soon to try anything drastic. Or dangerous."

His gaze fell, eye belaying his worry. "Knowing this is happening, it's been happening, and we're not in a position to stop it... it's troubling. But if we rush in and somehow make things worse--"

"We need information first." He looked at the book in Laura's paws, and then at Laura herself.

"I can think of a few different ideas for this, and my gut is screaming at me that this is important somehow, but..." She waggled her notebook. "I've got work to do, sorry. Maybe let's all just... get some sleep. Those of us that can, at least."

"I'd like to help," he said to her. "I don't need much sleep. We can work in shifts to get through it faster. If these wagons are still running, time is of the essence."

Turning, he regarded the rest of the group still gathered together. "Maybe there's something we can do around town to gather information, too. Sonora mentioned 'the mayor's goons' being responsible for operating these wagons. Is there any way to keep an eye on the jail from afar to try to spot the culprits?"

He gave the uniquely-colored Zora a short glance as she was leaving, and an idea began to form... "Once we know what we're up against, doesn't it seem wiser to try to sneak into one of these caravans as a guard rather than an inmate?"

 

[Sinderella]

Once we know what we're up against, doesn't it seem wiser to try to sneak into one of these caravans as a guard rather than an inmate?"

“A fine mix of both might be helpful too,” Odette mused. “Cover all the bases.” A shrug. “I’d be down to play either. In the meantime, if you find anything of note, I’d like to be kept in the know.”

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

Steven nodded at Odette. "We'll do our best to keep everyone in the loop about what we learn."

Lucien's warning burned bright in his mind again, and he regarded her with an earnest look. "In the meantime, take care of yourself. Who knows what we might uncover."

He made ready to tag along with Laura and the notebook, but he paused and gave Odette a smile and a bow. "Forgive me for not saying this sooner, but thank you allowing me to join you for a very interesting night."

 

[Sinderella]

"Forgive me for not saying this sooner, but thank you allowing me to join you for a very interesting night."

Grinning slightly, she nodded back.

“Thank you for agreeing to my weird invite,” she said. “And…thanks for being a friend.”

It felt good to feel like she’d made another. One she could trust for the foreseeable future, no less.

 

[Jackie Cat]

Laura allowed herself a moment to close her eyes, breathe, tell herself everything will be alright. Whatever happens, it'll be alright.

"I'll see what I can find out," she told those still nearby, "and then, I guess... we can come up with a plan. Good night, and um... I'll see you guys tomorrow."

She waved goodbye, and made her way downstairs, ignoring the increasing muddle of 'mon on the ballroom floor, slipping between guests who were finally expressing their shock, confusion, outrage...

"Hey light-cloud voice?" she asked, under her breath. "You there?

Hello, Laura. I am still present, although the connection is weakening...

"Shit. Okay, uh... What comes next? Were we supposed to take down the mayor? Surely he wasn't what we were summoned for? Do we follow this wagon to Terminal Two, or what? I don't know what to do."

Laura, I am sorry... I simply do not know any more than you do. I just have faith in you, and in the other heroic spirits. However, I can tell you that if you want to talk to me again outside of dreams, you should find a mystery dungeon...

A mystery dungeon, huh? Places where time and space went nuts, full of phantom feral 'mon and magic artefacts. Sure, why not.

"Okay. I'll try."

Good luck, Laura. Do what you think is best. I will trust in you.

What did she think was best?

The silver Meowth walked silently through town, glancing at stumbling ex-partygoers, tensing up at flashes of moonlight-on-metal she thought might be Bisharp Rin waiting to strike, her nose full of firework-smoke and cheap street stall fare. She let her legs take her where they wished, hardly thinking. She found herself headed for main street. Specifically, the offices of the Frontier Gazette.

She was gonna do what she thought was best.