Chương 90: Interlude - On the Hunt

"That's the place?" Grimsley confirmed, staring out at the compound from their hiding place a few rooftops away.

"Your cousin certainly has luxurious tastes."

"He has expensive habits. And a lot of incentive to take over as head of the family," his teenaged hanger-on replied, her eyes fixed on the quiet mansion just a few buildings over.

"I'm familiar with the type," Grimsley replied dryly.

"It took us a little bit to get over here. Think your cousin has cleaned house yet?"

"Only one way to find out," the girl replied.

"Plus, Mueller's not exactly the careful sort. Even if he tried to pick up after himself, there's decent odds he missed something."

"I guess that'll have to be good enough," Grimsley muttered.

"Stick in close now. The further you stray, the harder this'll be for Ink."

"Zoroark," the Dark-type protested, clearly unwilling to admit to just how rough the day had been on him.

"No playing tough. This guy might be an idiot, but he still hired one of the most dangerous killers on this side of the planet. No letting our guard down." That got both of his companions to sober up. Good. Time to get what they'd come for. - Sneaking inside the building proved relatively easy. Ink covered them in his illusions, and Grimsley's penetrating gaze helped him sus out where the motion sensors were.

The pressure plates surrounding the mansion proved a little bit more difficult, but Alyssa's partner was able to short them out without setting off any alarms, giving them the space they needed to ascend up to a third-floor window. One disadvantage about old, distinguished buildings, they didn't have very secure casements. Neirah was easily able to slice open the lock, letting Grimsley hinge the thing open so their little party could spill through into the mansion's interior.

Alyssa shut the portal behind them, and the group progressed further, following her lead through the dimly lit corridors.

"Mueller's office is on this floor, but in the next wing over. This one is reserved for guests, which generally just means my relatives from Neos when they have business in Techne, since no one actually likes my cousin enough to visit otherwise."

"You paint a very lovely picture of this Mueller fellow," Grimsley muttered as he trailed behind the girl.

"Don't take my word for it, just look around you. He's had full control of the decor on this estate since my uncle retired a couple of years ago, and I promise you, it didn't look like this back when he was in charge."

"I've seen– more tasteful," Grimsley hedged, trying hard to not look too closely at the walls. That particular shade of gold always gave him a headache.

"At least the carpeting is nice?"

"Nope. That's 'ethically sourced' Eevee-fur," Alyssa replied, her voice dripping with disdain.

".... What?" Grimsley finally brought himself to ask, as he stared down in horror at the furry brown rug they were walking on.

"When an Eevee evolves, all of their fur grows back in fresh, if their new form has fur in the first place. Which means you can shave one right before they evolve with no actual repercussion beyond the trauma they endure during the process."

"That cannot possibly be legal. Here in Ferrum of all places," Grimsley said with breathless horror.

"It's encouraged, actually. Something about 'shedding their normal typing to embrace their true potential,'" the teen replied, bracketing her statement in finger quotes.

"There's this whole ceremony and everything, and then the trainers and breeders make a tidy sum selling the shaved fur to one specific company for 'disposal," the girl paused, letting that sink in, before continuing, "of course, that corporation then turns around and creates monstrosities like this one to sell to rich idiots for very untidy sums."

"Ideals massive ass," Grimsley swore after a few moments of shocked silence.

"Please tell me that's considered as gauche as it sounds."

"It's worse," Alyssa promised.

"Most people see it as a particular sort of depravity, even among the hyper-wealthy, but it's also expensive, and it certainly makes a statement. For creatures like Mueller, those are the only things that matter."

"Well– fuck," Grimsley muttered.

"As if we didn't have enough reasons to nail this fucker to the wall."

"I could give you a hundred more, but we'd be here all night," the teenager muttered.

"Now come on, we're almost there." It took them another few minutes of traversing the massive mansion, but they finally arrived at Mueller's office. They passed a few staff members on their way, and a woman that Alyssa told him was her aunt, but no one was able to pierce Ink's illusion, and they reached their destination unspotted. The office's door was even thrown wide open, allowing them to walk right in. Unfortunately, that was where their good luck ran out.

Not only had Alyssa's father convinced her cousin to clean up after himself, the man was on the phone with the sniveling creature right now, dictating his action.

"Good. But don't just shred the paper. You'll need to burn it."

"Yes sir. Of course sir. I'll get someone on it right away."

"Do it yourself, you moron! You can't risk anyone else seeing the evidence." The shouting was so loud, it was audible through the wired phone held between Mueller's shoulder and ear. In some ways, Alyssa's cousin was as Grimsley had expected. He had the same brown hair and green eyes as the teenager, and even their faces bore traces of resemblance, closer to brother and sister than cousins to his eye. That wasn't unusual for families that cared a lot about dynasty, however.

No, the surprising thing about Mueller was that he was actually sort of handsome. Alyssa's words and the gaudy furnishings had led him to expect someone insecure. Someone whose worst excesses would somehow show on his own body. Instead, the man was well-muscled and actually rather handsome. The only outer sign of the rot he'd been led to believe was underneath came from the man's clothes, a gaudy suit that looked like it was, to Grimsley's expert eye at least, spun entirely from Spinarak silk.

The material was good, but the dye job made his eyes hurt, a fractal pattern of alternating triangles, colored in green, red, and purple. More alarming than the man's crimes against couture, however, was the rancid aura of desperation wafting off of him. It was visible to Grimsley's stamina-infused eyes, a sickly green haze of envy and resentment that made him want to puke. Not only for its potency, but also for its familiarity. His brother had looked just like that, in the weeks leading up to his 'coup.'

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"We need to act quick," Alyssa's words broke Grimsley free from the grasp of his own memories.

"How do we get Mueller out of here without calling the entire estate down on us?"

"Ink?" Grimsley nodded at his partner. The Zoroark's lips pulled back, exposing his pristine incisors in a savage grin. Not one minute later, Mueller was running out of the office, carrying a stack of papers and a shredder basket under one arm. Your father just told him to burn those papers now, out in the garden," Grimsley told her, even as the man's actual voice erupted, unheaded, from the receiver dropped on Mueller's ornate desk.

"That should give us some time."

"Not a ton," Alyssa hissed.

"Mueller's stupid, but he's not slow. Search fast." They tore through the room. Luckily for them, Alyssa's cousin had done a lot of the work of finding the evidence they needed. Unluckily, he'd already gotten around to destroying the majority of it. They flipped through stacks of files and paperwork, looking for anything that'd survived the man's rampage, but he'd clearly made off with anything obviously incriminating. Five minutes passed. Then ten.

Just before Grimsley called it, Alyssa shouted from one corner of the room.

"I've got it! Here." He came over to her side, staring down at the stack of receipts stuffed in an ash tray on one of the wood-paneled shelves.

"Receipts?"

"For a bunch of restaurants, stores, and supply depots in a district Mueller would never visit normally," Alyssa grinned.

"But maybe these aren't his receipts. Maybe, these belong to someone else, asking him to reimburse their expenses. It's not a slam dunk connection, but…"

"Clever," Grimsley breathed as they started snagging receipts and secreting them away.

"An accountant could use these to link Mueller to whoever made the purchases. And if we plug the addresses for these places into a map–""We'll have a general idea of Scythe's stomping grounds," Alyssa grinned.

"It's not everything we'd hoped for, but this'll be good enough, right?"

"It should get us close," Grimsley confirmed.

"And once Ink's on the trail, we won't lose him again. No teleporting out this time. Let's get this bastard. -"Any movement?"

"For the millionth time Morgan, no," Lenora drawled out, her eyes rolling almost into the back of her head.

"You can see just as well as I can. Nothing." Her impatient comrade huffed out a noisy sigh as he leaned back in the van's passenger seat.

"When the hell is this guy gonna show up? He's gotta come back at some point, right?" Lenora was increasingly less certain about that with every passing minute. It'd been a day since she pulled her two kids out of that apartment, and two since she and Morgan had started staking out the building. Pern Alvida had disappeared into the ether two days prior to that, and increasingly, it was looking like his vanishing act wasn't just the impromptu flight of a scared civilian.

They couldn't discount something untoward or unlucky having happened to the man, but that didn't make sense to Lenora. If there was any real chance he was simply missing, there was no way their bosses would have put the entire force on this. Sixty humans and nearly as many Pokémon, all searching for one lone actor. Even if not all of those were on the frontline, someone would have found something by now if there'd been some sort of accident. No, Pern Alvida had been ready to run.

Just another sign of his clear guilt. Lenora suppressed a grimace as a boom resounded from a few streets away. A week ago, Morgan and her would have been responding to that, partaking in the ongoing and failing effort to get Techne under control. She'd never expected to return home from Orre to find her own region almost as much of a battleground as that wartorn hellscape. And Lenora wasn't one of those idiots who tried to fool themselves.

Orre was in the throes of a violent civil war, even if the media insisted on calling it a gang crisis. Just like she and her comrades were definitely soldiers, even if the tax reports referred to them as 'security officers.' At least they had some experience in peacekeeping operations, after spending months on Orre's blasted soil. If they'd been forced into this role after the years of line-fighting in Ransei, they'd have been truly lost.

But just because they were capable of locking things down didn't mean they enjoyed it. Home was supposed to be somewhere safe, somewhere secure– different from savage foreign shores. That it wasn't, that the city seemed to be falling apart around their ears… it felt like a slap in the face. An insult they could lay at the feet of one man, and his misdirected resentment. Not that Lenora didn't have some sympathy. She'd do anything for her own children.

Had done things she wasn't proud of in retrospect, even if they'd been necessary at the time. But she'd kept her revenge contained, directed. Not like Pern, with his willingness to throw the entire region under the proverbial bus just because his project had been shut down. No noble or understandable goals made up for that sort of evil. After years of fighting in other people's wars, Lenora was well, painfully aware of just how little the ends could justify the means.

"How about your kids? They get anything out of the girl?" Morgan's voice broke her out of her reverie. Lenora held back a scowl.

"They were just all at the same stadium, Morgan. They didn't even know her father was missing, how would they think to ask about it?"

"I dunno, maybe she let something slip? I still think she knows more than she's letting on."

"She's just a kid, Morgan. Only thirteen, same as Bert and Gee."

"That's above age of conflict," Morgan refuted.

"And you and I both know what people younger than her are capable of."

"Sure, in other regions, but Ferrum's not like that. We're civilized here. You know, they're talking about raising the age of conflict to sixteen?"

"Yeah right. They've been talking about that for years. It'll never happen." Whatever reply Lenora had been about to make, it got forestalled by a beeping from the van's dashboard. Morgan slammed the button, opening the vehicle's radio system.

"This is Huxley Three. Over."

"Copy Huxley Three. This is Huxley One. We have confirmed sighting of the primary target. One day old, in district nine. Lieutenant is organizing a probe in force, from the primary rally point, over. Time to come back home."

"What about secondary target, over?" Morgan asked.

"Some suspicious outgoing traffic, but not a priority. Command doesn't care about a kid, Morgan."

"Roger that Huxley One," Lenora's partner ground out through gritted teeth.

"Moving to the primary rally point now. Over."

"See you soon Huxley Three. Out."

"What's your problem with Fione?" Lenora asked as she turned the key in the ignition, causing the armored van's diesel engine to erupt into life.

"The girl knows more than she's letting on Lenora, I'm telling you." Morgan's statement earned him a flat stare, as she began pulling the van out of its parking spot.

"She's just a child Morgan. Put her out of your mind, and let's nail the real bastard behind all of this." And maybe once they had him, they'd be one step closer to getting Ferrum back under control. Somehow. - He finally had a hint. After searching for so long, hunting and pining for his savior, he'd seen her. She was on the news! She'd been in this very stadium not one day hence.

He stared up at the towering structure's exterior, prevented from entering by armed security personnel who'd locked the entire building down in the wake of yesterday's attack. That was okay, though, because he'd found her trail, winding away from an alleyway not one street off of the stadium. She was so close. Just a little more tracking, and he'd be reunited with his savior once again. And this time, judging by what he'd seen on the television, he might be the one who'd be rescuing her.

Wouldn't that be incredible?! He'd tell her about all the things he'd done trying to live up to her legacy, and she'd be so proud of his actions. And they'd be together. Forever. After he was done killing the bastard who was hurting her. It'd be his finest work yet.