{a study in green}

[hr][/hr]

a study in green​

[hr][/hr]

“In the beginning was the Curd, and the Curd was with God, and the Curd was—ma’am, with all due respect, you can’t be serious about having us take this case.”

Dr. John H. Notson, possessor of delusions of grandeur, the desire to do something interesting with his life, and a very large headache as a result of some misdirection with the previous two objectives, sighed and looked over the top of the case files in his hands. Something told him that if he didn’t stop this farce in the next five minutes, he was going to have an excruciatingly long day. He yearned, more than ever, to be enjoying a spot of tea in his overstuffed armchair by the fireplace rather than sitting across from it, lanky form crammed into a rather uncomfortable wooden stool as an elderly woman crammed polaroid photograph after polaroid photograph into his hands.

“And on the sixth day,” said elderly woman continued for him, as if growing tired of waiting for Notson to finish his sentence, “He made the grains and the wheat, so that—”

Notson decided that it would be far better for his sanity if he simply ignored everything she was saying. Instead, he turned to his partner and said in a low voice, “Lock, with all due respect, you can’t be serious about having us take her case, either.”

Mr. Hulms Lock was, for all extents and purposes, a man playing the role of a man playing the role of a man playing the role of a very eccentric detective. When Notson had first met the tall, middle-aged man, his hooked nose, his penchant for smoking, and his terrifyingly irritating habit of playing the violin at all hours of the night, Notson had decided to determine if the man who co-rented his apartment was a sane man pretending to be a lunatic or a lunatic pretending to be sane.


“Don’t be daft, Notson,” Lock said calmly, and Notson changed his opinion back to ‘sane man pretending to be a lunatic’ for the four hundred and sixty-first time. Then, in a louder voice, he turned to the woman sitting across from them, buried deep inside of Notson’s comfortable, overstuffed armchair for which he so desperately yearned. “I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss, erm—”

“Piracy. Connie Silvia Piracy, young man, and—”

(Some corner of his mind begged Notson to run away while he still could.)

“—your name was Mr. Lock? Mr. Hulms Lock?” the elderly woman finished, squinting up toward Notson’s partner.

“Sure,” Lock said, giving her his best imitation of a warm, comforting smile, and then stopped short, as if forgetting what he was going to say.

Notson took advantage of the opportunity to step in. “But really, Ms. Piracy, I don’t think we can help you prove that, erm,” he paused for a moment to shuffle through the extensive pile of newspaper clippings and scientific journal excerpts cluttered on the coffee table in front of him. His brow furrowed a little as he leafed over a particularly confusing article, and then he sighed and continued, “I don’t think we can help you prove that this, erm, ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ was responsible for killing your husband.”

Ms. Piracy’s face fell. “I’m sorry?”

Notson wasn’t entirely sure how to phrase this. On one hand, as one half of a consulting detective agency, he was used to taking obfuscating cases. The implausible, the impractical, the impossible; he and Lock had at least taken a crack at them all (to say that they’d solved them all, on the other hand, wasn’t entirely accurate).

On the other hand, Ms. Piracy had dashed into their office five minutes ago (with astounding speed and constitution for a woman of her age, Notson had noticed) covered in blood and carrying, in no particular order, a foot-long length of lead piping, a candlestick, a spanner, a revolver, a dagger, and a rope. Notson hadn’t even been sure how she had been carrying such a vast quantity of murder weapons on her person. He had, however, some faint suspicions as to how they and their bearer had become covered in what Lock had, quite quickly, deduced to be the blood of the late Mr. Piracy.

“Ms. Piracy,” Notson said, suppressing a rather large and rather unprofessional sigh. “The police here, see, they won’t be terribly inclined to believe that this Flying Spaghetti Monster fellow killed your husband.”

Ms. Piracy’s face fell for a moment, and then she broke out into a wide, beaming smile that was missing two teeth. “Oh, Mr. Notson,” she said earnestly, “I don’t believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster killed my husband either! That would be absurd!”

Notson raised one eyebrow. Perhaps this would be easier than he thought. He stood up to usher Ms. Piracy out of the room, presumably into police custody. “Well, in that case, if you would be so kind as to—”

“—the true culprits were the Breloominati, of course.”

Notson couldn’t quite help it.

He sat back down.

His first instinct was to burst out laughing; the Breloominati were a children’s joke, an obscure legend that eight year-olds enjoyed bringing into arguments. He’d seen the pictures, of course, and the absurd claims that if one connected all of the triangles on a five-pound note and held it up under a crescent moon on a Tuesday during the month of June at precisely three fifty-four in the afternoon, one could see the all-seeing eye brainwashing the Queen or something ridiculous. There was an entire radio station that he would always skip through that spent the wee hours of the night interviewing countless people who believed that a faceless organization devoted to the propagation of god-knew-what had infiltrated the government.

He’d heard rumors that they were intending to expand to the telly eventually.

Every now and then, there were just clients that were too daft for even Lock to handle, and Notson knew that—

“We’ll take the case,” Lock said suddenly, and Notson felt his heart sink.

It was going to be an excruciatingly long day.

Perhaps he could still put a stop to this. Notson leaned forward and grabbed Lock by the collar of his beat-up, brown leather trench coat. “Lock, a word, please.”

But Lock was looking back at him with an air of fanaticism gleaming in his dark brown eyes. “The Breloominati, Notson. Everyone knows that they’re just a legend, but no one has been able to prove it.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Until now, of course. You and I, we can work together and take down these lies once and for all!”

Notson paused to think this over. “So you don’t, under any circumstances, believe that what she’s saying has even an iota of truth in it?”

Lock scoffed. “Of course not. Don’t be daft.”

Ms. Piracy seemed to see that they were having difficulties deciding. Raising her voice slightly, she shouted, “I’ll pay you two grand to take my case!”

The gleam in Lock’s eyes only intensified. “Two grand?” he called, without tearing his gaze from Notson’s. “We’ll want more than that. Tricky case and all.”

Ms. Piracy paused and began rifling through her oversized handbag, which was currently lacking in the assortment of papers, polaroid photographs, and murder weapons that Notson assumed she normally kept in there. “How much more?”

Lock stopped, as if he hadn’t actually expected her to agree. He paused for a moment, thinking it over, and then settled on what an acceptable sum. “Much more. One thousand, five hundred pounds total, at a minimum.”

Ms. Piracy frowned, and then shrugged. “Deal.”

Notson sighed.

[hr][/hr]

“Lock, don’t look now, but I think our client is trying to kill us,” Notson whispered into his partner’s ear.

“Wherever would you conjure up that idea?”

Notson stopped, shone his flashlight in a broad circle around him, and sighed. “Lock, the place she told us to go is literally a crypt.” Notson looked around again. Indeed, after descending the stairs to the supposed ‘basement’ on 221B Faker Street, Notson had expected anything but what he was seeing instead: a stone crypt, roughly hewn from the surrounding bedrock, with a torchlit clearing in the middle. And, because it wouldn’t be an awful day otherwise— “This is literally a crypt covered in a blood.”

Lock glanced around, apparently came to the same conclusion that Notson had. He shrugged and approached what looked like a pentagram drawn crudely on the floor. “I suppose it is.” He crouched down to the red shape, dipped one finger in the paint, and sniffed it. “There’s also a copious amount of blood on the floor.”

“It’s actually red paint, for once.”

Lock shrugged and happily processed this new information before duckwalking awkwardly around on the floor, examining the shape. It was exactly like a pentagram, except it had six sides rather than five and consisted of two interlocking triangles instead of a five-pointed star.

Had Notson been a telepath, he would have pointed out that, by that logic, it was not exactly like a pentagram.

However, Notson was not a telepath. In addition, Notson was distracted by the fact that he hadn’t been the one to correct Lock in what he’d assumed what was an otherwise empty room, and—

“Lock, there is a talking monster that is flying and appears to be made of green spaghetti,” Notson managed to say in as calm of a voice as he could muster.

Indeed, levitating in through the column of light carved out by the torches, there was a strange, green creature that really only could be described as an amalgamation of spaghetti colored green, with a pair of red boots sticking out. “An apt description if I ever heard one,” the creature said happily, and then vaulted into the middle of the not-pentagram, careful to avoid getting the red substance (paint? Blood? Notson didn’t know at this point) on its equally-red shoes.

“It is Him!” a voice cried out from behind Notson, and Notson was brushed aside as the surprisingly fast blur that resolved itself into Ms. Piracy elbowed past him to kneel reverently before the blob of green tentacles that had descended from the sky. “He has come at last!”

Notson blinked once, processed the situation, and then turned to go home. He was not putting up with this level of absurd balderdash today.

Ms. Piracy’s voice only got louder and louder, try as Notson did to tune her out. “He has come! Our salvation!”

“Ms. Piracy, don’t be ridiculous,” Lock said, looking up with bemusement from the not-pentagram, and then stopping when he saw the strange creature floating above him. “Is that a tangela?” he asked no one in particular.

The creature descended. “That is one of my many names, I suppose.”

Lock’s brow furrowed as he tried to piece it all together, and Notson knew then that no matter what happened now, it was far, far too late to turn back. “Tangela… Breloominati… Pokémon…”

“Lock, we should just go,” Notson said, because he’d be a fool if he didn’t at least try to leave before something ridiculous happened.

No such luck. “Tangela… Breloom… Pokémon…”

“Lock?”

In the corner of his vision, Notson watched in twisted fascination as Ms. Piracy dropped to her knees and began bowing to the tangela. “He who seeketh for mortals to be-leaf in him and his sacred sect of Pastafarianism,” she intoned. “He who is the source of all di-vine intervention.” She threw herself to the ground. “He who is the—”

And on the other side of the room, Lock was muttering, “Tangela… divine… believe…” He paced the floor in tight circles around the not-pentagram.

And Notson stared in mute horror at the complete shitstorm of poor reasoning that was unfolding before him.

The tangela looked at him and fixed him with a stare that looked altogether too-human for a wad of noodles. “This is only the beginning, poor soul.”

Notson frowned, trying to understand what the devil the tangela had just told him, when—

“Eureka!” Lock shouted, and turned back to seize Notson by the lapels. “I’ve done it!”

Very firmly, but very gently, Notson disentangled himself from Lock’s grasp and held up his hands disarmingly. “Lock, I think the stress is getting to you, and—”

“What is the symbol of the Breloominati?” Lock said, his voice growing much louder than normal.

Notson couldn’t help but flinch back a few paces. “The, uh, all-seeing eye,” he managed to say.

“Exactly!” Lock cried out, even louder than before, and he practically jumped into the air. “And as of now, the sixth release of the Pokémon Encyclopedia, how many species of Pokémon have the ability Keen Eye that have six letters in their names?” He noticed Notson begin to count on his fingers, frowning, and then Lock interrupted him: “Exactly what I was going to say! Eight!”

Notson frowned. “Lock, I really don’t understand where any of this is going, and—”

“And how many letters are in the first two letters of ‘Keen Eye’?” Lock asked, ignoring his partner entirely.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s right!” Lock shouted. “Two! And eight minus two is six!”

“I warned you,” the tangela said, and it almost sounded sorry.

“And tangela has six letters, John!” Lock was shouting, louder still, as he took another lurching step toward Notson. “Don’t you see? Six! Six! Six!”

By the time that Notson’s addled brain had pointed out that ‘tangela’ had seven letters, Lock had already reached into the breast pocket of Notson’s coat and pulled out the six-shot revolver that Notson kept there. At which point, Notson realized they were probably all going to die.

“The Breloominati are real, John,” Lock said, holding up the revolver with a manic glint in his eyes. “And I’ve just figured out that the killer, who is clearly one of them, must be standing in this room.”

Notson briefly processed everything that had just happened in the past few seconds, decided he was dreaming, and found, with horror, upon further reassessment that it was all still real. “Lock, Please.”

“The ‘H’!” Lock shouted, brandishing the gun threateningly.

Notson took half a step back and raised his hands in what was clearly meant to be a disarming gesture, although it did little to deescalate the situation. “Lock, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” he said as calmly as he could. “Put the gun down, and then—”

“What does the ‘H’ in your name stand for?”

That hadn’t exactly been the question that Notson was expecting. “I… what.” His voice came out flat.

WHAT DOES THE ‘H’ IN YOUR NAME STAND FOR?” Lock roared. A vein bulged out of his beet-red face.

“Why the devil would—H-Harvey!” Notson managed to stammer, and to his surprise, Lock actually lowered the gun for half a second.

“I understand it now!” cried Lock, gesturing the gun wildly between his client and his partner. Every few seconds, he would settle on a target, preparing to fire, and then change his mind at the last moment. “Everything makes perfect sense.”

Notson decided that he wouldn’t mind dying at this point if it meant escaping this absurdist, terrible reality. Perhaps he could fashion one of the tangela’s vines into a noose, or perhaps Lock would do something kind for once and just shoot him.

“The names, Johnny,” Lock said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s all in the names.”

Notson decided that he had absolutely no idea what Lock was saying at this point, so instead he settled on the most obvious issue. “Please don’t call me Johnny.”

“Breloominati!”

Notson felt a cold pit of horror settling in his stomach. He was locked in a crypt with a known murderer, and a man with a gun who seemed to have every intention of becoming one. Oh, and there was an eldritch abomination in the center of the room. “Please, not this again.”

“Breloominati, Johnny! Breloomi-not-e!”

Notson had absolutely no idea where this was going, but he decided that he didn’t like it. “Oh god.”

“Pokémon! Tangela! Breloom! Not-e!” By this point, the gun wasn’t even pointing at anyone in particular, and Notson briefly wondered if he could make a grab for it before Lock brought the revolver back down and pointed it at no one in particular. “What do you get when you take out the e’s?”

“Please stop.”

“Six letters in each word! Six. Six. Six!” He was shouting into the semidarkness of the crypt at this point, an impressive amount of spittle punctuating each word.

“Lock, this needs to end. Now.”

“And this spaghetti mystery? Spaghett-e? Myster-e?”

“That’s not even how you spell—why the devil am I even trying to talk sense into you.”

But Lock was unstoppable, a steamroller already in full motion and rolling down a hill toward what Notson imagined was a schoolbus full of his own hopes and dreams. “The killer?’ Lock shouted. “Not E. Not. E. Not E, Johnn-y.”

“That’s not even the letter ‘e’, either!” There wasn’t even a point to sounding indignant by now.

“Johnn-y. Harv-ey.” Lock paused. “Well, Notson doesn’t have anything, but there’s six letters in all three of your names.”

“For the love of god.”

Lock turned to point the gun at Connie instead. “And see? Conn-ie. Sylv-i-a. Pirac-y. Six letters. Three e’s. But ‘not e’! She can’t be the killer.”

“Then who the hell do you think it is?”

Lock paused, the realization dawning slowly on his face, and he stood still. “But of course.”

“What.”

“Of course.” Lock had stopped pacing by now, as if his legs had turned to stone by the momentous discover he had just made. “By the all-seeing eye, of course.”

Notson ran through the only possibilities left and thought he saw where all of this was going. “Lock, you can’t actually—”

“The all-seeing I.” Grinning, as if immensely pleased with himself, Lock turned the gun toward himself. “The killer is… it is… I.”

Panic filled Notson then. Idiot or not, Lock didn’t deserve to—well, whatever was going to happen, Notson didn’t want to see it go that way. “Lock, don’t shoot!”

Lock paused, as if what Notson was saying were the most absurd thing in the world. “Why not?”

Lies. Make up a lie. There was enough awful logic going around; surely Notson would be able to think of—“We need to take the killer into custody, of course.” He was shaking. Really, truly shaking. He hadn’t felt this terrified since the war, but with a man about to die in front of him, a man who may be completely devoid of any brains but still a friend nonetheless, Notson couldn’t help but tremble. He felt a surge of protectiveness toward the poor bastard in front of him, as if—

Lock lowered the gun and frowned. “Custod-y?”

The warm feeling vanished, but Notson strode forward and slapped the gun out of Lock’s hands. “Get the hell away from my gun, you idiot.”

[hr][/hr]

Notson sat down with a steaming cup of tea in his chair, the tangela nestled in the couch across from him. This was, Notson decided as he sipped some of his chamomile, the most normal thing he had done all day. He was sitting in front of what was apparently an elder god and figurehead for an ancient, sacrilegious sect devoted to the worship of pasta.

When Notson had first Hulms, Notson had decided to determine if the man who co-rented his apartment was a sane man pretending to be a lunatic or a lunatic pretending to be sane.

Pausing to take a sip of chamomile, scalding-hot like he liked it, Notson revised his definition another time. Hulms: a lunatic pretending to be a lunatic. Notson also mentally added himself there right alongside his flatmate, because—

“Your friend, was he actually serious?” the tangela asked, lazily snaking out one vine to help itself to its own mug of tea.

Yes, this was certainly the most normal thing he had done all day. And that was quite sad.

“I’m afraid so,” Notson said, and then sighed. It had been, as he had suspected, an excruciatingly long day.

“He’s under arrest now. Even though the killer was quite clearly Connie,” the tangela continued, almost conversationally. “Literally all of the evidence pointed to her.”

“We never actually found the killer,” Notson replied, frowning, and then wondered belatedly if it were even worth debating at this point. “Everything was basically solved the first place we looked, though. That was odd. It’s never usually like that.”

“You’ll find that, quite often, the police are competent at their jobs,” the tangela said idly. One tendril waved around as if it had a mind of its own. “Not everything needs to be done by an eccentric hero and his bumbling, average side-kick.” A pause. “And are you really thick enough that you’re going to use that to explain why your case isn’t how your other ones ‘usually’ are?”

Notson decided in less than half a second that it wasn’t even worth his time to get angry over the insults laced in that sentence. “Lock’s told me he was part of the police, too,” he said at last.

“My dear Notson,” the tangela said, looking up with these disturbingly piercing eyes buried beneath the mass of foliage again, “he’s a traffic cop. With any luck, he’ll never get promoted; there’s no telling what kind of damage he could do if he started investigating real cases.”

“Ah.” Notson sighed and glanced out the window of his apartment. The traffic below was calm and quiet, as if the rest of the world was having a jolly old time while he was holed up here, having the most sane conversation he’d had all day, and with a shrub. “He turned himself in five more times before they decided to just keep him at the station for a little while.”

The tangela paused for a moment, apparently thinking quite hard, and then it added, “Is your friend aware that Mr. Piracy never even died?”

“Of course Lock was unaware that—” Notson paused and processed what the tangela was telling him. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“I believe she even told you that the idea of having the Flying Spaghetti Monster killing her husband was absurd, you know.” As if unaware by the sudden change its revelations had caused, the tangela looked pensively into its mug of tea for a moment before remarking, “Ms. Piracy simply hired you to investigate what she believed to be a divine intervention of the Breloominati.”

Notson did not respond.

“I mean,” the tangela continued serenely, “her name was quite literally Connie S. Piracy. I’m not sure what you were expecting, to be perfectly honest.”

Notson paused, reflected, and realized in addition to all of the other poor choices he’d made that day, that he’d believed Lock when the latter had said that the red substance on Ms. Piracy’s clothing was blood. It was, of course, a grave mistake to consider seriously anything following the phrase ‘he’d believed Lock when’. “And the murder weapons she was carrying?”

“You mean the materials she needed to break into the crypt and draw the absurd symbols on the floor that she believed would summon me?” the tangela asked, not even bothering to look up from its tea this time.

Oh, dear.

The tangela made a shifting motion that may have resembled a shrug. Its red-booted feet twitched a little in the wooly upholstery of the couch. “So you’re saying your friend turned himself in five times after the first one… for a total of six times?”

They both paused for a moment.

“Don’t,” Notson said firmly, and turned away.

The silence stretched between them for a moment.

“So you’re an eldritch abomination,” Notson began.

“I believe the politically correct term is copypasta,” the tangela corrected him serenely, using one spare vine to reach over for the bowl of cream. It calmly emptied the contents of the bowl into its own mug of tea and then used an extra vine to stir its tea-milk (but now mostly milk) combination, making a whistling sound from beneath the recesses of its tangles of vines, apparently oblivious to the heat.

Notson could smell something burning, a little more woody than tea, and he looked over to see that the tangela had boiled at least a small portion of itself. “Copypasta?”

“Copypasta.” It offered no further explanation. The tangela sighed and retreated the injured vine back into its body before allowing another one to sprout in its place. Notson was halfway forming the thought to offer the creature on his couch a spoon before the tangela simply emptied the contents of its mug onto itself, leaving a slightly damper, slightly sweeter-smelling lump of green tendrils on his couch.

It did look like spaghetti in this kind of light, Notson reflected. “Would you like more tea?”

“With pleasure.” The tangela calmly accepted a fresh mug of steaming tea and promptly doused itself with chamomile again.

Notson decided that this vein of conversation was going absolutely nowhere, and rather than engage in some rather unproductive behavior, he opted to change the subject. “So you’re an omnipotent god,” Notson said at last. “A, erm, copypasta.”

The writhing mess of turquoise vines before him nodded slightly. “So they say.”

At this point, Notson took what he could get. “What do you think all of this means? What was the point of it, really?”

The tangela pierced him with a very serious, very solemn pair of white eyes peering out from the midst of those knots of vines. “Does it have to mean anything?”

“What? I mean, I thought—”

The tangela made that shrugging movement again and then slid off the couch. Its red-booted feet barely kept the mass of vines off of the floor. One tendril hung back lazily to place the now-drained mug of tea back on the nearest table. “Stop and think about that for a moment. Does it really have to mean anything? Not everything in life has to make sense, my dear Notson. Sometimes, some things just happen. Accidents happen.”

“But—”

The tangela raised its thin, reedy voice, and it stood on red-booted tiptoe, presumably so it looked more intimidating. It was almost two feet tall that way. “No ‘buts’. Sometimes, things just work out where there’s no clean answer. Accidents happen. Bullshit happens. There isn’t some sort of hidden meaning in everything, and if you try to find one, you’ll just drive yourself nuts looking for it. Some things are just exactly what they appear to be. Your friend Lock tried to learn that, bless him, but it didn’t seem to stick. Take a deep breath, Notson. Some things aren’t going to be dramatic, or world-changing, or profound, no matter what you’re expecting, so don’t look for that.” Pause. “Sometimes, the world is just full of idiots, so it acts accordingly. Like today.”

That was, Notson decided, some of the best advice he’d gotten all day, and it had come from a talking bush with feet that claimed to be an eldritch abomination that was the heart of all religion and conspiracy as the world knew it.

The tangela had made its way to the door by now, and was struggling slightly with the task of operating a doorhandle with its vines. Perhaps, Notson reflected, he was still dreaming, or perhaps this was part of an elaborate ruse wherein Lock had slipped him some particularly potent shroomish.

“I guess you’re right.” Notson sighed. It had been a long day. “When I see him next, I reckon I owe Lock an apology.”

The tangela paused by the door. “An apology-y?”

Notson decided to pretend that he hadn’t heard that, or that the emphasis he’d heard had just been a slight slip of the tongue, and resumed sipping his tea. A bit cold by this point, but he’d take what he could get. “So I should look into copypasta?” he asked instead, and then mentally hit himself because—

“Cop-y-pasta?”

With a resounding clank, Notson’s teacup found its way back to its saucer. He bristled. “No. Leave. Take the tea and leave.”

Another pause, and then: “Take the t-ea?”

“Get the hell out of my flat.”

So it did.

[hr][/hr]

Spoiler

attempted capture: tangela
character count: around 27k (haha jk 66,666)

This mess started at about two am last night in the URPG main chat when Felly and I made illuminati jokes out of everything, and then, well.

I tried to write funny things. I’m not really sure how this turned out, and there’s a lot of weird jokes hidden in here, but I’ll try to leave them up to reader interpretation instead. This story is not, however, in any way serious, and please do not treat it as such.*

seriously tho, bad attempt at deconstructing detective fiction is bad

…I’m sorry, world.

PS elysia has six letters elys-ia omg illuminati half-life three confirmed

Oh also secret santa hurray

 

did u know that Tangela also has 6 letters

 

ELY MY DARLING I'VE BEEN AVOIDING GRADING THIS AS I'M AFRAID YOU'RE GETTING TIRED OF MY SILLY ADVICE WHAT IS MY SHENANGIANS AND YOU PROLLY NEED A MUCH MORE ADVANCED GRADER X 100000 WHO DESERVES YOUR WONDERFUL WRITING BUT

YOU HAVE WAITED TOO LONG SO I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND ME GRADING THIS

<333333

6 3's!! or 2 sets of 3 for 2 x 3 = 6???

 

Story:

AHHH love love love the comedy in here! I don't actually know anything about Sherlock or Watson, but there were stylistic subtleties in here that made this a fun read no matter the contexts. I think this partially occurs because of a few delicious stylistic bits in here - "a spot of t(e)a," "telly," and inverted sentences like "a sane man pretending to be a lunatic or a lunatic pretending to be a sane man" really all add to the general tone of silliness in this text. Beginning from the title, a double entendre as Tangela is green but "green" also refers to an inexperienced worker, we knew this would follow the tale of people who had no idea what was going on but are still supposedly very important detectives. XD Marvelous.

round of applause for: BRELOOMI-NOT-E, BE-LEAF (BE-LEEB), DI-VINEEEE and DISENTANGLED :>

On another level, this was a great satire! Beginning from Lock's musings on words and ending through the climax gun scene, you did a fantastic job of displaying the illogic behind many conspiracy theories. The "keen eyes" bit really cracked me up, as well as the copy pasta part. The fact that this almighty center of the universe, Tangela, is literally pouring hot tea on its body for funsies is also a great commentary on the nature of these supposed all-seeing beings in modern conspiracy theories.

The plot line was definitely enough for a Pokemon of the hard-rank! We've got a standard day of shenanigans in the office with a side of spag-ANYWAY, I also think it's great that the story is a sort of play on real life conspiracists, detectives, and the reader too. Tangela's monologue about things not needing to make sense was meta cause now it's like "haha readurr i am almighty and can end this story w/o making sense because Tangela" and I LIKED IT. I would love to see you attempt more satire, because you clearly know what you're doing, and more detective stories in general!

Description:

Description was fine! The description of Tangela's voice as "thin and reedy" improved my mental image of the situation. I would definitely recommend you to add more sensory description like it in the future to make your writing even more AWESOME than it is! Voices, what blood / paint smells like, the feeling of darkness in the crypt - all these little details add up. When attempting to create the most vivid sensory imagery, what I usually do is vision the scene in my mind. Usually the things I feel / see first are those that are the most shocking, and will hopefully be the most intense to the reader. Then I try to take that feeling and translate it into a legible experience. I think we have a similar style, which is great! but now I think you can make your descriptions even more potent by making them as shocking / unusual as possible - without it being too overbearing.

On another note, I think it may be an interesting experience to tinker with the back story of places / things in your stories. You do an excellent job of creating the most heart-breaking and believable backstories for people, but I think adding the landscape history into the story too would add just that extra immersive dimension in your stories. For example, what's it like in this office of Notson and Lock, how long has their detective place been in business, etc. Hopefully this is sort of helpful!

Grammar:

*"in here" should be "in there" AND *"this disturbingly piercing eyes buried beneath the mass of foilage" should be "these disturbingly..." BWHAHAHAHA!

You are SOLID. I believe there were two comma splices that I noted, but tbh I don't really see comma splices as wrong and I love what these sentences do for syntax variety. So. :> YOU ROCK. <3

Length:

Characters on the higher side, always a nice touch! Pacing was perfect, too!

Outcome:

TANGELA (no ee) captured WEE! Go wild!