Marianne Jenny's Kitchen Nightmares

~~~~~~~~~~CELADON CITY POLICE HEADQUARTERS: 20:15, MAY 29, YEAR 105 P.A.~~~~~~~~~~

"Superintendent! There's been a third attack."

Marianne Jenny, Superintendent of the Celadon City Police Department, looked up slowly from the complicated pattern of papers and dossiers carefully arranged across her desk, impatience at the interruption written plainly across her severe, squarish face. Standing in front of her was a young male police officer— Officer Davies: partnered to Officer Cobbler. An effective investigator, but doesn't keep calm under pressure, she recalled swiftly from her knowledge of the man— who was slightly disheveled from running and whose thick-rimmed square glasses and curly black hair made him look like he belonged behind a desk instead of in active duty. Marianne noted that Davies was clutching his police cap in white-knuckled, sweaty hands that indicated intense concern: a detail that just barely managed to prevent her from telling him to go take his report to his superior officer.

Around Marianne and Officer Davies, the administrative section of Celadon Police Station was bustling with activity, as was usual for a late Friday night— lots of paperwork to be done, with the streets full of impaired drivers and rowdy revelers aplenty to be charged and processed— and the darkness outside the small windows was cut regularly by the headlights of passing vehicles. Police officers of every description were seated at tables all over the brightly lit room, or striding quickly to and from printers and scanners; beyond a set of swinging double doors through which the young Officer Jamison had entered was the processing area or 'lobby.' Beyond that, the holding cells for those being kept in custody were in the opposite wing of the building.

"Please tell me to what exactly you are referring, Officer Davies," Marianne demanded as patiently as she could. "There are a great deal of investigations under way, so you'll need to start with which case we're talking about here."

"...Right, Superintendent!" the young man responded, standing up very straight; a blush began to appear on his dark-toned skin. "The disasters in the restaurants. You didn't want to hear it yesterday. Told us to, uhh, notify you 'when you have at least circumstantial evidence that these weren't accidents.' Well, there's been a third death in as many days... and we need your help."

Marianne frowned. "I don't recall that conversation. Please fill me in on the previous two incidents?"

"The Ten Colours Bar and Grill and the Rising Sun Dim Sum Restaurant and Chinese Buffet," Davies rattled off, pulling a notebook from his uniform and looking through it. "At oh-seven-hundred hours this Wednesday— two days ago— the chef-owner of the Ten Colours was found dead, his arm caught and mangled in the workings of his kitchen's washing machine. Coroner reported cause of death as exsanguination, time of death perhaps an hour before discovery. Kitchen staff said he would often go to the restaurant early to get prep work completed and dishes done. My partner and I assumed a tragic but accidental death... until the other victim was reported. And now there's been a third, at an Italian restaurant."

"Too many and too similar to be a coincidence," Marianne said, frowning to herself. She frowned because something was bothering her; and her sharp investigative mind was already hard at work decoding it, sorting out what made sense from what did not.

It made sense that Officer Davies and his partner were on the case: accidental deaths were uncommon enough in Celadon that two in a twenty-four hour period would have drawn investigators' attention. That wasn't the problem. Given the importance of her current investigation, it also made sense that she'd have left this case to more junior officers until foul play was considered likely; even now, it would be appropriate for her to assign one of her senior investigative officers to assist, rather than to involve herself... But what didn't make sense was that she hadn't put the case in the hands of one of her most skilled investigators the moment the second chef had turned up dead. Two deaths was already suspicious: a third similar death in three days could mean a serial killer. Lives were on the line, and Marianne couldn't just ignore that. She should have responded more swiftly when someone had reported— in person, no less— that two deaths appeared to be linked; sloppiness was not something Jenny had come to expect from herself.

"The Chinese restaurant. Another appliance-related death, I presume?"

"Right, Superintendent," Officer Davies said, completely unsurprised that Marianne had made that logical leap. "Chef never showed up for work in the morning, was later found at twenty-two hundred hours, locked in the walk-in freezer at the back of the restaurant when the staff went to remove meat to thaw overnight. Coroner ruled hypothermia as cause of death, unsurprisingly. Thing is, there was no sign of an impediment to leaving: the door handle was capable of opening the freezer from the inside, there was no lock, and no part of the door was frozen shut."

"Mm-hmm." Marianne noticed her eyes being drawn back to the complex pattern of conjecture and evidence strewn across her desk, and she pulled her gaze from it only with difficulty. Her frown only deepened as she caught the lapse in attention: perhaps her focus on this particular case— bordering on an obsession— was causing her to neglect her duties as Superintendent of the Celadon Police, something she could not allow. "And you need my help to figure out why Celadon's chefs are dying at the hands of the very equipment they use to make a living."

"Yes, Superintendent Jenny. You're the finest investigator in Celadon City, maybe in all of Kanto," the man said earnestly. "Any insight you can offer would help us immensely. Please?"

Marianne nodded slowly, her frown being slowly replaced by a grim look of resolve. "I'll do you one better. Come with me, Davies; I'll be looking into this case personally. Casey!"

"Yeah, boss?" shouted a middle-aged female officer from a few desks away, responding to the Superintendent's call.

"Have Staff Sergeant Holmes forward me the contents of Officers Davies and Cobbler's files on their active case," Marianne barked shortly in response. "And sign me up as the officer in charge of the case."

"Haw!" barked the woman, her crooked features— bearing the signs of many a broken nose and busted cheekbone in the line of duty— wrinkling into a lopsided grin. "Gettin' claustrophobic, Super'ntendent? Yeah, git on out there; I gotcher back!"

Leaving Casey typing away at her workstation, Marianne strode confidently out through the double doors, walking grimly past the one or two miserable-looking miscreants in handcuffs who were awaiting processing in the lobby. Following Marianne at an almost-run, Officer Davies stammered a few times before blurting out, "Thank you, Jenny! I mean, uh, Superintendent."

"Don't jump the gun," Marianne told him darkly as the two walked out of the Celadon City Police headquarters. "I made an error in judgment, and I intend to fix it before anyone else dies. Until I do, I've done nothing you need thank me for. Now show me where the third victim is."





~~~~~~~~~~LA CASA DI MAMA, ITALIAN RESTAURANT: 20:40, MAY 29~~~~~~~~~~





The police cruiser pulled up in front of the restaurant less than twenty minutes after Marianne got in the passenger side of the car, gestured for Davies to jump in the back, and told the startled officer in the driver's seat that he was to get them to La Casa Di Mama restaurant, 1344 Everstone Street, right away. It helped that the distinctive blue-green hair and unique Jenny uniform (hers trimmed with Celadon green by way of a personal touch) marked her as part of the famed family of enforcers and investigators. As the only member of the Jenny family to work in the city, Marianne was instantly recognizable as the Superintendent of the Celadon Police, and the officer hadn't stopped to question: he'd immediately put the vehicle in gear and activated the sirens.

Stepping out of the vehicle and offhandedly opening the back so that Officer Davies could get out, Marianne scanned the building. The place was clearly well-kept: the stone façade was clean, as was the tastefully front-lit sign advertising that this was, indeed, "La Casa Di Mama! Ristorante Italiano".

Thankfully, it appeared the news crews hadn't yet arrived. Marianne took the stairs two at a time and walked into the restaurant, where she was immediately met by a line of yellow plastic tape proclaiming "POLICE INVESTIGATION IN PROGRESS: DO NOT CROSS."

Ducking under the tape and breezing through the small sectioned-off space where the host's table was located, Marianne emerged into the restaurant proper and took in the scene at a glance. Well-dressed patrons of the restaurant were still seated at their tables; police officers were everywhere, taking down names, addresses and statements from the witnesses. A haunted-looking line of waiters and cooks, each one wearing a simple black collared shirt and grey pants by way of uniform, stood along one wall, being interviewed by a short, exhausted-looking young investigative officer with pale skin and short brown hair: Davies's partner, Officer Cobbler. Over everything hung a distinct, acrid smell like burnt meat.

"You're certain you didn't see anyone alter any of the oven's settings, or interact with the wall plug?" Cobbler was asking wearily as Marianne strode up beside him. "Thank you, Mr. Ellis, that will be all. Ma'am, I'm afraid you'll have to stay in your seat until— oh."

The young officer gulped nervously as he turned and saw who he was speaking to. "Superintendent, I... I didn't realize you'd be coming in person!"

"I thought I'd come and take a look, see what I can make of the situation," Jenny said evenly, surveying the line of kitchen and service staff who were trying not to goggle at an actual Jenny in the flesh! and pretending she didn't glimpse Cobbler mouthing "What did you do??" at his partner Davies.

"Well, I can't make head nor tail of it," Cobbler said after a moment, scratching his head. "None of the kitchen staff saw any sign of sabotage, or of any kind of Pokémon, before the incident. The oven was working perfectly fine for the entire dinner service up to that point."

"Show me the crime scene," Marianne told him. "We're not about to discuss details of this investigation in front of civilians."

"Oh— right," Cobbler said sheepishly, embarrassment at his breach of protocol— in front of the Superintendent, no less!— written across his face. "Davies, you keep a handle on the situation here, see if you can find out anything more from the witnesses. Right this way, Superintendent."

The flustered junior investigator led Marianne through a set of swinging kitchen doors and into a high-ceilinged, spacious kitchen: implements of all kinds hung neatly from plastic hooks affixed to the clean white walls; there were spotless chrome surfaces everywhere, their pristine appearance broken only by cutting boards on which still rested ingredients in various stages of preparation. Filling the room was a pall of acrid-smelling smoke, like thick fog that dimmed the colours of the fresh parsley and chopped bell peppers arrayed neatly on the cutting boards.

In the centre of the kitchen, clearly designed for accessibility, was an island made of six electric ovens arranged back-to-back, facing outwards. Atop these were stoves, their darkened heating elements populated by a dizzying array of pots and skillets. A few of the dishes in these were clearly burnt, their electric coils abandoned when the chaos started and only later turned off.

Only now that Marianne had taken in the details of the crime scene— missing nothing, as her training required— did she allow her attention to be drawn to the floor in front of the one open oven, where rested a grisly pile of evidence that had once been a living human being.

"This is the victim, Mr. Capelle?" Marianne asked, and received a nod from Cobbler to confirm what she already knew. Protocol demanded she not jump to even the most obvious of conclusions. Still... "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the Coroner's diagnosis will be 'fourth-degree burns' as cause of death," she murmured. Some assumptions always had to be made in the course of an investigation, and this particular assumption was one that would later be checked carefully.

She knelt down and inspected the body. It was partially resting on the oven door, which, like most, opened top-to-bottom. Nothing about it was recognizable as a human being, except the shape: the entirety of Mr. Capelle's body had been reduced to charred carbon, cracked with heat and withered with the loss of all water mass. The only way for this kind of thorough charring to have occurred would've been for the body to be crammed inside the oven— in which case it wouldn't have survived being removed intact.

On the off chance she'd been wrong about the ovens being electrical, Marianne leaned in and poked her head into the oven, drawing a nervous shuffle of feet from Cobbler (likely at her lack of concern about the appliance doing to her what it'd done to Mr. Capelle.) Inside, she saw the telltale winding elements that showed this oven was entirely electric; no secondary natural gas lines or anything. The inside of the appliance was spotlessly clean, like everything in this kitchen; she turned her head to look out of it, past the victim's corpse, and saw a film of dark grey carbon particles on the stainless steel doors of the cabinet under the counter, likely carried there from the victim's body in the blast of whatever had killed him.

"I think we both know that these injuries weren't sustained from an ordinary electric oven. There's carbon from the body on the far side of the kitchen, but no sign of carbon or other fuel residue inside the oven itself. What have witnesses stated so far?" Marianne asked, removing her head from the oven and straightening.

"At nineteen hundred hours thirty-five, in the middle of dinner service, the victim was seen opening the oven. Immediately, a torrent of fire burst out of the oven and burnt the victim to a crisp in seconds; no one was able to approach due to the intense heat. Accounts by kitchen staff of how long the burst lasted, well... they vary, Superintendent, but most seem to indicate five to ten seconds. Police were called within the minute, and upon arrival found the kitchen staff had vacated the kitchen but that no patrons had left the restaurant. None of them claim to know anything about the incident, and although we're following procedure and taking their contact information, my partner and I are inclined to believe them. We're... we're treating this as a Poké-murder, Superintendent."

"As you should," Marianne said evenly, years of training allowing her to perfectly hide the fact that the phrase— Poké-murder— sent a crawling feeling down her spine. In the Jenny households scattered across the world, the phrase was a serious one: it wasn't spoken around the household's children until they'd reached a certain age, and its use meant an entire portion of the household was anticipating being called out of retirement to respond.

This was because Poké-crimes— particularly that one— were the ultimate enemy of the Jenny family: the purpose for which the line seemed to exist. The powerful aversion to allowing violent crimes to occur, and the drive to do something to prevent them— two seemingly genetic traits possessed by all members of the Jenny family— was strongest in response to violent crimes committed by Trainers using Pokémon.

Such things were rare: Poké-crimes were an extreme perversion of the bond of mutual understanding between Pokémon and Trainer— a bond that by its very nature required a Trainer to have the capacity to connect deeply with others— such that only desperation could bring most Trainers to the point of ordering a Pokémon to maim or kill. So the evidence— a man slain in cold blood by the kind of inexplicable anomaly that only a Pokémon could have caused— meant that there was a rare and dangerous creature running loose in Celadon City: a Trainer who was willing and able to use a Pokémon as a lethal weapon. A Poké-murderer.

"What do we do now, Superintendent?" asked Cobbler. "We have nothing to go on: no holes inside the oven that could've allowed a Pokémon entry; no patrons whose Pokémon were out of their Poké Balls at the time of the incident. We've been interviewing the staff as the prime suspects, but there's no evidence of any motive: consensus seems to be that the man was strict but fair, and it looks like he reduced his own salary as chef-owner to pay his people well above the average in the industry..."

Marianne was just opening her mouth to tell Cobbler that it was time to head back to the station and do some serious research into the man's history— any threats on his safety, anyone who would've wanted to do him harm— when she was interrupted by the sound of the double doors at the far end of the kitchen swinging open as a man burst into the room.

"Ignacio, what—" he burst out, while Marianne and Cobbler moved to put themselves between the civilian and their active crime scene, blocking him from getting past the oven island to where he could see— and possibly interfere with— the body.

Well-dressed in a smart black suit and tie over a pale purple buttoned shirt— a classy style just barely too casual to be a full-on tuxedo— the intruder had a clip on his belt that held three Poké Balls, marking him as a Trainer. The intense, focused look on his face turned to surprise, and then to wariness, as he was brought up short by the sight of the uniform-clad Marianne and Cobbler blocking his path.

"...Officer, what's the meaning of all this commotion?" the man asked Marianne, agitation evident in his tone.

Marianne's eyebrows rose. "I might ask you the same question. Who are you, and how exactly did you get past the police cordon outside?"

"I have a key to the back door," the man responded, glaring at her suspiciously. "My name's Evan. Evan Cobalt. I own the Fireside Hearth Restaurant down the block. Listen, can you tell me where Ignacio is? I just need to ask him something."

"Ignacio is the victim's given name?" Marianne asked Officer Cobbler in a conversational tone.

"Yes, Superintendent."

"Mr. Capelle is the object of our investigation at this moment, Mr. Cobalt," Marianne told the agitated man. "Tell me a little more about how and why you gained access to this building."

The man was sweating: Marianne's sharp eye for detail could see the beads of moisture gathering at this temples. "Ignacio gave me the key a while back. I needed to talk to him without interrupting dinner service, so I used it to get in the building. Is... Is Ignacio in some kind of trouble? And what on earth is that smell?"

Marianne ignored his question. "Mr. Cobalt, I'd like you to tell me where you were between the hours of five and seven in the morning, the day before yesterday," Marianne said as Cobalt's suspicious behaviour and his unrestricted access to the crime scene came together in her mind to form a hunch.

"In bed at home," the man said in a perplexed tone.

"Can anyone confirm that?" Marianne asked.

Mr. Cobalt frowned. "No, I live alone."

"Have you been to the Rising Sun Chinese Restaurant in the recent past?" Marianne asked.

Her suspect was clearly beginning to understand that he was being interrogated. "I was just there Wednesday night. Excuse me, Officer Jenny, but am I under investigation?"

"Not if you're innocent of any crime," Marianne told him evenly. "But while you're here, I'd like you to tell me what Pokémon are on your belt right now."

"I don't have to say," Mr. Cobalt said, drawing himself up indignantly. "Under what suspicion are you questioning me? You need a warrant for that. I know my rights."

"And I know mine," Marianne said grimly, stepping forward and subtly pulling a pair of handcuffs free of her belt. "As Superintendent of the Celadon City Police Department, I'm legally required to inform you that you are hereby detained under reasonable suspicion of the murders of Chefs Ignacio Capelle, Yunjuan Mao, and Arvy Holt."

All in the space of a second or two, Marianne reached out and grasped the startled man by one shoulder, then yanked him off balance and pinned his arms behind his back without too much difficulty. "You have the right to an attorney, and you are innocent until proven guilty... But if one of those Pokémon on your belt is a Fire-type, you'd be better served co-operating."

As she snapped the pair of cuffs on the man, he stiffened, his prior self-assured attitude giving way to frozen shock. "Ignacio... Ignacio's dead, too?" he asked in a tone of disbelief.

"Yes, and unless I'm much mistaken, the owner of a competing restaurant would have a great deal of reason to want them that way," Marianne said, unmoved by his apparent surprise. It was very common for a perpetrator to return to the scene of the crime; and this kind of faux-shocked reaction wasn't uncommon in criminals who were surprised to be busted.

"I... I would never do something like that to them. They were my friends!"

"Then you'll be happy to tell me who you think could have done this?" Marianne asked him in a very even tone. "Or the details of exactly what it was you needed to talk to Mr. Capelle about?"

Marianne's analytical mind hadn't been absent during all this: it was still possible that the man was innocent. But even if Mr. Cobalt wasn't responsible, she suspected he was involved; if he had a Pokémon capable of committing this crime, there would be more than enough circumstantial evidence to hold him, either way. And then the truth would come out.

"I think that should wait until after I speak with my attorney," the man said quietly, a chilly calm coming into his voice. He opened his mouth again, then hesitated for a split second before speaking. "Until then, perhaps look into tomorrow's event at the Celadon Convention Centre.I might be wrong, but if I'm not... there might be something there that'd interest you. I... I won't be telling you anything else for now."

"Suit yourself. Officer Cobbler, please escort Mr. Cobalt to the station. I'll look around here a little while longer. Using these." In one glove hand, she held up the keyring she'd found in Mr. Cobalt's pocket while he hadn't been paying attention. Officially speaking, these should be bagged immediately as evidence; in practice, she would first need to match them to the door they opened, and look around the scene.

"Right, Superintendent," Cobbler replied, and marched the suspect away.

Once she was alone, Marianne took a deep breath to steady her nerves, more affected than she had let on. It wasn't necessarily nice being back out here: surveying crime scenes, inspecting corpses, dealing with suspects... But it did at least feel like she was getting something done. She turned to the door in the back of the kitchen— the one through which Mr. Cobalt had come a couple of minutes earlier— and walked resolutely through.



~~~~~~~~~~CELADON POLICE HEADQUARTERS: 9:30, MAY 30~~~~~~~~~~



Okay, this case is more interesting than I gave it credit for, Marianne thought to herself as she drove a requisitioned police vehicle out of the garage at the Celadon Police HQ.

Back at the restaurant the previous night, she'd gone through the small refrigerator and pantry with the week's stocks of ingredients; taken a methodical look through the pristinely neat and tidy office where the late chef-owner had done his paperwork and electronic correspondence— she hadn't gleaned anything at the time, but had sent the laptop PC and the file-folder full of documents to be analyzed more in-depth for any sign of someone who might wish the victim ill— and had eventually moved on until she reached a door at the very back corner of the restaurant building.

The suspect's key had opened it, corroborating at least one part of his story: the door led into an alleyway between the restaurant building and the office complex next door. Marianne had sent Officer Cobbler to interview the staff, some of whom had confirmed that they knew the victim had had a few close friends with whom he shared the keys to his restaurant; they hadn't known anything about the individuals, though. That didn't rule out that the keys were stolen; or that Cobalt was still the murderer. In fact, statistically speaking, it brought him under even more intense suspicion: nearly all violent crimes were perpetrated by those known to the victim; more than half of them by those close to him or her.

A lot of things about this case made sense: firstly, motive. From what Marianne had been able to determine overnight and early this morning, the Fireside Hearth was an establishment less than five minutes' drive from all three victims' restaurants, and was indeed owned by one Evan Cobalt. Originally a local favourite due to its location on the edge of a residential neighbourhood and a business hotspot with many office buildings, its success had been decreasing steadily for the past year, ever since seven other restaurants had opened their doors nearby. It stood to reason that removing other restaurants from the picture, or at least hindering them, would restore some of the Hearth's good fortune.

It also stood to reason that if Cobalt were planning to murder his competition, he would seek to befriend the owners of the restaurants. It would make it far easier to pin down their habits, and to plan murders that would look like accidents: after a long discussion with Officers Davies and Cobbler, Marianne had determined that the first two murders definitely seemed like they had been planned with the daily habits of the victims in mind.

Most damningly of all, the suspect's Pokémon had been identified, by way of officers asking his employees at the restaurant: Mr. Cobalt's partners were a Marshtomp, an Eevee, and a Lampent. This last was a species of Pokémon that was classified as a Ghost-type as well as a Fire-type; and was known for possessing people and objects. It was exactly the kind of Pokémon that would be capable of causing an electric oven to spit out a torrent of fire— no other known Pokémon even made a lick of sense.

Although it seemed like the prime suspect was in custody, Marianne knew better than to cut corners. She had arranged for undercover officers to be stationed in and around all sixteen restaurants within a ten-minute-drive radius of the Fireside Hearth. This would be a popular assignment, and it offered Marianne the opportunity to reward certain officers she considered deserved it: the post consisted of having a rotation of plain-clothes officers enter in pairs and have lunch or dinner in the restaurant, to be on hand in case of trouble. If someone other than Cobalt was responsible for the attacks, it wouldn't do for them to be alerted that the restaurants were under police protection.

One thing that didn't make sense, and that Officers Davies and Cobbler had been doubtful was of any value, was the suspect's reference to an event at the Celadon Convention Centre. It had the sound of extraneous information to it, but a recent encounter— the one that had sparked the investigation that was now taking up so much of Marianne's time— had reminded Marianne that not every situation followed logic and that some extraneous factors took looking into.

So Marianne had done some research with the only Trainers' Association government office that was open late— which was of course the office that was kept open for the benefit of the Celadon hospitals, police, and other first responders. Eventually, the exhausted-sounding TA official on duty had happened upon a Use of Public Space application that had been approved more than a year ago: the Celadon Convention Centre had been rented out for today by the organizers of the "Biosynthesis and Abiogenesis Science Convention," a highly exclusive invitational event that had been described in the paperwork as being 'an exhibition and discussion forum open to a select category of scientists in the fields of biomaterials, artificial intelligence, and synthetic Pokémon research and development.'

It had, of course, been simple for the Superintendent of Celadon's police force to acquire a pass for the event: the Trainers' Association reserved the right to issue such passes as part of the Use of Public Space agreement. The only caveat was that they were required by that same agreement to inform the convention's organizers of the pass upon its issuing.

So it was that, as Marianne emerged from her white-and-Celadon-green police vehicle, a lanky beanpole of a man in a white lab coat hurried up to greet her.

"Hello, esteemed Superintendent of Police!" chattered the scientist, a tall, skinny older man whose thin shock of brown hair was peppered with grey and cropped short in an unsuccessful attempt to tame it: it sprung up in a complete mess from his scalp, as though he'd rolled out of bed and into his lab coat— which was pristine and unwrinkled, and still had a price tag dangling from one sleeve that declared it newly purchased for the occasion. Hanging on a lanyard around his neck in a plastic sleeve was a nametag that read: Odin Smith, Quasi-Real Materials Specialist.

"I'm Odin Smith, Ph.D., and today I'll be your guide to the wonderful world of science!" the man exclaimed, beaming at her. "It's a pleasure to see an officer of the law taking an interest in the inner workings of the world. If there's anything you'd like me to explain, or retrieve, or... or, yes, well, please let me know!" All the while he was bobbing his head up and down like some kind of ungainly, eager-to-please bird.

Marianne gave a polite smile of appreciation, while groaning internally. She'd been saddled with an eccentric. "I'll be perfectly all right on my own, Dr. Smith," she said, "Without anyone to keep an eye on me."

A faint look of worry crossed the man's face and then disappeared from it just as quickly, like the ephemeral shadow of a cloud on the surface of an oblivious pond.

"Well, the organizers were quite specific," he explained apologetically. "I should accompany you, and ensure that all of your needs are met."

Marianne sighed. "As the organizers wish, then. Such brilliant scientific minds must surely have a reason for tying you to a dull layman like me."

"Oh— quite the contrary, Superintendent!" Odin hastened to reassure her, "I have no doubt that whichever panels you choose to attend will prove most edifying! I'm sure they simply wished to make sure that you had someone nearby to explain any jargon that might otherwise escape you..."

With a sinking feeling, Marianne resigned herself to being watched, and turned to regard the Celadon Convention Centre and pretend to listen to Dr. Smith's chatter. The vast building, its outer walls made almost entirely of aesthetically pleasing metal frameworks around earthquake-resistant glass, rose five stories up in a vast dome-like shape. Through the glass, many figures— most of them in ordinary clothing, though some in ankle-length white coats— could be seen milling about, socializing, and exiting and entering various doors that led deeper into the building. Outside of the structure, stretching out in all directions a little ways above street level, was a plateau-like expanse of large tiled courtyards and concrete squares peppered with fountains, manmade gardens, and items of modern art.

Marianne strode up the steps from the sidewalk at her usual quick pace, and the tall scientist kept up with her by taking the stairs two at a time, clearly excited to get inside. At the door, two government security officials in suits— with Poké Balls and Great Balls at their waists— requested to see Marianne's and Dr. Smith's passes. She and the scientist both produced their cards— hers a shiny gold VIP pass, his a more ordinary blue colour— and with that, they were officially admitted to the Biosynthesis and Abiogenesis Science Convention.



~~~~~~~~~~CELADON CONVENTION CENTRE: 10:15, MAY 30~~~~~~~~~~



She'd been walking around the Convention for fifteen minutes... And all in all, Marianne was underwhelmed. The scientists walking to and fro in various degrees of dishevelment— most of these men and women didn't seem to place much importance on hair care or clothing beyond whatever jeans, t-shirts and lab coats they could throw on— were clearly excited about all of this; but the signs held in upright metal stands outside of the various presentation halls of the convention seemed incredibly dry to Marianne.

"Digimaterials and the applications of fourth-dimension quantum linkage in realspace...?" she murmured, frowning at one of the signs. "Is this even science? Sounds like something a sci-fi story would be based on..."

Dr. Smith, standing next to her, was staring from her, to the sign, then back to her with a pained look of helplessness on his face. "Can we go in?" he asked plaintively, wringing his hands. "Dr. Brighter himself is here from Silph Co. to present on the value of cutting-edge mathematical theories in actualizing virtual projections and...!"

He trailed off, crestfallen, as it became clear that Marianne wasn't understanding him; but Marianne realized that this was her opportunity to be rid of her unwanted hanger-on, who had proven to be most obstructive in the way he peered over her shoulder at (and then tried to explain) anything she seemed to be inspecting.

"I'd be most pleased to go in and learn about four-dimension quantum links," she told the eccentric old man with a warm smile. "Especially since it's so clearly a passion of yours. I'm sure you'll explain everything to me."

"I would be ecstatic to do so!" gushed Dr. Smith, leading the way through the doors and into a tiered lecture hall with a stage at the bottom. "You see, the fourth dimension is a theoretical construct used to simulate what would occur if standard science took place in an additional dimension; however, when modelling actual physical phenomena, several otherwise inexplicable..."

The panel itself began at that moment, and it was the work of less than five minutes to wait for Dr. Smith to become entirely enraptured by the completely incomprehensible stream of rapid-fire jargon issuing from the scientist in a smart suit at the front of the lecture theatre— at least there was someone here who understood the value of good self-presentation!— and to slip out through the door with her thoroughly distracted watchdog none the wiser.

Now that she wasn't being watched, it was time to investigate like a Jenny. Marianne returned to the lobby of the Convention Centre, where she remembered seeing a screen displaying the schedule of the convention. Each room of the convention had its own timetable, listing each panel that would be presented and its starting and ending times. She scanned the incredibly dry titles methodically for anything that might, in Mr. Cobalt's words, 'interest her.'

She'd reached the last room's list of panels and presentations— and was beginning to think Officers Cobbler and Davies were right that this was a wild Farfetch'd chase— when her gaze caught hold of a panel that stood out. Rather than being named Computational applications of graphene nanostructures: nanotech's role in AI development, or Mimicking nature's use of Fibbonacci's Sequence at the molecular level: biochemistry and abiogenesis, this one was titled quite simply:

R-0 TM LIVE: The world's first man-made Pokémon.

Marianne frowned. For all that this convention seemed to be about the vastly complicated (and frankly incomprehensible) science of synthetic Pokémon, she hadn't thought they actually existed yet. Was this panel claiming to have a working example? What would such a thing even look like?

"Well, Mr. Cobalt, you have my attention once again," Marianne murmured, narrowing her eyes at the title and re-reading it to make sure she hadn't misunderstood. "And the panel starts in ten minutes."



~~~~~~~~~~CELADON CONVENTION CENTRE: 10:30, MAY 30~~~~~~~~~~



Marianne had arrived at the entrance of the panel with eight minutes to spare, and had stood for those eight minutes at the back of a very, very long line that began at the door and stretched up and down a long hallway twice. She barely managed to get into the panel; she and a youngish businessman-looking type were the last two to be admitted before the seating filled up and everyone behind them in the line were turned away disappointed. The rest filed into a lecture hall which— like the other she'd been in— resembled a theatre, with rows of seats arranged in rising tiers to yield a clear view of the stage at the lowest end of the room; the arm-rest of each seat could unfold into a small table for note-taking. Two sets of steps broke the rows of seats, giving access to the doors and the stage.

Feeling out of place, Marianne found one of the few remaining seats near the doors of the the crowded hall just in time for the lights to dim almost to nothing. From the seven or eight speakers dotting the ceiling of the room came a male voice that spoke with a northern Sinnohese accent: "I shan't stand on ceremony. Despite the theft of our original prototype, and despite numerous technical setbacks, we at Sinnoh Scientific Solutions have laboured long and hard to bring before you, on time, the second version of the world's first synthetic Pokémon. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sinnoh Scientific Solutions' latest product, the R-zero Technical Machine... otherwise known as Rotom."

A spotlight turned on, illuminating a simple square coffee-table-sized pedestal, on which rested a large something covered by a black cloth. A pale-skinned hand reached into the light and whisked the cloth off to reveal... a shiny, chrome-plated electric car engine, inert and connected to nothing.

Marianne looked around to see if this was some kind of joke, but the scientists to either side of her were watching the device with rapt attention. Frowning, the investigator shifted her attention back to the engine just in time... to see it turn itself on.

With a whirr of spinning rotors that would turn the wheels of a vehicle if one were hooked up to the it, the engine started up smoothly despite the apparent lack of any power source. It sped up, and sped up, switching gears apparently of its own volition, and then just as steadily began to slow down, eventually coming back to an inert, resting state.

The spotlight shut off, leaving only the dim house lights; up from the shadowy bulk of the engine rose a series of electrical sparks, ones that appeared and then winked out of existence a split second later, like the tiny lights that came from static electricity in darkness. The lights grew more frequent and began to take on a faint tinge of colour as they floated into the air two metres above the engine; then, after about twenty seconds, they coalesced into the shimmering orange outline of a small teardrop-shaped Pokémon with two lightning-bolt-shaped 'arms' outlined in the same sparkling electrical lights.

"Greetings, attendees of the fifth annual Biosynthesis and Abiogenesis Science Convention." said a mechanical-sounding voice through the speakers.

"I am Rotom. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Please treat me gently."

The entire place erupted with applause, as the little shimmering Pokémon floated there over top of the engine. Marianne clapped as well, a little impressed but mostly mystified. This little thing was a never-before-seen type of Pokémon, made by people? But what did it do?

As the applause died down— after nearly a solid minute, during which time Marianne continued to clap politely despite the fact that her hands were beginning to ache— the original voice, the Sinnohese one, spoke again through the speakers. "Please observe the full range of Rotom's capabilities. It has been built to interface with most known types of technology, and to operate according to standard Pokémon command protocols."

The lights at the front of the room lit up all at once, illuminating a stage on which stood a semicircle of tables bearing shiny brand-new household appliances: a toaster with two pieces of bread lying next to it; a vacuum cleaner; a tabletop fan; a television; and even a small portable washing machine. Also standing up there, next to the little shimmering orange Pokémon, was a young lady wearing a long orange dress whose sleeves were a fine mesh of metallic fibres that evoked Rotom's shimmering arm-appendages: viewed together, the woman and Rotom looked like a matched Pokémon-and-Trainer pair, clearly an intentional move by the presenters. Suddenly, Marianne felt like she was watching a very well designed television commercial.

"Let's start off simple, shall we, Rotom?" the young woman said with a winning smile at the Pokémon, her voice being transmitted to the speakers via a microphone hidden somewhere on her person. "Could you make me some toast, please?"

"Certainly, Eve." replied the mechanical voice through the speakers. The little Pokémon floated over to the high-tech toaster and vanished inside it; the two pieces of sliced bread lying next to the device floated up and into the toaster's slots, then the circular power button next to the control panel lit up. Three seconds later there was a ding! and two pieces of perfectly browned toast popped out of the top of the appliance and stopped, hovering in midair.

The young woman walked over and plucked the two pieces of toast out of the air. "Thank you, Rotom! Now, it's rather stuffy in here; I'd appreciate a nice breeze."

"Certainly, Eve." The Pokémon promptly emerged from the toaster and floated over to the electric fan; while it did so, the young woman— Eve— nonchalantly picked up a jar of Bluk Berry preserve and a butter knife from somewhere on the table behind the toaster, and began spreading it on the toast. Rotom, now animating the fan, floated the entire contraption— which, again, was not plugged into anything— towards Eve before stopping a comfortable distance and causing it to turn itself on.

Marianne knew already that this was what Cobalt had suggested she investigate: a Pokémon capable of possessing appliances and leaving them without a trace. She watched with a writhing knot of revulsion in her stomach as the manmade Pokémon, Rotom, demonstrated that it could figure out and use each appliance one after another, improving upon or altering the function of each: the vacuum cleaner sucked up the scattered crumbs of Eve's toast, but left the stage polished and shining rather than just clean; when Eve placed the white hand-kerchief she used to wipe her mouth in the washing machine, it ran perfectly silently and eliminated the notoriously difficult-to-remove Bluk Berry stains without any detergent.

And what do you suppose, Marianne wondered angrily, would happen if you told that Rotom to inhabit a dishwasher and activate at full power when somebody reached in? Or told it to power a walk-in freezer to beyond its intended efficiency when a certain man walked into it?

Knowing what Marianne knew, this Pokémon's every demonstration reeked of the potential for misuse. She barely listened when Eve said something about how men and women of science might require more substantial utility than just assistance with household chores, but her attention was certainly caught when Rotom phased into the television and the plasma screen immediately flicked on to show a stylized cartoonish version of the Pokémon.

"Rotom, use the miniature processor in that Smart TV to give me a bar graph of number of human beings in each one-degree arc of your field of view versus angle from your central point of reference in this lecture hall," Eve said clearly, complete seriousness having replaced her earlier playful attitude.

"Certainly, Eve." came the voice of Rotom from the device's speakers. Then, on the screen of the television appeared:c



The crowd went wild, and Rotom emerged from the television set to hover next to Eve. Down on the stage, the woman smiled slightly, gestured in Rotom's direction, and the two headed for a small doorway on the far right.

Marianne surged to her feet, ready to go after them— only ill could come of that synthetic Pokémon being allowed out of this building!— but her urgency backfired on her: the scientists around Marianne noticed her standing up, and assumed she was initiating a standing ovation. They began to stand as well, and after ten seconds of struggling to push her way past half a row of exuberantly clapping scientists, Marianne gave up on that: she stepped up onto the arm-rest of her seat and dashed over to the steps, treading on the unfolded tables of her neighbours and leaving a trail of offended men and women of science gathering up scattered notes.

Taking the steps down to the stage at a run, Marianne nearly stumbled in the flash of sudden light as the house lights turned back on, but caught herself at the last moment. She crossed the stage and reached the doorway Eve and Rotom had gone through, but when she tried the handle, she realized the door was locked.

"Darn it all to heck...!" Marianne muttered. The door was black-painted steel, as was the doorframe; no breaking this one down. Then she noticed the keypad next to the door, and the keycard slot. Praying to whatever gods were listening, Marianne pulled out the golden card with the words 'VIP Pass' on it, and ran it through the slot.

With a quiet ding! and a green light in the corner of the keypad, the door unlocked. Marianne pushed through it and entered a narrow hallway with a door at the far end.

Through the door, she could hear two voices. "You were positively enthralling, my dear," said the posh North Sinnohese accent that had spoken at the beginning of the panel. "I could not have presented it half so well."

A quiet, throaty laugh responded as Marianne crept up to the door. "I'm happy to advance the cause of science. And of Sinnoh Science Solutions, of course..."

"And I'm pleased to offer you the services of Rotom, since you seem so taken with the little fellow. Just remember: no battling; and be sure to have him back by midnight or the execs will have my head!" said the man's voice, an indulgent smile behind it. "See you later, sweetheart."

Oh, heck no. It was time to crash this party. Marianne reached for her taser with one hand and her partner Arcanine's Poké Ball with the other, then threw her shoulder against the door...



~~~~~~~~~~CELADON CONVENTION CENTRE BASEMENT: 11:00, MAY 30~~~~~~~~~~



Marianne Jenny opened her eyes blearily, blinking up at the bright lights above her. Ouch— the lights were hurting her head...

Slowly, the ceiling of the hallway came into focus, along with the electric lights that were growing less bright— or was it just that her aching brain was adjusting?

The smell of dog breath assaulted Marianne's nostrils, and she slowly sat up, a loud pounding in her head informing her that her system did not approve of movement right now. Her movements were jerkier than she thought they should be, and everything seemed to be moving very quickly. Suddenly Arcanine's face pressed into hers, and she realized that when she'd been lying down, her head had been pillowed on her Pokémon's warm and fluffy side. A drift of orange fur— Arcanine was still shedding his winter coat— fluttered out of her hair as she ran a hand through it.

"Wha... Wha'appen'd, Arcy?" she asked, struggling to make her numb lips form words

Arcanine reached out and brushed a paw against the door in front of him, then rolled over and made a show of 'playing dead.' It took a few seconds for her poor abused synapses to process the charade, but when it clicked Marianne winced. The door had been electrified: probably Rotom's doing. Something deep within Marianne, the part of her that was a Jenny, roiled with fury. As a rule, even wild Pokémon only attacked people in defense of themselves or their nests. In the hands of the wrong Trainer, though, a Pokémon that was taught to attack human beings would begin to do so of its own volition: however intelligent or unintelligent a Pokémon was, all species seemed to have the same tendency to internalize their Trainer's orders, and to grow to be like their Trainer.

Now someone— and it was now becoming clear that Eve was that someone— was running loose with a killer Rotom, and it seemed like an attack was imminent. Marianne needed to put out an APB on the woman, right away. She pulled out her Pokégear, and was halfway through the motions of dialling HQ when she realized the thing hadn't even turned on when she pressed the power button. The device was fried, as was every piece of electronics on her person.

Marianne turned, and half-ran, half-fell through the door, Arcanine following. Stumbling to a halt, she found herself confronting a very startled-looking man wearing a smart uniform with the "sSs" emblem of Sinnoh Science Solutions. He looked her up and down— taking in her uniform, messy Arcanine-fur-filled hair, and the wild look on her face— and quickly put his hands in the air.

"Give. Me. Your. Pokégear," Marianne told him, carefully enunciating each word to avoid slurring.

Wordlessly, the man handed over the state-of-the-art-looking Pokégear that had been wrapped like a wristwatch around his arm. The whole thing was a flexible touchscreen; Marianne suppressed a twinge of envy. Her department couldn't possibly get toys this nice.

She dialled the direct line to HQ, and immediately an officer picked up on the other end. "This is Celadon PD's non-emergency line, if you have an emergency situation please hang up and dial 110 for police, or 119 for ambulance," said the male voice. "How can we assist you?"

"This. Is. Super'tend'nt. Jenny. I. D. Code. Seven. Four. Two. Eight. Sicksh," she said haltingly. "Put. Outta. All-Pointz-Bullit'n. For. Woman. Orange. Dress. Long. Black. Hair."

"S...Superintendent, you appear to be in some distress, and using a civilian line. What's the nature of your emergency? Shall we send an ambulance to your location??"

"Yeah. Uh... Electroc... 'lectrocutid. Convenshun cenner," slurred Marianne, her control slipping as her brain tried to force words through unresponsive lips. "Basemen'. Lectcher hall... B-Twelfpth."

"Stay on the line, Superintendent, we'll have help there as soon as— Oh, thank God, the Celedon Hospital's teleporting emergency response team picked up on my message."

There was a flash of purple light that turned Marianne's vision all blotchy, and two paramedics— one with a very tired-looking, droopy-winged Butterfree perched on his shoulder— appeared in the room, with what looked like an entire ambulance's worth of medical gear on their backs. Marianne struggled to say something, but apparently she didn't need to: as her legs buckled under her, one paramedic caught her and the other pulled a stretcher from somewhere in the tangle of gear they'd brought with them.

Marianne laid down on the stretcher, tried to give the paramedics a thumbs-up of gratefulness, then blacked out.



~~~~~~~~~~MERCY HOSPITAL, CELADON CITY: 12:30, MAY 30~~~~~~~~~~



For the third time that day, Marianne woke up; thankfully, this time she was in an actual bed. Even better, it seemed the hospital miracle-workers had done what they did best: she felt worlds better than the last time she'd come to.

She levered herself to her feet, and took a look at her surroundings: she was in an ordinary hospital room, furnished simply with the bed she'd just vacated, a couch for visitors, a doorway to a wheelchair-accessible bathroom, and a minimalistic cupboard on which rested her uniform, underwear, socks, and shoes. Noting those, she looked down and acknowledged that she was wearing only an open-backed hospital gown.

Marianne grabbed her clothing and got changed quickly in the bathroom, then headed for the doorway. The door had a pair of glass windows that were covered by blinds; Marianne waited until she could see the shadow of somebody— probably a nurse— crossing the hallway outside, then walked out and down the hallway, headed for the exit.

The good thing about wearing a uniform is that no one questions you. Marianne made it all the way to the elevators, took them down to the hospital lobby, and walked out into the street with nobody the wiser. She knew for a fact that she had the authority and the competence to check herself out of the hospital; all members of the Jenny family were well versed in the nuances of legality. And if her departure was going to cause any logistical problems for the Hospital? Well, then they shouldn't have left her uniform nearby. No self-respecting Jenny stayed in bed for long when a Poké-murderer was on the loose.

Lacking any technology to call someone with— presumably the Pokégear had been returned to its owner— Marianne headed straight for the nearby Celadon Square, the biggest tourist location in all of Celadon. She knew for a fact that a solid nine or ten officers were always on duty there: it wouldn't do to have disorderly conduct harm or offend a visitor and go unpunished.

Her quick thinking paid off: within a few minutes, she'd found an officer of the law and demanded— with barely any slurring of words— that he lend her his Pokégear and take her to the environs of the Fireside Hearth. While he drove, Marianne called up HQ, gave her ID, and asked to be given the direct numbers for Junior Investigative Officers Davies and Cobbler. She'd left them in charge of keeping track of reports from her officers on duty at the restaurants: she needed to know what the status was.

Cobbler picked up on the first ring. "Investigative Officer Cobbler, may I ask who's calling?"

"Cobbler. It's Officer Jenny. I need'n update. Did y'get the APB?"

"Superintendent! Yes, we did. Nothing from the watchers, yet, if that's what you mean by an update."

Marianne let out a sigh of relief. "Good. Tell me when y'hear—"

"Excuse me, Superintendent," interrupted Davies's voice from Cobbler's end, "I'm getting a call from Officer Quesnel. Like, uhh, right now."

"Where is he." Marianne demanded, an intense and instinctive need to know flaring to life inside her.

"...Checking now," Cobbler's voice said over the frenzied shuffling of papers.

"Bulbasaur's Mystic Garden Restaurant!" yelled Davies. "Cobbler, gimme that thing!"

"Get me to Bulbasaur's Mystic Garden Restaurant, and step on it," Marianne told her driver. The officer obliged by calmly turning the vehicle's sirens on and flooring the accelerator; Marianne made a mental note to get the man's ID and consider him for promotion in the near future.

From the speaker on her arm came a clattering noise like two Pokégears being pushed up against one another, then a voice spoke through Marianne's borrowed Pokégear. "...Hello? Officer Davies, what happened?"

"This is Superintendent Jenny speaking," Marianne said, "You've been patched through, Quesnel, for however long it lasts. Tell me your situation. Now."

"Yelling and crashes from the kitchen. We can't get in: the doors are electrified, and I know that 'cause my partner's out of commission..."

"Break through the walls," Marianne ordered. "Those people are in danger."

"I've got nothing that strong!" protested Officer Quesnel. Belatedly, Marianne remembered that Quesnel's Pokémon, Poochyena, was a skilled tracker but nothing special in combat. His partner, Officer Kagilik, was the fighter of the two.

"Crud," Marianne said. "I'm on my way. Try to find another way in, and I hope you've already called for backup."

"Yes, Superintendent," Quesnel said, and hung up.

"Officer, give me an ETA at BMG," she told her driver.

"...Now, Superintendent." The officer shut the sirens off as the vehicle coasted into the loading zone outside the rustic, greenery-covered eaves of Bulbasaur's Mystic Garden.

Marianne had been here before, many times in fact over the past year. BMG restaurant was beautiful, if an all-consuming flood of green was what you liked seeing at every turn. Marianne, the ache in her head returning— perhaps she wasn't as recovered as she'd thought— winced and pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her uniform. Donning them as she raced into the restaurant, Marianne found herself barely able to resist the sudden and inexplicable impulse to utter something pithy like 'It's time for Rotom... to rotate out.'

In the interior of the restaurant, which was well-lit by skylights, the sunglasses protected her from the familiar eye-smarting green paint and green growing things that covered every surface, darkening the palette to tolerable levels. The kitchen here was usually loud and clangorous, but the staff could usually be heard laughing over top of the din. Now, there was no laughter: only screaming.

The patrons— a large community of regulars and a few newcomers— were mostly standing up from their tables and staring in the direction of the doorway to the kitchen, with the exception of one family of four: that group, including a Pikachu that they had put in a highchair at their table with them, simply continued to eat as though they'd accepted whatever was happening and just wanted to eat their darn meal before it all really went to hell in a handbasket.

Officer Quesnel was nowhere to be seen; presumably he'd gone somewhere else in the building to seek another way into that kitchen. Marianne was faintly aware that the officer who'd driven her here was next to her, his taser out and a Mankey hopping around angrily at his side. She wished he'd had something a little more useful... Ah, well.

"Arcanine, Noctowl, come out!" Marianne shouted, tossing her two Poké Balls into the centre of the restaurant. The two Pokémon displaced some tables as they burst forth from the red light of the capsules, and came to a halt facing the door.

"Arcanine, those doors are electrified," Marianne told her Pokémon. "I need them gone."

In response, Arcanine howled loudly enough to briefly drown out the clanging din and yells from the kitchen; then he charged forward, tightly controlled flames streaming out of his mouth and mane. He tackled the doors head-on and they melted away from him as he came to a stop halfway in the kitchen.

Inside, a scene of absolute wreckage met Marianne's eyes. A dishwasher, disconnected from its water source and AC cord, was hovering near the ceiling in the centre of the BMG kitchen and spewing scalding water in all directions. The kitchen— from which the BMG's wacky assortment of vegetarian culinary creations came— was chaotic at the best of times, but right now it was truly a mess. Most of the kitchen staff was hiding under anything that could shelter them from the blisteringly hot rain; counters, prep tables, even an overturned cast-iron cauldron.

One notable exception was braving the deadly rain: the head chef of the BMG, Harry Kim. Untrained, Reckless, Portly and Gallant, he stood forth— a solitary knight of kitchenware— wielding a rolling pin in one hand and protecting himself against the scalding downpour with a trash-can-lid shield and a flat helmet consisting of a plastic cutting-board tied around his chin with duct tape.

Chef Kim was yelling all manner of obscene threats and random statements at his machine attacker, seeking to confuse it. "You're not a washing machine, you're a filthy Snivy! I'll beat you like I beat Fortree gym!" he screeched. "Husnain, use Stone Edge, like a Metagross! A writing contest is not complete without five hundred and fifty thousand characters! Charge you a hundred thousand Pokédollars for a Mothim, I will, you hooligan appliance! The door is open— fly, you fools!"

It seemed to take the cowering kitchen staff a moment to realize that this last exclamation was not part of the stream of bewildering drivel issuing from their leader's mouth. One by one, they began to dash out of cover and to safety past Arcanine, who was striding forward out of the doorway, wreathed in flames that turned the water to steam before it could reach him.

"Noctowl!" Marianne shouted. "We need to get this synthetic thing out of the air— destroy that dishwasher! Zen Headbutt!"

"Hooooooo!!" hooted Noctowl, soaring over top of Arcanine and Head Chef Kim.

With a concussive blast that sprayed hot water everywhere, Noctowl impacted the dishwasher and sent fragments of it flying everywhere. In the aftermath, the owl Pokémon, unable to turn around in such a cramped space, flapped to a halt perching on a shelf on the other end of the kitchen.

In the moment of peace that followed, a wide-eyed, wild-haired Head Chef Kim fled the kitchen at a dead run, muttering something about mechanical horrors and the missing numbers. Marianne let out a breath of tension she hadn't know she'd been holding: perhaps it was that now there were no civilians to get caught in the crossfire; ore perhaps it was just that somehow, the world suddenly seemed a lot more normal with the BMG's staff out of the way.

Then all hell broke loose.

Every last small electrical appliance in the kitchen began to rise into the air at once. A squadron of a microwave and two toasters, each spitting small tongues of fire from every orifice, began to chase Noctowl around the kitchen, drawing a stream of panicked hoots from Marianne's owl Pokémon. A gang of espresso machines backed Arcanine into a corner, spraying him repeatedly in the face with scalding water, which ran off his heat-resistant fur but forced him to keep his eyes closed. A rice cooker began machine-gunning half-cooked rice grains at Marianne's sidekick officer's Mankey as it rushed into the kitchen, causing the little monkey Pokémon to do an angry little dance.

The officer, thinking quickly, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and ambushed the toasters and the microwave with it, filling the appliances with foamy dust and extinguishing the fire with a sound like a series of dry coughs.

Almost instantly, a series of frayed electrical cords wrapped themselves around his legs and began crawling up him like snakes, prompting him to jerk back and forth to avoid touching any exposed wire.

Marianne took in all of this widespread chaos, and saw that they were fighting a losing battle. Synthetic though it was, this Pokémon was in its element: they couldn't win against it here.

"Rotom!!" she shouted desperately, on a hunch. "Stop!"

Suddenly, everything in the room froze, except Mankey, who leaped in a chittering rage onto his Trainer and began ripping the inert electrical cords off of the officer.

"...Holy crap, I didn' think tha'd work," Marianne murmured to herself, barely noticing the slurring that had crept back into her words. "Rotom, this isn' righ'; you weren' built t'hurt people, youw'r built... built to... t'help 'em! You... You 'member?"

There was a long pause, then a beeping noise from the ancient, out-of-date point of sale system in one corner of the kitchen alerted Marianne to the letters appearing on its four-letter screen display.

Beep.

" W A T ."

Marianne blinked. "Umm, I mean, rememb'r back atta Convention? You w'r in all those 'ppliances t'make someun's life easier, not t'hurt 'nybody."

Beep.

" E V E ? "

It seemed the Pokémon at least understood her. In a way, it was kind of like trying to talk someone down from a more ordinary crime: Marianne had dissuaded her share of desperate muggers or burglars with this kind of simple, honest heart-to-heart talk. She was pretty sure she hadn't done it sounding like a drunk, though. Why now? "...Well, ye', Eve, b'not just Eve... Don'cha wan' every'un t'likeya? T'be... T'be 'ppreciated 'stead o' fear'd? Jus'... 'magine seein' smiley faces erryday, 'n' knowin'ya contrib't'd... That soun' good, Rot'm?"

Beep.

" L O L ! "

Beep.

" N A H . "

Abruptly, the creeping power cables that had gone dormant jumped up to seize Marianne, and she wasn't able to pull away in time. In fact, all of her reactions seemed to be slowing down. Then she realized the nature of her mistake: she'd assumed the nurses at the hospital had fixed her up in the hour and some she'd been unconscious. But they hadn't: they'd just pumped her full of drugs to help with the symptoms until they could treat the mixture of nerve damage and outright psychological shock from her near-death experience.

The appliances cornering Arcanine and Noctowl resumed their assaults, and a sparking cable made contact with the officer's Mankey, knocking it out cold instantly.

"...Cruuuuud," she slurred as the sparking, frayed cables crawled up her body and that of the brave but unfortunate officer whose name she might now never know. Her delayed, grinding thought processes couldn't come up with anything to get her and her Pokémon out of this. "Crud, crud, crud..."

"Hey, Pokémon," said a voice. "Looking for someone?"

Marianne blinked a few times, and with difficulty focused on a man standing in the broken doorway of the kitchen. Next to him was a woman in a green dress— dang it, she changed clothes. APB wrong, gotta let 'em know ASAP... Marianne thought blearily— and it took her a few seconds to notice the silvery accessories on the suspect's wrists.

The appliances all froze in midair for a second time, and then whirled to focus on Officer Quesnel.

The Officer just grinned. "Your funeral," he said, and pressed a button on his Pokégear. In response, a loud barking noise came out of the device... and the power to the entire building shut down.

With a clatter, the two toasters, the microwave, the rice cooker, and all three espresso machines landed on the floor. The live wires climbing Marianne and her faithful officer slumped down as well, and Arcanine and Noctowl, following their training for inanimate dangers, both took the opportunity to pounce and absolutely demolish their inert assailants.

"Whew. Glad that worked," said Officer Quesnel, still grinning. "Figured the thing had to be drawing power from somewhere, else it'd be tired by now."

Marianne nodded along, too tired and injuerd even to offer a witty response. The officer who'd come in with her, though, had no such limitations.

"You risked our lives on a guess?" he asked incredulously. "You're crazier than the Superintendent!"

"...Heeeey," Marianne objected, frowning. "...Whaaaa?"

Her vision swam, and her gaze fell to the floor as she focused on trying to stay standing. When the world steadied again, she found herself staring at a fragment of the microwave: the low-tech control keypad built into the front. There was a light on in the cracked digital display, arranged into the letters

OOPS

Marianne reached down, pawed around in her satchel for an evidence bag; finding one, she thrust the accursed electronic terror into it.

Let it stay in custody for a while. Maybe forever She suspected a certain posh-voiced Sinnohese would get quite the dressing-down from his superiors for losing it, but that wasn't her problem, now was it? She just hoped it would stay in the goshdarn bag.

Nao, Marianne Jenny thought, using one last lucid moment to sit down before she fell over, I need th'hospital 'gain...

Gosh darn it to heck.



~~~~~~~~~~EPILOGUE~~~~~~~~~~



Later, when Marianne had had time— a long time— to recover from her severe electrocution (and her subsequent aggravation of the injury,) she would arrive back at Celadon Police HQ to hear about the aftermath of it all.

Mr. Cobalt had been released without charges. Apparently, being the kind of person to welcome competition even if he was losing, he had become fast friends with most of the local head chefs, and often ate at their restaurants; the deaths of two of them had hit him hard. He had been at the third crime scene to warn Ignacio Capelle of possible danger after doing some amateur investigation of his own, which had somehow led him to believe (correctly) that the attacks were linked to the upcoming Convention.

Unbeknownst to Evan Cobalt, though, the criminal at fault for the attacks had been his own sister, Eve Cobalt: not realizing (or perhaps not caring) that her brother was on friendly terms with his competitors, she had taken it upon herself to make use of the never-before-seen Pokémon with which she had been entrusted as a result of her work at the Convention Centre, and murder the people she viewed as the sources of Evan's financial woes. Psychiatrist consultants to the police department informed them that she was severely afflicted with Narcissistic personality disorder, rendering her essentially incapable of true empathy for others: the only way she was able to bond with Rotom was that the synthetic Pokémon was essentially emotionless in the first place.

It turned out, after TA scientists studied Rotom— the synthetic Pokémon did not get returned to Sinnoh Science Solutions, much to the company's dismay— that Rotom's intelligence was directly proportional to the processing power of the device it inhabited, and that its raw power was directly proportional to the amount of electricity it could draw from its immediate surroundings. That explained the eminent lack of success in Marianne's attempt to reason with the Pokémon while it was inhabiting nothing more complex than an old restaurant Point of Sale system.

Officers Quesnel, Cobbler, and Davies were given accolades for their significant parts in stopping Celadon's first Poké-murderer in two and a half decades; Marianne got one too, even though she missed the award ceremony; but she already had so many medals she didn't know what to do with them, so it wasn't a big deal.

Lastly, Marianne learned the name of the officer who'd raced into the BMG den of madness with her: Officer Near. She had him promoted immediately. It caused a lot of controversy, but everyone got over it eventually.

With that taken care of, Marianne settled back into her chair at her desk. Most people would have taken this moment to relax... but not Marianne Jenny. Marianne immediately picked up where she left off: with the case that'd been puzzling the heck out of her before any of this started. She intended to find out exactly who was pulling strings in Celadon, and why they wanted to capture this girl named Tella so badly...





~~~~~~~~~~END~~~~~~~~~~



Target Pokémon: Rotom

Target Character Count: 40,000-55,000

Actual Character Count: 70,015

 

Claiming for grading.

 

Well this has been awhile in the making.

The Grade

Introduction
To start off right away, I’d like to note that I will be counting the whole beginning up to the Italian restaurant as the introduction, because I feel it’s more appropriate and seems to be formatted as such. But, I’ll move on to the actual grade with that clarified.

Right away, we learn the setting. However, I would like to know, what does Year 105 P.A. mean? It might be minor, but I’m still interested as to what it could mean. There seems to be no real correlation I could tell that would connect it to our time period, so it just makes me wonder why you chose to particularly do that over anything else. I won’t go on about it any longer, since context from the story explains the era it’s in, but I feel just using years would have been more practical.

Overall, I like this introduction. It introduces us to our main character, gives us an idea of what she’s like, the conflict is introduced well, and everything seems to be in line out of what I would expect from a good introduction to a story. It doesn’t step outside of what I call a comfort zone, as it plays it mostly safe to the story’s main line without working too much on describing everything and everyone. I felt it was odd that you never told us what Jenny looks like here besides describing her face, but I can live with that.

I think there were two things that threw me off initially when I started the story though. At the beginning, you start with this line:

The first part of that sentence seems unnecessary. From the line stating that we are in the Celadon Police Station, and the shouting of superintendent, I feel like adding that bit was unneeded. From the context, we could have figured that out, and it feels like it’s more so just to ‘baby’ the reader than there to really explain Jenny, since the first two lines do it for us. Sometimes as a writer, its overall better to allow the reader to piece things together than to do it for them.

Lastly, the bit with Casey’s accent threw me off. With her first line, there’s nothing particularly pointing to it, but the second line does. Not going to say it’s a particularly bad thing, but it was something that threw me out of loop for a second since I wasn’t really expecting it. Introducing it right away may have been best, but overall, it doesn’t really hurt anything.

Besides those minor comments, I think you have a strong intro to a nice story here, and it certainly made me interested to continue into these investigations, and that’s what matters most.

Plot
The plot was overall interesting and didn’t tend to stray from what it was mainly going for, which is good. The pacing was on point for most of the story, and I didn’t notice any plot holes or huge issues with what was going on. At worst, it seemed timing for some of the events were a bit off track, but that’s mainly it.

If there was anything I really needed to ‘complain’ about, it would be the ending. I don’t know why, but it just seemed rushed and unexplained for the most part (which judging from the time you posted and I heard about you writing it, doe kind of explain it). It feels like the conflict was just resolved too fast and that more could have been added to what was going on. But that tends to happens with these short stories sometimes; more can be added but it isn’t exactly necessary nor is it in the author’s best wishes.

I think the main thing that bothered me at this bit was the chef’s rambling. Although hilarious if you understand all of the URPG references and the such, it just feels way too out of place and shouldn’t have really been done. But I will give some credit as the bag joke was pretty funny and I think the Rotom, although only talking with 4 letter words, made me laugh just by going “LOL NAH”.

Grammar
This story had barely any grammar issues that are worth going over too much, but I think one of the things that bothered me was the uses of dashes over commas in a lot of places where commas should have been used. Although it’s more likely that this is mainly due to your preference of writing, I feel you should have just gone with the standard comma and the rules around it than what you did.

Another bit, although less related to grammar, is that you got one of the locations wrong. While Jenny is at the convention center, you still had the location and time listed as "Celadon Police Station"

Some minor spelling issues I noticed:

Spoiler

Dishevelled should be disheveled.

Revellers should just be revelers.

Convenition should be convention.

Description
Description was pretty much on point for most of the story, I usually had a clear idea of what everything looked like, how each character looked, and what the moves the Pokemon used. Honestly, if I had any issues with this section, is that you didn’t use the characters you described enough. After the beginning, you never really hear of Carly again, and she seemed like she would have been an interesting character to meet again. Same goes for Eve, who we never really see after the initial convention as she’s arrested and we only hear about her plot. Aside from that, this story was lively and enjoyable to read since I always had a clear indicator of what was going on.

Length
This surpasses the 55k mark, reaching a little over 70k, so it is perfectly fine length-wise.

Summary
This story was a good read and I hope to hear more about the adventures of Jenny, as it seems we’re given a glance to another possible story connection at the end of this. The story clearly has Jenny as the protagonist, but Rotom was important as he was not only the conflict, near the end it had a major impact and gave some comedy relief despite its goals. So, I’m going to say this story passes, and you have successively caught Rotom in the bag. Hope to see more from you soon Magik.