CH35 (557), Police (5)

Honestly, I could not help but be surprised that I was still part of the patrol unit at the start of the new/33rd month. It had been more than two weeks since I joined the unit, and I actually enjoyed the assignment, but I really thought that with the start of the new/third work week, which was yesterday, I would get assigned to another unit.

However, Arcday passed and with it the 32nd month, and yet I did not receive any new orders. They did not even move me to another patrol group, so I was still patrolling the city on foot. Still, as I said, I actually enjoyed my time on the team with Officer Klein and Grozz, so I did not mind finishing a third or even fourth week with them. I think I mentioned this a few times, but this beat the previous assignments, especially the IT one.

I had already seen it during my time with the dispatch unit but there was always something going on somewhere in a big city like Celadon, and I got to see/experience that with my own eyes during these two weeks. There had not been a single day where we did not come across something to do during our patrols, though it was not always crime-related.

Sometimes it was just issuing a warning, breaking up a crowd, or looking for something/someone that suddenly got lost, which happened more often than one would think. However, I had yet to come across any serious crime, and neither did our team get assigned to one happening in our area.

I knew that some robberies took place, and even a gang battle broke out since we heard about it over the police channel, though they did not happen in or close to our patrol route so either other patrol teams were sent there or an SPU (special police unit) got sent out if the situation was deemed too dangerous/volatile, which was the case with the gang fight.

We already had Giratiday and tomorrow my third week with the patrol unit would end. That being the case, I could not help but hope for something really interesting to happen before the "week" was up, even though I knew that hoping for some serious crime to pop up close to me was not right.

Well, my wish ended up coming true, even if it was not in the way I wanted it to. At close to 3 p.m. we were contacted by the dispatch unit, who sent us to an address not far from our position, where a theft/kidnapping had taken place.

However, we were not going there to investigate the case, but to ensure the integrity of the crime scene until the guys and gals from the CID (crime investigation division) arrived on the scene. Once we made it to the place, we saw a crowd forming around a stall, so Officer Klein called out his Growlithe and Swellow, while Officer Grozz called out his Sandslash and Persian.

Each one of the Pokemon took position 5 away from the stall in one of the cardinal directions, forming a perimeter around the crime scene. Seeing the arrival of the Pokemon and the police the onlookers cleared the perimeter without a fuss, though they did stick around outside the perimeter to watch the hubbub.

Meanwhile, Officer Klein and Grozz chose to "supervise" their Pokemon along with the crowd, and Officer Klein told me to "interview" the victim to get a proper idea of the crime that took place. According to him, this was so that we could give the CID officers, who would be joining us soon, a proper idea of what happened. This way, they could immediately start investigating the place and ask targeted questions.

Following his order, I approached the victim, who happened to be a young lady, and asked her about the order of events. Apparently, Sally was an office lady who worked in one of the close by companies. She had been on the way to her home when she saw this accessory stand and decided to check if there was any accessory that would fit her Eve, which was what her Eevee was called.

She called out Eve and approached the stand with Eve in her arms so that they could check the wares together. At first, nothing was wrong, but when she leaned over a bit to check out the accessories at the back of the stand, a bright light suddenly erupted along with a loud bang going off.

While Sally was disoriented due to what seemed to be a flash bang going off, she felt Eve being taken from her arms. She said that she vaguely heard Eve crying out in protest for a moment before that died down. Once she was able to see and hear properly again, Sally hurriedly looked around for Eve and the stand owner, but both were gone, leaving only Sally and the empty stand, along with a few people who had come over due to the noise.

She then called the police and tried not to break down, her words not mine, which was admirable of her. Still, hearing about the people that had come over while she regained her senses, I asked Sally to see if she could spot/identify those people among the crowd. She quickly agreed and we did a quick circle around the perimeter to get a look at the crowd. She managed to identify 6 people like that, 4 women and two men.

However, if I had to be honest, rather than those 6, three other people that Sally did not identify stood out to me due to the mixed bag of negative emotions I felt coming from them when Sally and I passed by them in search of the potential witnesses.

Chief among those emotions were concern and anxiety, which was suspicious in my eyes. Nonetheless, I knew that I had no way to call them out on it since my word in this matter was not enough to call them out as either suspects or witnesses due to insufficient authority on my part.

Still, I made sure to memorize their looks because I was planning to mention them to the CID officers. What they did with that knowledge afterward however was out of my hands.

Anyway, I questioned the six singled-out people and documented their answers as well. It seemed that only two of them were close enough to see the events playing out, and they confirmed that Sally got affected by something that acted like a flash bang and that it was the stand vendor who grabbed her Eevee.

Apparently, a Jigglypuff rolled out behind the stand and forced the struggling Eevee to sleep. It was also most likely that the Jigglypuff was responsible for the Flash Bang. It seemed the three then simply vanished, which only made sense if they teleported away. Jigglypuff was once more the likely suspect of that since the species/line was capable of learning Teleport if taught properly.

Still, no matter how it was used, I had to admit, that the Jigglypuff seemed impressive enough, with it knowing not only Teleport but also a custom/combination move, at least that was what I was assuming the Flash Bang to be.

Regardless, I made sure to note these points on the record I was keeping. I also made a sketch of the vendor according to the description of each of the two main witnesses, and the resulting sketch was nearly identical to the sketch I made based on Sally's description.

At that point, the ladies and gentlemen from the CID finally showed up, and Officer Klein called me over while he was talking with one of the new arrivals. He asked me to share what I had learned with the detective, and I did. I summarized everything I learned in the last 10-15 minutes, and I also handed him the notes I kept along with the sketches I made.

Naturally, I did not forget to mention the three suspicious fellows before quickly making a sketch of them as well, which I handed in along with the rest of the notes. The detective thanked us for our work and praised us/me for the preliminary investigation we/I made. Before he left to join his colleagues, he asked me for my name and encouraged me to keep up the good work.

Anyway, after that Officer Klein, Grozz, and I were dismissed so to say, and returned to our patrol. The rest of our patrol ended up being peaceful, and we finished our shift without a hiccup. The next day, I inquired into the theft/kidnapping case from yesterday, but all that I could learn was that the matter was still under investigation.

For me, today was this week's last workday, and I could not help but wonder if I would be transferred to another unit on Arcday. If that happened, would my new unit be the CID, and if that was the case, could I be assigned to the theft/kidnapping case I briefly took part in yesterday? While those were quite a few ifs, I could not help but be hopeful that it might actually happen.

Nonetheless, those thoughts did not stop me from doing my best during the patrol. Not that there was much for me to do since our shift/patrol went by smoothly without any serious matters popping up. At the end of our shift, I left for my prolonged weekend without hearing anything about a transfer at the start of the following week.

Regardless, I put the matter on a back burner and spent the next three days meeting up with my friends and catching up with them. Well, at least with the ones that had the time for a personal meet-up. By the end of Grouday, I had managed to spend some time personally catching up with Erza, Aaron, Yoruichi, Rose, Jessie, Kinji, Misty, Wendy, and Weiss.

Dialday was spent in Rota, though the meet-ups were separate affairs since Yoruichi wanted to meet me alone, and after she said that Erza wanted a private meeting as well, leading to Aaron getting one as well.

That pretty much set the tone for my meetups on Kyo and Grouday as well.

Thankfully, a day had 24 hours, so I managed to fit in 3 meet-ups per day. Had any of the others managed to free some time, I might have been forced to abandon the single meetings, but fate arranged the whole thing meticulously, and I was thankful that everything went smoothly. I had fun, the others had fun, and that was all that mattered.

With the end of the weekend, the new week began, and Arcday ended up giving me quite a pleasant surprise. No, it was not the transfer order to the criminal investigation division. I was still part of the patrol unit, and I still had to go on patrol with Officer Klein and Grozz.

The pleasant surprise came from my side, or rather from my Pokemon. At the "end" of Arcday, once I made it back to my dorm and entered Utopia after the successful end of my shift, Ignis/Gyarados approached me while I was handing out dinner to my team.

He asked me to check his status, and when I asked him if it was because of what I was assuming to be the reason, he happily nodded, so I swiftly took a peek at his status sheet. That look confirmed that Ignis had completed his limit-breaking and that he was ready to break through to the dark gold stage.

I shared the good news with him with a bright smile, but we decided to keep the matter on the low until the end of our dinner. Once everyone was full, and we had cleaned everything up, I shared the good news with the rest of the team, before announcing the news over UtopiaFm for the masses.

Afterward, we made our way to Ignis' place for his breakthrough, and that was how we now found ourselves at the shore of Ignis' lake, with everyone gathered around him, waiting for him to break through.

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