"I do hope you're not planning on making a habit out of this, Roisin."
"Oh, shut it, Bulby," the Staraptor snapped back, the lingering pain putting her in a decidedly fractious mood. The pummeling she had taken in the Oreburgh battle tournament had left her in a horrendous state, with all manner of bruises and lacerations across her body. The staff at the Pokemon Center had been able to remedy the worst of it, but even with the healing hand of Skye alongside her, Roisin was still nursing a small handful of now fairly minor injuries, the bandaged forearm and band-aid on her cheek testament to that.
They had still advised her to take it easy and avoid anything overly physical for a few days to give her body time to recover fully, so while Laurie had already begun making tracks north to Eterna City, and Diane had chosen to go along with her, Roisin and Skye decided to try their luck once again with the Oreburgh Museum. Perhaps in the few days that had passed, the situation would have been remedied. Rounding the corner onto the street, however, the big bird let out a sigh of frustration at the scene that greeted them.
The museum was still closed.
"Great," Roisin huffed, swiveling a hundred and eighty degrees on her heel in the dirt path. "I guess we're going back to the hotel," she said, beginning her march off in the opposite direction.
The Lanturn quickly stopped her with a hand on the shoulder. "Wait, I thought they'd started repairing it when we got here," she said, heading over to inspect the still gaping hole in the side of the museum wall. "How have they not finished yet?"
"I can answer that," came a voice from inside the building. One of several identical police officers stepped forward, ducking underneath the cordon tape sectioning off the museum from the rest of Oreburgh, and leaving the remaining Arcanine to carry on searching around the room. "We had to postpone the building repairs while we conducted a more thorough investigation," Barkley explained. "We're still in the dark as to how the perpetrators actually broke in."
"Well..." Roisin casually pointed to the massive, obvious hole in the wall. "I ain't a detective, but-"
"See, that's what we initially thought, too," Officer Barkley told the duo, "but there's almost no rubble on the interior side, or damage to any of the exhibits. It seems as though, once they'd stolen the Armor Fossil," they continued, nodding in the direction of the hole, "that was the way they broke out."
Skye's shoulders and esca seemed to sag a little at that news. "Aww, they stole the Armor Fossil?" she lamented, her gaze turning to a poster on the exterior displaying the artifact. "I was really hoping to see that."
"Can you not just check the cameras?" Roisin pressed the officer. "That's how you caught Diane that time, isn't it?"
Barkley simply shook their head. "Scrambled. Nothing but static from ten minutes prior to the break-out, no sign of anything suspect until that point. Whoever pulled this off really knew how to cover their tracks."
Roisin glanced over at the gaping hole once again. "Yeah, they sure did-"
"HEY, FEATHERHEAD!"
Wheeling around at the shout, the trio saw the imposing figure of Tamsin Waters, the very same woman that had demolished her in the Oreburgh battle tournament and sent her to the Pokemon Center, storming in her direction, kicking up a small cloud of dirt with each angry stride, eyes burning with barely restrained fury. "Who in the blue HELL do you think you are?!" Tamsin hollered.
"Ma'am," Officer Barkley interjected, stepping in between a baffled Roisin and the approaching behemoth of a Rhydon. "We are conducting an official police investigation here, this area is-"
"I was a lock for that tournament!" Tamsin continued her tirade, ignoring the Arcanine until they were physically blocking her from approaching any closer. "And I got taken out by some depressed berry boy!"
Barkley raised a hand to keep the irate Rhydon at bay, addressing her calmly yet firmly. "This area is off limits to the-"
"In the third round!" Tamsin yelled.
"Please take your business elsewhere," Barkley said.
Roisin shared a bewildered look with a more apprehensive Skye, who was beginning to shrink away behind her far stronger companion. "And that's my fault, how?" the bird retorted with a shrug.
"You were DONE!" The Rhydon yelled, jabbing a finger at the Flying-type, and forcing Officer Barkley to take a step backward. "You couldn't even get back to your feet, all you had to do was give up, like everyone else!"
"Hey, I'm here to fight," Roisin replied, leaning around the Arcanine for a better view of her accoster. "I can't help it if you suck."
"Roisin, no," Skye piped up with a gentle tug on the Staraptor's arm, "don't try and get into-"
"Oh, you want another fight, do ya?" Tamsin growled, charging forward. "I'll tear those studs right out of your-"
"That's enough!" Barkley hollered, struggling to hold back the big Rhydon as two more Arcanine emerged from the museum to help douse the powder keg of a situation. "I told you, this is a police investigation, and you will have to leave, now!"
"You'd better keep your ass out of my way next time, you worm-sucking runt!" Tamsin snarled over the wall of officers that were now between her and her target, forcing her to back away, turning heel and stomping her way back into the streets of the city.
Roisin was left standing there, just as perplexed as she had been to begin with. "Wow, eat a bag, rock head," the bird muttered silently under her breath, before realizing just how tight the grip on her arm had gotten. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her companion staring intently at the disappearing Rhydon in the distance. "Skye, you okay?"
The question snapped the Lanturn out of her trance-like state. "Oh! Yeah, I'm fine," she gasped, releasing her hold on the Staraptor, along with a breath she didn't know she had been holding. "I just didn't want that to end up in a-"
"Observe three-nineteen," came a distorted voice suddenly from the group of Arcanine, "calling Zoom five-seven-one, over."
The officer that had initially halted Tamsin's outlash smartly grabbed the communicator from the front pocket of their uniform. "Zoom five-seven-one, copy."
"We've discovered an area of significant thermal variance compared to expected background," the scratchy voice elaborated, "might be worth investigating further, over."
"On my way, over and out," Barkley replied, stowing their communicator and pausing for a moment before heading back indoors, allowing the other officers to slip under the police cordon ahead of them. "You two should be on your way too," they told Roisin and Skye. "Don't want you meeting trouble again like in Sandgem."
Roisin gave a disgruntled snort, not appreciating the reminder. "Sure, c'mon," she grumbled, steering her Lanturn companion off with a hand on the shoulder, before stopping in her tracks for a second as something abruptly clicked in her mind. "Wait," she blurted out, spinning back toward Barkley, "how did you know about-?"
But the officer was gone. They had vanished back into the gaggle of identically uniformed Arcanine inside the museum, and there wasn't a hope of picking any one of them out from the others.
"That's what I was going to ask as well," Skye quietly chimed in.
The Staraptor could only reply with a shake of her head. "Let's just get out of here," she sighed, trudging back down the dirt road with the Lanturn in tow. It wasn't worth dwelling on, Roisin thought to herself, they just needed to find something else to pass the time while she was still recovering.
Maybe the mine would be a bit less dull the second time.
