Ch 20 – Cheap Sunglasses

If you asked any Pokémon in Varin to describe Tenea City, the first word they would use is “big.”

The streets are big, the Pokémon are big, the city itself is gigantic and teeming with all sorts of bustling life.

Under these circumstances, one might think that a heist involving a massive explosion in the city’s most busy district would not go particularly well.

To these people, Fanita would only laugh.

Tenea Central Bank claimed the title of the tallest building in Varin. It featured no true entrances or exits; the only Pokémon meant to come in and out are the Duskulls that manage all the various banks, who are more than comfortable simply phasing through walls. It’s rumored that there’s more wealth concentrated in this single building than anywhere else in the world.

Fanita was more than willing to test this theory, but this time around it wasn’t the money that she was after. She already robbed this place once before, and had more than enough Poké to last.

She was after something else this time, and while she’s working on it she might as well show the rest of Tenea City, possibly even Varin, that there was nothing she couldn’t do.

With her bag firmly attached to her incorporeal body, she set off.

She began by idly floating through the business district, casing the area. There were a couple Magnemites out, no one she couldn’t take down with a single Perish Song if she wanted to.

Unfortunately, there were also a lot of civilians. Perish Song was painless, but on principle she didn’t want to harm a passerby without a good reason. It made her look desperate, and she couldn’t possibly have that.

“Hmm…” She came to rest in front of the bank. Despite the fact that the entrance was just a wall, there were still two Magnemites guarding it. They immediately noticed the Misdreavus, trying to remember why the ghost seemed so familiar to them.

She decided to get some information out of them. “Good afternoon boys.”

“M’am.” The Magnemites weren’t hostile yet, but obviously suspicious.

“I have to ask, why do the two of you guard that entrance? Wouldn’t it make more sense to watch inside the tower? What if a ghost, say, floated in through the back?”

“…Dusknoir doesn’t want anyone but his own family to enter, so we are to guard the perimeter.”

“Hmm… interesting. I can’t imagine what goodies he’ll have for me inside then.”

Before either could react to Fanita’s statement, her eyes glowed a light blue with Hypnosis. The two Magnemites fell to the ground, but Fanita used Psychic to catch them before they could hit the ground and startle the Pokémon around them.

She gently set the two on the ground.

“Hmm… They didn’t seem to be the top of the academy… I’ll give them ten minutes.”

With the mental timer in place, she phased through the front entrance and into the tower.

The inside was about what she expected. Several Duskulls were floating in their little offices, reading over various business deals or loan applications.

Disgusting.

They were so distracted by their work they didn’t even notice the thief slip inside.

…Pissing off the bankers was appealing, but she had a pretty strict time table here. Hopefully, when she finished having her way with the tower they’d be mad enough. No need to screw with them now.

Uncontested, she floated upwards, looking through the various floors for anything of value. It was mostly offices, though on the second floor from the top she found a very interesting metal safe.

She had her suspicions about the material, but reached out to it anyways. Unlike everything else in this tower, she could feel the safe press up against her— she wasn’t able to just pass through it.

“Dark gems… you definitely have something worth looking at. But you’re not why I’m here…”

She prepared to finish her ascent, but took one last look at the safe. “…I might come back for you later.”

The final floor was a far cry from the office building-medieval dungeon fusion the rest of the tower had. This was just an apartment, and a somewhat modern one at that. It looked to be very luxurious, occupying the entire floor.

Fanita laughed to herself as she floated through its hallways and rooms. This was the place she was looking for; now she just had to find where her objective was.

“You appear to be somewhat lost. Perhaps I may escort you out?”

Fanita turned around to see a Dusknoir towering over her. She cursed herself for not noticing his approach, but still maintained her mischievous grin.

“Oh no, I believe I am exactly where I need to be.”

“The police have already been alerted. You will be apprehended.”

“Oh I don’t think so. It’s… hmm… 6 more minutes?”

Dusknoir’s eye narrowed. “Until what?”

“You won’t be able to find out if you fight me. Don’t you want to see?”

“You will not be doing anything.” As Dusknoir said that, 6 Duskull emerged from the floor, surrounding Fanita.

Fanita laughed as the Duskulls slowly closed in on her. This laughter gradually faded, as she sang a pleasant song to the Pokémon present.

Dusknoir’s eyes widened as he realized what Fanita did. “That was Perish Song! Take her down now!”

A series of Shadow Balls were let loose as Dusknoir’s goons tried to knock out Fanita. In response, she simply zipped around, phasing into furniture or walls that would absorb the attacks.

It was completely ruining what was otherwise a very nice-looking apartment, but if things went according to Fanita’s plan the apartment wouldn’t be making it out anyways.

“That’s one move…” Fanita let out a playful laugh. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“You imbeciles! Use Shadow Sneak on her! Don’t let her get away!”

The six Duskulls vanished into shadows, steadily approaching the Misdreavus. In response, she used Psychic and completely tore the apartment’s interior apart.

Chairs, lanterns, and anything else that wasn’t bolted down began flying around the room, randomly striking the ground and forcing the steadily-approaching shadows to abruptly change their approach.

“Ooh, I think that’s turn two!” Fanita floated upside-down, taunting the Dusknoir. “You really should do something, you only have one more chance.”

“Grr…” Dusknoir surged forward, fury radiating out of his single eye. His hands turned to black, denoting that he was using a dark type move.

The shadows crawling across the floor finally had the opportunity to zero in on Fanita as well.

Despite the seven different attacks flying towards her, Fanita just floated in place. “Three, two… one.”

The Perish Song’s effects kicked in, knocking all seven Pokémon out at the same time.

“My my, none of you are very good at this.”

She floated past the unconscious Pokémon, making it into Dusknoir’s bedroom.

“I know it has to be somewhere here…” She prepared to use Psychic to move all the furniture around, but fell to the ground as a psychic attack struck her out of nowhere.

“Gah…” When the headache cleared, she looked around, verifying that she was still alone.

“Future Sight… That’s a bit dirty, don’t you think?” She gave the unconscious Dusknoir a sweet smile. “Just for that, I’ll make sure there is nothing left of this place.”

She has her priorities though. There should be a safe somewhere in this room with the info she wanted, and she can’t get away with blowing up the apartment until after she has it.

She tried looking under the bed, behind the various paintings scattered around, and within the nightstands, though none of these yielded any results.

“Hmm… I should have known he wouldn’t be so amateur.” Fanita closed her eyes, firing off a Confusion in every direction. All the objects in the room got knocked back slightly. A piece of wood in the roof that had a bit of give managed to catch her eye, however.

She floated up to the offending plank. To test her theories, she tried to rise up through the roof, but ran into something.

“Oooh… Perhaps he really was an amateur.”

Fanita unclipped her bag, removing a hollowed-out blast seed. By filling it with ground up Fire Stones, and a little bit of Thunder Stone to act as the fuse, it formed a pretty potent explosive.

She used Psychic to hold it in place and trigger the fuse.

After a very satisfying flash of orange light, the blast knocked her back a bit, and blew out all the windows of the apartment.

Even if Dusknoir was lying before, there was no doubt the police would be en route now.

Shortly after the blast, she heard a massive thud as a metal safe the size of Fanita fell down from the now non-existent roof. In the bottom of the safe was a gaping hole where the blast went off. More importantly to Fanita, she could remove the various folders and documents the safe kept hidden.

As much as she wanted to look them over this instant, time was running out. Especially if she wanted to teach Dusknoir a lesson about using moves like Future Sight when it was obvious he would lose the battle anyways.

From her bag, she took out the other object she brought with her: a hollowed out empowerment seed, filled to the brim with as many Fire Stones as she could cram into it. If her last explosive was a controlled charge, this was a “fuck everything in a 10 meter radius” type of device.

With the documents comfortably in her bag, she armed her new explosive, letting it rest on Dusknoir’s bed. Once she was sure it was set, she flew away, phasing back through the various floors of the tower and coming back down to the ground level.

A crowd had gathered, having seen the earlier explosion that blew out the top floor’s windows. Fanita slipped into the ground and popped up with the other civilians.

While it would be smarter for her to get away, it wouldn’t be right to let her handiwork go to waste. Instead, she lingered with the other civilians, eagerly watching the top floor of the tower.

Even with it being broad daylight, the entire town center lit up orange for just a moment. The sound of the explosion came immediately after, a massive boom that probably resonated all throughout the city.

The tower lost its entire top floor, being blown into thousands upon thousands of tiny pieces that rained down harmlessly on the spectators. The civilians watched in fascination as Tenea Central Bank lost its status as the tallest building in Varin.

Fanita just laughed to herself, content with her work. She’s lingered long enough though, the police would probably be setting up a perimeter around the area soon enough, and while it wouldn’t be challenging to slip past it, it was an extra effort she didn’t really care to deal with today.

Pokémon were running through the major streets, both towards and away from the blast. She stuck to the side-streets where she could slip by them unnoticed.

As she floated through the city, she noticed a Piplup with a pair of pointed, lime green glasses walking the same direction as her. The fact that another Pokémon took this route wasn’t particularly surprising— most outlaws familiar with Tenea City knew how to navigate the streets without going through the main roads.

What was concerning was that the Piplup seemed to match every turn she made, even after she tried to shake him. She went for her favorite trick– Making a turn one direction, going around the corner to get out of the Pokémon’s sightline, before dipping into the floor and doubling back through the ground. While this did manage to shake the Piplup, he came back on her trail within a few minutes.

He seemed to be determined… Better that Fanita just stop and ask what his deal was now; she couldn’t have him trailing her all the way back to her hideout.

“You’ve been following me for a while, any reason for that?” Fanita said, making sure to never let her grin fade.

“Yea! I was wanting to ask you about how you did that!” The Piplup was excited, looking like he was just about to jump up where he stood.

“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

“That explosion you caused in the tower! I’ve never seen anything like it!” Without any invitation from Fanita, he stepped in closer to the Misdreavus.

As he did so, Fanita almost thought the color of his glasses got just a smidge brighter.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about what just happened over there. I was trying to get away before anything else happened.”

“Yea yea, but what did you use? I’m guessing the flash of orange meant you used ground up Fire Stones, but that would have created an incendiary charge that could’ve started a major fire in the city which obviously didn’t happen, so there was obviously some sort of catalyst-”

Fanita cut the Piplup off with a question weighing on her mind the moment she first heard his voice. “How old are you?”

“12! I think.”

“Why would you want to speak to the Pokémon that you think caused that big explosion then?”

“Because I need to know! Outside of Blast Seeds, I haven’t been able to find any real way to increase the power of an explosion, and with some of the items we just got we need more powerful machining tools, and I was thinking-”

“You’re quite chatty, aren’t you?”

“…I mean I guess? Leavanny says I need to be quiet more often.”

“I can see where she comes from.” Trying to end the conversation, Fanita kept floating down the street. In response, Piplup increased his pace to keep up.

“I still really wanna know though! You have to be really smart to figure out something like that.”

Fanita giggled. “Like I said, I don’t even know anything about what happened to the tower, how could I tell you what the explosion was?”

“…If I help you out, will you tell me?” Piplup’s eyes were sparkling. “I can build really cool things for you!”

Fanita cocked her head, still playing dumb. “Help out with what?”

“You’re the legendary thief Misdreavus, you have to have some use for really cool tech!”

“…If that were true, what could you do?”

“Here, look at these!” Piplup took off his glasses and held them out to Fanita. As he took them off, their tint changed from green to light blue. “They’re made on the base of Black Glasses, so you should be able to put them on!”

Fanita gripped the glasses with Psychic and put them over her eyes. As she moved them to her face, the color changed back from blue to green.

She fixed them to her face, not noticing anything aside from the world suddenly taking on a slightly green tint. “…What now?”

“Press the top right corner of them!”

Fanita gave the Piplup a blank stare.

“…Oh right. Let me get that for you.” Piplup jumped up and pressed the glasses for her.

Immediately, white Unown Script flooded her vision. It took her a moment to adjust to it, as she realized it was a display coming from the glasses. As it leveled out, she began to look around.

“So what do you think?”

When Fanita shifted her gaze to Piplup, lines of text showed up on the periphery of her vision as a white circle appeared around the Pokémon.

Piplup (M) – No Guild/Outlaw Affiliation

Level 20

Health – 100%

That would explain how he knew who she was, or why he was able to track her.

“Hmm… Does this work for any Pokémon?”

Piplup nodded enthusiastically. “It’s wired into the Federation’s explorer and outlaw database! So if you used it on a guild member or an outlaw it’d show even more about them.”

Fanita removed the glasses, putting them back on Piplup using Psychic. “And you want to help… me?”

“Yea!”

“And why is that? If I am who you think, that would make you an outlaw too. Do you want that life for yourself?”

“Well, sure that’d kinda suck but you can actually use the stuff I can make! Plus, I don’t really like the guilds…”

Piplup’s tone denoted that there was very obviously a history there, but one Fanita wasn’t going to pry into right now.

“…I’m interested. But what do you get out of this?”

“I just want cool things to experiment with! Science is awesome, and there’s so much cool stuff here I’m not allowed to play with because of my age…”

The way Piplup said “here” stuck out to Fanita, but she dismissed that thought for now. “So if I provide you with the materials you need, you’ll build things like that?”

Piplup gave another nod.

“Hmm… Well I won’t be able to bring you to my hideout, where are you staying?”

After the “battle” that destroyed her old hideout, she packed up everything and moved into a new hideout, a husk dungeon closer to Tenea City.

While she’s fairly certain Apex and Terrae have figured out by now that ex-humans are immune to the husk effect, she knows Hydreigon forbade any of his explorers to go into husk dungeons regardless, so she’d be at less risk if she stayed outside of the reach of Nova Town.

But even if she did feel comfortable showing Piplup where she lived, she did not want a potential partner to become a husk as well.

“That makes sense. I’m staying at the inn right now, let me know when you want to meet and I can show you some more stuff!”

“…Find a backup,” Fanita advised. “Inns leave an easy to track paper trail. If you get linked to me, you’ll be in danger.”

“Don’t worry, I got it all figured out!” He gave Fanita a thumbs-up, or as close to a thumbs-up as he could with his flippers.

Despite everything, Fanita decided to trust that he did have a backup plan.

Back at her hideout, Fanita was still thinking about Piplup. It was one thing for a kid who was down on their luck to look into a heist or two to get back on their feet, but what kind of twelve year-old turns to a life of crime just to do cool experiments?

She supposed she couldn’t judge too much, she woke up as a Pokémon with no memories about her home world and immediately decided to start stealing. Though after talking to Blizz and the other guildie humans, she hadn’t really felt the same about her heists.

Even today, the rush just wasn’t right. Causing an explosion on the top floor of one of Varin’s most corrupt institutions should’ve been exhilarating. Instead… well, it was exhilarating, but only for a few minutes. In previous heists she could’ve ridden that high for at least an hour.

She looked back to the guild badge Blizz left her. The last time she touched it was when she was carrying all her stuff from her old hideout to the new one. It had only sat on her desk since then.

No matter how little she cared to admit it, the offer did have its merits. While she doubted Blizz could clear her record on his own, she had her ideas on how it could be pulled off.

And it was because of that offer that she decided to lay low for the past couple weeks. For her, this meant not attaching her face to any of the crimes she’s pulled off— running into Dusknoir today was admittedly pretty sloppy.

But with the haul she just pulled, Dusknoir should know better than to go public about the theft. After all, the folder she managed to retrieve happened to have the sort of information that Pokémon all over Varin would be up in arms about if it got out.

Almost all financial transactions in Varin happen through his bank, and that includes the underworld as well. She began reading through the documents. While she had one transaction she was very curious about, knowing some of his other more interesting exchanges couldn’t hurt.

“Hmm… Lots of dealings with the police department…”

While she had her suspicions that Dusknoir had a firm grip over Tenea’s police, the amount of transactions with the police department as a recipient was unexpected.

Oddly enough, there were also payments to Nova Town’s department, but those seemed to come to a halt altogether a few months ago. That was around the time she woke up as a Pokémon… Interesting.

While learning about police corruption was fascinating, that wasn’t why she went through all the effort. What she wanted was the mission that had her own name on it.

“Here we are… Kidnapping mission, payout to Misdreavus… Oh my, how interesting.”

She set down the document, reading the line that stuck out to her.

Transfer of 35,000 Poké from Tenea City Guild to Misdreavus, kidnapping, one-time payment.

Transfer of 15,000 Poké from Tenea City Guild to Misdreavus, kidnapping, recurring every week.

Cancellation of Poké transfer from Tenea City Guild to Misdreavus, kidnapping target escaped.

Fanita knew looking into the details of one’s client when you received the mission from an intermediary was considered to be very poor form in Varin’s underworld, but her curiosity was too strong to resist.

Though she didn’t want to admit it, she also had some concern for Blizz. The fact that someone wanted to go through these channels and pay so much Poké to target a Pokémon who’s existed in this world for all of a few months meant they probably knew something about where he came from. And if they were targeting someone because they used to be human, that meant Fanita could be next.

So naturally, figuring out that Hydreigon’s behind it was still pretty nice.

Of course, this led her to a situation that she didn’t really know how to deal with. Does she tell Blizz, go public with the info, or keep it to herself.

If she went to Blizz, there was a chance that she could be arrested— the guild at Nova Town was much better at stopping criminals than the one in Tenea, and if Blizz decided to go back on his offer or someone else spotted her, she would be in a rough situation.

If she went public, it’d be pretty much impossible to predict what would happen. Most Pokémon know that Dusknoir is shady in some way or another, but making it known that he’s bankrolling the vast majority of Varin’s criminals would not only cause lots of very strong Pokémon to come after him, it would also collapse the underworld entirely.

She really didn’t know if she wanted that or not.

The other issue is that Dusknoir isn’t going to go after Fanita as long as he knows she has these documents in her hands— all it would take is one failed assassination attempt for her to leak these to the press and bring his entire empire crumbling down. If she went public now, she would lose that leverage, and Dusknoir wouldn’t have anything left to lose. The husk properties of the dungeon would probably keep her safe from any hitmen as long as she didn’t go outside, but living inside a mystery dungeon was barely living in the first place.

That led into the final option: sitting on the info. She only took this mission to satisfy her curiosity, and now that she knew she could wipe her hands of it entirely. Act like this never happened, and keep going on with her heists.

No matter what she chose, she’d have to keep an eye out for anyone Dusknoir sends after her. If he was confident he could take her down, he probably wouldn’t hesitate.

As she considered what to do, she began pacing back and forth through her hideout.

The wildcard was Piplup. The kid was the type of utterly bizarre that couldn’t be an act, and with how quickly he managed to track her down, having him on her side would be the best place for him to be. To say nothing of the invention he showed off; it was leagues ahead of anything she could remember from being a human.

“Oh what to do…”

She took one final look at Blizz’s old guild badge, the bronze reflecting off the lanterns lighting up the dungeon.

She slowly came to a realization that would explain quite a bit about the Piplup.

“…So we finally found the tenth.”

Piplup was sitting on a bench in front of the inn he was staying at. Ever since his meeting with Fanita yesterday, he was excited. Finally he’d have a chance to show this world what he was capable of, and that he didn’t need to be tethered to Leavanny’s side to do anything.

Still, that was assuming that Misdreavus actually showed up. Despite what she said, she still seemed pretty hesitant about working with him, and he caught the way she looked at him when he said he was 12.

But he had faith. Misdreavus seemed really impressed, and even returned the glasses to him after she was done; she could have easily just taken off with them!

Well, she couldn’t use it on her own because she doesn’t have any arms, but maybe she would have sold it to someone. The fact that she didn’t probably means she’s interested in a partnership!

There was the weird thing the glasses did though. He doesn’t quite know why they turn green when he wears them but are blue everywhere else. He started assuming that it was something unique to him, but then Misdreavus caused the same effect.

He wondered if it had something to do with how they grew brighter when he passed by those explorers in Leavanny’s lab the other day.

Pulling him out of his idle thoughts, a familiar Misdreavus floated up the street. He jumped up to give the ghost a wave.

“Hey! You came!”

“You really should keep your voice down. I can escape easily, the same can’t be said for you.” Her tone still housed that creepy fake-happiness, sending shivers down Piplup’s spine.

It was so cool.

“So what are we going to do now?”

“That’s a good question. I do need to ask you something though.”

Piplup cocked his head. Not that he was surprised Misdreavus wanted to know more about him; she was an insanely famous criminal, of course she’d have standards, he just didn’t know what she was gonna ask that she couldn’t think of yesterday.

“Did you used to be a human?”

That was not what Piplup was expecting. Still, he owned up to it. “Yep! Woke up as a Piplup a couple months ago!”

“…Hmm… Fanita.” She dipped her head. “May I get your name?”

“I’m Leaf! Except that’s only a nickname…”

“The others are the same way.”

Piplup’s eyes widened. “Others? Are there… wait, are you…?”

“Yes to all. Aside from us, I know there’s 8 other humans, but they’re on exploration teams, so talking to them is a bit difficult.”

“…Why?”

Now it was Fanita’s turn to be confused. “…Sorry?”

“Why can’t we? They wouldn’t arrest other humans, right?”

Fanita weighed the question. The Duke or the Prince… most likely would. Kibo almost definitely. Probably not Blizz though. “…I’m not sure.”

“Come on, don’t we have to stick together?”

“And why is that?”

“Because we’re basically the same! Silly things like stealing from Pokémon who probably deserve it shouldn’t ruin that…”

Fanita decided not to bring up all the exploration teams she beat who tried to come after her. “I’m not sure…”

“Well, we just gotta prove that we can work together! Doesn’t matter that we’re outlaws.”

Fanita blinked a few times. “One, we are not working together, and two, you are not an outlaw yet. I still don’t understand why you’re so set on this.”

“Because it’ll be cool! No one takes me seriously, but if I’m working with criminals they’ll have to respect me!”

Fanita shook her head. It was pretty stupid reasoning… but who was she to judge. “Alright, how about you tell me what you can do.”

Leaf’s eyes lit up. “Well, I can do a ton! What do you need?”

“Hmm… I have an idea. Follow me.”

She began floating away, and Leaf walked behind her.

“So where are we going?”

“You know how guilds have an entrance exam, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think you should get an entrance exam too. We’re gonna go find a mission, and if you prove that what you can do is useful, I’ll let you stick around.”

Leaf’s eyes were sparkling yet again. “I won’t let you down!”