#39 Pashay the Igglybuff has been murdered by the Stalkers.

Location: Behind Overland Metalworks
Cause of Death: Viciously stabbed to death

Standing over Pashay's body, Britera sighed. It was one thing to see an old Pokémon get murdered, because at least they got to live out a long life. But Pashay was young. Too young. The young Igglybuff had been brutally stabbed far more times than she needed to be in order to die, but that didn't stop the Stalker from doing what they wanted to do. The small pink puffball-like Pokémon was now nothing more than just a bloody mess that was just barely recognizable.

"Damn it, Bloodwish, you haven't done enough damage?" Britera growled.

"Are you certain it's Bloodwish?" Lexin asked the Braixen. "We haven't ruled out that there is another Stalker that could be mimicking the others."

"But there's no motive for that!" Britera replied. "Lexin, this second-guessing everything is getting us nowhere! We can't keep stalling like this! And that's something stupid Kanja believed! What proof is there that some stupid Stalker called 'Switchback' even exists?"

Meanwhile, Sten was taking pictures and taking notes on his notepad, but he wasn't pleased in the slightest.

"Lexin, hate to say it, but she's right," Sten nodded, wearing a frustrated frown. "Bet you were surprised to discover our own little miss Kanja was a god-forsaken Stalker herself. Do you realize how badly that screwed us up? I'm beginning to think she's the reason why my last two batches of photographs were ruined and why we lost that whole damn hard drive worth of investigation stuff. And all those times she had us digging around the wrong conclusions for hours. Seriously, why the hell did we believe her that Edder might be a Stalker!? And that stupid theory about Switchback wasted day after day of investigations. She was working against us the whole rotten time."

"I know, god dammit, I know," Lexin growled in frustration. "I didn't think she was one that fell under the influence. Everything she worked on now has to be reexamined and by god, I don't have the time to do that. I can barely keep the rest of this town under control."

"Look, we still have the three of us," Sten told him. "Trust Britera's judgment. This crap right here is something Bloodwish would do, right? We know Bloodwish is one of them and we know the method of operation. There's no such Stalker thing as 'Switchback.' That's a dumb theory Kanja insisted on and she never provided anything to support it even though she had us believing it up until she got bloody exorcised."

Lexin nodded, but it was hard for him as well. The whole time he thought they were making good progress. They were coming up with strong leads, Kanja made it seem like they were going in the right direction, and they felt like they had a handle on what could be a strong conclusion. Now, he had to admit it could be all wrong. Every last bit of it. It was like being caught in a maze and just when he thought he could see the exit from his position, things took a totally wrong direction and now he had to decide if starting completely over was really the best thing to do. But he made up his mind.

"We have to start with a clean slate," Lexin sighed. "It's the only way. Everything Kanja touched, provided, collected, and put work into has to be completely looked over again to see if there's any real truth to it, because she could have compromised anything and everything we know. And if we think it's wrong, we have to admit it's wrong and toss it. It's the only way. If there's any doubt about it, it has to go, or it's going to continue to burn us and waste time that we just don't have."

For a moment, Lexin thought both Britera and Sten might think he was crazy for suggesting to toss away so much investigation information, but instead, it seemed like there was a complete agreement on that.

"It's not your fault she led us on so many wild chases and dead ends," Britera told the Flygon police chief. "But everything she did has to be destroyed. We work only with what the three of us have gathered and this time, none of her damn theories or misguiding beliefs are going to screw us up again. She made us question ourselves when we were right the whole time, and who knows how many wrong turns we made because of it."

"We'll start picking up the pieces tomorrow morning," Lexin told the Braixen and the Bellossom. "For now, let's get Pashay's body out of here."

Sten took one last photograph of the heavily-stabbed Igglybuff and then nodded.

"We'll find them, kid," Sten spoke softly to Pashay's body. "They won't get away with this."

Doom Tracker:
4/20