#18 Mika the Boltund has been murdered by the Stalkers.

Normally, Terene the Nickit was up for any kind of opportunity to get field experience. She had been an Aurorawatch Squire for too long, and was looking forward to that promotion she wanted to become a Knight, but more and more field experience was a must. So if there was an opportunity out there, she was ready to take it.

She wasn’t ready for this, however.

It was one thing when a civilian was killed and they had no family and often died alone. It was something horribly devastating when the victim was a mother with a husband and a child. Upon discovering the burnt and dehydrated body of Mika dumped just outside the front door of their home, besides her was Dret the Mightyena, angry and frustrated that he failed to protect his wife, and Duante the Yamper… Mika’s son, looking like his own soul was stripped out of him as all he could do was weep and cry.

Terene called for backup, and they had sent Safen the Politoed for support. It ended up not being one of Terene’s proudest moments after all. When he arrived at the scene, however, she too was a bit on the cautious side regarding Dret’s reaction, and even she had to be on her guard in case the Mightyena went berserk and lost control. All the while, Duante was whimpering in a way he had never done before, never ready to accept the fact his mother was gone, murdered and dead before him…

“What are you here for?” Dret growled, looking at the Aurorawatch soldiers out of the corner of his glaring eye. “If you’re going to tell me something, TELL ME RIGHT NOW!”

“We’re… here to investigate the murder of Mika,” Terene swallowed hard. “I’m… sorry for your loss.”

“And you should be,” Dret snarled at her. “Yes, you should be, BECAUSE YOU AURORAWATCH BASTARDS ARE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT US! WHAT THE DEVIL IS YOUR PURPOSE IF YOU FAIL AT THE ONLY THING YOU EXIST FOR!?”

“Just… calm down, okay?” Terene asked, backing away. “I know you’re hurting, but this shouting isn’t going to help.”

At the moment, Safen had given Dret a cold, hard glare. It was true that Dret could probably take down the Aurorawatch Squire rather easily, but against a Paladin like herself and all the training she had, it wasn’t going to turn out very well.

“I’ll tell you what, Dret,” Safen told the Mightyena, trying to defuse the situation. “You’re right, Aurorawatch is having a really hard time getting to the bottom of these Stalkers because we totally don’t have enough going on right now between OMEN, ghouls, and trying to get this city back to some kind of sensibility. Right, not at all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?” Dret shouted back at her.

“It means get it through your skull that our resources are thin and no one is safe,” Safen told Dret very directly. “That’s right, no one, not even you, your son, or Terene and myself here. If you want to cling onto hope that we’ll overcome this, that’s your prerogative, but the cold hard truth is things are getting worse. For all of us, not just you, not just Aurorawatch. If you have any brilliant suggestions on how to deal with this with the reality we’re facing, sure, I’m all ears, buck, but I need real objective answers, not wishful thinking. So whether you want to scream at me, my Squire, or at a god-forsaken wall, it doesn’t matter either way, because the ones who are really responsible don’t give a damn about you, your wife, or your son either.”

Dret was silent for a moment. He wasn’t expecting Safen to be so blunt in this moment of grieving, but the truth was Safren was a warrior and was no stranger to grizzly and grotesque forms of death in both combat and in dark situations like this. This was nothing new for her. She had seen Pokémon with their eyes ripped out, their heads missing, and in disgusting, bloody, meaty pieces strewn about like morbid confetti.

Dret wasn’t used to it the way she was, and he knew deep inside that this moment of devastation rendered him incapable of fighting. On top of that, what kind of father would he be if he tried to attack her, right when his son was gutted emotionally?

In the meantime, Safen decided to look over Mika’s body, observing that the mother Boltund looked like she had been cooked alive very slowly. And besides her seemed to be several pieces of paper, which Dret had overlooked before. Safen picked them up and it looked like one of them was a note.

It was from her killer.

I learned quite a bit about Mika over the past few days. I think we probably even could have been friends, though you know, it’s a little tricky to do that when she’s dead. Corpses aren’t too great for conversation, though they won’t ever disagree with you either!

Mika was the fun and friendly type. It’s always tough to see Pokémon like that go, especially when times kinda suck like they do now, but that’s how things are in good times and bad times. Things can be cool one day, and then just a total suck the next. And I imagine her husband Dret and that cute little Duante kid aren’t taking this well. Intact Exacta City families sure are tough to come by these days! The ones that are still around should count their blessings! Well, I guess this one can cross that of. Big ouch there.

Mika was a school teacher, which I’m sure isn’t going to have a nice effect on the kiddos either. I mean really, she seemed like the best teacher to have. Heck, if I had a kid, I’d want her to be my kid’s teacher. But again, that’s not how things go. Life can be a big suck sometimes.

Her last years weren’t much fun either. Mika was a thrill-seeker, loving travel, adventure, writing down her wonderful experiences in a journal to read later, all great memories and stuff. And then OMEN happened and she’s been cooped up here for years since then, unable to do all those things while trying to keep the family through all the junk in their lives. Though it kind of seems like the adventure came to her this time! I guess you can’t really complain then, and the whole family got in on it!

And with those experiences, yeah, two of the things Mika really hated were waiting and hot weather. Golly, that does make for a terrible combination. And it seemed like my hunch was right, she really didn’t like being locked in that blast chamber for five hours and be exposed to that kind of heat for that whole time. Must have been pretty boring and agonizing! Although if you’re in severe agony, can you really be bored, too? I dunno, I guess not. Ah well.

Oh, and I found one of EXCLUDE’s puzzles on her. Yeah, I get what EXCLUDE is trying to do and I get some kicks doing the same kind of thing myself, but this kind of thing isn’t my jam if you know what I mean. Sudoku, really? I’m not a numbers guy. And the void blots are just… eh, not classy. Depressing stuff, really. Me, I’d rather have some fun with this. You create something, you torture that something for a little while, and you remind it that things can suck sometimes but it’s funny for everyone else who can relate but doesn’t have to suffer in the “right here right now” kind of way. You know how it is.

Cheerio for now.
ASTRALNOX

“What is that you’re reading?” Dret asked Safren just after he had finished.

“You don’t want to know,” Safren replied coldly, crumpling up the paper. “Unless you really want to get pissed off.”

Shortly after, she had looked over the last sheet of paper, and she found the Sudoku fragment that ASTRALNOX was referring to. Where and how Mika came across this, she didn’t know, but she figured she would hold onto it for now. Chances were good this wouldn’t help Dret in any way either. There was something about it that was morbid and hollowing and Safren was pretty confident in her feelings that this would only bring Dret and Duante more misery and woe.

And it was one of the last things they needed at this dark time…

Doom Tracker:
4/40