Alola to a New World!

by Tapu Meme

6. Poker Face

Under-Chief Nurzak rubbed the sleep from his baggy eyes and took a long sip from his near empty coffee cup. He was an old minotaur who had come to Hawhinny from the tense, hectic border between Equestria and and Minos for a life of manageable cases and paper filing. At least, that was what he had hoped he would find, but now that dream seemed a little dated.

He squinted through his reading glasses over the paper he held in his cloven hoof one more time, then looked up at Paige.

“This is going to reflect poorly on you on paper, you know,” he sighed setting down the complaint onto a pile of five or ten more that he had received this morning. “Crackle Licks is a proud pony, and he will most likely take this as a challenge to his authority.”

“Maybe,” Paige stated with a straight face and a steady voice. “but I believe that calling the Colonel out on his actions will convince him to think of ways to move up the ranks besides terrorizing the ponies below him. Besides, I'm not alone with my complaints. There are plenty of other ponies here--”

“Plenty? Seven isn't plenty.” Nurzak removed his reading glasses and hung them on one of his horns. “In order to get the attention of management, I would estimate you would need around twenty individually written complaints detailing clearly defined offenses. Getting them to act within the year? Forty, maybe fifty complaints and at least three different cases clearly botched by his actions.”

“That seems a bit extreme, sir.”

“Extreme is the only thing that will turn heads.” Nurzak sighed, shaking the paper stack into a manilla folder and dropping it into a drawer. “I’ll keep these around, might come in handy if Chief feels like he needs to be put in his place. Especially if they happen to...pile up with time.”

“I’ll make sure of that, sir.” Paige said.

Nurzak paused at that. “Perhaps it's for the best. All he knows about life at the top is the money he might make for his family.”

“Exactly my thoughts, sir.”

Nurzak let the drawer slide shut, carefully eyeing the open door just behind Paige. He couldn't see anypony in the hallway, and saw no shadow of a spying eavesdropper. Only then did he snatch his wallet out of his pocket and flip open a secret compartment and give Paige the folded paper within.

“Our new ally will be complaining of sandy shores.” Nurzak whispered as Paige tucked the paper into her coat. “He is in the blank chatroom already. He is in the favor of the dragonborn, but neutral to the mad scientist. Put in a bad word for him if possible, but above all else you do not. Know. Him.”

“Thank you for your advice, sir.” Paige said at a normal volume. Nurzak went back to the papers on his desk as she saluted and left, as though they had just finished the most ordinary of conversations. As she walked out of the room, she subtly checked for a spy the elderly minotaur might have missed, then relaxed and tried to look bored as she made her way to the room that hosted her desk and cubicle.

The office room was a gray, fuzzy maze of ringing phones and loose paper. Deputies rushed as quietly as they could, higher ranked officers exchanging case files and hushed whispers with them as they all tried in vain to make sense of the maze of bureaucracy.

Paige took her seat amongst the chaos, at the mountain of papers and manila folders waiting to be filed that she assumed was supported by a desk buried by the sands of time. This was her workplace, and it would be much more manageable if the higher-ups could ever find somepony else to dump their extra workload onto.

She picked up a case file from what Paige guessed was near the bottom of the stack. A missing pony case…

Milotic. Paige had to escort her out of the station after she had finished reporting her friend missing. She hadn't put up much of a fight when she was told she would have to wait for the police to find her friend, despite her stating otherwise at every opportunity while she was filling out the forms. Paige was a bit worried about where Milotic had gotten off to, especially if she only knew her and Rafe. She worried, but she had a feeling that Milotic was stable enough to know not to bother a student in the middle of a school day.

Paige leaned back in her seat and flipped open the file, reading over the specifics of the case and glancing over at the ancient whiteboard that she had scrawled the names of the deputies under her command. Her eyes flitted to the three unicorns on the list, mulling over who had the most experience with tracking spells.

“So lemme tell you about this tourist chick I met the other day.” an unfamiliar voice drawled from the hallway.

“A’ight. What happened with her, bud?” Ruban’s much more familiar voice responded in turn.

Paige frowned. This wasn't the time when new deputies from the academy usually came to work. And even if they were, wouldn't she have seen more ponies at the mission briefing she had nearly missed that morning?

“So, I’m a bit new to the capitol, yeah? Well, I grew up all the way over on near the northern side of the island, and lemme tell you, we didn't have this...this diarrhea of mainlanders--I hear the southern side is worse but still--so, I’ve never seen this many mainlanders in one bar before, right? And I go up to a mare that I think is local. But she isn't. Know why? Cause I introduce myself and she goes like ‘what kinda name is Mason Kale?’”

Paige buried her beak into the file, squinting at fine print as the two ponies passed her cubicle.

“And so I said, ‘the one my parents gave me, what's yours? And, listen, I'm not kidding with you she says her name’s Sandy Shores!”

Sandy Shores?

Curious, Paige quickly glanced at the two earth ponies deep in conversation. Walking next to Ruben's dusty red coat and platinum blonde mane was a painted pony in varying shades of brown. He was also a bit short in comparison to Ruben. To Paige, this guy looked a little like her dad. Shorter stature, earthy tones, Paige’s grandfather was a pony directly descended from the native herds of the islands. Was this new guy the same?

She sat back in her chair. Sandy Shores. Did Paige know somepony by that name? Sandy Shores...Sandy Shores...complaining of Sandy Shores.

Oh.

Paige felt like tearing out her feathers. Of course! Of course the pony Nurzak hired would walk by with a perfect cover and slip her a message, and she probably blew it by stupidly looking over at him when he mentioned the codeword.

Paige balled her claw in her lap into a fist to keep herself from having any other reactions for about a minute. Just because she might have botched the mission didn't mean she couldn't play it off like nothing had happened. She faked a yawn and rubbed the soft parts of her talons over her eyes. Yeah, just pretend to be tried, not like it's the oldest trick in the book or anything.

Paige let her claws fall to the armrests as she swiveled her chair back to the desk with the open file. She scooped it back up and rifled through the witness account. She read over the report with a sigh of disgust.

Young griffon cub, last seen talking to a police officer. If Paige kept messing up, she’d go the same way.

---

Nurzak heard a knock on his door, more subtle than any hoof of talon employed on the force.

“Come in,’ He called, smiling as he finished signing a notice with a flourish.

The door’s handle clicked and loudly squeaked open as a young minotaur with a backpack and a fancy pencil case dangling from her right arm poked her head in.

“Hi, Dad!” she dropped her things onto a chair and ran over to hug her beaming father.

“And hello to you, too, Floria.” Nurzak patted his daughter's head with one hand and brushed away the scattering of papers on his desk.

Floria came every school day to her father's workplace when her school had lunch period. He never found time in the mornings to pack lunch for either of them. Not when his daughter practically dragged him out of his bed by his hooves every morning to when she darted off to school with a mouthful of wildflower salad for breakfast. Instead, Nurzak always tossed some leftovers into a bag or bought a cafeteria lunch and shared it with his daughter when she came by to visit him.

“So, what’ve you got today?” she took a free chair across his desk and sat down with thinly veiled anticipation.

“Quick to the punch, as usual.” Nurzak chuckled and Floria began to bounce in her chair as he procured a thermos flask and two bowls from his desk.

A flash of disappointment flew across Floria’s face as he poured yesterday's leftover taproot soup into them, however warm and steaming as it was. She quickly tried to hide it as Nurzak screwed the cap back on, noting that her father had done that strange thing where he gave her a much bigger portion than his. Floria often told herself that her dad could just get a snack from the cafeteria if the portions he gave himself really weren't enough, but something about how stingy her father was with money told her that he didn’t bother.

The two slurped their soup in relative silence. When two people see each other every day, they tend to run out of conversation topics and just enjoy each other's company.

Floria’s ear twitched to the half-open door. Somepony was standing outside.

“Come in,” Nurzak called.

Tapu Lele floated in, holding multiple thick files in her arms.

Excuse me, she said, looking frazzled. Is this where I drop off mail?

“I think you’re looking for Kite Flyer's department, madam.” Nurzak kindly responded.

Oh! Of course. So sorry to disturb. She bowed out of the room, dropping a few papers and catching them with Psychic, the door clicking shut behind her.

Nurzak finished his soup and put the empty bowl next to the thermos under his desk. He glanced up at Floria’s to see if she had finished, but she was staring at the door with excitement.

“Those things!” she turned back to her father. “The Pokémon! Even the police have them around!”

“Finish your soup dear.” Nurzak suggested warily.

She gulped the rest down and handed her father the bowl.

“So dad,” Nurzak flinched, knowing which question was coming.

“Can I have a Pokemon?”

Nurzak took a moment to put away the bowl before he answered. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “After everything has died down, I'll take some time off to help you find one. I don't want you to go looking on your own and run into a dangerous one.”

“Just like prom, huh?” Floria snickered.

Nurzak kept his face blank. “If all goes well, my dear, it will be nothing like prom.”

That got a bigger laugh from his daughter. She glanced at the hanging clock on the wall and gasped.

“LATE! I'm late!” She reached over the table to give her dad a neck hold of a hug that smacked his glasses off his face before she grabbed her bag and pencil case. She was halfway out the door before she heard her dad tell her to wait.

“Yeah?” she called. Nurzak had stood up, but now he just stood awkwardly behind his desk.

“Floria, dear,” he said, voice shaking slightly. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn't eat lunch here for awhile. Things are more hectic than I anticipated, and I might not be here to give you anything. I’ll give you some lunch money for the week when we get home, is that alright?”

Floria beamed. “That sounds great, dad. See you soon!”

Nurzak listened as her hoofsteps faded down the hall. He sunk back into his chair, gingerly picking his glasses up from the floor. He ran his finger across a hairline crack in the glass, pondering his insurance plan.

Floria raced down the halls of the of the police station. She knew the way out through the back door, which was often a lot less crowded than the front lobby exit. She decided on a route that would be a bit longer, but would have less traffic from the mail room. She nearly missed the shortcut and grabbed the edges of the walls to make swifter turns.

A white hoof shot out and nearly tripped her. Floria tried to sidestep the pony that was now standing in front of her, but she was trapped. Fortunately, now that she looked, she knew who this was.

“Miss Cassarina,” she panted, not at all subtly looking over her shoulder at the next turn in the hall. “can I help you?”

“Of course,” Cassarina’s silky voice wound around Floria’s ears, her yellow eyes gleaming in the flickering LED lighting. “There's something very important I need help with.”

Comments

[TheArcticWolf]

something seriously off is going on here!