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The chime of an incoming email suddenly broke the silence.
Oleander's train of thought halted. She opened the message and began downloading the attached files, one by one. Her regional authority would be revoked at midnight, but until then, she could still issue orders to International Police units operating in the area.
Four hours ago, after deciding to investigate Luther, she'd placed a call to Sunyshore City in the Sinnoh region.
There, an International Police officer stationed at a local hospital was on active duty: Kaori.
At that time, news of her authority being suspended hadn't yet circulated. The officers still recognized her command and followed protocol. Oleander had assumed Kaori wouldn't be able to gather the information she requested so late at night. To her surprise, the report had arrived before the deadline struck.
She didn't open the attachments immediately. Her eyes instead drifted to the brief message Kaori had included:
"Don't worry, Deputy Minister. You'll earn their trust back sooner or later."
╰(°▽°)╯
'An amusing personality.' Oleander allowed a faint smile to curl on her lips.
Before today, her understanding of this spirited woman, who had transitioned from a medical background into police work, was limited to her exceptional performance in Sunyshore and her pre-filed resignation, effective next year.
Not everyone is built for the culture of the International Police. When the passion fades, people often return to their original paths.
'She'll probably make a fine doctor, ' Oleander mused.
She disconnected from the network and began opening the downloaded attachments, now stored locally.
Her investigation into Luther wasn't a product of impulse. As she flipped through the gathered files, she kept sensing subtle irregularities, like spotting a gemstone giving off an unnatural glow buried in a beach of sand.
Eventually, she pinpointed it: the accident that had taken Luther's parents.
It had occurred in Sunyshore City. They were driving through a city intersection when a drunk driver sped through a red light and slammed into their car.
By all accounts, Luther's father's vehicle had passed safety testing. But even the best structural design couldn't prevent a side-impact collision at that speed, not unless he was behind the wheel of an armored vehicle.
In that crash, the airbags barely made a difference. By the time emergency responders arrived, both parents were already gone.
The incident took place in a busy area. Dozens had witnessed the wreck. After paramedics treated the bloodied driver, angry citizens surrounded him until Sunyshore police arrived.
The verdict was swift: drunk driving, speeding, red-light violation, and two counts of manslaughter. The man was sentenced to ten years.
Oleander's only thought was: 'That's too light.'
Everything pointed to a tragic, if straightforward, accident. Luther's parents were driving safely, then fate introduced a drunk lunatic. The world tends to be cruel to those who follow the rules.
And so, they died.
Still, Oleander checked the International Police's database out of habit, pulling the offender's file. That's when she saw something strange.
Shortly after serving his sentence, the drunk driver had drowned in a remote lake near Sunyshore, having apparently stumbled in while intoxicated.
Some would call it karma or divine retribution, but Oleander didn't believe in such things.
She believed in evidence. And in her own instincts.
Once you start to question one part of a story, you inevitably begin doubting all of it.
She dug deeper into the man's background. But there were no red flags. A textbook case of a chronic alcoholic.
So she shifted her focus to Luther's parents.
When Luther was born, both parents were employed at separate companies in Sunyshore. Ordinary jobs, nothing noteworthy.
But when she traced their lives back to their university days, Oleander stumbled upon a buried detail that made her eyebrows twitch.
"Participated in early research into Pokémon mutation during their time at Rainbow University."
At the time, Pokémon mutation wasn't as controversial or prominent as it became after the Kalos amplification device scandal.
But for Oleander, that phrase hit a nerve, hard.
It had been twenty-four years ago. They were students then.
Two years later, both of them failed their thesis defense.
She read the thesis that had eventually passed, but she wanted the one that had been rejected.
Rainbow University didn't archive failed academic work. But that didn't matter. Oleander already had a strong feeling she was closing in on something.
In the years that followed, Luther's parents moved frequently. They even spent time in Lumiose City, Kalos, searching for work. After drifting through several positions, they eventually returned to Sinnoh and settled down in Sunyshore.
It was around then that Luther was born.
Still unsettled by the unresolved inconsistencies, Oleander finally opened the final attachment.
Something told her this document might begin to unravel the truth.
The case files contained a wealth of material: autopsy reports for Luther's parents, an investigation into the drunk driver's personal connections, technical assessments of both vehicles involved in the crash, and more.
One couldn't help but admire Kaori's resourcefulness; how she'd managed to obtain these sealed documents remained a mystery.
Oleander read through each word with care, scrutinizing every sentence and analyzing each image.
One attachment included surveillance footage from the area surrounding the accident.
She turned off the office lights, allowing only the glow of her monitor to light the dim room.
The footage had been carefully compiled by the officers who later archived the evidence, video from four different surveillance angles stitched into a single composite.
Luther's parents' silver car was shown waiting patiently at a red light. In an earlier frame, captured outside a nearby restaurant, the drunk driver could be seen stumbling into his own vehicle.
When the light turned green, the driver suddenly accelerated, speeding straight into the intersection. His car slammed into the silver vehicle, which had just begun moving forward. The force of the collision sent the silver car airborne, flipping multiple times before skidding across the pavement and finally smashing into a roadside barrier.
The windshield shattered completely, glass shards and mangled debris scattering in all directions.
Even personal items from the car were flung out onto the road.
Though the drunk driver had been speeding, his car was a durable model. The front A-pillar withstood the impact, and the airbags activated in time; he escaped with only a head wound. Still, the frame was crushed to the point where he couldn't free himself.
Smoke began rising from the wreckage as bystanders split into two groups, one rushing to the silver car, the other toward the drunk driver's.
The footage corroborated every detail found in the accompanying reports. And yet… Oleander felt something was off.
She began scrubbing through the footage again, back and forth, frame by frame.
In the darkened office, her eyes suddenly widened; she'd finally caught the detail she'd missed while focused on the chaos of the crash.
From one surveillance angle capturing the rescue efforts, she saw it, a blue folder was thrown from the silver car, landing just a few meters away.
As the crowd rushed to help Luther's parents, one person stood out. They ignored the wreck entirely, walked straight toward the folder, picked it up, and slipped into the camera's blind spot.
Only their silhouette remained on screen for a fleeting moment before vanishing.
(End of Chapter)