Lance looked at us with an expression I knew too well. It was a somewhat soothing smile, he was hopeful but hesitant, not disappointed, not proud. He always looked like that before we ran through our findings.

"Yellow, before we carry on, I want to know how you're doing. If you want to leave this case, I'll understand, though I wouldn't be too happy."

Stuck in our conference room with three men and an absent Blue, Yellow looked down at her fingers, "It's still hurting a lot, I'm not over his death but going to Viridian right now would be inconvenient. I'll probably take some time off when they return his body from examination."

"I agree, besides, Yellow's so invested in the case," Green smirked, "It would be a shame to yank her away."

I chuckled, his indirect praise would please her.

It did. Yellow was only a seat away from me, but looking at her beaming smile automatically made me want to move closer. Despite all the darkness surrounding us from the case, her face had a startling way of changing the sullen guilt that was settling inside my conscience.

"Well that's that then," Lance raised his eyebrows at the three of us, making evident that he'd seen me staring at her, "Run me through this sudden epiphany. Do you really think Rose is a possible suspect?"

"We do, Blue's chasing a lead right now, so we'll go through our timeline without her." Green stood up, pointing to the slide that the three of us had quickly created this morning.

"Alright, I see what you're saying about the girl's background, but I need more persuasion." Lance sat down beside me, "I want to hear this out completely before giving my opinion."

Rose Dubois. Her name tasted like bitter blood now, she had completely played me.

"Rose didn't have the longest time with us, but our time frame makes perfect sense for her to be Vespiquen." Green had insisted on taking charge of the pitch, he ruled out Yellow as unconvincing and I didn't want to talk more than I had to.

I didn't even trust my own intuition now.

"Rose was going out with Red for roughly four months, November to February. She used to always be around him, trying to distract him from his work then eventually settling as a recruit on the second of February." Green changed the slide, and it was replaced with the shameful newspaper that had blown away our articulate cover.

It made me feel like shit. I let her in. I persuaded the others to give her a chance.

"Fast forward to Valentine's Day. Red broke up with Rose in an argument after he refused to go to a party."

"In my defence, I'd just managed to get an interview with one of the labourers, I couldn't have given it up." I interrupted.

"Nobody is blaming you, Arceus if she cared she would have gone with you instead." Lance muttered, then nodded his head at Green.

"On the sixteenth, News Flash released the article that outlined our private plans towards the corporation. The only people in on this were Red, Blue, Lance, myself and Rose. All of us naturally suspected Rose because of her inexperience, but there was no initial evidence to prove us right. That all changed later on the same day." Green motioned for me to continue.

"That night I overheard Rose in her room, talking to someone called Jonas. She was giggling and promised she could be with him more since I'd broken up with her. Naturally, I figured out they were seeing each other already, when we were dating."

"When Red told us this, the name Jonas rang a bell; he was the journalist who had covered the article about us." Green speeded up, "Rose was fired the next day."

Who could forget that outburst? Rose's screams about my commitment issues sometimes echoed in my ears, and her words of escaping to Hoenn were imprinted in my memory.

"We're assuming that she went to Hoenn after this." Green continued, " I called Steven Stone last night and he told me that the bank robbery was on the twenty-sixth. This gives Rose enough time to arrive in Hoenn, preparing and executing her first crime."

"But what makes you so sure it was Rose, when the footage is so cloudy?" Lance interjected.

Now, Yellow enthusiastically piped in, "Compared to the crimes in Kanto, this one was more inexperienced. The cameras were clouded from a sort of Silverwind, we think this could've been from her Venemoth. On top of that, Sapphire said that our released photos of Vespiquen weren't the same."

"That makes sense, if we stick to the assumption that Rose changed her appearance." Green took over again as he changed the slide to the picture of Vespiquen, "Sapphire said that their criminal had brown eyes, a bigger nose and hair that wasn't blonde - that description matches Rose's original features. We think that after her first crime in Hoenn, she got facial surgery as well as contacts and a dye job."

"So you think the first crime was just Rose's practise? It wasn't pre-meditated, but the string of robberies in Kanto were?" Lance frowned, "I don't know, there's not enough to indicate both Hoenn and Kanto are related. There are too many 'ifs' here."

"Hold it! Kanto's heroine is here to save the day!" Blue startled everyone as she ran into the room, holding her phone up with a bright grin.

"Oh, and how do you plan to do that?" Lance questioned her sceptically.

I met her eyes, a mixture of triumph and regret blended together. We had proof now.

"I was on call with Doctor Yamamoto, my plastic surgeon based in Hoenn. I figured that with his famous skills, there's a high chance Rose could have approached him to change her appearance. He's also the only one worth going to, unless she'd prefer to travel to Kalos, a total drag." Blue couldn't have sounded more gleeful, "All we need is for you to send through a warrant, then he said he'd provide me with details on his clients from February."

"That's great!" Yellow looked up at Lance hopefully.

"Why do you even need a plastic surgeon, and when the hell did you go?" Green completely ruined the chain of explanation, looking at the brunette in confusion.

Blue rolled her eyes, "If I really went to Hoenn for Contests last year, trust me I would've come back with a few pretty ribbons." She then waved her hand dismissively, "But those ribbons wouldn't be as pretty as my slim nose."

I chuckled to myself at the memory of Blue leaving for Hoenn in the middle of the night last year. She couldn't complain about her nose to Green, so instead I got the delight of hearing her.

"Wait a minute," Lance held a finger up, lines creasing over his forehead in deep thought. "What if Rose used the first robbery for a quick sum of money?"

"So she could afford the surgery, and possibly the anaesthetic used on the Pokémon." Green nodded his head, "It makes sense."

Our leader stood up now, then sighed, "I'm sorry for dismissing the evidence from Hoenn, I think you could be onto something. I'll get a warrant issued now, but I think it's time to increase the size of the team on this case. I'll call in some of my best officers; you need to make use of some experts."

As Lance walked away, Yellow looked back at us curiously, "We mentioned anaesthetic before. How could Rose get a quantity large enough to kill Pokémon?"

"I guess she'd have to either buy them illegally or steal." I murmured, the others nodding in agreement.

"I'll call Yamamoto after lunch, maybe he's missing some." Blue groaned, "We're getting warmer but I just want to catch this asshole."

Personally, I didn't know if I'd rather Rose be the culprit or not. All I knew was that it was my misjudgements that had provoked this mess.

~

If my partners had scared me before, I couldn't describe the anxiety of being around these strangers.

They were all experienced specialists, and I automatically felt like the weak link in this large room. Blue was gone again, and without her comforting presence, I felt even more unnerved. My knees were lightly trembling as we sat back down at a table opposite everyone, and the expectant eyes prickled my chest. They'd heard everything we had to say, but our credibility wasn't exactly high.

I'd also forgotten all of their names.

"Relax, you know more than they do about the case." Red's voice whispered from behind my ear as the adults began to talk amongst each other.

I looked back at him and bit my lip, stopping myself from denying his words. "You're right, thanks."

He sent me a half-hearted smile, and my chest plummeted as I realised how much harder this entire scenario must be for Red.

"I think we should cross-reference photos of Rose," A red haired woman shifted her glasses and met my eyes for a second, "I've got new software, we can run an analysis on the face from Hoenn, the Vespiquen footage, and a picture of Rose."

"Good idea, I'll forward the picture from her CV to you." Lance nodded his head.

"I don't know," A loud voice from the right took our attention, a brown-haired middle aged man shook his head, "All of this fuss from one hunch? I don't think we should take any action unless Doctor Yamamoto sends clear proof of Rose's appointment."

The people around him nodded their heads in agreement, and even Red murmured, "That's a good suggestion."

"I don't think we should spare any time when we could be finding more evidence to support us."

I couldn't stop myself from speaking this time but now I wished I'd just kept my mouth shut. They were all looking at me as if I had spoken out of line, but I couldn't find fault in what I had just said. "Biometric evidence would support us, wasting time waiting wouldn't."

"Yellow is right!" Like a flash of lightening, Blue brightened the room with her entrance, holding a laptop in her arms and a wide smile on her face, "I'll show you what Yamamoto has sent over."

Once she had connected her device to the large screen in the room, we turned to analyse the list of names typed into the spreadsheet. Before I had even finished reading, the man from before sighed, "Rose Dubois isn't on the list, we're wasting time."

I covered my face and sighed; this was disappointing. If Rose hadn't got plastic surgery, then our purpose was disintegrating. If she wasn't Vespiquen, we were back to having nothing.

"She might not be on the list, but Yamamoto reported that his local surgery were missing quantities of an anaesthetic following a blackout." Blue tapped my shoulder and gave me a reassuring smile.

I met her eyes in shock, but before I could speak someone else piped in, "It's only optimism to think that could have been Rose."

"Maybe, but optimism becomes realistic when you look at this," Blue clicked on the screen and we all looked at the sole name, "The blackout was on the twenty-eighth, two days after the Hoenn robbery. Earlier that day, Doctor Yamamoto had met a new patient, not one of his regulars. Her name was Ruby Baker."

We were silent as the name settled in our minds: Ruby Baker, Ruby Baker, Ruby-

I gasped as my hands trembled, "That's her! Baker was taken from her real parents" I looked back at the sad figure beside me, "and Ruby is another shade of red."

"She's right." Green nodded his head in agreement, and I could have sworn he smiled in approval.

"A cheap alias." Lance nodded his head, "Alright, we're adopting K-Z's suspicions. Rose is our target."

"Where do we go from here?" Red sighed, and I could almost feel the glumness from his voice.

"Natasha, take Green and get started on confirming Rose's biometrics. I'll need someone, Sakura you can, to analyse any footage from Doctor Yamamoto's surgery. Our top priority is the safety of civilians; we need to preemptively strike against Rose."

"Sir, I think it's time for a press conference. We need accounts of her whereabouts."

"You're right, does anyone have any suggestions on her next target location?" Lance looked at the four of us expectantly.

"Well there's no pattern, her robberies were scattered all over June and now it's the first week of July." Red tugged at his hair in thought.

"What about Saffron City?" Blue suggested, "If she wants to get back at the DAPP or Red, maybe it's time for her to close in."

As everyone else began to agree in light of the recent break from robberies, I shook my head. Think Yellow, think. Her crimes are escalating, and the catastrophe in Viridian City proved that her craving for attention was becoming insatiable. Attention.

That's it. Attention.

"I don't think so." Again, I was speaking out of line, but it was time to shove their sceptical stares into the trash. Red was right, I knew more than they did.

"What do you think then?" A deep voice from the corner of the room asked me patronisingly.

I inhaled slowly to calm myself, "Rose craves attention, it's obvious in the footage of Vespiquen, as well as the press coverage of her destruction of Viridian Bank. Even the name Vespiquen can be associated with power and having others under her. I think she wants to be recognised, and she's becoming more desperate." I gazed at Red's face sadly, "In some sadistic way, I think she's trying to reach out to you."

"So if she's not going to stage another robbery, what else could she do?" Red squinted his eyes in confusion.

I bit my lip sadly, "I think she's going to target the people close to you, if not you, Red."

A/N:
Well, I don't know about you guys but that felt quite hefty as a chapter, sort of a filler but also a way to tie up any loose ends (at least, I hope). What are your opinions on Rose now, and what do you think her next actions will be?

Now I shall go and find a kawaii skin to decorate my Switch with, wish me luck!

Baiii