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Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm sorry I didn't get to send you the cliche camp letter, but quite a bit happened while I was there. Most of it I don't even know about or understand.

It would seem Team Rocket was behind the camp, either that or they knew about it and took it over. Don't worry though, I came out of the ordeal alive and unharmed, aside from some grogginess. Everyone in the camp was captured, put in cages, and kept asleep for nearly a week. They were after everyone's pokémon, of course, and even took my rental!

I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. When we got to camp we were allowed to pick from a variety of pokémon a temporary partner. You'll remember, that was the main reason I was so excited about the camp. I ended up with a rattata, and shiny at that! I named her Penners.

Anyway, while we were all out, the pokémon escaped and ran amok through the Rocket facility. I heard the other trainers say that the pokémon even liberated ones kept enslaved by the Rockets! They did all this with the help of a Mewtwo, and I got to see it! Briefly... It's still hard for me to grasp, a legendary help me and all the others escape. I don't know why, or even know its name. Does it have a trainer? Gender? I don't know. But I'm very grateful and will try to keep an eye out. It had rather distinctive purpler markings on it's face and chest, so I hope I'll recognize it again should I ever see it.

And when we got out of the facility, there was yet more to see! The Rockets were trying to capture a Raikou! I saw not one, but two legionaries in one day! In an effort to keep Penners and myself safe, we fled to the nearby trees until the police could arrive. I'm told someone helped the Raikou escape, but I didn't see it for myself.

Now I'm back home, safe and sound. And I got to keep Penners! The authorities were appalled at the condition many of the rentals were being kept in, so they got new homes. I included a picture, she's slightly smaller than normal, but look at that lovely coat! I'm so lucky!

Roise says "Hi", she's still considered an officer-in-training. She worries her superiors aren't making enough effort to get her a partner. I think she may eventually try to catch a wild pokémon of her own. Now that I have one, I hope everything works to her advantage quickly. I feel a bit guilty about being the only one with a partner. I'd give her Penners, but I know she'd say a Rattata wasn't a suitable partner for an officer.

I was glad to hear you hired more help for the store, I remember Carson, he's a good guy and you can count on him for anything. Is Lizel still in town? She was always a wiz with numbers and could help with the business side of things. Don't work too hard. Roise and I still have an extra room if you ever wanted to visit. I know the shop takes a lot of time, but maybe Carson and Lizel could take care of things for a week or two.

All my love!
Cab

"D*** it!" Roise's keys clattered to the ground and she nearly dropped the stack of files she was carrying. She rolled her eyes and began to carefully bend toward her keys while muttering obscenities.

"Roise! I got it, don't worry!" Cab ran up the last few steps and scooped up Roise's keys.

"You're a life saver," Roise said with a sigh. She was ready to crash but still had a few more hours of paperwork ahead of her. She wondered if partnered officers had this much paperwork to do, surely if there was this much then it couldn't mean it was getting spread around evenly. When the door swung open, she followed Cab in.

"Here, I'll grab some of that," before Roise could finish protesting, she could see Cab's smiling face where about half her stack used to be. "Where do you want to take these?" her friend asked.

"Just to the desk," Roise said with a sigh. She'd finally gotten that desk cleared and now it would be piled high with papers once more. She set her stack down and Cab set the other beside it and Roise finally got a good look at her friend.

"Oh my God, Cab! What happened?" She could only stare while Cab's face turned bright red and she fingered one of the tattered holes in her shirt. Her clothes were torn all over the place, not enough to reveal anything shocking but enough that it looked like she'd gotten in a fight with a rabid archanine.

Cab didn't meet her friend's shocked stare. "It's nothing, really. It was my own fault..." She pulled at one of the holes at the edge of her shirt to show a better view of the skin underneath. "I didn't even get hurt, so it's no big deal..."

"Cab, you gotta be kidding me! No big deal?" She ushered her weekly-protesting friend to the couch and sat her down. "And here I thought nothing could top the horrible few days I've been having. Tell me exactly what happened." She gave Cab a stern glare which her friend wilted under and sighed.

"Fine... just..." She bit her lip. "Fine." She took a deep breath and started to tell Roise about her 'adventure' in the woods today. Part way through Penners curled up in Cab's lap and snuggled into the tattered fabric of her pants. Cab calmed down some as she stroked her rattata's fur and finished her story.

"Are you out of your mind? Why didn't you just make a run for it?"

"Do you know how expensive this camera is?" Cab asked in an uncharacteristically assertive voice while shoving the camera at her roommate. "There was no way I was going to just abandon it without a fight." Cab crossed her arms and glared ad Roise with one eyebrow raised. Penners, who had been jolted awake by Cab's shout, mimicked her trainer. Roise looked ready to lash back out, but Cab spoke before she had the chance.

"It's been a hard day for me, I shouldn't shout at you like that." She inclined her head toward the desk. "How 'bout you tell me about your day and what all that' for."

Roise had been so ready for a shouting match, needed one actually, that Cab's sudden composure caught her off-guard. "I'm... sorry for yelling at you too," she said. "I've had a rough few days as well."

She took a while to tell her story about the yacht and the murder case, there had apparently been a large number of murders that day all across town and now efforts were being made to try and connect the dots between any of them. As far as Roise could see, they were all unrelated, but that didn't stop Headquarters from wanting to double- and triple-check everything. And that sort of work, as usual, fell to the few officers without pokémon partners.

"...and so, now I'm to sort through each case file and any related files and report my findings." Cab stretched and stifled a yawn. "What time... goodness!" Roise shot up off the couch and helped her friend get up. "You should have told me it was getting so late, there was no need for you to listen to all that."

But Cab was already half asleep. Penners was curled up on the couch and didn't notice as her trainer was half-carried to her bedroom by her roommate. Roise got Cab in bed and watched her few a few minutes to see if she woke up and needed anything. Once she was sure Cab was sleeping soundly, she exited the room and took her seat at the desk to begin her work. She'd always been able to stay up longer than Cab and work off of less sleep. It didn't bother her at all, although sometimes Cab kidded her that she'd be a much more pleasant person if she got more than five hours of sleep a night. But for now, she sifted through reports and tried to keep her mind off the long days to come.