Chatting Through the Multiverse

[Five] >< Extract

"So... what do we do now?" Izuku asked, looking down at his new companion.

"Snivy!" Snivy exclaimed, running to a nearby bush, summoning a vine, and using it to pull an object out of the shrubbery. Izuku's wakizashi. She proffered the weapon to him, to which he smiled and happily put it in his inventory. "Snivy, Snivy!"

"Thank you," Izuku reached down and petting the Pokémon. She hopped around happily, then jumped up into his hair and snuggled into place. "I guess the next thing to worry about is fixing my clothes... mom seeing me like this would not be good."

"Snivy," Snivy agreed.

"So, I either need to find a tailor or a general store... this town looks relatively small, but I could use more information," Izuku said, humming in thought. He eventually shrugged and decided to just wander around until something caught his attention.

This town was only host to four buildings, one being professor Juniper's lab, all of which were surrounded by dense forest. Izuku vaguely remembered his timeless, blind stumble through those woods, and it made him nauseous. Juniper undoubtedly lived in her lab, while two other families occupied the two South houses, overlooking the ocean. The house in the center of the town, however, looked to have been long-since abandoned.

It was decrepit, to say the least. It's roof was partially caved in, not a single window was intact, and vines had grown all along its outer wall. It was relatively small, as were the other two houses, but Izuku could imagine a small family peacefully living here.

Snivy growled at the sight of the building, making Izuku give her an inquisitive glance. "Is something wrong?" He asked. She hissed in response and shook her head, then jumped down to the ground, and formed a ball of vines around herself. Izuku blinked, looking between her and the house. 'Does she have history with this place, perhaps?'

Her reaction to this place worried Izuku. He had to know why she reacted that way, and the only way to figure that out was to go inside. Seeing as how Snivy was curled up on the ground, likely imitating the poké ball, he was free to go in. Still, he drew his handgun, just in case something waited inside.

The door creaked loudly as Izuku pushed it open, its hinges so rusted that he had to apply a lot of pressure to get it to move at all. He walked in, happy sunlight was able to penetrate the space via the many cracks and holes, and examined his surroundings. Torn, dust-matted carpets. Broken shelves and shattered pots. Hole-ridden furniture. A kitchen counter dirtier than any trash can Izuku had ever seen, and the smell of general rot and decay.

A single staircase led up to the second floor, running over a fireplace that had caved in on one side. All in all, there was nothing interesting. Still, Izuku thoroughly checked over the ground floor using the information he had garnered from the book Hal sent him, checking for any minute detail that could point towards an answer as to why Snivy acted the way she did.

While most of the windows had broken still, falling equally on both sides, the one in the kitchen had been broken inwards, and all the glass had been cleared from the frame. An entry point. Izuku knelt next to the glass shards and, sure enough, the dust level matched that of the floor around the glass. This home had been broken into the same day it was abandoned.

Izuku quickly - and carefully - gave the ground floor another look, and found several scraped on the floor. The depth and width implied steel-soled boots, as they were in places distant from the furniture. The patterns suggested a fight in the center of the living room, moving towards the stairs. Peculiarly, there were many holes between the floorboards, too big to have been from simple rot or bugs.

Izuku moved the rug to get a better look at the holes, only to find a large patch of crimson-brown hidden beneath it. Dried blood, years old. Protected from the elements by the rug. Izuku sighed, getting a better idea of what had happened here. A home invasion? Simply a burglary gone wrong? Or, most concerning, murder?