Chapter Text
Raihan unceremoniously dropped a binder on top of Marnie's desk, covering the paperwork she was busy reading. "I swear to you, Marnie, that something is happening with Gloria!"
Marnie looked less than impressed at the binder. "I'm pretty sure there is as much happening with Gloria as there is activity in that skull of yours."
"Exactly!" Raihan's face lit up before he noticed Marnie's deadpan expression. "No, wait. You're insulting me again, aren't you?
"Raihan, you are an absolute tool. I don't know how you managed to convince the general public otherwise." Marnie slid the binder towards Raihan. "Don't interrupt my work."
"The champion being involved in a conspiracy is directly relevant to your work as a gym leader." Raihan pushed the binder back. "At least open it before you insult me."
"Well, I could use a good laugh." Marnie flipped open the binder to a random page and was met with the front cover of a Galar's Gossip magazine. "I immediately regret my decision."
"No no no. You have to start from the beginning." Raihan flipped to the front of the binder, revealing pages of printed out social media posts. "So here you have Gloria's old internet activity. It's quite similar to my style of posting, with lots of selfies with the people she's with and long rambling descriptions to her photos with lots of tagging and hashtags."
"You call her social media similar to yours, but I see a distinctive lack of bare chest photos."
Raihan ignored Marnie's comment as he turned over a few pages. "But starting three months ago, her activity shifted. She posts rarely now, and it's all photos of her pokémon or scenery with the rare selfie mixed in. The descriptions are short with two hashtags at most and no one tagged. More importantly, there aren't any more photos of who she is with."
Marnie crossed her arms. "Maybe she just got sick of being nearly as obnoxious online as you are."
"That was my first thought until I noticed her schedule." Raihan flipped forward to marked up calendars. "Gloria for years has consistently booked herself for almost every League event across all of Galar. At the same time her social media activity changed, the number of events she went to dropped dramatically."
"The champion is taking some personal time off after years of dedicated service? That's very sinister, Raihan. I'm quivering in my boots."
"That was my second guess, but look at this." Raihan turned over the page to reveal the aforementioned gossip magazine. The title read "Mysterious Cloaked Figure Visits Champion".
Marnie squinted at the blurry photo. "People visit the champion all the time. You're concerned because one of them decided to wear a cloak?"
"A cloak and an Allister mask, actually. And they've been visiting Gloria consistently for three months now." Raihan again flipped the page to reveal dozens of photos of the cloaked figure, each marked with a date and time. "In fact, she's been spending increasingly more time with this figure and decreasingly less time visiting gym leaders. Bede in particular she almost never visits anymore."
"Raihan, please tell me you're not actually this dense. What you've managed to 'discover' is that Gloria has a lover." Marnie's face scrunched up as she gestured towards the binder. "Which means that all this represents an extreme invasion of her privacy. What Gloria does in her free time is none of your business."
Raihan slammed the table. "If it's a lover, then why doesn't she just tell me that?!"
Marnie looked mortified as she put a hand up to her forehead. "Oh dear Arceus, you actually went to Gloria with all this."
"Of course I went to Gloria with this! I don't want secrets held from me! In fact, she was the first person I went to, precisely because I respect her privacy. But she didn't tell me it was something private! She instead denied anything was happening at all!" Raihan looked Marnie dead in the eyes. "But I'm not an idiot, Marnie. I know when something is fishy. And the last time I ignored my suspicions, Chairman Rose nearly destroyed Galar!"
Marnie stood up and pointed at Raihan. "And the last time you followed your suspicions, you harassed poor Allister with claims that he had died twenty years ago!"
"And I still stand by those claims! That kid is one hundred percent a ghost!"
Marnie clenched her fists and sat back down, her eyes reminiscent of a stalking Liepard. "Stay away from Gloria's personal life."
Raihan scoffed. "Is that a threat?"
"No, it's a promise that I will kick your bombastic arse all the way to Kalos if you don't."
Raihan picked up his binder and started walking out of Marnie's office. "I will find out what's going on.
Marnie shouted as Raihan left, "I'll get Piers to assist me in your arse whooping if I need to!"
It was a vain hope, but it was all Raihan had left. Marnie hadn't revealed anything about Gloria except a fiercely protective attitude towards her, and Raihan’s visits to the other gym leaders somehow proved even less fruitful. Bede was always uncooperative and antagonistic to Raihan's efforts, but maybe he might know something about Gloria, or at least inadvertently reveal something in his insults. "Bede, do you know why Gloria has been acting so strangely?"
Bede froze as he exited the Ballonlea gym's back entrance at the end of his work day. He snapped his neck to the side to see Raihan standing in a casual green t-shirt and jeans and holding a big black binder in both hands. "I hope you're not here to bother me with another of your idiotic conspiracies."
Raihan presented the binder to Bede. "Trust me, it pains me to tell you I might need your help."
"And it gives me no pain to tell you 'no.'" Bede turned and began his way home, but Raihan had come prepared for this. Bede had a fragile ego, and that was a weakness Raihan could exploit.
"And here I thought the great Bede would be offended that the champion of Galar has stopped visiting his gym."
That got Bede's attention. He spun around and marched back up to Raihan. "What are you talking about?!"
Raihan opened the binder to the calendar pages and showed Bede. "See for yourself. Gloria stopped visiting you three months ago.
Bede pointed out the numerous blank spots. "Look again. She stopped visiting everyone."
"Yes, but she still sometimes visits the other gym leaders. She stopped visiting you almost entirely." Raihan gave a wide smirk. "Don't tell me you didn't notice the champion ignoring you!"
"Give me that!" Bede ripped the binder from Raihan and quickly flipped through the numerous pages. "Holy shit, Raihan! This all qualifies as stalking!"
Raihan crossed his arms. "All the information here is publically available. Even the photos were all taken in public locations, and I didn't even take them. Other people did and then uploaded them online. Nothing in there is illegal."
Bede stopped for a moment on the Galar's Gossip page. "No, but it makes a damn good case for Gloria to issue you a restraining order! And a gossip magazine, really? Didn't even know they still made these things."
"I keep tabs on all the biggest League members. This binder is just the compilation of Gloria's suspicious activity. I've got a filing cabinet for every Gym Leader back home. And for your information, I only have that magazine because I noticed it in the supermarket check-out lane while I was thinking about Gloria."
Bede settled on the photos of the cloaked figure. His eyes narrowed. "Then I stand corrected. This makes an excellent case for paranoid schizophrenia."
"It's not paranoia when I was proven right about Chairman Rose! And because I dismissed it at the time, innocent people were put in danger!"
Bede looked up from the binder. "That's post-traumatic stress disorder."
"Bede, it's just to make sure everyone is safe. I don't feel sane unless I do all this."
"Sounds like obsessive compulsive disorder."
"It's also a habit. Once I started doing it, I couldn't stop."
"Possibly autism spectrum disorder? Or maybe just an addictive personality. That would make sense, given your constant need for social media likes."
"How do you know all these disorders?!"
Bede shrugged and handed the binder back to Raihan. "I used to be a psychic pokémon trainer. Most of my pokémon still have a psychic type, actually. And unlike you, I do see a shrink. I can give you her business card if you'd like."
Raihan almost stopped to consider Bede's words, but then he noticed Bede never answered his question. "You're deflecting! Did you or did you not notice that Gloria has been ignoring you?"
Bede paused. "That assumes she's been ignoring me."
"So she has been visiting you? Just off the books?" Raihan was giddy. He had caught Bede hiding something, but he wasn't yet sure what it was. He felt like one of those lawyers in the courtroom shows Raihan sometimes watched.
Raihan could see the gears turning in Bede's head. "I never said that—"
"So she hasn't been visiting?" Raihan regained his smirk.
"Raihan, not everything is a conspiracy!"
"Then give me a straight answer."
"I would if you would just shut your mouth for 30 seconds!" Bede rubbed his forehead. "Have you perhaps considered that there are other methods of communicating with Gym Leaders other than direct formal visits? I know Gloria hasn't been ignoring me because we've been messaging, you moron! I would have thought the man spying on all of us would've realized that Gloria and I have become close friends over the past few years! Maybe you would be close friends with her, too, if you didn't stalk everyone you know!"
Raihan pressed further. "That's still a radical change of behavior, and it all coincides with the appearance of the cloaked figure!"
"The cloaked figure?" Bede started laughing. "This is rich! Here you are trying to play detective, but you haven't yet noticed the obvious!"
"What do you mean? Don't tell me you think the cloaked figure is a lover, too!"
Bede was now the one smirking. "I don't know if I should tell you what I mean."
"Don't tease me!"
Bede's smirk grew wider. "What do I get in return if I tell you?"
Raihan thought for a moment. "I will leave you completely alone for a month."
"And?"
Raihan sighed. Bede would accept nothing less than the humiliation of Raihan as payment. "I'll tell my fans you beat me at an arm wrestling competition."
"Deal." Bede took the binder back from Raihan and flipped to the photos of the cloaked figure and pointed at two in particular. "Look at these photos. The 'figure' is up against the same surroundings here, but you can see that the height of the figures are clearly different. This isn't the same person at all, it's multiple people. I give two theories for this. The first is that Gloria has been initiated into some kind of cult, and multiple cult members keep visiting her house all dressed in the standard cult attire."
Raihan nodded. "What's the second theory?"
Bede's smirk returned in full force. "The second theory is that maybe the people visiting her are sick of people like you spying on their every movement and just want some actual privacy." Bede pulled out a brochure and handed it to Raihan along with the binder. "But since you're so concerned that the champion has gotten sick of public affairs, how about you try visiting every event in Galar for three years? Here's a good place to start. I expect to see you at tomorrow night's exhibition match for charity, along with every other big event on that Ballonlea schedule."
Bede walked off as Raihan processed what had just happened. Raihan's plan had worked. Bede had just unintentionally revealed something critical in his taunting.
Raihan had long since known about the height discrepancies, but they only started appearing in the last month and a half. It made sense that someone paranoid enough to completely hide their face and body would start taking measures to further obscure their identity once they realized people were tracking their visits.
No, it was the fact that Bede himself knew about the height discrepancies that was a crucial clue. It had taken two weeks of intense trigonometry for Raihan and the internet detectives tracking this mystery to confirm the several inch fluctuation between the recent snapshots. There was no way Bede could be so certain about it after just glancing at the photos for the first time.
That meant that Bede had to have already known about the discrepancies, which left only two options: either Bede had already been tracking this conspiracy as contrary to his implications, or he was involved somehow in the precautions the cloaked figure was taking.
Raihan glanced down at the schedule Bede had given him. What if—?