Sinister Twists

Crimebot came up empty. The entire cabin and, as an extended search revealed, car had been totally devoid of clues. "What now," he asked his friend Ross. Ross plopped down next to Crimebot, who himself was sitting next to the corpse of the man who had been shot.
"I don't know, this goes way beyond all my years of police expertise!" Ross exclaimed quietly.
"Mine too," bleeped Crimebot, who's face servos had contorted into a look of utter dejection.

Just then, as quick as a shadow, a black figure raced past the door. "Did you see that?" yell-asked Ross of Crimebot.
"I sure did, let's go!" Crimebot yell-answered, jumping to his feet and bursting out into the train car's corridor.

Following swiftly after the fast-moving object, Ross bumped into an old lady who was returning to her cabin. Apologizing quickly, Ross took up the chase again. He and Crimebot soon after arrived at the end of the car. The door leading to the next car was shut firmly and hadn't seen recent use. Crimebot motioned towards the bathroom door, which had clearly just been opened, (don't ask me how it was clear, it just was) and Ross nodded. Crimebot took a firm grasp of the handle and...

... burst into the bathroom! But the bathroom was empty, save for a note on the mirror that read "Looking forward sometimes requires looking backwards!". At the bottom of the note it also read "P.S. Sometimes being now!"

Ross was befuddled. Where did the black shape go? He couldn't have doubled-back past them, unless... no, that's impossible! Ross tapped Crimebot on the shoulder and told him to follow him back to the cabin with the murdered man in it. As they returned to the cabin, they found it was totally empty, the corpse of the man missing with not even a trace of blood. Attached to his seat was another note. This time it read "You see me but you can not catch me, you hear me but you cannot see me, what am I?". There was another PS near the bottom of the page that read "P.S. The answer is a tree. Sorry, I'm bad at riddles," to which Crimebot agreed, this mysterious assailant was really awful at riddles.

Again, Ross was confused. "A tree? What the hell is that supposed to mean? JUST WHAT THE HELL, CRIMEBOT?" he blurted out angrily, his face muscles twisting into a look of anger to match his angry blurting. Crimebot blooped at Ross to calm down.
"Hmmm... WAIT! OFF COURSE!" exclaimed Crimebot after thinking a little bit about what to say. (That's why he said "Hmmm...") Ross asked Crimebot very slowly and calmly what Crimebot had figured out. So slowly and calmly, in fact, that it sounded like he had a brain problem. Crimebot blooped at Ross to become slightly less calm, then answered "The answer is quite simple, you see," he said to Ross, building up for suspense. "He's in the arboretum car!" said Crimebot at long last.
"Brilliant!" yelled Ross.

Alerted by the sound of their voice, the ticket-collector stepped into the car. "Tickets, please," he said in a monotone voice.
"I've got your ticket right here!" Crimebot yelled in defiance, before pulling out his ticket and handing it to the ticket collector*. The ticket collector stamped it and then stamped Ross' (who had done the same), then walked to the next cabin to try to find more tickets to stamp.

Ross and Crimebot then headed to the arboretum car, which was near the front of the train, to solve the mystery. Little did they know that lurking in the dense jungles of the arboretum car lay a horror so unspeakable that I cannot tell you what it is until next episode...




*Author's Note: This is funny because on the original train ride from Omegalopolis to Darkwinternight from the amalgamated chronicles of "Dark Legacy X-Treme Online" (the precursor to this blog, on which this story is based closely) Crimebot was asked for a ticket and yelled "I've got your ticket right here!" and then shot the ticket-collector with his laser.