TAWOG: Instinct

The Deal

The Deal

Penny and Gumball stood in the galleries of the museum with wide eyes and open mouths. Normally this was where patrons of the museum would admire priceless works of art, but at the moment there were more cops here than observers. It was easy to see why. Several of the spaces on the walls were bare, an outline visible on the wallpaper, indications of where a painting once was. And the thing is, this wasn't anything new. Well before the incident with Green and the abyssalis cat the museum had been robbed multiple times, the paintings missing from the walls having been stolen over the course of several months.

“Again?” inquired Gumball. “This is insane!”

“And it's horrible,” said Penny as she looked at the blank spot on the wall currently being investigated by police, blocked by crime scene tape, her eyes filling with tears. “That was my favorite painting! It was the best thing about visiting this place!”

“Don't worry, Penny. I'm sure they'll catch the crook who's doing this eventually,” said Gumball, taking Penny's hand and squeezing it reassuringly.

Penny sniffled, but gave him a grateful smile. Gumball returned the smile, but also sniffled. He couldn't help but tear up slightly too. Not for the same reason, but because he loves Penny so much that he couldn't help but tear up sympathetically for her as well. However, when he sniffed, something caught his attention. Something vaguely familiar.

“Huh?” he inquired, sniffing a few more times.

He let go of Penny's hand and got as close as possible to the crime scene as the crime scene tape would allow. There, he sniffed repeatedly.

“Gumball, what is it?” Penny asked, walking up beside him. 

“I smell something,” he answered, still sniffing.

“Uh, is it the cops?” Penny asked, looking at the food based cops, eyeing the one that looks like a hamburger. “Are you hungry? We can go for lunch if you'd like.”

“No no, this has nothing to do with that,” said Gumball, closing his eyes and focusing solely on one specific scent. “I smell something…vaguely familiar. And while it’s not something I smelled every day, I know I have smelled it sometime before.”

Gumball focused deeply on the smell, trying to allow its aggravatingly familiar presence to draw wherever he'd smelled it before to the surface of his mind. He knew this smell, and he felt as if the where he'd smelled it before was about to come up and hit him like a train…

…or a golf ball.

A certain incident involving a pitiful attempt to convince a would-be future father-in-law he was good enough for his daughter came to Gumball's mind, which unfortunately ended with him taking a speeding golf ball to the head. The smell here was eerily similar to how the guy he and Patrick played against that day smells, though much fainter. In fact, Gumball was probably only picking it up now thanks to his heightened sense of smell. But could that mean…

No…no. He…he probably just visited the museum recently.

“Hey officers?” Gumball asked one of the cops working the scene.

“Uh huh?” asked the Donut Cop.

“May I ask when this painting was stolen?” asked Gumball.

“Last night, around midnight,” informed the Donut Cop. “Don't worry, we'll find the scumbag responsible.”

But Gumball wasn't listening. He'd turned on the spot and walked away, his expression horrified. If the painting was stolen last night then there could be only one explanation why “his” scent was here. After all, “he” couldn't have visited the museum today, and Gumball knew this for a fact, because “he” had been with someone particularly close to Penny since that morning, and before the museum even opened.