The rumour started the way all serious Lucky Now rumours start.
Quietly.
Incorrectly.
And before anyone had finished their first coffee.
Someone swore they’d seen the Po Po downtown.
Not, like, normal police.
Undercover police.
“They were asking questions,” someone said.
“What kind of questions?”
“Normal ones. That’s how you know.”
By 10 a.m., the town had decided—collectively and without evidence—that officers were roaming Lucky Now pretending to be regular customers, specifically to make sure Fern was following marijuana regulations.
Fern found out when a man walked into her shop, looked around slowly, and said,
“So… how’s business?”
Fern stared at him.
“Fine,” she replied.
He nodded too much and left without buying anything.
“Oh no,” Fern muttered. “That’s cop behavior.”
Within an hour, everything was suspicious.
A guy with a clipboard? Definitely Po Po.
Someone paying with exact change? Undercover.
A person asking what strains were “popular with the youth”?
Absolutely a trap.
Nugs leaned into it immediately.
“I knew it,” he whispered, standing behind a plant he was not hidden by. “This is about compliance.”
“Nugs,” Fern said, “you once tried to price things based on vibes.”
“Exactly,” he said. “They hate that.”
The Mayor arrived mid-day, coffee already in hand, took one look at the mood, and sighed.
“No one is here to shut us down,” The Mayor said calmly.
“That’s exactly what someone would say if the Po Po were here,” someone whispered.
Glady appeared, arms crossed, observing everyone with intense satisfaction.
“I told you,” she said. “This is what happens when people enjoy things.”
The rumours spiraled.
People began acting normal, which made everything worse.
Customers suddenly over-enunciated.
Staff triple-checked labels.
Someone tried to discreetly throw away a perfectly legal sticker because it “felt suspicious.”
One guy asked Fern, “So… hypothetically… what are the rules?”
Fern blinked. “Which ones?”
He nodded, scribbled nothing in a notebook, and left.
“That’s him,” Nugs said. “That’s absolutely him.”
By late afternoon, it turned out the “undercover officer” was just a health inspector from out of town who had wandered in looking for a bathroom and asked too many polite questions.
And the other “officers”?
- A podcast host
- A guy waiting for his ride
- Someone’s cousin visiting from three towns over
Fern closed up that evening, exhausted.
“So,” Nugs said, “we survived.”
Fern looked around. “We didn’t survive anything. Nothing happened.”
The Mayor took a long sip of coffee.
“That,” The Mayor said, “is exactly how you know it was a normal day.”
Glady sniffed. “Still suspicious.”
By nightfall, Lucky Now relaxed.
The Po Po was not in town.
No one was undercover.
Everything was fine.
Until someone said, very quietly,
“…but what if they come back tomorrow?”
And just like that, Lucky Now stayed alert. 🚓🌿😄
