Complementaries

Complementaries Part of Pre-arc ← Pre-arc Mission 7, ??? Mission 7 → Release Date Oct 7th, 2012 - Part 1 Apr 5th, 2013 - Ch.1 End Author(s) PurpleKecleon Illustrator(s) PurpleKecleon Links All parts

“Dear, could you grab the wooden Totodiles for me?”

Payapa grabbed an armful without complaint, but one fell and clattered to the floor. A sharp look from her mother was all she received, and nothing more. It could have been worse, and it could have happened in the presence of her father. Happily, this was not the case today. She bent down and grabbed the little trinket, nearly dropping another.

“It would go a lot quicker if you just made two trips, dear. There’s no need to take it all in one go like that.”

Payapa considered this, but ignored it. She didn’t really want to be helping stock the day’s items to begin with. It was likely that she wasn’t even going to be allowed to help sell to customers that day, anyway. Thus she was bored by the task. What use was it stocking everything if she wasn’t going to be selling it? Someone else could do such boring work. Well, that’s what she’d have liked. Anana was unavailable; currently, the more respectful daughter was going over some things with their father (What things? Merchant things, things Payapa wasn’t privy to quite yet.)

So, she was stuck doing boring stocking, learning all about the systems of organization that led to more money flowing into the hands of the Kecleon family. That was always the goal.

Letting her mind wander, Payapa decided that she would always get someone else to deal with that crap when she had her own store. (And it wasn’t really a question of if, but when. It was actually a little bold to dream such, considering that their parents hadn’t even decided she was worth training alongside Anana yet.)

Eventually, after a few more trips of awkwardly carrying boxes and stacks of things to her mother, Payapa was done with her duty that morning. In truth, she could have stayed and helped actually arrange the items on the shelves, make sure everything looked nice before the main shop opened-- but she was hardly interested. What was the point? She didn’t really care how it all looked if she wasn’t even going to get to help run the place.

She was vaguely aware that this made her look lazy in the eyes of her parents, perpetuating their decision to favor training Anana in salesmanship, but it didn’t really affect her decision much. If anything, it only gave a slight pause to her step before she left the building.

And so the day was hers! The entire rest of the day was free to her to do with as she pleased. Anana wouldn’t have that luxury until maybe the afternoon, after the busy noon shift was over and their father took over selling by himself. Or their mother. This was more and more the case lately, as there were often things to be done and overlooked in some little village their father also managed. It was just big enough that it was a good place for shipments to pass through on their way to Alomomola City: a quaint little place called Tao Village. Payapa didn’t figure she’d like it very much, as the city had really captured her heart. So many Pokemon! So many things to do! There was really never any end to the entertainment that could be found in the city, and this tickled her childish sense of wonder greatly.

After wandering around for a bit, Payapa left the pier. It was a nice pier and all, and housed a lot of different stores along its length, but she knew them all too well to be very interested in any of them at the moment. She decided that perhaps she would find someone to play with until Anana was done with her own work for the day.

Payapa didn’t really have any particular friends she could call on to want to spend time with her; she only really knew of some kids from the rough neighborhood who sometimes would throw a ball with her, or maybe play in constructed forts near their shanty homes. She had a suspicion, one that had started to insidiously creep its way into the back of her mind, that these kids didn’t particularly care for her. It was hard to place, but she felt that this assessment was more-or-less correct. She wanted to be trusting like many small children often are, but had started rather early to pick apart motivations... making it incredibly difficult to be a friend without some level of reservation.

But these creeping thoughts didn’t matter so much when she just wanted someone to play with for a few hours. So, she dismissed them and carried on.

The foreign merchants lining the streets--having done business with her parents countless times--recognized Payapa and nodded as she passed. She acknowledged them with a half grin. The day was still hers, so she could afford smiles to those boring adults.

Eventually, as she reached the poorer area of the city, she noticed something in particular. There was a Pichu with a little green cloth tied around his head like a bandana, and this fellow was standing very high up on a pile of discarded wood and pieces of houses. Much rubble lined the base of this mountain of refuse, and Payapa was sure that if a fall was taken from the top to the bottom, someone would have a very unpleasant morning.

Luckily, this kid knew what he was doing. He made a giant leap, and just when Payapa was certain this kid was crazy, a Taillow darted out of nowhere and caught the Pichu on its back. It was smaller than the Pichu even, and still this tiny bird had managed such a feat. Someone had confidence, apparently, and rightfully so.

While she didn’t particularly know these kids, Payapa thought she might have a good time with them. Maybe she’d spot the other kids she normally played with while they were out and about. But first, she needed to get their attention.

As the pair made their way around the sky, something snapped the underside of the Taillow’s belly and the force caused the Pichu to go flying and into the dirt. The Taillow had nearly crashed, but avoided it at the last moment with a sharp u-turn away from some rotting wood jutting out of the earth.

The Pichu was understandably confused. And annoyed. “Gail!” he cried out in a squeaky voice (that was incredibly hard to take seriously.) “You tryin to kill me, eh? What was that?!”

This “Gail” was irked too. “It wasn’t my fault, Chulo! Something smacked me!” She flitted around near her friend when she spotted a very conspicuous Kecleon. “It was you!” she cried, landing next to Chulo.

Payapa grinned. “I want a ride too! But you gotta be more careful than that, or someone could knock you around like I did. So I’d say your speed needs some work, prolly.”

This sent Gail into a little flurry of rage. “What’s your problem?! You wanna make me crash? What’s your deal you little snot? Get out of here!” she shrieked, hopping forward and puffing her chest out. If the intent was to make her look more intimidating, it didn’t really particularly work. All she managed to do was look a little bit puffier. “You’re too fat to ride anyway, you’d break my back!”

Payapa’s good mood held steadfast until that last remark cracked it a bit. She would have figured out a way to get a ride out of the girl, but now she just kind of wanted to beat them both up.

Chulo didn’t say anything, merely watched. He seemed to be racking his brain for something, trying to recall some life-saving piece of information. Finally, recognition washed over his face, and he whispered something to Gail. Payapa couldn’t quite make it out, but she was getting pretty steamed.

Whatever Chulo had said to Gail had shifted her demeanor entirely, however. Gail did a complete 180 in a matter of moments. “Just playin’ around. I’ll give you a ride if you want.”

Payapa was caught off guard. What had changed? She wasn’t entirely sure, but didn’t dwell on it lest the little bird change its mind. Flying was something she had always liked, and finally someone was going to let her in on this awesome experience. She made a mental note to gloat about this later to Anana. She made a second mental note to remember to leave these two behind before Anana was done working so that she wouldn’t have the chance to ride as well, for what fun would it be to gloat if her sister had also gotten to fly?

Payapa approached the two without visible caution, though she was eyeing them warily. Just in case. Gail seemed to be eyeing her just as warily. The Pichu extended a paw in friendly greeting as she got close enough to them, though, and dispelled the tense atmosphere. “Hey chica, I’m Chulo. This is Gail. What brings you out to our little place?” There was something about the way he said the words, something that implied she wasn’t supposed to be here in their territory. Or perhaps she had imagined this subtext.

She shrugged it off and introduced herself. “Well, I’m Payapa. I’m just looking to play and stuff. My sister’s busy til like, I dunno, noon or something. You guys know Rionna? She has a cool ball.”

Chulo’s eyes widened. “You know that kid? She doesn’t really talk to a whole lot of us...”

Gail fluttered her wings a little. “She’s kinda weird. Whaddya do with her?”

Payapa considered this. “I dunno, sometimes we try to hit the ball over stuff. We practice a lot of moves and stuff together. It’s kinda fun. Why? What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s quiet and weird!” Chulo answered hastily. As if in afterthought upon realizing those reasons weren’t very adequate, he added, “Plus, she always finds us in hide and seek. I feel like she prolly cheats or something, it’s garbage.”

Payapa took this as a personal challenge and leaned forward aggressively, as if to close the gap between her and the other two. “I didn’t know she played that game! I bet I could beat her, I’m pretty much the best at it.” It was easy to state such a thing with confidence. Kecleon were, as many knew, able to turn invisible at whim. Except for a small stripe across their belly, that was.

Chulo furrowed his brow. “You really think so? She’s never lost a game, y’know. This chica’s got some mad skills, I don’t think you’d be winning.”

Agitated now, Payapa’s tail uncurled and whipped around erratically. “I’m the best, I’m telling you! I’m even better than my sister. She’s no good at fighting or hiding or anything like that. But I am. I’m awesome at it.”

Gail looked uneasy. Chulo continued on anyway in the same manner. “Nah, I’m tellin ya, I’ll even bet on it. I bet you... a whole box of berries that this Rionna’s gonna blow you outta the water. She’s got some way.”

Payapa instantly ate up this bet. “Uh huh, whatever! Sure, I’ll bet that. I’ve never lost a game. Never.”

However, Chulo still wasn’t shaken or moved at all by her confidence. In fact, he looked delighted that she had taken him up on this challenge. It was then that she realized that despite her confidence, he had bet anyway, and that they probably had nothing to offer in exchange. But they would surely bother her to death for the food in the event that she actually... No, that was stupid to think. She wasn’t going to lose. What was a better trump card than near-complete invisibility? There was really no way to cheat against that. As a matter of fact, it was more likely that she would be branded the cheater here, despite using a natural ability.

After an hour or two of searching, the triplet stumbled upon their quarry. It took a lot of extensive searching through the torn planks and fallen walls of northern Alomomola, but finally Rionna was within sight. It was purely by accident; huddled around her ball, Rionna had been taking a nap under a partially built stairway when Chulo accidentally collapsed one of the stairs and nearly landed upon her body below. Her first reaction was to stumble back, and for this error she suffered a lump to the back of her head courtesy of the rotted wood.

Payapa looked over her opponent carefully. There didn’t seem to be any immediate, obvious tricks. Rionna was a scruffy child. A tough, yet quiet, Riolu. She wore a tattered little poncho (which Payapa’s parents would have loathed to see within 20 feet of either of their children), and perpetually carried with her the only other possession to her name, her prized toy ball. It was remarkably sturdy despite the beatings it frequently took from Rionna, her brothers, and Payapa. It wasn’t a looker, but it was a fun toy, and that was what mattered to the children.

Rionna wasn’t very pleased to have been woken up from her nap in such a way, but this simply said to Payapa that this girl wasn’t going to be much of a challenge for her hide-and-seek prowess. If she couldn’t even take a successful nap in a good hiding spot, how on earth was she to find such a Kecleon of stealth? After a little bit of chit-chat, Rionna learned of both the reason they sought her out and of the wager on her head. She agreed to play the game. Payapa became suspicious.

Eventually, the question had to be asked. Rionna was the one to do it. “So, which one of us is ‘spost to seek first?”

“Well, you’re not gonna find me, so I might as well go first. That sound all righty with you?”

Rionna stood in silence for a few moments. Chulo and Gail looked at her with slight apprehension. Eventually, Rionna replied. “That’s fine. But what if you find me? Is it my turn to seek then? Or do we end the game?”

At this, the tiny Kecleon laughed. It was a little rude and a little obnoxious, but the idea that she should lose the game was so absurd that she was unable to contain it. Chulo looked on with unease, but Rionna maintained her proud stance. Payapa cut off her laughing upon realizing the others did not find it quite so hilarious, and then fumbled around for her next words. “Well,” she started, “I wanna finish this game ‘fore my sister gets out here. So if you can find me before... hmm.” Payapa looked toward the sky, briefly calculating the time. “If I can’t find you before about noon, then we’ll just end the game and ya’ll win the bet. Kay?”

This sounded plenty fair to Chulo, but Gail seemed annoyed by the suggested longevity of the game. “That’s way too much time! Anyone could find her by then!”

Rionna spoke before Payapa could protest. “I think that sounds fair. In hide and seek I usually like to both... hide and seek, but I’m okay if you just want me to hide.”

This was not what anyone had expected to hear from the Riolu. Least of all, Payapa. That Rionna should agree so easily was disconcerting. It made her reconsider the order the game should be played in. “Yanno what,” she said, sauntering up to Rionna, “I think I actually wanna hide first. I happen to like it more, and if we’re gonna only be doing one round here to pick the winner, I wanna do the thing I like best. That a problem?”

Rionna clutched her ball momentarily, then eased up a bit. “That’s okay with me. I’ll look for you.”

Perfect, Payapa thought. I don’t even have to do the boring part. I bet I can find some sweet hiding spots today. But which one is the best?

The next course of action was to put Rionna in a dark shanty to count loudly and away from the others. Chulo and Gail scattered in opposite directions, and Payapa immediately sprinted off when the count began. She wasn’t terribly speedy, but she could move it when she wanted. Playing with Rionna had helped her reflexes quite a bit. There was hardly another child so physically adept in the entire bay, counting even those children of the dojo she passed on her way to the shanties. Rionna was strong and sharp.

After a short trek, still within range of the hide and seek count, she eventually happened upon a large shell of a building. It had been one she overlooked many times before, but that very fact made it seem like an ideal hiding place. This building looked more complete than the others, but it was still missing many boards, and had a torn banner advertising a shop that had long since ceased to exist. It seemed a little spooky, despite no ghost sightings really having occurred near there... like the world was simply ajar nearby.

Not wanting to lose the bet, she entered the building through a hole in the side of the boards. Her mother would have nearly fainted to see such a dangerous thing done (all those splinters you could get! Oh, dear, you’re going to get infected!), and her father would have beaten her bottom from purple to dark blue. Regardless, she had crawled through the hole anyway.

The building was two stories tall, but the ceiling reached the very top of the building for approximately half of it. The feeling of the building was terribly oppressive in spite of the very open space provided by the second story only taking up the back half of the building. There was a musty taste to the air that Payapa hated, and she was sure she could almost hear voices whisp--

No, that was nothing. The more she listened, the more she was sure of the absolute quiet inside the building. The only noise came from outside, but even that was terribly muffled. It perhaps should not have been, due to the holes lining the building’s roof and letting some precious light in, but it was. Payapa dismissed her unease with the place and situation and scouted out a good hiding spot. Happily, there were many abandoned pieces of furniture. Tables, wardrobes, cabinets...

Wait. There were an awful lot of tracks all over the ground for a building she never saw anyone really enter or exit.

It was peculiar, she admitted, but she couldn’t figure out what it meant or what it might imply. So, of course, she reasoned that it must have been where other kids played. Even if some of the tracks were rather large.

A minute or two passed, and she realized she had been zoning out staring at the floor boards. If she didn’t haul her butt, she was going to be losing in a pitiful display, and quite soon. There was no way she wanted to live with that: an eternal stain on her perfect record of stealth in this so-called game. Hide-and-seek was a valuable life skill! She needed to be able to surprise her enemies! Or hide from them. Even as a child, she knew it was important to get good at camouflaging.

Finally, she settled upon hiding on the second story. She climbed up the wall with a tiny bit of effort with her terribly convenient lizard pads, and then did the same to reach the top of an antique-looking cabinet. It was very ornate, it seemed, though it was hard to tell in the poor lighting of nook she’d chosen. This particular cabinet’s top dropped a little, so that if Payapa had wished, she could lie down and not be seen at eye level with the top of her choice hiding spot. It hid her like a box might, but was very tall and hard to reach for most tiny Pokemon.

If nothing else, Payapa figured that Rionna would want to avoid looking in difficult places first. This would leave Rionna short on time after a while, and then, Payapa reasoned, Rionna would have to quickly check places that weren’t too terribly difficult to reach.

She became very glad that this building’s staircase was utterly collapsed, with the top of the staircase mostly seeming to float against the side of the wall. The leap up was probably at least 15 feet up, and Payapa simply did not think Rionna had it in her to make such a needless jump early on when there were plenty of other places to check first. They had a small boundary established, but it still contained many abandoned and dilapidated buildings in its perimeter. Furthermore, Payapa was also inclined to believe Rionna would think to check in an area above an old cabinet near the ceiling. There were even other tracks all about so that hers wouldn’t stick out! It was perfect. There was no way she could be caught, invisible or not. But, for good measure, she turned from purple to as invisible as a Kecleon could get.

And so she waited.

She let her mind wander to the previous week in the muggy silence above it all. Her father had taken another extended trip to that village he managed and had returned, angry and disgruntled. Again. This was not unusual, but it had caused tension in the household. Again.

Despite Alomomola being the bigger responsibility, their father was the head of everything in Tao. This was because of a pesky arrangement that had been set up by his great grandfather, Micle Nomel. Mr. Nomel had made some bad choices near the end of his life, and as a result, half of the village’s worth was owned by the family of some wealthy asshole cats out in Windswept Woods. They had a personal resort and villa, and came to own a large amount of both domestic and foreign land. Or, this is what Payapa often heard her father reiterate in anger. He was never really one to let it go. Apparently they just wouldn’t sell the other half of Tao to him for some cat-related reason (what did that even mean? She didn’t know), and something about their deed required their father to maintain the village perfectly without any help from them, or risk something-something, Payapa didn’t know. She stopped caring about the little details, only heard the bitter anger in his voice every time he’d returned from a trip and the topic was reignited.

“So why dontcha just not go there anymore?” she had asked one morning. She was getting uncomfortable with her dad’s grumblings. Continually her eyes darted toward the entryway door. Her honest intention was to spend the day building sand castles with her sister, away from the unease that threatened to crawl its way under everyone’s skin. She didn’t want any of that stuff. That was for adults.

Agave regarded her with harsh incredulity that the girl’s question hardly deserved. “What’re you, stupid? Ain’t givin’ that piece o’ land up. You know how nice it is? Central spot, easy to get to from just about everywhere on this miserable continent? Even if it don’t do much itself, it’s great for gettin stuff out here wit’ not much hassle. Learn you that now, girl. I ain’t repeatin it again.”

“Oh... well, can’t you get someone else to do it? Me ‘n Anana miss you somethin fierce when you’re all out all the time and stuff...” she said, telling a half truth. They mostly liked when he wasn’t being angry over things they didn’t understand, and that only really happened when he stayed at home without having to leave. Payapa was sure she missed her dad when he was gone, but often forgot that feeling after each of his returns. His good nature as a father seemed to have faded over the years as both children aged.

Agave opened his mouth after a little flaring of his tiny nostrils, and then

Rionna was staring Payapa in the face, peering from the side of the cabinet the Kecleon had erroneously chosen. She didn’t even know how to react. The whole thing didn’t make any sense, and it took several long moments before she realized she had been discovered. Namely, it was the moment where Rionna poked her with a single claw and spoke the dreaded words in a tiny whisper: “Found ya.”

This was impossible. Well, clearly not. This was just not right, regardless. How? It made no sense, it made absolutely none, and it was still not quite clicking in her head. Her mind flashed back to Chulo’s talk of Rionna and her cheating at hide-and-seek. Had she cheated? The lost pride of the Kecleon demanded that she find out how Rionna’s little feat had been accomplished. Settling for less was just not going to cut it.

Payapa’s blood started to boil, her head felt hot, and her words came out a little more like an angry bark. “How’d you know?”

Rionna looked startled. “Shush! We gotta get outta here. You picked a really bad spot. I didn’t even wanna get you...”

“Huh? I don’t wanna give you guys all that fruit anyway. You cheated, didn’t you? I don’t want to really play with you anymore, you guys are all cheaters. They told you where I went, didn’t they?”

Rionna’s expression darkened, became serious. “Come on. I don’t care about that. We can pretend I didn’t find you. Let’s get out of here before something bad goes on.” The Riolu didn’t wait for a response and simply dropped down out of Payapa’s sight. There was a tiny pitter-patter of feet as she distanced herself from the cabinet, but it was extremely quiet. Her paw pads must be soft, Payapa thought distractedly. Good for sneaking up on others.

She didn’t quite understand what that girl was going on about, but didn’t really find much use for sitting around in a spot exhausted of its worth. She climbed down (with less noise than Rionna had, she noted to herself), and followed her playmate to the precipice. It looked like Rionna was going to simply jump from the second story. Before Payapa could even ask, that’s precisely what happened. A soft thump was heard from below, and as she looked over the edge to see what had become of the victorious seeker, she simply saw Rionna silently motioning for Payapa to come down. She was still confusing the hell out of Payapa.

“Come on! What’s going on?” she shouted down below. Maybe she wasn’t ready to leave the building yet, after all. Maybe she wanted to know why Rionna was playing hush-hush, first.

Rionna’s hairs pricked up, and the funny little-big ear things on the side of her head quivered. “Stop!” she hoarsely whispered, “You’re gonna call them up! I’m not gonna be able to help you much if that happens!”

Indignant, Payapa continued to shout, though her sense of danger had slowly started to awaken itself. She wanted to defy Rionna, partly out of anger at having been found, and partly because she just wanted to do the opposite of what she’d been told. That latter bit had perhaps been partly inspired by her anger, and maybe partly by the little bit of ego that had been chipped off when she had lost her perfect record.

This frightened the Riolu girl off, leaving Payapa alone (save her big mouth; there was no ridding that). She stared down below and felt quite victorious. Well, she wanted to feel victorious, but there was a certain level of fear brewing beneath her little scales. Something that was working its way throughout her whole body. She wondered if a ghost was nearby, but then remembered that ghosts weren’t all that scary. This was a fear of something else. Something with a giant... presence. Something oppressive.

Payapa backed away from the drop and nearly stumbled backwards. Her tail uncurled and twitched erratically. Something was coming from below, she could hear each of the creaky steps reverberating throughout her tiny spine and all she wanted to do was simply get out, go, leave, before this giant pressure consumed her. It was wrong, bad, like a thousand disasters about to hit, that feeling in the very back of your mind like the whole world will never be right and everything is forever hopeless. It was incredibly unbearable, and she had to resist the urge to cry out in both surprise and sadness. It only was with tremendous effort that she crawled back over to and up the cabinet, the top of which had failed to hide her minutes earlier.

A gruff, androgynous voice spoke up.

“All right, you’ve proven yourself enough for now, kid. Let’s find some real tasks for ya.”

Payapa shivered at this. The voice’s owner was without a doubt the cause of the dreadful feeling saturating the atmosphere in the seemingly-abandoned building.

A second voice spoke up, one that sounded vaguely familiar... was it a playmate? Young, feminine...

“Yeh, I’m ready. Which places we hittin first?”

And then they were gone, had exited the building as quickly as Rionna had. Payapa exhaled loudly, then covered her mouth, as if scared her breath would reach the ears of the departed pair.

The sun had barely started to rise, painting everything in the siblings’ room a slightly golden hue. Later on, this lovely morning sun would inspire the color in one of the Kecleon pair, but that day had not yet come. She was still green, her sister purple.

There was some sort of commotion going on downstairs, stirring the green one from her sleep. She stared at the wall blankly, still dreaming of running around on the beach. Increasingly lately, she hadn’t gotten much of a chance to play with her sister after work. It had been very frustrating, and was a little disconcerting at the same time. She couldn’t quite put the feeling into words-- the limited playtime was starting to signal their transition into being young adults, though she wouldn’t have been able to connect that until years later. They weren’t quite there yet, but, like the sun, adulthood was rising up from the horizon quickly and threatening to engulf the sisters both before either could take notice.

The other sibling, still asleep, had kicked out in her sleep, getting the green one right at the base of the tail.

“Eeyyah! Watch it!” she hissed, despite the sound slumber of her assailant.

The other one stretched out, then sleepily asked: “Huh? What time is it?”

“I dunno. Probably time to get up from the looks of it. Let’s go make breakfast for mom and dad.”

“Hey... Heeey... Anana,” the purple one said, rolling over in their tiny, shared bed, partially ending up on top of her sister, “this morning I want some eggs and some juice and some... I dunno, we got anything good?”

“Eh, I don’t know. Mom hasn’t grabbed stuff from the warehouse yet, I don’t think, so we might not have a lot until later today. I know at least we have a few eggs, and I know dad will want some of those, so that’s really all that’s important.” Anana rolled too, but her destination was straight off the bed. She landed on her feet and started toward the door. She turned back when she noticed there was not, in fact, an additional set of steps to be heard.

“Kecky! Come on! I’m not dragging you out of bed, you’re too heavy to do that to anymore!”

This apparently offended slightly. “No, you’re just weak! I can drag you around just fine!”

“Yeah, well, you spend all day playing dumb games! Of course you’d be better at that stuff! Whatever...” Anana trailed off. She didn’t want to get caught up in a petty fight, not on her day off from helping her parents out. If at all possible, she planned to enjoy it playing games with her sister. “I can probably find you some juice, if you cook while I go look. But I’m not going to do it if you just sit in bed! No rewards for lazybutts.”

Anana thought her words reached out enough, but then a pillow mysteriously worked itself on top of her sister’s head and the grave error was revealed in assuming anything would easily touch the girl. Except... “Look, I’ll go grab your favorite juice from the store really quick. Really quick! But you need to do your part too! Come on. Out of bed. A Payapa for a Payapa!”

This was the magic set of words (or, rather, the thinly veiled bribery) that Miss Payapa had been waiting for, unlocking her capability to both sit up in bed and cooperate with Anana. “Really? So just cook the eggs? I can do that.”

So many pretty patterns on all of the eggs! If there was something she could appreciate, it was the colors. They all came in different sizes, different colors, but all were about the same basic shape. Rounded oval. It wouldn’t occur to her until later on that day that these eggs still might have had a chance at life, and that they had been rather expensive to obtain. So, she cracked each one open and onto the frying pan, tossing a plethora of rainbow shell pieces into the trash bin during her time at the stove. Save the plain, white eggs for her mother, every other egg had been a beauty.

It had actually been a pretty color of purple egg that had helped spark her decision of primary color. Most Kecleon did it a little later, but she had decided very early on that her color was purple. Her parents joked (but not really) that it meant she had a little of both of them in her: the swift temper from her father, and the sense of wonder at the world from her mother. Lately, she didn’t think her mother really had much wonder left in her, but she kept their little quip in the back of her mind regardless. It was easy to take what parents said for fact, even if it was sort of a non-serious comment.

Finally, all the eggs had been cooked, all the plates served. Normally they had some sort of fruit, and sometimes another source of protein, but not this morning. Well, if Anana got back in time, there’d at least be juice. “Dad! Come get your plate! Is Anana back yet?”

“No she ain’t, and hold yer Ponytas, I’m comin! Gimme a minute girl,” he shouted from... somewhere in the back room. She didn’t really care what he was up to, but did care that he ate his eggs before they got cold. She didn’t prefer another incident with a smashed plate because he came to his food late, forgetting it had been his fault the meal had turned cold.

“No! It’s hot ‘n ready now, Dad! Come on! I picked a cool egg!”

A few seconds later, he finally emerged. “Alright, alright... well, go wake yer mom. She’s sleepin in. As usual,” he snorted.

Payapa, who had already adjusted herself and her seat at the table, was loathe to go fetch her mother. However, the consequences of not doing so would be worse. The entire family’s day would become pretty terrible if she didn’t wake her mom up pronto. Still... she was really irritated that her own food had the chance of becoming cold. It ruined the enjoyment of the eggs! “But Dad, I--” was all she could muster before she got a lash to the face. She fought back warm tears, hardly realizing what had happened before her eyes reacted. She tentatively placed a hand to her stinging cheek, and averted her gaze from his harsh glare.

“Yes?”

“Dad, I just want to eat my eggs...”

“I betcha do. We’ll be havin a talk about that later, anyway. It’s about time. Go fetch your mother.”

She pawed at her cheek a little more, considering her options. She really just wanted to enjoy her breakfast at its best, but wasn’t sure she wanted to take a lashing to the bottom that morning for the sake of being defiant. It was a tough choice. Either way, she wasn’t going to get to eat warm eggs. Her mother was notoriously hard to wake from a deep slumber, and often seemed to use naps as a way to escape reality. Payapa’s heart sank a little, wondering what the rest of the day had in store.

Finally, after moments more of deliberation, she decided that today was not a day to stand up to her dad. On previous occasions, she had argued with him and ended up in trouble over the most mundane of things, taking lashings for refusing to apologize for the way she’d said this or that (and still never having apologized for such follies). As a tiny child, it was as if she couldn’t fathom why she might be asked to do these things, and was offended at the proposition. As she got older, she started to understand that sometimes you had to fake it in order to get along. Payapa thought her sister had picked up on this much earlier than she herself had.

So, for the rare chance of playing with Anana later that day, she had made the equally rare decision to swallow her pride. She scooted her chair out and hopped out of her seat without much enthusiasm.

Humming a little ditty she’d heard some customers singing the other day, Anana made her way along the path back to their house. It was hardly a long walk, but she had forgotten to bring any money to the little stall near their place, and thus had to assure the owners she would bring it later after breakfast. It would have taken too long to get it from their own warehouse; that was at least another ten minutes each way, and eggs did not take very long to cook. Oh well. She was in a relatively good mood.

Along the way, almost right before the corner you had to turn at to reach their home, was a furniture maker’s house. He had a very reflective window, the large kind used to display wares. So, of course, there were ornate pieces of furniture behind it. But what caught Anana’s attention was her reflection. Her pale green, with her deep, orange facial stripes...

Payapa had been right...

It really was kind of ugly.

She frowned a little, slowing enough to regard her unfavorable color for an extended period of time, and then picked up the pace once more. Maybe she would be able to decide a better color soon, but she just didn’t know what it was. Not yet.

All thoughts of could-bes left her head the moment she walked through the front door. The dead silence from the breakfast table was an immediate signal that something had happened during her brief absence. Some sort of fight. Anana frowned further. If this was a sign of things to come...

She took dainty steps to the kitchen, attempting to feign a happy mood, pretending to be oblivious to all that was wrong with the family picture. She had found that if you just acted like things were good, then sometimes others played along, and that was an acceptable substitute. It was certainly much more favorable than this detestable, horrendous silence, at least.

Anana kept humming the little tune. If she could just break through the nasty silence enough, things might become right. “Hi, guys! I got some fresh juice this morning! I thought it might be a little nicer than water, you know?” She poured one for each of them: four total, with a little more in the last cup for her sister. Anana took a moment to appreciate the pretty mauve fluid in its semi-transparency. The daylight was hitting the juice in a neat way from the kitchen’s window, and she welcomed the distraction. A certain shade of purple might have made a nice color for her, but her sister had already chosen that...

Well. There had to be another color, one for her. Or maybe she was just resigned to green.

Grabbing two of the cups, she walked to her mother and father, sitting wordlessly in front of their plates. Her father’s meal had been eaten already, but her mother’s sat untouched. The same was to be said for her sister’s... which was unusual. Payapa was known to like eggs. Anana became extremely uneasy.

She sat the cups down. “Here, Daddy! It should taste really good, it’s super fresh! And here you go, Mama.”

At the very least, her mother managed to speak up, albeit barely. “Thank you, dear.” There was clearly restless fatigue in her voice, and this worried Anana. A picture of what had happened started to form in her head, though she made a note to ask Payapa later for the details.

And then she took an actual look...

...and noticed that Payapa was sitting with her head down, staring listlessly at the table. Anana felt a little sick. She didn’t want to spend the whole day picking up the pieces of whatever conflict had exploded. She returned to the counter and grabbed the two remaining cups. If nothing else, she would at least show her sister she had kept her end of the bargain and gotten the favored drink.

Anana placed the fullest glass next to the untouched eggs of her sister. “Here you go, Sissy, here’s yours!” She considered adding in a remark about how it had better be enjoyed after all the effort she went through and all that jazz --a playful remark-- but decided that such a joke would make it incredibly obvious that she was trying to ignore the oppressive tension of the situation. So she simply took her own seat, instead.

Anana was halfway into her first bite when their father spoke up. “You both need to know about where eggs come from.”

She paused. Answering as sweetly as possible was key here. Maybe it would lessen his apparent anger at... well, Prosphora knew what. “What do you mean, Daddy?”

He spoke coldly. “I’m talkin about you two bein old enough, for, well, egg stuff. I got a list, and both of you are gonna memorize it. It’s a list of all yer compatibilities. I expect y’all both to know this by heart in the morn.” Anana noticed her sister fidgeting in the chair as soon as he started talking. She knew Payapa well enough to know memorization was not her favorite thing in the world, so Anana decided right then that she’d try to find a way to make it interesting for them both later that day.

“Yes, sir, Daddy. It sounds very important.”

He looked at her sternly, and then asked with suspicion: “Are you sassin me, girl?”

She was actually surprised at this. That wasn’t her thing; defiance was her sister’s thing! It bothered her that he would even suggest this, but she let it slide. He was obviously upset and his senses had slipped... “No... no, not at all! Egg stuff sounds very important, or you wouldn’t be telling us about it! You wouldn’t waste our time, Daddy...sir!”

He settled back into his chair, momentarily placated. “Alrighty then. Well first off, you girls know where eggs come from at all? Tell me now, honestly.”

Anana felt uncomfortable. She had a vague sense that it involved stuff parents did when they were alone, but that was about it. She had no clue if her sister knew more than that. “No, sir. I mean, I know they come from moms somehow, but...”

“Right.” He looked to Payapa. “And you?”

She fidgeted in her seat for a moment more before meekly replying. “Um... no, not really. I mean, ‘sides what Anana said...”

“Hmm. Well, you’re both at that age where boys are gonna want to get real close to you. I mean, really close. And if you get too close to the wrong boys, you get an egg. And then we got trouble because that boy is gonna try and mooch off of your mother ‘n me. And I hate moochers.” He took the first sip of juice of the four of them, and then continued on when he was well and ready. “So I’m gonna give both of y’all a list of types of boys you gotta keep your guard up around.

“And speakin of eggs, I know girls just naturally lay em sometimes. I do know somethin bout ladies, y’know. Y’all are both of that age too. But I can tell the difference between an egg with a baby waitin inside and one without. How? Well, it’s real easy. The types of eggs your mother eats each mornin? Those ain’t got a thing, they’re blank, duds. All white. Can one of y’all guess how you know there coulda been a baby, then?”

It didn’t immediately dawn upon Anana what the alternate type of egg was, since she wasn’t the usual cook in the morning. It did, however, immediately dawn upon her sister, who turned a rather pale shade of purple in an instant.

Payapa barely opened her mouth to utter a couple of words. “The colors...”

Their father smiled, though something almost sinister was visible beneath the surface. Or maybe that was just the lighting. “That’s right. The colored eggs coulda ended up as little baby ‘mons one day. Not anymore though. They ain’t gonna be more than a meal, now. Yer mother won’t eat em, you know her thing against meat, but you girls oughta been able to tell that the eggs we eat are always really tasty. Always a bit different from each other, too. That’s cause there are so many types of Pokemon. It’s hard to get these eggs, y’know? It’s sort of a... a secret market thing.

“But where was I? Oh, right. So don’t think I won’t know if there’s some egg you’re hidin from me after you got too close to a bad boy. I’ll know. But if you’re just sheddin a dud, that’s just life. Lots of girls do that. Tons of chicks at the ol’ ranch did that each ‘n every morn, and we’d fry em up just like yer sis did here.”

This inspired a new sense of horror in Anana, causing her to push her plate to the side. “So wait, we’re going to lay eggs too? And then someone’s going to... eat them?! That’s so gross... That’s so gross! Why?!”

“Well it’s a natural thing, but yeah, dud eggs are common and good eats. We won’t eat em, cause that’d kinda be like cannibalism or somethin, but we can sell em for a nice penny. Eggs are priced by rareness ‘n all that,” he explained. Anana felt rather ill looking at the cold eggs she’d started to nibble. She wasn’t sure she could stomach them anymore. It was basically like she’d bitten into a pair of babies... and this made her want to vomit.

“Daddy... sir?” she asked.

“What is it, girly?” Firm, but caring undertones. Whatever terrible Pokemon she had thought was present earlier had faded in an instant, and he was her daddy again. Not the mean one who seemed to like divulging horrible secrets that chipped away at her childhood.

“Can I-- may I be excused? I’m not very hungry this morning.”

“Sure thing. I’m gonna give your mother the list later, and both you best make sure to mind me. Memorize it well.” He looked from Anana to his other daughter. “You too. Especially you.”

Anana excused herself quickly and ran to her shared bedroom, where she decided what toys, if any, she wanted to bring to the beach in an unsuccessful effort to get that breakfast conversation out of her mind.

“Oh, no... no no, please do put that with the other-- no, not there! Ah, just give it over, please. Let me place it.”

Malt looked at his stand-in boss dubiously. PK had been pretty explicit about a lot of commands while Shroomsworth was out on his extended leave (to put it mildly, but not entirely accurately), and here he was, directing Malt to run the place much differently. Malt wasn’t even entirely sure that Shroomsworth should have been allowed to do this at all, but it was a welcome burden relieved from his own shoulders. He did wonder, though, how they ever reconciled these differences while running it together, but placed that curiosity to the side for the time being.

“Well, that’s not where PK ever wanted--”

Shroomsworth stood up stiff, and his face both darkened and hardened. He spoke sharply in return. “And she’s not here at the moment, now is she?”

Malt flinched, and after a moment of scrupulation from Shroomsworth, he relaxed just enough to look at Malt wearily. It clearly was not his intent to snap over something so trivial as the placement of a berry that wasn’t particularly known for being alluring to shoppers. And yet, he had snapped.

“Well, no matter,” Shroomsworth quietly spoke to himself. “When she... returns, we’ll discuss it together. That’s what we’ll do,” he affirmed. Malt didn’t hear the confidence he desired in his boss’s feeble assurance, but it would have to do. It was really all either of them had.

They worked on in near-silence for the better part of half an hour, tidying and organizing to the best of their ability. When something Malt was doing conflicted with something Shroomsworth was trying to do, Shroomsworth was the one to wordlessly concede and start on another task. Eventually Malt went upstairs to fetch something, and in this window of time--despite that it was yet another half hour ‘til the shop was supposed to be open to any non-Merchant--someone unfamiliar to Shroomsworth had shown up at the front entrance and was demanding to be let in. The drapes were pulled quite taut and he didn’t really want to untie them if the shop wasn’t even supposed to be open yet.

Shroomsworth considered ignoring the fellow, and then outright decided to tune him out. His night watch had left out the back shortly after he and Malt had woken up and started their morning tasks. Any actual Merchant would have known to show up or exit from the rear door, where Callahan’s portion of the hut lay. This stopped most Merchants from showing up before anyone important wanted them about, as no one ever liked dealing with the guild registrar if they could find a way to avoid it (which they usually did).

Shroomsworth was in the middle of preparing the cash register while daydreaming about giving Callahan a swift punch to the jaw when something about the atmosphere struck him as wrong. He had trouble placing what, exactly, wasn’t right about the air, when a horrible, nasty ripping sound made his spine tingle with the odd mixture of dread and annoyance. The heavy fabric being torn immediately illuminated what had unnerved him moments prior; his unwanted guest had gone deathly silent after a few minutes of protest, and Shroomsworth hadn’t quite noticed until it was too late. He was simply that good at tuning others out when he so desired.

He immediately dashed toward the front entrance. Claws! Really, now. Using claws to shred the drapes! It especially irked him, as Chrys had been asked to make an extremely heavy-duty set of cloths, and here, now, they were so easily rendered scraps? That Chrys was going to receive a talking-to! Right after this impatient customer, of course.

Before he had fully made the stride across the store, the draperies’ assailant sauntered through the entrance. And behind, presumably a friend. Shroomsworth recognized the smaller one’s species, as there were several on many of the teams around Tao. It was a Meowth, but did not look to be any from a team he recognized. It did wear a black bowtie, but there looked to be a shiny, golden orb in its center. He presumed gold as fake as the headpiece it wore, most likely. The bigger of the two wore an ascot the same color as the bowtie. He wasn’t entirely sure what its species was, but presumed it to be related to the Meowth. An evolution, perhaps? Neither looked exceedingly dangerous, in any case. Even if they were, he and Malt would take care of them in an instant.

But first, it was time to discuss compensation for the costly fabric. He pursed his lips into a faux-friendly smile before speaking curtly. “I assume,” he said, motioning back to the curtains, “that you’ll have the money to me for those soon, then?”

The larger one seemed momentarily confused. It cast half a glance to the shred sheets before deciding it was hardly even worth the effort. “And who are you? I wish to speak to speak to Payapa.” Before receiving any sort of response, and indeed without even appearing to wait for a confirmation at all, the pair headed toward the staircase to the bedrooms.

Shroomsworth was taken aback. Mostly, he was dumbfounded by how thoroughly this fellow was dismissing him. He made a single leap to block their ascension. “Excuse me? This is the upper floor, where the private bedrooms-”

Thoroughly disgusted at this minor impediment, the bigger cat glowered at this monocled barrier before impatiently brushing him off. “Yes, yes, I know. Are you a new hire? If you do not move, I cannot assure you you’ll remain under employment for much longer. Now, move.”

Shroomsworth was still having trouble adjusting to the haughtiness of this cat, but he took a moment to breathe and regain his composure. Something about this was really, extraordinarily familiar. He had dealt with many customers full of themselves before, but this particular Pokemon took it to a new level.

Shroomsworth held back his aggravation and attempted to get a handle on the best thing to say in this situation. He could be upset over this later, but not now. “May I please ask for your name then, sir?”

More repulsion. The larger cat’s tail started to flick from side to side. It was eerily similar to what PK’s own tail did while provoked. He answered, but not without an air of condescendence. “You must be new. So ill-informed. But, I’ll grace you with knowledge, regardless. I am Twigs. And though you did not ask it, this is my brother-in-law, Styx. Now, move. I hate to waste breath.”

Twigs made to walk past Shroomsworth and up the steps, but the Merchant would have none of it. Another swift block, brushing against his whiskers.

Twigs... that was...

Ah!

“Hold on a right second! Are you from the woods? Ah, I mean, Windswept Woods? Are you the... the villa owner?”

Twigs’s agitation was dampened with Shroomsworth’s recollection. “I am. It appears you are slightly less ill-informed than you first appeared. Now, if you would move, I have business with my dear Payapa.”

Shroomsworth swayed his hips to once again block the cat off from the upper floor. Finally, it was coming back to him. This fellow was exactly the same in written format as he was in reality; it was no wonder he was so immediately familiar. Still... wait, what? His dear Payapa?

How was this to be approached? He wasn’t sure. At the very least, he had to feign respect, for Twigs had been a rich client early on in Shroomsworth’s history of corresponding in lieu of PK. “Er... well, the good madam is out right now. I respectfully ask that you return at a later date.” He wished badly that there was a way to avoid talking about the Tao crisis, and hoped Twigs would comply.

Of course, as anyone could guess, Twigs did not. “No. I wish to see her now. Are you hiding her? Where has she gone?”

“She’s out, as I’ve told you. I know not where. She... didn’t tell anyone before going, you must understand.” This was an extremely uncomfortable subject for Shroomsworth, but he did his best to answer honestly. Well... it was all factually correct at least, even if not the whole truth.

Displeased, Twigs crouched down and wiggled his rump. Shroomsworth immediately tensed, prepared for an attack, when Twigs sailed right over his head and landed up a dozen steps or so. Shroomsworth whipped around to see the cat sprinting to the top and down the hallway.

“Oh, for the love of...”

Before that thought could be finished, he heard the very particular, very piercing sound of glass shards exploding. He raised a pair of claws to his face and wrung his cheek in an exasperated motion. Wondering if a troublemaker snuck in while he was dealing with his finicky client, he hopped around the corner to confront the source of the broken goods. He discovered he was half right: it was indeed a troublemaker that had taken advantage of the gap in Shroomsworth’s attention a minute or so before, but no sneaking was required.

It was simply Styx. He held another mirror in his paws, of the same variety as the shattered one now on the ground, and smiled vacantly. He loosened his grip and dropped this second one straight down. Shroomsworth felt himself turn a little paler; these were expensive! Handcrafted! Particular design around the edges! And, what? Just because his brother was rich, this little fool thought he could do as he pleased?

Shroomsworth’s patience was being drained much more rapidly than the brothers’ deficit was adding up. “Stop that, this instant! You are ruining perfectly good wares, and I shall have you removed at once!”

The Meowth continued its little smirk, empty of any real emotion, and crouched down. Shroomsworth leaned forward to grab him before any more profit could be sacrificed (for who knew if Twigs would really pay?), but Styx had fooled him in the same manner as Twigs. He made a very large leap up to a shelf reserved for boxes of overstock. Hardly being the most adept of climbers or jumpers, one of the boxes was knocked over in his wake.

What sounded like a few dozen glass items shattering at once could be heard as the box hit the ground, spilling shards and a rich, purple goo in a single wave outward.

Shroomsworth made a sort of little squeak that was the byproduct of extreme anger and disbelief, and wet his lips, getting ready to yell. Simply incredible.

In this situation, with a cat racing along the tops of the shelves, Shroomsworth found himself not knowing how to proceed. Dashing after the cat would result in more broken goods, undoubtedly. So, what was there to be done?

In the middle of a crazy leap from one shelf to the next, Styx was yelling, “I saw him go outta the mirror, nyeh heh!” He zoomed behind the boxed goods and made another leap of faith, during which he spoke his nonsense once more. “He went back to his castle where he rules the plebes, nyehah!”

Shroomsworth saw his opportunity in these leaps. He had to wait for a pattern in the Meowth’s seemingly-erratic laps, and catch him up during one of these jumps. If he could do that, Styx would be his.

He followed Styx with his eyes, moved carefully into place. If there was something Shroomsworth was adept at, it was seeing a pattern in what looked to be a random set of movements.

“He’s gotta wear his crown until it gets broke, but he can’t do it himself, nyehehe! He told me so himself, and so did his friends.”

Another crash from a box thrust from the shelf thanks to the tiny cat’s momentum. Almost, though. Styx was almost assured to make a flying jump from the left to the second shelf behind him... it was in his body language, in the crazed look contorting that face otherwise devoid of emotion.

The leap was made, as foreseen, and Styx was plucked midair by a perfect stretch of the arms. Shroomsworth had caught his quarry.

Right in time for Malt to gaze below, confused, from the railing above. “Hey... what’s going on?”

Styx fidgeted in Shroomsworth’s claws, but there was nothing to be done about that. He couldn’t quite reach anything while being held out at an arm’s length; Shroomsworth had made sure to disarm Styx, bracing him in such a way that neither forearm had much room to wiggle.

“Malt, do you... oh! Malt, please escort our dear client Twigs whence he has managed to end up. It appears to be... somewhere up there. I get the feeling checking Miss PK’s room first would--”

Malt sighed. “Yeah okay, I figured as much. Hold on.”

Suddenly, Shroomsworth realized that he was not entirely sure what to do with Styx. He hardly wanted to hold a Meowth like this for more than a minute or two, but realized that Twigs might give Malt an even more difficult encounter than Shroomsworth himself had had to deal with. And if he just put the kid outside? Well, who was to say he wouldn’t just dart back in and cause even more trouble? No one. Because that is precisely what Styx would have done, and Shroomsworth was very aware of this. He had a fantastic nose for troublemakers, a sense finely honed over the years.

Styx, no longer permitted to physically manifest his whirlwind of terror, began to speak. “If you don’t watch it, maybe I’ll sic him on you, too. When his crown’s all broke.” Styx turned his head around as if to look Shroomsworth in the eyes, but... didn’t. He was clearly looking at Shroomsworth, there was no doubt about that, except he also wasn’t. His eyes were on Shroomsworth’s, yet they hardly appeared to be focused on him. It was badly disorienting, and reminded him of the dismissal Twigs had so casually given moments after they met. It was almost like Styx was denying his existence. Maybe that was absurd, but that was the feeling that overcame him as this little cat spoke his gibberish.

“When the sky castle falls we’ll say hi to the other guy. That’s what he said. Lethe won’t let them go, but they can come out if it happens, nyeehee. I think everyone wants that.” Styx continued to speak, but it was apparent he wasn’t speaking to anyone in the room.

Oh... oh! How could he forget? This was the Meowth who had gone slightly mad! Twigs had paid a large bounty for anyone to get Styx to come to his senses and return home, for the poor fellow had been swimming in a lake, fancying himself a Magikarp. It was as good a job as any, and so he had it posted.

As such, it was hardly a surprise that the half-wit was speaking utter meaningless garbage.

“And when the big beastie from the ground is slain, I could maybe find that one. I’d break his, and maybe I could get a ride on his back. I think he said he’d do that if I broke it.”

Still, that didn’t stop it from chilling Shroomsworth a mite.

Happily, and not a moment too soon, Malt had retrieved Twigs and they were now descending the stairs together. Twigs could not possibly have expressed any more how much he disliked Malt’s mere presence. Shroomsworth nearly wanted to laugh at how comical he found Twigs’s face, but was quite beyond being so rude. (His heart ached mildly as he thought that Miss PK wouldn’t have held back, not at all, were she around. Indeed, he suspected she would have told the sorry pair to “beat it” very early on. Shroomsworth wouldn’t have been very unhappy for the loss at all.) What a grimace that miserable cat wore!

“I suspect you did not, as expected, find Miss PK?” Shroomsworth asked drily.

“Do not toy with me. Where has she gone? And do put Styx down. You’re going to make him a headache to deal with later.” Twigs had reached the bottom step and was eyeing Shroomsworth with a large degree of distrust.

“Ah...” Malt interrupted, answering in his stead, “We really don’t know where she went. She didn’t tell us, and Shroomsworth actually never even saw her before she left...”

“Shroomsworth? It was to my knowledge you had quit. You’re Shroomsworth?”

“Yes... I was on, ah, a break. Studying another village’s economy, you might say. I assure you, we do not know where she is. I will write you post-haste the moment we do.” Suddenly, it dawned on him that in all seriousness, he had no idea what Twigs needed from PK, nor why he was being so demanding over it. Before Shroomsworth had left, Twigs was fine simply corresponding his needs to Tao. They had never actually met face-to-face, and he was hardly sure that PK even knew Twigs was a client. Shroomsworth himself kept up on all of the mail, with all of the letters...

As he thought about it, Malt clearly had taken over those duties without much of a problem. Malt wasn’t very good at managing, but he was great at accounting and organizational work behind the scenes. Two things Miss PK had hardly been very good at-- wait. What did Twigs want, again?

“In any case, what exactly did you need of her? I will relay the message the moment she reappears.”

Twigs stared at him blankly, almost matching the void on Styx’s face. Just briefly. “I have no desire to tell you. It is her and my business solely.”

Shroomsworth was losing the last scraps of tolerance he had managed to hold onto. Still, he maintained his gentlemanly demeanor as best he could. “All right. That is your business, then. But, do know, I will be sending a bill your way the moment you leave this establishment. Your... brother, he has caused a great deal of lost profit today. The draperies, as well.”

“Eh, as usual, yes. I know. Next time, do answer the door sooner.”

As... usual?

“Ah... yes, well, please wait for opening hours, next time, if you’d rather avoid incurring an expense.”

Twigs prowled over to the entrance, and looked back. Expectantly. Suddenly, Shroomsworth realized he was still holding Twigs’s brother hostage and released the dumbwit from his grasp.

Twigs spoke, perhaps to Styx, but more likely to himself: “I suppose I will just have to get a portrait done without her, then.”

Shroomsworth dwelled on this. It didn’t quite add up. What on earth made him get the impression Miss PK would ever tolerate him?

The two cats departed, and Shroomsworth looked around the shop, troubled. He felt nearly on the grasp of some large, jarring realization, but nothing really fit together nicely. The pieces were there, but broken and jumbled, like the glass shards lining the ground. And as with the shattered bottles, he tossed his half-formed thoughts into the refuse.

“Why does he think she would do that, I wonder?"

Malt kept quiet.

Payapa and Anana steadily made their way toward the shanty housing on the far edge of the city. They were going to see if any of the kids had any interest in a game of hide-and-seek. Payapa suggested early on in their conversation that Rionna not be allowed to play with them, and Anana hastily agreed. Even though they could both hide extraordinarily well thanks to their abilities, Payapa reasoned that using auras to track Pokemon was definitely cheating and absolutely not allowed in their game.

Despite it being a natural ability.

Anana wanted to point out the hypocrisy, but she let it slide. It was just important that she and her sister have fun together. She didn’t want to worry about a fight over something she didn’t care that much about, anyway. Maybe one of the other kids would point this out to Payapa instead, and that would be fine. Anana really didn’t want to be the object of her sister’s agitation. No one ever did. It tended to last days...

Anana quickly changed the subject, feeling uneasy at the mere prospect of correcting her sister. “Quiz time! Name all the purple Pokemon on the list!”

Payapa groaned. “I’m so freakin tired of that! It’s been like... two weeks, and I still can’t even name like half of em.”

“Come on... give it a shot? Just try!”

“Ugggh... Okay, let’s see...Ekans, Arbok... Boy Nidoran and those ones... That stupid cat whose name I forget, and it has like purple--well, yeah, okay, don’t look at me like that! I know you said purple, but it’s not like there aren’t other cats too! There’s Meowth, and that was definitely on the list. I know it’s not purple! I’m just saying! It was Purrloin. That was the purple cat.”

“Yeah, keep going!”

Payapa squished her head between her claws. “I don’t know! I’m not some sort of color indexer! Gimme a list of all the Pokemon, or show me one, and I can say “yes” or “no” but I can’t freakin name like 100 out of nowhere!”

Anana sensed she was pressing too close to the point where the rest of the day would be a downhill ride, so she eased up. “Okay. Maybe later I can make a big list and we can do it like that.”

“Oh geez, I wasn’t being serious. Well, I mean, I could definitely pick them off a list, but I don’t really wanna study that bad. Besides, what if this list isn’t all totally right? Then it’s like we’re doing it for no reason.”

Apparently, that their father could be wrong about hadn’t really dawned on Anana yet. “What... but he wouldn’t make us memorize all these for nothing! Daddy just wouldn’t do that!”

They crossed through back alleys and over heaps of rubbish, nearing their destination. They would probably be able to find Chulo, Gail, and the others out here if they looked around a bit. Those particular kids never strayed too far from their home base, a tiny underground hole serving as a house. Payapa let the silence unnerve Anana, though in reality she herself was pretty convinced that their dad had given them a complete and thorough list. He had later explained that these were all heavily documented fertile pairs. Whether or not he was lying or correct or whatever, that meant nothing to Payapa. She just liked to be contrary about doing things she found no immediate reason to do, and Anana suffering an insecurity about the world and her place in it was just sometimes part of the consequences.

Before much longer, the Kecleon pair arrived at the approximate spot of the other kids’ hideout.

“No, I hate that game! I don’t want to play that! Neither does Anana, huh?”

“Well then what do you want to play? You aren’t giving any better ideas!”

Payapa considered. She really just wanted to play hide and seek. Rionna wasn’t around this time, so she had an actual shot at stumping everyone with her handy trump card. Anana wasn’t that good at hiding. But... everyone was expecting her to say “hide and seek,” which made it that much harder to suggest it. She always suggested it. She always liked being the winner.

...but maybe if Anana was the one to suggest it this time...

She turned to her sister and smiled. It wasn’t an entirely sincere smile, but Anana knew enough to know what it meant. The other kids could be fooled, but not Anana. “Hey, Nana Sissy...”

Anana took a couple of steps back, bumping into an old, rotted wooden wall. She instantly yelped and recoiled, then grabbed her tail to check for splinters. Normally she’d have been more careful about where she stepped, and indeed, about her environment-- but was heavily intimidated by her sister acting so sweetly out of character. It was really hard to deny her. Despite whatever Anana might have wanted to do, the reins were not in her hands. Even if it seemed otherwise.

“What game do you wanna play, Nana? How about we let you decide this time? Everyone got to pick, but not you.” Payapa turned to the increasingly impatient children. “This okay with you guys?”

Fin shrugged. “Let’s just play something.”

Spike, one to idolize his older brother, chimed in with agreement. “Yeah let’s just play something already! I’m tired of sitting around!”

Anana sucked on her tail in a sore spot. Everyone was staring at her. Fin, Spike, that weird Pichu (she thought his name was Chulo or something), that Taillow whose name she forgot but should have been obvious, and that weird Meowth girl nobody really liked but never wanted to admit to feeling. She felt rather bad for not liking- ...hm. What was that Meowth’s name? It was weird that she ought to forget. Normally she was pretty good at remembering names after once or twice being in someone’s presence. But everything about this Meowth was shady and slippery, including her name.

...but this was all just stalling. Distracting thoughts, since she didn’t really want to play hide and seek yet again, but knew her sister’s desire. It was practically radiating from her little purple pores...

“Well... well, I was thinking, maybe we could do hide and seek--” a series of groans from Chulo and that Taillow, “--because I don’t feel like running around right now,” she stated. It was a lie, of course. She had fun running around and playing tag, even if she was pretty slow and often got caught. But the other slow party, Payapa, just wouldn’t have that. Anana knew this.

That cool Buizel took it in stride. “Fine. We can do that. However, we’d like to spice it up a lil.” Anana looked at Fin blankly, and he took it as a cue to continue. “We always play in the same area. That’s kind of boring. So this time, why don’t we go in the center of the city? The center of all the stores? We can start from there. No one can hide past the rich quarter so there’s some containment, so we’re not all too spread or too far. Whaddya say?”

Anana just sort of stammered. She wasn’t really prepared to discuss hide and seek logistics, nor did she really care about it. She just wanted to be having some fun, and the day was lamentably short in supply so far. “Okay. Lead the way,” she said.

Payapa was in a good mood, and that was a good start for Anana. Something had gone right for Anana thus far, at least. She supposed that her sister was contemplating the best spots to hide in the pier section of town. At least she wasn’t complaining about anything, which was a great improvement! Fin had offered to be the seeker to start with, so the game was bound to progress fairly quickly. He was usually pretty good at finding the others, though he always had to concede to Payapa so she’d show herself and they could continue to the next game. In one of these games one time, Anana suspected Fin had actually stumbled across her hiding sister, but had pretended otherwise just to avoid allegations of cheating. He was like that. He knew how to keep his mouth shut for the whole group dynamic to remain as it was. Anana dwelled on that thought for a good half hour, relating painfully to that trait.

Neither of the lagging sisters noticed that Fin, Spike, Chulo, Gail, and Naki had been whispering here and there. The sisters had fallen too far behind to catch anything that the poor kids said under their breath. Payapa would later recall that it was a bit peculiar that they rushed ahead so quickly, but that she herself had been too caught up thinking of hiding spots and how best to brag when inevitably not found. Anana would later feel very foolish for not seeing the betrayal coming, and even further down the road, would cry every night for weeks in having made the stupid decision to play the game leading to her sister’s near-death.

===================

This time, Payapa had picked a fantastic spot. Not to be confused with any of the other places she’d picked to hide, though; those spots had been great, really nice, marvelous... but this one was utterly fantastic. It was so simple it had nearly pained her with its magnificence. She picked the big, tall Pamtre tree to conceal her presence. Its location?: merely a few yards from where Fin had begun his slow count. Perfect! It was so perfect in its simplicity! He would be looking all over the place: in shops, on roofs, behind bushes, all these little places so far from the original starting point. That’s what he’d expect. He’d expect her to be hiding all over, somewhere crafty, when she was really within shouting distance! She really just wanted to burst at how clever she felt. Before long, she would be the victor yet again, and then she’d have to come up with an even better hiding spot. It’s so stressful being on top, she mused. I bet he’s gonna find Anana first. She always picks the same type of spot. She’s so predictable, she really should take some pointers from me.

The countdown eventually reached its end, and Payapa’s excitement was at its peak. As expected, Fin immediately ran off to the most bustling part of the city. He was likely to be chased away by some of the shop owners, though neither she nor Anana ever hid in any of those places out of consideration for the poor kids. They had to be accompanied by either her or her sister, and even then, would still receive scornful looks. It was common knowledge that these kids had to steal to eat, which made them rather unpopular with all the vendors for this obvious reason.

She kept her eyes peeled from the top of the tree, making sure Fin was never looking in her direction for too long. Eventually he disappeared into the crowds and didn’t resurface. Good. He was probably looking in lots of bizarre places. So, she looked for Anana instead. Anana’s habit of hiding in obvious places was somewhat embarrassing to her. Being related to such a failure at this game was... well, it was kind of shameful for a Kecleon to be so bad at hiding. Anana never really seemed to want any tips, either, which was all the more bizarre.

She soaked up some good rays while skimming the horizon. All directions she looked, but nothing. Not even one of the other kids. Today’s session might be a little longer. No matter; she could be extremely patient if it meant she’d stay on top. She would just keep looking, see how many dejected losers showed up in the starting spot. It wouldn’t be her, that was for sure!

It actually wasn’t going to be anyone, she found out.

Something like an hour passed before she started to humor that sick ball of suspicion she had in the pit of her stomach. It had started to form a good thirty minutes in, but she was too proud to admit that she might have been duped so early on. She had to wait and see, which, of course, made it harder and harder to admit she thought something funny was going on. The longer she waited, the stupider she looked for falling for the deceit. There wasn’t going to be any winning going on in this situation this time. Not anymore.

She held back fresh, hot, angry tears, and let her heart rend itself. There wasn’t much to do. Her two options were stay in the tree and look like an idiot, or get out of the tree and start looking for Anana. She wanted nothing to do with those traitors. There was no good enough reason they could provide for their abandonment. They were dead to her.

Slowly, she climbed down the tree, scraping up her foot on accident along the way. This was the final straw. She hit the ground and started to cry, loud, obnoxious tears. It had been forever since she’d cried, but it was sorely necessary. Everything had been building up for months. Lately their dad had been really strict, harsh, and weird (would she even dare to instead call it... mean?), Anana had less and less time to play, their mother had been sleeping more and more of the day away, and to top it all off, she had started to realize she didn’t have much of a life’s goal going on, and she had started to also realize their parents invested all of their energy into grooming Anana. It was too much. The tears were for all of these things she’d let rest where they wouldn’t hurt. The final straw, and really, the thing to pull all of these uncomfortable feelings out, was seeing that she could so easily be tricked in the name of being really good at something as stupid as a kid’s game.

Even as Pokemon passed by, none of them comforted her. They looked on awkwardly, and scurried away at realizing who she was. It was really terrible to be crying in public, but it couldn’t be helped. Watching dozens of Pokemon avoid her only added to her sense of isolation, and she wailed harder.

Something like twenty minutes passed this way, but it was cyclic; she would sometimes think of some pitiable thought and cry louder, and then nearly settle down again only to think of some new way to feel sorry for herself. Eventually she reached a point where all tears had been exhausted, and this is when she sat, knees to chest, back to the tree, and watched the crowds. Something needed to change, but she hadn’t a clue what it would be. Sitting this way, all tightly contained, anger easily found its way into her tiny frame. She scanned everyone who passed, silently judging them, figuring out what type of character they really were. Watching the way they moved, paying especial attention to their body language. It was really easy to just let yourself ignore these vital things: she had for all too long. If she had really been paying attention, she might have noticed the way Fin’s mouth had twitched actually mattered in his agreement to play with them. She might have noticed the way Gail’s feather’s ruffled for half a moment, she might have noticed the way Naki’s eyes gleamed.

Well. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed at all; she had, too clearly. But it was nice to ignore it and pretend things would go her way. It was just nice to pretend that she could keep up at being best at something, because without it, she really wasn’t very good at anything at all.

And coming to terms with that thought was a little much for a child on the verge of adulthood.

It made her angry. With herself, with others, it didn’t matter. Mostly with others until she came to the realization, to that essential thought, that being angry at other people didn’t fix a situation. It didn’t change anything. She would still be the same Pokemon, and so would they. It would do absolutely nothing. But if she got angry at herself for not paying attention to these details marking everyone as liars, traitors, thieves, and so forth... then she might actually pay attention, and she would be better off for it. She would start to be ahead of everyone again. This minor setback wasn’t enough to keep her down, and that was a pleasing thought. She could still be the best at something, even if that something was judging others most accurately at a glance. That was still useful!

Unfortunately, in her rage, her tail had started to flick angrily. It was a controlled whip. It laid out flat against the ground, but every few seconds it would fling crazily to the left, or right, tapping the packed sand with a “thud.” It was hardly something she thought about: just one of those tics that went off when something was triggered. In this case, when her self-loathing anger was summoned.

Perhaps if she had been paying more attention to her surroundings (something that she would learn more about as an apprentice to a wily snake later on), she would have avoided the tragedy that was to befall her and forever work its way into her psyche as a deep fear.

However, she paid attention only to the crowds in front of her. As a result, she barely noticed when she thwapped a little Rattata right on the head. Well, she hadn’t noticed until it bit her, that was.

She screeched, yelped, and stumbled to the side. Her heart was racing and she nearly had decided to beat the thing to death when it spoke: “Oh! I’m sorry, is someone there?”

She was momentarily stunned. “I... what? Why the hell did you bite me, you little dick!” She went to cradle her tail, going to suck on the offending area as Anana had done herself not more than a couple hours prior. What struck her was that his eyes were closed. Why was he going around like that?

“I thought you were a branch or something and had to check. Apologies, Miss. It’s a little windy here sometimes, you know?” he said with a little squeak of a laugh. “You sound like you’ve been upset recently. I apologize to add to your pile of woe,” he added solemnly.

“Why were you walking around with your eyes closed like a moron?” she asked. There was surely no good answer to this. This kid was definitely some sort of dork just asking to be smacked around. It looked like he’d suffered at someone’s hands already: part of his tail was missing, the end scarred and frayed.

“Well, it doesn’t do me a whole lot of good anymore to keep them open, so I don’t.”

Her body chilled. “I... didn’t know, I mean, you can’t...”

“Yeah, I can’t see a thing. I’m blind. I’m normally better at not bumping into things. I thought I felt your presence, but your tail got me by surprise. I’m truly sorry, Miss.”

She blinked unbelievably at him. There weren’t a whole lot of Pokemon who had become handicapped living around her city. If Pokemon lost limbs or went blind or what have you, they usually had to move out of the city or go to the outskirts. It made them easier prey for everyone if they stayed around... and most couldn’t keep a job after that. There was no aid for Pokemon like these. They either went with family or died alone and hungry, usually.

Plus, her dad didn’t really like “broke” Pokemon like these. He called dependents “broke” both because they were broken in some way, and because it usually meant their cash supply was gone. It wasn’t anything she’d ever had to personally deal with before, so it had meant very little before this point.

“So what’s your name?” she asked.

“Charles is the name my ol’ mum gave me.”

She was relieved someone was looking after this kid. “Oh, where do you guys live?”

“Oh I dunno if my mom’s even alive anymore; I suspect not. But I live in a nice nook behind a noodle shop. There’s some nice finds in the trash there, sometimes.”

She was glad he couldn’t see the disgust on her face at the thought of picking from garbage. She was sure that no matter how badly things progressed in her life, at the very least, she’d never be eating someone else’s refuse. Nasty.

“Oh, you don’t have to make such a gross face,” he said, picking up on the sound of her snuffle. She was greatly embarrassed at her folly; she didn’t mean to let him know she found it gross. Normally, with anyone else, she wouldn’t have cared -- a gross face would have been her blunt, instant reaction, but something about this kid was different. She didn’t want to offend, here. She didn’t want to mindlessly blurt things out, or to criticize him harshly.

The thing making this kid odd, different, was she couldn’t pick up on any tell as he spoke. He was speaking honestly and without judgment. Time would reveal whether or not she was accurate here, but it felt right. Finally being honest with herself, she felt correct in this estimation of the little rat’s personality traits.

It was kind of nice that he spoke so openly. Always used to dealing with her dad’s angry outbursts, her mother’s half-truths, and her sister’s avoidance, it was rather nice (refreshing, maybe?) to meet someone who didn’t seem to fit the mold of her family.

“I guess I can’t hide that from you, huh,” she said. “I don’t really like garbage all that much when it comes to fine dining.” It was a little funny that he had been able to tell her expression, even if it did fluster her. She half-grinned.

“It’s not so bad, y’know. Empty stomachs are by far quite worse, Miss. What’s your own name, anyhoo?”

Had she ever really had an empty stomach? A truly empty stomach? She’d been hungry before, but never actually starving. “I’m Payapa. Like the berry,” she added.

“I’ve never actually had one, myself. Are they tasty? I’d like to imagine they are.”

This floored her. “Really?! You’ve really never had one? C’mon, let’s go to my house, I’ll show you some of my favorite berries.”

And like that, without a moment of hesitation, she was ready to open herself up to a complete stranger. It was really for the best that he’d managed to get in while her pride’s wound was fresh and hot; she was at the fragile stage where one gust either way had the power to blow her personality in either direction. Dangerously close to shutting everyone out forever, she had found a friend in the poor, blind rodent and saved herself from becoming the most bitter child in the city.

It was maybe even most miraculous of all that she was going out of her way to take this kid to try food. Perhaps that he didn’t ask anything of her was the most compelling reason why she should let him try different berries out. All the other children made it painfully clear that they wanted food from her and Anana, and often it seemed they had only entertained the sisters in hopes of being offered some treat on the side. It made her feel a little sick in retrospect.

It was no matter now, though. She and Charles would go eat together, and maybe he would be her friend.

There were the Pecha, Oran, Lum, and Mago varieties... and of course the Pomeg, Nanab, Payapa, Cheri (but never the Rindo, and she would get beaten for even mentioning such)... the rare Liechi, Petaya, Salac... (the latter of which Payapa wasn’t sure were even good berries to have around; her father made a point of locking them out of reach of the two children.) Normally they had more in the house, but it was the middle of the week and no one had come home from the store with groceries for a few days. She didn’t think anyone would miss pieces from each. Why should they? Berries were easy to obtain.

“Here, try this one,” she said, taking a freshly cut slice of Pecha for Charles and placing it in his open mouth. He chewed for a moment, then swallowed. She took a bite, herself, in the meantime. “What do you think?”

“That was sweet! I kind of like that. What color was it?”

This made her a little sad when she dwelled on it for too long, but she was happy to answer him. “It was a soft pink. It’s nice to look at, really pretty. Do you want another slice?”

“No, thank you kindly anyway. I’ve tried it, and isn’t that all you said we were going to do?”

“I...well, yeah. I guess it is.” She didn’t want to have brought him over simply to try a slice of one berry. That seemed kind of ridiculous, and maybe a little stingy and mean. Plus, she was hoping he would keep her company for a little while. “Well, why don’t you try some of these other ones too?”

“If you insist, Miss. I don’t got anywhere to be, so I’d be happy to stick around until you no longer wish to have me.”

His wording was always slightly peculiar, she thought. Just a little off, but containing his entire thought nicely. He sat patiently and awaited a reply. “Okay,” she said, “that’s what you’ll do, then! Here, this one’s good.” He opened his mouth, and once again she deposited some of the tasty flesh from the selection of berries. This one was special, though. It was her favorite. She was very eager to hear of how he found the taste. “What do you think? Isn’t it delicious?”

He chewed, slowed a bit, and swallowed with great effort. This disappointed her a little. After a little lip smacking (she was sure by this point that it was unfavorable to him), he moved his head as to look up at her. “It was too much for me. Somehow, both sweet and sour. It was just a little much for me, as I never get to eat anything with more than one flavor. I guess it was a little overwhelming, really.”

It made her feel incredibly foolish, but this nearly brought her to tears again. She was really hoping to get to share delight in her favorite fruit, but that dream was dashed in a moment. She felt stupid for daring to hope at all. Not knowing what to say, she simply took a seat in the chair behind her, and sat there dumbfounded. She was too eager to let someone in, too eager to try to get someone to understand what she felt.

It was difficult, and she was at that stage of pre-crying where breaths are taken in rapid succession, but she held back. Charles must have caught on to her sudden shift in mood, for he suddenly spoke and startled her. “I should have clarified, but what I was trying to say is that the thing is just too good for me. I can’t get used to its complexity in a single bite, though I did try my best. I’ve just never had anything like this before, and it would please me for you to believe that I was embarrassed to admit it.”

Payapa wiped at her eyes, and tentatively asked, “...so you didn’t hate it?”

Though his eyes were shut, his brow raised considerably. She found it a little odd that a blind Pokemon would be naturally inclined to make facial expressions like that, but was relieved at his reply. “Goodness! I hope that’s not the impression I gave! I took an extra long time to chew it because it was the most exotic thing I’ve ever eaten! Didn’t you hear my normal cuisine? It’s not particularly this fancy, I’ll have you know.”

She laughed, unable to deny the truth in that. “So you did like it!”

“I will like it much more once I’ve accustomed myself to it! I don’t expect you to help me with that, as that’s really all on-” but she had taken him by surprise, chucking a piece of the berry right into his mouth. It had nearly fallen out, but he caught it (somehow) and ate it right up. “Enough of that! I might choke if you do that again!” he scolded in jest. She laughed again, and hopped down from the stool. Her eyes were still stinging, but she was in no longer in danger of crying.

“Let’s go to my room, I got some cool stuff in there I wanna tell you about.”

“Well, if you’re simply telling me, we can do that anywhere, right? Maybe we can go out in the sun. I like getting as warm as I can before the cool night sets in.”

“Oh... why don’t you just stay here? It doesn’t get cold in my room!”

“Is that really all right? I dislike being a burden, you know. I’m fine heading out by myself, I’ve done it before and can do it again.” He sat down on his haunches and started to meticulously groom his paws and face, nibbling at little frays, smoothing out starts of tangles.

She watched for a moment. “Well, it’ll probably be okay. You can hide under our bed or something until I know for sure.” The truth was that she already knew her father’s stance on uninvited guests of no worth. She didn’t like the answer she predicted he would give, so she was just planning to operate without asking. She was hardly aware why it was so compelling that she do this for the rodent: never before had she gone remotely out of her way for anyone besides her sister (which was still a begrudging effort in Anana’s case). It didn’t make much sense, but she wasn’t in a good spot to question herself. It simply felt correct to do what she could for the Rattata, and so she was. She didn’t think about what a drain it would be for her parents, she didn’t consider if Anana would share this secret (rather, she assumed Anana would have the same goal as she), and she didn’t dwell on the fact that she didn’t know this Pokemon at all, really, aside from his name and his crippling trait.

As it would go, Anana had finally wandered home, and walked in on the two facing each other in silence. Payapa was the one to first spot her, but Charles had detected her all the same (probably even before Anana had reached the door). Charles turned his head, and said but a single word: “Hiya!”

Anana was stunned at first, then a little confused. They had never invited playmates into their home for the simple fact that it was heavily implied to be grounds for a beating. On top of it all, she didn’t at all recognize this Pokemon, so at first glance wondered it to be an intruder. When Payapa spoke to her, Anana realized it was not at all an intruder, but that his visit was just another one of her sister’s reckless, bad ideas.

“Hey Nana sissy, can you do me a favor?” asked Payapa, quite inevitably. Anana sighed. Surely it was going to be something along the lines of--

“Please, don’t tell Dad?”

There it was. The magic phrase.

And then the Rattata spoke up again. “If it’ll be a problem, I’d honestly rather just leave. It’ll be okay if I go back to my normal dwelling, you don’t got to worry about me, Miss. Honest, I’ll be fine ‘n well.” He stood up and started to pitter-patter his way out of the dining room, walking past Anana without so much as brushing against her. Payapa followed him out of the house, trying very hard to convince him to stay. He would not.

Anana watched her follow him down the boardwalk and off into the city, waiting for them to have disappeared for several minutes before slowly making her way to their bedroom to cry over the day’s events. Perhaps an hour or two later, she would take the lengthy screaming from their father for leaving a bunch of half cut fruit on the table and for leaving the rare berries out in the open, revealing nothing about who had really put them there, nor the guest they’d been for.

Payapa walked through the perhaps Alley Number 12, looking around every bend, into every hole, every crack. This was like advanced hide and seek, and she wasn’t the one hiding. She blinked heavily, feeling like some sort of fleck had gotten into her eyes. Perhaps that was why she was doing so poorly at the moment. “Come on... Charles! Are you over here? Charles!” She was heavily counting on having to scour the whole city, and twice had run into someone else named Charles along the way (the same fellow twice, to be clear), when she finally happened upon the correct Charles, sprawled out on the ground, looking to be asleep. That could very well just have been because his eyes were always closed, but it really did seem like he was sleeping this time. She ran up to him. “Charles!”

He didn’t respond, so she shook him, trying to stir him awake. All sorts of horrid scenarios ran through her mind, each ending with the realization that he had somehow died, and she was nearly driven to tears. It had only been maybe three weeks since she had met him, but they had become really good friends in the short span of time. Every day she would walk along the alleys, trying to find him, and within a few minutes he would appear. He had a good intuition for when she was out looking for him.

The possibility that the first Pokemon she could actually relate to and befriend... that he was going to just flicker out like that... especially when she’d known him for so little time...

“Charles! Wake up!” She shook him harder, and finally he was snapped out of that deep, deathlike slumber.

“Oh, hello, Miss. How are you feeling today?” he groggily asked. She hated that the first thing he did was address her wellbeing, not his own. He was obviously not doing well, and he was just going to... ignore it like that?

“Charles, stop it! What’s wrong? Are you just hungry? I can get you something to eat. Just tell me what!”

“No... I’m actually fine on food, Miss. I think I zonked out while eating some noodles out here, but I can’t quite remember. I’m just really tired.”

She didn’t think he was lying... exactly. Something seemed wrong. The previous week he had acted a little less energetic than usual, though she had just attributed that to... what had she attributed it to? Had she been so enthralled with the idea of making a friend that she’d ignored any sign of declining health? And now she was sure he wasn’t telling the whole truth. Something was up, and he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. He always had before, but wasn’t now. This panicked her.

“Charles! Stop it, just stop it! What’s wrong? I’ll take you to a doctor! Please, just tell me what’s wrong?” she pleaded. She was probably sounding a little crazed.

“I just feel a little under the weather, that’s all.” Something about the way he ended it... the inflection sounded insincere. This bothered her tremendously. It just wasn’t like him.

“I’m going to find someone to make you better. I’ll do it! I’ll make you better,” she mumbled, if not with a hint of frenzy in her voice. She slowly lifted him up and positioned him so he’d be easy to carry around. She didn’t have much of a shoulder, so bridal style it was. She didn’t really know where to take him (she wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about doctors or their whereabouts), so she headed home.

It wasn’t a very long trip from that particular alleyway to her house, but it was long enough that she started to feel very tired from her burden midway through the journey. Both her parents were out, selling things or whatever they did anymore, so she brought Charles straight to her bedroom. She placed him under the sheets, and used a pillow to block his head and body from the line of sight if anyone were to peek in. It would simply look like she had neglected to make the bed, which wouldn’t have been a first.

He had no objections, which worried her more. He hardly had the energy to speak, it seemed. She felt so stupid and foolish for not having noticed sooner. All the past week, she’d done most of the talking. She’d been venting about her family situation, something never before a topic to leave her lips. She and Anana had simply accepted the situation as a fact of life, the way things were, to basically Shut Up And Deal With It. Charles had let her know that it was okay to talk, to find things unfair, to be upset about situations, and to just complain about unjust happenings. In all this self-absorbed talk, she had failed to notice he was getting quieter and more lethargic. She really thought her observational skills were getting better, that she was getting more adept at noticing things going on with others... but Charles, having worked his way too close to her heart, had found his way into her blind spot. It was all too likely she had simply wanted to ignore that he could become unwell, and this thought made her burn with hatred for her selfishness.

It just wasn’t okay to talk about yourself; bad things happened.

She rubbed her eyes (that annoying fleck was back, messing with her vision), then left the house quickly to go find her father. Maybe he’d know what to do.

Anana heard the pitter-patter of footsteps following the jingle that signified another customer had entered the shop, and turned to greet the potential client. No sooner had she bid the Pokemon a good afternoon did she realize that it was hardly a customer, but her frazzled, seemingly upset sister. The way the purple seemed faded, a bit gray even, told Anana everything she needed to know about her sibling’s current emotional state. It was just so terribly obvious to her.

However, Payapa had nothing to say to Anana. She was after something else. “Dad! DAD! Quick... I... I need something, Dad!”

Agave lazily looked up from organizing the coins and bills in the cash box momentarily before returning back to his task. It seemed he had half a mind to ignore her.

Payapa paid that no mind. “Dad! I need your help! There’s this... well, I need something, there’s a friend, and he’s sick. I need something to make him all better. I need a doctor or something. Dad! Stop it... pay attention to me!”

Agave quickly tired of her impatience. She went to yank on his tail, something she’d done when she wanted his attention since early childhood, but was met with a smack across the face instead. The force was enough to knock her stumbling a couple of feet backward, and Anana turned away so as to not bear witness to the scene. Instead, Anana decided, she would recount the number of flower pots. There were fourteen.

Payapa grabbed at her cheek and pawed it; she looked at her palm, as if she expected to find drawn blood, but there was nothing. It just stung. Too shocked to properly react, she just stared at her claws, mouth gaping. Why? Why had he done that?

Without interrupting the work of counting stones, coins, and bills, he spoke. “Don’t you go touching me with those grubby little paws o’ yers. You want somethin’ from me, you best be givin’ me somethin’ in return.”

Clink. A coin dropped where it belonged.

“Yer old enough now that that’s a fair deal. We don’t get no work from you in the shop really no more anyway, so you might wanna be looking for a new place ta rest that sorry hide o’ yers soon if’n that don’t change right as soon, girly.”

Clatter. Another few coins back in their place.

“So you want my help? Gimme somethin’ for it. Fair trade. Doctor or somethin’? I’ll tell you about that for a price.”

Payapa was no less stunned now than she had been prior to the unexpected smack. Having to... pay him? To help her out? Charles was... he wasn’t doing well, he needed help... and she didn’t have the money for that! She didn’t have the money and didn’t understand...

Didn’t quite understand...

Why?

In the haze of the situation, that question formed once more: why had he done that? Why was he still acting this way? Couldn’t he tell she was distressed? Didn’t he know?

She had nothing to give him, not even tears. She backed up and into the wall before scrambling to her right and back out of the shop. The only reasonable thing to do here was find someone who would help without a stupid fee.

Anana was very glad her father didn’t notice that she was trembling with fright. She excused herself at the earliest possible opportunity to take a lunch break, and then became ill in the sand in front of a few concerned Pokemon.

The dazed purple Kecleon found herself walking in the direction of the noodle house that Charles often stayed near. She couldn’t possibly go back to him yet, not until she was able to find a proper doctor. She wasn’t sure at all how she would pay for it, but she hoped she might have some leverage as the daughter of a heavy-hitting Merchant in the city. She was pretty aware how well her dad had been doing, and knew that she got a lot of freebies from shop owners in the hopes of not incurring his wrath. She’d become aware of all of that too recently.

Her focus seemed to shift at this point. Everything became sharper, clearer, and eventually she realized she was walking with a determination. The noodle shop owners would definitely have something to say. Those foreign Pokemon were always nicest, and these guys were top-tier in that department. Both the foreign and the niceness department, that was. They were super hard to understand at first, but eventually she had became used to their weird mannerisms and accent in the weeks prior. Furthermore, they were probably the only shop owners she could think of who seemed genuinely nice without a hint of pretense.

She gradually worked her shuffle into a frenzied jog, and then a full-on sprint. She was sure this was right. They’d help, even if her dad wouldn’t. They absolutely had to.

The adrenaline carried her the rest of the distance without exhausting her too entirely, and when she shoved her way into the door to meet the couple, she found the building to be mostly absent of customers. The few who were trying to enjoy their tea turned to look at her in a very disgruntled manner, silently chiding her for being a disruptive youngster. Maybe she would have minded another time, but not now. She rushed into the back behind the floral curtain separating the kitchen from the main dining and lounge area, and missed bumping into the Lickilicky (carrying trays of tea no less) by perhaps an inch.

“Oh!” she said, all surprise and no disdain, “watch out, child! What do you have to run in here quickly so like that?”

“Mon-mon! I need to know where a doctor is... there’s one in this city, right? Can you take me there? My friend’s really sick and I just don’t really know what to do and my dad didn’t wanna help with that so I...” but she trailed off here, realizing how ridiculous her query was. Mon-mon was in the middle of business hours, and Payapa hardly knew her. She’d spoken to her a few times after waiting for Charles sometimes before they played together, but it’s not like this stranger was really in any way obligated to help. And this struck her really hard, because it was evident this was going nowhere and Charles would probably...

Mon-mon spoke abruptly. “You need doctor? Shaman is there at edge of town in grove, if you like I can ask husband to watch shop so showing you?” Wearing a very grave expression, she set down her tray delicately. “Serious sick?”

Hardly believing her ears, Payapa took a moment to realize Mon-mon was asking a question. “Yes... yes, it’s very serious. I don’t know what’s wrong, but he can’t really even move much... he’s at my house, so can we go there first? I need to get him right away!”

She assented. “O-Kay! Let’s go Keku child house. Let me to tell Nom-nom where I go to, first.”

Something like thirty minutes later, Mon-mon and Payapa were on their way to this mysterious “shaman” place. Payapa didn’t quite know what that was, but Mon-mon had assured it was a type of doctor. She wondered why her dad had never told her about that, but quickly changed the topic in her mind. It wasn’t a pleasant topic at all, so it was best avoided.

Mon-mon had insisted on carrying Charles, even though Payapa had argued over it for a minute or two. However, as it became evident that it was wasting precious time, she quickly gave in. It was probably for the better; Mon-mon was much larger and stronger than she, so was undoubtedly better suited to carry such a tiny Pokemon.

Payapa spoke to him about trivial, nonsensical, irrelevant thoughts the whole way to whatever building was their destination, hoping for (but not expecting) a reply. Mon-mon said nothing, letting the poor child have her moment in peace, knowing that her own voice was no substitute for the little Rattata’s.

Eventually there was a little hut in the distance, right inside a grove, as Mon-mon had said. It wasn’t super overt, but it was clearly there. It was a little weird to build a house this far from the city without disguising or camouflaging it any; there could be any number of predators who would love to ambush whatever doctor lived this far out, and that thought made Payapa a little uneasy. Predators weren’t something you had to worry about in the city (unless you were a dullard fish living along or in the bay itself), but her dad had told enough scary stories about where he had previously lived and what life was like that she had no desire to ever live outside of a city.

Really, thinking of predators always brought her back to her dad’s recanting chasing down and killing his “livestock” to feed company or something like that, before he had moved to the bay and married their mother. Furthermore, it seemed really horrid to eat something that could... talk. A little creepy, too. Did that just not bother him? She didn’t know and didn’t intend to ask.

The strange, lumpy hut didn’t even have a proper door. It was more a grass curtain, and a thin one, at that. This thing wouldn’t keep anyone out. It seemed so hazardous to Payapa... like it simply screamed “come in anyone, and kill me in my sleep!”

Mon-mon walked through the grass shambles without any reserve, and Payapa followed. She didn’t really want to, but this was her only hope. This was apparently the only doctor, and Mon-mon had gone through all this trouble when she clearly hadn’t needed to by any means, so Payapa was hardly about to shun the effort. It was terribly gracious of the tea lady.

The look of the place was as grim as Mon-mon was gracious, however, and Payapa wanted to swivel about and turn right out of the hut. She didn’t, though, because Charles was still hostage in the other’s arms. There were a couple of pestles against a far wall, and countless berries on innumerable shelves. Payapa wasn’t sure she’d even seen half of them before; surely they were either very rare, or very illegal. Both, in all likelihood. Powders and dried plants were carefully arranged according to some set of properties, surely, but only Prosphora knew what. Payapa had no clue.

It all seemed terribly shady, and, without the sunlight to give any other sort of impression (as there were no windows, and the entrance was facing away from the sun), reminded her what she might imagine the underground, secretive markets to look like.

Mon-mon spoke without stopping to consider how dismal the place looked, though. “Ramia, I have sick for you. Please, look?”

Ramia? Was that the doctor’s name? Probably.

Before Payapa even had the chance to consider what type of name Ramia was, a gigantic purple snake sporting entrancing, vibrant yellow-and-pink feathers (with matching marks!) slithered its way out from behind a very thick, leafy curtain. Not the spindly leaves draping from the entrance, either. These leaves were clearly intended to block visitors from viewing further within the hut. This struck Payapa as a little strange; why keep all these berries out in the open? What did it want to block from sight, then?

But then she was broken from her thoughts. This was a snake. There was a gigantic snake, and perhaps it wasn’t even the doctor. Why would a doctor be a snake? This snake had probably killed the doctor and left out a fake display to lure unsuspecting Pokemon deep into the first room before emerging to strike--

“Yessss...? Ah, you mean to sssay you’ve sspoiled a sssnack for me?” it--she?--asked.

Payapa looked on at the snake’s markings, transfixed, and horrified. Had Mon-mon accidentally walked the three of them into a trap?

Mon-mon gently placed Charles down on a grass bedding in the middle of the dirt floor. “No snack, sick little boy. Can you look see what’s wrong with?”

The snake lowered itself to Charles’s level and flicked its tongue a couple of times. “What are the symptomsss?”

Mon-mon turned back to look at Payapa, who was stuck somewhere between fear and agitation. “Keku child? What happen to little boy?”

Not knowing what else to do, and confused that Mon-mon didn’t see this snake as a threat, she started to talk. “When I first met him he was blind, so there was that, but then now-- I mean, it’s been some weeks, I guess?-- he couldn’t move and stuff. He was all limp, and now he’s not even talking...”

The snake seemed to expect more, but Payapa didn’t really have anything else to add. So, it asked another question. “Yesss? And when wasss that? Important to know how long he’sss been ill.”

“Oh, uh, since an hour or two ago’s when I found him. Maybe only an hour. I don’t know. I tried to get him to a doctor as quickly as possible.”

Lamia coiled loosely around where Charles was laying, and lowered her head to his chest. Payapa was incredibly uneasy during the display, but managed to keep quiet. She supposed this was the doctor after all, and felt rather foolish for her feelings. She couldn’t help having them, regardless of her supposition. It just looked rather bad to see a snake putting its face all close to a near-dead rat that was her first real friend.

“He doesn’t sound very well, ssso I’m going to try a mixture and ssssee how that workss--”

“What do you mean try?!” Payapa interrupted, “Like he’s just some sort of experiment? What’s wrong with you?!”

The snake cocked its head in return, and looked at the angry little reddening Kecleon with interest. “And so would you rather I do nothing inssstead?”

This shut her up.

“Really,” this Ramia continued, “I ssshould kick you all out for bringing such a dangerousss specimen in. I think he isss too far gone, but I will give my effort. With careful diligenccce, I will not be afflicted in the same way as this rodent. I will try, but there isss really no good solution.”

Payapa’s heart sank, though she didn’t fully understand what Ramia was going on about. The gist of Charles’s future was clear, however.

Ramia raised itself up and looked over its ingredients. “Excccept... a sap. Thisss does not help you, as there is no possible way for a child like you to obtain it, but I thought to be honessst. A sap from an eternal tree in the west, though I have never been. It has itsss tricks to make Pokemon abandon the path to the tree, and failing that, its guardians are numerous and formidable.”

“Where... can I get it? Can I buy it somewhere?” Payapa asked earnestly. Perhaps if she just borrowed from her dad--

“Absolutely not, I ssshould think. It’s invaluable, pricelessss. Perhapsss none even possesssss it in this time, at any rate. I shall do what I can with what I have, which is to sssay, considerably less mystic ingredients than what I’ve told to you.”

Mon-mon apparently had something to add. “Life sap, I hear of it. There is also life tea, though I never had chance to make. It was legend in home, and I hear only made three time in all my home history. Legend tea. I would always want to use craft to make life tea, even if legend.”

Ramia nodded in a large, sweeping motion. “Life tea, I’ve heard of that too. I’ve never had a chance to learn the recipe, for I’ve never met anyone else who knew of it. I don’t ssssuppose you’d have the recipe? Even if I’ll never get the chance to make it, learning recipes issss something of a hobby--”

Payapa had had enough of their pointless talk at this point. “Are you gonna help him or just babble about stuff you won’t even be able to do?! Are you just trying to taunt me? ‘I would fix him with this amazing super awesome thing, but nevermind, but oh let’s talk about how to make it in the case I ever did have it--which I won’t’?!”

Mon-mon turned and frowned. This bothered Payapa greatly; Mon-mon had only ever smiled or at least been sympathetic to this point. It made her feel a bit like a selfish brat, but she just wanted badly for them to get back to Charles. It was for Charles!

Ramia scrutinized Payapa. “Yesss. Your friend. I will try. However, payment will be due.”

Great. Payment.

Having absolutely no idea how to approach the issue, she just blurted it out. “I don’t have any money, so I’m gonna have to give you an ‘I owe you’ on this.”

“That is fine if you have no money, as money isssn’t my concern, anyway. I request the recccipe of the tea.”

Payapa was confused momentarily. “What?”

Mon-mon spoke for her. “I can give recipe, but exact write is at home with husband. O-kay to come back later and give?”

“Absssolutely. Thank you, Mon-mon.”

Payapa grabbed at her chest limply. Even when she’d just been so childish, they proceeded with helping her. Both of them had. She felt briefly ashamed.

Mon-mon left without much of a word, but Payapa stayed behind. It was imperative to watch the snake do its work, and to make sure she didn’t come back to an eaten friend and then herself follow the same path. She knew that was a little ridiculous, but really...

...it was still a snake.

Though she supposed that at least Charles had being sick going for him; earlier Ramia had expressed disdain at the idea that Charles be near her at all, so Payapa started to be able to push the thought from her mind. It really did make no sense for the snake to want to eat a sick victim. Surely it would get just as ill, and it had still managed to be here after however long, right? A reputation would have emerged if it had eaten its clientele at any point... right?

Payapa sat next to Charles and placed her claws on his head, stroking his fur. She wanted to talk, to say something, to try to rile him, but just settled for a repetitive action that would both comfort her through the nature of the act and let Charles know that she was around, even if he couldn’t hear her or muster the energy to talk. It wasn’t long at all before tears found their way down her cheeks, either.

In the meantime, Ramia started to collect various herbs and berries from her shelves, placing them in a pile near an unlit fireplace. At some point, Ramia decided the light was too little, or that she needed a fire for some other reason. Prepping the ingredients, maybe? So the fireplace was lit, and the room grew far less sinister in the orange glow. It was hard to look quite as terrifying as it previously had when the place was now being bathed with a warm, alive light. Though, she moved her tail abruptly when she noticed the shadow it created over Charles, seemingly cutting him in two with darkness as the knife. No, there would be none of that.