The train whistle scream was a screech, Sakaki explained, rubbing an ear while Nebby bopped towards his bag, wiggled in, and zipped it up behind him despite not having… fingers… or hands. Which lead Lillie to nip her lip and ask.
“Was that a um… psychic?”
Because Nebby in a bad mood with psychic… sounded scary. Not that he was scary, it was just the idea of what could be done that made Lillie cringe.
“No.” Sakaki shook his head. “’Mon without hands are able to manipulate their latent potent energy.. or their aura the spiritualists call it… to hold and manipulate things their physic would keep them from holding. It’s the reason why a magmar or magcargo don’t set everything around it on fire every second of the day, for example, or why handless ‘mon can hold items in battle.”
“Oh.”
Lillie had no clue what either of those named mon looked like, but fire every second of the day sounded bad, real bad.
“I don’t think that… thing… has one damaging attack to its name.”
“Nii!” Nebby definitely had heard that, and by the jerk of her packs had “splashed” against the cloth walls of his case.
And by the wet sound was making a mud bath inside. Sakaki considered her and her writhing satchel with a grimace.
“Sorry?” Lillie squeaked.
Hands in his pockets Sakaki flicked an eyebrow up at her, “and you’re apologizing why?”
Lillie opened he mouth, to explain, that you always had to. Fast and quick to avoid… Lillie’s scalp tingled unpleasantly, old memories so close. She shook her head, opened her mouth to explain, you apologized to not be punished… But that old pattern, that trained pattern… did seem a bit… Honestly, it seemed odd when she considered her present circumstances. It was him and her, and she’d technically done nothing wrong, and he didn’t care about “wrong” so long as it wasn’t being done to him.
So, following that thought to it’d end Lillie froze and found herself back where she started, with Sakaki’s question rattling around in her head. Why was she apologizing?
It was a revelation of sorts, and she clicked her mouth closed and realized that this was something of a revelation… And the sensation was uncomfortably familiar. Like that sourceless shattering from before, but somehow, worse.
XXX
Her scalp burned, where her hair had been pulled.
She’d been yanked from her chair, then thrown. Staggering from sprawl, to up, through the tears, because staying down was worse than getting up. Experience had taught her that. So she’d gotten up only to be grabbed again, yanked straight and proper by her hair and arm, she whined in her throat because it hurt.
Wondering, whimpering, why why why, and wanting nothing more than to run… but she wasn’t allowed to.
So she didn’t.
“What is this… thing you left on my table?”
The words were spit, like curses, each dripping utter utter scorn, and Lillie wanted to cringe into herself, only the iron grip on her arm, and the hand fisted in her hair, kept her from crumpling into a curl, clapping her hands on her head, and crying denials, she hadn’t meant to…
She was so so sorry…
XXX
They managed to skip around the side of the shipyard, without running into anyone.
They joined the foot traffic of the tourist pier. Fishermen dickered with wingul feeding families over the choicer bits of sea, and most of the people were going towards the edges, away from the beach. It was an almost… embarrassed air to everyone, who was pointedly not looking back, and lingering where they were and perhaps, walking a bit further away from the shoreline.
A look towards the beach showed why.
Skull had built a barrier, a toll booth.
Except it was the pirated idea, made from the ragged remnants of an abandoned construction project. About knee-high, off-colored, sun-cracked traffic cones were the foundation, purloined from the local police site, from some long forgotten crash. The cones were stretched over the entranceway and draped over the soft plastic triangles, pinned and bound by painter’s tape, was a length of PVC pipe. The pipe, the barrier, was about wrist thick, and there were raised voices coming from one edge.
A little kid, near pre-schooler age and probably ditching was demanding his “prize”. He’d limbo’ed under their pole, and he wanted to know what he’d won.
“Nothing but a beating ya little punk! Scram!”
Closing his eyes, with a wince, because the fight was getting louder, Sakaki let in a deep breath, let it out, then through gritted teeth managed.
“Please, break all my admittedly low expectations and tell me that your.. Nebby, knows surf.”
It could have been simple, so simple. Say “surf?” in a questioning tone and he’d give up.
Or she could tell the truth.
That Nebby couldn’t even dog paddle. He’d tried once, hopping off a pile of papers to try taking a dip in one of Professor Kukui’s magikarp tanks. His fluff had sucked water down faster than a sponge, got twice as heavy, and he’d only been spared from drowning by the fish swarming under him and splashing him up in turns to keep him from suffocating.
The little Legend had had fits at too-deep water bowls after that, and Lillie couldn’t blame him, not really.
So, Nebby, surf? Not in a million years.
Despite her silence, Sakaki read something of the truth on her face. He smacked a hand over his face, positively vibrating with… some unspeakable... incomprehensible… probably violent emotion.
“Quando mettero le mani su Celebi vado a strizzargli il collo.”
Pulling a pokeball from his pocket, Sakaki stormed down the dock, face flushed, dark eyes glinting with what Lillie suspected was homicidal fury. A flick and Beedrill was drawn, the bug’s buzzing and boy’s stomping steps probably should have been a warning. But one of the Skulls had hauled the kid up, shaking and barking at the kid to make him cry, bragging about planning to toss him “overboard, like one of those H2O guys”, the other was fixing their “barricade”, and the last, their lookout, was chewing on a candy bar.
He looked short, and sort of familiar, and he was the only one who looked up, after a big bit that is.
“Muff!” A choked swallow. “Hey, boss? Boss?”
“What?! I’m busy here!” The older teen was having to holler over the kid who was screaming, and a glance back confirmed that no one was coming to help. Except Sakaki, whose motives were definitely suspect. And Lillie, who screwed up what courage she owned to keep pace…
To make sure the kid was ok, to maybe pull Sakaki off of these Skulls, she wasn’t sure why really, only positive that she needed to keep up or she’d get left behind.
“Tourists at-“
Beedrill spat something white and sticky, cutting off whatever a clock that was going to be uttered. The thump, as the Skull fell, going mad pulling at his face covering that’d been glued skin tight to his face because he couldn’t breathe, made the other two grunts look up.
The kid, bit the hand that held him, hard. He was dropped and the second he hit the ground made a break for it. The grunt who’d been tinkering with the barrier ran to his friend, the “boss” swore, and pulled a red and white ball off his belt.
“Who the hell do you think you are, messing with Skull I’m…” The boy swaggered front and center, making gestures around his eyes, neck charm swaying almost as low as the visible waistline of his underwear. Only tripping over his baggy pants saved him from getting his mouth gummed up like his underling’s. The Skull leader got up fast from that, swore, and threw two pokeballs. Lillie flinched at the tan yangoose and its wide-fanged smile, and the flying bit of fluff and fangs swirling above them.
Sakaki, looked from the gangster, to the kid’s’ mon, then back again, lips quirking in a smile more terrifying than the yangoose, despite not having fangs.
“You picked the wrong day to play hero, punk.” The leader growled, or tried, pitching his voice low, trying to add a bit of a rasp to it.
It was like watching Rollie puff up. A motion that made the mouse used to try to be threatening, but lead to the sandy thing curling up instead.
“Oh you’re mistaken, I’m not a hero.” Sakaki’s smile went wider, and the Skull kid’s yangoose winced back at the tone, even if the creature’s trainer did not. “You’re just in my way.”
XXX
He’d been bright, and sunny, topped with hair so glossy it’s shined, teeth so white they glinted, and a sporty overcoat an off-white, possibly glitter trimmed, monstrosity that flashed when he walked about.
Lille’d called him Captain Sparkles, because he was a trial captain… and she might have lost track of his name under the wash of “shiny”.
He’d smiled, and waved, posing a bit for those with camera phones before getting to the business at hand.
Chumming with the newest “trainer on the scene”.
And… Lillie felt bad because the Captain seemed nice. But seeing him next to Sakaki… it was obvious there were differences. That both males lived on different wavelengths and nothing was clicking, despite the Captain’s tries.
Dressed to the nines in matching sport ware with Aether-affiliated logos popping out in tasteful places, the hem of his shirt, the sweatband around his head, Captian Sparkles made his first mistake, attempting to initiate physical contact. It went downhill from there and only ended when Sakaki dryly pointed out that there were bound people, possible bodies, strung up and tossed over the railing.
Ignoring the furrowed brow, the quiet… “And you’re okay with this?” Sakaki withdrew his Beedrill to keep the Captain from turning his attention to his bug, countering with a wry.
“Are you okay with letting those possible bodies become those in actuality?”
And Tapu and whatever good Legends were around, grant Lillie patience. Because Sakaki’s tones were snippier than a Persian being denied a head rub. And how Lillie knew that..
-It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense.-
“Because if you aren’t I’d suggest wheeling them up before the tide comes back in. I’ll report to the police station to get what bounties you gather for stopping ne’er do wells, or whatever quaint rewards system you have set up, on my time.”
Sliding his hands into his pockets, Sakaki brushed past the Captain, and Lillie considered saying… so many things…
In the depths of her psyche, Lillie wrestled with a wash of unfamiliarity. It was almost alien, her urge to snark at the boys, the situation, or just to roll her eyes.
“ Warning, he bites”, warred with “I’m sorry he’s always like this…” Though the last was the most familiar, the most right sounding. Despite being born of sass, and that thinking of saying those words made her stomach churn, they felt the best.
She swallowed down words and impulses and wondered, why her fingers tingled, why she remembered soft white fur and a yowl that mirrored Sakaki’s tone even if it was wordless.
Fingers twitching, trying to shake the odd feeling off, Lillie hugged Nebby’s carry box tight and trotted after the black-haired boy.
The words, the impulses reeked of… appropriated familiarity. And they weren’t familiar. Sakaki might have even hated her, certainly he scorned her and her lack of experience…
Except Sakaki didn’t, not all the time.
He’d scaled back his hostility in bits and pieces. Their interactions were becoming a dance she didn’t quite get and found disquieting as she instinctually took up her role in the motions.
“’scuse me…” She nudged past the shocked pretty boy, who had meandered to the dock’s edge, looked down, and recoiled in shock. Because there were living bodies down there, at least the thrashing gagged forms were bobbing along like the worst fishing bait ever.
The violet needles poking out of the threads showed Beedrill’d tried to keep them from being living and from the twitching, had probably failed.
Hopefully.
Behind her Captain Sparkles was on his phone, yelling for the lifeguard and paramedics…
Picking up her pace, Lillie was tempted to run. To cut Sakaki off, warn the man that Captain Sparkles was a Trial Captain, and thus the first step in getting to the Kahuna. That maybe, just maybe, if he played nice the other boy could be a handhold in dealing with whatever mad Legend was threatening the island...
But, (and this thought was as terrifying as the sass, as the impulses, and the familiarity, because it was all three, and complacent at best), Mr. Attitude Problem had struck again. So there went that opportunity skipping into the Mew blasted sunset because someone was in a mood.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, because not acting on these impulses hurt, Lillie grit her teeth around the pain. She was not that type of girl and wouldn’t be. The impulses could hang themselves, and so could the strange thoughts.
Lillie ran to keep up so she wasn’t left behind.
XXX
She wrapped some frozen peas to his knuckles, using a clean sock because she didn’t have a first aid kit and Sakaki’d been dumb and declared the injury irrelevant. Once his hand was bound Lillie set a timer, and indulged a bit of sass that wasn’t the odd implant in her head, Lillie told him not to punch things, just sit, and wait. He raised an eyebrow and might have argued, except his phone rang and his world shrunk down to the voice on the other end of the line.
A boy’s voice, impossibly young. Supposedly Sakaki’s son. It was another impossibility in and of itself just by looking at him, but not looking at the trainer made it easier to believe. It was easier to hear the adult tones, to imagine the voice properly deep, so Lillie listened while she worked and didn’t look up, not once.
Hopefully, the weight on his fingers would keep him from being too… gesture happy? Whatever the word, it wasn’t important. Only that his hand stayed still.
Because Sakaki’s hands were a mess. They were red and scraped. Treating bruises wasn’t an abnormality in the Aether household. Lillie knew about times, and to make sure the timer wasn’t too long and knew to set it two minutes too short so she would have plenty of time to get a towel warmed up and ready to swap out with the ice at just the right moment.
Lillie had a system, and Sakaki tolerated her return and the pack’s replacement with a peach, fuzzy toasty towel, without comment.
XXX
If she were brave Lillie’d of explained. It was her work, her puzzle, done so perfect, so right… for her… just for her.
But Lillie wasn’t a brave girl, but rather a quiet one, who stood back, and made sure not to be seen, or heard, that didn’t mean she didn’t listen.
Her face throbbed, a one-two beat that burned and dug in all at once. Her most obvious bruise ran from jaw to eye, darkened and swollen.
She’d been allowed no first aid and left in her room with a makeup kit and orders to make herself presentable or be punished.
Worse, more… Something that’d make her really cry.
Lillie reached for the makeup and despite the burning pain, choked down her sniffles and got to work, masking what she could.
XXX
She eased her makeup kit on the table; the soft rattle and click made Sakaki look up from the computer. He’d been combing his hair one-handed, flicking through web pages with the other, and then, mid search just stopped. Not because of her, he’d turned to face the screen fully, and whatever was on the screen shocked him so he went still.
For one scary moment, Lillie couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
The moment came and went, breathing resumed, and the hand that had been combing reached up, twisting his long locks so black ran between his fingers. Grip firm Sakaki tugged, masking shock with pain. Shelving something unbelievably violent with a moment of self-inflicted agony.
Familiar with the trick, though Lillie usually bit a lip, or the inside of her cheek, she winced back at the show. And while it wasn’t much privacy or anything, she looked about. The people around them were busy doing their own thing, around the desk, the other tables, so no one noticed. Lillie winced in sympathy pain, even as she forced herself to stay.
He seemed… settled… after a little.
Not inclined to get up and storm off. And scary thought, scary revelation, she realized that this was probably the most honest she’d ever seen Sakaki.
And his expression of the moment was an unpleasant, unhinged, cousin to surprise.
Flipping her dinged and battered makeup box open, Lillie took the hand that wasn’t clenched in hair, the unbloodied one. She compared the hues of fingers and knuckles to the patchwork of powders inside. He was more… darker… than she was. More olive, if the chart glued to the bottom of her case meant anything. Unfamiliar with anything besides alabaster complexions, Lillie pulled out each mini shelf of colors and found better matching hues closer to the bottom.
It was the stuff she’d never used. Whenshe'd seen it before she'd tought of these colors as accents rather than real colors real people, butthen she'd met him, and he was a match for so many of them...
Sakaki pressed his lips into a thin line, then loosed his hair with a grimace. Lillie slowly contemplated hues, trying to ignore how Sakaki’s face had gone eerily blank. That moment of honesty was done, it seemed.
With shaking fingers Lillie brushed over his wrist, when he didn’t pull away or react she turned his hand over. Testing the callouses for their texture and wondering how she was going to mimic that with what colors she had.
“What are you doing?” His teeth were grit, she could hear it, but his hands were still. Lillie really focused on his hands even if they winced from her touch.
Tightening her grip, because she wasn’t done yet, Lillie whispered, “Research.”
He’d blown off her attempts to talk to him with that word, so the girl didn’t feel bad about using it against him.
A huff made her look up. Thin lips quirked, an almost smile, Sakaki closed the laptop. The image on it, a smiling, familiar face of the local Trial Captain Sparkles, told Lillie what he’d been looking up. What he’d found out.
And, while it was little wonder he was shocked, and probably mad because… well everything about today, Lillie didn’t feel bad for him.
She could have told him but hadn’t wanted to. Even thinking of clearing her throat was enough to make her eyes smart and her scalp sting…
And Lillie hadn’t dared to think about making a peep when Sakaki spoke to Silver. From the first words, to his soft tones, she knew Silver calls were sacred. Sancramount. Not to be interrupted, ever, on the threat of a hundred Beedrill stings.
And doing nothing, not sharing everything… that probably made her a bad guide since she hadn’t said a word….
But there were things more important than that. What, Lillie wasn’t sure, but she’d figure it out.
Sakaki tugged at her grip, a possible complaint that was backed with a quiet, “Done yet?”
It was enough to jar her back to reality.
With a pat Lillie let his hand go. “When your hand scabs over and isn’t so… gooey… I can make them look normal. So long as you don’t punch any more Skull Grunts over piers it should look fine. But I only have one face brush and I don’t want my face brush in your…” She left it hanging, with a grimace at the end.
He nodded, understanding. Face loosening all hallmarks of expression, smoothing eerily fast, Sakaki raised an eyebrow. She knew him well enough to know he was going to ask something. He’d started with asking Kukui with that same expression on his face, until one too many “Moon”s had made the older boy drop all placidity, and swap it out with meanness.
In that, in how he acted, Sakaki wasn’t special. He wasn’t the only adult Lillie’d avoided talking to and likely wouldn’t be the last.
“But if you want I can really make your eyes pop if you want… I’ve got all the colors to do it!”
“Ah… no.” Disgust chased curiosity away. “I’m fine.”
She hummed as she sorted. Clicking her box closed, with a tapped ra-ta-ta, because it was set, and set right. Happy she’d be able to apply what she needed in a flash, a thought popped into her head. It was the simple pleasures, and that impulse felt right, important, so Lillie’d remember it. Focus on the simple things.
Lillie’s stomach rumbled, and simple things, getting dinner, her free one from the center, she could do that. So she should do it. She was getting up to do so while beside her, still sitting, Sakaki was busy with other things.
Running a hand over his head, perhaps soothing the pain from earlier, perhaps digging his finger in too hard and making it worse, Lillie couldn’t tell what he was doing. Just that it was something. A few strokes, to smooth then guide, and he started twisting his hair into a loose braid, black eyes distant, focusing on something both riveting and invisible between the folded computer and the table top’s grain.
“You said something funny, not ha ha funny but… odd when you hung up with Silver.”
Sakaki hummed at her, making a loose knot so things would hold but without a real hair clip it made his braid sideways and frayed and he hadn’t moved a step. Lillie itched to dig out one of hers, the loose imperfection of his efforts irritated her. Flaws in looks were digging, itching, irritants, like sand on a dress, and as unsettling as an imperfect high heel you had to walk on. She’d been nice before offering him some from her pack while they rested, before the school. He’d scoffed at the floral pins and pastel hues that were the bulk of her hairpieces.
He’d called his slopshod efforts of putting himself together “cultivating a rugged look”. She’d thought it made him look like he “rolled out of bed and hadn’t bothered”. Her last offer, a teal clip, the least floral of her stash, had been met with a wry.
“Do I look like an Aqua Grunt?”
He’d been irritated when she hadn’t known about Aqua, then sighed, and gave the hair piece back to her with a wry.
“I’m going to lop it all off anyways, so why bother?”
Today clearly wasn’t “lop it all off” day. And Lilie wrinkled her nose a little at the sloppy braid, but he was done and getting up too. Tucking the computer close, intending to return it, his sneakers squeaked against linoleum floors, hers, less new and more worn, made a dull tap tap with each step.
They walked together for a little, to the front, where he’d take a left to the desk and she’d nip to the side door to the right for a bite.
“And what’d I say, Ms. Lillie, taht was so funny?”
“Fay Yee Bravuh?” Lillie mimed the sounds, imperfectly and to that Sakaki’s dark eyes flickered, as if spying something interesting that she couldn’t see. The lines of his face eased out of their usual scowl.
“That, my dear, is Italian.” He corrected her pronunciation, repeated himself so she could hear it right, and when she asked him what it meant, he smiled, teeth bared bright and wide. “Roughly translated, it means “Goodbye, and be good” all at once.” To her baffled look he chuckled. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for irony.”
It was a joke. He meant it as a joke, clear as day. But Lillie didn’t get it and was sort of happy because there was something beyond meanness in his smirk as he explained.
And not wanting to know where the meanness went, Lillie deflected, again.
“Do you know a lot of languages, Sakaki?”
“A few”
And curiosity kept her, left her waiting while he checked the technology in, then rejoined her, the two of them going towards dinner it seemed.
Italian, he had drawled at her, their plates filled with bland veggies and rice by a uniformed worker behind the counter, one packet of salt apiece, a sliver of baked fish as a side, was his mother tongue. Kantoian –what they were speaking now- was a second language learned at school because most of the people in Kanto spoke it.
“The Madam wanted me to blend in, not stick out. The “lessons” to lessen my accent were a nightmare.”
And that’d made sense, even if the fact he’d that gotten two spoons and she two forks, did not.
They settled on a small table with two chairs, near a windowless wall, swapping utensils while Sakaki swapped out expectations and was almost pleasant as he rambled on.
Unovian was his third, taken up right before college.
“My last year of high school challenge, it was the only class I didn’t sleep through.”
And the real prize, for her patience, was learning that Sakaki knew Kalosian.
“Post-school, hobby. Research, really.”
He’d deflected. Then gone so far as to deflate her hopes of learning the most romantic language ever, because he was only fluent in gutter speak. All the swears, all the slang, all the things that would drive his rival, up the wall.
He’d found the man’s perfectionist streak and scraped wrong ways as often as possible.
All for the simple, sadistic, pleasure, of making some Lion person squirm.
”My Kalosian is on par to how those Skull brats were running their mouths.” He confessed between bites. “And I’m not teaching you to talk like that.”
He ignored her protests and flattery, about how he had to be smart enough to know more, with a blantant show of overacting.
He sniffed, pretending to be insulted. Only a glint of light about his eyes and a slight scrunch, an almost laugh line, tipped his hand.
“Whatever happened to Italian being the most romantic language ever?”
“All the soaps here have Kalosian romantic leads and all the Italians are thieves.” Lillie confessed.
“Ung how insulting.”
XXX
Despite probably being the rudest person in the Alola region, Sakaki managed to get a trial scheduled for six in the morning. Which meant, since it was an hour's walk between here and there, the boy had to shuffle out of the pokecenter at five, right before sunrise.
Lillie’d planned to sleep through his departure, get up at a reasonable hour, have her breakfast for one on her terms, and put herself and her head together to tackle the thorny problem of “what’s next” because things were… well winding down. Because once Sakaki did his Trial, and maybe washed the school windows or something as “charity” Sakaki didn’t have much reason to stick around.
And Lillie’s excuse of “guide” was going to be horribly ineffective since she didn’t know any part of Alola besides here, Iki, and the Aether Corporation building.
And problems that big needed lots of sleep, a warm breakfast, and some alone time.
Suffice to say, none of that had happened.
Her first part of her plan, to sleep through Sakaki’s leaving, was undone because Beedrill was being a…
Well, Lillie couldn’t think of any words, but she heard a lot of words that she was going to look up later, once she was away from any disapproving adults of course.
The kindest way to put it, and it was stretching kindness to breaking, was that Sakaki’s starter was of a sharing mind.
It decided that if it was up, everyone lost their right to sleep in. Very much not a morning pidgy, and likely only survived to evolve to a Bee’ by sleeping in late and not getting eaten like the rest of its nest to fulfill the cliché, the bug resented getting up early. Much less this early.
And if it was a person there would have been banging pots and pans and screaming.
Not having the right limbs, or vocal cords, the bug let its resentment about its trainers' choices be known with loud buzzes.
By flitting away from the light of Sakaki’s pokeball as the black-haired trainer tried to recall his bug and missed because Beedrill was moving so fast it almost looked like there were two of him and it made aiming confusing.
At first, the Italian had been quiet, a soft word to wake the bug from its cocoon of a hammock, then the hum of the pokeball turning on. Lillie tucked her pillow over her head, groaning because Sakaki was being too loud. Granted she was closest to Bee’s hammock, but still… Scrunching her eyes tight Lillie willed Sakaki to hurry and for sleep to come back.
The thump, as Beedrill tumbled out of its nest and staggered out of range of the first recall, spitting a blob of white by the sound of it, made Lillie throw the pillow off with a moan, and glare at the Bee’ in utter irritation.
Her bunkmates, once they were up, weren’t as nice.
By dodge number five there was no stealth, and no one was asleep anymore.
Stomping, snarling words that were probably swears, Sakaki stalked after his bug. Herding to a windowless corner with his misses. This early morning scuffle was taking place in the pokecenter’s communal sleeping area, where all the local trainers on Journeys had turned in for the night. And most of them had been up too late or training, or because there was no one to remind them to go to bed at a reasonable time, suffice to say the room was not full of happy, understanding, people.
The youngest and smallest were hugging their starters, alternating between bleary, and scared. Older and braver kids hollered swears. A few aggressive trainers threw their pokeballs, rubbing sleep from their eyes, and barked attacks at their freshly woken up ‘mon.
And since this was pre-first Trial for almost everyone the attacks called were tackles.
And because Beedrill was flying, those missed.
A few short-sighted yang’ boiled around the luckless trainer closest to the bug’s perch, settling on harassing the wrong thing. With a tight flip, the bug went from flying to clinging. Its pinchy legs stuck to the roof, pitted plaster, settling upside down so it could rest its wings and watch the chaos from upside down.
And, it might have been Lillie’s imagination, but the bug’s buzzes sounded smug because from the sound of it there were people outside who were up and coming to investigate.
“I do not have time for this! Get in the damned ball, now.”
Busy with some trainer who had set their starter aside, picked up a pillow, and threw, the yellow bug did not come down. And the pillow being tossed back flashed red as it absorbed the recall light and sailed on its merry way.
Lillie, done with kindness, decided that Beedrill had decided to try “naughty” as its nature today, with a dab of “slightly stubborn” and was doing a very good job at being bad.
One blast of light that nearly caught him mid-pivot, and seeing his capture imminent if he hung around the bug let go. Dropping down, right on top of the yangoose be-deviled trainer. The screams of “getitoffgetitoff!” were impressive and met with adult voices hollering at them to “hold on”.
Time was running out.
Seeing their prey in easy grasp, the long-bodied Yangoose pack -
( Or was it Yangeese, since there was more than one? Lillie wasn’t sure.)
-reared up and pounced as a single-minded entity. Near smothering the wailing boy in a rush of tackles.
Beedrill hopped off its suddenly unsteady perch and killed its flight to dodge another red flash of light. Blinking the starlets back, because Lillie’d gotten the pokeball’s recall light in her eyes, the girl blinked back tears and whined in her throat.
Because despite only being light that had hurt.
Something was making the bed indent, close enough that Lillie could feel it. The thrum of wings kicking up told her who it was, even if her eyes weren’t quite up to the task of working just yet.
So Lillie might have responded to the thing on her bed by picking up a pillow and thwacking it. The buzz directed at her was insulted, pitched like a wordless complaint. She smacked again, harder, and her third got stuck on something with a weird “shink” sound. She tugged, the bug tugged back, and something was ripping, but Lille couldn’t see around the stars bursting in her vision.
Then, there was another flash of red, and the pressure pulling back was gone.
Lillie flopped on her back, against the mattress, with an “ohmph”.
It was snowing feathers, was Lillie’s first thought. Blinking back tears, Lillie could sorta see better now, and those were definitely feathers, fur, and fluff, swirling all around.
And that’s when the center’s staff, a Joy, and two guards, tumbled in. Their guard growlithe was puffed and spitting embers, making some of the fluff catch. Pretending to be ignorant of the fire in the making, Nurse Joy set her hands on her hips, and in a no-nonsense tone barked. “What in Legend’s Name is going in here?”
Half the room pointed to Sakaki, saying he did it, tattletale tone in full attendance. Those not pointing were busy. Either crying into their starter’s fur and feathers, or trying to calm their barking yang’s, or pull their ‘mon off the wailing kid who was still getting knocked around.
Gritting his teeth, pocketing his Beedrill’s pokeball, Sakaki opened his mouth meaning to say something. Some excuse, some lie, to deflect. A glare about and he closed his mouth, slumped in obvious defeat. Digging out a wallet he’d probably pocketed from a Skull grunt, he glanced at the Nurse, with a wince.
“How much in damages do I owe you?”
Five minutes later and Sakaki was kicked out, Lillie with him, and he was very late going to his trial because when he tried to slink off Lillie had stuck with him. Loudly pointing out that he owed her, a room if nothing else, and she’d inspired guilt in the man. Because Sakaki checked them both into a nice hotel, not the hostel she’d expected, and left her a generous amount of stolen cash to buy breakfast with before leaving to deal with Captian Sparkles.
XXX
He came back, bleary-eyed, reeking of disturbed earth, and scraping off sand out of his hair. Beedrill, he’d told her, was grounded. He’d used Rollie for the trail, and if he saw another saint’s damned Skull grunt he was going to crack their skulls open...
Lillie left him to it. Content he was present and could stay with their things, Lillie took the shower she’d wanted to take since Beedrill’s little rampage. She might have used up most of the hot water, but her hair was a fluff speckled, poison gummed, and web-streaked mess. She slipped out quite a bit later, her hair bundled in a twisted towel, clothes damp and clingy, to find him napping on a bed. Rollie at his feet, the ‘mon was sprawled staryu position, blue eyes scrunched shut, little tail thumping slow and soft.
And shedding sand in his sleep, one of Sakaki’s feet was working on getting buried and there was a hissing stream sliding off the sheets, making a little pile on the floor.
Lillie could have woke Sakaki up, demanded answers, perhaps a real apology, but after a moment she decided “not now” would work for now. She flopped on the other bed, and closed her eyes, meaning only to rest them for a moment.
Noon room service woke them both up a few hours later.
XXX
There was a puzzle on a side shelf by the checkout counter. While Sakaki argued and negotiated their stay for the next two days, Lillie pulled the box down.
It was tidier than the one back home, the box showed a sea scene, and popping it open found the images stamped on the pieces matched the cover.
It was a wonder, and made her skin creep, all at once. For her, puzzles were a thing. But she was going to do this one, and by the sounds of Sakaki’s negotiations, she probably had two days to do it.
Which seemed fair enough.
XXX
She dumped the pieces out on a nightstand table. Not happy to work in a corner, she shoved the table around for a little. Leaving it attendant alarm clock on the floor.
After a bit of back and forth, and some grunting, because moving it back and forth was hard, Lillie settled on a spot right before the room’s biggest window. Busy beating his shoes, which were weeping sand, outside of said window, Sakaki didn’t notice Lillie’s work. Not until he came in and had to walk about it.
He spared her, and the newly located table, a little glare, but said nothing. Slipping around Lillie’s work to take his shower without a word.
So Lillie worked, uninterrupted, picking out the corner pieces with a little digging. She set them up in their right spots. Trains of “probably right” pieces were added in bits and bobs, making uneven lines stretching towards each corner but not quite touching.
“I’m going to the school to see if that fraud Kukui is around, were you coming with?”
“I could just call him.” Lillie offered, not looking up from one stubborn piece that fit nowhere. She set it aside, deciding to make that the start of the “I don’t know pile” and dug out another, which quickly joined the “I don’t know” section.
Well, at least the first piece wasn’t lonely.
“No.” The man grit out the next, as if gratitude was alien, and considering Sakaki, maybe it was. “Thank you. Regardless of whether or not he’s there, I need to talk to the principal to hammer out the… terms of my labor.”
So Captian Sparkles had said no, Lillie wondered why but didn’t bother to ask. She’d ask after dinner, she decided, if Sakaki was in a civil mood.
Until then, Lillie had things to do, things to think about. Going out and about seemed like an awful idea, because ether would be things outside that’d crowd out her thinking that she needed to do inside. Professor Kukui had called her an “incurable homebody”, but really, Lillie just wanted stillness and sameness, just for a little so she could remember what stability felt like.
“Are you coming?”
Lillie shook her head. And to that Sakaki shifted from one foot to the other, dark eyes flicked to her, then about, then back.
“Are you alright to be alone?”
And wasn’t that a funny thing for him to ask her? She smiled, because despite being probably an adult, he was silly at times, over the silliest of things.
“Being alone isn’t… It’s not new.” She explained, gently, matching his sudden softness with her own.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Their eyes locked and Lillie dropped the stare off first, rummaging another piece out she tried it aimlessly and of course, it didn’t fit. She tried anyway, the futile fitting was better than looking up.
“I’m going to stay in today. Catch up on my sleep, think.”
He left without a word minutes later, taking both of his ‘mon with him. Once he was gone Lillie, slumped into her chair, staring at the incomplete puzzle with eyes that burned. Hanging over that span between crying and screaming, and not too sure why she was there to begin with.
All she knew was that her head hurt, and there were urges, screaming at her that she “had” to go. Sakaki couldn’t be alone. But she hadn’t followed them, and not following the impulses hurt.
She smiled around the pain, because for the first time, in her whole life, she’d done what she wanted to.
A meep from her travel bag got Lillie up to pull it open.
Nebby, the stinker, having slept through everything, tumbled out with a happy yawn. Seeing her sitting, he bopped into her lap with a squeaky trill.
Alright, maybe this was the second time in her life, Lillie conceded, petting the starry fluff on Nebby’s head. Maybe, just maybe, she could fit in a few more things she wanted to do, just because, while she figured out what the right thing to do was.
It was a hope anyway.
XXX
They broke bread over the puzzle. It was almost done, with a few pieces baring some new nips courtesy of Nebby “helping”.
It made a weird place mat but was big enough to work for both of them. But then the nightstand was small, the take-out containers small, and all that smallness fit together nicely.
And per their agreement, she told him things, and he told her things, because Lillie had “upgraded their contract”, and sprung it on him when he shambled in from the “mankey breeding pen” of a school.
“They don’t even know how to hold, to throw…” Sweet rice with fried vegetables was their dinner course. A bland miso soup stood between them, to be poured into a cup and eaten when they felt like it. Overall everything tasted much better than the center’s food, though the off-white chunks in their soup made Lillie a little leery of taking more than one bite for the sake of manners.
Sakaki, initially, had refused the supplied chopsticks. She’d offered to show him how to hold them right and he went along with it. A trade for a trade, eating lessons for tales about the school. He’d managed to get one dumpling to the sauce container, before dropping said dumpling fell in. He’d gone back to using a fork to save the drowning bite out and tossed the sticks into the nearby trash bin.
“I had them all out in the front yard practicing their tosses. One of them had a Meowth, the poor thing was bloated, fur as soft as sin, but the flesh underneath it was clammy and slick. I’ve never seen a normal type look like that before unless it was dying of poisoning, but the cat was as spry as any I’ve trained.”
“You have cats?” contested with “How many have you trained?”
Lillie decided on the more informative, “Meowths are dark types here, not normal”, and ha, take that impulses.
She smirked more at the headache than at Moon’s stupefied shock, because not-normal-meowths was clearly not a thing from wherever he was from.
Kanto, Lillie told that bit of fuzzy thinking in the back of her head, Sakaki was from Kanto, and he wasn’t Moon.
And every time this happened, Lillie was more sure that Sakaki was right, about bad Legends, and her headache might of peaked at that thought. She winced, unable to help herself, because ouch.
“You alright?”
“Just telling the thing in my head you aren’t Moon again, it’s being a jerk about it.”
Because part of this new bargain, was honesty, and Lillie had almost lost him when she confessed to the voices and impulses. Until she’d told him how they were trying to lock her into thinking he was Moon, lock her into being “just a guide”, even though she knew he wasn’t and she certainly wasn’t going to be. The fact that the impulses hadn’t started until she’d started to believe in him had certainly piqued his interest.
As well as her idle thought of “if it/they/the Legend was doing this to her, a nobody, what was it doing to everyone else?”
His counter confession, of him being here, not home with his son, was due to the act of an evil Legend had almost been a deal-breaker for Lillie. After all, Legends were supposed to be good… but the teacher’s story had damaged her supposition that Legends must be good, and both settled for tamer confessions and truths after that opening exchange.
“Mother gained Aether from father about twelve years ago… We started as a science company, but became an everything company under her. There was an accident… Father became sick right before I was born and Mother started changing things after. At least that’s what everyone said. And… she got sick in a different way… It was like she had impulses but they weren’t simple things, like names and places. But bad things, bad thoughts, and she did more and more bad things… Until… well I rescued Nebby from her.”
Sakaki finished his bite, then broke a bite into pieces, passing it down on a napkin to Nebby who took the snack with a happy chirp and head butt to the man’s fingers.
A man who looked nothing like… who looked right about her age.. Lillie looked away, chased a bit of food about on her plate, until that thought went away.
Because she knew, believed him, and thinking of him as a “boy”, or even “a little older than her” was a bit creepy.
And not her thought, so she wouldn’t allow it.
Clearing his throat, Sakaki spoke, telling more of his day, affecting a curious lightness in his tone, that Lilly realized, was him attempting to mimic a woman’s voice.
“The Principal, Ms. Fiana,” Sakaki poured some soup in his cup, the water in it long gone, he’d repurposed it into a small bowl, “said, and I quote: “You are the most articulate juvenile offender to be I’ve ever met. And that “your rampant Social Darwinism doesn’t help anyone in the long run, young man.” And in closing, that my political beliefs “are the backbone too many totalitarian states to state”.” Teeth bared in a false smile Sakaki stirred his soup, “Considering the sheer amount of effort she put into those insults, the alliteration alone, I think she likes me.”
Lillie snickered, despite herself.
“Really?”
It might have been a goad, to get him to try mimicking the voices again because he was so bad. Seeing the ploy he snorted. “Nice try, and I’ll only say “yes”, and change the topic..”
He’d done this before, and daring, because he’d likely pick something irrelevant and Lillie just wasn’t in the mood for irrelevant, she asked. “Is.. Is Silver here, on a different island?”
“If he were, do you anything would stop me in getting the money to pay whatever transport system you people have here to get to him?”
Point, Lillie finished her water and screwing her courage set up her soup.
As she stirred, she spoke.
“So, where is he?”
“Have you heard of a place called Hoenn?”
Lillie shook her head and finished her meal without interrupting him. Listening to tales of a place, that any internet search would show, didn’t exist. On whim, settling in for the night on her bed, Lillie pulled out her phone and ran a search on Kanto. Because, why not? Like Hoenn, Kanto was a Never-Never Land all its own. But flicking her phone scanner over Rollie had shown him to be a “Kantoian Sandshrew”, which was a contradiction all its own.
“It’s nearing Ten, technology off.”
And really, he sounded like a parent or something, or how Lillie imagined one who might care would. She did turn her phone off if only so he wouldn’t grumble at her. In the dark, where he wasn’t quite so clear, he seemed taller, his adultness seemed more right, if you weren’t able to see his details all illusions of childhood bled away.
And really, it was just another illusion in a life full of them.
The contradictions in her life were both unsettling and familiar. The impulses in her head, the sickness in her mother, the blindness in the Professor and teachers, rattled around in her head. Pieces of a puzzle she could feel, not see, and someone’d swiped the picture that helped you put everything together.
Sakaki wandered about, turning off the lights as he went. Before turning in he summoned Rollie and ordered the ‘mon to stand guard by the door. The mouse was to bay if anyone came up, and break everything and anything if anyone came in and they didn’t wake up, starting with the window.
And even though it wasn’t cold tonight, Lillie drew her blankets tight. She fell asleep too warm and to starlight-stained shadows courtesy of Nebby snuggling her back almost as hard as she was holding onto him.
XXX
She woke before him, dressed in her cleanest clothes, and used the last of his guilt money to buy them breakfast. Pastries that ran the gauntlet of sweet, too sweet, and death by sugar, and food bought, she brought them up herself, to avoid Rollie baying at some hapless help.
She’d gotten her sweets with a side of milk, and filled her cup to a good dunking height. She was on her second donut before Sakaki’s eyes cracked open, and he greeted the morning with a grumble of irritation and rolled over, reaching for a pillow to better blot out the world.
Picking something vaguely fruit-filled, Lillie split it in half and set the haves on a napkin, letting the ‘mon enjoy a treat. She gave Rollie extra room because of his claws, and Nebby a good morning pat because of his fluff, and left them to breakfast.
“That better be some sort of organic, vitamin-enhanced, kibble I hear them eating.”
“Apple fritter.”
He snarled at her, and if she were older Lillie was sure it’d of been a swear word instead of wordless exhalation of utter irritation.
“You can have the shower first.” Lillie offered, trying to sweeten his demeanor by being nice.
And maybe eat a third donut without the worry she’d get scolded.
He was suspicious if that long look as he slipped into the bathroom meant anything. But he took her up on her offer, and Lillie ate her last sweet in peace and quiet and tucked her glass on the pickup tray before he got out. She slipped in to clean up for the day once he was back and came out to Sakaki eating the plainest donut in the package, Nebby at his knees, churring up at him.
“Learn to tackle and I’ll think about it. Now, off.”
Nebby hopped off, and bopped to her bed. When Lillie sat to join him, intent on combing her hair, the little fluff ‘mon hopped onto her shoulder, insistent on “helping”.
Rolling his eyes, Sakaki flipped through the newspaper in front of him, with a grimace.
He had skipped the milk and was sipping a cup of coffee. How he’d gotten that, and the paper, Lillie didn’t know. Really, she didn’t care, except that the smell was nasty.
Nasty enough that Lillie got up and worked a window open.
Sakaki topped off his cup, and warned her once he was done to “order something with some nutritional value besides maxing out the sugar allotment per day.”
“Donuts are food.”
“I’m not going to repeat myself…” Sakaki set his glass aside with a firm tap. “If you’re done hanging out the window like a Vermillion wh- lady of dubious repute, we need to talk.”
“About?”
“What’s next?”
Which was Lillie had been thinking about, all night, and the day before, and the day before that…
Perhaps she’d started when she snapped up Nebby. Though saving the puffball had been more instinctual, a burning need to make Nebby’s pain stop. To make others stop hurting him. But whether she realized it or not, she’d definitely made some decisions when she’d grabbed him and ran. She’d run to the only authority she knew besides her Mother. Her elementary plan of hiding, being safe, had been dashed. Because safe wasn’t a thing, not even with the Professor because she found Kukui’s eyes so horridly blank that first day. And the man’s supposed wisdom coming and going like tides to some unseen moon whose effect she couldn’t begin to grasp, let alone chart.
Then there was Moon himself, who wasn’t, and Legends who were supposed to be great, but couldn’t even scrape up to good on any sane scale.
And at first glance, Sakaki’s request was easy, so easy.
Do the trails, learn of the Legends, do the Kahuna battles and… just do all the expected things because every tale ended in “they lived happily ever after” and why shouldn’t hers be any different?
Except… that was dangerous. That was an impulse, and Lillie grimaced at the headache that that revelation brought into being.
So, if easy was out… then what?
“I suggest we get supplies, money, resources, research the trials, see what’s expected… I’ve got to finish up my obligation to the school but after-”
After, as if “after” wouldn’t trigger a dominoes of events that would railroad him into the next trial, what need or crisis would drive them to the next island, the next town, the next Captain? Maybe it was paranoia, but after seemed dangerous.
So Lillie fought against rearing, and fear, and shook her head.
“We need to stop the bad legends from being bad, help the good legends be good.”
“And to do that we need…”
“To not do what they want us to do. Yes, you have to do the school, but right away, right now?”
“There’s not a lot of time.” He warned tone distracted, expression curiously flat. His brows furrowed, as if he was grabbing for something just out of reach and not quite irritated that he couldn’t touch it. Then he winced in pain, some realization met, and a headache was his reward. “Son of a mother fucking houndoom…”
Lillie winced in sympathetic pain, because how could she not?
“You too?”
“Me too.” Was the grim agreement, “fuck, I’m going to the police station and shakedown what passes as enforcement for a paycheck for rounding up those brats. Ask about Skull. That’ll put me on the opposite side of the school and avoid any… accidental academics. You…”
She’d looked up things, about work that didn’t need parental approval, and she’d made her own plans, thank you.
“There’s work for temporary guides at the beach, when the tourists come in after noon, if you’ll write me a referral I can work there for the afternoon. And, if I hear anything, about Skull or other places like Hoenn, I’ll let you know, it might be important, and at least if we both get a little money we won’t have to work tomorrow too, maybe we can do something important tomorrow...”
It was a hope. The hope that these actions must be a deviant, because there was pain for both of them in making these plans. Headaches for one and all.
Which meant someone’s plans were coming undone, hopefully, someone evil, like an evil Legend.
Black eyes flicked over her, scrolling up and down, as if weighing her every inch, then lips twisting into a bitter smile, he nodded.
“I think I’ve some pens and paper, I’ll get you your reference going so you can head out. Keep your phone on you and charged just in case, and I’ve Moon’s phone if you need me and if I don’t hear from you by three...”
“The job ends at four.”
“Four fifteen…”
The surly correction took so much bite out of threat, enough so Lillie cracked a small smile.
“I’ll be fine. Can’t do anything dangerous today if we’re going to save the world tomorrow, after all.”
And hoo boy did that summon pain, a near migraine. Still, Lillie smiled through the throbbing agony, a bit smug that she’d show them. Heck, she had, by calling them out and how they answered…
Sakaki barked out a hard laugh, around his own agony. “We are not- I am not anything like a hero but screw it, and them, you’ve got a plan I can get behind… Once I find the damned Tylenol.” And he was digging through his packs, and though it hurt to see, move, Lillie staggered back to their cups and filled them from the tap.
“To toppling Legends.” He croaked, tossing back his pill and drink with a wince. “And making delays. May all their plans burn and them with it.”
Not knowing the right words, the real words, the things you were supposed to say at toasts, Lillie took the pills he offered her. Drink in hand, she sipped enough to take the pills and waited for the pain to dim so she could get on with her day.
To defying Legends.
It wasn’t something she could say out loud, not yet, but she thought it, and to that rebellious thought she smiled, bright and wide.
