I squint and shield my eyes from the sun, trying to make out the street names that flash on the electronic signs that line the waterway.
"Destination?" My gondolier leans on his pole, sighing impatiently.
I flop down on the seat and bite my lip. "Just take me to a good café I guess."
The gondolier smiles thinly and immediately pushes off from the sidewalk, weaving through the light water traffic. The canals aren't very crowded at this time of the day, since everyone is eating lunch. Give it thirty minutes or an hour, and the canals will be crawling again.
The boat glides to a stop in front of the Nuit Café. The man leans on his pole again. "This is the best café in all of Rivendell. I eat here every day."
I eye the front of the restaurant suspiciously. The sign is welded out of nondescript metal, with the c in café curved to look like a crescent moon.
It'll do, I guess. It looks a little greasy, but they're probably all like that.
I tip the gondolier and step onto the clean cobblestone. At first glance through the glass walls that separate the café from the street, there are only one or two people in the restaurant. Well that's a plus. I don't really feel like being around crowds of people at the moment.
A waitress greets me immediately and quickly asks me, "will you be expecting to meet anyone else?"
"No, just me."
She hesitates for the slightest second and then nods and leads me to an empty table next to the window. I'm looking at the menu when another man comes into the café. He is wearing a suit with a deep gray tie and he looks nervous. The waitress swoops down upon him. "Hello, will you be expecting to meet anyone else?"
The man nods. "Yes, but I'll be dining alone today."
The waitress beams. "Splendid. Right this way please, sir."
She leads him to the back of the restaurant and through a thin curtain hung in a doorframe. They are gone for only a second, and then the waitress reappears.
"Is that the group seating room?" I ask the girl as she comes back to take my order.
Her brow contracts for a second, then expands quickly. "Yup! It's for parties of seven or more."
I tilt my head. "But that man said he was eating alone."
I'm not sure why I'm so interested in it, but I have a funny feeling about what just happened. It didn't seem...right.
The waitresses smile fades. "May I take your order?" she asks, obviously avoiding the question.
I lean forward. "So is the man expecting anyone?"
The waitress' smiles morphs into a sneer. "If you are not going to order, sir, then I will have to ask you to leave. Tables are for paying customers only.
I lean back, deciding to let the matter rest for now. "I'll have a Persim Berry Stew and some water."
The girl smiles mockingly. "How pleasant." She turns on her heel and walks behind the counter, types the order into the machine and then busies herself on her phone. The two other people in the restaurant shot me glances in what I'm sure they thought was a surreptitious way.
The food takes a long time to come. It feels like it's been at least an hour since I ordered, and the two other diners had long since gone, leaving me as the only other person in the restaurant.
I glance outside. The sun is just above the Poke-ZIP tower a few blocks over. At least I have time.
The door to the back kitchen finally swings open, but the waitress doesn't have any food with her. Instead, two men with gray outfits and gray masks over their faces walk behind her.
I stand, foreboding slamming into me like a truck.
"Is there a problem?"
The waitress just nods at me.
The men leap forward impossibly fast and much too agile for their size and strike me on the head.
I crumple into darkness, and the last thing I hear is, "Alert the Caïd that Subject Three has been found."
I wake up on a cold, hard surface. I try to move my head, but the pain is too bad.
"Am I gonna have to deal with this frequently?"
I groan because I realize that Malon is the one that made me come to. She is standing over me, waiting for my answer.
I feel a prick on my arm and the pain in my head subsides enough that I can sit up and look around.
I'm lying behind a set of metal chairs and a table with an umbrella outside the Nuit Café. Malon is kneeling next to me holding a syringe in one hand and a ticket stub clutched tightly in the other.
"What on earth just happened?"
She smiles grimly. "I was going to ask you the same thing. I called you about ten times and then I tracked you using your phone's GPS signal. The Mono-Rail leaves in fifteen minutes. Can you at least get on the train? We can deal with your injuries better once we're on."
I glance at her syringe. "Where'd you get that?"
She blushes and quickly stuffs the syringe into her bag. "It's an endorphin stimulator. It's just for..." she trails off. "Never mind, we need to get you on the Mono-Rail. Can you stand up?"
I nod. "It's just my head and arms that hurt."
"Well get up then."
I stand slowly, groaning at my sore arms. "I love your sympathetic attitude."
Malon doesn't respond, and she doesn't help me along either. Her dratini is slung around her neck, and she's still holding a ticket stub in her left hand.
"So...how did the...Poke-ZIP tower go?" I ask through clenched teeth, trying to distract myself from the migraine forming in my head. The endorphin stimulation has worn off; it must have been a quick dose that only lasts for a minute or two.
Malon adjusts her clench on the ticket stub and clears her throat. "Fine."
Her stiff jaw and terse demeanor tell me otherwise, but I don't push. She's already dealt with me enough, what with wasting an endorphin shot on me, and having to track me down through the massive canals of Rivendell.
The Mono-Rail station is in the center of the Transportation District, which borders the Food District, where the Nuit Café is situated. We (meaning Malon because I'm too debilitated to think at the moment) decide that hailing down a gondola and loading me in, then convincing the gondolier to take us to the station and not the hospital, then unloading me and paying for the boat would be more of a hassle and take more time than just walking there ourselves.
Funny, seeing as I can hardly stand and she isn't helping me walk at all. I'm second guessing my decision to travel with her when we enter the station and I find out that she won't let me pay for my ticket (which prices at about ¥15,000 for a trans-provincial ticket). She pays for it all out of her pocket, then pushes me on board as the doors close behind us.
Miraculously, we find an empty compartment and I slump across one side of the seats, groaning in pain.
Malon lays her bag down on the floor and sits on the edge of the seat across from me, surveying me with a reproachful eye. "You look absolutely horrible."
I manage to open one eye and glare at her. "I appreciate the information. Let me just get up and care."
Malon ignores me and flips open her 3DS. I moan in pain and manage to fall asleep.
I'm jolted awake when I'm tossed off the seat and land face-first on the ground. Groaning, I rub my nose and sit up, my headache gone, but my bones still aching.
"What happened?!" I exclaim, looking around. The lights in the compartment are dimmed. The Mono-Rail is completely stopped, and I can hear people's confused exclamations coming from the compartments around us. I looked up at Malon, who was clutching her bag tightly with one hand and stroking a ruffled Dratini who was still draped over her neck.
"The train stopped," she answered.
I rolled my eyes and clambered back onto my seat. "Thanks for your commentary," I muttered. "Real helpful."
She observed me as I settled back down into the seat. There were a few awkward moments were she seemed to be analyzing me with her eyes, studying me. And not in an inappropriate way, but more of how a scientist observes a test subject. It unnerved me, but before I could say something about it, she leaned forward and tilted the top of her bag toward me.
Pulling open the drawstring at the top, she let me peer inside.
"What is that?!" I asked, astonished at the pulsing black egg that lay still in the bag.
Malon drew the drawstrings together again and leaned back. "It's an egg."
I sighed and leaned back against the cushion. "What would we do without our Queen Obvious over here?! We would be so lost without her!"
Malon shot me a withering look. "...which I was going to say before you interrupted me, was a gift I got from Professor Redwood with my starter. His aid told me to take care of it."
I stopped rubbing my head. "Huh. That's weird. He let me pick two starters instead of one. I wonder if they do something special with everyone so that they all feel important when none of them are."
Malon shrugged. "I don't think so."
I decided not to delve any deeper into that.
Changing the subject, I looked back at the egg and around at the train. "So why is that egg glowing? Does it have to do with the stopped train?"
She pursed her lips. "Yes."
Okay, if these short answers are all I'm going to get throughout this whole journey, it was going to get old real quick. I lean forward.
"Here's the deal missy. I just got attacked, and I'm honestly not sure who attacked me or what they did to me, much less why they did it. Professor Redwood gives you a mystery egg and me an extra starter. Now, the Mono-Rail's emergency brakes activate for no apparent reason and your mysterious egg is glowing. There's a whole host of weird things that I want to know the answers to, and your two word replies are not helping either of us. Can we try to be a little more lucrative with our words here, for the benefit of both of us? Please and thank you."
I lean back and wince as pain shoots through my body. I'll have to do a full body evaluation once I'm off the train to see exactly what they did to me.
Malon glares at me, but nods. I decide that if she really agrees with me then she'll be the one who speaks first, so I don't say anything and sure enough, she starts explaining.
"There's a...person that I met in the Poké-ZIP tower. He was the one who drew my numbers for me. He took a liking to me, and followed me onto the Mono-Rail." She shifts uncomfortably in her seat.
"Do you know him from somewhere else?" I ask.
She shakes her head emphatically, and I believe her.
"No. I just met him today. Anyway, he came into our compartment and we got in a little argument."
Knowing Malon (which I honestly don't), I'm not surprised at this.
"He tried to make a move on me, and I pushed him away, and then the egg started to glow and the train stopped. That's all I know."
I goggle at her. "He tried to...?" I trail off.
She notices my shocked expression and waves her hands quickly. "No, no, not like that. He just tried to...kiss me." She forces the words out of her mouth as if they're acid.
I stifle a laugh, trying to picture a complete stranger trying to kiss Malon.
"So where is this mysterious stranger?" I ask, trying I divert the conversation before I find something humorous again.
"He left when you tumbled off the seat. I think it scared him. At least you haven't been a complete nuisance today," Malon remarks snidely.
I ignore the last comment. "So he's still on the train?"
She nods. "Unless some fairy pokémon has poofed him away, yes."
I roll my eyes. "Okay, so is that all you know? What type of egg is that?" I ask, looking at her bag again.
She shrugs, drawing her bag close to her again. "I don't know what pokémon it will hatch into, but I know it's either a psychic or ghost type."
I raise my eyebrows. "And how do you know that?"
"Look at the train. Obviously the egg's glow is what stopped the Mono-Rail, and if there's any two types of pokémon who could do that, it's psychic or ghost." She says this as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"Obviously," I muttered. "Okay, so how do we make it stop?"
She shrugs.
I stand up. "Okay, well if you're not going to try to solve this, I'm going to call up one of my friends whose pretty tech savvy and see if she knows anything."
I'm exiting the compartment when Malon calls after me. "You know we're not the only ones on the train, right?"
I turn around. "Of course I know that. What does it matter?"
She smirks. "Don't you think that the engineers who are in charge of the Mono-Rail in the first place would be a little more capable of figuring out how to fix it then you are? Plus, I think you're overlooking an obvious solution."
I sigh and flop back down on the seat. She has a point about the engineers thing, but I'm not about to let her know that. "Okay, so what am I missing?"
Malon opens the drawstrings on her bag again and pulls the egg out. "If the glowing egg is what made the train stop, then we have to make it stop glowing."
Maybe it's the way she's holding the egg, or the aftereffects of me being thrown off the seat or beaten up in a café, but for some reason I think that she's about to smash the egg on the ground.
"No!" I yell, and dive down beneath her feet with my arms outstretched.
Unfortunately, she was not planning on smashing the egg. The second I realize that, she kicks me away from her and gives me her most reproachful and disgusted look yet. "I wasn't going to drop it, you idiot."
I get up from the floor for the third time in just a couple of hours and dust myself off.
"Well then, how do you propose we stop the glow?" I ask, embarrassed and avoiding her glaring eyes.
"I think I have an idea, but we'll need to go to the battling car first," she says, standing up and shouldering her bag.
I frown. "Why."
She shoots a withering look at me over her shoulder. "Sorry that you have to get up and walk someplace."
I am going to retort that ordinarily I would have no problem with walking, and that it was the fact that my everything hurt, but she slides the door closed before I can. I sigh. Something tells me this isn't going to work out.
The battling car is toward the back of the train. It is surprisingly not very full. Two trainers are goofing off in the ring, not actually battling, and three or four people sit on the sidelines, some watching the ring and some buried in their own little world.
Malon is sitting on the sidelines, chatting animatedly with a blond girl with a laptop. I walk over to them and sit down.
Malon turns to me. "Cole, this is Mia. She's going to be your partner. She's very nice, is a native Galapagoan, and is a receptionist/technician for the Polias Power Plant in Galapagos. Don't kill her or anything."
She stands and immediately intercepts a boy with swoopy black hair who has just walked in. Right off the bat she looks like she is trying very hard not to punch him, so I assume that it is this the stranger she met at the Poké-ZIP tower.
The girl, Mia, clears her throat softly. I turn back to her. "Oh, um, hello." I really don't like meeting new people.
She smiles brightly. "Hello! I guess your name's Cole?"
I nod. "Yeah. Hey, um, do you know what she meant when she said we were going to be partners?"
Mia looks at me blankly for a moment. "You mean she didn't tell you?"
I shake my head, my RBF settling into perfect position. "She doesn't tell me much of anything."
Mia looks taken aback for a moment, then seems to recover. "Oh. Well, she asked me if I would like to battle with one of her friends in a double battle against her and someone else she knew. I said yes, and then you came over."
I sigh and bury my face in my hands. Of course. How very typical. Malon signs us up for our first battle with our new pokémon and it's a double battle with two probably already very advanced trainers that we don't even know. Malon and I have both been trained in battling at school, but it was always with pokémon that the school provided. This is our first time using our own pokémon.
I look at Mia. "I'm sorry that she's dragging you into this, and that she found out so much about you in such a short time. I'm afraid she's pretty much always like this."
"Escapade! Get your fat butt over here!" Malon screeches at me across the room.
I sigh and take Mia's hand as she helps me up. "It's fine," she says, "I like battling. Besides, meeting new people is always fun, and I don't have any friends on the train. Maybe this will be a good opportunity to make some!"
"Thanks," I mumble and trudge along behind her. I do so ever love this idea.
A/N: And that's a wrap on the third chapter! Thanks for reading guys, it means a lot. Be sure to check out our profile too for links to this story on other sites, as well as a link to the Nocturna Wiki we set-up for behind the scenes info and lots more! And of course, remember to follow and favorite, and please drop a review! They're very VERY appreciated! :)
This chapter pulls the four main characters into a room together, and yes, spoiler alert, they are the four main characters of the story. There is SO much ahead for you guys, I can't for Malon and I to tell it all. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
Just so you all know, since all the main characters have been introduced, we will now be switching chapters in a four way POV. That means that starting this chapter, the POV rotation will go Cole, Malon, Mia, Zane, then back to Cole, etc. Just so you guys don't get confused when Mia pops up in two chapters. :)
Thanks again everyone!
-RareSnover
