THANK YOU for all the support so far, everyone!
Three
Stranger Come to Town
In Mai's opinion, the Burned Tower is a cauterized wound on an otherwise beautiful historical city. The ground floor is rather dim, illuminated only by light filtering through the cracks in the walls. There are holes in the floorboards, through which the cellar could be seen, and the pillars that had once proudly bore the upper floors are horribly charred.
The atmosphere is just as grim. Compared with the other Ecruteak City attractions, the tourists are much sparser here. The only other people here are two giggling girls taking pictures of each other in a corner, a couple holding hands as they gaze at one of the pillars, and a small tour group in the back.
The girls stop when they reach the center of the floor. Keiko is expecting some sort of response and Mai tries to find something nice to say. She finally settles for an honest, "This place is interesting."
It is all the confirmation that her friend needs. "Yeah, isn't this place amazing?" she says. "I've been here on field trips many times for class, whenever we learn about the Great Fire."
"The Great Fire?" repeats Mai. "You mean the fire that burned this place down?"
Keiko nods. "It's such an amazing story. Nobody knows for sure how the fire started, though most people say there was a big storm and a lightning bolt struck the tower. Once the fire got going, it was too strong for anyone to put out." She speaks as if reciting form a textbook. "Three pokémon perished. Then this beautiful, magnificent bird flew out from the Bell Tower and brought them back to life, and they were endowed with the essence of lightning, fire, and rain."
"It must've been quite a sight," Mai says, recreating the scene in her mind's eye. She imagines the destruction and then the resurrection. There is something about pokémon legends that captures her imagination. She runs a finger gently down one of the pillars. The burn marks are old. "The fire must have happened a long time ago."
"Almost two hundred years ago."
"Has anyone ever considered renovating this place?" Mai asks. Keiko raises her eyebrows questioningly. "You know, restore it to what it used to look like, or build a new building altogether. We did that in Goldenrod City. Our radio tower was built on top of an old tower."
Keiko frowns. "I heard the city council actually considered renovating the Tower in the past, but the Elder was very adamantly against it."
"Why?"
"Well, the Elder is right, you know." Keiko looks serious. "It is a bad idea to go against the will of nature. Besides, it's a historical monument in Ecruteak and we are all very fond of it."
They head to the back of the room and come to a stop beside a crumbling staircase that leads downstairs. At least, it led downstairs at one point. Now the stairs look as if they would collapse under the weight of a feather.
"What's in the cellar?" Mai asks.
"Just a lot of ghost pokémon, apparently," Keiko says.
Mai remembers the haunter. "Ghosts?"
"Yup. They usually don't come out during daytime, though. My older brother did say that if you come here at night, you could see all the ghosts and hear them tell stories of their past."
"Has anyone tried it?" Mai says dubiously.
"Big brother said he did, but he was probably just saying it," Keiko says. "We could go downstairs and check it out. Do you want to? The stairs aren't as fragile as they look," she adds, interpreting Mai's expression correctly. "I mean, they used to be, and then someone tried going downstairs and broke his neck."
Someone broke his neck! Mai backs away.
"Relax," Keiko says, giggling. "We reconstructed it. It just looks old, but it's just to go along with the look of the building."
Mai does not feel reassured, feeling that Keiko's explanation lacks logic. Why could they renovate the stairs, and not the Tower? Keiko, in order to prove her point, gingerly steps on the stairs. It holds her weight and does not even sway. "See?" she says. "It's safe. Want to see the cellar?"
The cellar looks no different from the ground floor. There is a big rectangular crater in the center, and a few sets of staircase cut into stone that no longer lead anywhere. Much of the cellar is also blocked by fallen debris and boulders, so there really is not much space where they could move around.
"Do you know that the cellar is cut into the hill?" Mai does not know. "Well, I heard a lot of beautiful artwork used to be stored down here, and treasures from the olden days, because the cellar makes a good storage space," Keiko says, as they walk around, carefully not to trip over stray stones and sticks. "And you see that crater? My grandmother said that a couple of decades ago, this mystic came here and claimed that Suicune was living in there."
"In the crater? Was it really?"
"Who knows? Our gym leader went downstairs to explore with him, but they didn't find anything. So the guy left and nobody ever heard from him again." Keiko grins. "This sort of thing happens here all the time. You know, people come and claim that there is some legendary pokémon hiding out in Ecruteak."
"Oh…do you believe them?"
Keiko shrugs. "Why not? Legendaries must be somewhere, right? And if legendaries would come to any city, wouldn't they come to Ecruteak?"
Mai has to agree. Ecruteak has an aura that makes it the perfect sanctuary for legends.
"Besides," Keiko says, "it's not just people who come from outside the city. People who live here see them too! Some of the older people will tell you stories of when they saw these pokémon. It's all quite interesting. I bet no other city has this many legendary sightings!"
Mai smiles, though she doubts the veracity of these claims.
They stay in the cellar for a few more minutes, Keiko chattering on the whole time. Mai's attention wanders. The haunter she talked to is nowhere to be seen. Indeed, there is no ghost pokémon anywhere to be seen. She thinks over the haunter's implied request again. Is she supposed to come at night, the way Keiko's brother supposedly saw ghosts? The Dance Theater's curfew aside, Mai isn't sure she'd be comfortable spending nighttime in this building, and she isn't one to be easily spooked.
Keiko concludes the tour of the cellar after another anecdote. They go upstairs and head out into the sunlight. Mai checks her watch. It is a bit past noon.
"Hey!" Keiko says. "Let's get lunch at my favorite sushi place. They have the weirdest ice cream flavors!"
Mai perks up, having craved real, unhealthy sugar ever since she tired of the cafeteria's ascetic menu. Not to mention her stomach is growling for food.
"Count me in!"
Keiko's sushi restaurant is located in a part of Ecruteak City that could readily be described as a maze of alleys. Mai doubts that she can find her way around even with the help of a map and is thankful that she has Keiko as a guide.
The place is small and the seating quite limited. There is already a long line of people waiting outside. Mai begins to suggest that they look for another place, since they passed a few other sushi restaurants on their way, when Keiko bypasses the line altogether, ignoring the indignant shouts of those less bold.
Mai stands outside in bemusement until Keiko pokes her head back out. "Aren't you coming?"
"Keiko, we are supposed to wait in line!"
"We don't," Keiko says. "Besides, I got a table for us already."
Dumbly, Mai follows Keiko inside, where a waiter leads them to the back of the restaurant. A small table has been set with place settings for two people. There are lanterns along the wall. The waiter bows as they seat, disappears behind a curtain, and reappears with two cups of tea and two menus, all within the span of a minute.
Distracted by the menu, Mai decides not to ask Keiko about their luck and peruses the possible rolls instead. Everything looks delicious and she is grateful that her parents had given her a generous allowance for her use in Ecruteak City. She has already spent quite a lot of money on food after just two weeks of being here, even though Ecruteak food prices are nowhere as high as food prices in Goldenrod.
Service is prompt, for a crowded restaurant manned by two visible waiters and hidden chefs, and food tastes as good as they look. The rice and seaweed are seasoned just enough to bring out the fresh taste of seafood. Once they finish all the rolls, it is time for dessert. Keiko has not been exaggerating about the weird flavors. Some of them don't even seem edible, like autumn leaves, kimono dance, or Elder's favorite apple.
Because they are indecisive, Mai and Keiko end up ordering quite a selection of ice cream. Then Keiko excuses herself to use the restroom, leaving Mai to admire the multicolored scoops of dairy and sugar when they arrive.
"Wow, those look amazing!" a girl from a nearby table comments. She seems to be on a date with the boy sitting across from her. "What did you order?"
"Almost everything on the menu," Mai says.
"Really?" the girl says, looking down at her own menu dubiously. "I only see vanilla, chocolate, red bean, and green tea. Hey Steve," she says, turning to her boyfriend. "Maybe you could try asking for a different menu?"
"Mmm, these look delicious," Keiko says, returning. "What's wrong, Mai?"
Mai explains the conversation she had with the neighboring girl, whose boyfriend is now trying to explain to the waiter that they would like more flavors.
"Oh, that," Keiko says, digging into the autumn leaf ice cream merrily. "It's no use asking, really. Most people in the restaurant don't have access to the extra flavors."
Mai tries to digest this with her dessert. "So there are two types of menus?" she says.
"Yeah, for two types of people, insiders and outsiders," Keiko says. "Insiders get special treatment. Outsiders don't. We are insiders, of course."
Understanding dawns on Mai. She feels warm inside, being considered an insider. Whether this practice is fair or not does not really occur to her.
"So how do people know if they are insiders or outsiders?" she asks with interest, different scenarios running through her head. When Keiko looks puzzled, she tries to explain. "Like what if you are an insider at one restaurant and not an insider at another? How do you know if you'll get special treatment at the place you go to?"
Keiko is staring at her as if she's crazy. "That doesn't happen in Ecruteak City. You are either an insider or you are an outsider. It doesn't change from place to place."
"Yeah, but how do you know what you are in the first place?" Mai presses on.
Keiko gives an exaggerated sigh. "You just are," she says, and changes the topic entirely.
The travelers arrive at the Kimono Dance Theater on an afternoon, the Monday after Autumnal Equinox. Momoko, Tamao's secretary, comes looking for her during first year dance class. She looks surprisingly uncomfortable for someone with a reputation for being cool and collected. Her interruption does not please the headmistress.
"Momoko, what is the meaning of this?" she demands.
"I am very, very sorry to interrupt," Momoko says. She sounds out of breath. "Your presence is requested at the office. Immediately."
Tamao raises her eyebrows. "My class ends in five minutes," she says. "Surely this can wait."
Momoko wrings her hands, obviously unwilling to discuss the matter in front of an audience. When Tamao does not budge, however, she sighs. "I'm afraid not," she says. "The Elder is here."
Mai raises her head in time to see a look of alarm pass over Tamao's face. "In that case, class will be dismissed early today," she tells her students, without missing a beat. "Please finish the last exercise on your own."
With that, she is gone. It is a testament to her authority that the girls actually stay to finish the stretching exercise before they head to the locker room to change and discuss the strange turn of events. As it turns out, without further information, there is not much to discuss. Even Keiko concedes that however unusual, it is not impossible for the Ecruteak Elder to leave his abode in the Bell Tower. Being such a powerful figure, who is to stop him from visiting anyone he wants? Furthermore, if the Elder were to visit anyone in Ecruteak City, Tamao is certainly one of the more logical choices.
While Chiyo and Hana, the most opinionated of the five, engage in a heated debate anyway, Mai has a vague recollection of having heard the Elder, the Bell Tower, and the Dance Theater discussed in the same context, though she does not place a finger on it until dinnertime. The cafeteria is noticeably rowdier than usual. Apparently the entire Theater has heard about the Elder's visit, even though it is something that is unlikely to be advertised by either Tamao or Momoko. Many theories are thrown around, mostly for entertainment. Surely the Elder is not planning to join the Theater as a trainee, nor is he professing his undying passion for Tamao.
Eventually, they learn that Rikuyo, a round-faced girl of the intermediate class, had been waiting outside Tamao's office for an appointment when the Elder arrived. "And," she announces, delivering her punch line triumphantly, "he was not alone."
The crowd is not easily impressed at first. "So what?" challenges Sachi, the girl who had proposed the undying passion theory. "The Elder probably brought one of the Sages. Big deal."
Rikuyo glares at Sachi. "No, there were people in addition to the Sage," she says, seeming just short of stomping her foot for emphasis. "They were pokémon trainers."
"How do you know they are trainers?"
"Because," she says dramatically. "I mean, they carry pokéballs, they have those gigantic backpacks that can carry everything, and they have awful, awful fashion sense. In what world is it a good idea to wear an orange cap with a bright green sweater?"
Mai yelps as Keiko seizes her arm in excitement. Too intimidated by the older girls to join in the gossip, they keep silent until they are heading back to their dormitory. "That must be them!" Keiko says. "From the Burned Tower."
"What are you talking about?" Akina says. "You mean Rikuyo isn't just making those people up?"
"No…not this time anyway. Mai and I ran into them that day when we visited the Burned Tower," Keiko says. "They wanted to visit the Bell Tower but then asked us for directions to the Theater also. Right?"
She turns to Mai for confirmation and Mai nods.
"So mystery solved, I guess," Hana says, sounding a little disappointed. "They probably wanted to discuss something with the Elder and Madame, so they all came here."
"I think it's much more complicated than that, Hana," Chiyo says. "What could they possibly discuss that is so important that the Elder has to personally come here? He could've asked Madame to go there. Besides, I don't know if you pay attention in history class, but the Elder of Ecruteak City never receives just any visitors."
"So you're saying those three people pulled some strings to trick the Elder into talking with them, but then he's happy to bring them to Madame," Hana says, rolling her eyes. "Right, totally makes sense."
"Whatever it is," Akina breaks in, lest Chiyo and Hana get into another heated disagreement, "we will probably never find out. So let's just drop this topic."
Akina turns out to be the farthest from the truth.
