Chapter 9: The Assistants
In the middle of the snow-covered woods, a small kingdom stands. Both the king and queen have passed away recently, so only the prince remains. Said prince is in the process of becoming king himself. None of the villagers realize, however, that the prince is notoriously egoistic and is often rumored to have dark secrets up his sleeve.
The prince has two assistants, though how he orders them tend to border on unfortunate implications. Even more so when one finally gets to see those two, who are both females: Ana and Lyn. Ana is the younger of the duo and is, in fact, Kat's sister. She was forcefully recruited as an assistant in the kingdom after she was captured during her solo exploration a year ago. She can't leave her duties, as she would be executed if she does so. However, she's still allowed to work alongside Kat in the faraway town, provided that she only does so during certain weeks. Even that doesn't equal more freedom, as she's still being watched even in her regular job at the town's café by one of the kingdom's guardians who is a stealth expert. Unfortunately, being a young child, she has no idea how much of a burden her life has become due to the fact that she sees both her jobs as something fun. Lyn, on the other hand, is a young woman of unknown origin. She has been working as a lone assistant for the egoistic prince for a long time until Ana accompanies her. Despite the prince's questionable acts, Lyn stays loyal to him.
The two assistants aren't completely isolated, however. If they feel lonely, they can play with the prince's various Pokémon which, sadly, are simply treated as his own slaves. It's not uncommon for the prince to have them fight with each other to the death, using "training" as his only excuse for doing so. One notable incident had a huge, powerful Blastoise blasting high-pressure water on the far smaller Clefairy. But the attack did more than intended, and the results weren't pretty. Much like Lyn, despite all of the horrible things their owner can possibly do to them, the Pokémon living in the prince's castle stay loyal, possibly in fear of him killing them off if they try to escape or rebel.
One bright day, the prince orders his assistants as usual.
"In preparation of me becoming king, you two have to make sure everything goes as intended. All fancy stuff should not be broken and no Pokémon skip their works! That is all."
"Yes, our..."
"Call me your lord!"
The two assistants pause for a bit before saying, "Yes... our lord..."
"That's more like it. Now, shoo."
At the castle's large hall, several of the prince's Pokémon are busy decorating and preparing everything needed for the kingly celebration, from the colored banner decoration to the tables for feast. Some of them are clearly tired, but they have to keep working anyway if they don't want to succumb to whatever kind of torture the prince will perform on them.
"Those adorable Pokémon have been making things prettier than usual!" Ana happily said.
"Indeed. In fact, they pretty much have to do this if all of them want to please the pri-I mean, our lord." Lyn said.
Suddenly, an exhausted Meowth carrying a sack of coins is about to pass out, causing him to trip and drop his sack, scattering coins everywhere and alerting everyone present in the hall. The poor cat Pokémon can only lie down and wheeze in exhaustion.
"Oh, no!" Ana immediately rushes to the Pokémon.
"I'll put the coins back!" Lyn decided to clean up the mess.
"You must be very tired..." Ana said to the exhausted Pokémon.
"Nyaaarth..." the Meowth cries weakly before finally passing out.
"Meowth? Meowth?!" Ana tried to wake it up, to no avail.
"Ana! Go to the infirmary section and have it healed! Quick!" Lyn commands her, worrying that the Meowth would suffer from something worse.
"A-Alright!" Ana dashes away while carrying the Meowth.
After the whole problem, Lyn notices that the Pokémon around her briefly stopped doing their duties after noticing Meowth's collapse, so she says to them, "Alright. All of you may go back to your work now. You really don't want our lord to execute all of us."
Understanding what Lyn has said to them, the scared Pokémon continue on their work. Lyn herself decides to carry the sack of coins herself, which is as big as the poor Meowth, which explains its tiredness. Thinking that it's supposed to be given to the prince, she walks back to the prince's room.
When she opens the door, she discovers that the prince is sitting lazily while surrounded by gold and valuable treasury.
"Ah... I love the shiny gleams of these... Huh?" the prince notices Lyn.
"Apologies, um, my lord. This sack of coins... it's..."
"Oho... that's my beautiful sack of villager donations that I asked Meowth to gather! Now give it to me!"
Unable to continue her report, Lyn simply gives the sack to the also-greedy prince.
"Shiny... Um. I don't care what happened to that Meowth. I assume that it passed the sack to you, hm? That thing must be lazy, and it's supposed to bring me fortune."
Lyn can only remain speechless.
"If it continues to be this useless, I might as well give it a well-deserved execution. Oh, I love that word!"
Lyn still cannot speak, though deep inside she genuinely feels sorry for Meowth and can no longer stand the prince's behavior towards his own allies.
"Anyway... I feel that there's something else missing..." the prince said.
"...What is it, my lord?" Lyn wondered.
"I need someone. A woman. A woman worthy enough to rule this kingdom alongside me. Wait, not just that. The woman should also help me expand this feeble excuse of a kingdom and conquer other kingdoms!"
Lyn is left speechless once again. Then, the prince glares at her and says, "No. Not you. You're too young to be considered worthy by me. Heh, I already have my thoughts set about the woman that I'm looking for anyway, thanks to my dreams..."
"...What does she look like?"
"I can't tell you, but I have a feeling that she's nearby this kingdom, hehehe..."
Meanwhile, outside the kingdom, deep in the snowy forest, Samus and company are still resting after the whole trouble with Falcon in his castle. Samus herself is still thinking about what to do to get Luigi out from Falcon's castle safely, without causing any more trouble.
No one in the group realizes, however, that someone hidden between the trees is coming for them.