As promised, the first piece of the puzzle falls into place in this chapter. And actually, there are more answers than what meets the eye.
Ten
In the Library
Mai and Jake have been best friends since they first met in the playground halfway between their buildings. They got into a fight in the sandbox because Mai knocked over Jake's sand castle, and settled their disagreement with a pokédoll battle. Neither could truly remember who won, though Mai would always insist that her stuffed buneary did, while Jake would always insist that his stuffed turtwig did. Somehow, after the battle, they became friends and spent the rest of the afternoon planning out their joint pokémon journey to become champions.
They make plans to meet in the same playground a few days after Mai's return to Goldenrod. She spots him waiting for her on the bench from far away. In all appearance, Jake looks little changed since the days of their childhood. Still short and bespectacled, he is more tanned and lean since the last time she saw him.
"Hey," she says, sitting down beside him. "How are you?"
"Hey Mai, good to see you," Jake says. He talks more confidently now, Mai notes, whereas he had been rather timid as a school boy. Constantly challenging and being challenged by other trainers probably have that effect. "You look different."
"I do?" Mai has been wondering whether she has changed and whether it is a good thing. Going to dance school doesn't seem to be a life changing experience, not like a pokémon journey.
"Kind of." Jake scratches his head. "You walk differently, I guess."
Oh, that. Mai almost laughs. Jake would walk differently too if he had to wear a kimono and wood sandals every day for three months. "Well, you look different too," she says. "How's pokémon training?"
His eyes light up. "It's amazing!" he says. "I already got two badges and four pokémon. I'm actually going to challenge Whitney next week!"
"Wow, nice!" Mai says. "Tell me about your journey! Where have you gone so far?"
"Well, you know how I started," Jake says. "I got my cyndaquil from Nurse Joy, and then I went to Violet City and got the Zephyr Badge. I lost the first time, but then I caught my own pidgey and won the second time. Then I went south to Azalea Town and got the Hive Badge. My quilava made that a really easy battle." He blushes suddenly. "I probably would've gotten back to Goldenrod faster, but I got lost in the Ilex Forest."
"You did?" Mai giggles.
"I wasn't the only one," Jake says defensively. "Apparently people get lost in the forest all the time. I actually heard a Kimono Girl got lost a few months ago. Do you know about that?"
Mai stops smiling. "No."
"Well, yeah, apparently some trainer had to go rescue her or something," says Jake. "Weird, huh?"
She makes a face. Weird doesn't even begin to describe it. She decides to change the subject.
"Let me see your pokémon!"
Jake grins, not minding the abrupt subject change, and takes the four balls from his belt. He releases a quilava, a pidgeotto, a wooper, and a mareep. All of them greet Mai politely, at their trainers' request, and then sidle close to Jake. Clearly, after a few months of companionship, trainer and pokémon already share a tight bond.
Mai tries to imagine her friend, weaving his way through Johto with a growing party of pokémon. She feels twinges of jealousy. Once, they had agreed to go on this journey together. Not for the first time, she questions whether she made the right choice to become a dancer instead.
"Oh, and I got this for you," Jake says, reaching into his battered pack to retrieve a strange object. "I got it in Violet City and figured you might like it."
"Thanks! What is it?" Mai says, turning it over in her hands. It looks like a headband, except instead of having fabric stretched over the frame, it has feathers instead.
"There was a festival celebrating flying pokémon in Violet City," explains Jake. "They were giving these out, so I got one for you because only girls wear those things, not boys."
Mai puts it on, feeling both pleased that her friend thought of her and foolish. "I like it, thanks," she says, not entirely honestly. "Er, whose feathers are on the headband?"
"I'm not sure, maybe pidgey and spearow? I think someone mentioned swablu too." No feather from Ho-oh, Mai thinks with some amusement. "Anyway," says Jake, watching as his quilava and pidgeotto settle in the sandbox, "how is your dance school?"
"It's okay," Mai says. "You know, I have normal classes and then dance classes, kind of like what I was doing here. There is a spring dance and I'm auditioning for the lead dancer part."
"Yeah? You will get it for sure!"
"Hopefully." Jake's words, like her parents', fail to reassure her. "Everyone in my year is really talented. What's even scarier is that not all the girls who enter the school can stay to become the top dancers."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, for one thing, the headmistress basically told us that one of us will drop out of school by spring." Mai gives an involuntary shudder.
Jake is silent for a while. "Well, suppose you don't become a top dancer," he says. "What would you do?"
The thought does not help. Mai hasn't allowed herself to consider that train of thought before, but of course, it could happen. In fact, it will happen to most of the girls at the Kimono Dance Theater. She imagines herself leaving, before being finished with her training, and clenches her fists. No, she could not allow that to happen. She won't think about it.
"I don't know," she says lightly, not meeting Jake's eyes. "What are you going to do if you don't become a pokémon master?"
"I thought about that," Jake says. "There are actually lots of things I could do, once I get a few more badges. Right now I'm debating between being a gym trainer and being a police officer."
Mai blinks before her mouth quirks upwards. "You, being an Officer Jenny? I think you have to be born into the family or something."
Jake blushes. "No, not the same thing!" he says. "More like secret agents."
"That sounds like something from a movie, Jake," she says skeptically. "Are you sure that's a real job?"
"Sure is!" exclaims Jake. "And they are way better police officers than Officer Jenny and have way more powerful Pokémon than growlithe and arcanine. The only reason that nobody has really heard of them is because they work undercover and investigate really secretive things. It's also really hard to become an agent. I'm going to need to train really hard!"
Mai crosses her arms over her chest. "Well, you know what, Kimono Girls are also really great trainers," she says. "I saw them battle and they're just as good as any gym leader, maybe even better, and they train eevee evolutions. That's a way more awesome career than a secret agent."
"Right," says her friend, clearly not meaning it.
The two glare at each other for a few minutes before they burst out laughing. It is as if they are young children again, arguing about who will be the better Pokémon trainer.
"What are you up to for the rest of the day?" Mai asks. "Training for your battle against Whitney?"
"Nah," says Jake. "I've been training the past couple of days and need a break. Do you have anything in mind?"
"Well…" She glances at him. "I have a little quest that you can help me with. I'm going to the library to do some research and could use your help."
"Library?" He wrinkles his nose. "I don't know about that. What are you researching on?"
Mai sighs. "It's going to be a bit of a long story," she says. "You can stop me if it gets boring."
As concisely as possible, she explains what she knows about the Rainbow Reckoning. She tells Jake about Tim and his two friends, the two battles he won so far, as well as some of the strange happenings that she witnessed at the Kimono Dance Theater. By the time she finishes, Jake's eyes are wide as saucers.
"Now that," he says, "sounds like something from a movie."
"It isn't though," Mai says. "I'm actually not making any of this up. That's why I want to find out more about it. Teacher Sato – that's my history teacher – told us the background behind the Rainbow Reckoning, and Keiko's grandmother sort of talked about it too, but there's definitely way more to it than that. I want to see if we could find out more about it."
Jake shrugs as he starts recalling his pokémon. "Sounds interesting, I'm game."
The Goldenrod Library, unlike most buildings in Goldenrod, is an unassuming three-storied building tucked between a large hotel and a bustling supermarket. Fortunately, as it is the middle of winter break and a lovely day, the two friends have no trouble securing seats in the computer lab. It does not take Jake long before he is catching up on the current Rainbow Reckoning by reading the Ecruteak Daily Digest online.
"Sounds impressive," Jake says. "What kind of pokémon does this Timothy have?"
"Pretty strong ones," Mai says, trying to remember. "You know, lucario, garchomp, gyarados." She shrugs. "But let's focus here. Maybe we could find out what happened to the trainers who went through the Reckoning in the past? The last one happened twenty years ago."
Jake frowns as he navigates through the archives. "There isn't much," he says. "All the articles on this website are so short and they don't archive articles from more than thirty years ago. Here, the last trainer was someone named Dorian, no last name listed, from Castelia City. Apparently he made it all the way past the three tests, but didn't end up ascending the tower. So what's the deal with ascending the tower again?"
Mind wandering with the new information, Mai gives a start when her friend pokes her to get her attention.
"Oh, the challenger goes up the Bell Tower – that's the tower where Ho-oh used to live – and then if he makes it all the way up there he gets to battle Ho-oh."
"And what happens if he wins? Does he get a big trophy?"
Mai giggles. "No, he gets to capture Ho-oh," she says.
Jake blinks. "Does something strike you as being a little fishy about this?" he asks, leaning back in his chair and glancing away from the computer screen.
Mai cocks her head. "What do you mean?"
"Well, so you basically have this big ceremony organized around capturing Ho-oh, right?" Jake says. "But it also seems like the identity of Ecruteak is pretty tied to Ho-oh. You know, you have all these legends and rituals, and a lot of them are related to the legendary pokémon. So why would they want Ho-oh to be captured?"
Mai thinks for a moment. "Maybe they just want someone who impresses Ho-oh enough to come back. And anyway, Ho-oh is a legendary. Maybe he is too strong to be actually captured."
"Legendary pokémon are still pokémon, at the end of the day," Jake says. "Besides, some people have master balls. If I have a master ball and see Ho-oh, you bet I'll be able to capture it."
She sighs. "Okay, what do you think then?"
Jake shrugs. "I think you guys don't actually want Ho-oh to be captured, and all of this Rainbow Reckoning business is just a publicity stunt, maybe for your dance school."
Mai considers her friend's logic. It isn't adding up for her. "I don't know about that…"
"It makes sense to me. Why else would the Kimono Girls get involved in all the battles? They're supposed to be dancers. And that's probably why the Naomi girl was acting so weird, she's probably worried that she'd do really badly and then embarrass the Theater, and it kind of sounds like she did."
"That seems really elaborate," Mai says slowly. "To come up with a whole ceremony just to promote dance?"
"I don't know, Mai," says Jake. "This doesn't sound all that impressive, no offense. I mean, I pass through small villages on my way to cities and sometimes they have weird traditions, like walking on your hands on Tuesdays or dancing with miltank to make better ice cream. This sounds more of the same. A lot of traditions are just meaningless, but you get caught up in it because you lived there forever."
Mai finds the logic unsettling, even though she has to admit that there is something about Ecruteak City that can ensnare someone in its mysteries, though she stays quiet. Meanwhile, Jake starts looking at the other articles related to Ecruteak City. After all, his next challenge, after defeating Whitney, would be Morty of Ecruteak City.
No, there has to be more to the Rainbow Reckoning than a publicity stunt. Mai remembers Naomi and Morty, Jackie's concern, and the glowing red eyes of Kaguya. There is definitely more at stake than the reputation of the Kimono Dance Theater, and whatever it is must be related to Ho-oh. She turns back to her own computer and starts to search for Ho-oh-related mythology, when her friend breaks the silence.
"Hey Mai?" Jake's voice sounds weird.
"Yeah?"
"Do you know someone named Sumomo?" he says.
Mai's head jerks up. "What did you say?"
"Sumomo Poplar," Jake says. "Is she related to you?"
"Let me see," Mai says, leaning over to peer at his screen. Jake is no longer on the Ecruteak Daily Digest website, but the website of an Ecruteak City magazine, the Ecruteak Gazette, that apparently did a feature a couple of years ago on the Kimono Girls. She holds her breath as she takes in the title.
The ten most famous Kimono Girls
Mai scans down the list, past the familiar names she studied in history books or watched on television, before she finds the entry she is searching for, the entry that she has ready many times in the past.
Eight: Sumomo Poplar, née Sasaki
Sumomo is most famous for her leading role in the Dance of the Camellias, a dance whose beauty and difficulty have never since been surpassed. Indeed, with her raw talent, she would have ranked much higher on this list had she not done the unforgiveable: she deserted her duty to the Kimono Dance Theater to run away with a pokémon trainer from Unova. She took nothing with her, not even her beloved vaporeon, and severed all contact with her friends and family. To this day, her name is not mentioned in Ecruteak City, tarnishing what would have been a fine legacy.
Mai looks up after she is done. Jake is looking at her questioningly. It takes her a while to collect her bearings and a bit more to find her voice.
"Yeah, I know her," she says eventually. "That's my biological mother."
Later, in her own room, Mai takes out the photograph album containing the only pictures she has of her mother. Her father, having after all been Mom's brother, can be found in far more photographs. Mother, however, seemed to have been camera-shy. There was her, radiantly happy on her wedding day, dressed in a green kimono. And there was her again, resting her elbows on the handles of a baby carriage as she faces the camera with a slight smile.
Mai stops at her favorite picture of Mother, a studio shot taken shortly after her arrival in Unova. Her mother looks so young and beautiful, dressed in a kimono with a sea of camellias against a background of navy blue. She has seen the kimono many times, neatly folded in one of Mom's trunks, and has seen the kimono in the pictures displayed in the library of the Kimono Dance Theater. She has always known that Mother was a dancer, but she never knew that Mother was a Kimono dancer until she saw her name in the yellowed dance programs on the wall, never knew that Mother was disgraced until she had tea with Kyoko and searched Mother's name online for the first time.
She clenches her hand into a fist and tucks it against her cheek. Her mother had come to Unova with her father, bringing nothing but the kimono she is wearing, so the family lore goes. Mai has never believed it until then, dismissing it as Mom's attempt to dramatize the lives of her late brother and sister-in-law. But more and more, she realizes it to be quite true. Her mother, who could have been the most famous Kimono Girl in the history of the Theater, left everything – her family, her friends, her career – to run away with her father. She didn't even care enough to pack any of her belongings.
Why did she do it?
Mai stares into Sumomo Poplar's green eyes and falls deeply into thought.