CHAPTER 52 – TIME AND PATIENCE

Leoric stood up from the lounge and made his way to leave Noland's hotel room, dropping his now empty bottle in the rubbish bin in the kitchen as he went. Noland, on the other hand, was sitting with his hands on his knees, leaning forward as he creased his brow and thought about the advice he'd just given the young Trainer. He turned his head to see Leoric straighten up, and he stood up as the fair-haired boy headed for the door. In a gesture of gentlemanly kindness, he turned the handle and swung the door open for him, and Leoric grunted gratefully and stepped into the brightly-lit hallway outside.

"So yeah," Noland said, somewhat awkwardly, as he stood in the doorway, "just do what I told you and you'll do fine. Take it from me, it snags the ladies every time," he added with a cheeky grin.

"Which is why you're single, Noll," replied Leoric smartly, smirking, but then his expression changed to one of gratitude. "But thanks anyways."

"No thanks needed," he said, waving it away, "but you have to tell me how it goes, alright?" Leoric laughed and gave a half-wink, which Noland took to be a 'yes'. "Well, go on, get to it!" Noland encouraged, brushing his hands forward in the air as if trying to shoo him away.

"Come on, it's – what… eleven-thirty? – at night, and somehow I don't think she'd still be up. I'll do it tomorrow," he said dismissively, turning towards the stretch of carpeted floor on his right. "See you later, Noll."

"Lil' El," Noland smirked, which earned him a punch in the arm from Leoric, who shook his head jokingly and grinned along to the ridiculous nickname. He put his hand on the side of the door and swung it shut, closing it with a soft click and leaving Leoric out alone in the hallway. "Suppose I'd better get some shut-eye," he yawned, turning to walk down the hallway, but he stopped short when he saw Anabel leaning on the wall, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed maliciously.

Oh boy, he gulped, his eyes darting around for a possible means of escape. He glanced across the room, and out of the corner of his vision he saw the empty bottle standing on the coffee table. To his dismay, Anabel saw it too, and she slowly paced over and picked it up, holding it at throwing height as she advanced on him. Even though he was easily a foot taller than her, the look on Anabel's face was more than enough to scare Noland into retreat, and he backed away into the kitchen as she continued to glare furiously at him.

"Look, I'm sorry, but it was Leoric who made that racket outside—trying to get in," he spluttered, feeling the hard edge of the kitchen bench-top against his backside. "So if you're going to throw that at anyone—" he looked fearfully at the glass missile in her hand, "—then you should hurl it at Leo, not me!"

"What were you thinking, giving him advice like that?!" she asked haughtily, flinging the bottle into the bin in the corner with such might that it shattered against the plastic bag on the inside. Noland shrugged his hands blankly, then did a double-take as her question registered in his brain.

"I don't—wait… what?" he asked, lowering his hands. "My advice?"

"You heard me," Anabel hissed, throwing her hand into the thin air in front of his face. He swung his head backwards to avoid the fake slap, but ended up hitting his head on the low-cut window between the kitchen and the lounge room with a crack. "Leo doesn't know squat about girls, and you tell him to be some kind of player?!" she said, keeping up the attack, as Noland straightened up and rubbed his aching head. "What kind of advice is that to a sixteen-year-old guy?!"

"Hey, it's his fault for coming to me in the first place! He knows I'm no—gentleman!" he countered, thinking of an appropriate term.

"So you'd rather he went to someone like Ash? Or Ari? Or Gary Oak?!"

"No! He should've asked a girl! Although I'm not sure you would've been a big help," he added cheekily, but regretted it a moment later, because Anabel gave him a swift kick in the shin. "Ow, sorry!" he howled, hobbling on the spot.

"You should be sorry," Anabel fired, her hands on her hips. "If Leo starts acting like that, then both of those girls are going to get their hearts broken. So you're going to go out there, right now, and tell Leoric what he should do, not what you would've done."

"He'd have been long gone by now," Noland complained. "Okay, okay," he added when Anabel gave him another nasty look, "I'll talk to him first thing tomorrow morning. There's no chance of him doing anything stupid this late at night; both those girls are gonna be asleep anyways. Now if you'll excuse me," he said firmly, returning her fierce stares, "I'm going to bed, or else that beer is going to start messing with my head. Hey, that rhymes!" he said jocularly, before sprinting off down the hallway and into his bedroom. "G'night!"

"Idiot," Anabel muttered to herself, before yawning and covering her mouth with her hand. She looked around wearily and yawned again before deciding to return to her bed, and she switched off the lamp that Leoric had turned on, then headed down the hallway for some more sleep.

Unbeknownst to her, just outside the room, Leoric lifted his ear away from the door, a sober look on his face despite the alcohol he'd just drunk. He'd heard every word of Noland's conversation with Anabel, and it had done little to calm his nerves about what he'd been told to do.

Oh, play the game, Leoric, that'll do real well for you! he thought angrily, remembering Noland's words. Thanks for nothing! He curled his hand into a fist and launched it towards the wall, but he stopped it an inch short and took a deep breath before he rested it lightly on the hard-board. I need to stop getting so worked up… he admitted to himself, his breath becoming heavy as his heart raced in his chest. He dropped his head and considered what he really should do about Misty and May, but a wave of fatigue hit him full-on instead.

"I need to take a nap," he muttered, reaching into his back pocket for the room key that Ari had thrown onto the floor earlier. As his hand dug deeper into his pants, the tip of his finger brushed against something unexpected – a scrap of paper, not the hard plastic of the card. What's this? he wondered, catching the slip between two fingers and digging it out. It was a blue water-coloured piece of paper that had been torn out of a notebook, from what he could tell, roughly the size of his palm, and there was a few neat, slanting words scribbled hastily on the other side. He turned it over and read the message in the light of the hallway, which read:

Leo—

Meet me at the hot springs at midnight tonight. Tell no-one you're going – I want you alone.

Misty xx

Leoric re-read the letter three times, wondering how Misty could have possibly placed it in his pocket without attracting his attention. But a second laughter he grunted a laugh as his mind flashed back to that morning, when he'd met her by the maple tree in Wilson Street after his Tag Team match with Ari. She'd bent down to tie her shoe, but he realised now that she'd written this note instead, and she'd intentionally tripped over when she walked over to him the second time. He could even imagine her slipping the note in his back pocket when she put her arms around his waist as he pulled her to her feet.

"Full marks for effort, Misty, but not the most original idea," he joked, turning the note back over in his hand. An odd shape flashed across the paper in the light, and so he moved it this way and that to catch the light again. The shape flashed up again, and he held the note still to see an imprint in the shape of a pair of lips in the centre of the tiny page, shaded with what looked like red chapstick.

"My, my…" he murmured, laughing again as a thought came into his mind. I told you that you were a kiss-ass, and you just had to make it literal. He glanced down at his watch, and saw that the time was twenty minutes to midnight. Plenty of time, he thought cockily, starting to walk towards the elevator. I'll just have Apache fly me there; it shouldn't take more than five minutes by air. Brimming with arrogant confidence, he pressed the button on the wall and waited impatiently for the elevator to arrive.


Ash and Brock took a sharp turn at the intersection, their feet thudding hard against the cold cobblestones as they came nearer to the television studio. They were still a block and a half away, but in Brock's mind they had made quick time in getting there, although Ash was thinking otherwise; he thought that this entire ordeal was just a wild goose-chase, and he was thankful that he had Noctowl and the other Pokémon patrolling the streets in search of Dawn as a backup.

"Relax, Ash, we'll have our answers soon," Brock yelled, as though reading his mind. "And if not, it's a good thing you suggested we use our Pokémon."

"About time I got credit," Ash shouted back, but he gave his friend a smile as he gave another burst of speed and raced along the dark road ahead of him. Brock panted with exhaustion as he fought to keep up with Ash's amazing energy, and in less than a minute the studio came into the latter's view. It was a towering building, distinguished by the unmistakeable array of satellite dishes perched at all angles on the broad roof, and there was a huge plasma-screen display installed on the front side, at about the sixth or seventh floor by Ash's guess. It strongly reminded him of the Jubilife City TV Station in Sinnoh, although this studio was far more imposing and impressive.

"Come on," Brock said promptly, indicating the glass double-doors at the entrance. Ash nodded, and together they swung the great doors open and walked inside. A blast of heated air, brought on by the indoor air-conditioning system, hit them full in the face, and the bright, coloured lights inside made their eyes swim. Shading them with their hands, Ash looked around and heard a commotion coming from the set of elevators at the far end of the lobby.

"What's going on over there?" Ash called out to the receptionist, sitting behind the counter. The man, well-dressed and in his late teens, turned to the source of the sound and gave the doors a look that was similar to what a cleaner would give to a rather nasty stain.

"A rather rude young man barged into this building not five minutes ago, demanding that he speak with our news-anchors, concerning some kind of matter regarding a man who he had seen during a Pokémon battle," he said, his accent high-British and pompous. "He ignored my requests to leave and made for the elevators, so I called security. I daresay that they've just apprehended him now," he added with a flicker of a sneer. Ash saw the smirk, and took a leering step towards him.

"Hey, Ari's a friend of ours, and this is urgent, so forgive us for not wanting to wait around!" he said loudly, shaking off Brock's restraining arm. "We need to talk to Derek and Jeanne right now!"

"Oh, so you're with this Ari miscreant, are you?" the receptionist asked in a drawling voice. "Well I'd suggest you take my advice and leave, unless you want to be forcibly removed, along with him, by security," he threatened, reaching for the telephone, but all of a sudden the elevator doors at the end of the room were blasted from the wall, clattering onto the floor and skidding thirty feet along the smooth marble tiling. "What in the world is going on over there?!" he shouted, dropping the phone in surprise and rushing out from behind the counter.

Oh no, please don't be Ari… Ash thought, with an apprehensive look on his face as Brock's head slumped and was covered by his hand. He whipped around and groaned when he saw Ari in the elevator, dusting himself off as the two security guards either side of him fell to the floor, having just been put to sleep by his Gallade's Hypnosis attack. As he and Brock ran forwards behind the male clerk, Ari snapped his head around and hastily returned his Pokémon to its PokéBall.

"Sorry about your door," he said sheepishly to the wild-faced receptionist. "Galadriel went a bit nuts when he saw me being held down."

"Do you have any idea what you've done?!" he snarled, just as a platoon of uniformed guards appeared from outside. "Security, remove these three criminals now!" he barked.

"You don't understand! We're not the criminals!" Ash protested, as he was surrounded by four of the burly men. Two of them grabbed his arms, and as he kicked out against the other two, they each grabbed a leg and dragged him through the air, and from the shouting cries on either side of him, he could guess that Brock and Ari were being man-handled in a similar way. "No, wait, we can explain—!"

"You can explain yourselves to the police," growled the clerk coldly, opening the doors for the guards. "You destroyed studio property and assaulted two guards, so somehow I don't think that they'll be too for—"

"Mathis! What's going on down here?" boomed a man's voice, coming from the second elevator at the end of the lobby.

"N-Nothing, Mr. Cohen," stuttered the receptionist known as Mathis. "We've just apprehended three criminals who tried to force their way into the building. Security was just about to escort them to the police station now."

"Let me see them," commanded Mr. Cohen, and Ash could hear footsteps as he came closer to them. He felt himself being swung around by the guards holding him, and the two grabbing his shins let him go, showing his face to the man. "Ash? Ash Ketchum?! Good lord, what are you doing here?"

Ash's head jerked upwards, and he gasped in shock when he saw himself staring at Derek, still dressed in his reporter's suit and tie, with a puzzled look on his face. "Derek! Am I glad to see you!" he shouted in relief, wincing with pain as the remaining two guards tightened their already painful grip on his arms. "Look, we need your help!" he pleaded, and Derek slowly nodded and signalled to the guards, who instantly released their hold on Ash. He stumbled forwards, then looked around to see that Ari and Brock were still being restrained by all four of their holders.

"Mathis, I happened to have met Mr. Ketchum on several occasions," Derek said in a low voice to the quivering clerk, "and I am of the impression that he is not the kind of person to be committing the acts you are accusing him of. Not without extreme provocation."

"W-Well… in all honesty, sir, it was only this boy who caused the damage," Mathis mumbled timidly, pointing a shaking finger at Ari, who glared at him from behind the guards. "He stormed the elevator, and when he was met with security, he, well, look—" he waved his hand back down the way Derek had come, indicating the blown-off doors and the incapacitated guards still lying in the elevator.

"I see… guards, release—who is your friend, Ash—?" Derek asked.

"Brock."

"—release Brock now." The guards complied and set Brock down on the tiled floor, where he dusted his arms and gave them a reproachful stare before giving Ash a relieved thumbs-up, which Ash returned. Derek gave Ash a quick smile and walked sternly over to Ari, who was still struggling vainly against his restrainers. "Now as for you—you're Ari DeVarro, aren't you?" he asked, surprised, when he caught the first clear glimpse of Ari's face.

"Yeah, what of it?"

"Hmph. I see… Security, release Ari and leave us be," he ordered, reaching for his cell phone. "I apologise for wasting your time."

"But, Mr. Cohen, these—"

"I said leave!" Derek said fiercely, his hand over the phone's speaker. "Jeanne, you might want to come down here. Bring a camera crew; we might have a new story," he spoke into the phone, watching as the sixteen guards grumbled mutinously, marching out of the doors and into the night.

"Please, no cameras!" Ash interjected, rushing forwards. "We need your help with something."

Derek looked away from the blasted doors on the ground and turned to face him. "What with?"

"One of our friends – Dawn – was kidnapped this afternoon," Brock chimed in, stepping into his vision. "We've got a suspect already, and we need to use your match footage to find who it is."

"Kidnapped?!" he yelped, hanging up the phone and lowering it to his pocket. "Oh my. Well, I can certainly see the need for your friend's—" he nodded at Ari, who had his arms crossed defensively, "—urgency in trying to gain access to our footage."

"Look, I'm sorry for what happened," Ari said apologetically. "My Gallade went berserk, blew the doors open, and put those guards to sleep."

"Well, no-one was injured, so I suppose that we can overlook it just for this moment," Derek reasoned, flashing a charming smile at the boys, who exchanged relieved looks with each other. "Ah, that must be Jeanne," he muttered, for the undamaged elevator slid open to reveal his co-anchor flattening down her dress, and three cameramen and technicians – complete with equipment – as they spilled out into the lobby.

"—look at that! Quick, Marco, get a nice shot of those gouges! And—oh my, what happened to the guards?! Don't forget to get a close-up of them—" Jeanne was instructing her crew, who were frantically ducking, squatting, and weaving around to get the best video footage of the damage to the building.

"Jeanne, get over here, now!" Derek yelled. Jeanne snapped her head around and hurried over, her goon-like crew bumbling in her wake. "Jeanne, you've already met Ash, and this is Brock and Ari," he introduced, pointing to each one in turn.

"Ari…" Jeanne muttered, her eyes narrowing as she searched his face. "Right…" She gave him a half-suspicious look, to which he shook his head a fraction to either side, before she turned back to Derek. "What is it?" she asked.

"Ash needs to use our video archives," he explained. "What was it in particular you were looking for?" he asked him.

"The, uh, footage from my match with Kaiden Hayes. In the second round," he added quickly, remembering that he'd had to battle Kaiden on two occasions.

"Before or after you were knocked unconscious?" Jeanne inquired, twirling a finger around her hair.

"When I was. Derek, you remember when you showed the video of me passing out at my interview?"

"Yes," he replied, wondering what Ash's point was. "You want me to pull that footage up again? What on earth for?"

"Just do it; you'll see later," Ari cut in, tapping his foot impatiently. Derek turned his head to look at Ari, his brow creased, before he turned back to Ash and gave him a questioning look. Ash nodded gravely, and so he clapped his hands together and nodded back with a tiny smile on his face.

"Okay. Marco, Jesse, Cameron—" he looked over at the camera crew, "you three stay here and tend to the guards. Make sure that they're all right when they wake up," he instructed, raising his voice over their futile complaints. "Jeanne, come with us to the archives."

"Right," Jeanne agreed, nodding towards the three men still carrying their equipment. "You heard the man, now drop those cameras and help those guards!" she snapped. The frightened men dropped their equipment as one and scampered over to the elevator to attend to the sleeping guards. She walked towards the elevator still in service, then turned on the spot to look at the four males staring after her. "Well, come on! Rule number one of news: time and patience are two things we never have!" she yelled.

"Coming up right behind you!" Derek answered, running forwards, and Ash, Brock, and Ari quickly followed suit, sprinting down the wide lobby and bunching into the elevator.

"Which way is the archive?" Brock asked conversationally. Derek leaned across Ash and pressed the button at the bottom of the panel, marked 'BX'.

"Down, of course," he replied, as the doors slid shut, and the elevator shook to life.


Trivia:

*Mathis is a name I picked out whilst reading Sebastian Faulk's "007 – Devil May Care" novel, where René Mathis is one of the characters.

*Derek's surname is taken from comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen (a.k.a Borat).

Quiz:

*What is the lowest level that a Gallade can learn Hypnosis purely by levelling up?