We're Finding Mint No Matter What It Takes
Mint and Fai walk along the sidewalk. Fai is pretty excited for Mint, he's going to be working alongside her. Mint, however, isn't as excited. He's nervous and worried, he doesn't want to mess up on his first day tomorrow and come off as an unreliable Pokemon to that human who hired him. Despite this, he's happy deep down, at least he's getting closer to fulfilling his goal of having a completely brand new life.
As they walk down the sidewalk, Fai starts to skip happily. Mint watches her and this reminds him of how he used to do this a lot when he was younger. It actually turned into a habit where he'd start skipping as he walked but he wouldn't notice that he's doing it. He eventually broke this habit, but seeing this makes him remember how bad it was. He chuckles at the thought initially, but then remembers that his parents had a big hand in helping him break that habit… his parents… here it goes again, thoughts of what he left behind begin to pop up and bite him in the butt.
He tries to ignore them and focus on what's lying ahead of him. He looks to his right and can see the "Royal Unova" off in the distance cruising along with a few other ships. The Skyarrow Bridge is also visible too and looking beyond that, Pinwheel Forest. His gaze stops there and he starts to stare longingly at it. Fai notices that he isn't next to her and stops. She turns around and calls out to him. "Hey! Why'd you stop?"
He doesn't answer her and instead keeps staring off at Pinwheel Forest. His left paw slowly rises up and grabs the pendant that's around his neck. He slowly holds it up to where he's looking and then moves it slightly over to the left to line up with the forest. The pendant glows and sparkles faintly, not because of everything that's happened, but for some other reason. He takes a mental note of this and questions it. "I'm not in the best of moods, so why is the pendant glowing? That place is nothing but a shadow of my real life after all…" he says to himself quietly.
Fai comes over to him. "Hey, are you okay? What're you looking at?"
He looks over at her and drops the pendant. He sighs silently. "I-it's n-nothing…"
"Nothing? It definitely didn't look like nothing to me." she then looks down at his scarf where the pendant sits. "Where'd you get something like that?" she goes to touch it with her right hand but Mint's very fast and his left paw comes up and grabs ahold of it before she can.
His face becomes covered by a dark shadow and Fai looks up at him. She doesn't know what to say now but she doesn't like the shadow over his face. He speaks up, his voice a bit breath filled and quiet. "This pendant… it was… a g-gift…"
"A gift?"
"Y-yeah… but also a b-blessing…" he says, as he remembers what elder Naomi had told him when she gave it to him.
"Whenever I got upset, I always looked at this pendant and thought about all the wonderful things that are in this world, all the good things I've got… Remember all the good things in your life… they outweigh all the bad…"
He speaks under his breath. "But if that's the case, Naomi, then why do I keep getting reminded of the terrible past…? Is there something that I've left behind that I have to go back and recover? Why do I doubt coming here? Why do all the good things now bring back memories and thoughts of the life I hated and ran away from?" questions that he says but remain unanswered and lost to the wind. The pendant stops sparkling and shining upon him saying this.
Fai notices. "Hey, it stopped glowing, are you sure this was just a gift and nothing more?"
He doesn't want to tell her. He can't, it hurts him too much to think about it and trying to tell this to someone he doesn't quite fully trust yet can only end up hurting him in the long run. He looks down. "Don't worry about it…"
She looks at him, concerned about whatever it is. She knows he's hiding something, she knew it from the moment he stepped foot into her apartment. Like she said, she's not gonna be able to make him talk but eventually he'll open up. She can only think about what it is that's bothering him and hope that it gets better. She pats him on the back gently a couple of times. "Hey, I don't know what it was that you were looking at or what that pendant means to you, but if it's making you upset, maybe you should focus on something else…"
The shadow on his face lightens up a bit. "Y-yeah…" he holds his scarf with his left paw. "I-I'm sorry Fai… it's j-just… stuff I don't w-want to remember." he looks at the ground to his right to avoid seeing her. He adjusts the scarf and takes a deep breath. "Let's go back t-to your apartment."
He turns and starts walking. She watches as he goes past her and looks in the direction of the forest but isn't too sure of what he was looking at. She doesn't stay long and runs after him. They continue to walk along the path, silence between the two of them. Fai is genuinely concerned about Mint, she wants to know what made him suddenly act all weird but since she knows she won't be able to get him to talk, she decides to stay silent. It stays like this all the way to her apartment and even when they both go inside, not a single word is spoken between the two. Mint feels that something's wrong, but he still can't understand what it is.
Back in Pinwheel Forest, two familiar Minccino, Emilia and Ross, have made it back from the hospital. Ross' injuries had healed up rather quickly but he's been advised to stay away from doing any strenuous physical activity involving the arms. The time they've spent in the hospital together is fatal, and if they knew about what happened with Mint, perhaps they could've done something to change his fate, but instead of coming back to a happy den guarded by their son, they arrive to an empty den. All their belongings are there, but Mint is nowhere to be found. They part the drapes away and immediately notice that he's nowhere within.
Ross turns to Emilia. "Shouldn't he be home? Where did he go?"
She shrugs. "I don't know, perhaps he went to gather berries or do some fishing."
This is proven false as the fishing supplies in the back of the den are there and haven't been touched in over 3 days. Ross and Emilia walk into the den and look around. Nobody broke in and everything seems to be in order, except for one small thing that Ross takes note of. He walks over to the beds and notices that one of them is larger than the others and has an odd coat of oil spread out over it. He glides his right paw over it and some of the oil gets on it. He raises an eyebrow and takes a small sniff to identify it. "Oil…? What's going on here?"
Emilia goes over to him. "What's wrong?"
He shows her the oil on his right paw. "This… If I'm not mistaken, this is Mint's bed, but why is there a coat of oil all over it?"
She thinks about this for a moment but can't come up with anything to possibly explain it. This worries both of them. Something clearly isn't right and with Mint's whereabouts currently unknown to them, they're worried that something could've happened to him while they were absent. Ross' voice gets low and threatening. "If that scumbag and his bitch of a daughter did anything to my precious son, I'm going to make sure he's dead where he stands, and this time, I won't lose."
Emilia places her right paw on his left shoulder. "Ross… you just got out of the-"
He cuts her off. "I don't give a shit about what I just got out of! Our son is nowhere to be found in this den, his scent isn't in this oil, and there's nothing here that could tell us where he went! If those pieces of shit hurt him or threw him out of the colony, every single one of them is going to get it, starting with the scumbag fatass himself!" He means business. After Mint was brought to them in a wounded and pained state from his fight with Patricia, Ross can't deal with finding or hearing about him being hurt again, or worse.
He wipes the oil off his paw onto the ground and begins walking towards the drapes. "We're gonna go ask our friends if they've seen him lately. If they don't give me an answer, then we simply move to the next person until someone gives us something to work with on where he is, because I know for a FACT that Mint wouldn't leave the den without good reason. If he's out there in this forest, we have to find a way to get him and make sure he's safe, he's the only son we've got and I'm not gonna let him die!"
Emilia understands his concern, but she doesn't like the fact that he's getting all riled up over this. She knows how protective of the family he can get, but only just being released from the hospital today, it's better if he doesn't do something that he'll regret. She quickly thinks up a different idea and proposes it to him. "How about you stay here instead? I'll go into the colony and ask around to see if anyone knows where he is. It's better than you getting into another fight while you're still recovering from the last one."
This calms him down. "That's fine. If he does return, I'll bring him along and we'll find you. Hopefully someone can tell us where he is, but it would be better if he comes back by himself." He walks over to the table and takes a seat where he usually sits, trying to calm himself down further. "I'll be fine, I just need a little bit to calm down. Go, the more time you waste here, the less likely we'll find out where he is."
She nods and parts the drapes away, taking off towards the main colony on all fours through the snow. A few minutes of running and she arrives, a little bit out of breath though. She ignores it and walks into the main colony, luckily for her it seems that almost everyone is awake and this would allow her to ask all of them. One of them has to know where Mint is, even if they all hate him. She walks through the snow and goes for the first Minccino she sees. The following ordeal takes place. She asks if they've seen Mint at any point during the day, and the answer is no.
This cycle happens for the next 112 Minccino she asks. Not a single one of them says that they've seen Mint. The last 5 Minccino remaining are Brian, Wesley, Sean, Rachel, and Patricia. Emilia dreads asking Brian if he saw Mint, he might think that she's blaming him for Mint's sudden disappearance and this could cause more problems, problems that nobody needs right now. As for the other 4, she doesn't trust they'll give an honest answer and instead, lead her on a Swanna chase that will end with her not finding him and only wasting her time in the process. She doesn't have a choice not to ask though, they could know of Mint's whereabouts and not asking isn't going to help her at all. She walks up to Brian's den and while a bit nervous, she knocks on the door a few times using her right paw.
Almost a minute goes by and Brian opens the door. When he sees who it is, he makes a sound of disgust before asking her. "What do you want?"
She takes a deep breath and prepares herself for anything. "I know we're not on the best terms, but Mint's gone missing and I was wondering if, by any chance, you know where he is?"
He smirks. "Mint's gone missing? Good for him, I hope the vicious Pokemon that everyone talks about every few nights eat him alive, they'll be doing us all a favor, including you and Ross."
His sarcastic comment is met by her attitude. "And I thought you had some decency to help me out! That's my child for crying out loud! If it was your child, would you want me to say something as horrid and terrible as that!?"
He laughs for a few seconds, then responds. "Honey… my child isn't stupid. She wouldn't go outside the boundaries of our colony unless accompanied by her friends or me. It's not my fault Ross has a big head and an even bigger ego, trying to be something he's not. It's his fault that Mint is gone."
Her eyes become intense and she frowns, her tone becoming more angry with him. "Look, I asked a question and you haven't given me an answer. Is my fucking child somewhere in Pinwheel Forest, or not!?" she yells in his face, making him back away a little bit.
"Geez… can you not spit in my face? I just washed off about an hour ago." he says, completely ignoring the question.
She kicks snow at him which reveals some dirt and then she kicks it on him, dirtying his feet and part of his lower body. This pisses him off and he gives her a death stare. "Do that again and you won't be finding that waste of cells for a child."
She gets right up in his face and screams as loud as she can at him. "THEN TELL ME WHERE MY FUCKING CHILD IS!"
He turns away, his ears ringing a little, but he answers the question. "I don't fucking know. I haven't seen him since the incident I had with your mate. Patricia told me that she and her friends think he evolved into a Cinccino somehow. I don't know how the fuck he managed to do it, but he must've found a shiny stone. Want proof? My daughter gave me this thing…" he goes into his den and from a table, he grabs the used stone that was found a couple days ago. "I know you've seen a shiny stone before because the elder before Naomi gave it to her and we all saw what happened. The damn thing lost its energy and the yellow star pattern inside disappeared when she used it."
He hands it over to her and she looks at it for a few seconds. She becomes very concerned, if this is true, then he could've lost his mind from the drastic change and for all she knows, he could be dead somewhere because he couldn't figure out how to deal with it. She grips the stone tightly and looks back up at him. He shrugs. "That's the best lead I have. I don't know where he fucking went or what the hell happened to him. He could be alive and well somewhere, or he could now be classified as a pile of literal shit if something got to him and killed him. Are you happy? Now get out of my den."
She walks away from the door, stone still in hand and he closes it. Her yelling from before has attracted the attention of a few Minccino and Mint's gang of bullies. Patricia speaks up since she's the one that found the stone. "I found that if you didn't know."
This makes Emilia turn around to face her. She continues. "We went to go find him with the intention of beating him up, but he wasn't anywhere in the forest. We looked all over, the beach, the Cottonee and Sewaddle colonies, the elder's den, even your den as well. We spent the last 2 days looking and we haven't found anything…"
This further concerns Emilia, but it also makes her upset. She speaks quietly and with a slightly sad tone. "Not even the 4 of you could locate him… where'd he go…?"
Patricia looks down at the ground. "Nobody knows what happened to him. My father told you that we think he might've evolved, and the stone proves that someone used it. Everyone else in the colony is still a Minccino, and you and your mate have been out of the colony so it's impossible that one of you used it, and since Mint's the only one that's gone missing…" she doesn't want to continue. Despite having hated him for so long, his sudden disappearance has made her realize just how different things are without him.
Emilia looks down at the stone again and her grip on it tightens. She shakes with anger and addresses not just her, but the entire gang with a furious tone. "It's because of you 4…. And everyone else who insulted him… if he wasn't belittled for what he was, he would still be here right now. All of you made him self-conscious of any little thing that happened to him. His evolution scared him and because he knew all of you would have something great to say about it, he ran away to avoid it all." her grip continues to tighten and the stone starts to crack, the sound being heard by all 4 of them, scaring them quite a bit.
She looks up at all of them. "You 4 are going to help me and my mate look for him. I don't fucking care what it takes. You caused this mess, and you're going to fix it, understand?" her face looks as if she's about to go crazy and her tone is threatening, serious, and carries a mother's wrath with it. The eyes of these 4 Minccino have become so small that the whites of their eyes are all visible. They reek of fear and they all shake their heads quickly to avoid whatever fury Emilia has cooking inside of her.
Emilia turns to the crowd that gathered around due to her yelling and she addresses them as well. "If all of you think you're getting out of it that easily, you're wrong… EVERYONE is gonna help me and my mate find our son. Anyone who dares object will end up like… this… stone…!" she grunts and with all of her might, shatters the stone with just her paw. The pieces fly all over and land on the ground near her, some of it bouncing off her chest and face but she doesn't flinch from it.
Everyone stares at her in utter fear. She's not fucking around. They all thought Ross was a force to be reckoned with, but Emilia, she's on a whole different level. She looks across the entire colony. Like she said, every single Minccino in this colony is going to help find Mint. It doesn't matter what it takes, how long it takes, or whose lives it takes, they're going to find them whether they're willing to help or not. She will not let the greatest part of her life be taken away from her because he was too mortified from his evolution and didn't have anyone to fall back on to push him forward.
Now that everyone knows, her work here is pretty much done. She dusts her hands off and the remaining pieces of the stone fall on the ground in front of her. "We start looking in exactly 3 hours, the top of the day, also known as "noon" if you've never been properly educated. Everyone meets at the fountain plaza and waits by the fountain. I'll give the orders on where to search and we all look. Once we scrape through every blade of grass, each grain of sand, every den and house, and overturn all the rocks in this forest, we expand our search out to the places we've never gone to before, and if you're too scared, just know that I don't expect all of us to come back if we do find him." she shrugs. "Heh, even then, if we don't find him, I still don't expect all of us to make it back."
She starts walking back towards her home. Her heart is set ablaze and she won't stop at anything to find her son. Little does she know that they'll never find him if they only stay within the forest, but they don't have any leads on him, so how could they know. After about 10 minutes of walking, she arrives back at the den. She parts the drapes away and walks in, Ross immediately stands up from the table.
"Any luck?" he says, hoping for something.
She shakes her head. "Nope, but I've got something even better."
He tilts his head, curious as to what it is. She explains. "I was told by Brian's daughter that quite a few things happened here while we were gone. First of all, I think Mint found a Shiny Stone and might've accidentally evolved by coming into physical contact with it. This is confirmed true because they found a shiny stone that looks to have been recently used. I don't have it anymore because I used it to prove a point but the fact is that when it has its energy, it still shines and the yellow star pattern can be seen in the center. This stone was dull and didn't have the pattern, so it had to be used at some point. Since nobody else is a Cinccino in the colony, Mint is the only one that is suspect and since he's gone, I further believe that he evolved."
Ross nods. "That's a problem in its own right."
She continues. "Exactly, which leads me into my second thing, I think he ran away to avoid being bullied and insulted over the change. Think about it, he's been ridiculed and put down his whole life and turning into something like that would be nothing short of a target to be bullied about. Wouldn't you want to run away and hide in a place that won't result in you getting hurt over the Pokemon that you've turned into?"
"Makes sense. It sounds like something Mint would do since he broke into Naomi's den many times in the past when he was upset over being bullied." Ross says, thinking about where he could've gone.
Emilia smiles. "Now, the last thing, I've gotten the entire colony to agree to help us look for Mint. Don't worry about Brian or the others, they're all under my control and if anyone steps out of line, I'll make sure they don't do it again. We're gonna turn this forest upside down to find him, and if that's not enough, we'll be going further beyond and exploring the "forbidden" parts of the forest, even if some of them will die. I don't care what we have to do, but we're finding him no matter what."
Ross likes the plan, but he doesn't like the part where some of them could die. "Isn't the point of a search and rescue to make sure nobody gets hurt or dies? Shouldn't we at least prepare to explore the forbidden parts if it comes down to it?"
She nods. "Yeah, but we'll worry about that bridge when we get to it, for now, we have about 3 hours until we start the search. We'll start at the beach and move east until we reach the road that cuts through the center of the forest." she then mutters to herself. "I just hope we find him before then, I really don't want to go past that road… hell knows what's on that side of the forest."
The plan is set and it's only a matter of time before they all start looking. Ross and Emilia can only pray that Mint is safe and that they'll find him sooner than they think. Their hearts cry out to him, but it goes unanswered for now…
PD: Mint's parents have come back safe and sound but their son is missing. The search begins, but if only they knew where he went... anyway, seeya in the next chapter!