PD: Just a heads up, this chapter is a bit longer than usual and has an optional theme. It's called "Pokemon B2/W2 Battle! Neo Team Plasma Extended" when you see a "*" play it and when you see "**" stop the theme. You don't have to use it though. I don't own this song either by the way.
Rough and Tough Customers
The next day is awoken by the sun rising on the east side of Castelia City. However, unlike the last few days, the light of the morning sun isn't seen by anyone due to clouds blocking it out, a tall tale sign of how the day is going to go. The gloomy grey barrier above drags down the mood of all those in the city and sure, there's always that small group of people and Pokemon who aren't really affected by it, but most of them are.
This is no exception to Mint and Fai. As they walk to the cafe for another day of work, they both seem to be a bit under the weather. There's one good thing though, and that's the fact that the job has helped to take Mint's mind off of everything else that he was thinking about. His doubts and confusion as to coming here being the best choice of action that he had have stopped and things are a bit more neutral now.
Mint and Fai walk hand in hand with each other, while Mint is still embarrassed to hold hands with her, he's starting to get used to it. They move a bit slower than usual and both are extremely quiet while walking. The streets and sidewalks are just as crowded as they usually are during the morning. The same old cars and buses drive by on the road, and hundreds of people and Pokemon head to their destination for the day. The sounds of engines roaring and people and Pokemon talking can be heard, as well as the sounds of the electronic billboards trying to entice anyone into buying the products shown on-screen.
As Mint and Fai turn right and head into "Cast Square", a strange, odd feeling begins to form inside of them. Today isn't going to be a normal day, and whatever life has in store for them isn't what they're usually accustomed to. They slowly approach the cafe but before they ascend the steps to open the door, Fai stops and asks Mint something. "Hey Mint?"
He looks at her. "Y-yeah?"
She frowns, her tone a bit lower than usual. "I… I don't want to worry you, but I've got a bad feeling for some reason. I don't know why, but I just do."
He has the same exact feeling too, and just like her, he doesn't know why. "M-me too. I hope n-nothing bad happens t-today…"
They both look into each other's eyes for a few moments before Mint breaks away and opens the door for her. The little bell rings as he does this and she goes in. He follows behind her and the door closes by itself. Unlike yesterday, the cafe is completely empty and super quiet. The unnatural silence is ever so slightly unsettling and the two don't bother to stick around and let it settle into them so they head behind the counter and into the backroom.
Hearing the door to the backroom open, Tony comes out of his office to greet them. "Mint and Fai, so nice to see you once again."
Fai gives him a weak smile. "Yeah yeah… today just isn't a good day."
He frowns and is curious. "Why not? Did something happen?"
She shakes her head. "Not at all, but it's just one of those gloomy days, you know?"
He understands. "Yes… I get it. A little under the weather are we? That's alright, I'm sure once you both get working, that'll start to lighten up and everything will be okay."
She takes his words at face value and goes into the changing room. Tony turns his attention to Mint. "If you're wondering about that outfit, I cleaned it up real good and it's as good as new. You might have to wear it for a couple more days though…"
This makes his ears droop a little. "Darn… I was hoping you'd have gotten the other outfit by now…"
Tony sees this. "Hey, you did great yesterday after what happened to you! Don't let the outfit get to you, I know today isn't great like Fai said, but you can do it."
Mint looks at the door to the changing room. "I-I guess… I j-just hope nobody… n-nobody does that to m-me again…"
Tony pats him on the back gently a few times. "Don't sweat it, rude customers come and go but you can't possibly have something worse happen to you. After we closed down, I got a call from the police saying they found the guy and they took him away, so if it makes you feel better, you have no chance of seeing him again."
He stays silent. What could be worse than having piping hot coffee poured all over you? There's quite a few things in mind that he's thinking about and he hopes that none of them ever happen to him. The changing room door opens and Fai comes out all dressed up. "Room's yours, Mint. I gotta make sure nobody's here." she then heads out of the backroom through the door to tend to any customers that might've shown up.
Mint heads into the changing room and eyes down the clean and fresh waitress outfit. He frowns and gives it a nasty look, he hates this thing with every fiber of his being and wishes he didn't have to wear it. He didn't think of it yesterday, but he does now and he partially attributes the events that happened yesterday to it. He grinds his teeth and clenches his paws into fists. "I hate this thing, just another reason for someone to pick on me. I guarantee that human knew I wasn't a girl and decided to pick on me since I was wearing such a humiliating outfit." in his head, he can see himself tearing it into pieces. It looks and feels satisfying in his head, but if he dare do that in reality, he'd probably be yelled at by Tony. There's no use in giving a dress nasty looks and threatening gestures, it won't respond back, so he takes it off the rack and puts it on like he did yesterday. The fancy dress still fits him perfectly and he's reminded of what he looks like to other people and Pokemon thanks to the mirror hanging on the door.
He grunts, frustrated and annoyed by it, and places his paw on the knob, turns it, and opens it so he can leave. He takes a few deep breaths as he does this to try and calm himself down before going out to the cafe. He pushes the door open and comes out behind the counter. In the time it took for him to change, the whole place became real busy. A total of 8 customers showed up and Fai began to take their orders.
The day is completely uneventful for the most part. Fai takes the orders of the customers and brings it to Tony. He takes the orders and prepares the food and drink, putting it on a platter that he takes out to Fai, who hands it off to Mint where he then brings it to the people that ordered. This process repeats itself many times before all 8 customers have what they ordered. As he delivered the food, Mint got a couple strange looks from some of the customers and a couple times he locked eyes with them. This would cause his heart to jump since that rude person kept giving him weird looks before he did what he did and this only makes him super nervous that someone will do the same thing or worse to him.
Luckily, nobody seemed to be looking for trouble today, and everyone was happy with what they got. A few customers did ask Mint to hurry, but they were polite about it unlike the guy from yesterday. It still made him nervous, but at least nothing bad came from it. When all of them leave, Mint and Fai go to the tables to gather plates and stuff. As they do this, they talk to each other. "No rude customers so far, things are looking better than they were at this time yesterday, right?" asks Fai.
Mint nods. "Y-yeah.. I-I hope it stays this w-way…"
She grabs a plate from the table. "I hope so too, I would rather not deal with any assholes today. I'm not in the mood for it and if someone looks at me the wrong way, I won't be afraid to call them out for it."
He gets the feeling that from those words alone, she doesn't mean that she's gonna be nice. As he grabs a plate from the table he's at, he looks up at the wall and notices a clock. It says that it's 9:30 AM and while he doesn't know what that really means, his best guess is that it's still the morning. He sighs, still a long way to go and the chance for a rude customer to appear is there.
They don't have too many plates to collect and finish up quickly. They bring the plates into the kitchen where Tony will wash them off at the end of the day. They come back out and stand at the counter by the register. The only thing they can do now is wait until more customers come in. While neither of them saw it, when one of the customers left, they ended up dropping something on the ground that's capable of tripping Mint and Fai if they're unaware of it. The worst part is that they can't see it from the counter and if one of them has to deliver food, depending on which table they have to get to, they could trip over this object and spill the food and drink all over a customer.
A few more customers come in about 20 minutes later and the same ordeal goes down as before. Unlike before though, it gets extremely busy from out of nowhere and 13 more customers appear. This isn't a problem though, because with how fast Mint, Fai, and Tony are going, all 15 customers get their orders without a hitch. Even though it isn't that hard, Mint is starting to get tired of carrying food and drink on his shoulders and his arms are starting to hurt a little. He knows that this is probably because he doesn't do this on a daily basis just yet and over time, he'll get used to it. Like before, a few customers gave him strange looks but nothing bad happened.
He's been lucky so far, very, very lucky… But unfortunately, this is about to change. As they pick up the plates from the 15 customers that were satisfied, a group of 4 new customers barge in. These people are much much different than all the other customers, they sport leather jackets, ripped jeans, and if one didn't know, they seemed to be part of a street gang from deeper in the city. The sound of the door being thrown open violently grabs the attention of both Mint and Fai, who look up to see what it was. Upon seeing this, Mint begins to breath a bit heavier and he becomes increasingly anxious. These people don't seem nice at all and instead of 1, there's 4 of them. He gets the feeling that if he does something to any of them, all of them will get involved and it could be very bad. A couple drops of sweat form on his forehead and he hurries to grab the remaining plates off the tables. After Mint and Fai give them to Tony, they go up to the counter to take their orders.
One of them is wearing sunglasses to conceal their eyes and on their jacket seems to be a strange, ground type Pokemon that looks like a Krokorok but has red skin instead. He takes his sunglasses off when he sees that Fai is tending the register. "Is this a joke? YOU'RE the cashier?" he says, his voice gruff and tough sounding.
Mint isn't the only one whose tense about these guys, Fai is too, and it doesn't seem normal for her at all in his eyes. She does her best to not sound aggressive or annoyed. "Yes, I'm the cashier. I'll take your order now." deep down, she's a bit scared. She knows who these guys are and the last time they were here, they got into an argument with her and she remembers that it almost ended with a fight.
The man tucks his hands into the pockets in his jacket. "Alright… I'm ordering for all of us ya hear? Yeah… we'll be getting 4 coffees, extra sugar and creamer, 4 breakfast specials, extra salt and pepper, ketchup on the side, and finally, 4 big biscuits with a shitload of butter, yeah?" If it was Mint doing this order, he'd have been lost after the breakfast specials. This is quite a bit for anyone but Fai handles it properly. After about a minute of punching in the order, she hands the receipt to him and he hands over the cash early. While it's not common, some customers do this to avoid having to go back to the counter and instead, can just leave. With this done, the 4 men walk over to and sit down at the table closest to the counter. This is a problem, because that thing that someone dropped earlier is near this table and when Mint goes to deliver the food, the result isn't going to be pretty.
The massive order takes about 20 minutes to be done, and unlike the rude customer from yesterday, these guys at least have the patience to wait for it. Tony comes out with two platters that are bigger than usual with everything on it. He passes it off to Fai and then before she gives it to Mint, she has to tell him something. He comes close and she whispers it to him. "Hey, you see those guys? They're part of a gang that exists deeper in the city. I know you probably won't mess anything up, but, if something bad happens, all of them are gonna go after you, so please be careful. Not to mention, these platters are a bit bigger than what you're used to so take it extra slow so you don't fall, okay?"
He nods but is scared on the inside. That bad feeling within him is peaking and he doesn't wanna know what'll happen if they're disappointed with the order. He takes the platters and balances them on his shoulders. They're much heavier like Fai said, but he's got it. He makes his way extremely slowly to the table all 4 of them are sitting at, but as he rounds the corner of the counter, he doesn't see the thing that was dropped and his foot snags it. He trips, loses his balance, and falls to the floor, the platters of food being tossed into the air but miraculously, they somehow land on the table perfectly without the food or coffee being dropped. However, this isn't taken so nicely by these 4 guys and they all turn around to see Mint on the ground. They all stand up and the guy that placed the order speaks to him. "Yo what the fuck you tryin to do? Were you about to spill that shit all over us?"
Mint thought that it all spilled on them and when he looks up to see that the food landed on the table and not a speck of it got on them, he's very surprised but he doesn't answer them. This prompts the same guy to ask again. "I'm talkin' to you! Why'd you throw our shit on the table like that?"
He's at a loss for words and stands up. He takes a step back because he now realizes that they're not so happy with this and seem quite upset with him. Fai hears all of this and looks over to see what happened. "Hey! What's the issue here?"
The guy speaks to her. "This motherfucking clumsy animal tried to ruin our leather jackets."
She's confused. "How?"
He explains. "They tried to straight up throw the food and coffee at us."
She sees that none of them are dirty. "You're all clean, nothing got on you. I don't understand why you think he-" she's cut off by one of the other guys.
"How abouts you shut the fuck up or else we'll do it for you. Nobody tries to ruin our leather and gets away with it." he says, a threatening tone in his voice which makes Fai quiet down but she keeps a close eye on them.
Mint's eyes shrink a little as the 4 dudes start to approach him. All of them look quite threatening and ready to fight. Mint begins to back up as they get closer and he hits the chair and tables behind him, making him fall again. Fai sees this and knows what's about to happen and she dreads seeing the end result. She jumps onto the counter and flies at the leader. "Get away from him right now!" she yells as she glides at him and kicks him in the head.
He stumbles a little but is very fast and manages to backhand her out of the air and onto the ground as he re-gains his balance. Believe it or not, this hit was hard enough to knock her unconscious and she simply falls to the ground and lies there, not moving at all. Mint sees this. "F-Fai!" he yells, hoping she stands up but she doesn't. He turns his attention back to the 4 guys standing in front of him.
He looks to his left and can see that he's got a clear shot to the front door and if he takes it, he might be able to escape the cafe and run away. The 4 guys notice that his eyes moved towards that direction and right as Mint makes a run for it, one of them dives in that direction to grab him but Mint reacts with insane speed and manages to jump over him, avoiding him completely, and landing on the ground safely. He takes off towards the door, the 4 dudes give chase to him and he rams the glass on the door, shattering it and breaking through. Somehow, no shards get in his fur or cut him and he jumps down from the top step onto the sidewalk where he takes off as fast as he can.
The 4 dudes blast through the door and do the same, following him but as they run, they take out weapons that they've hidden inside of their jackets. The leader's weapon is quite possibly the scariest and most dangerous of them all: a Gun. It isn't loaded so as he and his gang runs after Mint, he starts to load it.
Mint runs down the sidewalk deeper and deeper into "Cast Square". He jumps through gaps in people's legs and dives through open spaces as he desperately tries to shake his pursuers, but there's one issue, his outfit is slowing him down by quite a bit due to it being a dress and he's unable to take normal steps while running with it on and he has to be extremely careful otherwise he'll trip himself.
All of them blitz through Cast Square and go down one of the many streets at the end of the square and end up at the fountain plaza. Mint is unfamiliar with anything past this place and because of this, doesn't know where to go. "Fuck! I can't go further! Where do I hide!?" he thinks to himself as he quickly scans the entire plaza to see if there's anything that he could hide in to prevent himself from being seen. Sadly, he's unable to find anything and his group of friends appears behind him.
*"There he is! Let's fuck him up!" says the leader as he points at Mint, making him turn around to see them. They immediately run for him and prepare to attack. Mint has nowhere left to run and the only option he has is to knock them all out, but with the weapons they have in-hand, he knows he's not gonna be able to get out of this without some sort of serious injury.
One of them comes at him with a switchblade and goes to swipe at him but Mint ducks and just barely avoids being hit. He takes this moment to run away from him but is met by another one who attempts to stab him with what appears to be a broken bottle and once again, he barely avoids being hit, but this time, part of the dress gets caught on the bottle and is cut open.
Mint skids to a stop and turns around to face them. Except for the leader, all of them approach him. They insult him.
"Come here you little green insect…"
"Radioactive motherfucker, you're gonna die!"
"Let's go you filthy dick!"
He doesn't have a choice, if he doesn't fight back, chances are that they'll kill him. As much as he doesn't want to hurt humans, he has to do it. He swallows his morals and tenses his muscles up, ready to fight. The switchblade user attempts to swipe at him once again but Mint jumps back and uses "Bullet Seed" to shoot 10 seeds from his mouth at the guy's face, causing him to flinch and drop his weapon in the process.
Mint doesn't get a break though, because the third guy, with a rusty pipe, comes swinging at him. Mint tries to jump out of the way but his dress gets caught on the pipe and he's thrown into the ground, once again, the dress rips a bit more. He slides a few feet and comes to a stop, instantly standing up. He's unable to react fast enough though, and the pipe guy manages to whack him across the cheek with it, making his entire body twist in the direction it was swinging. It hurts like hell and leaves a massive mark on his cheek as well as cause some bruising too.
He ignores the pain, faces all of them, tucks his ears in, inhales as much air as he can, and lets loose a horribly echoing scream. His "Hyper Voice" attack causes all of them to drop their weapons and crouch down, covering their ears to avoid being damaged by the extremely loud scream. The attack ends and Mint has the opportunity to combo the pipe guy into another move. He runs up to the guy and using "Tail Slap", whacks him in the side, making him fall over. Mint then jumps on the guy's chest and slams his tail down on his face a few times, knocking him out after the third slam.
He jumps off him and goes for the switchblade guy but he manages to see what Mint did to his fellow gang member and right as Mint goes to use "Iron Tail", the guy whips out a small pocket knife from his jacket and impales Mint in the stomach with it as his attack lands. It knocks the guy over but Mint feels the sharp pain from the knife and jumps far back. He takes a look at where he was stabbed and through the dress, he can see that it's starting to sop up the blood coming from the wound. Luckily, this knife wasn't very long so it wasn't a deep cut, but it's still pretty bad and creates immense pain that stings him.
He looks up to see the same guy coming at him again but this time, Mint is smarter and using the move "Rock blast", he picks up a nearby stone and lobs it at the guy's face. It hits him, breaks his nose, and makes him drop the knife as he grabs his nose in response. This gives Mint the opportunity to put him down for good, so he puts his paws to his side and charges up "Focus Blast". He jumps up at the guy's face, throws his paws forwards, and the attack goes flying at him. The blue orb blows up upon impact and sends him flying into the air, landing on the ground completely knocked out.
The broken bottle guy comes up from behind and manages to impale Mint in the back with the bottle as he lands. He grunts in pain and a few tears are forced out of his eyes because of this and he responds by tucking his ears in, inhaling air, and using "Hyper Voice" right in the guy's face. The immense sound wave is so powerful at this close range that it immediately causes the guy to faint, his body not being able to handle the volume of the scream.
Mint takes the time to feel his back with his right paw and through the dress, a bit of blood soaks through it and ends up on his paw. The sharp edges of the bottle cut significantly deeper than the small knife the other guy had and he's bleeding much more now. He doesn't spend too much time with his wounds because the leader comes into view, holding his gun, locked and loaded. He snickers before taking aim. "You're quite the pest. My mates are gonna have to go to the hospital now, yeah? I hope you say your regards to satan for me you green furred rag." he then pulls the trigger on the gun.
The loud bang emitted from the gun is heard throughout most of the city, and bird Pokemon in trees that are in the slightly less crowded areas of the city to the north start yelling and crying as they take off to avoid the possible danger. People and Pokemon on the streets and sidewalks stop at the sound, trying to figure out just exactly what it was. In the fountain plaza, what seems to be a miracle has happened, the gun wielding man stands with his eyes wide open at what he sees. Mint is unaffected by the bullet and has no serious injuries from it besides a nasty black and blue mark on his forehead now.
Mint stands there, rubbing his with his forehead with his left paw. "Ow… w-what was t-that…?" he says as it stings and burns him. He takes his left paw off and notices that there's a bit of that special oil on it and he immediately realizes what happened. The bullet, while moving at an extremely high speed, was deflected by the oil on his fur. It coated the tip as it made contact with his fur and made it slip off in another direction, leaving him with only a bruise.
**The man can't believe that his gun didn't do anything to Mint, and instead of even trying again, he takes a few steps back, afraid that he's about to get hurt real bad. "O-oh Fuck t-this!" he yells as he turns tail and runs away as fast as he can. Mint watches as he runs away. He's glad he decided to run, the last thing he wanted to do was keep fighting. The adrenaline of almost getting killed winds down and in its place, he starts to feel a bit lightheaded, dizzy, and the pain from his wounds as well is felt by him. The world around him almost seems to start spinning and he takes a seat to prevent himself from falling over. He clenches his wounds as well and more blood gets on his paws.
Seeing this makes him freak out a little but he tries to focus on his breathing as best as he can. He doesn't know that he's losing more blood from his wounds than he thinks and continuing to fight after he was wounded only made it worse. He tries to keep his breathing steady and as he does this, two familiar voices are heard in the distance. "Mint! Mint! Where are you!?" the voices belong to Tony and Fai. Seems while he fought the gang members, she woke up and told Tony but they're a bit late to the scene.
Their voices seem to get louder and louder as they get closer to the plaza and about a minute later, they arrive and see him. Fai immediately flies right up to him and notices that his outfit is ripped, torn, and bloody in many spots. She looks him in the eyes. "Mint! It's me Fai!" she says, hoping he responds.
He looks at her, but is a bit out of it and his dizziness is starting to turn into drowsiness and fatigue. Tony kneels down to get a better look at him and his voice becomes extremely serious upon seeing all the blood. "He's been wounded pretty bad. Look at all the blood on his dress." he says while pointing at it.
This worries Fai. "We gotta get him to a Pokemon center!"
Tony nods and gently picks him up and he seems to go limp in his hands. Due to being such a small Pokemon, it doesn't take that much blood loss for him to start feeling the effects of it, and as such, he's fainted because of it. It's only his second day working and he's gone from having coffee poured on him to being attacked. When he wakes up in the Pokemon center, he just may have those doubtful thoughts come right back to him once again and it could be enough to make him truly think twice about what he's decided to get into.
PD: Hey hey hey! Mint's hurt pretty bad, but luckily, things didn't end with him being killed thanks to that special oil on his fur being able to deflect attacks! Will he awaken to second thoughts about everything that he's gone through so far or will he continue to stay in Castelia and pursue the life he's fighting for? Seeya in the next chapter!