"Y'any clue what this is?"
She wasn't even sure why she was asking him. There were probably dozens of other people who knew more about stones and stuff, including the lady at the pokemart, but still she found herself asking the yank for advice. Familiarity trumped efficiency it seemed.
Max just glared at the stone in her hands.
"…It's a rock?"
"I get that it's a rock, ye dafty." Caitlyn groaned. "I'm asking if ye can help me narrow that down. Like what if it's one of those evolution stones or something?"
"And you're asking me?" Max just reinforced, "I was strong-armed into this, remember? What do you think makes me the all-knowing sage?"
"Because you're someone else," Caitlyn groaned. "Arly's not here right now and you're the only other person I know. I figured it was worth a shot, a'right?"
"Huh. Maybe you wanna shoot somewhere else then." Max deadpanned.
"Rich comin' from a yank. Got any ideas?"
"And what makes you think I'd have any ideas? I know even less about these dumb games than you do, carrots."
"Oh, and you're just compiling lists in yer dungeon like some hermit because…?"
Caitlyn flailed an arm to the dusty piles of paperwork ensconcing the pair of them.
"When was the last time y'even left this place?"
"I'm not so good with these Pokémon things, as you may know," Max huffed. "So I thought I'd make this world work for me. All those 'lists' are information. Item drops, spawn points, swarm locations… you name it, I'm working on it."
"…right," Caitlyn frowned. That was odd. This kid was perfectly happy to go outside and train until recently, even if it did take a bit of persuasion. Now he was even more of a hermit than ever, just sat there putting lists together. Something didn't add up.
"How're you even getting the info?" She asked. "Don'cha need to go outside to do that?"
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Max scribbled more notes down. "That's the beauty of it all; it comes with a price tag. Anyone needing information can also submit information in exchange for a discount."
Caitlyn peeled back a few sheets of paper. "So if I wanted to find… oh I dunno, the location of a nearby Item Teller, I'd just have a look at yer lists, and-"
"-that's right." Max slapped his hand down on the list she was perusing. "And unless you've got information to share, that'll cost you 1000."
"1000?" Caitlyn's voice cracked. "And people actually pay this much to read yer lists?"
"No, if anything they pay more." Max said. "I figured, seeing as you're apparently my best buddy, I'd give you a discount. Sound good to you?"
"Huh. Well, since I've already seen what I'm lookin' for, I guess I'll just get out of your hair now. Sound good?"
"Wouldn't do that if I were you." Max didn't even look up from his lists.
"Oh? Ye think ye can stop me?"
"I don't need to."
The smirk was quickly erased from Caitlyn's face when her exit was blocked off by something large and metallic. Sparks rippled across its spiky, revolving body as it whirred threateningly.
"…so yer trusted Pokémon's been reduced to bodyguard work?" She couldn't hide the quiver in her voice. "And you're just… keeping me hostage now? Trust me, I'll drive ye mad before the-"
"-I'll take that stone off your hands as payment. Sound fair?"
"Not in the slightest. What would be the point in me surrend'rin' the thing I came in askin' advice for?"
"Fine then, I'll take the egg."
"Not on yer life!"
"Huh. Looks like we're at an impasse then."
"Looks like," Caitlyn's cheek dimpled. "What next? Gonna stare at me 'til I give up and pay ye with the money I don't have? I've… got potatoes? All the spuds ye could want?"
Max raised a finger to object, but slowly lowered it again. The same finger puckered a lip in thought.
"…wait here."
"Oh, 'cause I'm getting out of here with yer Klinklang blockin' the door!" Caitlyn called as he wandered off into another room.
His Klinklang just whirred to itself behind her while she stood there, waiting. Something told her it wasn't the potatoes that got him to reconsider. Would've been nice though.
After a few minutes of listening to him clatter about in the other room, her feet were starting to ache from just standing there. Marching on the spot for a moment, she advanced to gentle pacing, at which Klinklang immediately sparked in anger.
"Oh, shush," she waved a hand at it. "I'm just gonna wander a bit while yer man's away, a'right?"
A ribbon of electricity circled around Klinklang's centre, and Caitlyn could've sworn the thing glared at her with its dead, glassy eyes. But it remained still while she paced around the room. The kid seemed to have grown a personality since their last meeting, which was something. Aside from the paperwork just lying everywhere, there seemed to be a half finished chess game lying central on his desk, albeit covered in about a month's worth of dust, and random collections of unsorted… stuff lining the shelves.
When had he found the time to amass all of this? Were people trading him items in exchange for information or something? It just didn't add up. For a kid who didn't even want to be here, he sure had made a wee nest for himself.
"Leave that alone."
A flinch thundered along Caitlyn's spine. "Wha? Leave what alone?"
"The chess set. It's like that for a reason."
"I-it is? Who're you... playin' against? Yerself?"
"…you could say that," Max sat back in his chair, holding onto what looked like a map of the region. "You want that information? Find me some new info and we'll call it quits. Sound fair to you, Paddy?"
"Don't call me that," Caitlyn said immediately. "And uh… maybe? What kind of info are y'after?"
"A reliable spawn point for ice types," Max said. "Apparently, they're hard to find, so getting ahead on that would be more than lucrative. Think you can manage it?"
"Er…" Caitlyn's lips thinned. "I won't promise ye, but I can try? How's that sound?"
"…I can't say I'm enthralled about your answer," Max huffed. "But it will do, I suppose."
"Grand. Just don't expect results straight away, a'right?"
Klinklang obeyed orders and floated from the doorway, granting her exit. "Oh, and if y'ever finish yer chess game, I'll play ye."
Finally, the kid reacted to something. Eyes darting between the dusty board, and her, and back again, he eventually muttered. "…I'd like that, maybe."
A refreshing breeze tempted her hair to the side as Max's door closed behind her. With her newly acquired map in hand and the egg carefully squashed into her Oddish tote, she made a cursory glance about the village to find her bearings. The list she'd 'borrowed' had details of an item teller in the next town over, however that was several miles away. Not a distance to be sniffed at with a sick Minccino as her only defence. According to the map this next town was named Sugarleaf.
She couldn't help but snort in laughter. Who would name a town something that cutesy? What was this, some kids' cartoon? Then again, the place she was in right now was named Seabreeze, which wasn't any better. Now all she had to do was devise a strategy to reach this Sugarleaf town, talk to the Item Teller, then find somewhere ice types would appear. No problem!
A morbid thought tickled the back of her mind. She could also not do all of that. It wasn't like Max was going to chase her down if he couldn't bother to go outside. She'd just gotten herself a free map – odds are it wasn't worth much, but small victories – and that gave her more scope for actually exploring this place. And if she just happened across somewhere that had a bunch of Ice types, then she could report back to Max at some point. Maybe.
The corners of her map curling to the will of the wind, Caitlyn fought to keep the thing readable. Toddling along while following the outline of what could've been a river, she was nevertheless paying no heed to anything in front of her, and her only warning was a half a second of darkening shadow;
"Whoa!"
"Jaysus!"
Staggering backwards and falling onto her arse, the map fluttered from her hands and landed neatly in a muddy puddle.
"Ahh, shite," Caitlyn groaned. "I um… sorry there. I wasn't looking where I was goin' and-"
"-oh, KitKat!"
Her endless stream of apologies were drawn away from her like they'd been sucked into a vacuum. Standing above her, grinning widely, was Aurelie.
In a full length polka dot ballgown.
"Ar… Arly?" She accepted the hand up. A bizarre warmth radiated somewhere within her that she couldn't quite identify. "Wh-where'd ye come from? Why're ye here? I-in a ballgown of all things?"
"Heyyyy!" She dragged Caitlyn into a tight hug. "I was just thinking about you KitKat! And then you showed up! What a coincidence!"
"Eheh, this is a bit more than a coincidence, wouldn't'ye say?" She leaned into Aurelie and her warmth. The mere presence of her in a ballgown made her seem grand and imposing. Was it the fact that she was actually coordinated for once? And yet she still made the enormous purple scarf work with it somehow.
"So um…" Caitlyn mumbled. It seemed like this hug wasn't getting broken any time soon. "Why are you… in a dress?"
"Found it." Aurelie said without batting an eyelash. "We beat up a Kyogre up on a mountain somewhere and no one else wanted it. Where were you off to at this hour, all on your own?"
"O-oh, I was just planning a route to – ah feck, me map!"
Memory kicked in and Caitlyn squirmed out of the hug, scooping her map out of the puddle and shaking it. Dark muddy stains had ravaged the map's gentle details, rendering cities and even entire regions lost to obscuring splotches.
A strained whimper left her. "…well so much fer that. I only just got it too."
"Aw dear, that's a real shame KitKat." Aurelie was as blindly cheerful as always. "But don't worry, Aurelie's here to make you feel better…!"
Once again Caitlyn was subjected to the wrath of her hug.
"Do ya remember where you were going?"
"Err…" Caitlyn mumbled. It seemed like Aurelie didn't even care about mud staining her pretty new dress. That the hug mattered and nothing else. "I uh, think it was called Sugarleaf, something like that?"
"Sugarleaf? Ohh, I know the place. Cute name huh?"
"Not the word I'd use."
"Well it ain't so far away, so how 'bout we go together? Make a date of it!"
That weird feeling in her stomach bubbled up again. A date? Exactly what would that entail? Her in her ratty jeans and oversized jumper with Aurelie in her royal blue ballgown? Talk about a mismatch. Wasn't that something couples did anyway?
Couples…
The word buzzed about her mind like a fly against a window. Was that what they were now? A couple?
Granda would've had a fit if he'd seen them…
"H-hey Arly," she swallowed down nervous bile. "What… what are we? Like, to each other?"
"Ooh, asking the big questions now huh?" Aurelie finally let her go again. Meeting her gaze, she said, "Well I uh, I didn't wanna give it a name or anything 'cause I didn't wanna scare you? Make sense?"
Caitlyn just nodded. That wasn't exactly an answer…
"But if you asked me, I would've said you were my girlfriend, because well… y-yeah, it just makes sense, doesn't it?"
Caitlyn slowly withdrew farther into herself. It did make sense, there was no question about that, but this just… wasn't a situation she'd ever expected to find herself in. Boyfriends weren't a common occurrence, but she'd always blamed that on living in the middle of nowhere.
And now she'd found herself a girlfriend?
"I, uh…" she stammered. An ominous rumble from above had bucketfuls of rain pelting from the skies, soaking the pair in moments.
"Oh, dear!" Aurelie giggled, drawing in close again. "Not the romance I was lookin' for, but I'll take it!"
"I… I think I'd like that!" Caitlyn cried over the roaring of the rain.
"I'd like that too!" Aurelie tittered back, planting a kiss on her cheek. "Now do you wanna get outta this rain?!"
"That'll be grand!"
Leading by the hand, Caitlyn dragged her girlfriend through the pouring rain, back to the safe confines of her chalet.
The Floatzel snarled, launching a barrage of star shaped rays at its opponent. The Mareanie opposite twirled its tendrils furiously, absorbing each of the rays in turn. It followed up by releasing several bright poison spikes, littering the beach floor. Floatzel lunged forwards with an Aqua Jet, dislodging a few of the spikes and smacking the Mareanie at point blank range. It countered by wrapping its long tentacles around Floatzel's body and releasing a flume of thick purple mist.
Floatzel visibly struggled within the Mareanie's tentacles, but was released when a bright pink blast of energy hit Mareanie in the back. It recoiled almost immediately, but couldn't turn around in time for Kirlia's second blast of Confusion to singe its tentacles. Floatzel seized opportunity and swung with a heavy tail, knocking the Mareanie into the sky. Airborne and helpless, it could do nothing to stop the Diggersby bouncing towards it, seizing it by two of the tentacles and bodily throwing it back towards the earth. Fed by gravity, Mareanie hit the beach with a damp smack and shattered into crystals, swept away by the wind.
"Jaja!" Camila threw her arms into the air victoriously. Kneeling down, she grabbed at the deep blue TM that was threatening to wash away in the waves. "Para ti, Anibal?"
"Ho…!" Anibal received it from her, "Calentar? Excelente!"
"Calentar?" Both Camila and Pedro looked at each other? "Escaldar?"
"…si?" Anibal shrugged "Es diferencia para-"
Camila's sentence was cut short by a short, sharp spray of water dribbling down the back of her neck however.
"Ai?!" She yelped, flailing away from it. Anibal span around, ready to scold his Floatzel, but his eyes widened in shock from the sight.
Towering above all three of them, yet bearing no shadow in the heat of the afternoon, it looked like a garbled mass of pixels accumulating on the sands. A messy bite of a noise escaped from somewhere within its depths and it blasted another Water Gun at Diggersby, who barely flinched from the impact.
Diggersby reacted quickly, slamming the tower of pixels with one of its ears, while Anibal took a moment to feed his Floatzel a handful of berries, and Kirlia teleported behind the creature before blasting it with another Confusion. The pixels distorted out of shape before rippling back to normal, and it loosed another blast of water, this one aimed at Kirlia. Again, the impact barely even fazed. Floatzel smacked the creature in the side with a lightning fast Aqua Jet, Diggersby thrust a fist full of ice into its pixelated depths, and Kirlia struck with a Draining Kiss.
The creature released a strange noise in response and began amassing light within its many blocks of pixels. Anibal made a panicked exclamation and instructed his Floatzel, which swung a heavy tail at the monster, while Diggersby struck with another Ice Punch, coating its centre in a layer of ice. Despite being frozen in place, reminiscent of a stained-glass window, light continued to gather in the creature's centre. Kirlia took in a deep breath and swung an arm towards it, releasing arcing pulses of pink energy and striking the creature dead centre. The first cracked the ice, the second tore right through, and the third shattered it completely, reducing the creature to endless shards of mottled ice on the shoreline.
"Increíble…" Anibal raised a hand to his mouth. "El Pokémon falla?"
"Si," Camila took a moment to hug her Diggersby, "muy extraño."
Suddenly there was a rumbling, and the three of them looked about nervously. Pedro let out a yelp of surprise as endless amounts of little red cubes spilled out of his Quagsire rucksack. Clinking together merrily, the shards were quickly joined by swathes of intricately designed pokeballs falling out of Anibal's hoodie pocket, and perfectly tied bags of stardust piling up in Camila's tote.
The three of them stared at each other for a moment, before realisation kicked in and all of them dove to the floor, scraping about for the sudden avalanche of items.
"Muchos artículos…" Anibal pondered.
After having scooped as many items as they reasonably could into whatever means of storage they could, the trio trudged back to town and straight to the mart to take advantage of their windfall.
"So that's… fifty Timer Balls?" The attendant looked a little crestfallen as she counted notes behind the counter. "A-and you want to sell how many Red Shards?"
Camila spent a few minutes emptying her collection out onto the counter and rapidly counting them up; "Ciendo, diez, once… a-a hundred thirteen, please?"
The nurse let out an audible whimper. "I'm so sorry, but we can't buy that many. We wouldn't have any money left!"
"Ho…" Camila took a step back. After muttering an agreement with her two cohorts, the trio left the mart, each 3000 richer and sharing a rough share of each of the items. Life was comfortable for a bit longer, and it was their little secret.
"Okay, I'll take those off of you," The pokecentre nurse smiled, which quickly eroded into a frown. The nurse glanced right past Camila.
"Huh? What's that on your shoulder?"
"Shoulder?" Camila span around. Both hands fluttered to opposite shoulders and she brushed at them haphazardly.
"W-where, Señora?"
"A little white hand, on your shoulder," The pokecentre nurse remarked. "…you don't belong here, do you?"
Mottled green pixels surrounded the pokecentre nurse like a swarm, and she disappeared entirely.
Evening dudes. A nice filler chapter before shit gets serious again.
With the release of yesterday's Direct, I'm still not decided on whether I'll be including SWSH mons into this, mostly because it was started long before the games came out. This mostly impacts the whole 'fite all the legends' thing, but yeah. I'll make a decision eventually.
Anyway, we've got a nice fluff scene with Caitlyn and Aurelie, where they've been made official, and some foreshadowing with Camila, Anibal and Pedro. I dunno how you guys feel about it being in Spanish, but I've kept it relatively simple so you can figure what's going on even without knowing the language. Hell, I only know a bit, so... :D
As always, feel free to leave feedback if you've got a moment. Thanks for reading. :)
