And thus begins the final arc of what I currently have written. At the time, I actually spent quite a bit trying to write the latter half. That type of genre, extended, multi-chapter scenes, is something that's still new to me, so trying to figure out how to handle it was a challenge unto itself.
In exchange for having essentially free use of Whitney's gym and all its durabilities, Alex was to go on twice monthly dates with the Normal specialist. That was the phrasing June always teased him with; in reality, it was more helping her deal with some irritating stalkers and tabloids by way of faking a relationship. An outing here, a late post-training dinner there; just minor, simple things to get some control over what her stalker fans (or 'stans', in Whitney's words) obsessed over.
It also had the side effect of allowing him to know about the workings of Goldenrod in a way that he really shouldn't. In those quiet, nearly empty diners, Whitney often rambled about attempted poachings within the National Park, upstart gangs cropping up within the expansive Underground, and a recent string of pokénappings within the greater area.
Tonight though, Alex knew that whatever topic she had been constantly distracted by was something important. The fact that she had dragged him to the local seaside amusement park, the first since they started this ruse, and had been continually pestering him for the pensive look on his face, only cemented that opinion.
"I heard what you did to Bugsy." Sitting at a relatively isolated bench at the end of the pier, the two of them kept a comfortable space between them. A bit closer than he would have preferred were it anyone else, but concessions had to be made. "Can't say I disagree with what you did, but don't you think sending footage from those fancy cameras of yours was a little much?"
"Bugsy's been growing lax in his role as Gym Leader the past few months, let alone what he was allowing members of his team to do." On the water's surface, lights from the various attractions behind them danced along the waves, each of them uselessly competing against the splendor of the moon. "If he can't respect the power he's been granted, then it needs to be taken away from him."
"And you think you're the one to do that?"
"To make sure that the Pillars of any region are at a level befitting their station?" He glanced over at her. Staring out at the exact same waters, what she saw on its surface was undoubtedly different than him. Perhaps she only saw a gorgeous night and a ward against her irritations. Or, perhaps, she saw shadows lurking in the distance, waiting to be illuminated by some stray ray of light. "Yes."
Whitney laughed. "And here I was thinking you didn't like the Leagues."
"They're greedy and controlling. But they're still necessary."
"Rebel. If a revolutionary cell pops up in my city I'm coming after you." Despite the subtle warning, she leaned into him all the same. "Then again, maybe I already am," she whispered. Whitney grabbed hold of his wrist, fingers teasingly tightening for only a moment. "Did you hear about the training accidents over in the southern fields?"
"Which ones?"
"Exactly the problem." She sighed and slumped down into his lap, turning over so she could stare at the night sky. "Over the course of a week, no less than five different reports came out about Trainers losing control of their pokémon. If they were all novices, it'd be one thing, but one of the Trainers was a four badge. GRPD looked into it and it turns out some fuckers-"
Alex raised a brow.
She frowned. "Shut up. I'm allowed to curse. Just because you've got a virgin mouth." When he simply huffed in amusement she continued. "Where was I?"
"GRPD, jerkwads, something bad enough to make you actually curse," he listed.
"Right. Bastards are taking advantage of our yearly small business bonanza for the Winter Solstice." She sat back up, a questioning look on her face. "You know about those?"
"I participated in Celadon's event. Got one of those 8-bit, beaded keychains after I did all my shopping." He tapped a finger on the back of her free hand. "Think they mentioned something about taking inspiration from you guys."
She scoffed. "Of course they did. But there's a group that snuck some 'rewards' into the distribution centers. Participate in the stamp hunt, and somewhere down the line one of the stores will give you a specific coupon. Get lucky enough afterwards, and somebody will direct you towards the Underground." Whitney suddenly focused her attention on him, silently mulling a thought around. "How do you feel about going in 'undercover'?" She flicked a strand of his hair as she said that.
"I doubt I can pull off the 'inexperienced' bit well enough."
"Sure you can!" Whitney smiled, an almost too sweet thing that made him tense. "Just talk about how you're trying to find a gift for one of your nieces or nephews." At that exact moment, she reached up and cupped his cheek, preventing him from responding the way he wanted to. "You have eight, maybe sixteen of them to pick from, don't you?"
He lowered his voice to a whisper, staring down at the way she left her neck exposed. A single, wrathful finger twitched. "Leave those kids out of this."
"Alex, your Black Suit visited me about this. She said that until more evidence comes forward, she can't do anything. But if a certain loose cannon were to do something and find what they needed, then her hands would no longer be tied."
"And a certain loose cannon has standards."
"Everything has to bend. And if they break, then they have to be rebuilt so they won't break from the same thing." She let her hand fall to her stomach. Her voice dropped to a barely audible whisper. "Alex, please. Starlight won't tell me a thing about what's going on, other than how the JPA is refusing to allow her more than reactive measures and cleanup. I'm in the same situation; me and my Trainers are too well known to do any sort of investigating, but you and yours are still newcomers."
He looked away.
"Think about it, okay? If I have to go somewhere else, I will, but I know I can trust you to make sure it's handled cleanly."
"And what if I don't?" he whispered back, distant screams from the roller coaster washing over his back.
"With a team like yours, if something went wrong, I don't think anybody could salvage it."
/ - /
"Triple Over, 2'o'clock!" At his command, three first sized globs of glimmering webbing soared through the air, each unfurling into prime examples of modified orb webs and layering upon each other as the edges snagged on the jagged rock spires Celèste had created earlier.
"Gaia, stop!" The warning came too late. Crashing into the three webs, Micheal's eevee became entangled within the strands, the Normal type mewling pitifully as it tried to break out.
"Approaching fire." Alex clapped his hands twice, the sound echoing over the din of the battles around them. "Siphon then retreat, 7!" Following his order to the letter, Artemis scurried along the few remaining web bridges he'd formed over the course of the match, firing off short bursts of Poison Sting every chance he got. Locked down as he was, Gaia could do nothing but take the blows, thrashing even harder to escape the barrage of irritants.
Unfortunately for the eevee, Alex had drilled over the specific heights of the species with Artemis over the past few days. With each shake of his limbs, the flareon-hopeful only shifted higher and higher off the ground, his paws slowly becoming bound against his body. Now within leaping distance, Artemis pushed off the spire, landing squarely on Gaia's back. Without a sound, the spinarak bit down and began draining its life away, pausing only to secure his hold on the eevee's body when the shaking became too violent.
"Retreat, stay above!"
Not a moment later, Gaia managed to break free from the webbing, falling to the ground awkwardly with a not-insignificant amount still attached. "C'mon, Gaia, break through! Quick Attack!" Perhaps if Micheal and Gaia looked back on this moment, they would recall an audible, but no less fictional snap of the silk.
"Leap, 11'o'clock! Return fire!" Once more, Artemis sprang off the ground, rotating mid-air and shooting a salvo of semi-solid needles in bursts. Given another three months, if Artemis continued training like this, he'd be able to use Bounce in all but name.
Another command. Stars of energy, still unfocused enough that they'd dissipate on contact rather than explode, collided with the spurts of Poison Sting, strong enough that one star could deflect an entire burst each. The spray of projectiles was stronger than normal though, and a quartet of stars managed to survive long enough to slam into Artemis and knock the spinarak to the ground. "Headbutt!"
Alex waited until his pokémon righted himself to give out his next order. "Use your instincts!" Through training with the rest of his team at every opportunity, Artemis had quickly grown to match the baseline eevees in terms of skills. He was still too weak to take more than one solid hit from his primary companions before needing care (as a duo of broken legs last week had attested to), but that was more a result of who he was training with rather than a true indication of frailty.
The next series of exchanges went by quickly, Artemis increasingly getting more and more panicked as he continued to be peppered by stars. Not entirely unsurprising, considering how young Artemis was; give it a year and by then the spinarak would be able to handle himself in nearly any situation, regardless of how big the strength disparity.
It was when Artemis was combo'd by a Headbutt into Swift that he finally whistled out a tune— his team's universal code for 'return to me'. "That's enough for now," he called out, lazily flicking out Caitlyn. Humming to herself all the while, the gardevoir got to work on returning the field back into usable order. "Gaia's improved a lot with that Swift." He knelt down and held out an arm for Artemis to scurry onto, offering the spinarak a finger bump and a small, silk encased cocoon of fully liquified berries to lessen the aches of battle. "What drills have you been running?"
Micheal continued to gush over Gaia, the eevee happily accepting the praise. "We've been working on improving his endurance. Continuous fire at a target and knocking stones out of the sky like you suggested, and we've been increasing the length of each session."
Alex nodded. "Once Gaia's attacks get fast enough, if you want to continue to work on projectile accuracy you should look into clay pigeons. There's a few facilities around the outskirts of Goldenrod that you can rent a space at." Alex realized his error the moment Micheal stared at him with false understanding— a painfully recognizable expression he'd come to learn from all the children. "Clay pigeons are basically frisbees durable enough to be thrown by a machine. The costs can add up, but unless you get another pokémon that can do something like Rock Throw or Rock Slide you can't really match the speed of a machine, you know?"
"Normal rocks are still fine though, right?" The boy asked hesitantly.
"Of course. You guys are still starting out, plus, part of a journey is figuring out your own path. Taking the tried and true methods is fine and all, but the publicized ones tend to cost a hefty amount of pid." Alex rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. "Whatever works for you guys." Alex gave a quick, dismissive nod, idly reaching up and rubbing Artemis' head gently.
Today was the kids' weekly personal training day, a time that he used to check up on all of them and make sure they were progressing smoothly and offer some advice where they weren't. Nothing truly specialized in terms of battle, not when that was the role of their Kalosian mentors, but minor details were fine; things to lead them towards specific training methods, what sort of information they should be looking for if they wanted to accomplish their goals. Oddly enough, the film crews like to hover around him whenever the latter occurred.
As often as novice Trainers talked about wanting to become a Gym Leader, you didn't really hear talk about exactly how they should progress that way. The conversations within Trainer Schools were always 'specialize in your preferred Typing, get at least 3 badges, attempt to get an invitation to become a Gym Trainer, eventually become a Leader.' Which worked, provided you were trying to do so ten years ago. These days, even as a Provisional Trainer working under a Gym leader, you still had to take the proper coursework to earn your degrees. Hands-on experience wasn't as useful as it used to be for newbies, a fact that irritated his soul whenever it came up; it still carried a lot of weight though, especially alongside a recommendation or two.
That last thought made him let out a deep, heavy sigh. Two days had passed since Whitney's assignment. Information from all the lines he'd cast had narrowed the staging areas to a single mall and a handful of open air shopping districts, each of them participating in the nearly city wide sale to promote awareness of smaller stores. The link that all of them had in common was the purchasing of some trinket or other at the counter, though rather than a specific item within the store, it was more likely selecting something that was displayed within the handmade wooden case, multi-colored stones embedded into the frame on the left hand side, and all of the trinkets resting on a red, plush looking fabric, that was the signal.
Regardless, there was simply too much ground for one person to cover. If he made a new disguise and styled his hair a different way, he might be able to get away with doing a personal investigation, but considering that the only successful leads he got were from those under eighteen (courtesy of the various trainers Morgan and Caitlyn had battled in place of Celèste) he had low expectations.
He sighed once more. "I've got things to prep..."
/ - /
What are you supposed to say when your native friends aren't acting the way they should? What are you supposed to do when every fiber of your being is hissing that you're going to get jumped and it's not your fault? How do you cope with the terror that you can do nothing to prevent the inevitable?
Simple. You do what you normally would, and when the chips fell you barreled your way through like any other screw up. For Estelle, that meant keeping a soft smile on her face and her head held high. So what if she was a novice Trainer? She was still a Trainer. She still had two badges. Unlike her past self from two years ago, this time around she could rely on her own self, rather than forced to rely on her companions for protection.
It didn't hurt that Jasmine was a competent trainer herself, and Julien was undoubtedly better given his age, but the fact that they didn't know how to be discreet kept a whisper of terror running under her skin.
The difficult thing was that Jasmine wasn't acting the way she normally did; shoulders back and a self-confident grin that was so similar to her own, instead, the Johtoan was slightly hunched over and her shoulders rolled forward, eyes constantly flicking from the path ahead and anybody at the edges of her vision.
Same deal with Julien; being as defensive as he was was fine if you were wanting to try and maintain the upper hand, but all it did was increase your chances of being targeted. If they were strong enough to deal with any threat that came their way it'd be one thing, but when out of public spaces you could never tell if you were just dealing with bottom totem grunts or a local leader. Once more Jasmine nudged Julien, gesturing with a subtle flick of her head towards a symbol they were supposed to be looking for.
This deep into the Underground, well past the mirror-shined windows and decorative store fronts, the units were starting to look more and more abandoned; boarded up buildings, graffiti marking every surface, and tiny symbols carved into the walls. For not the first time, Estelle wondered why they were asked to travel this far for Alex's request. Amazing for their resumes or not, surely something that required them to travel through potential danger shouldn't have been handled by teenagers. Even Wes hadn't started dealing with Snagem and Cipher until he was almost 18.
Five turns later and Julien became noticeably calmer. No longer in what could be called the slums, this part of the Underground was simply unused. A few inhabited stores were scattered about, namely specialty shops, but the majority of the units were completely empty, only a simple lock on the door and a for lease sign on the window. Why they couldn't have gone in through one of the closer entrances she didn't know, but Alex undoubtedly had his reasons. Estelle let her companions take the lead when they arrived at the unmarked door within a side corridor, immediately taking note of the three people already inside.
First and foremost was Alex. Standing over a map with two pinkettes on either side of him (though the more athletic looking one was closer to red than true pink), he merely glanced at them and gave an acknowledging nod before smoothly continuing his conversation.
Second was the true pink-haired woman. Dressed in a well fitting black business suit with a flame red button up underneath and a dark, aura blue tie, the woman's returning gaze held a hint of something, as if she was pleased with what she saw. Exactly what type of pleased it was, she couldn't tell, but it worried her all the same.
The last was who Estelle hesitated to call Whitney. She'd seen footage of the Normal Specialist often enough in recent days, but to think that Alex— dumb, dopey Alex who could switch to a man with the most terrifying and commanding presence at the flick of a pokéball— knew the Gym Leader? "Congratulations on being the first team here."
The two women separated from him and moved to the whiteboard, already littered with diagrams and writings that individually made sense, but when put together were beyond comprehension. Add in the acronyms and arrows linking sections to multiple other sections and weaving in on themselves and subsequently following new, different colored paths?
"I trust you didn't have any issues?"
"None, Sir." Julien stepped forward, donning that same persona he always did whenever Alex was giving critiques.
"Good, good." Alex gestured distractedly towards the wall on the other side, where a coffee machine and small baskets of snacks that wouldn't look out of place at a blood center rested on the tables. "Make yourselves comfortable. We're still waiting for the others." He took only a half step towards the whiteboard before turning back. "Oh, and, if you decide to listen in don't try and distract us. Too many moving parts at the moment and we can't afford to lose our train of thought."
Estelle barely paid any attention to the conversation Jasmine and Julien were having. After staring at it for a few minutes, she now realized that the drawings on the board represented parts of Goldenrod; namely the shopping districts that Jasmine constantly tried to drag her to visit. Something about a city wide sale that allowed participants a chance at earning extra goodies for visiting enough places. The strange part, though, was the symbols dotting each area.
The vast majority she realized were symbols they'd come across while wandering the slums, though more than a few were symbols unknown to her. Jagged symbols in the shapes of Y's or grinning maws. There was a distinctly Dark feel to them, one that made her even more nervous. Back in Orre, symbols such as those were only found among the distinctly more unsavory groups, groups that her companions at the time told her to avoid at all costs.
"Psst. Estelle." Jasmine nudged her roughly, a sign that she'd been unsuccessfully trying to get her attention. "Whatchu thinking?"
"Nothing," she lied. "Just wondering what we're here for." Whitney suddenly raised her voice, only a half a word escaping before Alex cleared his throat and the woman went back to her conversational whisper. "And why Alex knows a Gym Leader and somebody in a business suit."
Jasmine frowned at that, though it was Julien who answered. "Alex is a Battle Master, remember? Somebody that high up probably knows a person everywhere, especially if he's not tied down to his home region."
Estelle gave an ambivalent hum. Kennith might have claimed Alex was a Battle Master, but she'd seen true ones. There was a certain air that a true Battle Master had, and the one that Alex carried reminded her more of the gang leaders that dared wander above ground.
After a few minutes, Umbral and Morgan slipped into the room, the door handle aglow with Psychic (spectral! A memory of Alex corrected) energy. The latter miyah'd lazily and padded underneath the table, the former cooing to Alex softly before becoming incorporeal and letting her beads hang around his neck in a manner that he specifically told them to never let a Ghost do. Shortly after, the door opened once again, another group of three coming in panting and clothes disheveled.
"S-sorry- we're late!" Willa was the first to hunch over, Adam and Sefina repeating the same action. "We took a wrong turn and-"
"Sit down and catch your breath." Alex nodded his head towards the snacks on the back wall. "We'll begin in a bit." Returning to his conversation with the other two as if the interruption didn't matter at all, the three adults quietly whispered to one another, moving back and forth from the whiteboard and similar map on the table. Every so often, one of the two women would glance over at them, an adjustment being made a few moments later.
A loud clap startled her out of her just deepening thoughts, possible-Whitney smiling broadly. "Alright, kiddies! Gather round, gather round. Lots of things to go over today and I'd rather not have to repeat it twice." Alex and the pink-haired lady moved to either side of the now sitting Whitney, Alex bearing his usual disinterested look— though with a hint of distractedness— and the woman unashamedly amused by something.
"Before we go further though, I need all of you to give verbal consent that you won't discuss anything you learn from this meeting with people who aren't here. That includes the process you took to get here as well. If you decline, your alibi should anybody ask, will be you decided to explore the city a little and got lost." Suit-lady looked each of them in the eye as she spoke, holding their gazes for little less than a second before focusing her attention towards their general direction. "If any of you decide to break this rule, your License will be suspended for no less than four years. And yes, I am aware of your current situation."
Whitney crossed her arms, "I don't know what Alex said to convince you to come here, but consider this your last chance to back out. And trust me on that non-disclosure thing; as a Gym Leader, my word will be more than enough to keep people from looking into things." She turned her head slightly towards Alex, whispering quietly enough that all Estelle could hear was something about a -verse and what was probably their ages.
Pink Hair laughed in response to what Alex said, a loud and amused 'Hah!' that sounded more like a bark than any normal humored sound. "Of course you would say that." Shaking her head, though never loosening the smile she wore, "He's not wrong though. Things could go south very quickly, but if everything goes right," she shrugged. "Your actions in this could go an extremely long way in impressing potential employers. Now, verbal confirmation please. 'I will not speak of nor indicate in any way, shape, or form what I have learned or will learn in the coming days, except among those who also agree and only while we are in private.' Mouthful, I know. You can simply say 'I agree' if you want."
Unsurprisingly, Jasmine spoke up first. She never got the full story about why her friend idolized Alex so much, but it was enough that when he'd approached them a few days ago with a request for assistance Jasmine had agreed without a moment of hesitation. Adam went next; as the vaporeon hopeful, he looked up to Alex as well, always asking enough questions about the eeveelution that she got irritated in Alex's stead. Sefina went after, and unwilling to be the odd one out Estelle repeated the short hand response immediately after.
When Willa and Julien didn't give an answer after a few seconds, a silent discussion held between the two of them, Suit-lady raised a brow. "Well, I was hoping we wouldn't have to do this, but—"
"We agree."
"It's nice that you two are on the same wavelength, but we need a separate answer from the both of you," Whitney said.
"I agree," Julien answered for himself, shooting Willa one more meaningful, but no less undecipherable, look. Just another one of the silent languages their Kalosian mentors had.
"Excellent!" The woman clapped her hands together, much the same way that Whitney did. "Now that we don't have to memory wipe any of you—" the way Alex rolled his eyes made her think that perhaps it wasn't as much as a joke as it sounded— "we can finally move on. Whitney?"
Whitney gave an entirely too pleased smile; a wide, toothy kind of smile that made her feel she was trapped before a pack leader. "So, I've got this tiny little problem. Nothing too big, nothing too big, just—"
The moment her smile turned a hair too far beyond unsettling, Alex was there, hand tightly grabbing her shoulder and a frown on his face. "Whitney. Children."
Whitney took a single breath, the tenseness in her facial muscles retreating back to the artificial kind she'd seen on some store workers. "Right. Sorry, where was I?"
"Underground groups, of which we are uncertain as to how many factions are involved, operating within the city."
Whitney laughed. A forced kind of laughter that only made Estelle more concerned than the sudden spark of craziness did. "Right, thank you, Ju— Starlight. How could I have ever forgot."
Alex leaned down to whisper something. Not even a moment later Whitney shot out of her seat and stood in front of the map on the whiteboard, muttering things under her breath. Neither of the other two adults paid attention to her, both of them silently drawing attention to themselves with subtle movements. "As we were saying, the Winter Solstice will be celebrated in five weeks. Shopping for the holiday has already started, and many shopping districts throughout the city have gathered together to promote awareness of the smaller stores."
The man picked up a small receipt off the messy pile of papers, no bigger than his hand. "On the back of these, coupons are printed out listing various stores that you can go to who will apply the discount to your purchase. You'll also get a stamp on one of these, if you accept." Here, he picked up a card that held ten spaces, two of which were filled in. "The difficult part is what we're looking after: the reward location for getting ten specific types of stamps."
Alex pulled out a handful of cards and began passing them around the table, each covered in tape so that only a few stamps were visible. Isolated like this, the similarity was impossible to ignore. "Quaint, isn't it?" He held up a piece of paper that had the hidden image within each stamp blown up, resembling a W that appeared to be a derivative of some stylistic interpretation of what had to be a pokémon. "Meet darkrai. A Sinnohan legendary. To protect itself, it creates nightmares around those that wish it harm. If it gets enraged," he shrugged. "Let's just say that sometimes nightmares can become all too real."
"You kids don't have to worry about darkrai though," Starlight interjected, her amusement never fading. "It's just the symbol you're looking for."
"Mm. The thing that you'll really be looking for is this." A surprisingly detailed photo, this one showing off a well made wooden case that had colored gems on the left frame and a plush red interior. "If you manage to find some people with a hidden darkrai whose stamp doesn't match up with any of yours, feel free to ask where they got it from." He smirked. "Say 'you really like the design' or something."
"What happens when we get all ten stamps, Mr. Collens?" Jasmine sat up straighter as she spoke, unashamedly giving him her full attention.
"You bring it to the location the last stamp giver tells you to," Whitney answered, calmer now, but still with a fake smile frozen on her face. "What happens from there, we don't know. Everybody we've asked are tight lipped on the subject, but we do know this: they come back with items specific to them, and for those that are battlers, a brand new pokémon that's far too aggressive."
"What we need are boots on the floor," Sunlight said, moving the map on the table so that the six of them could see it properly. "Four primary locations spread out around the city, though there's a scattering of locations located elsewhere." The woman shook her head, chuckling at something only she was privy to. "We'd do it ourselves, but we're too invested in the end result to do things stealthily."
Alex pulled out a stack of bills from inside his jacket. "Thirty thousand pid per person. Use it to buy gifts for yourself and the others, but make sure you have enough to hit up at least ten stores. For all we know some stores are just a front, places to keep us off their tails. If you have any extra after your shopping, feel free to keep it."
Thirty thousand pid? Estelle froze. In the back of her mind, she realized that she wasn't the only one to do so. Thirty thousand was a hefty amount of money, almost enough to buy a brand new eevee outright. Thirty thousand pid, given to them just like that?
"I hope we don't have to ask you all not to spend it in one place." Starlight sat down next to Alex, startlingly comfortable with how close she was to him. "Questions about where you got that much money, making yourself a target for somebody curious about how loaded you actually are, failing the test of budgeting," the woman extended a finger with each reason, smiling wider as she said the last one. "Officially, that's what this is. An exercise in restraint and budgeting. So if anybody asks~"
She glanced over at the other group. No longer out of breath but still a little disheveled, how many people might they have run past while they were lost? And if they were supposed to be part of a scavenger hunt that was spread across the entire city, how many people might start paying attention to them? Estelle curled in on herself and pressed her lips together.
Alex was using them as bait.
At that moment she realized he was staring at her. Once she met his gaze, he subtly sighed and glanced away.
Alex was using them as bait and was apologetic about it.
A man with three telepaths, two of which could read emotions- She giggled. She couldn't help it. Was Jasmine infatuated with Alex because of what he could do, or was it something else? Was that why Alex was always so disinterested in things? Because it was just that boring?
Were they that boring?
Alex suddenly reached up and pressed a finger against one of Umbral's beads, mouth moving in some unheard sound. The next instant, a kadabra appeared on his other side.
"For the sake of avoiding trouble with your superiors, we'll be teleporting you all back, rather than having you walk through the Underground again. I hope none of you get teleportation sickness?" Starlight winked and brought a single finger up to her nose. "Oh, and, if everything goes well, you shouldn't meet me again for a long while, so please, do your best."
"Discuss with the other members of your group where you want to do your shopping, just make sure you have it done by the end of the week," Alex followed up.
With a start, Estelle realized that a bundle of papers had been placed in front of her earlier. A small map of the relevant shopping districts, as well as a bigger map of the specific ones.
"And don't feel bad if nothing comes out of this. Just remember to keep an eye out; sometimes what you're looking for is hidden in plain sight."