Chapter One: Toast and Butterfrees

"Mika! Time to wake up!" came Mrs. Responsible's voice.

Mika, of course, was already quite awake, thank you. She sat in her bed, reclining on the pink silk pillows. It seemed everything in her room was pink besides her. Her skin was the palest it'd ever been, and she felt lifeless and dull. She even had bags under her eyes that went away only when she took a shower. Was she still even the same person? Here she was, an insomniac, when before her mom had always joked that she could fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

For awhile now, she'd been watching the seemingly insane Pidgey that landed on her windowsill and did some kind of strange dance, as if it was trying to entertain her. She'd noticed that the Pokemon around here were kind of… well, abnormal, to say the least. Some seemed ordinary, then there were the ones like the dancing Pidgey. It came and performed for her every morning, even when she had school – yet it had a different dance every time.

"Are you up, Mika?" Mrs. Responsible asked from the hall. Her name wasn't really Mrs. Responsible, but Mika had long ago forgotten what she was supposed to call her, along with everyone else in the house.

"Yeah." She didn't know why Mrs. Responsible was 'waking her up' so early, though. It was a Saturday, and, she recalled, summer. When she did sleep, she slept in. Or watched Dancing Pidgey.

"Your father's taking you out for breakfast in an hour!"

"Oh…" Mika dragged herself out of bed.

"You'd better get dressed!"

"I will!"

Mrs. Responsible finally stopped talking, and presumably left. Mika sighed, then retreated to her huge closet. Her clothes barely filled half of it, though she'd always had many more clothes than her friends, who were always borrowing from her. Somehow, her collection looked small and dull in the impressive closet, bigger than her living room at home. Her old home, anyway.

Finally, Mika decided not to bother much with her appearance today and chose some boring clothes: old blue jeans, black sweatshirt, green shirt. She fished a pair of dark green sneakers out of her pile of shoes, then headed to her bathroom.

Before, she'd shared a bathroom with her mother. Now she had her own one, and it was far bigger than the one she'd had before. Startlingly white, her bathroom was sleek and pristine: a haven made of marble and glass (both clear and frosted). She'd noticed that a lot of the house was made of glass and crystal, from the counters to the chandeliers to the gigantic mirrors to the staircases (though they were made, of course, of something stronger than glass. In any case, it still gave the same effect) and Mika had begun to feel she was living in a house of ice. She'd heard it called the Glass Manor.

Her bathroom had a glass shower, a crystal bathtub, a glass sink, and a glass-countered vanity with a lighted mirror. It seemed the only thing not made of glass or crystal was the toilet, made of the same marble as the floor.

After she'd emerged from her shower, she dressed and stared at herself in the mirror. Instead of seeing the red-cheeked girl from before, she was now pale and gaunt. Her dark curls (obviously inherited from her father) had become limp and lifeless. Her amber eyes had an expressionless quality to them as well.

She gave her reflection a last glare before she left the bathroom and her room. Heading down the clear stairs, she passed the second story and reached the first floor, with its spotless hardwood floors. Mika didn't spend much time down there, except to eat sometimes, but on cold days the floor was heated. Now, though, it was bright and sunny.

Mika looked around. Was she supposed to meet her father somewhere? Cautiously, she made her way into the darker hallway, the area he called his office. There were often other people in the rooms, though she still didn't know quite what she did. She didn't ask him very many questions. For that matter, she didn't talk to him when she didn't have to.

She knocked on the door at the end of the hall, the room she'd never seen the inside of.

"What?" demanded Giovanni's voice.

"Uh, it's Mika." She was slightly taken aback at the angry sound in his voice. He'd never sounded very annoyed with her, just tired. Around others, of course, she'd noticed he got angry easily, but with her, it seemed he just didn't know what to do.

"Mika!" he sounded surprised too. The door opened, and he looked down at her.

"I heard you were taking me somewhere," she said, dully.

"Right. To breakfast?"

She nodded.

"Will you tell Benedict to start the car? I'll be out in a moment."

Mika turned, and walked back out to the entry hall. She didn't exactly know where Benedict was, but she left the house through the side door into the garage. Sure enough (and oddly enough), Benedict was already seated behind the wheel of the town car, resulting in Mika wondering if he ever left.

She opened the door, making Benedict jump. When he saw her, he nodded. "Good morning, Miss Mika. Please accept my apologies for not opening the door."

"It's okay. He said to start the car up." Mika settled into the soft leather seat. She'd called her father 'he', like usual. Mika was never quite sure what to call him. He wasn't a 'Dad', obviously. But 'Giovanni' didn't seem right either. She wished there was some kind of appropriate term for someone you'd only met really a year ago that you just happened to share genes with.

Benedict started the car, eyes on the review mirrors. They were pointed to face the door Giovanni would exit from. "Where am I taking you today?"

"I'm not sure." Mika bit down on her thumbnail. Biting her nails was a bad habit she'd recently acquired. She'd tried to give it up, but couldn't quite. She was trying to remember how she'd given it up before, when she was younger, but it had seemed so easy then. Her mother said she'd just grown out of it.

"There he is," Benedict said, leaving the car. He opened the door, and Giovanni got inside next to Mika. After him came his ever-present Persian, a tan panther-like cat which had taken an immediate dislike for Mika. It never showed it around Giovanni, though. Mika thought that Persian probably just disliked everyone, except for its master.

And, of course, cats never liked her much.

"To the Launch Café, Benedict," Giovanni ordered. The garage door opened, and the town car rolled out of the building and down the driveway. They'd left the estate before Giovanni turned to Mika.

"I had realized we hadn't had breakfast together yet," he said.

Mika was busy counting the number of times he'd just said 'had'. "Oh?"

"And now that it's summer, I wanted to take you to my favorite restaurant. For breakfast, that is."

"Okay." She wondered exactly why he was taking her out, but maybe it was what he'd said: he hadn't eaten one breakfast with her yet, and perhaps he felt guilty. Maybe he'd been reading up on what fathers were supposed to do, and having breakfast at least annually was on the list.

They drove the rest of the ride in silence, and Mika looked out the window at the café they pulled up beside. It was outside Pewter City, in the northeast section, but far off the beaten path.

Benedict went in with them. The waitress recognized them, and led them to a room of their own. "The usual spot," she'd called it. Then she'd closed the door, and left them in solitude. Mika knew her father was rich, but she was continually surprised as to how rich he was.

The menu was full of fancy breakfast dishes. The one that sounded the most normal to Mika was some sort of omelet that she couldn't pronounce. She didn't even like eggs, but she wasn't sure what the others were. Then, she spotted toast. It was on brioche bread and came with marmalade and fresh strawberry preserves.

"So… what do you usually have for breakfast?" Giovanni asked her.

"Cereal," Mika answered.

"Ah. I think they have that here." He scanned the menu. "Yes, hot cereal with gold raisins, cream, brown sugar, and oregano."

Mika had no idea why anyone would put oregano on oatmeal, but she didn't ask. "I meant cold cereal. You know, like… Cheerios."

He had to think a minute before a spark of realization speared in his eyes. "Ah, right."

She blinked. "Please tell me you've heard of Cheerios."

"I've heard of Cheerios."

Mika wasn't satisfied, but before she could say anything else, the waitress returned.

"What can I get you?" she asked. "The usual, boss? Benedict?"

"Yes," Giovanni said, glancing toward Mika. She assumed it was to see if she'd heard the waitress call him boss. Her eyes stayed stubbornly on the menu, going over it like she was making a last-minute decision. She'd heard it, of course, and it unleashed a thousand questions in her head. Did he own this restaurant, or something?

"Miss?"

Mika closed the menu, and looked up innocently. "Oh, I'll have… the toast. And coffee, black."

Her order obviously surprised Giovanni almost as much as it would have surprised her friends. She'd been famous for hating coffee before. But now nothing was the same, was it?

"Nothing more?" her father asked her, to which she shook her head. The waitress whisked away their menus.

"I always get Eggs Benedict," Benedict said proudly. Mika decided then and there that his new nickname would be precisely that.

She wondered exactly why he was there, if he was their driver. Maybe he doubled as a guard when they went out. But then shouldn't he be guarding the door, talking in a walkie-talkie as she'd seen some mysterious people doing back at the Glass Manor? Maybe, she thought, Eggs Benedict was Giovanni's secret lover! But why would he act as their driver, then?

"So…" Giovanni's voice cut into her thoughts, "how is your summer so far?"

It had been a week since school had thankfully ended, and only one (albeit long and looming) year left before Mika was finally free. Oh, of course there was always college, but she didn't feel like thinking about that now. That would only lead to more uncertainty, especially as to what she should even study. She didn't know what she was interested in, and instead of making compulsive lists like she would have a year ago, she tried to push it from her mind so that she didn't have to think about it.

"Uh, fine." Didn't Mrs. Responsible tell him about what she did all day? Stayed in her room and did something, anything she could to not fall asleep from boredom? She left the house rarely, and didn't even really go outside much in the huge yard. She overlooked some of them from her tower window, and saw a rose garden and a hulking hedge maze, but she'd never really attempted to go through it (though she vaguely remembered as a child how much she'd wanted to go through a real hedge maze).

"What have you been doing?"

"Just… reading, and stuff. And going on the computer?"

His brow furrowed. "I see." He seemed like he wanted to ask something else, but didn't know how to say it tactfully. Persian yawned and lay down, head on its paws. "You don't have a summer job, right?"

"Nope."

"Well then, how would you like to work for me?"

She looked up from her ornate glass of water. "For you?" she repeated. She didn't even know what he did, much less have an idea if she'd even be interested in a job there.

"Right. Just some simple things… Treasury and keeping track of some accounts."

So she had been right when she thought he had a boring job. Accounting, of some kind. Blah.

"It would really give you experience in the business world," he continued, looking rather excited about the whole thing.

Eggs Benedict nodded. "He's right! Why do you think I've been working just as a driver for your father for twenty years?"

Uh, because you can't bear to leave him? Mika thought.

"It's great to be in any way associated with his company," Eggs Benedict answered.

Mika nodded. "Okay."

"So, would you like the job?" Giovanni asked her. "You'll be paid, of course."

It wasn't as if she needed money – he was insistent now that she spend extravagantly (guilt, perhaps?). She had her own bank account with more money than she even needed for college, along with a shiny plastic credit card (billed to him). She didn't really care about the experience, either. It wasn't as if she was going to spend her life doing something boring like economics. But the job also offered something to do, besides sit around and be bored. That was the only thing that mattered to her.

"Sure," she said. "When do I start?"

"Excellent! How about Monday?"

"Okay."

The next day was Sunday, and Mika was determined to do something active. She woke with a sense of determination, and quickly got dressed. She'd actually planned on going through the hedge maze, but when she ended up behind a tool shed somewhere in the backyard, she figured she was lost. Why have a hedge maze when the whole estate was one?

"They should have a map of this place," she muttered, as she looked around for the millionth time, trying to get her bearings. How could she have been there for a year and not know her way around yet? It was kind of pathetic.

There were too many tall trees blocking the way, and finally she gave up, for now. Plopping down onto a bench that reminded her she wasn't lost in a forest, she leaned back and sighed. Even when she'd been in Mahogany, going up to the Lake of Rage, she'd never gotten lost, and that was a winding path. Why was everything here so much harder than there?

"Frreeeeh!" came a voice behind her. Turning around, her dark curls partially obstructing her view, Mika saw a huge Butterfree kind of… hovering there. It was watching her intently with its big eyes.

Dredging up some of her ninth-grade biology, Mika frowned. Weren't Butterfrees supposed to be a lot smaller? This one was almost as big as her. It kind of scared her, until she felt stupid for being afraid of a butterfly.

"Er, hi," she said, giving it a half-hearted wave.

"Freeeehhhaaa!" it shrieked, in its strangely horse-like way.

"Are you Giovanni's?" she asked. She knew he had a collection of Pokemon.

It stared at her, then shook its head. "Freee." Then it came to rest beside her, balancing on its tiny feet on the bench.

Feeling increasingly stupid, Mika wasn't sure what she should do. She'd never owned a Pokemon, and wasn't exactly sure how to talk to one, or even if she should.

"It's a… nice day, huh?" Okay, now she was as awkward as her father when he talked to her.

"FREEEAHHH!" it suddenly exclaimed, making her jump. Its wings started beating faster and faster.

"Ahh! Calm down!" Mika stood up, slowly backing away. Was this thing going to attack her, or something?

It flew at her. Turning to run, Mika didn't get very far before it swooped in front of her and glittery dust appeared from its beating wings. The dust rested on her, and as she breathed in, she felt drowsy. Her eyes were heavy, and the last thing she could remember before she fell asleep was the maniacal "FREAHAHA!"

Aww, it was a lot shorter than I'd been planning on. D: Sorry, but I've been so busy lately. I promise the next chapter will be actually long! Anyway, please review!