This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
[8-2] Come and Smell the Roses
The blinking cursor dared him to explain himself.
The messages went silent immediately after he'd offered to send flowers. Was that weird? Sending flowers when a loved one passed away was supposed to be proper, unless he'd accidentally stumbled upon a Sinnohan faux pas from which he'd never recover. The thought of that seeped the salt from his skin, and it took until her last message said "11 minutes ago" before he peeled his eyes away.
It wasn't the only reason he wanted to send something to her. The other was far more… selfish, blindingly so.
"You know, I've read somewhere that smiling can make you happier," he said.
What an absolute, top-of-the-line idiot. Who decides to say something like that other than a lecherous bar-hopper? A flower was the least he could do to apologize, and even then it was hardly enough.
Despite his offer, though, he didn't know how he'd manage to keep them in good condition, and he didn't even know where Saber was. The man went completely off the grid and sent the entire news cycle into a frenzy, so Ciel imagined he wouldn't be too keen on signaling his whereabouts to anyone.
But the idea was already out there! And he couldn't take it back! His anguish condensed on the window and he sketched the character for "help".
The train rattled around them. Its engine was blasting through fresh snow and the continuous impact echoed through the trailing cars. Ciel was thankful that sitting closer to the back of the train dampened the impact. This was their second ride of the day, having taken a train to Jubilife after staying the weekend in Oreburgh. His behind was starting to get sore, not helped by the heavy, plush pillow he and his sister shared.
Raven stretched herself between their laps, her paw hanging over the aisle. She was doing better every day. His hand noticed fewer tremors and cupped tighter muscles, all of which were good signs, even if he wasn't sure what a clean bill of health meant. Maybe it really was better that he was taking a vacation from the Gym Challenge so she could rest.
He'd been training excessively in the weeks leading up to the trip, hoping to be the person Lance saw in him. Every day, he was out with his Pokémon, practicing new moves and techniques, and he constantly shipped around Johto to find interesting battlegrounds. Though his Showdown earnings were dwindling, and he wasn't entirely sure how long he could sustain them on prize money from other Trainers, he was glad to be able to give his Pokémon a proper break for a while. There wasn't any rush to get back into action. It was a time of recuperation, and he was sure he needed it just as much as his Pokémon did.
He focused on what was ahead—a land of near make-believe if the travel brochures were to be trusted. And Ciel was excited! He wouldn't let himself be dragged down in this well of negativity that he had seen encompassing Sinnoh, from the miners to the League employees to the citizens of Jubilife and Canalave.
"Hey, do you want to help me pick flowers later?" he asked his sister.
"Weren't we gonna do that anyway? Why come to a town made of flowers if we weren't going to get flowers?" she asked in return.
"Oh, that's— what I mean is, I'm going to send flowers to Kris and her brother. You know, to make them feel better."
"How are you gonna do that?"
He frowned. "Still figuring that out. Notes for later, not now."
Ciel heard the buzz about the train car and he imagined the conversations occurring in the adjacent seats. Could he understand them, he'd be unable to help himself from eavesdropping, mostly because it was exciting hearing other people just… talk.
It almost seemed like things were normal, or at least, as normal as circumstances permitted. He still saw people cry silently for the Champions, and there wasn't as much pep in public spaces as he was used to, but no one had tried to brain him with a brick recently, so it was a start. A start is better than not starting at all.
The Pokémon League needed to hurry up and select a Champion already. Every few hours he found himself checking the news application on his Poké GEAR, which recently added a dedicated page for Champion selection news. All things like "Riley Hordeo, Iron Island Independent, Selected for October 20th Audit" and not enough "Sinnoh's New Champion To Be Named In Press Event Next Week". It was dull. Like watching flowers grow, except the result wasn't as pretty to stare at.
He returned to the twin books that he rested on Raven's fur. On the left was A Brief History of Sinnoh, Volume 38, on which every pair of pages was a mirror-one side was in Unovan, the other in Sinnohan. When he got bored reading Unovan, or just wanted a spicy challenge, he referred to the book on his right, Sinnohan Basics for Idiot Foreigners (and yes that was its actual title), to attempt to read the history in its untranslated form.
Mostly, he'd been interested in learning about the Berlitz family, whose names he'd seen on more than most product brands. They were on buildings, bridges, and tunnels, all implying some grand importance. But it seemed like whatever presence Berlitz had was a relic of the past.
They were part of five major families, referred to as the Royal Guard because they originated as retainers to the kings of Sinnoh before it became an industrialized republic in the 19th century. Once the last king was deposed—if by one of the families, history was unsure—the Royal Guard began to shape the new industry of the Sinnoh Region by flaunting the wealth they assumed from the royal treasury.
Mills, factories, steam ships, anything the Royal Guard could get their hands on, they did. They were positively synonymous with the rise of Sinnoh as a world power before the Coalition war, and their names were written in the coal-blackened skies. Ciel was sure that the republic Sinnoh supposedly became was driven more by the moneyed interests of those families than the common people. Time was a flat circle, after all.
Like most previous power structures, they were nearly annihilated by the end of the Coalition War and the reorganization of world power under the Pokémon League's administration. But, assuming that he was parsing the Sinnohan correctly, they definitely still existed, if just a bunch of empty shells with powerless bills and coins.
The Sinnohan language guide slipped to the floor, and soon after did the history. He scrambled for them first, unsure how he'd dropped them, but it was Raven in his lap who had come alive like a motor. He quickly grabbed hold of her mitten-bound sickle to prevent her from thrashing. "Hey, hey, it's okay, I'm here."
She wasn't just trembling like usual, though. She was growling. Growling? Maybe she was annoyed at her own condition—he couldn't blame her—but it was a wholly new thing. He tried to massage her fur-padded muscles to no avail. Her teeth bared and her growl evolved into a nasty snarl that enveloped the entire train car.
"Ah!" said the woman standing in the aisle.
Ciel, embarrassed, found Raven's Poké Ball. They'd be in Floaroma in a few hours so he could address the episode in a more hospitable space than this moving iron prison. She disappeared in a flash of light, taking her fangs with her.
"Det er en uvanlig Pokémon." The woman had been loitering by seats opposite he and his sister, and once the coast was clear, she took her seat.
Ciel wracked his brain for a response, seeing the textbook flash across his mind like he was viewing a digital file. Unfortunately, that didn't help his execution much.
"Umm… Hallo— no, Hei på... deg?" He couldn't quite dance his tongue to the harsh syllables.
"I can use Unovan if you'd like," she said, actually in a matching accent. Ciel tried not to let his relief be too obvious. "I was just wondering about your Pokémon."
"S-sorry, she's been doing that a lot recently," he said.
She wore short violet hair under a white sun hat and a matching dress. They were diving further into October, so it was a strange getup, but the snow seemed to be clearing as the train approached their floral terminus. The woman seemed to blush, which meant he was staring too long. Crap. Ah. He looked everywhere else. The window—the aisle—the digital display of the next stop—that horrible knowing grin on Laina's smug face.
The strange woman leaned forward and narrowed her sharp eyes at him. He subtly pushed himself as far back as the seat would allow. She said, "I'm quite familiar with you."
It didn't sound like she was seeking confirmation. She knew it to be true. And for some reason her voice sounded strangely like someone else's, but he wasn't sure who, exactly.
"...I hope that's a good thing," he replied. He scratched at his throat.
"You're the one from the plane."
First the Viceroy, now this. He really was getting his name out already, but he had to overcome getting rattled by this attention. This was good. "Y-yeah. That's me. Ciel Fauder."
"What you did was brave. Do you have a knack for taking down criminals?" she asked.
"Yeah!" exclaimed Laina. "He even—"
Ciel slapped his hand across her mouth, silencing her. Proud as he was to contribute and work for Lance, he did actively fight Johto's most infamous mafia, and the fewer people who could mark him on their lists, the better.
"I just wanted to do… what I could, I guess. It was, what's the word, instinctual? Yeah, I didn't really think about not doing it," he said.
She seemed satisfied with that answer and sat back in the seat, her hat barely clearing the top. Her arms and legs folded like origami, and she sat with a sharpness matching her eyes. There was nothing casual about her despite her vacation suit.
"So, you're headed to Floaroma," she said. When he nodded, she continued. "For sightseeing, I presume?"
"Well, I want to capture a Pokémon while I'm there. I've had my sights on one for a few weeks because I think it'd help my team." His analytical mind overcame the awkwardness of the budding conversation. He thought about the pages of notes he'd nursed the past few weeks about team composition, potential moves, and the best things to feed his upcoming team member. He could prattle on for hours about it.
"The little thing looks cute too. See, I've been drawing it!" His sister flashed a scribble—of high effort, at least—of the small green creature nestled between her social science homework.
"Oh, Petilil. It'd be hard to imagine a serious Trainer like you with something so dainty." she said. As she spoke, she twirled a strand of her hair around one matching-color nail.
"What about you, lady? What are you going for?" asked Laina.
"Are you from Floaroma?" Ciel added to her line of questioning, a little too excited. He was just happy to have someone besides his sister who could understand him. Not that he didn't like talking to his sister, of course.
The woman smiled and shook her head. "No, I'm not even from Sinnoh, though you could probably tell. I've just been sent here for work."
"Something important?"
"Not really, though this will be my first time here." She noticed his drawing on the window and added her own little mark, a heart, next to it. "My boss has me travel often. I'm waiting for my next big project at the moment."
Something seemed to strike her, painting her face in surprise. She extended a hand suddenly. "Silly me, I forgot to introduce myself. Camella Wallach."
That name wasn't Sinnohan, he knew that much. "So you really aren't from here."
"I'm naught but a humble traveler," she said in a voice of theater.
"Looks like we're all in the same boat," he replied.
Ciel let himself be pulled into the conversation, allowing him to burn away the rest of the train ride. He almost wished he had Crystal and Gold and Brent here to yuck it up with, but they had their own little adventures to attend to. A new face would work just fine.
It helped counter his already racing imagination about Raven. Since her first outburst in the Berlitz Tunnel, she'd only slowly gotten better, and she'd never lashed out at something.
A sudden relapse? A completely new stimulus? Whatever the reason, he seemed unable to ignore his theory on what exactly had done this to her.
Her disaster sense found something. He prayed it was a false alarm.
If Floaroma's spring hadn't just begun, then it must have never stopped.
Ciel, Laina, and their new acquaintance disembarked into a wonderland. The passengers rushed around him when he stopped, unable to finish his processing cycle and move forward. There was so much information.
First, the ground was green. Green! He had been bombarded with white across the entire Region, or at best, the yellow of seasonal decay. However, living earth stretched from the foot of the station platform into an infinite horizon.
Second, it bloomed.
Ciel couldn't break his own heart and step into the sea of blossoms. It was a combination of colors one might see in dreams—reds and blues and oranges and whites and burgundies and fuschias and celadons. In fact, he'd only seen one rainbow that exceeded the colors at his feet, and he still wasn't sure if it was real or just myth.
Laina had no similar misgivings and threw herself face-first from the steps into a patch of colors. She grunted as she hit the ground, diverting disembarking passengers around her and displacing a nose-tickling cloud of pollen. Perhaps she respected the flowers as much as he did, but her respect was a little more hands on.
"It feels…" started Ciel, but he couldn't find the words.
"As if you have everything?" Camella answered. It was a world of bounty, and easily the most jaw-dropping thing Sinnoh had shown him so far. "And it's wonderful knowing it's yours."
"Oh my geeeeeez, it's so goooooood." Laina sounded like she was drooling into the dirt, inhaling deeply every other breath. "My nose is already clogging but it smells amaaaazing."
Camella laughed. "Or, in summary."
Ciel checked his Poké GEAR and the list of tasks he prepared himself for arrival. First, they needed a place to stay. Advanced research told him the Pokémon Center was probably a no-go. This was a major tourism spot and tons of people, Trainers or not, would no doubt have already reserved rooms at the Center. He also wasn't willing to blow the remainder of his savings on one of the Berlitz' family's grand hotels that stood near the edge of town.
However, his research had led him to a saving grace. Sinnohans were well-known for offering themselves as hosts to travelers, both as a source of extra money and because of some cultural hospitality. Kris had occasionally mentioned in text, usually in the context of inviting him to Sinnoh for a rematch, that most of the Region's people wouldn't hesitate to offer themselves to the needy. That said, the situation had obviously changed judging by his experience in the Berlitz Mine. Who knew if he was still welcome as a traveler?
Anyway, he needed to get Raven checked up, so the Pokémon Center was their first destination regardless.
Ciel hovered his foot above the bed for a while before finally taking a breath and letting gravity crush the flowers beneath his foot. He could feel each individual crunch travel up his leg to his brain. He was a monster.
Streamers guided their way to the destination, and he soon realized that the town had an event going. Frames of splintering wood and poorly driven nails sprouted from the flowers, offering street food and games and grand old time for all. Ciel, his sister, and Camella loitered around one of the former and were sent away with some kind of pickled ocean kelp that Ciel couldn't find the appetite for. Laina wolfed it down happily, only to complain about the essence of vinegar in her gums.
An alley of stalls ran along the flower road to the Pokémon Center. Ciel wanted to admire them, but Raven was more important. He picked up the pace of his flower sacrifice and pushed his way through the red-marked building.
Fortunately, despite the activity in town, the queue for interring a Pokémon was short and "ABSOL" appeared on the monitor after his Poké Ball was rushed through the curtains.
He and Laina found seats as they waited for a response, and Camella found her own place beside them. She sat an extra length away from them, still a stranger.
"You said this was a recent occurrence?" she asked.
"I had her checked in Jubilife, but they couldn't find anything. She's just, I guess, responding naturally to something," said Ciel.
"Naturally?"
Ciel clasped his hands together, only then noticing how hot each of them felt. Something put her on edge, and she'd graciously transferred it to her Trainer. His neck hairs were straight as steel blades.
"Her species, supposedly, can sense disaster," he said. Both his sister and Camella listened intently. "It's the only thing I can come up with but accepting that only makes me more scared that something horrible might happen. I didn't listen to her once when she tried to warn me, and I should've."
Arden's scar appeared in his mind. It was only one of three marks that had been carved by that incident. The other two were his, one mental and another unfortunately real. Ciel had refused to glance at the back face of his Trainer Card since then, but he also refused to ignore his mistake. He'd put trust in his partner's ability. If only that wasn't so terrifying.
"So, you believe there's some," she said, placing a strange pause, "trouble coming soon?"
"I don't really know. Maybe. You've seen what's been happening around the Region, right? I read that there's been more violent crime in the past month than in the entire decade before. And I saw some of it myself."
"You shouldn't concern yourself so much with it, young man. I'm sure the police and the Pokémon League have it handled," the woman said.
The Pokémon League had been stalled for over a month now, hadn't it? He was both a foreigner and hardly politically active but even he could see that Viceroy Nolsikker's administration wasn't handling the turnover well.
Laina leaned into him and wrapped her arms around him. "Yeah. You don't gotta worry so hard. Plus you were a cool hero like… twice already."
"Heh, yeah," he chuckled. "I really think I needed to come here to cool off. But I don't think I'll be able to relax until we find a place to stay."
"Well, I had a reservation in town that my boss prepared, but I don't think it's big enough for three."
"And I'm absolutely not camping any more. I want to keep my fingers, thank you very much," said Laina.
A man walking the crowd of the Pokémon Center turned to face them, and his gaze lingered on Ciel too long for it to be comfortable. He snapped his head away, but he had to check to make sure the man wasn't still there. When he looked back, the man's nose was centimeters in front of him.
"Ah!" shouted Ciel as he slipped out of his seat and landed painfully on the floor tile. He heard Laina's screeching laughter above them.
"Ciel? Ciel Fauder?" asked the man. He almost looked familiar, but then again, Camella was also tickling his receptors somehow.
"Yep, that's him. Man, you're sure getting well known," said his sister. She squinted at the man. "Wait, I think I've seen you before too."
Ciel took the man's hand when he offered and worked his twisted joints to stand himself. The man wore a fine petal-patterned sweater atop what seemed to be two other sweaters poking out underneath. His small spectacles balanced atop a reddened nose. He sniffled.
"I'd be pleased to offer you a place to stay. Anything for a friend!" he said.
Things were happening so fast. He didn't know how to respond. "Uhh… I'm sorry, who are you?"
"Do you not remember me? I'm Aevaren! I sat beside you on the airplane. The airplane!"
Suddenly, his blank memory was rewritten. This man's face became clear as day in his hazy thoughts, between recollections of his panicked scramble in the cargo hold and his desperate fight against that Poison-type Pokémon. It was the man on the aisle who informed them about Floaroma in the first place.
"You do not know how excited I was to see you on the television. You saved our lives!
Ciel swelled like a volcano, ready to burst any time with burning passion. Not only was he being recognized, he was being praised for what he did. Personally! And it inspired all the more confidence that he could be the worldwide influence he sought to become.
He sealed the man's hand in both of his own and said, "If you're willing to house us, we'd really appreciate it, sir."
"It's no intrusion at all. Please, come come!" he said with glee.
Ciel let his relief gather within his chest, both dumbfounded and elated by this lucky break. The world wanted to slow down, and he was ready to do the same. They waved goodbye to Camella—who promised she'd see them around, since she'd be staying in town for the foreseeable future—and headed off with Aevaren.
He glanced at Raven on the medical board. Everything would be just fine. If it wasn't, he would make it so.
So the random character on the plane wasn't for show! Ciel's slowly building reputation can come in handy, even if he had to endure horrifyingly dangerous situations to receive it. I have a tendency to introduce minor characters well in advance of their actual story role, because the main way to make a one-off character more memorable is… to not make them one-off, I guess.
Volume 8, Part 3 is Petal With Training Wheels. See you someday.