This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
[13-4] Break the Cycle
All Laina ever did was screw up.
She fudged the call. She barely even tried to get Ciel to talk to Mom and Dad. He still wouldn't tell her a dang word about what happened in the Floaroma forest, and to top it all off, she was the worst Pokémon battler known to mankind!
"Dang it," she grumbled.
Laina slammed a rock onto the sidewalk. It bounded and skidded across the pavement until it disappeared into the grass, and only half a second later, a shadow dropped from the sky to tackle the offending pebble. Brisa smashed it into the ground with her talons, then tried to crack it open with her beak, and then swallowed it completely whole. She wasn't surprised when the bird started to hack a few seconds later.
"Dang it," she repeated.
As she stomped across an intersection, the Lilligant sauntered behind her, wielding a fresh cup of mint chocolate chip ice cream that was barely soupy after an hour outside. After she discovered how much the Pokémon seemed to like it—maybe it was the smell, or maybe it was because she had no clue what dairy was—Laina had taken to calling her Mint. It was easier than "that Lilligant that keeps doing hip dances in front of her and every Pokémon she could find".
"Dang it!" she shouted to an empty street.
A hot paw made her leap out of her socks when it touched her shoulder. She shot her head back to the Typhlosion standing over her with flickering flames to match his drooping, puzzled expression. His fur looked all patchy, and like it was rubbed with dirt somehow. She'd tried to clean it out in the hotel bath but no dice. It all just looked a muddy purple.
"Don't worry, buddy. I'm just super discombolub— fustrat—" She squeezed her scalp in her hands. "I'm not okay!"
She only had a few days left to figure out how to get him to Veilstone. The hospital had him on the end of his an-ti-bi-ot-ic treatment with some bed rest, and she needed to be ready for when he was all clear. She wasted nearly all the first aid items in Ciel's bag on the way up here, and she didn't want to empty his or her parents' wallets buying more just so she could freeze to death on another mountain hike. According to the weather news, it was going to hit ten below and it was getting on blizzard season.
It was feeling more and more like her best option was to say screw everything, call Mom, and have her fly them home into her waiting arms. But she couldn't make that decision when Ciel wouldn't!
She held up a pencil sketch she found in his notebook to the dull autumn morning. He had doodled tons of little diagrams in the corners of the pages to describe battle maneuvers he wanted to try out that day. For a nerd, they were all surprisingly good. However, he sketched something not about training and battles that gave her an idea to get them back across Sinnoh's mountains.
Laina took three of his Pokémon to protect her—after that knife guy in Canalave, she drilled it into herself to be careful, to never be alone. The Absol that hadn't left his side since yesterday and the Scizor were doing their job to keep him safe too.
Eventually, following a map she swiped from the Pokémon Center's tourist info stand, she landed in front of a tiny little building with a cute, striped awning. One of the windows was boarded up and the awning itself was torn in places, but it still seemed open for business. The sign said something in Sinnohan. It hung off a shiny new bicycle and had something to do with Rad Rickshaw.
"Gang, wait out here," she said to Arden, having learned that he was the only one who understood her. She was counting on him to keep the other two in line, but with Brisa always picking fights and Mint constantly getting her groove on, that was a fat chance.
A bell chimed when she swung the door open, and she was sucked into a metal-framed maze. Racks of bikes, in every shape and size and color, cut the building into tiny lanes. She curved around, walking past a woman with orange hair checking some parts on the wall. Some of the racks were out of place, leading her to a dead end and a mouth full of greasy bicycle chains. Just about done with every setback, she slammed herself into the rack to shunt it out of her way.
Laina stood on her toes and slapped the sketchbook on the counter. "What bikes do you have that look like this?"
A Unovan-looking man—Rad Rickshaw, she guessed—traced the page and grimaced. He was clearly covering up his bald spot with a bike helmet. "This is a motorcycle, kid."
"I mean, do you have any bikes that have the same feel? What's the word? Aesthetic?"
Rad shot her a square look of disapproval through his unibrow, a face she knew from her dad. He must've mastered it on his own kids.
"What do you need the bike for?" he asked.
"To bike," she replied.
"To bike where?"
"A mountain?"
"Which mountain?"
"The big one!"
"Mt. Coronet! Mt. Mantel! Mt. Epaulette! They're all big!"
Laina was getting annoyed now, unsure what else she needed to get into his skull. She was a paying customer who was willing to pay money for a bike. Didn't he like when people paid him?
Wait, no. She wasn't even sure how much money she had, with no way of checking Ciel's account without squeezing a password out of him. In other words, she was flat broke.
"Look, my good fellow, my good pal," she stressed to soften her demand, "I just need two bikes to take me and my brother to Veilstone, hopefully one that looks kind of like this drawing so he'll feel better."
The man drew in a gasp, and then blasted into orbit.
"Well, if you're headed up Route 211 between Mt. Coronet and Mt. Mantel, you probably don't need super high gears, so maybe you could just use some trail bikes, but only if you're planning to stay on the path, or else I'd recommend you get some fatbikes. You should still take some tire spike covers since the snow's beating in nowadays, and you'd better get some strong gloves to deal with the cold metal. Plus, some extra chain oil never hurt anyone. You'll also need this, and that, one of these, oh, can't forget one of these bad boys." As he explained, he threw each successive item up on the counter, only substituting the actual bikes with little pamphlets explaining the pros and cons. With each object added to the growing pile, the register chimed, and the digits climbed, putting her squarely in "not able to afford that" territory. "Lastly, you're gonna need this."
He drove his finger into a key on the register and added one final, 5000 charge to the end. Seeing the series of question marks on her face, he said, "It's my special warranty. Free returns on bikes for thirty days, free replacements—on select parts—for a year, and your agreement that my bike absolutely wasn't responsible for putting you in the hospital. Uhh, if you end up there, that is."
"I don't… really think I'll need all that," she said, wondering why there were a few pieces of candy sandwiched between the tires and oil. She was just uncomfortable, but not wanting to make a scene of throwing it all in his face.
"Please, I insist." His helmet slung back and forth with his swift nodding.
A person appeared at her side, and a Trainer Card appeared on the counter. The orange-haired woman chirped, "I'll cover it!"
Rad looked at it, then at its owner, and then finally crashed from his flight. He nibbled his upper lip and sulked towards the register. "I never should have given you that discount."
He hit a few buttons and almost the entire tab poofed, leaving an easy couple thousand. In a few seconds, he processed the bank info tied to her card and handed it back. Laina was completely mystified at this whole turn of events, but she was enjoying it as payback for the guy trying to rob her blind.
"Don't blame him. His shop's struggled a bit the past couple months, so he's just trying to keep himself afloat, even if this was a bit much," the woman said.
She had a gentle face with eyes the same color as her hair, a similar shade of cargo pants, and a firm black jacket. Atop it all was a green cape or poncho or something that was stitched together at the front, and further atop that was a strange Pokémon on her shoulder. It looked kind of like an unripe berry, a cascade of dark petals mostly covering the thing beneath.
There was something about how confidently she swayed that caught Laina's eye. She was cute, but strong. She was bold, but dainty. The killer mix of cute and can-do.
"Thanks for all your help, lady. You've got a cute Pokémon there," she said.
Laina put her finger out towards it. It shook in its petals and covered itself completely, and she frowned. Another mistake. The woman tickled the little buddy's top, and it slowly revealed itself again while chasing her touch upward.
"He's just a little shy. Don't worry, he's super friendly once the sun comes out, and he's one real fighter when he gets going." Suddenly, she gasped, and grabbed Laina's hand to shake it vigorously. "Oh! I should have introduced myself. I'm Gardenia!"
"Laina," she traded.
The woman placed her own items on the counter: a pack of chain links and one of the candies from Laina's own pile, which she removed to ring up as her own. Rad scanned them through, grumbling the whole time about the pitiful amount on the display.
Once that was finished, he stumbled over to the racks, removed two of the trail bikes he mentioned, and rolled them over to Laina. She contemplated for a minute asking Arden to push the second one back home since she could only ride one, but Gardenia offered instead.
"Someone should stick with you. It's not been very safe outside these days, so it's good to have more company," the woman said.
They were rejoined by Ciel's Pokémon back outside, and the woman took quick to introducing herself to each of them. She had nothing but well-wishes for Arden and Brisa, but it couldn't compare to how much she exploded in awe at Mint.
"Ohmygosh! That color! That sparkle!" Gardenia couldn't help herself and tore the Lilligant from the ground to pull her into a hug. "This coloration only happens from amazingly rare mutations. Oh, I've never seen a Grass-type Pokémon so beautiful! Where'd you find it?"
Laina shrugged. "Not mine."
After being set back on the ground, Mint's eyes locked on target. Laina covered her eyes as the Pokémon began its regular routine, finding Gardenia a suitable audience for its sways.
"Do you know anything about that?" Laina asked her since she seemed to know her stuff. "She's been doing it for like two weeks and it's driving me crazy."
Gardenia smiled. "Oh, that's simple. She's trying to mate with me."
"What?"
"It's true! Lilligant do this kind of dance to attract partners, hoping to woo away Pokémon from other species. She's being as sexy as possible for all the studs out there."
Mates. Breed. Sexy. Studs. Whatever color Laina's face was, she was sure it wasn't even on the rainbow. "Hahahahaha, that's super cool and interesting! So anyway, you big on bikes?"
"Only recently. I used to walk everywhere, especially to train in the forest, but after he started giving me a discount, there wasn't much reason not to own one."
They started to walk the new rides back towards the Pokémon Center, the woman following her lead and the Pokémon trailing close behind once they managed to convince Mint to stop her rhythmic… babymaking. Did she even know humans couldn't mate with her? Did she not know that half her frequent targets were girls? Was that her intention?
Laina shook her head and thought about more appropriate questions. "Where'd you get the discount?"
"Oh, it was nothing." She vibrated her lips by blowing air through them, and then pulled her arm up to her shoulder to caress the leaves of her tagalong. "Got called up to help chase away some goons on the north side of town a couple years ago, and it turns out they took our friend Rad's Clefairy hostage. He granted me and a few other Trainers that helped lifetime VIP discounts at his shop. Pretty handy, huh?"
She couldn't help but be entranced by the woman's every movement, and each passing second made her stomach cave a little inward. That queen of the world was supposed to be her. Laina got what she wanted by her cute face and her refusal to fail, but right now, she was nothing but a screw up. Every choice she'd made since they left Floaroma turned right around and stabbed her in the back. It wasn't fair!
Just like Ciel wasn't being himself, she just couldn't seem to be herself. It apparently showed.
"What's wrong?" Gardenia's face went subtle, not clearly saying anything. "Sorry if I made you uncomfortable talking about all that stuff, but I'm just super excited about Grass-types of all kinds. I kinda make a living off them."
"No, no, that's not it. I kinda… I sorta… what do you do when someone isn't being themselves?" she asked.
Gardenia tilted her head. "Well, everyone has off days."
"No! It's my brother. He's got a thing in his head that he wants to do, and he's gotta be motivated to do it, but right now he's just not. And I keep trying to do something about it and it's not helping!"
They crossed an empty road to an empty sidewalk, the Pokémon Center in sight a few blocks down. Without anyone to hide them, the concrete's cracks told a long story. Rad probably wasn't getting much business because no one seemed to want to be out, let alone out and biking. People were acting crazy all over, so she couldn't blame anyone for wanting to stay home and not get mugged or something. Her skin still crawled even with four Pokemon between them.
"Tell me a bit about him," Gardenia said.
She felt herself come alive at the offer. "He's amazing! He's been all over the Johto Region and once he got thrown off a boat but he survived and he knows a lot of stuff that I wish I knew and he loves his Pokémon so much and he wants to be a famous superstar someday!" Her outburst paused a tussle between Brisa and Mint, the bird attempting to tear a petal off Mint's flowery crown. All her gushing came to a grinding halt when the more important thing worked its way to the front. "But his Pokémon died. And it's not his fault."
Laina only saw it out of the corner of her eye, but the woman's pupils were somewhere else. She was a bit too focused on herself to notice, and she threw her arms up in the air in frustration.
"Someone told me to 'be his hands' or something to get him back to normal, but nothing I do is helping. I keep trying to get him to do stuff but he's just so…" A disarming smile from her new friend twisted her tongue back down her own throat, and she looked away with her fists balled at her side.
"I think you might be looking at it the wrong way," said Gardenia. "Have you ever considered that your brother is being the person he's supposed to be?"
"How? He's been a limp biscuit for days. It's not fair."
"Who is it that decides who he's supposed to be?"
"Uhh…"
"Well? Who do you think?"
Her face twisted and she walked a little faster. The woman matched the beat of her steps without a second thought.
"If someone told you to be his hands, its simple things. Make sure he's eating, and that he knows that he can hug you if he wants to, and goodness knows isn't getting himself hurt. But you're not putting words in his mouth." It dipped into lecture territory for a moment, but she refreshed her optimism and hung the next words politely out to dry. "If someone loves their Pokémon so much, they'd have a lot to think about when they're gone. So, from my perspective, he's being exactly the person he always was. I think you can support him most by recognizing that."
Laina didn't know how to comprehend those words. They were in front of the Pokémon Center now, a few people bustling in and out. All of them seemed more friendly with the sidewalk than with the friends or family they were walking with. Gardenia passed the bike onto Arden, seeming that this was as far as she needed to go.
"Your brother is Ciel Fauder, isn't he?" she quietly asked.
Laina snapped her eyes to her. "How do you know who he is?"
The woman scratched her hair into a frizzy mess and tried poorly not to look suspicious. "It kinda fell into place when you mentioned he lost a Pokémon. A Typhlosion, a little sister, the fact you're in the northwest, it just sounds exactly like someone I keep hearing about on TV."
Ciel had been all over the news, that much Laina knew. From stopping a plane attacker to leading a rescue of trapped miners, there was no reason people wouldn't be slobbering all over him and asking for autographs. And then afterward? A dead Pokémon? Scandal in the making. Totally newsworthy.
Laina told Arden to head inside with the bike, and to corral the other two as best he could. A grunt was all she got out of him, but he snatched a handful of feathers on Brisa's neck with his snout and dragged her, along with the bike, into the sliding doors.
A chime erupted from Gardenia's wrist, and she answered a short call. She ended it with a pointed finger on the button and a frown. "Well, I should get running. Little altercation on the east end I need to take care of."
What, was she some kind of cop? She did say before she was called to stop "goons". Before she could leave, Laina reached out to grab her arm.
"Is there really nothing I can do?" she asked.
"Help keep him upright and be there to listen. He'll be all the stronger when he's finally put himself back together." Gardenia topped it off with a smile, held on tight to the Pokémon on her shoulder, and skipped down the sidewalk. "And send him my way when the Gym Challenge opens back up! I'm always on the lookout for uber-tough Trainers!"
Laina blinked. "Wait! You're a Gym Leader?!"
The woman was already long gone, leaving her mystified, confused, absolutely bamboozled, and nonetheless a little rejuvenated for what was ahead. She knocked her way through the sparse crowd with the bike and down the white and red halls to the guest room section, where Arden's flames lit the room door like a beacon—they weren't even orange anymore, more like a red or a purple somehow. The Scizor was on guard as usual and clicked a greeting with his pincers.
The door was unlocked. She slanted her bike against the wall and stepped into a grave.
He'd refused to open the curtains since he was released for bed rest, so she could barely make out the room. But for once, she heard his voice. Laina tip-toed down the entryway to get a better listen, and she saw nothing but the glow of an electronic device on one of the beds.
"Sorry this is a voicemail," he whispered. "Instead of, you know, a call. I kind of called when you'd be at work to make sure you couldn't pick up, because I don't think I could—"
He choked on something, and she nearly gave herself away by dropping the heavy breath ballooning in her chest. It took every ounce of her to let it out in peeps.
"I don't want you to think I'm avoiding you. I mean, I sort of am, right?" A stupid little laugh. "I'm avoiding a lot of things right now. Mom's probably pissed. I left her a mail too."
Within the single, millimeter beam of light coming from between the curtains, she could see his hand moving gently across a soft lump on the bed. Weirdly sick as Raven was, she knew he needed her.
"I'm an idiot. I don't want them to be in danger and then I left them with a twelve-year-old because I can't even think." His hand stilled when he paused. He pulled it away from Raven and kept it to himself, maybe feeling like he didn't deserve to care.
She inched closer. She wanted to say something, that he did deserve it. But Gardenia's words rang on repeat, and she just listened.
"I'm not sure what to say. You've probably seen it on TV."
One pause. One sob.
"He looked at me, Dad. He looked at me and told me it's what he wanted. I don't know how I'm supposed to accept that."
Ciel couldn't continue the message. He bawled until the voicemail beeped angrily at his slowness and then he clamped the device in his fingers.
His Pokémon had protected him, she was sure of it, but she had no clue from what. She wanted to know so much more, she wanted to be there to help him understand, to help him be who he needed to, whether that was himself or someone else.
Laina slinked out the door, hoped to dear Arceus or whoever that he didn't see the crack of light when she crossed back into the hall, and took in a huge breath. The other Pokémon, Arden, Mint, the Scizor—Mantis, right?—and Brisa all gathered around in curiosity.
She had planned on strolling up to the room, knocking the door down, and dragging him up the Coronet Range with her bare hands if she had to. But it wasn't working, and he wasn't getting any better on her watch.
So, she turned back around and knocked. Gently.
A few moments later, the door cracked open. He was unrecognizable from the person she saw when he wasn't there, his hair darker, his face building stubble, and his arm still strung up.
She asked, "Hey, uhh… I was wondering if you wanted to go biking. I was hoping to head up to Route 211, I guess."
He stared at her as if he'd never met her in his life. "I'm not sure that I..."
She resisted the urge to beg, to take what she wanted. Instead, she listened for his answer and forced herself to swallow it. He stood in the doorway much longer than he should've, lingering on the fractured arm slung to his chest.
"Do you think we could just ride around a bit instead? Like back in Goldenrod?" he asked.
Laina smiled more real than she ever had. "Yeah. Sounds like fun."
This whole volume handed it to me behind the scenes. Despite the trouble, I really like some of the stuff I ended up with. It's actually the first volume thus far that has the three main character pairs in one, and all of them are moving towards their own happiness in their own little ways.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll come back next time for Volume 14, Part 1: Mountain Rider. See you someday.