Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon, all rights to the owners.
I was going to write something entirely different, but as I was looking through the wiki I was on the page for Floccesy Town I noticed the old clock tower mentioned, and after a quick search I found there seemed to be absolutely no lore for it despite it supposedly being the fixture of the town, so… I guess I'm writing a story about the old clock tower to give it some detail.
Because clearly all of you were looking for fan lore about a random tower that no one cared about in one of the starting towns of an eight year old game.
I sometimes joke that out of everything in the tower, the keyhole gets the most wear and tear. Even with good coordination the key is bound to scrape the sides ever once in a while, and that goes especially for the winter when I'm wearing thick gloves.
It's not winter, but I still accidentally poke next to the keyhole with the key before properly sliding it in. The mechanism makes a satisfying click as I twist the key, and the hinges creak slightly as I push the heavy door open.
The hinges and the lock mechanism are by far the newest parts of the tower. Despite its age, very little has been replaced in this old building. Morning light shines through the roof, both through the openings on the top near the bell and the missing roof tiles.
The Floccesy conservation council has an odd policy of avoiding repairs on the tower as much as possible. The hinges and lock are just about the only "repairs" they've allowed. Even when the stairs were deemed dangerously unstable, they opted to build ladders and platforms rather than just repair the old stairs. Supposedly this is to preserve the feel of the old building, as repairs would make the building feel "inauthentic" or "unhistorical" because it would involve modifying the old structure with new materials that were not originally a part of it.
I suppose it gives me more exercise than I'd get otherwise; climbing ladders rather than stairs. It's not an issue, just an oddity.
The first thing I do every day when working on the tower is a Pokemon sweep. This is especially vital now during the early spring when many Pokemon are looking for a nice new place to call home. Climbing to the top of the tower reveals a familiar sight when I turn my gaze upward: a Purrloin sleeping on the beams above the bell tower. Some brown fur lying near the balustrade leads me to believe she probably had a meal last night, a Patrat judging by the color of the fur.
I leave Purrloin be. While technically I'm supposed to keep Pokemon out of the tower, Purrloin is more of a help than a hindrance. She's dealt with more than one pest in the time I've been here, usually Patrat that I can't get out from their burrows, therefore saving the town some money on hiring someone to remove them, and she doesn't make a mess beyond a bit of easy-to-sweep fur so I'm more than happy to let her stay.
I might need to do another sweep of the grounds though. If Purrloin caught that Patrat nearby that might mean there's a burrow on the grounds and I don't want a Venipede moving in. Venipede are even worse than Patrat. They cause less structural damage but they're quite aggressive towards everything, people included, and Purrloin won't even try to eat a Venipede so the town would have to hire someone to take care of it.
Today is one of those days where I have extra things to do, so I don't waste any time. Today is the day where I go about cleaning all the gears in this tower, and let me tell you, it's not a fast process. There are nearly a hundred gears of varying sizes in this tower. More than half of them would work the clock if they were connected, a quarter of them would deal with the bell, and the last quarter… we don't know what they do. We know they influenced the clock somehow, but the system is incomplete. Unfortunately, some of the missing parts of this tower that the town hasn't recovered and put on display over the years are some of the gears and (we think) and entire small room that were dedicated to this extra system.
Incidentally, the whole structure is much older than it's exterior architecture might suggest. Historians have some evidence to suggest there was a different clock tower here originally, and at some point a Unovan king tore down the old structure and built a new one, though kept all the old machinery. The stonework is only a few centuries old but the gears and clock face are at least twice that age, possibly thrice or even older.
And, need I remind you, proper mechanical clocks weren't invented until somewhere around the twelve-hundreds. The machinery here possibly predates that, and is more advanced than what should have been known at the time.
That said, there's also evidence to suggest the clocktower has never been activated. The bell distinctly lacks any impact marks from the automatic hammer that should hit it when the hands reach twelve o'clock.
They won't tell you this if you take the tour, of course. The town likes to pretend this tower is a memory of older times that "tells of Floccesy's beginnings", as the town was built around the tower. The truth is that the tower is far older and far stranger than the town lets on. The clock face has been stuck at 9:15 for two decades, and that's only by the coincidence of a violent windstorm from Tornadus that knocked the gears into rotating one minute's worth in 1995.
When cleaning the gears I always start at, well, the start of the gear chain, just for safety reasons. It's much harder to get your fingers caught between gears when there's no gear on one side. I pry the first gear off it's axle, oil my rag, and start scrubbing. It's a miracle these gears have held up so long. They rarely ever rust, and have suffered little weather or water damage despite their age.
Cleaning the gears isn't exactly difficult, nor does it require much focus. I fall into a routine very quickly and let my mind wander.
So, do you know what Floccesy's official motto is? It's "Prophecy flocks here", and if that sounds like an odd motto for a town, that's because it is. Between the Tower and the Pledge Rock just to the north, however, you can guess why that might be the case, even if there's no actual prophecy. Floccesy is hardly a center of archeology and cultural significance but it does possess two very odd relics with unclear purposes. Various theories have been thrown about detailing the supposed importance of both, from the pledge rock being a warning sign from Virizion to not proceed further into the forest at the threat of his vengeance to the Tower being a magical doomsday clock that is slowly ticking towards the end of the world at twelve o'clock, adding a minute every time a legendary Pokemon releases some portion of its power in anger.
An alert on my phone brings me out of my thoughts and tells me that it's almost noon, and I have to put my rags and gears down to attend to the bell. The automatic mechanism might not be connected, but the bell is still rung daily at noon for timekeeping purposes and so that the town can pretend it has a tourist activity. In reality, it's just me climbing to the top of the tower and hitting the bell a few times with a mallet.
"Purrloin." I call as I take the last step of the ladder. The cat yawns and glances down at me, her rest interrupted. "I'm going to ring the bell."
I don't need to explain what I'm doing, we go through this every day, but it only feels polite.
Purrloin stretches and hops down from the rafters onto the floor, then up onto the balustrade. She watches as I grab the mallet lying in the corner, count down the seconds on my phone, then firmly strike the mallet against the metal bell twelve times in a row, spacing each hit apart by approximately five seconds. As soon as I'm finished, Purrloin jumps back up onto the beams above the bell and curls up.
I'm always relieved a nocturnal Pokemon like Purrloin allows me to wake it up so casually without any hostility. I can't imagine most wild Pokemon, hunters especially, would be so accommodating.
With the bell rung, I break for lunch. I flip through news on my phone for a while as I chew on a ham sandwich. Supposedly there's a situation in Opelucid city with Team Plasma involving a legendary Pokemon which the gym leader is having trouble containing. The Rangers have been called in, and there's talk of possible military intervention being needed, so it just seems like an overall terrible situation as you'd expect of something involving Team Plasma.
I'm watching a live video of the situation when team Plasma's giant ice dragon freezes the city, and about a minute later the site crashes from having too much traffic.
I decide that's as good a time as any to finish lunch. Purrloin hopping down from upstairs, probably following the smell of meat, also spurs me to finish my meal (I give her a bit of ham anyways). I take a walk around the Tower grounds to find that possible Patrat burrow, and Purrloin tags along. She clearly doesn't like the sun, but she follows along behind me until I've made almost a full circle of the Tower, at which point she meows at me and walks over to the side of the Tower and sits.
I walk over to see that she's sitting next to a small hole in the ground. It's the aforementioned borrow. I nod appreciatively to Purrloin and go to fetch my shovel. I have to fill in this hole before something else takes residence.
While I do that, Purrloin makes her way back up to the top of the tower to sleep. I'm just finishing up my task when something unusual happens. A blast of frigid cold wind sweeps over the town, chilling me to the bone as it passes by and sending goosebumps cascading over my skin. It felt like winter decided it wasn't finished with the world, albeit for just a few seconds.
More likely though, I think it had something to do with Team Plasma's ice dragon. Though the implication that the effects of it's attack can be felt here, all the way across the country is… worrying.
A second burst of cold, this time accompanied by a strong wind, sweeps over me and the Tower. I raise my hands in a feeble shield, and behind me I can hear the Tower groan followed by a loud "thunk!" As soon as the wind passes I rush back inside, both for protection and to see what the noise could have been. None of the gears seem to have fallen, not even the ones on the table. The only difference in the room from how I left it is Purrloin hiding behind my bag.
The rest of my day is spent cleaning the gears, but with significantly more trepidation than before. For once, I make use of the radio function on my phone to listen into the events in Opelucid, and am relieved to eventually hear that Team Plasma was stopped by the Rangers, and their leader defeated by an up-and-coming trainer named Rosa along with the Opelucid gym leader Drayden.
Despite all the excitement and my distraction, I manage to finish my work in decent time. I'm done before dinner, and after I've locked up the tower and walk out the gate, I turn back to look at the clock... and see that the minute hand has shifted down to 16, meaning the tower now reads 9:16 rather than 9:15 as it did this morning.
I suppose that's where the noise came from, the wind must have strained the arms and rotated some of the gears inside, and I suppose that's one more bit of ammo for the magic doomsday clock theory.
It's going to take weeks for anyone else to notice the change though.
Worldbuilding one-shots are quite different from my standard fare from any fandom, but I hope some of you found it entertaining.