Chapter 28: Party at Backlot's

Lucas strode triumphantly into the Pokemon Center, marching towards Morgan who was petting her new Skoropi that was contently snoozing in her lap. The wild-haired dark Trainer looked up leisurely at her Mohawked rival, "So does this mean you got your badge this time?"

With a beaming sneer, the teen boy flipped the badge towards the girl like a coin, his new Fen badge landing on the couch next to her. The first time Lucas fought against Pastoria City's Gym Leader, Barry, the teen had lost. Not only that, the Leader's expression of disappointment over Lucas' skills had left the boy questioning whether or not to continue as a Trainer, as his confidence against refacing the Gym Leader was totally shot. After Morgan's own brand of pep-talk, Lucas faced his demon of never living up to anyone's expectations and after vigorous training and planning, the young man faced the Leader again. This time Lucas' new-found confidence and planning had worked, and he defeated Barry, earning his fifth badge.

With a smile of her own Morgan added, "That's more like it. No more acting like a pussy, right?"

"Nope. Those days are over. I know it for sure this time," Lucas grabbed the badge back and stuck it in his badge case before heading to the counter to heal his victorious team, "And I'm pumped to head for the next Gym,"

"Well, don't count for that next Gym to be in Sunnyshore, the road's still closed," Morgan groaned, "That means I still can't catch a ferry to Hoenn,"

"What? But that means it's been closed for over a week now, right? What could possible be that wrong with the power grid in Sunnyshore to shut down the road in or out of the city for over a week?" Lucas commented with surprise as the nurse handed back his now-healed Pokemon.

"I have no idea. But that means I'm stuck in Sinnoh with nothing to do but wait. I guess I'll go to this party after all," the teen girl said in an exasperated sigh.

"What party?" Without answering, Morgan reached into her purse, pulled out an off-white card embossed with silver letters and handed to Lucas. The boy read the pretentious-looking invitation:

Miss Morgan, former Champion of the Johto League and one guest are invited to Mr. Backlot's annual Trainer Appreciation Ball.

According to the card, the date of the ball was today. Lucas handed back the invitation and Morgan unceremoniously stuffed it back into her purse, "I normally hate these kinds of things. They are always super boring and you're surrounded by these pretentious, rich Trainers who don't even do most of their own training and you have to listen to them drone on and try to impress you, while all the while you're trying not to punch them in their stupid, rich faces. The upshot is that you sometimes see some really cool Pokemon and the food is really good. Normally I wouldn't even consider going, but I figure I rather be bored and chowing down on good food than be bored and rely on Pokemon Center vending machines," Morgan then asked Lucas a question that very much surprised him, "Want to come with?"

Lucas crossed his arms and smirked, "First you help me with the Gym Leader and now you're inviting me to be your date for this party. Are you sure you aren't just a little bit attracted to me? A lot of girls do find the whole bad-boy thing pretty sexy,"

"It's not a date, dumbass, I figured it'd be less boring to go with someone who I know. And like I told you before, you are not my type," she then added harshly, "I do not like redheads,"

Lucas shrugged, "Suit yourself. So where is this Backlot place, anyway?"

"Just south of Hearthome,"

"And how do you expect to get there in time. From here to Hearthome is like a three day walk,"

Morgan rolled her eyes, "It's amazing that you can be this good a Trainer and at the same time be this stupid. Remember how I said how I got here from Celestic Town? I flew here on my Honchrow. I intend to fly to Hearthome and then walk to the party,"

Lucas felt his cheeks warm slightly, "Oh. Right. That makes sense. Except none of my Pokemon know Fly yet,"

"Why doesn't that surprise me? Well, I've been doing you so many favors recently anyway, you might as well fly with me, too,"

Flying on the back of a Pokemon was an amazing experience for Lucas. The Sinnoh region below rushed by as the wind blew on his face. Morgan's Honchrow's wings flapped steadily in a soothing rhythm. The teen boy assumed he might be at least a little bit scared, having never even flown on an airplane before, but he didn't feel an ounce of fear, just exhilaration. Within an hour, the two teens had arrived in Hearthome, a city now filled with memories both good and bad for the male Trainer. The two stopped at the Pokemon Center first to change, as the invitation requested formal or semi-formal attire. This proved problematic for Lucas as he owned no article of clothing that fit that description. After several minutes of consideration, the teen boy settled on his white band t-shirt and one of his less baggy pair of pants. To compensate for his own attire, Lucas found a scrap of fabric and tied it around Gizmo's neck like a bow-tie and set his loyal Pokemon on his shoulder again.

Lucas waited for several minutes in the Pokemon Center lobby for Morgan. She finally came out of the woman's dormitory and the young man had to admit she looked rather nice. She was wearing a long black dress with glittering silver sequins and opera-length black gloves. She had toned down her heavy makeup to make her eyes look wider and her lips smaller. Her black hair was still wildly teased and voluminous, but she had taken the large hair bow out. When she looked at what Lucas was wearing, she seemed appalled, "Do you just not understand what formal means?"

"Hey, this bag..." Lucas lifted up his duffel bag for demonstration, "...Contains all my worldly possessions. And when you carry around absolutely everything you own it's not always possible to pick up extra things like tuxedos when you also have to haul around every article of clothing, cookware and personal items you possess, too. At least this shirt has sleeves,"

"I guess for you that is formal," Morgan shifted her attention to the Eevee on the boy's shoulder, "At least Gizmo looks pretty dapper,"

Finally ready, the two headed for Backlot and the Trainer Appreciation Ball. As Morgan had said, Backlot's Mansion was just south of Hearthome City, and only took a twenty-minute walk to get there. The place was not difficult to find, for not only was the millionaire's palatial mansion visible from almost a mile away, but the closer they got to the house the more decorations and party-goers they ran into. Though the bulk of the gala was intended to be inside the giant building, it appeared Backlot invited so many Trainers that the party spilled out into the grounds. Though it didn't quite seem as bad as Morgan had described, Lucas still felt badly out of place. It wasn't just because he seemed to be the only person in a t-shirt, but he got the feeling that he would have next to nothing in common with the other guests. He could understand Morgan not wanting to go alone, and seeing the well-dressed Trainers chatting eloquently with one and other, Lucas didn't want to wander too far from Morgan, either.

Once at the main gates, Morgan handed her invitation to the guard who looked over Lucas with a roll of his eyes but let the two in anyway. Lucas was still considering turning around and going back to Hearthome but hunger encouraged him to stay and at least check out the buffet first. For all the pretentiousness of the guests and decorations, the food was amazingly low-key. Though there were high-end options such as fine cheeses and French hor'dourves, there was also a large selection of more pedestrian fare such as huge slices of pizza and grilled bratwurst. What Morgan had promised was true, the food was amazingly good, some of the best he had ever tasted. And once he had his fill on his favorites, he became more adventurous and began to sample some of the things he didn't recognize.

After several minutes, a group of cute maids in frilly uniforms gathered the attention of the attendees and pointed out to the top of a grand staircase where a very heavyset, jovial man was waving to the Trainers below, "Hello ladies and gentlemen! Thank you all for coming to my annual Trainer's Appreciation Ball. This party is the highlight of my year. I am Mr. Backlot. As many of you know, I love Pokemon with all my heart. I built this mansion in such a way that Pokemon could comfortably and safely wander my property, and that the Trainers of Pokemon could be welcomed and honored for the work they do. I have not met many of you, but you have been invited here because you have reputations for being excellent Trainers and former Champions. I hope this gala is a true 'thank you' from me to you for your achievements, and that you truly enjoy it here. And with that I officially open the party. Now everyone, have fun and dig in!"

A roar of applause broke out over Backlot's speech as a sea of confetti came down from the ceiling. With the toast over, the guests returned to mingling, though Lucas' uncomfortable feeling returned again. The Trainer froze in surprise when an unfamiliar voice called out his name, "Excuse me, Lucas!"

Lucas spun on his heels to be greeted with a short, skinny, middle-aged man wearing a lab coat and think glasses. He adjusted his massive glasses to give Lucas a better look, "You are Lucas, aren't you? Professor Oak described you to me, but one never can be too sure,"

"Yeah, I'm Lucas, who are you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Professor Oak's Aide. The professor asked if I saw you to give you this," the man reached into her lab coat and pulled out an object that looked like a CD, "This is the Hidden Machine for the move Fly. Professor Oak figured you would probably want this so you don't have to waste so much time traveling. It's lucky I ran into you here. Well, enjoy the party,"

And with that the man melted back into the crowd leaving Lucas with the HM. Though the encounter was slightly strange, the Trainer was happy to receive the gift from the professor. This meant he could use one of his own Pokemon to fly as freely as he did on Morgan's Honchrow. Speaking of Morgan, Lucas made his way over to rescue her. An obnoxious looking man with a handlebar mustache was trying to convince her how useless dark-types were, and Morgan looked about ready to kill him, "Hey, can I talk to you for a second?"

Morgan looked relieved to be pulled out of the conversation and the two wandered back to the food table when the girl's grim expression returned. Lucas had always figured Morgan didn't like just about everyone, and just was in a bad mood all the time. The expression Morgan bore now was nothing compared to all those other 'bad moods'. If looks could kill, several dozen people around would have dropped dead. She said venomously, "Goddamit! Not him!"

Lucas had been so focused on Morgan's poisonous new facial expression it hadn't dawned on him to check what she had actually been staring at to bring on the mood. A young man, in his late teens, had just entered the main hallway to Backlot's party. He wore a black suit with black shirt and white tie, which gave the vague impression of him being a gangster. He had shoulder-length, rust-colored, red hair that framed his thin pale face. He seemed like an impatient kind of person, as though everything he did was far more important than anyone else. Lucas joked, "What is he, an ex-boyfriend?"

"Hell no!" Morgan hissed as she slowly backed away from the table, darting her eyes from side to side as though she were looking for an escape route, "Listen. If he comes over here, you don't know me, you've never heard of me. Got it?"

Before Lucas could say anything, Morgan had already vanished, leaving him completely abandoned in the sea of well-dressed, well-mannered Trainers whom he had nothing in common with. As the teen boy cursed the girl out under his breath, the redheaded young man who made Morgan flee approached him, "Excuse me, have you seen a girl around here? About nineteen years old, very full lips, teased black hair,"

"Nope, I'm pretty sure I'd remember seeing someone that trashy-looking around here," Lucas said as loudly as possible, hoping the girl would hear as punishment for abandoning him.

"Thank you anyway," the boy said with a sigh and slumped his shoulders sadly. Soon after, he too melted back into the crowd and disappeared. Morgan, however, did not return, leaving Lucas to once again curse her out. Now with only Gizmo for company Lucas considered finally leaving the party. He had more than enough to eat, and didn't want to be so classless as to stuff his pockets with food for later. He had never been in a mansion before, so he figured before heading out he'd look around and see how the other half lived.

Much to his disappointment, most of the mansion's doors were locked, probably as means to prevent theft and the snooping the teen Trainer was now attempting. The only unlocked room was an area that looked like a library or study, and though the door was open, the area was still cordoned off by a red velvet rope. This was especially disheartening as this room seemed the most interesting. From what Lucas could see, in addition to the shelves stuffed with books were fossils, artifacts and dozens of other things that piqued his curiosity. He considered sneaking in unnoticed, but when a burly looking security guard stepped next to the door, the last of Lucas' hopes were dashed. Full, abandoned and bored, Lucas made his way to leave.

"Want to make one last swing by the buffet, there, Gizmo?" Lucas asked the Eevee on his shoulder, "Speak now or forever hold your peace, because I'm done with this place,"

Gizmo didn't seem to respond. The teen boy turned his face towards his Pokemon. There was something very wrong with the Eevee. Gizmo was focused intently on something, his tiny claws digging into Lucas' shoulder and his ears twitching frantically. This wasn't like in Hearthome City when Gizmo became smitten with Donna and couldn't take his eyes off of her. There was no joy or curiosity in the normal-type. This was panic and fear.

Lucas took the Eevee off of his neck and held the Pokemon in his hands. He looked around to see what could possibly be stressing his creature so badly. All he saw was a crowd of Trainers, none particularly standing out. He didn't recognize any Team Cosmic members, and he didn't notice any body language that suggested a guilty pickpocket or agitated youths about to start a fight. There were a few loose Pokemon wandering around with their Trainers, but he doubted this was Gizmo's problem, after all, the Eevee never had any issue with any Pokemon before. The Eevee seemed to get worse, squirming fearfully in Lucas' grasp and crying out in unhappy little barks. Lucas was beginning to get very worried now, "Buddy, what's up? What's wrong?"

"Oh isn't that sweet, taking care of your girlfriend's Pokemon for her," Lucas turned to face a slim young man, only slightly taller than himself wearing a white suit, shirt and tie. He had dark brown hair, combed back stylishly with a condescending smile on his face and a vapid looking girl hanging on his arm. Gizmo stopped screaming and squirming, and was now pressed against Lucas' chest, trying to make himself as small as possible. He wasn't entirely sure why, but Lucas instinctively hated this boy, and it wasn't just because he was a pretentious asshole.

"No, Gizmo's my Pokemon," Lucas replied curtly, sizing the boy up.

"That's nice. Eevee are quite rare and can be useful if you do it right. Did you just get it?"

"No. I've had him for a few months now," Lucas stated again without any emotion. Gizmo was trembling so badly now the Trainer was worried he wasn't have a seizure.

"And you haven't evolved him yet? Boy, you must be an excellent Trainer," The young man commented sarcastically. The woman on his arm and several formally dressed Trainers behind him began laughing haughtily. The man's smile increased from the approval of his joke.

"For your information, Gizmo can't evolve. And that's fine by me," Lucas decided he had enough. He needed to get help for his Eevee ASAP and began to walk away from the obnoxious young man.

"I used to have an Eevee like that. Completely useless. I wasted probably two weeks in that damned Eterna Forest trying to get it to become a Leafeon. You have no idea how bad the bugs are in that place. Finally I got so fed up I told it to just stay by the rock and wait for me," The young man explained casually as he ran his fingers through his hair.

Lucas stopped cold in his tracks, "What did you say?"

"That thing was so stupid, I bet it's still waiting by that stupid rock. Boy, I wish I could see the look on its face, still thinking I'm coming back for it," the man began laughing and his entourage laughed along with him. His laughter stopped instantly when a right uppercut sent him flying across the room, crashing into a potted plant.

Lucas launched himself at the brown-haired boy, grabbing him by the lapels of his suit and throwing him to the floor. His steel-toed boots found their way to the young-man's stomach twice before the tattooed teen pinned the boy to the floor with his own body began throwing punch after punch to his opponent's face, "Infected stomach wound." Crack! "Fluid in the lungs!" Wham! "Hypothermia!" Thunk! "He almost died!"

The teen was like a wild animal now, wrapping his hands around the man's neck and squeezed slowly, reveling in the look of wide-eyed fear the ridiculous piece of filth was giving him. This look was nothing compared to that look of desperation Gizmo gave him, shuddering and shivering by the Moss Rock. The way this man was gasping for breath was only a fraction of the suffering the Eevee felt as his breathing stopped inside of Lucas' vest while the boy's legs screamed in pain from running to the Pokemon Center. When the man's eyes began to roll into his head, Lucas let go and began his chorus of punches again, that cocky, snide face becoming less and less recognizable with each blow to his skull, "He almost died! He almost died! You ABANDONED your Pokemon, you LIED to him that you were coming back and you dare to make JOKES about it? A piece of garbage like you has no right to live! You want to know the look on Gizmo's face when he was waiting for you? It's going to be the same look you have when I tear your goddamn throat out!"

"Oh my god! Someone get that animal off of him!" the boy's female companion shrieked. Just before Lucas could lay another punch, a pair of massive guards yanked the teen off of his victim and shoved him towards the roped-off room. They threw him onto a couch of the study and while one guard kept an eye on their prisoner, the other went to find Mr. Backlot.

As the adrenaline and anger subsided, reason and thinking flooded back to Lucas' mind and he took in what he had actually done. This situation had even been worse than the boy at school who had thrown rocks at the Pidgey. Over the months since Lucas had started training, he had often imagined what Gizmo's original Trainer was like. He thought it was some stupid kid who didn't know anything about Pokemon and didn't know what he was doing, or some impatient, heartless Trainer who had left Gizmo in a fit of anger. Never in a million years had he imagined that Gizmo's Trainer was this horrible sadist, who had intentionally told his loyal Pokemon that he would return for him, would make jokes about his act of premeditated cruelty. Until the day he died, Lucas would not regret the injuries he caused that bastard. But he also had, seemingly unprovoked, violently attacked someone in a huge room of witnesses.

It felt ironic that they were holding him in this room, the room he was so curious to see beforehand, now his prison. There was no doubt that the police would be called. Lucas sank his head in his bloody hands, his own fresh blood mixing with the dry blood of his target, dripping from cuts on his knuckles made by the man's teeth when he punched his mouth. He had really messed up this time. Between the open case still in Cherrygrove and this incident, he would not see outside of a jail cell until well after his eighteenth birthday, or even after his twenty-fifth. It wasn't about his family or John this time, but with this fight, it was more than certain that he would lose his Pokemon. He felt no remorse for what he had done to the man in the formerly white suit, but he regretted this action more than any in his life. He would lose them all. Hotrod who had just evolved, Franky, the Gyrados with such a happy temperament, Sparky who just wanted to see the world after decades trapped in an abandoned house, and Gizmo...

A tiny 'vii' sound made Lucas look up. He had set Gizmo down before attacking his former Trainer and lost track of the Pokemon in the commotion. But the Eevee was back, sitting in front of his new Trainer with his ears cocked to the side in curiosity and his large black eyes shining with concern. Despite his fear and stress from seeing his old Trainer again, all Gizmo cared about right now was how Lucas was doing. Seeing how much that Eevee cared about him made him feel even worse, and it was likely he would never see him again. Without a word Lucas scooped up his first Pokemon and held the small creature close against his chest. Then, in the first time since he was seven years-old, Lucas broke down and sobbed.