20.
Bathroom Scene
I love you like I love the sunny days of summer
I hate you like I hate the winter when it's cold
Candice awoke to the news that Raihan was toxic. He wasn't respecting the victims, they said. And he was too forward with his anti-coal agenda. Overnight he'd been suspended from social media, and his standing in the World Coronation Series was under review. As a result, he was currently on daytime television spouting off about Vermilion and Flint while promoting a new line of signed bandanas. Candice watched him on the hotel lobby TV from where she sat pouring a packet of brown sugar onto her oatmeal. He was tying a bandana around the knee of his jeans. Bright wildfire orange smothering navy blue.
"It's actually the color vermilion. I'm rebranding it for solidarity," said Raihan in his sonorous Wyndon lilt.
[Who's Raihan again?] Visquez asked in a private message.
[Not anyone important,] Candice replied, and then changed the channel, trying hard to deny that she wanted an overpriced knee scarf for herself. Nevermind that after weeks of goading that man he'd finally posted a V Sign selfie. Candice didn't feel like flashing the V Sign anymore. It felt… kind of mean. Flint had told her it was kind of mean in the first place. And now Flint was…
She stirred her oatmeal, watching the sugar melt into a syrupy brown sludge over the lumps. She then blew on a spoonful and tasted it. Pasty but palatable. Sustenance, at least.
The TV had broken from commercials and was now back to the local morning news. Jenny was reminding kids the new curfew was more important than climbing up the World Coronation leaderboard after dark. Also they needed to stop crossing the police tape around the Vermilion Gym Crater. It's not a dare. It's not your viral dance video background. It's too charred for anything worth looting to have survived.
I should call Visquez, Candice thought. Then she remembered Visquez wasn't a talk-it-out kinna gal.
Then I should call Buck. Buck would listen.
But she'd talked to Buck the previous night already. The guy called her using some girl's Rotom Phone when Candice was in her room trying to stomach her pizza. He'd been just dying to tell her about the glass in his foot.
"Yeah, it wasn't even by the Tower. It was outside the coffee shop. Espresso's the blood drug around here, but people are still splitting off into factions to fight over the cold press rations and one o' the things they do is see who can smash the most solar panels with rocks before the police show up. I sliced my foot like a mandolin, so I had to go to the ER. Turns out I was dehydrated, too. Like, 'Join the party,' the nurse told me while she put in the IV. Are you coming back soon? Don't come here. It's ass, Moscato. I can't even ride Claydol until I can get back on this foot, n' there's no way I'm letting my parents find out when they're deciphering Fireball's will. Turns out he left me a crapload of big nuggets? I might be rich now? Which I don't really know what to do with, 'cause my dad's gonna say I can finally afford an archaeology degree, but I'm just not sure I trust what they're teaching at that Jubilife University. I mean, 'Ideals are more important than truth?' 'You can't assume a mummified corpse's gender?' And who's gonna watch my little bro and sis if I'm gone? They're big enough now to go hiking on their own, but I will eat a solar panel to stop them from going near Heatran's nest."
"You sound better at least."
"I'm a total wreck! My brother exploded, my foot's shot, n' I listened to four hours of hold music today 'cause celebrities keep trying to hack my bank accounts. But right now I'm good. After I got discharged my new gang buddies took me to Penthouse Perilla to hide out for the night. The elevator's still broken, so anyone can come in here. Let's just say you were smart to get all that jewelry out when you did. Though that box of correspondences under the bed is gone. Everybody's gonna know who Fireball's mom is now."
"Did you say gang?"
"Oh, the Granola-Crunching Ginkgo Gang is chill. Mostly made of old Volknerds who don't support the panel-smashing. We control all of Ginkgo Plaza and the narrow section of the beach that has the solar boardwalk but not the section of the boardwalk with the graffiti on it, and we got the Marketplace but only the back two stalls. The front of the building is a no-man's land. Tomorrow we're gonna try to conquer the PokéCenter as well as secure part of Route 223. I'm gonna train some of these girls to ride Claydol. That way if things go south we can take Daybreak Town too."
That was it. None of the pizza was going to get eaten. Candice switched the elastic bands on her right wrist to her left and ran her fingers over the deep pink ruts left in the skin.
"It's okay to tell me how much you're hurting," she said. "I think… not enough communication is really what's causing all the crazy."
"I just toldja, Moscato. I'm dinged up. Do I need to get more detailed than that? Ya don't want me to cry, do ya? I already had my freak-out all over Aaron. If we had a signal here I'd be cringing watching it again on TV—HEY, HEY! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!? Sorry, Moscato, I gotta go. The UltraMega Aipom Squad is suction-cupping up the side of the building! They wanna steal our espresso! CRAP! I MEAN WE DON'T HAVE ANY ESPRESSO! GTFO BUTT-HANDED LOSERS! BUCK PERILLA! REMEMBER THE NAME!"
Later that night Buck assured her he'd fought them off valiantly from his seat on the couch, and then crawled into Volkner's bathroom to wash his face with the bidet.
And then he asked if she wanted to come to Sunyshore and have snacks with him. He asked if that was a weird thing to ask. And then he apologized, but still offered the snacks anyway. He had an extra full styrofoam cup of espresso in the freezer his gang didn't know about, and a bag of cheesy chips he'd looted, and he hoped to loot more in the next week as the Granola-Crunching Ginkgo Gang set off to conquer Daybreak Town.
[Moscato, I just don't know what I'm doing with my life] was the final message, sent just before four in the morning.
"Oh, don't make me feel for you too," she later told her pasty oatmeal.
It wasn't what she replied to his text, of course. She simply said, [Get out of that city,] and for sheer professionalism she wasn't going to look at whatever he'd replied.
She finished her oatmeal and made sure her Pokémon on hand had their fill of kibble and berries. Her own ferry out of Vermilion City was due in an hour or so. She was headed for a layover in the South Sinnoh Port, then a connection in Canalave and the long, chilly ride back up to Snowpoint City, where the odd magic of the land kept it frozen and peaceful year-round.
It was time to come home, her family said. To rest. To grieve. To interview for her dead boyfriend's position. Slip up and make some joke about urns. Were they even burying Flint? Did they have any of him to keep?
Her hands were smeared with mascara, she realized. Too much eye-rubbing after a sleepless night in the Port of Exquisite Sunsets. Feeling makeup was one thing she could control, Candice rose from her seat at the table and crossed the lobby to the one-stall unisex bathroom in the middle of the first-floor hallway. She tugged open the door and was surprised to find another person already standing at the sink just within.
"Oh, sorry!" Candice squeaked.
The other person turned slowly to meet her gaze. Too skinny was Candice's first thought. Sleep-deprived was her second. And totally fierce for the overall energy.
"Geez, girl. Looks like the Tower's at the top of your deck this week."
The woman straightened and gave a twitching grin. She was only wearing a pair of long black leggings and a matching black tank top, with a pair of skintight gray kitten heel boots hugging her knees. Her thin bare arms stood out stark and pale, save for places where the skin was warped and reddened with burns.
The biggest of these reached across her face, from the chin to the left ear. A curious field of blisters, wide and round at the base, then splitting off into several angled stripes that cupped her high cheekbone like a hand made of crispy dead skin.
"The Tower," the woman mused in a voice like scratchy acid. "Disaster brought about by one's own careless mistakes. How did you read that?"
"I… didn't. I just thought you looked rough, and that's a phrase I like to throw around."
"Well, you'd be correct. Now what do you need me out of here for? A cry break? I'm almost done with mine."
She wasn't crying, Candice noted. She looked too exhausted to express any kind of emotion at all, though those burns meant pain, and her shaking meant a very short temper.
"I was actually going to redo my makeup. Is it all right if I'm in here with you?"
"Not a problem," the woman rasped, looking disgusted at the amount of skin flaking into her palms as she lightly scratched her chin. She moved over a bit, and Candice fully entered, locking the door for the privacy of both. Then she wet her hands and started scrubbing her face with a shot of foaming soap from the dispenser. A fruity scent. Thankfully not cheri berry.
"I'm Candice," she told the other woman then. "I'm just on my way back to Sinnoh this morning. Gotta get away from the crazy here, ya know?"
The woman smirked, then winced a bit as she pressed a wet cloth over the hand-shaped burn.
"My name is Matori," she said. "I just came from Sinnoh. I'm playing hooky from work."
"Really? What part?"
"Sunyshore City," Matori groaned.
"Oh… yeah, I've heard it's not the best, with the espresso running dry. They should probably look into that."
"I don't care about a fancy coffee shortage. Sunyshore was horrid before the turf war. A hideous city with an idiot architect. Was the solar Volkner's choice?"
Candice nodded. "Actually, his original idea was to build a nuclear plant, but solar really grew on him. He likes the idea of a sustainable city."
"Right. He likes the idea. But no one told Volkner his solar panels at most have a thirty-year lifespan and contain such substances as cadmium, selenium and lead, making them difficult to recycle and ultimately still toxic to the environment. Where will Sunyshore City be eventually? Groveling at Oreburgh's feet for more coal? Or maybe by then Oreburgh will be solar-powered too, with its mine boarded off and half of Mount Coronet already shaved, and all of Sinnoh will fall into chaos? All because of one scatterbrained Gym Leader whose city trusted too much in his genius."
Candice was going to argue, but Matori had produced a jar of petroleum jelly from her purse and was just about to smear it over the hand-shaped burn.
"No, don't use that! Use aloe. It needs to breathe. Otherwise it'll get infected."
"I don't have aloe."
"I do! Just let me get it out of my suitcase. It should be buried in the bottom with all the skirts. Not sure why I put it there. I had to pack up sporadically and it's really not fun to leave a nice vacation spot knowing you're going home to your boyfriend's pending funeral even though the old 'rituals' say only other Elites can attend and I don't understand why they'd have anything to cremate anyway given that… oh, here it is. Yeah, use this. I can't have you ruining your skin. You're so pretty. "
Matori sighed and took the green bottle, slathering a good amount over her face and arms and then taping on a light dressing of cotton. She then reached for a pair of round wire-framed glasses, which were sitting on the edge of the sink. Slipping them on, she gave Candice a blank look, purple eyes flashing like moons beneath the lenses.
"I was hired because I was pretty," she said.
"Oh, are you a model?"
"A secretary."
"Oh, that's…odd… "
"For the boss of Team Rocket."
"What?"
Candice's lips were still pursed for her sparkly pink lip gloss when Matori unzipped a duffel bag shoved behind the toilet. She plunged her boots through the legs of a set of bibbers, slipping her arms through the top straps and zipping up the front. Then she produced a cropped gray-black jacket with a split up the front just between the legs of a big red R. She pushed her hands through the sleeves, then strained to zip up the back. Then came the gray gloves stretched up to her elbows and a singed black beret that she placed haphazardly atop her purple bob cut.
"What. We're not allowed to dress in corner store bathrooms anymore. Plasmadonna thinks it's funny to steal lightbulbs."
"You're in Team Rocket."
"For the time being. I failed my last mission. My boss was appropriately disappointed. I expect termination at any moment. There's any number of pretty Alpha Class agents who could replace me. None of them are as crafty, of course, or in tune with our leader's whims. But even I am not perfect. I accept that I'm a failure. You saw the proof right in front of you. You even made a joke about it."
"What did I make a joke about?"
But Candice's heart was beginning to sink.
A Tower.
Sunyshore.
Hand-shaped burn.
All those half-assed pulp articles she'd stayed up all night reading.
"The situation in Sunnyshore City worsens with the shocking discovery that remains belonging to Flint of the Elite Four were found after an explosion destroyed the top half of Volkner's famous construction, the Sunnyshore Tower..."
"The Eco Friendly City of the Future is a Dystopian Hellscape, says Steven Stone at dinner. His secret romance with Cynthia in peril?"
"Murders in the Four: The story of another controversial turnover in Sinnoh's dark castle. Who will be next?"
"Don't look at me," Matori scoffed. "I didn't kill Flint. My job was to capture and contain him until the boss declared the siege a go. I sent in Zoroark. I holed him up in the Tower. I underestimated him until things came to their obvious conclusion."
A blue flash erupted from Candice's purse. She raised her right hand and straightened all her fingers, aiming Glaceon's frigid maw right at the Rocket agent's face.
"Who did it, then?" she asked cooly.
Focused. Much more controlled than her opponent, who only doubled down on her destabilizing mood.
"I can't believe he fell in love with you when you put so little faith in him now."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You think he's dead? Because that's what everyone else is saying? Because that's what 'the cool people' are saying?"
"Are you saying he's not?"
"Do you need me to tell you he's not?"
"Don't play with me like this. Where things stand, I'm the strongest Gym Leader in Sinnoh—"
"Then the rest of the League is so much more fragile than we thought they were. What a shame. Supreme Leader Candice getting her opinions from tabloids and empty heads on social media—"
"STOP IT!" Candice shrieked.
Glaceon growled, charging up an attack, and the bathroom grew arctic in seconds.
"Oh, stop what?"
"I know I trust too much in what 'the cool people' say, but I still have a brain. And right now, if you're telling me Flint is alive, then I…"
"Is he?" Matori said with a sneer. A much better sneer than Marcell's, she thought. Practiced. Calculated. Renegading? Perfectly.
"I don't know. I don't know. Just tell me. Tell me or I'll freeze you to the wall and leave you there."
"Ugh, you're boring."
"GLACEON!"
"He's alive, but he's weak," Matori growled over the sound of a charging Ice Beam. "I know exactly where he is now. I can take you to him. I'll let you two have a chat. You can even take him off our hands. We don't want anything to do with him."
"You're lying."
"Am I lying? Did they find a body in the Tower? Or a pile of clothes and a rope? Charred by the same hand that ruined my pretty face? What are the actual facts of the case, unembellished or bent by the bias of bystanders?"
"That's impossible."
"You actually kissed him and you're telling me it's not possible. Willing contact, skin-to-skin."
"Not… not like that… He wouldn't hurt you. Not on purpose."
"Of course it wasn't on purpose. Because he can only create flames when he's afraid."
Someone knocked on the bathroom door then. Evidently the allotted cry break time was almost up and the next girl needed her share.
"Did you hurt him?"
"My job was to contain him, like I said. But that mission is done and over with. He kept Blazing up. I got frustrated. I left the Tower for five minutes. I let him escape. He was completely free until a recon squad could locate him and Zoroark and bring them to a secure location. Still entrusted to me since I have clearance, though I await termination anyway. But now, since the boss has decided there's sex appeal in renegading, I'm no longer obliged to follow his orders. Which means I'm perfectly content to let you see Flint, provided you can assist me with my next move."
"What are you planning?" Candice asked, twitching her fingers just slightly so her Pokémon yawned and the walls began to crawl with crystals.
Matori smirked.
"I've heard you're quite the fashionista. How about you put on a cute black uniform just like this one?"
And I show Giovanni my own new recruit…
~N~
Oh, good lord, the title of Matt Walsh's show today. Didn't listen in, but I had a good laugh while I was writing this chapter. XD I've also been reading some other Sinnoh-set crime fics, and I'm trying to balance humor with the (apparent) realities at hand in my own. I love Buck, though. MVP.
Also, to the guest reviewer who summarized this fic in one sentence, lmao.
Published by Syntax-N on July 28th, 2022. Reposting is not allowed on FictionHunt or any other third party site. Reviews here appreciated.