Chapter 7:

A Flowery Friend

As the dust cleared, the sight that was before Noelle was intense. Lying on the ground about a foot from the wall was a small stump, completely devoid of any movement. Crushed into the concrete wall behind the stump was Cranidos, flipped over onto his back, suspended upside down, completely unconscious. As Noelle stared, trying to decipher exactly what he was witnessing, the small lifeless stump sprouted a body, arms, and a small black tip on top. Eyes appeared and blinked a couple times before the stump levitated up and looked at Noelle. "Tump?" Phantump said quizzically.

Noelle stared back before exclaiming, "You did it Phantump! We won!"

At the split second before Cranidos reached Phantump next to the wall, Phantump retracted his ghostly form into the stump and the solid part of his being hit the ground. Cranidos, running too fast to change course, tripped over Phantump, did a slight somersault before hitting the wall directly with his back, the collision causing him to be stuck and suspended in the concrete itself.

Noelle ran towards Phantump as he floated up to Noelle's chest. He pulled him in close and gave him a big hug while petting him. Phantump was overjoyed and cheering at his accidental victory. Roark approached the two while returning his Cranidos to its pokéball. "Congratulations Noelle," he said. "You won the Coal Badge from me."

Roark held the badge out to Noelle who took it from him with a grin. "Thank you, Roark. That was a great battle!"

Roark nodded his head while Noelle examined the badge. "Do you have a badge case?"

"No, I don't," Noelle responded while rubbing his head embarrassed.

"That's okay, I have some back at my place if you guys want to follow me there. My dad made them from steel up in Canalave City."

Ariya and Omar ran down by Noelle and Roark and congratulated him on his victory. Omar put his arm around Noelle's shoulders and rubbed his hair like a small child. Noelle grinned as the three followed Roark out of the gym.

Once at Roark's house, he led them inside to a wooden case with glass doors. Upon opening the case, there were many items inside. Badge cases, actual badges, underground mining tools, shards, and stones. Roark grabbed the nearest badge case and offered it to Noelle.

"Here you are. Consider it a present for winning your first gym battle on your first try. Now, I need to get to the pokémon center and heal up my team, I'm sure Ralts and Snorunt could use a could freshening up too!" Roark said with a laugh.

The four of them departed for the pokémon center, the whole way Roark was explaining to them the mining operations that were taking place south of the city. Once at the pokémon center, Noelle and Roark handed Nurse Joy their pokémon, and walked over to the café. They order teas and coffees and continued to chat while Nurse Joy healed their pokémon to full health. Per usual, Ralts came charging at Noelle from behind the counter and climbed up his back handful by handful of sweatshirt before coming to rest on his shoulder. "Hey buddy," Noelle said to him, giving him a pat on the head.

Once they had retrieved all their pokémon from Nurse Joy, they exited the pokémon center. "Well, you guys still have a lot of daylight," Roark said to them. "You should get going to Eterna City. Gardenia should be your next gym challenge."

Noelle thanked Roark for all the help and they were on their way out of Oreburgh City. "Alright, if we leave through the north exit, that will take us up straight to Eterna City," Omar told the others.

Noelle and Ariya nodded and they were on their way back to Noelle's home city. After exiting Oreburgh City, they came across a split in the road. To the east sat an enormous mountain, and to the north they could see some of Eterna City's buildings on the horizon. "If we go east, that would take us to Hearthome City. North will continue us to Eterna. I don't think we need to go to Hearthome yet, so we should just keep going," explained Omar.

As they continued north, they moved out of the mountainous terrain that surrounded Oreburgh City to grassier, field-like terrain. Once past the rocky terrain completely, they approached a huge long stretch of bridge that led right to Eterna City. "I've been here before. This is Cycling Road. This was one of the reasons I had gotten a bike, but honestly, I never even left Eterna City. They don't really like when people walk it, but we do not really have a choice as of right now," Noelle told his friends.

They began the trek up the concrete bridge and got a lot of nasty looks from the people who were riding their bikes up and down the construct. As they continued, they attempted to ignore the bikers who were glaring at them from left and right, and eventually reached the end of the bridge. The trek took quite some time from Oreburgh to Eterna, and the sun was beginning to set. Omar made note of this to his friends. "My house is here, we can stay there for the night," Noelle responded.

As they entered Eterna City, there were quite a few people walking the streets that greeted Noelle as he returned. "Well, well, well, Mr. Popular," teased Omar.

Noelle shushed him as they made their way to his house for the night. As they arrived at Noelle's house, the sun had just gone down and it was dark out. He unlocked the front door, and turned the lights on, illuminating his dark and empty residence. "Well, this is my place," said Noelle with a sigh.

"It's decorated beautifully Noelle. Did your mom pick out all of the décor?" Ariya asked him.

"Yes, she did. She did do a pretty good job with the house."

"Does she not live here? Or is she just not home?" Ariya questioned.

"Actually, she passed away last week. She had been sick for a while. That's why I left on my journey, I wasn't taking care of her anymore," Noelle answered as he looked down at the floorboards.

"Oh… I'm sorry Noelle. I didn't mean to push."

"It's okay. I think it was coming for a while, I just hadn't prepared for it."

"I know the feeling Noelle," Omar interrupted. "But hey, who's hungry?" he said with a spirited tone to change the mood.

Noelle and Ariya didn't question his statement as they agreed they could go for some dinner.

"There are vegetables in the back garden we could use to make dinner if you want so we don't have to eat any of our travelling food we packed," Noelle said.

"You two rest your pretty little heads," Omar told them. "I am going to take care of dinner. Noelle you had a long hard battle- and consider it my congratulations for catching your first pokémon Ariya."

Noelle and Ariya laughed as Omar put on a floral apron that was hanging up in Noelle's kitchen. He led Ariya to his childhood bedroom. "Awww, look at the cute munchlax slippers!" Ariya teased Noelle.

"Oh quiet, they are super comfortable!" he responded. "But yes, this is my room in all its glory."

She looked through his stuff as Noelle looked out the window to see Omar in the back garden harvesting ripe vegetables. He smiled as he saw the garden was not neglected in the couple of days he had been absent. Gardenia had been tending to the garden, and hopefully bringing the vegetables into town to feed some people. He turned back around to see Ariya holding his journal he had used when he was a couple of years younger. His eyes widened as she held it up looking at him. "You're lucky I'm not as nosy as you or I could've gotten a bunch of juicy details out of here," she said while laughing and throwing the journal towards him.

He shook his head at her and the two exited his room and descended the stairs. Phantump was lying on the couch taking a nap with Ralts sitting next to him when they came downstairs. Omar had just walked back in with a basket full of fresh vegetables from the garden. As he began to prep their dinner, Ariya and Noelle decided that Phantump had the right idea and situated themselves in the living room as they both dozed off waiting for dinner.

Noelle felt a soft but strong hand on his upper arm. He slowly opened his eyes to see Omar squatted down on the floor eye level with him on the couch. "Hey Noelle," he said softly. "Dinner is ready if you want to get up." He gave him one final rub on his arm before moving over and waking up Ariya.

They both shook the sleep out of their systems and approached the dinner table. As they seated themselves, Omar served both of them plates full of the dish he had created from the vegetables in the garden. They both thanked him as they happily ate the delicious meal that Omar had concocted for them. Omar then set down some bowls of food for the pokémon who happily joined in on the meal. There was barely any conversation as they ate, as they had totally forgotten how hungry they were. As they finished, Ariya cleared the table since Omar had made the food. Noelle noticed the door to his mother's room was ajar as he approached it. He walked in and saw Phantump sitting up on his mother's vacant bed.

He slowly closed the door behind him, leaving it slightly opened. He sat next to Phantump on the bed, who in turn floated over and sat in his lap. Noelle sat in the room staring at the space that was empty of its usual medication bottles, boxes of tissues, and glasses of water, both empty and full, that had riddled his mother's room for the past decade. Phantump looked up at Noelle with a sad expression on his face. Noelle pet him to reassure him he was okay. Noelle turned as he heard the door open. Omar was standing in the doorway looking at Noelle. "Hey, Ariya just went to shower, I was wondering where you were," he told him. "This was your mother's room wasn't it."

What normally would've been an obvious deduction, Noelle realized wasn't the case. The room was void of personal touches his mother had in the room that would have identified it with her. "Yes, it was. I took care of her in this room since I was a kid."

Omar could tell by the shake in Noelle's voice that this was the location his mother had passed on. "I lost my mom when I was a young boy," he said sitting down next to Noelle on the bed. "Valeo and I never knew our dad. It was just us and our mom after Valeo was born. I was only about 10 when she has passed. Valeo is only a year younger than me, but I could tell it was much harder for him to process the situation that it was for me."

"What did you guys do then?"

"Well, living in the big city without our mother, I had to raise Valeo as both a father and a big brother. The relationship that most siblings can enjoy was lost to us. I had to discipline him as well as spend time with him like a sibling. It definitely strained our relationship that could've been very strong."

"I had no idea… that explains the interaction Ariya and I first saw when me met you."

"Yeah. He's a good kid. But there is just always that rift between us that I hope we can get over eventually." Omar scooted a little closer and put his hand on Phantump's head and began petting him. "You are lucky to have Noelle to take care of you Phantump," Omar said as he looked up at Noelle.

Noelle returned the gaze and felt his heart rate pick up. This was noticeable to Phantump as well as he looked up at his trainer, who was quite red in the face at this point, however, the lights were still off in the room, so it probably wasn't noticeable. Suddenly, the shower above the room turned on which snapped Noelle back to reality. He broke his gaze with Omar and looked down at his cute little partner. "I'm lucky to have found him. He has made this a lot easier. Plus, he loves cuddling with me at night and that's always comforting."

Omar stared at Noelle with the obvious response to what had just been said on his tongue, however he stood up off the bed and responded to Noelle, "I'm getting pretty tired. Would it be all right if I slept on the couch tonight?"

Noelle was not exactly comfortable with anybody sleeping in his mother's room, so he led Omar out to the living room and supplied him with everything he would need for the night. After this, they said their goodnights and Noelle ascended the stairs to his bedroom. He sat on the edge of his bed replaying what had transpired downstairs. Ariya, disrupting his thinking, came into his room with a towel wrapped at her chest. "Hey Noelle, where would you like me to sleep tonight?" she asked him.

He got up and led her to Ralts' room, which did have an extra bed in it for a human. "You can stay in here for tonight if you want to. Otherwise you can take my room and I'll stay in here."

"No, this is perfect Noelle. Thank you."

Noelle returned to his room and undressed. He crawled into his bed and realized just how much he had missed it. As usual, Phantump found his way under one of Noelle's arms and fell asleep quickly. Ralts had decided to sleep in his old bed next to Ariya, and Omar was downstairs on the couch playing with his pokéball that held Growlithe.

In the middle of the night, a slight hum out the back door to the garden woke Omar suddenly. The hum was a quiet and almost calming lull. He turned his head to the door to see a faint glow through the glass of the back door. He got up and put his shirt back on, before walking to the door to get a closer look. Once there, he peered through the window and saw the glow was coming directly from the garden. He could not make out exactly what it was, so he slowly opened the door, trying not to wake his friends. Once outside he approached the garden slowly.

Dancing around in between the green of the garden was a small flabébé. The flabébé looked up at him and smiled, accompanied by a friendly noise. "Hey little one, what are you doing out here?"

"Be! Be!" it responded with a laugh.

Omar stood at the edge of the garden watching the flowery pokémon dance around and enjoy itself in the garden. He began to play with the pokémon and laugh along with it. It was one of the cutest things he had seen in his entire life. He continued to play with the flabébé as he lost track of time.

Noelle awoke to the rising sun peering in through his blinds. He had gotten up and opened them to see Omar standing out by the garden. "What is he doing? How long has he been out there?" Noelle thought.

As he stood watching his friend squatted down out by his garden, suddenly Omar stood up and turned towards the house. He was holding something in his outstretched hands. Noelle was trying to make out what Omar was holding when Omar looked up at the window. Noelle went flush as he realized he was only in his underwear. He ducked out of the window and quickly put his clothes on as he heard Omar open the back door. He opened his door after finishing getting dressed and went downstairs, Phantump following behind. "Noelle!" Omar called out.

Noelle met him in the living room, where he could now see what he was holding. He was holding the flabébé that he was playing with in the garden. "This is my new friend, Flabébé." Noelle looked at him puzzled. "He was hanging out in your garden last night, and I was out playing with him. After we were playing together for awhile I was talking to her and asked her if she wanted to join us. I told her all about you and Ariya and your partners."

Noelle looked down at the small pokémon clutching the flower Omar held in his hand. "Nice to meet you Flabébé, I'm Noelle. You are going to have lots of fun with us on our adventure!"

Flabébé let out a joyful cry and did a jump in Omar's hand. "Well Noelle," said Omar, "You think you are ready to take on Gardenia?"

N oelle looked at him with a confident smile. "I'm ready!"