KANE OSAKA
Kane extinguished the last of the candles. Instead of plunging into darkness, it was only after a moment that a sallow golden glow illuminated his surroundings. He turned to look at the unholy apparition behind him.
"My thanks, yamask," he murmured, ducking his head respectfully. His pokémon bobbed silently in mid-air.
Kane gathered up his robe and stood, the heavy fabric whispering against the cold stone floor. He bowed once before the altar before moving down the aisle. He paused in the doorframe of the House of Memories, his eyes drawn to the velvet-black sky. There were no stars; only a sliver of white moon. Kane leant forwards, pulled the wooden door closed, and locked it.
Wordlessly, he walked a loop of the gigantic main room, gently brushing the top of each headstone and memorial as he passed. When he reached the main altar again, he lit a stick of incense in the glow of yamask's otherworldly face mask. Once the sweet smell of herbs swelled in the close air, just barely masking the underlying smog of decay, Kane took his leave. He crossed to the far side of the room and ducked through an archway, bowing his head against the hanging white strips of fabric. Yamask passed through the wall above the doorway, the dim glow disappearing momentarily.
The hallway was long, one wall lined with narrow open windows, hewn into the rock of the building, whilst the other had only four doorways. Kane opened the third and went through.
His bedroom was sparsely furnished. Tucked into the corner was a rough-looking bed, above its foot another open window, through which blew a cold breeze. On the opposite side of the room was a small desk and chair, and on the wall above the table top a faded sepia photograph was carefully pinned.
Although he was exhausted, Kane didn't allow himself to slump on his bed right away. Instead, he sat at the desk, pulling a slender notebook from the small pile before him. Yamask drifted to peer over his shoulder. The light from the moon mingled with the golden glow of his pokémon, giving the room an ethereal, paper-like quality.
Kane opened the notebook and flicked past a few pages, neat rows of his hand writing flashing past. He stopped at a list. Running a finger down the column, he studied each entry carefully, ticking the components off in his head.
He couldn't help but feel anxious. He'd checked and double-checked all that was needed for tomorrow, but the magnitude of his upcoming task lay heavily across his thin shoulders.
Kane raised his eyes to stare at the photograph above him for reassurance.
It was incredibly old, taken when cameras were still used. It showed a beautiful, tremendous tower, the structure seemingly cutting the sky in half. The sun was behind the photographer, so there was no shadow… but just off to the side of the gaping wound of the doorway was a smudged figure. It was hard to make out; it could very well just be a misprint or ink blot. Kane had diligently studied that smudge until his eyes watered. He knew what that smudge meant, even if the few remaining occupants of Lavender Town didn't.
Kane cradled his head in his palm, his eyes moving over the photograph, absorbing each detail as they had a thousand times before.
The Pokémon Tower was long gone now. The beautiful structure, made of curious purple-tinted stone, had been knocked down back in 2010. In its stead a radio tower had been built, but that had fallen prey to the spirits of the town twenty years later, and was now nothing more than a crumbling, tottering pile of stone and metal on the outskirts of town. Some thrill-seeker kids hung out there on the weekends, Kane knew, but that had dropped off significantly after Rina…
Clenching his fists, Kane dropped his gaze, replaced the notebook, and got up. Mechanically, he undressed – folding his robe – and got into bed, pulling the single thin sheet up to his chin. Yamask moved to float in front of the window, blotting out the weak light from the moon.
"Good night," Kane whispered. Yamask bowed its head and extinguished its mask, the room taking on a blurred grey-blue light.
When Kane woke, it was just before six. He was a little distressed at over-sleeping, yet the sight of yamask, waiting patiently, sleeplessly, for him to awake was a calming one.
"Today is the day," Kane reminded the blank ceiling, pale and clinical with the cool rays of dawn. Washing himself with the cold water in the jug on his desk, Kane then dressed in his soft grey robe, cinching the fabric around his waist with a thin leather belt. Over his left hip, on a notch in his belt, hung a small chip of lavender-tinted stone, whittled into the shape of a long rectangle and tied through the belt with a tiny piece of black silk.
Kane reached below his bed and pulled out a rough-spun brown rucksack. Making sure that it was secure and complete with the few belongings he needed for his journey, at the last moment Kane took the notebook from his desk and tucked it inside.
As he straightened up, his eye caught the photograph of Pokémon Tower. Kane hesitated. He pulled it down and put it between the first few pages of the notebook.
Yamask watched him, unblinking red eyes eerie in the dim morning light.
Kane ventured out into the hallway and made for the main space in the House of Memories. Just before he went into the room – and outwards to his journey - he noticed the last door to his left was open. Kane turned and pushed it open the whole way.
Elder Fuji was kneeling before the altar in the middle of the room. The air was smoky and sharp with the bitter Kanto wind coming through the window, the faint scent of autumn damp, melting wax, and incense.
Kane went and knelt beside his mentor, yamask hovering at his shoulder. Touching his forehead, Kane murmured the rites, relaxing at routine. As he asked the three dogs for strength and the three birds for wisdom, Fuji rose.
Once Kane had finished his prayers, he bowed deeply before standing up. Fuji was staring blindly out of the window, his eyes milky.
"Be brave, Kane," Elder Fuji said suddenly, his voice throaty and quivering with age. "Look to The Six, and you will be safe."
"I will," Kane vowed.
"You know and have studied your route." The ancient man turned his white gaze to Kane. Momentarily, his chin quivered. "I wish the grace of mew upon you, Kane. Your pilgrimage will not be in vain, I promise you that."
Kane bowed his head, although he knew it would go unseen by his mentor. He felt his eyes prickle.
"I will take my leave," Kane murmured, lifting his head. He studied Fuji silently for a few moments. The old man was so frail. Ageless, unmoving, he stood like a shelf of rock, heedless of wind or sea. If Kane didn't know any better, he'd say that the Elder had been created by arceus itself, right at the beginning of time.
Fuji would be fine, here in the House of Memories. He had the other two students to keep him safe. Those boys were younger than Kane, much too young for their own pilgrimage, but they loved Fuji like a father; Kane was confident nothing unwanted would happen. But even so…
Kane ducked his head once more and left the room, a gust of smoke and leaves and wax billowing out into the hallway.
Outside, the air was cold. The sun hadn't yet come up; its rays were only now peeking out over the horizon, hesitant golden light dabbing the fringes of the fading lilac sky. Kane hoisted his rucksack further on his shoulders. He wouldn't eat until he reached Saffron, maybe later. It would serve as a reward for travelling so far on his first day.
As he made his way down the deserted streets, yamask floating beside him, Kane thought about his task at hand.
To understand all gods, not only Kanto deities – that was his goal. He was following in the footsteps of Elder Fuji, the man who had traveled all the way to South America. The man who had stood at the base of Aztec ruins, the streaming sun illuminating ancient etchings, one hand shading his scholarly gaze. The man who had stumbled back as mew appeared before him, vanishing just as quickly, yet leaving behind a tuft of fur caught in the branches of a low-hanging tree. Elder Fuji, who in those days had been known as Mister, who was one of the first scientists to use mew's precious DNA, to create mewtwo, to escape the tragic explosion on Cinnabar.
Kane remembered listening to the Elder one spring morning, maybe two years ago. Listening as the old man detailed his trip back to South America after the end of the war, and his desire to see mew one more time in his old, withered age. How – and this was told with trembling breath, his white eyes shining with unshed tears – mew had come to him, had made him young again.
He'd reached the end of Lavender town. Kane stood at the line where muted purple pavement met the stern rural gravel. He hadn't been outside of Lavender town before, not since Rina had disappeared.
Taking a deep breath, maybe hoping to catch a last gasp of incense and candle wax, Kane stepped onto route eight.
"Mew guide my steps, know my path, light my way," Kane murmured as he walked, his sandals sending skittering stones to race before him.
Route eight meandered along the base of the mountains that surrounded Lavender, although it was a good deal grassier than the other surrounding routes. Scrubby mountainous foliage dotted the way for miles, a rough fence-line on his left serving as the only route guide. To Kane's right was a sheer face of dark grey rock. Over the fence was a coarse plain, intercepted occasionally by hunks of fallen rock. Lavender town was essentially unreachable by hover car, hence the absence of any motorway. Kane liked it this way, with the quiet sounds of distant pokémon and the gentle caress of the wind. It made him feel isolated, as if this stretch of road was the only place left on Earth.
It took about two hours to reach Saffron. Kane prayed as he walked, keeping up a running dialogue murmured beneath his breath, occasionally making an aside to yamask, who was silent as the grave. It helped keep his mind off other things, like how dangerous Saffron was, and how easy a target he appeared, in his old-fashioned robe and sandals.
The hulking mass of Saffron appeared on the horizon by about eight, and by eight thirty the gigantic metropolis was casting a looming shadow over the now-diminutive route. The rough outskirts of Saffron consisted mainly of one-story houses with chain-link fences, the gravel-turned-pavement littered with leaves and bits of rubbish. As Kane walked further along the main road, the buildings either side of him mutated, gradually adding a story here, a room there, until soon he was surrounded by squalid apartment blocks and the occasional burnt-out hover car. Thankfully, he saw no one apart from a stray persian in an alley and a koffing hovering over an overflowing skip.
Kane was nearing the city central. The apartment blocks – which had reminded him of some pictures he had seen of communist Europe, back in the Third War – had adopted a glossy look. Now, the streets were somewhat cleaner, the hover cars unmolested. Kane spied a man walking an eevee on the other side of the road.
At last, he reached the end of the main road. Kane glanced back the way he had come, fancying he could see the towering structure of Pokémon Tower in the distance. He crossed the street and found himself in the main square of Saffron, surrounded on all sides by flashing billboards and massive glassy buildings. The traffic had picked up considerably now he'd left the suburbs; people bustled to and fro, clutching coffee cups, their eyes watching their feet as they hurried along. In the background a stream of multi-coloured hover cars flashed past, the air now rising to a crescendo of car horns and traffic light signals and passing conversations.
Yamask now drifted almost directly above his right shoulder – and Kane couldn't blame it. Yamask was a creature of ancient worlds. The quiet solitude of Lavender was nothing compared to Saffron city.
Kane felt his stomach growl. Considering he had made good time, he saw a nearby diner and decided to eat a proper breakfast as a reward. He was planning on making his way to Celadon by lunchtime. Kane figured that travelling through the main section of Saffron and the outlying suburbs would take a couple of hours at least. He was a little nervous about passing by the Underground Path – although when he had voiced these fears to Elder Fuji, the man had told him to harbor no fear.
"The mew will guide your path, Kane," Fuji said gently, smiling at his charge, "no harm will come to you, I swear it."
The diner was cramped, a sideways rectangular shape mimicking half the length of the main square. One wall was taken up entirely by the counter, the other lined by booths overlooking the world outside. Kane chose a particularly sticky table in the back. He was hyper-aware of his surroundings, yet willed himself to not be overwhelmed by it all.
The dogs give me strength, he thought, looking down at the variety of breakfast sausages available, the birds give me wisdom.
"Can I help you?"
Kane looked up from the menu at the waitress, who looked sleepy and harassed. The diner was packed with early-morning commuters; she looked run off her feet.
"If I could have a bowl of rice?" Kane asked her politely, handing over the menu. "And a cup of water, please."
"Sure." The waitress took the menu, but before moving away, she gave his robe a thoughtful look and commented: "You in dress-up, or something?"
Kane glanced down at his clothes, although when he raised his eyes she had gone, the end of her skirt flashing around the end of the corner.
He arranged the salt and pepper shakers neatly, brushed the crumbs off the table. Yamask moved to float opposite him.
Kane stared, unseeing, as the inhabitants of Saffron city rushed past the window, his hands folded in his lap, like two animals comforting one another, and prayed.