Lights Will Guide You Home

Chapter 2

If it wasn't waking up to the horrible stench that morning or his brother blatantly breaking their promise to one another that annoyed him the most, it was the mundane walking through Heath Village in the dead of night to get to Professor Teak's Laboratory. It was a small, decent place that was decorated with beautiful red and pink flowers. They had leaves that looked as sharp as needles, but soft and delicate to the touch. In the morning, it was a wonderful place with delightful people on the streets. Almost all the time if you at least acknowledged their existence, they would smile and acknowledge you back. From the marketplace to the village square, Heath Village was a nice place to live. If you only go out during the day...

At night, the village took a startling turn. The winds usually howled like wild Mightyena, but that wasn't the bad part. What made Heath Village a nightmare at night were the shady people that roamed the streets. Nearly everyone that was out in the dark of night had no business being out. If you happened to rob one of them, there would be a 99% chance of finding something illegal on them like drugs or a stolen Pokémon. If a group of them were ever encountered, generally the idea is to keep your head down, but act like you owned the street you were walking on, which seemed to be an impossible feat.

Tolly walked down the street with his hands in his pockets and his hood pulled over his head to shield himself from the blistering winds. The night grew darker and the number of shifty people taking their places on the street rose. He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his head as he walked along quietly, trying not to show his fear. This was his first time walking the streets of the village at all, much less at night. As a child, especially after his accident, he was never let out of the house in fear of him wandering off. Their house was located on the outskirts of the village in an open field, but even then he was restricted in where he could go. As he aged, the limitations did not lift.

Every now and then, shrewd eyes would try to steal glances of the small boy, but because of how noticeably restless he was, he usually caught almost every single one. "It isn't too far now..." he thought. Just a few more miles." His legs were on fire. He had been walking pretty much the entire day since he left the train station.

Just as the temperature dropped low enough for Tolly to see his breath, he remembered a little trick his brother taught him if he ever had to walk out on the streets at night. "In order to not be a target, you can't look like some good-two-shoes. In warm weather, all you can really do is keep your hood up, hands in your pockets, and walk like you don't have a purpose in life. But if it's cold enough and you can see your breath, you can use your fingers and pretend you're smoking a cigarette. Something about someone smoking makes them less likely to be messed with."

Tolly brought two fingers up to his mouth and breathed out warm air to give off the appearance of a cigarette in his hands. He noticed that the quick sneak peeks and glances at him happened less and less until no one paid him any mind.

However, a few more feet down the road, he saw a group of people huddled underneath a street light across the street. They didn't seem too intimidating, but at 5'1 weighing in at 110 pounds, a lot of people can look intimidating. Tolly did what his brother taught him and smoked his fake cigarette as he leisurely walked past the group of shady individuals. His hoodie showed an increase in his breathing speed as it expanded and retracted with his shoulders.

"Hey," one of the hoodlums called out to him. He pretended like he didn't hear and kept walking, a little more hastily than before, which worked until the man called again. "Hey!"

Tolly stopped dead in his tracks, trying to keep up his appearance with smoking his fake cigarette and slowly looked over at the men. His hood thankfully covered his anxious looking eyes so they were unable to see his fear.

"You got another smoke I can bum off ya, little man?"

With a gulp, Tolly replied "No, this is one of those e-cigs. Sorry." He prayed to Arceus that they wouldn't take notice of the fact that there was literally nothing in his hand.

"Ah, s'cool." And with that, the men went back to their business of hustling and bustling amongst one another.

Tolly practically high-tailed it out of there with a walk that clearly showed he had purpose- to get the HELL out of there. His heart was pounding with excitement for the fact that the "hood-Rattata" as they called hood-rats in that world were actually stupid enough to fall for the trick. He then started giggling to himself about how if they had just looked closely to see nothing was in his hand, he would have been shaken down for lying. However, thinking about getting beaten down to a pulp only furthered his anxiety and brought up the shortness of breath. He had to stop and sit down on the edge of the sidewalk, rocking back and forth to try and calm himself. After a few minutes, he felt his body simmer down and he was able to keep walking.

Even though it took a long walk through the village, lying about smoking, and fending off an anxiety attack, Tolly had finally reached his destination: Professor Teak's Laboratory. It was a large, white, dome-shaped building with a vast, open field behind it stretching as far as the eye could see in the day. At night it just appeared to be one long stretch of endless darkness. To get to the laboratory, he had to take a small cobblestone trail off the main road and through a small grove of trees and bushes. Once arriving, he stepped up on the porch to the front door and pushed the small button he assumed was the door bell.

He waited. And waited. And waited some more. But there was no answer, which Tolly thought strange, so he rang the doorbell again. Again, he was left waiting and nothing happened. "This is weird..." he said to himself as he began to repeatedly jab the button as if it were the "A" button on a 3DS and he just wanted to get past the absurdly long dialogue.

Finally, a tall, slim man dressed in sky blue pajamas and a nightcap answered the door with a very miffed but half asleep look on his face. "What in the world do you want?! It's three-o'clock in the morning!"

It then dawned on Tolly that the reason why no one answered the door for five minutes was because it was the middle of the night, usually the time people are deep within their deep NREM sleep and enjoying it. At a complete loss of words for the fact that he didn't consider coming over late at night wasn't the best idea, he did the only thing he could do when he was nervous, which was to start having an anxiety attack. First came the shortness of breath which was much more aggressive this time because he knew he messed up big time in making a first impression to Professor Teak. Then came the horrid light-headed feeling that brought him to his knees. By the time his reality grew distorted and shifted from the porch of the laboratory to a white void where the only thing was him curled up in the fetal position and the completely unreal gigantic figure of the Professor looming over him like a human getting ready to pulverize a small insect with his size 11 shoes, he'd already passed out.

This was not how Tolly pictured his first meeting with the Professor would go.