Chapter 8: Burn-Book
"I'm sorry, but we've become very busy today," the Violet City Gym attendant explained. "We've gotten a lot of trainers who want to challenge Faulkner, and he is under new regulations on how many official battles he can fight each day."
"But," Risa said, her eyes beginning to water. "How - I mean - I just -"
The attendant sighed. "Look, I understand how you feel. I was there yesterday, remember? I oversaw your gym match. I get it. Losing your first gym battle is really rough. But," she gave Risa a reproachful look, "if you'd made another appointment on your way out, you would have been able to get a time slot tomorrow."
She didn't add the "instead of running and crying and almost throwing some sort of tantrum," but Risa heard it in her voice. The girl blinked back the same frustrated tears of the day before. "But I came here as fast as I could this morning. I need to get this badge so I can go home," she whined, her voice cracking.
"The first time I can give you is in six days," the attendant said as she ignored Risa's emotions and checked her computer. "You'll be fighting the first match of the day at nine in the morning. I can reserve that time for you if you'd like - it's the earliest available appointment."
Risa sniffed, wiped her nose, and nodded. "Y-yeah. We'll t-take it."
The woman entered in Risa's information and printed out a receipt. "Think of it this way, dear," she said with a kind smile. "At least you have plenty of time to train." Risa took the receipt, shoved it in her wallet, and prepared to leave. "Although," the attendant added, stopping Risa. "If I were you, I'd have two pokemon when you come back. It's never really a good idea to go up against a gym leader with only one pokemon."
Risa sniffled again, nodded, and left. Her spirits were perhaps the lowest they had been since she started, and the attendant's words, however true they were, stung quite a bit.
She took out Heat's pokeball and stared at it for a few minutes outside the gym. "What're we gonna do, Heat?" Risa mumbled as her vision blurred. "You - sniff - you're too w-weak to - sniff - fight F-faulkner's b-birds. And - sniff - and I'm just - sniff - a stupid girl who c-can't train her - sniff - pokemon!"
By the time she finished whining, she realized quite a few people were staring at her. Despite the fact that many people lost to Faulkner's birds, apparently they didn't stay outside and cry about it.
Risa's cheeks turned red, and she bowed to the people, mumbling an "I'm sorry," before dashing back to the Pokemon Center...
And tripping over her own shoelaces.
"Today sucks," she whined as she limped into the Center, her knees dirty and a little bloody. "It's the worst day ever."
---
And it got worse.
"What do you mean I have to pay?" Risa shrieked to the middle-aged redhead nurse. "I thought this was free!"
"Free for the first three nights, I'm afraid," the nurse explained sadly. "Due to the influx of trainers during the summer season, we just don't have enough rooms to provide free accommodations for more than three nights. We heal pokemon for no charge, of course, and room and board is pretty cheap for any extra nights, but we really do need the money to cover longer stays."
Risa groaned, taking out her wallet. Her fingers ran over her bills, counting the numbers and sending them to her brain for addition. "I - I don't have enough!" she exclaimed, panic rising in her voice. "I - I can't - I can't pay! I - I don't - don't have enough money!"
Realizing that the young girl was starting to cause another scene, the nurse reached over and grabbed her wrist. "Stop panicking," the nurse said in a half-stern, half-kind ton of voice. "How many nights do you think you can pay for?"
Risa sniffed, then looked down at her meager funds. "Um, maybe...only...only one. Two, I guess, but then I dunno how I'd be able to buy food and potions and stuff."
"How about this," the nurse offered. "You pay for one night, and then in lieu of payment for all the other nights, you help out around the Center. We're having a used book sale tomorrow to raise funds, since we're non-for-profit, so you could help out with that. I'd say that'd cover two nights. Any other nights you can cover by doing dishes in the cafeteria. Does that sound fair?"
Risa chewed her lip. If there was one thing she hated, it was doing dishes. But her payment and the book sale would cover three nights, she had two more for free, and if she managed to beat Faulkner at her next appointment, that would mean she'd only have to do one night's worth of dishes (whatever that meant).
That also meant that however much time she'd spend at the sale and doing dishes would be taken away from time spent training Heat. She had no clue really how to catch another pokemon or which pokemon to catch. All she knew was that Heat needed to get stronger.
"Um, okay. I'll do it." Risa handed over the money to cover one night.
"Great. See you tomorrow!"
---
"Where should I go to help out at the book sale?"
The nurse from the previous day reached over and grabbed a pokeball, releasing it to reveal a standard chansey. "Cheer, could you go get Mei, please?"
The round, pink pokemon nodded and waddled off into the depths of the Pokemon Center, coming back with a tall twenty-something with black hair, dark brown skin, and the creepiest yellow eyes Risa had ever seen. Over her black shirt and blue jean shorts she wore a white apron with the Pokemon Center logo.
"So you're helping at the sale, huh?" she asked Risa, looking down at the shorter trainer. "My name's Mei. I'm running the sale today, so you'll be working for me."
Risa bit her lip, then nodded. Mei had a booming voice that intimidated the younger girl, and she hated super tall people. They scared her. It was like they could step on her by accident and squash her like a bug. "Hi. M-my name's Risa."
"Nice to meet you, Risa. Now, come with me."
And with that, Mei yanked Risa away from the counter and dragged her out into the open area behind the Pokemon Center. Underneath a large tent stood tables of books in boxes ringed by bookshelves stocked with even more books. As Risa inspected a nearby box, she saw a jumble of fiction genres with spines that looked to be no younger than five or six years.
"So basically, fiction's in the boxes and nonfiction's in the shelves. We don't really have any system other than that," Mei explained as she strode over to her cash register. "I'm working the cash register. Your job is to make sure the customers find what they're looking for and that they don't steal anything. Oh - and consolidate the boxes once they're looking a bit empty."
Risa nodded hesitantly, not really sure how to help people find things if there was no order. But before she could do anything other than tug on the Pokemon Center apron that Mei tossed her, people had already started to trickle in.
The girl sighed, her hand brushing Heat's pokeball. "Sorry, you're gonna have to stay in here today," she mumbled before running off to keep a little toddler from chewing his way through the nonfiction shelves.
---
A few hours later, Risa found herself trying to help an elderly man find a list of books. The man, who had a long white mustache and thick-rimmed glasses and had introduced himself as Tsuruda, was apparently looking for a variety of books on different subjects for his book stall back home. (He never specified where "home" was, only that it was no longer in Johto.)
"It says 'a book about the sea routes of Hoenn'," Risa read, squinting at the man's curly script. "Um, that's probably gonna be in the nonfiction shelves..."
As she walked over to the shelves she tripped over a book on the ground. Her already scraped knees hit the ground for the second time that day, her shorts and apron doing nothing to soften the blow.
"Ow!" Risa winced and turned to pick up the book. "'The Southern Seas'," she read, looking at the cover. She flipped it open and looked for any mention of the Hoenn region - which she found, as the page she opened it to contained a map of the sea routes around Sootopolis City. Figuring it fit the description of the needed book, she slammed the cover closed, stood up, and looked around for Tsuruda.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"
She winced again, turning around to see a familiar person standing right behind her.
"Did you have to yell, Ichiro?" she spat, rubbing her ears.
Ichiro narrowed his eyes. "Is this part of your plan?"
"What plan?"
"Your plan to trick me into a false sense of security so that you can beat me," he explained.
Risa shook her head. "I dunno what you're talking about. I'm just working."
"Why?"
"So I can stay long enough to get the stupid Violet City badge."
"You only came in here this morning?" Ichiro asked, looking shocked. "But you were ahead of me! Right? I saw you pass by me on that big tauros, looking like you were about to puke."
'I was not about to puke! But - hey," Risa stopped, looking behind her so-called rival. "Is that your hoothoot behind you?"
"What? Kazeko!" The hoothoot looked up from her spot underneath the table, looking a bit bleary-eyed. "What're ya doin' down there?"
"I'm sleepy," the owl whined in a soft, girly voice. "I wanna go to sleep."
"Fine," Ichiro muttered, zapping his hoothoot back into her pokeball. "I caught her this morning. It was pretty easy; I guess it's just 'cause she was about to go to sleep." He clipped the pokeball back onto his belt and grabbed two more. "But I used these two to beat Faulkner - I just got Kazeko cuz I thought Faulkner's birds were cool."
He dropped the two pokeballs, and two pokemon appeared - one that Risa recognized as Freeze, Ichiro's totodile, and the other as a sentret she hadn't seen.
The sentret sniffed the ground, then looked up at Risa. "Melon bread?" she asked in a thick Old Johto accent. "Ah want some melon bread."
"Ignore her," Ichiro muttered with a wave of his hand. "That's Kansai, my weird sentret."
"Hello, Trainer of Fire," Freeze said as she looked up at Risa's face. "I see our paths converge once again."
"Uh, hi."
"Where is the Master of Fire? My opposite and balancing force?"
"Uh...he's..." Before Risa could say any more, Heat's pokeball forcibly opened and her cyndaquil popped out onto one of the fiction tables. "Oh. Hi, Heat," she said glumly.
"LET'S BATTLE!" Heat roared, standing on his back legs and almost igniting a box of bedraggled old romance novels. "He's our rival, we gotta -"
"Thank you, Heat," Risa said as she returned him to his pokeball. "Sorry, but we can't battle right now," she told the other trainer. "We're working. We, uh, we lost to Faulkner the first time, so we gotta work so we can pay for the Pokemon Center room 'n board until we rechallenge. So, uh, yeah..."
Ichiro frowned. "Oh." He looked down at the present two-thirds of his team awkwardly. "Well, then, uh, we'd better just go now...c'mon, Freeze, Kansai."
Risa waved as he returned his two fighters and left the tent without another word. She sighed. "Great. Even he beat Faulkner."
"Hey!" Risa looked up to see Mei looming over her. "I overheard you talking to that little boy."
"I'm sorry! I wasn't working! I'll go back to work!" Risa sputtered, panicking a bit. Was she in trouble? Why was her boss so scary?
Mei shook her head. "No, it's fine. I was gonna suggest we take a lunch break, anyway, since Nurse Satou said she'd cover for us for an hour or so."
"Oh." Relief washed over Risa. "Yeah, um, okay."
"But I overheard that you lost to Faulkner," Mei said as the two of them left the tent to go sit on the benches outside. "You're training for a rematch, right?"
"Yeah," Risa said glumly. "Heat's not so good with fighting birds, I guess."
"Who's Heat? A growlithe?"
"Cyndaquil."
"Huh. Well, if you want," Mei said, taking out a pokeball and enlarging it. "We could do a practice battle. I have a bird of my own." The pokeball released its contents, which turned out to be a spearow. The bird hopped around on the ground, glancing up at Risa with a glint in his one good eye - the other looked like it had been slashed out by something, as the skin around his other eye held a scraggly scar. "You could train against me and Scar. He's not exactly like Faulkner's pidgeotto, but it couldn't hurt, right?"
Risa grinned, releasing Heat. "Okay! But - let's not battle for money."
"'Course not. It's just training. Get up in the air!"
"Heat! Ignite your back!"
"Tackle!"
"Ember!"
---
"Sorry it took so long to get you your book," Risa said as she handed over The Southern Seas to Tsuruda. "I went on lunch break."
The old man looked at Risa through his glasses. "Your hair is burnt."
Risa blushed, embarrassed, and ran her hand through the hair behind her left ear. It was true - one of Heat's embers had gone a little off course while he was aiming for a dive-bombing Scar, and he had hit his own trainer's hair. She had a small chunk of it missing, and the tips of the remaining hair around it were blackened. "Y-yeah. I was training..."
"I see," the man said. "I remember when my pokemon was still alive," he said fondly, taking out an old black and white picture of a young boy and a natu. "We'd battle and read books all day."
Risa looked down at the smiling faces in the picture. "I'm sorry," she said, not really sure what else to say. The boy and his natu looked so happy in the picture, but she could hear the twinge of sadness in the man's voice.
"Libra was a good girl. I miss her." He gave Risa a stern look. "You should make sure to appreciate your fire-type pokemon while he's with you. There is no better friend than a pokemon with whom you've shared your life."
He turned, picked up his stack of books, and walked towards the cash register. After he paid, he turned to leave, then tilted his head back towards Risa. "Libra was always better at finding the book a person would need to read, but I had a hunch this one might be a good match for you."
Tsuruda tapped a black leather book in the nonfiction shelves with a wrinkled, knobby old finger, then walked away.
Risa walked over to the shelf and grabbed the book. The cover had some sort of language she didn't recognize, save for one word:
"'Grimoire'," she read, squinting at the dusty old cover. She looked up to see if Tsuruda was still around, but something else caught her eye.
In the bushes directly outside, she saw the afternoon sunlight hit something sparkly and red - the red jewel on the forehead of an espeon.
"Es - espeon?" Risa exclaimed, jumping forward in the direction of the eevee evolution involuntarily. Just as she did, the espeon vanished. The girl stopped, her heart racing. It was pretty much every little girl's dream to own an espeon. Their rarity probably helped that dream; while healthy eevees themselves were rare enough, being able to evolve one into an espeon seemed near impossible. Plus, once evolved, they were generally difficult to handle.
That one looked wild, too.
And there was no such thing as a wild espeon.
Risa's stomach flipped, and she looked down at the book in her hands. She brushed the cover, trying to remove some of the dust, and saw that in the center, just below the word "grimoire", was a dull red jewel.
"Hey, Mei?"
Mei looked up from her seat behind the cash register. "Yeah?"
"How much for this book?"
Twenty-three days left.
---
Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon.
Author's Note: If you're going to stop reading this story or start fangirling over it because an espeon showed up, don't - the espeon plays an extremely minor role in this story and will probably show up only once or twice more, if at all. She comes in later in the "sequel" as a minor character.