Cherrygrove's Winter Knights

…

- Schoolgirl Growing Up

While she never prided herself on her academics, her sports ability, or—God forbid—her position on the ubiquitous social ladder, Aubrey did flaunt her affinity to dream.

Chemistry and Algebra, she knew for a fact, never became any more engaging to the adult mind than they were to hers and those of her friends, right now in the present. Her teachers were lying through their yellowed teeth each and every time they said that they loved their work. Nobody loved math, and nobody loved drawing little doodles of what chemical bonded with which and why Sulfur wasn't invited to the party with the other good little elements. And unfortunately for her peers, almost nobody was immune to the drowsy side-effects of studying hard academics on carefree winter afternoons.

Almost nobody. Aubrey refused to sleep in class, but not for the reason one might think. At fourteen years old, she could care less about getting into a decent college or doing well on her high school entrance exams. If worse came to worse, she'd end up working her parents' day care anyway.

Sleep was a limited commodity in our mile-a-minute society, and Aubrey wanted to see the stars with every step she took. She woke up bright and early and powered through lecture after tedious lecture, because at the end of the day, after dubious homework and a solid load of housework, she could lie down and let her mind go.

Mr. Berger said in Health that a person could influence her dreams through thinking certain things in their waking hours. Focusing on ignoring one's fears, for instance, made them more likely to appear in dreamland. That he went on to make an out-of-place joke about his ex-wife said more about Mr. Berger than anything else, but Aubrey didn't care either way. She trusted her mind; they were joined in protest against the bland routine of her schoolgirl days.

Only twice in her life could Aubrey recall dreamless nights.

Once, when her parents argued about something trivial that escalated to Mom sleeping over at Aunt Betty's. Either the fighting made Aubrey unsettled, or her father's subsequent dinner had anti-dream poison.

The second, Aubrey couldn't even remember falling asleep. One moment, she lay down in the snow and watched as her new friends—Cherrygrove's Winter Knights, they dramatically called themselves—gave her reassuring grins. The next, she opened her tired eyes to stare at a blank white ceiling.

Slowly but surely, she came to attention and realized she was completely lost. This queen-sized mattress didn't belong to her, and neither did the white sheets, the aging wood furniture, or the blank walls of the squarish alien room. The nightgown she wore smelled like a woman a century older. Her hair had been pulled into a loose ponytail, leaving the whereabouts of her white stocking cap—and the rest of her clothes—unknown.

Aubrey jolted upright, and was quickly sent back down by a stabbing soreness in basically everything. A groan escaped her chapped lips. Because when you're unable to lift yourself from a strange room and escape your strange captors, what else can you do but groan?

"Someone's awake!"

Aubrey tried placing the voice. She had met so many people in such a short amount of time, surely they would forgive her for forgetting a few of them..?

Thankfully, Aubrey had a gift for remembering faces. The bubbly cheeks, luminous eyes, and warm smile of team leader Lanette could not be forgotten easily.

"Good mornin', hon!" Lanette said. The words seemed to float in the air and smile along with Lanette herself. "How are we feeling today?"

Like the textbook definition of full-body traction.

"I've been better," she said, her voice a tired whisper. "Where am I?"

"Paddy's house," Lanette said. She had pulled a rickety chair to Aubrey's bedside and sat down, but Aubrey couldn't remember seeing her do it. "We discussed it, and figured that if the city were really abandoned, then the Ciphers would see any activity in utilities and power grids. There was no point in living in the shed outside.

"Though it's still a pretty awesome base, huh!" She winked.

Aubrey almost asked what Lanette meant by 'the base' until she remembered: she was inadvertently part of a counter-terrorist strike force. Basically.

Lanette put a hand to her mouth. Her giggles fell gently, like drops of rain in springtime.

"What's so funny?" Aubrey asked.

"You, hon! Go on, ask."

"Ask…what?"

"Whatever it is you're all hung up about!" Lanette put her hands to her hips and feigned annoyance. Aubrey wondered if Lanette had kids or a family somewhere, because she would make a pretty good mother. "You look like you're gonna spill open into a billion confused mini-Aubries. Come on, now. Spit it out. What's eating you?"

The first question was easy enough. Where was Chikorita? It had worked harder than she did, and Aubrey was bone-tired, even after sleeping for God knew how long.

She intended to ask the one question and go from there. Instead—

"Where is everybody? What happened to the tower after I passed out? Is anybody coming to help us? Where's the food, because I'm starving! Are Summer and Ivysaur okay?" When she finally closed her lips, she felt as though she had won the national tongue twister tournament. The one that obviously didn't exist.

Lanette held her hand out, pinching her index finger and her thumb as she thought. Lanette, young and brilliant engineer, probably took that pose before attacking every problem. The same way Dad shrugged every time he tried to cook and wondered why everything came out burnt. As Lanette spoke, her stare remained glued to the wall, just past Aubrey's head.

The answers came as though recited from a laundry list. "You and I are upstairs in the master bedroom, Summer and Leaf are in the basement, and Paddy is with Maggaly in the shed.

"After you passed out, everyone carried you back here. Your clothes were a mess, so Summer and I got you into pajamas. And don't worry, Paddy wasn't in the room," Lanette added.

"Moving on! Paddy put out an SOS and we have our beacons going, but neither the Pokemon League nor the Covenant of Light have answered our call. For the moment, we're still on our own.

"Food's in the fridge, in the kitchen. And…

"Oh, Ivysaur is fine. I built a makeshift healing machine, like the Pokemon Centers have? And Summer's limping a bit, but Pokemon Rangers are built of tougher stuff than you and me. She'll be fine. She's watching after your Chikorita, as a matter of fact.

"Did I forget anything?"

Aubrey shook her head. That was all surprisingly organized and to the point. Lanette ended with a curt smile and bob of the circular head, but it just as well have come from a particularly-inhuman computer.

"Anywho! You're probably wondering why I came to bother you, and really I do hate to bother you, but we kind of have a situation," Lanette said slowly. "Do you mind getting dressed and coming down to the basement?"

"Why?" Aubrey asked, feeling the blood rush back through her body.

"Relax! Remember, you're still just a civilian. Sure, you're a civilian that played a truly instrumental role in the Cherrygrove Radio Tower Operation,"—Aubrey could hear the capital letters—"But you need to leave the world saving to us."

Aubrey nodded. She had no idea where this was going, but she nodded nonetheless.

"Just want to stress that to you, is all. I know I'm probably coming off like a broken record, but this is dangerous stuff you're getting involved in. So, when I'm telling you that we've been getting SOS replies from a girl claiming to know you—"

"What?!"

"—I need to trust that you and Chikorita won't run off and get yourselves captured, or worse," she finished. Aubrey processed the information, and slowly exhaled. Lanette had a point. In the radio tower—lower case—Aubrey barely made it through one battle, even with Summer's help. If she did anything stupid, it would almost certainly end badly.

"Like I was saying, I really, really hate to bother you, since you really did save the day," Lanette started again. "But we need you in the basement. Your clothes are in the washing machine, but luckily, you and Leaf are the same size. She said she wouldn't mind, so I hope it's okay with you."

"It's fine," Aubrey said. How was she supposed to complain about free clothes?

Lanette exited shortly after asking Aubrey what she would like to eat; Aubrey told her that honestly, anything in the fridge would be fine. Because again, how was she supposed to complain about free food?

Getting dressed was a new experience. Aubrey was only a couple years into puberty, and her wardrobe hadn't yet changed to reflect her coming into womanhood. Her closet held jeans, t-shirts with mysterious stains (courtesy of baby Pokemon), and a few training bras. The girliest thing she had was a yellow dress which she had only worn once, to her mother's birthday party. The extra mobility and breeziness felt weird, and everyone telling her she looked pretty was downright alien.

To Maggaly and Summer and Lanette, the clothes Leaf offered were probably standard-issue things. But to Aubrey, a skirt, thermal leggings, and an oversized college shirt (Go Ecruteak U!) were the things of the distant future. A distant future with boys and adventure…which suddenly sounded quite similar to her not-so-distant present.

"Someone looks like a grown-up!" Lanette said as Aubrey descended the staircase. "It's all a good fit, too. You're warm, enough, right?"

Aubrey nodded. "Though the skirt seems kind of silly…"

"That's just Leaf for you. She insists on those fingerless gloves too, even though the wind chill is expected to bring the temperature to subzero levels…anyway! To each her own. Here," she shoved a saucer into Aubrey's chest. The full sandwich and a side of potato chips belonged in a picture-perfect advertisement. "You should probably sit at the table and eat that. Downstairs is gonna be a bit…What's the word…Brisk, I suppose?"

Paddy's home made her own look like the shed in the back. Who had a full-blown dining room attached to a kitchen? The wood table shined so perfectly, Aubrey almost refused to eat on it. Her stomach vetoed the idea instantly.

"Hold on," Aubrey asked between mouthfuls of melted cheese. "Why the basement? I thought all of the important stuff was in the shed."

Lanette put a finger to her lips. "You'll see," she said. It was entirely neutral. There could be presents waiting downstairs; there could be a particularly heinous death trap. Lanette disappeared into the kitchen, and past that, Aubrey heard a door open and close. She had gone into the shed for unmentioned reasons; top-secret Winter Knight business.

Aubrey finished her breakfast and put the plate on the tile kitchen counter. Everything was so spotless, it was hard to believe Paddy—or anyone, for that matter—had lived in it. That was a different concern, though.

The door to the basement called to her through the silence. Just across the hallway between the kitchen and the staircase, the door to the cellar remained ajar. Light poured out through the crack, as did a very subdued laugh. The kind of laughter one gives in awkward situations, as though they're laughing at their company rather than with. The kind of laughter Aubrey would have walked away from in any other situation.

She opened the door and walked down the creaking steps slowly, gathering both feet on a step before going down the next one. Both hands glued themselves to the railing.

Feet skittered to the end of the stairs. Aubrey readied herself—

"Chikorita! There you are!"

The small grass Pokemon danced around her ankles, kicking out its hind legs and whipping the leaf on its head in raw happiness. Aubrey knelt down to pick it up, and failed at the first few attempts. Most of her body had gotten onboard with moving again, but her lower back screamed.

"If it isn't the Bearer."

Aubrey froze.

"I figured you were here with these crackpots somewhere," Kenneth said, dragging the words out as though he needed to make them last as long as possible. An unpainted plaster wall separated the staircase from everything else, and as Aubrey passed to enter the basement proper, she saw exactly what Lanette refused to put into words.

Kenneth, handcuffed to the piping in the walls.

"I like the new get-up," he added. "It's very Anime heroine."

"It's very grown-up," Summer said. Aubrey took a good look at her surroundings: a smaller computer desk had been set up in the far corner, away from windows or pipes. Unlike her own basement, no boxes or clutter was to be found. Neat, tied-off bundles of wires ran from the hardware into a small cubby hole in the wall. Summer sat on a busted-up leather sofa directly opposite Kenneth. Leaf—Aubrey noticed the fingerless gloves—spun in the desk's chair.

"Nice outfit," Leaf grinned. "Just giving credit, you know."

"Thanks," Aubrey said.

"Don't mention it. We're hoping we can say the same, though," Leaf said, spinning back around. She faced the sturdy-looking desktop and monitor setup and took to the keyboard. "Maggaly, the new girl's awake."

A light on the monitor blinked on.

What…What was going on?

"Kenneth tried following us back from the tower last night," Summer explained to the silent Aubrey. Chikorita stood emotionlessly by her legs, back where it belonged.

"Everything's online, and…Aubrey's alive and kicking," Maggaly's voice came through the computer speakers. "She looks kind of like an action figure, but she's alive. Who dressed her?"

"I did," Leaf said.

"That explains a lot. I'm setting up a conference call, so just hold on." A few more violent keystrokes later and Maggaly appeared on the desktop monitor, her furrowed brows, ridiculously-oversized glasses and rambunctious dirty blond curls filled the screen. She backed away, as if recognizing that she hogged the camera space, and suddenly Lanette and Paddy were in the image.

Aubrey stifled the urge to wave at him through the camera.

"Aubrey," he started. "We got this broadcast not even a few minutes after putting out the SOS last night. We didn't know who sent it, but when they put out a second recording this morning…well, you'll get the idea."

He had forgotten to wear that Pokeball hat, Aubrey noticed. He and Maggaly definitely looked like siblings: they had the same kind of hair, and they folded their arms and stared pensively in the same exact manner.

Cue the voice from the past.

"Cherrygrove Winter Knights, or whatever? Hullo! Is this thing working right?...I press that button there, and...So we're live, right? Okay…Yeah, Knights? I'm Rory White, Junior Leader from Violet City? I'm trying to…Wait, shut up, would you?"

"We don't know who she's talking to," Maggaly interrupted. "It kind of goes on like this for another minute, but apparently they blew their cover. It ends with this bit…"

The audio chimed in after a series of explosions and things falling. "Great, what a day!...I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying! God, Marie and Aubrey didn't have to put up with this…"

"And that's where it ends," Lanette said over the recording's abrupt static.

The three individuals in the shed stared at her through the camera; Summer and Leaf were trained on her. Five pairs of eyes, looking to Aubrey for an explanation. Thankfully, this wasn't a test, and she knew exactly what that was anyway.

"It's Rory," Aubrey said.

Maggaly threw her hands in the air. "We got that much—"

"Let her finish!" Paddy said. Maggaly folded her arms. Aubrey waited for a moment, then continued.

"Rory and Marie and I…we were friends. I met them both when I wandered into Cherrygrove City yesterday. Paddy, you remember them, right? Rory was the girl with the red hair, and Marie had the Snag Machine on her arm."

"You said something about a Snag Machine, I remember," Lanette put a curled finger to her pursed lips, then pointed her finger and thumb out in a pinching motion. "Aubrey, can you venture a guess as to where they went? If they were planning to meet anybody?"

"No," Aubrey shook her head. "Marie told us to run. Paddy and I didn't have time to ask questions. Remember?"

Why was Paddy being so quiet?

"If the Snag Machine is still on the market, then the Ciphers will stop at nothing to get their hands on it," Lanette went on. "That explains the noise at the end. Your friend is on the run, Aubrey."

The answer was easy. "We have to help her, then. Maggaly can trace the signal or something and find Rory, right?" It was the best attempt at technobabble she could muster.

Maggaly's eyes darted back and forth, obviously looking at screens again instead of the camera. "It's tight, but I do have a lock on her. She stopped…she's at the galleria," Maggaly said. "Doing some shopping while the country's being invaded. Sounds like a good idea."

"If rescuing your friend is a priority, then I can't allow both Cherry Blossom units to leave with you," Lanette said. Aubrey felt guilty for calling the Knights dramatic before, but…did Summer and Leaf really call themselves that? "Not when the Ciphers could be honing in on our location as we speak. And on top of that, we already have a Snag Machine, so ignoring this would actually be in our best interests."

"Wait, when did we get a Snag Machine?" And when Maggaly sneered: "I mean, when did you guys get one?"

"Easy, Chikorita Bearer. It's grafted to my arm."

"Ignore him, Aubrey," Lanette said. "That's for myself and Maggaly to deal with. Like I told you before, this is our business."

Kenneth smirked. There was definitely something Lanette hadn't told Aubrey yet.

"However…it would be outright cruel to leave them out there," Lanette changed the topic. This time, she stretched her arms out and fought a smile. She rode a fine line between hardened general and overly-happy-team-leader. "Summer's not on her feet yet…Leaf, do you think you can do a quick rescue mission?"

The adrenaline racing through Aubrey's body must have advertised itself. "Hold on," Lanette dialed back as fast as the English language allowed. "Scratch that! This is not a mission," Lanette said. "The galleria's not far. You are to go, retrieve your friends, and come back immediately. Think of it as an errand."

"Got it," Leaf bounced up to her feet. "We'll leave in thirty."

"Make it twenty," Lanette ordered. "And Aubrey…"

"Yes?"

"I should make you leave Chikorita here to keep you out of battles, but without it, the last mission would have been a bust. So just…stay out of trouble. Got it?"

Aubrey smiled. She liked Lanette. Lanette wasn't so much their boss or even their mother, as much as she was just the oldest sister, trying to keep everything moving at a decent pace.

"Okay, I'm killing the camera feed. See you guys safe and not-burnt-to-a-crisp," Maggaly said.

"Hey, Aubrey?"

…Would she have a heart attack every time Paddy talked to her?

"That skirt looks good on you."

"Enough of that," Leaf groaned.

A partially-gloved hand—really, those things did look so ridiculous—turned the monitor off, while the other reached for the belt hanging off the desktop tower. A single, familiar Pokeball sat on the front rung. Leaf strapped it around her hip loosely: it didn't hold up her skirt—apparently Leaf had a thing for skirts—so much as it just sat on her hips and drew attention to them.

"You both look ridiculous," Kenneth heckled. "Can I have some food now? You know, Gracie's got this butler who cooks a mean omelet…"

"Ignore him," Summer said, her tone somewhere between playful and more-serious-than-a-heart-attack-in-the-woods. "The first thing we did was hide his Quilava. If he tries anything, those handcuffs are gonna get a lot tighter."

Aubrey scooped up Chikorita and followed the stoic Leaf upstairs. She stole a quick glance: his purple sweater had been stained brown by who-knows-what, his blond hair had matted on the back of his head, and bags had developed under his eyes.

Silver fingers stuck out from the sleeve of his left arm.

"Take care," Kenneth said.

…She had only been awake for an hour, but there were more questions now than last night.

"Here," Leaf handed her the familiar white parka. "I didn't bring a spare jacket. I tried to give you an outfit that wouldn't clash too hard with it, though."

Leaf was the only girl in the world who could play dress-up with an expression harder than diamond.

"I'll tell you about the Kenneth stuff on the way," she said. "It's ridiculous, if you ask me. But Lanette's the boss, so you've gotta do what you've gotta do."

"She's not the boss," Aubrey said. And when there was no response: "…Is she?"

Leaf opened the door. The breeze that ripped through the house belonged in the Arctic; despite the thermal clothing, her skin became ice.

It was time to see her friends again.