"The former prince of Unova," Poppy breathed. "He lives?"

After the monarchy had been overthrown to create a republic—well, everyone knew the stories. There were thousands of cruel variations, but the gist of it was that the rebels had had the royal family killed. The king, the queen, and their two smiling children.

Poppy had found this out the first time and had simply blinked. Politics had no affect on her. Why should it? She had just been scum, hopping from place to place. But now…

Now her heart palpitated. Isn't this what she had wanted to avoid by blocking out her emotions?

My first kill order.

Could she really be an assassin?

"Yes indeed," answered Drayden. "He lives, and your cousin has located him."

Black. Black found the former prince. And now I have to kill him.

"No other member of the royal family lives; the king, queen, and young princess are all dead. The only remaining member of the family is the prince."

"And I will kill him," she echoed.

"Yes." Drayden nodded, pleased at his child, obedient as a canine.

Poppy rose, not having any words worth saying. Through her constant numbness she registered a vague shock. How was she just supposed to kill a person in cold blood? But she would not be the first person to commit such a crime. Her siblings had done the same. Her makeshift elder sister, Elesa, was currently in Kanto on orders to kill multiple persons. But guilt never wove its way to Elesa. She was tall, proud, golden. A yellow flower. Poppy revered her, and if she could accomplish such tasks for the sake of Unova's success, surely Poppy could as well.

"One question." She had not known the answer for a rather long time, and she figured it was rather vital to the situation. "Why did this war start?"

Blank stares met. It was obvious, but Poppy had never known. Sheltered in shadows all her life, too young to remember anything but tensions between kingdoms, she really had paid no heed before. But when she took on a mission, she did her research. And she would do this one no differently.

Except that I will kill a boy only a year older than me.

Drayden's voice shook her. "Why, I thought you had known. There were hard times here in Unova, and some rebel groups blamed the government. They overthrew the monarchy to develop a flourishing republic in which the people had their say, as you know." He chuckled, it seemed. His moral was that even the scum should have a say. That was why he accepted the street kids. "Kanto thought this was not wise. They disbelieved in such a system. Of course, those arrogant jabberers choose to believe what they will, but tensions increased, trade faltered, insurgent groups mingled into both sides and caused havoc. Sinnoh, following suit but less successfully to Unova's change, allied with us. Kanto allied with Johto, and Hoenn wanted no part, but is rather unfortunately and quite literally in the middle of this crossfire. Somewhere along the way, it seemed, these tensions altered into an atmosphere of war."

Such a critical explanation, it was, and so Poppy understood better than all of the murky stories she had pieced together before. But it didn't shock nor appall her. Nothing did. She only nodded and turned.

"You will make an excellent assassin, my dear flower," Drayden reassured her in his gruff voice as she made her way out. "And one more detail…your cousin knows nothing of this. It should probably stay that way, for the greater good of your mission, should he become too close to this prince."

Poppy nodded and quit the room. She stumbled into the courtyard—Whitney was there, frowning at some wilting flowers, not listening as Marlon conversed animatedly beside her—and had to sit to calm herself. She'd never killed anyone in cold blood before. Sure, on missions, she had been forced to use force, but never had she gotten an order to kill. Sure, her siblings had, but not her. She wasn't even sure how to go about doing it.

Maybe she would burn him.

That would be fitting. A little girl was once destroyed by flames. And if the prince was burned…any traces left of her would be singed away. Then the blood running through her would certainly be black as a witch's.

Poppy physically shook herself, he stoic demeanor vanishing for a fraction of a moment, before she managed to calm herself and return to her placid state.

She could do this. She would do this. She would have to.

The shadow of someone rather tall fell upon her. "Well. I heard you got quite the order today, isn't that right, Poppy?"

She stared up, unabashed. "Yes. How did you know?" The question came out as more of an accusation.

"Why, who did you think was tailing our cousin to keep track of his whereabouts?" N asked with a laugh that held some strange and cruel note far beneath it. His expression slid to something foreboding. "Just be wary, Poppy. Odd things are occurring."

What a peculiar warning, she mused to herself, watching his tailcoats swish as he turned on his heel and swept away.

"So let me get this straight."

White let out a moan as she swept by the table again. Belle offered to explain her story to Black and White, but White was working and could only hear bits and pieces as she walked by. Still, she'd managed to string together enough, but Black still needed to go over it.

Sometimes I wonder if his brain gets so full that it actually cripples him, White thought with a shake of her head, replenishing a different table with more tea.

"You were found on a boat," Black repeated, "and that's why they call you 'Belle', because of the way the bells rang when they found you."

She nodded. "Right."

"And a fisherman brought you to his friends a few towns away, where they gave you a temporary home."

"Correct."

"And then they took you to the fisherman's niece, who brought you up as her sister."

"That's about it."

Both of them halted and turned towards where a small group of people was talking about a new act passed by the president pertaining to correspondence between the nations of the Pax Seas—Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Unova. Also known as the nations, excluding Hoenn, that were involved in a war.

White knew why Black would wonder about any sort of act passed by the government; he was, after all, the son of the vice president, though this was not common knowledge. But she had no clue as to why Belle would be so interested. White noticed her, though, put a hand over an envelope on top of her usual stack of books. White couldn't make out the name on its front, but she saw the letter "C".

Black shook his head and his trance was broken. "Sorry," he said to Belle. "Just got a bit distracted there." He glanced over as the door swished open, bringing with it the sound of whistling wind and rain. "Ah, that oughtta be Wally," Black explained. "Don't worry, he's a real nice chap. Perhaps a bit on the fragile side, but he's practical. With the conjoined genius of me, Prez, and Wally, certainly we'll solve your mystery." With that, Black leapt up and greeted a sopping-wet, pin-thin boy at the door.

White rolled her eyes, having overheard what he said and sunk into the booth next to Belle. "Really, we will help, even if it doesn't seem like we amount to much. We've all been friends for a while, so I know that although Black is silly, he's very capable of being cunning. Though I wouldn't say that before him or else I'd never hear the end of it."

"Well, I'm already grateful that you're even trying. Never would I have thought that people would want to help me on such a tedious quest. How did you two meet, anyways?" Belle asked.

White groaned. "He came in one day with another one of his rowdy cousins and caused a huge uproar, breaking a whole bunch of cups. Rather than making him pay, the staff at our coffee house decided it would be a better lesson to him to make him work to pay for it. And for some cruel reason, I was put to be in charge of him. But it all worked out in the end. Since we both didn't really have many friends, we found each other, and discovered Wally soon after." She giggled and leaned closer to Belle, speaking in a hushed tone. "But you know what? He paid off the cups long ago. We just cannot seem to get him out." White quickly told one of her coworkers she would be breaking for a few minutes, as Wally and Black slid into the booth beside them.

"It's nice to meet you, Miss Belle," Wally greeted politely.

"And you too, Wally."

She had to explain her story again to Wally, though it went much faster since he was rather attentive. For a long while afterwards, White, Black, and Wally debated ways that Belle could have turned up on that ship—Black's, of course, being the most obscure of all—and Belle occasionally interjected with facts that made them all realize there were so many holes in the story that they could not form a logical prediction quite yet.

"Looks like we'll have to do some investigating," Black said excitedly.

Though it was an unspoken agreement that such investigating could not go on during to dreary, stormy weather outside. Despite that the sun had long since been trapped behind the blanket of clouds above, what little light they had soon receded into a darkness that dripped in through the coffeehouse windows. So to get home, the quartet was forced out into the rain with only two umbrellas. They had scarcely begun trekking away from the coffeehouse, still chattering away, when it happened.

The sound pierced the calm, rainy dusk and reverberated through the surrounding area, windows rattling, shutters fluttering. Black spun round, startled, and heard as screams rose from a dull hum to a shrill shriek. Coming from the capitol building. In the distance, he could just barely see two figures running his way.

"What happened?" Belle asked, a quivering fear in her voice. Nobody answered.

After a second's hesitation, Black leapt out from beneath the umbrella and plunged into the rain. White called his name after him, but he paid no mind to the sloshing of his friends' boots as they followed him. He had a head start, though, and no umbrella to hold him back. He nearly tumbled headfirst into the figures he knew well, but Falkner steadied him.

"Falkner, what just went on in there?" He gestured to the capitol building. It was a fairly new building, built so tall as a sign that Unova could surpass anything, that a democratic republic was so much more important, so much higher than anything else. But at that moment, it just looked to Black like it was stabbing the clouds, slicing into them until they cried cold tears of rain.

"President Juniper was just assassinated," Poppy answered, small and soft beside Falkner's hard-set aloofness. Just a hint of nerves worried at her level tone.

"What?" Black choked, hardly able to comprehend the gravity of the situation, hardly noticing the clamor of his friends skidding to a stop behind him.

Still, White's voice carried through the rushing torrent and reached him: "But that means…Black, your father is now…" She didn't finish.

"Wait, what?" Belle asked. "What does this even mean?"

Black didn't turn around to look at his friends, who watched him with worry. He simply stared straight ahead into the rain, void of reaction. "Did I forget to mention who I am, Belle? I'm Black Harmonia, and this means that now my father, Ghetsis Harmonia, is president of Unova."

A/N:

Oooooh, bad things are gonna happen...
So, um, a really short & really useless chapter here. Sorry for fillers but I just ran out of things to say and I gotta get like nine chapters out of Part II before I can get to the twisted mind-screws that will be Part III. But hey, at least I got this out with all the homework I've been getting.
Rant over! Thanks for reading!
-Silvia

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon or anything else.