"YES! YES! YES!" Chili exclaimed. He proceeded to stand up on a chair, and put one foot on the round table. He threw his head back and began laughing manically while pumping his fists in the air wildly.

"He's losing it," Cilian sighed. Cress' eye twitched when he saw his red head companion's shoe on the neat table.

Chili stopped his laugh abruptly and pointed directly at White, who was looking at the exit of the restaurant trying to formulate an escape plan to get away from these insane men. This seemingly fancy café was more like a zoo with a bowtie.

"Hey girlie! You're the owner of this snivy, aren't you?" he roared at her. White squeaked and visibly jumped in her chair from shock at his address. Just the force of his voice seemed to blow her hair back.

"Y…yeah?" she said nervously.

Chili threw his head back and laughed again. Cilian calmly moved up to White's chair and tried his best to smile down at her kindly.

"So that means that you are the trainer who recently left Nuvema Town, correct?"

White managed to nod her head.

"And you were planning on challenging the gym here in Striaton, correct?"

White nodded again and her shoulders relaxed. Cillian had a calming aura about him that made her chill out. Cress rolled his eyes and walked up to the other side of White's chair and knelt down beside her again. He looked her up and down and let out a wistful sigh.

"I'm jealous of Chili. He got the cutest one of the three. I was challenged by that rash brute."

White tilted her head to the side and the corner of her mouth twitched into a frown.

"I don't understand…" White said pulling her hat down to cover herself bashfully.

"The trio café is also the Striation city gym!" Chili yelled, unable to contain his excitement, "Man, I was wondering when the third trainer would get here!"

He snorted as excited stream seemed to rise from his nostrils. It reminded White of a tepig.

"You're telling me that you three are the gym leaders of the Striation city gym?" White said in disbelief. She couldn't believe that these three aipoms were actually gym leaders! Cress took White's hand into his own to reassure her.

"It's true, mademoiselle. I'm the water pokemon trainer of this gym. I knew there was just something about you…water is weak to grass types, you know. It explains everything," he said with a smirk.

White felt like she was going to melt from embarrassment. Chili slammed his other foot onto the table and rudely pointed his finger now at Cress.

"Quit putting the moves on her, Cress! She chose the snivy so she's mine!" Chili spat.

Cress looked up at Chili still with a playfully smug smile painted across his face.

"Make me," Cress whispered.

This set Chili off like a firecracker. He let out a war cry louder than a loudred and jumped off the table, knocking over the (thankfully) unlit candelabra and some of the (thankfully) empty crystal goblets. Cress stood up in one fluid motion and began to roll up his sleeves. Cilian hid under the table as Chili leapt at the blue-haired menace.

White couldn't take it any more.

"Everybody STOP!" she hollered at the top of her lungs.

The three froze and looked at her wide-eyed. Before any of them could speak to continue their obnoxious banter, White cut them off.

"Cress, Cilian, Chili, sit your butts down right. Now." White demanded. She channeled her mother's best angry face, and looked at them each in the eyes sternly. The three butlers sat down at her table quickly, too shocked to disobey. They sat there for a moment in silence while White muttered something about getting a headache. Finally, she looked directly at Cress.

"Cress. I'll take a glass of water and an orange juice. Please get a straw for Snivy."

Cress raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and left to get her order. White turned to Chili.

"Chili. Snivy and I will take a salad with whatever kind of vinaigrette, and two rose petal parfaits."

Chili stood up abruptly, nearly knocking his own chair over. He gave her a short bow before leaving to fulfill her order.

"Cilian," White began.

"Yes ma'am?" Cilian straightened up, expecting some sort of order.

White slumped in her chair and relaxed.

"Please call me White," she said waving her hand dismissively. Cilian gave her a small smile.

"Nice to meet you Miss White," he said. White gave a crooked smile in response to the "miss."

"You three wear me out. So, is this the Straiaton gym or do battles happen someplace else?"

"Oh no. We like to battle on stage at our cafe," Cilian said relaxing a little bit as well.

"Well that's interesting," White said thoughtfully.

"Actually, our favorite thing to do is to have event battles, but we haven't been able to do that in a couple of years. Exhibition matches always pull in a lot of customers."

"I bet that's a lot of fun. What do you do at the events?" White asked.

Finally things were peaceful. Cress appeared with two pitchers of ice water and White's glass of orange juice. He set the orange juice near Snivy, who was still sitting on the table. Cilian and White watched while Cress proceeded to fix the table quickly and quietly, and poured each of them water into the goblets on the table. Cress passed Snivy a straw before sitting down at the table. Snivy stuck the straw into the orange juice and began to sip it down eagerly.

"We usually do a large formal dinner, or a casual luncheon or tea tasting during the day. We advertise and send formal letters to our best customers," Cilian said excitedly.

"Exhibition matches are always busy. Sometimes we even have the trainer help us wait on guests. We play a lot of games, Cilian plays music, and sometimes we battle one another. The main event at the end is always the trainer challenging the respective leader to a battle, though." Cress said quietly. He flashed White an apologetic smile, and she smiled back. Finally they weren't acting like cartoon characters, but like regular people. Chili appeared with multiple salads on a large black tray.

"Figured everybody was hungry…" he muttered and placed a colorful salad in front of everyone. He also placed two pink rose gelato parfaits in front of White and Snivy.

"Thank you, Chili. This looks really good!" White said earnestly. Chili's serious frown slowly brightened up into a cheesy grin. He sat down at the table with the group.

"Aw, it was nothing!" he said happily blushing a little.

"So, if these exhibition matches are so much fun, why haven't you had one in a really long time?" White said before taking a bite of her salad. Chili, who had not yet begun to eat, responded to her.

"You guys are talking about exhibition matches?"

They nodded politely.

"Why haven't we had them? I guess it's because all of the trainers that come through here lately just haven't been interested. No one wants to stay in Striaton for a week or two and wait for it. But, man! We always have so much fun! I wish that we could have another one…" Chili said while tapping his hand on the table impatiently. Just talking about it seemed to get him a little riled up.

"It's gotten to the point where we haven't even been asking trainers if they would like to do it. Negative answers have become the norm, so why ask? It's had a pretty harsh impact on our café, as you can tell," Cress said wistfully while swirling his glass of water in his hand absentmindedly.

"That's really unfortunate," White said sadly, "They sound like a lot of fun."

Cilian's eyes met White's and she knew what he was about to ask.

"White, would you be willing to stay in Striation for a while and participate in the event with us? We promise it's a lot of fun. You won't be disappointed."

White thought on it for a moment. What would Bianca and Cheren say? They were eager to continue to blow through the Unova region together, and White would be so far behind them if she stayed. She thought about N, too. She wanted to spend more time to get to know him better and she couldn't do that if he was miles and miles ahead of her. Plus there were living expenses that she needed to think about. There was no way that she could afford to stay in the pokemon center for a week. Trainers needed to be constantly moving around Unova and challenging each other to battles in order to win money to survive. Staying in Striaton would leave her unable to go out and battle to make money.

Then she looked at Chili, Cress, and Cilian's faces. Cilian looked so hopeful it almost made her want to cry. Chili's face was shocked at Cilian's request, but she could tell that he was waiting on bated breath for her answer. Cress was avoiding her gaze as he stared at the ornate ivory tablecloth. He looked so sad as if he had lost all hope in it ever happening again.

"Well…I can't see myself being able to do it," White said distantly.

The three men collectively sighed and looked down at their plates.

"Thought so," Cress said before taking the last bite of his salad.

"Okay. Listen. It does sound like a lot of fun. I would love to do it. Really, I would. However, I don't have anywhere to stay here other than a hotel or the pokemon center. It's going to cost me way too much money to stay in a town for a couple of weeks. I need to be traveling and making money at the same time. That's how trainers have to live," White explained.

Chili looked at Cilian with his eyebrows raised. He made a sort of shrugging motion in her direction, and Cilian's eyes lit up.

"You could stay with us!" Cilian said happily, "We have a guest bedroom here. It's very fine and has it's own bathroom and everything. We wouldn't mind your presence here."

"But the living expenses…" White tried to explain.

"If you live here, you work here! Simple as that! You can eat and stay here if you work at the café!" Chili said determinedly clenching his fist.

"A woman like White would draw a lot of attention. If we were to advertise a girl working here for a few weeks I'm sure our café would be booming again in no time. You would get to keep your tips, of course, so you would be making money at the same time," Cress said stroking his chin thoughtfully.

"It's a win win situation! We can send out invitations to the exhibition match today if we try hard enough. You can work here for, oh I don't know, a week and a half, maybe two weeks? Then we have the event and then you and I get to duke it out for your badge!" Chili said excitedly. He dug into a small pocket on the chest of his vest and pulled out a shiny pen adorned with 3 colored stones. He held it up for her to see and her jaw dropped slightly.

"This is what you want, right? The trio badge? I still have mine to give out," Chili said sticking his tongue out at White. White's pupils dilated like a purloin looking at a branch of catnip. For some reason, just looking at the little badge made her heart thunder in her chest.

"Yes. I want that badge," White said firmly. There was no asking why she wanted it, or how it had this strange effect on her. All she knew is that she wanted it. Bad.

"Too bad! I'm not going to give it to you unless we have an event match," Chili said teasingly.

"You can't do that, Chili. If a trainer challenges the gym, we have to battle them, no matter what," Cress raised his voice, threatening Chili.

White thought about it for a moment. One of her fears about staying had been dismissed by the butler gym leaders. They promised to let her stay and give her meals if she would do the event for them and work the café with them in the meantime. She would also get to keep the tip money from her tables. It sounded like a really great deal. The more and more she thought about it, the more she wanted to do it. There was the issue of falling behind on her adventure, but what was a week or two? This was her journey after all. Well, it wasn't all hers. She would have to ask her traveling partner what he thought about the whole thing.

"What do you think, Snivy? We were going to rest a few days in Striaton anyway…" White's voice traveled off. Snivy stood up from his spot next to her on the table.

"Sniiivy," he said with a small incline of his head and a smirk on his face.

"All right! We'll do it!" White said with a grin. The 3 gym leaders eyebrows shot up and their faces broke into wide smiles of excitement.

/chapter 9 end/

Sorry I took forever to put this chapter in. I've been out of town in LA for the past week. A big thank you to my reviewers for their encouragement!~