10.
Champions and Volts
Liko couldn't remember falling asleep.
Sprigatito wakes her up with a purr, and the blue Squawkabilly, finally recovered, watches from his place in the table, silent and so unlike her mother's yellow Squawkabilly that Liko wonders for a minute if she's actually looking at the same species.
Serena appears minutes later, wearing a different sundress, blues and greens, no hat, and her long hair free, charming as ever.
"Had a good rest?"
Liko nodded, shy, trying to remember how much she told the older girl through the tears before she collapsed, tired from everything.
Serena fills in the blanks that Liko forgot; the mess at the local Indigo Academy had been the real talk of the city, and despite what Joey thought, that Beedrill had been old news as of three days ago.
A guy named Friede, a professor, had requested a meeting with the local gym leader, Blue Oak. Serena, an old friend of Blue's, had decided to tag along because she could.
According to Friede, he and his crew had been hired by the mother of one of the students attending Indigo Academy. They were to get the girl back home to Paldea.
The girl was missing, and that Friede guy figured it had something to do with what happened at the academy and was asking the gym leader for help.
"M-mom didn't…she didn't call to tell me about anyone coming to pick me up for break," Liko interrupted, trying to remember if her mother had called to tell her about the airship crew, a part of her wondering if Lucca had just forgotten.
Her mother wasn't a bad mother, Liko didn't think so. Lucca had more of a hands-off approach to her parenting, mostly because she wanted Liko to make her own decisions and not wait for her mother to make them for her; they had grown apart in the last few years but Liko figured that it was because she was getting older and not because her mother always seemed to be busy these days.
Liko knew her mother would have called to tell her about it…wouldn't she?
"Blue didn't get too much info out of that guy, though…except that professor mentioned that he and your mother were old friends and that he and his crew were doing her a favor. We were a little suspicious, you understand? Me and Blue. Looking for a girl that goes missing after someone attacks her school, what's that about? But I guess he figured we didn't believe him, so he had to tell us that there was a chance you were being targeted by a group of professional thieves…something about a pendant…"
Liko held her pendant close, thinking about it all.
That man's words came back with a bang.
…Lucca knew.
"What are you planning to do?"
Liko doesn't know.
There's strangers looking for her; one of them already has shown his cards, and he's a little monster. The other could be lying about knowing Lucca, probably another thief from a different group, trying to get on her good side to steal her grandmother's pendant…and…and…
Her grandmother's pendant…
Liko tries to remember the dream.
A fisherman sitting on top of a black snake flying over the world, taking pieces of the world of crystal below to build paradise.
"I…I need to go back home."