Ninette knows two hours have passed, and the morning is beautiful and picturesque and everything she'd want in a trip abroad. But she doesn't know what actual time it is, since her phone refuses to get any service, and thus hasn't updated its clock.
It's early-ish morning. Maybe mid-morning? Ninette has tromped all around the pretty green hills, and found many wild pokémon waking up for the day, and even some nocturnal ones settling in, but no wooloo. And now, in addition to her prior exhaustion, she's hungry.
So she traipses back down to the tiny town, hoping to figure out the local time, get some needed food in herself, and ask some locals about wild wooloo.
She only gets lost once.
Civilization finally back in sight again, she finds herself pulling up short on the outskirts. Ninette hardly registers the town sign—Los Platos—and doesn't care about its cute touristy description because her eyes land on the pokémon center for the first time. She'd seen the roof when they'd landed and from the distance a handful of times as she climbed around the hills and meadows. Everyone knows pokémon center red, even if they're not a trainer.
But that is not a pokémon center.
To start with, it's not even a building. She's all for open-air architectural design, but it looks more like a large store kiosk than anything else. Yet the red roof is unmistakable—literally, since it's a copyrighted color and she's had to explain more than once that she can't dye furfrou fur that specific shade of red because it's illegal for non-nurse pokémon outside of special events.
Two people stand behind the open desk, flanked by a few machines, including a conspicuous healing machine. There are official colors denoting a pokémon center and a government-sponsored pokémon mart (if they do things the same way in Galar, anyway, but she's pretty sure that's worldwide), and while she doesn't know what the green stands for, the fact remains: that is not a building.
Ninette had hoped to stay the night in the pokémon center. She'd hoped to talk to locals there (both about wooloo and about what eateries they'd recommend), check over maps, charge her phone, go to the bathroom, refill her water, and get out of the sun. All the very, very basic amenities she's come to expect from the universal staple of care in a pokémon-friendly world. Even if they hadn't had private rooms available, she's heard stories about trainers who are allowed to camp out in the lobby, and she'll take a couch for a night or two. She's not that picky.
But she is picky enough to demand to sleep with a roof over her head.
Camping is popular in Galar, isn't it? Ninette recalls, though panic still digs its claws into her brain.
They don't have a pokémon center. It's a travesty. It's also greatly upsetting her plans, since she hadn't thought she'd have to spring for a hotel. This may have to be a two-day, single-night affair, and she may be eating significantly less than she'd planned, even if she had saved a couple thousand on the travel portion.
Ninette takes a deep breath, then approaches the strange pokémon not-center.
A woman with pink hair and an official red apron smiles at her. "Welcome, how may I help you today? Do your pokémon need healing?"
Yeah, that sounds like a Nurse Joy alright. Ninette fidgets, looking over the woman's shoulder, through the stand and right back out into the great outdoors. Does this count as culture shock? It's certainly some kind of shock. "Oh, uh, I was just… I'm not from around here, and I was taken aback, and a little confused. Could you answer a few questions for me, please?"
"Certainly!" the Nurse Joy chirps.
"This is a pokémon center, isn't it?"
She chuckles, good-naturedly. The man behind the counter beside her raises an eyebrow. The Nurse Joy replies, "Yes, it is. We can heal most injuries and problems with pokémon at any of these centers in this region, and they're used as common travel points for flying taxis as well. If I may ask—judging from your accent, are you traveling? Could you be Kalosian?"
Ninette sweats. She can hear the woman's accent, too, so how starkly must she stand out here? "I am, yes." No use lying, however.
"Pokémon centers in this region have this open plan to encourage easy, freer travel. My partner here beside me also runs an official pokémon mart, too, and we have many helpful machines as well to aid trainers with most things they'd want. I know this must look strange, but it's wonderful to get so much fresh air and sunshine—and we're very proud of those here."
That's all well and good, but Ninette doesn't need to buy anything from a pokémon mart, and she doesn't have a team to heal, either. She needs a building where she can rest. "Do you, um, have a camping kit or something I could rent, then?" Ninette asks in a feebler voice than she means. She's only been camping once before, and it had gone poorly. If she needs to sleep outdoors, by herself, in the dark—so be it. But she at least demands a tent.
"Oh! You were concerned because of that—I understand now," the Nurse Joy says, hand to her mouth. "Yes, we do, as well as picnicking sets. We don't sell any groceries here, but most towns have a couple of stores, as our people are proud of our local produce. This may not be the rest area you were hoping for, coming from Kalos, but everything ought to be reasonably priced. I'm afraid Los Platos doesn't have a hotel, however…"
"There was that bed and breakfast, though?" the shopkeeper chimes in. He leans an elbow on the countertop and squints in the direction of the town, as if he can see every building in it. (Well, he just might, considering its size.)
"Oh, no, that closed two months ago, hadn't you heard?" the Nurse Joy drops her voice into a whisper.
"Ay, no, I didn't. Was it…?"
"Yes, it was. There isn't enough business. No one comes through here these days, not with Mesagoza so close."
Ah, small town gossip. At least that's the same abroad. Ninette doesn't wish to interrupt, but neither is she interested in a bed and breakfast that no longer exists.
"Um," Ninette interrupts, as politely as she can, "could I rent a camping kit? And a picnicking kit, I guess…?" She could see a convenience store a ways down the road, and there would be other places to get a couple necessities, if she's roughing it. Not in her plans, but cheaper than the hotel they don't have in this little town. She doesn't want to stray much farther than she must—wooloo aren't going to be found in the bigger cities, after all, and as much as she'd love to sightsee, it'll have to be saved for her next visit.
Especially Wyndon. That's been on her bucket list for ages, ever since her mentor shared pictures of the time she'd been invited to style the teams of the Galar Champion Cup. And then, her mother had brought her back her wooloo wool cardigan and beret as souvenirs from a business trip there, and Ninette was hooked.
But she's sacrificing much for her grand dream, and that means sightseeing and window shopping, too.
Next time, she vows to herself.
Her bag, while sturdy and plenty roomy to pack what she'd needed, isn't exactly the type that can handle more bulk tied onto it. (She'd also hoped to rent a locker in an actual pokémon center to stash her stuff during the days…) The Nurse Joy kindly helps her rearrange what she can, but it comes out lumpy with the picnicking kit shoved inside, and the camping kit has to be tied onto one of the straps.
Ninette, for the first time, wishes for a backpack. She hasn't worn one since grade school—they're not fashionable for anyone outside of the roughest of trainers. But they are so much easier to carry than lugging around her travel bag…
In this way, Ninette learns that much more about trainers. Very much against her will.
Ninette is not having any luck with finding wooloo.
She feels much better after a convenience store salad and a parfait—and the food had been wonderful, even for quick and cheap stuff—but her bad luck begins to wear on her. Aren't wooloo supposed to be common? They're livestock! She's not about to go steal someone else's, but they were picked out as livestock partially because of the super common thing, weren't they? And she hasn't even found any ranch examples, anyway, to waffle about stealing!
Worse: the temperature continues to climb as the sun rises in the clear sky.
She's already stripped off her cardigan, again tying it unstylishly around her waist, since it won't fit in her overstuffed bag. But Galar wasn't supposed to be hot-hot, just warm. Usually rainy, too. But the sky is cloudless, bright blue, allowing the sun to beat down mercilessly upon her.
After ensuring it isn't too dirty and not covered in pokémon poop, Ninette flops onto a rock and fans herself with her hand. She'll need to trek back into town to refill her water bottle soon, because she knows how bad dehydration can be, and she refuses to succumb to something as frivolous as that. She hadn't planned for this heat, and she hadn't planned for wooloo to be hard to find, either.
Ninette stretches her legs out in front of her, then comes to a horrifying realization.
The strip of skin between her stockings and shorts is turning pink. After stretching out her arms, she sees that they, too, are slowly reddening.
Ninette leaps back to her feet with a squeal.
She's pale as can be and didn't pack sunscreen for a trip to Galar. Who would?! It was supposed to be cloudy and dreary! Ninette downs the rest of her water—gotta doubly make sure to stay hydrated now, plus she has to run back to Los Platos anyway—and shoves her bottle back into her bag's side pocket.
She doesn't notice it pop out again from the overstuffed pressure against it.
Ninette all but sprints back to the town, sweating, panting, and grouchier by the step. She's resigned to sweating through her outfit, but she'll have to stick it out for the day, and she needs sunscreen.
Her wooloo-less luck at least gives her high enough SPF sunscreen for her skin tone at the convenience store. Ninette also buys another parfait for herself in celebration of this minor win.
She pays, opens the parfait to consume immediately, then heads to the public water fountain by the store's entrance. She'll have to wash her mouth out after all of that sweetness, and she'll refill her water bottle before heading out again.
Which is when she notices that her side pocket is empty.
"You're kidding me!" Ninette shrieks and pats down every bit of her bag for her spritzee-patterned water bottle. It's not there. It's nowhere in her bag, nor in the convenience store, nor in the street. (There's really only one big street in the tiny town, and it's the only road she's taken.)
But there's no cute pink water bottle anywhere in sight.
The Nurse Joy and mart merchant give her a sympathetic look as they see her pass again, this time, dragging her feet, with a cheap bottle of water from the store dangling from her fingers. She'll never trust that pocket again. That water bottle had been a holiday gift from her mother only last year; she'd never gotten the occasion to use it very much and had looked forward to showing it off to any curious locals. Plus, it was insulated. With how hot the day had become, she'd enjoyed that feature tremendously.
Everywhere outside of the town looks the same. It's all perfectly picturesque rolling hills, small cliffs, and sparse trees and ponds. It could be the subject of any number of landscape paintings in any art museum in the world.
So it's also damn near impossible to tell where she'd come from, with everything looking the same, plus her terrible sense of direction.
There's no way she'll be able to retrace her steps to find that water bottle again. There's a small chance she'll stumble upon it again—maybe she could spot it at a distance, given that it's pink, unless it's in taller grass—since she'll be traipsing everywhere in search of wooloo again, but it's a very small chance. Ninette does not believe in getting her hopes up unduly.
What will I tell mama if she asks where it is? Ninette wonders with trepidation. I could say I've lost it… It wouldn't be a lie. But then her mother would go through the same stages of searching she's trying now, and it would all be in vain, since it would've been lost a whole region away, and Ninette will not be sharing that little tidbit with her mother.
Ninette manages to find another mostly-clean rock to sit on, this time half-shaded by a small cliff. Aside from the close cliff, it could've been the place she'd rested earlier, for how similar the scenery is.
Ninette sighs and pulls the sunscreen out of her heavy bag.
She lathers it generously on her exposed arms and shoulders, making sure to get her neck and chest, too. She has to guess how well she's covering the top of her back, but she will not be untying her hair again to cover it, given the heat. She uses her phone's camera to make sure her face is covered and rubbed in properly. She's gotten her nose and ears sunburned too many times to forget the details now.
Ninette spreads her legs and rolls her stockings down to her knees. She hikes up her shorts' hem as far up as it'll go. She's never shown this much thigh outside of wearing a swimsuit, but at least no one is around to judge her desperate sunscreen smearing routine.
She covers her thighs as best she can, then sits back and waits. Being as fair as she is, Ninette has learned a lot—from experience—about sunburns and sunscreen. She knows to cover everything thickly, evenly, and rub it in well to avoid the burns. And to repeat in a couple hours.
But the secondary concern, more immediate now, is that sunscreen can hurt many types of fabrics.
She's not risking her tarountula silk stockings, and she likes these shorts (even if they're white so it wouldn't show), so she sits and waits it out for her skin to dry a bit. She's not going to rub off all of her carefully applied protection because she gets impatient. She's done this before for several different outfits in the past.
Skincare is important, and too many people overlook sunscreen as part of it. But taking care of good clothing is also important.
She reclines on her hands on the rock, squinting up at the bright sky overhead. It is pretty here.
She wriggles around until she can angle the sun better, then tries for a selfie.
"ARGH!" someone screams from above, on the cliff.
Ninette drops her phone and almost screams, too, in reflexive fear at the sudden noise.
Something long and black thwacks down into the ground, right between her legs, inches from her face.
She does scream then.
Ninette tumbles backward, falling off the rock, and ends up sprawled upside-down on top of her bag. From her new vantage point, she sees someone standing on the short cliff's edge above her, silhouetted.
The figure jumps off the cliff, slides down the scree, and stumbles to a stop in front of her. Turns out it's a boy, probably only a little younger than her, brown-skinned and dark-haired and wearing large sunglasses. His mouth is twisted in a sneer. Ninette blinks noctowlishly up at him, because she did not expect any part of this situation.
"You," the boy imperiously demands, jutting his chin down at her. He surveys her a moment longer, gaze hidden behind his sunglasses, then turns away with pursed lips. "Y-You, have you seen anything like that thing around here?"
Ninette looks back at the thing that had almost speared her. Her initial split-second impression of a sword isn't quite correct, though it is long and has a pointy enough end to end up stuck in the ground. But it's not a handle so much as a topper, and it's circular where a sword would be flat, and there's a large, broken charm hanging off the loop at the top. She can't tell what it's made of, but it's visibly cracked—kind of looks crumbly, actually. She has zero idea what the thing is supposed to be.
"No?" Ninette replies.
The boy scowls harder off to the side. "They're usually glowing, in different colors, but if you see them, they'd be stuck in the ground like that." He turns enough that she assumes he's glancing at her out of the corner of his hidden eye.
She catches a definite redness to his cheeks that time.
Ninette only realizes then that she's still splayed on the ground in the most embarrassing, awkward, and unprofessional manner. She scrambles to a kneeling position, wiping off as much grass as she can, though there's no salvaging it. She's sticky with half-dried sunscreen, now covered in grass and dirt, and must look a wreck for how her stockings are down around her shins and her shorts are rucked up like she's trying to give herself a wedgie.
Her first real meeting with a (non-merchant) local and she must look like a deranged foreigner. Great. She's supposed to be better than this!
"So… What is this?" Ninette asks, nodding toward the odd stake thing. No salvaging it, so may as well try for nonchalant. When in doubt: fake it 'til you make it.
"A stake." (At least she has good noun applicator skills.) "That's all you need to know!" Did his voice come out angrier right then? She vows to make a better first impression with the next local she meets; until then, she doubles down on the nonchalance. He plants his fists on his hips and demands, "So you haven't seen any around here? Those in this area ought to be glowing green."
"I think I would have noticed something so odd standing out in this scenery," Ninette replies with another attempt at lightness.
The boy scowls harder. Another mission failed.
He scrubs a hand back through his shaggy hair and sighs in a manner that's somehow full-bodied. He appears to be the type to do everything fully. "Fine," he says as if he doesn't believe her, but what the heck would she stand to gain by lying about those weird stakes? "But if you do see any, don't touch them! They're mine—I have to be the one to break them."
So the crumbliness is meant to be part of it? Ninette glances again at the inert, eroded stake on the other side of her sitting rock.
"Oh, yeah, and they're dangerous, too. So you shouldn't touch them for that reason, either," he adds in a rush.
So the fact that they're 'his' is more important than their danger? Ninette flatly thinks, mightily unimpressed. This first impression is ruined on both sides—she doesn't know what those stakes are, what they're used for, or why he's looking so angrily for them, but she does know that he's kind of being a selfish dick about the process. He hadn't even apologized for startling her so badly. Nor introduced himself.
Given that the situation is a bust, Ninette decides she doesn't need to introduce herself, either. With the sprawling green hills surrounding them, and that she's been here for half a day with only seeing him out here, she's going to hazard a guess that Galar is a lot bigger than she'd anticipated, and she won't be running into many crowds of trainers. At least she won't be beating back ten-year-olds looking for their starters while tracking down a wooloo.
He stomps over—he even walks angrily, wow—and yanks the stake out of the ground. It takes him a few tries and it is painfully obvious he wanted it to be one smooth, suave pull instead. Ninette kindly does not voice her snark about this.
"And if you see any like this," the boy mutters, glancing away again, but points it at her, "that's all black and colorless? It might be a fake. Still don't touch it. I'm trying to track down who's doing that, too."
"Right," Ninette agrees without actually caring. She doubts she'll see this boy again. She also doubts she'll come across the magical glowing stakes in the next day and a half it takes her to capture a wooloo and conclude this trip.
He works his mouth like he wants to say something else, but ends up settling for a grimace. He leans the stake against his shoulder and continues (presumably) glaring off to the side.
But if he's a native trainer, and he's going to be exploring all over this place, and may be a little more familiar with the area—
"I'm actually looking for something, too!" Ninette blurts out with enough suddenness that he jumps. "It's this super cute spritzee-patterned pink insulated water bottle. I lost it earlier when I was exploring—so if you find something like that, please just drop it off at the pokémon center! They know I'm looking for it there."
"What's a spritzee?" the boy replies.
"Oh, they're very cute fairy pokémon from Kalos! Little, with big red eyes, and these soft beak-like mouths, and they're feathery and so, so cute. Très mignon, right? But it's a pink water bottle with a pattern on it. Can't miss it! I hope." Ninette holds her hands roughly spritzee-distance apart for scale. (She's groomed her fair share of them, so she's familiar with what that would be.)
He stares at her, gaze lost behind his sunglasses, but expression slack.
After a long beat, in which Ninette worries that he'll continue his rude streak and declare this favor beneath him, he asks, "Are you from Kalos?"
At least my accent isn't as obvious as I'd worried, she thinks exasperated. (Even if that Nurse Joy had pegged her from a few sentences.) "Yes. Ouais. Oui oui. All that jazz. I'm only here for a little while longer, so I would greatly appreciate it if you could keep an eye out for my water bottle. Pretty please?"
The boy's face again reddens, and he tears his eyes away, yet again glaring at the cliff face beside them. "F-Fine! I guess I could, since I'll be scouring the area, anyway…"
Ninette knows it's quite a long shot. But it still reassures her to know that someone else knows of her plight, and might be able to help her. Hope springs eternal—and it feels pretty darn nice, too, after an afternoon of feeling sorry for herself.
"Thanks!" she chirps, grinning at him.
"Whatever! Just keep an eye out for these stakes—I-I mean don't do that! Don't approach them or touch them or anything, and I guess I'll look around for a pink weird water bottle, too. But only because it might be on the way of where I'm looking for the stakes!" he ferociously exclaims, face reddening further. Has she really made him so mad? But he agreed to her request, and she'll never see him again, so Ninette decides she doesn't care.
He stomps off with little other fanfare. He didn't give even a halfhearted goodbye. Then again, he hadn't said hello, hadn't apologized, and hadn't introduced himself.
Ninette wipes off sweaty excess sunscreen from the back of her neck, then returns to picking grass off her legs.
Ninette hisses at the setting sun.
Not only has she found zero wooloo all day, but with the sun going down, she must face the prospect of spending the night outside. She'd rented that camping kit from the not-center, but that only means that additionally, Ninette must confront the fact that she's never pitched a tent in her life.
She stares at the pathetic pile of plastic sticks and canvas that ought to be her tent. Somehow. She's smart enough to know that she needs to work on it while there's still natural light, but… How? It didn't come with instructions. Isn't it supposed to be intuitive? Plenty of kids go camping all the time, like in scouts or with school or on family outings, so it doesn't take a genius to do this.
And yet.
Ninette stretches, wipes her sweaty forehead, and glares again at the pile of camping gear spread out before her. She's hungry, too, which does nothing for her mood.
She could go back to Los Platos, fill up on convenience store junk, and beg for a place to sleep… But what would that pokémon not-center offer her? It hardly could offer a roof over her head. And grass beneath a blanket would be marginally softer than the concrete pad surrounding the station.
Galar has lush, thick grass, at least. She won't freeze and she probably won't break her back sleeping outside. Small mercies.
"You. Are supposed to go together," Ninette tells the camping kit. She senses that the plastic bits come together to form the skeleton that the tent goes on, but then why are those separate from the canvas bits? And isn't there something about pounding stakes into the ground at some point? She doesn't see any stakes or mallets or rope.
Stakes reminds her of that strange boy from earlier. She'd checked during her last snack/water break in town if the Nurse Joy or pokémon mart guy knew that boy, or if he'd somehow already found her bottle to return. Negative on both. Aren't Nurse Joys supposed to memorize all of the trainers in their area?
"Go together already," Ninette hisses at the unmoving camping kit.
She flops down onto the ground—she'd been caring less and less about her shorts' cleanliness as the day went on, given how much she'd sweated and all of the grass still covering her—and kicks her legs out in front of her. Ninette rests her weight backwards on her hands and looks up at the orange and red sky. The sunsets here are pretty, too, of course.
She's losing light. She doesn't have time to sulk, rest, or get lost in thought. But Ninette, for all her love of planning and skill at it, is easily lost when there is no obvious first step. She'd thought the first step had been unpacking the kit, but that had given her a pile of pieces she had no idea how to fit together. Does she screw the plastic bits together and drape the canvas overtop? It doesn't sound right, but it also sounds like her best course of action, given that she has no signal on her phone to look it up.
This trip to Galar sucks, she decides—before her first night roughing it, even. It doesn't bode well.
Ninette digs around in her overstuffed bag for her phone, deciding to check the time against the sunset to see how long of a day she had, and will have tomorrow. She'd ditched it into her bag after realizing it was just a heavy, glorified clock in her pocket without service. No need to be using up the power if she couldn't do anything with it, though if she doesn't hurry it up, she may be using it for a flashlight.
Exhaustion from the incredibly long day and nearly-sleepless night edges into her movements. (She knew she shouldn't have flopped down for a rest.) Maybe I won't even feel the hard ground or care that I'm sleeping outside, if I'm sleeping so heavily, she thinks with forced optimism.
It's less about the fact that she'll be in a tent, it's less about the fact that she barely has a blanket to sleep with, it's less about the fact that she'll be picking grass out of her hair and clothes until the world ends—it's that she'll be outside. Not in a bedroom, not in a building at all. Outside where the elements and wild pokémon and who-knows-what are. Outside where there are no nightlights or light switches or phone chargers.
Ninette's hand closes on something hard in her bag.
Hard and round.
Not her phone.
With great trepidation, she withdraws her hand—and the luxury ball she found in her bag.
It's empty, she tells herself, on autopilot. Of course it's empty. Théodore meant to tag along, but only got as far as putting his ball in her bag, because she distracted him with food. Of course. It has to have happened like that, because she did not only cross international borders illegally, intending to capture a native pokémon illegally, but she did not also bring a highly-restricted purebred furfrou also across international borders.
Of course she didn't.
Ninette drops the luxury ball.
Théodore pops out and instantly begins wagging his tail.
Ninette screams into the sunset.
LIST OF NINETTE'S CRIMES SO FAR:
+International travel without valid visa
+International travel under false pretenses
+Travel as a non-training minor without parental permission
+Intent to capture pokémon without training license
+Intent to smuggle pokémon across regional borders
+Transport of trained pokémon without valid visa
+Transport of purebred furfrou across regional borders without valid visa
+Theft of pokémon