Chapter 4: It Takes Getting Used To
A short time after Tromba's Protector had thoroughly underwhelmed the proud teams of Bluewhorl Town's Rescue Team guild, Team Traveler found itself on the ground floor of a wooden hut shaped like an Ampharos' head.
Inside, they sat on a mat along with a few carefully selected snacks set out before them. On the other end was the hut's Ampharos proprietor, calmly seated on an overlooking stump lit by sunlight coming in through open windows. As his audience waited expectantly, Hatteras passed the time adjusting a red scarf with white dots on it.
"Is there something to play with here too?" the young Lugia asked, fidgeting a bit at how somber and quiet the room was compared to the beach the others lured him off of.
"In a moment, Protector," the Ampharos answered. "Your arrival… Has some rather profound implications for our town, and this is a matter that must be presented to the mayor at once!" he proclaimed, waving about one of his arms in the air before his nonplussed audience.
"The… Mayor?" Crom asked, shifting his young Druddigon eyes a little uneasily.
"Guildmaster Hatteras," Kiran interjected "Is this really-?"
"Now, now, Kiran. Ceremony is important!" the Ampharos insisted as he carefully undid the red scarf about his neck. The electric sheep set aside the scarf, and then traded it for a teal one hung on the wall behind with simple, thin, black runes in the local script.
"And that will be 'Mayor Hatteras' for the time being," he corrected while loosely tying his new article around his throat, cheerily ignoring the blank, exasperated looks and sweat droplets forming on the Pokémon in his audience… With one standout exception.
"What's a 'mayor'?" the young Lugia asked while tilting his head, still trying to piece together just what the importance of the scarf trade was.
"A mayor is the leader of a town, much like an Ampharos like me might be the leader of a flock. It's a bit of a different role than a 'Guildmaster', and as such the trappings also change accordingly," Hatteras answered, giving his new scarf a firm tug at the front to tighten its knot.
"Yeah, he does things like helping to plan out festivals," Crom added, "And negotiating with the Company over who gets to be a guard and how much they're allowed to take from us each-"
"Anyhow," Hatteras interrupted, one nubby paw raised into the air, "Let us take a moment to recount the facts of the matter… starting from the beginning!"
"Uhm… Well…" Nida began, flattening her ears as she found herself at a loss of just where to start summarizing this debacle. "There's a sea god in the same room as us right now?"
"We found him in the dungeon!" Crom interrupted, "And Kiran, Nida, and I only had to go through 5 floors to find him!"
"In a stable spot within it," Kiran corrected, "We passed through the fog on our way into the Protector's chamber. As for why it was so far up in the-"
"Yes, yes, the Distortion shifting the chamber so close to the top is a surprise to all of us. But we should perhaps move on to the other facts about our Protector we know right now," Hatteras said.
"Er… Well, he's still un pollito…" Kiran replied in between casual pecks at some seeds spread out before him.
"And he comes up to my snout when he stands!" Crom dutifully added.
"And he seems to be a little inexperienced," Nida added as she turned to see the Lugia staring down puzzledly at a pile of seeds, before looking up from it.
"Do you play special games with these pebbles?" the Lugia asked.
"Uh… That's food, pollito. You're supposed to eat it," Kiran explained before pecking at the pile before him again to demonstrate. Which prompted the Lugia to try to follow the Swellow's lead and mimic his actions.
"Mmm! These pebbles taste much better than normal pebbles!" he declared.
"Okay, he seems to be very inexperienced," the Nidoran sighed.
"Then perhaps it is appropriate to consider what the best way to remedy that would be..." the Ampharos mulled while rubbing his chin deep in thought. "Maybe it would make most sense to have Hariti watch over him at the Day Care for a while? Watching over young Pokémon is her forte."
"Eh?! But Kiran recruited him!" Crom objected.
"Guildmaster-" the Swellow interrupted.
"Mayor," the Ampharos quickly corrected.
"Mayor Hatteras, I did indeed recruit the pollito in a proper manner and all," Kiran continued, his tone beginning to grow a little nervous at the thought of Team Traveler losing its newest recruit so swiftly.
"Perhaps. But given the… Ahem, present condition of our Protector, it does not seem quite right to be throwing him into the thick of dungeon crawling right now." At the Ampharos' reply, the trio's faces sank.
The Ampharos did have a point. Just because the Lugia with them came from the Mystery Dungeon didn't mean that he was remotely prepared to go back into that maze. Perhaps Kiran had been a little too hasty in claiming the creature as his newest recruit after all.
"What's a 'Hariti'?" the little Protector asked.
"She's the Froslass who runs the Day Care, who unfortunately doesn't watch Nidoran in the evening anymore," Nida replied, muttering the second part of her statement under her breath.
"'Froslass'? And will I still get to play with you?" the Lugia asked, starting to grow a little concerned about where the conversation was going.
"Er… Well… We're all a little too old for Hariti… And we kinda have our work here at the guild," Kiran reluctantly answered.
"And I have to help mom and Cenn at the bakery," Crom added uneasily.
"And I have babysitting every fourth turn at home," Nida grumbled.
"I mean, it's not that we wouldn't have time, but-" the Swellow tried to explain before the Lugia cut him off.
"But the Nidoran said that you'd play with me!" he chirped, flailing his wings in protest. Team Traveler's members traded dismayed looks with each other as they attempted to puzzle out how they were going to untangle this situation... Then, Hatteras' voice cut in.
"Well now, it seems that the Protector's taken a bit of a liking to your team, Kiran," he chuckled.
"Ahehe, well… You know how pollitos work, it's in their nature to latch onto friends and family," Kiran replied, sheepishly batting out a wing as Hatteras tried to think of a solution to the present conundrum.
"Hmm... Perhaps you all could lend Hariti some help for the time being? Your team is, after all, meant for teaching little lambs to stand on their own, isn't it Kiran?"
The suggestion immediately drew some vexed groans from the less Legendary members of Hatteras' audience.
"Babysitting during the day too?" Nida shuddered, not particularly looking forward to dealing with more rambunctious children along with her siblings.
"Er… With all due respect, Guildmaster-"
"Mayor," Hatteras once again admonished, pointing at the script on his scarf.
"Mayor Hatteras," Kiran corrected, rolling his eyes a bit at the absurdity of the whole routine, "But my team's mission statement is to fledge new Rescue Team members, and not babysitters."
"And he's our Protector!" Crom protested, "How's a Pokémon supposed to learn to protect anything if he's being babysat at Hariti's all day?"
The Druddigon snorted a bit, "Why, what's a team if its members can't work together and get their names known helping other Pokémon?"
"'Names'?" the young Protector asked, not fully sure what the ruddy lizard was saying.
"A name is… well, it's like a word that is attached to you," Nida explained. "Like I'm a Nidoran, but my name is 'Nida'. Crom is a Druddigon, but his name is- Oh, you get the idea," she said, flattening out her ears.
"Do I have one?" the white creature asked after a pause, tilting his head quizzically.
"Um… I mean, we call you 'Lugia'," Hatteras answered from his stump, "But... Well, you technically don't-"
"I want a name!" the Lugia cheerfully exclaimed, beating his wings out excitedly at the prospect of getting one of these strange things called a 'name'. The entire display took the poor Ampharos aback a bit as he voiced his hesitations.
"Is it really proper to give a common name to a god?"
"But I want one!" the Lugia chirped insistently, not fully understanding why the yellow and black creature on the stump seemed so opposed to him having one of these 'names' that Nida and Crom had.
"I don't think it could hurt, Guild- Er… Mayor Hatteras. And it might make him seem a little more approachable to the locals," Kiran replied.
The Swellow seemed to have a point, but naming the white bird in the hut was a matter that the Ampharos couldn't help but find himself at a loss of how to even begin.
"But what would we call him?"
"Oh! Oh! Give him a name that means something!" Crom insisted "Like mine! Mom says that it's the name of a tough dragon from the old world!"
"Uh... I'm pretty sure that Mami and Papi just rearranged sounds to make my name," Nida sighed, "But definitely something that isn't too much of a mouthful."
"Hmm… Well, he is un pollito, maybe we could use use that for his name? It's certainly appropriate..." Kiran offered, beaming expectantly.
"Puh- Puh-yee... Puh-leo…" the Lugia muttered to himself trying to mimic the Swellow, before asking in a satisfied tone, "Pleo?"
"No, no. Pollito," Kiran corrected, "It means-"
"Pleo! I like Pleo!" the Lugia said, growing delighted with his imperfect mimicry of Kiran's suggestion.
"Heh, I'll admit, it seemed odd to me, but it looks like our Protector has made up his mind. And the name does have a bit of a ring to it, Kiran," Hatteras chuckled.
"Yay! My name's Pleo! My name's Pleo!" the newly-christened Protector chirped in triumph, as he prattled on to himself with different inflections of his new name.
"I suppose it could be worse," Kiran sighed as his younger charges couldn't help but giggle a bit at their teammate's fascination with his new moniker.
"Also, on the topic of unconventional approaches… There might be another way we could train up our Pro- Er… 'Pleo' here that might be a bit more appropriate for your team," the Ampharos said to the audience as he visibly pondered some particulars as he spoke.
"Oh?" Crom asked.
"Think about it," the Ampharos mused, "You need a place for Pleo here to learn how to channel his power, but you need it to be done in a controlled manner..."
"And what better place for that here in Bluewhorl Town than in Mosca's Dojo?" Kiran finished, as he began to piece together where Hatteras was going with his comment. "Now that you mention it, I'm sure the Hawlucha would be aflutter at the chance to train the fabled Protector of Tromba."
"A 'Dojo'?" Pleo asked, unsure of just what this funny-sounding word was supposed to mean.
"It's a place where you can train and get tougher without having to fight ferals," Nida answered.
"Yeah, we go there all the time in between missions!" Crom added in a cheerful tone.
"Great! You all will start reporting there first thing in the morning!" the mayor happily decreed.
"T-Tomorrow?" Crom stammered, "B-But we were just one apple away from finishing up our current mission!"
Nida began to feel a sinking sensation rise in her stomach. The Druddigon was right, they were indeed one apple shy of finishing their mission before she fell down the Pitfall Trap. Going to the Dojo first thing in the morning would mean pushing the mission off for later, potentially much later. Nida's mind then realized that this whole matter, as awful-feeling as it was, was unavoidable due to something that happened back in the dungeon...
"Crom… We wouldn't be able to go back anyways. My badge's broken."
"I appreciate you taking your training mission seriously, Crom. But… Seriously. Sea god among us. Priorities," the Ampharos replied while undoing his scarf. After he hung the teal scarf on the wall, Hatteras took back his earlier red scarf and dutifully donned it... Before nonchalantly pushing an apple by his feet forward.
"Now that I'm 'Guildmaster Hatteras' again, I can safely say that I'll count this apple here as your team's sixth. And... might I see that badge for a moment?" he prodded Nida.
The Nidoran undid her mud-encrusted badge with her forepaws and gave it over to Hatteras, who carefully took it up and began to inspect the sorry little brooch in the light filtering in from the windows.
"Hm… Yes," the Ampharos mulled, while Nida uneasily watched his inspection.
"Is it bad, Guildmaster?" she asked.
"Hmm? Oh, hardly."
The Ampharos dipped the badge into a small bowl of water and rubbed a coarse shred of cloth over it, slowly melting away the coated dirt and grime. After a short while, he then set it down on his stump and gave it a firm press with one of his not-terribly dextrous paws.
"What now?" Pataki's voice filled the minds of the Pokémon in the room.
"Why, it just needed a good cleaning. The Psychics can't sense you if there's a layer of gunk that thick covering your badge, after all," the Ampharos cheerily explained.
"Guildmaster, if there's not a problem, could you not message us? I was in the middle of-!"
Hatteras cut off the telepath's message by releasing his grip on the badge. "Good as new, just make sure to keep it cleaner," he declared as he handed the badge back to a most sheepish-looking Nidoran. As he watched, Crom couldn't help but realize...
"Couldn't you have just washed that off back in the dungeon, Ni-?"
"Crom, stop talking," Nida growled, flattening her ears.
"But I was just-"
"Stop. Talking," the Nidoran demanded in an adamant tone as she reaffixed the now-glinting badge to her navy blue scarf. The shine from the badge had caught Pleo's attention and he found himself drawing his head near to keenly eye a faint reflection of himself on one of the misshapen brooch's surfaces.
"Do I get one, too?"
"But of course, a badge is necessary for every member of the guild. I'll have Kiran pick up one along with some other things for you as a team member before your session at the Dojo tomorrow," Hatteras replied, "For now, just take the evening off and-"
The Guildmaster's words were abruptly cut off by a harsh rapping against the door of the hut, and the sound of a frightened voice coming from the other side.
"Hatteras!"
The sound of a commotion and of markedly more hostile voices reverberated outside the door. "Oi! You! What do you think you're doing?!" a hostile voice demanded of the frightened-sounding one.
The eyes of everyone in the room turned to the door, where a white and green, chitinous blade slipped through the crack opposite the door's hinge and forced it open. Its owner burst in, a Scyther- bearing a dark round blotch on his head, with five ends trailing upward not unlike the tails of a comet.
"Hatteras, you must rid this island of that monster before we are all doomed!"
"H-Huh?!" Pleo cried out, startled by the commotion and the sudden intruder.
"What's the meaning of this?!" Hatteras demanded. As the intruder's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed that much to his horror, one of the members of Hatteras' audience was the white and blue 'monster' he dreaded.
"ACK! It's- It's here?!" the creature flinched, and turned to flee before he was grabbed by a leering Machoke and a Mightyena with some blackened spectacles from the ranks of the guild.
"Apologies for the distraction, Ander here was just leaving," the silver and black-furred Pokémon huffed.
"Yeah, not like you would care about gods anyways!" the muscled reptile growled at the Scyther.
"Enough! Unhand him!" Hatteras bleated angrily and rose to his feet, sparks beginning to form along his hide. "This is my town, and everyone in it can speak!"
The two Pokémon, surprised at their Guildmaster's (or was it Mayor's?) outburst, hastily complied and backed away a little from the Ampharos' direction. The Scyther, realizing that he blundered into an audience, inhaled deeply and, although visibly quailing, attempted to brave the presence of the sea god in the room.
"Hatteras, you- You need to get rid of that thing!" he cried, gesturing at Pleo with a trembling scythe.
"Get rid of him?!" Kiran exclaimed.
"H-Huh?! But that's our Protector!" Crom protested.
The outburst sent a shiver down Pleo's back, and led him to retreat behind his teammates to put some distance between himself and the large, loud, creature with blades affixed to its body who was clearly displeased with his presence.
"Wh-what is-?"
"That's Ander," Nida whispered to Pleo, "He's one of the Marked."
"What are they?"
"They're other Pokémon… They… Don't really like Pokémon like you, at all."
"So what, you're gonna kill this god too?" the Machoke spat at the Scyther.
"Yeah, a fine way to repay the town that lets you live here! With an apocalypse!" the Mightyena snarled.
"Quiet!" the Ampharos demanded, stamping his foot against the ground irately. After the two quickly hushed up, the Scyther sensed that the floor was his again, and Ander continued with his entreaty.
"Hatteras, please! Send that thing away from here!" the Scyther begged, his eyes widened with fear.
"Just where am I supposed to send him to, Ander?"
"It doesn't matter where it goes! Just get it out of here before it brings ruin on us all!"
Pleo began to retreat into a corner behind his teammates, curling himself progressively into a ball as he grew more and more unnerved by the large bug flailing its scythes about and loudly shouting things the Lugia didn't really understand. Nida and her teammates found themselves stunned into silence as they watched the exchange between Hatteras and Ander unfold.
"Ander... The Pokémon on this island have been waiting generations for this day," the Ampharos answered in a calm, but firm tone.
"And Pokémon like me have been dreading this day for all those generations! You don't understand what you're doing! That thing- That demon is evil and it will destroy everything you know and love if you let it stay here!"
"Hatteras, this is really getting out of hand," Kiran whispered, pointing at an increasingly bewildered and frightened Lugia balling up in his corner behind Crom and Nida. Hatteras, seeing that the meeting was now rather thoroughly derailed, turned back to Ander in a bid to try and get him out the door peacefully.
"Ander, I'm not saying that I agree with you, but even if you're right… What good do you expect sending the Protector away will do?"
"It will keep us alive!"
"Ander, get a hold of yourself!" Hatteras snapped, stunning the bladed bug into silence.
"Stop and think about it! 'Anywhere' isn't a serious option for places to put a sea god!"
Indeed, it truly wasn't given that the world was effectively split in two. On the one hand, there was the Cradle, the inland sea and the skies above it that held Tromba and the other islands in the world that were habitable. On the other, there were the Wastes beyond, which... Well, they certainly weren't anything that the Cradle was.
"You and I both know he can't be sent into the Wastes... Just think of what could happen if this Protector shuffled off the mortal coil out there!" the Ampharos bleated in exasperation. "Can't you see that only leaves places in the Cradle? Don't you think he'd be able to come back from such a place later?"
The Scyther stammered and tapped his blades together as he visibly fumbled in his mind for an answer. Was there really anywhere in the Cradle to put this 'demon' away? Maybe… Just maybe... There the solution wasn't 'anywhere', but 'anyone'.
"L-let the Company take it away from here! Let them be the ones to bring doom upon themselves while penning the demon up!" Ander blurted out.
Immediately, loud protests went about the room. It was a suggestion that was just too much for anyone else in the room to bear.
Pleo? Off Tromba, the island he was supposed to protect? In the claws of Company lackeys without someone like Hatteras to keep them in check? At the mercy of the force that tried its hardest to suck the island dry after every harvest that would probably 'pen' Pleo up by leaving him to shiver cold and alone in the bowels of some dreary sea fort?
"Wh-What?!" Crom exclaimed.
"You can't let the Company take him away!" Nida cried.
"Hatteras already has his hands full keeping them from sending their off-island creeps here! How can we just hand him over to them?!" Kiran squawked, surprised and frankly horrified that the Scyther could even contemplate such a thing.
"That's enough, Ander!" Hatteras cried out, his body sparking and his patience having finally worn out. The Scyther flinched and braced himself as the Ampharos got up from his seat, which prompted the two Pokémon at the door to trade some snide comments about how Ander was surely in for it now.
Their comments abruptly shut up after Hatteras gave a withering glare at the two spectators before he directed his attention back at the Scyther, taking a moment to breathe in and calm himself before he spoke with Ander again.
"Look. This is a big change, Ander and you're obviously… apprehensive about it," the Ampharos sighed while maintaining a firm and hardened countenance. "But running your mouth off like that isn't going to make anything better. Please… for your sake and mine, just go home, spend a night with your family and calm down. I have other things to tend to, and I'm sure you do, too."
"B-But-!" Ander weakly buzzed, before the Machoke grasped one of the bug's arms above his scythe.
"Alright bub, let's go," the Pokémon demanded.
"Huh-?!"
"You heard the Pokémon, he's busy. If you're going to be like this, go back home and wait with your mate and that brat you allowed your curse to pass onto to die from this 'imminent doom'," the other added as the two lead the stammering Scyther out of hut and slammed the door behind them on a room that remained dead silent for what seemed an eternity.
"Is… Is he gone?" a wavering voice asked from the corner of the room.
"Yeah, he's gone," Nida replied, which prompted Pleo to uneasily poke his head up from the rough ball his body formed.
"I understand that that could have gone… Significantly better than it did, but please don't let it get to you, Protector," Hatteras sighed while rubbing his forehead, wondering whether he perhaps could have handled the whole debacle more gracefully. "Pokémon like Ander mean well, it's just… They've become scared of things that normal Pokémon shouldn't be."
"Yeah! We don't think you're gonna bring doom to us!" Crom piped up.
"It truly is an honor just to be around you-" Kiran said, as the sound of the hut's door being thrown open could be heard.
"Oh no," Nida groaned, facing away from the door. Much to her dismayed surprise, it was not Ander's voice that called out from the door, but that of a male Nidoran.
"Oi! Nida!"
"Oh no," Nida groaned louder, screwing her eyes shut in frustration before turning to see one of her older brothers standing in the doorway.
"Mami needs you to watch over the little twerps tonight," the purple Nidoran barked.
"What?! But it's Ani's turn tonight!" Nida objected in an exasperated tone.
"Not anymore, it's not. She's sick in bed right now," her brother responded before hopping off, leaving Nida to flatten her ears and turn to headbutt a wall.
"Ugh… en serio?" she groaned after her forehead came to a rest against the wall of Hatteras' abode.
"Hey! Hey! Careful with the walls! It needs to serve as a guild and a mayoral office!" the Ampharos exclaimed.
"What's wrong?" Pleo asked, his earlier apprehensions melting away as he waddled out from his corner and tried to puzzle together what the purple spike ball had done to deflate Nida's mood so much.
"It's just… I'm going to have a long night tonight," Nida sighed while turning back to face her white-feathered teammate.
"Can I come, too?" Pleo asked curiously, which immediately took the Nidoran aback.
"E-Eh?"
"I don't see any harm in it, Nida," Kiran offered.
"Yeah! Maybe he'd be able to help out!" Crom chimed in.
"It would solve the problem of where he'd stay for the night," Hatteras added.
"I… I mean, I suppose it's at least worth a try."
As the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon, Nida arrived back at her family's burrow on the thinly-wooded hillside overlooking Bluewhorl Town.
"Well, this is it," she said, coming to a rest on the reed mat in front of the burrow. Pleo gawked around, looking at the dark hole in the ground, at the mailbox on the wooden post, and then back at the hole in the ground.
"Oh, so that's what a home is?" he asked.
"Well, it's what mine is," Nida sighed. Between her siblings and this Protector who seemed to need everything explained to him, she could tell that this was going to be a most interesting night to say the least. Pleo looked around, expecting something, but not fully certain what, before he questioned Nida about why she came to this place anyways.
"So what is 'babysitting'-?"
"Sissy!"
Almost immediately, Pleo's question was answered by six shouting little Nidoran who spilled out from the burrow and surrounded Nida.
"Play with us, si-!" a blue spike lump demanded, before her and her siblings' eyes caught sight of the tall, white, stranger that Nida had brought home. "Huh?"
The attention of the little Nidoran immediately shifted to the stranger, and they began to hop over and press up against Pleo.
"Who's the big birdie?" a purple lump asked.
"I wanna ride it!" another declared.
"No, me first!" a blue Nidoran protested.
"I'm the biggest, I should go first!" one of the purple balls huffed. All the while, Pleo began to grow increasingly bewildered and intimidated by these fast-moving- and rather pushy- little things that Nida called her 'siblings'.
"Ah! Nida! They're-! OW!"
Pleo recoiled, hopping back and wrenching his right wing away from a Nidoran that brushed up against him. He looked down, and saw a small spine stuck in between some feathers, still dripping purple fluid.
"Oh nice going, Dino, you poisoned the birdie before any of us could ride!" a blue Nidoran huffed, hopping up and down
"I poisoned the birdie? That's your spike!" a purple sibling retorted.
"Is not!"
"Is so!"
As the two Nidoran bickered, Nida couldn't help but bury her face in her paws. Two minutes at home, and her siblings had already done their best to keep their home's latest guest from ever returning. Meanwhile, Pleo began to feel a chill course through his body. His limbs began to ache and feel stiff, and his stomach began to feel increasingly uncooperative.
"Urgh… Nida, I don't feel so-"
"Here," a voice interrupted, prompting all eyes to turn to see a Dustox clutching a pink, heart-shaped fruit.
"It's a Pecha Berry, eat it," the Pokémon said while offering the fruit to Pleo, "It'll dispel the poison."
As Pleo bit into the fruit, and took it for himself, Nida couldn't help but shake out her pelt, a bit flustered.
"Um… Artemis? I mean- I'm thankful, but I already had a-"
"Don't mind me!" another voice called out, revealing its owner to be a Pidove. "Lemme see what I can do about that barb stuck in you."
The Pidove quickly began tending to Pleo's wing, which couldn't help but make Pleo shrink back uneasily from the stranger's abrupt examination.
"Um… Nida? What are all of these?"
"They're our neighbors!" one of the younger Nidoran replied.
"They… Live next to us?" Nida sheepishly explained.
"I heard that someone needed a Pecha Berry?" a Lombre asked, also bearing a pink fruit.
"No, take mine," interjected a Goomy that abruptly came from the left. "It's fresher!"
"Mine's from mom's own field!" a young Poochyena that came from the bushes behind the burrow insisted. One after the other, more and more Pokémon came to the scene, each offering some small service or another to the Protector in their midst.
As Pleo put two and two together and began to realize that as pushy as the strangers were being, their pink fruits were surprisingly tasty, his initial misgivings about them began to melt away. Nida, on the other hand, couldn't help but grow increasingly flustered.
"H-Hold on a minute here! I'm supposed to be babysitting my siblings, not half the neighborhood!"
"We can help!" one of the neighbors offered.
"I'm not watching all of you-! Wait… Help?"
Nida paused for a moment, looked at her siblings, at Pleo, then at the crowd of her neighbors looking expectantly... and then back at her siblings, before she came to her own conclusion of what to do with the offer.
"Uh… Hehe, I guess some help couldn't hurt."
After the sun went down and the moon and the stars rose into the sky, life around Bluewhorl began to wind down. As the deep blues of late sunset transitioned into the black of night and the shops shut one-by-one, the guild's teams returned from their missions and traded their worries about their tasks for worries about dinner and preparing for their next outings. Further from town, the Pokémon that tended the fields along the fringes began to leave for their homes.
Among the Pokémon who returned from the fields along the fringes of the settlement were Nida's parents, who made small talk with each other as they worked their way down a path going through a thinly wooded hillside above the town.
"The berries are coming along nicely this season, don't you think, Marley?" the Nidorino asked his mate.
"They'd better with all the time we've been putting into them, Teja!" the Nidorina huffed in response, in a tone that evinced some degree of frustration with a fickle crop.
"Cálmate, they'll be fine, they're being watched by keen eyes tonight. Just like our kits-" the Nidorino said before he was interrupted by the sounds of a raucous celebration… Coming from the direction of his burrow.
As the two drew closer to the burrow, they found that their home was ringed by most of the neighbors, cheerfully talking with each other, trading food and drink. The kits were up and awake kicking a pebble around among themselves- Wait a minute, the kits were up and awake?
"Did you send out an invitation to the neighbors for tonight that I didn't know about?" Teja asked.
"No, I didn't," Marley answered, her expression hardening into a scowl as she tromped up to the middle of the assembly.
"Okay, what is going on here?!" she demanded.
"Uh oh," a neighbor Lombre mumbled. The other neighbors and some of Marley's children pieced together that they perhaps overstepped a bit from the tone the Nidorina was taking with them, and the festive atmosphere came to an abrupt halt.
"Er… There's a perfectly logical expl-" Nida said from the welcome mat, before a young purple Nidoran excitedly cut her off.
"Mami, Mami, Nida is the best babysitter ever!" he declared, bouncing up and down.
"Nida, why are all of the neighbors in front of our burrow? And why are the kits still awake? The Mountain Roar's Traveler has already come out from behind the moon!" the Nidorina fumed, giving a withering glare to a larger blue Nidoran who was all but digging a fresh hole in the ground to hide from her mother's gaze.
"Marley, your kid brought the Protector home with her today!" the Dustox that was apparently named 'Artemis' interjected, trying to get the Nidorina to cut poor Nida some slack.
"Hrmph! A likely sto-!" Marley fumed, before an unfamiliar voice piped up.
"Hi!"
"-ry," she trailed off, before turning to find that, much to her astonishment, Nida truly had brought the Protector home with her.
"My name is Pleo!" the Lugia cheerily replied.
"Oh, so this is the invitation that you sent out," Teja chuckled to his now slack-jawed mate after taking a few moments to blink and prick himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming things.
"We figured that given the occasion, Nida could use a little help," a Pidove offered, as Marley hastily recomposed herself to try and regain control of this unexpected situation.
"That's- Aherm- That's fine and all, but my kits still need to be getting to bed! Right now," she said, shooting a stern glare towards six small spike balls that were quick to protest.
"Aww."
"But Mami-"
"No buts, it's well past bedtime," Teja interrupted, before Marley chimed in with a much blunter tone of voice.
"Bed. Now."
The younger kits realized this was not a battle they were going to win, folded their ears back, and marched down the burrow's entrance, followed closely by their mother.
"Whelp, party's over," a Pidove said.
"Yeah, see you tomorrow," a Goomy added.
"Let us know if 'Pleo' there needs anything," a Poochyena's voice called out in passing.
One after the other, the neighbors left for their own homes on the hillside, bidding their farewells to Nida and Pleo as the young Lugia mimicked a few of the parting calls the neighbors made.
Eventually, all that was left of the gathering was a young Lugia, a blue Nidoran with ears folded back, and a Nidorino staring down at his child.
"Papi, this really wasn't what I meant to-!" Nida protested, only for her father to interrupt her words.
"It's fine, mija. Given the circumstances, I think that we can overlook one night of shaky babysitting. Besides, you'll have someone of your own to put to bed tonight," the Nidorino responded.
"I… Do?" Nida asked, before a Lugia's voice piped up.
"Nida, what's a 'bed'?"
"You weren't going to make him sleep outside on the mat, were you?" the Nidorino laughed, as he gestured at the white bird with his horn.
"Uh, well, I guess not," Nida sheepishly responded, before she turned to her new companion.
"Come on, Pleo, we should be going to bed too. Especially with training at the Dojo tomorrow."
"But what's a 'bed'?"
"It's a place to lie down and sleep. Come on, I'll show you," she replied, gesturing at the entrance to the burrow.
"Uh… Nida? How do I get in?"
"You might need to crouch a little, pollito," the Nidorino explained "Try to walk low to the ground like me."
The Nidorino demonstrated by lowering his body, and folding his ears and spikes close to his body in order to make it through the tight contours of the burrow's entrance tunnels.
"Oh, so that's a crouch," Pleo mused, one more mystery from this strange world having been explained to him.
"Follow me," Nida said, as she began to make her way down the burrow. Pleo paused for a moment as he shifted his body low to the ground to get a hang of this 'crouching' thing. After a slight delay, he followed after the Nidoran, occasionally brushing the sides and the walls of the tunnel.
The Nidoran lead the young Protector down the tunnel and around a bend, into a small chamber with a straw nest, a crude table, and a pair of stumps that served as stools that were shoved into a corner. The room was illuminated by a small, semi-opaque jar on the table that faintly glowed blue from some manner of bioluminescent material inside. A thick piece of cloth rested next to the jar, apparently meant to cover it as needed.
"Whelp, this is it. Mi casa es tu casa. Or at least for tonight," Nida sighed as she hopped into the room, glad that her elder siblings now slept under other earthen roofs now… or at least when Mami didn't have one of them babysit in Nida's stead. Pleo followed the Nidoran into the room and entered the straw nest. After some circling and fidgeting, he eventually found that if he folded in his wings and curled in his tail, the nest was a surprising, if rather tight fit.
"How come you use those weird words sometimes?" Pleo asked.
"Weird words?" Nida tilted her head, raising an ear.
"Like that 'casa' thingy that you were just mentioning," the white bird chirped.
"Hmm? I was saying that 'my house is your house'."
"But then why didn't you just say that?"
"That's just the way that Pokémon on this island spoke back when it was part of the old world. Before they started meeting the Pokémon in the Cradle and began to form the way we're speaking now," Nida replied. "I learned it from Mami, Mami learned it from her Mami… and, well- You get the idea."
Pleo tilted his head curiously at the Nidoran. He supposed that her explanation made sense, but...
"Then why does it sound funny to me?"
"Well, I heard that Pokémon are supposed to learn their first words based off of the voices they hear from inside their egg close to hatching," she murmured. "And you were in yours a long, long time. Why, if the voices you heard were speaking like we are now, and you heard enough of them..."
Nida's prattling stalled as she noticed that Pleo grew increasingly distracted with tucking his head behind his back to preen some of his feathers.
"Eh, I guess explain more later. You seem to be getting a little bored," Nida sighed.
"Hm? Okay," the Lugia chirped as he turned his attention back to the Nidoran. "So… What do we do now?"
"You just lie here, and fall asleep," Nida explained, as the sounds of her siblings protesting with their mother faintly wormed their way into the room.
"Mami, Mami, don't forget to tell us a bedtime story!" one of them demanded, which caused Pleo to perk up at the noise.
"'Bedtime story'?"
"Uh, well… It's something that's normally told by parents as their kits go to sleep," Nida explained.
"Can I have one?"
"Pleo, I'm not exactly your-"
"Bedtime story! Bedtime story!" Pleo insisted.
"Alright! Alright! Keep it down, Mami's trying to put my siblings to sleep!" Nida whispered in an irked tone, not particularly caring to put up with an earful from her mother on this night. Pleo, happy with his victory, quietly sank down into the nest as he waited expectantly for whatever this nighttime ritual might entail.
"So what is this 'bedtime story'?"
"How about… The story of the 'Prince of a Thousand Enemies'?" Nida offered.
"'Prince of a Thousand Enemies?'"
"It's about a Pokémon with many, many other Pokémon that didn't like him."
"But why wouldn't they like him?" Pleo asked, as he thought back to his earlier encounter with Ander that day. Did that mean that this 'Prince of a Thousand Enemies' also had a lot of Pokémon that yelled and made a lot of noise when they were around him?
"Er… Well," Nida cleared her throat as she began her tale, "A long, long time ago. Back in the time of the old gods, before the first Nidoran went to live among the humans, there was a young Prince Nidorino who ruled over all the world's Nidoran."
"So… Over all the Nidoran here?"
"Our town didn't exist then, but that's missing the point," she explained, "Now this prince was strong in body and in will, and he had many children, so many that they were like the stars in the sky. And under his guidance, his children were bold, taking and eating as they pleased from the world's plants."
"Plants?"
"Like those berries and seeds you ate earlier. Anyhow, the children ate so much that they left other Pokémon without enough food for themselves, and after they complained to the old gods, they went to the Prince and sternly warned him to control his children."
"'Control'?"
"Like putting them to bed on time," Nida sighed, wondering just how long it would take before Pleo would be less clueless about facets of her world that seemed to just be.
"Oh," Pleo responded, "So… Then why is he called 'Prince of a Thousand Enemies'?"
"Well, in his arrogance, the Prince laughed the warning off. Saying to the old gods that his children were the strongest Pokémon in the world, and were simply doing what their numbers allowed them to.
"And so it was that the old gods, exasperated, decided that if the Prince would not control his children, they would allow the other Pokémon to be able to do so in his stead. And so they gave them gifts to fight against the Prince and his children. Long claws, and sharp teeth, and eyes that could pierce through the dark, and-"
"Oh, so like Crom?"
"Yes- Wait- No!" Nida exclaimed, lowering her ears, "Crom isn't my enemy, he's my friend!"
"So the old gods also gave the friends of Nidoran things to fight them with?"
"Well, I don't think that would make- But-," Nida stammered. How on earth did Pleo even get on this track anyways?
"I suppose it's possible they became friends later on?"
"But didn't the old gods say they needed Pokémon to control the Nidoran?" Pleo yawned.
"The Nidoran learned to behave? Anyways, let me finish the-"
"This story is confusing," Pleo interrupted as he began to curl tighter in the nest and his eyes began to droop.
"Can you tell me the rest later?" Pleo asked, his voice thick and drowsy. Nida paused for a moment, somewhat exasperated at how completely derailed her bedtime story turned out. As she heard the Lugia begin to doze off, her exasperation waned, and she contented herself with a job well done as a storyteller… Sorta.
"Yeah... I think I can do that," she said as she covered the glowing jar. After the cloth did its work in blocking out the light, she took off her scarf and threw it on top of the jar's cover before hopping up onto the lip of the nest to settle down for a well-deserved rest.
"Good night, Pleo."
Author's Notes:
- (¿)en serio? - Spanish: "seriously?"
- Cálmate - Spanish: "Relax"
- Mi casa es tu casa. - Spanish: "My house is your house."
