6.
Cyllene MɅkes Herself More Trouble
Seek out the source of light
Where SINNOH shows true might
From One Ʌre mɅde Two
Two liVe within One
When six rings Ʌre tripled
The world is begun
"I don't know what it means," Cyllene said, fingers wrinkling the parchment.
"You didn't have any weird dreams about getting out of bed and deciding to write a poem and then… wandering out to the pasture?" Zisu asked.
"I dreamed…" she tried to remember, peering at what was unmistakably her own neat penmanship in her own blue ink. "No, I don't remember. I just dreamed about fire."
She was safely back within Zisu's quarters now, wrapped up in a borrowed red gi. Overnight, Pesselle's potions had cured most of her burns, but she never recalled crawling into the wheelbarrow left with the Bidoof, bruising her elbows and stiffening her spine. Zisu found the parchment carefully rolled up in her hands while she slept, secured with the blue silk ribbon from when her hair was long. Upon it, the bizarre riddle was written.
"I think that beer did something to me," she said, flexing her fingers and wincing when the skin was still tender.
"What beer?"
"Well, it wasn't beer. It was… whatever Ginter had in that bottle."
"Was it his piss?"
"No!" Cyllene spat, throwing the parchment up in the air and then catching it quickly.
Zisu was behind the beaded curtain in the back of the room breastfeeding. She hummed softly while Cyllene stirred the breakfast stew in the iron pot hanging above the divot in the still-oozing pine-paneled floor.
"The guardsmen saw you all over town. You didn't go near Galaxy Hall or try to hurt yourself, so they let you be."
"Well, tell them to wake me up next time!" Cyllene exclaimed. "Why would they let me roam around asleep!? I was sleepwalking! What if I did get hurt!?"
"They probably didn't notice you were asleep. Half the village was running amok all night, and Ress said you've been wandering around after curfew for the past few weeks. He said you would go into Galaxy Hall when Eiffel was there."
"Right, well… I can't do that anymore. And please don't ask about it."
"Where are you at with him, anyway?"
"Just about ten thousand steps backwards and underground."
"Well, it can't be that bad, can it? He does like you. You just don't know how to talk to men. You need to flirt more."
Cyllene squeezed the parchment roll in her hands, shaking her head and letting out a defeated sigh.
"I kissed him," she said softly.
Zisu's humming stopped.
"You… You actually kissed him? When? Where?"
"On the lips, the other night in his study. I kissed him. And he didn't like it, and I was scared of it. But tell me how any of that matters when two years of documents are gone and now that hole in the sky looks bigger."
Zisu had finished with the feeding and burping. With a red-curled son in each arm, she elbowed back the curtain and crossed the room to lay them in their cradles.
"Accursed oaf ran upstairs to get his books and left me in the basement to burn," Cyllene told her.
Her best friend sighed, coming to sit and wrap her in a hug.
"I'm so, so sorry."
"I… I can't help it, Zee. You put the idea in my head, and now I keep imagining us together. Happy. Even just eating together for once. And then I think about how he has the means to leave Hisui if the expedition fails. I could leave with him. If only I were more interesting than a book about Pokémon, and maybe… maybe if he were prouder of himself… "
Zisu stared at her. Cyllene couldn't meet her gaze, focusing instead on her pink-lined hands again. A knot arose in her throat, and she clenched them into fists, fighting the hazy memory of that fiery, dreamless sleep.
"Sometimes… I feel like I was born without spirit. Do you ever get that from me?"
Zisu reached out to touch her hand, her smokey gray eyes twinkling. "No. Never. You're beautiful, Cy. You know that, right?"
Cyllene sighed. Tears pricked, hot and stinging, but she set her jaw and ran her fingers slowly over the smoothness of the blue silk ribbon.
"My eyebrows burned off again in the fire."
"You are so beautiful," Zisu insisted. "You're a beautiful, smart lady, and you don't have to wear yourself thin chasing after men with diplomas and fancy accents who clearly don't deserve your love. Woman, you have to tell me when you're upset. Otherwise I won't notice. I have so much going on right now."
"So do I."
"I really mean it. I… I don't…" Zisu stuttered. "That was really scary last night, okay? You can tell the Commander, and I'll back you up. If you need a break… If being Captain is too much for you—"
"The Commander was right though," Cyllene said, pushing her away. "I can't question why I'm here. I can only do what is needed for us all to survive."
Zisu stood up, looking more concerned than ever. She glanced over at her sons, then crossed the room once more to where they slept, placing a hand over each blanket and taking in a shaking breath.
"Tell the Commander I can't attend the meeting," she said. "Ress will report."
Cyllene nodded.
"Understood."
"Galaxy Team report," said Kamado from where he sat on his knees in the sand.
Prelude Beach was no third-floor office with a five-hundred pound oaken bureau, but said bureau had made wonderful firewood, and was currently resting in the basement after the third-floor dome's collapse.
Cyllene was still waiting on a new blue uniform jacket from Anthe. She sat on her knees in her leggings and singed blue gi over the turtleneck, a white bandana keeping the sun off her ears. She watched the gentle waves wash in over the sand. The sea was glittering in the midmorning heat. A calm sea. A pleasant, blue sea. Behind her, in the distance, the sky was shredded and thunder crackled constantly.
Ress, in his red jacket, nodded. "Deputy Ress reporting for the Security Corps, sir. Both of the Clan leaders have been assigned personal bodyguards. They'll not be allowed in the same room together without extra precautions, and their roles as civil guests has been reiterated.
"In addition, it seems the smoke scared off all the wild Pokémon we usually have trouble with. Without any skirmishes, all available guardsmen are on rotation at the perimeter. A count was conducted at sunrise, determining there are no missing persons and no casualties, thank whatever Sinnoh watches over this waste. However, several civilians broke curfew and there was one theft from the craftworks. There have also been a few reports of malicious mischief involving that new Ginkgo Man."
"Yes, I've heard," Kamado said. "Ginter."
"His name is Ginter, sir. He likes to get snippy with Captain Zisu. An anonymous report says he verbally harassed another woman, too."
Accursed Zisu! Cyllene thought, tightening her lips. Why do you have to fight my battles for me!?
The Commander was frank. "Unfortunate, but of little concern due to circumstances. Have you yet determined the cause of the fire?"
"Captain Sanqua reporting for the Construction Corps, sir," said the woman in purple. "Based on the accounts given by yourself and Captain Cyllene, we believe the fire began internally, after an electrical malfunction. We are investigating the wreckage. Debris and unstable flooring make it difficult."
"Good. Supply Corps."
"Captain Tao Hua, sir. Nothing… no accounts to be salvaged. We will have to run over inventory completely."
"You're not already working on it?"
"Well, sir, like Captain Sanqua said, no one can get into the basement."
"But how do you know the accounts can't be salvaged? What about the document safe?"
Captain Tao Hua looked at the ground.
You used the safe to hide beer, Cyllene thought, expertly masking the inward smirk as Tao Hua collapsed into himself. The old man in green was the Commander's favorite to pick on. Thankfully an entire person less organized than her roiling emotions.
The Commander glared at him. "I will speak personally with you later about inventory. No doubt word will travel and Ginkgo Men will swarm in to capitalize on this disaster. We must be extremely discerning when dealing with them."
Deputy Ress spoke up. "Ginter claims to be the Ginkgo Guildmaster. He gives it as a reason for his belligerence."
"Then perhaps I will confront Ginter. If he sees us as nothing more than pawns for profit, I'll cast him and his ilk out of the village at once."
"I would advise against that," said Cyllene.
Kamado turned to her, brows furrowing. "What counsel do you offer, Captain Cyllene?"
She took a deep breath in, then forced it out, and imagined she was leaping over a charging Lopunny and feeling the dead grass crunch between her fingertips.
"Commander, you're not delicate in dealing with difficult people. We need to keep a civility with the Clans, so they don't view us as interlopers. The Sekki is an honored guest in our village. But when his words offended you, you chose to show him violence. Don't think I was too delirious last night to notice. If you speak now of discernment, of times when deliberation is wise, then you will not confront Ginter about misconduct. He's an old and crafty merchant. He knows wayward emotions will have us bound to him. Instead, let yourself remain too important to amuse him."
The Commander listened intently. He closed his eyes, thinking for a moment, lips twitching. His words of the previous night echoed in her mind.
"Cyllene's brilliance confounds her. She chooses the worst times for deliberation."
But she didn't choose to think too much. Her mind was a veritable galaxy. One she simply became lost in too easily.
One that almost got her killed.
"Can I trust your own thoughts and feelings will not betray us?" the Commander asked.
"We're all scared, Commander," she said, blue eyes trained on his face. And perhaps she was being rash, said her thoughts. Or bravely foolish. Or taking on more than she could handle, when not even Zisu could confront what the fire almost claimed. But Kamado needed to know, she reasoned. She could overcome her shortcomings. He needn't doubt her now. He couldn't afford to doubt her. She couldn't afford to doubt her.
The others shifted, staring at the silent exchange. This was personal. Cyllene had always been his favorite — and also the thorn in his side — seeing nonsense where he couldn't and always questioning his decisions.
Then Kamado nodded, lifting himself from his knees and standing up to face the swirling circle in the distance.
"Very well. I will not involve myself with the Ginkgo Guild. Instead I'll focus on improving morale and repairing relations with the Clans."
Cyllene gave him a small smile. "That is wise, sir."
"Your mission then, Captain, is to make Ginter agreeable."
"What!?"
Her voice came out squeaking. Her hands flew in shock to the sand on either side of her, and she looked wide-eyed up at her superior, who had crossed his arms and was already walking back toward the village.
"Return to your duties at once," he announced. "Galaxy Team at ease."
"Aye," the other Captains affirmed.
Cyllene scrambled up, slapping sand off her thighs and marching quickly after him. She was five foot four, and his strides easily outclassed her own, but she powered on, matching his speed just so she could get another word in.
"You know what I'm going to say," Kamado told her.
"And, and you—" she stuttered.
"Yes, I know you're the one he was unkind to. No one but you would know to take offense."
"Don't give me praise for that. Tell me simply, how does it make sense the Survey Corps be assigned such a complicated task as—"
"What is more critical? Understanding wild Pokémon which the Security Corps are content in fending off, or seeing into the minds of human monsters who would claim the clothes on our backs for shiny things?"
"Sir, that's… I will defend our research and Professor Laventon's endeavors."
"Research is not unimportant. You'll continue it. Recover what was lost speedily, I hope."
"Which is my official position."
Kamado grumbled in his throat. "Your official position would have you surveying that hole in the sky up close. But will I send you up there? Dare I be the one to make that your directive?"
"I would if you commanded me to."
"You would not, Captain. Because you know not to follow a broken man blindly. As you will know to see through whatever tricks the Guildmaster may have hiding under that canvas. If it does not please you to speak with him, then watch him, and report to me any suspicions. I only request you think of the village's welfare. At ease."
"Aye, sir."
They marched through the gates of Jubilife Village together. People watched — turned into stiff, staring ghosts from the horror of the previous night. Cyllene merely stiffened her posture and steeled her gaze. She separated from the retinue just in time for Kamado to become bombarded with questions.
"What if there's another big storm? Where will we take shelter?"
"Is that hole in the sky going to kill us?"
"Commander, perhaps we should never have come here. If Almighty Sinnoh is real, then He must be very angry—"
"Is Captain Cyllene faring well? What about the professor?"
"What am I to send in a letter to my family back in Alola? That fires spring out of nowhere? That we almost killed the leader of an entire Hisuian Clan!?"
"Are you in your right mind, Commander?"
"At least in Johto we felt safe. The experiment is over. Two years is enough."
Kamado's eyes widened. He turned to the man who had spoken and gave him a glare like lightning.
"No one in my village was safe when the beasts came," he boomed. "It is fire or fire. At least here we can separate ourselves from the pain of the past."
A verbal scuffle ensued. Something Kamado enjoyed, Cyllene thought to herself, watching the huge man dodge and strike in every way except his fists. He was clumsier in semantics than she would've liked, but Ginter, at least, was safe. For now.
Ginter… Cyllene marched on ahead, down to where Canala Avenue intersected Floaro Main Street. Ginter's caravan was still in its usual position beneath the blackened brickwork of Galaxy Hall. In some accursed jest of fate the canvas hadn't caught a single spark — only slightly sagging and discolored from an overnight rain of smoke and ash. Ginter himself was missing from the stool out front, though she saw his boots sticking out of the canvas flaps up on the wooden platform — unmoving.
Still asleep, she thought. Unless he suffocated.
She crept closer, curiously reaching out a hand to squeeze one idle boot. Then suddenly it jerked, and a horrid, hacking cough was heard within the canvas. Wet and weighty, it sounded as if the old man were rattling his ribcage and all that hung within it. For ten whole seconds, he coughed, and then softly groaned, going quiet again and pulling the boots up into the platform with him.
"Do you think it's the consumption, Captain? That's mighty contagious stuff."
Cyllene jumped. Suddenly right behind her was a concerned boy of fifteen, dressed in the blue gi and trousers of the Survey Corps. He thumbed the brim of his scarlet cap and winced when she looked at him.
"You're getting better at sneaking up on unsuspecting Pokémon, Rei, but please give grace to your superiors," Cyllene said.
The boy looked as if he'd been kicked. "Yes, Captain," he whimpered with a deep bow of apology.
Reinold, called Rei, was the youngest surveyor — a clumsy, quivering Galarian stowaway who had dumped himself off in Hisui on the same supply ship as the professor. He didn't speak of having parents, or really anyone significant back home. No partner Pokémon to protect him, until he'd caught himself an ornery Pikachu that zapped him every other day. In and out of the infirmary constantly, with tiresome stories of pain and paralysis. Bite marks that burned, even. The boy seemed to live held-up by a single thread, and a feebly-worded wish to "see the world" and "meet Pokémon" and other half-baked ambitions Eiffel spoon-fed him in the study at less-eccentric hours of the afternoon.
Eiffel. Oh, the man must be a wreck, she thought. And now his charge was seeking her out for orders instead. To choose the severe Cyllene over the lovable Laventon at this point in the day…
"Aye, Captain," she corrected.
"Aye, Captain," Rei repeated.
"Do you have progress to report?"
Rei's eyes widened. "P-Progress? On my Poké Dex? But Captain, there was a… a fire last night. I've… I'ven't…"
"Do you think the Galaxy Team should feed you for slacking? Your working volume is one of the few that survived the fire. What have you collected this morning that I can assess?"
"Em… I…" He hung his head low. "I've nothing, Captain. Yesterday I was recovering from Pikachu's Thunder Shock. It struck me right in m'stomach. I was throwin' up m'lunch and for hours I couldn't move a muscle! I thought I was going to spend all night with adamaN in the infirmary, listening to him soundin' out the dictionary he took from Professor Laventon's library. Lucky for us that we started smellin' smoke—"
He was interrupted by another loud bout of coughing and hacking from the old man under the canvas.
"Botheration, Captain, he's pro'lly brought somefin wit' him from whence he came. It's going to spread."
Cyllene crossed her arms, looking the caravan up and down while the canvas started shaking. Served Ginter right for refusing to move even when sparks and ash were raining from the sky. But even the morning before, he'd been ill, she remembered. Coughing into his sleeve and peering at her with those glazed and sunken eyes.
"I'm a seventy-seven-year-old geezer whose heart is slowly killing him."
"I don't think it's something that can spread," she told Rei. "The trouble is his heart."
"His heart? He's coughing a whole lung out under there. That's consumption. You can't see because o' the baggy trousers and all the wrinkles 'round his face. He must be rail-thin."
"I can hear you two," Ginter spat through his coughing and the canvas. The yellowed sheets bulged out on one side, and there suddenly came a CRASH from within — something like a whole wooden crate falling over while the old man continued to grunt and groan.
Cyllene took in a breath. Wait until it's made one false step, then dodge and watch it crash into the ground.
"Guildmaster, if you are suffering from any foreign communicable disease, you ought to know you cannot remain within the village walls. We must treat our own first and foremost."
Rei grimaced at such a callous statement, but didn't have the courage to debate his superior. She knew he was seeing the ghosts of burns on her face — still fading, but remaining enough to show her true toughness in the face of unfortunate news.
Two pale, gnarled hands split the curtains at the front of the platform and tore them open. Ginter slid himself out, looking sicklier than she imagined. Those sunken eyes were shadowed without sleep. His face was gray, as if smeared with muddy ash. Without his cap, his hair stuck out in all directions. His chest was heaving as he strained to breathe. Both hands clutched his forehead, and he moaned at the sudden sunlight, legs coming to dangle off the edge until he was almost slipping.
"I told you it's my heart," he snarled. "Unless you've given me a disease."
"Are you then at our mercy?" Cyllene asked.
The old man raised his head, thick gray brows furrowed in utter confusion and dismay.
"Have I threatened you, Cyllene!?"
She shivered hearing her own name in his brutal rasp. His fingers looked swollen. The crescents of his nails were black, and looking sticky. Phlegm? Tears? Dirty blood? Strange how quickly he lost that arrogance. He must be suffering.
"You shall become agreeable," she told him. "You shall treat the people you serve as equals, not thinking of their pockets over their spirits. I will only tell you once. Do you understand?"
Now Ginter stared at her blankly. She became a wall — that emptiness — betraying no wayward emotions. Neither offense nor pleasure in his unease. Nothing of yesterday's outbursts.
"You'd watch me die, wouldn't you, madwoman," Ginter grumbled. "You probably will. My special medicine is running out."
"What kind of medicine, sir?" Rei asked, too giddy about this for Cyllene's liking. "Tell us what your disease is. The Galaxy Team'll not stand for—"
"Rei, return to your fieldwork," Cyllene told him.
"I have medicine from a wondrous far-off region a kid like you will never see in your lifetime," Ginter boasted, wiping spittle from his lips with a swing of one greasy wrist. "No one dies from consumption there. They've invented a medicine to cure it. I'm sure they've got another that can prevent you from even getting it."
Rei's jaw dropped open. Taken in and hopeless, Cyllene thought.
"And you didn't think to bring more of this with you," she said to Ginter.
"They're stingy with it," Ginter replied, scratching at his stubble with both hands until his cheeks were all red and greased. "They wouldn't give me more than a three-month supply, even when I argued. So fine. I'm 'at your mercy.' What are you going to do with me now? What do you want from me? I'm ancient. I can't even aim my piss to not spray my own feet."
He coughed again, leering now at the crinkled shreds of gray-white grass littering the lawn. Long fingers slipped into a deep, baggy pocket of his trousers, and he pulled out a peculiar stone — like a bright green crystal, but with a yellowish mineral threaded through its center in the thin, branching shape of lightning.
"Take this," he said, tossing it toward Rei, who snatched it out of the air with the reflexes of one who'd been shocked too many times in the field.
"What is it?" he asked, turning it over and watching how the green facets glittered in the sunlight, and the lightning pattern seemed to shine like molten gold.
"What does it look like, foolish child? It's a lightning bolt rock," Ginter grunted, shimmying himself back under the caravan flaps until the two could hear him flopping down, defeated. "When you figure out what it does, then I promise to be agreeable with Miss Cyllene."
"But it's not…" Cyllene started, before realizing what Ginter had just proposed.
It couldn't have been that easy, right?
Or maybe I'm just overthinking things again…
She said nothing more, astonished at what a few harsh words had brought her. The old man had agreed to be agreeable! She'd accomplished her mission in minutes! What was left other than the all-important survey work!?
"Rei, we must venture into the Fieldlands. There's no time to waste in restoring our research."
Except...
Rei had completely vanished, taking Ginter's gift with him, and Cyllene's eyes turned to full blue moons as she realized that rock was less of a gift than a curse.
so I'll never fall again…
~N~
Okay, six chapters in, and I finally understand she doesn't wear a skirt. That's just the bottom half of her gi over leggings and under the jacket.
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net June 10th, 2023. Please don't repost. Please do review!
