9.

Ginter is GrɅnted a FɅVor


He was a tough old grouch. She'd give him that. Hardly a second had passed before Ginter was up on his boots again, and sprinting after the bandit who had stolen his pack.

THUD.

Another groan.

More labored coughing.

Under a shade of moonlight behind the gauze of clouds, Cyllene found his carcass spread-eagle. She stood idly by, only watching the aged man struggle. He rolled over and grasped at his temples in pain, eyes watering and stomach jerking inward beneath the belted apron.

"A… accursed," he choked out weakly. "Are you there, Cyllene?"

"I'm here," she said, bending down and struggling herself to remember that technique The Sekki had performed. The pulsing of the chest… could it work on a choking man? Was Ginter choking now, or merely too decrepit to keep himself in shape? Would he even let her touch him if she tried? And did she want to? (Was the blanket dirtied with his ailment!?)

"I need that pack," Ginter breathed, sweat running down along his sharp nose and moistening his beard.

"You need…" Cyllene started, then trailed off. She was about to demand he return to the village and seek immediate help from Matron Pesselle. Medicinal leek juice and Croagunk poison poultices. Maybe a bath of steam and salt. Pine sap under the nose, to clear the lungs and inspire new energy.

But those things weren't for shifty Ginkgo Men. Not for outsiders. Only for the stalwart Galaxy Expedition Team officers. Villagers who worked hard and believed in Kamado's experiment. Fewer leeks prospered in the drought. More and more children were sick in the heat.

All the poison for those poultices had perished in the flames…

Ginter gasped for air, one hand clawing at his forehead, the other resting heavily on his chest. He panted and spluttered and pulled himself to his knees, spine snapping straight to hold him up, then bending down again like a reed in the wind.

"Can you walk?" she asked him, afraid to get too close. It might be the consumption after all, and that would turn travesty to tragedy.

Dark eyes — bloodshot blue eyes — flicked up toward her. Barely cracked open, crusted over, offended by the moonlight.

"You must get up and walk," she corrected quickly. The hissing of Ghastly reemerged in the shadows, spheres condensing and glowing within the trees and webs they'd just escaped. Growls were emerging too.

"Ghost- and Dark-type Pokémon can smell despair, you know," she added.

"You smell like too much perfume, and I smell like piss," rasped Ginter, forcing himself onto trembling legs. Without his pack he should've been quicker. Instead he was shivering with his arms crossed — staring at the ground. The dry grass was stiffening. Straightening. Thickening as each blade swelled tall with crystals of white frost.

Ginter bolted again.

Cyllene bolted after just as a corpulent Gengar exploded out of the webs and flew straight toward her. Red slit eyes flashed viciously. A smile full of blocky teeth opened wider than its body should allow, and out of it lolled a long, fat tongue, quivering and dripping and raking up the back of the blanket wrapped around her shoulders with the icy chill of winter.

Pivoting quickly, Cyllene wrenched the blanket off her body. She gathered it in both hands like a flimsy whip and sliced it through the air at the creature.

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP-WHAP-WHAP!

The gasses of its earlier evolutionary forms had condensed. Gengar, with peaked ears and stubby, grabby fingers, was a solid ghost now, and that worked in Cyllene's favor as she haphazardly smacked it over and over, beating it back until its mischief had all drained and it retreated. The creature whined and snarled as it liquified and sank into the too-purple shadow of a too-slim tree.

Its Ghastly retinue remained, however — purple orbs pulsing, multiplying, swarming with poisonous intent. Cyllene could smell them — like a sickening aura of sulfur and must. Reflexively, she grasped at her waist, but Abra's Poké Ball was missing, still stowed under her pillow at home. Accursed!

The first wicked Shadow Ball flew — attracted to her body heat. Then another formed like a globule of solid night. Another glowed blue-black. The poison was thickening in the air until it wrapped around and smothered her like a shimmering, tangible mist. Cyllene's eyes watered. She bunched up a corner of the blanket and held it over her nose, taking a long, toilsome breath through the fibers, then dashed away, hoping the direction she'd chosen was clear of sharp thorns and Wurmple.

Her sandal slipped on a sharp rock, and she was tumbling. Bluish lightning flashed in the sky over the mountain. In slow motion, she watched the blanket fall upwards, unwrinkling and billowing, while gravity took hold of her, back and chest pummeled by baked earth and gravel.

She stiffened her legs and jabbed her heels into the incline, catching the loose soil just enough to skid to the bottom of the hill. Her hands were scraped, and she was dizzy, but otherwise unharmed.

Except she'd rolled through a whole nest of Wurmple webbing, and her clothes were sticky with slime and string. Cyllene ripped off the gi at once. She'd do with the nightgown.

Except it was bitter cold and her toned shoulders were way too pearly-pale in the moonlight. She stuck out like a veritable moonstone amidst wet sand. (Curse that metaphor! It just kept getting worse!) Defeated, she picked it up again and put her arms through the sleeves, freezing when she heard Ginter's cough.

She had fallen to a wide, flat field amidst the outcroppings — a glacial valley where the water could drain at least a fair bit into spongy clay soil, and Ginter was marching headfirst east after a faint few small depressions left in the dewy grass. Human footprints, slowly uncurling as the dryness returned.

There was a new smell in the air, too. A comforting smell, if a bit marred by those of thick humidity and rotting fish.

Those bandits have a campfire, she thought.

"Can you fight?" Ginter asked.

He was staring at her from up ahead. They could see the fire now, glowing far in the distance, and flickering, like human bodies kept orbiting around it.

Cyllene shook her head. "I've never commanded a Pokémon to fight for me before. Abra merely keeps me out of harm's way—"

"Not that flaky Abra. You. Would you punch another human in the face?"

"I'm… capable," she answered slowly. "Why are you asking?"

"Because I need you to do me a favor and get my pack back from those bandits."

Cyllene shook her head at that. She drew herself to a comfortable distance and followed him. They were hastening toward the campfire. The bandits were shrieking. Female bandits, if Cyllene was hearing correctly. Less brutal strength, perhaps, but less willing to compromise if things got dangerous.

"Favors aren't something we toss around lightly in Hisui," she said. "They're only done for people you would trust with your life. What merchandise is so precious that you'd put my life in danger to get it back? And Zisu's, by the way, since we're supposed to be finding her."

"Priceless merchandise," Ginter said. He was marching quicker, and she had the power to match his pace.

"I already told you I'm not saving gold."

"It's not gold."

"Then what is it?"

Ginter put a hand to his temples again, fighting off the accursed headache. He pitched forward, as if nauseous, and beat his chest, dislodging a glob of phlegm from his throat that he hacked out all over his boots.

"I'm not worth tea or spice or the knife that killed some foreign prince, either," Cyllene was saying.

Ginter scratched his sweaty beard in thought. "What if it killed a king?" he asked.

"Don't test me," said Cyllene.

"What if I'm being deadly serious?"

They had come close enough now to see the flames dancing — the sparks swimming upwards and puffing into light gray ash amidst the smoke.

"Down," Cyllene commanded. She was on her stomach immediately, and she had to tug at Ginter's breeches before he carefully lowered himself. Oh, painfully slowly, hacking all the while.

"Silence that cough," she told him.

But it seemed the bandits couldn't hear him anyway. Two were locked in an argument, while the third and smallest — the woman who had stolen the pack — was running thin fingers over its buckles and straps, then slapping it and chittering to herself.

"Shove her away and open it!" the tallest bandit shouted — an imperious woman in her late thirties, wearing a purple jacket and leggings. Her face was covered in painted stripes, forming a mask of mud around her eyes.

Cyllene blinked. "It's Kiku," she whispered. "She used to be Captain of the Construction Corps. She built Galaxy Hall."

"Really?" Ginter rattled beside her. "That's your chief engineer?"

"Was. She got into a spat with Kamado and disappeared shortly after. The others I don't recognize."

"Slithering Idiots Lick Linen Yonder," said the second bandit, who was blue-haired and topless, save for the bandages wrapped tightly around her breasts.

Kiku shook her head. "Coin, you belabor everything. Pearl Clan rubbish. I should make you lick cinders."

"It was an acrostic," Coin retorted. "I was saying she's being SILLY. And it's entertaining. Why don't we see how long she takes to get that pack open?"

"It was you acting silly last night," Kiku spat. "Crying about the sun and the moon while stumbling about. You stepped on poor Clover." (She pointed to the smallest bandit, who was fidgeting with the pack.) "I should have her step on you."

"Then I reckon tomorrow night you'll step on both of us, when it's your turn to sleepwalk," Coin hissed, her face paint curving into spikes. "Or maybe since we've lost so much sleep we'll all sleepwalk and step on each other."

Sleepwalking. Cyllene focused on the smallest bandit — Clover — and watched her fidgeting. Her hands were uncoordinated, and her face was bemused and dreamy, face paint smeared and eyes bulging like Zisu's had. She hugged the pack to her body and nuzzled her cheek into a corner.

"Flight!" she chirped suddenly, voice like a bell in the quiet of winter. "The sensation of it! Like the hopeful confusion between dreams and waking! A drunken lucidity! Shapeless and gaudy at once!"

"Now she quotes prose like the Diamond Clan dreamer she is," Kiku scoffed. "Let's open the pack, Coin, and see what Ginkgo goods she's brought us, even without her wits about her."

"Not that she had any to begin with," said Coin with a smirk.

"Stop them," Ginter hissed at Cyllene, jabbing her in the side with a gnarled finger. "You have to stop them from opening it. Go. Now. Please."

"You stop them," Cyllene bit back. "I thought you said you could handle a few bandits."

"Easy enough with Shinx at my side. But I'm powerless now. I can't even trust my own body."

He said it like it annoyed him — like he wanted to be the one snatching treasure and laughing as he scampered away.

"But how is the pack worth my life, Ginter? You barely know me. You have no reason to be my friend."

The old merchant glared at her and ground his next few words.

"What if I told you that pack contains Hisui's doom?"

She slapped his cheek lightly with the back of her hand. "You are an ignoramus."

"You are a real spitfire."

"Give us that pack, Clover," Kiku was cooing, tugging on one of the girl's black bubble braids while Coin tugged at the other. "We'll open it together and share what's inside."

Clover continued caressing the pack, quoting paragraphs and bobbing up and down on her knees to some unseen dream. The other bandits looked at her, then at each other, and then shoved her away together, descending on Ginter's "doom" like two ravenous spheres of gas.

"STOP!"

"Stoh-copphhh."

The first to shout was Cyllene. The second was Ginter, then breaking into a cough. Three heads turned to look at them. Cyllene popped up and came into the range of the firelight, orange glow making her face sharp and eerie.

Kiku dropped the pack, and Clover resumed her canoodling.

"Well, well, well…" the lead bandit said with relish. "If it isn't smarmy little Cyllene? Kamado's favorite kiss-ass. Still trying to look like a prepubescent boy?"

Coin broke into a guffaw behind her, which Kiku eagerly ignored.

"Admit you have hips and smile, darling. Things will be so much easier for you in the long run. Though what do I know? I've always been after men's bodies, never their approval."

"Dead bodies," put in Coin.

"Preferably with shiny things attached," Kiku added, drawing a dagger out of a slit in her jacket and inspecting it coyly. "And then it doesn't matter whether they're even my type. What is your type, Captain darling? Have you given it any thought at all?"

"Irrelevant," Cyllene said, grim face unchanging. "You will give me that pack, and we will part ways."

Kiku seemed to find this far too amusing. "This pack?" she said, tearing it away from Clover and holding it up in the air by one strap.

"That pack," said Cyllene.

"You want the pack," Kiku mused. "Oh, darling, blunt and bold as ever. You must be unfixable in that regard. Though I admit it's refreshing. Lately I've had only Coin and Clover to keep me company. They're from the Pearl and Diamond Clans, and they think plain, blunt language is vulgar."

"The Galaxy Team would reinstate you at any time, provided you haven't actually murdered anyone."

Kiku sighed dramatically. "Oh, I'm sure they would. But you see, I can only design and build magnificent architecture. I can't, you know, reconstruct it out of ash. And you'd better believe if Kamado invited me to see what pitiful stones are left of my Hall, I wouldn't be Captain Kiku. I'd be Charm. Your tallest glass of misfortune."

"No one burned it deliberately," Cyllene said. "It was an accident."

"Still her fault it burned," Ginter rasped from where he was kneeling.

Kiku — Charm — turned to him. Her expression darkened immediately.

"You. Ginkgo Man. Have we met before?"

"Possibly," replied Ginter, raising a hand carefully to one stubbled cheek and smirking. "Or possibly not. Depends on your perspective."

"What does that mean?"

"He seems familiar," said Coin. "Something about his voice."

Charm stomped over to him. "Stand up," she commanded. "Show me your face in the light."

Ginter crossed his arms and tipped the brim of his cap downward. "Wouldn't matter. Last time was in the dark, too, and you didn't care then how I looked. 'Handsomer than a fairytale merman,' you said. For a minute I entertained that. An old, snaggletoothed coot like me. Handsome."

The lead bandit huffed. "You are mistaken," she said. "I never kissed an old coot."

"But aren't you Charm of the Miss Fortune Three? Didn't you kiss me by a river? Didn't you try to seduce me out of the piddly things in my pockets? Coin remembers my voice, at least."

Coin stifled another laugh, and Charm just wrinkled her nose in further confusion. "I remember no such thing!" she barked at Ginter.

"Well, I remember you, even if you don't remember me. And that's what I said before. Possibly we've met. Possibly we haven't."

He took off his cap, then, and looked her in the eyes with that crooked yellow grin.

"It's a pity," he told her. "Because decades ago I was quite handsome. And powerful, too. I lived in a castle. I knew of magic. I witnessed the anointing and slaying of kings. But even if I could take back my youth, I wouldn't bother with a woman like you. One who says she's brilliant and then skimps on copper in all the wrong places."

Now the bandit was gritting her teeth. Something had struck a nerve.

"I. Don't. Remember. Kissing. You."

Ginter slowly nodded, the grin growing wicked. He tipped his chin up further into the light.

"Ah. So the cough and scruff are throwing you off. You see, two weeks ago, my Shinx and I didn't have the consumption."

Charm's confusion turned to shock, then horror, as she gazed down upon the wrinkles and scars.

"I DIDN'T KISS A SICK OLD COOT!" she shrieked.

Cyllene rushed at her, swiping the pack with her left hand and swinging a brutal hook with her right. Her knuckles popped on the other woman's forehead, bone striking bone with only a subtle give where skin stretched. Then she pivoted and leaped back into the grass and whipped the pack at Ginter.

"TAKE IT!" she roared. "ACCURSED GINKGO! YOU DO HAVE THE CONSUMPTION!"

Ginter sat straight up in shock, but Cyllene had already sprinted away, legs numb beneath her, fists pumping, and the night wind chilling her bare ears. Caressing her short hair…

She missed the way her long silky-soft blue hair flew back in the wind of the sea. She missed washing it. Combing it. Braiding it into complicated whorls and buns and twisting it up with flowers for festivals. Or shyly pushing it back over her shoulders so she could sit up straight at her desk and practice calligraphy for the next great contest.

Then Zisu fell in love, and they came to Hisui, and Cyllene remembered cruel words and jealousy… Not a scrivener. Not a master calligrapher. No. Something bolder and rougher. A swordswoman. With a mind like a shining star.

Conceited.

Blunt.

Unfeminine.

Loveless, bitter, angry little Cyllene…

She ripped the white camellia out from behind her ear. Then remembered it wasn't a camellia at all. It was a small, plain turquoise oran flower. She'd plucked it from a bush in Captain Colza's orchard, knowing the drought was killing it and any fruit it gave would be more precious to the gardener than gold. (Or spices. Or some foreign king's murder weapon.)

Five soft, shimmery petals were wrinkled and loose around the style. Just rubbing them with her thumb tore them away. They fluttered to a distant, shadowy grave without noise or fuss.

And punching a bandit isn't any kind of victory, mind you, said her rational thoughts, which hadn't burned with Galaxy Hall and made her clutch her own temples in rage. Because then you'll ruminate on whether you should've punched her more. And if that really solves anything. Or how you could've wasted her patience with words, like Ginter. He's practiced his words for decades. So precise. So venomous. So…

Precise and venomous…

Draped over a dry, buried tree branch sticking out of the cliffside she made out Ginter's white-and-yellow blanket.

"He was bluffing so I could take the pack," she realized. "Consumption doesn't affect Pokémon. It takes weeks to even start showing symptoms. And why would he admit to having it in front of me when he'd lose his safe haven in the village? Unless that pack is more important than my life… But he gave me the blanket, knowing I was afraid of catching something. He can't be contagious. Right?"

The broken flower in her hand said nothing. Neither did her blue-smeared fingers.

"She'll kill him so he can't spread whatever it is to anyone else. And she'll destroy the pack. Or at least take what's inside. Or…"

Now she was sprinting back toward the fire. Sprinting like Lopunny, leaping over darkened stones and rolling down the soft ridges in the earth. Her body was one with the wind — a feather in the night. A thin shimmer of blue, or moonlight — she felt sick to her stomach, and her head was burning, and she could feel her bones bending and twisting as she somersaulted and her scraped hands raked through thistles and sticks.

And why should I rescue him? For any reason other than to clear my conscience? Would I care if he owed me a favor? Do any of his wild stories carry any weight?

"We can dump him over a cliff," Coin was saying. "No one looks for missing Ginkgo Men. The Pearl Clan doesn't deal with them at all."

"You have no idea who or what you're even dealing with," Ginter grunted.

Charm, with one palm to her forehead, was squinting. "I'm not afraid of your friends in high places, coot. Clearly they want you to rot here in Hisui."

"He lived in a castle," Coin hissed. "What guff."

"He's probably in exile," said Charm.

"He'll be dead soon anyway."

Ginter was on the ground, hog-tied in hemp rope. His cap was gone. His apron was slashed, belt halved, and breeches torn right down the front of the right thigh. The left cuff of his coat was shorn clean off. That dagger had cut through every bit of clothing he was wearing, though Charm hadn't yet the nerve to draw blood. Instead, she kicked the burning logs so red sparks rained over his body, fizzling and eating even bigger holes. A few even caught in his beard and smoked. He coughed, eyes watering in the heat.

Charm tossed the dagger to Coin, who tore the pack away from Clover again. Eagerly, she plunged the blade into the top flap and sawed away, leather curling up in flimsy strips.

"I hope there's a crown inside," she said.

"I hope there's a ring," said Charm.

Cyllene stopped, just outside the firelight's range. She looked at her own hands. Badly scraped. Burns still healing. She was without a weapon, without Abra, without the nerve or sleep to even use her words against the villainess. She whipped around, looking for anything to throw at the bandits. A stone? A stick? A Wurmple? The Bug-type creatures fled from fire. They were all hiding up in the hills.

Coin stuck her bony hand inside the hole, rooting around like a child — or a scavenger. Her fist closed tight around the first thing she felt, and with a screech she tore it up out into the firelight.

Dangling from two pinched fingertips was a sock.

A gray sock. A small sock. A well-worn, unwashed sock, the bandit discovered, upon pressing it to her face. But a sock nonetheless.

Coin scrunched her nose. "Well that's…"

"It's nothing but his extra clothes," said Charm. "He's a liar. Put him out of his misery."

"Gladly," said Coin, who was much more eager with the blade than her sister in crime. She dropped the pack and scampered to where the old man thrashed, sparks and embers spitting at his back.

He wheezed and whimpered, utterly helpless. Utterly on the brink of death.

A pair of red eyes opened in the flames, staring right at Cyllene.

Well? Does it hurt to watch him die? Do you care enough to save him?

A heat shot up her spine, and she blinked away a brilliant circle.

"Who… are you?" she whispered.

But the eyes had disappeared, and her muscles were already moving, running, pounding the dust, leaving the ground as she hurled herself into the woman with the knife, right before it could plunge between the shredded fabric of the apron right into Ginter's chest.

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Cyllene screamed.

Coin fell over into the fire. She screamed louder. The logs scraped her legs, and ashes coated her hands. Flames tore at the bandages wrapping her chest. They painted her skin, ate her hair, bit her leggings, shriveled her boots. The dagger dropped from crisping fingers, falling lifeless in the dirt and scattering ashes everywhere.

Cyllene hid her eyes from the horrible sight. She snatched up the dagger and fought to stand, lifting Ginter's bound form as much as she could and starting to drag him off toward grass and dew.

Then the firelight went out. Darkness struck so quickly she choked on her own breath.

Charm slammed an empty water bucket against the rocks, letting its clang ring out into a cold, empty waste of the night. Beneath her, her sister in crime collapsed dazed in a circle of grayish mud, and now the air was chilling quickly. Smoke billowed outward. The grass stiffened.

The heat in Cyllene's chest began to fade. Her hands burned and trembled as they slipped over dozens of holes in the fabric of Ginter's coat. She felt the skin of his arms, cold and oily and rough with the ghosts of older, larger scars. He was gasping beneath her, cursing and spitting, but she held him firmly aloft and marched on.

And she certainly hadn't heard the click of a Poké Ball's clasp, but with the sheen of frost spreading thickly over the field ahead, she knew the woman in purple had popped one open and released an accursed Gengar behind her.

Ah, yes. That's what the spat had been.

Before the Survey Corps. Before Eiffel. When Cyllene was nothing but the pretender captain of the Security Corps.

Captain Kiku wanted to catch and train Ghost-type Pokémon, and Kamado forbade it.


always up and down...


~N~

Still don't know what the official pronunciation of her name is. Sy-leen? Sih-lee-nee? Sih-leen? Suh-lee-nuh? (That last one is probably the least likely but so cute...)

All I know is I got to see Ava Max live on tour and it was so much fun. She even performed "Sleepwalker!" :D

My discord handle has changed! You can send me a friend request (at sign)scrivenernoodz

Published by Syntax-N on Fanfiction . Net July 2nd, 2023. If you are reading this on another site, it has been reposted without the author's consent.