PRESENT DAY

Chapter 6:
The Inspiration

It was no use. The spark, the flash of artistic vision... it wasn't hitting right.

The early afternoon sun hanging over the town of Artazon was pleasantly warm and bright as spring was starting to figure itself out. The barn before her, turned into a makeshift art studio for the event at hand, was full of various folks coordinating and crafting and collaborating on their projects, the sounds of humans and Pokémon intermixed in their various affairs. Nemona had needed space to herself, so she'd moved her canvas just outside the barn, against one of its sides. Green grass at her feet, a weathered red-and-brown barn before her, not too much sun, not too many clouds, not too much wind, not too much commotion... The milling activity from inside the building and around the town in general was comforting background noise. A small herd of Sunflora passed by her from behind, following a diligent youth. Ah, yes, the Artazon Gym Test of hide-and-seeking the masses of Sunflora, the town's official 'mon. Gym Leader Brassius was squeezing in an assessment battle for some lucky Naranja student, from the looks of their school uniform as they wandered around with the crowd of flower Pokémon. It took Nemona back to the multiple, multiple times she had helped many a student pass this test – including the frustrated and impatient Scarlet, who had spent the entire time complaining about what any of it had to do with demonstrating proficiency in battle...

Besides the bittersweet reminder of days long past, the setting was about as ideal as she could ask for, but Nemona was still struggling to get off to a good start on this art project. Art wasn't her strong suit, but like with anything, when presented with a challenge, Nemona never backed down.

With a heavy sigh after a solid thirty seconds of intense staring at her blank wooden slate, Nemona decided to take a short mental break and check her RotomPhone. Maybe that would help prep her mood. She'd gotten a text from her girlfriend.

( From: Mi Tesoro )

( sounds like it's not happening. haven't heard back from em. )

(Arven's still gonna do his thing there tho. grabbin supplies with him after work )

Nemona's heart sank. This was supposed to be a full Zero Crew kinda thing... They hadn't gathered all in one spot in months. Not that she wasn't going to say 'no' to having Arven hang out, too, she actually was missing the guy a little with how busy things had been as of late. Penny and Nemona had bailed on two of their last four planned weekly hangouts with him, and it was starting to get to her a bit.

The fact that even Penny didn't know what was up with Letty was kind of odd, though. Every other time the League had hired Scarlet for some freelance work, they always had tabs on things, and whatever Rika knew – which was everything, always – got passed along by Penny, if not voluntarily, then passively.

Had Letty changed their mind, maybe? About meeting up. Nemona had been good, she hadn't messaged Scarlet outside of their group text chat in weeks, maybe even months. Scarlet had no reason to be annoyed by her, surely... So, then, what was up? Why weren't they confirming they'd come? Letty did have a habit of ghosting people (so a Gengar really was a good fit for them, huh?), but even so-...

"Have the muses spoken to you today?" came the enigmatic tone of Gym Leader Brassius, eliciting Nemona to tuck her phone back in a breast pocket on her vest.

She was still in her work uniform, since it was only the early afternoon – participating in this event was technically doing work for the League; and besides, it doubled as security to have her on site, just in case. Though she wasn't wearing all of her usual accessories, as she wanted to have a somewhat more casual appearance for the festival. So it was steel-toed boots, work pants and belt (as well as her metal chain belt of pokéballs), her usual security vest (complete with Security Chief badge) with a white button-up shirt, and her hair was bunched up into a high bun with no cap on. She'd left said cap at the Artazon Gym, knowing the secretary there would watch over for her while she took in the flowery air. She even had her unruly hair tamed with an ornate hair comb modeled after Quequaval's feathers – a memento from Cordia she'd received a few years back, being used to hold her thick hair bun in place. It was meant to celebrate what Nemona had found in Scarlet – a true Rival. And Quequaval was the Pokémon Nemona had brought up alongside Letty's Meowscarada.

So, Cordia had been taking notes when she'd gotten that gift, it seemed... Even if she hadn't been present to watch their iconic fight in Mesagoza, Cordia had claimed to have watched a recording of it, at least. And Cordia barely bothered watching any Pokémon battles, so-... Well. Nemona had worn the hair comb specifically to honor Scarlet, and... now that didn't matter, 'cause Letty was going to be a no-show, like usual.

While Nemona was mostly wearing attire she was often seen in, Brassius, meanwhile, was donning a special suit with Sunflora-inspired, shimmering patterns of gold and matching trim. He wore the same suit every time this event happened. And he always came checking on the participants to see how their pieces were coming along.

"How goes the birth of a new creation?" he pondered over her shoulder.

"It, uh-..." Nemona gawked at her floundering, unfinished creation with some disdain. "It goes," she replied, wrinkling her nose as her shoulders sagged.

The attempt at a wood carving Nemona was trying to make wasn't vibing the way she wanted or hoped: a lumpy, wonky, blank-faced excuse for a Pawmot. It was supposed to be jumping, battle-ready, but her attempt thus far looked more... like it was tripping and yawning. She'd try crafting an art piece each year for the Artazon Open Crafts Festival – seeing a regional Champion participating helped motivate the younger crowd, in particular, so Nemona was told. Brassius had managed the event for a long time, now. The town became one big art gallery for a week or so, with the first day of the festival being the main highlight, and it was always where Brassius would debut his biggest new works. There'd be all kinds of family friendly stations to visit, a menagerie of crafting workshops to help teach the basics of various creative projects... It was good, wholesome, and really brought out the kids, something the increasing use of RotomPhones made rarer with each passing year. Not that many kids in Paldea were really interested in Pokémon battling themselves with their own partners, but getting to make things with their 'mons seemed to at least inspire the more creative types of youth to show up, if their parents didn't drag them out, besides.

Nemona's presence at the event would always bring some extra participants, as well, and elicit extra art entrants into the festival: anyone interested in taking on Champion Nemona in a battle had to produce a valid art piece and submit it. It had to be made from start to finish the first day of the festival, and those interested would be put in a raffle drawing to face off against one of Paldea's Champions: given those options were kind of dry in recent times, it usually ended up being Nemona. They did the same raffle setup for Brassius himself – so one art piece entry granted two raffle passes – but there was always more fanfare about getting to see a resident Champion at work.

They couldn't technically call her 'the reigning Champion' since Scarlet had defeated Nemona multiple times in a row by that point. But Scarlet was rarely in Paldea anymore, and had become a semi-celeb in other regions by proxy of their Paldean title and their obvious strength – they'd even become a bit infamous in certain circles, from the way Penny talked about it. Nemona had heard buzz that Letty had also reached Champion status in the Johto League not too far back, and yet there'd been no fanfare or bragging about it. When Nemona had tried looking into it, though, the Johto League received new Champions every few months... Even in batches, sometimes. So in a way, it wasn't really news worthy in a sense. Given what Nemona knew of Johto, it was definitely not that they went 'too easy' on challengers, either. It made her wonder why Paldea had yet to find a new Champion. It had been a full year since anyone had even attempted to challenge their Elite Four... and over five years since anyone had completed it (with Scarlet being the most recent victor).

And thinking about that only made Nemona start pondering about her chat with Cordia from a couple days prior, when she'd moved in with Penny.

"Mmm..." came the familiar skeptic humming of Brassius from over Nemona's shoulder. "Your piece is... a bit lacking, isn't it?" he contemplated. The two of them swapped concerned expressions, and he nodded thoughtfully. "You can see it, too. It's not at all avant-garde."

'I'm gonna... avant... your... garde...!' Nemona thought spitefully to herself, her eyes projecting her bottled up frustration at the man critiquing her unfinished work. With grit teeth beneath a wrinkled nose and a clenched fist at her side, she could practically feel a blood vessel about to pop in her forehead. And yet she managed to eke out a professional smile despite it.

She could run circles around this hoity-toity artist when push came to shove, who was he to be getting up in her busi-?!

"Start over," he commanded rpimly, grabbing her piece – themed after her Pawmot, Puñito – before discarding it face down in the grass. "Find something that truly inspires you, Nemona." He flexed a balled fist abreast, staring at her intently. "Not simply what you think you ought to be creating..."

"Hey," Nemona grunted, glaring down at her unfinished work in the grass. Her fingers twitched at her sides as she kept herself from throttling the guy for disrespecting her art. "I was... getting somewhere with that...!"

"Were you, though?" Brassius retorted with narrowed eyes, his entire demeanor pompous and 'above' her.

Nemona ground her boot into the grass a little with her heel, crossing her arms. She had half a mind to pop him one for being so full of himself. Maybe that was Penny's influence leaking through – Nemona of years back wouldn't have even questioned Gym Leader Brassius. It'd be all 'Yessir, of course, right away, Sir' and she'd already be to work on something new. Her status as Chief of Paldean League Security, however, made her an equal to Gym Leaders and school staff alike, at least in the general co-worker sense. And with that shift in power came more assertiveness to push back when she was feeling belittled.

She went to bend down and retrieve her unfinished carving, but Brassius stamped his shoe upon the wooden plaque, putting his whole weight against it. It cracked, and Nemona felt her entire being tighten in a flinch, only to relax a moment later. Almost as if he'd done her a favor.

Nemona huffed and leaned back up, making sure her hair bun hadn't been jostled too harshly from the jerking movements. She straightened her vest out and shoved her hands on her hips.

"You're the one who always asks me to partake in this thing," Nemona scoffed. "I could just leave, y'know..."

"Yes," said Brassius with... sass-ius. Chin in in hand, nodding all smugly... "You could give up. Mm. 'Champion Nemona, the Quitter.' That would be more avant-garde, at least, more emotionally resonant, than this slapdash work you were about to pass off as Champion-worthy."

"I'm a security worker, not an artist," Nemona repelled with an upward snap of her arm.

"Everyone is an artist, Nemona," insisted Brassius with his glossy, pedantic gaze. "Everything is an art."

"Then why not let me do what I'm good at?" snipped the Security Chief.

"I am trying to do exactly that," insisted the melodramatic artist, pressing his hand to his chest and flaunting his body language at her. "I know you are good at expressing the passion that roils within your hot-blooded young heart. And this?" He lifted his shoe from her now cracked wooden carving, then kicked it across the grass. "This is not you. This is not what you are good at. This piece is forced, it is pandering, it is playing to expectations for its own sake. You are better than that. I have quite literally seen you produce better than that."

"Maybe I'm not 'better than that' today," Nemona grunted, and her arms crossed over her chest again. "Maybe I've got other things on my mind! Maybe I just wanna get this meet-and-greet over and done with. It's not like any of these people are gonna hold a candle to me in a battle, anyway..." She knocked her steel-toe boot against an uneven mound of grass, as if to press it into its proper place, flat with the rest of the ground around it. "I don't even see what the point is..." she added under her breath.

"We do not create with the intent to supersede others' works," Brassius advised. And there he went with the same stuff he got from Hassel... As if she hadn't heard this over and over from all of her time at the school. "Art is not a race. Nor is battling, in and of itself, a singular outward grasp toward victory. To battle, to create art... it is all a climb. One which we might inspire others to take, or grab their hand to lift them up beside us. You should know this better than anyone. To battle is your field of expertise, Nemona. To uplift others, your calling and self-appointed duty. If your passion is somehow lacking – if you view your strength as some singular entity, some numerical goal in a static state of 'achieved' or 'not achieved' – then you have much bigger things to be concerned about than how easy victory may come to you in the here and now..."

Nemona felt her steely expression dent to reveal some uncertainty at the truth she could see in Brassius' words. Her lower lip propped out in a slight pout as she felt that hollowness in her chest when this kind of stuff got brought up – the 'future'... The expectations of greatness everyone around her seemed to have, yet she herself increasingly could not comprehend...

"... I guess," she sighed out, feeling too raw and defensive to have him read through her so transparently and be so right in all his fancy blabbering. He did clearly understand the role of a Gym Leader: to foster, not to quell. It was at least something the two of them had found some common ground on, and part of why she kept attending his festival each year. He had a passion, a sense of 'balance in all things' even in spite of his tunnel-vision, that made her feel hopeful that she could one day attain that kind of focus while still being able to see the forest for the trees like he did.

"So, what is the actual problem?" Brassius asked from across the way, reaching for a fresh plaque of wood from the nearby pile he'd prepared near the barn's entrance. With light effort as he made his way back, wood in hand, he observed, "It's rare to see you so... creatively blocked, so distant and... quiet."

Wordless, she watched as he slated the wood onto the canvas Nemona had been working with.

"Pff, yeah, it's... it's usually the opposite problem, isn't it?" huffed Nemona, scratching at her cheek glumly as she approached the canvas.

Brassius effortlessly picked up a wood gouging tool and handed it to her. She accepted hesitantly but ultimately went to work beginning to etch out a border around the edges of the piece of wood, her mind having not even decided what she'd create just yet.

Nemona closed her eyes for a moment and tried envisioning one of her 'mons for inspiration.

Lyla came to mind immediately: her faithful Lycanroc.

She dismissed the thought. It should've still been Puñito, right? She'd carved him her first couple times at this... It had been a while. That's why she'd been attempted to recapture him – almost like some metaphorical 'recapturing' of the young, adorable, spunky spirit he'd carried when she caught him over five years prior. He was her primary 'mon, her go-to, her main partner... Her ace. The Pokémon everyone associated her with...

But as she stared at the wood on her canvas, with an awkward divot in its corner, her lips unevenly shut and trembled, and she felt her stomach quiver.

Why didn't it feel like Puñito was her 'main Pokémon' anymore...? Why did he keep letting her down more and more as time went on? She was so deliberate in her training... What was she doing wrong? She had years of experience training Pokémon, he was the one she'd spent the most time on by that point, surely. Even more than ones she'd trained before meeting Scarlet. So... what was the problem?

"I'm just-... I feel off lately," Nemona admitted.

Brassius hazarded a guess: "Is it that your... coveted Rival doesn't seem to be joining us today, despite that prospect having originally been promised?"

Nemona's hand slipped a little on the wood, her delicate border now scuffed off balance with a blemish, a divot digging in too deep. The perfect symmetry of the piece was now ruined, and that divot couldn't be undone. Once peeled from its wood, the shaving couldn't be put back.

It was true that she was anxious about Letty. The whole crew was supposed to be meeting up that evening, and yet... there'd been no word on Scarlet returning from whatever job they'd been sent on. Which only heightened Nemona's anxiety. But it wasn't what she was frustrated about right in that moment. Brassius and his all-knowing smug self... She'd stopped putting Scarlet on a pedestal a long time ago, why'd everyone have to keep-...?!

"Grgh-" She tightly gripped the wood gouger in her hand, her teeth clenching. She chucked the wood gouging tool to the ground. "Not every fucking thing on my mind has to do with Scarlet, you know," she snapped in a bitter chill of prickly syllables.

That had sure shut Brassius up. Though he looked more impressed and fascinated than apologetic. Even the way he reacted when she was trying to be pissed at him made him come across as better than her...! And experiencing this self-appointed insecurity, knowing, being self-aware, that she was projecting her bottle up bullshit at the man, who was a genuinely positive force in her life, and the lives of so many... it just made her even more mad at herself.

In a moment of lost calm, Nemona kicked her boot's toe against her canvas, just enough to jostle her carving around a little. "Urgh, so... sick of everyone always assuming that battles and rivals are all I think about..." Her hands clawed at her scalp's sides, her nails sifting backward through her bun-taut hair. In her moment of rampaging frustration leaking out, she impulsively grabbed the canvas with both hands and toppled it over.

Brassius had observed all of this with one wrist on his hip, the other propped against his chin. Hadn't even flinched, much less taken any steps back.

Puffing hot hair as she felt her hair comb loosening from her sudden movements, Nemona fussed the comb and her hair bun back straight, looking at Brassius for any kind of reaction.

"Hm. Art is creation and destruction," Brassius remarked coolly, seemingly unfazed. If anything, he almost seemed pleased that he'd riled her up. That just figured... He commented, "When an artist of any kind seeks to further hone their craft, there is often much that must be left behind. Destroyed, even. It takes a true artist to recognize what they wish to leave behind, and what they wish to keep. But one must remain true to their vision, their intent. And that requires passion. Now-..." He glanced down at the canvas and unfinished carving, unceremoniously sitting in the grass. "That was a display of the kind of passion I think of when I hear the phrase, 'Champion Nemoma.' Less bridled than usual, perhaps." He quivered his fists before himself. "But fiery, physical... That was actual emotion, not simple placation. That is what you need to let yourself work through: the source of those emotions."

Brassius closed the short distance between them, daintily knelt down, and scooped up the carving tool from the grass. He dusted it with his fingertips, delicately flicking stray dirt from his hand as he handed it back to her. She accepted it, and accepted the weathered palm he placed on her vested shoulder.

"It's important to let yourself process these feelings," he told her. Dramatically clasping his other hand as he looked to the gently clouded sky with his other hand clenched abreast, he prattled, "Anger, disappointment, disgust, rage... We cannot appreciate the easy times without accepting the difficult ones overcome to reach them. We cannot confront the dark without light present to cast a shadow: anything otherwise would simply be swallowed in the black, unable to be seen."

"And-..." Nemona nodded impatiently as he removed his hand from her shoulder, letting her pick her canvas and carving back up. Fussing things back into place, Nemona asked, "What's any of this have to do making art?"

"The same things it has to do with battling, I suppose, muh-haha!" mused Brassius with a chuckle. He clapped Nemona's back gently, his fingers like thorny little twigs against her shoulder-blades. He began to walk off with the parting words, "Release that passion, that doubt, that anger, my fellow. But remember to process it. Harness it. Lest it grow beyond your control..."

And with that, the conversation had concluded.

By the time he'd faded into a crowd of youths to check in on their amateur wood-working, Nemona added to herself in a mumble, "... Sounds a lot like taming a Pokémon that lives inside your brain, huh...?"

'Shouldn't the Pokémon outside of my brain be the priority, though...?'

That crowd of Sunflora from before was passing by yet again behind her. Nemona turned to look – the group had grown in size. Following their leader blindly, as was their duty during the Gym Test. The student leading them around looked determined enough to see things through, at the least.

As they disappeared behind a building in the distance, Nemona gaped dumbly at her pokéballs, dangling on the chain that hung from her belt.

She felt kind of guilty for it, but she knew what her heart wanted to depict. She knew what would calm her down.

She summoned out Lyla, gave her some ruffling pets, asked her pupper 'mon to pose, and got to work on a carving of her Very Good girl.