In which Arven and Nemona have their first date. But not really.
With midterms quickly approaching, and Arven attending a mere 10% of classes, Florian decided to get back at him for the involuntary Titan fighting by quizzing him.
"What was the name of the first leader of the Paldean Empire?" Florian asked as he and Arven headed back to the school.
"Uh...King -"
"I'm gonna stop you right there," Florian interrupted. "It was an empress."
"Can't you just give me your notes?" Arven complained.
"Come on, your dad was a scientist!" He deliberately left out the parent who actually got custody - Arven might have been better off with Turo in the institution. "You've got the genetic potential for smarts."
"Yeah, and the smart thing to do is to read your notes."
Florian shook his head. "I'll give you my notes once you get a question right. You should try studying for once."
"Not while Mabosstiff still needs me."
"He's getting better," Florian reminded him. "But I can watch him while you study."
Arven didn't seem to be listening. "I've got a plan," he said, almost as if whatever plan he had would get him in trouble. "And we've got to get it just right."
The more Florian listened to Arven's plan, the more he believed Professor Turo's intelligence wasn't the only thing he'd passed down to Arven.
Arven wondered if this was a bad idea when he first heard the spy music playing in his head.
Still, he carried on, dodging the patrol Murkrow as they searched for students out past curfew. He'd climbed a few buildings before, but never the school. He wondered if anyone else had attempted this.
Breaking into Clavell's office was easy. Finding the test answers would be hard.
"I'm in, little buddy," he said to the air.
"So am I," said Florian's voice from behind him.
Arven turned, startled, to find his friend sitting in the director's chair. "How did you get in before I did?"
"I went through the hallways."
"How did you get past the security Gengar?"
Florian just smiled. Arven almost facepalmed.
"Ok, I should've just sent you in the first place. Clavell wouldn't notice you."
Florian carefully opened a drawer, using his shirt to wipe his fingerprints off it. "My dad's a lawyer," he told the confused Arven. "If I'm going to break the law, I'm not going to incriminate myself. Wipe down everything you touch."
It took a few minutes for the boys to find what they were looking for, but they finally came across a drawer with a visible lock. "Bingo," Arven said with a wide grin as he put his ear to the drawer and stuck a bobby pin he had in his pocket in the lock.
"I'm going to guess your only experience with this is from spy movies," Florian said as he looked down at Arven with a blank stare.
The tall boy nodded. "I watched Ocean's Eleven just before we came here."
"Interesting." And without another word, Florian pulled the drawer open on Arven's head.
"Ow..." Aven quietly said as he rubbed his noggin.
Florian smirked. "Closed doesn't mean locked."
Aven, muttering a few choice words under his breath, looked into the drawer with his friend and their eyes widened at the sight of a large, sealed envelope with the words "Scantron Answer Grading Guide" stamped on the front. "Jackpot."
"Don't do it," Florian said dishearteningly as his protests once more fell on deaf ears.
As Arven opened the envelope and pulled out the answer sheets, he decided to start with Salvatore's class and read the answers out loud. "How do you say 'how can I get to the train station?' in French? and the answer is B: Si vous sites la vérité, vous ne devez vous souvenir de rien."
Florian raised an eyebrow at that. "I'm pretty sure that's wrong."
"Well, it says so right here."
Florian, still skeptical, decided to ask the opinion of a third party. "Rotom, translate this sentence."
The Rotom phone obediently flew out, scanned the phrase, and began to laugh. "It was definitely Google translate," she said through her laughing fit. "It roughly translates to 'If you tell the truth, you never have to remember anything'. It's a quote by Mark Twain. You got bait 'n switched so hard."
"What?!" Arven said frantically as he swapped the page out for Raifort's answer sheet. "This one says, 'How did Emperor Andrés's chief advisor predict the fall of the Paldean Empire a century prior?' C: One lie ruins a thousand truths. What?!"
"Why am I enjoying this?" Florian asked as he was also laughing himself to tears. Wiping a tear from his eye, he picked up Tyme's answer sheet. "X = Your final grade for the semester once I catch and expel you..."
That one just made the color drain from both their faces. Rotom just dove into Florian's pocket intending to deny any involvement.
"You take it," Florian said as he shoved the paper into Arven's chest.
"I don't want it!" Arven objected as he shoved the paper back.
Florian returned the favor. "This was your idea!"
After that, Arven just shoved the papers back into the folder and grabbed the rope he used to climb the building to slide back down while Florian threw the envelope back in the drawer before running back down the hall.
When morning came, Penny was having an adventure of her own.
She'd found some students to practice battling with, and she had won most of them. She wasn't ready to challenge her sister or even the Gyms, but she was coming along with training her Pokémon, and she was sure that if she was ever cornered by Team Star again, she could handle it.
Of course, that would mean that Operation Starfall was a failure...
Her Umbreon looked up, ears twitching, looking for the source of a voice Penny could barely hear. Following the Dark-type, Penny found a small crowd gathered around Champion Nemona, who was making a speech to the students. Penny quietly returned Umbreon to the ball and watched.
"Everyone needs a study break," Nemona was saying. Penny watched as the Champion removed her shoes, tossing one on the floor and holding the other. "Breaking into teams! Everyone on my right, throw one shoe into the pile! Everyone on my left, pick one shoe. Return it to its owner and go see a movie together. Take a study break and make new friends, then come back and continue preparing for midterms."
Penny left right as Juliana started taking off a shoe. The others did not.
"I need someone to help me study," Arven pointed out to Florian, as both were on Nemona's left. "Not someone to help me postpone studying."
"Sucks to be you," said Florian, and he left his friend in the dust, picking out a plain black school shoe with the bottoms stuffed with dirt. He walked up to Juliana with a smile.
"Been a while," he said, passing her the shoe. She accepted, shoving it back onto her foot to match the one she hadn't bothered to take off. "What movies do you like?"
Juliana froze. She usually watched a lot of bad movies to laugh at them, or doodled while listening to good ones. What did she actually watch to enjoy? "Animated, mostly," she said after a moment of thought. "And superheroes. I like art and special effects."
"Into the Spider-Verse, then?"
And the pair headed off to Florian's dorm room. Arven grumbled something about Florian being a traitor, but approached the rapidly dwindling shoe pile. He picked one up at random.
And then he dropped it when he noticed that Nemona was holding the match.
Unfortunately, she was looking right at him. "Don't cheat! We're stuck together!"
"I want a recount."
Nemona sighed dramatically. "Arven, there's no reason we can't be friends."
"Yes, there is. I don't like you."
"Do you even know me?" Nemona demanded. "Because I don't know you! I'm only half sure that Arven is your real name, you just never corrected me! Why don't you like me?"
"You're weird!"
Nemona rolled her eyes. "Hello, pot. My name is kettle."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean, I'm not the only freak in this school." Nemona gestured around. "Juliana's a special needs student, and I'm only half sure that's related to her being a scatterbrain. That Penny kid? I'm impressed she hasn't gotten in trouble for breaking the school uniform policy. Jack is rocking that mohawk even though he shaved the rest of his head, his parents are going to be furious. And Florian?" Arven snapped back to attention at the sound of his friend's name. "He can recover from rabies!"
"You still haven't looked that up, have you?"
"The point is, you don't talk about your parents, no one knows if you were raised by your parents or a nanny or by a pack of wild wolves...and they all seem like legit options. You picked my shoe from the pile, and we've been talking for so long that there's no shoes left. We need to take that study break together. What movies do you like?"
Even though Arven wasn't sure about any of this, he admitted she wasn't wrong. "I haven't seen a movie in a long time," he said. "Not for enjoyment instead of education, at least. I used to watch Disney as a kid, but who didn't? I hear the recent live-action remakes suck, though..."
"Have you seen Despicable Me?"
"What's it about?"
"Villain learns parenting."
"Let's watch something else."
After their movie, Florian and Juliana went out for pizza and quizzing each other. Juliana had told him that she did ok in classes but needed extra time on tests, so he decided to help as much as he could - especially once she got to Languages.
The pizza shop was small, but the waitress was nice. "It's nice to see siblings get along so well," she chirped as she brought them their drinks. "My sister and I only see each other once a year."
"We're not -" Florian started, but Juliana just kicked him under the table and smiled at the waitress.
"Do you text?"
"Pictures of our pet Pokémon, mostly. But enough about me. What would you like to order?"
As the waitress left, Florian gave his friend an irritated look. "We're not siblings, though," he pointed out.
"Yeah," she admitted, "but why not pretend for the night? We already look alike and take turns with the brain cell."
"So many turns," Florian agreed. "How am I still passing school?"
"Who knows?" Juliana laughed. "But hey, I have notes on art and home economics. You have notes in math and languages. The brain cell's doing pretty well, I think."
"Speaking of," he said, "do you know how to ask how to get to the train station in French?"
"I don't even know how to say goodbye in French," Juliana admitted. "What about you? Do you remember what sandwich ingredients tend to attract Ghost-types?"
"I don't know," Penny was telling her Pokémon. "Maybe I should have tossed my shoe in the pile."
Of course, she knew exactly what would have happened. Someone would have picked up her boot to return it, she would have run away with only one shoe, and pulled a Cinderella, leaving her platonic Prince/Princess Charming to track her down, which would take up too much time when they could have been studying.
She pulled up her hood and tightened it before flopping on the bed. Sylveon hopped up and nudged her hand. "Penny?"
"Penny isn't here," the trainer said quietly. "She's in Hoodieville."
"Are you going to come out of Hoodieville?"
There was no answer, verbal or otherwise.
Leafeon turned to the others. "Time for the Veevee pile! Let's go!"
Even the recently-evolved Vaporeon hopped up on the bed with them, burying Penny in Eeveelutions.
Nemona had kept quiet through the movie. It actually impressed Arven, since they were watching Shrek, and it was a very quotable movie. But Nemona had listened to his suggestions and had come to the conclusion that something with no parents, no dogs, and lots of comedy was their best bet.
Maybe I had her wrong, Arven thought to himself as Nemona turned off her DVD player. Maybe she's not some crazed battle maniac.
Nemona, oblivious to his thoughts, smiled brightly. "So? What did you think?"
"I can see why it was memeing so long," Arven said honestly. He'd seen it before, of course, but watching a movie with his nanny was different than watching a movie with a girl.
Not that Nemona registered as a girl, as opposed to just a female.
"I should get going," he continued, heading to the door. "I don't want to get in trouble."
"Guys are still allowed on the girl floor for another two hours," Nemona pointed out, but she let him go. "Just let me know if you want to hang out, or battle, or..."
"Battling isn't ever far from your brain, is it?"
It came out more hostile than he'd intended, and Nemona stepped back. Rather than explain that he wasn't in any mood to battle with his best friend near death, he dropped the subject completely.
"I had fun," he told her. "Thanks for the movie."
Then he closed the door.
In Greendale Home for the Non-Criminally Insane, Professor Turo was waiting for the start of karaoke night by watching the citizens of Levincia go about their lives. He liked having window privileges. It wasn't something just given out to people here. He'd had to prove he wouldn't throw things out of it or spit on people or fall out of it.
Well, maybe it was easy to get window privileges, but not for someone who threw things like Turo used to.
"This is going to be a good day," he said out loud.
Then he saw it.
It was a Donphan, but it wasn't a Donphan. It was big, with splotches of pink and tusks that could gore a man to death. No one was present, but he watched as the not-Donphan flipped a car upside down. Then it looked up, alarmed at the noise the car was now making, to make eye contact with the professor. It was almost like it was daring him to explain.
That's not real, Turo told himself. He knew better.
His heart rate picked up. His breathing techniques weren't helping. For a moment, he was back in Area Zero with Sada and Koraidon and...
He forced himself away from the window. "That's not real," he said out loud. "Not even she would release it into the world unless it was ready!"
He was shaking. Shaking and hallucinations led to bad thoughts. Bad thoughts led to bad actions. He needed a nap and a strait jacket. Preferably at the same time.
They'd give him the latter soon enough. It wasn't as if it was the first time he'd tried to warn people of the impending destruction of all of time. And this time he might be in enough control of himself to not slap people with the strait jacket sleeves. That would be a nice experiment.
The other patients with window privileges were clustered around the area he'd just left, talking to themselves, or maybe each other.
"Did you see that thing?"
"It was just a Donphan, right?"
"A really big Donphan."
"At least I'm not hallucinating this one."
The fools.
And Turo broke into hysterical, stereotypical madman laughter when the same short, balding psychiatrist he'd been dealing with lately screamed about his car.