Chapter Four – Serenity Village School

The Daily Pelipper – Your one reliable source of news

BREAKING: Current Prime Minister to tour country, ending in South Ophria

Baram Town – After a successful two terms in office, Prime Minister Grovyle Rufus, coalition leader of the Conservative Pact, will be capping off his time as head of government with a celebratory tour of the country – ending in its southernmost province, South Ophria. Late this May, the grovyle will tour its largest city, Crossings, before announcing the winner of South Ophria’s Regional Cup competition in Serenity Village, this year’s host town.

A successful two terms in government is an unusual feat in recent memory for a Prime Minister – rarely has one been able to fully complete a term without meeting some ill fate before the end. Many of the superstitious believe that the position is cursed, ever since the radical candidate Ninetales Winslow suffered a crippling defeat over twenty years ago.

The administration is reported to have made this decision as a ceremonial passing of the torch, as the government will leave Baram Town, Luftand, in the summer of next year and settle in Crossings, South Ophria for its next term and next Prime Minister.

~\({O})/~

4.

Serenity Village School

~\({O})/~

Slowly coming to, Espurr felt dizzy.

She tried to sit up, yawning and rubbing her eyes with both paws.

Wait, her broken arm was healed?

She twisted her left arm in curious surprise, watching it move around just like new. The shock was cold and slow-moving. It was then that she snapped awake, and realised that she wasn’t in her bed. She yelped and jumped in fright.

Darkness cast its cloak upon her from all sides, blotting out the walls and the roof and anything that was laying around in the background. Even the straw bed she’d drifted off on was gone; instead, she was laying on the ground in the middle of a pool of shallow water that didn’t feel wet. She scooped her paw into it out of curiosity, marvelling at how it came out completely dry. Despite how dark it was, she could see her reflection perfectly, as if the sun was illuminating her fur coat. Where was she?

And why was she out of her bed, again? She was quite sure this was setting a new record for supernatural kidnappings somewhere, and it was starting to get on her nerves. If someone was going to kidnap her, the least they could do was show themse—

Sudden light from behind lit up the not-wet-water with a warm blue glow. Startled, Espurr quickly stood up and whirled around, immediately shielding her eyes from what was a sphere of too-bright light floating above her. She took a few steps back, squinting, preparing herself to run if she had to.

“Hello?” she asked, her voice wavering.

“Hello,” said a voice pleasantly. The sphere of light descended towards the water, forming into something more solid. It took the form of a glowing, three-headed dragon, which Espurr briefly recognized from an old mythology book she’d read.

“Who… are you?” she asked, too taken aback to ask anything else.

“Me?” asked the dragon -thing, cocking its middle head. “Well, I’m usually called the Voice of Life. Most call me Hydreigon. You may also call me that. Your name?”

One of the few blank spaces in her head. She still couldn’t remember her name…

“People call me Espurr,” she settled on, eyeing the ripples in the water.

“Hmm…”

The large, three headed dragon seemed to hum out of one head, then the next, idly floating around Espurr in the black expanse almost like he was a balloon. He settled in front of her with a splash, the large draught of air blowing her back a little.

“So!” he began. “Questions. Answers. You’re probably wondering why you’re here.”

“I’m wondering a lot of things,” said Espurr, folding her arms. Was this the person who’d brought her here? “We could start with why I’m not in my bed. Either of them.”

“You are in your bed, actually,” said Hydreigon with a three-headed grin that almost looked like he thought she’d make a tasty snack. “You’re dreaming quite deep! It’s the only time I could reach you.” All three heads suddenly looked sheepish.

“I was hoping you’d ask why you’re here,” admitted the left one.

“Can you answer that too?” said Espurr.

This looked like it was going to be a while. Her eyes still on the softly-glowing hydreigon, Espurr sat down in the water, her tail perking up behind her. She might as well get comfy.

The hydreigon cleared all three of his throats loudly, then the middle one began to speak in a regal voice: “Every so often, this world faces a catastrophe, which threatens to swallow it up whole. You are hope. An outsider, brought from far away to save everyone from the destruction of the world. If you succeed, your name will be written and sung in the pages of history for eons to come!”

“What if I don’t succeed?” asked Espurr.

“Well, none of you have failed so far,” said Hydreigon. “Those are good odds!”

“Well, what if I just want to go home?”

Hydreigon looked a bit taken aback.

“Come again?” he asked.

“What if I just want to go home?” Espurr repeated, some tiredness from the past few days cracking through her voice. “I have an maths exam next week, and the material wasn’t easy to memorise, and I really want to finish the book I was reading.”

As Espurr talked, words and letters seemed to materialise above their heads, foggy, crisscrossing in streams. None of them made sense, but among the nonsense she did recognise the equation from Problem Four on the practise exam.

It was wrong. Again.

“Um, it was bookmarked in a really good place and I don’t want to lose it,” she continued. “And I have three more books to read after that. One of them is supposed to arrive at the library next week and I’ve been waiting for it a year, and…”

She tapered off when the Hydreigon didn’t seem particularly receptive. In fact, he looked rather guilty.

That wasn’t a good sign.

“I’m trying to say, you can get someone else, right?” she finished carefully, then looked up at him in hope.

Silence. Hydreigon looked even more guilty.

“Right?”

“I’m afraid…” Hydreigon’s right head tapered off. He gazed into the deep, dark blackness beyond. “I’m afraid we don’t have that luxury this time around.”

The world seemed to stop turning. The streams of numbers and letters crumbled away into dust.

“Wait,” said Espurr, her mind suddenly scrambling. Her tail bristled and curled into the fake water behind her. “Wait. What do you mean?” she asked, her voice rising in worry and desperation. “If you could bring someone in, why can’t you take them out again? Can’t you find someone else? Please?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t do the bringing in,” said Hydreigon’s middle head, bowing towards the water below. “And time is running out. By now, the powers hunting us will have figured out how to track and intercept journeys between worlds. How do you think They were able to get to you before we could?”

The meaning of They registered in Espurr’s mind immediately. Suddenly she could see them, ghostly, blurry images shrouded by the fog of the dream, hunched shadows with pinprick eyes and cones for heads.

“You mean the Coneheads?” she asked, leaning forward.

Hydreigon looked pensive for a moment, then nodded.

“They have many instruments to carry out their dark bidding,” he said darkly. “These… ‘coneheads’ may be one of them, yes.”

It was… a lot to think on. Espurr didn’t know how she felt right now. Except annoyed. Very vividly annoyed. If nothing else, that shone through. She could have personally picked out three students in her class who would have been better for this! The least they could have done was ask first—would you like to go off to the spooky fantasy world and maybe be a hero but probably die?

Somehow, a lot of students in her class would have leapt at that one.

“So,” said Hydreigon, breaking the silence. “I’m quite sympathetic to your plight. If, by the end of this, you wish to be taken back to your own world, then so be it. But as it is, we’re in quite the sticky pickle, you see, and while you’re here it affects you more than most…”

He trailed off, looking slightly desperate. Espurr had to wonder just how in-control he was right now. Probably not very much. If someone looked a little desperate, they were usually very desperate.

But then, how much sway did she really have? She wanted so much to be back in her bed, her real bed, right now, but she also didn’t want to be hunted down by weird conehead things. And if that meant playing hero for a little while…

“So if I help you get rid of ‘Them’, you promise you’ll put me back afterwards?” said Espurr, settling for what sounded like the best deal she was going to get.

Hydreigon, relieved, nodded with all three of his heads. “That’s the ticket!” he said.

“Shake on it.” Espurr held out a paw. Hydreigon looked unsure of how to handle that, before Espurr remembered that didn’t seem to be a gesture here again and she should stop doing that. She took it back awkwardly. Hydreigon simply nodded his heads instead.

“You have my word.”

“Then it’s a deal,” said Espurr.

And just like that, she felt a bit better. There was something she had the power to fix and change now. It sounded daunting… but in honesty, she’d take that over having no idea or direction at all.

“So, what do you know about ‘Them’?”

~\({O})/~

Not very much, it turned out. There was ‘something something ancient’, ‘something something evil’, but Hydreigon was apparently just as much in the dark as she was. Which made her feel really wonderful about the deal she’d just made. With a three-headed, floating dream dragon. Had he really pointed her in the direction of nowhere and hoped it’d work out? What had she just been roped into?

Oh well. Maybe there was still some leeway for her to hope this was all a bad, very elaborate dream. Maybe she’d read a bit too much fantasy before bed. Maybe, if all else came to nothing, she’d find a way to get out of here on her own. How far away could she possibly be?

If there were clocks here, they probably would have struck nine in the morning. The sun had already risen, the chilly morning breeze had scattered, and the local birds and squirrels had long stopped squabbling over the branches and tree-nuts. Large, impressive clouds rolled over the sky, turning into fog as they met the slopes of the faraway mountains. If she was home right now, school would have long since been in session.

“Look sharp, class!”

The fifteen other students lounging around and talking with each other in the classroom quickly took their seats when loud, portly Farfetch’d walked in and took his place at the teacher’s desk. Behind him, a blackboard swung gently in the breeze from the branch of a low-hanging tree. He picked up a leek half his height, then stomped it into the ground like a cane.

“We have a new student joining us today,” he began, clearing his throat. “I’m told some of you met her yesterday, but just for formalities, she’ll introduce herself now.”

He looked over at Espurr expectantly. Until now, she’d been standing off to the left, where the others couldn’t see her, and frankly she’d have liked to keep it that way. She wasn’t a spotlight person.

She moved over to the blackboard, stiffening up and facing the rest of the class. Fourteen sets of eyes stared back at her. She wanted to die.

“Good morning,” said Espurr, the words sounding unnatural and stale. She hated public speaking so much. “My name is,” – a pause to stomach the inertia – “Espurr. I wish to become a student at the Serenity Village School, and I hope that we can all become good friends and classmates in the future.”

Silence swept over the classroom so harshly an already-fidgety Espurr could hear the thirty bugs in the immediate vicinity going about their business. A single “pfffft” emerged from Pancham’s side of the classroom. Her tail and ears flattened. The entire affair felt so awkward she wished she could zap away into the creepy woods and live there forever.

“Very well done!” Farfetch’d broke the silence and clapped his wings together in feathery applause.

He was the only one.

Trying to move on, he crossed the final name on the board out with a leek. “There’s an empty seat next to Tricky right there. Why don’t you take that one?”

Of course she got the seat next to Tricky. And Tricky couldn’t have looked happier.

“Isn’t this so cool?!” she whispered excitedly the moment Espurr sat down, her tail wagging furiously. “Not only do we get to attend the same school and detentions, but we get to sit right next to each other too!”

Espurr thought she heard Watchog mutter something like “Of course, put the troublemakers together, not like I care, I’M just the Vice Principal…”

Farfetch’d cleared his throat again, thumping his leek into the ground.

“Now… is the class ready?”

The class was not ready by any means, but Farfetch’d continued anyway.

“History! So far, we’ve covered…”

He leafed through the fat history book that sat on the teacher’s desk.

“…Ah! Yes. Here it is. The Human Age. The earliest scrap of recorded history we have in our possession dates back to over 10,000 years ago. Legend says that many of the things the Humans left behind have been passed down and become deeply integrated parts of our culture, from spoons to sundials to…”

The world seemed to fade out for Espurr. They knew about humans! So…

Before she fully knew what she was doing, her good paw was sticking high up into the air.

“Yes?” asked Farfetch’d.

“What happened to the Humans?” asked Espurr, trying to keep the anticipation out of her voice. This was her chance to finally learn something about this place, and if she had any actual chance of getting home on her own. With any luck, this would be some strange, forgotten island in the middle of nowhere, and she could pitch herself a boat and sail back without a problem.

“Well, I was getting to that,” Farfetch’d replied, looking a little flustered as he leafed through the pages of the book. “If you all would pipe down and let me tell the story.” He cleared his throat and began again.

“Due to various ancient relics and texts, we pokemon have been able to get a very good idea of what happened to the Humans.”

Without warning, he suddenly leapt onto the desk and slammed his leek against the blackboard, creating a loud ‘thwack’ that jolted the rest of the class to attention. Watchog, who had been dozing off in the corner, awoke with a high-pitched shriek.

“Bam! Wiped out. Just like that.” Farfetched paused for a moment, climbing down from the desk and surveying the class. “By what? We don’t know, only that the pokemon were left to pick up the pieces, and no-mon’s ever seen what a true Human looks like ever since.”

Farfetch’d went on to talk about other things, but it all seemed to fade into static that bounced through Espurr’s ears like whistling wind. The humans were… gone? But what about her… if there were no humans left, then…

It couldn’t all be gone, it just couldn’t! There had to be something to go back to. Someone she could find and ask for help. There just… there just had to. And hadn’t that dragon said she could go back ‘to her own world’? That must have meant whatever had happened in the past… it wasn’t her past. He wouldn’t send her back to a desolate wasteland, right?

No, surely he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that. Whatever happened, this must have been another place.

That thought helped calm her down, her breathing slowing, the sickening feeling that pierced her heart slowly draining away. Maybe things would turn out okay. They’d be fine.

They had to be.

~\({O})/~

School passed quickly. It was shorter than Espurr’s old school, and almost none of the classes were objectionable enough to be miserable. Farfetch’d had a sense of timing and humour, and Audino was patient and kind throughout her own class, which was about identifying and using the native types of fruit. Watchog’s teaching style, however, was akin to an angry, snarling great dane who was somehow qualified to teach outdoor safety.

“Sit straight!” he barked at Pancham, who had been relaxing in his seat with his feet on the desk.

“Yeesh, teach,” Pancham grumbled, sitting straight.

“Any more of that and it’s detention,” Watchog growled back. “Don’t think your dad will save you forever.”

Espurr saw Pancham sit up and make a surly, rude gesture under his seat. She urgently nudged Tricky, who had been playing dead as a form of class protest, so that Watchog’s punishing eye didn’t wander towards them.

School let out during the highest point of the afternoon, when the sun was at its hottest. If the heat was overbearing, a full coat of fur only made it worse. And it was hot like Espurr had never experienced it before: a baking, humid warmth, scorching like the sun itself had veered down to earth. It was in this soup-like heat that Vice Principal Watchog declared it was time to serve detention.

“Now, Principal Simipour doesn’t hold the same high standard to punishment that I do…”

Watchog marched down the beaten dirt pathway behind Espurr and Tricky through the village’s eastern archways and towards mountains, forest, and vast fields of farmland. Goomy, unable to properly keep up, slimed behind them as fast as he could.

“But your detentions for the following week will be personally overseen by the law-upholding gaze of yours truly, Vice Principal Watchog,” Watchog announced, his voice bursting with self-absorbed pompous flair. “And I assure you, I. Will. Be. Vigilant. In my—Sharp left!”

The three students wearily stopped trudging down the path at Watchog’s command, instead taking a left off the path.

“Mr. Watchog?” Espurr panted, annoyedly brushing away the dust Watchog had unwittingly kicked into her fur from behind. Not that it did much; her tail dragging on the ground was picking up twice as much dirt.

“Vice Principal Watchog,” Watchog muttered. “What is it?”

“Why are we the ones leading?” Espurr asked between heat-strained breaths. “You seem to have all the directions, and we clearly have no idea where we’re going.”

Vice Principal Watchog sputtered. “I… I have to make sure you don’t run off while I’m not looking! Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had deserters…” he growled, staring at Tricky, who was suddenly very interested in the flowers.

“Sharp right!” he yelled a second later. Everyone perplexedly took a sharp right.

“Now we’re just back on the path,” Tricky observed obnoxiously, her tone gleeful. “Do you even know where you’re going, Mr. Watchog?” she asked cheerfully.

“For the last time…” Watchog sputtered, his face red, “It’s Vice Principal Watchog! And yes, I took a wrong turn. All straights from here.”

After a few more minutes of silent endurance in the sun as Watchog danced around them frantically, they finally arrived at the berry fields: long, open rows of bushes stretched far into the distance, ending at the neatly-clipped trees that marked the beginning of the forest. Mountains, swathed in rolling fog, loomed in the distance.

“Here we are,” Watchog sighed with the enthusiasm of a grumpy swadloon. “The three of you will be spending detention picking this week’s lunch. Here’s a list from Principal Simipour, it has what you need to pick and where.” He handed out a list each to Espurr and Goomy, who took it with his slimy paws. Espurr looked over at Tricky, who was distracted by a large, hovering insect.

“I expect hard work from all three of you!” Watchog continued. “If I catch any of you slacking, I have permission to extend your detention periods… into Summer Vacation,” he finished with a grin and a sharp glare intended just for Tricky.

Tricky, who had been doing something Espurr couldn’t make heads or tails of up to that point, didn’t like the sound of that. She gulped, and began to physically drag Espurr off to the Strawberry Section by her good arm.

Goomy accidentally dropped his copy of the list as he slimed after them. He watched it blow off into the fields helplessly, carried away by a sudden gust of wind.

“That Watchog is evil!” Tricky gasped once they were at the gate of the fields, and Watchog was out of earshot. “He wouldn’t cancel Summer Vacation, would he?”

“I-I think he would,” Goomy stuttered as he slimed up, his eyes peeled to the paranoid weasel loitering about stiffly in the distance.

Tricky grabbed one of the wicker baskets resting next to the large gate in her mouth, entering the fields with a hop and a bound. “Epferr! You’re on reading dudie!” she yelled back through the fields, oblivious to any of her classmates’ plights. “Goomy, help me pfick berrpfies!”

Then once again, she left Espurr in the dust. Magenta annoyance tinged her vision once again as she glared—could Tricky be any more carefree? Both Espurr and Goomy traded looks. Goomy looked at his slimy paws that weren’t fit for picking berries in any way, shape or form.

“Want to trade?”

Espurr handed her list out to Goomy with her one good arm, heading over to the remaining wicker baskets.

Goomy gave Espurr a grateful nod, bobbing his head readily and taking the sheet.

“Okay… I- It says we need 200 strawberries from t-the orchard…” Goomy began, following Espurr through the gate and into the field, where Tricky was already busy several rows down shoving countless berries into her basket without rhyme or reason.

He panted as he went, drooping, his antennae floppy. It looked like he was suffering from the heat far more than Espurr was. Which made sense, she guessed, looking at him. He was slimy…

“I-I remember when it use-used to rain most of these days,” panted Goomy as they picked. “It-it wasn’t so hot the-then…”

“It used to rain in the summer?” asked Espurr, filling the basket at a faster rate than he was.

“A-all the t-time,” said Goomy, using his paws to pluck a berry from the bush. “Now it’s ju-just s-s-sun. I d-don’t like the su-sun.”

“That makes two of us,” said Espurr, putting the basket where it was easier for Goomy to reach. “It never rains in the summer where my family moved.”

“W-where d—”

“I’m Espurr,” interrupted Espurr quickly before Goomy could finish. “You?”

“G-goomy,” said Goomy. “Tha-thanks for g-going in after me yesterday,” he awkwardly added.

“What were you doing in there?” Espurr asked.

“A d-dare,” Goomy said. He deflated a little. “I-I thought that if-if I brought the paper b-back, then they’d…” he shook his head. “Ne-nevermind.”

“No, go on,” said Espurr.

“They said they’d stop treating me like a little kid,” said Goomy. “But I didn’t bring it back alone, so…”

“Well, I think it takes guts to take on the dare in the first place,” Espurr replied. “A little kid wouldn’t have gotten as far as you did.”

Goomy brightened up a bit after that, picking the strawberries faster. They moved on to a new bush.

“H-hey,” he said. Espurr, concentrating on holding the now rather heavy basket up with her one good arm, looked at him.

“W-wanna be friends?”

The question made Espurr stop in her tracks. No-one had asked her that before… well, except for…

But Tricky wasn’t here. Visible shaking and the squawking of some distant crows in the bushes several rows over told her they were out of earshot.

Well, she did like Goomy, quite a bit more than Tricky…

“Sure,” she said. She made to extend her paw out to shake on it, but stopped herself at the last second. Goomy gave her a friendly nudge instead.

She was getting the hang of this.

~\({O})/~

“Exactly 200 strawberries… ten apples…” Watchog searched through the students’ baskets, his own copy of the list in his paws. “50 carrots, freshly dug…”

A moment later, he put both the list and the baskets down, a look of complete and utter shock on his face.

“I don’t believe it…” he muttered in disbelief. “You actually got everything. And without any problems, too…” He just caught himself from swooning. “I think I need to sit down…”

As Watchog stumbled off to find a seat, Espurr, Tricky, and Goomy all took a well-deserved break in the shade. After working for an hour in the harsh sun, they all needed to cool off a bit. Espurr wished she’d been able to do more of it, but without the help of both arms she could do little more than hold the basket.

“T-that took l-longer than it s-should have,” Goomy stammered, still panting from the heat. He looked overly dry.

“It was only the strawberry section that took longer.” Tricky happily stated, licking the strawberry juice off her paws before it could stain her fur.

“Y-you ate some of the berries?” Goomy just stopped himself from crying out in shock. “We could get g-grounded for that! Especially after l-last time!”

“Eh.” Tricky finished licking the last of the juice off her snout, causally falling back on her haunches. “What Watchog doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Right, Espurr?”

“I’m not testing it,” said Espurr. Watchog wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was fierce. She didn’t exactly want to play with fire, especially not when she was so new…

Swish

In the distance, they could hear something creeping its way through the trees, brushing up against tree trucks as it went. It was coming from the dark, twisted woods that lay just beyond the fields, where the canopies were thick and intertwined and little light broke through to the underbrush below.

“What’s that?” asked Tricky, her head tilting as she looked towards the sound. But Espurr froze in place, eyes wide, breathing hard like a bolt of ice had been shot straight through her heart. It couldn’t be… Principal Simipour’s words still hung fresh in her mind: “I say this out of concern for your own safety. We don’t need yet another disappearance on our paws.”

A gust of sudden wind ruffled her fur, snapping her out of her trance. The sounds had stopped; the distant woods had gone silent. A large sheet of paper flipped and fluttered through the air above them, slowly soaring lower and lower as it continued to surf the wind. It was flying low enough for Espurr to leap up and grab, and she hopped and plucked it out of the air with her good arm.

“W-what is it?” asked Goomy.

Espurr laid it flat on the grass and brushed it out flat in front of them.

“It looks like a map,” she said. Tricky looked like she was going to say something, but the moment she opened her snout—

“Hey! Troublemakers!” Watchog yelled a distance away, apparently recovered from his near-fainting spell. “The forests are off-limits! You’d better stay clear!”

“OKAY, MR. WATCHOG!” Tricky yelled, immediately standing in front of Espurr and hollering at the top of her lungs. Espurr cringed from the volume and did her best to cover her floppy ears with one paw. “WE’RE COMING BACK NOW!”

The words “It’s Vice Principal Watchog!” could be heard floating over the breeze towards them.

“We’ll hide it under the baskets,” Tricky chirped, happily trotting off. “Watchog will never find it.”

As Tricky pranced off, Espurr and Goomy did their best to carry the baskets and the map after them. Espurr cast a quick glance up towards the sun before following, which was already beginning to dip into an early sunset.

~\({O})/~

Dear Diary,

Wrote Espurr in her head while she lay on her belly in the straw bed. Spread out on the floorboards in front of her was the map from earlier. She could see its contents within the dim light from the covered luminous orbs, a long, vertical coastline that split off into a peninsula at the bottom. A path in red marker had been drawn from halfway up the coast down to the western slope of the peninsula, where in small black letters she could just barely read “Serenity Village”.

I think I’m starting to get the hang of things here. It’s not that different from home, really. Everyone’s still animals, and I guess me too for now, but there’s still school and days and nights and crabby teachers. Just like back home.

A pause. Espurr rolled onto her back, ignoring the dull pain in her arm, staring up at the bare wooden ceiling. She felt like sighing.

I will get back home. I have to. I promise I will. If what Hydreigon said is true, then I shouldn’t be here much longer anyway.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to stop yet, but there have to be leads somewhere. I’ll start looking tomorrow. The sooner I find it, the sooner I can leave. And this can all go back to being a strange, awful dream.

Her mind, ever contrarian, chose that moment to greet her with a flash of Goomy. Did she want it to be a dream?

Of course she did! She had a life to get back to. Her brain was just being stupid. With those last dying thoughts, she barely had the good sense to stuff the map under the straw of the bed before she drifted off to a pleasant, deep sleep.

~\({O})/~

Knock-knock.

The wind of a spring gale howled outside, rustling the leaves in the trees and cloaking the pitter-patter of the endless rain. The sound was comforting to old ‘mon Abernathy, who had been there to witness many spring seasons over his long life and intended to stick around for at least a good twenty or thirty more. There hadn’t been as many storms in recent years as there were in his youth, which only made this one a welcome sight. Hopefully the grass and flowers, which had grown yellow and sickly over the years, would brighten up now.

Knock-knock.

It came to Old ‘Mon Abernathy’s attention right about then that the banging he heard from the door downstairs wasn’t the wind rattling his doorstopper.

It came again.

Knock-knock.

Somemon persistent enough to knock three times must want something. He was expecting important visitors in the next few days, but he didn’t think they’d come so quickly. And certainly not in the middle of the night… If that was them, he’d best get up and fetch the door. So the elderly raichu pulled himself out of his warm bed, and hopped down the wooden steps of his house to see who was knocking.

“Who is it?” he asked as he swung the door open. The face he expected was one of an audino from Serenity Village, the one that was about to be connected by ferry.

But instead, the figure that greeted him was of somemon tall and lean, dressed in a shadowy, green cloak, hidden by a veil of darkness. They were silent. Abernathy couldn’t see their face.

“Hello?” he prompted, trying to get an answer out of the strange figure. Silence. The silence was beginning to unnerve him, making him think that perhaps this spring shower wasn’t a sign of good fortune after all.

Still, the figure remained silent.

“I’m going to shut this door now,” said old Abernathy, his voice laced with caution. “If this is some kind of prank—”

The figure suddenly stepped to the side deftly, and the last thing old ‘mon Abernathy saw before the blast hit him were multitude flashing lights of red, yellow, and green.

~\({O})/~

Music of the Week!

Worst Pep Talk Ever – John Powell