Strange Company

Tipper wasn’t remotely ready for work today. There had been some sort of party last night in the Swanna House’s Juice Bar that had gone on until the wee hours of the morning, which meant that by the time the sun started peeking over the horizon, he was shambling down the steps half-asleep. He made his way through the Juice Bar and over to the counter where Swanna was already up and tending to some bookkeeping.

The Kecleon lurched over to the counter and all but slumped against it as he neared. From the corner of his eyes, he could see Swanna tilting her head and staring down at him.

“I take it that you’ll be ordering a Chesto Tea this morning, Kecleon?” she asked.

“Yes please,” Tipper groaned. “If you do to-go orders, I’ll also take a couple for later today while I’m on the job.”

There was a lingering silence, before Swanna sighed and gave a tired shake of her head.

“I should have a flask to keep them warm which you can borrow for the day,” she said. “Just be sure to bring it back with you tonight after work.”

Tipper stumbled over to a table by the wall past a magenta planter and flopped onto the stump seat in front of it. He pawed at his eyes and sighed, fighting to stay awake as the sound of footsteps approached followed by the clatter of ceramics and the tink of metal in front of him. He cracked his eyes open, where sure enough, there was a steaming cup of cream-colored liquid in a porcelain cup, along with a metal flask with a cloth sleeve around its middle.

Tipper raised the cup to his mouth and sipped at it. Small ones at first, then larger and larger ones as the tea cooled down. All the while, he could feel his tiredness start to ebb away as the surroundings of the Juice Bar became less of a blur. There were the other tables, the rugs on the floor, the decorative plants, and the notices on the wall that were pinned starting just past his table.

He turned his head up and noticed one of them had the portrait of a Salamence’s head on it, along with neatly-printed Footprint Runes underneath. He read along and caught himself when the subject line crossed his eye.

It was a wanted poster for an Outlaw that apparently had a habit of thrashing around, except the listing had been made a full year ago. He turned his attention back to Swanna’s counter as the Flying-type was settling in behind it, before cocking a brow at her.

“Hey, Signora, does anyone actually bother to update these listings?” he asked. “Since I can’t say I’ve seen too many places before that kept ones this old up.”

“It’s admittedly a bit of a slow pace since they get taken by customers when there’s business, and… well, you’ve seen how the regulars around town can be sometimes,” Swanna explained. “Quagsire’s talked about setting up a proper bulletin board, but all of the locations around town that he’s tried to set one up at have wound up going similarly neglected.”

Tipper looked up at the listings and noticed that mixed in with the classifieds and advertisements, there were other mission requests lying about. Ones for missing treasures, ones for requests to be escorted through Mystery Dungeons… most of which looked like they’d been up for a while.

Tipper couldn’t help but feel a bit bad looking at some of them. Had any of their posters actually gotten their requests fulfilled? He knew that there were a lot of transients in Post Town, but he didn’t think that the locals would be this slow to help each other.

Though he supposed there wasn’t much he himself could do about it. He had a shop to tend to, and Dad was a merchant, not a Rescuer or an Explorer. He finished the last of his tea and got up, taking his flask off the table.

“Right, I suppose we all have our own problems to worry about,” he sighed. “Though I’ll see you again around lunch, Swanna. Hopefully I won’t need to put in another order of tea like this.”

He got up, and shuffled off for the door. He hoped that those listings weren’t going to be an omen for what the day was going to be like.

Fortunately for Tipper, the morning shift wasn’t full of inhospitable customers… or customers of any sort for that matter. It was one of those slow days that petered out after the morning rush, which left him with little more to do than to tend to the shop or idly gawk at his surroundings. Even if he was starting to feel drowsy again, he’d barely bothered touching the Chesto Tea in his flask. He simply hadn’t needed it.

“Oh! There! There! It’s a Kecleon Shop!”

Tipper cracked his eyes open as he saw an Eevee and Riolu off in the square, with the Normal-type of the pair pointing off at his shop. He hastily reached for his flask and sucked down a few gulps of Chesto Tea before stashing it under the counter. Not a moment too soon, either, as the Riolu and Eevee sidled up and reared up to peer over the counter.

“Welcome to the Kecleon Shop!” Tipper greeted. “How can I help you?”

“We’re looking for equipment to help out on a journey!” the Riolu replied.

“Yeah! Lou and I are on a quest to save the world!”

Tipper blinked and stared at the two for a long moment. Stars, they were those sort of customers. It’d become a trend among younger and more impressionable types to take after Rescuers and Explorers who had a human on the team after that whole business around Pokémon Square on Air. And then the trend went and got another shot of popularity after a human apparently turned up around some podunk town on Grass and built up local notoriety over some mission in the Sea of Wonders.

And every time, those sorts of kids would be a headache to deal with. They’d come in with stars in their eyes, thinking they were destined for greatness without the faintest clue of how to get it…

along with the most aggravating insistence that they deserved a discount to help them along their way.

“Uh… huh,” the Kecleon said. “Well, if you have money with you, I can sell you a few things that might help. Though you should probably be focusing on making it through Ragged Mountain reliably before you worry about saving the world anytime soon.”

“Shouldn’t you be cutting us a break at all?” the Eevee asked. “After all, Lou had to have been brought here for a reason, and a couple of items could make all the difference for us.”

Aaaaaand there it was. Tipper felt his face sag as he could already feel these two wearing him down by the moment in spite of the Chesto Tea. He put an arm on the counter and leaned against it, narrowing his eyes down at the pair.

“Look kids, the planet could be about to crash into the sun, and I wouldn’t be able to cut you a discount. It’s Kecleon Market policy,” he explained. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“But Lou really is a human!” the Eevee insisted. “Can’t you at least sell us stuff on credit?”

Tipper was starting to wish that he’d ordered spirits instead of tea from the Swanna House before leaving. Maybe that some of that ‘Baccacello’ he’d seen before on the happy hour menu, heavens knew that it’d make dealing with these two a lot easier.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure that he is,” Tipper scoffed. “Ever since that human turned up on Air and that whole meteor incident happened, everyone and their mother who’s looking for a discount conveniently comes to me with a secret human friend. So I can’t exactly give you special treatment.”

He trailed off after he noticed the pair were pinning their ears back and looking away, visibly downcast. Tipper chewed the inside of his cheek and grimaced quietly. Gah, he really needed to learn how to watch his tongue on the job. Kecleon Market’s specialty as an institution was its customer service!

… Well, that and its second-to-none theft recovery, but either way, it wouldn’t do any good to just let the two leave his shop in a mood like this.

He forced a smile on his face, and gave a reassuring wave across the counter.

“Hey, don’t take it too hard. You don’t need to have a human teammate to impress others. Just work hard and the rest will follow naturally,” he said.

That got their attention. Tipper weighed his words carefully. It didn’t make sense to keep these two loitering around the shop if they couldn’t buy anything, but maybe there was a way to let them off gently without leaving a bad taste in their mouth.

“You two are an Exploration Team together, right?” he asked. “There’s some requests posted inside the Swanna House at the moment. Why don’t you take one or two of the simpler ones and earn some money, and then I’ll sell you a few things for that journey of yours, huh?”

The pair perked up and traded beaming grins with each other, as the Eevee wagged her tail back and forth happily.

“Come on, Lou! That could be just the break we needed!” the Eevee yipped. “There’s probably a couple that we can do on the way to meeting Munna from your dreams!”

‘Munna from your dreams’?

Tipper wasn’t sure what to make of that comment or why Riolu would be dreaming of a Munna. He snapped to attention after hearing pattering footsteps running away, and saw the pair already halfway across the square.

Tipper flinched, as he realized he’d let the two go without getting in an important part of every customer’s experience at Kecleon Market:

“Wait! Thanks for your business! Come back anytime!”

Tipper pinched his brow and let out a low sigh. Gah, messing up the customary Kecleon Market farewell again, he could already tell that was going to be a problem if business picked up later in the day.

He shook his head and reached for his flask of Chesto Tea. Clearly he wasn’t as awake as he needed to be.

The rest of the day went by in a forgettable blur for Tipper, that or he was too tired to really pay attention to what was going on. He wound up needing to get a refill for his flask from Swanna after all… twice. When it finally came time to close the shop up for the night, he was struggling to stay on his feet.

Tipper heard the clunk of the lock to the side door set into place as he shuffled around the counter and out in front of the shop. He abruptly stopped after realizing that his bag felt a little lighter than expected. The Kecleon slipped it off his shoulder and opened its mouth, when he saw that everything was there… except for the metal flask he’d borrowed in the morning.

“Right, the flask,” he muttered. “I was supposed to bring that back to Swanna.”

Tipper looked back at the shop. He really didn’t want to have to unlock the shop’s door and lock it again. He looked at the counter, and set his bag aside before vaulting over it. He came to a stop behind the counter, before rooting under it when he felt his claws brush up against something hard and cold.

Thank the stars, it was the flask. He sighed and hopped back over the counter, only for his feet to drag on the edge and him to pitch forward with a yelp. Tipper laid on the ground for a moment, getting up and dusting himself off, when he noticed that the square was strangely bright that night.

“What the-?”

He looked up, where there in the sky, was a golden orb slowly floating upwards from somewhere in the distance. He blinked and rubbed his eyes as the strange light just lingered and ascended for a moment, before it slipped past darkened clouds and vanished from view.

The Kecleon looked up, unsure what to make of the sight when he realized his eyes were bleary and struggling to stay open.

“I must be seeing things,” he muttered. “Guess that’s a sign to go straight to bed tonight after squaring things away with Swanna.”

He picked the flask and his bag off the ground and trudged off for the Swanna House with a tired sigh. After a day like today, he couldn’t get back to his room soon enough.

Tipper all but collapsed into bed the moment he made it back to his room at the Swanna House and dreamed of home under the shadow of Baram’s windmills. Before he knew it, the morning rays were peeking through the window, and for once, he was earlier to rise than Torneko, who was still slumped over in his own bed from a long day out in the field.

Tipper decided to let his father rest and made his way down to the Juice Bar, stretching his limbs as made his way down the steps and into the Juice Bar on the ground floor.

“What on earth is this still doing up?”

Tipper blinked after hearing a voice coming from the direction of the side of the room where all the listings were pinned, and watched as a Munna floated a paper shrouded in a bluish aura off the wall and in front of her face. Tipper made his way over and glanced at the Psychic-type as he passed, when he noticed that the listing was the bounty for the Salamence Outlaw he’d seen the day before.

… She wasn’t seriously planning on taking that mission, was she?

“That looks like a pretty dangerous mission there, Munna,” Tipper said. “Are you sure you’ll be able to handle it?”

The Psychic-type abruptly whirled around and had a flash of surprise cross her pink eyes. It faded almost as quickly as it came, as the bluish aura shifted and she folded up the paper in midair with an unseen force. She turned aside, and closed her eyes with a quiet harrumph.

“I think I’ll manage. I have teammates and we’re more than capable of handling a fight on our own,” the Psychic-type said. “Though I appreciate the concern. With the way that Pokémon can be to each other these days, you can never be too careful.”

The Munna brought the wadded-up poster to her forearms and pinned it against her body, before starting to float for the door. Was she really strong enough to be able to handle fighting a Salamence of all Pokémon? And why on earth did she seem vaguely familiar…?

Wait a minute!

Tipper’s mind briefly turned to the Riolu and Eevee who came by his shop the day before. He distinctly remembered that the two said something about Riolu having seen a Munna in his dreams. Maybe it was nothing, but before he knew it, Tipper found himself hurrying off after the Psychic-type and waved his claws after her with a sharp call.

“Actually, wait! I just remembered something, Munna,” the Kecleon said. “There was a Riolu and Eevee who came by my shop and said that they were looking around for a Munna. Were you expecting them at all?”

She didn’t say anything back in reply and as Tipper waited for a response, he got the distinct feeling that Munna was studying him somehow. Eventually, she shook her head, before turning for the door.

“Sorry, I can’t say that either of those two really ring a bell,” she said. “Though I suppose that a lot of faces have been blurring together for me lately.”

Tipper stared after her after she floated along and out of the Swanna House’s entrance. He couldn’t place his claw on it, but something about the exchange felt… wrong. Like there was something that Munna had kept hidden from him.

He looked at the entrance’s doorway before hearing shuffling towards the counter. It was Swanna coming in from tending to the Juice Bar’s backroom.

Tipper shook his head and made his way back for the inn’s keeper. He had a shop to open up for the day, and getting in an order of morning tea would help him get to it all the faster.

Besides, it was rude to pry into other Pokémon’s matters. If that really was the Munna that Riolu and Eevee had been looking for, he was sure they’d find each other soon enough.