There was something fundamentally eerie about stepping in through the doorway she'd seen Jagdish disappear into, like the maw of a trap. Yarver's casual lead was a balming but stark contrast. And so it wasn't much later that she was ushered into a dining room. It sported a table that seemed large enough for at least ten occupants. The kitchen was apparently right next to it, with a door between the rooms that in theory could be slid closed, but looked like it hadn't been in a longer while.
Some potted plants sat in the corners. “What kind of tea would you like? Black, green, herbal, fruit?” Yarver asked her.
There was no sign of Jagdish right now, although a mild scent of frying oil suggested he had made true of his earlier threat of Being In The Kitchen for at least some of the time and might yet return to clean up. They were a bit on the early side of his timebox, so maybe it wasn't too surprising that he'd bowed out.
A variety of tea boded well. Or did it? Correlation, not causation: the fact that in the past a wide tea selection was something she'd found a positive sign didn't mean that it would be this time.
Her thoughts were definitely jangled, Adelaide acknowledged with a grimace.
“Green, please.” Safe, consistent, soothing.
“Green, then,” Yarver acknowledged. He lingered for an awkward additional second, as though concerned that Adelaide might yet change her mind about calming down once she was alone, but then sauntered into the kitchen with a smile that actually managed to be casual.
Anything that could possibly have been interesting in the kitchen was strategically out of view from the dining room table, but she could hear Yarver's shuffling about. Clearly he wasn't as familiar with it as Jagdish, but the absence of cursing suggested that it also wasn't a maze.
About two minutes into her wait, to the sound of a kettle turning on, Adelaide noticed that the room wasn't right.
It was hard to put a finger on what was alarming about it - like she'd blinked and the potted plants were suddenly swapped with others, like something had just shifted, but she couldn't catch anything out on being out of–
The pokémon was right in front of her. Like something that had lurked in her blind spot all along, it stood only a metre away, staring right at her, its silver patterns seeming almost alive on its dark skin. Its blue eyes had adopted a trace of luminescence. Even in the still of the room, the flowing feather mane rippled in soundless motion.
~How did it begin?~ it asked, its voice laced through her mind as a schizophrenic medely of a soothing whisper and a hiss.
She'd like to say that she was unflappable, that she'd been sufficiently trained, that professionalism took over.
She'd like to, but that would be a lie. Instead, Adelaide's immediate reaction was an undignified squeak.
Her second reaction was alarm, but she felt that was justified; a very large pokemon had just appeared right in front of her and this was very startling. So was the pokemon talking to her. A potentially deadly human appearing in front of her and asking weird questions would also be startling so this was justified, right?
“I'm sorry, how did what begin?” Adelaide asked politely, hands clasped very tightly in her lap.
~The enslavement,~ the pokémon clarified. There was no more emotion in its voice than before, no more tension in its body.
Somewhere in another reality, the kettle was boiling, but she might have heard Yarver's shuffling pause, as though unsure if he had heard something and, to be a good host, ought to look if something had been requested.
She still had no clue what the Legendary - because who else could this be? - was talking about. “I… seem to be missing the start of this conversation. Enslavement?”
~The pokémon you keep encased,~ the Legendary continued, and the luminescence in its eyes seemed to intensify at the edges, hue-shifting to a discordant magenta outline, the only indicator that there might be something shifting inside it at all. Come to think of it, it didn't look as though it was even breathing, although no doubt it did.
“Jesus!” Yarver's voice was sharp and crisp, revealing that he stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Please not now.” He stepped toward the both of them, extending an arm to carefully slip it between Adelaide and the Legendary.
She didn't think 'well the Natu followed me home' would go down terribly well, no matter how truthful, nevermind any of her other wild-caught pokemon. Was that why their eyes had a building glow? How terrified should she be right now?
Given Yarver's alarmed reaction, probably quite a lot.
It was hard to track exactly where those eyes were looking, but it was clear when they shifted, latching onto Yarver instead. If the pokémon was speaking again, its soundless voice didn't bother to touch Adelaide's mind - but evidence that it had surfaced some moments later. “I said 'please',” Yarver said, with an equally stern and frantic mien. “We are waiting for Jagdish. I'm sure there will be opportunities for whatever's on your mind later.”
Eerily, the pokémon's maw opened wide, in something emulating a hideous grin, and actual vocalisations spilled from its chest, akin to a hacking laugh. Then the muzzle snapped shut, its gaze snapped back to Adelaide for a few seconds, and then it took a step back, moving its head to the side as though politely considering the prospect of taking its leave.
Her gut told her she was going to be eaten. The rest of her told her gut to shut up, and also that she should probably stay still and not shuffle sideways to hide behind Yarver. It wouldn't work, anyway.
And now the Legendary was… laughing at them? That was a good sign, yes? Being mocked was generally bad, but mocked was far from the worst outcome.
Mercifully, the consideration landed on leaving, and so it did - quite normally, if one could consider it normal that the world around it seemed to ripple a little, as though it weren't quite fully attached to its environment.
“Sorry about that,” Yarver said, his voice very soft, and his attention still on the pokémon. “If I'd guessed that was going to happen, I wouldn't have left you to sit here alone. Did she do you any harm at all?” He didn't sound as though he were outright expecting any, just that it was an unnerving possibility.
“No?” Adelaide answered, sounding a touch uncertain and dismayed. “She asked a question about my pokemon, but it was as if she'd started the conversation in the middle and I'm… not quite sure what was even being asked.” She. Adelaide made a note of that pronoun, since it seemed the uncomprehensible questioning had only been postponed.
“Ah, yes. That doesn't surprise me,” Yarver said, although he sounded crinkled. “A psychic pokémon doesn't have a whole lot of patience for words,” he tried to explain. “If it can read what's on your mind, clearly you should be able to read what's on its mind.” He stopped just shy of rolling his eyes. “Persistent assumption, even though she knows better. It's like living together with someone who is hard of hearing - you know, and you respect, but the everyday interactions still sometimes turn into… annoyance, I guess.”
She'd never had that problem with Farsight, but she couldn't exactly hold a spoken conversation with her Natu either. Their everyday interactions were more akin to charades, which… would that help avoid certain assumptions, or make them worse?
“You've, uh, had a lot of conversations with her?” Adelaide was still unnerved, but if she was going to be having a conversation with a Legendary (and it looked like that was only delayed) then she should attempt to prepare for it. Even if it felt odd treating a future meeting with her like she would a future meeting with a port official.
“Personally?” Yarver half-echoed the question thoughtfully. “Not really. Jagdish does, though, and I've had… enough of them to understand.”
For a moment, he seemed lost in thought, but quickly snapped out of it. “Tea,” he said, although he shot the direction that the Legendary had left in a suspicious glance, as though unsure whether it might not be about to resurface the moment his back was turned. “Let me get you your tea.” And with that, he wandered back into the kitchen.
Jagdish was the pokemon whisperer. That was unsurprising, and not especially comforting, given their last interaction. Farsight peeped softly from under her chair. Adelaide resisted the urge to scoop up her pokemon; if she wanted up she'd come herself, and if the Legendary returned then being seen manhandling a pokemon wouldn't help.
What would? Tea, perhaps. If another stranger appeared, maybe she should valiantly retreat to join Yarver in the kitchen.
No other pokémon came to accost her, and neither Jagdish nor anyone else that might yet be lurking here snuck in interfere, but the minutes that Yarver needed to finish up her tea seemed to stretch uncomfortably. When he did resurface, it punctured the tension. He sat down beside her, passing her her cup of tea on a saucer, merely smiling mildly.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting it gratefully and taking a moment to inhale the steam and let the scent begin calming her down. Or continue calming her down. Right now she wasn't sure if 'calm' was a reachable state, but tea could only help.
Several long sips later, Adelaide turned to Yarver. “Is there anything else that I need to know before whatever comes next?”
There was a palpable pause as Yarver digested the question, some gears working in his head. Then, haltingly, clearly unwilling to assume that what her question implied was the absolute truth, he first asked: “You've made up your mind?”
It took a few moments to guess at what he was meaning. Had she? Adelaide screwed her eyes shut. “It feels inevitable and like I may not have other viable options, but… that's not the same thing, is it?” And his unwillingness to say more spoke very loudly on its own, didn't it?
“That's not the same thing,” he nodded, his tone mild. “I said you can sleep on it, and that's still true. As I said earlier, it would be the easiest way to defuse the situation, by a large margin, but it's your choice - we can try working the kinks out some other way.”
The tea proved soothing, but it didn't fully smooth out her frayed nerves. When Jagdish resurfaced, indeed mildly surprised at their early return, Yarver and her conversation had settled on sleeping over a night. The gym leader's facial expression was considerably less bristly and hard-edged and when he offered a room for the night and Yarver assured her it would be fine, it was only mildly frightening to accept. Maybe one of her pokémon would allow itself to be abused as a plushie and guardian, both - she was not expected to give her pokéballs or belongings to her host. Clearly no one was expecting her to scheme on destroying the place.
Unsurprisingly, sleep did not come easily, but it did come. Her dreams were messy, incoherent snippets, more emotion than narrative, fragments of unease and a stubborn will to prove herself. All the details bled together. Somewhere in the back of it all seemed to be the unnerving pokémon, observing without making as much as an emulated sound.
What was she doing? The only thing she could. Which was… trying not to break down, apparently, or chalk the entire thing up to a series of vivid dreams. Nightmares? Nothing terribly nightmarish had happened. Yet. Unless one counted murderous conspiracies, in which case things perhaps had, but nothing enough to count as evidence, and how did one handle a conspiracy when it involved the very people you were report such things to?
Adelaide's thoughts had chased themselves in that spiral many times over the night.
The looming sense of presence had not helped. Was there a Legendary pokemon spying on her dreams, or was her mind considerably more rattled than expected by their brief encounter yesterday? Adelaide found herself regretful she'd never looked properly into the myths and stories of Sehto. The best she had was a surface, tourist-friendly skim, which gave her the answer of… maybe.
Maybe wasn't good enough. But surety of any sort was in short supply.
In fact, the only clearly defined path was 'submit to trial and pray for a good outcome', but a craving for certainty was not a good reason to do something dramatic.
(She wondered what counted as a good reason. Did anything?)
Technically she had been told how to navigate not only to the bathroom, should she need it, but out of the building, but the architecture of the place seemed maximally confusing - and so it was good, at least in one singular sense, when there was a knock on her door, and, absent any protesting sounds from her, Jagdish appeared in the doorway.
Somehow, he seemed less scary that the evening before, despite all of the dreams. He was lanky, dressed in casual clothing, black hair presently slightly slick with the moisture from a morning shower. Evidently he didn't blow-dry his hair. That trivia was sure to be important on some final exam somewhere.
“Good morning,” he said, politely. It wasn't obviously a false sentiment, either - the acerbic undercurrent from their first meeting seemed to have mercifully evaporated. “Can I bribe you with breakfast?” One corner of his mouth played at a smile, combining with the absurdity of the question into obvious humour. The breakfast, presumably, was real.
Breakfast? Breakfasts were good. Breakfasts made sense. It was very hard for a breakfast not to make sense, and she was including those strange northern 'we buried a fish and forgot about it' breakfast foods in that number.
“Breakfast sounds lovely,” was what Adelaide said aloud, because odd diversions on how to ruin a perfectly nice fish was not appropriate small talk around one's possible employer/jailer/lawyer.
“Great. Evil plans work much better when all involvees are on the same page,” Jagdish said, in the same perfectly conversational tone of before. He took another look at her, but she was quite presentable, so he gestured with one arm for her to follow, and began to lead the way. “You might get exposed to more of my dark sense of humour over the course of breakfast.” He didn't apologise for it, technically, but the warning felt like it was for her benefit, at least. “Speaking of which, forgive me the curiosity, what is dream-me's body count?”
Adelaide grimaced at the question. Dark humour, indeed. She had a feeling she would need to grow comfortable with that, fast, no matter what path her future held. “Directly? Zero. Your dream-self did not lay a finger on anyone.” Which was true; he'd turned up less than she expected. “As an approving bystander? Perhaps two.”
She considered his behaviour yesterday, Yarver's words, and Jagdish's joke about evil plans. “There were also several Team Rocket members sucked into a giant wine bottle that a pokemon played fetch with.” It was that last detail that made her think her dreams were naturally-formed nonsense, and not inflicted on her by terrifying Psychic Legendaries. Whether the Legendary in question had been watching was another matter. If so, Adelaide hoped it had amused.
“Two,” he echoed, arching a brow mildly while making a face that at first left her guessing whether he was disappointed at the low number or that it was anything other than zero. The answer stayed true to the mood of his humour: “I feel like there's some room for improvement for dream-me there. If I'm going to feature in a dream as a caricature, it might as well go all-out. Maybe sacrifice a whole town to the volcano, that sort of thing.” He shrugged one shoulder, then smiled mischievously at her for a moment. “Maybe your dreams can consider that next time.”
It turned out that the dining area wasn't so far away as that the conversation wasn't effectively cut short. “Sit,” Jagdish gestured two fingers to a chair. “I believe Dakarai will be joining us,” he said. “I hope that won't be a problem.” Instead of giving her much of a chance to look puzzled and ask what pokémon that was, he asked: “Any dietary restrictions?”
She'd guessed somewhat correctly; Jagdish wasn't upset by his dream cameo. His suggestion of sacrificing a town to the volcano struck her as rather more suitable to Keith; the Kzye gym leader had access to both a town and some bubbling lava. Jagdish was much higher up the volcano, true, but from a sacrifice perspective he would have to rely on gravity and that was far less spectacular.
“No dietry restrictions,” Adelaide answered as she sat. Yarver wasn't mentioned, so possibly he'd sensibly gone home to sleep in his own bed. 'Dakarai' was a new… person, she was going to go with 'person' unless otherwise instructed. Best to treat this as she would any other possibly-work-related introduction, then. “Is there anything I should be aware of?”
That could cover anything from 'another Legendary will be here and threaten to lick you' to 'please mind your language'.
Jagdish gave her a look as though the question were positively bizarre. “Oh yeah,” he said after a moment's pause, not quite managing to look unmistakably impish for it. “You should be mentally prepared for that a breakfast is going to appear on the table in front of you in about, oh… fifteen minutes or so,” he deadpanned.
So she could expect the meal to be normal, then. Or normal by his standards. Which probably meant… anywhere from actually normal to somewhat bizzare, but she could probably eliminate outlandish.
Jagdish turned to disappear to the kitchen, but paused, then turned to Adelaide and said: “For your calibration, this is a normal day for me, and it's going to continue being a normal day for me.” He smiled, but a sharp glint in his eyes revealed that some of the previous day's frustration was definitely still there. “Sit tight.” Said, he slipped past the frame of the door and into the kitchen.
And she was still ruffling his feathers somehow, possibly by her mere existence. It was hard not to shrink under his look but that also seemed a poor idea. Hopefully that would pass?
Six minutes, it turned out, were a long time, even though it was considerably shorter than the time Jagdish said the breakfast would appear. But at six minutes after he'd disappeared into the kitchen, a groggy-looking, dark-skinned man in somewhat worn black slacks sauntered into the dining room, two fingers of his left hand massaging at the edge of one orbit, his posture casual and tired for all of the two seconds it took him to notice someone else was in the room.
For a split second, his face transformed into an expression of deer-in-headlights. Then the moment was gone, and he let his demeanour slip into mildly slouching teenager, wordlessly slipping into a sit opposite of Adelaide, looking at her with some curiosity.
Presumably, this was Dakarai. If so, he was a very, very quiet man. …or perhaps someone used to not speaking until it was explicitly his turn to talk.
Politeness rarely went astray. “Good morning. I'm Adelaide,” she greeted, then stalled slightly on what ettiquette applied here. “ Uh… my apologies for disrupting your regular routine?”
“Hi,” the man said. He had to be in his early thirties, but he acted younger, for sure, in various ways - some subtle, some not. “Are you a circuiter?” There was a look of confused fascination on his face, and maybe a tinge of horror. Whatever the exact emotion, it had apparently overridden his instinct to introduce himself.
“Not for quite a few years. I'm visiting Taqnetah for other business,” Adelaide answered. Neither of the gym leaders had told her she needed to keep quiet about their grand conspiracy, but she liked to think that was mostly because it was blitheringly obvious. And she could nonsense smalltalk with the best of them.
Although she may not need to. “Are you Dakarai, by any chance?” If he was, that would likely prompt a topic of conversation. If he wasn't, that should prove distracting.
The man visibly untensed as she dated her last circuiting attempts to several years back. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry,” he added, realising he hadn't introduced himself in kind when she had. One arm reached across the table, offering to shake her hand. “Dakarai N'Sehla,” he introduced himself. “Are you a scientist doing a survey?” he asked, curiosity in his voice. Maybe that was the second most common type of person up here.
“Nothing as interesting, exciting, or valuable as that,” she joked. “Is that what you're here to do? I'm mostly familiar with the coastal areas of Sehto; I used to work on the S.S Anne. Although I'm glad that's well behind me.”
His discomfort with circuiting was interesting. Plausibly connected to the conspiracy in some way? She suspected Jagdish would illuminate things once he returned, and she had at least an hour of funny cruise ship stories to select from if necessary.
The smell of savoury pancakes was drifting toward them even before they could see Jagdish. Five seconds later, he was in the door, then through it, holding a small stack of plates, the top-most of which held in turn a stack of pancakes. He set a plate down in front of Adelaide, the pancakes hovering under her chin for a moment's logistic juggling, then did the same leaning over to Dakarai, before setting down a third in the spot right next to Adelaide and the pancakes in the middle between them. Hands now free, they fished through a pocket on his apron, and he brought up cutlery like a metal bouquet of flowers, picking at it to pass individual pieces around. As he did this, he commented: “Oh, I bet you two have been expertly beating around the bush.”
Dakarai squeezed at a fork, the look of surprise back on his face, if rather milder than before.
“Adelaide, this is Dakarai,” Jagdish redundantly introduced, seizing one of the pancakes from the stack as he did so. “He spies on circuiters for me.” Then he smiled across at Dakarai and said: “Dakarai, this Adelaide. She may be assisting us here in future with chores and logistics. You may talk to her freely.”
“An assistant?” Dakarai echoed in spirit, sounding mildly surprised.
“It's a large house,” Jagdish gestured with his free hand, as though 'cathedral in partial ruin' met the qualifications of 'house'. He seemed to remember his other apron pocket, plucking a bottle of honey out of it and plonking it onto the table. Rather than use it, he started to cut into his pancake.
Well. That answered the question on whether it was safe to talk about what was happening. At least in the abstract 'Dakarai is aware of the conspiracy' sense; it could still be quite dangerous in the 'rant about being caught up in it' sense.
“Logistics, I suppose, is what I was discussing with Yarver yesterday,” Adelaide offered, before tasting a bite of her pancake to see if it needed adulteration.
“Oh, so Yarver brought you in?” Dakarai smiled. The tension seemed gone now - Jagdish had evidently said some magic words to put him fully at ease. “Are you a friend of Yarver's?” he asked, curious.
“Friendly acquaintance at best. It was only the third time I've had the pleasure of meeting him.” Which made threats of death if she fled even more alarming. And, admittedly, spoke to Yarver's ability to judge others' character: if she'd been an evil person or concerned only with her own skill, she'd have bolted. He had to know she cared about the consequences of such actions.
Although if he thought she was that sort of psychopath, she wouldn't have passed the initial job interview.
Dakarai's curiosity seemed to pingpong between some thoughts for a moment, before he began: “Do you owe somebody–?”
“She's a perfectly normal, job-seeking person,” Jagdish interrupted. “And I am sure she would like to be able to have her breakfast.”
“Sorry,” Dakarai said, although without much of any particular inflection. Puzzlement, maybe. For a moment, his mouth opened as though he were going to elaborate where his line of questioning had been going, but he merely closed it again, then tended to his own meal.
“Not meaning to cut either of you off,” Jagdish commented to Adelaide, conversationally. “But the missing piece of information you're looking for is that Dakarai, much as he appreciates me, generally thinks in who owes who what, socially speaking. So he's assuming something along the lines of that you owe a gymleader your life and that's why you're here. It makes sense from his perspective, that's why he's here.” A pause. “In fact, let me phrase this maximally bluntly, so you're not confused about the dynamics here, or think they apply to you, which they don't and never will: For all intents and purposes, Dakarai is a slave.”
If Dakarai objected to the term or thought it was somehow inappropriate, shaming or otherwise an attack on his integrity and values, it was completely invisible. He didn't look particularly submissive, though he had certainly shown that he would do as asked, such as ending a line of questioning. He didn't look beaten up or malnourished.
✘ IN PROGRESS