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Dakarai's idea of smalltalk was certainly bordering on strange so far and when he started on a tour, that impression only deepened. He didn't as much as narrate anything obvious - that the place must have once been some sort of cathedral, that something had happened to damage it or let it fall into extreme disrepair, and that Jagdish had taken up residence here. As a tour guide, his most frequent words were 'left' and 'right' as a heads-up that he was going to go that way and for her not to be surprised by it, and the phrase “We're not doing anything with this room right now.”
It wasn't that he was completely devoid of stating the obvious. One of their earliest stops was the pantry, and he said as much, and explained that they sourced most of the contents from Vale, skipping the Hollow's prohibitive geographical structure with some pokémon's Teleport. The pokémon was usually 'Mew'.
There were also no pokémon anywhere for most of the tour - not that Adelaide could be strictly sure that the strange apparition from before wasn't hiding in plain sight again, doing something to her mind's visual processing centre to disappear.
The place was in reasonable shape, all things considered, although on even a moment's reflection it implied that Jagdish basically never left the sprawling house. No 'day job', just mob boss, then. The modern interior design, especially of the guest rooms, including the one she was occupying, seemed at odds with the necessary practicality of everything. But maybe if you spent your entire life–
On the other hand, how old could Jagdish possibly be, though? Mid-twenties? The design of the place looked a little more established, so maybe a predecessor had put that in.
“Since we're up the mountain,” Dakarai was explaining. “We get a decent amount of rain when the clouds catch here, but more often than not they just linger as fog. Anyway, it's what feeds the plumbing. If you're interested in the system, I can show you the containers outside. Frost is actually a real problem, it doesn't really get warm up here.” None of this had the tone of him expecting her to do anything about it, it just seemed to be interesting trivia to him. “Well-built pipes with solid insulation help, of course. In a pinch, friendly pokémon neighbours help, too, but that doesn't scale.”
“How much scale would be needed, though?” Adelaide asked, curious. “Baseline water consumption seems like it would be low, although I don't know how frequently you have guests staying, or how many.” She paused. “Granted, if some of those guests are pokemon, I suppose things could vary wildly.”
And if there were ever… grand gym leader conferences or suspicious gatherings of that sort, the number of people present could temporarily skyrocket. Nothing of the sort had been mentioned yet, and Dakarai had yet to show her a conference room with a sinister table headed by a grand high-backed chair, but she'd certainly seen her share of perfectly normal non-criminal conference rooms in the business world and one of those wouldn't surprise her.
She'd even seen one with a high stool for the CEO's Espeon.
…would utterly terrifying Legendaries prefer to stand, or would they have some sort of comfortable divan?
“I mean, just boiling some water is always easy, but the pipes are still here regardless who is here to use them,” Dakarai pointed out. “But yes, sometimes a pipe bursts and we go out to get the water directly from the tank while that gets fixed, and then you don't need scale at all.” He gestured loosely with one hand as though pointing in what was presumably the general direction of a container added any relevant content to the conversation. “But it's only happened three times that I've personally witnessed, and two of those were piping from the tank to indoors, the obvious breakpoints you would expect. The pipes we have in place now have heating we can turn on, but frost has caught us by surprise before, and one of the breakages was because a heating element failed. For the former we're thinking of hooking up a temperature sensor to automate it.” A light shrug. “Everything about this place is bespoke.”
She nodded slowly in understanding. “And I suppose one difficulty with bespoke is a reluctance to bring in outside experts to assist.” Between the gym leaders they could probably come up with some excellent excuses, Adelaide supposed, but if they wished to keep Mew's existence quiet - she didn't know if that was the case, but she was guessing so based on power and the fact she had no idea what species she was - then any outside expert would have to be willing to climb the volcano. That was an expensive prospect.
“It is hard to maintain an air of mystery if every plumber on the island has been to your lair,” Dakarai observed, so drily it was hard to tell whether he was making a joke or considered it an honest to god issue.
Maybe it was the stress, but that remark slipped past her self-control and Adelaide couldn't stifle a laugh. “The main mystery remaining would be 'why on earth have you chosen to live all the way up here', possibly with a side dish of 'seriously, you must love climbing treacherous mountains, but I do not and you can hire another plumber next time',” she acknowledged. “Possibly that would be why you'd need every plumber on the island.”
“I would expect they can ask some pokémon to Fly them here,” Dakarai mused, puncturing the humour a little, although judging by facial expression he wasn't deliberately trying to rain on the moment of amusement.
He came to a stop in a large hall. The ceiling was easily seven or more metres up and an open space that could have contained a small house all of its own opened up here, with two sides flanked by what looked like giant stairs, or just seating opportunities, complete with a railing separating them from the court and all.
At the end of the hall were large doors. …oh. She remembered those. That was the front door.
“This is the arena,” Dakarai said, perhaps forgetting that she knew this part fine.
The place looked rather a bit different if it was light outside, with sunlight spilling in through tall, gothic windows, but certainly no less deliberately ominous and ready to chew up any trainer that thought 'arena' sounded fun, to a loudly advertised audience of none.
Adelaide shuddered. Yes, it looked less omnious in daylight. It was still omnious, just more imposing and intimidating than a horror movie prop. Was that more or less accurate? She wasn't sure.
“I'd wondered, a little, if it was just me being tired and done and alarmed by Farsight's reaction and that was colouring my memory. But despite all the sudden complications it is causing, running still seems like it was the sensible reaction.”
“Absolutely. Although, if you do absolutely everything right, you can win the fight, but that's only ever happened once,” Dakarai mused. “And Jagdish and his friends aren't going to make that mistake again, for sure.”
“Only once?!” she asked, in shock. Being extremely good was one thing. Never losing was quite another. “Well. I already knew everyone here could outmatch me, I suppose hearing how resoundingly makes no difference. My team has always been more… competent but cunning, more than strong. And that day was only the second time Farsight has screamed like that.”
Adelaide looked at the stands without really seeing. “I half thought that the volcano was going to erupt, just based on her reaction.”
“You might have gathered by now that Jagdish has Legendary friends,” Dakarai mused. “So everything needs to be perfect, beat by beat. You need to think at least two steps ahead - non-Legendary pokémon can't do that at all, so it has to be you.” …he was being oddly specific. “It takes a lot of control. And if you have that degree of control, there are typically other reasons why you don't deserve to walk out of here.” He smiled, having stared out at the empty arena for the duration of the commentary. “So you made a good choice.”
✘ IN PROGRESS