Destiny [Pokémon]

❥ chapter XX

As you bade goodbye to your best friends, who would stay at the café a little longer, and headed off to your family's clinic with your three Pokémon, the strap of your shoulder bag slung over your shoulder, you mulled over what they had told you after you had returned from the restroom.

A pair of shady characters wearing very strange clothes similar to costumes from a stage play about kings and queens had shown up at the café and asked whether anyone had seen Ho-Oh—and if that wasn't already surprising (and creepy) enough, they had also mentioned the exact time, date, and location of the encounter you had had with the Legendary Pokémon.

Neither your friends nor you could make head or tail of how they knew all that. If Ho-Oh had been visible not just to you, but to everyone, there would have been a huge clamour about it, beyond doubt. But no such thing had happened. That was why you were convinced that the legendary bird had revealed itself to you only.

The question remained: How in the world did they know about that? More importantly, why were they even searching for you in the first place? What could they possibly want from you? And what would they do once they had found you?

Perhaps they could give you the answers to all the questions that had been floating around in your head regarding your encounter with Ho-Oh. However, your friends, their Pokémon, and your Pokémon had strongly advised you to stay away from these people should you happen to run into them by yourself. Especially May and the Ralts siblings had stressed multiple times that something was very off about them. Since May's gut instinct was practically never wrong and the two Feeling Pokémon could sense emotions—and they had sensed something malign in the strangers' intentions—you had resolved to heed that warning.

There was no point in thinking too much about this incident right now anyways, let alone trying to figure it out. You would only get a headache again. Thus, for the time being, you cleared out all the questions and thoughts in your head, your eyes focusing on the headband in your hand.

The four girls had urged you to stop wearing it. Since those weirdos—whoever they were anyway—somehow were so well-informed about what had happened yesterday, they most likely were very well-informed about Ho-Oh too. In other words, it was highly probable that they would be able to recognize the Rainbow Pokémon's feather.

You didn't want to tempt fate a second time. You could count yourself lucky that your visit to the restroom had taken longer than expected because something had suddenly broken and an employee of the café had had to fix it in great haste. This hadn't taken too long, just a couple of minutes, but it had kept you from meeting the pair of strangers unprepared.

Hence, you stored the headband in your shoulder bag, careful not to damage the beautiful multi-coloured feather attached to it. These strange people wouldn't take notice of you when there was nothing about you connecting you to the Legendary Pokémon—especially nothing as obvious as one of its feathers. All you had to do now was to steer clear of them if you came across them again. According to your best friends' and your Pokémon's description of them, that should be fairly easy, seeing as they were not that hard to spot due to their flashy clothes.

Knowing that there were some suspicious characters searching for you for reasons you didn't know (and didn't really want to know either) was definitely unnerving if not downright spine-chilling. You had even considered giving up on your plans of travelling the region for a moment—or maybe even two ... or three ... But you had discarded that thought again. Everything up until now would have been in vain. And you didn't want to disappoint your Pokémon either—or your friends and your parents, for that matter.

No, you wouldn't let these people ruin your Pokémon journey (which hadn't even begun yet, mind you), much less intimidate you or make you hole up in your room! You would go on this journey, no matter what. You had been dreaming of this for so long, of leaving your hometown to travel across the region you were living in—and maybe even beyond—with your Pokémon at your side. In that aspect, you weren't any different from most kids nowadays.

If you backed down now, you would never get to realize that dream of yours. You would never get to see what lay beyond the two islands—and never find out why Ho-Oh had appeared before you. You were determined to do just that. You wouldn't let anyone or anything stop you, not even those weirdos. To the Distortion World with them! And at a pinch, you could always defend yourself against them with the help of your Pokémon.

As you walked along the sidewalk, you closed your eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling through the nose and then exhaling through the mouth, breathing out all the worries and doubts that had piled up in you once more because of this incident. Then, you opened your eyes again, nodded to yourself, and zipped your bag shut.

Barely a second later, you were glad that you had listened to your friends' advice and taken off the plastic headband. Just on the other side of the street were two persons, and the description of the odd strangers the girls had given you fit them to a T. Luckily, they were being busy talking to a group of teenagers, and you hurried on ahead without being noticed.

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After a few minutes of walking, your parents' clinic for Pokémon came into view. Located on the ground floor of a two-story building near the town center, it stood out a mile because of the large cross that was attached to the projecting roof above the entrance. Its top half was coloured red and the bottom one white with a black line in between, resembling a Poké Ball.

The automatic doors slid open quietly when you neared them. You stepped into the waiting room with your three Pokémon by your side, greeting a young girl who was hugging a Stufful tightly to her chest with a nod and a smile as she walked past you with heavy steps and left the clinic. She was visibly struggling to carry the Flailing Pokémon—which was a little heavy for a kid like her—but sheer determination (or rather stubbornness) made her move onward regardless.

Shaking your head in amusement, a smirk tugging one corner of your mouth upwards as you watched the girl go, you turned forward again, only to start back in surprise. You could only just prevent a squeal from escaping you, but quickly regained your composure. "Geez, Rosa, you really gotta stop sneaking up on me like that!"

"Look what the cat dragged in," the tan girl standing right in front of you drawled, her face split into a big grin. She had been sitting behind the reception desk just a second ago, but she had crept up on you while you had been distracted. As usual, she ignored your mild reproof and wrapped an arm around your shoulders instead. "Looks like the late bloomer finally became a fully-fledged Pokémon Trainer. It was about time!"

You batted her hand away when she tried to muss your hair, giving her the evil eye. "No, stop it! Don't you dare! My dad did that often enough yesterday!" you grumbled, though that only made her laugh.

At that moment, the double door to the back area of the small clinic was pushed open, and Felix, another one of your co-workers, appeared. A grin like a Cheshire cat's spread over his lips the second he laid eyes on you. Without saying a single word, he turned on his heel and left through the door from which he had just emerged.