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Post by Sleepy on Nov 16, 2019 20:11:26 GMT
That tower in Huanglu City was her home now, as much as the crammed rows of generic cookie cutter apartments made her feel like a Combee in a hive, everyone stacked right on top of one another. Astrid hadn't spent more than thirty waking minutes there since she'd checked in and registered for the League. The sterile white walls still felt like someone else's dorm, a temporary motel room stay until the next bullet train. She had kept herself busy in books and screens and sightseeing, a tourist in her childhood home. The dark silhouettes of her memory suddenly came into sharp focus as she hopped a ferry back to Marasay City, her birthplace, returning to the labyrinthine streets lined with cold neon. A miserable gray cloud had enveloped the city that morning, and the forlorn wail of the foghorn followed her as she plunged into the dark heart of the city. Home. In some form, this had been home. Once, she could've traced the streets like the veins in her wrist, but she felt an inexplicable hard lump in her throat as she followed the human current past peddlers and panhandlers and food carts, fingering at the Poké Ball hidden in her dark coat. The crisscross of electric wire, balconies, clotheslines, and storefront awnings formed a canopy against the sky, and the world on the ground was a kaleidoscope of hot fluorescent whites and blues and dull reds. 'OPEN ALL NIGHT'
'TRY THE NEW RARE CANDY!'
'POKé STRONG'
'SPICY FARFETCH'D SPECIAL' Astrid wasn't sure what she had come here to look for. Turned around now, the shouting and droning of the bustling market almost louder than the thoughts in her own head, it occurred to her this was the first time she'd been on the ground level of the city without her mother or father by her side. She let the Poké Ball roll into her palm and between her fingers, still concealed in her coat as she took a sudden sharp turn out of the thoroughfare and into a dark side street, almost lifeless by comparison. Almost. |
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Post by Jay on Nov 17, 2019 3:03:43 GMT
There was a time in Ernest's life where these kinds of places felt normal, almost exciting, to him. The days he spent in Castelia City during college, when he took all those pills and stumbled his way through dark city districts. Here he passed through this place with a shudder, his fingers wrapped around his wallet. He wanted to see the cities this region had to offer, but now that he was here, all he wanted was to leave.
But he didn't. He plunged further. It felt like a challenge to himself. Leaving meant that drunken and bright-eyed part of him was gone, the boy who climbed dangerous crags in remote mountains, who dove into half-frozen pools at the promise of free beer. He had admitted this to himself almost a decade ago, so he didn't know why it was blossoming again now, a boutonniere on his sagging collar. The region was bringing it to surface again.
The train back to Huanglu City didn't leave for another hour. He ran his hands through his oily hair. It had been a long day of aimless travel, and the most hopeful parts of himself expected Ramona to be waiting when he returned. Like they were still back in the house, like he was just up the road and she was only eight and his ex-wife made food in the kitchen. Memories rapped like a brass knocker against the rotting wood of his skull, and he felt its splinters in his burgeoning headache, the sting in his eyes as he passed alleyways soaked with piss.
Maybe it would be a good idea to get a drink before he left, get loose, let himself smile at something right now. Why was the same scene playing in his head all that day, his daughter disappearing into a crowd of eager travelers? They were all so fast.
He saw the girl with the dark hat as his memories projected across his eyes, through the din of probing salesmen and shady posses and screaming, mascaraed women. She too disappeared into the bodies. He crossed the dark intersection and stopped to find her disappearing down a smaller street, slicing the lamplight that bathed the asphalt pale. Where was she going? He lingered longer than he should have to find out.
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Post by Sleepy on Nov 18, 2019 0:49:02 GMT
Her steps slowed, focusing in on the tap-tap of shoes approaching from a measured distance behind. Astrid kept her pace up along the grimy walls, eyes tracing along the splashes of white graffiti like flower petals until she could oh-so-naturally turn her head toward the figure behind her. She paused. An unsavory washed-out looking man in a worn out suit, like many of the faces she'd seen here in the city's underbelly. Common street smarts would tell most people to keep walking with their head down, but she couldn't be troubled by shyness now.
After a hard second, her expression still and placid, she managed to raise her voice to the stranger, raising the brim of her hat to lift the shadows from her eyes. "Excuse me, are you a local?" Astrid assumed so by the fact that he hadn't brushed his hair. She spoke in sharply clipped syllables, each word correct and punctual and projecting clearly across the alley, but restrained by a certain hushed quality in her throat. "I could use directions, but I don't have an exact address..."
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Post by Jay on Nov 18, 2019 0:57:33 GMT
She was talking to him. He became awash with shame; how creepy he must look, staring at this girl that had now caught his gaze. "No," he said. He smiled the most innocent smile a grown man could make towards a teenage girl. "I'm actually looking for a way out of here. I'm a bit off the path, I guess. Are you looking for the train station too?" Something about the girl's innocent question made him think that she was in a position like this, far away from where she should be. He took it she was too young to get a drink first, but this didn't look like the kind of place where people checked IDs.
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Post by Sleepy on Nov 18, 2019 1:56:39 GMT
A curt sigh escaped her lips. Somewhere along the line, she had hoped to recapture some image from her youth, a familiar street corner or shopfront, but Marasay City had continued to sprawl and metastasize without her. "I suppose I am. All I know is that I'm not in the place I want to be." Astrid turned to face him. "My name's Astrid. Where are you headed, sir?"
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Post by Jay on Nov 18, 2019 2:03:31 GMT
He flinched. He thought the word too communicated his destination well. However, as she asked he felt himself hesitate, then his lips part to a smile, and he shook his head with uncertainty. "To get a drink, maybe. If you've seen such a place," he said. Man, what an alcoholic he must have looked like, asking this kind of thing of a teenager in a place like this. "Maybe see if there's anything worth while in these markets. The next train isn't for another few hours."
He looked up past rows of catwalks and blunt, thumb-like protrusions, shops and apartments that watched him through foggy windowglass. A laundromat sign flickered down, missing a few vowels; as far up as he could see, clothes flapped over the mile-deep ravine. The sky peeked through everything, but none of its light seemed to reach this place. Maybe it was a good idea to find his way up higher.
"I'm Ernest," the man said. "I have a daughter about your age. Maybe I can help you through here."
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Post by Sleepy on Nov 19, 2019 4:34:32 GMT
Ah. Just a man looking for a drink. It was a little embarrassing, but that was not so uncommon, so she held back from passing judgment.
"Ernest," Astrid acknowledged with a polite dip of her head. She studied him with a steady and unblinking gaze, dark eyes that more than one person said made her look like a dead Carvanha dragged up onto the dock. Here in the dull gloom of the inner city, they seemed to absorb the neon glow like black holes. Picturing him as a family man was some other small measure of reassurance she could be grateful for, if she was going to be escorted through the city. "I'm afraid I wouldn't know any place like that, but I'd be glad if you'd accompany me. It seems like I don't know my way around as well as I thought." She paused before crossing through the lamplight.
A natural part of her was reluctant to share more than necessary, but if she was going to trouble this stranger, she figured she ought to be open. Speaking wasn't her strong suit, but she didn't betray any hint of that immediately. "I'm looking for this... place. I guess it's like a social club that I visited a few times as a child. But, again, I don't know the name or the street, so that's a non-starter... By the next train, I'm off to anywhere anyhow." The entire odyssey was something of a whim, a promise to herself fulfilled, and if she didn't find it, maybe she could forget it and move onto something more productive. She had this entire region to travel up and down, and time to get acquaintanced with Amrys metro's smelly train-cars. "I guess I should have asked earlier, where are you ultimately headed? If you don't mind my asking."
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Post by Jay on Nov 19, 2019 5:56:46 GMT
Ultimately. He wasn't sure how existential she was getting, whether he should answer with Huanglu City or something deeper, something even he did not fully know. "That's a hard question to answer," he said. He scratched his chin, still unshaven since he left the Unova Region. He checked his phone for the time, his half-dead battery, five new text messages from his ex-wife, a picture of Ramona and her new Solosis as his background. "How about we worry about finding you this social club? I could use a good adventure."
He almost added the words "for old time's sake," but he knew it meant nothing to her. He took a step to the road, looking up into the weaving architecture above, arteries open and gushing with people. "Do you remember what this place looked like? What level it could be on?"
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Post by Sleepy on Nov 20, 2019 4:24:10 GMT
Her mild curiosity wasn't all that important, but she could catch a glimpse of the screen, a mousy-haired girl and her Pokémon. "Then it's an adventure." Despite the playfulness of her words, the smile surfaced for just a moment before sinking back down into that blank face. She fell silently in step beside the stranger as they rejoined the human current. You had to bob and weave and occasionally alter your course in a city this size. Together, they had to avoid pushers and hobblers, streetside hawkers and moving carts overflowing with fresh produce and still-living Basculin, mangy Pokémon dashing between people's legs or flying free through the air over their heads.
"There's not much I remember," she was forced to admit. "It seemed old to me back then. Ancient. There was this symbol on the door, some white interlocking rings around a gold eye... Star-shaped, I suppose? And it was green. I mean, like, overgrown." One look around at the lifeless gray asphalt and cold gray metal told them a place like that wasn't very common, but that was all they had. "It's been many years... It could be it's gone." But how could a place that seemed to have lasted over so many ages just disappear?
A hint of sheepishness broke into her voice. "Sorry. I'm probably wasting your time with all this."
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Post by Jay on Nov 20, 2019 4:33:51 GMT
Ernest absorbed the information she gave him, all the while nodding to the salespeople he felt too bad to entirely ignore, placing a coin in the hat of a busking guitarist. "Sounds distinct enough," he said softly. What she said sounded so far removed from a cityscape, more akin to that they'd find in some jungle ruins.
It would be hard to find, but this was the kind of thing he wanted. Some aim to his aimless walking.
He stared down a narrow street that spiraled in a circular cluster of stairs, pocked with metal grates above some shadowy, urine-scented abyss. "Is it on ground level?" he asked. "Or should we go up?" She would likely not remember any of this, but they needed some direction.
Maybe he could use his Rockruff, his little detective. But he had to have some kind of district scent to trace.
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Post by Sleepy on Nov 23, 2019 3:21:58 GMT
Up? Down? Straight ahead? Every layer of this mud-and-slime worm-eaten cake of a city was equally a mystery to her as it was when she was a small child, toddling after her father who knew every crack and corner. This was looking to turn out to be a wasted day and expended energy after all, but with hours more to kill, there was no point in giving up the search. Astrid surfed her memory for snapshots, landmarks, some map lying somehow buried in her memory, but one mysteriously stained concrete wall looked much the same as another. Astrid suppressed a sigh, unable to answer Ernest's question directly. Unable to rely on her head, she had to go with her gut, following her feet wherever they led, down the narrow street to the grate stairs uncoiling up, up to the upper levels of Marasay City.
"I just remember these remarkable flowers that were indoors and outdoors. My father would take me and I would sit and drink tea with—..." With who? There was a black cigarette burn in her memory of the figures and faces, just their laughter and jokes and nondescript conversation. She remembered candies and magic tricks and board games and white fluffy cushions, fearsome Pokémon, the overpowering aroma of incense. Astrid had to take a moment to catch her breath as the stairs leveled out before starting up the second flight. "Well, I suppose if we find it, you may also get your drink, Ernest sir."
Her choice of direction was a wild strike into the dark, but for someone with such a serious and sensible disposition, Astrid had an uncommon faith in her natural instincts. There had always been a streak of the irrational, perhaps the superstitious. She had always grown up secure, comfortable, protected, perhaps too protected, but trouble had a way of sniffing her out. This was something of an inherited trait in her pedigree, an unshakable belief embedded in her DNA, that some force she couldn't understand was guiding her every footstep. And it was malicious.
"Where are you from, if not from here?" she ventured to mask her heavier breathing, counting the steps. It was not a difficult climb, but she had never been inclined to athletic pursuits. Meaning, she got winded walking to the Poké Mart back in Ecruteak City. "Is your daughter a trainer?" They came up the third flight, to a quiet skyway between concrete bricks overwrought with pale ivy, which was digging and rooting into the chinks and cracks in the walls. There was no foot traffic here, a stark contrast to the density of the rest of the city, but Astrid could make out dark silhouettes in some of the grimy shop windows with a quick peer around.
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Post by Jay on Nov 23, 2019 3:56:57 GMT
Up the stairs they went, climbing deeper and deeper into the heart of the city. Its beauty came in its verticality, how each building felt more like rooms of a house than buildings in an open world. With each step they passed the windows of apartments crammed into minuscule spaces, in whatever areas they could steal the open air. At one point Ernest locked eyes with a woman in her apartment. She stared before closing her blinds.
"My daughter and I are from Unova," he said. He thought he had an accent, but maybe it was ambiguous enough. "We're both challenging the Pokemon League." At this point, he felt his limbs begin to anchor, his lungs heave. Man, he had never felt so far removed from his youth. He used to climb hills for leisure.
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Post by Sleepy on Nov 30, 2019 4:05:21 GMT
Astrid turned her head with a flit of a grin. "Both of you? I think that's delightful." A part of her wished she had the same privilege with her own mother or father, fearsome trainers in their own right. With old fuss-and-feathers tucked away in his Poké Ball most of the time, she barely felt adequate enough to call herself a trainer. "My mother is a talented trainer. Err, was. When she was younger." She adjusted the brim of her hat, drinking in the sights and smells of this forgotten corner of the city, following the creeping ivy. "Her whole side of the family actually, some were even almost champions, but that was a long, long time ago... She always wanted another champion in the family." It sent a spike of embarrassment through Astrid's gut to say it out loud, and she was kicking herself for moving her mouth ahead of her thoughts.
She had lived in several cities throughout her life, and none were exactly pleasant smelling, but Marasay City had to rank among the worst. But as they curved through old narrow alleys not wide enough for a cart, the squalor and grime and noise of the underlevels began to peel back. Astrid passed streetside garden boxes and little barrel ponds floating with white and pink flowers, spotted with brilliant golden eyes.
Was it random coincidence, latent memory, or fate, a natural instinct, that led her back to the exact facade she'd seen as a child? Astrid slowed to a stop ahead of a windowless concrete brick building overgrown with silver ivy, a strange and unidentifiable sigil marking the door.
"I don't believe it. I think this is what I'm looking for, Mr. Ernest."
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Post by Jay on Nov 30, 2019 5:38:18 GMT
Ernest listened to the girl's story, traced the ivy with his eyes. He wondered what kind of plant that was, how it survived in a murky recess like this, whose only water source was vomit and blood from bad drug deals. He tried to picture her parents, prim folks with equally debonair hats and outfits, Pokeballs crafted with a casing of polished ruby and quartz. From how he pictured them, from the details of her mom's expectations, they sounded like a couple of pricks. No wonder this girl was in a place like this on her own. "My mom shot up cocaine," he said absentmindedly, like he didn't really mean to say it at all. "She was pretty cool. Not a good mother, but she had connections."
Was that how he should talk to a lost child, so casually and so crass? He really was in a sorry state. That drink just sounded more and more fulfilling to him with each step he look into this sour-smelling abyss.
As the girl stopped, he kept going for a few more steps before coming to and halting. He eyed the place with a raised, befuddled brow. Perhaps he had set his expectations too high. Just because it meant so much to this girl didn't mean it would be gleaming in a rainbow of colors, flowing with fountains of ambrose colored waters and marble statues of Lopunny shooting arrows into the sky. It was a windowless brick building. It didn't stand out much at all.
"No wonder you had a hard time finding it," Ernest laughed. His eyes rested on the mysterious sigil on the door, and though he couldn't derive a form from it, he felt like it was staring back. "Should I wait outside? Or am I no longer of service?" Something about how she chose her words, the eloquent singsong of her voice, left Ernest mindlessly following along, and his words danced like that of a butler holding the limo door for his young maiden.
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Post by Sleepy on Nov 30, 2019 6:17:29 GMT
Astrid gave a hard blink. "Goodness," she managed to choke out, clearing her throat with her hand held up to her mouth. "My father told me never to associate with junkies." Or drunks, but she didn't care to insult for this strange, crass stray she'd picked up out of the gutters of Marasay City. "He was the one who used to take me to this place." When they walked in together, they were greeted like old friends, long lost family
Right now, she was entranced by the faded out memory come back to life, and set up with trepidation up the worn stone steps. Running her fingers over the door, it was solid wood reinforced with crisscrossed iron grates. Astrid turned back to the man who had followed her through this urban labyrinth. "Don't tease. Why don't you come with me? I'm not really sure what to expect..." Perhaps there was no one inside. Besides, she would hate if he would depart from her side now, out here in this far-flung sector of the city.
Almost unconsciously, she found herself mimicking her father's sharp, rhythmic knock. It was the characteristic rapid tap he made whenever he entered a room or punctuated a sentence; two knocks, one knock. Then the same thing again, knock-knock — knock. No answer, a wall of silence. Astrid stood patiently by the door, and after a tortured few minutes of suspense, she reached out to knock a final time.
As she did, the door pulled inward, opening into darkness, the thick and heady fog of peculiar incense flooding out from the building. A hand reached out from the darkness, seizing around Astrid's wrist, and yanked her wordlessly inside. The door slammed shut, silence returning to the street.
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