KoN (2/8)

[aetherling]

Formatting fixed! 

II. a dream job

 

It is a given fact that there are several questions and puzzles in life that will never be answered during the short lifespan of a human, or for the entire duration of the universe’s existence. Alder’s hair, Black decides, is one of them. Black is staring intensely at Alder as if his gaze alone will deconstruct the components of Alder’s flaming, gravity-defying hair, while Alder kicks back and relaxes on a somber-looking sofa. It’s such a stark contrast—the gray of the sofa just does not blend with the flam—colorful man occupying its cushions. Black is not entirely sure if it’s his sofa anyways. Or if they're really in Alder's apartment, what with the way he just snapped off the doorknob earlier when he “couldn’t find his keys”.

“Refreshments?”

“I don’t think it’s very nice to steal food from people whose apartments you’ve broken into.”

“Nonsense, this is my apartment, can’t you tell? I even have it decorated with uh...well, could you help me identify what these hanging thingies are?” Alder is looking at what could best be described as “hanging thingies” hanging on the far wall behind Black. To him, they looked like fake brightly colored vines choking each other in a giant tangle, and the owner meticulously hung them so the loose ends don’t look like they’re just hanging. Black will never understand interior design.

“Contemporary art,” is all he can suggest.

“Oh really?” Alder raises an eyebrow. “Then we must appreciate it more! Black, you’re not showing your proper respects to contemporary art with that expression – hurry to the kitchen and fetch the imported wine along with two wine glasses. In the presence of contemporary art, we must be classy.”

“But you’re the host—”

“Ah schematics,” Alder waves it away. “Perhaps I will resume proper host duties when my lips are sweetened with some alcoholic grape juice. So, chop-chop!”

Black reluctantly goes into the kitchen and finds exactly one bottle of wine in a glass cabinet along with several shot glasses. He shrugs to himself and grabs the bottle and two shot glasses.

Alder is absentmindedly drumming his fingers on the left armrest of the miserable couch and holding a corkscrew in his other hand when Black returns to the living room. As Black hands over the wine bottle for him to open, he is tempted to ask the Champion if he normally carries a corkscrew with him just in case he ever gets the urge to break into a stranger’s apartment and steal their wine like right now, but then Alder asks, “Weren’t there any wine glasses?”

“I checked. Didn’t find any,” Black says, not completely truthful.

“Oh.” Alder shrugs nonchalantly. “Ok.” The cork is removed with a small pop and he begins pouring for both. “Sit down; why are you standing? We can’t enjoy our drinks if one of us is standing. It’s a nice couch and the right armrest is so lonely. Please.”

“You’re not concerned about illegally providing a minor with alcohol?” Black asks with a wry smile as he settles by Alder’s side and takes the extended drink.

“Well, since you are already accusing me of breaking into a stranger’s home—which let me remind you, is honestly and sincerely mine—what’s one more law broken? Besides, you’re the one who brought two shot glasses. So, cheers.” They clink and drain their glasses.

“You are such a stellar role model for a Champion,” Black remarks.

“Ohh, you sound like Cheren right now. Don’t tell me his serious attitude is actually rubbing off on you, it’s supposed to be the least infectious.” Alder pours another round and Black wishes he has some sort of food to scrub the bitter taste out.

“If I were Cheren, I wouldn’t have even set foot in this place and be your accomplice in crime.”

“Haha! Oh, he is such a fuddy-duddy.” Alder goes ahead and downs his shot while Black is sitting there thinking “fuddy-duddy?” to himself. “Ahem. Mm. Now, does the hanging thingy look different after two shots?”

Black quickly drains his glass before replying, “Absolutely not.”

Alder shrugs again. “More?”

“I’d rather not—” Black starts but Alder cuts him off.

“Cookies! I nearly forgot I had these.” Alder pulls out a wrinkled silver bag from one of his many hidden pockets and dumps the contents directly onto the pristine surface of the coffee table. None of the cookies that emerge are entirely intact. “Oh, they crumbled,” says Alder sadly. “Brycen made these.”

“Wait, Bry—”

“He wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t finish them. Anyways, sorry I forgot about pairing food with this fine wine. The cookies should help, I think. Sweet with...sweet, right?” And Alder starts pouring the 3rd round of shots.

Black does not want to tell Alder that he’s completely wrong about his particular selection of food, lest he give something away about his life choices, but figures the cookies will at least help wash the alcohol down. And he is somewhat right—right when both of them bite into relatively intact pieces of cookie, they simultaneously gag and reach for their glasses.

“Oh Arceus, what is wrong with these cookies?” Alder cries after he has emptied his glass at record speed, and frantically pours himself and Black another round.

“I am”--Black starts before draining his 4th shot--“never accepting any food from you ever again.”

“It’s not my fault! I didn’t make these. Okay, maybe they...got stale or something after a few months—” Black groans and cradles his head queasily in between his hands at this “—but that’s probably because Brycen didn’t put enough preservatives or something.”

“You don’t need preservatives in homemade cookies, you just need common sense and not shove them in some obscure pocket and forget them for Arceus knows how long!” Good grief, Black realizes, I sound like a fussy old housewife. Or Cheren. He can’t help it though, not when there’s still the taste of...otherworldliness in his mouth, if otherworldliness means Distortion Worldliness and toxic waste was its main export. Black is about to tell Alder this pretty sweet metaphor but when he sees Alder sitting still without meeting Black’s eyes, he wonders for a brief moment if the cookies are actually poisoned.

“Hey...Cha--Alder, you alright?”

“Hm, yes. Actually, I just remembered.” Alder faces Black with a glint in his eye. “I have a job offer for you.”

Black is taken aback by the sudden change in Alder. “Uh, what?” he asks lamely.

“I’m offering you a job,” Alder replies, looking almost hurt at Black’s lack of enthusiasm.

“I’m not drunk and hearing things, am I?”

“Not sure about the first one, but no, you’re not hearing things.”

“...And you’re not drunk are you?”

“I have more tolerance than you, youngster! This was only a refresher.” He holds up the bottle for Black to see.

Black runs a hand down his face in a physical attempt to make sense of everything. “Okay, I’ll ask. What. And why.”

“Well, nothing too complicated. As you know, being Champion carries...a lot of duties and responsibilities.”

“Uh-huh,” says Black, not entirely convinced this laid-back man ever took said duties and responsibilities seriously.

“And with so many responsibilities to fulfill, sometimes one Champion isn’t enough.”

“Ok.” Black is feeling nice and warm from the wine.

“So I’m asking you if you can help this old man with some of his duties.”

“Mm-hm.” It’s so easy with his mind on autopilot.

“And I think you are exceptionally well-qualified to help me with this matter--”

“You still haven’t told me what it is.”

“I want you to help me stop N and Team Plasma’s crazy quest.”

“Yeah sure--” Black says without thinking.

“Through inception.”

Black’s heart nearly skips a beat. His mind abruptly turns off autopilot mode and the warm feelings evaporate too quickly from his body. He sits there dumbly, and his only solace is that he’s not gaping at Alder and looking dumber.

“Are you sure you’re not drunk?” he manages to croak, and oh Arceus, why did his voice crack just now, in front of the Champion. A Champion who’s getting him tipsy and asking him to perform inception. The circumstances are too strange to make any sense even without alcohol, and next to him, Alder’s smile is promising Black he will have to beg for at least half of the answers. Might as well start now, if he wants to get anywhere. Black rubs his face one more time and asks, “How did you know about inception?”

“Your father.” Alder is facing straight ahead, looking at the hanging things, but his eyes are distant. “Many years ago. He told me about a special kind of dreaming. Dreams that are shared. Dreams where secrets are stolen. Great, beautiful, terrible dreams.”

Black hears a hint of his father’s voice from Alder’s explanation, and smiles fondly at the recollection. “That’s exactly how he told us about his ‘side job’.”

Alder smiles at him. “Yes, I knew he would tell his children too.”

“Why would he tell you? He promised us certain doom if we even breathed a word about dream exploration to anyone else.”

“Because it was his ‘side job’ that led him to seek refuge in Unova.”

One of Black’s earliest memories is of a large ship. Sometimes he can almost taste the ocean air on his tongue and hear a girl laughing behind his ear as he stared into the infinite horizon and puked.

“I was barely one week into my title when he requested I pull a few strings and grant him sanctuary for him and his family. In exchange, he said he was going to help me defend my mind from the most skilled of extractors. Which was him, of course,” Alder chuckles, “because apparently when you’re Champion, you invite a lot of dangers both outside and inside your mind. You tend to pick up a few secrets here and there as Champion. Especially when you agree to sneak a criminal into the region.”

“So my father militarized your mind?”

“That’s what he was supposed to do. He took me into the world of dream-share and showed me the basics. Building a defense around the secret you want hidden. Breaking the laws of physics. Bending reality. And on the last day I saw him, he asked me if his side job--extraction--is possible, shouldn’t the other way round work as well? Inception. It never left my mind, even after the dreaming took him away.”

“That’s a nice way to put it.”

“Ah, but he was a good man. With an affinity for pushing the limits of the dreaming.”

“So you think because my father’s extraction skills got him to abandon his home, his son would inherit his mastery of dream exploitation?”

“That is a chance I am willing to invest in. If you’re willing to take it.”

Madness, Black thinks. Complete madness--Alder does not know the depth of Black’s skills with dreams--or at least, he should not know. Logically, after his father’s departure, Black would swear to never play with the fire he lost his father to, and figuratively bury dream-share deep into the ground. But he was still a child--a child with imagination--and he had no need for books or friends when he could create better worlds in his dreams.

And he wasn’t always alone.

“So, why inception, particularly? Why not uh, extract N’s most embarrassing memory and blackmail him into submission?”

“Well,” and Alder gives him one of those mischievous smiles. “I have been tracking Team Plasma’s activities for quite some time, and I too have been observing their little speeches around the region, and now I think it’s quite safe to come to the conclusion that they’re planning mass inception.”

“What? Cheren, Bianca and I couldn’t figure out their plan, how did you--”

“Oh,” Alder laughs. “Right. I had Looker go undercover in Team Plasma to provide me some intel on their activities. I didn’t know he would be so good at his job--in less than a year he’s given me information from top Plasma members, and maybe from N himself. So, I am certain they will attempt mass inception--most likely from the Entralink, as it is located in the heart of Unova. Therefore, we shall counter-incept N, and in turn, N will command Team Plasma to stop the mass inception and their overall goal of Pokemon liberation.”

Black is shaking his head. “You still haven’t answered...why inception, of all things, why choose the one thing that’s nearly impossible?”

“Isn’t it poetic? We give him a taste of his own medicine. We fight back against Team Plasma with the same weapons they wield. One inception to end them all! No one is harmed, Team Plasma’s king is finally convinced separating people and Pokemon is terrible, everyone lives happily ever after. Black, son of the greatest extractor in Unova at least, will you help me save Unova, and quite possibly, N, from his crazy idea?”

“I need to save you from your crazy idea first.”

“Look. What if I told you that inception...it is possible?”

“Really?” Black has to look into Alder’s eyes now to make sure he wasn’t lying. “You’ve done it before? What was the idea?”

“We didn’t quite succeed--the idea didn’t stick for long. It was too complex. But we were close. Very close. I think we can do it this time, if we keep the idea simple enough.”

“So in other words, you failed.”

“No, we mustn’t view our failures as dead ends. We learn from them. And we try again.”

Black gives an exasperated sigh.

“So will you help me?”

Black shakes his head. “Sorry Alder.”

“You haven’t even heard about the rewards.”

“I don’t want money.”

“I’m not offering you money. Black, I’m offering you an opportunity.” Alder pours another round of shots, and hands Black a glass. “Drink?”

Black hesitates before finally accepting.


to part iii