Chapter Twenty-Nine: Straight Through

Boots clattered against the compact earth of the ground, and the boy pulled his cloak around his shoulders as he made his way to a building just a few houses away from his.

One part of his new job as Aiden—he found that he always had to remind himself of that name, and it had soon burnt its mark into his mind—was to deceive that girlfriend of his. Lillian didn't look like someone who could be fooled easily, but it wasn't his position to argue with whom he had to keep up his act around.

I've never talked to her much. That thought alone made him nervous; how was he supposed to know how his brother would act around her? For all he knew, Aiden could have been a different person around his partner—and if that was so, his act would be shattered there and then.

He drew a deep breath to calm himself. He would just act the way Aiden did; the boy never changed his behaviour around many people and he would just assume that he acted the same way towards Lillian.

If she found out—he would deal with that later. He couldn't bring himself to accept that reality just yet.

With that thought in mind, he approached the house just a few feet away from him and ignored the rising tremble in his boots.

Lillian's house was larger and different than most others; it had more of a Hoenn flair to it, and he had heard his brother mention his girlfriend's wealth before. Her family seemed far too willing to flaunt their expenses, and that fact alone made his lips form a thin, disapproving line. People, regardless of status, angered him when they reordered their priorities like that.

He couldn't afford to have that expression on his face, however, and he forced himself to smile; to make that same gentle expression that had always irritated him—and he raised his hand to knock, startling just the tiniest bit when hollow noises sounded from behind.

It must be the lack of sleep, he tried to assure himself. That has to be why I'm so jumpy. Nothing else.

His panicked ramble to himself was cut short as the wooden frame swung open, revealing a black-haired man standing behind to greet him. He had the appearance of a butler; at least, he behaved like one too, and he made haste to nod back before being led in.

"The young mistress of the house has been waiting for you." The worker spoke in a tone similar to that of Yveltal's; it had a certain level of apathy and had just the amount of politeness that Avis found himself comfortable with. "Right this way, Sir Aiden."

The teenager was escorted to a room in a matter of seconds, and he took his time to wave the man off with a small smile and a word of thanks before facing the door once again.

It was certainly foreboding, with a layer of glossy obsidian covering up the wood's flaws and a doorknob that chilled his fingers when they brushed against it's surface—still, he had no time to mull over that, and when he heard a muffled sound come from within telling him to enter, he knew that he had no choice but to plunge right into the situation.

He had to snap at himself not to jump, that he wasn't a wimp, and watched the entrance creak open with a smile that he wanted nothing more than to stab.

"Oh. You're here." Lillian approached him with no words of greeting, and he felt those large eyes of hers pierce into his soul and try to dissect every inch of him as if they were strangers. It made him uncomfortable, to say the least, but he had to try and pretend that it was a normal occurrence.

He bit his lip, trying to decide what to say, but the younger girl interrupted him before he could even open his mouth. "I got the information we were looking for last week," she muttered. "The nature of these attacks are varied. Sometimes, they seem to have come from an army of Pokemon, but sometimes it's something else entirely."

Avis' head spun at her words—just what was the girl talking about? He hadn't been told anything about this—why was she talking as if they belonged to some kind of secret organisation?

It was as if the world was running at a pace much too fast for his brain to even keep up with, and he rushed out words in response to the statement without taking two seconds to even try and understand what he was saying. "I see," he replied. "That's confusing, to say the least."

"It is." If he had given an answer that Aiden wouldn't have said, the black-haired girl didn't let him know it. Her golden gaze remained steady, as if the tone of their conversation had never changed, and she spoke once again.

"I have to investigate something else, but we have a client to meet," she continued. "Could you collect the information from the vendor three blocks away from Kalos' military headquarters today?"

He gulped, remembering all the times he had purchased food from the man she'd mentioned. He was just a friendly man that seeked a normal career in such a chaotic time—what did he have to do with the things she was talking about?

Still, he nodded, refusing to break the facade he was keeping up—and Lillian gave him a smile, satisfied with the answer she had received.

He left right after that, with the teenager before him claiming to work better when she was alone, and that was the end of their discussion.

§

The boy found himself nearing the stall with an air of apprehension around him.

He had decided not to wear the uniform that his brother had perpetually seemed to don, realising that he was more than foreign to the mission assigned to him and that he could tarnish Aiden's reputation if he was to be caught.

It was still stupid; he hated every bit of this disgusting act and and he let that thought gloss over his mind before locking it away in a corner. How many times had he said that he wanted to be like the knight? How many times had he tried to do just that?

So, when he was given this chance, why was he having these thoughts when he should have grabbed the chance there and then?

Snap out of it. You have an errand to run. Suppressing a glare, he glanced at the wooden booth that was now metres away from his position, and he found his steps slowing to an uncertain amble. Just talk to that man and get whatever information Lillian ask for. You can figure out the rest later.

The man served packed lunches with the same smile plastered on his face, and he greeted customers as they came and went—the vendor seemed like an average person with no ulterior motives, so how was the girl so sure about this?

With a small, choked noise at the back of his throat, he found himself at the front of the kiosk. He'd been there for more than a few seconds—a queue had formed behind him and he flashed an apologetic glance at the impatient glares thrown his way.

"I'm—" he lowered his voice to the smallest whisper he could achieve, trying to keep the conversation between them unknown, but the vendor seemed to know just who he was and pressed a hefty bundle into his hands before grinning at him.

"Thank you for the purchase!" he replied with a broad smile, and Avis noticed a sliver of white peeking out from the layers of leaves the false lunch was wrapped in.

It was all he could do to shoot a tight smile back and press a few silver coins into his hands, and he made haste to leave the area as fast as he could. The manufactured smile on the man's face was starting to bother him, and he would rather escape to somewhere more comfortable.

He was about to head back to Lillian's house and drop off the information she'd asked for, but a hand on his shoulder caused him to startle, causing the boy to loosen his grip on the leafy parcel in his hands and almost drop it to the ground.

"I've been looking for you." His leader—not his, but Aiden's—stared at him with a tired gaze; one that turned out to be a pathetic attempt at looking cross but not being able to because he knew that the boy before him wouldn't ever be his subordinate.

"There's been a sudden request for a meeting with one of Hoenn's military generals," the taller man explained. "I know that it's an off day for you, but he insisted on meeting you and no one else."

Avis had no choice but to respond with an unsure nod, and he glanced at the ground as he spat out a whispered reply. "Just let me get changed at home," he murmured. "Tell him that I can meet him in twenty minutes."

"Right." The soldier gave him a strange look, one that he couldn't quite discern, but one clear emotion that he could see in that tangle of feelings was a knowing kind of disappointment.

§

"I'd like to make this meeting short—I am sure that the both of us are rather busy and have other matters to attend to."

He disliked the man when he first saw him. The general's eyes were a pale shade of ice-blue, the colour emphasising the cold seeping from them and freezing him in his place, and his posture was made up of a mixture of stiff politeness and a shrewd ruthlessness.

Avis saw him as more of a dictator than anything, but he wasn't about to let the man know that.

"I appreciate the thought." The teenager hoped that his words sounded calm enough. He was trembling inside, he really was—this was, after all, his first time in this sort of meeting and he prayed that the wild palpitations of his heart wouldn't impair his speech. "But I would also like to query just what sort of request you would have."

A strained string of chuckles sounded from the older man's throat. "I do like your straightforwardness. It's not typical of Kalos, with their sneaky tactics and all..." He shook his head, cutting his own sentence off before continuing. "I will get straight to the point as well. Stop your so-called mystery attacks on Hoenn and we'll stop the war. I believe that it's the best way to solve all these problems."

Of course he would bring this up. He didn't know as much about that issue as Aiden would have, but he leaned further back in his chair as he tried to form a coherent answer.

"I'm swearing to Arceus that Kalos isn't behind any of this," he rushed out, aware that his voice had crept up in pitch, and he took a deep breath to calm himself again. "I'm sure there's another way! What if we work together to—"

He felt sick just uttering those words that his brother would have said. They were wrong, at least to him; he didn't believe in the humanity that his brother had hope for, but there was nothing he could do about it.

The black-haired man across him shook his head, his eyes slipping close in a disappointed facade. "That's a brave declaration you make, but it's useless."

Before Avis could even speak again, the general—he remembered that his name was Damien Albus, a merciless man who didn't think twice about slaughtering any he thought responsible for damaging his country—was already continuing with his spiel.

"Then we will not show you any mercy." His voice was absolute, and the man rose from the table to leave. "Your method is too naive. No sane Hoenn would work with a country that's slaughtering their own. Our conversation is over."

§

He would never think that he would find the girl's place reassuring in any way, but the stifling atmosphere of the cramped room he'd been in made him want to vomit.

If anything, his day prevented him from thinking too much about the sleepless night before; the heavy words the Legendary had said to him and the way Yan had reacted to his death. 

The butler didn't greet him this time, but the teenager made his way into the building with little difficulty. Despite the darkening sky outside, he found the room still bathed in varying hues of golden light—he supposed that Lillian's family was one of the few who bothered with oil lamps and he decided not to question her wealth any further.

A creak stopped him in his steps, and he looked up to see the door swinging open even before he reached it. The black-haired girl glanced at him with those golden eyes of hers, gaze then disinterested and wandering down to the package in his hands. "So you're done," she noted. "Could I have it...?"

She didn't leave much space for him to disagree. The bundle was snatched out of his arms, and she invited him into her room before starting to unravel the layers of leaves their information was wrapped in.

"A lot of Grass or Ground-type attacks were witnessed." A frown slid across her face, and she folded the slip of paper back to its original size, fitting it back into the sheaf and looking back at him. "I'll have to burn the evidence later, but for now, I have something I need to discuss with you."

He hummed his assent, tilting his head, and the perplexed expression on his face was the only thing that he didn't have to fake. "What is it?"

Lillian answered him with a dry laugh and a hollow smile. "You're not Aiden, are you?"

§

argh. i'm so sorry for the shit writing at the start (maybe throughout this chapter/book?? i choose to stay positive) but i had really severe writer's block and needed to get rid of it

Thank you guys so much for 571 reads and 81 votes!! :0 You have no idea how much this means to me <3

As always, votes, comments and critiques are very appreciated °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

~ nyxia ☆