The beach was beautiful at night, John had always thought that, but it was especially so tonight. The weather was perfect -- just cool enough to warrant the heavier traditional clothing some had brought out -- and the moon shown full and heavy in the sky. Stars, rare in Slateport, twinkled above as the clean air of the oceanside freed it of some of the smog suffocating the sky elsewhere in the city.

On the ground, countless stalls. Concessions, attractions, games -- but not packed so tightly one didn't know where to go. Not gaudy either. In the spirit of the festival being celebrated tonight they were simple stalls of wood and tarp; between them were strung up wires and from them hung paper laterns that painted the sand and sea and sky in lovely oranges and yellows. It was a night out of a dream. For John it was like a nightmare.

Martín del Mar had talked about wanting to put up a stall for the festival but wanted something special. John (idiot that he was) recommended music and then (twice the idiot) said he had some background in music that might help them get talent. Too bad all his connections were, oh, twenty years out of his date and held together with dental floss. And -- having admitted to some skill and also having recently cut his own hours in half to chase an old dream -- he found himself needing to fill that hole in talent.

So here he sat on a little stage in a little booth, flanked on either side by sleeping Meowth and more plushies of the same than he could count, trying to remember his way through some old song and maybe turn some heads for good ol P.O.G. Bank. It wasn't as easy as it sounded. It was just him, no band, with an acoustic -- and god it's not like the material he used to play had a damn thing to do with banking. Hell, he was pretty sure if his sixteen year old self knew he was working at a bank at thirty-five he'd end it right then and there.

No, too morbid, just gotta sing something.

Sure, why the hell not.

"I was a teenage anarchist, looking for a revolution," he started, voice settling into the place it always did -- breathy, raspy, half-spoken and half-sung, "I had the style, I had the ambition -- read the right authors, I knew the right slogans."

And as he sang his fingers worked. The song would never sound complete with just him and one guitar -- not to his ears -- but what could he do but try.