“Front desk? Uh…”

Fuck, June probably should have done that. Wait, no, it was too big to carry inside. Not, like, THAT crazy, but she would need some help to get it past the front doors, let alone five steps. To Yuina, it just looked like June flipped between surprise, shame, and then relief in the span of five seconds. “Oh, right, no, it’s a little bit too big for that. If you want to come outside, I can show you what I mean.”

June led the way out of the museum, their pace only slowed by her long stare at the closest exhibit. Like a child window shopping, except the stuff wasn’t for sale and she had about zero interest in the thing on display. But it looked pretty enough, and that was enough for the two neurons that still functioned.

“Cool stuff,” she said to the museum owner. “No wonder why you got so much of it.”

Once they got past that, they were well on their way to the boxes that sat outside in the cold and thin layer of snow on the ground. It crunched underneath their feet as they went out the doors and June pointed to the large ‘object’ beneath a green tarp. She ran ahead and started to work on the straps that held it all down.

“Not sure what you have going on here,” June called over her shoulder, “but we tried to make sure none of it got ruined. Hard with the long distance travel, and the straps, and the weird weather, and the stupid bird that didn’t set it down gently, but I think it should be fine.”

Emphasis on 'fine' as the last strap was undone, and the fabric blew off to the side. She caught it before it could get far. As for the packages… they mostly looked as described: fine. An abundance of tape, caution stickers, and a small label for each box. Besides evidence of where the strap had been, everything looked as it just been wrapped up.

Except for one of them, a corner box. It had a massive dent in it. June caught it just as Yuina did, a loud crinkling sound that followed her as she went to the box and felt its rough exterior. “What the fuck… when did… how… fuck. Uh, sorry about that. I sure hope nothing too important was in there.”

---

Yuina Higashi

Yuina didn’t explicitly say that it was a problem, so June took that as a good thing. A disaster narrowly avoided (for now), she pulled together all the tarps and straps and shoved them underneath the pallet. That’d hold until Knight got back. For now, she released one of her own Pokémon to help out.

A tall Cinderace, clearly ready for some action. She pointed to the boxes, and it got to work without even waiting for her explanation. All June could do was sigh and start to carry the boxes alongside the Pokémon.

Thankfully, they were able to get them all in with a singular trip. There were only a couple boxes that proved to be really heavy, but the help of several strong Fighting-Types made them look like they weighed nothing. Kicker had to be put back in his ball the second they got inside, though. He looked like he was ready to start doing some Soccer tricks with the fucked up box.

“Alright, that should be all of them,” she looked at the scattered packages with careful eyes. Not to count them, but to scan for more visible damage. If one fell off on the way here, it belonged to the wild Pokémon or a lucky hiker. Whichever found it first.

“And only one bad egg! Nice.” From her sling backpack came a clipboard, packed to the brim with information about the items delivered. Half the items were well beyond her comprehension or ability to pronounce, but as long as Yuina knew what it was then that was good enough for her. It came with a pen and found its way to the front desk countertop. “If you’re interested in the goods.”

Regardless of if Yuina investigated the contents of the delivery or not, she rubbed her arms vigorously. Fuck, it was cold out. It didn’t help that she pulled out a blue can of Sugar-Free Tauros-Energy, slick with frost. She cracked it open, a loud sound considering the relative quiet of the museum. “So, Howard really didn’t tell you what he was sending? I figured he would’ve sent you a text at least.”

---

Yuina Higashi

“Uh. Sure, I guess,” June quickly released the tall Cinderace back from its ball, and pointed back at the packages. He wasted no time and bore the load of the brown boxes yet again. Even with the additional load of June’s packages, it had relatively little trouble following along with the rest of the Pokémon.

Arceus, this was annoying. She delivered packages. The packages had been delivered. Open-close case, the money had been given to her, everything was just splendid. Howard was lucky he’d both knew this girl and that he had paid for it all. If this had been some random schmuck, she’d ditch her faster than a jet plane. Instead, she followed at the tail end of the makeshift conga line.

At least this place had plenty of eye candy for the few functioning neurons left. Placed within various wooden cases with a shine like no other were numerous artifacts of various kinds. A couple pretty jars, what looked like an old poem written on leather ready to fall apart, and everything in between.

June yawned wide and took a sip from her energy drink. Fuck, she needed to get back out in the blistering cold and into the open skies. Not stuck in a calm location in relative warmth. Bad for business.

“What even is all this stuff anyway?” She asked the historian, thumb jutted towards the Pokémon ahead of her. “And how the hell did you manage to convince that stingy bastard to give it away?”

That’s about the only thing she could think of to drown out the footsteps of the various Pokémon. And keep her awake. Otherwise, it was a perfectly valid question. Yuina knew Howard, and knew him in the artifact collection way. June sooner saw the man die than sell any of his shit. Let alone ship it across the region.

---

Yuina Higashi

“... Are we talking about the same guy, or?”

“Seriously, try having him as a customer,” June sighed as she motioned for the Cinderace to drop the packages he carried. “You’ll see what I mean.”

All she had to do was remember that stupid trip to the Sky Tower, and any doubts planted in her head by his coworker were uprooted. Or that very first delivery. Man did love his relics, for better or worse. He also loved talking about them.

“Maybe it’s because you didn’t ask for any funeral urns,” she muttered to herself as she recalled Kicker. Oh how she desperately wanted to tell Yuina about his unhealthy obsession with those damn things. However, the odds of them being illegally owned were not zero and thus off limits for discussion. Even as the urge clawed at her worn out brain, she kept it behind her lips.

Damn.

“But… wait. You’re a Hiswui–Hish–Hi– Ancient Sinnoh Historian. But we’re in Hoenn. A place that has the largest criminal organization of them all, barring the one literally ran by them.”

“So... why are you setting up shop here?”

Maybe Yuina was in on the black market trades too. Smuggling in priceless relics as a front for ‘historical preservation’ when it was little more than her collection. Would explain the part where Howard willingly (and with June’s help) donated this much shit. Didn’t explain the part where she put it up on display for the world to see, though.

June poked around at the boxes, now slightly invested in the scheme being run here. “Wouldn’t it be much easier to preserve your… what the fuck-- whatever it is, back in Sinnoh?”

---

Yuina Higashi

“Fair enough then, I guess,” June shrugged casually. Arguments about history and all that shit were well outside of her jurisdiction. Even worse, she had heard about the weird time paradox shit that had occurred throughout Hoenn for the last while. Sometimes, it felt like all she heard about.

If everyone else wanted to try to connect the dots, who was she to stop them? Not her place. They could do it without her. Too hard to remember all the places and events and what order they happened in and their significance. Especially once they started to talk about the rest of the regions.

June sniffed and looked around the wing of the museum. “I’m just not a history person is all. Always took a nap in that class.”

“I will say though,” she gently tapped a box with her foot, “there’s some pretty stuff in here. Real eye candy, with all the faded colors and shit. I can see why people come out and look at it from time to time.”

Yuina talked just like Howard, in a way. Passionate about the things they liked, but in a way that inspired something deep within her. An infectious… hope? Perseverance? View on their futures? As if they looked towards the sky with an outstretched hand, ready to grab hold of the dawn.

Or they couldn’t look, because their heads were too far stuck into the sands they pluck their relics from. Hard to say, really. Only time would tell, and it’d be by some other historian digging up the remnants of their society. Or something. That’s probably how it worked.

“Hey, you think Ancient Sinnoh had a couple engines, or anything mechanical?” For the first time, her eyes showed a spark of life. “That’d be cool to learn about. See what those old bastards did for power and mobility."

---

Yuina Higashi

June’s inkling of excitement shortly died as Yuina explained the situation in ancient Sinnoh. Even more when the display they approached and stood in front of was little more than a diagram of a primitive Poke Ball. “Oh…”

This… was… not what she meant by ‘engine’ or ‘mechanical’. This wasn’t an ancient attempt at a vehicle, nor any attempts at factory machines that dominated the landscape as soon as they took off. Instead, this was just… a Poke Ball. Boring. Honk-shew. Snork-mimimimimimi. Her eyelids drooped a little further. She took an obnoxiously loud sip from her light blue can.

“It looks… alright. I guess. Steam is something they used back in the day. It checks out,” she said dryly. Man, it looked like her initial assumption had been correct all along: ancient history sucked. At least the paper looked to make sense. Knowledge between systems didn’t transfer one to one (hello electricity), but it sure did help.

“Well… uh. I guess…” June bent closer to the glass and squinted her eyes, “...’Howard Slatye’ did an alright job. He knows how to draw stuff.”

Neat enough handiwork. Made her drawings look like she had a mild case of Parkinson’s, but that wasn’t here nor there.

“But… is this it in the entire building? Just this one piece? No, like, cars? Or motors? Not even a single factory fabric machine?”

---

Yuina Higashi