Gods, lights. John wasn't not so snobby as to turn down a cigarette because it was off his usual brand, but for a second he considered it before accepting. He unconsciously rolled it between his fingers while waiting for the lighter. A cute little thing. For a second he remembered when he had his own custom lighter -- used between ones nicked from house parties or bought cheap from gas stations.

Thing gave out years ago.

"Thanks," he said before lighting up and taking a long drag. Fuck, that felt good.

The call to head to the pier admittedly caught him off guard. His kneejerk response was to tell the stranger no. He was kind of working, and it wasn't like bumming a cig gave this dude the right to order him around; yet, the pier did sound nice. Fresh air. Cool by the water. So despite his better instincts he nodded and followed after the other man.

And man was he ever happy he did. How the fuck did he manage to bump into CIAN MAHER and Callan Young in the same thirty day span? What kind of messed up backwards universe did he get spat into? Not just that, but Callan Young bearing compliments?

"I appreciate it," he replied, managed somehow not to lose his cool, "and yeah, it's been a while. Turns out chops don't carry a kid far when everyone's got 'em and then some. Band never got picked up by anyone and then we split."

He took another drag from his cigarette, puffed a few clouds.

"Never found another group and decided I was better off focusing on other things."

Momentary emotions are forgotten in the wake of Cian's reply. The confused expression of repressed tears is replaced by a knowing smile. Kecleon.

"I used to have one, uh . . ." oh gosh what was her name, John finds himself hit with sudden guilt at the thought that he may have forgotten before, with a snap of his fingers, "Grace! She was a little sneak."

He hopes she's happy with that kid he passed her off to.

"A battle?" John replies, eyes fixed on the Castform instead of Cian's face. His heart flutters -- anxiety, anticipation -- but he swallows it down. Remembers the training he's put on even in the small time since the two of them agreed to this. He won't embarrass himself.

"Sounds fun!" he continues, the cheer in his voice only a little forced as he locks eyes with Cian.

The response from the young man in front of him makes John want to roll his eyes. Like the feeling almost makes it through his brain and to his face before he can catch it. But he does, just barely.

'Working adult ' the kid says. At what? The local Burger Kingler?

"Mhmm, sure, 'halfsies '" he agrees despite the impulse to double down. At the end of the day this kid saved his life, it wouldn't be fair to heckle him. Arguing also isn't anywhere close to the top of his priorities right now. Not with his back aching and his mind reeling and the knowledge that 'holy shit he almost died out there '.

The kid's question that follows cements this position for him. It's flattering, the question, and it perks him up a little despite the pains and the existential dread.

"Nope," he replies with a smile, popping the 'p' as he plants hands on his lower back and stretches backwards. Something else pops.

"Just a working adult," he continues, voice strained by the motion but a clear playfulness still managing to color it.

There's an old adage just about everyone knows. Careful what you ask for, just might get it, all that jazz. It's something John was usually very careful to observe in his day to day life. It was something that escaped him after a few drinks.

Gideon reminded him with all the subtlety of a bat to the head exactly why that adage was so popular. From the moment Gideon began to lean in John knew somewhere in his stomach he'd made a mistake -- or at least waded into deeper waters than he intended. He wasn't expecting the other man to play along so well. Then he felt the warmth of skin on skin, and there were butterflies, and then a voice too close.

Warm. Textured. Directly in his ear. It was almost sobering. His stomach flipped and a blush that was more than just liquor heat raced down across his shoulders and up over his face.

"Wow," he said, feeling more than a little unsteady but grasping desperately for all the comfortable bravado he'd had a moment ago, "That'll uh, I think that'll do it."

Then he turned away to cough nervously into the night air.

"Gonna have to, have to get me home first though, champ."

"Aw, I try," John replies pleasantly, the words thrown over his shoulder as he waits for the drink to come sliding along the bar top. It's a cliche, but dammit it if it's not a cliche he likes.

It's only once he's got the drink in hand and turns around that he finds himself facing a familiar kind of embarrassment. An echo of another night at another bar, although muted with the knowledge that his boss isn't the kind of uptight stickler to potentially fire him over a bit of misplaced casualness.

He tries not to look too awkward as he shifts his drink from one hand to another. It's a thinking motion. Thinking. Hard to do when you're drunk, but vital when you're drunk with your boss. On accident. Whoops.

"Oh, you know, it's treating me," he replies with a tone that falls ungainly between that he used with GIDEON GRAVES and the kind adopted around a water cooler, "don't follow me around too long -- I'll stop looking good in an hour or so."

Okay, leaning towards Gideon. The words fall out unbidden and John finds himself slapping a hand over his mouth hard enough to sting.

"Pretend I didn't say that," he murmurs between his fingers.

Things spiral out of control faster than John can properly keep up with. Hoenn trains a person to naturally follow a certain amount of chaos, but apparently the only place crazier than Hoenn is this world branching off of it. Everything registers on a sensory level, but no further.

Crying, shouting, a flash of light, and suddenly John is in the air being hoisted by a Drifblim. The clarification from Orion is lost completely at the sight of MC growing further and further away.

"New plan, girl, back to me!" he shouts, rifling through his pockets while things go to shit around him. MC huffs as if this command is somehow not the best course of action -- as if she can keep up with a 'Beast Killer ' against Kartana or go up against that giant Ariados with more finesse than the Lycanroc already assailing it. They're trying to get better at battling -- but John knows they're nowhere near either of those levels yet.

"Just listen!" he shouts again and MC relents, though not before kicking out and scraping the giant Ariados with a CRUSH CLAW. She runs into range of her pokeball just in time for John to click the button and suck her up in a red capture light, "stupid brat . . ."

After another couple of seconds (spent staring with a mix of worry and wistfulness at the beaten up pokeball in his hand) he perks up and looks to Orion who is similarly lifted by the Drifblim.

"Oh, I know that -- your name. I know it's Orion," he belatedly replies, "MC isn't so good with names, though. She doesn't care about senators and stuff, ya know?"

The faux pas of referring to a man by his disability is lost to John. In his mind a robot arm is a pretty cool addition to any person. Later he will spend a lot of time screaming into a pillow in mortification at this childish perspective and the lack of immediate apology he has to offer.

How much money has he spent? John doesn't know. How many bars, in how many cities? John can't remember! What he does know is he's having a good time. Has had good talks. Is running out of time to have more when he stumbles into Ritual -- fresh off the back of conversations with that sweet kid Locke.

"How's, how's New Years Eve!?" He shouts into the bar when he walks in and the bar roars in reply. Yeah. That's the shit.

"Old Fashioned," John says, smiling over the bar top and the tender. The tender smiles back with a knowing, tired expression, and gets him his drink.

'Careful buddy, no one wants to be the one cutting a guy off on New Years,' he warns as he slides the tumbler to John.

"I'll be good as an angel, won't hardly know I'm here," John replies with a wide smile, taking the drink and sauntering his way over to one of the few unoccupied (at least he thinks it is) booths. He more drops himself into the seat than slides in -- it's a miracle he doesn't spill the alcohol in his hand all over himself.

Every few seconds, John has to remind himself that this is real life. Not just that but that it's the wildest kind of real life it can be. As he walks after Cian he has to actively tell himself he's not on some guided tour, he's not some voyeur sticking his head in after hours, he's here for training. He's here on official business to train with Cian Maher .

Nowhere is that feeling harder to process than once he's in the arena. Even in its dormant state -- no crowd, no crew, no challenger, the lights dimmed to just functional and the terrains more or less inactive -- it feels surreal. It takes him back to other stages. It takes him back to places he never thought he'd stand in again.

It's only through great effort and a healthy dose of internal shaming that he keeps from crying again on the spot.

"Normal types," John answers, blinking rapidly and staring up at the barely shining lights. After a second he looks Cian in the face, eyes only a little watery.

"I specialize broadly in Normal Types."

The rest of the song was a blur. John had hit his groove. Muscle memory took over on the guitar, the lyrics found him without reaching, it all came so easy like something in him had been just waiting for the opportunity to do this again.

But he still felt all of it.

It was emotional, and exhausting, and sweaty, and when the song ended he was shaking. The muscles in his arms were taught as the sound of the speakers -- a chord and the last of his shouts into the mic -- echoed through the air. His shoulders and back trembled. His eyes stung. Sweat in his eyes, it had to be, and he wiped a sleeve across his face to catch it. Turned away from the crowd. He barely registered how many people were there he just suddenly needed some distance.

"Hey guys, get to work," he mumbled, friendly but firm, to the Meowth near his feet. They got up slowly (taking time to stretch just about every part of themselves one could imagine) but did as ordered. They were pampered little things but they knew the pampering was one end of the deal and that they needed to uphold their own. As John walked backstage the Meowth sauntered into the crowd with plushies to hand out and brochures stored in baggies around their necks.

John walked into the shaded back of the P.O.G. bank tent without delay. He ran hands over his face and felt all the places his dress shirt had soaked through and was now clinging to him and just how slick his face itself was. How it ran up into his hair as he fisted handfuls of it.

"Fuck," he sighed to no one, voice shaky and eyes still stinging (this fucking sweat). It was then the sweetest smell caught his nose, he followed the scent of cigarette smoke to another person standing in the shaded interior. He couldn't make out their face, but he could see the burning mote of light hanging from their lips.

"Got enough to share?" he asked.

It's a hop, skip, and a jump from Walpurgisnacht to Nimbus. Hardly a trip at all, which is good! Drinks with Gideon always get out of hand and tonight is no exception -- especially given the topics they fielded and the fact that for once John was the initially sober one. He is not good at being the sober one.

John walks into The Nimbus already loose and happy. A smile on his face, tie missing, not a complete mess but obviously a handful of drinks into his night. And he's not slowing down. Of course he's not. The whole point of a bar crawl is to keep your foot on the pedal. So within moments he's drumming his fingers on the table top. Hailing the bartender with a 'come hither ' finger that would probably be condescending on someone built bigger or meaner.

"What's your cheapest?" He asks, voice just loud enough to carry over the chatter of a bar on New Years Eve. The bartender thinks for a second.

'The special is half off,' when they see John's expectant look the bartender continues, 'A Negroni. Gin, bitters, vermouth. '

"You had me at gin!" John supplies with a wide smile before sliding his card over, "Open me a tab, please."

The little bit of reassurance that Cian is excited to work as John is enough to buoy him through the awkward start to his . . . appointment? session? Maybe just day?

It gets him through the awkward bump is the point. He lets go of Cian's shoulders after a friendly couple of pats, and quickly has his attention captured by the Castform that floats on in. Immediately his face brightens and he extends a hand to pet its actively waving body.

"Junior . . . Is he the one that features in all your challenges?" John asks, smiling, his eyes still on the pokemon in front of him.

This song didn't come out until years after Creampunk fell apart (for no dramatic reasons: distance, age, money) and John learned it like he played it now -- on his own. Around a campfire with Dess (then an adolescent Loudred) and other pokemon he didn't keep when battling, too, fell through. It already felt like it did now in this moment. Nostalgic. Yearning. Frustrated.

When did he get so frustrated?

"I was a teenage anarchist, but the politics were too convenient! In the depths of their humanity all I saw was bloodless ideology," John's voice got louder, not more confident but less self-conscious as he let himself forget where he was, "and with freedom as the doctrine guess who was the new authority? I was a teenage anarchist, but the politics were too convenient!"

He hit the chorus for the second time and it didn't immediately register there was more sound now. Another instrument, another voice underneath his pushing it up. Elevating and filling out the music. It didn't immediately register, and even when it did John didn't want to investigate. The campfire in his mind faded and was replaced with a stage. A dive bar. Not a lot of people, but enough that they might sing along on a good day.

"Do you remember when you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?" He got louder still for the springboard the unseen stranger's support gave him, he closed his eyes and leaned into his guitar. Into the microphone. The Meowth around him roused curiously, opening single eyes and observing him lazily.

"When you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?"

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.