“Yonny”

A voice whispered in his mind. A faint call between clouds made of wine and spirits. It was familiar. Yannick thought about getting up. The intention was there, but somewhere along his spine the electrical message dissipated. And then so did the intention.

“Yon, honey. It’s time to get ready.”

There was the whisper again this time. But this time it was accompanied by the slightest stimulation on his cheek. A feeling he knew well, and as it turned out, would prove to be the beacon capable of leading him out of the fog. Yannick rolled over to find a blurry Kou beside him.

“Let’s just cancel the thing.” He mumbled.

“You’ll feel much better once you get going.” She smiled at him.

She traced her finger around his brow, mopping the sweaty silver strands out of his eyes. Her index finger was a magic wand, writing an inscription onto his skin. She came into focus. The devices that had pressed against his cheek drew his attention before it was then diverted by her fingertips burying themselves into the roots of his hair. Her nails like a match striking the matchbox ignited his motivation.

“Okay, Dear. I’ll do my best.”

Her cheeks bunched as they drew the corners of her mouth away from each other while simultaneously wrinkling her eyes. Yannick placed his hand on her head, mirroring her motion. If only they could stay like this. He took a mental picture of this moment. An oasis in a desert. He must drink while he could.

He drew her head closer to this and their lips met. Seconds passed. Kou began to draw away but Yannick insisted. He needed to draw every last morsel of energy that he could like the leech that he was. She giggled and accepted for a while before pulling away completely.

“Come on now. Get dressed.” She laughed at him before throwing his tie at him. The woven strand of fabric fell over his face, making him out to be a pirate late for his 5:30 with his shareholders. He folded himself out of bed, now starting to laugh himself. He threw the tie back at her and then headed for the shower.

In the bathroom, he saw Mimi, Kou’s Mime Jr. He was brushing his teeth with an invisible toothbrush while balancing on the sink.

“Good morning.” He said, bowing his head before the small creature. It bounced up and down upon seeing Yannick before promptly returning the bow. It turned and handed him a crystal snifter with a brown liquid in it. He must have given it to him before passing out.

“You didn’t have any of that, did you?” Yannick whispered, cringing a little. The small clown had a penchant for copying him so the last thing he wanted was for him to pick up on his bad habits. Mimi shaked his little head but returned his cringe which made Yannick suspect that maybe he had tried a few drops and decided against this particular vice. He quickly took the glass.

"You know this is very bad for you, okay?” Mimi nodded vigorously. Yannick smiled and patted him before lifting him off the sink and onto the floor. Mimi put up his arms to be easy to lift.

“Okay let me have my shower.”

Mimi waddled through the doorframe before turning back and peeking in.

“I don’t think so.” Yannick shut the door on the Mime Jr. He knew Kou let him shower with her but he wasn’t quite there yet with his relationship with the pokemon. Apparently, he was very good at washing hair, not that Yannick ever intended to find out.

He turned on the shower, letting the hot steam fill his lungs. Before stepping into the shower, opened the medicine cabinet. He opened a couple of packets of pills and sprinkled a few into his drink. He faced the mirror and held up his glass. “Cheers, prick.” A greasy loser celebrated his toast with him. With one practised motion, he downed his favourite type of cocktail. His stomach bubbled. Ahh that was the stuff. His whole career hinged on the genius of the pharmaceutical industry.

An hour later he was standing in his warehouse, facing a large shard of brilliant orange. It was a massive fragment of amber that his company prospectors had pulled out of a swamp in Sinnoh. It towered to eight feet, four feet wide and a foot in depth. Even a small amount of light that filtered through the warehouse windows was able to light up the glittering auburn of the stone. It was beautiful in its uneven translucency.

But the real prize was what had been trapped inside. Half a dozen roughly spherical stone-like objects were suspended midway through the medium. Some of them could be mistaken for ordinary stones, at least to the untrained eye, but some had a distinctly pokeball shape. A shape that didn’t come naturally, like they had been crafted by intelligent hands. The prospectors had been murmuring about what this could be and had decided to rescue it from the site.

“Morning boss. What do you think it’s worth?” Haymitch, one of his security guards asked from over Yannick’s shoulder.

“Mmm. Amber isn’t worth much to us. But a piece this size might find a collector. Not really worth the trouble.” Yannick stepped closer. His reflection appeared warped in the irregular facets of the stone. The greasy drunkard that he had seen earlier that morning had been replaced. A crisply dressed and well-groomed figure of a career man had replaced him. The difference was so vast that you would do well to pick them out as the same person.

“It sure is pretty though.”

Something caught Yannick’s eye. He bent down. A small chunk of amber had dislodged from the base. And inside was a small flower that the man knew well. “Forget me not.” The characteristically blue flower appeared a deep purple within the orange tint. He pocketed the stone and turned back to Haymitch. “I guess it is.” He said with an uncharacteristically bright smile.

It took a bit of effort from a couple of handymen as well as Haymitch and Star, his Gurdurr partner, to load the stone onto the back of a truck. Yannick decided to ride beside the driver while the others looked after the specimen in the back. Soon they were off to the Slateport Museum.

Driving around the back of the Museum, they would be let into the loading bay. This delivery had been set up a week in advance, so the museum staff would know they were coming.

Yannick stood at the edge of the abyss. All that faced him was pure inky blackness. A pure ichor of midnight swirled, threatening to drown his sanity. What was down there? His consciousness did not want to know. He knew if he were to take one more step, he would lose something more important than the world. And yet, his body willed it.

Cast yourself into the breach! Relieve yourself of woes and worries. All will be null in the presence of eternity. Do it now!

It called out to him. An eldritch siren song that could not be resisted. Something had to be done to feed the beast. An offering in place of himself. Something symbolic that represented all of what he was.

Yannick pulled out an oddly shaped pebble. It was nothing of note, just a stone that could be found along any road. Why this, when he was someone who had access to the most valuable shiny things in the world? Because this is an object that had surreptitiously stowed away in his pocket on one of the few cherished outings with his friends. Moments that valued more than all the king’s riches.

The stone was cast into the well.

“Take it.”

The ranger’s silhouette against the sky was something to behold. Atop a dark bird that landed, he dismounted with casual ease. He was so young but nevertheless seemed impressive in Yannick’s eyes.

“Ranger Blackwell! It is a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for meeting us out here.” Yannick would spring to meet him with a handshake at the ready should his new acquaintance accept.

“A rookie?” Griselda rudely gawfed. “Of course.”

“You can stop that right now.” Yannick answered, mortified at his employee’s attitude. She was very knowledgeable about her job but her manner did not earn her points with her boss. Frankly, if he could leave her in some cave for the rest of her career then they would probably both be happier.

“Just don’t blame me when you turn into an icicle.” She shivered in her boots, playing up the cold.

Yannick sighed and decided to address the ranger. “Yes, we are here to have a look at the land here. We would like a tour of all the different areas if it wouldn’t be trouble. What we are looking for, well, It’s something we will know when we see it. Basically all of the area that was affected by the unnatural cold.” The businessman didn’t feel it was the right time to delve into the motives behind this expedition.

Hammond began to rummage around in his backpack. “We were given a map and a few other things. There will be quite a lot of ground to cover, do you have any idea what would be the best way to proceed?” They could probably do their job by bumbling around by themselves but the assistant rightly assumed that the ranger might have the best clue as to how to carry out the outing.

Yannick nodded and smiled at each fact about the game that he knew nothing about. “Yes, I can see why it would be hard to focus on sports with so much going on. I will say though, if it’s something that people care about deeply then it’s worth doing. Something to celebrate is always welcome.” In truth, Yannick found it a bit hard to see the appeal of sport during times like these. But compared to the strange ways some people coped, this had to be one of the least malicious for sure.

“A that’s a shame. Someday I would love to watch you again!” Grace responded while pinning the mic to Josh.

A few excess bats of the woman’s eyelashes did not go unnoticed by Yannick. “Forgive Grace’s friendliness.” He said with a sigh. The orange floating camera snickered in the background.

“Yes, let's have the interview like this then. Kazoom, make sure to be at his eye level.” Grace continued, ignoring her associates. “We are ready whenever you are.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

“Rolling in three, two, one.” Kazoom lit up, the machinery inside shifting into motion. The lenses would capture both Josh upon his glorious mount, with Yannick below him.

“Let’s start at the beginning. How did you first become aware of the Meteno event?”

“Ah Mister Devlin. Thank you so much for meeting me out here. I hope I am not taking too much time out of your schedule.”

Yannick had stood to greet the Mauville Gym Leader with a smile and an outstretched hand. His eye contact was intense but not challenging. Beside Josh was an impressively majestic fox with nine bushy yellow tails. You could tell the assuredness of the pokemon as it clung to it’s master’s side. Yannick found himself wondering whether this had been one of the beasts that had braved the cold on that day.

“Don’t worry, we were still setting up. How did the game go? Would I be right in assuming that you are a supporter of the Mauville team? Though I profess I don’t know much of anything about sports.” Yannick wove chuckles into his small talk and punctuated each sentence with a wave of his hand. He could do this sort of dance all day, after all, leaving a good impression on people of importance was what he was raised to do.

“Oh by the way, this is Hammond, my assistant, and this is Grace the producer and Kazoom who will be operating the camera.” Yannick first pointed to a gaunt man who had been keeping a shrewd gaze on the meeting while keeping to the back of the booth. Second, he gestured to a woman with a tablet computer in one hand and a clip-on microphone in another. Kazoom was in fact a rotom who had inhabited a camera and patiently floated behind them.

“Hi there! It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a big fan of your racing, I managed to catch a few events in person.” Grace stepped forward and gestured with the microphone. “Let me get you mic’ed up and then we can begin.” If he would allow, Grace would attach the microphone to Josh’s clothes.

The Silent Icelands had become of great interest to the Bijoux Solette Company very recently. A single crystal. That was all it took. A single crystal found by a pair of young trainers that had ventured into the wasteland. This crystal had piqued the interest of the company’s prospectors so much so that Yannick and his executive team had deemed it worthy of doing a full-scale survey of the area.

This would necessitate the need for the Ranger Corp. What better than to have one of Hoenn’s finest outdoor adventurers to lead the way through treacherous terrain and fend off any scary pokethreats? Yannick just hoped there wouldn’t be any further legendary shenanigans, like the ones during the Meteno event, while he was in the area.

“Is this the place?” Yannick asked as he turned to his personal assistant and head prospector, who would be coming along with them. He was already feeling the chill on his neck and they were only just standing on the very edge of the Icelands.

“I believe so. Our ranger guide should be here any minute now.” Hammond, the assistant, answered. A poised, gaunt man who did his best to seem unbothered by the cold.

“Bloody horrid place.” Griselda, the prospector, offered up. She was used to the furnace-like environment of volcanic mines. This wilderness was a bit of a shock.

The three huddled together with their winter jackets buttoned up as far as they could go.

It had been a whole year since the dreaded Kyurem attack on what is now known as the Silent Icelands. A monumental shift in the paradigm of the Hoenn region had resulted. Not that Yannick had caught sight of those days. He had been tucked up safe in his high street apartment in Slateport. Well, as safe as you could be in modern-day Hoenn. There he waited out the storm, only to scurry from under his rock once it had passed, daring to attempt a return to normal life.

See, Yannick Solette was one of the small people. The type that lacked the will as well as the power to affect any sort of change on the interdimensional-legendary-disaster threats that they faced. So he did what he could, and not a fraction more.

However, the man he would be meeting today was nothing but a small person. Yannick was here to listen to the tale of the 99943 Meteno event. Yannick had travelled out to Oldae Town, the settlement adjacent to the frigid wasteland for the first time since the event. Not only that, he had brought a camera crew. He intended to document the story for his own use.

The adept prospectors of the Bijoux Solette Company had found something below the ice. Yannick’s sharp business mind sensed an opportunity. But more about that later…

For now, he needed a reason for his company to be here. Hearing about the plight of the heroes who braved the storm when he could not, might just yield the window of opportunity he was looking for.

Yannick and his team of three were posted up at the back of the Mead and Meadow Pub. They had hired out a large booth area where they could be private and yet still capture the essence of the town watering hole. Here they waited for their guest of honour.