“Hi Bill,” he said, retaining his right to be antsy. “An inventor? What kind of things do you-”
And before he even had the chance to finish his question, Riley was whirled around, forced to stare up at the house in the distance. What a cute little cottage, he thought for maybe a split-second before realizing that mental comment was completely beside the point.
Taking in the man’s apprehensive replies and uneasy laughter, Bill thought, Looks like we’ve got a nervous one here. To be fair, Bill knew that he usually wasn’t one to inspire much confidence. He probably should have chosen his words more carefully, he admitted.
Too late now, of course.
“Don’t be such a worrywart,” Bill said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I may have caused a bit of trouble for myself the last time I fiddled around with this, but it turned out all right in the end, really. I just needed a little help was all. Hence you.” Bill gestured towards the man, then placed a (hopefully reassuring) hand on his shoulder. Bill pushed him lightly towards the cottage. “It’s pretty simple stuff. All I need you to do is stand in a pod while I push a button and make sure everything’s working like it should. Easy, right?”
Bill didn’t want to give him too much time to dwell on the potential issues, so he kept on walking forward and said, “But hey, you wanted to hear about my inventions, didn’t you? Mostly I work on the PC storage system. You’ve heard of it, yeah? What I’m doing now is sort of similar, but instead of Pokémon, we’re transporting people.” Bill sighed, smiled, and stared at the man, eyes bright. “Can you imagine how much easier things would be if I could get this to work--travel, communications, connections--everything! So, you see, I’m just trying to help people. That’s all.”
Luckily, before Bill could fall too deep into his explanations and aspirations, they’d reached the door to his home. He held the door open for the man. “Sorry for the mess. I didn’t think it was this bad, but now that I’m looking at it, well...watch your step.” Even Bill himself wasn’t entirely sure what pieces of equipment were lying in wait beneath the scattered pages of his research, waiting to trip or jab at anyone who dared walk over them.
Groaning internally, she nodded. She didn’t really think he would really take up her offer. In all honesty, she probably would’ve declined. This man didn’t know who she was, or what she did, yet he was trusting her with patching him up, and feeding him. She could easily take advantage of that, any person in her profession would have dropped him off at the nearest hospital and called it a night. Dare she say she had a soft spot for taking care of people?
Maybe there was a reason for this.
Lately, Shelly had been lacking something. She didn’t know exactly what it was. She had begun to distance herself from the people at work, her friends, even her family. Something was wrong that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Unsettling almost. It was like she was losing touch with reality, and submerging herself into work. It was consuming her thoughts, taking away her sleep. But that tended to happen with her. When she worked for Devon, that’s all she did, was work. Where Aqua allowed leniency with work habits, some things weren’t that simple.
“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any food on ya, would you? I haven’t eaten in…a day I think.”
Well there’s the reason why he couldn’t bring himself up out of the water.
“Ye, I can cook ya up somethin’ when we get back to my place. Ye might not want to do that anymore lad, some people arent as nice as me.”
She was tempted to pick him up fireman style, but that was overkill. After all, they weren’t that far from her place, so getting there wouldn’t take very long. She swings his arm over her shoulder, picking him up from the sand. That was going to be another annoyance to take care of. Sand in her carpet annoyed her the most out of everything.
“Why’d ye come this way anyways? I doubt you were lookin fer a nice view.”
Knowing that food would be coming, Bill felt comfortable ignoring the rumbling in his stomach. “You’re an angel, Ginger. Really,” Bill replied. But honestly, on another note, she was right: he had to stop pushing himself to the limit like that. It happened far too often, and though usually he just got himself something to eat and crashed without any immediate consequences, he could very easily get himself into trouble again. “It won’t happen again. Promise.”
How many times had Bill made that promise, though? To friends, to family, to himself? And yet here he was. He’d never been trying to lie--he’d believed every word he’d said at the time--but somehow it always ended up like this. Bill would get distracted working on some interesting thing or another, and when he finally finished he’d realize he hadn’t taken a break or had anything to eat in a long, long while. “I’m just a little too into my work, you know?” Bill said with a smile and a self-deprecating little shrug.
Bill leaned heavily against the woman as she helped to drag him up from the sand. The movement was more than a little wobbly, but with her arm wrapped around his shoulder, supporting himself, he was able to move along without too much of a struggle.
“Why’d ye come this way anyways? I doubt you were lookin fer a nice view.”
Bill opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say a word, he realized he didn’t quite remember; his mind was still more than a little hazy. “Huh...” he started. Bill scanned his mind, trying to remember. Eventually, a memory floated up, hazy and indistinct as a half-forgotten dream. “Not looking for a view, no. Not a swim, either,” Bill replied with a laugh. “I’d gone out looking for something to eat and got myself lost. I figured the docks were a good place to get my bearings.” He paused. “I think I actually had it all figured out before I fell in.”
As they made their slow, wobbling way along the streets of Sootopolis, the townsfolk gave them all strange looks. Whenever he caught one of their eyes, Bill offered them a smile and a wave. Nothing strange here, everything’s fine.
Bill’s head started to clear as they walked, though without food and rest he was sure that it’d never be back up to one hundred percent. As it did, he started to wonder about something else the woman had said, about how not everyone was as nice as her. For that matter, why was she so nice? Wasn’t that suspicious? It wasn’t like Bill was going to turn down her offer, oh no, but still.
“Say, why are you helping me so much? I’m really hoping that you’re not gonna kidnap me now. That would make a bad day worse, don’t ya think?”
Before she could even start to give him the Heimlich, he started spouting out water. It took him almost ten minutes to started breathing correctly. She kept hitting his back repeatedly, helping him get the rest of it out of his chest. If she were to guess, he was definitely going to be sore for a couple of days. Raw throat, dehydration. And of course, the cuts on his head. Somehow he had hit something, but there werent any rocks around the pier. He probably hit it when he toppled over the edge. She could patch him up just as good as any doctor. After all, she had to look after Archie when they were children, she was a pro when it came to patching wounds.
She watched as he finally came to some sort of realization that he was back to reality. He blinked a few times, then a sheepish smile spread across his face. Instead of an actual thank you, she received a man trying to play off the fact that he almost drowned by pointing out the obvious. Sighing, she sat up and wiped her hair out from her face, then wrung it out. Looking at him, she stood.
“I’m going to grab my stuff from the pier. Do NOT move.”
Jogging up to the pier, she grabbed her things and jogged back down. Honestly that was the most exercise she had gotten in about a week. She shoved everything back into her pocket, and put her jacket back on. Squating down, she took a good look at the gash on his forehead and then stood back up.
“Alright ye have two options. Ye come with me and get patched up for free. Or I take ye to the hospital. It’s yer choice lad.”
Offering that much help, was totally out of character for her, and it made her feel very weird. Out of place almost.
The woman returned exactly none of Bill’s pleasantries, but he hardly minded. He had little patience for polite conversation under normal circumstances, and with his head still swimming as it was from his near-death experience, he doubted he would have had the time for it now. Instead, he offered the woman a mock-salute to match her commanding tone. “Can do, ma’am,” he responded with an easy grin.
As soon as the woman had turned her attention from him, Bill struggled to sit himself upright. He took stock of his condition: the exhaustion, his still-shaking limbs, and the pain emanating from nearly every point of his body. He felt...well, terrible, when you got right down to it. He shivered in spite of the warm Hoenn air.
Though he didn’t even know this woman’s name, Bill was still relived when she returned. He smiled up at her as she approached him. She said nothing, though. Instead, she crouched down next to him and stared at his forehead with such an intensity that Bill couldn’t help but raise a hand to see what she was so interested in. His hand came away wet with something other than water; Bill was bleeding. He wasn’t worried too much--head wounds did tend to bleed a lot, after all--but still, he had to wonder: When did that happen? He couldn’t remember. Sometime during the fall, probably.
Bill was so busy scanning his memory for the source of the scrape that it took him a moment to process what the woman’s offer. His smile widened. “You’re not kidding? Well damn, then. How could I refuse? I can’t believe how lucky I am, to’ve run into you.”
Ready to get himself moving again, Bill stood. Immediately, a wave of dizziness assaulted him, and he stumbled.
Oh, yeah.
“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any food on ya, would you? I haven’t eaten anything in...” He paused, trying and failing to remember his last meal. “A day? I think?”
What a beautiful day to be out and about in Kanto. It was certainly Riley’s first time this far out East and, at this specific moment, he was exploring the wonder that was Cerulean Cape. He had known that it was recognized as a hotspot for romantic couples all across Kanto, but little did he expect to be one of the loners in a sea of pairings.
‘Well, this is somewhat embarrassing,’ he thought to himself, spotting couple after couple all around the cliff’s edge, each one of them locked into a starry gaze over the horizon as the waves below crashed against the rocky wall below. It was all ironically depressing and Riley quickly found himself wondering if should summon his Lucario so that he wasn’t entirely alone.
It was at that moment of mid-contemplation that Riley had been jerked out of his thoughts by a complete stranger; at this, he had to reel back. Riley had honestly been thrown by how stealthily this stranger had snuck up on him. Not only that, there was something unusual about this stranger’s demeanor that perked Riley’s attention; he didn’t think that he was up to any trouble, but something in his gut was telling him that things were about to get interesting.
“I, uh, sure,” he said, the obviously contemplation still lingering. “What can I help you with?”
Bill had readied himself for a whole round of cajoling, and persuading, and begging, before he got anyone to agree to his request. People around Celadon were used to his antics, and were usually able to avoid getting roped into his experiments. He honestly hadn’t expecting this random man to agree so easily, but he wasn’t about to complain. He was probably an out-of-towner, if Bill had to guess. The man sounded more than a little bit unsure, true, but Bill was one hundred percent ready to ignore that. He grinned.
“An experiment,” Bill explained. “I’m an inventor, you see. Among other things. Bill’s the name.”
Bill looped an arm around the man’s shoulders, oblivious to any need for personal space, as if to prevent his escape. He spun the man around and pointed towards his cottage, which was clearly visible from their place on the Cape. “That’s my house over there,” he said. “So not too far out of your way, right? I just need someone to help me out for a little bit. No previous experience required.”
Finally, Bill paused. As if as an afterthought, he added, “And it’s totally safe this time.” Right? He’d put more than enough safety checks in place, surely. And he’d run computer simulations until he was bored to tears, until he was nearly jumping with the need to get started, and they’d turned out mostly fine. “No need to worry. I promise, no mad scientist here.” He raised his arms in defense. He was able to hold his mock-seriousness for just a moment before he laughed.
