@Erzz - Just like her futuristic 80s movies. <3 ~

@Dilasc - I've asked other people after you said this and they all knew that "It" referred to the time. I apologize if you're going to be careless about reading my story however. Also the prologue was posted last May, so I'm glad you're at least starting it.

@Pillow - But if they learn their lesson we don't have any fun. </3

@Aurea - I'm so glad you like my Silver! I was sorta worried about him because these last few chapters have been a bit of a jumble for me but i'm glad I can still portray him okay.

@Bullet - Too late everyone knows Also i'm sorry it was a bit wordy, i'll try hard to not make it so now that you've pointed it out, thanks Bullet. c:

The girl stood there, on the edge of the old basketball court, its color three shades short of white in the middle of a Summer night. It was a heck of a place to be on a Friday night, with its rusting hoops as old as her mother, the yellow lines as bright as a highlighter would be on stone, and the moon was almost full.

On the other side of the court came the calls and whoops of the boys playing a game with a ball, the sounds of their shoes squeaking and stomping on the concrete. They haven’t noticed her yet; probably for the best.

It was a hazy Saturday in the middle of the a small town in Johto Summer, and darn doesn't she feel like Cinderella arriving at the Prince's palace.

The lights were on inside the ragged old clubhouse, bricks that were once an intense firefighter red peeking out of the holes of peeling paint, and she knocked even though the door is vibrating from how loud the music inside is and the door was probably unlocked what was she doing-

Throwing politeness to the wind, she turned the surprisingly shiny doorknob and opened the door a sliver. The brunette poked her head through, wariness tightening its noose around her neck the longer she stared.

She saw ratty couches, and the adolescents that sat on them with their poodle skirts and their plaid button-ups and how they threw cards down without a care and mouths that were never still. (Probably in more ways than one.) Maybe if she squinted she could see which one was slipping the ace out of his sleeve-

When the door opened completely with a swing that almost made her fall to the floor before there was a quick grab on her arm. It was a man with a cloud of slicked-forward black hair and red tinted sunglasses who just engulfed her (or any normal person) in size that steadied her. She kept her eyes down as soon as she was caught, instead getting a good look at his cowboy boots. Soft, tan leather, well-looking enough to a level of perfection fitting for her mother, with small imprints of dotted-lines on the edges that made her squint in the moonlight.

She probably knew this man, since he went to her school as did probably the rest of the members occupying the old clubhouse.

“Well now, looks like we have a little Nidoran peekin' her head in!” he roared over the blast of noise, and if she peeked past him, she would see the throngs of people who’d be turning their heads in wonder at what in Celebi's name the boy was hollering about now.

Hesitantly she looked up, eye level to the crook of his red wifebeater, and the teen wrinkled her nose at how strong the smell of beer was on him. Although, the whole place smelled like smoke and booze and forest so...

Before she had the privilege of getting lost in her train of thought, the older man's voice snapped her back Johto. No need to click your heels and close your eyes this time around, Dorothy.

"Well now, don't just stand there!"

The giant peered over her, with his wolfish grin getting larger as the night grew longer, and it was a true shame she wasn’t Goliath, wasn't it.

---

It was bigger than the Bellsprout statue next to it and all Loli wanted to do was laugh and pretend she was back in New Bark, where everything was sunshine and Sentrets and rainbows compared to Violet at night. Silly little balls of light weren't supposed to be over four feet tall, what are you talking about? Everything was fun and games when they were compressed down to a little square picture on a machine!

And then Silver grabbed her hand with another curse and broke into a run as soon as he could handle Loli's weight. It resulted in her being thrown into reality with her brain still lagging behind, like a jet skier being jerked by the spinal cord. Eventually though, the gray matter caught up with the rest of her body with a smack and hey, it was a great party man sorry you had to miss it, have some of the leftover beer in the kiddy pool and try not to step on any of the people passed out on the floor.

The little - no it was getting bigger how far could it go until it took the entire hall - sphere was gaining on them, and she might have been seeing double, but no they couldn’t stop running they couldn’t stop running they refused. The haze had grown thick and the hall grew hot but she could see the stairs at the end but what was going on - what was coming up from the level below when did it become so dark- why did those large big purple things have to be here whywhywhy-

Then one of the big amorphous blobs opened its mouth in a silent cackle and it was just going downhill from here everything needed to stop now.

Loli bit down on her tongue so hard she could taste the copper as it trailed out of her mouth. (Dammit, she didn’t bite hard enough to make part of the damn thing fall off, it didn’t need to go bleeding everywhere.)

And then the shaking started and why was it shaking why was a tower founded on a base made not out of steel, not made of wood, but from a BELLSPROUT.

The rumbling wouldn’t stop and oh god there were more than two so many more than two oh gods...

It was all Loli could do with her brain scrambled to just toss a Pokeball at one of them, and grab the ball mid air as she flew by it and didn't stop running.

When they turned another corner, that's when they saw it. And the irony stung a little bit (or maybe that was just her tongue) when she was running towards the lantern’s light this time around and not away from it.

She honestly didn’t feel the metal hit her temple for a split second. But when the pain sunk in, the girl was almost knocked out cold. It was a burst of red hot flashes and the feeling of something wet rolling down the side of her head and incoherent phrases made from bloody words bubbling out of her mouth and son of a bitch --

The bald man was dressed in his dark traditional clothes just like the others of his occupation. He paid no heed to the trainer, who was on the floor again for the umpteenth time this day, out cold in one of the worst places to be when going down to Wonderland.

"Oh, I knew I heard some rats up here!" He laughed, swinging his lantern around with the flames licking out. Silver didn't hit the floor like she did, but he at least had the instinct to duck. (Was this how she was going to die? By an old senile monk in a dead carcass that was reformed into a tower infested by big balls of gas next to a prick who got her more mixed in with questionable business agreements than she already was?)

The monk waved his improvised weapon more, a sense of familiarity and habit to his actions. "Shoo, shoo the lot of you! You've had enough fun with these two." That was when the crossdresser realized he wasn't aiming for the two trespassers, but rather the ghosts that circled around them. (Didn't stop the collateral damage though...)

With his words, the Ghastlies froze with their expressions of madness glued on, and collapsed in on themselves in dust and smoke and one last little trick with their gusts of wind - but then it was done. She couldn’t see any more purple. Then again she couldn’t see anything considering she finally got knocked out.

Maybe if she had listened hard enough Loli could’ve heard Silver’s sigh of defeat.

The fire behind the glass flickered, but it in no way gave warmth.

“Well now... look at what I’ve stumbled upon!” And then the monk stared down to them, a pleased smirk gracing his face. “A couple of trainers who decided to sneak out allll the way up here.”

Only one half of the duo stared up at their savior, with his chin on the ground in stunned silence.

“Ah, one of those nights, eh? Don’t you just hate when that happens? At least it’s never boring, hah!” He poked “Loki’s” hat lightly with the with the bottom of the lantern and hefted him up with an ancient looking limb. “Up, up with you lot.”

The red rat glanced up, an unreadable expression on his face, then stood up and trudged behind the monk with the swinging lantern and the jolly spring in his step.

---

The highest story in the tower was well lit, had no walls and minimal sliding screen doors, and was still generally as immaculate as the rest of the floors.

Loli still had every single right as a Johtonian citizen to be unnerved by the metal statues that loomed over her like Teddy Roseford all those years ago when she came to Blacktop.

Now Silver and her were standing in front of a generic wooden desk with scrolls and ink bottles scattered on it, a larger than life painting of a Bellsprout inscribed on the wall behind it. The two were both ramrod straight in posture but couldn’t stop swaying from exhaustion, their expressions cool. 'Although...' Loli considered, 'The more scared looking the better?' But then she remembered that only really worked when you were a girl and crossed that thought off.

The monk who carted them up was currently fiddling around with the various objects in the room, opening drawers with contents unseen from Loli’s perspective, and her hands fidgeted with impatience.

’They better have hot water in the showers still...’

Peeking at her watch for the umpteeth time, she was surprised to find out that it was barely past three. When someone who sounded much too old to be Silver gave a cracky clearing of the throat, the young woman looked right back up. She also straightened her stance again and ignored the blood oozing down the side of her head.

“Well, well...” The monk seemed to have completed whatever he was doing, hands folded behind him as he stood in front of the two. “Well.” The trainer wasn’t really sure how to feel about the smile on his face.

“Loki” bit the inside of her mouth while she waited for him to continue. From the corner of her eye she saw Silver’s hand twitch slightly and his heel bounce.

“It seems you two are either blind and couldn’t read that visiting hours are only from eight to eight, and that you are not permitted past the first floor of this establishment. But considering you both look like smart lads - or at least with my poor eyesight here, it seems like you can read, yes?” The man nodded his shaved head and hummed. “Yes, yes. We have a procedure to these sorts of things.”

The monk just smiled at the lack of response, and showed what he was hiding behind his back: Two small silver discs smaller than Loli’s fist, a label on each with “HM-05” printed were presented to the trainers.

“Congratulations!” The bald man cheered. “You’ve won the prize for reaching the top of Sprout Tower!”

The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop.

“...Excuse me?” The younger man’s eyebrows furrowed, tone strained.

“Ho ho, this is the only time of the day you can catch Ghastly, don’tcha know? It would be ridiculous to punish every single trainer in Johto for trying to come in and get a catch! And I heard you two running around enough tonight that you might as well’ve reached the top by now.”

Loli accepted the disc with shaking hands, her face having a color that could rival Silver’s hair. Speaking of the ginger punk, he just stood there with his face unnaturally blank, before the Monk began to shoo them out with a small grin that seemed to be glued on his face.

"Gotta love this time of the year," he smiled, before nudging them down the many many flights of stairs that coiled around the tower. "Ah, newbies... Well it's time to find more of you all, tata and come to the worship today! If you can wake up early enough anyways, haha." With those parting words, he shut the Tower door behind them, leaving the two outside in the courtyard with woods on either side.

The night breeze blew on their faces when the adrenaline finally wore off. And when it does, Entei could have used flamethrower on her if Loli didn’t feel silly dizzy busy and oops there goes her footing but wait she didn’t get any booze first hahaha-

They somehow ended up leaning on each other like brothers in nomansland, and when they stumbled out of the wretched Bellsprout carcass neither of them knew what was going on except that they needed to get away from that stupid tower. It wasn’t even five minutes later that they fell into a heap on the ground, passed out.

---

When she woke up, it was (according to Loli’s watch) four thirty-seven in the morning, and her head was throbbing more than the morning after last year’s play-off game celebration party.

Her eyes felt tired, but she squinted anyways and realised she was still alive, the pain was there to prove it - and oh god did it - and no, the crossdresser didn’t kick it (yet). That would be too much to hope for.

Shuffling slightly on the ground, she heard a groan and when she realised it wasn’t herself the lightbulb in her head went off, albeit dimly.

“...Fucking... Teddiursa tits...” the jerk breathed out, sounding just as peachy keen as the blue-eyed crossdresser was. Rolling over onto his back, the girl could hear his heavy gulps of air. “Didn’t even crack a rib...”

Loli could only wheeze a little louder in response, and she was pretty sure the scrub understood, when after a few minutes he called out, “Just needed to make sure I didn’t have to get the Underkeeper to make an opening.” Liar. “We should only be five minutes from town, if you don’t reach it by then you’re going the wrong way.” It was all he offered, before he pushed himself up off the ground with another gasp and stumbled away.

The clearing was quiet, save for the (early-as-fuck) pidgeys chirping in the groves and the rustling of the grass as the breeze did its daily cleaning, the tips tickling her skin with featherweight caresses.

She was barely breathing, and she could feel how much she beat up her body already. There was something stinging in her left cheek and she could feel the scratches already starting to clot up on her legs and dammit girl shouldn’t you be going home to mother now-

There was a crack when that thought was hit with a metal bat. Home run; the crowd was on their feet.

“...Bye Silver.”

Like hell she was going to give up after a little tumble.

Groaning silently, she pushed herself off the ground with arms that wobbled like jello, and
when she entered the PokeCenter and saw Morty still sitting on the couch through the glass doors, Loli took out her Gastly’s Pokeball, let the big ball of nothing come out, and strutted in with her pride as her weapon. She would not allow her body to give up now dammit.

Forcing her excitement and adrenaline down to a simmer, she stopped in front of the man, plots of revenge stuffed in the back attic of her mind for now. The man had that large purple bandanna covering his eyes but dammit she didn't care about his sleep schedule when she needed to get back on hers and plucked it up with a pinch of gloved fingers. When she saw a purple eye open and staring at her, she was impatient. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

It was a simple question and when Morty merely raised his eyebrows underneath that mess of bangs, she repeated it with more demand.

The Gastly floated out from behind her and grinned stupidly at Morty, its size surprisingly small, and merely hovered over the purple-eyed man’s hand. (Oh, she saw how it was now you blonde tool, the entire reason she went through that trauma line was because he wanted another ghost friend. You are so lucky you are a gym leader you scrub...)

And then the freaky white pupils stared at the ground as he thought, and a thumb hooked under his bandanna. While he was thinking, Loli caught her breath and attempted to get her brain back to normal.

“It’s a girl,” the man announced finally, and the trainer was pleased.

Then it was her turn to think. It actually took a minute to come up with a name, but when she found it it was a sealed deal do not pass go do not collect two hundred dollars. That good.

The trainer could already feel the blood starting to dry, and part of it felt like it was about to crack when she smiled.

“Her name is Circe then,” she announced, grinning like a Sharpedo and feeling as stronggreatalive as one.

There was a warm shower and a nurse waiting for her a few steps away, but she was going to bask in the victory a bit more with her warpaint still on.

...And then she realised how tired she really was and bid goodbye to the jerk and promised to exact revenge when there was more sleep tucked under her belt. She could bandage up the flesh wounds by herself in the privacy of her room after the shower.

If worst came to worst and she wiped before reaching Ecruteak at least they departed laughing.