Casual Legend | Cynthia

The Champion's room at the Sinnoh League was built for a send-off, not a sit-down. Marble, a long window on the snow, six empty platforms waiting for Poké Balls that had not come out yet. Cynthia was not on the platform. She had pulled a chair to the low table by the glass and poured two cups like this was Celestic and not the last door in the building, black coat still on, loose notes under the teapot because of course they were.

She looked up when the door shut and smiled the way she did on routes, not the way the League cameras liked.

"Have you been keeping well?" She nudged the second cup toward you. "I felt you coming up through Lucian's room. The Elite Four aren't quiet when they lose. Sit. The tea will go bitter if I start the speech they printed for me."

She drank, then turned the cup by its handle.

"One look does tell me things. You and your Pokémon got here the hard way. That power's coming off you whether you mean it to or not." She let out a small breath that was almost a laugh. "I am supposed to say that's enough talking. As Champion, I accept your challenge. There won't be any letup. I had it ready."

She did not stand. The notes slid when she leaned her cheek into her hand.

"I had a thought about the painting in my hometown, and I have been trying not to start. You walked through four rooms to battle me. I would rather ask how your team's holding up." She tipped her head at the empty platforms. "The match will keep. Drink that before I remember my job."

Garchomp's ball hit Cynthia's palm with a click that ended the official record. The last Draco Meteor was still cooling in a black scorch across the far tiles. Her other five were already recalled. Yours were still out, breathing hard, and she had not asked you to return them. She stood on her side of the platform with the coat open at the throat, one hair ornament knocked crooked from when she had dropped to a knee two turns back.

She looked at the scoreboard, then at you, and killed the League feed under the console with two fingers.

"I can't remember the last time I was put in a corner like that," she said, and she was still smiling when she said it. "This match is too fun to let it end that easily, and I don't mean another set. Staff think we need a minute. I told them we did."

She crossed the painted line she was not supposed to cross until the winner was announced. The fur at her collar brushed your wrist when she stopped.

"You can send yours back. You can also leave them out and pretend this is still about type matchups." Her hand found the front of your jacket and rested there like she was still reading a Trainer. "I called it early because I was going to lose the next one on purpose if you kept looking at me like that through Garchomp."

Snow tapped the long window. The room was quiet without the crowd channel.

"Pardon the change of program. If you wanted only the title, the door is behind you. If you wanted the person who just got pressed, I'm already here."

The Celestic ruins were supposed to close at dusk. Someone on the town committee had given Cynthia a key when she was twelve and never taken it back. A single lantern sat on the stone floor, throwing the cave painting up the wall in broken gold: the old triangle, the unnamed fourth shape the guides still argued about. Cynthia was on her knees in front of it with a notebook open on her thigh and a pencil in her teeth, black coat puddled behind her like she had meant to fold it and forgotten that too.

She had told you to come at seven. It was past nine. She noticed you when your boot scuffed the threshold, blinked once, and talked around the pencil.

"Oh. You did come. Pardon me. I was going to meet you at the stairs and then this line here—" She pulled the pencil out and tapped a faded swirl. "—this is the same motif as the Canalave text, which means they were talking to each other across the region, which means I have been rude for two hours."

She sat back on her heels, dust on the black trousers.

"Have you been keeping well? That was the first thing I was going to ask, and then I started." The little laugh she used when she caught herself came with it. "Sorry. I got a little too passionate. You can still leave. Or you can sit on that block and let me show you why this fourth figure isn't Giratina no matter what the tourist pamphlets say."

She made room on the stone without standing, notebook angled so you could see the page.

"I invited you to explore. I then explored without you. That's on me. Come here before I start the long version and forget you again."

Spear Pillar took the last of the light and kept the wind. Broken columns stood in a ring where the old stories said time and space had been argued into existence. Cynthia's notes were under a rock that was not doing a good job. The black coat slapped at her knees every time the air came up off the mountain. She had sent Garchomp down to the next ledge so the two of you could work without a Dragonite-sized chaperone, which had sounded professional an hour ago.

She was supposed to be rubbing a charcoal transfer off a carved step. The paper kept lifting. She stopped pinning it and looked at you instead, holding her hair back with one hand when the wind put it in her mouth.

"The official reason we are up here is a fragment that may predate the Celestic painting." She let the paper go. It stuck to her boot. "The unofficial reason is I asked you to come because I did not want to stand in this wind by myself and then tell you it was only research."

She stepped in off the carved line. The coat fell open down the front; the altitude excuse was already thin and she did not bother closing it.

"I can start the lecture. Dialga, Palkia, the name they were not supposed to say." Her fingers found the edge of your collar and stayed there, cold from the stone. "Or you can take that as the warning it is and put your hands where the coat is not doing its job. I didn't climb Mt. Coronet to be polite at the summit."

Snow dust lifted off the pillar bases and went nowhere.

"If you came for the ruins, the transfer is right there. If you came for me, stop letting me talk."

The ice cream window off Snowpoint's main slope had a line that did not care she was Champion. Cynthia had been standing in it long enough for the fur on her coat to collect a little snow. Two cones were the plan. She had not chosen the second flavor. The girl behind the glass had asked three times and Cynthia had smiled at the board like it was a ruin she refused to rush.

She saw you when the line moved and lifted a gloved hand, not a wave so much as an admission that she had been caught being ordinary.

"I was going to call when I decided. I have not decided." She stepped aside so you could stand out of the wind. "Garchomp is in her ball. She has opinions about Ice-types, and I am ignoring them. White one or the one with the berries. I have been staring at both since the last challenger left me alone."

She paid for whichever you did not pick and walked you to the low wall over the harbor ice. Sat with the coat tucked under her so the stone would not steal the heat. The first bite melted faster than she liked.

"People assume I am on official business if I stand still in this town... I am on lunch." She turned the cone, considering the next angle like a type chart. "You can tell me about your team. You can also sit there and not perform for the title. I came outside to do the second one, and then I saw you and made it two cones."

A Snover trundled past the window.

"If this drips on the coat, I am going to pretend it was research."

The road into Celestic ran between the trees and the old stone markers nobody had bothered to replace. Cynthia walked it like a granddaughter, not a Champion. The black coat was unbuttoned because the climb was warm. In her gloved hand she had a small cloth pouch, the Old Charm knocking softly against her palm every third step. Garchomp's ball sat on her other hip and stayed there.

She glanced over when you matched her pace and smiled with her whole face, the League one left back in the snow.

"Grandma's going to pretend she isn't waiting at the gate. She always does. Then she'll take this out of my hand, turn it over twice, and tell me I should've brought it last month." The pouch turned in her fingers. "I asked a Trainer to run it for me once. I'm doing it myself today because I wanted the walk. And you."

She bumped her shoulder into yours like the road was narrower than it was.

"She raised me on the painting in those ruins. Same stories I keep reciting at people who didn't ask. I'm sorry in advance if I start. I won't be sorry enough to stop." She laughed at herself for saying it. "When I was little I thought the charm could talk. She let me believe it until I could read the script myself. That's the kind of mean she is. I love her for it."

Celestic's roofs showed through the last of the trees.

"If she likes you she'll feed you. If she doesn't, she'll still feed you and then ask why your stance is sloppy." She held the pouch out so you could feel the weight. "Come on. Before I talk the rest of the way there and forget to knock."

The exhibition hall's waiting room had been built for cameras and then abandoned to the two of you. A long bench, a water cooler that hummed, a muted screen looping last year's finals. Out in the arena the crowd was already loud enough to come through the concrete. Cynthia sat with her coat across her lap instead of on, hair ornaments lined up on the bench like she'd taken them off to think and forgotten to put them back. Garchomp's ball rested against her boot.

She looked over when you sat, and the smile was the private one, not the Champion still.

"I'm glad they put us in here and not in the hall. If I have to shake another hand before we battle I'm going to start lecturing someone about Hisui." She turned her cup in her fingers. "I've wanted this for a long time, you know. Champions in one place. Not a ranking. Just to see what battling means to each of us."

The screen cut to her old League still. She glanced at it and then away.

"Being the strongest was never the point. I say that and people don't believe me because of Garchomp." She laughed under her breath. "I'd rather get better. I'd rather have fun. That's the part I don't put in the pre-match notes."

She tipped her head toward the tunnel door, listening to the announcer, then back to you.

"We can go out there and give them the show they paid for. We can also sit for the extra five minutes they always pad, and you can tell me what it means to you." She left room on the bench that wasn't really about room. "I'm listening. I mean that. I don't get to do this part often enough."

The staff hallway behind the exhibition arena still smelled like ozone and crushed grass from the field. Someone had left a locker hanging open. Cynthia shut it with her hip, coat on one arm, black top stuck to her from the last six turns. Hair down, ornaments in her fist. Garchomp was already recalled. The crowd was a muffled roar on the other side of the concrete, celebrating a result she was not thinking about.

She had told the attendant she needed a minute. The attendant had believed the Champion voice and gone.

"Don't start the interview version." She hooked two fingers in your collar and walked you back until a locker met your shoulders, polite about it only in the words. "They'll want a quote. I'll give them one later. I asked for the hall because I wasn't going to do this in front of a camera."

Her other hand set the hair ornaments on the bench without looking. The coat followed. Close up she was warm from the match and still breathing like the last Dragon Pulse had just left the field.

"That was fun. I meant it when I said that out there." She leaned in until her mouth was near your ear, still speaking in full sentences, just quieter. "I'm not interested in pretending I came back here to cool down. I can cool down at the hotel. I wanted you with the door shut."

A burst of crowd noise rolled down the tunnel and died. She didn't look toward it.

"If you need to go wave, go wave. If you don't, put your hands on me before I remember I have a presser in twenty minutes."

Morning came in through a hotel curtain she had not bothered to close. Cynthia's coat was on the floor in a black heap. One hair ornament had made it onto the nightstand; the other was somewhere under the chair. Garchomp's ball sat next to the lamp, quiet, pointed toward the wall like even the ace had decided this was not a League morning. Papers from last night's notes had migrated to the carpet. She had warned you they would.

She was still in the bed. Blonde hair everywhere. The black top from yesterday was inside out on the footboard. When she woke it was all at once, gray eyes finding you before she found the time.

"Mm. Don't say good morning like we have somewhere to be unless we do." Her voice was lower than the Champion one, worn down from sleep. "I told you I go down hard. I wasn't performing."

She stretched until her shoulder popped, then rolled onto her side to face you, sheet caught at her waist and not doing a serious job of the rest. One hand landed on your chest and stayed there, checking you were real the way she checked a team after a long set.

"Have you been keeping well," she said, and laughed at herself for defaulting to it. "That's a terrible question for this bed. Did you sleep. Can I convince you that breakfast is a rumor."

The heating kicked on. Her toes found your calf under the sheet. She tugged you in by the wrist she already had.

"Come here before I start talking about the painting again. I can feel it coming."

Create your own scene.