How frightfully inconvenient.
It's never particularly pleasant to wake up in a muddy ditch, and this time is no exception. It's bad enough when it happens in the natural course of things – when you're making your way through the wilderness in your capacity as a Trainer – but when it happens after a mostly unremembered but undoubtedly wildly hedonistic Saturday night, it's even worse.
At least, you reflect as you lie there and stare up at the sky, it's sunny. And you don't have a hangover.
Wait. If you don't have a hangover, why do you feel like you're recovering from the effects of getting uproariously drunk?
You sit up in the ditch, and feel a little woozy. Something is most definitely up with your head, but you're not at all certain what it is. It feels a little light – a little fluffy – a little bit like it's made of
crème de menthe.
OK, now you're
really confused. That's not drunkenness. Nor is it a hangover. You have no idea
what that feeling is, actually. It's something new, and you immediately decide that you hate it.
Perhaps your surroundings will afford more clues. You have a look around, but all you manage to ascertain is that you're somewhere on the outskirts of Saffron, where you've been staying for the last few days while you challenge Sabrina's Gym (not that you've got around to that yet; you've been a bit busy with your carousing). Right. So that's one mystery solved. Although, really, it just poses more questions: why on earth are you out here, rather than back in the city where you came from?
You get slowly to your feet, rubbing your head to make sure it's still solid, and pat yourself down. Nothing broken – nothing stolen – no immediately obvious wounds. All right, you haven't been mugged, then. Just to be sure, you double-check your wallet, phone and Poké Balls – all present and correct – and then, marginally more satisfied, stagger off through the suburbs in search of a bus stop. It's a calm and quiet Sunday morning, the sort that's perfect for sleeping in or enjoying a third cup of tea in bed; though you're not a great tea drinker, you'd definitely prefer either of those to walking around at dawn with what feels like ten gallons of muddy water soaking through your clothes.
At this point, you stop thinking about it, because thinking is making your head feel even lighter and fluffier, and you'd much rather it stayed as solid and dense as it was before you did whatever you did last night, thank you very much.
A moment later, you stumble across a bus stop, and catch what looks like the first of the morning buses back to the city centre; even here, in the heart of the sleepless Kantan capital, it looks like most people are at home right now. There are few cars on the streets, and fewer pedestrians afoot; the shops are shut, the office windows are dark and the guards outside the Deep Embassy are snoozing on their feet.
Such happy restfulness makes you, in your current state of mind, extremely jealous and consequently rather angry; you refrain from punching the seat in front of you only because Saffron bus drivers are rather fearsome, and this one will probably throw you under the wheels of his own vehicle if you start having a tantrum. You clench your fists and mutter crossly instead, which doesn't relieve as much stress but which does come without risk of personal violence.
You get off the bus two streets from the Pokémon Centre where you've been staying, wander inside and up to your room, divest yourself of your clothing and sleep. This is not exactly heroic, but it is, in fact, what sane human beings do in this situation. And for now, at least, you are still sane.
Well. As sane as anyone who feels like their head is made of
crème de menthe can be, at any rate.
Three hours later, refreshed, you emerge from slumber, shower, and set off to uncover precisely what happened last night. Your head no longer feels quite as liquid – it's more
nata de coco than
crème de menthe now – but it's still by no means right, and you demand an explanation for its bizarre behaviour.
The first thing to do is ascertain where you were last night. This is easier said than done; you don't have a permanent web of contacts in the city – you're not a native – and there's no one you can reliably ask about your location. However, you figure you might as well ask Nurse Joy. You might have mentioned something in passing.
"Sorry," she says apologetically, smiling. "I don't know. You were probably going over to Streatwick, though."
Well, you could have told her
that, you think darkly. If anyone's going to go out for a night in Saffron, they're going to go to Streatwick. That's where all the bars and nightclubs are, after all.
Actually...
Perhaps someone will have seen you there. You were about to dismiss the idea, but upon consideration it seems like it might be worthwhile. Some of these places are open from dusk til dawn; not all the staff would have left yet, even at this time. You might find someone who could shed some light on the situation.
Onwards, then! Another bus ride, this time to the northern quarter, where Streatwick and Bellford meet; here, on Honey Street, the finest clubs and pubs in Saffron – and probably Kanto, you think, recalling a few choice memories – are to be found. Honey Street at night is a glowing strip of neon and music that burns the night around it into simulated midday, but now, in the morning, it looks rather sad. You see how old and shabby many of the buildings really are; you see the broken bottles in the street, and the bent lamppost from where some drunk Trainer and his Machoke had a punching-hard-stuff contest the night before. You see spills and stains, and puddles of vomit; you see a man's hat and a woman's shoe, lying unheeded on the pavement.
It's all a bit sad, really, and you resolve never to look at a nightclub in daylight again. You almost feel like turning back – but you have detective work to do, damn it, and for a detective a melancholy location is a bonus, not a deterrent. (You class yourself, by the by, as the 1950s hard-boiled private eye sort of detective. Hence your preference for the
noir location.)
You have a wander up and down the street, looking at the various clubs until one seems more familiar than most; here, you stop and squint at the sign. Flesh, says the unlit neon sign. Were you here last night? If so, why? It doesn't look like a friendly sort of place. Not that any of these places look friendly, really – not in the light of day, anyway. They all look like the sort of place that the rats would turn their noses up at.
Still, a vague recollection is a vague recollection, and you knock on the door, hoping someone from last night is in there. You wait a while, and finally a suspicious-looking face appears in the doorway. Aha! You recognise her – a barmaid from last night! You
were here, after all.
You outline your predicament in a few concise words. You were here – something happened – you lost something – you awoke in a ditch. Strange things are afoot. You're doing a little detectivery.
"Detectivery ain't a word," the barmaid notes.
You are forced to concede the point. But, you argue, it ought to be. That isn't the real issue, however. The real issue is whether she saw anything happen to you last night.
"Maybe I did," she says. "What's it worth?"
Is she after money? You shake your head and sigh sorrowfully. You
had hoped you could resolve this without resorting to such base lucre.
"You ain't being witty and charming, you know," the barmaid tells you bluntly. "You're being pretentious."
Ouch. That one hurt – right in the pride. You wince, and ask her what her price is.
"Twenty dollars," she says.
That won't leave you enough for the bus ride back home, you protest. This isn't true, but you don't want to pay her twenty dollars and it seems as good an excuse as any.
Unfortunately, she has a heart of stone, and is entirely unmoved.
"Tough," she said. "Twenty, or nothing."
You sigh and pay her. In doing so, you inadvertently reveal that you have in fact
more than twenty dollars in your wallet. The barmaid's sneer – already fairly firmly entrenched on her lips – deepens.
"You were drinking with a devil," she tells you. "Tall, thin guy. Orange eyes. Little horns."
A devil, eh? Simultaneously Kanto's most charming and most rapacious denizens. They probably wouldn't be tolerated if it wasn't for the strong military position that diplomatic relations with Hell lend to the nation. And they are excellent conversationalists. Fantastic guests at parties. They have this little trick they can do with a lighter flame that goes down a storm, and they never run out of jokes.
It's a pity about the way they prey on humankind and all, but it seems like a small price to pay for such winning company.
Did she catch the devil's name, at all? You're not really hoping she did – it's unlikely that the devil even gave you his name; they tend, for reasons known only to themselves, to make themselves known solely by title – but it's worth a shot.
"I think he called himself the Lizard," she says thoughtfully.
The Lizard? Well, that's...
interesting, to say the least. You suppose there must come a point where all the regular titles – Duke, Earl, Countess – have been taken up and the devils have to resort to more unusual ones, but you didn't really know that they got quite so... odd.
Does the barmaid have any idea what you were talking about? No, she replies, she doesn't. But he did get up and leave abruptly halfway through the evening.
And shortly afterwards you danced out the door screaming about pigmen. Which is why she happens to remember you.
There is a pause.
Ah, you say. Is there anything else?
"No," she replies. "Now, I've been on my feet for fifteen hours and I've still got work to do, so sod off."
With that, she shuts the door in your face, and, dispirited, you trudge off and sit on a nearby bench to think.
Why would you have been talking to a devil? That's easily explained; they're excellent company. But why would you have suddenly lost your mind afterwards?
That, too, is easily explained. Only you're not too keen to admit the real reason to yourself.
There is a little velvet bag in your pocket containing fifteen sovereigns of warm Hadean gold. Sovereigns worth, in total, fully six hundred and twelve Kantan dollars.
You must have sold something to him.
Not your soul – good grief, no! – you'd have to have been
really drunk to be talked into parting with that, and in any case your continuing ability to feel emotions would seem to confirm you still have it. But you must have sold him something... Something whose removal would account for the empty space in your head, and for your brief period of lunacy the night before.
What on earth could it have been?
Choose wisely:
You sold your imagination to the devil. But that means you can no longer write angsty poetry about Cubone and misty graveyards and the rainy miasma of your soul! You must retrieve it at once!
You sold your love for Pokémon Training to the devil. How will you ever defeat Sabrina if you don't care about the fight? You must find a way to get it back!
You sold your ability to get drunk to the devil. A teetotal life? Unthinkable! There must be a way to recover it!
You sold your childhood memories to the devil. You cannot remember your mother's face... You will not rest until you can recall it!