Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Quenched Torch

Chapter 61: A Horse and a Hard Place

"...Sammy? You feeling better?"

Samuel pursed his lips into a mild pout as he sighed, glancing back as his father entered his little room. "No, not really," he frowned. The man took a seat nearby, sighing as he watched his son for a moment.

"Look, Sammy. I know it's disheartening, but sometimes you just have to settle with doing what you can. You saved Wilsa's life back there, don't you think that's enough?" he tried.

"I'm really not in the mood to get called whiny again," Samuel groaned.

"When have I called you whiny? I'm saying you did enough. You don't need to excel at everything; even if you stay in that office your whole life, you'll still be one of the best of us. I'll still be proud," his father said.

"Yeah, well, maybe I could do something other than sit on my ass all day? Wilsa did all the work back there, what am I even doing other than wasting my time? If you wanna be oh-so-proud of me, then let me get my own Pokémon, let me get a real job and find something I actually want to do, just anything other than whatever we're trying to do here?" Samuel snapped.

"Samuel, you—"

"Look, just. I don't want to talk anymore. Not tonight."

Samuel heard his father's breath shake in frustration as a moment of dreadful silence hung between the two. Before long, the man simply got up and started for the door. "Good night, Sammy. I love ya," he said simply.

Samuel didn't respond back.

...this was going nowhere. Obviously no one around him was going to let him get a Pokémon, and it wasn't like he was going to just find one. Most Pokémon that weren't street Normals or feral were uncommon in the urban Southeast, especially around Striaton. The only places he could think of where that might be an exception were the mindbending nightmare that the Dreamyard had become, the hostile forests around the city, and...

...the old trainer routes. Nacrene, even; God only knew what kinds of Pokémon they'd left there. It'd be a long, treacherous hike. Samuel knew he ran a very high risk of dying on his way. But comparing his odds with spending the rest of his life in front of the telegraph...

...he grabbed his backpack and quietly opened the window.

No one would see him leave.

---

Snap, snap. "Kid? Hey, ya good?" Bert asked, leaning across our table to check on me. I flinched and sat back up.

"Yeh, dahd. ...er, B-Bert," I coughed.

Bert chuckled a bit at my slipup there before settling back into his seat. "Don't go dropping on me again, yeah? I'd be real sad," he nodded. "Now like I was sayin', you two're gonna love this, I think Gold cuisine's the best on the entire continent..."

I nodded absently, hanging my head as Bert continued. Was... that really how I'd left things with the people in my life? I knew where this ended— I hadn't forgotten that last memory. The pain, the poison, the struggling to stay awake... then there was just me and that voice; Palkia's, I now knew. And then the next thing I'd known, I was waking up to Rye staring down at me.

My gut told me that the time between my leaving home and that last memory was... only a couple of days...

...

"Ah, bout time," Bert sniffed as the waitress showed back up, tamales still steaming. "You have a bit? This is these two's first time here, you know where we'd go for Guild business?"