Broken Home

Bui made his was into the housing district of Grassveil Town accompanied by his togepi friend Cirrus. It had been a fair while since Bui had actually came into town—the time he had spent in the nearby dungeons and by the Small Pond had consistently increased over time, and the periods he spent in town—especially at home—grew ever more distant apart.

The reason? His dad. Bui and his dad were never close. The two rarely ever even spoke to each other, even when Bui was much younger and rather dependant on his father for survival. But the last time Bui hung around the house his father had made it pretty clear to Bui that his time in the house was running out.

It was something close to a month ago, Bui had been out at the Pond the whole day. The sun had gone down by the time Bui came in. His father was in the main room, sitting at the table. He didn't look at Bui when he had spoke. "Don't you think it's near time for you to be on your own?" Bui had ignored him for the most part—as far as he was concerned he was pretty much on his own anyway. Even so, Bui had made an effort to stay away from the house most of the time.

Bui returned from the memories as the pair arrived at the same house that he was just visiting in his thoughts. "Here, this one," he said to Cirrus as he stopped in front of it. The exterior was very basic—a single story, three round rooms, one entrance, and a few windows. A small chimney coming out from the back of the centre room.

Bui opened the front door and peered in. Seeing no signs of his dad, he opened the door fully and took the first room in full view. Something had happened here.

The main room was the largest. It had a doorway on either side, each of which immediately connected to a seperate bedroom. On the far back wall, directly opposite the main entrance, was the small, basic fireplace and it's stone chimney. On either side of it were two windows. Below one window was a small, under-stocked woodpile, and under the other was a large basin for storing water. on the two walls adjacent to the entrance were a few shelves, but they were rather bare, with only a few baskets with scare amounts of food and such. In the centre of the room was a decently-sized table and three chairs—and they were the first sign something had gone wrong here.

Two of the four legs of the table were busted, causing the table to slope to the ground. One of the chairs was are broken. On further examination, the window above the woodpile was shattered.

"What... What happened here...?" Bui asked, almost as if asking the room itself.

Cirrus walked alongside Bui as they headed into the district, having accompanied him over from the Small Pond. They had made plans to explore a dungeon together with another teammate and had split from the guy for the time being while Bui when to pick something up. "This is the place then?" she replied when the Buizel stopped outside a house and spoke to her. She had no clue what the house looked like beforehand so it appeared as though he had made a random stop before he said so.

The Togepi took a cursory glance around this main room, only for a gasp to be caught in her throat when she too noticed the disturbances. "Uhh... I have a bad feeling about this..." she replied with a hint of unease.

Bui moved around room slowly, making sure to glance into the adjacent rooms to see if whoever did this was still around. Seeing no one, Bui shrugged. "Yeah, something not good happened here. But it looks like we're the only one's here. My dad's not here."

Bui moved onwards, into the left room—his room. It was noticeably smaller than the centre room. Towards the back was his makeshift bed. On the wall left from the door was a small window—just big enough for Bui to go in and out of, which had been done on a few occasions. On the walls adjacent to the door were two shelves, on which were some sparsely scattered objects; mostly simple, broken wood toys, which were covered in a thick layer of dust.

Bui went over to his bed and dug out from under it a small bag. He placed in in his shoulder bag. He then noticed a small piece of paper to the side of the bed. Unfolding it, he was met with a short string of on text—none of which he could understand. "Hey Cirrus, I've found something," Bui called, holding the paper out for her to take.

The Note:

She kept close behind him as he searched throughout the room, serving as a second pair of eyes while he glanced around. "What could have happened here...?" she asked, more to the room since Bui was just as clueless towards this situation as she was. Cirrus followed Bui into his room, feeling a twinge of pity for the Buizel when she saw the makeshift bed.

The Togepi then took the piece of paper from him once he held it out. Remembering that Bui couldn't read, she looked at the writing. "It's a letter for you. From someone called Jess." She continued by reading the letter's body out loud to him "If you ever bother to come back here, and I'm sure you will for your money, you won't see me around here anymore. I'm leaving. The house is yours. You're welcome." and finished with an uncertain silence. Cirrus had no clue as to how Bui would react to this... Anger? Despair? Relief? Indifference?

"If this Jess is your dad... then it looks like he's moved out. I don't know what to say..." she finally responded with an honest tone.

Bui was surprised. Surprised that his dad would leave him the house—not that his dad would leave with just a note. "Humph, he could have left the place in better condition," Bui scoffed. "Yeah, tha'ts my dad, always there when I need him." The indignation in Bui's voice was very clear.

Bui didn't make to take back the letter—it was nothing to him and Cirrus could do what she'd like with it. "I don't know why he bothered to write a message, he knows I can't read." Bui said as he made his way to the room on the opposite side of the house. The room was just as barren as the other room, but the bed was of a slightly higher quality. "Oh look his room is perfectly fine. Well it's mine now."

Bui thought for a moment about the whole situation, and then turned back to face Cirrus. "Just so you know, I don't have a clue why he left, and I don't care. Actually, I'm glad he did—look I got a whole house out of the deal," Bui said jesturing the the room around him. "Well, minus a window a chair and half a table." It was clear Bui was trying to cover irritation with comedy.

"I guess that's a good way of looking at it." she said, having left the note behind in Bui's old room when she followed him over. "Not the most heartrending farewell note in the world though, I have to say. It sounded like he was in quite the rush." Cirrus continued. She felt a little more comfortable talking about it with him now that he'd voiced his thoughts on the matter. It was good of the guy to even leave a letter for Bui at all, but she felt that she would have done a better job at it.

"Still, a bit of cleaning up and dusting off around this house once you've finished today's exploration could really make it feel more like a true home of your very own. Personal touch and all that. He did say that the house is yours, perhaps you can make use of this?" the Togepi voiced out.

"Yeah, I supposed sleeping in a bed under a roof beats sleeping in a bush in the rain," Bui said. "I'm not much of a fixing-things kinda Pokemon, though, so I'm not promising anything really pretty." Bui paced the room a bit. He was slowly coming to the realisation that he had a place of his own. And then his thoughts turned to Xeno.

"Ya know, Xeno is out of a home. Maybe if we could convince him it's safe to go into town he could stay here with me. I don't think I could sleep well here knowing he'd be sleeping out in the wild somewhere." Bui paused for a moment, and then proceeded in a lower tone, "Wow, these last few days have been... Interesting."

She just nodded after the Buizel finished his reply and watched quietly as he begun pacing, thinking about the bed. She wasn't sure if she could actually sleep in that herself, being much more highly accustomed to a nest. That and she found it a comforting place to think about both her secluded previous home and the loving parent.

This totally random thought was tossed off in time for her to hear Bui continue speaking. "He has nowhere to stay?" First his abusive excuses for parents and now this? Cirrus almost felt as though fates were conspiring to give him grief at every turn. "Yeah, I'd definitely see if that can be done. He needs a roof." she responded firmly.

"Yeah, I'll be sure convince him, even if it takes a while. Speaking of, we should probably get on our way to Pecha Forest—I'd hate to keep Xeno waiting on us too long," Bui said as he began to make his way to the door. Bui was ready to get out of the house—at the moment he didn't want to spend any more time in the place. Maybe later, after the dungeons, but not right now.

"We can talk as we make our way over. Hey, don't you have a place somehwere here in Grassveil? You should show me the place sometime."

She only nodded at Bui's call and hurried over to his side once he begun to make his way towards the door. "Mhm. Wouldn't be good of us to not turn up at all."

Bui had just then asked Cirrus about her showing him her own place in Grassveil. "I probably should. It's quite a bit smaller than this one. I've been living there ever since my mother dropped me off here. The move-in was easy, all I had to my name was this shell, my bag, some bandages, her blessings, and a dream I wanted to chase... I felt a bit homesick at first but I've gotten over that now." she recounted to him, omitting the part about building a nest to sleep in using twigs from Pecha Forest. He'd find out for himself when she decided to show him around.

Walking down the path now, Bui nodded as Cirrus spoke. "So, have you done anything interesting between our first meeting and now?" Bui asked while casually examining the places around him. Bui had walked these paths hundreds of times, and yet he couldn't tell you  who was who or where they lived or what they did.

Bui was curious what Cirrus had been up to. He himself had not been doing a whole lot since Shadowhue Forest; the most interesting thing that had happened was meeting Xeno in Pecha Forest. That was just two days a go, but it felt much longer.

What had she done since the last time they met? "After we had our fun together, I learned that Double Team move you and Xeno saw earlier and then met up with a Skitty from this town's guild when I last explored Pecha Forest to look for herbs. It was a rough trip thanks to a misunderstanding with a Tangela and there was this Exeggcute later on that caught the both of us in a Leech Seed, but I enjoyed the Skitty's company. She was really nice." she recalled. "There was also this Hoothoot in the dungeon that was hurt after a run-in with some Beedrill and I had to treat it." This was pretty much it. A summary of what she did between her two meetings with Bui.

"Some of the herbs I gathered in that trip were then used to help out that Chespin when he tripped up back near the pond and you when Xeno's Sonic Boom knocked you out cold, remember?" Cirrus finished.

"Yeah, I remember—mostly," Bui rubbed his head where the Sonic Boom had impacted him, the memory of the event bringing back a phantom pain for just a moment. "Xeno doesn't give himself enough credit. He can fight—I'm sure of it. He's got the capacity, and the tactical prowess, he's just being held back by his fears, He's definitely got more fighting skill than I have reading ability, that's for sure."

Bui thought back to the moment he had struck that deal with Xeno—back then, at that very moment, Bui had come up with the deal for his own benefit. Had things gone differently, and Xeno had taught Bui a lot more in less time, and earlier, then Bui would probably have skipped out on his end of the deal, taken the knowledge, and ran. But now, he was glad things went the way they had.

"Xeno surprised me back then too. I thought he was going to freak out and run the very moment he took a single hit but he was a lot more capable than I had been expecting. Looking back, I think I might have struggled against him even with that lovely weather giving my Morning Sun move a boost..." she said to Bui while mulling over and envisioning such a scenario.

"One of us should definitely keep a close eye on him while we're exploring the dungeon though. The last thing we want is for him to dive into a bush that has an Exeggcute hiding inside." Cirrus continued as they walked along, her remark being both that of a joke and, knowing Xeno, a potential possibility.

"Heh, yeah..." Bui replied, somewhat distractedly. His thoughts were focused on Xeno. There was something about the other buizel that Bui couldn't quite name, something he had never sensed before in another Pokemon, and he didn't quite understand what that something really even was.

The town was starting to leave view now as the two made their way onward to Pecha Forest. Bui turned to face Cirrus and he walked. "What do you think about Xeno? Like—I dunno, really, what I'm trying to ask here..." Bui scratched the back of his head somewhat awkwardly. "I guess, just, what is your opinion on him? I guess, like, as a person?"