Chapter Text
Flint can’t find Cynthia
Flint was about to tear his damn hair out by the fist fulls.
Flint is planning on using the castle's rarely used speaker coms and blasting an air horn into the mic so he could find Sinnoh’s missing Champion.
That is, until he finally gathered the courage to knock on her bedroom door. The one place he refused to look as Cynthia was so protective over her space and had chewed multiple snooping people’s heads off over it. It turned out to be exactly where Cynthia was hiding.
Along with her garchomp, who was awake but wasn’t growling at Flint.
Yet.
He inched into the room. Keeping a wary eye on the very large and scaring dragon type who kept an eye on him in return. He never really saw Cynthia’s room before, only being in it a few odd times during the first few years when he started as her Elite Four at the ripe age of thirteen. When she was about to reach her twentieth undefeated year as a Champion, she was more of a guardian figure to Flint then. Now she’s more of like an unreachable object that he can’t properly talk to anymore. Lest it be akward as fuck.
The walls were nearly covered wall to wall in everything from battle plans, shelves with nicknacks, shelves with rocks and crystals, shelves with books, pictures of her dig sights, pictures of her pokemon and friends, pictures of caves and what looks like underground streams. Book shelves filled with old scrolls and books bulging with broken pages. Fanart truly shines in this section of her room. Stacks of fanart of Cynthia herself, her pokemon, and her with either other trainers or the gym leaders and elite four. It was sweet that she kept some of all her fan mail. Getting bags and bags of it nearly everyday.
Truly filled wall to fucking wall.
The double diamond patterned doors to her bathroom were wide open. Steam still slowly trickled out of the room, no doubt that it must have been a sauna whenever Cynthia must have been in there. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well. Cynthia had been going out during rainstorms to a few dig sights that had revealed different types of ancient pokèballs. She had gushed about them probably being from the Hisui years with how ancient and whatnot about the newfound artifacts. Going against the wishes of both Bertha and Lucian after they had caught the Champion blacking out in the kitchen not too long ago. Flint has also been buried under all the International League employee and tax paperwork as the Sinnoh’s league’s main accounting during the time that he hadn’t heard the news until today.
That was somehow after the fact that she suddenly shot up from the dinner table when everyone but Flint was there before bolting out into one of Sinnoh’s worst seasonal thunderstorms to date. Without a proper coat, in her sandals and socks, with no gloves or scarf to be seen. She hadn’t returned until late that night or… really early this morning. When everyone had given up waiting her out because they sure as hell was not going to go chasing after her. She’s made of much tougher stuff than the four of them. She does it so often anyway.
Flint really does mean both the bolting from dinner, worrying little amount of proper clothing for panicked situations and very late night and early morning arrivals.
Garchomp letting Flint get so close to Cynthia to begin with telling news enough for him. The dragon had a dislike for the red-head since the beginning. It wasn’t anything dangerous, more like mild annoyance in the overgrown Salazzle. Flint felt the same towards the de-fluffed Beartic.
Mutual annoyance and even more mutual acknowledgement not to fuck with each other. It had also taken them both years to get to this barely silently acknowledged agreement and it’s only been two and a half months old.
What was the most ridiculous thing about the room was the giant circle bed that has a dark green princess curtain surrounding it. Warm yet dim fairy lights lit up the room and ceiling, casting such a nice dark glow that it didn’t strain Flint's eyes like every other damn light in this ancient unforsakable castle. The curtain covering both sides to block out the light and the middle portion was tied low enough it blocked the headboard of the bed and then some before letting the light spill in.
Cynthia is buried under a thick mountain of blankets that it looked painfully to be under them all. Pillows galore spilling out from the ends but thankfully didn’t distort any light into the upper half. The only thing he can see is her shiny thick golden hair sprawled out from where she must be laying.
It soon came to Flint's realization that, if he goes back and tells Bertha what he found without trying to wake Cynthia up to at least see if she was alive, the other elite members will skin him alive before charging in here. Which could send the possessive scaly fuck, not even three feet away from him, into a rampage. Garchomp has done it more times than Flint has won battles in his entire trainer career and ninety percent of the time Garchomp had a damn good reason too.
Team Galactic was never above hiring assassins and trained spies.
“Can I wake her?” Flint didn’t take his eyes of the blond hair and large lump in the pillows, though he did tilt his head down to the laying dragon.
The grumbling snarl was a clear answer of you fuck of right now … but Bertha is much more scarier.
“Dude, please!” Flint hissed. Finally turned to stare pleadingly at quivering thin slits of bloodlust. “Bertha will have my ass then will come for your hide next. You know she sees Cynthia as her grandchild.”
Flint knew he won the fight when, after a very long moment, Garchomp heaved the heaviest and longest sigh Flints ever witnessed. Smoke billowing out of the dragon's nostrils for the same amount of time. Tucking his head away from Flint and huffing one more breath.
“Cynthia.” Flint called softly. Usually the others didn’t bother saying anything, just a slight nudge could wake Cynthia up right away. Though no doubt she would be out of it more at this point.
When she gets hit with any type of sickness, Cynthia is down and out of count for a while.
“Hey, cynthia.” He tries again. Even reaching out and gently tapping some covers. Hopefully tapping a foot or calf over the thick blanket. “Yo, Cynthia. Please wake up.”
No response.
Not even a grumble .
“Girly pop,” now Flint was starting to panic. Even when sick Cynthia wasn’t this bad. The desperation started to strengthen with every word.“Homa-licous, boda-licous, most fantastic woman ever on this planet. Please don’t let Bertha kill me. Unlike you and your crazy ass stunts, I’d like to actually live life to my fifties. If possible, after all. So like please wake the fuck up-“
“Dude!” Cynthia’s head finally popped up enough for flint to, y’know, actually see her fucking face. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” Flint felt like his sanity was snapping. “What am I doing!? I was trying to make sure that you-that… that…”
Flint knew Cynthia was in bed, given that he was literally about to lose his shit on her, what he wasn’t expecting was everyone else in the bed popping their heads out.
Two haggard looking twenty year olds were first, coming up at the same time and looking achingly familiar. One girl tucked back to back with Cynthia in bed and didn’t even look like her eyes were open. A boy was tucked up chest to chest with her and looked on the verge of crying. An equally haggard looking Pikachu popped their head out of the pile of pillows in the front. The most bloodthirsty Piplup Flit has ever seen popped its head out next.
What worried Flint the most was the strange little white and blue Zorua lookalike. This one just had blue mist coming off of it.
“No.” Flint didn’t even have to consider anything anymore besides the fact that it’s just too much here.
Just … too much.
“I’m not resigning but I’m going back to my room and getting black out wasted because-“ he waved at everyone in the bed. “-no.”
He turned around, stuffed one hand in his pocket and waving the other over his shoulder. “Good night.”
“Good night, Flint!” Two voices that Flint personally knew chimed behind him and Flint has never slammed a door so hard in his life and never ran as hard too.
That’s what happens when a Garchomp breaks the tentative truth.