The next morning was chock-full of more apologies, explanations of the forest adventure, and plenty of ice cream for Phanpy. Quinn also spent more time than he ever had before dressing his many wounds with antiseptics and thick bandages. With the help of Phanpy, Quinn also listed the pros and cons of doing the paternity test on a sheet of paper, with both of them not seeing many cons — except the potential for extreme awkwardness. The pros list filled up until it reached the bottom of the page and he knew he couldn’t ignore the letters.
Quinn called Amanda to discuss next steps. Amanda, while cordial, set clear expectations that she would not provide any more information until a paternity test could verify the relationship. If the results came back positive, then Quinn would come out to Havenwood for a meeting between him, Mabel, and Amanda to answer all questions and to distribute Paul’s estate.
The paternity test would take around five days to complete and so Amanda, knowing Mabel’s schedule, tentatively planned the meeting eight days from then at Mabel’s house in West Havenwood. Amanda gave Quinn the location of the lab for the test and asked him to complete the test that day. Amanda also purchased a refundable round-trip train ticket for Quinn and Phanpy on that Sunday of the planned meeting with Mabel.
Quinn couldn’t bear the thought of trying to walk across town to the medical lab and so he splurged on a cab. But the cab didn’t save him from three flights of stairs. Phanpy had forgiven Quinn, but that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy watching Quinn suffer. Phanpy kept his head high and didn’t react to Quinn’s moans and grunts as they made their way to the lab.
Giving the blood for the test was pretty straightforward, but Quinn had to explain what the injuries were from before they would allow him to give blood. The nurse must have suspected Quinn wasn’t being completely honest and handed him a pamphlet about escaping abusive relationships on his way out. He couldn’t blame the nurse — a long shower could clean off the dirt, not hide the bruises and scrapes.
Quinn and Phanpy spent the rest of the weekend trying to relax while watching the end of the Vorunda Open.
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With the waiting game in full effect, the rest of the week crawled at an agonizing pace. Besides Phanpy, Quinn didn’t feel close enough with anybody to talk about these heavy topics. He used to have a close-knit friend group in high school, but they'd drifted apart over the years as everyone except Quinn went to college. Now the deepest they ever got was sending funny videos to each other in a group chat, and calling each other out when their favorite teams lost a big game. Ironically, Quinn would be getting closer to a lot of them if he made the trip to Havenwood because most of his graduating class went to Havenwood State.
The only decent distraction came when Quinn and Phanpy ran into Sofia and Jenny again on the walking path home. This time Sofia did have her dad’s Slowpoke with her, and the two Pokemon hit it off right away. The spur-of-the-moment play date lasted over an hour and ultimately ended in a competition between Phanpy and Slowpoke to see who could hit a soda can off their trainer’s head with a [Water Gun]. Round after round, each Pokemon hit their marks with deadly precision, resulting in both Sofia and Quinn needing to back away to make it harder. Eventually, at around 25 yards, Slowpoke shot a little too high and Sofia’s soda can stood still. Phanpy, knowing he just had to hit at 25 yards to win, gathered the water in his trunk and lined up his shot. But as he released the water, his vision got fuzzy and his trunk wobbled. Phanpy’s [Water Gun] sailed through the air and hit Quinn right in the face.
Quinn wiped the water away from his eyes to see Phanpy huffing and puffing as he stomped around Slowpoke, Jenny, and Sofia who were all laughing on the ground. Quinn found out that Sofia had told Slowpoke to use [Confusion] on Phanpy to make him miss. Even though Quinn was the victim of the crime, he couldn’t help but laugh with everyone at how mad Phanpy was.
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On Thursday, with his limp gone and his scrapes scabbed over, Quinn got a call from Amanda. She informed him that the test confirmed what he and Mabel suspected. While the waiting was killing Quinn, he agreed with Amanda that it would be best to ask all questions with Mabel present on Sunday in West Havenwood.
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Quinn stood on the train platform tapping his foot as he again looked west down the tracks to see if anything was coming. Quinn and Phanpy couldn’t sleep well the night before and Quinn figured that he might as well be nervous at the train station instead of at his apartment. He had convinced Phanpy to leave an hour early but the walk to the train station had only taken 20 minutes. They had yet to see a train on either side of the track and it was five minutes past the departure time. Quinn pulled out his phone to check the train schedule for the fourth time when he heard Phanpy squeal out his best impression of a steam whistle.
About a quarter mile away, a high-speed train came into view. From this distance, Quinn couldn’t see the details of the front of the train but knew it had the face of a Dodrio painted on it. The Dodrio Express was known to have the head of a Dodrio painted on the front of every one of its trains. The nose of the train was painted as if it were the beak, the eyes being windows that the conductor looked out of, and two black feathers ran from the top of the head up onto the top of the train. As the train got closer, Quinn could see more and more of the train which was painted almost entirely sky blue. On the side of the engine car, Quinn could see the side profile of a second Dodrio head which he knew mirrored the other side of the car. Every car after that had a silhouette of a Dodrio painted on the side as if it were running along.
When the train came to a stop, Quinn boarded the second passenger car and saw it was empty except for a woman and her Stufful finding some seats on the other end of the car. The train car was laid in clusters of four seats facing each other. Tickets didn’t come with seat assignments so Quinn just chose to sit down in the closest cluster. He was about to sit in the window seat facing the front of the train, but in a flash, Phanpy went through his legs, jumped off the side of the wall, and plopped in Quinn’s targeted seat.
“Fine, but just because you need to stand up on your tiny legs to look outside,” Quinn relented.
Quinn chose the seat next to Phanpy — partially because he didn’t want to get sick sitting backward and partially because when Phanpy fell asleep he tended to sprawl and Quinn didn’t want someone else to have to deal with that.
Quinn looked up in front of him to see a television screen above the doorway he'd just walked through. The majority of the television showed an advertisement for Vorunda Pokemon centers. The commercial showcased a cartoon nurse with pink hair pushing a bloodied Machoke into the lobby of a Pokemon center on a gurney calling out for emergency help. Right away, several other nurses with pink hair burst out of other doors in the lobby with their own individual Chanseys and rushed to the side of the Machoke. A cartoonish cloud appeared, covering the action, and then faded away to show a perfectly healthy Machoke standing and flexing on the gurney. The pink-haired nurses were the brand mascot for all Pokemon centers in the Vorunda Region and they always had a Chansey as a partner. The television was muted, but Quinn could still hear the Pokemon center slogan and jingle go off in his head: “Let Nurse Joy bring back your joy!”
Quinn’s eyes then moved to the bottom of the screen which had a graphic listing the train number and the next 10 stops on the route. Havenwood wasn’t listed so Quinn gave into his paranoia and checked his phone again.
After confirming he was on the right train, he put his phone in his purse and set it on his lap, trying to get comfortable. The train wasn’t what he would call a bullet train, but it had to be going over 100 miles per hour. The countryside was dense with tall trees and that made it impossible to see anything past 50 yards from the tracks. The speed prevented Quinn from getting a good look at any Pokemon that might be in the trees. But that didn’t stop Phanpy from snorting and pointing his trunk periodically out the window to try and get Quinn to look at something notable. Phanpy must have had way better eyesight than Quinn because Phanpy’s pointing didn’t help him see.
Before the next stop, the ticket inspector entered the train. “Ticket, please. Also, your Phanpy will either need to go in their Pokeball or sit on your lap if all the seats fill up. Will that be a problem?”
Quinn handed him his ticket. “Of course not.”
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The ticket inspector quickly scanned Quinn’s ticket and handed it back as the scanner dinged and flashed green. With the ticket inspector moving on, Quinn settled in for the hour-and-a-half ride to Havenwood.
Phanpy eventually got bored of the treeline and laid down with his head on Quinn’s left leg, making sure to tilt his hard hat forward so it covered his eyes. Within a couple of minutes, Phanpy’s breathing got deeper and more steady. Even though Quinn couldn’t hear the signature snoring over the rumbling of the train, he knew Phanpy was out.
Not wanting to drain his phone battery, Quinn tried to keep himself from thinking about what awaited him in Havenwood by alternating his attention between blurred trees to his left and the constant stream of commercials above him. Each stop offered further distractions with a break in the tree line to present small farm towns and new passengers joining the train car. The ticket inspector would make his rounds at every other stop, making sure to check everyone’s ticket.
The train car was about 40% full by the time it pulled into the Silverfall station. Silverfall was around the same size as Ashford and was known for the large silver mine that the city was founded around, although Quinn was more familiar with Silverfall because of Silverfall High School. Silverfall High was Ashford High’s biggest rival, and the diner he worked at would close up shop during the rivalry games. Not wanting those rare nights off to go to waste, Quinn would always attend the games and cheer as loud as anyone else.
As soon as the train came to a complete stop, the door in front of Quinn quickly opened and a woman beelined it to the window seat across from Phanpy. After taking the seat, she took a moment to sit up and scan the rest of the train car.
Quinn was accustomed to having all people avoid him due to his size and his resting face that screamed: “Back off.” If it weren’t for Phanpy softening his image, Quinn was sure that he'd be the town leper. So he was very surprised to see someone, especially a woman, take a seat across from him when the majority of the train was open. So surprised by the quickness of the situation, Quinn scanned her while she scanned the train car.
Quinn guessed that the woman was in her mid-twenties and stood at around 5’ 7”. She had a darker skin tone that was more common in the south of Vorunda. Her hair consisted of tight ringlets that poofed out a couple of inches from the top and side of her head but weren’t long enough to reach her shoulders. She used a minimalist style of makeup that highlighted her vibrant almost copper-colored eyes. She wore a forest green bomber jacket with a plain white shirt. Between her jacket and her shirt, she had a fanny pack that crossed her torso from the right shoulder to her left side. She finished her ensemble off with dark denim jeans and black combat boots.
Her beauty had tempted Quinn into looking at her longer than he should have. “Do you need something?” the woman rhetorically asked as she got Quinn’s attention with a glare.
Quinn shifted in his seat and mumbled out, “Oh. I… No. Um… Sorry.” He kept her gaze for only a second before pulling out his phone like it was a life preserver.
Phanpy had been woken up by his pillow shifting and he started to get his bearings, catching his hard hat before it fell off his head. Quinn could see Phanpy waking up in his peripheral vision but didn’t dare look up at the woman who probably thought he was a pervert. Nobody would call Quinn a womanizer, but he never had a problem acting normal around a pretty girl. He had seen his mom put up with a lot of sleazy guys growing up and the last thing he ever wanted to do was make a woman uncomfortable. Quinn scrolled through his social media feed with his finger but didn’t register anything that he was seeing. He was too wrapped up in reliving the embarrassing situation and debating whether or not he should move seats.
Before he could decide, the woman was back out of her seat and out the same door she'd entered. Soon after she'd left, he heard the ticket inspector behind him asking the new passengers for their tickets. Connecting the dots, Quinn understood why the woman was so quick to sit next to a brute like him. The seat gave her a great lookout point to see the inspector coming and being so close to the door gave her a quick getaway.
The ticket inspector went through the cabin scanning tickets, eventually going through the same door that the woman had. A couple of minutes passed and the next person to open the door in front of Quinn was the ticket inspector, followed by the woman who stayed behind at a safe distance. The woman reclaimed the window seat she was previously sitting in. Quinn rationalized that his silence could be some sort of pitiful recompense so he acted as if nothing ever happened.
Having been too sleepy to catch the cat-and-mouse game, Phanpy stretched and looked up to see the woman sitting across from him. Phanpy, having no reason not to stare, assessed the woman to see if he could get her to give him some scratches. He moved around in his seat and flapped his ears underneath his hard hat, but the woman only had eyes for the window and eventually, Phanpy gave up on getting her attention. She was still more interesting than Quinn or repeating commercials, so he continued to watch her. That's when Phanpy noticed something that Quinn had missed. On her fanny pack strap, underneath the right side of her jacket, were four miniature Pokeballs.
Phanpy, wanting to share his discovery, put his front two legs on Quinn’s left leg and proceeded to tap him with his trunk. Quinn looked at Phanpy, who stopped the tapping and pointed his trunk at the woman. Knowing that Phanpy hadn’t been awake to experience any secondhand embarrassment, Quinn shook his head no and went back to his phone. Phanpy didn’t give up though and proceeded to keep tapping him.
When Phanpy started to get more bold, Quinn relented and chanced a glance to avoid an outburst. Quinn saw in his short glance that the woman was looking almost perpendicular out the window and her hair covered any part of her face he would have been able to see. He then looked back at Phanpy and shrugged his shoulders to question what was so important. Phanpy then used his trunk to trace a line across Quinn’s chest that matched where the woman’s fanny pack hung. With some more direction, Quinn focused on the fanny pack and noticed the four Pokeballs.
While having Pokemon was common, having Pokeballs was not. The Pokeball was a technological marvel in modern society. Years of learning and development had created a device that could be used to capture wild Pokemon who didn't want to be tamed, teleport a Pokemon from 50 yards away, and put a Pokemon in a stasis where all their biological needs are paused. These features and others made Pokeballs very useful tools, but they also had the potential for disaster. If a Pokeball broke with a Pokemon inside, the Pokemon was more likely to die than live. For that reason, Pokeballs were highly regulated by the government to meet high-quality standards. One Pokeball would cost Quinn half a month's salary, so people avoided using them when they could.
One profession that couldn’t avoid using Pokeballs was a Pokemon trainer. Pokeballs allowed trainers to travel with large teams and catch strong wild Pokemon, which was paramount to the life of a trainer. Seeing four Pokeballs on one person screamed Pokemon trainer — and these Pokeballs all had the feature that let them shrink down to golfball size, indicating that she was serious about training.
“You know that I can see you staring at me again, right?” The woman shocked both Quinn and Phanpy with a simple question.
Quinn’s eyes went wide as he looked up at her still-covered face as she tapped on the window in front of her. Quinn looked at where she tapped and could see a faint reflection of her face in the window. “Umm… Oh. Phanpy was… I was…” Quinn tried to explain but couldn’t put together a sentence. Phanpy, seeing Quinn’s tan face turn into a tomato, started to chuckle to himself.
Quinn half covered, half rubbed his face with his left hand, and accepted defeat “No, I didn’t know you could see me through the reflection.” The woman didn’t respond as he stared at the ceiling, wondering if he could survive jumping out of a speeding train.
In an honest attempt to make her feel a little less uncomfortable about his staring, he said, “Umm, just so you know, I wasn’t looking at your, umm… chest. I was looking at your fanny pack.”
“Oh yay, I'm so glad I'm sitting next to a thief and not a perv,” the woman sarcastically quipped while finally turning her face to look at Quinn.
Quinn was surprised to see that her earlier glare had been replaced by a raised eyebrow. Emboldened by seeing that she wasn’t disgusted when she had every right to be, he responded, “Hey now, your fanny pack is pretty neat and pulls your outfit together, but I already have my awesome purse, and wearing two bags is a fashion faux pas that even I know about.” He lightly slapped his purse in hopes that she'd take the bait.
The woman scrunched her eyebrows while looking down at Quinn’s lap and then back up to his face. She paused, debating how to respond, ultimately saying, “Purse? Don’t you mean shoulder bag or satchel?”
Quinn smiled, knowing that he had steered the conversation to something he was comfortable with. “No, it's a purse. Here, let me give you a better view.” Quinn lifted his purse to showcase it as a salesman would. “See, it has a flap that covers the main container and clips in with a magnetic clasp. When I open up the flap you can see that smaller pockets line the inside of the main opening and that's where I keep all my junk. The shoulder strap is connected to both ends of the purse and can’t be removed,” Quinn continued as he hit his groove. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but satchels have pockets on the outside, shoulder straps that can easily be removed, a handle on the top of the flap, and buckles to keep it from opening when you carry it by the handle. I guess you could call it a shoulder bag, but that just seems like a more generic term for the larger family of bags,” Quinn finished, struggling to keep his smile down.
The woman, catching onto Quinn’s schtick, matched his smile and responded, “Oh, my mistake, I must have not seen it correctly in this lighting. That of course is a purse and definitely not a bag that a man would carry,” ending her sentence with a chuckle.
Relief washed over Quinn for being able to salvage the situation. “Au contraire, madame. Purses are no respecter of gender. They simply exist to effectively hold junk and look good doing it. It isn't their fault that men don’t like briefcases anymore but don’t want to call their purses ‘purses.’” Quinn feigned offense and spoke in a voice that he imagined was used in high society.
Matching the posh tone, the woman said, “My apologies to you and your purse, monsieur,” with a smile and sparkle in her eye.
“Don't fret, I'm a forgiving man. But it would be easier to forgive if I knew your name. Mine is Quinn,” he said, hoping that he could stick the landing.
Not missing a beat, she responded with a smirk, “And mine is Harper.”
Quinn grinned back at Harper until he noticed Phanpy giving him a big wink of approval.