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Neither Lillie nor Gladion had set foot in a carnival before. Now that they were there, it was a little overwhelming.
They were surrounded by colorful booths and people trying to sell them whatever it was they were offering. There was tons of food they’d never heard of, let alone tried, walls of stuffed Pokémon hanging among colorful lights above different games, and music competing with the noise of the masses who were enjoying the festivities.
At first the siblings had just wandered among the screaming children and rides neither was quite willing to get on. Eventually they decided to try some of the carnival food they had apparently been missing out on.
It took passing many stalls selling fried food a bit too similar to malasada, (which they were thoroughly sick of thanks to Hau), cold treats that were too familiar, greasy burgers and hot dogs, and the horrors of deep fried butter, before they finally found something they deemed acceptable.
So it was that they walked the rows of booths, astonished at how fast cotton candy disintegrates as you eat it. They had bought a bag to split, alongside candied apples, which had led to teasing Lillie as she said she’d rather eat it pre-cut out of a bowl.
They paused as Gladion threw away their trash. When he returned, Lillie was distracted by one of the displays surrounding them.
“We should try some of the games!” She pointed to a stall where a very frustrated kid was failing to knock over a stack of bottles.
“Lillie, you know those things are rigged, right?” Gladion asked, raising an eyebrow.
“They’re not rigged, Gladion. They wouldn’t let them run them if they were rigged,” Lillie said firmly, crossing her arms.
Gladion rolled his eyes. They kid missed the bottles again.
“Yes, they are rigged. Have you seen anyone actually win one today?”
“Well, no,” she admitted, “but I haven’t really been paying attention.”
“You don’t need to pay attention to know these games are impossible.”
Gladion tried to start walking again, but Lillie held her ground.
“Why would anyone make a game that’s impossible?” She asked him. It was such a naïve question, he couldn’t believe it had come from Lillie.
“Money.” He felt like he shouldn’t even have to say it.
“You think everyone here is just trying to cheat people?” She said accusatorily.
Gladion shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Well I believe in the good of humanity,” Lillie said, gesturing vaguely to the surrounding venders, “and I don’t think they’re rigged.”
“And I believe in the greed of humanity,” Gladion countered, “and know they are.”
“Then why don’t we try some and see?” Lillie challenged. She turned and started walking to one at random.
“Fine with me.” Gladion said, following her. “It’s the president’s money.”
Lillie led them over to the booth the child had been failing at moments ago, and fished through her bag to buy a set of balls.
“Easy winnings! Knock down the bottles, win a prize!” The carnie was prattling to the general populous. He was quickly distracted by Lillie’s money, as Gladion questioned him.
“Knock them down, or knock them off the table?”
“A smart guy, eh?” The carnie asked, handing Lillie three balls. “Off the table.”
“Do you get all your balls, or one throw?” Gladion pressed. This time it was Lillie’s turn to be exasperated.
“All in one,” The carnie conceded.
“Alright!” Lillie exclaimed. She wound up and threw her first ball.
It was a spectacular miss.
She tried again, and managed to hit the top bottle, but left the bottom two on the table.
She turned and handed the last one to Gladion, “Why don’t you try? You’re the trainer.”
He couldn’t argue with his further experience in throwing. He took the ball, ignoring the carnie’s comments on his theoretical skills.
He managed to knock off two of the three, but the third stayed in place.
“Ooh, some trainer!” The carnie jeered. “Whaddaya got, kid? A slowpoke? C’mon, give it another shot if you’re so good.”
Gladion glared at him, and turned to Lillie, who was looking at him expectantly, well aware of his throwing skills.
“He’s just trying to bait me into spending more money.”
He whispered it, but Lillie turned to the carnie and said, full volume, “Excuse me, sir, my brother doesn’t think it’s possible to win your game.”
“Course it is!” The carnie exclaimed, giving Gladion a knowing look. “He’s just tryin’ to save face in front of his little sis. Here, lemme show ya.”
He restacked the bottles, picked up one of the balls they had used, and knocked all three down with a dead center throw.
The carnie turned expectantly to Gladion, “And I’m no trainer. Think you can do better, kid?”
Unfortunately for the carnie, Gladion had been in Team Skull, and become the king of not rising to the pointless challenges of idiots.
He walked away, trusting Lillie would follow. She did, catching up to him a short ways away.
“See? You can win that game,” She said pointedly.
“He did something to it, I just don’t know what,” Gladion insisted.
“Or you’re just mad that you lost.”
“At least I don’t want to eat my candy apple with a fork.”
“I said cut up! Not with a fork!”
Their playful banter continued as they walked past a basketball stand, and Gladion paused. Lillie looked at him confused, and he guided her to stand where he was.
“Look, those hoops don’t look right,” He pointed to them, just as someone’s throw bounced off the backboard.
“They do look a little strange,” Lillie conceded. “But we really don’t know anything about basketball.”
Gladion didn’t care enough to keep up the argument, so they kept walking, eventually coming across a rickety old test of strength.
“Step right up and ring the bell! Only the strongest have what it takes! Hey, little lady, don’t you want your brother to win you a prize?”
The carnie had singled them out, and Lillie looked at him in frustration, then determination.
“No, I don’t,” She said, hands on her hips, “I’m going to win one myself!”
While the man had irritated him too, and he was glad to see her calling him out, Gladion didn’t believe she had a chance in the world of winning. It was less a doubt of Lillie’s strength than of the carnie’s honesty.
He watched carefully as she paid for her swings and took the provided hammer. After a few tries she was hitting the pad dead-center with all her strength, but the weight rose to roughly the same spot every time.
Gladion watched as Lillie, getting progressively more frustrated while the carnie continued to tease her, egging her on, asking if she needed her big brother’s help, paid for another swing.
Taking advantage of their distraction, he began to inspect the set up.
Walking around the back of the structure, he saw the wire the weight was on led out the back of it, and appeared to tether the whole setup to the ground. Seeing her try again from another angle, he noticed how slack the wire the weight traveled on was.
He watched as Lillie paid for another round, and, making sure no one was paying attention to him, leaned against the wire, tightening it.
Her next try she rang the bell, much to the surprise of both her, and the carnie.
“I did it? I did it!” She cried in excitement.
“Yeah, you did.” Gladion joined them before anyone could see him near the wires.
A brief exchange netted Lillie a cheap stuffed Teddiursa, and she was still glowing with pride as they moved on.
“See, that game wasn’t rigged!”
It was the one game he had proved was, but he didn’t have the heart to correct her.
They moved on down the rows of games, until Lillie stopped them at another stall.
“This one’s using actual Poké Balls!” She said, pointing to it. “It has to be fair.”
“Get a ball in the milk jug, win a prize! Easy pickings for any trainer worth their Z-Ring!”
Gladion noted that bit of banter came as the carnie laid eyes on him. He paid and was given a few of what the carnie was claiming were Poké Balls.
While he didn’t doubt they were once Poké Balls, they were incredibly light, and appeared to have been glued shut. Clearly, they had been gutted, and were only husks incapable of holding anything.
He showed this to Lillie, handing her one.
“Okay, maybe they’re not regular Poké Balls,” She said slowly, “but the point of the game is to get a ball in the bottle, not that they’re Poké Balls.”
“That doesn’t mean trainers used to the weight of them aren’t going to screw up by force of habit,” Gladion pointed out. He aimed for the jug, striving not to be one of those trainers.
Large stuffed Pokémon hung annoyingly low above it, getting in the way of his shots. Still, after several attempts he managed to get one in, only to win a cheap pair of sunglasses.
If nothing else, Lillie was amused as she talked him into putting them on, and he ended up wearing them on his head like Guzma. There was something strangely fun about mocking his former boss with terrible plastic sunglasses.
A brief stop at a pop the balloon game where neither was good enough at darts to tell how well it was set up, and Lillie had a pair of her own. As they walked off she entertained them with an impression of their mother’s reaction if she found out the two had been wearing them.
They slowed a short while later, seeing another new game.
“That looks hard,” Lillie said, as the two came to the back of the group playing it.
“It looks impossible,” Gladion corrected. “Or at least unlikely.”
They watched as a few children tried to throw small plastic rings and land them onto glass soda bottle necks. The sheer number of bottles arranged on the table gave the game the impression of being much easier than it was.
“You want to try?” Gladion asked. Lillie did, and the pair approached the Carnie and bought a huge handful of rings.
They took turns, since someone had to hold their prizes. Lillie went first, and was frustrated as all of her rings bounced off. None came remotely close.
Next was Gladion’s turn, and his technique was much better. He threw them with skill, coming close, but never landing them.
“You were really good at that game!” Lillie commented as they walked away.
“I throw a lot of disks.” In a weird way, Gladion was pleased to see his skills with Silvally coming to play in some other aspect of life, pointless as it may be.
The day wore on, and by the end of it they had tried nearly every game in the carnival. They were just about to leave, when a final game caught their attention.
“Catch yourself a Magikarp! Get your ball in the bowl, take home a Magikarp!”
The booth was populated by excited small children, and parents who absolutely did not want to be taking home any Magikarp. There were likely more of them earlier in the day, but now it seemed as if it was just the few remaining parents struggling to get their kids home as they begged for one more game.
“The Magikarp don’t look very happy, do they?” Lillie said, looking at them sadly.
“They spend all day in tiny bowls in the sun, as kids try to throw balls at them,” Gladion said, arms crossed. “It doesn’t sound like a good life.”
“Then why don’t we do something about it?”
Before Gladion could ask what she was doing, Lillie had approached the stand, and pulled out a stack of Lusamine’s money. She exchanged them for real Poké Balls this time, and turned to Gladion with a smile.
“Aether is supposed to be for helping Pokémon, isn’t it?”
“Neither of us can leave one in need, huh?” Gladion smiled back at her.
And so, to the astonishment of the carnie, the pair stayed at the booth, buying more and more Poké Balls until eventually they had caught every last Magikarp.
From there they left the carnival, wandering over to the beach. They spent the next ten minutes releasing their catches, before finally setting out for home.
The next day Lillie entered Gladion’s room, with a video pulled up on her laptop.
They watched it together. It showed how carnies arrange their booths to be difficult, but not impossible, and explained the techniques they used.
When it ended, they looked to one another.
“I guess they are rigged,” Lillie admitted, “or most of them are, anyways.”
“But they are mostly possible,” Gladion returned. “Not likely, but winnable.”
“But I guess all that really matters is that they were fun, right?”
Gladion glanced towards the stuffed Teddiursa sitting on his bed.
“You’re right. They were.”