9 Chapter 9- Veronica Stem

I leaned my head close to the blotter strip, sniffing the wafting fragrance coming off it.

My nose tingled and my eyes narrowed a bit, I put the blotter strip away from me and grabbed hold of the perfume bottle the blotter strip's scent came from.

I aimed for my wrist and proceeded to press on the nozzle, sending a wave of sweet smelling mist into my bare skin.

"Hmm." I hummed.

The smell is pretty... 'soft', it doesn't have that 'sharpness' some perfumes have but instead it has more of a subtle aroma.

"How do you like our new upcoming product ma'am?" Samuel spoke up from beside me.

I sighed and swished the bottle. "It's rather weak, we want long lasting quality products here Samuel, not some basic perfume without a kick to it!"

Samuel bowed their heads and muttered an apology.

Huffing, I handed him the perfume bottle and leaned back my seat, I glanced outside of the window and saw a pair of Oddish frolicking in the garden.

My brows furrowed. Who allowed such pests here!?

My anger seemed to be very visible as Samuel commented on it.

"Ah those Oddish were brought here by your son a week ago ma'am, they were injured so he had to treat them and they're staying here for the moment as they recover."

My son...? I looked at him.

"Well tell him to take the injured pokemon to the Pokemon Center next time and remind him not to touch wild pokemon, they will make him smell unpleasant otherwise."

"Also if those pair had already stayed here for a week, surely they rested enough, kick them out" I added.

Samuel froze and hesitated a bit as he looked past me and stared at the Oddish, I wasn't sure if he would go against mo orders or not but in the end he nodded "Yes ma'am."

Good. I sighed once more and turned my attention to the clipboard that Samuel is carrying

"Other than testing some perfume, what's my next agenda?" I asked him.

He looked down at the clipboard and paused for a moment, his finger seemed to trail down it as his eyes moved along with his finger's movements.

"It looks like you'd be going to a contest at Lilycove ma'am, you'd be attending as a guest and you'll be a part of judging the contestants."

A contest? Why had I agreed to participate in such a thing again?

"Your son would also be attending there."

Oh right. He does have a particular interest in those kinds of things... That child, if only he had the same amount of interest in our business.

"I see, I shall prepare to depart to Lilycove then, ask my son if he would also like a ride ther-"

"He's already there ma'am, hadn't I already informed you of this?" Samuel cut me off.

"Had you?" I tilted my head. "Oh well, prepare the car as I go dress myself"

Samuel nodded.

________________________________

"We have arrived ma'am."

"It seems we have." I stared outside the car's window and saw the large amount of people entering a certain building.

My nose scrunched up, I can already smell the sweat emanating from the crowd.

I took out a perfume bottle from my purse and held it tightly as the chauffeur exited the vehicle and opened the door for me.

I stepped out of the car and immediately sprayed my surroundings, attracting de attention and making people stop walking to smell the air and turn their heads towards me

"Better." I smiled.

Samuel appeared by my side and he started guiding me towards the main entrance.

People cleared up a path for me as I walked near them and I could hear all their muttering and whispering to the people closest to them.

"...It's Veronica!"

"...Veronica? As in the Veronica!?"

"...Shhh quiet, she'll hear you..."

"...What is she doing here?"

My smile grew a bit wider. Then when we went near the entrance a guard had stopped us and led us to a more secluded place where they made us enter a door.

"Veronica! You've finally arrived."

Someone called out to me as I entered. It was a woman wearing an elegant purple dress with an elaborate design.

She smiled at me and walked towards us and the smell of fresh strawberries made itself known to me.

"I see you're using one of my products, Hazel." I said to her.

The woman chuckled "You can smell it? Well you know I like me some sweet strawberry scent."

I smiled. "That, I do."

Terribly so, she was born in a farmer's family that specializes in strawberries and grew up being surrounded by them.

She had worked herself to the top and became a well known celebrity with companies everywhere trying to get her to endorse their products.

With all those competition around, I had to cheat a little and researched into her background. That was when I found out that she was from a farmer's family and grew up surrounded by strawberries.

So I managed to get to her first with a product similar to the one she's using right now and she'd fallen in love with the scent immediately and agreed to partner up with us.

"Come now, let me introduce you to some of our judges if you hadn't known them already" Hazel said and gestured behind her.

There is a group of people sitting beside a table. They greeted me and Hazel introduced me to each one of them.

Unfortunately, a guy had entered the room and announced that the contest would start soon and we had to end our introductions early.

We left the room and went to a room far more spacious than the last one, with rows of seats covering most of the space and a large stage occupying the front.

There is a small space between the two where we would sit and I went ahead and took the center while Samuel took a seat amongst the audience.

"Is there a theme for this contest?" I asked Hazel as she took the seat to my left.

"The League's Evergrande circuit had just opened recently and so did the Grand festival, that means it is too early for more complex contests."

"I guess that's true" I said and glanced at the stage.

The contest hadn't even started yet but I could feel the growing anticipation from the crowd with all their loud chattering and talking.

I guess it would be nice to relax and look at some visually pleasing performances and to look at my son.

I got myself comfortable and I didn't have to wait for much longer for the contest to start as an announcer has presented themselves and hyped up the crowd, making them create some not so quiet sounds.

"For the first performer we have someone new joining us for today!"

The audience cheered.

"They had decided to pick a pretty unique name and may I remind you all again, they are still a beginner so please be easy on them."

Most of the audience chuckled while I rolled my eyes

How bad of a name could it be? Someone couldn't possibly mess up and pick a bad name for something as important as announcing themselves to the world.

I wanted to guess what kind of name they have to warrant such a reaction from the announcer but my musings were interrupted as they spoke up again

"I'm not gonna waste any of your time anymore so please come to the stage contestant number one! Or otherwise called as Brilliance!!!"

The announcer shouted and a flood ton of clapping and shouting along with some laughter spread throughout the room as the figure of a guy entered the stage.

I couldn't get myself to judge his face nor their outfits as I was stunned by their name.

....Brilliance really? I know some performers like to use strange sounding names to catch attention but this is a bit too much.

They clearly have a lot of confidence picking that name, let's just see if they have the actions to back it up.

Brilliance didn't appear shy or nervous, instead, he wore a smile on his face and moved to the side to reveal a Ralts wearing a cheap looking vest.

"....Do... what... have... performed..." They whispered something to the pokemon and some of the words have been picked up by the mic in their mouth.

His smile faltered a bit when he heard his voice but he shook his head and smiled even wider and moved Ralts to the center stage.

Brilliance then turned their head back and seemed to be signaling at the side of the stage, perhaps communicating to a staff.

It took a long while for him to turn his head back towards us again but he still stood there, not even ordering his pokemon .

I frowned at the sight of it, when would they start already?

Most of the judges are already writing something into a paper in front of them except for me and Hazel which may change if they kept stalling

My frown lasted for a few seconds before a loud sound started blasting through a speaker.

Music had started and immediately, a splash of colors appeared on the stage as confetti of varying colors danced around wildly, hiding the two of them from plain sight.

The confetti moved with seemingly no patterns at all but there was a weird stiffness to the confetti's movements

It raged on for a good minute and it would've been a boring performance if that's the only thing they have to show if not for the confetti starting to take shape and form letters right in front of our eyes.

Bit by bit, the confetti started to decrease as more letters were formed and a word was being made.

With each letter being successfully formed, a section of the stage is revealed and Ralts could be seen standing still next to other Ralts's with each one of them having a letter right above their heads.

Then finally, the music started to increase in volume as the final letter was being formed and completed and everyone could see what the letters had formed into. It wa—

The music had suddenly stopped and everything went quiet and I myself were also surprised at it, but then a voice said amongst the silence and the confusion.

"BRILLIANCE!"

Then the music is brought back to life, sounding more cheery and joyful than ever.

The confetti scattered and returned back to its wild, unpredictable movements and when it finally calmed down, all of it dropped to the floor.

And the ten Ralts that were just seen standing to each other side by side were now in a straight line.

My eyes widened by a fraction

The group of Ralts then started to raise all of their hands, starting from the first to the last, they then released a continuous ray of light from their finger tips, stopped to pose and started dancing.

The confetti on the floor also started to rise back to life again, swaying in the same direction they're moving and forming simple shapes.

The dance overall lasted for a few minutes before ending in a huge eruption of more confetti and then Ralts bowed as all of it fell to the ground.

"What a brilliant performance from Brilliance! And such a display of skill and focus from Ralts!? It's a marvel as to why it hasn't evolved yet!" The announcer shouted and the audience shouted alongside him.

All of the audience applauded for Brilliance for a good second before quieting down as the announcer said something.

"It was truly an amazing performance but shall we hear from our judges?"

Light shined upon our seats and I winced from the brightness. I raised my hand to block some of the light and stared at Brilliance

He was smiling and saying some things to Ralts, there were no worries evident on his face, still perfectly confident that he'd get a good score

I have to admit, it was a wonderful performance.

Although the start was rather frustrating with them being late but they make up for it by their shocking display a few moments later.

After that however, was just boring.

They built up a lot of tension for the audience but failed to satisfy that attention and the dancing just became dull when compared to their opening act.

There is also one huge problem in their act that I'm sure Brilliance himself doesn't realize despite it being so obvious.

"Can I speak up first...?" I said and turned to my fellow judges.

They blinked at me, looked at each other for a second and shrugged.

"Sure." One of the judges said.

They held a small microphone in their hand that was handed to them by a staff member a moment ago. They handed it to me and I stared at Brilliance again.

"First of all, that was a good start to your performance, if ignoring the delay." I said.

Brilliance smiled.

"I'm no pokemon trainer but controlling hundreds of those tiny pieces of confetti surely required a lot of skill to execute and what made it even more impressive is that it was done by a Ralts, a pokemon that has not yet evolved."

He smiled even wider.

"There are however mistakes."

I smirked, now he looked worried.

"When forming letters with confetti, Ralts had gone ahead and formed a letter in advance before the letter before it was even made."

He tried opening his mouth to speak but I raised my finger at him.

"I'm not finished."

He looked down.

"Moving on to your next mistake, one of the Ralts in your dancing routine which I may add is lackluster, is a moment too late than the others."

"Onto the next mistake Ralts had made would be that made his psybeams I presume too strong, look at the ceiling, there are holes that were not there before you have performed."

Brilliance looked up and there it was, several holes were made into the ceiling and he grimaces when he spotted them.

I hummed into the mic and that made his head snap towards me.

"Forgetting all about those mistakes, do you know what's the biggest mistake you've made?" I leaned forward.

Brilliance paused, thinking and thinking while his Ralts decided to glare at me.

I glared back at the pokemon and they flinched.

Moments passed and Brilliance was all silence. I still did not speak though for I will wait for as long as I can until I get any semblance of an answer.

Brilliance clenched their fist and I could see their mouth opening and closing.

"Well?" I asked.

"I-i don't know...."

A smile crept up to my face.

"It's that you didn't even do a single thing other than say a single word. That frustrates me more than any mistakes you have made."

"What are you even here for? Contests are supposed to be performed with a trainer and their pokemon, if it was only the pokemon performing then this would've been called pokemon got talents"

I scoffed at the idea of it.

"You as the trainer are supposed to be the coordinator!"

"You!" I pointed at him "make your pokemon more effective and more shining than they could have been alone."

"But I didn't see that from your performance." I shook my head

"You as a trainer failed at being a coordinator for your pokemon."

I said and then went silent.

So does the audience.

And so does Brilliance and his pokemon.