The pinnacle of romance, he'd heard time and time again. The city profited off that image, even if Maximus didn’t agree with it. Like yeah, sure, Lumiose was big. Sure, the Prism Tower was pretty at night, with all those lights. Sure, there were lots of shops and cafés and restaurants, too. It would be a field day for most.
Maybe he just didn’t agree with it because he found Lumiose very mundane, nowadays. As a child, from Anistar, the mere notion of Lumiose felt like a place of wonder. The first time he set foot into the metropolis, he was sucked into a wallow of awe. But now, now it felt like any old city. It didn’t wield that same spark it used to.
A chariot of crimson, doing its rounds on the inner circle of the city, approached whence Maximus stood. He jutted a hand out, hailing it down. As the tram came to a groaning halt, he hopped aboard; it was mostly empty, aside from a few passengers nestled in their seats. Trams—in fact, most forms of public transport—had that godawful pattern plastered upon their seats. Bright and playful, with overlapping geometrics—tacky to a fault. Something about the pattern made it more difficult to pinpoint besmirched fabric; supposedly, the bold colours were an effective illusion to veil much of the dirt, grim, and spillages that were commonplace upon their day-in, day-out routine travels.
After having sat upon something cold and damp, Maximus certainly lacked appreciation for how effective that illusion was. With a grumble and a shift, he sat on the seat directly adjacent. Blue eyes, bags heavy with exhaustion pinned beneath, peered sidelong and outside the tram. Watching the stores slowly roll on by.
Sat upon his lap, was a small treecko. Florimond, he’d called him. Florimond was a chatty pokémon, but that chattiness was not born from confidence nor elation, rather anxiety. Chirping sounds over and over, those big, golden-yellow eyes of his flickered around, and his fingers remained wrapped around one of Maximus’. Maximus was very much Florimond’s anchor.
Florimond’s chatter was drowned by out his own thoughts. Or, well, perhaps thoughts wasn’t the best descriptor. His mind felt like a void; a pit of white noise.
He snapped back into reality when Florimond sharply tugged at his mint-pink hair.
Florimond looked awful stressed. Eyes bigger than usual; fear kept them wide and nigh bulging.
A point, towards an individual on the opposing side of the aisle. Maximus lifted his gaze, and in his sight was a girl—she looked quite young, probably mid-teenage years—staring straight at him and his treecko. Maximus blinked in rapid succession.
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