Understood

It was Inventory Day.  N always did Inventory on Tuesday, at precisely 2:00 in the afternoon.  Any other day or time was just…wrong.  The only Exceptions he allowed himself were if Ghetsis made him do something else during that time or if he was literally too sick to get out of bed.  That was it.

But today there weren’t any Exceptions, so N could go ahead with inventory as planned.
First were the cars.  He took them out of the clear plastic storage container one by one and carefully lined them up in front of the half-pipe.  He had to make sure this line was as close to perfectly straight as he could manage.

N was very proud of his collection of toy cars.  Right now he had exactly 137 of them.  He had memorized this number the last time he’d gotten a new one, but he counted them all anyway as he lined them up…just in case.

One of his favorite games to play with the cars was Jail.  N had no toys of humans, so the cars stood in as the mean bad guys who were trying to take Pokemon from the wild.  But N caught them and arrested them and put them in Jail, which was an overturned wicker basket.  One time Concordia had suggested playing with the cars like they were actual cars, and N had just stared at her blankly.  What was wrong with playing Jail?

Sometimes N took his favorite cars into bed with him at night.  When N had turned twelve, Ghetsis had told him that he was too old to be doing that anymore.  That had been more than five years ago, but N still did it anyway when he could get away with it.

While N was thinking about this, he finished the line.  It was a very good line this time…not his best one ever, but one of the better ones of recent memory.  He just sat there for several minutes, feeling very pleased with himself.  He was so happy that he even started rocking back and forth a bit, but then he caught himself.  Ghetsis said that he was too old for that too.

Now that the cars were done, it was time to start on the Pokemon plushies.  He had 46 of those.  His favorite was the Audino.  All of the plushies had names and elaborate backstories.  Sometimes N got so excited over the backstories that he felt like he had to share them with someone.   He’d tried sharing them with his Pokemon friends, but they always wandered off in the middle.  He’d tried with Anthea and Concordia, but they could never keep the details straight.  And as for Ghetsis, well…

One time, about a year ago, N had gotten a new book about human children going to school.  He decided to try to adapt that for his own toys.  He arranged twenty assorted plushies and cars in a circle, with the teacher (the Audino plushie) in the center.  They were in the middle of a trigonometry lesson when Ghetsis walked in.  N had happily told him that they were having Circle Time, just like in the book.  But when Ghetsis saw the book, he grew eerily quiet.

“Who gave you this book?” he asked in his Dangerously Calm Voice.

N shrugged.  He never really thought about it…his new toys and books just seemed to appear.

Ghetsis snatched up the book and stormed out, muttering something that sounded like, “For Arceus’ sake!”  He never gave the book back, but N had memorized it already anyway.
But at any rate, now he was too scared to tell Ghetsis about any of his stories.  And now he was sad from thinking about it.  He decided to take a break from Inventory and work on some problems in his calculus textbook  (The people who cleaned the room knew well to not touch the Inventory until it was all finished).

He knew his life was pretty much perfect…but he did wish he could find someone who understood.

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Everybody was shouting and saying bad words, which made N’s head hurt.  He knew he was supposed to stay in the throne room, but he was getting so anxious that it was hard for his to see straight, so he snuck off to his safe spot.

When he got there, he sank down to the floor in relief, reveling in the quiet.  He remained like that for several minutes, until he could hear himself think again.  There.  Now he could slip back into the throne room, and no one would even know he had…
“N?  What are you doing here?”

N nearly jumped out of his skin, but managed not to scream.  It was Hilda.  Darn, N hadn’t expected her to find her way around the castle so quickly!  In his haste, N had forgotten to close the door all the way.

Well…this was awkward.

“Would you like to see my toys?” N heard himself blurting out.  Even he knew that this was an odd thing to say when the fate of the world was hanging in the balance, but was there really anything he could have said that didn’t sound weird?

Hilda seemed taken aback, but she managed a smile.

“Sure, why not?” she replied.

It was definitely not 2:00 on a Tuesday, but if anything counted for an Exception, this did.  N decided he should probably do the short version of the story, so people wouldn’t start wondering where he went.

“This is Jennifer,” he started, showing Hilda the Audino plushie.  “She’s a doctor and a teacher.  She lives there…” he gestured to the left of the basketball hoop-“and she’s married to John the Herdier.”

And on it went.  Even the Short Version took longer than N was expecting.  When he finished, there were a few seconds of silence.  Now what was N supposed to do?!

Then Hilda did something unexpected.  She started applauding!

“Wow, you’re really creative!”  she said.  And she was telling the truth.  True, N had been looking at the floor and talking even more quickly than usual, so she didn’t quite catch all of it, but she was genuinely surprised at his imaginative streak.

Meanwhile, N was very, very happy that Hilda hadn’t been bored.  He sat there for a while, just thinking about how happy he was, until he realized he was rocking back and forth and making squeaking noises.  Oops.

In mere moments, N would have to leave, and Hilda would have to “find” him, and then they would be enemies again.  But he still cherished this moment of understanding, no matter how brief.