Summer Festival — Project Lead
A Clover Guild Story
By Ribombee-anon
Work, work, work. This previous week was quite possibly the busiest one I’d been through since joining the Clover Guild. It felt like I was back in college, working all day and staying up late every night. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to do this if I had the option, but things didn’t turn out that way.
The guild’s Team Misfits had accidentally destroyed a wonderful new outdoor stage at the Blue Claw Inn, and this only worsened our already poor reputation around Capim Town. Shortly after the incident, Guildmaster Lliam gathered the entire guild and brought us up to speed on the situation: to placate the furious townsfolk and raise funds to replace the ruined venue, we were going to put on a festival. As expected, the meeting had been incredibly rowdy, with many guild members expressing their frustration about Team Misfits’ antics and all the work we had to do now. Lliam did his best to keep things orderly and allow people to speak in turn, though I still found the meeting tense and uncomfortable.
One major conundrum during the discussion was that nobody was willing to volunteer to be the project lead. As I watched and waited, I slowly began to realize I would likely need to take drastic action and... speak up. I always hated doing that. But I’d also always been good at organizing things, and after joining the guild, I’d taken a leadership role in countless missions. Being smaller and weaker than almost every other Pokemon around, I was better off managing and supporting other people than attempting a more active role. This seemed like a good opportunity to use my skills.
And so, with ample hesitation and shakiness in my voice, I quietly offered to be in charge of organizing the festival. My guildmates were pleased and unanimously voted to give me the position of project lead. But I also needed a team to help me, and after some more discussion, half a dozen volunteers stood with me.
I soon regretted my choice to manage the project, as it catapulted me into a swamp of work. For the last week, I had been mostly confined to the guildhall while I struggled to complete all my tasks before the deadline. I’d spent each long day writing, reading, meeting, discussing, reviewing, and overall desperately trying to ensure everything was going well. The desk in my and Sneasel’s dorm quickly became covered in papers and documents I’d obtained from other people, including permits; to-do lists and plans; sketches and blueprints of festival tents, stalls, and the main stage; lists of materials required to build each attraction; rough drafts of the advertisements we were going to hang up around town; security patrol routes; ideas and suggestions offered by guildmates (many of which were just unfunny jokes and memes); and so on. There was also a pyramid of inkwells for me to use, along with bottles of water, honey, and ambrosia to keep me from collapsing from exhaustion.
The project was overwhelming, partially due to the size and the tight deadline of it, but mostly since the Clover Guild’s reputation rode on it. We had always been unpopular, and this last fiasco, while purely unintentional, put a ton of pressure on us to prove that we were not a complete blight on society. Failure simply was not an option, and this knowledge made anxiety overtake me as early as the first day.
With all my nerves and the mountain of work weighing me down, it oddly felt like the week both took forever and also passed in the blink of an eye. The eve of the festival arrived before I knew it, bringing with it a new surge of fear that wracked my mind. It felt as if a tiny voice was incessantly whispering in my head, warning me that I had forgotten some critical detail and the entire event would collapse like a house of cards. Try as I might, I couldn’t relax. Even after the entire guild gathered for one final meeting to celebrate our progress and discuss tomorrow’s festival, I knew I wasn’t done working. And so, late in the evening, I found myself poring over my notes at my miniature desk atop our dorm’s main desk, trying to tell if there was some step or requirement that I had overlooked.
I was so focused that I didn’t even sense Sneasel approaching. I yelped in surprise when she knocked on the door and opened it up.
“Honey, I’m home!” she said with a laugh. “Did I scare you? Sorry. How’s it going?”
It took a couple seconds to refocus my brain from my work to my partner. I hadn’t seen her much all week. Although my new team and I were organizing the festival, and many other guild members were busy planning and setting up their attractions, some people were still performing jobs and missions—after all, the guild’s daily operations didn’t grind to a halt just because we were putting on a special event. Sneasel was one of these people, which meant she was gone all day, so we could only see each other for a little time in mornings and evenings. I always felt better in her company, ever since we met a year and a half ago, so spending all this time without her only amplified the overall stress of my work. On the bright side, she made sure to chat with me every single night to get an update on my work and help me de-stress. She always knew how to cheer me up and give me the energy to keep going, so I treasured these nightly talks.
“You doing okay?” Sneasel asked, cocking her head to the side.
I realized I had just been staring at her for a while, lost in thought. Embarrassed, I gasped and nodded. “S-sorry. I’m just distracted. And I’m... still busy.”
“Really? It’s the night before the big day. The whole guild already had our wrap-up meeting, right? Shouldn’t the work be all over now?”
“Y-yes, it should, but...”
“Don’t tell me your team’s been slacking. Lemme know, and I’ll go slap some sense into them for being lazy.”
I held up my hands and said quickly, “No, no, it’s not that! They’ve all been f-fantastic workers. I’m proud of them.”
“Alrighty. If you say so. But remember, I’m always happy to slap anyone you want me to.”
“P-please resist the urge to slap my team,” I said. I flipped through my notes on milestones we’d met and the work everyone had been doing. I’d already told Sneasel most of the following information, but going over it always helped me organize my thoughts, which were quite cluttered as of late. “Like I said, everyone has done a f-fantastic job. Phanpy’s been a great deputy, working with me closely, making sure everyone who’s p-participating in the festival is doing alright, even double-checking my notes... although he needs a magnifying glass to read them. Toge’s been handling items, resources, and materials, and Macom has been supporting Toge there, while also w-working on mapping out the event. And we both know how good Toge is at o-organizing, and how good Macom is at mapping, so... I have zero complaints with them. Percival’s handling security... He has Mustel, Serpes, and Bean with him, and they’ve all been v-very dedicated to their roles and practicing hard.”
“I still dunno why Bean joined that team,” Sneasel interjected with a smirk. “I thought guards were supposed to be intimidating. That bird couldn’t even scare a Wimpod.”
“I won’t question Percival’s judgment with s-selecting his team. I’m sure Bean has a reason to be included. And as for construction... Cassie was in charge of that, with Testa and KFC helping her. They all did a g-great job. Cassie brought me to the festival grounds once a day, and their progress was wonderful to watch. A-and of course, the guildmaster let me visit him whenever I had questions or updates.” I looked up from my notes and turned in my seat to face Sneasel. “So... o-overall, everyone has been working very hard.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Sneasel as she sat at our big desk. “But if everyone’s done a good job, and it’s the last day, why are you still working? At that meeting today, didn’t you tell everyone that you’re pretty much done with everything? C’mon, get some sleep. You deserve it.”
“I want to sleep, but... I can’t. I know we reviewed everything earlier today, and I know I said we should be done, but... I’m s-still not convinced. I’ve been looking over all these papers f-for the last few hours. The map, the to-do lists, the meeting notes... I need to d-double- and triple-check everything. Quadruple-check, even. B-but no matter how long I spend, I... I feel like I’m still missing something. I know I am!”
“So that’s the problem, huh? What makes you say that?”
I let out a sigh and averted my eyes. “I guess it’s just... nerves,” I admitted. “I’ve always been this way. Whenever I get to the end of a project, I always feel like... s-something must have slipped through the cracks.”
“Slipping through the cracks of you, and your entire team, and Lliam? Doesn’t sound likely. You trust your team, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure.” I gasped and added, “Wait—I d-didn’t mean that as an insult or anything! Everyone’s done a wonderful job so far! But, I mean... when I’m working on a project, I just don’t feel comfortable putting all my faith in someone else. I like to ch-check things over myself, so I know for sure that it’s okay.”
Sneasel crossed her arms. “I get it. You wanna be the last line of defense, huh? Makes sense, but... this is a big project for one little bug to do all by his lonesome.”
She playfully flicked my antennae, and I flinched.
“Point is,” she continued, “don’t feel bad about relying on anyone else. I know this guild’s got its fair share of goofballs, but the crew you got is pretty good. And you’re the best of them all.”
Again, I briefly looked away from her, sheepish from such a comment. “I don’t know about that...”
Sneasel chuckled. “Alright, maybe I’m biased cuz you’re my partner. But I really do believe you’ve got this—honest. You oughta trust your team, and trust yourself while you’re at it. I mean, if you’re really so focused on everything being perfect, and you’ve already spent so much time reviewing things, then I bet you’ve already caught every mistake you’re gonna catch. Besides, at this point, ain’t it too late to fix any mistakes?”
“D-depends on the mistake. If there’s something that everyone missed, something that’s going to ruin the entire event, and I still have a ch-chance to find it and fix it... I have to!” I looked back at my papers. “I... I can’t just ignore that risk. I can’t stop. I need to keep reviewing, and—”
I stopped as I felt something lightly descend on my head. I glanced over and saw Sneasel reaching across the desk to pet me with the edge of a claw. We met each other’s gaze, and she wore a warm smile that made my worries slowly melt away.
“It’ll be fine,” she said softly. “Listen. I trust you with my life. So I sure as hell trust you to plan a silly little festival, alright? I know you did your best. No need to doubt yourself.”
The little voice in my head that made me second-guess myself was fading away. Slowly, I felt a warm smile appear on my face, matching Sneasel’s. I reached up and patted her claw as it rested on my head.
“Y-you’re right,” I murmured. “It’s hard for me to just accept that my work is done, but... if I let myself keep worrying, I’ll never stop. I just need to accept that I—and my team—did all we could.“
“That’s the spirit!” said Sneasel. “Don’t worry about a thing. This festival is gonna be awesome. Now, get some sleep already.”
We said our goodnights, then I got up from my desk, stretched, and trudged over to the bowl of cotton balls I’d long used for a bed. Sneasel turned off the lamp on our desk, and as darkness fell over our dorm, she got in her own bed. I lay down for a while in silence, thinking about the big day tomorrow. Stress still clouded my mind, but as I thought about my team and my partner, and all the work everyone had put into this event, Sneasel’s words became more believable.
I yawned and nestled into my soft bed. As sleep slowly crept over me, I thought, ‘Maybe this festival really will be awesome.’
My homepage: https://rentry.org/RibombeeHomepage Clover Guild homepage: https://cloverguild.com