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TEEN: some rise by sin

o. the fault in our stars

    • ___​

    FOREWORD

    Presented for your entertainment is my version of Johto. Readers be warned that later chapters will contain cursing, mentions of death/blood, mentions of mental illness, and general dark themes. General blanket warning for cursing/death/blood from here on out; other subjects will be tagged at the beginning of relevant chapters.

    AWARDS

    I can never say it enough, but guys, you are so amazing. Whether we won or lost officially, it's always been a victory in my book. Thank you so much to everyone who read/reviewed/nominated/judged. I couldn't have done it without you. <3

    autumn 2013: best darkfic
    spring 2014: best darkfic, best protagonist (nara), best pokemon (icarus), best character (nara)
    summer 2014: best darkfic
    winter 2015: best darkfic, best story
    winter 2016: best antagonist (silver), best supporting (bates), meme queen

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    Last edited:
    • i. carrion men
    • Responses:
    Pavell said:
    Hmm ... interesting. Ok, I'll be fair and stop being all mysterious. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Overall, I enjoyed Chapter One. You've cunningly got round any problems you'd run into from writing a Rocket dictatorship by presenting it through the eyes of a teenager. The concept of the starter pokémon works just fine, I rather like the implication that Xatu does as it pleases rather than necessarily what the Rockets want.

    I will say that the reference to the games fell flat for me. More of a sly wink than a loud shout would have worked better on that score
    Click to expand...

    I'm glad you like it. ^^ Some of the mystery concerning the xatu get explained in a few chapters, and the rest... well. By volume two, maybe. Maybe. xD

    I have some issues balancing "humor" with storytelling, I think, and thank you for pointing them out. Don't worry; there isn't going to be much fourth wall breaking in the future. Glad you enjoyed!


    Flaze said:
    Well I have to say. I actually quite liked that first chapter. We don't get to see a lot of flat out first person fics and certainly not ones that really dwell into the character's mind. I like this protagonist, even if he seems like the sarcastic type that's gonna get in trouble anyway the way that you made him out to be felt really fresh to me, plus the jokes were all pretty funny to begin with.

    There's not much to comment on aside from the fact that I still like the way you went about making Team Rocket into dictators, it's kind different and at the same time not...so like something that's not different but it's done in a unique way if that makes any sense. My only advise would be not to dwell into his mind too much otherwise narration will end up taking most of the chapters in the future.
    Click to expand...

    Haha, glad you liked too! As for the narration bit--I actually struggle with first person, honestly, because putting myself in the mind of another is fairly difficult, but I thought it would be a fun exercise in style and all the Young Adult fiction I've been reading lately has been in first person for some reason, which is probably important. There's a lot of introspection in these first few chapters because I'm cheap and have to set the stage somehow, but I promise that it'll go away in a couple of chapters, if that helps!


    jjl2357 said:
    Nice first chapter. Actually reminds me of Clouded Sky a little - wishing the protag luck..
    Click to expand...

    I've never actually read Clouded Sky, but my beta reader mentioned this to me before. She said that the similarities stop after the murkrow and (I think) the xatu, though, and some social stigma against dark-types, though, so I think it'll be okay?

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    PART I. AUTUMN​

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter i. carrion men​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    I waited until I was nearly sixteen before I got on that bus in Goldenrod. Sometimes, I can't help but wish I'd never stopped waiting. It would've saved my life, at least.

    Trainers of all ages were welcome to journey—it was a nice break from everyday life. The minimum age was ten, like it used to be before Johto went to shit, but anyone could start whenever they decided that the best course of action in life was to run on a merry adventure across the region. You could find yourself out in the wilderness, they said. Get your life goals in order, figure out how the world worked. Some Zen stuff. But I wasn't going to find myself. I wanted to lose myself.

    Funny, that.

    Waiting so long was a definite disadvantage if I'd ever planned on doing well in the League, actually, but I hadn't had a choice—problems at home had kept me in Goldenrod five years after most of my friends had gone off on their journeys, and now problems at home were forcing me to follow after them. Luckily, I hadn't planned on doing well in the League. All I wanted was to win a couple of badges and send the prize money back to my mother for four or five months; once I turned sixteen, the legal age of full-time work in Johto, I was getting a job and settling down. I'd seen enough people come back with injuries from a spontaneous cave-in, or an unfortunate training accident. And I'd seen people leave and not come back.

    I'd waited six years before taking the bus down to New Bark Town. And as I stood on the icy tiles of the laboratory, shivering in a mild autumn day, I wished and wished and wished I had waited longer.

    These are the thoughts I had when I entered the laboratory to face the xatu. These are the thoughts I gave him to read my mind and choose my destiny.

    The wizened old xatu in New Bark Town was gifted with two impossibilities: the ability to see all of time simultaneously, and, judging from the stark black-and-white tiled room, a rather interesting taste in home decor. The walls were lined with empty bookshelves, while the rest of the room was almost entirely barren, leaving me staring at the green bird splattered with red and white perched on the only piece of furniture in the room. Even from the door, I could see a decade's worth of gouges that had ground their way into the dark grain of that wooden table, undoubtedly from the xatu's wrinkled claws. Fitting, that it would choose to keep that lump of wood and nothing more. Dr. Elm, an eccentric man who'd gotten his doctorate in at the age of nineteen and whose genius was only rivaled by his kindness, had once allowed gifted trainers to carve out their futures using the starting pokémon he kept from that table. The scientific advances those brave trainers had made during his career should've been enough to launch Johto into a new golden age. That should've been his legacy.

    Instead, twenty years later, high school kids like me write papers about how his refusal to surrender ran most of southern Johto to the ground, left New Bark Town an underpopulated wasteland, and earned him a bullet to the brain on live television.

    Having a single-party country run by the main branch of Team Rocket wasn't that bad so long as you stayed on the right side of the law, which also wasn't that bad if you were okay with the status quo. Which, as it turned out, wasn't terribly bad, either. By the time I was old enough to get my first pokémon, they'd mastered the dictatorship thing quite well. I'd heard blood-soaked legends about how the Rockets came to their position of power, but that all happened well before I was born. Team Rocket overturned all of Johto mostly through the combined might of precisely two trainers, only a year or two older than I was, who'd harnessed the destructive forces of one of the Birds Regent—Lugia—and that was that. That's how it goes sometimes. Legends appear in the history books from time to time, and when they do, destruction reigns and the world changes.

    Kanto burned, Johto fell to Team Rocket, and, the rest gets left to inherent bias in a one-party state's textbooks. Team Rocket took down the old government in a time when most Rocket grunts ran around with zubat and rattata. They were so disorganized that they almost got stopped by a plucky teenager and a houndour before they managed to hold their ground against the fearsome forces of a puny kid, his puppy, and his half-grown starter. And then a couple of glorious leaders came around, the Rockets got their act together, and basically everyone involved that wasn't on their side was publicly dismembered or executed when the Lugia and those two trainers came along.

    We expected subjugation, I imagine. We got blessings beyond that imagination. The Rockets diverted the Lugia's massive psychic prowess into powering the country's power grid and providing free hydroelectric energy for everyone—in the process overcoming one of Johto's unique quirks that had previously made a region-wide power network impossible. They improved the route system to cover some of the previously inaccessible areas, like Ilex Forest. They founded hospitals and schools and charity organizations across the region. They replaced New Bark's cratered laboratories with an entire science district in Olivine city. Within a year, they'd even subsidized the cost of training for low-income families—like mine—and distributed free starter pokémon to all citizens who wanted them. Training, a pastime formerly available to those rich enough to stop working. They did what the old government hadn't, as terrible as that sounds. If you ignored the facts that all opposition was violently and systematically scourged out, some of their buildings were literally built on the corpses of their enemies, and all of the really good people they'd murdered, you could almost say that things had changed for the better.

    And, of course, if you tried to turn that starter against them, you earned a one-way ticket to the gallows in Ecruteak. The Rockets had the means and the technology to give far more efficient deaths than hanging, but then again, watching a person slowly suffocate before your eyes sent a better message—sort of like crucifixion without all of the Jesus imagery. It was, at least to me, clear enough. You were perfectly welcome to mount a rebellion against the generally benign, completely helpful organization that had rebuilt our failing government into a charity machine. You were encouraged, even; they'd give you the starter. And then you were facing a charity machine that held a power against which you stood no chance, and you would die.

    That brings us back to now, when I was standing before an impassive xatu, starting my own journey at long last and wishing it would end sooner.

    {Greetings.}

    I had enough time to take one shaky breath before I was able to process the confusion and turn my thoughts to the current conundrum: there was a voice speaking. In my mind. The words felt static-y and made my brain tingle, like when I stood to close to the TV at home and the hairs on my arms stood up.

    The xatu's eyes cracked open then, glowing blue, and I felt a presence in my head, one that was very much alive and fizzled with power. I realized that I'd probably been staring, dumbfounded, at a high-powered psychic while listing off reasons I was terrified and also uncertain about its employers, and that was my last coherent thought before—

    I found myself on my knees, clutching my temples and gritting my teeth in pain, and I was probably screaming as well, although I wasn't exactly listening. All of my thoughts adopted the consistency of melted butter, and I struggled to blink the spots out of my vision. The white tiles flickered black and purple before my eyes, thoughts running together like melted butter, time repeating itself, looping through, redundancies upon redundancies while something somewhere deep inside of my mind was simply screaming, screaming over and over again.

    I'd wondered what telepathy was supposed to feel like. Never felt it before. And now it was like someone had seared the edges of a knife before running it through my forehead, a laser cutting through my skull and then bouncing around inside.

    I was going to die, I decided then, while a colder, logical voice admonished me not to be stupid.

    The mental touch retreated hastily and diminished until it was only grazing me. {I apologize,} the xatu said, its voice surprisingly gentle, given that it had just shredded my mind. {I did not mean to harm you.} It paused thoughtfully and surveyed me like it might survey a particularly delicious caterpie. Its talons tightened their grip on its table. Perched on the last of Elm's legacy, the strange bird added, {You have indeed come a long way, trainer.}

    I watched it numbly.

    Whatever other response I had in my arsenal was lost in the wave of bright spots that filled my vision, so instead I found myself giving it an astute-sounding, "Unnnnghhhhh." I tried to follow some sort of logical chain. It wouldn't do any good to panic now. The xatu could've probably euthanized me with its mind if it had wanted to, but I hadn't done anything to provoke that. I had absolutely no plans of doing anything stupid. I just needed a starter to help me through the first few gyms so I could get enough cash to stay alive for the next few months. That was it.

    That was it. It was that simple. If only.

    The xatu could see the past, present, and future all at once, and it would give you, quite literally, your destined starter, based on the type with which you had the strongest affinity and your own personality. You would grow together, your strengths and your pokémon's complimenting each other—that's how Gifts came out in trainers. The xatu looked at you both, and some ability in it reflected back your true potential, like some sort of magic mirror. Science, magic, mumbo jumbo, something or the other that would've been easier to focus on if I hadn't been on the ground, dry heaving.

    You weren't allowed to ignore the Rocket's hospitality, so what the xatu gave you stayed. And if the all-seeing, all-knowing psychic bird told you that you should specialize in the water-type and gave you a magikarp, well, you would spend a lot of time training and raise yourself a gyarados. Raise a magikarp, raze a gym; that was the motto they taught us in school.

    There were worse options than the garbage, honestly. If the all-seeing, all-knowing psychic bird gave you a ghost, bug, or steel-type, you plead amnesty, quit training, and swore fealty as quickly as possible. Because that meant you were unyielding like steel, or insidious like insects, or haunting like ghosts; because that meant it saw you as a threat to the Rockets. More specifically, it meant that the xatu, who could see your entire past and future, thought that this was all you would ever be. And everyone knew it. Ghosts were evil. Bugs were an infestation. Steel refused to change. Your starter said more about your personality than your words ever could.

    {It is done,} the xatu told me. And then, as if it were speaking of an entirely different matter, it added, {I have determined your starter.} There was a pause, and then I felt the touch again, less burning-knives and more feather-light. He—the voice was certainly male—opened his eyes and looked squarely at me. I felt a chill go down my spine as I met a gaze that, surely, saw eternity even as he looked at me. His voice had dropped twelve octaves. {I knew you would reach here eventually. So it begins.}

    The all-seeing xatu, whom I had never seen before in my life, had first liquefied my brain and then recognized who I was. I couldn't help but wonder if I could just turn heel and leave now. There weren't any real laws against immediately stopping a journey, and I could probably—

    His eyes were rheumy and old and full of so much sadness that my entire train of thought stopped short. Here was the master of Johto's future, essentially, and he looked as wizened and tired as the dying trees in the Goldenrod Park. His feathers drooped and were tinged with silver, and as he spread his wings to fly to the entrance, a few fluttered to the ground before vanishing in flashes of light.

    {Are you prepared?}

    I had just about quelled the urge to projectile vomit all over the tiled floor and made the room stop spinning, which I figured was a solid start. If he meant anything else, though, such as completely free of second-guessing all of my reasons for going on this journey, or currently not suppressing the impulse to run back to Goldenrod for my mother, or generally not terrified to take my first steps on what would no doubt be a long and arduous trial, then no, I wasn't quite 'prepared.'

    I assumed that the bird didn't take sarcasm very well, so I nodded instead.

    The xatu's eyes glowed blue, eclipsing the tired expression I had seen before, and in the harsh shadows that the light cast the instant before we vanished, he seemed omnipotent once again. Across from him, the doors flew open, and he teleported the two of us to the front of the laboratory without a second glance. There was no dramatic popping or queasy shaking of the ground; one moment I was facing the xatu, and the next, I was facing the open world of New Bark Town, where the winds of new beginnings are supposed to blow.

    I'd expected him to waste a little more time on the small talk, honestly. The kids I had watched yesterday had been inside of the room for at least five minutes, and they'd come out excited and smiling, as if their time with the xatu had been the most enlightening moment of their life. Granted, most of the kids were barely half my age, but it would've been nice to be a child again, just so it would be acceptable to be scared for this.

    There was usually a small crowd in front of the laboratory at New Bark Town, so the ten or twelve people I saw milling around in the square wasn't anything strange. Nothing had really rebuilt here since the destruction; the city was quieter than it had ever been. Most of the people here were just prospective trainers waiting for their own starters, a handful of them were extremely bored residents, a few were waiting for their friends, and the rest were probably Rocket agents in disguise. Who knew.

    {There will be a long journey ahead of us,} the xatu said to me, not yet addressing the crowd. His voice seemed softer now, as if his words were meant for someone precious to him. Meanwhile, I was beginning to regret ever leaving at all. I could probably still go back to Goldenrod and sell my starter on the black market at this rate and get enough money to last until I could find a job. Yeah. Pray for anything that wasn't a magikarp. No need to raze the town. That would be—

    {And your path will be far from kind.}

    Too late, the thought began to occur to me. He was saying these words with intention. This was an apology. "You aren't going to—"

    {You will experience much loss, trainer. Be careful that you do not lose your way in the dark.} And then, before I could manage a response, the xatu turned his gaze and his voice toward the throng of people before us: {I have chosen a fitting starting pokémon for this child. It shall be…}

    In front of us, a pokéball flashed into existence. Teleportation again. Hesitantly, I reached out to touch it, as I knew I was supposed to. As I'd seen happen dozens of times already. A pokéball. It was like Christmas.

    Not a bug-type. Not a steel-type. Not a ghost-type. I repeated the mantra over and over. A pidgey, a ratatta. Anything. Anything innocuous. Anything at all.

    The red and white hemispheres of the ball were cool on my fingertips. I'd barely touched it with my fingertips before it burst into a flash of red.

    A small bird, about the size of the pidgey materialized in the air in front of me. Its feathers, sleek and jet-black, jutted out in strange places, giving the bird the illusion of having a small top hat perched on its head and a small broom for a tail. Its beak and feet were bright yellow, and I could just make out a pair of beady, crimson eyes peeking out beneath the hat, taking me in even as I stared at my new pokémon, the history books ringing in my ears as I finally understood—

    "Murrr!" it shrieked in a long-forgotten voice that made my blood run crowd.

    {A murkrow,} the xatu next to me announced proudly. My brain was already in overdrive, so I did the math half a second before everyone else did.

    —shit.

    ___________________________________________________________________________
    ​
    The first unusual thing about that morning was the murkrow, which was not at all my fault, no matter what the xatu said. Destiny be damned, my personality was not one of a bloodthirsty killer. I swear.

    The second unusual thing about that otherwise normal, brisk autumn morning was probably what kept the Rockets watching in the crowd from killing me on the spot, and was also not my fault. Probably. Apparently of its own accord, the sky filled with unearthly fire, the only occurrence more absurd than a murkrow and far-fetched enough to save my skin.

    Fine. That was too dramatic. It wasn't fire. I'd always wanted to see the northern lights, actually, but I'd imagined seeing them where they belonged: the north, for lack of a better word.

    So it really wasn't surprising that everyone, myself included, was entranced by the ribbons of green and purple that danced across the sky above us. The sirens started then, faint but certainly extant, whining from a distance like they'd travelled a good deal. I frowned. I'd heard these sirens before, in some sort of test, but I couldn't quite remember their purpose—partially because I wasn't the type to memorize the sound of sirens for fun, but also because, hey, the all-seeing, all-knowing xatu had decided to wake up this morning and ruin my life because wouldn't that just make for a fantastic Tuesday.

    I realized that my hand had started to feel numb, which might've been the first physical reaction I'd had to this entire incident, but by then I was shaking and my breath was coming in quick pants. My head felt like it was about to split open.

    No. I had to focus. This was just a mistake, and there would be an easy way to get out of this.

    No, there wouldn't. The crowd was starting to notice, and they were putting two and two together to get what I'd just understood as well. If the sky had been cloudy that day or hadn't decided to burst into flames, I would have been killed that instant, probably. The xatu gave me a murkrow. A dark-type in a world where dark-types had been made practically extinct when the Rockets took over long ago. I wouldn't have made a more welcoming target if I had started preaching anti-Rocket propaganda on the spot with, say, a scizor and a semi-automatic.

    There was also the added reason as to why dark-types were extinct: it wasn't only because they threatened the psychics of Team Rocket, although I'm sure that was taken into consideration. Dark-types were vicious. I'd heard the stories. Children being snatched away by houndoom in the night, weavile leaving the shredded bodies of hikers in the Ice Path, murders of murkrow ambushing city-dwellers and pecking their eyes out—the list went on. Pokémon were dangerous, yes; although we'd reached the point where small children were given portable flamethrowers or hurricane-summoners on a daily basis. And dark-types still scared us because they weren't just dangerous; they were deadly.

    This was the pokémon that the xatu thought best described my destiny. The xatu picked us based on our type, so the dreamy boy who lived across the street from me and liked to stare at clouds rather than do his homework ended up with a hoppip while Whitney, who lived next door and was a second degree black belt, got a heracross, turned in her starter immediately, and swore in public never to train again. She had no shortage of dirty looks from the neighbors, she could barely register for schooling again, and eventually the pressure must've gotten so bad that she and her family left her apartment completely empty with not so much as a note.

    Oh gods.I'd never head of a dark-type starter. I'd never heard of people using dark-types at all, actually—the whole murder-happy and gloom, doom, destruction thing tended to be a pretty big turn-off. This wasn't one of those times where I wanted to be special, like the girl in my elementary school class who could read eleven thousand words per minute, or the guy in the flat next door who could bend spoons if he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough. This was the kind of special that would get me killed. This was the kind of special that would mark me a killer.

    I turned to the ancient bird before me, rage and fear blotting out my knowledge that the creature beside me had literally witnessed the fall of empires and also had just sent me reeling in pain with a casual thought. On accident. "What are you doing?!"

    Turning myself in wouldn't help. Going home wouldn't help. The stupid bird was marking me for death. Both of the stupid birds were marking me for death, actually.

    The bird remained calm. {I am sorry, trainer.} He shuffled his wings. {Fate has given you a hard path to walk. Did I not warn you?}

    "This is just a complicated way of saying I should specialize in flying-types, right?" I probably shouldn't have asked. It would've been better not to know. In fact, had I not known for certain, I could've deluded myself into thinking that I wasn't meant for this path, and things might've gone a lot differently.

    {No.} He shuffled his wings impassively. {I have looked into your heart and your future, and I have seen much darkness.}

    "I'm not evil." I knew the mantra, drilled into our minds since birth. I'd read the books. Public opinion aside, there was the whole issue that dark-types killed everything they could. Unorthodox or not, there was no denying that this murkrow brought death. It literally travelled in a flock called a murder.

    At first, I received no words in response—only a vast wave of telepathic bemusement that bordered on being offended. {I never said you were, trainer. Darkness is not evil. It is simply unknown, and people fear that which they do not know. That is human nature. But you must be wise, child. You must not fall into such a simple trap.}

    I lost it then. I started to beg. "Please, I can do soul-searching on my journey, but I really don't want to—"

    He ignored my protests. Instead, he looked up to the sky, his sallow beak pointing like an arrow to the flashing light show above us, which had taken a backseat in my mental hierarchy until now. {When the lights go out, you must run. But be careful that you do not lose your way in the dark.}

    And then the xatu that had sealed my fate teleported away, leaving me alone.

    The murkrow spread its wings and cawed, locking beady, blood-colored eyes with me as if daring me to challenge.

    The third unusual thing—after the murkrow and the sky's lighting on fire—about that otherwise normal, brisk autumn morning was certainly what kept me alive in the days that would follow. And it was, once again, not my fault. Technically, it counted as an aftermath of the second unusual thing, but I hadn't done the math at that point. It saved my life, though, and that's really the important part.

    I looked at the murkrow, prepared to do—I don't know what, exactly; probably something desperate—and then I stopped.

    In a single instant, the air shuddered and the power lines around us lit up like torches, sending brilliant bursts of sparks cascading to the ground. In the distance, I heard something explode, and one of the large, grey boxes at the base of the telephone poles burst into flames. The entrance to the lab, normally pristine and white, was filled with sparks as the overhead lights shattered, and I ducked to shield my head with my hands, unsure of what else to do. I'd felt the static back when the xatu had first began speaking to me, but now it was everywhere, hot and crackling, and I could feel my hair rising in the storm.

    And then, silence.

    The lights died, the sirens shut off, and everything went dark and quiet. Literally, everything. There was no whir of air conditioning behind me, no hum of generators, no gentle illumination from the inside of the laboratory. Every single light in the town had gone off. Everything in the town had gone off. The silence began to worm its way into my ears as I stood, frozen and alone, on the top of the laboratory steps, goosebumps working their way up my arms.

    My first instinct was to look to the Rocket members in the crowd. They looked as horrified as I was, and I realized with a sinking feeling that they were just as surprised as I was. They hadn't disabled the magnezone field to hold our electricity hostage, or if they had, the operation had been so well-hidden that Petrel, or, hell, Ariana, half of the executive core, looked confused about it.

    Speaking of Ariana and Petrel. They were likely going to order their grunts to detain me at the very least and execute me at the very worst. As a person who enjoyed having a functioning system of internal organs, I was in the mood for neither of these events. From my spot on the steps of the laboratory, I could see the reactions of the crowd clearly. Some of them were trying to open their pokéballs to no avail, waving them like they were broken.

    Something inside of me was still running while the other half screamed and went into panicked overdrive. That something remained cold, calculating, and utterly sure of herself as she began working out the details of a very suicidal, very destructive plan. It was madness. But if they weren't going to attack me, I could make them pay for it.

    The plan entailed getting the violent dark-type pokémon that would be my starter to, first, not kill me, and, second, go along with the next steps.

    When the lights go out, you must run, the xatu that had damned me had said. Well. The lights were out. Now I had to run. I could feel my breath catching in my throat as I tried to process what had happened in the past ten minutes. I was scared to—

    No, said that cold, foreign, dark part of my mind. Not now. There will be time for terror later.

    I looked at the murkrow before me, the only pokémon not in a pokéball in the immediate vicinity. Blood pounding in my ears, I took a deep breath. I was probably going to regret this later. The thing had wickedly sharp talons and a curved beak that could, from what the books said, cut up a caterpie in under six seconds. It would probably murder me in my sleep later, but in the meantime, it was the only pokémon in the immediate vicinity, so we'd have to work together if we both wanted to live. "I'm your trainer, and we're going to start running now. Objections?"

    The bird glared at me indignantly, beady eyes glancing from me to its useless pokéball and then back to me. And then it leapt for my throat, talons outstretched.

    I reacted almost on reflex, online articles about murders of murkrow savaging travelers in Ilex Forest running through my mind as I swatted the bird out of the air with an outstretched fist. The bird staggered back, halting its flight in midair and circling back toward me.

    I glared at it, eyes hardening, resolve strengthening, something welling up inside of me that I didn't know I had. "No," I told the bird in a firm voice. "You listen to me."

    In hindsight, I don't know what I was expecting to happen. Whatever it was, I wasn't prepared for when the murkrow dipped its head in sullen affirmation. It shifted its perch to my shoulder, allowed me to adjust my backpack, and then spread its wings, dark as the night, wide above its head before craning its beak to the sky and screeching. A chill went through my bones. What had I just done?

    The sound snapped the crowd back to reality, and I saw Ariana's signature, flaming hair moving toward me, her eyes narrowing as she fumbled in her pockets for something. I started calculating. Three seconds. The pokéball was in her hands immediately, but I never saw her try to open it and fail, as I knew she would, because I was already shouting, "The redhead!" because I knew I only had seconds more before she went for her gun.

    The darkness pokémon launched itself from my shoulder in a flurry of black wings and flew straight into her face, letting out another blood-curdling screech as it did so. On one hand, it had sort of listened to my command, although whether that was a reflection of its bloodthirsty inclination murder everything or some tiny semblance of loyalty, I wasn't sure. It tangled its talons into her hair, wings spread wide, and began pecking. With any luck, it wouldn't be strong enough to actually peck out her eyes—

    That was never a thought I'd considered having before today, funnily enough, and context or not, I would never forgive myself for trying to rationalize through it. But I was going to die. If the Rockets didn't shoot me, the murkrow would murder me, no pun intended, and then—

    Other people, unsurprisingly enough, had caught wind that I had just told my pokémon to attack one of the Executives. There was no turning back now. I started running. "Off! We're leaving!" I shouted to the murkrow over Ariana's hoarse screams. I didn't actually want to hurt her. I just didn't want her hurting me.

    The murkrow screamed back in defiance, never even bothering to look at me as it continued worrying away at the woman whose fate I might've just sealed.

    Oh my gods. I'd just—

    "Now. Leave her." The cold was back, and with enough strength to leak into my voice.

    To my eternal shock, pride, and relief, the murkrow actually listened and disengaged.

    I ran.

    The murkrow landed on my shoulder by the time I reached the tall grass bordering the route out of New Bark Town. No one had bothered following me. Crowd mentality, I thought, suddenly grateful, remembering distant lessons in school. People always thought that the bystander effect was based on laziness, that tragedies were witnessed because crowds would literally sit around and wait for someone else to do the difficult job.

    That wasn't the entire truth. It was more of a mimicry thing, actually. You'd look to your left and right and see no one else moving, and you'd assume that that was the proper thing to do. That a whole crowd of people couldn't be wrong. And besides, if they weren't good enough to do that task, then how could you possibly be?

    And in this case, said difficult job involved taking down the blood-crazed murkrow, a species known for its uncanny love of devouring the dead, that had just attempted to maul Ariana, whose Gift, while unknown, apparently made her one of the best battlers in Johto.

    Honestly, I would've much sooner stuck with the crowd.

    "If you try that eye-pecking shit on me, I'm throwing you at a tree," I muttered darkly to the bird that now defined me, casting one last furtive glance over my shoulder to the darkened city. I wondered how far the power outage had spread, if all of Johto had this problem.

    I had my own problems. If I took that first step into the forest, my old life would be over. I'd tried to maul an Executive, after all. I could probably still turn back now, and beg for forgiveness, and maybe get off with a firing squad instead of a public execution. I'd only tried to maul an Executive, after all. But if I ran off into the grass like this, if I made myself into a fugitive, the only way I could come back would be in a bag.

    Then again, I think I'd already taken that first step the minute I'd gotten the murkrow.

    The murkrow cawed at me indignantly, fixing me with a bloody, one-eyed glare that burned from beneath the fringes of the top hat-like protrusion on its head. Well, don't just stand there, it seemed to say.

    We sprinted into the tall grass together.

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    Last edited:
    • ii. gaia
    • Responses:
    Flaze said:
    Well that chapter was a little short, but it was a pretty good chapter. However I do think that maybe making it a bit longer would've helped since it felt that not a long went on. I liked how you expanded more in regards to the state the world is in, and I'm interested as to what will happen since I can pretty much tell that something regarding the magnetic feel will keep popping out. I'm looking forward to the next chapter and seeing some more plot, I like to dwell into his mind but a story has to move.

    So what I'm wondering now is how long he'll be able to survive, either from the Rockets or from Murkrow.
    Click to expand...


    Pavell said:
    Aha, the promised next chapter! Not bad, a lot of imagination in this one and the ideas are solid. I do feel the exposition slowed down the action too much though, especially since our protagonist is in fear for his life. I'll freely admit that I'm not very good at action scenes myself though, so I wouldn't blame you for ignoring that comment
    Click to expand...

    The general consensus is that last chapter was too short, methinks. This chapter isn't much longer, but I found myself struggling--the next chapter is quite lengthy, and I didn't know where to meld the two of them together, so for now, I've this next chunk is split into two smaller/medium-length chapters. Hopefully, there's a lot more action going on here, and we can finally get the plot rolling; hurray!

    Again, thank you for your feedback, guys! ^^

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter ii. gaia​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    No one tried to follow us. This confirmed my suspicions: no one felt safe going into the forest without a pokémon of their own to defend themselves, or no one knew where I was. That was good. Unfortunately, I didn't feel safe going into the tall grass with only a pokémon I had just met to defend myself. Namely, a pokémon I had just met that was known for its ability to be both a carrion bird and a bird of prey, and one that had probably been hunted to extinction for good reason.

    Part of me really wanted to throw in the towel now. I could offer to swear loyalty to Team Rocket, give up training forever, and let them shoot the murkrow. Better yet, I could just ditch the murkrow myself and sneak on back to Goldenrod. Maybe even bother the xatu into giving me a normal starter. That would probably be enough to keep them from marking me as a terrorist and starting a witch hunt, and I'd probably get out alive with the least amount of collateral damage.

    Looking up to the aurora-streaked sky, dancing with shades of green and purple that continued to defy all my expectations, I realized the piece I'd been missing.

    The sirens. The aurora borealis in the heart of the south. The electrical lines exploding.

    Something had just nuked the power grid. All of it. And craziest of all, I knew how.

    One day, the literal sun decided that having Team Rocket rule our country wasn't bad enough, so the sun ended up spewing untold amounts of charged ions woven in with the light of the day. Well, actually, that had happened for about as long as the planet existed. The magnetic field from the center of the earth kept us from being fried instantly. And, in the past few years, something had happened. The official theories were beyond my comprehension, but the most popular one was that the Lugia's awakening had done something to screw with the planet's core.

    Up until now, Johto, the technological beacon of the world, whose legendary pokémon either lived unreachable high in the clouds, deep in the seas, or unreachable in the heart of the land, had played at being god. We had used an entire fleet of magneton and magnezone, courtesy of Team Rocket and their Lugia, to imitate whatever the iron core in the center of our planet wasn't really doing properly for the past years. Medical technology kept the cancer from the rest of the radiation away. Apparently.

    The imitation field was the only reason Johto had been able to utilize Kanto's technology once the Rockets came in. It was a metaphorical umbrella sheltering the tiny flame that was our tech from a torrential downpour of coronal radiation. And with the umbrella gone?

    They didn't know my name, and I wouldn't be in the trainer database for a long time because the database currently didn't exist. All trainer records would be wiped out, and even if they managed to get the mag field up and restore power, I wouldn't exist in them because I'd made my timely exit instead of registering. The only way people would remember what had happened today would be by their own, fallible, human memories, and, by virtue of not being native to New Bark, no one even knew my name.

    In fact, if I showed up back at home at Goldenrod and claimed that the magnetic apocalypse—it was hard to believe that I was accepting this, and yet here I was plotting around the complete failure of Johto's infrastructure—had struck before I got my starter pokémon from the xatu, no one would ever know the difference. Ariana might've caught a glimpse of a frightened sixteen year-old kid throwing a murkrow at her face, but would she be able to pick my face out of the chaos that followed? Dozens of trainers got their pokémon each day; the Rockets couldn't possibly hope to sift through them all and they wouldn't know where to look.

    So all I really had to do, actually, was ditch the murkrow. I could just forget the xatu's cryptic advice, hide from the Rockets for a while, and throw the stupid bird at the nearest tree. He was a pokémon; he didn't need me to survive—well, actually, he might've fed on my flesh later, if given the chance, but he could probably hunt on his own.

    We were nearly two miles in uncharted undergrowth by now. I slowed to a brisk walk, panting. As if sensing my intentions, the murkrow dug his talons into my shoulder. His claws easily pierced through the thin fabric of my shirt, and I hissed in annoyance as pinpricks of pain flared up on my shoulder. "For the love of gods, let go of my shoulder," I snapped, thinking back frantically to what I knew from pokémon behavioral classes. I had to show that I was the alpha murkrow, or else things would get messy. Did murders of murkrow even have hierarchies? Could I treat him like a pidgeot and hope for the best?

    He cawed back in defiance, the sound unnaturally loud in the silent forest. I instinctively reached into my pocket to pull out my dented, second-hand pokédex to translate what he was saying, and I was already flipping back the plastic cover and fiddling with the power button before I remembered that, yes, I'd just watched the magnezone field go down this morning and take out all electronic devices with it, and, yes, my pokédex was an electronic device.

    Reality started to sink in then, albeit just a little. Pokédexes didn't work. Phones didn't work. Pokéballs didn't work. Until the Rockets found a way to get another fake magnetic field up and running, and then fixed the power grid again and replaced all the hardware—and no one had seen the Lugia for nearly a decade, although that meant absolutely nothing—life was going to be quite difficult. For instance, my starter pokémon probably wanted to kill me, and I had no idea if he was telling me this or not.

    "Let go of my shoulder," I repeated firmly, turning to look at the bird perched on my shoulder. The murkrow's beady crimson gaze met mine, and I swear I saw his eyes narrow. I tried to glare back as well to look as intimidating as possible.

    "Okay."

    He obliged and lifted himself airborne, hovering for a moment before sinking his claws into the cuff of my jacket, right above my wrist. The better to see me with.

    I thought I was hearing things for a moment. I held the bird up at eye level, squinting. My pokédex was short-circuited, so it couldn't translate for me, but—"Did you just, uh, talk?" I knew some pokémon could talk—chatot, in Sinnoh, for example, had vocabularies of nearly four hundred words, and almost all psychic-types were telepaths, but that was a little different.

    Of course, if the xatu had given me a chatot or a psychic-type, I would've been in a much happier place right now. Murkrow were in the same family as chatot, I guess—they were both birds, right?— and I'd never really seen one to know about its vocal habits because they were supposed to be mostly extinct. For all I knew, all murkrow were capable of human speech, curing cancer, and doing the can-can alongside bloodthirsty murder and destruction.

    I kept my eyes pinned on the murkrow. He cackled at me, and then slowly and deliberately opened his bright yellow beak to croak, "No."

    So we were going to die, murkrow could talk, and my starter had a sense of humor.

    Damn. It was an interesting day to die, at least.

    "Look," I said patiently, trying to ignore the fact that I was holding a logical conversation with a bird. "Your pokéball is broken. It doesn't work." I pulled the empty sphere out of my pocket and waved it for emphasis. "I changed my mind. I don't want to train pokémon any more. You can go. Fly off. Be free. Peck someone's face off. Do murkrow things."

    "No."

    I tried a different tactic: logic. Maybe the bird was smart enough to piece it all together. "I don't want to keep you. That means you don't have to fight for me or train with me or do whatever else starter pokémon are supposed to do. That means you're free." I paused expectantly. "Now please leave me alone."

    "No."

    I kept storming through the undergrowth, enjoying the taste of tree in my mouth as I walked through a low-hanging branch by accident. I could hit him with a rock or something until he fainted, but he might've died, and I didn't want that on my hands as well. And besides, I wouldn't be able to catch another pokémon without his help, and I'd expertly maneuvered myself into the middle of a forest full of wild pokémon. If I miraculously managed to escape from the murkrow, I'd be easy pickings for whatever was hanging around. I sighed. "You can't be my starter." He tilted his head to one side. "I can't keep you. They'll kill me. Go away."

    "No."

    I didn't even know where I was going at that point. It was becoming painfully more and more apparent that the murkrow intended to stay with me as long as possible, probably so he could kill me at night. He'd even torn himself a nicer grip in the wrist of my jacket. "Is that all you can say?"

    "Yes."

    I sighed.

    I was honestly curious to know how much English he could speak—purely for scientific reasons, of course, because I was not going to keep him. Chatot could hold lopsided conversations, but I doubted that murkrow were quite so competent, if only because they had far less social exposure. But until I could get my pokédex translator fixed, I could at least maintain basic communication with pokémon. He had the vocabulary of a rock, but it was way more than I'd expected. And, again, he was possibly the only captured pokémon usable in the immediate area, seeing as the pokémon in their pokéballs were unreachable, and the pokémon outside of them were wild.

    The reasons, sadly, for keeping the murkrow were starting to pile up. On the other hand… "Are you going to kill me?"

    The murkrow shifted his feathers and snorted a little to himself. "Pity yourself already?" he asked, a condescending tone slipping into his voice. Could birds even be condescending? "Pathetic response to danger. Should fight or fly, not talk."

    "Please let go of my arm." I was holding a conversation with a pokémon, my starter was a dark-type, and the mag field had gone down less than an hour ago. Very quietly, I pinched myself on my free elbow. The murkrow took the liberty of nipping at my ear as well, and then swiveled his head violently as a pidgey burst out of the bushes at that moment, screeching angrily at us. I noticed the wickedly sharp talons and a long, curved beak, and I suddenly felt thankful that I had the murkrow before remembering that he might not want to battle for me at all, anyway.

    As if to contradict me, the murkrow immediately launched himself off my shoulder and into the air, spreading his jet-black wings and throwing back his head to issue a battle-cry that at least gave the pidgey some reason to pause. At the very least, the murkrow wasn't going to hesitate about attacking things, even if he didn't seem to have any qualms about attacking me, either.

    "Use, uh…" I trailed off. What moves did murkrow even know? I assumed that he could peck, seeing as he had a beak, but he could probably do something else. This was my first actual pokémon battle. I'd imagined this scenario several times before, although I'd never been stupid enough to imagine a murkrow. I felt like it should've been some momentous occasion that I'd been dreaming of for years, but I was coming up empty here.

    Instead, the murkrow made a sound in my direction that might've been a snicker before darting toward the pidgey, his inky-black wings marking his progress across the still air. The pidgey nimbly dodged out of the way of his attack and began flapping its wings to generate whirling jets of air that buffeted at the murkrow, but before they could do much damage, he'd already looped around in a tight somersault to avoid the compressed gusts of winds and was preparing to peck at the pidgey again with its beak.

    I was impressed against my will. This was by no means a high-caliber aerial battle, but it looked fairly awesome and everything was happening within a matter of seconds. Neither bird had managed to hit the other for much damage, but they both seemed to know how to handle themselves in airborne combat fairly well.

    Another thought occurred to me then. If the pidgey was a competent battler, I could catch it. At the very least, I could add it to my team so I'd have another pokémon with which to defend myself if the time came. And at the worst, I could replace the murkrow with another pokémon, no questions asked (or answered, really).

    I wasn't dark. This was all a mistake.

    At that moment, the pidgey jetted forward even faster than normal, cloaked in brilliant white light that I recognized as some sort of quick attack, and clipped the murkrow in the wing, sending him plummeting to the ground.

    I remembered then that I was a trainer and not a bystander, and a few seconds too late, I darted forward, trying to intervene or at least shout some words of encouragement to remind the murkrow that, hey, I really did care—which was only half of a lie, at the very least.

    My fears were ungrounded. The murkrow righted himself inches before his feathers touched the grass, and then he rocketed upward, slamming into the pidgey's feathered midsection with bone-crushing force and sending the pidgey into a tree. The pidgey slid limply toward the ground, and I scrambled in my backpack for a pokéball, thinking fast. I could catch the pidgey and pretend that one, it was my starter, and two, I was a flying-type pokémon trainer. There. Problem solved. No death by Rockets and no death by murkrow.

    It would've been a great plan, too, if my pokéballs worked. It would've been an even better plan, except the murkrow, noticing the pokéball in my hand, leapt forward with renewed vigor and sunk its talons deep into the pidgey's feathered chest, pinning the pidgey to the floor. He spread his wings wide and opened his bright yellow beak, preparing to tear into the pidgey's throat. I could see the bloodlust reflected in the murkrow's eyes. The history books were true.

    "What the shit!" I shrieked, resisting the urge to vomit was that blood? "Stop it!" I cringed away, fully expecting the murkrow to rip the pidgey's throat out and then turn on me and attack me as well.

    Fine. I felt my fingers curling into fists and tried not to think about how they'd find my body—abandoned in some random corner of the forest, and probably picked over by birds. I turned back. Eye contact. No flinching. "Stop it."

    To my surprise, the murkrow lowered his wings and stepped off of the downed bird, making harsh, hacking sounds under its breath but clearly bowing his head in submission.

    The pidgey staggered away, and we both let it.

    "What the hell were you doing?" I shouted, but the murkrow seemed to ignore me.

    Instead, he settled back onto my shoulder like nothing had happened, and it was hard to believe that the black scruff of feathers perched by my ears had been on the verge of gutting a pokémon not ten seconds before. Both in the sense that he was actually quite unintimidating with his head lowered like this, and in the sense that he was much closer to my neck than I liked. "Do not want to be replaced," he muttered.

    And then I realized that the murkrow was smart, possibly smarter than I was, and the warm, fuzzy feelings were replaced with dread again. All I wanted to do right now was get out of this situation, but he could see through all my lies. "Look. There are a bunch of people who think that dark-type pokémon should—"

    The murkrow glared at me with those beady crimson eyes again, as if daring me to give him another excuse. I found myself stopping short.

    Whether I liked it or not, I was grudgingly impressed with the murkrow. So far, he'd done a good job of attacking anything I pointed him at, which seemed like a fairly useful skill. He was clever, he was vicious, and he was fairly strong for such a young pokémon, and he seemed to have some iota of trust in me. On top of all of that, he could talk, which was already setting itself up to be an invaluable skill, seeing as the translators were dead and I probably wouldn't get a psychic-type any time soon.

    On the flip side, he'd either kill me in my sleep or get me killed by the Rockets. Maybe.

    He hadn't killed the pidgey.

    I wasn't dark. Maybe he wasn't dark either.

    Something about the bird struck me in the core. He seemed afraid, just like I was, even if he was doing a much better job of hiding it than I. I couldn't really be sure. But what other pokémon would be afraid that its trainer would replace it within an hour of being caught? And the xatu had pegged me for darkness, after all, even if darkness wasn't evil.

    He hadn't killed the pidgey.

    "Look. Fine. Say we do this together," I said at last, running my free hand through my hair and screaming internally. I was actually going through with this. Okay. "Remember those people in suits that we saw earlier? They probably don't like you and me very much."

    "Attacked them," the murkrow cawed back proudly.

    In hindsight, setting a rabid bird on Ariana definitely hadn't been my brightest idea all day. No worries, though; I was now trying to reason with and then lie to said bird, which was most certainly a stupider plan. "And if there are more? We're going to need backup." Yeah. I could totally pull this off. "More pokémon on our side."

    He stared at me blankly.

    "More pokémon on our side whose throats you don't rip out."

    His eyes actually narrowed and his head cocked to one side as he began calculating through what I had told him. Fascinating. He was listening to reason. I could get a fake starter from the woods. Something strong, like a—

    "Caterpie!" the murkrow shouted loudly, suddenly distracted, at which point he launched himself off of my shoulder, talons extended, toward a nearby branch.

    There was that kind of edge in his voice that he tended to have when he wanted to murder things, so I my guard went up fast. "Hey, wait! I'm talking to you!"

    The murkrow ignored me, of course—like I had expected anything different—and continued to wheel around the tree. He dipped out of sight for a moment and then shot like an arrow back to me, inky black feathers almost invisible among the branches.

    "Hey!" I shouted, right before I remembered that shouting would probably be a horrible idea in my dastardly scheme of not drawing attention to myself.

    Did murkrow eat caterpie?

    The murkrow flapped back laboriously to me, something struggling in his claws, and then he released his burden and swept back around to perch on a branch in front of me so I could better see his prize. "Caterpie," he said proudly.

    Indeed, in front of me was a very stunned caterpie. Its buggy eyes, large, white, and bulging, stared vacantly off into space for a minute, and then it righted itself with a soft squelching sound, its suction cup-legs searching for traction on the damp ground. Pink antennae twitched in fear as it slowly focused on me.

    I turned away at first, intending to leave without looking back so I could try this plan again. Caterpie were basically small piles of shit with legs. I didn't want to sound like some sort of jerk who only cared about strong pokémon, but I knew enough about bugs to know that caterpie weren't all that impressive, and I needed a real fake-starter.

    Another sentence that I couldn't really wrap my head around properly. Caterpie were weak, picked apart by birds like murkrow, and evolved into slightly better versions of themselves that could—

    "Fly," the murkrow said calmly, jabbing at the caterpie with his talons and then back at himself. "Caterpie. She fly one day."

    The leafy-green bug shied away, and I realized just how smart my bird was. Caterpie weren't the most powerful bugs, but they evolved into flying-types. Flying-types like xatu, or, more pressingly, murkrow. How many dots had he connected?

    "I thought you were afraid I was going to replace you?" Oh, well done, I mentally congratulated myself. Let's shoot ourselves in the foot while we're at it, shall we?

    The murkrow cocked his head to one side, beady red eyes narrowing as he studied me. "Caterpie weak," he said, judging my reaction carefully. "I not afraid you try to replace."

    "Piii." I wasn't sure if the caterpie understood our conversation, but she had the sense to try to look a little offended. With those adorable, massive brown eyes, she didn't look particularly upset at all.

    When he said it so bluntly, actually, I sounded like some sort of jerk who only cared about strong pokémon. "Why this?"

    "Boss says afraid of Team Rocket because starter is dark." The murkrow made that sighing sound again, as if he were being incredibly patient simply by enduring my presence for this long. "Pretend caterpie is Boss's starter. Evolve her. Then we are all fliers."

    My blood ran cold.

    As much as I hated to admit it, perhaps the xatu was right. This murkrow and I were a lot more similar than I would've liked, and—

    No, I was still going to replace him as soon as I had the chance. No one had seen me with the bird yet. I could easily avoid being killed. Even if I decided to keep him around, I could say that the xatu had told me I was destined to be a powerful flying-type trainer, and I, a dumb kid, had seen this very obvious black flying-type on the road and captured it to complete my specialized team of awesomeness. What, it was a murkrow? Murkrow weren't seen in the wild because they'd mostly been killed off after the Rockets came to power? How was I supposed to know that—my pokédex broke, and I had no idea why! What was a dark-type? Evil? Me? Never!

    Heck, if I wanted to, I could avoid starting anything altogether and actually believe that the xatu wanted me to specialize in flying-types. Maybe I could convince the murkrow to let me capture another pidgey as well. I reached into my backpack for an empty pokéball and aimed it at the downed caterpie. It stared back at me, large, beady eyes wider than normal. I would have had the murkrow attack it, but it already looked battered up from its collision with the ground. Also, said ground was still covered in our last capture attempt's throat-blood.

    In terms of first pokémon captures, this one was quite lame. I didn't care. I had a pokémon that wouldn't mark me as a terrorist if I used it as my starter. I pressed the center of the pokéball to expand it.

    Nothing happened.

    Right. Magnetic apocalypse. That was still a thing. Funny how my world was ending in two ways for the price of one.

    The murkrow cackled again, this time making no effort to keep it to himself, and I silently fumed. Life without electricity was probably going to get brutal after I finished freezing to death. If anything, though, failing to capture the caterpie only cemented my fears—previously, I could delude myself into believing that life was still fairly normal and the power grid wasn't down and Goldenrod wasn't in crisis mode, but now, with the dead pokéball in my hand, I knew that that wasn't the case. This was all happening.

    "Piii?"

    "Stupid," the murkrow said, flapping from my shoulder and landing on the ground between me and the caterpie. At first, I thought he was talking to me, but he kept his beady gaze fixed upon the caterpie. He cawed at her again in a mixture of some sort of pokémon-conversational-language, and she nodded happily. "Stupid bug wishes to accompany you on free will," he concluded. "Not need pokéball."

    I crouched down so that I was somewhat level with the caterpie. She waved her pink antennae cheerfully at me, and I could have sworn that she was smiling despite the general lack of mouth. "You want to come with me?" I could hardly believe my luck. I mean, caterpie weren't known for their bellicose natures, and I hardly expected them to resist capture, and if it came to it I could probably just pick up the caterpie and carry her around Johto, but at the same time, it was nice not to have to resort to kidnapping this early on in my adventure.

    "Pi!"

    I stood there for a moment, two roads dangling in front of me for yet another time this day. "I'm supposed to have a dangerous path ahead of me," I said at last. "You don't mind?"

    "Pi." She shook her head and then returned to nibbling at the grass. She didn't seem like the warring type, which was nice. I had a hunch that the bloodthirsty bird who was technically my starter would be bad enough.

    "And you don't mind either," I added, turning to look meaningfully at the murkrow. The last thing I needed was for the little blighter to change his mind and murder my caterpie in a couple of hours. It would be sad, and also that would take ages to clean.

    "Caterpie make better company than you," he said proudly, picking at a bit of dirt between his talons with his abnormally-large beak. "You say wrong things often. Caterpie make nice conversation." He paused and thought about something. "Also, nice not to be chased by men in coats." Another pause. "But not afraid of men in coats either, so that matter less."

    The caterpie suctioned her way on to my arm—it felt a little strange, and her feet were a lot colder than I'd expected—and looked at me with wide eyes while I looked back. I didn't have any brilliant strikes of naming ideas, and there wasn't much by way of inspiration. If my murkrow and I were going to go down in flames, I was going to feel a little guilty bringing something as helpless as a caterpie down with me.

    In that case, we weren't going to go down at all. We couldn't. Time to fly.

    The name came to me then. "Your name is Gaia." The first. The foundation. The roots of the earth.

    "Piii," the caterpie replied solemnly, and the murkrow bowed his head.

    Our foundation was made of lies, of course, but that was a matter for a different day.

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    • iii. all that glitters
    • Responses!
    Pavell said:
    A quiet chapter, this is a first for you @kintsugi eh? You're getting better, I'm sure of it. Still very coy about where this is all going, and as usual I don't see that as a weakness. I can see that you're thinking about practical matters - the coming winter, for example - and I'll be curious to see how the rest of Johto is coping without electricity.

    A rare moment of well, very nearly warmth at the end of this chapter. It's a nice change, I rather liked this line

    The first. The foundation. The roots of the earth.
    Click to expand...

    I'm hoping this means a little more attachment ... it would be sweet if that little Caterpie became a firm companion. Don't pander to me, mind ;)

    Oh, yes, and I did have A Song of Ice and Fire in mind when I referenced Commander Mormont's raven (Dead! Dead, dead! Corn)
    Click to expand...
    Heh, quiet chapters? I'd never! We'll be seeing the effects of the apocalypse shortly, though.

    And, no worries, Gaia's going to stick around for a while. I have a soft spot for those early-route 'mons, and she'll... well. No spoilers, eh?

    Flaze said:
    [really long evaluation that I did read but if I replied it would take, like, forty months]
    Click to expand...

    Bwahaha, I think I already said this, but thank you so much for the feedback. One of my largest flaws is pacing, so hopefully by the time summer comes around, I'll actually have some plot for you to go off of.

    I can't thank you guys enough for reading and giving comments, though. Seriously. :>
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    chapter iii. all that glitters​
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    "Sentret, sentret, pidgey!"

    My murkrow could talk.

    As soon as I'd realized that, now that I wasn't terrified for my life, I wanted nothing more than to make him shut up. More on that in a second. As we trudged through the endless forest, I was slowly beginning to understand the seemingly-simple concept that life without electricity sucked.

    You'd think that, for a nation whose power grid could be taken down so easily, we'd have put together some precautions for the magnetic apocalypse. As far as I knew, we didn't have any: there'd been tornado drills back in the flatlands of Goldenrod, but I'd never taken any classes on, say, how to navigate if your compass thought that literally every direction was both magnetic north and south, simultaneously. My pokédex was broken, which took my map with it, and I didn't have so much as a radio to call for help. Not that I was really going to call for help with the murkrow still hanging around. Pokéballs were a moot point, too, but that was more of an afterthought.

    It was hardly afternoon, but I was already getting cold. At night, it would be colder, and darker, and I didn't exactly know how to deal with that.

    I made a mental note to self to obtain a fire-type pokémon as fast as possible, which would be—

    "Pidgey, sentret, pidgey, pidgey!"

    —seeing as the stupid bird was taking the liberty of listing every pokémon he saw from his perch on my back, and apparently there was a whopping total of two species of pokémon out here, it might be a while. Add to that the fact that the stupid thing seemed liable to murder things he didn't like, and it was quite possible that I would spend my time freezing to death.

    "Sentret, pidgey!"

    "Piiii," Gaia offered unhelpfully from my other shoulder.

    As it turned out, in addition to making me terrified for my life, marking me as an enemy of the government, long walks on the beach, and ripping out the throats of unsuspecting pidgey, the murkrow enjoyed pissing me off.

    But the only thing more chilling than the bird's incessant chatter—"Boss, sentret, pidgey, sentret! Pidgey, pidgey!"—would be the silence. And there was plenty of silence to be had. Even the pokémon in the depths of the route between New Bark Town and whatever town lay ahead were silent. It was like they all knew that something terrible had happened this day, something that required their own silence out of fear. The only sounds were the occasional shuffling of talons from the branches above our heads and the dry crunch of my own feet on the loamy earth of the route. Every pokémon, it seemed, knew to hold its breath to see how the world would react to this horrible event, while above us, the sky flashed incessantly with the aurora borealis.

    "Pidgey, pidgey, sentret, pidgey!"

    Every pokémon except mine. The murkrow was quite pleased with his ability to talk, which I assume he had taken for granted until he discovered that it annoyed me to no end, and he dug his talons into my shoulder and proceeded to caw out as much obnoxious, inane information as he could. Which mostly consisted of him calling out every species he saw. Every time he saw it. We quickly settled into a routine: I would try to punch him off my shoulder and then prepare to defend myself in case he lunged for my eyes; he would nimbly dodge my attack and shut up for five steps; he would begin cheerfully spouting rubbish; I would try to punch him. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes, Gaia would chime in with something unintelligible.

    "Sentret, pidgey. Pidgeotto, oooh! Sentret, sentret!"

    This was nice, though. A routine was good. Settling into a routine meant that I didn't have to think about what had actually happened today, which probably amounted to my being exiled from society, at the very least. At the very worst, society wouldn't be around to exile me, because Johto's power grid had crashed and everything was slowly devolving into chaos.

    I sighed. "Do you see anything else?" I asked. It was a purely rhetorical question; maybe I could get him to start a conversation that didn't sound like he was mashing the pronunciation button of a pokédex.

    "Team Rocket," he replied nonchalantly.

    I tensed instantly, fingers curling into fists as I felt adrenaline start pumping into my legs at a million miles per hour. I could probably run into the forest before their psychics caught sight of me; otherwise, trying to run from a police force that could teleport would mean instant death. If I made it into the undergrowth, I could probably try to stay hidden until they—

    "Hah!" my murkrow crowed, spreading his wings wide and flapping around so he could better project his reedy voice into my face. "Kidding!"

    —I was midway through charting out the least-painful trajectory through a nearby bush when his words sunk in. My eyes warily narrowed, and I let my gaze dart through the dark trees, wondering if there was anyone lurking behind the branches.

    My murkrow, however, made a harsh croaking sound that could pass for a laugh. "Look on face absolutely priceless!"

    I grit my teeth to keep myself from cursing violently, and then I released the breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. "Don't do that," I said tightly.

    The murkrow returned to his perch on my shoulder, and I could feel his talons sinking into the threadbare fabric of my backpack strap. "Why?"

    "Piiii," the caterpie answered sagely.

    "Um, yeah." I had no idea how to answer that.

    There was an awkward silence.

    "She say you should be less violent," the murkrow translated.

    I decided to take his words at face value and mentally filed away the fact that my caterpie thought that loud words constituted actual battling. Gods help us when we had to battle if that was true. "Look. Team Rocket is actually a threat. We got lucky." I tried to be patient. Really, I did. But the organization-government-dictatorship that ran my country wanted me dead, the electrical infrastructure was in shambles, and I was trying to explain politics and strategy to a talking bird that had been hunted to exctinction.

    Yeah, today was a little weird, but I was learning to cope.

    The murkrow pumped out his chest a little, baring the tufts of black feathers beneath his neck. "We protect Boss," he said proudly. "Why fear? We not afraid of men in coats."

    "Pi," Gaia supplemented, helpful as ever.

    I was trying to explain politics and strategy to a talking bird that was supposed to be extinct, I told myself. Nothing to see here. "Look, we just need to avoid them. They don't like us because you're—" what the heck was I even supposed to say? "—they just don't like you because of the kind of pokémon you are, I guess, and they're going to kill us for that if they can."

    "Bird? Forest full of bird. Caterpie will be like bird one day. Killing all bird bad planning."

    No, it would've been perfectly fine if he'd been a flying-type. I felt a flash of pity for my murkrow: he probably hadn't seen another dark-type pokémon before, and he certainly didn't know why people might fear him. "You're what they call a dark-type. They don't like dark-types."

    "Still not afraid of men in coats," he repeated, as if I were missing something crucial.

    "Well, I—Boss is afraid of the men in coats," I snapped back. "And they don't like you because you're a dark-type, and they don't like me because you're my starter, which means that we're apparently really close to one another, so we're going to avoid them." Hopefully that would keep it simple enough.

    Miraculously, it worked, because there was a moment's pause before—

    "Sentret, sentret, pidgey!"

    Damn. I probably should've seen that one coming.

    Speaking of things I didn't see—

    The gust of energy that knocked the murkrow off my backpack moved too fast for me to track. I spun around, eyes widening and adrenaline making me fully awake, but the murkrow caught himself before he slammed into a tree and managed to right himself with a few flaps of his inky wings, squawking indignantly all the while before landing back on my shoulder.

    "Nice shot, Dante."

    I hadn't said that, and neither had my murkrow.

    I whirled back around to see a trainer about my age with dark red hair that reached nearly to his shoulders—I vaguely wondered if he'd had a nice time sleeping with that in the dirt. Other than the fact that he had a pokémon, though, I wouldn't have pegged him for a trainer. His clothing, still in miraculously-pristine condition despite the dirt, looked like he was dressed for a job interview. He wore a white, expensive-looking blazer and an arrogant smirk that suited his pinched face far too well. I decided then, perhaps too prematurely, that I hated him, shortly after I realized that, holy crap, there was a trainer in the forest and he'd attacked my pokémon.

    But what was most threatening was the pokémon hovering next to him, floating of its own accord with what I knew was telekinesis. The creature was short, about the size of a small child, but it sat in a meditating pose and kept its eyes tightly shut. Its tail, golden-brown, lashed through the air and was the only sign that it was conscious at all. Pointy triangular ears twitched occasionally, and if I hadn't known better, I would have thought it was sleeping or dumb.

    But I did know better. Abra lived in the grass outside of Goldenrod where I grew up, and were devastatingly powerful when well trained, and were a traditional staple of Team Rocket.

    "Um. Hi?" I tried to keep the fear I felt out of my voice. This was a big forest, and I'd purposefully strayed from the path. I couldn't be easy to stumble upon out here, but there was always a chance. I tried to shift my stance so that my murkrow-shoulder was facing away from him, and my caterpie-shoulder was a lot more prominent. "Can I help you?"

    The way he raised one eyebrow, almost in disbelief, told me I shouldn't have bothered. The boy smirked, one hand stroking the abra beside him like a Bond villain might stroke a persian. "Well, you know how the saying goes. When two trainers make eye contact, they have to battle." And with that, he looked me squarely in the eyes, his dark brown gaze locking with my own. "In case I haven't made it immensely obvious, please stop backing away from me so we can battle."

    I decided then and there that 'hate' was not an adequate term to express my feelings for this trainer. "The whole of Johto is in crisis mode and you try to jump me so we can battle?"

    "Yeah. Something like that." He sounded like he meant it, too, speaking with a careless authority that came from years of getting his way.

    I didn't have time for this. I had a rebellion to not-start and a villainous team to avoid, and I wanted to get to Cherrygrove before nightfall so I didn't end up freezing to death without proper supplies. "That's cute. I'll be leaving now."

    "Dante, if you would be so kind."

    The abra moved faster than conscious thought, or at least faster than my conscious thought, and I found myself staring at its squinted eyes even as I tried to walk away from the trainer and his psychic rat. Teleportation. Of course. Just like the xatu. {My trainer asks you to stop. I ask you not to refuse.}

    "Mine declines," my murkrow growled before I could speak. Perhaps he sensed my unease. His talons flexed unconsciously, and I could tell that he was prepared to dig into the abra's throat, if it came to it. He seemed content to trade banter with the abra, though, although whether he was doing it to help me avoid a fight or for a closer shot at the golden pokémon remained up in the air. "We pass now."

    The boy seemed to be calculating his options, although I had no idea for what. "It won't take too long," the trainer scoffed at last, lazily examining his fingers. "Dante can crush your petty little pokémon in an instant, and then I can be on my way."

    Ass. I wanted to punch him, but there was something afoot here, something deeper. The arrogance suited him well, but it seemed like a façade, almost. But why?

    On second thought, I didn't particularly want to find out. "Thanks for the offer," I said. I had to actively resist the urge to roll my eyes, and even then, it was close. "But we'll be leaving now. You know. Gotta get to town before the armageddon strikes again."

    This time the trainer himself moved to impede my path, throwing out a gloved hand and slamming it into my shoulder. I staggered back in surprise as he said, "Look. I don't want to waste time. If you don't send out a pokémon soon, preferably the murkrow, Dante here will pop your head like a zit."

    The abra hovered into my face again, eyes glowing menacingly, and I wondered if he'd actually meant it. Pokémon on human violence was rare, and trainers were forbidden to attack other trainers with their pokémon, but we were in the middle of a forest devoid of any witnesses, I had an illegal pokémon, and the rest of Johto was too busy with the magnetic apocalypse to care, anyways.

    Actually, shit, he knew what a murkrow was? This was probably a bad sign.

    "I don't believe you," I retorted, eyebrows creasing into a frown. He wouldn't dare. I turned to leave—

    And found the abra in my face again. Teleportation. Damn.

    "Shall we try this again?" he asked, and I realized about then how screwed we were. Engaging this kid would be the stupidest thing I'd done all day, probably. And this was after I'd attacked Ariana with a murkrow and then believed him when he promised not to slash my throat. But my head had a happy and welcome place on my neck with all of its internal fluids, well, internal and not splattered across a tree. And besides. Dark-types beat psychic-types. Bug-types beat psychic-types. I had a legitimate shot at this.

    Best to do it in style, then.

    "And if I refuse?" I probably shouldn't have asked, but I was feeling daring and he was starting to piss me off. Starting was a lie, actually; he'd pissed me off quite a while ago. "Settling disputes with battles is a bit of an outdated notion, don't you think?" I didn't have time for this. I wanted to reach Cherrgrove in the next few days, and I needed to reach Goldenrod as soon as possible. My mother—

    "Then I report back to Proton that I've found their fugitive with the murkrow starter, the Rockets come and take you back to Goldenrod, and I watch you hang on this evening's news while reading a nice book." Pause. "Well, I guess the broadcasting network is down, but the point still stands."

    "Report directly to Proton?" I repeated numbly. "Why would you—oh." The red hair. The expensive clothing. The perfect psychic-type pokémon. The entitlement. The violence. "You're Giovanni's kid." And then, because I couldn't help it. "Oh, shit."

    Of course he'd have an abra as his first pokémon. They evolved into nigh-unstoppable psychics, and the heir of Team Rocket would, naturally, get no less. I assumed that he'd been stuck with an abra only because the Lugia wasn't a legal starter.

    He did a mock bow, his dark red hair falling into his eyes, but I could see hatred burning there, and contempt. I didn't know for whom or what. "Codename Silver, the one and only." Most of the higher ranks claimed to operate under codenames, although I preferred to pretend that their parents were stupid enough to name their kids stupid things like 'Proton' or 'Petrel.' Or here, 'Silver.'

    I didn't care what they were called; I didn't want to see any of them and I didn't want them seeing me. I took a step backwards. This was bad. I'd been hoping to evade Team Rocket at least until nightfall. I wanted to get a trainer card up at Cherrygrove, preferably one that listed Gaia as my starter; with the records down, they'd have no choice but to believe me, especially if I managed to convince my murkrow to keep his mouth shut while I was registering. But if Silver knew who and where I was, it would only take a matter of time before the rest of Team Rocket found me as well. "Why are you battling me?" I asked. Stalling for time, really. Half of my mind was searching for a way to keep him quiet. Bribery wouldn't work; he was too rich for that and I too poor. The forest stretched on for miles, from what I could see, and I couldn't outrun his abra if it could teleport. "Are you trying to capture me?"

    Silver laughed humorlessly. "You think I care? You think I'm going to go blabbing back to the Executives about the little trainer on the road with her pathetic bird?"

    "I'd gotten that gist from the whole 'I'll report directly back to Proton if you don't do what I want' speech, yeah."

    The smile faded from his face, and I caught a glimpse of that hatred again. "I don't run around for them like a pet. They're a bunch of idiots, and they don't know what you look like or where you are," he snarled. His voice had suddenly turned harsh. "And all I had to do to find out was follow you, but they botched that one up. You don't threaten us, anyways. The xatu thought you were special, and the second you got your starter, Johto went to hell. I believe in fate. I want to see why. If you win, I'll let you go, but it goes without saying that I don't expect much."

    This was going to be a normal day. That's the promise I'd made.

    Oops.

    On my wrist, my murkrow was bristling and ready for a fight. That wasn't really anything new, but I nodded curtly at him. This conversation was over, and if I wasn't going to be allowed to leave until we pounded him and his stupid abra into the ground, then so be it. "Um, he's all yours." Quickly, before anything else got out of hand, I added, "The abra, not the boy."

    Clearly glad to get fighting at last, the murkrow leapt off my arm and took to the air in a flash of black feathers, cawing angrily. The joking drawl, the casual naming of the native pokémon to piss me off, the lazy flapping was all gone now, replaced with a beady crimson glare fit to kill beneath the feathered protrusions that formed his little top hat. It was almost cute, and then I remembered that this was still a murkrow, after all, and they travelled in flocks called murders for a reason.

    Across from us, Silver nudged his abra with a nod of his head, and the golden pokémon levitated forward as well, its eyes pressed firmly shut. They said that looking into an abra's eyes could cause insanity, and I didn't want to find that out.

    I opened my mouth to shout out an attack when I realized I didn't know what moves my murkrow knew. I'd figured out some of the local pokémon around Goldenrod, of course, but murkrow weren't native to anywhere, let alone my backyard. I'd ask him, but that would look dumb. I'd use my pokédex, but it didn't work. This whole 'no technology' thing wasn't working out too well. We had to start somewhere, though. "Peck it like you did with the pidgey."

    If he ripped out the abra's throat, some voice said in the back of my mind, even better.

    Thankfully, the murkrow seemed to know what I was talking about. He drew his wings close to his body and dive-bombed the abra, golden beak glinting in the sunlight.

    Silver raised an eyebrow. "Confusion, standard resist protocol."

    What was he playing at? He of all people would know that abra's psychic attacks wouldn't have any effect on murkrow. I frowned, wondering if perhaps I had overestimated his skills, before his abra nodded, spread its hands out, and levitated the rocks around it with a flash of blue energy.

    "Look out for the rocks!" I shouted, and the murkrow barely swerved out of the way as the rocks around him rose into the air and began hurling themselves at him, almost of their own accord. I flinched. Dark-type or not, getting hit with a large boulder would still hurt. I was impressed against my will. Silver didn't seem to be unnerved that I was using a pokémon absolutely immune to his starter's attacks of choice, and he'd revealed a battle plan in the first few moments of our skirmish.

    And I had no idea how to fight back.

    Think. Act. Now. "Swerve around. Get behind it!"

    Instead, he began engaging the abra head-on, darting in and out of its range, flitting close to it before pulling out quickly and flying in from a different angle. Every time, he had to pull up short or avoid taking a rock to the face. He was faster than the abra, but barely; each time, the rocks and dust flying around crept a little closer to the bird before he managed to get out, and he narrowly dodged a crushing death with every pass.

    Granted, even though he'd disobeyed me, it was a pretty successful decision on his part. My murkrow got the first hit off, a fleeting peck that was hardly more than a brush before he had to retreat again. The murkrow cackled victoriously. "Slow, slow, slow!"

    Silver didn't seem amused. "Shock wave," he said, his voice cool.

    I stifled a curse. Not only was his first pokémon an abra, but it was an abra that had already been taught special moves. It could do more than sleep, it could do more than teleport, and now it could do more than use psychic-type attacks. All of this from a starter that had been given out yesterday morning from a xatu that was supposed to distribute pokémon that were tame and completely untrained so that everyone could get an equal footing.

    Yet I got the murkrow and the heir of Team Rocket got the electricity-wielding abra. Silver's abra, I noted distractedly, also didn't seem to annoy him to no end by, say, listing names of wild pokémon or pestering Gaia all the time.

    The abra spread its paws apart, and a web of crackling blue electricity formed in the air around it. It pointed a stubby paw towards my murkrow and released the fizzling lightning, arcs of blue light splitting from the fistful of energy that it held in its palm.

    This was no time for complaining. "Dodge!"

    To his credit, the murkrow actually tried to listen to me this time—maybe I'd actually made a good command as a trainer—, folding his wings and dropping like a stone in a steep dive, but the lightning followed him, painting the air and the surrounded forest a washed-out blue. The murkrow squawked in pain as the shockwave hit his tail feathers and then coursed through his body, and I found myself wincing as he hit the dusty ground with a thud.

    I bit back a curse. "You okay?" I asked tentatively. He lay on the ground in a limp heap of tangled feathers. "Hey, are you okay?" One crimson eye cracked open.

    It occurred to me that my murkrow wasn't okay.

    We couldn't lose this. We couldn't. I had no effing clue what Silver was going to do if we lost.

    "One more should finish the job," Silver said. "Dante, quickly."

    I couldn't lose this battle now. I couldn't. I was not coming this far and fleeing Team Rocket only to get beaten by some upstart, arrogant heir to their organization who had effortlessly pounded us into a pulp and if we didn't make it out alive he was going to kill us or worse. "Hey. Get up." I couldn't keep the pleading note out of my voice. "Please."

    The abra prepared another orb of electricity between its two paws and aimed at its downed target. Now that my murkrow wasn't flapping around like a bat out of hell, the abra had a much easier target.

    Silver looked up from a careful examination of his fingers. "Don't take me the wrong way, but I was definitely expecting more out of you." I didn't bother responding to him. "I mean, if the xatu actually chose you to do whatever it thought you would, I'd have hoped it would be smart enough to choose someone competent enough—"

    "—he didn't choose me," I growled, teeth gritted. I wasn't going to do anything stupid to get myself killed.

    "Well, he's dead now, so I hope you're proud."

    He looked up, those dark brown eyes of his glinting and his face unreadable. Triumph, maybe, but there was an edge of sadness as well. Why was he telling me this? "Did you know that that xatu belonged to one of the trainers who took down the old government? He took out two of the old Elite Four by himself, fought the Zapdos alone to a draw, and helped combat the Lugia. One almost had to wonder why he turned against us by doing something as stupid as helping you. Archer thought you were going to be tough shit to trick the xatu into doing this." Silver looked away. "Two elites, the Zapdos, and the Lugia apparently don't pack the punch of a shotgun at close range, you know?"

    I felt the blood drain from my face.

    "We'll probably have to shoot the murkrow as well."

    But they hadn't killed us yet. The cold was back. Fine. If they were going to gloat, I was going to take advantage of it, but I didn't know if there was any advantage to take at this point. Options. My fingers curled into fists, but my eyes were wandering around, trying to take stock of what I had in my arsenal.

    {It is nothing personal.}

    Damned psychic. He wasn't laying a finger on my pokémon. I mean, I hardly trusted him either, but— "Get up!"

    The murkrow cracked open his other crimson eye, looking weakly at me. His wings were splayed across the ground, and I realized with horror that he wasn't going to make it out in time. I was going to lose, and my murkrow was going to die. I could get Gaia to attack while the abra was distracted and maybe she could try to surprise him, but I doubted she was strong enough to—

    Then the stupid bird winked at me. Moments before the electricity hit him, the murkrow propped himself up on his wings and pushed himself airborne, a trail of dust behind him as he skimmed across the ground in a flash of yellow and black.

    {What.}

    The little blighter tricked me.

    Then he was whizzing past me alongside the smell of burnt feathers, the electricity not too far behind him, and I realized that we weren't quite free yet. He couldn't outrun the shock wave attack forever, and I was sure that despite his brash appearance and jaunty smile, he definitely wouldn't enjoy taking another hit.

    Before I could start giving a command that would've been absolutely unhelpful, the murkrow executed a tight backward loop, arcing gracefully behind the abra. The steely glint had returned to his eyes, and it was clear that he'd planned something without my telling him to. He was eclipsed by the sitting abra's figure, which was turning to meet him but all too slowly. For a moment, the dark bird was completely hidden by the abra's golden fur, and then I saw his face and beak sprouting out of the psychic-type's chest.

    He did not just—

    Tendrils of darkness trailed away from the murkrow's tail feathers as the rest of him emerged smoothly from the abra's brown chest plates. The abra itself looked at its chest in confusion as the murkrow slipped out of its abdomen like an apparition, leaving flesh and skin completely intact. It tried to swat at the murkrow, but its paws were too slow, and then its eyes widened, almost comically, from small slits to slightly less-small slits in pain.

    The shock wave was still locked on, but unlike my murkrow, it lacked the ability and motivation to pass through solid objects. The electricity hit the abra squarely in the back, and this time the blue, fizzling energy made the abra cry in pain rather than my murkrow. Not letting up for a moment, the bird swerved back and latched on to the golden pokémon's face, pecking at it until the stunned abra finally lost the energy to stay floating upright.

    I blinked. I'd won?

    "Hey," I said, snapping back to reality. "Off. You won."

    Chattering sourly, the murkrow disentangled himself from the abra's face and returned to my shoulder.

    Silver scowled. "Faint Attack. Cheap." He glared at his abra, now unconscious, and pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and threw it at me. "You win. Catch."

    I caught it and slipped it into my pocket without counting it, too shocked to even consider doing so. I'd heard that trainers used to give each victor money, but that was a tactic as ancient as the old government—no one outside of the gym league had that kind of money to spare any more. No one, it seemed, besides the Rockets and their spawn.

    I filed the name of the new attack in the back of my mind in case I needed it again. "Yes, well, it worked, and, uh, it was totally on purpose. Now leave us alone." I balled my hands into fists. Without a pokémon to help him, Silver couldn't exactly turn us in. If I wanted to get away, now was the chance. "I'm leaving now."

    I wanted to do something to defuse this, or maybe just punch him in the face for killing the xatu, but all semblance of neutrality would be lost the moment I laid a finger on his pristine white clothing.

    Then again, all semblance of neutrality had probably been lost the moment I'd told my bird to go after Ariana.

    Still not my best plan, in hindsight.

    Silver took a half step toward his fallen abra, and then pried its mouth opened and shoved his hand into its mouth.

    What was he doing?

    "Piiii!" Gaia cried out in warning. She'd been so quiet I'd forgotten she was there; sometime during the battle, she must've slipped from my shoulder to stand by my feet. My gaze was already tracking away from her toward Silver's downed abra, which awoke with a jolt, and in a movement so fast it must've been practiced, wrapped its paw around Silver's leg and teleported the two of them away.

    My murkrow unsteadily took to the air, cawing defiantly.

    Shit. We had to go.

    I turned around to run, but no sooner had I processed what had happened when Silver appeared at my back in a flash of blue light and kicked Gaia away from us. I had maybe half a moment to think before Silver reached grabbed the base of my ponytail from the small of my back and pulled, yanking my neck back so I could feel a touch of cold steel on my throat. "But settling disputes with battles is a bit of an outdated notion, don't you think?"

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    • iv. an eye for an eye
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    chapter iv. an eye for an eye​
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    All I'd ever wanted was to make some money as a trainer and this was where I ended up.

    The asshole had revives. I'd seen them in the Goldenrod department store before, but they were always kept locked up in pristine glass cases with laser-triggered alarms and pressure-sensitive plates because they were freaking expensive. Apparently they contained enough raw adrenaline to kill a reasonably healthy adult, but pokémon could ingest them and recover from fainted status within seconds. With most of Silph in shambles after the Saffron base collapsed, the supply had become even more scarce.

    And of course the people I was facing had so many that they could give them away to children. Honestly, the smart thing would've just been to call it quits right there and surrender.

    {Do not move,} the abra calmly advised us before blasting my murkrow out of the sky with another shockwave.

    "Fucker!" I managed to spit. I normally didn't curse like that—my mother would hate it—, but there was the pressing matter of Codename Silver had pulled the jump on me and my pokémon was spasming on the ground, screeching. I moved my hands up to try to force him off of me, lashing out with my feet as I did so—and froze as he pressed the knife a little closer to my throat.

    "Bad choice," Silver continued, his breath scarily warm and close on my neck in contrast to the cold metal beside it. I could feel a little blood dripping from the scratch he'd pressed the blade too close to my neck.

    My mind went a little dead there, numbed by fear.

    I lived in the nicer side of Goldenrod—we didn't have the money to live in the up-scale area and I'd never carried anything worth being mugged over, but I knew to stay out of the crime-ridden areas like the Underground. I'd never thought that I'd find myself in a situation like this. That was for the people in the movies, really, or the idiots like the boy who had tried to challenge the Rockets years ago.

    The abra casually floated over to my downed murkrow, who was struggling to recover from the numbing electricity and regain his footing. {Ceaes your struggles or I will continue to shock you,} the abra explained casually.

    "Don't touch him!" I shouted. This time, I wasn't able to keep the raw fear out of my voice.

    The abra, of course, ignored me and instead released a small pulse of blue electricity from its palm. The shockwave hit the murkrow and enveloped him in sparks that spent spasms down his wingtips, but instead of crying out, the murkrow kept his beak clamped firmly shut and glared up in abject defiance even as the numbing electricity racked his fragile body. He refused, or had lost the strength, to move, even as the shocks became too intense for him and he had to sink to the ground, glaring daggers all the while.

    "Calm down," Silver shouted, the noise deafening in my ears.

    "Easy for you to say!" I shouted back. "Stay the hell away from us!"

    "I just need to remove your murkrow," the heir to Team Rocket was yelling in my ear, struggling with his non-knife hand to get a better grip on my collar. He was saying more, but I couldn't hear him through the blood and fear roaring in my ears.

    My world smelled like burned feathers.

    "Get out of here!" I cried in frustration to my murkrow. He had to get out. I wasn't going to be Johto's savior—and let's face it, I never would be— but he could go out and find some other, better trainer to overthrow the assholes that called themselves Team Rocket. Or he could get out to live his own life. But my murkrow really did care enough to die for me, and I had no idea why.

    "Piii."

    Gaia launched herself into the air and latched on to the abra's head, pivoting around to fire off a web of sticky silk aimed at Silver with enough precision to hit him in the face and knocked him away from me, the knife falling from his hand. The abra raised its paws to launch a psychic wave at its newest attacker, but Gaia threw herself up with no small difficulty to clamp down with tiny mandibles on its ears, hard, throwing off its concentration for a moment.

    I disentangled myself from Silver and ran over to the murkrow, who was still breathing feebly, although his feathers were charred and had lost their sheen.

    It occurred to me then that everything I was and ever would be was inextricably linked to my starter.

    Silver managed to peel the webbing off of his face, spluttering indignantly as he freed himself. His abra bucked wildly, trying to dislodge my caterpie, high-pitched keening sounds erupting from its mouth as it did so. "Teleport!" he shouted. "Watch out for the murkrow!"

    The abra obliged, and teleported a few feet behind its original position. Lacking a firm base, Gaia fell to the ground, bewildered, only to find the abra looming behind her, bleeding freely from one ear and looking furious.

    "Confusion!"

    Gaia and I didn't have much time to blink before the abra waved a paw in a pushing motion and threw her into the nearest tree trunk, which she hit with a thud. My feeling of elation quickly turned to dread.

    "Confusion." Silver had pulled himself to his feet and was calmly brushing himself off, the strain slipping from his voice.

    Gaia collided with the tree again before she could even regain her footing, and the abra floated up to her and casually bashed her into the trunk repeatedly, sending chunks of bark from the ground and dislodging a few berries from the upper branches. The abra had already caught her with its psychic powers, and she wouldn't be fast or strong enough to escape it.

    I was too slow. There was nothing we could do.

    That inexplicable cold I'd felt the day before returned then. No, it told me. There is always something. I felt a surge of revulsion and then quelled it down. We had to think through this rationally if we wanted to get out.

    "Piiii." Gaia, hovering in midair where the abra held her, calmly fixed her opponent with an expression that might have been distaste, if not hatred—then again, she wasn't exactly the most belligerent of pokémon, and her face was primarily eyes, so I couldn't really tell.

    {Do not think that you frighten me with idle threats,} the abra said with a sniff of distaste, raising its paw again. {And do not flatter her. The foolish girl will not make you stronger. You make you stronger, and there is no need to give her credit she does not deserve.} The abra tilted its head, studying the caterpie, and then it added, {Your trainer and her murkrow have no chance of escape, and neither will you, should you choose to join them. You should flee while you still have the chance; we will be lenient. You were taken against your will.}

    "Pii."

    {Ah. I see. If that is your answer, then—}

    "String shot. Aim for its head, and then behind it when it goes down. Perforate the tree." The voice that was coming out of my mouth was too cold to be mine, but it wasn't Silver's and it wasn't my murkrow's.

    "Piii!" she shrieked back in protest. She had said she was a self-proclaimed pacifist, but we didn't have time for that. That was irrelevant to survival.

    "Gaia." Dangerously calm, even in the face of impending doom. I didn't have a choice. We didn't have a choice. "Now."

    Silver had uncrossed his arms and was staring at me now with a mixture of shock and horror, as if I'd done something unexpected. His abra, however, still looked at us with pity, and that was something that could be exploited. The psychic began, {You don't have to listen to—}

    Gaia cut the abra off by spitting another blob of silk at its head. The abra's entire body snapped backward with the force of the collision, and then it collided into the tree trunk behind it, sliding to the ground. There was a crack as something inside of the trunk shattered. Excellent. It began to get up, but Gaia was already in action. Another chunk of stringy silk erupted from her mouth, this one hard and compact, like a bullet. And another. And another.

    And promptly pummeled the trunk of the tree behind the abra, missing it entirely.

    {You missed,} the abra said dryly, vaporizing the first string shot attack from its face in a flash of blue. Behind it, the tree was peppered with little bits of webbing, some of them so deep in the trunk that they weren't even visible. Bits of bark were scattered on the ground. {You can't even move enough to adjust your aim to compensate for my new position.} It sounded shocked.

    "Confusion."

    "Cattt," Gaia remarked, but then tilted her body upward with herculean effort to aim upward through the psychic hold.

    {Move out of the way? Why would I—}

    Checkmate. "Tether yourself to one of the upper branches," I said curtly. "And brace yourself."

    Gaia fired. Unlike the other shots, she maintained a steady string connecting herself to the tree. She was exhausted. It didn't look very strong, but it was good enough. It had to be.

    The awareness spread across Silver's face just a fraction too slowly. His brow furrowed, and then his mouth opened to call off the order, but—

    The abra moved too fast for all of us. It blasted Gaia back with a pulse of energy, and she flew backwards into the forest, bits of silk trailing behind her as distance ate up the slack—

    And the tree went with her.

    There was a groan before the trunk pitched inward, the heart nearly blasted in two from the steady barrage of projectile silk it had received. The branches shook as they hit the ground, obscuring the abra from sight. The sharp crack of shattering wood registered in my ears a second too late, and then it stayed there incessantly.

    "What the fuck are you doing?" Silver shouted, glancing between me and the tree that covered his abra, struggling to climb through the undergrowth to reach his fallen pokémon.

    "Piii," Gaia murmured. I expected pride, but she only looked at me with immense concern.

    I caught Silver's movement in the corner of my eye and whirled around as he reached to the ground to pick up his knife where it had fallen. I couldn't let him do that. Alarm flooded through my veins. "Touch the knife and I'll have the murkrow bury his beak in your forehead." With the abra gone, I finally had the upper hand. My voice didn't sound like my own, and there was a steely edge buried in it that I didn't recognize, but when I saw the glint of metal in his hands, my voice only got harder. I'd only seen this in movies, but that didn't mean I knew how to avoid getting stabbed or shot. "Hands in the air. Now."

    He froze and slowly raised his hands and interlaced his fingers behind his head with a tired air, as if he'd done this before. I saw him look toward the tree covering his abra again. The knife lay on the ground by his foot, and I wondered if he still had any plans to turn this to his favor. Most likely.

    I pointed to the knife. "Slide it over to me." As he moved with one hand to pick up the metal object again, I flinched. "No. Use your foot." I'd read about this part in books, but it was so much scarier in real life. I had to sound like I was willing to kill him, though. I had to sound committed. It wasn't really hard; I could just draw from my feelings five minutes ago.

    "Aren't you clever," Silver drawled, but I could see a trace of fear in his eyes that mirrored my own. At least he thought I was serious, and at least I'd foiled part of his plan. When I raised my eyebrows insistently and the murkrow wearily caught on to my plan and ruffled his charred feathers, trying to sound murderous, he rolled his eyes and kicked it towards me.

    The object skidded towards me in a flash of silver and hit my foot. I glanced down at it, reluctant to tear my gaze from Silver in case he tried anything, so I left it there. I didn't even know what he'd wanted to do with it, and I didn't want to.

    "Kill?" the murkrow asked, sounding curious and fascinated. He seemed to have recovered enough to return to thoughts of death and destruction, but I could still hear the exhaustion creeping into his voice.

    "No. Shut up." The murkrow's whimsical squabbling wasn't helping my threatening image, but this whole situation wasn't helping my non-threatening image, either. I wasn't sure which one was worse.

    "Maim?" he tried hopefully.

    "Hands at your sides," I said, voice suddenly shaking. The invincible feeling had faded as quickly as it had come. My face burned. I motioned with my head toward Silver. "Gaia, tie him up."

    My caterpie shot me a confused look but obediently shot another web of silk toward Silver, binding his arms to his torso. She looked at me, apparently sensing my intentions, and let loose a doleful "Catt…" from my shoulder. I ignored her.

    I didn't know what to do after this. I didn't want to kill him, for so many reasons. I didn't have the heart, first of all. He was the heir to Team Rocket, second of all, and killing him would be the only thing stupider than what I was doing right now. And, third of all, I didn't have a good weapon and I didn't want the murkrow to have to disembowel someone. Fourth…

    I was actually contemplating killing him. Not out of hatred, even though every word that came out of his mouth had only made me dislike him a little more and he'd just tried to slit my throat, but out of… I didn't even know. Survival, really. If he lived, I would be in danger. He would run back to Team Rocket and blab. And he had ordered his abra to kill my murkrow while he held a knife to my neck and…

    I shuddered. The most logical response was to make sure that he couldn't come back after me again.

    I couldn't believe I was actually considering any of this. "Kneel." I pointed with my foot.

    He did.

    I wondered how the xatu had died, and why.

    And I knew it hadn't been for this.

    "Count to five hundred," I snapped. "I'm heading out. Don't move until then." It occurred to me that it would be stupid to let him see where I was going, but there was precisely one road through the forest, and we were both on it. "If I see you following me, I will not hold back." Yes, I definitely would, but he didn't need to know that.

    I turned to leave. The murkrow lingered for a moment, clearly said to have his prey removed from him, and I glared back. "You can't have him."

    The fifth reason I didn't want to kill Silver really should've been the first one to come to mind. Because I was a normal person who believed that lives shouldn't be taken in vain. The most logical response might've been to kill him, but there was no way in hell that I ever could.

    The murkrow fluttered limply onto my backpack, tired even from that small exertion, and I scooped up Gaia in my arms, who, for all of her heroism, seemed exhausted as well.

    We were barely walking away from this fight alive. But we were walking, and we were alive.

    I didn't turn around, but Silver moved his head so he could see my retreating figure, nervous and afraid, my murkrow squabbling at me in protest, my caterpie barely conscious. "You're just going to leave me?" the red-haired trainer asked in disbelief.

    "Maim!" the murkrow suggested again. "Kill!"

    "Piii," Gaia whispered mournfully, and although I couldn't understand her, I knew she was fairly morally opposed to my becoming a murderer.

    My cheeks burned, but I didn't want to let him see my face. If he did, he would see just how scared I truly was. "Shut up!" I shouted, but there was a hitch in my voice and we could both hear it. "I was going to escort you back to town with my pokémon and help you carry your stupid abra, but if I see you near us, you're a goner." That didn't matter too much, either. He probably had enough revives to wake up his abra in no time, anyway.

    I chanced a glance behind me. He was still kneeling in the dirt, pristine clothing splattered in silk rope, but the fire in his eyes had returned. Then he opened his mouth and laughed, mirthlessly, the sound echoing in the empty treetops. "You can't be serious."

    Maybe I was. I didn't care. I kept walking.

    "The xatu picked wrong, then, if he vested all of his hopes in a stupid, naïve girl who won't even—"

    I tuned him out, suddenly caught by thoughts of the tired silver wings, the rheumy eyes, the ancient voice of the xatu that had screwed me over. I hadn't known him for long, but he'd tried his genuine best to help me. And he would never be felt or seen or heard by anyone again, because of—

    Not because of Team Rocket. Because of me.

    I grabbed Silver's knife from where he'd slid it on the ground and hefted it in my hand. The metal was cool to the touch, and the blade flicked out violently as my fingers curled around the handle. A switchblade. Fairly long, very sharp. The handle was worn with use. I could use this.

    "Piii!" my replacement-starter shrieked violently from my arms, while on my back, my real starter cackled maniacally.

    I ignored them both and strode towards Silver, the metal of the switchblade pressing hard into my hand and my two pokémon created a cacophony of protest and encouragement. There was true fear in his eyes now, and I stood in front of him, icy calm and composed for once. "I'm a sucker for karma. And that means I should kill you for what you and your friends did to that xatu, let alone all that you did to me."

    "But what," he asked, a slight tremor in his voice, and I realized that both of us were trying to hide our fear and failing, "you're just going to threaten me with that and then walk away? Or are you actually going to kill me? What kind of message are you trying to send across, anyway?"

    "You know how the saying goes. An eye for an eye." I lashed out with the knife and caught him on the cheek, right beneath the eye. He flinched but didn't turn away, even as blood began welling up and streaking down his cheek.

    "Killll!" Of course the murkrow would be angry.

    "Piiiii." And of course Gaia wouldn't understand.

    But as I remembered her anger and how she'd held it back and managed to defeat the abra without killing it even as it laughed in her face, I knew. She understood quite well. She was trying to get me to be a good person in a world where good people got screwed over and heroes got publicly dismembered.

    I'd just maimed a person. My cheeks suddenly felt like they were on fire, and I resisted the urge to vomit. "And then the world goes blind," I finished in a shaking voice before throwing the knife to the ground. "There's your stupid message, and here's your stupid knife. Now you stay the hell away from me."

    I took a shaky step back and let the knife fall. It buried itself in the ground, point down, but the thud echoed dimly in my ears. With a shuddering breath, I found myself doing the only thing that seemed logical at the time, the only thing I'd really ever done.

    I ran.

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    Last edited:
    • interlude i. icarus
    • Responses!
    Beth Pavell said:
    Hah! Of all pokémon, in some rise by sin of all stories, Caterpie saves the day. Screw it. I'm buying it. I'm totally buying it.

    But being serious for a moment, it's good to see Unnamed's logic melting a bit. Her choices in this chapter aren't entirely logical from a chilly survivalist perspective, and that's good to see. A slightly warmer heart beneath this setting, you might say. I'm wondering whether Silver - and his Abra - will learn a lesson from this experience about arrogance but we'll see.

    “Podddd.” And of course Gaia wouldn’t understand.
    Click to expand...
    Did you just try to sneak an evolution past me?
    Click to expand...

    Silver's definitely going to get some development in the distant future, but alas, for now he's going to be off doing nefarious unicorn-plots or something until he comes up again in [spoilerland]. But yes, he has development planned, pinky promise.

    The bit regarding "Poddd" was a remaining fragment from one of my earlier drafts wherein Gaia evolved during the battle, but I ended up changing that. I thought I caught all of the "Poddds," lol, but it's just a typo.

    Flaze said:
    GO GAIA GO!

    Or at least that's what I screamed while I was reading that chapter. That Caterpie is so courageous, I actually loved that since Caterpie tend to be treated as just useless Pokemon most of the time, I liked the trick you pulled off with string shot an attack that is also passed off as useless. Overall I think this chapter offered a lot in regards to character development for Unamed since she had to decide whether to kill Silver or not and at the end of the day while it's easier to do so it would also mean that she's basically standing on the same level as TR.

    I don't have much else to say aside from the fact that this chapter was just awesome xD so I'll just leave it at that for today.
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    Bwahahaha, glad you enjoyed. No spoilers, but Gaia's going to be doing a lot more eventually xD

    Legacy said:
    The prose and voice of the narrator is amazing to read. Graceful and witty while adding the right amount of description to details about the world around us. Also, it's a small detail, but I love the design of your chapter headings with the lines and no-caps titles.

    All-in-all, really enjoyed reading so far.
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    Hi, minor fangirl moment, but when I saw that you reviwed my story two months ago my god I'm so bad at updating regularly I squeed a little. So glad you enjoyed!

    Caitlin said:
    So, here's my thoughts on the story so far:

    Interesting start. I quite like the strange twist of Team Rocket completely owning the place like some sort of Orwellian utopia, I don't think I've ever seen that attempted before. Reminds me of the Mirror Universe in Star Trek which definitely appeals to me, but that's me being nerdy. You've done well describing the setting, as well. The words and tone you've chosen paint a grim, black and white picture in my mind, while the protagonist represents color and hope. My only complaint was in Silver's characterization, at least from the parts I read for the Awards judging; He seemed to lack a lot of depth and originality. Being a bad guy just for the sake of it. Maybe I interpreted him incorrectly, but that's what I saw.

    Thumbs up from me.
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    Midorikawa said:
    I loved this. It was a unique twist on the journey world and for the most part the characters are unique. The non-stating of the protagonist makes it very interesting and I actually was reading it with them as a guy until I caught hints of them being a girl. Their thoughts are entertaining, and the resisting and plans they make seems very realistic. Icarus is adorable. His personality is unique for a protagonist pokemon, and he is always entertaining, and he provides so much to the plot. The setting is described just enough to give a gloomy feel to the gloomy world, but not too much to where it bogs the story down with description. The only true complaint I have is Silver. He lacks an original personality and while at first I thought he wouldn't be trying to turn her in and stuff, he soon became contradictory to that, and a boring old bad guy that could have just as well have been a grunt.

    All in all I really liked it, and feel free to mention me whenever you get the next chapter up.
    Click to expand...

    And then I already praised @AetherX; for his gorgeously wonderful review, but I can stand to do it again, and now I want to do a Green Lanturn/Laironman/Crobatman crossover, dammit.
    I'm glad you enjoyed so far. I don't follow Star Trek very vigorously/haven't heard of the Mirror Universe, but I definitely agree with you in regards to Silver's characterization--almost by necessity, he's a bit flat here because that's how the narrator sees him: she chooses to villainize him even though his motives really aren't that bad and his biggest crime thus far is being a bit of an ass. My hope is that I can flesh out his and the rest of the antagonists with future encounters, especially as Proty finds out that she's not exactly the best judge of character.

    pinky promise, I didn't try to nominate Silver for Antagonist last Awards, but that's a long-dead point by now, heh
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    interlude i. icarus​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    I'd been running for at least three miles before I could feel like my heart wasn't trying to rip its way out of my chest, and at that point it had degraded to my heart actually trying to rip its way out of my chest, which I figured was a side effect of running three miles. I slowed to a halt. Back in cross country, running had been mindless, a good way to get away from the situation without thinking about it, but without the distraction of physical exertion, it was hard to ignore what had just happened.

    Last week, I had been a normal kid working two shifts at the Goldenrod Café four blocks from my house, and the most traumatizing thing that really happened was when people didn't tip. I'd learned what I could from the trainer books before I started my journey, but I hadn't planned on making anything of it. I ran for the school's cross country team, and I was pretty average there too. And now, through some cruel twist of fate, the world was ending, and I was running for… a lot of reasons, honestly. I imagined the two apocalypses—my personal one, which involved Team Rocket hunting down me and my murkrow and Gaia and happily slaughtering us all; and the actual one, which involved society slowly grinding to a halt with the power grid down.

    But I had to move on from this. We had to survive, and if I let myself get bogged down in the past, there would be no point in trying to make it to the future. Right?

    I was a pokémon trainer now. That was another fact, another blip that added to my tiny, personal apocalypse. Besides the murkrow that marked me as a killer, I was being trusted with lives. Living, breathing, actual lives. I'd never really thought about it before. My family had never been able to afford to keep a pet around, and now I was going to try to raise a feral companion that I needed to convince to trust me to the ends of the earth and back.

    "Thanks for everything out there," I said to Gaia, wheezing.

    "Caaat." She looked up at me with those doleful round eyes, glassy and reflective in the dying sunlight filtering through the trees, and I could almost sense what she was saying anyway.

    "I wasn't actually thinking about killing him," I lied.

    "Piiii."

    I didn't know if that meant she believed me or not.

    The murkrow had protested my cowardice for about half a mile and then had fallen silent, talons digging into the strap of my backpack as he closed his eyes and, for once, stopped talking. A pity he'd chosen now to finally shut his beak when I needed his distractions more than ever, and another pity that it took almost being killed to shut him up.

    And a third pity that, given that Gaia's means of communication involved saying two syllables with slightly different inflections and my pokédex translator was out of commission. The obnoxious bird that was my starter was the only one who could translate for us, which meant I had no idea what my caterpie was saying. She kept staring at me, though, and I think she could pick up that I was lying. "But thank you for reminding me."

    "Cattt." Then, she fell silent, and I decided then that my pokémon took pleasure in talking when I needed to think and thinking when I needed to talk.

    Which left me alone with myself, which wasn't comforting in the slightest. The thoughts swirled around like a cocktail in the back of my mind, pounding there like a heartbeat, leaving me more confused than ever. The xatu had given me a murkrow. The xatu was dead. The Rockets were looking for me. They didn't know who I was, but they were closing in. Codename Silver, heir to Team Rocket, had tried to kill me.

    And I'd almost killed him in return. Not in the heat of the moment. I'd thought about it. I'd actually considered it.

    I'd spent most of my teenage life wondering how people in the comic books could get around to killing people if they had to, and it turned out that, when stressed and feeling threatened, I ended up erring toward the side of murder. Some Crobatman I would ever be.

    In hindsight, I'd been undeniably stupid. I'd wanted to lie low. Throwing a temper tantrum, if I could describe it like that, and cutting up a kid's face was idiotic. I didn't even have words to express how stupid I'd acted back there. If I'd wanted to hide, that was by far the worst possible way to do it.

    Maybe, said the cold, calculating part of me that I was really, really starting to dislike, I hadn't ever wanted to hide in the first place.

    Think of the positives. Think of what I had. I had a sleeping bag and a broken flashlight to make camp. I had a few matches in my bag (I'd packed them 'for emergencies,' when the flashlight wouldn't do or when it got cold), but there was no way I was making a fire with Silver running around in the forest like this.

    And that was really all I had.

    I threw my pack down by a tree at random. They all looked the same to me, so I really had no idea, but this one seemed solid. When I sank down to sit at its base, I found myself basically surrounded on either side by bushes, which was nice.

    It was then, clutching at a caterpie who I'd literally ordered to get thrown into a tree for me, with a murkrow on my back who had tried to slash my throat when we'd first met, standing in the middle of a forest that would, ultimately, offer me no protection against the forces I'd incited, that I realized how everything in my life was falling apart faster than I could put it back together.

    I rifled through my pack, already painfully aware of the obvious—I had maybe three cereal bars and some fruit snacks, but I'd mostly been packing with the intention to buy food in Cherrygrove. The outpost towns tended to have better stuff to carry while camping than the department store back in Goldenrod. The survival classes I'd taken before I'd left had given me the theory of scavenging, yes, but now I was going to put it into practice or literally die trying.

    I had absolutely no idea when we were going to get there, though, so this measly snack bar might have to last for a while. I unwrapped it slowly.

    "Piiiiii."

    Damn. "Fine," I sighed, and broke off a piece to toss to her, aware of several conflicting pieces of information: namely, that I had a duty to her as a trainer, and also that I had a duty to my stomach, which was growling in protest.

    She inched over to it with a cheerful cry of, "Piiiiiii," and in seconds, it was gone.

    I looked down at my hand and realized that the rest was gone as well. Confused for a moment, I looked around, and then a joyful squawk from the branches, accompanied by a shower of crumbs on my head, gave me all the answers I needed.

    Stupid bird.

    This was the stupid bird that meant I would never live a normal life again. Would my Gift flip dark because of him? I remembered watching a glassblower and his magmar dipping their hands in fire together at a stall in Goldenrod to lift a vase out of a kiln. Shared adaptation from years of working together. They'd both learned to brave the flames. If the murkrow trained together long enough, would we really end up so similar?

    I'd already almost killed someone today. Long enough was never going to be long enough.

    Even as I tried to settle down in my sleeping back and let my raging thoughts and empty stomach rock me gently to sleep, I noticed that both of my pokémon were still staring at me. What was I supposed to say? I'd told Gaia to basically get herself killed so that we could get out. I'd used her as a glorified counterweight for a homemade trebuchet. There had been a part of my mind running at the time that had seen this as the best possible plan, disregarded her life, and executed it.

    I sat back up and looked at the murkrow, who had hopped through the bushes to stand by my arm.

    "Why in the world are either of you still here?"

    The caterpie looked at me quietly, antennae waving. "Piii."

    I looked at the murkrow, eyes narrowed. "Translation?"

    He shuffled his wings uncomfortably, pausing to pick at some imaginary speck of dirt in his feathers with his beak. "She says she tell you on her own time." He paused, tilting his head to one side. "I vote we let her."

    Was that fear in his eyes? Why would he—

    It all clicked at once, and I felt my body freeze in place as the realization struck.

    I scared them. I scared them both. I'd yelled at my pokémon, bullied them until they'd done what I'd asked, shouted commands with so much anger in my voice that they'd ignored their own safety and actually listened. It had literally been a day and I'd already gotten to the point where my pokémon were too afraid to tell me how they felt.

    How did they see me?

    More importantly: what had I done?

    I'd been able to distract myself during the day, when I could rely on things like running from the Executives or taking down Silver as diversions rather than facing the truth. But the façade came crashing down there as the realizations came sweeping in all at once. I was sitting alone in a deserted forest, freezing and alone and desperately hoping that no one else would show up, because that meant so much worse. Johto was collapsing around us, and what was left was going to start coming after me because, because—

    That was the truth that hurt the most to realize, I think. That somehow, the all-knowing psychic had decided that I was something that hadn't been seen in Johto in years. Something so terrible that we'd taken systematic strides to eradicate it from the face of our country, knowing full well the consequences. The xatu had decided that my starter should be dark.

    No, there was more to it than that.

    Dylan Tucker was my lab partner in sixth grade physical science. He came to school every day wearing the uniform (khakis and a black polo) and the widest smile I'd ever seen. He was a good-natured kid with sandy-blonde hair, warm eyes, and a brilliant mind that could crack any puzzle you put in front of him. Despite all of that, and despite being in the phase of life where most people were pre-teen shits, he never bragged or pushed people into lockers or did any of that stuff. Simply put, he was a bright kid, and everyone knew it.

    When he left for his journey at the age of twelve, he got a chinchou. Bright kid, bright future, bright pokémon. Last I'd heard, his Gift had developed to the point that he could literally light up a room with a snap of his fingers, and his lanturn had all but swept the floor with Pryce. One badge left until the League.

    Then there were less obvious things, like Jenna Davis, a mousy, brown-haired girl who kept her nose buried in a book, got a porygon when she was eleven, and ended up strategizing her way to the Semis in the Indio League last year. Or Cole Johnson, whom everyone thought was a perfectly normal (albeit quiet) kid who ended up taking the misdreavus the xatu had given him and literally driving anyone he passed on the street insane with her. Something about how concentrated doses of the thing's song induced hallucinations, but the gist was that the kid was royally messed up in the head, something all of us hadn't picked up on in our twelve years of knowing him. But the xatu had seen through him in five seconds and given him a pokémon that was equally psychotic.

    And that left me. I wasn't bright enough to light up someone's day, or calculating enough to sweep through Clair without breaking a sweat, or even cruel enough to peel the wings off of ledyba during gym period. No. The xatu had looked at my past and my future and decided that who I was now, who I would become, was best described by a pokémon that, in flocks, enjoyed dropping small children from large heights to see if they screamed on the way down.

    Somehow, the rest of it—Johto's collapse, the Rockets—didn't seem that important to me in comparison.

    Two things dawned on me at that moment: first, that I'd forgotten to breathe, and second, Gaia had curled herself firmly in my lap and was nudging insistently at my hand.

    "Piiii."

    "I don't understand you," I choked out. Holy shit. Was I crying?

    "Pi."

    "She says you be okay," the bird offered sullenly from his perch.

    I shook my head. "It's not going to be okay. It's never going to be okay. How in the world are things supposed to be okay when—"

    "Pii."

    My caterpie had spent all of her life up until now sheltering under some leaf to avoid getting picked apart by pidgey. She didn't get it. She didn't know what we were up against, what was coming for us, what I… what I was. "Gaia, the xatu marked me and—"

    "Pii," she repeated firmly, rearing up to look at me.

    In her eyes I saw the same rigid determination that had let her stare down Silver's abra and win. She had seen a superior foe and risen to meet it, and somehow we'd all made it out okay. It had all been okay.

    "But—" I began.

    "Piii." And this time, the edge slipped into her voice. I knew what she wanted from me. She wanted me to be as brave as she had, or at least to take the courage from her and let it spark some great, big, metaphorical torch in me, and I'd lead us all through this and we'd do great things together but she didn't get it. I wasn't even sixteen; I wasn't ready for this shit. And she and my murkrow and the xatu and even Silver and the Rockets were all expecting me to do these incredible or terrible things, and I was just me and I couldn't do this stuff. I couldn't.

    The bird and the bug were both looking at me expectantly.

    "Her name is Gaia. And... and your name is Icarus," I said at last, sighing heavily as I tangled my fingers in the murkrow's matted feathers and rested my chin on my knees.

    Whatever they'd been expecting from me, it hadn't been that.

    "Name mean little," the bird said at last.

    He was smart, but he didn't understand everything. I could deal with that. But whether I liked it or not, he was part of my team now.

    Silver had seen me.

    Silver had seen me do the unthinkable.

    Silver had seen me do the unthinkable, and now there was no going back.

    No matter what I wanted to pretend, this murkrow and I weren't that different. The xatu wasn't wrong. It would've been easier to abandon the murkrow, to leave him and my so-called fate and this apocalypse far behind me. But I hadn't.

    Because if I was going to abandon my real starter to the elements and pretend that Gaia was my pokémon, it'd be like abandoning my actions. It'd be like damning his behavior while tolerating my own, equally shitty decisions. And that wasn't really an option. I couldn't replace him. These were the cards I was given, and if I didn't like my hand, I was going to have to deal with it somehow.

    "Your name is Icarus," I repeated, turning my head to gaze at the bird, who had landed back on my shoulder, tiny rivulets of blood caked on his talons from his scuffle with the abra and the pidgey. When the murkrow—my murkrow—cocked his head to one side in confusion, I continued, "And that name means—that name is my promise that I won't abandon you."

    That wasn't the start of it. I could feel myself standing on the edge of a cliff, teetering on the edge of destruction. After this, there would be no turning back. No matter what I did now, nothing would be the same.

    I paused, weighing my options. There would be no turning back from this. But he hadn't killed the pidgey. He hadn't killed the abra. He hadn't killed Silver. Three times, the so-called harbinger of death and destruction hadn't followed true to his name because I'd asked him nicely to stop.

    Maybe the two of us weren't as bad as we thought.

    "Your name is Icarus, and I give you this name along with my word that you'll always be my pokémon."

    His beady eyes narrowed.

    There was a long silence.

    "I see." My murkrow tightened his claws into my shoulder. "Very well." He paused again and then, unmistakably, dipped his head into a bow. "Boss."

    I rolled over, trying to figure out the most comfortable way to position myself that involved the least amount of knobbly roots in my back. Icarus settled down by my head and tucked his head beneath one wing before emerging to preen his matted feathers. Beside us, Gaia began to make her nest in a pile of leaf litter.

    Above, the aurora was still going, flashes of green that threw the stars out of focus, a reminder that this whole apocalypse was still real, was still happening.

    And so we settled down for our first night of many.

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    • v. a penny for the old guy
    • Responses!
    Legacy said:
    Glad to see this story continued. Wow. Just a very well done chapter, and a joy to read. You are clearly an incredibly talented writer judging by your graceful word usage throughout the prose.

    I love the feeling of impending doom that you plant in the back of the reader's mind. The whole power grid failure and unique TR threat are really formidable conflicts for our hero. Really ups the ante and heightens the power of every relevant event that occurs.

    The details are really what get me. Phrases like "TR would have my guts for scarves", the man having a "practiced eye," etc. Just the little things that you add to your writing that all adds up to make it a fantastic read.

    He only nitpick I'd have is:

    Of course. The pokémon center was the center of the town, the metaphorical heart. When there was a crisis, like there was now, the people flocked to it in droves. Like they did now.

    Maybe a little redundant there, but like I said this was so good that I'm reduced to nitpicking.

    If you couldn't tell, I like this story, and I am very interested to read more.
    Click to expand...

    More praise from Legacy squeeeeeeee

    I'm glad you enjoyed, and I fixed the wording issue you pointed out. Thanks, haha!

    Flaze said:
    I just can't find words to describe how I enjoyed this chapter. While it didn't have the tension and drive that the last few chapters had I thought that it made up with it with its wit, plus it was a good chapter to just relax in a way...not like you can do much relaxing in a fic taking place in a world overrun by an evil organization where there is no electricity.

    I have to agree with Pavell, I'm glad you didn't show the world as completely overtaken by people who no longer give a shit about society, frankly I think in that sort of situation you'd have to be a maniac to just give up all your morality just like that, rather I feel most people would be scared, something that was portrayed pretty well here. That being said I liked how you portrayed Bates, the scene with the shotgun was really funny and to see him warmed up to Unnamed was pretty nice.

    It's kind of sad she couldn't keep all those things xD it would've made the story a lot quicker, I'm not sure I just think that actually giving her that extra push by letting her have all those extra things would've been interesting, cause in this type of story the protagonist usually ends up carrying practically nothin (as is the case now) plus I just think she deserved a break.

    I hope she finds Gaia though, the poor Caterpie better not die or I'll kill you.
    Click to expand...

    I'm honestly really glad you liked Chapter VIII, because I know it was a lot slower than my others and I was afraid it would drag--this section of the story is a bit of a slower one, so we can stop getting constant action or really constant exposition about Rocket Regime lol, but I had issues keeping things entertaining, I guess?

    Also, yeah, I was being an optimist with nice-guy Bates, and it'll continue for a little while. But just when you've got your guard down... heh. Hehe.

    There's also something in your review that made me chuckle at the irony but no one will understand why for at least forty chapters. I'mma just put there here and remember that this was lol. ;-;

    Beth Pavell said:
    This was no hardship to judge. Not that this means I went easy on you - nope, I was as critical of you as you are of me ;)

    [snipped the rest because it's about half the length of my chapters, haha]
    Click to expand...

    My understanding of double negatives is tentative at best, though; what does it mean for something to not be a hardship? (although hooooo boy, bring on the concrit yaaaas)

    Setting has always been a low point for me. I'm trying to work on it, but I kind of just see lots of trees, and, well. Yeah. Not my best, boss.

    Silver, I've decided, was me trying to toe the line too much with my antagonists. You'll see exactly what I was trying to do when he comes back (which should be in two or three chapters, actually!), hopefully, but I abused the unreliable narrator that I have in TUPpy (I've decided, for brevity's sake, that she shall be The Unnamed Protagonist/TUP, and then py because it sounds nicer and also puppies) a wee bit too far and ended up pushing Silver over the line. I admit, having him plaster a pokemon to a tree was something that I can't handwave away with the unreliable narrator card, but rest assured, I'm on it. I edited away what I saw to be the most awful of his dialogue already, and I'm cleaning up the rest as well.

    Speaking of which, I skimmed through what I've put up so far and did a mild edit run of everything so far. It was mostly limited to some phrasing/flow issues, but I tried to redirect some of the exposition-dumps, and I also ended up doing some plot/foreshadowing-related subtleties and fixed the inconsistencies in my timeline. Editing round two should hopefully finish up dealing with the expo-dumps and setting issues, but idk when that'll actually happen >.<

    It's my fault for not working it in earlier, but I do intend to have backstory for TUPpy, as well as softer moments, appearing in the near future. The former probably comes up in a basic form in two to three chapters as well (four, perhaps; not sure how one of them is going to split) and then hits hard waaaaaaay in the future; the latter should hopefully come, well, eventually. I noticed in my editing run that her favorite thought is basically "I'm going to die," which is a bit much, and I tried to alleviate that a bit.

    Your comments on Icarus are completely on point. Nothing more to say here. xD Again, planned stuff in the future, but I'm to blame here/can't complain when people complain that I haven't done it yet, because nine chapters in is plenty of time.

    Gaia is my favorite character in srbs. Hands down. There are a couple who come close eventually, but Gaia is my baby. And she might not be able to be the sole provider of light in this darkfic, but she will be damned if she doesn't try.


    In other news, we're two months late. Thank the Awards for that! (No, actually, thank the Awards; they were fantastic and gave me some really great reading over the summer. And, while you're at it, thank Ace, haha).

    On with the show.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter v. a penny for the old guy​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    My second official day on the road was much quieter than the first. Not that it was exactly a high bar, but small steps. By nightfall, I could see the welcome sight of Cherrygrove Town looming ahead of me, splashes of pale buildings against the forest. It was larger than New Bark and smaller than Goldenrod, but, then again, everything was larger than New Bark and smaller than Goldenrod. I heard the distant rumbling of generators, almost like a highway of car engines, in contrast to the silence of the forest I'd been walking in all day. My eyes were drawn to the pokécenter and pokémart; the rest of the buildings were almost exclusively houses. Probably less than a dozen in all. The entire town fit along the single road that went through it—honestly, it was mostly a stopping point between New Bark and Violet, a remnant of a Johto's older years.

    To my left, I could hear a dull roar that I recognized as the intermittent collision of the waves upon the shore. There was a narrow bay here, with a couple of spindly docks leaning across the dark waters. Almost all of the boats seemed to be tethered and docked for the day, bobbing slowly in the waves. The city was peaceful.

    It was strange how some things stayed the same even though everything else had changed so much. If you didn't look carefully, you really couldn't tell that the world was ending.

    It was getting a bit chilly. I'd have to find a sweater at some point, but I was more focused on picking up supplies. "Icarus," I murmured, reaching behind me and shaking my backpack until I heard the indignant squawk that heralded his awakening. "I'm going into the town. Do you mind waiting out here in the forest until I get back?" It wasn't really a request, but I figured if I didn't make it sound absolutely imperative that he wouldn't be seen, Icarus wouldn't try to spite me by getting us all noticed and killed.

    I didn't put it past him, though.

    With a surprising lack of protest, Icarus fluttered off of my backpack and into the branches of a tree by the path. When he folded his wings and settled down, the inky darkness of his feathers made it almost impossible to see him, leaving me with a significantly lighter backpack and a pair of beady, red eyes watching me from the trees. And, after he ruffled his feathers for a moment and closed those eyes, he became practically invisible.

    "Catttt."

    "Yes, I'm going to miss him too," I said sarcastically, although I really had no idea what Gaia was trying to tell me. As I kept walking toward the center of town and the chugging of the generators, though, it did occur to me that my murkrow was being unusually docile and quiet, even now. I'd chalked it up to his exhaustion earlier, but maybe—

    "Are you here for the pokémon center?"

    A kind voice jerked me out of my reverie. I looked around and realized that, yes, I was indeed in standing in the doorway of the darker-than-usual pokémon center looking like a crazed lunatic. "Um, yes," I managed to say. "Is there space?"

    What normally would have been a rhetorical query asked out of politeness turned out to be a serious question as I surveyed the lobby of the pokémon center. It looked like the entire population of Cherrygrove had fled into the center, and then some. Trainers of all ages were crammed on to the benches and scattered across the floor, and entire families were huddled in corners together. One of the nurses was handing out sleeping bags to a pair of young girls, and a chansey nearby passed out pillows. There was a generator in the far corner of the pokémon center, and my mind attributed it to the whirring sound I'd noticed coming in. The pokémon center was the center of the town, the metaphorical heart. When there was a crisis, like there was now, the people flocked to it in droves.

    The nurse didn't answer my question directly. She wiped a bit of sweat off of her brow and sighed. "There's always room for more," she said at last, one hand twirling around her bright pink hair. I wondered for a fleeting moment if it was dyed. "You'll have to find a spot in the lobby, though. All of our upstairs rooms are already packed."

    So was the lobby, by the looks of things. I bit my lip. "I know that you're busy, but I heard that I could get a trainer card," I said, trying to look her in the eyes and appear as unsuspicious as possible. I certainly wasn't going to try to illegally register my caterpie as my starter; that would be absurd. "I couldn't get one at New Bark." Not even a complete lie.

    My efforts seemed to work, because the nurse smiled sympathetically. "You're new at this, aren't you?"

    She was going to catch me and report me and then Team Rocket was going to have my guts for scarves in the morning. "See, I just got my starter yesterday, and then all of this stuff happened, and now…" I trailed off lamely, mentally glad for once that, with my hair pulled back, I looked at least three years younger than I was.

    "We haven't used trainer cards for a while. We switched all of our records to an electronic system nearly a year ago, honey—"

    Oh. Of course. I was a well-learned trainer and totally knew that. Something else occurred to me before I could embarrass myself further.

    "—and we lost everything when the grid shut down," the nurse finished. She looked distracted at this point, and her eyes wandered around the room, no doubt away from the newbie trainer asking useless questions to the crowds of people who needed her help. "There's not much we can do for you or anyone else, but people should be understanding until we're back on course. Anyway, you're welcome to settle here for the night and you can collect some emergency supplies over by that table."

    I tried my best to look disappointed about the whole thing and thanked her with a weak smile before moving off.

    Inside, I was elated. No trainer records. I could claim to be whoever I wanted or needed to be, and no one would know. I'd have problems when the grid went up, but that was a long way away. Also, free food. "If there's anything I can do to help," I said, looking up and feeling guilty for not asking earlier, but she was already speaking to a young boy, no older than ten, and his poliwag.

    As I left the center, I felt lighter than normal, not just because I'd replaced Icarus with a month's worth of dehydrated noodles in my backpack. That being said, though, it probably wasn't best to be light at this point—if I was serious about partying around in the wilderness until people decided not to kill me, I needed actual supplies. The pokécenter could wait; as long as I was in town, I needed to stock up. I desperately wanted to drop off Icarus to see if the nurses could heal him up—maybe there was some sort of internal damage—, but handing over my murkrow would be suicide. He would just have to heal on his own or with my help, which meant that I really, really needed these supplies.

    And, furthermore, I really wasn't going to get very far trying to find a spot to sleep in the lobby here anyway. Supplies it was. "Gaia, I have to go to the pokémart. Do you want to stay here and rest up?" I asked the caterpie in my arms.

    "Piiii."

    I had absolutely no idea what that meant. "One 'pii for staying here. Two 'pii's' for coming with."

    "Pii. Pii."

    I left the stuffy lobby of the pokécenter and crossed the street to the pokémart, caterpie in my arms. Feeling oddly optimistic, I opened the door.

    And was promptly greeted by a double-barreled shotgun.

    I swore violently and took a step back, the twin holes on the muzzle still dangerously close to my neck. I opened my mouth, ready to admit to everything—

    "Welcome to the Cherrygrove Pokémart," the voice behind the shotgun growled. The lights in his store, like the lights in his city, were off, and as he stood in the doorway, I couldn't even see his face. "Close your mouth and shut up."

    I hadn't made any noise, except perhaps for a vague, strangled sound of surprise, but I obliged.

    I really, really had spoken too soon about things not getting worse and feeling optimistic.

    "Do you have any other pokémon with you?" the man asked, pushing the shotgun out a little further. I backed away. When I didn't respond, the man jabbed the gun further. "Any other pokémon, kid?"

    I found my voice. "Just this one," I gasped, fear filling me once again. I prayed desperately that Icarus was still resting and didn't choose now to make his triumphant entry. It was probably stupid to lie to someone with a gun at my throat, but I wasn't about to explain that I had an illegal dark-type that was healing off some injuries from my latest clash with Team Rocket.

    On the other side of the gun, the man nodded, but the gun didn't lower. "Your pokémon stays outside. Do you have any weapons?"

    I thought about Silver's switchblade and cringed. I had no idea that trainers carrying weapons was a common thing—I'd always assumed that pokémon would be enough. "No."

    The man, his face still mostly shrouded in darkness, nodded. "If you're lying to me, Brigid will burn you to a crisp. That's a promise."

    "Okay," I gasped, eyes fixated on the barrel of the shotgun and hands uselessly supporting the caterpie in my arms. "I'm not lying. Please, I just wanted to get supplies."

    "That's fine with me, so long as you pay," the man growled. "Some assholes and their pokémon this morning thought it would be a fine idea to try to raid my store after the power went out. Brigid and I took care of them. You aren't going to try the same thing, are you?"

    I desperately hoped that he was exaggerating and 'took care of them' didn't translate to brutal murder like he was implying.

    "No, sir," I whispered numbly, the honorific slipping into my speech unconsciously. It seemed that angry people with guns deserved my respect.

    "Good. Now leave your pokémon outside and hand your backpack to me. I'll give it back; don't worry."

    I hesitated, uncertain. I was afraid that Gaia would freak out if I left her on her own, and I certainly didn't want to give my pack to a stranger. I didn't have many supplies, but I needed them to count, especially if every shopkeeper was going to greet me with a gun.

    "I'll give it back," the man rumbled, sounding vaguely annoyed. "I own a pokémart. I don't need whatever shit you've got in there. I just want to make sure you don't try to shank me with something in there when I'm looking the other direction." He said it with such conviction that I couldn't help but wonder if it had happened to him already. "Or," he offered, "you can leave and—"

    "No!" I said quickly, taking a step forward before stopping at the barrel of the gun again. "See, look." I placed Gaia on the dusty ground as gently as I could. I didn't want to leave her, but right now, I was still operating at gunpoint. "She'll stay right here and won't hurt you, right, Gaia?"

    My caterpie nodded. She was clearly quite threatening.

    "I'll be right back, I promise," I said to her, leaning down to pat her head. I slipped my backpack off of my shoulders and handed it to the man, who finally withdrew the gun while I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

    "Brigid, give us some light, would you?" the man asked, turning back to look into the store.

    Beside him, there was a slight sparking sound, and then a large purple globe of light appeared behind the man, casting his face in harsh shadow. I peered behind the shopkeeper to see a small pokémon that looked like a giant candle floating silently behind him, roughly the size of his head. What looked like a purple flame flickered atop the creature's head, and it peered at me with a single, glowing, golden eye. I didn't recognize it.

    "I'm going to put your backpack by the door," the shopkeeper said, placing my bag on the ground as he did so. "If you so much as look at it in the wrong direction, my litwick will fry your brains out. Got it?"

    I swallowed. "Yes, sir," I mumbled. And then, despite my better judgment, I tried to make casual conversation. "Did the xatu give you that pokémon, too?"

    The man turned around and looked at me for the first time. He had dark brown hair that shadowed equally brown eyes lurking behind wire-framed glasses that rested a little too far down his nose to be comfortable. He seemed friendly enough, but he was also well-acquainted with his gun and too grizzled for his age, which I placed in his early thirties. "Shit, you're just a kid," he said as he squinted at me. "Why didn't you tell me that earlier?"

    "I tried?" I asked him quizzically. "But you had your, uh, shotgun thing going."

    He sighed, the smile fading from his face a little. "Yeah, and try anything funny and—"

    "—Brigid will burn me to a crisp, I get it," I muttered, rolling my eyes. It was easier to be sarcastic than scared. "I need supplies." It sounded so much more official than 'how do I survive in the wilderness.' I hadn't packed for the apocalypse when I'd left Goldenrod. I had a blanket, a spare change of clothes, a water bottle, and scrapped plans to spend the nights in pokécenters. My camping experience last night had been cold and generally awful, but it had also proven that I was going to have to rethink those plans, and quickly. With the power grid down, the pokécenters probably wouldn't be healing pokémon as efficiently, to say the least, and I wasn't going to spend the nights there like I'd planned. "What have you got?"

    "Potions and healing items are rationed," the man said, running a hand through his hair and sighing. "You can only get three of each per week, and that's how it's going to be for a while until they get the factories and delivery systems up and running again. Gasoline is limited to a gallon per person per week with proof of generator only, but you look like the trainer type so I doubt that'll affect you. And if you want a gun, cigarettes, or alcohol, you're going to have to go somewhere else. I'm not selling to minors."

    I blinked. "Just the potions, please."

    "I'll get those out of the back room," the shopkeeper said with a sigh, retrieving another key from his apron pocket and moving away from the register. His odd, floating candle hovered next to him to illuminate his way. "Mostly everything else is pretty well stocked, if you care to look." He moved away and began fiddling with the lock on a side door that presumably lead to a supply closet. "Brigid, I'm fine. Give the girl some light." And make sure that I didn't pocket anything, no doubt.

    The floating candle obliged and hovered over to me, casting that strange purple light over the nearby shelves. "Do you buy pokéballs?" I asked. I hadn't left home with that much cash; we hadn't had much to spare and I hadn't wanted to cause trouble. Funny how that one had turned out. But any money I could scrounge together now, when the stores were still stocked and friendly, would be a blessing.

    From the back room, the man laughed. "Those things are paperweights until the grid goes up, kid," he called over his shoulder. "Next you're going to try to sell me your pokédex." He paused, and then added, "If you can wait until Goldenrod, some of the shops there might be larger and more willing to eat the cost until the power's back."

    It had been worth a shot. I skimmed my fingers along the shelves, peering at them from the light generated by the candle pokémon. There was a surprisingly wide, albeit picked over, array of merchandise on the shelves, ranging from plush dolls to canned food, and I realized that this really would be the best time to get things. By the time I reached another store, they could be sold out for a very, very long time.

    I started scooping items off of the shelves, trying to pick the lightest and most effective things I could carry. I hadn't really gone camping, so I was mostly taking shots in the dark based on the mandatory survival classes my school had made us take when we were nine. There was still rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, and antiseptic, so I grabbed a bottle each of those and dropped them in the basket that Brigid handed me—the thing had little stubby arms that blebbed out of the wax; it was weird—along with several packs of cloth bandages. If I had to look after my own pokémon, I wasn't going to rely on potions, especially if they were rationed. As an afterthought, I doubled back and nabbed some aspirin, and located a map and thermal blanket in the back of the store, slightly worn but quite useable. And food. I grabbed a ton of food.

    That would have to make do for a while. I desperately wanted to get more stuff, but I didn't know how much I could carry, and I also had a hunch that my funds weren't going to last. "You got any matches?" I asked, glancing around the shelves. I'd have to learn how to start a fire myself soon enough or get a fire-type—I thought jealously of the floating candle that, even now, was casting a pool of warmth and light around me—, but for the time being, I didn't want to be caught outside in the freezing conditions that would be coming. Last night had been bad enough.

    The shopkeeper emerged from the backroom holding six spray bottles that I knew would have to last me for a long time. "Those are all gone. You might want to catch a fire-type instead," he advised, placing the bottles on the front counter. "I have two super potions, a hyper potion, and one each here for paralysis, burn, and poison." When he noticed the disappointed expression on my face, he added, "That's all I'm allowed to sell you. If you're still around in a week and I haven't sold out, you can try again."

    I couldn't have expected much more, but I still felt disappointed for some reason. I resumed rummaging through his shelves. "I'll be there in a second."

    "Take your time." His pokémon placed my basket on the counter next to the scant collection of healing potions, and the shopkeeper looked through my intended purchases with a practiced eye. "You're trying to go practical," he said. Pause. "You have absolutely no idea what you're doing, do you." It wasn't a question.

    "Nope. Wanna help?"

    "Soap," the man sighed, reaching behind him and putting a lumpy green bar on the counter beside my basket. "Some rope, extra bandages, a rain coat, sunglasses, water purification tablets, better first aid kit. As a start. Brigid, be a dear and grab the rest for her, would you?" He paused, glancing back through my basket, while his litwick floated around the store and began picking up the required objects in its stubby, white hands. "Oh, and a knife or two."

    "Pardon?" So we'd gone from shotguns to packing my backpack for me like it was my first day of school in a matter of seconds, and I had no idea why. And I didn't want a knife.

    {I believe Bates is trying to improve your supplies,} a serene voice said in my head. {You seem to be lacking a couple of necessities for a prolonged camping trip.} The voice paused and then let off a gentle laugh before adding, {If we're in the mood for packing moderately, I think some tape could come in handy.}

    Of course. "No knife." And then: "Did your pokémon just—"

    "Some ghost-types can create a low-ranged telepathic field. Translates what pokémon say in a small radius," the shopkeeper, apparently named Bates, said, waving one hand dismissively through the air and shrugging.

    I thought that his candle was a fire-type. Odd.

    "Good call on the fork," Bates was calling over his shoulder. "And grab a roll of duct tape if there's any left," he added to Brigid, who was currently floating through the air and estimating sizes of raincoats. "It shouldn't weigh too much. Brigid already mentioned it, but I'm Bates, by the way."

    "The telepathic field thing sounds quite useful." Unlike Icarus's mangled and haphazard speech, Brigid's words were smooth and almost sounded human, like the xatu's telepathy. I made a mental note to pick up a ghost-type if I could, but they were rare, especially in Johto.

    "With the newer pokédex and translation collars, I took it for granted," Bates admitted. He looked at one of the boxes of water purification tablets Brigid had given him and frowned. "Of course, all of that's gone now. I'm just lucky Brigid was out of her pokéball helping me do inventory. Some of the trainers came to me yesterday with their pokémon stuck inside of their balls, and I had no idea what to do." He was squinting at a different box in his hand now, and then he said, "These might run out. Find one of those solar-powered ones instead." Then, looking back to me, he shrugged. "Brigid's my only pokémon, though, and we understand each other pretty well even without it."

    "Is she your starter?" I couldn't help but feel a little useless at this point, what with the apparently experienced camper and the ghost doing all of the work for me.

    He danced around my question. "I got her a few decades ago, back when I was younger. I moved to Kanto to start my journey."

    {We'd just gotten our third badge when they really started overturning the old government,} Brigid said despondently. {It was unfortunate. We were trying to get the gym badges one day, and the next, everything was in flames. We used to have three other pokémon, and then, well.}

    So that was where they'd learned to survive. "Oh," I said quite eloquently. I didn't like where this was going and searched for a tactful way to change the subject. Brigid had said what I was expecting but didn't want to hear. Even when all of the pokécenters were operational and healing items were in high supply, there were still casualties. And apparently these two had lost three. I didn't even want to think about how that would feel. And now, with no pokécenters and a horrible selection of potions to choose from, I had a sinking feeling that things could turn out even worse.

    Desperate to change the subject, I glanced at the growing pile of items that threatened to spill over the counter. "I can't carry all of that."

    "You're going to need all of it," Bates retorted, a wry smile spreading across his face. He glanced over to the door, where my pack still sat dejectedly in the corner, tiny and patched and lumpy. It was the best I could afford at the time, and it was falling apart on the seams. "That's a pretty pathetic backpack you've got going there."

    "Thanks," I muttered sarcastically, but my ears burned. My family had never really been rich, but no one had blatantly called us out on it like this.

    He reached under the counter and pulled out a much larger, much sturdier, much newer pack and placed it next to my mountain of supplies with a dull thunk. "I used this when I was your age. It's a bit worn on the edges, but it should be fine."

    He'd literally been trying to kill me five minutes ago and now he was giving me his nostalgia fodder. What had I said to change this? I tried to think it through. Something about my supplies? I thought he'd started complimenting me when I picked up the map; maybe that had been it?

    Bates was looking between me and the backpack expectantly, but I hesitated. It felt so wrong to take the bag. A man's dreams were sewn into that industrial grade, dark-green fabric. He'd probably clipped pokéballs to it and carried his pokémon's favorite snacks in it and pinned his hard-earned badges to it with pride. And now all of those things were old and useless, existing only as relics to be passed down to a younger generation. "I, uh, don't have enough money."

    Bates sighed. "How much do you have?"

    "Seventy-five dollars and twelve cents." My response was immediate; I knew exactly how much money I'd brought on my journey and how many painstaking years of saving it'd taken to accumulate.

    Even though he was several feet away from me and only half-illuminated by Brigid's fire, I could still hear his sharp intake of breath. I knew. Seventy-five pokédollars could barely pay for the meager selection I'd picked out in the first place, and there was no way it could cover Bates's additional supplies and the backpack as well.

    So much for that plan.

    "That's practically nothing, kid."

    In fact, part of me was happy for any excuse not to take any more from this man than I already had. Of course, the other part of me was cringing at the thought of long, cold nights spent curled up on the ground. "That's fine. I'll just take the bandages and the potions."

    Bates slowly tucked all of the extra supplies back into the bag. The excitement had faded from his eyes, and his movements became slow and lethargic. But I was glad he didn't try to do something stupid and give me the stuff for free. We all had to survive somehow.

    "Could you put your right hand on the counter?"

    I did so, slowly. "And why exactly?"

    He turned me hand over so that the palm was flat on the table and the back faced up. "Sorry, I'm obligated to do this for anyone who buys potions," Bates said, pulling out a small bottle of violently green ink and dabbing at it with a brush. Brigid leaned in closer to illuminate his work with flickering purple flame. "We have to make sure that trainers don't get more than their allotted amount until the factories go back online, which could take weeks. I guess they'd print ration cards, but the printers are offline."

    "Ah."

    "They'll probably get something going within a week or two, but for the time being, we'll just stick with smeargle ink. It won't come off for a week under most circumstances that you can think of," he added seriously, looking up at me beneath bushy eyebrows, "so don't try anything stupid. There was already one kid who showed up at the pokécenter a few hours ago who tried to use his bellsprout's acid to burn his off."

    {Luckily, he was left-handed,} Brigid remarked, hovering behind Bates now.

    "Anyway," Bates said, looking up and stoppering the bottle again. He glanced back down at his work: on my arm, just below the wrist, the date was written in bright green letters. "You can claim your next batch of healing items at any pokémart in Johto one week from now. Brigid, get her bag, please."

    {Good luck,} Brigid said solemnly. She floated in front of me now, her small hands clutching my backpack, which was almost as large as she was, and she passed it gently to me. And then: {Be careful that you do not lose your way in the dark.}

    Nope.

    Nope. Nope.

    The xatu's words echoed in my mind, and then I forced myself to calm down. It wasn't an omen. I refused to accept that the xatu had any influence in my fate. It was coincidence. That was all.

    It was coincidence. That was all.

    Saying it twice changed nothing. I took a shuddering breath and cracked a smile. "Thank you," I said, nodding at the floating candle and at Bates. "And thank you for trying to help me out."

    Bates inclined his head in my direction and replied gruffly, "Watch yourself. It's more dangerous than you'd think."

    I was preparing for the worst already, so the knowledge that things could go even more badly than I'd expected wasn't entirely reassuring. "Thanks." I waved goodbye uncertainly and then stepped outside.

    "All right, so now that that's over with, we can settle in for the night, right, Gaia?" I asked, looking down by the doorway for my caterpie. At first I thought I was just looking in the wrong spot, but it quickly became apparent that she wasn't by the doorway or in any other spot.

    I started panicking then. "Gaia?" No response. I spun around, eyes pleading, but she wasn't anywhere in sight. "Gaia!"

    My caterpie was gone.

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    • vi. those who favor fire // vii. to perish twice
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    chapter vi. those who favor fire​
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    My caterpie was gone.

    My first thoughts went to Icarus. Maybe he’d finally tried to eat her, like I’d always thought he would. Maybe she got eaten by something else big enough to scare off Icarus. Maybe, at the very least, he’d seen what had happened.

    Something else occurred to me: she might’ve run off. She didn’t have a pokéball; beyond her word, which I couldn’t really understand anyway, there was nothing holding her to me. While our conversation last night had been cathartic for me, she may have just decided it would be better to leave her psycho-trainer before things got much worse. “Gaia? Icarus?” I called, checking the rooftops. I’d left the murkrow in the trees with firm instructions to stay where he was, but it wasn’t like I expected him to stay put anyway. It wasn’t quite night, so I could still make out the blurry outlines of the buildings, but I couldn’t head or tails of him.

    So they were both gone. That couldn’t be good.

    Now that I thought about it, there was very little holding my pokémon to me, and I barely understood why either of them were here in the first place. It certainly wasn’t my stellar personality or tender love and care. With Icarus in particular, I’d basically done nothing but try to shoo him away, threaten to kill him, and constantly hit tell him to shut up when he annoyed me, which was often. Short of our mutual agreement not to kill each other and our understanding that a rather large organization was interested in making sure we both ended up dead, there wasn’t much reason for him to stay with me in the first place.

    No. He’d grown oddly attached to me for whatever reason. He hadn’t left when I’d asked or even when Silver threatened. In that light, I kind of sounded like a dick, but it also meant that if he wasn’t still around, it probably wasn’t by choice. “Icarus,” I hissed, “you haul your feathered little butt down here right now, or I swear I will tear your beak in half!”

    I was just killing it with the tender love and care aspect.

    Bates emerged from the doorway of the pokémart at this point, grumbling about the noise. “What the hell are you going on about, kid?”

    I had, quite stupidly, not realized that shouting loudly in a small town would probably generate attention. Goldenrod wasn’t like that, really. You could scream and no one would care enough to listen. “My pokémon,” I stammered, suddenly afraid. They were gone. And if someone had convinced Icarus of all pokémon to do something that he didn’t want—this couldn’t be good. I looked around again, as if Gaia would suddenly appear in front of my eyes. “She’s gone.”

    That was when I thought of Team Rocket, and my dread only deepened. Icarus had hardly been able to hold his own against what I was pretty sure was a mostly-untrained abra, and that had been in a fair, one-on-one fight. When Silver started playing dirty, Icarus hadn’t stood a chance. The Rockets weren’t against shooting pokémon, and they’d already killed a far more powerful pokémon than my starter. We didn’t stand a chance.

    “Your caterpie?”

    But I couldn’t tell Bates about Icarus. I desperately wanted to, but he was friendly and willing to help me now, and if he had the same dark-type stigma that most people had—no, best not to think of that. I could only hope that Gaia and Icarus were together, and that enlisting Bates to find Gaia would also lead me to Icarus. If we found Gaia and not him, then… I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. “Yeah. I, uh, my caterpie is gone,” I admitted, biting my lip. I didn’t want to talk to Brigid and Bates right now. I didn’t want to have to explain the horrifying conclusions that I’d already made. I wanted nothing more than to bolt into the forest and shout, looking for my pokémon, and find them. “I have no idea where she went.”

    “Does she often run off like this?”

    The fact remained that I’d done nothing I’d done to earn her loyalty. Last night had proved that well enough. Bates seemed to take my silence as an answer in itself. “It takes a while for them to grow on you, kid.”

    “Okay,” I replied in a shaking voice, “but the main problem right now is that she’s gone.” Night was falling fast. I couldn’t go into the forest alone, but if I waited until daybreak, I’d probably never find her.

    Bates sighed and stepped out of the doorway, slinging on his pack. In a practiced motion, he pulled out three separate keys for the three different locks on the pokémart door, secured them, and sighed. “It’s getting dark, and I was about to close anyway,” he said. “Brigid and I will help. I don’t want you to get yourself lost in the woods without a pokémon, especially with all of the other stuff going down.”

    Huh. On the one hand, he had a pokémon and I didn’t, and he was offering me help. On the other hand, he had a pokémon and I didn’t, and he was offering to take me as far away from a populated area as possible. I’d decided a while back that I liked Bates, and I’d decided in the past thirty seconds that I desperately needed his help, but now I was reconsidering.

    {If he wanted to harm you,} Brigid said serenely, settling onto Bates’s head like an overgrown, flaming marshmallow-helmet, {he would not have left his shotgun in the store, nor would he use me. Even though there are more trainers than normal in this area, there are still few fire-types and even fewer ghost-types. It would not be difficult to link a charred corpse to us.}

    Grumbling something about the clouds, Bates pulled a flashlight out of the front pocket of his backpack and handed it to me before changing the subject abruptly. “There are two roads out of Cherrygrove. Where do you want to start?”

    I had no idea. Panic was starting to set in. The route to Cherrygrove was pretty straightforward and short, but it’d taken me forever and I’d still gotten lost a couple of times. Gaia probably wouldn’t even stay on the route. There would be no way to comb through the forest and its thousands of pokémon to find her, but I couldn’t stop looking. Not before I’d tried. “I caught—well, met, I guess, because of the pokéballs—her on the way from New Bark Town. She might’ve tried to go back there.”

    Bates frowned. “That’s odd. I always differently.”

    Brigid elaborated for him: {Caterpie are not native to the Route 29. Something about the forest keeps them closer to Violet City and Cherrygrove.} Brigid floated ahead of us, peering with her one, yellow eye into the treetops.

    “And while many species of pokémon have no qualms about migrating short distances, caterpie are sedentary creatures until their final evolution—moving is difficult for them even when they have legs,” Bates noted, glancing at the darkening sky, now almost purple, and shifting his weight to his other leg.

    {The butterfree even prefer to return to their birthtree to lay eggs. Unless they join a trainer, few caterpie will leave a fifty foot grazing radius until they grow their wings.}

    The way they practically finished each other’s sentences reminded me of what I was missing: both the inescapable bond that you inevitably formed with your first pokémon, and my actual starters. Both of them. “Um. Should we go the other way?”

    Bates shrugged. “She’s your pokémon.”

    Which only served to further my guilt, because if they’d run off like this, maybe they didn’t want to be. But I wanted to think that Gaia hadn’t run off to return home, that I hadn’t already terrified her this much. I really did. “North,” I said, quite stupidly. “I think we should try looking north.”

    So we did.

    I should’ve emphasized the word try a bit more, because we hadn’t even gotten five feet along, Brigid casting her eerie purple light over the gravel next to the LED’s of my borrowed flashlight, before something latched on to my face.

    In retrospect, I really should’ve seen it coming. Bates had been nervous about letting me into the forest alone because of all of the wild pokémon there, and while he hadn’t brought his shotgun—not like hunting pokémon was even legal in the fall—he hadn’t seemed too thrilled to accompany me, even with Brigid. Of course the forest would be infested. Hindsight or not, there was something attacking my face, and it took all of my willpower not to run around in circles and shriek like a zubat. My actual reaction involved lots of flailing and was hardly any more composed.

    Brigid calmly blew a wisp of purple fire onto the furball and then pried it off of my face, its scratches ineffectual on her intangible body.

    There was a pause as the creature stared at the fire on its fur, which quickly fizzled out, in amazement, before it began to scream. {Intruders! Intruders!} the creature cried wildly, still flailing around in Brigid’s grasp. I could see its sharp claws even in the dim light from Brigid’s fire. {Scout compromised!}

    I calmed myself, blinking as I rubbed absently at the shallow scratches on my face. “What the—”

    The creature wormed its fuzzy body around so it was facing me, brown ears twitching madly like insect antennae. Its tail, striped chocolate and mocha, was larger than the pokémon itself and whipped around with a mind of its own. {Tell this vile monster of yours to unhand me at once.}

    I could still hear the faint and indignant echo of “Tretttt!” in the background through the telepathic field. The pokémon’s voice sounded female, and there was a hard edge to it that I wouldn’t have associated with a cute ball of fluff that I recognized as a sentret—a lot of trainers used them at the Goldenrod Gym. {My brethren will allow you to escape unharmed if you let me go free; otherwise, you must face the wrath of the sentret army. We are the warriors of the forest.}

    “First of all, she’s not mine; she’s with that guy,” I said, pointing over my shoulder towards Bates. “Second, what.” I’d just been overpowered by a ball of fluff. “Third, sentret army?”

    “They organize themselves into a sort of military hierarchy,” Bates explained, moving forward and gently detaching the sentret’s claws from Brigid’s incorporeal body and letting her land softly on the ground. He looked at the sentret for a moment, quite bemused. She hissed back at him. “The pups start out scouting for the others, and then they move up the ranks as they grow stronger. I didn’t think their clan let ones this young interact with humans.” He looked at me critically, and then added, “And stop shining that flashlight in her face. I doubt she likes it.”

    Guiltily, I pointed the flashlight at my feet, muttering something about how the sentret didn’t seem to like me in general.

    The sentret’s legs scrabbled until she reached the ground, and then she propped herself up on her large tail, hardly reaching my waist. {I will forgive you because I am merciful. I am going to leave now. If I see you following me, I will not hold back.}

    I was reminded for a brief moment of a different small girl with a different tiny blade threatening a different enemy far larger than herself and promising retribution that she could never really give, and seeing it recreated here was so pitiful I almost laughed despite myself. “Sorry, are you threatening me?”

    {Yes!} She sounded indignant.

    And now I was getting into a verbal spat with a pokémon whose idea of camouflage was having a target on its stomach. “Just checking. Listen, you’re a scout, right? We’re not trying to hurt you,” I said, raising my hands in a sort of mock-surrender. “I just want to know if you saw a caterpie come through here. She would’ve been quiet. And slow.”

    The sentret cocked her head to one side and stopped bouncing up and down on her tail for a moment. {Caterpie come here all the time, and almost all of them are quiet and slow. Few come through, I suppose, but I didn’t see one.}

    I decided to risk asking about Icarus, even though I’d have to answer to Bates later. The sentret might’ve seen, or at least heard him. “What about a black pokémon?” I tried to be as vague as possible, in the vague hope that Bates mistook my description for something else. The sentret looked at me with confusion painted across her face. “Dark-type. Loud, obnoxious. He probably wouldn’t have shut up even if the world was ending.”

    The sentret’s eyes narrowed. {Oh,} she said in a dangerous tone of voice that I didn’t quite like. {So that monster has decided to enlist his services to you.}

    I swallowed nervously. Leave it to Icarus to mess things up when they couldn’t have gotten worse, but in the meantime, that meant that they were around here somewhere. They were safe. I thanked all the gods I knew. “Has he done anything, uh, bad?”

    {He was harassing our clan earlier. He now bears the mark of my claws across his face.}

    “Okay, that’s perfect.” Well, not perfect, but it was good to know that the bandages I’d bought wouldn’t be going to waste with him around. All the remained was to find them. I could barely contain my excitement as I continued: “Can you lead us to him?”

    The sentret bristled. {No.}

    “Perfect, we can—wait, what?” My mouth stayed open. I hadn’t been expecting that response.

    The sentret propped herself up a little higher on her tail and puffed out her chest. With her adorable, floppy ears and big, brown eyes, she still looked about as intimidating as a wet paper towel. But I desperately needed to convince her to help me. {He ran away like a coward after I bested him in combat. More importantly, I am a warrior of the forest, not a trained pet who will perform tricks at your bidding, human.} She spat out the last word like it burned at her tongue.

    Bewildered, I turned back to the sentret, desperately trying not to let the fear show on my face. I couldn’t lose Gaia. Not here. Not now. Not when we were so close. I frantically tried to draft a rousing speech, but all that came out was a strangled—“Please. I don’t know what else to do.”

    There was a silence, untouched save for the faint hissing of the purple fire on Brigid’s head.

    The sentret narrowed her eyes as she sized me up. Her head tilted to one side. {No,} she said simply. {I am returning to my clan. Goodbye.} And then she somersaulted neatly over her tail into the underbrush.

    This couldn’t be happening. “No! Wait!” I dashed headlong after her, the beam of my flashlight darting erratically around the treetops. My sleeve caught on a low-hanging branch, but I unsnagged myself and kept sprinting. I couldn’t lose sight of her for an instant; if she disappeared into the forest, Gaia would stay lost forever, and that absolutely wasn’t an option.

    “Hey!” I heard Bates shouting behind me, but I was beyond reasoning at that point. He had to understand: this sentret was probably my only shot at getting my pokémon back. I couldn’t lose her, not when we were this close. It just wouldn’t be fair. “You can’t just—”

    His voice faded off in the distance behind me as I plowed headlong through the trees, eyes straining as I tried to keep track of the sentret, whose tawny fur was barely visible in the shifting moonlight. She was fast. One instant, she would be spiraling up the branches of a sapling, too blurry to track; another moment, and she was flying through the leaves to the next limb; half a second later, and she’d hit the ground and was already running with all four paws through a pile of pine needles.

    On the other hand, I was running headlong through the forest with the finesse and grace of a charging rhyhorn. A root seemed to sprout out of nowhere for the express purpose of tripping me, and I found myself tumbling forward into the dirt, shredding my numb palms as I stumbled to catch myself, my ears ringing. “Please! I just need to find my pokémon, and then I swear on everything I know that I’ll leave you alone!”

    The sentret furiously chattered something back, but her words were unintelligible and—

    We’d slipped out of Brigid’s telepathic field, I realized, and some voice in the back of my head was warning me that perhaps we were taking things too far, that perhaps this was too reckless, even for me, and that if I died trying to find Gaia, it wouldn’t matter if I found her in the end. My head throbbed. I shivered. I was alone in a forest full of wild pokémon and I didn’t have anything, and the temperature was dropping fast. I’d even left my backpack back in the pokémart; if I ended up getting stranded out here, the only real question would be whether or not the wild pokémon would kill me before starvation did. Documentaries of swarms of ariados ambushing ten year-olds on their first night in the woods flashed in my ears, and Gaia was out here somewhere, alone and defenseless. I was armed with a flashlight. My blood ran cold.

    The sentret pulled up short and turned to face me, bristling. I couldn’t help but notice the way the moonlight glinted off of her claws. She hissed and then gestured with her tail to a small, black pokémon that was curled up peacefully at the base of a tree.

    It wasn’t what I was expecting. “Is this what you were going to show me?” I asked hesitantly, my teeth chattering in the cold. I had no clue what pokémon I’d caught with the beam of my flashlight, but it certainly wasn’t Icarus or Gaia.

    The sentret nodded her affirmation before the thing twisted up and grabbed one of the sentret’s brown, adorably floppy ears in her mouth. Shrieking in alarm, the sentret unsheathed her claws. In a matter of seconds, the two pokémon had practically merged into a single ball of fur, although I could only see the sentret, which had pinned the other pokémon to the ground and was raking her claws across its face.

    Their snarls overshadowed the song I’d been hearing building, but then I was distracted as the other creature arched its back and then shot out a blast of fire from its fanged mouth, sending a rush of welcome warmth. The force of the blow pushed the sentret back, and the pokémon picked its way to its feet, all four of them, and sank into a battle crouch. Its black fur, although matted and tangled, almost blended in with the darkness around it, and it looked like it was wearing a skull as a helmet. Small, white protrusions marked its paws and back, and its stubby tail flicked back and forth as it pressed its ears to the sides of its face and whined.

    Before the two pokémon could leap at one another again, I stepped in between them, my arms spread apart. “Calm down,” I said, more to the sentret, but both pokémon bared their sharp teeth at me. I shivered as I realized what a stupid position I had entered. My voice rang in my ears, pinging against the echo of the haunting song.

    {This is the pokémon that has been bothering my clan,} the sentret hissed, her fur bristling and her tail coiled high so she looked almost twice her normal size. {Don’t tell me to calm down. I’ll shred him.}

    I—

    I could understand what she was saying.

    All at once, I noticed the singing, the sudden drop in temperature, and the fact that the phrase ‘my blood ran cold’ was more than an idiom. It had started subtly at first, so quiet that I hadn’t even noticed it, but as I mindlessly watched the two pokémon tussling, I realized the terrible mistake we’d made: we’d let ourselves stray too far from safety.

    When I exhaled, my breath froze around me, and when I tried to move my hands around my shoulders, I couldn’t feel my fingers. And the singing I was hearing was only growing louder.

    The sentret tore herself away from the other pokémon and sprang upright on her tail, spinning around and searching for the source of the disturbance. Every inch of her fur was on end—I’d thought that she’d seemed uneasy back when she was talking to me, but she’d bristled to at least twice her normal size now.

    I worked my chattering teeth apart to stammer, “Do you know what this is?” No response from the sentret. “Are you going to help me with whatever this thing is? We can work together.” I instantly regretted saying it.

    The sentret fixed me with a look of pure and utter disgust that I hadn’t even thought was possible. In that moment, she seemed to remember that there was no need for her to stick with this blundering, idiot human and whatever else that pokémon was, in near-darkness with something singing and freezing and growing closer. She tilted her head to one side, and then she turned to vanish back into the forest again—

    A blast of frigid air hit her before she could make it into the trees, so cold that I could feel it from where I stood. The sentret let out a shriek of pain and was sent rolling to a halt near my feet.

    I stuffed a scream back into my mouth with the sleeves of my jacket and turned to run as well, only to find myself face-to-face with a pair of glowing yellow eyes framed by purple, gem-like growths. Another flash of pale light, and my numb legs had crumpled beneath me, leaving me to stare at the monstrous, white and blue figure that loomed above us through the freezing fog that I had only now just noticed. I strained upward, desperate to escape, but my legs wouldn’t respond. The winds had picked up, blasting my hair back and doing nothing to combat the cold.

    The black-furred creature from before whimpered uneasily before exhaling a narrow stream of fire that dissipated harmlessly into the cold. A tendril of dark energy reached out and twined itself around the pokémon’s midsection, dragging it toward the singing and the yellow eyes and my own unresponsive body.

    The sentret’s scream of warning was lost on my unhearing-ears. She tried to run for the bushes again, but the thing serenely waved one of its arm-like appendages, sending a condensed beam of chilled air with laser precision to hit the sentret in the middle of her back. I heard a sickening crunch as the iceblock’s newfound weight sent the sentret tumbling to the ground. The following blast of power sent my hair blowing back, and the struggling sentret was being dragged toward us, her body outlined in glowing aura. Leisurely, it leaned down to wrap the other one around me, although I could barely feel its jagged touch.

    The sentret hissed wildly. {Unhand me. Immediately. Or—}

    I didn’t hear her threaten to bring the wrath of the warriors of the forest or whatever. Instead, I watched numbly as the ghost above us smiled, allowing its frozen jaw to crack upward. {Gently, little one,} it hummed serenely, its voice bouncing around the ebbing corners of my mind. {Sleep now.}

    The ghost was right. Fatigue was starting to weigh down on me like a heavy blanket, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and rest until this had all passed. Some remote corner of my brain categorized this as the precursors of hypothermia, but the rest of me was too exhausted to care.

    I stared blissfully as the squirming sentret was levitated above my head and the temperature around us plummeted. The ghost smiled, the notes of its song echoing in the fog as the rodent’s struggles lessened.

    Through chattering teeth, I blearily managed to open my numbed lips and whisper, “Please.” Every breath was an uphill battle; forming them into words was like fighting a war. “Don’t.” Don’t what? I could hardly remember.

    The ghost tore its attention away from the sentret for just a moment, fixing me with those hypnotic, yellow eyes, and I sagged back. It stroked my cheek, and I felt my entire face go numb. {Hush, hush, little one,} it murmured, and I began to slip away, vision flickering. {Be still.}

    As the singing began to fill my ears, I vaguely managed to wonder where the sounds of the sentret had gone. All I could here was the gentle whoosh of the wind and the ghost’s song.

    I would close my eyes and that would be it. My problems were solved. No need to win pokémon battles or flee the Rockets or combat my dark destiny. No need to continue down the road to hell armed only with good intentions. It could all end here, quietly, and not in—

    “Inferno.”

    A searing wave of purple fire filled my vision, and the clearing erupted into painful warmth. The monster holding us reared back, screaming, and it tried to tighten its hold on us before another burst of purple flame sent it reeling back.

    I turned to see the blurred figures of Bates and his litwick burning their way through the frozen fog. I tried to choke out a warning to them—this monster was far too strong; they had to run—but my thoughts were running together and my head felt like it was filled with cotton. I hadn’t even noticed that the thing had retreated until Brigid was approaching me, her flame sending bursts of pain through my numb limbs. {Are you okay?} She bobbed close to my head.

    As my circulation returned, burning like fire as it passed, I pieced my thoughts together as quickly as my numb lips would allow. “The hell was that?”

    “Is; it’s still around,” Bates growled, looking up from the sentret and examining the trees through bushy eyebrows. “You won’t be able to get far.”

    {A froslass,} Brigid said on his behalf, but that really wasn’t a comprehensive answer.

    “A what?” I managed to slur.

    “Usually endemic to Sinnoh. Ghost and ice-type that enjoys deep-freezing their prey before eating them. Once it targets a victim, it never relinquishes them.” Even though it was hard to focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time, I could hear the anger grating through Bates’s voice. “All you should’ve understood from that is ‘really fucking out of my league,’ but that didn’t seem to stop you from running off on your own and almost dying.” His head snapped away from me and he turned to look at Bridget. “How long until it comes back for her?”

    The litwick was bobbing over the sentret, thawing the block of ice on her back. {A minute. Perhaps less.}

    My eyes finally focused on the details of his face, where I could see a scowl etched deep into the frown-lines of his face. “Oh.” I sluggishly tried to piece together a more refined response. “Um. Sorry.” No one had moved, and Bates seemed perfectly unalarmed by the fact that a psychotic, freezing ghost was coming back to kill me in the next sixty seconds. “Shouldn’t we try to leave?”

    Bates finally cleared his voice and, not tearing his eyes from the fog-laden treetops around us, growled, “When were you going to tell us that you had a second pokémon?”

    The impending sense of dread, which had momentarily dissipated after nearly-dying at the claws of a froslass, returned in full force. Of course he’d managed to piece together everything when I’d been begging the sentret for help. “I, uh—”

    There was a hard edge in his voice when he continued, “Was it before or after you promised me on pain of death that you only had a caterpie?”

    “I—”

    “Or,” Bates continued, so darkly that I could feel his anger brushing up against mine, “is this whole thing was part of your plan to help the poor damsel in distress while your six pokémon—hell, your froslass, or maybe you’re with the Rockets—ambush us in the middle of nowhere? Is that caterpie even yours or did you pick it up from the forest to make yourself look like a helpless rookie? You’re probably fifteen or sixteen; you could’ve been training for years at this point.”

    Frantically, I looked to Brigid for guidance, but she kept her one visible eye fixated firmly on the sentret. “Bates,” I began desperately, holding my hands out in what I hoped was a non-violent gesture, even though my fingertips were still too numb for me to uncurl them. “I—”

    He scowled and picked up the flashlight from a pile of leaf litter, where I must’ve dropped it. “Brigid?”

    {It’s circling back. Thirty seconds at most.}

    “It’s not a trap!” I managed to stammer, which definitely made it sound like less of a trap. But what was I supposed to do? Right now, he was only considering leaving me for the froslass or whatever monster the sentret had found earlier. If I told him about Icarus, the only reason he’d save me would be to turn me in to the Rockets. “Please.”

    Bates turned back to look at me, the lines in his face cast in Brigid’s purple light. “And people honestly wonder why I even have a shotgun.” He threw his hands into the air in exasperation, nearly knocking Brigid out of the air as he did so, but his fist passed right through her. The cold, mechanical shopkeeper that had spoken to me from the other side of a gun in a dark doorway was back. “Kid, there’s a froslass on your tail, and so far you’ve done nothing but lie to me. I don’t want you to get hurt, but I’m not risking my skin that this isn’t part of something bigger. Tell me what I need to know.” He left the rest of the sentence unspoken.

    Death by fire or death by ice. Which one would best suffice?

    ___________________________________________________________________________




    hi yes i do compulsive edits and this means sometimes two chapters get one post



    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter vii. to perish twice​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    So apparently I wasn’t the only one with serious trust issues.

    I tried to think of something to say, a better, more convincing bluff. I wasn’t the worst liar in the world; I’d already managed to convince both the murkrow and Silver that I was actually to be respected. The words were piecing themselves together in my mind: I’d befriended an extra pokémon, but it preferred to be out in the wild, so I hadn’t counted it as my own, but I still wanted to make sure it was okay. I’d ‘liberated’ something from an abusive trainer but hadn’t formally caught it because it was still ID’ed to its (now useless) pokéball. I was transporting my neighbor’s starter back home because they hadn’t been able to make the journey this week. There were so many lies already at my fingertips—

    But the only thing that came out was: “I lied. Gaia isn’t my starter.”

    Bates crossed his arms and planted himself firmly. One eyebrow quirked upward, but he didn’t bother voicing the sarcasm-laden, ‘No shit,’ that I could see on the tip of his tongue.

    I took a deep breath. The words slipped out. “I, uh.” Phrasing this would be tricky, but I didn’t have any time to consider the consequences. “You know about the xatu that gives out destined starters?”

    His eyes narrowed, probably because this looked like an enormous non-sequitur. I counted five breaths before he finally answered, “I wasn’t born here, but I’m not an idiot.”

    There would be no turning back after this. If he tried to turn me in, so be it. I weighed the options for half a second more, and then the words came tumbling out. “He gave me a murkrow.” It actually felt good to tell someone else, to let the words run free from the dam that was my mouth. I hadn’t been able to confide in anyone—out here, I didn’t have anyone I could trust, except maybe my pokémon, and they wouldn’t exactly understand. “The xatu gave me a murkrow yesterday right before the power went out, and now the Rockets are trying to hunt me down before I do—I don’t even know what. I found a caterpie and I’ve been trying to pass it off as my starter so they wouldn’t find me, but now both of my pokémon are missing and they might’ve been killed already.” I paused. “Oh, and Giovanni’s son thinks I caused the magnetic apocalypse and tried to kill me yesterday.” It wasn’t like I had anywhere to run.

    Bates paused, taking it all in, and narrowed his eyes at me. “A murkrow.” He frowned, studying me carefully. “That actually makes a lot of sense based on what you said earlier.” Another pause, and the frown lines deepened in his face. “Okay.”

    Relief, heavily mixed with confusion, flooded through me. “Okay?” I asked. “Okay? Really? I drop that bomb on you and all you have to say is ‘okay’? No pitchforks, no torches? You’re just going to keep treating me like a random customer with a caterpie?”

    I watched some sort of connection form in his eyes, one I couldn’t start to comprehend. “Your caterpie. It targeted you on purpose,” he breathed. He spun around, turning to Brigid. “Can you sense it from here?” The litwick shook herself in what I could only assume was a ‘no,’ and he began walking briskly back toward what I assumed was the path. I followed.

    “What’s happening?”

    He ignored me for a moment, his hands jammed firmly into the pockets of his coat as he crunched through the undergrowth. Bates sighed heavily. “I have a little more experience than most shopkeepers. And Brigid isn’t my starter, technically. Well. We—” he broke off suddenly, his hand snaking out to grab the fabric of my jacket and yank me between him and Brigid. “Stay behind me.”

    I squinted into the trees. It was cold, but the night air lacked the biting chill I’d come to associate with the froslass. There was an unmistakable rustling of undergrowth that gave way to a loud and incessant {Running! Running! Running!} that, even in the muted peace of Brigid’s telepathic field, sounded loud in my mind. “Bates?” I asked tentatively.

    {Running too fast! Tree! Ow! Bushes! Running faster!}

    The aforementioned bushes exploded into a mass of dark fur that resolved itself into a snout topped by a chipped skull, quickly followed by a blur of four legs and a barrel-like body that rushed toward us, nearly knocking Bates of balance before skidding to an ungraceful halt and turning around. I pointed my flashlight toward the creature, which looked back at us shamelessly, mouth hanging open to reveal a lolling tongue. As I squinted, I recognized it as whatever pokémon the sentret had mistaken for Icarus. “This isn’t going to kill me as well, right?” I asked Bates, who now wore an expression of immense concern and didn’t seem to hear anything I was saying.

    {Houndour,} Brigid replied on his behalf, circling the dog-like pokémon, who, delighted, tried to nip at the fire crackling on her head.

    I racked my brains. “Never heard of it.”

    “I thought they were extinct.” Bates’s voice cracked. “Brigid, the froslass. Do you think…”

    The very not-extinct houndour focused on the hunched, greying man beside me with surprising speed and intensity. {Hi!} the pokémon said in a rumbling voice that lilted upward, sounding altogether far too cheerful for a pokémon that had tried to maul the sentret and narrowly avoided death with me. In Brigid’s light, I could see how the little stump on his back waggled back and forth, and I was reminded of the growlithe that one of my neighbors used to keep. {Hello! You have fire on your head!} he barked to Brigid, and then turned away. {And you are tall! Hello!} The houndour surged forward now, sixty-five points of black fur and sinew, and then he was milling around Bates’s legs, panting happily and nudging his nose against Bates’s open hand. {I am not an extinct. I am Atlas!} the houndour said proudly. {I am Atlas because I am big and strong. Hello! I have not greeted you yet.} His warm, brown eyes turned to look at me, and his ears flicked back. He whined a little. {Your hair smells funny.}

    “I. What.” I narrowly avoided falling over as the houndour turned and began pressing up against my legs incessantly. One hand self-consciously flew up to pat the terrible dye job I’d done to my hair.

    {That is okay. I like you too,} Atlas proclaimed, and began licking my fingertips.

    That’s nice, I almost remarked dryly. Now we can all die together. Instead, I looked suspiciously at Bates, who still hadn’t moved. “Um.”

    Brigid whirled away from the houndour to look at her trainer, who was frozen in the cold. {William,} she said urgently, tugging on the shopkeeper’s sleeve. {It doesn’t matter. The past is behind us. That thing is coming back for her now. We need to move.}

    Bates said nothing, or if he did, it was drowned out by the howling wind that began to pick up around us. The temperature dropped. I looked around; the houndour seemed completely oblivious to any danger, Brigid was still trying to convince an immobile Bates to even look at her, and there was absolutely no sign of the sentret—she must have abandoned ship long ago. “Brigid?” I asked hesitantly.

    {We will protect you,} the litwick replied as the temperature continued to plummet, but she didn’t sound certain.

    {Hush, hush, little one.}

    “Brigid!”

    {I know,} she said coolly. The litwick brought her tiny arms together, humming as she concentrated. A ring of purple fire expanded around us, probably ten feet in diameter and hovering at waist height. It kept the freezing temperature at bay, but the flames seemed to lose heat every second. {I cannot hold her off forever,} Brigid cried to the shopkeep. {We need to head back to town or fight!}

    The houndour leapt easily through the flames and into the icy fog. {I shall protect you, tall man!} he barked cheerfully, and my wasted command for him to stop froze in my throat as a blast of cold wind sent him skidding through the undergrowth.

    Brigid cried in alarm as the blizzard’s onslaught turned away from the houndour and toward us. For a single, heart-stopping moment her protective ring of fire flickered out, only for her to renew it with terrifying intensity, the center of the flames glowing white-hot.

    {Let it all end,} the froslass growled, and those hypnotic yellow eyes surged up before us, just outside of the reach of Brigid’s fire. The purple protrusions on its head shimmered in the heat, but it waved its sleeve-like arms to conjure a blob of shadowy energy. I could feel the negativity and darkness even from where we stood, and it was then that I realized the horrifying truth: Bates and Brigid were strong. Strong enough that they’d conquered an entire region even before I was born, and survived the war that had brought a country to its knees.

    And yet this thing was even stronger.

    With a deep snarl that I hadn’t thought was even his vocabulary, Atlas leapt toward the froslass, his mouth filled with fire. The ghost barely blinked as it swerved to the side with impossible speed, singing serenely all the while. Atlas’s whine of alarm was cut off immediately as the Shadow Ball was released at point-blank range into his neck. When he was thrown to the ground this time, he didn’t get back up. {It is only a matter of time,} the ghost whispered quietly, and then it snapped its head around to stare at me. Wind whistled through the holes in its body, adding a haunting chorus to its melody. {Hush, little one.}

    To her credit, Brigid barely flinched, instead directing an enormous arm of fire from her ring to lash at the froslass. The snow around us melted and the grass beneath began to wilt, but—

    {You are irrelevant, nothing,} the froslass snapped at her, raising an impossibly strong barrier of ice in front of its body to reflect the flames downward. The wall barely melted even as Brigid began pouring all of her fire against it.

    I didn’t know what to—“Take me,” I said instead, realizing the obvious solution. “I’m the one you want. Don’t hurt them.”

    Whatever courage I had summoned vanished as the froslass turned its yellow-rimmed gaze back to me, piercing through the fire and fog. {I saw a time where an entire nation wanted to tear you down, and you refused, little one,} it whispered, trying to reach through Brigid’s ring with one wispy arm. {And here you are offering yourself up out of your own free will. You don’t even know much harm you will cause, do you?}

    Had it found me by random chance, or because it, like everything else in this world, was terrified of what I would supposedly become? A flash of light in the woods caught my attention. My eyes widened in recognition. It couldn’t be.

    But if I could keep it talking, maybe—“I do,” I lied. Because trying to trick the undead ice-spirit that could apparently see the future and wanted me dead because of it had no possible bad outcomes.

    Brigid flinched.

    The froslass began humming louder, so loud it began to leave ringing in my ears. {You know the atrocities that line your path, and still you stay the course?}

    Almost there. “And still I stay the course,” I repeated, like an oath, and began walking toward it with outstretched arms like I was going to let it attack me. Just to make things a little more confusing.

    I couldn’t see her expression, but the way that the fire flared even brighter in front of me suggested that Brigid wasn’t on board. {Don’t you dare,} the litwick hissed at me. {You can’t just, just—she’ll destroy you and then turn on us anyway.}

    That wasn’t the point. It worked best when the opponent wasn’t expecting it, so we had one shot. I had no idea where he’d come from or how he’d ended up here. Maybe they were attracted to sources of negative emotion, and between me and Brigid and Bates, we’d made ourselves into a beacon for it. Maybe the froslass had been hunting both of us, and we were inseparably linked already. Maybe it was dumb luck. But I wasn’t going to look the gift ponyta in the mouth, so to speak. “Feint Attack,” I whispered, drawing a tiny slash with my index finger, and my murkrow shot like a black arrow from the trees.

    It was foolish. If Brigid and Bates couldn’t handle the monster, Icarus and I didn’t stand a chance.

    But what choice did we have?

    With a blood-curdling screech, my murkrow made contact with the froslass’s icy midsection, passing through it cleanly while trailing tendrils of smoky shadow. For good measure, a wad of sticky silk hit it on the side, covering the crystal-like protrusions on the back of its head. It reared back in surprise, touching its white arms to the spot where Icarus appeared in disbelief, but it reacted faster than I’d hoped. A swirling blizzard formed as it raised its arms up, and it directed the frigid blast toward Icarus with a flick of its arms.

    “Get down!” I shouted from within the ring of fire, too slow, but then the houndour sailed upward, fire streaming from his maw as his jaws closed down like a steel trap around the froslass’s neck. The ghost was thrown back from the impact, of the stream of ice crystals went wild, missing its intended target and freezing the branches of the overhead trees solid.

    We were winning. We were going to make it. We—

    {No,} I heard Brigid murmur behind me, and I barely had enough time to turn to ask her why before the froslass reared back, screaming violently. Enormous blocks of ice, easily bigger than my entire body, sprouted out of the ground. Rocks and dirt sprayed upward, and a thin but growing web of frost spread until it wrapped around my ankles. Icarus was thrown against a tree by the concussive force, Gaia flew out of sight, the houndour hit the ground hard, and Brigid plummeted like a stone.

    By the time the froslass reached me, I’d managed to pry one foot out of the ice and tripped over myself as I tried to free my other leg in the darkness.

    I looked up at it, searching for mercy in its yellow eyes and finding none. I waited for some cryptic preaching—was this what it meant to lose my way in the dark?—but the ghost was impassive as it hovered above, its glowing yellow gaze the only light in the night.

    {You will destroy Johto,} it said at last. {That is what I saw.}

    “And still I stay the course,” I said thickly as I locked eyes with it.

    I was powerless and defenseless. Begging would get me nowhere. And we both knew it.

    “Brigid, kill her,” a stony voice said from behind me, and to this day I still wonder if Bates meant the froslass or me.

    There was a pause, a decision was made, and then the silence was broken by the faint hiss that precluded Brigid’s fire. I shied back, the arm I’d thrown in front of my face doing little to help against the heat as a pillar of purple fire engulfed the froslass. The calm air around us snapped in an instant as the froslass’s song turned to shrieking agony, and I watched numbly as it tried to sink back into the ground, protective fog swirling around it, but—

    Brigid was too fast. The litwick was there in an instant, wrapping her arms around the monster’s midsection and hitting it point-blank with another blast of purple fire, far too big to be contained by the wisp on her head.

    {You burned me,} I heard the froslass whisper in disbelief. {It hurts.}

    I wanted to turn around, to ask Bates how he could justify this, this level of barbarism—pokémon battles were never to the death, never, no matter what anyone said, no matter how huge the stakes, no matter what had happened before, no matter—

    {I am but one of many, little one,} the froslass said, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled when I realized she was talking to me.

    “And still I stay the course,” I whispered instead, shivering despite the warmth. There was a horrible cracking sound, and I watched the shattermarks spread up one of the froslass’s arms from the intense heat.

    “Don’t watch,” I heard Bates say gruffly from behind me, and he pulled me to my feet before pressing my head into his jacket and shuffling us away.

    It wasn’t enough to block out the screaming.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    “You probably want to know what the hell was going on back there.” Bates walked with his hands in his pockets, staring straight ahead as he we walked slowly back to Cherrygrove.

    “Um.” It was hard to organize the vortex of thoughts in my head into coherent words. Glowing yellow eyes, freezing winds, the future-teller, marked, Brigid and her cone of fire, burning so bright it threatened to consume everything else, the sinking sense of familiarity, like this had all happened before, like this would all happen again—

    So this was what going into shock felt like.

    I held Gaia closer to me, clutching her rough, green carapace like a lifeline.

    She’d evolved in the woods, somehow, when we were facing demons. I’d always imagined that my first evolution would be a momentous occasion—a trump card at a gym battle or something—but I barely had time to process it. I had a metapod now. An undead ice-monster had tried to kill me. A friendly shopkeep made the call to burn a pokémon alive.

    Had he been wrong to trust me, or had I been wrong to trust him?

    “Before you say what I think you’re going to say, the froslass would’ve killed us all,” Bates said when I didn’t answer. His voice carried so much certainty that I couldn’t help but wonder how much he’d seen back when he was a trainer. “Remember that.”

    “We could’ve knocked it out or something,” I said weakly, jumbling words together even though I knew they made no sense. The thing had just died in front of me. I’d hated it, and it had certainly hated me, and it had tried to kill me, but the screaming.

    I’d briefly wondered what I would’ve done if, gods forbid, I’d actually hurt Silver in the woods, and, as I walked side-by-side with Bates away from a burning corpse, I realized I physically wouldn’t have been able to continue with that on my conscience.

    I hugged Gaia a little closer.

    But Bates’s laugh was mirthless. “And then talked to her very nicely when she woke up, and then we’d all go on a merry adventure through Johto together? Nuh-uh. The second she locked on to you as a target, one of you was going to die. It was almost you.”

    My grip tightened around Gaia’s shell as I protested, “But—”

    He stopped walking so abruptly that I almost tripped, and by the time I had found my feet again, he’d placed his hands on my shoulders and had lowered himself so he was looking directly into my eyes. I saw no remorse in his gaze. “Look, kid. She targeted you. She thought you were alone, easy prey. She kidnapped your caterpie to lure you into the forest, and she was going to kill you all out here, quietly, where no one could hope to hear your screams. And the things that got in the way—the sentret, the houndour, your pokémon, Brigid, me—she didn’t care. She would kill all of us if it meant savoring you.” He shook me gently, and I blinked at him, uncomprehending but trying so hard. “You’re new to this, and I know they teach you guys to never harm a pokémon, but you need to understand: monsters like that? They need to die.”

    “But—”

    “No.” He shook my shoulders again. “I know it’s weird to you. I know it feels wrong to rationalize something like this.” There was a glint in his eyes, a sag to his shoulders that I hadn’t noticed before, and I realized that it felt wrong to him as well. “You better pray to the gods that you never get to the point that it doesn’t stop feeling wrong, but this is just something I have to live with, okay, kid? This wasn’t your fault. It had nothing to do with you. This is on me.”

    I didn’t know what I was supposed to be feeling. It wasn’t supposed to end up like this.

    “That’s the murkrow, right?” Bates said suddenly, too loudly, pushing me down the path with one hand while looking over his shoulder to see Icarus moodily flapping behind us.

    “Name not ‘right.’ Name Icarus!” the murkrow squawked indignantly, cackling as if this was the best joke in the world.

    Bates forced a laugh as well, and I kept walking in silence, holding Gaia closer and wondering if this was what being a trainer was supposed to feel like.

    What if I’d lost them?

    “You and Brigid were strong enough to finish the fight almost instantly,” I said at last, and I felt the mood drop back to match my own. I wanted to say something else: but why did you wait so long? or did you know from the beginning what you’d have to do? or even just are you okay? but instead the statement hung in the air uselessly, a question in itself.

    “Fifteen years ago, we used to be underdog favorites for beating the League,” he said in a low voice. “William Bates, prodigy trainer, with his miraculous team of dark and fire-types.”

    Even though I knew the froslass was gone, I couldn’t help but associate the fear I felt with the chill that ran across my back. “Dark types?” So that explained why he hadn’t freaked out when I’d told him about Icarus, but the other realization was worse. “So you were around during the takeover.” I tried to remember what I’d read in the books about the Rocket’s purge. They’d put prices on the heads of dark-types. Literal prices on heads. How many pokéball clips had I seen on that backpack he’d shown me? I couldn’t remember. But it was more. More than just one, more than just Brigid.

    Bates didn’t answer for so long that I thought he hadn’t heard me. But when I cast a furtive look in his direction, I could see the way his jaw had set, how his hands had curled into fists inside of his pockets. I followed his gaze instead.

    He was staring at the houndour with a strange expression on his face, one that bordered between longing and sorrow and joy that I couldn’t quite peg. Ahead of him, Atlas bounded over his too-large paws, trying to catch Icarus’s brushlike tail with his mouth.

    I cleared my throat. “Did you—” I didn’t really know how I was going to finish, but Bates interrupted me first.

    “I wasn’t always a shopkeep, kid. And she wasn’t always a litwick.”

    “Do you want to talk about it?”

    He was hiding something, I knew. That was important.

    “No.”

    But more important: I knew better than to push him.

    “Okay.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________
    ​

     
    Last edited:
    • the noodle incident
    • Re: The Long Walk

    Chapter Eighteen – The Noodle Incident (Version 1.0)

    Joshua​

    “In the beginning was the Curd, and the Curd was with God, and the Curd was—ma’am, with all due respect, you can’t be serious about having this.”

    Joshua Cook, trainer extraordinaire, possessor of delusions of grandeur, the desire to do something interesting with me life, and a very large headache as a result of some misdirection with the previous two objectives, sighed and looked over the top of the manila folder in his hands. Something told him that if he didn’t stop this farce in the next five minutes, he was going to have an excruciatingly long day. He yearned, more than ever, to be enjoying a spot of tea with Eve back at that quiet café across from the gym rather than here in the Pokécenter, standing awkwardly as an elderly woman crammed polaroid photograph after polaroid photograph into his hands. Screwball bobbed up and down between them; the magnemite’s single eye watched the entire exchange with veiled interest.

    “And on the sixth day,” said elderly woman continued for him, as if growing tired of waiting for Josh to finish his sentence, “He made the grains and the wheat, so that—”

    Josh decided that it would be far better for his sanity if he simply ignored everything she was saying. He was beginning to understand precisely how much Eve kept him grounded sometimes. And yet after one day off, which she had taken to spend training Lyra in the nearby caves to work on her doubles game, Josh was fairly certain he’d become insane. This odd-jobs-for-cash thing had gotten entirely out of hand—catching a buizel was one thing, but—

    “But really, Ms. Piracy, I don’t think we can help you prove that, erm,” he paused for a moment to shuffle through the extensive pile of newspaper clippings and scientific journal excerpts cluttered on the coffee table in front of him. His brow furrowed a little as he leafed over a particularly confusing article, and then he sighed and continued, “I don’t think we can help you prove that this, erm, ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ was responsible for killing your husband.”

    Ms. Piracy’s face fell. “I’m sorry?”

    Josh wasn’t entirely sure how to phrase this. On one hand, he’d recently encountered a man who thought he was a medieval night, a xatu who tried to tell his future, and a heavily-accented forest spirit that had tried to get into his pants.

    On the other hand, Ms. Piracy approached him five minutes ago (with astounding speed and constitution for a woman of her age, Josh had noticed) covered in blood and carrying, in no particular order, a foot-long length of lead piping, a candlestick, a spanner, a revolver, a dagger, and a rope. Josh hadn’t even been sure how she had been carrying such a vast quantity of murder weapons on her person. He had, however, some faint suspicions as to how they and their bearer had become covered in what Screwball had, quite quickly, deduced to be the blood of the late Mr. Piracy.

    “Ms. Piracy,” Josh said, suppressing a rather large and rather unprofessional sigh. He did, after all, want to get paid. “The police here, see, they won’t be terribly inclined to believe that this Flying Spaghetti Monster fellow killed your husband.”

    Ms. Piracy’s face fell for a moment, and then she broke out into a wide, beaming smile that was missing two teeth. “Oh, Mr. Cook,” she said earnestly, “I don’t believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster killed my husband either! That would be absurd!”

    Josh raised one eyebrow. Perhaps this would be easier than he thought. He stood up to leave. “Well, in that case, if don’t mind—”

    “—the true culprits were the Breloominati, of course.”

    Josh couldn’t quite help it.

    He sat back down.

    His first instinct was to burst out laughing; the Breloominati were a children’s joke, an obscure legend that eight year-olds enjoyed bringing into arguments. He’d seen the pictures, of course, and the absurd claims that if one connected all of the triangles on a five-pound note and held it up under a crescent moon on a Tuesday during the month of June at precisely three fifty-four in the afternoon, one could see the all-seeing eye brainwashing the Elite Four or something ridiculous. There was an entire radio station that he would always skip through that spent the wee hours of the night interviewing countless people who believed that a faceless organization devoted to the propagation of god-knew-what had infiltrated the government.

    “We’ll take the case,” Screwball said suddenly, and Josh felt his heart sink.

    He’d only recently been able to become familiar enough with the magnemite’s intricate system of buzzes and tweets to understand it, but sometimes he couldn’t be sure if he was interpreting his own pokémon correctly. This was absurd. “Screwball, you can’t be serious.”

    But Screwball was looking back at him with an air of fanaticism gleaming in his singular eye. “The Breloominati, Josh. Everyone knows that they’re just a legend, but no one has been able to prove it.” He paused, hovering in the air. “Until now, of course. You and I, we can work together and take down these lies once and for all!”

    Josh paused to think this over. “So you don’t, under any circumstances, believe that what she’s saying has even an iota of truth in it?”

    He probably shouldn’t have bothered asking.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    “Screwball, don’t look now, but I think she’s trying to kill us,” Josh whispered.

    “Wherever would you conjure up that idea?”

    Josh looked around, frowning. He’d already suspended most of his disbelief with Mrs. Piracy by this point, and when she’d asked them to investigate the catacombs beneath Sprout Tower, he’d prepared himself for anything. Anything but what he was seeing instead: a stone crypt, roughly hewn from the surrounding bedrock, with a torchlit clearing in the middle. And, because it wouldn’t be an awful day otherwise— “This is literally a crypt covered in a blood.”

    Screwball glanced around, apparently came to the same conclusion that Josh had. The magnemite bobbed over to what looked like a pentagram drawn crudely on the floor. “I suppose it is.”

    “It’s actually red paint, for once.”

    Screwball began whirring carefully to itself and happily processed this new information before floating awkwardly around above the floor, examining the shape. It was exactly like a pentagram, except it had six sides rather than five and consisted of two interlocking triangles instead of a five-pointed star.

    Had Josh been a telepath or Screwball a psychic, he would have pointed out that, by that logic, it was not exactly like a pentagram.

    However, Josh was not a telepath and Screwball was not a psychic. In addition, Josh was distracted by the fact that he hadn’t been the one to correct Screwball in what he’d assumed what was an otherwise empty room, and—

    “Screwball, there is a talking monster that is flying and appears to be made of green spaghetti,” Josh managed to say in as calm of a voice as he could muster.

    Indeed, levitating in through the column of light carved out by the torches, there was a strange, green creature that really only could be described as an amalgamation of spaghetti colored green, with a pair of red boots sticking out. “An apt description if I ever heard one,” the creature said happily, and then vaulted into the middle of the not-pentagram, careful to avoid getting the red substance (paint? Blood? Josh didn’t know at this point) on its equally-red shoes.

    “It is Him!” a voice cried out from behind Josh, and he was brushed aside as the surprisingly fast blur that resolved itself into Ms. Piracy elbowed past him to kneel reverently before the blob of green tentacles that had descended from the sky. “He has come at last!”

    “Ms. Piracy, don’t be ridiculous,” Screwball said, looking up with bemusement from the not-pentagram, and then stopping when he saw the strange creature floating above him. “Is that a tangela?” he asked no one in particular.

    The creature descended. “That is one of my many names, I suppose.”

    Screwball’s imaginary brow furrowed as it tried to piece everything together, and Josh knew then that no matter what happened now, it was far, far too late to turn back. “Tangela… Breloominati… Pokémon…”

    “Buddy, we should just go,” Josh said, because he’d be a fool if he didn’t at least try to leave before something ridiculous happened.

    No such luck. “Tangela… Breloom… Pokémon…” The magnemite began to mutter, now completely upside-down.

    “Screwball?”

    In the corner of his vision, Josh watched in twisted fascination as Ms. Piracy dropped to her knees and began bowing to the tangela, who stared at her with a look of bemusement from between the bellsprout statues. “He who seeketh for mortals to be-leaf in him and his sacred sect of Pastafarianism,” she intoned. “He who is the source of all di-vine intervention.” She threw herself to the ground. “He who is the—”

    And on the other side of the room, Screwball was muttering, “Tangela… divine… believe…” while floating in tight circles around the not-pentagram.

    Very firmly, but very gently, Josh began taking backward steps toward the door “Screwball, I think the stress is getting to you, and—”

    “What is the symbol of the Breloominati?” Screwball said, its voice growing much louder than normal. Electricity crackled between its magnets.

    Josh couldn’t help but flinch back a few paces. “The, uh, all-seeing eye,” he managed to say through the shock.

    “Exactly!” Screwball cried out, even louder than before, and it practically jumped three feet into the air. “And as of now, the sixth release of the Pokémon Encyclopedia, how many species of Pokémon have the ability Keen Eye that have six letters in their names?” It noticed Josh begin to count on his fingers, frowning, and then Screwball interrupted him: “Exactly what I was going to say! Eight!”

    Josh frowned. “Screwball, I really don’t understand where any of this is going, and—”

    “And how many letters are in the first two letters of ‘Keen Eye’?”

    “I beg your pardon?”

    “That’s right!” Screwball shouted. “Two! And eight minus two is six! And tangela has six letters, Josh!” Screwball was shouting, louder still, as he made another lurching loop toward Josh. “Don’t you see? Six! Six! Six!”

    Pause.

    “The Breloominati are real, Joshua,” Screwball said, a gleam re-appearing in his eye. “And I’ve just figured out that the killer, who is clearly one of them, must be standing in this room.”

    Where the hell was Eve when he needed her?

    “The names, Joshy,” the magnemite said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s all in the names.”

    Josh decided that he had absolutely no idea what Screwball was saying at this point, so instead he settled on the most obvious issue. “Please don’t call me Joshy.”

    “Breloominati!”

    Pause.

    “Breloominati, Joshy! Breloomi-not-e!”

    Josh had absolutely no idea where this was going, but he decided that he didn’t like it. “Oh god.”

    “Pokémon! Tangela! Breloom! Not-e!” The magnemite spun around wildly. “What do you get when you take out the e’s?”

    “Please stop.”

    “Six letters in each word! Six. Six. Six!” Screwball was shouting into the semidarkness of the crypt at this point, punctuating each word with a dangerous sizzle of blue electricity.

    “Screwball, this needs to end. Now.” Josh reached into his belt for Screwball’s pokéball, hitting himself for not considering this earlier, but he found, with some degree of horror, that the red-and-white sphere wasn’t there.

    “And this spaghetti mystery? Spaghett-e? Myster-e?”

    “That’s not even how you spell—why the devil am I even trying to talk sense into you.”

    But Screwball was unstoppable, a steamroller already in full motion and rolling down a hill toward what Josh imagined was a schoolbus full of his own hopes and dreams. “The killer?’ Screwball shouted. “Not E. Not. E.. Not E, Josh-y.”

    “That’s not even the letter ‘e’, either!” There wasn’t even a point to sounding indignant by now.

    “Josh-y. Um, I don’t remember your middle name.” Screwball paused. “And Cook doesn’t have anything, but if you add up those letters you get nine, which is a six upside-down.”

    “For the love of god.”

    Magnemite turned to look at Connie instead, who had been watching for the entire time and quietly climbed out of the plot hole into which she had fallen. “And see? Conn-ie. Sylv-i-a. Pirac-y. Six letters. Three e’s. But ‘not e’! She can’t be the killer.”

    “Screwball, please listen—”

    “Eve. Ledian. Meowth. Pidgeotto. Ivysaur. Misdreavous. All not-e! It’s no one in your party, Josh.” Pause. “Heh. Party.”

    “Then who the hell do you think it is?”

    Screwball paused, the realization dawning slowly on its otherwise un-emotive face, and it stood still. “But of course.”

    “What.”

    “Of course.” Screwball stopped spinning now, as if turned to stone by the momentous discover he had just made. “By the all-seeing eye, of course.”

    Josh ran through the only possibilities left and thought he saw where all of this was going. “Screwball, you can’t actually—”

    “The all-seeing I.” Grinning, as if immensely pleased with himself, slowly said, “The killer is… it is… I.”

    But of course.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    Josh sat down with a steaming cup of tea in his chair, the tangela nestled in the couch across from him. This was, Josh decided as he sipped some of his chamomile, the most normal thing he had done all day. He was sitting in front of what was apparently an elder god and figurehead for an ancient, sacrilegious sect devoted to the worship of pasta.

    He thought to wonder what had happened between the crypt and now, because he had absolutely no recollection of traversing between the two.

    “It’s best not to ask,” the tangela said serenely. And then: “Your friend, was he actually serious?” One vine snaked out to help itself to its own mug of tea.

    “I’m afraid so,” Josh said, and then sighed. It had been, as he had suspected, an excruciatingly long day.

    The tangela paused for a moment, apparently thinking quite hard, and then it added, “Is your friend aware that Mr. Piracy never even died?”

    “Of course Screwball was unaware that—” Josh paused and processed what the tangela was telling him. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

    “I believe she even told you that the idea of having the Flying Spaghetti Monster killing her husband was absurd, you know.” As if unaware by the sudden change its revelations had caused, the tangela looked pensively into its mug of tea for a moment before remarking, “Ms. Piracy simply hired you to investigate what she believed to be a divine intervention of the Breloominati. There was never a murder.”

    Josh did not respond.

    “I mean,” the tangela continued serenely, “her name was quite literally Connie S. Piracy. I’m not sure what you were expecting to be perfectly honest. Have you checked the date, by the way?”

    Josh paused, reflected, and realized in addition to all of the other poor choices he’d made that day, that he’d believed Screwball when the latter had said that the red substance on Ms. Piracy’s clothing was blood. It was, of course, a grave mistake to consider seriously anything following the phrase ‘he’d believed Screwball when’. “So you’re an eldritch abomination,” Notson began.

    “The full name is Eldritch Literally Yelling Shit It’s an Abomination, and I believe the politically correct term is copypasta,” the tangela corrected him serenely, using one spare vine to reach over for the bowl of cream. It calmly emptied the contents of the bowl into its own mug of tea and then used an extra vine to stir its tea-milk (but now mostly milk) combination, making a whistling sound from beneath the recesses of its tangles of vines, apparently oblivious to the heat.

    Josh could smell something burning, a little more woody than tea, and he looked over to see that the tangela had boiled at least a small portion of itself. “Copypasta?”

    “Copypasta.” It offered no further explanation. The tangela sighed and retreated the injured vine back into its body before allowing another one to sprout in its place. “I also appear about once every five months to create continuations in a personal favorite pocket universe of mine.” Josh was halfway forming the thought to offer the creature on his couch a spoon before the tangela simply emptied the contents of its mug onto itself, leaving a slightly damper, slightly sweeter-smelling lump of green tendrils on his couch.

    Josh decided that this vein of conversation was going absolutely nowhere. “So you’re an omnipotent god,” he said at last. “A, erm, copypasta.”

    The writhing mess of turquoise vines before him nodded slightly. “So they say.”

    At this point, Josh took what he could get. “What do you think all of this means? What was the point of it, really?”

    The tangela pierced him with a very serious, very solemn pair of white eyes peering out from the midst of those knots of vines. “Does it have to mean anything?”

    “What? I mean, I thought—”

    The tangela made that shrugging movement again and then slid off the couch. Its red-booted feet barely kept the mass of vines off of the floor. One tendril hung back lazily to place the now-drained mug of tea back on the nearest table. “Stop and think about that for a moment. Does it really have to mean anything? Not everything in life has to make sense, my dear Josh. Sometimes, some things just happen. Accidents happen. Slice of cake. Slice of life, whatever. People these days want more. Action, action action! Bang bang! Rocks fall and everyone dies and the survivors blow up!”

    “But—”

    The tangela raised its thin, reedy voice, and it stood on red-booted tiptoe, presumably so it looked more intimidating. It was almost two feet tall that way. “No ‘buts’. Sometimes, things just work out where there’s no clean answer. Bullshit happens. There isn’t some sort of hidden epic in everything, and if you try to find one, you’ll just drive yourself nuts looking for it. Some things are just exactly what they appear to be. Your friend Screwball tried to learn that, bless him, but it didn’t seem to stick. Take a deep breath, Josh. Some things aren’t going to be dramatic, or world-changing, or profound, no matter what you’re expecting, so don’t look for that.” Pause. “Sometimes, the world is just full of fools, so it acts accordingly. Like today.”

    That was, Josh decided, some of the best advice he’d gotten all day, and it had come from a talking bush with feet that claimed to be an eldritch abomination that was the heart of all religion and conspiracy as the world knew it.

    The tangela had made its way to the door by now, and was struggling slightly with the task of operating a doorhandle with its vines. Perhaps, Josh reflected, he was still dreaming, or perhaps this was part of an elaborate ruse wherein Eve had slipped him some particularly potent shroomish.

    “I guess you’re right.” Josh sighed. It had been a long day. “When I see him next, I reckon I owe Screwball an apology.”

    The tangela paused by the door. “An apology-y?”

    Josh decided to pretend that he hadn’t heard that, or that the emphasis he’d heard had just been a slight slip of the tongue, and resumed sipping his tea. A bit cold by this point, but he’d take what he could get. “So I should look into copypasta?” he asked instead, and then mentally hit himself because—

    “Cop-y-pasta?”

    With a resounding clank, Josh’s teacup found its way back to its saucer. He bristled. “No. Leave. Take the tea and leave.”

    Another pause, and then: “Take the t-ea?”

    “Get the hell out.”

    So it did.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    Eve gritted her teeth. There was no way the gym leader was going to win like this, type-advantages be damned. Lyra could handle herself. Flying-types beat Bug-types, but a little skill easily closed that advantage.

    “Comet Punch!” she shouted.

    “Aerial Ace!” the Flying-type gym leader shouted. There was a blur of red and blue feathers, and the enemy pokémon swooped in on light but powerful wings, clipping Lyra on the right side of her body, hard.

    “Fuck yeah, America!” the gym leader continued, cheering from the braviary’s back.

    “I beg your pardon?” Eve asked, trying her best to remain civil. Gloating was one thing in a gym match, but this was entirely crossing the line.

    “I actually forgot what I was supposed to say here,” the girl atop the braviary said, sobering up nearly instantly. “There was some joke about reclaiming Johto from the Brits and I’m sure something that was hideously historically incorrect and probably offensive, but I have no idea what it is.”

    Eve was fuming by this point. “You aren’t taking this seriously, she began, and then: “Reclaiming Johto from the Brits? What even is a Brit?”

    “Pip pip cheerio!” exclaimed Josh happily from whatever plot hole he had vanished into.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    Eve was walkin wen she stumbleed up on a brown lump in the midddle of the rhode. She almost triped over it but had t stoph erself justin time. "Oh no wat is this" she said, bubling with compasion. It must be a Pokemon!!

    She didnt kno what pokemon it was though. Even though she had grown up in what was clearly a well-versed line of people who were paid to be well-versed in pokemon knoweldge.

    "Eeveee" moaned the injured Pokmon weakly.

    Eeve used her magical joy powers to nurse the injured pokemn back to healthy because shes a nurse and good at thatst uff.

    "evee will you be my Pokmon forever" Eeve asked.

    "Eve"

    "okay thats great" said eve "I cant wait to show Josh"

    And then eeve became an alicorn princess

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    “Josh, I’m so glad we can finally say it,” Eve whispered, nuzzling Josh’s neck affectionately before stopping to look into his eyes. She’d never really appreciated how much depth he held there, the way he always seemed to be thinking.

    “Me too,” he murmured, stroking a loose strand of hair out of her face.

    It was finally here. They were finally going to say it, and then all of the tension would be over and they would begin to participate in the having of hot and steamy sex.

    “Joshua Cook, I lov

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    That's right, everyone. I'm switching to a cheerful slice-of-life fic starring Jashua Cookie and the Illuminati.
    updates regularly
    ^the biggest joke in this thread tho

    April Fool's, btw, in case that wasn't painfully apparent

    So Pav and I had this idea from months ago where we were going to guest-write April Fool's chapters for one another. I, in my infinite presence in this forum, almost entirely forgot about it until the last minute, and it really wouldn't be an kintsugi update without being a week or so late, but I figured, what the hell, I couldn't let the world live a happy, uninterrupted existence without having to deal with my heavy-handed attempts at comedy. I also threw in the other two ideas I was going to flesh out.

    Well, actually, the original joke chapter, The Long Cock, was so dirty I had to burn my computer, but we don't speak about that.

    'pavell' has six letters illuminati confirmed you didn't hear it from me

    Anyway, actual SRBS updates!

    I went back through and did a bit of an overhaul--just grammar and flow things, dealing with over-sass/over-explanation/there were actually some long-con plot changes that I ended up incorporating, but that put me back a bit. Anyway. Real update is done--it's a couple of interludes before we plunge into the Violet City Arc, and that'll get posted later tonight. I'll also fix the thread title in a bit haha.

    Cheers, folks.
     
    Last edited by a moderator:
    • interlude ii. aftermath
    • Replies!

    Beth Pavell said:
    The Long Walk. Screwball having to learn how to think (Clearly he hasn't got the hang of it yet. Or counting). And slice-of-life, don't think I missed that! Why an erudite Tangela who is apparently your avatar (And now your avatar should be a Tangela, no arguments), I don't know. Tangela dumping tea over himself was hilarious and I don't know why.
    Click to expand...
    ALL OF THE JABS WERE OUT OF LOVE, I PROMISE

    Oh dear, glurge alert. Anyway, this is Josh we're talking about. Make that "lukewarm and desperately reheated sex"
    Click to expand...
    I believe what you meant to say is "this is you writing we're talking about. How the fuck did you become responsible for writing lemons oh right that's why it was so tepid" XD

    BinkVallen said:
    The best part about this line is that we don't know which one of them turned into an alicorn princess. Was it Eve? Was it the Eevee? The world may never know
    Click to expand...
    THIS WAS INDEED MY INTENTION <3

    Flaze said:
    Do I seriously have to read all that?

    I might as well write a late april fool's chapter for your story @AetherX; :p wanna see what I make of it?
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, man, I fully expect you to support my artistic endeavors because this was entirely serious. You meanie.

    "Rocks fall everyone dies boom boom murder FUCK NO I ACTUALLY LIKED HIM DAMMIT SHIT"

    I was gonna write a lemon for SYR, @Flaze; but that was already canon. Ramen dick. heh.

    Without further ado, an update! Egad!

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    interlude ii. aftermath
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    aftermath: icarus

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    “You stay here, okay?” I said, knowing it was futile already.

    My murkrow squawked and fluttered off of my shoulder and onto the branches of a low-hanging oak tree, cackling all the while. I could still smell the singe on his feathers, which made me worry a bit, but the way he still took the time to clip me on the head with one of his wings made me think he was fine, more or less. “Of course, boss,” he said insincerely, which I didn’t believe for two seconds.

    I paused to fiddle with the straps on my backpack and sighed. I’d been thinking of these things during the hunt for Gaia, but I hadn’t found a way to say them eloquently. At all. And the issue with the froslass hadn’t made it any easier to think this through. “You know that what I said still stands, right?” I ended up saying. “You can leave any time you want.”

    To his credit, the bird almost looked hurt. “Icarus no want to leave. Told you already. Icarus not change his mind like fickle-fickle humans.”

    “I know, but—”

    “Icarus no leave, Master.” He paused, and I waited for his familiar cackle, but he was shockingly serious. “Boss is boss. The murder follows.”

    There was, of course, the disturbing thought that I’d managed to convince him I was Boss when all I’d done was point him toward things to kill, but maybe that was the point—the Boss provided the prey. “I don’t want to drag you guys anywhere. We’re running low on supplies, and we haven’t even started yet, so the going’s going to get rough. I want you to know what you’re getting into.”

    “You get supplies yesterday, no? That why you leave me in trees in first place. Then Gaia get snatched, and hah!” He made it sound like the whole thing was his contribution to the field of stand-up comedy.

    “I tried, Icarus,” I said patiently. “But we don’t have money.”

    “Money?”

    It’s funny how situations changed so quickly. A few hours ago, a ghost had marked me for death. Now, I was trying to explain economics to a bird. “Yeah, it’s the shiny stuff that we exchange for other things.”

    “Also made of paper,” he told me matter-of-factly.

    “Yes, Icarus.” I sighed. “Some of it’s also made of paper.”

    He shuffled his talons on my backpack and got himself a better grip. “Trainer with nasty abra give you lots of paper after I beat him first time, no?”

    Holy gods.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    aftermath: brigid

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    {And you’re sure you didn’t rob a bank or something?} Brigid looked at me dubiously over the counter. Bates stood behind her, re-counting the creased bills in the dimmed firelight. {Honestly, we’d report you now, but the nearest bank is in Violet City and you don’t look like you made a thirty-mile hike last night, but there were a bunch of people sleeping in the pokécenter that were probably focused on other things than pickpockets, and…} She didn’t finish the sentence, but rather stared pointedly at me. Behind her, Bates stopped counting to look at me, arms folded and one eyebrow raised.

    “I promise, I got into a fight with that Silver kid, and when we won, he just threw a wad of cash at me,” I protested, aware that my excuse was paper-thin. But for once, it was true. “I forgot about it until now.”

    “You forgot about fifteen hundred dollars,” Bates repeated, as if hoping I’d realize how stupid I sounded.

    Well, yes, between the moral dilemma and the knife and the urge to get away from New Bark Town as fast as possible and the fact that he’d almost killed me and all my pokémon, I hadn’t been in the mood to count my spoils, and I hadn’t expected it to even be money because I wasn’t used to the idea of having so much money you could literally throw it at people, but I had no idea how to explain that. “Yes?” I answered weakly.

    He shrugged. “This more than covers what you want to buy,” he said. The bag from yesterday was still packed, filled with supplies and begging me to purchase it. “My register is broken, of course, but I can tell you—”

    “Keep it,” I said. I probably should’ve been more frugal with the money, but I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to think about how Silver had gotten it or what his father had done to get it or anything about how it came into my hands in the first place. “No, don’t look at me like that. You helped me find my pokémon. I’m sending the other half to my mom—actually, if you could mail this to her when that gets back online, that would be great. Keep the rest.”

    Bates, surprisingly, was unimpressed. “I don’t need your charity, you know.”

    It was more money than I’d ever held in my entire life, and probably more than I would ever hold for a long time, but I needed to repay my debts. “This isn’t charity. This is thanks for covering me out there.”

    I could see his hand tighten on the counter for a moment, and his gaze when he looked back up at me was as hard as steel. I understood what he was trying to say: if I knew what was best for me, I would never speak of what I’d seen there. About how I’d found him.

    The moment passed. Bate shrugged and chuckled. “It’s your funeral, I guess. You can take whatever you else you need from the shelves.”

    {We noticed last night that you do not carry a knife,} Brigid added, floating to a shelf and retrieving something from it.

    My response was immediate. “I don’t want one.” I wasn’t going to act like a Rocket. No switchblades, no guns, no nothing. I had my pokémon, and those were violent enough.

    Bates sighed. “It’s not just for stabbing people. You can’t honestly tell me that you’re going to go camping without a knife.”

    “I don’t want one,” I repeated.

    Brigid floated back to me. {Okay,} she said patiently. {You have rope in that backpack, right?}

    I didn’t like where this was going. “Yes.”

    {And say you want a smaller piece of that rope?}

    “I’m not going to stab people,” I said, with as much cold in my voice as I could muster. A snide voice in the back of my head reminded me that dropping trees on people was hardly a safer alternative.

    Brigid looked at me, single visible eye completely serious. {And I hope you never have to. But it would be a grievous error on my part to send you out into the wilderness without so much as a pair of scissors.}

    “I…” I searched around for another excuse, but nothing came to mind. My fingers closed around the cool metal of the knife, and I found myself hooking the sheath to my belt unconsciously. “Okay. Fine. Thank you.”

    “See, kid, we’ll have you surviving Magnarok no problem.” I could see the laughter lines in his forehead glinting slightly in Brigid’s light.

    “Magnarok?” I frowned. “Like that thing in World of Warcra—”

    “No, no, not that,” Bates said quickly. The smile faded a little and he laughed awkwardly. “You know, the magnetic apocalypse. Magnetic ragnarok.” He paused expectantly. “Magnarok. It just rolls off the tongue, see?”

    {I told him to stop making Magnarok happen,} Brigid said serenely. {It’s not going to happen.}

    I probably shouldn’t have expected any better from a guy whose idea of good customer service was a shotgun and threats of immolation. I was about comment further when something behind the counter caught my eye. “Say, is that hair dye?”

    Bates turned behind him and examined the brightly colored boxes for a moment, squinting in the dull light of Brigid’s fire. “Yes.”

    “I’ll take every color you have,” I said quickly, before he could ask me any silly questions such as why. “They’re light and I won’t be carrying them for long. Don’t look at me like that.”

    Bates continued to look at me like I’d asked him to eat his jacket.

    “Thank you,” I said. I turned to both of them, the tall and old and lonely man and his litwick, and I realized that I might never see them again after I left in the morning. I made a mental note to try to stop in Cherrygrove when all of this cleared up. “I, uh, don’t want to keep bringing it up, but thank you for everything.”

    {You aren’t leaving until morning, right?} the litwick asked, hovering over to pull gently on my sleeve. {There are still several hours before dawn.}

    The tiredness hadn’t sunk in yet, but I knew it would eventually. Even though I was still pumped up on adrenaline, I needed to rest, and I practically melted just thinking about the sleeping-bag Brigid had set up in the corner. But being alone, in the dark, promised a whole new slew of problems. “I know. I just didn’t want to forget.”

    {I see.}

    “Really. Thank you for everything.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    aftermath: gaia

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    “Gaia?” I asked, as I tucked her into the wad of blankets next to my sleeping-bag. Even though there was a thick door, a flaming ghost-candle, and a shotgun-wielding badass between the outside world and my metapod, I still felt a twinge of fear for her. She was so fragile. I’d held her carapace on the way back, inspecting it for any outward sign of damage from the entire ordeal. The shell was hard, although it’d lost its gloss in some places, but I didn’t think it was hard enough. She couldn’t run, she couldn’t fly, she couldn’t really do anything to defend herself.

    She had to rely on me, and I hadn’t even intended to train her properly in the first place. That was the true burden that my foundation was making me carry, let alone that she reminded me not to be a monster who murdered people.

    Let alone that we’d been saved by a person who murdered monsters.

    {I’m fine, trainer.} She spoke each word as if it weighed heavily on her. {I was afraid, for a brief moment, that you had abandoned me.}

    I looked at her, but her evolution had changed the shape of her body so I couldn’t see her eyes clearly. “What? Abandon you?” How could I abandon her, when I was literally using her as a ticket to my salvation? Did she know?

    For a while, she was silent, until: {It’s nothing.}

    It was interesting. Icarus never shut up, no matter how much I wanted him to, but Gaia never spoke, no matter how much I wanted her to.

    I knew better than to try to push her too far for answers. If she wanted to tell me, she would do so eventually. In all fairness, I was keeping secrets from her, starting and ending with the fact that I was telling her she was my replacement starter when I knew for a fact that butterfree would never be good battlers, and—

    Perhaps it was best if some things remained unsaid for the time being. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

    {In time, trainer. In time.}

    In time, she would be a butterfree and the worst would be behind us. I could still hope.

    “In time,” I said, and made it sound like a promise.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    aftermath: bates

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    I felt my way into the semi-dark of the pokémart’s stockroom, where Bates and Brigid were cataloguing cans from boxes. “Can I help?”

    “We’re just about done for the night,” Bates said with a sigh. In the candelight, when I could look at him directly, the purple fire cast harsh shadows on his face that made him like twenty years older.

    I nodded and sat down by the sleeping bag he’d laid out for me in front of the counter, and Bates wearily lowered himself into the pull-out cot he’d had on the other side.

    A minute passed.

    “This may surprise you,” Bates said, “but you’re supposed to sleep in a sleeping bag, not sit next to it.”

    I blinked. My mind had definitely been far, far away. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

    “You also don’t need to apologize for not using my stuff.”

    “Right. Sorry.” It occurred to me a few seconds too late that apologizing for apologizing would be a little too obvious. “I have a question,” I said before I could back out. And then I paused anyway, even though it was too late to stop. I stared at my hands glumly, wringing them together for a moment and wondering how best to say it. “You’re probably one of the few people I’ll be able to talk openly with about these kinds of things.” I felt the clarity coming back at that point, but I paused again. Shoulders tensed. Sighed. “You know, with the dark-type and stuff.”

    “A lot of my team was dark, but that was a personal choice,” Bates said. “We didn’t have the xatu back when I started training.”

    I figured he was waiting for me to actually say something. I had a moment longer to turn back, and then: “It doesn’t make me evil, does it?”

    “No.” He said it so flippantly that he probably didn’t even think it was a question that merited a real answer. “A lot of that is propaganda. I can lecture you on how you forge your own destiny, how you aren’t defined by some preset notions of your character, how the xatu doesn’t really know who you are, but—”

    “I did something yesterday that terrified me,” I said. It felt rude to cut him off, but I didn’t want to listen to him reassuring me against something that wasn’t even true. “And I don’t know how to deal with it. Gaia—my caterpie, well, metapod now—was completely against it, but I don’t really understand her, and I can’t talk to her about it properly even now that we’ve found her. And Icarus was completely on board with it, but his species is famous for ambushing city-dwellers and pecking their eyes out. And, well, I know it’s probably a bad sign if I agree with him when it comes to maiming someone, and I know that what I did was wrong, but it felt so out of character and weird for me, and I can’t imagine myself making the same choice now, and, and, and…”

    The room was silent for a while after I trailed off. In the distance, through the walls, I could hear the soft lull of hoothoot.

    “I can’t talk to anyone about this, you know. I don’t know anyone here enough to trust them, and I’m telling you anyway because, because I don’t know what else to do,” I said, suddenly filled with the need to fill the silence. “My pokémon can’t know that I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m afraid that Icarus will just kill me if he thinks that I’m weak, and Gaia only tagged along because she sees me as strong. And that’s what I have to be, you know? Strong.”

    Bates sighed heavily. He stared at his hands as if they had become his entire world, and I watched him trace over the callouses and light scars on his palms. I’d seen his shoulders tense when I’d casually dropped the word ‘maiming’ into our conversation, and it looked like he was prepared for the worst. “What did you do?”

    “Huh?”

    “The thing that you mentioned. You said it terrified you.” His hands had stopped roving by then, which meant I would have to stop focusing on them and actually look him in the eyes.

    I looked away instead. “I moved away from New Bark as fast as I could, but I ran into a Rocket within a few hours anyway. Codename Silver.” I was going to explain further, to somehow find the words that would delineate the terrifying fear I’d felt upon learning that the Rocket’s bastard had found me, but the sharp intake of breath to my left told me that I didn’t need to. “And, well, he challenged me to a battle. His starter versus mine. He wouldn’t let me leave, so I accepted.”

    “What did you do.” Bates asked the question in such a low, dangerous voice that it wasn’t even a question.

    “We muddled by, I mean. It wasn’t anything terrible.” Now he was starting to scare me. I didn’t know why he was suddenly on edge like this, knuckles white against clenched fists and shoulders rigid. “Icarus pulled out a win, and then he used a revive and tried to jump me and then Gaia tried to save us and then—” Here was the harder stuff. I faltered then, unable to keep the words just coming out like they had a mind of their own. “He pulled a knife on me, and then I got Gaia to drop a tree on his abra and I managed to get the knife from him, and—”

    “You dropped a what.”

    I hadn’t dropped anything on him, but I didn’t really have the heart to clarify that. “I. Um. It was a tree.”

    “You dropped a tree on a Rocket’s abra? Are you fucking insane?!”

    “I—”

    I could almost feel the air heating up around us. “I don’t understand. You looked genuinely upset about the froslass. I thought you were good. I saw you packing up stuff for a long haul in the wilderness and I thought you were smart. You—”

    I felt myself curling inward a little, trying to shelter beneath the poofy fabric of the sleeping bag to no avail. I had expected anger, yes, but I hadn’t even gotten to the worst part, the part where I’d seriously considered killing someone. If Bates was this mad about something I’d barely even noticed doing, what would he say next? “He said he going to kill us!”

    “He was bluffing.” Bates’s voice dropped six octaves, into a register so low that I had to strain to hear him. “Look. I don’t care what he said to you; if you so much as looked at him or his pokémon funny the Rockets can have you executed on the spot. You have to get that. They don’t roll in the same league as we do. They don’t follow our rules.” Pause. “They don’t live in the same world as we do. That eye for an eye crap that we deal with doesn’t apply to them. In their world, in this world, they can take your eye any time they want.”

    I looked away, suddenly sullen. Even though it felt terribly childish, I found myself folding my arms in front of my chest and muttering, “I hardly think that’s fair.”

    And, even stupider, I found myself making an unspoken promise to set out to change that world.

    “Tough,” he growled.

    I didn’t answer.

    “You don’t get it, do you?” Bates pressed, shaking my shoulder with one hand even as I refused to look at him. “Pokémon aren’t immortal. You saw the froslass. Okay? Do you get that?”

    The hypocrisy stung like a slap. “The froslass? How can you—”

    “No. You don’t get it. Pokémon aren’t immortal. People like to think they are, because pokémon take all kinds of crazy hits from other pokémon, but that’s different. Pokémon are evolutionarily built to tank attacks from other pokémon. They can do that. Get struck by lightning, bathed in flames, frozen in ice, yeah. They can do all that better than humans.” Bates paused, one hand reaching out for Brigid and coming back empty. “But they aren’t equipped for some things. Bullets? Trees? That’ll kill a pokémon just as fast as it’ll kill you or me.”

    I paused, thinking about all of the fights I’d seen on television. Pokémon causing rock slides on one another, or braving an enemy’s earthquakes, and coming out unscathed. “That’s not true. What about—”

    “Pokémon are careful when they attack each other. Even at the highest level of combat, they’ll normally never attack one another meaning to cause lethal harm outside of hunting. The intent to kill senselessly comes from humans.”

    I thought about Icarus, the murderous glints in his eyes that overcame him from time to time, and shook my head. “That’s not all true.”

    “How do you think I got Brigid? My starter?”

    I frowned a little. It was hard, I knew, to train a ghost-type; they a little less-than-kind to being subservient to mere mortals. It hardly seemed like a task for a beginner trainer.

    “When the government fell, Codename Blue collapsed a building on us. I think intentionally. I made it out alive. Brigid didn’t.”

    “Bates, I didn’t—”

    He kept speaking, either blind to me or uncaring. “Do you know where ghosts come from? Things like that froslass? Of course you don’t. They’re not like other pokémon, you know. They’re more violent. They have that killing intent that other pokémon don’t. They’ll burn you to a crisp if someone tells them to. They’ll burn you to a crisp even if someone doesn’t tell them to.”

    I was filled with the overwhelming urge to say something, anything, to make him stop telling me these horrible truths. “Bates—”

    “When ghosts are born, they don’t remember their pasts. They don’t remember who or what pokémon they used to be. They’re just vengeful spirits, doomed to drift, to wander, with only the memory that they died in terrible, terrible agony. If you tell them who they were, they might remember, or they might just look at you blankly and then continue attacking you until you have to fight back. And then you’ve lost that pokémon twice.”

    I wasn’t a genius, but it didn’t take one to know what he was talking about.

    I couldn’t help but imagine both the losses he must’ve felt—the first time, when she died, and the second time when he’d gotten that false hope that she’d returned only to find her cold and unresponsive and uncaring to him.

    I released the corner of my sleeping bag from my fist, where I’d unintentionally been choking it for the past five minutes. The way he’d frozen up when he realized that the froslass had been looking for me. How he’d called it a ‘her,’ as if—“Bates, I didn’t know—”

    “Yeah.” He cut me off without even pausing for breath. I opened my mouth, trying to say something, but there was a horrible, haunted look in his eyes that told me that nothing I had would be good enough. “You don’t know a lot of things. I get that. But you sure as hell better learn. Goodnight.”

    I felt like something between us had broken. “Bates, I—”

    “I said goodnight.” He muttered something to Brigid, and the litwick let her flame splutter out, leaving me staring at the ceiling and wondering just how long it would take me to lose myself in this dark.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    aftermath: cherrygrove

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    {Bates has family out in Goldenrod. We’ll look for you there.}

    “Brigid, I wanted to apologize about—”

    {Don’t.}

    “Okay.” Pause. “Will he—”

    {He’s being rude by not seeing you off today, but he carries his hurts buried deep. Most people do. April was a good friend of ours, and now we have lost her twice. It would do you well to remember that.}

    “I know now, but—”

    {You meant well. I hope you can see that we meant well, too.}

    “More than anything. Thank you again for—”

    {It was nothing.}

    “For me, it was a lot more than nothing.”

    Pause.

    “Your friend that you mentioned. The one that you said looked like me. Is she—”

    {Yes.}

    “But did she—”

    {Yes.}

    “Brigid, stop cutting me off. I just wanted to say that—”

    {It’s in the past, now. No amount of crying will change it.}

    “—I’m sorry.”

    Long pause.

    {Hopefully we’ll see you soon. Good luck out there.} Pause. {Be careful.}

    “I’ll try.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

     
    Last edited:
    • viii. iris
    • Responses:
    Flaze said:
    I like how you detailed that both Icarus and Gaia are really close to her as both were scared that she had abandoned them just like that. Her moments of reflection and doubt were also very well matched, I think they made a lot of sense plus you actually refrained from relying on jokes so much this time around which landed the seriousness of the transition a lot more (I do like your humor though but I can appreciate its lack of it in this one)
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    Ha, I've definitely been trying to cut down on the sarcasm. My most recent edit-run of the previous chapters (done when I published this interlude set that you reviewed here) tried to cut that out a lot as well, and I'm glad that this is a more welcome turn.

    But what I enjoyed the most from this chapter probably has to be the character interaction between Ely and Bates (as well as Briget) I think the fact that we didn't quite put as much focus on her own narration this time helped in that regard. Their conversation escalated from normal to dramatic in a very nice pace but also suddenly enough for it to shock us just as it did Ely. Plus I can tell that you actually thought about what you were going to have them say for a bit and if what they said made sense too. Bates' sermon to Ely in itself can be a definition of some of the themes that have seeped out into this fic. Not everything that seems bad is. Dark types aren't necessarily evil and Team Rocket don't necissarily not give a shit about their Pokemon.

    It's a good life lesson for Ely if she'll ever need one, it means she'll have to learn to value both herself and her enemies before deciding if her choices are meritable, as opposed to just become some straight up cold badass that doesn't care about the feelings of others. I do wonder what Bates' speech will eventually have to do with Icarus and the fact that he does seem like a murderous death ball unlike what Bates suggest.
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    Yar, everyone has depths. Fifty shades of Flaze/Grey has taught me so much.

    One thing that I will find interesting if you go through with it though is seeing Ely dye her hair in different colors, it's avery clever way to pass by without being noticed, like I can also see her just cutting her hair and then dying it different colors as it grows and doing different hairstyles, it kind of brings home the point that she's a character without a clear face to us as well.
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    hue.


    Vivillon said:
    Obligatory Joke Chapter feedback!!!

    Screwball has nine letters. Magnemite has nine letters. Magnet has six letters. Six is nine upside-down. 6-6-6. Magnemite has one eye. When evolved, Magnemites form a triangle. Screwball is Breloominati confirmed.
    Click to expand...
    THE ALL SEEING EYE OF SCREWBALL IS PLEASED WITH THIS STATEMENT

    The crypt is shaped like a Star of David. The Star of David has one I. The all seeing eye. The crypt is an Illuminati crypt.
    Click to expand...
    THIS TOO PLEASES SCREWBALL

    Joshua has six letters. Piracy has six letters. Spaghetti has nine letters. Six is nine upside-down. 6-6-6. Piracy has one i and one c: The all seeing eye. Josh has one consonant. The all-seeing eye is one eye. Everyone is Breloominati. But of course.
    Click to expand...
    THIS PLEASES SCREWBALL LESS. SCREWBALL IS THE ONLY TRUE ILLUMINATI, BUT HE WILL ACCEPT MINIONS IF THEY SO PLEASE

    ...MINION HAS SIX LETTERS


    “That’s right!” Screwball shouted. “Two! And eight minus two is six! And tangela has six letters, Josh!” Screwball was shouting, louder still, as he made another lurching loop toward Josh. “Don’t you see? Six! Six! Six!”
    Click to expand...

    Somebody should tell Josh and Screwball that Tangela has seven letters, not six.
    Click to expand...

    This sounds like I'm bullshitting, but this was actually on purpose. Because the logic of this is nothing. In my defense, the last string of logic was "how many letters are in the first two letters of 'keen eye,'" so Screwball hardly has anything resembling actual writing going for it at this point.





    Beth Pavell said:
    I've always been a fan of the vignette style - short, to the point scenes without much to set them up or end them. A whole chapter of them is something I haven't seen before, but now that I look at it, I can't say that this checklist approach to the story was a bad idea
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    The main point of this interlude set was to close up things from everyone's perspective, which really felt hard to do strictly with Narra (YEAH I'M SETTLING ON THAT FOR REALSIES; IT'S THE FIRST HANDFUL OF LETTERS OF "NARRATOR" and sounds like "Inara," which is actually a pretty cool name, or "Nah-rah") talking, since she mostly talks about herself, selfish little shit. Originally, these were gonna be third-persn vignettes from the perspectives of the speakers, but I thought that would be too drastic of a departure of style, even for an interlude. I do, however, like the flexibility that this gave in terms of telling a story in a quicker manner, so I think I'll be keeping the snapshot thing for future interludes (barring interlude ii, at the bottom of this post, which is a remnant of the original interlude drafts that I got a little attached to lol)

    ANYWAY TL;DR.

    Some much-needed wrapping up here. You've been learning again - if you'd tried to write this chapter using the usual tricks of filling it out with black humour and long, disassembling narrative, I can guarantee you that it wouldn't have worked. At this point I'm wondering about your approach to the narrative - do you want the reader to make the interpretations you want, or do you want the reader to take away from it what they like?
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    I'm glad that you picked up on the decrease of sarcasm--I'm actively trying to tone that down since it starts bogging down the narration a bit. I'm definitely a bit more aggressive about what I say/how I want the reader to interpret, but this is most certainly a product of this story: Nara is telling this story in the end, and she certainly wants the reader to say things a certain way.

    The reason I bring this is up is because the Bates conversation is rather ambiguous. Personally I think he rather was being unfair - for a man who lived through a civil war he sure doesn't cut TUPpy any slack. He's very quick to dismiss the idea that you just don't have a choice sometimes (Which you could say is the real tragedy in battling pokémon for war). And very quick to unfairly pull the Brigid card, considering that TUPpy has to leave that be for the sake of compassion.
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    There, uh, actually is some reasoning behind this that literally won't be revealed for at least sixty chapters, so I'll go ahead and say that this is an a-okay point to discuss. I did want Bates to come off as a little trigger-happy with this exchange--a bit of an extension of normal annoyance with young-uns, but hopefully enough to indicate intense past hurt. Kind of like how freshman can be super annoying because they don't understand how basic things, things that are so well-ingrained that they're basic, everyday operations to you, and this random kid just doesn't get it, except in this case her stupidity can actually get people killed (and it has with other people before).

    Maybe a bit too much to convey in the small space I gave it.

    In any case, being honest works, and for that matter, being understated every now and again works as well. I hope you bear this in mind for the next emotional climax, frankly. I know you have a habit of pushing it just that little bit too far so the darkness becomes cartoonish
    Click to expand...
    I am, however, immensely glad that you enjoyed, and I'll keep it in mind for the next set of things that are coming.

    Anyway, new chapter now! Go! Proof that I actually change the story according to reader feedback, commence!

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter viii. iris​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    "You think this stuff has been in for an hour yet?" I asked Gaia, looking up from the cardboard box and gritting my teeth to keep them from chattering. My hair was soaking wet, and I was freezing as the wind kept blowing in. If this was autumn, winter was going to be rough. For the fiftieth time that morning, I regretted not catching the houndour.

    Cherrygrove had several lakes and ponds nearby, none of which were devoid of wild pokémon, and all of those didn't approve of my crashing their party and repeatedly dunking my head in their home. In fact, the closest body of water that wasn't occupied by irate poliwag, as I had discovered by prodigious trial-and-error, was at least three hours away on foot from the town. I'd filled up my water bottle in town and hadn't been drinking much on the way, so I approached the icy water, made sure it was decently clean, and then I'd proceeded to follow the instructions on the back of a cardboard box and try to drown myself.

    Kidding. But I had a hard time explaining to Icarus how hair dye worked and that I wasn't doing anything outlandishly stupid, like, say, trying to drown myself. I squinted up at the sky, and then back at the box, as if one of them would give me some way of telling the time. Shit, this is why I wasn't supposed to leave my metapod in charge of the heavy literature.

    When I looked up again, something furry launched itself at my face. Having surprisingly similar experience with this situation, I'd finally perfected a semi-decent response and managed to swat the flash of brown out of the way, knocking it back into the water. "Unnnnnghhh! Why!?"

    My attacker surfaced and began swimming lazy circles in the pond as I spluttered and brushed strands of damp hair out of my face, dripping wet and hanging heavily in my face.

    I didn't have to look for the scratches under the sentret's eyes to identify it as the one from the night before, but I did so anyways. "Icarus, please ask the nice sentret why it's following me."

    "Seeennnn," she muttered dourly.

    "Life debt." From my backpack, Icarus almost seemed to be laughing at me. He cackled wildly. "You save her life, she must save yours. I think."

    I'd figured this was the one from the other night, but I hadn't been sure. "I'm fine," I said, waving my hands dismissively at the sentret, who still bobbing lazily in the water and using her tail as a flotation device. "And I didn't save your life."

    "Trett."

    "She thinks differently," Icarus translated, even though the vigorous shaking of the sentret's head told me the same. "Must accompany you on journey to repay life-debt. Mostly?"

    On the one hand, having a horde of pokémon who came along on my merry journey by choice seemed like a strike of dumb luck that I'd be stupid to pass up.

    On the other hand, it was called dumb luck for a reason. The sentret I'd met in the forest had been adamantly against the idea of my existence in general, let alone following my commands. Something was up.

    I shook my head as well. I'd played with the idea of getting Atlas to come along because I'd needed a fire-type, but in all of the chaos that was last night, I'd forgotten. There was no point in trying to find him; it'd be about as useless as searching blindly for Gaia had been. But I didn't want to start lugging around a party of pokémon. Gaia and Icarus were heavy enough, and I didn't have the time, skill, or energy to train a full team of six. If I filled up half of my team before the first gym, I was probably doing something wrong. "No life debt," I said firmly. "Go back to your clan. And didn't you hate me, anyway?"

    More rapid-fire chattering.

    "She says does not want to return to clan." Icarus cackled madly. "We have new friend, Boss?"

    "No," I repeated, pulling myself to my feet and backing away from the pond, where the sentret still paddled her arms in little circles. I adjusted the straps on my backpack and began walking away.

    The sentret followed at a distance, her head popping out of the grass along the road from time to time.

    "Please stop," I called over my shoulder.

    "Sen, senn!"

    "I'm not kidding!"

    "Sent, trett trett, sen sen, senn, sen sen? Trett! Tret trett!" She continued chattering for a long time, and I had no idea what she was saying. It was clear, however, that she was talking to me. I wasn't sure what tipped me off: the fact that she kept bobbing up on her striped tail to get into my face, or the excited hand gestures she made with her stubby brown paws, the pads well-worn with use.

    "Icarus," I said with a groan, shifting my backpack on my shoulders and fiddling with the dark green straps idly. "What is she saying now?"

    "Dunno."

    He was kidding. He had to be kidding. "What?"

    "Dunno," the murkrow repeated, cackling to himself and making a shrugging motion with his wings that was altogether un-pokémon-like. "This sentret dumb, but all sentret speak weird language. I not understand nuances well." When I slowly turned my head to glare at him, ready to knock some sense into that feathered head of his, he only looked earnestly back at me with crimson eyes. "Easier speaking to Gaia. Bug and bird live in trees together; similar dialect. Sentret live in holes in ground. Develop own language. Have different speaking. Humans too. Hard to speak human. Must translate twice. First from sentret to murkrow, then from murkrow to human."

    If my party ever expanded, I would have to keep my limited understanding of pokémon communication in mind. "I don't know what you're trying to tell me." Apparently it was important, because she tried again. "Please leave."

    "Trett!" A hiss followed.

    "Why are you following me?"

    The sentret stopped and gave me a meaningful glare, and I didn't need Icarus to translate the painfully obvious: I already told you that, stupid human.

    But she hated people. She hated trainers. And above all, she hated me. I was all three. "You threatened to kill me if I tried to capture you the other day," I said, trying to reason through the logic myself. "Why the big rush to tag along now?"

    "Trett."

    Informative as ever. "Icarus?"

    "Dunno."

    "Poddd!" Gaia trilled from my arms, clearly more enthused about this situation than ever.

    "No!" I whirled around and faced the sentret that I had been expecting to kill me and frowned. "Even if I didn't think you were on some mission by your clan to kill me in my sleep or something—" (funny, really, that this was the second out of my three pokémon that made me fear for my life; given that the other one was a metapod with zero intent to kill and was also essentially a large, green rock, this wasn't a good start) "—you aren't strong—" Most trainers ended up abandoning their sentret and furret in the underground at Goldenrod because the scouting pokémon couldn't keep up with stronger, more powerful pokémon that came along the way.

    Obviously, I didn't cut myself off fast enough. "Sennnnt," the sentret growled, sinking into a crouch and hissing at me, clearly prepared to scratch my face off like she'd done last night. "Tret!" There was something terrifying in her enunciation with that one, a kind of cold anger that cut to the bone.

    "This translation difficult, but doable," Icarus chimed in, cackling with the restrained kind of glee that made me downright nervous. "I think she say you are 'grackle-bellied tail-less tretlimb' in sentret language. In murkrow language, we say you have dull beak for scraping worms and deserve frow in heap of milderdew."

    "And in human?"

    Icarus paused for a moment longer, beady red eyes narrowing a bit in concentration. "I believe phrase is 'one with defecation-face who has mated with a mother' for insulting her strength without combat trial."

    "Poood!" came the sharp reprimand from my arms.

    Instinctively, I put the hand that wasn't holding Gaia in the air as I connected the dots behind the actual phrase. "Good, see? You actually don't like me. Don't follow me around."

    "Poddd," said Gaia fairly, and I braced myself. I was not going to let her guilt me into helping a pokémon that could clearly help itself. Not killing Silver had been a good idea in the end, but there was absolutely no justification in letting this sentret come along.

    "Treettttt." The sentret looked at me pleadingly, something in her brown eyes indicating that this particular 'tret', one that carried more heaviness than the uncountable number before it, was legitimately important.

    "Icarus?"

    Icarus made a shrugging motion with his dark wings. "She repeat sounds from before. Complicated. Dunno. Betrayal, I think? Something with honor. Life debt reason sound bullshit, but dunno."

    All of that had somehow fit into a single 'tret.'

    "Meta."

    "Yes, I know, we should just have a rainbow troupe of happiness and prance around in awesomeness like the great people we are," I muttered at the metapod in my arms, growing frustrated. At least she was pretty light. If the sentret didn't insist on attaching to some part of my backpack or body, I'd be able to… I couldn't be trying to justify this. Could I?

    "Not what she said." Icarus shuffled his feet, expertly stating the obvious.

    "Podd."

    "Fine," I snapped, not as excited with this compromise as I should have been. If it came to it, more pokémon would be better in a fight. Silver might have a scarily well-trained abra, but it couldn't take down three pokémon at once.

    Of course nothing would end up going like I'd planned it to. Of course not. Otherwise, it clearly couldn't be my journey. "Fine," I repeated, frustrated. "You can come. Okay?"

    "Trett."

    "She afraid you abandon her," Icarus chimed in helpfully.

    Well, yes, I could entirely see why she would feel that. "I still don't see why you want to come along, but whatever. You can tag if you want. See if I care."

    "Trett!"

    "She still afraid you abandon her."

    I was trying to subtly ditch at least two-thirds of my team at this point, and I didn't even know how to justify the other third. I already started walking down the path, one hand supporting Gaia while the other absent-mindedly threaded through my too-orange hair. The dye streaked across my fingertips. Of course. "Do you have a name?"

    "Sennnn."

    "Not one you pronounce."

    I sighed and sat down, feeling Icarus settling in to his familiar perch on his shoulder while the sentret trailed behind us, looking bewildered for reasons I had yet to understand. "Iris," I said at last, and I heard the gravel stop crunching as she pulled up short three feet behind me.

    "En?"

    Names were more than just words. That was what my mother had taught me, what my father had failed to teach. They were promises, promises for— "For the future. Iris. That is what you will be to me. Your name is Iris. Is that okay?" Goddess of the rainbow; scout that hated my guts. Close enough. "It is my promise that I won't abandon you."

    "Tret?"

    I shook my head ruefully and kept walking. "Sometimes I don't understand, either. I'm setting up camp now. Do whatever. I'll be here all night."

    That was my strategy, really. I kind of just threw my pokémon to their own devices. It had been useful with Icarus and spared me from seeing the carcasses of whatever things he hunted in the night. He cawed in assent and took off from my shoulder, vanishing into the undergrowth. The sentret gave me a strange look and then followed after him, chattering.

    Maybe they'd be able to talk easier without me there.

    I sighed and folded my legs, glancing up at the darkening sky before propping Gaia up on a tree stump nearby. I'd made enough headway for today, I figured. I glanced at my compass, which was practically useless for reasons I probably should've considered a long time ago. I threw it into my backpack and sighed. Camping was hard. Training was hard. Everything about this journey was hard, harder than I had ever imagined that it would be. My pokémon weren't nearly what I wanted, I honestly didn't know why half of them were following me, and my bag, full of supplies I'd never even looked at, weighed about as much as a ton of rocks. I didn't mind that Bates was apparently trying to look out for me by packing my bag like it was my first day of kindergarten, and having extra food was useful—I guess I was getting the full value of the money I'd left him, after all—but there some markedly useless things shoved in various pockets.

    Bates. Holy gods, Bates. I'd messed up with that one.

    I didn't know how to handle that. I didn't. There were some things I hated stewing over, and some things I stewed over because they were easier. This was the hard kind, the stuff I didn't like to bring to mind because re-living my failures hurt.

    He was right, though. I wasn't prepared, and I had no idea what I was doing. I'd run headlong into this mess, set Icarus on Ariana when I should've been avoiding being a threat, attacked Silver out of anger, run into the woods without a second glance. I'd even dyed my hair a bright orange color for no particular reason other than because it was the first box I'd found in my bag, with the knowledge that if I ever needed to change, I had seventeen more colors to choose from. And in the future, when there was no more safety net?

    I hefted my now-orange locks in my hand, studying them. They dye job was pretty bad, honestly, and I probably hadn't reached all the way to the roots without a mirror, but it wasn't like I had a choice. I'd always liked having long hair back in Goldenrod. Of course, back in Goldenrod, there were things like running water and conditioner and beds. Also, there was no Silver to grab my braid and use it to restrain me before he threatened to slit my throat.

    Impractical. Utterly impractical. I silently thanked Bates for the hundredth time as I slipped the knife out of its sheath from my belt and hacked away at the ponytail. Soon, my left hand held a knife, while my right hand held a skein of thick orange hair. What was left on my head barely reached my chin, and both of my fingertips ended up staining a sickly orange, like the spray tans I'd seen in the magazines.

    In retrospect, it would've been much easier to cut it first and then dye it, but I wasn't really one for good forward thinking.

    So I tossed the hair into the bushes, which yelped at me in alarm. "Trett!"

    The sentret—no, Iris, I had to start thinking of her as my sentret now, too—had literally picked a spot as far away from me as possible without being out of my eyesight. She was a conundrum, one I wouldn't understand without actually getting a psychic or ghost to talk to her, and I would have to accept that I wouldn't properly understand her motivations until that happened.

    But she'd been so dead-set against joining me—

    I looked up to see that Icarus had returned as well, and had also taken the liberty of setting up camp for us, namely by nosing (beaking?) his way into opening the zipper of my backpack and eating the cereal bars I'd stashed on top. He had issues opening the wrapper properly, though, what with lacking opposable thumbs and all, so I tore one open and tossed him half before giving the other half to Gaia.

    After a moment of thought, I opened a second one and threw half to the sentret—my sentret, I tried again, although I had a feeling that neither I nor she would really ever see it like that—and ate the second half myself.

    "Tret." She glowered at me for a moment after the granola bar hit her on the white, target-like ring of fur splattered on her stomach (maybe my aim had improved a bit), and didn't touch it.

    "It's not poison," I muttered sourly, aware that I'd thrown half of my potential dinner into a bed of dry leaves and a disgruntled ferret. "If you don't want it, I'm totally taking it back."

    "Sen," she muttered, and didn't touch it. But when I looked away, I heard crunching, so I figured that was a good sign.

    I sighed and glared at my overstuffed backpack again. If I was going to stop for the night, I could at least sort out my pack and try to see if there was anything useless. Maybe I'd actually make it to Goldenrod so I could thank the man who'd reminded me that people weren't all awful, or if they were, they usually had a good reason.

    In the meantime, my backpack had some junk in it.

    Namely, rocks.

    Just one rock, actually, but I pulled out the fist-sized lump of shiny black material and scowled at it. "Icarus, do you have any idea what this is?"

    His typical perch on my backpack had been disrupted, seeing as I'd pulled it off of my back and was rummaging through the dark-green, military-grade pockets, fuming all the while as packets of dried fruit and jerky appeared before my eyes with a speed that only breeding ratatta could rival. How Bates had managed to stuff my backpack with food when I wasn't looking was beyond me. When had he even had time for this?

    Icarus gave a sound that might've been a hoity-toity sniff and pecked at the plastic wrapper of a bag of dried oran berries. "Rock."

    Oh, yeah, I would've never guessed. "Anyone else want to tell me what this is?" I glanced over at the motley crew that made up my current team.

    Iris, glared up at me from where she had been sharpening her claws on a nearby tree. Her tan fur still bore some of the scratches from her fight with the houndour and my murkrow a few days before, but she had mostly healed up. Her dark brown ears twitched a little at my question, but as she studied the lump of rock in my hand curiously, she wilted a little. "Sennn," she growled, shaking her head.

    "No?" I glanced back at it. "Well, I'm throwing it away unless anyone else wants it."

    "Poddd."

    Gaia had seemingly taken it upon herself to act as my moral compass, which was quite a daring goal, seeing as she had no means of communicating with me and lacked some useful features, such as arms and legs. Sometimes, though, she really wanted me to carry heavy burdens. Heavier than not maiming my peers, for example. As heavy as a rock.

    "You carry it, then," I muttered darkly. Her shoulders didn't hurt from carrying food for all of us.

    "Meta."

    I didn't bother asking Icarus to translate. "Yes, I know you have no arms." I glared at the lime-green cocoon propped up against a tree, looking back at me mournfully, and scowled. It was like getting growlithe-puppy eyes, except from a metapod. And somehow, it worked.

    "No legs, too!" Icarus squawked joyfully.

    "Poddd."

    I had no way of picking up body language from a pokémon that couldn't move her own body, but she seemed intent that I carry around the lump of black rock until my back broke. Which would be quite fast, given my lack of formal lifting training. "Here, I'm going to throw it. Gaia, if you bring it back, we'll keep it."

    I was being unreasonable, yes, but it had been a long day. I threw the stupid rock into the tangled underbrush.

    "Okay, Gaia. Your turn."

    "Pod." I might've seen a slight glare in her eyes.

    The bushes barked back and then exploded in a mass of roiling black, and then I was on the ground as a sixty-five pounds of pure muscle leapt out of the undergrowth and onto my chest.

    Oh, boy.

    There was a harsh thunk as the saliva-covered rock landed on my sternum, and then the thing began licking my face insistently, whimpering excitedly as if we had been parted for months rather than days.

    Of course. Picking up one crazy pokémon just wouldn't be enough. "Hello, Atlas."

    "Dour!" I could already imagine his words. I fetched it for you! Oh boy! Can you throw it again? I love fetching! I am very good at fetching! But all it really meant was—

    I had a houndour now.

    "Pod!"

    …And I had to keep the stupid rock.

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    • interlude iii. silver
    • Arkadelphiak said:
    All I can say is:

    ATLAS
    YES GOOD

    (And the chapter was nice. Its slower pace let Maximilien Robespierre mull over Bate's words without the chapter getting boringly introspective. Ding ding ding, that rock is important. But . . . Atlas.)
    Click to expand...

    Haha, no jokes, crossover battles is a 100% sponsor of Atlas's continued existence here.
    rock what rock I was being so subtle about the rock


    Flaze said:
    It's been a while since we've gotten to have Ely talk and experience things with her Pokemon, the fact that they've had developtment now also makes it more fun.
    Click to expand...
    her name is Nara like narrator last time switching names I promise sounds like nah-rah

    Icarus is a real troll though but I like the way he translates with such fun xD and the explanation he gives as to why he can understand bugs better is...I don't know, I guess it works? at the same time I find it funnyt hat Icarus can translate anything related to feelings of anger and the like but not good thing (he translates how the sentret still holds kind of a grudge as well as her intent and the like but once she becomes a bit more vulnerable he's suddenly unable to keep translating)
    Click to expand...
    I actually have a decent explanation for this--in this universe, at least, murkrow are super-aggressive and their language primarily deals with murdering and mauling. So, like you said, he's got a good vocab and a nice ear for picking out phrases in other Pokemon dialects that pertain to murdering and mauling, while the concept of honor/life-debts is actually extremely foreign to him, to the point that he can't quite comprehend what's going on. But, yeah. I'm totally a linguistics expert.

    I didn't expect to see the Sentret back actually, if anything I was sad because at first I thought we wouldn't get to see Atlas again :c not that Iris was a bad addition, even if you're totally copying Survival Project (nice reference there btw :p totally not obvious at all) and wel I guess her reasons for joining Ely will be interesting to explore. I mean she still holds a grudge for her that doesn't seem to be going away soon, which is different to Gaia's respect, Icarus'...I don't know, he likes her enough and Atlas' complete and utter devotion of her, so it's a new dynamic to add into the group.
    Click to expand...
    atlas livvvesss
    Our last interlude (it's mostly crack, heh), and then we dive full-on into the Violet Arc at last.
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    interlude iii. silver​
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    William Bates opened the door to his pokémart, shotgun in hand, to find some little kid with an abra glaring back at him. He sighed. He hated psychic-types; Brigid could handle them on good days, and it was only morning, but—

    “Welcome to the Cherrygrove City pokémart,” he growled, shoving the muzzle of the gun in the kid’s face. “Your abra stays outside. Any other pokémon on you stay outside too, understand?”

    The kid, unfortunately, didn’t seem at all intimidated by the twin barrels of the shotgun staring him in the face. He almost yawned, clearly trying to look as blasé about the situation as possible, but Bates could see that he was exhausted. And, for some reason, he wore a layer of shredded but sticky something? (Bates decided not to think on it too hard; he’d seen stranger things and he certainly didn’t want to make too much of this) over his rumpled and dirty clothing.

    “I’ve been having a really shit couple of days, so don’t be upset if I don’t trip over myself listening to you,” the kid retorted, and there was a hard edge in his voice that almost made Bates think twice, except he’d seen worse than this kid and knew he would again. “Teleport us inside, would you, Dante?”

    The piece of shit little kid was actually going to try it. “Brigid!” Bates shouted.

    Bates’s litwick, floating behind him, seemed unperturbed, but she reacted with blinding speed. A puff of light marked her position before she vanished into the shadows. {On it.}

    The abra’s brown paw reached out and snaked around the kid’s arm, and then the two of them vanished in a flash of blue light. Bates, teeth gritted, turned around, pulling back the barrel of his shotgun with a satisfying click-click as he did so, and leveled the weapon at an apparently empty spot behind him.

    Half a second later, the spluttering boy appeared alone in front of him, his head materializing conveniently before the twin barrels of the shotgun. A few feet away, Brigid flickered into existence as well, holding a squirming abra by the ears between her small, white hands. Her smile was twisted into a frown, and her yellow eyes, or at least the one visible, gleamed dangerously in the light.

    Bates breathed a silent sight of relief, although he tried to look as confident as possible. Brigid could hold her own against lower-powered psychics like this one, but when it came to resisting against more powerful ones, a litwick and a shotgun didn’t give much defense. And, as much as she hated to admit it, Brigid and he both knew that disrupting a teleport was risky business. He’d heard horror stories of how interceptions ended in a trail of scattered body parts; even though Brigid was clearly more skilled than the fledging psychics who had tried, he didn’t want to push her.

    Still, in the meantime, he was doing quite well. “Welcome to the Cherrygrove City pokémart,” Bates repeated calmly, staring down the barrel of the shotgun to the surprised-looking kid on the other end who no longer had the courage to glare at him. “I would advise your abra to stay outside, but you two seem to have other plans.” He glanced over at Brigid, who was idly combatting the abra’s half-hearted splashes of blue energy with her own purple flames. “That’s fine. Brigid will watch him while you shop. If either of you try anything stupid, she’ll burn him to a crisp. And that includes the knife,” Bates added, glaring at the bulge in the kid’s front pocket that looked a little too much like a switchblade for his liking. He might’ve felt sorry for the kid, who looked hardly older than fifteen and rather beat up, but the kid had just tried to jump him, after all. “I take it you want to buy supplies?”

    The kid managed to look decently unafraid even though his abra was struggling in Brigid’s grasp and there was a shotgun staring him in the face. “No.”

    Bates raised an eyebrow. The question had been mostly rhetorical, given that they were standing together in a pokémart, but if the kid was a little addled in the head from whatever had covered him in white shit, Bates wouldn’t blame him. “I’m not a charity. The pokécenter is next door,” Bates grumbled. It was still hard to feel sorry for the kid, given what had happened a few moments before, but Bates was starting to feel guilt setting in.

    “I’m fine,” the kid snapped back, cynicism beyond his years filling his voice. “I need information.”

    Bates’s eyebrows retreated a little further into his hairline, and he looked at the kid with renewed interest. No one asked shopkeepers for ‘information.’ Instincts that had been dormant for years stirred up in the back of his mind once more. “About what?”

    “There was a girl who came through here earlier. My age, give or take. She’s on the run, and I’d like to know where she’s going. Average delinquent, really.”

    Unbidden, Bates’s thoughts leapt to the brash teenage girl who’d come barreling into his shop two days before. He stifled them as quickly as possible with a quick glance to the abra, but the yellow and brown psychic pokémon seemed a little distracted by its current predicament to read his thoughts.

    Then, Bates realized something worse. The girl had mentioned fighting—

    Holy shit. Red hair. He’d only seen the pictures and read the papers, but Bates was pretty sure that he was holding Silver, Giovanni’s fucking son, Silver, at gunpoint while his litwick attacked the kid’s abra.

    Yeah, this was probably the fastest way to earn himself a one-way ticket to the gallows at Ecruteak.

    He had to remain calm. Bates let the shotgun fall a fraction of an inch, so it was no longer pointing at the kid’s head. In another time, in another place, Bates might’ve felt bad about aiming a shotgun at an innocent kid, but he had other problems now, namely that he was aiming a shotgun at a mostly-innocent kid whose daddy could get Bates killed, and he was trying to find a clean way out of it (although the pressing threat of apocalypse was a close, albeit long-term concern). “There are a lot of girls your age.”

    “She has a caterpie, stronger than it looks.”

    The girl had never mentioned that her caterpie had been the one to take out Silver’s abra. That would explain the silk, at least. “No idea. There are a lot of girls your age with caterpie. Look around you, kid. This is the edge of the forest. There are a thousand caterpie north of here, and practically everyone who goes through here picks up a couple.” Bates winced. He’d paused too long before answering, and the kid had noticed.

    “Do you know who I am?” the son of the most powerful organization in Johto asked coolly.

    Yes. “No.”

    “I’m the heir to Team Rocket, Codename Silver,” the boy growled, a fire blazing to life in his brown eyes as he glared up at Bates despite the shotgun, a sort of weary rage keeping him upright. “And I suggest you tell me what I want to know.”

    Bates weighed his options. On one hand, he’d been on the wrong side of the Rockets before, and almost all of his pokémon had ended up dead. On the other hand, dipshit though she was, he liked the girl who had come through a few days ago, and he had no intentions of ratting her out to the Rockets. He sighed. “I said it before. No need to get antsy. There are a lot of kids with caterpie,” he said, choosing the middle ground for the time being. “I’ve seen at least twenty in the past week.”

    “She had a murkrow with her,” Silver said, still sounding as irate as before. “A murkrow,” he added in a voice that was more suited for teaching five year-olds the alphabet, “is a small, black bird, feathers like a top hat, blood-red eyes—”

    “I know what a murkrow is,” Bates snapped back. A shame, that. “I saw a girl like that a few days ago.”

    “Did she get anything from you?” Silver glanced at his abra. Bates prepared to lie, and then thought better of it, just as Silver added, “Oh, and I can tell if you’re lying, by the way. I won’t like it.”

    Bates shut his mouth quickly. “Your Gift? Really?” This was getting bad.

    “If you want to test it, be my guest,” Silver retorted. “Did she get anything from you?”

    Of course he would by a lie-detector. Of course. Nothing would be easy. The kid could be bluffing, but Bates didn’t want to try anything stupid. Not yet. “Yes.”

    “What did she pick out? Specifics, please.”

    Bates paused for a moment, pretending to try to remember. In reality, he was searching for loopholes. He’d dealt with psychics enough before to know that lie-detectors had flaws. “She got some survival stuff,” he said slowly, still frowning like he was thinking hard to remember a mundane purchase five days back. Well, he was thinking hard, but he knew exactly what the girl had picked out and what he had… oh. “Antiseptic, rubbing alcohol, bandages, a map. Blanket and compass, maybe.” He felt no need to mention things that the girl hadn’t picked out, nor her plans, nor anything else that had happened while she’d been here. If Silver was going to be stupid with his word choice, then he would pay for it. Because the girl had been given that stuff, and hadn’t picked it out, and as long as Bates believed the wordplay strongly enough in his mind, the kid wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, Gift or not.

    And this was why you didn’t sent a kid to do a Rocket’s work.

    “Anything else?”

    Bates shrugged. “Her potion rations, I guess. She couldn’t afford to pay for anything more that night.” Which was also true; she’d brought in her windfall the next morning. With any luck, they’d try to head her off at the next pokémart, when she’d actually be well-stocked and wouldn’t need to visit town for a while.

    “Anything more?” To his credit, Silver seemed to register this information as worthless as well.

    The kid seemed to know that he was holding back on something, and Bates remembered the last item that the girl had explicitly picked out for herself and not had shoved into her arms by Bates or Brigid. “Hair dye,” he said grudgingly.

    Silver’s eyes narrowed, but Bates could sense his excitement. “What color?”

    Here, in the darkened shop that was only lit by the faint purple flames from Brigid’s head, Bates had to actively suppress his smile. Instead, he shrugged a little and gestured lazily to the display case behind his counter that proudly showed eighteen different colors of hair coloring. “Um. All of them.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    Silver let one of his feet dangle off the docks outside of Cherrygrove’s pokémart. The sunset on the gently lapping waves was actually quite beautiful at this time of year, even if the entire sky was still stained with touches of the borealis. The dying sunlight made the entire ocean sparkle like a pile of, well, silver, for lack of a better word, and there was a sort of beauty in that.

    He’d always loved the ocean views from the beaches in Goldenrod, so much so that he’d been willing to change his codename to reflect them. Something about tumbling in one place, flashing brilliantly for a moment before being pulled under, had seemed so melodramatically fitting to his current state of affairs that he’d only considered his codename for an instant before settling.

    That had been a different time. A better time, too. No need to get held up by a kid or act humble around a shopkeep who really seemed too emotionally conflicted to be serious about holding him up. Dante might’ve been able to stop the bullets in time, but Silver hadn’t wanted to take that risk. Not today. Not when there was still beauty like this left in the world.

    Staring out to sea like this made him miss Locke for the thousandth time in the past few days. He could’ve used a bit more logic in his life right now.

    He sat there as the ocean subsided to a dull murmur in his ears, all the while weighing his options and idly peeling hardened caterpie silk from his sleeves. He could report back that he had indeed found the girl with the murkrow, and she was about his height, had dark eyes, and he’d quite cleverly narrowed down her hair color to eighteen or nineteen possible choices. Or, he could withhold his knowledge from his superiors, possibly threatening their mission here because he didn’t have the heart to look stupid in front of them.

    Whatever he did, he couldn’t fail. That was out of the question. That was always out of the question.

    But there had been something so off about the girl, about the way she’d snapped from terrified and trembling to icy-cold and rigid in the blink of an eye. One moment, she’d been quaking, and the next, she’d been threatening to cut him up. He’d thought it was a mistake until he’d looked into her eyes, impossibly hard and impossibly dark, as she stood in front of him and threatened to shred him if he interfered any further. But he’d seen it painted in her eyes, something he’d seen too much before, something that didn’t belong in the heart of a kid like her, in a kid like him.

    Intent to kill.

    But there was no mistaking it. There was something wrong with her.

    He hadn’t quite decided if that meant he should pity her or fear her even more.

    “What do you think, Dante?”

    For once, the all-knowing abra did not know all.

    They sat there until the silver of the ocean faded away, and then sat there for quite a while longer.

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    • ix. the slopes of olympus
    • I had responses/thanks here, but something about the forum format when we went to the 2015 changeover made this chapter keep quoting itself because I fucked up the format somewhere. Oops.
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter ix. the slopes of olympus​

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    "What do you mean, you don't sell to trainers without a gym badge?"

    I really had to work on my politeness, but I figured my track record was pretty shitty. The last person I'd talked to had, in no particular order, pointed a gun at me, threatened to burn me alive, helped me find my pokémon when I couldn't, helped me obtain two new pokémon (kind of), given me some great advice, given me some shitty advice, and then basically threatened to burn me alive a second time. The second-to-last person I'd talked to had tried to kill me, and then I'd tried back, and I'd probably started a shitstorm with all that. This basically told me that I wasn't exactly the most personable bulb in the knife drawer (and also, trying to be polite didn't seem to help or harm my cause in any discernible pattern).

    The Violet City pokémart was dimly lit by a sparking flaafy, which bleated angrily at my outburst. I waved my arms through the air in a sort of vague protest. "It's the apocalypse! I need supplies!" I continued, even as the sinking feeling that this wasn't going to work started in the pit of my stomach.

    The thin, pasty woman in the white pokémart apron looked distinctly uncomfortable, but she said in a calm, mechanical voice, "We've had a rash of people claiming to be trainers coming in for their weekly potion rations who then go out and scalp their supplies out to real trainers for markedly higher prices."

    "I got my ration at Cherrygrove last week," I protested, struggling to stay calm. There was no need to get angry with her. I rolled up the tattered sleeve of my jacket and showed her the indelible, green smeargle ink Bates had used to mark my wrist over a week ago.

    Yeah, okay, so I wasn't the best at navigating routes either, and it'd taken me five days to cross between Cherrygrove and Violet, but I was learning. All the stupid trees looked the same to me, and horticulture really wasn't my strong suit. I'd grown up in a metropolis, not a forest.

    The storekeeper shrugged. "Look, miss, I'm sorry. But with all of the trainer records down, and without a trainer card, functioning or otherwise, we have no way of proving that you're actually a trainer, and having a gym badge—any gym badge, mind you—is our best bet. That's procedure."

    I fumed silently. "But I just started training last week, right before all of this happened." Maybe she would look at dirt-covered me and see that I wasn't trying to be a threat. Pity had worked okay with Bates, and—

    "Then this is the perfect time to get a badge, isn't it?" she asked, smiling tightly. "I can direct you to the pokécenter, if you'd like. The staff can heal your pokémon practically overnight. And they have generators, in case you want to take a shower."

    I wanted to retort, but I figured that this wasn't the best battle to pick right now.

    And, yeah, I kind of did want to take a shower.

    But I kind of didn't want to fight a gym. Really. Most of my intentions of becoming a pokémon master and fighting the champion had faded a little in the light of my becoming a fugitive and the magnetic apocalypse, and the idea that I'd actually use a badge for anything more than a nicely-carved paperweight had been a laughable possibility in the back of my mind.

    For a brief moment, I imagined stepping into the gym to challenge Falkner, the flying-type expert, who would no doubt recognize Icarus's species on sight and then report me to his higher-ups in Team Rocket, who would teleport over and have me killed to death. I figured the entire process would take about fifteen seconds.

    "Is the gym league even operational? I thought that we'd, you know, have plunged into chaos by now." It was a little difficult to keep my voice civil by this point.

    The woman raised one eyebrow. "Ostensibly it is, or else I wouldn't be asking you to show me a gym badge." She appeared to have difficulties being civil as well. "Falkner's out right now, but one of his provisional trainers can stand in."

    There was also the uncomfortable fact—one that even this supermarket owner could notice— that I probably couldn't win a gym battle. Icarus had no problems murdering everything he saw and I sort of aimed him at threats like my personal murder-cannon, but Gaia had the intent to kill of a soggy paper towel. In the past week, I'd gotten a vague handle on what Iris and Atlas could do; from what I could tell, Iris was determined but not necessarily all-powerful, while Atlas preferred to, uh, make friends. Battles were a war to her, and a game to him; it was mostly a matter of pitching the fights in the way that best appealed to them.

    Well, I could go challenge the gym and get myself noticed and then killed by Rockets, or I could go out into the wilderness without potions and later get myself killed by Rockets, or starvation, or my sheer stupidity.

    "Thank you for your time," I grumbled, and then hefted my backpack onto my shoulder and stepped back into the street, which was dimly lit by the midday sun. I scooped up Gaia in my arms, relieved that there were no missing pokémon awaiting me this time. Iris, following at a distance, slunk behind us.

    "Podd?"

    "No luck, Gaia," I told her. "You aren't feeling up to challenging a flying-type gym for our potion ration, are you?"

    "Podd."

    Probably a no.

    "Iris?"

    "Trett!"

    Definitely a no. She'd refused to listen to my commands in practice about seventy percent of the time. If I'd been a normal trainer, I'd probably take this as a problem—however, given that none of my pokémon actually listened to me all the time, I wasn't terribly miffed. In fact, between Icarus's murder tendencies, Gaia's inability to move, and Atlas's refusal to battle until he'd sufficiently licked any newcomers, the thirty percent chance that Iris would listen to me was looking pretty good.

    I sighed and glanced up at the sun. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was actually a beautiful day, although it hardly felt like that. I stomped angrily away from the pokémart and stopped in front of the gym, weighing my options.

    I might've been able to waltz in and casually challenge a gym, but Falkner wasn't exactly a pushover. He was typically the first gym leader that trainers challenged, but he also boasted one of the best records in the region. Flyers were a versatile and powerful class of pokémon, and I couldn't abuse type-advantages to even attempt scraping a win. Not that that would've been much help—I'd heard that Falkner had invented some terrifying, anti-electric strategy after the first few times he'd been shocked by a half-trained mareep.

    With some reflection, perhaps I didn't need potion rations that badly. I hadn't needed any of my items yet, but who knew? I wouldn't have minded stocking up.

    Before me, the gym towered, imposing and threatening at the same time. The roof of the building, like every other municipal building in the city, was a dark purple, likely to match the whole "violet" theme. The other municipal buildings in the city, however, weren't seventy-five foot behemoths made of spotless glass that managed to shine even in the apocalyptic afternoon sun. I craned my head up to peer at the massive arch over my head, an elegant affair of flashing gold that peaked in an elaborate swirl and sported the words nihil supra in spindly, golden script with letters three feet high.

    I didn't really know the dead languages well, but it vaguely resembled Violet's motto well enough that I could try to wrap my head around it. Nothing higher. A city in the clouds, higher than all save the outskirts of Blackthorn with some buildings trailing so far up the western slopes of Mount Silver that they disappeared into the clouds.

    No, I definitely wasn't going to do a gym challenge, strange as it felt. Tucking my hands into my pockets, I turned away, aiming myself toward the eastern side of town to where I had left Icarus and Atlas. And all the while, thinking.

    There was more to this sleepy town, the stuff that I couldn't learn in geography class in tenth grade, enough to dazzle me. Beneath the layers of buildings on the steppes and terra cotta roofs painted violently purple and adorned with crouching, winged statues, there was something that ran deeper. At the north of the city, just by the base of the mountain, the gleaming tiers of Sprout Tower poked into the sky, its topmost roof obscured by pearly wisps of cloud. Legend said that the heart of the Tower was not a wooden central support shaft, but the body of an enormous bellsprout. Its stalk was the oldest living thing we had discovered save for Johto's legends—the Wandering Beasts, the Birds Regent, and the Forest Queen.

    And, well, it was prettier to pretend that the Lugia didn't exist sometimes. The idea of living under something that possessed enough raw power to wipe out a continent, that had most likely single-handedly screwed up the region enough to knock out the magnetic field, didn't really sit well with people when you phrased it like that.

    The people of Violet City, however, had no faith in these myths. There were no shrines to the Wandering Beasts, and the gargoyles on their roofs were stylized representations not of the Birds Regent, but of the very birds they trained. They were a people who had founded themselves on the clouded slopes of a mountain rather than move to lower, easier-to-access ground. Their center of worship, if I could call it that, was living proof of an epoch come to earth. They were among the legends, not beneath them.

    Nothing higher.

    "Sent?" Iris asked.

    It was at the foot of this tower that I found myself when I finally looked up from my wandering. I didn't really know how I'd ended up here, hands jammed deep into the pockets of my faded, green, partially-dying military jacket, idly scraping one foot against the dusty ground, brow twisted in concentration. Bates had given me the jacket, and it was surprisingly effective against the brisk winds that were picking up at the base of this mountain.

    He was, of course, so very right about how little I thought about things. I'd been told that going to a gym would be pretty vital to my plans, so instead I ended up at a shrine. Of course. I'd never been one for worshipping the legends, although my mother had been a fan of the names in the myths. Icarus, Gaia, Iris, Atlas—perhaps, so had I. Battling with a team full of legends made for an easier time than a team full of ragtag misfits.

    It appeared I wasn't the only one who preferred flashy things. The arch of the door was a work of art in itself, one I didn't feel worthy of observing. Ornate brass figures, intricate flocks of birds flying up the archway toward the gleaming sun above my head. Frozen in the first moments of flight, a million feathers all pointing upward. The rays of the sun reached out almost to embrace them, welcoming them as equals in the harsh, golden cast of the sky.

    Nothing higher.

    The door itself was a masterpiece as well, a large, dark slab of wood studded with round bits of metal, and at around shoulder level were two brass doorknockers shaped like bellsprout heads holding metal rings in their mouths. Feeling like I was polluting something precious, I reached out and touched one hesitantly. Colder than I'd expected. I dropped it, partially out of surprise, and the sound echoed in the narrow confines of the doorway. Like ringing a bell. I could feel the vibrations bouncing through my feet and up my bones.

    No one answered. I vaguely wondered if it would be sacrilegious to enter this building—I hadn't showered properly since I'd left, I had this recurring issue where I ordered my dark-type starter to attack things, and my shoes were kind of muddy, but no one had tried to stop me yet. Gently, I tugged at one of the door knockers.

    Nothing happened. The door, beautiful work of art that it was, didn't budge.

    "Pod?" Gaia asked curiously.

    Well, I suppose it would've been too easy to just walk in.

    I tried to consider for a moment what to do next. I'd left Icarus to watch Atlas near one of the dark caves at the base of the mountain—one of them had the unfortunate habit of mauling people with his sharp and deadly beak, while the other had the unfortunate habit of mauling people with adorable showers of hugs and kisses. Plus, Icarus got a bit lonely being ditched from every city I went to, and they could do boy things together. Pee on trees or something. I shrugged and turned to leave. Perhaps this was a sign that I should go to the gym or jump off a cliff instead.

    The door swung open.

    Huh. Delayed response, but I'd take what I could get.

    The first thing I noticed about the Tower was the light. Normally, I wouldn't be surprised to see a well-lit, prominent historical landmark, but, given the current, no-electricity situation, seeing a building that wasn't illuminated by a fire or electric-type was a bit strange.

    No. Here, the illumination came from a glowing pillar in the center of the room, one that rose from the floor to the ceiling and disappeared in a round hole near the top of the room. The pillar seemed solid enough, but it shone with an eerie light from within that pulsed like a heartbeat that cast soft shadows on the intricately-carved wooden paneling around the walls. The bellsprout, undoubtedly.

    "Welcome to Sprout Tower," a voice with a slight lisp said from behind me, and I visibly jumped.

    There was a wizened, bald man standing in the corner, clad from head to toe in dark blue robes that obscured his hands—and, really, everything but the very tips of his sandaled feet. He filled the typical old-man-monk role fairly well, with a wrinkled but kind face and sprouts of white hair peppering his chin and even coming out of his ears.

    He looked old and harmless, but he'd managed to sneak up on me. In wooden sandals. "Um, hi," I replied, tearing my gaze from the pulsating column in the center of the room and then having second thoughts. "Is this, uh, the legend?" I pointed back at the pillar.

    The wizened man gave a weak sigh. "That," he murmured, "is the giant bellsprout that makes up the core of this sanctuary."

    I'd never seen a giant bellsprout, or really one that was more than two feet or closer to two hundred, but I hadn't seen a lot of things. Military sentret, for instance, such as the one that was currently sniffing around the floor like it was covered in chocolate.

    "It is dying," the man continued mournfully. And indeed, with each pulse of light, the room seemed a little dimmer than before.

    Wait, what.

    There was no possible way that could be good. The enormous bellsprout that had stood regent for centuries, maybe millennia, couldn't just get some root parasite and die. That didn't seem right. There was something deeper afoot, something more sinister, something no doubt linked to the dancing aurora just outside and the tumbling magnetic field below.

    There was also something heartbreakingly sad in the idea that this old giant, one that seemed to pulse with the lifeblood of Violet City itself, could die. A legend come to Earth, rooting in the ground but reaching for the sky. Nothing higher.

    "You are the savior who has come to help us."

    "Pardon?"

    "You were drawn to the Tower. Save Falkner, our leader, you are the first one outside of our order to enter these sacred halls since the day the power failed and the monster appeared." The monk's words were a low rasp in the silence of the Tower. I was reminded of an ekans slithering through piles of dry leaves.

    "That's ridiculous. You have a building with light." I gestured around to the wooden paneling and the impassive bellsprout statues that stood guard in each of the four corners of the room, all bathed in gentle light. Okay, it was a little hard not to ogle over sweeping architecture; I enjoyed it a lot more than I did trees, but back on point: "And, well, a bunch of historical context and lovely architecture. Why wouldn't anyone—"

    "The doors are locked."

    This started to sound like the set-up to a really bad horror movie, or an even worse porn movie. I couldn't really tell which. I backed up a little, wondering if I could try to sneak out without his noticing me. I was a somewhat-fit teenager, of course, and he appeared to be an unarmed, harmless man. But when I hit the doors, which were solid enough to bury the head of the bellsprout-shaped doorknocker into the small of my back and refused to budge an inch, I began to feel afraid. "I wasn't drawn here," I deflected, even though I had a sinking feeling that he was actually right. "I was wandering around the town—"

    "—because your sssstarter is different from the otherssss, and for that you have been casssst out," the man finished sagely, inclining his head slightly. I could still see his smile, which was filled with too many pointed teeth to be natural. Also, the man's lisp was transforming into a hiss. "You are the ssssavior who has come to help ussss."

    I'd never bought the sage-mysticism myths, but unless Icarus had blabbed at some point instead of waiting outside of town with Atlas—I wouldn't put it past him, honestly—then the sage was hauntingly correct. "Who are you?"

    The words hung in the air, which suddenly felt a thousand times thicker, for a long moment, tinged with a brass reverberation that sounded like the door knockers.

    The monk looked at me, tilting his head in one direction and then the next, angling his head just a fraction of a degree too far to be normal. Then, his face began to dissolve. I bit back a scream, but the wizened old guy had disappeared into a puff of dark smoke, in which I could see the faintest outlines of a cackling face before the smoke, too, dissipated, leaving me alone.

    For all of their talk about living alongside their gods, I'd never heard anything about living alongside their dead.

    "Be careful that you do not lossse your way in the darksssssssss…"

    Well. That escalated quickly.

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    • x. these violet delights
    • omg hi friends
    I'm alive
    nara is too
    maybe
    Arkadelphiak said:
    JUDGING JUDGING JUDGING

    [snipped for length but ilu you're fabulous and we already discussed a lot of this I think]
    Click to expand...

    Ariana omg I fail tho.

    Flaze said:
    This isn't my formal review or anything just a random comment I wanted to give out, well some random comments.

    -FINALLYW E'RE AT VIOLET GOD, THAT TOOK TOO FUCKING LONG

    -Holy crap we're having a haunted mansion type of arc now

    -You know thsi could still turn out to be a pretty weird porn movie in the end.
    Click to expand...

    Hush it's only been two years.

    mmmm surprise gaia used harden
    gaia used string shot
    gaia engaged kinky bondage scene
    holy shit I could do some awful stuff with that

    Beth Pavell said:
    Why haven't I read this chapter yet?

    I'll have to dispense with the usual categories. I've got you again - you say "pokémart" when I'm sure you mean "pokécentre". And there's an "I" missed in one place.
    Click to expand...
    I think I fixed; thanks.

    Anyway, there's a lot to like about this chapter. First of all, you can build a world when you put your mind to it. The apocalypse isn't brown, thank heavens - this is a pretty good version of Violet City. There's a lot to it which is familiar from HG/SS, with some more texture and a little history to give it a sense of place. Nothing Higher ... damn, why didn't I think of that as a Gym motto ...
    Click to expand...
    /pleased

    Anyway, from a story perspective I like the change from what has been a lot of the same survive-survive-survive thing. Well, it may still be that, but it's not to do with Rockets or starvation so it amounts to much the same thing. Echoes of Nagini in the old monk, I think. Presumably he doesn't contain the soul-shard of a wizard who isn't as clever as he thinks he is, but you never know
    Click to expand...
    legit hope I didn't disappoint here. I find that my style tends to drag a lot and turn more to "omg gonna die" when writing quiet-srbs chapters, but I'm trying to do some more... well, different things here. Also yeah, totes Voldy.

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    chapter x. these violet delights​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    There were some days where I really just felt like throwing in the towel and quitting. I'd just gone through hell in the forest, what with losing my starter (both of them), having a froslass try to eat me (alive), getting lectured on death by an irate shopkeep who had undoubtedly saved my life (before I made him hate me), and, yeah, trapping myself in an apocalypse and marking myself out to be a horrible human being (several times). And now it appeared that there was no other option but to go further into the haunted tower, which was really something I didn't want to do, what with the dissolving people. I had a sentret who hated me and a metapod who couldn't even escape my arms, versus a haunted tower, and I couldn't help but think about how unfair everything was. If I just threw everything on the ground and quit, how bad would it really be?

    An incessant, sarcastic voice in the back of my mind pointed out that if I threw Gaia on the ground, I would probably break her and she would die and I wouldn't like that.

    For good measure, I tried the door behind me. It was securely locked, and the knockers refused to budge no matter how many times I pulled at them, significantly less calmly than I'd been when I'd tried to enter. I tried to focus. Facts. I liked those. Sprout Tower was apparently filled with creepy sages that could teleport and were probably possessed by ghosts who had taken a marked interest in my fate—ghosts that had been repeating the same incomprehensible advice since I'd started. And yes, there didn't seem to be much of a way out. What could possibly go wrong?

    I should've stayed in the forest. I should've done so many things differently. But the only way out was through. I began taking purposeful steps toward the spiral staircase in the back corner of the room, unsure of precisely what I was trying to accomplish.

    "Poddd."

    "Yes, Gaia," I said with a sigh. "We're going to go poke around in the haunted tower."

    I made my way to the middle of the room, drawn by the gently-pulsating light of the bellsprout. The Tower, while architecturally flawless, smelled like must and was caked in a fine layer of rattata shit. I scraped my foot along the floor experimentally. There was a lot of dust for such a prominent landmark, and all two of my steps were already creating visible prints in the ground. Iris's tracks skittered across the ground to her feet, occasionally criss-crossing a pair of similar tracks that I figured were rattata, but other than that, the dust was uninterrupted. How long had it been since anything higher than my knees had set foot here?

    {Cap, I sense danger ahead.}

    Iris's voice in my mind made me pull up short. I glanced up ahead at my sentret, who was chattering away at the ground, but even though I could hear the excited murmurings—"sent, sent, treetttt!"—I could still hear her voice resonating in the back of my mind. Telepathic field. We weren't alone.

    A ghost or a psychic-type nearby. Haunted or Rockets. I wasn't sure which was worse. I spun around, searching the wooden rafters and dusty beams for some sort of clue, but the dimly-lit interior of the Tower yielded nothing. I gritted my teeth, and then, possibilities exhausted, I tried the frustratingly obvious: "Who's there!?"

    A chuckle. {But please, do stop plagiarizing Hamlet by calling that out to ghosts in the dark.}

    I didn't recognize the voice. Iris sank into a fighting stance, her tail bristling until it reached twice its original size and hung over her body like a shield, curled in an s-shape. {Leave us be,} the sentret growled, baring her two tiny fangs as her eyes darted around the room.

    {Or what,} the voice—it was smooth and surprisingly mellifluous, with the consistency of melted butter, and that knowledge did nothing to mitigate my fears that I was conversing with a Bond villain—asked, {you'll scratch me to death? Surely, little sentret, you know better than that.}

    "We don't mean to harm you," I said slowly, looking around the room as I tried to locate the source of the voice and failed. It wasn't like I could've hurt a ghost if I'd wanted to. "We were just taking refuge in the Tower, and now we'd like to go." Pause. I added in a quieter voice, "Please don't possess me."

    {I get the feeling that would quite a ghastly feeling for both of us.}

    That hadn't quite been the response I was expecting. "Sorry, what?"

    A leering grin burst out of the nearby wall, solidifying into a dark blob of haze with a face. The blob whirled a little more, darkening and becoming more tangible, until I could recognize large, piercing eyes and fangs sprouting out of the purplish nebula.

    I tightened my grip on Gaia and took a step backward, one eye casting toward the staircase, but I had a sinking feeling that we wouldn't make it before the ghost caught up to us. Add to that the fact that he could walk through walls and I couldn't, and I didn't see this ending well for any of us.

    {I've been trying to tell you,} the ghost said lazily, revolving in midair before hovering directly in front of my eyes. His leer widened, but I was fascinated by those white, blank eyes. {I didn't possess anyone here. Possession is nasty business.}

    Gaia spoke up for the first time. {Who did, then?}

    The ghost cocked his head to one side in a motion that might've been a shrug, if he'd had arms. {I don't know, ma chérie. If his body does not remain where you saw it, I wouldn't call it possession in the first place, as we cannot possess a something that does not exist. An illusion, perhaps. If I were to hazard a guess, however, I would peg the perpetrator as the same ghost that haunts Falkner.}

    "The same ghost that—" I began, but then cut myself off as a look of horror began to dawn on my face. "There are more of you here?"

    {Imagine that, little human and her pokémon friends. There are dead in the world, and more than one.}

    That hadn't been what I'd meant, but I couldn't help but remember Bates's words—ghosts were the remnants of slain pokémon. I wondered if this ghost remembered who he used to be, if the witty lines he quoted were actually remnants of his past.

    When I thought of it like that, it became a hell of a lot harder to antagonize him.

    {Leave us alone, and straighten your tongue,} Iris hissed back, the rest of the fur on her back bristling as well. The sentret, clearly, didn't share my sentiments. {Or I shall straighten it for you.} It was actually pretty interesting to hear her speaking in a language I could understand. I felt a little less dejected now that I could see that she seemed to growl angrily at everyone and most of her comments were death threats—but to everyone, at least, not just me.

    {You're quite loud. I don't like you,} the ghost said to her after a moment, and then turned back to me. {There are many ghosts in Sprout Tower, some more malignant than others. Very few will be as welcoming as I, and I frankly couldn't care less about what you do here.}

    Well. I didn't want to stay here any longer. Further up and further in. I took a step forward.

    Iris shook herself and took a step forward.

    The ghost took a step forward. Well, not a step, but a little bob in our direction.

    I stopped taking steps forward. "Are you following me?"

    {Perhaps.}

    Things were a little convenient. A little too convenient, if you asked me, but I wasn't exactly complaining. If I needed a ghost-type to set up a telepathic field and I just so happened to be locked in a tower filled with ghost-types, then I would laugh and make lemonade, as the saying went. "Is that a yes or not?"

    {I may stick around to see how the world ends,} the ghost said, sensing my unasked question. {I can sense much death on you, ma chérie.} He paused thoughtfully. {But I do not foresee myself leaving this tower. Now that I have awoken, I merely wish to see what disturbs the peak.}

    Oh, yes, that was a far better option.

    {If you do anything to hurt us, I'll—}

    {For the love of gods, you'll what, little sentret?} the ghost asked, lazily drifting down to poke Iris with an incorporeal glob of energy. {Kill me? I'm dead already, and even so, I'd like to see you try.} The smile vanished for just a moment, just one, just enough time for his fangs to show cleanly beneath the threat.

    I blinked and instantly began regretting every decision that had gotten me to this point. "I'm going upstairs," I said loudly, unsubtly moving my leg between the hissing sentret and the ghost. I started shuffling to the stairs, which was a lot harder when I was trying to keep Iris from flaying our guide.

    I couldn't help but notice that the spiral staircase was also a work of art, as was everything in this tower—although it was becoming more difficult to notice, given the nagging ghosts that I could swear were behind me. Elegant and airy, it was a nice change from the wooden paneling, and kind of a homage to the brass of the door, all spirals and curls.

    Iris vanished up the railing in a swirl of sable fur, ignoring my half-hearted cry for her to stop, that we should stick together.

    "Sent," she called down distantly—out of range, I figured, by which point I had remembered that: first, she didn't particularly like me, and second, she was a scout.

    That left me standing on the bottom floor of a haunted tower, clutching a metapod with a gastly orbiting my shoulders.

    Gastly. I remembered now. Those were the ghosts in Ecruteak that enjoyed hiding in people's shadows and sucking out their souls.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    The second floor of Sprout Tower, we discovered, was Gaia's.

    We wouldn't understand it at first, but I think I should've known from the very beginning.

    {Do you know why snow falls so slowly?}

    I ignored Gaia's non-sequitur at first, momentarily confused, and I looked around, because the entire floor seemed to be a non-sequitur. The central bellsprout pillar was the same, climbing from the floor and disappearing high into the ceiling while casting a sickly yellow glow on the room, but everything else was different. The floorboards were replaced with a wide expanse of shallow grass and a few saplings. The air smelled fresh and crisp. In fact, short of the giant bellsprout stalk in the center of the room, we could've been in an idyllic meadow.

    I peered back down the stairs, where a guilty-looking gastly looked back up at me. The stairs looked perfectly normal. And, if I craned my neck out far enough, I could see the perfectly-normal wooden floorboards beneath us.

    So then why in the world was I standing in a meadow?

    The trainers started appearing then, drifting into view from behind the pillar. They kept their heads bowed so I couldn't see their faces, but more and more of them came, shuffling through the grass like little ants. One of them, a trainer with dark hair and a red vest, appeared beside me, a pokéball in his hand and a small, golden electric-type that I recognized as a pikachu perched on his shoulder.

    "Hello?" I managed to ask tentatively, but none of them answered. Were they all like the sage? I turned to ask the gastly for some sort of clarification, but found myself staring instead into the blank face of the red-vested trainer. He had the same wide, expressionless eyes that the gastly had. The pupils were too vacant, the whites too reflective.

    Startled, I reached out to touch him with one hand while keeping the other firmly wrapped around Gaia, but the boy vanished as soon as my fingers passed through him, and he dissolved into the same thick smoke that had masked the sage from my view downstairs. I bit back a scream as I stared at my hand in shock, looking at the fingers, but when I tried again, another trainer dissipated as well. Black smoke whirled around my hand from where the trainer had once stood, and, before my eyes, the haze reformed back into the image of the same trainer with his pikachu.

    I was reminded of the way the gastly on the floor beneath us had formed.

    I had to admit, I didn't consider myself the best subject for a haunted tower. Rather than reeling back in abject terror, some part of my mind was casually admiring what I was seeing and imagining how to best study this for science. I'd seen it before—when I'd first met Icarus, for example—where my rational brain didn't quite catch up to whatever else was going on around me, so I was instead left tilting my head to one side as I airily dissolved another trainer with a flick of my wrist. Why was this happening?

    {It is merely an illusion,} said gastly said calmly, passing through four trainers at once and sending them all vanishing in spirals of black smoke. {I don't see why this is so hard for you to process.}

    Gaia didn't hesitate. {Why this illusion, though?} There was a hard edge in her voice that I wasn't accustomed to, a kind of buried hurt that was slowly coming to the surface with each of the ghostly trainers that spawned around us.

    The gastly didn't give a response for a long moment. {I do not know.}

    {How can you not?} Iris shot back, barely visible from the haze of dissolved trainers languishing around her.

    Unfazed by her outburst, the gastly calmly replied,{Some ghosts draw energy from the fears of others. Some resist their urges and find strength through other ways. Normally, the sages are able to keep the malignant spirits at bay. The balance has been disrupted for about a week, now.} He drifted through another trainer. {Personally, I find my companions who must actively inflict suffering to grow stronger to be lacking in imagination. There is already more than enough fear and pain in our world, if they only knew where to look. We all hide secrets.}

    A trainer spawned next to me, staring with vacant eyes before making aimless circles around the bellsprout at the center again, and I ran through my options. We didn't seem to have any real leads, actually. The gastly was lying, or he wasn't. The Tower was a giant prank caused by a hungry ghost, or it wasn't. We were all going to die, or we weren't.

    Another trainer.

    "But why do you—or whatever ghost is causing this—think that a meadow full of non-aggressive people would cause massive fear? Am I supposed to be afraid of flowers?" I stared pointedly at the daisy at my feet before kicking it into a plume of smoke.

    {I think this is mine.}

    The smile faded from my face, and I slowly looked down at Gaia, who hadn't even moved to indicate the five world-shattering words she'd spoken.

    {Yours?}

    And for once, Iris sounded strangely sympathetic. We'd all stopped short: the gastly had stopped bobbing idly, I'd stopped crushing flowers, and even Iris was deflating a little.

    {Mine.}

    Another trainer. I didn't wipe it away into mist.

    "Pardon me for asking, Gaia," I said quietly, glancing around as more trainers formed from the fog in the gastly's wake, "but why?"

    {No,} she said, cringing away as the red-hatted trainer spawned next to us again. {The forest is full of bugs, and we all wish to be captured. Well,} she said, tilting her head to one side slightly as she considered it, {not all, but most, and I once dreamed of glory. On the first day that we met, you named me Gaia.}

    I was really having a hard time seeing where this was going.

    {I was captured many times before you, have lived under many names,} Gaia said, looking wistfully at the pokéball in the hands of the red-hatted boy beside us, whose hand had drifted up to stroke the pikachu's head idly. {These are all of my past trainers.}

    "These are—these—you—" had this many past trainers? I almost asked, but cut myself off barely in time. There were at least two dozen trainers drifting around in here with varying numbers of gleaming badges pinned proudly to their lapels, the light not reflected in their unseeing eyes. She couldn't possibly—

    {Sixteen, yes. Few people keep bug-typed pokémon on their main team. We have shorter lifespans compared to most pokémon, and, while we evolve quickly, we fall behind just as quickly as well.}

    She'd still been a caterpie when we'd met. She'd had sixteen trainers before me and not a single one had even used her enough to get her to evolve.

    {Often, trainers will release their bug-types back into the forest. It's quite common, so no one bothers to call them out on it, but we're mostly just glad to be on a team at all, no matter for how short. With you, I was able to grow strong enough to evolve. That is more than most of my kind ever get.}

    I'd captured Gaia with no intention of having her on my main team after she became a butterfree. I'd planned to pawn her off as my starter, a flying-type, in the name of my survival, but battling with her had never been part of the plan. I knew that bug-typed pokémon were weak—perfect for children, they said—and I'd never imagined having to have one as a star battler. When the storage systems went back online, I might've even put her in the box if I ended up finding a stronger replacement.

    And it seems like I hadn't been the only one to think this way.

    The realization I'd had on my first night of training came back then: I was trusted with living, breathing lives. These were real pokémon with real feelings. Not like the figured I'd read about in my half-hearted attempt anatomy homework or in the history books. Somehow, we were supposed to work together and get through all of this. Even if Gaia was just a metapod. Even if I was fated for unfathomable darkness.

    If this was a tower that revealed deep, dark secrets, maybe this floor was mine after all.

    I remembered the words she'd said even when we'd first entered the floor. She'd known from the beginning. She'd known.

    {I have high hopes that you are different.}

    She was wrong, of course, and I couldn't say anything.

    {Do you know why snow falls so slowly?}

    I tried as hard as possible to swallow my guilt.

    {Because it doesn't know where to go any more.}

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    • xi. the center cannot hold
    • Beth Pavell said:
    Well, this was rather fun. I do like illusions and dream sequences and locations that casually ignore common sense. I wouldn't have thought to use Sprout Tower as such a location, so I'm loving that. You did a pretty good job with the description overall. Trippiness is a lot harder to pull off in prose than visually. Pacing wise, keeping this relatively short and bringing the focus onto Gaia was a good move. You've kept TUPpy's verbose inner monologue in check as well, which helps.

    The telepathic dialogue could have done with a bit more tagging. I didn't expect Gaia to have such a mature voice, for some reason ... but anyway, at times it wasn't immediately clear which pokémon was speaking. What else, what else ... ah, yes, I'm hoping for a understated Gaia backstory. Pokémon angsting are ten-a-penny, I'd be interested to see if you can pull off the emotion without turning the dial up to eleven.

    Oh yes, and you stole my NEXT CHAPTER thing you thief

    Oh yes, and I'm really rather looking forward to the next chapter
    Click to expand...
    Hi, I'm a noob and don't know how to do formatting on this forum any more, but key points:
    Yay I have gotten better at description.
    I ended up backtracking and fixing some of the dialogue tags in the last chapter (some of them were even wrong, so awk, seems like I went a touch too minimalist for my own good.
    Emotion lol. Um.
    And, yeah, totes stole the inspiration from you. Thank you senpai.

    Melissa et al said:
    Hi. So I just finished reading this, pointing out any errors I came across. Calmly, of course, but that should go without saying.
    [...]
    And because I'm obliged to rip apart your politics, I'm finding it difficult to believe that Team Rocket wouldn't have a basic amount of protection for the kid of the region's dictator aside from a powerful starter and a knife. But since it would be hard to set up a rival storyline otherwise, I suppose it's OK
    Click to expand...
    Calmly ahahahaha
    tears
    Honestly been trying to cut the sarcasm down as much as possible, and then I find that there's actually very little content in the early chapters. Heh. Working on that one.
    Heh, the politics thing actually has an explanation! Besides plot! And it'll be explained in the chapter after this one!
    !
    Thanks <3

    Flaze said:
    This chapter, like many others had no shortage of Lysy being sarcastic, but it also had no shortage of her doubting herself and feeling guilty for the things that happen to her and her Pokemon. She's certainly proven to have a lot of survivor's guilt on her shoulders as she tries to make sense of things. I think that she shouldn't worry abotu Gaia though, whatever her original reasons for getting her were Gaia is happy and she cares about her a lot more than she thought she would.

    It's actually kind of funny cause in Leaf Green and the hoenn games I always had a Butterfree or some variant of Wurmple's final form either on my main team or as a sub member xD; I dont' know, people always left them behind or ddin't pay attention to them but I always had a soft spot for them.

    Anyways bring on the next chapter and the next trial! I'm aching for it already.
    Click to expand...
    who dafuq is Lysy
    I do not stand for this
    :(
    call me maybe

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter xi. the center cannot hold​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    You'd think, with the revelation that my fake-starter pokémon was tagging along because she believed I genuinely would help her grow stronger (rather than because I wanted to save my ass and she happened to be the first thing Icarus had thrown my way), that it would only go uphill from there.

    You'd be wrong, naturally.

    I finished climbing the spiral staircase and peering through the railing to see that the next floor was, quite literally, filled with sentret.

    I couldn't help myself. I'd mostly been bracing for my floor, which I'd started to imagine would be filled with Rockets and machine guns and a huge amount of blood, so seeing another grassy field around the central Sprout was a little disconcerting.

    "What the hell?" I asked, as I watched another brown and white blur rustle through the three-foot tall grass. "Iris?"

    {We're leaving, now, Captain} Iris hissed, although she had bristled to what could've been twice her normal size and had propped herself up on her tail so she looked even taller.

    {They aren't real pokémon,} the gastly said airily. I could've sworn he was laughing, but there was an edge to his voice, one that hadn't left him since we'd climbed the stairs. {They are merely illusions. Right, little sentret?}

    "Hey, lay of her. Iris, why would we be frightened off by an army of sentret?" The little things were quite vicious, sure, but it was sort of like getting milled by a bunch of little furballs. And, I mean, Iris hated me, but that was just a special case. If all the sentret hated each other to the point that one's greatest fear was the arrival of the others, well. That would make for a pretty awful species.

    Another hiss, this one followed by the distinct thunk of Iris-hitting-floor as she tumbled through another illusion, where she hit wooden floor in a puff of black smoke, told me otherwise. I took a step towards her, dissolving more grass in my wake, only to stop short. "Iris. Are you okay?"

    {Just peachy, Captain,} Iris growled back tightly. {Leave me alone.}

    "But why are you supposed to be afraid of sentret? Why is this your floor?" I repeated, more confused than ever.

    No one answered me at first. Iris halted her attack and turned back to look at us, and I wondered how she saw me then: a naïve little girl, clutching a metapod and knee-deep in her worst nightmare, and yet trusted with her life.

    Another sentret spawned beside her, only for Iris to slash it open with her claws once more. It spawned again, vacant and white eyes unfazed. Iris destroyed it.

    It spawned again. Iris destroyed it.

    It spawned again.

    Panting heavily, Iris slouched back down on her tail, brown-furred head sinking beneath the grass as her ears wilted. She didn't even bother attacking the illusion this time, even as it stalked closer to her and moved its teeth soundlessly, chattering silent threats in a language that the telepathic field wouldn't translate. It stared her down with deathly-pale eyes.

    I closed my mouth. I didn't know what to say. I'd never seen her defeated like this.

    {I don't know how much you understood from Icarus's interpretation,} Gaia said quietly, observing the sentret face-off happening before us. {It was quite cryptic, but I was unable to offer any better, so I had to let it stand.}

    "I don't—"

    {He told you it was a life debt, Captain. I have no idea where he got that idea, but I don't owe you my life at all,} Iris snapped, her back ramrod straight as she refused to look at me, her tail still at attention. {Practically the opposite, actually.}

    "Iris, I don't—"

    {Shut up and listen for once, would you?}

    I stood there, mouth wide open, and she continued: {There are strict rules in my clan. We defend the helpless and protect the weak from danger, but we never, never have anything to do with the humans. It is not our duty to intervene with the affairs of mankind. However your species chooses to destroy itself, the burden will rest on your shoulders. We, the sentret, are the forest's scouts, not your warriors. Any who leave our ranks do so knowing they abandon our ways forever.}

    I didn't want her to steer the conversation down this path. I didn't want to let her. "That's, uh, really harsh. Your clan doesn't do a three-strike policy or something?"

    {You have no right to insult the ways of the clan. They do what is right.} It took me a moment to tear myself away from the distractions—her upraised tail, her sharpened claws, her bristling fur—to look at her eyes. She wasn't staring at me. She was fixated on the sentret in front of her, which had reformed once again with its face almost pinned against her, all bared teeth and claws. {When I saw you, you were helpless and weak and in danger, and I thought that the laws of the clan would understand that. I did not think that this would be my time of choosing; I merely saw a child in need and was foolish enough to act with my heart instead of my head.}

    She sheathed her claws. {I was told that I would receive no aid from the clan, nor from any of the forest. My Captain—} she gestured with her tail to the sentret before her, still chattering silent threats with blank eyes {—told me to find another, to leave and never return.}

    "Oh."

    {And now I'm stuck with you.}

    "Oh," I said again. "Um. Hope I don't disappoint."

    First, I'd ruined Gaia's life, and she didn't even know it yet. Luckily for me, I couldn't really ruin the gastly's life, seeing as it had ended before I'd met him, but I was probably on course to ruin his afterlife. And, well, it would seem that I'd done a good job of burning all of Iris's bridges on her behalf. What were the odds? In hindsight, it almost made sense that most of my pokémon were trying to kill me. I'd done a pretty good job of ruining them first.

    {I'd hoped you would take the news in a different manner,} Iris replied evenly, slinking away from the sentret gathering around her so she could glare at me five paces from my feet.

    I felt a sinking feeling gathering in the pit of my stomach, the same one I'd felt when Bates had finished his story, when Gaia had finished hers. "Iris, I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to say."

    She looked like I'd kicked her in the teeth. {It isn't what I want you to say; it's what you want to say,} she said in a small voice. {I've watched you. Since the moment I had to leave my clan, I watched you from the forest. I wondered if it was worth taking a gamble on you or if I'd be better off trying to live on my own. Maybe you don't get a floor on this tower. Maybe it only works on pokémon. But the thing about you that scares me the most? Everything's a calculation to you, Captain. Everything's a battle. You say what you think other people want to hear.}

    I felt my temper flaring up at her, hot and ugly. Bates had caught me by surprise, but— "You people can't just unload sob story after sob story and then expect me to sit through your random, half-assed analysis of my deeper character, okay?" I knew this was wrong, I knew I was supposed to be the better person in this situation, the level-headed voice of reason, the trainer, but I didn't really give a shit. I didn't want to take this lying down. "Especially when you met me less than a week ago. That's not how it works. I'm sorry that I ruined your—no, I'm sorry that your life got incidentally ruined because I happened to show up and then—"

    {You ruined everything! Everything I ever had, everything I ever worked for, everything I ever cared about!} Iris hissed back at me, her claws leaving long, real gouges in the floor that didn't dissolve into black smoke. {You stomp around like the rest of your kind, acting as if we're nothing, and you never once even think to notice that—}

    "You aren't the only one who's been through tough shit, okay? So don't go around crying like—"

    {You humans are all the same. No one else is important but what's happening right beneath your noses, but—}

    "You don't know shit about me, okay? You don't know what I've been through. You aren't the only one who's had it rough. You have no right—"

    {Stop it, both of you,} Gaia said from my arms. {This is exactly what they want.}

    {I'm vaguely inclined to agree,} the gastly chimed in cheerfully. {And I really do dislike agreeing, so I'd take this as a—}

    {"Shut up!"} Iris and I shouted at the same time.

    I became vaguely aware of how I must've looked to them, and how different it was than how I was supposed to look. Trainers were supposed to be the core, holding everyone together, making the tactical decisions, being the heart of the team. And yet here I was, hands curled into fists, face contorted in anger, and so, so very afraid.

    Tough on them. The xatu had given me a murkrow. Clearly I wasn't going to be what a trainer was supposed to be.

    "If you don't like it here, then leave," I said, forcing my voice to sound as calm and collected as it ever would at this point. I could hear my words echoing in my ears, in the Tower, all around us. I looked to my right, where the gastly floated, staring with those vacant, vacant eyes that all of the other illusions had. If I passed my hand through him, would yet another voice of reason go up in clouds of smoke as well? "And that goes for any of you."

    {Trainer,} Gaia began.

    But I silenced her. "This is the package. This is what you get. I'm not going to grow up and become the Champion." I turned back to Iris, who still stood in the tall grass, half her face cast in sickly-green shadow by the light of the pillar. "I'm not going to be your level-headed, military-trained Captain." I turned back to the gastly. "And honestly, I have no idea what you even want from me, but there's a fair chance I can't deliver. Okay? This is it. This is all I have. If you came on board expecting a miracle from me, well. Tough. You're all free to leave this team whenever you want. I won't stop you."

    There was one blissful moment where no one moved, and then a sharp fwoosh as Iris brushed past me in a brown blur, turning the yellowing grass behind her to ever-reforming smoke. I watched her run up the stairs, but I made no move to follow.

    {Trainer…} Gaia began again.

    "I know." I sighed. "I shouldn't have said that."

    {On the contrary, ma chérie,} a quiet voice chimed in. The gastly bobbed back into my face, all wisps of purple haze and an ever-presents smile and unmatching blank eyes. {It should be said, however, that tact is most certainly not your strong suit.}

    {You should go after her,} Gaia prodded. I waited for her to say anything more, but she fell silent.

    For all the bridges I'd burned as of late, I didn't quite have the heart to let another one go. And besides. This brash sentret who had a penchant for speaking too loudly and rushing in too fast had struck a chord with me. After all, it wasn't really her fault that a strange thing had fallen from out of nowhere and basically marked her for grim isolation from the rest of society.

    I suppose, to her, that made me the xatu. Which, well, was a little unfortunate. At least the xatu had pretended to understand how hard it was going to make my life before it dropped the bomb that changed everything. I'd sort of just showed up.

    It wasn't like I really had a choice. The only way out was through, and I had a sinking hunch that the only way through was together. I could fracture my team and send everything to shit once we got out of the haunted Tower that was currently trying to kill us.

    I tightened my grip on my metapod and started walking toward the stairs. Funny how she ended up being the heart of our team more frequently than I did. "I know, Gaia. Let's go."

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    {I called myself Rousseau,} the gastly said quietly as we looked around. I didn't ask him why he was telling me this now, and I didn't even have to—the answer revealed itself in time.

    The fourth floor of Sprout Towever contained absolutely nothing. Short of the sickly central pillar, which still cast the entire room in green light, the entire floor was empty. The wooden panels on the walls and floors looked pristine and undisturbed.

    I frowned. "Okay, fess up," I said, back to the gastly. "I'm pretty sure my floor is going to be covered in piles of blood telling me not to lose my way in the dark or something horribly cliché, so what's going on here? And where is Iris?" There was a moment's pause, and I half-expected a giant spectral monster to come tearing out of the clean, polished (was that mahogany?) floors that glimmered in the pulsating light of the pillar.

    Nothing happened.

    {I believe this is mine, ma chérie,} the ghost said at last, peering over my shoulder. {I'm flattered. I didn't think they would give me a whole floor.} There was an edge to his voice that sounded like he was trying to laugh, like he knew he was supposed to be laughing, and he was failing. {I called myself Rousseau,} he repeated, like a mantra.

    "There's nothing here." I expertly stated the obvious.

    He drifted into the corner of his room, small blobs of dark energy trailing after his spectral body as he bobbed above the worn floorboards, peering around the rafters. {Only fools are afraid of nothing,} he said, laughing, this time sending little wisps of his astral trail into the floor and waiting for a response that never came. {So I guess, little human, that this would make me a fool, would it not?}

    "I'm, uh, really not following what you're saying here. Where's Iris?"

    {I assume she did the wise thing and simply continued climbing the Tower,} Rousseau remarked. {After all, who would stop to be afraid of an empty room?}

    I could sense more than a little negative sentiment from that one. "Rousseau, are you—"

    {I am a young ghost, little human,} the gastly cut me off. {And yes,} he added quickly, seeing my open mouth, {there is such a thing. Time passes differently for us, but even now I can tell that I have spent far less time dead than I did alive. Does that answer whatever question you were about to interrupt me with?} He looked at me, suddenly expectant.

    Slowly, I closed my mouth.

    {Ghosts are different from other pokémon. We are born from death.} The gastly paused to let his words sink in. {I was born into this world without form or soul or memory,} Rousseau continued calmly. {Only fools fear nothing, as only fools are ignorant and devoid of all knowledge. I have not ventured out of this Tower since I was drawn here after my rebirth.}

    I remembered Brigid's words. How the froslass had attacked us without any hesitation. So then—

    {I do not know enough about myself or of the outside world to feel fear.} Pause. {When I coalesced, I pieced together what I knew of my existence, and I called myself Rousseau. I have the vaguest recollections of a past life. Now my tabula rasa. It is much easier to leave the slate blank, so I did. I do,} he lied.

    There was a long silence.

    We'd all been abandoned, in our own ways. I think, even now, that that was what had brought us together at first. The broken have a way of sensing their kin, no matter how many lies they tell. We could hide ourselves behind our respective walls—incessant sarcasm, unfeeling cocoon, bristling fur, coyish indifference—but the truth had a way of seeping out eventually.

    "Rousseau, can I ask you something?"

    {Fire away. We have no secrets here.}

    Goldenrod didn't have many ghosts; most of them were drawn to Ecruteak. I'd grown up on folk stories and urban legends that pokémon who died in battle became ghosts, but then again, I'd also heard that dark-types were soulless killers, so there was that. And I'd grown up since I'd left Goldenrod. I'd met a certain shopkeeper who'd told me something that—"Do you remember anything?" I asked at last. "When you were… you know. Not a ghost."

    A flash of fire, a candle in a dark room, and suddenly I realized what it must've felt like to be Bates, reaching out to a past that would never be remembered.

    The gastly cringed, and I suddenly realized how vulnerable he was here in the Tower, just like the rest of us, even if his smile could never fade, even if it could only hide the fangs for a moment. {Pieces.} A pause. {I had a good trainer, I think. One of the best. But…}

    But they let you die, I finished silently for him, because the gastly could not bring himself to say it. They let you come to this. "We shouldn't stay here," I said at last. That was all we could do at this point. At the top of the Tower, maybe, we could finally find some answers. And Iris.

    Even as I approached the stairway leading to the next floor, I knew what was coming next. There was only one left. "The next floor is mine. Let's see what they've got." When I turned back, the gastly was still floating, looking for something he would never find.

    They were anything but similar—how Iris lashed out at her illusions, how Rousseau sought them out eagerly, how Gaia had no choice but to sit and endure—but we were all the same. And I knew why.

    Once you stood in a dark place like this, the kind with shadows that couldn't be cast out no matter how brightly the Tower's core glowed, there would always be a small part of you in there, fighting. You carried a piece of that fight with you wherever you went, because you had no choice. You carried a piece of that room with you until you won.

    "Rousseau? C'mon. It's time to move on."

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    I had no better words for the mournful gastly who still drifted around the room, a leer fixed permanently to his face, trying to find proof in an empty room that he was still foolish enough to be alive.

    The fifth floor didn't quite contain what I was expecting.

    But I'd recognize that goddamn hair anywhere at this point.

    "No. This is stupid."

    At the base of the sprout's column, surrounded by a cloud of black smoke that contrasted wonderfully with his stupid white clothing, was Silver. His stupid abra floated beside him. And Iris wasn't anywhere in sight.

    "No," I was saying aloud, already taking strides even as I finished taking the spiral staircase two steps at a time. The blood was boiling in my ears. "There is no way that you're allowed to be my greatest fear. That isn't fair. No. No."

    He turned to face me, eyes narrowing in confusion, mouth opening for a response the illusion would never make sound for, but the image was too slow. My hand was already moving. I would turn the picture to dust and we would all move on. It was much easier to just punch him in the face and move on than to contemplate why in the world my greatest fear manifested itself as someone so random, especially since—

    "I met you, like, a week ago? This is the stupidest thing I've—"

    "What are you—"

    Silver, too, must've looked as confused as I did, as my hand did not pass through his face like it was supposed to, and instead landed, quite solidly, on his cheek. He did not vanish in a puff of black smoke like I had been expecting. A simple, quite clever deduction told me this meant he was the real thing.

    Ah. Well.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

     
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    • xii. the ceremony of innocence
    • ___________________________________________________________________________​
    chapter xii. the ceremony of innocence​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    “So, if I may ask,” my unofficial rival said, eyes sliding sideways to look at my hand. “Why are you stroking my cheek.” It wasn’t really a question.

    My hand was already flying back to my side and my brain was purging the relevant memories from existence. “I, um, thought you were a spectral projection of my worst nightmare caused by a bunch of vengeful spirits haunting the Tower?” It wasn’t really an answer, either.

    My words seemed to rouse him back into action, though. He shot a sharp look at his abra, which began zooming around the room, vanishing the reforming illusion in the back corner into a puff of black smoke. “She was right, you actually would show up in the Tower. But we aren’t doing this here,” Silver snapped, jamming his hands into his pockets and turning toward the stairs. “Let’s move out of here. Where’s your murkrow?”

    I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck slowly rising even as I could un-feel my toes going numb. “Hanging around the rafters somewhere,” I lied, trying to think of contingency plans to deal with his abra without Icarus. I stuck my hands into my jacket pockets as well; maybe he’d think I was reaching for a gun and would leave me alone. “He’ll mess up your shit if you try anything.”

    He didn’t even bother looking up; instead, he just sighed as if this was the most arduous part of his day. “Did you send him away on purpose or have you lost control of him already?”

    “Screw you.” Maybe I could just push past him and run up the Tower, leaving us both to the mercy of the ghosts higher up. “I can control him just fine.”

    “Look. I don’t want to repeat last time.” Silver raised his empty hands over his head, as if he thought that would help. As if I didn’t know how quickly things had escalated before. “I won’t do anything dumb if you don’t; I just want some answers. Let’s talk at the top.”

    We hadn’t exactly parted on good terms, and I doubted I could scrape another victory now. They’d probably find my corpse rotting here three months later with the rest of the ghosts. “You aren’t, uh, mad that I seriously debated killing you last week?”

    Silver looked over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised, with a dubious expression that I interpreted as saying, ‘Are you really trying to shoot yourself in the foot that badly?’ “I think we can agree that was a mistake for both of us,” he said instead. “Now, let’s get moving.”

    I frowned, piecing together the puzzle as quickly as I could. Apparently the heir to Team Rocket didn’t want me dead, which was a rather pleasant change of events from last time. However, the ghosts of this Tower did seem to have some malicious intent, so they were becoming the more pressing concern at this point. Another puzzle piece snapped into place. This Silver was real, and it wasn’t my floor, so—

    “This is your floor, isn’t it?” I said aloud, stopping where I stood. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the abra appearing around the room in flashes of blue light, clouds of black smoke trailing in its wake as it passed through the illusions before they could solidify. Whatever Silver was hiding here, he really didn’t want me to see. I was curious against my will. Somehow, seeing him here, covering up his fears—it made him seem less like the jackass who had tried to kill me and my pokémon, and more like the frightened kid kneeling in the dirt while I threatened to slash his throat.

    I couldn’t let myself forget that he was both, and it had taken him less than five seconds to disarm and threaten to kill me last time.

    “My floor?”

    “Rousseau can explain it better, but, um…” I trailed off, searching for words.

    {The residents of the Tower are projecting illusions of our fears,} the gastly interjected smoothly, perhaps sensing that I was about to say something conjecture-based and factually- incorrect (not that I would ever do such a thing). {Each floor, the ghosts show us what they think will make one of us the most afraid.}

    Silver did a little double-take, apparently noticing the gastly for the first time, and then raised his eyebrows and nodded to himself. “Okay. Well. Yeah, that actually fits in with the legends I’ve heard,” he said to himself, and then seemed to remember that he had an audience. “This is going to sound like a trap, but I don’t want to hurt you. I think we need to talk about some things.”

    “I don’t want you to hurt me either,” I remarked brightly, but I was painfully aware of how vulnerable I was—my party had dwindled down considerably since our last encounter. Given that Rousseau probably wouldn’t fight for me, I really only had Gaia. And, well, there wasn’t a tree in sight. I’d also promised Bates I wouldn’t do that again. “Also, uh, Admiral Ackbar sends his regards,” I couldn’t help but add.

    “Don’t start that. I just have to ask a few things about—”

    He said the word ‘ask’ in such a manner that I thought he probably meant ‘arrest’ or ‘punch’ or ‘shank,’ and given that he literally still carried wounds from our last encounter, I didn’t quite blame him.

    “—but not here. Next floor.”

    This was probably the fifth time he tried to get us to leave this floor. I wondered again what he was so desperate to hide. “No way in hell are we going upstairs for casual conversation, if that’s even what’s going down.” The next floor was probably mine, and if we weren’t going to talk while his psychic rat hid his greatest fears from me, we definitely weren’t going to do it while my nightmares had a playdate all around us. It was going to be distracting enough encountering whatever was up there, even without having Silver trying to do whatever Silver-y things he was talking about.

    Silver turned around, his face a mixture of sheer exasperation, anger, and a touch of shock. “I know you’re dense, but I’d hoped you wouldn’t be this stubborn when both of our lives are on the line.”

    “Evidently you’ve forgotten that the last time we met, you tried to cut my throat, kill my pokémon, and swore that your organization would hunt me down as I ran away.”

    “It was an empty threat, and if I recall correctly, you dropped a tree on Dante.” Silver’s voice was hard. Behind him, the abra stopped its work long enough to glare at me. Long enough for a hulking, dark figure to start rising up in one corner of the room before the abra blasted it back with a quick pulse of blue light.

    I cringed. “That was after, though,” I said in a small voice. “And abra heal fast.”

    “Yeah,” Silver muttered darkly. “Lucky, that. Given that the pokéballs are still down, I couldn’t have put him in stasis and he would’ve died if he couldn’t Recover.”

    There was another unspoken threat in that one, too—that the abra probably wouldn’t have been the only one to die that night, had anything truly bad happened.

    “Yeah. Um. Sorry about that.” As much as I wanted to antagonize his stupid face, I couldn’t help but notice the pressing facts: I didn’t have any battlers on hand. He had all the chips. And if he wasn’t going to force a conflict, well, it was best not to incite one on my end. The most pressing query of all, however: what answers was he possibly seeking from me?

    {What was Dante’s fear?} Gaia asked suddenly.

    Silver gave us a withering glare. “Getting a tree dropped on him by some random psycho and her caterpie.”

    “Hey! I’m not random!” I cried out, more out of indignation than anything else, and then my eyes widened as I understood Gaia’s intention. Because, asshole or not, Rocket or not, I had a few questions for this Silver kid as well, and talking peacefully with him wouldn’t be the worst thing I’d done all day. “Oh. She’s right. We can talk downstairs. Depending on how the tower rolls, it should be either Dante’s fear or Rousseau’s—”

    {I imagine a hundred philosophy lovers just rolled over in their graves at that one, ma chérie,} Rousseau commented dryly.

    “—and, uh, Rousseau’s fear landscape is actually a decent place to talk,” I called over my shoulder as I began descending back down the Tower that wanted us to climb it. I mean, it was that, or the Tower would give a hearty ‘screw you’ toward my attempts at peaceful compromise, and the floor beneath us would still be mine.

    “I have no idea what you just said.”

    I ignored him. I was focused on getting down the stairs in one piece, and not finding my worst nightmare on the other side. Not like focusing would really help that, but—

    We’d stepped back downstairs into an empty room. I exhaled out of relief. “Rousseau?”

    {Still mine, I think,} the little gastly confirmed, glancing around the blank pillar again and encountering nothing.

    “Okay,” I said, sighing and throwing my pack down so I could lean against the nearest wall and try to appear as comfortable as possible. I knew how to deal with situations like this. Show no fear. The Tower literally brought nightmares to light. Show no fear. Easier said than done. “How exactly is this going to work? We’re just going to sit here and trust each other?”

    Silver sat down across from me, so that was at least step one. “Something like that. If you try anything dumb,” he said, looking at me warily, “Dante will—”

    “—do something unsavory, okay, okay, I get it.” I honestly had to stop getting held up by people with super-powerful pokémon; it was getting quite distracting. But Silver hadn’t attacked me yet. This is the key mantra that had earned me Icarus’s trust, and I was going to fall back on it now. Whether or not it was because he thought I had some ‘answers,’ which I probably didn’t, was a question for a different time. I sighed and slid down the wall so I was sitting across from him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I muttered.

    One of his eyebrows quirked again. “That’s a lie.” His voice was calm and brokered no room for argument.

    I scowled. “Fine. I’m not going to hurt you if you don’t hurt me first,” I said, and waited for him to challenge that. He didn’t. “What do you want from me?”

    Silver exhaled slowly, one hand drifting to his abra even as his eyes drifted around to study the empty room around us. “I’m not sure,” he said at last. “I know that our first encounter was—”

    “The scariest goddamn moment in my life?”

    “—less than ideal, yeah.” Distractedly, he ran a hand through his hair. The next most logical thought, of course, involved some jealousy at wherever he was able to take frequent showers, and some admiration for his preferred brand of conditioner.

    I shrugged. “Sorry. I was having a rough day.”

    Both the abra and its trainer turned to look at us simultaneously. “You were having a rough day?” Silver asked, sounding dubious to the point of disbelief. Almost comedically, the abra and trainer looked back at each other, and then back at us. “And you don’t even think you’re lying about that.”

    I blinked, unsure of which part of my statement was so confusing.

    {You were having a rough day?} the abra repeated on its trainer’s behalf.

    I snorted. “Uh, yeah,” I said, looking back to Gaia for some sort of reassurance. Unfortunately, seeing as she was quite immobile, I couldn’t replicate their look-at-your-starter-then-back-at-me performance very well. “My bus was late, I didn’t have proper change for my fare, and—and, oh, I got myself a starter that wanted to kill me, said starter basically prevented me from ever being a normal trainer, and then I became a public enemy of Team Rocket, which probably means I’ll never see my mother or anyone else I ever cared about again,” I said, counting off the events on my fingers before trailing off. “That was before I almost got gutted by my starter and had a knife put to my throat. It was a bit of a rough day.”

    I waited for his response for a lot longer than I’d expected.

    The disbelief hadn’t fully faded from Silver’s face when he finally spoke. His breathing was a little uneasy. “My father’s organization was targeted by terrorists, which lead to the power grid exploding—which isn’t supposed to happen; we have precautions for it and they were all compromised—which lead to our Executives getting attacked by nightmares we haven’t seen for a decade, suggestions that malevolent ghosts have returned to Johto, and I also lost access to most of my team to defend myself in the aftermath. And that was just Tuesday.”

    I raised my hands defensively. “Hey. Magnarok was my problem too.” Bates had a point; the name really did roll off the tongue if you didn’t think about it for too long.

    Rousseau frowned. {Magnarok? Like the World of—no, wait, Johto’s crisis. I understand.}

    I’d never been prouder of that gastly.

    The look Silver gave the two of us was so pained I may as well have told him I believed the Breloominati were real. In fact, my stupidity was so massive that he completely forgot what he was saying in favor of: “You can’t possibly call the magnetic apocalypse ‘Magnarok.’ Do you realize how ridiculous—”

    There was something more pressing than my penchant for borrowing terrible naming schemes, though, something that had just triggered in the back of my mind. “Magnarok was caused by terrorists?”

    Silver closed his mouth while we both realized he’d said too much. He looked back to the abra, his brow furrowed, and I assumed some sort of communication passed between them, because the abra quickly said, {Team Rocket does not acknowledge any external threats that would cause any sort of magnetic apocalypse.} It was very careful to stress the last two words.

    “Magnarok,” I corrected, just to get the point across, and they both glared at me. I desperately wanted to ask more about whoever had brought the power grid down—what kind of suicidal group of people would pick a fight against Team Rocket? The same idiots who were willing to sacrifice the entire grid, I supposed. The hard look on Silver’s face, however, told me that those answers weren’t coming out today.

    {I think their point is that you’re preaching to the choir about having it rough,} Gaia offered.

    I pretended not to hear her, though. It was a lot easier to act like I was the only one who had a rough day when everything went to shit, even though basically every interaction I’d had with a living being since then (Bates, Gaia, Iris, Rousseau, and now even Silver) had turned into some ploy for me to pity them. All that considered, though, Silver might’ve been one of the few people (besides Ariana. Oops) who’d had it worse this week than I had. All of his life’s work collapsing around him, getting beaten up by a caterpie, and even if— “Wait. What do you mean, you lost access to your team? Your abra’s right there.”

    I would’ve had a more receptive and believing audience had I tried to explain that grass was blue. Silver sat for a moment, his mouth open with no words coming out, and I watched him struggle to think of the appropriate thing to say. “Are you dense? Dante isn’t my only pokémon,” he managed at last.

    I mentally kicked myself, given that I was holding, sitting next to, chasing, and ditching pokémon in the woods that weren’t my starters. Granted, Rousseau wasn’t mine at all, and I figured it was pretty unnatural for trainers to have a team of four before their first gym badge, but—

    “I’ve been officially licensed for over six years,” Silver said, having slowed his speech to the point that I’d seen slugma move faster. “And I’ve been around pokémon basically since birth thanks to my father, who happens to head the most powerful organization in Johto. You honestly thought I was just running around at my age doing work for Team Rocket with a newborn abra and a shitty knife?”

    Now it was my turn to gape at him. “When we battled on the route to Cherrygrove—”

    {I told you she was really this dense,} the abra muttered snidely.

    “The pokéballs have been down,” Silver explained, trying to sound patient and clearly failing. “The other two on my team, including my long-distance teleporter, are stuck in stasis in their balls until I can get back to Goldenrod and get them out again. Dante can handle most of the things that come our way, so I have it better than most, but it’s been rough.”

    In hindsight, this explained a lot, like how his abra was so good at fighting, or how it had already learned TM’s, or really how Silver had behaved like he was leagues better than me when— clearly, he was.

    Huh. It seemed like I’d made a lot of poorly-informed decisions last week.

    “What, and next you’re going to tell me that you’re not the heir to Team Rocket,” I muttered. “Don’t tell me I screwed that one up too.”

    There was an awkward silence.

    “What?” I asked, and then instantly wished I hadn’t.

    {You told him not to tell you.} The abra looked about as amused as I was, which is to say, not very much.

    Well, shit.

    “The blatant favoritism in the old system—Elm giving out rare pokémon to his chosen few, gyms and Elite positions being passed down through families, and trainer licenses being affordable only to the wealthy—were some of the key principles that Team Rocket strove to destroy when we took over,” Silver said at last. I recognized that exact sentence from one of my history books, but I didn’t interrupt him. “We wanted to give Johto back to her people, so we tore down the old ways and rebuilt the system based on merit. We believe in survival of the fittest. If you prove yourself strong enough to be a Gym Leader, Elite, Champion, whatever, then we give you the position, no questions asked. Team Rocket’s leadership functions the exact same way. My father’s job will go to whomever has proven themselves most fit.”

    “I’m sure Daddy gave you a head start, though,” I couldn’t help but add snidely.

    Wrong move. I flinched as his hand curled into a tight fist around the handle of his backpack. “Daddy,” he said in a careful, controlled voice, “ensured that I was a rival to all of his Executives the minute I was born. I had no other career path than to follow in his shadow. Archer first tried to kill me when I was six, and when I told my father, he told me I should’ve expected it and that I needed to toughen the fuck up.”

    Huh. I might’ve actually just met someone who had father issues that rivaled my own.

    Silver rested his other hand, the one that wasn’t strangling his backpack, on his outstretched knees and looked up into the rafters. His expression was unreadable. “I’m not going to just walk into that office one day and take his chair without a fight. When I do, I will have to be the very best, like no one else.”

    I fished around for a more cheerful topic that wouldn’t end with my face getting pummeled into the floor. For all the bad choices I’d made in this conversation so far, and my interactions with Silver in general, I probably couldn’t do worse than what I’d done already. “Six years, huh?” I glanced at the metapod in my arms, and then back at the trainer in front of me. “So your Gift manifested?”

    “Not fully.” I had a feeling that, given our current vein of conversation, I wasn’t going to get elaborate answers.

    Still, I was curious. They said that after living among the ghosts for so long, Ecruteak’s gym leader had developed the Gift to commune with them. Pryce had been reported to make it rain snow on his foes, although that had taken him decades to master. Daisy, the aptly-named girl in my Pokémon Anatomy class whom the xatu had given an oddish (who’d evolved into a vileplume by then) had been suspiciously good at growing plants when she’d visited home last year. “Then what has six years of training with your psychics given you?”

    Another perk of living in a Rocket psychic-dictatorship, and a really tempting reason to wander the wilderness at the age of ten—the xatu could determine a starter that would literally give you minor superpowers if you spent enough time working together. We’d discovered something with our training system—it wasn’t just the pokémon that got stronger, although the growth of the trainer was a lot more subtle. A newborn oddish could already throw down seedlings at will, but it took Daisy four years of constant symbiotic training to get a quasi-green thumb. You could only do so much when humans weren’t designed to be conduits of indescribable power, after all. But some people hit the elemental jackpot. If you were linked to psychics—

    “Lie detection,” Silver said evenly, eyes settling back on me. “In a world full of psychics, not the most useful of powers.”

    Huh. Not useful in his eyes, but that did make things a lot more inconvenient for me. Unconsciously, I began mentally going through all of our conversations, wondering if he’d ever pretended to believe me on something. And then I considered a few other things, and a way to fact-check. “That’s a gateway into empathy or telepathy, though.”

    Silver looked surprised. In his defense, it was probably the most intelligent-sounding thing he’d heard me say. Like, ever.

    “My Childhood Aptitude Tests were pointing me toward a psychic, grass, or flying-affinity, so I ended up researching some of the things that could develop from that before I left,” I said, raising my hands in the air defensively. “And sometimes I actually know things.”

    “The xatu gave you a murkrow after your CAT’s flipped psychic?” Silver asked.

    My eyes narrowed. “You tell me.”

    Pause.

    His eyes narrowed. “Well-played.”

    He didn’t seem terribly adverse to my fake-lie, and he’d seen through a lot of my real-lies pretty easily, which at least somewhat suggested that he could sense that I was telling the truth. Interesting. Ideally, I’d figure out a way to make it out of the Tower alive and would never see Silver again thereafter, but if our paths crossed again, I’d have to watch my tongue.

    A second realization hit me. With only Gaia and maybe a gastly on my side, I didn’t stand a chance against whatever was trying to lure us to the top, let alone Silver. It would probably be beneficial for my short-term survival to keep Silver around, even if I was screwing myself over in the long-term. It wasn’t like planning was really my strong suit.

    {Your Gift is already fairly impressive for such little time,} the abra remarked. Its tail flicked through the air.

    My reply was on reflex. “It hasn’t manifested yet; I got my starter a week ago.”

    The abra and its trainer exchanged a knowing look. Something significant had just happened, and I had no idea what.

    I frowned. I didn’t have a Gift, as far as I knew.

    Then again, my basic knowledge of telepathic principles told me that it only counted as a lie if the speaker believed it was true.

    Was this a test? Had I failed?

    “Well-played,” I muttered darkly. I could only be clever for so long.

    Current theory: I had manifested a minor Gift, Silver knew about it, and I didn’t. But—

    Gaia broke into my train of thought. {If you’ve been together so long that Silver has part of his Gift, if we were so outmatched, how did Icarus win against Dante?} Gaia asked.

    The answer was immediate, too fast and too certain for a lie: {Because we wanted to lose,} the abra said as it floated calmly alongside its master, its voice betraying nothing. {Silver wanted to test a theory.}

    “What,” I said flatly. And then: “Why?”

    There was a long pause.

    “I think,” Silver said at last, choosing his words carefully, “that there’s a lot they haven’t told you.”

    I found myself holding on just a little tighter to Gaia. My foundation. “Um. Okay.”

    The abra looked expectantly at its trainer, and I could sense a nonverbal conversation going on between them, one that quickly devolved. “You do it,” Silver hissed aloud.

    {Not my job. This was your idea.}

    “But—”

    {Nope.}

    “Fine.” Silver paused, fishing carefully for his words. “Before he died, the xatu spoke of an ancient darkness being unleashed upon Johto again, the kind that we haven’t seen for years.” Another pause. Silver took a deep breath and steeled himself. “There’s no way to prove it, but clearly you and the xatu have some sort of connection, and he knows a lot more about you than he let on. He claimed you were marked to him, which is why he broke a decade’s worth of tradition and was willing to die just to give you this starter, to mark you in return. And what he said after—” Looking like he would rather individually rip off his toenails than say this, he said, “We think you’ve, well—” he cleared his throat uneasily “—been possessed by a ghost. Possibly several.” He finished his sentence so quickly that I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly.

    {He thinks,} Dante added quickly.

    “Sorry, what?” I’d been expecting an absurd variety of responses, but that certainly hadn’t been up there. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rousseau flinch. “Why the hell would you—”

    {I told you she wouldn’t take it well.} The abra tilted its head to one side, studying me carefully.

    “That’s completely unfounded bullshit,” I spluttered at last, remembering the hissing monk downstairs. “Here, you can lie detect me. I am not possessed by a ghost. Or several ghosts.”

    Silver sighed and interlaced his fingers beneath his chin. “You wouldn’t be aware of possession, so you’d think you’re telling the truth regardless.”

    I knew that. We both knew that. But I was panicking now, overlooking the obvious facts in favor of the easier answer. I thought of the sage downstairs. “Look. I don’t know much about ghosts, but side effects of possession include hissing maniacally, turning into smoke, being dead—”

    “Being drawn to the Tower, sporadic fits of uncontrolled violence with no previous history, memory loss, and attracting fellow ghosts to you,” Silver said smoothly, with a pointed glare at Rousseau. He studied the gastly a moment longer before turning back to me. “Ghosts rarely show themselves to the living, unless it is to battle or to feed.”

    “I didn’t know that ghosts could possess the living.” I didn’t know that ghosts could possess the dead, either; long-forgotten lessons from school were starting to come rushing back. Ghosts were honestly quite uncommon in Johto; outside of the Towers and the occasional type-specialist, they weren’t a frequent sight. Bates’s litwick had been the first ghost I’d seen in years.

    “They rarely take a living host, but it’s not unheard of.” He met my eyes. “Ever felt like you were watching yourself hurt people and you couldn’t do anything about it? Your body would’ve seemed cold and distant, like it wasn’t even yours.”

    ‘No,’ I began indignantly, and then stopped. I knew that cold feeling he was talking about.

    Escaping from New Bark by mauling Ariana. Calling Icarus off of her. Reacting to Silver’s abra taking down Icarus. Commanding Gaia to drop a tree on them. Cutting Silver’s face. And—

    Silver reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife, flicking it open in a casual motion. Another moment, and the abra had teleported it half an inch in front of my face, right between my eyes.

    Panic was setting in, quickly numbed by cold and calculation. Our truce was over, then. My eyes narrowed and I was already running through options. Abra had fast reaction times, so it’d have to be put off guard quickly before it pushed the blade through my skull. I tapped one finger on the ground, pointing it toward the abra. Gaia wouldn’t be able to do anything in time, but I could get Rousseau to—

    Thankfully, the gastly understood and surged forward. My vision blurred as my head ducked sideways even as Rousseau began lobbing a tendril of darkness toward the abra, who had to relinquish control of the knife so it could defend itself. My hand grabbed the hilt out of the air, letting Gaia slip behind me as my feet surged forward, covering the distance between us in three smooth steps so the blade was pointing back at his face.

    “We promised to keep this civil,” my voice growled, jabbing at him a little to get the point across better. “You want another scar to match the first?”

    The abra blasted Rousseau back with a wave of blue light, pointed one paw at me, and teleported the knife out of my grasp and into Silver’s outstretched hand.

    They were stronger than expected. Maybe we could—

    “This is what I was talking about,” Silver said in a quiet, almost sad voice as he also stood up and began dusting himself off airily. He motioned with three fingers to his abra, which stopped trying to dissolve Rousseau in an instant. “How much of that were you actually aware of?”

    I was shaking my head. The panic began to set in as the numbness wore off. I was aware that I was breathing heavily, and I took several staggering steps backward so I could lean against the wall next to Gaia. “What?”

    Slowly, Silver snapped the knife back shut and put it back in his pocket. “Ghosts typically assert themselves when the host is too emotionally unstable to suppress them.”

    “I’ve been angry without literally turning into a monster before,” I said, trying to sound calm and failing.

    “You wouldn’t remember.” Silver didn’t let me finish my thoughts. “But that’s why Dante didn’t support my idea at first. He was focused on the murkrow when you two attacked Ariana, but I was looking at you. Your eyes changed.” Silver shook his head. “So later, when we tried to piss you off that entire fight and nothing happened, Dante almost convinced me you were just some idiot who’d panicked. I thought maybe almost losing would trigger it, or even winning, but that didn’t happen. You react like anyone else with an extremely short fuse and lack of intelligent planning—”

    “Was that really necessary?”

    “—but it’s when your life is threatened that you start to lose it, isn’t it?” he finished softly, raising one eyebrow as he studied me. “That’s when the gloves come off and you start ordering your caterpie to kill.”

    One of the things on Silver’s list of nightmarish things that happened to him last Tuesday was the return of ghosts to Johto. One of the things on that list might’ve been me.

    Silver bit his lip. The asshole almost sounded sad when he added, “And I’ve heard—from a source that I’m very inclined to believe—that if I entered here, today, I would find a possessed human trapped in the Tower.”

    I bristled. “What source would tell you that?”

    He glanced at his abra for advice before saying, “The Celebi.”

    I couldn’t help it. “The Forest Queen?” I asked, in case there was another one and this was all a misunderstanding.

    He nodded.

    Holy shit.

    Three weeks ago, after I’d already made up my mind that I would have to start my journey, I’d gotten a call from a number I didn’t recognize. It turned out it was Daisy’s mother, telling me that Daisy had been brutally injured in a training accident up in the Ice Path. She wasn’t conscious, but surely she would appreciate it if I visited her in the hospital before I left.

    That whole time, as I’d picked nervously at the denim of my jeans until I thought I would chafe my fingers raw, I couldn’t think about Daisy. I felt bad about that, because she was the one with the collapsed lung, four broken ribs, and a coma. She couldn’t hear me anyway, which was a blessing, but I kept thinking about how, in a couple of weeks, I would be next. I knew that was the wrong focus, and that I should’ve been thinking about my injured classmate, but I couldn’t do it. The guilt, the denial, the sickening feeling that something was wrong with me, tasted like bile.

    The toxic feeling of the revulsion forcing its way back up my throat returned to me now. One, the Forest Queen was on my long list of things I was a threat to, which was already quite lengthy. And two, there was a mounting pile of evidence that I was in way over my head.

    I wanted to vomit.

    No, what I really wanted was to find enough evidence to empirically shred his assertion. So I could, you know, prove that I was just an asshole who wanted to survive, not an idiot possessed by ghosts. Honestly, when you put it that way—

    It still wasn’t better to be possessed, no. I’d take being an asshole any day, so long as my actions were my own.

    I realized Silver was watching me. His gaze was almost sympathetic.

    Without taking my eyes off of him, and through the nausea that threatened to overwhelm me, I leaned down to pick up Gaia. I had a feeling that the time for sitting and trusting each other was over. “Say you’re right and I’m possessed,” I began uncertainly. “Which I’m not, by the way, but if we’re just being hypothetical here.” I stopped and took a breath. I wasn’t going to believe this until there was literally no other options left. “Why me? And what now?”

    Silver sighed and swung his backpack onto his shoulders. He studied me for a moment longer, and then turned his gaze upward, toward the rafters of the empty room that reflected Rousseau’s fears, toward the top of the Tower. “That’s what I wanted to find out.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

     
    Last edited:
    • house of spirits
    • ___________________________________________________________________________​
    house of spirits​
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    “So this is how it’s going to go down,” I muttered as I swung my backpack on and adjusted my grip on Gaia. “You don’t want me to see what’s on your floor, and I don’t want you to see what’s on mine.” I probably should’ve known better even before I said it. “So let’s just run really, really quickly through both of them.”

    {Actually, we want to see what’s on your floor,} the abra said, casually floating up alongside me.

    “Or if you even have a floor at all,” Silver added, moving toward the stairs. “The ghosts may not antagonize their own.”

    “We were just on the gastly’s floor,” I said, inclining my head toward Rousseau. “His fear is, uh, complicated, but…” I didn’t really know what else to say, except: “And for the love of gods, I’m not a vessel for an undead spirit.” Huh. That was a sentence I’d never expected to say in my life.

    “You’re taking this recent development quite well.” Silver’s voice was casual, but I could see his eyes narrow from the corner of my vision.

    “Because I don’t think it’s true,” I replied tersely. “You could’ve told me that I’m a time-travelling four hundred foot purple psyduck with pink horns and silver wings and that would be just as ridiculous.”

    {We think your floor will be very telling, regardless,} the abra said hesitantly.

    “Too bad. I think your floor would be very telling as well, but I respect your personal secrets, so I’m not going to force you to show it to me. Let’s just skip them both.” I tightened my grip on Gaia.

    Silver shrugged and then tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing. “Okay, fine. We want to see what’s on your floor, and Dante has already shown that he can subdue you and both of your pokémon in under thirty seconds. Fifteen, if we’re being honest.” His hand drifted toward his pocket, an unspoken but clear threat. “As you can see so far, we’d much rather not, but—”

    Ass. “Fine." I folded my arms and planted my feet. “Then I’m not going. Trust me, I have far better things to do here then escort you through my nightmares.”

    Without warning, the central pillar began to glow a blinding green, so bright that it washed out my vision and left me seeing spots. There was a distant rumbling from the top of the tower, and I felt a light breeze ruffle my hair. As I blinked away the last of the light, I looked around in confusion, trying to place the source of the disturbance, but I saw nothing. The room looked otherwise unchanged. “What was that?”

    “We’re going to find out.”

    I was still being held hostage here, effectively, although our friendly conversation had almost allowed me to forget that. I realized that my previous analysis was flawed: Silver and his abra were treating me like I was made out of glass, but not because I was something to be pitied. It was because I was something to be afraid of: they didn’t want to see what would come out if I broke. I took a deep breath. “Thirty seconds, and I don’t have to tell you anything about what it means.” Hopefully I ended up getting something indecipherable like Gaia’s meadow of flowers or Rousseau’s empty room, and Silver could puzzle through that until the end of time. The fingernails of my free hand, the one that wasn’t holding Gaia, dug into my palm. “Are you going to lead the way, then?”

    “And invite you to literally stab me in the back? Nice try, but I don’t think so.”

    Whatever witty retort I had died in my throat as I realized numbly the only floor left was mine. As I looked around, the pain in my jaw receding in the wake of the fear that was rising up in my stomach, I began mentally counting to thirty.

    It was completely empty.

    I held Gaia tighter and clenched my free hand into a fist so no one could see my fingers tremble.

    “You have the same floor as the gastly,” Silver remarked, peering into the corners closest to him and then checking the rafters. He paused to look back at me, his expression unreadable. “I thought I saw a flicker earlier, but…”

    I’d seen the flicker too, actually. As if the room had been trying to decide, and it had settled on this. On nothing. Was this intentional? At least Silver didn’t know the significance of an empty room. I looked to Rousseau for reassurance, but he had been disturbingly quiet since this entire topic of conversation had started.

    {Perhaps her fear is having the same floor as a ghost, stemming from this newfound paranoia that she could be possessed,} Gaia suggested.

    {Perhaps our theory is simply right,} the abra shot back snidely. {Have you grown attached to your trainer so soon?}

    “Perhaps,” I began, desperate to stop this fight before it started, and then I trailed off.

    I’d never believed in fortune-tellers for one key reason: they showed you vague images, and let your imagination fill in the rest. Perhaps the ghosts had shown Gaia a meadow full of flowers arbitrarily, or Iris’s room full of her kin, or the empty room that was Rousseau’s, and my pokémon had extrapolated a fear out of that because that was what they’d been expecting to see.

    But as I looked to the shadows at the back of the room, barely illuminated by the central pillar, those theories were completely dashed. Whatever was behind this wasn’t creating images at random. It knew, without a doubt. It knew.

    Silver followed my gaze.

    Through the deafening roar in my ears and the increasing pressure against my forehead, I formed a single, coherent thought: at least it exists. More evidence that I was myself. I clung to that thought like it was a lifeline and I the hapless sailor, drowning at sea.

    “What is that?” I heard Silver asking, but I shook my head.

    It was gathered in one enormous lump by the base of a ladder, with a salty tang so strong I could taste it on the roof of my mouth even where I stood. I stared at it, the revulsion gathering in my throat as I watched it bleb across the floor, but—

    “Heck if I know,” I said, answering Silver’s question once I recovered from the shock. I honestly had no idea what it was. It looked like a giant bead of water, but large enough that I could probably fit inside if I crouched.

    {Awww, crap,} Rousseau said, floating up behind me. {I think I know what’s going on.}

    A disembodied voice echoed from the rafters. {Foolssssss!} it hissed to no one in particular, enough anger in its timbre that I could feel the floorboards shuddering in response. {I sssssaid ‘make an illussssssion of her greatest fearsssss, not tearsssss!}

    “What.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    Silver followed my gaze.

    Through the deafening roar in my ears and the increasing pressure against my forehead, I formed a single, coherent thought: at least it exists. More evidence that I was myself. I clung to that thought like it was a lifeline and I the hapless sailor, drowning at sea.

    “What is that?” I heard Silver asking, but I shook my head.

    “I…” I trailed off.

    Whatever I was going to say next was washed out by a wave of eardrum-shattering music, the first sound I’d heard from the Tower. I shied back as my vision was assaulted by blazing lights that changed colors at frequencies too fast for my brain to match, and the sticky, thick scent of fermentation washed over us. Figures sprang into existence around us, some wildly dancing in horrid attempts at rhythm to the music, some crouched on the ground frantically reading books that were at least five inches thick, some despondently eating noodles out of tiny cups. Somewhere, there was an obligatory reference to the sensual consumption of ramen.

    {Greatest yearssss?} the disembodied voice shouted, bordering on disbelief. {Are you kidding?}

    “I peak in college?” I said in horror, spinning around and, fascinated against my will with an image of my older self collapsed against a whiteboard with a half-scrawled cloud of numbers and Greek symbols. “Seriously?”

    “This is how you imagine college?” Silver asked, his expression bordering on amusement and pity. I followed his gaze to see a girl curled up in a tiny bed, staring listlessly at a computer screen.

    {Is that a funnel?} Gaia said from my arms. {And they’re putting it—}

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    Silver followed my gaze.

    Through the deafening roar in my ears and the increasing pressure against my forehead, I formed a single, coherent thought: at least it exists. More evidence that I was myself. I clung to that thought like it was a lifeline and I the hapless sailor, drowning at sea.

    “What is that?” I heard Silver asking, but I shook my head.

    I could smell it from where I stood, but I’d have to be dead not to. My shoes seemed to stick to the floor, trapped in a fine layer of whatever the stuff was, and I could see the sparkling amber droplets glowing slightly green against the floorboards. I leaned down to scrape my finger against some of the liquid on the floor, and I tentatively put a drop on my tongue before my eyes slipped to the barrel at the back of the room, where more of it undoubtedly was.

    “Greatest beers?” I asked no one in particular. “Seriously?”

    Silence.

    "Well, it does bring some new meaning to the whole 'Tower of spirits' thing," I said after some reflection.

    {Head hurtsssss,} said the disembodied voice plaintively. {Thinking hurtssss.}

    Silver frowned. “Go home; you’re drunk.”

    My eyes brightened, and I perked up. I think Gaia could tell what I was planning, because she began a frantic, {No, no, no, no—}

    “Heaven forgive them, and heaven forgive us all,” I said, reaching into my pocket and fumbling around for my sunglasses.

    Silver must’ve caught on then as well, because his head spun around and he began: “Don’t you dare say what I think—”

    I put on my shades, gloriously unaware of whatever drinking age had been arbitrarily set in a country where preteens were given licenses to roam around with living flamethrowers. “Some rise by gin, and some by choujiu fall.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    Silver followed my gaze.

    Through the deafening roar in my ears and the increasing pressure against my forehead, I formed a single, coherent thought: at least it exists. More evidence that I was myself. I clung to that thought like it was a lifeline and I the hapless sailor, drowning at sea.

    “What is that?” I heard Silver asking, but I shook my head.

    A grid loomed above us, spanning from the floorboards to the rafters, with circles periodically marked every few rows.

    “My gods,” I said, utterly horrified.

    {Yessssss,} the disembodied voice said. {Your true fearssssss…}

    The words almost clogged my throat. I could hardly voice them; they were that terrible and inconceivable. My greatest fear. “Regular updates.”

    ___________________________________________________________________________​


    Contrary to logical belief, this isn't actually the drunk chapter, but it may as well be. Full credit to Aether for coining some rise by gin as canon.

    ...April Fool's, yo.
     
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    • xiii. things fall apart
    • ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter xiii. things fall apart    ​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    “So this is how it’s going to go down,” I muttered as I swung my backpack on and adjusted my grip on Gaia. “You don’t want me to see what’s on your floor, and I don’t want you to see what’s on mine.” I probably should’ve known better even before I said it. “So let’s just run really, really quickly through both of them.”

    {Actually, we want to see what’s on your floor,} the abra said, casually floating up alongside me.

    “Or if you even have a floor at all,” Silver added, moving toward the stairs. “The ghosts may not antagonize their own.”

    “This is the gastly’s floor.” I inclined my head toward Rousseau. “His fear is, uh, complicated, but he had a floor just like everyone else.” I didn’t really know what else to say, except: “And for the love of gods, I’m not a vessel for an undead spirit.” Huh. That was a sentence I’d never expected to say in my life.

    “You’re taking this recent development quite well.” Silver’s voice was casual, but I could see his eyes narrow from the corner of my vision.

    “Because I don’t think it’s true,” I replied tersely. “You could’ve told me that I’m a time-travelling four hundred foot purple psyduck-ursaring with pink horns and silver wings because of some circumstantial evidence you found, but I’m not going to accept that as fact just because you said it. And besides,” I added, even though some internal voice of mine was screaming caution, caution, don’t open up to him like this, “you’re a week late. The xatu basically told me he thought I was destined for the unspeakable when he gave me Icarus, but that doesn’t mean I have to listen.”

    “I suppose,” Silver said, uncharacteristically quiet, but he refused to meet my eyes.

    Through it all, although they seemed intent on thwarting my every request, Silver and his abra were treating me like I was made of glass, like I was something to be pitied. Compared to the harshness of our last encounter, this was downright strange. {We think your floor will be very telling, regardless,} the abra said hesitantly.

    “Too bad. I think his floor would be very telling as well, but I respect your personal secrets, so I’m not going to force you to show it to me since, clearly, none of us want to. Let’s just skip them both.” I tightened my grip on Gaia.

    Silver shrugged and then tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing. “Okay, fine. We want to see what’s on your floor, and Dante has already proved that he can subdue you and both of your pokémon in thirty seconds. Fifteen, if we’re being honest.” His hand drifted toward his pocket, an unspoken but clear threat. “As you can see so far, we’d much rather not, but…” He trailed off, letting me fill in the blanks myself.

    Of course he would see this as justified. If anything, he probably thought he was helping me. But gods knew he wasn’t. “Fine.” I folded my arms and planted my feet. “Then I’m not going. Trust me, I have far better things to do here then escort you through my nightmares.”

    Without warning and as if on cue, the rafters let down a flurry of dust onto our heads. There was a distant rumbling from the top of the tower, and I felt a light breeze ruffle my hair. As I blinked away my confusion, I waited for Rousseau’s floor to spawn demons, but I saw nothing. The room looked otherwise unchanged. “What was that?”

    “What we’re going to find out, if you would stop getting in the way.”

    There was something deeper afoot. But I was still being held hostage here, effectively, although semi-friendly conversation had almost allowed me to forget that. I realized that my previous analysis was flawed: Silver and his abra were treating me like I was made out of glass, but not because I was something to be pitied, but because I was something to be afraid of: they didn’t want to see what would come out if I broke. I took a deep breath. “You get two minutes, and I don’t have to tell you anything about what it means.” Hopefully I ended up getting something indecipherable like Gaia’s meadow of flowers or Rousseau’s empty room, and Silver could puzzle through that until the end of time.

    “Agreed, on the incredibly clear condition that we aren’t stopping on my floor.”

    “But—”

    Silver’s response was immediate, the hard glint not fully gone from his eyes. “It’s not negotiable. Dante will literally force you up the stairs with telekinesis if he has to. Also, I’ll probably punch you in the face.”

    His tone left no room for argument, and I didn’t know how to start a debate anyhow. The fingernails of my free hand, the one that wasn’t holding Gaia, dug into my palm. “Are you going to lead the way, then?”

    “And invite you to literally stab me in the back? Nice try, but I don’t think so.”

    Funny how threatening to kill someone really bombed your chances of befriending them in the future. Not like the heir to—erm, a person who worked for Team Rocket and might one day become its leader through hard work rather than nepotism—and the idiot with the dark-type starter who might one day undo them would really get along anyway. I sighed and began walking toward the spiral staircase leading up, Silver and his abra trailing behind me. “I’m curious, though,” I said as we walked, desperate to lighten the mood somehow. “What did you see on the first few floors? We had one floor for each of us, but there’s only two of you.”

    Silver’s brow creased. “What floor are we on?”

    “Fifth,” I said as I finished climbing the spiral staircase and set foot on Silver’s floor. “Why?”

    “From the outside, Sprout Tower has three floors and an attic.” Silver proceeded to push me toward the next set of stairs, steering us around the glowing central pillar as his abra began dissolving the illusions with blasts of psychic energy before they could form. “This is our third floor, you’ve been on five, and, if those stairs are anything to go off of, there’s another one coming up.”

    I frowned, suddenly entertained and simultaneously terrified by the idea. Entertained, because this seemed like one of those times that I tricked Atlas into trying to catch his own tail, and terrified, because this seemed like one of those times that I tricked Atlas into trying to catch his own tail. And Atlas, well, wasn’t exactly the sharpest bulb in the toolshed, and—

    I honestly hadn’t intended to turn around. I hadn’t. Despite my distaste for Silver and what he was making me do right now, I didn’t want to make him suffer even though he was forcing me to. I wasn’t about to make him unveil his deepest fears to me. He wasn’t my pokémon; he wasn’t my friend; he wasn’t under any obligation to do that for me, even if he would do it to me in a heartbeat. Call it kindness.

    Okay, call it what it really was—a tiny attempt at penance for dropping a tree on his pokémon and cutting up his face, but the point remained.

    But what I saw, even for just that half second, made me turn and look without thinking.

    The hair was a different color from what I was used to, but I definitely saw a flash of myself running behind the central pillar away from—

    Without skipping a beat, he was gone again. The nice, courteous kid who’d almost managed to convince me that he felt sorry for me and held my best interests mildly close at hand vanished, and the asshole who’d jumped me in the middle of the woods and had his abra almost kill Icarus was back. Silver punched me in the jaw, knocking me over and completely breaking my focus from everything besides mitigating the enormous blast of pain coming from my head without dropping Gaia.

    “Dante,” I heard him say curtly, and then I felt the soft tug of a psychic as I was lifted by the straps of my backpack and unceremoniously dragged up the stairs. “You saw nothing,” he snarled in a voice that left no room for argument.

    Did I scare him? So much so that the floor dedicated to his darkest secret had me in it? Part of me felt guilty for looking at his floor, and the other part—perhaps the one closer to the bruise forming on my jaw—reminded me that he was still a violent, manipulative douche who was forcing me to allow him to witness me at my most vulnerable, and that our trust was set to fall apart at any moment. “At least you keep your promises,” I muttered as I was deposited gently on the next floor, rubbing my jaw gingerly and trying to puzzle through what I had just seen. Was he the nice kid who only became an asshole when he had to, or was he the asshole who only became a nice kid when it benefited him? And how in the world did this tie back to me? I let the calculation run in the back of my mind.

    “One of us has to,” Silver said, stopping short and looking around.

    Whatever witty retort I had died in my throat as I realized numbly the only floor left was mine. As I looked around, the pain in my jaw receding in the wake of the fear that was rising up in my stomach, I began mentally counting to one hundred and twenty. Two minutes. I didn’t even have to look if I didn’t want to, but I knew already that I was as doomed as Odysseus was with his sirens.

    It was completely empty.

    I held Gaia tighter and clenched my free hand into a fist so no one could see my fingers tremble.

    “You have the same floor as the gastly,” Silver remarked, peering into the corners closest to him and then checking the rafters. He paused to look back at me, his expression unreadable. “I thought I saw a flicker earlier, but…”

    I’d seen the flicker too, actually. As if the room had been trying to decide, and it had settled on this. On nothing. Was this intentional? At least Silver didn’t know the significance of an empty room. I looked to Rousseau for reassurance, but he had been disturbingly quiet since this entire topic of conversation had started.

    I strained my ears, perking up at some imagined noise, but it sounded distant and far away.

    {Perhaps her fear is the fear of having the same floor as a ghost, stemming from this newfound paranoia that she could be possessed,} Gaia suggested.

    {Perhaps our theory is simply right,} the abra shot back snidely. {Have you already grown so attached to your trainer that you are so blinded to reality?}

    “Perhaps,” I began, desperate to stop this fight before it started, and then I trailed off.

    The grass grew outward in a ripple around us, spreading from the base of the stairs and aging a year every second until the tallest stalks reached my waist. Bark crawled up the side of the central pillar, obscuring some of the green light but still letting the rest cut through the cracks. A massive oak tree twined around the bellsprout’s core, the upper branches vanishing into the rafters.

    The blades of grass parted for the image of a little girl in a periwinkle sundress, her eyes bright as she darted barefoot toward a flock of pidgey. Long before she reached them, they retreated to safety in the upper branches of the tree. Her dark hair streamed behind her, dancing in an unfelt breeze, and she didn’t look at us for a moment before rustling away into the grass again, her silent laugh hanging in the air from her open, smiling mouth.

    I’d never believed in fortune-tellers for one key reason: they showed you vague images, and let your imagination fill in the rest. Perhaps the ghosts had shown Gaia a meadow full of flowers arbitrarily, or Iris’s room full of her kin, or the empty room that was Rousseau’s, and my pokémon had extrapolated a fear out of that because that was what they’d been expecting to see. But as I looked to the shadows at the back of the room, barely illuminated by the central pillar, those theories were completely dashed. Whatever was behind this wasn’t creating images at random. It knew, without a doubt. It knew. And I knew that it had never happened like this, that it would’ve been too godsdamned poetic for it to have happened like this, that it was never truly my—

    Isn’t it prettier to think so?

    They were in the back of the room, ignored by Silver and the girl in her muddied sundress, I couldn’t help but stare after them. Through the deafening roar in my ears and the increasing pressure against my forehead, I formed a single, coherent thought: at least this fear is my own.

    {What is that?} I heard the abra say, but I shook my head and refused to look at them. Tears burned in the corners of my eyes.

    “Are you okay?” Silver asked, and he at least had the decency to pretend that he wasn’t analyzing every second of what he had just seen, even as I was furiously trying to—

    To do, I don’t really know what. Something. I’d wondered at my floor as I saw my pokémon’s, wondered if there could truly be some skeleton that I kept buried so that seeing it here would completely undo me. I had never considered that I had an image so troubling that it could quiet Rousseau or tear apart Gaia’s walls or send Iris fleeing, but this seemed to fit like a key in a lock.

    The girl had run out of our sight, but they were still there in the quiet shade of the oak tree, his arm around her shoulders as they watched their daughter frolicking through Goldenrod National Park, careless and carefree. And they were smiling and together and through it all content, and then she turned away from watching the girl to look at me, the real me, with eyes that saw far too much and her lips mouthing words that I couldn’t hear because all I could understand was this is a lie this is a LIE THIS IS A—

    The room seemed to tip, or maybe it was my legs threatening to give out from beneath me. I threw one hand out to the central pillar to steady myself and immediately wished I hadn’t. Searing pain washed through me and I pulled my hand away like I had been burned, but even as I cradled my left arm, those thoughts were replaced by the overwhelming terror that flooded through me as I saw what I had done.

    The room changed again. The girl in her mud-caked sundress was gone. The park was gone. The father was gone.

    She remained, sitting on the ground with her knees tucked into her chest, alone in a dingy reproduction of our kitchen. Water stains spiraled around the ceiling above her and the faucet was still running, but she paid them no mind. Her hair, matted and tangled and like but so unlike mine, hung in her face, but it wasn’t enough to hide the staring eyes that saw straight through me. I stared at her, transfixed and horrified simultaneously.

    {Trainer?} Gaia whispered.

    “She can’t hurt you, I promise.” Silver ignored the more pressing question, something I hadn’t expected from him.

    “She never could.”

    “Do you want to talk about it?”

    Pause.

    The easy answer was no. The smart answer was no. He held all the keys to my destruction at the moment: he was the only Rocket who knew where I was, who I was, and possibly even what I was. No need to give him personal dirt on me as well. But I was alone and afraid and scared, and I didn’t know what to do, and maybe I could trust him, despite the odds. “What happens when we get out of here?” I asked instead, shaking his hand off of my shoulder and not tearing my eyes from her for an instant. We’d forged an uneasy alliance out of the acceptance that we needed each other to get to the top, but we were hardly keeping it together as it was.

    Silver’s answer was far too immediate for my taste: “It depends.”

    Gaia asked it for me, because I couldn’t: {On what?}

    “On what we find at the top.”

    I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to steady myself. I couldn’t. Not with someone as dangerous as him. I ran through the options. I did the math. And I found myself coming to a single conclusion, one that I’d fumbled at before but had held secret then, because knowing it wasn’t fair. I’d had most of the pieces of the puzzle before. His words back when we’d first met in the forest. His reaction to my victory. His theory from the Tower. And that final clue I’d seen on his floor, the one I wasn’t supposed to have seen, and somehow that made it all feel so much worse.

    And, above all, the way that—out of all of my Pokémon—it was Gaia who seemed to understand him the most, who had repeatedly offered him forgiveness even though he’d hurt her more than any of us. She had been the one to mediate his words and try to forge a peace between us, and, and—

    Because she truly did understand him the most. Because the broken have a way of sensing their kin, no matter how many lies they tell.

    Seeing him in this light, the thought formed, one that I couldn’t negotiate: he was human too. I can’t bring myself to betray his trust like this—

    {Why does that scare you?} the abra asked, but this time I could hear the probing calculation in their voices beneath feigned the concern.

    —but he’s already betraying mine. He was backing me into a corner again and again, trying to get me to do far too much and threatening me every time I backed down. If I didn’t draw the line there, I may as well have surrendered then and started heading back to Ecruteak. I tightened my grip on Gaia. {Trainer—} she began, perhaps sensing my intent.

    What I was going to say was horrible and unforgiveable, and Gaia would never understand why I did it. But I wasn’t like her. And neither was Silver. This was the person who tried to kill me and Icarus and Gaia in the middle of a deserted forest. This was the person whose room full of fears showed a terrified fifteen year-old girl. This was the person whose goal was—“To stop what you perceive as evil, to protect what you perceive as good. I’m not really sure. But your biggest fear is that you’ll never be good enough to do it when your time comes.” I could feel my voice growing colder, and I half-turned away from the illusions to look at him as I continued: “You’ve got me on a pretty tight leash, and I can’t do shit to you anyway. So why does that scare you?”

    My words echoed in my ears as I realized what I had just said. I closed my eyes, waiting for some sort of outburst, but I only received silence.

    The abra lunged at me then, a thin matrix of blue energy distorting the air around its paws, but Silver threw his hand forward and held it back. I flinched back as the abra flicked its tail in frustration, but it remained behind its trainer. {How dare you,} it snarled. The resulting psychic shockwave shattered every illusion in the room, but I could see the black smoke begin solidifying into her face again. I turned away.

    I could see the calculations running in Silver’s eyes, and I realized with a jolt of horror that he was wrestling with the exact same dilemma I’d just faced. We were both smarter than we’d given the other credit for, and now we were both going to pay that price. “They say people fear what they don’t know,” Silver began quietly, picking each word with care, and I was too slow or too scared or too guilty to stop him. I’d just given him the last piece of my puzzle, and now he understood.

    “Wait—” I began, but the words died in my throat. I didn’t know what I was going to say. Please don’t make us do this, or I’m sorry, or I didn’t mean—

    “But you and I aren’t like that, are we?” He laughed mirthlessly, running one hand through his red hair. “You and I spend so much time afraid that these fears are what we know best. They’re all we know.”

    His eyes hardened, and I knew then that something had shattered between us, perhaps irreversibly. I could feel him gearing up to strike back, to hit me just as hard as I’d hit him, and I realized that I’d sparked a fire that I should’ve never even touched. He had all the resources he needed to destroy me. Giving him the incentive to do so was even worse. “Please,” I began. “I’m s—”

    “You run and hide because you’re afraid that people will be able to look past your lies and see what you already know: deep down, it’s actually all your fault. The murkrow. Your parents. Everything.”

    I wasn’t looking at him by the time he finished saying what we both knew. I was staring at my mother’s eyes as they slowly reformed on the other side of the room.

    {Trainer,} Gaia began again, either to console me or to warn me, but by then I was crossing the room with long strides, my free hand extended so I could dissolve her vacant face before those eyes could drown me in their depths.

    I turned to look back at them—Silver, his abra, and Rousseau. “I know,” I whispered as the smoke swirled around my fingertips and began reforming back into those cold, sightless eyes that saw all, set first in what could’ve been a reproduction of my face before the bags and the wrinkles made it hers. “It’s been two minutes.” I clenched my first. “We’re leaving.”

    He didn’t argue.

    {You are wise indeed, ma chérie,} Rousseau whispered in my ear as I held tight to Gaia with one shaking hand and began climbing the wooden ladder with the other, casting one last look beneath us. She was coming back again, and I was running away just like I always had, ever since I was a little girl in a muddy, blue sundress, running and running until I came home and found her on the floor like this, alone and a wreck, and when I turned I collided with him again, and he in his rage had finally turned from her to me until it all ran and ran together in thick pools on the floor, but he kept going, like everything in his life was okay except for his wife and kid (it wasn’t) and if he just kept hammering away it would all break clean eventually but I would run and run from all of that until I ended up here—

    —only to find that she still managed to catch up in the end.

    How fitting.

    The ghost called me wise.

    If only the fool knew.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    I was breathing so hard I could see spots by the time I pulled myself out of the trapdoor and heaved myself to my feet on the next floor. I didn’t, I couldn’t—

    “This is the top, right?” My voice cracked when I asked the question. This room was smaller than the rest, and the ceiling was slanted in all directions, low enough here that I could almost bump my head on it if I tried, and high enough in the center that I couldn’t see the rafters.

    Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the dejected look in Silver’s eyes. Had he been genuine? Had I gone too far? Had we gone too far? Sure, I hadn’t really had a choice¸ but was that true? “This looks like it’s it,” he said in a low voice.

    The elaborate carvings of the wall panels were almost invisible here, obscured by a thick curtain of vines, some as thick as my arms. They twined around the beams, vanishing into the ceiling, and they all pulsed with that same faint light that the central pillar, clearly their source, did. It was like a heartbeat.

    “Dante, is he real?” I heard Silver asking, and I looked up.

    My eyes fastened on the sitting figure at the back of the room, a tall, wavering man with dark blue hair. His clothes were disheveled and I could smell the reek on him from where I stood, but what scared me most were the eyes—red-rimmed and distracted, darting around the room to miss nothing.

    “That’s Falkner?” I asked Silver, slightly nervous.

    {So it would seem,} the abra replied curtly.

    My eyes caught on to something else, the only thing that could’ve torn my attention away from the spectacle before and beneath me. “Iris?” I took a step forward, noticing the slumped mess of brown fur by Falkner’s feet, but she didn’t stir.

    Silver’s eyes narrowed. “The sentret?” He pointed. “Is she yours?”

    It was a bit of a grey area, but this was hardly the time. I hadn’t even finished my nod before the abra vanished and reappeared across the room and then back before us again, holding Iris in his hands the second time.

    {That is no illusion,} the abra told us at last, nodding curtly to the man leaning on the wall opposite from us. He deposited Iris in my other arm, and while she shifted slightly, she didn’t wake up.

    “Then it’s Falkner,” Silver said, but he didn’t sound certain.

    I stood there with my hands full of unconscious or immobile pokémon, neither of whom had the reason or the means to fight or get hurt for me, and I realized that I was going to have to convince them to do both if we wanted to get out alive.

    It wasn’t going to work.

    “In a strange room,” the man began calmly, looking at me with wide, raving eyes, “you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were.”

    Beside me, as I struggled to comprehend what Falkner was trying to say, Silver stiffened.

    “Um,” I began quite eloquently. “Do you—”

    “—And Pidgey is, so Falkner must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is,” Falkner finished dramatically, sweeping one hand away from him for a final flourish.

    I closed my mouth as I remembered why I’d been really bad at English class.

    {Please,} his pidgey began, flying towards us. The silhouette of her wings looked tattered in the backlight of the pillar.

    Silver was frowning, hard, and one of his hands was reaching into his pocket. I didn’t even want to know what he was planning next. “What are you and Falkner doing at the top of the Tower?”

    To be fair, that seemed a little harsh. It wasn’t like he had to be in his gym every minute of every day, but now that I thought about it, the lady at the pokémart had mentioned—

    “He hasn’t checked in since the grid went down. That was a week ago,” Silver said without tearing his gaze from the gym leader. “The doors haven’t unlocked since. I wanted to investigate, and, conveniently enough, I ended up running into the other candidate.”

    {It’s not—} the pidgey began, but then stopped as the man began talking again.

    “Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon,” Falkner said quietly, hands reaching out blindly for the bird on his shoulder that wasn’t there, “cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart; the center cannot—”

    {Falkner’s not well, miss,} the pidgey said, flapping her wings to stay aloft in front of us. {Please.}

    “—hold. Mere anarchy is loosed on the world,” Falkner continued softly.

    Against my will, I found myself mildly interested. “What is he even saying?”

    “Yeats,” Silver answered curtly, which really wasn’t an answer, but okay.

    {He has a penchant for literature,} the pidgey said, snatching up the point of conversation. {He hasn’t been doing it quite right since—}

    “The ceremony of innocence,” Falkner spat, lurching forward and catching himself with his hand on the polished floorboards, “is drowned. The best lack all conviction.”

    I was putting together the pieces, probably a lot slower than I should have.

    Silver took one step forward, making motions behind his back with one hand to his abra while he held out the other. “Falkner, I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to talk about a few things.”

    “Oh, gods,” I whispered aloud.

    {And you, child,} the pidgey whispered, gathering herself to fly a few feet higher into the air and to fix me with her gaze. {You must be careful that you do not lose your way in the dark.}

    Silver tore his gaze away from Falkner, frowning at the bird. “What did you say?”

    She beat her wings heavily, propelling herself into the air before launching herself at me with all her might. {You must be careful that you do not lose your way in the dark!} she shrieked at me before diving and lunging for my face, talons outstretched—

    —and dissipated into a puff of black smoke against my outstretched fist.

    {Quick show of hands, who didn’t expect all six of us to fall for that again?} Rousseau asked loudly, orbiting the two of us and trailing purple smoke even as the room began to dissolve to match him. {Oh, right, the sentret is unconscious and the metapod and I don’t have hands, but if I did, I would—}

    “Whose floor is it?” Silver shouted, while I was filing him away as irrelevant. It wouldn’t really help us much to whose literal fears we were facing now, but it might give us some tiny advantage. And, on top of that, whose fears entailed—

    Oh. Oh. Oh, shit. This wasn’t a floor at all.

    {Ourssss,} half a dozen voices said at once, issued slowly from the mouth of the too-limp body of Falkner as it slowly pulled itself into a hunched standing position.
    ___________________________________________________________________________
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    • xiv. the first coming
    • holy update batman! turns out I do still focus on things.

    I'm updating two chapters at once, because the pacing was weird in both of them and I spent too long tampering with it with no actual result. Some things to keep in mind:
    1. it's not April Fool's

    also, I made shitty title art~~

    SV8mVIl.jpg

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    chapter xiv. the first coming​
    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    As the room erupted into clouds of black smoke, I realized two things.

    The good news was that the possessed-by-ghosts-person in Sprout Tower wasn’t me.

    The bad news, naturally, was that the possessed-by-ghosts-person at the top of Sprout Tower wasn’t me, was trying to kill us, and easily outmatched the forces of my metapod and unconscious sentret.

    “Take this, quickly.” Silver, evidently, had connected the dots a fair while ago, and had already pulled out a spiky, white crystal that I recognized as a—“Revive your sentret. Now.”

    I didn’t have time to question his goodwill or point out that he would be better off constantly using his revives on his abra instead of trying to keep my pokémon conscious, because by that point Silver had crammed the chunk of rock down Iris’s throat and she had spluttered back into reality in my arms.

    The sentret hissed as she came to, writhing wildly out of my arms and falling to the ground with a thud. She scrambled back to her feet, claws skittering on the vine-covered floors, and she refused to meet my eyes.

    “Do you—” I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I was cut off anyway.

    “Dante, screens!” Silver shouted, pushing me behind him as his abra reared up to intercept a whip of dark energy hurtling toward us. I recognized the shimmering blue glow of a reflect flickering around in a five foot radius from the psychic, but that didn’t stop the blast of wind that followed.

    I took a staggering half-step back, shielding my face from the buffeting wind that was so strong it threatened to knock me over. “What are we supposed to do?” I shouted to Silver over the tempest’s roar. The alarm was beginning to set in, but I couldn’t help but notice how devastatingly unfazed Silver and his abra were being in the face of this development. They were acting like they’d seen stuff like this before. His boasts downstairs were definitely true: he outclassed us. By a lot. Whether it was enough to keep us alive was still up in the air.

    “I’m not sure. I’m working on it.” The blast sent clouds of black smoke everywhere, granting clarity for a moment.

    “What is he?” The smog quickly reformed again into the hazy outline of the attic.

    “Dante’s got a theory that we need to test, but I’m working on it.”

    I covered my mouth with my sleeve to keep the dust from filling my throat. “Why is he doing this?”

    “I’m working on it!” he spat back through gritted teeth, and I realized then that he was feeling about as lost and overwhelmed as I was. Behind him, the abra was frantically weaving a light screen around us, and the wind lessened a little. Silver shouted over the tempest, “Falkner’s on-record Gift is manipulation of air currents, but it’s being accessed and maybe augmented by whatever’s possessing him because there’s no way he’s naturally this strong. Dante, can you hold him off?” Another cyclone of wind began hurtling toward us, ricocheting off the walls and gathering bits of wooden shrapnel in its wake.

    With considerable effort, the abra caught the tornado in a matrix of flickering blue energy and deflected it to one side, where it cratered the paneling opposite us. {Doubtful. Unlike our gym match with him, he is not holding back.}

    {You won’t be alone,} Gaia said firmly.

    Silver straightened his back a little, and I swear I could’ve seen a touch of pride in his eyes, had the buffeting wind not made it difficult to focus. “I’m not allowing a rookie trainer who doesn’t even have a badge to get caught up in this. Take your pokémon and get outside. Find help.”

    I felt a grim feeling settle in the pit of my stomach. Somehow I knew without truly being certain: if he and the abra stayed here alone, they would never make it down alive. Asshole though he was, he still represented a life. “I’ve already been caught up in a lot worse than this,” I shot back, trying not to think about how outmatched we were now and how possible it was that running from the froslass with Bates or starting the Rockets on my headhunt might actually be less dangerous—

    My attention was torn away by the sight of an enormous beam of wood being peeled away from the ceiling supports by the blasts of wind and rocketing toward us. I saw Silver’s eyes narrow and his mouth begin to contort as he tried to command his abra, but even at the lightning-fast speed with which they communicated, we were all too slow to do anything but brace for the impact, an impact I surely could not handle even as I turned away so that my ribs would take the brunt of the collision instead of Gaia—

    There was an enormous crack. Iris hurtled through the air, her striped tail fully extended and rigid as it impacted the beam, the force of her blow sending her back even as she shattered the wood. Splinters rained down on us as Iris hit the ground hard on all fours, panting.

    “Iris?” I asked in disbelief.

    {Obviously,} she replied, curt as ever.

    “Are you—”

    {You’ll explain later,} she hissed, arching her back and allowing her fur to inflate to twice its normal size.

    “I, uh, okay, yeah.” It was hard to hide my confusion, but it’s not like that was a big focus at the moment. “We’ll talk later, sure.”

    “Ssssurely,” shouted the marionette-like body of Falkner, hands thrown back, “ssssome revelation issss at hand!” Around him, around us, the winds picked up once more, coalescing into another miniature cyclone around him that picked him up and sent him hovering three feet in the air, his legs pointing limply downward. The elaborate paneling, thousands of years of recorded history and legend, shattered around us from the force, and the pieces were sucked into the orbiting vortex around the gym leader.

    “Dante, keep those screens up,” Silver said tightly, dark eyes narrowing and fists clenching as he watched the situation with barely-contained panic. “Have you found an opening yet?”

    {Nothing. His mental defenses are secure.}

    “Iris, uh.” I didn’t know if we could even lay a hit on him, but we had to do something. “Try to do that tail-hitty attack again.”

    The sentret shot me a disparaging look, but she obediently tucked her tail in and launched herself toward Falkner. She was instantly slammed into the wall with a gust of wind for her efforts. I winced sympathetically, but I honestly hadn’t expected her to listen to me at all. Oops.

    But as I watched even the central pillar of the Tower caving inward under the force of the buffeting winds, as the roof began peeling off in thick layers and spinning around Falkner like armor, as Silver’s abra shook under the sheer effort it took to maintain the flimsy psychic shields that were the only things keeping us from being ripped apart, I came to a chilling conclusion: there was no way we could win this fight in our current state. It was a different level of being outmatched; it was totally unlike Brigid and the froslass. This was no wandering spirit, and Silver was no champ-in-the-making. This was some ancient foe, as old as humanity’s fear of the dark, and if we tried to fight it alone, we would surely be destroyed. “We have to get out of here,” I said, but I was too quiet, too slow.

    I could’ve sworn I’d heard Icarus’s keening cackle as I ducked for cover.

    As if to further cement my point, one of Falkner’s hands tipped forward and a searing blast of wind cut through the air. The command “—shit, go for a Psychic—!” come a fraction of a second too slow. Silver’s abra took the hit head on, its tiny paws crossed over its torso to defend itself, but it wasn’t enough. The yellow psychic flew back, brown chestplates denting from the force with which it was thrown into the wall, and then the tempest hit us full force as the screens flickered away.

    “Dante!” Silver shouted, his composure slipping in an instant, his voice nearly lost in the wind. He scrambled to his pokémon, already fumbling with the pull-tab of a potion—

    There was another sharp crack, and I heard Silver scream again.

    I ran over to him, ducking under another blast of wind that cratered the wall behind us, desperately cradling Gaia, Iris swirling around my heels. The abra was up, floating around in alarm even as it desperately tried to renew the screens around us. “We have to get downstairs! We can’t win this!” I shouted.

    “Got hit. Air Slash,” Silver said through gritted teeth, and I looked down to see a thin but growing trickle of blood snaking around my shoes. “Left leg.”

    For a moment, my mind went blank, and then I was kneeling down, helping him roll the cuff of his pants up to reveal a deep, clean cut that extended from the base of his ankle to the back of his knee, first-aid lessons flashing through my head. There was a vein in the thigh that was important. I had no idea where it was. But we had to disinfect the wound. No, we had to stop the bleeding. No, we had to stop the madman that was trying to kill us. My fingers stumbled against the zipper of my backpack. I had a first-aid kit in there, but I didn’t think it was enough for this. I dug around, looking for the canvas sack filled with things I barely knew how to use, but my hands closed in on Gaia’s stupid rock instead. This was too slow; by the time I got the bandages out he was probably going to lose too much blood. There was a better way; there had to be. “Gaia, String Shot over it,” I rasped, tears slipping into my voice. I didn’t know what to do. “That’ll slow the bleeding. Um.” I didn’t know what to do. The silk looked like it would hold the blood in, but I had no idea for how long. “We have to get you out of here. Can you walk? Can your abra lift you?”

    Silver opened his mouth to respond, and then we both watched in numb horror as Falkner floated slowly toward us, head tilted to one side, eyes impossibly dark even as the fetid stench of decay filled the air.

    “Sssssurely,” his lips said in a cold, rasping voice, “sssome Sssecond Coming isss at hand!”

    “Dante, Psychic,” Silver hissed through gritted teeth.

    Slowly, because the effort must have cost him greatly, the abra raised its paw and threw the possessed body of Falkner against the wall. The ceiling collapsed on top of him with a sharp crack, showering him in rubble. The winds died down for a moment.

    “I’ll be okay. Don’t focus on that.” Silver turned to me, his eyes wide and frantic, but when he spoke, he was eerily collected, albeit rushed, and he gave no other indication of the bleeding wound in his leg. “There’s no time to explain. But, well.” His breathing hitched for a moment. “I’m sorry.” His hands seemed to move of their own accord as he continued spraying the potion on his abra’s chestplates, the pokémon’s wound knitting itself together before my eyes, and I saw the focus return into his eyes. “What you saw when we first fought was probably the lowest end of Dante’s combat ability. You got a brief snapshot of his upper-level skills just now. He can produce psionic shields and use Psychic to telekinetically manipulate objects weighing up to around my body weight, but overuse will tax him,” he recited quickly. “We’ve been practicing Shock Wave, but it’s a little new for him. He can safely use his Teleport with one at most non-psychic passenger, but only if he has direct line-of-sight with the final destination, and it’ll exhaust him immensely if he carries anyone but himself. He passively regenerates up to a missing limb if removed from battle; possibly more, but we haven’t exactly tested it. He can also—”

    “Why are you telling me this?” I asked. It was growing hard to catch my breath.

    “Because,” he said, his voice more serious than I had ever heard it, “if we don’t fend that thing off, we won’t make it down alive.” He squared his jaw and looked at me. “I’m sorry.”

    Pause.

    “Do you understand?” Silver asked, and then took a deep, shuddering breath that surely wasn’t only because of the leg. He locked eyes with me and winced before he said, “I know you can hear me in there, and I doubt you like any of us, but if you don’t act right now, we are all going to die. You are going to die.”

    Oh.

    Too late, I realized what he was trying to do, and it terrified me. “Wait. You can’t—” I began, but that was washed away by a cold sense of calculation as the winds howled around us. My legs were already in motion, and then my body was standing upright, facing a demon.

    The situation at hand was easy enough to size up: there was a threat. It needed to be removed. The available pieces made this task difficult, but not impossible, so long as it was properly understood. “Rousseau. Advantages and disadvantages that a ghost would experience when possessing a human corpse.”

    There was a long pause before he answered, and when the gastly finally glanced up, he looked conflicted. {Ma cherie?} he asked tentatively.

    There would be time to explain later. “Advantages and disadvantage of human possession.” The memories resurfaced easily. “You mentioned downstairs that it ‘wasn’t your style’. Explain why.”

    The gastly blinked several times, and then finally spluttered, {Possessing an object gives the ghost the strengths and weaknesses of whatever we possess. The ghost within Falkner can access his Gift, but it must also compensate for the weakness of Falkner’s form. It must become tangible, so it opens itself up for physical attacks.} Rousseau paused, and then began, {Are you okay? I—}

    As suspected, there wasn’t much unexpected in the actual possession. The rest of his speech was filed away as irrelevant. “Dante. Start laying down a Light Screen, but conserve your strength. You’ll need a Teleport soon. Keep your screen in a tight radius: four feet.”

    The abra flinched at the sound of the command.

    I glared at it. “Listen to me, or we all go down.”

    The psychic looked uncertainly at Silver, who hissed, “We don’t have a choice. Trust them.”

    He was starting to see things our way instead of wasting time on needless arguing. Finally. The abra looked uncertain, but it weaved its paws through the air, leaving a shimmering wall of light in its wake. It wouldn’t hold up, but it would be enough. Cushioning off Falkner’s ranged attacks was critical for drawing him in closer, where there would be a better chance of making contact. The ghost had chosen a physical form, and all that remained was to exploit it.

    The floorboards ahead of us exploded into action as Falkner burst through the rubble that had previously trapped him.

    “Iris.” The name of her attack sprang to mind. “When he approaches, Slam him out of the way. Gaia. Prep for a String Shot. Dante. On my command, Teleport with Gaia to Falkner and then Shock Wave. Slow him down instead of damaging him.”

    {I cannot try to Teleport to him,} the abra protested. {I require a line of sight. The path toward him is too clouded, and even if I made it, Falkner will shred me before I have a chance.}

    “There will be an opening.” The gastly was still an asset, but he also remained largely unknown. “Rousseau.” I hesitated for a moment, although it was unclear why. “What attacks do you know?”

    A crack of energy rippled through the air, like the undertow of a wave. I felt something strange in the pit of my stomach, and I wanted to reach out to Gaia so I could—

    {Ma cherie,} the gastly began, hovering closer. {I don’t think it’s particularly wise to—}

    {She’ll get us out of here,} Gaia said confidently. {She’s done it before.}

    “Listen to me!”

    The gastly refused to hear. {But she’s not in there.} There was anguish in Rousseau’s voice. {I promise. That isn’t your trainer. It has no regard for your safety. It probably endangered you the last time this happened, didn’t it?}

    Gaia faltered.

    The central pillar began to glow brighter. This was no time for remorse.

    Silver’s voice echoed from behind. “So then what is inside of her?”

    A blast of wind came at full speed. Wood paneling tumbled through the air, blowing the floor and ceiling back and sending my body tumbling to the foot of the stairs. Rubble scattered away as my torso made contact with the wall.

    My right hand grabbed a cratered portion of the wall to pull my body up. Splinters, ignored. Slight pain in in the chest suggested one broken rib, maybe two. That would explain the coughing.

    Bloodied fingertips fumbled for the knife in my pocket as another realization settled in: undead or not, Falkner would die for this.

    The light of the central pillar was almost blinding, but no one seemed to care.

    Silver’s voice was louder now, more urgent. “That thing just threw her into a wall and she shrugged it off.”

    They had to be stopped from discussing this matter any further. There were still assets available, and the elements for distraction had already been set. Iris, for whatever reason, seemed the most loyal at this moment. That was unexpected, but it would have to be addressed later. “Iris. Now.”

    Falkner wasn’t quite within the protective screens, but the sentret launched herself out from behind them, her tail flapping in the wind as she attempted to slam into him again.

    “Gaia. String Shot.” Cough; blood appeared on my fist. Irrelevant. “Aim to her right. Dante will teleport you shortly. When you reappear, hit Falkner with another String Shot.”

    The metapod hesitated for a moment, but then Falkner whipped his hand through the air and again sent Iris flying before she’d even gotten within three feet of him, sending her plowing through the smoke and toward the wood paneling. Gaia had no choice but to obey or let Iris fall. The line of silk shot through the air, sticking to Iris and slowing her flight before she crashed. “Dante. Bring Gaia with you.” Falkner’s blast of air had momentarily cleared the smog and dust cloud around him. “There will be no second opening. Shock Wave. Three seconds, then get out.”

    {Your metapod will be caught in—}

    “Silk is an insulator. She’ll be hurt less than he will.”

    The abra disappeared and reappeared a tenth of a second later, its frail arms latched around Falkner’s chest and Gaia latched on to his tail. A bright blue frizz of electricity surrounded all three of them; the pungent smell of singed hair filled the air; a delayed blast of string shot pinned Falkner to the ground; the gym leader sagged, sparking.

    {You knew that would happen,} Dante said flatly upon reappearing. {You used your sentret as a distraction. You let your metapod get hit by that. You planned for that to happen.}

    There was no point in denying it. Falkner was momentarily paralyzed at best. Time was running out. “Iris. Knock him back. Now is your chance; he’s stunned, so you’ll be fast enough to hit him now. Gaia. When he hits the central pillar, String Shot him in place. Dante. Prepare for a Psychic. Sever the vines above the pillar and bring them down on top of him. Aim for the points he’s already weakened. He’ll be buried beneath the rafters of the Tower after you take out the last supports.”

    The sentret surged forward for a third time, her claws and tail outstretched, and she slammed into the stunned Gym Leader with all the strength she could muster. She connected with his torso with bone-crushing force, and this time he flew backward, colliding with the ground and plowing a furrow through the floorboards until he collapsed at the base of the Tower’s pillar.

    “Gaia. Dante. Now.”

    {No.}

    I almost dropped Gaia. It wasn’t the refusal that surprised me; it was the speaker. “What?”

    {No,} Gaia repeated. There was fire in the metapod’s voice as she continued, {When you used me to take down Silver, I was convinced that it was a one-time thing. That you would never resort to rashly endangering us in the name of your survival. But you did it just now, and you’ll probably do it again. Rousseau’s right. That’s not you in there, Trainer.}

    There wasn’t time for this. Couldn’t she see that there wasn’t any other choice? “Gaia—”

    {I cannot allow you to destroy our team,} the metapod replied firmly.

    The abra screamed a too-late warning as a blast of air smashed it back into the wall, and undead, too-black eyes turned to me as their next target.

    It was too late. Falkner had recovered. The plan had failed, all because—

    The swirling vortex propped the Gym Leader to his feet. One hand reached backward, winding up the final blast of air that would doom us all. The scene played out in fast-forward: a blast of wind would throw my body into a support pillar, which would not yield. Instead, my neck would.

    Mentally, the pieces connected half a second before Falkner’s hand brushed against the central pillar and the room was filled with blinding light.

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    • xv. the forest queen
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    chapter xv. the forest queen​
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    I landed. My mind felt like it was aflame.

    The intensity was searing hot, a thousand times worse than the xatu’s intrusion into my mind, and as I blinked away spots to try to focus on the room around me, I could’ve sworn I’d died. I was standing in the gentle light of the unscathed central pillar of Sprout Tower, which was a little duller than I’d last remembered it. The walls were untouched, the floor intact, the ceiling unharmed. If this was hell… my imagination needed a lot more work.

    Tentatively, I touched my forehead, expecting pain, but I felt nothing. My breathing quickened as I looked at my torso, which was unbroken and unbloodied.

    But when I turned around, I saw a green, fairy-like creature floating toward me, and that was when I was convinced I’d truly passed on. Blue eyes rimmed with black stared firmly back at mine. Gossamer wings kept it hovering in midair, but as it floated to me, it looked like it was trapped in a stilted animation, skipping over frames and reappearing in places too quickly for logic to comprehend.

    My mind screamed: this was wrong. I shouldn’t be seeing this.

    I gawked, vaguely aware that I should’ve fallen to my knees already. “You… you’re real.”

    {Yup. I’m the Forest Queen,} said the fairy in a voice that sounded too bored for the deity that, legends said, had once directed the trees of Ilex Forest to strangle Team Rocket as they marched on Azalea. The Celebi blinked calmly. {Surprise.} Tiny fingers waggled in a motion that I numbly registered as jazz fingers.

    {You’re working with her?} another voice said, emerging from the stairwell. I turned to see Iris at the base of the staircase, her eyes wide.

    I tentatively reached out and passed my hand across the Celebi’s face, half-expecting her to dissolve in a cloud of black smoke.

    The goddess of time was real and she had a sense of humor, and for the second time, I was left awkwardly stroking the very real, very annoyed face of someone I’d never expected to see here. She brushed me off almost instantly. {Touch me again and I’ll give you roses for hands,} she said flatly, sizing me up carefully. And then, to Iris: {Little sentret, your trainer and I have to have a little chat. Rest assured that she’s working with me, and whatever she did to anger you downstairs is something she’ll explain later. For the time being, leave us alone, and when the time comes, trust her.}

    I braced myself for Iris’s scathing retort, which only made me even more surprised to see her look at me, her expression mixed between awe and terror, and then meekly say to the Forest Queen, {Of course, your majesty.} Without sparing us a second glance, she began running upstairs again.

    Warrior of the forest. Forest Queen. Huh. That kind of made sense, actually. Unfortunately, with Iris gone, that left me with—

    {Wow. You’re certainly an underwhelming one, aren’t you? No offense, kiddo.} She must’ve noticed the way that my breathing had hitched, or how I was frantically looking around the room while my legs trembled beneath me, because she said in a calmer voice, {Slow down, kiddo. It’s okay. You’re safe here.}

    The flash of light. Falkner, bearing down on us. My body, flying through the air. “I died,” I said, connecting the pieces just as I said the words aloud.

    The Celebi’s smile dropped for a second, just one, and she floated before my eyes, her expression somber. {Not yet.}

    She circled me quickly, and I could feel her piercing blue gaze poring over every inch of my body, scrutinizing. What did she see in my mud-stained jeans, or the tattered, green bomber jacket bates had given me to stave off the cold? Did she notice the dirt beneath my fingernails, or the still-healing scratches from when I’d been slammed into the ground by the froslass, or the way that my face was already starting to grow gaunt because I was trying to split my meager rations among four extra mouths?

    Or could she only see the darkness, the kind that was visible to everyone but me, that had marked me for Icarus?

    “You’re reading my mind,” I said at last. I felt her touch withdraw hastily, and the questions stopped curling on the edges of my consciousness from where she’d been drawing them to the surface.

    {I didn’t want to waste time talking it out, yeah. Sometimes you’re just a little too melodramatic, you know? You got a murkrow from a bird claiming to know your destiny. Tough. Take down the dictatorship, don’t take down the dictatorship, whatever. Take it from me, kiddo; people who try to predict the future never get all the facts right. That xatu didn’t know the start of it.}

    There had been legends of her sightings, and I knew that she lacked the raw destructive power of something like the Birds Regent, but that didn’t mean that an encounter like this was normal. “But why—”

    {Why am I here, at the top of the Tower, talking to an apparently random idiot who almost destroyed one of the oldest landmarks in Johto?}

    I closed my mouth. “Yeah. That.”

    I hadn’t even finished before she rolled her eyes in a disturbingly too-human motion. {There are few things left in this world that I give a shit about, and Sprout Tower is, remarkably, one of them. I want to protect it, but I needed help.}

    “You needed help from—”

    {Yes, I know. Embarrassing, isn’t it?} the Forest Queen said with a tittering, too-adorable chuckle. {I had to ask a little egghead like you.}

    “Are you still—”

    {Am I still reading your mind? No. Retrieving your actual words would take significant effort at this point, given that your brain is slowly turning into a psychic’s worst nightmare. Don’t be so stupid. You’re horribly predictable, I was born at the literal beginning of time and I’ve lived even longer than that because of all the time travel, and also I might just be smart.}

    I decided to stop asking questions.

    {You’re downstairs. I launched you back in time by about ten minutes.}

    I almost instantly broke my promise to stop asking questions, because what the—

    {I didn’t want to involve you, trust me. You’re okay when you shut up, but you’re so incredibly slow as soon as you start talking.} The Celebi flickered back in front of me, seemingly skipping a foot of space until she was staring directly into my eyes. {I’m gonna go over this once, kiddo, so listen up. The Beast of the Sea and the Sacred Flame are your past and future, the sea and the sky. I am the Forest Queen, the boundary between them; my domain is time, but that shit is complicated. Most things get devoured by paradox if they even try to mess with time. Even for a being of my power, there are three immutable requirements for more than a few seconds of time travel. One for each of the Birds Regent, one for me—it’s how we keep the timeline intact.}

    She swung back in front of me, flickering back and forth like a hypnotist’s pendulum, and I struggled to focus on what could only be a post-death fever dream. {First, a spiritual locus, to anchor you to the past. The belief that the supernatural can overwrite the existence of something as impassable as time itself.} She gestured with one waifish arm toward the Tower’s central pillar. I realized with a jolt that the light was paler than I’d remembered before.

    “Are you saying—”

    {Yes, I’m saying that I just consumed several centuries’ worth of quasi-atheism to save your skin, because I quite liked the décor of this place. Nihil supra. The idiots. There’s always something higher.} The Celebi looked at me impatiently, still jumping back and forth through space—through time, I realized. {The next thing you need is a creature that can survive the journey through the temporal winds, to tie the abandoned timeline to the new one. The catalyst, who must remember the specific events of what was to come, and whose vision of the future is set in stone, lest the world fall into paradox. Because of the intense psychic power involved in meddling with time, few pokémon can serve as catalysts, and even fewer humans left alive can do the same. Do you know why?} She paused, looking at me expectantly, and then added, {That isn’t a rhetorical question. Go ahead and make your stupid guess. I’m curious.}

    My throat felt dry all of a sudden. “Team Rocket eradicated the dark-types.”

    The way she carelessly shrugged her shoulders suggested that she hadn’t expected me to be right. {Nice one, kiddo. Okay, you might be a little smarter than I thought. The third requirement is the most common, and also the most unintuitive, but you gotta give up one future if you want to make another one. The sacrifice, not of property or even of life, but of time itself. The scales must be kept in balance. In order to gain time, you must lose it as well, and undo a future in the process.}

    For the first time I noticed the caterpie in the corner of the room, where she must’ve fallen from my arms when I’d hit the ground. “Gaia?” When had she ended up here? Terror flooded over reason, and I scrambled toward her.

    {I already told you we didn’t have much time and—kiddo, look, she’s fine,} the Celebi huffed, teleporting in front of us and hoisting Gaia into the air with a casual wave of her hand. {See? Perfectly unharmed. Just a little smaller and a little more unconscious.}

    She wasn’t a metapod. “But how—”

    The Forest Queen folded her arms and looked at me, daring me to continue. I shook my head. {Good.} One of her antenna twitched. {You wouldn’t even begin to understand the whole of it, so here’s the simple version: evolution is crazy stuff. Most pokémon, under certain circumstances, are capable of condensing generations of mutations into a single instant. Think that through. That makes zero sense. And then, on top of that, it isn’t a random thing. It’s like a time-bomb, coded into the genes of every pokémon, somehow identical to each member of the species. Ho-oh’s gift to the world, they call it, and also her way of saying, ‘screw you, time goddess, I’m Regent and I don’t need to follow your rules.’}

    “Um.”

    The Forest Queen threw her hands into the air with a huff. {So yeah. I was minding my own business, this Falkner brat comes out of nowhere and decides he can start turning one of my favorite buildings into cannon fodder, and I was all, ‘ugh, there goes another one of Johto’s monuments’—by the way, screw you Team Rocket; I know Brass Tower was Lugia’s and you needed something to win your asinine war, but you didn’t have to raze the place—and I was resigning myself to that dinky little crapshrine in Ilex Forest when suddenly, out of nowhere, I sensed you.}

    She’d been telling the whole story like it was a joke, but her tone completely shifted on the last three words. “Me.”

    {Yeah, trust me, I was confused too,} she muttered darkly, lazily waving her hand to toss Gaia into my arms. I caught the caterpie out of sheer instinct. {But there was a human with a half-formed dark Gift who was basically a beacon—anti-beacon, I guess; that’s a joke; you can laugh—and this is the second-largest spiritual locus in the country, the metapod was right there, and I thought, ‘huh, I don’t know if she’s got enough dark in her to make the jump safely, but it’s worth a try,’ and then bam, here we are. Turns out you’re strong enough after all!} She tilted her head to one side, raising her left hand in a mock-thinking motion. {Which is a really good thing, too, because it would’ve been pretty messy if you hadn’t.} She shrugged. {Like, ‘scattered across ten minutes’ messy.} Another shrug. {Well, the Tower would’ve collapsed on what was left of you, so I guess it didn’t matter either way.}

    She paused expectantly, and I didn’t really know how to react to the callous discussion of my temporal dismemberment.

    “So you can time travel,” I began, trying to form a thought—

    {Kiddo, I’ve already established that I think your intellect is comparable to that of a wet paper towel. You have five seconds to finish that question.}

    “—can’t you use this for something more useful?” I asked, staring back at her in amazement. My ribs were fully healed. The damage to the Tower was undone. It was like nothing had even happened in the first place. “You could destroy Team Rocket in an instant. Or—”

    {Aaaaaand five seconds is up,} the Celebi said loudly, blinking back and forth in front of me to prove her point. {No. And,} she added, raising one finger in the air, {because I know you’re about to ask something stupid like why, here’s your answer: I don’t give a shit.}

    I blinked.

    {Your kind has been fighting their own little wars since they first picked up sticks from the mud,} the Forest Queen said disdainfully. {If I were to get involved in every one of your little conflicts, there would be no end for me. Before the Rocket regime, there was the shambles of Kanto’s government—and trust me, that was beyond stupid. And before that, the rise of the Harbingers, and before that, the monarchy and the peasant’s revolt, and then the Tohjo Great Wars, and then, well, you get the point.}

    “But—”

    {Look. For you, this is probably the end of your world. For me? It’s Tuesday. If things go really south, I can just make another loop and try again.} She teleported halfway across the room and back in half a second, just to prove her point. {I swear, people pass stories around about how regal the others are, and they assume we’re all the same. Tough. The other legendaries don’t have to deal with the mindscrew that’s time travel.}

    “Team Rocket has the Lugia, though!” I protested, and I figured I must’ve surprised her enough because the retort wasn’t ready instantly. “You have to—”

    {Have to?} she asked, and did that little titter again. {Kiddo, remember when I compared your intellect to a wet paper towel? Your kind has been trying to use us to end the world probably once every two centuries, and it’s never stood up against us, against time. I don’t have to do anything. I didn’t even have to have this conversation with you; I could’ve just taken all the information from your head, but I was being nice because you’re doing me a favor.}

    “A favor?”

    {Well, yes and no.} The Forest Queen made a shrugging motion with her arms and then pointed at the central pillar. {See, I like having the Tower in one piece, and you like being in one piece, and it turns out the only way for the latter to happen is if you do the former. So really I think I’m doing you a favor, but let’s just leave it at this, kiddo: if you manage to keep the place mostly intact, I’ll owe you one. Otherwise, well.} She winked at me.

    I muttered something under my breath.

    {Excuse me?}

    “Otherwise what?” I grumbled. This whole thing felt surreal, like I would wake up with a horrible head injury from when Falkner had thrown me into a wall. Trust my comatose brain to imagine that the Forest Queen was actually a sarcastic, fast-talking onion fairy.

    {Otherwise the original timeline runs its course and you die again,} the Celebi retorted, hovering in my face. One antennae twitched. {I just saved your life. Kids these days need to learn their place.}

    I could feel the air around me curling with energy, like standing in the middle of a thunderstorm just before the lightning. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Okay,” I said, taking a step backward and doing nothing to get out of her range. My entire trip through the Tower had just been one power to another, threatening me to do what they wanted. Why would I expect this to be any different? “I’ll do it.”

    {Lovely,} the Forest Queen said, her voice slipping back into its saccharine tones. {I’m so glad we could see eye-to-eye!} She hummed for a moment, darting around the room, and then waved one hand carelessly in a tight circle. Icarus and Atlas appeared in midair, and the latter promptly fell flat on his face as gravity ran its natural course. {One more thing,} she said, holding up a finger to forestall a happy reunion with my pokémon. {I started weaving the loop around when you got thrown into a wall, so that’s your timeframe.}

    “My what?” I asked, absently scratching Atlas between his ears to keep him quiet. If I annoyed the short-tempered forest goddess, I had no doubt that Atlas would make things even worse.

    The Celebi sighed. {You’re the catalyst. Up until the travel started, your interpretation of reality has to hold.} She made a knotted motion with her hand, and a trail of blue energy followed her, twisting itself into y-shape. {I started shunting you back in time around here,} she said, pointing to the juncture. {And you’re trying to replace this version of events—} she paused to flick her wrist toward the top fork {—with something mutually beneficial to all of us,} she said, nodding toward the bottom fork. {But you’re actually here, about ten minutes before when I was able to arrive and meddle with time, because we needed some time to have this little chat. But this is stuff that you can’t mess around with, because I wasn’t around to start messing around with it in the first place, so if you start messing around with it, you’ll prevent me from being around to mess around with the stuff that’ll let you— Okay, I’m losing you. Right. You’re dull.} She paused, looking at my dumbfounded expression, and sighed in exasperation. In a much slower voice, enunciating every word, she said, {What you remember seeing, up until when I start the process to send you back in time, has to be the way it was.} The Forest Queen waved her hands again, and the knot wriggled into a twisted mess of glowing blue threads. {Otherwise, things start getting wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… well, you get the point.}

    Iris had trusted me the first time around. Was it because of her personal epiphanies, or because this loop had already happened for her, and she’d seen me with the Forest Queen before I’d even gone up the Tower?

    {Neither,} the Forest Queen said flatly. {Don’t think of it in a line, and it’ll make a lot less sense.}

    “Don’t you mean—”

    {No.} Another flick of her fingers, and Gaia was stirring in my arms, pink antennae twitching. {Well, good luck, kiddo. I’ll see you soon.} She paused and tilted her head. {Or I won’t. Who knows?}

    There was a bright flash of light, and the Forest Queen teleported away.

    “Pii!” Gaia shrieked in alarm, in a voice I’d almost forgotten to recognize.

    “I can explain,” I said, which was half-true.

    “What did you see on the first few floors? We had one floor for each of us, but there’s only two of you,” my voice said from downstairs, and I finally remembered to ask myself what floor of the Tower we were on. I glanced around for a clue, but the shadows hadn’t formed anything yet.

    “What floor are we on?” Silver asked as he and I approached—

    Shit.

    —me, standing on his floor.

    I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation play out identically to how I’d already heard it. I had already turned toward the stairs. We had to go up. “Stay quiet,” I hissed to Icarus, and I prayed to all the gods I knew, and twice as hard to the uncaring Forest Queen, that he would listen (but I already knew that he would, didn’t I?) as I began shepherding him and Atlas up the stairs. I’d almost reached the stairs when another wave of nausea struck, followed by blinding light, and I found myself standing in the middle of the room, blinking.

    What?

    I went for the stairs again and found myself in the middle.

    I remembered the Celebi’s words: we’d started travelling in the attic, probably when the pillar had started to glow. But until that point, what I remembered had to stay? What was I doing here that was preventing that?

    I found myself creeping behind the central pillar, trying to stare back at myself as Silver forced herself up the stairs. They weren’t looking at me; even Dante was focused on dispelling the illusion of Silver’s fears, and, and—

    I’d never seen Silver’s fear at all.

    I darted out then, slipping past them in the shadows and trying to remain hidden. Silver’s gaze remained firmly ahead, but I already knew that she would turn to look at me, her forehead wrinkling together in confusion as she saw me on his floor and made the only truly logical conclusion. I kept skirting behind the pillar, even as I heard Silver curtly say, “Dante.”

    It was really, really weird to hear her shriek in pain in my voice, but I couldn’t stop moving. Lest the world fall into paradox, the Celebi had said.

    Gods, watching from the outside, without the paranoia that he was actually right and I was the evil one, Silver was a total dick. I watched him force her up the stairs, where I knew he would make her stand and watch as—

    Yeah, no, I wasn’t going to go through that again, even if it couldn’t change. Atlas barked at me, sitting in a rigidly-upright position by my heels, and I could see that he was absolutely straining between the desire to greet me and my command for him to stay quiet.

    “Piiiii.”

    “What in fornication name did you do?” Icarus summarized elegantly, cackling so loudly I was sure he could be heard throughout the entire Tower.

    I looked around at them. Icarus and Atlas were supposed to be outside, Gaia was supposed to be a metapod, and I was supposed to be dead. We were off to a good start already.

    ___________________________________________________________________________​

    As I watched myself and Silver try to fight Falkner and fail spectacularly, I realized I didn’t exactly have a good way to deal with this. Having Icarus and Atlas back was a huge benefit; they were my firepower (somewhat literally). But even with them, we lacked the raw strength to do anything to Falkner, and I didn’t know how to stop him. Watching our pokémon get thrown around the first time was evidence enough that we were going to need a lot more than power to get through this.

    Ahead of us, the central pillar began to glow, and I felt that ripple of power surge through the air again. It was like a wave of static electricity, with my past self as the epicenter, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Here, at the back of the room, we were well-removed from the center of attention.

    {Ma cherie,} I heard Rousseau say, and I watched him approach the girl standing in the middle of the room. {I don’t think it’s particularly wise to—}

    There was something eerie about this. It was more than just watching myself with the sickening feeling of knowing precisely what was going to happen next. There was more to it than that.

    {She’ll get us out of here,} a metapod was saying confidently, and I felt Gaia’s frail, unshelled body wiggle uncomfortably in my arms. I knew what the girl was going to do next. I knew that she wasn’t to be trusted with Gaia.

    “Listen to me!” I heard myself shout, the pent-up frustration slipping through the control in her voice.

    I didn’t want to look at her, at me, because she was about to command my pokémon to do terrible, terrible things, supposedly to keep them all alive. “Brace yourself,” I whispered to Icarus, glancing up at the rafters ahead. This looked like the spot. “Get to the rafters.”

    He nodded solemnly and vanished into the shadows. The pit at the bottom of my stomach solidified into a solid lump. Here went nothing. There would be no third chance.

    There was a tremendous blast of wind, and the girl’s body flew through the air a few feet from me. She knocked into one of the support columns, breaking the centuries-old wood and a few ribs with a sickening crunch. My chest twinged in sympathy, but I ducked down, protecting my head with my free hand as the rubble rained down around us, shielding me and Gaia from view.

    As I stumbled over, the girl was struggling to her feet, even as she coughed blood onto the floorboards. She hadn’t seen me yet—she was too focused on disentangling herself from the splinter of wood the size of my fist that had speared itself through her thigh—but the look in her eyes made me pull up short. He hadn’t been wrong. My heart plummeted.

    I wasted half a second just to confirm my suspicions. Silver was sheltering in the corner, straining despite his leg to see what had happened to me. And Falkner was descending slowly on his cyclone of air and debris, his eyes impossibly black.

    The girl ripped out the wood that had stabbed her with a feral grunt, her expression showing only frustration and none of the physical pain, and I forced myself to check again, even though I already knew the answer, even though it was going to make saving us all even harder.

    There were three people in this room, three pairs of eyes, and the only ones that looked human were Silver’s.

    ___________________________________________________________________________
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