03: A MAN OF WEALTH AND TASTE
“Well, thanks for your time,” says Emilia. “Someone will be in touch.”
She smiles and shakes hands and gently extracts herself from the room, trying to disguise her eagerness to leave. Jerry and his parents are having a hard time. They deserve her compassion, even if there's been a whole lot of talking and very little information. Jerry himself doesn't remember much, which she feels is probably for the best, and his parents, worried sick, latched onto Emilia as an obvious authority figure and hammered her relentlessly with questions. She evaded them all easily enough, of course, but this kind of thing always feels wrong. You never feel good hiding stuff from anxious family members. Hence her desire to escape as soon as possible.
On her way out of the ward, Emilia runs through what she did manage to get from them. Firstly and most importantly, confirmation that Jerry doesn't know anything he shouldn't; if he does start remembering, Brock should be able to keep him from talking to people about it. He can handle the business of getting the family to sign the contracts when things are a little more settled. Secondly, Jerry is displaying symptoms of minor radiation poisoning. From Emilia's reading, she knows that this is something that can indeed be caused by a breach event, although the documents she was given are infuriatingly nonspecific when it comes to case studies. As far as she understands it, if she can't find any trace of ionising radiation at the site itself, that's a good indication that this actually is breach.
Which brings her to her next task: visiting the scene. She's contained the information, and now she needs to live up to the second part of her job description. She's done the legal adviser bit. Now it's time for the investigation. Lorelei will want to know, one, if this really is what everyone thinks it is, and two, if so, how it happened.
Emilia sighs. This bit could get prickly. Local law enforcement often doesn't like it when the national agencies start butting in. People have a certain amount of respect for the League, as the oldest part of the Kantan government, but even so, Emilia has faced more than a little hostility in the course of her work. With the stereotypes about Pewter insularity, she has a feeling this is going to be one of those times.
At least she got something useful from Artemis. She wasn't what Emilia was expecting; when she read 'rookie trainer' in the notes attached to the interview transcript, she was imagining a ten-year-old, not a young woman nearly twice that – and she was much smarter than Emilia had been counting on, too. She covered for Brock like a pro, and without Nadia Emilia isn't sure she'd have figured out where the lie was. But she did, which means she has something to wave at Brock next time she sees him. Whatever he told Artemis, Emilia needs to know it.
This thought is a smokescreen, of course. What Emilia is really thinking is that she is crass and insensitive and shouldn't have jumped to conclusions on the phone. She of all people ought to know that that kind of assumption only gets people hurt. Artemis, poor kid, has more than enough to deal with right now without being casually misgendered into the bargain.
Forty minutes later, after navigating the clinical labyrinth of hospital corridors and the unhelpfully signposted nature trails in the woods, Emilia walks out from beneath the trees onto a grassy mound, cordoned off with police tape and crawling with cops. A couple detach themselves from the general mass and move towards her as she approaches.
“Sorry, ma'am, this area is,” one begins, and then stops as she raises the card.
“Emilia Santangelo, legal advisor to the Indigo League with special investigatory powers,” she says. “Talk to your boss. I think you'll find I'm expected.”
The cops glance at each other, and then one goes off while the other stays to keep an eye on her. A few moments later, the first one returns, trailing a haggard-looking man in his early forties.
“Miss Santangelo?” he asks. “Detective Inspector Albert Harkness. The chief said someone would be coming.”
He sounds unhappy about it, but then, he looks like the kind of guy who's unhappy about most things. Emilia decides to give him one chance.
“
Ms Santangelo,” she corrects. “I'm here representing the League's interest.”
“That's what I said, isn't it?” asks Harkness, and Emilia watches his one chance go up in flames. Okay. She's been black in this country for long enough to know an a*shole when she sees one. Fortunately, her League position means she doesn't
have to be nice.
“Just tell me what you've found,” she says, stepping past the police line. “I assume your own forensics team has gone over the site?”
“Right,” replies Harkness grudgingly, following. “The peak of the hill is scorched, but footprints in the soot put two people there, one of whom fell over, and one pokémon. We're not sure what.”
“Rhyhorn?”
Harkness blinks.
“Could be,” he concedes. “The trail of broken grass is pretty wide. You know who was up here?”
“Yes,” says Emilia simply. “What else have you found?”
Harkness' unhappiness congeals for a minute into open anger, but he hides it quickly enough, turning away to gesture up at the hilltop and the white-clad forensics team scouring it like ants in search of crumbs.
“Not a lot. The damage to the grass doesn't match any known source. Forensics say it was disintegrated, not fired. Why the witnesses weren't I have no idea.”
All right. This sounds like breach; in the files Emilia read on the plane, disintegration of nearby matter – sometimes including parts of humans who got too close – was listed as a known side effect. Still, someone who's helped cover up as much of Kanto's weirdness as she has knows there's more than one way to trigger molecular disintegration. A powerful psyshock combined with certain rare poison- or ghost-type moves, for instance, can result in each destabilising effect multiplying the other, and before you know it you've got yourself a disintegration field spreading right through a building. Emilia saw that one in that case out in the sticks near Lavender, and the grass there looked much the same as here.
“Okay,” she says. “What else?”
“The porygon scan picked up some sort of radiation,” replies Harkness. “Very low, not dangerous.”
“Which you might get from a sufficiently powerful fire attack. Except …”
“Except that there doesn't seem to have been any fire, yes.” Harkness glowers. He doesn't seem to appreciate her having jumped in halfway through his thought. “We've done a psy trace, too. Nothing doing. Just a lot of static.”
Emilia nods.
“What did you use?”
“Slowbro. Our handler is Psy Officer Walker, over there.” Harkness nods at a woman standing a little way off, talking to one of the forensics officers. Something pink and shiny that might be an otter and might be a newt is sitting on her foot, staring into space and occasionally scratching the scars around the base of the spiral shell clamped to its tail. Not the best pokémon for the job, but Emilia doesn't doubt that it gets results. The problem is whether or not it can communicate them effectively.
“All right,” she says. “Anything else, Detective?”
“That's all we've got,” he replies. “Honestly, I don't know what else you're expecting to find here, Miss Santangelo. We've run the tests, and―”
“You just let me worry about that,” she says sweetly. “Thanks. You've been very helpful. I'm going to run a few tests of my own.
She leaves him glaring and walks up the hill to where the scorch marks begin. One of the forensics specialists tries to stop her, but she glances back at Harkness and he, with an obvious show of reluctance, nods.
“She's League,” he calls. “Here to do tests or something.”
The specialist gives her a concerned look.
“We've run―”
“Yes, of course,” says Emilia. “I'm not here to impugn your good work. I just have some other things to check.”
He backs off, and Emilia takes a breath.
“Okay, Nadia,” she says, holding out her hand for the natu to perch on. “Ready?”
She gets a chirp in response, and Nadia hops across to her finger, where she turns her unsettling stare on the ground before her, the grass and mingled grey-black dust of disintegrated vegetation. A second or two later, a faint purple glow begins to rise like smoke from her feathers, and Emilia closes her eyes.
There's a second of darkness, and then the hillside reappears before her, drawn in lines of purple and silver against the dark. The police are gone, and instead she sees Artemis standing in front of her, staggering, arms raised to shield her eyes. Jerry is next to her, caught mid-fall, face turned away.
“I told you we did a trace already,” calls Harkness, but she can barely hear him. There's some other sound here. Something very faint, almost inaudible in fact, but there. Grinding. Like a knife being sharpened.
Emilia turns her attention to the hilltop now, almost dreading what she might see, and relieved more than disappointed to find that there's nothing there. Nadia has tried to look into this part of the past, obviously, has made an attempt to render something in the usual glimmering translucent lines, but something's gone wrong. The purple and silver have bled and pooled into blotchy squares, zigzag lines of pixellated interference jumbling the image.
“Nadia?” she asks, staring. “What am I looking at here?”
FURRET THING, answers Nadia crossly. Apparently furret are natu's main predators, out in the wild, and though born among humans Nadia retains enough instinctive hostility towards them that she uses them as curses.
“That's fine,” says Emilia. “You've done plenty.”
COULD BETTER.
“Really. It's okay.” Emilia opens her eyes, letting the sunlight and the cops rush back in to take the place of the artificial night, and taps Nadia gently on the head with one finger. The purple glow fades and she turns to glare at her. “Don't give me that,” says Emilia. “If you couldn't, no one could.”
Nadia's not happy about it, but she returns to Emilia's shoulder without further complaint. Technically, after all, she's right: no one
could do better. There is perhaps one species of pokémon with better prophetic powers than natu, but the thing about xatu is that with one eye on the past and one on the future, they tend not to be paying much attention to the present, and don't notice things like their trainers asking them questions or predators sneaking up behind them. In the wild, Emilia was told by the League trainer who assigned Nadia to her, natu almost never evolve. Given the rapid pace of mutation among pokémon, in a few thousand years' time they might lose the ability to do so entirely.
“So?” asks Harkness, joining her. “It's like I said, isn't it? Nothing doing.”
“We saw the witnesses,” replies Emilia, giving away perhaps more than she should but unable to resist a jab at his pride. “And something on the hilltop, although I'm not sure what.”
He stares.
“Walker didn't get anything,” he insists.
“I'm sure Officer Walker is an excellent tracer,” replies Emilia. “Perhaps she was just unlucky.” Too far, she admonishes herself. You don't have to be nice, but you don't have to be outright mean, either. “Anyway, there's something else I'd like to do,” she says, moving swiftly on before Harkness can think of a reply. “If you'll excuse me?”
She opens up her bag and withdraws a poké ball: electrum casing, engraved with the Indigo League insignia. It's a little showy for her tastes, but after so many centuries the tradition is here to stay; all official League pokémon, as opposed to those partnered to specific members, have to have the special ball. Nadia does, for instance, or she did before Emilia quietly lost the ugly thing on a beach holiday in the Sevii Islands.
Effie never had a ball. When Emilia needed to travel with her, she'd just tap the flowerpot and Effie would jump right in, digging down into the compost with her stubby roots. She'd often uproot herself at night to roam, but she never wandered out of sight of her trainer. There was a loyalty there, an animal trust that if she was with Emilia she would always be safe.
Emilia carefully does not think about this. She releases the ball's occupant, and makes Harkness sigh crossly.
“We did a porygon scan as well―”
“Not with this porygon,” says Emilia flatly. “Beebs? Scan protocol theta, please.”
BB97 is an old model – one of the original 19, in fact – and it takes a little while to respond, its polygonal head nodding back and forth while it processes her command. Emilia has worked with it before, and is used to the delayed reaction, but she can sense Harkness' contempt behind her back. It can't be helped. BB97 has undergone extensive modification at the hands of some of Lorelei's anomalous resources, and nobody wants to update the OS and risk breaking it.
“Acknowledged,” it says at last, in a flat monotone like the speaking clock. “Authorisation required.”
“Presenting.” She holds out her hand, palm down, and BB97 scans her fingerprints with a flicker of half-visible light from its beak.
“Analysing,” it says. “Registered user Emilia Santangelo acknowledged. Proceeding.”
It turns and begins to trundle back and forth across the scorched earth, beak to the ground like a bloodhound following a scent. Sometimes it comes close to bumping into a forensics officer and politely asks to be excused before floating around them. Privately, Emilia thinks it's very cute, but she doesn't let it show.
“I would've thought the League would have porygon2 at least,” says Harkness.
“We do,” replies Emilia. “None of them outperform this one.”
He stares at BB97 for a while. It is having a little difficulty pathfinding around a rock.
“Really,” he says, and Emilia swallows her annoyance and forces herself to stay silent.
Eventually, BB97 is done, and it returns, agonisingly slowly, to Emilia.
“Scan complete,” it says. “Results: 97% match.”
Harkness looks at her.
“Match for what?” he asks.
“Thank you, Beebs,” says Emilia, recalling the porygon. “And thank you for your time, Detective. You'll receive some papers to sign in a little while.”
She turns and leaves, and feels a rush of triumph as he asks again, and is again ignored.
The feeling doesn't last; by the time she's back in the woods, her secret smile has faded. It doesn't really matter if she's put one over on Harkness. That last test has clinched it. The witness testimony, the corruption of the trace, the profile of the fallout BB97 scanned: it all points to one thing, and that thing is breach.
I am omen, Artemis said the entity told her. If that isn't the start of something bad, then Emilia doesn't know what is.
*
Later that afternoon, Artemis gets another call from the Gym. Not Brock or Emilia, but she supposes they must both be pretty busy. She gets thanks for her assistance, a reminder that she can count on the League whenever, and reassurance that Leroy has been found. He came back all by himself, chewing the remnants of someone's rose bush and trailing a broken hosepipe looped around one ankle.
It's a relief, or at least one less thing to worry about. She feels there's an important distinction to be made there.
She finishes packing, slowly. There's more than she thought, but she's pretty confident she can handle it. Sometimes being big is useful after all. She fills up bottles of water and looks at maps. Each League campsite should have some kind of water pump or something, so if she doesn't wander too far from the marked trails she should be fine. They're designed for ten-year-olds, after all.
It takes her a long time; for some reason she can't seem to concentrate. Or no, not 'some reason': she knows
exactly what it is that's bugging her. It's about a billion feet tall and springs into existence in the middle of an unnatural night.
What really gets her is that she's still doing this. Okay, so maybe she doesn't have a choice, but what if there are others like it out there? Emilia didn't give anything away, and Artemis never really got a chance to ask any questions; as soon as the interview was over, they went right into the whole getting-a-pokémon thing. That had to be deliberate, right? She didn't see it then but she sees it now, and she could kick herself for not noticing at the time.
“Damn it, Artie,” she mutters. Brauron looks up at the sound, and Artemis holds out her hand for her to climb on. “You were a distraction,” she tells her. “A really pretty distraction, but still.” She sighs. Brauron makes her way slowly up Artemis' arm to hang from her collar. She seems to like it there.
Somewhere out there, terrible things are happening, and the League sends well-dressed women with natu and kindly smiles to make sure nobody ever finds out. Doesn't even sound real, does it? Even she has to admit it seems like a delusion. But it is real, and this is the world she's planning on going out into, as soon as tomorrow comes.
“What are we gonna do, huh?” Artemis asks Brauron. She puts a delicate hand on Artemis' clavicle: a response, or not. “That's not so helpful,” says Artemis. “But it's cute, I guess.”
She peels Brauron gently off her shirt and holds her up close, looks into her dark, intelligent eyes.
“We gotta do it anyway,” she says, as if it's her pokémon she's convincing. “We're committed, Brauron. What are we?” Brauron licks each of her own eyes in turn with a long blue-black tongue like a fish tail. “That's right,” says Artemis, engaging in some creative interpretation. “Committed.”
She returns Brauron to her perch and gets up. It's going to be okay. How unlucky would you have to be to meet that spire
twice, right?
*
It's another bad night. No ghost people, for which Artemis is thankful, but nightmares. It's all right. She'll live. She always does.
In the morning, she gets up early and tidies her room. She tore it up fairly thoroughly yesterday while she was packing, and though she's taking anything that could reveal her other self to her parents with her, she doesn't want to leave a single reason for anyone to come in here and go through her things. It's just second nature at this point; Artemis has spent far too long being far too careful to let herself slip up now.
She's quiet, but Brauron is clearly a light sleeper, and when Artemis closes the wardrobe she senses her uncurling on the windowsill where she perched last night. She originally coiled herself on the bedside cabinet, but Artemis had visions of reaching for the alarm clock and missing and accidentally crushing her with her giant clumsy hand, and had to move her before she could calm herself down enough to go to sleep.
“Hey,” she says. “Ready for adventures?”
Brauron looks at her suspiciously for a minute, then seems to remember where she is and who it is she's looking at and relaxes, yawning and settling onto her haunches. She holds out her forelegs expectantly, and Artemis raises her eyebrows.
“Is that what I am, huh? A taxi? Oh god, don't be so cute at me like that, I can't say no.”
She picks her up and Brauron settles by her collar again like a spectacular pendant.
“C'mon,” says Artemis. “I gotta go make the tea.”
But for Brauron clinging to her shirt, everything is just like normal. The radio clock in her parents' bedroom clicks on as she passes, bringing in the presenter mid-greeting; exactly three minutes later, Artemis hears the shuffling of bodies begin as her parents start the arduous process of getting up and ready for work. She makes tea and leaves it out for when they come down. She eats cereal without really tasting it and gauges how much time is left until she needs to leave.
Just like any other Monday in the Campbell household. Except school's out, and in its place something much, much bigger is coming.
Ten-year-olds do this, Artie.
Ten-year-olds. You're going to be fine.
Her parents come down dressed for work and eat breakfast in an uneasy quiet. Nobody is quite sure what to say, until Artemis, knowing that there are now just five minutes left until her father has to leave, puts her mug and bowl in the dishwasher and stands by the door.
“Well,” she says. “I, um … I guess I'm going.”
The words hang in the air for a little while, filling the kitchen like a cold mist.
“Okay,” says her mother. “I guess you are.”
They all file out into the hall, where Artemis has left her backpack. She puts it on in silence, carefully avoiding squishing Brauron beneath the straps (her brief and shocking mental image: a crunch, a hiss, blood soaking into her shirt), and stands there for a moment, fidgeting.
“Well,” she says again. “Bye, I guess.”
“――,” says her dad, taking her hand. “Good luck, son.”
(A tiny stab of pain.)
“You know you can come back if you need to,” her mother tells her, and then quickly corrects herself: “If you need a break, I mean.” She pauses. “You have your meds?”
“Yep. I do.” Artemis waves a hand awkwardly over her shoulder at the pack. It's heavy, but as she thought, it's okay. She's heavier by a long way. “Thanks.”
There is a moment of graceless silence, in which her parents visibly think about hugging her but do not, partly because of the salandit clinging to her chest and partly because this isn't really a thing that they do with her, any more. Artemis focuses on breathing and not seeing the look on their faces.
“Well, it's nothing really,” says her mother, in the end. “Bye then, ――.”
“Yeah,” says Artemis, moving to the door, so relieved she almost forgets to not hear her old name. “Bye.”
“Bye,” calls her father, and then Artemis closes the door behind her.
She stands there on the step for a moment, letting the warm light and cool breeze of an early summer morning wash over her. Breathe, Artie.
Okay?
Okay.
Artemis breathes out, and starts walking down the street.
She has a lot to be getting on with. She's not actually leaving town right away; first, of course, she has to stop by Chelle's and get into character, so to speak, and then after that she needs to wait for the shops to open: she has a few errands to run before she abandons civilisation as she knows it for the foreseeable future. If it had been possible, she'd have left a little later, but she would have felt terrible about going while her parents were out. That really would be like abandoning them.
So: first, the bus, eerily quiet at this hour now that school's finished for the summer, and then Chelle's house. Chelle is waiting for her, looking as excited as if it's her who's going off to wander Kanto and have adventures. But then, she already went on her own trainer journey, back at the usual age: three badges in a case up in her room, a persian that now spends its retirement finding new and ever more inconvenient places in which to lie down. She knows what Artemis has to look forward to.
It's a little grating. Artemis doesn't like to be reminded that she missed her first chance. But Chelle's her oldest friend, and she stuck with Artemis even after she became Artemis, taught her everything she knows about clothes and make-up, so she deserves to be cut a little slack. Artemis would be excited for her too, if their positions were reversed.
Here, Artemis gets changed and leaves the clothes she wore out of her house at the back of Chelle's wardrobe, to be picked up when she return home. And after Chelle is done cooing over Brauron, who accepts the attention with the regal grace of a queen receiving a gift from a visiting dignitary, it's time for one last trip out together. They go to the store and buy sunglasses, blinking at each other through mirrored lenses and laughing as they compete to try on the least suitable pairs they can find, and then Chelle accompanies Artemis to the hairdresser's.
It's the last thing. She's going to be gone a while: she's not going to keep this ugly hairstyle when she doesn't have to. Still, it's nerve-wracking, putting herself in such close proximity to people who cannot fail to detect what she is, and she's glad she brought Chelle. Artemis hates to admit it, but she really does need the support. And anyway, someone has to carry Brauron. (The fact that she could simply be returned to her poké ball is one that Artemis deliberately does not consider.)
She does okay. The hairdresser is a little stumbling, a little hesitant, but between her and Artemis and Chelle they manage to work it all out, and Artemis leaves with hair that is still much shorter than she'd like but immeasurably more stylish. She feels a heady rush of relief, and a certain half-ashamed pride that she survived.
There's no time to dwell on it. This is the last goodbye. At the bus stop where she can catch the number 65 to the edge of town, Artemis stops, and moves Brauron to her shoulder so she can hug Chelle goodbye.
“Stay safe, Artie,” she is told. “Call me sometimes, huh?”
Artemis promises she will, and then the bus comes and she is at last all on her own.
It's the first time in so long now. There was a time when doing anything at all seemed impossible, and then after that there was a time when her friends and family wouldn't let her out of their sight. She hated it then, of course; nobody likes to be treated as if they can't be trusted, even if it might be true.
Now she has all the freedom in the world. Technically there's nothing to stop her leaving the country and heading for Johto, even; her League grant will allow it. Anywhere she can walk, she is allowed to go. And if at the end of it she turns out to be any good, maybe she could go even further still. Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos … the world is huge, and one day it might all be hers.
Not yet, though. And that's okay; right now, it's too big for her to even think about comfortably. First, she just needs to make it through Viridian Forest.
Artemis looks away from the city shifting outside the window and down at Brauron, flaring the fins between her shoulder blades to catch the sunlight.
“We're really going,” she tells her. “You and me, kiddo. We're gonna see some things.”
Pewter grows thin and sparse around them. The bus empties its passengers out, stop by stop. Eventually, there's no one on board but Artemis, and the road gets narrow and leafy.
And then it's the end of the line, and she gets out and stands there by the wayside. The bus leaves, and she looks back after it, watching it shrink down among the distant houses. She can't hear even the faintest whisper of Pewter traffic. This is the furthest she's been from the city centre in at least three years.
She looks south, past the place where the road bends to skirt the woods, at the trees that stand there, dark and silent.
The moment hangs inside her like a bead of water on the tip of a finger, gravity arrested by a miracle of physics.
Artemis leaves the road and walks south down a footpath that cuts across the scrubland. Behind her is a signpost, VIRIDIAN FOREST 1 MILE, and behind that are the suburbs, and behind those are her hometown, her friends, her family, everything she loves and hates and both and more.
She thinks it would make a good story if she didn't look back, but she does, just once, and then she gets her head down and hurries on towards the woods.
*
“Good morning,” says Emilia to the receptionist on duty at the Gym. “I'd like to speak to Brock, please.”
Hopefully he's around. She gave him Sunday to get some sleep and recover a little, but now she can't put this off any longer. Her report is filed, the information has been contained, and Brock's sitting on the last loose end Emilia needs to tie up before she can get out of Pewter. And not before time. This is one of those cases, the ones that keep her up at night hoping that the League is as good at dealing with this stuff as she thinks it is. The sooner she can get back home and forget about it, the better.
Besides, at this stage, she really doesn't want to leave Effie alone for too long.
“Um, he's kinda busy this morning,” says the receptionist. “Is it urgent?”
Emilia nods.
“I'm sorry, but it is. League business.” She shows him her card, which he scrutinises with frank curiosity for a moment before handing it back. Technically he and she both work for the same organisation, but she suspects that he tends to think of Brock as his boss, and not the people up on the Plateau who actually pay his wages.
“All right,” he says. “He's in practice room 2 right now. That's down there on the right.”
“Thank you,” replies Emilia, who already knows this but is too polite to say so. “I appreciate this. I won't take much of his time.”
Smile, and turn and go. Hurry it up, Emilia. It's early, but like League investigators trainers keep weird hours and she really doesn't want to get in the way of anyone's Gym challenge.
It's the same room in which she gave Artemis her starter yesterday. The pokémon are actually still here, joining in with a practice session Brock is running with a couple of his trainers: simple things, really, mostly reflex work. Many of the more sluggish rock-types have a tendency to slow down even more when living among humans; without the occasional predator or natural disaster to keep them on their toes, they end up too confident in their armour, relaxing into lethargy. (Emilia has a good memory, and a lot of League friends. And you never know when a little extra knowledge might be the thing that decides a case.) Under Brock's direction, the trainers are having their graveler block hits with the tough edges of their forearms, trying to improve their reaction speed. The non-rock-types that Emilia brought are mostly just getting in the way, although they do appear to be doing so very enthusiastically.
“Brock,” she says, standing by the door. “I'm glad to see you back on your feet.”
He turns, surprised. She wouldn't call the look on his face welcoming, exactly – nobody
likes being visited by a League lawyer – but he doesn't look overtly hostile, which after the inane intransigence of the Pewter Police Department is really rather refreshing.
“Ms Santangelo,” he says. “I didn't expect to see you here again. Is something wrong?”
“No, not at all. I've finished my report. I just need to discuss a few last things with you, is all.” She makes significant movements of her eyes. “Perhaps in private?”
“Oh. Right. Uh, guys? Keep working on that, switch every five minutes for the next half hour. And for the love of god,
someone catch that petilil before it gets its roots into anything it shouldn't.” (An incorrigible little grass-type, getting into trouble. Emilia closes her eyes momentarily and thinks of home.) “Okay,” says Brock. “Let's go.”
He follows Emilia out and back down the hall to his office. Nadia chirps and alerts her with a series of mental images to the ways in which it's changed since yesterday: the geodude are gone, presumably for training; there is a mostly-empty mug of coffee on the desk; a copy of the standard anomalous event confidentiality contract is half-visible in an open drawer;
Rugged: A Life Among Rock-Types has been removed from the bookshelf and left propped open nearby. She's good. Emilia's no slouch herself, but even she only noticed the geodude and the book.
“Can I offer you anything?” asks Brock. “Tea, coffee …?”
“No, thank you. As I said, I won't keep you long.” They sit down on opposite sides of the desk. Emilia makes her opening move. “I'd like to talk to you first of all about Jerry DeWitt.”
“Yeah, I heard you visited him.” Just talking about it makes Brock look tired. “I … went there myself yesterday.”
“He should recover within a few days,” Emilia assures him. “I don't know if anyone told you that. Probably they didn't, because they barely bothered to tell me, but there you go. The symptoms pass within a week of the event.”
Brock stares at her for a moment, then sighs.
“Thanks,” he says, with feeling. “They
didn't tell me that, no. Although, um, I have a feeling I might have been shouting a lot at the time.”
“Yes, Lorelei did mention you seemed upset.” In point of fact, she said something much less flattering, but Emilia feels it would be best for everyone if she tactfully forgot this. “In any event,” she says, “I'd like to leave him in your hands. You can arrange to speak to him when he's better and have him sign the necessary papers, right?”
“Yes. Yes, I can do that.” Brock nods. “Thanks. I was hoping you'd let me do that. I think it's best this way.”
“As do I. I'm not here to make things any harder for anyone.” This is … well, it's
mostly true, but coming as it does right before she starts to make things uncomfortable for Brock it seems a little like a lie to her. “With that out of the way, I think there's only one thing left for me to address.”
“That being?”
Nadia shifts her wings slightly, sparking memories: Artemis' prevarication, Brock's lie – and, strangely, Lorelei's report of his anger. That one doesn't quite seem to fit with the rest to Emilia, but she lets it slide. Sometimes Nadia has a strange idea of what ideas are relevant.
Anyway. It's time to come out with it. Brock will appreciate her being straightforward.
“Brock, I know she stays very quiet and it's easy to forget she's here, but I work with a natu,” she says. “We can't read minds, but we know when we're being lied to. And you and Artemis both tried to avoid one of my questions.”
She stops there, to let it sink in. Brock's elbow hits the table with a thump, and he lets his head fall into his upturned hand.
“Damn it,” he says.
“Yes,” agrees Emilia. “The good news is, Brock, that as far as I can tell what you were trying to do is reassure Artemis that none of what happened was her fault. And maybe I work for the League, but I'm not an unreasonable woman, so I've waited until the morning
after I've filed my report to come and talk to you about it.”
He looks up, startled.
“So …?”
“So as long as you haven't given away any state secrets, nobody needs to know.” She clasps her hands together on the desk, a picture of calm. “Just tell me what you told her, Brock. And then I go away and we both forget this happened. Deal?”
He hesitates, but it's a good offer and he knows it. Brock straightens up in his chair and nods.
“Deal.”
“Okay. So?”
“There's … what I said was, I don't think you're responsible and I was going to have strong words with the people who I thought
were responsible. That's it, I swear. I wasn't going to tell her any more than―”
“The people you thought were responsible?” Now Emilia sees what Nadia was driving at. Lorelei said Brock was angry. Why would Brock be angry? Because he thought she had something to do with this. Because he suspected …
No. No, there has to be an explanation. The League fixes problems. Sometimes it creates new ones, and Emilia helps fix them too, but not like this. Not … not whatever this is.
“Yeah,” says Brock, oblivious. She keeps her face as impassive as ever. “I mean, I don't know what breach is, exactly, but I know it doesn't happen by accident. It's like the thing said, it was
called. And who else is going to be doing that kind of research?”
Nadia, thinks Emilia, and the natu shuffles her feet, ready.
She leans forward, eyes intent.
“What do you think you know, Brock?” she asks, and he gives her a nervous look.
“What? Nothing. I mean, rumours. I know that's Lorelei's division, the weird research stuff. There's – a bunch of people think it's in Viridian Gym or something and that's why Giovanni's never around, but you know, it's just conspiracy theories. I don't really know anything.” He's talking too much, too fast. Emilia needs to rein herself in, dial down the intimidation. With an effort, she forces herself to lean back in her chair and relax her shoulders.
“Sorry,” she says. “Like I said, Brock, this stays between us. But help me understand something: why would you argue with Lorelei just because of rumours? She's not an easy woman to shout at.”
Brock looks genuinely uncertain. Emilia waits for Nadia, but she's got nothing. His hesitation is real.
“I … don't know,” he admits. “Just what I said, I guess. I thought, who else was going to call something like that? And – well, Jerry was in the hospital and Artemis was terrified.” He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry. You know what, I'm glad you asked. Talking about it now, it seems, uh, kind of ridiculous. I should apologise to Lorelei.”
Emilia sighs. Okay. She gets it now. There's nothing behind it, probably – but she'll have to have a word with the Elite Four about maintaining better communications with the various Leaders. Too much secrecy and you get absurd rumours like this. Lorelei's research teams work mostly on managing legendary pokémon and other powerful entities, alongside move research. And Giovanni? He has a business to run. Not the kind of business she entirely approves of, maybe, but still, it more than explains his time spent away from the Gym. Isn't he in the middle of negotiating the appointment of a successor with the League, so he can stop splitting his life between two workplaces and focus on his casinos?
Yes. It makes sense. It does. And she should probably say something to Brock, because the silence is starting to grow.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I think that would be good. Although – give it till this evening, maybe. She seems a little on edge at the moment.”
Brock winces.
“Ouch. Okay, thanks for the tip.”
She smiles.
“Not at all,” she says. “I'm glad we cleared this up. You can depend on me, Brock: no one will ever know you told Artemis anything.”
“Thanks.” He grins in relief. “Is that everything?”
“Yes, I won't keep you any longer.” She stands up and shakes his hand. “It was good to work with you,” she says. “You didn't hear it from me, but you're probably the most sensible Gym Leader we've got in Kanto. Your outburst to Lorelei notwithstanding.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. I mean, you've met Koga, right?” That gets the chuckle she was after. “Just – don't listen to rumours in future, okay? I think you're better than that.”
“Sure,” agrees Brock. “Sure.”
They part amicably, and Brock returns to the practice court while Emilia goes outside, where the sun is just getting high enough to start properly warming the city up.
“Well,” she says, starting the walk back to her hotel, “that's done then, Nadia. We can go home now.”
NO, says Nadia, and Emilia pauses.
“What d'you mean?”
CONNECTIONS, she answers, and a little cold finger of doubt touches Emilia through the heat of the day. Artemis, Brock, Lorelei. Evasion, omission, anger.
The breach entity did say it was called …
“I think you're overthinking this,” she says, snapping the thought in half before it can go anywhere. “Don't
you start with the conspiracy theories too.”
FURRET, mutters Nadia, but she doesn't press it.
It's fine. Natu are good at observation, at making connections, but as her catalogue of differences in Brock's office proved, those observations aren't always meaningful. There's a fine line between detective work and paranoia, and Emilia does not intend to cross it today.
“Let's just go,” she says, not wanting to think about it any more. “Come on. Effie's waiting.”
*
Viridian Forest is not like the other woods. That makes the going a little easier. East of Pewter, the forest was dark and leafy and monochome; here, the trees are all different shades of green, and thick with some kind of creeper that dangles in long, flower-heavy loops. The air is cool and fragrant, and dappled with light. This difference is an important one, as far as Artemis is concerned. It's what says, this isn't last time.
Her plan is to go south through Viridian itself to Pallet, where she can get the ferry out to Cinnabar Island. She could have gone east, she supposes, but that would take her to the mountains and then on into Cerulean, neither of which seem a particularly good place to start training a young fire-type. Viridian Forest, on the other hand, is known for its bug-types, and given Brauron's particular typing they shouldn't be able to do much to her, even allowing for her inexperience.
Their inexperience, even. It's Artemis' first time, too.
It's an okay plan. Not perfect, kinda patchy in places, but okay. It will definitely do as a starting point. If you're going to make mistakes, she figures, you should try to make them before it starts mattering too much.
And hey, if nothing else, this is a nice walk. The particular trail she's following is pretty quiet and a little overgrown in places; sometimes she catches flashes of movement out of the corner of her eye and knows there are wild pokémon around. None seem to want to fight. That's okay. Some of them will. They always do.
Artemis hums to herself and breathes in the calm. Freedom is a little frightening, really, so fraught with possibility, but she thinks she could get used to it.
A couple of hours into her walk she hears a clatter of heavy wings and looks up to see a group of glossy wood pidgey flying from tree to tree. They look back, hesitate; some fly on, but one, sensing an opportunity, flies down, shrilling and kicking at air. For a minute, Artemis freezes up – but Brauron knows what to do, has in some amphibian way been anticipating this, and she leaps from her perch with a hiss and a showy jet of greenish flame. The pidgey banks sharply and retreats up to the tree, cooing, and Brauron lands in the dirt at Artemis' feet, crouched and ready to move.
“Oh,” says Artemis uselessly, staring, taken aback by the speed of it all. She knew it would be different in person, but still, she wasn't expecting this.
The pidgey flares its wings and begins to beat them weirdly, at a strange angle to reality, and the air stirs, gathers in half-visible clumps, and at one last beat flies forward―
“Um – oh hell,
move!”
Brauron may or may not understand the word, but she definitely understands the sentiment. She darts past the gust, twists and spits fire in a neat little ball that falls far short of the pidgey but firmly convinces it that it has picked the wrong fight, and as it flaps off after its companions Brauron turns to look up at her trainer, hissing in contentment.
Artemis keeps on staring.
“Uh,” she says. “Right. Okay. Um – well done? Yeah. Yeah, well done.”
She picks Brauron up and strokes her little head with one finger.
“I guess you're gonna have to train
me,” she tells her. “'Cause I think you won that one on your own.”
Sss, replies Brauron, squeezing her eyes shut in pleasure.
Artemis sighs, and starts walking again. It seems like she's got a lot to think about.
She thinks back to all that time spent on the internet. What does she know about salandit? They're poison/fire, an unusual combination that opens up interesting opportunities; the touch of flame in their venom means that it's effective even against the armour of steel-types. Their fire itself comes from setting alight their poison, giving it that distinctive green tint and making its smoke somewhat noxious; they are fast, fragile and dislike close combat, preferring to spit fire and poison from range. In terms of categorised moves, most young salandit will be capable of performing a type 12 ember (rated .43 on the Standard Power Scale) and a type 46b poison gas.
Artemis sighs again. Forget the jargon. Move categorisation is a whole other thing, and she's really not likely to get a proper handle on it any time soon. Focus on what Brauron can actually
do: i.e., spit a green ball of fire slightly harder than average, and poison pretty much anything with a pulse and a few things without. What Artemis needs to figure out is how to make her do each of these things on command – quickly and efficiently, if she can, and without giving the game away to her opponent. She has a feeling that saying “hey, do a type 12 ember” within earshot of the other trainer is probably something of a tactical mistake.
“So how do we do this, huh?” she wonders, holding Brauron to her chest so she can climb back onto her dress. “Any ideas, little miss I-can-scare-off-a-pidgey-in-one-go? Yeah, okay, I thought not.”
She keeps walking, through a thicket of trees rich with tiny pale flowers that give off a strong smell of growing things, and ponders the question. It's strange, but she hasn't actually ever read anything about this one basic component to training. Everything she researched was kind of predicated on the assumption that the pokémon would at least understand what the trainer was saying; they're not like regular animals, after all.
Possibly, Artemis realises, she should have started with something more elementary. Pokémon Training 101: how to get the thing to do the thing. And now she's here in Viridian Forest, actually on her way, in a place where she might run into wild pokémon or even be challenged to a battle, and she doesn't have a damn clue what it is she's doing.
Brauron looks up at her, concerned. She can feel Artemis' pulse racing through the wall of her chest.
Slowly, deliberately, Artemis untenses her shoulders and lets out her breath.
“I'm okay,” she says, unconvincingly. “I'm okay. I'm just – thinking, is all. Just thinking.”
It's going to work out. It is. There's no alternative, Artie, so you're going to make this stick.
She keeps thinking, and walks on through the woods.
The sun gets higher and higher, and even in the shade of the trees it starts to get hot. Artemis has been wearing a light cardigan this whole time, self-conscious of her arms (their size, their scars), but now she really can't stand it any longer. And anyway, it's silly. There's nobody here to see. So she takes it off, eyeing the undergrowth carefully in case it conceals any watching eyes (which it doesn't, but sometimes it's just easier to placate your paranoia than it is to fight it), and continues on her way.
The deeper she goes, the more flowers she finds. Bushes livid with red splashes, a whole swathe of old forest where the undergrowth is dominated by late bluebells. She takes photos on her phone and, seeing Brauron reaching for them, breaks off a stem for her to chew and burn up into fragrant smoke between her teeth.
It makes her feel a little better. Maybe she doesn't know how to make Brauron understand her, but at least she's not so bad at understanding Brauron.
Later, she's surprised by what she imagines must be the world's most pugnacious weedle, which sees her coming and decides the time has come to either prove its worth or discover hers. It crawls out from under a bush, nose bobbing as it inches along the ground, and she has to try hard not to laugh. Somehow, the pokémon master-or-be-mastered instinct seems less appropriate in a weedle than, say, a golem or a machoke.
“Okay, kiddo, you're up,” she says, laying Brauron down on the ground. “Emb― oh. You know what, never mind.”
The weedle, catching sight of what looks like a predator, has turned around again and started shuffling off back towards the bushes. Brauron lunges for it hungrily, and for one awful second Artemis thinks she's actually going to eat it, but she stops immediately at the sound of Artemis' panicked voice, and turns to stare at her while the weedle loops its way back into the shrubbery.
“O-
kay,” says Artemis shakily, crouching to pick her up again. “Um – please don't do that. Please. I know that's what you do and all, but – just please don't. Or at least not when I'm looking.”
Brauron eyes her, uncomprehending. Artemis sighs and puts her back in place by her collar.
“Never mind,” she mutters. “Never mind.”
She continues. The forest moves around her, same as ever. Except that now, she can't help but be watching for every little movement, every creature that Brauron might see as prey, and somehow the flowers don't seem as bright as they did before.
She really,
really needs to start training her properly.
*
![[Imaginative]:[Clockwork]](/data/avatars/m/192/192875.jpg?1525616141){kind=avatar}