Crack'd, or How the Love of Seafood Saved Unova

[Cutlerine]

With Cheren and Bianca's luck, I expect them to go to the opposite entrance to Chargestone cave that N and Jered come out of..........................................................................................................................................................and I still don't see what seafood has to do with any of this.

You'll see about the seafood later on. Although I have started laying the groundwork for the seafood part of the plot.

Side note: I really, really love seafood.

Seafood sparked the initial conversation with a paring of characters earlier, that's all I remember.

Anyway, I like how you used the shadow triad here, I was actually wondering if they would make an appearance. I bet if ezra hadn't shown up, the triad would have saved Jared regardless but most likely bianca and cheren would have been left behind (I don't care to capitilize their names)

I'm not sure whether they would have saved them or not. Certainly they could have done, since there are three of them, but if they had they almost definitely wouldn't have taken them all to N.

For reasons that will be revealed later, I don't think N would let Cheren and Bianca die... yet. As such, I think the Shadows might have saved them.

Really liking this right now and look forward to the next instalment.

Thanks! We're getting towards the first of the two Enormous Events that I've had planned from the start and which have been guiding the plot so far, so I hope the story continues to hold your interest.

...Now I'm gonna subject you to a dream I had a few days ago. There was somebody in a fandom, talking about a race of golems left behind from an ancient civilization or whatever, the golems were quite spiffy, they were made of metal and thin and angular like Tin Men. The plot is, some invading race came in and did something horrible at some point. Okay so the person goes into WW2 horror-poetry mode, with everything she's saying (possibly she was JX Valentine) conscious as all-caps logorrhea:

NOTHING THEY DID NOTHING THEIR CHILDREN SLAUGHTERED DO YOU THINK THEY KNEW DO YOU THINK THEY CARED THEIR LOVE THEIR CRANIAL STOPS THEIR LAUGHTER THEIR MADNESS THEIR

etc, while I looked up from the POV of a fallen golem Tin Man, watching an ill-defined black samurai approach me, the laughter in my soul escalating smoothly to terror as it bent down to hew me. Why are all my nightmares so tacky?

A dream for a dream, as they say:

Spoiler: For length

I was going to a fair in a small country village somewhere. It was a beautiful summer's day; the fields were bright green and the little white houses practically glowed in the sunlight. With me was a friend of mine with bloodlessly pale skin and black hair.

We did not get to the fair.

A storm came. The sky grew dark and the sun burnt red; there were screams from the fair and as the rain started coming down we fled down a side road through the woods along the south edge of the village. I saw flashes of feather and scale among the trees, and at one point even saw two of the creatures standing by the side of the road. They weren't scared. They weren't trying to intimidate us. They were just watching.

We ran.

We kept running and eventually came to a large shed - a building on a farm just across from the edge of the woods, west of the village. It was full of old farm equipment, and connected to the farmhouse on one side - but we didn't dare go in there; we were afraid of what might be there. There was a refrigerator and some imperishable foodstuffs, too; this place had evidently been used as a larder/garage/equipment storage place combo.

We barricaded the doors and waited, looking out at the rain through the cracks in the curtains.

A 'time is passing' montage happened. I don't remember much of it, just the red, swollen sun moving across the sky, and the knowledge coming to me - perhaps via the radio - that outside our sanctuary, the world had gone to hell. Dinosaurian monsters had risen from the earth. In some places, the dead did not stay dead. Civilisation as we know it had fallen.

After the montage - weeks later, or months; we had lost track of time - two men broke in: one through the front door, one through the door that led into the farmhouse. They were tall and filthy, with intelligent eyes and tattered clothes. One had the kind of beard that a hairy man ends up with after a few months without a razor; the other just had stubble.

My friend and I stood in the room, separated. The man who came through the front door was behind me and wouldn't let me move. He may have had a knife at my throat; my memory is unclear. I thought they wanted our food, our shelter - I would have let them have it, if they had just left us alone.

The other man looked at my friend with a terrible predatory gleam in his eye, and she looked back at me.

We were so, so afraid.

And then I woke up.

Sometimes I dream in short stories like that. When I do, they are almost invariably terrifying.

Maybe I write too much.

Shiiiiiiii... Did you intend anybody to realize what the retriever was until this scene?

I have to confess, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

This is pedantic: what is the precise mechanism by which less logical people understand what N does? I mean of course this comes from the tradition of things in British sf that sometimes, people 'just know'. But then, I dunno, you're playing around with that tradition, making rules like 'logical people don't have that sense' (which, I admit, is the most natural way to proceed). But could it stand for some elaboration beyond 'just knowing'? How exactly someone like Cheren would be led to miss it?

I think what I meant is that Cheren would look for a logical reason why N could know - whereas anyone else would have been able to intuit by now that N and Jared are not like other people, and that N does not necessarily have a 'logical', or indeed a knowable, reason for his connection with Jared.

Nevertheless, I take your point.

Doesn't the group feel a little forlorn and awkward without Jared/Lauren? Their chemistry isn't coming together. They've no idea what each other are talking about.

Wouldn't you? After all, without the hero, how can the rest of the legend carry on successfully?

****, Cheren, you're using Dropbox to ensure data against the Party's more private secrets? Remember when it was hacked last year? Dropbox is not the most secure thing, if N's people really wanted to destroy this sensitive information.

I think the story's set before the Dropbox hack, although I confess I'm a bit hazy about the exact time. Besides, I imagine that what happened was that Cheren's phone automatically syncs its photos with his laptop via Dropbox - I imagine there was very little choice involved at all.

This is all theory, of course. I don't own a phone complicated enough to run any sort of app at all, let alone Dropbox. I chose a phone that slides open over a phone with functionality, and I've never regretted that decision.

Because, y'know. Slidey!

That was a lovely beginning, so tranquil that it made me think of Woolf of all people. "Septimus Warren Smith heard the birds singing in Greek" (not an actual line).

Septimus Warren Smith was always a bit more disturbing for me right from the off. In fact, this is probably more Robert Rankin than Virginia Woolf - though hey, I'll take a compliment when it comes my way. Thanks.

I fail at 'helpful', so I'm gonna try for 'fertile bed': I wonder how much the evil of supernatural beings is rooted in just this point, which seems to be, they don't understand suffering. Damage that is an annoying impediment to action, vs. damage that is physically suffered. Teiresias has no sense of what Smythe might be feeling under the effects of starvation and cold, and this is why compassion is lost to him. Ezra's condition is similar, I think. But these Castiel figures who try to help mortals anyway, I wonder how far their sense of good or compassion really goes, how much they simply try to do good mechanically, imagining an absent sense of compassion. Wait I forgot Ezra's probably not on a moral mission. Even so, he sometimes does things that are only motivated by a sense of right, small as they are.

You mentioned Lovecraftian horror before. Although Derleth later added a morality to the Mythos (which I think was a terrible move), originally there was no good or evil at all in Lovecraft: just humans, and creatures so far above them that they simply do not understand or even care about humanity, any more than we would care about lice. Creatures with alien minds and moralities. My demons come from the same tradition: it's not that they dislike us, particularly (except Weland, who has a specific reason for disliking humans that will be discussed later), it's just that we don't matter, and we have an annoying Gorsedd of druids that interfere with them if they come up here.

Ezra, of course, is not quite the same as other demons. There is some morality in his mission, or at least he thinks there is. But there is another motive, and one that he has not yet admitted to anyone.

Slightly anomalous? Maybe it's just the fact that you wrote "Smythe" in the third one, to avoid repeating "He", which in turn made it feel somewhat like "Smythe" and "he" were different people.

Oops. I rearranged the order of these sentences during the edit and forgot to alter the pronouns/proper names accordingly. Well spotted.

Oh yeah, and what does my previous rambling about good and evil mean for the evil of someone like Halley, who has a sense of suffering, but doesn't use it for other people? An evil maybe less justifiable? But also a lot less absolute?

There is something of an extenuating circumstance in her case, which I can't tell you about (and which frankly doesn't excuse that much). At the moment, though, it does look like she is morally worse than the demons: you could say she is a true moral evil, whereas they are more of a natural evil.

Lauren waits patiently, holding her OTP folded over her bosom. (I didn't mean to pull Lauren into it, but she was the one who declared it, you know.)

Well, it's not necessarily that they'll end up lovers. They may well simply be returning to a previous state of close friendship. Perhaps I'll decide one way or the other; perhaps I'll leave it open, and up to the readers to interpret as they see fit.

A nice modulation, on what we talked about in the last review. In the first place, the events of a full-tilt plot actually happening to someone in real time, they've got to have a very particular dislocating effect. In the second, I feel this is hinting towards Jared actually learning to come into his own, in a way; this might be how he matures the natural abilities you need to deal with so much supernatural ****.

Yep. I'd written this before your review, but I went back and edited it to make it a bit more obvious afterwards when it became clear to me that I wasn't managing the segue into familiarity-with-supernatural-stuff very well.

I can't be sure if this line break was intentional. Bringing it to your attention anyway.

This definitely isn't.

Yep, those were both mistakes. Thanks.

I like the way you sometimes describe pokemon in reference to mythical rather than real creatures. The idea of Taillow being a sparrow pokemon in a world where no sparrows exist is problematic; your fic slides through it, by having real animals. I hadn't thought about this in the last review.

I'm not sure what you mean. Elvers are eel larvae - as are Tynamo. I think one of us is misunderstanding the other, though I'm not sure who.

But yeah, there really have to be actual animals alongside Pokémon, or the ecosystem just doesn't work and any sense of realism is simply gone. It was one of the very first things I decided when setting up this Unova.

Cool. I was also going to be pedantic, like in the Cheren quote above, about when N says "I simply can't do it, because destiny". One of my old thoughts was that destiny ought not to work in a way that directly contradicts the actors somewhere -- nudges them, not through the working of normal cause and effect, but by a magical deus ex machina. Now I also think it's that d.e.m. that provides the element of actual magic; a story ought to have a d.e.m. somewhere, or it gets really ****ing banal. What do you think?

I'm not sure. I suppose it can be done well, but equally I suspect that it's not something that would suit all stories.

Plus, it suddenly makes it incredibly cool that these characters are jacking the system -- getting past a d.e.m. by ingenuity, as though it were a jumpable fence set up by wyrd, and not the word of wyrd, itself.

Thanks. I'm trying to make my fate fluid. Everyone's constrained by fate, and some more than others - but there's a way around it if you really want to bypass it. Free will torn from the jaws of destiny, if you like.

SH*T! That dragon who stole a tower is what they're talking about! Everything loops back to itself, ultimately! There is no god! Your update schedule is quite awesome!

We'll see about the dragons. They haven't been mentioned for a while, have they? I wonder why that is.

Also, thanks! I do try to keep to a schedule of one update each week, if I can.

Thank you all for reading, commenting and (possibly even) enjoying! It's very much appreciated.

 

[Cutlerine]

Interlude: The Prophet

In the old days, they knew how to treat a proleptic.

Now, they get a letter from their doctor and an autoinjector to stave off their more disturbing visions. Back then, ah! Back then, they got a shrine, and an altar, and a title.

Such a shrine it was that the king came to at the beginning of winter, when the grass was beginning to pale and the trees had resolutely ceased to give out olives. He was planning to make war on someone and wanted advice; who he was, and who his enemy was, are long since lost beneath the tide of history. (Not so the oracle, however. No one would forget them – indeed, no one could, even if they had wanted to. Immortality and creative cruelty are exceptionally fine preservatives for one's legacy.)

So came the king to the cave where the oracle resided. He left his retinue behind him at the door and his companion in the antechamber, and at the bidding of the attendant (a haunted fellow whose face had been replaced with a dirty piece of leather, sewn with crude stitches to his skull) proceeded into the sanctum.

The sanctum was dark.

The attendant left the room and closed the door behind him.

The sanctum was very dark.

A king is only a king in the company of other men. Alone, he is a man. And when he is alone in the dark, he is just as afraid as anyone else.

He tried to speak; he failed. He stammered out a weak charge to the oracle to speak.

Two blind white eyes opened in the dark – young eyes, the eyes of a creature weak and unformed, and yet still more puissant than any man in Greece.

“I speak,” said a voice that issued like smoke from cracks in the floor. “What would you learn?”

And in the king's whiteness of countenance, in his trembling voice and hesitant request – in all that, you would have seen the unmistakeable mark of one who has gone too far into the night to ever truly return to the light.

Oh yes, they knew how to treat a proleptic in the old days.

Chapter Thirty-Two: Twain

“—you?”

Ezra blinked.

“What did you just do?” he asked, but the man in black had already vanished again, faster than even Ezra's eye could follow.

Ezra stared.

“This,” he said at last, “is very strange.”

He looked around, and saw nothing so very out of the ordinary: a quiet street that would have been at home in any town in the country. Not at all odd – not, that is, unless a moment ago you had been somewhere else entirely.

“Hm,” said Ezra. “And where is this, exactly?”

He felt tentatively for an entrance to the dark paths, but there was none nearby – not even a gap in reality that might lead to an entrance, such as he normally took. However the man in black had brought him here, neither of them had left the everyday mortal world.

“Hum,” said Ezra, and frowned.

He walked down the pavement, looking for street signs; he found one on the corner, which informed him that he was on Lombard Place.

“Not helpful,” he concluded, and turned the corner in search of answers.

None were forthcoming. The street beyond was busier and had more shops, but that was all that set it aside from that which he'd just come from.

He roamed aimlessly for a while, looking for clues, but there were few indications; a lot of the older lampposts had ornate wrought-iron crowns set into the crooks of their arms, but all that meant was that this was a royal district – and the Unovan Royal Family had had residences in a good six parts of the country before their forced abdication at the hands of the British.

In fact, Ezra was on the verge of becoming invisible and taking flight to see if he could spot a landmark from higher up when he saw a familiar figure trudging down the street.

He frowned. The man was not one he had any memory of meeting, or of corresponding with – or anything at all of that nature. And yet he had the distinct impression that he had seen his face before.

“Now who...?” Ezra's eyes widened. He knew where he had seen him before – flickering like a ghost through the back of Niamh's head. He wasn't quite as handsome as in her memory, but there could be no mistaking it: this was Portland Smythe.

But if there was Smythe, thought Ezra, where was Niamh? Surely they wouldn't have parted so soon? And why did Smythe look so wet? No, there was something wrong here, and Ezra was determined to find out what it was.

“Excuse me,” he said, sidling past a knot of pedestrians. “Excuse me... Excuse me!”

This last was directed at Smythe, and accompanied by a tap on the shoulder. He turned around sharply, a hunted look in his eye – and the sight of Ezra did not apparently comfort him.

“Who are you?” he asked guardedly.

“Mister Smythe, am I right?” asked Ezra. “Portland Smythe?”

“Yes,” he replied, narrowing his eyes. “Who are you?”

“My name is Ezra. I'm a friend of Niamh's.”

Smythe's eyes lit up, and the cares fell away from it in an instant. It was rather like watching a shaft of sunlight breaking through storm-clouds.

“You are?” he asked. “Where – is she nearby? Can you take me to her?”

“I rather fear I cannot,” said Ezra, a sudden dread taking hold of him. “Er – Mister Smythe—”

“Portland.”

“—Portland, if Niamh didn't come for you, how did you get out?”

Smythe stared.

“What? What do you— how do you know where I was? And what's this about Niamh coming for me?”

Ezra was hardly listening. He should have foreseen this, he thought; Weland never broke his word, of course, but that was with demons and men of the old sort – with humans? No, he wouldn't have regarded a promise made to Niamh as anything at all, and he could have broken it without a second thought...

“I'm so sorry,” he said at last. “Portland – Mister Smythe – I'm afraid we need to have a talk.”

---

Of all the people they might have met on the trail that wound up through the hills to Chargestone Cave, Professor Juniper was the last one either Cheren or Bianca would have expected.

They'd been walking up the path for a while before they realised who she was; the path was full of twists and turns and lined with a thick growth of trees, and she kept vanishing behind corners before they got a good look at her. It was only when, on a particularly straight length of track, Bianca remarked that she'd only seen that hairstyle once before that Cheren noticed anything familiar about her.

“I'll tell you why,” he said. “It's because that's Professor Juniper.”

“No way – no, wait, it is.” Bianca's eyes widened. “What's she doing here?”

“I have no idea. Shall we ask?”

Bianca agreed, and they hurried on to catch up with her near a cairn that stood by the roadside.

“Professor!” called Bianca. “Professor Juniper?”

She stopped and turned.

“Bianca? Cheren?”

“Good afternoon, Professor,” said Cheren, coming to a halt before her. “We didn't expect to see you here.”

“And I didn't expect to see you, either,” replied Juniper, brows knitted in puzzlement. “What exactly are you doing out here? I thought the plan was for you to build up the strength to take on the Gyms nearer Nuvema?”

“Plans change,” said Cheren. “In this case, quite spectacularly.”

Juniper's eyebrows rose.

“Is that so?”

“I think we can safely say yes,” said Bianca. “I mean, we met two heroes out of legend and got dragged into a plot to take over Unova.”

Juniper's eyebrows rose further.

“We solved the mystery of the Dream World,” added Cheren.

“And got tangled up with some demons,” put in Bianca.

“You're forgetting the talking cat, but whatever,” said Halley. She lacked her usual acerbic energy; she'd been sulking since they got off the train.

Juniper's eyebrows rose still further – so much so, in fact, that they appeared to recede into her hairline.

“I see,” she said, in the tone of one who absolutely does not. “Er... To be quite honest with you, I'm not sure what I'm meant to say in response to that.”

Bianca and Cheren looked at each other.

“You do it,” said Bianca. “You won't forget anything and you'll get it all in order.”

“Right,” said Cheren, and launched into a thirty-minute explanation of all that had occurred since they had left Nuvema. At the end of it, Juniper looked a little like she'd been hit over the head with a hammer, but all things considered she seemed to bear it rather well.

“This,” she said at length, “is going to change quite a lot of current scientific thought.”

“I know,” replied Cheren. “At least half of everything that's happened to us seems to have broken the laws of physics.”

Juniper pinched the bridge of her nose.

“And so... I'm sorry, demons? And magic?”

“Professor Juniper,” said Bianca, “Cheren doesn't have the imagination to make all that up.”

“Hey—”

“She's right,” said Halley. “And anyway, I'm proof, ain't I?”

“Well,” said Juniper doubtfully, “I suppose...” She crouched down and poked Halley hesitantly.

“You satisfied?”

“You certainly feel real...”

“That's because I am real,” said Halley. “No hallucination could be this annoying.”

Juniper straightened up.

“OK,” she said. “I just poked a woman who turned into a cat.” She took a deep breath. “This is all quite strange.”

“That's one way of putting it,” muttered Halley.

“Yes, it is,” said Cheren. “And anyway, that's why we're here. To find Jared in this cave.”

“Why are you here, Professor?” asked Bianca.

“What?” Juniper looked like she'd forgotten where she was entirely. “Oh. Er, I was here to catch a few Klink. I wanted to take some metal samples and find out how old they are – my father has a theory about them that I thought was interesting.... no, wait! Forget that. You're here to find your friend who was abducted by magical teleporting ninjas! What does it matter what I'm here for?”

“Oh. Um, yeah, it is kinda weird,” said Bianca. “But I was just making conversation.”

“Anyone feel like moving any time soon?” asked Halley. “We're not even at the cave yet, and we need to get in there soon.”

“Ah. Of course,” said Cheren, inwardly marvelling at how much less disagreeable Halley was being. (That collar had been the best three pounds he'd ever spent, he thought.) “Professor – we're going in the same direction. Shall we walk together?”

“OK,” agreed Juniper. She still looked somewhat dazed; whether she was actually making a conscious decision to go with them or simply saying whatever came into her head was open to debate. “Sure, we should go...”

They started on down the path again, and kept up the conversation. After a few minutes, Juniper seemed to recover her senses a little, and by the time they reached the enormous hill that rose over Chargestone Cave she was theorising about whether or not any of the demons might consent to undergoing a few tests for the cause of Science.

“Somehow, I don't think so,” said Bianca, thinking of Teiresias. “I'm not even sure they have any blood for you to take.”

“Ah well,” said Juniper wistfully. “There are other tests, you know. Professor Linden in England has come up with some interesting ways to sample the spirit-stuff of Ghost-types, so maybe I could adapt that... of course, I'd be working with the Gorsedd, of course, so we could work out exactly how much of the Treatises is true—”

“Professor,” said Cheren gently. “Do you have a torch?”

“Hm?” Juniper looked around, and realised that they were currently standing in the cave mouth. “Oh. Right.”

She took a dynamo-powered torch from her pocket, unfolded the handle and gave it a few brisk winds; the light stuttered and flared into life. In the darkness before them, a distant blue glow winked in sympathy, and a few distant flecks of brightness darted away from the sudden glare.

They looked into the mouth of the cave for a moment, all conversation forgotten. Juniper's light flicked upwards; they saw no roof, only more darkness, rising in silence right up to the crown of the hill.

“It's... it's bigger than I thought,” murmured Bianca.

“Gets me every time,” said Juniper.

Halley stalked a little way into the dark and turned, eyes shining bright with reflected torchlight.

“Are we going or what?” she said. “If it's this big, we're going to have a hell of a time finding Jared. Or any Klink, whatever those are.”

“Right,” said Juniper. “Of course.” She looked at Cheren and Bianca. “Shall we, then?”

“OK,” they agreed, and they walked in. In just a few moments, the dark had swallowed them up entirely; soon enough, when the torchlight was faint and distant, there was nothing at the entrance to show that anyone had ever been there at all.

---

“War,” I repeated. “War? What do you mean, war?”

“I mean what I say,” said N. The Tynamo whirled around his head, a luminescent crown of slime and suckers. “I'm going to take back what is my rightful property as King of Sandjr – of all humans – and I'm going to reclaim this land.”

“You're not – you aren't going to kill everyone or anything, are you?” I asked, worried. If his war was going to be anything like the one the Twin Heroes had waged against Naudri in the past, it would be unspeakably brutal.

“Not quite.” He kept his gaze straight ahead, never meeting mine. “I can't say more.”

I sighed.

“How convenient,” I said.

“I've given you what I can,” he said. He sounded tired. “I... I would give you more, but for me to do what I must, Harmonia must succeed.”

“But you know what's going to happen if he does,” I said. “You know about his deal with Weland – it's going to be a disaster...”

He fixed me with those ice-coloured eyes, and my voice died in my throat.

“Please trust me,” he said. “Everything will be all right.” He paused. “As long as I win,” he added.

I frowned.

“I don't buy that.”

“Of course you don't. You're my opposite: you believe in your own cause, and I believe in mine.” His head drooped. “Unfortunately, we can never agree here.”

No, I realised, we never could. N and I had reached the end of our collaboration, it seemed: things were coming to a head, and we had to finally face the fact that we were diametrically opposed, devoted to contradictory causes.

We walked on in silence for a while. The Tynamo darted ahead and back again; one of them hovered over a pothole, anxious for us not to fall.

“I have a question,” I said at last, trying to salvage the conversation.

“Is it one I can answer?”

“I think so.”

“Then ask it.”

“I'm – we – er, Lauren and me,” I said. “I'm male, she's female. I get how that's division. But I was thinking, how does it work with you? I mean, you're a guy, right? That's not united, that's just choosing one over the other.”

N smiled. On anyone else, it would have looked patronising; on him, it was beatific.

“Lauren knows the answer to that one,” he told me. “I imagine Halley does too, although perhaps she might not give the kindest answer.”

“OK,” I said, concealing my impatience, “but I'm not Lauren right now, I'm me, so perhaps you could tell me?”

“I'm neither of them,” said N. “Or both. I've never quite pinned it down. I never saw the need to; my people don't use the same categories as yours.” He shrugged. “Just a difference in the way we look at the world, I suppose. You tend to put things into categories so that you can sort and divide them; we – or I, I guess, since I'm the last one – tend not to sort at all. We like randomness.”

I sucked my teeth thoughtfully. I'd understood maybe one word in six there; I wasn't all that certain what N meant by 'neither or both', or indeed what he was getting at with that talk of categories. Perhaps, I decided, it would be best to leave that for Lauren to think about. Maybe I could try to contact her again, as I had done a couple of nights ago.

“I see,” I said.

“No, you don't,” he replied. “But it's OK. Lauren does. This conversation is a little different with her.”

I think that was the first time that I realised N lived both my world and Lauren's simultaneously, without even the benefit of the midnight switchover that Halley perceived; he was at the same time talking to me and to Lauren, and exploring two different avenues of conversation at once. How did you do it without going insane, I wondered. And what made me so sure that N had done it without going insane? If he hadn't, then it explained an awful lot about him.

“Huh,” I murmured.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” I said, pushing the thought away before it got too overwhelming. “What were we saying?”

“Not a lot,” he replied. “We'd just finished with the topic at hand, actually.”

“Oh. OK.”

What else could I say? It didn't really seem right to just make small talk. No talk with N could be small; everything had meaning.

“There's nothing else to say, is there?” said N, as if reading my mind. “It's all right. We're meant to be enemies now, anyway, and I suppose enemies don't really talk much.”

I didn't say anything. I couldn't have if I'd wanted to. The connection between us was mutating into a cold gulf; it was as if fate had used the link to draw us into itself, and, now that it had us, no longer cared about maintaining it.

The Tynamo flickered. Candy whimpered. We walked on in silence.

---

“Professor,” said Cheren. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but Klink are usually quite fearless, aren't they?”

“Yes,” replied Juniper. “They have very few predators, and don't perceive humans as a threat.” She sighed. “Which is exactly why it's so weird that we aren't seeing any.”

They had been wandering the cave for a while now, searching for either Jared or Klink, whichever came first; neither, however, appeared to have any desire to reveal themselves.

“There aren't any Pokémon,” said Halley. “I mean, I can smell their trails, but they aren't here.”

“Well, where are they?” asked Juniper.

“I don't know,” replied Halley irritably. “Ask a dog.”

“There!” cried Bianca, and they looked up just in time to see something small whizz past a foot above the ground, flashing in the torchlight. “Is that a—?”

“A Klink!” Juniper waved the torch around frantically, trying to find it again. “Where did it go? Where...?”

“There,” said Halley, eyes flashing. “No, wait, it's further away...” She leaped forwards and sniffed at the floor. “I think I can just about track its scent,” she announced. “Which makes me a person of some importance, don't you think?”

Cheren sighed.

“Please,” he said. “Halley, now isn't the time for your bile—”

“Oh, but I think it is,” she said, grinning. “Maybe you could take this collar off, and then I could see my way towards tracking—”

“Or,” said Cheren, “if you don't help track down the Klink, I wire the buckle permanently shut.”

“That way,” said Halley meekly, pointing with a paw. “Follow me.”

Juniper, who had been watching the proceedings with interest and no small amount of confusion, turned to Cheren.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” he said airily. “Right, Bianca?”

“Yeah,” she agreed with a smile. “Nothing.”

Juniper frowned, but the matter of the escaped Klink was too pressing for her to dwell on anything else for long, and she followed Halley without further comment.

They passed between two of the enormous blue stones and on down a path that grew increasingly narrow until the three human members of the group were forced to move sideways; Juniper voiced a quiet concern about possibly getting stuck, which Halley countered with the assurance that she could see a way out at the other end. Juniper said that she didn't doubt there was a way out, but that that didn't really preclude the possibility that the passage might narrow so much that she couldn't get out again. To which Halley had no reply, though Bianca promised to pull really hard on her arms should Juniper actually get stuck.

All in all, tensions were rather high, and everyone was glad when the path began to widen again, and eventually gave out onto what the torch revealed was a cavernous space divided up by walls of fused stalactites and stalagmites.

“There are more Klink here,” said Halley suddenly. “And other things – something like fish? And more.”

“Tynamo, perhaps,” said Juniper.

“They're all – they're all going in the same direction,” Halley went on, sniffing back and forth along the stone. “It's weird. Like they're all going to a meeting or something.”

“Sounds like N,” said Bianca.

“Yes,” agreed Cheren. “I wonder if he said something to them.”

“What's this?” asked Juniper.

“Oh, didn't we say before? We're fairly certain that N can talk to Pokémon.”

Juniper looked like someone had battered her over the head with a brick.

“You didn't think that might be good to mention?” she asked. “To someone who's dedicated their life to understanding Pokémon?”

“I'm not sure it actually benefits you,” said Cheren. “Something tells me N isn't the sort of person who would be willing to do translation work for you.”

“Yeah,” said Bianca. “He's a pretty big Liberation Policy fan.”

Juniper groaned.

“Oh Frige,” she said. “The only person in the world who can communicate reliably with Pokémon, and he's a Green Party supporter.”

“Probably more than a supporter,” said Cheren. “Probably a member.”

She shook her head sadly.

“What a waste,” she said. “What a waste...”

Halley coughed.

“Didn't you want to catch that Klink?”

“Ah!” Juniper nodded. “Yes, of course. The Klink. Lead the way.”

They walked on, threading their way through the maze of rocky jags; occasionally, they would pass one of the great crystals and the torchlight would be lost in their brighter glow. After a while, they began to catch glimpses of things moving in their peripheral vision – furry yellow spiderlings the size of fists; gleaming elvers, some as long as Halley's tail; sentient geodes, dragging themselves along with small, stony claws.

“Joltik, Tynamo, Roggenrola,” listed Cheren in a whisper. “Dozens of them, all going the same way...”

“They don't seem to mind us,” said Juniper. “I wonder why?”

“There's something more important happening,” said Halley. “I smell Jared.”

“Which means N,” said Bianca.

“It means we're close,” said Cheren. “I don't think you'll have any problem finding a Klink now, Professor. We'll go on and meet up with Jared.”

“I'll come too,” said Juniper. “I'd like to at least see this N guy. Like you say, I won't have any problems finding a Klink, so I can afford the delay.”

Cheren shrugged.

“All right,” he said. “Lead on, Halley.”

“Barely need to,” she replied. “Listen!”

There were voices nearby, they realised – quiet, but not far away.

“Jared,” said Bianca.

“N,” said Cheren.

The four of them hurried around a corner and out onto a ledge overlooking a much larger pathway – and saw below them a pair of figures, one in black and the other crowned with brilliant, phosphorescent white.

---

N blinked.

“Who's there?” he asked suddenly, tensing beside me. Above his head, the ring of Tynamo started crackling nervously with electricity, and I noticed that some of the rocks around us were uncurling to reveal geodesic ears; we had bodyguards, it seemed.

“It's only us,” said a familiar voice. There was a flash of light from patch of darkness a few metres up and I looked over to see Cheren, Bianca and Halley up on a ledge above the path, along with a woman I didn't recognise. Candy chirped a relieved greeting at them; she hadn't liked the darkness of the cave, and seemed to be slightly afraid of the unearthly light of the Tynamo.

“Hi,” called Bianca, waving. “Oh – uh, this is Professor Juniper.”

“Hello,” said Juniper, lowering herself off the ledge and dropping down with practised ease. “You must be Jared – and you must be N. I've heard a lot about you.”

N didn't relax.

“And I about you,” he said. “Professor, you are in a position of some importance with the Unova League. You are at the forefront of the drive to increase Trainer activity. I have to wonder that you had the audacity to come here, after Cheren and Bianca have told you what I am capable of.”

“What?” Juniper looked disconcerted. I doubt she'd been expecting this; I certainly hadn't.

“I strongly disagree with what you do,” said N flatly. “You perpetuate a master-slave relationship between humans and Pokémon – encourage people to view Pokémon as a means to an end. Certainly, some people come to see their Pokémon as friends – but how many more see them as tools? I fear you overestimate humanity's... well, its humanity.

“And what does that mindset lead to? The potentially world-ending crisis in Hoenn a few years ago, the Black TMs affair in the 1980s, the monster birthed in the Rocket labs in Kanto. The destruction of three thousand years of accumulated wisdom and knowledge – and the subsequent creation of perhaps as many as eight hundred thousand Gengar – with the end of the Kadabra Wars in 1906. The repercussions of that one are still being felt to this day.” N's lip curled slightly. “That is what you stand for, Professor. A world beneath the heel of your species and suffering for it.”

“I... I can see why you would say that,” said Juniper, recovering valiantly, “but honestly, it's just not that simple. We can't just cease to interact with Pokémon – quite apart from what would happen to the world's energy supplies if electricity farms were shut down, rather a lot of Pokémon interact with us anyway. It's how Training started: without it, we're all just prey. You can't order anyone to take apart the system without laying down a clear praxis for what comes next – it'd be chaos.”

N smiled then – smiled. It wasn't a mocking smile, either; it was a warm, happy smile – a smile that looked like it was born of real joy, and which was totally incongruous under the circumstances.

“You're quite right,” he agreed. “If I take apart the system, there will be chaos – but it will be my chaos, and my chaos is not at all the chaos you're familiar with.”

We like randomness, I remembered him saying. What did he mean by all this?

“You people see everything in shades of grey,” sighed N, shaking his head. “But it only looks blurry to you because you try to categorise it and realise you can't. If you approach the world as I do... well, ironically enough, everything is resolved into simple strokes of black and white.”

“That doesn't even make sense as an argument,” said Juniper, frowning. “Do you not consider anyone else's view?”

N sighed.

“Jared. Tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“That she's wrong.”

I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong – and then realised what he meant. It was not that Juniper was objectively incorrect in her opinions; it was more that she was approaching this the wrong way. This was not a matter for debate or rational argument: you couldn't bridge the gap between N's chaotic and our rational minds with an argument based only on our rules of engagement. In such a situation, I realised, there was only one way to argue a point that both parties could understand: let slip the reins of legend, and choose your champions to fight their corners.

“I...” I shook my head. Explain it to a third party? No, I couldn't. Lauren might be able to, perhaps – but not me. I could never put the magic into words. “I'm sorry,” I said at length. “I can't explain it.”

N sighed deeply, and nodded.

“We can't agree,” he said to the cave in general. “The fault is mine, and for that I apologise. I can't make myself clear to you. I would like to be able to, but I can't.” He smiled a crooked, rueful smile. “But I suppose that doesn't really matter. Matters aren't going to be decided here and now, in a debate with a scientist in the middle of a cave.”

There was a silence.

“I'm sorry,” said Juniper, and she really did sound apologetic. “But I honestly don't understand what you mean by any of that.”

“I know.” N sighed. “I don't want to be your enemy – I would rather not be anyone's enemy – but quests take dedication, and if I have to be opposed to you then I'd rather do that than not reach my goals.” He took Juniper's hand and shook it. “I can divorce my feelings about what you stand for from my feelings about you as an individual,” he said. “You aren't a bad person – none of you are – but put a lot of not-bad people together and you don't end up with a good world. You end up with one that is, at best, not too bad.”

He let her hand go and stepped backwards, out of the circle of white torchlight; the Tynamo moved with him, circling restlessly.

“Three days, Jared,” said N. “No more talking. No more diplomacy.” He smiled, but his heart wasn't in it. “Goodbye.”

He turned away into the blackness and disappeared, the Tynamo dispersing in the gloom. I heard no footsteps, but I knew he was gone – just as something else was gone, something that had kept us together until now but which had started to decay as we talked earlier; something that had at last withered away to nothing during his strange, nonsensical argument with Juniper.

I was on my own now, I thought. We all were.


Note: Updates will be a bit less frequent from now on, I'm afraid! I go off to university this week, so my free time's going to disappear pretty quick. I hope that doesn't cause too much of a problem for anybody.

 

[Praxiteles]

...Wow, I am an absolute idiot, who should never try to make two long reviews in the same day.

I have to confess, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

I probably misunderstood the purpose of that scene; I thought it was telling us to identify the company's retriever with that abominable thing the trio (+ Alder) found in the passage leading to Driftveil. I hadn't thought of that before. Is that right?

Wouldn't you? After all, without the hero, how can the rest of the legend carry on successfully?

Oh, yes. It's hilarious.

Septimus Warren Smith was always a bit more disturbing for me right from the off. In fact, this is probably more Robert Rankin than Virginia Woolf - though hey, I'll take a compliment when it comes my way. Thanks.

You have to understand that I'm so literate, I must have read approx. one British novel per era; when duck ponds are mentioned I go straight to the one story in my life that involves them. (That's a fabrication, I can now remember two more American novels with duck ponds. Point is, I haven't read Robert Rankin.)

Well, it's not necessarily that they'll end up lovers. They may well simply be returning to a previous state of close friendship. Perhaps I'll decide one way or the other; perhaps I'll leave it open, and up to the readers to interpret as they see fit.

Charming!

I'm not sure what you mean. Elvers are eel larvae - as are Tynamo. I think one of us is misunderstanding the other, though I'm not sure who.

Yeah, that's me without a handy connection to Wikipedia. I actually had heard once of what elvers are, but then I decided, no, go for the most facile connection possible. elvers ~= elves!

On to the chapter. An interlude, how nice. The olive trees a very subtle hint towards who exactly we're talking about.

(a haunted fellow whose face had been replaced with a dirty piece of leather, sewn with crude stitches to his skull)

...It's not any trying-too-hard horror plots, it's the little details in your fic that gets one every time. *shudders*

The most puissant man in Greece. I wonder what else it might be that attends prolepsis in cases as progidious as Tiresias's, because the darkness the interlude implies is definitely going beyond, say, Munny's little visions. Prolepsis is knowing the future but what is it anyway: a medical condition, a biological ability, a state of the soul, an affinity with certain Outer powers...? That is my guess as to how Tiresias's backstory will reveal itself.

Ezra and Portland randomly teleported to the same town? I don't believe in coincidences. *shades*

"That's because I am real," said Halley. "No hallucination could be this annoying."

XD Oh, Halley. And to think I still haven't imagined her continuously with a British accent.

we had to finally face the fact that we were diametrically opposed, devoted to contradictory causes.

It's interesting to inquire into how exactly you mean this: I wrote a paragraph about how Jared's own cause doesn't feel to be very clearly defined yet, either to himself or to us, and in fact if we're considering the 'Muggle world'/'magical world' dichotomy, where you can either stick up for the common people of our feeble human world or dive unashamedly into cosmic politics, Jared/Lauren seem to be pretty firmly on the magical side, they've gained all their strength, knowledge, conviction from their mythical legacy. That way, I suppose you mean that even though Jared isn't clear yet exactly what he is and what he must do, his opposition to N is clear to everybody (by their having been defined as diametric opposites). It's the fact that he doesn't trust N that solidifies their being enemies; otherwise I still felt they didn't necessarily have to be. There is a difference of principle between them: N is fundamentally riding the wave of a story, counting on the inevitability of fate for his securities and convictions, while Jared doesn't believe in this cosmic unity, he wants to do what he can do in the ways he can figure out.

furry yellow spiderlings the size of fists; gleaming elvers, some as long as Halley's tail; sentient geodes, dragging themselves along with small, stony claws.

If you want to make pokemon realistic, put them in near pitch darkness.

and saw below them a pair of figures, one in black and the other crowned in brilliant, phospohorescent white.

Particularly appreciate how this effect is achieved by something very physical and ordinary coming together, which you don't realize until a moment after you read. N's saintly, semi-divine status, coming through in a classic way of divinity: nature fitting together around him in an almost non-miraculous way. (If somebody ever makes a platformer out of this, we'll have N fly by means of ten small bird pokemon attached to his shoulders.)

Missed a quotation mark:

"I strongly disagree with what you do," said N flatly. "You perpetuate a master-slave ... [end of this paragraph]

"You aren't a bad person -- none of you are -- but put a lot of not-bad people together and you don't end up with a good world. You end up with one that is, at best, not too bad.

A stance that strikes me as incredibly objectivist -- even, if you'll excuse me, to the extent of Rorschach (Watchmen). He was willing to start as much for the sake of his absolute morality, good people and inadequately-good people. N does say he sees everything in black and white. Of course as happens with something like 'his' chaos -- something purported to be outside human understanding -- the story might come under the danger of never explaining it very clearly, under the excuse that it can't be explained -- but this scene does try to approach it, from an angle. And it seems like before the story's done, we will know exactly what N's intentions and motivations are, and what happens to them when they come in conflict with the other things in the world.

 

[Azurus]

I am reminded of Devil Survivor 2 and the interactions of the main character with "The Anguished One" it seems, to me anyway, to be very similar.

Anyway, pretty much the same as before, looking forward to more.

I don't mind waiting longer, scholarly pursuits are important.

 

[Cutlerine]

I am reminded of Devil Survivor 2 and the interactions of the main character with "The Anguished One" it seems, to me anyway, to be very similar.

Anyway, pretty much the same as before, looking forward to more.

I don't mind waiting longer, scholarly pursuits are important.

Thanks! Your understanding is important.

I probably misunderstood the purpose of that scene; I thought it was telling us to identify the company's retriever with that abominable thing the trio (+ Alder) found in the passage leading to Driftveil. I hadn't thought of that before. Is that right?

Oh yes, yes of course. I thought everyone already knew that they were the same creature?

You have to understand that I'm so literate, I must have read approx. one British novel per era; when duck ponds are mentioned I go straight to the one story in my life that involves them. (That's a fabrication, I can now remember two more American novels with duck ponds. Point is, I haven't read Robert Rankin.)

That's all right. I'm pretty sure not many people outside the UK actually have, although he has a certain dedicated following. He's a crazy-looking old man. This, for instance, is a picture of him with his steampunk ray gun. It says pretty much everything you need to know about him.

The most puissant man in Greece. I wonder what else it might be that attends prolepsis in cases as progidious as Tiresias's, because the darkness the interlude implies is definitely going beyond, say, Munny's little visions. Prolepsis is knowing the future but what is it anyway: a medical condition, a biological ability, a state of the soul, an affinity with certain Outer powers...? That is my guess as to how Tiresias's backstory will reveal itself.

Perceptive. It's certainly linked to that.

XD Oh, Halley. And to think I still haven't imagined her continuously with a British accent.

She's probably from London, if you're looking for the specific voice. Or else she has that middle-class-southerner voice that people from abroad mean some variant of when they say 'British accent'.

It's interesting to inquire into how exactly you mean this: I wrote a paragraph about how Jared's own cause doesn't feel to be very clearly defined yet, either to himself or to us, and in fact if we're considering the 'Muggle world'/'magical world' dichotomy, where you can either stick up for the common people of our feeble human world or dive unashamedly into cosmic politics, Jared/Lauren seem to be pretty firmly on the magical side, they've gained all their strength, knowledge, conviction from their mythical legacy. That way, I suppose you mean that even though Jared isn't clear yet exactly what he is and what he must do, his opposition to N is clear to everybody (by their having been defined as diametric opposites). It's the fact that he doesn't trust N that solidifies their being enemies; otherwise I still felt they didn't necessarily have to be. There is a difference of principle between them: N is fundamentally riding the wave of a story, counting on the inevitability of fate for his securities and convictions, while Jared doesn't believe in this cosmic unity, he wants to do what he can do in the ways he can figure out.

Jared/Lauren's cause is on the cusp of crystallisation. They have to figure out what to do before they can do it: N can go ahead and just do what he feels is fated.

This all becomes clearer at Dragonspiral Tower, which I really need to stop talking about because if I keep promising stuff there's no way I can fulfil all these expectations.

Particularly appreciate how this effect is achieved by something very physical and ordinary coming together, which you don't realize until a moment after you read. N's saintly, semi-divine status, coming through in a classic way of divinity: nature fitting together around him in an almost non-miraculous way. (If somebody ever makes a platformer out of this, we'll have N fly by means of ten small bird pokemon attached to his shoulders.)

That would be awesome. He can have limited flight time, and there's a Light/Dark Stone floating randomly through the level; if you can find and catch it, it becomes a Reshiram/Zekrom and he blasts his way in supercharged mode for a while. Jared/Lauren, on the other hand, act as a kind of tag team, where they can phase in and out of existence to help each other up high ledges, or perhaps switch over for combat (if Jared) and climbing (if Lauren).

Missed a quotation mark:

No, it's like that intentionally - when you have multiple paragraphs in a block in one chunk of dialogue by one speaker, you leave off the quotation marks at the end of the internal paragraphs and keep the leading ones. At least, that's what I've always been taught, and what I've always seen in books. Perhaps it's different elsewhere, but it's the convention I stick to.

A stance that strikes me as incredibly objectivist -- even, if you'll excuse me, to the extent of Rorschach (Watchmen). He was willing to start as much for the sake of his absolute morality, good people and inadequately-good people. N does say he sees everything in black and white. Of course as happens with something like 'his' chaos -- something purported to be outside human understanding -- the story might come under the danger of never explaining it very clearly, under the excuse that it can't be explained -- but this scene does try to approach it, from an angle. And it seems like before the story's done, we will know exactly what N's intentions and motivations are, and what happens to them when they come in conflict with the other things in the world.

It really is. He's not as psychopathic, but he is exactly like that. N is mentally not in tune with the times at all: his ways of thinking simply don't match with this world. There might have once been a society that his way of thinking could be applied to without problems - but not any more. We'll see exactly what his motivations are in time, and what he means to do, but he won't make it easy for us, if that makes any sense.

Thank you all for reading, commenting and (perhaps) enjoying; you are all very kind!

 

[Cutlerine]

Chapter Thirty-Three: Waiting For the Bus in the Rain

Candy broke the silence – and the mood – with a cheerful squawk. Familiar faces were once again around her and the Tynamo had gone; all right, so everything was still a bit dark for her taste, but things were definitely looking up.

“What was that?” asked Cheren, climbing down from the ledge. “That three days thing?”

“Oh,” I said vaguely, head full of muddled thoughts. “I'll – er, I'll tell you later.”

“Hm.” Juniper glanced in the direction that N had taken. “That didn't quite go as I thought.” She sighed and thrust her free hand into her pocket. “I guess I didn't expect him to come around that easily, but maybe at least he'll consider my point of view...” She shook her head. “I don't know. Anyway – sorry, we haven't been properly introduced. Professor Aurea Juniper,” she said, reaching out to shake hands.

“Jared Black,” I said. “But you know that. I guess Cheren and Bianca told you everything?”

“They did.” Juniper looked intently at Candy, who stared back with frank idiocy. “Is that an Archen?”

I sighed.

“I wish for once someone would believe me when I said she was a rare parrot.”

“That's what it said on the news, wasn't it?” asked Juniper. “When you were reported as a runaway.”

“Yeah.” I scratched Candy's throat and she chirped happily. “Not that that seemed to fool anyone at all.”

Bianca cleared her throat.

“Er... can we move on?” she asked. “It's dark and, well, pretty nasty in here.”

I looked around.

“Seconded,” I said. “I've spent more than enough time in here now.”

“The nearest exit is just up that way,” Juniper said, pointing to where N had vanished. “It's a couple of hundred yards north, sort of hidden between two rocks. I'm sure Halley can lead you to it.”

“Sure,” said Halley sourly, dropping down from the ledge like a brindled ribbon. “I suppose I might be able to see my way towards doing that.”

“Mm.” Cheren turned to Juniper. “Professor?”

“It's been lovely to catch up with you two,” she said, “and to be a, uh, a brief part of your weird cosmic mission, but I haven't caught a Klink yet.” She smiled. “I don't think it'll be too hard to find one now; there's loads of Pokémon hanging around just outside the lights. N helped me out after all, it seems.”

I wondered why he hadn't sent them away before he left – he must have known that if he didn't, they would stay to be caught by Juniper. Perhaps he'd forgotten in his anger, but I didn't think so; N wasn't the sort of person to lose control very easily. His will was more unshakeable even than Cheren's, if not so openly displayed.

Bianca smiled.

“OK,” she said. “Well – see you then, Professor.”

“Bye,” she replied cheerfully. “Good luck with, uh, whatever it actually is that you're trying to do. And if you need anything, you have my number.”

“Yes.” Cheren cleared his throat. “And, um – you wouldn't happen to have a spare torch, would you?”

“Don't worry about that one,” I said, clicking my phone into torch mode. “I've got it covered.”

“Oh, OK. Good, because I actually don't have a spare one.” Juniper chuckled. “Anyway. It's been good to see you both. Now, I'd really better get going before the Pokémon disperse too much...”

“Right, right,” agreed Cheren, and in a flurry of goodbyes we parted ways – Juniper heading back into the dark, and Cheren, Halley and Bianca coming on with me towards the distant light.

---

Smythe stared.

“So she's...?”

Ezra nodded.

“It seems very likely, I'm afraid.”

They were sitting in a small, sunlit bar in the Old Town; it was a bit early in the day to be drinking spirits, but Ezra had felt Smythe might need a slug of something strongly alcoholic to handle the shock, and he'd been right.

Smythe took a deep breath.

“She went to rescue me? They were going to let me out?”

“Yes.”

He closed his eyes and groaned.

“You knew about this, didn't you?” he asked Teiresias. His voice was hollow. “You came to get me because you knew that if I were freed before you did you wouldn't have anything to bargain with.”

It was the most effective way to go into hiding, it answered. I had to have your mind and no other; I took it by whatever means I could.

“What do you mean?” asked Ezra, puzzled. “I didn't know this would—”

“Not you,” said Smythe, sighing. “I have... Teiresias is in my head.”

Ezra blinked.

“What? I can't—”

“I know you can't sense it. That's why he wanted my mind – something about me being from Hoenn.”

Ezra nodded slowly.

“Almost directly opposite Unova on the globe,” he said. “As far away as one could get... Yes, no Unovan demon would be able to see past the different mental structures to detect the demon within. Clever. But what is that monster doing in there?”

“Hiding from Weland. It was happy to work for him until he granted it its powers back, and as soon as they started returning it began to think maybe it didn't need to take orders any more. So it's in hiding for a while.” Smythe took a too-large mouthful of Laphroaig and half choked. “But Niamh...”

“This is, at least in part, my fault,” said Ezra, chewing his lip. “I... Well, you know, I'm still bent on killing Weland. That means I still want to get back into the tomb-city – and so, I presume, do you.”

Wait, said Teiresias. Before you trade any more words with the rebel, I would remind you that you and I have sworn oaths. You must help me first – or have you forgotten that I want to enter the Last Bastion?

Smythe paused.

“What is it?” asked Ezra, eyes narrowing. “What does Teiresias say?”

“Part of the contract I made with it to get out of that crypt,” said Smythe, brows knitted. “It wants to get into some fortress somewhere – calls it the bastion or something. I have to take it there along the tunnel we used to escape.”

“The Last Bastion?” Ezra looked suspicious. “And what exactly do you propose to do there, Teiresias?”

It is none of his concern, said Teiresias contemptuously. Oh, he is old, yes, but never was he strong. He lives on his wits; he hasn't the might to rule by force.

“It doesn't want to say,” said Smythe. “Look, I – what exactly is it that they're doing to Niamh?”

“I don't know,” answered Ezra. “Perhaps they have taken her for Harmonia to question. I just don't know.”

“Is that all?” Smythe almost looked relieved – almost. “That's... that'll be OK, then. I survived that and didn't say anything. She could do that with her eyes closed.”

Ezra smiled, but it was strained.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Assuming that's what they've done. Anything could happen to her – but she will be alive, I'm certain: if he'd wanted her dead, Weland would have simply had his messenger kill her when she wasn't ready.”

“She's alive. Alive. That's a good start.” Smythe latched onto the information and held it tight in case it fled him. “Alive...”

Immaterial, said Teiresias. Finish your drink, change your wardrobe and find food. Then we go to the Bastion.

“Shut up,” muttered Smythe. “Just shut up a minute, damn you!”

“Mr Smythe,” said Ezra carefully. “Portland. I am here to help. I have been banished from the tomb-city and the exile sealed with a curse: I cannot enter it by conventional means. But I had a plan to get in that involved Niamh Harper. If you want, I can help you get in to find her, and show you how to let me in to help further.” He hesitated. “You and Niamh love each other very much,” he said. “I don't pretend to understand you very much – I have been in the darkness too long – but I do know love. I would rather Weland didn't destroy another pair of lovers. So I'll help you – I'll even help you take Teiresias to the Last Bastion, if that's what it takes to get rid of it.” He ran a thin tongue over his lips. “I... I have lost everyone, over the centuries,” he said. “And everything, as well. My home, my lover, my freedom, my very species... All I have left now is the desire for justice and a part-time job as a freelance journalist. And, until very recently, I had a new friend, and I will not leave her in that monster's hands.”

Smythe stared. A little kernel of hope warmed in his heart.

“You'll help?” he asked. “You know how to get in?”

“There are many ways in,” said Ezra. “All of them are sealed to me. But I can help you get Niamh back.”

If he will help me, then I have no objection, said Teiresias, in response to the unasked question. What you do after I am gone from you is of no consequence.

Smythe held out his hand without hesitation.

“You have a deal,” he said.

Ezra shook it.

“Now, Portland,” he said. “The passage to the Bastion isn't easy to navigate. You need more food than that sandwich, a new set of clothes and some medical attention before you're ready to go – not to mention some sleep. You'll be no use to Niamh in your current state.”

He drained his glass and jumped to his feet.

“Come,” he said. “You have a quest, Portland, and no hero ever slew their dragon looking like that...”

---

“Three days,” said Cheren. “Three days to find this place.”

“That's it,” I confirmed. “Three days, or I think N might win by default. I'm not sure.”

“Well – hey, look!”

There was light up ahead – a little sliver of a glow in the dark; just as well, really, since my phone battery was almost dead. We redoubled our pace and came within a minute or two to a thin crevice, barely wide enough to squeeze through, in the rock – and, on the other side, the relentless dripping of rainwater.

“Oh, at last,” I sighed, as Candy wriggled into the breast of my jacket. “Fresh air!”

“And rain,” muttered Halley darkly. “Ugh. The ground's all wet, and I don't have shoes.”

Before us, a path snaked off through the trees; it looked like it was normally dirt, but the rain had churned its topmost layer into a thin but clingy coating of mud. I glanced from it to Halley's uncovered paws, and then got distracted.

“You're wearing the collar,” I said.

“No sh*t, Sherlock,” she replied.

“Halley,” said Cherne warningly.

“Look, we both know you aren't going to take this thing off,” she snapped. “So I don't see any obligation for me to be nice—”

“I could always tighten it a couple of notches,” said Cheren. “Depends how much you enjoy breathing, I guess.”

Her reply was given in the form of a glower, but it didn't seem to have any effect and she gave up with a sigh.

“OK, whatever,” she said. “Can we go? Before this road turns into such a horrible glutinous mess that I have to – ugh – lick this sh*t out of my fur?”

“I think it's already at that stage,” Bianca said happily. “Come on, then. Jared, you were saying?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Uh, so, like I said, we've got three days to find out where the hell this place is.”

We walked on for a moment in thoughtful silence.

“What did you say N said, exactly?” asked Cheren. “About the battle at this place.”

“He said we'd meet where the thief was in—”

“No, his exact words,” he said. “What did he say to you?”

I thought for a moment.

“I think,” I said, “he said, 'The war isn't over. It was only on hold. When we meet at the hiding place of that thief, it will start again. Your army and mine will meet, and Sandjr will ride to war against Unova.'” I frowned. “No. Wait. He didn't say 'hiding place', he said something else... something really specific...” I racked my brains, and as we rounded the bend it came to me: “Castle! He said that when we met at the castle of that thief, it all starts again.”

“I thought you mentioned something,” said Cheren. “Yes, so castle. There aren't many of those left in Unova, actually.”

“There's the Celestial Tower,” said Bianca. “Lacunosa Castle. Gannat Court.”

“Is the Celestial Tower a castle?” I asked.

“Yes,” answered Cheren. “The remains of one, anyway. It was one of the forts of King Ethlraed, I think, but it was destroyed in a siege during the Viking raids. Only the tower was left.”

“They mention that in Estebán's Unovan Grand Tour,” added Bianca. “That's, er, why I know.”

I gave her a puzzled look.

“I don't remember that one,” I said. “What was it about?”

“A Spanish kid going on an adventure around Unova with a talking Seismitoad,” she told me. “I think it was meant to be superficially educational, but if you read into it, it was really an examination of how Estebán dealt with the untimely death of his mother.”

“Jesus!” put in Halley. “No wonder you're all so bloody weird. Aren't there any normal TV shows in Unova? Or at least, any shows that don't deal with dead Spaniards?”

“Technically, Olga and Benito featured a dead Mexican rather than a dead Spaniard,” pointed out Bianca.

“OK, OK,” sighed Cheren. “Enough quibbling about cartoons. Back to castles, perhaps?”

“Oh yeah. Uh, what did I have... Celestial Tower, Lacunosa Castle, Gannat Court. Any more?”

“Dragonspiral,” said Cheren. “That's like Celestial, the remains of a bigger castle. So technically it could be there as well.”

We came to the point where the track ended and merged with the main road; here, the motorway foundations meant the ground was harder underfoot, and less unpleasant to walk on. Across the road from us were the railway tracks, cutting north through the forest towards Mistralton by the most direct route.

“OK,” I said. “Four castles, one reasonably nearby, one in the north, one in the east and one in Castelia. It's going to be a pretty tall order to figure out which one he means before the time's up.”

“Not really,” said Cheren. “We can rule out Dragonspiral right away.”

“We can?”

He sighed.

“Yes, Jared, we can. No one can get inside it, remember? The entrance is underwater, flooded and collapsed. The last lot of archaeologists who tried to get in said they couldn't find a way of breaking in without potentially causing the tower to collapse, and since it's the oldest building in Unova short of the desert ruins no one's risked it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. Uh, I guess that makes sense. So I suppose the thief hasn't gone to ground there.”

“I should think not,” agreed Cheren. “There's nowhere to hide.”

Two cars roared north and drowned out Bianca's next words.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I said that maybe the thief's in Castelia, in the middle of Gaunton. Harmonia might not expect them to stay that close to his base.”

“I think the demons would have found him there,” said Halley. “I've been in Hawthorne House. There's serious magical sh*t going on in Gaunton. If the thief was savvy enough to penetrate the Party defences, they definitely knew better than to stick around.” She sounded almost admiring, I thought.

“OK, so not there either,” I said, hiding a smile. “Which just leaves Lacunosa Castle and the Celestial Tower.”

“Both are major tourist attractions, though,” said Bianca. “We've been there, haven't we, Cheren?”

“Have we?”

“Oh. No, wait, just me.” She smiled apologetically. “I remember that they're both really busy, especially around Eostre-time – everyone wants to get away during the holidays, but they want to visit indoor attractions because of, well, because of this.” She held a hand out and caught a palmful of raindrops.

“You're telling me,” said Halley, who was looking distinctly bedraggled. “You guys all have coats, you know. It isn't fair.”

“Candy doesn't have a coat,” I pointed out.

“Ark?”

“Candy's in your coat,” she retorted. “It's the same thing.”

“Ark,” agreed Candy, snuggling deeper into its lining and nearly giving me an accidental and very much unwanted nipple piercing with one talon.

“Ouch!” I tapped her beak. “Stop wriggling.”

“Chee,” she said sheepishly, and settled down on my sternum.

“Anyway,” said Cheren. “We seem to have hit a kind of dead end as far as castles go. Do you think maybe the thief could be a demon and concealed invisibly in one of the tourist castles?”

“If they were a demon,” said Bianca, “they could probably get into Dragonspiral Tower, too.”

I shook my head.

“There's only one rebel demon in all this, and that's Ezra,” I said. “N would have mentioned it in his list of betrayals if there were more. Whoever stole that thing must be human.”

“Which means they're using conventional hiding methods,” concluded Cheren. “OK. So, probably not in Gannat Court, Lacunosa or Celestial. Which leaves...”

“The impossible one,” Bianca said, sighing. “Dragonspiral. Are you sure we haven't missed out a castle somewhere here?”

“Maybe we have,” agreed Cheren. “We'll check when we get into Mistralton and can find a Pokémon Centre.”

Mistralton was about a mile and a half further down the road, and it took a further forty minutes of walking through the outer suburbs before we found anything even remotely resembling a link to the city proper. Our salvation, when it turned up, was a bus stop, and we joined two other exceptionally weary-looking young people who were altogether too charred to be anything but Trainers.

“Did you come through the cave?” Bianca asked one.

“No,” she replied, shaking her head. Flakes of ash came out of her hair as it moved. “Went through the hills. There's a frickin' enormous Heatmor there, sittin' on a Durant nest.”

“We got maybe a little too close to the barbecue,” said her friend unnecessarily. Like her, he had a strong southwest accent; I guessed they were from Aspertia or Virbank. “Grace of Thunir.”

“Huh?”

“Oh. Uh, it's a Floccesy thing. Saved by the rain.”

“Ah, OK.”

“You're Trainers too, I guess?” asked the girl, looking at Munny, drifting as ever just above Bianca's head.

“Yeah,” she replied. “That's us.”

“Here to challenge Skyla? Or just for Trainin'?”

“Maybe,” said Cheren. “Right now, I think we just want to get to the Pokémon Centre.”

The girl nodded. It looked heartfelt.

“I hear that,” she said, scratching her head. I didn't think her hair was meant to be as short as it was; it looked like a substantial part of it had been burnt off. Was this the kind of mess Trainers got themselves into? Why on earth had Cheren and Bianca ever wanted to go off with Pokémon when there were so many ways to get yourself killed?

“We're goin' to the Celestial Tower,” said the boy. “Ghost population's risen lately – all those bodies, all that sorrow, gives 'em so much to eat. The League's ordered a cull.”

“How exactly do you cull Ghosts?” I asked.

“You call Ghostbusters,” said the girl, perfectly seriously. “Which is us, more or less: we specialise in Ghost- and Dark-types. I do Ghosts, Owain does Dark.”

I knew that the Gym Leaders specialised in specific types, but I'd never given much thought about where those Leaders came from – there must, I realised, be quite a few Trainers who worked solely with one type, or all the Leaders would be woefully unskilled. And of course, even if they weren't Leaders, there was nothing to stop certain Trainers being employed by the League to do tasks that the Elite Four were too busy to deal with themselves.

“Can they die?” asked Cheren with interest.

“Yeah,” answered the girl. “They're alive, they're just not made of meat. Gotta use intangible ways to kill 'em.”

“Such as?”

“Feed 'em to other Ghosts, mainly,” she admitted. “Or hit 'em with the right set of Dark attacks. Get it right and you shake their spirit apart. Quick and painless.”

“Depends on the Ghost, though,” added Owain thoughtfully. “'Member that Chandelure back in Humilau, Sadie?”

“Oh yeah.” She nodded, and shed a few more ashy hairs. “Hit it with a standard set of vibrations and somehow triggered an uncontrollable growth spurt. It grew to the size of a rhino, burned down a pub and nearly killed six people before we managed to drive it into the sea and weaken it enough to put it down.”

“I see,” said Cheren politely. “How, er, interesting.”

“Yeah, it was really somethin',” said Sadie.

The bus came then, and thanks to the pattern of unoccupied seats, we were separated from the Ghostbusters and squeezed into the back row. Half an hour later, an automated voice told us that we were at Tannhauser Gate, and we crawled exhaustedly off the bus and into the Centre. Cheren put on his ultra-serious deadpan face and did the business of convincing the receptionist I was a visiting Swedish Trainer, which Candy helped to prove by crawling out of my jacket into the warmth of the lobby and throwing up a handful of pebbles to show she wanted attention; that done, we got upstairs to our rooms, dried off as best we could, and gathered in the deserted cafeteria to eat. Of Sadie and Owain there was no sign; they were probably still scrubbing ash out of their hair, I thought.

“Hm,” said Halley, stealing a mussel from my plate. “Would you lot mind investing in some f*cking umbrellas next time you go out in that kind of weather? I feel like a drowned rat.” She fumbled for a moment, and then added hopefully, “Er – any of you lovely people feel like opening this for me?”

I sighed and snapped the shell open for her, then turned back to my plate to realise Candy had seized a beakful of mussels and was cheerily smashing them on the side of the plate to make sure they were dead.

“Oh, no! No, Candy, stop that!”

She looked at me unapologetically, as if to ask what else I expected such a magnificent predator to do in this situation, and retreated to upset the salt shaker instead.

“She's in, uh, high spirits,” observed Cheren.

“That's one way to put it,” I muttered, picking shards of shell out of my chips. “She's happy to be out of that cave, I think. I don't think she liked those rocks.”

“Anyway,” said Bianca. “What's the plan after this? Go to the computer room and see if we've missed any castles?”

“That's the idea,” agreed Cheren. “And if we haven't, well, er...” He shrugged. “Actually, I don't know what we do then.”

Halley stared.

“Whoa,” she said. “An admission of ignorance from the Man Who Knows Too Much.”

He gave her a withering look.

“If you have any ideas, then, Halley...?”

“Hm? Oh, no,” she replied breezily. “I'm untrustworthy anyway, aren't I? Better leave the planning to you.”

“Halley, you're not ever going to get shot of that collar if you don't change your attitude,” said Bianca. That seemed to shut her up, and she went back to moodily batting mussel shells between her paws.

“Right,” said Cheren. “So. I guess that's it.”

“Mm,” I agreed. “What happened with you guys while I was in the cave with N?”

“Oh, not much,” he said. “We went back to the Centre and caught a train to the cave. Then we ran into Juniper outside, and volunteered to help her find a Klink.”

“Why'd she want a Klink?”

“Something to do with her father's research.”

“Her father?”

“Professor Cedric Juniper,” said Bianca knowledgeably. “He has a TV show.”

“He does?”

“Yeah. Or at least, he did about eight years ago.” She popped a cherry tomato into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “At least, I remember him having one. He's pretty weird. Does a lot more fieldwork than Juniper.”

“I know him,” said Halley unexpectedly. “Well, not personally, but he worked with David Attenborough on a series about Bug-types a while back.”

“With who?”

She made a face that indicated either displeasure or indigestion. I wasn't sure which.

“Sir David Attenborough? British national treasure? Possibly the finest wildlife documentary narrator in the history of time and space?”

This was met with blank stares, which Halley did not apparently find reassuring.

“Seriously, is his fame just confined to the UK?” she asked, shocked. “Really? Don't you get his programmes on TV in the Commonwealth or anything?”

“We don't get much foreign TV here,” said Bianca. “Like I said to Jared the other day, I think it's too sensible.”

Halley rolled her eyes.

“Give me strength,” she said. “Never mind then. Get on with your miserable Attenborough-free lives.”

We did, and, finishing our meal, went over to the computer room. Unfortunately, there was a member of staff sitting there trying to repair a recalcitrant PC, and in order to maintain the Swedish façade I had to sit next to Cheren and pretend I didn't understand anything that was being said. This got boring very, very quickly, and I went back up to my room after about thirty seconds. There wasn't anything more interesting to do here, but by that time it was getting pretty late, and after another day of weirdness, death threats and interminable walking, I was exhausted – and so almost before I knew it, and long before I'd managed even a token attempt at undressing, I was asleep.

Unfortunately, it didn't last long. Soon afterwards, Bianca came in and shook me awake.

“Hey,” she said. “We might have a problem.”

“What? What is it?”

“Well, there are a few more castles in Unova than we thought,” she said. “Quite a few more, actually.”

“How many?” I asked, suddenly awake.

“About one hundred,” she said, nipping the corner of her lip between her teeth. “Of which about thirty have anything really left of them. Six are in the same sort of shape they were when they were first built.”

“Sh*t,” I groaned. “Why did we have so many wars?”

“Blame the Patzkovans,” said Bianca. “If they'd left us alone, we wouldn't have needed to fortify the border so much.”

“So most of these are along the border?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “But there's no way we can visit them all in three days. So we need your help now, Jared.”

I blinked.

“OK, but what exactly do you expect me to be able to do?”

Bianca shrugged helplessly.

“I don't know. Cheren asked if maybe you could remember anything else about what N said? Anything else that might have been a clue?”

I shook my head. There had been nothing, I was certain; just that the thief had hidden in a castle. No more, no less.

“That's all he said,” I told her. “I'm sure of it.”

She sighed and flopped down on the bed next to me.

“Great,” she said. “That's just great.”

There was a silence, punctuated by little avian snores from Candy on the nightstand.

“Where's Cheren?”

“Downstairs, putting every castle in Unova individually into Google, just in case they've appeared in any recent news stories. He says that maybe someone noticed the thief's presence and reported it as a ghost or something.” Bianca made a pfft noise. “I don't think either of us thought that was likely, but without any other leads to go on...”

I nodded.

“I get it. We're stuck.”

“Yeah.”

We sat there for a while, listening to Candy's feathers shifting in her sleep.

“Oh,” I said.

“'Oh' what?”

“I just remembered something N said. He said the conversation was different with Lauren... Which means she might have heard another clue!”

Bianca looked confused.

“So... wait... tomorrow you'll be able to tell us?”

“Remember to ask her. Me. Whatever. Just ask tomorrow about what N said. And maybe we'll get an answer worth having.”

“O-K,” said Bianca. “But in the White world, wouldn't we have already asked Lauren today? I mean, how does that work? Does that mean tomorrow we'll already know what N said to her?”

“I don't know,” I replied, holding my head in a futile attempt to stop it falling apart at the seams. “'Sraven, this is confusing... I mean – I guess – the people around me seem to stay in the same world as me. I think. So I think in Lauren's world, you asked her the same questions today that you asked me, but perhaps she forgot to mention something? Something that she'll mention tomorrow? I think the result at the end of each day has to be the same, or things get out of sync. Like... like when we fought that monster in the dark,” I said suddenly. “Lauren must have been hit on the head during the fight, because when I woke up I had a headache. Things got out of sync, and I ended up with too many injuries... Oh, I don't know! I have no f*cking clue how this works.”

Bianca patted my arm.

“That's OK,” she said. “I think I understand even less than you. I mean, I only got about one word in three there.”

I smiled, but I had to force it; I wasn't in the mood. Thinking about how all this might work, and how little I knew compared to N – what was I even fighting for, anyway? – was just depressing.

“I don't know,” I said. “I get the feeling I don't know anything at all.” I dropped my head into my hands with a sigh. “I hope Lauren knows a little more, I really do. If I'm the strong one, does that make her the smart one?”

“I don't know,” said Bianca seriously. “I'll let you know tomorrow.”

Then I really did laugh, and the moment passed, and I set aside my worries and talked.

 

[MikeHill005]

Wow, I really need to catch up on this... I haven't been on the forums for a while.

I'll start reviewing chapters as I finish them.

 

[Azurus]

I think Jared has to do that dreamlink again if he wants answers.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, all the games this october turned me into hermit and I haven't wanted to do much else.

I wonder which ingame or made-up castle they will go to, or maybe not a conventional castle at all.

Looking forward to another chapter.


It seems your schooling doesn't hold you back too much on updates, which is cool.

 

[Cutlerine]

Wow, I really need to catch up on this... I haven't been on the forums for a while.

I'll start reviewing chapters as I finish them.

Don't feel any pressure! What with the advent of the new academic year (and also the release of X and Y, which are taking up much of what is normally my writing time), it's taken me two weeks to write 500 words of the next chapter so far, so, uh, there's definitely no rush to squeeze out the reviews before we get too far ahead.

I think Jared has to do that dreamlink again if he wants answers.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, all the games this october turned me into hermit and I haven't wanted to do much else.

I wonder which ingame or made-up castle they will go to, or maybe not a conventional castle at all.

Looking forward to another chapter.


It seems your schooling doesn't hold you back too much on updates, which is cool.

Actually, it kind of does. I had that chapter 90% done before I left for uni, so there was no problem getting it out. Expect the next chapter to take a few more weeks; between university and Pokémon Y, I'm not currently spending all that much time writing. Or even online (gasp).

I'm glad everyone's still enjoying the story. I'll try not to take too long with Chapter Thirty-wherever-we-are-now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took much longer than normal.

Thank you to both of you for leaving comments!

 

[repoman]

Take your time, speaking of X and Y, what do you think? Do you think a more prominent/fleshed out storyline like this and BW may you come up with a plot for that particular game fic (if you get around of course, no pressure), or do you think it hinders your creative process?

 

[Cutlerine]

Take your time, speaking of X and Y, what do you think? Do you think a more prominent/fleshed out storyline like this and BW may you come up with a plot for that particular game fic (if you get around of course, no pressure), or do you think it hinders your creative process?

It doesn't hinder it, it directs it. With Emerald, I had a very loose plot to work with; with Gold and Red, I had practically none. With B/W and X/Y, there's a specific story in place, but it's up to me to reinterpret that and make it my own.

Nowadays, literary critics write essays and articles on poems and books. In medieval times, you rewrote the original story that, but changed and adapted it to lay more emphasis on the points you found interesting, or to highlight themes which you felt were raised but perhaps not fully explored. This sort of game fanfiction, for me, contains something of that proto-literary-critical spirit: it's a semi-critical response to a work given in the form of a retelling.

 

[Praxiteles]

Nowadays, literary critics write essays and articles on poems and books. In medieval times, you rewrote the original story that, but changed and adapted it to lay more emphasis on the points you found interesting, or to highlight themes which you felt were raised but perhaps not fully explored. This sort of game fanfiction, for me, contains something of that proto-literary-critical spirit: it's a semi-critical response to a work given in the form of a retelling.

Very interesting! I don't think I knew about this old convention (how much mediaeval literature have I read anyway); can you mention some examples? I also appreciate that your response to the game storyline is critical, with that kind of intellectual engagement and respect; there's something crude about the way most fanfiction handles canon, some need to 'civilize' it or make it adult. (For that matter, is Game Freak a team of adults or children?) It's very nice to know that the B/W storyline admits critical response. Once I actually start understanding what's going on, I'll be sure to look at your fic that way (and, after all, there's a lot more going on in criticism than just highlighting or expanding on certain pre-existing themes).

The first scene... mmm. I certainly agree that the previous one in Ch. 32 needs a come-down, it's ending was a break and not a conclusion. Still, there's not a lot really that happens in this scene. I see that detail about N leaving the Klink behind, and there's something that seems indispensible: an unresolved question. I wonder somehow if you're not hiding it in a haystack of obvious, perfunctory details, Juniper's introductions, people looking to disperse from the area.

Candy broke the silence – and the mood – with a cheerful squawk. Familiar faces were once again around her and the Tynamo had gone; all right, so everything was still a bit dark for her taste, but things were definitely looking up.

This is how I am all the time.

I knew that the Gym Leaders specialised in specific types, but I'd never given much thought about where those Leaders came from – there must, I realised, be quite a few Trainers who worked solely with one type, or all the Leaders would be woefully unskilled. And of course, even if they weren't Leaders, there was nothing to stop certain Trainers being employed by the League to do tasks that the Elite Four were too busy to deal with themselves.

Isn't it a little weird that Jared (who apparently has never heard of such a thing before) goes from seeing two specialist trainers to conjecturing a full, worldwide tradition of specialist trainers who eventually step up to become gym leaders? (I'm wondering how much trouble such single-type trainers would have on a normal trainer journey.) It might be more plausible that Jared already knows about such things, while the reader (of course) does not; though that of course precludes exposition of it.

“That's one way to put it,” I muttered, picking shards of shell out of my chips. “She's happy to be out of that cave, I think. I don't think she liked those rocks.”

She's a beast of the skies!

“Her father?”


“Professor Cedric Juniper,” said Bianca knowledgeably. “He has a TV show.”

This doesn't look like an intentional line break.

“Sir David Attenborough? British national treasure? Possibly the finest wildlife documentary narrator in the history of time and space?”

I didn't know she kept that much stake in wildlife documentary television! Is it a British thing, to worship David Attenborough?

“I don't know,” I replied, holding my head in a futile attempt to stop it falling apart at the seams. “'Sraven, this is confusing... I mean – I guess – the people around me seem to stay in the same world as me. I think. So I think in Lauren's world, you asked her the same questions today that you asked me, but perhaps she forgot to mention something? Something that she'll mention tomorrow? I think the result at the end of each day has to be the same, or things get out of sync. Like... like when we fought that monster in the dark,” I said suddenly. “Lauren must have been hit on the head during the fight, because when I woke up I had a headache. Things got out of sync, and I ended up with too many injuries... Oh, I don't know! I have no f*cking clue how this works.”

Oh yeah! I didn't think of that either, but it seems to be pretty fundamental to your Entralink situation, there's no reason you wouldn't have it well-developed. We know that the black and white worlds are definitely never identical -- geographical differences. But this seems to be more of an assertion on the storyline -- the plot-significant 'common' characters between the two realities have to go through identical stages. (Now I'm getting confused too, what is it exactly that switches reality every day at midnight, if both worlds are always existing in parallel? Jared/Lauren's consciousness? But apparently there are two consciousnesses working in ignorance of each other. The common characters? But even they seem to have two copies, one Jared-inspired and one Lauren-inspired. Only Halley?) *clutches head, moans, swears*

Then I actually remembered important details, and you (Juniper) said something like everybody's mind gets switched into the other reality -- but where is that reality in the meantime? *moans again* A dark (undisclosed) rift in your system! If it's not actually a rift in my sleep-deprived consciousness. This is the rift all the demons come out of.

 

[Cutlerine]

Very interesting! I don't think I knew about this old convention (how much mediaeval literature have I read anyway); can you mention some examples? I also appreciate that your response to the game storyline is critical, with that kind of intellectual engagement and respect; there's something crude about the way most fanfiction handles canon, some need to 'civilize' it or make it adult. (For that matter, is Game Freak a team of adults or children?) It's very nice to know that the B/W storyline admits critical response. Once I actually start understanding what's going on, I'll be sure to look at your fic that way (and, after all, there's a lot more going on in criticism than just highlighting or expanding on certain pre-existing themes).

Examples? Pretty much anything. Off the top of my head, Chaucer's Book of the Duchess contains a treatment of the story of Alcyone and Ceyx which lays emphasis on different parts of the story to the version it's based off, and you'll find endless rewritings of the same old stories by different authors, all treating them in different ways - things from Boccaccio's Decameron turn up in The Canterbury Tales, the Arthurian romances come back from the dead more times than Dracula, and so forth. Formal medieval writing made a big deal of auctoritee, which is a word that's made it into Modern English as both author and authority: what you found in old books, from earlier scholars, from classical Rome or Greece or what have you, was considered extremely important. Literary criticism as we know it didn't exist, and nor did the emphasis on originality as shown by new plots and ideas; a lot of the originality of medieval writing is in the treatment of old ideas.

So it's not exactly critical in the sense you're thinking of - and it would be wrong to consider my stories a critique of the games. What they are is a deliberate engagement with what I see as the themes and unexplored potential of the games. I made my Hoenn story an end-of-the-world B-movie-giant-monster sort of thing because that's what Emerald feels like it could have been to me, and I had this idea of people and the land and sea themselves in relation to each other because that seems to be one of the other main themes of R/S/E. Similarly, the Platinum story is bleak, bleak, bleak, a story where you can't stop Cyrus, only Giratina can, and so I gave it a darker twist, made it a pseudo-detective story that I could make my main character consciously play noir clichés off, and made sure to end it on a black note with a glimmer of hope for the future. In Black and White, the main theme as I saw it is duality, with a few subordinate things playing second fiddle to it, and so I took that to its extreme in my treatment of its story. And that is, unfortunately, all I can say about it for now without ruining what happens later on.

Isn't it a little weird that Jared (who apparently has never heard of such a thing before) goes from seeing two specialist trainers to conjecturing a full, worldwide tradition of specialist trainers who eventually step up to become gym leaders? (I'm wondering how much trouble such single-type trainers would have on a normal trainer journey.) It might be more plausible that Jared already knows about such things, while the reader (of course) does not; though that of course precludes exposition of it.

I'm fairly certain Jared's probably heard something about it, but never consciously thought about it before. It must happen: people must work to become Gym Leaders, or else new Gym Leaders would be as pathetic as Cheren is in BW2.

This doesn't look like an intentional line break.

Oops. No it is not.

I didn't know she kept that much stake in wildlife documentary television! Is it a British thing, to worship David Attenborough?

She doesn't. But it is a British thing, or at least an English thing, to treat documentaries narrated by David Attenborough as fundamentally better than other documentaries.

Oh yeah! I didn't think of that either, but it seems to be pretty fundamental to your Entralink situation, there's no reason you wouldn't have it well-developed. We know that the black and white worlds are definitely never identical -- geographical differences. But this seems to be more of an assertion on the storyline -- the plot-significant 'common' characters between the two realities have to go through identical stages. (Now I'm getting confused too, what is it exactly that switches reality every day at midnight, if both worlds are always existing in parallel? Jared/Lauren's consciousness? But apparently there are two consciousnesses working in ignorance of each other. The common characters? But even they seem to have two copies, one Jared-inspired and one Lauren-inspired. Only Halley?) *clutches head, moans, swears*

Here's a clue: it's all a matter of perception.

Then I actually remembered important details, and you (Juniper) said something like everybody's mind gets switched into the other reality -- but where is that reality in the meantime? *moans again* A dark (undisclosed) rift in your system! If it's not actually a rift in my sleep-deprived consciousness. This is the rift all the demons come out of.

Eh, it's all conjecture on their part. Shadows and caves; people in Unova can only see the effects of the underlying mechanism on Unova. To actually see how it works, you'd need to step outside their reality.

But we will see how it works, eventually. Not for a while, but we will see it.

 

[Cutlerine]

I've been thinking about this for some time now, and I'm afraid to say that I can't continue writing this story. It's not that I'm bored with it, or that I don't know where to take it, but for a variety of reasons, ideological, artistic and personal, I simply can't in good conscience keep going. I may post something else soon. I may not. It may be a long time before I do; there are still things that need to be sorted out.

To those who were reading and enjoying the story: I apologise, but there's nothing to be done. Whatever corner of my imagination housed Crack'd has been gutted by fire and now stands derelict.

 

[Knightfall]

Well, I had long hoped that I would never have to read the above in one of your stories (or write this very message), but I understand completely. Sometimes a story just isn't possible to carry on anymore.

Despite my rather silent nature on your works as of late, I do keep up with them every time you post new material and such. So, I am sad to see this go, but I know that there is a point in time where "good-bye" must be said. I am sorry about the imagination fire, you'd really think that it would set up a more efficient fire department after all this time, right? Well, at least they were able to contain it to a single house. As long as it doesn't torch the entire city, we're good.

Anyways, you have all my wishes for good luck in whatever you decide to do, regardless if it be another story on Serebii or something else entirely. You have my most sincere wishes for success in all your endeavors. Your stories have brought me an immense source of joy and are often some of the most interesting (and hilarious) things I will read the day that they're posted.

Thank you for everything, Cutlerine. This present story, past stories, and if applicable, future stories.

Knightfall signing off... ;005;

 

[teamVASIMR]

Um, um, "WHAT THE CHARMELEON SAID!!"

...looks like my reply at the other site has been outclassed...

 

[Pink Harzard]

I will miss your story Cutlerine. In my lurking-time, I have been reading your stories. They gave me a lot of joy, giggles and exitement. I have the feeling that you are a inspiration for other writers.

Your view of the Pokémon world is a special one. The way you show evolution is one of the best I've seen. And it looks more logical in my opinion too.

I wish you the best of luck.

~Pink Harzard

 

[Cutlerine]

Well, I had long hoped that I would never have to read the above in one of your stories (or write this very message), but I understand completely. Sometimes a story just isn't possible to carry on anymore.

Despite my rather silent nature on your works as of late, I do keep up with them every time you post new material and such. So, I am sad to see this go, but I know that there is a point in time where "good-bye" must be said. I am sorry about the imagination fire, you'd really think that it would set up a more efficient fire department after all this time, right? Well, at least they were able to contain it to a single house. As long as it doesn't torch the entire city, we're good.

Anyways, you have all my wishes for good luck in whatever you decide to do, regardless if it be another story on Serebii or something else entirely. You have my most sincere wishes for success in all your endeavors. Your stories have brought me an immense source of joy and are often some of the most interesting (and hilarious) things I will read the day that they're posted.

Thank you for everything, Cutlerine. This present story, past stories, and if applicable, future stories.

Knightfall signing off... ;005;

Um, um, "WHAT THE CHARMELEON SAID!!"

...looks like my reply at the other site has been outclassed...

I will miss your story Cutlerine. In my lurking-time, I have been reading your stories. They gave me a lot of joy, giggles and exitement. I have the feeling that you are a inspiration for other writers.

Your view of the Pokémon world is a special one. The way you show evolution is one of the best I've seen. And it looks more logical in my opinion too.

I wish you the best of luck.

~Pink Harzard

Thank you very much, everyone. You're very kind, and I really appreciate the support you've given this story, whether by posting or just by reading.

Unfortunately, as I've been uncomfortably aware for a long time now, Crack'd is moving towards an ending that supports a series of propositions about the world that I fundamentally disagree with, and I've sort of come to hate working towards those ends. If there was a way for me to to change that ending so that I'd feel comfortable writing it, then I would, but - as I have been forced to admit to myself over the past few weeks - there isn't: at this point in the story, the ending is set in stone and its philosophy is immutable.

So yeah. That's the main reason why I'm having to cut it short. I do have another project in mind - something quite different from the series of fics that I've posted so far - but that may not materialise for some time. I hate to be unreliable, since it feels like I'm short-changing readers if I cease to be a reliable producer of diversions and entertainments, but I'm afraid I can't avoid it. My apologies for that.

Anyway. That's it from me for now. See you later.