purple_drake
E/GL obsessed
A/N: Tad late, sorry. Explicit violence and pokemon torture in this chapter.
“Rafael asked you a question,” Aina said after an awkward pause, and I shook my head to clear it.
“I’m sorry. Ask it again and I’ll hear it this time.”
“Just asked you how the training was,” Rafael mumbled down into his meal. Under other circumstances I could have gone into great detail to answer that question, but Rafael had never managed to stop being skittish. He would have only asked to be polite, so I let him off with a short answer and the smile I wasn’t quite able to restrain.
“Very well, thank you.”
Better than well. I’d now trained over a dozen pokémon, was in the process of training two at once—during different sessions, of course—and Raticate had been assigned to a field trainer for evaluation. He’d passed with flying colours, according to the write-up I’d seen in the database; the trainer had taken him on permanently to train herself.
Ichigo had long since stopped overseeing my sessions. After I started training my third pokémon he’d thrown up his hands in exaggerated disgust and pronounced loudly that he had nothing more to teach me. It had been at once warming and embarrassing, but the one or two trainers in the room hadn’t laughed.
If anything, it was the opposite. People were ‘sir’ing me left, right and centre, now. I’d even caught Yuudai and Aina doing it in public. It had been a shock at first; I didn’t want them to feel like they had to be official. And yet, at the same time, I’d known it had to sooner or later. It had just always seemed like it would be ‘later’.
In all, things were good. There was just one thing I didn’t understand, the thing that had occupied my attention just before. I’d started training my second concurrent pokémon just that day, which was why it came to mind.
“Actually,” I said, turning toward Ichigo, just down the table. “There was one question you never answered about that.”
“I never had to answer any questions,” he pointed out without looking up from the magic trick he was showing to the agents on either side of him using the wasabi and soy-sauce bottles. “Easiest orientation I’ve ever had to undertake. You’re good for the old record, y’know.”
“Glad I could be of service,” I said dryly. “But there was one thing I never figured out on my own. Why aren’t the pokémon we train wild?”
His fingers faltered, messed up the sleight-of-hand, and he frowned down at the bottles as if it was their fault. Around us, the table went a bit quieter. Obviously I’d said something wrong—again. It had been a long time since that had happened; I hadn’t missed it in the slightest. Still, I pressed on.
“The Boss told me that pokémon are violent. And you remember he showed me that kairyuu. So why are the pokémon we train so passive?”
Ichigo grimaced and looked up. “You know, I think that’s a question you should probably ask the Boss yourself.”
“Why?” I lifted an eyebrow, aware of the awkward silence around us and trying to ignore it. It just made my stomach clench. “You are a master trainer, aren’t you?”
“But I’m not in the habit of yanking the rug out from under the feet of my superiors,” he corrected, and then grinned hard. “I hate to see an executive-in-training cry.”
I snorted, the others chuckled, and the awkward moment passed—for them, at least. It didn’t do anything for the solid knot of apprehension in my gut. There was a reason why he didn’t wanted to tell me that himself; I just didn’t know what it was.
Maybe he was right. Sakaki had asked me to breakfast to discuss my progress within the next few days. I’d ask him then.
“You look pensive, my boy.” Sakaki watched me over the tops of his steepled hands and I smiled sheepishly at his regard as well as the observation. “You have a question you want to ask me.”
From the serious look on his face, he already knew what it was, too. It was hard to resist the urge to roll my eyes, but I managed; naturally, someone had reported what had happened. “Do I even need to ask it out loud?”
“Would you prefer if it you did?” A twinkle of humour there, now, and reluctantly I grinned. I couldn’t keep it, though. The question had been gnawing on me more and more over the last few days until I’d been impatient for an answer. And yet, on arriving at the Boss’s office, I hadn’t known how to ask it without causing the same kind of awkwardness as before. If I thought Ishii would know I’d have asked him during my check-up tomorrow, but he was a psychologist, not a trainer.
“Why aren’t the pokémon we’re training wild?” I asked. There had to be a good answer—Sakaki wouldn’t have told me pokémon were violent unless they were.
“They are,” he said simply, “but you’ve only seen them once they have already undergone their first stage in training.”
That was … actually, that didn’t make much sense at all. I blinked. “First stage?”
He sighed. “If you are finished with breakfast, I believe we will need to take a walk.”
Immediately I nodded, laying my chopsticks down and pushing the bowl back. Even if I hadn’t been done already, the coil-uncoil of my stomach would have made sure of it. His silence as we left didn’t help much either, but it wasn’t any different to previous times. He seemed to use it to gather his thoughts, so he knew exactly what to say before he said anything at all.
Only this time he still didn’t say much. He just led me through the corridors toward the training areas, ignoring the salutes thrown our way.
“Sir?” I asked eventually, because the corridors were definitely familiar, now. That’s when he finally spoke.
“You haven’t been to all the arenas, have you, Wataru?”
“No,” I answered, a little startled. “I haven’t needed to. They’re all the same, aren’t they?”
He gave me a sad, tight smile as we came to the door to the viewing balcony for one of the biggest arenas, one of the ones I hadn’t been to. “No, my boy, I’m afraid they’re not.”
I’d been to a few of these seated balconies before to watch other trainers at work, to view their styles and see if I could learn anything from observing them. Like then, there were a handful of off-duty agents watching what was happening below—except that this time, the atmosphere was oddly tense. One of two turned at the sound of the door opening and snapped to attention, startled by the abrupt presence of their Boss.
“Rock Tomb!” I heard shouted as we came in, and perked up a bit. Once you got used to the sheer brutality battles sometimes had, they were pretty thrilling. They weren’t always nice but they were necessary; and even if it wasn’t fun to see the blood, analysing trainer tactics always was.
“Are we going to watch a battle?”
“Of a sort,” Sakaki said quietly under the roar of flames, nodding at the other agents and moving toward the edge of the balcony. That answer made my neck prickle and my stomach coil again, and I almost didn’t want to get closer to the edge. Still, when Sakaki beckoned me, I approached, trying to breathe through the dread settling in.
The battle below wasn’t like the others I’d seen in at least one very obvious matter: there was only one trainer. The pokémon in front of him was a graveler, semi-round and stony, with its hands in the ground. The other was a growlithe with bristling orange fur and flames pouring from its mouth, the attack striking the monument of jagged rocks between it and its opponent.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and couldn’t even grimace at the uncertainty in my voice. A battle without two trainers? Surely that couldn’t be right …
Sakaki didn’t speak, but as we watched, the trainer on the field lifted something in his hand. Next instant the growlithe’s Flamethrower cut off with a choked howl and the pokémon convulsed, collapsing to the ground. It took a moment before I could see the spark of electricity and the collar underneath its thick fur, and it seemed forever before the trainer shut it off.
“Wh—what—” I stammered, the bottom falling out from my stomach.
“You remember the kairyu,” Sakaki said without looking over at me. I flushed and was grateful for his discretion, at least, when I saw the other agents eyeing us sidelong and then looking quickly away as if to pretend they hadn’t been watching.
“Well, yes, but—”
“We’re barely able to control it at all. We’re certainly not having much luck breaking it. Other pokémon are easier.” He nodded toward the growlithe now staggering back to its feet, panting, fur slightly singed. “Their natural rage is their enemy as well as ours. As soon as they are broken of that, they are trainable. A clean slate, as it were, without their baser, more violent instincts interfering in the process.”
The growlithe was exhausted, I could see, and yet it still took a few steps forward, slowly at first and then faster, and then suddenly in a flash of movement too quick to be seen. The trainer pressed the button in his hand, and the growlithe shrieked, tumbling to the ground only a few feet away, rolling over and over the ground and shuddering with the electric shock.
“But …” I couldn’t look away. It was horrific and fascinating in equal measures, making my skin crawl. The trainer shut off the collar, but this time the growlithe didn’t rise and just lay there, breathing.
“We don’t revel in this duty, Wataru,” Sakaki said quietly. “It would be better if it weren’t necessary at all, of course. But it is. The way the government would like to believe is best results in thousands of pokémon-related injuries every year. Pokémon turning on their trainers. Attacking them. All because their rage drives them to it.”
The trainer indicated for his graveler to approach and the pokémon lumbered closer to the growlithe, poking the dog with one huge hand. Growlithe twitched but didn’t move to attack. The trainer looked up toward the balcony and nodded. It felt as if the nod was permission to made my stomach turn into stone; it certainly felt heavy enough.
“I would like you to learn how to do this.”
At first I thought Sakaki’s voice was just a result of the ringing in my ears. Then I managed to croak out, “What?”
“You are a trainer, Wataru,” he said simply. “The best. Trainers are responsible for all aspects of making a pokémon eligible to be used as protection—including this. Your education would not be complete without it.”
As I watched the trainer bent down to examine the growlithe, hand absently stroking through its fur, before returning it to its pokéball in a flash of red light. I felt numb; part of me wanted to refuse, but I couldn’t. Sakaki was my Boss, and I was just like those enraged, wild pokémon. That’s what my medication was for—so I wouldn’t be like them all over again. He didn’t have to take that risk for me, but he was.
I owed it to him not to mess up that gift. If that meant I had to break pokémon into being useful creatures instead of sociopathic ones, I couldn’t do anything less.
Ichigo was looking at me sidelong. I didn’t even look around to know that he was; it felt as it his gaze was burning. I was grateful Sakaki had banned anyone else from watching, but Ichigo alone wasn’t helping the fact my stomach was trying to drive my lungs out of my body. Wasn’t it enough that I had to learn to do this in the first place? And to think I’d been wary about the battles.
This was nothing like a pokémon battle. It wasn’t about defeating an opponent—it was about hurting a pokémon into submission.
“I don’t have any pokémon of my own,” I said, trying hard not to glance down again at the pokéball in my hand. It was hard to make myself believe that I’d just been pointing out a flaw, not trying to find a way out of it. Something about this whole situation made my skin crawl.
“That’s why I’m here,” Ichigo said negligently. “You’ll be using one of mine.”
I took a deep breath and held it, counting off five before letting it out. “Alright. What do I do?”
“Pigeon will be groggy when you let it out, so just step away quickly.” He tossed a pokéball at me; it was only reflex I caught it. “Let Persian defend you, but don’t attack Pigeon directly. She’s just there to make sure you don’t get filled with beak-holes.”
He grinned but I grimaced, releasing Persian first. She yawned and stretched, blinking sidelong at me warily. I clipped her ’ball to my belt and unclipped the remote control I’d been given. The one that controlled Pidgeotto’s shock collar.
Then, with another deep breath, I tossed Pidgeotto’s ball out so it would land a distance away and stepped back quickly. The flash materialised into a bird a little bigger than the one I’d trained previously, with four feet worth of wingspan, and not nearly so passive. No, this one shrieked and beat its wings almost the instant it was out of the ball, and I instinctively covered my face with an arm against the sharp buffet.
“Use the collar before it turns into a Gust!” Ichigo shouted from the sidelines. I pressed the button on the remote control. The pidgeotto shrieked, the sound high-pitched and drilling into my head, and I looked up as the wind died.
I shouldn’t have. The bird hit the ground, convulsing and shrieking and hurriedly I turned the collar off, swallowing hard once, twice, three times to keep my stomach down.
“Ichigo—”
“Keep your focus on the damn bird!” he barked, so suddenly and forcefully that I flinched.
“But—”
“TSSSEEER!”
“RRREEOW!”
I jerked back at a sudden movement—the pidgeotto, back in the air and diving at me. How had it done that so quickly?! But Pidgeotto wasn’t the only one moving; Persian leapt to intercept. They collided with one another, rebounded, Persian landing on her feet with only a minor stagger and Pidgeotto’s spinning flight-path stabilising after a moment. It dove again, shrieking.
“The collar!” Ichigo’s voice was barely audible over the bird’s scream, all of it ringing in my ears, but I obeyed. The pidgeotto dropped. This time I took a few moments longer to react, and before I could press the button to turn the collar off Ichigo spoke instead. “Count off thirty.”
“But that’s too—”
“Thirty!” he barked again. “Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!”
He kept counting. I closed my eyes, kept them closed so I didn’t have to watch the pidgeotto buck on the ground, and took a shaky breath. My hands were trembling; I clenched them. That, I could hide—but not the raggedness of my voice. “Twenty-three. Twenty-two. Twenty-one.”
They’re dangerous, I told myself firmly. They’re dangerous, they’re enraged, they need to be broken of the rage before they can be trained, this is necessary.
“Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen. Fifteen …”
So why did it still feel like this was wrong?
I’m standing in an arena, an arena without places to hide. My heart’s pounding; there’s a bird in the sky, shrieking, preparing to attack. There was someone else here, but when I turn around there isn’t anyone, just an arena that stretches on and on and on, the arena and the bird.
There’s something in my hand and I know it can help me. When the bird dives I press the button, but nothing happens, and then I can’t move at all because my heart’s beating too fast and my muscles don’t want to work. The bird’s claws rake forward and its whole body hits me on the chest, sending the both of us tumbling in a flurry of limbs and feathers and—
Only there’s no more human limbs, only feathers, and when I straighten up and shake myself I am the bird. Now there is someone else there—Ichigo, it’s Ichigo. I try to speak but it comes out a bird’s shriek, and then Ichigo’s lifting something in his hand, something he presses with his thumb—
Pain.
There was darkness as I jolted awake, my heart pounding and body trembling, and for just a moment I could feel electricity making my muscles clench, could feel the hard, hot steel around my neck. I whimpered involuntarily and curled up on my side; my breathing was ragged and so fast that it didn’t seem as if I could get enough air.
I needed to uncurl. I needed to uncurl and breathe and stop trembling and breathe and yet I couldn’t move.
Count off. I had to count off. One. Two. Three. Four. Five …
On sixty-three my chest loosened enough that I could take a regular breath on every fourth or fifth number. At two-hundred-thirty-two it was every second. At about three hundred I was taking them and holding them for a few counts before letting them go. It was still impossible to tell how long I lay there just relearning how to breathe. I couldn’t even feel embarrassed; I was still shaking, could barely swallow, felt damp and sticky with sweat.
I couldn’t remember being so terrified in my life. Stupid statement, really; I couldn’t even remember most of my life. But I’d had dreams before. Nightmares. Some had made me break down; this one made me incapable of doing anything but lay in bed and tremble. Something about it had just … I had felt that pain, I was sure of it. But that couldn’t be possible, could it? It had only been a dream.
Only a dream, I told myself. Only a dream, only a dream, only a dream. There was no way I could turn into a pokémon. It was just a metaphor for me being like them, needing to be broken and medicated so I didn’t turn like them again. That was all.
I wasn’t sure how long it was before I really started getting aware of the room around me—a couple of hours at least. It wasn’t much, at first. The shadows seemed deeper and my eyes picked out the shapes of pokémon in them. The silence made my heart start to pound again. The windowless room felt like a prison.
Had to get out. I shoved the covers aside and almost staggered, my legs shaking, when I tried to stand. It took me ten minutes just to walk to where my boots were; another ten to pull them on along with my jacket and pants. I didn’t bother to change my sleeping shirt—no one was going to see under the jacket. Then I was out the door, without any direction except to be able to move and reassure myself that I didn’t have phantom pidgeotto stalking me through the corridors.
I tried the gym but couldn’t get into the rhythm of the forms we’d managed to figure out. The emptiness made my skin crawl, but so did the company of the one or two others that were there. If Takeshi had been awake maybe we could have practise my forms, but he wasn’t. I left.
The training arenas were a definite no. So was the lab. Yuudai would be asleep. So would Chiyo. Aina …
Aina had nightly inventory duty this week. For a moment I hesitated in the cross-corridors; then with a deep breath I turned down toward the supply wing. At this time of night, the corridors in the supply wing were nearly empty. I couldn’t decide if that was a bonus or not, and walked quickly to escape it. I didn’t want strangers around, even other agents—people who’d be watching me, judging me. Yet I didn’t want to be alone, either.
It took a little while for me to notice the singing. It echoed slightly, which was the only reason I could hear it at distance; some of these corridors were wide to allow carts through. It wasn’t a terribly good singing voice, either, but it was a voice I recognised. Eventually I found a door standing open, one of the general supply rooms, and when I reached the door I saw Aina inside, clipboard in hand, tallying the inventory.
It was strange. I wanted her company, but the instant I got there I didn’t move into the room. I just stood there watching her instead, feeling weak and wrung out and yet soothed by watching her do her chores and listening to her idle, half under-the-breath singing.
She had to notice me eventually. I just didn’t expect it to startle me as much as her when she turned around and then jumped with a shriek.
“What are you—don’t do that,” she gasped, clutching her clipboard to her chest, and pressing a hand to her eyes.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, trying to take control over the sick churn in my stomach the sudden adrenaline spike had caused. It didn’t occur to me that I must have looked awful until she frowned and came forward, one hand automatically lifting toward my forehead before she checked herself and let it drop again.
“Are you alright? You look horrible.”
“I had a nightmare,” I admitted, but not reluctantly. Aina had never made fun of me. “It was a bad one.”
“Oh.” There was a moment of awkward silence, but then she gestured toward one of the boxes, tugging gently on my sleeve. “Come on. Sit down for a little bit. I need to finish this inventory, but I could use some company.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be very good company.” I let her lead me and sat with a sigh. It had been hard to tell just how rubbery my legs felt until I was off them. Leaning back against the crate behind my new seat, I found my eyes actually sinking a bit as I watched her, head tilted back so I could see her work beside me. Yet the idea of actually trying to sleep, going back to that dark-filled dream, made my stomach twist with dread.
“I finished breaking the pigeon today.” Why the hell had that come out? Aina paused, half turned toward me, and nodded as if prompting. “It took five days. Ichigo says that’s par for pigeon.”
Five days, every afternoon, torturing a bird that wasn’t responsible for its instincts. I needed to change the subject. Now. “Why are you on inventory? I thought this was a job for admin and supply agents.”
Was it my imagination, or did she just flinch? “We all have to pull our weight.”
“But you’re a field agent and you haven’t been on a mission recently,” I pointed out. “Field agents don’t get assigned inventory this long after a mission unless they—Oh.” Unless they did something wrong. I blinked. Aina did something wrong? That was … a really strange thought. An irreconcilable thought. I’d seen Aina’s stats on the database; she was a good trainer, a good supportive agent. And she was too nice, too even-minded, to have had anything to do with disciplinary problems. “Your last field lead must have been a dick. What did you do, turn off his favourite radio station?”
“No.” She marked something down on her sheet, clearly avoiding looking over. “He doesn’t assign inventory for stupid things, Wataru.”
She really didn’t want to talk about this. If the alternative had been anything but what it was, I’ve have regretted bringing it up; as it was, the least I could do was drop it. But not without a final word. “He must be a dick,” I muttered, “to give it to you.”
Now she looked over, and her expression made my gut clench. She was blushing, and maybe on another night I’d have teased her about that. But there was also something tired, an edge of pained sadness—a lack of the semi-formal barrier she usually kept up between us because of my rank, even when we were alone. It was in her eyes and the soft, resigned smile. She put a hand on my cheek, and my chest clenched and my stomach fluttered in equal amounts.
“You’re a sweet man,” she murmured.
My breath caught. For a moment it didn’t matter that I was supposed to be an executive and she was just a field agent, or that I was insane and she wasn’t, or any of the other things I was supposed to keep in mind. What mattered was that her face was sad, even with the tiny, wistful smile in the corner of her mouth marking some kind of acceptance I just couldn’t see.
What mattered was that I wanted to make that expression go away. That she was kind and gentle and hard-working and unafraid of me, and shouldn’t need to wear that expression at any point or for any reason.
That was why I took her hand and pulled her down to kiss her.
It didn’t work as well as I’d intended. If I’d intended anything. It was hard to tell; I hadn’t even been really thinking. The action took her by surprise so she tripped on the box and landed on me with an oof; the clipboard whacked me across the head when she instinctively reached out to catch herself; and the kiss turned out to be less on the mouth than on her cheek.
“Oops,” I muttered, and felt my cheeks heat up a bit.
“Oops?” she repeated, sounding shocked and on the verge of laughing both at once. I gripped her around the shoulders to pull her up so she could find her feet and a proper seat on the box instead of half sprawled across me. This time I held her face steady with a couple of fingers on her chin and then leaned down to kiss her. It was the first kiss I could remember giving—soft, a little quicker than I wanted, a little more tentative than I’d intended.
She smelled like apples.
“There.” When I pulled back this time my heart was pounding, and despite the fact that I’d already been insensate with terror just a few hours earlier I found myself smiling. She blinked up at me, her expression more shocked than amused.
“I—you shouldn’t have done that,” she said at last.
That wasn’t the reaction I’d been hoping for. I hadn’t even realised how much lighter my stomach had felt until it sank again. “What? Why not?”
“Because you’re an executive and I’m just a grunt.”
She was frowning now. I had to resist the urge to wipe away that frown with my thumb, but I couldn’t keep my hand from twitching up in automatic action first, so I brushed a stray bit of fringe behind her ear instead. “Is it really so important?”
She didn’t pull away. “Yes.”
“I could always promote you.”
Now her expression changed, flickering so rapidly from stoic resignation to wide-eyed panic that I wanted to hit myself. “Please don’t do that.”
“I—” Alright, now I was at a loss. And kind of hurt. “Why? Not that I would, if you didn’t want to, but—why?”
“I don’t want to be a team lead,” she whispered. “I don’t want to have to order people into danger or decide who lives and who dies. That’s why I’m here, Wataru. He ordered me to kill someone for the sake of the mission and I couldn’t. I’m too soft.”
Soft. Aina. Soft. Who the fuck had told her that?
“I’m insane and violent,” I said quietly. Her head jerked slightly and she opened her mouth as if to object, but I continued quickly before she could. “I’m insane and violent and I killed members of my own team, and yet you were the first person other than Sakaki to talk to me without acting like I was going to lose it at any moment. The first person to tell me your name. To treat me like I’m human. That isn’t soft, Aina, and if you need to want to kill to not be soft then I wouldn’t want you like that anyway.”
Even if it meant following orders.
She looked up at me like she was a deer in the headlights and I had to look away, running a hand through my hair. I hadn’t meant that to sound so heartfelt, even though it was true. “That’s just how I see it, anyway,” I mumbled.
For a few moments neither of us said anything; I leaned my head back against the crate behind me with a thunk and a sigh. Aina didn’t try to move, so we stayed sitting like that, our thighs pressed together. It was … nice. Companionable. Maybe that was all we were supposed to be.
Except then she sighed too, and then she leaned on me, all her weight pressed against my side and her head on my shoulder. It made my stomach flutter again. “Can we not tell anyone?”
The smile was impossible to stop.
Chapter 7
Breathe life into this feeble heart
“Sir. Sir?” Someone nudged my side and I blinked, looking up from the surface of my soup to find half the dinner table looking at me, Rafael with a trapped expression as if he’d started something he regretted.Breathe life into this feeble heart
“Rafael asked you a question,” Aina said after an awkward pause, and I shook my head to clear it.
“I’m sorry. Ask it again and I’ll hear it this time.”
“Just asked you how the training was,” Rafael mumbled down into his meal. Under other circumstances I could have gone into great detail to answer that question, but Rafael had never managed to stop being skittish. He would have only asked to be polite, so I let him off with a short answer and the smile I wasn’t quite able to restrain.
“Very well, thank you.”
Better than well. I’d now trained over a dozen pokémon, was in the process of training two at once—during different sessions, of course—and Raticate had been assigned to a field trainer for evaluation. He’d passed with flying colours, according to the write-up I’d seen in the database; the trainer had taken him on permanently to train herself.
Ichigo had long since stopped overseeing my sessions. After I started training my third pokémon he’d thrown up his hands in exaggerated disgust and pronounced loudly that he had nothing more to teach me. It had been at once warming and embarrassing, but the one or two trainers in the room hadn’t laughed.
If anything, it was the opposite. People were ‘sir’ing me left, right and centre, now. I’d even caught Yuudai and Aina doing it in public. It had been a shock at first; I didn’t want them to feel like they had to be official. And yet, at the same time, I’d known it had to sooner or later. It had just always seemed like it would be ‘later’.
In all, things were good. There was just one thing I didn’t understand, the thing that had occupied my attention just before. I’d started training my second concurrent pokémon just that day, which was why it came to mind.
“Actually,” I said, turning toward Ichigo, just down the table. “There was one question you never answered about that.”
“I never had to answer any questions,” he pointed out without looking up from the magic trick he was showing to the agents on either side of him using the wasabi and soy-sauce bottles. “Easiest orientation I’ve ever had to undertake. You’re good for the old record, y’know.”
“Glad I could be of service,” I said dryly. “But there was one thing I never figured out on my own. Why aren’t the pokémon we train wild?”
His fingers faltered, messed up the sleight-of-hand, and he frowned down at the bottles as if it was their fault. Around us, the table went a bit quieter. Obviously I’d said something wrong—again. It had been a long time since that had happened; I hadn’t missed it in the slightest. Still, I pressed on.
“The Boss told me that pokémon are violent. And you remember he showed me that kairyuu. So why are the pokémon we train so passive?”
Ichigo grimaced and looked up. “You know, I think that’s a question you should probably ask the Boss yourself.”
“Why?” I lifted an eyebrow, aware of the awkward silence around us and trying to ignore it. It just made my stomach clench. “You are a master trainer, aren’t you?”
“But I’m not in the habit of yanking the rug out from under the feet of my superiors,” he corrected, and then grinned hard. “I hate to see an executive-in-training cry.”
I snorted, the others chuckled, and the awkward moment passed—for them, at least. It didn’t do anything for the solid knot of apprehension in my gut. There was a reason why he didn’t wanted to tell me that himself; I just didn’t know what it was.
Maybe he was right. Sakaki had asked me to breakfast to discuss my progress within the next few days. I’d ask him then.
“You look pensive, my boy.” Sakaki watched me over the tops of his steepled hands and I smiled sheepishly at his regard as well as the observation. “You have a question you want to ask me.”
From the serious look on his face, he already knew what it was, too. It was hard to resist the urge to roll my eyes, but I managed; naturally, someone had reported what had happened. “Do I even need to ask it out loud?”
“Would you prefer if it you did?” A twinkle of humour there, now, and reluctantly I grinned. I couldn’t keep it, though. The question had been gnawing on me more and more over the last few days until I’d been impatient for an answer. And yet, on arriving at the Boss’s office, I hadn’t known how to ask it without causing the same kind of awkwardness as before. If I thought Ishii would know I’d have asked him during my check-up tomorrow, but he was a psychologist, not a trainer.
“Why aren’t the pokémon we’re training wild?” I asked. There had to be a good answer—Sakaki wouldn’t have told me pokémon were violent unless they were.
“They are,” he said simply, “but you’ve only seen them once they have already undergone their first stage in training.”
That was … actually, that didn’t make much sense at all. I blinked. “First stage?”
He sighed. “If you are finished with breakfast, I believe we will need to take a walk.”
Immediately I nodded, laying my chopsticks down and pushing the bowl back. Even if I hadn’t been done already, the coil-uncoil of my stomach would have made sure of it. His silence as we left didn’t help much either, but it wasn’t any different to previous times. He seemed to use it to gather his thoughts, so he knew exactly what to say before he said anything at all.
Only this time he still didn’t say much. He just led me through the corridors toward the training areas, ignoring the salutes thrown our way.
“Sir?” I asked eventually, because the corridors were definitely familiar, now. That’s when he finally spoke.
“You haven’t been to all the arenas, have you, Wataru?”
“No,” I answered, a little startled. “I haven’t needed to. They’re all the same, aren’t they?”
He gave me a sad, tight smile as we came to the door to the viewing balcony for one of the biggest arenas, one of the ones I hadn’t been to. “No, my boy, I’m afraid they’re not.”
I’d been to a few of these seated balconies before to watch other trainers at work, to view their styles and see if I could learn anything from observing them. Like then, there were a handful of off-duty agents watching what was happening below—except that this time, the atmosphere was oddly tense. One of two turned at the sound of the door opening and snapped to attention, startled by the abrupt presence of their Boss.
“Rock Tomb!” I heard shouted as we came in, and perked up a bit. Once you got used to the sheer brutality battles sometimes had, they were pretty thrilling. They weren’t always nice but they were necessary; and even if it wasn’t fun to see the blood, analysing trainer tactics always was.
“Are we going to watch a battle?”
“Of a sort,” Sakaki said quietly under the roar of flames, nodding at the other agents and moving toward the edge of the balcony. That answer made my neck prickle and my stomach coil again, and I almost didn’t want to get closer to the edge. Still, when Sakaki beckoned me, I approached, trying to breathe through the dread settling in.
The battle below wasn’t like the others I’d seen in at least one very obvious matter: there was only one trainer. The pokémon in front of him was a graveler, semi-round and stony, with its hands in the ground. The other was a growlithe with bristling orange fur and flames pouring from its mouth, the attack striking the monument of jagged rocks between it and its opponent.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and couldn’t even grimace at the uncertainty in my voice. A battle without two trainers? Surely that couldn’t be right …
Sakaki didn’t speak, but as we watched, the trainer on the field lifted something in his hand. Next instant the growlithe’s Flamethrower cut off with a choked howl and the pokémon convulsed, collapsing to the ground. It took a moment before I could see the spark of electricity and the collar underneath its thick fur, and it seemed forever before the trainer shut it off.
“Wh—what—” I stammered, the bottom falling out from my stomach.
“You remember the kairyu,” Sakaki said without looking over at me. I flushed and was grateful for his discretion, at least, when I saw the other agents eyeing us sidelong and then looking quickly away as if to pretend they hadn’t been watching.
“Well, yes, but—”
“We’re barely able to control it at all. We’re certainly not having much luck breaking it. Other pokémon are easier.” He nodded toward the growlithe now staggering back to its feet, panting, fur slightly singed. “Their natural rage is their enemy as well as ours. As soon as they are broken of that, they are trainable. A clean slate, as it were, without their baser, more violent instincts interfering in the process.”
The growlithe was exhausted, I could see, and yet it still took a few steps forward, slowly at first and then faster, and then suddenly in a flash of movement too quick to be seen. The trainer pressed the button in his hand, and the growlithe shrieked, tumbling to the ground only a few feet away, rolling over and over the ground and shuddering with the electric shock.
“But …” I couldn’t look away. It was horrific and fascinating in equal measures, making my skin crawl. The trainer shut off the collar, but this time the growlithe didn’t rise and just lay there, breathing.
“We don’t revel in this duty, Wataru,” Sakaki said quietly. “It would be better if it weren’t necessary at all, of course. But it is. The way the government would like to believe is best results in thousands of pokémon-related injuries every year. Pokémon turning on their trainers. Attacking them. All because their rage drives them to it.”
The trainer indicated for his graveler to approach and the pokémon lumbered closer to the growlithe, poking the dog with one huge hand. Growlithe twitched but didn’t move to attack. The trainer looked up toward the balcony and nodded. It felt as if the nod was permission to made my stomach turn into stone; it certainly felt heavy enough.
“I would like you to learn how to do this.”
At first I thought Sakaki’s voice was just a result of the ringing in my ears. Then I managed to croak out, “What?”
“You are a trainer, Wataru,” he said simply. “The best. Trainers are responsible for all aspects of making a pokémon eligible to be used as protection—including this. Your education would not be complete without it.”
As I watched the trainer bent down to examine the growlithe, hand absently stroking through its fur, before returning it to its pokéball in a flash of red light. I felt numb; part of me wanted to refuse, but I couldn’t. Sakaki was my Boss, and I was just like those enraged, wild pokémon. That’s what my medication was for—so I wouldn’t be like them all over again. He didn’t have to take that risk for me, but he was.
I owed it to him not to mess up that gift. If that meant I had to break pokémon into being useful creatures instead of sociopathic ones, I couldn’t do anything less.
***
Ichigo was looking at me sidelong. I didn’t even look around to know that he was; it felt as it his gaze was burning. I was grateful Sakaki had banned anyone else from watching, but Ichigo alone wasn’t helping the fact my stomach was trying to drive my lungs out of my body. Wasn’t it enough that I had to learn to do this in the first place? And to think I’d been wary about the battles.
This was nothing like a pokémon battle. It wasn’t about defeating an opponent—it was about hurting a pokémon into submission.
“I don’t have any pokémon of my own,” I said, trying hard not to glance down again at the pokéball in my hand. It was hard to make myself believe that I’d just been pointing out a flaw, not trying to find a way out of it. Something about this whole situation made my skin crawl.
“That’s why I’m here,” Ichigo said negligently. “You’ll be using one of mine.”
I took a deep breath and held it, counting off five before letting it out. “Alright. What do I do?”
“Pigeon will be groggy when you let it out, so just step away quickly.” He tossed a pokéball at me; it was only reflex I caught it. “Let Persian defend you, but don’t attack Pigeon directly. She’s just there to make sure you don’t get filled with beak-holes.”
He grinned but I grimaced, releasing Persian first. She yawned and stretched, blinking sidelong at me warily. I clipped her ’ball to my belt and unclipped the remote control I’d been given. The one that controlled Pidgeotto’s shock collar.
Then, with another deep breath, I tossed Pidgeotto’s ball out so it would land a distance away and stepped back quickly. The flash materialised into a bird a little bigger than the one I’d trained previously, with four feet worth of wingspan, and not nearly so passive. No, this one shrieked and beat its wings almost the instant it was out of the ball, and I instinctively covered my face with an arm against the sharp buffet.
“Use the collar before it turns into a Gust!” Ichigo shouted from the sidelines. I pressed the button on the remote control. The pidgeotto shrieked, the sound high-pitched and drilling into my head, and I looked up as the wind died.
I shouldn’t have. The bird hit the ground, convulsing and shrieking and hurriedly I turned the collar off, swallowing hard once, twice, three times to keep my stomach down.
“Ichigo—”
“Keep your focus on the damn bird!” he barked, so suddenly and forcefully that I flinched.
“But—”
“TSSSEEER!”
“RRREEOW!”
I jerked back at a sudden movement—the pidgeotto, back in the air and diving at me. How had it done that so quickly?! But Pidgeotto wasn’t the only one moving; Persian leapt to intercept. They collided with one another, rebounded, Persian landing on her feet with only a minor stagger and Pidgeotto’s spinning flight-path stabilising after a moment. It dove again, shrieking.
“The collar!” Ichigo’s voice was barely audible over the bird’s scream, all of it ringing in my ears, but I obeyed. The pidgeotto dropped. This time I took a few moments longer to react, and before I could press the button to turn the collar off Ichigo spoke instead. “Count off thirty.”
“But that’s too—”
“Thirty!” he barked again. “Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!”
He kept counting. I closed my eyes, kept them closed so I didn’t have to watch the pidgeotto buck on the ground, and took a shaky breath. My hands were trembling; I clenched them. That, I could hide—but not the raggedness of my voice. “Twenty-three. Twenty-two. Twenty-one.”
They’re dangerous, I told myself firmly. They’re dangerous, they’re enraged, they need to be broken of the rage before they can be trained, this is necessary.
“Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen. Fifteen …”
So why did it still feel like this was wrong?
***
I’m standing in an arena, an arena without places to hide. My heart’s pounding; there’s a bird in the sky, shrieking, preparing to attack. There was someone else here, but when I turn around there isn’t anyone, just an arena that stretches on and on and on, the arena and the bird.
There’s something in my hand and I know it can help me. When the bird dives I press the button, but nothing happens, and then I can’t move at all because my heart’s beating too fast and my muscles don’t want to work. The bird’s claws rake forward and its whole body hits me on the chest, sending the both of us tumbling in a flurry of limbs and feathers and—
Only there’s no more human limbs, only feathers, and when I straighten up and shake myself I am the bird. Now there is someone else there—Ichigo, it’s Ichigo. I try to speak but it comes out a bird’s shriek, and then Ichigo’s lifting something in his hand, something he presses with his thumb—
Pain.
There was darkness as I jolted awake, my heart pounding and body trembling, and for just a moment I could feel electricity making my muscles clench, could feel the hard, hot steel around my neck. I whimpered involuntarily and curled up on my side; my breathing was ragged and so fast that it didn’t seem as if I could get enough air.
I needed to uncurl. I needed to uncurl and breathe and stop trembling and breathe and yet I couldn’t move.
Count off. I had to count off. One. Two. Three. Four. Five …
On sixty-three my chest loosened enough that I could take a regular breath on every fourth or fifth number. At two-hundred-thirty-two it was every second. At about three hundred I was taking them and holding them for a few counts before letting them go. It was still impossible to tell how long I lay there just relearning how to breathe. I couldn’t even feel embarrassed; I was still shaking, could barely swallow, felt damp and sticky with sweat.
I couldn’t remember being so terrified in my life. Stupid statement, really; I couldn’t even remember most of my life. But I’d had dreams before. Nightmares. Some had made me break down; this one made me incapable of doing anything but lay in bed and tremble. Something about it had just … I had felt that pain, I was sure of it. But that couldn’t be possible, could it? It had only been a dream.
Only a dream, I told myself. Only a dream, only a dream, only a dream. There was no way I could turn into a pokémon. It was just a metaphor for me being like them, needing to be broken and medicated so I didn’t turn like them again. That was all.
I wasn’t sure how long it was before I really started getting aware of the room around me—a couple of hours at least. It wasn’t much, at first. The shadows seemed deeper and my eyes picked out the shapes of pokémon in them. The silence made my heart start to pound again. The windowless room felt like a prison.
Had to get out. I shoved the covers aside and almost staggered, my legs shaking, when I tried to stand. It took me ten minutes just to walk to where my boots were; another ten to pull them on along with my jacket and pants. I didn’t bother to change my sleeping shirt—no one was going to see under the jacket. Then I was out the door, without any direction except to be able to move and reassure myself that I didn’t have phantom pidgeotto stalking me through the corridors.
I tried the gym but couldn’t get into the rhythm of the forms we’d managed to figure out. The emptiness made my skin crawl, but so did the company of the one or two others that were there. If Takeshi had been awake maybe we could have practise my forms, but he wasn’t. I left.
The training arenas were a definite no. So was the lab. Yuudai would be asleep. So would Chiyo. Aina …
Aina had nightly inventory duty this week. For a moment I hesitated in the cross-corridors; then with a deep breath I turned down toward the supply wing. At this time of night, the corridors in the supply wing were nearly empty. I couldn’t decide if that was a bonus or not, and walked quickly to escape it. I didn’t want strangers around, even other agents—people who’d be watching me, judging me. Yet I didn’t want to be alone, either.
It took a little while for me to notice the singing. It echoed slightly, which was the only reason I could hear it at distance; some of these corridors were wide to allow carts through. It wasn’t a terribly good singing voice, either, but it was a voice I recognised. Eventually I found a door standing open, one of the general supply rooms, and when I reached the door I saw Aina inside, clipboard in hand, tallying the inventory.
It was strange. I wanted her company, but the instant I got there I didn’t move into the room. I just stood there watching her instead, feeling weak and wrung out and yet soothed by watching her do her chores and listening to her idle, half under-the-breath singing.
She had to notice me eventually. I just didn’t expect it to startle me as much as her when she turned around and then jumped with a shriek.
“What are you—don’t do that,” she gasped, clutching her clipboard to her chest, and pressing a hand to her eyes.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, trying to take control over the sick churn in my stomach the sudden adrenaline spike had caused. It didn’t occur to me that I must have looked awful until she frowned and came forward, one hand automatically lifting toward my forehead before she checked herself and let it drop again.
“Are you alright? You look horrible.”
“I had a nightmare,” I admitted, but not reluctantly. Aina had never made fun of me. “It was a bad one.”
“Oh.” There was a moment of awkward silence, but then she gestured toward one of the boxes, tugging gently on my sleeve. “Come on. Sit down for a little bit. I need to finish this inventory, but I could use some company.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be very good company.” I let her lead me and sat with a sigh. It had been hard to tell just how rubbery my legs felt until I was off them. Leaning back against the crate behind my new seat, I found my eyes actually sinking a bit as I watched her, head tilted back so I could see her work beside me. Yet the idea of actually trying to sleep, going back to that dark-filled dream, made my stomach twist with dread.
“I finished breaking the pigeon today.” Why the hell had that come out? Aina paused, half turned toward me, and nodded as if prompting. “It took five days. Ichigo says that’s par for pigeon.”
Five days, every afternoon, torturing a bird that wasn’t responsible for its instincts. I needed to change the subject. Now. “Why are you on inventory? I thought this was a job for admin and supply agents.”
Was it my imagination, or did she just flinch? “We all have to pull our weight.”
“But you’re a field agent and you haven’t been on a mission recently,” I pointed out. “Field agents don’t get assigned inventory this long after a mission unless they—Oh.” Unless they did something wrong. I blinked. Aina did something wrong? That was … a really strange thought. An irreconcilable thought. I’d seen Aina’s stats on the database; she was a good trainer, a good supportive agent. And she was too nice, too even-minded, to have had anything to do with disciplinary problems. “Your last field lead must have been a dick. What did you do, turn off his favourite radio station?”
“No.” She marked something down on her sheet, clearly avoiding looking over. “He doesn’t assign inventory for stupid things, Wataru.”
She really didn’t want to talk about this. If the alternative had been anything but what it was, I’ve have regretted bringing it up; as it was, the least I could do was drop it. But not without a final word. “He must be a dick,” I muttered, “to give it to you.”
Now she looked over, and her expression made my gut clench. She was blushing, and maybe on another night I’d have teased her about that. But there was also something tired, an edge of pained sadness—a lack of the semi-formal barrier she usually kept up between us because of my rank, even when we were alone. It was in her eyes and the soft, resigned smile. She put a hand on my cheek, and my chest clenched and my stomach fluttered in equal amounts.
“You’re a sweet man,” she murmured.
My breath caught. For a moment it didn’t matter that I was supposed to be an executive and she was just a field agent, or that I was insane and she wasn’t, or any of the other things I was supposed to keep in mind. What mattered was that her face was sad, even with the tiny, wistful smile in the corner of her mouth marking some kind of acceptance I just couldn’t see.
What mattered was that I wanted to make that expression go away. That she was kind and gentle and hard-working and unafraid of me, and shouldn’t need to wear that expression at any point or for any reason.
That was why I took her hand and pulled her down to kiss her.
It didn’t work as well as I’d intended. If I’d intended anything. It was hard to tell; I hadn’t even been really thinking. The action took her by surprise so she tripped on the box and landed on me with an oof; the clipboard whacked me across the head when she instinctively reached out to catch herself; and the kiss turned out to be less on the mouth than on her cheek.
“Oops,” I muttered, and felt my cheeks heat up a bit.
“Oops?” she repeated, sounding shocked and on the verge of laughing both at once. I gripped her around the shoulders to pull her up so she could find her feet and a proper seat on the box instead of half sprawled across me. This time I held her face steady with a couple of fingers on her chin and then leaned down to kiss her. It was the first kiss I could remember giving—soft, a little quicker than I wanted, a little more tentative than I’d intended.
She smelled like apples.
“There.” When I pulled back this time my heart was pounding, and despite the fact that I’d already been insensate with terror just a few hours earlier I found myself smiling. She blinked up at me, her expression more shocked than amused.
“I—you shouldn’t have done that,” she said at last.
That wasn’t the reaction I’d been hoping for. I hadn’t even realised how much lighter my stomach had felt until it sank again. “What? Why not?”
“Because you’re an executive and I’m just a grunt.”
She was frowning now. I had to resist the urge to wipe away that frown with my thumb, but I couldn’t keep my hand from twitching up in automatic action first, so I brushed a stray bit of fringe behind her ear instead. “Is it really so important?”
She didn’t pull away. “Yes.”
“I could always promote you.”
Now her expression changed, flickering so rapidly from stoic resignation to wide-eyed panic that I wanted to hit myself. “Please don’t do that.”
“I—” Alright, now I was at a loss. And kind of hurt. “Why? Not that I would, if you didn’t want to, but—why?”
“I don’t want to be a team lead,” she whispered. “I don’t want to have to order people into danger or decide who lives and who dies. That’s why I’m here, Wataru. He ordered me to kill someone for the sake of the mission and I couldn’t. I’m too soft.”
Soft. Aina. Soft. Who the fuck had told her that?
“I’m insane and violent,” I said quietly. Her head jerked slightly and she opened her mouth as if to object, but I continued quickly before she could. “I’m insane and violent and I killed members of my own team, and yet you were the first person other than Sakaki to talk to me without acting like I was going to lose it at any moment. The first person to tell me your name. To treat me like I’m human. That isn’t soft, Aina, and if you need to want to kill to not be soft then I wouldn’t want you like that anyway.”
Even if it meant following orders.
She looked up at me like she was a deer in the headlights and I had to look away, running a hand through my hair. I hadn’t meant that to sound so heartfelt, even though it was true. “That’s just how I see it, anyway,” I mumbled.
For a few moments neither of us said anything; I leaned my head back against the crate behind me with a thunk and a sigh. Aina didn’t try to move, so we stayed sitting like that, our thighs pressed together. It was … nice. Companionable. Maybe that was all we were supposed to be.
Except then she sighed too, and then she leaned on me, all her weight pressed against my side and her head on my shoulder. It made my stomach flutter again. “Can we not tell anyone?”
The smile was impossible to stop.
