The Progression

[Praxiteles]

15. Magikarp Blues !



“So then you punched a hole in the cave floor?” Lewis said.

Brawly looked calmly at him. “It’s not our place to destroy natural environments.” He was squatting on a training mat and we were the mob of children engulfing him with questions and loud noises. Yuki had a punching pad in both hands and was trying to get him to hit it. There were a lot more than just us four. “If I had been in an evil corporate tower,” he said, “I’d definitely have punched the floor.”

Actually it was a dojo in the back of the Gym where Brawly taught martial arts to the island’s population of young children and pokémon. He’d given them all free hour and they were doing their own practice – more or less chaotically, eleven-year-olds practicing locks with eight-year-olds, marill trying to throw makuhita, eight-year-olds getting into wrestling matches with marill. Brawly went up on the balls of his feet to whistle at somebody. The treecko and wurmple that were on him went cradled in both arms. Then he squatted back down, barely exhaling. I suddenly put my hands forward and took Treecko back from him, putting her on my lap. She didn’t try to get out.

“Brawly did you have your makuhita with you?” said a young kid, probably Brawly’s little cousin or niece, who was now back in her position all over his left arm. He nodded. “And, your machop?”

Walker said, “Let Brawly tell the story. Tell it, Brawly.”

He said, “I had a very good idea of where the team would have hid out. I just hadn’t expected any team there in the first place. Until the kidnapping… I went through the cave diagonally, so here you have the east side, I got to the north. That’s the only other opening of the cave. It opens on a tiny beach. There’s space to camp out. That’s about it.” The windows of the dojo, which were huge and very high up near the ceiling, darkened under cloud cover.

The kid started jumping up and down. “It was their hideout! It was the Team Aqua hideout!” Treecko shuffed her with a soft tail before she knew what was coming. I’d expected Brawly to be ripped; actually, he had about as big arms as you expect on men his age, slim and almost kind of wiry. His shirt wasn’t tight.

Brawly winked at the kid. “There was a motorboat at the beach. And two grunts, sitting on a rock, with a treecko tied up sitting between them.” He put a hand briefly to my shoulder and said, “Totally sorry about that, by the way, I didn’t even guess it might have been your pokémon.” I shrugged smiling. “They hadn’t battled me,” he continued, “because that was their plan. They were counting on getting out of there while I was still getting through the cave. But what they hadn’t expected, was my friends the tentacool.”

“Yay! Finally! The tentacool!”

“I’d given them a wink on the beach just before the whole debacle began. They went over to that side, faster than either of us could walk, and stuffed the motorboat’s pump with clear jelly! This stuff dissolves overnight but it can clog things up like no one’s business.”

The kid broke into singsong: “And that’s why the grunts couldn’t leave…” Brawly gave her the look. “You sound like you know the story already,” he said. “Were you secretly following us or what?” She turned up both her hands.

“And then I told them how it was. You know what they said? Listen to this.” He put the wurmple down, who came up to let Treecko sling an arm over its head, and turned around so the kid had to look at him. “I bet you don’t know about this one.” She said, “I bet I do!”

“What they said was – I gave them the Talk, you know. I told them they could apologize for the crimes they’d done and turn to a better life, or they could try and fight me. They said, they didn’t want to leave the Team. But I didn’t want to teach them a lesson in such a stupid way! How would they ever get out of crime if I just gave them a thrashing? And they knew fighting me wasn’t a good idea.”

“So but wait,” Walker said, “they looked pretty thrashed when we saw them.”

Brawly broke into a smile. “That was the idea! They told me they’d have to make it look like I’d beaten them or their superiors would make them pay. So first I had their pokémon pressure-pointed to faint instantaneously. Then what I did, I asked the tentacool again! Thank god they’re such good friends. I asked them to ink stain both the grunts so it looked like bruises and red sores. And then I laid both of them out under the motorboat tarp, all wrapped up for the discovery.”

“That’s… really solid of you, Brawly,” Mark said.

“But how did that teach them a lesson?”

He shrugged. “It was enough for me just to get them out of that tight spot, I guess. The life of a low-level grunt is bad enough anyway. I figure they might look back on this and remember what it’s like to be with people, in society, where we help each other out.”

“Brawly helps everyone out! Brawly brawly brawly.” Brawly turned his face around until it was right up in hers. “Marsha marsha marsha.”

Mark said, “Brawly, who were the thugs? I know they were working for someone. What were they doing in Dewford?”

“That’s something I wanted to ask Atashka,” he said. “Your pokémon was kidnapped, wasn’t it? Did you get a ransom letter?”

“I did actually,” I said. “They didn’t want any ransom, they wanted to scare me. Which they did.” I squeezed Treecko again. “It’s because… In Rustboro, basically, my sister and I, foiled their plans. Two times. It… involved Devon.”

He gave me a look that I was starting to see very often now. It was cool and all, but I was starting to get a little tired of this reaction. I hadn’t even been the hero. I doubted Arauve was getting any of the fall for what we’d done.

Brawly though seemed to notice this and looked away quickly. I opened my mouth again and he said, “Maybe it’s better not to say too much, just in case. You can tell people what you do is top secret.”

Actually, I could do that.

“The grunts,” he went on, “were working for a criminal organization called Team Aqua. I’ve heard of them, but never run up against any. Until now. Frankly I thought Hoenn was a quiet region, relatively…”

Wurmple ducked out from under Treecko’s arm and came over to Brawly again. He patted its head, and said, “I don’t want to keep you too much in the dark, Atashka. If, you said, these people have their eyes on you now… But the truth is, no one really knows anything about this team. We weren’t aware of their existence a year ago. Their operations are like those of the organization working in Kanto and Johto, Team Rocket, but nothing they do seems to be bringing profit, or power. What we do know is, their eyes are on the sea. Not piracy, I don’t think. Their agenda seems to be something else…”

*

I found a pokémon in the desert. Its head was bigger than any other part of its body. I found it half-buried in the sand, a small torrent, flailing wildly and seemingly at random. My first thought was to why it was struggling and what it needed. It seemed small but definitely enough for a human, and I didn’t want to engage it in a pokémon battle. Because I couldn’t easily make out its face, it was hard to tell its emotions either way.

The sand seemed as fine as a fluid, and was thrown up in light sheets. The pokémon seemed from its color and the hard glint of its shell to belong to its habitat. I tried to watch it for a while, but the flailing wouldn’t make any progress. Every time it seemed to be thrashing out a kind of hole for itself out of pure luck, it would shift to the side and destroy the work it had done. I had no idea what kind of architecture could be achieved on this soil. Eventually I decided this had something to do with cleaning, or grooming. The pokémon was polishing its shell.

*

Uncle Briney found me pretty early that day, just after I left the dojo. “Atashka,” he said, slightly out of breath from coming up the road. “What am I even to do with you two? You never looked like this much trouble when you we cooped you up at home.”

I laughed. “Uncle Briney, you know I don’t look for trouble.”

“I know, lad, I know. Some people are made of… your dad was of the very same stuff. Ah, Peeko, lass.” He winced a little as she crowded his shoulder. I wondered what he’d been doing the past day, he seemed tired. “Treecko and Peeko. You both doing well, girls?” Treecko chittered and leaned on his leg. “Your adventures didn’t scrape you up too much? Good.”

Treecko made friends faster than I did, I thought. My mood was weird that day. I didn’t know when I was going to start trying to train, probably by going back to Dewford Cave, but I knew it wasn’t today. Uncle Briney said, “I don’t want you stressing over the Gym battle. The Devon shipment can wait. Stick around this island as long as you want to, train very well. Atashka, I think you’re not keeping up your training. God knows you keep having misadventures, but… I mean to say, slow down, for goodness sake.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“It’s the reason, that your journey, is so hectic, that’s why you need to slow down.”

“I don’t know how,” I moaned. Treecko went on clawing at Uncle Briney’s leg.

“I know of a few good ways,” he said. “You need to relax, lad. You’re not relaxed?”

“Uncle Briney,” I said, “Brawly said I was getting… involved in Team Aqua.” His eyebrows sank in concern. “He said… I’d have to…”

"Did he say you'd have to deal with them again?"

"I don't know," I said. "I think there's a chance."

"You don't want to see them again, do you." I lowered my head.

“Atashka, Atashka,” he said, and sighed. “I have something to remind you. Who’s the one really getting involved in the Team business? You or your sister?”

I tried to think of arguments, but said, “Arauve.”

“You think she’ll keep her nose clean of this from now on? That crazy girl?”

I shook my head no.

“Do you think she knows training better than you do?”

Some of our recent battles had been really weak… But then I reminded myself of her face. “Hell, no.”

“You think she can handle it and you can’t? You think she’s getting her second badge already?”

He said, “When you think about the road and whatever you’re going to be expected to do, I want you to think of that maniac. Her father has no clue what’s happened to her. She ran off through a tunnel that was under construction. Let me give you another old goodie. One time on the beach she lost her way trying to, dig her own sand baking suit.”

“Oh, heehee, I remember that!”

“You remember? She had a leg and an arm underground, and she yelled like she was wriggling in quicksand! Think of that clown, lad!”

I looked down, trying to push back my grin.

“Imagine her in one of your, what, criminal organization hideouts. Imagine someone trying to pull a fast one over her, or you. Do you know what happens to people like you and your sister?” He didn’t wait for any pause or shake of my head. “They grow up into your dad.”

I went around the houses once more with Treecko riding. I just walked through the alleys, recognizing places where I’d been before, looking for people, though apparently they were all inside or gone to work at this time. I’d already parted with the other trainers so I didn’t feel like going back to them for a while. Now that I was alone with my thoughts, I had a bit of space to feel bad about her. I wondered how much my dad and Uncle Briney were worrying about her together. I couldn’t feel any sort of worry, or maybe not outright worry: I just had a craving to talk to her, something that would be gone in an hour, and probably didn’t mean I actually wanted to meet her. I wondered when we’d get a chance to register pokénavs. If she couldn’t talk to Dad yet, at least she could tell me the important stuff, relay she was still alive. I hadn’t counted on getting separated from her this part of the journey. Mostly I worried about Dad.

“Treecko if we’re going to train at some point,” I said, “we should probably train with both of my friends who’ve got the badge already.”

She grumbled, something from her gut not her throat, and spit out one perfectly round seed. “Well, good to know you still remember how to attack.” I turned the white seed around in my hand, looking for the subtlest inward seam. “You think if I plant this thing I’ll get more treecko?” She whacked me for that.

We were going to the beach now, which was pretty good. There were fishermen on the edge of the water. I wondered what they were getting in a place like that, but it occurred to me that these people often battled their pokémon, too. I went right up to the closest one, who greeted me coming with a big smile.

“Friend, have you ever tried fishing?” I shook this off. “No but I’ll try it if you battle me.”

He said, “That’s fair. Let me battle with my catch! They tugged like some tough customers.”

Fisherman Chaby sent out his pokémon. “Look at this one, she’s a hundred pounds or more!” He looked big enough, a great scaled fish, with long whiskers. Treecko stood straight in front of me, wary. Joey said, “He probably knows some great moves. Water Gun!”

It jumped in the air, fell back down, and flopped weakly on the ground for a few seconds. I said, “It’s a water pokémon, you should probably put it in the water.” Chaby stumbled up to its and lugged its heavy weight into the shallows. I said, “Treecko, um, Leer?”

Chaby called Water Gun again. The pokémon flopped in the water and nothing happened. I said, “Wow, so magical.” A Bullet Seed didn’t finish it off, it took a second flurry. But it pretty much established that the pokémon knew no useful moves of any kind. In fact, he barely got around in the water, with no agility whatsoever.

Treecko spat out at least seven seeds to bring this one down, and then there was another one of those, and a third. Chaby said, “You’re up against a pokémon that can’t fight!” I kept my eyes fixed on Treecko, who was crouched more or less on the water’s edge, craning disconsolately down and then firing another shot.

“Magikarp are fishing pokémon,” he said. “They’re not for battles.”

“You could have told me that before we started,” I grumbled, a bit meanly. I was considering telling Treecko to back down a little, but she looked relaxed.

“Well, do I have to battle every single one of them?” I said. “Can we just stop with battle now and pretend it never happened?”

“You tell me, friend. You’re the trainer.”

“Augghh.” Treecko made one last shot and knocked this one out, taking a lot more time than she had with the first, and Chaby scrambled into the water to rescue it. His face finally showed grievance of some kind. “You dusted off all my magikarp, I was going to show them off!” He flashed this one back into its pokéball and put it in his jacket pocket. I said, “You shouldn’t have battled with me, then!” Treecko jumped on me, as I turned away, and blew a raspberry back at him.

There were probably other trainers on the beach, but we headed back up to town. The sun hadn’t appeared to move at all since we’d come down. I asked Treecko again what we were supposed to do. Pokémon never know what you need to do next; they leave all the worrying about that to their trainers. The back face of some big warehouse appeared first, then the clump of League buildings and houses past it. It wasn’t a warehouse, it was some apartment duplex. The weather was kind of oppressive even in this month.

I didn’t know how strong we had to be to defeat Brawly, only that it was probably a lot. I had no idea how we were supposed to train. I’d already seen every part of this tiny island. I didn’t even know how we were doing. Was Treecko supposed to be learning any more moves? She’d gotten pretty tough when we fought Roxanne, but since then we’d done almost nothing, and avoided wild battles. Treecko fought with agility and quick thinking more than outright power. Were we supposed to hone her quick thinking some more?

I knew most of these things already, I just didn’t want to face the answers. Treecko’s Absorb was still pretty much a distant acquaintance to her. Pokémon were definitely supposed to be well-practiced with their moves, and a few days of fighting even magikarp would only make her better at them. I could look up Treecko’s chart, they lent you those in the Pokémon Center. I’d have to learn how to read it.

Treecko’s legs were starting to dig into my right shoulder. “Shift,” I said, and nudged her. She cringed slightly with her arms, and stared up at me without doing anything. “Come on now, Treecko. Eeeko. Echo. That’ll be your nickname from now on.”

She didn’t do a thing. I was sure she’d have hated the name. I said, “Hey you wanna get a – ”

Abruptly she bolted down my arm and swung over to my other side, where she leaned all her weight on my trouser pocket. Was my pokéball chain hanging out?

“Haha, what? What’s up with you, Treecko? Is there – ”

She didn’t bother to listen, and for the first time in our journey, flashed herself into her pokéball.

*

I had thought of sand architecture and when I saw the sinkholes, the connection was probably somewhere in my mind. What was hard was catching it in the act. The sinkholes were pretty large affairs, at least a few meters across. I’d judged that their diameter was more than my height, perhaps close to double. In terms of depth, I wouldn’t have been more than knee deep at the bottom. They were conical to the point of perfection. Their centers were visible enough and betrayed nothing, just a sharp point of sand. I saw only one in my first journey, and left it behind without doing anything, but the thought of them made me turn back after I’d already crossed the desert and try to find others.

Obviously, when I spotted one I treated it with caution. I started with rocks. These bounced a very small part of the way down, and then lodged in the side of the pit. Something smoother and softer might have been needed, so I pulled out a berry, which glided down the incline like a water drop, leaving no trail behind on the wall. I watched the sand in its vicinity sift around as if it were liquid. When it reached the center, it was noiselessly swallowed up, leaving another perfect point where it had disappeared.

Then I stopped being cautious and shoved a foot into the edge of the trap. It dug down a few inches before encountering any resistance, but that was it as far as sucking me down was concerned. It seemed like there was one superfine layer of sand on which everything slid, unless it was heavy enough to penetrate it.

The center of the pit may or may not have quivered at the moment I put my foot down. In any case, after that, anything I dropped just rolled to the bottom and stayed there. I hadn’t meant to drive the inhabitant away and was sorry that I’d scared it.

*

“Treecko.”

The pokéball’s button dimmed, and then blinked fast angrily. I’d had no idea they could do that.

“Treecko, come out and talk to me.”

Back in my room at the Pokémon Center; I’d seen this place for about five minutes last night before falling asleep, and five minutes in the morning. It was a lot plainer than the Rustboro rooms and not much to look at. The other trainers had been hanging out at the ground floor, but Treecko and I had business, so I turned in pretty quickly.

This business was progressing pretty much like every other business we had in this town. Treecko was now communicating only through pokéball blinks. I asked her if she wanted to go have a fizzy. She blinked angrily. I asked if we should sit idle here for a few days. She blinked a little more furiously.

“I don’t know what you want me to do, Treecko.” Blink.

“How long are we going to sit here? We need to battle! We don’t have time to waste with magikarp.”

“Treecko, you hate your pokéball.”

“I’m going to leave. I’m leaving now. …The island, Treecko.”

“Treecko, if you’d just stop freaking me out for a second and…” Wobble.

Some kind of change? I pressed her. “We were so cool this morning.” My voice came out kind of whiny. “You’d given me that one big scare but we’d gotten through it. And now…” It wobbled again.

The pokéball rolled away from me until it hit a pen holder.

It was hard not to get incensed about it, even if I didn’t care about schedules or work stuff, there was one errand that a business was waiting on from me, and there was the problem of getting along and that wouldn’t go away today, a week later in Slateport, or years from now. Why don’t pokémon ever listen to your problems? I put her pokéball on the table, paced around the room, then sat down again, leaning over it.

“Treecko, I know exactly why you’re mad,” I said. “It’s because I don’t listen to you. Things have been a little hectic the past few days and we’ve both had to pull – ”

A blinding flash hit my face and she was out. I said, “Oh, thank god.” I put out a hand for her and her tail coiled around it – then she turned and smacked it into the table.

“Ow!” She’d hurt my hand! “Treecko I know you’re just playing but your tail is really powerful okay? You can’t just – ” She pushed herself up in my face, her eyes furious, and smacked me again. “TREECKO! What the…” Suddenly I realized the situation, we were fighting, a human versus a pokémon was stupid, I let her go and stepped back from the table.

I started pacing again, trying to hold my hand up in a way that wouldn’t put stress on it. I was wrong, she hadn’t been playing. I was wrong about why she was mad, too. I didn’t know anything that was going on with her. She didn’t know how to tell me. That made her angry.

That made for a few seconds of understanding; it was more than I was hoping to get. I went downstairs to the cafeteria. The others were still around, of course.

“Nothing much to tell?” Lewis said. I sat down at their table and grabbed fries from him.

“My treecko’s mad at me,” I said.

Walker leaned on an arm. “You guys just went through a lot, it’s understandable. Maybe she’s telling you something she wanted to say for a long time. Pamper her for a bit.”

“I’m gonna be here a while,” I sighed. Mark looked really glad. “We don’t mind that at all.”

 

[Praxiteles]

Oh holy mother of god. I'm dead. There's a swearword in there somewhere. Tell me to get started on the next chapter tomorrow so I don't hiatus again:



Exiting the cave onto Verdanturf I only felt a difference in the air. The small field it opened on was shielded from three sides by hills, with the fourth side opening into the town, and the grass was much softer and lower here, the flowering bushes more tame, the air warm and sweet-smelling. There were two cracks in the back of my neck because I’d stayed bent down throughout the cave passage. My eyes were tired. Talking to Toby I couldn’t tell if he was under the same exhausted oppression and I tried to avoid conversation. He left the next morning before I’d got up. I think the last we saw of each other was booking rooms separately at the Center. Escaping to Verdanturf I had not been counting on any release but I’d still expected to find it. Once I was out on this side all conditions were off me, and Atashka couldn’t follow, there was no way to contact me, I didn’t have a background, or a mission or beginning or destination, and when I walked on the routes – I did it empty handed. But I hardly felt any of this. Nothing changed with that step into daylight. I felt nothing. I kept on feeling nothing in the routes that followed.


Wally was in a Merai Colony back-alley in the afternoon, hurrying home, his fingers scrabbling to keep two file folders balanced. He had only enough breath for a piece of a sentence he had heard before, and he was now repeating it over and over. Only one pursuit at one time. Only one pursuit. Only… He knew that the argument was not without its rebuttals, because this wasn’t the first time he’d thought about it. He could still manage everything. He hadn’t missed any appointments yet.

He didn’t recognize the road he emerged into, but as soon as he slowed, the folders swung back too hard and one of them spilled their loose papers all over the road. Notes for Coast People studies. He’d taken the introductory class after all. It was not a commitment, at least. He didn’t feel that actual anthropological study was a disappointment of what he’d imagined, though it was certainly not the same and quite a lot more difficult. But his feelings towards ancient cultures, pleasant as they were, showed no change from two weeks ago. Any decision looked just as far off as it always had been. It was no better with pokémon appreciation, which was a bit outside his income range, and being a Coordinator, which he still hadn’t more than dabbled in – and now that he’d got all the loose pages back in his hands it was time to move again.

Home was within sight. He was not unhappy, that was worth stressing. If it was really the time to get into all of that, Wally knew that for a very long time, maybe longer than he even remembered, he hadn’t thought of his life as something in his own hands – rather, he’d seen it as something you did things to. Maybe his parents would give him a license at some point and he would train for a few months, and that would be a change. Or more likely, they would put him in school. That had changed sometime between Atashka showing him to catch pokémon, and his getting to Slateport – there was a moment, when he’d finally gathered the courage to even think about what he was doing, he’d realized it had gotten easier to think.

He knocked on the door, which nudged inward under the force, as he’d more or less expected. The entrance lobby was dusty and smelled of plaster. Mr. Yamada called to him from up the stairs, almost drowned by the sound of power tools. Wally yelled, “Mr. Yamada, is the move tutor here yet?” It turned out he had cancelled today. That came as a relief: an hour free that he hadn’t expected. He went into his room and shut the door, which blocked the sound a little bit.

When he’d set everything down and settled into bed, he finally took the pokéball out and put it on his chest, his head propped up against the wall. There was a delicate way to do this in close quarters. He cupped his hands around the two halves and tried prying them open with friction. It was very slippery, but, if he aimed it right – the light spilled out of the crack in a slow, fluid wave, and settled on his stomach almost like fast-moving smoke.

Ralts raised her head up, looked at Wally, and went back to sleep. Her eyes slightly creeped Wally out. They talked through words more than expressions.

Ralts’s cap had a fringe all around the top of her head, it was attached part of the way up her forehead. Wally liked the odd, velvety touch of it. It wasn’t hair; he still had no idea what kind of material it was. The horn was of course very sensitive but apparently only to his touch, because he’d seen it impact all sorts of obstacles, bend in directions, and get smushed under pillows, without Ralts appearing to notice; only when Wally’s hand touched it did Ralts cringe in pain. Wally avoided it carefully as he stroked Ralts’s head. He said, “Ralts? We did okay, didn’t we? When we were on the route and had to defend ourselves? You don’t have to be, like, a serious expert right?”

The ralts went on breathing almost imperceptibly.

“You were never really into battling,” he said. “I don’t care about training you. I wouldn’t want you to evolve. I mean,” his hand paused, “if that’s what you wanted I’d be more than happy, but… you know. You don’t want to evolve, either. Let’s not evolve okay?”

Ralts dreamed of an island in the middle of a lake, which fact no one other than Ralts and we now know. She didn’t dream of anything happening; the island was content to happen by itself.

“Who says we need to pull everything together right now? Mr. Yamada never told me I’ve got limited time.” He shifted on his elbows and thought about his argument-in-the-making with a little bit of savor. The opposite wall hung a print of a bellossom, a woodcut from Johto.

“Even if he thinks it and he’s trying to protect me from the pressure… See Ralts I’m going to feel, when I need to, about… how I want to do life, whatever part of it I’m doing at the moment… If I only have to listen to this feeling,” he shifted again trying not to disturb Ralts, “I don’t need Mr. Yamada, exactly to babysit me, and when I’m ready to… You know something? Every time we go into battle, we make a friend.” He snorted at this observation. It was somewhat out of the blue. The shaking of his chest woke his pokémon up, and Ralts slowly and fitfully pulled herself up to a sitting position. “Was that you?” Wally said. “I wouldn’t have thought of it that way.” His pokémon yawned at him, looking unaware of anything that had happened.

The morning had been early and soon both of them were asleep again, with the bedroom light still on. Wally dreamed of Johto, which he had never seen. He saw a radio host sift through her papers in a small, dark recording studio; just outside, a pop-singer/trainer and his guitarist lounged on the waiting seats, smoking cigarettes, a croconaw hunched between them. The room inside the tower briefly yellowed to the color of bamboo before dissolving into nothingness. The echo from the sound of clanging metal equipment rang up and down the lobby, and then the main door shut and Wally and Ralts opened their eyes.

Mrs. Tofer’s head was in the crack of the bedroom door. “Sorry I ought to have knocked,” she said, “oh well.” She smelled vaguely of clove, as always. “The chairman asked me to remind you of, a class? Ready for class, Wally?”

Wally blinked, and straightened himself up, rolling Ralts to the side. “Thanks, Mrs. Tofer.” The door clicked closed. It was just the hour of evening practice he’d set for himself, if it was really 6:00 already. There was no constraint of time, but he didn’t feel like sleeping any more anyway.

“Come on, Ralts,” he said. “Let’s train you a little bit.”

*

I got back to the room and Treecko was out of her ball. She was on the desk holding onto the pen holder, which was a small red mug with a handle. Her arms were around it like it was a tree branch or something. I sat down on the side of my bed and slowly leaned back onto its headboard.

I had to listen to Treecko. She rocked with the holder from side to side, tipping the broad mug slightly onto its edges. One of the pencils slipped a little and she got up on to her feet. Then she went down again on all fours and bent to the corner of the desk, catching the thin table leg in her hands like a baton and slinking down it.

We were definitely going to train in the cave, when we got down to it. I tried to bring up the entrance cavern. Were the pokémon there any good for training with? It wouldn’t be a pleasant place for Treecko, anyway. Where was she: on the desk again. I still hadn’t got the charts, they were right downstairs, I should have taken them while I was down there. Treecko had a problem. God, my mind was tired. It was so hard to think about her – what was wrong with me? Had it always been this way? How were we supposed to act as a team if I barely even noticed her? I was appalled to find out it was like this. I sat on the chair again, bent down over her, and she gave me a blank look, so I just kept staring at the wood grain because I didn’t have anything to say to her.

*

In Rustboro after I left, Atashka divided his time between tagging along behind Megan, who always trained with more regularity and effort than either of us, and roaming the city as a measure against boredom, like a child in the forest outside home, looking for something interesting to go to, refraining from everything at the point where he had to pay. On weekends Megan took him out in the city and showed him places a resident would know. It was the day just after I left, actually. Megan came to his Center and found the room where he was. She said she’d heard about the new Badge winners more or less immediately, and also of the run-in in Rusturf Tunnel. She got the story out of him in full and, with Treecko’s help, managed to get him to the Center café and from there on, told him exactly what to do, that they were going to go to the mall and he only had to follow her and help her with shopping, that they might see a movie if they felt like it.

It was appropriate to Atashka’s liking of being led around by the hand, but ultimately pointless because he always got through his moods at his own pace. They walked to the mall from Megan’s complex. The backstreets they took were all empty and cramped, and Treecko enjoyed the environment immensely. She ran along above the trainers’ heads, on rain gutters or whatever she could find. When the road finally opened up to the courtyard the mall was built in, she had to slink her way down and walk morosely on the ground a few paces ahead of them.

“This is five seconds before she does something stupid,” Atashka grumbled. Megan looked up at this burst of expressiveness and snorted. “Hah! Treecko, we’re not even in the mall yet.” Treecko glanced back and hastened to the front doors. They had to speed up to keep pace with her. When she got there the automatic doors refused to open, perhaps because she was on all fours.

“She’s like a toddler, I swear,” Atashka said. “The annoying thing is she’s about as – ” “You’re not exactly the most mature yourself,” Megan said. “Yeah I know, I was saying, what gets me is that she can be so stupid. She never even tries to think ahead. You hear what I’m saying, Treecko?” She turned around. “I just said you’re stupid!” She waved her fists and then dropped down to scamper the short distance up to his shins.

“We’re going to be looking at girly stuff for a few hours,” Atashka said, “and if they let you in the shops you need to behave, or else you get the ball.” They got into the entrance hall. It was a small mall but still three stories high, evidently. Treecko seemed to be behaving well if unresponsively for the journey into the entrance space. Then she jerked at Atashka’s sleeve and bolted.

Megan asked Atashka if he was still hungry at all, but the café had fixed him in that regard, so they made their way to a store one floor above, which she always went to first. The interior design was distinctive and a little traumatizing. Mannequins had been placed flanking the entrance like marble angels, but the decorators had artistically forgotten the heads, and what was worse, neither of their outfits were particularly cute. Atashka declined to look for anything for himself or Megan, but did follow her around offering comments – which she appreciated immensely, although it gave him the impression it was mostly because he was agreeing with her.

After a while she went to try something out and Atashka dropped onto a chair, surprised at how tired he was. His gaze wandered over the four lanes in front of him. Suddenly he had a strong urge to look up.

“Treecko!” he hissed. She had got on the boarded ceiling by some unnatural method. He stood up and went after her as she crawled upside down to another end of the room.

From the same lifted board Treecko had taken, a zubat also emerged and starting moving timidly behind both of them. Treecko looked back, thumped her foot quietly and kept going. Atashka said, “Get down there, how did they let you in?” without noticing the new arrival. There was a scheme in her head; she never moved that hastily when there wasn’t. Atashka considered taking out her pokéball, but it would have caused people to notice and wasn’t the nicest thing to do. He briefly looked around on the ground for something he could use. They were heading into a forest of clothes hanger trees, in the kids’ section. When he looked up the zubat was ahead of him. He grunted in irritation and jumped to catch up with Treecko.

The special feature of this area was in the corner, a huge round pachirisu head, covering some piece of storeroom furniture, with tables in front of it. Atashka acknowledged it but Treecko didn’t approach immediately. Instead she went to the other corner, where there was only a round eyeless video camera. “Oh no no no,” Atashka said under his breath. It may have been a smoke detector. With a gesture Treecko got the zubat to flutter down to the other corner, where it was maneuvered over to one side of the pachirisu, almost behind it. There it sat tight with its wings folded and a few people, hearing the noise, came to fawn over it.

It was too late to worry about the commotion, though he still wasn’t going to use the pokéball without her consent. He still took it out and threatened it at her, moving into her corner. At that point he heard Megan scream: “Where the hell are you, Atashka?”

“Megan, a moment okay – ” She pulled him back to face him and he almost fell off his feet. She was wearing a short dress that ended in folds, and had pulled shorts directly over the skirt. “Megan for god’s sake – ” “Who the hell cares, I was calling you from across the room – ” Atashka shook his head tiredly and backed up a little. “Meg, if you keep this up one of the store people will…” The kids who had been appreciating the zubat were now backing uncomfortably away. In the confusion Atashka had enough time to notice that the two of them looked a good bit older than their age group, at least when Megan was with him. This was the moment Treecko chose to strike (her choice was Bullet Seed).

With an incredible sound reminiscent of a cracked walnut, the face of the pachirisu head began to tip over and, with the humans clearing out but the zubat plunked innocently close as it watched, it fell to the floor, exposing the glass-windowed shelves behind it. Treecko jumped down as soon as it fell but Atashka caught her out of the air. “Let’s fucking scram!” he shrieked. Megan raised her hands but Atashka told her to hide in the trial rooms and escape separately. It took five minutes and a back-stairs exit for them to reunite.

“Treecko, could you not have?” Megan said in the parking lot, as the pokémon sat sullenly on the ground with its arms together. “Why don’t you ever think about your trainer. Look at him, did you notice how he’s feeling these days?” Atashka was standing at a distance turned awkwardly away. “He has enough stress on him already, he’s alone in a big city. You shouldn’t…”

The Bullet Seed, which had rebounded behind the pachirisu head and with excellent aim (and much more luck) knocked it loose of its fastenings, had also shaken the doors to the unlocked cupboard. Zubat clambered over ledges to get at one now. By some amazing coincidence it held stacks of purple bat heart-shaped cookies, wrapped up in loose cellophane.


For training one could either go north to the open route, or to the beach, where a few of the vacationers were always ready for battles. Trainer battles were more stressful than Wally felt the two of them needed, so he usually stuck to wild pokémon. They made their way to the route road on Merai’s east side, which would point them generally northward. This was a high road that was bigger than Slateport’s average market alleys, and the shops and warehouses on either side of it were huge and unmarked.

Once out of the housing board the buildings began to disperse one last time into the clear outskirts, the lawn green of vacant lots growing wider and more frequent, until it reached the openness of the the town center, with its lazy flats of pavement and low buildings visible from very far away. The start of the route was only marked by its signpost, and the south office of the Cycling Road. It was here that a small garden of weeds and overrun metal fencing had been allowed to collect, old and human-neglected enough that pokémon felt comfortable frequenting it.

This was usually the point where Wally decided there was no call to do any work, with some nudging from Ralts’s side. When he passed the fence he finally set her down and walked into the higher shrubbery. There were two cotton bushes that he had not seen before; their dried crimson pods had not burst yet. Beyond them was a bad tangle of thorn bushes (they could have been pecha) presided over by a single, enormous fern. Part of the smell of this place was unfamiliar, part he could identify: wet waterside soil, dry branches, possibly mulch. Some things were familiar to Ralts. He couldn’t say what those smells belonged to.

It was very dry, all things considered.

Wally eventually stopped guiltily reminding himself of training and after a while lost Ralts somewhere. It was unusually nice today to be in the wild grass. The two of them had slipped out of the bounds of the office fence and were roaming in the overgrown space that was hemmed in by the trees. He went where he did not expect to find people. Sometimes pokémon eased by the fringes of his attention. They unsettled him slightly but much less than people, at this point.

It was people he had his senses out for, moving through the snipping meshwork of light and green, the sign of some other tall artificial shape aside from his own. He saw it from a very good distance. It had a splash of red mostly on its top. It moved very carefully and effortfully as if it were trying to hide from something.

A yell, “Sleep Powder!” and there was the flash of a pokéball hurled to a few feet ahead, though the pokémon was hard to discern. Wally saw the sickly-green burst of cloud, too. The voice was vaguely familiar and it coaxed Wally to move closer despite himself.

He heard his name. It was the girl from Littleroot, the professor’s daughter.

He walked up so he could see her face. From somewhere came Torchic’s faint crashing footfalls, and the pokémon bobbed up in front of her. She said, “Wally? Is that you?” He pushed aside a low bough and stood in front of her.

“I’m… it’s,” he fumbled, “yes.”

“Your family is worried sick,” she said with a pained look. “We haven’t heard anything from the police yet. I was told to look out for you.”

“Is that – ” Wally resisted an involuntary impulse to turn. “Wait,” she said. “I’m not gonna, say anything. Whatever you were thinking of doing, I respect that. I never found out about you running away… until after… but…” She put her pokéball back inside and shifted her weight to both legs. “What’s… what’s been going on with you, Wally? Where have you been.”

Ralts was out of mind, or far away enough not to come to him, so it was just her pokémon that stood around him and gawked. He resented that she was making this have to be so mournful. They squatted down under the shadow of a hedge bush. His sullenness did not help the tone but, slowly coming to open up, he traced through the way he’d taken from home in Petalburg, which was strange to think of as an explanation for where he was now. She said there’d been a fire in Oldale but it was probably a restaurant owner trying to score insurance. She’d finally crossed Route 103 around July-end and wouldn’t come back to Littleroot for a while now, but it was still research work so her dad made her stay in line. Petalburg she hadn’t heard as much about, but Norman was renovating the Gym, he had a new design in mind or something. She asked Wally if he was training. He went as far as to admit that he didn’t know, before remembering and telling her to tell his parents, very firmly, that he was living in the house of a pokémon appreciator, a very well-respected gentleman, that his training was going well and he was working to start to pay himself back, that the guardian was not going to kick him out anytime soon, and he was very well, was feeling better than he had done in years. When he got all this out his face flushed visibly, but Sapphire kept her strange look steady and nodded she would. Wally asked her what she was doing here and she was as vague as researchers always are outside their work. But then her shroomish finally reappeared and she got interested in the fauna once again – it was a census and nothing else, she was supposed to mark down all the pokémon species that she could find in this route, did Wally know how frequency counts were done? You looked for every new species you hadn’t seen in the route before. Every time you found the first kind of a species, you had to Sleep Powder it so you could take its pokédex profile. Then you stickered it with a homing tag and waited until it got up. If you just left it unconscious where you found it, in terms of the disadvantage you gave it that would be half a battle, almost like fainting. And we were scientists, it wouldn’t have been cool at all to do that. If you come as a trainer, you battle, but if otherwise, you stay out of a pokémon’s way. As far as you can, anyway.

But Wally said do the pokémon know what you’re planning to do? Maybe the homing tags bother them. Sapphire said maybe they are looking for a battle, but still it’s different when you’re out as a researcher, if you do it properly they approach you a different way. She could bet her life on telling between an encounter as a trainer and an encounter as… something else… she guessed they didn’t understand exactly what was going on, that she was a scientist. But they knew something was up, she could tell. It was in the pokémon’s body language.

She said the last time before she’d reached Slateport, she’d kept out of cities for two weeks.

It was just her satchel with her now. Where was – It wasn’t on her, she’d kept it in a hidden place while she stalked this pokémon. But you didn’t take a satchel when you went out for such a long time, you kept a huge backpack and carried it with you everywhere. When you went out like that you didn’t stick to the routes, you went into the forest, where you have to cut through just to move your body, or you went on hills, with rock faces you had to climb. Wally had never got close enough to the route edges to observe anything particular about them, and in the beginning he was scared of accidentally overstepping them. Yeah that wasn’t a real concern, you definitely couldn’t get through the wilderness unless you were trying to.

But if you were… The last time she’d been in a little branch of the Rusturf range, just hilly enough that the terrain turned up as gravel and shook off the vegetation. The first night, she’d been so unfit for the climbing… in the morning she could barely get her legs to stretch down under her. Cramps over her whole body. She climbed like that for at least two days. Then maybe the fourth morning she had the realization, the country she was in didn’t even have a name. There was country for people, and it got hilly in its own way, overgrown, rugged, watery, muddy, just enough to give trainer pokémon a challenge. It was a zone on the route maps, made partly by humans, for them to do human things. Then there was country for pokémon. She’d been in pokémon land.

It frightened Wally a fair amount now; before he’d left it would have no doubt inspired him more than frightened. It also made him think of his own journey. He’d never had a moment on the road when he’d felt anything like this, a feeling he had heard from others many more times before.

*

It was evening of the second day before I even noticed. Treecko came down and started moving around and when I tried opening our room door, I actually got to take her outside. It was probably not wise to go out just when it was getting dark, but we had to do it. I just let her walk slowly down in front of me and I followed at her pace. We didn’t go into town which I hadn’t hoped for I guess. We looked to be going north up the same road that’d led to the beach.

The air ran straight over our faces channeled by the buildings. I put my hands in my pockets and looked toward my feet. We made the warehouse turn. From here Treecko basically had to know the way. Getting behind the building we followed the rest of the road, which made a short run in the forest’s direction before turning left to the sea. I looked up. Huge pit of empty space just hanging there, if you look up. It was purple enough to be studded with the really big stars, bigger here because the island was so little. My foot fell on a big rock in the road and I stumbled a step. Treecko didn’t seem to notice.

Then the road ended and it was gravel your feet went over, shifting cups of sand your feet pivoted through, again and again. I didn’t question Treecko, just tried to keep her in sight. I really should have brought a light with me; the sand was bright so there was that, but she was still an indistinct shape on the pale white, trudging in a repeating pattern. I shouldn’t have worn sandals, either. The sand shook under my feet and it was cold, unexpectedly cool and fine. The wind didn’t need any channeling at this point. I put my hands in my pockets and my arms close together.

Where was the water? I looked up toward the sea and instantly regretted it. Black roar shapeless whoosh in the far dark.

We were a good few feet from the shoreline and kept walking along it. Treecko’s footfalls. She walked hesitantly, lifting each foot after a pause, setting it down reluctantly and aimlessly. She was far. I ran forward a few paces and then caught myself and struggled to a stop.

There was such a cottony scrawl over all the white of my vision that I couldn’t even tell where Treecko’s eyes glinted from, where her arms were, what part was her big round head. She was looking back. Her, arms were tucked in. She felt like she was barely all there –

*

Ralts came, and Sapphire showed her appreciation by bothering her through pokédex tests – because a Ralts was so difficult to come across even in their habitat; she’d only found one in her whole Oldale study. Wally said nothing, but I would have even grabbed the opportunity to compare her to her dad. Something like, “What kind of Sapphire would look at a trainer’s pokémon and first thing start testing it?” I’d have wanted to hear her answer to that, at that particular point.

Wally did ask her about how you might get into pokémon research if you were interested. “University,” she said. “Either that, or you find a really important scientist and beg them to let you carry their equipment for two years.” Realizing something, she gave an unpleasant grin. “You could ask my dad and he might not turn you down.”

*

Treecko’s iris was a yellow triangle in her big eye, expressionless and slanted, her head was knobbled with tiny scales, one of the mounds on her head felt taller, but didn’t look, her color was light green even in this light, her skin wasn’t all hard but some places soft like a leaf surface, she was cold like a gecko, she breathed like a small kitten, with her ribs countable lifting, she thought about walking, her arms and legs all in a tired overstimulated mess, she thought about the move Absorb. I took out the Bullet Seed that I had kept in my pocket since she’d spat it days ago. It had the one inward seam along half its side. I rubbed the knob of her head with my thumb, picking her up, putting her in the top of my shirt so she didn’t have to look out or see anything. “I’m never going to take my eyes off you,” I told her, rubbed her head, my nose close to that cool mineral surface, tucking and retucking the collar of my shirt over it.

 

[Negrek]

Hey there. I figured I'd check out your story since it's a Hoenn 'fic, and I love Hoenn (and upon actually reading it, it really does feel very Hoenn, which is great). There's a lot here, so this review is going to be pretty broad, with maybe a little talk about specifics in more recent chapters.

Above all what strikes me about this 'fic is how atmospheric it is. The writing gives it a floating, detached sort of feel, which in turn has the nice effect of making it seem like a story out of childhood memories to me: all soft and faded around the edges, distant from the present day. The prose has a kind of relaxed, still air, which works great for me, since it fits very well with my impression of Hoenn as kind of being a beautiful, tranquil kind of place, where you might want to linger a while just to watch the little flower sprites bob at you for a bit, as it were. At times the dreamlike quality takes on kind of sinister undertones, though--I'll talk about that a bit later on--which I'm not sure you intended. When you have a dreamlike kind of setting, it can often be hard to stop it from starting to shade into nightmare.

I also appreciate that you're trying some experimental things with your prose, though at this point I can't always tell what your intent with them is, and they didn't all work out for me. For example, the all-dialog style of the Rustboro Gym Battle was cool. I'm just not entirely sure why you did it. Because ordinarily the story is being narrated by one character or another (although that conceit seems to have fallen off in the course of the chapters, actually), and here you wanted to get them both in on the scene?

In any case, in that chapter I got lost towards the end of the gym battle and really lost towards the very end where they corner the Aqua grunt in the cave. Upon a rereading I was able to understand the Rusturf tunnel bit much better (previously I completely missed out on Arauve's plan to leave), but I still have no idea what Arauve's final strategy in the gym battle was supposed to be, or why the nosepass fainted. I'm still confused as to how Atashka knew that Arauve had run off when he called his father... he never went back to look for her or tried to rendezvous with her somewhere, did he?

I think going all-dialogue there does work for the most part, although it puts the narrator at an even farther remove from the action than normal, and as a result the battle itself fell pretty flat for me--that's something that's hard to visualize properly solely through dialogue, and you did well to get even the general idea across, but if you'd hoped for that to be a high point of the chapter, it didn't really do that for me.

Right now that chapter kind of sticks out because it's the only one done in that style; I'm guessing you're planning to use it again in the future, but at the moment the chapter sticks out a bit since it's the only one done in that style. There are other little conceits that have popped up here and there where I'm still not sure what their purpose was or whether we'll be seeing them again (the bit with the starter pokémon in the chapter where Treecko got captured, for example). I get that at least part of this is Arauve writing a story in hindsight and a lot of those kinds of interjections come from that fact, but I'm not sure what they're supposed to be inidcating at this point.

Also, while I really do like what you're doing with the prose style, the detached feel of the writing does also kind of detach me from the characters, though. Their emotions feel blunted and indistinct--I don't sense any real strong desires from any of them, and that contributes to a feeling of plotlessness (of which more later) and general disconnect from them as people. Arauve and Atashka do react to and think about the world differently, but if you asked me what they want out of life, I honestly couldn't tell you. Arauve apparently has something going on about pokémon rights, but I don't really understand her motives there, or what exactly she believes or why she feels that way, or what her particular goals are, or even if I've correctly interpreted her reasons for ditching Atashka.

I have even less of a read on Atashka--he seems to be going along with things just because. He ostensibly has the goal of getting to the league, and I guess now actually finding Arauve, but he strikes me as a rather passive character, one who mostly gets dragged from place to place and spends his time observing, mostly, when he gets there. He seemed to have a bit more character when he was interacting with Megan--the whole obnoxious watch thing, for instance--but other than that I couldn't really say much about him other than that he's pretty clueless about this training thing and strikes me as fairly laid-back. The narrative just retains this very calm, nebulous quality throughout, and the viewpoint you've chosen and how you present information doesn't really do a great deal to let me get to know them.

This is strange because I think the characters are supposed to have felt some fairly strong emotions. Atashka has pretty much been acting like Arauve running away is no big deal, and I honestly can't tell whether that's because he actually doesn't care, because he's in denial/trying to hide it/genuinely does care but for whatever reason isn't showing it, or he actually is really ripped up about it and I just can't tell. There are some spots where you kind of touch on this, most notably in the recent chapter, but I can't really get a feel for the characters' emotions from the prose itself; it's not until you specifically state what they're going through that I'm able to pick up on it. I wish I were able to infer more about their mental states based on the way the narrative presents them.

All in all, though, the characters just feel rather muted to me. Treecko and Megan have the biggest personalities out of anybody, and while they both look to be important, they're not either of them viewpoint characters, who I'd hope to be some of the more interesting people, since we're going to be spending the most time with them.

And as mentioned, not really being able to draw a bead on the characters makes it harder for me to see how this story is supposed to be hanging together; I'm just not sure where it's headed. Not in the "there are mysteries in here and I don't understand everyone's motivation" sense, but rather in the "this is kind of wandering around without direction" sense. I'm sure you do have an idea of where this story is driving; it's just that I can't personally see it yet. Plot is ultimately driven by what the characters want and the actions they take to accomplish those desires, so if I can't tell what your characters are after, even obliquely, I have a hard time making sense of why you've chosen to present events as you have.

Right now the way this story reads to me is more like a television show, a series of vignettes that are loosely connected by the fact that they're happening in the context of a trainer's journey, rather than a cohesive story. A lot of the scenes feel very self-contained, like the whole Dewford Cave thing or Arauve's time at the library, and there are many characters getting introduced that I'm pretty sure we're never going to see again, which gives them a character-of-the-day kind of feel. The badge quest gives at least some structure, so I'm reassured that we're progressing, but I take it that this story is really supposed to be about much more than that. At this point I just can't figure out what that is, though!

I think that about clears up what I dislike. As for what I appreciate about this story, I think that it does a great job of capturing a childlike approach to the world. I love that the other characters Atashka and Arauve are interacting with are mostly children around their age or just a little older, and that they solve problems in ways that seem very appropriate for their age group. Atashka in particular seems a lot less isolated than the typical OT, who generally spends loads of time off by himself or perhaps with his one or two human companions (and pokémon, of course).

I also found the stuff where Arauve was investigating the "game mechanics" behind battle very interesting, and I think it's cool in general when you allude to the strangeness of their world, as inspired by game mechanics. This lends to the creepy air that I mentioned before, though, which I'm not sure is what you want. This feels like a clockwork universe, fundamentally cold and strange--if your intent was to integrate things like battle maneuvers and how routes work into the story such that they felt natural for the world, it's not having that effect on me. The way you've presented them still makes it feel alien and game mechanic-y rather than organic and logical, and I'm not sure that's the effect you were going for at all.

I'm also curious to see how much they end up mattering to the story. While they were coming up in Arauve's sections plenty, I don't know how much of her we'll be seeing from here on out (still plenty, I would guess, but she's been absent recently). Atashka doesn't seem to notice or care about these things, so if you don't have Arauve around to resolve them a bit, that's going to leave you with kind of a weird hanging thing in the earlier chapters. I would definitely enjoy seeing more of that kind of thing in the future, anyhow.

And completely unrelated to anything, I rather like the term "flashing" pokémon in or out of their pokéballs... it seems like such a logical way to describe the process, but I don't think I've ever seen someone describe it that way before.

One last thing: did you intend for Brawly's account of what happened in Dewford Cave to seem sketch as hell? Because that's definitely how it came off to me.

Anyway, this looks like a very ambitious project, and it's a shame it hasn't been getting more attention. I wish you the best of luck with it.

 

[Praxiteles]

HI Negrek! I was pretty delighted when you dropped a review. Sorry for giving probably a whole month for this review reply; it was because most of the criticisms you made, I felt, were exactly on point and so I felt I had to consolidate how I felt about the fic and what I intended to do, before I gave an official answer. My writing is getting a little loose and flimsy, probably because I've lost track of my immediate objective. I do have one however and will stick to it.

I also appreciate that you're trying some experimental things with your prose, though at this point I can't always tell what your intent with them is, and they didn't all work out for me. For example, the all-dialog style of the Rustboro Gym Battle was cool. I'm just not entirely sure why you did it. Because ordinarily the story is being narrated by one character or another (although that conceit seems to have fallen off in the course of the chapters, actually), and here you wanted to get them both in on the scene?

I was pretty sure how I'd answer that question when I wrote it. The thing is that it wasn't so much a matter of "I made that particular choice" as it was "I couldn't think of any other way to write it." I knew what events were going to go in the chapter, but from there to actually writing narration, I felt that it was not possible for me to describe the events in any kind of 'conventional form', or rather that there wasn't any such form for this chapter in the first place. That's still not a convincing defense of why I did it. I needed some kind of 'problem' to grapple with, because it was otherwise impossible for me to write narration from scratch. (The problem is how to tackle a long multi-scene passage given that constraint.) A lot of this fic will go on in this format, in the form of solutions to questions or problems -- and with the later parts it'll be a lot clearer why I chose that particular problem to tackle -- in this one I ultimately can't give a good 'instrumental' reason for the choice I made, except that -- you'll notice I narrated eyes whenever possible -- the central part of this chapter was the relationship between Atashka and Arauve and the things they did to each other on that day; the whole chapter is literally a dialogue between the two, although one in which they never explicitly say anything important. (This seems like a good reason but I attached it after writing the chapter hence why I don't say it with the omniscient implication 'I chose this to be so, and it was well'.)

In any case, in that chapter I got lost towards the end of the gym battle and really lost towards the very end where they corner the Aqua grunt in the cave. Upon a rereading I was able to understand the Rusturf tunnel bit much better (previously I completely missed out on Arauve's plan to leave), but I still have no idea what Arauve's final strategy in the gym battle was supposed to be, or why the nosepass fainted. I'm still confused as to how Atashka knew that Arauve had run off when he called his father... he never went back to look for her or tried to rendezvous with her somewhere, did he?

Those all look like very valid points. In this case there's no reason why the events of the cave should be anything but immediately clear, and since you're saying you did get quite lost, there's no doubt I must have written it confusingly. I'll wrk on that at some point. Also the strategy in the gym is not incredibly important, but it should still be pretty understandable. And as for the last point, I realized I failed to make explicit in an important explanatory detail, that Atashka himself wasn't exactly that clueless what Arauve was doing (he's not talking, notice, and even though Arauve interprets it as such, it doesn't mean he thinks there's nothing going on). As soon as I decide on the exact point where he understood something was going on, fixing this part should be simple.

I think going all-dialogue there does work for the most part, although it puts the narrator at an even farther remove from the action than normal, and as a result the battle itself fell pretty flat for me--that's something that's hard to visualize properly solely through dialogue, and you did well to get even the general idea across, but if you'd hoped for that to be a high point of the chapter, it didn't really do that for me.

Not at all! =P The important moment was the scene in Rusturf Cave.

My hope/intention, ultimately, for all those experiments, will be to bring them into use for the objective of (at least this half of) the story. They all have a mechanism or, like, concept behind them and that should probably be useful somewhere. But I admit a few of the scenes are pretty pointless -- literally me playing around -- and the starter pokemon scene probably sticks out a bit too much; I was intending it to go along well with an anime episode style for those three chapters, but it didn't turn out as clear as I'd intended and probably best to scrap that part.

Their emotions feel blunted and indistinct--I don't sense any real strong desires from any of them, and that contributes to a feeling of plotlessness (of which more later) and general disconnect from them as people. Arauve and Atashka do react to and think about the world differently, but if you asked me what they want out of life, I honestly couldn't tell you.

There's a certain parallel there with a kind of colorlessness inherent in the player character of the games. I think I can make that connection. The player character also doesn't have a very strong personal drive, and their actions end up being only the heroic expectation made by the plot and circumstances of the game. They don't do human, character things; they do game things (or trainer things in other words). This is no doubt ultimately because in JRPGs the player character is intentionally made to be as blank and identity-less as possible, so that the person playing can project themselves onto the character. Temporarily, for a certain part of the story, I had been intending to mimic that kind of blankness. What I didn't realize is that obviously fiction has different expectations from games and that the blankness would turn out quite a bit different. I think this is a major issue with the fic that I will have to tackle -- hopefully within the chapters I still have to complete, if that's at all possible.

Their emotions are most of all hidden behind the screen of subtext -- I'm not explicitly saying what they felt. In Atashka's case I think you must have noticed that he suffered a certain affliction of muteness just after the Rustboro Gym chapter. The prose wonkiness in those following chapters is not just stylistic, it's a reflection of his real mental state after so much gets turned upside down. I don't explain the emotions it caused (and perhaps I should) but I do explain the breakdown of experience that happens to him, the absolute reduction down to bare gameplay skeleton.

Might be good to note that all this blankness and muteness is only a phase of the story, and we're almost on another phase, which will hopefully give a lot more elaboration on what the people are and how they've felt through all the events.

I'm sure you do have an idea of where this story is driving; it's just that I can't personally see it yet.

As it happens (you might have even guessed) the destination it's heading to is possibly not as much physical and plot-based as it is, um, based on other aspects of a story or a piece of writing. Can't explain much more. But it definitely is something; I very much don't intend to disappoint my readers.

This feels like a clockwork universe, fundamentally cold and strange--if your intent was to integrate things like battle maneuvers and how routes work into the story such that they felt natural for the world, it's not having that effect on me. The way you've presented them still makes it feel alien and game mechanic-y rather than organic and logical, and I'm not sure that's the effect you were going for at all.

This was the one part of your critique that I hadn't been expecting in any remote way. (I do understand what you're saying, though.) When I see it from your angle I can understand exactly how this feeling may have come to take place, but it was definitely way off from my intentions -- a completely unexpected consequence of trying to write a game-like reality -- well, I thought the context of the RSE games would provide a reassuring emotional net, but I guess there was no reason not to expect this, in hindsight. I really will have to think about what to do with this. Ideally it would be preferable not for this to arise at all. (But I think I can use it.)

Atashka doesn't seem to notice or care about these things, so if you don't have Arauve around to resolve them a bit, that's going to leave you with kind of a weird hanging thing in the earlier chapters. I would definitely enjoy seeing more of that kind of thing in the future, anyhow.

Oh, they will have direct relevance to the way at least Arauve will train in the coming journey. I guess I left it hanging because I never got around to narrating exactly how Arauve trains. That also remains to be done.

One last thing: did you intend for Brawly's account of what happened in Dewford Cave to seem sketch as hell? Because that's definitely how it came off to me.

No I didn't! D : It almost looks like this is the birth of a new subplot to pull out of my ***!

Thanks very much for the in-depth, pretty incisive review -- I left you hanging way too long without a response -- anyway, whenever this fic gets a review it ends up being a pretty big influence on where I'm going to go, so, thanks, for... being... such. bye


As for UPDATES: The next chapter has been done to I would say more than halfway, but I still haven't got into any kind of a groove. I'll probably keep you posted on when you can expect a new chapter the next Sunday.


EDIT EDIT: Thanks so much to everyone who voted and nominated my fic for the awards. My readers are the best. I see you out there.


UPDATE UPDATE: that you will only see if you happen to reread this thread now, because I won't bump the htread for this update. It's 21 May and I'm still fighting along with the next chapter. I still can't promise a release date, but I will tease that only one battle scene and a certain impossibly difficult passage of landscaping remains. So that gives you an idea of how exciting this one is going to be. :/

 

[Praxiteles]

This chapter has a warning for moderate injury and blood in the Gym Leader battle, moderately described as well. It's also split into two posts.



Once I was hard by the wooden fence, I could see over it to something of the ploughed field beyond it, the dark ruffled expanse of soil proceeding in two directions from its north corner where I stood. A deep trench opened straight southward in a long line to my left, but there was no trench on the north border. The farm seemed to have been cut lengthwise by a thin, lighter path and looking west further transverse paths seemed to be visible. I jumped the fence without effort, and the soil took my weight badly, spilling over the laces on my shoes. I made a reasonable diagonal cut over this plot to the center path, figuring I would be long gone by the time someone noticed the footsteps. The next plot on the path’s south side was already planted and dark green sprouts opened against the red of the earth. I skipped this one, keeping along the path, and saw that the plot further west of it was clear. The dividing path between them was dotted by a small tree, which I saw from its distance roughly half of the way ahead. A wide, stubby one with long branches that sagged down to a kind of hollow. I decided to walk through this open plot’s exact diagonal and was surprised half of the way by a scarecrow, gleaming plastic magnemite, and more surprised to stumble on a pile of rocks that had perhaps been gathered close by to prop it up. In this time it became clear that there was in fact no center path and that the field was cut lengthwise into thirds.

I was travelling with loose baggy clothes, a superfluous coat over my red sweater and a t-shirt for an inner layer, wearing thin city jeans that behaved like paper as far as cold air was concerned. My hair had just been knotted slipshodly and stuffed into a woolen cap because although it was embarrassingly long now, I still didn’t have the nerve to cut it myself. My weight proceeded from the center between my shoulders and was twinned down in my two pocket-suspended hands.

When I hit the south path I crossed over it and went into the last plot directly. There was a south border, but the west one to my right showed a low, distant tree line. The transverse path west of here was farther than the south border, but after it there was only one more plot. Three into three = nine plots in total, then. This one was planted, knee-length saplings with thick green stalks. My footsteps cut diagonally past each row one by one and each time the rows on either side diverged parallel, before I met one and shifted it left. Perhaps twenty columns passed by. Six into twenty = one hundred twenty sprouts in this field. The end of this plot was also bound by a trench. As I approached the two straight edges rulered down until their bottom became visible. The open gouged walls were sand orange and packed with tight white stones. One hundred twenty into nine was. Twelve hundred. Minus… I jumped the trench without a running start. There was no space between the further side and the fence. I scraped my hand on the wood as I landed with forward momentum and then, grabbing a brace, held myself from falling back.

My heart gradually thudded back to normal. The treeline stood just beyond the fence and now my nose was right up to the envelope of the forest. Pine-green leaves in round, dense clusters on black branches.

After I had steadied myself on the very edge of the trench, I bent down to cross the fence. One half was the brown expanse of the soil and the other half was solid cooler dark green. As soon as I began to move south from here a mild incline made itself apparent. Actually, the sparseness of the trees was such that it was possible to look far in any direction. The ground sloped up due south and towards my left was an old wide tree perched on a mound of rocks with its roots exposed, but further left almost in a valley curve it seemed to be nearly clear of pines and a young flowering tree grew with weeds all around its feet. I headed toward the old tree and sighted it between the trees on its right and left, more trunks on its right than its left. As I did, I became conscious that a little ash was falling.

The ground was brown but hard and completely free of grass or weeds; instead, thin coiled wires of branches made a matting underneath trees. It was broken only by clusters of round beige pebbles. Where it was more visible, it looked matte as though it had been rained on, densely coiled with leaves, pebbles and clods. Near the old tree the leaves became bigger and formed a yellow carpet for me to crunch on. I passed by its right and then stuck solely to the direction up the incline, feeling it with my feet. Moving dead straight in a thick forest was nearly impossible, even if I had reference locations, but it seemed that following slopes was an effective way to orient myself. By ignoring the identical and moving array of trees I found the view of a huge thicket that curved around my right horizon far ahead, blocking my way; the three small trees that stood under the canopy, in front of the thicket; the light patch a long way to my left that seemed to indicate a large clearing.

I soon came to find a hill that the thicket was nearly surmounting, one with no real top or high points and that only curved off into a vague elongated crown, too low to show any view and also tree-choked. Without investigating too far of the other side, I turned sharp left and followed the long curving line of the thicket. The direction it projected me was straight toward the light clearing. The decline was much gentler than any of the previous ones. In short time the unusual texture that was approaching me became clear; it kept shifting and breaking, was very narrow and small, and shone out blue in the brown. The pond that I came up to had a very straight, gravelly shore. I followed it to a corner, and then went to the diametrically opposite side. It was satisfyingly square, like a water tank in the desert. The trees were very sparse; from here I was exposed not only to the white blankness of the sky, but to the expanse on all sides of me. Some distance in front of me was clearly the forest border. I made a right turn, and started walking.

From here I didn’t find it necessary to see where I was going but only oriented myself straight down the incline, still perhaps south away from the hill. The trees started to stoop the further down I got, and it became a little more difficult to keep a straight path. The sky had yellowed to an uncertain color. I thought it was about time to let my pokémon out. It might have been awkward to stalk the margins of the route and avoid human interaction while they just followed silently, but now I could let them loose into the forest and reconvene whenever they were no longer sick of me. Vibrava I released almost immediately. He seemed surprised at the surroundings. As soon as I gave him time to he shuddered his wings in place and crouched down, refusing to move. As soon as I started to leave him behind, he followed. The soil in the area I was getting into was still drier, and now it was clear of any plant matter and stained with salt, a coarse percolative scrub, with rocks on its surface that were large enough to twist my feet if I walked blindly. Very suddenly I was out in the open.

A narrow plateau, whose right side was the shore of a huge lake, whose boundary ahead was a sudden uprising of white crags, and at whose back the line of trees stood watching the hills on the other side. There was no ashfall here and the sky seemed to be a solid color. Now that there was space, Skarmory came out, and immediately she clacked off into the air immediately in a burst of overdone lights. I released Marshtomp last, and he lowered his body as I flashed him down, then headed closer to shore. It seemed to me that if Skarmory hadn’t left me permanently the last time I’d released her, she wouldn’t leave now. As for Marshtomp, I felt confident of finding him in the exact same place he’d stopped even hours later.

The smell of the water woke me up, a running mineral coolness. The view mounting up ahead showed that the route would nestle itself into a valley, with two lines of hills straddling the lake on either side, with the south horizon very high and white-rocked. It was not the best point of vantage but quite revealing.

*

Treecko had an itch in the muscles on her forearms, I didn’t know what it was but it made her uncomfortable. She kept gong down on all fours and shaking herself. But we were finally on track and she was all psyched up for the challenge against the Dewford Gym, we knew we’d be able to do it somehow. Yuki and Lewis took us up to the front door. Inside was just a small room floored with wood panels and wooden walls, with one doorway leading into darkness. A familiar green suit stood next to a table and a clerk.

“Hey, how’s it going, CHAMPION-bound Atashka?”

“STANLEY?” I said. “You came to Dewford?”

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. What are you here for, challenger? Are you here to show BRAWLY, the GYM LEADER of DEWFORD, if you’ve got spunk?”

“I am?”

“BRAWLY is a trainer of FIGHTING-TYPE POKéMON, so don’t put NORMAL-TYPES up against them, okay? What’s more, the GYM is unlit. You’re going to have to find your way through pitch darkness!”

I looked down at Treecko and tried to think of a response.

“But not to worry, because your way will slowly light up as you defeat trainers. Well, are you ready? Go for it!”

“I can start?” I said. Yuki and Lewis came up behind me. “We’ll be skipping this part, the stadium’s on the other side,” Yuki said. “Don’t make us wait too long.” Lewis said, “It took Yuki fifteen minutes to get through.”

I nodded. I nudged past Treecko and went into the darkness of the doorway. My legs gave me maybe three steps before they froze up. The important thing was to go confidently, not so slow that you froze up but slow enough not to hurt yourself. I held one arm out but kept the other dangling. Treecko was glinting a few paces ahead but not doing much better. I stopped her and waited; slowly the room came into view.

“Okay, there we are Treecko,” I said, but she was already heading for the dark rectangle to our right. It was the only way forward, so I got to the doorway before I stopped.

Now what was Yuki saying about using sound to work out the way? I tapped the floor tentatively and it made a clear hollow hardwood sound, which resonated out, but it was so bizarrely thrown that it sounded like it was coming from my right. I looked down, and first I couldn’t see Treecko but in a moment I heard her clicking footstep. We held out our hands. Immediately walls came up on either side. It looked like a hallway, then. We went forward, scraping both walls with our hands. I kept almost running into Treecko.

“Do you hear that?” I said. We stopped short. Then the sound started up again as soon as we started walking. But I was sure it wasn’t something either of us were making. I stopped again and picked up Treecko and tried to move but it froze me because the hallway was gone for me, my arms were up against my chest. Thunkthunk. “Try not to get spooked,” I whispered. I edged forward, feeling with my feet.

Thunkthunkthunkdhunk –

Pokéball! Treecko flashed inside and the shower of sparks lit up a fighter bent rushing toward me but with her ponytail splayed sideways and shock on her blinded face so I ducked to a crouch, holding the ball in – thunkthunkthunk stop, a few inches before my head. My hands finally felt the singe from the close-contact sparks, still cupping the ball.

“Take your pokémon back out,” she said. “You won’t get through to my master. I’ll take care of you!”

Now that I’d flashed the room, if I’d had any chance of seeing what was going on in the darkness, it was gone. I stepped a bit back and called Treecko out, lighting it up again, this glimpse of the room hazy from the burn from the last flash. It seemed Treecko had landed maybe one pace ahead of me, while the trainer was stepping back to give a few steps of space to a white, thin, triangle-headed pokémon.

She said, “Meditite, dodge this one.” I had been planning on Pound, and I told Treecko she could land a hit if she rushed straight on. I heard one set of attack noises pattering swish thunk no thud of contact and then, sharp and double, unfamiliar sounds of two feet landing close together right in front of me.

Treecko squeaked from a bit of a distance, closer to the trainer than to me. They’d apparently exchanged their positions.

Okay physical moves wouldn’t be so effective with a fighting type. I tried to reason through its mechanism first but the stress made me blurt out, “Absorb!” quickly and got the drop on the other trainer’s command this time, at least. What would Treecko be doing: step forward cause contact is needed and for Absorb just contact is enough, so that’ll happen – skritch – is that the sound of Absorb, real quiet? – oh great the shape of Meditite glowed dim green, black green-rimmed silhouette and Treecko had a hand on Meditite’s raised arm, where the glow emerged, she hadn’t even broken away yet –

The trainer hadn’t said anything yet, why was Meditite?

Green flared and their bodies whipped around with the Absorb detaching and burning a green line in a curved x, and then, Treecko got slammed down on her back and the light went out. I pulled myself together and cried, “Treecko!” At least she was on my side now. I heard her pull herself scraping up and then jump to her feet. She sounded just winded.

“Okay that was a drop,” I told Treecko, “we can, we can, still handle this. Just don’t make contact. Bullet Seed!”

“What are you trying to do?” the trainer said. “In a hall this small!”

“It’s okay! The seeds won’t ricochet I swear, they just break!” “Hey are you really sure?” she said. “You’ll be fine!” I said. “I think.”

“Okay, be my guest.”

“Go, Treecko.” The first bullet came up and started a racket that made everything impossible. I heard someone drop to the floor. Pokémon were moving and maybe Meditite was trying to approach but that was a bad idea since it’d have to go through Treecko’s barrage, but what was actually happening I couldn’t tell in the slightest and I put my hands over my head and waited for it to be over.

There was silence and I heard a familiar swish of a tail, and, ringing heavily against the hollow wooden floor, the sound of a Pound so hard it was almost a sharp thwack.

Now there was a click that didn’t sound like it came from living things. Nothing changed, but I gently felt the hall pulled into the edge of visibility. The fighting trainer was crouched on her feet with one hand on a knee folded forward. She looked at me with vague hate as she said, “Your strategy worked out. If there were any rules for it it’d be illegal anyway.” She recalled Meditite with a flash that wiped out the room for a second, but it was clear in the ensuing haze she was stepping aside. I said, “Does it really get easier to see now?” and picked Treecko up.

“The other members of my batch are more skilled than this,” she said. “And the way ahead is definitely not straightforward. I don’t think you’ll last, challenger. This was a fluke.” I giggled as I walked past her.

The long bony ridges on each of Treecko’s arms, slight raised mounds. “Are you good?” I asked her. She shook around in my hands, her round bottom half suspended in between. “Hurt yourself?” I felt her hands pulling punches in the air. Now I could at least tell how far the current corridor went. It made a straightforward turn a little bit further from here, but before this was a corridor branching from the right side and I knew I had to figure it out first. I hit the wall it adjoined and crept along it. Treecko kept whacking at the air stealthily. Her tail was really kind of big against my stomach, it was making my abs sore.

I got to the corner of that branch and peered into the doorway. There was a blank wall and it ran on ahead, as I would have expected. No matter how long I stared I couldn’t work out if that hall was any lighter or darker than this space. That wouldn’t have made sense, anyway. I tried using sound. A quiet tap on the wall. Its reverberation seemed clearer and lower than my footsteps in the main corridor. What did that mean.

Treecko wriggled free and dropping to the floor passed the opening without a further look. “I guessed that!” I said. “That was my guess! It’s a dead end, huh?” But maybe it could have been a smaller passage. I didn’t have to think about it, if Treecko knew. We went on ahead, and turned left.

This area was a little larger than my vision could scope out. I crept forward, keeping an arm out, with Treecko moving no further than me. The black directly ahead kept trying to pulsate in those creepy gray blobby shapes. I froze for a second, then pushed myself to make a few steps, and immediately the left wall fell away.

Pulsing blackness. The floor was visible up to maybe two feet around me. I asked Treecko if she could see any better.

The only way to go was to take a wall and edge forward, and just look out for whatever tried to emerge through the edge of vision. Treecko got in front of me, and we started moving close on each other, keeping each other moving and in check. It took only four or five long steps to get to the opposite wall. The next one was going to be longer.

I tried to step very lightly, as light as Treecko even. I was way louder than the trainers in the Gym – that girl had been on padded feet or something, because my sneakers rang out like gongs. But if someone was lying in wait for me, they would have had no obligation to move – all they’d need was to listen to my sound move around. I took another step, and then stopped. Nothing much was turning up. How much fighting could we take, if it came to it. I asked Treecko if she was tired at all, and she was noncommittal. I took another step.

There it was – the sleeve of a loose exercise robe, falling whitely just near visibility. I couldn’t begin to figure out anything about the mass attached to it. It was near the center of the room, ahead of me, several feet from the wall.

I hadn’t reacted yet. “Save your energy,” I told Treecko, and pulled her in my arms. It looked like she had seen it too and not reacted…

I started moving again, fixing my eyes straight ahead. I tried not to squint. The trainer started to swim into view out of the corner of my eye. I hadn’t noticed him yet, was just walking on. My night vision was terrible, and I wasn’t being very aware. But I just had to keep walking, and.

He said, “The eye contact rule doesn’t apply here. This is a dojo. Trainers must fight as soon as they both are aware of each other.”

Treecko turned her head around stiffly, and I did the same. “I don’t…” I stammered, looking him full on. “Really?”

“No, that was a trick,” he said. “Now you have to battle me.”

“Oh, no!” Treecko jumped down. “Why would you do that? Isn’t that cheating?”

“You shouldn’t skip out of matches,” he said, “this is a dojo. Go, Meditite! You’ll find him a better trained pokémon than the others you might have seen.”

The flash knocked out my vision for a few seconds, but when it cleared, our battlefield showed up much more spacious and visible than the last one. Treecko jumped down and crossed her arms against the opponent. The trainer said, “Take it, Meditite. Stay non-defensive.” I waited for him to give the command first but his pokémon went ahead and I said, “You won’t call out moves either? Treecko, try to Pound!”

Meditite came at Treecko’s right side as she swung from left, but sidestepping he dodged her rotated completely into the open quarter around her, she twisted off balance and in this instant Meditite slipped onto his back and pinned Treecko between his legs. Treecko tried to jerk herself backwards out of it but she was too light for Meditite, he lifted her and flipped her over his head slammed her on her stomach. “Seismic Toss,” the trainer said, “you wanted me to call the moves. It shouldn’t have to be said, though.”

“Treecko, get up!” She opened her eyes, wincing down her snout at the floor, and pushed herself onto her feet.

“Okay, come at him!” I said. “Try to Scratch!”

They charged each other at the same time – Treecko pulled back her arm but Meditite broke his charge at ninety degrees, leaping away, and as Treecko struggled to a halt he didn’t even touch the ground to launch straight at her, punching her out just as she stopped. “It’s because he’s Psychic, he’s boosting himself!” I said. “He’s more agile than a physical pokémon can be. We’ve got to think of something else.”

When Treecko got back to her feet this time, she was a lot slower, and had to bend down panting. But her face looked serious – she was only losing her first wind. She jumped back around avoiding Meditite back to her side.

That was nice, but I still had nothing. Treecko couldn’t dodge him, or run from him, if she attacked he’d be able to evade it almost always, and she didn’t have any good non-contact moves. Contact… but then Meditite twitched again and I had to blurt out, “Treecko, nn, Bullet Seed?”

She only gave me a glance before jumping in at him. Head on, like before. She raised her arm over her head, claws glinting but this time something was different. Meditite launched up, a higher jumper than Treecko could reach and as she tensed to strike he tumbled upside down in midair pushing her head back and landed on his feet behind her, watching her fall flat again on her snout, and she started to lift up just in time for Meditite’s pummeling he launched forward with his fists up but suddenly she jumped back straight into him, his collision with her back glowing bright green, and the two rolled over each other and separated but without breaking the Absorb link, which thickened to sap a good chunk of health into Treecko even as she lay curled and cringing with her lights all but out.

Absorb was a contact move… but it was one that physical speed couldn’t help you avoid, and I could tell she could keep knocking a bit off him as long as it hurt her too in the process. Also, he hadn’t been expecting a hit nearly that suicidal and he looked a little stunned himself. But if you wanted to go there, he was probably quicker to get to his feet that Treecko…

Meditite padded two hesitant steps and again threw himself straight all out. Treecko leaned forward and crouched. This time stopping he swung his arm at her, let her jump back, then standing back on his heels waited for her to hop forward claws out and flipped superfast out of the way his white legs socking her jaw as both of them reeled away from each other. But that had to have been enough – it was, the green glow pulsed down from his legs and and up to Treecko’s neck and she took back a little more damage.

It wasn’t anything close to the damage she’d sustained, though. She backed up unsteadily, clutching her snout in a hand, and she must have been hit in the head the last time too. Meditite didn’t give her a moment this time. He charged again, punched her so hard back he didn’t have to stop going, punched again, where was the glow? I shouted, “Bullet Seed!” Treecko dropped onto her back and readied a quick small one that slipped past his arm and into his sternum. She fired a second and he dodged, coming in from the side and pulling a low side kick that dropped her to the floor. The glow brightened once again, but Treecko stayed down on her stomach for a little bit as Meditite returned to his neutral spot.

“Treecko?” I said. “You’re doing okay, aren’t you?”

Her eyelids flicked and then she pulled herself to her feet, but she was definitely putting on a brave front. We didn’t have a lot of time. How was I going to handle the battles after this? It had been really stupid to go in with only one pokémon.

Maybe we had one chance…

“Treecko Bullet Seed but go slowly,” I said. “Try not to miss.”

She readied it raising her shoulders looking down, and then aimed at Meditite standing far and spat one hard bullet at him. He leaned blurring away started running at her. Treecko fired once, at his feet, evaded, she scrambled back crouched waiting as he closed the gap fired making him sidestep with one of his arms clotheslining and what do you know, there was special attack in the arm coming at her, a pallid distorted ridge arcing his arm and no time for escape –

Treecko could only hold up both her arms obliquely over her head. Before they collided it threw up a glow of green light that flared in two lines from her arms, swelled, and before I knew what was happening, burst into white. Meditite contacted softly with her, his own glow completely drowned out, and then quickly bounded away leaping to a safe position. His trainer had a knowing, entertained look like he expected me to understand what was happening. Treecko doubled down on her glow and I took a step toward her, but the trainer yelled almost inaudibly, “Don’t try to interfere with it, just watch!” It was barely audible because there was a rustling static everywhere and the wooden room was starting to get lit up with reflecting Treecko’s light multiple times. And as I thought I saw her kneel down on her shins, tail out, leaning on both her hands, the glow stopped breaking out from all around her and started spreading – to the double lobes of her tail, to her similarly cloven head, until what I could still see of her was a streamlined curve of green, a ridged ellipse with legs attached.

The light exploded once and left a purple burn on my vision. Then I started to see Treecko more clearly again. A white bud sprouted from the top of her head as she raised it. She turned around and at the same time it swished and grew longer until it almost reached the floor. Then she flexed again and the little buns of hard muscle in her arms and legs corded, the muscle strained visibly through, and she rose up all at once standing on longer, more powerful legs, her body bigger and more shapely, her face itself like a stranger’s long and cold, but the look –

The look sent a familiar shiver down through my panic. That was the look she gave whenever she was going to make trouble. It finally broke through my head what I’d been thinking since I’d got here: “She’s evolving!”

She raised her arms again, definitely smiling, to show me the white slits running down their backs. With a splintering thwish they broke open and dark double leaves emerged. The tail behind her unkinked and grew into two flat blades. I felt the tiny husk fragments hit me from where I was standing.

For the first time since we’d been friends, I heard Treecko roar. Grovyle, Grovyle roared. It was a high, soft shrieking sound but it still had running clicks behind it setting it off. She was really beautiful.

I don’t know what the look on my face was when I finally looked behind her to the trainer. He just said, “We won’t take much of your time,” with a tacit smile.

“Um,” I started. Meditite leapt forward immediately and this time he went straight for Treecko’s head. She scrunched down leaves splaying and took the blow and slashed with her own arms, throwing him out of a shower of green sparks. I said, “Don’t, don’t let him get up!” He raised himself to sitting position before Grovyle smacked his head with another blow, throwing him down for good.

“Very good!” the trainer said. “Grovyle, you must be feeling an unexpected burst of strength. Is this your first evolution?” He was looking at me; I nodded, swallowing. “Your pokémon has hit on a great reserve of energy, and a whole stash of new skills. The rest of the Gym maze might be assured now. But Brawly is not a green fighter. How well both of you do will depend on how fast you can adapt to your new tools. Good luck!”

He shoved me forward and that was all the guidance for now. Grovyle stood just before me, her beautiful leaves curving to the ground. I remembered how the room was now – there had been an exit on the other corner from where I was headed, and it was no trouble finding it in the slightly raised light.

What did we have to get through now… I found the ending wall immediately. This was a short corridor. There was one branch opening to the right a bit ahead of me and then the corridor itself turned into another one. A fork, then – where was Treecko. She was right behind me, her head almost up to my stomach’s height. I grinned, a little overwhelmed.

No hesitating now. Both of us were on a roll. I passed the first fork, entered the farther one, since it would be less expected, went down a longer corridor, dark but for some brightness at the far end, and turned right again. Now it was straight and clear a long way ahead. There were openings to the right all along its length. We got to the first one and the corner was bit into in a long notch, with the opposite corner visible a few paces ahead – movement – from our corridor! Where did we have to run? We turned into the opening and it was a short passage to another corridor running parallel to the first one. Looking ahead, the openings kept going down regularly on the left. So it was – the footsteps weren’t slowing down, what if they turned here?

I darted back to the beginning of this hallway. Like I’d thought, it led directly to the closer branch of the fork, the one I hadn’t chosen. The trainer really had switched to this corridor and turned back the same way they’d come.

One chance I had was to follow them down this passage at some distance and hope they wouldn’t notice I was there. I could also have taken the other corridor as empty and gone down it, but this way I had one person’s barrier between anybody new appearing. I sprung forward before they got out of sight and then just tried to walk slowly, not any faster than they were, keeping them in sight. They were less than a blur; if they did anything sudden, I might not even notice.

They slowed barely and disappeared into an opening. I froze. Another white robe behind them. It turned down the same way and seemed not to notice me.

I had to keep going! The safest place was just behind them both. I rushed to the opening and went in, reached back to the first corridor, looked both sides to see retreating shapes, got behind the newer one going up ahead. Next time it turned and another one was behind it, what could I – I ran back down the corridor to the opening I’d come from and hid in its corner. In a flash – this one turned into the next opening, another appeared briefly coming this way and turned – and I’d been safely hidden. I came out and hurried behind them. Wove back into the second corridor again, one more opening ahead of where I’d been.

Grovyle was fast – she hardly broke a sweat keeping up with me – and quieter than the wind. I waited at the corner of my opening, just standing in the middle of the corridor, sure that the trainer still had a ways to go until the next one. They seemed to take longer than the distance the other two had. Suddenly they turned – further away than the others – I tried to duck into my opening but everything was clear before I knew it – had there been another patroller this time? I thought I’d only seen the flash of this one, disappearing into the opening. Either way the way was clear. I crossed the opening they’d gone into and peered again, both sides, into the first –

Coming this way – from down the corridor – another trainer! There were two trainers patrolling this one! I ducked back into my opening and we hurried back to the center of the connector where I stopped Treecko, trying to think. Where would the first trainer be right now, which path was safe? I ran back to the second corridor, and then went back up the hall, back to the previous opening, just in time to see the trainer appear one opening away.

How was I going to avoid this one? If two trainers were doing the rounds on one loop in opposite directions, they’d always make a pincer between them that you couldn’t escape from. The only way would be to get between them just after they’d crossed, so both of them would be moving away from you. I would have to follow one, and get past the whole situation before they met again. I didn’t know what the room was like beyond this, not even where the two trainers were as of this moment.

“What we have to do,” I whispered to Grovyle, “is sit down and think about it.” Then the footsteps came within hearing. “No, no we don’t!” There was a trainer on this circuit too, I’d forgotten about them! Going back was dangerous and going forward was a sure trap, I stood there frozen out of all thinking, then just as the white robe swished into sight from the other end I ran forward.

They’d cross the gap fast, and in that time I had to duck into the next gap. That led me exactly where I’d been, with the two trainers still pincering into their circuit. My only chance, maybe, was if they met at a point just next to the closer opening, so I could catch them at their meeting point and slip between them – as they started moving away. I peered past my gap, and saw one figure just beyond the next one. Now the other trainer just had to appear, and soon –

There! The other trainer came in from the gap and crossed this trainer and kept going down the corridor. I waited barely enough to keep a good distance and darted forward before I was caught again. At least to the next opening. Here I had to decide – which corridor to take? Right was all the rooms I’d already been through, left then. “Come on, Grovyle,” I said. “Just a little more.” I kept to my corridor, didn’t see anyone, but it seemed to go on longer than the others, what was I going to do if –

To the left! A broad, paneled alcove with a door set in it. Definitely a trap. I powered into the opening.

In the shadows on either side… there wasn’t anything. I was home free! I grabbed for a knob or handle and roughhorsed the door open. It let in a blinding sheet of light.

*

 

[Praxiteles]

The ashfall had stopped everywhere, but as the day turned toward evening, it seemed that the sky continually moved toward somewhat fuller colors. After Skarmory left Marshtomp had dipped into the pond, and Vibrava had gone back inside. I didn’t like walking on the big, unsteady pebbles of this plateau, so I made my way back into the forest. The expanse of the tree trunks showed a clear unexplaining emptiness for miles, and I no longer paid any attention to the gradient. I saw that I was pointed north and decided to strike northwest as well as I could make out, where the road itself would presumably be. A little bit of life showed itself, mostly in distant bird calls. I identified taillow: they have rising, buzzing screeches, like old feed printers. A poochyena watched me from behind a rock pile some yards away, then went off. No one in the forest came with aggressive intentions toward trainers, and they would have been at a loss to know what a human was doing here.

The trees did not become any less impersonal up close. Moving through the wiry black brushes of trees spaced so safely far apart began to feel strokingly hypnotic, now that the feet had learned to handle this kind of ground by themselves. The exercise became to keep the most straight course despite of them, to try to forget that there was anything occupying the space, which was impossible, but would have been less possible if something more substantial than trees had been visible. I tried to excise everything that moved, retaining only the stationary things in my attention. The suspended platform of the sky. The ground, which was more difficult to fully see. This terrain didn’t suit me, it was too dry and calcitic. Dry sand did not feel leached like this. I felt that the soil of Mars may have looked similar. The mass of the visible ground gradually hovered into attention, the dark green ash-covered trees rooted absurdly in the yellow scree. Ahead and to my right, the uniformity of the trees finally started to clump up. I changed course and had been walking fast. The tree mass was thinning and breaking into big bodies that were themselves broken by large blue near-lakes, the most clear things in the distance. These I avoided, continuing to play a game whose purpose had been lost once the edge of the forest came in sight.

Soon I was able to come out more or less into the open. The forest was still heaving and subsiding around me and I now avoided what I could discern to be the irregular boundaries of the tree cover. The soil returned to a comforting deadness in the open. It was the red-brown soil of Route 113, furrowed and ashen, like a meteor site.

In the area I crossed last, rarefied to a feeble extent that could hardly be called forest, the trees gradually stopped living, until it was only their black-grey dead boughs, and I sensed that I’d gotten further north than I had thought. Their skeletal structure was different from the trees’ full implication. These trees were also shorter. They did not obscure the view of the ground or any part of the sky, but only a black marbled band along the center of the distance, the horizon. All the same, I was unable to ignore hints of where I was going to. The ground began to climb at a gradient I had no difficulty noticing and the soil became more damp and clayey red, and to a small extent the trees began to come back to life and almost thicken to a real grove. Wind picked up. I found that a noise had started to rise to audibility, very immersive and uniform, a hiss of probably river water or hard wind. It also suggested an open space. Where I was going, which was plateauing, there was probably a valley or decline at some point. The edge of the trees slowly came close enough to distinguish itself from merely the open distance of trees. There was something in the air as though it had rained, cold and saturated wet. I passed the tree line. The drop was fifty feet and no more land ahead because of it, forward and down a vast grey-white distance as wide as my angle of view. Below it, almost colorless water crinkled reflecting the sky and where it neared the lake’s further edge was devoured by the line of a waterfall. I sat down on the edge. The water body was a crescent, wrapped far to my right and left by the arms of the cliff I was on. The air streamed past my head and over the drop and was made tense and sparkling by the hard sunlight.

It seemed that the cliff fell in steep but steady steps, but the arms on either side were also descending and I walked along the right edge out of this dead grove, into some others, descending comfortably over one or two mounds of shoulders and foothills. It was not that high an elevation climbed at a gradient. When I found the water level I had reached the edge of the waterfall. The crescent lake was fed by one river connected to the side opposite to mine, and was thus a kind of repurposed meander. The land overseen by the waterfall which must have been south of here was completely plain, and not at all completely forested, with many blue ponds and perhaps an unpaved road winding very far in the south. At this point I was lost, and I realized one of my pokémon was far out of my reach, while another would probably be unwilling to look at me. At least Marshtomp was still in the one great lake of this route which was where I would necessarily go.

This time I crawled straight down the incline of the cliff, since it was not very high or debilitating. The face was very rocky and provided constant ledges to place my feet on. This was easier than the artificial walls I’d practiced on in the city. Alighting, I avoided trees deliberately now and struck left so that I could be sure of finding the road eventually. The cloud cover made the afternoon yellower than it would otherwise be. I finally hit the corner of the road where it turned south, almost missing it again. There seemed to be a small gap of ground and forest between the road and wherever the north hills began; apparently I had crossed it in my abstraction without noticing the landmarks on either side. I stuck to the road religiously: pale brown among the rocky brown soil, it made right-angled concessions to even particularly imposing trees and tried to move diagonally west.

But finally relieved of open navigation and huge geography I took to the route like a street, it was about the width of a truck and wound through little hard bumpy fields that I didn’t even look beyond, bounded by hills with pretty sheer, rectangular faces, and in which I spotted craters of the same size found in Fallarbor, loose ridges or piles of rocks, and that sprinkling of brown topdust that must have had ash content. It was a mercy there were no trainers. I had no desire to train. The air got sharp with the smell of smoke, charred bark or leaf matter crinkling to a spicy, mentholated extremity of itself, not from any burning I could see, only out of the dryness and the rock. It was a little orange and comforting. As the shore of a big lake turned, the sky finally cleared to a gleaming, nighttime blue.

*

That door opened directly into the stadium. It didn’t look fancy or even really official, it was a big concrete hall with a battle ground as large as regulations, but the walls were painted yellow just like the dojo in the back, and there was metal screen over all four walls with plastic seats behind it. My box was a white square placed outside the rectangle of the battle ground. Brawly was still at a desk behind the sidelines. He looked up when I made footsteps, and nodded.

But then: “Atashka, loser!” I heard Yuki’s voice and looked back to see a bunch of people sitting on the sidelines behind me. I hurried back to the screen for a second and leaned my fingers through the holes. Yuki was judging my face from the seat right in front, but left of her were Walker, Lewis, Mark, and on the other end of the group, a girl who I didn’t know. Yuki said, “Did you get past the last four guards? You probably wouldn’t have. You’re not that quick.”

“Shut up,” I said, “as if you know anything anyway Yuki.” Lewis said he bet I hadn’t. He had the same look as Yuki like he was there to watch the circus, so that was very supportive. Mark seemed to know the fifth girl because he was talking with her quietly about something. He looked up when I spoke and was the first one to smile at me. “Treecko, that’s amazing,” he said. “Congratulations Atashka!”

I glanced at Grovyle and grinned back. Lewis said to Walker, “Slateport isn’t really hot stuff. I’ve been to the market. If you want anything above the level of like local produce from the Seven Islands, you won’t get it.”

‘Why would I even go to Slateport anyway?” Walker said. “There’s no gym over there.”

“Slateport’s okay,” Mark said.

“Nu uh, it’s not!” Lewis said. “I’m telling you, you want good Devon accessories, you should go to something like Mauville. The street market’s – ”

“Yuki told me,” Walker said, “she wants to meet the head designer at the shipyard someday.”

“You do, do you,” Lewis said teasingly.

“She said it’s her one traveling wish.”

“Aww, that’s really precious Yuki!” Lewis said.

“Shut up, Lewis!” Yuki said. “What I said was my dad has connections with a few engineers in Slateport so if I went there, I might be able to look at some early prototypes. I don’t give a shit about the head designer. I want to look at the ships.” She suddenly cast her eyes down and paused, then called across the three boys sitting on her left, to: “Riesa?”

The new girl reacted only after a moment. “Yes?”

“Who’ll you stay with? In Slateport? Isn’t that your family town?”

“No, it’s Mauville,” she said, smiling.

“Your home is in Mauville?” Yuki said.

“Mm,” she nodded.

“You’ll, take a Pokémon Center in Slateport, I guess?”

“Yeah, a Pokémon Center. It should be…”

“Yuki, that’s not even the problem,” Walker said. “The problem’s getting there. We still haven’t thought of anything really – ”

“I’m still saying, my folks won’t have any problem if…” Mark trailed off for a second when Walker looked at him, then continued, “We’ve got a wailord. I’ll say it again. He’ll be happy to get her across the – ”

Lewis said, “But she still has to fight that way.” Mark didn’t reply. “If you’re going by any pokémon that’s the same as surfing, and you know…”

By this time all four of them had turned their heads and now that they’d all fallen silent were all looking towards her. This flustered her and she smiled nervously again. “I’m… you don’t, you shouldn’t worry about me! You don’t need to do all that…”

I’d seen her before somewhere! Lewis said, “But Slateport is really shit.” I walked over to Mark to let the other three talk about their nonsense, but he wasn’t saying anything at the moment. Grovyle passed a leaf blade through the wide grating of the screen for Mark to admire. Up close, she looked slightly less familiar, but I finally remembered. It was the girl who’d been walking in pitch darkness in Granite Cave.

“Hi,” I said. If she replied, it was cut off by Mark suddenly getting obnoxiously loud: “You’re going to challenge Brawly with one pokémon then?”

I scrunched my face. “So?”

“So, nothing,” he said. “Riesa fought against Brawly a day ago. She says the last pokémon’s changed up his style.”

“The last pokémon?” I said, looking at him. “So what would that mean?”

“Do you even know her name?” Mark said and turned to his left. “This is Riesa, Riesa, this is Atashka. I bet you recognize him.”

“Yeah, I do!” she said. “I met the two of you. In that cave?”

“You fought Brawly yesterday?” I said. “So you’re going after the badges too?”

“Yeah. I don’t really know that definitely, but I think, I’m touring the League.”

“What do you think about me, then?” She made a questioning noise. “This is my pokémon, here,” I said. “Can we put up a good fight?”

At a loss to what to say: “Well… yeah!”

“Why are you asking her about your pokémon,” Mark said. “Atashka the confidence to win needs to come from, from – ”

“Riesa,” I said, “do you remember a lot about your fight? Who was the last pokémon?”

“Umm, Hariyama,” she said quickly. “Hariyama… was a lot more offensive, when I challenged them.”

“Did it play a more,” I said, “stall sort of game before then? Was it like that?”

“Mm-m,” she said, moving her head noncommittally. “You know, there’s one thing,” and leaned forward on her seat, finally thinking of something. “You won’t get any favors from Brawly if you go with one pokémon. Not with this – ”

“Challenger Atashka,” Brawly’s voice rang out, “step up to the box, please.”

I jumped and looked back to let Mark give me a quick thumbs up before I rushed to my place. Riesa had been smiling also.

“We won’t take too much time,” Brawly said, “doing battle introductions. Tell us your name and hometown.”

“Uhh…” I tried to remember my name and hometown; “Atashka Kalen, and from Petalburg.”

“This team is Brawly’s,” he said, “Gym Leader of Dewford. We ask that you show us your true face today, both pokémon and trainer, by fighting with everything you have.” He pulled his body from attention to a slightly more staggered, stable stance. I said, “Y – yeah.”

“I’ll begin,” he said, and threw his pokéball. “Machop.”

First time outside of photos and illustrations: the grey-green human pokémon, muscled and ridge-headed. He was a strong pokémon. He probably had great offense and defense. I told Grovyle, “Stay on your toes! Try not to get hit. Tail Whip!”

Grovyle advanced on him warily, but he stood in his place. Brawly said, “Defend!” Grovyle span around in a blur and started lashing at him with her tail, striking the arms he’d crossed in front of himself, slashing her two long double leaves rapidly and repeatedly. Machop held hard and lowered his head. I didn’t know if it was doing anything because his arms stayed hard and strong in that position, but I thought I saw red lines turn up across them, so it would probably have hurt. Suddenly Brawly said, “Attack!” and when Machop burst forward Grovyle was already tense and ready from all the whipping so she jumped back fast, but Machop swung again Karate Chop, and this time Grovyle landed kind of stumblingly and when she stopped reeled down a little so she hadn’t dodged it completely.

I thought fast, Pound maybe, to test him, when Mark murmured from behind, “He’ll be too tough to start attacking yet.” Too bad. My plan was for the long haul so I could throw away a few turns.

“Pound!” I said and Grovyle stiffened her tail and swept forward again. Machop blocked before she could slap his midriff and bounded Grovyle back. Mark said, “See, he should have waited.” The pokémon steadied then sprung back to their positions, I decided on another quick Tail Whip and then the smallest voice from behind me said, “…’s only going to get tougher.”

“What was that?” I blurted, looking behind me, and Riesa was staring widely back just as Brawly said, “Bulk Up!” I said, “Riesa did you fight him yesterday?” She sat silent for a moment. What was Bulk Up? I swiveled back to the field but Machop wasn’t moving, he was flexing down to a defensive position and straining his limbs. The muscles swelled and popped.

Technically I wasn’t allowed to get advice from the sidelines. Mark also murmured, just as quiet, “Is Machop really a setup fighter? I thought…” Yuki or Walker put in their half-hearted murmurs: “Bulk Up” something something.

I heard Riesa shout, “Atashka he’s weak now! You need to attack him hard before he bulks up.”

“You’re not supposed to help him,” Mark said. Riesa said, “That’s offensive and defensive both!”

I looked ahead at Machop standing up straight. Mark said, “Don’t look back I guess, Riesa can just keep talking.” “Like cheating tests!” she said quietly.

Hit him hard? If it was defensive too, the Bulk Up would have probably overcome the effects of the Tail Whip already. “Bullet Seed!” I said.

Grovyle’s neck swelled and she started firing immediately. Machop dropped down dodging one seed over his shoulder two in a body roll before the third caught up and a fourth seed, that Grovyle pre-aimed perfectly and Machop anticipated perfect enough to block it with crossed arms. He started Bulking Up straight into his staggered blocking stance and I called another volley of Bullet Seed, five of them this time, all of them bouncing off the skinny cross of his arms except for one that stuck on his belly.

She needed another move, too, and I thought I had the perfect idea. “Grovyle,” I said, “how come you have those leaves on your arms?” Machop kept to himself when we didn’t attack. His cross stood up strong. It seemed like if her tail leaves were strong enough to whip with, maybe the arms were also not just for show. She looked back at me and I said, “Get in there!”

Holding her arms out she charged him and the leaves stuck out pretty stiff, but I didn’t know what they could have done until she rammed into him and bounced off. Even on the tough backside of him arms, they’d left abrasions. There wasn’t any broken skin yet. Then Riesa gave me another hint: “Leaf Blade…?”

“Leaf… Blade,” I said. “Treecko slash, slash! What’re your arms up for! Swing them! You’ve got razor leaves!” She came at him again and swiped with the backs of her arms and this time the sting threw Machop back, even if she was too lightweight to push him herself.

“That’s Grovyle’s signature move?” Mark asked Riesa.

“Mm! She’ll have to learn it fast though. It takes skill.”

“You know a lot of things don’t you?”

The pokémon faced each other again, both of them breathing a little. Grovyle didn’t pause at all before charging at him. She’d really just discovered her blades? “Too fast,” Riesa whispered. Grovyle kept the blades folded in crosswise and then burst out all at once in a flurry left right left right that made him stagger and it must have hurt worse. But when she stepped back the new welts were weaker and when he Bulked Up they almost disappeared. She glared at him thinking, her head lowered. “Riesa,” Mark said, “how did you know?” She said, “I…”

Then Grovyle started back picking up speed more carefully before hitting him and, it looked like, angling her blades almost backward so they actually curved or seemed to, and she got so much as two real slashes in when Machop burst grabbing her all of a sudden and threw her.

“Oof, it’s started, he’s finished setting up! Atashka,” Riesa said, “you don’t have a lot of time. It’ll be hard to knock him out too! Your only option is – ”

Brawly’s voice whipped me back to the field: “What’s wrong? The battle is this way!” That was all the warning before Machop leapt at her and coming down landed a Karate Chop that grazed the shoulder she tried to move out of the way. I said, “Slash him!” but it was all she could do to try to keep out of his way and one hit would probably finish her. Machop advanced on her chopping and drove her three jumps back, and in the last jump he was so close she had to fire off the ground as soon as she touched it somersaulting and landing backward just a foot from where he finally stopped.

Mark said, “What? What can she do?” She didn’t reply.

I called “Bullet, Seed?” but it was drowned by Brawly’s “Arm Throw!” Machop didn’t give her a moment to catch her breath, he just ran straight into her, punching multiple times in one flurry. This time she couldn’t dodge all of them. I dared a wild glance back while they were still moving. Riesa’s expression was fixed and silent on the battle and her face was red. I guessed it was better for her to stay still.

Machop paused after the first flurry and drew his arms in to rally his power. Grovyle, running back pretty wildly, stopped several feet away from him and really close to me and gave me a look. She might have looked older now, but it was pretty much the look she gave when she was in over her head. She crouched low with her arms close together and her hackles would probably have risen if there were any. I said, “How are you going to get out of this one, Treecko?”

She had about an instant of blank surprise before her long eyes narrowed and as soon as that happened, I couldn’t recognize her at all. She turned her head forward and stood up, looking almost like she was scouting from a height. Then before Machop even recovered she burst forward and her speed on long muscular legs drove the point of her outward arm blades headfirst before she slashed thrice, surprising Machop for a second, blocked the first Karate Chop he swung hurriedly, then leaping back for the one she couldn’t stop, drove on relentlessly and slashed again just before he was ready just a millisecond faster than his pace making him have to defend again, and then as he swung her long narrow eyes scanned and caught an opening and without warning fired Bullet Seed point blank into his uncovered face.

It was maybe the surprise that did it. She swung both arms and cross slashed so hard that it actually blew him back sliding on the back of his shoulders. Then she fired again, not hitting as perfectly but more than good enough for his stunned pile.

“Treecko?” I said. She ran at him now but this time she ran out of momentum, taking increasingly stupid strides until the one where she made contact was a big feinting slash over Machop still lying on his back, a slash that cut the air a long way off him and dissipated to nothing. Brawly said, “Enough, enough. It looks like you got him.”

I jumped and threw my fist down. “Holy crap, Grovyle!” She gave a choking screech and I got a heart attack before I realized it was her. So she wasn’t graceful all of the time. It sounded like at least Mark was clapping. I looked back to him and glanced at Riesa who hesitated before echoing my grin.

“Next,” said Brawly, “Meditite.” Flash!

Meditite stood on his two feet. He walked to the middle of the field stepping toes first. Then he dropped to his knees, breathed in, and pulled himself into a stance with his arms and legs stretched hard out and balancing on the toes of one foot.

Grovyle stood all alert, with her arms out in front. Meditite breathed out again and his stance started looking even scarier. We waited.

Nothing happened. I said, “Status move? Probably?” All Meditite did was tighten, the arm and leg stretched forward bending like a bow.

“Grovyle,” I said, “You can use this break too! Is there a move that’ll up our status…?”

Grovyle turned her head back, not really saying much with her face. Then she looked back and shot him a look that from the sound it made must have been Leer. Meditite didn’t even flinch, just kept tightening.

Then Mark suddenly yelled, “That’s not a status move though – ” Riesa said something, and Mark said, “It isn’t is it? It’s – ” He paused to catch her voice, then said, “Focus… that’s?”

Riesa’s voice broke me out of my daze, loud and clear: “Focus Punch, Atashka! Loser!” I looked back to check that it was Riesa who’d called me a loser, and it almost made her freeze up, hiding her face into her hands and laughing. “If you don’t attack him, he’ll – oof!”

Back to the match! Meditite was straightening up and now he came at her, one arm thrown back with a transparent light crested around his fist and bending the air around it, sending gusts in a circle in his wake. I said, “Dodge it!” and Grovyle before I’d ended leaped straight at him, swinging an arm, right arm against Meditite’s left fist. The impact sent wind all the way back to my square.

“This is a specialty move!” Brawly said, his arms folded. “Focus Punch! It takes a preparation period of intense focus to pull it off. But during this time, the pokémon can’t block attacks!”

Grovyle, it looked, had blown past him just after impact and was staggering to a stop. She held her right arm weirdly at an angle, but I couldn’t see it from my side. I told her to come back here so I could see. As she walked, she dripped blood.

“What’s wrong?” Brawly said. He pressed something on his belt, and a trainer immediately came out of a door close by and walked along the sidelines toward where Grovyle was heading. The kids behind me were talking. Brawly said, “Grovyle will be fine, but if she broke something the battle might have to be put on hold.” Grovyle hunched coming closer to me, and gave me a stupid look, really stupid, her dumb mouth opening around her set of tiny, perfectly white teeth. She submitted to the nurse with a grunt. He held up her arm and started pressing it in different places, and I could finally see what was up with it. It looked like the blade had shifted or torn a little in its place, and the gash around where it was rooted looked really bad. “Grovyle!” I scolded her.

“Focus Punch has power a step beyond even Fighting moves,” Brawly said. “That was not a good counter for it. You tried to deflect it by attacking instead of blocking, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have been able to dodge that might be true, but you can’t withstand a move like this.”

The nurse raised his arm and curled the open hand into a thumbs up. He took some cotton out of his bag and sprayed it before wiping Grovyle’s arm with it, at which she squirmed. “She’s out of the woods,” Brawly said. “Be less reckless!” he told the pokémon.

“Is she okay?” I heard Riesa say. I turned around to talk to her. “She’s out of the woods, you know. And it’s only her in this match,” I said. She didn’t look convinced. “She’ll be fine, I’m gonna tell her how she can guard herself. What did you say about Focus Punch?”

She paused, and lowered her voice, looking sideways at me. “Atashka it’s just like he said, Meditite won’t be able to stand attacks while, when he’s in that stance. Everybody in Dewford knows about it.” “Hey what?” Mark said. “I didn’t know about it!” “If you attack Meditite, he can’t block or fight back, Meditite loses that turn!”

“Is that right,” I said, giving a crooked smile. “Yeah,” copying it, “that’s your, it’s a game of anticipation, choosing the right moment and stunning him.”

“That sounds fun.” I smiled to myself and turned around. “Don’t even wait Grovyle just strike this time.”

Grovyle bounded forward, leaving her pain behind as Meditite lowered down to another stance a lot less extended and I said, “Pound Grovyle, don’t put your arms out” and she lost a step confused, slowed jumping and then went ahead with her left blade just when something gleamed in Meditite’s face that shot her arm out far left.

“Detect,” said Brawly. Mark said, “He didn’t even have to move!”

“Idiot Grovyle!” I called her back to my box again. “Don’t tell me you injured that arm too…” I examined it uselessly, “Okay but you jolted it. This is a really vicious move Grovyle, I don’t think you have unlimited Leaf Blades in you. I’d say you have maybe five strikes with your left arm.” She shook the blade at me. “Six then.” She might have been injured but her body was still tensed in a normal healthy way, she didn’t have any pain and instead just swung back and forth dropping to her fours. I told her I wasn’t going to interrupt her again.

“No way he’ll use Detect again, right,” I said. “He’ll attack. You should hit back Grovyle, Absorb!”

Sure enough, Meditite stayed on his feet and advanced walking just fast enough to match her pace. As soon as they got close Grovyle braced but, faster then I’d expected, Meditite sidestepped and appeared in a flash at Grovyle’s side, slashing her side with a chop! But the moment he disengaged and leapt away she had caught him, because a thread of green light spattered from him and flew toward Grovyle.

“Absorb but don’t wait for him!” I said. A Detect was likely since he’d want to rest for a beat, perhaps. Grovyle came after Meditite throwing one green-glowing fist at him. Meditite used Detect and her fist was again flung hard out.

“How about you get out of there and Bullet Seed?” But Meditite didn’t come after her, and as soon as she pulled her attention away from making distance enough to fire the attack, Meditite was already in his Focus Punch stance. The first bullet locked up his arms and he juddered without being able to move.

Next it would be Detect. “Leer,” I called.

Meditite came running full tilt and I put my hands to my mouth. As he pulled his Karate Chop, she didn’t have time enough to block and only just managed to dodge out of the way. “He’s messing with our heads Grovyle!” Treecko barely had time to get indignant about this.

“But we can’t do much about it either,” I said. “You can’t take another Focus Punch. Pretty clear… If he uses Detect, that’s a big loss too… Grovyle you know what the problem is, he’s dictating our moves. When he makes a move we have to react.” Riesa said, “But we haven’t got any other way, have we?” I glanced back to watch her say, “Do you have a stronger…”

Here he came again. The way Grovyle was right now, even these Karate Chops might finish her off. Mark was saying something about pattern forming. The blood rushed to my head and I said, “Leaf Blade!” Grovyle leapt forward and surprising even Meditite slashed straight at his chest, which was unprotected. The momentum sent both of them back.

“Leaf Blade!” I yelled. “Keep at it!” Riesa said just audibly, “Atashka…”

Meditite was just settling down for a Detect. This time Grovyle deflected her own slash expertly into thin air and didn’t lose a thing. Next Meditite attacked again and they sprang at each other, colliding with a strike that hurt both of them. Grovyle started slashing again and didn’t relent before Meditite started another Detect that forced her to deflect.

With both sides breathing heavily, I tried to look at the situation again. If berserk Leaf Blade hadn’t achieved anything then I didn’t have any more ideas. Meditite, as though satisfied that we were done, finally settled down to the intensive Focus Punch stance.

“Bullet Seed,” I said tiredly. Meditite straightened up quickly just before Grovyle fired but the confusion of reconsidering still kept him from getting an upper hand in this turn. “Bullet Seed again.” Meditite walked toward her. Grovyle fired two bullets that missed him within excellent, easy range, and then she fired a third.

It looked like it hid Meditite square in the face. He stood stock still for a moment, and his arms dropped. Brawly said, “Ignore it Meditite, you can get to her before you get hit again.”

But then, in a really refined, delicate motion, Meditite tottered forward and fell on his face.

“Oops!” I heard Riesa say. I nearly started laughing myself. “Oops!” I repeated. “Looks like we didn’t know our own strength! Sorry about that.” “Completely unexpected!” Riesa yelled, probably the loudest she’d ever been, which made even Brawly look behind me to her in surprise. This made her clamp down embarrassed.

“Two… down then,” Brawly said continuing, “none from the challenger’s. Quite admirable.”

“But maybe I’m not playing very cleanly?” I said. “I have to, um, I have to convince you to give me the badge, don’t I?”

Brawly smiled and said, “Actually, this is a dojo. The one thing we respect is a victory. I don’t care how you achieve it. Of course, if you lose, then you lose, and no argument will qualify you for the badge then.”

*

The flat wooden bridge floated on the water and went the entire length of the lake. From there, it moored to the south shore of the lake, faintly curved border. I found Marshtomp and took him in without a word; the other pokémon were somewhere beyond. Mountains emerged in the close distance, much taller cragged than the flat hills of the north half. Out of the baked mineral wind that had been running south for the first time came the smell of damp grass. I stepped onto grassy soil that climbed for a little before being enclosed very gently into the dark stillness of near-flat meadows, unseen but nearly blank of confusion away from the rank growth of plants. I rounded crossing over lawns finding their farther ledges having learned the overall trend of this area that sloped down, into the closing arms of a valley deeper down a little depression that only grew tighter. The mountain rock was white and rugged.

Behind the grass was a small clump of trees obscuring the abrupt edge behind it and I slunk into the trees, finding my way through to the other diagonal beyond them. They were the corner of a house. Its light went as far as the rectangle of its property that had not been fenced but a little trimmed and tamped down, with a folding chair and table on its openest lawn. I rounded it over to the doorstep and decided to call in.

*

“My final pokémon,” Brawly said, and called him out. “Hariyama.” The pokémon flashed into place neatly replacing its fainted team member. He started to advance and Grovyle, reluctant, pranced forward trying to meet him halfway until they stood around the middle pokéball, Hariyama in the center of the red half and Grovyle at an edge of hers. I called, “Pound.” Hariyama made two steps forward and angled his third step to better swivel him into a crouch diagonal to the direction he’d moved, and this shuffling had made Grovyle step back an inch but now Hariyama only stood waiting. Grovyle walked around a little to face him, then paused again before jumping at him spinning with the lash of a sharp tail. Before she was off the ground Hariyama’s left foot was going forward and his hands folded around her tail in a crumpling moment before he spun hard around and slammed her entire body into the ground. Mark moved in his place and he said, “What was it about this pokémon? He defeated you didn’t he?” Riesa said, “Yeah, no, uh – nothing. Nothing important now.”

Hariyama now stood at the center of his half, crouched, with Treecko still slammed on the ground to his diagonal right. Her tail was still twitching. “Give us one more hit Grovyle!” I said quietly. She stirred and rolled over to her side before getting up. I told her to get out of Hariyama’s reach and hit him with Bullet Seed. She bounded backward three long strides away from the pokéball and as soon as she slid to a stop Hariyama advanced straight at her, took two of her seeds head on, and thumping on the ground in front of her threw her off her feet with the palm of one hand. I put my hand to my collar and tugged. “Grovyle, darn it…” She struggled to her feet as Hariyama moved back. “You’re still faster than him,” I said. “Get really far away and keep out! Dodging is more important than getting a hit in.”

Grovyle was now moving as Hariyama disengaged from his crouch and, setting a beat with the weight of his regular footfalls, moved straight forward as Grovyle cut a lengthening circle further and further from him, scurrying half sideways with one eye on the opponent. “Arm Thrust,” Brawly said for the first time. Slowing a little she fired a bullet and kept moving. Hariyama didn’t stop but bounced it with only a raised palm. When she was nearly to the border of the field Grovyle stopped to turn full on him and fired the other five. She had to angle it in the air for the heavy bullets to reach such a distance. Hariyama burst forward moving shockingly fast but Treecko reacted at the same instant running forward to force him to meet in a corner of his own half of the field, still firing and as soon as Hariyama put his crouching weight on his left foot Grovyle leapt to his left crossing totally over to his blind rear side, and then she paused for just an instant but moved again before I had to tell her to run first fire later. She got to her half of the pokéball as Hariyama turned toward her and, her legs pinwheeling hard but well, started firing immediately. Hariyama blocked all four without moving. Mark said, “You lost to this pokémon didn’t you Riesa?” “Yeah. I hadn’t trained enough, I guess.” “Is that what you were doing in there?“ “Where? Oh look look, Hariyama is about to…” She trailed off. Mark said, “To what?” “Or wait sorry, maybe not.”

Grovyle reached the middle of her half of the field. At this point Hariyama finally advanced on her. He made eight paces to the further one-fourth of the field and Grovyle did four more away from him. Then he stopped and crouched, and apparently didn’t have to move any further. His left hand went down and folded up into a fist while the right made a flat over his chest just above it. Grovyle curved away and got even further to his right just as he made one step turning diagonal away from her and his hands rotated to turn the folded one up but not to open it, only to make it tighter and then he made another step turning just in her direction and suddenly sped up in a rush, his closed hand whizzing bright yellow when, just as he came to a stop Grovyle somersaulted further upfield to avoid an expanding block of light that suddenly shot out of his closed palm and rippled the ground in a straight line toward her. The shock broke her landing out and threw her back almost to the border. She got up quickly turning on her momentum. “Did you mean, Mark when,” Riesa said, “when I met you two first, in that cave?” “What?” Mark said. “Oh, the question I asked…? Yeah that’s what I meant. It looked like you didn’t have Flash. Were you trying to train?” “Oh no, I was just…”

Lewis said “Hey Mark did you see what Hariyama’s preparing? Atashka’s going to lose.”

“Shut up, Lewis,” Mark said. Hariyama advanced another two steps without standing up as Grovyle squeezed in to the farthest corner of the field and turned around. Suddenly she acted first. Her opponent had just folded his hands and he quickly opened them on the very first step and slammed the light into her but this time she slashed with her arm blade and under a brief streak of green the Arm Thrust split in two and disintegrated. I heard Riesa stifle a laugh. “He he! This is exactly what I did!” But Hariyama made another forward step and when he thudded the ground another glow shot forward and Grovyle, fresh out of space to move in, slashed it again off center then hit the ground and rolled in the moment Hariyama moved and just got away from him, a third arm thrust missing her and a fourth dissipating just behind that pushed her on her way. She didn’t lose her balance.

Brawly said, “Breaking for a trainer item.” Grovyle leapt her last step backward and stood on her feet, still tense. Hariyama got up and walked to Brawly. I called Grovyle back, too.

Walker said, “If you use a Super Potion it should fix Grovyle’s blade.” Yuki said, “Also though Atashka, she’s hurt in her tail too and I think it’s probably slowing her down. It might help with her agility if you fixed that. Your call.” “Obviously it’s not,” Walker said. I said, “Really Grovyle?” She jerked her butt in my direction. “Just for that I’m not treating it.” Mark said, in a small voice, “Riesa, doesn’t it look like it’s about to rain?” “Just a little cloudy,” she said. He said, “Brawly’s using an X Speed.”

*

“I didn’t know this route would be so long,” I said, “but I packed for two days in any case.” She leaned back to fold her hands together and said, “Good, I always plan for an extra day. Did you start in the morning?” “Yeah, around eight,” I said, “but I took my time. I was planning to spend most of the day off-route.” “Oh, I see. You should still have dinner with me, because then you’ll have one meal to spare. Are you stopping anywhere for the night?”

“I’ll cross the cave overnight,” I said. “It doesn’t make a difference underground. And I should really finish the stock I brought with me.” “Even then, have that stock with me. I’ll find something good to throw into it.”

She was an adult and wore track pants and a baggy wool sweatshirt and glasses, with her hair tied up tightly in a twist. When I’d shown myself she’d immediately found the cut on my right hand and given me a bandage. She sat beside me at a computer table that I had walked a circling path through the room to get to, a table swamped with printouts except for the clearing she’d muscled away for us. Behind us, DEVON INFRA SOLUTIONS was stacked in a central mount, while the wall that continued to our right was the freest, only covered with charts and posters transparent taped to the plaster. Then a small empty bookshelf, and a table with three neater stacks, the closest ones blue with the logo of official League shipments, then free territory with paper-overflowing stacks of cardboard boxes, peripherals, With Love From The Vermilion Seaside, LAN, INKJET PRINTER, the Light Storage Bible, an entire plastic trunk full of floppy drives, a buried CRT monitor underneath a stack of paper rolls, the only room Lanette really used so the only place anything of hers ended up. “You’re the one who manages the Pokémon Storage System,” I had asked her. “It’s my computer you access,” she said. It might have been evening now, but Mauville was still lit with water-pale white sunlight and growled with diesel traffic where I had tucked away Beautifly last. Lanette asked me if I’d climbed Mt. Chimney yet.

In fact I’d crossed the desert instead, afterwards finding that its following respite of sudden verdant wetness was brisk in this season and also strangely bitten with fire, like the trees in cold weather that smell like wood smoke while standing unburnt in their place, and then I’d understood soon enough, when there started to come a dry snowfall early for the month that muffled what would have been green wild grass to ashy brown fuzz, a blanket over the world and when from Fallarbor Town, a tender break of sprouts, I’d round back south to a cave that had been named Meteor Falls, then, emerging from this cave into a grassy decline, only then I would see Route 114, in an afternoon blowing to me from a past rung with friends I had made on the way, and a challenge still waiting in the future.

Lanette sat over her keyboard for a few seconds, then got up, holding her twist in both hands. “Go on, I’m only moving around,” she said. I glanced sideways as her huge curly brown hair fell. She said that this valley route was popular with a few Hikers and Campers if they were a match for the cave that followed, the air just stayed clear here somehow, and that the area was also a favorite with Swablu and Altaria. The time she preferred to make errands through it was soon after lunch, when the day was actually at its warmest.

She also mentioned that from perhaps five years ago, the autumn rains were being steadily pushed earlier and earlier in the year until they now fought intermittently with almost midsummer heat, and instead the winter had gotten drier, she had been there during brushfires as late as September or even October. Some cycles the weather made in its natural course, she explained, and some were man-made. There was an institute somewhere in Hoenn that would have explained which this was. She moved into this subject with an interest that was less for the thing itself and more for the possibility of engaging me in a conversation about something interesting. I was pretty engaged because of her tone of voice, it made me listen to every word she said.

The crossing from Rustboro I had made months before Rusturf Tunnel in fact opened for safe passage and then, slipping out from the rational course of routes in this way, as if I’d done everything only to escape from this course, I’d broken connection from my family entirely, not a word about my locations, my plans, when I would get back, how I was doing. The route outside looked to have darkened to night. Her house glowed yellow and warm on the overgrown lawn.

Lanette said that there was a certain inevitable shape to the descending valley, and this shape dictated to a lot of things what they were supposed to be, for instance the precipitation and forest cover, also the lighting, the movement of people and pokémon through the route, and the path the eyes took when seeing the view from a place like the south-facing lawn of her house.

*

This time, Hariyama stopped in the center of the pokéball. I’d made a calculation. If he’d really used X Speed on Hariyama, then it might be better to keep up Grovyle’s agility to its maximum before thinking about her attacks. If one more hit landed on her, it was all over. And she was still no match for him in close combat, so Leaf Blade was out of the question. So I used a potion on the root of her tail and also gave some for her hindquarters, and when I did she noticed the improvement too, and stayed behind Hariyama walking to stop twenty feet diagonal from him, leaned hard right on all four legs.

Before Hariyama was crouched she fired a volley of five bullets, all of which he blocked, then fired again three, again blocked, then ran right which hand Hariyama had kept underneath the left making him reverse them much faster than she could run but she didn’t fire, she just stayed forelegs to the right. Prompting him to move… He didn’t though and she darted right again and fired, was she figuring that he was right handed? all six bullets blocked and she advanced three wary steps forward, barely a fraction of the distance, then crouched again. But Hariyama did nothing.

Not knowing what to do, she paused hesitating longer this time. Then she leaned forward toward Hariyama. As soon as her first step Hariyama got up and stood straight and this spooked her into firing three more bullets which he blocked again, maybe a little faster at the most. She had to use a move that had more dexterity, or she stood no chance of hurting him. She stood up and slinked closer to him, a good ten feet. It was still farther than his Arm Thrusts went, I guessed. Hariyama crouched and raised his arms; now she started on a curve to his right side firing bullets as she moved and the first one he blocked but then stood up taking the second bullet straight on and swiveled to his right, taking a bullet, four steps forward, so fast he dodged a bullet, crouched, took a bullet, took the last bullet as Grovyle skidded to a stop and disappeared in a blur to reappear, huge and blurry in contact with Grovyle and send her sliding into the ground such a short distance that only she knew what kind of power was in the move.

“Check your pokémon, is she fainted?” Brawly said, as the far door opened and teenagers in tracksuits started entering. “Good match. Train hard and challenge me again.” Riesa had her mouth open.

 

[Praxiteles]

The surf from Route 104 floated down in thin white lines to Dewford beach. The water was heated by the sun the whole way so that it was bathing hot by the time it came over the yellow sand of the shore. Dewford waited just as warm, since it didn’t have a lot of seasons, dry and hazy with sleepy breezes. We were in the open air garden of the soft drinks bar which was tall and cramped with big-leaved tropical plants, fenced in from the arid sand of the rest of it. The sound and air of the sea managed to float over the leaves.

“Riesa, how did you get to Dewford over the water?” I asked her.

“She hired a boat personally,” Mark said. He was opposite from me, while Riesa sat across a corner. He was the only one who still wasn’t done eating.

“That must have cost a lot,” I said, widening my eyes.

“No, I mean it did,” Riesa said, “but I was saving up for it. I’m a little cleaned out now.” Her voice was so hard to hear that I was just glad we were sitting at a table in an empty place.

“The problem is that you can get private boats from either side,” Mark said, “Slateport or Petalburg, but there are no boats that are based in Dewford at all. When you got dropped off you must have expected to, be stuck here,” he said to her.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“What are you gonna do now Atashka,” Yuki said. “You couldn’t even do what Scipio did. Are you going to challenge Brawly again?”

I picked up my straw to chew on. “I was planning to you know, because this island is so far you want to finish all your business while you’re still here. But right now I’m pretty sick of it. I’ll be going to Slateport.” Riesa looked up at me.

“You’re moving on?” Mark said. “You can’t beat Brawly with only one pokémon, it’s common sense. You should work on your team more.”

“Yeah and I don’t think there’s any pokémon on this island that I need,” I said. “We pretty much saw everything in Granite Cave that one time.”

“Atashka see if you want to train, you have to move around,” Yuki said. “See new trainers, go to new places, new pokémon too. Besides, this island is – even more than other places, nothing happens here. I feel like I’m missing out on my training too.”

“Hm mm,” Walker looked at me. He’d been pretty sullen and untalkative, so I said, “You don’t get a lot of wild pokémon here do you.”

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds so it looked like he was going to ignore it. But, “Both of us have pretty much gotten better and better at fighting Brawly. Either you learn to fight Brawly, or you learn under Brawly. Either way it’s a waste of time.”

“So what I’m saying Atashka,” Yuki said, “it’s a good move to go to Slateport right now. You think it’s hard to get around the region now, but you don’t know about later. And you should get a team of three. It’s between too few pokémon and too many. Mark has two pokémon and it gives him trouble. Walker always ends up neglecting one of his, he has four. Do like I do.”

“Okay okay,” Walker said, “that’s fine. I never said I had any trouble with… So do you have your Mr. Briney around?”

“He’s in the area!” I said. ”It looks like he’s having a lot of fun because he likes these parts. I just have to wait until he drops by here again.”

“Great.”

“I put him to a lot of trouble I think.”

“It’s okay, take it easy.”

Someone’s shadow dropped over me, and I looked up to see Lewis hanging over the table in a uniform. “Hey not that I have any expectations of you, but are you guys even going to pay?”

I swiveled around. “You’re working here now?”

“What, we’re not done eating!” said Mark. “Get me another chocolate soufflé.”

Everyone at the table groaned except for Riesa who gave an intense grin. “Mark,” Walker said, “don’t you think you’ve had enough of those? If they were actually good it might have been better, but their soufflés are absolute crap. You eat the slowest and you’re the one who orders everything.”

“So what,” Mark said, “I pay my share don’t I? You can’t blame me for how fast I eat. That’s not up to me.”

“It is, it is up to you,” Yuki said. “Eat faster, you twit. Or I can’t guarantee what happens to your little Roman moon friend.”

Mark’s eyes filled with rage.

“Back to the point!” Walker banged the table. “We’re actually trying to get Riesa off the island. Atashka, the whole problem was that there were no boats. But you said Mr. Briney is coming soon?”

“Yeah, he is,” I said. “Are you saying… Of course! That would be completely okay, yeah! You mean Riesa can go with me up to Slateport? I’m sure Mr. Briney won’t mind either. That is, if…” I looked at Riesa and I wasn’t sure what expression I had, because she looked back for a few seconds trying to think of her answer.

Mark said, “Hey that’s perfect! I can’t believe no one thought of that before. But…”

“Mark, shut up!” Yuki said. “Riesa, sorry. Are you okay with this idea?”

“We’ll probably leave sometime after noon,” I said, “and get there before evening.”

“That much time for a motorboat, you’re kidding!”

“Shut up Mark!”

The soufflé arrived in this time and Lewis leaned on Mark’s side of the table to watch all of us. Everybody looked at Riesa at the same time.

“It’s, it’s no problem,” she said. “Actually it’s – really glad, that’s a good plan! I just don’t want to be any trouble for you two…”

“Nonsense,” Mark said. “No trouble,” I said. “Mr. Briney will be happy to see you too.”

“Oh…” she grinned. “You should tell me when we’re going to go, I’ll get ready in no time. And – “

“Riesa,” Mark said, “how fast do you think Atashka gets ready? You should worry about these things later. For now, relax. This is an island resort. I bet you’ve…”

“Well yeah,” Yuki said, “that reminds me! Riesa, you’ve been here a week so you must have seen all the places here. Have you been to the beach?”

“I saw it,” she said, “when I was training…”

“But you never actually went there for real, did you,” Yuki said. “That’s a shame! Dewford is too hot around June-July! This is the best time for it. Riesa we need to have a beach day before you and Atashka leave!”

“A-are you kidding me!” Lewis yelled. “We had one three days ago!”

“You did?” I yelled. “You guys didn’t even tell me?”

“That, that’s why we can do one now!” Yuki screamed back. “Don’t shout at me!”

“That’s awesome!” Mark said. “Beach day! I’m gonna do the backstroke this time without flotation!”

“Wait, no wait!” Riesa finally got in. “Hang on a second! I still think all of you are doing… I mean, won’t that be too much for…” “For who, Riesa?” Mark said.

“What about Mr. Briney?” she said. “I don’t want to make him wait just on my behalf…”

“What about him?” I said. “If he doesn’t come tomorrow, we’ll have the beach tomorrow. And if he does, we’ll just make him come with us!”

“Heck yes!” Mark said. “Beach day!”

“Mark calm down,” Walker said.

“But I’m pumped,” I said to support him. “I didn’t get any vacation either, while I was here, you know. You guys just kept buying me Aspear soda every evening. Riesa, what about you? We didn’t even ask if you wanted to go the beach. Do you?” My sister in large groups with imposing situations. “If you just want to stay in for a day that’s totally okay too.” I gave a smile.

“No, I what’ll I do in my room all day?” she said. “Let’s go to the beach! I’m pumped. That’s right, I’m pumped too!”

*

Slateport on the other hand seemed like it was protected in its south nook in the coast; the line of trees and freshwater bounding its north was so warm that it blew through even something like cold wind. Mauville might have been more compact, as a city. But Slateport was easier to navigate, now that I’d seen the other thing, because its neighborhoods were a lot clearer to separate and identify. They were probably distinguished by age.

Moving in a big city was more interesting than the wild, in a different way, but it was never possible to be alone. I would have liked to see the buildings with the people out of the way. As it is I was restricted to city people activities out of a sense of even propriety. First I tried browsing shop windows, and after I realized how completely useless that was to me, I decided to try to head towards some landmark of Slateport, some old attraction or building. But that was at the farthest end from where I was. It would have involved walking through a lot of cramped residential boredom.

I’d eventually sat down at someone’s home café in a colony area, cozy with blocks of identical houses and large trees. They had carrot cake with frosting, which I liked. This place was nearer the north end. At the south shore you had the oldest part of the city, the sea walkways, and these were harbors and jetties or little shaded courts, all made out of a tarnished white marble; it was like no one had needed anything but the sea business for at least a generation in the very beginning. Close to these was the oldest neighborhood of houses, which was maybe called Watchhouse Colony; the reason I was unsure was because the houses were also close to the shipyard so I thought a few people had called it Shipyard Colony. And at the same level was the huge Open Market. As soon as you came to the shipyard, that was the start of Shipyard Street and the opening to the main center of the city, however a little west of the street was also what had been called the Industrial Area and left open for some 500 acres of factories that had mostly declined to be built, so that a patch of the city above the shore was open undeveloped land with a scattering of factory buildings, with a few warehouses and iron yards closer to the shipyard street.

Then, at the end of Shipyard Street started the colonies. They were very close to the new market center of the city, and the Pokémon Mart and Pokémon Center were in fact still north of them, closest to the north route entrance. Also, somewhere in this scheme fit the civic roads that had the most venerable buildings and widest, quietest lanes. As I finished this summary in my head, I tapped it over for not only coherence, but ease of comprehension to one listening. I had learned since I’d left home that there were important limitations to what would easily get across in spoken conversation.

Now that I’d got icing on my hands I paid the bill and started walking. The best thing about walking was that it provided its own purpose. Otherwise I would have had to think about what to do. I saw that there were six or seven flyers posted on street corners about apparently the same thing, and I tried to look at one on a streetlight pole. It was a talk, maybe. THE QUARTERED SPLINTCAKE. I’d never heard of such a tale before. The image was just a long wallpaper of cave glyphs. Splintcakes were popular before the time of steam because they stored the nutrition of berries in dry tacks. That could have probably placed it anywhere in the past. I looked at the subtitle. Trainer, Groomer, Master, Breeder: Our Evolving Relationships with Pokémon. Something in my stomach jumped painfully. Either way, it looked stupid. It was probably something about pokémon rights but the presentation shown in the subtitle was hopelessly primitive. There was no way these people would agree with me. It was an address in Merai Colony, some company’s building or it said a President’s house somehow, as in their actual residence, also shown on a map for ease. I moved on.

It was probably nearing noon, and the road I was walking down came to meet a smaller street at a right angle, more compacted with houses of differing shapes and smaller lawn areas. There was little I could do to lose the tree shade, and the asphalt breathed in an afternoon nap of sliding, pulsing sunlight spots. I smelled something chemical: it may have been very faint enamel paint, or simply ply sheets breathing in the wind, or the smell of pavement. Better than all that, there was no one outside. Only the house windows stared at me with unlit eyes.

One house at the opposite street caught my eye, a very showy thing with lilac roof shingles, a three-sided balcony peering from its front in the rain-warding Johtoan style, and a garden all over its main gate. I averted my eyes, but the sign had been in front of me: “Pokémon Fan Club / President’s House.” Supposing this had been the exact hour of the talk, I wouldn’t have gone to see it. Then I got a glimpse of the house owner. I went up to the white iron fence and asked him a question.

*

It was a different beach from the kind we were used to, desert beach and we were both dried out like raisins. But it was a fun day. Most of the local kids hadn’t even broken into a sweat except for Lewis, he kept dipping in the water not that that hid anything. I got to see Riesa’s starter pokémon, an onix, her name was Rola and she only stuck with us for a while before slinking into the side of Granite Cave with the pine trees. Okay, first we just took a cooler out and sat on the shore for a while, under umbrellas, and talked about stupid stuff, but then, Mark really had brought blow-up tubes and after it’d gotten hot enough to go into the water we all started swimming, and Mark got left to be the only one wearing them because everyone else knew how to swim. No, Riesa put them on too but she knew too. She said she was making sure but it was just to be nice to him.

“No, I’m really scared of water!” she said. “I still don’t like floating on my own.” The second island was in the corner of Dewford where the harbor was, but on this beach, you could probably see north all the way up to Petalburg. There were boats or speed bikes powering up and down the blue water, and probably swimmers but those were too far to see.

I said, “That’s pretty brave what you’re doing then.” She looked underneath and realized there were at least ten feet down there. “No way!” she said and paddled closer to shore.

“But I really like it too,” she said smiling. “I’ve always wanted to go on the sea routes of Hoenn.”

“Hey Riesa!” Mark said, “Look at this! Tell me how it looks from above!” Riesa nodded. He threw his body into the water and started pinwheeling with both arms. Yuki sighed. “Walker already told you everything that was wrong with it. Not that you’re going to listen…” Riesa nodded. She said, “And, I don’t really know anything about swimming either!”

Mark tried to curl himself upright and as a result almost sank down. “No,” he said coughing. “I think I look funny! You gave me all those stupid tips, you didn’t even tell me how I looked doing it. Riesa, did I look funny?”

“I thought you looked okay,” she said.

“Is there any soda left?” Yuki said.

“Go get some,” Walker said. “Lewis got a whole crate back from work.”

“Yeah, but the crate wasn’t full…” She tsked, standing over the cooler. “The ice is melted.”

“You can handle it,” Mark said, “it’s been ten minutes. Atashka, you thirsty?”

I shook my head. “I just had some, Mark.”

“He got it in those glass bottles, though,” Yuki mumbled. She pried off the cap with her fingers.

I heard a whooshing from the jetty side so I got out of the water yet another time. “I think it’s Uncle Briney,” I told Walker.

Riesa looked up. Yuki was back in the water, as though she hadn’t heard. No one was ready, they didn’t realize we were going today!

“Atashka, sit down,” Walker said. “I made you sit out the last time a boat came, too. If Mr. Briney really came he – ”

“I hear a bunch of wet sea pups,” I heard, “gossiping about me behind my back!”

“Uncle Briney!” I turned around. “You already came?”

His voice was embarrassingly puffed up, like he was talking to five year olds. “You didn’t let me near any of your friends when I came last time. Who are these children? Tell me your names. Who’re you,” he said to Walker who was closest.

“John Walker,” he said. “My mother is in freight ships.”

“A name that frightening, no doubt she is,” Briney said, and Walker gave Yuki a glance. “How long has she been in the business?”

“I don’t know, twenty years.”

“Twenty years? I haven’t heard of her. And what about you? His best friend?”

“I’m not his best friend,” Yuki said, and Walker pulled his cap over his forehead and stumbled away. “My name’s Yuki. I’m a pokémon trainer.”

“You’re a pokémon trainer? I’ll take that to mean the others aren’t pokémon trainers. Have you traveled, Yuki?” She shook her head. “What about you?”

“Don’t look at me,” Lewis said and tried to make himself smaller. “I’m not part of this.”

“Well, and wh – ”

“Hello there Mr. Briney!” Mark hurried out of the water to shake his hand. “My name’s Mark! I’m a friend of your Atashka! Can I call you Uncle Briney? Sorry my hand’s wet.”

“It’s all right, boy,” he said surprised, “the sea’s to blame for that. What’s your name?” He nodded to Riesa. “Very quiet girl.”

“Sir!” she said coming to attention. “Please let me board your ship along with Atashka!”

Everyone turned to look at her. “What what what?” Uncle Briney said.

*

He leaned over the fence, his blazer sleeves rolled between the metal curls.

No, but I think it’s very good that you’re going off road on your routes. I’m supposed to explain to you the dangers. If you’re traveling there are plenty of hazards of getting something, not having enough food, not having enough water, getting tired, or injured, losing a battle against a bad pokémon, and most of these are always there, whether you make a certain kind of precaution or not. The route is designed to show you the way. You wouldn’t be aware of this yet, but there are really some huge wide empty spaces in Hoenn. The one everyone gets to know is the desert. There are many, if you go off the trail. For sure, if you stay outside for too long without civilization you’ll be in trouble. But Hoenn is really much smaller than some places. Orre, … Hoenn is like a connected line of homes, gardens, parks, villages… you haven’t seen some other regions

Of, of – parks? gardens, Mr. Chairman? All the routes are like constructed they feel like a, landscaping, nature trail. Aren’t there any open –

But exactly, my friend, you’ve said it in just the right words. I’m very glad you think the same way. Actually, not all of Hoenn is constructed. Have you been to Fallarbor? Not yet? There you will find some largely uninhabited country. There is country everywhere in Hoenn, you’ll see. This is what you’ll realize when you go off route. Why… it’s not risky in the least to take that way. My Wally has gone off route, getting here, because the way is shorter. Actually he tries to avoid conflict. The agreement is that pokémon go to the routes to battle with human teams. That’s how it’s been since time untold. These pokémon come with the expectation to be defeated, to win against them, or to be captured. That’s why, I’m sure you’ve seen, there are no wild pokémon who aren’t good to fight on the routes. Take a count the next time you go and you’ll see it. They all have attacking moves. Ah, but that means that when you go off route, the pokémon become more peaceful. In the overwhelming case they don’t want anything to do with you. They have their own business. You can remember that, but don’t go into the country with no pokéballs of course!

The talk… it’s more about getting into a certain state of mind, than directly about how we are supposed to talk to our pokémon. I used those three, iconic, roles… Trainer, Groomer, Master, Breeder. I think it’s true that pokémon, and pokémon trainers too, spend their time in a world where the conventions of city humans are more or less absent. I think we can’t ignore this territory. I don’t mean that this is pokémon territory, any more than human territory. But as long as we keep hauling all our activities with pokémon into purely our turf, there will be a certain injustice. I hope I’m not boring you? All this injustice and rights! I think that you are someone who thinks about this. Are you, now? It doesn’t matter. Perhaps you’re not coming to the talk, I think.

My ward, Wally, ran away from his parents almost two months ago, I’ve made him make up with them since but he’s not showing signs of stopping or going back or anything. Of course, it’s against his parents’ wishes to travel so much. They want him home in Verdanturf. Have you been there? Ah yes, I thought so. A different kind of gentleness, Verdanturf. Wally has never felt comfortable being a pokémon trainer. But now he’s found a road. He’s a little sickly, but it’s a good thing that it doesn’t hurt his pride. Now hang on just a moment, I have something that would go down just perfect for your little pokémon, you have to

Oh you really have to go. I understand. But hold on just a minute more. I want you to meet my Wally. It’s one grudging request of mine. Of course if you have something else I can’t oblige you to come, but he’s stopping home around 6:00 in the evening today, and in a few days he’ll leave. If you’re at all curious, if you want to talk about the future, if… someone more clearheaded about pokémon than I am, I’ll say it frankly? You’ll think about it? Then I won’t bother you a second time. Go on, my friend. Best of luck!

– A kind of ruined overgrown scrapyard neighborhood that the street led further into, but walking roughly east along it, soon a larger main road was to be found. What was that nonsense he’d said about territories… I’d barely been listening. I remembered that there are no zones that belong to neither humans nor pokémon. Such places have no owners and are hence no territory. – But no, my dear, my discussion has to do with more than geographical zones and ownerships. Perhaps what I mean by it is only how humans and pokémon would behave, in this no-zone, in the absence of their societies. – There’s no such no-zone. – But I still wish to idealize it. By visualizing it I say that we could gain insights – and I don’t mean about factual matters, about the way things are, but ethical insights – how we should honorably act.

– You’re nothing but a way of killing time. Wally. The main road kept going, and I didn’t notice much around me. I hadn’t had time to fully remember him while the Chairman was talking, but at least I was sure he was from Petalburg, I didn’t know what he was saying about Verdanturf. – Petalburg, cottony early evening, squares of ponds lawns and lilypads, an earnestly expectant town, like the evening wait of a sick child. It was mostly dreaming, and I’d dreamed about all these places that were no longer even pictures but just moods of longing. Petalburg was now another mood. – I had to realize I hadn’t thought this before. If I went back home, it would not be the same as when I’d left; and what I remembered now was neither to do with the experience that I’d actually lived; Petalburg now was an unmoving, indefinite wafer in between the past and present, which have no space between them.

– Did Wally really leave home to go training? In that case, I noticed a small river between Oldale and the Mauville area; no doubt he would have found a way to cross the river, perhaps talking to someone with a boat, or perhaps he’d had a friend. – He’d gone off route a substantial part of the way… As for me, it was Verdanturf, Mauville, Slateport… I would have to see Mauville a second time… north of that, I knew nothing more than what the map told me. – A route through which one would not be required to deal with a single person. I’d just talked to a random enthusiast from some evening club. – But it was possible, if you kept track. Food and supplies were not a problem because you could always pack what the Pokémon Center provided. Further, avoiding trainers was my very calling out on the road. If I simply stayed in the woods it would cease to be a problem. – A route from here to Fallarbor in solitude… From Mauville to Fallarbor. Or, even better, to let my pokémon out north of Mauville and never to make them go back in. A worthless form of company traded for a perfect unjustly-named solitude. And then I could get down to real training.

It wasn’t a clear road after Mauville; there was the Lavaridge Gym.

Then there was the inevitable day I’d realize I wasn’t out here on my father’s money, and start training again.

Ah…! I knew you’d pay a visit! You’re a few hours early but it doesn’t matter, he’s here. You didn’t tell me you knew him? You don’t know how glad he got when I told him you were here from Petalburg. You know, he was polite and deprecating about it but he hasn’t been home in months.

*

“… … … … … …
… … … … … Beep!

“Which dweeb got hold of this number?”

The other side of the boat’s deck bobbed up, and I got cradled into our side’s bench and railing. Then it went down and I had to prop myself up.

“Megan, I was missing your voice.” “I’ll punch you!” “So did you get your semester finals?”

“My what? No, they’re not happening this whole month.” “Really? You were talking about preparing when you saw me off, back then.” “No.” “That was almost two weeks ago.” “I was talking about a quiz, nerdass.” “Oh.”

“Aren’t you in school right now? I was debating whether to call because I had free time” “No school. Don’t talk about school.”

“What should I talk about, then?”

“I don’t know, you called me. What did you call me for.”

“Nothing, I don’t know. I had some free time so I opened my Pokénav.” “Where are you right now.”

“The sea route to Slateport.”

“Slateport? So you got the Knuckle Badge?”

“No.” “Ha ha ha! You ran away like a loser.”

“Shut up! I only had one pokémon to fight with, anyway.” “That’s because you don’t know how to raise a team.” “I did really well for one pokémon.”

“Why are you traveling so much if you don’t even know how to train? Is it because your dad’s rich?” “Megan, your dad’s rich too.”

“No, not that rich! Don’t try to hedge the subject! I’ve gotten news about you. You wasted almost two weeks in Dewford, drinking at bars and going to parties and such and then you got a girlfriend.”

“…”

“What have you got to say for yourself.” “How did you get any news of me! I’ve been in Dewford.” “I’ve got my sources.” “What the crap do you mean I’ve got a girlfriend? I don’t have any girlfriend.” “Sure you do. Anyway, darling, I’ve got to run. I have to watch a 3D movie, then I’ll get my hair done and then maybe I’ll go bowling in the arcade all evening. How many surround theaters do you have in Dewford again, dear?” “Megan, stop talking like that, that sounds horrible.” “I have to watch some cable TV, sweetheart. How many cable TVs do you have in Dewford again?” “Cable TV, are you serious! What do you think this is, a jungle?” “No, for real, I have to go. My friends are waiting.”

“Okay fine, whatever. Is Anna waiting? The girl you want to impress.” “I’ll punch you freak!” “Ha ha ha ha!” “Why did you call me for! You piece of crap! I admire her!” “Ha ha, okay!” “So you just shut up, okay?” “Sure, Meg. I’m ending the call.” “Okay, Atashka. I’ll call you later. Possibly today or tomorrow morning.” “Kay.”

“… … … … … …
… … … … … Click!”

“Do you still talk to your friends, at home?” Riesa said. There was hardly more than a few empty buckets on the floor of the deck, and they didn’t slide much. Mr. Briney looked at the sea from the cabin window in the room to our right, and Peeko perched on the roof just above him.

“Huh? My friends at home?” I said. She nodded. “My Petalburg friends I hardly talk to. It’s been a while…” Petalburg seemed way far back, and everyone we’d left there still seemed like very small kids. It was a little scary because I remembered it had hardly been two months. “I’ve only been two months or so on the journey,” I said. “Half of it was together with my sister. What about you?”

“Me too,” she said. “Um… I would say, maybe a month.”

“Do you keep in touch with your friends? With Mauville?”

“No. I mean, you made some new friends on, on the road, on…” She looked at me questioningly and I waited for her to finish her sentence, but she just said, “No, I don’t talk to my friends in Mauville. I had some good friends there.”

Petalburg was some kind of different world, I thought. I didn’t think of Petalburg or remember it enough to miss it. But we’d had our beautiful house… the library, the garden, the bedroom, the car; it was different now.

We’d been away from home, but leaving didn’t really feel all that much because both of us had gone together. But then Arauve ran away. This month in Dewford I’d been completely on my own. I didn’t have any friends. There were friends that you could talk to be friendly with help and get help from, everything, but they couldn’t literally be your companion. The other kind of friend was one that could be with you and then, instead of just you unbalanced alone, there’d be two of you. A stable party. For example, Megan, I guessed.

Riesa looked toward her feet with her hands together. I felt scared something like I’d felt in Rustboro after Arauve’d left. I was a lot stronger now but it was there. Yuki, Walker, Lewis, Mark had showed me a way to be grown up though. I had to keep my other kind of friends around me, too. I felt some determination.

“… … … … … …
… … … … … Beep!”

I got up and walked over to the other side.

“Hey there, Atashka.” “Hi, Dad.” “Uncle Briney told me about the program. You left Dewford around three or four, right?” “Yeah, 4:00.” “And you’ll get to Slateport by evening it looks like.” “I guess so. Is that okay? Uncle Briney’s with us.” “It should be fine, I think. Listen to whatever he tells you. He’s very fond of you two, you know. And you’ve got a friend with you?” “Yeah, her name is Riesa. She came here for the badge too, but she didn’t have any way off the island so Uncle Briney took her.” “That’s good. Is she a good kid?” “Yeah, dad.” “Reasonable to travel with?” “Yeah.”

“Good. You two will be keeping together after Slateport, too?” “Dad, I, don’t know. We’ll see.” “Try to make your journey together. She’s from Mauville, I heard. She’ll know that area. Maybe she might want to visit home or something.” “I’ll see, Dad.”

“Did you hear anything from Arauve?” “Not yet.”

“She’ll talk to you first, probably.” “Yeah.”

“Tell me if there’s anything wrong. Anything you need from home, any problem on the journey. You know you don’t take your dad seriously enough.” “How seriously should… Dad, you should do serious things. Then I’ll!” “Heh heh heh! As I said, anything at all. Uncle Briney will solve it or I will.” “Yeah. It’s all good. Thanks, Dad.”

“Okay, are you good then? I was about to get groceries when you called.” “You get the vegetables.” “Have a safe trip, Atashka. Bye!” “Bye.”

“… … … … … …
… … … … … Click!”

I tried to look at the waves coming against the boat’s side a little longer, then I turned back to Riesa. She was sitting the same way as before, her curly beige shirt tight around the stomach so her hands rested on the bell it made over her knees. It was just a style of thinking, I guessed.

I heard Uncle Briney speak from just above us: “Are you two bored enough yet? In a half hour we’ll see the Abandoned Ship.”

“Huh? Is there really an abandoned ship in these waters?” Riesa said.

“You can find everything in the waters around Hoenn,” he said. “It would take me my old age to show you everything. The catch is – Atashka, quiet down now – I promised your father we wouldn’t take before 7:00 to get to Slateport, so we won’t be able to go in. But I’ll give you a concession. If you can both show me how to climb on Wailmer, I’ll let you swim up to it.”

“I can do it!” I said. “And I can do it so that wild – ”

“Uh uh!” We looked at Uncle Briney. “Both of you, I said. Only if you’re both worthy will I let you go. Riesa, do you think you’re seabred enough?”

“Mm!” she said and nodded. “I can do it!”

“Riesa, I’m counting on you,” I said, but I didn’t know how she’d react. She smiled unimpressed, thankfully and said, “I’ll try not to disappoint.”

*

Arauve, do you like walking in the slightest? Do you enjoy the journey between cities? The Chairman was telling me you talked about the routes of Hoenn. I thought that maybe you were someone who felt the same way I do when I go into the places of this region. When I entered the forest near Oldale for the first time… I mean, when I… That was just a silly thought, so don’t mind me.

I do, actually. I do. I’ve been trying to find trails where people are not going to be found. And I, like –

I’m really, very glad to see you. I know we didn’t talk much in Petalburg, but… It can be pretty hard work sometimes, hiding from people and especially if you don’t know how those journeys are supposed to go. Ralts and I didn’t know whether the pokémon were going to challenge us when we met them. Mostly we spent our time hiding, or on the lookout. She’s gotten a lot stronger since I met her.

Is Ralts, any good at battling? I think she’s your only pokémon…

In the start, she wouldn’t battle at all. I think, if I had had to stand there and hit someone else with my whole body, I wouldn’t even have the nerve. We were both the same, in that way. We only thought about escaping. But eventually we had to learn a few things, there was no other way, and Ralts took the lead. I don’t know if I was supposed to teach her the techniques, but she would find something out by herself, the right way. And somehow if she found her confidence she did things, even outside the battle, that… you could only call it pokémon intuition. She used to look at me how to react. Later on… even the feelings I had… I think that I was following her lead.

No I mean, you mentioned pokémon encounters? outside of battle? I was trying to think of what kind of exchanges these could entail

I did mention that once. But Arauve, the reason I wanted to tell you… about… how I felt was that actually, I’ve really been getting into the work of a Pokémon Coordinator. It’s kind of hard for me to train pokémon for battle, because… I don’t want to do those things. But I still wanted to see Hoenn…

Wally I’ve been avoiding trainer battles the entire journey here, and the reason was that, I saw these conveniences placed there. Like the route was like a nature trail, there were these sort of, infrastructures! Placed right in the middle of the route. In the wild that’s supposed to be outside any city. And the place where my head was…

What a coordinator does is they also go through the journey a League trainer takes. If they want. There’s battling actually. But it’s like, the point of everything is different. When Ralts and I were fighting because… we thought we had to survive a gym, it was… But she has this thing called Condition. We found out that, you don’t just try to groom and eat the right diet and choreograph, you also have to train a little in combat! But because it’s for her Condition, it feels completely different.

But if you’re being, serious, there are ways… I looked for a way to keep the pokémon out and with me that doesn’t seem like it’s fake. And for that, you have to avoid people. You and the pokémon take a new area together. A route is just for walking and there’s nothing for a pokémon to do. But outside the route… it’s not a place for humans, it needs… you have to be bold, and, you need skills that are beyond the use of your feet.

Arauve? Arauve are you listening? Did Mr. Yamada tell you I was leaving next week? I’m going to try and make it all the way to Lilycove. Obviously there’ll be a lot along the way that has nothing to do with contests. Coordinators are supposed to slog just like pokémon trainers. It’s harder because you can really get muddy and not bathe for days and slog, but…

I’m not sure if I made myself, really clear…

I heard from your dad that, Atashka’s coming to Slateport. He’s coming… on motorboat? With Mr. Briney? They say he’ll be here by tomorrow evening.

*

 

[Praxiteles]

“Uncle Briney, what area is this?”

“Area? I would say we are sailing on Route 108, just about.”

The deck behind the cabin, all three of us in one corner of the railing. The water twinkled jewel-blue, so much blue that it was like a spill of dye. There was a mess of low, jutted rocks walling the boat on one side.

“Route 108? I know that, where in Route 108?”

“These kinds of locations don’t really have names, lad. This is part of the route corridor, like you can see, but soon on the right there’ll be a bit of a gulf and an opening into the open ocean. Of course, this boat is not fit for that journey.”

“Do you think wailord get this close to land?”

“Wailord… it would be difficult. They only come up the rarest of times. Around this season… If we can find the clues they leave, we might be able to find a place where wailord are ringing. That would be a nice sight to see, Riesa. They make a huge whirl of bubbles underwater and when it reaches the top, they burst up through the middle! We will look out for it.”

Riesa turned her head when he said her name, but didn’t smile or nod. She took a step onto the footing that the railing was on, obviously fascinated. Uncle Briney said, “Wailmer you get much more easily. Outside the route they get very bold.” The shore kept running along in the far distance, so it was the north side. “Is that a wailmer pod?” Riesa said.

“That’s the one.” “Where?” I looked out into the sea, beyond the route boundary where the water caught a surface glow from the sun. It all looked choppy to me.

“Look at the right side,” Uncle Briney said, “we’re just about to cross it. See where it’s darker.” I didn’t see any darkness, but I eventually found a cluster of light foam close to the rocks. As we crossed it a plume shot up several feet and dissipated in the air. “Look!” Riesa said, looking back at our expressions. “They did a water spout!”

“That’s pretty cool!” I said, and grinned with her. She turned away quick back to the sea. “Mr. Briney, what other kinds of pokémon are in the sea? Are there any rare ones?”

“Just the ones in picture books,” he said, “tentacool, magikarp, goldeen, over here anyway. But if you go into the deep ocean…”

The surface heaved. “There are deep sea pokémon… clamperl…”

“Is that a pearl pokémon?” Riesa said.

“Huntail,” he remembered. We’d never seen what Huntail looked like.

“How are we supposed to go into the deep ocean?” I said.

“You can’t go in there. If you had a diving suit you might go in there.”

Riesa looked at us out of the corner of her eye, and then she turned around and began to walk back to her bench. Uncle Briney said, “It’s time!”

I looked in the direction he was looking – the rocks opened up to our right and, in the middle of a bay of open sea, a rocky island. “The moment has come, kids. I’m going to bring out Wailmer and you try to ride him. Both of you know how to swim?”

I nodded but he’d asked Riesa, she said: “I can swim! I’ve gone swimming in the open sea.”

“You have?”

“Yep. I took lessons for almost a month when I was on a cruise with my parents.”

“That’s well. That means you’ll be courageous. Surfing is four fifths courage, you know. People are scared of how the open sea heaves. You should keep your head steady, that’s all you need.” He hurried to the cabin, and then the motor started bursting and the boat changed course. I sat down on the bench right next to us but when I shifted for Riesa, she climbed on the bench and kneeling watched us approach the island. There was just enough shore sticking out from one side of the rock for the boat to fit.

“I haven’t been on the open sea either,” I said. She was about to object and I said, “I mean it looks like you have”

“Yeah, of course I have.” She nodded self-importantly. “I’ve been around. I’m kind of a woman of the world if I don’t say it myself.”

“Oh yeah?” I grinned. “You’ve sailed the world, have you?”

“I’ve sailed a few seas.” She nodded, her eyes closed.

“You’re really enjoying the sea wind there,” I said.

“Mm, yeah.” She looked away, then looked back at me. “This is how seasoned sailors land a ship. They…” she put her arms out thinking of a story, “see how the beach rolls in.”

As we came within fifteen feet the motor cut out. Slowly the boat bobbed closer, still coming from the right side we were looking at and I couldn’t tell Riesa to sit back before the boat yawed down in her direction, hitting an invisible sand flat, and left her gripping the railing with both arms.

“Whoa there, lass!” Uncle Briney said. Lass was his name for Arauve, and, Peeko. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, my girl! I had to have warned you the ship would tilt.” Riesa slowly disengaged from the railing and got off her knees. “I was in the cabin so I clean forgot. Did you get hurt anywhere?”

The first thing she did with her head looking down was turn to me. “That’s what we call a…” She broke into giggles. “Perfect landing,” and then I did too when I realized what she was laughing at.

Uncle Briney stood looking at us, speechless. “I don’t know what is it with the two of you…”

When we subsided he turned again to her with his hands together: “Riesa, did you knock yourself anywhere? Do you want me to look at your arms?”

“No, no,” she said. “I’m okay. I handled myself, don’t worry, Uncle, Mr. Briney.”

“She’s,” I said, “she’s not a little kid. She’s kind of a seasoned traveler” and Riesa giggled again.

We let down the steps straight onto the beach. The sand of this sea was always bright yellow. Uncle Briney finally let Wailmer out and the pokémon shined his bright black eyes when he saw me, wide on both sides of his round bulk. I leaned in to climb on top of him, but Uncle Briney said, “Not you, lad, we know you are.”

Peeko perched right between Wailmer’s eyes. He floated silently up the sand until he was idling almost on the beach itself. Riesa was wearing shorts so she could go into the water right away, but he told her to step onto Wailmer first. “First we have to tell you how to sit. You’ll start understanding when you get moving.”

I released Grovyle, who’d been a soggy branch about the beach this morning, too. I could tell she’d never liked water. She’d even gone inside her pokéball instead of dealing with the heaving boat. When she found her bearings I saw her crouch on all fours, turning her tail to me, and slink under the shadow of the rock.

I went after her, stepping over some of the craggy stones that were all around the rock, and having to answer why I’d brought her here, told her I just wanted to ask what was up. She glanced at me with disgust, which was good enough for me. Even Treecko gets disgusted with me these days, I thought.

Riesa was yelling, so I walked back to that commotion, looking to see if Grovyle was coming along. Riesa seemed to be holding on pretty decently but when I came close it turned out she was slipping back and forth on Wailmer’s roundness which was going to topple her eventually. Uncle Briney said, “It’s not as easy as it seemed, is it?”

“No! I thought you’d just have to sit, but his skin is really….” she had to stop talking and then, slipping too far to her left, she splashed headfirst into the water.

I needed to find a way to laugh at her. I said, as her black head sputtered out, spraying water, “Is this how seasoned travelers do it?”

She spat over and over, her face screwed up.

“I need to learn from an expert! You’re hunting for fish… with your bare hands?”

She jumped to her feet. “No quiet down there!” she said, and spat out water again. “I… I know even you want to learn about the world, but you can’t ask stupid questions okay. Just watch, kiddo.”

“Riesa tell me too! Tell me tell me! Tell Grovyle she’s tired of all the stupid people around here.”

Grovyle stood awkwardly under the shade, her head bowed down almost to her chest and trying to keep out of trouble. Riesa said, “Your grovyle looks really condescending all the time, doesn’t she?”

“She started putting on airs when she evolved,” I said. “Right after. You should have seen her when she was a treecko.” Grovyle raised her head and brought it back down, trying to look as innocent as she could.

Riesa shook her head. “What a mean pokémon.”

“Wailmer’s also trained to hold people on him,” Uncle Briney said. “You will learn how to work together with him. Keep at it, lass.”

Wailmer turned around to Riesa and drifted down obligingly. I didn’t really see Wailmer all that often. He seemed kind of like someone who would work with Uncle Briney on the same business deals. He was pretty old too.

“Okay, this time I’ll do it,” Riesa said. Wailmer lowered down again to accommodate her. “I figured out a – aaaah!” She might have screamed a little louder but it didn't help – she dunked into the water again.

“This sand gets in my face!” she said.

I said, “That wasn’t even one second this time was it?” Riesa turned to me to answer that and Uncle Briney said, “Have a little while with it. It looks like you’ll manage easily. Atashka, I want you to help her, not waste your time around, all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not going to do it.”

“You’re being mean!” I puffed up my cheeks. Uncle Briney laughed.

“Now, now that we’re stopped I shall do some work on the ship,” he said. “I don’t want anything happening while I’m gone, Atashka.” “Yeah.” “Riesa, you too,” and it made her drop off mid-mount to nod and look straight at him.

Uncle Briney stood waiting for a second.

“Ha ha, go,” I said.

“Don’t worry, we have plenty of time to do everything,” and broke a small smile and went.

The sun had a hot and unobstructed way, but down closer to the right horizon there were a few waves of clouds like rolled sheets of cotton. Grovyle and I went to look for the side of the beach that was shaded. It was hardly a beach and the brown rock of the hill dropped straight into the water. I found barnacles or polyps planted on the wet sides of the rocks, and the water felt so warm that the moisture coming off it heated my hands. Bright evening was a good time to be out on the ocean.

Once Grovyle had glared at me enough, I went back to see what Riesa was doing. By this time they were already a few feet out of the direct shore. When I came close they’d made a half circle into the water and back in, and when Wailmer jerked to a stop it pushed Riesa off him and feet first into the water line.

“Riesa,” I said, and got down closer to both of them.

“What,” she said grinning along with me.

“Do you think you’re having trouble because you’ve been on the boat all day,” I asked her. She took her hands off Wailmer to look at me.

“Ever since I got off the boat,” I stood up straight with my eyes going nowhere, “the whole island’s been rocking, back and forth,”

“Hee hee! Yeah, that’s right! I feel like I’m still on the ship and the island is getting carried around.”

“You’re having to handle a lot,” I said. “I’m surprised you didn’t get seasick too. When I learned to ride, I was just on a picnic at the Petalburg beach. I was littler, too. Arauve, did it…” I stopped talking when I remembered that she did it faster than I did.

“Who?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Arauve’s your sister, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Your twin sister?”

“Yeah, we’re twins.”

“That must be weird? Do you two look alike?”

“We don’t look at all,” I said, “I’ve got more brown or greyish hair and she’s got really black hair. And her skin’s also a little darker. About our faces, I don’t even know – think there’s any similarity.”

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t look the same.” She hunched her head and, without waiting for Wailmer to come down, hoisted herself on him. “I can almost do it now,” she said.

“Great!”

“But even if I can’t, look, I’ve figured out how to get on him in deep water. So even if I fall off…” She had done it without Wailmer’s help. “That means I’m probably ready right now.” “We’ll ask Uncle Briney.” “Yeah.”

“Man, Uncle Briney said we have plenty of time?” I hunched my head pointing it up at the sky. “I sure hope so. We’re not done with today yet.”

“We probably do,” Riesa said. “See where the sun is? It’s not summer, so it’s always a little lower. This is probably four o’clock.”

Grovyle came grudgingly around the side of the island, bored enough now and bent down to the water, showing a little interest in the sea. The water line rolled just short of her feet and lapping mine.

I sat down. “Yeah, I noticed that. This whole day’s been like a vacation. I mean I was pretty much on vacation anyway, but like, vacation from training. For me even training can get kind of harsh, you know? We started in the morning with a beach party and then Uncle Briney came, and he knows how to have a good time, you should have seen him with me and Arauve when we were little…” Riesa grinned. “And now we get to see the open ocean. Must be pretty normal for you, but…”

“Atashka?”

“What’s up?” She was turned sideways from me on Wailmer.

“You’re going to Slateport so you can keep challenging gyms?”

“Well, yeah. I am supposed to be following a League route.”

“So then you’ll go to… What‘ll you do, when… you get to Slateport?”

“I don’t know. I’m looking for someone, too, so I’ll see if I can find her… I think I’ll just hang out there for a while.”

She started her head toward me. “Do you think, if… if we…”

“What is it?” I said. I had figured out what she was going to say.

She looked at me distant and expectant for a little longer, then she turned away. “It’s okay. Hey Atashka. I want you to do something.”

Grovyle perked. I said, “Huh?” Her voice was suddenly completely different.

“You know what Uncle, Briney said? He said both of us have to show we can get on Wailmer. You said you’ve done it, but he said both.”

“No…?”

“Yes.” She cracked. “You know once you learn how to ride a bike, you, never forget it or something? I guess it’s the same with surfing! Atashka, why don’t you surf with Wailmer a little! You should give me some advanced tips! It’ll be a demonstration.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t think…” She gave me a perplexed look – “I ONLY HAVE TO do it in front of Uncle Briney, right? I just don’t see… why…”

Her smile became wider. “Oh, you want Uncle Briney to be around too! That’s easy, he’s right in the boat. You want me to call him? Mister,”

“No! Wait, I’ll do it!”

“Oh, okay! That’s okay! Here!” She moved away from Wailmer and the pokémon came up expectantly to the water line. I had a look at his body from up close. Aside from the two gel-smooth flippers on distant sides of him, there was nothing on his body to break the perfect roundness. I tried to remember how Riesa had done it and crossed one of my arms over his left flipper.

Riesa was looking eager. “You don’t have to do it so slow, I can follow. Two seasoned old sailors. You two must really be old friends.”

I flashed her an interviewee smile and went back to my problem. Riesa seemed to have been climbing up all at once, in one hop. I had to figure out one good pull. I was good at climbing walls. I pulled my other arm over too as far as it would go, but it didn’t get any kind of a grip. Then I tried throwing myself out of the foot of water. Wailmer was like a wet balloon. I managed to cling on and when our rocking started to still, Wailmer slowly disengaged and tried pulling us into deeper water. But as soon as he accelerated I fell off.

“Incredible!” Riesa was clapping. “Atashka, I just fall backwards! I’ve never fallen on my face! How do you do that?”

I wiped open my eyes and turned around. Grovyle had already gone back, but now there was Uncle Briney in my field of view.

“Atashka! Are you enjoying yourself?”

“You want to make fun of me too?” I stood up and dropped my hands down. “You do it too, I don’t care.”

“You’re rusty at it,” he just said. “But Riesa’s all right now. Get to where she is and we’ll set off.”

When Uncle Briney thought we were ready, Wailmer went away into the sea instead of coming on board. We dripped on the boat as it started up and Uncle Briney steered it curving out to the route, and then curving back around when the huge yellow squareness of the ship emerged out of the rocks just across the bend. The motor stopped again after barely a minute and then we were drifting very slowly toward the abandoned ship.

“Oh my god!” Riesa said. “I didn’t think it would be…”

The deck level of the ship was sunk almost down to the water surface. The waves kept hitting its railing. It was pretty big as a ship and must have been as wide as a building. Everything we could see was dark metal green and discolored, but it didn’t look broken down. The cabin was still a story or two above us. Uncle Briney said, “She’s resting on a drowned island, you know. Otherwise she’d have too many holes to float.”

“How did it get here?” Riesa said. “The ship has to have a story. Do you know, Uncle Briney?”

“You don’t want to hear its story,” he said. “It’s boring. This was a research vessel. It was taking a very tricky journey outside the routes and it got punctured. I think everyone got flown off quickly enough. Since then, it’s only become something like an attraction for swimming trainers.”

“A research vessel?” I said. I looked at Riesa, who asked, “What were they doing? It was a ship for scientists?”

“I don’t know. Some marine science no doubt. Now we’ve stopped here, because the water gets very shallow after this point; the sand is so high that I even feel good going behind your dad on this. Riesa, you will have to make an adjustment.”

“Tell me, Uncle Briney.” She smiled.

“There’s Wailmer, coming up to us.” “Oh!” “He’s going to get very close to the railing. Do you think you can land on him from here?”

She looked down at the two or three feet to the water, and then looked around.

“We have a ladder going down to the level,” he said. “It’s actually very easy, the most difficult part of mounting was getting higher than your pokémon. Here you are. I’m going to give both of you lifejackets. Stay where you are.” He left one more of his sudden disappearing silences. I looked at Riesa, and said, “We won’t be able to go together, will we?”

Uncle Briney came back. “Oh, Wailmer will be carrying both of you. Does that sound good?”

Well I needed someone to hold on to!

“Sure!” Riesa said. I would probably make both of us fall, but it was better for me. We put on the lifejackets and then we even lowered down on the ship’s swimming ladder, and then without noticing it too hard, we splashed down where Wailmer could catch us, one after the other.

“Whoa… it’s different in the open water,” Riesa said. The water came up to our shins so we’d taken our shoes off. When a wave hit us it still lapped up to our sleeves.

Wailmer skimmed smoothly forward out of the shadow of the boat, then started drifting toward the front end of the huge ship. “I just want to see how it looks like up close,” I said.

Riesa told Wailmer to show us what was hanging from the ship’s side right near the nose. “Is that safe?” she said. Wailmer gave a weird purr and started moving. It looked like there was a balcony built in a good way under the deck where the bow pinched squarely into an end. The balcony made a semicircle that stuck out from the hull of the ship and the whole thing was screened with glass that had broken and gotten unclear by now. “We won’t be able to see inside,” Riesa said. Wailmer was getting to directly in front of it, and at least twenty feet away.

“It looks like… a dining hall,” I said. She looked at me.

“See you can see how big the room behind it is. Or a ballroom. It’s clear and empty right?”

“Wow, I really want to go inside once!” she said.

“Ha ha, I don’t think we’ll get to do that while Dad and Uncle Briney are all over us.”

“Atashka, you’ll teach your pokémon how to surf someday, right?”

She was looking at me for the answer. I said, “Yeah, I will.”

“I’ll learn to Surf too. Let’s go on the water routes once when we’re older.”

“Yeah!” I said. “Deal.”

Wailmer turned around because the other side of the ship was up against rocks. It still didn’t look like the ship was on any solid land; it stuck directly out of the water. Riesa said, “Where do people get on the ship from?”

“Didn’t you see?” I said. The open side of the ship came up and there was a wide staircase in its center, hinged down to the water. It might have been where the passengers had escaped from. He took us closer to it.

“I don’t think this was just a science ship,” I said. “I saw a dining hall back there.”

“Yeah, and this can probably fit a lot of passengers,” she nodded. “It must have been a cruise ship.”

We got as close as we needed to the staircase, then Wailmer started taking us away. The waves got a little deeper and squarer and the white haze under the surface slowly lifted away from sight. “I wish we could go inside…” Riesa said. “We’re not getting to see anything this way.”

Above the big boxy cabin complex on the deck, there were a few smaller rooms like observation platforms almost at the top of the ship. These looked very industrial and probably weren’t for the cruise people.

“We could have just looked at it from the boat,” I said. “This sucks.”

Wailmer snorted out of his top and sprayed us both. “Hey!” My new t-shirt was wet now. “Come on…”

I felt us pick up speed and we started bobbing much more smoothly. He was taking us back.

“We… we had plenty of fun, though,” Riesa said, looking to me. “I really just wanted to Surf on a pokémon. Right, Atashka? Wailmer, I got to Surf with you and I’m happy.”

Wailmer spouted some more water.

“Hahahaha!” I clapped my hands. “That’s what he has to say!” I didn’t even care about getting wet this time

“Wailmer!” she yelled. “You, crudface!”

“Ha ha ha haha! Great job, Wailmer! Crud face?”

We kept bobbing. The waves were only bigger and slower out away from the island and its rocks. Moving on the sea was pretty slow if you stopped to watch it. Uncle Briney’s boat was also pretty square and white. By now the sun was going down and there was a little breeze. It was very faint but almost too cold to expect. Dewford had been a hot desert island and as soon as we got out of it, the actual season had started to appear. Both of our clothes were heavy and drying.

Uncle Briney was right at the railing, as close to us as you could get. My legs were tired and even my hands were sore, from holding on to Riesa’s shirt. He half pulled us up by himself and set us on the bench.

“You two back now?” he said. “Come on, towel yourselves off.”


We spent the next hour or so dozing inside, where it was warm. When it got almost so dim on the sea that the boat lit up yellow in a big, glittering blueness, I noticed the time and made my way to the pilot’s room. Uncle Briney was in the tiny bedroom with a single cot, squeezed in the back of the cabin. I peeked in the door, and I was about to duck back but he said, “Well, get in here, lad.”

“Where’s Riesa?” he asked. I told him she was looking through her baggage. This close, he had a look on his face that I hadn’t seen in the open light. He always had the same wrinkly mask, with the eyes pinched angrily down and the rest of his face like a cartoon’s, but his mouth was turned down and it almost looked solemn.

“Ah, that’s good,” he said. “She hung up a few clothes after the Abandoned Ship. You should look too, you don’t want anything left behind.”

“I did, Uncle Briney.”

“So, you’re going to Slateport? What do you plan to do. The gym is in Mauville. Then, there’s another in Lavaridge. You have to see.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If there’s anything to hold us up in Slateport I don’t mind either. Hold me up. Or… I don’t know, maybe Riesa…”

“You and Riesa should stick together?” he said. “It’s what your father advised too, you know. You should find friends and then don’t go anywhere without them. I don’t just mean for practical reasons. You’ll see. You need more than your pokémon. You do need your pokémon, but you need more than that. It becomes much, much better with friends, you saw how today was didn’t you lad?”

I cut into it, “I wouldn’t mind that,” trying to satisfy him.

“I’ll be going back to my, my old sea shanty,” he said. “Peeko gets tired. Imagine, a bird like her tired of the ocean. Lad, you come home whenever you get the opportunity.” He lost steam finally. He was being talkative. Usually he was just the adult in charge and he stayed cheerful, but never talked about himself. I remembered that Uncle Briney was such a great sailor once that people said his name was specially known by the water.

“Oh my friends are all retired,” he said. “These days the only times I take out my boat are for you.”

“Uncle Briney, did I keep you for too long?” I said. “And,” I lowered my voice, “the second passenger. All these changing plans. You’ve just been going around doing our ferrying jobs.”

“Atashka, why are you talking like that?” His face was more solemn than before. “You know I’d still make a round around Hoenn’s ocean for no reason if I had the spare time. Don’t you worry that Briney is getting too much of the sea!”

My smile twisted up along with his, and then it fell, too. “Ah, it’s all good. God knows where your sister is. You know that I saw both of you before your Dad even laid eyes on you?” “Yeah, Uncle Briney,” I said. “Well hear it again why not, it won’t kill you. I talked to all of the children that were to be adopted. There were the two of you apart, even I saw something different when I met you two… and you told me you were twin siblings. You said it, yourself.” I was nodding, trying to get him to move on. “You see how that is? The other children could hardly have told me who was whose second cousin… Get her back, lad, I mean into your sights, at least. You two should know what the other is doing.”

I nodded, and nodded. He took a huge, bracing breath, got up and said, “Right! You need to figure out what’s what in Slateport. Call Riesa. Atashka, Riesa is a good kid too. I can see it, she’s been on my boat all afternoon. I know you haven’t known her for very long, but she’d make too solid a friend to lose. Keep her around as well. That’s enough out of me! Riesa!”

We got out into the open air. “We’re just about to pull in! Come here lass!”

 

[Praxiteles]

just being safe: warning at the very end for mild suggestions of 'harming yourself', and possibly dissociation







Hey, it's Riesa. When Atashka and I came down to Slateport, it was late at night and Uncle Briney took us to the Pokémon Center, so I couldn't see much of the outside in our lighted cab. I slept the whole time. Or I mean I was drowsy and I can't remember much. This was the third or fourth Pokémon Center I'd seen, flower-printed and yellow, even though vinyl-finished, still like a home that someone had set to welcome someone they didn't know, and I liked being in it. I wonder if Atashka was interested in anything. Does he like seeing new cities like I do? After Mr. Briney put him to bed, in an adjoining room that he'd gotten for us, he came to my room and asked me what I was thinking of doing after Slateport. It was good that he wanted me to stick with Atashka, too. I mean, I don’t mind if… At the end I got this little brightly colored bracelet, just a little market stall purchase, but it was sweet. The front of it was cute and looked like an onix snaking around your wrist. I kept it on every day in Slateport.

Maybe Atashka didn’t want to say, but I knew that while he was here, he was looking for his sister Arauve. Uncle Briney had even told me this before he left. And he’d told me one extra thing. Arauve was here in the city, and she knew about us, she’d already talked to someone from their hometown. It looked like Atashka might stay here for a little while, which I didn’t mind, I liked being here.

Slateport was very familiar to me. I’d visited many times, at least once with my older cousins, and we’d looked at the market, the white stone paving, and always hung with colorful pennants and signs. That was more than four years ago so I only remembered the food, the little beach shell trinket shops and how long they stayed looking at clothing accessories, or powders for their pokémon. Then again I’d been here only a year ago, when my parents were about to get really wrung out by work and they managed to fit in a few days before my summer school. That time I hadn’t had as many friends and we’d only seen some of the civic buildings.

That’s not really a very, big detail… I didn’t know if Atashka already knew about Arauve. If they met in the next few days it would probably be without me… but perhaps I’d get to meet her later, I mean it seemed likely that we’d meet.



I was going to bring Riesa along when I ambushed Arauve. It looked like I would have to ambush her – at least that’s what Uncle Briney said. He said he’d pass along a time and place to her. She probably still didn’t want to talk to anyone from Petalburg. It was basically a secret rendezvous. Noon tomorrow on the docks. I didn’t really know if she was still running from us, and if she didn’t show up tomorrow then it would be hard to do anything after that. I’d drag Riesa along to the meeting and then we could see the market in the evening. If she wanted to train, we could get outside the city, I needed another team member anyway.

It was getting stressful, Riesa and I wish Dad and everybody wasn’t such a control freak about it, they’d basically organized everything to the last step. It was just talking, in the end. She might tell me what’d been going on. If she didn’t want to meet, then that just meant, that she didn’t want to talk to me. I was done figuring out what her thoughts were. They were okay, but I didn’t need to know. I never tried to start.



The light of the lighthouse reaches dozens of miles away. I wonder if it doesn’t startle pokémon in the sea.

If you look at a stone from the cobbled paths, it’s being washed by a blue WAVE.

I love running through the buildings of this city. Plastic crates in a supermarket. On the tables, there are MEDICINES, FLOWERS, FRUITS.

WHITE, not like a beachside stone wall, but like they’re clean pennants laid on each other: WHITE, GREEN, BLUE.

A flat city, a big open city. Wide flat paths in grass. There’s a museum, and there’s a mall.

A city can be made where there’s clear water. Where the waves of the sea lap against… There there’s a bountiful harvest. And when people gather to this place, where fruits grow, they start a market. This is how a city is born.

Atashka and Riesa loved SLATEPORT. I like it too though when I was there with them



I got up a little bit early, without really seeing the new room I was in. All I saw was a clear nice wave of whiteness, and the city we were going to see today, and the water of the ocean. Atashka was up too when I knocked on his door, and we had breakfast downstairs in our pajamas, crumpled bed hair in an air conditioned white coffee room.

“Riesa, did you sleep well?”

I nodded. “I feel totally refreshed today.”

“Me too.”

“You still look a little bit sleepy.”

He gave me a sleepy smile. “I’m waking up. Look, they’ve got a breakfast plate here. Milk, omelet, toast… wow, a pastry roll!”

“Really? That sounds nice!”

Then we went back upstairs to bathe and dress up. I took all the heavy stuff out of my training satchel because I was going to take it with me today. I’d picked my white dress for today, the really loose, ribboned shirt with satiny fabric that I liked, and brown capris, with my light green-white belt. On the belt, in a new pokéball, I had Rideon. I’d hardly had a chance to talk to her since Dewford, and we still didn’t know each other very well. Around that time, Atashka knocked on my door, but it was open.

“What’re you doing?” he mumbled when he got closer to my bed, a little louder than when we were having breakfast. My booklets were lying on the sheets along with all the other stuff I’d taken out, and it was pretty likely that he’d seen them. I looked back, he was laughing. “Are those your pictures of boys?”

“What! I don’t have any pictures…” I turned around, covering the pile of booklets a little. “That’s Vito Winstrate! Atashka, don’t you know who that is?”

“Who?”

“He’s a famous trainer!”

Atashka walked a little closer and the pile was again in his sight. “These’re the information booklets they give out about the League. Why are you keeping such a crummy thing?”

I picked them up. “No reason, I don’t know.” I looked up at him. “They’re really crummy?”

“I mean…” He scratched his shoulder. “If you’re into that, it’s okay…”

“No! That’s not it. I kept them because I thought you need them to… to do well in the League,” I mumbled.

He looked down at my hands for a second, then he smiled. “That’s dumb, you don’t need them. Hey so Riesa, I was thinking about all the things we could do today. I don’t know a lot about Slateport, but don’t worry about the stuff I need to do. It’s no big deal and it’ll only take an hour at most. I wanna know if there’s any place you want to see…”

“Well…” We dropped onto the bed. “There are a lot of cool places but today, I was thinking, we can just take it easy and go to the market…? And if we want, explore the city.”

“I like that idea!”

“Later on there’s this museum that we can go to, it’s cool and it takes a few hours. There’s supposed to be a ship yard but I don’t know how interesting that is – ”

“Oh right!” He smacked his head. “I have some other stuff to do, too! That’ll be some other day, I have to ask Uncle Briney about it…”

“Is it some kind of job?”

“Yeah basically. There’s someone called Capt. Stern…”

“Oh, really? He’s really famous, too.”

“You know about him?”

“Yeah, he makes ships! I can’t believe you have a job to do with him.”

“I do, I have to make a delivery.”

“We can probably find out where he works or where to meet him.”

“Yeah. Later. Let’s do something nice today.”

“You ready to head out now?”

Atashka got up. “Wait a sec. I’ll fix my hair – ”

“Do you always let it grow that big?”

He squinched his face. “I hate haircuts.”

“Well, it doesn’t look good,” I said. “Go ahead and get ready, I think you’re supposed to meet her in an hour.”

“Oh. Really?”

We had to go through the market if we had to reach the docks anyway. It was an open lot full of little, temporary stalls. It was a long way from the downtown road where you found big stores and buildings. We went through the main road very slowly, and there were pokémon running from one alley to the other, families with children holding shaved ice, flowers dropped on the ground, sellers with just big boxes strung around their necks, panels in all the colors. Atashka told me about his time in Rustboro staying in a narrow two floor Pokémon Center over a busy street. It had been his first time visiting a big city and it sounded like a student staying away from home in a guest accommodation to me. He’d made friends with kids from big condominiums, and challenged the university gym they have there. But he’d been there with Arauve, and I wonder if that makes it any different.

He told me about Megan, his best friend from Rustboro. She was a brash, determined girl who had burns on her fingers from keeping her vulpix around her all the time. She was a junior student and she had a senior mentor called Anna.

“So that was when Arauve left?” I said.

“Yeah. We both got the badges just before she left. Then I stayed in Rustboro for a little while, but my dad had an idea of where I could go next, which I don’t mind. I know that sounds kind of like… I’m just going along with what I’ve been told to do, but it was the right plan, and I’m the one who’s going to do it in any case.”

I said, “I’m glad someone gave you an idea of what to – ”

“Does it sound like Arauve was being immature?”

We slowed down for a second. “Well, I wouldn’t know…”

“She’s definitely not. I don’t want to make it sound like that. Actually Riesa, Arauve’s always been the older sibling. I don’t know when she was born, but when we were really small, she was almost like… a mini adult.”

“He he, really?”

“Yeah, sort of! I was a lot more kiddie than anyone and she was always, managing me, doing the stuff I couldn’t do, you know, tying my laces.”

“Is that right?” We got to the end of the marketplace, where there was a little blue fountain surrounded by the gray backs of at least three houses.

“So,” he said, “there’s a reason for Arauve doing what she did. I believe her. But I think she won’t tell it to me. She’s always been secretive like that.”

Aside from going in the same direction, I didn’t really have a clear idea of the way now. I looked around for roads through the buildings.

“I was a little kiddie from the start, too,” I said. “I’ve always relied on my parents for everything. You said you only have a father?”

“Yeah, I do.” He nodded. “Wait, I don’t mean – ”

“No, all I meant was – ”

“Yeah,” smiling embarrassed. There were probably lots of other things involved that I didn’t know about.

We strutted up all the way to the fountain. Atashka turned around. He was in a yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his hair was already in a bad state. “Ha ha, where are we supposed to go now?” he said.

I lifted my hands. “Come on, let’s keep going down. That must be the ocean we’re smelling.”

As soon as we were past the houses, whose fronts were a lot brighter and nicer, the city cleared up a lot. There were a lot of long grassy spaces for the bright white walkways that pooled together where they met in flat squares, and the squares were over the water. Between the edges of the paths and the sea level here there was barely a foot or two of drop. Further ahead, there was also a big, busy beach. I couldn’t see any ships around this area, but it looked like everything got more industrial further to the east. Arauve was supposed to be waiting there. I felt a little blood pressure rise in my head as I walked, which was stupid of me. “There’s the docks, I think. Do you know where – ”

“Yeah, I think so. Come on,” and he led the way.

We walked all the way east to the corner of the shore, where a little lighthouse stood in big openness but not really anything at all, and then we turned a little away and kept walking, still right up against the blue water. Sure enough, stone railings started up against the water and coming out from niches, miniature sailing boats or bigger ships. He kept us going for a good while through these old, pretty big, gray stone warehouses until it seemed like we were about to cross the area. But finally he said: “There. That says Seaweed Dock.”

It was a parking lot filled with trucks and sailboats on wheels. We went up to its road.

“I guess it’s still early enough.”

“Now what?” I said.

“We wait, I guess.”

I didn’t like that, and decided to look around to see if she wasn’t here already.

Atashka was standing now like he didn’t know what to do with his arms.

“Hey, you want me to take a round around the lot? You should stay here, in case she comes.”

Atashka looked up, asking me, and said, “O, okay.” I said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Suddenly he stood back up straight. “Who’s that?”

The person was back in the direction I was going. They looked our age, and they were walking towards us. Atashka went up to meet them, a lot slower.

When Arauve came to her brother, her face was pretty nonchalant but she said, “Hi, Tashka,” and hugged him almost immediately and he sort of drifted into the hug after a second of surprise. She said, “Did you say sorry to Dad for me,” with a meek look.

“Dad already forgave you, you know.” He looked aside to me. I’d gotten close to them. “Arauve, this is my friend Riesa. She’s traveling with me right now. Riesa, this is my sister.”

She hadn’t expected me and looked down while we quietly said “Hi.” She was only a little bigger than me and had a round face with long, dark black eyes. Her hair was short but tied back and she wore just a t shirt and trousers.

She glanced at my eyes then looked at Atashka and told him, “Atashka, cut your hair.”

He giggled loudly at what she’d chosen to say. “Screw off!”

“It’s terrible. I’m going to cut your hair today, Atashka,” with the same expression.

“Shut up.”

“While you’re sleeping.”

I tried to put my hands behind my back and took them back out. Those two weren’t looking at me much, though.

“How long have you been here Arauve,” he said. “In Slateport?”

“…A while,” she said gruffly.

“Did you go to a lot of places up north?”

“Yeah.”

“Riesa is from Mauville,” he said. “Did you see that city?”

Arauve started walking, which made both of us have to move. Atashka said, “Hey Arauve do you still have that weird rock?”

She didn’t look up. “What rock?”

“The one you gave me in Rustboro. The magnet.”

“The, magnet? It was a chunk that broke off from Roxanne’s Nosepass. You can’t even remember that? I don’t know where it is.”

“You didn’t… Did you lose it?”

“I didn’t do anything to your stupid rock. I just gave it to you.”

We got onto the road. Atashka said, “Not the one I have, I know where that is! What about your part?”

“I don’t have it with me right now, Atashka,” she said, exhaling. “I’ll have to get it from my room.”

Atashka gave this a big berth of silence. I didn’t have anything to say in this conversation and I should have been uncomfortable, but I was just trying to listen to Arauve. I couldn’t have imagined running away on my own to travel alone, but I suddenly thought that, whether I liked it or not, I’d done the same thing. I had a weirdly strong sense of how Arauve was feeling about her own attitude, and tried to hold it in my mind.

We made it out of the docks, with neither of them too inclined to break the silence. It was getting hot. I took the water bottle out of my satchel and asked them if they were thirsty. Atashka was with us and everything was good, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. “Arauve, are you challenging all the gyms as well?”

She looked at me sidelong, but she couldn’t ignore me. “Yeah, I am.” We were walking down the road from the first seaside square next to the docks.

“How many badges do you have?”

“Just one,” she said.

“The Boulder Badge.”

“That’s right.”

“Atashka says you saw Mauville. Did you ever go down to the outer block? It’s a housing board, and it’s the southmost part before the road to Slateport.”

“I only crossed there once,” she said. “When I was leaving.”

“That’s where I live.”

“Huh,” she said, looking at me.

“Yeah.” I smiled. “They’re kind of old apartments, but it’s close to family, and my parents have a good arrangement there… so, anyway, if you ever think of going back there, there’s a really interesting theater there that still hosts shows. A while back they were featuring Revolution-era plays.”

She turned her head around. Her style of walking was very leaned forward. “You mean, Light Revolution?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool!” I said. “It’s hard to find a live performance like that in a place like Mauville. You can imagine…”

“Oh, I see.” She hadn’t responded too much and her eyes were back on the ground. So she wasn’t planning to go back to Mauville?

“Do you think you might take on Brawly after this?” I said.

“Brawly challenges are quick,” she said. “He tries to sweep his opponents.”

“Nu-uh,” Atashka said. “I just battled him. He tries to Bulk Up early and then he keeps getting sturdier and sturdier. It gets drawn out.”

“Atashka you probably couldn’t even manage a real battle,” she said.

“Whaa—a…?”

“His hariyama is a powerhouse and frankly it’s not easy for any pokémon to last too long against it, win or lose.”

“Okay but his other pokémon are all about, technique, strength…”

“I talked to some of, Ata – ” I put in between their arguing.

“Hmm?” Arauve said.

“I talked to the local trainers after I had my battle.” Atashka nodded. “Before, too. They said that Brawly had just changed his last pokémon’s strategy, a week or so ago. This time he was going a bit for the longer haul because it was too easy for some of the really advanced pokémon to knock Hariyama down early.”

“Hmm-hm,” Atashka said, nodding at Arauve sententiously. She gave him a mean look.

“Well, I don’t know about Brawly,” she said. “Riesa, I said I was on the gym challenge but I haven’t been thinking of any towns recently. I…” She trailed off.

“Why is that?” I said.

“I don’t know, I’m just lazy.”

“But you’re still traveling, right? Do you like traveling?”

She slowed down till she was properly beside me. “I want to travel. I sort of feel like going around the terrain of Hoenn without… anyway it’s stupid, don’t worry about it.”

“That sounds cool!” I said. “Isn’t it difficult to travel alone? I started my journey alone… I mean, there are lots of people usually, and the route has lots of things to make everything easier, but still… there’s something weird about it…”

That made her very interested; she looked at my face for quite a bit, like looking for a sign. But I couldn’t, or didn’t have the nerve to explain anything more than that. Finally she managed to say, “It’s like… you constantly have some kind of thing, human thing provided for you from every side… at every opportunity, it’s smothering… or like, there’s too much interference, you can’t get to the clear picture… of the, route…”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I tried for a while to fit it into a way that I could understand. Arauve went back into silence. I’d just thought, that traveling alone was lonely!

Suddenly Atashka said, like he was on some kind of mission, “Hey Arauve do you know where we found Riesa. Me and my friend Mark found her when we met for the first time, we were on the route.”

“…Yeah.”

“Okay so, where we were was in the Granite Cave next to Dewford. At night.” He looked at her and suddenly burst, “Oh my god Arauve I have so much to tell you, about, the kind of crap you put me through!”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you! It was all your fault! I’m going to, I’ll tell you after this. We were in Granite Cave for, a reason. Did you know that when you go below ground level, it gets too dark to see? Yeah, you need a pokémon who can use Flash.”

“I already knew that,” she said. “So you didn’t go with Flash.”

“How did you know?” he said. “Anyway, Mark did have it, but we ran into plenty of other problems. There’s this one tunnel at the end of the cave that leads back to the entrance. Or it leads to the deepest part too. So we were going down the tunnel, Mark had his Scipio out and we were using him like a flashlight, – Riesa comes out of the darkness like she’s some kind of cave being, in the dark. I’m not kidding! She had big, gigantic eyes, bigger than now even and her hair was all puffed up.”

I laughed under my breath. “Atashka!”

“Sorry Riesa, no offense. So you know what she was doing? In the dark?”

Arauve looked directly at him, and burned her stare into his face.

Atashka said, “I have no idea.”

Arauve turned back. She looked at me: “Well, do you want to explain this mystery?”

I laughed again, it was flustering, “I don’t, no mystery, really… I mean, I was catching a pokémon. I heard you can find aron really easily in the lower levels, so…”

I was way beyond the stage where I could keep going after how interested Arauve looked. But she said, “Is that so…”



Then I felt pretty bad for bringing it up. Riesa was embarrassed, I could tell. It was her business what she was doing.

We were in front of the beach. It was such a long, huge shore… The seats and parasol stands started from here, and the yellow sand went on for as far as we could see. The ocean was only to our right and left.

Arauve was looking at the families moving around down there. I said, “Arauve, what do you want to do? Let’s go to the beach.”

She gave me a look. “Frankly, I don’t know what we’d do on the beach like this…” I couldn’t think of anything either. “Did you bring beach clothes?”

I shook my head. “Riesa, did you?”

She giggled. “No, I didn’t. And it wouldn’t be a lot of fun if only I was swimming.”

“No beach,” Arauve said. I turned on her.

“What do you… what would you be doing, if we weren’t here? What do you do in Slateport?”

“What do you do…” She looked around. “There are all these attractions, if you – ”

“I bet you’d stay home all day,” I said.

“I don’t stay home. I spent yesterday all around the city.”

“What were you doing all around the city?”

“Walking.”

“Wa – ”

“How about that, Riesa?” she said. “Have you ever tried it?” Riesa was nodding vaguely. “Let’s walk around the city today. How does that sound?”

Riesa grinned. “That sounds pretty interesting!”

“Wh – ” I was out of breath. “Just… what. That’s all I have to say to you, Arauve.”

She glared at me, and then gave a smirk. We walked around for the next few hours.



We walked around for the next few hours. Arauve was such a poophead. I hate walking because I’m a baby.
But I thought it was interesting! I’ve been doing my whole journey alone and… one time, I went into Granite Cave without any light…

I felt pretty bad walking with my sister. I kept asking Arauve, with every word I said to her. for. I wanted her to admit something. She admitted something then it was so sour and late that anyway it wasn’t what I wanted.
I’m, Riesa. I’m Atashka’s friend who’s been traveling with him.

I was tired the morning I went out to meet those two. hadn’t slept well. My mind kept going to a stand of smoke-bitten Rawst berries at the end of a cave passage one can use for Fallarbor, which I hadn’t gone to yet see, this is before the talk with Lanette. I don’t care. I kept going to ridiculous lengths to go along with the jokes they made, then feeling bad about the exertion.

Riesa strolled up the great beach road with her arms going ahead of her, that takes the market on one side and the docks and everything on the other, then she walked up the Oceanic Museum, admiring it from the outside, she put the shiphouses in her dust, she trod the beaten ways of the housing colonies, going up, she ambulated the downtown, coming to the very Pokémon Center I’d been shacking up in.



Atashka said, “Arauve. Wait. Get serious for a bit.” We stopped scuffing and stood just outside the Center door. He said, “Is this where you’re staying?”

“Yeah.”

“How long are you gonna be here? Do you have anything to do?”

She didn’t reply.

“Okay, are you at least gonna keep the room for this week?

Arauve turned away to look at the Center again, and Atashka shifted impatiently. “Could you shift over to ours?” His scowl suddenly broke open. “Come stay with us. Please? What you’re going to do – ”

“Atashka I was trying not to bring things up because they – ”

“I’m not asking anything!” he said pretty loudly, and he had a grin as he shouted but it was pretty clear he was making a mess. “I don’t want you to talk to Dad, I don’t want you to even tell me what you were doing…”

“I’ll do it!” she said. “Geez, that’s what I’m saying! I’ll switch. If you want it that bad…”

Atashka lowered his head and went on walking. Now we were sort of retracing our steps. I was miserable enough at this point. There’d been a big crowd outside the Oceanic Museum, I’d pointed it out, I felt maybe loud bigmouthed and I wondered if we’d see it again. I was in the middle with Atashka and Arauve on my sides. I said, “Do you think we could picnic somewhere? I want to bring out my pokémon.”

Atashka said, “That sounds good. Do you want to go outside the city?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I have a new pokémon, Aron. I’ll have to meet her for the first time. Where do you think is a good place?”

“Aron? What’s that?”

Arauve said, “It’s a steel type pokémon. Steel and rock. You don’t remember anything.”

“The beach might be a little familiar because I found her in Granite Cave,” I said. “But they were living in the dark parts, so…”

“Riesa, your best bet for any pokémon is somewhere dry and warm, but also keep it quiet. It should be just you and the pokémon. Don’t ask Atashka, he hasn’t caught a pokémon in his life.”

“Somewhere quiet…”

“Have you talked to her before?” she said. “How did you catch her?”

“Well it was kind of by…” I couldn’t keep it to myself if I didn’t stop talking about it. “By accident. I didn’t see her and she suddenly ran back at the last, just before I was on top of her. I don’t know if we talked. But she looked at me for a little bit I think, before she suddenly challenged me. I guess I took that as permission.”

“I think you need somewhere quiet to train,” Arauve said. “We’ll take you to the cycling road. That’s where Wally kept training, Atashka. Did Uncle Briney tell you he was going to become a coordinator?”

Atashka nodded.

“Well did he tell you Wally met Sapphire Birch? Just for a bit.”

“Cool.”

Arauve gave me a look. I caught it at the last moment and tried to smile back. Then we were quiet once again.

“I guess I must have been down there…” I took a breath. “Because I thought I needed to. So I could…”

Atashka was looking sideways at me. “Down in the cave?” he said, confused.

They were both waiting for me to talk. It was too confusing for me too. There was no way I could have explained…

Arauve said, “How did you make it through in the dark?”

I couldn’t think about anything.

She slowly said, “The first forest I went into alone was south of Verdanturf. I didn’t have a plan in mind either. My pokémon and I nearly got to starving.” Atashka looked at her helplessly. “I didn’t even realize that I had a responsibility to… I kept thinking it, throughout the journey, and then the first time I got the chance, I – ”

“I don’t think I would have made it,” I said. “I don’t know what would have happened. I was going in the wrong direction, that’s when Atashka and Mark found me.”

“Riesa,” Atashka said, “are you okay with the dark?”

Arauve, stonefaced pulled us all into a street between two buildings. On the other side there was a square looking over the ocean. We sat on the railing, in a corner.

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t even like sleeping alone, do you?”

“I can’t imagine doing it,” Arauve said, wrinkling her forehead.

Once again, I looked at both of their faces. It was okay to tell them, everything I could tell them. One was Atashka. And the other one, it didn’t matter, she was Atashka’s sister, she was someone I was going to get to know well.



I told Riesa about the last week in Rustboro again. There still wasn’t much to say really. Then Arauve finally talked about what she’d done. That stupid trainer she’d been chasing around left as soon as they crossed to Verdanturf so she didn’t stay there for a long time. There wasn’t anything to do. She went to Mauville, challenged the gym leader, lost to him, then she trained for a little while and then she decided to move on. But while she was there she did manage to get into more trouble.

“It was Team Magma,” she said. “Did you know there’s another team doing fishy business around Hoenn? Team Aqua and Team Magma. I don’t know what they have to do with each other, but…”

“What did you see, Arauve.”

“Okay. This is going to stay between us. Basically I was on the south side under the cycling road where there’s a big lake… um, training… There was a lot of boat activity going over the water. Like the lake is very big and you don’t know what’s going on at the end parts… Right, Riesa? There’s probably something down there.”

“It’s actually part of a river,” Riesa said.

“Really? See? There is a cave or something there.”

“Is there?” Riesa looked away. “I didn’t know about that.”

“Anyway, a lot of motorboats. At least two. So I was pretty much on the route side, minding my own business, but the motorboats were parked near some trees. I couldn’t see all that much. But one thing I found out.” She turned to look at Riesa. “Gym Leader Wattson was on the shore. He was standing there, and some of the people on the motorboats had gotten off, and they looked like they were talking.”

“Okay so how did you know they were Team Aqua?”

“I didn’t say that! Team Magma! Listen!” She huffed. “They like, disassembled in like minutes. But I followed them in after that – it looked like the motorboat people were going back in, in the river… it was pretty late in the day… they were in plain clothes Atashka… Anyway. One of them found me.”

Riesa looked shocked.

“He was such a pushover! I wasn’t even supposed to know who he was, but as soon as he saw me he was like, ‘Did you see that? How much did you see?’ ‘It’s not safe for little kids, okay?’ And I said, ‘Did you get what you wanted from Devon?’ He was like, ‘What no, haha this is great! You don’t even know who we are!’ Except now I do. There are two teams in Hoenn. Dumbass.”

“Arauve I don’t care, but this better not come back to me.”

“What? How do you think – ”

“The same way it did last time! Do you even know that Aqua kidnapped Treecko? They, wanted to teach me a lesson! I didn’t even do anything!”

“That’s impossible! They shouldn’t even have seen your face.”

“Well they got my name, apparently.”

Arauve leaned back. “Huh.”

“Don’t huh me! What do think I could have done? It was Treecko!”

“Okay I get it, but it’s over, Atashka. Look. I can promise you that they won’t bother you again.”

“How do you know that?” I put my palms down as hard as they would go. “They didn’t even talk to me after that kidnapping? Brawly did. He rescued her.”

She looked at me with her mouth hanging for a few seconds. She wasn’t going to answer. Then the smug smile: “Very interesting.”

“God, I don’t care, Arauve. Just tell me you’ll leave me out of it.”

“Wiiiill do.”

“Who are these two teams?” Riesa said. “What do they want?”

“Beats me,” Arauve said. “But did I tell you I messed with Team Aqua once? That’s how this all started.”

“Really?”

“We were in Petalburg Forest and we stumbled on an Aqua thug threatening a businessman. He panicked. It looks like he was stealing something that guy was supposed to be delivering.”

“And now I have it,” I said. “I’m supposed to deliver now.”

“What really?” Of course Arauve perked up. “Who to?”

“Some guy called Mr. Stern?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Riesa has,” I said.

“Take me along when you do it,” she said. Then she turned to Riesa and looked at her for a second. “No wait. Atashka, I want to go to him right now.”

“No way! Wait until tomorrow.”

“No, let’s not take our time. Let me at least find out where to find him. Riesa, have any idea?”

“Me? Uh, he’s working on a ship building project so maybe find out where he works? He could be at the harbor, or if there’s a shipyard somewhere…”

“Do you think he might be at the Oceanic Museum?”

Riesa said, “Wait, are you saying Capt. Stern might get into trouble? Cause…” She shifted. “Because, your team wanted to steal that package that was being delivered, and Capt. Stern is the one it’s supposed to go to.”

Arauve smiled. “Let’s go to the Oceanic Museum.” She hopped off the ledge and started walking.

Riesa looked at me saying, “It’s all her call.” I said, “Why on earth would he be at the museum right now.”

Arauve said, “Did you even look at the crowd outside it? Everybody was in blatant uniform.”

I let out a whine and tried to sink into the pavement.

“Riesa, have you been to Slateport before?” she said.

She nodded. “Mmh. I started from Mauville and went down to Dewford.”

“Do you ever think that the routes around Hoenn are pretty, constructed?”

I don’t know if Riesa was understanding Arauve any better, but she smiled when she looked at her, with her head a little tilted.



In that square looking over the ocean, Riesa leaning back with her elbows on the railing as she confessed to us:

Did you two leave home together? I left Mauville in what must have been mid-July, on an afternoon I would have left to the latter half of a nap, after a small going away day that was just my parents making something nice for lunch and taking the day off. Mauville sleeps around that yellow time too, and I went down first to the registration office, a tiny booth in the downtown where I got my trainer card, my satchel overpacked and already worrying me about my ability to carry it. I was tired but it was okay, I’d got it pretty easy and I left on the south route direct from there, going as the evening was just coming into intensity, arriving at my destination at night.

I don’t know if there’s anything I really feel I need to tell you about… What I remember is that, the first night I didn’t talk to anyone. I must have got through the route without messing with the trainers, then later on I guess I went through the reception at the Pokémon Center, but I didn’t meet any new people. I think this worried me at the time. Traveling on the route was supposed to include meeting people and fighting trainers. I thought about the League hanging over the journey, and it was pretty much beyond my sight – I didn’t know what was going on now, what exactly I’d have to face, or how I’d challenge it eventually, what channels I’d go through, since even trainer registration was something as weird as going to an office blocks away from home. Anyway, that’s never been a major problem. I mean the League is always pretty much a worry over my head but it’s probably far off as of now.

I don’t think I was worried about being a trainer. I always managed to make that work, one way or another. But the first time that night… walking by the edge of the trees in the dark… I don’t know, I’m a scaredy-cat! something froze me up. I mean I couldn’t think, it was not really just finding it hard to push on, it felt like something got inside me for a second. I’d never been as cold as I was for a few seconds. And then the journey went on. I almost felt like I was perched on my own skin, like I was watching myself from the… no, that’s stretching it. But you had these warm winds and sometimes I felt like I was totally powerless, lying down in a night bus, strange adults around me ignoring my existence.

Okay that’s enough! I don’t feel any of that anymore, I’m not alone now. If you were hearing this for real, I wouldn’t even say this much. Because I’m just a sheltered only child who grew up in Mauville and you have veteran trainers going so many places, and what I saw wasn’t much even by normal leaving-home standards, just a rookie freaking out… I’m the same as anyone, and I don’t know anyone who’d even talk about this later… I started my journey, I was a little homesick… and, so eventually… I got myself lost and terrified in a cave alone.

I just want to say one thing, that I never wanted to do something stupid to myself, even indirectly by not caring… that was never on my mind. I basically didn’t even go through that cave deliberately. I just… this is really stupid and I wasn’t thinking anything at all then, but maybe, I needed to know what would happen? Going in would definitely give me some answer. If I get lost in a dark place, and you can’t avoid that as a trainer, what would happen to me?

 

[Praxiteles]

“What do you know,” the water on all sides of the Museum rocking and very bright gleaming now. “The crowd is all clear.”

“What?” Riesa said. “Where’d they go?”

Arauve said, “Why don’t we go and ask?”

There was one person left, near a corner of the pavement in front of the Museum, a lady in a suit. Arauve said, “Hey do you remember that big crowd of weird people that was here a while ago? What happened?”

She said, “I don’t know! There was another man who got here and led them all inside.”

Arauve saluted to her and hurried to the door.

“Arauve come back please,” I whined. She was already going inside. I made Riesa stop at least so I could look at her straight.

“Riesa, you need to understand what Arauve does.” She started a little nervously. “She did this as soon as we left home. We got in the way of this… Team Aqua goon, who was trying to rob someone. She battled him and got him to drop the item. And later on, when we found another one in Rustboro, she went after him herself. She tackled a hostage situation with her own pokémon. And this was after she’d just beaten the Gym.”

“I heard about that from, Mark,” she said.

“They came after me! That was when we met you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’m trying to say, she’s going to get herself involved. She hasn’t done it before, but obviously she wants to go in that building and… mess with those people’s… operation! Whatever they’re doing. First she'll mess with them like it’s some kind of a game and then she won’t even expect to get in trouble.”

“Are you sure, though?”

“Huh? What?”

“I heard about what happened in Dewford a little bit too. And it seems to me like this time it’s different. You two had trouble fighting one or two subordinates then. I’m sure you’re stronger now, but still, going after a group that big? I’m wondering, there might be people in there who’re bigger than a few low-level thugs. I think Arauve really does have something in mind, I think she wants to make a statement.”

“That’s what I’m saying! We don’t want to be anywhere near the statement!”

“But maybe, it’ll be just that, a statement. Atashka, I think there’s a chance we won’t even have to fight. Anything could happen, but I still think she just wants to show her face for the first time.”

“Okay, but what if ‘anything’ does, happen?”

“Well I was thinking. I mean I haven’t known her for a long time, but now that she’s in there we don’t have so many options anymore. Either we show our faces with her, or she makes her introduction there alone.”

*

Along the sides of a rift between Sootopolis and Ever Grande, Hoenn’s deepest underwater trench, blue frozen magma stepped in waves of matte fabric, and after a short intermission, rose to a lesser depth where colors such as moonlight yellow and beige could become possible. Further above these in a thin film all together were those fine strata where science had shown its hand, laying coat on top of coat of translucent understanding, or making drills to puncture down the undisturbed depths. At present these probes were halted only a few meters above an ancient relief feature, a sleeping relic, which rolled open its unseeing membrane-covered eyes, before these crater sized domes returned to benthic blackness.

Here in clear air the counters described fine, glittering yellow ellipses. The traction pads on either side where the receptionist placed her ledger formed my cordon to entry. “Four hundred for a trainer ticket,” she said pleasantly. Beyond, like a party at an artist’s showing, Team Aqua stood scattered among the normal visitors, holding glass cups of coffee and stealing looks into their brochures. I received mine on the light counter pad, a very expensive pleasantry.

The aquamarine spirit of discovery was everywhere; the air positively buoyed it. I was very happy to look at the exhibits, and my ratty sneakers also scuffed some of its polish off the synthetic waxed tiling. They were glass displays set into the beige walls. I looked at a strong-limbed underwater shore climbing down into sediment strata, frozen in clear jelly water and varicolored with lines of beach sand. A history was shooting off from its bottom, climbing leisurely, arriving after the geological span to our reality. “Over many years, soil, salt and the matter of dead animals settles at the ocean floor and forms sediments.”

Its frame in strong yellow mosaic opposed the turquoise vines with which the mouldings were painted. An Aqua Grunt was also interested in sediment formation. “The Boss told us to take control of the Museum…” he said, holding a bullet-point card between his thumbs and indexes, his head rounded by the bandanna a watery white skull on his forehead. “But it took an hour to get through entry!”

The same mosaic frame ran to a double length around the next display… “In the sea, the weight of the water above you exerts pressure. The ocean water’s pressure increases the further down you go, so tha.”

I was taking the wrong way around. At this I drifted into the inside unanchored. A glass cylinder on a stand… through its center, a blue fluid pumped upwards through water to the top, where it pooled and diluted, it seemed, curtained invisible around the sides of the walls. The blue cone wobbled in a regular circle. “An attempt to recreate whirlpools created by winds.”

A grunt with dark blue hair, allowed to fall to her black-polyestered shoulders. Her gaze went up and down with the wobble. “This is making me think of some nights on the ocean… and not in a good way.”

I tried to make my small eyes as round as they would go, and nodded a look of awe. “Is your Boss a really strict one?”

But she hunched her shoulders. “Go on now.” Her eyes followed me away from the exhibit. “We’re going to drive you all out in a few minutes.”

It was the man at the stairs to the second floor who was the real prize. I stumbled into him moving backwards, looking from where Atashka and her were finally walking in from the counter, so I heard his nervous footsteps first. He yelped as soon as I acknowledged him.

“Don’t you remember me? I’m the one you thrashed in Rusturf Tunnel!” His hands pushed up something in his satchel, then nearly lost them from his fingertips. “Here! Don’t fight me! I hope I never see you again!”

TM46. Which one could that be…

For him it was as hasty a shove past Atashka and Riesa as he dared. That was my time to handle the two of them. I took Atashka’s shoulder in my grip as he looked reluctantly around.

“It’s a party,” I said. “It’s better than I hoped. I think I might even be invited. Riesa, let me guide you around the exhibits?”

“Yeah?” she said. Atashka followed less than an inch behind.

”OCEANIC MINIFACT NO. 1: Why is the sea blue?”
“Wow, I never thought about asking that!” Riesa. “My parents always used that question to make fun of me. ‘Next she’s going to ask why is the sky blue?’”
”Light is made up of many colors.
“When it passes through water, it loses many of these colors.
“The color that gets left behind is sea blue.”
“…Wow I didn’t understand a word of that.”

”OCEANIC MINIFACT NO. 2: Why is the sea salty?”
“Obvious,” bad-natured Atashka, a detractor from science. “One time there was a huge war. After it was over and lots of people died, someone cried for years. I don’t care. Those tears made the oceans.”
”Seawater contains dissolved salts from potassium and sodium.
“These salts leech out of rocks on the ocean bed.
“The salinity of seawater differs from region to region.”
“Inconceivably incorrect!” I told him.
“Oh no!” Riesa with total seriousness. “Better luck next time, Atashka.”

”OCEANIC MINIFACT NO. 3: Is there more water or more land?”
Atashka: “Either way, it’s not enough.”
Me: “If there’s more of anything, not to worry, we’ll balance it out.”
Riesa: “Whatever we were given is just right.”

“Okay, okay, I think that’s enough,” I said, making Atashka throw up his hands. I led them over to the stairs, but immediately its clear doorway bulged with grunt uniforms… two at least… three.

“Wha-wha… are they…”

“We’ve been watching you from the windows!” the middle one said. “The boss told us to take you down. Did you think you could barge in here like it’s your parent’s house?”

I tilted my head back to Atashka.

“Everyone knows how to battle. If you get in trouble, yell. I’ll… think of something.”

“Riesa, I didn’t…” he yelled.

“No choice now, Atashka!”

The middle one set his full attention on me. One on one, no fooling around here. I was waiting for him to choose his pokémon, but the matter was easy: Beautifly was fragile and Mudkip was sturdy. I called the second one out as soon as it looked like the grunt was waiting for me.

“Carvanha,” he called. The pokémon, which I’d only seen in pictures, bobbed out onto the field. It was going to be a tedious battle. I told Mudkip to Mud Slap and wait for the opponent to make a move.

My pokémon was faster but, as soon as he’d run up within the right distance of Carvanha, he spurted a Water Gun that smacked its face and did little more than surprise it.

“Mudkip…” clapping my hands at him. “I said Mud Slap.”

He cocked his head fin a little. Aside from that, I could discern no response. In the next moment Carvanha came in strong with Bite. He wasn’t anywhere close to dodging position.

It was a close call... As far as I could tell, the black flash of the move hadn't caught him.

“Hit him now," I shrugged. "No big deal.” Mudkip usually responds, in some way… I watched him stare at Carvanha stretching its jaw for another go, then without taking any position, not even briskly, he skipped puppylike out of the way.

Carvanha was at a complete loss. Mudkip kept trotting without hurry, a long way beyond what you could call the battle field.

“Mudkip? While you’re doing that, the foe is going to bite me instead.”

“Well, that’s something new.” The grunt I was supposed to be fighting was looking at him. “I thought my pokémon and I were indifferent. He doesn’t have the least interest in you or your battle.”

“Mudkip, I thought we understood each other.” At this point he was pretty much out of earshot. “Atashka?” I called out somewhat cowardly, but the others were in completely different parts of the room.

“Well, kid, on the route this kind of thing gets an afternoon to hash out, but I have orders from the boss to do a few things with you when I beat you…”

“N-Wait! Mudkip!” I ran over and picked him up. His face stubbornly avoided mine. “Did I say something stupid?” He really wasn’t mad at all, which was more disquieting. He didn’t look like he was pretending not to be mad. “Come on, you’re such a good pokémon.”

“Someone call me?” Atashka was behind my right, now looking smug.

“Are you done already?” I hissed.

“Unlike somebody, we had practice.”

“I can’t deal with you,” I said. “Go away.”

“Look, I can understand Mudkip better than you right now.” Atashka watched me drop him, who trotted a few steps ahead, showing me his back. “He just doesn’t see any interest in fighting for you. That’s what it is. He doesn’t know where you are, he barely remembers me, he doesn’t know where you’ve been, he doesn’t care what we’re doing.”

“Don’t, don’t be an idiot…”

“When was the last time you involved him in something you did, Arauve?”

“I – he doesn’t need to be involved in every little human thing!”

The grunt said, “Don’t tell me you have another pokémon? I was supposed to be on break after this…”

“Shut up! Mudkip isn’t down yet. I’ll give you your break!” Even so, I probably only had a minute or two left with Mudkip. “Atashka please be a dear, screw away?”

“If you don’t want my help you shouldn’t have called me,” he said, but without moving. I picked Mudkip up again. I touched his fin once and then squeezed his cheeks quite a lot until he finally reacted. Only then did he agree to looking at me.

“Mudkip I’m not even totally aware of what I did wrong. I know I did something wrong, that’s obvious.” I felt stupid, making human noises into empty air, and he was back to no eye contact. “Right now… we’re in a little trouble? Can we have a beneficent arrangement? Look, I’ll give you a rare candy if you fight this trainer.”

At the sound ‘Rare Candy’, almost mechanically, he perked up. The same puppy way he’d opted out of the battle he hopped back in. I took a breath.

“Mud Slap?” I suggested. No good. He tackled into the opponent’s side, rubbing against its scales in a way that made his smooth blue side red. I’d been avoiding that from the very beginning. It seemed like he was at least surprised and when he hastened to turn around to look at Carvanha, it bit him viciously on the same place.

Mudkip fell on his other side and wriggled for a few moments. I said, “Return, Mudkip.” Beautifly, then… who flashed out with a look of surprised attention that also made me feel bad. A straight order: “Mega Drain.”

Carvanha managed to hit him with a Water Gun and it seemed like it did a little bit of crumpling damage, but he finally latched onto it with his green feelers. One spurt of green light was enough to finish it.

“Blast it,” said the grunt. “If my partner is still in the running he’ll deal with you.” We looked over to Riesa in the oceanic tides exhibit, still battling. “I don’t want to find out.” He hurried past me out of the building.

I looked around the room – there were a lot less grunts here now, but the remainder didn’t look interested in fighting me. They hadn’t been ordered to. So that, unless Riesa was possibly in trouble, was…

“Arauve, get over here!” Atashka yelled. I got into the oceanic tides exhibit. Both sides seemed to be in a tense intermission. Riesa had her Aron out…

Atashka said, “Riesa, if you want me to – ”

“Wait,” I judged. “Let them work it out.”

Riesa was actually sitting down, not crouched, and the pokémon was looking directly at her. She had her hands over her kneecaps. “…you don’t want to, that’s all right. And you can refuse now but still stay with me, if you want. Like – like you can see, things didn’t turn out like I expected.”

It was all said the same way she usually talked to us; more naturally, more naturally. She brought her arms down and sat Indian style. “So… I should have talked with you a long time ago, but I guess I messed up. Okay? Okay, I’ll let you decide what to do now.”

One good chance was that her opponent was a poochyena. Riesa stood up, and the aron rotated around to regard its foe.

The opponent called, “Take Down!” At the same moment the aron started to pick up speed from a total stop.

I watched them follow the same trajectory toward each other, the same scrambling run escalating to a reckless unbraced charge, one of them much slower but with vastly different momentum. Much before Aron had reached their middle, they smashed into each other with a thuck.

It was the sound of flesh, not steel; Poochyena landed several feet away and didn’t move. The grunt called on Ho-oh involuntarily. The two Take Downs had met head-on and unloaded all their impact into the one you would expect to come out worse. It was more or less the pokémon’s own ploy.

“Did we…” Riesa said with a high voice. The Poochyena twitched and opened its eye.

Then it was enveloped in a flash, and its trainer said, “I didn’t come here to get pounded,” and went the same way mine had.

“Wooooow!” Riesa said. “That was incredible, Rideon!” The aron perked her head up at the name.

“Remember what we agreed on in the cave? Let me call you Rideon while you’re with me.” Rideon played cool modesty and started walking away to try to ignore her.

“But really Rideon! I wouldn’t even have thought of that!”

Atashka came between them. “So now you’re friends – already?”

“I thought we decided to be friends in Granite Cave,” Riesa said. “But I mean, she doesn’t need to give me an answer now. She’ll still do what she wants.”

Leaving Atashka behind, she walked up to me and crossed me, before I could think of anything, touching my shoulder with her hand. “Come on, we better see what they have left up there. It’s not like we can leave now.”

“We can! We can leave,” Atashka, but grinning.


[Now I have a spoiler. This episode isn’t done yet, but the screenplay was leaked.

What? What? What do you want with
TEAM AQUA?
Our BOSS isn’t here!
He’s gone off to jack a submarine!
… …
Where did he go?
Wahaha! Do you really think I’d tell
you something that crucial?

Slateport.
Shipyard – empty.
Dock – ‘’
Museum:

I was hoping that it was a famous star
so I could get an autograph.
But who’s that being interviewed?
Isn’t that CAPT. STERN?
Hey! Are you watching?
Am I on TV?
CAPT. STERN says they discovered
something at the bottom of the sea.
I wonder what it is?
What could it be?
A TV interview! Here!
The CAPTAIN’S a celebrity!

TY: Okay, CAPT. STERN, a big smile
for the camera!

Impassive, concentrating faces.

GABBY: I see, I see. You’ve had a most
invaluable experience.

CAPT. STERN: Yes, indeed. We intend to
move ahead with our exploration.

GABBY: That’s wonderful, CAPT. STERN!
Thank you for taking the time from
your busy schedule to talk to us.
We hope we can interview you again
with news of more discoveries.

Reporters left us and STERN in the crowd.

CAPT. STERN: Whew…
That was my first time to be filmed for
TV. That was nerve-wracking.
Oh! Arauve!
You’re looking great!
We made a huge discovery on our last
seafloor expedition.
We found an underwater cavern on
ROUTE 128.
We think it’s the habitat of a POKeMON
that’s said to have been long extinct.

Freeze.
... ... ... Fufufu…
CAPT. STERN, I presume.
We of TEAM AQUA will assume
control of your submarine!

Your objections are meaningless!
We expect your total cooperation!
Fufufu…
Just watch and learn what TEAM
AQUA has planned!

CAPT. STERN: What was that all about?
It sounded like someone using
a megaphone…
Where did it come from?

It’s from the HARBOR!
The submarine!
They’re trying to take it!
Arauve!
Please, come with me!

CAPTAIN STERN waiting at the entrance.
Near a dark mass, AQUA LEADER
and ADMIN. Walk,
walk, walk, walk, walk!

ARCHIE: Oh?
Not you again…
You are tenacious to track us here,
that much I will give you.
But now…
No one can stop us! No one!
Or, will you follow us back to our
HIDEOUT in LILYCOVE CITY?
Fwahahahaha…
They jumped into the water.

The shadow whizzed away.

CAPT. STERN: Why…
Why would TEAM AQUA steal my
SUBMARINE EXPLORER 1?
They can’t be after the slumbering
POKeMON at the bottom of the sea…
But even if I were to chase them,
I don’t stand a chance against them…]

*

The first model is the SUBMARINE EXPLORER 1. This is a scale replica of the high powered submarine for exploring the ocean floor.

The second is a SUBMERSIBLE POD. An unmanned submarine pod that was deployed to take pictures of the ocean floor.

Then there’s the SS Tidal. The great cruise ship in construction in Stern’s Shipyard. It has six floors above deck and it’s white steel and I’ve heard, four times the length and width of the ABANDONED SHIP.

The geography of the sea. There’s a diorama of the whole HOENN region, with so many sea routes. All these routes are plied by ships, people and pokémon.

OCEAN CURRENTS: Near the ocean bottom, currents are driven by differences in temperature and salinity.

But the color curves that they draw over the ocean map are way too complicated to read. It was enough to learn.

OCEAN CURRENTS: Near the surface, currents are driven by wind.

The sea level differs from place to place. Does the saltiness of sea water vary too?

The second floor didn’t have any visitors, only those two. They sat on spinning stools at the diorama table. From the way the taller one sat, it was like there was a desk and folders between them.

The shorter one was an engineer, and he had a lab coat and glasses. He watched with his huge eyes, probably not understanding much more than us. “CAPT. STERN, are you on a level with us?” the other one, in a voice that was leathery and suddenly reminded me of Uncle Briney. His plain business suit fit him very tightly, his hairy hands coming out of their cuffs and folded together hugely. “This was on my mind since I planned this visit. That we shouldn’t have to deceive you into anything... I hope you understand what it is we do now, at least in the general details. I think you can agree my project is almost indispensible.” The captain nodded his head weakly.

We couldn’t have made a move because it was like waiting at a teacher’s office. Only when he acknowledged us we suddenly came into attention, and he said, “Your timing put me in a bit of a pinch. Can I assume that you managed to deal with my ‘squad’?” Arauve barely moved her head.

“There wasn’t much to deal with, I think. Next time I won’t rely only on those nameless types.”

They stood up to get away from the table. As his blazer fell flat you could see pokéballs on a huge metal chain draped over his chest. Now I finally tried to respond – no one else was. “Wait,” I said. “You know that I, I’m not – ”

“I knew as soon as I saw you,” he said. “That’s your question? There was a mixup a few weeks ago when Shelly went after the twin in Dewford instead. Of course when she did…” He chuckled. “She came across someone we weren’t expecting. Someone much better than we could have expected… No.” His eyes came back to our depth. “My admin has two little files where he has your names, your teams, quite a lot of character detail. I know the real troublemaker is over there.” Arauve ulped quietly like a puppy.

“When are you going to put that CD in its case?” he said. She’d only hooked her TM into the open flap of her backpack. “I recognize the regulation print. It probably belonged to a THIEF I saw deserting my Team a while back. A move in which the attacker anticipates the status move of the opponent, and steals its effect for its own good… It’s a very good move for the minute elements running around at the bottom of my team, but as it happens, they never have the good sense to learn it. Are you thinking of making better use of it?”

Arauve wasn’t exactly thinking about anything at that moment.

“Before I came, I was expecting to take those equipments from CAPT. STERN without even needing a squad. But it looks like the courier was more late than me, and it should have been smart to expect you two after all. So here is what we’ll do. CAPT. STERN, I’ve explained everything to you in terms a scientist can understand. I won’t harass this heavily belated delivery route any more. You can keep the package from Devon now. Only, remember the reason I asked it from you, and the vital, vital cause I’m representing.”

As he moved, twice Riesa’s height to the stairs we shifted out of his way.

“I’ll leave you to make your decision, CAPT. STERN. I hope you do what you feel is right, not just for you and I here, but for the region and the region’s future.”

 

[Sike Saner]

HI YOU. Been a good while since I read anything of yours, hasn't it. I'd say it's about darn time.

Following are the thoughts and comments I had while reading. Also: jokes, lots of jokes, because I think my ability to take any work of fiction completely seriously is long since dead and buried.

Here we go!

Water has splashed around it and the whorls in the floor’s panels are starting to smudge and curl up.

Birch needs to get him a piddle pad for that thing.

The professor is a little girl with short, messy hair, wearing sandals and a white coat that she’s a little thin for.

This is the second time in recent memory I've seen a scenario turn out to be a case of kids playing pretend. I rather like it.

I’d only seen Littleroot once and in my memory it had exactly three buildings.

This might be the first time I've seen a literal interpretation of an in-game town layout in fiction.

I didn’t need to pee but went to do it anyway.

Smart kid.

A little blue pokémon stood on all fours, without making a sound. It was a wet, blue, watery puppy.

A PUPPY

Okay, I can honestly say it would have never occurred to me to refer to a mudkip as a puppy.

Also he packed up 300p, hard money. It was a thick shiny wad.

I am so glad that second sentence didn't occur out of context.

He said, “Lemme…” taking one of them, not my Mudkip’s. Turned to face the route and hurled it at the ground, his arm going up and round in a big pitcher’s arc.

Cool, but it didn’t open.

I think his performance there warrants one of these.

And I’d worn socks, so when I’d landed mud had splashed all over them.

Well then you've got some laundry to do!

Treecko was cunning, not a necessary feature of plants.

Being lizard-shaped is also not a necessary feature of plants, but damned if Treecko didn't rock that ****.

All moves ought to be capitalized, as they are League-identified qualities.

THE LEAGUE AIN'T THE BOSS OF ME!

He jokes sometimes, I think it’s f… you know right?

Sometimes real speech abruptly changes directions like this, with no real grace to speak of. It's not every day I actually see that reflected in written dialogue.

so a water pokémon was like an energy drink to grass pokémon

Mudkip: it gives you wings

I have already anticipated the existence of shapes larger than triangles.

I call them Jumbo Triangles.

However, it would be more perfect if these shapes were polygons of more sides, rather than still more complex figures that actually include triangles inside them – or, most perfect of all, a triangle of triangles, the nine-pointed Universal Triangle that includes and circumscribes all (it must be) nine pokémon types

Aren't you in for a surprise. :>

There were three types of rock, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary.

And a fourth: classic.

It didn’t seem like it was cut out to be a battling pokémon.

Aren't you in for another surprise. :>

But yeah ralts are a pain in the *** to raise. Pretty sure my gardie and gallade on Y were trade-ins.

Also, “I get the logic of rock being such a strong defensive type, but how come it’s weak to fire?”

Because someone's holding the type chart upside-down.

I went for thick denim jeans before my father indicated how that would feel in hot weather in the absence of baths; it turns out crude khaki is the most appropriate for this purpose. I don’t like the idea of baring anything out in the wilderness. Pokémon have hides. I go out there insulated, like an astronaut. Or a skier.

And bake like a potato.

She watched Treecko struggling to get up, over my shoulder. I blubbered, “What, what’s that, how do I fix it?”

“You don’t, Ah do believe. He said no medicine. Try and pep her up or something.”

“You suck!

I love that response.

But Treecko’s leer is special.

It makes the opponent wonder if their fly's open, regardless of whether or not they're even wearing pants.

“Okay, well,” she moved back at random, “let’s, start.” Mudkip took his place.

The trainer whistled. Horace sprinted out of the grass behind her, his heavy lengths of fur bouncing.

At first I thought oh, he's a cinccino. But then he howled. So much for that theory, heh.

I wonder what he was. Did I miss something?

“That was… that wasn’t like what rescues are like!” “It wasn’t a rescue.” “We sucked so much! That was… Arauve it was a thug.” “A Team Aqua Grunt.” “We could have gotten. What if we hadn’t.” “Well we did. No use thinking about if we hadn’t.”

“How did we win? He wasn’t that tough, was he? Arauve wasn’t he easier than the other trainers?” “All I know is Mudkip is this close to fainting.”

“And now that company likes us. What does that guy think we are now? Will they want us to help them again?” “They don’t have our names, probably couldn’t see our faces, and the guy forgot about us in five seconds. I have no idea what he thinks or what he’ll report to his boss. Are you scared of the company thinking we’re grownups or Team Aqua thinking we’re annoying?”

The thing about putting quotes from more than one character in a single paragraph is they can kind of... bleed together. Especially in the absence of dialogue tags. It's easy to lose track of who's speaking.

Atashka found a mud hole in the trees behind the shop, wallowed with the beasts for the time that we talked, and when he emerged, like a beast with only his baseness and ignorance stole away all the attention I’d been carefully earning from the three of them.

Sounds like someone needs to do some more laundry!

where my pokémon was not debarred, but only given a plastic waterproof basket to ride around in (equally insulting for my mudkip is quite fastidious, though he didn’t seem to take offense)

It's those lotad you've gotta watch out for. Them and their piddle-puddles.

“How can we overcome the brute tyranny of weakness, and the omnipotence of chance, to find peace in a life of almost mercenary traveling?”

By getting plenty of water and sleep.

The boy who had a wingull, therefore, was called Hade which was short for something he wouldn’t say

I'm guessing Hadalpelagic.

and now Mariner has figured out when he tries to like, sprinkler some water at the enemy he’s figured out not to snort while he’s doing it

PFFF. I bet there were some funny moments before he finally figured it out.

“Zoe’s first pokémon is a nosepass,” Rimana said.

“You better sit still,” I whispered, “or you’ll get us both in trouble.”

FIDGET, TREECKO

FIDGET LIKE YOU'VE NEVER FIDGETED BEFORE

That made her hiss, because she knew I’d have been worse than her in any other place or time.

Awww, hissy lizard.

I didn’t need to teach her, she bit me anyway.

Good girl.

“Sorry about her,” I said to him, holding up Treecko who leaned back like an Egyptian queen. “Treecko is just…”

...bitey and shissy and probably my favorite character at this point tbh

She shrugged. “Study for a job. And training can be a hobby I learned when I was eleven. Like playing the guitar, or ****ing su doku.”

The swearword made me clench, but I made sure I didn’t show it.

Ikr? "Guitar". What a filthy word.

“Whoa the Water Gun actually broke that rock apart!”

“It was a clod of dirt.

snickers

Oh look at this.

“A piece of magnetite? Did I break…” I believe you did. That was quite a strategy you employed. These are no good to Lenz now, do you want these shards?

“That would be very cool.”

As a memento of, a display of outstanding power.

“Yes… They’re really no good to him? Most, rock-types can integrate rocks back into their bodies…”

Except –

“Of course! Lenz’s magnets can’t join back, after they, break apart. That’s fascinating!

WHAT DID YOU DO TO THAT POOR NOSEPASS

...are those boogers

are those nosepass boogers

I mean heck, that'd explain why Lenz can't take 'em back, wouldn't it. Who puts boogers back in their nose?

I had to hop up a little to catch the upper side of the ledge. “Every time I do this it’s like we’re pissing on somebody’s…”

“Atashka, a swearword!”

Seriously, Atashka, that "somebody's" was uncalled for.

Rushes.

Green, pale, screen, fluffy.

Blue. Seeds. Buds.

“Why are you… doing, this anyway.”

“Huh? Doing what, Atashka?”

Opaque wall of stalks.

Dirt road.

Blue sky and less visible, blue beyond the edge of it.

Sections like these are some of my favorite parts of the story. Reading them really feels like being behind another pair of eyes, noticing things as I pass them by.

“Just arrived? You can tell when somebody new comes to this town, it’s really small.”

It's still practically Los Angeles compared to Littleroot.

“Thanks, Mark. That’s real specific. I’ll look around for someone wearing a gigantic condom around their neck.”

PFFFFF. XD

DEWFORD HALL

Under a much smaller subtitle, “Everyone’s information exchange!”

Examples of the kind of information that gets exhanges there: USING SMACK and YOUR MOTHER

At this point Mark said, “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

Simultaneously: “’ALTERNATE CASTFORM’, Mark.” “Do you even know about ‘ALTERNATE CASTFORM’? Loser.” Also, from Lewis, “There’s this TV series called ‘ALTERNATE CASTFORM’, it’s really big.”

All three of his friends turned to him and said, “It’s not a TV series, it’s a slogan!”

Dewford is a very strange place indeed.

It was Treecko’s photograph! She was crouched warily in a corner, and in her eyes was a glimmer of fear. I picked it up as soon as I got my breath back and turned it over.


To Atashla Klan,

When you irked our deliveryman, did you expect you
would win a medal? Darling, did you really think for a
moment that meddling with TEAM AQUA might be a
good move for you?

Your beloved POKéMON is at a covert location!

We might give it back once we’re convinced you’ve
learned your lesson.

Fondest regards
SHELLY
(learn the name!)

Ohhhhh ****. Stuff's hitting the fan now.

It’s Treecko, Mudkip and Torchic! Treecko, Mudkip and Torchic have a favorite haunt, in a little Secret Base north of Oldale. After they were given trainers, Treecko, Mudkip and Torchic may have been separated by their different paths, but in their hearts they’ll always be the tightest team in Hoenn!

Torchic is freaking out. “I can’t believe it!” He runs circles around the both of them. “Treecko got kidnapped? What are they gonna doooo?”

Treecko is the only one actually laid on her back. “Don’t worry about it,” she says, lowering a Grepa down to her mouth. “Mmhm. I’ll slash my ropes while they’re not looking and sneak out. Then I’ll probably call an army of rampaging pokémon on them, you just watch.”

“Treecko’s the only one who’s gotten kidnapped yet,” Mudkip says. “I wonder how my trainer would do if I got kidnapped.”

“My trainer’s the most level-headed!” Torchic says. “I’d be out of there in no time!”

Mudkip says, “I don’t think I’d want to put my trainer through it…”

Treecko snortles. “Yeah. Your trainer would go to the police first. Mine didn’t even consider it for… five whole minutes!”

Mudkip shakes his head matter-of-factly. “No. I know my trainer. She’d figure it out all on her own, and then I bet it would take a lot of time, and she’d feel really bad through all of it.”

Everyone pauses for a sad moment. Torchic says, “One time my trainer forgot me at the pastry table for a whole night! I didn’t mind it too much…”

Mudkip and Treecko jump, and then fall back laughing.

Oh my god that was fabulous. XD Of all the angles this story's approached itself from, this is by far my favorite.

“Yay! Finally! The tentacool!”

“I’d given them a wink on the beach just before the whole debacle began. They went over to that side, faster than either of us could walk, and stuffed the motorboat’s pump with clear jelly!

...do I even want to know where said "jelly" came from

She grumbled, something from her gut not her throat, and spit out one perfectly round seed. “Well, good to know you still remember how to attack.” I turned the white seed around in my hand, looking for the subtlest inward seam. “You think if I plant this thing I’ll get more treecko?” She whacked me for that.

Pffffeheheheh. XD

Treecko jumped on me, as I turned away, and blew a raspberry back at him.

Yeah, Treecko confirmed for best character.

Treecko’s legs were starting to dig into my right shoulder. “Shift,” I said, and nudged her. She cringed slightly with her arms, and stared up at me without doing anything. “Come on now, Treecko. Eeeko. Echo. That’ll be your nickname from now on.”

She didn’t do a thing. I was sure she’d have hated the name. I said, “Hey you wanna get a – ”

Abruptly she bolted down my arm and swung over to my other side, where she leaned all her weight on my trouser pocket. Was my pokéball chain hanging out?

“Haha, what? What’s up with you, Treecko? Is there – ”

She didn’t bother to listen, and for the first time in our journey, flashed herself into her pokéball.

Little did he realize he'd basically just named her "Fart" in treecko language.

I was travelling with loose baggy clothes, a superfluous coat over my red sweater and a t-shirt for an inner layer, wearing thin city jeans that behaved like paper as far as cold air was concerned.

This is exactly the experience I've had with jeans in the winter. I need to just buckle the hell down and get some thermal goddamn underwear.

Treecko could only hold up both her arms obliquely over her head. Before they collided it threw up a glow of green light that flared in two lines from her arms, swelled, and before I knew what was happening, burst into white. Meditite contacted softly with her, his own glow completely drowned out, and then quickly bounded away leaping to a safe position. His trainer had a knowing, entertained look like he expected me to understand what was happening. Treecko doubled down on her glow and I took a step toward her, but the trainer yelled almost inaudibly, “Don’t try to interfere with it, just watch!” It was barely audible because there was a rustling static everywhere and the wooden room was starting to get lit up with reflecting Treecko’s light multiple times. And as I thought I saw her kneel down on her shins, tail out, leaning on both her hands, the glow stopped breaking out from all around her and started spreading – to the double lobes of her tail, to her similarly cloven head, until what I could still see of her was a streamlined curve of green, a ridged ellipse with legs attached.

The light exploded once and left a purple burn on my vision. Then I started to see Treecko more clearly again. A white bud sprouted from the top of her head as she raised it. She turned around and at the same time it swished and grew longer until it almost reached the floor. Then she flexed again and the little buns of hard muscle in her arms and legs corded, the muscle strained visibly through, and she rose up all at once standing on longer, more powerful legs, her body bigger and more shapely, her face itself like a stranger’s long and cold, but the look –

The look sent a familiar shiver down through my panic. That was the look she gave whenever she was going to make trouble. It finally broke through my head what I’d been thinking since I’d got here: “She’s evolving!”

She raised her arms again, definitely smiling, to show me the white slits running down their backs. With a splintering thwish they broke open and dark double leaves emerged. The tail behind her unkinked and grew into two flat blades. I felt the tiny husk fragments hit me from where I was standing.

For the first time since we’d been friends, I heard Treecko roar. Grovyle, Grovyle roared. It was a high, soft shrieking sound but it still had running clicks behind it setting it off. She was really beautiful.

Well that was cool. Gotta love a good evo scene.

I identified taillow: they have rising, buzzing screeches, like old feed printers.

Neat description there.

“Check your pokémon, is she fainted?” Brawly said, as the far door opened and teenagers in tracksuits started entering. “Good match. Train hard and challenge me again.”

That ended as I'd suspected it would. Though I've gotta give props to Grovyle all the same; she lasted longer than I'd expected.

At the end I got this little brightly colored bracelet, just a little market stall purchase, but it was sweet. The front of it was cute and looked like an onix snaking around your wrist.

I want one!

She glanced at my eyes then looked at Atashka and told him, “Atashka, cut your hair.”

He giggled loudly at what she’d chosen to say. “Screw off!”

“It’s terrible. I’m going to cut your hair today, Atashka,” with the same expression.

“Shut up.”

“While you’re sleeping.”

Heh heh. Siblings...

We walked around for the next few hours. Arauve was such a poophead. I hate walking because I’m a baby.

Had to laugh here, too. XD

“Okay, okay, I think that’s enough,” I said, making Atashka throw up his hands.

Atashka why did you eat your hands, what the ****

“CAPT. STERN, so are you on a level with us?” the other one, in a voice that was leathery and suddenly reminded me of Uncle Briney.

I rather like "leathery" to describe a voice.


If I had to compare this story to something, it'd be one of those albums that you can't truly appreciate to its fullest until the second or third or whichever re-listening. I did start to get into it in earnest several chapters in; I can say that much. Perhaps another readthrough or two will make the rest click nicely into place for me, too. As it stands, I think I've just barely scratched the surface when it comes to comprehension.

Anyway, it's been a lovely evening here, and I hope things are nice on your end, too. Until next time, take care.

 

[Praxiteles]

AHHHH! It was about time since I reviewed Communication too (I have at least two opening sentences to the review in different text files I think) but then I sort of died from SPPF. This is a great thing to see coming back a full month ago, sorry about that ... I don't know what I wanted to see more than a gigantic post of prepubescent jokes, that's the exact aesthetic of this fic.

[The fic isn't dead yet btw everyone. I've been sitting on an almost complete draft for months, thinking about the next chapter and also procrastinating. It.. will.... come.. besides, there are literal light years to go before the story finishes]

This might be the first time I've seen a literal interpretation of an in-game town layout in fiction.

I'm actually shameless

A PUPPY

Okay, I can honestly say it would have never occurred to me to refer to a mudkip as a puppy.

But that's just how it moves in the Special manga! I think puppy is really fitting for Arauve's mudkip -- mostly silent,, sometimes a bit restive, but exceedingly simple and good natured.

I am so glad that second sentence didn't occur out of context.

Jesus I should tone down the adjectives on that one, thanks

THE LEAGUE AIN'T THE BOSS OF ME!

Yeah Arauve is too snooty to be honest!

Being lizard-shaped is also not a necessary feature of plants, but damned if Treecko didn't rock that ****.

I think my favorite thing about this review is the way it takes sentence fragments out into short quotes, just because my writing style for this fic is so weird, out of context it looks even weirder.

Sounds like someone needs to do some more laundry!

HEADCANON Atashka has not done laundry a single time since the fic began

so a water pokémon was like an energy drink to grass pokémon
Mudkip: it gives you wings

I have already anticipated the existence of shapes larger than triangles.
I call them Jumbo Triangles.

THERE'S my out of context

At first I thought oh, he's a cinccino. But then he howled. So much for that theory, heh.

I wonder what he was. Did I miss something?

Yeah, that part is a bit iffy, my idea for it was that he's a very untrained stoutland and that the twins had never seen one before, so he never got identified. But I think Cindy should name him just for the benefit of the readers. Maybe I missed writing something, it literally slips my mind what I was intending.

The thing about putting quotes from more than one character in a single paragraph is they can kind of... bleed together. Especially in the absence of dialogue tags. It's easy to lose track of who's speaking.

Yeah, it doesn't really feel comfortable to read at all does it... In real life there is a clear separation between two quotes even if they're spoken right after each other, in that the voices of the two people are clearly distinct. I ought to figure out first of all exactly what kind of paragraph flow I really want for those parts.

...bitey and shissy and probably my favorite character at this point tbh

I love her

Ikr? "Guitar". What a filthy word.

Why is Megan pronouncing all those asterisks... and how?

WHAT DID YOU DO TO THAT POOR NOSEPASS

...are those boogers

are those nosepass boogers

I mean heck, that'd explain why Lenz can't take 'em back, wouldn't it. Who puts boogers back in their nose?

THEY JUST CHIPPED HIM A LITTLE! He's a rock, he'll be okay. And you know how when you break magnets they separate into south and north poles of their own, well with Lenz the pieces repel each other. You physically can't fit them back in the same configuration.

Sections like these are some of my favorite parts of the story. Reading them really feels like being behind another pair of eyes, noticing things as I pass them by.

Thanks, I really like them too! I'm usually trying to break up reality into like pinprick pixels of the kind you see on the game boy advance display.

Dewford is a very strange place indeed.

That is supposedly a series from the mainland because everyone in Dewford is obsessed with what they get on the TV from outside except... no one has heard of it...

Oh my god that was fabulous. XD Of all the angles this story's approached itself from, this is by far my favorite.

Pretty much the only remaining sign that these three or four chapters were supposed to emulate Pokeani episodes

Well that was cool. Gotta love a good evo scene.

This fic is mostly just about how much I love plants

That ended as I'd suspected it would. Though I've gotta give props to Grovyle all the same; she lasted longer than I'd expected.

Grovyle is a very smart pokemon. Her battle style is pretty much like someone who can't take the time to study properly, but if they ever get stuck in a test with zero preparation they'll find a way to ace it.

I want one!

Same

Had to laugh here, too. XD

I have a whole scene in my folder that's 'narrated' from Atashka's perspective but actually written by Arauve.

If I had to compare this story to something, it'd be one of those albums that you can't truly appreciate to its fullest until the second or third or whichever re-listening. I did start to get into it in earnest several chapters in; I can say that much. Perhaps another readthrough or two will make the rest click nicely into place for me, too. As it stands, I think I've just barely scratched the surface when it comes to comprehension.

Honestly it's more of a plump fabric than a complex structure, at least at this point: you can sink into it, but you won't find imposing, rigid things othet than ambience maybe and soft, wooly resistance (if that makes any sense). The beginning chapters certainly are kind of like warmups. Different parts don't have so much coherence with each other. All that just goes back to how I need to write way more regularly... >:[

It's a pretty nice morning over here too. Even though it's one month away from your message

 

[Praxiteles]

Getting back to the Pokémon Center was a big relief. We put the pokémon in the recovery rooms to get refreshed, and ordered food into our room. Arauve went straight into bed with her two closed pokéballs, so we had our after lunch meeting on her bed, Grovyle too big to be on the cot, but Rideon settled nicely between Riesa’s legs, slowly punching a hole in the mattress.

“TM46…” Arauve muttered. She looked up. “Where is it…? My bag,” but didn’t move to get it, stared into her lap.

“Arauve, okay, – today sucked,” I said, looking at her sullen shoulder. “We all got a little taken by surprise. But next time – ”

“He said to my face it was a good move to make…?”

“He who?” I said.

“The Leader,” Riesa said.

“What did he even mean. That gorilla. He was telling me what to do just to show how he’d foil me.”

“What is she talking about?” I asked Riesa. “You know if you didn’t stick your head in things like these…”

“Shut, up Atashka,” she said peacefully. “Just shut up.”

Riesa, who was perched on the edge, made me make space for her and I moved to the head of the bed. Arauve shifted for me but said, “Don’t be a baby Atashka.”

“You don’t be a baby,” I said and tugged Grovyle’s head to my lap.

“Arauve,” Riesa said across from us, “could it be possible that… doesn’t Thief sound a lot like what Team Aqua was trying to do? With the delivery of the goods in, in…”

“Well what is it they’re trying to do?” she said. “Why’d they want the goods?”

“If… it’s, can be taken as a hint, then maybe they’re trying to steal their effect? What were the goods used for?”

“They were going to go in the research submarine,” I said.

“So maybe Captain Stern was planning to do something on the ocean floor, when he got down there, and Team Aqua wanted to do it first.”

“That sounds pretty reasonable,” Arauve said. “Is Rideon drooling on my bed?”

“No way, she doesn’t drool.” She was drooling, but her head was on Riesa’s lap so Arauve was just a stuck-up.

“I’m not really that worried about Team Aqua for now. I sort of can get the mood of these things. We had our meeting today. Now Archie won’t want to see me for a while.”

“Archie?” I said. Arauve pushed my head from her shoulder.

“The Leader,” Riesa said.

“Rauvie,” I whined into her arm. “You don’t have to see them again. Just go under the radar. You can still do that right? This is all too much work. I don’t want to get into all of this.”

“Those are quitting words,” Arauve said. “We are going to win.”

Riesa said, “You will never win until you can face your own pokémon eye to eye.” Rideon turned her head to Riesa in her swiveling way, looking up with her big glass eyes.

Arauve nodded, but didn’t give any good answer.

“You know Mudkip is just a little quieter than other pokémon,” Riesa said. “He doesn’t always come out to you with everything – ”

“That’s the problem! He doesn’t come to me at all! You’re just supposed to know what they’re thinking, but… where’s the proof you know anything?”

“Well, you don’t have to have proof,” she said reasoningly.

“I want to be more confident. And that’s not it. I don’t feel like I ever hang out with him. We don’t play any games, he doesn’t ask for grooming…”

We tried to think of what we wanted to say.

“And if he doesn’t talk,” Arauve said, “if he doesn’t play with me, doesn’t behave any way in battle, how am I supposed to… to, be friends.”

I said, “I don’t think you messed up today… You probably haven’t done anything really bad – ”

“But I can’t keep from messing up all the time,” she said. “Little, routine things. Are they really that serious?”

“No, we all do them,” Riesa said. “But you know what? I think they make it harder for you to get back to your pokémon. So you keep avoiding them.”

“Well, what should I do?” she said. “I try involving Mudkip and Beautifly in the things I do. But it’s too easy to put it off…”

“Why not try making a new habit?” Riesa said. “Whenever the three of us hang out together, we always bring our pokémon into the group. You should take yours out too.”

“Sure… That might help. Just… I mean, how much longer are we going to be…” She broke off and sank down further into her sheet.

Riesa smiled. “At least while we’re all here together in Slateport, you can keep it up.” Arauve raised herself on her arms, rolling the two pokéballs into her lap. I said, “Yeah idiot, you really don’t have to worry about that for now.”

Riesa stretched. “Well I’m feeling pretty drowsy now,” she said. “We got pretty hungry and then we got stuffed.”

I snickered. “Same here.”

“Night night,” she said, going to the door. “Let’s have cake or something in the evening.”

I yawned goodbye. Arauve waved her blanket. We all went to knock ourselves out. When the evening came around… I’d have to go outside for a while for some air, so Arauve couldn’t say she didn’t get any alone time with her pokémon…

*

If this spills then she’ll come. standing up, yellow sand on my shins. how long until we leave? It’ll be an hour before we go back. atashka? He’s on that gazebo. See? Arauve, do you want to make a sand castle? atashka. Where are you going Arauve? atashka good. i’ll go inside with him. You want an orange drink but you don’t want this to spill, do you? in, if Atashka can fit that door then I can. what’s this room… it’s empty. let’s go down. dad is in the living room. don’t talk to him Atashka. If this gets spilled, then will she going to look my way? let’s go out. the pond with the forest behind it, where I used to bother water pokémon, is it time yet? That’s a flat dish. In your hand. Half of it’s broken off. The water is streaming.

the trees… which are like black hairlines across the surface of a white gleaming lens… the wind, with the oceanic humidity of silver, in sheet flow, among the columns.. and the ruins, the columns and damp soil, the stage bars between which the water falls, the brown hair, the crinkle of a foil surface of hard water.

A dream is like another self telling you about its passion for the same things you both see, which you declined on the first offer. However what was that, the place I saw after Fallarbor, I went far enough north and west to find the mountains. I remember that waterfall. Someday I will go back.

*

I’d got up much earlier than Atashka and Arauve said they would but I still got out into the cool corridor and tiptoed across to their room, just to try their door, and it was open. Atashka had himself propped up in bed, his eyes still puffy. “Sorry for not knocking,” I said. “Why are you sorry,” he muttered. “We didn’t lock it because you were sleeping over there.”

I sat down next to his folded legs, so I had to bend all the way back. “This is a really nice morning, isn’t it?” I hoped I wasn’t being too energetic for him right away. “That’s the only way I could get out of bed. Yesterday was a long day.”

He nodded looking around. “I was doing the same thing.”

“I bet the wind is up around now. It feels cool outside.”

“I’m gonna get Arauve to swim with us,” Atashka said. “We’ll get some water gear soon.”

“You know what, this is the best time for the market. When I was with my cousins I had to get up around seven or eight.”

“You wanna go now?” he said.

“You really think so?” I said. “That’s what I got up for. You know the idea came to me in bed a few minutes ago. I really should have asked you yesterday, but I thought, on the off chance that Atashka isn’t sleeping…”

“Let’s go just so we can wake Arauve up,” he said. “She’ll get really mad.” I had to turn the other way: she was on her stomach with her head under a pillow and the rest under the sheet, so her 100% white glowed in the morning light. Except for a thin strip of dry, puffy hair.

“Oh!” I put my hand up to my chest. “I hope I’m not obliging you to do anything… I mean, you look pretty sleepy, and we’ll definitely have to wake Arauve up…”

“Hey Riesa, you don’t look all that fresh yourself,” he said, and I laughed hard. “No, I want to go. I thought it would be better to go the beach while it’s cool too.”

“Are you sure? You’re not just trying to make me feel better?”

From somewhere we heard a muffled voice. “Riesa. I’ll tell you a secret about our household. Once you’re in here, you never do anything for anyone again.”

“Oh, my gosh,” I said.

“Stupid Arauve,” Atashka said. “When your head’s under the pillow I know you’re pretending to sleep.”

She took the pillow off, but kept her head turned away from us.

It turned out to be so early that the sun was still under some of the buildings, orange and very beautiful. So we went to the beach first even though we weren’t in a bathing mood quite yet. There were a few people already there, a lady in a shrug walking with her children, and some teenagers cleaning up the shoreline. The sand was really scrumptious, very fine and just a little packed, and when you dug past the warm surface, the layer underground was almost like it’d been chilled. Arauve made a pokémon-sized hole and stuck Mudkip in there. I said, “This is the best chance I’ll get,” and called out Rola.

“Who? Who’s your other pokémon?” Arauve said and then jumped a little when she saw how big the flash was. It was wrapped all around the three of us.

When my onix materialized I remembered that there was nothing to worry about. Her gentle eyes rested on me and past me and then she neatly corkscrewed herself underground, with nothing more on her mind than the new type of soil I’d given her.

“That pokémon’s my starter,” I said. Arauve and I sat down together around a slightly shaken Mudkip. I felt the underground vibrations in my legs, the pads of my thighs. “When I can feel Rola moving around down there it gives me a, crazy feeling of peace.”

“You two actually keep tabs on each other underground?” she said.

“We do! But it’s been days. Rola hasn’t been able to come out since I was in Dewford.”

While we were both sitting together Arauve said, “If Atashka’s over there, I’ll tell you about the dream I had this morning. The same time you two were talking.”

“Oh no,” I said, “was it a nice dream?”

“I’ll have to tell you about it,” she said. “It was about some places around our home. You said you’ve been to Route 104, haven’t you?”

“I just remember the beach,” I said. “I thought it was the best beach I’ve ever seen.”

“It is the best beach,” she said with assurance. “Atashka and I went all the time with our father when we had holidays. Well I dreamed that I met a pokémon.”

“A nice pokémon?”

“Well I’m not sure, because I never remembered what kind it was. Maybe it was just someone you come across in the wild but I think it, held itself like a rare pokémon. It could talk though. I said a lot of stupid stuff to it too before I could make it say something. And then it said, – no this is too funny.”

“It’s not!” I said. “I mean I don’t know, but I won’t laugh.”

“It said, there’s a special power inside me, as in the pokémon, and neither of us know what it is, but I can draw it out.”

“Wow,” I said. “It really said that? You had a dream like that?”

“You should laugh if you want to laugh at it,” she said. “It’ll only make me feel better.” “No,” and I thought about her confusion about Mudkip yesterday.

“If Atashka heard he’d think it was funny. So, that was the thing in the dream. Now I pretty much doubt it, but it said that it came down to something I had to say. That would unlock the power of pokémon.”

“Something you have to say…” I thought about it. “Training is supposed to be more than just commands. The practice sessions together, the time spent in the same element, the bond with the pokémon, all that goes into it.”

“That’s right,” she said.

I felt a cool spray on the part of my ankle that was exposed, and it looked like Rideon was kicking sand at me. “What’s up,” I said. Nothing very urgent. I looked her over and there was a scuff of wet sand on the bottom of her bright white armor.

“Oh, doesn’t look like water will be too good for her,” I said. “Come on sweetie.” With a grunt, I lifted her to rest sideways on my leg.

“How much does she weigh?!” Arauve said.

I shrugged. “A hundred pounds. I think more than me.” I used the bottom of my dress and wiped the mud from her belly joints. “I’m not that strong.”

Atashka started walking back from the shore, so I got up on my feet. “If you want my opinion,” I said, “about the dream, I think everything might be picking up for you finally.”

Arauve raised her head up from her starter. When she processed that, she said, “I can’t say if that’s true or not.” With effort, she pulled Mudkip out of the cool sand. The pokémon was still moist and now his lower body was caked. “How am I going to get that off!”

“Ha ha stupid Arauve and her stupid pokémon,” Atashka said and crouched down to bother Mudkip.

“Ugh!” Arauve took out Mudkip’s pokéball. “You leave me no choice! Why don’t you ever leave me choices?”

“Is it true that when you do that, you have to clean your pokéball out too?”

“No, that’s stupid,” Atashka said. “When you flash in a pokémon, if the pokémon is dirty, the sand falls right off him. See?”

Mudkip’s body dissolved in red light. When it did, it took all the sand with it.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

My dress was a nice one that I’d barely wore once since I got it in Mauville. It was a real sundress with thin straps that left open brown space on the back of my shoulders, sewing around the midriff, and a loose skirt that flared in the wind. I really liked the flowers that floated along the bottom of the skirt, they were bright red stains on the yellow. I’d always thought that where I was going would be too dirty for it.

Atashka had pulled out something special too, and he’d done it first. He said it was a gift from his friend in Dewford. It was a jacket made in the real protagonist chic like Ace Trainers wear, burnt yellow with a white hemming that ran over the left shoulder and all the way down. It didn’t make him look too much of a hotshot though thankfully. He looked a little taller and more slender, and it struck off the strange look his face always has. For Arauve her brother picked the clothes: a big white shirt and black jeans to make it look like a boys school uniform. With a brown ponytail around her shoulder length, the shirt hanging on the arc of its shoulders and then tucked close at the waist, she looked much cooler than Atashka.

Atashka said: if you go east from Slateport, there’s a very strong current that starts a little way into the water. Pokémon can’t fight the current, either. That’s why travel over sea from Slateport is impossible. That’s what Uncle Briney told me; I didn’t know if this city was really a crossroads for going by land but I guess there were ships that could get to it. We got out of the beach, then we took a wide, white cobbled path that started almost immediately and went down through the city. Parallel to its left, a little wall ran with pink bunches of flower plants beside it. Arauve was going to be dumb like always and go right past it, but Riesa noticed the crossing on our left and we turned around to get into the market gate.

The market was just a wide, open paved court that went down all the way to the sea. Every few steps, on both sides, there was a small shop with a cloth awning. On our left was a vegetable shop and the one opposite to it sold flowers. Grovyle put her face in the yellow daisies as we went by. Just beyond them Riesa stopped for a moment and then called both of us in – the front of a shop where a lot of keychains, necklaces and stuff had been hung on threads.

Arauve said, “This is for… imported textiles? Why do you need those?”

“No,” and Riesa held up one of the bracelets with a round onix design. The one on her wrist was the exact same, now I noticed.

“Uncle Briney got this one for me,” she said. “He must have got it while he was driving us to the Center.”

“What, really?” I said.

“You were sleeping too?”

“Ha ha Atashka,” Arauve said.

“So I’m going to buy you two something nice here. It’s a good thing you two are with me, you can look too.”

“Awesome!” I said. “Can we have… a keychain?”

“Can’t you think a little bit bigger?” Arauve said. “Here she’s opening up her pocket to you…”

“What do you mean Arauve…” I gripped my cheeks. “Bigger than these Skitty keychains?”

“I’m going to make her buy me a Carbos that I can give to Mudkip.”

“What’s Carbos?”

“Now hang on,” Riesa said. “’Opening my pocket’ might be a bit… But you can definitely have something bigger.”

Riesa said that her pokémon had just come back to us when we got back to the main street. Rola was probably jealous of the onix on her wrist. When she said that, even I felt a shake and apparently Rola left again.

“Sounds like Rola is a lot like my starter,” I said.

“What’s that?” Riesa said.

“If she can’t annoy me, she gets annoyed instead.” “Hee hee hee!

“Oh no, Rola is really sweet. I’ve been pretty mean to her. You saw right?”

“She’ll forgive you for that…”

“So Atashka. What sort of thing does your sister like? I want to gift her but I really wish I knew you two well enough.”

“Arauve?” She gave me a few steps to think about it. I tried to make a face while I thought. “What do I want. I want a keychain! Made of solid gold!” Riesa laughed. “Give me something cute.” I said. She laughed. “Anything you pick, don’t sweat it!”

“And for Arauve?”

I still couldn’t think of anything. “Buy her a book. She likes books.”

“Okay good. Anything else?” she said.

“…No,” I said. “Sorry. Arauve doesn’t like anything.”

“That can’t be true! I’ll find out what she likes.”

The middle of the market had this total mess where crates and empty containers had been piled on each other. We stopped for a second before we plowed through it. The closest things were berry pots, tiny and shallow. I said, “I didn’t know you could buy berry trees. We should take these instead of looking for berry trees every time.”

“Atashka, you stupid!” Riesa said. “I know they’re tiny, but how would you carry them?”

“I have item balls,” I said.

“Then you’ll have a ball that weighs ten pounds.”

“No you won’t – ”

“We actually have something to do, loser!” A horrible sound! The sound of Arauve catching up. “Riesa, what about swimsuits?”

“You think?” she smiled.

“Can we get them in the market?”

“Probably can! Will Mudkip swim too?” She touched the middle of his face with her finger and he closed his mouth around it.

“Mudkip will need a spray because Mudkip is a freshwater fish. If you put him in salt water, he’ll” tightening her fingers around him “shrivel up… like a bug…”

When Mudkip finally looked up to meet Arauve’s evil look, he sprayed her with water.

“Mudkip is sooo cute.” Riesa told us that if we wanted sprays, she remembered the shop where they’d bought pokémon accessories four years ago, probably. They were all locals so there was a chance the same shop was still there.

She found the stall without a problem. But the seller stood behind one antique, wooden counter and around her were only huge jars with ceramic lids fencing her in.

“Was there a stall that used to sell pokémon sportswear here?” Riesa asked her.

“That’s me. I changed the shop, now we sell traditional herbs and tonics.”

“All those are herbs?” I pointed to the giant, waist-height jars.

“Those are for my raw ingredients. Ordinary stuff… Pickled babies, dried bones, pickled pokémon…” She gave us a grin.

Arauve finally caught up from wherever she’d been screwing up. The shopkeeper leaned forward and pulled down her glasses. “Oh my! Your pokémon… Am I right in saying your Beautifly OTs from Petalburg Forest?”

“OTs?” Arauve said.

“Original Trainer. As trainers you should be on top of jargon you know.” She wasn’t really an adult, probably. She looked much older than us, but she had big round glasses and black hair coming down from a bun.

“That doesn’t make sense…”

“The gradient on the lower color band of his wings proves it,” the nerd shopkeeper said. “If your pokémon really is originally from Petalburg, then do I have a job for you! It might take some running around, but the payoff is severe.”

“Not interested,” she said, and turned back without waiting for us.

“Hang on!” Riesa said. “Let’s talk a little more! What kind of reward?”

“Don’t you want to know about the job first?” Her glasses sank.

“Rewards or I leave,” Arauve said. I told her, “Then leave already.” She stuck out her tongue.

“Okay, okay…” She raised her hand halfway to her mouth, and we all leaned closer over the counter. “I’m not supposed to divulge this, but have you heard about SECRET POWER?”

“Nope.”

“Nothing?” That dismayed her too. “I’ll tell you a little bit. One, it’s a super mysterious move you can teach to any pokémon. And the second thing is it’s a Hidden Move that works on the land. That’s all I’m saying about it. My friends and I are part of a secret circle revolving around SECRET POWER. If you do this for us, I’ll pass you along to the others and at one point, someone will hand you a TM. Then you can buy special items from me.”

Still huddled, we looked at her quietly for a few seconds. Arauve said, “I don’t buy it.”

“It’s real! Look! Lean closer and make sure no one can see the counter.”

There was a knapsack under it barely visible, and she pulled out a CD. “That’s my own TM.”

“That looks like an HM serial!” Arauve said.

“It’s not part of the HM series. It’s custom. If you’re as keen eyed as I think you are, surely you should be able to see…”

“Yeah, okay.” Arauve stopped leaning. “You pulled out your weird TM, I’m good.”

“So will you do it?”

“Miss, what’s your name?” Riesa said. “I’m Riesa, this is Atashka and the killjoy is Arauve.”

“I’m Violet,” she said.

“Pretty!”

“Thank you. You have a pretty name too. Not you two, yours are weird. Your job, if you’d let me get to it, is very simple, you made me stretch it out too long. There’s another shopkeeper here that I’ll show you where. I want you to get a TEA CHISEL from her. She’s had her hands on this vintage item for way too long, and I need it for something of mine. Like you can tell, she won’t sell it for any kind of sum.”

“Are you saying we have to wheedle it out of her – ”

“Hang on! You have Beautifly so it’s going to be a breeze! She’s been talking about a beautifly from Petalburg Forest for months. She won’t part with her CHISEL until she gets to see one.”

“We just have to show her Beautifly and come back with the item?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Arauve,” Riesa said, “I don’t know how you feel but unless this gets a lot more complicated, it sounds like a real nice opportunity.”

“It will,” she said. “It will.”

Violet said the shop was in the last lane of the market. I made the twins come down all the way down the stalls even though they wanted to stop for bathing suits and spray. At the last moment, they saw a stall with flotation rings stacked blatantly outside, and I lost them down the second-last alley. When I did, Rola finally rumbled closer, after she’d been quaking in the background for a long time and I remembered that Atashka and Arauve were still strangers to her. She hadn’t even wanted to show her face to me after a break of almost days inside her pokéball. Threading her down the market lane, I came down to the end. Below me, a slender line of wooden pegs ran east to west. Under that line was the chewed-up ridge of the land’s edge. Then there was blue water, running west into a fold of land that tried to catch it.

I just waited for Rola’s digging to get closer – the grinding crunch of earth snaked its way until it was just under me. Then I heard her hit something with a loud metal screech and she bolted down the left alley. I followed her all the way to the end, along a constant chain of red and orange pennants running over all the shops, to another stall front with hanging trinkets like the last one. “Trainer’s accessories,” the shopkeeper said. “Pokéball decals, belts, ID card cases, hats, you want… costumes,”

“What’s this?” I said. “It looks kind of like the pad on a pokéball belt. Is it a spare…?”

“That’s an accessory ball,” he said, smiling at my smile. “See? It looks like a pokéball holder, but the pad isn’t round, it has a triple pincer magnet that can hold any item. You can keep precious stones, precious items, lockets, anything on your pokéball slot. It makes a seventh slot.”

I muttered that I’d be back and went to find the swimsuit shop.

“What did you find?” Atashka said. “What kind of shop is it?”

“No, I had an idea for your gifts,” I said, “but it’s a collaborative thing.” “That sounds complicated…” Arauve said. Mudkip was still in her hands, now sleeping.

I made them stop their shopping to come with me. “I’m making you work for your own gifts, but that’s what you’re here for. You guys should tell me if you don’t like it. Plus you have to help me with something for Uncle Briney. Here it is, look at this.”

“Oh, those accessory things?” Arauve said. “I’ve seen this before.”

“Yeah?” I just realized that my mind had gone blank. I tried to gather my idea back up. “I remember… you two had that really rare, Magnetite in your bags? And both of you had it?”

“I think I still do,” Arauve said. “What about it?”

“What if we had a triple gift, where I give you both one of these, and you can both put your Magnetite shards in them?” Suddenly, the last afternoon came back to me. It was only last afternoon that I’d even heard of the Magnetite! And it was a conversation that turned into a fight. This was a bad idea. “So… that makes it…” I moaned, “a gift from me, and a gift, from…” The twins watched me trail off.

Atashka turned his head to Arauve. “Would you have thought of that?” She said, “How does she get those ideas?”

“It’s… it’s too weird, then?”

“No!” Atashka said. “It’s cute!”

“Only downside is that it’s a memento of him,” Arauve said. “Why should I remember him? It should be a memento of Riesa.”

“Arauve you’re dumb, look it’s three-way. Riesa’s memento is the holder.”

“Oh…” she said slowly. “That is smart.”

“Now can we finally look for the shop,” I said.

“Please.”

It was right at the end of the other street. Mrs. Kino stood in an apron, presenting a table full of fresh seaweed. When we came, Beautifly wasn’t present but Arauve said he would wind back to us sooner or later. She started with the seaweed, like the stupid she is. “It looks so fresh, I feel like it’s going to rear up and attack!”

Mrs. Kino laughed a little louder than you’d expect, and she stopped just after Arauve got embarrassed.

“Thank you, dearie. You sound just like my mother. Did you have something you were looking for?”

“I dunno yet!” she said. “But I got interested when I saw a shop front like yours. I couldn’t help but notice all the traditional dry goods drawers in the back.”

“Not much of dry goods here, I’m afraid. But we do have herbs. Very good for pokémon trainers. Want me to show you some?”

“Ah… is that right,” she said. “Sure, yeah…”

Beautifly still hadn’t come yet. I was starting to wonder if one of us would have to hunt him down.

Before she got out the herbs, Mrs. Kino opened the smallest drawer and pulled out just a handful of tools from the back. Was that…?

“Oh! Is one of them for tea?” Arauve said. Mrs. Kino raised it to the light. “That’s so beautiful! How did you come by it?”

“Oh, it’s been in my family for generations. Why, dearie, do you have your eye on it?”

“I’ll be upfront about it Mrs. Kino. I really do want a well-weighted chisel. I use herbs for all my pokémon and I simply have to break them right.”

“Oh, but this isn’t simply a chisel for any herb,” she said. “This is a tea chisel. It’ll sound strange to you now, but there was a time when my family – well, most everyone used to get all of their daily tea in bricks. Not just the specialties.”

“Ah yeah!” Arauve said. “I understand how… prestigiously your family must have used it. But don’t you see, that’s precisely why it’s useful to me!”

“Every pound of tea in my mother’s old household has gone through this.” She dragged on this for a little while, as if she was making a point.

“And the flavors of the…” Arauve started.

“Why dear, there are so many different kinds of CHISELS in the world! In our house we had a TEA CHISEL, we had an HERB CHISEL, an old PICKLE CHISEL, what else… Their materials had been carefully toned over all the years we used them. This metal has gained far too much DRY ENERGY to be used on… revival powders or whatnot.”

When she said ‘dry energy’ I saw Arauve crumpling. It was way too funny not to laugh right in front of them. “Well anyway,” Arauve said quickly, “it’s still something I want, but I already know… it’s probably a family heirloom of yours.” She thrust her hands behind her and finally pulled a beautifly into view. “I’m positive that if I find the right blend for my Beautifly to sip on, it could be as good as a vitamin… It could easily raise his Special Attack…” Hands around his abdomen, she inched him uncomfortably close to the seafood and Mrs. Kino.

“What a well-mannered darling you have,” she said slowly. “Where does he come from?”

“Petalburg,” she said and grinned.

When we got out of the market Arauve was steaming. “I told you it’d drag on! I said it!”

“Ha ha Arauve who’d listen to you?” I said.

Riesa looked at the slip we’d been given. “President, Pokémon Fan Club, No. 233, Merai Colony. What are we supposed to do when we get there?”

“Like with Violet, apparently, just turn up, with this loser.” Beautifly flapped roughly in Arauve’s hair. “We wouldn’t be in all of this if it wasn’t for you!”

“Cut it out Arauve,” Atashka said, “we’re the ones who’re bothering him.”

“I know,” she said, and got her hair blown in her eyes.

“But I still don’t get why… why Petalburg? What’s that rare about a Petalburg beautifly?”

“There are plenty of him,” Arauve said, “you weren’t listening. He grew up in the forest so it looks like he can tell different varieties of mushrooms. I’ve never seen him touch mushrooms before. I guess we have to go on a gourmet mushroom tasting or something. What’s that noise? Do you hear that? So weird!”

“What?” I said.

“Is that Rola?” Arauve said.

“Yep.” Riesa said. “She’s being a little loud, but…”

There was a quake that I swear dislodged some of the pavement stones a little bit. Then the grass next to us burst up and the onix rushed out of it, her full length, and before we knew it she was coiled up into what looked like a pile of grey rocks.

“I think she’s hurt,” Riesa said. “What is it rolly?” She moved towards her. “Do you want to show me?”

The rocks closest to Riesa spasmed and I grabbed Arauve’s shoulder. Riesa hadn’t flinched. There was a depression about an inch from her toe.

Then the onix’s tail uncoiled, rolled around Riesa once, and showed the smallest end to her. She kneeled down with it, holding the small boulder in her lap. “Oh, look at it,” Riesa said. “This is battle worthy. Arauve look.”

We came closer, so we could at least see her head over the coil of stones.

“She ran into something hard that was buried underground. I guess something steel, probably.” Her pokémon gave a painful screech but Riesa didn’t move, and neither did Rola. “Rola, why didn’t you tell me? She held it in until she actually couldn’t control it anymore. Did you think we were too busy?”

Arauve said, “She’s very sweet.”

We stepped closer to peer in over the stones. The coil opened just enough to let Rola’s head in. She watched us with her head down to the ground.

“Rola, remember when Rideon had a little problem this morning at the beach? All you have to do is make Riesa notice you. She’ll figure it out.”

“No, I messed up too,” Riesa said. “We all got too busy looking for our gifts.”

“Well anyway, keep her in the pokéball so she doesn’t get hurt any more.”

I said, “Looks like we’re going back to the Center.”

*

This is Slateport, our first visit, so we’d been training pretty rigorously on the way here. When I came to the city I took my first long break. It’s literally impossible to do any work with those two around.

To be open about Beautifly: he is the one I have been focusing all my ideas on. I’ve been keeping my strategies pragmatic. I started seeing that he often fell short of very decisive hits, usually when I used type advantages. Such hits would prevent him from taking damage that got to him in the longer game. I started wondering if I couldn’t raise his power by a small margin. He knew Growth but in battle, you had to work in frames of six or seven seconds. Just before I reached Slateport and met Wally, I rather felt like I was on the brink of a great change in my style of training.

To Atashka I said, “I had a dream about Mom.” Oh. Do you still think about her? No, but today I had a dream.

 

[Sike Saner]

“Shut, up Atashka,” she said peacefully. “Just shut up.”

Of all possible modifiers for telling someone to shut up, "peacefully" would've never crossed my mind. So of course now I'm trying to decide what, exactly, shutting someone up entails. I think I've settled upon "resisting the urge to bludgeon the other party with a shoe while telling them to shut up".

A dream is like another self telling you about its passion for the same things you both see, which you declined on the first offer.

Some dreams I'll continue to decline to the frickin' end. Those particular other selves can stfu, peacefully or otherwise.

“Is it true that when you do that, you have to clean your pokéball out too?”

“No, that’s stupid,” Atashka said. “When you flash in a pokémon, if the pokémon is dirty, the sand falls right off him. See?”

Mudkip’s body dissolved in red light. When it did, it took all the sand with it.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

...That'd explain how pokémon can be deployed and recalled while holding items, come to think of it.

Those are for my raw ingredients. Ordinary stuff… Pickled babies, dried bones, pickled pokémon…

pickled pokémon babies, baby bones, dried pokémon, dried babies, pokémon bones, bony dried pickles...

In our house we had a TEA CHISEL, we had a HERB CHISEL, an old PICKLE CHISEL,

a BABY CHISEL, a BONE CHISEL...

To Atashka I said, “I had a dream about Mom.” Oh. Do you still think about her? No, but today I had a dream.

This bit reads really nicely. Great way to end the chapter.

 

[Praxiteles]

I was like, 'It's been half a night, I can't possibly have any reviews.' And there you were!

Some dreams I'll continue to decline to the frickin' end. Those particular other selves can stfu, peacefully or otherwise.

I have had those godforsaken dreams.... I like writing characters who actually have meaningful dreams, just to see what that's like.

pickled pokémon babies, baby bones, dried pokémon, dried babies, pokémon bones, bony dried pickles...

baby pickles, baby pokemon, bone babies...

a BABY CHISEL, a BONE CHISEL...

I JUST IMAGINE A NEWSBOY READING OFF ALL THIS IN AN URCHIN VOICE. (I also remembered that herbs start with a vowel... silly mistake.)

This bit reads really nicely. Great way to end the chapter.

Ty! Who knows what Arauve really dreamed about? I have a feeling it was one of Those dreams and she's bluffing...

 

[Praxiteles]

Rola’s fracture wasn’t deep enough to cross her rock layer, but it was enough to irritate her. So the nurse said it wasn’t maybe battle-worthy, but it definitely would have hurt. Not that I’d tell the twins any of that.

What did we do the rest of the day? Of course we went! Atashka and I hardly knew the city but Arauve took charge and led us on foot, although we had to leave Rola behind to recuperate. She got us through phase and phase of hushed city background until I couldn’t believe she knew the way, past the tinny festive houses close to the ships, past a nearly open expanse of plain and factory, past a white plaza splayed like pavilions on the grass, into a wide-avenued and old residential block, that she couldn’t have known stopping at a café to get us ice cream cones before going down a street, almost adjacent to it under huge shadows of trees.

That’s where we saw the cutest looking old house. It had light lilac shingles, bright and pastel even though they were old, a very narrow front and at least two other doors at other angles that I could see, and a balcony over the porch that was laced with metal vines that made windows out of its sides. It had a front garden with round, pink flowering trees that looked like they were from outside the region. We had a long time to look at it as we came down the street.

“This is the president of a Pokémon Fan Club,” Arauve said, “in this city. I’ve only had to listen to him once. Do you know who’s going to ring the bell? It’s the one who came up to me saying ‘It’ll be fun Arauve, it won’t drag on, it sounds cool, it’s…’”

She was turning toward Atashka, but I took her other side. “I’d be glad to!” Crossing past them, I minced down the house’s short white garden path a little faster than the two. When I found where the doorbell was, the door opened by itself with a little click, and a stately old gentleman walked out and just missed seeing me.

He spotted the twins, then turned around to take on all three of us. “Arauve!” he said. “What a nice sight! You should have told me you were staying in town.”

She walked up to him and sighed, “Hi, Mr. Yamada. This is my brother Atashka and this is Riesa.”

“Pleased to meet you!” I said. “My dears,” he said, “you three have crashed a party. Come inside, quick, the mocktails are almost finished.”

The inside of his house turned out to be a lot different from any home I’d seen. When we crossed the living room, I realized that it was nothing but a paper enclosure made of rugs and Kanto-style paper screens. The real interior of the house was in a lot more chaos. I only really noticed in one corner, a plaster-choked upper stairway before he ushered us down a narrow corridor and into the downstairs.

Their basement was almost two stories tall. Its walls were hidden by long embroidered sheets draped on stands, and the center was taken up by a huge table with a pewter milotic lounging in the center, covered with food and surrounded with guests. The other side had a smaller table and buffet. I tried to steal a look at any of the party guests’ faces, but they all looked like older trainers from all over, with showy clothes.

“Are you fond of mushroom at all, Riesa,” the president asked, and I said, “Do you mean to eat?”

Arauve interrupted: “I’d have liked your appetizers in the living room Mr. Yamada,” but she said it almost interestedly. We’d stopped at the doorway.

Mr. Yamada said, “But you’re here on a mission? Oh, I know all about it. You met with Mrs. Kino at the market.”

“I even got a letter of recommendation,” Arauve said frowning and bored, “in this stupid purple print, do you want me to show it…?”

“My dear I was planning to introduce you to them anyway, if you’d come. You’re more than interesting enough! I could almost have counted on your reaching her on your own, you’re a trainer of a certain calibre…”

Arauve gave her brother a look. She said, “What is this Secret Circle anyway, and why is their secret so… great?”

“The latter is something you’ll have to ask them; I have no idea whatever. Come on!”

He ferried us one side along the table, to the right wall. We stopped at two trainers who had turned their chairs around to talk to each other; one was very tall and had black hair in long bangs, and was wearing a sleeveless red coat and the other had thick curly brown hair pulled back into a bun. “Zigzagoon!” the president said, “Here is the friend of Wally’s I wanted you to meet.”

The shorter girl turned around to look at us. Her round face had big light eyebrows and was lit up with a smile. “Well, hello!” she said. “Are one of you Arauve? I’ve been hearing a few things!”

“I’m, Arauve,” she said, stepping forward with a grudging smile. “I didn’t catch your name…?”

“Zigzagoon!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it charming? Of course it’s just my… Mawile would say nom de guerre…”

“Get some seats for them first,” said ‘Mawile’? and the two of them just split so that three empty chairs were left between them.

“This is one half of the Secret Circle inner ring,” Mr. Yamada said. “I was planning to leave you in their hands, they’re some of my favorite guests.”

I sat down closest to Zigzagoon, and Arauve was next to the scary one. They were probably at least three or four years older than any of us. She gave me another smile, and I fidgeted. Her earrings, brown or wooden, were big flat downward-pointing triangles and they propped her round face.

Immediately when we were all settled, Mawile from the other side said, “Arauve would handle the night at Tohjo well.”

“A-Arauve?” Zigzagoon said laughing. “That’s a very fast assessment, definitely. Guys, you should hear what we were just talking about. Mawile is becoming a kind of fan of the old Johto court values. She tells me their court life was very martial. Every attendant to the Queen was one of her knights. They had a very rigid personality test.”

“It was not rigid, their ideas changed by the end of every war,” she said, “but I would say that the pivotal moment for their court was the Night at Tohjo. That was a battle. Arauve, have you ever thought about choosing between evisceration and drowning?”

Zigzagoon laughed so hard that she must have given her at least five or six seconds to react. We around to look at the two. Zigzagoon’s laugh was pretty pleasant, though. Arauve said, “It was Riba who took me to that idea. His answer was pretty clear…”

“Yes, but Riba was only a pokémon trainer,” Mawile said. Her eyes were big, but very dark and disquieting. “The problem that faced the Johtoan knights was about name. Name is a quality that in the end of those feudal days had become almost like liquid. So here, a death story matters a great deal. How would you want to be written, Arauve?”

“I’d rather die in my grandchildren’s house after all my pokémon,” she said. Mawile chuckled, breaking her expression for the first time.

Zigzagoon touched me on the shoulder and said, “This is honestly such a boring topic to break the ice with,” as I turned around, “death and economy. I hope it’s not shocking you?” Her voice was high and light.

I shook my head. She said, “That’s good to know, sweetie. What’s your name?” She picked up a jug and offered and poured us apple juice.

“Riesa,” I said. “He’s Atashka,” I leaned to let his face through.

“Oh, Arauve’s brother! We’ve been trying to hear about all three of you, believe it or not. But we didn’t want to pry until we saw you in person. Are you having fun here, Riesa?”

“In Slateport? Yeah, I think so! I like both my friends and I’ve been here once, unlike them.”

“You know the market well?” “Veeery long ago.” I scrunched my face.

“Well, do you know what they sold on the first day of Slateport Market?” I must have looked blank. “That was hundreds of years ago. RAINBOW WINGs!”

Atashka whistled. I said, “You’re not making fun of me…?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Have you heard of the great fire clash that happened in the eighth century, just when this city was founded?”

“You’re telling me that the windfall of feathers from Ho-oh’s fight fell here…?”

“It did! That was this city’s original richness! It’s a city of festivals you know, every day is market day now and the pennants are up year round for the ships. They made a promise never to have a somber day after that.”

“That’s such an incredible thing,” I said. “I mean, Hoenn is a bit isolated. I didn’t know it had visits from all these legendaries.”

“Hoenn has always been part of the circle!” she said. “And it has its own very populated circle. Maybe someday you can search for some of them.” She winked.

Her voice quieted just in time to hear, from the other side, Arauve say “… the jaws of friendship. Nature’s strongest vice…”

Zigzagoon dropped her palms on her kneecaps and started laughing again. “It looks like Mawile and Arauve get along!” She hooted. “They’re even talking about friendship…!”

“Actually, we were talking about food…” Mawile said. “How the earliest pokémon-human couples would have been based on mutual arrangements for hunting or foraging. A family that feeds a pokémon and a pokémon that feeds the family. Perhaps the prehistoric root of what we now call the ‘household familiar’…”

“Not ‘now’, Mawile,” Zigzagoon said, “in your time, in feudal era Johto.”

“What?” Mawile said. “Anyway, Arauve is about to say something completely true. She says that the soul of any training relationship is housed in the jaws. There is an organ they traditionally placed it in. Actually it is the gullet.” I put down my glass and turned toward her; Arauve was only focused on her plate.

“Two pokémon who eat together are at the highest tier of trust. Even mothers and children eat one after the other. If any one of you intends to not be provided by the other someday in the future, it would be better to fight for food and secure an advantage now. In their synchronization eating together, two pokémon are like lovers who have matched their breathing to each other. It benefits them to eat at the same rate. Or perhaps it just feels better.” She put down a roast leg and cleaned her mouth with a deep red handkerchief, which she then refolded to its clean reverse, and handed to Arauve who had just finished a smaller version of Mawile’s leg. Arauve’s movement to take it was just as refined, burning a fixed look into the tablecloth under Mawile’s arm.

“That makes me hungry,” Zigzagoon said. “Let’s go near the buffet. You three have one more person to meet today.” I had actually just finished my juice. Mawile unfolded her full height, her suit coming down to the knees of her black tights, and led us.

I’d been trying to see who was at the smaller table much closer to the buffet. It was maybe for seven or eight people but had only three: a white-dressed girl the same age as Mawile and Zigzagoon, a very small boy with dark hair, and an old lady in a simple apron, maybe the cook. Zigzagoon handed me a plate and I forked some salad on it, to be polite.

“Riesa, try their bolognese, it’s the only good dish here,” Zigzagoon said.

“We just ate,” I said, “before we came here.”

“That didn’t stop Arauve,” she said. “Always respect the gullet, right?”

Arauve shrugged. “I was hungry today.”

“Clamperl,” Mawile said, “stop romancing Wally, he’s leaving tomorrow. Come here and meet his Petalburg friends. This is Arauve and her twin brother.”

The girl in the white blouse turned her head to look at us. Her hair was blue and curled up around her neck, and she had huge round cat-ear rimmed glasses with a pink tint. She said, “Arauve? She’s going to have to battle me.”

“Okay, okay, say hi to her though,” Zigzagoon said. Wally waved slightly to us while he thought we weren’t looking. He definitely looked a lot younger than Atashka told me he was! But he was sitting very gently with this very old lady on one side and the Secret Circle trainer on the other.

Clamperl said, “Shroomish wouldn’t even leave the base today… she ought to have seen you.”

“Shroomish, the final pin of our inner circle,” Mawile said. “Shroomish is the one these three are here to see, Clamperl. I must meet your pokémon,” she said to Arauve.

“Time to call the hansom,” Zigzagoon said.

“The what?”

The president was at the buffet, picking up eclairs. “I shall telephone presently,” he said.

“Whaaaaaat,” Arauve repeated.

*

It wasn’t a real hansom but it was an old-fashioned car, small but stately, with red curtains at the windows. We all got in and rode through the city in the yellow afternoon. Between the leaders that were there, the three of us had a rather intensive interview into what must have been information into the Secret Circle. Clamperl was finally totally interested in us and she sat craned back to us throughout the ride, her spectacled face cute but a little contemptuous-looking. She had a necklace of deep blue rocks above her blouse.

“Who introduced you,” she asked me.

“Violet,” I said.

“Good. I’ll have to make her divulge less to strangers, because she couldn’t have known who you were. I don’t think the beautifly holder, whoever it turned out to be, even needed to know about the move. Adrian and Stera are both circumscribing their routes today, Zigzagoon. Did you know that?”

She was sitting with us in the back, but she didn’t answer immediately. “I heard they were coordinating the agents in the Fortree circle. I guess that’s on hold?”

“There’s only one magic to the Secret Circle,” she said. Mawile looked up from her abstraction to hum yes. “Isn’t that right,” Clamperl said, and gave the three of us her first smile, a meaningful look. I equivocated.

When we came to to their base, which I can’t say much about except that it was in a neighborhood almost identical to the first one, we had more screens, although these were green bamboo and blocked the phases of the huge interior in rows. We had to take off our shoes at the door. It was almost like a shrine with the priestess waiting up at the top of all the stairs with her assistant maidens. Except that when the final door opened, to a lavish room floored with wooden platforms that formed a ring around a central depression, there was no statue of a legendary but only a stovetop and a soup pot, with the final pin of the ring stirring the contents.

“It’s been torture!” Shroomish said melodically. She had mousy brown hair just as I’d expected, but also ringlets that fell to her shoulders, a long and kind of heavy looking green gown that buttoned in the front, and colored spell tags dangling from her clothes. “I feel like I’m only now recovering. There have been some… good omens to the day.”

“Shroomish, stop stirring that pot, you obviously haven’t figured it out.” Mawile was almost laughing, incredibly. I stared at this girl who entertained her so much.

“Poor Shroomish!” Zigzagoon said. “She’s a huge gourmet. She was going to make her sea cabbage stew for the first time for dinner. But she mixed up some of the ingredients or something, right–?”

“The mystical Petalburg spotted mushroom and the Petalburg speckled mushroom,” she said. “Two foods so different in their destinies that pokémon know instinctively which one is the magical one. But only if they live in Petalburg Forest. Human divination is no good for it, it’s too bad.”

“I’m hungry again,” Zigzagoon said, “so we’ll have to get to it. That’s why Violet was, out hunting for Beautifly in the marke--he-he-et…” Clamperl snickered as well. “Sorry, that’s mean.”

“Do we release the pokémon yet?” Atashka said. “My starter really doesn’t like to be in there…”

“Oh, of course!” Zigzagoon said. “Very rude of us. Let’s go down a step.”

The stage just before this room was a lot wider and bigger than the room, but it turned out that when the screens opened all the way, nearly the whole view was visible from where Shroomish was standing. Its floor was stone, thankfully. Clamperl walked among the pokémon who were here with us, while the others were talking. She crouched for Rideon, and when she was done touching her metal forehead, moved over to my Mudkip. I felt a stupid tightness in my chest.

“What kind of places have you been,” I think she murmured to it. Mudkip licked the bottom of her palm. After almost a minute, she got up and said to me, “Take care of this one. He’s your starter, isn’t he?”

Before I managed to half bake an excuse, she said, “There’s no tension in him, or poise. This kind of nonchalance… I almost don’t believe he’s been battling for months. Very few pokémon react this way to training. I think his ideal strategy is going to be unbelievable.” She gave me a smile.

I hope I hadn’t melted in relief. “Well, and harder to find than a coherent thought in a wobbuffet,” I managed to say.

“I’m going to battle him,” she said again. “Him and Beautifly. Do you need to prepare?”

“We’re ready I think. Right after we do that thing for Shroomish…?” I said.

I don’t think Beautifly really had a clue. He’d been a silcoon when I’d picked him up. He chose one out of the two Shroomish gave him, though, and Shroomish minced and threw in the bright red mushroom almost immediately.

“Now the stew is balanced!” she said. “It has one thing from the forest, one thing from the sea, one thing from the cave, and one from the fields. The four Zones whose rotation keeps everything in check. Both in the geography of nature, and in our lives. The four leaders of the Secret Ring embody them. Of course we chose our pokemon names ourselves, I think they match.”

Clamperl was already taking position in the lower stage, so I moved too. She told me: “Two against two, single battle, and you can only bring a pokémon out once. Fair enough?” I nodded.

Shroomish said, “This soup is a little propitious, I took a long time gathering all the ingredients and before I mixed them up, this was going to be the very day they would be at their zenith… I think I can promise both happy days and momentous days for anyone who eats it with us. First the battle though, because it’s not quite done yet. Let it not affect the outcome of this match and let it reinforce our personal energies with its earth energy once we eat it.”

Clamperl’s pokeball sprung before the last few words. Roselia: in that case, Beautifly first. I made him plow at her with a Gust and he got the hit first. Roselia didn’t seem to have enough time to even counter with a weakening spore because she put her legs together, tottered as Beautifly hit her, then only missing a beat replanted and started using Growth. Beautifly swooped back up in perfect form and fluttered back to the ground and before he did, enjoying his energy for this battle, I called Growth too.

Roselia finished first, of course. She tiptoed to right in front of Beautifly like a ballet dancer, and I couldn’t guess what she was planning to do because her trainer still hadn’t called a move out loud. Suddenly I noticed the rainbow gleam over her and realized – Magical Leaf –

Beautifly flapped hard as he tried to detach as quickly as he could and I called, “Gust!” Like I’d hoped – attempted from the ground, it scattered into aimless dust devils and a centerless gust and blew the front of Roselia’s leaves into disarray. She had to step back, and that gave Beautifly a little time and distance.

The leaves whizzed so quickly that I barely saw them, and Beautifly was already off the ground. I’d never seen that move attempted at point blank before. As my pokémon swept close to me I tried to examine him but I didn’t see any obvious damage.

“Very responsive, trainer and pokémon,” Clamperl said.

“Thanks,” I said.

She hmmed, and told Roselia to step back and use Growth again. This was my cue to strategize. The foe seemed to be at a higher level than us and even though I had plenty of good attacks, it was my priority to damage significantly and quickly. I told Beautifly to get up high near the rafters. If he was alert we could do this. I called Gust, and watched him pull back his wings and swoop, gaining speed as he fought through the air and his lightness. When I saw the gusts build around him as he came to meet her I yelled “No! Peck instead!”

The gusts fell on Roselia and disheveled her but he broke through them instants later and pecked at her disarrayed head. But even before he’d swept past her she exploded in yellow spores. I shouted for him to get up high again. The yellow cloud flowed to the bottom of the room and blanketed the floor.

As far as I was concerned, Clamperl had sacrificed a lot of health to achieve this tactic. And we could still avoid the spores and keep attacking. I made him dive again but before he could, he was thrown a volley of Magical Leaf somehow even without warning and managed to dodge most of it.

If this was her tactic, making both ground and air hostile, it wasn’t enough to snag us. Beautifly was more than nimble enough in the air. Roselia spent her next few turns throwing more bursts of leaves in somewhat creative angles. Beautifly managed to dodge them but couldn’t get an attack in through the volleys. In my estimate, he only needed to land one more hit…

“Hit hard!” I told him. Suddenly he dropped vertically down and at the last moment, swung his wings. A hole cleared cleanly in the spore blanket and wavered long enough for him to land. He settled for a Growth.

What was he doing? “Beautifly, don’t drag this on!” I’d never seen him disobey an order before. Was it my punishment for the battle at the museum?

Roselia advanced on him for another point blank, but he used my strategy to distract her, blow off the encroaching spores, and lift off. “That was way too close!” I said. Before he even got to safety he pecked her coming off and blew another blast of his wings.

We watched our opponent from safety. She squirmed for a minute, then got up with no effort.

“So my strategy…” I said. The gust-peck wouldn’t have been enough!

Clamperl gave me a laugh. “I think your pokémon is a little bit overmatched. His little disobedience was a good idea though, make sure you hug him for that. You really need to examine him though, right now.”

“What…?” He shouldn’t have taken too much damage in the exchange. As he flapped toward me, I noticed the dull purple of severe poisoning. “Toxic–? When?”

Clamperl said, “Work it out yourself.”

Recall, then. I brought out Mudkip, and was surprised to see how much he lightened my mood. I said, “Mudkip, we’re at a nice place and we’re going to get dinner. Don’t get hurt too bad.”

He waved his head and skipped forward. I really did not know still what went on in his mind. I said, “Tail Whip…?”

Mudkip used Tail Whip on Roselia, who advanced on him with her trademark tip toes. As she started to gleam I panicked and told him to Tackle. He knocked her several steps back and stunned her for a few seconds.

“Okay…” I said, “Mud Slap!” I could try to make it impossible for her to aim. His first hit got her while she was down. When she regained her feet she decided to waste time using Growth again. Mudkip hit her a second time just as she started to glow and her volley, arched upward, probably overshooting.

Mudkip yelped! Clamperl froze, and withdrew Roselia mid attack. I ran forward; the leaves had evidently got him. Clamperl said, “I’m very sorry! This is frustrating, I was planning on getting to know him. Is he finished?”

“He’d like to have stew instead,” I said reproachfully, and he glared at her too from lying on his side.

The second stage from the top room had the dining table, with an adjoining floor-level table for the pokémon. Shroomish served the humans, and Roselia served Mudkip, Rideon, and Beautifly. That was the plan, but the pokémon kept sneaking to us to steal bread even though they had it, and Grovyle only ate with Atashka. Conversation at the table was too hungry to be very loud, although the mood was hilarious enough. The food was delicious of course. As we wound down, Zigzagoon said, “Tonight’s Wally’s debut at the Contest Hall! Did you know, Arauve?”

“I knew,” Atashka said. “Riesa did too, didn’t you?” She nodded. “I knew about it.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Isn’t Slateport only for Hyper Rank contenders anyway? See I know something.”

“Oh, this will only be a trial event, the contest season hasn’t even begun,” she waved her hand. “But a lot of big judges will be there, so it’s a huge moment for him. We’ll take you there.”

“The entertainment of the evening,” Mawile said.

“A Contest on a full stomach. Personally one of the best things,” Shroomish said.

Riesa and Atashka turned to me. “What do you say?”

I shrugged. “It’s sightseeing, I guess.”

“Excellent,” Zigzagoon grinned, scrunching up her whole face in a way that entertained Riesa too much for some reason.

*

The Slateport Contest Hall was really huge. The Circle Pins got us mezzanine seats, although not the highest mezzanine seats. Or maybe it was the President's idea, he met us there. I sat with Zigzagoon and Riesa because I liked them. While the show hadn’t started I told Riesa about Wally. Arauve and I had always known about Wally because we all used to play together around the ponds, and all the families in Petalburg know each other. Once or twice, he’d come to our house. His dad was some kind of stressed out office worker who cared about his only child a lot. I don’t think we’d become best friends at any point but I remember Arauve enjoying bossing him around, and once we’d shown him the pokémon color books in our library, he’d gotten engrossed in them.

Riesa really wanted to know about him. Arauve said she’d talked to the chairman first while she was in Slateport alone, then found out Wally was with him. Wally had gone off route a lot on his journey. What’s more, he found out he wanted to be a coordinator once he got to Slateport. I always thought he was better at the decorating and elegance stuff than fighting. But Arauve said coordinators have to battle a lot because they have to hone their moves, trainers’ pokémon only have to get the move to work and deal damage but every contest pokemon’s move has to be perfectly executed.

The curtains went up, and eventually they introduced the contestants. Wally was standing behind Ralts, in a black coat that braced his neck with buttons and slim beige trousers. I don’t know if judges look for something special in contest pokémon, but his Ralts was looking nice. She was a rare pokémon and had a stylish blue scarf around her neck. She posed with her green cap thrown back a little so you could see her mouth a little bit, even from here. Zigzagoon and Shroomish both whooped for her.

Arauve said, “They won’t let them get off the stands? The pokémon are supposed to walk around and show off a little too.”

“Only sometimes,” Zigzagoon said. “Usually it’s just the higher level contests that have dynamic primary judging. Or if they’re performing for publicity.”

The curtains set again, but the announcer stayed on the podium in front of them. Then they went to the main contest. I think this stage has the pokémon move one after the other for five rounds, except they don’t attack each other. In the end they reveal the results.

This was a Smart-type contest, I figured it out when they made the moves. In the first round she did a Double Team where she walked behind Wally, hiding her fully then came out in two directions, then started circling around the stage and splitting wherever she managed to hide herself with herself. The pokémon after her did Double Team too, and got booed for it. Then the next round, she used Growl even though Arauve said that wasn’t a Smart move, it was a Cute move. The audience had been hushed the entire round while the other pokémon did these complicated moves, so when she suddenly started with this, standing in the center and posing like an opera singer, first some people laughed and then there was a lot of loud adoration. So I think that was good for them.

They didn’t get to Confusion until the last round. I think all the psychic pokémon there did Confusion. Ralts did it by moving the air of the stage around in little tendrils, white and gleaming so it looked like drifts of icy wind were coalescing, and they started to collect in the center over Ralts. When they all came together they seemed to crystallize into an ice arrowhead and Ralts, pushing her cap back with her eyes still hidden, jumped up and brought the arrowhead slam against the ground. It didn’t shatter or make any noise, just a puff of light.

I had to look at Arauve and Riesa for this, but they looked confused too. Arauve was saying, “He made the wrong appeal. That was Cool with a buildup of Beauty and a beginning of… I don’t know, it wasn’t even trying to be Smart.”

I said, “It was smart because she did it in a clever way…? That wasn’t actually ice type…”

Clamperl said, “He went for a strategy way ahead of this level. Wally reads too much, like I always tell him. I wonder how the judges will take it.”

“What was it,” Arauve asked Mawile.

“A simulacrum of an ice move. Smart moves have a predilection for engineering other kinds of moves, to demonstrate that they are all artifice. The non-training audience might not even have known it was Confusion until she made the illusion clear. And that was by the phantasmic wedge of ice, which glittered far too transparently. Ice moves are often Beauty-type, but the end was clearly a pun – the move was too Cool. Well, it seems less clever when you explain it. Smart appeals talk in the language of associations and styles, not direct combat. In my opinion, a good riddle move. I’m glad he chose to conclude in such a way.”

In the end, Ralts and Wally got second place, although he looked a little wiped out when they got their medal. Riesa, Zigzagoon, Clamperl and I were ecstatic. I was sure I whistled and cheered the loudest. When I kept doing it after people had mostly quieted down, I probably caught his eye and he blushed.

 

[Sike Saner]

Arauve gave her brother a look. She said, “What is this Secret Circle anyway, and why is their secret so… great?”

The secret: they're actually more of an ellipse.

“I’m, Arauve,” she said, stepping forward with a grudging smile. “I didn’t catch your name…?”

“Zigzagoon!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it charming? Of course it’s just my… Mawile would say nom de guerre…”

“Get some seats for them first,” said ‘Mawile’? and the two of them just split so that three empty chairs were left between them.

Please tell me one of them goes by Squirtle. Or Weedle, or Wurmple, or anything similarly hilarious.

Her earrings, brown or wooden, were big flat downward-pointing triangles

were they jumbo triangles

“Hoenn has always been part of the circle!” she said.

Ellipse, Zigzagoon. Ellipse.

Two foods so different in their destinies that pokémon know instinctively which one is the magical one. But only if they live in Petalburg Forest.

Okay now you know I have to ask: are they that kind of magic mushrooms?

I hope I hadn’t melted in relief. “Well, and harder to find than a coherent thought in a wobbuffet,” I managed to say.

Fun fact: attempted scanning of a wobbuffet's thoughts by anything other than a trained professional will only yield three random passages from Finnegan's Wake, all recited in unison in an incredibly tinny voice.

 

[Praxiteles]

The secret: they're actually more of an ellipse.

They're actually a shitty square, there are four of them.

Please tell me one of them goes by Squirtle. Or Weedle, or Wurmple, or anything similarly hilarious.

Did Shroomish satisfy you.... in any case I can promise some of the lower peons of the secret circle are called things like Hoothoot and Magikarp

were they jumbo triangles

You didn't audibly hear the stars come in to Arauve eyes so no.

Okay now you know I have to ask: are they that kind of magic mushrooms?

I really think you missed the best chance and that was when Mr Yamada asked Riesa if she liked mushrooms and she asked, "to eat, or...." XD

Thanks for reading!

 

[Praxiteles]

Sorry that this one is not nearly as eventful even though it came after such a long break. My internet was out for more than two weeks and I simply gave up all hope in life. Anyway, enjoy these extremely important small moments with Mudkip and the family:






Riesa was so tuckered out from the exertions of yesterday that she overslept… well beyond even me. Atashka and I sat up in bed by the middle of nine, at the latest, and then we killed the time talking simply because it felt like the expected thing to do. Eventually, though, Atashka asked if anyone was planning to get up today. We decided to nip down to the cafeteria where they were mercifully serving hot Sitrus buns and chocolate milk, so we could get trays to bring back upstairs. They also had shrimp bites that Mudkip would have liked, but the pokémon could have their breakfast whenever they decided to wake up.

Her door was not only unlocked but unlatched, which was critical for surprise room service. We slipped inside creakily. She was stretched out in a blanket with her head under a pillow, a clear disciple of my school of oversleeping, since the room was more or less naturally lit by this late time in the morning. Rideon was curled up on the floor.

Atashka said, “Wake up, sleepy!” I put my tray down to get to the other side. She had a whole twin bed with a big circumference, while we had to sleep on single cots.

After a pause, we got a rustling under the sheets and a groan. “Breakfast was nearly over,” I said. “Smell that?”

“That’ll make her get up,” Atashka said. “They’re cinnamon buns with Sitrus marmalade inside. We know you want it.”

She turned over, her frizzy hair netted over her squinting eyes. “What time is it?”

“Dunno,” I said.

“It’s ten thirty,” Atashka said.

Riesa’s squint relaxed slowly, and then she giggled. “We ate so much yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Atashka said. “I’m hungry already!”

She pulled her hair out of her eyes. “You guys haven’t eaten yet?”

“We wouldn’t eat without you,” I said. “Scoot over.”

The bed was more than big enough for three kids. We got under the comforter and peered around for a minute, swamped by the cool white expanse.

“Haha you guys Zigzagoon was so cool,” Riesa said. “And so nice.”

“They were pretty…” Atashka said. “The four trainers.”

“Yeah…” Riesa sighed.

“They told me to exchange Match Calls with everyone. I’ll give it to you guys too.”

I fidgeted my thumbs while I remembered them. “I have Mawile’s already,” I said.

“Hehe! Arauve, you and Mawile…”

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” Riesa said. “It’s nice.”

“I’m just glad you found someone you got along with so well,” Atashka said.

“Yeah,” Riesa said.

I brought my eyes back down to my hands. Mawile was nice, but the whole circle of Mr. Yamada’s friends had been exciting, it had been an unusual day. I was happy now, in this room. I saw Riesa’s content eyes in my direction out of the corner of my eyes, too.

Someone touched my shoulder. Riesa said, “Is it okay…?” Her arms were spread. I nodded surprised and was enveloped in a hug.

“I’m so glad I’m friends with you two…” she hummed. I smelled cherry shampoo as she pulled back her hair. Atashka tottered up on his knees and got in with us, which prompted me to at least raise my arms. “I’m really glad too, Riesa!” he said. “I want to stay like this forever. Let’s forget the League!”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that…” Riesa said as we disengaged. “I wanna be famous!”

“We can start a famous bakery here,” Atashka said. “Then we’ll get croissants whenever we want.”

“If anyone can bake, I’m up for it,” she said.

“Arauve, get to it! You still remember don’t you?”

I was taking my green handkerchief out of my pocket. I’d thought of tying it around my neck, but then I remembered Sapphire Birch’s hairstyle.

“Atashka,” I said, in time, “how long has it been since you’ve biked?”

“Huh?”

“Ever wanted to cycle race, Riesa? Do you know how to ride a bike?”

“Mm-mm!” she nodded. “I’d love to, why?”

“You know how I came down to Slateport? The 500 meter Cycling Road. Ever found a stretch of road that long in Petalburg, Atashka?” He hadn’t. “It’s a place where bikers come from all over Hoenn to practice and race. So you know it’s good.”

Riesa turned her head toward Atashka. “That sounds so cool!” she said. “Atashka, I want to go there.”

“What about the bakery?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” She brought the blanket up to her chin. “Why don’t we come back once we’ve all beaten the Champion.”

“That’s too long!”

“Or we could try it out for a few months and if the bakery doesn’t work out, we’ll leave.”

“We’ve got this year’s tournament to catch,” I said. “Bakeries are for eating, not starting. Let’s wind up this city soon.”

I regretted saying that; I knew it was going to make both of them go quiet.

Riesa said, “I heard that if you get a pokémon who knows Surf, you can go around the ocean yourself.”

“There are ocean routes, obviously,” I said.

“Atashka, let’s do that. I want to see all the islands. And the Abandoned Ship properly.”

I looked at her. She sounded very serious about it. However, her face wasn’t turned to me.

“Okay,” I said, gesturing with my eyes at the door, “let’s feed the pokémon.”

Riesa had to lean before she saw Mudkip peeking inside from the lobby. “Aww, come here,” she said. He waddled up to the foot of the bed and I picked him up.

“We’re getting shrimp for you. We’re gonna fatten you up,” I said. “And then we’ll eat you!”

“Arauve says that every morning,” Atashka said.

“Shut up! You haven’t even been here two mornings. What’s Grovyle doing, Mudkip,” I said. “Still sleeping?” He blew a bubble and imploded it.

Atashka said, “I’m gonna go bother her,” and crawled sinisterly over the bed.

Mudkip dropped down on the floor where Rideon was thudding around now. He spent a few minutes peering under our bed, for some reason. Then Rideon appeared behind him with his sail in her mouth. Mudkip turned around quickly and stared at her questioningly.

“Where is Rola anyway,” I said. “Guess she can’t be out like the other pokémon.”

“She’s down around the foundations, actually.”

I looked around. “The foundations of this building?!”

“Mm! She says they’re wider than other foundations. I can feel her breathing or something…”

“That’s incredible…” I got down off the bed, too, so I could put my hands in a harness over Mudkip’s back. Rideon had teased him with another bite and retreated to the corner of the room. I made a jaw of my fingers and bit his head fin, which made him turn his look to me.

“Hey, you want to go out again today?” Riesa asked me.

I said, “I wasn’t thinking of anything, but if you feel like it…”

“We’ll probably get bored enough to go in the afternoon,” she said. “Sorry for getting mad at you, by the way. I’d… pretty much thought we’d leave Slateport once we felt like we were done with it. But I guess it’s a pretty big city.”

“I’m sorry I got so depressing on you…” I said. “You know, Wally’s leaving in the evening. If nothing else happens we could go and see him off…”

“That sounds nice…”

“We really don’t have to rush,” I said, considering it, “we’re well on schedule. At least I think you are too. There’s no need to leave this city until we’re satisfied. And you know we can come back whenever. The Cycling Road is barely two hours if you’re fast.”

“Arauve,” she said, “I know. I’m only here cause I like being with you two. So don’t worry, okay?”

She glowed at me for a second, then padded down to go to the bathroom. I stood up too, taking the failed handkerchief experiment out of my hair. The clench of tension was lifting from my head. Was I getting stressed out talking? Why, if I’d decided I liked her? I never had anything to fear from anyone. I hoped I wasn’t still going to have to be awkward around her.

“That’s a cute style, by the way,” I heard from the door. “I’m too long, but your hair is probably the right size. I can try it on you if you want.”

I quietly slunk out into the corridor.

*

Grovyle really is totally covered with scales, at least the matte green lacquer on her is shaped in scales. She’s not hard under it like trees, obviously. But where her leaf blades come out there’s no break of any kind, it’s a smooth curve from skin to leaf, maybe a lighter green join of fine putty. The leaves are totally harmless if she wants them to be, flat grass blades that don’t hurt her if I flex them holding with both my hands, or she says so.

She’s pretty heavy… like she’s carrying her flower pot around with her.

Arauve went to shower straight after she came in. Riesa, did you know she gets scared too? It’s something she starts to understand around Mauville or so. Her second time, when she’s still with us. We’ll get to see that little garden route between Mauville and Verdanturf, picking Nanab, with all the athletes. I’ll tell everything to you. She thinks, the world has this flicker, like computer monitors also have. Now flashes over the screen, then an instant later the next frame, then the next one over that. What this has to do with training I don’t know. She says, what happens between this flicker and the one that’s coming? There’s darkness. Nothing to see. Then if that’s true, what are we seeing? Are we even there? There isn’t anything, so where are we?

That is kind of scary, but there’s no flicker actually. I read as much science as she did. She gets into battle theory too much, most of it is imagination. I think you should just try to have a battle that you can enjoy with your pokémon.

Is that what she said… I can barely wrap my head around it but I think, Atashka, I understand what those feelings are. She seems to have said it much better than I can. Anyway, I wanted to take her to the beach today, she was really up for it at the market right? The day turned out to be so hot for this month. It was way different after lunch, when we went. There was a whole romp on the long beach, parasols and stands everywhere, with all kinds of people lounging on the sand. I didn’t know Arauve actually doesn’t like open water. Can she swim at all? Mostly it was little kids who wanted to battle even though there were plenty of teenagers our age or older. These two cute little sisters came up from the water, as soon as we set up near it and challenged us. They got a shock when Rola heard about them and popped out of the ground to lie in front of them. But soon they were skipping on her boulders and trying to ride behind her horn. The bigger one had to take off the little one’s tube before she could maneuver. Rideon really liked playing with them, so they made her battle both their marill at once. They launched Bubbles at her, but she charged through everything and hit them with a tackle! At that point, even though the match was going very intensely their mother came along and pulled them out.

Then there was the soda shop in front of the wall. It had parasols and tables all around it, with people drinking floats so you knew it was there before you saw it. The tuber daughter spotted us coming up to it looking for drinks, and she ran up to us and delivered her commercial campaign.

I think, “Hey, trainers! Hot to trot, or cool cat not? Either way, come to my Papa’s soda pop shop!” Can you imagine! So of course we had to look inside.

The whole shop was filled with trainers, and they all wanted to battle. Inside the shop! This was where the kids our age had all gone. Some of them really looked like hotshots; there were two Ace trainers talking to the Papa of the shop when we came in. He came to us immediately, and offered us free drinks. They were good for all our pokémon too. I gave mine to Rideon first for her hard work.

What the Ace trainers were saying was interesting. Apparently one of them had seen a very rare dragon pokémon flying in the sky. It was green, and long almost like a serpent. Sounded frightening! It must be interesting to go on the hunt for super rare pokémon. I wonder what it would be like to actually see one of the mythical ones? Anyway, maybe we’d come across it someday, when our journey came to it.

*

Atashka shouldn’t talk about me behind my back. I’m not scared of flickers. A flicker is the home of memories. For example, do you ever truly see Rustboro later when you try to remember it, or even when you are in the city? Rustboro doesn’t feel anything until it returns to you once much later, without bidding, and then the whole thing comes in just a flicker, whose afterimage fades within seconds; is more than just a reproducible image, has perishable components of feeling. The flicker is a hologram for an entire lost world. The sheet clarity of Fallarbor’s silver waterfall lives in an instant, the city of Rustboro lives in an instant, an elongated round ruby: hiss the courtyard, the slate-blue fountain, footsteps on the white oblique pavement, children in the midday heat, office multistories, the rock-type gym a pyramidal domestic bloom of bricks in the days surrounded by white stone.

I was planning to start the visit to the beach but Riesa got to it first… I’m the one with experience, I know how to do scenes. Not anymore apparently.

And the soda shop guy’s daughter, had said it like this; it was worth recording.

“Yo, TRAINERS!
Whether you’re hot to trot,
or cool cat not,
chill at my papa’s spot!”

The waving line that held in that silty yellow of flat sand… Outside the shoreline, which foamed white periodically before returning, there were natural rocks holding the beach in. I enjoyed walking on the flatness and got obscured and out of parasols. My trail leaving impeccable prints, fading forever in the white.

To stand there, seeing the colors and the lines and content that they were always there for you to see. If you walked, you could leave footprints.

To see a box building, its sign marked in squares and straight lines in your eyes. The square of the building exterior tells you what it’s for. The color, patterns, construction. A building stands for rest. Our Slateport home. Another stands for grass, water, fire or Contest.

Riesa told me that I was waiting for someone to force me not to skip Wally’s departure. But she brought us to the beach first; I am perfectly happy to let it pass by.

Besides, when we met after the Contest we had a few words. She doesn’t need to insinuate I wasn’t even going to talk about it. In fact, there is barely anything to say. All eight of us met all two of Wally’s team outside the Contest Hall, not even backstage, and I think the words that passed between us were pretty earnest, but not super meaningful. He was going to make the journey toward Lilycove (he didn’t mention it). Just looking at him, I didn’t talk about it at all, but remembering him, reminded me of training in a sharp way. The training I had once used to do, what seemed like ages ago, the invention of strategy. Anyway, Mr. Yamada and the trainers of the Secret Circle gave him a ton of advice that I would never agree to take to heart, Atashka asked him about Ralts while Riesa and I awkwardly listened in, and at the end Wally just said to me that he met a lot more friends since he’d moved away from home and that was his favorite thing about the decision. What exactly was he meaning to say! He said he and Ralts both were glad about the company. As far as I’m concerned, what we had in the Contest Hall was a goodbye.

After Riesa’s solicitude, I had to take the two for another outing in the evening, no doubt. We went up to the happy downtown of Slateport where large buildings stood simply and emblematically on a grassy plain, waited on by wide pedestrian roads. At the end, like a fairground gate, was the road to the north route, a leisure path cut out of a thick of water, trees and land. Actually a riverside route, if you looked at the map. But on the road we only had to go to the first intimation of sky blue freshwater to find where the gatehouse of the Cycling Road looked over a bend in the road. Schoolchildren from Mauville made up the main crowd around it, but I could see some of the perennial triathletes warming up on the grass too.

Inside, there was a queue passing through the checkpoint. No toll, of course. Atashka said, “Everyone has a bike, Arauve. Where do they rent them out…? Do you even have one? Arauve? Do they rent them out?”

I had no clue. Obviously, this was the first time I was setting foot in the gatehouse. But there was no sense in letting on that. We got back out, eventually, and started walking down the footpath, which was filled with family and middle aged traffic mostly. On our left side were the trees, on our right the river and its overpass. There were already battles going on but who wants to fight some dad, hot and shirt-tied from his day at work. We avoided people’s eyes.

Eventually we came to a house on the wooded path, old and Kantoan, that looked delicate in the sense that it would sway in a good wind. Atashka drooped his shoulders as he slowed down in front of the crappy house and turned half around.

“We shouldn’t have left the beach,” he moaned. “No Cycling Road, no Wally, no good training even. Arauve I hate you.”

“Hey, it was an experience,” I said.

“You thought we were going to go the whole way now that we’re here? I’m not leaving Slateport.”

“Of course not,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to miss this experience. Look, here’s the way I came from. It’s the path people take when they don’t have bicycles.”

Atashka and Riesa turned over to the bridge that was emerging out of our right. In their defense, I had mistaken it for a dirty thicket of weeds. The bridge of earth over the river, railed on the sides by painted white metal, was pretty much completely overgrown with wild pokémon grass.

Today Mudkip, on the route, stayed with the humans even after I let him out, looking up to me often as I talked, and neglecting to walk so that he collided with another pokémon or was left behind. It was after half the walk that to my nervousness I realized he was probably asking me for something. As soon as we stopped he kept on going toward the river and looked back to see if I was behind him. I assumed he was trying to train after all the break, which filled me with dread. We went near the trees to a riverside spot, the turf cracked dark brown at the shore and grown with rushes. Then he flopped in and wouldn’t stop looking back until I folded up my trousers and waded knee-high. The river flowed breezily with a pleasurable sifting around my legs but Mudkip, laid like an otter on the surface, stayed exactly where he was in the center of small ripples.

Suddenly he spat water at me and dove under the surface. I just stood there drenched for a second. It occurred to me that I was not someone who tolerated something like this. I thrust into the water, probably only luckily hit soft plush skin, grabbed it and hauled him kicking out of the blue surface. My trouser sleeves didn’t survive in the exchange. As soon as I put his face upside down in front of mine, openmouthed, I tossed him back in. He righted himself with a thwack and swam around me tauntingly. I’d never seen him actually interact with water before. Perhaps the smell of fresh water or earth raised his mood.

After a while Grovyle found us and rescued what was left of my outfit; because as soon as she splashed into the water, cutting in with a surprisingly graceful if rotund stroke, Atashka had to know she was having fun without him, and he found us shortly. Then it was only the horror of trying not to tell him what I’d been doing, in this dirty riverside spot. I have no idea what Riesa thought and I don’t want to. We turned back soon after because it was getting darker. Only a little dark, but not light enough to think of doing anything else with the day.

 

[Sike Saner]

They also had shrimp bites that Mudkip would have liked, but the pokémon could have their breakfast whenever they decided to wake up.

I want shrimp bites. Can I have some even though I'm not a mudkip?

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that…” Riesa said as we disengaged. “I wanna be famous!”

“We can start a famous bakery here,” Atashka said. “Then we’ll get croissants whenever we want.”

I for one would choose croissants over fame any day.

Riesa had to lean before she saw Mudkip peeking inside form the lobby. “Aww, come here,” she said. He waddled up to the foot of the bed and I picked him up.

“We’re getting shrimp for you. We’re gonna fatten you up,” I said. “And then we’ll eat you!”

“Arauve says that every morning,” Atashka said.

“Shut up! You haven’t even been here two mornings.

Arauve said it twice on those days.

They got a shock when Rola heard about them and popped out of the ground to lie in front of them.

There were no survivors.

What the Ace trainers were saying was interesting. Apparently one of them had seen a very rare dragon pokémon flying in the sky. It was green, and long almost like a serpent.

HOLY **** A GREEN DRAGONAIR

Also: Rola is probably the most adorable onix in the history of onix.