trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

I don't have potions for humans. None exist. Spiral was quick to throw herself onto the Houndoom to stop its rampage. I think back on all the signs I didn't take seriously and know that this isn't a conversation that we can have. Spiral is already quick walking away from where we fought, our path leads us into the woods of route 2.

After the uphill climb tapers off, I get her to stop. Her eyes are on the Ultra Ball holding a pokemon we can't heal at a center. She gets out a Full Restore.

"Wait." I toss her some gauze.

Spiral looks at the thing with this abstraction and then sees the burn marks on her own jacket.

"Do you-"

"My grimer can help." Her words come out terse, then slowly she thanks me.

The little poison pokemon eats through her jacket with its natural acid enzymes. We both let out a sigh of relief when we see that her skin is fine. Pokemon faint. People end up in hospitals and sometimes never recover.

"I was wrong about that kid not being a threat," Spiral admits. "I don't know if there's anything we could've done differently, but he was dangerous."

"I was an angry teenager once. I have a pretty good idea about what he's likely to do next. If he heard about our plans to go to Cerulean City, then we're out of options."

"He'll want to fight me one-on-one, to prove that he's better than me."

"His face was burned, Spiral. I know it wasn't you, but he's likely to blame you for that. He might even accuse you of stealing pokemon. Assuming he goes to a Jenny, that could be added to your crimes."

She groans, smacking her head back onto a tree trunk. "Fan-fucking-tastic. I'm assuming you have a better idea?"

I sigh. Her Pokemon need experience, but any fights are going to cost us resources. We have three paths to Cerulean City and none of them are all that safe, especially if there's a flying teenager out looking for revenge.

"I still have contacts in Sinnoh. People I can trust. We go there and try to find this Mallory Ware."

"Without any leads? People aren't going to be able to call us. You know that, right?" She's grumpy.

So am I.

"I'm sorry."

"No." I shake my head. "You're right. We do what's best, not what's easiest. Let's take a break and then we'll travel to Cerulean through the nature preserve."

*

Spiral has an easy time making friends with the Houndoom. Vengeance is an amiable pup once she's fully healed and eating from Spiral's hand. Of course, I know the real reason is that Spiral is a champion. She's trained hundreds of Pokemon just like I have. Though seeing her work with a new friend is something else, her empathy seems to go beyond body language. It makes me feel like a fake.

Within an hour, she's hugging the lustrous female. We walk side by side, her keeping Vengeance out of her ultraball. As the sun starts to set, I take Connie up above the canopies and I can't believe my eyes. There's a building nearby, and not just a ranger stop or a cabin, but a sprawling modern compound. The facility is big enough to house a hundred people or more. Whatever the facility is, there's a radar dish on the roof.

I'm so spooked that I dive down fast to avoid detection.

"What?" Spiral asks.

I shoot her a worried look.

Out past a clearing and through a dangerously dense bush, we get to an overlook that has eyes on the backside of the facility. Seeing it from there, it's easy to see that the place is abandoned. Garbage bins are empty, not even swarming with wild pokemon. Service doors are open. Exit lights are turned off. The parking lot is completely empty.

"What is this place?" I ask Spiral.

"No clue. Let's go poke around."

I balk.

She throws her hands up. "What? Are we going to get into MORE trouble?"

I shrug. She has a point, but I still don't like the look of this place.

With the power off we can walk inside the facility. The architecture and interiors are utilitarian. This place was made with haste and the walls were cheap. I can see stucco and holes where the cracks were never sealed. The back entrance leads into some kind of supply closet. Vengeance takes a sniff but doesn't linger around spilled chemicals. At a glance they left tens of thousands of pen worth of merchandise in this backroom.

Spiral goes for the door, which is ajar, but it might be stuck.

"Hold on." I throw out my Gengar. "Shadowfell, look around for malicious spirits."

She responds with a chuckle and slips into the shadows.

"Good idea." Spiral checks on Vengeance, scratching her behind the ear.

Shadowfell comes back and tells me that the place has hoppy hand things, floaty head mons, and wiggly arm menaces. I really wish Pokemon could talk.

"Looks like we're walking into a ghost house."

"In the middle of a nature preserve? This is so weird."

"On the plus side, Vengeance is gonna get some battle experience."

She doesn't respond to my mirthless optimism. "You watch our flanks."

With ghost pokemon flanks can be complicated. The floor and ceiling are easy places for them to pop up. Spiral kicks open the entrance and walks out into the ruins of a lab. Containment tubes and cages suggest pokemon experiments, but there aren't any pokemon still inside. Thankfully there aren't any remains either. I do however see blue and white feathers.

Before I can look down to examine them, our ghastly hosts make an appearance. Haunters, duskull, and phantumps are there too, each of them doing a mischievous job of adding spook to the abandoned setting. It doesn't take much to scare them off. Spiral takes down a few haunters, I send some warning shadowballs towards the fake forest walls and we're alone to investigate.

One lab leads to another with each of the rooms still more or less intact. That is, until we reach the main floorplan. Four stories up it has a skyline -- where something tore up the ceiling. The entire open floorplan is covered in years of festering water made fouler by spearows and other pokemon leaving kills to gather cultures.

Bug, grass, and poison pokemon have laid claim to various holes and clumps of debris. I glance at Spiral to see if she wants to clear it and we step back into the hallway, making sure to latch the door solid tight.

"What do you think that was?"

"It's hard to say. I only have one idea and it's not a realistic one."

Remembering her comment about me being geeky, I try on my casual face. "Okay, let's hear the silly one."

"Well, we're by Viridian City and all, so maybe this was a secret base used by Team Rocket."

I scoff. We laugh a little and then slowly it dawns on us how that might not be pure nonsense.

"Oh, fuck," I say. "What if it is? This place is kind of on the way to Celadon. Wasn't that one of the places Red found a lair?"

She shrugs, but there's more to her shrug than pure confusion. It's this almost bashful expression that makes me smile.

"We both grew up when Red was dominating tournaments. I'm not gonna give you crap for being a fan."

"Were you a fan?"

"I was fifteen when he was a champ. I resented the crap out of him, tried to push him out of my mind while doing everything I could to follow his path to victory. You?"

"I started in Pallet Town, remember. My journey followed his almost step for step. Of course, Team Rocket was a shadow of what it was." She shrugs inscrutably. "Anyway, maybe we can find some storage files or something."

"Hey, hold on." I hurry into her periphery to get her to stop. "I wanted to talk to you about that fight with Winston?"

Hard eyes. "Oh?"

"Not about the tactics or anything." Coughing through the nerves. "You jumped on the Houndoom."

She looks away.

"That was a really dangerous thing to do."

"I had to save him. I didn't have time for anything else."

"You had a pokemon that could've played the role of shield." I groan because this isn't happening how I thought it would; how I want it to. "I'm not saying this right."

"You're always quick to jump to the offensive, don't stop now because of me."

"I know, but I'm just…" I sigh, because I always sigh. "I am trying to be better and that means telling you that your life is important. Winston didn't deserve to be hurt, but it's not worth your health to save him."

She walks into the shadows where I can't see her face.

"I just mean that-"

"Got it." Her words come out clipped and so I keep following her deeper into the rear of the facility.

*

We find a storage area in the back, some place that might've one day been filled with paperwork, but that's been destroyed. A pokemon had blasted the door down and burned everything to ash. A family of ekans are living amongst the debris. The slithery group is huddled together for warmth and we make our exit.

Spiral and I split up. She doesn't communicate this idea, she just stops going into rooms with me and leaves when I try to join her. So our sweep goes faster. Shadowfell takes care of ghost pokemon quick and the others don't cause me any trouble. That is until I stumble across a rattata.

There's nothing special about rattata. They're common garbage pokemon. It was the first pokemon I caught, using my family's meowth to weaken it down. The hissing terror makes me hesitate and I do nothing as it jumps up into the vents.

Spiral runs over. "What was that?"

"Rattata." I walk inside, checking out the room that's been claimed by the wild mistake.

Old computers are covered in dirt against a wall, beside that is what looks to be a pokeball refresh system.

"Is that a Pokecenter healer?" Spiral asks.

"Yeah, I think so." With a stick I move some of the rattata's litter aside. Shining my flashlight around I see the tubes and frames of old world storage facilities. "Oh, shit. You know what this is?"

"Tube computers. The kind alakazams would run."

"Yeah. I've never seen one up close before. There's gotta be something here." I move some debris around and find the ruins of a pokemon recall storage unit as well as a fully intact computer. "This computer's okay." I try the power but nothing happens. 

"Power's out."

I laugh and smack my head. "Duh." I get up but Spiral leans down to investigate.

"Hmm."

"That sounds promising." She gets out her rotom-phone and looks up. "You think this place has a signal?"

"I mean, it's legally a dead-zone, so no. It's probably why Team Rocket was using this place."

Spiral snorts but gets out some tools. "It's not Team Rocket."

"It could've been Team Rocket."

She's prying at the rotom-phone's case.

"What are you doing?"

"You and Murray got me thinking. This thing isn't just a phone, it's a Rotom. If I can get this frame off, then maybe we can use the Rotom to power the computer."

"That's…" My skepticism doesn't last for a breath. "Badass."

"Hold here."

I do.

Another tool out and she's ready to bust the case open. "Okay, this'll either work or we're going to have an angry Rotom ready to fry us."

"And me without Jolteon." I glance at Shadowfell who is holding up a flashlight. "Alright, go for it."

She does, smacking the corner three times before the wedge and the impact break the case. All it takes is a little crack and out comes the Rotom. It makes a lovely hiss and crackle sound. We back the fuck up and then it smiles and tilts its head to the side.

Spiral plays nice, appealing to the mon's sense of fun, but she doesn't need a hard sell. This thing is tame. It's tame as Coba, ready to be friendly and obey. Once she tells it to power on the computer, it flies into the outlet and works its magic. We don't get overhead lights, but the monitor and tower power on, illuminating the room with the eerie red of a large solid R.

"No fucking way," I exclaim.

"It really was Team Rocket."

Everything looks good. The operating system is ancient, but it's what I grew up on. I try to log in only to come across a password login. Head down, I sigh.

Spiral takes out her premier ball. "You give up too fast."

"Huh?"

"It's a Porygon 2. These things were built to bypass security. Okay, Vast, come on out."

It does. A series of burrs and whistles sound the pokemon's greeting.

"Vast. Break us past the password. See if you can get us admin privileges too."

Its eyes go squint with pleasure before flying into the antiquated disk port. Within minutes text appears in the password section and we're in. I have access to one of Team Rocket's computers.

"Yes! Way to go, Spiral!" I offer a hand. We hi-five.

"Can you make sense of this?"

"Yeah, I think so. The interface is the same as what I grew up with. Looks like this computer doesn't have access to the main landline or remote access, but it still has a data log."

"So what's in the log?"

I get immersed in the windows and sub-folders, scouring for something that can give me answers.

"I'm gonna find you a chair."

"Sorry. Yeah, maybe find a place to sleep too. There's several megabytes of information just in the text logs." I open up a file that looks promising only to find complete gibberish.

Spiral walks off and I lose myself in the data.

*

The grimer-washed storage container makes for a surprisingly durable chair, but my back hates the long hours. It doesn't matter. I'm mostly hunched over the terminal, sliding the mouse around before sifting through pages of data. The night goes by fast. So fast that it feels like the second after I noticed that Shadowfell went to sleep, Spiral is walking back into the office.

"Any progress?"

"I lot," I confirm. Leaning back into a stretch, I try to get the kinks out. "You can get some sleep. Really."

"I did. It's morning."

"Shit." I check my poketech. A yawn doesn't come.

Spiral gets beside me. Her short hair is frazzled with sleep. "So?"

"Okay, so everything here was gibberish. I had trouble accessing these text files until I changed the extension type only to realize that the data was formatted into a spreadsheet viewer Team Rocket was using."

I pull up the first main file that gave me anything usable. "This line right here is the date, this one here is the user ID, and this one…"

"It's all gibberish. Except for that M."

"It's pages of it," I confirm as I click page down repeatedly. "Pages of pages of things that are identified as nothing but M until…" I point at the screen.

"Missingno," she gasps.

"Yep. Not just one either. If I had to take a guess there are at least one hundred missingno released and over a thousand of these M things."

"What do you mean released?"

"These are pokemon. I'm sure of it. Way down at the bottom of the list are normal pokemon: tangela, ghastly, all pokemon identifiable by Indigo during the Kanto acquisition. But it wasn't particularly helpful. I realized that this was a list of pokemon that were being released. I was looking through the input file when you came in."

"What do you think they were doing here?"

I stand up to stretch, taking the flashlight from Shadowfell before returning her to her ball. My eyes hurt. My face is oily, but my mind is electric. Closing my eyes to allow rem, I do my best to explain.

"The input files lists the pokemon by their actual names. I saw several dozen records of Swanna being fed into the pokeball system that Team Rocket was using. That accounts for the Missingno outbreak. As for all of these M's I'm not sure. They were definitely playing around with alolan forms. I kept seeing geodude dash a, rattata dash a, things like that. Maybe that's all they were."

Closing my eyes, I shake the tangent away. "Anyway, there were additional files covering the mechanisms of the pokeball, specifically the safety features. I found a master list that details all of the ways that the league was able to safeguard the apricorns and keep hackers from bypassing their security.

"A lot of the information is tied down to the trainer ID, it's why they needed the pokeballs to be sold through vendors. They put some kind of an override feature that makes the balls unusable without a trainer ID, they did a bunch of back door stuff through the pokedex. Honestly a lot of this was over my head.

"But I also found something creepy with a capital Fuck." I get back to the terminal and bring up the file. There are scans of pictures, little diagrams showing abras in containment tubes and mechanisms surrounding an apricorn.

"What am I looking at?"

"Teleporters."

"What?"

"The mechanism that sends a pokeball to the PC system is an abra put into a specialized apricorn; something called an AX1-T."

"You're telling me that there's an abra inside every pokeball?!"

"I don't know." I sigh. This one's hard getting out. I step back and shake my head. "There's references to files that aren't there. Some of the information was purged before this facility was abandoned. For all I know the abra weren't killed, merely contained, or the League found a way to siphon off their power. Like I said this stuff is over my head.

"What I do know is that the six pokeball check is what screwed over Team Rocket. They kept trying to modify the pokemon's code manually and the six pokeball check would get triggered. At the time it was their only method of tampering. I think the use of foreign pokemon surprised the league. They couldn't figure out the BAD EGG system until Hoenn and-"

"You look tired."

"I don't feel tired."

"Why don't you get some shut eye or something?"

I realize that I probably reek. "I'll eat something and clean up. Do you think you can back up the data?"

Spiral gets Porygon 2 out and gets to work.

All of Team Rocket's efforts are banging around in my brain like a Tauros at a rodeo. There's enough proof of foul play to put them in jail for a long time, but at the same time there isn't anything that could be used to design a new league in here. Nor is there anything to explain what escaped from the lab.

*

Not refreshed, but a little less manic, I return to the lab. Spiral's backed everything up.

"I remembered something else while I was looking through the files." I lean up against a filthy wall. "Silph Co was a partner with them every step of the way. Apparently they had helped the League develop the teleportation technology back when people were still trying to get Ultraballs to hold. I'm talking like forty years ago. The work Silph was doing with Team Rocket was something else. They had developed a human teleportation system but they couldn't get it to work at a distance further than one hundred yards. I saw mention of it potentially being implemented on a building, but I guess it never came to pass."

"I guess not," she confirms. Then, pensive, she looks from the monitor to me. "Has any of this changed how you think of Team Rocket?"

"I mean, not really. They still stole Pokemon and hurt a lot of people. At best the League was the lesser of two evils but that doesn't make me like Team Rocket. What about you?"

"I don't know." She looks wistful. "I knew some people who got taken in by their propaganda. Not all of them were bad people. Some were just desperate."

"You mean like us." I'm too direct.

She reflects on that with dread before standing up.

I go back to looking at the input log. My finger mashes on the page down, my eyes flicker from cell to cell so fast I start to feel queasy.

"We should stop," Spiral says. "If we take too long to get to Cerulean City, there's definitely going to be trouble."

"Yeah, you're right." My tired eyes stray from the list of unspectacular pokemon and then linger on the input dates. I freeze.

"What?"

I point. Then my tired brain realizes that she has no idea why that date is important. I scroll fast, slamming on the page up button harder and harder until I find it, the list of pokemon that's sorted perfectly, that fits my sensibilities exactly. I get so mad I slam my fist on the desk.

"Hey! Cool it, jerkwad!"

Head in my hands. No cool. Stand up. Still pissed. I scream. I ball up my fist and almost break something on these reinforced walls.

"What?! What are you freaking out about?!"

"It's mine!" I shout incoherently. "Those pokemon on that list are mine! Those are the pokemon that I lost. The ones that were supposedly destroyed in a fire that rampaged the League's storage boxes. It wasn't a fire on their servers, it was an attack! It was fucking Team Rocket stealing my pokemon directly from the box and they lied to me! They lost my pokemon and they fucking lied!"

@trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

"Those bastards. Those absolute sons of bitches." I'm pacing a furrow in the road, clenching and unclenching my fists. I feel like I'm going to explode.

"Yep," says ASH.

"All that fearmongering about Pokehackers was bullshit. It was them. Their incomplete storage system created Missingno."

"That's about the gist of it," says Murray.

"And all those Pokemon they purged?" I throw my arms in the air. "People's Pokemon, people who trusted them when they said there was nothing they could do? They're not gonna get away with this. As soon as I get Coba back I'm gonna–"

"I think we should go someplace else," says ASH. "People can hear."

"I don't care if they hear! They should hear! The League is gonna have to answer for–"

"That's not what I mean."

ASH jerks his head toward the rotted old fence. Through a gap, I can see a small group of people watching me. They quickly avert their eyes and start moving as soon as I look at them, but I can hear snatches of what they're saying to each other.

"That crazy old man–"

"–even more drifters now–"

"–shouldn't be around kids–"

"Someone should call–"

"Right," I mutter.

I turn to Murray. He makes a sad smile, and I feel my guts twist as I realize how much my ranting and raving about holding the League accountable is worth. Murray already tried, and he paid for it with everything he had. "Thank you, Mr. Marmuck. And...I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about them." Murray swats the air dismissively. "Fear makes people stupid, and it grows in the unknown." He taps his temple. "Only knowledge will set you free."

ASH and I both nod solemnly at that.

Murray rummages in his pockets and after sifting out handfuls of loose screws and twist ties he pulls out a battered notebook and ballpoint pen. After a moment of scribbling he hands me a sheet with two names written on it.

"Old contact of mine," he explains. "Mallori Ware–she was a developer on the V4ST project. Haven't heard from her in years, of course–the League blamed her for a data leak, named her a Pokehacker. She had to go underground, but before she skipped town she told me she was going to Sinnoh. Took a lot of Indigo's data with her, too. I can't tell you where she's hiding out, but my pal Cody Lynes is still working at the PC lab up in Cerulean. He and Mallori were close. He might know.

"Don't lose hope," he tells me. "You can still help your Pokemon."

His courage moves me. I nod sharply. "Thank you, Mr. Marmuck."

ASH thanks him too and shakes his hand, and he and I slip off onto Route 2.

---

We train in the woods for a few hours, speaking very little. I focus on Bluk–I need to be able to rely on her more. I'm pleased to see her succeed at Toxic and Sludge Bomb, but I'm aware that I badly need her using a physical move. If I could access my cache of TMs I could easily equip her with Poison Jab, but I'm afraid to turn my Roto-Phone back on, and I'm not sure my old Poketch X will still be linked.

I look over at ASH, drilling his Gengar with a serious expression on his face. After awhile he notices me watching him and looks up. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I say, looking away. Then I laugh in spite of myself. "It's just...I don't think I've ever seen you like that."

"Like what?" He sounds anxious.

"When you were talking with Murray about glitch Pokemon. You were so excited."

"Oh yeah. Sorry," he mumbles.

"No, it was...I always thought you were too serious. It was nice seeing you just, I dunno. Geek out." Ugh. So awkward. Shut up, Spiral.

"Really?" When I glance back over at him, his face is red. "I thought I was just being annoying."

It shouldn't be unusual for him to be awkward around me, but I get a weird feeling then. Like the reason for his awkwardness isn't about the fact that I killed a bunch of his Pokemon and kind of ruined his life, but something else.

Nope nope nope. That's way too much. Get Coba out of that stupid egg, then worry about whatever this weird vibe is about.

I clear my throat and look around the forest. "We um...we should plan how we're going to get to Cerulean. Is your Swanna ok to carry us I think?"

"I think so, but maybe we'd better go on foot. We'll be harder to spot in the woods."

"I know, but it might be better to go fast. Besides, nobody's caught up to us y–"

"HAHAHAHA! I finally caught up to you, Spiral!"

ASH and I whirl around, Pokeballs in hand. The voice is coming from the tall brush behind us. It's familiar, but I can't quite place it.

"Show yourself!" ASH barks.

A short person thrashes his way out of the brush, dressed in a travel-stained violet jumpsuit with gold piping. A round gold badge winks on his chest. His hair, styled into elaborate orange spikes above his round face, has sticks and leaves in it.

"Who the hell is this?" ASH asks.

"I have no idea," I say, nonplussed.

"Don't you dare pretend you've forgotten me!" the kid snarls, advancing toward me. "I'm Winston, President of the South Mauville Pokemon Collector's Club–or I was, until your cheap tactics and dirty tricks ruined my life!"

"OH. Wait, what?"

"You have another rival already?" ASH asks.

"No, he's just some kid I fought back in–"

"I am NOT just some kid!" Winston hollers. "I'm Winston of Mauville City, and I'm here to bring you to justice!

"See, after you forfeited our match," he continues, falling effortlessly into a monologue, "I was on top of the world. I'd beaten a Champion! I had video proof of it! The respect and admiration of my fellow man would surely follow, right?"

"That's not how I rememb–"

"WRONG! Because of your unscrupulous behavior, the public did not view my victory as legitimate! In fact, they unfairly labeled me as a loser and a fool! I lost the title of President! My friends abandoned me! My own mother unfriended me on PokePortal!"

ASH snorts.

"I knew the only way to restore my honor would be to track you down and make you taste unequivocal defeat. So I followed you." He grins wickedly. "All the way to Koynlab."

Suddenly this is less funny.

"The place was a mess by the time I got there. I knew the moment I battled you that you were a scoundrel and a cheat, but little did I know that you were also a wanted criminal terrorist!"

"Winston, you have no idea what's going on here," I say. "For your own safety, you need to go home and not get involved any further." "Oh, I'm afraid it's far too late for that." Gleefully, he thumbs forward the golden badge on his chest. "You see, Trizztan Teknor himself deputized me. You are looking at a Junior Executive Field Agent of Koynlab Technologies."

Before I can even begin to process a response to that, he jabs a finger in my direction again. "Koynlab is coming for you, Spiral. They're on their way, but I got here first, and I'm going to make sure that I'm the one who brings you to justice!"

"Forget it, Winston," I say. "I don't have time to humor you." I jerk my head at ASH. "Let's go."

Winston holds up his Roto-phone like it's a detonator. "Walk away, and I'll signal Koynlab right now and give them your exact coordinates."

ASH reaches for a Pokeball and takes a step forward. "That would be a big mistake, kid."

Winston moves his finger a hair's width from the phone's screen. "You don't scare me, you Slaking-faced goon! I settle the score with Spiral, or I call for backup! Your choice!"

I step around ASH and pull a Pokeball. "I beat you and we're done. You give this up and leave us alone."

"I beat you, and you come quietly with me back to Hoenn!"

"Done."

ASH grabs my arm. "What are you doing?" he hisses.

"It's fine," I mutter. "He talks big but he's no threat."

He lets go. "Let's hope so. Koynlab is bad enough, but teenagers with a score to settle are on another level."

"This kid is no Red," I assure him.

ASH glances at Winston, and I can see he agrees with this assessment. "Beat him fast," he says. "He could be stalling until Koynlab gets here."

I nod, but I doubt it. This is personal for Winston. He won't want anyone else getting in the way of his vendetta. I step forward and select a Pokeball. "Same as before. One on one, no items."

He grins with all the malevolence his round, boyish face can muster. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Let's do this," I say. "Go, Bluk!"

Winston throws a Quick Ball. "Vengeance, I choose you!"

When the flash of light clears, Bluk is squaring off against a snarling Houndoom.

I hear ASH suck in his breath behind me, and I can't blame him. However Houndoom might stack up in the competitive scene, it's not fun to face one down. Deadly teeth, wickedly curved horns, a brimstone smell wafting over the forest arena. It activates a primal sort of fear.

"Scared? You should be!" Winston crows. "If a Houndoom's fire burns you, the pain never fades! So, too, will the shame of your defeat burn eternally once you've tasted the fire of my vengeance!"

But I'm proud to see that Bluk doesn't seem afraid. The battle against the Trubbish horde and the training I've been doing along the way have toughened her up. She blinks her wet eyes at the hellish beast as she waits for instructions, and I'm quick to oblige her. "Toxic!" I shout.

"Howl, Vengeance!"

Vengeance howls, and the sound makes the hair on my neck stand up. It turns into a furious gargle, however, as Bluk calmly slides forward and barfs a wad of sludge directly into its face.

"Mud Bomb!" I command.

That puts a smug grin on Winston's face. "Same old dirty tricks, huh? Well, that won't work for you this time!" He points a finger at Bluk. "Vengeance! Feint Attack!"

Bluk spits a blob of mud into the Houndoom's face. Vengeance snarls and shakes her head, dancing about in a fury, her tail cracking the air like a bullwhip.

Winston grits his teeth. "I said Feint Attack!"

"Sludge Bomb!"

As Bluk moves forward, the Houndoom jigs to one side and then briefly dissolves into a shadow, raking Bluk with her horns as she reappears. It's a solid hit, but undercutting my concern for Bluk is the realization that something is not quite right here. Bluk is a lot of things, but quick isn't one of them. She should not have been able to get her Toxic attack off before the Vengeance made her move–and this is not a particularly slow Houndoom, judging by the attack I've just seen. Which leads me to the sneaking suspicion that all is not well with Winston and his team.

"Are you kidding me?" I call across. "You've barely trained this thing!"

"It's too late to beg for mercy!" Winston yells, but his voice is a bit higher than it was before.

"This battle needs to stop," ASH concurs. "It's too dangerous."

"It's too late to beg for mercy!" shrieks my would-be rival. "Vengeance, give them another Feint Attack!"

Vengeance takes a shuddering step forward and shudders–the Toxic damage must be causing her pain. But now that he's been called out, her hesitation makes Winston furious.

"Feint Attack!" howls Winston, brandishing the Houndoom's ball in her direction. "I am your master, and you will obey me!"

Vengeance turns her head, baring her teeth in Winston's direction, and his mask of confidence slips. But even as he flinches back from his own Pokemon, Vengeance turns her attention back to Bluk.

I grit my teeth. "Disable."

Again, the Houndoom's hesitation to take an order allows Bluk a free shot; she whips out a slimy tendril and taps the Houndoom's neck, striking a pressure point. When the Houndoom tries to melt into shadow again she only staggers forward, teeth and tail snapping in rage.

"Cheat!" Winston howls. "You're doing it again! Cheater, cheater, cheater!"

"Forfeit or move," I snap. "You brought this on yourself."

"I will have my revenge!" He points. "Fire Fang, now!"

"Mud Bomb."

Vengeance lunges, but her movements are pained, and she takes another glob of mud to the face. Her fiery teeth close on nothing but air.

"No, no, NO! You will NOT beat me with these stupid tricks again!" Winston's face is purple with fury.

"It's over, Winston," I say, gesturing at his suffering Houndoom. "I'm not going to forfeit this time. If you care about your Pokemon, withdraw her and earn her respect before you use her in a trainer battle again."

"Don't you tell me how to train my Pokemon!" Veins bulge in Winston's head and neck. His eyes are red. "You're not a Champion! You're not even a real trainer! You're just...a dirty...CHEATER!"

And to emphasize his point, he hurls the Quick Ball hard at the ground, where it promptly breaks in two.

Deadly silence fills the woods. The color drains from Winston's face as he realizes what he's done.

The Houndoom's horned head slowly turns.

Winston stumbles back, reaching for his belt, but the Houndoom's hind legs are already tensing for a lunge.

ASH shouts a warning, but my body is moving faster than my brain. I hurl myself on top of the beast, seizing her by the horns and jerking them to the side just as she releases a gout of flame at her would-be master.

I hang on for dear life. She bucks like a Tauros, rattling my bones, the forest reeling around us, until I feel like my arms will jerk free of their sockets and my spin will crack in half. But I hang on, and before she can fling me off she succumbs to the poison. As her legs go loose and she slumps sideways to the forest floor, I register the screaming.

"Let me help you!" ASH is shouting, advancing toward Winston, who is crawling backward away from him, screaming bloody murder. His right hand is clamped over the side of his face.

His agonized eye locks with mine, and a look of palpable hate reaches out to slap me in the face. Slipping out of ASH's reach, he tosses out a Swellow and barks an order at it. The bird Pokemon grasps his shoulders and rises into the sky.

"I'll get you for this, Spiral!" he roars. "If I have to follow you to the end of the world, I'll get you for this!" Then he's over the treetops and gone.

ASH and Bluk are at my side in a moment. ASH kicks aside the remains of the Quick Ball with contempt. "Well, turns out he is dangerous, but in the terminally stupid way."

"No kidding," I mutter, laying a hand on the Houndoom's neck. She's unconscious, but her pulse is strong.

"We need to know how he tracked us. There's no way he used this Houndoom to do it."

I withdraw Bluk, and then pull out an empty Ultra Ball. "Well, his loss is my gain."

The ball engulfs Vengeance, shakes a few halfhearted times, and stills. I put it in my pocket. "We'll have to get in and out of Cerulean fast," I say. "Let's move."

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

Of all the places to end up in Kanto, we arrive outside Pallet Town. Town is a bit of a misnomer, at this point it is definitely trending towards becoming a full city. We try to arrive on the shoreline only to find industrial docks managing supplies from freighters. Spiral spots a low access dock over by a small center of commerce and we touch wood next to a boat advertising, “Orange Tours! Live Citrusly!”

I��m not used to the wobble skip motion of riding behind a Sharpedo. My legs have trouble standing upright. The sharpedos wait for us to put the skimming platforms onto their backs. I get cut in the process, but it doesn’t even react. Whoever that stranger was, she trains well behaved Pokemon.

“Do you have their Pokeballs?” I ask Spiral.

“They’ll head back on their own.” She thanks the Sharpedo, prompting me to do likewise.

Responding to her words, the fanged monsters bow and take their leave. We watch them dive low enough for their fins to show and stretch. I keep thinking about our shared ride on the litter and how she hasn’t anything about it.

Meeting her eyes awkwardly, I ask. “So, who was that?”

“Someone you aren’t supposed to know about.” She walks up to the docks.

We have plenty of places to grab a bite and I sink into a beef bowl. It’s night time. I don’t know how late, but we’re some of the only people on this side of the dock. A few couples dine on the end of the pier. Soft light and Whismur sounds make for a romantic view, with us well away from the ambiance. The cheap eats stores close as soon as we finish our meals.

“I’m gonna need to hit a Pokepark,” I tell her. With us being in trouble we can’t risk going to a Pokémon Center. My finances are taking a huge hit from all this.

“Okay. Lemme try to find one.” Spiral crouches down to talk to her Grimer. “Find us a park.”

It gurgles something before sliding into the sewage.

Light applauds make the end of one song. A man and his Chattot sing on, taking the sound of the Paldea region, no doubt profiting off the league’s push to show off their latest acquisition next month. I watch a woman lean into her date’s shoulder, neither of them taking their eyes off the ocean.

Spiral is watching a rage of Gyarados’s cast a long wake over the moonlight. Her blue eyes shimmer with sorrow. I ache to rest my arm on her shoulder.

“The BAD EGG is just code,” I assure her. “We’ll get Coba back.”

“So you say.”

Grimer gurgles. The little mon found something and it’s pointing the way. It’s obvious that Spiral hasn’t leveled it up that much. It’s not much bigger than a wild Grimer.

“Do you-”

“Listen, I don’t really want to talk right now. It’s probably better if we keep quiet anyway.”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry.”

I keep my head down and pretty soon the Grimer in her arms has lead us to the Pokepark. It isn’t a lot, just a little place for the local wealthy to let their Vulpix’s go to the bathroom. We’re alone.

I let out Roi and my Tyrantrum is out cold. Snapping a revive by his snout, he wakes up with a bellow of pain. Gripping his head tight, I stroke his cheek until he quiets. The injured leg is bad, mangled into the wrong direction from a fracture. Shadowfell helps me reset the limb and Spiral applies hyper potion on the area. Soon the Pokemon magic works and rocky flesh is restored.

He’s going to be okay.

“You’re friend Rosette-” I stop myself. “Sorry. No talking.”

“Do you know how the League tracks IDs?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No, I just don’t trust Rotom-phones. Nothing about their propaganda makes any sense. Infinite Energy is impossible.”

Spiral walks off, forcing me to recall Roi to catch up.

*

I don’t know where anything is. When I was here last Pallet Town was a few houses and a humble dock. There are signs everywhere for the Oak Museum of Pokemon. A generic gabled home remains preserved beside a modern building. Signs tell us that we can actually meet the legend Red that the character Ash Ketchum is based on. No one is around. No lights are on inside. Everyone’s resting in their homes, probably watching Oak’s variety hour or some other terrible program. Spiral has lagged behind. She’s staring at a one story tall lab not too far from Red’s home. It’s where Oak’s lab used to be, before all the fame. Before the League took over Kanto.

“This is where I started,” she says. “I walked in there and got my first pokemon. All I had to do was show them my license and I got a Squirtle. Oak didn’t even charge me anything.”

I wanna grumble about how hard it was to train with a Meowth, but she’s actually opening up again.

“Is that why you came to Kanto, for Oak’s offer?”

She shakes her head. “No, it was the League. Johto didn’t have that and the League wouldn’t recognize Johto’s badges to compete at the time.”

“The one-two punch of the Indigo League, free Pokemon to those that can travel and no alternative for those that want to compete.” She’s still staring at the building.

“I’m sorry you lost your Blastoise.” At the very least, it isn’t a Pokemon I killed. It was destroyed in the Galar data crash.

She walks off. “Let’s go.”

Not ten minutes later we’re walking down Route 1, the place where dreams become reality for so many trainers. I only ever sped through here on my bike. No insects sing to the stars, the Rattata heavy fields would kill any Kricketots.

“You don’t actually know if my Rotom-bike will stop working, do you?”

“No,” I admit.

She sighs.

“But, I-”

She’s walking faster, fast enough for me to really put in the effort to keep up.

“Infinite Energy has to come from somewhere. A mass transfer of power like that can just as easily work both ways.”

Wild Rattata are spooked out of the brush. She throws out her Grimer and I let her handle the fight.

“Do you have a plan?” she asks with scorn. “I need to know that all of this isn’t a complete waste of time.”

“It isn’t.” The look in her eyes makes me swallow. “Listen, Murray Marmuck was a big deal back in the day. He blew the Missingno outbreak wide open. They had to change policy because of his reporting. He’s gonna know something.”

Spiral recalls her Grimer and we’re back to walking north. The glow of Viridian City soon shows low buildings surrounded by rock walls.

“Why did you fight for me? Back in Slateport. You could’ve left me there.”

“It took me a long time to accept that training Pokemon isn’t always about hard facts. You think that something special happened with Coba and I believe you. When I saw you panicking, I knew I had to help you. That’s all it was, a feeling. I don’t care about my career anymore. My Metagross research can continue with or without the League.”

“So you helped because you believe in Coba?”

“Yeah, I guess. Kind of dumb, huh?”

Silence. All the way to Viridian City.

*

There’s a love hotel close to the main road. We get a room each and don’t make eye contact on the way to the elevator. Our rooms are on opposite sides of the hall. I don’t look at her. We don’t comment on the sounds we can hear slipping through the doors.

*

A new day means I get to fully appreciate how fucked I am. Without the League my credit is gonna be void almost everywhere I go. It’s strange being back in Kanto, but not because of the League. I remember my first team. My family. The pain I ran from. The pain I’m still running from. It sucks being here.

I wasn’t truthful to Spiral last night. I didn’t intervene because I believed in Coba. I’m intrigued by the mystery of it, but that’s not why I helped Spiral. I like her. She’s a strong trainer, a beautiful woman, a person that I want to help, and I feel close to her. I’m doing this because I want to help her and I’m scared that telling her any of that will scare her away.

She obviously doesn’t think of me that way and I need to be cool about this. My feelings are my problem.

Spiral isn’t in the lobby when I wake up, so I wait for her. A woman of the night tries to start a conversation, but I’m dismissive and she’s got a home to go back to.

*

Walking through Viridian City is just like how I remember it. Lots of Rattata, Pidgey, Nidoran, and Pikachu making everyone’s lives miserable. Frayed cables are just as common as ripped open garbage bags.

Some scrappy kids run past us and I stop in my tracks. The little girl is a dirty blonde underneath her baseball cap. She reminds me of my sister. It’s hard to take my eyes off her as she throws a lethal rock at a Pikachu. Her throw misses and her friend tears into her. I wanna challenge the little kid to a battle.

I wanna drive my fist into his face.

Spiral pulls me away by the wrist.

I sigh, putting my eyes back on the concrete.

“What’s wrong?”

“I grew up in a place like this. It brings up a lot of hard memories.”

“That why you escaped into the luxuries of the Battle Chateau?”

I laugh. “No, uh.” I laugh some more, it’s all nerves. “I got a crush.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It’s was all unreciprocated love and-”

I see him. The old man is bald and grungy and trying to tell street urchins how to catch a Caterpie, but it’s him. Murray Marmuck in the flesh. I run over to catch the guy, but he isn’t moving. My presence is just as important as everyone else’s to him.

The little kid yells at him. “I already know how to catch a Pokemon! Just gimme that Caterpie!”

“Sorry, youngster. You’re gonna have to catch one yourself.”

The kid flips him off and takes off by squeezing through the rot in a fence.

“Do you two need help catching Pokemon?” he asks us.

I’m smiling. I can’t help myself. I haven’t seen this guy’s face in twenty-five years. “You’re him, aren’t you? Murray Marmuck. I’d watch you every night when you’d say, ‘And that’s the news today.’ You wanted to clean up the airwaves.”

“Well,” he grumbles. “Now I’m cleaning up brains.”

Murray releases the Caterpie from his Pokeball manually the same way I wasted my Pokeball. The thing is well trained and stays close by. Then he picks up the destroyed Pokeball and does something to reset the mechanisms. It looks like all he did was flick a switch, but there is no such switch on a Pokeball. I have no idea what he did or how he did it.

“We need your help,” says Spiral.

Something about her tone or maybe the intensity of her sapphire gaze makes him take her seriously. We explain our situation and he listens with a grim scowl.

“I don’t know anything about Koynlab and I’m sorry about your Pokemon, but I’ve never dealt with a BAD EGG. I’m sorry. I know that they were introduced shortly after Indigo acquired Hoenn, but that’s it.”

The way he says Indigo makes me smile. It reminds me of a time when the League wasn’t everything, when it wasn’t a corporation operating like a political machine slowly taking over the world.

“So there isn’t any hope. It’s gone. Coba is gone,” says Spiral with understandable frustration.

“Now I didn’t say that. What I know about glitches is a lot, and I can tell you that they are Pokemon.”

Spiral is shocked. “What?”

I’m so happy I giggle. “I told you!” I take out my Quickball and hand it over to Murray Marmuck. “This has my Swanna inside.”

He chuckles, bringing his head low. “You saw my report.”

“Of course I did. Your work on glitch Pokemon is amazing.”

“Well, I didn’t.” Spiral glares at me for excluding her. “What’s going on?”

“Gimme a minute.” Murray takes out a set of tools from his pile of junk. The junk pile is large enough to house a family of Pikachu, the tool set fits in his palm.

“Murray is gonna turn my Swanna into a Missingno.”

“What?!” Why would you wanna do that?!”

“Don’t you worry. It’ll be safe,” says Murray casually.

Running a thin bar though the crease on the center of the ball, he pries the top shell of the quick ball up at four precise locations; two by hinge, two equidistant from the back. Then very carefully, he takes off the shell and reveals the lacquered wood of the apricorn inside.

“That’s an apricorn,” I say to Spiral because I’m too excited to keep it contained.

Murray chuckles. “That’s right. You can even touch it. As long as this shell isn’t cracked, the pokemon will stay inside.”

Spiral and I take turns running our hand over the flesh. It feels like wood left out in the sun.

“Can you show me how to manually trip the region data?” I ask, feeling like a kid getting his first mon.

“Watch me carefully while I explain things to the former Champion.” Murray works the servos around the main activation button while he talks. “Try as they might, Indigo doesn’t have access to every pokemon in the world. Some are rare, some too endangered to properly study, but most aren’t native to the lands they have claim to.

“When Indigo showed up they put a lot of smaller institutions out of business. Not all of them were apricorn conartists, some of them had a lot of influence. The biggest restructured into Silph Co. A bright engineer in their employment wasn’t content to let Indigo take over. He was trying to use the remnants of the smaller gangs to build up a new empire. Everyone knew him as Boss Rocket, but his real name was-”

“Giovanni,” Spiral answers. “I’ve fought him and Team Rocket before.”

“Then you know how dangerous he was. Giovanni wasn’t only trying to steal Pokemon, he was doing experiments. His researchers on Cinnabar Island created the semi-legendary Dittos, but he had a bigger project in progress at Saffron City.”

“The Masterball,” Spiral says, no doubt knowing the tale of Red by heart.

“Bigger,” I say, taking the quick ball from Murray’s hands.

Spiral glances between us. “Does this have something to do with the Silph Scope?”

“It wasn’t originally developed to detect ghosts, that was an unforeseen consequence of their research. Giovanni hired enough psychics to create the power vacuum that let Sabrina rise to the top,” Murray explains. To me he adds, “That wire right there is delicate. Don’t pull, just nudge.”

“Got it.”

He keeps talking to Spiral while I work. “He needed espers to sense whether or not Pokemon still existed in their glitched state and what he found was that they were still Pokemon in every way except for their physical form. Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” I snap the quick ball’s blue and yellow shell onto the top of the apricorn’s casing. “You ready?”

Spiral nods.

I press the button to activate voice command. “Connie, hold!”

Throwing the ball, the bird pokemon comes out as a flash of light that doesn’t take a solid form.

Tangible chunks of floating mass are arranged in a vertical pillar and a squat rear. The characteristic shape of a Missingno. The glitch that scared pokemon trainers everywhere.

Spiral gets onto her feet, her hand shoots to strong balls that likely haven’t been on her belt for years.

“You see that long part,” I point it out. “That’s a Swanna’s neck.” Gawking, she looks flabbergasted at me.

I think my excitement is creeping her out. “Connie, return.” She does. The ball treats the data like it’s whole and healthy.

Murray goes back into his explanation. “A bulk Pokemon storage program had been tried for years, but it wouldn’t work. Indigo’s star researcher Bill got around this problem by creating a limited list of Pokemon he could register into Indigo’s database, but it didn’t work completely.”

I’m so excited I add to his explanation. “Many of the M glitches were actually regional variations on Pokemon native to Kanto. Galar Electrodes showed up as Bulbasaurs, things like that.”

“Wait, so you’re telling me all of the glitch Pokemon that showed up was nothing but Giovanni releasing Pokemon that Bill hadn’t yet coded?” She considers it. I can see her mind digesting this new information with speed. “That’s why he needed masterballs, to catch Pokemon if the apricorns broke.”

“Giovanni wasn’t trying to steal pokemon to get rich, he was trying to beat Indigo at their own game,” Murray explains. “He was trying to make a better Pokemon League.”

I take over. “But once the League takes over a region, their researchers add the new data to their list, transmit the code to Pokemon centers and stores through the region. Rather than giving you a new ball, they upload a patch into your pokeballs and then…”

I toss the quick ball out. Connie comes out fine, extending her wings in triumph. “Viola. Missingno is no longer a glitch.”

@trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

We head northeast over the sea, ASH's Swanna laboring under our combined weight. We're pushing her hard, but we don't dare rest until we're well clear of Slateport.

I can't rest anyway. Something is rising and falling inside me, a black and writhing thing that surfaces and dives in silent waves. A hateful thing of the abyss.

ASH's hand falls on my shoulder, and the clenched knot of my body shudders. I glare at him, incensed at the unwelcome surge of emotion this contact causes. The kindness in his eyes only deepens the pain.

"Hey," he says, maddeningly calm. "We're going to get him back."

"There's no getting him back!" I bark. "He's a Bad Egg! They might as well have incinerated him!"

Bad Eggs. The League's next line of anti-glitch tech after Pokehackers started figuring out how to circumvent the V4STs. Remotely forcing a block of data into the Pokemon's ball so that it gets reconfigured into a digital ball and chain–a lifeless egg that can't be stored, traded or released, forever shackled to the offending trainer's ID. The only way to get rid of it would be to turn myself in and let the League punish me however they saw fit. Then they would defragment the Bad Egg, destroying it and whatever remnant of Coba might still remain.

But ASH shakes his head. "I think it can be done."

"Don't." My voice is all teeth. "I don't want any false hope. I want to get a grip, and then I want to burn Koynlab to the ground."

"Just listen."

I make a snarling noise, but I shut up and stare at the water while ASH tells me his plan.

"Do you remember," he asks, "how Missingno became known to the public?"

"I remember rumors, a few news stories and some crackpot websites. Everybody thought it was just hysteria for awhile. But I grew up in Johto." The Missingno problem started in the Kanto region. It didn't become an issue in Johto until a few years later, when the Indigo League absorbed the Johto League, but the V4ST system was established by that point.

"Well, I grew up in Kanto, and I remember the first outbreaks," ASH says. "People were encountering them from Saffron City all the way out to Cinnabar Island, but the League wouldn't confirm their existence or issue any guidance. Professor Oak dismissed it as 'unsubstantiated humbug' for years.

"But then along comes this reporter–Murray Marmuck was his name. And he gets obsessed with Missingno. The League pressures him to let it go, accuses him of fanning the flames of a mass panic. But he doesn't give up, even after he gets fired from his League-affiliate news station. He writes tons of indie articles, makes a website, scrapes together money for research trips. And he never gets any credit, but eventually the League finally puts out a statement, and now we have regulations on the creation of artificial Pokemon."

I ask, "What is some reporter gonna know about Bad Eggs?"

"Marmuck had a network of Missingno researchers," ASH says. "Hackers, mavericks, fringe people who were all on the outs with the League in one way or another. I think if we can get him to talk to us, he'll help. Only..."

"What?"

"From what I hear, he's kind of crazy."

"Of course he is." I make a long, ragged sigh. "Do you know where to find him?"

He hesitates. "If the rumors I've heard about him hold up, he'll be somewhere near Viridian City."

I don't answer. I've lost Coba, the one thing giving me purpose. I've lost Rosette, my best friend. I can feel my mind coming apart. The last thing I want to do is chase down some crazy old man in Kanto.

"Look, by helping I've basically tied my fate to you. If we can-" ASH stops his tirade by raising his hands. "I don't want to give up without trying every option. I've lost Pokemon while they were in the box too, it's a long shot but it isn't nothing. Let me help. Please."

I glance at him, and his look softens me. I recognize that look–that desire to come back from the lowest point of life, to do something meaningful. It's what started this journey for me, and with it I feel a part of my strength return.

I owe it to Coba. I have to try.

"Okay," I say. I squeeze his forearm gently. "Thank you."

He nods. "And whether it works or not, we will burn Koynlab to the ground."

I make a sound that's almost laughter.

The ocean wind swells, and the litter bucks and sways. ASH grimaces. "Fuck. We need to land somewhere. Connie's not gonna make it much further."

"Bear south," I say. "I think I know where to go."

-----

The island is a tough brown fist, sparse in vegetation and with only one small beach in its jagged girdle of rock. It appears uninhabited by anything but Wingull, but as we approach a small structure appears among the crags–a tiny cabin, shaded to blend in with the rock.

We hear the howling of an Exploud as we land on the meager patch of land around the cabin. It's a rough landing–more of a collapse for our overburdened mount. ASH comforts his Pokemon, applying potions while I study the cabin. A weather-worn face beneath a beanie peers out and vanishes.

Before long a sturdy woman approaches. She wears waders, rubber boots, a faded yellow beanie. Her face is marked by years of salt and sun. A grizzled old Exploud flanks her, giving us the evil eye.

"Spiral," she says drily. "You never call."

"Hi, Sandi," I say. "I'm guessing you're in charge here now."

She nods. "Uncle Kurt passed about six years ago."

I expected that, but it still saddens me. Kurt wasn't a warm guy, but he was a dedicated ranger and scientist–the kind of person who did necessary, unglamorous work.

Sandi squints at me. "Radio says you're in trouble," she says simply, without judgment or sympathy.

"It's a misunderstanding."

She doesn't respond to that. ASH walks up cautiously beside me, and I gesture at him. "ASH is helping me. We need to get out of Hoenn."

"And you figured I'd be eager enough to get you off my island to help."

Yep. This island, with its secretive research station, monitors the migration patterns of Phione every year. They're protected, and their movements are a closely-guarded secret. It's a complete accident that I even know about this island–I washed up here once long ago, young and stupid enough to try and Surf the brutal currents alone. It's a dick move I'm pulling. "I'm out of options, Sandi," I say.

Just like her uncle, she gives no sign of her feelings as she weighs me with her eyes. Then she simply signals with a jerk of her head, motioning to the rough stone steps that lead down to the sea.

As ASH and I mount up on two Sharpedo outfitted with sea harnesses, just as I'm stewing over burning yet another bridge, Sandi leans in close. "That Koynlab is no good. You watch out."

I grimace. "Guess I'm the last to know. Thank you, Sandi."

And then we're off, the Sharpedo tearing over the ocean, bearing us away from Hoenn.

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

I know that I can be dangerously shallow, but I like being right. It feels good to have someone look me in the eyes and admit that something, anything, that I’ve done was actually worth their time. Of course with Spiral yelling for me to run, I don’t really have time to savor it.

Double ball time and I toss them out with a finesse that surprises me. Roi goes out in front of Spiral and Edvart appears before the wall. “Edvart, spore.”

My Shiinotic replies in kind, spreading noxious spores into the overly airconditioned office space. The difference in pressure would normally favor the office, but this cold wave evens things out.

“Spiral, get on Roi. He’s nice.”

Roi smiles. It looks threatening.

“I have a BIKE!” she yells, fiddling with that Rotom-thing.

“They’ll override it! Get ON!”

I push her back and Spiral rounds on me. Rolling my eyes I jump onto Roi, but she trusts me enough to join me on my pokemon. Cool but complicated. Edvart keeps spreading spores.

I replace my plant boy for my tough lady, the one woman wrecking crew Diela. With a spinning wind up, the Conkeldurr takes down a load bearing corner. “Those guys are evil, right? Like Silph Co to Rocket?”

“You’re asking that now?!”

“Point.”

Diela goes back in her ball and Roi takes off. Trouble is coming and it’s gonna come back in directions I can’t anticipate. My flight litter isn’t an option. So we need to get out of the city. The ocean will be the obvious choice, so I need to head towards the wharf before banking wide. I got the map in my head, only there’s a fork somewhere in southern Slateport that I can’t recall.

“So what am I right about?”

“Koynlab had an ulterior motive. Vast said Coba wasn’t a glitch but their machine said otherwise. They called Coba an asset.”

“Cryptic. What else?”

“I don’t know. Do you have a plan to get us out of here?”

“Maybe.”

Two Jenny cars skid onto the road on our side. I toss out Sorrowfell. She blasts their spirits with a shadowball, but they’re too tough. Reduced amygdalas or something. Sorrowfell takes a few bad fire shots, but we make it through. Counting down clicks on Sorrowfell’s ball, I judge the distance for the auto recall.

“What are you doing?” Spiral asks.

“Guesstimating.” I turn hard towards the sound of the siren. “Hold on.”

Two more Jenny-mobiles pop up and I grip Roi’s neck tight. “Rockhead!”

He smashes into the fenders sending the cars vertical. I laugh with victory and he roars. Sorrowfell comes back by auto, the light trail zipping through buildings. My mental map suggests that she hasn’t been knocked out. Jennys are still using Growlithes.

“What are you doing?! Why did you attack those cars?”

“For the same reason we’re running away on a pokemon and not your Rotom-bike. You broke the law. Vandalism is the main crime, but something tells me that ‘asset’ is gonna get you into trouble. First thing they’ll do is seize your mons and then you won’t need to worry about solving the mystery of Coba.”

“He’s my Pokémon," she says with love. “I won’t let them take him.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that when you used hyperbeam.” A thought finally coalesces. “Wait, how did you use hyperbeam? Is that Porygon 2 still with you?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you didn’t have any of your old pokemon.”

“I think I’ve made that perfectly clear!” she screams into my ear.

“No, I mean you didn’t trade anything for the Porygon 2, right? It’s a loan?”

“Huh What does any of that have to do with-”

“Can you answer me, please? Fuck.”

“Yes, you deranged weirdo. What’s your point?”

“Non-digital OT transfer,” I mutter. This is getting weirder when it should be making more sense. Something is going on. “Do you have powers?”

“If I had psychic powers, do you think I’d have to use my Pokémon to get out-”

“Hold on.”

“What?” She looks beyond me and sees the railing.

Roi keeps barreling forward, scaring a truck into a corner. We come up to a guard rail separating the upper street from a lower set of grungy residentials; much lower. Out goes Connie and Roi jumps. We go down.

“Fuck!”

Spiral holds on tight to me and I don’t let go of Roi.

“Connie!” I shout.

My Swanna grabs hold of Roi and tries to fly. The air doesn’t hurt Roi none, but it does give enough lift to not break a rib when I come down. Spiral smacking into me knocks the wind out though. Completely.

I almost make a human sound.

Thankfully my Tyrantrum is running like a champ. It’s a straight shot from here to the edge of the town. That jump would’ve been something the Jennys would never plan for. I was supposed to take that turn and end up in the docks and now we’re almost out of the city.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re out past the docks, only a mile or so until we’ve left Slateport.” I glance back. “Don’t you know where we are?”

“Look out!” She points.

Roi comes to a stop.

There’s trouble with a capital B. Blastoise. We’re staring down a fucking Blastoise and it looks primed for damage.

“Hydropump,” goes the trainer call.

Water doesn’t fly out, we are on Roi and then we’re in water. His legs are taken out, ripped out of their sockets or worse. My chest slams into something hard and the torrent threatens to pull Spiral away from me. I grab on, keeping her close.

Roi is hurting bad. I throw out Edvart. “Gigadrain.”

The move hits Blastoise, but it isn’t enough to keep the next attack from coming. Edvart is a champ, lowering his head to deflect the burst of water so that Spiral can get back on her feet.

“Some backup would be great,” I say as I withdraw Roi. He looks bad.

“I don’t have much,” Spiral warns.

“Spiral, stop it,” calls out a firm but familiar voice.

We both look behind the Blastoise and see Rosette. We are so fucked.

“What are you doing?! You’re running around breaking cop cars?”

“It’s Coba,” Spiral tries. “They wanna take him.”

I know from experience, reasoning with a cop isn’t going to get us anywhere, but we don’t have a lot of options. The rush of water pushed us on the long end of a t-intersection with Rosette standing in the way of our exit. Blastoise might not be a wall, but Shiinotic won’t be able to break through. Stalling is only going to favor her.

“He’s a glitch, Spiral,” Rosette says. “You need to hand him over or you could lose all your data. I know you know what that means. I lost…so many Pokémon because of Missingno.”

“I know,” Spiral says, losing all resolve.

I pull her arm towards our best exit, the rightward path away from the ocean. Only an arcanine blocks our path. It’s that older Jenny, Kicho.

“Coba, go,” says Spiral. It isn’t a winning bout or anything but at least typing’s on her side.

Only a little blue bug looking thing doesn’t come out. It’s an egg. It’s a BAD EGG. She shrieks.

“Fuck.” I toss out Diela.

The time for finesse is over. Conkeldurrs might not win any beauty contests, but they are pure power. Diela’s already got a burn orb flaring up on her collar, so there’s no risk of slamming into the arcanine. One drain punch gets it out of the way and the follow up mach punch slams the arcanine head first into a building corner.

Kicho makes way, but Spiral is still dragging me back. She can’t take her eyes off that damn egg.

“Recall him!” I shout.

A slam brings my attention backwards. Rosette’s used some big boy attack to knock Edvart into the wall. She’s coming up fast and I am running out of Pokémon.

Rosette and I recall in sequence as Kicho sends out a Manectric. It isn’t gonna stop my Conkeldurr, but a Jenny’s dog based line up doesn’t have anything to counter Diela. One drain punch brings the electric menace end over end.

Rosette and Spiral are yelling at each other and I keep pulling.

Like a pure badass, the League stooge pulls out another ball and I panic even before it comes out. With a classic overhand throw she sends the ball out far enough to manifest her Pokémon a punch away from Diela and out comes a Gardevoir.

Rosette has us dead to rights.

Spiral recalls the bad egg in the time it takes Gardevoir to savage my Conkeldurr. I hear bones shatter before I switch out Diela for Sorrowfell. It isn’t enough to stop the Gardevoir, I know that. I’m literally stalling as we run down the next street. Her shadowball comes out first, but it isn’t enough, not by a long shot.

Psychic hits Sorrowfell so hard she flies over our heads, sending her ghost body into a panicked group of gawkers before triggering the auto-recall from the faint condition.

Spiral is grabbing a ball, ready to send Vast out, but I stop her. I’ve been fingering a pokeball for the last ten seconds, those precious ten seconds that Sorrowfell bought us. With one tap followed by an extended press, I trigger the pokeball’s override sequence.

I turn around and shout nice and loud, “Metagross, Explode!”

Rosette hears that and she jumps out of the way. People everywhere get down. I toss the ball fast. With the override triggered the ball flies open inert as it emits a flash of light emptying the stored power, but no one sees that. They all see a pokeball opening with a flash and their mind fills in the rest.

By the time they realize I sent out a dead ball, we’re turning the second corner and sneaking into an apartment. I’m dying. A few of my Pokémon might actually be in critical condition. No one is in the stairwell. Spiral takes the elevator, which is sensible.

“How did you do that?” she asks from inside the cabin. “I’ve never seen a pokeball open like that.”

“It’s a…” I’m gasping. “A manual override to disable the registration. Pokeballs have to be registered.”

“I know how to register a pokeball.”

“Right.” I swallow. “Well, there’s a simple override that’s available on all balls. It defaults to releasing the Pokémon but when there’s nothing inside it makes the ball go dead. Excess energy is ejected and viola, flash grenade.”

“That was some trick.”

“Thank you. Please tell me you have a flying Pokémon on you.”

She shakes her head.

I sigh. “Okay, well, we’re gonna have to double up on my flight litter until we get out of the city. It shouldn’t take too long.”

She doesn’t seem to hear me. Her eyes fall down to Coba’s pokeball, staring at the bad egg even as the lift opens.

“They killed him,” she says aloud. “There’s no way to open a bad egg.”

“Not necessarily.”

@trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

It's a restless few hours, waiting to leave for my appointment at Koynlab. I wake up at dawn with no hope of getting back to sleep. I try to distract myself by messing with my Roto-phone's settings and watching cute Pokemon videos, but there's too much going on in my head.

I'm excited to have some real answers about Coba, and to get closer to finding his owner.

I'm sad, because I know that finding his owner means giving him up.

I'm nervous about seeing ASH again, especially after my conversation with Rosette.

I'm worried that Rosette is angry with me, and that I've done damage to our friendship that can't be repaired.

My mind wanders ahead in time, into the upcoming meeting, rehearsing different outcomes. It goes further, past the meeting and beyond, to a tearful parting at a stranger's door.

I see myself rehoming Bluk, unable to justify owning a Pokemon now that my task is done. I see her trying to follow me, and that image mixes with all the painful memories of my Galar team, of their anxious cries as I left them with the various people I'd trusted to keep them safe.

I see myself going back to my empty house, alone.

Before I know it, it's almost time get ready. My body is tense from living a thousand imagined futures, and I feel no better prepared.

I can't bring myself to eat more than a power bar and a cup of tea. When I'm done, I take Coba out of his ball and settle him on my lap. I pet him and feed him berries, and my eyes blur with tears.

Vast settles on the bed next to me and looks up with a questioning sound. I tentatively reach out my hand. It looks apprehensive, but when I slowly lower my palm to stroke its head, it leans into the touch.

"Thank you," I whisper. "You really helped us."

Vast makes a warbling sound, something confused and a little sad. Coba nudges my stomach anxiously, and I pick him up and squeeze him. He buries his snout in my neck.

"It's ok," I tell us both. "You're going home soon."

-----

In order to kill time and help calm my nerves, I decide to walk to Koynlab. The pleasant sea-air stroll takes about half an hour, and I'm still fifteen minutes early.

The building is a tall cylinder of blue-violet glass joined by gold-plated steel beams. The glass is a dark enough tint that you can't see in. The Koynlab logo blazes gold at the top of the building, blinding in the late morning sun.

The reception room is white and sleek, with a golden front desk beneath another iteration of the golden logotype. I check in with the stylish receptionist, and he tells me to have a seat on a purple chair shaped vaguely like an athletic shoe.

I sit there for 30 restless minutes before an assistant in some kind of violet pinstripe jumpsuit comes out and calls my name. I jump up awkwardly and nearly topple the little gold end table next to the weird chair.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," the young woman says as she leads me deeper into the building's interior. "His morning workout ran long."

She ushers me into a large, brightly lit room sprawling with minimalist furniture and accent sculptures. A bar dominates the far wall, flooding the space with the roar of an industrial juicer. The man behind the bar removes a glass of green mixture from the machine and pours it into a metal thermos, handing it to a short, muscular guy in form-fitting black and yellow workout gear.

"Your 11 o'clock is here, Trizztan," the assistant says.

Trizztan turns, a crisp, white smile on his brown, square-jawed face. His dark hair is gelled up into some kind of lightning bolt-shaped pompadour, bleached yellow where it joins his head, and he has a well-groomed goatee of dark stubble. His proportions are a little off from handsome, but he's clearly making up for it with aggressive fitness and grooming.

"Trizztan Teknor," he says as we shake hands.

"Spiral," I say.

"Thanks for coming, Spiral. You want a juice? Smoothie? Coffee?"

"Nothing, thanks."

"You sure? Best juice bar in Hoenn, hundred percent." His voice has a staccato, overcaffienated cadence.

"No thanks," I say. "I'm kind of eager to get this going, actually."

"All business! I like it. You're bringing in a..." he snaps his fingers a couple times, "....Trrrrapinch?"

"Yep."

"Alright alright!" He claps his hands. "Let's go to the lab."

We exit the juice room and into an area that is, I guess, some kind of bullpen. But Koynlab feels more like an ultra-modern cafe than a workplace. Hot young people are sprawled across weird geometric furniture, talking and laughing, drinking coffee and smoothies. A few are puttering around on weird little Roto-tech segway things that I realize after a minute are mobile work stations with computers built in. When Trizztan and I walk through, we get a chorus of greetings: "Trizztaaaan!" "Sup Trizz!" "The Trizzlerrrrrr!" He seems well-liked; it puts me a little more at ease.

"Whaddaya think?" he asks, indicating the general everything with a thrust of his chin.

"Uhh, it's cool? Super casual."

Trizztan shakes his head vigorously. "Nah, nah. No casuals here. Those guys are always crunching, thinking of new ideas, know what I mean? Just thinking thinking thinking, all the time. Did you know your brain uses twenty percent of the energy you consume?"

"Uh--"

"That's why all this stuff--the amenities--you're probably like, pff, this is all just a stupid waste of money, right?"

"Well--"

"But you need all that to have a company like this, number one company--biggest company in tech right now, not even close. You gotta give people brain resources or they can't perform. Nutrition, fitness, stimulation, all that good shit. Did you know that you can increase your mental capacity by sixty percent with just diet alone?"

"I don't really--"

"I'm not even joking. Eat right think right. I'm actually working on a food program for entrepreneurs right now, because I think we can maximize--"

I go into nod and smile mode and zone out. When I wake up, Trizztan, still outlining his executive supplement regiment, is scanning Roto-phone at a steel door labeled "Authentics Lab - Authorized Personnel Only."

The first thing my eyes fall on is a ten-foot tube of fluid with a Mew floating inside of it.

I lurch backward, grabbing onto the doorframe, but Trizztan just laughs. "Looks like the real deal, huh?" He thrusts his chin at a man in a labcoat. "Yo, Alex! Change the channel on that guy."

Alex walks over to a console next to the tube and starts twisting dials. The machine hums and vibrates, and the Mew's shape breaks up into a mess of angular phosphenes. The fragments reform into an Exeggcute. A Crobat. A Milotic. An Incineroar.

I have to look away then, because my brain feels like it wants to jump out the back of my skull. But there are similar containment devices arrayed around the lab's wide perimeter, crammed into niches between banks of consoles. Some hold recognizable Pokemon shapes, others nothing but jittering pieces. Each of the six scientists working the room is shadowed by a Porygon2 - a V4ST.

"Freaky, huh?" Trizztan slaps a tube containing a spasming Magby. "No worries. Locked up tight. Now over heeeere--" he waves me over to a machine in the center of the room, a squat cylindrical thing with a clear dome over the top, "--is where you're gonna put your Trapinch."

He taps on the machine's console, and the glass dome hisses open. Hands shaking, I pull out Coba's ball and tap it on the platform inside. Coba appears there, and I sense Vast floating over my right shoulder.

Coba is nervous. I start to reach for him, but the dome snaps back into place. He scrabbles at the glass with his front paws, his cries muffled by the glass. A strained sound crawls out of my throat.

"Alrighty, now just stand back and we'll know what's up in a sec," Trizztan says, tapping on the console.

Vast warbles softly in my ear. I take three slow steps back, crossing my arms tightly across my chest. I'm horribly embarrassed, but Trizztan doesn't seem to notice my distress; his eyes are on the machine. The scientists and their partners keep working, unconcerned.

I glance over at Vast, but its eyes are locked on the machine. The anger toward it I've worked so hard to squash flares up suddenly, bright and painful in my guts. It's waiting to see if it's going to be needed, to destroy Coba or incapacitate him so he can be stuck in a vat and fiddled with like a broken TV. I clutch my arms hard, sigh through my teeth. Coba passed, I tell myself, and it becomes a chant against panic. He passed. He passed. He's real. He passed. I try to lock eyes with him in his little chamber, to send him reassurance and comfort as he scrabbles around in there.

The machine hums for a long, long two minutes, then shuts off with a dull thunk. Trizztan leans forward slightly to look at the console. He cocks his head, puts a hand over his mouth and nods slowly.

He turns, and the hard set of his mouth makes the room spin.

"Yep," he says. "That's one mother of a glitch, all right."

I try to ask a question, but there's no breath behind it.

"Woo, good thing you brought it to our attention. This lil sucker could have done some real damage." He slaps the dome above Coba's head, making him flinch.

"He passed," I say weakly. "V...the V4ST never--"

"Oh, right," he says. "The V4STs Sypherbase makes for us, they're a little different from normal, yeah? Like, they'll blast a glitch to hell if it's gonna, y'know, kill somebody or blow up a city or whatever. But we study Missingno here -- number one Missingno research company in the world, actually -- so they know they gotta bring 'em in alive."

"But he never...he never did anything wrong," I say. I'm no longer afraid of crying in front of Trizztan, but my emotional weather is starting to shift unnervingly from sorrow to rage.

"Oh, no doubt. Best fake I've ever seen, hundred percent. They're getting real good at this, these Pokehackers. Tricky fuckers."

He smiles stiffly; I stare at him. Coba thrashes against the dome, growing more and more agitated.

After a long minute, he sniffs and says briskly, "Yeah, definitely one hell of a glitch here. Koynlab will def have some dope new research thanks to you."

He starts to approach, hand held out for a shake, but I stiffen. Because the second after the word "glitch" leaves his mouth this time, I hear a familiar noise, soft and low in my right ear:

"Drr-drr."

I glance over at Vast, which is still pointedly not looking at me. I look back at Trizztan, who looks impatient and a little fidgety as he waits with his hand out. I shake, searching his face.

...you should be worrying less about whether he's a fake, and more about what they think is really going on.

"Wellp, thanks for coming in," Trizztan says. "I'll walk you out in just a sec. V-42," he says, addressing Vast, "standby for containment. Yo, Kenny! Fresh meat!" he shouts, taking a few steps toward a nearby scientist.

When his back is turned, I look over at Vast, which makes eye contact with me at last.

"Help me," I whisper.

Vast makes no response. It drifts over behind Trizztan.

The world goes gray, then rage-red.

I charge over to the machine and start grappling with console, searching frantically for the release mechanism. A surviving scrap of sanity tells me not to do anything that might incinerate Coba by accident. The rest of me responds by trying to pry the dome open with my fingernails.

"Hey!" I hear Trizztan yell, hear the sound of feet moving toward me and V4STs beeping. I look up and grab Bluk's ball, squaring my shoulders in defiance against Trizztan and his mob of scientists and glitch-killers.

Something explodes.

When I stagger up from where I've sprawled over Coba's prison and the jagged echoes of sparks have cleared from my vision, the V4STs are circling up around the jittering, shifting mass that is throwing itself across a spray of debris at a prone scientist. The rest of them are fleeing in all directions. A klaxon starts screaming.

Vast barrels back toward me and has a quick word with the dome machine, which flies open. I seize Coba in both hands, crushing him against my chest.

"Hey! Get her! She's got the asset!"

The scientists aren't listening, but Trizztan's eyes are on me, his face knotted with rage. He staggers up from the floor, charges forward, slips on a green puddle of spilled smoothie.

Vast whistles at me, and we charge for the door.

I withdraw Coba on the run. Behind me a horror of sound as Koynlab's V4STs fire upon the rampaging glitch. The smell of ozone and burning plastic.

The door won't open for me. Vast initiates a rapid conversation with the keypad. I glance back over my shoulder. Trizztan is advancing again, limping slightly, his face murderous. There's a Quickball in his hand. Vast wins its debate with the door, and as I charge through I hear the Quickball pop.

A deep, sharp bark nearly takes my legs out, activating some sort of rabbit-brained fear response. I trip over a rhomboid-shaped cushion as my fight and flight responses fumble for control. From the floor, I see the lean yellow shape of a Bolthund sizzling toward me with lightning in its jaws.

"Tri-Attack!" I scream.

A lightning bolt crashes into Vast. It spins with the impact, drops altitude, but fires its attack -- three elemental blasts sluicing over the Bolthund, hurling it off its trajectory. It bounces up fast, but I smell charred fur and know it's been burned.

"Crunch!" Trizztan shouts from where he leans against the lab's door.

"Psychic!" I yell at Vast.

Vast lurches forward, winces, shudders. It's paralyzed, helpless before the oncoming jaws of the Bolthund. I hurl myself at the Porygon2 and tackle it out of the way. I hear Trizztan shout another attack, but it's dawning on me that I'm in big trouble and I can't afford to treat this like a fair fight. I grab nearby Roto-segway and hurl it into the Bolthund's path. It and its master snarl in outrage as I run, Vast pressed into my side like a football.

My lead is meager; no amount of adrenaline or trickery will let me outrun a Bolthund. Luckily, Vast is smarter than me. It beeps sharply, and my Roto-phone flies out of my pocket and hovers in front of me. I swat at it, not understanding, but at Vast's command a bicycle icon appears on my screen and suddenly I'm on my Roto-bike, careening around furniture and tech bros and segways, completely at the mercy of its collision avoidance. The Bolthund's baying and Trizztan's screams fall further behind.

I tear through the juice room and pull up short. A ring of purple-uniformed security officers have the exit to the lobby choked off, an array of Pokemon out and ready.

I switch directions and pedal hard toward the windows. If Vast can't break through its paralysis I'm cooked, but the thought takes a backseat to pure animal determination.

"Hyper Beam!" I scream.

A roar of sound. I launch out into the salt-tanged sky; my tires crunch down on broken glass, and I tear away from the building.

Only the Roto-bike's merciful collision avoidance keeps me from mowing ASH down where he stands. He leaps back and goggles at me, catching his glasses just before they fall.

"Shit!" he shouts. "What'd you do?!"

"You were right," I shout back. "RUN!"

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

Another day, another contest. Back to back performances are brutal, but the season of competition keeps eyes on the theater. Today the finalists from Ultra rank will be showing off their skills. I'm still down in Normal rank with a Beldum that doesn't have a name. Weirdly, I don't feel too worried about it.

The judges are the same as last time, so I know my fake routine isn't going to work. This time I try to let my Beldum's natural cuteness shine, but it's all steel and eyeball. Take down doesn't get any applauds. I let my partner shift about the room, frolicking on electromagnetic waves guided by my exertions. Once again, I overdo it, but my showing is over. Beldum has to help me keep my balance.

Riko walks onto the stage with her Buneary and the change is noticeable. Buneary is throwing her head up with sass and it catches the judge's attention right away. Her moveset is different, her routine is rough, but the energy is raw and natural. It's entertaining in that way that a wobbling figure skater is.

*

Raul isn't in the Normal ranks. I'm alone with my meal and my berries. Beldum is doing alright, but I'm feeling the sway of every breath. My psychic abilities aren't strong enough for this. I need to super charge my brain and I don't even know anyone who could teach me how to do that.

Riko walks over to my spot by the planter. She crouches down low to wave and I nod.

"I should thank you for your advice the other day. Training with Mimi has never been that easy or fun. I always had to fight with her, to push her to get her to tilt her head or do anything cute. Yesterday, it was like I finally got to meet Mimi for the first time."

"Well, she takes after you," I say with a smile.

That makes her pout and she jabs a finger at me. "You can shut your mouth if you're not gonna say anything nice! I was trying to thank you!"

I can't help but laugh and I have to lean back to catch my breath.

"Hey, don't try to act like I hurt you because I have plenty of witnesses!"

"Nope, it is psychic fatigue," I explain with my eyes closed. "I'm not used to putting out so much power all at once. You wouldn't happen to be a psychic, would you?"

"No. Sorry. Maybe you need to train your Beldum differently. It can understand verbal commands, can't it?"

"Yeah, but it..." I open my eyes to contemplate her words. Maybe all of my fancy training is a waste of time. I reach into my bag to pull out my laptop and my Poketech X buzzes.

Last night Spiral let me know that she was going to Koynlab at 11. I set an alarm for 11 in case I was available. Win or lose, I'm not going to be able to continue.

"You know, I was talking to you," says Riko.

"Yeah, and I'm gonna have to take off." I stand up and the rush of stars is real. "You think there's any chance I made it to the-"

Riko isn't looking at me. The kid has her arm held out. Her Rotom-phone is extended towards me with unspecified purpose.

"What are you doing?"

Riko acts annoyed as she explains the obvious gesture. "I'm exchanging numbers with you, but only so that I can tell you how low your ranked."

Poketech X interacting with a Rotom-phone is fast. All I have to do is tap my wrist watch against the Rotom and the Pokémon uses its power to send the information. I don't really get how it works and that scares me. Ignorance to technology makes me feel old and even more irrelevant.

"Thanks, Riko. I'm sure you'll get high marks today."

I'm all the way down the stairs before Riko speaks up. "Today was better. What you did with your Beldum was better. You needed to practice more, but I think the judges liked it. I still think you're wasting your time, but I guess if you're going to fail no matter what, you should try your hardest."

"Thank you, Riko. I'll keep that in mind." I wave bye to the kid and gather my will. Meeting up with Spiral feels foreboding.

*

I don't know why I'm so tense walking into Slateport's business district. I have six Pokemon on me. Even with Beldum and Connie taking up two slots I'll be alright. I still have enough Pokemon for a three on three battle, with one to cover my exit -- should the need arise. The last time I met with Spiral it was fine. Well, it wasn't fine but we didn't battle. She has to know I probably have Roi, my Tyrantrum, but the rest of my team should be a mystery. Edvard, my Shiinotic, and Sorrowfell, my Gengar, gives me two options for a decent stall.

I wonder if I should go to the Pokémon Center and switch both of them out for Ferrothorn, but she's been in a box since I was battling seriously. She might come out aggro and confused to find her trainer ten years older and sporting a beard. I'm just gonna have to trust the Diela is strong enough to deliver hurt. Conkeldurr's aren't popular, but they hit hard and mine was one of the best. She could hit strong as a champ's and had a good sense of where blasts were gonna come in. If this fight gets serious, I can trust on Diela to make some space and Roi to give me the speed to get out of here.

But there isn't any fight coming. I am in the business district imagining fights because I'm fatigued. I take a seat outside Koynlabs, and wait for Spiral's exit.

@trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

It's late afternoon when I stumble into Slateport, and it takes me much longer than I would like to find a motel with a vacant room. The Pokemon Contest that drew ASH here must be responsible for that.

When I finally find a place, I whip out my trainer ID and announce myself as a former Champion before the clerk can react to my appearance and odor. I've never been checked in so fast in my life.

After a long and thorough soak and shower, I check my email. Sure enough, there's a message from nifti@koyn.lab It reads:

Hi Spiral!

Great news! My team says they have all the battle data they need! Thanks so much for all your hard work!

When you get to Slateport, shoot me an email and I'll tell you where to meet Trizztan, our head artificials researcher. He should have all that data crunched by the time you get there.

Cheers,

Nifi<3

I feel light as air. I shoot her back an email right away, and while I wait for her response I text Rosette and tell her I'm in town. She asks whether I can meet her for dinner, and we arrange to meet at a nearby hotpot place. By the time we've finished, Nifti has responded with the location of an office building near the market district, and I'm able to confirm that I can make an 11am meeting.

I stare at the meeting time and place for a long moment. I don't want to dampen my own excitement, but my misgivings about Koynlab and ASH's warning keep knocking around in my skull. After a moment's thought, I forward the information to ASH. He quickly responds that he'll wait for me outside the building.

The ingrained laws of inconvenient politeness tell me I should refuse and force him to insist before I give in, but I surprise myself by simply responding, Thanks.

No matter what the outcome, something tells me I'll want someone to talk to when that meeting ends.

.....

When Rosette sits down across from me, I can tell she's not in the best mood. Her smile is much more tepid than usual, her expressions more muted. I wait until the waiter comes and goes to ask her about it.

"Work got you down?"

She looks at me for a long beat, long enough for me to feel nervous.

"What is it?"

She sighs, settles her purse on the booth next to her, and gives me an uncomfortably serious look. "I met with ASH."

"Oh." I blink. "I thought...I thought you'd just talk to him on the phone, or text him or something. That was nice of you to meet him in person."

Her expression doesn't lighten. She continues to study me from behind her glasses.

"Did something go wrong?" I venture.

She sighs and adjusts her glasses. "No..." Her tone is uncertain, and her gaze shifts off of me and into the middle distance.

I want to push, but I wait for her to collect her thoughts. When she looks back at me, she looks somewhat sad. "Spiral, is there anything you're not telling me?"

"Huh? About ASH, or...?"

She stares at me expectantly, and I wrack my brains, but I can't think of anything relevant I haven't told her. I shake my head. Her eyes flash, and a hint of anger enters her expression.

"Ro, what is it?" I ask. "Was he a jerk to you or something?"

"No," she says roughly. "Well, you know how he is, how he can be." Her eyes harden. "He's just kind of rude, you know?"

"What'd he say that was rude?"

"Just some little remarks about my job, the League. He said..." Her eyes flash at me again. "He said he made you cry."

"Oh," I laugh.

"It's not funny!" I flinch at the pain in her voice. "Why didn't you tell me about that?"

I drop my eyes, sobering. "I was just embarrassed. You know how I hate to cry. And the only reason I did was because he said he forgave me for killing his Pokemon."

"But that was his fault! I've been telling you that for years, and if he's going to be guilting you about--"

"I don't think he was." I hold up my hands. "Ro...I know he comes off kind of dickish, but I honestly think he's been doing a lot of soul searching."

"Not enough to accept responsibility!"

"He does, it's just that--"

"He just thinks you should get half the blame, too."

"Shouldn't I?" I say, my voice taking on a ragged edge.

"No." She leans forward, pointing her finger in my face. "Absolutely not. And you can't let him put that on you."

"I could have called the match after the first casualty. If I hadn't been so proud--"

"He could have forfeited, and he should have."

A silence unspools between us. She sighs, her face softening, and looks at me with desperation in her eyes.

"Spiral, I just don't want you to get hurt."

"I know. I can hand--"

"Listen." She presses her palms together. "Even beyond all that stuff that happened in the past, he's just...chaotic. He thinks he knows better than the League, better than everyone. He chases bizarre theories and bulls through whatever's in the way. He stress-tests things until they break."

"He's changed." My voice is weak.

"I believe you when you say he feels bad about what happened," she says. "But I'm not sure it's enough to keep him from making the same kind of mistakes."

I take a deep breath. This is where I should tell her that ASH will be waiting when I finish with Koynlab tomorrow, but the words stick in my throat. Instead I just say, "He's only helping me with one thing. I'll be careful."

Her mouth quirks in a grim smile. "I hope so."

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

An hour into my meditative exercise, a kid comes up to me and asks, “Is that telekinesis?”

Politely, I reply, “No. It's electromagnetic pulses.”

She then proceeds to brag about how she can do telekinesis and shows off. My words of praise don't stop her, but eventually my silence gets her to stop and ask, “Why're you doing that?”

“I'm hatching a Pokémon.”

“Wouldn't that be faster walking? Or on a bike. You should get a bike and ride around with a Slugma. You probably don't have a Slugma, huh?”

“I used to. Please let me concentrate. I'm not very good at this.”

She doesn't argue with that. Silent as a Raltz, she wanders a short distance away and watches me until her mother comes to fetch her. For all of her complaining, I expect the mother to be stubborn and cruel, but instead, she relents and agrees to leave her behind. It hurts. The yelling, the snide comments, the passive aggressive agreement would come as no surprise to me, but the understanding hurts me. This mother is giving this psychic child something I never had growing up. Every concession was a bargain. Every agreement came with conditions however invisible they might be.

The steady roll and bounce of the premier ball stops. I expect to find a newcomer messing with it, but the light on the button has lit up. The white ball opens with a flash of light, revealing an egg. It wiggles back and forth, cracks forming along the length of the edge and then all at once the bits of shell are pushed back, ejected from the Beldum's psionic escape.

“Wow!” says the little girl. “I've never seen one.”

“It's a Beldum,” I tell her.

She snaps back. “I know what it is! I've just never seen one.” After her aggressive response I think she's done with me, but soon she's asking with that same chipper voice, “What are you gonna call it?”

“I don't know. I think I'll figure it out as we get acquainted.”

I get close to the Beldum and hold out a hand. The gesture isn't to give it something to sniff, but to help me channel a soft ripple of electromagnetic energy. It responds, vibrating at the same frequency as it floats in close to form an orbit around my hand. Its eye is swiveling around, distracted by the growing crowd of onlookers. The hatching of every egg is an event, but it's made all the more special by me showing off psychic powers. The insecure psychic girl starts doing tricks and it helps me grab the Beldum's attention.

“Hey, little one. It's alright. Let's see what you like.” I reach for my Poketech X and stop myself. This thing will be discontinued soon and I don't know what I'm going to do about it. The premier ball is already registered to me, but I don't need it to figure out the Beldum's nature. “You want some food?”

It floats up fast, using one tooth to pull at my bag.

I rummage through my bag.

“I have some pokechow,” offers an elder with a Zigzagoon.

“I'm alright,” I say with a smile. “Just picking out some berries.”

I get out five and spread them out on both hands. Figy, Wiki, Mago, Aguav, and Iapapa rest about an equal distance from each other. I have hundreds of them saved up from my time in Sinnoh where berries are plentiful. The Beldum spins about, putting its mouth over each berry as the teeth twirl. Once it passes the Mago berry, it stops, swishes back and sucks the berry up into its body. It's got a sweet tooth, so it'll be fast.

The others I need to feed to my Beldum by hand, but its got a huge appetite. No trouble with the Figy berry or the Wiki.

“Whatcha doing?” asks a youngster inches from my face. He's close enough for me to smell the Poocheyena on him.

“I am determining its nature.”

“Doesn't your Roto-phone tell you that?” he asks like I'm an idiot.

“He knows that!” snaps the psychic. They leer at each other and I dread the possibility that they're gonna battle.

“Gimme some space, please,” I tell the youngster. Scooting forward, I put a hand on the flat surface of the Beldum. It soothes the Pokémon, easing the erratic electromagnetic field into a more stable sinuous wave.

“Can I pet it?” asks the youngster.

“No, it's about to get dangerous. You better get back.”

He and the psychic turn about and start issuing commands to the crowd like they're deputes in the police force. I feed my new friend the Aguav berry and there aren't any problems. I let out a sigh of relief. Its not gonna get confused.

“It's alright,” I tell the kids. “The threat is over.” My body struggles with rising to my feet and I see stars. My hasty new friend hovers over to support my back. Smiling, I stroke a bare panel of its surface.

“Well, what is it?” asks the youngster.

“The Beldum has a hasty nature,” says a lass with glasses.

“How do you know that?” asks the youngster.

She goes into a diatribe about the different types of berries and I ignore them to check in on the psychic girl. “Hey, you gonna be okay?”

The child holds up her Roto-phone. “I'm calling my mom.”

I nod and stretch out my back.

“Well, hasty is a terrible nature for a Beldum anyway!” says the youngster to end the lass's discussion. He's not wrong, it's just that I don't need my Beldum to battle.

* After getting away from the hustle and bustle of Slateport's boardwalk, I use my Shiinotic to give my Beldum a polish. The spores are porous enough to help scrape off birthing gunk and his metal body protects him from any poisonous effects. Me, I need a mask and gloves, but the Beldum doesn't mind. As long as I keep communicating with the ripple of electromagnetic power, it's happy. It. I remember how Esther Flowne gendered her Beldum. She obviously wasn't a fool, so she must've sensed something about Hoshino that gave her a vision of gender. I'm not picking up anything from Beldum that would gender the floating monster of psychic bound steel.

I get out some technical machines and go through the process of teaching it some heavy hitting attacks. Zen Headbutt, Iron Head, and Iron Defense round out its limited selection. Beldum's can't learn anything until they evolve, so the study session goes on long into the night. Soon my buddy is performing the moves with two letter signals sent out in morose code. Getting it to ignore my verbal commands is gonna take some time. The pokemon is too eager. I'm barely finished saying “Zen” and its already charging up the psychic attack.

Edvard, my Shiinotic, is max level. One decent attack and he'll destroy Beldum, but using Strength Sap allows for the push and pull of combat to be simulated while giving my Beldum a wall to practice on. We go until Beldum has to struggle and I take them all into the Pokecenter for rest. I don't realize how tired I am until I shovel down some food. I like training with my new Beldum. Its not gonna be a winner, but I should have a lot of fun at the contest.

* Registering is quick and easy. The premier ball is inserted into the slot, sign my name, and I am ready to compete in a pokemon coordinator contest. The conditions are normal and the day starts out with a hundred contestants. Most of the people competing are actually about my age. Youngsters and Lasses are no longer interested in contests. It's an old trainer's game now and that makes my competition interesting. Most are there to socialize and make friends while they show off their pet, but a few have that look of serious competition in their eyes. I put on sunglasses and keep to myself.

The call my name and I get up from the audience. Without so many competitors the theater would be empty. There's three judges at the front and they don't really care. Every few days the normal contest comes along and they probably don't see anything worth mentioning. I hope to change that.

Feet set wide apart, I cross my arms and hold my head high. “Listen up, losers! I'm the elite trainer ASH and I'm gonna destroy you with the coolest Pokémon in the world!”

A few people chuckle and a murmur spreads through the audience.

“Please send out your partner,” says one of the judges.

“You got it! Mega death bringer, come on out and destroy!” I go for an over the top throw; only the ball sticks to my finger. “I said destroy!” I shake my hand, acting like the premier ball is stuck. It takes quite a bit of effort to keep up the act, my psychic abilities aren't great so the multitasking is difficult, but I'm able to keep the ball on my finger for three shakes.

Then out comes my Beldum. It's wearing a cape with the symbol for death on the back.

“Ha! You won't be laughing now!” I call out. “Beldum, use Take Down.”

It stands still.

“I said use Take Down!”

The crowd laughs. Beldum float down and rests its head on its body.

“In that case, use Meteor Smash!”

Out comes the Take Down attack, responding to my electromagnetic signal.

“Yeah, that's it! Now wow them with Ze-”

Beldum shoots forward covered in psychic energy. It comes out of the attack spinning, rotating over and over; eye and all.

“Hey, I didn't shout the attack yet!”

It starts spinning so fast the the cape flies off.

“And stop spinning! We gotta wow them with our finale.”

It does, nodding to get into position.

“Alright losers, get ready for a real attack! Straight out of Alola, it's time to use a Z-move! Go, Corkscrew Crash!” I go through the motion of the Z-move, moving through the familiar gestures until the motion is complete. Meanwhile, I give Beldum the signal for Iron Defense and its edges extrude and shine.

“What! That wasn't Corkscew Crash! We only have three moves! You've messed everything up!”

Then, right on cue, it tilts its head and half closes its eye.

“Aww. I can't stay mad at you.” I lean down and give my Beldum a hug and it knocks eye to limb together, making an audible chink for everyone to hear. Returning the pokemon, I pick up the cape and bow to leave.

Responses are good in the audience, a few of them even standing up to cheer, but the judges don't look impressed. Not a single one of my moves were cute, but hopefully the performance makes up for it.

* After round one, I'm in the cafeteria eating with over a hundred trainers. A few people walk over and chide me for bringing a pokemon that I don't know how to train. So I get extremely serious and nod, apologizing as I bow so low my head hits the table. They walk off and I can't help but laugh behind their back. Beldum enjoys the R & R outside. It's easily distracted by all the other pokemon flying around. A Cutiefly trainer comes over and the two play an informal game of chase.

“That was a pretty good opener,” says the trainer. He's a pretty guy, maybe ten years younger than me, but in no way a kid.

“Thanks, I couldn't think of how else to do this.”

“Beldums don't really belong in a cute pageant. He should be doing a tough competition.”

“Well, my Beldum has a sweet tooth, so it's gotta be cute.”

He shakes his head. “You're not gonna make it to master with that attitude.”

“Maybe not,” I agree. “But it'll prepare Beldum for when it evolves.”

“Can Metangs even learn cute moves?!”

I laugh. “I don't know.”

Beldum puts Cutiefly into its mouth, gripping the bug with its three teeth. Cutiefly freaks and Beldum acts like a bottle dropped, rolling over the ground as only the black of its eye can be seen. When Cutiefly goes over to investigate, Beldum springs back to life and chases Cutiefly.

“What's your name?” I ask the trainer.

“I'm Raul and my friend over there is Gwendalyn. Your name was ASH, right?”

“Yeah, that's right. I still don't know what to name my Beldum.”

“You looking for suggestions?”

I shake my head. “Inspiration. You think my Beldum will ever be seen as cute?”

He frowns. “I guess he's the cutest Beldum.”

I notice how quickly Raul is to assign Beldum a gender.

* There are a lot of tears in the hallway when the standings are listed on the wall mounted monitors. Not from our group. Most everyone there is content to receive losing marks. We're in Normal rank. We know our chances of success are low. One Vulpix trainer is incensed to see that her beloved didn't make it, but their coat looked matted. She storms out of the building with tears in her eyes. As for me, I don't have any reason to cry. Beldum has made it to Round 2. It placed tenth. Which is good for my Pokémon's experience, but a sign that all of my theatrics isn't gonna win out against the presentation of the classically cute.

* Next up is follow-the-leader dancing. All sixteen of the final competitors are on stage. Raul is on the side the far side of the stage taking the spot of number one. Beldum is in between a derpy Zigzagoon and a way too serious Buneary. The Zigzagoon can only do the steps when watching their trainer. Buneary pulls off every move as listed, but they're also not looking cute. All those flowers in the fur aren't making up for the stiff movements and the trainer is getting irate fast.

I play the fool, calling out moves with gusto. Frequently, I'm calling out the wrong moves, shouting them like a maniac. My actual commands to Beldum are electromagnetic projections, and it's hard for me to project them out to the space. The problem is that I came under prepared and I don't have a signal for spinning. I try to send out a rapid flurry of waves and Beldum flies out with confusion. The effort is too much. I go down and I go down hard.

No one designed the stage for stunt drops. It is hardwood and my hip takes most of the impact. I need to ham up my exhaustion, but I'm seeing stars. My breath is shallow and everything feels electric. Beldum should be doing dance moves, but it flies over to check on me. I smirk at the pokemon and I can't be mad. It must know that I'm hurting. It can't feel the psychic impulses from me. I give it a hug and put my forehead against its eye socket. No one is breaking form.

They think whatever's going on is part of my show. I roll away and throw my arm out to prepare my flounce, but round two is over. I don't make it to the next round and that's all well and good. Me and the Buneary trainer leave the stage. Once I'm outside, I lean up against the wall and try to find my breath. It's difficult. Psychic activity takes it out of my chest. My heart feels out of sync with my body, like one's running while the other is trying to swim. Beldum is still there, leaning against me to provide support. I feel bad for worrying it. I feel bad for not giving my pokemon a name.

“I don't know why you're so upset!” says the Buneary trainer. She's not a lass exactly, but what a lass might grow into after a decade of disappointments. All her hair and makeup give the woman a look of sophistication, but it's kind of ruined by this air of entitlement she carries. I can see the pink in her eyes from where her tears are trying to break through. “You're using a Beldum! You and your Beldum are never gonna be cute enough to beat actually cute pokemon!”

Sighing, I rise to my full height. “What's your name?”

She's acting like I'm trying to intimidate her, raising her chin like she'll take a slap on the cheek with courage. “Riko.”

“You don't know why you lost, do you?” I ask.

“Those judges are blind! Buneary is the cutest Pokemon anyway! Way cuter than that bug.”

I sigh. “Your Buneary is too serious to compete in cute. Look at them, watch the way they move. They're made to battle.”

“You don't know what you're talking about! You're just a loser who can't even deal with the pressure of performing on stage!” Riko turns around with her head turned up high and for the first time in the contest her Buneary finally does something cute. They stick their head up, spin around on their heel just like their trainer, and march off.

I laugh and run to catch up with her. She's already outside marching down the stairs when I make it to the door. “Hey, Riko.” She flashes me a rude gesture. “I was wrong.” That makes her stop. “Your Buneary can be cute. You just have to make it be haughty.”

“Haughty?” she looks down at her Buneary scowling at me.

“Yeah, adorable doesn't work on her, but she's great at being haughty.”

The Buneary turns away from me.

“We don't need advice from the likes of you!” she declares and marches off, catching her beloved Buneary as they make it to the walkway.

As for me. Well, I sit down at the top of the stairs and close my eyes. I am not ready for this.

@trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

Route 110 churns away beneath my Roto-bike's tires.

When I hit the crossroads with Route 103, I whip the bike sideways and come to a dusty halt, my heart hammering. I didn't realize how recklessly fast I was going. Slateport is only 30 minutes away.

I'm not ready.

I turn down Route 103. As I walk my bike along a stand of autumn-hued trees my breath starts to catch in my chest. Black spots appear against the midday sky. I drag myself off the road and slump down on a mat of red and yellow leaves, hands over my face.

I tell myself that the Makuhita will survive over and over again. I replay the Berry Master's wisdom like a mantra. I relive ASH's words of forgiveness until the moment becomes worn and distant.

And at the end of it all, I'm still afraid.

I'm afraid of the old, cold battle-lust that still comes far too easily, of the seed of pride that lay buried for decades and yet refused to die. And I'm also afraid of my fear, because for Coba's sake I need to be willing to fight. Not only to fight, but to fight and win, because if I hold back he will be the one to pay the greater part of the loser's fee.

And yet here I am, having a panic attack over a pitifully low-stakes match, because the idea of any Pokemon getting hurt as a result of my actions is so overwhelmingly painful.

I can't fight, and I can't retreat. I'm paralyzed.

My Pokémon died fighting because it's what they wanted to do. They chose that life, just like we chose to be trainers.

ASH's words echo the old cliche all young trainers hear, that a good trainer thinks of Pokemon as equal partners. Now I wonder if I've ever really believed it. I know that Pokemon are tough and resilient and smart, but humans are the ones giving the commands. Certainly there are times when Pokemon refuse to follow orders, but a captive Pokemon only has so much agency. The deeper the bond of trust between trainer and Pokemon, the greater the burden on the trainer to make responsible decisions.

But it is clear to me, here and now, that I will not be able to proceed if I can't accept on some level that they are choosing to back those decisions.

I let Coba out, and the V4ST follows. As soon as Coba sees my face, he cocks his head in concern and nudges me with his head.

I lift him gently and rest him on my knees. The V4ST watches from above, unreadable as usual.

"Coba," I say.

He's uncharacteristically still, his head turned so he can watch my expressions, sensing the weight of my feelings. I take a deep breath.

"We're going to have to do a lot of training and fighting. I'm really scared about that, because I care about you very much and I don't want you to get hurt. But if we're going to find your real trainer, we have to try.

"You've been really brave so far, and I know it's been hard for you because I'm so scared. That's because some bad things happened to other Pokemon I used to train."

I swallow hard, steady myself.

"But I don't want that to get in the way of helping you, so I'm going to do my best to trust you. I'll train you to be strong so that you can prove yourself, and I'll take you wherever I have to so you can get back home. I just..." I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain. "I just want to know that's what you want, too."

I open my bleary eyes and find Coba's little starry pupil looking up at me. I let myself stare at him, feeling...something. A sense of stillness, of connection.

Then he springs into my arms, and as I hold him close I feel something new--warmth and trust and childlike joy, things I thought lost to me. For a moment I feel like there is no separation between the two of us, and I stay in that moment as long as I can.

At last the surge of feeling goes out like a wave, and I turn my burning eyes up to the V4ST. It has moved closer and is hanging almost motionless in the air, watching us with its full focus.

"I'm going to trust you, too," I say. "I know what you're supposed to do if Coba doesn't pass, but I don't believe he's a glitch. You've already helped us so much." I hold out my right hand. "So I hope you'll be willing to keep helping us...Vast."

It stares at me long enough to make me unsure whether it understands. But then it says, "Bi-bing," and taps the palm of my hand with its right foot.

A fierce grin breaks over my face. I pull myself up; Coba capers around my ankles, crashing through the leaves.

"Let's get started," I say.

Vast beeps in the affirmative.

------

For the next four days, we train.

Warmup drills before breakfast, stretching and running and jumping in the woods. We do those as a team, all four of us.

After we eat, I have Coba and Bluk do isolated move training against practice targets I fabricate out of wood and stones. Vast is our lookout, alerting us when humans and wild Pokemon are too close for comfort. For the most part, we go unmolested. At midday, the woods are fairly quiet except for the occasional Zigzagoon crashing through the leaves. The few times a hiker wanders through, I withdraw my team and hide in the brush until they're gone.

After lunch, Bluk and Coba spar. Vast keeps one eye on our surroundings and one on Coba as he practices using his limited moveset. Its occasional comments--a bi-bing when a move lands and a drr-drrr when the execution fails--seem to help Coba understand what he's getting right and wrong. I come to think of it as a secondary coach.

When evening falls, it gets cold. I'm woefully unprepared for sleeping rough, but on the first night I notice a group of Zubat rising from the direction of the river that divides Route 103. I cautiously cross the road and climb down the eastern embankment.

Sure enough, after I've picked my way north along the river's edge for a little while, I find an opening in the rock.

Using my Roto-phone to light the way, I carefully explore. The cavern is about the size of a modestly large house with a nice, high ceiling. It doesn't smell very nice, but after a day training with Bluk, neither do I.

I build a little campfire just outside the entrance and use my Roto-phone to look up move training strategies, thinking of ways to optimize the work. When I'm sufficiently warm and my attention starts to fail I go inside, mark off an area with Repel, and sleep.

When the sound of the returning Zubat wakes me at dawn, we do it all again.

By the end of day four, Coba is confident with Mud-slap, Bite, and Astonish. Bluk has mastered Disable, Mud Bomb, Sludge and, of course, Minimize.

On the fifth day, we go looking for wild Pokemon.

Coba's first challenger is a Zigzagoon, nimble and quick. After fighting only slow-moving Bluk in the practice sessions, Coba is unsure. He takes a couple of Tackles before he manages to land a Mud-slap, and I'm worried the next hit will take him out. But the blinding mud shakes up the Zigzagoon's confidence, and it shifts to using Tail Whip, giving Coba the opportunity to engage with a Bite attack.

Coba hasn't enjoyed practicing Bite against Bluk much, for obvious reasons, and the first attack is somewhat tentative. But the second time I order it, the little Trapinch seems to realize how strong his jaws really are. The Zigzagoon tries to retaliate with a Tackle, but the mud hinders its aim and it misses.

After the third Bite attack, the Zigzagoon goes down.

"Bi-bi-bi-bing!" chimes Vast, and I let out a triumphant shout.

After I lavish Coba with praise and Oran berries, I carefully check out the Zigzagoon to make sure it doesn't have any serious injuries. I consider capturing it--they're useful little creatures, good at finding things--but I decide against it. I leave an Oran berry beside it and back off until it gets up and vanishes into the woods.

We spend the rest of the morning fighting Zigzagoon. Coba defeats another one, and Bluk defeats two more.

After lunch, I start working on teaching Coba how to use Sand Tomb. He's able to kick up a good amount of sand, but struggles to shape it. I have Bluk drill Sludge attacks, encouraging her to increase the volume of the attack bit by bit. I want her using Sludge Bomb as soon as possible.

I find myself talking to Vast a lot. Its wide range of expressive electronic sounds make the experience feel eerily close to a human conversation. Sometimes when I'm struggling to communicate something to Coba or Bluk it will chime in, and the information seems to come across easier afterwards.

In the evening, I gather us all around the fire for dinner. Coba and Bluk, tired but in high spirits from their victories, get into a mild wrestling match. Vast doesn't exactly join in, but it hovers nearby and makes playful-sounding noises, swooping out of reach whenever one of the others decides to lunge at it.

Before long they're all worn out. I put them back in their balls and settle down for the night.

We defeat more Zigzagoon the next day. By evening, Coba's Sand Tomb is starting to look just about right.

"I think we only need two more fights, right?" I ask Vast as I build up the fire.

Vast makes two deliberate tones in reply.

I breathe deep, pick Coba up and hug him. "Almost there," I tell him.

He squeaks and nuzzles my neck.

-----

When I emerge from my cave on day seven, I hear commotion coming from the direction of Route 110.

I sneak cautiously through the trees to the crossroads, hide in the brush and watch. A loose group of about twenty trainers--triathletes, fishermen and hikers for the most part--have fanned out across the lower path, blocking the way with Pokeballs at the ready.

Aware that I am filthy and smell like sewage, I approach the person who seems the least likely to be bothered by that--an older lady hiker who looks like she's been camping out for at least as long as I have, and ask, "What's going down?"

"Trubbish horde," she says. "Big one."

"We spotted them from up on the cycling path earlier," the triathlete guy beside her adds. "If they get into Slateport, they could start sneaking onto ships and spreading who knows where. The rangers have asked local trainers to defeat and capture until they can send more people."

"I've never seen a Trubbish in Hoenn," I say.

"We think they've been breeding in the abandoned levels of the New Mauville Power Plant," says the hiker. "Could be there's finally so many of them that they're looking to expand." She sniffs. "You been fighting them already?"

I sigh. "I'm training a Grimer."

A shout goes up somewhere down the line.

"Well, I hope you've been training hard, 'cause here they come!" says the triathlete, and throws his Pokeball.

All down the line, Pokeballs pop open in a staggered chorus, and a rank of Pokemon takes up position in front of their trainers.

Squinting down the road, I see them--a massive group of Trubbish, at least a hundred strong, tottering with determination down the road. The leaders pull up short at the sight of the blockade, stumbling and tripping into each other, but the mass behind quickly pushes the group forward again. The landfill stink of them hits soon after. The other trainers start to groan and cover their faces, but after weeks of training with Bluk I hardly grimace.

"Reflect!" the hiker orders, and her Lunatone murmurs and makes the air in front of us shimmer.

"Metal Sound!" the triathlete barks, and his Magneton directs a concentrated beam of sound at the nearest Trubbish, causing it to fumble and clutch its head.

"Well? What have you got?" the hiker asks me abruptly.

I realize I've been standing there gawking. I think about just slinking back into the bushes, but I shake the thought out of my head. I've made a vow to stop babying Coba, to make sure he survives all the way to the end of his journey. This is a good test for him.

Without another thought, I release Coba and Bluk together.

They've been training hard, but they're both still so green. At the sight of the horde and the cacophony of attacks and commands around them, they quail and turn back toward me.

"Coba! Mud-slap!" I shout. "Bluk! Minimize!"

They both hesitate for a moment, but I hear a sharp series of beeps from over my left shoulder. Vast's tone snaps them out of it, and once they've executed those initial commands, they fall into the rhythm of battle.

Bluk quickly realizes that with a few round of Minimize and successful Mud Bomb attacks, she's near invincible. The Trubbish start to back away from her and she goes on the offensive, blinding and Disabling Trubbish that are giving a nearby Manectric trouble.

Coba naturally wants to stick close to Bluk, but with Vast's help I encourage him to stay in the protection of the Lunatone's screens. The triathlete switches positions to be next to me, and once the group nearest us are sufficiently hindered by paralysis and mud, he starts ordering his Magneton to use Discharge, taking advantage of Coba's immunity to the attack.

The triathlete pulls out a Pokeball. "Catch them if you can," he says. "The rangers will exchange them for fresh balls if you don't want 'em."

I nod and start going through my eighteen remaining Ultraballs. Trainers all down the line follow suit, and the Trubbish horde starts to thin. Many of the stragglers start to turn and run, and I hear shouts of "Mean Look" and "Rock Tomb" as the trainers try to prevent their escape.

"Sand Tomb!" I tell Coba, pointing at a fleeing Trubbish.

He tries, spinning to kick up a small twister and flinging it forward, but he hasn't quite perfected the move. The Trubbish slips out of the too-weak dust devil and lunges at him, managing to hit with an Acid Spray attack.

Vast squawks, a sound of dismay. I grit my teeth. "You can do it, Coba!" I shout. "Shake it off! Sand Tomb!"

Coba looks back, unsure and afraid, and suddenly the urge to withdraw him is strong. Surely he's fought enough now to prove he's real.

Instead, I look steadily in his eyes and focus on projecting my confidence into him. "You can do it," I say again. Vast makes an affirmative chime.

With a fierce little growl, Coba turns and spins, a little longer and faster than before. The dust devil grows, swells, and shoots forward, engulfing the Trubbish. It struggles to break free, but the twister keeps it spinning in place. It tries to Acid Spray Coba again, but it misses.

"You've got it!" I shout. "Bite Attack!"

Coba charges forward and thrusts his head into the miniature storm, clamping down on the Trubbish with all his might. The Trubbish's eyes roll back and it falls unconscious.

A victory roar goes up from the assembled trainers. The last of the Trubbish vanish into Pokeballs. Vast and I join in, and then I drop to my knees as Coba comes running back to leap into my arms. A moment later I stagger as Bluk's heavy, wet arms wrap around my waist. Vast circles us, chirping and chiming with excitement.

"Is it over?" I ask. "Did we get it?"

"Bi-bibibi-bi-bi-bi-bing!"

I hold up my right hand to it, and it slaps my palm with its foot.

It's time to go to Slateport.

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

Slateport's Oceanic Museum is primarily a place for geology and chemistry students. The nearby Museum of Marine Pokemonology is far larger and more busy, though the two are connected as part of a four building center dedicated to learning about the ocean collectively called the Four Seas Museum. It's inside the Oceanic Museum that I meet Esther Flowne. She's on the bottom floor staring at a dome that shows the haunting division of ocean water and black brine.

Esther has extremely soft brown hair cut too short to ever fall in front of her eyes. Those green eyes of hers are both haunted and distracted. I get close enough that I'm sure she can sense me, but she doesn't once look away from the black sludge at the bottom of the tank. Some drama is playing out in her mind and I watch as her expression goes from worried to angry, like the pulse of the sea. My limited empathy is overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, triggering memories of shouting matches and lost battles.

“Ms. Flowne?” I ask to push back the oppressive aura.

She looks away from the tank and my mind is given a reprieve. “Yes? Oh, hello. You must be ASH.” Esther keeps her hands to herself and bows.

I bow in return. “I am.”

Strangely, I'm at a loss for words. My experience with psychics has been complicated. Generally they come in three variations: the grandiose charlatans, the esoteric mystics, and those that never wanted the abilities that made them different. I have never met a reticent psychic with such overwhelming power. As the silence between us stretches on, I feel my inhibitions about the future flare to the forefront of my mind. I don't know what I'm hoping to accomplish with this study of a Beldum, but it scares me. It scares me enough to make my knees shiver.

“Can you stop reading me?” I ask with a grunt.

Her eyes snap open, returning to that half cordial approximation of normal she's practiced at wearing. “Sorry. I didn't mean to. What did you want to know about my Beldum?”

It feels strange talking about this in such a public place, but there aren't a lot of people nearby. We're surrounded by rocks taken from the seabed and once she starts to wander about my heart doesn't feel the pressure of her drilling eyes.

“I was asking about some topological theories I was developing and the scientists at Fenominal Labs asked me to help with their research. Well, specifically, I wanted to look into their research and they talked me into raising a Beldum.”

“I don't remember the people there very well. I was suffering from severe depression at the time. Hoshino helped me start over. She was my star.”

Beldums don't actually have gender, but this psychic scares me too much to correct her. “Do you remember how you trained her? That information could be valuable.”

She looks to me with confusion and I feel that soul sucking assault on my conscious thoughts again. My mind careens from the moment in the lab to the weeks beforehand scrawling at loose scraps of paper while I laid on the floor, and the pathetic months of lethargy that proceeded that. My hand slaps a railing and my knees threaten to give out. Blinking, she looks back to the rocks and apologizes under her breath. “Sorry. I'm not used to people feeling my exploration. You're a psychic?”

“Not a great one,” I grunt as I recover from another assault. “Though I get the feeling that I couldn't stop you even if I tried. You swear you're not doing this on purpose?”

She shakes her head. “No. I meant to check your mind then. I've hand too many people lie and manipulate me in the past. I can't trust anyone anymore. Not like before. Those visions I saw of you running through calculations, is that what the value is?”

“I don't know,” I admit. I have to walk fast to catch up to the shorter woman, who is climbing the stairs with haste. “Your training session with Beldum showed remarkable variation and growth when compared to every other trainer. Did you use your powers to bolster Hoshino's progress? Did you do anything to stimulate her body?”

She is standing at the top of the stairs, turned about to look right at me, stopping me with the threat of another delving into my mind. At this height, with this many steps behind me, a psychic assault could be fatal. She means to threaten me and the cold look in her eyes doesn't do anything to alleviate her own sorrow. “You will answer my questions directly. I need to know what value this information has.”

I swallow. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I have a theory about Pokémon, that their mass is far greater than the bounds of the physical world. There's too many unexplained phenomenon connected to Pokémon that can't ordinarily be explained with physics. I think there are interactions happening beyond the four observable dimensions. Your training methods could shine light on where Pokémon growth and evolution really comes from.”

“But why is this important to you?”

Lowering my eyes, it hurts to admit my petty motivation. “I want to feel important. I want my life to have meaning.”

At last, she steps back, giving me room to climb up the stairs and stand on a surface that won't hurt me should I collapse. “Your research won't give you that. No pokemon, no achievement, no act of love will give you the feeling of a life worth living. That is something that you have to find within yourself.”

“My research could still help people. It could change how we see Pokémon.”

“You're not listening to me.”

I lower my eyes and follow her as she walks off to examine containers full of water. “Maybe not.”

“I didn't do anything special when I trained Hoshino. My coordinator events were all recorded, they can be found in the archives at Lilyport. My scores were nothing impressive. My arrangements were uninspired. I was an average cool coordinator with a mediocre showing.”

“Cool?” I ask to clarify. “Weren't you a tough trainer?”

“Hmm?” She searches her memories and a flood of morose vibrations pours out of her and into my chest. Little tremors of delight, break of the quagmire and she nods. “Yes, that's right. I was a tough trainer at first. Hoshino couldn't learn anything but tough moves and so I thought I needed to coordinate with that expectation. Once I worked with Hoshino's nature we both had a better time. You feel emotions, don't you?”

I pull myself back to my feet by the railing I'm clinging to. “Yeah. It, um, usually isn't this strong. You're obviously a very powerful psychic. Why don't you compete?”

“I did. Once.”

“What happened?”

This time no emotions escape her. She is in complete control. Based on the hard look in those haunted eyes, I think it's because she's responding without remembering. “I met people I thought were worth my love and people who I thought deserved my hate and I was wrong about most of it. Then everything we fought for all got swept away.”

“What?”

Esther shakes her head. “I don't want to talk about that. Did you have any more questions?”

“Well, yes.” I wander over to a nearby bench and get my laptop out of my satchel. “There are specific moments of intense growth that I wanted to ask you about. Would you mind going over your history of Hoshino with me?”

“Yes, I'd mind terribly. What we shared, it was ours to experience. I didn't participate in Fenominal Lab's study because I cared about their research, I did it because I wanted to raise a pokemon that reminded me of better times. I won't tarnish those memories by investigating my memories with scientific precision. As I said, my competitions are all in the archives. I won't say anything else about Hoshino.”

The brief sensations of sorrow that pierce through her irritation come as the spike of a poisonous memory. Reliving Hoshino's death might not only be difficult for her, but it could push the limits of my empathy to dangerous ends. I'm almost crying as it is.

“Why haven't you started training?” Esther asks. “You have the egg. You have enough support pokemon to protect them and nurture them through the worst of your training, so why haven't you started training your Beldum?”

“I...” Blinking away the tears that still threaten to unmake me, I sit up straight. “I want to get everything right this time.”

“You are surrounded by fear. You might think that you are controlling it, or that it doesn't affect you, but it controls you. It's actually beautiful, past the tragedy. You must be very appealing to psychics and yet you live alone.”

That shocks me so deep that I can't even speak. It's difficult enough to formulate a response to such a cutting damnation combined with what I can only interpret as a compliment. So my mind comes around to facts about her and I redirect to give my overwrought heart relief. “I, uh, I heard that you married a trainer you met while coordinating. Are you still with him?”

She smiles. “I am. Goodbye, ASH. Don't try to contact me again.”

I'm left to watch her leave the second floor of the Oceanic Museum, the laptop black and impotent on my lap. The feelings of devastation and loss in my heart are not my own. I know they are hers, bitter echoes of a tragedy I did not experience but my mind can't help but remember the fire that destroyed several containment boxes within the warehouse of Bill's PC. My first set of Pokémon were all gone, dead from an event beyond my control. It is a memory I work hard to repress, but I can't ignore it any longer. The echoes of my loss, remind me of the sharp smiles of my childhood and the lies that cut into me.

*

I spent a hundred pen to have a psychic break me down without even trying and I celebrated by crying in her aftermath. Honestly, it probably wasn't the worst experience I've had at a museum, but it is embarrassing. I don't like to know how weak I am, but it is something that I have tacitly accepted. I am controlled by fear and so that is the thing I must overcome. I've never learned true courage. I have never mastered that trembling, gnawing, burning, crunching, gripping feeling in my chest. It is a thing I live with, a monster in my heart that responds to no commands and has no limit to the number of attacks it can learn.

There's a public walkway a short distance away. I'm not by a pier exactly, but something like a shopping district overlooking the docs. Wingulls are harassing every fisher, food court vendor, and trash bin, but they are a familiar nuisance. I sit down cross legged facing a bench, a railing, the ocean, and the burn of the sun. I place the white premier ball down on the ground and calm my breath. Sucking in the air, I hold it above my diaphragm and slowly move my breath up my chest. I feel the energy rising, moving up from my chest until it's tingling my shoulders and buzzing in my throat. The sensation doesn't last there, it fades quick, spreading to the neurons of my graymatter, stilling my physical irritations through a body-wide numbing sensation.

I hold out my hand and focus my energy out in a radial splash. In comes the ripples, pinch by my mind's imaging. Down goes my hand, low enough to be level with the ball. Then I think not of my energy, but of the metal casing that holds the shaped apricorn surrounded by mechanisms. Electromagnetic waves push out, sending the ball rolling until it hits the base of the railing, stopping it before the ball returns to the life giving ocean. Magnetism works on the ferrous elements, drawing the body of the servos back to me. The white ball rolls, returning with haste, picking up speed until it taps the edge of my fingers. The ball stops. I take a breath, and send it out again. If that was one step, then this ball will need thousands more before the egg inside hatches.

For reasons I don't understand, I smile. Maybe I'm just looking forward to meeting a new Pokémon.

@trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

"No!" I blurt out.

"Drr-drrr," the V4ST agrees.

"Those are the rules!" my bespectacled assailant declares, striking some kind of superhero pose with a Pokeball clenched in his right hand. "I, Winston of the South Mauville Pokemon Collector's Club, have issued a challenge!"

He can't be older than fourteen--stocky and round-faced, with a shaggy mop of orange hair that I think is supposed to make him look like a J-pop idol or something. He is wearing a purple jersey bomber jacket with a stylized Mawile head and the letters "SMPCC" embroidered over the left breast and a bunch of miscellaneous pins on the right.

"Look kid, I'm just not in a position to battle right now. I don't have my full team, and the Pokemon I'm training are--"

"Article 10 section five of the Hoenn Trainer's Conduct Guide!"

"Article...huh?"

"While traveling a zone defined as a Wild Pokemon Capture and Battle Arena in Article 2 sections one through six--"

"I thought they amended that in--"

"--any licensed Pokemon trainer, upon making direct eye contact with another licensed Pokemon trainer, has the right to issue a battle challenge provided both trainers are carrying at least one registered Pokemon!"

"I don't--"

"Should the challengee refuse the engagement, the challengee must award the challenger a forfeiture payment equaling 72.9% of the challengee's calculated battle loss penalty!"

"I'm--"

"So choose your Pokemon, or forfeit your money and honor!" he shouts, thrusting the Pokeball out in front of him for emphasis.

"Look, kid! I'm sure you're a big shot in your little collector's club, but us grown-ups don't have time to go around battling everybody we look at! If that stupid rule is still on the books--"

"It is! Look it up!"

"If it IS still on the books, nobody takes it seriously and nobody cares! So if you don't mind, I will keep my money and be on my way!"

"Coward! Welcher! You have no honor as a trainer!" Winston shouts as I withdraw my Pokemon and pick up my bag and bike.

"Yeah, yeah. Smell ya later, kid," I mutter, but just as I'm about to mount up and leave him in the dust, two more teenage boys come crashing out of the brush beneath the overpass. One is tall and one is short, and both are wearing the same stupid jacket as Winston.

"What's going on, Winston?" shouts the first, a gangly Black kid with a magenta fade.

Winston points at me. "This craven excuse for a trainer is refusing my lawful challenge!"

"What?!" squawks the second crony, a short kid with a gel-hardened aqua pompadour. "But Article 10 section five of the--"

"Nobody cares!" I shout. "Now are you kids gonna get out of my way, or am I--"

A gust of wind snatches my hat. I grab it out of the air before it escapes and smash it back on my head, but it's too late.

"It's Kalos Champion Spiral!" hollers Magenta Fade.

"The former Champion is refusing a fair challenge!" shrieks Aqua Pompadour.

"It's not a fair challenge!" I protest.

"So what, you assume you'll crush us just 'cause we're not Champions?" snaps Magenta Fade.

"You're insulting the honor of the South Mauville Pokemon Collectors' Club!" roars Aqua Pompadour.

Two purple Roto-phones, unnoticed until this moment, rise up and tilt their faces down at me, and I feel my fists clench as I realize they've been recording me.

A tongue clucks behind me. I turn slowly to face Winston's smug face. "What a shame. I might expect a regular trainer to welch on a challenge, but Champions are supposed to be the best of the best!" He rests his chin in the crook of his thumb and forefinger, mocking up a thoughtful expression. "Are you afraid you'll lose? Or are you just cheap?"

I let the Roto-bike drop into the weeds. I shrug off my bag and let it fall. I meet Winston's gaze from beneath the brim of my hat, and I hold up one finger.

"One on one," I say, my voice low and cold. "No items."

If my change of tone makes him think twice, he doesn't show it. "Agreed!"

There's a very good possibility I'm screwed. I only have two usable Pokemon, and if I stick to my guns about not using Coba against a trainer until I'm sure he's safe, I really only have one. And the thought of losing to Winston on camera makes me want to hurl myself into the sea.

But I'm banking on one thing. Winston was watching me before he issued his challenge. He's already seen my Pokemon. He'll expect me to use the strongest one.

And if he makes his choice based on that, I think I have a shot.

I snap out the Ultra Ball, using my signature backspin by force of habit. "Let's go, Bluk!"

"Juggernaut! I--choose--you!" cries Winston, punctuating the word with sentai-inspired arm gestures.

I can not lose to this kid.

Bluk appears on the ground in front of me, facing a shiny Makuhita. It's bigger than average and spoiling for a fight, smacking its glovelike hands together and stomping.

Winston's expression grows stormy; he did just as I thought he would, and this is not the matchup he hoped for. "You'll regret not using your full strength against me!" he snaps.

"Let's just get this over with," I say. "Poison Gas!"

"Fakeout!"

Despite her inexperience, Bluk's response time is pretty good, and for once I have no reservations about the fight. Unfortunately, Juggernaut the Makuhita is practiced and light on his feet. Before she can open her mouth he feigns a blow with his right fist and slaps her across the face with his left. She screws up her eyes and flinches back, startled.

"Excellent!" crows Winston. "Now use Arm Thrust!"

But Juggernaut staggers away from Bluk instead, his hands going up to cover his face. He may have got a free hit, but her overpowering stench keeps him from gaining tempo.

"Poison gas," I repeat.

"Arm Thrust! Arm Thrust! Arm Thrust!" howls Winston.

Juggernaut screws up his face and throws himself back into the fight, but he Arm Thrusts himself straight into the filthy cloud that comes billowing out of Bluk's gaping mouth. He connects two hits and then staggers back, purple-faced and gagging. The volume of stink in the area doubles in magnitude. Winston jumps back a foot, his hand flying over his nose, and I hear groans of disgust from the two goons behind me.

My eyes are watering, too, but I force myself to stay composed. It's time to execute my strategy.

Before leaving the hotel this morning, I spent a little time studying the Kanto Grimer's moveset. It's not much of a heavy hitter; I can't rely on Bluk to simply slug it out. And I have no doubt that Juggernaut is the stronger, faster, more experienced Pokemon.

But there are ways to make that matter a lot less.

"Minimize," I say.

"Force Palm!" yells Winston.

As Juggernaut surges forward, Bluk shrinks. The edges of her sludgy form squeeze inward, and Juggernaut's blow swings past her.

Winston stares at me, red and goggling with disbelief and rage. "That's a cheap trick!" he shouts.

"Yep," I say. "Mud Bomb!"

"Arm Thrust!!"

Bluk horks a fountain of brown gunk into Juggernaut's eyes. Blinded, all but one of his hits goes wild. Winston's face turns from red to purple.

I smile. "Minimize."

"Force Palm!!"

"Mud Bomb."

"Arm Thrust!!"

"Minimize."

"Force Palm!!"

"Mud Bomb."

"ARM THRUST!!!"

On it goes. Bluk is now down to about a third of her original size, making her eyes appear comically large. Juggernaut is filthy, gagging, weak with poison, and getting further and further off the mark.

"Forfeit," I say. "It'll cost you less."

"Never!" snarls Winston.

"Your Pokemon is suffering," My voice sharpens.

"A real trainer never surrenders!"

"Come on, Winston! Don't let her throw you off!" shouts Magenta Fade.

"Yeah! It's vital that you win this match!" yells Aqua Pompadour.

"No coaching!" I snap, but Winston's eyes have already lit up.

"Vital Throw!" he crows.

Juggernaut's chest swells; he squeezes his narrow eyes shut and begins to weave in the air with his hands. As soon as Bluk moves, he'll sense where she is and grab her.

But she'll get to move first, and his Pokemon must be down to its last reserves of strength. Juggernaut's movements are stilted and painful. I bet a full-force Sludge attack will--

Will what?

What am I doing?

ASH's Metagross--Fission--appears in my mind the way it has for years of sleepless nights, eternally exploding. And the others, one after another. His Porygon-Z. His Lucario. His Rosearade.

I hold up my Ultra Ball. "Return."

Bluk vanishes from the field.

"What are you doing?" shouts Winston.

"Forfeiting," I say.

"Why?!"

"Because you're not smart enough to do it."

"I'm a Pokemon trainer! I'm not some little kid!" His voice is brazen, but there are tears in his eyes. "I want a real fight!"

"You got your fight, kid." I walk closer and look him in the eyes. "But I'd rather pay the loser's penalty than pay for your mistakes."

He looks away. I mount my bike and pull out my Roto-phone, preparing to transfer the funds.

"Keep your money," he snarls in a wobbly voice. "It wasn't a fair fight."

"It was fair enough," I say. "Go buy yourself some Antidotes."

I ride away, careful to keep my eyes on the road.

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

Rosette embodies the cordial smile of customer service. Her smile and stance is polished. Her attire, professional but colorful in the way a watercolor for children helps to soothe the senses. Behind her soft eyewear is the look of a fighter. Rosette may have retired from battling, but she's kept that edge.

She greets me with a firm handshake, no doubt anticipating a show of machismo that I never deliver. We're not alone at the outside diner, but Spiral isn't here. Standing at Rosette's side is a woman with noticeably tan makeup contrasting her graying blue hair. The woman is putting on a little weight, especially around the hips, but she has the same height as every Officer Jenny I've ever encountered. Rosette introduces her as, "Kicho. She helps me organize a lot of coordinator events here in Slateport.”

“Oh, I see. Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice. I didn't expect you to come so prepared.”

Rosette shakes her head. “We're going to a meeting right after this so it's really more of a coincidence rather than something we planned. Feel free to order anything. You're not working, right?”

Blushing, I tell her, “I have a nest egg.”

Rosette ignores me, putting her attention into food selections from her Roto-phone.

“Do I have to order from that?” I ask. “I only carry around a Poketech X.”

“You should switch over,” says Kicho. Her voice is a smoker's variation on the familiar whistle sounding voice of the Officer Jennys. “The League has already announced that they're going to phase out Poketech support with the launch of Paldea.”

“He likes to try to do things differently. ASH was a Normal trainer back in the Indigo League, and originated the Slaking-Shuckle combo in doubles,” Rosette explains with a veneer of praise.

The detail unsettles me. She knows a lot more about me then I know about her.

My scowling only makes her smile transition into worried sympathy. “Isn't that right?” She offers her Roto-phone so I can order.

Nodding, I order a hamburger steak with gravy.

“So.” Rosette folds her hands on the table. “Who is this coordinator you're looking for?”

“Esther Flowne. She used to use a Beldum, but I don't know what her specialty was.”

Kicho knows who I'm talking about right away. “Esther Flowne, she was a tough coordinator who fell into it because of her latent psychic powers. It came as a big surprise. She was training to be a triathlete like her mother until some tragedy happened. I can't remember the details, but she would always compete with this boy. I think they're married now.”

“Do you know where I can find her?”

“Lemme check our records,” Kicho says. She pulls out a Roto-phone with the back dressed to look like an Arcanine's face.

“Spiral says that you ran into her at Mauville,” says Rosette.

I nod. “She must've told you about how I forced an apology on her. You don't need to chide me for overstepping my bounds, alright? I didn't plan on making her cry. I am genuinely sorry. If you have any advice on how I should apologize, I'm open to it.”

There's this strange look on her face. I glance over at Kicho, sure that I've committed another mistake. “Sorry, I guess I shouldn't be talking about this.”

“No, maybe not,” Rosette mutters, her hand going up to adjust her glasses.

“So, um, what is it that you do, now that you've retired from battling?”

“I do battle from time to time. It's good exercise for my Pokémon.” She continues while I bite my tongue. “I work for the League to assist in civil planning.”

“Sorry. I'm sure working for the League isn't great.”

“It's actually a fulfilling job. I get to see communities at their best and bring Pokemon and people together. Most of my job is a lot of hard work, but it really is worth it when all that planning comes to fruition. A lot of people are being critical of all the big changes going on, but the League is doing things that no other organization has done before. We're bringing the world together.”

I bite back my comments about how the goals of the League mirror the ambitions of Team Plasma. “Well, it isn't easy having to rework strategies with every acquisition. I spent close to half a million pen on items that cause mega-evolutions and now I'd be lucky to get a tenth of that back on the open market. It's even worse with Z-moves. You tell me this, are they going to allow Dynamaxing once Paldea is added to the League?”

Rosette stays composed. “I can't talk about changes before the announcement.”

“Figures.”

“You know, the League actually does a lot of good for the regions they adopt. Hoenn was something of a warzone before they showed up. Team Aqua and Team Magma rose up from corrupt criminal institutions that were completely uncontested before the League's involvement. Critics accuse the League of taking from the culture and discarding what doesn't sell, but we've been keeping coordinator events going even though it's costing the League money.”

“Yeah, and they were thrilled to have that activity relegated to Lilycove in one building.”

“That was an attempt to revitalize interest by keeping everything centralized. The League actually does care about the longevity of the places they occupy. This is more than gym battles and badges.”

I sit up straight and let out a calming sigh. There's no point in taking out my frustration with the League on Rosette. She's doing her best with the job she has, it's not her fault that the League is expanding like an empire of old. “No, you're right. Hoenn is a lot safer now than it used to be. I'm sure you're doing good work. I'm sorry if I came off as ultra critical. The League wasn't supportive when I lost my main fighting team and maybe I've never forgiven them for that.”

“I've sent Esther a message and she got back to me,” says Kicho.

“What, now?!”

“We've been here for a few minutes,” Rosette says with perfect composure. She's acting like I never wronged her.

Kicho continues, “Esther says she doesn't know you.”

“Of course she doesn't know me.” With an exaggerated wave of my hands, I express my annoyance. “I'm getting in touch with her because I want to talk to her.”

“Well you haven't told us what this is about.” Rosette's tone is clear, or at least I think it is. She wants me to stop attacking the League and her friend and get to my goal.

“I'm helping Fenominal Labs research the growth rate of a Beldum. She was involved in the same study years earlier and I'd like to ask her questions about her training methods.”

“Did you get that?” asks Kicho into her phone.

Esther from the other line speaks up, “Yeah, loud and clear. Tell him that I can meet him at the museum.”

I glare at Kicho, but instead of being paralyzed she lifts her self assured chin. “Thanks, Esther. I look forward to meeting you.”

“You too,” she says before ending the call.

“What was that?” I ask Kicho. “You can't wait for me to explain things and then relay it?”

“Life is too short to waste time running back and forth. Honestly!” Kicho stands up and excuses herself.

I'm starring daggers at her until I pick up on Rosette watching me. “What?”

“She's a clone. She doesn't have as much time as we do.”

“Okay, but that shouldn't mean that she ignores social protocol.” I pause to take in the lack of a smirk on her face. “What did I say this time?”

“You know, people have to change their behavior a lot to deal with you. I would've thought that you'd be more patient about accommodating the needs of others.”

“Well, unlike you, I'm not perfect.”

“I'm not,” she snaps and it is a stoned edge comeback. “I have to work hard to be presentable too. This doesn't come easy to anyone. It's another skill, just like everything else.”

For some reason her hard composure and talk of social training reminds me of the first video I'd ever seen of her. Rosette and Spiral were fighting while they were making their rounds through the Hoenn League. Spiral humiliated her with using a Shedinja's Wonderguard. Everyone was talking about it. That was how I'd come to learn about Spiral. It was why I was prepared for my first major fight against her.

“You know, you were a good trainer back in the day,” I say. “If you'd kept with it you probably could've been a Gym Leader or better.”

“I know,” she says without shame or pride. “But I enjoy doing this more. Life isn't always about doing the big things and winning fame. There's a lot you can do when you let go of pride and enjoy life for what it is.”

I poke the bottom of my cup with a straw. “I've been trying to do that, but it never seems to fit me.”

“Maybe that's because you think you have to fit in right away. Pokemon taught me how to evolve, what have they taught you?”

Looking down at the bare plate, I see the stylistic design of Kyogre along the edge. I've never seen a Legendary and I don't know anyone who has, but we have pictures of them all over the world. Maybe being a Champion is kind of like that. Maybe I'm missing the point entirely. “Pokemon taught me to fight for what I want, but the problem is I don't know what I want anymore.”

“You do,” she says with confidence, but annoyingly she doesn't elaborate.

The server comes back with our meals and by the time Kicho and Rosette are finished eating, they get up to leave.

I shake their hands. “Thanks again for setting up the meeting.”

Kicho shrugs. “It was pretty easy. You can find people's numbers if you had a Roto-phone.”

Rosette smiles at her comment, like she's trying to give me a secret message or something and I don't get the joke. “Take care of that Beldum you're studying and be nice to Esther Flowne. I won't be around to smooth things over.”

I chuckle. “Yeah, thanks. Oh, and tell Spiral thanks for arranging this meeting. You were a big help.”

Rosette smiles, but doesn't respond. It creates a lingering effect, some rippling tension that tickles at my undeveloped foresight. I'm experiencing some kind of omen but I don't know why. Rosette and Kicho leave and I wait around for the server. It takes him ten minutes to come over and explain that Rosette already paid for everything.

[trainerspiral]

I spend the rest of the day in my hotel room, watching TV with Coba and the V4ST and trying not to overthink my conversation with ASH. I'm largely unsuccessful.

The hope of Coba being an old box Pokemon isn't completely crushed, but I'm certainly not encouraged. ASH is right--there are too many other, more likely explanations. It irks me to be accused of magical thinking, but I can't claim innocence there. I know for a fact Coba isn't one of my old Pokemon--I've never owned a shiny Trapinch--but of course the possibility of getting them back would push me into the realm of crazy ideas.

I resolve to put the idea out of my head and focus on finding Coba's owner. I can't let him pay for my inability to move on.

Sometime after sunset, as I'm contemplating whether I'll order room service or go out again, my Roto-phone flies out of my pocket and hovers in front of my face, chirping. I jump, causing Coba and the V4ST to look around and make startled noises.

I seize the phone, intending to find a way to shut that feature off immediately, but forget as soon as I see that it's showing me a message from ASH:

I'm trying to find this coordinator named Esther Flowne, do you know any coordinators in Slateport?

I don't know any working coordinators, but I know Rosette is involved in setting up contests with the league every year. I send a message to her asking about the name.

She answers quickly that the name isn't familiar off the top of her head, but she wants to know how I'm doing, and I decide it's easier to call her.

"Helloooo!" she sings.

"Hiiiiii," I say, the sound of her voice lifting my spirits just a bit.

"So? How's Coba? Is he passing his test?"

"So far," I say, and give her a quick rehash of my journey up to the point I left the Berry Master's. She's a great audience, interjecting with enthusiasm at all the right beats, especially when I describe Coba's first fight and the capture of the Grimer.

"That's so great, Spiral! Aw, I knew that little guy was going to be fine!"

"Well, we're not done yet, but it's looking a lot better than it was," I admit.

"Are you any closer to finding his owner?"

I sigh, and launch into my meeting with ASH. She grows a lot more serious as I recount that conversation and try to sum up the theories he's thrown out. I don't mention his depressed mental state or my own emotional outbursts, but I'm sure she can read a lot of the underlying emotions on my face.

"Well, like I said I don't think I recognize that person, but you can give him my number if you want and I'll try to help him," she says when I'm finished.

"That would be amazing, Ro, thank you."

"No problem!" A brief pause. "I'm really glad you were able to talk to him. I know that last fight you two had has been bothering you for a really long time."

I nod slowly. "Yeah. It's...it was really good."

We say our goodbyes and hang up. ASH doesn't answer his phone, but I text him Rosette's number and turn my attention to the room service menu.

-----

I get up early the next morning, have a quick breakfast in the lobby, and head out into the enclosed city, eerie and echoing at this time of day. I restock on healing items and travel rations and pick up a few Repels in case the going gets too tough. I still only have two usable Pokemon, after all.

As I'm heading toward the south exit, I pass a familiar shop: Pokemon Reflexology Services, a grooming and massage parlor for Pokemon. It has grown larger since the renovations to the city and certainly looks more modern than it did the last time I was here, but a quick glance at my phone shows it still has rave reviews. It's just opening up for the day, and while it's not completely empty it's not slammed, either.

I decide to go inside, where a friendly blonde greets me and informs me they are having a two-for-one special. I take a ticket and am on my way to a massage room in under twenty minutes, where a pair of pretty young masseuses tells me let out my Pokemon.

I think about including the Grimer, but I'm worried about its tameness level and odor. Instead I release Coba and the V4ST. Coba settles down eagerly under the violet-haired masseuse's hands, but when the redhead reaches for the V4ST, it rocks backward and gives a sharp tone of alarm.

"It's ok," I tell it. "It's just a massage." It makes a hectic series of tones at me. "Look," I say, pointing at Coba. His eyes are closed in ecstasy as the masseuse rubs the muscles around his jaw.

The V4ST still seems uncertain, but it allows the masseuse to guide it to an adjacent table. It's alert and tense at first, but as the young woman works her fingers into its body it settles down, and soon it's making what I can only describe as an electronic purr.

I smile, but the reaction puzzles me. The V4ST is trained to a remarkable level of competence, capable of independent decision-making and complex analysis. Yet it seems unable to differentiate a friendly human gesture from a hostile one, something most Pokemon know instinctively.

When I reflect on my own attitude toward it, though, it makes sense. I can't be the first trainer to grow attached to a potential Missingno. There is a nonzero chance this Pokemon has had to face aggression from humans before. I can only hope its handlers at Sypherbase treat it well, but I have no idea what the training up of a V4ST entails.

Either way, watching it enjoy this moment of care, I'm glad I made the decision to be kind to it. It's a tough, clinical little creature, but it's still just a Pokemon.

-----

Unlike the people of Mauville, the triathletes on Route 110 are early risers. As soon as I'm in sight of the cycling path's gatehouse, chatter and bike noise and the distant sounds of battling fill the scene. A group of swollen-calved trainers in spandex and helmets are circled up outside the teal building, chatting and sipping from water bottles and scanning their surroundings in a pointedly casual way.

Nuts to that. I tug the brim of my hat down over my eyes and veer sharply to the right, into the weeds of the lower path.

A few coastal plants are still blooming, but much of the brush is autumn dry. Wingull drift over the embankment to the sea beyond, dark shapes in the low morning fog. I find a sizeable enough area of clear space in the scrub and mark its edges with Repel. I rub a little scented lotion under my nose and pull on my gloves. Then I release all three members of my scrappy little team: Coba, the V4ST, and the Grimer.

My Roto-phone has informed me the Grimer is a female, with an estimated power level of 23. I've decided to call her Bluk.

I've raised a few poison-type Pokemon in my time: Garbodor, Vileplume, Weezings of both the Galar and Kanto varieties, and a handful of others. I briefly spent time with the Alolan variety of Grimer and Muk when I was over there, but the Kanto variety is not one I've ever gotten familiar with.

I learn two things very quickly.

One: the Kanto variety of Grimer is the worst-smelling poison type I've ever trained.

Two: Kanto Grimer are huggers.

I've hardly tossed her a berry and told her the nickname I've chosen before she's all over me. I stumble back to keep her from taking me out at the knees. Her gloopy face is adorable, but the smell is pure madness. The lotion does nothing.

"Hode on," I plead through my sleeve, eyes watering as I signal for her to stay back a pace. "Don'd dock be ober. Das a good--glaaaah!"

My ass hits the dust and I go sprawling back into the weeds. I try to crawl away but she is shockingly heavy and strong, and the odor is making me weak.

A sharp, alarming tone rings out, and I feel Bluk slump off of me. When I'm able to look up, I see that the V4ST has positioned itself over me with its beak pointed at Bluk, who has shrunk back into a faintly quivering puddle.

"Id's ogay," I choke out, scrambling to my feet. "Id's ogay. Stand dowd."

The V4ST draws back, grumbling in low metallic tones. Coba rushes up behind Bluk, hissing. She looks back and forth between the two with a whimpering gurgle.

I stagger over and pick Coba up under one arm. Once he's calmed down, I squat and approach Bluk again with an Oran berry in my hand.

"Sorry," I say. "Led's dry dis agaid."

One eye peers up at the V4ST, but she only hesitates for a second before moving forward to slurp up the berry, her mouth engulfing my left arm to the elbow. I shudder and look at the arm with concern, but nothing looks melted or gangrenous. The V4ST whirs disapprovingly and Coba growls.

"Be dice," I tell him. I hold out another berry, and this time I pet her on the head while she swallows it. She's happy to lean into my hand for a moment, but she quickly decides it's time for another hug.

"No," I say firmly, holding my hand out in front of her. "Stay. Stay."

Once she settles, I reward her. After a few repetitions she stops trying to tackle me, and I'm able to walk away a few paces to take some deep breaths and apply more lotion. It doesn't help much, and I tell myself I'm just going to have to acclimate until I can find a better solution.

In the meantime, it's time to move on to the main task.

I step back toward Bluk and crouch down, commanding her to stay once more. She burbles and quivers eagerly but obliges. I carefully hold Coba out. He gives an anxious squeal.

"It's ok, buddy," I say. "This is Bluk. We're going to be friends."

Not since my early twenties have I had this problem. When you're an experienced trainer with a lot powerful Pokemon, new recruits tend to understand that they need to behave. Introducing low-level Pokemon to one another is a lot harder. In the absence of a clear hierarchy, they naturally want to fight it out.

All things considered, I'm lucky. She might be smelly, but Bluk isn't mean. Coba is understandably nervous, but he's more inclined to retreat than attack, and the smell doesn't seem to bother him. If I can just convince Bluk to sit still for a minute without trying to grab him, it should be fine.

"Stay!" I say in a sharper tone as Coba dances back from her groping arms, but the possibility of play has excited her and she keeps advancing. He keeps out of her reach, snapping and hissing, but when she ignores my command for the third time the V4ST suddenly swoops in again, delivering what sounds like a harsh scolding in binary. Bluk shrinks back. With the V4ST's backup, I get her to keep her hands to herself long enough for Coba to approach on his own.

We let him circle her, wary and curious. When he starts nudging her with his head I take a few steps back, and before long the two of them begin game of tag in the brush.

The joy of watching Pokemon at play. I'm not prepared for how good it feels.

I glance up at the V4ST, tracking the antics with machine-precise movements of its head. "Thanks," I say. It makes a low whistling noise, but stays focused ahead.

An impulse comes over me, a likely bad idea that I can't resist. "Hey, I don't want to call you 'Hey You' or 'Porygon2.' Will you answer to 'Vast'?"

The V4ST whirls around so quickly I almost trip backwards. It makes a clipped alarm sound, but as I start to backpedal I realize it's looking past me. I whirl around and find myself staring into a gleaming pair of glasses.

"You've met my gaze!" the trainer bellows. "Prepare for battle!"

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

Slateport isn't far from Mauville, but the trip on Tyrantrum is going to be a hassle. Long ago some civic planners thought it would be an amazing idea to carve the inlet into a triathlete's paradise. Of course that's what Route 110 had looked like some ten years ago, but I'm not about to test the difference now. Connie is happy to be out of her quickball and doesn't give me any trouble when she climbs onto the litter, but I wonder how much her behavior is forced into compliance. She acted up while in front of Spiral and maybe that was because Pokémon actually like her. She was so unbelievably gentle with that shiny Trapinch, not at all like the determined monster I fought in Unova.

Flying over trainers battling out for dominance on Route 110, I'm not thinking about Team Aqua or modernization or the ever expanding reach of the League. I'm caught up in the problems Spiral faces. She said that her shiny Trapinch appeared in her garden, but that there wasn't any box system close to her. Her idea about Pokemon manifesting is absurd, but maybe it comes from a place of truth. There's some part of her that suspects the Pokemon came to her and maybe her response isn't a logical one, but it could be a spiritual one.

I've never asked her about her abilities as a psychic. She clearly doesn't have telekinesis, but maybe she has abilities connected to the Channelers and Hex Maniacs -- some ability to sense the spirit of Pokémon. Beyond that, I'm getting ideas on how to solve her Porygon problem and it isn't exactly legal. I wish I had my old contacts. I wish I hadn't spent the last five years isolating myself.

I enter "the port where people and Pokémon cross paths with nature." Slateport looks as busy as it ever has. Floating rotom-tech directs me to a landing pad on the top of a Pokecenter and I obey the ordinance. Whatever plans I have for disobedience, I'm not ready to go full criminal. Retrieving Connie, I get to work putting my flight litter away and stop.

The sunset is beautiful.

I realize with shame that I was lying to Spiral. I didn't guess that Pokemon existed outside known physical space, I calculated it. My self-destructing Metagross couldn't reform without some exterior force to will that mass back into existence, and while a Metagross could possess the telekinetic ability to reconstitute its mass, a Voltorb could not. Self-destruction is proof of a pokemon existing beyond the limitations of mass and I didn't even mention it. I was too ashamed of Dr. Tetsu's disappointment. I didn't want another beautiful woman to hate me.

My own selfish impulses are getting in the way of doing a net good. I need to swallow my damn pride and tell Spiral that I think I can help her, but there's no point of doing that when I don't have anything in my hand.

Another flier is coming down for a landing. With a knot in my gut, I turn towards the Tropius, but it isn't Spiral.

Shaking my head, I go down into the Pokecenter. There's a report on the television screen, something about time travel dumbed down for the general public. There's no topographical maps or formulas to follow, it's all the kind of talk that any grifter could come up with. I look around for a Poketech X connection port and find it out of service.

"Excuse me," I say to a Joy behind the counter. I can tell she's a clone by the sagging where her wrinkles should be. "I need to send a message to another region. Do you know where I can find a connection port?"

"I'm sorry, Hoenn is going to be discontinuing that technology as part of the shift to full IE support as the League integrates Paldea."

"What? How am I supposed to send a message?!"

"You could send continent to continent messages with ease if you had a Rotom-phone. They're safe, efficient-"

"Yeah, alright. Alright!" I snap. "I got the pitch."

Furious, I walk out into the busy streets. I shouldn't have snapped at the Joy, but I'm getting real sick of the direction the League is headed. It took me months to learn how to do all the dancing connected to Z-moves, and now they're banned.

It doesn't take long for me to find a Rotom-phone retailer, but I don't cross paths with any nature. Slateport has changed and so has the League. The retailer explains that all of my Poketech X contact info will be transferred, but that it doesn't support most of the features on my trusty Poketech X. I'll lose my outbreak sensor, my RNG tester, my notepad, and on and on, but at least I'll be connected to the League's new wireless IE network full of propaganda.

"Listen, can you just point me in the direction to a Poketech X port? I'd like to make a call to someone in Sinnoh."

They point to a cluttered corner of the store surrounded by signs for cheap upgrades to state-of-the-art Rotom-Phone Mark III. It takes me minutes to connect, but my signal goes through.

A fellow blonde trainer answers the trainer and he still looks like a total tool in his early twenties. "Hey, A****. It's been a long time. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, Barry. I'm fine. How's life as an Elite Four?"

"I wouldn't know. I've been running the Battle Tower circuit."

"Taking after you're dad, huh? Congrats. Listen, I'm calling about something specific. You got a moment?"

"Yeah, I'm between matches. We've had a lot of action here in Sinnoh lately. We've seen a lot of fairy trainers. It reminded me of when that Sylveon- Oh, jeez! Maybe I shouldn't have brought that up."

I'm gritting my teeth, but the audio connection is fuzzy anyway. "Don't worry about it, Barry. Do you know what happened to Team Galactic? Have you been keeping track of the remnants of their cell?"

"Huh? No one has asked about Team Galactic in a long time. I think Cynthia was keeping an eye on them."

I cringe all over again. "No, I don't want to bother the Champion."

"Oh, she's not the Champion anymore. She didn't even compete this year. I think she's been searching for Legendary Pokémon or something. You should call her. If anyone's gonna know anything about Team Galactic, it would be her."

"Okay. Thanks, Barry."

"Yeah, no problemo my friendo. I'm glad you're still training Pokémon. After your Garchomp was killed I thought you'd give up professional training for sure! What are you doing now?"

"Um, helping with a research project. I have given up on professional Pokémon battles."

"Oh. Um..."

"It's fine, Barry. I'll talk to you later." I disconnect and let out a long sigh.

Getting in touch with Cynthia is intimidating. What's worse is that I know she's not gonna be interested in helping me. The retailer wanders over to talk upgrades and I walk off. I'm gonna resist using a Rotom-phone for as long as I can.

I find a quiet place and I send Spiral a message: I'm trying to find this coordinator named Esther Flowne, do you know any coordinators in Slateport?

A response takes long than ten minutes and so I miss her call while I'm eating a bowl of curry. In my absence, she's given me the name and number to her friend, Rosette. She's a local, but not a coordinator herself. Point of fact, she's connected to organizing events for the Pokemon League. Time was, the sight of the League's logo filled me with confidence. I had a certain level of ownership over the League as one of its most important representatives in the region, now I'm kind of starting to hate them.

Rosette is busy but she can squeeze me in for breakfast tomorrow. I hope Spiral is gonna be there and I'm afraid about what that means.

@trainerspiral

[trainerspiral]

The thing I mostly feel when ASH tells me he forgives me is rage.

How dare he put that blame on me, just so he can take it away again. How dare he stir up all these feelings, not only about that terrible battle but about the loss of my own Pokemon. How dare he make me cry in public, an event I consider a form of torture.

How dare he forgive me, when I can't forgive myself.

And it's not helped by the fact that I know I'm being stupid; that what he said is perfectly mature and kind and reasonable, and that I'm only reacting with anger because I expected it from him and didn't get it. I remembered his sharp tongue and merciless, dissecting mind, and I wanted to use him as a vehicle for self-flagellation. Instead he gave me just enough honesty to make the barb of kindness stick.

I press a hand against my mouth and force my tears to be silent.

His shadow falls out of my field of vision. I hear the slow sound of his footsteps retreating, and with every step my head clears a little bit. And I remember that I was looking for him not just out of masochism, but because I thought he could help me figure out what was going on with Coba. Now all the obstacles to that goal have fallen away--he's right here, and he doesn't want to fight. And Koynlab, my chosen alternative, might not be a trustworthy source.

I scrub my eyes, take a deep breath, and call out to his retreating back. I have to try twice to make my voice carry, but when he hears me he turns.

I meet his eyes briefly, shake my head. "Would you...would you meet me at the cafe by the north elevators in an hour?"

........

A calming cry and shower later, I'm once again sitting at a Pokemon cafe explaining Coba to someone.

The second time around is very different, though. This Mauville cafe--Gulpin Coffee, it's called--is a little bigger but less quaint than the one I visited with Rosette. It's got a distinctly mallish vibe, with harsh lights, bright plastic chairs, and white photo-backdrop walls. The V4ST is hovering over my shoulder, which is how I learn it will let itself out whenever Coba is loose whether I release it or not--a required precautionary measure, no doubt. I'm drinking my second milk tea in two hours, which is insane, but the stress has driven me to abandon all aspirations toward reasonable sugar and caffeine intake.

And of course, I'm sitting across from ASH.

"Ok. So." He brings his palms together and looks up, taking a deep breath. "He has no data. He's obviously super fucking tame." He waves a hand in front of Coba's face for emphasis; no reaction but a startled tilt of his little head. "And this weird tech company just sent you an old-school glitch killer and told you win ten battles?"

"Correct."

"And you didn't look into them at all or find out what their deal was before you accepted this arrangement."

"I...they were working with the space center! I had no reason to think that--"

"I'm not judging," he says, holding up a hand in a whoa-there kinda way. "I'm just trying to understand."

I heave a big sigh and give Coba and the V4ST another cookie each. "No, you're right. I was being stupid."

"I didn't--hey!" ASH yelps as his Swanna, tired of watching other Pokemon eat in front of her, gives him a hard peck on the arm.

I snort in spite of myself, and he gives me a look as he fishes out a cookie and holds it up. "Drizzle," he says.

The Swanna ruffles her feathers and shakes her head like a model tossing her hair. A fine mist of glittering droplets swirls around her, evaporating neatly without soaking anything. "Good," he says, handing her the treat. "Here you go, grumpy bird."

I blink, nonplussed. "Are you a coordinator now or something?"

He snorts. "No, it's just a flourish. Something to make her look cooler when she wins a match." After a beat, he adds, "I don't believe in giving unearned rewards."

"Is that so," I say flatly, nudging Coba's begging head away from the cookie packet.

He sighs. "I'm pissing you off."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. Look, I don't mean to sound judgmental. I just don't--" He opens his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"You have a tone problem," I suggest.

"Yes." He really does look crestfallen. "I'm sorry."

"Well...it's not like I didn't know that," I sigh. "Look...this is tense for me. It's not easy to ask for your help."

"I know." He runs his hand roughly over his head, tousling his freshly-combed hair. "I'll try not to be an asshole."

"Fine. I'll try not to be so defensive." I pluck Coba away before he can knock my drink over and settle him into my arms.

"Anyway." He takes a sip of his unsweetened iced tea. "How have the battles been going?"

"Not great," I grumble. "I've only done four of them. He's passing so far, but his record is 1-3. His only win was against a Wurmple." I shake my head. "He's trying, but I get so upset every time he takes a hit, and I think it's throwing him off. And I'm not happy beating up wild Pokemon, either, and I think he senses that, too."

"What about trainer battles?"

I shake my head vigorously. "Too dangerous. If he is a glitch, he could hurt or kill the other Pokemon."

"He's not a glitch."

"How can you know that? What else explains this weirdness?"

"I don't know. Maybe the PC's system itself was having issues when you took him in. Maybe he's some weird new variant that doesn't have a Pokedex entry yet. Maybe he's from Ultra Space, or a digital copy of an existing Pokemon caused by data overflow." He spreads his arms in an emphatic shrug. "There's a million weird things that could have happened, but if somebody was making fakes this good, everybody would know."

"Yeah, well...that's what Nifti said, too," I mutter.

"Nifti?"

"My contact at Koynlab."

"Right. You know what that means?"

"What?"

"It means you should be worrying less about whether he's a fake, and more about what they think is really going on. Because companies like that don't help someone for free unless they think there's profit in it."

I stroke Coba's head, staring hard at the table as I process this. Then I slowly look up and meet his gaze. "Do you think...there's any possibility..." I swallow.

"What?" he asks in a gentler voice.

"That he could be a...an old box Pokemon?"

"By 'old box' Pokemon you mean the ones that you lost?" He contemplates it with more than a little skepticism. "Assuming you had a shiny Trapinch at one point in time, then maybe, but the question would be why here and why now and why only this Trapinch? It's a culmination of coincidences that requires magical thinking to justify. Unless there's a mass outbreak of Pokemon you trained that responds to their nickname, then I don't think that's a possibility. What makes you think that this Trapinch could be one of your lost Pokemon?"

"Because of all that stuff about Pokemon attracting atoms instead of being made of them?"

"Look, Spiral..." He gives a heavy, painful sigh. "I'm not a scientist, okay? I'm just some nobody who got lucky with one crazy idea a long time ago. I'm deeply sorry if I gave you false hope, but if I'm being honest, you shouldn't listen to anything I have to say."

"Wh--no! Bullshit!" I sputter. "If you don't want to help me that's fine, but don't pretend like you don't know what you--"

"I don't!" People at nearby tables turn to stare as his voice takes on a touch of its old power. Coba shrinks back in my arms a bit. ASH stares at me, fists clenched on the table, his face knotted and flushed. "Do you really think I'd lie just to get out of helping you? I would love to have all the answers, but the fact is that I don't know anything, and I never did, and the fact that people thought I did has caused nothing but bad things to happen!"

I almost get up from the table, frightened by this outburst, but he draws a deep breath and relaxes himself. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I really do want to help. Look...maybe when I finish my business in Slateport, I can look into this disaster with the boxes."

"Slateport?" My heart stutters.

He gives me an odd look. "Yeah. I'm...helping with a research project. I'm looking for a coordinator there."

"I'm also going to Slateport," I say. "That's where I'm supposed to meet my contact from Koynlab."

"Really." He looks down for a long moment, a look of intense thought on his face. "Okay," he says finally. "We go to Slateport. You meet up with your contact and see what they have to say about your shiny Trapinch. If they don't have an answer, call me and we'll talk again. I don't know if I can help, but I'll do my best."

I nod. "Okay," whisper, my throat tight.

We exchange phone numbers. "Now all I have to do is get the rest of that battle data," I sigh.

"Maybe you can have him battle that thing." ASH points at the V4ST.

"It's meant to destroy him," I say.

"It'll happen anyway if he fails, right?"

I rub my eyes, upset by the morbid sense that makes. "It doesn't take orders from me, anyway," I say. The V4ST makes a murmuring noise.

"Too bad," he says. "Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"ASH," I say seriously as he withdraws his Swanna and stands to go. "Thank you."

He grimaces. "Thank me when I've actually helped you."

With a lopsided smile, he turns and walks out of the cafe. I sink back in the booth, drained but oddly relieved. Hard as this has been, I feel like I've been thrown an unexpected lifeline.

And ASH has given me one idea of how to get the battle data I need without risking another trainer's Pokemon or beating up wild ones. I can't draft the V4ST to be Coba's sparring partner, but I have one more occupied Pokeball in my pocket now, thanks to the Berry Master.

I head back to my hotel to rest, and try not to think about the steady current of events that seems to be dragging me back into the world of Pokemon training.

@novelistash

[trainerspiral]

It's a long flight to Mauville City and my shoulders need a break. Strangely enough my legs are killing me. Even though I used to fly everywhere in a litter, it still makes me reflexively hunch to be on a space so small. I should've upgraded, but travel was such a non-issue in Alola and now I'm paying for it.

I spot the elaborate fort of lights from a distance. Mauville boasts that it's the "bright and shiny city of fun," but I'm in no mood to spend my pen or even to get drunk. A Jenny Clone directs me to a nearby hotel and I'm quoted rates for a week. The rich kid tries to upsell me to three days and I slam a hand on the counter.

"I need a room for the night. Think you can handle that or are you gonna have to wake Daddy?"

They're grumpy when they give me the key, but I'm too tired and sore to be personable. Someone should've taught this kid that stubborn doesn't work when you're renting out rooms to travelers.

The bed is too nice, the sheets starched and soft. I turn on the television set to try and engage with the world outside my misery and pass out.

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Loud speakers wake me. It's already lunch time, but room service hasn't pushed me out. Maybe I went too hard on the kid. Thinking back, they probably weren't even a kid at all, but someone closer to 18 or 20. I've officially aged into my grumpy old man form and it's sapping me of empathy. I get my stuff together and hope to apologize to the kid I saw before. It's a different person, a looker with a warm toned tan. She's all smiles as I hand off the key cards.

On the way out I check my account balance and can't make sense of it over the blaring speakers. This time I hear what's going on, a gym battle. Some tryhard must be making their rounds. Stretching, I walk on out to the balcony of the third floor and see a Pokémon arena in the center of the city. It's still Wattson running the show. He's gotta be in his seventies now but he's having the time of his life. His Voltorb is rolling around to give this youngster trouble.

I spot a body nearby, well, not exactly nearby but around a pillar from me. They have a better view of the youngster trying for a badge and our eyes meet like trainers on the open road.

Spiral. She's here killing time with a fancy plastic drink in her hands. Last time I saw her, she had her hair dyed like seaweed. Now it's a purplish color and her attire looks utilitarian. Things have been complicated. She doesn't look like the proud champion looking down on a display of incompetence, but a mournful soul contemplating life.

I take a step forward and she gauges the escape routes.

"I'm not here to fight," I say nice and loud. Some locals glance in our direction, but I keep my eyes on the former champion. She's stationary, letting me get close. "It's been a long time, Spiral. I haven't seen you since we ran into each other in Alola."

Her distant eyes look to her Poketech X and the nearby café. "If you've come for revenge save it. I don't have my team anymore."

I put together that means that she has some Pokémon on her, but why wouldn't she? Few people walk around without any. I get closer still, but she takes a step back, taking a trainer's stance out of old instinct. "Like I said, I'm not here to fight."

"Then why are you in Hoenn?"

I chuckle and scratch the back of my head. "Math. Nerd stuff like that. Listen, why don't we go outside? This gym battle makes it hard to hear."

The announcer telegraphs the youngster's stall tactic in agonizing detail. From the sound of things, Wattson might actually win this.

Spiral isn't happy to see me, but maybe the years have given us enough distance to put our rivalry back into perspective. We were good, we were both really strong trainers but she ended up stronger and I gave up.

"Outside," she decides. "I can't stay all this artificial light."

"What? You don't wanna spend all that champion pen?"

She doesn't laugh. She doesn't even smile. All her thoughts are elsewhere, looking back at ghosts in her mind. "Ten minutes." Spiral walks off and I'm left contemplating how the years have changed her.

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Mauville City is set up like a big shiny fort. The cardinal directions have entrances on the inside and the roof is covered with grass and trees to offset the generators, fans, and broadcast towers. The fifth floor is a nice place to walk, but I can't appreciate the view.

I didn't have time to change and I would've had to buy something to look presentable in front of the former champion. I'm in trainer garb, carpenter pants, windbreaker, and a tangle of flaxen hair that is trying to mimic the clouds. This was not how I wanted to see Spiral after our time apart. I wanted to look like a winner. I wanted to be a champion of a different region, to bring fear back into her eyes so that she would apologize for killing four Pokémon in one fight. The fear is already there, along with the regret. Spiral's ditched her drink and is looking off to the ocean.

"What happened?" I ask hoping that I don't have to clarify.

She responds defensive, but her tone is more bitter than spiteful. "I'm sure you already know."

"I gave up on being a champion in Galar. I gave up on being the best, on owning enough Pokémon to collect breeder fees, and on revenge. I haven't been keeping up with you because I've gone into isolation. Everything is different now. I wanna put all of that behind us."

"I can't."

"Hey, you're the one that killed my Pokémon," I snap.

"You think I don't know that?!" she snarls at me. "I was so mad at you for pushing that fight. It was your fault Pokémon died. It didn't have to be that way! It didn't..." She looks away. "It doesn't matter now."

"What do you mean?" I walk over to enter her line of sight. She's maybe a head shorter than me but I don't feel intimidating. If anything I wanna crouch down to make her look me in the eyes. "You want me to apologize to my Pokémon, I did. Whatever's left of their spirits haven't come back to haunt me and they don't show up at graveyards. They died fighting. How can you say that doesn't matter when it's clearly something that still bothers you."

"My Pokémon are gone."

"What like you sold them?"

"They glitched. All of them! Everything but the six Pokémon I had in my balls were destroyed; corrupted by some Missingn0."

"What?" I step forward and try to clear my head. My analytical mind is processing, offering possible explanations for a situation that goes against my understanding of Pokémon, but there's something more important for me to consider.

Spiral is hurting. She's been hurt for a long time and for some reason, a woman as popular as her hasn't gotten all of this off her chest by now. She's been through a lot of pain because her Pokémon were in a box.

"Spiral, it's not your fault they're gone."

"That's easy for you to say," she snaps.

"No, it isn't." I take a step forward and this time she meets my eyes. What's happened to my Pokémon was my fault, but we were both partially responsible. "My Pokémon died fighting because it's what they wanted to do. They chose that life, just like we chose to be trainers."

"Well, mine didn't choose to be erased in someone's PC!"

"No, but you didn't choose that either. Whatever happened, whatever the reason, it wasn't anything that you could predict. You can't blame yourself for something you didn't have any control over."

She bares her teeth at me, but I can see the tears welling up in her eyes. "They trusted me, don't you get that? They trusted me to take care of them and I put them in a box while I ran off to play youngster in Galar. I don't care if I couldn't have known, it's still my fault."

"It isn't." I ignore her swear and press on, moving in to put a hand on her shoulder. The gesture startles her out of her rage, letting nothing but her sorrow remain on the surface. "You were a good trainer and a great battler. You raised them well."

"I..." she looks at my hand and steps back to get me to stop touching her. Completely somber, she studied the grass. "All my fighting did nothing but kill Pokémon."

"It also made them happy and it made you a better person. Do you remember when we were in Unova together and Team Plasma was spreading all of that anti-fighting rhetoric?"

She nods.

"Why did you keep fighting?"

"Because Team Plasma were a bunch of hypocrites following a cult leader."

I laugh. "Yeah, but there had to be a reason beyond that."

"I liked it. I liked spending time with my Pokémon." She's tearing up again, probably remembering that Eelektross that trounced me.

"I'm sure they liked spending time with you. I'm not much of a psychic, but I picked up enough to learn empathy. When my Pokémon were dying they were at peace. They felt proud to serve me with their last breath. There was something else inside, something I felt when Fission passed away. I think he wanted me to let go of my hate and I think I finally can."

"What?" She raises her head so fast tears flow down her cheeks. She knows what I'm gonna say and it's creasing her forhead.

"I forgive you, Spiral. It wasn't your fault that they died."

She scowls at me, walks up and pushes me. "I know that! I already told you it was your fault!"

"It wasn't my fault either. Sometimes Pokemon die and there's nothing anyone can do to stop that. I'm sorry you lost your Pokemon to a glitch, but that wasn't your fault either."

She turns her back to me and slowly her shoulders begin to shake. I reach out a hand to comfort her and then think better of it. She already showed me that she didn't want my comfort. All I can do is walk away and give her space to grieve.

@trainerspiral