Chapter 4: Black and Blue
Between dumpsters. Over a fallen weezing. Ahead, strangers in red led the way down the alley. One of them turned back and caught sight of Natalie—probably Mark, but she couldn't quite tell.
Whichever way they go, Natalie decided,
I'll turn the other way.
Still, she pushed on, driven by the continued sounds of sirens and pokemon somewhere behind her.
At the far end of the alley, a camerupt plowed down a metal police barricade. Natalie was the last to step over the twisted metal remains, back into open space. The red bloc continued down the street to the right, through a construction zone. Not that way, then.
With one hand pressed to the stitch in her side, she slowed to a near halt, struggling to find her bearings. This street was unfamiliar. She felt drowsy, even as some distant part of her recognized with alarm the effects of sleep powder. And she couldn't decide where to go.
Amelia landed on Natalie's shoulder, wings sagging. Then she squawked in alarm as a large shadow passed overhead.
Natalie jerked her head up.
"This is a bad place to stop." Mark. Breathing hard but not as winded as she was. The source of the shadow was his golbat, who flapped and chittered on the other side of her, at the mouth of the alley.
Outraged confusion swept through Natalie in a hot wave head to toe. "What do you
want from me?"
"You can't stay here." He nearly had to shout to be heard over the sirens.
"I'm not going with them," she panted.
"I know." He shook his head. Strain seeped into his voice. "You're right—you can't. We'll go somewhere else and talk, just you and me. Alright?"
His golbat shrieked, and Mark and Natalie turned their heads in time to watch it fall to the ground, a thin stream of smoke rising off its body.
A moment later, a pair of manectric slunk out of the alleyway. One lunged—only to be shunted aside by the solrock that careened out from behind Mark. The other manectric skirted around and sped for Mark and Natalie.
"Luna!" As Natalie sent out her mightyena, she saw Mark release another of his pokemon—little more than a streak of shadow in the corner of her eye.
Still materializing from red light, Luna shoulder-checked the manectric. And that other streak of shadow was right there under the feet of the police pokemon to trip it. Not until the manectric was down and Mark's pokemon finally stood still was Natalie able to identify it: his liepard. Gibs, she remembered.
The first manectric knocked into the solrock and sent it spinning. Natalie didn't notice the shield of purple light twinkling around them until it suddenly wasn't there anymore.
"Gibs—on your left."
"Hit it, Luna!"
Both Gibs and Luna jumped to intercept it. They seemed to know instinctively how to move together. Luna, all muscle and snarls, threw her weight into the manectric. The liepard, just slightly faster and silent as death, struck a blow from the other side as the manectric reeled. Two quick hits from either side, and then that manectric too lay stunned.
Natalie had never battled tag team with someone like that before. Despite everything else, she turned to flash a smile at Mark—
But he was already recalling his golbat and drawing Natalie forward, across the street. "Come
on."
Through the tree-lined median. Across an outdoor seating area. Down another alley.
Her legs were heavy and clumsy, and his stride was much longer than hers. If not for Mark pulling her along, Natalie might not have been able to make herself keep running. Luna and Gibs flanked them on either side, Amelia flew jerkily overhead, and Orwell brought up the rear. Natalie wanted to stop—she thought her lungs would burst—but Mark wouldn't let up until finally they came to an empty parking lot and could no longer hear the police sirens behind them.
Natalie slid down the wall and dropped to the asphalt. With each throb of pain across her ribs she wondered if she was going to throw up. She was used to walking with a full backpack, but she wasn't used to so much running. Amelia perched with the flat of her beak pressed against Natalie's neck, and her breathing was labored too. All the smog. Natalie petted her between the wings with shaking hands and whispered a thank you before recalling her.
Luna sat between her and Mark, watching him.
"Ore—kill the cameras."
While Mark watched his solrock sweep around the lot, his liepard stood at the ready. Tail twitching, it flicked its golden eyes back and forth between the street and Luna.
The solrock circled back to its trainer's side and hummed a series of dissonant notes.
At that, Mark let out a breath. "Good job. Thanks."
Mark began to check his solrock over with what looked like a miniature blacklight. "You holding up okay? Long day for you." One of its fins was still missing a piece from Natalie's battle with him the day before. But the solrock responded with more humming. Mark patted it on the back. "I'm fine. Relax. You did good."
He stopped what he was doing when his radio crackled, but Natalie couldn't hear what was said.
"Sorry, Cora," Mark answered. "Had to take care of something real quick. Can you manage—? Yes, great. Do that. I'll catch up with you guys soon."
Mark sighed and let his shoulders slump. Setting down his messenger bag, he rolled his shoulders one way then the other. Then he dropped to a crouch in front of Natalie, who jumped and reflexively laid a hand on Luna.
The mightyena growled.
His liepard responded with a hiss. Natalie blinked, and the next instant Gibs was at Mark's heels, claws out and shimmering darkly.
"Get back, Gibs." Mark rolled his eyes, still the only part of his face she could see. "Natalie, I'm not gonna fucking hurt you."
"Great," she huffed, still out of breath. "Love that tone."
"I looked out for you, didn't I?" He raised an eyebrow. "Alright, look. Thanks, Gibs. Take it easy," he said, and he recalled the liepard. "Orwell's keeping an eye out—for both of us. You can let your pokemon rest." He dug a water bottle out of his bag and held it out for her.
Natalie hesitated a moment. Then, because she did want to hear what he had to say, she recalled Luna and accepted the water bottle.
While she drank, Mark took off his hoodie and stuffed it into his bag. When he untied the red bandanna, he was smiling. He shook his head. "You jumped right into it back there. Didn't expect that. I can't tell if you're brave or stupid."
"Both." She didn't smile.
But Mark grinned. Then his eyes traveled up the wall behind her, and his expression soured. "Huh. Someone's been busy."
Natalie followed his gaze and saw the blue skull and crossbones spray painted above her head. She jolted, though she was well used to seeing the symbol of the ORCA, the so-called Ocean Rescue and Climate Avengers, on walls around her hometown. She didn't know they were active this far west.
"I'm so sick of their shit," said Mark. The cut above his eye had reopened, and a line of blood ran down his temple. "No rest for the wicked, I guess." He flashed a dangerous smile.
"You're bleeding."
Mark touched his face and made an exasperated noise when his fingers came away red. He dabbed at the cut with his Magma bandana, staining the fabric a darker red. It was already blotted with similar dark stains, she noticed.
Natalie's stomach swooped, and she looked away.
"Well," he said, tucking the bandanna into his shirt pocket, "I guess I should explain a few things. I didn't plan for it to go down like this, but here we are."
Natalie took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the wall. It was only now starting to sink in. She had fought police pokemon—more than one. That was a felony. Or maybe only a misdemeanor. She'd never had a reason before to know that kind of thing.
But even as that thought simmered in her gut, another rose up:
I had to. They were sending pokemon against people who had none of their own, some of them younger than Natalie by her estimate. That girl with the knee brace … she couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds, if that.
"I didn't think you were …." She trailed off, unable to think of a safe way to end that sentence.
Mark raised an eyebrow and waited. With his face showing, in normal clothes, he looked like any other trainer again. But now she knew.
Natalie swallowed. Not for the first time she wondered,
What the hell am I doing here?
She said, "Why were you helping them?"
"Which
them?" he replied coolly.
Natalie opened her mouth but then stopped. Neither made sense to her, not a gym trainer helping Magma and not Magma helping protesters. "Either," she said. "Both."
"I'm a helpful guy." His smile faded when she didn't reciprocate it. "Look, cops don't fight fair. You saw what it was like back there—those people would've been crushed without our help."
Our help meant Magma … and her. She wasn't sure she wanted to be included on the same side as them.
Natalie spoke without thinking. "But you guys threw that rock. What kind of help is that?" Immediately, she regretted it. She didn't know what he was capable of anymore.
Mark looked hurt, almost, or maybe only disgusted. Then he recovered. "That wasn't us. It was a cop in plainclothes. Do you know what an agent provocateur is?"
That's convenient. She thought better of it and pushed it down. Instead she insisted, "But you knew it was going to be like that."
He shrugged, but his expression had taken on a hard edge. "It usually is."
"Then why get involved?" Natalie spluttered.
"Because no one else is going to step up! How many other trainers did you see out there? How many did you see standing around watching?"
Mark took a moment to collect himself and started again, quieter. "It's bigger than Meteor Falls. This is happening everywhere—look at the Cerulean Power Plant disaster, the Sinnoh mines, fucking Virbank. It's killing us and nobody fucking cares. Not the government. Those cops don't protect you or me or any of the regular people living their lives—their job is to protect corporate interests. They aren't good people, Natalie."
She shook her head.
"I saw you out there. You can't tell me you don't know all of this is wrong."
Natalie wanted to take a walk, get her head right. She wanted to crawl back into bed. She wanted to get out of Rustboro.
"I don't know …."
"Yes, you do." He waited a beat. "You said you were trying to find your purpose, right? Well, here it is."
Mark locked eyes with her, but she broke away from his gaze and dropped her head into her hands. He breathed out a long sigh. "Fuck."
Neither of them spoke for several moments.
Finally Mark said, "Let's just … start this conversation over. Okay?"
There was a despairing earnestness in his face that hadn't been there before.
He really cares about this, she realized. And he
had looked out for her.
Natalie sighed. "What are you asking me to do, exactly? Fight cops?"
"It's not about the cops." He leaned closer, the beginnings of a smile pulling at his lips. "It's about standing up for—"
But then Orwell the solrock made a noise, not a hum but a trill of alarm.
Mark went very still and very quiet. He stood and turned.
An instant later, a man and a woman rounded the corner alongside a starmie and a massive, barnacle-crusted crawdaunt. Each of their faces was partially hidden by a blue bandanna with a white skull and crossbones.
ORCA.
"Well, look who it is," said the woman. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail shot through with braids. She was slight yet predatory. Laying a hand on the starmie she said, "Good job, Vega. You were right."
The man said, "Hey, asshole." One eye was swollen, mottled purple and sickly yellow. "Long time no see."
The crawdaunt clacked its pinchers.
Mark grinned savagely. "Back for more? Need me to make those eyes match?"
Natalie counted the pokeballs on their belts. If Mark really thought he could handle them both, he was either a better trainer than she'd realized or was expecting her help. Or he was bluffing very well.
Orwell buzzed, and Natalie watched the now-familiar light shield flicker around them.
She wanted Luna and Samson—badly—but was afraid releasing them would instantly kick off a fight she wasn't prepared for. Scanning for an exit, she climbed to her feet.
The ORCA woman turned her head and registered Natalie for the first time. She didn't speak loudly, but her words still rang out clear and unmistakable: "Natalie? What are you doing here?"
It hit her like a punch. She was absolutely certain she had never seen the woman before.
Mark swiveled to look at her. For a split second, his shocked expression mirrored her own.
The woman stepped forward. "Get away from her, right now."
With the finality of a door slamming, a cold look settled onto Mark's face. He flicked out a pokeball.
Immediately, commands and pokemon cries echoed off the walls. Lights burst.
And then Mark closed the distance between himself and Natalie. She saw the intent in his eyes and reached for Samson's pokeball, but not quickly enough—she wasn't ready for the way he grabbed her wrist just so and twisted. She cried out, mostly in surprise, as he locked her arm behind her back. The pokeball slipped from her fingers without releasing. Before she could even think to grab another with her free hand, she was back on the ground with her cheek to the pavement, one arm behind her and the other pinned under her own weight.
She couldn't make a sound—he'd driven the breath out of her. With mounting panic, she strained for air, for escape, but there was only Mark's knee digging into her back and his weight pressing her down.
Above her, Mark's solrock bobbed and weaved to avoid an oncoming blast of water, then fired green beams from its eyes. She couldn't see the other pokemon, but she heard a crash, a sound like a light bulb popping, a roar.
Mark shouted above the noise, "Back off or I'll break her arm!"
He wasn't lying—she felt the unsettling pressure against the bone. She pulled against his grip, and he leaned harder. She gasped and held still.
"I said get back!"
What had she expected? He'd shown her exactly what he was—a criminal—and she'd recalled Luna anyway. She should've stayed away from him. She should've run. She should've listened when he told her to stay away.
Finally, she heard, "That's enough, Vega."
"Bossier, pull back."
The scuffling continued for a moment and then fell quiet, and the dust began to settle. The crawdaunt click-clacked to a distance. Orwell made a low whirring sound almost like a moan. Somewhere out of sight, something large snorted. And she could hear Mark breathing.
He said, "Okay. Here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna recall those pokemon, drop your belts, and back away. Then I'll let her go, and I'll go about my business. No one goes to the hospital. Easy."
Natalie was powerless to do anything but close her eyes, pray, and try to breathe.
To her surprise, she heard the distinctive whoosh of pokemon being recalled. She opened her eyes again, but all she could see was asphalt and, in the corner of her eye, the woman's boots. Who the hell were these people?
Mark spoke in a low voice, close to her ear. "You got me. I was stupid. But you were stupid to get caught."
Then, more loudly, he said, "Alright, belts." He waited a beat. "Let's go. Belts."
The air temperature dropped. Mark's grip loosened, and she felt him turn to look behind them. And then the surrounding shadows coalesced into something with weight and teeth, and it tore through the light shield to slam into Mark sidelong.
Several things happened at once.
Red lights flashed all around as pokemon burst forth.
Natalie rolled to her hands and knees, tried to suck in a good breath. To her right, a mightyena had Mark pinned to the ground. For an instant she thought it was somehow Luna, but she turned and saw
her mightyena's pokeball rolling away from her, knocked off her belt in the struggle.
A darmanitan leapt into view, swung, and sent the mightyena tumbling. Then the darmanitan lifted Mark by the shirt collar back onto his feet.
To her left, a huge, skittering shape passed close enough to touch. Natalie tucked her head, but the pokemon ignored her and kept going. The darmanitan bellowed and charged the skittering pokemon—a grapploct—who rose up and flung open its suckered tentacles to envelop its opponent.
Something grabbed Natalie by the hair. She tried to twist free, and it growled. The mightyena. It began to drag her, forcing her to crawl along or road-burn her palms and knees. And then it turned her loose again.
Natalie sat up and found herself facing the graying muzzle of a mightyena missing the top of its right ear. She choked. "Justice?"
His tail thumped—only once, but still. This was her brother's mightyena, and he remembered her, too.
"What are you doing here?" She dug her fingers into the fur on either side of his face. "Where's Bubba?"
Justice had pulled her to the edge of the lot, and from here the scene was spread before her. Mark stood in the center of the fray, his solrock in tight orbit. Red smeared down one arm—maybe his blood, maybe blood from something else. And he was surrounded.
The man and the woman stood blocking the way out to the street but kept their distance. Beside them, the starmie hovered and lanced out with water if any of Mark's pokemon came too close. On the other side of the lot, in front of the other exit, another figure wearing the ORCA's blue bandanna watched from behind the cover of a heavily plated armaldo.
To one side of him, Mark's darmanitan thrashed in the grapploct's embrace. Behind him, his gigalith launched hunks of rock and asphalt at a pelipper. And on the other side, his bastiodon hunkered down under alternating hits from a machoke and the crawdaunt.
The odds weren't in his favor. Natalie felt no pity for him but couldn't quite bring herself to cheer for ORCA either. All she wanted was to get away. Would she have to fight her way out?
Several yards away, she spotted Luna's pokeball. She didn't know where Samson's was. The only pokemon she had left on her belt were Amelia, exhausted and unfit to fight, and Gus the whismur, who she was still training to respond to his name. She had to get to Luna.
Mark shouted, "Ore, grab the machoke!"
The machoke suddenly lit up purple and spun to wallop its teammate the crawdaunt, looking surprised that it had. At that moment, the bastiodon cut its head to one side and swept the two attackers away like bowling pins. As the machoke started to stand, light shimmered around it, and it jerked through the air as if on a string. It landed with a smack, pavement cracking at the impact, and it didn't get back up. The crawdaunt hissed and rushed at the bastiodon.
As Natalie started to stand back up, Justice growled again. She ignored him and moved for Luna's pokeball, but then he tackled her, paws slamming her shoulders. "Get off!" Natalie shoved against his chest, but Justice wouldn't budge, only growling louder.
Then the grapploct crashed into the wall only a few feet away from them, wreathed in purple light. It peeled off and hit the ground with a wet slap and a shower of crumbling concrete, and then it fell still.
A chunk of concrete fell towards Natalie. Justice barked, and the shadows under the two of them leapt up like living things and swallowed the rock before it could hit them.
Mark was already shouting new orders. "Rand—the crawdaunt."
With a howl, his darmanitan loped to meet the crawdaunt. It swung a glowing fist once, twice, and the crawdaunt parried with the flat of its claws. The third punch caught the crawdaunt between the eyes and sent it sliding across the parking lot.
The man and the woman dove out of the way. When it slid to the stop, the woman darted to the crawdaunt's side and placed her hands on its knobbly shell. The crawdaunt opened its eyes with a groan.
In the distance, police sirens sounded again. Part of Natalie want them to come, hurry, and break up the fight. Another part wondered if the cops might make things worse. She tried again for Luna's ball, but there was no getting past Justice.
"Enough's enough," said the woman. "Come on, Vega. With me." As the crawdaunt rose, creaking and grumbling, the woman caught hold of a barnacle cluster, swung her leg up to kneel on one of the massive hammer claws, and let it lift her up with it.
"Scar, are you sure that's—"
But the crawdaunt was already lumbering back into the fight, and the woman was along for the ride. The starmie hovered alongside them.
Mark had turned away to deal with the armaldo now bearing down on his darmantian. He didn't see the crawdaunt until his solrock trilled, and then it was almost upon him. "Huxley!" he called, and the bastiodon swung its head to charge the crawdaunt. But the starmie cut in between and drove the bastiodon back with a torrent of water.
"Shadow claw!" cried the woman.
The crawdaunt's claws flashed with black fire. It jabbed, and the purple light shield surrounding Mark ripped like tissue—
The solrock thrust itself between Mark and the crawdaunt's claw—
The woman leapt down—
As the crawdaunt smashed a claw into the solrock, slamming it to the ground, Mark staggered and ducked his head. And the woman stepped into him with a flash of silver in her hand, pulling him to her by the front of his shirt.
Natalie winced.
But Mark barred the woman's arm, and the knife clattered to their feet. In one motion, he kicked the knife out of reach and elbowed her in the face. Red bloomed across her blue bandana, and she stumbled back.
The starmie made an eerie, warped sound and floated to the woman's side, pulsating a purple glow. The light surrounded her as she dropped to one knee, and the starmie moved to block her body with its own.
Behind them, the darmanitan dropped at the armaldo's feet and turned to stone. The armaldo bulldozed it out of the way, sending it rolling, and scuttled forward.
The bastiodon took the opportunity to ram the crawdaunt. It didn't knock it down, but it knocked it back. For a moment, a path to the street lay open, and Mark took it.
He ran and hoisted himself onto the bastiodon's back, sheltered behind its wide mantle. Then Mark turned to recall his two fallen pokemon and his still-swinging gigalith. The bastiodon wheeled towards the street.
The armaldo managed one last swipe at them. The blow jarred the bastiodon—Mark slid but caught himself with a handhold on the bastiodon's horns. And then they were a wrecking ball of momentum and mass tearing across the lot.
The ORCA man with the bruised face scrambled to release another pokemon, but he wasn't quick enough. He jumped to avoid the bastiodon's tail.
As the bastiodon thundered past, Mark turned and caught Natalie's gaze. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but the fury in his eyes froze her blood.
The bastiodon made a wide turn and barreled onto the street. Then they were gone.
Only then did Justice step back from Natalie. He trotted to the fallen grapploct's side and nosed it. Finally the grapploct began to twitch its tentacles and shake itself off, and Justice turned away to investigate the other pokemon.
One of the men in blue knelt beside the woman, under the starmie's wary supervision. "Tip your head back. Goddamn, Scarlet. Why the hell did you do that?"
She laughed thickly and held up a pokeball spattered with her own blood. Muffled by the blue bandanna pressed against her nose, she said, "One of his."
All around, fainted pokemon began to stir. The crawdaunt rocked from side to side, snapping its claws.
The sirens grew louder.
"You okay?" The other man, the one with the black eye, bent to offer Natalie a hand up.
She ignored his hand and stood on her own, her body protesting at every movement. She was bleeding at the torn knee of her leggings and from her cheek. Bruised, too, in several places. She could hardly hear herself think over the rushing of blood in her ears. She felt like she'd been shaken upside-down until everything fell out of her.
"Don't touch me." She spoke with one hand on a pokeball, as if she weren't utterly outmatched and outnumbered, but the trembling of her voice betrayed her. "Where did you get my brother's pokemon?"
The man who crouched with the bleeding woman sighed and stood. He wasn't tall but he was stocky, and he moved like someone who knew his own power. The edges of a dark beard showed under his blue and white bandanna, and above it his eyes were green. Like Natalie's. The beard was new, but still she recognized him the instant before he spoke.
"It's me, Small Fry," said Archie.