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Summary:
“You could make a difference if you really wanted to.”
Natalie and Mark quickly find themselves on opposite sides of a deadly turf war, and more than their own lives are at stake.
Rating: T+
language, alcohol & tobacco, implied (off-screen) sex, and violence. It’s also very much a story about politics and civil unrest. And felonies.
Chapter by chapter:
Chapter 1: Someone pricks their finger
Chapter 3: Someone is bleeding (mentioned in passing, injury happens out of sight)
Chapter 4: Blood on someone's arm (the injury happens out of sight) + a bloody nose
Chapter 7: There's a moment that might qualify as occult--message me if that's a trigger for you and you want more detail.
Chapter 8: Someone is misgendered.
Chapter 9: Another bloody nose
Chapter 10: Blood drips in one sentence. Also there's a moment that might qualify as occult--message me if that's a trigger for you and you want more detail.
Chapter 12: There's a cut on someone's cheek and a reference to someone bleeding on the ground, but no other detail.
Chapter 13: Two quick, undetailed mentions of blood.
Chapter 14: Several characters misuse alcohol.
Chapter 16: Small amounts of blood.
Genres:
Crime, political intrigue, adventure, romance
Notes on setting:
Like my other stories, this one is set in a more realistic version of the pokemon world. Trainers start at age eighteen instead of ten—pokemon can be dangerous, and so can the wilderness itself.
This is a fix-it that tries to imagine a version of Aqua and Magma that are semi-reasonable and could be taken seriously. I’ve renamed some people and other stuff to match the more realistic world I’m spinning: less J-pop, more Earth Liberation Front.
Feedback: The April Fool's chapter ("Chapter Forteen: Stone Sober") is by definition not a real chapter, so I don't really want reviews on it. I'd much rather talk about the chapters I actually put effort into. Aside from that, I'm open to any and all constructive criticism. I don't always make changes based on reader feedback, but I often do.
On AO3 | On FFN Crossposted reviews appreciated but not at all required!
You can also find more about Divides on Tumblr:
explanations of the actual climate science I'm using for inspiration, behind-the-scenes stuff, art, memes, etc.
The street behind Natalie remained empty no matter how many times she looked over her shoulder, but the hairs on the back of her neck prickled all the same. Still there. Somewhere.
She had first noticed the skinny, androgynous figure among the crowd in the park, dressed all in black with their hood pulled up. If they had worn a knowing smile and followed Natalie with their eyes … well, it was a park battle. Spectators came to study the competition. The opposing sandslash had given Natalie plenty else to think about. After, the stranger in black had dispersed along with the crowd, and Natalie had forgotten them as she stepped forward to collect her winnings.
Later, leaving the bodega with supplies for a quick meal, she'd thought she'd spotted them again under a bus awning across the street. But it could've easily been some other stranger in a hoodie, so when a bus cut them off from view, Natalie shrugged it off. She started back for the hostel, planning her dinner and also, of course, thinking about her brother—until she caught sight of the reflection sliding across the display window to her left. That hooded face hung behind her, a smoky blur hovering at their shoulder. When she turned, the figure had already vanished, even though there was nowhere for them to vanish to.
If someone was following her, Natalie knew better than to lead them back to her hostel. The trainer's ed "city safety" modules had suggested going to the police or alerting someone on the street of the situation, but there wasn't a soul in sight and her Gear watch felt like an unsafe distraction. Maybe it would have been smarter to have holed up in a cafe somewhere and waited them out, but it was too late for that now. The souvenir shops and food stalls of the tourist strip had given way to looming apartment buildings converted from the shells of warehouses and factories. Long twilight shadows were creeping in, but Natalie kept her head high and kept walking.
I've got my pokemon with me.
She'd said that to Dad the last time they talked on the phone. It was meant as a reassurance but, as always, she couldn't hide the exasperation from her voice.
Dad had gotten more paranoid than ever about "the urban crimewave" as Natalie approached journeying age. He'd fought her leaving until Mom came down on her side, and even after five months on the road Natalie still woke up most mornings to find a new article about violent crime in her inbox. This morning it had been something about MGMA—Magma, the Masked Group for Mass Action—along with his usual terse reminder to be careful.
Natalie touched the pokeballs at her belt—three plus a newly-caught whismur who'd be worse than no help in a fight. But between the others, she'd be fine, probably. She didn't have anything to compare this to—she'd never had a battle before without a referee or witnesses. Natalie was glad she'd only used Samson back in the park. Her tail wouldn't know her other pokemon, so at least she'd still have the element of surprise in her favor. That was worth something … right?
The problem was … whoever was following her definitely had pokemon of their own. She hoped they didn't have more than three. Or other friends waiting and watching.
No, don't think about that. If she gave in to fear, she wouldn't have a chance.
What did they want from her anyway? Money, she guessed. Not that her casual running shorts and stained backpack screamed money. Maybe it was enough to be short and freckly. Maybe they'd decided she was an easy target.
At that thought, anger burned her fear away and stopped her in her tracks. So, what, was she supposed to just wait for them to ambush her? No way. She'd proven it before and she would prove it again: she could fight back.
Turning sharply on her heel, Natalie threw down Luna's pokeball and called out, "If you want something, come get it!"
A moment later, her mightyena was winding past her legs. They stood together in the middle of the empty street, Luna swiveling her ears as she settled into a watchful crouch and Natalie fumbling to unclip the mace keychain her father had insisted she carry. She steadied herself. But the surrounding shadows revealed nothing, and there were no sounds but faraway cars.
Maybe she'd shown her hand too early. Or maybe she'd let her imagination run away with her.
Then Luna bared her teeth and growled. Faster than Natalie could follow with her eyes, Luna spun and snapped her teeth at nothing—and the nothing screamed, human-sounding and effeminate.
The stranger flashed into view on the other side of the street, cursing, their partly-hidden face like a half-moon in the darkness. But Luna turned away, swiping at an invisible pokemon. Shadows licked around the mightyena like flames, patches of blacker darkness against the deepening twilight.
Natalie's voice caught in her throat—how could she help when she couldn't see what Luna was fighting? The sandslash in the park had at least left furrows when it went underground. There was no way to tell where this thing was going to appear.
"No, Whiskey!" the other trainer shouted. "Let's go!"
Snarling, Luna whirled and bit again, this time catching a mouthful of shadow. The shriek that followed this time was distinctly inhuman. Luna furiously shook her head, and for a second Natalie glimpsed the thing caught in her jaws: doll-like with floppy arms and a gleaming crescent of teeth.
Then the thing slipped from Luna's grasp and melted into the darkness again. As Luna whipped her head from side to side, searching, a cold wind swept down the street. Then the stranger winked out of sight again.
Natalie waited, her mace keychain in a white-knuckled grip, but the shadows didn't stir. When Luna sat back down on the pavement, Natalie knew they were finally alone.
"You okay, Luna?"
The mightyena gave a hesitant wag of her tail as Natalie approached. When Luna raised her head to be pet, a scrap of something dark still hung from her mouth.
"What do you have? Drop it." Natalie tugged it from Luna's mouth, noticing only then that her hands were shaking. It was a piece of fabric, rough, scratchy and—
"Ow! What the hell?" She tilted the fabric scrap to catch the gleam of a straight pin under the streetlight. As she held it under the light, the pin began to smoke and dissolve until there was nothing to show it had ever been there but the dot of blood welling from Natalie's finger.
A banette. That explained the disappearing act but gave little comfort—they were nasty, living bundles of junk fabric held together by needles and malice. Natalie struggled to imagine what kind of person would want to raise one. She hoped the pinprick wouldn't get infected. Sucking her fingertip, she rolled up the fabric scrap—carefully, in case there were more pins—and tucked it into a backpack pocket.
Then she knelt to Luna and pulled her close, digging her fingers into her fur. "Good girl." Sweet, smart Luna, who had eaten a pair of her sneakers in middle school but who always knew when something was wrong. Lightheaded, Natalie held on tight and listened to her thundering heartbeat, trying to slow her breathing. She only let go when Luna started whining and licking her face. Natalie had to push her off, laughing despite her still-jittering hands.
You're okay. Of course she was. Bullies didn't know what to do when someone hit back, and Natalie had given them a reason to pause before they tried that again. Walk it off.
"Let's get out of here, Luna."
—
Retracing her steps should've been easy enough, but none of the landmarks looked familiar in the dark. Had she crossed Pine Street, or had it been Spruce? The streets in this part of Rustboro curved and didn't let out where she expected, not like the neat grid downtown where her hostel was. Luna trotted cheerily at her side, but Natalie couldn't stop glancing over her shoulder anyway.
When she finally happened across a bar, light and voices spilling from the open door, Natalie's heart swelled with relief. She wasn't in the mood for a drink, but she relished the thought of a place full of people where she could sit with the Nav app and figure out a route home. A neon sign proclaimed the bar On the Rocks. The sandwich board outside listed daily specials and a request to keep pokemon in their balls, so Natalie gave Luna another scratch behind the ears before recalling her and heading inside.
The walls were cluttered with a mix of local sports team banners, vintage liquor posters, and weirdly nautical decor. Among other oddities, Natalie spotted a ship in a bottle and a mermaid figurehead wrapped in string lights. The patrons gathered at the tables were locals—mostly dock-hands, day laborers, and union folks, not trainers. On the Rocks probably wasn't in the guidebook, a world apart from the flashy cocktail bars and clubs downtown, but Natalie liked this better. She wondered if her brother had ever come here, whether anyone knew him.
There was a lot she didn't know about her brother's life. Much of what she did know she'd gleaned from reading between the lines of the emails he'd written to Dad; she'd still been "the kid" when he was writing, as in, Say hi to the kid for me. On visits home, they'd had fun together—he'd taken her out on the bay for a pokemon ride or schooled her at checkers—but they hadn't talked about anything real. She didn't blame him: she'd been a child, and he was a full adult, already on the other side of his badge journey and working a real job. Back then, she hadn't thought to ask him the questions she wondered about now: Was campaign work what he'd wanted or just something he'd fallen into? What did he remember about his mom? Did it matter to him that she was only his half-sister? Had he ever been in love? She'd daydreamed dozens of conversations ... but his imagined answers were flavorless and unsatisfying.
Mostly she remembered watching him train. Bubba didn't invite her along, but he also didn't stop her from following him to the scrap yard. Sometimes he squared off with other trainers and made her sit at a distance. She watched from the sagging seat of a truck missing the hood and all four wheels. Other times he set up targets from the old steel drums and set his pokemon on them. Bubba trained a mightyena, too. Where Luna was clumsy and eager to please, Justice was still half-wild, missing part of one ear and prone to snapping when startled. He could vanish out from under a falling piece of scrap, reappear on the other side, and bite it in two all before it hit the ground. Natalie could tell they liked her cheering for them even though they both acted like the whole thing was no big deal.
One trip home, he'd brought back a poochyena. Hers. Officially, legally, Luna had been just a pet until Natalie turned eighteen. But that hadn't stopped him from teaching Natalie how to train: when to give treats, how to establish authority. "She sees you as her pack. You've gotta give her a reason to listen to you."
The loud scrape of a barstool jolted Natalie out of her reverie. Right. A quick rest to figure out where she was going, avoid any more strangers in black, and then back to the hostel to finally get something in her stomach.
As Natalie scanned for a place to sit, preferably a booth or a table where she could set down her pack and still see the door … she noticed with a jolt that someone sitting alone at the bar had turned his head to watch her. He was too tall and broad to be the stranger who'd followed her, but she wasn't imagining his staring. When she caught his gaze, he smiled crookedly, an unmistakable challenge.
Belatedly, she realized she knew him, sort of. She'd only ever seen him wearing a white button-down—it hadn't occurred to her until now that it must be part of the uniform—and he was almost unrecognizable now under dim light and wearing a flannel open over a t-shirt. But he was definitely the trainer from the gym, the serious one.
She'd never seen a gym trainer battle like him before, like it was personal. And then, like a car skidding to a sudden stop, he would recall his pokemon and wave the challenging trainer ahead, sometimes even if it looked like he was going to win. Natalie had heard that the gym leader herself was known to occasionally award badges to trainers who had actually lost to her, if they impressed her, but this was something else. He seemed bored, boiling under the surface.
They had never spoken—Natalie had only watched his battles from the sidelines—but there was no doubt that he recognized her, too. His smile made her wonder again whether the stranger in black had more friends watching her. But a gym trainer? Maybe not. Then again, what were the odds of running into him here after what had just happened?
Natalie took out the scrap of fabric and squeezed it tight as she strode towards the gym trainer. She tested the words in her mind: Recognize this? Or maybe, Care to explain?
But he spoke first, his tone lazy and almost playful. "So, you following me now? I can offer advice about Roxanne if you want it that bad, but I don't think it's worth that much effort, to be honest."
She ground to a halt. He thought she—?
He leaned back against the bar. "Or you looking for a fight? Doesn't count for anything if it's not inside the gym, you know."
"No, I …." He was as surprised to see her as she'd been to see him. Of course. What had she been thinking? Natalie laughed in relief, feeling her face color. Dad's articles had gotten to her. "I just got a little turned around on my way home."
The gym trainer raised an eyebrow. "Big detour."
"It's been a long day …. Almost got mugged, actually."
She must've looked as tired as she felt because the gym trainer's face softened. "Oh. That sucks."
"It wasn't actually a big deal." Even as she said it, she started to feel calmer. Under the string lights and surrounded by chatter, the incident already felt far away, easy to explain. Now it made for a good story—after all, nothing bad had come of it. Raising her chin, she added, "Scared them more than they scared me, I think."
"I bet."
He smirked again, and this time Natalie saw it with fresh eyes. She wanted to laugh again. He was flirting with her, and she'd taken it as a threat. What was wrong with her? Maybe she could use a drink after all. Some normalcy.
"Mind if I sit?"
"Go ahead." He flipped shut the book that lay on the bar next to him.
Natalie snorted. "You were reading in a bar?"
"Yeah." He shot her a look that added, duh.
When Natalie moved to set down her backpack, she realized she was still clutching the weird fabric scrap. She shoved it back down into a pocket, stealing one last glance at the door.
"No one's gonna fuck with you in here. You're okay," he said, not unkindly.
She shook her head. "I know. I was just thinking my dad would kill me if I became another headline." When she hopped onto the stool, she discovered to her annoyance that her feet didn't touch.
"Area girl fatally murdered by crime. Details at eleven."
"Right." She grinned. "I'm Natalie, by the way."
"Mark. Cheers, Natalie." He raised his glass.
She glanced at the chalkboard menu and her eyes immediately glazed over—too many options and none of them familiar.
"You probably want a Red River," Mark said after a few moments. "Cheapest thing that's still drinkable."
"Alright. Thanks." He was right—cheap was what she was after. She considered food but balked at the price listed for a sandwich. She'd drink slowly then, and when she got back to the hostel she'd make her own sandwich. Natalie flagged down the bartender and then said to Mark, "Must be nice getting paid a salary to battle."
"Don't be too jealous. I'm hourly."
He took a long swig of his beer. Natalie cut a sideways glance at him, watching how his Adam's apple bobbed when he drank. She'd never planned to talk to him, and it was strange to be sitting so close after a week of observing his battles. He was different from what she'd thought. Even his accent was unexpectedly Unovan—she hadn't picked up on that before.
Gods, no wonder he'd assumed she was following him—she had spent the better part of a week looking at him. Not that he seemed to mind it now.
The bartender slid her drink over, and Natalie was grateful for something to do with her hands. She took a long drink, taking a moment to imagine how the rest of the evening might play out. It hadn't been a bad night, actually. She'd won her battle in the park and earned some cash. Then she'd fought off an attacker—an invisible one, at that. And now … she was enjoying herself. If nothing else, she decided, this could only enrich the story of her night.
Natalie took another drink and then turned toward Mark with a question already springing from her lips. "Do you even like working at the gym? The way you were battling …." She caught herself, wondering if she was crossing a line.
But Mark shrugged. "I won't be there forever, and until then … I've got responsibilities, and it's decent money."
The thought that training could become another job to weather through was a sobering one. Her friends back home had gone to school for teaching or business, and Natalie had thought of journeying as an escape from all that. But, if she were being perfectly honest with herself … she knew she didn't have any special talent or love for battles. Despite having two pokemon with a type advantage, she still hadn't even made a move for her Stone Badge yet. She didn't want to think too hard about what she'd do when she decided she'd had enough of this lifestyle.
As if reading her mind, Mark added, "I'd rather be around real people. Spend too much time with trainers and you lose perspective."
She grinned again. "What, and trainers aren't real people? I don't know if you noticed, but you've got a belt too." He carried six pokeballs to her four.
Mark snorted. "There are all kinds of trainers. I see plenty of them every day, and almost none of them can see two inches past their own ambition. No clue about anything else, just badges and bullshit."
Natalie gave out a laugh of surprise, almost choking on her beer.
He watched her reaction with cool amusement. "You're clearly not in a hurry to get your badge. Most people are in and out in a day or two, you know."
"Sick of me already?"
Mark smiled but didn't rise to the bait. "So what are you doing in Rustboro?"
"Good question," she said with another laugh, shaking her head. She ran a finger over the bar, gathering crumbs as she gathered her thoughts. It wouldn't be a lie to say that she was training and rounding out her team ... but she didn't want to hide behind excuses. She wanted to talk to someone about it, and it certainly wouldn't be her parents.
At last Natalie said, "I've been thinking about my brother a lot since I left home. Like, I'm probably walking all the same places as him, especially here in Rustboro. He was a trainer too, for a while, but he quit, I guess. Ended up here working on an election campaign. And then ... he disappeared."
"Well, fuck."
She added quickly, "I mean, it was ten years ago—I didn't even know him that well. But …." Natalie raised her hands helplessly. "I dunno. It's just this weird part of my life."
Mark nodded slowly. "So you're trying to find out what happened to him?"
"Maybe? Not necessarily. I mean, what am I really gonna dig up that the police couldn't? Probably nothing." She cut herself short. "Gods, that's depressing. Sorry."
"Don't be. I asked."
She flashed him a grateful smile. "I guess I feel closer to him when I'm here. I don't want to forget him, you know? He was such a good person—better than me, anyway."
"What makes you say that?"
"Oh, I dunno." Words failing her, Natalie turned to her drink. When she looked up again, Mark still had her fixed in a stare she couldn't quite read. But she appreciated that he was listening so intently. She said, "He was always doing something big. Like with Devon Horizon. Did you hear about that?"
Mark smiled humorlessly. "I can guess. Pipeline failed?"
"No, but you're close," she said, surprised. "An oil tanker. It crashed into the reef off the coast of Slateport and … I was pretty little, but I remember it was bad. They had to close the beach for a long time. Bubba—my brother, I mean—he came home to help with the cleanup, and he even convinced Mom to let him foster a pair of pelipper in the guest bathroom."
She still remembered the pelipper's reptilian yellow eyes. Her parents hadn't let her near them, and for good reason: they were raggedy with stress, but each still had a wingspan more than twice the length of her little child body and the strength to break her neck with one wing swipe. But just once, after making her swear up and down that she wouldn't tell her parents, Bubba had let her pet the sleek feathers at the crown of the female's head. He'd kept a firm grip on Natalie, ready to snatch her back if needed.
When he finally released them back into the wild, Natalie had cried.
Aw, don't worry, Small Fry. You can catch your own someday.
That had been about ten years ago, too. They didn't know when exactly Bubba had disappeared—he'd been busy, after all, and had sometimes gone weeks without calling or emailing—but it had certainly been the last time Natalie had seen him.
Mark's voice broke Natalie from her thoughts. "Not a lot of people are willing to look closely at the fucked up parts of the world and try to do something about it."
"No," Natalie said, "definitely not."
She winced, thinking of a line from one of Bubba's emails that had hurt to read: I never thought the man who taught me to shoulder my responsibilities with pride would be so fast to abandon his own. It wasn't a secret that he and their dad had fought—the Armstrong family showed both love and anger with loud voices—but she hadn't realized it was like that. She couldn't exactly ask Dad about it without reopening old wounds … and explaining why she'd dug around in his emails in the first place.
Mark raised his glass and said, "Well, here's to your brother, then."
She took a deep breath and smiled. "Thanks." They clinked glasses, and she drank deep.
Talking about Bubba felt good, Natalie thought, and Mark was easy to talk to. It had been so long since she'd had a conversation that went beyond battles and travel stories. She opened her mouth to ask Mark about his family—
"And what about you?" he asked.
"What do you mean? I just told you my entire family history."
"That was your brother. What about you? What do you care about?"
"A lot of things, but …." The room suddenly seemed louder and smaller than it had before. She was reminded uncomfortably of Mom asking, But what's next? "I'm trying to figure it out, I guess. I'm not really political like he was."
Mark was quiet for a moment. Then, pointing with his eyes, he said, "You see that woman sitting over there?"
It was obvious who he meant. She had long, long hair and spoke heatedly with a small group sitting in the corner, too far away to be heard. A breloom perched atop a stool next to her and dipped its muzzle into its own beer mug, lifting its head every so often to lick away the foam.
"I thought pokemon weren't allowed in here."
"They are for her. If she leaves, then all her friends stop coming too, and the owner doesn't want to lose all that business. Erica Spitfire is a hippie, but people around here listen to her." Then, catching the look on Natalie's face, he added, "Yeah, I know, but that's her real name.
"She's got an interesting story: A couple years back, she was close to taking the title and a big cash prize." He paused for effect, spreading his hands wide and then turning it into a shrug. "But she came back instead. She decided she was a better organizer than a trainer, and now she's one of the last things standing between DevCo and their pipeline."
Not understanding, Natalie nodded anyway.
"The point is, you don't have to be a politician to do something. You just have to give a shit."
"I guess so."
He smiled, leaning forward, and there was hunger in it. "I think you could make a difference in the world," he insisted. "If you really wanted to."
A nervous laugh burst out of her. "Maybe!"
Before she could think of something clever to say, Mark's phone buzzed. "Hang on." He squinted at the screen and then he growled, "Shit. Shit. I have to go—right now." He jumped up, slinging a messenger bag over his shoulder and tossing in his book.
"Everything okay? Emergency at the gym?" she teased. Her heart sank, just a little.
"Something like that." He set his jaw and smiled grimly. Then he turned and gave her a real smile. "We'll have to finish this conversation later though."
"I wouldn't hate that."
"Great. You know where to find me." He started for the door, calling over his shoulder, "Get home safe." Without looking back, he slipped between the tables, out the door, and into the night.
Natalie let out a long breath and leaned back against the bar. What a weird day. She reached for her beer. Then she thought about the long, dark walk that awaited her, and she abandoned it on the counter half-full.
—
She made it back to the hostel without incident, and in the shared kitchen space, she finally made her grilled cheese. Then a second one. A pair of trainers fussed with a saucepan over the burner next to hers, gabbing about how they'd fared at the gym. Natalie licked grease from her fingers and fought the urge to laugh, thinking badges and bullshit.
She considered chiming in with her own story, flashing the scrap of banette cloth to see their stunned faces, but it wasn't worth the questions that would arise. Natalie was tired and didn't have to prove herself to them—they'd head on to the next town by morning.
Staying in Rustboro had been her choice, but the thought of being left behind made her suddenly lonely. She started a text message to Sonia, her best friend from home, who'd stayed to take classes at Slateport College. But Natalie couldn't make herself finish any of the sentences she started. Today I fought a—no, she didn't want Sonia to worry. I met someone—nothing had happened, though. A non-event.
Natalie knew what Sonia would ask, a question she'd asked herself several times: what are you still doing in Rustboro? She still wasn't sure. Who was left to prove herself to? Bubba was gone—and had been for years before she arrived. She imagined herself rusting in place here like the abandoned factories she'd seen on the edges of town, and then she pushed the thought away. Rustboro already had Bubba, and it wouldn't have her, too.
Tomorrow, she decided, she'd claim her badge and be done with it. And then … well, she didn't have to decide what she wanted to contribute to the world all at once. For now, she could handle dishes and then sleep. Tomorrow she could figure out making the world a better place.
The locker room muffled the bellowing and crashing of sparring pokemon, but Mark's head throbbed with each vibration through the floor. It's gonna be a long day. The door opened as he was tossing down a couple of ibuprofen.
"There you are," said Hilary. She swept past him to her locker, dabbing sweat from her face with a floral handkerchief. "Aisha is all set to take over as soon as Casey's fight ends—like, any second now, from the looks of it. So, you're okay for a minute, but buckle up because there are a lot of kids lined up today. Whew."
He grimaced. "Good to know. And thanks again for switching with me at the last minute."
"Sure thing. Means I'll have time to actually do something with my hair before this dumb date." Hilary rolled her eyes in his direction—and then did a double-take. "Jeez, what happened to you?"
Civic engagement. Mark smiled crookedly, which made him wince in pain.
Instead, he took a slow breath and then told her the story he'd prepared. "I went for a bike ride after work yesterday and somebody doored me."
"Oh no, that's awful!"
"It's not so bad. Could've been worse."
"How's your bike?"
He paused for a fraction of a second. "Scraped up, but it'll still get the job done."
"Wow. I'm glad you're okay though." Hilary leaned against the lockers. "I didn't even know you biked."
"Oh yeah. It's a great workout."
"That part's good."
Mark stood, fussing with his collar while he watched Hilary from the corner of his eye. "By the way ... Did you decide if you're coming to the new member meeting? "
"Oh." Hilary looked down, twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. "I get why you're disappointed with Roxanne. And I know you're not the only one either. But she's still a good person. Like, think about all the time and effort she's put into our schools alone."
He waited.
She took a deep breath and blurted, "What I'm trying to say is you're entitled to your opinion, but I don't want to get involved. I really, really like this job, you know?"
He couldn't help himself. "You're not gonna lose your job for one meeting. There's gonna be cookies and shit."
"No, I know. It's just, you know. Not my kind of thing."
Mark hadn't expected a lot from her, but he'd hoped a self-professed nature-lover would at least be interested in becoming more informed about what her employer was allowing to happen at Meteor Falls. He set his jaw, considering his words carefully. "I don't think Roxanne is a bad person. I just don't agree with everything she does. But I'm still part of the team, and I won't bring it up again."
"Thanks," Hilary said with obvious relief. "And thanks anyway for including me."
"Yeah, sure." He put on a smile, though his heart was bitter, and then turned for the door to the gym.
"Oh, hey! I just thought of something else. A trainer came by asking for you this morning."
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob, puzzled. Then he remembered: the girl from the bar. Natalie. "Red hair?"
"Yup." She smiled knowingly. "Friend of yours?"
"Maybe." He grinned. "I guess I'll find out." With that, he stepped through the door.
Casey and his opponent had finished, and the gym had quieted somewhat. But on the main stage, Roxanne and her probopass faced off against a kid with a grovyle, each command and roar amplified by the big screens on either side. Mark was glad—it meant he didn't have to explain his alleged bike accident again. Or talk about his numbers.
He continued to the steps that led down into the sandbox, the smaller arena that was set into the floor. The next trainer already waited at the top of the challengers' stairs, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Mark exchanged glances with Aisha, the other second-shift gym trainer.
"I raked the gravel when I got in," she said. "You take this one."
So down he went.
The challenger sent out a lotad, who squinted in the sudden light, and Mark had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. He could tell by the way it moved that the lotad would be no match for any of his pokemon ... but his job was to filter out incompetent trainers, not to figure out who was actually skilled. His ratio of wins to losses had been too high this month, according to Roxanne. Higher than any of his coworkers'. So if a challenger demonstrated any kind of basic knowledge … he'd let them continue on and become her problem.
After letting the lotad struggle against his solrock for what felt like a reasonable amount of time, Mark threw the match and took Aisha's place on the sidelines, which was even more boring. In theory, he was supervising the match to ensure fair play. In reality, it required little from him but to announce the rules and then wait for the fight to end. Today, at least, he had plenty to think about.
Then he switched places with Aisha to do it again. And again.
Mark was leaning against the stanchions after another calculated loss when Natalie strode through the automated doors. She nodded to him, and he smiled back. His smile became a wicked grin when, rather than taking her usual place against the wall, she pulled a number from the dispenser and took a seat on the bench.
During his next battle, the cut above Mark's eyebrow opened again, stinging from the sweat and dust. He felt grit in his teeth as he inevitably did after spending any amount of time in the gym. But he suddenly didn't mind so much.
He ended the fight and then waited for the challenging trainer to finish high-fiving his machop before waving him ahead to Roxanne. Then, as Mark craned his neck to see which number was up next, Natalie hopped to her feet.
"I got this one," he called up to Aisha.
She paused with one foot on the steps, hand on her hip. "Aren't you tired?"
"I've got another pokemon."
Aisha looked over at Natalie, who stood at the top of the stairs, and then back at Mark. She raised an eyebrow. "Well, I won't say no to a longer break."
Mark turned to meet Natalie's eyes, and they exchanged grins. He beckoned for her to join him.
She's gotta be young, Mark thought, watching her swagger into the sandbox. He guessed eighteen, nineteen—not a huge gap between them, in the grand scheme of things, but enough to make a difference. Young wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It meant idealistic. Willing to take risks.
In her tank top and bright leggings, she looked like many of the rookie trainers he saw in the gym, except for the look in her eyes. Most trainers stared through Mark. To them, he was one more obstacle on their way into the spotlight. Natalie seemed to be actually paying attention. Alert. Curious.
And she'd come looking for him. That said something, too—several things.
Aisha called, "Challenger! What's your name?" She took such pleasure in the ritualized call and response. Mark, when he had to referee between his own battles, skipped the theatrics and just did his job.
"Natalie Armstrong."
"Very well. Facing challenger Natalie on behalf of Rustboro City Gym is Mark Dunstan."
He smiled to himself. Normally this part of the song and dance was a reminder that he was playing a role, playing by the rules. This time … he'd be Roxanne's litmus test, but he was also watching and evaluating for himself.
"You may shake."
As Mark stepped forward to shake Natalie's freckled hand, he saw by her expression that she was appreciating for the first time the difference in height between them—he stood almost a foot taller than her. In response, she raised her chin and rolled her shoulders back.
In a voice too low to be heard up on the main level, she said, "Looks like you had quite a night."
"You should see the other guy." He played it for a laugh, pleased when she did. But the look in her eyes made it clear she intended to try to get the rest of the story out of him later.
We'll see about that.
He said, "Nice to see you down on my level this time."
She grinned. "It's overdue."
"Trainers, take your places." When they had retreated to opposite sides of the arena, Aisha announced, "This will be a one-on-one battle. Recalling a pokemon will be considered a forfeit. Mark, you may choose your fighter."
There was only one gym-approved pokemon left for him to choose from. "Let's make it count, Ore," he said, and released his solrock.
Immediately, he felt the prickle of Orwell's presence along the edges of his mind, an unintelligible buzz. With no command, the solrock took a defensive stance between him and Natalie, raising a shield of purple light over Mark like it did every time. He imagined that, from its perspective, there was no distinction between a gym battle and any other kind of fight. It was a good habit.
"And you may choose your fighter."
Natalie watched the solrock hover for a moment. Then she grinned. "Go, Luna," she said, and released a mightyena onto the field. It didn't snarl or pace, simply waited for an order. But it bared its teeth at the sight of the opposing pokemon.
He'd been ready for her to choose a grass- or water-type like most of the rookie trainers did. Sometimes the particularly aspiring ones, like the kid with the lotad, got creative and tried to cover both bases simultaneously. A dark-type was interesting, though. He was curious to see what she'd do with that.
Aisha shouted, "You may begin! Good luck!"
Natalie wasted no time blurting, "Circle up!"
The mightyena took off, scattering gravel. It zigzagged across the field until it was close enough to make a wide arc around his solrock.
Mark felt his solrock's desire to get between him and the mightyena, a pulse of anxiety. "Stay put, Ore. Let's see what she'll do." But he already had a good idea what it would be. Mark ignored the mightyena for now, watching Natalie instead. "Get ready."
"Alright, Luna, do it!"
One moment the mightyena prowled along the edges of the sandbox. The next moment it lunged and vanished in a swirl of black vapor.
Ore made a low keening and slowly spun in place as it tried and failed to find the mightyena.
All at once, a black cloud flowered in the air above the solrock and the mightyena leapt from within. It pounced, trailing black vapor, and knocked Ore to the floor.
Mark was ready. "Ore, smash it! Now!"
Ore rose shakily, buzzing in outrage, as Natalie's mightyena landed and skidded to a stop. With a sound like a gong, the solrock launched itself at the mightyena and bowled it onto its back.
"Bite it, Luna!"
The mightyena made it onto its side when Ore smashed into it again. The solrock swooped for another hit, but the mightyena bared its teeth and snapped up at Ore. The mightyena's legs were in the air, belly exposed, but the shadows on the arena floor wavered threateningly as it began to growl. The two pokemon hung in a deadlock for a long moment, each twitching in preparation for attack but flinching away from follow-through. Finally Ore levitated away, back to its defensive position in front of Mark, allowing the mightyena to roll onto all fours once again and shake itself off.
"Good girl," Natalie called. "Get ready to go again!"
As the mightyena took off running for his solrock, Mark commanded, "Rockslide!"
Ore's eyes glowed like heated coils, and the sandbox walls rumbled.
"Watch out!"
By the time the mightyena managed to slide to a stop, sections of the rock wall were already crumbling and crashing down on top of it. There was a sharp whine, and then there was only the sound of rock settling.
Natalie gasped and winced, watching from between her fingers.
Come on. Really? Mark folded his arms. Give your pokemon some credit.
The dust slowly cleared, revealing boulders scattered across the sandbox and no sign of the mightyena. It reappeared a moment later in a whorl of shadows. But it was holding up one paw to avoid putting weight on it.
With a bitter smile, Mark called out, "Put it in the ring of fire." He wasn't sure if he was more pleased to finally allow himself his first win of the shift or disappointed to have made such quick work of her.
Purple light radiated from Ore and then lashed towards the other pokemon, bursting into flames. The mightyena jumped back, but was soon caught inside a circle of purple fire.
"Good. Scramble it," Mark ordered. He was careful not to look directly at the beam of light the solrock shot from its eyes, shimmering through the air like a heat mirage.
But Natalie called, "Bite!" and her mightyena turned directly into the beam. The mightyena's pupils quickly expanded and then shrank. It shook its head and started forward, turning to snap its teeth at an imaginary foe. Then, swooning, it staggered into the rim of the fiery ring. Belatedly, it whined and fishtailed back from the fire.
"Rockslide. Finish it."
"Come on, Luna! Jump through!" As the first rocks tumbled down from the arena's edge, the mightyena tucked its tail and whimpered. "Go! You can do it!"
The mightyena lowered its head, tensed, and then bounded between falling boulders and through the fire. Mark smelled burning hair. The mightyena moved clumsily, less a run than a three-legged jumble in motion. Rock tumbled all around. Many of them hit. Still, Natalie's mightyena flung itself toward the solrock. He had to admire their determination but wasn't convinced that would be enough.
"Bury it."
"Crunch!"
The mightyena barked and, from nowhere, a pair of shadowy jaws appeared around Ore and snapped shut. Mark's head jerked back in surprise. He had assumed the mightyena couldn't do much at a distance. His solrock tried to spin free, but the shadow-teeth yanked it down. As it struggled, the solrock let go of the light shield over Mark and let rocks drop at random all over the sandbox.
The mightyena wove between fallen rocks and drew closer—still wobbling, but it didn't matter now. It bared its real teeth, and the shadowy phantom jaws pressed tighter around the solrock. Pieces crumbled off one of Ore's fins.
Mark winced. He hated leaving Ore exposed, and he wished he could send out Gibs to catch the mightyena from behind. His liepard was a quicker, quieter shadow-walker—she wouldn't see him coming. Or Rand, his darmanitan, could send the mightyena flying with one swipe. Instead Ore had to take the fall alone.
He'd better let Ore take it easy for the rest of the day—they had a long day ahead of them tomorrow.
All the same, Mark realized he was smiling. He'd never intended to hand it to Natalie, but he'd hoped she'd win.
The mightyena threw its head back in a howl, and its shadowy jaws clenched harder, squeezing and squeezing until Ore's light went out.
"Drop it, Luna."
With a snort and a toss of the mightyena's head, the shadowy jaws disintegrated, leaving Ore to topple into the dirt. Mark recalled his pokemon.
Natalie looked up at Aisha, waiting for the official call that she'd won. Her mightyena, though, watched Mark. That was good, too.
"The match goes to the challenger! Congratulations!"
Mark waited with his hands in his pockets as Natalie went to her pokemon, first checking the injured paw and then throwing her arms around its neck. When she recalled the mightyena, he approached. "Not bad," he told her.
Natalie dusted herself off and stood, beaming. "That's it? Not bad?"
"Looked like a narrow win to me," he said, raising an eyebrow.
Natalie started to shoot back a reply but stopped short, frowning—her thoughts were loud, plain to see on her face. She lowered her voice and asked, "Did you lose on purpose?"
At that Mark grinned. "No. You won." Then he held out her prize, the plastic token that would give her permission to battle the gym leader. "I don't think you'll have a problem with Roxanne."
Though …. He glanced at the seated trainers waiting for their chance to face Roxanne and saw several he'd waved through earlier. Then he looked at the wall clock. Well, shit.
She followed his gaze. "The gym closes at seven, right? Maybe I should come back tomorrow."
The gym would almost certainly not be open tomorrow, but he couldn't say that here. And if she came back to the gym at her usual time—
"Hey, Mark?" Aisha tipped her head towards a waiting trainer at the top of the stairs.
He nodded for Aisha's benefit and said quickly to Natalie, "Could you come back tonight? I want to talk to you."
She flashed a self-satisfied smile, cheeks coloring. "Yeah. I've been thinking about what you said yesterday, actually."
"Oh yeah?" And Mark knew then that he'd been right: she was already half-convinced. It wouldn't take much more.
"Let's make way for the next challenger!" Aisha spoke brightly, but Mark could hear the edge to it.
"I'll meet you out back around seven-thirty."
"I can do that."
He smiled and turned for the stairs.
"Finally," Aisha said under her breath as she passed him.
"It was important."
"Yeah, looked like it."
Unbothered, Mark took his place to announce the next match. He followed Natalie's exit with his eyes, aware of her watching him back.
How should he explain things to her?
As the battle below started in earnest and Mark knelt to tend to Orwell, he briefly entertained the idea of bringing Natalie with him to the protest tomorrow. He could watch out for her, keep her from getting into more trouble than she could handle.
But, no, he couldn't. Not really. Too many other people were already counting on him to watch their backs, to make the right calls. And that wasn't the only reason it was a bad idea.
He'd seen Natalie's type before: she wasn't timid and complacent like Hilary, but she was uncertain. When shit got real, she'd bolt—and she'd be gone forever. Burned out before she started. Or, worse, she might freeze up and get someone else hurt trying to to save her. If she didn't trust the team—if she didn't trust the cause—she was a liability.
And there was no rushing trust.
But she already knew enough not to trust DevCo. He'd recognized the anger in her face when she'd talked about Slateport—it was the same thing he felt when he thought of home. The thing that drove him to the streets again and again. If Natalie was angry enough to fight for change, they were already on the same side. The rest was just a matter of time.
—
Outside, Natalie was already perched on the stair rail with a wingull on her shoulder.
"Hey. Thanks for waiting."
She started in surprise, her wingull squawking a complaint at the movement. "Who's your friend?"
"Oh. This is Gibson." His liepard slunk behind him, half in shadow. No way was Mark walking home without an extra set of eyes after last night.
"I guess I assumed you only had rock-types."
"Nah. Can't use him in the gym, but Gibs was my first."
Natalie hopped down from the rail, prompting her pokemon to take wing, and held out a hand for Gibs to sniff. The liepard ignored it, eyeing Natalie's wingull instead.
"Don't even think about it." Mark nudged Gibs with his knee until the liepard flicked his tail and turned away from the wingull, rubbing his face along Mark's legs. Mark rolled his eyes at Natalie. "Keep an eye on your keys and your phone too. Sneaky bastard thinks he's hilarious."
She grinned. "He's your baby."
"I don't think he's my anything. He's made it clear I'm his." He shook his head—derailed already. "Anyway. You wanna walk?"
At a leisurely pace, Mark led them down a quiet side-street. He caught a glimpse of Gibs before the liepard slipped inside a shadow and faded from sight. Hunting. Mark smiled, knowing Gibs was close, maybe even right underfoot, and nothing would be able to sneak up on them without him knowing.
When he looked up, he caught Natalie watching him, perhaps waiting for him to say something first. Or perhaps just watching. He gave her a smile—fuck it, he was only human for enjoying the attention. But there were more important things to take care of.
"So," he said, "you've been thinking?"
Natalie let out a sigh but smiled. "Yeah. About pipelines. Except I thought more and now I'm not so sure. Like … I'm just one person, you know? I don't even know where to start."
At that, Mark grinned. She was making this so easy. "No one gets anything done alone. It has to be a coordinated effort." He paused to gauge her reaction, then added, "I know a local group, if you're interested. There's an open meeting later this month."
"Later this month I'll be in Lavaridge …." She tipped her head back to watch her wingull's gliding path. "So, you're kind of involved in local stuff, huh?"
"Kinda," Mark said with a shrug, holding back a smirk.
"You going to the protest, then?"
She flashed him an impish look as he faltered mid-step. How had she—? But he shouldn't have been surprised. He'd seen some of Spitfire's crew handing out flyers on neon green paper, and it had to be all over social media, too.
Natalie puffed herself up. "I've got more on my mind than just badges and bullshit."
Mark barked a laugh of surprise. He felt a rush of flattery at hearing his own words from her mouth—but also an undercurrent of wariness. She was so earnest.
"Have you ever been to a protest before?"
She deflated slightly. "First time for everything."
"Yeah, that's what I thought."
Natalie slowed to a stop, still smiling but now with a hardness to it. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just that it's not gonna be like you think. But the group I mentioned—they do trainings. Deescalation strategies, how and when to keep formation, police tactics to watch for, what to do if you get arrested. Things like that. I think you'd really benefit from it."
"Wait, are you really trying to tell me not to go?" Natalie snorted. "I thought that was the point."
"I'm saying," Mark said, fighting to keep the frustration from his voice, "that there are other first steps. This one is gonna be ugly, Natalie."
The instant the words left his mouth, Mark knew that they'd been the wrong ones.
She crossed her arms and cocked her hip. "I'm not scared of ugly."
He fought hard against the urge to roll his eyes. "It's not about scared. It's about being smart. You could get hurt if you're not—"
"I'm going. So are you coming or not?"
Part of Mark wanted to laugh. It's a protest, not a fucking date. But what was he supposed to say? Of course he'd be there, but she couldn't exactly join him. And to explain that …. He didn't trust her enough for the complete truth yet.
His silence had lasted too long.
"Incredible," Natalie said, shaking her head.
No, fuck—there had to be something else he could—
She drew in a sharp breath and said, "You know, it's okay. I'll figure it out. I'll see you around, maybe." Without waiting for him to answer, she whistled for her pokemon and cut down another street.
The crowd was impossible to miss. Protesters filled the plaza, flowing down the stairs and onto the sidewalk below. Some even perched atop the concrete parapets where banners depicting the true price of oil had been hung to face traffic.
Natalie sat on the church steps across the street with her gurdurr, Samson, who wouldn't sit still. He was a recent trade from a tourist she'd met in Dewford, so she wasn't entirely sure yet if he was agitated by the crowd … or if moodiness was simply his baseline. But he was already almost as tall as she was, each arm as thick as her waist, and she felt safer with him out. Part of Natalie was glad she'd chosen to bring only what fit in her pockets and on her belt. Another part of her felt naked without her backpack.
A news crew adjusted equipment near one of the plaza entrances. Half a block away, a group of counter-protesters tried to make up for their small numbers with decibels. From a distance, Natalie could read a few of the signs, which said things like, Roxanne is my rock, and, DevCo means jobs for Rustboro. In between the protesters and the counter-protesters, a cluster of macho police officers with manectric straddled their bikes. They mostly watched the plaza, but she thought she saw one of them look at her a few times.
Microphone feedback squealed and then died back down. She could tell from the applause and shouts that someone was giving a speech, but she couldn't make out more than scattered words from where she sat. She'd wanted to observe before jumping into the thick of it, but …. Natalie stood and said to her gurdurr, "Come on, Sam. I want to hear what they're saying."
No sooner than she took a few steps towards the plaza, one of the bike cops peeled off from the group and cut in front of her. "That pokemon needs to be back in its ball, immediately." He wore a face mask and sunglasses, which made him look not quite human.
Natalie couldn't help herself. "How come? I thought one pokemon per trainer was allowed out in the city limits."
She stole a glance at his manectric, outfitted in a gray harness that matched the police uniform. It wore a power-limiter collar, almost like a pet's; judging by the sparks rising off its back, though, the collar had been turned way down or off. There was no reason it would hurt her, of course—she wasn't doing anything wrong—but Natalie was unnerved all the same. The manectric stared hard at her, its hackles raised.
The cop laid a hand on one of several solid black pokeballs hooked to his belt beside his holster and handcuffs—peaceballs for forcibly recalling another trainer's pokemon. One way or another, that hand said. "Right now they're not. Put it away. Now."
Samson grunted and popped his knuckles.
Natalie laid a hand on the gurdurr's meaty shoulder before he could do anything stupid. "My bad," she said and recalled her pokemon.
The cop held her in an icy gaze for a few more moments before clambering onto his bike and wheeling back around to rejoin his squad.
"What a dick hole," Natalie muttered.
She pointedly ignored the bike cops as she passed them on her way into the plaza and pushed her way into the crowd.
Despite the heat wave, most of the protesters wore layers: zip-up jackets, scarves and bandannas of various colors. Some wore belts with pokeballs. Most didn't. They carried painted cardboard signs of all sizes: Meteor Falls—not falling for it! Pokemon over profit! And, of course, Hell no, DevCo!
The protesters burst out in applause and cheers, and then a feminine voice crackled, "It's an honor to be here with you all today. Let's take a moment to remember that we stand in the South Grannus Watershed, on Draconid land."
Natalie squeezed through until she found herself in front of a wrought iron sculpture of a larger-than-life aggron with a trainer raised up on its shoulder. She clambered onto one of the aggron's massive feet. Nodding a silent greeting to a teenage protester crouched on the statue's other foot, she settled in to watch.
In the center of the crowd, a woman with very long hair stood on an overturned crate. It took Natalie a moment to recognize her without the breloom at her side: Erica Spitfire, the woman who supposedly could've made it big had she not chosen to come back to Rustboro to fight a different kind of battle. She was ordinary-looking, with thin lips and a windburned face, but the crowd seemed to hang on her every word. She spoke into the microphone, "Roxanne says she's read the environmental impact assessment. If she sees no problems with it, we must not have read the same report."
From her perch, Natalie could see much of the crowd and, if she rose up and half-turned, the band of bike cops. She didn't actually believe she would find him there, but she couldn't help but search for Bubba's face each direction she looked. And, ha, there was no sign of Mark either. He really was all talk in the end.
Spitfire said, "I don't care how fancy the technology is, how minimal they think the risks are. Nothing is worth risking access to clean water for the people and pokemon downstream. We're the ones who will live with the consequences of DevCo's mistakes, and we can't drink oil!"
The crowd roared its approval.
"I don't care how much money they throw at our schools," she said. "Mother Earth can't be bribed! Mother Earth doesn't take cash or credit!"
Natalie wrinkled her nose. Mother Earth was as cheesy as the name Spitfire. But she saw too that, under all the buzzwords, Spitfire's anger was real, her voice strong and clear.
So when Spitfire cried, "Do you trust DevCo to keep our water clean?"—Natalie thought of the pelipper in the guest bathroom. She thought of her brother. She thought of Mark telling her to stay home where it was safe, and she didn't hesitate to join the cacophony.
"No!" the crowd shouted as one.
"Do you trust DevCo to clean its messes?"
"No!"
"Do you trust DevCo to do what's best for people and pokemon?"
"No!"
"Let's show Roxanne that we are not so easily bought and sold!" To deafening applause, Spitfire pointed a finger down the parkway, towards the gym. "If she can't see the smoke, let's bring the fire to her!"
The crowd erupted in cheers. Protesters hefted their signposts higher. Someone packed the speakers and microphones onto a bike trailer, and others pulled the banners from the railings. Activists in matching t-shirts circled Spitfire, keeping her insulated. The banner bearers led the way down Iron Avenue. Then the rest of the crowd began to move, first in a trickle and then a flood. A parade. The bike cop brigade also set off, crawling alongside the banner bearers. Natalie waited for the bulk of the crowd to flow past before she hopped down from the aggron sculpture and trailed after.
Someone took up a megaphone and began a chant. "No pipeline! No way! No pipeline—"
In a jumble, the crowd finished: "Not today!"
Up ahead, the crowd oozed across the boulevard, forcing cars to stop in the middle of the road. Nearby, three boys began to drum on five-gallon buckets they'd strapped to their chests with bungee cords. The rhythm drove into her, pounding through her chest to the soles of her feet. Whoever had the speakers on their bike had started blasting, "Roxanne! Put on the red light!" Natalie grinned.
The protesters wove between the cars, dancing and laughing and shouting chants. Someone knocked on the hood of a car as he passed. Natalie walked close enough to another car to see the look of boredom and frustration on the driver's face, to feel the heat radiating from the grille. Well, they should get out and join, then. She hadn't felt so powerful since the first time she'd won a pokemon battle.
She hadn't expected the protest to be fun.
"No pipeline!" Another megaphone, closer.
Natalie joined the refrain without thinking. "No way!"
"No pipeline!"
With all the force she could muster, "Not today!" Natalie could hardly hear her own voice among the hundreds.
She glanced behind and saw more police bringing up the rear. They kept a reasonable distance, but still Natalie felt a chill. They wore riot armor with several pokeballs clipped on each armband. Better to have them around to keep things safe than not, she told herself, begrudgingly. But she reached down to touch one of her own pokeballs for reassurance.
Next to her, a girl in a mechanic's jumpsuit caught her eye and grinned. She offered Natalie a Hell no, DevCo sign, but Natalie waved it off. She wanted to keep her hands free.
Although Natalie had passed the same shops and office towers and courthouse each day walking between the hostel and the gym, they looked different from the middle of the street, as if she were seeing them from underwater. On the sidewalks, mothers with strollers and shoppers with bags gawked. Some pulled out phones and tablets to record. Others looked on disapprovingly.
Natalie lifted her head high. Her brother would be proud, she knew, to see her doing more than watching from the sidelines. She didn't know how much of a difference it would make, but at least she was doing something. It felt good to be in motion, to be headed towards something.
She moved closer to the girl in the jumpsuit and shouted to be heard over the drumming and chanting: "Do you know what the plan is? Are we just trying to get people to join?"
The girl shook her head and grinned. "We're gonna surround the gym, shut it down for as long as possible. No pipelines, no badges."
A private chant started in Natalie's heart: No badges, no way! No bullshit, not today! Screw Mark, but it was still a good phrase.
They moved through a roundabout where several side streets connected with Iron Avenue, and then the streets suddenly quieted enough to hear the police radios buzz. The crowd slowed.
At first she couldn't tell what had happened. Then she saw the people pouring in from the side streets, at least thirty on either side of the crowd, maybe more. Each wore shades of red from the waist up, their faces covered: red sweaters and jackets with hoods pulled tight around the eyes, bomber jackets and ski masks, red baseball caps, a red leather jacket, and even one red headscarf. Every single one of them also wore a red kerchief emblazoned with a black letter M for MGMA.
A low sound of displeasure rippled through the protesters, more a groan than a boo. The cops nearest to Natalie, at the rear of the crowd, exchanged glances and palmed their pokeballs. The silence sizzled.
Natalie didn't seek out news about gang activity, not like Dad did, but she knew the rumors all the same, that Magma liked to stir up trouble, harass the police. Break into politicians' homes and threaten them.
In a flash, Natalie wondered if they had also been involved in her brother's disappearance.
Finally, one of the protesters called out over a bullhorn, "This is a peaceful protest!"
There was a low chuckle from the red bloc. Almost too quiet for Natalie to hear, a voice shot back, "Tell that to the cops!"
Then someone shouted loudly enough to be heard widely, "Who are we?"
The red bloc answered in one voice, "Earth's army!"
The hair rose along Natalie's arms.
"Why are we here?"
"To defend free speech!"
Then the red bloc took up the same anti-pipeline chant the protesters had been calling out before: "No pipeline! No way! No pipeline! Not today!" By the third repetition, the crowd began to chant with them. The drumming resumed, intensified. And then they were moving again, together.
Faceless cops behind and ahead, faceless red bloc left and right. Now was probably the smart time to leave. But Natalie knew Bubba would've stayed, and she was no quitter.
The gym was close enough now for Natalie to see the stainless steel dome. The protesters and the red bloc crossed another street, cutting off traffic again. Then they came to the park with the stone sculptures, the gym steps laid out in front of them one block away. Confused-looking trainers hung around outside the gym, and more cops too.
Between the gym and the protesters was a barricade of police officers mounted on snorting rhyhorn and donphan. Natalie was surprised for a moment by how quickly they'd mobilized until she realized: they'd been expecting this.
"Let's keep it moving, folks," an officer boomed over megaphone.
The crowd's frustration was Natalie's frustration. They were demonstrating peacefully—why shouldn't they be allowed in front of the gym? What was the point if they weren't allowed? She followed the crowd forward.
They jammed up against the mounted officers at the park gates, and then moved no further. The chants grew louder and more furious. Then a new cry rang out over one bullhorn, then another, and slowly passed through the crowd. "Sit—down! Sit—down!"
In a wave spreading from the head of the crowd, the protesters all around began to lower themselves to the pavement. They sat cross-legged or with their knees to their chests. Natalie hesitated, nervously eyeing the MGMA. The red bloc tensed. But, a few beats behind everyone else, Magma took a knee. That seemed to Natalie like a safer positioning, so she followed suit.
The rhyhorn and donphan towered over them, blocking out the view of the gym. She couldn't see the police officers' eyes, but she could feel their gaze bearing down all the same.
The protesters' megaphones blared, "Link up, tighten up!" One by one, the crowd linked arms.
A girl with a mohawk offered Natalie her arm, but Natalie shook her head. Prickling with nervous energy, she scanned over the heads of the crowd. She was caught between the protesters on her left and half of the red bloc on her right. Surrounding them was a ring of black, officers in riot gear, squeezing in closer. She wondered if it would even be possible to fight her way out if it came to that.
An officer announced over the megaphone, "You are ordered to continue peacefully down the parkway or disperse."
Where were they supposed to go, hemmed in like that?
Two protesters with megaphones shouted over him: "We won't stand up!"
"Roxanne, stand up for us!"
A mouthful, Natalie thought, but the crowd picked it up anyway.
Her leg was beginning to cramp when a cry of dismay rose up from the crowd. She started to rise, trying to see what was happening. To her right she heard, "Get ready. Here we go." The edge of the crowd was a flurry of movement, arms and bodies tangling. She couldn't see much, but felt in her gut it had to be Magma.
Then, in a perfect arc, a fist-sized rock flew from out of the crowd and pegged one of the police rhyhorn. The rock couldn't have hurt it, but the rhyhorn bellowed and reared, stomping back down heavily.
The backlash was immediate. With a whoosh, dozens of pokeballs opened all at once, releasing dustox and weezing outfitted with gray police power-limiter bands. There was a flurry of police radio noise. And then clouds of gray smog and insect scales filled the air.
Natalie gasped, choked, and pulled her t-shirt up over her nose and mouth.
Before she could begin to move, the Magma group to her right was already on its feet amid a surge of flashing red lights. A massive camerupt materialized with an earth-shaking roar, silhouetted through the smog. A nidoqueen, an exploud, an aggron—more she didn't have time to see as she fought her way to her feet.
Eyes stinging, she pulled the girl with the mohawk to her feet—only to be nearly knocked down herself when she was jostled from behind. Her ears rang with screams and sirens and pokemon cries, and her chest burned. For a moment all she could do was stay upright and try to see where she was going.
There was a break in the fog as a golbat swept overhead and threw itself into a weezing. As pokemon smashed into each other above and on all sides, Natalie grabbed a pokeball from her belt. "Amelia!" she croaked and sent out her wingull. The wingull looped around her and then, with a confused squawk, landed on Natalie's shoulder, shivering. "Clear the air!" With another squawk, the wingull spread her wings and pushed off, beating the smog back from her trainer's face.
Natalie struggled to draw in a breath without coughing and her eyelids felt heavy, but she turned and realized she suddenly had room to move. In a matter of seconds, Magma had pushed forward from behind the cover of their pokemon. Their camerupt reared and smashed its way between two rhyhorn, plowing the mounted officers to the ground. The red bloc pushed through the gap with a wild shout.
Smog continued to pour down on them, even as flying-type pokemon swept back and forth to break apart the clouds. Black pokeballs glinted through the smoke. Lights blinked in and out as the red bloc recalled their own pokemon—only to send them back out in a new spot, avoiding the black police balls.
The dustox scales were making Natalie's head fuzzy, even with Amelia circling above her. She shook her head, squinting. In front of her was open sidewalk. Natalie started to move towards it, but something made her turn and glance over her shoulder.
Behind her, the crowd of protesters began to collapse inward, pinching apart into two smaller groups. Protesters toppled one by one as if the floor had opened under them. It took her a moment to catch the blue sparks spraying up from the crowd. Manectric.
Less than a few yards away, a manectric exploded out of the smog to tackle a protester—a skinny girl with a knee brace. The manectric stood on the girl's back, growling and fizzing with electricity.
All the blood rushed to Natalie's head and her stomach clenched. Then the manectric lifted its head and fixed its red eyes on her.
Something struck the manectric sidelong and knocked it to the pavement. Natalie couldn't see what had done it. As the two pokemon swatted at each other, someone in a red coat leaned down and helped the girl with the knee brace to her feet.
As Natalie turned, she saw others, like a red thread winding through the chaos. A Magma girl with a pair of baltoy hovering on either side of her stood between a cop and a handful of protesters who sagged from the sleep powder. A man in red sat astride a second camerupt, and protesters crouched behind it. One of the red bloc directed a dusclops to cast a glittering light screen over a section of the crowd.
They were actually helping. Protecting people.
Half of the red bloc faced off against the police blockade, forcing them back foot by foot with their pokemon and creating space for activists to push through to the gym. Natalie thought she saw Spitfire and her breloom make a lunge through the smog. The rest of the bloc was among the crowd, the last effort keeping it from coming apart completely. A scattering of regular trainers had released their pokemon into the crowd too, but mostly Natalie saw red.
She glanced one more time at the open space ahead of her. This was the best chance she'd have to get away before things got worse, a clear shot.
Instead, she tossed out Samson's pokeball, called for Amelia to follow, and shouldered her way back into the fray with one hand pulling her t-shirt up higher over her nose and mouth.
Natalie moved towards the place where the police line wedged through the crowd of protesters. At her command, Samson swung and knocked aside one manectric and then another. He grabbed one by its hind legs and heaved it through the police line, and then made a scary sound she'd never heard him make before. A howl of bloodlust. She felt electric with it, hardly even noticing the burning in her throat.
"Hold the line!"
She couldn't tell if the shout came from the red bloc or the police.
An unseen pokemon zipped behind her, narrowly missing her—impossible to say whether it had been friend or foe. Nearby, cops dragged protesters away in handcuffs. There was a crash and then car alarms. Smoky shadows of pokemon tangled everywhere she turned.
The other half of the crowd was completely blocked off by the police line now. She'd lost sight of them. Still she pressed ahead, back to back with her gurdurr, and pulled straggling protesters out of reach of the police manectric. She side-stepped an officer who made a grab for her and kept moving.
She nearly tripped over a fallen protester before she saw him. With no hesitation, she knelt. Samson stood over her, head swiveling. "Can you stand?" The protester had a gash across his temple, and it took Natalie's full strength to pull him to his knees. He bobbled his head in half-sleep, eyes streaming. "Amelia, water!" She crouched with him until he waved her aside and rose, swaying.
"I'm okay."
Samson pushed and made room for the protester to wobble away, towards the open.
Natalie began to stand, swooning a little herself. And she looked up to see a manectric streak towards her, electricity streaming off its fur. She staggered—fell. Samson turned, but too slowly. She had time only to raise an arm over her head—
There was a shower of purple sparks. Inches away from her face, the manectric crashed into empty air and stopped. Its teeth gnashed against nothing for an instant before an invisible force slammed it down and away.
Someone grabbed Natalie by the arms, wrenching her back. Dizzy and throwing elbow hooks, she fought.
But it wasn't a cop.
"Hey, hey, I'm trying to help!"
She caught her balance and found herself looking up into a face mostly hidden by a red hood and a Magma bandana.
"So how do you like ugly?"
Natalie struggled to parse the question. Was his bandana hiding a horrible disfigurement? Was he threatening her? She fought for breath, winded and choking on the thick air in spite of the t-shirt over her mouth. Her hysteria mounted—
Then she recognized those sharp gray eyes, the day-old scrape running through his eyebrow. And she knew his voice. "Mark?"
His solrock glided in front of them, eyes glowing violet. "Keep it up, Ore." He patted the dome of its back as it passed on its way to knock aside another manectric.
Then he turned to her and shoved a pressurized bottle into her hand. "Here." Antidote. No sooner than she twisted the cap and released the vapor into her face—gasping in relief as it cooled the fire in her lungs—Mark was pulling her by the arm. "Come on, this way." Away from the police line.
Samson toddled behind them, swinging his arms wildly to keep up. Amelia circled anxiously.
"I can still help them," she protested.
Ignoring her, Mark spoke into a radio clipped to his hood. "Russet—we're heading out."
She barely heard the reply over the wailing sirens: "Copy that, Ruby. We'll follow you out shortly."
Then Mark cupped a hand around his mouth, over the bandana. "Close ranks! Let's go!"
Natalie pulled against his grip until he stopped and turned to look at her. Lightheaded, she stumbled into him, only his hand on her arm stopping her from losing her balance again. She couldn't read his expression. Beyond caring, she spluttered, "You're just going to leave them?"
But even as she spoke, she could see it was over. Several cops together carried a kicking protester away from the gym. More officers struggled with a second protester who'd managed to handcuff himself to the gym doors. The crowd was scattered and thin, and the police line was advancing again. Red and blue lights flashed as two more squad cars and a black van screeched to a stop, blocking off the parkway. The van lurched as a pair of purple-glowing metang and three machoke clambered out. Then a squadron of police officers with riot shields and rifles jumped down from the van, trailed by a slipstream of semi-tangible dark-type pokemon.
All around, the red bloc streamed away from the remains of the crowd like blood from a wound.
And they left destruction in their wake: overturned cars smoldered, filling the air with the stink of burning rubber. Someone in a Guy Fawkes mask galloped past on a rapidash, brandishing a burning Hoenn flag. Broken glass scattered the street. Iron Avenue looked like it had been bombed. How had it happened so fast?
"What the actual fuck, Mark."
"Come on. We gotta go." His voice was gentle, but his unreadable eyes floated in a sea of red. A golbat swooped and began to circle around his head, chirping. "Alright, Octavia, I know!"
All around she heard cries from the red bloc: "Pull out! Tighten up! Keep moving!"
She shook her head and stepped back. Her head spun.
He let out a frustrated sigh. "Please don't stay here and get yourself arrested. That'd be a real fucking waste." He paused. Then with a smirk in his voice, he added, "See you around, I guess." With that he turned and ran, following the rest of the red bloc towards a side street, his golbat darting ahead and his solrock bringing up the rear.
With a glance behind at the encroaching special forces, the squad cars blocking the other end of the street, the protesters on the asphalt handcuffed in a line, the cars belly-up and spurting flame—Natalie did the only thing that made sense. She recalled Samson and then ran for the safety of the side street, behind Magma.
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.
The mightyena bite on Mark's arm took twelve stitches to close—a new scar to match old ones. He could've died instead, he reminded himself, but the hour under fluorescent lights and the drudgery of hospital paperwork had dulled the urgency of that thought.
He kept catching his hand dip down to the empty space on his belt where Gibson, his first, was supposed to be. Yeah, asshole. Still gone.
While he waited for the tetanus shot, Mark took advantage of the doctor's absence to send Cora a text message. I'm an idiot. ORCA ambush. An explanation and an apology.
Her reply was almost immediate. R u hurt?
Not bad.
Where r u?
Magma only messaged through an encrypted connection, but he hesitated. Urgent care. Done soon.
Where? Cora repeated.
Mark supposed it wouldn't hurt for a friend to know where he was, just in case, so he told her which hospital. By the time he was allowed to leave with his care instructions (dropped into the first trash can he passed), Cora already sat in the waiting room. Not exactly surprising to see her, but he hadn't expected her to come alone.
From the dark crisscross of tattoos up her arms to her torn right earlobe and badly dyed pink hair, Cora looked too wild to be allowed to sit in the waiting room, flipping casually through an old edition of Trainer Today. Maybe to a stranger she came off as no different from any other trainer who had been too long on the road. Messy hair, dirty sneakers, some bad judgment with facial piercings—all of that was acceptable in trainers, charming even. But then, a stranger wouldn't know the story behind the torn earlobe, the earring ripped out in a back alley fight. And he'd seen what she'd done afterward to the person responsible.
He waited to speak until he stood close enough to keep his voice a low murmur. "Why are you still wearing that?"
Cora glanced down as if noticing her red sweater for the first time. She gave him a shrug and a wolfish grin. "A color's not a crime." Hopping to her feet, she said, "All right, Rocky Balboa. Lemme see."
Mark rolled his eyes but held out his arm.
Cora ogled the stitches, making exaggerated noises of appreciation and indignation. "Could be worse," she said at last. "You had me worried, the way you said it. Thought I might find you in pieces."
"I said it wasn't bad. My team got beat to shit though." He swallowed, reaching again to the empty space on his belt. "And Gibs is gone."
"What does that mean?" She squinted, unable or unwilling to understand.
"Gone means gone, Cora." He clenched and unclenched his fists. "They stole his ball."
Gibs was the thief. It shouldn't be possible for a thief to be stolen like a goddamn wallet.
In the ten years they'd been partners, the petty thievery was a constant, both funny and frustrating. Every morning, after he brewed his coffee and before he stepped out the door, Mark patted his pockets to see what Gibs had shadow-swiped that day. Phone, wallet, keys—? Sometimes Gibs would get sneaky about it, take only his ID instead of the wallet itself. It was a game. It was also a way to remind Mark who was boss.
As a purrloin, Gibs had left little treasures on Mark's pillow, mostly loose change and bottle caps. Sometimes feathers or marbles or keys, and once a silver ring. Mark had tried to train him out of the habit, but it was hard to return the items when Mark didn't know where they'd come from, and harder to keep Gibs from nightly prowls when he could phase through the bedroom wall anyway.
And now he was gone.
In the urgent care waiting room, Mark tried not to contemplate the very real possibility that Gibs' pokeball might be sinking in the harbor by now. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Fuck, Mark," said Cora.
The woman sitting closest to them shot them a disapproving look. Mark gave himself a mental slap. They shouldn't be talking about this here.
"We'll fuck 'em up good. We'll get him back." Cora squeezed his shoulder. The gesture nearly undid him.
"I know." Mark forced himself to step back from her touch and stand up straighter. He couldn't break down here. Not in front of Cora, and definitely not in front of strangers. "Let's get out of here. I still have to hit the pokemart."
Outside, night had fallen, but the streets were still thick with people and cars. ORCA was still somewhere out there too. How many of them? Mark wondered. He couldn't shake the feeling of being exposed. Gibs was supposed to be his eyes in the dark, guarding his back. In fact, until the rest of his team had a chance to recuperate, the only pokemon left for his protection was Jemisin, his slow and surly gigalith.
But at least Cora was here.
"Thanks for coming," he said, belatedly. "You didn't have to."
"Of course I did. We're a team."
At that, Mark finally cracked a smile. He knew her better than almost anyone, he realized with a rush of something like gratitude. There was so much about his life, his politics, that he would never have to explain to her. Like him, she was a transplant. She'd been a gym trainer once too, in Cinnabar, though that was before she'd found Magma. And, like him, she was willing to fight for a better world, even at a cost. That was the only thing that really mattered.
"Speaking of ..." he said. "Where's everyone else?"
Cora shrugged. "Some folks wanted to run jail support for the Root Revolution folks. And at least a couple have to file claims for stolen pokemon."
Stolen by cops, she meant.
Ironically, the best way to get back a pokemon seized under Unified Hoenn Code Title 8 was to file a police report: by complete coincidence, someone stole my pokemon the exact day of the protest that you can't prove I attended. I sure hope it wasn't involved in any crime! As long as the pokemon hadn't been flagged as evidence in an ongoing investigation and as long as the trainer could dig up their registration documents, there was a chance the cops would return it. If they were in a generous mood.
Now that one of Mark's pokemon really had been stolen, the police were the last people he expected to help.
Cora shrugged and continued, "I think the rest of the squad either went home or out for drinks."
Alarm bells rang in Mark's mind, but he kept his voice controlled. "Are you sure that's a good idea, with what just happened?" He wanted his people ready for another fight if necessary, not staggering around drunk—calling attention to themselves at best, getting picked up by the police at worst.
"Don't scold me. People need to blow off steam. It's been a weird day for all of us."
Mark squinted at her but said nothing. He'd left his squad in her charge after the protest, and it was too late to be upset about it now. Mark wasn't Cora's supervisor and he had no right to tell her what to do—especially when she'd already done him a favor taking his team.
Montag had made both of them officers for a reason, Mark reminded himself. And Mark mostly trusted Cora, but he always trusted Montag.
Anyway, he could message a few of the more responsible ones on his way home, make sure they kept everything under control. Satisfied that this wasn't another crisis, Mark finally answered, "Weird is one word for it."
His thoughts flashed to Natalie, how guileless she had seemed, so eager to prove herself. And maybe that part had been sincere, but it was ORCA she was eager to impress. A new recruit, probably. Idiot, he scolded himself again, clenching his teeth. He let out a long, slow breath.
Cora pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag as they walked. Propping an unlit one between her lips, she offered the pack wordlessly to Mark.
"Nah, I quit." And then, because he knew she already knew, he added, "Years ago."
His sister hadn't actually asked him to quit, but after the look on her face that first time she'd found the pack in his coat pocket, he made the decision himself. It wasn't fair to her. Kathy hadn't chosen to destroy her lungs. How could he flaunt his choice to ruin his?
"I know." Cora shrugged and tucked the pack away. "Thought you deserved a pick-me-up. Small joys are all I've got to offer."
His expression softened. "Thanks anyway."
Cora lit her cigarette and took a quick drag. "So what exactly happened?"
Mark sighed again. The further he got from that moment, the stupider his own actions seemed to him. "I was trying to recruit someone. Seemed like a perfect fit." In need of a purpose. A sense of justice. Unafraid to jump into a fight. And he'd been starting to like her—the admission, even privately, stung. If she'd just listened to him and stayed away from the protest—but no. He wasn't thinking straight. It would have been worse if she'd stayed away, because then he might have actually brought in a fucking mole. "I guess the pirates thought so too."
Cora growled, "The fuck are they doing way over here anyway? Can't be good."
"No," he agreed.
"You shouldn't have gone off alone though."
"I know." And he should've kept Gibs out with him. "With the protest—I wanted to talk before she got the wrong idea or …."
At the word she, Cora flicked her gaze to him but said nothing.
"Well, it doesn't matter now anyway." Mark kicked a crumpled can off the sidewalk. "I didn't think it would be like that. Captain fucking Ahab himself was there."
Cora grumbled under her breath. "Here?"
"I know."
"We've gotta do something about them. Like, yesterday."
"I know."
They walked the last few blocks to the trainer supply shop in silence. Cora waited outside with her cigarette while Mark ducked in, saying, "This won't take long."
His feet turned automatically to the Medicines and Wound Care aisle. Not for the first or the last time, Mark wished he could simply drop his belt off at the nearest pokemon center. But it would be a challenge to explain why all of his pokeballs were registered to trainer IDs that were scrambled strings of letters and numbers instead of his own name—better to lose one pokemon than to be arrested and lose them all.
Mark shook his head and began loading potions into his shopping basket, because he still had pokemon to take care of. He tried not to think too hard about the cost—there was no avoiding it. His gym ID, at least, still offered a little cushion in the form of a discount.
Not for much longer, he supposed. Natalie could easily out him to Roxanne—or the police—and footage from CCTV and the gym would eventually surface to support her claims. Careful wasn't perfect, after all. And he hadn't been that careful. It would take more than her word and some circumstantial evidence to pin a case on him, but that wasn't all he had to worry about.
Easy enough to get a new number, quit the gym. He hadn't planned to leave this soon, but he had no reason to care about giving two weeks notice. He wasn't exactly looking for a letter of recommendation from Roxanne. He could even find a new apartment if he had to. Harder to change his name and face, and those could be connected to home and—
He needed to talk to Montag as soon as possible. Also, he should call Kathy, but thinking about Montag and his sister in the same span of seconds made him wince.
Gods, Mark was tired.
One thing at a time. Montag. That was the first priority.
Mark left through the side entrance and slipped around back, firing a quick text at Cora to let her know he'd be another minute longer. Then it was just him and the dumpsters and the long shadows.
First he needed Orwell. It pained him to release a pokemon only to see it remain unmoving on the ground—even after repeated losses at the gym, he wasn't used to it. He uncapped a potion and sprayed until it was empty, watching Ore's scrapes and scuffs begin to close themselves bit by bit.
What his solrock really needed—had been needing for weeks—was a full night to recharge in the moonlight. Harder to give it what it needed in the city with all its light pollution and smog. They needed to get out of Rustboro for a while, both of them. The sooner the better.
He felt Ore flicker awake, a prickle at the back of his mind, before it physically stirred. After a moment, the solrock rose jerkily up and up until Mark could stand and still be at eye-level.
"Hey, Ore. How're you feeling?" He used to feel self-conscious about talking to a creature that had few of the parts normally associated with a face. Now he only felt relief. When Ore responded with a chime and a psychic nudge—nothing like words, but a question nonetheless—Mark grinned. "I'm not hurt. Thank you. We're okay."
Except for Gibs—
Mark shook his head. "You feel up for making a phone call with me?"
Orwell whirred, glowing a little brighter.
"Alright then."
As Mark dug through his bag, the solrock started up with a series of beeps and staticky notes that reminded him of a dial-up tone. It vibrated through his skull and in his teeth—not pleasant, but a necessary security measure. His fingers closed around the Faraday pouch that held his second phone. This one was only used for calling Montag—or Corner Pizza as he was officially listed in the contacts. Just in case. Mark took a moment to collect his thoughts and then made the call.
Montag answered after a couple rings. "Hello, Mark."
He straightened up. "How are you, sir?"
His mental image of Montag always defaulted to their first meeting: Montag in a blazer and a t-shirt. Henna-red hair, collar-length and combed back. A stark face, angular and clean-shaven. A look in his eyes like he knew Mark's thoughts and judged him for them.
"Busy, as usual." There was a smile in his voice. Busy was good then. Meant things were lining up. "How did it go?"
"About as expected."
"It does matter, you know. Builds numbers."
"I know. I'm not complaining."
"Hm," said Montag, and Mark could hear the smirk and the eyebrow raise in it.
"Anyway, it was fine. Nobody hurt, nobody arrested." Of course, people had been hurt and arrested, but not their people.
"So what wasn't fine?" Each word was crisp, even through the layers of Ore's static.
Mark grimaced. "ORCA was there, after. Second time this week." The first, he realized, had been right after he met Natalie. A couple of them spray painting their skull and crossbones, spotted by one of his newly recruited college kids. Couldn't be a coincidence. "This time Sinbad was with them."
The name had finally stopped sounding ridiculous to him. He'd run into ORCA enough times over the years to know they were a threat precisely because their leader was the kind of madman who would name himself for a folk hero.
Montag didn't speak for a long moment. "Interesting," he finally said.
"And ... one of them recognized me from the gym. She knows my name."
"Not good."
"I know." He looked at the ground as he spoke, even though he stood alone with a solrock in an alley. Shame coiled in his gut. They both knew what that meant: he could become a police target.
Ore, sensing Mark's distress, made a sympathetic whirr.
"Then you should lay low for a while."
Sit on his hands, in other words. Limit communications. Let Cora handle things. Train. Earn money. Wait.
He closed his eyes. "Yes, sir."
"Or ... we could move you."
Mark waited for the rest to come.
"There's an upcoming intervention. Direct action, you'll be happy to know."
"Say the word and I'm there."
Montag fell quiet and Mark knew he was weighing the risks of giving the details now. Meeting in person had its own risks—being seen together, travel delay. "A team will be disrupting the Ridge Access Pipeline at Route 110."
At Mark's side, Orwell the solrock wobbled mid-air, the only real indication of Mark's shock, the way his stomach dropped.
Mark had left Unova because of Montag, but he'd stayed in Hoenn at least in part because he'd fallen in love with it. The jungle. The blue-green water. The stars. Unova still had its stretches of green, but not like here. In Hoenn there were places where you could walk for days and never see signs of humans—no bridges, no towers on the horizon, no sounds of traffic on the other side of the trees. Hard to swallow the idea of making a part of it a little shittier, even for the sake of giving DevCo a black eye.
He composed himself before answering, "Sounds ... messy."
"Yes," said Montag, grim but firm. "I'm not making this call lightly. It's been under consideration for quite some time, and I can't see a better way to demonstrate how dangerous Devon has become."
And how dangerous we've become.
Perhaps sensing Mark's hesitation, Montag continued, voice soft and low, "Ridge Access has leaked four times in the last three years, thousands of gallons. And it will again. On average it takes DevCo nine hours to take notice and respond. If we do it, we'll have control of where and how it happens. And it won't go unnoticed. By anyone."
"Right." Mark made a face but nodded. "Doesn't make the MetFalls line look very promising if the existing one goes to shit."
"Exactly. Proof that DevCo bleeds oil. Hurts their bottom line in more ways than one."
No progress without a price. If anyone was going to force DevCo's hand it wouldn't be Spitfire and Root Revolution, not on their own.
After a moment, Montag said quietly, "You don't have to take the mission, Mark. There's always other work to be done."
"No, I—" Mark paused to calculate. "I can be there in five days."
"Good. I feel better knowing you'll be there."
"Thank you, sir."
"Tabitha will connect with you in Mauville."
At that, Mark suppressed a groan. Tabitha didn't like him. Easier to accept they were on the same side when they were on opposite sides of the country. "Yes, sir."
"See if you can gather up one or two people you trust. If Sinbad's ramping up their activity .…"
"Likely to be trouble." Mark pulled his mouth into what wasn't quite a smile. He hoped the girl who'd stolen Gibs would show her face again. Natalie too.
Fuck, he couldn't even think about Gibs without thinking about her now.
"Keep it quiet though. The fewer who know, the better. Especially considering—"
"I understand. Don't worry."
"I know. You're not stupid. But one can't be too careful."
"Right."
"We'll be in touch. Let me know when you've arrived in Mauville."
"I will."
"Take care."
When the line disconnected, Mark waved Orwell down and let out a long breath. "Well, Ore, at least we'll get to be out of the city for a while."
But the prospect of having something tangible to hit was less rewarding than he'd expected. Maybe in the morning it would feel different.
Right now what he really wanted was for Gibs to throw his paws onto Mark's shoulders and butt his head against his face until his purring rumbled through Mark's entire body. With a sickening twist in his stomach, Mark wondered whether Gibs knew what had happened. The pirate couldn't possibly be foolish enough to release him—Gibs would cut her to shreds on sight. Then, what? A trophy, Mark supposed.
Maybe Cora was right and he'd find a way to get his liepard back. He needed to believe it was possible if he'd have any hope of sleeping tonight.
Out on the sidewalk, he found Cora lost in her own thoughts, still smoking. She looked softer in the half-light.
"Sorry I took so long. Had to make a phone call."
Orwell, hovering behind, beeped in greeting.
Cora turned and, for an instant, the way the streetlight turned her pink hair redder, she almost looked like—
She watched at him out of the corner of her eye as she tipped her head back to exhale smoke. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Regretting your choice? Not too late. I won't tell." She held the cigarette out to him.
"You're a bad influence," he said, but he accepted it anyway and took a drag.
"I know." She smirked. "So how's Dad?"
"He says not to let you burn the house down while I'm gone."
"Please. We all know that's what I do best."
He shook his head but smiled.
"So you're leaving town?"
"A few things to clean up first. But yeah. Tomorrow, probably." He was glad not to have to explain. Cora knew not to ask. To follow Montag's plan was to agree to keep secrets, even from friends.
"Too bad. I guess I'm the biggest asshole in Rustboro now."
He grinned. "Did you want to …?" Mark trailed off and took another drag instead. Was it Cora making him feel better or the nicotine? "Never mind." He passed the cigarette back.
Cora cocked her head to one side. "Were you gonna invite me over?"
Mark frowned, even though he'd started it. They didn't really do that anymore. Bad optics, for one. If they agreed about a course of action, it would look like it was because they were fucking. If they disagreed, it would look like it was because they were in a fight. And it felt cheap. Wanting someone after a near-death experience was too easy with all the endorphins, nothing but a temporary high. It didn't lead to anything that could or should last.
But he was still feeling sorry for himself, so he admitted, "Yeah."
As much as he could trust her to have his back, he could trust her not to take anything too seriously—including this.
"Well," she said, flashing a smile, "safety in numbers, after all."
He rented a studio apartment on the south end of town, intended as student housing. A couple of those students had been wearing red bandanas at the protest a few hours before—Mark knew how to pick them. Usually.
Cora spoke up as they stepped inside, "You know, Mark, I get that capitalism is a scam and all, but you don't have to live in a box. I've got a good idea what gym money looks like, and this isn't it."
He set his bag down in the chair, careful to avoid looking at Gibs' food dish. "I don't need a lot." None of the furniture was his. Everything he owned fit in his backpack, even the stovetop espresso maker—he was still a trainer, after all. And he'd be on the road again soon.
"Sure, but a poster wouldn't hurt. Some plants—something."
"I'm barely here anyway."
Tomorrow he'd put his apartment up on Trainer Pages and leave one of the college kids in charge of the keys. Some trainers would be willing to pay a premium for a few nights with a shower and a room to themselves. By the time he returned, Mark might make back almost as much as he would lose from leaving the gym.
She bent to examine the one decoration he'd taped up, a photo over the desk. "This your sister? She looks like you."
"Mm."
"Is she the sick one?"
"The cellist." He didn't like the pitying look that crossed Cora's face.
"Oh," she said. "Is that the other one?"
"There's just the one." Mark sat on the bed heavily. "I don't really want to talk about my sister right now, Cora."
So she joined him on the bed, and for some time they stopped talking altogether.
After, she slept curled away from him, quiet snores rising from her side of the bed. Mark drifted in and out of sleep. A few times, he started awake at a small shove from Cora; he'd reached his arm around her, mistaking her warm body for Gibs'. At last, as the sky lightened outside, Mark dropped into a deep sleep, only mildly troubled by the odor of crude oil that wafted through his dreams.
Night had already fallen when Natalie awoke, dry-mouthed, aching, and unsure of where she was. Blearily, she started to swing her feet to the floor, and instead her knees hit something solid. Then everything pitched sideways, forcing her to brace against the wall, and she remembered: she was aboard the Ultimatum, an ORCA ship.
Her brother's quarters consisted mostly of a twin bed squeezed between the wall and a desk. A skinny window showed stars, and beneath it a map of Hoenn had been hand-painted directly on the wall. The door was almost within arms' reach from where she sat. Natalie was used to sleeping on narrow hostel bunks (and carefully ignoring thoughts of who else might have lain there), but she was also used to having the freedom to explore the city or return to the wooded trails. For the next few days, she would only have a cubbyhole, the open ocean, and a group of confirmed criminals.
She could've stayed put. She could've continued on to Lavaridge—screw ORCA and the Rustboro gym, too. But that would've meant letting Archie slip away again. And if she'd let him go this time, she might've never seen him again.
Natalie sat up, more carefully this time. The effects of sleep powder had lasted longer than she'd expected, much to her frustration—she'd been swooning during the journey to the ship once the adrenaline had worn off—and she was still a little lightheaded. Or maybe it was because of the rolling of the ship now. All the same, she took a deep breath and stood, steadying herself against the edge of the desk. She didn't know what she was going to say yet, but it was time to find her brother.
Natalie pulled the door open and—nearly smacked into someone passing in the corridor. She yelped in surprise, too startled to apologize. A linoone wound between his feet, and if she didn't know better, she would've thought he was a regular trainer. It unsettled her more than it comforted her.
"Oh, you're ... You must be looking for Sinbad, right?" Before she could formulate her response to the unfamiliar name, he continued, "I think he's down in the strategy—you know, I'd better just show you." His linoone had already darted ahead, chittering impatiently from the bottom of the stairs.
Natalie didn't have any better ideas, so she allowed herself to be led down the narrow stairwell to another hallway nearly identical to the one they'd left. How many of these passages were there? Despite the cramped corridors, the Ultimatum felt vast and unknowable. As they passed, she slowed to peer through the doorways that were open: an infirmary, some kind of storage room, a cabin packed with bunk beds—Archie's cabin had been more generous than she'd realized. The thought made her uneasy in ways she didn't want to deal with yet.
And then she heard her brother's voice down the hallway. "So we go get another set of plans. No big deal."
"I guess so. But DevCo hurt, Sin. I lost my sealeo back there and nothing you say can unfuck that situation. We can't keep—"
Natalie's guide rapped on the open doorframe. "Sorry to interrupt, but I've got your sister here."
She leaned to see in. Newspaper clippings and maps had been taped along the walls, and a wireless transmitter chattered to itself in a corner. Natalie smiled hesitantly at the sight of Archie, but he was turned away, frowning in concentration. He leaned over a table with the woman from the parking lot, the blood cleaned from her face. Another woman Natalie didn't recognize stood to one side, her hair a massive cloud of orange curls and her face a mask of sorrow.
The woman from the parking lot caught Natalie's gaze and jumped up with a snarl. "Fucksake, Jax—you can't bring her in here. She's not one of us."
But Archie silenced her with a hand on her arm. "It's alright, Scarlet. We might as well wrap up for now." He turned to Natalie and said, "I bet you're hungry, right?"
She smelled a distraction, but she also hadn't eaten since—oh—the bagel at the hostel that morning. No wonder she felt so weak and unsteady. "Yeah, kind of."
"I bet it's not too late to talk to Chef." He started forward, but Scarlet caught him by the arm.
"Sin."
The two of them exchanged a look that Natalie couldn't read, and then he broke into a grin. "You worry too much." Then he gave in to her pull and bent for a swift kiss.
Natalie looked away. She wasn't usually a prude—when hostel talk devolved into never-have-I-ever, she was the one who would send the others into scandalized laughter, determinedly unafraid of laying the personal bare. But this was Bubba. She squirmed thinking of all the people who'd managed to seize some piece of him, who had shared meals and plans and more with him, while Natalie and her parents were left wondering whether he was even alive. He'd built an entire life without them.
"Come on. Galley's this way."
As they made their way further down the hallway, Natalie couldn't help noticing how people always stepped aside to let Archie through, but he never stepped aside for anyone. That uneasy feeling spread in her stomach like creeping vines. "How many people are on this ship anyway?"
"Right now, I think only about twenty-four. Plus however many pokemon."
"Twenty-four?"
As a child, Natalie had occasionally been allowed to tour the dry-docked ships her father helped build. He'd shown her the bare stretches that would soon be stacked with cargo crates, the engine room, and the bridge. The company's boats were always big ticket industry contracts, built for crews of twenty to thirty. Twenty-four was a full-blown, serious operation.
Archie shrugged. "People come and go," he said, misunderstanding her dismay. "Oh good, looks like she's still here. Hey, Chef!"
The chef looked up, gripping a saucepan in one hand and in the other a metal bar that hung from the ceiling. "Oh, hi. New recruit?"
"Natalie, this is Chef Raina."
"Ray. I'd shake your hand, but ... prepping for tomorrow. And that's Mash." She nodded towards a machamp who ignored them, chopping vegetables with two knives at once. Then Chef Ray turned to squint at Archie. "You scrounging for scraps already? I wish you would learn to eat at a normal time."
"Cut me some slack, Chef. Gotta feed the kid. She overslept."
The kid. Still. Natalie hadn't minded it in his emails—she had been a kid ten years ago. And she appreciated him taking care of her, finding her a bed and a meal—a ride home, even. But the word made her feel smaller each time he said it.
He continued, "I was just gonna plate some leftovers, but I don't want to get in the way ..." The galley was a single, tight pathway, already blocked by Ray and Mash.
Ray rolled her eyes but smiled. "I'll heat something up and get Jonas to bring it out."
Archie clapped her on the shoulder. "Backbone of the movement."
With that, Archie pulled Natalie away to what was clearly a mess hall, though it was currently unoccupied. He sat at one of the benches, his back to the wall, and gestured for Natalie to sit opposite him. "So how did you sleep?"
"Fine, I guess." Natalie shifted in her seat. How were they tangled in small talk? This was her brother. But she didn't know how to put words to her feelings—they were too big. She tried, "Is this where you've been the entire time?"
He shrugged, stretching his arms across the back of his bench. "I've been lots of places. You know me—restless feet." His smile didn't meet his eyes, and she didn't smile at all.
"I mean … with ORCA?"
"It's a little more complicated than that, but … more or less, yeah."
She blurted, "But why, Archie?"
He made a face. "No one calls me that anymore. It's Sinbad now."
Natalie lost some of her momentum at that, stumbling over her words. "Okay, fine, but … what happened?" She glanced around and lowered her voice. "Are they threatening you? Are you being blackmailed?"
Archie laughed. "I want to be here. They couldn't keep me away if they tried."
She opened her mouth and quickly shut it again. The ship creaked as it tipped to one side and then the other.
"Whatever you think you know about us," he said, "you don't. Listen, kid, people like to say—"
"Stop calling me that," she snapped. "I'm not a kid anymore."
He frowned, and Natalie braced herself to argue against whatever he was about to say. But all he said was, "I guess you're not."
She set her jaw and pushed ahead in a loud voice, "And it's not about what people say. It's about what I know and what I've seen. Like the shipyard."
Natalie hadn't been at the shipyard, of course—she'd been ten years old. But she'd been called out of school early to sit on the couch with Mom and watch the local news with the solemnity of prayer, waiting for news of Dad. Channel 10 looped the same footage over and over: the fires stretching into the sky, the ships with water cannons and pokemon dousing the flames. And, after, the blackened remnants of the seven ships that had burned. The skull and crossbones slashed across the warehouse doors had left no doubt about who had been responsible.
"Did you know that ORCA attacked our shipyard a couple years ago?" She raised her chin in challenge, but he only stared back.
"I did."
She spluttered, "That's it? Bubba—" But she stopped short. Her childhood nickname for him no longer seemed to fit, but she couldn't quite bring herself to use the new name. "What about Dad? I begged him not to go to work. Every day. For weeks. And you don't have anything to say about it?"
"I didn't want him to go into work either." A dark look crossed his face as he leaned forward across the table. "If you wanna talk about home, let's talk about Devon Horizon. You remember that?"
Natalie folded her arms. "Of course."
"And do you know what happened to the ship after?"
She only hesitated a second. "I mean, it crashed. It's scrap metal."
But by the expression on her brother's face, she was clearly wrong.
"Did you know," he said slowly, "that it was returned to service?"
"No …."
That seemed—well, it wasn't good that the tanker responsible for the worst oil spill in Hoenn history was back on the water.
"It's in Unovan waters now. It says Devon Hudson on the hull, but it's the same tanker doing the same job." He let that sink in for a moment before he added, "Would you like to guess the name of the company that repaired it?"
Natalie closed her eyes.
As a welder, Dad might've even personally laid hands on the ship. Did he know? Natalie started to wonder—but, no, it wouldn't have mattered.
She pictured him leaning against the counter after work, letting out a sigh as he cracked a beer. "Another day another dollar," he would say, but he would smile, too. He wasn't the type to talk about his work—he simply did it and came home—but she could see how proud he was when he pointed out a boat he'd built. It could be a garbage freighter and he'd still be proud.
Good, honest work. Each word sat in her stomach like a brick.
"So what?" Natalie said, ignoring heaviness in her gut. "Gods, what if he'd been hurt? If anyone had!"
"We made sure that wouldn't happen. It's not about hurting people—it's about preventing harm." He eased back in his seat again. "Think about it. Now those tankers will never sail. Less oil burned, less oil spilled."
His tone was so relaxed it struck Natalie speechless. We. So he'd been involved … and he wasn't apologizing.
"Of course, it wasn't much better than stalling for time before DevCo commissions another set of ships. Still better than letting it happen, but ... that's not how we do things these days."
Pointing out that it was also a crime seemed useless. She tried a different tactic. "You can't pretend it didn't hurt people. How many people lost their jobs—"
"Do you hear yourself? Is that what you really think?" he said, voice rising. "Which is worse, losing money or suffocating to death under crude oil?"
"I'm not saying—"
"That shit lingers for decades, killing pokemon, making people sick all down the coast. And it never stops. If it's not DevCo, it's ocean acidification. Fifty years ago, Hoenn had some of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the world, and now half those species are completely gone—in less than one human lifetime. Where do you think we go when we finally fuck it up so badly that humans can't survive our own cesspool?"
Natalie let out a long sigh. "Couldn't you talk to him?" she pleaded.
Archie—or, no, Sinbad—shot her a scathing look. "Sure. Real open-minded guy, our old man. Just loves sharing feelings and debating politics." He laughed. "ORCA's only the half of what he'd hate about me."
She grimaced, thinking of the emails. Don't make this political, Dad had written more than once. End of that conversation.
"Fair point," she admitted.
"It wasn't anything personal against you, Natalie," Archie added more gently. "None of this. But what was I supposed to say? Fuck you and your politics, but say hi to the kid for me?"
Natalie studied her brother's face. He used to look so much like Dad, but the full and curly beard changed the shape of his jaw. Already, a few grays were scattered throughout his dark hair. Maybe he was right—he wasn't Archie anymore.
Dad would be heartbroken if he knew.
She was saved from having to respond by the sound of someone whistling as they approached. A sailor carried two steaming bowls to their table. "Hey, Captain. Cook asked me to bring this over."
"Thanks, Jonas. You'd better help her finish cleaning up."
Captain.
The word hit like a bolt of lightning, but Natalie clamped her teeth shut until the sailor left. "This is your ship?" she hissed. She should've realized, but she hadn't wanted to.
"It's my team."
"Your—"
He gave her a meaningful look, hands spread wide to indicate beyond the confines of the ship.
Sinbad, the pirate king of ORCA.
Natalie felt suddenly sick to her stomach.
The ship lurched again, and he reached to catch Natalie's bowl before it slid off the table. "You should eat before it gets cold."
Dumbly, she took up the bowl and gave it a stir. Some kind of peanutty stir fry. She made herself take a bite, which went down like lead.
"I don't need you to understand, Natalie," said Sinbad. "I got you out of Rustboro and made sure you're safe from Magma along the way—I owe you that much. But if you want to part ways when we dock, so be it. That's not on me anymore." Then he took his own advice and began to eat.
"You're not going to try to convince me to join you?"
He took his time chewing before he answered. "If you're not willing to put your life on the line for this, it isn't for you. And we don't want anyone we have to babysit."
For a second, she was almost insulted.
"What if I tell what I know?" She raised her head high, heart pounding, but even she could hear the fear in her voice. "You gonna come after me?"
He snorted. "You know fuckall. You want to tell the cops my name, the name of my ship? Good for you. Ships don't stay in one place."
She forced herself to chew and swallow. Finally, she said, "I wouldn't anyway."
"Like I said, you can do what you want. You said it yourself—you're not a kid anymore, and I'm not responsible for what kind of person you are. Though if I were you," he said, gesturing with his fork, "I'd be careful leaving Slateport, if nothing else. You've made a nasty enemy."
She almost wanted to laugh. How many times had she told Dad not to worry about the headlines because, after all, Slateport had its own violent crime? But on at least this one point Dad and Sinbad still agreed: home was safe and the world beyond was full of enemies.
And if she'd done what Mark wanted and joined ranks with Magma ... would she have made an enemy of her brother instead?
"I don't get it," she said. "Aren't they basically the same as you?"
His laugh was so sharp and sudden she jumped. "Those jackasses are wasting their energy trying to fix a broken system. ORCA doesn't wait for permission or for the right moment," he said, air-quoting. "We do what needs to be done, what no government is ever going to do, no matter how the system changes."
Lip curling, he added, "And Montag can't stand not being in control of everything, so he has to stick his nose in it anyway." He clenched a fist, suddenly wound tight as a trip wire. "So, no. We're not the same. Not even close."
Natalie still felt ten years behind, sleep powder-heavy. "But I thought you wanted to be in politics. What changed?"
"Nothing did. That's the problem." He added almost wistfully, "I wanted to believe that if I learned to say the right words in the right way, I could make rivers flow uphill." For a moment, he looked like the old Archie, his eyes unfocused and dreamy. Then he flashed a steely smile. "But that's not how it works. The people who have money and power are very good at keeping it."
So you gave up? But she let him go on.
"I was still on the Harry Gordon campaign when Devon Horizon shat all over Slateport. And when I came back from the cleanup ... no one wanted to touch the issue." With an expression full of fire, he sneered, "Eyes on the prize, they said. Education reform first, and we'll tackle the rest when we win. Keep your head down. You can't attack the biggest employer in Rustboro if you want to win, even if they are casually destroying entire ecosystems. Fuck that."
Natalie stirred and stirred the contents of her bowl, unable to make herself eat and unable to tear her gaze from Sinbad's face as he reveled in his outrage.
"That's when I realized the slogans and promises and handshakes were just branding. Harry Gordon called himself progressive, but he didn't actually care what happened to people or pokemon—just his bottom line. Exactly like the other guy. And even after all of that, we lost anyway." He shook his head, chuckling. "So I guess the old man was sort of right. It's a seviper's game, and the skin's always shedding."
Sinbad sank into a stony silence. After a moment, he seemed to remember the bowl in his hands and returned to eating.
He did sound like Dad, who'd made no secret of his scorn for both candidates during the last local election. Natalie had been too young to vote then, and now ... she couldn't say who she would choose. They weren't wrong, Dad and Sinbad. Whoever won, nothing that really mattered seemed to change. But, gods, that didn't mean he could do whatever he—
A chime prompted Sinbad to fish his phone out of a pocket, and he grinned. "Yes! Perfect." He jumped to his feet and then, smile fading a little, glanced at Natalie. "I gotta head up. I'll ask Jonas to show you a bunk when you're done—"
She stood too. "It's fine. I'm done anyway."
He shrugged. "Alright. Then come if you want."
The ship had been quiet before, but now the hall filled with excited chatter, and footsteps clanged up the stairs. Natalie followed Sinbad up until the night air and sea spray touched her face. The deck was crowded with both people and pokemon, many more than when she'd first boarded. Zubats and golbats swooped overhead, an odd sight on the ocean. She tottered, disoriented by the dark and the constant rocking—she didn't think she was imagining that it had gotten worse in the past few minutes—but her brother strode smoothly to the guardrails. So she trailed after.
They'd come to a stop, and a pair of catamarans had joined them. Neither was quite as large or sleek as their ship but, like the Ultimatum, the prow of each had been painted with sharpedo teeth. One also bore a black rose decal, the other a cartoon cannon.
Natalie eyed the water churning around them. It didn't look like the wake of a motor, but she couldn't figure out why it looked strange until she saw a figure lean over the rails of one catamaran with a bucket; when they tipped out its contents, triangular fins jutted from the water. There had to be dozens of them, sharpedo and carvanha both. She had never heard of both schooling together or of sharpedo schooling at all, but if they were feeding them ... Seriously, what was wrong with these people?
Sinbad paid no mind to any of it, squinting into the dark distance and turning from side to side. He froze then leaned forward. "There she is," he said, so low Natalie almost didn't hear him.
She followed his gaze and then gasped. Even from a distance, she could tell the freighter was a monster, at least six times the size of their ship. It held no cargo she could see, and a new name had been superimposed on whatever had been there before, dim but just visible in the moonlight: The Motherfucker. And from across the black expanse of water, she could just make out cheers.
Answering yells rang out all around the deck of the Ultimatum and from the two catamarans, and the noise set the pokemon off, too. Sinbad threw his head back and joined in with a long howl.
Natalie held on tight to the guardrails.
"Sinbad!"
They turned to face another sailor—another pirate—Natalie hadn't seen before. He held up a wine bottle, a questioning look on his face.
Her brother hesitated before he broke into a grin, too. "Fuck it. Let's do it." He took the bottle and raised it over his head in a wordless cheer to the crew. There was another burst of cheers and applause.
A chant broke out: "Speech! Speech! Speech!"
"Alright!" He raised a hand until the crowd settled down and drew close enough to hear, some of them pressing between him and Natalie. The sudden quiet was astonishing—Natalie could hear the waves slapping the ship's hull.
"I'd like to make a toast," he said, "to our generous benefactors."
The crowd chuckled, and it made the hair on Natalie's arms stand on end.
"Here's to Macro Cosmos in honor of their sizable donation to our cause!"
More laughter and applause. Sinbad seemed to grow taller and fiercer with each swell of cheers, and Natalie felt herself shrinking beside him.
"And here's to all of you. You guys have some fucking balls!" He waited for the cheers to die back down. "Really—I'm impressed by you guys every single day. Nobody else fights like you. And it's a good thing because the fight is far from over. Tomorrow it's back to business … but tonight is yours."
With that, he unscrewed the cap, took a swig directly from the bottle, and then passed it into the crowd.
Natalie moved away from the ORCA festivities, holding tight to the railing. As she passed, someone offered her a bottle, but she waved it away. She wanted to get her head right.
When she found a quiet corner, she dropped her head onto her arms and let the events of the long, long day crash over her. The protest—had that been only this morning?
And Mark. Gods, she'd been wrong about him. His knee on her back. His eyes burning with murderous contempt. Natalie shivered and straightened up to wrap her arms around herself instead.
A nasty enemy, her brother had said. Probably he'd meant Magma in general, and that was worrying, too. There must be people out there, she realized, who already hated her even though she had no idea they existed. She didn't even have to be involved with ORCA—if any of them knew who her brother was, they would know about her and—gods, Archie—her parents, too.
But Mark was something else—a personal demon. Natalie had told him things about herself, about her family, that she hadn't admitted to anyone, and he'd …. Well. She wouldn't be so quick to trust again. She should be angry, and maybe in the morning she would be. Right now, she mostly hoped she never crossed paths with him again.
Natalie gazed over the railing at the black ocean, almost indistinguishable from the black sky, and felt very small.
Turning back to face the deck, she was relieved to see the crew settling down. She didn't like the idea of being aboard a ship under the control of drunken sailors. A few of the pirates stood together in small groups, passing bottles around, but others were simply talking or returning below deck. Natalie's gaze caught on a skinny, androgynous figure who stood against the wall, wearing all black except for their blue and white kerchief. They looked half-familiar. For a moment, she couldn't figure out what seemed strange about them, though her eye kept returning to something gauzy and fluttery draped over one shoulder—until she recognized a banette's smile gleaming out from their sweater hood.
Without thinking, Natalie started to rise and reach for Luna's pokeball, but a hand caught her arm.
"Woah, slow down." She tried to pull away, but they didn't loosen their grip, and then someone else laid a hand on her shoulder. "Be chill."
In a strangled voice, she squeezed out, "They're following me!"
"I asked them to."
She hadn't noticed Sinbad approach, and his voice stopped her cold. The strangers let her go, and she turned to face him, this man who was both her brother and someone else entirely.
"Why?" She punctuated it with a shove.
The crowd gathering around them gave out a hiss, but Sinbad hardly reacted. "I wasn't sure it was you," he said with a shrug. "And then … I wanted to make sure you were okay."
She crossed her arms to stop them from shaking, painfully aware of all the eyes on her. "Why couldn't you just talk to me?" To her horror, a single, hot tear slipped out. She quickly swiped it away, but her mouth kept quivering.
"I'm sorry, Small Fry."
At that, her tears started flowing in earnest.
"I really am sorry," he repeated.
Natalie wanted to hit him. She wanted to scream at him and at each one of the silently staring crew. Instead, she crumpled against him. After a moment he patted her on the back.
She clung to him with desperate force, feeling every bit the kid she'd been when he vanished. But he even smelled wrong, like unfamiliar detergent and alcohol. No matter how tightly she squeezed, she couldn't seem to bridge the gap between the words he'd written ten years ago and the person he'd become—or maybe always had been.
When at last she calmed her breath, he pulled away first.
Steven took the long way between the gym and the Devon office building so he could admire the new construction that sprouted among the crumbling brick row homes—wooden frames sheathed in pastel-colored weatherproofing. Nice to see parts of North Rustboro on the upswing. His silver metagross, Delorean, lumbered behind, taking one step for every five of Steven's. He moved at a brisk clip—until a splash of red caught his eye and he slowed to investigate.
It took Steven a minute to decipher what was spray-painted on the plastic, a jumble of hasty lines bleeding into each other. Oh. He spotted the remnants of a blue skull and crossbones where the artist who followed had failed to fully block it out with black paint, and on top of that a jagged red M.
Steven turned away. Nothing new there—not worth dwelling on right now.
On the corner, he came across a Go Joe Cafe. That was new, outdoor tables and decorative planters where there had once been abandoned furniture and garbage. He smiled at the sight. Undoubtedly, someone would be sent for coffee during the meeting, but—Steven glanced at his watch—there was still plenty of time before he had to be there.
"Delorean, stay here." Technically, Steven knew he should recall it. But the metagross was almost as renowned as Steven himself, especially in this town. No one would mind. Delorean wouldn't bother anyone, and there was little anyone could do to bother it.
On cue, the metagross tucked its legs and, with a grinding and a groaning, lowered itself to the sidewalk. Then it fell eerily silent, its glowing red eyes the only sign of life.
Steven smiled and turned to rap his knuckles against the metagross's hull—clonk, clonk—before he made his way inside.
The coffee shop looked like any other Go Joe, comforting in its familiarity. Young professionals with laptops crowded the tables. A trainer sat by the window writing postcards, a swablu watching from its perch on her shoulder. He could be in almost any city in the world.
"Morning. I'd like an iced coffee, please. To go."
The barista looked up from wiping down the counter and then froze, a nervous grin on his face.
Steven smiled expectantly.
"You're Steven Stone!"
Even without his pokemon at his side, the Stone family coat of arms pinned to his lapel and the prematurely gray hair gave him away. "One and the same."
"Wow!" The barista wrung his hands but couldn't hold back his smile. "Sorry, I bet you hate when people make a fuss. I'm just such a big fan. I'm a trainer, too—" He cut himself off with a helpless gesture towards the espresso machine. "When I can."
"No shame in that. I worked while I was developing my team, too."
"Did you really? I didn't know that."
"Absolutely. Nothing like squeezing battles between classes to motivate you." Already a line was starting to form behind him, but Steven still leaned in to ask, "What do you train?"
The barista ducked his head and flashed a shy smile. "Well, she's just a torchic now, but we'll get there eventually. Hopefully a corphish at some point too, to cover some of Dessa's weaknesses."
Steven's smile went tight. "Good for you," he said, holding out his credit card. "Sounds like you're well on your way."
"Oh! Nonono, this one's on me." He waved the card away.
"Well." Steven dropped his arm. "That's very kind of you." A quick glance at the name tag. "Thanks, Flynn."
Trying not to think about fire and stadium lights, he watched the barista prepare his drink. Don't ruin a perfectly good morning. He rubbed a thumb over his commemorative Hoenn League ring.
"Here you go! Iced coffee."
Steven accepted the cup, then paused to peel a few ones from his billfold and slip them into the jar on the counter, indulgent smile back in place. "Here's another tip: Don't ever listen to anyone who says you can't get what you want. Show them you can."
—
Steven eyed his reflection in the elevator doors, smoothing his hair and adjusting his sleeves. As the doors opened onto the top floor, he stole a final glance at his watch. Perfect. He was exactly on time.
When he strode into the boardroom, the executive committee was already seated along the gleaming table, facing the projector screen. His father stood by the head of the table, framed by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He looked the same as always, his square face creased with frown lines, a pocket watch in one hand. "Ah, Steven. Shut the door behind you. Did you have a productive time training this morning?"
His father spoke lightly but Steven could still hear the touch of scorn in his voice.
"I did, thank you," Steven answered brightly as he slid into the empty seat next to his father's. "Roxanne sends her regards."
His father snapped his watch shut and pocketed it. "Well. I don't know what the headlines are like in Mossdeep, but here's what the rest of us are working with today." He motioned to the Stone City Herald article on the projector screen: Anti-Pipeline Riot Rocks Downtown.
Steven thought of the graffiti on the side of the new building and brought his knuckles to his mouth, fingers laced. He wasn't surprised—he'd known they would need to discuss this—but it did put a damper on his mood.
Roxanne had seemed shaken, too. She'd insisted they use the gym for their sparring match and had even opened the doors early for him, but she'd been too quiet. None of the usual teasing. After their battle, she'd confessed, Even my staff have been tense lately.
She had a talent for worrying. But the look on his father's face troubled him.
President Stone squeezed the clicker, and the screen cycled to another article. Dozens Arrested After Protest Turns Violent. "Unsurprisingly," he said, "The Rustboro Times is more sympathetic to the hooligans."
A few grumbles went around the table.
"Not that sympathetic," Steven spoke up. "The public doesn't like the gangs—either of them. They're volatile. Honestly, this is good press."
"They like Root Revolution though." Rathburn, the Executive Committee Treasurer, shot Steven a stern look. When he'd first met the man, Steven had been ten and Rathburn had ruffled Steven's hair and called him son. They were at eye-level now across the table from each other, and Steven didn't flinch from his stare. "If those hippies scream loudly enough to get the appeals court involved, it'll set us back months, even assuming the judge upholds our permit."
"And it's been brought to my attention that wasn't the only noteworthy event yesterday." President Stone gestured to Howard, the Chief Security Officer.
Howard looked pale. He drew in several breaths to steady himself before he spoke. "We had a data breach."
"What about the metagross?"
"They fought and disabled it."
A sour taste rose in Steven's mouth. They'd come in person? He couldn't imagine what they had done to get past the entire security force and a metagross he'd trained himself.
After a moment, the CSO continued, "Security officers identified five thugs leaving the property—looked like ORCA. Blue masks. They got away, unfortunately. But we've got a metagross team trying to match the security footage to the police databases. And we've got one of their pokeballs."
"Then we can get a trainer ID," said Angela, dismissively.
"Still working on that, too. It's thoroughly scrambled."
"The protest," grumbled Lloyd. "Those bastards used it as a distraction."
"Maybe." The Chief Information Officer—huh, Steven had forgotten her name—tapped her chin. "I'm not convinced they like each other enough to coordinate a heist."
"So what did they take?"
Howard grimaced. "We don't know yet. We're still assessing."
The executive committee exchanged uneasy glances. The executive secretary paused his note-taking. In the absence of keys tapping, the only sound was Lloyd clearing his throat.
Steven said, "Well, there's a headline that's sympathetic to us."
"No," his father said instantly. "No one talks to the media about this, not until we know how bad the damage is. The last thing we want to give The Times is a snapshot of Devon's piss-poor handle on our own databases."
The room fell quiet again.
"Let's talk solutions." President Stone lowered himself into a seat at last. "Tobin—when is the Energy Committee voting on our public safety bill?"
Ah yes, the bill. Drafted by Devon Corporation lawyers, given to Senator Lumin's staffers. Lumin, a former real estate investor, had no head for policy, but he did have an electable face and he was good with numbers. He could be counted on to do what he was asked.
Steven honestly didn't know the specifics of it himself. That wasn't his area. Most of what he knew was that the bill was meant to stop activists from wearing masks or using their pokemon during a protest, which he was surprised weren't already illegal actions. The defacement of public property was plenty by itself, and that was the least of what a pokemon could do in the wrong hands. And if they had nothing to hide, if they truly thought they hadn't done anything wrong, why should they need masks?
Steven twisted his Devon insignia ring around his finger as he watched Tobin, the Executive Committee Secretary, swipe through pages on his tablet.
"Friday, sir," said Tobin. He'd graduated from Rustboro University a few years before Steven, one of few people he'd encountered who had never attempted to become a trainer at any point—bland and wheedling, but adept with calendars and deadlines. "Senator Nakamura has pledged her support for the bill already. And Senator Lumin, of course."
"Good." President Stone leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "I imagine Senator Weissman's campaign could benefit from a little help this time of year. Angela—how can we make that fit into the budget?"
Before she could answer, Tobin piped up again, "Actually, sir, we've already hit our annual gift-giving cap for the Weissman campaign."
Steven said breezily, "I heard Weissman's oldest son recently received his starter. They follow League Events. I'll make sure the senator and his family have front row seats at the Evergrande Winter Conference."
That much he could still do.
His father nodded and gave him a small smile. "Very good. The Hoenn Cancer Society benefit dinner would be a good opportunity to present him with tickets."
Steven stopped twisting his ring. They'd talked about this. He'd already pledged a personal donation, separate from the Devon Corporation pledge—he didn't have to do that. "I thought …." His father shot him a warning look, and Steven shut his mouth.
"Did you have somewhere else to be?"
"No." Steven put on the smile he used for talking with politicians and the League oversight committee. "No, of course not."
Steven didn't necessarily mind the idea of a benefit dinner. In fact, he already had a tie that perfectly matched the requisite cancer awareness ribbon. He knew to allow the men his father's age talk about their favorite subjects—themselves—to make them like him. And he was good at telling little stories to make their wives laugh, nudging them to indulge him in the occasional secret. But there were no trophies for small talk.
He wanted a prize no one had yet been able to claim, one his father couldn't even imagine.
Joseph Stone would not understand that his only child and heir would rather spend his time with his two "vagabonds" in the back room lent to them by the Sootopolis Museum of History. Digitally reconstructing the places where the stone tablets had worn away. Cross-referencing several runic dictionaries and texts on ancient religion. Matching GPS coordinates to mountains described in folk tales.
Steven fiddled with his rings again and resisted the urge to look at his phone.
"Meanwhile, Martha, how do we make this situation look good?"
The Chief of Communications sat up straighter. "Well." She paused to take a deep breath and glance at her notes. "Devon celebrates technology and all the ways it makes life better. From ensuring grandma's medicine is delivered on time to producing the pokeballs that keep your friends close, Devon fuels life. And," she added in a conspiratorial tone, "we remind them that the pokelectric alternative is inhumane. Sprinkle in a few shots of sad electrike."
The work was likely no worse for them than training, and that would be Mauville Electric's obvious rebuttal. But the winner of that fight would not be determined by who was more correct.
"Good. Angela, where are we with our marketing budget?"
Steven tipped his face toward the projector screen, but his mind had drifted miles east. Every time he closed his eyes lately, he saw red sand and wind-sculpted cliffs.
He had visited the desert east of Route 111 exactly three times. The first time, he'd gone with a surveying team (for the company) and a paleontologist (for his own interests). The second time, shortly after, was for a company tour and commemorative photo at Devon's first domestic pipeline. He hadn't even known about the tomb then—it had looked like nothing more than another rocky outcropping until Cynthia had given him the idea to look for more. The third trip had been with Brendan Birch and Brandon Harrison, and the three of them had camped five nights under the velvety sky. In all his travels, Steven had never seen the stars so clearly.
Now he ached to see those stars again. To trail one hand along the ridged cliff wall as he walked. To see the tomb appear on the horizon at dusk, like a mirage, except it was real, more real than—
"How about we get the League champion? People eat that up."
Steven lifted his head at those words. Everyone was staring at him, waiting. His insides clenched tight.
Because it was his job, he took a deep breath and smiled. "Of course. I can talk to her."
What he didn't say was the truth: she doesn't want to talk to me. And that was the sole point on which the two of them both agreed.
The last time he'd seen her had been for a joint interview and photoshoot with Trainer Today. They'd called it Passing the Torch, another stupid torchic pun. He and May Palmer had posed obediently—separately, together, with her blaziken, without—smiling as if her words weren't still simmering between them.
Don't act like you're shocked. You can't expect to win against someone who's actually had to work to get here. That's what she said to him after the Evergrande Conference.
Thinking about it made his temples throb.
Did she really think someone had simply handed him a fully-trained metagross? Delorean alone had taken him three years—he'd had to procure not one but four shiny beldum and then train them in perfect tandem—to say nothing of the rest of his team. And Delorean hadn't been his first attempt. He'd waited until he could do it right before he tried for Del.
The League had cautioned him against trying to raise a metagross at all, and not without reason. He'd consulted with an electrophysicist and a psychic-type specialist leading up to it, but that first metagross had still turned on him immediately after its final evolution, sending silent lightning through his skull. He was lucky all he'd lost from that was the pigment in his hair. Steven wore it like a badge of honor, proof he'd earned the designation of Hoenn's metagross expert.
And he had still graduated with honors. He'd done both, because that was what was expected of him.
The new champion of Hoenn, on the other hand, didn't even have a bachelor's degree. She had a blaziken and a smart mouth, and apparently that was enough.
In white-knuckled silence, Steven sat through another forty minutes of supplier contracts and the Thursday IT update, his graduation ring pressed to his lips.
As the executive committee finally trickled out the door, marking notes in their digital calendars, Steven's father called him over. He waited until the execs had gone to say, "Why were you late this morning?"
Steven made his face a mask. "I came in the door at nine exactly."
His father gave him a hard look. "I'm only going to tell you this once, son. Running a company doesn't work like parading in front of the Evergrande League. You've had your fun with that, but now that it's done I need you focused here in the real world. On Devon. You have to earn your place here, just like the rest of them."
Steven clenched his teeth, but he met his father's gaze and nodded. He would not look away first.
"Good." His father's expression softened. "This company will be your responsibility someday, and I want you to be ready. I know you're capable. You always rise to a challenge." He pulled his stopwatch from his pocket. His ring caught the light—the Stone family crest, twin to the one Steven wore. "I'm meeting with the mayor in half an hour. I'll see you this evening. Hortencia is making cordon bleu."
He didn't pause for farewells, just a curt nod and away he went.
Steven lingered by the enormous window, gazing out on the best view of Rustboro the city had to offer. With a sigh, he took out his phone and tried to make peace with his schedule. Lots of fires to put out. He held his phone in his right hand, where he wore his Stone family and Devon rings. With his left, where he wore his graduation and League rings, he reached to touch Delorean's ball. After a moment's consideration and another sigh, he messaged Birch: Send me the files here. I'll take a look at them tonight. Tell me what you find at the site.
For a moment longer, he gazed out the window at the distant mountains. The tomb had been waiting there for thousands of years, since the time the desert had been a shallow sea, since the time legends dragged their bellies across the earth. It could wait a little longer yet. And then—
Well. He wasn't done yet.
—
Snowpoint Temple, once again. In his dream, unlike in life, the alcoves below each idol were lit with candles, wax oozing down the stone. The air smelled of dust and the smoke of long ago fires. As usual, Cynthia led the way, solar lantern held high. They were still the only two people among the ruins. No pokemon either, though in the waking world they had been escorted by Delorean and Cynthia's lucario to ensure the sneasel that pilfered the offerings left on the temple steps stayed in the shadows and came no closer.
For what felt like a very long time—much longer than it had taken in real life—they walked. Neither spoke. They moved slowly to avoid the sections where the floor had weakened, visible as depressions in the stonework. Every few yards they passed another pillar with the likeness of a minor deity carved at eye-level, candles guttering below, the face of each one forgotten the moment it was behind him.
Steven's pulse quickened at the sight of the stairs that led down into the crumbling heart of the collapsed temple. He knew what waited below.
As they descended, the temperature plummeted. Though his breath came in visible puffs, Steven's only concern was the occasional patch of ice underfoot, lingering evidence of the underground streams that had eaten the ground away from under the temple. Roots dangled from the ceiling where trees had reclaimed parts of the building. But in this version of the temple, the place where the floor had caved in so long ago was a smooth round hole, as if the opening had been created on purpose. In this dream, the pillars had landed upright, whole and unmarred.
Cynthia and Steven stepped out of the shadow of the upper floor and into a pool of light. Above, stained glass windows formed a dome where before there had only been a stone ceiling and faceless gods in the flickering gloom. Steven held out his hands to watch the fragmented rainbows dance across his skin.
Ahead, in the center of the light pouring from above, was the monument. Hunched shoulders, arms dragging to the ground. A thousand eyes carved in its chest. The arms were inscribed with runes, half-lost to the green and gray lichen.
Steven craned his head to see the top of the statue and tried to meet each of the stone eyes in turn. Who made you? Who put you to sleep? His heart ached at the impossibility of knowing.
Cynthia finally spoke up. "It's time to wake him." Runes crawled up her arms and neck like a rash. "You know what to do."
He did this time. Steven glanced down and found a knife already in his hand, the hilt inlaid with rubies and sapphires. Each one reflected his face in miniature. At the foot of the statue, he knelt and turned up one hand as if in supplication. He drew the blade across his palm—
—
Steven snapped awake in his bed, struggling for a moment to recognize what had woken him. In the blue pre-dawn light, he fumbled to find his buzzing phone on the bedside table.
"Hullo?"
"Steven—sorry to wake you. But this is—I didn't want to wait."
At the sound of Birch's voice, Steven sat up and put both feet on the floor. The tomb. He wouldn't have called if it wasn't important. "What's the news?"
"It opened."
Steven was already reaching for his belt and hiking boots. "I'm on my way."
I warned you.
I based this drawing of Steven on a particular US political figure (surprise, it's Don Trump Jr.!), not because I actually picture him looking this gross but for thematic reasons. If you can guess who it is, you win a prize! (Though, sadly, the prize is just having that dude on your mind. You're welcome.)
A character gets someone's pronouns wrong. They course correct, but they're still salty and petty about it.
Archie wasn't at breakfast on Natalie's first full day on the ship, but he must've put out the word to keep an eye on her; the instant she stepped into the mess hall, a table of sailors waved her over and pulled her down onto their bench. Maybe it had nothing to do with Archie at all. Maybe they were simply being kind. Certainly, they didn't say anything important or incriminating in front of her, but she got the impression that it was because what they needed most was to joke and complain, not because they were being careful.
Even wedged between two of them, she still remained on the edges of their conversation. She observed the crew the way she might watch a flock of wingull: as a distant, shifting mass. So she noticed the ripple of movement around the room even before someone passed the pokeball to their table. Her companions quieted, each one examining it in turn, snickering as they handed it around—until Natalie was next in line. There came a pause and then, "Oh, let her see it. What's she gonna do?"
It was an ordinary pokeball, if well-worn. Like each of the others before her, she turned it to read the text crawl at the seam between the red and white halves. The text was corrupted—she hoped it wasn't a sign of something wrong with the pokemon inside—so it took her several moments to parse: reg1sTEred tr4iner MÅ18x0ÑSTAn—li3paRd.
Liepard. That was a surprise. Not many of those in—
With a wash of revulsion, she remembered: she'd met Mark's liepard, Gibs. And they'd taken one of his pokeballs back in the parking lot.
"So what do you think I should do with it?"
Scarlet appeared at Natalie's elbow, her dark hair in a French braid and a cold smile on her lips. She made no move to take the pokeball back, but Natalie sensed Scarlet had approached to better supervise her with it.
When Natalie didn't respond, Scarlet offered airily, "I thought about tossing the thing overboard."
She remembered the ripple of muscles as the liepard tensed to lunge at her, and she could hardly believe he was now curled powerless in the palm of her hand. It would take so little to send the pokeball flying over the rail: a short walk and a flick of the wrist. Over in less than a minute. Pokeballs were supposed to be waterproof, but …. She shivered, imagining Luna's pokeball bobbing in the ship's wake instead.
"Please don't."
"You're right—enough trash in the ocean already." Scarlet cast Natalie a sly look. "Or you think I should give it back?"
Aha. A test. Well, Natalie didn't want anything to do with it. Wordlessly, she shoved the liepard's pokeball back at Scarlet.
"How loyal is a cat, d'you think?" She held the pokeball up like a jeweler inspecting the cut of a gem. "A dog will wait 'til death for its trainer's return—almost impossible to retrain. That's why cops love them. But a cat … harder to say. Hard to tell with people, too." And she shot Natalie a pointed look.
Don't lecture me about loyalty, Natalie wanted to fire back. I'm the one who was left behind. But she had no friends or allies aboard the Ultimatum, so she kept her mouth shut.
Scarlet pocketed the pokeball with a shrug. "Probably better to sell it off, right? We could use a new welding torch." With that, she sauntered back to her own table.
Natalie couldn't wait to get back to shore.
—
Five of them gathered around a table towards the back. Mark had arrived first, bone-tired and full of venom for every overwatered lawn in Mauville City. Sierra and River had arrived together—possibly siblings and possibly a couple but definitely a unit—both cheerful but guarded. Eben had arrived next, to Mark's relief. He'd also traveled from Rustboro, though as a precaution he'd taken a different route. Mark trusted Eben as much as he trusted anyone: he showed up when asked and didn't panic under fire. Last to arrive was Zig, short for Zigzagoon, who nattered away as he stealthily nibbled from the others' plates. Like his namesake, he never held still.
Tabitha had yet to arrive, and Mark had no doubt her timing was purposeful, more of her usual psychological bullshit.
Over drinks, they idly compared notes on the situations in Rustboro, Mauville, and Fortree. They examined recent headlines on each other's phones, sharing a dark laugh at what had been left out. Someone mentioned the anti-mask bill, and they hissed and fumed together. All the while, each of them caught the others' eyes in turn. Probing. Making silent contracts.
Like before his very first action and like every other since, Mark began to love these near-strangers a little, even sketchy Zig. They were going to spike trees until the logging stopped. They were going to hit DevCo in the teeth with its own infrastructure. They were going to save the world—because no one else would.
Zig checked his watch with a flourish and asked, "Is anyone, like, keeping tabs on Tabs?"
"Don't let her catch you calling her that," Mark said dryly. "She doesn't like nicknames."
River and Sierra exchanged a look.
"What?"
"I'm pretty sure—"
And then there was Tabitha, stepping suddenly out of the crowd as if materializing from the ether. Her hair was shaved shorter than even Mark's, her scalp gleaming with blue light from the TV screens. As she offered a curt wave and slipped into the remaining seat, Mark mustered a smile.
"Well, there she is," he said.
Tabitha scowled in greeting.
Seriously?
Mark let his smile fall. Yeah, hello to you, too.
"My pronouns," Tabitha said coolly, "are he-him-they-them."
Heat crawled up Mark's neck. Tear me right the fuck in half. Since when?
He shoved down his indignation and took a breath. "Sorry. I genuinely didn't mean to—"
Tabitha cut in, "Let's just go around and share names and pronouns. I'll start. You all know who I am, and we already talked about my pronouns … but this is Cipher. They, them."
What Mark had at first taken to be a backpack crawled up and over Tabitha's shoulder, flicked out its wings, and flitted onto the table to investigate a sticky patch where something had spilled. Oh yeah, Mark remembered that ninjask. Fast, persistent, and always watching both enemies and friends alike.
After the others dutifully recited their names and pronouns, Tabitha leaned forward and pushed aside her—fuck—his drink. "I'm glad you all made it. No one had any trouble? No incidents or encounters?"
They shook their heads.
"Good." Tabitha nodded slowly. "Since some of you haven't worked under me before, let me tell you how this is going to be: if I give an order, you do it. No questions."
He was imitating Montag's speaking style, Mark thought, but missing the point. Montag didn't make demands—he offered invitations.
Tabitha continued, "We only get one shot at this. There's no room for screwups or showboating." He looked at each of them in turn, his gaze lingering on Mark, who folded his arms but didn't interrupt. "If anyone has a problem with that, any doubts at all ... go home."
No one spoke.
When he was satisfied with their silence, Tabitha withdrew a pen and paper from his pocket. He shooed Cipher out of the way and—wonderful—the ninjask buzzed to the back of Mark's chair instead. Tabitha smoothed the paper flat and then, with careful attention to each bend, drew a zigzag down the page. "This is the Route 110 overpass." He added a second line, in some places parallel to the first and in others arcing away to hug an invisible coast. "And this is Ridge Access."
Just like that, a piece of paper became the world. They all leaned closer to watch the ink move across the page.
"There will be lookouts here and here." Tabitha indicated each spot with an X. "Zig, you and your murkrow will be here."
"Eyes in the sky," Zig said with an exaggerated grin.
"And ... Mark. You've got a liepard and a swoobat, right?"
Mark couldn't stop himself from wincing. "I don't have my liepard right now." He cleared his throat. "But I have a golbat."
Tabitha shrugged, no hint of sympathy in his face. "Golbat works. You're on watch on this side." Then he looked up and raised an eyebrow at Mark, waiting for an objection.
Is that what it was about, elevating himself above Mark? Fuck off, Tabitha. I don't work for you. If Montag wanted him to follow Tabitha's orders this time, he would—out of respect for Montag, not Tabitha's ego. But let Tabitha think whatever he needed to.
"Can do," Mark answered evenly.
Cipher's claws scraped along the back of his chair. Little creep.
Tabitha returned his attention to the page, circling a segment of the pipeline. "The rest of you will be with me, somewhere around here. We're looking for a place where the surface has already been damaged. That's where we'll apply heat. Camerupt, magcargo, whoever you have. Then … who's got a reliable digger?"
Mark counted off in his head—everyone on his belt except for Octavia the golbat. But Tabitha wasn't asking him, so he kept it to himself.
Eben spoke up. "I've got a graveler."
"Good. Then you'll make the trench to flush the pipeline with water. It has to be fast. Intense heat, then—" He snapped his fingers. "—sudden cold. After that, one or two good hits should crack it."
"I thought the point was to keep it away from the water, control the damage."
Tabitha shot Mark a nasty look, and he returned one of his own. "The point," Tabitha snapped, "is the overpass. If Hoenn cared about water, they wouldn't have approved the pipeline in the first place."
Mark closed his eyes and imagined standing up, letting his chair topple to the floor, and walking out—fuck Tabitha and fuck this entire plan. But Montag's words held him in place: those in power will wait until the worst has already happened before they do a single thing, both a warning and a promise. And Mark believed it because he'd seen it.
He'd gone to his first protest against the Virbank refinery—his first ever—when he was sixteen. The noise and spectacle had made him feel hopeful, angry, and alive ... but nothing had come of it. When the protests had grown larger and louder, the only change had been for the police to become more aggressive. When Mark had come of age two years later and left home, those two plumes of smoke had still squatted on the horizon at his back. Even after he'd left Unova entirely, Mark had kept an eye on the news at home, so he knew the half-hearted protests had continued, as had the refinery.
Last year, the refinery had finally closed for good—but only because it had self-combusted. A corroded pipe, the reports had explained almost sheepishly, as if it could've happened to anyone. The explosion had launched a drum the size of a gigalith clear across the river to Liberty Garden, and it had also released five thousand pounds of hydrofluoric acid into the air. Benzine in the groundwater. Lead in the soil.
By then, Kathy had already started at Castelia Academy of Music, thank gods. But by then, she'd also already lost half her childhood to hospital visits and countless days when the air quality had been so bad she'd had to stay inside.
"Do we have a problem?" Tabitha demanded.
"No." Mark forced himself to lean back in his chair. "I get it."
Tabitha eyed him warily for a long moment. Finally, he turned back to the map to indicate their exit route, west through a wooded stretch to a pickup point. "We'll teleport back to Mauville, separately, to make us harder to track. Oh, River, you'll be fine. It's only a short distance."
He sat back. "Any other questions? Okay, good." Then he drummed his fingers and called, "Cy, come."
The ninjask shot onto the tabletop, nearly toppling several drinks.
"If the cops or ORCA show up," Tabitha said, tearing a long strip from his hand-drawn map, "we don't engage. We're not here to fight with them. We do the job quickly and get out. Everyone got it?"
The five of them made sounds of assent while Tabitha continued shredding the map. They all watched him feed the pieces of paper to Cipher, demolishing both evidence and pipeline one strip at a time.
—
The ship continued relentlessly forward, carrying Natalie closer both to her point of origin and to a fathomless future. All she could do was wait to arrive.
At first bewildered by the constant activity both above and below deck, Natalie quickly learned the Ultimatum's mess hall hours. She had no tasks and nowhere to be, so mealtimes provided the only structure in her days. The rest of her time she spent above deck, watching the crew tease each other as they worked, the sharpedo that knifed alongside the ship. She still saw Archie little; entire days passed without her glimpsing him once.
She was grateful the deck was large enough that she could give her team some air. Cramped as the ship was for her, she imagined it was worse to be cooped up inside a pokeball for days on end. Predictably, Luna hated being on the ship. She'd been on the ocean before—starting with childhood day trips on the family Bowrider and most recently during the journey to Dewford—but she never seemed to acclimate. Natalie let her out a few times anyway, just to try. Each time, the mightyena swayed, claws scrabbling with an increasing frenzy until she all but knocked herself over; then she lay belly-down, whimpering and waiting for Natalie to recall her.
She'd expected Gus, the whismur, to start screaming immediately upon release—but, to her surprise, he seemed to like the Ultimatum. The deck was loud, but it was a wash of constant sound that drowned out the sudden noises that would've normally set him off. The ship's rolling wasn't unlike Natalie rocking him to calm him down from a crying fit.
A few times, she convinced one of the crew to spar with her, wanting as much to exercise her pokemon as to break the monotony. She lost each match. Over and over, a sudden pitch would send Natalie's pokemon sprawling or unbalance them enough for the opponent to knock them down instead. Samson and Gus didn't have enough experience to roll with the motion of the ship, and she didn't have enough experience to help them compensate for what they didn't know.
Only Amelia was untroubled by the rolling of the deck, but she was much more interested in chasing and amicably squabbling with the other wingull and pelipper that followed the ship. Some definitely belonged to the crew—occasionally swooping down to beg their human for treats or to give an affectionate nip—but others seemed to be wild, coming and going at will. When Amelia first flew up to join them, Natalie's heart clenched in momentary panic that she wouldn't be able to find her again. But only Amelia had speckles along the edges of her wings, and only Amelia came when Natalie whistled.
Was Amelia glad to be heading home? Surely she could sense that Slateport was close. Had she missed her family, Natalie wondered, or would she be disappointed to return to familiar shores and find them smaller than she'd remembered?
With Gus in the crook of her arm, eating a nabab berry she'd saved from lunch, Natalie stood at the guardrails to watch Amelia drift and dive between the pelipper. Her wingull's calls almost sounded like laughter. Natalie heard the footsteps behind her but, accustomed to being mostly ignored on the ship, didn't turn her head.
"In the wild, they actually eat wingull sometimes."
It took Natalie a moment to realize the woman was talking to her. She had seen the woman around the ship—her mane of gingery curls was hard to miss. Most often she was in conversation with Sinbad, her brows drawn together. But she was half-smiling now as she leaned against the railing next to Natalie.
Without waiting for her to respond, the woman continued, "They cooperate more often, though. When a pelipper dives, it also stuns the fish—easy pickings for the wingull. And then, eventually, the wingull become pelipper and pay it back to the next generation."
Squinting against the wind, Natalie swept her hair from her face with her free hand; it was too short to pull up, so all she could do was hold it back. "I thought pelipper did the hunting for the wingull. Mouth-feeding and all that."
"Only the young. Adolescents and unevolved adults are on their own." She paused to point out a pelipper overhead. "That's my girl Alba with the pinkish beak. And yours is the little speckled one, right?"
"Yeah, that's Amelia. And I'm Natalie."
"I know."
Right. Of course.
But the woman smiled and said, "I'm Shelly. Captain of Rosie the Riveter—when I'm not here."
She pointed again, though she didn't need to. The catamaran with the rose painted on its side was still sailing alongside them, but the other had split off along with the freighter some time ago.
"I've been missing her. Excited to get back behind the wheel."
Gus began to fidget, so Natalie switched him to her other arm, bouncing him gently. She was getting ready to ask if there had been a reason for the biology lesson when Shelly spoke up again.
"I know this probably isn't easy for you. Sinbad can be …." She paused. "Easily distracted. He means well, though."
"Sure." Natalie turned back to the water, scowling and swiping her hair from her mouth.
"I just wanted to make sure you're okay. See if you need anything."
"It's fine." For the hundredth time, Natalie checked her watch—still no signal. "Though I kind of thought I might get service back as we got closer to Slateport. I left my backpack at the hostel. Have to ask them to forward it to the pokecenter."
"Oh. No one told you."
Natalie shot her a wordless glare. No, no one had told her much of anything.
In a kind voice, Shelly explained, "Zinfandel blocks all outgoing signals except for the ones we authorize. You won't be able to make any calls while you're in her range."
"Oh," said Natalie, not fully understanding.
Shelly smiled, the low sun shining golden through her halo of hair. "I could help you put a call through if you want."
"What's the catch?"
"There's no catch. Something like that isn't a big deal. We just have to do it from the bridge. Come on—I'll show you."
The bridge was full of boxy panels of lights and machinery, long windows lining the front and rear walls. It was mostly as Natalie expected—aside from the porygon-Z perched atop one of the consoles like a dashboard bobblehead. Zinfandel, she guessed. When Shelly and Natalie came through the door, the porygon swiveled its head to look at them without moving its body.
Sinbad, who leaned against one of the panels, didn't react to their entrance at all. "You're sure?" he was saying. The throbbing vein in his neck belied his relaxed air.
"You're really asking if I'm sure?"
Standing opposite were Scarlet and a woman with close-cropped hair and a woolen traveling cloak.
Shelly sucked in a breath. "Shit, Sin—you weren't gonna call me?"
"Relax. She just got here."
Shelly did soften somewhat, and then all four pairs of eyes turned to Natalie, the interloper.
She caught the gaze of the woman in the cloak. A frown flickered across the woman's face—but then she smiled so fiercely it was like the frown had never existed. Her canines were slightly crooked, creating the illusion of fangs. "Cute pokemon," she said.
Natalie held Gus closer, not caring that he'd reached up to pull a handful of her hair.
Shelly turned to Sinbad. "I was going to help her make a call. I didn't know things were happening in here." Then to Natalie she added, "Sorry. I'll come find you later if I can."
Sinbad dismissively waved a hand. "It doesn't matter. She can stay if she wants." He paused only briefly before charging ahead. "Tell them, Zinnia."
The woman in the cloak suddenly sobered. "Magma has been hanging around near Slateport the past few days," she said. "They're planning to target the Ridge Access Pipeline."
Natalie stared. Target? As in ...? She glanced at Shelly, whose face had gone to stone. The silence in the tiny room confirmed her worst suspicions, but she couldn't make herself believe it.
"There you go, Small Fry," Archie said, baring a grin that was all teeth and no joy. "You wanted to know the difference between us and them? There it is. We fight to keep oil out of the ocean, and Magma spills it to make a fucking point."
She thought bitterly of Mark's words in the parking lot: It's killing us and nobody cares. Had he even believed himself? Or had he simply not known?
"But that's horrible," Natalie said.
Scarlet laughed. "No shit."
Natalie turned to the woman in the cloak—Zinnia. "How do you know?"
With another flash of crooked teeth, Zinnia brought her hands to the top of her head and mimed tuning them like satellites. "Supersonic hearing." Then she let the smile fall, tucking her hands behind her back.
Natalie fought back a grimace, unsettled by her jerky movements, the stop and start smile.
Sinbad cut in, "Do you know when?"
There was no hint of a smile when Zinnia answered, "I don't think they'll wait much longer. They might even make their move tonight."
"God fucking damn it." He turned to look out the window at the sun, which sank slowly through a bank of clouds red as flame. "We're cutting it close, then."
Sinbad's silence seemed to radiate a heat of its own, and no one dared speak. He picked at his beard where a bare patch was beginning to show—then he snapped up to look at Zinnia. "Go follow them. I want you to tell us every time one of them so much as scratches his ass. Alright? Every little movement."
That smile again, a twist of her mouth, quick and sharp as a dagger. "You got it, boss." For a second, she almost sounded teasing, but then her expression turned grave again. She started for the door, her skinny arms vanishing into the folds of her cloak.
Sinbad called after her, "Spook should be there too. Can you take them?"
Zinnia paused and seemed to sink deeper into her cloak. But then she said, "Lycoris can carry us both, yes."
"Good."
This time no one stopped her from sweeping past Natalie onto the deck.
As the door shut, Natalie blurted, "Where is there a pipeline near Slateport?"
Sinbad shot her an irritated look but answered, "North. Ridge Access runs from the desert down the coast into the city. And the stretch that feeds into Slateport crosses an estuary. It's the breeding ground for half the local species."
She remembered the journey to Mauville: the smell of grass and saltwater. Home at her back and, ahead, electric bursts arcing between the bushes where a pokemon had startled from its hiding place. She'd stopped in the shade of the overpass to watch a distant pod of wailmer. And across the water to the west, there was the occasional glint of metal. She'd assumed it was an electrical line.
Shelly sighed. "So, what is this? Revenge?"
Sinbad slowly shook his head, jaw clenched. "No. As far as Montag is concerned, we're just collateral damage."
"Not if we damage his collateral," Scarlet said, followed by a metallic snap. With a pit in her stomach, Natalie watched Scarlet click her switchblade shut and open and shut again to an imagined beat.
Shelly snapped, "Stop that."
While Scarlet closed the blade and tucked it back into her boot, Shelly fired a glare at Sinbad.
He stood abruptly. "Alright. This is what we're doing," he announced. "Scar—when we dock, I want you to go with Natalie and make sure she gets home safe."
"What? Why me?"
At almost the same instant, Natalie drew herself up and protested, "I don't need a bodyguard."
Then Gus took a couple of fast breaths, the first indication of an impending fit. She scrambled to recall him.
Sinbad ignored Natalie and said to Scarlet, "Because I don't want any kamikaze shit from you tonight." Then he added more softly, "And because I want someone I can trust to keep her safe. We don't know what the fuck is going down in Slateport."
Scarlet made a momentary show of pouting before she uncrossed her arms and went to Sinbad's side, laying a hand on his chest. "And who's going to keep you safe?" she asked, her tone teasing but her eyes serious.
A good question, Natalie thought. "Why don't you just call the cops?" she said, hating the pleading in her own voice. But even as she spoke, she thought of Rustboro, how effectively Magma had broken through the police line and then slipped away again.
Sinbad leveled a stern stare at her. His eyes, so like her own, had gone dark with rage. "Because this is home."
—
Even after four years, each mission carried with it some of the fear of that first night.
Mark had been eighteen when he'd abandoned his half-finished badge quest, agreeing instead to join Magma in disabling diggers and excavators in Twist Mountain. It wasn't a mountain anymore but a pit, and on that moonless night, it had also been endlessly black. The darkness itself wasn't what had scared him but the very real possibility of blindly putting his foot over a ledge and tumbling to his death. The thought left no room to worry about hypotheticals like being arrested. But Gibs had been there, invisible yet solid and steady. Mark had crept along with his palms turned out to feel for a nudge from the liepard, listening for a growl warning him to stop or a cat-chirrup urging him ahead.
Hoenn Route 110 was neither as dark nor as perilous as Twist Mountain. The path was flat grass, silver in the moonlight, here and there sinking into marshy pools. Even in the dark, the lapping of the water told him how far before he hit the edge. But without Gibs, Mark moved haltingly. Octavia flew circles around him, which should've been comforting but instead was disorientating. Her wingbeats first from one direction and then another created the nauseating illusion that he was the one changing directions even when standing still.
There was little to see but pinpricks of light: Slateport was a line of glitter to the south. To the north, Mauville was dark, hidden in the foothills. In between, the grass rippled with intermittent sparks of hunting electrike, like a blanket full of static. He watched the drifting lights of distant ships, but those weren't the ones to worry about; ORCA would travel under cover of darkness, just like Magma.
A few hundred feet behind him, his teammates were hazy outlines among spouts of flame from three different pokemon. He smelled the burning grass, but it was almost comforting, evoking memories of battles during his early days on the road. Mark imagined Tabitha was squinting through the heat, waiting for a section of pipe to glow white-hot before he gave the order to stop and introduce the water. But from where Mark stood, it was one big fiery whorl. A signal fire. Tabitha's crobat swept clouds of shadow back and forth, but they only softened the effect, far from hiding the flames completely. Mark felt exposed, aware that he, too, would be visible as a silhouette from the water. Not much he could do about that except to stay alert.
The waiting was the worst part—nothing to distract him from his worries and doubts. He'd already come this far, and he would hold to his word. But he felt nearly sick with being there. Uselessly and foolishly, he found himself for the first time in years wanting a cigarette. Something to occupy his hands.
In his early days with Magma, lookout duty had meant crouching with the older trainers, sharing cigarettes and quiet jokes while they burned through hours of waiting for something to begin. They all smoked Blue Rings, a Hoenn brand named as a nod to the wild camerupt herds. He'd only ever smoked socially, but for months he'd carried a pack of Blue Rings in his breast pocket like a memento from a lover. An internal combustion all his own. The tobacco was probably grown in Kanto or Johto, but the pack in his pocket had felt like his passport, proof he belonged.
He didn't carry cigarettes anymore. Even if he did, he wouldn't be stupid enough to light one so close to a pipeline about to blow its highly flammable load. But he thought about it all the same. His own fault—he shouldn't have indulged with Cora.
Focus, he scolded himself.
He swept his gaze across the darkness, searching for change in the movement of the grass. Listening for a boat motor or footsteps or the call of Zig's murkrow. But there were only crickets. Even the overpass was silent, thanks to their carefully placed traffic cones and construction signs. For a little while longer, it was a beautiful night.
Then, off to one side, he heard two sharp clicks from Octavia and a jumbled flapping. First he spotted the dustox, its pale body luminous in the dark, and then Octavia diving. For a split second, he thought she was preying on it—hard to train out that behavior when what he called a lookout seemed to her like a hunt. But, no, the dustox was far too large to be wild. Mark hadn't seen its trainer yet, but he could just make out the powder flaking from its wings: sleep powder.
Even as Mark's pulse quickened, two goals crystallized in his mind: he had to raise the alarm, and he had to keep Octavia away from the sleep powder. Whether this was ORCA or police, he couldn't afford to be down a pokemon. He started to reach for his belt, calling, "Octavia, pull ba—"
Breathtaking cold swept through his chest. Before he'd even realized he'd fallen, Mark was on his knees. I'm having a heart-attack. But even as he coughed and gasped for breaths that would not come, he watched the ghost waft out through his shirt and materialize before him, baring a grin made of zipper teeth.
Mark strained to lift his hand and grab a pokeball, but his arm was as numb and unresponsive as if it had fallen asleep. He tried to shout but only managed a wheeze.
The banette's smile stretched until its face puckered, and it raised an arm, claws glowing a sickly green.
With a screech that made Mark's ears throb, Octavia swooped and caught the banette's arm in her teeth. It swung the other arm and raked its claws across her face. As she backpedaled, there was a sound of fabric tearing.
Then he saw the human figure shambling towards him along the water line, bent low over the grass. The banette must've been keeping the trainer hidden before.
Not police then.
Murkrow caws burst out from the other side of the overpass—and then cut short. Zig.
The feeling began to return to Mark's limbs, a prickling of pins and needles spreading out from his chest. He reached again for his belt, but an icy stab through his shoulder brought him up short with a grunt of pain. For a moment, he thought something else had hit him, but as he twisted to look and cold sliced across his back again, he realized his mistake. The banette must've cut him.
Octavia dove for the banette, fangs flashing. Like fog in the wind, the banette split down the center, ghostly fabric flowing to either side to let the golbat pass. When she'd gone, the banette reassembled itself with the sound of a zipper closing.
Better to slow it down. "Toxic," he rasped, but he knew Octavia hadn't heard. She wheeled for another attempt to take a bite out of the banette, and this time the dustox was on her tail.
And the trainer was almost on Mark.
He gritted his teeth against the aching cold that lanced through his back, and he seized a pokeball, fumbling with half-numb fingers and nearly dropping it. But Mark held on long enough to hit the release, and moments later, Orwell's purple light shield dropped over him like a loving embrace. "Ore," he croaked. "The dustox."
Mark didn't turn to watch how it played out—he trusted his pokemon. And he had to stand up. Hissing curses, he climbed to his feet with jerky motions that took every bit of his effort and concentration. By the time he was upright, tears pricked the corners of his eyes, and he was out of breath again. What the fuck had the banette done to him? The numbness had passed, but every motion brought a stab of fresh pain. He couldn't tell whether he was bleeding—all he felt was preternatural cold.
He turned in time to see the dustox vanish in red light. The trainer clipped the pokeball back to their belt and took off running towards the pipeline, the banette whisking behind them in a streak of smoke. And the pipeline, he realized, had gone dark.
Mark didn't know if it mattered anymore, but he still had to try to warn the others. "Ore, flash the signal!"
The solrock whirred behind him and, in bursts, cast the scene in stark light and shadow: two of his teammates still stood beside the pipeline, their pokemon fluttering overhead, and the others had moved to intercept the ORCA onslaught rushing up from the southwest. Mark counted ten of them but couldn't be quite sure. And then darkness again.
That was it, then. They'd failed … but maybe, just this once, it was for the best.
Then another thought hit him: They knew we'd be here. There was no other way they could've gathered so fast.
But he'd have to deal with that later. If he didn't act quickly, the team would be cut off from their exit. And behind him, he heard more running footsteps. "Octavia, go!" He gestured toward the approaching silhouettes, grimacing at the pain the movement shot down his arm. "Confuse them. Slow them down." Then he started forward, Ore hovering alongside him. The best he could manage was a jog, each step another burst of icy pain.
Mark was under the shadow of the overpass when two blasts rang out. He didn't know whether it had been an attack from his side or theirs. But then a breeze carrying oil fumes hit his face, and he slowed to a stop.
On the other side of the overpass, maybe fifty feet ahead of him, a camerupt barreled through the jostling people and pokemon, and some of the crowd drew away behind it. Light shields in various colors flickered on, forming a haphazard wall against ORCA. A command carried across the field: "Light it up!"
Lines of red light crackled up the camerupt's back, the brightest thing in sight. A blast of water arced toward the camerupt but instead splatted harmlessly against a glowing shield. The camerupt drew in a breath, sides heaving, and opened its mouth to show a throat full of molten yellow.
Mark scrambled back. "Ore—!"
Everything happened between one breath and the next: a blue light flashed across the surface of the pipeline, cutting between the metal pipe and the torrent of flames, which poured like water to either side of the light shield. Sparks hit the grass, blooms of flame shooting up where they landed. The blue light shield buckled, swelling with heat and pressurized air—
And then, for an instant, there was only white silence.
Mark felt the explosion instead of hearing it, but his ears rang in the aftermath. Concrete and pulverized rock rained down from the overpass, hitting Orwell's light shield like hailstones. Drops of oil rained down, too.
All around, the marsh was on fire.
—
Wedged between two benches, Natalie sat on the floor of the little motorboat with her arms wrapped around herself. Scarlet perched at the back to steer, and her starmie clung to the prow, casting red light onto the water ahead. Natalie turned away from them both, watching the city lights on the water and replaying the conversation with Archie in her mind.
So is this it? she'd asked. Goodbye forever?
I think that's up to you.
They'd moored the Ultimatum in a cove off the coast of Slateport. Her brother had briskly hugged her, then Scarlet. Then he and a handful of his loyal crew had piled into motorboats and sped off to dispense justice, while she and Scarlet crawled up the eastern waterfront in stiff silence. They would dock at Sedge Park, which was a fifteen-minute walk from Natalie's childhood home. Door-to-door delivery.
She should be relieved, she knew. Certainly, she was happy to be off the Ultimatum, and she would be glad to part ways with Scarlet. But mostly, Natalie felt awful.
What was she going to tell her parents? What could she tell them? If anything, she should probably say something to the police, but … despite everything, she didn't want Archie to get in trouble.
She didn't know what she wanted.
Natalie let the view of her city fill the empty spaces inside her. She'd never seen it from the water at night before and was comforted by the game of picking out landmarks by their lights. The lighthouse and the shipyard were easy. The museum she recognized by the pillars. She kept expecting to see the contest hall, whose lights changed colors at night, but that was on the other side of the city. Then she spotted Sedge Park: a stretch of trees where hammocks hung in the summer, the grassy hill topped with the city flag, and the iron railing where the Slateport wave had been recreated in neon lights. And their motorboat shot past all of it.
Natalie sat up. "That was the park!" she yelled over the motor and the wind.
"What?"
"The! Park!"
At last, Scarlet cut the engine. "What?" she shouted again.
"Back there. That's Sedge Park."
Scarlet squinted in the direction Natalie pointed. For a moment, they drifted on the current. "Are you sure?"
Natalie puffed herself up to deliver a cutting retort—but she was interrupted by a distant thunderclap that wholly captured Scarlet's attention, her mouth falling open. When Natalie looked over her shoulder, her jaw dropped too. A fiery plume spiked into the night sky. The entire horizon had gone crimson.
Scarlet growled a string of curses. "If he thinks I'm going to just stand by and—" She revved the motor, and their little boat plunged ahead into the darkness, leaving the lights of Slateport behind. "We're taking a detour!"
As they drew closer, Natalie smelled the smoke and chemical fumes. She couldn't look away from the towering, flaming spectacle. She gripped the sides of the boat until her hands ached.
When the buildings along the shore had given way to trees and sand, all lit a hellish red, Scarlet and her starmie guided the boat into the shallows. She leapt out to drag it the rest of the way onto the shore, heedless of the water sloshing up her legs.
Up the slope, a line of flames cut across the long stretch of fields. The route beyond was swallowed by smoke. Through the haze, Natalie could barely pick out the outline of the overpass, a chunk missing from the left side as if a giant creature had taken a bite from it. Fire geysered higher than the overpass, marking the source of the destruction. Wild pokemon scattered away from the flames, but on the other side, silhouettes of larger pokemon and people collided and fell and rose again, flashing in and out of view.
Scarlet reached into the boat for a bundle of rope, then changed her mind and tossed it down again. She started away, pausing only to whip out a blue bandana and tie it over her face. "Stay here," she commanded Natalie. Then, as an afterthought, she pulled a second bandana from a pocket and tossed it to her. "Better cover your nose and mouth." Before Natalie could protest, Scarlet took off running down the path, her starmie gliding behind her, until she vanished from sight.
Part of Natalie had to admire her for diving in, though she wondered what Scarlet intended to do. What could anyone do in the face of that?
She clambered out of the boat, suddenly unsteady on solid ground. She edged closer, stopping at the invisible line she decided marked the point of no return. I'll bear witness, she told herself. Never taking her eyes off the scene before her, she heeded Scarlet's advice and doubled the bandana over her nose and mouth.
How could they do this?
Not far from where Scarlet had entered the fray, another figure burst into the open air at a halting run, moving west. A half-shell of light hung around him like a mantle, melting globs of it dropping off. She watched in horrified fascination as a solrock spun out of the haze to join him.
Mark of Rustboro. Mark of the MGMA.
At the sight of him, she began to tremble. He'd ranted about the world's problems like he had the answers, then come to her home to pollute and destroy. And for what? What gave him the right?
Without planning to, Natalie unhooked a ball from her belt. His voice burned inside her, taunting: You could make a difference. Her anger swelled, lifting her along with it and carrying her forward, first at a walk, and then a run.
Mark had almost gotten clear of the fire-zone when Ore's constant hum in his mind became a warning shriek, demanding wordlessly for him to turn, look. First he saw the mightyena bounding towards them between patches of burning grass. And then behind it, he saw her. She'd masked her face with ORCA blue, but her hair still stood out flaming red.
Despite the press of heat all around, despite the pirates somewhere behind him and the chilly throb of his banette wound—he stopped in his tracks. Un-fucking-believable. Blood rushed to his head so suddenly that, for an instant, the edges of his vision wavered.
Ore was simultaneously several feet away and also there inside Mark's bubble of rage, taking it in and pulsing back an undercurrent of righteousness through his thoughts. Without language, the solrock told him, I am with you. As Mark took the first step towards Natalie, the light shield was already reforming around him.
If she wanted to finish what they started in that Rustboro parking lot, he was more than ready.
The mightyena moved toward them in syncopated bursts, cutting in and out of shadow. Orwell glided in front of Mark, buzzing in distress each time the mightyena vanished. But Mark wasn't worried. As he tracked the mightyena's zigzagging path, his anger settled into icy calm. Even shadow-hopping, there were only so many places it could go without rematerializing among the flames.
He stepped back, into the heat, trusting Orwell's light shield to protect him from the worst of it. The mightyena would have to run straight at him to avoid the fires sputtering behind and to the sides. Sweat dripped down his face and neck, but he ignored the flames licking at his back, his gaze fixed on the mightyena. When it vanished from sight again, Mark closed his hand around his next pokeball. He flashed a smirk that remained hidden behind his bandana, and then he released Rand.
His darmanitan burst forth with a roar. When the mightyena reappeared mid-lunge, Rand was already swinging. He caught the mightyena upside the head with a smoldering fist, smacking its jaws shut. Leaving it no opportunity to recover, he beat it back with several quick hits to the ribs.
Mark followed his darmanitan forward. "Keep it tight, Rand! Don't give it room to jump between us."
Gritting his teeth through the stab of pain in his shoulder, Mark swiveled toward Natalie. She stood frozen, her eyes wide, just as she had when ORCA had arrived and blown her cover. The reminder made Mark's blood boil. He'd gone out of his way to protect her, and what had she done in return? Lied to him. Led him into ORCA's path. He'd lost Gibs because of her.
As she fumbled for another pokeball, he saw his opening. She should've kept her mightyena closer.
To Ore he said, "Go for her head."
The solrock's eyes flashed violet. A soundless wind ripped through the grass—and then Natalie clutched her head and doubled over like she'd been punched. Her expression was difficult to read at a distance, but her shock and alarm showed in the way she moved. She stared at him for a long moment, arms drawn protectively around herself, before flinging down the pokeball.
Her wingull rose easily on an updraft. It was even smaller than Mark remembered, but he knew better than to underestimate a threat from above. He didn't wait to find out whether it was coming for him and Ore or for Rand.
"Go, Octavia."
She might have escaped the worst of the explosion, but she wasn't in great shape. Her flight was crooked as she approached the wingull. But there was nothing he could do about it now. If he recalled her, they'd be open to attack from the air. Let it play out, then; Octavia could manage for a little while. He just had to finish this quickly.
Clenching his jaw, Mark turned back to Natalie. He counted two more balls at her belt, but she hadn't reached for either yet. Too slow. "Again, Ore."
This time Natalie's knees buckled. He watched with surprise but not pity as she dropped. No more tricks up your sleeve, huh?You really had no idea what this was like.
From her knees, she finally sent out another pokemon, the gurdurr. It tottered momentarily and then, at her command, lurched towards Mark's darmanitan. Rand was leaping away from the mightyena's teeth and couldn't see the gurdurr drawing back its fist behind him, but—she keeps forgetting about Orwell.
His solrock knew what he wanted before he'd even finished the thought. Ore spun to face the gurdurr, freezing it mid-swing. For a moment, it strained uselessly against the invisible hold, but then it toppled as if its legs had been knocked out from under it. Ore lifted the gurdurr and tossed it out of sight, through the veil of smoke. At no point did the solrock leave Mark's side.
"Good work," he said, giving Ore a grin the solrock would sense even if it couldn't see.
Overhead, the wingull was a white smudge, weaving and twisting to avoid Octavia's snapping jaws. To the right, Rand pinned the mightyena by the throat with one massive hand and pummeled it with the other, ignoring the shadows lashing his face and chest. The mightyena snarled and then blinked out of sight; but it hadn't managed to move out of striking range, and Rand caught it with a left hook before they tumbled together through the haze. Flame spilled across the grass on either side.
But it wasn't about beating her pokemon. He'd bled for his team and his convictions countless times, and he'd do it again—but he didn't think she would be so ready to accept the real price. Next time, she'd know better and stay the fuck out of it. He'd make sure of that.
Mark started forward, ignoring the pain that shot through his back. "Come on, Ore. Let's finish this."
—
As Mark strode towards her, Natalie struggled to her feet, her head throbbing. Something dripped hotly under her bandana, and she wasn't sure if it was sweat or blood. Red-hot lines webbed Mark's light shield, but the solrock bobbing alongside him sealed the cracks with pulses of light like they'd never been there. And, gods, she still had nothing.
She closed her fingers on her last pokeball, picturing her whismur's velvety nose and quivering whiskers. The metal was slippery in her grasp. It didn't feel fair. Gus wasn't ready for this, but—
Mark was close enough now to hear him. His voice came distorted from behind the light shield, but the malice was unmistakable. "Get the fuck out of here."
The solrock's eyes began to glow again, so Natalie pressed the release button and threw down her pokeball. The whismur's silhouette formed from the red light, ears unfurling—
Again, the bone-rattling hum filled her head, squeezing against the confines of her skull and wrenching her sideways. She screamed—
—and her scream poured from Gus's mouth. The sound stretched until it was unrecognizable, booming with such force that dirt and sparks and flaming debris flew.
Mark's light shield burst like a soap bubble. This time he was the one who ducked his head and pressed his hands to his ears. He straightened stiffly, flinching as he lowered his arms—he was hurt.
Good. He deserved it.
Heart pounding, Natalie scrambled to right herself. She drew in a smoky breath and shouted with all her strength, "You leave!" Gus amplified her voice, the sound vibrating through her shoes. "HOENN ISN'T YOURS!"
Mark stumbled back, and his solrock wobbled. It was trying to reconstruct the light shield, but the light flickered out again with each reverberation. Behind them, Samson was back on his feet, but he had stopped to clamp his hands over his ears, too. And Luna. Where was she? Natalie couldn't even see her anymore.
When Natalie quieted, so did Gus. Mark's voice made Natalie jerk to attention. "Rockslide."
As the first pebbles showered their feet, Gus sucked in a breath and started to howl again. But the rocks kept falling, each one larger than the next. Huge shapes hurtled through the haze, outlined in purple light—great hunks of the ruined overpass, Natalie realized, some of them almost as large as her.
"Gus!" she shrieked, but she couldn't hear herself over the whismur's cries. Natalie recalled him moments before an enormous concrete block dropped where he'd been standing. She narrowly avoided being crushed herself. Concrete dust showered her as she skittered out of the way, leaving rubble scattered behind her.
Natalie fought for breath. Each gulp of the smoky air burned her throat. Mark was drawing closer, his solrock ablaze with violet light. Their eyes met. For a moment she thought she saw a softening in his face, but then his mouth opened, and he said, "Again. Take her down."
A rock flew past her ear, forcing her to duck. The concrete chunks that lay all around lit up and lifted shakily into the air. Mark watched, arms folded.
The first rock grazed her shoulder, and then another struck her leg. It was no bigger than a tennis ball, but Natalie stumbled and almost went down again. As a third rock flew towards her, Natalie shut her eyes—but no impact came. She blinked. The air in front of her shimmered blue. Then the keening call of a wingull rose over the roar of the flames, and Amelia swooped to land at Natalie's feet.
But as rock and concrete clattered against Amelia's light shield, it began to crack, blue shards splintering off the edges. "Hang in there, Amelia!"
In response, Amelia lifted her wings, beak open in a threat display ... but she was such a tiny thing to hold back so much weight. Her wings trembled. Natalie's heart felt ready to burst. The shield wasn't going to hold, and Natalie couldn't bear the thought of all that rock coming down on her brave little wingull.
She reached for Amelia's ball, and then hesitated. Natalie couldn't outrun this. If she recalled her ….
Amelia trilled, and Natalie raised her eyes—but the wingull was too bright to look at directly, the white of her feathers incandescent. Natalie shielded her face in the crook of her elbow. From the corners of her vision she watched Amelia's silhouette ripple and stretch, blazing ever-brighter, and then bloom into something new.
At last, the sound of rocks battering the shield faded away. The air hung thick with dust and smoke. But the air was clear inside the unbroken dome of blue light where Natalie crouched behind Amelia, who flexed her new pelipper wings.
Natalie couldn't see Mark through the smoke—which meant he couldn't see them either. They had one chance for a surprise attack. "Amelia," she said with a ragged voice, her lips cracked and dry. "Water pulse."
Amelia flapped, scattering smoke and sparks as she lifted into the air, and she opened her beak to release a torrent of water. The blast cut through the dusty haze, then smashed into the solrock's light shield with enough force to drive both it and its trainer back several yards.
But, through the smoke, the solrock's shield still glowed a steady purple. Silhouetted against the flames, Mark reached to his belt again.
Natalie cast her eyes around wildly. Could she run? Sam toddled towards them—but Luna! Natalie still couldn't see her anywhere. She couldn't just leave her.
Behind Mark, a second, smaller figure cut through the smoke, a crobat flying at their side. The trainer caught Mark by the arm, their faces close, and Natalie wondered if she was saved. But instead of attacking, the crobat turned its back to the solrock, watching the rear while it guarded the front. They knew each other. She didn't stand a chance against two of them.
Mark shoved off the other trainer, who grabbed the front of his sweater instead and pulled. Straining away, Mark twisted to face toward her one more time—she could feel the venom in his gaze even if she could make out none of the details of his face. How had she ever admired him?
Natalie wanted to return the glare with even greater ferocity. She wanted to tear him down and make him hurt as much as he'd hurt her. But she didn't have anything left in her, and instead she shrank back.
But, to her amazement, he turned away and recalled his pokemon one by one, red light flashing through the smoke until only the solrock was left. Then he and the crobat trainer turned and ran towards the trees.
She didn't watch them go. Hands on her knees, she let herself drop to a crouch, gasping in tearless sobs of relief. She felt like she might throw up or pass out.
The entire fight must've lasted only a minute or two. How had it spiraled out of her control so quickly?
At a squawk from Amelia—a new, lower register—Natalie lifted her head. Samson had rejoined them. "Sam! Are you okay?" Legs shaking, she clambered over to lay hands on him and assure herself that he was whole. He was covered in ash and dirt, so she couldn't tell the full extent of his injuries, but at least he was on his feet.
Still woozy, she forced herself to stand up again, scanning for signs of her mightyena. She could hardly see anything but flame and curtains of smoke. "Luna!" The shout tore at her throat, but she could still hardly hear herself. "Luna!"
There was no response.
"Come on," Natalie said in a voice pinched with panic. "We have to find her."
With Sam on her heels and Amelia coasting overhead, she plunged through the smoke in the direction she'd last glimpsed Luna, calling her name. Even with the bandana over her nose and mouth, she was arrested by a coughing fit. Then she saw Luna, a lump of fur on the ground just ahead, illuminated by the encroaching flames.
Heart in her throat, she ran. She directed Amelia to fight the fire back from them, and then she dropped to Luna's side, cradling the mightyena's face in her hands. "Luna? Oh gods. Luna, baby, are you okay?"
Luna lifted her head and whined.
Natalie swallowed hard and gingerly pet the top of Luna's head. "I'm so sorry, Luna. You're so good and, gods, I screwed up. You're okay. I'll take you to the pokecenter, and you'll be okay."
With another whine, the mightyena weakly wagged her tail.
Natalie's stomach felt like it was full of rocks. She bent to press her face against Luna's cheek and then recalled her. The pokeball came away covered in dark fingerprints; her fingers were black with soot from Luna's fur.
The heat was oppressive, a reminder not to linger. Amelia wheeled, gliding low to douse the flames and then rising again, but the fire was still moving forward. At heavy footfalls behind, Natalie spun around. Sam, rejoining her at her side. Hadn't he already been right behind her? She paled at the thought of leaving him behind without even realizing. She knew better now than to rely on Amelia alone if another of the MGMA came upon her, but she also couldn't afford to slow to his pace. The fire was moving fast now. "Good job, Sam," she said, recalling him. Then she shouted over her shoulder for Amelia and moved towards the open air.
A pelipper's plaintive call brought her up short. For a moment, she thought it was Amelia in trouble. Then, from beside her, Amelia trumpeted an answering cry. To the left, where the smoke was thinner, blue shadows circled in the air. Below them, the fires were settling down, and trainers stood in the thick of the smoke and steam that rose when a spurt of water hit flame. More trainers waded in the shallows, commanding their pokemon to stem the flow of oil down the coastline. Among them was the glowing outline of a starmie, and Natalie thought she saw Scarlet turn to look at her, but it was hard to tell through the haze.
Natalie gave a start at the realization that, all along, ORCA trainers had been less than a hundred feet away. Not that it had helped when she'd been fighting for her life. She wasn't one of them.
And, of course, that meant the rest of Magma might've been nearby, too. She'd gotten off lucky.
Amelia landed beside Natalie, smoke eddying in her wake. She called out again, craning towards the other pelippers.
"You want to go to them," Natalie said softly.
She imagined how she might move through the fray, Amelia carving a path with wind and water. They could put out fires, redirect the waterflow. They could help.
Amelia's head came to Natalie's chest now, her wings almost as large as doors. But already her feathers had gone gray with smoke. She wasn't invulnerable.
Just past the ORCA trainers, scraps of flame floated across the water. And farther ahead, at the heart of the roiling smoke, splotches of burning oil rained down, and flames taller than buildings continued to spew into the sky. ORCA was making their way towards that column of fire, but so much was still burning in between. Maybe too much even for them.
No. Natalie had already done enough—and her pokemon had paid the price. For once, she knew when she was beat.
"Amelia, let's go," she said, voice quavering, and turned towards the main road. She paused to cast a look over her shoulder. Awash in orange smog and still listing towards the shadows of the ORCA pokemon, Amelia gave another squawk. But finally, she took to the air, sailing up and away from the fire. Natalie breathed out in relief.
It was a long walk to Slateport, but there were no other options. Natalie wasn't about to wait for a ride home. Not tonight.
As she walked, Natalie pulled off her bandana, sucking in the cool air. Her mouth tasted like iron, but the smell of the ocean was so sweet that she felt maudlin with it. She moved almost in a trance, mystified by her own ability to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Down the road, red and blue lights flashed, too distant for her to hear the sirens yet. They'd come far too late.
Amelia wiffled past, and then she was a white dot receding towards the city lights, leading the way home. Don't look back, Natalie told herself. She kept her eyes on Amelia and kept her feet moving.
—
The spare key was in the lock box hooked under the back stairs, like always. Natalie's own key was in her backpack … which, of course, was still many miles away in Rustboro. She shook her head at herself as she spun the number dials—but how could she have known that she wouldn't return to the hostel after the protest? That felt like a thousand years ago.
The moment she opened the door, she was hit by cool air and the smell of laundry. There was something else too, a smell she had never noticed before and couldn't quite pinpoint. The definitive smell of home.
Natalie pulled off her filthy sneakers and padded through the house like a thief. The dark rooms were like museums of normal life: the kitchen table covered with bills to be paid and one of Mom's articles, half-edited and scattered with three colors of pens. The remote and the empty beer can next to Dad's chair. The school portraits, a younger Natalie with no front teeth and a teenaged Archie smiling cooly. The carpet looked freshly vacuumed. Natalie, conscious of her unclean hands and clothes stinking of smoke, touched nothing on her way to the bathroom.
She sat on the edge of the tub, and for several moments, she was so overcome with exhaustion that all she could do was stare at the tiles. But, although she knew her team would be fine in pokeball stasis, she couldn't stomach going to bed without tending to them. So she made herself sit up.
The pokecenter had admitted only Luna. Natalie had never had a reason to visit a center late at night before and had been surprised by the "emergency hours" policy. The nurses on shift were stony and impatient, asking terse questions about the cause of Luna's condition. She'd stuttered through her story of being attacked by a rogue trainer. It wasn't untrue, and her ragged appearance made good evidence, so they sent her off with little more than a cautionary word. Guilt wormed through her, but she was grateful they'd turned away her other pokemon. She wouldn't have felt safe walking home alone.
One at a time, she released her remaining pokemon into the tub. Sam was dirty more than anything else. He grunted and groaned in protest as she began to wipe him down with a wet washcloth. From upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Natalie shushed him, straining to hear. She hoped she hadn't woken her parents; she couldn't face them right now. There were no more footsteps and no knock on the bathroom door, so she finally turned back to Sam, sprayed him with one of the potions she'd bought on the way home, and then returned him to his ball.
Gus she feared would come out screaming loudly enough to wake the entire block and probably damage the walls too, so she bit her lip but decided to pass over his ball until the morning. That left only Amelia.
For the first time, Natalie had the chance to really look at Amelia's new shape: a broad and unyielding wedge like an axe head, but with the same golden eyes and speckled wingtips she knew so well. Still Amelia. The pelipper nibbled at her fingers, and Natalie allowed herself to smile for the first time since she'd seen fire on the horizon.
Gently, she stretched open one wing and then the other to check for damage. A few feathers had been ripped out, and ash streaked her breast and head, but nothing looked too serious. Then Amelia half-turned and revealed the dark splashes down her back, shimmering with chemical rainbows. Each black splotch was like a stain on Natalie's heart.
She scrambled to find dish soap and a fistful of paper towels. When she returned, Amelia had turned her head, bill pouch folding and wrinkling, to groom the oiled patches on her back. Natalie bit her knuckle to stop herself from crying out in horror. "That's poison," she hissed, wresting Amelia's beak away. "Don't touch."
As Natalie worked the feathers into a brown lather, she was powerless to stop the angry tears from running down her cheeks. She rubbed her face into her shoulder but didn't stop what she was doing until the water streaming off Amelia's back ran clear. This must be how Archie felt after Devon Horizon, she thought. This must be how he feels right now. Greasy suds swirled around the drain. Natalie felt sick thinking about the oily dregs most likely running back to the ocean, but she didn't know what else to do about it.
Finally, she planted a kiss on Amelia's beak, earning a too-enthusiastic headbutt to the shoulder, and recalled her. She drooped against the side of the tub with her head resting on her arms ... and then jolted awake again a moment later. If she didn't get up now, she wouldn't be able to.
When Natalie stood, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her tears had cut two tracks through the soot on her face, and dried blood crusted under her nose. She didn't look like any kind of hero. And she wasn't—she knew who was responsible, and she'd watched him run.
Badges and bullshit, she thought with a grimace. Mark could burn in hell, but he'd been right: earning badges hadn't made her strong in the ways she needed to be. She cringed thinking how her pokemon had fought those bullshit battles for her, for an empty prize.
Natalie turned her back on her reflection and ran the shower. As if she could wash away her disgust with herself as easily as the dirty fingerprints on the side of the tub, she scrubbed herself until she swayed on her feet in exhaustion. When she collapsed into her bed at last, her hair still smelled like smoke.
She pressed her fist to her lips, curling into a ball, and armored herself with a promise. She didn't know when or how, but she would find a way to make Magma pay for what they'd done. As she plunged into a black, dreamless sleep, a final thought chased her down: I bet Archie didn't run.
—
From the fire escape, Route 110 was little more than a red glow peeking through the Mauville skyline, but Mark saw flames every time he closed his eyes. He floated in the haze between sleep and waking, thoughts churning too hard to fully relax but too tired to do more than laze on the steps with a borrowed cigarette. In his dormant form, Rand curled up on the landing below, stone head fused to the crook of his stone elbow. Eventually, Mark would have to try to sleep, too, but he wasn't excited about the idea of lying down.
When he'd shown his back to Sienna, asking, "How bad is it?" he'd been ready to hear a sharp intake of breath or sounds of concern.
What she said was, "Huh."
There was no bleeding gash, no tears in his pullover—just five sewing pins. He had to take her word for it: each one had evaporated the moment she'd pulled it out. Immediately, he'd been able to move more freely, even rolling his shoulder all the way around. He was grateful. But a check in the bathroom mirror later had revealed five star-shaped bruises across his shoulders, still tender to the touch.
Somehow, he didn't trust the injury not to worsen when he wasn't looking, even though he knew he was being paranoid. For now, he leaned his elbows on the top step, leaving his back open to the air. Mark shivered, the nape of his neck still damp from the shower. He imagined Gibs warm against his side, but the thought made him feel more alone. Watching the smoke swirl in the languid breeze soothed him, though. He'd already inhaled enough smoke that night to last a lifetime. And yet.
On his return to the hostel, Mark had encountered a trio of trainers who'd bought out the liquor store to celebrate earning their badges. "What happened to you?" one of them had blurted at the sight of him. "Bad run-in with a camerupt?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's about right."
That had set them giggling and, in their minds, made him one of their own. They pleaded for him to join them—"You've earned a drink! It's on me!"—but they were already shitfaced, and he suspected he wouldn't have wanted their company sober either. But he didn't mind bumming a Blue Ring off them and then slinking off to nurse his guilty thoughts alone.
Their laughter and tinny phone music still drifted down from the roof like sounds from another planet. Mark wondered if his teammates, now scattered to separate corners of the city, were celebrating in their own ways. Were they also up watching the fires burn, or had they already glided into dreams of a better tomorrow?
Mark's phone vibrated in his pocket, and he jolted. It had to be Montag. Who else would call at this hour? Except … no, it was his personal phone.
At the sight of his sister's name on the screen, Mark stubbed out his cigarette as if he'd been caught in the act. He tipped his face to the sky and breathed slowly. I can't handle another emergency tonight. But if she'd been hospitalized, Kathy wouldn't be calling—Mom would.
He weighed the phone in his hand for a moment and then, fuck it, answered. "Hey, Kath."
She squeaked.
"Hello?"
"I didn't think you'd answer!" Scoldingly, she added, "Isn't it like three in the morning there?"
He did the math. In Unova, it was still yesterday afternoon.
"I can hang up instead if you want," he said.
"I was gonna leave a voicemail."
She did that from time to time, nonsense postcards in audio form, anecdotes about her performances and the weather, interspersed with car alarms and the rumble of traffic. Mark wasn't much for talking on the phone, but he appreciated the reminders of home. It was a softer place through her eyes—he almost missed it.
Kathy asked, "Did I wake you up?"
"Nah. I've been awake." Sitting up, he tucked what was left of the cigarette through his boot laces, not yet ready to be done with it but unwilling to dirty his shirt pocket. "You sound out of breath."
"It's fine," Kathy said sharply. "I'm just walking home."
He pictured it: Her cello case, strapped to her back, was broader than she was. She'd made him carry it for her enough times that he knew it wasn't all that heavy, despite its size. She was definitely straining, though. Castelia was a cleaner city than Virbank, the avenues wide and sometimes tree-lined, but it was still smoggy and gray most days.
Mark wished yet again that she'd chosen a school in Hoenn or even Alola. But it had to be CAM.
"Yeah. Alright," he said.
"Don't do that."
"What?"
She went quiet, and he knew she was making a face. "I haven't had a flare-up in months."
"I didn't say anything."
"Hmm."
Mark rolled his eyes. He wasn't going to apologize for worrying, but he knew enough to leave it alone.
"Anyway," she said. "How are you? I haven't heard from you in forever."
Now he winced. "I know. I'm the worst. I'm sorry."
"Yeah, you are, you jerk." But there was a smile in her voice. "So, you've been pretty busy, huh?"
"Ha. Yeah."
"Gym stuff?"
Ah, shit. He hadn't considered what he'd tell her about that. After a moment he said, "I quit, actually."
"What? How come?"
He settled on a partial truth. "The gym leader's a fucking corporate sellout. She's signing away wilderness for political favors. I couldn't just sit there and watch."
"Yeah, that sounds like you."
"I'll figure something else out." Then he paused, because this was the real sticking point. "It'll probably be a little while before I can send money again, but—"
"You really don't have to, you know. Mom and I will figure it out. It's not the end of the world if I take out a couple of loans."
"Yeah, well. I want to help."
There was a lot he couldn't do for her, but this one problem he could solve by throwing money at it. Mom shouldn't have to shoulder it by herself. Meanwhile, Dad had insisted he'd be happy to support Kathy getting a degree in a "practical" field, as if it had anything to do with him, but he hadn't had the opportunity to prove it. Or fail to.
Of course, the air in Castelia was killing her slowly, but the music wasn't Mark's to take away from her. And he was glad to know there was still something beautiful left in Unova.
Kathy made an exasperated sound, and Mark smiled.
"So when are you coming home?"
That caught him by surprise. "I ... don't know. I don't have any hard plans for my next visit."
"If your job isn't keeping you anymore ..."
No, I've still got a job to do here. MetFalls wasn't done yet, after all. There were still lines left to draw, boundaries left to defend. But he couldn't tell her about those things without telling her too much. How could he explain that he was a soldier and the fight for Unova's soul had been lost before he was born?
Kathy continued, "The leaves are turning. It's been really pretty out lately."
"What would I do in Unova, Kath?"
"Eat Mom's food. Come to my concerts. Read too much. Complain."
"Sounds pretty good."
"I mean, you can be a trainer anywhere, right?"
The words flared up in him like Roman candles: Hoenn isn't yours.
Fuck Natalie. What did she know? She hadn't even been to a protest before—he didn't think that part had been a lie. But the sinking feeling stayed with him even after he pushed the thought away.
Mark closed his eyes as a new wave of fatigue swept over him. Maybe it was time for him to take a break. Just for a week or two. For a moment, he was tempted to tell Kathy, Yes, tomorrow. No one would stop him, not even Montag.
But how could he go home without Gibs? And what would Mark say when Mom and Kathy asked where he was?
"I'll think about it and keep you posted," he said.
Kathy sighed. "Sure." They both knew he meant no.
"I miss you, though," he said. "Send me some music sometime soon?"
"I just got in. Give me two minutes to set up and I can play you something right now." She paused. "It really is late there, though. I should let you sleep."
"I'm not going anywhere. Get set up."
In the absence of conversation, Natalie's voice crept back in. He turned his phone as loud as it would go, smashing it to his ear, and let Kathy's music chase her out.
He didn't recognize it at first as a lullaby. Smartass. He smiled. Leaning his forehead against the railing, he shut his eyes against the fires burning in the distance. He tried to imagine himself in Castelia, but it was a fruitless effort; he hadn't visited Kathy's new apartment yet, and his mind offered nothing but an empty room. She played on, and he reached instead for a memory of Montag.
They'd been at the threshold of the dark woods, Montag driving an unblinking stare into him: Hoenn belongs to anyone willing to fight for it.
There had been anger in his voice. A challenge. A benediction. But never a single shred of doubt.
Brendan's boot prints wound through the dark behind him, but ahead, the fine, pink sand lay undisturbed. By the end of the week, it would be a jumble of footprints as journalists, academics, and surveyors made their way through the temple. The floor would be swept, staked, and digitally imaged. It was only sand ... but the thought that they were changing the space forever just by walking saddened him.
He paused in the center of the room, solar lantern held high, and turned in a slow circle. The last chamber had been much bigger. The tiles shone where his footsteps had revealed them; steadying the camera atop his lantern, he snapped a few photos of his footprints, proof that, for a few moments, this had been his alone. In the preview window, the chamber looked like the surface of the moon, beautiful in its austerity. He wondered if this was how the first astronauts had felt.
Harrison and Steven were somewhere nearby, but they'd split up to cover ground more quickly. Brendan couldn't think of a time he'd been so completely alone: even after May had gone her own way, he'd always had his pokemon at his side. He would've liked their company, but he could too easily imagine any one of them trampling delicate artifacts underfoot. Indie in particular could be a menace with that tail. Time had done damage enough here already.
As he moved forward, he spotted a lump in the sand. He nudged it with his toe to reveal a few broken pieces of pottery. One looked like a handle. Brendan photographed the shards and then stepped carefully around them, taking mental note to return later with a bag. Everything would be saved and studied, each mystery prised apart … but they'd come looking for something bigger than pottery shards. He should keep moving.
If Harrison had come this way, he would be trying to figure out what this room had been for, making Brendan his whetstone while answering none of his questions.
No, that wasn't fair. Brendan hadn't forgotten what an honor it was just to be here with both Brandon Harrison, the world-famous archaeologist and Frontier brain, and Steven Stone, former champion of the Hoenn League and Trainer Today's Man of the Year, the very image of class and power. Brendan still didn't know what he'd done to deserve their company. Really, he hadn't done anything—it had been Steven. He and Harrison had already been poring over texts for months when he'd invited Brendan to join.
Ahead, the back wall had been carved into shelves, the upper ones lined with fat clay jugs, each thick with dust, but the lower two empty. Depleted stores? Or missing? The shards must've come from here, sometime when there had been less sand on the floors to break the fall. Had the temple been abandoned in a hurry, he wondered, a jug tumbling from hands gone clumsy with urgency? Or had it been a careless raider? He hated to think that anyone had beaten them there and stolen artifacts they wouldn't know to miss. Regardless, it hadn't happened recently, and it probably wasn't relevant to their quest.
"Birch!" Steven's voice echoed from another room.
Brendan scrambled to the doorway of the small side room. From there, by the warm half-light of the tripod-mounted lamps, he saw no one in the main chamber. They had to be farther in. "Did you find something?" he called back.
"Come see this!"
He followed the sound of Steven's voice deeper into the enormous main chamber. The layout of rooms was too linear and purposeful to be natural, but the walls were irregularly shaped, a line that wavered and folded back on itself as if drawn by a child's hand. Raising such a structure must've taken a lot of pokemon—and long before the invention of pokeballs, too. Later, he'd ask Harrison how they'd managed it.
"Where are you guys?" The uneven walls twisted Brendan's voice and threw it back at him.
"Over here!" Towards the back and to the left.
As he passed under the carved archway in the center of the room, Brendan slowed and craned his neck. The upper reaches were lost to shadow now, but when they'd first entered, Harrison's bronzong had lit it in full: the carving was a perfect copy of the tablets from the museum, the ones marked Regirock. The image had been eyeless and maybe even headless (it was hard to tell) but had still seemed to be watching him. He felt it even now, despite the dark.
A guardian, he decided firmly.
Beyond the arch were several doors, simple cutaways in the rock. He ducked through the lefthand one. The passage was narrow, lined with more carvings that stretched floor to ceiling, depicting mountains made of simple geometric shapes, groups of robed figures, and what had to be pokemon—but he couldn't let himself linger. At the end of the hallway, light spilled from two doors engraved with glyphs. Brendan clicked off his headlamp, pulling it down around his neck, and pushed through.
The room was bright with the abundance of lanterns and pokemon, and Brendan blinked as his eyes adjusted. Steven's claydol, Mazda, floated patiently in the center of the room like a chandelier, beaming light from each of her golden eyes. Steven and Harrison crouched across from each other, their hand lanterns forgotten on the floor beside piles of sand and a stone slab. They'd uncovered something. Sankara the bronzong hovered overhead, the glow from its bell like a spotlight on the two men and the dark tunnel gaping between them.
"You don't think so?" Steven was saying, his voice excited but hushed.
"Might be," Harrison answered. "But it could go anywhere."
Brendan slowed his steps, suddenly feeling like an intruder. He wouldn't have wandered off by himself if he'd realized they would be sticking together. What had they talked about without him?
But at the sound of his footsteps, Steven turned and called out, "Birch! There you are." He flashed Brendan a grin that he couldn't help returning. "Can you believe this? Secret tunnels! This place keeps getting better and better."
Even kneeling in thousands of years of dust, Steven looked like a clothing ad. He'd traded his usual suit and tie for more practical attire, but all of it was sharply creased, and the Stone family crest glinted green and silver at his breast pocket.
As always, Brendan felt shabby next to him. The nicest things he wore, his boots, had actually come from Steven. I bought the wrong size by mistake. You don't happen to want them do you? Brendan hadn't believed him for a second—Steven Stone didn't make mistakes. But he recognized the kindness, and he also saw Steven's point; he'd worn the same pair of shoes from one end of Hoenn to the other, and it showed in the way the soles had begun to peel away from the canvas uppers.
But he'd loved those shoes and their mismatched laces, one red and one black, from when he and May had swapped. He'd tried threading the new boots with the old laces, but they'd looked even worse against the shiny, dark leather. In the end, they were just ratty old laces, and he wasn't so sentimental he couldn't throw them away.
Steven gestured for Brendan to join him and Harrison on the floor beside the mouth of the tunnel. It cut straight down. Even Sankara's light only shone so far before the darkness swallowed it up.
"It looks deep," Brendan said. He knelt cautiously, nervous that a careless step would send him falling in headfirst. "Do we know what it's for?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Steven said, beaming.
Harrison cut in, "Few people would've known the answer to that. Probably only high priests. Some nobles, maybe." His voice was gruff, as ever, but Brendan recognized that elated look in his eyes of a late-night, coffee-fueled breakthrough. At Brendan's frown, he added, "You didn't see the markings on the doors? Like the ones outside."
In other words, intended to keep people out. The temple door was a puzzle, one that had taken them months to solve.
First, they'd had to find the temple. Harrison had translated (and re-translated) the tablets, and Brendan had scouted out the locations Harrison identified—guesswork as much as anything else. At last, one of those guesses had brought Brendan to the cliffs bordering the Hoenn desert. Behind a stone slab that didn't match the surrounding rock, he'd uncovered both the entrance, set into the cliff and framed by intricately carved pillars, and another riddle.
The door was featureless except for a heavy stone wheel embedded in the center; spinning it did nothing but reveal an indentation the size of Brendan's fist. Glyphs marked the wheel's bottom edge, but, regardless of which way the wheel was turned, the most Harrison could make of it was, "Gods of gods? And then ... huh. A participle, best as I can tell." He harrumphed and added, "Enough goddamned gods to trip over around here. Sounds like a temple at least."
Nothing they did to the wheel or the indentation underneath had any effect on the door. Despite Steven's wincing protests, they even tried tunneling under. But, bizarrely, not even Steven's pokemon could penetrate or shift the rock surrounding the door or the cliff. One manic week later, they were still no closer to solving the riddle. Steven had gloomily collected his things to return to civilization, saying, "Just … please do let me know if there are any updates."
One morning the week after Steven left, Brendan woke before dawn. In his dreams, he'd been following May down a wooded path, falling further behind the faster he walked. Too restless to return to sleep, he'd unzipped his tent and stepped out into the morning chill. Above, the stars of Balen the wailord still shone faintly in the sky. Not wanting to disturb Harrison and not sure what else to do, he made his way back to the door with his camera. But when he saw the door, he froze. By the dim light of the not-quite-risen sun, new glyphs shone bluish on the stone wheel, completing the circle.
Brendan paused only long enough to snap a few photos before running to rouse Harrison. He was glad that he had. By the time Harrison shuffled up the slope—his leg was worse first thing in the morning—the sun had crested the horizon, and the second set of glyphs was gone. But Harrison managed a translation from the camera display screen: As dust from earth, so gods from gods.
While Brendan was still struggling to make any sense of that, Harrison burst out, "Dust from earth … ha!" He bent for a fistful of crumbling red soil and then pressed it into the indentation behind the stone wheel. There was a rumbling deep below their feet, and, at last, as it had so many times in his dreams, the temple door grated open.
For the first time, Brendan had felt like a real part of the team. Now, though, he was back to being along for the ride. Already, Harrison and Steven had opened an entire door without him, while his contributions had mostly been dumb luck.
Brendan turned away from the hallway door, back to Steven and Harrison, squinting against Mazda's eight slow-spinning lights. At the side of the tunnel, Harrison was staring at him, a plastic bag in his outstretched hands.
"Here. Take a look. We collected these from the floor."
Inside were more pottery shards. A layperson would've taken the scattering of dots as some kind of decorative pattern, but Brendan recognized it as writing. Not that he could read any of it. Harrison was one of the few scholars who could make any sense of the ancient writings, and even he wavered on his interpretations. Once, Brendan had broached the idea of learning, but even the simplest of the "constellations" had baffled him. Though, turning the bag, Brendan spotted a pictogram he did recognize—
"Trapinch," said Harrison. "The ancients most likely saw them as protective totems. I'm surprised we haven't found any nests in here yet."
Sensing a lecture coming on, Brendan cast a helpless look at Steven, who was contemplating the hole in the floor, his head tipped to one side; clearly he'd already heard the speech.
Brendan surrendered to the inevitable. "What is it?"
"It's a clay seal," Harrison answered in a tone that almost sounded scolding. "Or part of one. It could've been another barrier to entry, or it might've simply alerted priests that the door had been tampered with."
"So someone did break in." Thinking of the pottery shards in the other room, Brendan added, "I hate to think what they might've taken."
"Don't worry. He didn't get very far."
Brendan turned in the direction Harrison pointed, and—skeleton. He'd been so focused on Steven and Harrison when he entered that he hadn't seen it against the wall. It lay on its side, one arm reaching toward the only door. The skeleton still wore wireframe glasses and a few strips of frayed cloth, but sand spilled from between the exposed ribs and grinning jaws.
Harrison clapped a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Relax. He's already dead." And had been for a very long time, considering the state of decay. There was little in the way of moisture and wild pokemon in the temple to help break down a body.
"But he died in here." Looking around with fresh eyes, Brendan noticed for the first time a stone lectern against the wall. Scrapes in the sand marked where it had been recently dragged from the mouth of the tunnel. At one point, someone had wanted that trap door to stay shut.
"What if there's—?" He couldn't help it: his eyes went to the cane resting against Harrison's good leg, the handle carved into a leering cofagrigus. Brendan tore his gaze away, but not quickly enough.
Harrison took the clay seal back from him, scowling. "If there are vengeful ghosts around, there's no point worrying about which room you're in, boy."
No, walls didn't matter much to ghosts, not even walls of thick stone. It wasn't a comforting thought.
Steven cut in cheerfully, "I think if there were any danger, Mazda and Sankara would've let us know by now."
"No, I know," Brendan said, sitting up straighter. He forced himself to look again at the skeleton. It wasn't really so different from any other artifact or mineral he'd handled before, right? "Just surprised me."
Steven smiled mischievously. "Time to find out where this tunnel goes."
They anchored their ladder to Delorean, Steven's metagross, one loop around each of its front legs. Steven leaned down and tugged at a rung. "Seems sturdy enough to me. Thanks, Del."
The metagross shifted its weight, and the aluminum rungs jangled all the way down the dark shaft. Brendan shivered, but when Steven caught his gaze, he forced a smile.
"I don't mind going first," Steven said, switching on the headlamp hanging around his neck.
"Floor might be unstable," Harrison warned. "Take it slow."
"Of course. I'll be careful." In one smooth motion, Steven took hold of the golden cross curving up from Delorean's jaws and swung himself down onto the ladder. He paused to rap his knuckles on the metagross's foot. "One for luck." He winked, an eclipse of one blue eye before he dropped below, the beam of his headlamp jouncing with each step.
Watching made Brendan's stomach seize up, so instead, he stood to look around the room again. No one but us has seen this room in hundreds of years, he reminded himself. The worshippers and priests were long gone, but this place still felt holy. And it was beautiful. The dust couldn't hide the fluted pillars or the engraved altars under half-domes of stone tracery. So he busied himself with his camera, listening all the while for sounds of distress from down in the tunnel. Not that he could do much if …. It's fine.He's fine.
Harrison's grumbling made Brendan pause and look up from the viewfinder. He'd brought out a collapsible camp chair and was easing himself into it, massaging his bad leg. "Sankara, c'mere. I need more light."
"You're not coming," Brendan said, the thought somehow occurring to him only then.
Harrison gave a derisive laugh as he pulled a tiny notebook from one of his many pockets. "Come on, kid."
Brendan's face colored. "No, I know. But I mean ... couldn't Sankara—?"
"I try not to get into any position I can't get out of by myself."
He had a point. The opening was too narrow for either of their pokemon to fit through. Steven had recalled his claydol on the chance there would be room to release her again somewhere below. But if there wasn't, Harrison could be stranded.
"And I've got plenty of work already." He tapped on the camera hanging around his neck. "I could be here all week translating what's in the main room alone. Cynthia'll shit herself when she sees some of these." At that, Harrison chuckled, but it sounded hollow to Brendan.
Steven's voice rang out, distant and echoing, "I've reached the bottom!"
Brendan secured the camera to his chest harness and crept to the edge of the opening. "Everything seems alright?"
Far, far below, Steven's light was like a tiny, trembling firefly. "There's a tunnel! Looks like it bears south!"
Brendan exchanged looks with Harrison, who rolled his eyes. He smiled. "Alright. I'm coming down!"
Tipping his head back, Brendan met Delorean's impassive gaze and felt a prickle down the back of his neck. He wouldn't be trying Steven's trick. Instead, he grabbed one of the ladder's aluminum crosspieces, steadying himself against the stone lip of the tunnel. Then, with a deep breath, he gingerly lowered one foot into the hole until he finally caught on a rung. The ladder swayed as he put his full weight onto it. For a few moments, he hung there, simply breathing until the ladder stilled.
"Birch." Harrison said it like a command, making Brendan stop short of taking the next step down. "Don't let him do anything stupid down there."
Right. As if anyone let Steven do things.
"I'll do what I can," he said, and let the darkness envelop him.
The climb was long, and soon Brendan began to lose his sense of scale. He couldn't shake the sensation that beyond his headlamp beam was an empty void, that he was floating. For a moment, the uncertainty was so powerful that he had to stop and reach a hand towards the opposite wall. His palm met rough stone before he'd even extended his arm all the way, and he breathed out in a rush.
Steven's voice startled him, closer than Brendan had expected: "You're almost there. Just a few more feet."
He moved down a few more rungs—and then jolted at two quick smacks on the back of his calf.
"The bottom is right here. Four more and you can jump down if you want."
He didn't. Steven's light moved along the wall under his own now, but Brendan climbed the rest of the way down, rung by rung. His leg still tingled where Steven had touched him, a welcome reminder that he existed in space and all his limbs were attached.
"Nicely done, Birch."
Buoyed by those small words, he managed, "That wasn't so bad."
The bottom of the shaft was no wider than the opening, and the entry into the tunnel was barely bigger. Crouching to keep from brushing against the ceiling, Steven had stepped back into the tunnel to avoid coming nose-to-nose with Brendan. There was definitely no room for Mazda—or any of their pokemon.
"Are you alright to continue?" Steven asked. "Do you need a moment?"
"No, no, I'm okay. I don't know why I got so spooked. Stupid." Laughing nervously, he tried to catch Steven's eyes—
But Steven was already cupping his hands around his mouth. "Harrison! You still there?"
The tunnel entrance was a dim square that looked no bigger than a postage stamp.
After a pause and some grumbling came a reply that sounded terribly far away. "Of course I am! You think I've got something better to do?"
"We're going to follow this tunnel as far as we can! If we're not back in a few hours ..."
"I've got the ranger station on speed dial."
"Beautiful," said Steven, laughing. "Del, you alright up there?"
The metagross answered with a horrendous grating that vibrated the walls until sand came hissing down.
When all was quiet again, Steven said in a low voice, "Shall we?"
Brendan's heart was still skittering from the climb down, but he returned Steven's grin. His boyish excitement was infectious.
Steven led the way, his pale hair luminous in the gloom. The tunnel was cool and smelled of damp earth, and sand muffled their steps. The bare walls were close, always within the headlamp beams; being able to see the walls and ceiling so clearly made Brendan very aware of the many thousand tons of rock overhead.
In the temple above, only traces of life remained. But this tunnel had never been a place for humans.
Brendan wanted badly to touch something living. When Indie was still a treeko, he'd been small enough to perch on Brendan's shoulders, tail curled around his neck. Maybe he should've let him stay that way.
It didn't matter. None of Brendan's pokemon did well in the dark anyway. They thrived in sunlight.
What would happen to them if he never made it back to the surface? How long would their pokeballs hold them in stasis? Five hundred years from now, would some enterprising archaeologist discover them among Brendan's bones?
Steven had slowed to a stop. He turned halfway towards Brendan, the headlamps cutting his face into harsh shadows. "Birch, will you do me a favor?"
"Of course," Brendan said reflexively. Then, "What is it?"
"Would you turn off your headlamp for a moment?"
Brendan swallowed. "Sure."
The very moment after he switched off his light, Steven switched his off, too.
The darkness was complete. It was nothing like the nights he'd spent on the road with May. Even on the darkest nights, the stars and moon had shone overhead, and the air had been alive with lotad and zubat calls. In the tunnel, there was only dead air and dust. He couldn't even hear Steven's breathing.
Brendan stepped forward and reached for the wall, anything to keep him from drifting away into the endless black. He gripped his headlamp hard, not sure how much longer he could stand—
Steven whispered, "Amazing."
Brendan snapped his light back on. He had to cup a hand over it to protect his eyes from the sudden brightness.
"It's like the rest of the world doesn't exist! No emails down here." Steven laughed, his smile a white crescent. "Turns out the secret to inner peace was right under our feet all along. How long do you think it would take for them to hunt me down and find me here?"
Right. No reason to be afraid. But he didn't relax until Steven switched on his light and started walking again. Brendan followed with a fast-beating heart.
As they walked, his legs began to ache from crouching. He imagined they had to be halfway to Mauville by now. The sand gradually sloped higher and higher up the walls. At first, Brendan thought he was imagining it, but before long, his boots sank with each step, the sand dragging at him. Where had it all come from? As the level of the sand rose, Brendan had to bend lower and lower.
Then Steven gasped and came to such an abrupt stop that Brendan nearly ran into him.
"What? What is it?"
Steven had to lean to one side for Brendan to see around him. The passage ended in a pair of doors, blocked by a tall pile of sand. Brendan didn't understand what had so startled Steven until he squinted and realized what was sticking out of the sand halfway between them and the doors: a skeletal hand.
"Gods," Brendan breathed. "What do you think happened?"
"Maybe a cave-in?" Steven offered, sounding actually concerned for the first time. But when they aimed their lights at the ceiling ahead, the stone was still smooth and unbroken.
"Huh." Steven considered the doors and adjusted his sleeves, though the fold was already immaculate. "Well, seems alright now." He started forward.
"Shouldn't ...?" But Brendan trailed off, unsure how to even begin trying to turn Steven Stone away from something he'd set his mind to.
Steven paused and smiled winningly over his shoulder. "Don't you want to find out what's on the other side?"
Brendan didn't have to look back to feel the dark pressing behind him. Ahead, Steven's profile was like a blade cleaving the shadows. "Yeah, alright."
Steven edged along the sides of the passage, but he couldn't avoid the skeleton completely. Sand slid off it as he passed, exposing the top of the skull and a bent knee. When his turn came, Brendan couldn't help staring. It had to be hundreds of years old, he reminded himself, noting the desiccated flesh gone black with age. Had the skeleton been buried after death, he wondered, or had he suffocated under all that sand? It would be a horrible way to die.
"Help me with this." Steven had waded through the sand and stood beside the doors, alternating between shoveling sand out of the way with his hands and tugging the door open a few centimeters at a time. "If you dig, I'll pull."
"Should we go back up for the shovels?"
"Let's see what we can do without them first. I'd hate to have to double all the way back now."
They turned sideways to fit beside the doors, each bracing his back against the wall, but it was impossible for Brendan to keep from knocking into Steven as he worked, shoulder hitting thigh and knuckles striking knuckles. As Brendan scooped at the sand, his fingers met something hard hidden underneath. He caught it just as Steven gave out a cry of effort and triumph, wresting the door open far enough to squeeze through.
Brendan lingered on his knees in the sand to examine what he'd found, tilting it in the light. It looked like the broken clay seal Harrison had shown him, but instead of a trapinch, it bore the image of a vibrava. He shook his head and pocketed the clay fragment. Sliding, he climbed to his feet and then slipped between the doors behind Steven.
The moment he was through, he knew immediately by the quality of the sound that they'd entered a much bigger space. There was finally room to stand straight again.
Several yards away, Steven turned in a broad circle without his light striking a wall, and when he craned his head back, the headlamp beam stopped short of the ceiling. His footsteps echoed. Satisfied, he sent out his claydol. A few moments later, her light revealed a large, high-ceilinged room, utterly bare except for another set of doors set into the far wall.
The elaborate carvings on the doors were the first real sign that the tunnel had any relation beyond proximity to the temple above. Like the other doors they'd passed through, these were built of thick stone covered in glyphs—and they were firmly shut, a strange lock laid over the seam where they met.
Steven laid a hand on the carved glyphs and groaned. He pushed, but, of course, the door didn't budge. "We're so close. I can feel it."
Brendan unholstered his camera, secretly relieved. Without Harrison, they had no chance of getting this door open today. They'd have to turn back now.
When the flash went off, Steven startled away from the door. "Ah, I'm in the way, aren't I?"
"Just a little," said Brendan, cracking a smile. "Probably making Harrison's job harder, but at least you look good."
He froze, watching for Steven's reaction. What on earth had made him say that? In his head, it had sounded funny, maybe, but out loud ...
Steven flashed him a polite smile but did not meet Brendan's eyes. "Well, better not give him additional reasons to complain. All yours."
"Right. Gods forbid we annoy him," Brendan said, too earnest by half. He ducked behind the camera like a squirtle tucking into its shell.
Once he'd taken a few full shots of the door, he sidled up for a better angle on the lock. It took him a moment to realize why it looked familiar: it was another clay seal, this one intact. "He'll be happy to see this thing in one piece, though."
Weird to use something so fragile as a lock.
Brendan lowered the camera to look at the seal with his own eyes. Clay filled the crack between the doors—it looked like it had been hard-fired in place afterward, probably by a pokemon—and gathered into a pokeball-sized knot at eye level. A flygon had been etched into the surface in surprising detail, bookended by more dots. "I wonder," he said, "what was stopping someone from just smashing it." Curious how solid it was, he reached to tap a fingernail on the surface—
—And it exploded. Scattering fragments. A burst of light. A wavering, almost melodic whine.
He didn't know when he'd ended up on his back. Ears ringing, he squinted against the flying sand. A dust devil spun above him, humming, and from out of the sand rose something solid and large with a lashing tail, two wings, and eyes like stained glass. A flygon.
"Birch, move!"
A dome of purple light flared over Brendan's head. Sand peppered the shield, then sprayed against it, sloughing off noisily. He scuttled backward and then, still one-handedly clutching the camera, lurched to his feet. The room had gone to shadow again with Mazda diverting her energy into light shields and attacks. She hovered between him and Steven, shielding each of them. A fusillade of violet bolts, sparking like fireworks, shot out from the claydol and then disappeared into the dust devil. The air was so thick with dust that Brendan could hardly see Steven and his cradily a few yards away, lit intermittently with purple light. He couldn't see the flygon at all anymore—until it ripped past Steven, slapping the cradily down with its tail.
He had to help. With one hand, he jammed the camera into its harness, and with the other, he reached towards his belt. Definitely not Henry—the sandstorm would rip his wings apart. Indie? He'd be vulnerable waiting for the flygon to come close enough to hit. Then there was only—"Walton, we need you!"
His ludicolo spun in a circle and shivered, making an unhappy sound.
"I know, I know. I'm sorry," Brendan said distractedly, peering into the gloom. He was grateful for the light shield, but it made seeing into the dark even harder. At a glimpse of green, he pointed. "There! Ice beam!"
Walton moved sluggishly but fired a blue beam in the direction Brendan pointed. The wind caught the gust of ice, drawing it up into the vortex of sand until the blue light was gone. Brendan wasn't sure if it had actually hit the flygon at all.
"Again!"
Between the sand showering the light shield and the keening wind, he couldn't hear Steven's commands, only that he was shouting, too. Brendan could hardly see anything except the occasional swoop of movement and bursts of violet lights. Green fire lanced at Steven's shield, then into the air, and then at Brendan, hot on his face even through Mazda's shield. Walton teetered out of the way and then sent a retaliatory blast of ice in the direction the fire had come from.
A scream tore the air, the humming died out, and something thumped to the ground. They crouched behind their shields and waited, but no further attacks came. Slowly, the dust began to settle.
"Lotus," Steven said to his cradily, "Give us light." The light welled up in a spreading ring, pink-hued like her, until it washed over the fallen flygon.
With a sigh of relief, Brendan turned to check on Walton, who let out a plaintive whine. The ludicolo was breathing hard. His fur was full of sand and singed on one side, but he seemed okay. "I know, I'm sorry. I didn't warn you," he said, brushing sand from Walt's fur.
A metallic creak and a thud made Brendan jump. When he turned, Steven was scratching his skarmory under the chin. Brendan hadn't even realized he'd sent it out. The skarmory held out one wing at an odd angle, ice crusting the green feathers—
"Oh gods, I didn't mean to ... is he okay?"
"Oh, Thunderbird has seen worse. I'll give him a rest, though." He recalled both his cradily and his skarmory and then rounded on Brendan with a grin. "And you said you weren't much of a trainer."
Brendan flushed with pride. "Oh, I ..."
He was spared having to answer by Walton grabbing a handful of his shirt, yanking until Brendan, staggering, began to pet him and make soothing sounds. "It's probably too cold in here, right? Poor guy. I'll see you outside." Brendan recalled him and said, "We do alright. But you make it look so ..."
Steven had already drifted away, towards the narrow opening between the doors. "This is it," he said breathlessly.
"You think it's here."
Steven gestured, rings gleaming in the light. "One way to find out."
"What about the flygon?"
"It's not getting up anytime soon."
Brendan glanced back at the narrow, sand-choked tunnel they'd entered from. "It won't be able to get out. It's trapped here."
Steven shrugged. "I didn't bring any extra pokeballs. Did you?"
Oh, of course. Brendan patted his pockets, grinning when he finally felt one tucked in a pouch of his camera harness. He moved closer, wary even though the flygon lay still. It was smaller and paler than the ones he'd seen before, the antennae more pronounced. Maybe they had spent more of their lives underground when the temple was built. He tapped the pokeball on the flygon's head, and it was swept inside without resistance. "I'll release it when we get outside."
"Sure, good idea. Now could you please help me with this door? It's quite heavy."
Together, they pushed the door until it creaked open to admit them. With Mazda hovering ahead to light the way, they stepped inside.
The air here felt thicker, older. Four sets of stone steps ran down to a square pit. And there in the center was Regirock, standing upright but motionless.
Steven didn't even pause, taking the stairs at a run, but Brendan froze on the top step. "Is—is it real?" He felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. After everything, he hadn't expected to open a door and find it just sitting there. As much as he trusted Steven, he hadn't even been sure he believed it existed.
He had assumed the tablets were a crude representation of the real thing, but the hulking form before them was as advertised, not like a thing carved from the earth but like something made by smashing rocks together until the remaining pieces were vaguely human-shaped. It was massive, easily a story tall, even sunk one flight of stairs down. Glyphs marked the space between its shoulders, in the middle of what might generously be called its head. Cupped in its fingerless hands was a huge, perfectly round and perfectly polished red stone.
Brendan raised the camera to his eye—only to discover that the lens had splintered in the fight with the flygon. The preview window had cracked, too, a jagged line running from corner to corner. An awful thought seized him, and he scrambled to open the side panel. Inside, the memory card was still whole and undamaged. He let out a sigh of relief.
"Hello!" Steven called up to the stone titan. "My name is Steven Stone, and I've come to set you free."
A lump rose in Brendan's throat, but he stood still and watched.
"You've been sleeping for a long time. Now, I'm calling on you to serve once again." Steven waited several long moments and then reached to touch one of its marbled legs. There was no reaction at all. "Regirock, can you hear me?"
Mazda drifted to investigate the corners of the room.
Steven began to circle the inert Regirock, calling out to it with less and less conviction. Then he shrugged off his rucksack and pulled out a pokeball. Oh, of course, he'd been saving his. Steven drew back his arm, and then in a perfect arc … the pokeball bounced off the rock face with a hollow tok.
As Steven picked up the scuffed ball and examined it, Brendan made his slow way down the steps. As if remembering for the first time that Brendan was there, Steven glanced up at him and said, "Well, I hardly expected to catch it on the first try, but …." He smiled, but his tone was affronted. "The ball didn't even open."
"Maybe it's not the real thing?" Brendan offered. "Maybe it's just a sculpture. Like an altar?"
"With that level of security leading up to it? No." Steven shook his head, looking pained. "There must be a way to wake it up. Something we're missing." He turned and, catching his own eyes reflected on the surface of the red orb, broke into a smile.
Beside him, Brendan blanched. "Maybe we should wait for Har—"
Reaching up, Steven laid hands on either side of the orb. "It's warm," he said, surprised. Then he easily lifted it off and brought it down to eye level.
There was no noticeable change in Regirock. Brendan thought perhaps he felt a tremor in the floor, but it was gone so quickly he decided he must've imagined it. Steven's only reaction was a slight frown.
"The clarity really is amazing. You can practically see through it." His face brightened then, and he knelt to tuck it carefully into his rucksack. "I'm sure Harrison will have plenty of thoughts on this."
"Whether you want them or not," Brendan agreed.
Steven smiled, and some of the tightness eased from Brendan's shoulders.
"Let's see what he has to say about some of these markings. Take some time to clear our heads." Brendan waited a moment and then added gently, "No one expects you to figure out everything right away. I don't think the big guy is going anywhere."
"No, of course. You're right. We should go back before Harrison gives us up for dead."
"Definitely," Brendan said, more forcefully than he'd meant to.
They started back up the stairs, Brendan taking the lead and Steven trailing after with his head hanging. In the middle of the staircase, he stopped and cast a longing look back at Regirock. "You know," he said, "there is one more thing I could try. You don't have a pocket knife, do you?"
Brendan reached for it automatically, pausing to wonder why he wanted it only when it was already in his hand. Steven's expression was so expectant that Brendan couldn't deny him.
"Perfect. Thank you, Birch."
With methodical calm, Steven descended the steps one more time, his back straight and his head high. He knelt between Regirock's feet, and for a long time, he simply stared up at it. Then he flicked open the blade and wiped it carefully on the hem of his shirt.
The moment before he raised his hand, Mazda cried out in alarm.
Steven turned up his left palm and carved a line across it as if he were drawing a picture. By the time Brendan made it down the stairs, the cut was welling up. Steven squeezed his fist over one of Regirock's stone feet until a trickle of red hit the dust.
Brendan and Steven both held still to watch for signs of movement. For one wild moment, Brendan half-expected Regirock to groan and extend its arms down to Steven.
When it was clear it wouldn't, Brendan dropped to Steven's side, fumbling in his pockets for something to stop the bleeding. "I can't believe you did that. I hope it doesn't get infected."
"The first aid kit is in my backpack," Steven said. When Brendan moved for it, he added, "I can get it."
In silence, Brendan watched him take out cleansing wipes and gauze, wincing as he wrapped the injured hand. Finally he said, "Steven … why'd you do that?"
Steven wiped the blade clean before snapping it shut and handing it back. "Well, now I can say I tried everything, can't I?"
—
Brendan had never been happier to feel sunshine on his face. Sprawling on the rocks, his pokemon soaked up the morning's first rays. He smiled to see Walton in particular looking more relaxed, tucked against Henry, his tropius. But Brendan couldn't help sneaking glances at Steven, who leaned in the shade with his phone to his ear, nodding and frowning. The cliff loomed many stories above him, unremarkable and unwelcoming with the doors shut and the rock slab back in its original place.
"What do you think happens next?" he asked Harrison. "Is this the end of our little treasure hunt?" It was a sad thought, but at the same time …. Even at a distance, he could see the white of the gauze wrapped around Steven's hand. He needs a break.
Harrison didn't answer, utterly absorbed in his laptop screen, where he'd pulled up the pictures Brendan had taken of that final door.
With a sigh, Brendan turned his eyes toward the red sand stretching to the horizon. The dunes looked flat except for the odd bit of scrub or stone, but he knew that, below the surface, dozens of trapinch churned the sand, creating worlds of their own. And below that … Regirock still waited.
Steven wanted to wait to reveal their discovery to the press. Harrison had grumbled, but Brendan was privately pleased to keep it their secret for now. Maybe Regirock would be waiting for another five hundred years. Maybe it should.
Brendan touched the new ball on his belt, wondering if the flygon felt a difference between that stasis and waiting inside a clay seal for what must've been several thousand years. He'd decided to release it when they were ready to leave; he wanted to be far away when it came to. And at the same time …. He wondered how much the desert landscape had changed while it had waited deep below the earth. Would it awaken to a world it still recognized?
"Groudon's eye," Harrison burst out.
"What?"
"The orb, that has to be it. That's what it says. Right here." He held up the laptop, but the thing was more rubberized armor than screen, and Brendan couldn't see the details from where he sat. Besides, by now he knew better than to get too invested in Harrison's first translations.
"If it has a name, there are bound to be other texts that reference it," Harrison continued, but Brendan tuned him out. Steven was coming back, a thunderous look on his face.
"Are you okay?" Brendan asked.
"They attacked Ridge Access. They couldn't have picked a worse time to make a mess of things."
"What? Who?"
"ORCA, Magma—it doesn't matter. They're all a bunch of thugs." He dropped onto a rock with a frustrated sigh. "I'll never understand some people."
Brendan looked to Harrison, whose expression was unreadable. "Wait, so … what does that mean?"
Steven said flatly, "I have to go back to Rustboro. The media is having a field day with this, and someone has to smooth things over. I'd rather stay here, but …." He thumped his uninjured fist on his leg. "It feels like every time we make a little progress, something like this happens."
"Just as well," Harrison said. "This stuff doesn't translate itself. And I need some sleep in a real bed."
"Maybe … rest would be good for all of us," Brendan said. "As much as I hate to leave without knowing …."
Steven turned toward him with such sudden intensity that Brendan stopped short.
"But I've got you as my eyes on the ground, right, Birch? I'll make sure you and Harrison get whatever equipment you need, of course. But we can't give up, not now that we're this close."
When Brendan opened his mouth, his protest not yet fully formed, Steven spoke in a softer voice. "Brendan. Why do you think I chose you? You're an explorer, like me."
It wasn't true. Brendan had been scared down in that tunnel. He would be alright not knowing the answers if it meant not going back there.
But Steven must've seen something else in him. Brendan had once watched him pick geodes from among the ordinary rocks, knowing which to leave and which would split neatly to reveal a glittering core. Steven was looking at him now like he could see what was written on his heart, and he smiled in anticipation of Brendan's answer. Whatever he saw, that was who Brendan wanted to be.
Natalie's head pounded like the worst hangover she'd ever had but with none of the fun the night before. Even blinking hurt. The curtains were drawn, but the muted light was enough to make out the dresser she'd covered in stickers, the band posters curling at the edges, and the desk stacked with unfamiliar boxes. Home, almost exactly as she'd left it.
She pulled the blankets over her head, not wanting to be awake. Not wanting to remember flames drifting across the water, the smell of burned fur, or cruel, gray eyes above a red bandana.
But she couldn't ignore her full bladder or empty belly any longer. She checked the time and groaned: it was already past noon. Wincing and hissing, Natalie crawled out of bed. Most of her clothes were still here: like a good trainer, she had taken only the essentials when she left. She pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie, breathing in their familiar homey scent, and then shambled down the hallway to the kitchen.
She found a note stuck to the fridge: Didn't want to wake you, but I'm excited to see you for dinner! Text me and let me know what you want. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Love you.
So Mom had heard her come in last night after all. Natalie felt a twinge of guilt, but more than that, she was glad to have the house to herself for a few hours. She didn't know what she'd say to her parents, Dad especially. Would it be kinder to tell him about Archie or not to?
She had time to figure it out. It didn't have to be now.
Natalie rooted around the junk drawer until she found a bottle of ibuprofen and then washed the pills down with oran juice straight from the carton. There was a half-filled carton of eggs in the fridge and a tupperware of leftover pasta sauce, but Natalie didn't have it in her to actually cook anything. Maybe later. Instead, she rolled together deli meat slices and Kraft Singles, demolishing the wad in two bites. Then, with a jar of peanut butter and the oran juice carton tucked under one arm, she dragged herself to the couch and curled up under a blanket like she did when she was sick. She nibbled peanut butter from a spoon and clicked through TV channels. When she landed at last on a trainer travel advisory, she stopped out of habit.
"—got quite a shock when the eruption began this morning shortly after five. After several hours, there are still no signs of it letting up."
Dense, curdled clouds bulged over Mount Chimney, stretching out of frame. Natalie stopped with the spoon halfway to her mouth. She'd known Mount Chimney was a volcano, but she'd thought it was long dead.
"Those clouds may look like smoke, but they're actually made of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and particles of rock and glass…"
Planning her route across Hoenn, she'd swiped through dozens of photos, trainers and tourists posing on the crater ledge or hiking into the bowl—unaware that magma burbled far below, out of sight but no less real. There was so much that people didn't pay attention to. The more Natalie learned about the world, the stupider she felt.
"Masks are recommended for travelers on routes 111, 113, and 114, and pokemon should be released with caution. Although thereis currently no evacuation order in effect for Lavaridge Town, the mayor has advised the public to remain indoors. Cable car service will be suspended until further notice."
If things had gone differently in Rustboro, if she had never gone to the protest, she might be in Lavaridge right now, hiding out in the pokecenter, watching the ash come down and waiting for the news station's next prophetic announcement. There was no escaping it, was there? Hoenn was exploding from one end to the other, whether by acts of nature or human stupidity.
"Geologists say that sudden eruptions from previously dormant volcanoes are not unheard of. Mount Chimney may not have erupted for more than a hundred years, but to a volcano, that's like no time at all."
The footage cut to Professor Anna Karst, who absently patted her graveler's head as she addressed the camera.
"We study volcanic activity to predict the likelihood of violent, destructive eruptions. Of course, there's no such thing as absolute certainty when it comes to volcanoes, but as of right now, there's no reason to be overly concerned."
"We'll continue with more Mount Chimney updates as the situation develops. Cassandra Burns, Channel 10 News, Lavaridge."
Natalie reached for the remote—but before she could click away, the scene changed to one she recognized all too well.
"Cleanup continues in the wake of the disastrous pipeline accident that destroyed the Route 110 overpass and left miles of marshland burning late into the night."
Accident. The word sizzled in her mind.
By the light of day, the overpass looked worse than it had the night before. The bridge had snapped in two, and the broken ends sagged at forty-five-degree angles, girders jutting out exposed bone. Chunks of concrete dangled from steel cables and swayed in the wind. Rubble lay in a heap underneath, pale against the scorched field.
"The explosion occurred around 2:05 a.m., drenching an area the size of an Ever Grande stadium with oil. Some of the oil burned off in the fires that followed, but by the time the pipeline could be shut down, an estimated two million liters had already spilled. We go now to the terrifying footage from last night."
The broadcast cut to a dark, shaky video, what looked like a cellphone or pokedex recording of the fiery column shooting above the overpass. The fire looked small and distant in the middle of the grainy black, only an echo of the terrible heat she'd experienced firsthand.
"The Devon Corporation gave a statement earlier this morning."
"We care deeply about the health of our customers and the community. No one is more invested than we are in ensuring our pipeline system operates as intended: safely and reliably."
Natalie speared her spoon into the jar and left it standing upright.
"Investigations into the cause of the explosion are still underway in cooperation with local law enforcement. When asked if they suspected foul play, officials said they're currently considering all possibilities."
The word investigation gave Natalie a zing of hope, and for a moment she allowed herself to imagine Mark in handcuffs, unmasked to the world. She could give the police his name: Mark ... D-something. Okay, maybe not. It didn't matter—the Rustboro gym would have the information. But she had no proof that he'd done anything or even that he'd been there except for her word ... and she would have to explain what had brought her to Route 110. And what good would it do if they arrested him anyway? The other Magma jerks would pick up where he left off.
She drew the blanket tighter around herself, but she didn't change the channel.
"But local activists remain concerned about the long-term environmental impacts of the spill."
The text blurb announced the next speaker simply as Redbird. Natalie thought immediately of Erica Spitfire, that same weathered face and fierce delivery. He used words like groundwater contamination and ecological niche, but they washed against her without sinking in—it was too much, too awful.
"And that's not even touching on the grimer problem."
Natalie gasped when the video feed jumped to a shot of grayish water oozing down the coast like a second spill, stretching tendrils towards the dark shimmers on the water's surface. Twisted little faces bubbled up in the spume, subsumed one another, and sank back down.
"To hundreds of grimer and muk making their way downstream from Mauville City, an oil spill looks like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Given a large enough food supply, a population of grimers can double in as little as one day."
Natalie's thoughts circled back again and again to one landing spot: it wasn't fair. The places that were already most vulnerable shouldn't have to keep weathering blow after blow. Fair or unfair, the footage rolled on and on, more of the same.
"The Marine Spill Response Corporation has put out a call for trainers in Slateport and Mauville to assist in catching these troublesome pokemon. And that's not the most unusual source of help to arrive in the aftermath of the Ridge Access spill."
The camera panned across the crowd of emergency responders and trainers at the water's edge and—They're still there! Natalie bolted upright. She tried to pick out familiar faces, but all she saw were blue bandanas streaked with soot.
"Historically, the extremist group ORCA has had a violent, antagonistic relationship with local authorities, claiming credit for a number of destructive acts in and around Slateport. Today, however, they're joining the cleanup efforts."
A Marine Spill Response crewman in neon coveralls appeared onscreen. For a moment, he looked so much like Dad that Natalie did a double take.
"I'll just say they wouldn't be my first choice, but … when you have a situation like this, you take help where you can get it."
The shore was crowded with dozens of trainers and crewmen in day-glo coveralls; ORCA stood apart from the others, but they looked as busy as anyone else: directing pokemon to chase grimer into the paths of pokeballs, raising trenches along the shore, shoveling black goo into buckets. Last night, only a handful of sailors had left the Ultimatum with Sinbad, and now at least thirty of them were gathered at the spill site. Had they left and come back, or had they been there all through the night?
She should've stayed.
Natalie realized she'd bent forward with her elbows on her thighs and her face raised to the TV like a satellite dish seeking a signal. She forced herself to take a deep breath and sit back, but her eyes didn't leave the screen. The news anchor spoke placatingly over shots of volunteers in rubber gloves sudsing an oiled electrike, but Natalie's heart pounded. She couldn't just sit on her ass and watch.
Ignoring her body's protests, Natalie jumped up for jeans and her belt. When she returned, hopping from one foot to the other to pull on her socks, the screen had gone red. A lone figure sat dead-center—a man, she thought, despite the long hair—but the backlighting made his face an impenetrable mask of shadows. Above him was the Magma insignia.
"What you're seeing is the natural consequence of allowing corporations to self-regulate—they don't."
His voice was digitally altered, but what struck her was its clipped cadence, each word sterile and sharp. Natalie hated him instantly.
"This is not the first time a Devon pipeline has spilled on Hoenn soil, and it certainly won't be the last."
And he would know. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. Rage and disgust throbbed in every aching inch of her.
"Events like this one will continue unless the Hoenn legislature takes immediate action: increase government oversight of corporations, commit to conserving wilderness, and curb greenhouse gas emissions. A government should serve its people, not corporations.
"Magma is watching, and we will not back down."
The transmission cut abruptly.
"Thank you for your patience while we resolved some technical difficulties! This is Channel 10 news, Slateport's premier news source. We're live on the scene at Route 110 …."
"What the fuck was that?" Natalie demanded of the TV, her throat tightening. Had they actually just hijacked Channel 10? Could they do that? Before fear could seep in, she drew her anger around herself like a shield.
The screen showed more aerial shots of the crumbling overpass and the rainbow sheen on the water's surface, but nothing more about Magma or ORCA—not one glimpse of anyone who might be Archie. But he had to be there, somewhere just offscreen.
Funny how, after ten years of thinking of him as a ghost, she knew exactly where to find him now.
He'd said it himself: this was their home. Amelia's home too, she thought, touching her pelipper's pokeball. If Archie was out there right now trying to undo what Magma had done, then he was fighting on the right side. Then he was still her brother.
—
The stench of oil and burnt earth was dizzying. Natalie didn't have anything else to cover her nose and mouth, so she was grateful she'd thought to bring the blue bandana, hastily hand-washed and wrung out in the sink. She'd turned the skull and crossbones to face inward, but as soon as she saw the crowd, she realized it didn't matter: no one but ORCA was wearing blue here.
At the edge of the scorched grass, she paused with her hands on her hips, taking shallow breaths. Out on the water, motorized skimmers drifted like aquatic roombas inside the oil containment booms. Bulldozers assisted by machokes scraped up piles of pulverized concrete and then rumbled away with them. A helicopter chattered noisily overhead. Under a canopy tent, pairs of volunteers gently sponged oil-dark pelippers; many more birds lay heaped along the water, unmoving and difficult to distinguish from the mud except for a jutting wing or beak. Both sorrow and purposefulness hung thick in the air, the crowd quiet but in constant motion. As she'd seen in the news report, ORCA worked several yards from the next closest volunteers.
And Natalie was alone.
She'd made a breathless call to Sonia on her way out the door, pleading, "Come with me."
But Sonia had answered, "Oh gods, I don't think I have it in me. We just had midterms." She gave the groan of someone doing a full-body stretch, and even across the line, Natalie heard her bedsprings creaking. "Gab and I were going to catch a movie later, though. You should come with."
They used to watch a movie together almost every weekend. That might as well have been another planet, another Natalie. "Yeah, sure, probably," she'd said, certain she wouldn't. "I'll text you later."
When she hung up, Natalie let out a slow breath. She couldn't be mad at Sonia. She was an education major, not a trainer. What was she going to do about a grimer? But Natalie could still do something about it, so that's what she'd do.
She had come to Route 110 prepared with pokeballs for grimer, but she wasn't sure where to jump in. The ORCA work crew tempted her. She'd spent enough time on their ship to learn some of their names and to know that none of them shied from physical labor—they would put her to work if she asked. Her brother was almost certainly somewhere among them, and part of her was eager to talk to him about what had happened. He knew it wasn't an accident.
But she hesitated. None of them had come to her aid last night, not even Archie. Sinbad. More importantly—They're still criminals. Don't be an idiot.
She didn't have to work with ORCA to help.
Her gaze slid to the other volunteers. They moved haltingly from one task to another, pausing in between to shrug and look around hopefully for someone to give further instruction. Natalie thought she understood the feeling: they were afraid to do the wrong thing and make things worse. ORCA, to their credit, was decisive. Their crew never seemed to stop moving.
Before she could decide where to go, someone chirped behind her, "Hi! Did you—?"
She turned to face a girl with a tie-dyed face mask and clipboard. At the sight of Natalie's bandana, the girl jerked her head back and then narrowed her eyes. Her words came out stiffer this time. "Are you a registered volunteer?"
"I heard you guys needed trainers to catch grimer. I've got a bunch of pokeballs."
"So is your name on the list?" Without looking at it, the girl trailed a finger down the front of her clipboard.
Natalie lifted her chin higher. "I just want to help."
The girl primly folded her clipboard against her neon vest. "At this time, we are only taking in volunteers who've filled out the online form."
"But what about …."
Natalie followed the girl's gaze to the ORCA group across the field. What was the problem if they were allowed to—of course. They weren't allowed to be here, but who was going to pick a fight with a big group like that? But Natalie, all on her own, was an easier target.
"If you won't leave peacefully, we're prepared to escort you out." The girl put her hand to a belt full of pokeballs.
Shaking her head, Natalie took a step back. Heat rushed to her face. "I haven't even done anything—"
"Are you serious right now?"
Natalie felt a hand on her arm and jumped, anticipating a verbal lashing from yet another stranger. But the woman who had stepped up next to her, drawing her against her side, wore a skull and crossbones bandana. Her hair was tucked under a baseball cap, and Natalie almost didn't recognize her as Shelly.
"Do not fuck with blue today. This is our coast."
Clipboard girl shrank back but unhooked a pokeball.
Several volunteers had turned to watch, but Shelly seemed not to care. "Uh huh. How do you think that's gonna end?" She gazed imperiously at the girl, one hand on her belt and her other on Natalie's arm. After a long, tense moment, she said, "That's what I thought. Come on." Natalie didn't resist when Shelly tugged her forward.
Feeling eyes on her back, Natalie glanced over her shoulder. The nearby volunteers shot them ugly looks before begrudgingly turning away. At last, clipboard girl did as well, and Natalie breathed out in relief.
As they walked, Shelly reached to yank Natalie's hood up over her head. "Girl, you don't want that hair on TV. Where the hell did you go? Sinbad's been freaking out."
Natalie stumbled. "He was? I didn't think he wanted me here."
"He was definitely pissed when he found out Scarlet brought you, and then more pissed when no one could find you."
They crunched over the brittle grass, towards ORCA's segment of the coast. One moment, there was only a shifting mass of humans interspersed with pokemon. The next, like a magic trick revealed, Archie was right in front of them, recognizable by his frame even from behind.
An armaldo at his side raked piles of dirt with its claws, shoring up an embankment separating clean and contaminated soil. Archie wielded a shovel, filling in gaps. Natalie's heart surged with pride at the sight of him laboring under the sun. In the open. There could've been cops here—probably had been already—and she was sure they'd love to get their hands on the leader of ORCA. He could've sent others in his stead. Except, no, he couldn't. He couldn't sit back and watch any more than she could. In that, at least, they were the same.
When he stopped to wipe his face, stabbing the shovel into the mound of earth, he caught sight of Shelly and Natalie. Several expressions cycled across his face: exhaustion, confusion, then recognition. "Goddamn." Bringing a hand over his face, he let out a whoosh of breath that could've been either relief or irritation. At last he said, "You went home."
"Yeah." That feeling of smallness was creeping up on her again. She snuck a glance at Shelly but couldn't read her expression.
Archie looked Natalie over with bitter-edged amusement. He raised an eyebrow at Shelly, who responded with an exaggerated shrug. "So, what, you're joining the ranks now?"
Natalie couldn't help it—she recoiled.
"That's what I thought. Go back home, Small Fry." He said it gently, which somehow stung more.
"I can't just sit and do nothing!" All around, the nearby ORCA sailors paused their work to watch, and it only deepened her desperation. "I can help catch grimer or dig ditches—whatever. I'll do any of it." She hated the pleading in her own voice but couldn't stop herself.
Archie shrugged, taking up his shovel again. "Then do it." Without waiting to see her reaction, he turned back to shoveling earth.
Shelly nudged her. Pointing with her chin, she told Natalie, "I'm going to help those guys round up grimer."
The sailors parted to make room for them.
Closer to the water, the oil fumes intensified, mixed with the grimer brew of twice-baked garbage and sewage. Every time Natalie thought she'd acclimated, a wave of new odors hit her, a richer putrefaction. The grimer rolled across the water, endlessly pinching apart like taffy and melding with other grimer globs.
They couldn't attack them, one of Natalie's neighbors quickly pointed out: disturbing the water would only spread more oil around or send the grimer to the seafloor where they'd poison kelp and coral and everything else they touched. With so many trainers on the shore, there was also a risk of hitting a teammate by mistake. Instead, they threw one pokeball after another, missing almost as often as not; the grimer were slippery. Natalie had bought a bulk bag of one hundred pokeballs and still worried they wouldn't be enough. When the grimer managed to lay claim to a floating patch of oil, the water seethed with their rapid dividing, two new ones forming for each one they caught.
Pokemon that could fly or float herded grimer, a delicate dance of forcing them away from the oil while keeping them concentrated together. Natalie hated to send Amelia back into this after last night's close calls, but none of her other pokemon could get close enough. She had to trust Amelia would be okay.
At first, she couldn't understand why they couldn't simply drive the grimer further out to sea—until a golbat came too close and the grimer scattered, riding the current as far south as they could. Towards Slateport.
"Everyone downstream is getting fucked by this no matter what we do," grumbled one of the nearby girls.
Natalie cringed at the mental image of grimer washing up on the piers where outdoor markets were held, at the shipyard. She couldn't imagine the damage they could do to the fisheries. "Clean up the oil and they starve, right?"
She made her throw, but the grimer squelched out of the way, sloshing ashore. It wrapped around Natalie's leg and managed to pull her partway into the stinking mud before the other girl caught it.
"Yeah, too bad even the dead ones are toxic as fuck," she panted. Together, they turned their gazes to Natalie's pants leg, which was caked with purple sludge. "Let's, uh, hose that off."
It was wretched work, but the ORCA sailors cracked dirty jokes and kept each other laughing through it. Despite herself, Natalie joined in; any excuse to laugh was a relief. Every so often, someone split off, returning with armfuls of fresh water bottles and potions before she had even noticed they'd left.
"You should take a break." Shelly had reappeared suddenly at Natalie's side.
"I'm okay," Natalie said, forcing a grin, though it was hidden behind her bandana. She refused to be outdone by ORCA.
Shelly shrugged. "Suit yourself, I guess."
By the time Archie slipped in next to Natalie either minutes or hours later, she was lightheaded, her hair was plastered to her neck with sweat, and she was almost out of pokeballs.
"Come on, kid," he said. "Break time."
This time she didn't argue. She whistled for Amelia. Then, pulling down her sweaty bandana, she followed her brother and his mightyena away from the noxious water, towards an area where the grass was still green.
ORCA had rigged up their own tarp, where sailors and their pokemon took shelter from the sun. Most lounged in the grass, their bandanas down around their necks, but a few people sat in fold-up chairs and someone straddled the ice cooler. At Sinbad and Natalie's approach, the sailors scrambled from their chairs. A startled poochyena gave out a shrill bark.
"You guys doing alright?" Sinbad called.
A chorus of affirmations rang out. The sailors who stood up didn't sit back down, though.
Sinbad pointed to an empty chair and told Natalie, "Sit. I don't want anyone getting heatstroke."
She did, gratefully. Across from Natalie, a girl sat cross-legged in the grass, a corphish in her lap; she smiled, and Natalie returned it unthinkingly. It was so easy to forget who these people were. She turned away, but Archie had vanished.
He returned moments later with a water bottle for each of them and dragged one of the unoccupied chairs next to hers. "You did good work out there."
She eyed him warily, forcing herself to search his face for the evidence of a hardened criminal. His forehead was shades darker than the parts of his face the bandana had covered, and something black spattered his clothes—difficult to tell if it was oil or grimer slime. Mostly, he looked like a hardworking volunteer.
"Thanks," Natalie said, After a moment, she added, "Channel 10 is calling it an accident, you know. Someone should tell them it was Magma."
"Sure." Archie shrugged. He was twelve years her senior, but at that moment, he looked even older than that. "Won't stop DevCo, though."
The thought of DevCo quieted Natalie. Magma was one thing. They were awful, but at least she knew they were people. But how could you fight a corporation?
She squirted water into Amelia's waiting mouth, then took a sip for herself—back and forth until, all too soon, the bottle was empty. All the while, she felt the gazes of both Sinbad and Justice on her; the mightyena lay at her brother's side with his tongue lolling but his mismatched ears perked up.
At last, Archie spoke up. "I won't be able to protect you if you keep coming around, Natalie." She squinted at him, and so, misunderstanding, he added, "I already told you: we can't babysit anyone."
"I noticed. I fought one of those Magma guys alone last night."
If he noticed the accusation in her voice, his only reaction was to raise his eyebrows. "Huh. Seems like you can handle yourself alright, then. I'm impressed."
"Not really." She tried to channel her anger into it, but it came out sounding petulant. Rubbing a bruise on her shoulder, she looked away. "I wish I was strong enough to make him pay for this—for everything. But I'm not."
"So you want to punish Magma?"
Absolutely, she wanted to say, but she also knew that wasn't all he was asking. She felt the undertow's pull beneath his words. It was an invitation, one that set her heart beating in a sickening rhythm. Instead, she stared into the distance and said, "Someone has to. And it probably won't be the cops."
Sinbad bared a grin, but his eyes were storm cloud-dark. "No. It'll be us."
Natalie nodded, the words sinking in her mind like a stone. Solid. Weighty. They felt true.
She gave herself permission to look around at the surrounding sailors, the ragtag crew who stood between Magma and acts of destruction. The ones who had shown up to help without being asked, without thanks. The ones who'd shown her around their ship and made sure she never ate alone. They chattered amongst themselves, stretched, drank water, or tended to their pokemon. Even at rest, each of them looked ready to leap up and throw a punch at a moment's notice.
And they stared back at her, not bothering to hide it. Clearly, Sinbad didn't care what they heard—he trusted them. He believed in them.
She hoped he was right to put his trust in them.
From here, Natalie couldn't see the water, but the stench of oil and grimer still wafted on the breeze. Had the work they'd done today even made a difference? She stared across the expanse of blackened grass, and her heart broke all over again. There was so much work to be done and so much that might never fully heal. The volunteers at the water's edge had already begun to thin and scatter. The sun crept towards the horizon at their backs, casting the lingering work crews in the syrupy light of a retro postcard.
Natalie glanced at her watch. "I should go soon. I feel bad leaving, but … Mom is expecting me for dinner." She glanced at Archie. "You could ..." But she stopped herself.
Archie met her eyes, saying nothing.
No. No, he couldn't.
He spoke slowly, "If you want to help, there is something you could do."
She turned away, watching Amelia preen her feathers. But she was listening, every nerve ending alive with it. "What is it?"
"Sin. We don't know her." Natalie jumped; she hadn't noticed Scarlet's approach. Scarlet held herself at a distance, like a wild zigzagoon eyeing a camper's plate and waiting for the opportunity to pounce.
Natalie brought her gaze back to her brother. "You don't know me?" she repeated incredulously.
He shot Scarlet a cold look. "Who else would you send? She's perfect for it."
Scarlet folded her arms, "She could bail. Or go to the cops."
Natalie silently begged Archie to stand up for her, but he only gave her a long, searching look. "You gonna talk to the cops, Natalie?"
"No."
Scarlet started to protest, but he held up a hand to silence her. "It's your call. Are you helping or going home?"
Under Scarlet's haughty gaze, Natalie sat up straighter, rolling her shoulders back. "I can help."
—
When she got home, Natalie washed her hair twice and changed into fresh clothes—her third outfit in a single day—but she still felt dirty. Her smartwatch lay atop the dresser, and she couldn't shake the feeling that it was watching her. Or that the porygon inside it was. Sinbad had laughingly reassured her, "Z's the opposite of an NSA spook." All the same, Natalie tossed her towel over the watch when she finished drying her hair.
"Come on, Luna. Dinner."
Natalie had picked her mightyena up from the pokecenter on the way home, and Luna had spent the last hour curled on the bed, paws tucked under her chin. At the mention of dinner, she leapt into motion, barking and prancing circles around Natalie.
She laughed, relieved. "You're feeling better, huh?"
And then Luna launched herself through a shadow on the wall, trailing black vapor.
"Luna, no! Sit!"
From the kitchen came a scream. But by the time Natalie skidded into the room, Mom was laughing, mussing Luna's fur with both hands. When she caught sight of Natalie, she cried out, "There you are! Welcome home!" She threw her arms around Natalie, but the hug was cut short by Luna jumping up at them, whining.
"Yes, of course we missed you too, Luna," Mom cooed. Luna's tail beat a happy rhythm against the cabinets. "You're so big now!"
"Hadn't she already evolved the last time I was here?" Natalie had been fresh off her first badge then, bursting with confidence and the thrill of adventure. Returning home the first time had felt like wearing too-tight clothes. This time, home felt like an airbag cushioning her fall.
"Could be," Mom agreed. "I guess I haven't stopped thinking of her as a poochyena."
"She's a lot stronger now." Natalie leaned her hip against the counter, frowning. "I dunno if you want to rile her up like that before dinner. Is her bowl still—aaah!"
Two big hands caught her by the shoulders and shook her.
"Daaaaad! Don't do that!" She whirled on him, grinning even as she swatted his hands away, but he pulled her off balance and into a hug.
"Haha, gotcha!" He turned her loose again. "Good to see you, Butter!"
Her childhood nickname, shortened from Butterball. She usually hated it, but now it made her smile.
"You scared the sh—" She caught herself. "You scared me!"
"Now you know how I feel when you don't call or answer my emails."
He was smiling, leaning to let Luna sniff his hand, but Natalie blanched. "Oh gods, I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't have service for a couple days."
"I told him not to worry." Mom rolled her eyes but smiled affectionately. "You're young—and a trainer! It's natural to want your independence."
"Sure. And maybe she can independently let us know every so often that she hasn't been trafficked out to Orre."
"Bruce."
"What? I'm just saying I like knowing you're safe."
Bruce Armstrong's booming voice and sweeping hand gestures created the impression of a larger man. His fingers were blunt, his face square. Sturdy. But now, after time away, Natalie noticed his soft paunch, the raw-looking freckles down his arms.
Behind him, the table was set for three, an empty space in front of the fourth chair.
Dad had been worrying about the wrong things all along. He had no idea that Archie was right here in Slateport tonight, as close as a shadow. It felt unkind, but if Natalie wanted to help her brother—help them both, arguably—she couldn't tell him yet.
"I'm safe," Natalie said. "Promise. You don't don't have to worry about me."
"Worrying is what we do, honey," said Mom, squeezing her shoulders. "Now I don't know about you two, but I'm starved."
Once they'd sat, served themselves, and given thanks to the life-giver, the conversation turned to badges. Natalie had expected it, and she was ready. She talked about Dewford beaches, her match with Brawly, and the ferry until she ran out of things to say. Then, with a deep breath, she lied: Rustboro was pretty and quiet. Getting her badge had been a cinch. And that was that.
"Good thing you left when you did," Dad said, stabbing at his plate. "The news out there has been a real mess."
Natalie couldn't think of a single thing to say that wouldn't worry him more, so she took a large bite instead. "Mm," she said, nodding.
"Not that things are much better here lately. They're calling Route 110 an accident, but we all know it was ORCA."
She stopped chewing. "But they helped with the cleanup." Hastily, she added, "I saw it on Channel 10."
"Natty, if someone murdered me in the street, it wouldn't be any less terrible just because they paid for the funeral. It's a publicity stunt. A get out of jail free card." He shook his head. "And, apparently, it's working. Those Rustboro cops dropped the ball."
"Rustboro?"
Mom caught her eye and shook her head.
Natalie knew there was no arguing with him—when he was on a roll, he didn't back down—but she couldn't stop herself this time. "Dad, that was a totally different thing."
"You think it's a coincidence that a pipeline blows up a week after a riot? No, sir. You can bet all those thugs are in cahoots with each other."
Pressure mounted behind her eyes. How was she supposed to explain that she'd seen first-hand the difference between people like Mark and people like her brother?
"I don't think—"
"When these people are left to run wild, people are going to get hurt. It's only a matter of time," he continued. "The cops have got to start taking these things more seriously, throw every last one of them in jail where they belong."
If there had been more arrests in Rustboro, maybe she wouldn't have encountered Mark out on the marsh—or maybe she would've been arrested instead. She winced, remembering the manectric teeth snapping together inches away from her face, and she set down her fork.
Mom cut in, "Do we have to talk about this at the table?"
"Alright, alright." Dad mimed zipping his lips, locking the end, and tossing the key out of the room.
Natalie imagined a big, sturdy lock over her own heart. She would never be able to tell him about the protest or the Route 110 cleanup. Or Archie.
"I want to hear more about Natalie's journey," Mom said, doggedly cheerful. "You must have added some new pokemon to your team by now, right?"
Natalie breathed out slowly. "Well, Amelia evolved." Urged on by appreciative sounds from Mom, she continued. "I also caught a whismur, Gus. He's the baby. Oh, and I don't think I told you about Sam yet."
She stole an uneasy glance at Dad, but it was too late now. She'd already brought it up. "I traded my machop for a timburr—well, gurdurr now. I like him a lot."
The problem, of course, was that he was a foreign invader. How many times had she heard Dad rail against Kantoan ships for tracking invasive shellder into the harbor? They have no idea what that does to the local economy! Shellder stayed small in the warm waters, undesirable to most trainers but the perfect size to infiltrate drainage pipes and choke them shut.
"Gurdurr, huh?" Dad chewed thoughtfully for a few moments. To her surprise, he cracked a grin. "We could use one of those at the shipyard. You should let me borrow him sometime."
"Funny you should say that ..." Here it was. Natalie's heart began to race, but she pushed herself through it. "I was wondering if maybe sometime this week I could shadow you at work?"
Her parents exchanged looks of surprise. Dad settled into amusement. "Thinking about taking up welding, Butter?"
"Maybe, actually."
Mom furrowed her brow. "Honey, what about the rest of your badges?"
"Yeah, no, of course," she said in a rush. "It's just ... I dunno, I thought it would be good to start working on a backup plan, for after. You know, feeling things out."
Mom made a worried face at Dad, but he wasn't looking. "It's hard work but ... I don't see a reason you couldn't learn if you really wanted to. Seeing what it's like would be a good first step."
"That's what I was thinking, yeah. I want to learn more about it."
It wasn't completely untrue. The shipyard was familiar, a sprawling fortress that held childhood memories. She might enjoy that kind of work: she liked being outside and using her hands, and she'd even taken metalworking as an elective her last year of high school. Besides, it couldn't be worse than rounding up grimer.
And she didn't have to do anything for Archie—she could change her mind. She could just ... investigate. Decide from there.
"I'll have to check with the project manager, but ... if he okays it, I don't see why not. You gonna be able to get out of bed at five?"
Oh gods, he was excited about this idea, grinning from ear to ear. Could she really go through with this? But he gave her an expectant look, and then backing out didn't feel like an option anymore.
"I'll be up."
"Bring your gurdurr and we'll put at least one of you to work." He laughed at his own joke, and Natalie made herself smile along, avoiding Mom's gaze.
"I'll bring him," she said. And a porygon.
—
Mom packed breakfast burritos and lunches for both of them like Natalie and her dad were a pair of kids off to their first day of school. In the truck, Dad sang loudly to the radio, making exaggerated faces to try to get a laugh out of her. Finally he elbowed her. "What's up? Tired?"
"Nervous," she answered honestly.
"Nervous? You kidding? The girl who fights with monsters for fun is nervous about hanging out with a bunch of old farts?"
She allowed herself a smile.
"This isn't a performance review. You're not going to be doing any welding today. You just get to kick back and watch."
Right. Watch.
She'd never noticed the weight of her Gear watch until the past twelve hours, how the wristband chafed against her skin—though it looked the same inside and out as it had before. After dinner, she'd scrolled through her apps for signs of change, but nothing had stood out. A thought had occurred to her: "You still in there?" she'd said, at once feeling ridiculous—but then the watch had chimed with a text alert, a smiling emoticon from Zinfandel.
If Sinbad hadn't told her, she would have had no way of knowing the porygon was inside. He hadn't had to ask either—he could've bugged her watch without her knowing. He had asked, but the idea bothered her all the same. She'd thrown the towel over the watch again before she went to bed.
On the harbor, sunlight spilled red and gold across the water. The shipyard was all purple silhouettes: warehouses crisscrossed by the shadows of bridge cranes, half-built freighters latticed with scaffolding, smaller vessels gleaming along the piers.
The Secure-Tek barrier was nothing but a shimmer in the air, several hundred feet before the buildings. It would allow pokeballs through but not a loose pokemon, keeping away wild wingull … and other unauthorized pokemon. As the truck nosed through the gate, Natalie held her breath. But there was no alarm, not even as much as a tingle from her watch, and then it was behind them.
In the parking lot, Dad gestured towards the water and said, "We'll probably spend the morning at the assembly hall …."
The second Natalie opened the passenger side door and stepped onto the asphalt, an arc of pink and blue light leapt from her watch. In her surprise, she stumbled backward into the truck. The light skimmed silently along the ground, quick as a blink, and darted around a corner to the right. She swiveled to see if anyone had noticed.
"We'll grab protective gear for you and your pokemon first, though," Dad continued. "This way."
Natalie craned her neck, trying to spot the porygon around the corner, but Zinfandel was gone. What was Natalie supposed to do? She couldn't just leave her, but ….
Heart pounding, she tried to take up a casual tone. "What's that building over there?" She pointed in the direction she'd seen Zinfandel go.
"That would be Design. That's where our engineers draft the plans we build from. I'll show you what some of those look like later."
Clever porygon.
Dad started off in the opposite direction, but Natalie lagged behind. Archie had said that Zinfandel could mostly handle herself—"All she needs from you is a boost," he'd said—but how would Natalie get her back? She'd have to find an excuse to come back this way later, she decided, and jogged to catch up with Dad.
He greeted other shipbuilders as they walked, either calling out a nickname or waving rather than shouting to be heard over machinery. The way he navigated between slipways and forklifts, head high, reminded her of the way Archie moved aboard the Ultimatum. Whenever anyone passed close enough for conversation, Dad put an arm around Natalie and announced, "This is my daughter, home from training. She's already got three badges."
Her face colored each time. She waited for one of the men to demand to know why she was there, but none of them did. They turned their focus on Sam instead. "That's a solid-looking pokemon you've got! Is that your replacement, Armstrong?"
Natalie guided Samson with a hand on his shoulder; every time they passed a worker with a machoke, he flexed and pounded his chest until the other pokemon scowled at them. "Yeah, yeah, we know. You're very strong," she said, patting his arm. "But we're not here to fight anyone." That was the entire point: if she carried Zinfandel past the energy barrier, ORCA didn't have to. They'd leave the shipyard alone.
Dad pointed out a steel beam, and at Natalie's order, Samson gleefully hefted it onto one shoulder. Then she had to coax him into pausing his one-handed military presses to fit the beam into the rig. Natalie pulled Sam's goggles into place. Then they lowered their welding hoods, and Dad set to work. At his elbow, Natalie alternated between watching the spray of sparks and scheming up excuses to split off for the design building. If she said she'd gotten her period, maybe Dad would let her walk back to the truck by herself to get—
But she needn't have worried.
Between welds, hand raised to pull her welding hood back down, Natalie looked up in time to catch a distant flash of blue and pink zigzagging along the support struts of a ship-in-progress. Her heart stuttered along to the porygon's movement. At a shipbuilder's approach, Zinfandel ducked behind a cargo crate. She flickered solid, head bobbing in the air.
Someone is going to see you! But Natalie couldn't think of a way to warn Zinfandel off without calling more attention to her, so she clenched her jaw and watched.
Samson, turning to see where she was looking, gave out a grunt. Natalie clamped onto his arm, praying for him not to make a scene.
"Pay attention, Natty. Hood down."
"Sorry, I got distracted—" As soon as the visor was down, she broke into a grin: she couldn't see the porygon at all. Of course. None of the nearby welders could while their hoods were down. A few moments later, only the buzz of her Gear told her that Zinfandel had safely returned.
When she pulled back the visor, a text alert was waiting for her: ; )
"See that?" Dad said, and Natalie nearly jumped out of her skin—until she realized he was showing her the finished weld. "Slow and steady."
Sam snorted and frowned, making a grab for Natalie's watch hand; she jerked it away. "Right, gotcha," she said, holding him off with her other hand.
"Looks like he's ready to keep going," Dad said with a chuckle. "Why don't you have him bring over another beam."
They worked through the morning. At lunchtime, they drove to Sedge Park and ate their sandwiches together on the tailgate. Under Amelia's watchful eye, Sam, Gus, and Luna play-wrestled in the grass nearby.
Natalie was reminded of summer afternoons metal detecting with Dad, digging up pocket change, vintage badges, and sometimes clamperl. Bubba had joined them sometimes, too. When they tired of walking, they would sit on a dune and watch the wingulls fight over hotdog buns and other trash as the sun slowly sank. They hadn't done that since Natalie was a child. And, of course, most of the local clamperl had died off after Devon Horizon.
Neither of them spoke now. She was grateful not to have to explain herself or weave around difficult conversations. But at the same time, she couldn't help thinking of the quiet moments with Archie and Dad. Had Archie been holding secrets even then? And now she had secrets of her own.
Dad spoke up, jarring Natalie from her thoughts. "What do you think so far?"
She couldn't meet his gaze. "It's not so bad. Cool seeing the ships come together ..."
He was quiet for a moment, then he cleared his throat. "You know ... I know I give you a hard time about training ..."
Oh, Dad. "It's okay. I know you just want me to be safe."
"I do, but I also want you to be happy, Natalie." When she raised her head at last, there was such tenderness in his face that it hurt. "I'd love to see you become a welder or an engineer or even the captain of your own ship if that's what you want. But you don't have to do that for me to be proud of you. Gods only know how much I would've loved to go out adventuring when I was your age if I'd had the chance."
Natalie clutched his arm. She dug for a scrap of the truth he deserved to hear, an apology, a promise—but all she managed was, "Thanks, Dad."
—
New message from PRIVATE NUMBER, Zinfandel announced on the screen. With a sigh, Natalie rolled onto her back and held her arm over her face to read. What followed was an address and a time, tonight.
She closed her eyes and let her arm fall. This was her last chance to change her mind. She could throw her watch into a signal-blocking pouch and ... then what? If a single porygon were enough legal evidence to bring down ORCA, someone else would've done it by now. And neither Archie nor Dad would ever forgive her.
"We're not taking anything away from them. We're not trying to fucking outcompete them in the shipbuilding market. All we want is to borrow some of their knowledge and do our own thing."
By daylight, under the tarp on Route 110, it had sounded reasonable. But the only word she had for it now was theft.
The bed frame creaked as Luna hopped up beside her.
"Hi, Luna." Natalie sat up, grabbing for her. "What do you think, smart girl? Do you think I should go through with it?"
Luna thumped her tail on the mattress.
"We should've gone to Petalburg instead, huh." But if another badge was the answer, it wouldn't make her feel so sick to think about it. She dragged her fingers through her mightyena's mane until Luna shoved her way onto her lap, ignoring Natalie's laughing protests. "You're not being very helpful, you know."
"Knock-knock." Mom leaned against the doorframe, half-smiling. "Mind if I come in?"
"Sure."
She dropped down next to Natalie, scratching Luna behind the ears. For a long moment, she said nothing; Natalie could practically hear her testing words in her mind. Did she somehow know? The thought turned Natalie's guts to ice, and she watched Mom's face with bated breath.
Natalie's fingers tightened in Luna's fur. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know." She sighed. "All this talk about jobs, coming home out of the blue ... Don't get me wrong—I'm always happy to see you, and this is your home any time you want. But it made me wonder if something had happened to make you want to quit training."
"Um." Her throat tightened.
"I thought this was what you'd always wanted."
Without planning it, she blurted, "Do you ever worry you're not doing enough? If you're doing the right things?"
"Oh, honey." Mom tucked Natalie's hair behind her ear, and she dissolved into Mom's embrace. For a while, Mom simply held her. "Sometimes getting a little lost is part of the journey."
Natalie nodded, letting a tear dribble onto Mom's shoulder. "I feel a little lost."
"Nobody has it all figured out at eighteen. You'll figure out what you need at your own pace."
"Yeah, but ..." For a moment, she wanted to tell Mom everything, but she stopped short of finding the words. "The world is so messed up. I don't want to be part of the problem, but I don't know what to actually do."
Mom considered that for a moment. "I think the most important thing is to try to be as kind as possible as often as possible and leave the world a little brighter than you found it."
Natalie shook her head, burrowing her face deeper into Mom's neck. "Is that enough?"
"I don't know about enough. Each of us can only do the best we can." She began to stroke Natalie's hair. "But don't underestimate the power of kindness, Natalie. Sometimes the little things are the most important."
In Mom's embrace, Natalie believed it. But she had to let go eventually.
"Are you meeting up with Sonia this week? I bet that would cheer you up."
"Oh. Yeah. I'll text her."
Mom kissed her forehead and stood. "Dinner in fifteen?"
"Sounds great."
Alone in her darkening room, she pulled up Sonia's number, but her finger froze above the screen. What was there to say? Sonia was the one she'd called the time she'd needed a ride home from a party she wasn't supposed to be at, the first time she'd had sex, and every time Dad had said something that pissed her off. But this felt different. Bigger. Natalie couldn't imagine how Sonia would react to hearing about the protest, her fight against Mark, her brother. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. Was she really going to lounge on Sonia's couch watching movies while a porygon loaded with stolen data sat on her Gear?
A happy ending on-screen wouldn't help clean a single drop of oil.
With a sigh, Natalie flicked away her contacts list. In the corner of her watch screen, there was still a message notification from the unknown number, pulsing like a beacon.
—
The address Archie gave her was a northside bar, The Emblem. She spotted Shelly first, swigging bottled beer in a tattered booth towards the back. As Natalie drew closer, she realized most of the seats were filled with ORCA sailors, lounging in their seats but watching her. Shelly nodded to Archie, who sat opposite her with his arms stretched across the back of the booth. Scarlet had tucked herself against his side, scowling as she stirred her swizzle stick around and around. Natalie's stomach soured at the sight of her, but she walked forward anyway.
When she arrived at the table, Shelly stood. "Arms up," she said with a half-smile. Natalie was so baffled by the request that she didn't argue. In a few quick motions, Shelly swiped her hands down Natalie's sides and back. "You're good." With that, she sat back down and took up her beer as if nothing had happened.
"Satisfied?" Archie said to Scarlet, amusement in his voice.
She pursed her lips but said nothing.
Shelly slid over to make room beside her, and, holding back a sigh, Natalie sat.
"Let's see what you got." Archie pulled his phone from his pocket. Without warning, Natalie's Gear lit up; Zinfandel streaked across the table and into his phone. He grinned, first at the screen, then at Natalie. "Good work. You passed."
"Passed?" All the blood rushed to Natalie's face. "This was just some bullshit test?
He shrugged. "I needed to know, and now I do. It's a good thing—now there won't be any questions." The last point he directed at Scarlet.
Natalie scrambled out of the booth, breathing hard.
Sinbad raised an eyebrow. "You're not going to leave. You came here for a reason, right? So, what do you want, Natalie?"
The three of them turned their gazes onto her, and her mouth went dry.
"I want ..." I want you and Dad to make up. To go back to when things were simpler. But had things ever really been simple, or was it only that she hadn't known enough to spot the cracks in the photo frame?
And after everything she'd seen since Rustboro, weren't those small, selfish things to begin with? She spat out, "I want a better world."
"A-fucking-men."
Shelly's eyes flicked to Scarlet and then to Archie. She nodded as if coming to a decision. "You could ride with me. You'd do well with Rosie. If you can follow orders and keep your head under pressure, you could learn a lot with my crew."
They could teach her how to fight—not the battles she'd practiced in parks and gyms but real fights. The kind that mattered.
Her parents would never understand. She could call and write home, just like she had for the past few months, but she would have to lie to them again and again and again.
But was she really going to stay in Slateport for the rest of her life? Take up a job at the shipyard? Go to the movies with Sonia? Change the channel when Magma appeared on the news? How was that leaving the world brighter than she'd found it?
Slowly, Natalie nodded. "I think I could do that."
Sinbad raised his glass. Shelly and then, reluctantly, Scarlet lifted theirs. "Here's to a better world!"
A few sailors at nearby tables raised their own glasses and whooped.
Sinbad drained his glass and then flashed Natalie a fierce grin. "What are you drinking? Beer? Rum and coke?"
Screw it. "Sure. Rum and coke."
"You got it." He swept out of the booth, towards the bar, patting her back as he passed.
Shelly smiled and pulled her back down into the booth. "Welcome to the family, Natalie."
The morning was unseasonably warm, even for Hoenn. This time of year back in Unova, the gutters sometimes froze solid, trash and all. Today, Mark was already sweating under his hoodie, and the sky over Route 115 was a barren blue. He checked the time on his phone to confirm what he already knew by the position of the sun: it was almost time to go.
Mark scanned the crowd, trying to figure out if anyone indispensable was missing. Some of his teammates perched on the sun-dappled boulders, talking quietly. Others stood apart with their pokemon or, like Mark, with a cigarette. He silently listed off names to himself, simultaneously pleased to be able to recognize even those who'd already pulled up their bandanas … and uneasy at the reminder that hiding his face, even in a crowd, had its limits.
He spotted Eben passing out water bottles; he hadn't seen him since Ridge Access. When Mark caught his eye, Eben flashed a grin with something new in it. Maybe pride in their latest guerrilla news bulletin, in their success. Or maybe Eben was smiling at the memory of seeing Mark brought to Tabitha's heel. Mark found himself returning only a curt nod.
A few faces in the crowd were unfamiliar. As Mark watched some of the new kids, the memory of ORCA swarming Route 110 washed over him, how they'd known exactly when and where to seek out the pipeline team. Had someone here—?
No, he couldn't get swept up in that fear now, not if he was going to fight alongside the others. They needed each other—for strength and for safety. And anyway, he reminded himself, taking another drag on his cigarette, he wasn't the only one recruiting for Magma. They must be Cora's people.
And there she was, cutting towards him through the crowd. The pink had faded almost completely from her hair, leaving dull orange-blonde and dark roots, but her grin was bright as lightning. Manic. Cora always got like this before an action. Sometimes her excitement hit Mark like a caffeine buzz, an updraft, but this time he held tightly to his inner quiet and braced himself against her approach.
"I thought you quit," she said, smirking like she'd won something.
Mark couldn't keep the irritation from his face, but he finished off the cigarette with one final, slow drag. "I did," he agreed. "Years ago." He stubbed it out on the sole of his boot and then, because that shit would never biodegrade, he tucked the butt between his laces.
Before Cora could get in another jab, he shoved his own question through: "Do you know them? With the zangoose?"
She didn't even look. "That's Rudy. From Fallarbor." Like Montag, she meant—as if that were a metric for trust. Well, he hoped her judgement was better than his: in another life, if things had gone differently in Rustboro, he would've brought Natalie the ORCA lackey as a plus-one.
Cora's smile tightened to a sliver. "You could, you know, talk to people instead of sulking over here by yourself."
"I've been clearing my head."
"Well, things are gonna kick off soon, and we've still got a hike."
"I know." He touched each of his pokeballs in turn, reassuring himself that they were still with him. That Gibs was still gone. "Are we waiting on any of your crew?" he asked.
"A couple," she said. "But too bad for them. Can't be late for our own party."
Then they were as ready as they'd ever be.
He unclipped Ore, his lifeline. He didn't expect to have room to send out more than one pokemon at a time: they'd be fighting in close quarters. Besides, this wouldn't be a short fight, and the last thing he wanted was to find himself in a corner with an empty belt, his team already worn down. That had been Natalie's biggest mistake, beyond stepping up to him at all. She was lucky to have walked away from that fight.
It had been over a week ago, but the memory of Ridge Access flared up so intensely that Mark paused for a moment, pokeball still in hand, and drew in a deep breath. The Route 115 air was sharp with pine and salt water, but he could almost swear he detected the phantom odor of burning oil.
Dropping his voice, he asked, "Did you see that last news blast?"
Cora folded her arms. "Yeah?"
"You don't think it's ...?"
Mark replayed the speech in his mind: Events like this one will continue unless ... Montag had made Hoenn a bargaining chip, a unit of earth to be weighed against Hoenn-the-system.
"What?" she said.
Fucked up, Mark wanted to say, but the look on Cora's face stopped him. "Never mind."
Of course not. This wasn't her home either.
And that was a little fucked up, too, wasn't it? Sure, it was Montag's plan, but who were Mark and Cora to—?
"Oh, come on." She shoved him hard enough that he nearly dropped Ore's ball. "Don't go all limp dick on me now."
When she moved to push him again, he backed out of her reach. "Fuck off." But he said it without real animosity, so she bared a grin.
"You've been weird as fuck since you got back. Like, extra Mark-y."
He shrugged. "Factory default."
"Seriously. What the fuck is up with you?"
Maybe if they were somewhere else, alone, he might've talked about Ridge Access. This week, a Slateport paper called The Trumpet had published an article about the local gulpin population. How they lived on the Route 110 marsh and nowhere else in Hoenn, quietly eating the garbage that trainers left behind. How the grimer attracted to the spill were now out-competing the gulpin and rotting the grasses in their wake. Montag must've already known and factored it into his equation ... but Mark hadn't.
The stain kept spreading, across the marsh and across his thoughts.
Part of him wanted to ask Cora if she was aware the spill had been Magma's doing. Was it possible she didn't know? But she had him fixed in an impatient stare, one eyebrow raised. And behind her was the crowd waiting for Mark and Cora to lead them up the mountain, to strike the match.
So all he said was, "What do you want from me, Cora?"
She rolled her eyes. "I want you to say you've got my back, dude."
"Of course I have your fucking back. We're a team."
"Then stop with that sour-ass face." Smiling again, Cora gave his shoulder another push, but it was playful this time. "So you good to go or what?"
He allowed himself a small smile. "Yeah, it's time." He sent out Ore, who began to circle them, buzzing inquisitively. Then Mark tilted his head toward the crowd. "Let's get these guys moving."
"Oh, you know I will."
With that, she stepped back and tossed down a pokeball, giving it a little spin. Her pokemon was still a half-formed light when Cora swung her leg over—planting herself on its back with a triumphant shout just as the rapidash became a solid creature and rose to its full height. Mark had watched her do it dozens of times, but it was still hard not to be impressed by the sight of flames licking up her legs and arms without burning. And there was no denying it caught the crowd's attention.
An excited murmur rose up as she started off at a canter, bringing the rapidash around until the tiers of Meteor Falls were at her back. Cora threw her hands over her head and whooped a war cry. Grinning at the answering cheers, she leaned back to signal the rapidash to stop. Already panting from either exertion or excitement, she called, "Are you guys ready to kick some ass?"
A few voices scattered voices answered.
"Are you asleep? Wake the fuck up! I said are you ready to kick ass?"
As a half-circle began to form around Cora, Mark hung back to take up his usual position as the rearguard. There were always a few people still getting their shit together: scrambling to lace their shoes, digging in their bags for a bandana, whispering admonishments at a pokemon that wanted to nap. For now, he let the stragglers finish what they were doing but kept his eye on them. In ones and twos, they joined the weave of bodies. He nodded to them as they passed, clapping a few of them on the back—grounding both them and himself.
"They've been up there asking nicely for the construction crews to go home," Cora crowed, jabbing a finger toward the mountain. "For weeks! Fuck that!"
Cries of fuck that shit rippled through the crowd.
Mark took a deep breath and reached out to grasp one of Ore's fins. It vibrated like a plucked string, an echo of the roaring crowd.
"We didn't come here to make nice. We came here to get shit done!" She set her rapidash pacing up and down the line. "And we're not gonna take shit from DevCo!"
The crowd hissed at the mention of the company's name.
"We don't take shit from anyone!"
They howled in approval, and Mark grinned despite himself. Then he pulled his bandana up and his hood down, and he became anonymous.
The flickering fire made Cora's grin fearsome. "Are we going to let that construction crew past us?"
"No!"
"Fuck them!"
She raised a fist. "Let's burn that shit to the ground!"
All around were fierce grins and raised fists. "Burn it down! Burn it down!"
As they chanted, Cora put on her Guy Fawkes mask and drew up her hood. She gave out one last cry of, "Burn it down!" The mask muffled her voice, but it didn't matter. She set her rapidash towards the slope at an easy stride, and the crowd rushed alongside her.
Mark cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Mask up, tighten up! Let's go!" The stragglers jumped: if they didn't recognize him by his voice, they recognized Ore. One of them hurriedly stamped out their cigarette butt and—"What are you doing? Fuck no. Pick it up and pack it out."
The stragglers trotted to catch up with the others, closing ranks, and Mark nodded in satisfaction. But when he paused to clip on the mic that would tether him to Cora, he spotted a girl still trailing behind with her baltoy. Raquel, he remembered. He opened his mouth to shout for her to get it in gear—but stopped. She was wringing her bandana in her hands, eyes darting between the crowd and the shadows beneath the trees. Ah, hell. She was panicking.
He searched the crowd for someone who could reasonably—Julio. Good enough. Mark caught him by the shoulder. "You can lead a chant, right?"
His eyes lit up. "Sure! Which one should I—?"
"It doesn't matter. Just make it loud, get the others excited." Mark didn't wait for an answer before peeling off from the crowd; they'd be fine without him for a minute.
He jogged a few steps toward Raquel and called, "You're alright. Come on."
"I don't think I can do this."
When she shrank away, he took another step closer. "Bullshit. You already have. What about Rustboro?"
She hesitated. "There were a lot of cops in Rustboro." Her baltoy spun fast, wobbly circles around her. "They've been all over campus lately, too. And now with that anti-mask bill ..."
Ore was mirroring either the girl's anxiety or the baltoy's and dumping it directly into Mark's head with a steady whine. He stood straighter, projecting confidence and calm for all three of them. "If that's what you're worried about, you're safer with the group than by yourself," he said, aware that they'd just become a group of only four.
Behind them, a call and response rang out: "They wanna build a pipeline. We say—"
"Burn it down!"
The crowd had already pulled far ahead of them, into the trees. He'd lose sight of them soon. Mark motioned Raquel forward, but she shook her head. He bit back an exasperated sigh.
Maybe he should let her go, but he felt responsible: she'd been on his crew in Rustboro, and he'd been too wrapped up in his own shit to check in on her after. And besides— "The rest of us will be safer with you there, too. Can never have enough teleporters when things get dicey. We're all looking out for each other."
At that, her baltoy stilled, but she continued to frown. "It's not just that."
"They wanna dig a coal mine. We say—"
"Burn it down!"
Raquel finally looked him in the face, her expression pained. "I mean … do we know us being there won't make things worse?" Like Rustboro, she didn't have to add.
Ore shivered mid-air like one magnet passing near another.
Mark swallowed, glad his face was mostly hidden. When he trusted himself to speak he said, "You heard about Route 110, right?"
Her expression clouded. "I saw the news. It looked terrible."
"It was fucking awful." He stopped again, and for a moment the only sound was Ore's whirring. Repeating Montag's reassurance, he said, "But if we keep this pipeline from being finished, that can never happen here."
Raquel bit her lip and nodded.
Her nod bolstered him, and he continued with greater force. "No one else is gonna stop it. DevCo's got the courts and the League in their pocket—more than enough to clear out Root Revolution and the Draconids. They can protest all they want, but it's not gonna do shit." Bitterly, he added, "It never does."
"They wanna dig an oil well. We say—"
"Burn it down!"
He forced himself to look her in the eyes. "We can't let DevCo win."
Raquel turned toward her baltoy, as if in private conference. At last, she looked up and said, "You're right."
Relief swelled in his chest. "You good, then?" Another nod. Good enough. "Alright, let's go. Mask up."
—
They marched through the trees, over the crumbling gully ledge, and onto the main road. The former footpath had already been widened and smoothed out to accommodate construction vehicles. Steel stakes with day-glo flags marked the southern end of the trail, but the protesters had pulled them from the northern end, leaving behind only a line of evenly spaced holes. Through the dusty haze, the foothills were dotted with color where the protesters had made their camp. More dust clouds rose with each step down the road—another reason to be grateful for their face coverings despite the heat. Even so, the hike wasn't especially long or difficult, and the team was mostly in good spirits. They didn't have to reach the summit, only the battleground.
MetFalls jutted from the earth like a collection of block towers, each tier cartoonishly flat except where craters pitted the rock. The access road climbed only to the first, lowest step, where over the centuries the river had carved an opening into the cliff. Sometimes water ran from the cave entrance, but in the last few dry weeks, the eponymous falls had flowed only in the deepest recesses of the mountain—convenient for DevCo's diggers.
Even before Magma reached the plateau, warbling, distorted audio drifted down from above. The sound wasn't much clearer at the top. Someone with no experience addressing a crowd had nevertheless been given the megaphone, slogging through a poem they read off their smartwatch. Mark immediately saw why the organizers were letting it happen: a few protesters were still on their feet, but most sat or crouched, using their cardboard signs to shade their eyes or fan themselves. Saving their energy for a last stand.
But as Magma spread across the plateau, the protesters stood up, muttering. The poem-reader trailed off; in the ensuing quiet, distant nincada buzzed. The cliff was just wide enough to allow the two groups to stare each other down across a distance of several dozen yards.
The Roots Revolution crowd was thinner than it had been in Rustboro or even on the news only days before. Their banners had been visible from the road, a white tree on a green field. Up close, it became clear that Draconids made up a larger part of the crowd, their faces banded in green and black with fangs stenciled down their cheeks.
Mark thought suddenly of Zinnia but didn't see her among the Draconids, nor did he see either of her dragons overhead. Not entirely surprising: she skated on the surface of things, never getting too close. At times, it had made him question her loyalty, but it seemed her aloofness extended even to clan and kin.
He said into his mic, "Looks like the townies had enough."
Cora's voice crackled back, "Thoughts and prayers."
Another shape was rising alongside the crowd, slower and much, much larger. Gasps rang out. One moment, it had looked like another boulder; the next it loomed over their heads. At first, Mark couldn't process what he was seeing: it had no context in Hoenn or Unova or even this geologic period.
"Where did they get a fucking tyrantrum?" He doubted the government would've been experimenting with establishing a population, not even to draw tourists to the Safari Zone. Stolen, then. Good for them. That explained why the cops hadn't been able to drive them from the build site yet: dragons were better than thoughts and prayers.
"Goodra, too," Cora pointed out. "On the right."
He'd never seen one in person before—again, they weren't exactly common either here or back home—but this goodra had gone gray under a film of dust. Smaller than he would've expected, too. Shriveled. The fierce sun wasn't doing favors for any of them.
An upsurge of murmuring prompted Mark to turn. Erica Spitfire had emerged from the crowd of protesters. Her breloom squeezed through beside her, lashing its tail. Spitfire swept her wary gaze over Magma and said, "Haven't you already done enough?"
Enough? Mark almost laughed.
He shouted back, "Have you?" That earned a fresh wave of cheers from his teammates. Spitfire turned his way, but he was in the thick of Magma's left flank now, and her eyes didn't land on him until he spoke again: "Enough is when DevCo is dead and buried!"
She crossed her arms and set her jaw. Too bad. Mark didn't especially want to make an enemy of Spitfire—she cared more and tried harder than most. But he didn't admire her enough to walk away and leave the outcome of this fight to ride on her passion.
"Then where were you before?" came another voice. It didn't take long to find the speaker: a Draconid woman took up a fistful of the tyrantrum's feathery mane and hoisted herself onto its haunch, her other arm dangling lazily. She wore stacked necklaces of metallic beads that rattled each time the tyrantrum swayed. "Where were you," she said, "when they clear-cut trees for their road? When they tried to bulldoze us off the mountain? When they kidnapped our pokemon partners?"
Mark winced. He hadn't failed to notice that, with the notable exceptions of the tyrantrum and the goodra, few pokemon stood with the Draconid crowd, just a handful of flitting swablu and toddling bagon—not much of a defense against Rustboro's finest. He'd assumed it was about pacifism, a rejection of competitive battling culture … but of course the police would've seized their pokemon during the clashes throughout the past week.
And meanwhile, Mark had been biding his time in Rustboro, one eye on the news and one eye on his next paycheck. Sparring with Magma. Letting his pokemon rest. Waiting for Montag's orders. He opened his mouth—and realized he didn't have an answer.
It was Cora who shot back, half-laughing, "You gonna fight DevCo and us? You'll just lose twice."
The Draconid woman waited for Magma's cheers to subside before she spoke again. "You can't fight us and still fight for Hoenn."
On all sides, his teammates shouted and jeered, but Mark remained silent. Like air pressure building before a storm, he felt the crowd straining forward; they'd come to brawl, and some of them wouldn't care who was on the receiving end.
He finally burst out, "Cool it, all of you!"
Cora's job was to hype them up, his to hold them back until the right moment. They weren't here to pick fights with the Draconids, particularly not with that tyrantrum—better to let it brutalize the bulldozers when they came. But it wasn't just that.
Hoenn isn't yours.
Somewhere down the line, a rapidash whinnied, and Mark clenched his teeth. "Don't," he said into the radio, praying Cora could hear him over the crowd. He couldn't see her from his vantage point. "It's not worth it."
"I know, I'm not stupid," Cora snapped. "But it wouldn't kill them to be a little more appreciative. We're risking our skins to—"
From behind came a sound like a string of firecrackers going off, the bursts of displaced air that signaled the first cops teleporting onto the flat portion of the access road. Only briefly shaking their heads to clear the vertigo, the officers stepped into formation one by one. Behind the shimmer of pokemon light shields, each cop also carried a riot shield.
Mark grinned as Ore cast his own shield over him. Let's fucking go, assholes.
To the crowd of trainers in red, he called out, "Ruby Squad—to the front, shields up! Rowdy—get ready." The red bloc moved into position, shields of all colors springing up along the outside edges like panels of stained glass. Their backs were to the Draconids now, but Mark wasn't concerned about them anymore. He couldn't hear Cora, but he knew she'd be calling out similar orders to her two squads, Russet and Ruthless. All down the plateau as far as he could see, a rainbow of shields flickered on.
On the dirt road below, megaphone feedback squealed, then a voice boomed out, distorted through layers of light screens, "This is Rustboro PD Lieutenant Officer Dan Steelman. In the name of the Rustboro Greater Metropolitan Area, you are hereby ordered to disperse immediately."
As he spoke, officers continued to appear from thin air; most arrived arm-in-arm with a kadabra, but a few other pokemon were scattered among them as well: two alakazam, a flinching kirlia, a few natu pecking the ground, a slowbro, and a few magneton fizzling blue sparks. Behind them, a dust cloud stirred on the horizon, quickly growing larger. Mark didn't have to be able to see them to know that meant police vans and bulldozers. Two black specks appeared in the relentlessly blue sky: helicopters. But Mark wasn't worried. This was what Magma had expected.
"This is an unlawful assembly," continued Lieutenant Steelman. "Starting in five minutes, anyone remaining in the Meteor Falls area will be in violation of Penal Code 376, regardless of purpose or intent, and may be subject to arrest, pokemon seizure, or other police action as necessary."
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark glanced from one side to the other, the masked faces of his teammates melting into one red blur. Below, the cops were standing at attention, a mass of gray and black riot armor, tinted pinkish through his solrock's light screen. "Stick close. Watch each other's backs." He didn't raise his voice this time, trusting those nearest to repeat the message. They knew the drill. Ore floated at chest-height, its glow like a guiding light. "They can try, but they can't fuck with us. They're not taking MetFalls."
As the helicopters drew closer, one of the protesters took up the bullhorn again, perhaps trying to wrest back some degree of control from Magma, or maybe only digging in their heels as hard as they could. "We stand in defense of the sacred! We stand against corporate greed, and we will not stand down!"
Rustboro PD doesn't give a shit about sacred, Mark silently chided them.
Police vans and armored cars roared up the path ahead of a squadron of yellow bulldozers and excavators. Dust clouds swept behind them, obscuring the police line, and the smell of diesel carried all the way up to the plateau. Lieutenant Steelman's voice rang out one last time from within the haze. "This is your final warning. Disperse immediately."
Cora's laugh cut over the radio. "That was a short five minutes."
"They're all out of good cop," Mark answered. But by then, the first helicopter was circling overhead, so loud that he could barely hear himself, though Magma's light screens protected them from the buffeting winds.
Scattering dust, the second helicopter touched down to release another battalion of cops onto the road before it lifted into the air again. More cops poured from the vans and armored cars. They'd brought a lot of manpower, a sign they were expecting trouble.
And they'd get it. Magma was here to make sure of that.
Mark watched the vans, their edges rippling in that telltale way of manmade anti-pokemon barriers, and he wondered how many mobile healing machines they'd brought. He wished he could charge down the slope and lay waste to all those weaponized toys, but it would be more than stupid to do anything but let the cops come to them. Up here, protected behind interlocking shields, his team was in control.
For a few moments, clusters of cops put their heads together, pointing first at the dozers, then at their own ranks. Then, with a snort of diesel fumes, the first construction vehicles began chugging up the road, slowing at the steepest part of the incline but not stopping.
"What the fuck?" said Cora, echoing Mark's own thoughts.
The cops couldn't possibly think they could shovel Magma off the plateau that easily. They had to know those diggers were the prize: destroying equipment wouldn't stop the pipeline all by itself, but it would cost DevCo. Maybe it would even cost them enough time for the Root Revolution lawyers to complete their challenge to the original environmental impact assessment.
But they weren't coming for Magma. The construction crew turned off the path, away from the mountain. Instead, the machines jounced and growled towards the protester camp where cook fire smoke trailed into the sky. The protesters on the plateau howled in dismay, a few of them rushing forward, as if they could beat the bulldozers on foot.
Two of the armored police cars were tearing up the path, and these didn't veer towards the camp. The cops' plan was clear: they would press in from the access road and attack the other flank with a teleport team, trying to cleave them down the middle. That couldn't happen.
Mark turned away before the bulldozers tore into the first tents. He couldn't do anything about that now. They'd come to defend the build site, and that was what they'd do.
"Rowdy, let's go!"
After the words left his mouth came the inevitable fear that they would act too slowly or fail to act at all. But he couldn't be everywhere at once, and he couldn't manage his team's pokemon for them; as with his pokemon, he could only trust that they would hear and do what was needed.
A split second later, a grating and rumbling signaled the start of the rockslide, and he smiled. Behind them, the protesters cried out in surprise and leapt away from the crumbling wall, even as the tyrantrum swung around to shield them with its body. Stone chunks tumbled down the mountainside until the dust hung so thickly Mark could no longer see the falling rock, only feel the earth's trembling.
Finally, the mountain stilled and the dust began to settle, revealing the silhouette of a cop car half-buried under rubble. The second fishtailed over loose rock, skidding to a stop just shy of ramming the other. Boulders and rock fragments covered the access road, heaped high as the tyrantrum's back; above, a jagged gash ran up the rock face, exposing bands of gold, copper, and even green. The Rowdy squad whooped in triumph, human and pokemon both. The tyrantrum added its voice to the cacophony too, though it was hard to say whether in savage joy or protest.
The noise almost drowned out Ore's warning cry; Mark only heard it over the tyrantrum and the helicopter because it reverberated inside his head. He followed the solrock's urging and looked up. The constant clatter of the rotors had already become background noise he tuned out, so he was startled to realize that only one of the helicopters was still circling while the other hovered ominously in place.
Alright, and what about—? On the other side of the rubble, the cops had disembarked from their cars and each released several pokemon—machoke and manectric and weezing—but made no move to break through the barrier and advance. Staying out of harm's way, huh?
"Look up!" he shouted to Cora. "They're getting ready for a drop."
Even with Ore boosting the connection, he could hardly make out her words: "Ha! They're scared of a long fight."
Mark only had time to shout into the crowd, "Tighten up! Close those gaps!"
And then came the explosions.
The concussive force sent him stumbling into his teammates, ears ringing, but he managed to stay on his feet. By the time the onslaught ended, his light screen was gone; Orwell had moved to shield Mark's head with its body instead, the beginnings of a new light screen wisping around its fins. Gods—thank you, Ore. Mark brushed metal filings from his sleeves as he stood straight, but neither he nor Ore had actually been hurt as far as he could see.
Light screens flickered on and off above the crowd. Some of the others who'd been closer to the edges had been thrown to their knees, groaning as they stood—and at their feet, among pulverized rock and curved fragments of metal shells, lay voltorb that had yet to detonate.
Another trainer's sandslash hissed and drew back its paw to strike—
"Don't touch them! Ore, get rid of it!" Mark shouted, pointing towards the ledge. With invisible force, the solrock swept the voltorb out from under the sandslash's claws and over the cliff. It burst mid-air into red and white shrapnel that plinked off nearby light screens.
The others got the hint then, whether they'd actually heard Mark or not. In moments, the remaining voltorb were rolling or flying through the air. He hoped a few of them landed before they went off—let the cops have a taste of their own medicine.
Still, the explosions made him wince, not for the cops but for the voltorb. Supposedly, pain wasn't in their programming. What did bodily destruction mean to a being cached on the cloud, ready to be downloaded into a freshly assembled shell? But the voltorb's internal mechanisms strained against their fall, and it sounded too much like screams.
A burst of light down the plateau tore his attention away from the cliff edge. Gouts of flame stretched towards the helicopter, driving it up and out of reach. Cora and Ruthless. But the helicopter banked hard, leaving their attacks to dissipate into the air, and it arced away unscathed.
"Good try," Mark said into the mic. "You guys okay?"
As he looked the crowd over, ushering Rowdy and Ruby to pull in close and get their shields back up, he noticed the Draconids. A boy in green face paint lay on the ground, and a street medic crouched over him, pressing a bandana to his leg. And the Draconid boy wasn't the only one bleeding in the dirt.
The goodra ponderously stretched its neck over them all, lowing; a half-dome of blue light hung above it. The tyrantrum roared and swung its head in rage until one of the Draconids put a hand on its haunch, petting the scales there until it calmed enough to raise its own translucent red shield. Between the two dragons, the swablu were in a twittering tizzy and the bagon crouched in front of their trainers, heads lowered in readiness to smash into an enemy's knees. There were a few light screens and larger pokemon among them—but most of the crowd lay exposed. And the helicopter was looping back around.
"Here it comes again," Cora said. "Your flank is too loose. Better tighten them up."
That was the plan they'd agreed on: stick together and wall the cops out. But he could see now that the Draconids and activists would be even more exposed as Magma drew closer together. And they were already hurt. Each person here had come knowing the risks, but he was still responsible for keeping his crew safe however he could. So who was responsible for the Draconids? Montag hadn't asked him to do that, but—
Fuck it. Mark didn't waste time arguing with Cora. She could yell at him later if she wanted to. "Everyone take ten steps back!" he yelled, both gesturing and shoving them where he wanted. "Move! Shields up!"
The gap between his team and the protesters shrank, and then he found himself facing open air instead of a teammate.
The radio hissed, "Mark, what—!"
This time, he heard the whistle of the voltorb falling before the impact threw him down and blew out his shield. Metal bits rained from everywhere, forcing him to bury his face in the crook of his elbow. As long as Ore was still buzzing at the edges of his mind, he trusted that he was safe.
When the screeches of voltorb finally faded and shrapnel stopped falling, there came a crash from the direction of the access road. Mark raised his head to see a machoke smash through the rock barrier, followed by a stream of manectric and police officers. Before he could react, a snapping and popping prompted him to turn the other way. In the space between his crew and Cora's, Rustboro PD was teleporting onto the plateau.
Mark reached to his belt and then paused, torn between the impulses to protect and destroy. Hux or Rand? He didn't want to try to keep track of both of them at once unless he had to.
He climbed to his feet, trying to distill the chaos into a concrete answer. The cops ahead were stepping into formation, and he had to squint to see them through the glow of their light screens. Magma trainers climbed to their feet beside pokemon that still lay unmoving. A Draconid girl cradled a fluttering swablu to her chest—why didn't she just recall it? In front of the cops, a row of their manectric crouched, charging up an attack.
Huxley, then. The others needed cover while they got their shit together. With Ore guarding his back, he sent out his bastiodon, already reaching out with his free hand to pull a teammate behind the shelter of Hux's body.
He didn't recognize her until he caught sight of the baltoy painted in zigzag patterns. Raquel.
"You alright?"
A small cut on the exposed wedge of her cheek trickled blood, and she nodded dazedly. Had she hit her head or was she freaking out? He'd better keep an eye on her.
Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called to the others, "Let's go, Ruby! Hold that line! Rowdy, with me! Recall your pokemon if you have to and keep it moving!"
Camerupt and lairon joined Hux on the plateau, forming another wall against the police manectric where the plateau met the access road; on the other side, the Ruby crew pivoted to face off against the police line with their houndoom and ninetales.
Alright. Mark breathed in and out. Things were back under control.
His radio sputtered with static and the beginnings of a complaint from Cora—just as something slammed into Hux with enough force to knock Mark off balance, too. He whirled around, cursing at the sight of a police machoke, drawing its fist back again.
"Ore, get the machoke."
As his solrock tossed the machoke aside, Mark spoke into the mic again. "I didn't catch that. We're dealing with these fuckers on the—"
Ore pinged him with a spike of anxiety a split second before he spotted three mightyena running toward them. A cluster of police officers held their ground between his team and Cora's.
"Solar beam, Ore—"
A flicker of movement at his feet. His own shadow sprang up like a living thing—Gibs! he thought for one wild, senseless moment—and then it clamped onto one of Ore's fins. The light screen disintegrated.
"Jin, help!"
Raquel's baltoy flung out its red light shield—which lasted only until the first mightyena reached them and ripped through like the shield was paper. But it bought Mark just enough time to send out Rand to cut in between. His darmanitan caught the mightyena by the throat and threw it into the path of the next one, leaving them to fall upon each other in a tangle. Rand reared up, pounded his chest, and barreled towards the last mightyena.
Mark's shadow lay flat again. He stared at it for a moment, rattled. "You okay, Ore?"
The solrock shivered, but it traced reassurance through Mark's thoughts. He squinted at Ore for a moment … but, really, there was no winning a staring contest with a solrock. Mark spared a glance at Raquel, who was trying to coax another light screen from her baltoy—at least not outright panicking. "Hey, thanks," he told her.
Then he turned his gaze to the helicopter circling overhead. He could feel its eye on him like a spotlight; they'd send something to target Rand next. And the endless droning was getting under his skin.
"We gotta ground those helicopters," he said to Cora.
This time her voice came through loud and clear: "I'm on it."
He couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not, but his attention was already skimming over the crowd. His teammates were easy to spot in their red jackets and bandanas. Also obvious was the fact that that they were spreading further and further apart by the minute, fighting in ones and twos now: their formation was fucked three ways to hell and out of his control.
Meanwhile, Mark had already sent out three of his pokemon, meaning he only had three left in reserve—fuck. No, only two.
Rustboro had been the same, he reminded himself, and Fortree before that and Lilycove before that, and on and on all the way back to his first protest in Virbank. No plan or structure could hold up forever … and it didn't matter. Magma would never be able to defeat Rustboro PD's pokemon in an out-and-out fight as long as they were running government-issue portable healers, but it wasn't about their pokemon. A healing machine couldn't fix destroyed machinery or mend human tissue, and it wouldn't hold a frightened cop in line when his self-preservation instincts kicked in. A cop fought on orders; Magma fought out of love and rage. Duty always lost that contest in the end. Montag wouldn't have sent them here if he didn't think it mattered, if he didn't think they could handle it. So they'd fucking handle it.
A few of the cops drew together, trying to reform their lines. Time to find out how strong their sense of duty was. "Charge, Hux!"
A bastiodon couldn't get up to a run very quickly, but Hux was hard to stop once he did. With a bellow, he plowed through the officers' machoke and manectric, driving both humans and pokemon towards the ledge. One of them teleported away, and then a shower of black Title 8 balls from nearby officers forced Mark to recall Hux mid-charge or lose him. None of the cops had been very close to dropping over the edge, but they looked shaken as they climbed to their feet.
Grinning, Mark released Hux in front of him again; the bastiodon pawed the ground and shook his massive head, and Mark patted his scaly hide. "Good work, Hux."
But where was—? He spotted the darmanitan knocking down one pokemon after another before tearing after the next, racing further and further away. "Rand!" Gods, would Rand even be able to hear him?
Thankfully, the darmanitan pulled up short, casually dropped the manectric it had snatched up, and loped back to Mark. He'd worked himself into a lather, but it didn't stop him from reaching up to grab the back of Mark's head to pull him closer for inspection, breathing hotly on his face. When he determined that nothing was wrong with his human, he dropped back to all fours and turned toward the crowd.
"Don't go so far," Mark told him. He whipped out a potion and sprayed Rand's cuts and bruises while they were still sheltered by Huxley. "You're gonna get hurt, and I won't be able to help."
Rand snorted in response.
Gravel crunched and shouts rang out on the access road. One of the armored cars lurched to one side and then the other. For a moment, it lifted a few inches off the ground, outlined in purple light, only to crash back down. Mark grinned again when he saw the culprits, a few of the Rowdy team with a claydol and a dusclops, taking cover behind a camerupt. That was a good idea—if they could get around the police kadabra that hunched together beside the car, drawing esoteric symbols in the air with their spoons.
If Gibs were here ….
Mark grimaced and shoved the thought away. "Ore," he said, "help them out."
Creaking, the car wrenched a foot off the ground but moved no further, invisibly anchored by the kadabra. Orwell's frustration thrummed in Mark's head.
He cast his eyes around for a teammate within shouting distance, but all the trainers around him were already locked in skirmishes with police. Finally, his gaze landed on Raquel, still leaning against Hux. Her baltoy bobbed at her side, nuzzling her shoulder. Had she moved from that spot at all? Goddamn it, he should've left her in the clearing. "Can your baltoy do something?" he said, exasperation bleeding into his voice.
To his surprise, she took a deep breath and straightened. "Go, Jin," she said, giving the baltoy a nudge. It rose up, spinning faster and faster—
The halo of purple light around the police car flared, and it jerked upward as if on a pulley. The kadabra screeched—the car wobbled—but they weren't able to pull the car back before it arced over the edge of the road. It tumbled end-over-end all the way down the slope, rock and dirt spilling in its wake.
Ore beamed pride into Mark's head as cheers rang out all around. "Yeah, you did good," he laughed. He called to Raquel, "You too. Come on, let's send these guys back to where they came from."
She nodded quickly. Her gaze was more focused and, since he couldn't read much else in her expression, he chose to take it as a good sign.
And then, like a comet dropping out of the sky, one of the helicopters screamed past, burning at one end and flying so low that officers broke ranks and scrambled out of its path; it clipped the cliff edge as it fell.
"Holy shit, you did it," he said to Cora, unsure if she'd hear him over the triumphant roar of the crowd.
"I wish. It was the goodra."
A roar shook the ground, and Mark looked up in time to see the tyrantrum sweep three cops off their feet with its tail. The nearby officers backed to a safe distance to throw eightballs. A Draconid swatted them out of the air with her cardboard sign while the tyrantrum bellowed until boulders crashed down from above, forcing the cops to crouch under their light screens. Even at a distance, Mark had to steady himself with a hand on Hux's back.
"Recall it!" he shouted at the Draconids.
Even as he spoke, one eightball flew less than an inch from the tyrantrum snout. But they either didn't hear him or wouldn't do it. The Draconids continued batting down eightballs with their signs.
Mark clenched his teeth. Protest signs would only hold them off for so long. "Ore, I need you to cover them."
Ore trilled, driving a sharp note of worry into him.
"I'll be fine. Rand and Hux are both here." He hesitated, speaking the next words less for Ore, who always understood him better and faster than language, than for himself. "I don't want RPD taking that tyrantrum. I—it's not right."
Hoenn might not belong to him, but it sure as hell didn't belong to the cops. It was the least he could do.
For a moment, the solrock only hovered in place, whirring, and then set off through the crowd; its presence in Mark's mind faded to a near-whisper, still there if he reached for it but only barely. He watched Ore long enough to see it sidle up to the enormous dragon and flick open a light shield—just in time to block a eightball that would've hit the tyrantrum square in the chest. Good, Ore, he thought, hoping the solrock would hear.
Mark turned back to reorient himself—but the cops were backing away from the road. A grin began to edge onto his face. Was that all it took to scare them off?
A helicopter roared overhead. Without Ore's light shield, the wind threatened to rip Mark's hood back. That had been a low pass. He craned his neck back and jerked in surprise when he saw two helicopters skulking overhead instead of only one. When had the new one arrived? The sun glinting off the side momentarily obscured the logo painted on the doors, but as it turned toward the access road, the Devon logo shone clearly. A skarmory flew alongside it, open wings gleaming not red but deep green.
Mark couldn't help himself: he let out a laugh. No doubt Steven Stone could trounce him one-on-one in a stadium under the watchful eye of a referee … but what did the former League champion know about street fighting? What a golden fucking opportunity to land a solid hit on DevCo. Much better than wrecking a defunct digger.
"Cora, check it out. We've got a celebrity guest appearance."
"What?" Amid a backdrop of jumbled growls and shouts, she was clearly unamused.
He gave her the punchline anyway. "The prince of DevCo is here."
The League helicopter touched down on the access road, and a troop in unmarked, black uniforms climbed out. Then Stone hopped down like he was getting ready to greet the paparazzi. His hair shone white as salt under the intense sun and—Mark laughed again—he wore a full fucking three-piece suit and a tie, an assault vest thrown over it all.
Mark had known who would step out of that helicopter the second he'd seen the skarmory, but it was one thing to see that familiar face in the tabloids and another to see it in person. Part of him was caught in disbelief that the living symbol of indifferent opulence could also be a real person sharing the same piece of earth as him.
He shook off his amusement to shout, "Come on, guys. Tighten up!" He nudged Hux forward, motioning for Rand and his teammates to follow and press in; he wouldn't give Steven Stone an inch.
As Mark drew closer to the Draconids and their tyrantrum, Ore split off and floated back to him. "Ore, no," he started—but the cops had stopped throwing eightballs for now, and he couldn't help smiling at his solrock's return. "You worry too much."
The police had withdrawn into a knot at the mouth of the access road. As Steven Stone approached, one of the cops tried to pull him aside, his manner almost conspiratorial, but the former champion brushed him off with a careless wave and continued forward, his other hand falling to his belt. He threw his pokeball with the easy swagger someone used to being watched, more fit for a televised match than a scuffle in the dirt.
All the same, when the light cleared, Mark sucked in a breath. Each of the metagross's legs was taller than a person and looked heavy enough to smash him to pulp. As it shifted its weight from foot to foot, reflections of blue sky and green banners and red jackets flitted across its chrome carapace. Its red eyes flickered across the crowd, lingering for a few seconds on each one of them.
Magma's ranks drew closer together, and a prickly quiet set in. Raquel and her baltoy hung in Hux's shadow. Nearby, Mark spotted Eben, hunched beside his graveler. Rand panted, leaning forward on his knuckles and swaying like a runner readying for the starting gun. To the other side, the Draconids raised their fists one by one. None of them spoke.
Goosebumps ran down Mark's arms. "Hold your ground!" he shouted, trying to regain his earlier calm. "It's just another pokemon."
A faint humming rose in Mark's ears. He wasn't sure at first if it was real or coming from Ore, but the sound grew louder, drowning out even the chatter of the helicopter's blades. Loud enough that his head began to ache.
"Ore, it's okay—"
The radio crackled with Cora's voice. "Hey, Mark—" Her words dropped off into empty air.
"I didn't catch that. Hello?" But the flatness of his own voice confirmed that the radio was dead. "Fuck."
A burst of static and human voices ripped through his head.
—all units.
Ten-four, standing—
He clamped his hands over his ears, but it did no good. "Ore, stop!"
The solrock vibrated violently in place as if an invisible hand were shaking it. Mark had never seen it behave like that before.
He turned towards the metagross. With a metallic grating that he did not hear but felt inside his skull, it swiveled to look back at him. Its gaze seemed to pierce through his skin, straight through to his skull.
"Ore?" His voice was shaking. Someone touched his back, but he hardly felt it, his eyes focused on his quavering solrock. "Ore, we need a light screen. Come on, you can do it."
Stone shouted something, and then, slowly and soundlessly, the metagross rose onto its rear legs, blotting out the light. When it smashed down, everything went sideways.
Mark landed hard. The plateau rippled and bucked with such force that he feared the entire thing would come crashing down. When he managed to roll to his hands and knees, he tasted blood. He ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure they were all still there.
The cops rushed back in like a tide, eightballs zinging through the air. One hit a bagon, and it vanished instantly; a police manectric darted into the opening and tackled the now-exposed Draconid. Seconds later, a cop was there to zip-tie her wrists behind her back. Nearby, a camerupt disappeared into a eightball, and one of Mark's teammates screamed.
Rand hoisted Mark up. The second he was on his feet again, the darmanitan let go to swing at an approaching machoke. For a moment Mark tottered, struggling to focus on what was in front of him. Ore spun around him tight and fast, pinging him repeatedly with worry, worry, worry, until Mark waved the solrock back and said firmly, "We're okay." He was glad, at least, that Ore seemed to be back to normal. "We're okay."
Hux was down, legs splayed. Mark cursed and recalled him. If he could just get a second of cover, he could patch his bastiodon up. He threw out Jemisin's pokeball and then dropped behind the gigalith.
While Mark tried to catch his bearings, Stone had released more pokemon: a pink cradily and a golden-eyed claydol. The metagross lumbered amid the cops like a tank, idly raising a leg to smash down a pokemon, and then continuing sedately onward.
Fuck that thing. Getting rid of it was top priority.
Without thinking, Mark laid a hand on his belt—but he only had Octavia left. Gibs had been gone for weeks, and yet Mark was still reaching for a pokeball that wasn't there.
The tyrantrum charged into the police ranks, grabbing officers in its teeth and shaking them until they flew—and then finally a eightball caught it in the leg, and it was gone. So much for that, Mark thought bitterly. The black ball whipped over the crowd and into the orbit of Stone's golden-eyed claydol; several others already haloed its head.
Mark wasn't an idiot. With the state his team was in, he didn't have a chance to take out a metagross by himself. Not without Gibs. He swiveled around, searching for Eben and his graveler, maybe, or someone with a camerupt, or—
He spotted Raquel. In sharp contrast to her trembling, her baltoy was very still. At least one of them was calm. But when Mark locked eyes with her, she gave the smallest shake of her head.
Oh no.
"Raquel—"
And then, with a pop, she was gone.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
That wasn't the plan. Teleporting out was their last resort, but they didn't all have a pokemon that could do it. They had to coordinate, fucking communicate, or else people would be left behind.
"Pull the fuck together!" Mark shouted at the top of his lungs.
But he was screaming at empty air. As if an invisible switch had been flipped, his teammates began to blink out of existence, first a scattered few, then all across the crowd, trainers madly recalling pokemon and grabbing for a neighbor before making the leap into the void.
Mark's pulse stuttered. He squeezed his radio's push-to-talk button one more time. "Cora? Can you hear me?" But it was still dead plastic.
The cops swept into the empty spaces, the remaining blips of red swallowed by gray and black. A trainer in red turned helplessly, only able to watch as their pokemon vanished one by one. Another swung their fists until a manectric downed them.
Mark had one last failsafe. "Ore, send up a flare." The solrock's purple fire was distinctive; Cora would know what it meant.
As the ball of flame shot into the air, Jemisin rumbled and hurled rock chunks into the ranks of police. Rand screeched and struck down a swooping magneton. But all of Mark's attention was focused on Cora's team, a patch of red only yards away.
Come on, Cora. She had to have seen it, right?
Bit by bit, her crew drew into a tight pack. Good, if they scattered too, there'd be no point in—And then, all at once, they disappeared.
Mark couldn't breathe. She'd misunderstood his signal.
Or maybe she'd understood exactly what had happened.
For a moment, all he could do was stand and try to breathe. The sound of a manectric throwing itself into Ore's light screen snapped him out of it.
Focus!
He'd gotten himself out of tight positions before. His only possible escape was behind him, into the heart of Meteor Falls. Getting to the cave mouth would be dicey, but fighting to leave something was much easier than fighting to keep it. His pokemon could clear the way.
"Ore, Rand, let's go!" He raised his gigalith's pokeball, readying to recall her and run for it. Orwell did a loop around his head, buzzing and crackling, but Rand—"Fuck, Rand, enough!"
Before Mark could recall the darmanitan, there was a sound like an engine accelerating, and then something crashed into Jem with a horrible crunch. The gigalith reeled, jaws working; one of her crystals was fractured. The second blow was nothing more than a streak of silver, too fast for Mark to do anything to stop it. He managed to recall her at last, and then the only thing between him and the fucking metagross was a membrane of light.
"Fire spin. Don't let it any closer," he said to Ore, backpedaling. "Rand!"
Purple flames shot out with a hiss. The metagross froze for a moment. Then, despite heating to a pink glow, it pressed through the flames and swung a massive leg into the light shield. Mark and Ore slid back several feet; the shield held, but cracks webbed the left side.
"Rand!"
The metagross brought its leg up to swing again, but Rand lunged and caught its claw between his hands. He jammed the leg up higher, and for a moment it looked like the metagross might flip onto its back. Instead it yanked itself free and scuttled backward.
"Fire punch, Rand!" Mark shouted. "Aim for the leg joint."
But he should've been watching Stone.
As Rand's fist connected, something burst from the ground beneath the darmanitan in a spray of dirt and rock. Not until it had hooked its claws into Rand's back did Mark recognize the excadrill. They tumbled backwards together, and the metagross clomped towards Mark. It held one leg off the ground, but that didn't slow it down.
"Ore, solar beam the …." He couldn't hit the excadrill without hitting Rand. "The metagr—"
The dome of Mark's light shield rocked back and forth. A machoke on one side, manectric on the other. Fuck, they were everywhere, closing in tight. He could ask Ore to sweep them away—but then nothing would be holding back the metagross. He needed backup, but there was no one in sight any direction he turned. The only pokemon he had left was Octavia, who wouldn't be happy with that metagross or under the full sun—
Ore shouldn't take this long to charge up a solar beam.
The solrock was frozen in place, not even twitching. It buzzed so loudly that Mark felt it in his teeth. For the second time, radio static burst through his skull—west end secure. Copy—and then the light screen popped like a soap bubble.
With a final shriek, Ore lashed energy out in all directions. The machoke and manectric skidded backwards, kicking up dust. The radio static fell silent. Mark took a breath—
Then something black whizzed through his peripheral vision, and Ore's presence in his mind suddenly cut off. By the time Mark turned his head, Ore was gone.
Gone.
He looked up in time to see the rebounding eightball shoot past Stone's smug, smiling face and join the others that orbited his claydol.
I'll fucking kill him. Mark reached to his belt again, but he still only had Octavia left, and she'd never get him past that metagross.
"Rand—" He whipped his head around in time to see his darmanitan vanish, too. No!
Under the cover of the claydol's golden light shield, Stone strode forward, raising one arm—
Mark felt the drop in his stomach before he registered that his feet had left the ground. Legs dangling, he tipped back and back …. MetFalls swung overhead, all those stratified shades of red rock stretching long … then only sky, and then no sky at all—
Until he was skidding facedown along the plateau. Something landed on him, hard, and he wheezed for air. Before he could even think about fighting back, rough hands yanked his arms behind his back and zip-tied his wrists.
Another hand reached for his pokeballs—standard cop procedure—and Mark's panic mounted. They were going to take everyone. And then he would be truly alone.
But a voice made the hand pause.
"That's one of the leaders, right? I want to meet him."
They dragged Mark up into a sitting position. He squinted against the sun until Stone's shadow fell across his face.
For a moment, the former champion only stared down at him, head tipped to one side, smiling faintly. He crouched and reached for Mark's bandana.
Mark thrashed, but the cops to either side had him by the shoulders. And then a breeze hit his face, stinging against his split lip. He glared up at Steven Stone, every possible insult boiling inside him, but kept his mouth clamped shut.
"Well," Stone said softly, "you've caused a lot of trouble today, haven't you."
Behind him hovered the claydol, spinning and spinning its collection of eightballs. Following Mark's eye, Stone turned and then grinned. "I'm sure they're all legally registered in your name … right? If the judge decides to let you out on bail, you'll get them back right away."
Stone let that sink in before he spoke again. "So, where did you get that bastiodon? That's more than theft, you know. That's copyright infringement."
Montag had gifted Hux to him years ago, but like hell Mark was going to so much as breathe his name. He clenched his jaw tighter.
The former champion waited a moment. When Mark still gave no indication of opening his mouth, Stone shrugged and stood, brushing dust from his suit. Without so much as a glance back, he stepped away to address the cops.
Mark tested his bindings, but the zip-ties only bit into his skin harder when he strained. At last, he let his head hang and sucked in a ragged breath. By a stroke of luck—if Steven fucking Stone unmasking him could be called luck—he still had his team with him. Or, at least, half of them. But the moment the cops noticed he still had balls on his belt, they'd be confiscated. Gone. Forever.
Would they release them into the wild? And what about Rand and Jem, Unovan natives? It seemed unlikely that a Hoenn police department would bother with the cost of shipping pokemon across the ocean. No, they'd more likely be sold at a police auction to some spoiled little shit hoping to fast-track their badge quest. Would they think he'd abandoned them?
Or maybe they'd be left to gather dust in a filing cabinet, caught in stasis indefinitely.
If someone could just grab Octavia's ball from his belt …. Erica Spitfire sat zip-tied among several of the Draconids, their faces smudged with dirt and paint but their heads high. A few feet away, someone hit ground with a flurry of curses: Eben, his bandana slipping partway down. At the sight of a teammate, Mark felt a rush of joy—but none of them were close enough for a whisper, and a yell would also catch the attention of the cops and remind them that he still had pokeballs on his belt.
Even if one of them managed to release Octavia … then what? His hands would still be tied, and they'd still be outnumbered.
What had been the point of any of this? Mark had failed his pokemon, he'd failed the trainers under him, he'd failed Montag … and he hadn't deflected harm from anyone.
And then, gods, he hadn't even considered Mom and Kathy yet. They'd be heartbroken when they found out … but he couldn't avoid it, could he? He'd need Mom's help finding a lawyer, not to mention paying for—fuck. It wasn't supposed to be like that. He was supposed to be the one supporting them. If he'd just listened when Kathy—
The fleeting coolness of a shadow swept over him, and he looked up. Two winged shapes wheeled high above the plateau, one quick and lithe and the other much larger and bulkier. Neither was the right shape to be the skarmory. Maybe an aerodactyl, but even the heir to the Stone fortune didn't have two of those. Then one of them bellowed, smoke trailing from its mouth, and Mark knew exactly whose pokemon they were: Zinnia had decided to show up after all.
The cops had noticed her, too. The two remaining helicopters circled closer but kept their distance. Stone's skarmory shot out ahead of them, flinging razor-edged feathers with each wingbeat. Zinnia's noivern easily dipped below while the salamence flew to meet Steven's bird. Green flames spewed from between the dragon's teeth until the skarmory was forced to pull away.
The noivern tucked its wings and hurtled towards the ground.
"Shields up!"
Fewer police kadabra were out than before, but there were still plenty to raise a glittering dome of light over their ranks. The noivern held to its course.
Maybe it didn't know. Octavia's daytime vision was bad, and Mark guessed noivern was the same. It was going to hit the light screen like a pidove against a high-rise window, and while it lay stunned, the cops would swarm.
The smack he expected never came. Instead, in a jumble of shouts and radio commands, the cops all ducked behind their riot shields. Overhead, the light screen was still intact, but the noivern had slipped through somehow. It was hardly more than a blur ripping along the crowd, knocking polycarbonate shields and pokemon aside with its wings and tail as it went. Finally, with a hiss, it landed among the officers it had stricken prone. A riot shield cracked under one foot.
"Manectric, go!"
As the pokemon bounded towards it, the noivern whirled, reared up, and brought its wings together with a terrific clap of air that blew out the light shields and sent cops and manectric flying. Even at a distance, Mark's ears popped.
The salamence dropped through the opening, spraying flames to force the cops further back. A few of them dropped half-melted riot shields as they ran.
Zinnia clung to the salamence's neck. When it dropped to all fours with a ground-shaking thump, she leapt down, black cloak streaming behind her, and bolted for the protesters. "Tacca, clear the way!" The noivern slithered ahead, slapping police and pokemon aside. Cheers rose up then, and Zinnia grinned as she whipped a long hunting knife from her hip.
Mark craned his neck to watch her lean over one of the Draconid protesters and snap the knife through her zip-ties. Zinnia, please. But what right did he have to ask for her help? If he were in her position, he'd free his sister before a near-stranger.
"What happened to Kalmara and Harsumna?" she asked one of them. "Where are they?"
A roar drowned out the answer. The salamence lifted off the ground in a gust of sparks and dust, narrowly avoiding the metagross's swinging leg. The breeze stirred Zinnia's cloak as she turned for a moment to watch. Her expression was pained, but she whirled back around and continued down the line, sheltered by the noivern's wings. The cops threw eightballs from a safe distance, but the noivern blasted them with green fire; the eightballs fell as splatters of molten metal.
Finally, Zinnia came to Mark and—snick—cut his hands free. He almost could've cried in relief.
"You're amazing," he said, but she'd already moved past him.
The Draconids and protesters helped each other up, some rubbing life back into their hands. Most were faster on the uptake and ran, skidding over discarded riot shields, towards the opening of Meteor Falls. A few of the bolder cops started after them, but the noivern darted up to pepper them with fire.
Beyond the ring of destruction the two dragons had caused, Rustboro RPD was reforming their ranks and reactivating light screens. She'd taken them by surprise, but Zinnia couldn't keep this up for long. This was the only chance Mark would get to run to safety.
But he couldn't leave Ore and Rand. He couldn't.
A hundred feet away, Stone's metagross and Zinnia's salamence were still locked together in a cloud of dust, fumes, and flecks of metal; the crowd had moved back to give them a wide berth. The metagross planted a foot on the salamence's chest, grinding the dragon into the rock and smashed polycarbonate—until a claw raked its face, and it reeled back. With a kick and a blast of fire, the salamence wrenched free.
Through the heat haze rising off the metagross's cherry-red shell, Mark could see the former champion out ahead of the ranks of police officers, his brows knit together. The cradily had been cordoned off by a line of burning debris, but the claydol bobbed at his side, still juggling more than a dozen eightballs that gleamed with reflected fire.
Spitfire had already gone, and Eben too. Mark was on his own.
He felt naked without Ore, but he knew his pokemon were counting on him. He had to try. Before he could second-guess himself, Mark took off running, Octavia's ball in hand. He hoped the dust and smoke in the air would provide him some cover.
By the time he burst through to clear air, he was already calling out his golbat. "Confuse ray!"
Mark didn't get within thirty feet of Stone before the claydol caught him in an invisible grip and yanked him to a stop mid-air, but Octavia was much faster. She shot past him, trailing lights that flickered and pulsed colors that hurt to look at. Mark was powerless to turn his head, so he shut his eyes instead.
The claydol's hold didn't loosen, but it hadn't been Mark's target: the most dangerous opponent on the field was always, always the trainer.
A cry of alarm prompted Mark to open his eyes. Steven Stone had sunk to one knee and swayed like a drunk as he tried to stand back up. The nearest cops stumbled into each other.
Then the claydol began to tilt slowly to the left, and Mark tilted, too. Octavia was quick, but he'd seen her fly in the opposite direction from—Holy shit, it's Stone. His pokemon were dizzy off his confusion.
From behind Mark came a creaking, grating sound, and he managed to slowly turn his head. The metagross shimmied first to one side and then the other as if the floor were tilting beneath it. It swung a leg at the salamence, missing widely but nearly striking down several cops instead.
When Zinnia's noivern dropped next to the claydol, writhing shadows cupped in the crook of its arm, Stone's pokemon was defenseless. The instant the noivern struck, Mark tumbled free from the psychic grip. Even as he hit his hands and knees, he laughed, half-delirious with relief.
Like beads dropping from a snapped necklace, the eightballs surrounding the claydol dropped at once and rolled in several directions. Mark's stomach lurched. He dove forward, shoveling eightballs into his messenger bag. Some were half-melted or smashed, empties that had already been on the ground. There was no time to try to sort through them—he picked up every single one he saw.
"No!" someone shouted.
The noivern hunched between Mark and the cops, but a clear path lay between him and Steven Stone. The former champion braced himself with a hand on the ground, his gaze sliding all over, but he reached his other hand for a pokeball.
Mark froze. He had nothing left to defend himself.
The ball slipped from Stone's fingers and rolled away without releasing. Stone fumbled after it, leaving Mark to resume his mad grab for eightballs.
As he scrabbled for the last one, he saw a flash of pink out of the corner of his eye. He rolled, trying to cover his head—but it was Octavia who saved him. She slashed at the cradily's face in defiance of the tendrils snatching at her wings.
From behind came a crunch like a car crash, and the salamence roared. Mark stole a glance over his shoulder to see it clamber atop the fallen metagross and roar again.
He grabbed the last eightball and stood—but there was nowhere to go. The cops surrounded him on all sides. A couple of them were helping Stone to his feet; he pressed a hand to his head, but two of his pokemon stood nearby, and another pokeball was in his hand.
"Hey, over here!"
Zinnia stood beside her salamence with a hand on its neck. It bellowed and exhaled green flames again, incinerating another barrage of eightballs before they could find their targets. Crouching to avoid the worst of the heat, she waved wildly to Mark.
You don't have to tell me twice. He recalled Octavia and ran for it.
As Zinnia hoisted herself onto the salamence's back, the noivern took to the air; it zigzagged hard and fast around them, warding off both eightballs and manectric with wind and flame. "Come on." Zinnia reached a calloused hand down to Mark and helped him up behind her. As soon as both of his feet were off the ground, the salamence lurched forward and spread its wings. There was nothing to grab onto but Zinnia, so he shut his eyes and held on tight—
And the ground dropped away below them. Above, violet dazzled against the sky—a light screen. The cops were trying to trap them in. But the noivern shattered it with another sonic blast, and the salamence didn't even slow.
Only as they veered away from Meteor Falls did Mark see how many of his teammates and the protesters were still left behind, little specks of color among the gray. The longer he looked, the dizzier he became. He squeezed his eyes shut against the wind and the bone-crunching drop to earth below. The salamence was all power and pumping muscle, surprisingly warm beneath him, and Mark tried not to think about anything but the space between one wingbeat and the next.
He had no sense at all of how long they'd been flying before they landed. The impact jarred him hard enough that he released his grip on Zinnia. As the salamence trotted to a standstill, he tumbled off and rolled into the bushes. He dry-heaved until his eyes watered. Then, for a few moments, he let himself simply lay there, cheek against the cool dirt.
Mark decided he hated teleporting slightly less than flying.
He sat up slowly. They'd arrived at a forest clearing, though he couldn't begin to guess whether they were north or east of MetFalls. The air was still save for the chirping of tailow.
Zinnia said nothing about Mark's landing when he finally emerged from the bushes, brushing dirt and leaves from his hoodie. She'd busied herself examining the salamence's injuries. While she ran a hand over its side, it dropped its head onto her shoulder, making a sound remarkably like a cat purring. The noivern lay nearby, grooming its ruff of fur with a forked tongue.
"Zinnia … thanks," he said. "I owe you one."
Her smile was there one second and gone the next. "Yes, you do." She made an air-grab at his messenger bag. "The pokemon?"
"Right." His stomach twisted. What if he'd missed one of them?
One way to find out.
Gingerly, he lowered himself to sit at the base of a tree; the adrenaline had worn off, and he felt like he'd been hit by a truck. He dumped the eightballs into a pile beside him, then he heaved a sigh. "So, you think I should just—"
Zinnia snatched up a few of them and tossed them down, releasing a pair of swablu and a bagon. The swablu flitted up to perch on a branch; the bagon took a few unsteady steps and plopped down with a sad bleat. She told them, "You fought hard. I'll do my best to help you find your human friends if you want to return to them, but no one would blame you if you'd rather return to the mountain."
Mark wondered how much of this speech was intelligible to the pokemon, but he remained respectfully silent.
The clearing quickly filled with pokemon. He released a police manectric that growled long and low before turning and streaking away into the underbrush. Zinnia released a graveler that might've been Eben's or might not have. Before long, the pile of empties was bigger than the pile of pokemon waiting to be released.
When the tyrantrum burst forth with a roar, Zinnia wrapped her arms around its leg and cried, "Kalmara!" With astonishing gentleness, it lowered its massive head to snuffle her hair.
The pile began to thin, and they still hadn't come across either of Mark's pokemon. He felt like something was squeezing him by the throat, the pressure mounting until—
"Rand!" he choked out.
The darmanitan emerged in his dormant form, but at the sound of Mark's voice, he began to rise up, stone arms rasping against stone ribs. By the time Mark threw his arms around him, Rand was furry and warm again. He didn't even care that the darmanitan nearly knocked the wind out of him with the force of his hug.
When Mark pulled away, his fingers came away sticky and red. "Shit. That excadrill got you good." He recalled Rand into his own pokeball, the one he'd carried with him since he left Unova.
When the next ball burst open, a familiar crackle of energy grazed over Mark's mind, and he thought his heart might burst with relief. "Ore! Thank fucking gods. You okay?" The solrock trilled and made a loop around him before it held still long enough to let Mark press a hand to its side; Ore buzzed with an echo of his own joy. "Yeah, you too."
"Is that all of them?" Zinnia cut in. "There has to be more, right? She has to be here."
Mark's smile fell. He didn't know Zinnia well, but he knew that awful gnawing feeling when he touched the empty slot on his belt. He checked his bag one more time but came up empty. "I'm sorry," he said. "The rest are duds."
Her mouth twisted. "You didn't see a goodra out there?"
"I did, but … I guess Stone didn't grab it."
Zinnia raised one fist to her mouth and swiped at her eyes with the other. Mark turned away to give some semblance of privacy. After a moment, she let out a breath and bent to scoop up one of the recovered bagon. She cradled it like a baby. To his surprise, she bared a toothy grin.
"Well. She's not the first dragon stolen by the Hoenn state, hmm?" Her grin wobbled and then became fiercer. "The rest of us will just have to fight even harder. For Harsumna. For Aster. For all those who came before and all who will come after."
A growl and a thump prompted Zinnia and Mark to turn to the salamence. It fanned its wings, stirring a wind that rustled the leaves. "Don't you go flying off without me, Lyco," Zinnia said in the same tone she might scold a naughty toddler. "The last thing we need right now is to call more attention to ourselves. If you wait a few minutes, I'll get you dinner."
The salamence regarded her for a long moment. Then it folded its wings and slunk off between the trees, its sides scraping bark as it went.
Mark repeated her words to himself with growing unease: call more attention to ourselves. "Why don't you just recall it?"
Her smile was quick and sharp. "I don't use pokeballs."
"Oh." That explained a few things. He turned to Ore and thought maybe he understood: he didn't want to let the solrock out of his sight again if he could help it.
With a swish of her cloak, Zinnia turned away to tend to her pokemon, and that was that. Fine by him.
Mark settled back against the tree with his bag in his lap and counted up his potions: three left. As he uncapped a potion for Ore, he made a mental tally of his team's injuries. Rand definitely needed one. Hux was out cold, and Jem needed care, too—none of them were in great shape, really, but—
Zinnia tsked as she examined a patch of blackened scales on the tyrantrum's back. When her hands strayed too close, it snapped its teeth at her. She shoved its snout away one-handedly and said, "I know, I'm sorry. I'm only looking. I won't touch."
Mark rolled one of his two remaining potions between his palms. Finally he said, "Zinnia. Catch."
She did easily. "Thanks."
For a moment, he watched her shake and spray the bottle, how she stepped automatically to avoid the tyrantrum's swinging tail and ducked to reach its underbelly.
"I didn't know you could fight like that." He paused, then added pointedly, "I thought you were a pacifist." That had always been her excuse to skip out on a fight. Her skills were best suited to surveillance, she'd said.
Zinnia didn't pause to look at him. "With exceptions."
"Fine, but … where the hell were you? It would've made a difference if you'd been there earlier." Even as he spoke, he wondered how true that was, but it felt good to say.
"A difference?"
She gave the tyrantrum's haunch a thump, and it pivoted away towards a patch of sun, nearly catching Mark across the face with its tail. Ore buzzed in protest, but the tyrantrum paid no mind; with a thud that sent pine needles raining down from the trees, it dropped into the dirt and rolled around, legs in the air.
As Mark straightened back up, Zinnia flashed him another snaggletoothed smile. "The Devon data center is burning," she said. "How's that for a difference?"
He stopped dusting pine needles from his shoulders to shoot her an incredulous look instead. That had to be a joke, right? Except Zinnia returned his stare with unblinking calm. Goosebumps broke out along his arms. "You're not kidding."
"Nope."
"Holy shit." Mark grinned but shook his head. Dragons or no, that was no small feat. At the very least, Tabitha had to have been involved—who else could disrupt their security system? But even then, they would've needed a larger team, and Mark couldn't imagine how—
Then he saw it: half of the Rustboro police force diverted to MetFalls. Steven Stone helicoptered in with his monstrous metagross.
Montag's plan had never been just the pipeline, not when he could do that and destroy one of their buildings, too.
He felt lightheaded at the enormity of it. Devon Tower was a more elaborate structure, the jewel of the Rustboro business district, but the data center was Devon's heart. Even before Mark had been assigned to Rustboro, it had been a potential Magma target, but for years it had only been a pipe dream. It was protected by both the latest anti-pokemon barriers and a metagross—sometimes two, now that Stone was no longer holding court at Evergrande.
Now and again, plan proposals bubbled up from the ranks, but Montag had never approved any of them. One idea had been Mark's: getting Gibs into the building would be impossible, but he was more than capable of shadow-swiping key cards, phones, and datebooks from the security team once they were on the street. A good first step to breaking through, Mark had thought. He flinched now, remembering how he'd delivered his pitch in an excited rush.
Montag had at first said nothing, then simply, "No."
Mark had accepted that answer, the lack of explanation, just like he had accepted every other impenetrable decision that Montag passed down. He trusted Montag. And yet ….
A scuffling and a chirruping made him look up. The noivern pawed at Zinnia, nearly knocking her over, until she reached into the folds of her cloak for a strip of fruit leather. She tossed it high; the noivern snatched it from the air, then came knuckle-crawling back for more.
"He didn't tell us," Mark said in an accusatory tone.
Zinnia's eyes flicked over to him and then back to her pokemon. She shrugged and then tossed another piece of dried fruit. For a moment, the only sound was the noivern's chittering and chewing.
Montag operated on a need-to-know basis … but Mark had always been one of the ones who needed to know.
He spoke as the realization hit him: "We were the distraction."
She was still smiling, but it wasn't a happy expression. "You. My people. Huwasi."
Right, the Draconid word for MetFalls.
Ore drew closer as if to protect him, and Mark squeezed his eyes shut.
After a moment, he mustered a hollow laugh and one of Montag's maxims: "No change without sacrifice."
Mark had always nodded along before, but … fuck, when had he become disposable?
Fine, Montag couldn't have guessed that Mark would fuck it up the way he had—that hadn't been part of the plan. But Meteor Falls?
DevCo would get to build their pipeline—maybe not today, but soon enough. Losing the data center wouldn't inconvenience Devon enough to halt their projects … but it might motivate them to pull in more revenue quickly. Neither Magma nor Root Revolution nor the Draconids would be able to rally enough manpower in time to intercede: they were spread thin, too many of them tied up in personal legal fights now. Locals would hiss and complain for a little while, but eventually, normal life would take over again and they'd forget to be angry. The grass would regrow. Some or maybe even most of the pokemon would come back. The oil would trickle quietly beneath the surface, forgotten … until the day a valve blew or the protective coating wore away and thousands of gallons of crude painted the foothills black.
Then what? Would Montag ask him to make an example of the MetFalls pipeline next? The thought made him sick to his stomach.
As if reading his mind, Zinnia piped up, "Yeah, funny thing about that. I dunno if you've been following the news but, apparently, it's very sad that our sacred land is being disturbed." She leaned one elbow on the noivern's shoulder and with her other hand pet the bridge of its nose. "But at least we get good, cheap oil, thanks to DevCo's sacrifice."
Mark shifted in his seat. "You don't actually believe that Montag and DevCo are the same."
Her smile stretched wider. "Do you want me to tell you that he's the brightest star in my sky? Would that make you feel better?"
Then why are you here, he wanted to say, but she didn't give him a chance.
"It doesn't matter what I believe. I show up and play my role, just like you."
Ore pulsed an echo of his own frustration back to him, and Mark snapped, "Do you think this isn't real for me?"
She scratched her noivern behind the ears without looking up. Her silence needled him.
"You know Montag is the only one who can stand up to DevCo." Zinnia still didn't look up at him, but Mark didn't slow down. "Say what you want about him, but at least he doesn't waste time on stupid, feel-good bullshit."
Mark had watched Thrive, Virbank's biggest clean air advocacy group, slowly suffocate under red tape. They were good people—they cared—but what was the point of a protest when you asked the city for permission and clearances first? What good was a potluck, period? All their petitions, divestment campaigns, and dialogues with the city had literally blown up in their faces when the refinery exploded. Now Thrive mostly organized cleanup efforts, too little too late.
Do you want to go home and plead with City Hall for a street permit and a speaking slot at the next committee meeting? Montag had asked him. Neither do I.
"Mega-corporations don't give a shit about the slogan on your sign or signatures on a petition," Mark continued. DevCo didn't care what happened to a small city downwind of their refinery, and they sure as shit didn't care about one girl with bad lungs. "They care about their bottom line—that's it."
Of course, Montag had his own bottom line … and only he knew how far down it was.
Kathy wasn't part of his equation either—she was a statistic, one dot on the map across an ocean. But worrying about Kathy was Mark's job. Montag's job was to wake people up, get them moving, and give them something to rally around. Thrive had lots of theory and literature, but Magma had that and more: it was an engine that turned anger into power.
In Unova, Mark had felt hopeless and powerless. The deeper he traveled into the heart of the country, the more he felt like a patrat in a maze. The street names changed, but the concrete walls and smoggy skies didn't. Eight hours before he'd first learned about Magma, he'd been arrested at a protest in Driftveil. It hadn't been the first time, but it had been harder than other times: he'd been thrown around, humiliated, left for hours in an overcrowded cell—and through it all, the cops had remained calmly indifferent. He'd been far from home and no closer to accomplishing anything real. Or anything at all. When the cops had turned him loose, Magma had been there with water bottles, energy bars, and an invitation to join them at Twist Mountain.
They did what the protesters had failed to do: they shut the mining operation down, at least for a while.
"People need someone to believe in," he said. And for a moment he felt a rush of the old conviction singing in his blood: Montag made him want to be a better, bolder person.
Or he had. Desecrating a Hoennian salt marsh had never been on Mark's wishlist. He'd believed in the plan to stop the MetFalls line from being built … but that had never been the plan.
Montag was right: they'd made Ridge Access impossible to ignore. Mark knew the call to arms, so he spoke now: "Most people will do anything to avoid looking at the fucked up parts of the world. If people knew …. " He trailed off, thinking of the Virbank refinery. How long would the public outrage in Hoenn last, he wondered, and what would come of it? If Virbank was any example … the answer would be no time and nothing.
Mark sucked in a breath, groping for the words that would vindicate Montag, or maybe just himself. But all he had left was, "Things don't have to be like this."
When he finally raised his head, Zinnia was staring down at him impassively. "But they are."
He let out a slow breath.
"Buck up, colonizer," Zinnia said with such forceful cheer it came like a slap even before her words registered. "You got what you wanted, didn't you? So did I."
Before he could figure out a response, she spoke again. "Look, after I feed these guys,"—she patted the noivern's side—"I'm taking the rest of the pokemon to the Fortree clan. If you want, I can drop you off anywhere between here and there."
He opened and shut his mouth before he managed, "I thought I was a colonizer."
She shrugged jerkily and smirked. "You saved our pokemon—some of them, at least. Maybe you were just looking out for yourself, I don't know. But it still means something to me. So you want a ride, or are you hoofing it?"
Mark closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The alternative was to travel on foot—overnight with an injured team and no supplies. And returning to Rustboro was a bad idea right now. As little as he liked the idea of getting back on Zinnia's salamence, he wasn't stubborn or stupid enough to turn her down.
He sighed and said, "Yeah, alright."
—
Zinnia refused to fly too near to Mauville. Instead, she dropped him on the sandy eastern outskirts. This time Mark was more prepared for the bumpy landing. He managed to hold on until the salamence stopped and then slide down on his own terms, stumbling but still landing on his feet.
As he checked his belt—everyone accounted for—Zinnia leaned down over her salamence's neck. "I guess I'll see you around."
"I guess so," he said, a little out of breath. Then, "Thank you."
He squinted up at her and could hardly believe he'd been behind her on the salamence's back only moments before. She looked like a storybook character, rail thin amid the folds of her cloak but sitting tall and straight between the dragon's open wings.
"Zinnia … if you don't trust Montag, why do you work with us?"
She flashed a jagged grin. "Which place is safest from dragon fire?" She didn't wait for him to guess. "The dragon's back."
With that, she thumped the salamence on the shoulder, and it lurched into a waddling run. Then, with a few pumps of its wings, it lifted off the ground and wheeled away with improbable grace, as easy as a kite on the wind.
Mark watched them until there was only empty blue above. Then he released Ore and the two of them headed up the hill that marked the edge of the city limits.
He hadn't planned to return to Mauville so soon: it reminded him too much of Nimbasa for comfort, all those neon lights crowding against raw desert. But as the hub of western Hoenn, it gave him the most options for his next move, the most exit routes.
After a quick stop to buy a few basics—potions, a toothbrush, a change of clothes—he made his way back to the hostel where he'd stayed before and got himself a room. When he dropped onto his bunk, he finally turned both his personal and burner phones back on. Immediately, one of them lit up with a new message, and his heart leapt to his throat—but it was from Cora: What the ever-loving fuck was that? He closed it without answering and got in the shower. When he returned, there were no new messages.
He couldn't bear to sit still.
Mark walked without knowing or caring where he was going. The marquees and telescreens washed the streets in light, but the dusk sky was gray. Ore hovered alongside him, filling the air with trills and static. He pressed the burner phone to his opposite ear, clenching his teeth as the ringing dragged out longer and longer.
"Hello. The person you are trying to reach is not available at this time. Please leave a message after the—"
"Fuck."
He turned to Ore. "Now what?" But the solrock only whirred and stared back unblinkingly.
Montag was probably busy: he had a lot of people to debrief, after all.
Or he was ignoring him.
Unthinkingly, Mark reached into his breast pocket for the pack of Blue Rings, only catching himself when the cigarette was already in his hand. He paused in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at it. No, he shouldn't.
He kept walking. With the cigarette still pinched between two fingers, he dialed Montag again. On the third ring, he gave in and lit it. If there was a time to indulge in bad habits, it was now.
As he turned down the next street, a flicker of red caught his eye. The Hoenn National News was playing on a telescreen. His stomach fluttered when he recognized the Devon data center, and he slowed to watch. The building had become a pillar of flame and smoke, a flaming middle finger to the world. Maybe it should've made him feel better.
"Hello. The person you are trying to reach is not available at this time. Please leave a message after the tone."
The chime sounded, then silence. Mark knew he should hang up, wait and follow Montag's lead. But he didn't. The silence stretched on, punctuated by Ore's crackling presence on the line. Mark's throat clenched tight, and then he drew in a sharp breath and blurted, "We have to talk—in person. I'm in Mauville and … you owe me an explanation."
That was a mistake—he had no business making demands of Montag. But he'd already said it. Haltingly, he finished, "Call me when you get this."
Mark jammed the phone into his pocket. He wouldn't check it again, he told himself, until he finished this cigarette. Move, keep walking.
On the screen behind him, pixelated smoke climbed higher and higher into the darkening sky.
This chapter has a lot more alcohol in it than previous ones. If you're sensitive to substance abuse and would rather skip this one, DM me and I'd be happy to give you the Cliff Notes instead.
Chapter 14: Liquid Courage
The Motherfucker stretched the length of several city blocks, and tonight it was ORCA's playground. All five of their ships had anchored alongside the stolen freighter and pooled their crews into one heaving throng: at the center of the deck, a knot of dancers thrashed around. The pack thinned at the edges, sailors drifting in and out with drinks. Off to one side, a few trainers paired off to spar, the matches dissolving into laughter long before either side was out for the count. Natalie leaned against the guardrail on the far end of the deck, where it was quiet enough to hear the cursing of the nearby poker players who'd gathered around an overturned crate. Somewhere among the whirling bodies was Pearl, boatswain of Rosie the Riveter and Natalie's assigned mentor. She'd stuck to Pearl's side for most of the party … until Natalie had lost her in the crowd.
Pearl probably didn't want to babysit, and Natalie didn't blame her. Normally, she'd be fine on her own: she'd steel herself with a drink and dive into the crowd, letting herself get swept up in the music. If she didn't have friends, she'd make some.
But being alone at an ORCA party was different. She couldn't just melt into this crowd, not when she felt eyes on her back all the time—and sometimes they didn't look away when she turned around. Like two of the poker spectators. Natalie set her jaw and stared fiercely back at the two sailors until they returned their attention to the card game.
Good. Great.
She could handle this—she just needed a drink. With a deep breath, she pushed away from the rail and strode to the nearest person holding a beer. "Where you'd get that?" He pointed her towards a cooler shoved against some crates, and away she went.
Another sailor reached the cooler an instant before she did. He popped the lid to reveal the last two cans nestled among the ice, then flashed her a grin. "Perfect timing. Hope you like Red River."
She accepted the can gratefully and started, "Thanks—" But even though she recognized his single sharpedo tooth earring, his name wouldn't come to her. "Nice to see you again, stranger."
His face lit up. "I didn't think you'd remember me."
Too late, she realized he might've taken her fumbling for coyness. Unsure what else to say, she drank.
Sharpedo Tooth started to shut the cooler when a sealeo sprang up beside him. It thrust its head into the ice, knocking him onto his butt. He held his can straight up in the air, miraculously managing not to spill. He and Natalie exchanged looks of surprise and then burst out laughing.
She helped him to his feet. "I guess that's his now."
"I'm sure not gonna argue."
They edged away, leaving the sealeo to snuffle and crunch in the ice.
Sharpedo Tooth pointed toward the poker game. "You gonna cut in?"
"No way. Those guys would clean me out for sure."
The sailor grinned. "I would've thought Sinbad's sister would be a card shark." Natalie's smile tilted into a grimace, but he seemed not to notice. He tipped his head the opposite direction, back toward the rail. "Let's chill over there, then."
Natalie hesitated. Was she locking herself into a weird, clammy hookup later? No, if he tried anything, she could just leave. "Yeah, sure."
And then she was up against the rail again, this time near the prow, beyond the reach of the poker players' voices. The crowd was far enough away that it felt like TV. In the thick of it all, Zinfandel perched atop a speaker, bobbing her head in time to the music. Now and again, a sailor cupped their hands around their mouth to shout up at the porygon, and then the song switched. The bass line vibrated through the guardrail at Natalie's back. She couldn't tell if the boat's rocking was because of the choppy waters or the crew's furious dancing.
Salt water and alcohol wafted on the chilly air, a hint of diesel underneath. She had started to take the french fry smell of the Riveter for granted; Pearl had explained that the engine was modified to run on recycled cooking oil, collected every few weeks from Slateport restaurants who were happy to support an "environmental nonprofit." Now the smell of diesel on the Motherfucker was jarring.
Sharpedo Tooth lounged next to her. "So how do you like it?"
She squinted. What, the beer?
He smiled knowingly. "I bet Shelly's working you pretty hard."
"Not really," Natalie said, stiffening. "She's nice. All of the Roses are."
Everyone seemed to be asking her what she thought of ORCA tonight. Maybe some of them were genuinely interested, but mostly it felt like the latest test—like they were hoping for signs she was about to crack. Either way, there wasn't much for her to tell.
She'd spent her time repainting the deck of the Riveter, scrubbing the floors, tracking inventory, and learning safety procedures. Her biggest excitement so far had been helping lay out a floating rig to trap and collect ocean plastic. Instead of televising another woeful reminder to think of the lapras and choose reusable bags, ORCA whipped out their rig and did something about the problem. But the magic had evaporated somewhat when Shelly had tasked her with loading the trash bags into one of the small power boats and lugging them to the landfill.
Later that evening in the mess hall, she'd learned that while she'd been hauling trash, two of her crewmates had taken the other power boat to LiquiTek. Local papers had outed the chemical company for its toxic runoff years ago, but LiquiTek had found it cheaper to pay the Slateport Clean Water Commission's fines than to change their equipment. So the Roses had dumped grimer at the corporate office.
The rest of the table had whooped. Natalie watched open-mouthed, caught between horror and glee. "Was that the plan for the grimer all along?"
"I dunno about a plan," Pearl had answered, shrugging. "We just do what needs doing. It seemed like a good idea, so Shelly told them to go for it."
At first, Natalie had been relieved by the mundane work. Nobody had asked her to steal anything or go head-to-head with police manectric again. But she hadn't joined ORCA to scrub floors and take out the trash. She wanted to do something useful.
It's only been a week, she reminded herself. Still, it had been a week.
When Natalie glanced over, she realized Sharpedo Tooth was staring at her. For a flash, she wondered if she'd somehow said or done something she wasn't supposed to. "What?" she demanded, face coloring.
"Nothing." He wore a dopey smile. Was he that drunk already? "It's just … you look a little like him. The nose. Kinda wild."
She resisted the urge to touch her face. "Why wild?"
"Because he's the big bad boss, but you're little and cute."
Natalie couldn't help her scowl. Cute was for children and pets.
"Aww, don't be mad. I didn't mean anything by it."
She was saved from having to answer when something banged against the rail. Several yards away, a sailor had climbed onto the railing, grinning-drunk. He brought one hand to his mouth and let out an ear-splitting whistle.
Natalie straightened. "Gods, he's going to fall off if he's not—"
The climber saluted, then—quick as a blink—pushed off.
She didn't even have time to scream. As she spun to look over the rail, a sudden wind hit the back of her neck. Something white gusted overhead, opening wings wide as sails, and caught him out of the air. They fell together, slowing, and then began to rise again. For a moment, bird and man were one silhouette. Then the pelipper landed below them on the deck of the Rum Runner, and the drunk trainer stumbled off. His pelipper lingered long enough for a head scratch and then took to the air again.
At Natalie's elbow, Sharpedo Tooth laughed.
She felt sick at the thought of that terrible drop, the sharpedo waiting below. "He could've died!" she spluttered, pressing a hand to her fast-beating heart.
"Lighten up! He's fine."
Begrudgingly, she tucked herself back against the rail—and then she spotted Archie. He moved through the crowd, pausing to bump fists and crack jokes; when he saw Natalie watching, he tipped his chin up in acknowledgement.
She hadn't seen him in a week: when they'd pulled out of Slateport, the Ultimatum had gone one way and the Riveter another. She probably should've expected that when she'd agreed to join Shelly's crew, but she hadn't.
Sharpedo Tooth had his back to the rest of the party. He didn't notice Archie's approach until he clapped a hand on his shoulder and boomed out a cheery, "Jonas!"
"Hey, Captain!" he choked out, paling. "Congrats, again."
"Congrats yourself. We all got a reason to celebrate tonight." He kept grinning, but he didn't let go of Jonas' shoulder. "I think Trent and his boys were looking for you."
Natalie took another drink to hide her smile.
"Sure, sure, sure." Jonas bobbed his head. "I probably should go check on them."
Archie gave him a couple hard thumps on the back. "Good idea." He took over Jonas' place next to Natalie, stretching his arms along the railing.
Shuffling away, Jonas raised his beer can to her. "See you around, Beebee."
Beebee? Wondering if she'd misheard him, Natalie squinted but returned his air-cheer. When he was out of earshot, she said, "I had it under control, you know." But she smiled anyway, pleased.
Archie shrugged. "His buddy's fuckin' blowing chunks. Somebody's gotta take care of him, and it's not gonna be me. Not tonight."
She smirked into her beer. Whatever you say.
They nursed their drinks without speaking, and for once Natalie felt no pressure to fill the space between them with words. Gods, how long had it been since they'd passed time in comfortable silence? Ten years, at least.
He smacked his lips and sighed contentedly. His smile was so easy tonight, more like the Archie who'd taught her how to play checkers than the one who'd scolded her and tried to send her home. "So. You havin' a good time, Small Fry?"
She wasn't having a bad time. "Sure!" she said. "I'm just … getting used to all this."
"Good," he said almost sternly. "You know, we're celebrating partly because of you."
"Me? I thought it was about …." She waved a hand to indicate the entirety of the Motherfucker. She vaguely understood only that ORCA had finally managed to fix something that hadn't been working right.
"Why do you think I sent you to the shipyard?"
She forced lightness into her voice. "I thought you were testing me."
He shrugged again. "We needed those plans, too. You got 'em."
"Oh." So he had trusted her?
Shaking her head, she pushed the question away. "I still don't really get what all of this is."
Natalie was ready for him to sigh and roll his eyes, to tell her she wasn't ready or allowed to know yet … but his smile widened. "We're gonna bring the ocean back to life."
She would've laughed if not for the dark intensity in his eyes. "What does that mean?"
"I mean," he said, "we're cleaning up decades of bullshit—spills, greenhouse gases, overfishing … All of it. All at once." He patted his pockets as he spoke, switching his cup from one hand to the other and back again. "It's so simple. It's the simplest fucking …. Aha, there we go." He pulled a piece of sea glass from his pocket, holding it up so it caught the fading light. No, sea glass was frosted and smooth. The rock in Archie's hand had sharp, clear facets, the inside glowing neon-bright.
She blinked, not sure what turn the conversation had taken. "Is that … a piece of a leaf stone?"
His laugh was so sharp that Natalie jumped. The wind pushed his boozy breath into her face. "You're killin' me, Small Fry," he said, and this time she caught slurring in his speech. "You think we'd have rager for a fucking leaf stone?"
"I think you're drunk."
"Course I am," Archie said cheerfully. He held out the gleaming green hunk. "Here."
She half-expected it to give off heat, but the stone was cool in her palm. "Alright. So what is it then?"
He took a leisurely drink before he answered. "It's an energy gem, the shit leaf stones come from. Before pressure under the earth mashes 'em into junk. Can't get much from a leaf stone, unless you're an eevee or whateverthefuck. Just pretty rocks. But that"—he pointed—"is raw energy, free for the taking."
Energy gems sounded half-familiar, but Natalie's last science class had been more than a year ago. She frowned, rolling the gem in her hand. A pretty rock was exactly what it looked like to her.
Archie didn't pause for breath. "And what do those miracle science motherfuckers at DevCo do with it? Show off. And then charge an arm and a leg for it, because they only care about life when it's a goddamn product." He gestured wildly, sloshing his drink onto the deck. "They're too busy fucking with shit that died millions of years ago to save what's dying right now."
Natalie had hardly sipped her beer, but listening to her brother was making her feel drunk. "You're talking about fossil pokemon, right?"
"Damn right I am!"
He paused to gulp his drink, and when he began to speak again, his voice was softer. "And they can fuckin' go ahead. No skin off my back. They're not the only ones with the power anymore. They can pussyfoot around with fossils while we do some actual fucking good. Restore the balance. Imagine if—"
"Wait, wait," Natalie cut in. "Are you saying ORCA has access to fossil tech?"
Everyone knew that DevCo guarded the secrets of its fossil reanimation project like holy relics. When the Safari Zone had tried to breed their pair of purchased aurorus without permission, DevCo had sued and won. After that, the company made sure to modify their fossils' genes: buyers could specify any color they wanted, but the pokemon would always be sterile. So she had to be misunderstanding him. ORCA was—well, they were scrappy and brave, but at the end of the day, they were a bunch of pirates on stolen ships. No way could ORCA just—
"Fuck yeah we do," Archie said with a ferocious grin.
She sputtered a laugh. "How?"
"Stole it," he said and then belched.
"You're crazy," Natalie said, shaking her head. "Actually fucking crazy." But she couldn't help mirroring his grin.
"Cheers to fuckin' crazy!"
As they knocked their drinks together, she laughed again, dumbfounded and giddy. ORCA might be crazy, but she had never felt more sure that she was on the right side. Who else could pull a heist on DevCo?
Remembering his armaldo, she burst out, "And you already have one."
"'S right. Vengeance," he said tapping a pokeball at his left hip. Natalie wasn't sure if that was its name or an explanation.
"So, we're … reviving ocean fossils?" She still didn't understand the point of that or what glowing rocks had to do with it, but she pressed on, "And that's how you got your armaldo?"
Archie's expression soured. "No." He knocked back the rest of his drink. Then, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he snarled, "You know what? Fuck Max, too. Fuck him."
Natalie flinched at his sudden jump in volume, even though his glare was aimed somewhere out over the water. She tried, "Who's—?"
But he charged past her. "I was right. All along. From the very beginning. Don't need to hear him say it." He moved to take a drink, only to realize he'd already drained his cup. "Doesn't matter. We're doing what we want. It's ours now, and we've got the balls to use it for the right fucking reasons."
Despite his bravado, Archie scrunched his shoulders and sank into himself, scowling. Natalie didn't know the full story, but she'd seen enough despairingly drunk trainers during her hostel stays to have an idea of how to help. She nudged him and asked, "You want water?"
"Bah." He straightened up. "'S all good, Small Fry."
"You sure? I could—"
"What was I sayin'? I was making a point."
"Uhhh … fossils?"
He swatted a hand as if batting the word out of the air. "I told you. 'S not about fossils—it's about what's alive right now." Pointing, he demanded, "Lemme see that."
Natalie had forgotten she was still clutching the energy gem, its color even brighter in the deepening twilight. As she passed it back to Archie, his grin returned.
"This. This is the shit." He held up the gem, excitedly shaking his fist. "Fuck a fossil. Life depends on the simple shit at the bottom. You know, fidoplankton. Cyto—cynano—" Archie let out a guffaw. "Fuck. Sinobacteria."
"All the green shit of the ocean. Those little fuckers fix atmospheric carbon three times more effishi … better than plants. There's bacteria that fuckin' eat oil. You know? Unfuck the climate. Bring the dead patches back to life." He waved the gem around some more. "A lil' boost and life can start fixing isself."
"Oh!" She saw it then, what a sober Archie might've explained more clearly: if DevCo's tech could bring ancient fossils to life, couldn't it revitalize the living ecosystems they'd carelessly poisoned? Start with the plants and build the rest back up from there. The rocks still confused her, but she suspected that had more to do with Archie than with her. It couldn't be as simple as dumping rocks into the water, right? DevCo would hardly be able to patent that. But maybe their fossil project involved extracting something from energy gems? Or grinding them into some kind of weird paste? It didn't matter. The rest made sense enough. "That's actually kind of smart."
Archie laughed. "Course it is! I've been workin' on this shit for years, Small Fry. Years." He jostled her with his elbow. "This is what everything else rests on. Wild gastrodon might even come back. Finneon. Alolomomo—You know what I mean."
"Slateport's clamperl," she offered.
"Ezactly. Wouldn't be the first. You know they found relicanth by Sootopolis? After five hunerd years of spills and all the other shit, they're fucking stillalive." He tried again to drink from his empty cup and grumbled, "Damn it."
She loved that he knew things like that, how even drunk, his mind returned to the relicanth. "All that from a little rock, huh?"
As he pocketed the energy gem, his smile faded slightly. "Well, we need a lot more'n one. Unova's only place to get 'em." He paused, and then his grin returned in full force, a touch mischievous. "But I got ideas. And we got enough to last us tonight!"
Natalie brought her drink halfway to her mouth and stopped short. "Tonight?"
"It's now or never. That's the whole fucking point." Anger flashed across his face. "While those guy are out playing politics, DevCo's gonna keep doing its shit. We could waste time debating lawyers n' senators … or we do something right fucking now."
She considered that for a moment, then lifted her chin. "You're right."
But Archie wasn't looking at her, instead glancing over his shoulder at the water below. He hooked a thumb behind him. "There you go. Check it out."
The sky had faded to a rosy purple, the water dark beneath it—except where brilliant green bobbed just below the surface, inching farther and farther out. The same green as the energy gem she'd held in her hand.
"Woah." Natalie squeezed the rail with her free hand. "That's all bacteria?"
"Yup."
Natalie turned back to the deck with fresh eyes. So, ORCA hadn't been making repairs, not exactly. She didn't know the specifics of what Zinfandel taken from the shipyard, but she could imagine they designed all kinds of ship-mounted rigs and underwater turbines—or whatever ORCA had needed to run DevCo's machinery in the middle of the ocean. Her tiny, fumbling efforts had mattered, and here was the proof.
She peered down at the water again. The green spread out around the freighter like a skirt, a striking color against the neon pink horizon and black water. Even a single-celled organism could light up the ocean. And this was the beginning of something much bigger than all of them.
"It's incredible, Ar—"
"Sin!"
Natalie swiveled back around just as Scarlet latched onto Archie's arm, nuzzling her head against his shoulder. "Were you gonna leave me on my own all night?" She lifted her head and—surprise, surprise—cast Natalie a cold look. "Oh. Beebee. Hey."
Beebee definitely didn't mean anything good, then.
Natalie squared her shoulders. "Hey." She knew that not everyone here fully trusted her, but the only person who actively had it out for her was Scarlet. Since day one. Well, don't worry, she thought. The feeling's mutual.
"Scar," Archie said warningly, "No drama tonight. It's a fucking party."
Natalie's heart lifted. She held her breath, hoping he'd remind Scarlet that Natalie's contribution was why there even was a party.
But Archie's attention was fixed on Scarlet now.
"You 'spect me to stay in one place all night?" he said to her. Then, the corners of his mouth quirking up, he snatched the bottle from Scarlet's hand and took a pull from it. She rolled her eyes but didn't try to stop him. "I'm trying to have some goddamn fun." His grin belied any scolding in his tone.
Scarlet tugged on his arm, "Then be fun and come dance with me."
"Yeah, alright. I could dance." Slipping an arm around her waist, he let her pull him from the rail. He took a few not-quite-steady steps before he seemed to remember Natalie. "You coming?"
Scarlet looked back too. Her mouth tightened, her eyes like chips of ice.
Come? And do what, exactly? Watch Scarlet eat her brother's face? "I'll catch up later," Natalie said coldly.
He shrugged, like it didn't matter. "Alright. See you, Small Fry."
Scarlet smirked and tossed her braid over her shoulder. "Bye, Beebee."
When they'd gone, Natalie sighed and eased back against the railing. For another moment, she watched the crowd, drumming her fingers on the empty can. Was she really going to sit against this stupid railing all night? She gave her drink a swirl, slugged it back, and pushed into the crowd.
Scanning for a friendly face, she wove between bodies. She started toward a group of girls she'd shared a table with once on her brother's ship—but changed her mind when she realized they were talking about him. Then she nearly tripped over a couple who had tangled together so fiercely they looked like one body with four arms; for one dazzlingly horrifying moment, she thought one of them was Archie. She was almost ready to find a new place to sit by herself when she spotted a familiar broad-shouldered frame turned away in conversation. "Pearl!"
Sure enough, she turned to look. For an instant, Natalie regretted it—if Pearl wanted to hang out with her, surely she would've already come looking for her.
But Pearl broke out in a grin and cried, "There you are! I was starting to wonder if you fell overboard." Natalie began to relax as Pearl signaled just one minute to her companion and started toward her. She shouldn't have doubted Pearl.
They first time they'd met, Natalie had been nervous; Pearl was the only member of Rosie the Riveter's all-girl crew with an Adam's apple and five o'clock shadow, and Natalie hadn't trusted herself not to repeat some stupid thing Dad had said. But she'd put Natalie at ease right away: she was patient, showing her around and answering all her stupid questions. She'd even gotten Luna meds for her sea-sickness.
Pearl planted her free hand on her hip. "Where've you been? Getting into trouble, I hope."
"I was … people watching, I guess." She tried for a nonchalant smile. "I was about to go get another drink."
"Yeah, you're way too sober right now," Pearl agreed. "The Roses are playing Flip Cup. You should join."
That sounded like the kind of game Natalie could handle right now: no strategy or thinking required. She started to smile for real, but something made her hesitate. "Hey, Pearl … do you know why everyone keeps calling me Beebee?"
Pearl waved a hand. "Don't worry about it. You don't want to know what they called me when I first joined."
She did know, then.
"Would you just tell me, please?"
Pearl shrugged. Her expression said, suit yourself. "I think it's short for Baby Boss."
Oh. BB.
Gods, would she ever stop being the kid trailing her brother to the scrapyard, stuck sitting at a safe distance? For a moment she'd imagined that ORCA had actually seen her, but all they were seeing was her brother's shadow.
She slouched, folding her arms around herself. "I really hate that."
"Don't let it get to you. Nicknames come and go." Pearl bumped her bony hip into Natalie. "Hey. You know what'll help? Booze."
"Yeah, probably." Natalie held up her empty can and gave it a shake. "So what are we doing with—?"
The music cut out. The crew muttered in confusion as they turned toward Zinfandel. Her head rolled in the air independently of her body, spinning completely upside-down. "What the hell, man?" a distant voice rang out.
Then the intercom squealed, making the pirates flinch and stagger. "Heyyy, everyone," a voice crackled over the PA, "breaking news! The Devon data center just fucking blew up!"
There was a long silence as the drunk sailors struggled to process this information. Then, as one, they burst out with laughter and celebratory howls. Goosebumps rose along Natalie's arms.
The cheering was so loud, it partially drowned out the voice on the PA "—smoke and fire and shit! Good thing we got what we needed first, huh? So cheers to those crazy fucks, and cheers to all of you! I love you guys!"
"Love you too!" someone yelled back.
Natalie whirled to face Pearl. "What does that even—?"
Pearl shouted something unintelligible and smashed her cup into Natalie's empty can, sending up a splash of green.
Then Zinfandel whooped, and the music kicked back on, louder and faster than before; her head spun to the beat, a pink and blue blur. The crowd threw up their arms, wrapping their neighbors in wild, stumbling hugs. A sailor knocked into Natalie as he danced past, sending the empty beer can flying from her hand. She felt guilty, imagining it tumbling into the water, but she wasn't about to dive after it—that would be a good way to get trampled.
Natalie pressed closer to Pearl, shouting over the music, "Who do you think did it?" The burning overpass leapt to her mind, and her stomach clenched. "What if it was Magma?"
"Who cares?" she laughed. "As long as DevCo gets fucked, I'm happy! Come on, we need a refill."
They wound through the crowd. Pearl ignored the ice coolers and went straight for a drink dispenser where slices of citrus fruit and berries sloshed in punch colored a violent green. Had the color been planned, Natalie wondered, or was it just a happy coincidence? As Pearl pressed a cup into her hands, Natalie said laughingly, "I don't want to know what's in this, do I?"
"Cheer-up juice!" Pearl touched her cup to Natalie's again and shouted, "Fuck DevCo!" She met Natalie's eyes, waiting for her to say it, too.
Natalie rose up on her tiptoes, little good though it did her, and shouted back, "And fuck Magma!"
"Fuck em all!" Pearl howled, throwing her head back.
"Fuck em all!" echoed a nearby sailor. Someone Natalie didn't know reached to clink cups with Pearl and then her. The toasting continued as she turned, the crowd around her a sea of smiles and hands and cups. Something was drying stickily down Natalie's arm, but she grinned and took a big drink of green punch, the taste sharp and sweet. When Pearl tugged her by the elbow, she followed, laughing.
Suddenly, a group of familiar, grinning faces emerged from the crowd. "There she is!" Cries for Pearl rang out, but Natalie thought she heard her own name, too. Hands pulled and pushed her in among the Roses, spilling more of her drink along the way. "Now we're all here!"
Someone handed Natalie a second cup with an inch of clear liquor at the bottom. When she turned, she realized it had been Shelly, who was pressed against her shoulder-to-shoulder. "Just in time. We're doing a round of shots together, just us Roses," she explained with a wink. Then she raised her cup and cried out, "To Rosie!"
The Roses held their cups high and shouted it back. Natalie watched their faces. Did they really want her here? How could she tell for sure?
As if reading her mind, Shelly fixed her eyes on Natalie. "To our newest Rose!"
Her face went hot, but she beamed as the Roses screamed her name.
Shelly cried out one last time, "And to ORCA!"
The Roses whooped and threw back their shots; Natalie did, too, half a second behind the others. It ripped down her throat, leaving her coughing. "I'm good, I'm good!" she choked out.
Then someone grabbed her free hand, tugging her toward the dance floor. As the bodies pressed in around her, Natalie closed her eyes and let the beat swallow her whole.
—
"What the hell is wrong with her?"
Good question, Natalie thought, glad that someone had finally said it; every time she looked up, Scarlet's eyes were burning into her from across the deck. She spun to see who had her back, who was seeing what she was seeing. Just as she realized the words had come from her own mouth, her foot caught on something and she pitched forward.
A firm hand yanked her upright before she fell. "Watch out for the twistlocks."
Oh, right. Those.
All across the deck, metal knobs jutted half a foot from the floor. They were spaced several feet apart, where the corners of shipping containers would have been bolted down, but that hadn't stopped sailors from tripping over them all night. Her turn now. She turned her entire body to glance down at the twistlock, giggling. Her head felt like Zinfandel's, loose and ready to drift off on its own. Still laughing, she swung around the other direction and fixed her gaze on Shelly, who still had a hand on her arm.
"You should switch to water for a while, huh?"
"I'm fine. Great," Natalie insisted, raising her voice over the music. "She's the one with the problem, not me."
Following Natalie's jabbing finger, Shelly sighed. "Don't worry about Scarlet, okay?" She pulled Natalie into a side-hug and steered the two of them away. "She's just an insecure person, and Sinbad doesn't make it easy for her to be chill when he—" Shelly came to a sudden stop, wobbling along with Natalie. "Never mind."
Half-formed questions burbled and died in Natalie's mind before she managed, "What does that have to do with me?"
"It doesn't. Forget I said it."
More secrets. Again. Natalie pulled free from Shelly's grip, but drew up short as another thought came to her. "Is it about Max?"
Shelly's eyes went wide. That was a yes. "Where did you hear that?" But she held up her hands, preempting a response. "It doesn't matter. Look, nobody gets along with everybody, but we're all on the same side here. We don't gossip about each other."
She'd taken up her captain voice again, so Natalie hung her head. Still, she mumbled, "She's the one being mean."
Shelly squeezed Natalie's arm. "I'll talk to her." She nodded, apparently deciding. "Yeah, I'll do that." Then she rolled her shoulders back and pushed past Natalie into the crowd.
Untethered, Natalie swayed in place. The music didn't make sense anymore. She felt its rhythm in her gut, like she'd swallowed something overlarge and slimy-cold. Why wasn't she having fun?
An arm dropped over her shoulders. Pearl. "Hey, you okay, Natalie?"
Pearl's weight pressed down on her, and the thing Natalie had swallowed was suddenly fighting to get free.
"I'm great!" She slithered out from under Pearl's arm. "Be right back," she said brightly, equally certain both that she was going to be sick and that no one could know—they'd think she was a dumb kid who couldn't handle a couple of drinks.
Natalie made her way below deck without bumping into that many people or tripping on a twistlock. She floated through the hallways, up some stairs and around a corner—and was half-surprised when she found herself suddenly in a bathroom, flopping back against the door as it shut behind her. The second she bent towards the toilet bowl, the contents of her stomach came back up neon green. Then she might've napped there for a minute or two. But when she sat up, she felt much better.
On trembling legs, she rose, turned to face the sink, and splashed water on her face. The hand towel had gone missing, so she wadded up some toilet paper and patted her face dry with that. When she met her reflection's eyes, she giggled. She was doing okay. Nobody had needed to babysit her—nobody even knew!—and now she was feeling totally fine. All she needed to do was find the Roses again.
Back in the hallway, nothing looked familiar, but she moved toward the music, trailing a hand along the wall. Outside was dark, the crowd illuminated only by string lights and a few scattered pokemon. Natalie blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted. The bass rolled over her, punchy, soulful, and right. For a moment, she simply stood with her eyes closed and rocked to the beat. When she looked up, gods, the stars were clear and perfect.
She wanted to dance.
Natalie glided towards the tight-packed center of the dance floor, letting her unsteady steps become part of the rhythm—
Someone cut in front of her, hip and shoulders connecting hard. She staggered and nearly fell, arms windmilling. Cold soaked her shirt, and she smelled alcohol. Natalie rolled her head back to lock eyes with Scarlet, who stood with her hips cocked and an empty cup in her hand.
"Goodness, BB!" She widened her eyes in mock surprise. "You've really got to build up your sea legs."
Anger pushed the words out of Natalie's mouth hot and fast. "The fuck is your problem? I haven't done anything to you."
Scarlet snorted. "You haven't done much of anything around here, period."
Natalie's heart clenched like a fist. "What?"
Scarlet held up the backs of her hands; Natalie jerked her head back, thinking for a moment that she was going to hit her. "I've still got grease under my nails from reworking the pump all week. What did you do today?"
Natalie drew herself up, hand to her chest, and crowed, "I'm the one who got the plans from the shipyard." Even Archie had said.
"Well, woop-dee-fucking-do." Scarlet rolled her eyes so hard she swiveled her entire head. "Whaddya think woulda happened if you hadn't? We'd all go home and cry about it? The only thing you've done is shit anyone here could do." She punctuated her words with a jabbing finger, coming dangerously close to connecting with Natalie's nose.
"So, what, you wanna fight me?" She smacked Scarlet's hand away. A low ooh rang out, and from another direction came a titter and a hiss. A crowd was gathering around them.
Wobbling on her feet, Scarlet took a look around, too. Then she threw her head back and let out a loud, ugly laugh. "Sure. I'll fight … if we make it worth something. Loser gets a—no, wait." She flicked her braid behind her. "Winner takes a pokemon from the loser."
The crowd murmured again in excited disapproval. They pressed in close—Natalie had no room to back away even if she wanted to. Across the circle from her, Shelly caught Natalie with a reproachful glare. Archie stood at her side, his arms crossed and his expression unreadable. Then she spotted the banette trainer, the one who'd followed her in Rustboro. At her brother's orders, but still. Their smile made her feel vaguely sick again.
Natalie turned in time to see Pearl shove her way to the front. "She's fuckin' drunk, Scarlet."
"I can fight!" Natalie snapped. Then she tipped her chin up towards Scarlet and set her jaw. "You're on."
A nasty grin overtook Scarlet's face.
Shelly spun toward Archie and demanded, "You're just gonna let them?"
Scarlet's eyebrows shot up, then a snarl overtook her face instead as she turned over her shoulder to meet his eyes. Natalie had no concept of what her own face might look like. All she knew was the thudding of her heart and the urge to hit something.
He shrugged. "Don't make a mess."
The crowd began to draw back, leaving two of them on display in the center of a wide circle. The music had stopped—when had that happened? Over the low chatter, someone called out in a warning voice, "Scarlet," and Shelly stepped forward, one hand outstretched.
Natalie clenched her fists. If Shelly intervened now, this would never, ever end. She took a step towards them, but Pearl yanked her back with a hand on her arm. "I have to do this!" Natalie hissed, pulling against Pearl's grip.
"I know." Pearl held on tight and leaned closer. "Don't let her control the pace. You gotta make her react to you." Only then did she let go and step back, adding, "You got this, Lil Red."
Scarlet dropped to a sudden crouch, prompting Natalie to look over. At first, she thought Scarlet was lacing her boot, but she came up with something gleaming in her hand; with another dramatic eye roll, she stood and dropped her switchblade into Shelly's outstretched palm. Natalie's stomach did a little flip. It hadn't even occurred to her to worry about that.
Come, on. Focus, she scolded herself. She counted three pokeballs on Scarlet's belt, plus a fourth fitted with an electronic lock across the—oh, gods, the liepard. She still had it. Taking trophies was her thing. Was this her goal all along, to goad Natalie into a fight so she'd have an excuse? What had Natalie just done?
One of the floodlights kicked on, and she raised a hand to shield her eyes. For a moment, Scarlet was only a silhouette reaching to her belt, saying, "Let's fucking do this."
A few beats behind, Natalie fumbled for her own pokeball. She'd only seen one of Scarlet's pokemon before, the starmie. An easy win for Luna.
Her throw was sloppy, but whatever. She grinned as Luna materialized—except, oh, there were two flashes of red on Scarlet's side. Two pokemon. She wobbled as she reached to her belt again, but Luna was exactly the right height for Natalie to lay a hand on her back to steady herself. Digging a hand into the mightyena's mane, she whistled for Amelia. Not so long ago, Luna had been the one struggling to keep her balance on the ship's deck. Now Luna was the one holding her up.
Natalie's eyes were adjusting to the light now, and she'd been right: the starmie spun in place beside Scarlet, its jeweled center flashing in a complicated, distracting pattern. But another dark shape hurtled across the deck at them, too fast for Natalie to make out. And then she was on the floor.
Nearby, Luna yelped. By the time Natalie managed to roll into a crouch and turn to look, her mightyena was already kicking the seviper away. The snake hissed, head snapping back. Its bladed tail swept mere inches from Natalie's shins; she recoiled, but it was already gone. A meter away, Luna scrambled to her feet and then leapt back to avoid a second strike.
Before Natalie could form her mouth around a command, she felt a familiar prickle down her arms and pressure mounting behind her eyes. Reflexively, she brought her hands to her temples, but she knew it wouldn't do any good. Across the way, Scarlet's mouth moved, but Natalie couldn't hear. The starmie glowed brighter and brighter as the pressure built in Natalie's head—
Then a glassy blue light shield bloomed around her, and the pressure dropped off. Amelia landed in front of her with a triumphant trill, wings thrown wide. The light screen held just long enough for Natalie to climb shakily to her feet, and then it dissolved into the floodlight.
That confirmed it. This fight was't about knocking out pokemon—it was about forcing the other trainer to back down. Well, this time she'd keep Luna close. Her fight with Mark had taught her that much.
"Amelia, the seviper!" She pointed where she thought it had been, but it was already whipping back around towards Luna. Amelia drove it away with a blast of water and then took to the air, the wind slapping Natalie's hair across her face.
Natalie's arms began to prickle with goosebumps again. "Luna, here!"
She turned toward Natalie without hesitation. The seviper struck again, but Luna evaporated mid-leap, leaving it with a mouthful of black mist. She reappeared in front of Natalie a moment later, growling and raising her hackles. The prickling sensation immediately stopped.
Natalie grinned fiercely in Scarlet's direction and threw her arms around Luna's neck. But—oh. A pair of puncture wounds at Luna's shoulder, already swollen and bruise-dark, seeped purple fluid. Natalie squeezed Luna tighter. Every time she got into trouble, Luna got the worst of it.
This entire thing was stupid and awful. Shelly had said they were on the same side, but—
"You know," Scarlet said loudly, flashing the crowd a conspiratorial grin. "Pelipper are useful, but I think I want the mightyena." With that, she dropped her final pokeball.
Not on your life.
Natalie made her throw blindly. On Scarlet's side, a sealeo materialized with a growl and a gust of cold. And a moment later—"Sam!" Natalie burst out, beaming. What a perfect matchup. And Scarlet was out of pokemon.
With a grunt, Samson aimed a questioning look over his shoulder.
Oh, right. "Go for the sealeo!" she cried, swinging her arm around to point.
As he lurched to the right, a gust of air made her turn the other way. Amelia swooped towards the coiled seviper. It was about to strike, Natalie realized, but there wasn't enough time to warn—the seviper sprang like a trap, catching the edge of Amelia's wing. She squawked, trailing feathers as she spun away.
"Stay back!" Natalie called. "Air sl—"
Something smacked into the deck—the crowd oohed—and she spun her head the other way. Sam was pushing himself up from the floor, shaking his head furiously. How had—? No sooner than the gurdurr was back on his feet, an invisible force swept his legs out from under him again. He hit the deck with a slap and a roar of frustration. Behind him, the sealeo chortled, unharmed.
"Shit, the starmie."
Luna tensed against her leg, ready to lunge. "No, stay." With a steadying hand on Luna's back, she whirled to find her pelipper circling the seviper and dodging spurts of venom. "Forget it, Amelia! Air slash the starmie!"
As Amelia banked away, Scarlet shouted, "Nava, poison fang!"
Too late, Natalie realized nothing was keeping the seviper from coming for her and Luna. Fluid and fast, it doubled back on itself and lashed toward them, fangs gleaming red.
"Sam!" Natalie squeaked, grabbing a fistful of Luna's mane and stumbling back.
Luna bared her teeth, her shadow twitching beneath her. But before the seviper could complete the arc of its strike, it jerked back. Sam had caught it by the tail, chuffing with glee. The snake thrashed in his hands until it caught his arm with its bladed tail and he dropped it with a howl of rage.
Across the way, there was a sharp clap and a pelipper's cry. Natalie spun and realized she didn't see Scarlet or her starmie anywhere; Amelia circled, but there was nothing there. With another clap, they reappeared off to one side, behind the sealeo and well away from Amelia. The pelipper trumpeted as she swiveled in the air to try again, but nearly collided with a wall of blue ice that sprang from the floor. She flew up at a sharp angle, sharp chunks of ice chasing her.
"Come on, Natalie, you can figure this out," she mumbled to herself. Three on three. It should make sense … but it was all tangled. Her mind spun through matchups, going nowhere. All around, the crowd was a formless wash of noise and blurred faces.
Sam had caught the seviper again, and with a huff he flung it at Scarlet and the starmie. The crowd scrambled back, but Scarlet just teleported again.
Natalie licked her lips. "Luna, don't go anywhere," she said, tightening her fingers in her fur. "Use crunch from here." When the mightyena drew in a breath, Natalie breathed with her.
Luna barked, and the shadows of each pokemon under the floodlight leapt up. She barked again, fur standing on end, and the shadows twisted together to form one enormous, toothy mouth. Natalie grinned as it swept towards Scarlet and her starmie.
"Zero!" Scarlet cried.
The sealeo answered with a yip, and a blue shell of light flashed up around Scarlet, frost crusting its edges. An instant later, Luna's shadow-mouth smashed against the light shield, gnashing and writhing uselessly.
Where was Sam? Couldn't he—? Oh, the seviper.
Then, "Amel—" The pelipper swooped to avoid a beam of green ice.
Luna's shadows began to curl away into smoke. She growled and took a few steps forward. Then Natalie blinked, and the shadows she'd summoned had already scattered and jumped back where they belonged. The mightyena panted, her head drooping. She might not have another one of those in her tonight, or not right away; she fought best with teeth and muscle, up close.
Meanwhile, as the light shield fell away around it, the starmie fired a beam of red light. Amelia squawked, twisting in the air to avoid it—and caught an ice beam to the face. She thumped to the deck. While Amelia lay half-stunned and shaking out her wings, the seviper and the sealeo advanced on Sam together. Natalie cursed, prompting a growl from Luna.
Scarlet was driving her team in circles, and it was only a matter of time before she wore them down. If even one of them fainted, Natalie would be exposed. Game over. And she had no path to force Scarlet to yield. She still had Gus … but was that a good idea? His powerful voice might take Scarlet by surprise, but it would hurt her other pokemon, too. And she could barely keep track of the pokemon she already had.
She reached for his ball anyway, swaying as she weighed her options. When she took a step, preparing to throw, her foot slid. Beneath her, ice spread in rings. She scrambled for balance and stepped onto another patch of ice. Her legs went out from under her. She grabbed for Luna to steady herself—pulling the mightyena down on top of her.
Scarlet's laughter cut the air. "Not getting much of a prize, am I?"
Groaning, Natalie tried to stand, slipped, and tried again.
"But maybe that mightyena would do better in my hands."
The starmie spun lazily in front of Scarlet, its light pulsing dim, bright, dim, bright. Luna was the only one who could hit it, but she'd have to face it head-on … and leave Natalie on her own. The starmie would attack her—there was no question about it. But if she didn't do it, she'd lose. And then she'd lose Luna.
The crowd murmured. The seviper hissed and spat. Scarlet called out an order.
Natalie planted her feet, clenched her fists, and called, "Sam!"
Directly ahead, the sealeo peppered his back with ice while he snatched at the seviper, trying to catch it by the neck. He paused only long enough to grunt over his shoulder at Natalie. Then he turned and swung at the sealeo, driving it back. But from a safe distance, it spat ice in his face again. The seviper took the opportunity to snap at his leg. He whirled and made another grab for it, but the attack was clumsy; the snake darted out of reach.
"Forget the seviper!" she shouted.
Heedlessly, he snatched at the snake again. Had he even heard her?
"Sam!"
With a roar, he spun to face her.
"When I say go, charge straight ahead and grab!"
Another blast of ice prompted him to take another sloppy swing at the sealeo. Gods, he wasn't going to last much longer. On the opposite side of the circle, Amelia began to rise again, but sluggishly. Natalie gritted her teeth. It was now or never—there was no plan B.
"Go after the starmie, Luna," she whispered, nudging her.
Luna lowered her head, snarling. Then she stepped through Natalie's shadow and disappeared.
As Natalie turned toward Sam, she caught sight of Scarlet. There was a clear line of sight between them now. Scarlet grinned and cried out, "Vega—"
Natalie was already screaming, "Sam, go!"
She didn't see what happened after.
Pressure and sound and impossible colors ripped though her head. She tasted fire alarms as she dropped to her knees. Then, as suddenly as it began, the pressure in her head eased off. Through the red fog of her mind, someone was shouting, "Stop!" Was it her?
As the ringing in her ears faded, Natalie opened her eyes (she hadn't realized she'd closed them). She spotted Luna first, the starmie pinned beneath her. Nearby, the seviper coiled around Amelia. And several yards away, Sam had hoisted Scarlet off the ground, pinning her arms to her sides. Her sealeo hung back warily, whimpering in concern.
"Stop! Stop," Scarlet wheezed, her voice fading with each word. "You win!" She hung in Sam's grip like a wet rag.
"That's enough!" someone cried out from the crowd.
"Sam, let her go," Natalie said, her own voice trembling.
He grunted and then unceremoniously dumped Scarlet onto the deck. She remained where she landed, moaning and holding her side. For a moment, the only sounds were the thumping of Amelia's wings and the seviper hissing. Then Scarlet slowly sat up and met Natalie's gaze. She gave a single nod, her mouth turning down sharply. One by one, she recalled her pokemon. Natalie did the same, lightheaded with relief.
Scarlet stood gingerly, legs buckling. A sailor stepped out of the crowd and extended a hand, but she shoved him away. "So," she said, still out of breath. "Who are you taking?" Her eyes were on the floor, poison dripping from her voice.
The crowd went so quiet Natalie could hear the waves against the ship's sides.
She'd wanted to win but hadn't considered what would happen when she did. She tried to imagine claiming one of the pokemon she'd fought, but her thoughts kept drifting back to her own team, the swollen bite on Luna's shoulder. Natalie didn't think she could ever trust that seviper—Scarlet could keep it.
Scarlet's words from the first morning on the Ultimatum came back to Natalie: a dog is almost impossible to retrain. The only reason she'd wanted Luna was to hurt Natalie. Well, two could play at that game.
The starmie. People talked about the unique bond between a trainer and a psychic-type—what was closer than a voice in your head? This was Natalie's chance to get even. She rolled her shoulders back and opened her mouth—
Scarlet wasn't looking at her. She was on her feet but hunched over as if resisting a strong wind. With one hand, she felt along her ribs and shoulders, wincing, and the other arm was tucked around her.
Natalie flashed back to the burning overpass. She remembered how small she'd felt as Mark stood over her. How helpless.
Maybe Scarlet was a bully, but Natalie wasn't.
"I want the liepard," she said.
Scarlet's mouth went slack. "What?"
"The locked ball." Natalie pointed, as if there were any question which one she meant. "It's a liepard, right?"
Scarlet unclipped the ball and then hesitated, eyes narrowing as if searching for a trap. "You sure?"
Natalie stepped forward and put out her hand. "Deal's a deal."
Scarlet snorted but dropped the ball into Natalie's palm. Then, tossing her hair behind her, she shoved her way out through the crowd without looking back.
Natalie rolled the ball in her hand, rubbing a thumb over the lock. She didn't know what she'd do with it, but that would be a problem for later. For now, Scarlet would have to leave her alone, but it had been close—too close. If she'd lost Luna …. The thought made her shudder. The ocean air suddenly felt freezing. All she wanted to do now was curl up and sleep.
Then Pearl's unmistakable voice rang out, "Let's hear it for Little Red!"
She jerked her head up as the crowd rushed in around her with a celebratory howl. Hands patted her back, her arms—whatever they could reach. Before the jostling crowd could accidentally knock it out of her hand, Natalie clipped the liepard to her belt.
A jumble of voices called, "Hell yeah, Lil Red! Good job!"
"Li-ttle Red! Li-ttle Red!"
Was Archie among them? She swept her eyes across the crowd, then stopped herself. No, this was hers. And Little Red, she decided, was better than BB.
I post a bunch of extra CD content on Tumblr, including art and chapter discussions. Sometime in the next few days, I'll be adding a post about geo-engineering to go with this chapter. If you're interested in learning some actual science as explained by a sober person, come say hi @ WildBootsAppeared.
Mauville offered endless distractions. The downtown strip was choked with bars, casinos, and sketchy battle halls, their exteriors modeled after other cities' landmarks: there was a replica of Prism Tower, a hotel shaped like an Alolan exeggutor, and a sprawling, Johtonese-style palace with a sign that read Live Girls.
None of it was Mark's kind of poison. He could hold his liquor, but he'd already learned the hard way that it wasn't an escape—drinking dragged him deeper into himself.
All the same, he hadn't been able to deal with the hostel for more than an hour. The hallways bustled with young trainers bragging loudly about all the stupid shit they thought mattered. A few had been discussing the DevCo explosion, and so Mark had slouched against a wall, pretending not to eavesdrop. One trainer denounced it as terrorism. The other sounded less sure; she brought up the idea of fossil fuels and climate change, but then trailed off, perhaps wondering what the data center fire might be releasing into the atmosphere. Twenty-four hours ago, he would have cut in, engaged her, tried to bring her into the fold. Now, though … he'd stepped out into the sticky night air instead.
What he really wanted was a fight, something simple and all-consuming. Quick cash he could send home. In Mauville, someone was always looking for a battle no matter the time of day or night … but Mark's team needed a break after getting dragged across MetFalls, and honestly so did he.
He settled for the next best option: a book. At a secondhand shop with dingy red carpet, he grabbed a paperback from the dollar shelf without checking the title. Then he walked until he came to a slouchy hole-in-the-wall called Ray's Tavern.
It was the right kind of place: sticky floors, a pool table. Busy enough to fill the room with a formless buzz of conversation, empty enough that no one would care if he took an entire booth for himself. The inevitable slot machine in the corner made him curl his lip, but the wary-eyed patrons lounging at the bar reminded him of Virbank in a way he didn't mind.
He ignored the draft list and instead perused the fridges that lined one wall, stopping short when he spotted a can with a familiar blue and white braviary logo. How about that. Mistralton Pale Ale was an utterly adequate beer, but not one he saw outside of Unova very often. Why not? Adequate was enough tonight.
Beer in one hand and book in the other, he sank into a peeling booth and propped a foot up on the opposite seat. The book opened on a city ravaged by an aggressive strain of pokerus. Right away, he could tell that it was his kind of story, hard-hitting and real, but not his reality. A lucky grab. But by the time he was halfway through his beer, he was still on the first page. His eyes kept sliding past the words.
Finally, he gave in and checked the burner phone again. Montag still hadn't replied—of course he hadn't. Mark was embarrassed by his own disappointment, a crawling burn through his chest.
Another part of him was calculating; it was morning in Unova, early but maybe not too early. He thumbed the beer can tab, considering. Finally, he dialed.
The line rang once, twice. Mark imagined the look on his sister's face when she saw his name on her screen for once, then he winced. He really fucking needed to do this more often. But this was good. A start.
Mark stared into space as the line continued to ring, then jumped at his sister's sudden, bright, "Hi!"
He smiled. "Hey, Kath—"
"I'm not available right now, but leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
Damn it.
At the beep, he cleared his throat. "Hey. It's me. Uh … I dunno. I don't really have anything to say. Just wanted to see how you're holding up …." He twanged the beer can tab again. "Anyway. We'll talk when we talk. Take care of yourself, Kath."
He ended the call and let out a sigh.
Mornings had always been hard for Kathy. At home, Mark had always known when she woke up because her coughing carried through the wall, even on her best days. Sometimes, on bad days, she coughed until it made her throw up. He hoped she was okay now. She could still be sleeping, he guessed. Or in class already? Mark realized he had no idea what her class schedule was anymore. He should know that stuff.
Mom's schedule hadn't changed in years, though, so he tried her next.
She answered on the third ring. "Mark, hi!"
Gods, he hadn't heard her voice in so long. Too long. Guilt writhed in him, but he managed to keep his tone light. "Hey, morning."
"And good evening to you! Isn't it late where you are?"
"Nah, it's only nine." He finally shut his book, giving up on pretending, and settled back in the booth. "Is now a bad time?"
"I'm just having my coffee," she said, as he'd known she would. Before he'd left home, they used to drink a pot together before they left for school and work respectively. A comforting constant. "Something going on?"
"Just wanted to see how you're doing."
"Oh," she sighed, "business as usual here. I've got to weed most of popular fiction today."
The books she culled were usually either donated or sold to pad the library's budget, but when Mark had still been living at home, she'd occasionally left a few battered volumes on the kitchen table for him and Kathy to look through. He'd gotten a lot of his books that way—all of them back home now.
"I can't complain," she concluded.
"That's good." He paused, taking up his drink. "Talked to Kathy lately?"
"Oh, sure. I think Monday? Sounds like she's mostly getting ready for her mid-semester concert."
Something loosened in his chest. Of course she was fine. She usually was. "I tried to get ahold of her earlier, but …." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Glad everything's okay."
For a moment, the only sound on Mom's end was the metallic scrape of her spoon going around and around her cup. "She mentioned you quit the gym."
Damn it, Kath. Of course she'd told Mom.
Warily, he admitted, "Yeah, I did."
She stirred her coffee around some more, and Mark held back a sigh. Finally, she said, "Should I be worried?"
"No, Mom. I'm just focusing on training and traveling for a while."
"I get that, Mark, but …. You know your twenties won't last forever. Eventually, you'll need a plan that doesn't involve sleeping in a tent."
"Ma, I've got things under control," he said, more harshly than he'd meant. He took a slow breath and then continued more evenly, "Seriously. The gym was always going to be temporary."
"I just don't want you to get stuck somewhere you don't want to be."
It was the same thing she'd said when he started getting into trouble with Virbank PD. "There's an entire world beyond Virbank, Mark. Don't give them an excuse to take it from you."
Mark softened. "I know. I'm not."
He understood that stuck had never only been about Virbank but about the cold war between his parents. It was the reason she'd made sure there'd been a box of condoms in his bedside drawer long before he started dating. It was the reason Dad had sent the package from Driftveil with a note that read, This is your ticket to go anywhere you want. You can even visit me sometime! And under that, a pokeball for each of them. Kathy had taken the lillipup and Mark had taken—
The loss crashed over him again, still as fresh as the moment Mark had first realized his pokeball was missing. Gibs hadn't intended to leave. But that didn't change that now he was—not gone, Mark decided. Stuck. He couldn't let himself imagine beyond that.
Mom's voice interrupted Mark's thoughts. "You'd tell me if you were in some kind of trouble, right?"
"What do you mean?" he said, sitting up straighter.
He knew, though.
The first time he'd been arrested, he'd been sixteen, which meant she'd had to pick him up from the police station. He'd expected her to yell at him once they were in the car or, worse, to invoke I'm not angry, just disappointed. Instead, she'd been quiet for a long moment, then she'd said, "You wanna get ice cream?"
Over Castelia Cones, she'd explained what she knew about protests and police: how to avoid being kettled, what to do if he breathed in sleep powder, why he should never ever fight a cop, whether with a pokemon or his own fists. "You're a minor, so your record will be wiped when you come of age. But it'll be different when you're an adult. You need to understand that."
She wasn't stupid.
Now, on the other end of the phone, Mom offered cautiously, "It sounds like the political situation has been intense there lately."
He wondered if the data center attack had hit international news outlets or if she only meant the protests.
"Yeah. Well." Mark forced himself to relax into the seat again. "People are the same everywhere. There's always something messed-up going on."
"Maybe especially in Rustboro?"
"Maybe." Route 110 had been the ugliest of it, but he wasn't going to be the one to bring that up. "If it makes you feel better, I'm not even there right now. I'm on the other side of the mountains."
Mom sighed. "I'm sorry. I'll stop nagging."
"It's okay, Ma."
"I know you're busy, but …."
Mark winced. "Sorry. It's usually late there when I think to call," he said, hating his own excuse. He owed her better. Kathy, too.
"No, I know. The time difference doesn't make it easy. And I'm glad you have your own life …." She trailed off. "I just worry about you, that's all."
He wished he knew what to say to ease her mind. The last thing he wanted was to make her worry. But he didn't think he'd ever once gotten away with outright lying to her, and he wasn't about to try to explain Magma.
Before he could think of anything to say, she piped up, "I didn't mean to ruin the mood—I'm happy you called. We miss you, you know."
"I miss you, too." He leaned his forehead against his fist. At last he said, "I've been thinking about coming home soon, at least for a little while."
"Oh, Mark, that would be great!" Her voice transformed completely, sounding ten years younger. "I think your sister would really like it if you were home for her Solstice concert."
Unova was prettiest around Solstice, when the snow lay smoothly over the streets like the trash and potholes underneath had never been there at all. Nothing back home would have changed, not in the ways that mattered. But maybe for once that wouldn't be the worst thing. Mark imagined Kathy playing onstage, Mom reading aloud from a book of poetry, the three of them squeezing past each other to get around the tiny kitchen …. His chest ached, but he smiled.
"Yeah, I'd like that, too," he said.
"I think there are usually cheap flights on—"
But he didn't hear the rest. In his pocket, the burner started buzzing. A sickening pulse of adrenaline went through him as he scrambled for the phone. The call could only be from one person, but Mark still sucked in a breath when a glance at the screen confirmed it was Montag.
"—probably makes the most sense to fly into Castelia, and then—"
"Mom," he said too sharply. "I gotta go."
"Oh. Okay."
Her disappointment was a knife twisting in him, but Montag wasn't going to call a second time. "Sorry, something just came up, but I'll call you back. I love you."
Mark didn't wait for her to repeat it. He was already bringing the burner to his ear.
—
From up here, Mauville was pretty, actually. The soft path lights were set among the flower beds, turning both the strolling couples and the trees into silhouettes, the high rises luminous beyond them. Improbable glass sculptures speared up through the foliage, pulsing pink and then blue. Below the walkway, traffic still hissed and honked, but Gracidea Park felt removed and sheltered. Mark couldn't resist pausing at the railing to take in the cool air and the scent of night-blooming jasmine—but only for a moment. Time was short.
Montag hadn't named a specific meeting point, just Gracidea Park, thirty minutes. It was safer that way, of course, but it was also inconvenient: the park was over a mile long, changing elevation to skim the roofs of buildings or to dip for street-level access. Mark had little choice but to start at one end and continue down, Ore bobbing alongside him. He walked unhurriedly but not too slowly, trying not to look like he was looking for someone.
The longer he walked, the more disenchanted he became. All he could think about was the amount of water it must take to maintain such a lush space in the middle of the high fucking desert. Mauville was the opposite of Nimbasa in that way, actually: Mauville was pumping water into the desert, but Unova's desert had spread as the cotton boom sucked water out of the grasslands. He wondered what withered so Mauville could flourish.
Mark jolted as his phone started ringing. Idiot—he should've killed it already, but he'd forgotten in his rush to get to the park. He reached into his pocket … and then his stomach turned over. Kathy was returning his call. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sent it to voicemail. Phone off. Battery out. Keep walking.
Near the midway point of the park was a space almost like an amphitheater, where the paving stones dropped away to low, wide steps that faced a glass wall. The steps offered a view of the intersection below; even at this time of night, the street was thick with tourists, trainers, rhinestoned street performers, fortunetellers, and drunks.
The steps themselves were empty, but a man stood at the top with his hands folded behind him. Mark would recognize the rigid posture and fitted jacket anywhere. Montag. His back was turned toward the walkway and to Mark, but with Kropotkin the claydol spinning slowly at his side, he didn't need to look to be aware of his surroundings. On either side of the lookout point, stairs led down to the street—two exit routes. And teleporting away with the claydol was a third. Montag was always prepared.
Reminded of Stone's claydol, Mark gave an involuntary shake of his head. Whether in response to Mark's revulsion or just the presence of his solrock, Kropotkin gave a whir, and Montag glanced over his shoulder.
"Good evening, Mark."
"Evening," Mark answered. He added stiffly, "Sir."
"Would you like to sit?" He gestured.
Mark did as he was told and took a seat on one of the steps, forearms resting on his knees; Montag settled himself straight-backed on the step above him. His claydol hovered behind and slightly above, watching in all directions.
"I'm glad to see you're unharmed."
Mark reached for outrage, for an accusation, but came up empty. He was so fucking tired. "Me too," he said.
A thin smile reached Montag's lips but not his eyes. "I hear there was some trouble this morning."
Of course he'd already talked to Cora. If MetFalls had gone as planned, they would've left together and then debriefed with Montag together … but they hadn't. Whatever she'd said couldn't have been flattering—she'd been pissed. Maybe she had a right to be.
"It could've gone better," Mark agreed, grimacing. Then Ore bumped his shoulder, and he reminded himself, It was almost so much worse.
Montag nodded slowly, as if digesting new information. "You were supposed to make sure your teams teleported out safely when the fight became untenable."
When, not if. Was that how he'd worded it before?
It didn't matter now.
"Yes, sir."
"Why didn't you?"
Mark sifted through the morning's events, trying to pinpoint when everything had unraveled. He should've prepared an answer—he'd known this was coming. Finally, he said, "Stone's metagross. Blew out the radios and screwed with Ore, too."
The only reply was silence. When Mark raised his head, Montag was still staring at him impassively, waiting.
Mark let his eyes fall briefly closed. "We should've held our formation better. That was my fault." Then he took a sharp breath and added, "Why didn't you tell me we were letting MetFalls go?"
"I assumed you knew," Montag answered coolly.
Mark clenched his teeth. With a burst of fire in his voice, he said, "We should've fought harder for it. We could've …."
But he trailed off with one glance at Montag: his face was a mask that invited nothing. As Kropotkin slowly rotated behind him, red light outlined one side of his face and then the other, off and on, over and over.
After a moment, Montag said, "I value your insight, Mark. How do you imagine things might have gone differently?"
Mark couldn't tell if it was a taunt or if it only felt like one because he didn't have an answer. How long could they have held off the construction crews, a few hours? Days? Magma would've had to go home eventually, just like Root Revolution, and then the dozers would've returned anyway.
He looked away. "I just …." For a few moments, he watched the street below. The top-down view of the pedestrians gave him a small kind of power: Mark could follow which direction they walked from, where they were going, and even what was on some of their phone screens. But he didn't have the power to change any of their paths. "It feels like we let DevCo have what they wanted."
"And what is that?"
Caught off guard, Mark stammered, "Th-the pipeline, sir."
"And why do they want a pipeline?"
Mark shrugged, scoffed. "Money."
"Money," Montag repeated thoughtfully. Then, as if it had just occurred to him, he said, "Devon stock isn't looking very good lately, not since Ridge Access. Today's events came at an inconvenient time for them. Bad luck."
He raised an eyebrow, silently offering Mark space to cut in. When he made no move to speak, Montag began again. "Now, the data center. That's an expensive problem. Surely there are some built-in redundancies—maybe their Unova and Kanto offices have backups. Maybe Jimmy in Public Relations has some of it on his hard drive. Maybe some of it is even in a filing cabinet somewhere. With time, they could likely recover most of their data. However, their more … sensitive projects …." He shook his head and clucked his tongue. "More copies mean more risk of theft or exposure. I imagine their fossil research was quite centralized."
His tone invited Mark to share the victory. DevCo's plummeting stock was quantifiable proof that the plan was already working. Mark couldn't argue with numbers … but they didn't ease the knot in his stomach. Maybe DevCo only saw things in terms of money, but Magma stood for more than that. Mark stood for more than that.
Zinnia's face flashed in his mind, her eyes hard and glittering. "What about the Draconids?" Whatever happened to DevCo, the Draconids still weren't getting their pokemon or their land back.
Montag smirked. "Mm, that won't be very good press for Devon either, will it?"
Was it that simple for him? For a moment, Mark saw it the way Montag might, how it would play out onscreen: the protesters crying out as the bulldozers rolled on their camp, the helicopters swooping to drop a load of voltorb, and Magma, the brave protectors, stepping in to shield them. In that story, the rest didn't matter.
"They didn't want us there," Mark said. Beside him, Ore bristled with static.
Only a faint twitch of Montag's mouth betrayed his irritation. "Maybe not. But this isn't a popularity contest. It's about results."
Mark bobbed his head without meeting Montag's gaze. He was right, of course. Thrive had been popular. Comfortable suburbanites had thrown them money to soothe their consciences. But no matter how Thrive had fundraised and waved their fists, nothing got better—not Virbank, not Clay, and not DevCo.
Magma was making a difference … but everything had a cost.
Montag spoke up suddenly, "I know things haven't been easy for you lately, Mark. I'm sorry about your liepard."
The unexpected kindness staggered him. Mark swallowed hard before he managed to choke out, "Thank you, sir."
"But we all have so much more to lose. I don't think I need to remind you what's at stake."
Sea level rise. Desertification. Forest fires. Storms. Oil spills. Air pollution. A girl with a big heart and bad lungs.
Mark set his jaw. "Everything."
Montag repeated softly, "Everything."
For a moment, they sat in silence and watched the pedestrians pass below. Then Montag tossed out, "I'd like your opinion on something."
Mark lifted his head drowsily. It was an opportunity to make up for his performance at MetFalls … but it was also a test, one he didn't feel quick enough to rise to tonight. Still, he said, "Of course."
"Do you think Zinnia is trustworthy?"
She sure as shit didn't trust him. But that was a different question.
Mark took his time. Montag wouldn't appreciate a thoughtless answer. "She had my back today. If not for her, I'd be in jail."
Montag said nothing.
Whirring nervously, Ore pressed so close to Mark that he'd knock his head if he turned too suddenly.
When Mark couldn't stand the silence any longer, he asked, "Why? Did something happen?"
"She came forward with some interesting intel about ORCA."
"Huh. So she's been spying on them?"
Montag nodded. "They're not evil, but they are reckless and sloppy. Unfortunately, good intentions don't guarantee good outcomes." He smiled wryly. "Apparently, they've got the plans for Devon's fossil resurrection system."
If anyone other than Montag had said it, Mark might've laughed. "Why the hell would they even want that?"
"Well, why do you think Devon wants it?"
"Money," Mark said again. Wasn't that always the answer? "Rich assholes profiting off other rich assholes."
Montag fixed him in the unblinking stare that told him he'd misstepped. "I think you can do better than that. The fossil resurrection project hasn't turned a profit a single year since its inception. Why, then, does Devon persist?"
Mark tried to make his foggy brain work. "Reputation?" he tried. "Drawing more investors?"
Montag looked almost amused by Mark's attempts. He shook his head slowly. "Devon has been aware of climate change for decades. They know what they're doing to the planet. So how does Devon secure its future?"
Ore's hum built in Mark's mind, suddenly oppressive. "I don't know, sir."
"They turn it into an opportunity." He gave that a moment to sink in before continuing, "They'll carry on with business as usual for as long as it's profitable. Ecosystems will crumble and countless pokemon will die, but why should that matter to them? Devon will see to it that no species goes extinct … so long as someone is willing to pay the right price."
Every time Mark thought he'd gotten a handle on the depths of DevCo's cruelty, they pulled the bottom out from under him. "That's … deeply fucked."
With a humorless smile, Montag said, "And now ORCA wants their turn. They don't actually understand the technology or the harm they could cause, but that's never stopped them before."
"What the fuck do they think they're gonna do, build a fossil army?"
"I suspect their plan is less sophisticated than that," Montag answered dryly. "My guess is that they plan to pump their emulsion directly into the ocean."
Mark could only squint.
"He thinks he's going to bring the ocean back to life. Idiot." The vein at Montag's temple pulsed, the claydol's lights bringing it out in sharp relief. "I told him it would be grossly irresponsible, but he never learned to listen to reason."
For a long moment, Montag didn't speak, and this time Mark didn't dare interrupt. He'd never seen Montag quite like this before.
At last, Montag started again, "It's completely untested. There's no telling how it'll affect ocean chemistry. It might do nothing at all … or it could accelerate ocean acidification and decrease carbon uptake. It could even cause toxic algae blooms and poison the entire ocean."
Yeah, that sounded like an ORCA plan.
"There's no oversight," Montag continued grimly. "No one to flip the switch but them. They could pollute hundreds of miles of ocean before any news outlet or research institute catches word of it."
Hold on. Now Montag cared about water pollution? Why had Ridge Access been different? Grimer were still spreading inland. The spill's publicity hadn't stopped that.
Mark shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He'd called Montag to get answers—about MetFalls, about the pipeline—but somehow now they were talking about ORCA. It was always like that, Mark realized in a sudden, cynical flash. A conversation with Montag wasn't an exchange; he steered it where he wanted. He always had to be in control.
But with ORCA's plan, he wouldn't be.
Was that the only difference?
Mark held his face very still, but he couldn't keep Ore from humming louder and wobbling at his distress. "What are you asking me to do?" he said levelly.
Montag arched his eyebrow. "Isn't it obvious? We can't allow them to treat the ocean like their personal science fair project."
Mark let out a slow breath, rubbing his hands over his face. He couldn't keep doing this shit. He couldn't keep putting off going home. Mom probably had twenty tabs open on her clunky, old computer, trying to find him the best deals for the flight. And he probably had a voicemail from Kathy waiting in his pocket right now.
"It's your choice, as always," said Montag.
Mark wasn't sure he trusted his own choices anymore. The pipeline had been a mistake. He was sure of that now. It had cost too much, and Montag wasn't the one who had to pay that price. No matter what he said to justify—
Gods, maybe ORCA was reassuring itself in the exact same way right now.
What might happen if Mark just packed up and left when he knew ORCA was playing mad scientist with DevCo shit? Choosing to do nothing was still doing something, and it wouldn't absolve him of anything. If he knew, he was responsible.
Somebody needed to save ORCA from themselves.
He felt Montag's pointed stare, but instead of meeting it, he craned his neck to stare up at the sky. Airplanes drifted past, but there were no stars; the sky was purple-gray with light pollution. Just like home.
"I'm in," he said at last. But not for you—for Hoenn.
The chain clanked as the anchor lowered, counting down link by link to the start of Natalie's first real mission. With a flutter in her belly, she peered over the rail and shaded her eyes. There was little to see but the sparkle of sun on the water and, farther out, the frothing waves that marked the Huntail's Teeth. "So we really think there's an entire DevCo ship down there?"
Pearl leaned against the railing beside her, but most of her attention went to sectioning her ponytail with a dozen colorful hairbands to keep it from tangling underwater. Through teeth clamped around an elastic band, she said, "That's what it looked like on the radar." She paused, taking the hairband from her mouth and stretching as wide as it would go. "Buuut … plenty of ships have wrecked here over the years, so there's no way to know what's really down there until we take a look around."
Natalie frowned, thinking of Devon Hudson rising triumphant from the wreckage of the Slateport oil spill all those years ago. "Why would they just leave it? Seems like they'd want it back."
"After it's totally sunk? No way. Might as well buy a new one at that point." Pearl snapped her last elastic into place, then swung her stiff ponytail behind her. "Joe Stone basically wipes his ass with hundred dollar bills, so what's another boat, right?"
Natalie wondered if Dad had built its replacement. How many of their ships had he helped build? Probably even he didn't know—he only ever handled a few parts at a time, and there was no way to itemize which portions of his paycheck flowed from DevCo's pockets. Natalie wasn't living under his roof or eating his groceries now, but she'd still left home in sneakers bought at least in part with DevCo dollars. She imagined an oily sheen trailing behind her, leading back home.
But what was she going to do, stop talking to him?
Reflexively, she glanced down at her Gear. Dad had already sent a follow-up to his previous email, and Natalie hadn't answered either yet. She'd typed a few lines after dinner last night … but it was hard to concentrate on the Riveter. Pearl had been telling a story nearby, and Natalie had kept stopping to laugh. Then one of the other girls had invited her to spar, and she couldn't say no—she needed the practice. And today the wifi was off again, for security: no data coming in meant no data about their location going out. Dad would have to wait just a little longer.
Pearl cut in, perhaps misinterpreting Natalie's frown, "Don't be nervous."
"I'm not," she said, too quickly and too loudly.
Pearl raised her eyebrow.
Sheepishly, Natalie admitted, "It's just weird to think about going somewhere I can't take my pokemon." None of them could make the dive with her.
She was confident in the water, having taken swimming lessons from age four and diving lessons from age fourteen, but this felt different. She hadn't dived in over a year, and none of the crew knew this site—that was the point. Exploring new territory was part of being a trainer … but she usually had her team with her when she stepped into the unknown.
Not for the first time, she wondered if she'd made a mistake passing up Scarlet's pokemon. A sealeo or a starmie would come in handy right about now. But, no, she didn't actually think either would've accepted orders from her, especially not when Scarlet was around—which was apparently all the time now. It would've been senseless cruelty to take one of them when they'd be no more use to her than the liepard at the bottom of her backpack.
She felt a little bad about that. The lock on the ball made her think the liepard probably hadn't seen the sun since the Rustboro protest, which had been over two weeks ago. Technically, it would be fine in there long past her own lifetime, but … she would never leave one of her own pokemon in its ball for weeks on end. The liepard didn't deserve to be punished just because its trainer was a shitbag. Still, it had been ready to attack her the last time she'd seen it, so she wasn't in a hurry to find out how well it remembered her.
Pearl nudged Natalie in the ribs. "You'll feel better once you hit the water. In fact—" But the rest of that thought never came. Instead she said under her breath, "Buckle up."
Natalie turned to see Shelly striding toward them, her expression all business. Without pause for pleasantries, she said, "Pearl, can you make sure the other girls are gearing up?" Then she slid her gaze to Natalie, a look that said, You stay put.
This had to be about Scarlet.
When Natalie had woken up the afternoon after the party, as they were pulling away from the Motherfucker, she'd been horrified to find Scarlet calmly eating in the Riveter's mess hall. Of course Natalie didn't like it, but she hadn't done anything to her. They hadn't even spoken since the party, silently agreeing to ignore each other.
Pearl snuck a glance at Natalie, then shrugged. "Sure thing, Captain."
With a sinking stomach, Natalie watched her go.
As soon as Pearl was out of earshot, Shelly folded her arms and said, "I need to know you won't cause trouble with Scarlet today."
Natalie crossed her arms, too. Staying out of each other's way would be easy while she was underwa—and then she realized what Shelly was saying. "She's coming on the dive?" She had assumed Scarlet had come aboard to work on the Riveter's engine or something like that, never once considering she might be joining their mission. Her mission.
"Well, she's the one who knows the most about the rig. She'll have the best idea of what else down there is worth bringing up." She waited a moment, watching Natalie's face. "And I don't want a repeat of the other night."
Natalie winced. "I didn't mean—I just drank too much." Thinking about drinking even now made her stomach quaver.
"So did I. So did Pearl. So did a lot of people who didn't get into huge, stupid fights."
Like it had all been Natalie's fault. She scowled down at her shoes, wondering if Scarlet had also gotten this lecture or if it was just her.
"I mean it," Shelly said. "If you don't think you can handle it, I'll pull you from the mission. This is too important."
Natalie snapped her head up, mouth falling open in protest. She hadn't been lugging trash and mucking drains all week for nothing—it was her turn! But saying so would hardly prove she could handle her shit. Instead, she took a deep breath and swallowed her outrage. She wasn't going to let Scarlet take this away from her.
"I can handle it. I won't fight with her."
"And if she gives you an order, will you listen?"
Natalie hung her head. "Yes."
For a long moment, Shelly was quiet. Finally, her frown gave way to a reluctant half-smile. "Then go get your gear."
Natalie let out a breath. "Thanks, Captain."
Shelly waved her away. "Don't keep them waiting."
When Natalie scrambled into the gear room, the other girls were laughing about something, swim fins scattered on the floor around them. Pearl looked up from zipping up the back of another girl's wetsuit and flashed Natalie a grin. "Hey, there you are! Now it's a party."
The other divers called out greetings as they fussed with their straps and buckles. Natalie didn't know all of them well, but she had at least met each of them: Waverly, Marya, and Nerissa. She'd learned which of them snored, who spoke some Kalosian, and who was divorced. Sparring partners, bunkmates. Friends.
And then, from across the narrow room, Natalie met Scarlet's cool gaze. Scarlet pulled her mouth into a tight line and then turned away to adjust her harness.
"So, Red—"
Natalie jerked her gaze back to Pearl.
"—is that a kids' wetsuit or just a women's extra, extra small?"
"Shut up." But she grinned, recognizing what Pearl was trying to do. She turned her back to Scarlet and started to shimmy into her wetsuit, listening for a place to jump into the other girls' conversation.
When each of them had on her wetsuit, mask, and buoyancy compensator device, they all tromped to the swim deck, fins slung over their shoulders. Those who had diving pokemon wore a pokeball or two clipped to her BCD, but the pokemon themselves were already in the water. ORCA's pokemon surrounded the Riveter in one huge, improbable school: piscine, invertebrate, and mammalian species all jumbled together. Most were Hoenn-native, but a lapras's long neck stretched above the rest, and the colorful fronds of shellos and frillish emerged from the waves here and there.
Natalie dangled her legs in the water—warmer than she'd hoped for a fall morning—and watched the other girls gather their pokemon. Marya's wailmer, Queequeg, greeted her with a barrel roll, spraying the closest girls. Waverly had brought bagel pieces to bribe Curacao, her lanturn, and had also attracted an audience of honking pelipper and wingull.
"Get out of here. I don't have anything for you!"
Since her own pokeballs were in her locker, Natalie reached instead to reassure herself of the shaker that hung from her BCD—an underwater bell, more or less. They each had one, but that was all Natalie had, the ability to call others for help.
Something smacked against the boat, and Natalie jumped. A golduck had slapped her webbed claws onto the platform to hoist itself partway out of the water. Bits of seaweed clung to its bill. Its eyes were a shocking red and entirely unfriendly. For a moment, the golduck's mind poked sharply into Natalie's; she bolted upright. It withdrew again with air of boredom.
"Hi to you, too," Natalie said, half-laughing.
But the golduck was already looking past her. Shelly appeared suddenly, reaching to scratch the golduck under the feathered jaw. "Good girl."
"I thought you were staying."
Shelly smiled. "I'm not gonna send you under without a pokemon."
"Oh!" Shelly really was trusting her, then. One of the captain's own pokemon—that was a big deal.
"Natalie, meet Reeva. She'll help clear blockages or scare off any huntail that get too close. If you send your thoughts her way, she'll hear it, but don't be surprised if she doesn't answer."
Hi, Reeva, Natalie tried.
Sure enough, the golduck ignored her and kept nuzzling her head into Shelly's hand.
"Keep an eye on her, okay?"
Natalie wasn't sure if she was talking to her or Reeva.
Shelly gave her golduck a stern look. Then, apparently satisfied, she gave Reeva a final pat and then rocked back on her heels; the golduck slid back into the water. "Alright, ladies. All set?"
Natalie and the other divers made sounds of affirmation. She drew up her neoprene hood and tucked her hair inside, her heartbeat quickening.
Shelly stood. She'd pulled her hair back from her face with a blue bandana, the rest of it streaming behind her like a flag. "I know everyone's hoping to bring something big home to Mom,"—the Motherfucker, she meant—"but safety is the top priority. No stupid shit down there, alright?"
"That's asking a lot, Captain!" someone called out laughingly from the upper deck.
Shelly ignored the outburst. "And don't leave your dive buddies for any reason."
Natalie watched Scarlet from the corner of her eye, the green details of her suit making her easy to spot. Natalie's stomach clenched, and she couldn't be sure whether it was from nerves or Scarlet—maybe it was the same thing. But Shelly's gaze lingered on her, so Natalie sat up straight and kept her head high.
Pearl nudged her side. "I've got your back if you've got mine."
She couldn't quite muster a smile, so she nodded instead.
"Break a leg, ladies. See you when you get back."
The dive team pulled on their fins and fitted their pokemon with harnesses and saddlebags for carrying their findings. Then, two at a time, they faced each other across the swim platform and tipped backward into the water.
Pearl had been right: Natalie's nerves washed away the moment the water closed over her head.
The bird calls and the Roses' good-natured shouts vanished, and a world of new, distorted sounds enfolded her. Pokemon keened, chirped, and churned the water. Her own slow breathing became inescapably loud, bubbles rushing past on each exhalation. The moon-pale underbellies of ORCA's pokemon hung overhead, bumbling around the dark planet of Rosie the Riveter. Around the fringes of the crew's pokemon, sharpedo and carvanha roved in bursts of motion. Natalie's pulse gave a kick at the sight of them, but they paid the divers no mind.
Ahead were the Huntail's Teeth, a cluster of coral-crusted rocks whose five pointed tips pierced the surface at low tide. Only their outlines showed through the cloudy water. What lay on the seafloor around the rocks faded into fuzzy shadows.
In a burst of bubbles, a lanturn barreled past her, Waverly hitching a ride on its harness; Natalie rocked in their wake. Shelly's golduck ripped through the water behind them. So much for keeping an eye on Reeva. Or vice versa. Marya followed without hurry, and Queequeg was even more sluggish, pausing to scoop up a mouthful of plankton. As Natalie watched the wailmer's slow movements, something clipped her from behind. She whirled in time to see a sealeo shooting away. Neither Pearl nor Nerissa had one, so it had to be Zero. Scarlet's.
Natalie didn't turn to look for her, not wanting to give her the satisfaction. Still, when a red light drew up alongside her, she jumped, thinking of Scarlet's starmie. But it was Pearl, flanked not by a starmie but her much smaller staryu. Okay? she signaled.
Natalie watched Scarlet and Nerissa swim past with Vega, the starmie, lighting their way. After a moment, Natalie had to begrudgingly admit to herself that the bump might've been a genuine accident, if only because giving commands was so much harder underwater. Okay, she signaled back.
Pearl motioned, Let's go.
With a few kicks, Natalie glided down into the murky green.
A few curious goldeen swam alongside the dive team for a ways, until they finally lost interest and circled back towards the Riveter. Then there were only the six divers and their pokemon moving through the open water. As they swam closer to the rocks and reef, some of the shadows began to resolve into sunken ships, like buildings rising out of the fog.
The lanturn's lights carved through the gloom, illuminating coral shelves that shone bone-white. At first, Natalie thought it was an optical illusion, a trick of distance and reflected light. The closer they swam to the Teeth, however, the clearer it became that the reef truly had no color, as if something had siphoned it off. Here and there were patches of mottled yellow and bruise-purple, but the rock face was dominated by white. Not one single fish still swam here. Natalie had heard of coral bleaching, but she had never seen it in person before; the size of the damage shocked her.
The divers directed their pokemon to shine light onto the wreckage below, but a flicker of movement on the edge of the reef drew Natalie's eye. A coral crag lifted to reveal a face. Tremulously, the creature rose up on a wispy, translucent body, stretching towards the sunlight—and then snapped shut again when Pearl's staryu drifted too close.
All down the reef, knobs of rock shivered and jostled each other, faces alternately peeking out and ducking away: an entire reef made of cursola. There must've been color here once—sponges, living corsola, horsea, and anemones—but now there were only ghosts.
Natalie clenched her teeth around her regulator. Would her brother's plan bring this reef back to life, too? It seemed unlikely looking at it now … but it was worth a try, wasn't it? Even if this reef never came back, a resurgence of life anywhere in the ocean had to be better than leaving things the way they were.
A metallic sound tore her attention away from the reef. When she looked over, Scarlet was rattling her shaker in one hand and pointing down the slope with the other. The lanturn's spotlight had landed on a freighter that lay upside-down in the sea grass, sunken partway into the mud. Several other boats and fragments littered the area, most of them crawling with more white coral and wooly algae. But nothing grew on the hull of this ship yet, and the text on its side showed clearly: Devon.
Shipping containers spilled like Legos from the side of the cargo ship, loose crates trailing down the slope into even deeper waters. Some of them had even landed among the other wrecks, blocks of color in the reef-smothered debris. The dive team avoided the thickest of the jumble where the containers seemed likely to tumble down on them, instead starting their search with the crates closest to the reef. Scarlet led the way.
Each crate was longer than the Riveter's power boats. Circling with her flashlight, Natalie found places where rust had already eaten holes in the metal, but none large enough for her to see inside. If the crate had been labeled at one point, the paint was gone now.
All around, light shimmered as her teammates' pokemon cut into crates, so Natalie called Reeva with her mind like Shelly had instructed. She knew she'd managed it when she felt Reeva's refusal, like smacking into a wall. There were no actual words in it, but her meaning was unmistakable: No. You come.
Well, there was Reeva keeping an eye on her. Or something. Shelly had warned her, but she still didn't like it. What if there was a real emergency and she needed Reeva to protect her? Would she refuse her then, too?
Natalie couldn't do much except force the team to resurface, and she wouldn't, not for that. Scarlet would never let her live it down. Besides, if Shelly trusted Reeva, Natalie should, too. So she set aside her misgivings and went to the golduck's side.
Orange light flared around Reeva's webbed claws. Her first punch dented the metal, and the second tore through. Then she grabbed the edges of the hole she'd made and peeled the metal back like the lid of an aluminum can. When she finished, Natalie shined her light inside, and the beam caught on piles of something that glittered green. Her heart leapt. What incredible luck to find what they'd come for so quickly.
Natalie reached for her shaker … but as she drew nearer, she realized she'd been mistaken. One of the green lumps lay near the opening Reeva had made. It was glassy, yes, but irregularly shaped, shot through with coppery flecks and distinctly leaf-like fractals. A leaf stone, not an energy gem. Too bad.
She couldn't hold back a laugh—a gush of bubbles—at her own dismissal of a crate full of leaf stones. But here she was. They were valuable, of course; the Roses would probably make a second trip down to collect as many as they could for resale. But a leaf stone couldn't repair an ecosystem.
By the time she flagged the crate with a length of reflective ribbon and turned around, Reeva had already moved to another crate without her. Natalie hesitated, but when she spun to check for the other divers, they had already scattered. They were all still in sight, except for Waverly, who was only visible as the bobbing beam of a flashlight next to her lanturn, but they had gone far further than the radius of several feet that Natalie had expected. Clearly, staying close to your dive buddies meant something different to the Roses than it had to her old diving instructor.
Shaking her head, she swam to join Reeva. They opened containers of dusk stones, copper wire, and already-rusting steel ingots. She flagged the stones to be collected later and left the rest. Crate by crate, they worked their way along the reef edge.
Then Reeva did something strange: instead of punching open the next crate, she clambered on top and hung there like a gargoyle, head lowered and tail swinging. When Natalie came around the corner of the crate, she saw why. The side of the container had already been clawed open with enough force to pucker the roof, ribbons of steel curling outward. It definitely wasn't Reeva's work, and it also didn't look like damage from a fall: the crate had been gutted and emptied. A sharpedo might be able to do that kind of damage, Natalie guessed, but she couldn't imagine why it would.
And somewhere among the crates, something clanked. Metal scraped against metal. A chain rattled.
As Natalie spun, looking for signs of movement, Reeva pushed off from the shipping container. She wheeled like a bird of prey, head swiveling from side to side, the gem on her forehead flashing. But she finally landed once again on the roof of the ruined container, apparently satisfied; Natalie listened hard, but she couldn't pick up even an echo of a sound.
Something shifting in the current, she told herself. Or one of the others knocked something over. But she edged away, already reaching for her shaker to call the rest of the dive team.
Within a few moments, three of the other girls were at her side. She winced to see Scarlet among them, but she pointed them all towards the crate. While Marya, Scarlet, and Pearl investigated the container, Natalie kept a watchful eye all around. But the only thing that moved was Queequeg, butting her shoulder for pets.
Scarlet banged the handle of her dive knife against the crate to catch Natalie's attention. She traced a circle around the edge of the hole: rusty. Whatever had done this was probably already gone, then. Scarlet waved her arms dismissively and started away, her pokemon trailing behind.
Under her mask, Natalie's face warmed with embarrassment. She'd spooked herself so easily … but Scarlet didn't have to be a jerk about it.
Okay? Pearl signaled.
Natalie nodded sheepishly.
Marya pointed to herself and then made an X with her wrists, signaling that she'd found nothing so far. Pearl repeated the gesture and then pointed to the area she had searched. Nothing over there. Together, the three of them paused to check their dive computers and oxygen levels one more time before—Okay? Okay—Pearl and Marya split off towards one section of crates, Natalie and Reeva another.
—
The crates seemed never-ending.
With a sinking heart, Natalie hung onto the corner of the most recently opened container and gazed out on their search area. She was starting to understand why DevCo hadn't come back to reclaim their lost crates. Some of what the dive team had found was already ruined by salt water, including the storage containers themselves. And there were so many. The six of them would hardly be able to make a dent before they started running low on oxygen and had to resurface, and they were only looking. They'd never been able to bring up most of what lay here, even if they wanted to—the Riveter just wasn't equipped for it.
Natalie wasn't complaining. Diving was still a lot more fun than repainting the deck, and the moment of mystery and anticipation before the reveal of each crate's contents was a little like opening Solstice gifts. But the size of the task was still disheartening. They might resurface with nothing to show for their time.
As she looked around, something caught her eye, a heap of debris in the shadow of an older, overgrown shipwreck. She'd noticed it earlier and ignored it, mistaking it for a broken off piece of the ship. Now that she was close enough to make out the dim colors, she realized it was a handful of shipping containers stacked to form a half circle. Weird. What were the odds of that many crates landing together so perfectly and so far from the others? Had someone else been down here dragging crates around?
Reeva lifted her head and turned towards the strange stack of crates. Maybe she'd heard Natalie's thoughts, or maybe she had noticed on her own. For a moment the golduck only hung in the water, lashing her tail.
Weird, right? Natalie focused her thought at Reeva, trying to get a reaction.
The golduck gave no indication that she'd heard Natalie but to kick into a graceful arc toward the stacked crates.
Natalie glanced over her shoulder. A few crate-lengths away, Pearl was briefly silhouetted as her staryu cut open a container with a beam of light. Scarlet and Marya were farther away but still visible, lit intermittently by their pokemon. She couldn't see Waverly or Nerissa at all anymore.
By the time she turned back to Reeva, the golduck had already put several yards between them. She paused to look at Natalie. Disdain and impatience popped into Natalie's head as if they were her own. Then the golduck turned and swam ahead into the gloom, away from the dive team.
If Natalie followed, she would be leaving her dive buddies. At a distance, Natalie could almost mistake Reeva for a human swimmer, but the golduck wasn't carrying spare air or a pressure reader.
She supposed she could join Pearl and her staryu instead, let Reeva scout it out, but there wouldn't be much for her to do: Pearl didn't need her help to shine a flashlight inside a crate. And she hated the idea of Scarlet discovering something big while she twiddled her thumbs. Besides, they weren't going that far away from the others.
So she pushed off from the side of the crate and followed Reeva towards the stacked crates and the sunken ship.
They ascended gradually to approach from above. The crates were stacked three high in most places, the makeshift wall butting against the shipwreck. Natalie wondered again what the point was. Had another salvage crew started to collect the containers and given up partway through?
The wrecked ship looked old, not just because of the thick growth of coral and algae but because of its shape. The Slateport shipyard didn't produce vessels like that anymore. A giant hole split the hull, possibly a "bite" from the Huntail's Teeth.
Nothing moved inside—or anywhere in sight—so she and Reeva descended for a closer look. Reeva led the way, knifing straight down. Natalie followed more slowly, releasing air from her BCD to let herself sink at a safe rate. As she passed the crates, row by row, she swept her flashlight across them. Each had been ripped open like the one she'd seen earlier, and each was empty.
By the time Natalie arrived at the bottom, Reeva was picking over the crates that lay in the sand where the half-wall of crates opened back onto the reef. Most of these were already split-open, too. Blown apart, Natalie caught herself thinking with an involuntary shiver. What the hell happened over here? But Reeva didn't seem bothered, so she pressed on.
Natalie's light caught on a crate to the left that was still mostly whole, unopened but rust-eaten. No, not rust. Something else.
She moved closer, her flashlight beam illuminating a puncture mark near the top edge of the container. The hole wasn't round but stretched, as if the crate had been skewered by a giant fishing hook and pulled. She couldn't think of anything human or otherwise that would do that.
It didn't matter. She wanted to know what was inside.
Reeva, she called.
This time, miraculously, the golduck came without protest. Natalie backed out of the way as Reeva pried back a section of metal to reveal neon green. The heaped stones ranged in size from pocket change to tennis balls, fluorescent in the dim light. No one could mistake these for leaf stones.
The regulator in her mouth made it impossible to smile, but Natalie's heart danced. The others needed to know.
First she had to mark the crate. They each carried an inflatable buoy for this purpose, so they wouldn't lose track of anything important once they surfaced. As she patted herself over for the rolled-up buoy among her various tools, she looked around and realized for the first time that she could no longer see her teammates, not a single dot of distant light. Her insides went cold, but she shook her head and pushed the fear away. All she had to do was mark the location, and then she'd go back, pockets heavy with treasure.
While Reeva made the rounds and opened a few more nearby crates, Natalie inflated the buoy. She clipped its reel of cord to a crate and watched with a full heart as it rose. Then she turned to see what else Reeva had found: two more crates of gems, one of dusky purple and one of black with ultraviolet cores. She wondered if any of the other divers had uncovered any. Probably not three crates!
Eat your heart out, Scarlet.
Natalie scooped up a fistful of gems and crammed them into her hip pouch. She didn't have room for more than a handful of each color—lucky, in a way, because they wouldn't weigh her down too much. Reeva's hip bags would hold more … but she was busy swimming gleeful laps around Natalie.
We're not done yet, Natalie thought at her. Please. Let's just get through this.
Swishing her tail, Reeva drew closer and reluctantly allowed Natalie to fumble with the hip bag zippers. One stuck fast, and she couldn't quite grip it with her gloves. Letting out a frustrated huff of bubbles, she started to pull off one glove—
Without warning, Reeva shoved Natalie aside, bubbles streaming from her beak. The flashlight flew from Natalie's grip.
As she kicked out to right herself, fuming, a shadow fell over her. When she raised her head, rippling green and brown filled her vision. A floating mass of seaweed. She wondered how anything so huge had drifted so close without her noticing it earlier. Something else was off: the current should have carried it over and past them, but instead the enormous seaweed tangle was approaching from inside the half-circle of crates, where the water flow was poorer. She heard the faint jangling like a wind chime before she managed to identify what glinted among the seaweed: cutlery, pieces of steel pipe, a chain with links as thick as her fist.
A partial memory dribbled from the muck of her subconscious. A nature documentary. Then the word: dhelmise. It didn't make sense, but there was nothing else it could be. So what was it doing here?
Onscreen, the dhelmise had been mesmerizing, all rippling green. Up close, it was unsettling. Something that size shouldn't be able to move so quietly. It was also much bigger than she would've expected, so overgrown it was nearly unrecognizable as a pokemon at all. And it was drifting closer. Dhelmise were supposed to be skittish, but this one didn't seem the least bit scared of her or Reeva.
Natalie's throat tightened as she clumsily backed away.
Then with a rapid-fire crank and a whir, something huge and curved dropped from among the seaweed and swung out.
As Reeva moved into its path, the water in front of her crystalized into a light screen—seconds before the dhelmise's anchor smashed into it. Even from feet away, the clang rattled Natalie from head to toe. She and Reeva both tumbled backward, the force pushing them further apart.
The light screen held, but one point of the anchor lodged in it, spiderweb cracks spreading in all directions. The anchor was massive, its shank and arms each at least twice Natalie's height. Every inch that wasn't choked in green slime was instead scabby with coral and rust. The dhelmise made no move to pull it back, eerily still except for the seaweed fronds unfurling all across its body; its chain swayed, creaking.
Slowly, the dhelmise stretched up and out, nearly filling the gap between the stacked crates and the shipwreck. At the center of the tangle, a broken-off ship's helm twisted first one direction and then the other. It reminded Natalie irrationally of a spinning computer cursor.
And then a long strand of seaweed lashed out—not at Reeva, but to the left, at Natalie.
She flailed backward, ungainly in all her gear—
Reeva flicked her light screen away and flung herself at the heart of the dhelmise, raising a fist sheathed in ice. Her blow landed with a muffled thump. The dhelmise contracted, snapping back its seaweed tendril.
Affection surged through Natalie. Shelly's golduck wasn't friendly, but she was fierce.
As if Natalie had urged her on, Reeva struck harder, walloping the mass of seaweed again and again until ice spread where her punches struck. Then, with a pulse of water, she sent the mass flying back.
Its anchor arced high and crashed down in the sand, stirring up silty clouds. For a moment, the dhelmise's shape was still visible, chain pulled taut and fronds flaring. Then the silty murk swallowed it.
Reeva jerked back in distrust—then crashed back down into the sand. Natalie spotted the seaweed vines only as they retracted into the silt clouds. Reeva pushed herself up, shaking her head, and the dhelmise lashed out again.
Natalie couldn't see through the silt how badly the dhelmise was hurt, but red lines seeped across Reeva's chest. In seconds she'd gone from poised to crumpled, head tucked. And Natalie had no idea what else the dhelmise was even capable of. She'd never fought one before—they weren't supposed to live in Hoenn!
She and Reeva couldn't win this fight.
Far later than she should've, Natalie snatched up her shaker in trembling hands and pumped her arm for all it was worth, praying the others would hear. Reeva, we need to get out of—
Something caught her by the leg and yanked. The shaker dropped from her hand, and she hurtled through the muck, blinded. She reached out for Reeva, for anything she could grab onto to stop her forward momentum. But there was only the water rushing past her ears and metal clattering above—and then she passed through the silt to clear waters. The shipwreck loomed overhead, growing nearer by the second. The dhelmise had drawn up its anchor, dragging Natalie behind it like a magikarp on a hook. Back to its lair.
Nearly choking on terror, Natalie yanked her dive knife from its sheath. She strained forward and slashed through the water until her blade connected with something that tore. From somewhere above her came a metallic shriek. All at once, the pressure on her leg released, and she slowed to drifting.
Without hesitation, she twisted around and swam as hard as she could. Green ropes slapped at her, cutting to the skin. She paused only long enough to slice them away and kept kicking.
Not until several crates lay between her and the dhelmise did she slow, breathing heavily and dimly aware that she was guzzling oxygen. The dhelmise was still coming—she couldn't stop here—but where was Reeva? Natalie couldn't leave Shelly's pokemon behind. She whirled, searching, but could barely see a few feet in any direction, the rest lost in the twilit murk. Chunks of green spun out around her, glimmering as they sank in slow motion; she dropped a hand to her hip pouch and felt the hole there. Blood fuzzed the water. And Reeva was nowhere in sight.
At a sharp clank, she turned to see the dhelmsie behind her, suddenly much closer than she'd expected. She flung herself from the crate as the dhlemise swept toward her, seaweed fanning out—but then it drew up short.
Surprised, Natalie froze, too.
The dhelmise's helm spun slowly. Considering. Then it stretched down strands of seaweed and came up clutching a luminescent lump of green. An energy gem dropped from Natalie's pocket.
For the length of a breath, the dhelmise coiled its tendrils into itself and floated motionlessly. Green light rippled across its body and then, with a rattling, the dhelmise stretched taller. Seaweed fountained from between the spokes of its helm, pouring down and down until the new growth dragged in the sand.
Natalie went cold with the realization: it had been gorging itself on energy gems. No wonder the dive team hadn't found any yet.
Then the dhelmise started towards her again, faster this time, churning the water to bubbles.
She swam furiously in the direction she thought she'd come from, panic pushing out thoughts of anything but escape. Then, to the left, a red light cut through the darkness. A swoosh of swim fins. The bubbling of another diver's breathing. Pearl!
A pokemon shot overhead, a cool backdraft washing over Natalie, but she didn't pause to look. She kept kicking, squinting against the light, until she and Pearl caught each other by the arms and the staryu's shield enfolded them. No, wait—starmie. Had it somehow evolved ...? And then Natalie finally got a good look at whose arm she was gripping, the green detailing of her wetsuit and black braids drifting behind her. Not Pearl—Scarlet.
A roar behind her prompted Natalie to spin around. Swift and graceful in his element, Zero circled the dhelmise. A vine slapped across the sealeo's face, and he let out another bellow, the cry of pain becoming a burst of blue light that sliced through vines. With each vine that dropped away, the dhelmise flinched and groaned.
Something swished up from between two crates, and Natalie looked up in time to see Reeva illuminated by Vega's red glow. The golduck darted over and past them—leaving the fight behind. With a pit in her stomach, Natalie watched her fade into the gloom.
Just Natalie and Scarlet now.
Finally, Zero's ice beam struck the dhelmise straight on. It shrieked as seaweed sloughed off its side, exposing its coiled anchor chain. Natalie cheered silently.
But then the dhelmise dropped its chain with alarming speed and swung the anchor like a flail. The first pass missed Zero narrowly, but the second didn't. The anchor caught his side with a thump, sending him flying into the wall of gutted shipping crates. Several tumbled onto him, rumbling and stirring up more silt.
The dhelmise made no visible turn towards her and Scarlet, but Natalie still sensed its attention shift onto them, a chill down her spine. Scarlet tightened her grip on Natalie's arm; she must've felt it, too.
Where the hell were the others?
Natalie hardly had time to finish the thought before the anchor came flying towards them.
For a skull-jangling instant, everything spun. Scarlet's elbow connected with Natalie's head connected with the light screen—but she and Scarlet held tight to each other all through it. Then came another clang, so loud it felt like a hammer blow, and they spun the opposite direction.
When they bobbed upright again, Natalie's ears rang and the water swirled dark with sediment, but Vega's light screen still shone around them. They were okay. The attack had pushed them down the slope, farther from the maw of the dhelmise's lair … but farther from the reef and the others, too.
As the buzzing in Natalie's ears grew louder, like a radio stuck between stations, she realized it was Vega. The light screen pulsed brighter with each crackling burst, until finally the starmie fell quiet.
The silt began to settle, and the dhelmise's silhouette emerged in the middle distance, unmoving except for the gentle undulation of its seaweed cloak. It dragged the anchor back to itself, chain clattering. If the dhelmise couldn't get at them, would it leave them alone? And what about Zero?
Ahead, the water grew darker, as if night had come on suddenly. Natalie's arms prickled with goosebumps despite her wetsuit. Then a ball of violet light dazzled through the darkness, screaming toward them. In answer, the starmie's buzzing reached an almost intolerable crescendo—then the light smashed through Vega's shield, throwing Natalie and Scarlet against a crate so hard they flew apart.
Natalie shook her head, trying to clear the ringing in her ears. When she opened her eyes, the dhelmise was ambling toward them, lazily unfurling vines. Nearby, Vega lay in the sand, its light twitching on and off. No sign of Zero.
But a hiss of air made her turn to Scarlet. Bubbles gushed from her tank, and her eyes were wide behind her mask as she flailed for her secondary air source. Natalie didn't think that would help, not at the rate she was losing air.
Unthinkingly, she pulled herself along the crate toward Scarlet and stretched out her own backup regulator. Scarlet took it, clasping Natalie's arm. Then she signaled, Okay. Air flowing. Natalie heaved a breath of relief.
She suspected there wasn't much left in her tank—she'd used a lot of air fleeing from the dhelmise, and sharing with Scarlet meant less for each of them. They needed to get back to the surface now.
But the dhelmise was still closing in, approaching faster than the rate they could safely ascend.
Scarlet nudged Vega with her swim fin; the starmie peeled itself up from the sand, painfully slow. Its light was dim and its arms sagged. Dazed. Scarlet flailed her free hand, and even Natalie could practically hear her thoughts: Hurry! Do something!
The dhelmise towered over them. Its stretched wide, neon green flaring across its seaweed mantle—growing again. Vega hovered before the dhelmise, trying to shape a new light screen, but it kept flickering out.
Natalie tightened her grip on Scarlet and pulled. She wasn't going to sit and wait for death to come to them.
But as they rose together, jerky and off-balance, a shadow flitted past. And another. Then a shiver of sharpedo rushed overhead, nearly silent and too fast for Natalie's eyes to follow. Bringing up the rear, Reeva calmly treaded water. She hadn't abandoned them after all.
The first sharpedo ripped into the dhelmise with enough force to knock it sideways, and it came away with seaweed streaming from its teeth. The dhelmise barely had time to drop its anchor before the second sharpedo hit. Its vines went slack. And then dozens of sharpedo swarmed the shambling seaweed mass. It screeched, a terrible metal-on-metal sound, and shot out vine after vine. But for each sharpedo it slapped away, another dove to replace it. As seaweed shreds flew up like confetti, the dhelmise sank down, down into itself and at last disappeared under the frenzy of gnashing teeth.
From behind Natalie and Scarlet came first the low cry of a wailmer, then lights. The others had finally arrived. They gathered around Natalie and Scarlet in a flurry of hand signals. Okay? Okay? As they each checked over their air supply and equipment, a crash to the left signaled Zero sliding free from the pile of crates.
Scarlet gestured, Up. Now. With their pokemon alongside them, the dive team began to rise through drifting seaweed shreds.
Natalie's pulse still pounded, and it took every ounce of self-control not to claw her way to the glimmer of sunlight. But as the sounds of rattling chain and wet tearing faded below them, meter by meter, her breathing slowed. When her face broke through the surface at last, she ripped her regulator free and greedily sucked in fresh air. Scarlet turned her loose and did the same.
As the others surfaced all around them, Natalie turned hesitantly to face Scarlet, bracing herself for ranting and screaming. She deserved it—she's nearly gotten them both killed. But Vega bobbed to the surface behind her, and Scarlet turned away to wrap her arms around its fins, whispering words of praise and assurance.
Pearl paddled over. "You okay, Lil Red?"
"I'm sorry!" she blurted, water sloshing into her mouth. She coughed, spat, and started again. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone off alone—"
"It's okay!" Pearl cut in. "All that matters is that we're all safe. We'll figure out the rest back on the Riv."
Natalie could do little more than nod. Her entire body felt like it was made of overcooked spaghetti.
Below the water, something bumped her leg. She yelped, swallowing another mouthful of salt water. A triangular fin rose through the water and made a lazy circle. For a moment, she could only stare after it, then she laughed. She never thought she'd be relieved to see a sharpedo in the water beside her.
A sloshing prompted her to turn in time to see Pearl grab onto another fin rising from the water. "I don't know about you, but I've had enough swimming for one day." She patted the sharpedo's side, and they glided off.
More fins poked through the water's surface; the other divers each took hold of a sharpedo of her own. The backs of their pokemon rippled the water all around, a slow wave moving toward the distant dot of the Riveter.
Natalie paused to glance over her shoulder and then allowed herself a small smile. Somehow, her buoy still floated on the waves. At least that much had gone right.
The sharpedo nudged her again, so she reached for its fin, the rough scales rasping against her gloves. It was surprisingly patient, waiting for her to get a firm grip before it smoothly started forward. She nestled her cheek her arm and let herself go limp against the sharpedo as if in a warm embrace.
—
Once she'd showered and bandaged her cuts from the dhelmise, Natalie went looking for Scarlet. She found her in the rec room, twining her still-wet hair into fresh braids.
A floorboard creaked under Natalie's foot, and Scarlet lifted her head. "Oh. It's you." There was no hostility in her voice, only tiredness.
Natalie took a deep breath. "I just wanted to say … thanks."
"Yeah. Well." Scarlet studied the ends of her hair for a moment, swung the finished braid over her shoulder, and then started on the other pigtail. "Sinbad would kill me if I let you get eaten."
"Or he'd be glad to have me out of his hair." Natalie chuckled, but Scarlet didn't.
She paused, fingers still in her hair, and said, "Look, I know he really sucks at showing it sometimes—and I mean really sucks … but that doesn't mean he doesn't care. You have to trust him."
"I guess you'd know better than I would."
With a sigh, Scarlet said, "You just gonna stand there or you gonna sit?"
So Natalie settled herself onto a cushion, leaving an empty one between them.
Scarlet was quiet for a moment, then offered, "I don't have any siblings. For a long time, it was just me and my dad. But ORCA's my family now."
"Me too, I guess."
She snorted but smiled. "Nobody gets under your skin the same way, right? But family's family. That's it. You're stuck with each other."
Was that her way of apologizing?
Without looking up from her braiding, Scarlet added, "Aside from the obvious fuckup, you did alright down there. We probably wouldn't have found all those energy gems if you hadn't done that."
Natalie frowned despite the compliment. Didn't the dhelmise change everything? It had been eating energy gems. Maybe that had been the only one, a freak accident. The Hoenn Sea wasn't exactly teeming with dhelmise. But still. Were other pokemon eating energy gems too? That hadn't been Archie's plan, not like that.
She'd have to talk to him about it later. For now, she wasn't going to be the one to wreck this new peace between her and Scarlet. Instead, she managed a smile. "Happy I could help."
This is likely to last chapter I'll be able to post before August 2021 ish, which means it's time for some updates and thank you's.
In response to reader comments, I've made a few changes to existing chapters. Most of these changes are small and not very noticeable, but a few are worth knowing about.
1) Natalie has inherited a Friend from Back Home ™️ who appears in chapters 1 and 11.
2) I've cut out mentions of masterballs (because they're really more like snagballs anyway) and have instead started calling them eightballs, as in United Hoenn Code Title 8. That explanation happens in chapter 5.
3) Chapters 2, 4, and 14 have been slightly retooled with a better glimpse into Mark and Natalie's respective heads.
To Pano for helping me figure out how to open doors, the predatory habits of sea monsters, and whether my dialogue was working—
To Pen for making my sentences infinitely better and helping me realize that I'd written three chapters out of order—
To Kintsugi for knowing when something technical is off, for consoling me about OSHA and guardrails, and for infinite shitposts—
To StarlightAurate for answering all my scuba questions—
To everyone who's commented and reviewed or even just read—
Thank you! Any mistakes are still my own, but this story would definitely be a little worse without your help and support.
Taking up Other Projects for the summer ... but this trash fire burns hot and bright in my heart, ever and always. See you soon.
It's been a tumultuous but exciting month for me. I've talked to a few of y'all about this privately, but since Flaze touched on this in his last review, I thought now might be a good time to talk in a more official capacity about what's happening.
I spend enough time and energy on this story that I've started to rethink what I want from it and what I want it to be. There are some changes coming for Mark and Nat! They're changes that I think will serve the story (and me!) overall ... but also change is never easy, and that means I've got good news and bad news.
Bad news: I am probably not updating Continental Divides anytime soon. It's possible that I still will at some point--never say never--but I'm not anticipating it right now.
Good news: I'm not done with the story. In fact, I'm so excited about it that I'm working on it as an original fantasy story instead. One that doesn't require me to sheepishly explain why there are pokemon in it But Not Like You Think ™️ . One that's wholly mine. And maybe! With a little luck!! One I can share with a much broader audience.
Part of me is sad to leave Hoenn behind ... but a bigger part of me is excited for the new direction. Taking out the pokemon lets me get much closer to some of the points I want to make (and also removes some of the ethical weirdness around owning your friends). And, like, let's be real: this story has had one foot out the door of fandom from the beginning. I've already pushed the canon far enough that simply renaming a handful of characters and places solves like 70% of it. It might've been a hockey stick at one point, but I've bent the thing into a boomerang and now I don't feel bad putting my own logos on it.
So, no, I'm not dead, but I have been pretty busy with non-fic things lately, and likely will be for some time. 💪 🤩
I do feel bad for leaving folks in the lurch, and I apologize that so many things will have to remain unresolved. (Though, honestly, this is a better place to stop than after Chapter 17, which would have been an aggressive cliffhanger. ... Possibly literally, actually.) I might post a crude "here's some stuff I expected to happen" later if folks are interested in that. I hope it's some comfort that *a* version of this story will continue, because I want to know what's going to happen to Mark and his cat, too. The cat just isn't purple anymore is all.
I'm still really appreciative of all the feedback I've gotten so far--the story is all the better for it! I'm not putting energy towards making corrections to this draft right now, but I'm still open to feedback and interested to hear what folks think. I'll definitely keep any comments in mind as I make my way through draft 2. That said, if you wanted to read it and haven't yet, you should ... do that. Eventually, I'm probably going to start taking it down from the internet.
Thank you all for reading and for joining me on this ride! Stay tuned, I guess? ✨
