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Pokémon Dragon's Dance

Sinderella

Angy Tumbleweed
Staff
Location
In Guzma's Closet
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. sylveon-shiny
  2. gothitelle
  3. froslass
  4. chandelure
  5. mimikyu
Hiya hiya Pen! Getting started on this exchaaaaaaaange!! I got through chapter 1 and 2 to start, but I don't think I'll be able to get the rest done before the end of Blitz. However, I will be back around in the coming days to do so!

So, to be completely honest I don't know a lot about Kanto and Johto, because this dummy started Pokemon in Sinnoh 🥲 So Lance is a foreign concept to me. HOWEVER, I will say that I really enjoy how this started, and where this is headed! I really enjoyed the usage of all the Japanese names, and especially how they're built around the Dragon Clan--how referring to the Dragonite line as the -ryu's is normal for them, but just an old legend for all the outsiders. I just found that concept really neat!

At this moment, all I can say is poor Wataru. I kind of felt my blood boiling FOR him as chapter 1 stretched onward. He had so many hopes and dreams, and they were just dashed in an almost instant because he wanted to show some other little boy he battled the Dragonair. I wasn't really sure how the whole "trial" was going to go--on one hand I had hoped that his Uncle would have stuck up for him, but I also had a feeling that that was not going to happen, and ended up being right unfortunately, which...was really upsetting. Even his words to Wataru following the verdict being reached were infuriating. "This was your fault but also, sorry you never felt truly welcome here"..........like, sir, did it occur to you that maybe if he'd felt welcome, he would have stayed in class and learned he shouldn't have shown the gaijin the big rare dragons??? He's TWELVE. Getting ousted for something that wasn't his fault is a lot to shove onto a twelve year old, and then to just throw him to the outside world without his trusted Pokemon life partner???? Bro, the absolute heartlessness was just UGH.

What continued to drive that absolute anger I was feeling toward the exile was how clueless Wataru was as he ventured further from his home--this kid had never seen electricity, barely knew what money was, didn't know what a train was, didn't even know his damn birthday--and the clan was just totally okay with sending this poor twelve year old out like that. I feel like that would be more dangerous than keeping him around? This dumb kid who's never seen a lightbulb walking around among the masses knowing this secret legendary clan exists seems pretty counterproductive to keeping it secret! I simply cannot wait for Wataru to become champ so he can just rub it in all their faces. I just want to see this man succeed, because it's obvious his clan never thought he could :(((((((((

I didn't really have a lot of criticism at the moment. I think the only thing really getting to me is that I was having a hard time grasping what kind of time period this was set in. The clan is obviously very rural, which is understandable, but then we have Wataru's new guardian going around on a wagon, bitchin' and moanin' about trains, and then we get to the Pokemon center which has electricity, because the region has been "blessed" with it...but, it's the 1980's I think? Or the 1970's? If I I read right? So is the Pokemon world (or at the very least, Johto) just not as developed as it would have been in the real world at this point in time? I just had a difficult time following that.

All in all, very good stuff! Will be back to finish the exchange at a later date :D

Sporadic Line Reacts
"Here," she said, thrusting the bundle of cloth towards him. "Take it." She turned a glare on Uncle, as if daring him to object. "I prepared and dyed that cloth all by myself. It's mine to do what I want with." Turning back to Wataru, she softened her voice. "You could have done it, you know. You were much better than all the little kids dancing."
PLEASE TELL ME TOKU IS IN THERE

"You've said your goodbyes, Ibuki," he said firmly. "Now you need to get back to your chores."
This man is damn HEARTLESS, I want to see Wataru make him EAT IT

"Go back?" he said at last. "My word, we're behind schedule enough as is. I want to reach Cherrygrove while there's still light to steer by."
Bless Mr. Inushi. May his wares sell out fast.

"Not fire, electricity," Mr. Inushi corrected. "Cherrygrove has seen the light of the future."
Is electricity like...a coveted thing in this world?

"When were you born, lad?"

"About twelve winters ago," Wataru said, wondering why it mattered.

"But what day, what month, do you know?"

He stared back at them, his mouth slightly agape. Who knew the exact day they were born on?
THIS KID DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HIS OWN BIRTHDAY AND THE ELDERS WERE JUST LIKE "HE'LL MAKE IT WORK OUT THER" BRO WHAT---

"April 22, 1976,"
0/10 no roller discos???? Smh my head

As he lay in his cot, Wataru realized for the first time that Uncle had never said how long the exile would last.
I had the same thought for a while. That's a little unsettling!

"That's an apricorn ball. Speciality of Azalea—I noticed one of their venders at the market. These balls are made from naturally grown shells. Might be a little closer to what you and your little gal are used to."
Again, I say, bless Mr. Inushi. May his wares sell out fast and may he be extremely wealthy.

"Miniryu, hakuryu, kairyu," the professor continued in a reflective voice. "Yes, that's right. That's the full chain. Of course, there have always been legends floating around about a lost community of dragons and their tamers—"

A cold feeling swept over Wataru. Don't let your tongue wag, or the kairyu will be in danger.
monkaS monkaS monkaS monkaS...........

Real talk though, Okido seems like a homie. I think he knows what's up, but he's tryna keep it on the DL. Respect.
 
  • Quag
Reactions: Pen

SparklingEspeon

Back on Her Bullshit
Staff
Location
a Terrace of Indeterminate Location in Snowbelle
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. espurr
  2. fennekin
  3. zoroark
Hello! I’m here for the BLEC review awards, covering chapters 4 – 5 (The Gambler – The Recruit, Part II)!

I do have to say that this has gone extremely differently from what I expected, leaving off from the gyarados chapter. Not that it’s a bad thing, mind. I knew Team Rocket would likely rear their heads in this story at some point, and I’m always down for TR rocketing it up so I’m all on board for the current trajectory.

I don’t recall if I said it last time, but one of the biggest strengths of this story is the atmosphere and tone that you give to Kanto. It feels very down-to-earth and cohesive in its vibe, and especially the way that you contrast it with Wataru’s dragon tribe. The place just has too many strange rules and regulations to be compatible with the way that his tribe did things, and his reactions range from confused to outright angry. (In particular, I liked the way he scoffs at the gym in Saffron for not fighting for their rights to stay open, when it’s likely the city probably made them shut it down. The fact that he has to pay an extra entry fee for being "foreign" was a depressing bout of realism as well.) It makes sense that an organization like Team Rocket, which has much simpler principles and purports to be about doing away with Kanto’s rules, would snap up people like him. It’s the little details that truly ground it, however, from all the ways Wataru’s tribal upbringing influences the narrative to Erika running a big company and phoning in all her battles to the fact that much like an actual mafia, Team Rocket can operate basically in the open and no-one can do anything about it. If Kanto existed in the real world, I could easily see this being what its political landscape looked like in the years leading up to the events of Red/Blue (I assume this fic is set before that, at least).

There’s definitely some irony in that Wataru’s insistence on honesty and goodwill led him into the claws of dishonest people who would like very much to use him (Like, it makes sense that the jackpot was never going to be winnable in a crooked institution like that, but also someone with Wataru’s age and experience isn’t going to think that way or do the proper research into it). There’s been a feel that his naivete would lead him into trouble sooner or later, and though he’s essentially secured himself a healthy non-grunt position in Team Rocket as of Chapter Five, I doubt he’ll continue for too much longer before he’s asked to do something that conflicts with his moral code... or perhaps something more? If this Team Rocket has establishments in Johto just like the games’ versions do, then I wonder if he might be asked to do something with the miniryu valley at some point… and if so, it’ll be interesting to see what his reaction is then. Just some speculation from me on that part, though; it feels like he’s still got a lot of growing to do yet. I’m excited to see what Team Rocket will have him doing now that he’s graduated training; this feels like it’s about to be a large part of his life from here on out.

The theme of naivete contrasted with the corrupt way the real world works seemed to be extra strong during the Team Rocket training period – it was made pretty clear that strength was considered the strongest virtue at the camp, and during the final exam the trainees were straight-up encouraged to backstab and sabotage other trainees in order to get the higher positions. Though her story hasn’t yet and might not get a resolution from here on out, I thought Hunter was a pretty compelling statement of the theme. Like Wataru, she has a lot to lose, and she can’t afford to be nice. They were always going to end up battling for the final win, and the deciding factor wasn’t Lance’s moral high ground or anything, but essentially who could be stronger. Though it was a deus ex machina, I think the way that Wataru won – by his charizard just randomly evolving – helps in this regard because it separates the battle from anything Wataru did specifically. By Team Rocket’s design, the battle was always going to come down to the smartest and strongest, and if Wataru hadn’t gotten that second burst of luck, he would have lost. There wasn’t a right or wrong there, and it subtly prelude's Wataru realizing that indeed, while he battled his way to the end successfuly, there were some people who got the slip on him. Interested to see how that develops in the coming chapters.

I think the last big talking point I’ve got is that I really like the way you write your Archer – I haven’t actually seen him or the other Executives used in fics (which is a crime tbh), but this version of him definitely fits the bill to what little we see in the games. While he’s not the Big Boss, he certainly feels charismatic enough to be a leader, and he knows the way to sway people isn’t through fear but instead through winning their trust and then using it. I really liked the scene where he sits Wataru down and then talks him into joining Team Rocket – he’s got a silver tongue and knows exactly what to say to make Wataru listen. Wonderful manipulation :okgon:

Overall, there’s some good stuff in here! I’m surprised at how much was fit into just “two” chapters, and given how those two chapters went, I’m expecting the remaining five are going to be an absolutely wild ride. Until next time!

~SparklingEspeon
 
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  • Heart
Reactions: Pen
Ch 15: The Challenger, Part One

Pen

the cat is mightier than the pen
Staff
Partners
  1. dratini
  2. dratini-pen
  3. dratini-pen2
The Challenger, Part One

The sandstorm cloaked the battlefield. Seated in Jiro’s private booth, Lance had a better view of the stadium than most, but the wall of sand left him just as blind as the general audience.

Beside him, Kaisho’s fins vibrated, but before Lance could ask what the hakuryu had sensed, the storm slackened and his gaze was drawn back to the arena. Billows of dust and grit eased down onto the ground, where Jiro’s snorlax lay unmoving.

Lance began to count under his breath. Seven, eight―as he reached ten, the announcer’s voice broke the expectant silence.

“Fiiiirst knock-out!”

As scattered cheers rose from the crowd, the announcer continued, “What we just witnessed was a triple combination: Iron Defense, paired with Roll-out, the move’s increasing power veiled by a Sandstorm. A combination that surely required immense focus and years of training to master, and with quite the pay-off―Jiro hardly knew what hit him.”

With the sandstorm gone, Lance could see how Jiro’s jaw clenched at the announcer’s words. In the weeks leading up to the hustings, he and Lance had poured over the names, faces, and battle records of Kanto’s top-ranked trainers; this challenger hadn’t been among them.

“Challenger,” the referee called out, “the first knockout is yours. You may now press your challenge or rest on your victory.”

This was only the seventh knockout Lance had witnessed in the first three furious days of the hustings, but he could already mouth the standard answer: My victory belongs to Kanto. I relent.

But the pause stretched out a beat too long. Then the challenger said, “All in.”

A murmur raced through the crowd, and Lance shifted in his seat, surprised. The hustings were held to determine the champion, but most trainers who participated were after a more achievable prize—the prestige that came with defeating a member of the Elite Four in a one-on-one battle. There was a reason challengers lucky enough to win a first knock-out chose to end the battle there. If they continued to a full battle and lost, that initial victory would be erased. But someone who fought a full battle and won . . .

Lance studied the challenger’s face, remembering for a moment the old men at the Grand Royale’s poker tables, their eyes gleaming as they shoved their chips forward. All in.

Jiro would have to fight through the challenger’s whole team now. Lance saw him scowl slightly as he considered his next move. Then his expression cleared. He gestured, and Akira, his clefable, floated into the ring.

“Close your eyes, Kaisho,” Lance warned as the referee raised his flag. He followed his own advice just in time: the white and pink radiance stabbed against his eyelids. As the afterlight faded, he risked a look. The challenger’s golem lay motionless on the battlefield, surrounded by wrecked stones. They’d tried to block with a stone edge, Lance guessed, but what was stone against the power of the moon?

“Jiro’s Moonblast, ladies and gentleman,” the announcer crowed. “What is more exceptional, the power or the speed? And in a single move, the tally evens out. The challenger has four pokemon left. Should she triumph, she will claim Jiro’s place on the Elite Four and if she wishes, may take his place in the hustings as a contender for the championship. If she fails, she walks out of this stadium with nothing.”

She’ll fail, Lance thought. The triple combination had been impressive, but winning five knock-outs was a very different proposition than winning one. Still, Lance worried. A full battle would wear Jiro’s team down, and he was still open to two more challenges before the Rule of Three would force the battle back on Kikuko.

The champion sat on the dais behind the referee, her hands clasped primly in her lap. Her arbok lay coiled at her feet; her crobat perched on her shoulder. The only sign of her other pokemon were the thick, unnatural shadows that spread out around her. Her expression was masklike as she watched the battle.

For once Jiro was eschewing his usual flourishes. He called out his commands with single-minded focus until the challenger’s last pokemon fell. None of Jiro’s remaining pokemon had been knocked-out, but from their sluggish dodges, Lance could gauge their exhaustion. If the next challenger was as skilled as this one had been, Jiro might be in real trouble. The hustings were a contest of attrition just as much as they were one of skill. A string of bad luck could end Jiro’s hopes for the championship before the hustings even made it out of Saffron.

Lance tightened his grip on the token in his hand. It could end before he had the chance to take on Kikuko himself.

He watched the challenger’s diamond expectantly, but one minute turned into five, with no new challenger announced. Then the announcer’s voice boomed, “The next challenge is by right. Representing Saffron City, please rise for Leader Natsume!””

Relief flashed almost imperceptibly across Jiro’s face as Natsume stepped into the harsh light of the stadium. The crowd broke into a roar.

“As gym leader of Saffron City, my challenge is by right,” Natsume called out in her cold, carrying voice. “Champion Kikuko, stand and face me.”

Like always, Kikuko took her time. But she seemed especially slow-moving today as she shuffled down from the dias.

At the ring of the battle bell, Natsume sent out her alakazam. Lance had sparred a few times with that alakazam, part of Jiro’s plan to strengthen his team’s psychic resistance. Natsume’s psychic pokemon had incredible force, but they lacked the fine control that had confounded Lance when he had fought Kikuko. He was curious to see how she’d fare against Kikuko’s gengar.

Kikuko’s lips drew back into a small, dry smile. She let out a low whistle, and her arbok slithered forward.

What? Lance and Kaisho shared a baffled look.

The announcer echoed their confusion. “An . . . unconventional choice by the champion. She’s hobbled herself by pitting an earth-bound poison-type against a teleporting psychic.”

What game was Kikuko playing? The ability to select second was the greatest advantage the hustings candidates had. But Natsume couldn’t have gotten a more favorable match-up if she’d chosen it herself.

Lance’s confusion deepened as the battle got underway. For some time, the arbok and alakazam played a fast-moving game of tag. Alakazam flitted from place to place, barely touching the ground; Arbok kept to the safety of deep dirt. Then Natsume seemed to grow impatient. Alakazam sent out a volley of energy balls that left the battlefield covered with craters.

A dark fog spilled suddenly from the ground. The battlefield obscured; when the smog finally cleared, Alakazam and Arbok were locked together, Arbok’s fangs clamped onto Alakazam’s abdomen. The tableau lasted only seconds, before Alakazam threw off the snake with a psychic blast and pressed its advantage with a whip-like psybeam. The cord of energy tangled around Arbok and bound it in place. Leisurely now, Alakazam floated across the cratered field. She held up her spoons, forming a psychic fist. The blow struck Arbok head-on.

“Fiiiiirst knockout!”

The crowd stamped and roared. They always cheered a knockout against Kikuko more loudly. No surprise there―Saffron was Jiro’s home turf. It was his name the crowd screamed when the two contenders took their places each day on the dais.

Kikuko waited until the noise died down, a small smirk on her face. Then she called out, “Objection. Unsteadiness.”

There was a long pause. The referee flashed five fingers.

“Kikuko objects, and it’s been sustained with a five-minute wait. If the challenger’s pokemon is on its feet after the time passes, the knockout is proper. If not―”

Poison, Lance realized in a flash. The arbok got in a bite.

He studied Alakazam closely. She stood relaxed, twirling her mustache. Surely, a single bite wouldn’t be enough―but Kikuko looked awfully assured. Two minutes had elapsed when Lance saw the alakazam shudder. Natsume’s face grew stormy. Another minute passed, and the alakazam began to gently sway.

She’s not going to make it. Just as the thought formed in Lance’s mind, the whine of a recall split the silence.

“Natsume withdraws before the time has been called, forfeiting her victory!”

There were no cheers this time. In the audience, people bent their heads, muttering. Natsume bowed stiffly and departed the stage.

Lance clenched the token in his fist, sharing the audience’s displeasure. Kikuko hadn’t needed to do that. She could have chosen her gengar and beat Natsume easily. Instead, she’d gone with her arbok, and Lance could only find one reason for that choice: humiliation. Kikuko had all but proclaimed, “Even with every advantage, you can’t defeat me.”

“She’s arrogant,” Lance told Kaisho. “We can use that when we face her.”

He looked down at his token. He’d stood in line for it on the first day of the hustings, eager for the fight to come. But Jiro had been adamant that he not register his token yet.

“There’s a strategy to this, Lance. Let the early hustings wear her down before you enter. You don't want to face Kikuko fresh if you can avoid it.”

“We’re ready now,” Lance said aloud, staring at Kikuko’s face. She’d hunched back over her staff, but her eyes gleamed with private satisfaction. She’d looked the same way as she stood over him and Toku.

Lance’s glare deepened. He ignored Kaisho’s chiding trill until the hakuryu’s tail whapped lightly against his face. With effort, Lance forced himself to relax back into his seat. Kaisho trilled again.

“I know,” Lance murmured.

This was Jiro’s show, not his. All Lance had to do was play his part.

~*~​

By the end of the fifth and final day of the Saffron hustings, Jiro’s team had taken twelve knockouts in total and they all looked exhausted. Even Kintsugi’s usually perfect coat had become patchy and unevenly groomed.

“Saffron’s usually the worst of it,” Jiro said, as they departed the stadium. “Town hall tomorrow, and then we’ll have one free day before the hustings resume in Celadon. The town hall should be a good time, at least. People love me here.”

He wasn’t wrong. The discrepancy in cheers that Lance had noticed at the stadium was even more pronounced at the town hall, as Jiro and Kikuko fielded a volley of questions about industrial standards, trade with Hoenn, and Saffron’s housing crunch. Kikuko’s answers were distant and non-committal; she seemed to recognize that she was fighting a losing battle. Jiro was at his most animated, grinning and gesturing as he spoke.

Lance paid close attention for the first half-hour, but as one hour wore into two, his concentration began to drift. When Kintsugi batted his leg and flicked her tail imperiously towards the exit, he followed her out with a silent apology to Jiro.

The town hall concluded just after three. Jiro shook his head as Lance and Kintsugi slunk into the backstage room to meet him.

“Truants. Come on, if we keep Natsume waiting much longer she might refuse to teleport us.”

Lance wouldn’t have minded giving teleportation a pass. He’d stopped getting a stomachache from it, but the experience always left him woozy. After they materialized, Lance sat down on one of the plushy hotel couches, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Jiro chatted for some time at the front desk, then rejoined Lance, looking pleased.

“Good news! I was able to reserve us the full spa for our exclusive use tomorrow morning. And I was very specific about your gyarados. There won't be any complaints this time.”

“You're serious,” Lance said flatly, shaking his head at the extravagance. Over-the-top, but well-meant. That was Jiro in a nutshell. “Ibuki will appreciate it,” he conceded.

But it still nagged at him the next morning, as Ibuki and Kaisho slithered off towards the wet rooms and most of the others followed Lance and Jiro into the dry sauna, stretching out on the oaken benches. Kana let out a blissful groan and flopped onto the heated floor, belly-up. Archer nestled next to her, crooning. The air was thick and steamy.

“Doesn’t it look bad?” Lance said.

“Hmm?” Jiro had already closed his eyes. The heat brought up sweat on his forehead, glistening in the dim yellow light.

“Reserving the whole spa like this. Isn’t it a bit―” Lance floundered for a word.

“Oh, so now you want to talk about image?” Jiro stretched out his arms, cracking his shoulders. “My team’s been fighting for five straight days. They deserve this, and so do I. No one in Saffron would bat an eye at our taking some well-deserved rest.”

“How about outside Saffron?” Lance said, his thoughts turning to Pewter’s miners. He was pretty sure they worked more than five days in a row and didn’t see a spa at the end of it, much less a private one.

Jiro snorted. “If Kanto really believed in democracy, I wouldn’t have to worry about ‘outside Saffron.’ We’ve got more people than every other township and municipality in Kanto, but thanks to this damned archaic system, Saffron has the same say in the champiancy as Pallet Town―and calling Pallet a town is stretching it. More like Professor Okido’s personal research fief.”

Lance frowned. He didn’t exactly agree with the idea that Saffron should get more of a say just because it happened to have more people crammed into its brooding high-rises. “Like it or not, the other places do vote.”

“They do.” Jiro splayed out his fingers and began to count them off. “Kikuko’s got her strongholds in Lavender and Fuschia. She’ll get Pallet, too―Oak knows where his funding bread is buttered. Cinnabar and the Sevis are always wildcards, but I’m guessing they’ll swing her way out of inertia more than anything else. Half the islanders don’t even have radios―absolutely hopeless trying to make headway out there. Saffron and Celadon are in my corner, obviously, and Vermillion follows Saffron. Pewter’s trickier. Muno's promised to endorse, which carries a fair bit of weight with the miners. But there’s a lot of anti-urban sentiment there. Hard to know which way it will come out. Cerulean’s a safer bet. I had my doubts back when Hamako was still kicking around―a traditionalist to her core, that one―but I've had some very productive conversations with the Waterflower Sisters and I can't see them putting in for Kikuko. They understand that Kanto’s not getting anywhere hiding from the future.”

“You left out Viridian,” Lance said, choosing to ignore the jab at Hamako.

"Oh, Giovanni’s a friend, but he’s also a cagey bastard. Wants to keep his finger in every pie, you know.” Jiro cracked open an eye. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest, Lance, but you shouldn’t worry too much about the politics. It’s not going to come to a vote. You’ll beat Kikuko first.”

“Right,” Lance said. His gaze fell on Toku. She had both her eyes shut and her breathing had evened out. In the thick haze of the sauna, she looked more peaceful than she had in months. “You’re right,” he said, more emphatically.

~*~​

That evening, they went to see a play. During the ride, Jiro was uncharacteristically stony, staring in fixed silence out the cab window. He’d taken a call in the afternoon, and when he returned, his whole body thrummed with tension.

“Is everything all right?” Lance finally ventured. Jiro’s gaze snapped over to him, and he waved a vague hand.

“Theater’s just so tedious. And Kazuki’s Tale is horribly overdone. They always perform it for the hustings and of course it’s a snub to Celadon if we don’t show up, so here we are.”

Lance was pretty sure the play wasn’t the actual issue, but he held his tongue.

He had never been to a theater before. With its stage surrounded by a half-circle of bleachers, Lance thought it looked a lot like a battle stadium, though the seats were definitely more comfortable. The air was thick with the same anticipation that heralded a pokemon battle, but when the lights dimmed, the crowd went quiet instead of loud.

In the beginning, Lance struggled to follow anything that was happening. The actors’ faces were painted so thickly they hardly seemed human, and they spoke in a strange, archaic dialect that passed right over Lance’s head. The battling was strange, too. The pokemon’s attacks were as exaggerated and artificial as the actors’ gestures. Nothing like real battling at all, he thought at first, but as the play progressed, he began to find a logic―even artistry―in it. Each battle had been condensed to its most essential moments, those crucial shifts that normally occurred in the space between blinks.

The play told the story of the very first hustings. Kanto lay under siege by a great army. But instead of meeting the threat in battle, the lords of Kanto squabbled and did nothing. When Viridian sent desperate pleas for aid, Kazuki saw that the lands would fall if they did not unite. He traveled from fief to fief and stood in the town square thirty days and thirty nights, taking every challenge. After this, the lords swore to follow him, and he led Kanto’s first combined army into combat, pushing back Johto’s forces and holding the narrow pass against them through a punishing winter, until at long last Johto relented.

Kazuki was the first champion. After him, the towns of Kanto never stood alone.

When the curtain fell and the lights returned, Lance rose in a thoughtful mood. What would have happened if the great dragon masters had been like Kazuki? If they had stood and fought, rather than retreating into their seclusion?

On the way out, their paths crossed with Kikuko. Jiro made her a deep bow, elaborate enough to verge on mocking. She returned a curt nod, her lips curling.

They didn’t speak.

~*~​

By the time Lance woke the next day, Jiro’s bad mood had burned off as thoroughly as Saffron’s morning fogs. He hummed as he smeared spicy mustard over his natto and rice, and sent Lance back to change twice. “I don’t think any photographers will be bothering with me,” Lance said at last in exasperation when Jiro raked a critical eye over Lance’s third ensemble and opened his mouth once more.

“Never assume that,” Jiro said. “Always look your best, even if you think no one’s watching. But I was thinking it’s time for you to register your token.”

“Now?” Lance’s irritation dropped away. “Didn’t you say I should wait until Cerulean?”

“I did. But, you’re ready, aren’t you? So why wait.”

Lance refrained from rolling his eyes. He’d been saying that since the start, after all.

“Kaisho,” Lance said. “Are you ready?”

The hakuryu stirred from where he lay curled on the couch. They had decided Kaisho would be his lead. Kikuko would most likely expect Toku; the hakuryu’s appearance would make her drop her guard. But underestimating Kaisho would be her mistake. Kaisho had the agility to match her gengar and Kikuko wouldn’t be counting on his shadow ball.

Kaisho’s answering trill sounded less than sure. Jiro turned around.

“Come here,” he said firmly. When Kaisho floated over, he undid the yellow ribbon from his bun and tied it neatly around Kaisho’s horn. “You need to look your best, too,” he said. “Now listen. You’re strong. You’re smart. You’ve trained hard every day. Kikuko doesn’t stand a chance.”

Kaisho trilled again, more warmly.

When they arrived at the hustings, Lance joined the line that wound out from the registration table. A half-hour passed before he reached the front. He showed his citizenship papers and badges and signed an affidavit. The clerk wrote down the number of Lance’s token, then passed it back to him.

“This token is your battling ticket,” said the clerk. “Remember, you’re only entitled to one. Sale of tokens is forbidden by law and carries a civil fine and league expulsion. If your token is called and you do not present yourself within fifteen minutes, you forfeit your challenge and your token number will be struck. Please affirm that you understand the rules.”

“I understand,” Lance said. His pulse quickened as he made his way into Jiro’s reserved booth. Celadon’s hustings took place in an open-air stadium, perfumed by the late autumn flowers. It would make good terrain for Lance’s team. Kaisho could even call the rain here.

Now that he was registered, Lance took more interest in the large board where the called token numbers were displayed. Most numbers passed unclaimed―Lance guessed those belonged to Saffron trainers who weren’t inclined to follow the hustings to Celadon―but the day dragged on and Lance’s number still didn’t come up. As the final challenge concluded with a clean knock-out by Kintsugi, Lance sighed and tucked away his token. It would have been very lucky to get called on his very first day. He heaved another, deeper sigh when Jiro informed him that they’d be attending another gala tonight.

“Don’t even start,” Jiro said, when Lance opened his mouth to suggest that maybe his time would be better spent training than partying. “The moment you beat Kikuko, you become a member of the Elite Four. You should start acting like it.”

The rebuke was mild, but it still stung. Lance straightened his back and nodded. That evening, he smiled until his face hurt, and when Kaisho grew restless, Lance didn’t follow him out into the hibiscus-scented night.

It was nearing eleven when they returned to the hotel. Jiro’s face was red and flushed―he’d been drinking more than usual. Lance sat cross-legged on the carpet, rubbing Kintsugi’s belly.

“I’ve decided.” Jiro spoke up from the couch, his words slightly slurred. “When I’m champion, I won’t live at Indigo Plateau. It’s ridiculous having the champion so remote. If Saffron’s good enough for Parliament, it's good enough for me.”

“Mmm,” Lance said. He’d never been to Indigo Plateau, but he’d heard about it. A broad mountain, topped by a wide, flat plain, from which all Kanto was visible. Kana and Archer would probably enjoy the open space there. He wondered if it had a lake.

A pleasant lull fell. Lance closed his eyes and rested his head by Kintsugi’s paws, knowing he should go to bed, but unwilling to move from the floor. Tomorrow, his token might be called. Since the hustings had begun, he’d itched to fight Kikuko, but now that it might happen at any moment, Lance felt a small stab of reluctance. He wanted to win that battle, of course. But if he won―when he won―everything would change. For all the attention Jiro paid to how he dressed, the reporters that followed Jiro like second shadows mostly ignored him. That wouldn’t last once he took Kikuko’s place.

The sudden shrill of the phone startled Lance from his thoughts. Muttering under his breath, Jiro hoisted himself from the couch and picked up the receiver. His forehead scrunched. “Lance, do you know a Miss Iwata?” he called across the room.

Lance got to his feet. Miss Iwata called him every other Friday―what was she doing calling on a Monday? And why so late? He pulled the receiver from Jiro’s hand.

“Hello?”

“Agent Lance?” Miss Iwata’s voice was indistinct. “I’m so sorry to call at this hour. I tried to reach you three times already, but they said you were out―”

“It’s fine,” Lance said. He turned to Jiro, who looked desperately curious, and flapped his hand. “Can you, uh―”

A grin split his face. “I’ll give you two your privacy,” he said with an exaggerated wink and ambled unsteadily off towards his bedroom.

Great, Lance thought with an internal groan. Jiro would be teasing him about this for weeks.

“Is something wrong?” he asked Miss Iwata, trying to keep the annoyance from his voice.

“Not wrong, right! I finally have some information for you. That criminal you’re after―he’s going to be in Celadon City tomorrow. 6:00pm, at the Grand Royale Casino.”

Lance’s heart began to pound. “Are you sure?” he demanded. “How do you know?”

“Mr. Fiorelli canceled his lunch meeting today, and told me he’d be having lunch in. I thought it was odd, so toward the end of the lunch hour I took some papers that needed his signature and went up to his study. The door was locked, but I could hear voices. Then I heard Mr. Fiorelli say “Archer,” so I knew it was your man. He speaks softly, though. I couldn’t catch much, just that something was “risky.” But then Mr. Fiorelli said loud and clear, ‘6:00pm tonight, the Grand Royale. I’ll see you there.’ Is that―you people can do something with that, right?”

“Yes,” Lance said, though he wasn’t actually sure they could. Agent Noriko had explained to him in her usual dry way that as far as they could prove, Archer hadn’t done anything illegal. He gave his profession on his tax returns as the Grand Royale’s Chief Executive Officer and he held himself out as a businessman and high-society lender. Visiting his own casino probably wasn’t out of the ordinary. But Giovanni would be there too. If Lance could listen in on their meeting, if he could get proof that Archer was threatening Leader Fiorelli― “That’s really helpful, Miss Iwata. But listen, you have to be careful. Archer’s dangerous. If he realizes you’ve been eavesdropping on him―”

Miss Iwata cut him off, her tone polite but firm. “Respectfully, agent, where my sister is concerned, I’ll take whatever risks I like.”

“Of course,” Lance said, chagrined. “Just be careful, please.”

After she rang off, he sat for some time, staring at nothing. He fell asleep on the couch.

~*~

Tuesday’s hustings came and went without Lance’s token coming up. He had an excuse prepared if Jiro insisted on another gala, but they made it back to the hotel by five. Lance changed into his Rocket uniform, then threw on a dark sweater to hide the bright R. It took him some time to find one in his luggage―Jiro had been energetic in his efforts to replace Lance’s “entirely unsuitable” clothing.

Lastly, he grabbed the tape recorder Noriko had given him. Again, he wondered if he should try to contact her first. But what would be the point? He knew she didn’t trust him to do anything about Team Rocket. When he’d asked her for a real mission, all she’d done was give him this tape recorder and said to keep his ears peeled. Well, that was what he was doing, wasn’t it?

Jiro was also heading out. He raised an eyebrow at Lance’s all-black attire, but didn’t comment. They took the stairs down together, and as they stepped outside, both turned left, almost bumping. Jiro laughed. “The practice hall’s the other way,” he reminded Lance. His expression turned sly. “Or are you meeting a friend?”

“I’m going to see someone I haven’t seen in a while,” Lance said carefully. It wasn’t a lie, not exactly, but he felt rotten the moment he spoke, and even more so when Jiro nodded, oblivious to the undercurrent in Lance’s words.

Jiro was more than a mentor. He’d opened his life to Lance, and he deserved better than secrets. He deserved the truth―all of it, no matter how much it hurt to tell.

“Will you be free later tonight? To talk about―” Secrets and lies, Lance thought, wincing. “Just to talk,” he finished weakly.

Looking faintly bemused, Jiro nodded. “Of course. I’ve got business now, but it shouldn’t run too late.”

Lance shot him a quick smile, then set off down the street at a brisk walk. It had been years since he’d been in Celadon, but he could have found his way to the casino in his sleep. He followed a shortcut that led directly to the casino’s back entrance. A block away, he drew out his battered black cap and worked it onto his head, tucking in wayward strands of red hair.

Two men were stationed at the back entrance, their stances slumped and bored. Neither wore Rocket uniforms, just the midnight black of the casino staff. Lance steadied himself and then took off toward them at a run.

They watched him approach without any change in stance. Lance stopped a few feet away. “Is Archer here yet?” he said breathlessly.

“Executive Archer to you,” one of the men answered. “I haven't seen him. What's going on?”

Lance tried to look nervous and lost―he didn’t have to pretend very hard. “I don't know, they just told me ‘show up.’ Thought I was gonna be late. You-you don't know where I can find him?”

The other man shrugged. “Better check with the manager.”

Lance nodded. But as he stepped between them, a hand came down on his shoulder. He stiffened, his blood pumping hot.

“First time you’ll be assisting the executive?” the man asked.

Lance swallowed. “Yes,” he said. Seizing onto a thread of inspiration, he looked up and said in a rush, “Is it true that he―”

Both men laughed.

“He won't bite, boy, not if you keep a respectful tongue in your mouth.”

A jovial slap to the back propelled Lance through the entranceway. He jogged down the corridor until it turned a corner, then paused to collect himself. This was going to be harder than he’d thought. He didn't dare try the same ploy out on the manager―she was too likely to recognize him.

He decided to canvas the third floor, where the casino had its private meeting rooms. Trotting down the winding halls, Lance kept his head low. It was the dinner hour and downstairs the casino bustled, but the landing on the third floor was deserted. Most of the rooms were locked. But the room at the far end of the corridor had its door slightly ajar. Coming closer, Lance noticed a discrete ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.

Wataru?”

He froze.

“Wataru,” the voice said again, more sure this time.

Lance turned slowly, his heart thudding. A server in a pink kimono was coming towards him, pushing an ice cart in front of her. A stranger―at least, until she stepped out from behind the cart and their eyes met.

“It is you!” Aki breathed. “You’ve gotten so tall!”

He smiled uncertainly. She had also gotten taller. The baby fat in her cheeks had thinned out, and her hair was longer now, loose around her shoulders. She wheeled the cart past him, into the meeting room, then looked back, her uncertainty mirroring his own. “I have to prepare the room, but nobody will be here for a while yet. We can catch up?”

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The walls and floor were dark-paneled wood, lit by a low-hanging chandelier. A table stood at the center of the room, surrounded by plush chairs.

“Important guests?” Lance said, fighting to keep his voice casual.

She nodded as she draped a thick red cloth over the table and set out a silver bucket and three champagne glasses. “The executive’s coming. Are you here to see him? The manager told me you’d gone to work in his personal office.” She began to scoop ice, her eyes cast down. “I had to ask. You didn’t exactly say goodbye.”

Guilt prickled in his chest. “I’m sorry, Aki,” he said heavily. “I didn’t think―it happened really fast. How have you been?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m great.” She shoved a bottle of champagne into the ice-bucket. The ice crunched loudly. “I’m a senior server now. I’ve got―well, my boyfriend’s got―a nice apartment on the west end.”

As she reached to place another bottle in the bucket, her arm knocked against a glass, sending it rolling off the table edge. It hit the wood and shattered.

“Shit,” Aki said. Before Lance could react, she was on her knees, snatching up shards of glass with her bare fingers. “Shit, shit.”

He joined her on the ground, noticing how her hands trembled.

“Aki,” he said, alarmed. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer. Dumping the largest glass shards on the cart, she grabbed a cloth napkin and swept up the rest.

“It’s fine,” she said, pulling another glass out from the cart. “See? I always bring spares.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She set the spare glass on the table. Then, finally, she looked at him. Now that he was paying more attention, he noticed the puffiness under her eyes, the chalky paleness that indicated heavy make-up.

“You’re the first person to ask me that all month,” she said flatly. “And I haven’t seen you for three years.”

Lance glanced towards the closed door. He wasn’t sure how long they had until 6:00pm―as a rule, the casino rooms displayed no clocks. If Archer found him here . . .

“Aki, if something’s wrong, maybe I can help.”

“You can’t.” She wheeled the cart into a small alcove, drawing a curtain closed in front of it. Her back to him, she said, “For weeks, I haven’t been feeling well. Nausea in the mornings, throwing up my food. And every day I’m so tired I don’t know how I’m going to get up. So I stopped by a chansey shop last week. They told me I’m―that I’m.”

“―sick?”

“Pregnant.”

“Oh,” Lance said stupidly. He looked at her stomach, but it didn’t seem that big.

“I haven’t told anyone,” Aki said, her voice picking up speed. “I haven’t told Benjiro. I just don’t know if he―I don’t know if this is what he signed up for. And if it’s not and if he doesn’t―I put all my savings into the deposit, but the apartment’s in his name, and I think maybe I’ve been really dumb.” Her throat worked. “I just don’t know how I’m going to do this. I don’t know.”

Lance didn't know either. He sought for something to say, but all his mind offered back was the empty saunas of the spa Jiro had reserved. He wondered how much money it had cost, and what that kind of money would have meant to Aki.

She rubbed her temples. “Sorry. Gods, I haven’t even asked how you are.”

“I’m―”

Were those footsteps in the hallway?

“Aki,” he said, fear sharpening his tone. “They can’t see me in here.”

She blinked at him. “Executive’s orders?”

It would be so easy to say yes. But after her honesty, Lance couldn’t bear to lie to her.

“No,” he said softly.

Definitely footsteps. Aki stared at him, then gestured frantically toward the alcove. He made it behind the curtain just as the door swung open.

The alcove was about as large as Toku. Along with the ice cart, Lance barely fit. He heard footsteps clattering on wood and then the scrape of chairs being drawn back. Hoping the noise would cover his actions, Lance opened his pack and pulled out the recorder. He winced at the low hiss it made as the cassette began to turn.

“May I pour you some champagne, sirs?” Aki asked, crisp and professional.

“Certainly, my dear.” Giovanni’s smooth baritone was unmistakable. There was a clink and a loud pop.

“None for me.”

Lance had been bracing himself for it, but Archer’s stiff drawl still hit him like a slap to the face. He heard his breathing speed up and forced it steady.

“Of course, executive,” said Aki. “And you, sir?”

“I’ll indulge.”

Lance froze.

The third voice continued brightly, “Genuine Kalos import? You’re spoiling us, executive.”

He knew that voice. But it was impossible.

Lance couldn’t help it: he twitched back the curtain just enough for the room to flash into view. Three men were seated around the table. Giovanni swirled his glass, expression indulgent. Archer sat rigid in his chair. And smiling up at Aki as she poured his drink . . . was Jiro.

The curtain flopped back into place. Lance stared at its coarse red fabric, unable to form a single coherent thought.

“But of course. Only the best for yourself and Leader Fiorelli. That’s all, girl. We aren’t to be disturbed for the next hour.”

There was a lull, filled by Aki’s departing footsteps. The door thudded shut.

“A toast,” Giovanni said into the silence. “To Kanto’s future champion, Adachi Jiro!”

The glasses clinked.

“Won’t you drink to that, executive?” Jiro asked, his tone teasing.

“You’ll forgive me, Master Jiro. I make a habit of avoiding intoxicants, particularly when discussing business.”

Giovanni chuckled. “He’s hopeless, Jiro―believe me, I’ve tried.”

Jiro chuckled too. More seriously, he said, “I’m grateful that you’re taking the time, executive. I know you’ve got a busy schedule.”

“As do you, for the next few weeks. I’m slightly perplexed as to why we’re here, Master Jiro. I thought we had agreed that you would receive your loan once your position was secure.”

“That’s right. But the situation’s changed. I got word on Sunday that the city’s pushing the auction forward. I’m afraid I’ve run out of ways to delay.”

“I appreciate that circumstances have changed for you, Master Jiro, but I don’t see how they’ve changed for me. You’re requesting I advance the full sum on a probability, rather than a certainty. You can hardly fail to grasp my reservations.”

“I think, Jiro,” Giovanni interjected, “that what Executive Archer wants to know is how sure you are. Even if I endorse, if it goes to vote and you lose Pewter, that’s the end of it. And you know I’d prefer not to go public on the race. The politics are delicate, to say the least.”

“I understand completely, Giovanni, and I’m telling you, there’s no need. Lance is going to win.”

Lance flinched at the sound of his name. Had Jiro always said it like that? Proud. Proprietary.

“Ah, yes.” Archer’s voice was drier than Pewter’s parched air. “Your dragon-wielding prodigy. I heard Champion Kikuko thrashed him in a private battle last month. Given that, do you really expect me to take your assurances seriously?”

“Respectfully, Executive Archer, you don’t know Lance. I do. You’d be hard pressed to find a more capable trainer―or a more stubborn one. When I first fought him, my persian took down his dragonite. After that, the two of them didn’t give it a rest until they could match us. More than match, if I’m being entirely honest. He’s going to beat Kikuko, and in my opinion, it’s not going to be close. The old zubat’s gotten cocky.”

A short silence followed Jiro’s pronouncement. Then came the sound of a hand slapped against wood. Lance almost dropped the recorder.

“Well dammit, Jiro, you’ve convinced me. Haven’t you heard enough, Archer? I say, give this man his money.”

“As one of our chief investors, your opinion is, of course, entitled to the highest deference, Leader Fiorelli. Master Jiro, you understand that if I were to grant this advance, under these highly exceptional circumstances, I would expect, shall we say, reciprocal consideration on your part in the future.”

“That goes without saying, executive. I promise you, when I’m champion you won’t find me ungrateful.”

“It’s settled, then!” boomed Giovanni. “Executive, I’m sure you can manage the fiddly details. Jiro, shall we head down to the floor and go a few rounds of poker?”

Jiro’s laughter sparkled with relief. “How can I refuse? But only a round, Giovanni. You’re a dangerous man at the poker table. If I’m not careful, it’ll be you, not me, walking out of here with Executive Archer’s money!”

“You’re a scandalous flatterer, Jiro. Very well. One round only, but do make it good. Worthy opponents are so hard to come by these days.”

The chairs scraped again. The door opened and shut. After a minute had passed in silence, Lance dared another twitch of the curtain.

Archer hadn’t left. He stood with his back half to the alcove, unmoving. Lance froze. The recorder’s whirring sounded louder in his ears than a rushing waterfall. Any moment now Archer would turn, their eyes would meet―

As Lance watched, Archer lifted Giovanni’s abandoned glass to his lips. He contemplated it with a strange, private smile, then took a single sip. Without even a glance in Lance’s direction, he slipped out the door.

~*~​

The ginkgo trees had all shed their leaves.

When had it happened? Only yesterday, Lance remembered looking out the taxi window and seeing a limitless sweep of gold. But the branches were bare beneath the street lamps, and pale yellow leaves clung to the soles of his boots. As the hotel came into view, his walk slowed into a trudge.

He wanted to fly. He wanted it so much he could almost feel the cold wind on his face, how the city would become nothing more than a grounded constellation. But he had to talk to Jiro. He had to try and understand what he’d heard. Lance had the strangest feeling that he’d just witnessed another kabuki play, all labyrinthine words and artificial gestures, and beneath it all some meaning, just out of reach.

But if it was a play, who had been the audience?

Lance’s heart hammered as he unlocked the door, but the hotel suite was empty. He walked over to the room where Jiro slept and for the first time, tried the door. It opened without resistance. Inside, Jiro’s bed was strewn with clothes, shimmers of gold and russet, sunny yellows and burnt reds. Lance began to poke around in the drawers, under the bed, not sure why he was searching or what he was searching for. Maybe he was just looking for anything hidden, anything that hinted at some discrepancy between outward and inward―but there was nothing to find.

He crossed back into the living room. A glance at the clock told him that almost an hour had slipped by. He slumped on the couch, and it was only then that he realized how tired he was. His legs and eyes seemed to have turned into stone weights. But despite the fatigue, he couldn’t stay still. Jittery, he swung to his feet and made a circuit of the room, from the couch to the window, then back to the door. He did it again, and again, picking up speed until he was moving at just short of a run. The pidgey clock trilled. It was 9:00pm.

When the door finally swung open, Lance had his face pressed to the window, watching the city lights flicker. He spun around as Jiro entered the room, humming.

“Winter’s coming on quickly,” Jiro said conversationally. He unlooped his scarf, tossing it across the nearest armchair, and began to work on his coat buttons. Lance said nothing. Once his coat was shucked, Jiro glanced at the clock and performed a double-take. “Quarter after nine already?” he said. “I hope I haven’t been keeping you waiting. I got a bit caught up.”

“Playing poker?” Lance said quietly. His voice came out hoarse, like some grit had lodged in his throat.

Jiro blinked. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Lance,” he said, playfully stern. “You weren’t meeting this friend of yours at the Grand Royale, were you? I know it’s hypocritical coming from me, but there are some bad habits you don’t want to develop too young. If you’ve really got your heart set on gambling, I can take you sometime this spring, after you’ve turned eighteen.”

Lance studied Jiro’s loose smile. He seemed at ease, as if this conversation was no different than a hundred ones they’d had before.

“Is playing poker all you were doing?”

“Bit of business, bit of pleasure,” Jiro said vaguely. He squinted at Lance. “What’s this all about? Kikuko hasn’t been feeding you some nonsense, has she? I thought I saw that damn gengar of hers lurking around. Well, she can take―”

“This is nothing to do with Kikuko,” Lance interrupted. The anger spiked in him suddenly. Jiro could talk until the tauros came home and still not come to the point. He drew in a short breath. “I saw you. I heard you. What’s Archer giving you? What does he want in return?”

For a long moment, Jiro didn’t speak. Then he walked slowly over to the couch and sat, gesturing towards the armchair opposite. “Sit down, Lance. Let’s talk.”

It felt a bit like conceding something, but Lance took a seat.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you heard this.”

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not. Listen, it’s simple enough. I need a loan; Executive Archer’s giving me one. That’s all.”

“But what do you need a loan for?” Lance burst out. He’d been turning it over in his mind while he waited, and the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. “You’ve got more money than there’s koiking in the sea!”

“Ah. Well.” Jiro’s smile shaded on a grimace. “That’s certainly the impression I aim to impart, yes. However, there are certain debts that have gotten a little on top of me in recent years. And now that I’m in a position where I need a substantial sum right at this moment, it’s been a tad difficult to find a lender willing to extend their goodwill. Even with Archer it was a close call―if Giovanni hadn’t had my back, I’m sure he would have sent me packing.”

“But you―” Lance shook his head, trying to square that with everything he knew about Jiro. The pieces didn’t fit. “If you need money so much, what are you doing reserving spas and buying me shiny new clothes every other day?”

“Appearances are important, Lance. How many times have I told you that? And it’s not like―” For the first time, Jiro looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well, take the spa. The manager was happy to do me that favor. No money needed.”

Lance’s forehead creased. “What?” he said sharply. “You mean you didn’t even pay? Why would the manager agree to that?”

Jiro seemed to weigh his words. Then he shrugged and said simply, “Because I’m going to be champion.”

Lance digested that in silence. The room felt very warm. “So it was a bribe. Archer too. It’s all bribes.”

Hideyoshi’s words rang through his mind. They’ve got the pocket of everyone who matters.

Jiro’s nose wrinkled. “That’s an ugly word, and an inaccurate one. It’s favors, Lance. Favors are the grease that turns the world’s gears. Everyone does it.”

Then everyone was wrong. What kind of thing was that to say?

“So Archer does you a favor and you’ll do him one back? What do you think that’ll be?” His voice rose. “Don’t you know who he is?”

“The Grand Royale’s CEO,” Jiro answered, tone entirely baffled. “And a seriously cold ‘karp if you want my opinion, but that’s neither here nor there. I know what he wants: looser licensing, fewer restrictions on the import-export of pokemon, shaking the dust off some of the old morality laws. It’s practically my platform anyway.”

“He all but runs Team Rocket.”

“What’s that? Oh,” Jiro said, before Lance could open his mouth, “they’re that trainer’s rights group. What’s your point? They’re a bit obnoxious, but nothing to get worked up about.”

“They kill people,” Lance said flatly. “If you don’t believe me, talk to Agent Noriko from the G-Force. She’ll tell you.”

“Slow down,” Jiro said, blinking. “Kill people? The G-Force? Lance―” He held out his arms placatingly. “It’s just a loan, all right? No need to get the G-Men involved.”

He’s not lying. He really doesn’t know. Lance’s anger faltered, punctured by a rush of relief. He forced his voice back down. “This is serious, Jiro. You have no idea. Whatever you need that money for, it’s not worth it. Give it back. Tell them you don’t need it.”

“I do need it, though.” Jiro leaned forward, his eyes bright. “I was planning to tell you once the sale was complete, but―it’s Fearow Hill. I’m buying Fearow Hill. And it can’t wait. The city needs revenue, they’re putting the land up for auction. It’s prime pickings for development―the view alone is a goldmine, and nobody but me cares that construction there would mean stripping the trees, driving away the fearow.” Jiro’s face went tight as he spoke. “I can’t just let that happen.”

Lance’s eyes widened. Jiro had never said it outright, but from his offhand comments Lance had come to understand that Fearow Hill was the closest Jiro had gotten to a permanent home. In a burst of sympathy, Lance imagined monstrous bulldozers piling into the Ryu’s Gift like an invading army, tearing up the koiking grass and banishing the kairyu.

“That’s―that’s terrible,” Lance said emphatically. “But surely―surely you can’t be the only one who’d want to stop it. People probably just don’t know. You should tell them. If you speak up about it, about how it’s been the fearow’s home so long, and what that means, wouldn’t Saffron support you?”

Of course they would. Saffron loved Jiro. He could do it at the Celadon town hall, in front of all the journalists with their notebooks and recorders. Lance was opening his mouth to suggest it, when Jiro started to laugh, low and bitter.

“Raise a stink and piss off all of local government, not to mention the development industry and the construction unions to boot?” His voice was sharp, incredulous. “You have no idea how badly that would go. No, I’ve got to buy the land. It’s the only option.”

“Sounds to me,” Lance fired back, “sounds to me like it’s the easy option, not the only one.”

Jiro sucked in a breath. Anger flashed across his face, distorting his handsome features, but when he spoke his voice was level, almost bored. “Think what you want, then, but it’s my choice to make.”

“It’s not. Not when it involves me. Don’t sit there and tell me it doesn’t. They don’t think you’re going to win. They don’t want to give you money. So you use me―” Lance’s voice cracked. The anger was back, hot and thick, and it was impossible to sit still, so Lance got to his feet. He was shouting. “I’m supposed to hand you the championship so you can go and take their bribes and make their laws. Aren’t I?”

Jiro shook his head sharply. “It’s not like that, Lance. You’ve got it all turned around. You’re in the hustings to join the Elite Four because you want to be there and because I want you to be there with me.” His gaze latched on to Lance, arms open and beseeching. “And I want that because I trust you. Don’t you trust me?”

Lance shut his eyes to block out Jiro’s face. His head buzzed, and his body felt strangely weightless―liable to float away.

“Jiro, just. Please. This isn’t right. Give the money back. Tell Archer you won’t have anything to do with him ever again.”

His eyes were still closed when Jiro’s answer came. “I’m sorry, Lance. I can’t do that.”

“Then you’re a coward,” Lance whispered.

He didn’t wait for Jiro’s reaction. Turning, he grabbed his backpack from the table and made for the door. He had nothing else to say.

Nothing.

~*~​

The late autumn wind snapped and bit at Lance’s face. It was a cold night for outdoor camping, and he wasn’t dressed for it. When he shivered again, Kana rumbled and pulled him flush against her belly, draping him with her warm, leathery wings. He’d fled to their old spot outside Celadon―a little more trampled than it had been three years ago, but still isolated. Still a place to get away and think.

He’d tried calling Noriko first. She hadn’t picked up until his third attempt, and when she did her voice was edged with irritation at the lateness of the hour. The irritation hadn’t gone away when he explained.

“Going after Elite Four members for taking loans is not in our mandate, Lance.”

“Not loans, bribes. And from Team Rocket.”

“Unless you’re telling me that Jiro’s actively collaborating with them and you can prove it . . .” When he stayed silent, she continued, “Look. I’ve already told you—we don’t have anything on Archer yet. If Jiro’s taking loans from him, that’s a matter for an ethics committee but not for us. We fight crime, Lance. We’re not a roving morality commission. And frankly, if we start going after popular Elite Four members, we can kiss our funding goodbye. ”

Then what good are you? Lance had thought furiously. He hadn’t said it, though. Just set down the phone and walked out into the night.

Now he looked out at his pokemon, arranged in a loose circle like his very own counsel of elders. It had been hard to put Jiro’s conduct into words they understood. Money didn’t hold the same weight to pokemon. But betrayal did.

Kaisho’s trill broke the silence. The hakuryu slithered forward, jutting out his head. Jiro’s yellow ribbon, still tied around his horn, shone in the thin moonlight.

Lance undid the ribbon and twined it around his fingers. He thought of the clothes Jiro had gifted him, their fine fabrics and careful embroidery. And then he thought of Kaisho, displayed in the artificial blue water of the casino tank.

“Everything he’s given us,” Lance said slowly. “Maybe it was always more for him than for us.”

Kaisho whined, his tail whipping from side to side. From the river, Ibuki let out a roar. She bent down her massive neck and snatched the ribbon from Lance’s hand, taking care not to graze his skin with her teeth. Slaver dripped down the sides of her mouth.

Despite everything, Lance had to laugh. “How about we save eating him for plan B?” he managed.

Archer let out a caw. With the help of the others, he acted out an elaborate charade showing what the aerodactyl did to the ones who took more food than was their share. The flock pushed them from the nest, and harried them if they dared approach again.

“I’m just a person, though. Not a whole flock.”

Lance twisted around.

“Toku?” he said. “What do you think?”

She’d been silent since he first spoke, her eyes dark and hooded. Now she pointed up at the sky, where the half-moon beamed. Then she pointed towards a level patch of dirt. She crooned softly.

“Oh,” said Lance. The fatigue hit him suddenly, like a mallet. “You’re right.”

He pulled out a thin blanket from his backpack and lay it out on the dirt, wishing he’d thought to grab his coat when he’d stormed out of the room. But Toku and Kana crowded in next to him, their bodies blocking out the worst of the wind. His mind churned, muddy and turbulent.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I’ll figure it out.

~*~​

Jiro hadn’t slept.

Even from the distance of the bleachers, Lance could tell. He’d applied kohl to hide his red-rimmed eyes, but nothing could disguise the dullness in his voice or the hollowness of his smile as he greeted the crowd. His gaze skipped right over Lance, sitting with his cap pressed low in the challenger’s section of the bleachers. It was the first time Lance had sat with the other challengers. They buzzed with boasts and stratagems, but Lance was deaf to it all.

He almost hadn’t come. A part of him still longed to leap on Toku’s back and leave Celadon behind. But running wouldn’t solve anything this time. With a night’s sleep behind him, he could see that he’d handled the confrontation all wrong. He’d been too ruled by his outrage to think straight―so sure that if Jiro only understood what he’d gotten himself into, he’d do the right thing.

Well, Lance knew him better now. He wouldn’t, not on his own. But that didn’t make Lance helpless. When the hustings wrapped for the day, he’d give Jiro an ultimatum. Give back the money, or I won’t fight Kikuko.

“Thirty two!” The bleachers began to chant for the benefit of anyone in the back who couldn’t see the board. “Thirty two!”

“Saffron number,” muttered a woman next to Lance. The chant continued ten more times, then died down.

Lance turned his eyes back to the battlefield. Jiro had been fighting poorly. He’d suffered an early knock-out, losing Asahi to an icebeam that on any other day he would have countered with a mirror move. Between battles he sat slumped in his seat, his face drawn. Kintsugi, who usually claimed his lap, lay curled an arm’s length away, her tail twitching. Lance wondered if he’d told her what had happened.

“Fifty seven!” Lance startled. The woman next to him joined her voice to the chorus. “Fifty seven!”

Lance had memorized the surface of his token, every groove and scuff. But he still drew it from his pocket, unwilling to believe. Fifty seven. The number hadn’t changed.

“That’s me,” he said. His words were swallowed by the chanting, but the woman next to him heard. Her eyes lit up and she hollered, “Hey, make space! We’ve got one!”

The rest of the bleachers took up her call. “Budge up, make space!”

Knees were drawn in, backpacks lifted off the ground. Lance stood unsteadily. As he passed, someone gave his back an encouraging slap.

And then, with all the suddenness of teleportation, he was at the foot of the stairs, holding out his token to a burly man in striped league garb and a bored-looking kadabra at his side.

“Name?” the man said.

“Lance.” His voice was so soft he barely heard himself. “Lance,” he said again, more distinctly.

“You know the challenge words?”

He nodded.

“Rule of Three isn’t active. When you hear the bell, take your place in the challenger’s diamond. Don’t speak until you’ve been announced. And please remove the headgear. Good luck, challenger.”

The kadabra gestured, and a gap formed in the shield that separated the battlefield from the spectator stands. Lance pulled off his cap. His mind had gone completely blank.

Then he heard the bell.

It took him ten strides to reach the white chalk outline of the challenger’s diamond. At the sight of him, Jiro’s whole face lit up like noonday sun. His mouth jerked open as if he meant to continue their conversation then and there, in front of all Kanto.

He’s thought better of it, Lance’s thoughts sang out desperately. He’ll give it back. He’ll turn it down.

Kikuko’s gaze bored into him, her black eyes narrowing into slits. Shadows curled at her feet. Her fingers closed around her staff.

“―the challenger, Lance!”

He remembered rain beating on his back, sand pressed under his knees. Hamako’s nails digging into his shoulders.

Promise me, boy.

You could only draw your token once. You couldn’t cross an ocean twice. He had to choose, and if he chose wrong, there wouldn’t be another chance.

He opened his mouth.

When he finished the challenge, no one moved. They just stared at him, like he was an actor who had given the wrong line.

So Lance said it again.

“Jiro of the Elite Four, stand and face me.”
 

Persephone

Infinite Screms
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her/hers
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Oh? A teenager banished from home has made a questionable decision after an argument on minimal sleep? Ah, the Broken Things cast can empathize. Truly the best way to make Good Decisions Only.

I mentioned this after sliding into your DMs, but it would really be helpful to have a quick recap after long hiatuses. Even a few sentences would go a long way.

Okay, Hustings. I thought the play did a good job of summarizing what / why they were. I was otherwise trying to figure out what was going on and what the rules were as I read as it’s been a while and even if I understood the rules before I definitely did not now. Have you considered a biweekly update schedule? Helps prevent these kinds of problems.

The action was sparse, even in the one or two Important Battles, but I didn’t really mind. Only noticed when I sat back and tried to comment on it in this review. Also why is Jiro allowed a Clefable get this imposter out of here.

I will say that I didn’t see the cause for the schism coming. Getting in deep with the mob to save the borbs is not a plot beat I’ve seen before. Neither have I seen a conservationist’s protege attempting to beat up his cat with dragons to prevent him from getting in deep with the mob to save the borbs. But I’m sure someone can relate.

I don’t remember Aki but it’s cool Lance cares for her a little, even picking up broken glass. Separates him from Jiro and helps justify his Politicians Should Not Be Involved In Anything Even A Little Wrong stance. Also, Archer definitely knew he was there. But did nothing. Drama!

Wait has Lance had a mentor he didn’t betray? Will he ever?

Anyway, there’s a small plot hole here. Lance shouldn’t know Aki. Only Wataru should. And Aki also calls him Wataru when this is actually the Book 2 Generation Skip Protagonist, Lance, who has an unknown relationship with the Book 1 Protagonist, Wataru. They are apparently quite similar, though? Are they siblings? Father and son? Clones? I look forward to learning the answer. I’m sure everyone else is, too.
 

WildBoots

Don’t underestimate seeds.
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Eyyyy it's my first review in ,,, uhhhhh

We've been building to this moment for a long time! It's inevitable, since we've heard of Lance but not Jiro in canon, but I still found the payoff satisfying.

I was pleasantly surprised that, although Jiro does indeed disappoint Lance in the end, he's doing it for a personal reason rather than one that's purely about his own power and prestige. In fact, we're finally seeing the holes in his power. The politics in general felt realistically complicated and messy, and in many ways Jiro is emblematic of the coexisting contradictions in Kantoan politics. He's such a symbol of opulence and uses it to his advantage to pull more power to himself, and even when it's just a facade it still keeps him from Getting It when it comes to the Pewter miners. Maybe it's because it's a facade that he misses some of the things Lance notices in this chapter: he's too busy climbing to notice what's below. But he does still also know what it means not to have enough, and it's his loyalty to the pokemon that were there for him when he had nothing that ultimately motivates him. Sometimes the things he said reminded me of ways the US left fails to actually embody its own ideals, and at other moments his stances were almost conservative. The result of the messiness both feels distinct from any real world politics and so very, very real.

The asymmetry of information here is delicious. Lance has learned so much ... and yet. (And, man, your mom must have such a different read on this not having the same prior knowledge we all do about just what Giovanni's relationship to Archer is. I wanna know what she thinks is happening.)

I also see what you mean about having a lot of battles coming up in this one. I think you did a god job picking the most important parts to focus on and keeping things moving smoothly.

I don't totally feel like I understand the structure of the hustings. But I think I'm at about a 90% understanding, and I definitely think it's enough for me to get the impact of what Lance has chosen. It definitely feels ceremonial, layers of history both deeply felt and half-remembered in turns, which feels right and adds a lot to the usual presentation of the E4 challenge. Canon's answer to picking a champion is sort of a shrug, either a black box (he's just the champion okay) or pandering to a blank slate player character, and fanon mostly spends its time justifying the canon formulas rather than coming up with something else that makes better sense. This feels close enough to canon to be recognizable while actually addressing some of the questions about what it means to become a champion. And they're questions we'd better answer, since this story has never been satisfied to accept that power and strength are equivalent.

At the ring of the battle bell,
Why not "at the bell"?

part of Jiro’s plan to strengthen his team’s psychic resistance.
Something about "Jiro's plan" is giving me less "we have a training program" and more "all according to keikaku."

Alakazam sent out a volley of energy balls that left the battlefield covered with craters.
I sort of wanted a reaction from Lance here.

it’s been sustained with a five-minute wait.
I'm torn. Five minutes feels like a long time for a sporting event but also, yeah, feels like the bare minimum you could wait to see poison set in. I found myself wondering what it feels like to wait and see for that long, how the announcers handle it and keep the hype going. A little more of that content--like, a sentence or two worth--would help me suspend my disbelief.

Kikuko had all but proclaimed, “Even with every advantage, you can’t defeat me.”

“She’s arrogant,” Lance told Kaisho. “We can use that when we face her.”
Nice. He's really learning to strategize. And I think this level of strategy is what makes your character arcs so satisfying: it's not just about match-ups and math. It also validates what the human brings to a fight they aren't participating in, making the human and pokemon feel like more equal partners.

This was Jiro’s show, not his. All Lance had to do was play his part.
Oof. On the one hand, Lance, how do you think you're ever going to get what you want if you're always playing a part in someone else's show? On the other hand, he is still just a kid. On the other other hand, I've finished the chapter and welp so much for that, huh, Jiro.

By the end of the fifth and final day of the Saffron hustings, Jiro’s team had taken twelve knockouts in total and they all looked exhausted. Even Kintsugi’s usually perfect coat had become patchy and unevenly groomed.

“Saffron’s usually the worst of it,” Jiro said, as they departed the stadium. “Town hall tomorrow, and then we’ll have one free day before the hustings resume in Celadon. The town hall should be a good time, at least. People love me here.”
Roughhh. This reminds me of the world series! R and I aren't very knowledgeable about baseball, so we were both shooketh to learn that it's a 5-day event of back-to-back-to-back bouts with no break in between. So all this to say, there's a precedent for this, and not just in game canon.

as Jiro and Kikuko fielded a volley of questions about industrial standards, trade with Hoenn, and Saffron’s housing crunch.
Ooh yeah. This really nicely adds some richness to the world--there are lots of problems without easy solutions here--and sets the scale for what a champion is expected to deal with.

“How about outside Saffron?” Lance said, his thoughts turning to Pewter’s miners. He was pretty sure they worked more than five days in a row and didn’t see a spa at the end of it, much less a private one.
Oof. Good looking out, Lance.

Jiro snorted. “If Kanto really believed in democracy, I wouldn’t have to worry about ‘outside Saffron.’ We’ve got more people than every other township and municipality in Kanto, but thanks to this damned archaic system, Saffron has the same say in the champiancy as Pallet Town―and calling Pallet a town is stretching it. More like Professor Okido’s personal research fief.”
Woah, this is interesting. This reminds me a lot of complaints against the electoral college. Like, mood, but also Jiro's being pretty tone deaf to the feelings of people who live in the more rural areas.

I had my doubts back when Hamako was still kicking around―a traditionalist to her core, that one―but I've had some very productive conversations with the Waterflower Sisters and I can't see them putting in for Kikuko.
Oof, it does not bode well that what's good for Jiro aligns so closely with what's good for Giovanni.

“You left out Viridian,” Lance said, choosing to ignore the jab at Hamako.
Priorities.

"Oh, Giovanni’s a friend, but he’s also a cagey bastard. Wants to keep his finger in every pie, you know.” Jiro cracked open an eye. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest, Lance, but you shouldn’t worry too much about the politics. It’s not going to come to a vote. You’ll beat Kikuko first.”
A fRiEnD. (Record scratch!) Man, Jiro really thinks he's maintaining the appropriate cautious distance from Gio with dismissive comments like that, but he's so out of his depth.

“Is everything all right?” Lance finally ventured. Jiro’s gaze snapped over to him, and he waved a vague hand.
This is so easy to picture. Nailed this one.

“Theater’s just so tedious. And Kazuki’s Tale is horribly overdone. They always perform it for the hustings and of course it’s a snub to Celadon if we don’t show up, so here we are.”
Womp, so much for Jiro's air of culture. I like how this also echoes the way we see his pokemon getting tired. The climb to the top comes with some burdens.

He had never been to a theater before. With its stage surrounded by a half-circle of bleachers, Lance thought it looked a lot like a battle stadium, though the seats were definitely more comfortable. The air was thick with the same anticipation that heralded a pokemon battle, but when the lights dimmed, the crowd went quiet instead of loud.
The entire description of the theater was so nice, especially the attention to sound. You really captured the magic and strangeness of it from Lance's POV. TBH, I would struggle to grasp the intricacies of Kabuki theather too, bud. Very valid reaction, baby Lance. And, again, very nice additional context for the idea of the E4 and the champion. AND the way Lance sees possibility here where Jiro can't is a nice precursor to their split.

Each battle had been condensed to its most essential moments, those crucial shifts that normally occurred in the space between blinks.
Sounds like this chapter! Hahaha.

When the curtain fell and the lights returned, Lance rose in a thoughtful mood. What would have happened if the great dragon masters had been like Kazuki? If they had stood and fought, rather than retreating into their seclusion?
Big questions! Moments like this show how much he's not just a kid from the Ryu's Gift anymore. He's been changed by the world in some major ways.

He hummed as he smeared spicy mustard over his natto and rice,
Atta boy, Jiro! 💛

Kaisho’s answering trill sounded less than sure. Jiro turned around.

“Come here,” he said firmly. When Kaisho floated over, he undid the yellow ribbon from his bun and tied it neatly around Kaisho’s horn. “You need to look your best, too,” he said. “Now listen. You’re strong. You’re smart. You’ve trained hard every day. Kikuko doesn’t stand a chance.”
This was a nice moment. I liked that Kaisho got a pep talk too. It really sells the idea that, again, the human characters and the pokemon truly are partners in essence not just in name. It's not enough to convince Lance. You have to convince his team too.

“This token is your battling ticket,” said the clerk. “Remember, you’re only entitled to one. Sale of tokens is forbidden by law and carries a civil fine and league expulsion. If your token is called and you do not present yourself within fifteen minutes, you forfeit your challenge and your token number will be struck. Please affirm that you understand the rules.”
Mmm juicy.

Lance opened his mouth to suggest that maybe his time would be better spent training than partying. “The moment you beat Kikuko, you become a member of the Elite Four. You should start acting like it.”
Lance, grow up and party like an adult.

Since the hustings had begun, he’d itched to fight Kikuko, but now that it might happen at any moment, Lance felt a small stab of reluctance. He wanted to win that battle, of course. But if he won―when he won―everything would change
This is such a mood!! I feel some of this now thinking about the next step in my career. It's mostly positive, but I will lose out on some of my free time too. The big wins can be scary just because they change so much.

I think the fear of success is something a lot of people miss in their rise-to-the-top arcs, or it's written as more of a self-esteem problem. The fact that Lance can recognize what he'll lose by achieving his goal shows both that he's grown so fucking much and that he's being intentional. He's considered the pros and cons.

“Agent Lance?” Miss Iwata’s voice was indistinct. “I’m so sorry to call at this hour. I tried to reach you three times already, but they said you were out―”

“It’s fine,” Lance said. He turned to Jiro, who looked desperately curious, and flapped his hand. “Can you, uh―”

A grin split his face. “I’ll give you two your privacy,” he said with an exaggerated wink and ambled unsteadily off towards his bedroom.
Little does he know this boy's gay as a rainbow.

Agent Noriko had explained to him in her usual dry way that as far as they could prove, Archer hadn’t done anything illegal. He gave his profession on his tax returns as the Grand Royale’s Chief Executive Officer
Oof oof ouch oh no too real.

if he could get proof that Archer was threatening Leader Fiorelli
Lol oopsie

Again, he wondered if he should try to contact her first. But what would be the point?
Reading this, I was screaming internally for Lance to seek an adult, yes, but having finished the chapter ... damn, he was right though.

Jiro was more than a mentor. He’d opened his life to Lance, and he deserved better than secrets. He deserved the truth―all of it, no matter how much it hurt to tell.

“Will you be free later tonight? To talk about―” Secrets and lies, Lance thought, wincing. “Just to talk,” he finished weakly.
Should you tell him though, bucko?

I loved the very anime moment of them leaving the apartment at the same time, not realizing they were going to the same place. Chef's kiss.

Lance shot him a quick smile, then set off down the street at a brisk walk. It had been years since he’d been in Celadon, but he could have found his way to the casino in his sleep.
Ooh yeah, I bet he could. I wish we'd had more "b roll" passages setting the scene as we return to Celadon, TBH. Does he see it differently now that he's grown some and burned through 1.5 mentors? Or does being back here make him feel like "the gambler" again? This city was a real turning point for him, and it seems like he'd feel that casino staring at him even when it wasn't actually visible from where he stood.

“It is you!” Aki breathed. “You’ve gotten so tall!”
Aww, it's nice to see her back! His first same-species friend! This makes your version of Kanto feel both a little small and like it's alive. Characters don't vanish just because the protagonist has gone somewhere else.

“You can’t.” She wheeled the cart into a small alcove, drawing a curtain closed in front of it. Her back to him, she said, “For weeks, I haven’t been feeling well. Nausea in the mornings, throwing up my food. And every day I’m so tired I don’t know how I’m going to get up. So I stopped by a chansey shop last week. They told me I’m―that I’m.”
Ruh roh that sounds like--welp, there it is.

He wondered how much money it had cost, and what that kind of money would have meant to Aki.
Yup.

Though I think the next level for Lance is going to be ... okay, so I can see these disparities, but can I finagle the resources and public attention to actually do something about it.

Aki stared at him, then gestured frantically toward the alcove. He made it behind the curtain just as the door swung open.
Very Golden Compass vibes!

“I’ll indulge.”

Lance froze.

The third voice continued brightly, “Genuine Kalos import? You’re spoiling us, executive.”

He knew that voice. But it was impossible.
Yup. Wow, what great payoff to be a fly on the wall in this room.

“That’s right. But the situation’s changed. I got word on Sunday that the city’s pushing the auction forward. I’m afraid I’ve run out of ways to delay.”
:eyes:

Lance flinched at the sound of his name. Had Jiro always said it like that? Proud. Proprietary.
We're having some big growing pains today.

“Ah, yes.” Archer’s voice was drier than Pewter’s parched air. “Your dragon-wielding prodigy. I heard Champion Kikuko thrashed him in a private battle last month. Given that, do you really expect me to take your assurances seriously?”
Omg, this conversation must be so awkward for him. I wonder if he resents Jiro for seeming to wield Lance to his ends when Archer couldn't. I also love that Jiro thinks this is a jab at Lance's capabilities (and therefore his own) when for Archer it's really a jab at Lance's trustworthiness.

“Respectfully, Executive Archer, you don’t know Lance. I do.
lolololololololol

If I’m not careful, it’ll be you, not me, walking out of here with Executive Archer’s money!”
No, never.

As Lance watched, Archer lifted Giovanni’s abandoned glass to his lips. He contemplated it with a strange, private smile, then took a single sip. Without even a glance in Lance’s direction, he slipped out the door.
!?!?!?!!!!11 Oh my god. Homoerotic AF, TBH. I don't totally know what this moment means to Archer, but I imagine time will shed more light on it. Meanwhile, what a power move. I also love how this reinforces Lance's idea that Archer is the big boss, even though he isn't.

The ginkgo trees had all shed their leaves.
Ginkgo the kitty says hi

This is such a nice image for Lance's disillusionment. He's grown as time has passed, but also he's been stripped of his illusions of support and safety.

But if it was a play, who had been the audience?
Me

Who indeed.

Lance’s heart hammered as he unlocked the door, but the hotel suite was empty. He walked over to the room where Jiro slept and for the first time, tried the door. It opened without resistance. Inside, Jiro’s bed was strewn with clothes, shimmers of gold and russet, sunny yellows and burnt reds. Lance began to poke around in the drawers, under the bed, not sure why he was searching or what he was searching for. Maybe he was just looking for anything hidden, anything that hinted at some discrepancy between outward and inward―but there was nothing to find.
Ooh this is a spicy move. Even though he didn't get caught, this is a total moment of no return. He's decided he and Jiro aren't on the same side and he no longer has to respect his boundaries or follow his rules.

His legs and eyes seemed to have turned into stone weights.
IDK about eyes as weights but eyelids for sure.

Jiro blinked. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Lance,” he said, playfully stern. “You weren’t meeting this friend of yours at the Grand Royale, were you? I know it’s hypocritical coming from me, but there are some bad habits you don’t want to develop too young. If you’ve really got your heart set on gambling, I can take you sometime this spring, after you’ve turned eighteen.”
Oh, he's right on the cusp of legal adulthood now! Also, womp, too little too late, Jiro.

“I saw you. I heard you. What’s Archer giving you? What does he want in return?”
Woof, really laying all your cards on the table, huh.

Everyone does it.”

Then everyone was wrong.
I think Lance's otherness and isolation has prepared him for this type of political stance. He's ready to stand alone to support his beliefs more than others are because he's already used to feeling alone. He assumes he will be alone.

I know what he wants: looser licensing, fewer restrictions on the import-export of pokemon, shaking the dust off some of the old morality laws. It’s practically my platform anyway.”
Wow, those are some pretty conservative offerings, Jiro! Why is he cool with loosening those regulations? Is it purely because he knows his backers expect it?

I’m buying Fearow Hill. And it can’t wait. The city needs revenue, they’re putting the land up for auction. It’s prime pickings for development―the view alone is a goldmine, and nobody but me cares that construction there would mean stripping the trees, driving away the fearow.” Jiro’s face went tight as he spoke. “I can’t just let that happen.”
Aww, Jiro.

but it’s my choice to make.”

“It’s not. Not when it involves me.
👏 Growing!

We fight crime, Lance. We’re not a roving morality commission. And frankly, if we start going after popular Elite Four members, we can kiss our funding goodbye. ”
🙃 Man, everyone is handcuffed by their purse strings.

Now he looked out at his pokemon, arranged in a loose circle like his very own counsel of elders. It had been hard to put Jiro’s conduct into words they understood. Money didn’t hold the same weight to pokemon. But betrayal did.
<3 </3

Lance undid the ribbon and twined it around his fingers. He thought of the clothes Jiro had gifted him, their fine fabrics and careful embroidery. And then he thought of Kaisho, displayed in the artificial blue water of the casino tank.

“Everything he’s given us,” Lance said slowly. “Maybe it was always more for him than for us.”
Having some beeeeeg realizations tonight. How perfect and terrible that it's happening in this spot.

A part of him still longed to leap on Toku’s back and leave Celadon behind. But running wouldn’t solve anything this time.
G R O W I N G, wow!

With a night’s sleep behind him, he could see that he’d handled the confrontation all wrong.
Awww, wow, this is all too real. And, again, a sign of how much he's grown! Baby Wataru would've stubbornly stuck to his guns, I think. But even this realization isn't enough to change what has to happen or what's already happened.

You could only draw your token once. You couldn’t cross an ocean twice. He had to choose, and if he chose wrong, there wouldn’t be another chance.
Oh man, he's starting to accept he can never go home again.

So is anyone free to challenge either Jiro or Agatha? The only person we saw challenge her during the chapter was a gym leader, "by right," so I wasn't totally sure. The other point I wasn't totally clear about was what became of trainers who won a 1v1 against Jiro/Kikuko but not a full knockout.
 
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Pen

the cat is mightier than the pen
Staff
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Review responses for The Challenger, Part One! (Hoping to get to other review responses soon, but it's an intimidating task).

Have you considered a biweekly update schedule? Helps prevent these kinds of problems.
Huh, I've never thought of that before!

The action was sparse, even in the one or two Important Battles, but I didn’t really mind. Only noticed when I sat back and tried to comment on it in this review.
Yes--we're entering the politics arc now. The battlefield Lance is on is getting more figurative.

Getting in deep with the mob to save the borbs is not a plot beat I’ve seen before. Neither have I seen a conservationist’s protege attempting to beat up his cat with dragons to prevent him from getting in deep with the mob to save the borbs. But I’m sure someone can relate.
:LOL:

Lance really is about as far from an every-man protagonist as you can get.

Wait has Lance had a mentor he didn’t betray? Will he ever?
1. Uh, I don't think so. 2. We'll see!

Anyway, there’s a small plot hole here. Lance shouldn’t know Aki. Only Wataru should. And Aki also calls him Wataru when this is actually the Book 2 Generation Skip Protagonist, Lance, who has an unknown relationship with the Book 1 Protagonist, Wataru. They are apparently quite similar, though? Are they siblings? Father and son? Clones? I look forward to learning the answer. I’m sure everyone else is, too.
Damn you got me.

Hey 😁 I'm very pleased because it looks like pretty much everything I wanted to get across this chapter was landing for you.

It's inevitable, since we've heard of Lance but not Jiro in canon, but I still found the payoff satisfying.
Yeah! That was definitely the trickiest thing about the Jiro arc--I knew my genre savvy audience would know exactly where this had to end up. So I tried to make him more than a punching bag we're waiting for Lance to punch.

I was pleasantly surprised that, although Jiro does indeed disappoint Lance in the end, he's doing it for a personal reason rather than one that's purely about his own power and prestige.
And it's a personal reason that resonates with Lance! Protecting your home is important. But so is standing up to Team Rocket.

The politics in general felt realistically complicated and messy, and in many ways Jiro is emblematic of the coexisting contradictions in Kantoan politics. He's such a symbol of opulence and uses it to his advantage to pull more power to himself, and even when it's just a facade it still keeps him from Getting It when it comes to the Pewter miners. Maybe it's because it's a facade that he misses some of the things Lance notices in this chapter: he's too busy climbing to notice what's below. But he does still also know what it means not to have enough, and it's his loyalty to the pokemon that were there for him when he had nothing that ultimately motivates him. Sometimes the things he said reminded me of ways the US left fails to actually embody its own ideals, and at other moments his stances were almost conservative. The result of the messiness both feels distinct from any real world politics and so very, very real.
I'm glad. It's been important to me to not have the politics be able to map 1:1 to any of our politics, but some fights are timeless.

The asymmetry of information here is delicious. Lance has learned so much ... and yet.
Heh, I adore information asymmetry and for this chapter I got to do it in spades. It goes both ways here, because Lance knows things that Jiro doesn't too!

I also see what you mean about having a lot of battles coming up in this one. I think you did a god job picking the most important parts to focus on and keeping things moving smoothly.
🙏 I was worried about the opening section dragging, but it sounds like you wanted even more there?

I don't totally feel like I understand the structure of the hustings. But I think I'm at about a 90% understanding, and I definitely think it's enough for me to get the impact of what Lance has chosen. It definitely feels ceremonial, layers of history both deeply felt and half-remembered in turns, which feels right and adds a lot to the usual presentation of the E4 challenge. Canon's answer to picking a champion is sort of a shrug, either a black box (he's just the champion okay) or pandering to a blank slate player character, and fanon mostly spends its time justifying the canon formulas rather than coming up with something else that makes better sense. This feels close enough to canon to be recognizable while actually addressing some of the questions about what it means to become a champion.
The hustings are some messy mash-up of sports event, celebrity tour, traditional ceremony, and political campaign. I figure the process can't completely resemble anything in our world, because we don't really have a role like I imagine champion to be in Kanto. Royalty might be the closest our world comes, but royalty is famously nonmeritocratic.

And they're questions we'd better answer, since this story has never been satisfied to accept that power and strength are equivalent.
Banger ending line in this review.

Something about "Jiro's plan" is giving me less "we have a training program" and more "all according to keikaku."
I mean, yes.

Five minutes feels like a long time for a sporting event but also, yeah, feels like the bare minimum you could wait to see poison set in. I found myself wondering what it feels like to wait and see for that long, how the announcers handle it and keep the hype going. A little more of that content--like, a sentence or two worth--would help me suspend my disbelief.
Makes sense!

Oof. On the one hand, Lance, how do you think you're ever going to get what you want if you're always playing a part in someone else's show? On the other hand, he is still just a kid. On the other other hand, I've finished the chapter and welp so much for that, huh, Jiro.
This was very much a 'last year I'lll wear the miniryu's blue' line to write.

Lance keeps trying to be a cog in someone else's machine but keeps running up against his moral code.

This reminds me of the world series! R and I aren't very knowledgeable about baseball, so we were both shooketh to learn that it's a 5-day event of back-to-back-to-back bouts with no break in between. So all this to say, there's a precedent for this, and not just in game canon.
Ooh! I know nothing about baseball either, but I'm glad I have a real-world example to point to now.

Woah, this is interesting. This reminds me a lot of complaints against the electoral college. Like, mood, but also Jiro's being pretty tone deaf to the feelings of people who live in the more rural areas.
For sure! Jiro's got valid reasons to be pissed here. He would 100% win a popular vote, but with the current system it's a toss-up, with Kikuko favored.

Oof, it does not bode well that what's good for Jiro aligns so closely with what's good for Giovanni.
Hey, Giovanni's a--

A fRiEnD. (Record scratch!) Man, Jiro really thinks he's maintaining the appropriate cautious distance from Gio with dismissive comments like that, but he's so out of his depth.
Jiro thinks he's handling this so well. He knows how the game is played! (but it might be a different game than he thinks it is.)

I like how this also echoes the way we see his pokemon getting tired. The climb to the top comes with some burdens.
Becoming champion is not fun. There's a reason Jiro's the only one competing with Kikuko.

The entire description of the theater was so nice, especially the attention to sound. You really captured the magic and strangeness of it from Lance's POV. TBH, I would struggle to grasp the intricacies of Kabuki theather too, bud. Very valid reaction, baby Lance. And, again, very nice additional context for the idea of the E4 and the champion. AND the way Lance sees possibility here where Jiro can't is a nice precursor to their split.
Lance is idealistic enough for the message of Kazuki's tale to resonate. For Jiro, it's just background noise at this point.

Big questions! Moments like this show how much he's not just a kid from the Ryu's Gift anymore. He's been changed by the world in some major ways.
Yeah, he's no longer taking as given that what people did back home is the best way.

Lance, grow up and party like an adult.
Networking!!

This is such a mood!! I feel some of this now thinking about the next step in my career. It's mostly positive, but I will lose out on some of my free time too. The big wins can be scary just because they change so much.

I think the fear of success is something a lot of people miss in their rise-to-the-top arcs, or it's written as more of a self-esteem problem. The fact that Lance can recognize what he'll lose by achieving his goal shows both that he's grown so fucking much and that he's being intentional. He's considered the pros and cons.
Mm, for sure. Lance knows he needs power to accomplish his goals but there's a lot about Jiro's life he doesn't enjoy or want in his own.

Little does he know this boy's gay as a rainbow.
Jiro is a very perceptive people person, clearly.

Lol oopsie
I mean . . . in his shoes, would you guess differently?

Reading this, I was screaming internally for Lance to seek an adult, yes, but having finished the chapter ... damn, he was right though.
Lance is painstakingly earning his 'the authorities cannot help me' cred.

Should you tell him though, bucko?
Maybe it would have changed things! Lance will never know :(

I loved the very anime moment of them leaving the apartment at the same time, not realizing they were going to the same place. Chef's kiss.
Heh, I had inordinate fun with that.

Ooh yeah, I bet he could. I wish we'd had more "b roll" passages setting the scene as we return to Celadon, TBH. Does he see it differently now that he's grown some and burned through 1.5 mentors? Or does being back here make him feel like "the gambler" again? This city was a real turning point for him, and it seems like he'd feel that casino staring at him even when it wasn't actually visible from where he stood.
I think those are all great questions--this chapter is already so long though, ugh.

Aww, it's nice to see her back! His first same-species friend! This makes your version of Kanto feel both a little small and like it's alive. Characters don't vanish just because the protagonist has gone somewhere else.
Not everyone's version of career advancement looks like Lance's.

Though I think the next level for Lance is going to be ... okay, so I can see these disparities, but can I finagle the resources and public attention to actually do something about it.
Stay tuned :D

Very Golden Compass vibes!
Oh?

Omg, this conversation must be so awkward for him. I wonder if he resents Jiro for seeming to wield Lance to his ends when Archer couldn't. I also love that Jiro thinks this is a jab at Lance's capabilities (and therefore his own) when for Archer it's really a jab at Lance's trustworthiness.
Archer . . . certainly has some thoughts about all of this. The phrase "dragon-wielding prodigy" is taken straight from Gio's lips in the Puppetmaster.

lolololololololol
KEKEKEKEKEKE

I also love how this reinforces Lance's idea that Archer is the big boss, even though he isn't.
He's the big boss in Lance's heart tho 💘

This is such a nice image for Lance's disillusionment. He's grown as time has passed, but also he's been stripped of his illusions of support and safety.
💯🙃

Oh, he's right on the cusp of legal adulthood now! Also, womp, too little too late, Jiro.
Jiro's trying! Like, genuinely trying. 'Huh, I have some bad habits that I probably shouldn't pass onto this teenager.' But yeah, he doesn't know.

Woof, really laying all your cards on the table, huh.
Our boy's still figuring out subtlety. But sometimes being direct isn't the worst thing.

I think Lance's otherness and isolation has prepared him for this type of political stance. He's ready to stand alone to support his beliefs more than others are because he's already used to feeling alone. He assumes he will be alone.
Yes.

Wow, those are some pretty conservative offerings, Jiro! Why is he cool with loosening those regulations? Is it purely because he knows his backers expect it?
Not sure conservative is the word for it, at least in this world. As far as Jiro's concerned, Kikuko's a conservative; he represents progress, commerce, globalization. Laws that stand in the way of that are dead wood.

So is anyone free to challenge either Jiro or Agatha? The only person we saw challenge her during the chapter was a gym leader, "by right," so I wasn't totally sure. The other point I wasn't totally clear about was what became of trainers who won a 1v1 against Jiro/Kikuko but not a full knockout.
If your token's called, you can challenge either, unless Rule of Three is active. Rule of Three prohibits more than three challenges in a row against the same person. (If you're really intent on fighting that person you have to pass until Rule of Three doesn't apply.)

Kikuko's getting less challenges than Jiro because people think Jiro's easier to beat.

If you win a 1v1, you can either continue to a full battle or end your challenge there. If you end your challenge there, it's recorded as a win, but only winning a full battle allows you to take someone's place on the Elite Four. If you win a 1v1, keep going and lose, you just lost.

I think most of this info is either explained or there by implication but if there's places you think it could have been made clearer, lmk!
 
Ch 16: The Challenger, Part Two

Pen

the cat is mightier than the pen
Staff
Partners
  1. dratini
  2. dratini-pen
  3. dratini-pen2

The Challenger, Part Two


Hunching his shoulders, Lance slurped up another mouthful of noodles and winced as the hot broth stung his tongue. Despite the late hour, the soba shop was bustling, but the conversation wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out the radio.

“—we return with hustings highlights from today’s shocking upset. Master Jiro has lost his place on the Elite Four to seventeen-year-old unknown Fusube Lance. Their high-powered battle commenced with a rapid initial knock-out—”

“Is this seat taken?”

The restaurant was crowded, but not that crowded. Lance looked up with a frown. The stranger couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Lance, but he was dressed like a middle-aged businessman. A growlithe sat at his feet, tail thumping energetically. Before Lance could say a word, he slid onto the opposite bench and set down an open notebook.

A reporter. Lance had thought he’d shaken them all. He transferred his gaze back to his dinner, hoping it was a coincidence. Reporters had to eat too, right?

“You’re a hard man to track down, Master Lance!”

Lance flinched slightly at the honorific, wondering if repetition would make it more or less strange. He wondered if he could convince the reporter he’d accosted the wrong person. But the growlithe looked smug at her trainer’s words, and Lance realized with an uneasy twinge that they’d probably followed his scent.

“No comment,” he said, a little too sharply. Jiro had taught him those words early on, though he seldom followed his own advice. Jiro liked talking to people.

Unfazed, the journalist beamed at him. “I’m Habiki, from the Saffron Sentinel. I’ve got to say, you took me by surprise. I thought, I mean, we all did, that you and Jiro were cooking up Kikuko’s defeat.”

Lance took another slurp of his noodles, ignoring him.

“—taking advantage of the soaked battlefield, the challenger’s gyarados covered itself in mud, handily insulating it from Jiro’s electric attacks—”

“So what happened?” the reporter continued. “That didn’t strike me as a torch-passing. Jiro looked like he’d smelled a muk. Of course, Kikuko’s people are saying it’s because you knew you didn’t have a chance against her.” He paused, waiting for a reaction, but Lance kept his head down. “I don’t think I buy that, though. I watched you at the Saffron town hall. You walked out right when Jiro began talking about loosening up the alcohol laws. And then, yesterday morning—”

He pulled out a thin broadsheet and spread it triumphantly out on the table. Lance didn’t mean to look, but the blaring caption drew the eye. Another Night of Debauchery. The picture showed Jiro, bent over a roulette table. Even in the casino’s dim lighting, Lance could make out the unrestrained joy on his face.

Something must have slipped in his expression. The reporter sat back, satisfied. “Thought so. You were his protege, but you don’t like his politics. Well, now’s your chance. You’ve just taken center stage and everyone in Kanto wants to hear from you. What do you want to tell them?”

But Lance didn’t want to tell anyone anything. His body still rang with soreness from the night spent on the hard-packed autumn earth, and he couldn’t seem to look away from Jiro’s grinning paper facsimile.

When he’d realized what Lance intended, all the color had fled Jiro’s face. He’d stood up shakily, and the shakiness hadn’t left. It was there in every command he spoke, jerky and increasingly frantic. He’d pulled out every trick, threw down every ace from his deck, but it hadn’t been any use. Lance knew them all, and if he had wondered, as he stepped into the challenger’s diamond, just how much Jiro had held back from him, by the final match-up he knew that in this, at least, Jiro had been honest.

“—a spectacle that has not been witnessed in Kanto in living memory: two dragonite, tumbling through the sky. It was impossible to tell one from the other, until at last, with a trumpeting roar, Lance’s dragonite cast its opponent ditto down into the mud.”

And then it had been over, and the world had rushed back in.

A frown began to inch across the reporter’s face. Maybe it had occurred to him that if Jiro sat in Lance’s place, he’d be getting more than slurped noodles and mullish silence.

“I really thought Jiro was going to pull it off,” he said finally. “First serious challenge Kikuko’s seen in five years. I suppose she’s sailing to an uncontested reelection now, unless—will we be seeing you at the hustings tomorrow, Master Lance?”

“I told you,” Lance said stiffly. “No comment.”

There was still some broth left in his bowl, but abruptly, Lance decided he was done here. Thankful that he’d already paid at the counter, he stood up and pushed into the night.

The cold instantly set his teeth chattering. Longingly, Lance thought about a private hostel room, but he only had a few rolls of yen left in his backpack, and he couldn’t waste them. He needed gloves and a warmer change of clothes. His current ones were still clammy from Kaisho’s rainstorm—and the rest were back in Jiro’s hotel room.

The thought was still hard to wrap his head around. It had been a long time since he’d had to worry about having dry clothing or a soft place to sleep. With Jiro, he hadn’t had to think. And that was just the problem, Lance reminded himself. Not thinking.

He ducked into the first second-hand store he passed. The place was deserted, and the cashier ignored him, his nose tucked into a battered magazine. Maybe it was just his mood, but the racks of hanging clothes put Lance in mind of discarded miniryu skins, slowly decomposing.

He flicked through the clothing slowly. Despite himself, the reporter’s words nagged at him. You were his protege, but you don’t like his politics. Was that really how people saw it? He wondered if he should tell someone the real reason but shied from the thought—it felt wrong somehow, like a second betrayal.

And he’d solved it, hadn’t he? Team Rocket had wanted something and he’d made sure they wouldn’t get it. Mission accomplished, he thought to himself, aware of his own bitterness but unable to articulate its source. Job well done.

As Lance reached the end of the rack, a flash of red caught his eye. A jacket, he assumed, but when he gave it a tug, the fabric kept coming.

It was a cape, red on one side and black on the other and smelling faintly of smoke. Lance turned it over in his hands. The fabric was sturdy and soft, but the cloth was marred with singes. One of the street performers must have used it, Lance speculated. One of the fire-eaters. He hesitated for a moment, then swung it on. The heavy fabric pressed down on his shoulders, but the sensation was comforting, like Kana’s wings braced against his back.

Reluctantly, Lance set the cape down. He couldn’t be reckless with the little money he had left. Archer and Ibuki still preferred to hunt for themselves, but the others would need more in their diets than the cheap, nutritionally-questionable food that the pokemon centers gave out for free.

And soon it would be winter.

Lance shivered slightly, feeling the loss of the cape’s warmth. The store smelled of dust-balls, and the weak light flickered erratically. Disorientation swept over him, so potent that his legs almost buckled. What was he doing here?

He was a member of the Elite Four now. But if that meant stepping into Jiro’s shoes—the galas, the small talk, the bribes—Lance wanted nothing to do with it. He’d be eighteen in a few months. Maybe Noriko would take him seriously this time, when he told her he wanted to join the G-Force.

Only, Lance wasn’t sure he wanted that anymore. Noriko and the G-Force hadn’t been willing to raise a hand against Jiro. Whatever they had been once, these days they had no power to do anything about real problems.

The champion had some power. She must have—otherwise Archer wouldn’t have been wasting his time bribing Jiro to try and get it. Lance frowned, picking out a final pair of pants. He dumped the medley of clothes on the counter.

Kikuko had been champion for fifteen years, almost as long as Lance had been alive, but what had she got to show for it? She hadn’t fixed anything.

Maybe no one could. Maybe it was just all just rotten. His fingers tapped restlessly against the counter. He wanted to hit something. He wanted—

He wanted something that made him feel real.

“Hold on,” Lance said to the cashier.

The old cape was sprawled where he’d left it. Lance pressed the fabric to his nose. Smoke. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure a bonfire, stars, all the things he had once known with a certainty that now seemed out of reach.

His footsteps were heavy as he returned to the counter, where the cashier was watching him with badly-concealed annoyance.

“I’ll take this too.”

He let another roll of yen fall onto the counter and for a brief moment, he thought of nothing at all.

~*~​

The moon was full tonight. Cape wrapped around him like a blanket, Lance braced himself against Toku’s belly. Fatigue made his vision swim, turned the stars into darting light bugs, but he didn’t want to sleep yet. The day felt like an undigested meal.

“I could try for champion,” he said in a voice slurred at the edges with exhaustion. “It might mean something. It might make a difference.”

Toku’s snout settled on his shoulder. She rumbled, questioning.

“I don’t know. I feel . . . tired, I guess. Of trying. Of being wrong. And”—Lance dropped his voice—“there’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t gone to the Grand Royale at all. That I hadn’t seen Jiro there. That I hadn’t—” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t think I was such a coward.”

Toku snorted. The next instant, Lance’s face hit the dirt. He scrambled to his feet, wakefulness sparking down his veins.

“Hey, what was that for—”

Toku dove at him again. He jumped back just in time to avoid being clipped by her wing.

“Toku!”

But she was making a third lap, her eyes glinting a furious green. This time Lance feinted to the right and, as she sailed past, gripped the end of her tail, using the momentum to swing himself onto her back. Still shaking from the sudden shock of adrenaline, he inched forward into a more secure position.

“Toku—” he tried again.

She climbed higher. At this height and speed the night wind had a physical bite, but beneath him Toku’s body heat flamed like a torch. They had left the treetops behind: the whole country lay spread out in the moonlight. Toku let out a rumble laced with an imperative.

“I am looking. It’s Kanto. I don’t see—”

She whapped his back with the tip of her tail, so he shut his mouth and looked again. Below them, the lights of Celadon City shone like the thousand shards of a shattered gem. To the west, Mt. Moon stood tall, its rock-face flecked with the silver of early snows.

“It’s beautiful. Is that what you want me to say? And it's ours now. I know. I know.” He pressed his face against her scales. It was easier to be honest with only Toku and the night sky as his witnesses. “It’s just, I thought I’d found something. A place where we fit. But it’s gone now. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to try again.”

He felt her answer reverberate through his whole body.

He closed his eyes. “I’m cold, Toku,” he said. “Take me down.”

They couldn’t have been in the air for more than ten minutes, but when they landed he was numb all through. His legs wobbled beneath him as he slid from Toku’s back. Their impromptu flight had woken the rest of the team, who watched them curiously.

“Toku thinks we should fight,” he told them flatly. “To become champion. It’ll be weeks, you know. Weeks and weeks of fighting. I don’t know if it’s worth it. What do you think?”

Kana didn’t hesitate to let out an approving roar. Archer joined her a moment later. Their combined trumpeting and shrieking sent a harried hoothoot fluttering from the trees. Ibuki made the terrible choking sound that Lance had long ago learned to call a laugh and sent up a pillar of dragon fire. Like the rest, she’d been buoyant when he’d come back to pick them up from the pokemon center. To her, the victory against Jiro was uncomplicated. It was something to be worn with pride.

I betrayed him too, though. That was the thought that ambushed him in every quiet moment. The way Jiro had paled, the way his eyes kept seeking Lance across the battlefield—for some reason it made Lance think of Archer in the Grand Royale. Your dragon-wielding prodigy, he’d said, disdain dripping from his voice. As if he’d never put his hand on Lance’s shoulder and smiled down at him with quiet approval.

How could so much be erased in a moment?

Blue light flared. Lance looked up to find Kaisho hovering close, worry coiled through his body. The safeguard attack washed over them all, quieting Kana and Archer. The forest returned to stillness as they watched the undulating light.

“We’ll do it your way, Toku,” Lance said at last. He smiled without humor. “My way hasn’t been going very well.”


~*~​

At first, the guard stationed at the back door of the tournament hall refused to let Lance in. Even after he showed her his identification card, she continued to shoot him dubious looks.

“The restroom’s to your left if you want to . . . freshen up.”

Examining himself in the bathroom mirror, Lance had to concede her point. He looked awful. Bags had sprung up under his eyes; his hair was disheveled and still half sopping from his morning dunk in the freezing river water. He smelled like river too, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

“Look what the meowth dragged in,” Kikuko murmured when he walked into the ready room. He made her a stiff bow, unsure of what to say. He'd expected their next encounter to be at opposite ends of a battlefield, where words weren't needed. Her gaze followed him as he sat down on the farthest chair he could find.

Presently, she spoke again. “I was right about you.”

He didn’t know what she thought she’d been right about, but the flat disdain in her tone made clear that it wasn’t a compliment. Lance’s eyes found the floor and for several minutes they sat there in heavy silence.

Finally, a league official stepped in, slightly out-of-breath

“Challenger Lance, welcome,” he said with a perfunctory bow. “Welcome to the hustings. As I hope you’re aware, you are limited to five active pokemon for the full duration of the hustings, with a sixth held in reserve, in the event of any permanent incapacitation. That hasn't happened since the 30s, of course. Performance enhancing drugs, including those commonly referred to as “vitamins” and “x enhancements” are strictly prohibited and their detection will result in both your expulsion from contention for the championship and the revocation of your place on the Elite Four. Participation in each husting is mandatory; failure to attend is considered withdrawal from the championship race, though it will not impact your Elite Four position. This is the final day of the Celadon hustings. It will wrap up by four instead of five, leaving time for a town hall this evening at six. Tomorrow the hustings will move on to Cerulean. Do you have any questions?”

Overwhelmed, Lance shook his head.

“Well, if any occur to you, I'm sure Champion Kikuko would be delighted to fill you in on the more abstruse turns of this age-old rite.”

Kikuko scowled, not exactly looking the picture of delighted.

“We’ve had a few technical difficulties this morning—I apologize deeply for the delay. We’ll begin in just fifteen more minutes Champion, Challenger.”

It felt like a lot longer than fifteen minutes when the official returned to lead them out into the stadium. Kikuko moved with surprising speed for her age, but Lance still had to check his pace so that he fell into step behind her.

The day had dawned cold and wet. Moisture settled on Lance’s face as they stepped outside. A roar of applause greeted them, though Lance thought it sounded muted compared to yesterday’s.

Lance could hardly blame the crowd. At this moment, Jiro would have been raising his arms with a grin, his gold studs flashing, but Lance slunk after Kikuko and sat himself stiffly in the wooden chair next to hers. From this position he could see almost the whole amphitheater, though the faces of the crowd were obscured behind the psychic barrier. Inside the barrier camped a small contingent of battle photographers, armed with magnemite and abra. Right now their lenses were all pointed towards his face, which Lance tried to school into a neutral expression. Lance was horribly aware that his new clothing fit him badly and that he looked like a tauros had run him over. When he saw the photos, Jiro would have a fit—

Would have had a fit. Lance wrenched his mind away from an image of Jiro drinking his morning tea and crinkling his nose as he opened the newspaper.

“WELCOME”—Lance flinched as the announcer’s voice boomed from behind him, as if shouting into his ear—“to the final day of the Celadon hustings! You may have noticed a new face joining us. Challenger Lance has defeated Master Jiro of the Elite Four and will be taking his place in the hustings.”

The announcer’s words drew some scattered applause. Lance was grateful when it ended, and even more grateful when the first challenger named him. He hopped down from the dias, glad to escape the weight of a hundred anonymous eyes. At least during the battle, they’d be watching his pokemon, not him.

His opponent led with an onix. Lance’s first impulse was to send out Kana, for old time’s sake, but he caught himself at the last moment. This was the first battle of many—better to play it safe. He sent out Ibuki instead for the easy knock-out.

The second challenge was also for Lance and the third too, until Rule of Three forced the next one on Kikuko. As her haunter spun circles around a snapping arcanine, Lance leaned back in his chair, idly rubbing Toku’s snout. He’d probably pull the majority of the challenges today. After all, he was the newcomer, the easy target. Lance didn’t mind. He’d prove on the battlefield that his victory hadn’t been a fluke. And he had at least one advantage over Kikuko—nobody had entered the hustings planning to fight him.

After days of sitting on the sidelines, anticipating a fight and never knowing when it would come, the constant stream of hustings challengers came almost as a relief. Lance quickly taught himself to tune out the too-loud commentary, ignore the noise that filtered through the barrier, and pay no attention to Kikuko’s glare each time he returned to his seat. In the lulls between battles, he tended to his pokemon. There didn’t seem to be any rule against it, so they joined him on the dais—all except Ibuki, who coiled herself around it.

Lance had so sunk into the flow of the hustings that the end of the day caught him by surprise. Kaisho grounded a pidgeot with a bolt of lightning and then, instead of announcing the next challenger, the overhead voice was thanking all the participants for their fighting spirit.

Slightly at a loss, Lance wandered back to the dais.

“That’s it for today, I guess,” he told Toku. Kikuko was hobbling towards the exit and with the barrier down, Lance could see the crowd filing out of the bleachers. The battling had energized him, but now Lance felt the exhaustion of yesterday threatening to crash back down. He stifled a yawn.

A few reporters began to close in, but Archer interposed himself and let out a warning cry. Probably Lance shouldn’t have cracked a smile at the way that sent the reporters stumbling, but he seized upon their distraction to make his way out the back.

He had just enough time before the town hall to drop off his pokemon at the pokecenter and grab a quick bite to eat. He kept his head down, but even nestled into a corner table he was conscious of the eyes and whispers following him. Being at the center of a crowd wasn’t entirely new, but Jiro had always held the spotlight.

Lance hadn’t appreciated just how much of a gift that had been until it was taken away.

~*~​

At the town hall, the spotlight was literal. Lance blinked against it, dazzled, as he and Kikuko were once again introduced to the crowd. His hand dropped reflexively to his belt, but his pokemon were still at the pokemon center. He’d have to face this one alone.

The first question was about pokemon importation laws. Kikuko answered crispy, defending the existing system as striking the right balance between restriction and exchange. Lance didn’t know if it was a good answer or a bad one. At the past town hall he’d judged answers by the crowd’s reaction and by the confidence in Jiro’s voice. Jiro had—Lance strained to remember—Jiro had favored loosening them. Because the current laws were out-of-date and . . . something.

“Challenger Lance?” the moderator said courteously. “You have two minutes, if you’d like to respond.”

Lance’s mouth had gone dry. The lights blinded him to everything except Kikuko’s burgeoning smirk. Even if he remembered Jiro’s view, how could he trust it? How was he supposed to know what Jiro had really believed and what he’d said because it was useful for him to say? Lance couldn’t know and if he said something now that was wrong—

“I don’t have anything to add,” he managed. The microphone clipped at his collar took his hushed words and amplified them so that his unsteady voice crashed through the stadium. He winced as Kikuko’s smirk widened.

The second question was the same story. And the third. A hot haze seemed to have settled on Lance, stuffing up his vision. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. He wished this were a nightmare—at least then he would be able to wake up. But the ordeal stretched on. There was nothing he knew, nothing he felt sure enough of to answer.

Then he heard it, a word like a lifeline.

The noise in his ears cleared. He listened hard as Kikuko spoke about the historic importance of gambling in Celadon City and reiterated her commitment to respecting that tradition. His hands tightened on the side of his chair, gripped with sudden excitement. He had an answer to this.

“Challenger Lance?”

By this point, the moderator’s tone had become perfunctory when she turned to him. He could already see her preparing to ask the next question, when he shifted forward in his seat and spoke in a rush.

“I have something to say.” Startled, her eyebrow rose, but she gestured for him to speak. He forced himself to take a breath before he continued. “Casinos are—out-of-control. It’s not just entertainment. Well, for some people, it’s just entertainment, but for others, it’s their whole lives. It controls their lives. It takes people’s hope and it turns that against them; it takes everything they have, until they don’t have anything, and so they don’t have any choice then but to come back again and again. It hurts people,” Lance insisted. He wasn’t sure where he should be looking—when he looked out towards the crowd, the lights burned his eyes. “Anything that hurts people, you can’t give it a pass just because it’s hurt them for a long time. I think they should be shut down.”

He finished, breathing hard like he’d just been running. Kikuko watched him with an incredulous look on her face. His cheeks burned, but he kept his chin raised. Maybe he hadn’t put it well, but at least he knew he’d said what he meant. The glow of answering maintained him through the final, dragging half-hour. He didn’t speak up for any other questions, but his head had cleared and he was able to follow along.

Still, he had never been more relieved than when the moderator thanked them both and the lights dimmed. He bolted, knowing that it looked like he was running away but too desperate to care. Backstage, he took whichever turn led him somewhere emptier, until he was finally alone. He sank against the wall and groaned.

What had he been thinking? The husting battles were one thing. This was entirely another, and nothing he’d done with Jiro had remotely prepared him for it. He squeezed his eyes shut. There were seven towns left. Seven town halls. The best he could hope for was that someone would knock Kikuko out in battle. Otherwise—

A low trill interrupted his thoughts. Lance’s eyes snapped open and he stared in surprise at the miniryu crawling up to him—a pink miniryu.

“Gigaku?” he breathed. The ditto trilled an affirmative and began to snake down the corridor, her message clear: follow me.

Gigaku meant Jiro.

Lance hesitated, torn by two conflicting impulses. He wanted to talk to Jiro. He really didn’t want to talk to Jiro.

Gigaku looked back at him and trilled an interrogative.

It didn’t matter what he wanted, Lance decided at last. He owed Jiro enough to listen to whatever he wanted to say.

“I’m coming,” Lance said. His fingers thumbed uneasily over his empty belt.

~*~​

If Lance had passed Jiro on the street, he wouldn’t have recognized him: Jiro wore a wide-brimmed hat and a muted tan coat in the place of his usual bright yellows. The smile he drudged up for Lance was a poor mockery of his usual carefree grin and it didn’t show in his eyes.

“Lance,” he said, gesturing. “Have a seat.”

Lance sat quietly. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

“Before anything else, I need to know . . . was this your plan from the very start?”

“No!” Lance said indignantly, his head whipping up. “Of course not. How could you even—I never planned—”

“All right, all right,” Jiro interrupted, some tension draining from his shoulders. “Don’t sputter. I had to ask, though your performance tonight was an answer in its own right.” His smile became simultaneously nastier and more genuine. “What was that, Lance? I mean, really. Tongue-tied silence is one thing, but bad-mouthing casinos in Celadon of all places? I can practically write the headlines.”

“I meant what I said about the casinos.”

“You meant—” Jiro passed a hand over his forehead. “It doesn’t matter what you mean, it matters what people hear and how they’ll vote. Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush. You need my endorsement. So let’s talk about what I’m going to get for it.”

Whatever Lance had expected, it wasn’t that.

“Your endorsement?” he repeated.

“I hope you’re not under the delusion that you have even a fraction of a chance at the champiancy without it.” Jiro’s tone was pleasant, but his eyes were hard. “I endorse you, we present a unified front, and that’s Saffron and Viridian. Celadon too, if you walk back your ridiculous casino statement. Getting to six from there won’t be easy, but there’s a path. Of course, I have conditions.”

Apparently mistaking Lance’s incredulous silence for acquiescence, he continued.

“First, everything I promised Executive Archer. I’ve already pledged the money he gave me—if I don’t convince him he’s getting his money’s worth, he’s going to get nasty. Second—”

“Jiro,” Lance interrupted. “You don’t—you don’t seem to get this. I didn’t fight you because I wanted to be champion. I didn’t want to fight you at all and I’m sorry that we had to, but I can’t change what happened. I told you to give back that money and you wouldn’t—”

“And I told you I didn’t have any choice,” Jiro snapped. “You didn’t want to fight me? You’re sorry that we fought? Thanks for that, Lance. Thanks a lot. I’ve worked my whole life for this, I lifted you up from the gutter, and you think you have the right to stab me in the back? Not even for ambition, but because I offended your mystifying sense of propriety?”

“It’s not mystifying.” Lance was hit with a sense of deja vu; they were back in Jiro’s hotel room, talking straight past each other. “Don’t pretend that taking bribes isn’t wrong, don’t pretend it doesn’t matter—”

“Give me a break. Fearow Hill matters. And if it had been your home on the line, you’d have done exactly the same.” Jiro’s lip curled. “But then, you don’t really have one, do you.”

“Shut up,” Lance said quietly.

But Jiro didn’t. His gaze floated past Lance’s shoulder, as if unwilling to meet his eyes. “It’s come to my attention,” he said flatly, “that there are some irregularities in your citizenship documentation. As I’m sure you’re aware, the hustings are reserved for bona fide citizens. If these irregularities are born out, your citizenship will be revoked, invalidating your position. I don’t want to report you, but it seems you’re determined to leave me no choice.”

Jiro kept talking, but Lance had stopped listening. The world seemed to have turned slow and viscous.

I refuse. The thought cut him like a glass shard. Kanto wasn’t perfect, but it was his. His home. I refuse to do this. Not again.

He reached for anger, but there was nothing. He felt chilled all the way through.

“That would be too bad,” he said after a moment. He didn’t recognize his voice. It seemed to come from somewhere outside of him, soft and clipped and so very, very cold. “Too bad for you. I know a reporter on the Saffron Sentinel. Do you think he’d be interested in a recording I have? It’s of three men talking at the Grand Royale. You know them. One of them, you know really well.”

Jiro twitched, like a raticate run head-long into a sneasel. “There’s no way,” he said. And, more vigorously, “You’re bluffing.”

An extraordinary stillness possessed Lance. He met Jiro’s gaze without blinking. “I don’t tell lies. That’s what you do. So keep threatening me if you want. But when that tape is public, I won’t be the only one who doesn’t have a place here. It’s your choice.”

Jiro stared at him like he’d never seen him before in his life.

“My god,” he said, slumping back in his chair. “I weaned a little arbok.”

“It’s your choice,” Lance said again.

Jiro laughed bitterly and stood. “Fine. Looks like I’ve wasted both our time. Enjoy the Elite Four, Lance. Enjoy Kikuko’s shadow—I hope you choke on it.”

The door slammed behind him.

Still, Lance didn’t move. He wasn’t sure if he could. His bones seemed to have become stone, his blood ice. That’s the only way kairyu learn, he thought nonsensically. They’d said that before they sent him away—

He didn’t want this lesson. He didn’t want this terrible stillness, this cold.

One thought looped through his mind, inescapable: I sounded like Archer.

I sounded like Archer—and it worked.

~*~​

Cerulean City received Lance with a hailstorm. At first it was just a few pellets, but the closer Toku flew the worse it got, as if the city was saying, turn back. We don’t want you here. Lance had gone numb a few minutes in, but even with the cold a distant burn in his extremities, the hail still hurt.

Toku endured the onslaught grimly, the only sign of her discomfort the increased pace of her flight. At last, the red roof of the Pokemon Center came into view. Toku banked down, snorting in disgust as an icy barrage fell on them like a parting shot.

The only silver lining was that the storm had cleared the streets of any lurking reporters. When Lance trudged inside the Pokemon Center, he garnered only a few anonymously sympathetic looks from the people in the waiting room. Soaked and shivering, he made his way to the front desk.

“I’m in town for the hustings,” he said. It was difficult with his teeth chattering, but he tried to speak the way Jiro always had, with a confidence that couldn’t be questioned. “I need a private room.”

The nurse’s eyes fluttered from his soaked clothing to his rain-slicked red hair. A spark of recognition lit in her eyes.

“Of course, Master Lance,” she said.

It was the biggest room he’d ever seen at a pokemon center, and it was still smaller than any hotel room he’d stayed at with Jiro. The windows faced toward the ocean, though in the current weather everything outside had been transmuted into the same relentless gray. Lance opened his pack. The clothes inside were only a little less wet than he was. He draped them awkwardly over the room’s heater and started to towel his hair, but it suddenly seemed useless, and he stopped.

Hail beat against the windowpane. Hot air rushed from an overhead vent. The heat made his hands tingle unpleasantly. He flexed them and noticed that his fingers had turned swollen and red. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he listened to the hail’s drumbeat, surrendering all sense of time.

A loud rapping at the door brought him back to himself. Reporters, was his first, unhappy thought. He hunched over on the bed, determined to wait them out.

The rapping stopped.

“Lad,” the voice floated under the door, “if you don’t open this door, I’ll hyperbeam it.”

Lance flung the door open. Hamako looked back at him, one eyebrow raised.

”Well, you look terrible,” she said matter-of-a-factly. “Come on. You’re staying with me.”

They didn’t speak on the way over to her house. Hamako led him to a small bedroom, smelling of starched linen and dust.

“Here. My son’s old room. He’s a ship mechanic now. Took after me too much to stay in one place; didn’t take after me enough to come crawling back to Cerulean. There’s some clothes in the closet. They won’t be a perfect fit, but dry over wet, eh?”

Ten minutes later, and dry, he made his way cautiously into the kitchen, following the sound of a whistling kettle. When he tried to greet her and burst into a fit of sneezing instead, she clucked loudly and pushed a steaming cup into his hands.

“Ginger tea. Drink all of it.”

He did. The sharpness made his throat burn, but when he finished he almost felt awake.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked finally.

“I was storm-watching. Then I saw a miserable-looking dragonite.” She scooped some rice into bowls, poured over green tea, and set them down. “I didn’t realize perishing of frost-bite was a winning hustings strategy.”

Lance was spared answering by the spoonful of rice in his mouth.

“Congratulations,” Hamako added belatedly. “It was some fight. Not exactly the fight I was expecting, though.”

Her unspoken question hung in the air.

“You tried to warn me about him, didn’t you?” Lance said, putting down his spoon. “That night on the beach. I should have listened sooner. I—” His voice cracked. “I thought I knew him, but I really didn’t know him at all.”

“Knowing’s a tricky business,” Hamako said contemplatively. “I’ve found that sooner or later, people show you who they are. It’s quite often later, of course.”

They finished their meal in silence, broken only by Lance’s occasional sneezes. It was a good thing that no hustings were scheduled for the next day, because when Lance next woke up the sun was out in full force. His throat tickled and the sneezing had only gotten worse. After taking one look at him, Hamako returned with more ginger tea, as well as a plate of noxious-smelling sucking candies.

“I’m fine,” he protested, but Toku, obnoxiously well-rested, snorted and settled her head on his stomach. The others followed her cue. Resistance was futile; Lance lay trapped beneath a warm pile of pokemon for the rest of the day.

The sore throat lingered the next three days, not helped by the constant commands he had to shout during the hustings. By the morning of the town hall, his voice had been reduced to a croak.

He was dreading it. The feeling thickened as the day progressed, clamping down on him every time a break came in the battling. He’d tried to prepare, this time. He’d talked with Hamako about the local issues, tried to figure out what he thought about them and why. Strangely, the preparation just made him feel worse.

There was an hour’s respite between the end of the day’s hustings and the town hall’s start. He found a deserted room in the lower levels of the newly-refurbished Cerulean Gym and munched unenthusiastically at the onigiri Hamako had packed him, wishing he had something hot to drink. It was only as he wiped his hands clean that he became aware he was being watched.

A girl with hair the color of a koiking, tied back in two scruffy pig-tails, squinted at Lance from the doorway.

“You have a gyarados,” she announced when their eyes met.

A little taken aback, he nodded.

She seemed to take that as permission to wander further into the room.

“Leiko’s still a ‘karp, but she’s going to be the strongest gyarados when she’s evolved. Stronger than Hamako’s, even. My sisters don’t train koiking. So they’re not going to have gyarados. So that means I’ll be the real gym leader, ‘cause it used to be that you could only be a gym leader in Cerulean if you had a gyarados. That’s ‘cause the gyarados protect us, and when Hoenn tried to attack by sea, the gyarados ate up all their ships.”

She spoke very fast, like she was expecting to be cut off at any second.

“Gyarados protect their homes,” Lance agreed when she came to a breathless halt. “How long—” His voice cracked and he tried again. “How long have you and Leiko been together?”

“Since she hatched,” the girl answered promptly. “She was the best swimmer. Like me. I’m the best swimmer in my class, and I even go out where the rip currents form, even though my sisters scream at me.” Her face brightened. “Do you want to meet Leiko?”

“I’d love to,” Lance said with too much fervor. He followed the girl down the winding, seafoam-colored corridors until they came to a small pool room. A koiking and a goldeen were chasing each other in circles. They broke off when they saw the girl and darted to the side of the pool, gupping furiously. She laughed as the koiking swished its tail, splattering them with water.

“This is Leiko!” she declared, beaming with pride. Lance bent over the side of the pool and extended a finger for the koiking to nibble on.

“I’m Lance,” he said hoarsely. “I knew a koiking just like you. She beat up a charmeleon and climbed a waterfall.”

“A charmelon?” the girl repeated, her eyes wide. She and her koiking exchanged a look. “Leiko could beat a charmeleon too.”

Lance found himself smiling. Their easy back and forth reminded him of Toku, back when she was still a miniryu.

“Kasumi? Kasumi, I swear to Ho-oh’s high heavens—”

At the voice, the girl seemed to shrink several inches. Her grin dropped into a sullen frown. Footsteps slapped in the distance, and then a woman about Lance’s age in a lily-pad green kimono rushed in.

“There you are. Don’t you know what time—” She broke off to look at Lance. “Oh! You’re the challenger. Has Kasumi been bothering you? I am so, so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Lance said, looking between the two of them. “She was just introducing me to Leiko.”

“You’re wet!” the woman said in horror, following his gaze to the skirt of Kasume’s kimono. “You can’t attend the town hall like that.” She grabbed Kasume by the wrist. “Change at once, young lady.”

“Don’t call me that!” Kasume spat back. “You’re only five years older. That doesn’t make you an adult. Stop pretending you’re Sakura.”

“Kasume!” The woman jerked at her arm. “You’re embarrassing yourself, and all of us, behaving like this.” In a much softer voice, she said to Lance, “The town hall will be starting in ten minutes. I think you may be expected soon.”

Just like that, the dread was back. Lance sketched a short bow and beat a retreat as the quarrel bloomed into a full-blown shouting match.

He set his shoulders and took his place onstage.

~*~​

“Well,” Hamako said cheerily as they walked out from the stadium. “At least you talked this time.”

Lance said nothing. She patted his back roughly.

“Don’t be hard on yourself; you’ve been a politician less than a week.”

When he made a scratchy sound of protest she raised an eyebrow. “What else should I call it? The champion’s a politician, lad, and the sooner you get that fixed in your head the better. Siba of the Elite Four can get away with spending all his time meditating under waterfalls because he doesn’t have any interest in rising higher. But a champion has duties. You know it was only ten years ago that the law finally changed so that foreign ambassadors don’t all need to be presented directly to the champion? If, Ho-oh forbid, we got ourselves into a war, it’s the champion who’s responsible for leading us safely through it. You might get that position by being good at battling, but you won’t stay in it long if that’s the only thing you’re good at.”

“Should I stop, Hamako?”

She shot him a side-long look. “Can’t decide that for you, lad. It’s not the worst thing for Kikuko to have to fight for her throne for once. I don’t know why you’d want it, though. And I’m not sure you do, either.”

When they reached her apartment, Lance ate the food Hamako set in front of him without tasting it.

“I’m going to the beach,” he announced when his plate was clean.

Hamako glanced outside, where the cold rain had progressed into sleet. “Right,” she said with a crooked grin. “Never a bad time for the beach.”

Kana hissed and inched closer to Hamako’s fireplace, and Archer and Kaisho looked thoroughly unenthusiastic. Lance met Toku’s eyes. At his silent plea, she snorted and lumbered to her feet.

“Try not to get pneumonia,” Hamako muttered as they went out the door.

When Lance was twenty steps into the sleet and fully soaked, it occurred to him that this hadn’t been the best idea. But he pressed on until he reached the river where he’d met Ibuki and ducked into the shelter of the caverns.

They made their way in silence. Toku seemed to remember the path. All the while, Lance felt words building in his chest, but he didn’t speak until they had flown up the waterfall and entered the clearing. The pools were running over from the rain, spilling out over the cavern floor, and the water beat out a constant tempo.

Toku watched him patiently. She’d always been able to sense when he was trying and failing to put something into words. He was glad she was the only one that had come, glad no one else had to hear this.

“I can’t do it, Toku.”

Toku’s breath steamed in the cold air. Her tail whipped back and forth, but she waited for him to continue.

“You don’t know what it’s like. When we battle, we’re together. But with these town halls, it’s just me. And I don’t know who I am when I’m out there, Toku, I just. I don’t know who I am.”

It was wrong to expect her to answer a question he could barely put into words. But he couldn’t help the plaintive catch in his voice.

Toku stepped behind him. He felt a tug at his backpack; a moment later soggy fabric fell over his back. He knew without looking that it was the cape he’d bought in Saffron. A kairyu master’s cape, or as close as he would get to one now.

Toku took to the air. She hovered for a few seconds, then dove into a tight loop. With a jolt, Lance recognized it as the opening step of the kairyu dance.

“Toku,” he said, startled. “Toku, we can’t. It’s—it’s not right. I can’t.”

Why not? Toku rumbled back, looping again.

Because I’m not worthy yet. The words were almost on his lips, but he’d never lied to Toku before and he didn’t plan to start now.

“Because I don’t remember,” he admitted.

He saw them sometimes in dreams, ready and waiting behind his closed eyes. But the images were blurred by time and distance, just flashes of color and a sensation of rightness so hazy that he wondered if it was a figment of his imagination.

All he had left were the memories, and memories faded. They weren’t enough to hold onto; they were a lighthouse that faltered in the dark.

I don’t know how,” he shouted above the crash of falling water, angry she was making him say it, making him strip away that last illusion.

But Toku only parrumphed, the same impatient sound she’d made as a miniryu when he was too slow to grasp something simple. She flared her wings and twisted, then banked, watching him expectantly. When he still didn’t move, she harrumped again and charted a looping arc around the room. It was a dance, but not one Lance remembered.

Could she really remember so well, when he didn’t?

And then he understood. It was in the name, after all. The kairyu dance. The clan had never claimed to have taught it. The ryu had danced it first, and the first tamers had followed them.

Toku looped again in the air. Lance sucked in a breath and cartwheeled, the cavern floor hard under his palms. She rose in the air and he leaped. The simplicity of the revelation dizzied him. To dance the kairyu dance, all Lance had to do was follow his kairyu.

He wasn’t sure how long they danced together. At some point the rain subsided to a trickle. Toku fluttered down in front of him and licked him very precisely on the nose. He flung his arms around her belly and felt her low, pleased rumble.

“Wherever you are, that’s home, Toku,” he said softly. The rain chill had lifted as he danced. He felt warm inside and steady, like the world had kicked back into balance.

Hamako was still in her armchair when they returned to the house, but she was sleeping, her breathing coming in long, dry whistles. Lance draped a quilted blanket over her and saw himself to bed.

~*~​

When Lance and Toku touched down in Pewter City, Muno met them in front of the pokecenter with a grin that seemed slightly strained. He batted away the reporters and hustled Lance into a quick march down Pewter’s dusty streets.

“You’ve sure put me in an awkward position, kid,” he said as they walked. “Jiro was going to help me make Pewter’s case to those damned Saffronites, you know. Cost me a lot of credibility, endorsing a cityslicker like him, and all for nothing now.”

“I’m sorry,” Lance said uncertainly. He didn’t know how to broach the topic of Jiro’s bribes, or if he should even try. “It was complicated.” He glanced behind him, where a few reporters were trailing at a distance. “Is there any place to stay around here that’s not the pokecenter?”

“Eh?” Muno followed Lance’s gaze. “Yeah, I suppose you wouldn’t want to hang around there, not with that beedrill hive about. Platinum Inn’s our nicest bed-and-breakfast. Jiro always stayed there.”

“I can’t afford that,” Lance said tightly.

Muno shot him a look tinged with incredulity. “They’d probably give you a discount, kid. It may not have sunk in yet, but you’re on the Elite Four now, and that means perks.”

“Perks,” Lance repeated, the word tasting like ash. “You mean bribes. That’s what Jiro did, he took bribes.” When Muno didn’t react except for a slight grimace, Lance felt a stab of betrayal. “You knew that.”

“Not as such . . .” Muno scratched his head. “Look kid, you gotta understand, all the bigshots take bribes. It’s just how it works. Only reason I don’t is that I’m not worth anyone’s money.” He sighed at Lance’s frozen expression. “Believe it or not, I remember being your age. Things seemed pretty simple then. Right and wrong were something you could just see, like veins of ore in rock. But life’s really more like migmatite, all mixed up together. And when you’re between a rock and an onix, you take what you can get.”

Sooner or later, people show you who they are, Lance thought. He wondered if he’d ever stop being surprised by it.

“More hard-headed than a geodude,” Muno muttered to himself. “Listen, if you don’t mind roughing it, we’ve got open spots in the mine barracks—you and your pokemon could earn your keep hauling rocks, if you really insist. It’s not a pleasant place to stay, though. Lotta noise, and you won’t have hot water unless you heat it yourself—”

“I’ll take it,” Lance said instantly. “Thank you, Muno. It means a lot.”

“Not a problem. Not a problem. Heading back there now, if you want to tag along.”

They continued for fifteen minutes in tense silence.

“You know, of course,” Muno began without warning, “I truly like you a lot, kid, I admire your spunk, but you know I can’t endorse you, right? Kikuko’s gonna win, and I’ve already screwed myself backing Jiro. It won’t be pretty if I go against her twice.”

“I understand,” Lance said. He hadn’t exactly been planning to ask, but the rebuke still stung.

Muno wasn’t wrong, though. Hamako hadn’t minced words when she saw him off. Not everyone liked Kikuko, but at least they knew who she was.

Nobody knew Lance.

~*~​

The mining barracks were everything Muno had promised: loud and dirty, with a sagging mattress and smelly shared restroom. Dust settled in Lance’s hair, his nose, his ears, and fingernails, reluctant to come out. He ate his meals with the miners, mostly ignored. A boy who Muno had introduced as his son Takeshi shot Lance the occasional curious glance, but kept his distance. They were opening a new shaft, and the whole camp was on edge until the passage was fully secured.

Pewter had three days of hustings. The morning of the first day, Lance hesitated, but pulled the red cape around his shoulders. He ignored Kikuko’s raised eyebrow and steady smirk at his new look. People didn’t know Lance—well, how could they, when he hadn’t known himself? He felt honest in the black and red of the not-quite-a-kairyu-cape, honest in a way he hadn’t felt for a long time. Kikuko could smirk all she wanted.

The morning of the third day—the town hall—he clasped the cape and ran a hand through his hair, frizzy from the spate of humid weather.

“How do I look?” he asked Toku.

She squinted at him, then took up a position behind his back and began to flatten his hair with her tongue.

“Who needs Kalosian pomade when you have kairyu spit?” Lance cracked. His face fell when he realized he’d made yet another joke meant for Jiro. Groaning, he turned and buried his head in Toku’s belly.

The ground trembled.

“Toku?” Lance lifted his head, but her confused expression mirrored his own.

Outside, people were beginning to shout.

Lance darted out the door, Toku close behind. The camp was abuzz, miners streaming out from the barracks, geodude filling the air.

“What’s happening?” Lance asked the nearest miner.

“Cave-in,” came the snapped response. The man’s face twisted. “Again.”

“Which way?”

He pointed up.

Then Lance saw it: a gray plume spiraling in the distance.

He whistled to Toku and swung onto her back. By air, they outpaced the rush of miners and mining pokemon. The site of the cave-in was mostly rubble, with a small opening held aloft by a straining onix. Nobody else was in sight. But if the onix was still holding up the tunnel—

“Are there people in there?” Lance called out, horrified. The onix wheezed a short affirmative. Lance drew in a breath and dropped his hand to Kaisho and Archer’s pokeballs.

“Cover me with protect!” he shouted to the hakuryru. “Toku, Archer, get ready. We’re going in.”

The shaft plunged steeply downwards. Soon the daylight cut out, leaving just the thin blue of Kaisho’s protective shield. The air was warm and stagnant, carrying an unpleasant acrid smell. In several places, rocks completely obstructed the path. Toku punched through them and they moved onwards, until Archer let out a shriek and dove ahead.

A few yards more, and Lance spotted the weak twinkle of headlights. A group of miners was huddled under the coils of another onix.

“How many?” Lance called out.

“Six! But some of us are injured. And Naozumi and Hirota are further in, they got cut off.”

“How long can your onix hold up the tunnel?”

There was a gaping silence. “Not long.”

Ignore the darkness, Lance told himself. Ignore the closeness of the air, the intermittent crashes, the bitten-off moans of pain.

Ignore it. Think.

His voice echoing strangely in the cavern, he said, “Everyone who can walk, come over here. Kaisho’s protect will shield you. My aerodactyl can carry you up the shaft. Archer, you understand? You need to go with them and carry them out. When you’re done, come back.”

As Archer barked his agreement, four miners shuffled forward.

“Go,” Lance told them, moving with Toku into an open spot under the onix’s coils. In the receding light of Kaisho’s protect, he made out two prone forms.

“How badly are you hurt?” he asked.

“Leg,” came a muffled answer. “Setsuko got hit in the head, I think. She’s out entirely.”

“Okay. Hold on. I’m going to try and break through to the others.”

“Don’t!” His urgency stopped Lance short. “You’ll bring everything down again.”

In the distance a crash reverberated. The light was entirely gone now. Kana’s flame would give them visibility, but Lance had listened to the miners enough to know that underground, fire could sometimes mean instant death.

He stood paralyzed. Beyond those rocks, two people might be dying. But if he did anything rash, he could doom them all.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll wait.”

Thirty seconds passed in silence, a small eternity. Lance listened to the onix’s straining breath, the grinding of stones in the distance. He could feel Toku’s wings, spread out protectively over his back, but if the ceiling really came down on them, there wasn’t much she could do except summon a twister powerful enough to save herself. Toku had never mastered protect.

“What’s your name?” Lance said to the conscious miner, desperate to break the stifling silence.

“Shoko.”

“Do you have family?”

“A small army.” His voice was hoarse with pain but fond. “I married three years ago. We have two daughters and my Harumi’s five months pregnant now. A boy, the xatu-teller said.”

“Congratulations,” Lance said awkwardly. Under the circumstances, the words felt horribly inadequate.

“Harumi wants to leave Pewter. There’s construction jobs in Vermillion, she said. Longer hours, but the work’s safer. I told her not to be silly. Our families have lived here for—aghhh.” He broke off. “Rock’s right on my fucking leg.”

Lance crouched down, feeling with his hands. “Toku, can you—”

They shifted it off.

“I still can’t move it. Must be broken. Don’t be a silly fool, that’s what I told her. Gods. Who’s the fool now?” He began to laugh unevenly. Suddenly his arm darted out and grasped the edge of Lance’s cape. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her she was right. Tell her—”

“You can tell her yourself,” Lance stopped him. “When we get out of here.”

Dust cascaded down on them as the onix shifted. Lance flinched, but no larger bits of cave followed the dust.

“Just a little longer,” he told the onix in a steady voice, hoping it was true. The weight must be almost unbearable.

What they needed was a distraction.

Lance started to hum one of the campfire songs the miners liked to sing in the evenings. Toku joined him and after a few bars so did Shoko, his words low and clipped, but audible. Lance closed his eyes—like that, he could pretend they were somewhere else. He focused on the melody, one note after the next.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a shriek interrupted them.

Archer!

The aerodactyl barreled into the chamber, Kaisho close on his tail. They weren’t alone. A squad of miners followed them, their headlights bright.

“Two injured here, two further in,” Lance called out.

“We’ve got an abra!” the leader of the group shouted back.

The next few moments passed in a blur. The abra teleported out Shoko and Setsuko. Kaisho and the miner’s sandslash maintained a protect while a group of graveler excavated into the blocked chamber. It was slow, careful going. Lance waited uselessly at the edge of the protective sphere, until one of the miners gently told him the fewer bodies in the tunnel, the better. He made sure Kaisho had the energy to continue, then gestured for Archer and Toku to follow him up.

The outside air hit like a cool spurt of water, gloriously clear and bracing. Lance gulped in a few heaving breaths. A passing breeze lifted up his hair and set it down. As his eyes readjusted to the daylight, the commotion filtered in. The area outside the shaft entrance swarmed with miners and mining pokemon. They had managed to prop the entrance, freeing the onix that had been holding it up. One of the miners came up to him with a bottle of water, which Lance downed greedily.

“Excuse me.” Lance turned around, swaying slightly on his feet. It wasn’t a miner addressing him—her clothes were too clean and too flowing for mine-work. A reporter, he realized, as a man with a camera stepped up behind her. Now that he was looking, he noticed a few sleek transport pidgeot grooming their feathers at the edges of the impromptu camp. “You’re Master Lance, right?”

“Yes,” he said scratchily. “Do you know what caused it?”

“Some kind of equipment breakdown. Everyone’s been too frantic to give me the details.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re covered in dirt—were you down there?”

“We got here first. Why don’t they have more abra?” The question burst out of him. Psychics had issues teleporting into dark, unfixed locations like mining tunnels, Lance knew, but they should be able to reach the shaft entrances. He recalled a crash he’d witnessed in Saffron—abra and medics had been on the scene almost instantly.

“Trained abra are expensive. I don’t think they can afford them full-time.”

Lance blinked. The battle halls, the gyms, the hustings—they all had psychic teams maintaining the battle shields, a fixture so familiar that Lance had stopped noticing it. It was important to keep people safe during battles. But battle-goers were there for fun; the miners were here because they had to be.

The reporter was watching him with burgeoning interest. “Do you think the regional government should give Pewter more support?”

“More support?” Lance couldn’t help his snort. He gestured towards the shaft entrance. “How about any support? There were eight people in that shaft when it collapsed and two of them are still inside. There’s a man, Shoko, the rock fell right on his legs. He might not be able to use them after this, and he’s got three kids depending on him. And if he can’t work, he’ll still be lucky, because he’ll be alive. His kids will grow up and he’ll still be there for them.

“I have a friend from Pewter. Both her parents worked in the mines and both of them died there. She didn’t have anyone growing up. She had to make her own way. But it shouldn’t have to be like that. These problems aren’t mysteries; they’re not sent by the gods. We can prevent this.”

“As champion, Pewter would be a priority for you, then?”

“It’s not just about Pewter. It’s about all of us. Hundreds of years ago, Kanto was just a collection of towns. Closed-off and vulnerable, because we didn’t help each other. If one town burned, what did that matter to anyone else? The war with Johto changed that. The first champion changed that. But if we’re willing to sit back and watch as Pewter suffers to provide Kanto with steel, then we learned nothing—nothing at all. If being champion’s good for anything, it’s to remind people of that.”

Lance broke off, realizing how much his voice had risen as he spoke, until he was almost shouting. A lull had fallen around him. Several more reporters had gathered, ringing around Lance in a loose circle. Beyond them, some of the miners had turned to stare.

Suddenly self-conscious, Lance took a small step back. Before he could take another, a calloused hand closed around his arm and hoisted it into the air.

You hear that?” Muno shouted, pumping Lance’s arm for emphasis. A crimson gash ran across his forehead, and his eyes were wild. “That’s our future champion. That’s Lance!”

His words had the effect of a second rockslide. Noise surged. The miners were clapping, the reporters shouting, the onix baying. Lance’s eyes went wide as the noise swept over him.

. . . They were all shouting his name.
 
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The Challenger, Part Two

Ah yes, the chapter in which Lance helpfully points out that people shouldn't say things they don't mean and then everyone goes, "Golly, you're right!" and corruption is henceforth gone forever. 🥲

This chapter had some of my favorite descriptive passages in all of DD so far!

The obvious starting place is the battle, or the un-battle. I bet you're gonna get some complaints from some of your readers about it. Even though this story makes it clear that power does not equal strength and that Lance isn't a badass because he's a better fighter but because of what he believes in, I'm absolutely positive that's flying right over some folks' heads, especially on FFN, and they'll feel cheated by not getting to see Lance smash his way into the E4. However, I think it's a successful choice. The way we get only painful glimpses of it not only centers the conversation on the most important parts, all the aftermath that his battle skills can't fix, but it also reflects the way Lance is trying to avoid reliving it. It's not a triumph. The glimpses we did get are great, though, and I enjoyed getting to see how Lance is really learning to strategize.

At least on the battlefield.

It has not yet occurred to him to strategize about when and how he speaks. 🙃 It's so painful to watch him flailing around—the literal stuff of nightmares. I guess Jiro thought he'd have more time to teach Lance this stuff. Or maybe he thought he wouldn't need to because Lance was his to control, RIP. Or maybe Lance's intrinsic ability to absorb it is just ... poor. (I'm thinking about his Ch1 lessons on dragon history and his inability to pay attention.)

Am I understanding right that Lance needs the votes to become champion because, unlike Jiro had planned, he has no understudy to fight Agatha for him?

I also enjoyed getting to see Jiro stripped down. He names Lance as a snake ... because that's part of who he is under the glitz and grins too. He's willing to fight dirty, in the end, when he's lost the kind of power that rewards being charming. I wonder whether Lance would feel differently if he understood how much danger Jiro was in by being in debt to Gio. He could easily be killed for that shit, or maybe a little "accident."

I like how what's at stake for Lance in this chapter isn't reeeeally the politics, which feel like a problem he'll have to sort out more fully later, but figuring out who he is without a mentor, separate from his team. He can't figure out the former without the latter. So, although we know honesty isn't going to be enough to win this game and although he's gonna have a hard time making good on the promises he's making to Pewter/Kanto at the end, it IS a triumph when he's able to vocalize what he really believes. It was so gratifying to see that, even though he feels so very alone, he does actually have allies, however humble, of his own making. It feels like he really has figured out what he stands for in a real and lasting way because right now he's reaping the fruit from seeds he sowed when he was on his own. Not everything good in his life was on loan from Jiro.

I'm also loving how we get to see the impression he's leaving on the next generation of gym leaders! Kasumi is going to remember him as kind and as someone she looked up to. And she's so independent and headstrong—she'll be ready and willing to push back against the establishment Gio has set up in Cerulean, though I don't think she'll realize she's pushing up against him at all. Brock (whose Japanese name I've already forgotten) comes off as a quiet, serious kid when he's framed as just a background character at the miner's camp. He'll remember Lance's humility and how he made himself relevant to the miners.

Speaking of the miners, I love that even in a setting with pokemon, the threat of a mine collapse doesn't vanish. It's so brutal how it sounds like it's a problem of distribution rather than technology existing, much like in our world. The crushing dark is very palpable. So what a cinematic success for Lance to rush to the rescue and pop back out of the earth, covered in dust and speaking shouting truth to power. Feels a little like a metaphor for rebirth. And he couldn't have crafted a better PR campaign if he'd planned it. No plans, just regrets and good decisions.

Incidentally, this reminds me of some of the beats in Black Water Sister, the one about the Malaysian girl being haunted by her, uh, very intense grandma who wants to get her involved in a dispute between the gods and a development company. Very tradition and magic vs technology and progress in a way that resonates with your Kanto. Pls read, so good.

Anyway, can't leave without talking about the cape! The dragon dance! I weep. Both moments really capture how he's caught at a crossroads between the tradition he lost but carries with him anyway and the modern world he doesn't quite fit into. The cape is wrong, costumey and singed, but it fits this new third thing he's been forced to become. The dance is maybe not quite correct but it's maybe closer to the origins of the dance and purer for it. I don't know if these feel like triumph either but like ways he's been marked. He's made his politics (and lack thereof) very, very public this chapter, and I wonder if and how these aspects of who he is will come into public light in some ways. Otherwise he's going to end up with some half truths of his own in the compartmentalization of these two sides of himself.

Lance slurped up another mouthful of noodles
Wowwwwww what a zag. I love how the hunched shoulders first seem like they'll be part of the Jiro fight but then, nope, it's time for more food. Skipping the battle feels like a brazen choice in this genre, but I think it worked, and you dodged it in such a Pen way.

A reporter. Lance had thought he’d shaken them all.
Poor genre-unsavvy Lance doesn't know he's in a Pen fic. Of course there's a reporter.

Lance realized with an uneasy twinge that they’d probably followed his scent.
Oh yikes. That's uncomfortable AF, but I love how proud and happy the little growlithe is lol.

I watched you at the Saffron town hall. You walked out right when Jiro began talking about loosening up the alcohol laws.
🙃

“Thought so. You were his protege, but you don’t like his politics.
Welp, you did all the wrong math to get the right answer, lol.

His body still rang with soreness from the night spent on the hard-packed autumn earth,
Oh NO. It's so telling how quickly he jumps back into being a little urchin boxcar child. It doesn't occur to him that there are other options.

by the final match-up he knew that in this, at least, Jiro had been honest.
Ouch, my feelings.

two dragonite, tumbling through the sky.
The idea that this sad yet momentous battle is what triggered that final evolution is 🙃

Though toward the end of the chapter it seems like actually Kaisho is still a Hakuryu? Unclear.

And then it had been over, and the world had rushed back in.
Nicely done.

With Jiro, he hadn’t had to think. And that was just the problem, Lance reminded himself. Not thinking.
Yeah, he did definitely let Jiro sweep him along. A lot like Archer. Lance definitely escaped a bad mentor, but then just jumped to a new one instead of getting his own ideas. He's being so hard on himself, though. He's a teenager. Of course he did.

He ducked into the first second-hand store he passed.
Man, remember when this guy didn't know what money was? Even though he's backslid in a lot of ways here, he's still come so far.

the racks of hanging clothes put Lance in mind of discarded miniryu skins, slowly decomposing.
Niiiice.

You were his protege, but you don’t like his politics. Was that really how people saw it? He wondered if he should tell someone the real reason
LOLOLOL the lack of self-awareness here is amazing. He doesn't think his beliefs are political just because he means them. Everything is political, baby Lance. Even the truth.

As Lance reached the end of the rack, a flash of red caught his eye. A jacket, he assumed, but when he gave it a tug, the fabric kept coming.
COULD IT BE
Loved the descriptions here.

The heavy fabric pressed down on his shoulders, but the sensation was comforting, like Kana’s wings braced against his back.
Excellent image! What a great parallel to the leadership he's just stepped into. A weight but also like wings.

Archer and Ibuki still preferred to hunt for themselves, but the others would need more in their diets than the cheap, nutritionally-questionable food that the pokemon centers gave out for free.
Logistics 👏 Yessss.
Man, he's really writhing on the end of the hook throughout this chapter, and you use money as a way to keep the stakes high for him.

The store smelled of dust-balls, and the weak light flickered erratically. Disorientation swept over him, so potent that his legs almost buckled. What was he doing here?
This is so effective.

Maybe Noriko would take him seriously this time, when he told her he wanted to join the G-Force.
He still sounds so much like a child here. I AM a big kid, see?

She hadn’t fixed anything.

Maybe no one could. Maybe it was just all just rotten.
Aww, baby.

I didn’t think I was such a coward.”

Toku snorted. The next instant, Lance’s face hit the dirt. He scrambled to his feet, wakefulness sparking down his veins.

“Hey, what was that for—”

Toku dove at him again. He jumped back just in time to avoid being clipped by her wing.
I love how she feels simultaneously inhuman and very relatable here.

I betrayed him too, though. That was the thought that ambushed him in every quiet moment.
Yeah. :c

Do you have any questions?”

Overwhelmed, Lance shook his head.
Questions: who? what? when? where? whyyyyyy

“WELCOME”—Lance flinched as the announcer’s voice boomed from behind him, as if shouting into his ear
Nice! The shift in his experience of the announcer is so good.

And he had at least one advantage over Kikuko—nobody had entered the hustings planning to fight him.
Hell yeah.

so they joined him on the dais
I had a little trouble picturing this, actually. It might be the kind of thing that would be fine if this were a novel I'd binged in one night instead of having read the previous chapter a while ago.

Being at the center of a crowd wasn’t entirely new, but Jiro had always held the spotlight.

Lance hadn’t appreciated just how much of a gift that had been until it was taken away.
New level of difficulty unlocked. He's really hurting for the loss of a lot of Jiro's gifts here. (But were they gifts or just on loan?)

His hand dropped reflexively to his belt, but his pokemon were still at the pokemon center. He’d have to face this one alone.

The first question was about pokemon importation laws.
Oh boyyyyy he did not study for this exam. You've really set up well how much of his strength is just in understanding his pokemon well and how little that helps him with problems like these.

Because the current laws were out-of-date and . . . something.
🙃 Surely nothing important in that gap.

Even if he remembered Jiro’s view, how could he trust it?
And that was just the problem, Lance reminded himself. Not thinking.

The noise in his ears cleared. He listened hard as Kikuko spoke about the historic importance of gambling in Celadon City and reiterated her commitment to respecting that tradition.
Aha and there's her uneasy alliance with Gio.

Anything that hurts people, you can’t give it a pass just because it’s hurt them for a long time.
👏 That's a hard intellectual hurdle for people to clear sometimes.
He finished, breathing hard like he’d just been running. Kikuko watched him with an incredulous look on her face.
HAHAHAHA
"Holy shit, he just shot himself in the foot right in front of me."

but at least he knew he’d said what he meant.
Hoo boy, he does not understand the rules here. We've already had at least one moment in this chapter when Jiro's honesty wasn't enough, and I can't imagine that'll be the only time.

Gigaku looked back at him and trilled an interrogative.
This was a little stiff IMHO.

He owed Jiro enough to listen to whatever he wanted to say.
Yeah that feels fair. And I imagine he's seeking closure ... but there's none to be had.

You meant—” Jiro passed a hand over his forehead. “It doesn’t matter what you mean, it matters what people hear and how they’ll vote.
You didn't teach him everything after all haha.

You need my endorsement. So let’s talk about what I’m going to get for it.”
Woof. There's his real face.

Jiro snapped. “You didn’t want to fight me? You’re sorry that we fought?
Yeah, I'd be pissed too. Lance is giving a poor apology because he's not addressing the thing Jiro is most upset about. I would not want to be a guy who's failed to get the Rockets something they were owed.

And if it had been your home on the line, you’d have done exactly the same.” Jiro’s lip curled. “But then, you don’t really have one, do you.”
Wowowowowow nuclear option.

It’s come to my attention,” he said flatly, “that there are some irregularities in your citizenship documentation. As I’m sure you’re aware, the hustings are reserved for bona fide citizens.
🚨

The world seemed to have turned slow and viscous.
So good.

It seemed to come from somewhere outside of him, soft and clipped and so very, very cold.
Sounds like Archer.

My god,” he said, slumping back in his chair. “I weaned a little arbok.”
And he'd wanted a lamb.

I sounded like Archer.

I sounded like Archer—and it worked.
Oh he noticed too! Haha. It's funny (though relatable) how this sneaks up on him. Like, my guy, you already named a pokemon after the man.

Lance opened his pack. The clothes inside were only a little less wet than he was.
:cccccc

Lad,” the voice floated under the door, “if you don’t open this door, I’ll hyperbeam it.”
This is so funny. That's supposed to be Lance's move!

Well, you look terrible,” she said matter-of-a-factly. “Come on. You’re staying with me.”
<3 He's gone about it in a messy way, and it's a ragtag band, but he does have his own allies because of the choices he made, not just because others have handed them to him.

Ten minutes later, and dry, he made his way cautiously
I wanted it to be "[second adjective] and dry," or "finally dry."

She scooped some rice into bowls, poured over green tea, and set them down. “I didn’t realize perishing of frost-bite was a winning hustings strategy.”
Omg the sass. The excellent choice of food. Love her so much.

Knowing’s a tricky business,
So very true.

newly-refurbished Cerulean Gym
🙃

A girl with hair the color of a koiking, tied back in two scruffy pig-tails, squinted at Lance from the doorway.

“You have a gyarados,” she announced when their eyes met.
Aww, hi! This was such a fun cameo.

a lily-pad green
I feel like it should be lily pad-green if anything. I definitely think it's lily pad and not lily-pad either way.

She grabbed Kasume by the wrist. “Change at once, young lady.”

“Don’t call me that!” Kasume
You've got both Kasumi and Kasume in here.

I don’t know why you’d want it, though. And I’m not sure you do, either.”
Oooooooooooooof
That might make it harder to achieve, kiddo.

When Lance was twenty steps into the sleet and fully soaked, it occurred to him that this hadn’t been the best idea.
Good decisions: weather edition.

You don’t know what it’s like. When we battle, we’re together. But with these town halls, it’s just me. And I don’t know who I am when I’m out there, Toku, I just. I don’t know who I am.”
Yeah, and this is hard for them to grasp since they're not there and can't be there. They don't know what they're missing.

Toku took to the air. She hovered for a few seconds, then dove into a tight loop. With a jolt, Lance recognized it as the opening step of the kairyu dance.
Not me crying on the bus.

He saw them sometimes in dreams, ready and waiting behind his closed eyes. But the images were blurred by time and distance, just flashes of color and a sensation of rightness so hazy that he wondered if it was a figment of his imagination.

All he had left were the memories, and memories faded. They weren’t enough to hold onto; they were a lighthouse that faltered in the dark.
Wasn't totally sure what "them" referred to? Memories? People?

What a doozy of a sentiment, though. It's been ... what, 8 years? That's a long time. I was a different person 8 years ago with a totally different set of expectations for my future. And I wasn't removed from my own culture as thoroughly as Lance has been.

And then he understood. It was in the name, after all. The kairyu dance. The clan had never claimed to have taught it. The ryu had danced it first, and the first tamers had followed them.
So pure.

Wherever you are, that’s home, Toku,” he said softly.
😭

You’ve sure put me in an awkward position, kid,” he said as they walked. “Jiro was going to help me make Pewter’s case to those damned Saffronites, you know. Cost me a lot of credibility, endorsing a cityslicker like him, and all for nothing now.”
🙃 But, again, he actually clicks with Pewter in a way Jiro hadn't. He has actual friends and resources here still.

Muno shot him a look tinged with incredulity. “They’d probably give you a discount, kid. It may not have sunk in yet, but you’re on the Elite Four now, and that means perks.”
Everyone realizing the depth of Lance's naiveté like 😒 😦 lol. But, like, nobody told him!

You mean bribes. That’s what Jiro did, he took bribes.” When Muno didn’t react except for a slight grimace, Lance felt a stab of betrayal. “You knew that.”
That moment when the scale of the conflict tips from "one smol boy and his large pants vs. Team Rocket" to "one smol boy vs the concept of corruption" lolololol. Yikes.

Right and wrong were something you could just see, like veins of ore in rock. But life’s really more like migmatite, all mixed up together. And when you’re between a rock and an onix, you take what you can get.”
This is such a delightful salad of rock nerdisms and truisms that somehow really works for me. Like, adapting that axiom to pokemon really fits and, yeah, it's one of those phrases people just emptily repeat, but it sounds very much like a thing Muno really has said to himself repeatedly.

himself. “Listen, if you don’t mind roughing it, we’ve got open spots in the mine barracks—you and your pokemon could earn your keep hauling rocks, if you really insist. It’s not a pleasant place to stay, though. Lotta noise, and you won’t have hot water unless you heat it yourself—”
Man, he couldn't ingratiate himself to them better if he was actually trying to.

I have to wonder how much of this is Lance's refusal to take what he sees as a bribe and how much is just "look, I already started doing it this way and I'm too stubborn to stop now."

A boy who Muno had introduced as his son Takeshi shot Lance the occasional curious glance, but kept his distance.
:eyes: Really making an impression on the next gen of gym leaders just by being around, participating, and being nice.

Toku had never mastered protect.
She only attaccc.

You can tell her yourself,” Lance stopped him. “When we get out of here.”
This is such a cliche, but it felt right anyway. You've done a good job capturing the oppressive darkness and the imminent danger, so I believe this miner would believe he might not make it out.

I have a friend from Pewter.
Friend (n.) - a person who was nice to me one time

But I love how we get to see all these events from his past really staying with him. You're doing a nice job using alllll the ground work you've laid previously.
 

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don't mind me, just quoting your whole review over here. As I was reading it, even besides the content, I was just enjoying it on a review-writing level. You've got topic sentences and dramatic transitions!

Also, spelling and line comments noted!

Ah yes, the chapter in which Lance helpfully points out that people shouldn't say things they don't mean and then everyone goes, "Golly, you're right!" and corruption is henceforth gone forever.
🥲
🥲


The obvious starting place is the battle, or the un-battle. I bet you're gonna get some complaints from some of your readers about it. Even though this story makes it clear that power does not equal strength and that Lance isn't a badass because he's a better fighter but because of what he believes in, I'm absolutely positive that's flying right over some folks' heads, especially on FFN, and they'll feel cheated by not getting to see Lance smash his way into the E4. However, I think it's a successful choice. The way we get only painful glimpses of it not only centers the conversation on the most important parts, all the aftermath that his battle skills can't fix, but it also reflects the way Lance is trying to avoid reliving it. It's not a triumph. The glimpses we did get are great, though, and I enjoyed getting to see how Lance is really learning to strategize.
In this house we 👏 SKIP 👏 BATTLES 👏 2023 👏!

Skipping this one was a very early decision, that I've been lowkey looking forward to. There's not really any dramatic tension in the question of whether Lance will win--everyone who knows the Gen I E4 knows at some point Jiro has to drop out of the picture. And we know how Lance fights, we know how Jiro fights. The character meat is in the aftermath. And as you said, this battle isn't one Lance wants to think about, even though the world isn't going to let him forget it.

At least on the battlefield.

It has not yet occurred to him to strategize about when and how he speaks.
🙃
Yep--he's entering the political arena now and it is a whole different ballgame.

It's so painful to watch him flailing around—the literal stuff of nightmares. I guess Jiro thought he'd have more time to teach Lance this stuff. Or maybe he thought he wouldn't need to because Lance was his to control, RIP. Or maybe Lance's intrinsic ability to absorb it is just ... poor. (I'm thinking about his Ch1 lessons on dragon history and his inability to pay attention.)
A combo of all three, I'd say! Jiro thought he'd be around to guide Lance through stuff like interviews and public appearances. He'd be telling Lance what to wear and what to say--easy. As for Lance's learning capacity, I think he's pretty good at learning things he thinks are important. But he has his own ideas of what's important and if it doesn't register, he just tunes it out--like the townhalls when Jiro was in them.

Am I understanding right that Lance needs the votes to become champion because, unlike Jiro had planned, he has no understudy to fight Agatha for him?
Unless someone else defeats her before the hustings end, it goes to vote! And yeah, unlike Jiro, Lance doesn't have a dragon-training apprentice to throw at her.

I also enjoyed getting to see Jiro stripped down. He names Lance as a snake ... because that's part of who he is under the glitz and grins too. He's willing to fight dirty, in the end, when he's lost the kind of power that rewards being charming.
He's so together most of the time, it was fun writing that composure crack. Even now, I don't think it's fully sunk in. He's either in denial or bargaining.

I like how what's at stake for Lance in this chapter isn't reeeeally the politics, which feel like a problem he'll have to sort out more fully later, but figuring out who he is without a mentor, separate from his team. He can't figure out the former without the latter. So, although we know honesty isn't going to be enough to win this game and although he's gonna have a hard time making good on the promises he's making to Pewter/Kanto at the end, it IS a triumph when he's able to vocalize what he really believes. It was so gratifying to see that, even though he feels so very alone, he does actually have allies, however humble, of his own making. It feels like he really has figured out what he stands for in a real and lasting way because right now he's reaping the fruit from seeds he sowed when he was on his own. Not everything good in his life was on loan from Jiro.
YES. No, you nailed it. His struggle in this chapter is deeper than the political stumbles, it's that he doesn't have a handle on his identity anymore. It's a less dramatic break than the one with Team Rocket but in a way it's more destabilizing for that. At least the Team Rocket thing left him with a clear mission that fit into his worldview. Now he's swimming in an uncharted sea.

But yeah, everything he'd been doing does matter. And the identity he'd going to build from this will be stronger for the fact it's all his own.

I'm also loving how we get to see the impression he's leaving on the next generation of gym leaders! Kasumi is going to remember him as kind and as someone she looked up to. And she's so independent and headstrong—she'll be ready and willing to push back against the establishment Gio has set up in Cerulean, though I don't think she'll realize she's pushing up against him at all. Brock (whose Japanese name I've already forgotten) comes off as a quiet, serious kid when he's framed as just a background character at the miner's camp. He'll remember Lance's humility and how he made himself relevant to the miners.
The Lance generation!

nyway, can't leave without talking about the cape! The dragon dance! I weep. Both moments really capture how he's caught at a crossroads between the tradition he lost but carries with him anyway and the modern world he doesn't quite fit into. The cape is wrong, costumey and singed, but it fits this new third thing he's been forced to become. The dance is maybe not quite correct but it's maybe closer to the origins of the dance and purer for it. I don't know if these feel like triumph either but like ways he's been marked.

Capes are very important. Lance lost Ibuki's cape at the end of the Agent. In the Vigilante he had a totally fake costume cape which he resented. This cape is a preformer's cape, but it's more real because it's marked by time and use. I think you're really right to call it a third thing. Lance has tried to hold onto his roots, but it's inevitable that what those roots mean will change as he does.

He's made his politics (and lack thereof) very, very public this chapter, and I wonder if and how these aspects of who he is will come into public light in some ways. Otherwise he's going to end up with some half truths of his own in the compartmentalization of these two sides of himself.
Indeed.

Welp, you did all the wrong math to get the right answer, lol.
Big moment of, people watch you too, and come to conclusions based on what they know.

Oh NO. It's so telling how quickly he jumps back into being a little urchin boxcar child. It doesn't occur to him that there are other options.
born2camp

The idea that this sad yet momentous battle is what triggered that final evolution is
🙃


Though toward the end of the chapter it seems like actually Kaisho is still a Hakuryu? Unclear.
Ah, no. The two dragonite refers to Toku fighting Jiro's ditto, which has transformed into a dragonite for the battle. Kaisho is still a hakuryu. If he evolved, Lance's narration would definitely pay attention.

Yeah, he did definitely let Jiro sweep him along. A lot like Archer. Lance definitely escaped a bad mentor, but then just jumped to a new one instead of getting his own ideas. He's being so hard on himself, though. He's a teenager. Of course he did.
He fell into the trap of feeling happy and like be belonged. Big mistake.

Man, remember when this guy didn't know what money was? Even though he's backslid in a lot of ways here, he's still come so far.
Yeah! I had fun sending him into a second-hand shop--a lot's changed since Mr. Inushi took him to one.

LOLOLOL the lack of self-awareness here is amazing. He doesn't think his beliefs are political just because he means them. Everything is political, baby Lance. Even the truth.
Cue surprised look at Hamako.

Nobody's told Lance "the personal is political" yet but he's starting to figure it out.

Excellent image! What a great parallel to the leadership he's just stepped into. A weight but also like wings.
Ooh, was not consciously thinking that but it totally fits.

Man, he's really writhing on the end of the hook throughout this chapter, and you use money as a way to keep the stakes high for him.
He's not having a good time. Which is sort of a perpetual DD mood of "you won and doesn't it suck."

He still sounds so much like a child here. I AM a big kid, see?
He's teetering on the edge--but to get what he wants--or not lose the things he doesn't want to lose--, he has to grow up some.

I love how she feels simultaneously inhuman and very relatable here.
I definitely think his dragons tend to more physical communication.

Aha and there's her uneasy alliance with Gio.
I was curious what your impression has been of Kikuko in these two chapters?

Yeah, I'd be pissed too. Lance is giving a poor apology because he's not addressing the thing Jiro is most upset about. I would not want to be a guy who's failed to get the Rockets something they were owed.
Absolutely. Lance just took away his power when he's just sold his soul to the mafia. It's a terrible position. As I said, I think the only reason he's not even angrier is that it hasn't quite sunk in.

Sounds like Archer.
Eyyyyy! Love that this was your first thought right here.

Oh he noticed too! Haha. It's funny (though relatable) how this sneaks up on him. Like, my guy, you already named a pokemon after the man.
What are you talking about, Lance has fully worked through how he feels about Archer. By not thinking about it. It's a good strategy.

This is so funny. That's supposed to be Lance's move!
:wink:

<3 He's gone about it in a messy way, and it's a ragtag band, but he does have his own allies because of the choices he made, not just because others have handed them to him.
Yeah!

Aww, hi! This was such a fun cameo.
Glad you enjoyed it! It was so easy to write--maybe the first fully finished scene of the chapter.

Wasn't totally sure what "them" referred to? Memories? People?
Ah, that's the kairyu dancers. I will clarify.

What a doozy of a sentiment, though. It's been ... what, 8 years? That's a long time. I was a different person 8 years ago with a totally different set of expectations for my future. And I wasn't removed from my own culture as thoroughly as Lance has been.
He's 17 going on 18 now and was 12ish when he left, so about 6. Still long!

🙃
But, again, he actually clicks with Pewter in a way Jiro hadn't. He has actual friends and resources here still.
Right, Jiro and Muno's friendship was always pretty 'you scratch my back.'

That moment when the scale of the conflict tips from "one smol boy and his large pants vs. Team Rocket" to "one smol boy vs the concept of corruption" lolololol. Yikes.
Yup yup! It's already so much there in canon, with Giovanni swanning around as a gym leader and running the mafia.

This is such a delightful salad of rock nerdisms and truisms that somehow really works for me. Like, adapting that axiom to pokemon really fits and, yeah, it's one of those phrases people just emptily repeat, but it sounds very much like a thing Muno really has said to himself repeatedly.
That bit just flowed. I hadn't thought about Muno at all before I wrote The Traveller Part One, but as a character he's just come super naturally.

Man, he couldn't ingratiate himself to them better if he was actually trying to.

I have to wonder how much of this is Lance's refusal to take what he sees as a bribe and how much is just "look, I already started doing it this way and I'm too stubborn to stop now."
I definitely think stubborness is a big component and also--he's already feeling guilty about screwing Jiro over. Imagine if he'd screwed Jiro over for something that's not a big deal?

Really making an impression on the next gen of gym leaders just by being around, participating, and being nice.
Yeah, we're starting to hit the part of the story where it's like, 'oh yeah, he's going to be Lance. One day, he'll be on posters kids pin on their walls.'

She only attaccc.
I'm very committed to the idea that while the dragonite line can learn almost anything as a whole, on the individual level what they're able to learn is deeply tied to their personalities. So Kaisho's over here with the safeguard and protect and rain dance, and Toku attacc.

This is such a cliche, but it felt right anyway. You've done a good job capturing the oppressive darkness and the imminent danger, so I believe this miner would believe he might not make it out.
That's good to hear! I fretted over the mine collapse scene a bit, because it's a bit of a genre swerve.

Friend (n.) - a person who was nice to me one time
They bonded over being orphans!! How else do you define a friend?

Ugh, but yeah, Lance could really use human friends, but he'll have to make do with dragon frens and dragon gramma.

But I love how we get to see all these events from his past really staying with him. You're doing a nice job using alllll the ground work you've laid previously.
It's very satisfying for me to write. And! Tune in for the next chapter at an unspecified date for even more groundwork getting, uh, stood on.
 
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kyeugh

you gotta feel your lines
Staff
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. farfetchd-galar
  2. gfetchd-kyeugh
  3. onion-san
  4. farfetchd
the citizen, i. -

it feels really good to be back in this fic. i mentioned it in chat, but it's such a hard one to review because i don't want to pull myself out of it at all to react or even think—i just want to burn through it to the end, but that doesn't make for a very good review. your writing is so tight yet immersive and evocative, just a breeze and a joy to read.

there's a quietness and a tinge of melancholy that permeates this fic and it comes through strongly in this chapter. it makes sense... lance is encountering a few different turning points at once. for one thing, as koga points out, he's perhaps approaching the limit of what raw strength alone can do for him. jiro is also persuading him to put down real roots now and potentially even become part of the elite four; to become part of the establishment to which he still views himself as an outsider.

he's at the end of something and the beginning of something else, so of course his eyes turn to the past he misses and the future that he desires: home. but maybe this is home now? things are feeling less and less like a means to an end. lance doesn't even know if he considers the dragon clan his family anymore, and he's seriously considering citizenship. the citizen!

it feels like jiro and koga represent the two warring sides of lance now. jiro is such a cosmopolitan guy and he really wants to shake things up. koga is steeped in the traditions of his home and resists the change that jiro represents. which path will lance take?

koga is a really cool character—not a ton to say but i agree with boots' assessment that his saltiness feels earned. he radiates power and experience in a way that reminds me of your giovanni. the parallels (and perpendicularities!) between him and lance are strong, and i liked the detail of him doting over his venomoth's wings, and he has some super hardcore dialogue. i'm a fan.

i really like your presentation of fuschia. it's very flavorful and unique, and i think you do maybe the best job i've seen at making kanto feel plural and varied. the road of compromise it's taken—the commodification of its own traditions and culture—is really sad. koga insists it's just practical, and i think if part of your culture is secretiveness and blending in, then maybe that can be true. it doesn't seem like it would apply to lance's case, where grandeur is part of the kit; turning it into a product really would destroy it, i think, and there's power to be sought in the kairyu that the snakes and spiders can't really boast. i wonder if lance is seeing a vision of the future here. if he aspires to power he will probably have to reckon with some of the questions that koga already has, and i'm not sure there are any good answers.

With each beat, Lance heard Jiro's question, reverberating grimly in his head.
the double comma makes this feel a bit choppy. i'm not sure what right rejig is, maybe "With each beat, Jiro's question reverbrated grimly in Lance's head."

You are entering the sovereign lands of the Unified Ninja Clans. 17 Revised Kanto Code 2000-b establishes the sovereignty of Ninja Clan law within the borders of the Fuschia Region. Consult with the Bureau of Information to learn your rights here.
this feels like it should be italic.

His form-fitting black clothing gleamed in the weak sunlight. It was the kind of black casino dealers wore. The kind of black meant to stand out.
i liked this callback to the casino.

"Not really. I don't think he's a real ninja."
this made me laugh. you really don't think so?

beating silver fists against his mind.
really cool

If Lance had found someone flashing a false kairyu cape
i was thinking about this. once lance rockets to stardom and becomes iconic, will there be cheap mockeries of his culture, too? what impact will his prominence have on his home? it's an interesting thought.

We know that this thing some call pride is little more than a bright cape
straight for the jugular, wow.

He didn't touch the tray, but watched Lance for several minutes, as if gathering his thoughts.
several minutes feels long—are they just standing there staring at each other?

---

the citizen, ii. -

i'm not sure if i'd figured it out once before, but if i did i definitely forgot that kikuko was agatha until just now. something about the way you described her laugh prompted me to look it up.

lance continues to struggle with his identity in this chapter... he does come to a decision in the end, maybe because he has to, but it rings a little hollow. the chapter ends with his reflections on how out of place he feels here, how badly he fits into the atmosphere of saffron, while the restaurant attendants dote on jiro... it's hard to feel like this is really what he wants, but it's not like he has a lot of choices.

the fight with kikuko was pretty brutal. i loved her banter, but she doesn't fuck around, and it's becoming really clear (if there was ever any doubt) that there's a lot more to the league than just pokémon battling. i understood that there was a political aspect, but in the last chapter koga lets on that he essentially had to swear fealty to the champion, and kikuko talks a lot about power-grabbing, so i guess in this world might makes right to a greater extent than i expected. it seems like lance might not have fully appreciated this before either, but it does make you wonder a bit more about jiro's posturing.

i liked your takes on the ghosts... they're cute and feel alive, and it was great seeing them interact with lance's pokémon and even teach kaisho a move. there is some cool battle-related lore here too; the psychic stuff with kikuko's gengar was pretty sick. the power escalation here seems almost shounen-y in a way—i don't mean that as a slight at all, but rather that there always seems to be just one more technique that recontextualizes what you thought you knew about strength in this world.

things are pretty low for lance at the end of this... he belongs nowhere, he just got his ass beat, and it looks like he's pretty firmly in cope mode in the last couple lines. i really wonder what happens for him next. it feels like it can only go up from here, but maybe we haven't plunged the depths quite yet. looking forward to revisiting soon!

Festival of Ash.
thank god he's finally here, i was starting to worry.

now, with sudden darkness, he wondered if Uncle just hadn't considered her worth mourning.
oh jeez.

Lance found ghastly lurking behind every stall, looping lazy circles around street lanterns,
* gastly — this typo crops up a couple times

Everyone in Lavender had spoken of Kikuko with respect, but the gym's disrepair told a different story.
maybe she just likes her gym to look haunted, lance.

Lance studied the panoply of objects in bemusement.
"panoply" is a new word to me but man is it good.

its tongue lolling-a bloated, unnatural pink.
did you want an em dash here?

A week in, Kaisho began to huff out dark wisps, much to the haunter's excitement. The ghost took on the role of tutor, until Kaisho could manage to spit a shadow ball about the size of an apple. That attack hit the ghastly and haunter no matter how discorporeal they were. Lance was sure it would come in handy when they went toe to toe with Kikuko.
it's really cool to see kaisho learning from them like this.

"Lance? What kind of name is that? If your mother gave it to you, she must be a fool."

His fists clenched before he could stop them. "Where I got my name isn't your business, is it, Champion?" he said, proud that his voice had stayed level.

"Sure isn't. I just want to know where you got that hair. A bottle, I expect."
i love her so much.
 
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bluesidra

Mood
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. hoppip-bluesidra-reup
  2. hoppip-bluesidra-pink
  3. hoppip-bluesidra3
I am finally free! Dobby is free to review the stuff she's put off for far too long!

Okay, I have many Thoughts and Feelings on Challenger 1&2, and most of them are me being angry with Lance.
On one hand, he deserves the biggest dressing down of his entire life, for stabbing Jiro in the back when he himself isn't that much better. For still running into things without thinking. For constantly burning all bridges. For sounding like an absolute killjoy and for still getting support.
But on the other hand, when I was seventeen, I would have done exactly the same. Point for point. And ten years later I cringe at the thought of it. But let's shove my personal gripes with Lance under a spoiler.

Lance aside, those were two impressive chapters. I quite enjoyed your worldbuilding with the e4 and the champion, and the way they're intermingled with kanto's politics. And also the tournaments. The one-knockout-rule makes it impressively clear just how strong the e4 are. And Jiro trashing that one challenger who went all in was a very neat way of show-don't-tell. I didn't even notice that I was learning all these essential rules until it was already over. But re rules: The rules regarding the tournament process and who gets to challenge who for what title are still a bit fuzzy in my head. For Challenger 1, the rules as explained were completely sufficient. By the end, I knew exactly the consequences of Lance's challenge. But right now, I couldn't tell you what would need to happen for Lance to challenge Kikuko.

Overall, this chapter has sent me on a roller-coaster of emotions, maybe the most out of all chapters of DD. Well, maybe roller-coaster is the wrong word. But it made me very emotional in that I felt myself getting angrier and angrier with a fictional character, in a way I haven't been in quite a while. The only tonal relief was the cave-in in pewter. The cynic side of me despised it, because it felt like it's building some "hero of the people" narrative, which I see more often than not in the neighborhood of populist campaigns nowadays. But the way Lance reacted to the media, still completely clueless and without a plan somehow reconciled me with it. Saving miners also felt very in character for Lance, and finally there was one thing that I could support without spending braincells on second guessing the consequences.

As much as I glared at Lance this chapter, Jiro really grew on me. I couldn't quite grasp him in his introductory chapter, and then he's mostly been in the role of a supporting friend. But here, Jiro is working towards his own goals, and we're also shown him in public and in private. You constructed him very well. He is flawed, but he is also believable and relatable. Sometimes more so than Lance. #JiroForChamp

I have no clue how you intend to finish DD in one or two chapters, but I'm very much looking forward to it. Until then, I'll cry sad tears over the loss of Jiro, the funnest character in this fic.
Gud fic, pls update

Cheers, blue
Rip Jiro (2022-2023)

Lance.
He is a teenager, and it shows. He makes some really bad decisions while trying to do what's morally right. I get that. I was there. You feel like the world is so corrupt, when the right thing to do is so obvious. But doing the right thing hurts everyone around you, and then you feel like your self-righteousness is actually only selfishness. And you're back at the beginning of the conundrum, where you're again feeling that what you're doing isn't right.
I went into this Blitz wanting to be a lot kinder than last year, and try to honor characters' perspectives and especially political views more. Because I know I have absolutely no chance at seeing the full picture of what you and all the other great writers out there are even concocting until I stand in front of it.
But damn, Lance's decisions in these chapters make me so angy, and I can't for the life of me justify them. Other than that he did the "right" thing? He didn't compromise on his morals, that's one thing. He didn't think too much, either. But as things stand right now, and with the world you've built, I can't see Kanto heading towards a brighter future under Lance than it did under Kikuko. In pewter he promises things he has no chance of knowing if he can actually come true on his words. He is so gullible in a way (he's very jaded by now, but he still falls easily for someone who appeals to his sense of justice), that he might easily end up as a marionette. And then you have people in the shadows that can't be voted out of the office. And if he doesn't end up as a marionette, he is so impulsive that he might as well sign two well-meaning policies that completely lock each other. Because sometimes, both sides can only lose.
I'm not saying that Kikuko is doing the politics the right way. Or that Jiro's bribes and favors are the way to go. And I get his frustration about this. Because it is so incredibly frustrating. But unless we throw democracy out the window, the voices of other people have to be listened to. And that takes time and soft-skills to navigate.
Only, Lance wasn’t sure he wanted that anymore. Noriko and the G-Force hadn’t been willing to raise a hand against Jiro. Whatever they had been once, these days they had no power to do anything about real problems.
Yes, and it's for the better. Lance has a serious issue with hoarding power and influence, unaware that splitting up power to have each of them act as checks to each other is a good thing. I for one am happy that there is no G-Force with ultimate power under the leadership of Lance, enforcing his ever wavering moral code on anyone who disagrees with him.
His entire convo with Noriko after he recorded the tape reminded me of just how much Lance wants to be judge, jury and executor when it comes to moral issues. And when Jiro didn't comply with his views, Lance got to be all three of them. He means well, which... yay... But that's a scary image nonetheless.
You walked out right when Jiro began talking about loosening up the alcohol laws.
“I have something to say.” Startled, her eyebrow rose, but she gestured for him to speak. He forced himself to take a breath before he continued. “Casinos are—out-of-control. It’s not just entertainment. Well, for some people, it’s just entertainment, but for others, it’s their whole lives. It controls their lives. It takes people’s hope and it turns that against them; it takes everything they have, until they don’t have anything, and so they don’t have any choice then but to come back again and again. It hurts people,” Lance insisted. He wasn’t sure where he should be looking—when he looked out towards the crowd, the lights burned his eyes. “Anything that hurts people, you can’t give it a pass just because it’s hurt them for a long time. I think they should be shut down.”
Another thing about Lance's politics that concerns me a bit are lines like these. I get where he's coming from, but he's mainly against these issues because he knows Rocket will profit off of them. He doesn't stop for one second to think about how conservative his viewpoints are, or how much power legislations like these would give the state to criminalise anyone they wanted. The fact that Hamako is in his corner now is something I would see as a warning sign if I were Lance, to seriously reconsider what I'm saying. But he doesn't. He is very much a traditionalist. And that might not be inherently wrong. But I live in a country where traditions are freely abused to stifle progress and keep the rich and powerful rich and powerful, so I'm sus of this mindset.
I’m sorry that we had to, but I can’t change what happened. I told you to give back that money and you wouldn’t—”
If he was really sorry, he wouldn't have done it in the first place. He tore down Jiro just because he didn't do what Lance wanted him to do. It's the way of the dragons, where one eats the other, and I get that. But to act now as if this wasn't just a thing of pride and Lance not even trying to view another side is just cowardice.
An extraordinary stillness possessed Lance. He met Jiro’s gaze without blinking. “I don’t tell lies. That’s what you do. So keep threatening me if you want. But when that tape is public, I won’t be the only one who doesn’t have a place here. It’s your choice.”
Yeah, you don't tell lies... except when you do, what with Team Rocket and Aki and whatnot. Also, what would happen if the tape got out? I'm sure Jiro can handle a bit of public outcry, especially with Archer and Gio involved. What he can't handle is his certain death to which Lance has doomed him. As in, he knows what happens when Rocket doesn't get its money back. It's not his responsibility -- after all, Jiro has gotten himself into this. But if Lance really cared about him, he might have taken into consideration how seriously he put his friend's life at risk there.
If, Ho-oh forbid, we got ourselves into a war, it’s the champion who’s responsible for leading us safely through it.
BuT tHeY kILL pEopLe!!!
aha. Head of the Kantonian military. What exactly is the difference between what a military does and what team rocket does? Armies also kill people. Innocent people. It being state-sactioned, or, in this case, Lance-sanctioned doesn't make it less reprehensible. But Lance is just so stupid, he has to see the consequences himself before he starts to think for once.
“Believe it or not, I remember being your age. Things seemed pretty simple then. Right and wrong were something you could just see, like veins of ore in rock. But life’s really more like migmatite, all mixed up together. And when you’re between a rock and an onix, you take what you can get.”
Me 🤝 Muno
sigh as much as I'm angry about Lance, in the end it all comes down to this right here. Like I said, I was exactly like him when I was seventeen. And now I sound like an old woman. His worldview is not inherently wrong, in fact, it's probably the morally right thing to stick to. But it's also very inconsiderate. And now I feel like I'm excusing corruption and loss of integrity and slow politics, and feel guilty.
Lance frowned. He didn’t exactly agree with the idea that Saffron should get more of a say just because it happened to have more people crammed into its brooding high-rises. “Like it or not, the other places do vote.”
Ah, yes, what even is fair representation? Just because you happen to live in a big city, your vote counts less? I swear, the uk and american voting system are such a hack.
He had never been to a theater before.
Oh god, what a baby.
“Will you be free later tonight? To talk about―” Secrets and lies, Lance thought, wincing. “Just to talk,” he finished weakly.
🙃 Okay, if I have learned something in my long career of consuming media, then that this is a surefire way to make said thing not happen. If Jiro pulls out a picture of his family next and tells Lance how much he looks forward to retiring soon, it couldn't be more dooming.
three champagne glasses.
oooooooooooh shit, the third person's Jiro, isn't he?!?!
“―sick?”
Please give the boy some sex ed before he has any political influence okay? "I don't understand how condoms and education will keep the bombirdiers from dropping more babies. Let's use the money somewhere else"
The third voice continued brightly, “Genuine Kalos import? You’re spoiling us, executive.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA Called it!
after you’ve turned eighteen.”
Omg, he's baby.
Sometimes I forget how young he is.
Jiro could talk until the tauros came home and still not come to the point.
A) cool proverb B) Jiro definitely could C) he is a born politician
However, there are certain debts that have gotten a little on top of me in recent years. And now that I’m in a position where I need a substantial sum right at this moment, it’s been a tad difficult to find a lender willing to extend their goodwill. Even with Archer it was a close call―if Giovanni hadn’t had my back, I’m sure he would have sent me packing
oooooooh shit that's really bad. It's only a matter of months until he ends up in a river, feet firmly in concrete
We’re not a roving morality commission.
Yes, and it's better they aren't.
Despite everything, Lance had to laugh. “How about we save eating him for plan B?” he managed.
:D Nothing to add, just a sweet line
With the help of the others, he acted out an elaborate charade showing what the aerodactyl did to the ones who took more food than was their share.
omg, the pokemon are so cute!
cap pressed low
okay, that's it. The old hag is done now, we all know that by pokemon law, he who wears a cap shall win the championship
Hunching his shoulders, Lance slurped up another mouthful of noodles and winced as the hot broth stung his tongue.
WAIT WHAT?!?!?!? THIS IS NOT THE MATCH I EXPECTED!
But the growlithe looked smug at her trainer’s words
Heh. She's a good girl and she damn well knows it.
I thought, I mean, we all did, that you and Jiro were cooking up Kikuko’s defeat.”
This reporter hasn't quite understood the way an interview works. It's the interviewed one who should do the talking, not the interviewer.
It had been a long time since he’d had to worry about having dry clothing or a soft place to sleep. With Jiro, he hadn’t had to think. And that was just the problem, Lance reminded himself. Not thinking.
Putting this line in my own notes for reasons...
Reluctantly, Lance set the cape down.
that's my cape man Lance. reluctant to give up cape. As the gods willed it.
Archer and Ibuki still preferred to hunt for themselves,
Oh, I like this! Addressing how dragons feed! Bc I figure between them they'd eat two cows a day, and that's costly and hard to sustain in the long run, so any fic that thinks about the logistics of keeping your team fed is super cool!
ll talk, the bribes—Lance wanted nothing to do with it. He’d be eighteen in a few months.
Omg. He. Is. Baby. Technically, his legal guardian would have to sign for the bank to even accept bribe money.
gripped the end of her tail, using the momentum to swing himself onto her back.
This is an unexpected and very humiliating move to wrestle with a dragon, but also hilarious and I love it.
“We’ll do it your way, Toku,” Lance said at last. He smiled without humor. “My way hasn’t been going very well.”
As much as I distrust Lance's plans, and as much as I trust Toku's judgement... what is her plan?
“Well, if any occur to you, I'm sure Champion Kikuko would be delighted to fill you in on the more abstruse turns of this age-old rite.”
This guard has woken up on the wrong side of the bed and doesn't give a fuck that he's gambling his life away.
they joined him on the dais—all except Ibuki, who coiled herself around it.
Very cool and impressive image!
It didn’t matter what he wanted, Lance decided at last. He owed Jiro enough to listen to whatever he wanted to say.
YES YOU DO!
You need my endorsement. So let’s talk about what I’m going to get for it.
That's my boy right there!
“Lad,” the voice floated under the door, “if you don’t open this door, I’ll hyperbeam it.”
Oh, it's Lance's secret twin brother?
 
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Jiro (2022-2023)
So long. Was nice meeting you, my friend...​
 

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Hiiiiii Pen, finally tagging back for our review exchange! I'll be covering chapters 3-5 and will come back for 6-8 hopefully before the end of Blitz!

Last time I was here I'd just read 1 and 2, so I had to do a brief skim/recap of those chapters and they were just as upsetting as the first time around. I still feel really bad for Wataru and I still want him to show back up at the Clan and beat them all over the head with a big "GET FUCKED" sign. Anyway.

Chapter 3 sees Wataru off, with a new companion no less! I'm looking forward to seeing how he gathers all of his other dragons, as I assume a lot of this story will also cover the gathering of his team. I'm loving Kana already and am excited to see how the rest of his team's personalities play out.

I keep having to remind myself that this is like WAAAAAAAAAAAAY before the time we see in the games (not that I actually played the Kanto/Johto games thoroughly but still), because I keep finding myself getting stuck on "what the hell do you MEAN the gym is just being built??" or "what the hell do you MEAN the gym is out of commission???" only to realize that Wataru/Lance is still a babby fetus at this point and this is all like, prequel to the League as we see it in the games. So it's actually kind of cool to kind of see in passing how things were developing as Wataru was also developing himself.

I had to google who Muno was lmfao, I guess he was in the anime at one point? Brock's dad? Can you tell my knowledge on the Indigo League is lacking lmfao Neat to see the predecessors at work, because I'm over here thinking WAIT A SECOND, BROCK??? But again, yes, this is things as they were developing. As Wataru was a kid. So I'm assuming I'll be seeing some OC gym trainers later on? Or some anime-only characters I have no idea about because I live under a rock *rimshot*

I did like how Wataru was eager to battle Muno even knowing it wasn't going to be officiated, and that he wasn't going to get an actual badge out of it. It shows his eagerness to get stronger and prove himself, so that was just a cool little character thing there. Good for him, beating the man down as he's :riplup: over his destroyed gym :copyka: Nah but fr he was a good sport about it.

Chapter 4 was really damn sweet! I love me some cute old ladies that end up opening up a can of whoop-ass and dropping some sage wisdom after the fact. Couldn't find anything about a Hamako so I'm assuming she's a cool OC, and I love her. I love her willingness to help Wataru out, and I love how she just KNEW the magikarp was going to evolve. I found myself wondering "how the fuck did she know that" and then she just whipped out a gyarados. That's what I get for asking questions too early ifg. Good for the Magikarp, she really was trying her best and EVERYONE was making fun of her, but she damn well knew!!!!! What was up!!!!!!

Also HE NAMED THE GYARADOS IBUKI I'M CRI. I had forgotten who Kana was too until I read back, I guess he's naming his team after people who had big effects on him back at the clan? Am I right?

I also fucking KNEW that was going to be the moment Toku was going to evolve. Idk the emphasis on her shedding, then how Wataru was just so fixated on how shiny her scales were? I was like "yep, it's coming, this is prime foreshadowing," and a bitch was right. I'm so happy for her. The elders back at the clan are shaking in their fucking wrinkles rn.

Also god I hope the dragons who previously owned all that skin are alright :copyka:

Chapter 5 was a bit more of a doozy, a darker turn. Of course it was coming. Kind of brought on a more somber mood with the exposition about Wataru's reptilian nature, being unable to function in the cold. I wonder if that was intentional, is the man just a lizard at his core??? Is that why he's so good with these other lizards???

I had a big AWH FUCK moment when Wataru found the tank in the casino, because how the FUCK did they find a dratini? And god the seething rage I felt when not a single goddamn person, not even Okido (seemingly) listened to him. Like, I GET why, these things are on a mythic level, but also, like......come on, look at the poor thing. You made it clear by the prose that it's VERY MUCH sickly looking, at the very least heed the advice goddamn!!!

I know its bad but I DID want Wataru to whip Toku out and be like THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO ME YOU SHMUCKS buuuuut I get why he didn't wanna do that. I respect it, but I was definitely malding.

I was really malding at Okido dismissing him, but then I got to the bit about the letter being sent and I did a lil' happy dance. THANKS PROFESSOR DAD.

I'm so happy they let him at least attempt to tend to the dratini while they were changing the water; it's not much but it's progress. Also, side note, love how this country bumkin kid is learning how to fucking gamble. Good for you Wataru, learn while you're young. Your hair will turn grey much faster with all that gambling stress.

I know I stopped before the güd güd but I do hope he finds some miraculous way to break the thing out. I know he's GOING to but I'm still on the edge of my seat.

Overall I like where things are going! Your prose is stellar and I love the way you describe things. Very flowy and ethereal like, honestly.

As for my more critical notes, the pacing kind of fluctuated for me a little bit. I felt like some parts really got sped through when we could have spent more time in them, while other parts that could have been sped through got a little more moseying. I think this overall shows in how Wataru is becoming accustomed to this more "modern" life he has now. He left the Gift not knowing jack fucking all about the outside world, and I was really looking forward to watching him struggle through figuring out more modern technology and making his way around to all of the more modern architecture, and I feel like the way the exposition just describes his months in paragraphs, I don't really get that sense of growth. We just kind of bounce between him at different points without the actual trek to those points.

I was also a little disappointed in chapter 5's battle, because there was such a buildup to it--him having to wait for a month, finding out the day of he only has 2 hours to get there with 2/3 of his team nowhere in sight, and it all gets condensed to a paragraph or two. I wonder if that was INTENTIONAL, to make me feel as disappointed in it as Wataru was, but even so, I would have liked to have seen that drawn out more. Ericka seemed to have a very, uh, generic/mass produced way of going about her battles and I would have LOVED to have seen that explored in a battle scene. Having Wataru all hyped up about it, and watching it slowly deplete as he realizes she's just kind of there because she has to be. Also, I was looking forward to seeing more Kana bonding!

Anyway, I think that caps my rambling thoughts for the moment. I have some assorted line-by-lines, too, so yeah!! Good stuff, and I'll be back for those last three :)

"It's been some time since my onix has been laid low by a runt without a water-attack to its name. That's some fighting spirit your pokemon have got, both of them."
Buuuuuut she had some steel-type attacks didn't she?

"Made them at 4am this morning.
The "4am" would be redundant with the "morning" part. But I also realize this is dialogue and that might have been intentional because people do really be talkin' like that.

From the first, Saffron City had been unwelcoming. Entry into the city was funneled through a checkpoint, where a long line stretched out into the wintery air. When Wataru finally reached the front, thoroughly chilled from standing in the cold, the guard had examined his trainer's card with a skeptical face. She'd demanded his visa next, subjecting that slip of paper to the same scrutiny. Finally, the guard had declared that foreign trainers paid a special processing fee. Wataru didn't know what that meant—in the end, she'd let him through only after he'd paid her with almost all that was left of Uncle's money.
Ah yes, just like the "random searches" they do at airports, smh my head

Spin and Win the Jackpot, blared red and gold letters emblazoned above the tank. Ultra-Rare Dragon Dratini!
BRUH NO

The woman laughed. A small smile lit her face and she glanced distractedly down at the silver watch on her wrist. "Listen, kid. You read something in a fairytale? Heard Professor Okido spout some haiku? Dratini are rarer than five-leaf clovers. Anyone who claims to know what's best for them is talking out of their ass."
OH MY GGGAAAAAAAAAWWWDDDDDDD FUCKING LISTEN TO HIM IT'S SICK *chimpanzee noises*

The professor answered on the fourth ring. His eyes went wide.
Oh wait, so....they have video phones??? Did I miss a bit where he has a digital dex or something, I'm sorry

There's nothing to this at all, Wataru marveled, reaching for the red button again.
Oh honey, you've got a fucking storm coming

The pokemon meditated with closed eyes at the center of the casino. It could sense bad intentions and teleport at the slightest hint of trouble.
Waaaaaiiiitttttt so why didn't he sense the drunk fucker about to square up with a bartender? Man's slacking

"Are you up to fighting all on your own?' Wataru asked Kana. He wasn't really surprised when the charmeleon answered with a confident yip.
OMG YES KANA AND WATARU BONDING YES

Kana did win in the end, but the victory wasn't anything close to elegant. As Wataru slumped on the railing of the platform, still exhausted from the long night, Kana burned her way through a weepinbell, a tangela, and a gloom, keeping a wide distance from their noxious sprays.
:(((((((((((( Damn I really wanted to see this play out tbh

Congratulations, challenger! Your skilled pokemon has won you the Rainbow Badge of Celadon City. I wish you the best of luck in your aspirations going forward!"
Okay Ericka just tell the room how much you hate being there, we'd respect you more if you just stopped lying to yourself

"I talked to the manager and she told me that they're changing its water tomorrow, early in the morning, and she said if you still have ideas about how to deal with that nasty flaking, you can try. Some professor sent a letter about it, or something."
OKIDA CAME THROUGH WHAT A GOD

One afternoon, Wataru pressed mechanically down on the red button—the kairyu roared; the lines spun. A column of miniryu, and another, and another, until the very last column jerked into place, its final slot taken by a grinning gold magikarp. Wataru stared blankly up at the screen, counting.

Fourteen. But fourteen wasn't enough. It wasn't enough!
HE WAS SO CLOSE

Still, the man stared. "Perhaps you don't know me because I'm well above your pay-grade," he suggested, dark amusement slithering through his voice.
Wow I had this exact thing happen to me when I worked at Starbucks--some rando tried to walk behind the counter and after I flagged them down they were like "Oh you don't know me because I'm your district manager and you're new here." 100/10 believable LMAO.
 
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it feels really good to be back in this fic.
It feels really good to have you back!

i mentioned it in chat, but it's such a hard one to review because i don't want to pull myself out of it at all to react or even think—i just want to burn through it to the end, but that doesn't make for a very good review.
Aw, well. I appreciate your saying so!

lance doesn't even know if he considers the dragon clan his family anymore, and he's seriously considering citizenship. the citizen!
The sheer subtle nuance of my chapter titling, revealed!

koga is a really cool character—not a ton to say but i agree with boots' assessment that his saltiness feels earned. he radiates power and experience in a way that reminds me of your giovanni. the parallels (and perpendicularities!) between him and lance are strong, and i liked the detail of him doting over his venomoth's wings, and he has some super hardcore dialogue. i'm a fan.
He was a ton of fun to write. Grump ninja uncle. You don't get thicker skin than if you're a ninja cosplaying as a tourist.

the road of compromise it's taken—the commodification of its own traditions and culture—is really sad. koga insists it's just practical, and i think if part of your culture is secretiveness and blending in, then maybe that can be true. it doesn't seem like it would apply to lance's case, where grandeur is part of the kit; turning it into a product really would destroy it, i think, and there's power to be sought in the kairyu that the snakes and spiders can't really boast. i wonder if lance is seeing a vision of the future here. if he aspires to power he will probably have to reckon with some of the questions that koga already has, and i'm not sure there are any good answers.
Great observations. watch this space.

this feels like it should be italic.
Hm, is there any particular reason why?

several minutes feels long—are they just standing there staring at each other?
Lol, I cut the time, but also, I could kind of see Koga doing that.

he does come to a decision in the end, maybe because he has to, but it rings a little hollow. the chapter ends with his reflections on how out of place he feels here, how badly he fits into the atmosphere of saffron, while the restaurant attendants dote on jiro... it's hard to feel like this is really what he wants, but it's not like he has a lot of choices.
Yeah. It's finally sunk in that going home really isn't a choice anymore.

it's becoming really clear (if there was ever any doubt) that there's a lot more to the league than just pokémon battling. i understood that there was a political aspect, but in the last chapter koga lets on that he essentially had to swear fealty to the champion, and kikuko talks a lot about power-grabbing, so i guess in this world might makes right to a greater extent than i expected. it seems like lance might not have fully appreciated this before either
watch this space

the power escalation here seems almost shounen-y in a way—i don't mean that as a slight at all, but rather that there always seems to be just one more technique that recontextualizes what you thought you knew about strength in this world.
That's good to hear! Kikuko is the champion--it would be strange if she didn't have some tricks up her sleeve.

things are pretty low for lance at the end of this... he belongs nowhere, he just got his ass beat, and it looks like he's pretty firmly in cope mode in the last couple lines.
I do think there's a sense of relief that comes with choosing to try and belong. So I'm not sure I'd call it his lowest point.

thank god he's finally here, i was starting to worry.
WHERE ISS ASH??? THERE IS. NO ASH?????

* gastly — this typo crops up a couple times
You're learning my true zoroark tell--I mispell pokemon names left and right because I'm very confident in knowing how they sound and I never check the stupid spelling. Fixed, sigh.

did you want an em dash here?
Wow this is the second random hyphen someone's pointed out in my writing today. Those little buggers get everywhere. Fixed.

it's really cool to see kaisho learning from them like this.
I write Kaisho as being more adaptable than Toku--he had to be, to survive as long as he did in a totally unsuitable environment--and one way that comes out is more of an ability to pick up on new moves.

i love her so much.
Glad to have a Kikuko stan onboard!

Hi Blue! Great to hear from you again--really appreciated hearing your thoughts on this chapter, and of course, your FABULOUS FANART. Kaisho's wings look so fluffy, I keep wanting to touch the screen.

For still running into things without thinking. For constantly burning all bridges.
Lance, in a nutshell.

For sounding like an absolute killjoy and for still getting support.
Well, not much of it. Pre Pewter, I don't think anyone's supporting him other than Hamako, and I doubt she'd actually vote for him as things stand.

The one-knockout-rule makes it impressively clear just how strong the e4 are. And Jiro trashing that one challenger who went all in was a very neat way of show-don't-tell. I didn't even notice that I was learning all these essential rules until it was already over.
Very glad to hear that! Balancing the exposition in that chapter was tricky.

But re rules: The rules regarding the tournament process and who gets to challenge who for what title are still a bit fuzzy in my head. For Challenger 1, the rules as explained were completely sufficient. By the end, I knew exactly the consequences of Lance's challenge. But right now, I couldn't tell you what would need to happen for Lance to challenge Kikuko.
He had his chance to challenge her when his token was called. Instead, he fought Jiro and took his place. Now he's in the hustings as a candidate for champion, which means no direct fights with Kikuko. The only way to beat her is by the vote.

As much as I glared at Lance this chapter, Jiro really grew on me. I couldn't quite grasp him in his introductory chapter, and then he's mostly been in the role of a supporting friend. But here, Jiro is working towards his own goals, and we're also shown him in public and in private. You constructed him very well. He is flawed, but he is also believable and relatable. Sometimes more so than Lance. #JiroForChamp
Ey, very glad Jiro has a stan.

I have no clue how you intend to finish DD in one or two chapters, but I'm very much looking forward to it.
I have no idea how I would either! There's at least 3-4 named chapters left, which if recent pattern holds means more like 6-7.

Until then, I'll cry sad tears over the loss of Jiro, the funnest character in this fic.
You may not have seen the last of him!

Lance.
He is a teenager, and it shows. He makes some really bad decisions while trying to do what's morally right.
This could be the tag-line of this story, yep.

He is so gullible in a way (he's very jaded by now, but he still falls easily for someone who appeals to his sense of justice), that he might easily end up as a marionette.
Absolutely. He's trying, though!

Yes, and it's for the better. Lance has a serious issue with hoarding power and influence, unaware that splitting up power to have each of them act as checks to each other is a good thing. I for one am happy that there is no G-Force with ultimate power under the leadership of Lance, enforcing his ever wavering moral code on anyone who disagrees with him.
His entire convo with Noriko after he recorded the tape reminded me of just how much Lance wants to be judge, jury and executor when it comes to moral issues. And when Jiro didn't comply with his views, Lance got to be all three of them. He means well, which... yay... But that's a scary image nonetheless.
There's a reason he found Archer's initial pitch compelling.

If he was really sorry, he wouldn't have done it in the first place.
Well, it's definitely possible to do something and be genuinely sorry after. But Lance isn't giving a good apology here at all, and it's bad precisely because he does feel conflicted about what he did and so is defensive about it.

sigh as much as I'm angry about Lance, in the end it all comes down to this right here. Like I said, I was exactly like him when I was seventeen.
I'm glad his age and his actions are making sense for you.

His worldview is not inherently wrong, in fact, it's probably the morally right thing to stick to. But it's also very inconsiderate. And now I feel like I'm excusing corruption and loss of integrity and slow politics, and feel guilty.
These are big themes for this story--idealism and corruption, the limits of moral purity as a solution. I don't think they have easy answers and I certainly don't think you should feel guilty over that.

Ah, yes, what even is fair representation? Just because you happen to live in a big city, your vote counts less? I swear, the uk and american voting system are such a hack.
the internet: land doesn't vote!!
Lance: why not tho

WAIT WHAT?!?!?!? THIS IS NOT THE MATCH I EXPECTED!
The broth was very hot.

Technically, his legal guardian would have to sign for the bank to even accept bribe money.
This made me chuckle.

This guard has woken up on the wrong side of the bed and doesn't give a fuck that he's gambling his life away.
The guard woke up and CHOSE VIOLENCE

That's my boy right there!
Aw, your Jiro love is so pure.

Hey, Sind, welcome back! I'm having a lot of fun with your lack of Gen I knowledge, because there's some stuff in these chapters that's a big flashing siren if you've played that gen's games--it's a blast to have a reader experiencing it from a POV that's a bit closer to Lance's. And uh, the güd güd is certainly on its way.

I keep having to remind myself that this is like WAAAAAAAAAAAAY before the time we see in the games (not that I actually played the Kanto/Johto games thoroughly but still), because I keep finding myself getting stuck on "what the hell do you MEAN the gym is just being built??" or "what the hell do you MEAN the gym is out of commission???" only to realize that Wataru/Lance is still a babby fetus at this point and this is all like, prequel to the League as we see it in the games. So it's actually kind of cool to kind of see in passing how things were developing as Wataru was also developing himself.
It's very fun to write in, because people have a good sense of Kanto in the future, but in this time period, I get a pretty open but still recognizable canvas.

I had to google who Muno was lmfao, I guess he was in the anime at one point? Brock's dad? Can you tell my knowledge on the Indigo League is lacking lmfao
Don't worry, with the Japanese names and all, I suspect most people are doing some googling.

Couldn't find anything about a Hamako so I'm assuming she's a cool OC, and I love her.
She is! #GyaradosGrammas4life.

I had forgotten who Kana was too until I read back, I guess he's naming his team after people who had big effects on him back at the clan? Am I right?
Names are important!

I wonder if that was intentional, is the man just a lizard at his core??? Is that why he's so good with these other lizards???
crack theory thread let's go. Lance is the lizard people.

You made it clear by the prose that it's VERY MUCH sickly looking, at the very least heed the advice goddamn!!!
But how do you know dratini don't look like that naturally, hmm? It's not like you've got one to compare it to.

I was also a little disappointed in chapter 5's battle, because there was such a buildup to it--him having to wait for a month, finding out the day of he only has 2 hours to get there with 2/3 of his team nowhere in sight, and it all gets condensed to a paragraph or two. I wonder if that was INTENTIONAL, to make me feel as disappointed in it as Wataru was, but even so, I would have liked to have seen that drawn out more. Ericka seemed to have a very, uh, generic/mass produced way of going about her battles and I would have LOVED to have seen that explored in a battle scene. Having Wataru all hyped up about it, and watching it slowly deplete as he realizes she's just kind of there because she has to be. Also, I was looking forward to seeing more Kana bonding!
The anticlimax is intentional! Definitely hear your interest in seeing more of the battle, but I tend to only write out battles that are significant, and the whole point of this one is that it ends up not being significant at all.

Did I miss a bit where he has a digital dex or something, I'm sorry
Nope, old fashioned paper.

Wow I had this exact thing happen to me when I worked at Starbucks--some rando tried to walk behind the counter and after I flagged them down they were like "Oh you don't know me because I'm your district manager and you're new here." 100/10 believable LMAO.
Amazing.
 

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Hey Pen! Here to finish up my end of our review exchange, covering 6-8. Sorry I didn’t get this done during Blitz, life hit harder than I was anticipating.

Anyway, so it seems SHIT HAS JUST GOTTEN REAL. So much for just a simple gambling addiction. No, now Lance has joined a fucking mob without realizing he’s joined a mob. Fucking yikes bro, what a record scratch moment.

I knew IMMEDIATELY, as soon as Archer was like “hey you wanna join a group dedicated to helping get Kanto back on track” that it was fucking Rocket. Just a hunch. But I really liked how the term “Rocket” was never used until after the trial when everyone was taking their vows. It made the reveal a little more poignant, and even after knowing the entire time, I was still like “hahahaha Wataru’s in danger.” And I was right cuz the man just witnessed a straight up fucking MURDER and fled the scene.

Well, ig he’s not Wataru anymore, I guess! I was wondering when the name change was going to come into play, so that was pretty neat! I’m now contemplating how the whole F plot of him picking a name is going to play out now that he’s forever scarred by Team Rocket—is he gonna waver on keeping the name or is he just gonna continue going by Lance as a big “fuck y’all”?

Also YAAAAAAAAAY he got the miniryu! But……..at the expense of his only friend. I was cringing on Hunter’s behalf cuz good lord, but also, I think that whole sequence helped adequately illustrate that Lance doesn’t seem to be out to make friends—he likes not being lonely, but if it has anything to do with a Ryu, or getting back home, or his goals, fuck ‘em. At least the man knows what he wants, but damn. I’m hoping we see her again in some capacity. Maybe she’ll whoop his ass for being a bad friend.

Also this was a little detail but I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Wataru going through puberty. His voice cracking, how quickly he was growing, how bad he smelled whenever he worked out. Got a few snickers out of me, poor boy.

Now that he has two of the dratini line I was getting a little sweaty for Toku, cuz……the man only has one dragonite iirc. So who was gonna be the one to evolve, and who was goinna be stuck as a dragonair? Judging by the buildup, from Toku malding over Kana bein a full dragon and emphasis on how quickly Kaisho picked up on the thunder move (i forgot which one it was kekw) I was under the impression that KAISHO was gonna end up evolving and this was gonna end up being a story of Toku coming to terms with never becoming a dragonite, but……according to the end of chapter 8, Toku IS a dragonite now????

I was admittedly a little lost at the end there, because I just couldn’t catch the moment that she evolved, and I also couldn’t tell if it was meant to be figurative for some reason. I thought I misread something but between him flying off on what I caught was described as Toku’s dragonair form, the reminiscing about what would have happened if Wataru had trained Toku up to a dragonite had he not been exiled, to Toku comforting him, to the exposition stating Toku was a dragonite now, I strayed off the path of understanding.

I also noticed a couple little hiccups here and there:

his mind flashing back to the two extra tokens in Opal's back.
Was this meant to be “backpack”?

Delphine crouched by the two posts, examining the rope tied to them.
Added “e” on the end of Delphin there.

He recalled Toku and Kaisho, and clipped their pokeballs onto his belt next to Toku and Ibuki's
I assume this was meant to be “Kana and Ibuki’s.”

So that marks the end of part one! I’m left wondering what the FUCK this kid’s gonna do now because man, he do be up shit’s creek without a paddle rn. Big plot turns in store, I can feel it in my bones.

Thanks so much for exchanging with me, and I once again apologize for the lateness of my fulfillment. Hope to see you around!!!
 

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Hey hey! I'm here for our review exchange. For this review, I'll be looking at chapters 2-6 7!

EDIT: so I ended up falling in love with this story at around chapter 5 (The Gambler) which inspired me to make this review a chapter longer!

Chapter 2

The outside world couldn't be that bad, if Airi had thrived in it.
I don't think he meant for that to be a burn, but it certainly feels like one!

The miniryu had coiled herself around his arm, tighter than usual, almost painful.
Ah, I'd forgotten how small Dratini are in your fic! I always imagine them as big enough to ride on lol.

"Good day!" he said in Airi's same thick accent.
I don't know if you mention this anywhere, but do you base the different cultures here off of different parts of Japan?

As they sat waiting for Mr. Inushi, the bundle of cloth on Wataru's lap suddenly wriggled. His breath caught. Beneath the folds of dark blue was the sky blue of a miniryu's scales.

Ibuki hadn't just given him her cloak. She'd snuck him Toku!
Aha! I knew it! I know that Wataru was really caught up in shock of the moment, but I do feel like the added weight of a Dratini would have been noticeable, unless the cloth was really that heavy.

"Well, the sea's like"—Airi floundered like a landlocked koiking—"it's like a big lake!"
LOL nice.

"All this talk of building new roads, sending trains zipping back and forth—when there's a train track capable of crossing the Ilex forest, I'll eat my hat."
Hats will be prepared for eating.

It's also striking how DIFFERENT the outside world is compared to that of Wataru's people. It's not a criticism (I have something like this in my fic, too), and I know it happens in real life. It's just always a bit jarring to see that some places have caught onto modern technology and others remain without it.

"Our neighbors. Past the silver mountains. Haven't been the worst neighbors, all things considered. A bit godless, but that's what technology does to you."
An interesting note! It is neat to think of how much Johto embraces the culture of Japan, and while I'd say Kanto still has it, it doesn't feel as celebrated, if that makes sense. I especially think of Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town, which has people paying respects to the dead and the Channelers being possessed by the spirits they tried to communicate with. Johto has the Radio Tower, so if anything, I'd say that Johto is more technological than Kanto! But I can see why Mr. Inushi would take pride in his home region.

"They're only in the important towns, like Ecruteak, and Goldenrod, and Violet City . . ."
Please appreciate the amount of effort it takes me to avoid remarking on the ellipses, since I know we've had this discussion before 😅

"Do you know your kanji, lad?"

"I can read!" Wataru answered, indignant at the question. "But that's written strangely."
Ah, is this a traditional vs. simplified forms of Kanji that Wataru is seeing? Or Chinese vs. Japanese forms? Kinda funny that, having learned Chinese, Kanji is the only part of Japanese writing that I can understand haha.

He didn't see the distinctive spirals that made up "ryu."
Is this exclusive to this fic or is it how "ryu" is written in Japanese kanji? In traditional Chinese, it's 龍 (pronounced lóng)

He crawled into the lower one and remained there huddled as Mr Inushi bustled back and forth through the room.
At first, I thought you were missing a period at "Mr Inushi", but then I noticed you dropped periods for Mr and Mrs entirely later on. It threw me off on the first read, and I don't expect you to go back and change anything, but just to let you know.

He stared back at them, his mouth slightly agape. Who knew the exact day they were born on?
Is this just because he's a child or a cultural thing? Older people born in China (I keep pulling from there because it shares a lot of cultural things with Japanese, and so I'm kinda wondering out loud whether they're sharing these aspects or if they're different because I don't know all that much about Japanese culture) follow the lunar calendar for their birthdays, so even though they don't have the same birthday each year according to the Gregorian calendar, they still know the precise day on which they were born.

"Eat quickly, boys," said Mr. Inushi. "We've got a lot of shopping to do today." He smiled at Wataru, his eyes sparking with sudden humor. "After all, today's your birthday!"
Awww so sweet.

"How would anyone fit in there?"
The question we've been asking for decades.

He was standing in a strange, over-lit room, stacked high with gleaming canisters bearing incomprehensible writing, and he was alone. He was wearing the clothes they'd just purchased at Mr. Inushi's insistence, and their smell was wrong, sharp and acrid, burning his nose just like the white ceiling light burned his eyes. This place was ugly and wrong and there was not a single thing to anchor him, to hold off the bright pain that started in the back of his head and moved forward into his eyes, because Toku was—
Aww, poor kid! This really emphasizes how much of a security tether Toku is for him. As soon as she disappears, he becomes overwhelmed by all of the strangeness around him (which would be enough to overwhelm anyone, tbh). I feel for the little guy.

But how was he supposed to recognize them?
They'll have the red logo of our forums on their uniforms.

Ugh, now I have an itch to play G/S.

"Hang on, you're that pokemon professor everyone was goggling over last night. Here from Kanto, is that right?"
Oh my gosh, I'm an idiot. I didn't realize until now that "Okido" is "Oak" *facepalm*

"But—" The professor looked from Wataru's pale face to Airi, sitting frozen with his lower lip sucked in, to Mr. Inushi's flat-footed expression "—it's all nonsense, I'm sure. And absolutely none of my business in any case. Do I have that right?"

"That's right, Sir," said Mr. Inushi quietly. "I see you're a very wise and learned man. So I hope you're wise enough to let a subject rest."
Ah, it's so apparent Inushi and Oak are agreeing-without-saying to keep off the subject of Wataru's heritage because they both acknowledge how secretive the Ryu people are meant to be.

"Did very well for myself in the league, before I succumbed to the siren call of research."
Man oh MAN do I feel this. A job with no prestige, no money, and no stability, but it entices you to the point you don't want anything else? Yep, that's a siren call.

One bright spring morning, Wataru said his farewells to Airi and Mr. Inushi. The trader clasped him in a quick hug and gruffly told him, "Keep safe now, lad." He pressed the bundle of money he'd been safekeeping into Wataru's arms.
Huh, I would've thought that Wataru would have said some sort of goodbye to Airi!

"When Toku becomes a kairyu, we can go home."
Boy, you might not WANT to go home.

Definitely a lot happening in this chapter! I think you did a good job of getting us through the transition of Wataru actually leaving his village, travelling a bit with Inushi and Airi, meeting Oak, training Toku, and beginning his journey to Kanto. I can totally see the setup of him becoming the Champion of Kanto, and I'm sure we'll see some of Claire woven into all of this. The chapter did feel a bit long, but that might just be because I like to pick lines apart. That being said, I definitely enjoyed it! What really stuck out to me was how clear it is that Wataru NEEDS Toku to feel secure. As soon as she disappeared into the Pokeball, he was overwhelmed and almost panicking. I wonder if Team Rocket will show up in all of this... And if not TR, then perhaps someone else will try to steal Toku away from him? Guess we'll find out!

Chapter 3
"Now, though," the man continued, "now we're getting it back. Back from that bi—that witch in Lavender—"
Ha, nice save.

"Mr. Fiorelli."
Italian name! Must be a certain Rocket!

"Curious pokemon you've got there," Muno said. "Some fancy water-type, I expect."
This story is meant to take place in 1980's Kanto, correct? Does it follow the canon games (I think) that the Pokemon in the Kanto 'Dex were recently compiled by Professor Oak, and so many of them are still unknown to most people? It's a neat take on canon, I'm just trying to follow along.

Her tail struck cleanly against the enormous slabs of the onix's back, causing it to let out a short, displeased rumble. But Wataru could see the attack hadn't been enough.
In any game, a Dratini's Aqua Tail would certainly be enough to take down an Onix!

When the light cleared, Kana stood taller, her claws sharper and her skull more pronounced. She scratched one new gleaming claw against her chest and let out a boastful yip.
Aww, didn't take long for Kana to evolve!

"Moon stone fragment. Not big enough to sell on the market and you won't get an evolution out of it, but pretty. It's good to have pretty things."
Seems a little too conspicuous to "just be pretty"! I'm betting it'll show up again.

And Wataru has defeated the first gym leader (if unofficially!) I think you did a good job of making the battle captivating. One thing I noticed about this chapter was that I didn't get much of a sense of emotion from Wataru. He's clearly worried for Toku when she's struggling against Onix, but he doesn't seem to show any pride or joy at Kana's evolution, and even though he's living in exile, I don't geta strong sense of whatever could accompany that, like loneliness or abandonment. It could definitely be that he's in shock and still traumatized from the events, and perhaps you made it intentional to not go too deep into the emotion (at least not yet, as I have a feeling you'll bring up more later in the fic). Especially since chapter 2 seemed to have more emotion in it and spent more time on character interactions, this one felt a bit bare and a much faster pace in comparison. That being said, I do like the fast pace a bit since it gives us time to show Wataru at the start of his journey while also getting to the meat of the story.

Chapter 4

Due to the abundance of guests, Wataru was placed in a shared room, lined with four sets of doubly-stacked cots.
8 beds?!? The most crowded dorms I've ever been in had only 6!

There was no group curfew, and so the door slid open and shut what seemed to be every five minutes, washing the room in blinding light each time. Wataru stuck his pillow over his head, but even that couldn't drown out the constant whispering and giggles that rose from the other beds.
I feel this soooo strongly.

Besides, the noise was worst at the beach, high-pitched hooting and even screaming that had Wataru flinching around to see who was in distress.
Freaking tourists.

Wataru asking the Magikarp/koiking to battle makes me wonder how intelligent Pokemon are in this story, and how well they can understand human speech. It seems like Magikarp understands him perfectly well, at least.

Progress, to be sure. Fewer lives lost to the sea. But we lost the dragonite and we gained all this—" Her hand rose in a dismissive sweep of the crowded beach-side. "It can make an old woman melancholy, it really can."
I feel this, too. Our island nations become more developed, and people need no longer live in poverty and life is much easier. But it very often comes at some expense to the natural world, whether it's habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species, or something alike.

"Excellent," said the old woman, before Wataru could answer her. "I'll see you at dawn."
Oooh, woman knows how to communicate with dragons! And Wataru still doesn't even know her name!

The small stream they were following joined with another tributary and then split again. At each crossroads, the koiking didn't hesitate before picking its direction.
If they're in a cave, I wonder: how can they see? Is there light coming from somewhere to illuminate the place?

But as Wataru looked from husk to husk in the silent, too still cavern, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was standing in nothing more or less than a graveyard.
Mmm, suitably eerie.

She flew through the air, over three meters long fully uncurled. The sun caught off her silver horn and the dark blue orb that adorned her neck and the tip of her tail. Her scales had darkened to a lustrous blue and her ear fins extended into gleaming wings.
Beautiful. Dragonair is actually one of my favorite Pokemon, just because of how majestic it looks!

Before Wataru could ask what she meant, the old woman had recalled her gyarados and released an enormous seaking.
Aww a Seaking! I love them!

And that's a beautiful work of art at the end! It really captures the grace and elegance of the woman.

Chapter 5

So it took me until now that you don't actually put chapter numbers in front of your chapters, and you put names instead. But since I've kept it up this long I might as well just embrace my mistake and keep going with it.

Wataru had lingered in Cerulean through autumn, training Ibuki and Toku on the open sea.
Aw, he kept Ibuki!

Wataru didn't know what that meant—in the end, she'd let him through only after he'd paid her with almost all that was left of Uncle's money.
:(

If they wanted to keep their gym, they should have been willing to fight for it.
Amen, brother.

Wataru saw shabbier houses, their bright paint more worn and the brickwork in worse repair, but there was no neighborhood where the flowers didn't grow densely.
This is a lot like how I imagine Verdanturf to be! In general, when you describe Celadon City, I imagine it to play out like a Studio Ghibli film.

Light came from every part of them, glowing screens, flashing dials, and currents that shot around the tops and down the sides, the color of their light shifting from second to second, so that glancing from machine to machine the eye made a rainbow.
Ah, Pachinko, Japan's addiction.

The poor Dratini! I really felt for it when Wataru saw that she couldn't shed :( It was several hours in the dimly lit waiting room before Wataru was led into a small office.
Ha, sounds like the police where I live.

It's apparent what matters most to Wataru; much of the chapter is spent on him trying to help out the Dratinin stuck in the Gambling Corner, but the journey from Saffron to Celadon wasn't even mentioned.

"The world can be very cruel sometimes, very cruel. But let's talk about something cheerier. You've won your third gym battle, you wrote?"
I've had these conversations when something traumatizing in my life happens, and the person on the other end immediately switches the conversation to talk about something happy. It sucks. But I'd hope that Professor Oak is actually doing something to help Wataru and is just doing it under a guise.

Ha, neat to think that Lance once spent a bit of his time gambling, even if it was for a noble cause!

The owner paid weekly in cash and didn't care about Wataru's visa,
Oh MAN that sounds like a dream nowadays.

The dish-washing left his hands red and swollen from the hot water.
What, his place never heard of dishwashing gloves?

They stayed that way for a moment and Wataru felt something unclench in his own chest. Maybe the battle had done him some good too.
I'm sure it did! High-energy activities like that can do WONDERS for you when anxiety and tension are high.

I'm kinda surprised that Erika is the Gym Leader here; I always had the impression that she was fairly young in the RBY games.

But at last the small ryu lifted her head and examined Wataru with dull eyes.
Small nitpick, but earlier you referred to this Dratini as "him," and here you say "her."

"Executive Archer!" The floor manager and her kadabra had materialized in the hallway. "Forgive the wait, sir, I was only just informed of your arrival."
Ooh, it's Archer! I have some nasty head-canons about him.

What an exciting chapter! When I saw the wordcount, I thought it might take a while for me to get through--but I breezed through it because the plot was so gripping. Lance in a casino! A poor Dratini who needs his help! Archer! This chapter feels particularly unique; with the previous chapters, I could see it being a close extension of canon, but this one feels like a much stronger worldbuilding. Well done!

Chapter 6

Ooh, opening with Archer fan-art! Looks quite like WildBoots's style, too. I didn't know you were an Archer fan!

Wataru sniffed suspiciously at a wet patch on his sleeve, making a face at the sharp scent of alcohol.
Makes me wonder: how old is Wataru? The art at the beginning of the fic makes him look about 10 years old, but a few chapters in and he claims he's not a child. Not that alcohol would have anything to do with this--I definitely don't enjoy the scent of it lol.

Second, that I have no interest in possessing another trainer's pokemon, no matter its species.
Wataru no

"Come with me," he said, "and I'll prove it."
Wataru noooooooooo

But he could bring this man to Toku.
Wataru NO

"Come with you? I think I will."
WATARU NOOOOOOOOO

"So you didn't plan all along to begin a battle of two against one?" Archer said darkly, but when Wataru blanched, his expression eased into a faint smile. "There are some who would have set that ambush on purpose, and there's some sense in that. Still, I can see it's not in your character."
Ah, I can totally see that Archer is studying Wataru's character here. No doubt he'll remember this for future interactions.

"Very astute. Kanto is . . . akin to a ship without its helmsman. She drifts rudderless through choppy seas, endangering her passengers, while those who should be steering play at petty games of profit. It is corrupt politicians and penny-pinching bureaucrats that steer this ship. They care little for the pains and struggles of those in their care. Little for their lives, even. I will illustrate my point. Are you familiar with the island of Cinnabar?"
Ha, seems like you and I have similar character personalities for our villains! Reminds me a lot of some of the speeches I've written for Archie and Maxie.

Agh, Wataru's quickness to take Archer up on his offer shows that he's still naive and, to a degree, innocent. I understand he's been jaded after exile, seeing how bleak Kanto is, and spending 6 months working fruitlessly at a casino and watching a Dratini suffer--but he doesn't seem to consider that other people would try to use him for their personal gain. And I expect that he's going to be broken further for it.

Interesting that Wataru agrees to keep the name that Archer picks out for him. I wonder what their relationship will be like.

And an end on an interesting cliffhanger! It'll definitely be interesting to see what he decides--he clearly cares a bit for Hunter, but so far, not to the point where it's cost him anything. I don't see him going easy on her or making room for her to be first so she can outclass her other siblings hey I come from a family of 8 kids, and there's nothing wrong with it. He wasn't using the Moon Stone fragment, but it was heartwarming to see him use it purely to help her--even if a Nidoqueen makes things harder for him! Maybe it will have cost him something after all.

Very excited for this! I didn't think Archer was going to play a pivotal role in this story, but I'm very pleasantly surprised to see him here and with as big of a presence as he has. I expected to end my review at 5 chapters, but I'll continue on with the second part of this chapter!

Chapter 7
Ah, now the narration only refers to him as Lance, and Wataru is gone.

Being found would mean a battle, and a battle would mean a token.
Cocky boy!

Inside the other recruit's pack, he found three bronze tokens and a map depicting the route to the next waypoint
Toku managed to defeat a trainer who had managed to defeat (or at least disarm) three other trainers? She's definitely a powerful Pokemon!

Shedding, Lance realized, as he bent closer, but this wasn't a normal shedding. The shed layer of skin was unusually thin and purpled in hue. A half-remembered story from one of Elder Kyo's lessons surfaced in Lance's mind of a poisoned hakuryu that had shed his illness.
Ah, neat way of writing a Pokemon ability into fic!

The route climbed upward—Lance stuck on his crampons and began his ascent.
I learned a new word! Crampon! The things you never hear of when you grow up in the tropics :mewlulz:

Delphin. She stood a foot taller than Lance; her eyes were wide-set and her hair was cropped close to her scalp. Lance had been paired a few times with her dewgong. "Too scared a stray attack's gonna hit her to give proper commands," had been Hunter's scathing evaluation of her battling, and Lance hadn't disagreed. She blanched now as she caught sight of him.
These are the kind of people that I usually think make grunts--the ones who cower and turn afraid when things get difficult.

I'm kinda confused as to where Alto's fever came from. I understand that you can get all sorts of sickness in the wilderness, but the lead-up made it sound like he got sick from his confrontation with a Gyarados, which I don't quite follow.

For a long second, Lance considered it. Exhaustion lay on him like a hard gray weight. Toku's scales were still tender, poison was working its way up Kana's leg, and Ibuki was out of his reach. He could become an agent, follow Hunter into the command track. If anyone was going to beat him, he wouldn't mind it being her.
I mean, considering how desperate this whole situation is--Lance being so tired, Kana poisoned, Toku barely moving--I wouldn't be surprised if Lance tackled her and fist-fought Hunter. But maybe that's just what my characters would do, haha.

He moves like his houndoom, Lance thought.
I love it when people have traits of their Pokemon.

"Your jackpot?" Archer spoke laconically, a hint of a smile playing around his mouth. "Indeed. I keep my promises."
But Archer specifically said that he couldn't make any promises about the Dratini :eyes:

What a heartwarming ending for this chapter! It's nice to see the Celadon miniryu get a breath of fresh air and a taste of freedom--I could see this canonically being one of Lance's several Dragonite, or I could see it being only a temporary respite for the miniryu. And it certainly makes Lance's relationship with Team Rocket and Archer more complicated! Maybe it's just because I already know he's bad, but I keep getting not-good-feels from Archer and his friendliness and favor towards Wataru, whom I think is much younger than Archer, creeps me out. Not in a romantic sense, but just in a "taking advantage of your youth and innocence" sense. And he absolutely should listen to Hunter when she says Archer is only interested in Lance's dragons--though I don't think he's only interested in them, it's definitely a large part.

In general, I'm really enjoying this fic. One thing that sticks out to me, though, is that I don't get a super strong sense of emotion from Wataru/Lance. I know there's a lot going on, and you have a lot of plot to keep up with. But until he starts panicking the first time Toku is put into a Pokeball, it feels like he's in shock more than anything. This could totally be the case, and he ends up growing up with internalized trauma of being thrown out by his own people, forced into what feels like a totally foreign culture, watching a Dratini practically being tortured by living in an artificial tank system, and having to fight the only friend he's made. Not to mention that this is all set up for him to just be utilized by Team Rocket as their tool for their own personal gain, I'm sure. I wonder if you plan on tying PTSD/anxiety into this somehow--I understand they're very personal experiences, and so it's possible Wataru is able to pull through all of this, but I do expect it to heavily affect him in ways he might not be able to understand just yet.

And the characters! Kana is definitely shining through for me. I LOVE her go-getter I-always-want-to-fight attitude, and both of her evolutions were sweet. I was cheering when she evolved into Charizard and took down Scyther and Fearow! I wonder if it was her frustration and desire to win that made her evolve, or some sort of desire to protect and ensure victory for Lance. I feel like Ibuki (Gyarados) hasn't had much time to shine, which is expected from a Pokemon with no legs (and I often feel like leg-less Water-types get a bit shunted in fic because of their impracticality), so I hope we'll have plenty of time by rivers and in the sea to be able to see her! Right now, I see Toku as Wataru's security tether as much as anything. She definitely represents his living connection to his culture, his heritage, his hometown, and the values that he still holds. The most personality I get from her is her loyalty to Wataru--following him from their hometown when it was forbidden! It definitely shows that she cares most for him, rather than the society that they come from.

And poor, poor Wataru. We'll see how far he gets in Team Rocket. His brashness and alacrity to fight remind me from the scene in GSC where Lance has his Dragonite attack a Rocket member directly, when their Pokemon aren't even there to defend them. I'm definitely foreseeing him grow with a vicious side to him. I hope he heeds Hunter's warning that TR doesn't care about him, just his dragons--though I think they care about his fighting skills, too, he'll find that they're a LOT more utilitarian than he initially thought. I can already start to see why he grows to hate them so much (especially as I also learn first-hand what it feels like to go through betrayal trauma).

And Hunter cutting her braid off after she loses to Lance! Ugh, that hurt to see. Is her braid a symbol of her pride? Her value? I can see it being the former, since it came out when she broke her wrist and was cut off totally when she lost to Wataru right when she thought she was winning. Poor girl :(

Overall, this is good! There are a couple of stylistic things in your writing that felt awkward to me, but because I'm reviewing older chapters, I avoided commenting on them. Some of the prose felt a bit awkward at first, but I'll refrain from commenting on it unless it's in the most recent chapters.

I'm really looking forward to more--as you know, I'm a HUGE sucker for evil teams, Team Rocket included, and anything going into their backstory really intrigues me! I'm interested in Archer (though I don't think anyone knows that because I've only posted one TR thing here and he wasn't in it, but I originally wrote Proton in it) and I'm curious to see if you end up depicting him with the same cruelty that I always think of him with. Thanks so much for sharing this lovely fic with us <3 I'll definitely be sticking around!
 

kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
if i had a nickel for every time i tried to cram pen catchup in the last few hours of blitz before realizing that this was probably the thing i've been wanting to catch up the most on and now i can die happy ignores SC final chapter-induced anxiety, i'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot. but it's weird it happened twice.

the protege (2)
I thought the scene-setting of this opener works really well for the two-parter setup you've got going. I don't think it'd be too glaring to read in sequence, but it's also really helpful for the folks like me who pick up the story with two year gaps in-between. Not really a concern I think fanfic authors should really cater to, but I think it works here.

I also really liked the miscellaneous travelling bits that show up in this chapter. Just eating dinner with some people whose not-crops I almost torched, it's all good--it's a little comedic, nicely lighthearted stuff compared to the journey ahead. More than anything I like how it brings the region to life. Ties nicely into the idea of homes that choose you; sometimes these experiences just come out of nowhere and you roll with them. I also think it added a nice layer of whimsy/peacefulness to the idea of the journey. Of course the teenager with the indestructible back and boundless energy would feel the most comfortable sleeping outside next to his dragons and flying through hailstorms. It adds a layer of vulnerability to Lance that I almost find nostalgic--since idk besides this may main experience with him is that one anime episode and man who staples three dragonite together during teambuilding--but it also does play a lot into the conflicts/successes either. Lance/Jiro's fallout comes from a lot of things but one of their major differences is where they draw the line around home--Jiro protects place (and ok probably also the fearow, this is a flawed metaphor), but Lance has a lot less disdain for the average person in Kanto, lol.

The fish out of water/compassion bits with Archer and Lance are also really good. Crazy that a trainer would use their character flaws and growth to empathize with an out-of-control pokemon instead of just beating the shit out of them and hoping the pokemon grows instead. But it also feels like a realistic understanding that Lance would have of the world. He doesn't get politics, he doesn't get the G-Force, but he can imagine what it's like to lose home. I get that the real Kintsugi wasn't actually the aerodactyl wishing to make something new out of a bygone time, but the themes stayed true lol, rip that his name is Archer instead. I also think it's one of the least fun "someone gave me this pokemon out of nowhere" takes I've seen--like yay, Lance's flock is bigger, he's helped Archer, but also now this is going to encourage a bunch more fossils, isn't it. I also really like scientist lady remarking that maybe the solution is just to resurrect more aerodactyl. I wish someone had tried that lol.

Giovanni sitting in a high-backed chair menacingly calling out commands, anime style, is rad as fuck. I like what you do with the tension in this battle. It never really feels like a proper gym battle--though this is probably in-part because I'm inherently familiar with the tension that comes with cheerful kids trying to battle Giovanni for their badge--and I like how Lance (and me) never really figures out what Giovanni wants with things, why Giovanni still feels like he's won. I get the idea that he was excited at the end because he thinks Lance can be molded, or at least beaten down underhandedly if things actually come to that; later we find out that Giovanni's got vested interest in Lance being good at raw power because that in turn backs Jiro's standings (but I wasn't sure how much of that interaction Giovanni was already planning here). I guess for me the line is that Giovanni is probably confident he could thrash Lance if pesky things like ethical battling rules weren't in place? Maybe it's just that if you aren't an exiled teenager making the best decisions you can exude confidence even if you aren't holding a winning hand? I also don't think this is a question that needs to be answered in this chapter, as it's likely to come up later. I also liked the gradual breakdown of Giovanni's facade at the end

"Lance knew the word for it, anger that became power" is such a good sequence. also the image of human!Archer sitting in the rafters watching Lance send out a half-trained pterodactyl named after him will never cease to amaze

the citizen (1-2)
I cannot believe the Lance visa arc actually paid off

There's a lot of duality metaphors in this stretch, and I think it really works--there's a lot of buildup to the end of challenger2 for Lance trying to figure out who he is. I also like how you have Lance pick things like double-backed fabric, time and place, his literal self sparring with Jiro--things that aren't actually two things at all. Anyway I'm sure glad that this resolves with him realizing that everyone is their truest self all the time and that it's not possible for--

I'm astonished/grateful for how much information you compress into these two chapters, and how much internal structure there ends up being to keep it all up. I think the Fuschia chapter would've probably been three or five chapters in another journeyfic and there wouldn't have been much value added for it lol. Koga's parallels with Lance are good ones to draw, and again I like how you play to Lance's strength--he's not good at being a subtle battler, Koga's running political circles around him despite all claims to the otherwise, but Lance can still extend the olive branch over the idea of losing home, something that he's intimately familiar with.

The worldbuilding around sovereign forest enclaves that have diminished rights due to a bloody war and now throw sickass festivals to hide their grief is an idea I'll never stop simping for, haha. I really liked how you pulled Lance from the fairgrounds into the forest, how he's unsettled by both of them but ultimately even more so by the forest--because it reminds him of what they both really are, I guess, and that's so deeply sad but also so deeply Lance. I also think this sets up a lot of Lance's future failures in a subtle way. While he can understand why Koga would agree to this, why "we've lost a lot more than this" would ring true, he's not yet fully equipped to do it himself, and can't imagine what it'd be like to let someone keep flashing a false kairyu cape. I'm also reminded of how immigrants gradually unmoor from their own culture, how it can feel like what they're remembering of homeland is just as fake as the caricature versions of it--you have your celebrations and foods, but inevitably they're not there any more; maybe to Lance it's just as real as the ninja costumes.

The theming of home is really powerful in this set, and I see how they end up feeling paired as a result. I liked how Lance insists to himself that he's still got family in Johto, but as he thinks about it more he becomes less certain. He can't even figure out who to call himself when speaking to a mother he never really knew. Kikuko tells him to go home, and it's not like he really can; he barely remembers it either. And of course I like the rooftop conversation where everyone steels themselves for knowing they can't actually go back home again; the sea's already being crossed.

Kikuko and the ghosts are great. Teapot! Staff! I'm also, lol, so used to your cheerful and helpful grandmas that this old lady causing Lance ten million psychic damage and then deciding to run it back on Toku was such a surprise for me lmao. I like how this arc was intended to be to get Lance prepared for fighting Kikuko too, but he takes his first real thrashing in a while instead--and the cracks in the plan start to show on the personal side of things, where he realizes he does have a home in Kanto here and he is willing to take more dramatic steps to protect it.

the challenger (1-2)
my heart really dropped out of my stomach the first time reading these, and even on reread it's still dreadful watching all the little hints build up. "[Kikuko vs Jiro championship] is not going to come to a vote" lol. I never really got around to pulling line quotes--I thought the descriptions were on point, the cliffhanger of Lance calmly repeating his line into the really exhausted Lance trying to eat noodles while the broadcast plays over this incredibly good decision he's now reaping the benefits of, Lance bitterly thinking that Jiro at least was honest in giving him all the tools needed to bring about Jiro's defeat in battle, is one of my favorite sequences in the fic so far--largely because I just ended up being sucked in to things.

I never really could convince myself that this whole plan was going to work out, but it's still really sad to see them falling apart on the fractures. On reread there's a lot of little casual lines that bite, oh it's crazy we never talked about your family did you have any, Lance can't bring up the Ryu's Gift or Team Rocket. There's a caring relationship here but it isn't quite love; they can't share everything they know, and both of them underestimate the cruelty of the other when it comes to it. I think maybe Jiro puts it on a bit thick with the whole "let's just completely eliminate caring for anyone besides my city"--it's kind sad that the only time he takes off the political mask around Lance is to be like, hey, actually fuck the people tbh--but, idk, that's also incredibly realistic and same bestie, same. Why can't you let us have nice things, Pen?

I like how the conflicts of these chapters echo the earlier ones, back to I guess the true Wataru/Lance dichotomy of the fic--if you change so much of yourself to get what you need that you can't even recognize yourself, is it still what you need? And let's be real I'll never stop rooting for characters who refuse to make that choice to the detriment of anything and everything around them.

I think you set up the worldbuilding of the hustings efficiently and then immediately start exploiting the obvious issues in their setup + how those affect the main characters. You can battle for days on end! And now everyone is tired. The challengers are a lottery system and you can't control who shows up when, there's that random trainer who Lance and Jiro couldn't research! And now Lance is being pitted into a decision that he might've made differently if it hadn't come up at literally this moment. There's town halls too, and Jiro's great at that! But Lance isn't. It's really good setup/payoff and I think helps make the pacing of this work; from the word count it's pretty apparent that you needed a lot of things to happen in these chapters, and imo they do just breeze by.

I also liked the closing of the arc on Kanto tour road trip spring 2024, mineshaft osha regulations fail any% version. I'm, uh, deeply curious to see how Lance's political career turns out. "Why don't pokemon just fix everything" is a pretty core worldbuilding question, and the answer of "because we didn't pay for them" continues to be a solid one. You've mentioned that wanting to establish Lance's motivations for, like, actually wanting to become champion as pretty core in the "how Lance becomes champion" fic, and I like the slow-burn route you end up taking here. Because it is kind of weird that he's got a cousin/culture in Johto, it is kind of weird that anyone who just staples six dragons together is implicitly given a lot of political power, it is kind of weird that the champion doesn't intervene that one time with Team Rocket and it's some rando child who has to do it--and I think the answers you give to these oddities really work and inform the drama of this story. And it makes sense that, for a while, Lance doesn't really know what he wants with the championship; for most of the story he doesn't really know what he wants with himself either. There's something really poignant about watching him grow into that role alongside just growing into his place in the world. "Because I don't remember", sobbing. The ryu evolution moments in this story always strike me as the most dramatic, because you do a good job of tying them to Lance's character growth as well--and the reverse moments, with the dance, feels like Lance is evolving in his own way. I really like how he comes to his conclusion here; it feels like a capstone on the whole arc and like he's basically a new person going into Pewter.

She grabbed Kasume by the wrist.
her name changed from Kasumi to Kasume halfway through this sequence, which I don't believe was intentional

a flaw in Jiro's plan occurred to him
I'm being groomed, Lance realized.
petition to make these two the midgame equivalent of "hue hue hue so this is the last time he'll wear the miniryu blue"

anyway yeah good fic upd8 more? ship ash and kasumi pls
 
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