Pokémon The Fire's Wake

[Sastrei]

Overall rating: T for mild language and some heavy themes

Synopsis: In 1986, on the day Cinnabar Island's Blaine was saved by a Moltres - he also became an uncle.
On this same day, 3 year-old Lance became his home's Chosen One.
The new life born in between - Blaine's niece, Cora - will change both of their fates, while experiencing victory and humility herself.
A story of friendship, healing, and learning to love. MCs are Lance & OC with lots of cameos from other cast.
Estimated word count upon completion: 200-300k.
Also available at FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14214597/1/The-Fire-s-Wake
And AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45960103/chapters/115682587







Original art by Sastrei

---

Cinnabar Island Grand Resort Hotel

Spring 1997

By all rights, this hotel room should positively emanate soothing relaxation. There's a beachfront view on Cinnabar Island's east side – the better one, with sugar-soft white sand and clear waters. The towels look so fluffy that one could sleep on them, and the room service menu – which Blaine had insisted upon paying for – left absolutely nothing to be desired. Lobster, filet mignon, crab legs–

"I want one of everything," Clair announces triumphantly. She's lying sprawled on one of two enormous beds, holding the menu above her head, swaying her boots up and down as they dangle off the mattress. "Although, what's a car-carpach–"

"Carpaccio," Lance corrects, dumping his travel bag loudly onto the dining table. "You probably wouldn't like it." His cousin hasn't left their hometown much – in fact her presence here on Cinnabar is a direct request of the Elder, who wishes for his granddaughter to experience new cultures now that she's twelve and might actually be able to absorb and appreciate some of them.

Years eight through eleven were, to put it bluntly, a gratuitous disaster. Twelve had to be better. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen.

"Car-patch-yo," Clair repeats terribly, but with confidence. "When can we eat? I'm starving."

Lance sighs. He's been doing that a lot today. Not only is his seventh Gym battle in Kanto tomorrow, which is stress enough in and of itself, but he's been tasked with watching over Clair the past several weeks. While she is family, and the Blackthorn Clan is as tight-knit as they come – he absolutely can't stand her sometimes.

There. He said it.

Or thought it, at least. Just that brief internal admittance is a welcome relief.

He's sixteen now – and more than anything, he just wants space, quiet, and time to train. Three things his cousin is extremely adept at ruining.

"I'm going to the Gym to scout ahead," he tells her, already heading for the door. "Get whatever you want."

"Scout ahead?" Clair scoffs, sitting up on the bed to smirk at him. "You sound like a soldier talking about a warzone. It's just a Gym; they're all the same at the end of the day. No need to get so serious."

"One day," Lance begins, opening the front door, "you'll see how wrong you are. Just try not to break anything, alright?"

"No promises! And don't expect any food left over when you get back."

He rolls his eyes as the door closes behind him. Deliberately, he draws in a slow, deep breath. Releases it as he heads downstairs to the lobby. The sun has just barely set, but this is the beginning of the Island's busy season, and tourists of all kinds are mulling about the entrance and front apiary. Bright, flowery shirts, khaki shorts, the lingering smell of sunscreen and saltwater. Laughter, occasionally, mostly from kids still wearing little floaties on their arms or flippers on their feet.

Lance observes this silently, his iron eyes flicking from one face to the next. A crowd of strangers is guaranteed to bring on familiar feelings of displacement and detachment. You'd think after nearly six months of travelling Kanto collecting Gym badges, this would've at least eased slightly.

He catches a strange glance from a middle-aged man with a goatee, some tall, fruity cocktail in one hand – and Lance is reminded of how untrue that is. The cape probably doesn't help; he hasn't quite grown into it yet, and the accentuated collar hides half of his face.

Whatever. They don't know his path, the power he wields in those pokeballs on his belt. He's going to fight for his place among the Elite Four soon – these people, these commoners don't know anything about what kind of sacrifice that entails.

Now outside beneath the budding stars, he releases his dragonite. The Gym isn't far, but he doesn't feel like walking among people. The sky is a much better place for his head.

"Let's head for the Gym," he tells his partner. "It'll probably be closed, but I want to see as much as I can before tomorrow."

They take to the sky easily, with practiced movements; his dragonair had evolved nearly two years ago now, again earning him the title of "youngest" for some sort of accomplishment among his clan. Most members wouldn't see a fully evolved Dratini until their twenties, at least. Lance had been only fourteen.

"I think that's it," Lance says, pointing to a large building below. "Maybe?"

They land swiftly, which makes it all the more apparent that this building was no longer an active gym, even if it still had signs saying otherwise. The front door had been nailed shut with wooden boards. Part of the roof was in disrepair and slouching to one side.

"Well, that's annoying," Lance grumbles, walking around to search for any sign of what might've happened. He hadn't received word his battle was cancelled, so maybe it was being held in another location?

There's a smaller house out back, clearly residential in nature. Several windchimes hang from the porch awning; a vast collection of vivid tropical plants surround the entire exterior, some bearing fruit Lance has never seen before. Lights are on inside. Clenching his jaw, he decides asking for help is his only option. Dragonite follows behind him closely.

He doesn't make it halfway before he notices someone outside, in a small, fenced garden just beside the house. They are partially hidden behind leaves and branches; he realizes it's a girl, about Clair's age, maybe a bit older. Her back is to him as she kneels down before a gravestone.

A gravestone. Lance pauses; he clearly can't interrupt someone kneeling in front of a grave. Literally nothing would be more inappropriate. On the other hand, he can't just stand here staring, either. Because that's weird. And not a thing normal people do.

God, he hates things like this. He really needs to find out about the Gym, but this stupid situation is so painfully uncomfortable. Cringing, he decides to turn around and make an attempt to return later–

"Can I help you?" comes a soft voice.

He turns around, begrudgingly. The girl has come closer; her hands are in her pockets casually. She has her reddish-blonde hair pulled up. A golden feather is stuck in between the strands, pointing back over the plume of her ponytail. And even though she's fresh from visiting a grave, there's only a small hint of sadness in her gaze. It's mostly curiosity and more than a little amusement.

"Nice cape," she says, smiling.

"Ah, th-thanks," Lance manages, clearing his throat. "I, er, didn't mean to interrupt. I apologize, truly."

"It's okay," she shrugs. "I visit Mom every night at sunset, when I can. It was her favorite time of day. She always liked visitors, though, don't worry." She peers past him now, at his dragonite, and her eyes light up. "Whoa, is this your partner? He's so cool! What's his name?"

That is… a lot of personal information from a complete stranger, as well as a barrage of questions. Lance swallows hard, his discomfort doubling. "R-right. Yes, that's my dragonite. I, uh, just call him Dragonite."

She purses her lips, then shrugs again. "Hmm. I like to nickname my Pokemon."

Great. Wonderful. "I'm, uh, looking for the Cinnabar Gym, but it appears to be closed."

The girl sighs now, with exasperation. "Yeah, that just happened a little while ago. Duncle said this place had become a 'tourist trap,' so he shut it down himself to scare away all the lame trainers."

Lance blinks. Did she just say – "'Duncle?' What is…?"

"Oh, right, sorry." She shakes her head, tapping her forehead with her knuckles. "I forget that's not a word normal people use. It's what I call my Uncle Blaine. Supposed to be a mix of dad and uncle. He sort of became both to me once Mom died."

And: more personal information! Lance's social anxiety reaches a penultimate high. He wants to throw up. He's probably – no, definitely – sweating. Still, he retains enough awareness to realize this girl just called herself Blaine's niece – which means she would know where he is.

"I'm supposed to battle him tomorrow," Lance manages. "Could you tell me how to find him?"

"Sure! But it's easier if I take you there. Outsiders get lost all the time, even with directions," she says, her annoyance obvious. "Um, just one minute though. Just gotta say bye to Mom."

Lance watches, dumbfounded, as she returns to the gravestone for a few moments. Every single inch of this interaction is entirely foreign to him. In Blackthorn, the dead were cremated and poured into the holy waters of the Dragon's Den. Gravestones were tantamount to sacrelige. Being trapped in one spot for all eternity? The thought made Lance shudder.

Although, honestly, getting visits from loved ones every day didn't seem so bad. Clan rites largely forbade conversing with the dead – it was thought to keep their spirits from fully moving on.

Lance holds a hand to his suddenly aching head. He does not have time for an existential crisis.

Apparently, the girl had a pokeball behind her waist, because there is now a small, young charmander standing on the grass between them, its flaming tail swinging happily, illuminating the rapidly darkening evening sky. Strangely, the irises of its eyes are tinged red – don't most charmander have blue eyes?

Even more strangely, as soon as the fire pokemon materializes in front of them, that golden feather in the girl's hair bursts into flames, what is even happening? At once Lance pictures her whole head catching fire, Dragonite trying to hit her with a de-powered Hydro Pump as she runs around screaming –

"It's not a real fire," she says, obviously noticing his bewildered face. "Don't worry. It only happens when my pokemon are out. Besides, we'll need this and Draco's tail light to get through the cave to Duncle." She starts walking, the charmander beside her, motioning for Lance to follow.

He exchanges glances with dragonite, who gives him a look of 'hey, why not,' and they head after her.

Finally, there's a little bit of silence. Lance's headache and nausea ease gradually. He keeps staring at that flaming feather in her hair; to his knowledge, there's only one other like it, and it's kept at the Indigo Plateau, to light the Pokemon League torch during the opening ceremonies every year.

That can't be right, though. The one in the Indigo Plateau is from Moltres, and it's incredibly rare and valuable. There's no way a girl from Cinnabar would be wearing one as a hair accessory.

"It's about a ten minute walk up the slope," she tells them. "There's a lot of annoying zubat, but once they see Draco's tail they usually stay away."

There's that name again, Draco. Through the fading tenseness, Lance's curiosity is piqued. "Did you say your charmander's name is Draco?"

"Yep!" They cross into the mouth of aforementioned cave; it is indeed very dim. "Draco is the dragon god that lives in the stars. One day, my Draco will be a charizard, and then he'll really look like a dragon." The charmander growls a small sound of approval.

"I'm from Blackthorn City in Johto," Lance says with pride. "We have lots of stories of Draco, too."

"Really?" She turns to face him, walking backwards, still expertly stepping over certain rocks and bumps. That flaming feather casts strange shadows on her smiling face. "We get a lot of travellers, but I've never met anyone from Blackthorn. That's really cool. What's it like there?"

"Very different from this," he admits with a sardonic laugh. "I can see why your uncle Blaine wanted to shut down the old gym. There's so many tourists here."

"They're annoying, aren't they?" she scoffs. "Every year, they come, they trash the beaches, they leave. I was born on this Island. I wish people realized this is a home, too."

Lance feels that. "Blackthorn also gets tourists, sometimes. People like to come just to see where all the Dragon Tamers are from. We're pretty famous." His chest is puffing out now, with more pride.

She gives him a studying stare for a moment. "Duncle says the only pokemon harder to train than Fire types are Dragon types. You must be pretty good if you've already got a dragonite at your age."

Lance frowns. "'At my age'? I'm older than you, you know."

"Only a little, and you're not a grown-up yet," she declares. "I've seen plenty of grown-ups lose to Duncle. When you battle him tomorrow you'd better be ready. He'll roast your pokemon alive!" That last part was said with too much glee for Lance's comfort.

They round another corner, and now stand before a huge, heavy metal door. It's tall enough to reach the ceiling of the cave; beside it is a small plastic box that the girl now points to. "When you come tomorrow, just press the button here and say who you are. Duncle will open the doors for you."

Lance nods. Easy enough. "Thank you for your help, uh…?"

"Cora," she says, instantly holding out one hand in a greeting.

He shakes it, honestly a little surprised at the firmness of her small grip. "Lance."

"Ooh, cool name. Lance the Cape Guy."

"Just Lance is fine, thanks."

"I can't wait to watch your battle tomorrow," she beams. "I'll make sure Duncle gets plenty of sleep tonight. He's not very good at sleeping."

"Ah, sounds good." He hesitates here, brow furrowing even deeper than usual, wanting to do the most polite thing, but also not wanting to overstep anything. In his extremely brief knowledge of Cora, he has the sense she wouldn't mind, though.

"And, uh, I'm sorry about your mother," he continues gently. "But I'm glad Blaine was a good enough man to step up and care for you. That takes strength, and I enjoy battles with strong-hearted trainers the most."

To his immense relief, Cora smiles again, though it's wistful, and so strangely full of peace. "Thanks. She was really strong. And Blaine is the best Duncle anyone could ask for. I'm really lucky." Her charmander tugs on her shorts. She pats its head, scratching behind its jaw. "Sorry, Draco. You're awesome too, of course."

Lance gives one last look to the charmander's oddly red eyes, and that flaming feather lighting Cora's head. He honestly has so many other questions, but he really needs to return to the hotel to rest up.

And to make sure Clair hasn't conned the front desk staff into giving her champagne. Again.

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then," he says, waving over one shoulder.

"Best of luck to you, Cape Guy! You're gonna need it!"

When he returns to the front lobby, there's still plenty of people milling about. He can hear a band playing on the restaurant deck around back. Clair has succeeded in making a rather large mess of their room, with a dozen half-empty food plates strewn on every flat surface, but she's thankfully already asleep in a food-coma. Nothing is on fire, and no security was called. Success.

He steps onto the patio for a moment, enjoying the soft night breeze and the ancient sound of waves. He's smiling a little, for once. Battle strategies dance in his head; he can feel his spine tingle, that electric excitement the night before a big match.

Hiding underneath that, in a small corner of his thoughts, is peace. At sixteen, thanks to the solitary nature of Blackthorn's ways and his regimented training, Lance has yet to forge any connections outside of his clan, other than professional ones or mentors for battle. It's fair to say he's never had a friend before.

Maybe that can be different now.

He tells Dragonite goodnight, in his pokeball, then dreams of victory.

 

[Sastrei]

Chapter Two, Prelude: Three Lives at Once​

---

Kanto Region, Cinnabar Island

Winter, 1985

---

The mirror lies. Or at least that's what Blaine keeps telling himself.

Though the day outside is overcast – typical of the Island's depressing, if brief, winter – enough evening sunlight is coming through the bathroom window to make his internal declaration hard to believe. At forty-five years old, it's not like he's a dead man. Why, many of the Island's residents of similar age and gender have proudly stated, "fifty is the new thirty now!"

Blaine pulls down on one of the bags hanging under his eyes. That's not entirely from age – he's historically been terrible at sleeping, with a brain that just doesn't seem to shut up, and never has even from childhood.

The worst part of the mirror, though, is the shiny, conspicuous patch of bare skin smack on top of his head.

Blaine hates being bald. With a disgruntled sigh, he palms a small glass bottle on the marble sink and splashes a few drops of tonic into one palm, only to begrudgingly rub it into that same bare patch of head-skin a moment later. Mister Fuji – who of course has a full head of thick, wonderful hair still – says this stuff works miracles. Blaine is so far vehemently unimpressed.

Abruptly, nearly causing the bottle of 'miracle' tonic to jostle loose from his hand — there's a knock at the front door. Blaine's charcoal eyes widen even as he frowns in curiosity, the lines around his mouth deepening.

This is strange for two reasons: one, it's the off-season and hardly anyone visits the Cinnabar Gym in the winter, and two, well – there's not a whole lot of people Blaine talks to, in general. Other than his Pokemon of course, but he has yet to teach his Magmar how to knock prior to entering a room. Human manners are lost on most Pokemon, particularly Fire-types, that live with such vivacity and tenaciousness.

"Coming," he announces, with a swift clear of his throat. He's still in his gold and red silk bathrobe but he doesn't care as he makes his way to the front door, past looming statues of majestic Fire pokemon from all over the world, their stances and bristling fur seeming to radiate heat.

When he opens the door, he completely forgets about his hair.

The woman in the entryway is about his height, if slightly shorter. She's wearing a lavender, wide-brimmed hat that hides her eyes. Her shoes were once nice, of the same color, but the scuffs at the toes tell of some recent neglect. Just peeking out beneath a long beige trenchcoat is a suitcase. A bit of what looks like a sleeve is sticking out of the top of it haphazardly.

The circular black glasses clinging to the bridge of Blaine's nose tumble to the ground, landing on the welcome mat. "Lor… Lorraine?"

The woman lifts her head now, just enough to reveal a pair of emerald-green eyes, ashen skin and a desperate, if hopeful smile. "Hello, big brother. I hope I'm not bothering you."

Blaine blinks, a thousand gears in his mind clinking at once, but he has the right of mind to at least step back and allow her inside. "Ah, no, not at all. Not much going on around the Island these days, truthfully." As she steps inside he notices she seems to be favoring one leg. There's also a small, but conspicuous rip in her pantyhose, just beneath the hem of her knee length skirt.

Something dark sinks into Blaine's stomach. "Is everything alright, Lorraine?"

She shrugs as she sets down her suitcase beside the sofa. "Yes and no, I guess."

"Not that I don't adore seeing you, sister, but you're not usually one for unannounced visits. Only reason I'm asking, honest," he continues, cementing her welcomed status as best he can.

That lavender hat is hung on the series of hooks by the door. Now free, Lorraine shakes loose a head of thick, reddish-blonde hair (Blaine has always been jealous that she got the good-hair genes). She keeps her trenchcoat on though as she looks around the room, pursing her lips slightly, and nodding as if in approval at his decorative tastes.

"Do you have any chamomile tea, by chance?" she asks. A few of her slender fingers reverently trace a stone Arcanine's face as it guards the doorway.

Blaine nods. Then waits. Then waits some more, only to finally realize there's no more conversation happening right now. At least, not until tea is involved.

"I'll make some right now!" he announces cheerfully, cutting this decidedly strange mood with forced alacrity. "You still like yours with honey?"

"You remembered," Lorraine says softly, a smile ghosting her lips. She still won't sit down and keeps idly wandering the room, her heels clicking on the tile. "You were always the softie out of the two of us."

"You're my little sister," Blaine intones proudly from the kitchen, putting the kettle on. "Plus, I might be 18 years older than you, but I haven't lost my wits yet. It's my job to take care of you, after all."

He hears her footsteps follow him into the kitchen now, amid the clinking of porcelain mugs and the first hisses of boiling water. When he turns around she's right behind him in the doorway. He blinks, surprised.

"I… Well, I was hoping you'd say that," Lorraine all but whispers, her gaze dropping to the floor. Gingerly, she undoes the trio of buttons on her trenchcoat and beneath all that beige canvas fabric is a dark grey blouse that clearly doesn't fit. Why doesn't it fit? Blaine's eyes thin in confusion, it's like her proportions are off, or maybe she's just eaten a really big meal before she arrived –

Oh.

Oh.

"I wasn't showing this much until a few weeks ago, I swear," she continues, laughing a little as she peers down at her rounded stomach. "But you can only hide it so long, I'm afraid."

The kettle is screaming now, and Blaine nearly burns his hand fumbling to remove it from the stove. "I – Lori, I didn't even know. I'm so sorry. Holy jeez, congratulations!"

That's what you're supposed to say, right? Blaine and Lorraine (yes their parents rhymed their names on purpose; trickery and irony runs in the family) haven't had a bad relationship per se, but they've never been what Blaine had considered close. He's trying his best to handle this like not only a big brother but a decent human being. What's a normal thing to say next, um – "How far along…?"

"Three or four months, I think," she says, and the smile on her face now is genuine and kind. It makes that hollow look on the doorstep seem lightyears away.

"That's wonderful," Blaine beams. This is his sister. He's going to be an uncle, and that's abruptly the single coolest, most exciting thing to ever happen to him, even if he didn't think it was possible.

"He left," Lorraine says flatly.

Blaine's elation deflates like a punctured balloon. "W-who? The father?"

"We were engaged," she continues, trying to hide her eyes behind her hair as they glisten with tears. "I lived with him, I– he was everything to me. But when I started showing, he left. He didn't want a baby."

And now a new emotion surges in Blaine's chest – this is a veritable kaleidoscope right now, isn't it? It's white-hot, and simmering, even in his voice when he asks: "Why?"

"I don't know," Lorraine says, her voice cracking. She holds one hand to her mouth. "I don't know, Blaine. I feel so stupid. I'm so sorry to come here, I know you have your own life, but I didn't know where else to go, and I–"

Her voice is like shards of glass and he silences it with a gentle, life-affirming hug. She instantly starts crying into his shoulder, and even though his brain is still reeling there is a definite grounding in the raw, human pain of her sobs. They stand there in the kitchen doorway. He's never been good at this. Should he say something? What can he say?

He decides to just be a human with her, to share in this moment of darkness with no expectations. And he doesn't know how long passes before those sobs start to ease, but they do.

"I've got you, Lori," he manages hoarsely. "Both of you. Don't you worry about a thing."

She seems to only have the strength to nod against his shoulder. It's easy to guide her down the hall to the bed; he brings her suitcase with them, and leaves it in the room with her as he begins to close the door.

"Thank you, big brother," she whispers.

He smiles a little as he closes the door. "Get some rest. I'll be here when you wake up."

Click. Door closes. Blaine stares down at his bare feet, toes squishing into the grey carpet. Numbly, he manages to get to the living room couch and collapses into it like so much jam preserves. Apricot, likely – that's his favorite. He absently realizes he's hungry; his stomach groans at him like a perturbed frog.

"Well, shit," he declares, to no one. "Time to get to work."

---

Johto Region, Northern Blackthorn Mountains

Winter, 1985

---

Just because he's not four yet doesn't mean he can't be the leader.

"Come on!" Lance shouts, waving one arm with enthusiasm. His voice echoes through the trees and forms a huge puff of steam from his lips. The air up here this time of year is like breathing ice; Lance doesn't mind the cold, but it does mean he's bundled in about a half dozen layers of clothing his mother won a hard-fought battle to put on him ("Hold still, you wiggly Dratini," she'd told him through simultaneous laughs and sighs). Though it keeps him warm, Lance feels slow and clunky as he clambers over piles of ancient boulders on all fours, his face beaming, gloved fingers fighting for purchase on the uneven granite surface.

It's stupid he doesn't have wings. Dragonite have wings. Why can't he?

This thought causes a momentary frown as he shoves his foot into a stony opening, using the leverage to launch himself up the last bit of hill and finally onto flat earth.

Behind him, the grown-up members of his clan have chosen to walk the premade, smooth dirt path to the same location, which isn't nearly as fun as what Lance has done. Grown-ups are so boring.

All of that is quickly forgotten, though, when his wide eyes – an iron-grey his father has mentioned reflects his spirit well – land upon the still, half-frozen lake amid the clearing just in front of him. It's midday, and the sunlight makes the ice sparkle brilliantly.

"Whoa," Lance breathes, creating another puff of breath.

This is the first year he's been old enough to accompany the clan elders to this place. A Blackthorn clan tradition, the Midwinter Meet is held on the shortest day of the year, when sunlight holds the least sway – in order to honor the natural powers of cold and ice, one of the Dragon's most prolific weaknesses.

No one type of Pokemon is strongest; Lance has already learned from Kaburagi that nature keeps itself balanced that way, but both Pokemon and people can grow stronger over time by consciously acknowledging their weaknesses. This, he's learned from his father, who ruffles Lance's windswept reddish hair as he strides by.

"Can we start th'fire yet?" Lance asks, jostling from one foot to the other to stay warm.

It's Kaburagi that answers; though in his early sixties now, the respected leader seems no worse for wear after the hour-long hike. He gives Lance a mischievous grin as they all head towards the lake. "Already too cold, are we, young one?"

"Nuh-uh," Lance retorts promptly. "Not cold. But I want Matron to make stew. 'S lunchtime."

Kaburagi pats him on the back. "Then make yourself useful and gather firewood! We all have a part to play, including you!"

Lance's face becomes awash with singular, pointed determination. "Right!" And he's dashing into the woods, gaze scanning the ground for appropriately sized twigs and branches. Behind him, he hears the clan members conversing, dragging the old, worn wooden benches around the fire pit, setting up the cast iron pot. Excitement bubbles in his stomach. Or maybe that's just hunger.

Turns out that the trees right around the clearing are pretty skinny and useless – Lance has only managed to shove like four twigs into his satchel, not nearly enough to impress anyone – so he presses onward. There probably should be a nagging thought in the back of his mind to not go too far – but at this point in his life, he's been reminded of safety less times than he's been reminded to show bravery and strength, so the latter wins easily.

Eventually he finds it: the perfect pile of dead branches, nestled beside a sprawling, barren tree. It looks like a wooden mountain to him. In fact there are multiple mounds of dead wood here – they almost seem to form a line, or a fence that curves out of sight, beyond a stony outcrop nearby.

Then Lance is instantly and haphazardly stuffing as many pieces of wood as he can into his satchel. He's humming a song to himself, the one his mother often sings while tending their garden in the summer.

When he picks up the last one – the bag is really heavy now – he stops humming.

Beneath the empty space left by the branch, something moves.

Lance freezes in place. Sheer surprise wants him to stumble backwards but even being a kid still, he knows this is a wiser decision than turning tail and running.

What's sitting there is black, mostly. The longer he stares at it, he can see the black is surrounded by something green and… well, scaly, Lance thinks. It kind of reminds him of pictures of a Dragonair's skin. This thought instantly comforts him – Dragons are kind and strong protectors, after all – and any fear that remained now turns into sizzling curiosity.

So he pokes it with a stick.

Beneath his boots, the ground thrums. Snow falls from the nearby trees. And in the middle of all that darkness he poked, a vibrant yellow eye twice the size of his head snaps open.

Its pupil is round and so deeply black, he fears he might fall in and never come out. Those mounds of wood start to shift and shiver; their collapse sounds like a sudden rainstorm. He sees more green skin – it's everywhere among the grey, naked trees. Only now does Lance realize whatever is in front of him is also over there, which means this thing is huge, and maybe those aren't tree branches after all, but horns?

Run? Scream? Wet his pants? All three?

No, not an option. If this is a Dragon, he can't run.

Instead, Lance bows. So deeply his torso is parallel with the earth, and partially because if he just doesn't look at it, maybe it'll go away.
"S-sorry," he chitters; the cold and fear are combining to wage war with the steadiness of his voice and jaw. "For p-poking you, I mean. Hope it didn't hurt."

He keeps staring at the ground, eyes wide, listening. Possibly waiting to be devoured whole. There's more of that rainlike wood sound, more vibration beneath his boots, shaking his bones. And a slow, calm hiss like a sigh.

Only when silence remains does Lance look up. Through the falling snow, he barely catches a glimpse of flashing emerald green, smudges of yellow and red, before the thing's long body disappears above the low clouds.

"Whoa," Lance says again. He's smiling as he picks up the last stick. The satchel is so heavy he has to drag it on the ground, leaving a trail in the snow.

Within a few minutes, he makes it back to the clearing, although he's calling out much sooner: "Kaburagi! Elder! Father!"

All three men are seated in a semicircle around the stone pit. Kaburagi finishes sipping from a wooden mug, then flashes that bright, gap-toothed smile at Lance again. "That bag weighs more than you, boy! Well done–"

"I saw something!" Lance announces breathlessly, finally dropping the bag at the unlit fire pit. One hand is pointing furiously to the sky. "It was sooooo big, and it flew away when I poked its eye with my stick!"

This garners mixed reactions from the three men before him, ranging from mirth to keen interest. The Elder is first to respond, his long braided silver hair hanging down over his shoulders as he bends to more clearly see Lance's face. It's well known the Elder is going blind, although not completely. He motions Lance closer, who obeys, still gulping down breath.
"What did you see?" the Elder asks, his weathered voice intent. "And be specific."

Honestly, this is more intimidating to Lance than that thing in the woods. He swallows hard, digging the toe of his boot into the snow. "Um. It was real long. And green. And had a big yellow eye. I think its mouth was red. I thought it was gonna eat me, maybe," he finishes, somewhat sheepishly.

Father, Kaburagi, and the Elder all exchange a tense, silent glance. Lance has that feeling he gets often, like the grown-ups are talking without talking.

"He's ready," Father finally says. He sounds sad, somehow.

Kaburagi breathes a huff of protest. "He's too young!"

"It's the Dragon's decision," the Elder interjects. "On today, of all days? No coincidences. We must obey."

Their voices are so weird. Lance doesn't like it. Besides, he's even colder and hungrier than he was before the Big Yellow Eye. He starts stacking his branches in the stone pit, pretending not to listen. It's not the cold that makes him shiver this time.

"He's ready," he hears Father repeat.

---

Kanto Region, Cinnabar Island

Fall, 1986

---

"She's ready," the doctor is saying. He sounds almost excited; Lorraine is anything but, sprawled on a small hospital bed in a messy tangle of limbs and wavy strawberry hair, breath hissing through gritted teeth. A stethoscope is being held to her bulging abdomen; she hopes her voice makes the man go deaf.

"She can't be ready," Lorraine growls, but she's also crying too, because of hormones, because of this shitty situation – "It's too early, isn't it?"

"Well, technically, yes," the doctor divulges. He's a portly man in his sixties, the only obstetric specialist on Cinnabar Island, or else Lorraine would've switched him out months ago. "Four weeks is just on the edge of preterm labor, but many infants do well at this stage."

"'Many'?" She mocks incredulously. "This is my daughter, not a statistic! Has anyone found my brother?"

A nurse somewhere nearby speaks up, softly: "We're trying, ma'am, but it seems he hasn't returned from his trip as scheduled."

Of course not, Lorraine thinks, her head sagging back against the stiff pillow with its crunchy paper case. Granted, labor four weeks early was not part of her or Blaine's plans, but he just had to go on that stupid expedition up Cinnabar's highest mountain with that friend of his, Mr. Fuji. The timing is just right, he'd told her, that sparkly light of curiosity and discovery in his eyes that made him seem like a kid again. If we leave tomorrow, we can have a perfect view of the comet!

"Her heartbeat is healthy and steady," portly doctor is telling Lorraine, for once saying something she actually wants to hear. "Right now, there is no urgent rush. Might I suggest some controlled breathing? It may slow the contractions."

Controlled breathing. Okay. Lorraine can manage that. She purses her lips, brow furrowed, and inhales slowly.

It took a lot of controlled breathing when she first packed her suitcase, intending to head to Cinnabar.

Even more when she had walked aimlessly around her apartment back in Celadon – past gaping, haunted holes in the wall – desperately trying to believe she wasn't left alone, or there was a note somewhere, or that her fiance's departure was simply a mistake.

There hadn't been a note, and it wasn't a mistake.

"I can do that," she whispers, the pain in her pelvis easing into a dull ache. "Just, please, someone find Blaine. He's up the mountain studying comets. He has to be here."

Her eyes are closed now, in meditative concentration, but she hears that same nurse with the sweet voice: "Yes, Ms. Katsura. I'll send someone right away."

—

This wasn't supposed to be happening.

Blaine considers himself a man of above average intelligence. When planning this expedition – which had taken weeks – he and Mr. Fuji had been sure to check and double check every weather forecast. Clear skies, they said. At most, a stray cloud. Perfect comet-viewing conditions.

Definitely not sheets of biting snow.

"Fuji!" Blaine yells, but his voice is getting hoarse by now, and the wind's grown so loud he knows the sound probably isn't carrying that far anyway. Even though he's wearing thick, rugged boots, his toes are getting cold. And forget about his fingers, or rather, small icicles – his packing list had definitely not included gloves.

About ten minutes ago he still had sight of the nearest trail marker. He doesn't know where Fuji is, and until now finding his friend had been his priority. But there's so much snow now – Blaine is squinting through it, his glasses having been tossed from his face by the wind ages ago – that he can't see the marker anymore.

He pulls his arms inside his sweater vest for warmth. Vaguely, he senses the way he came from, but it's entirely possible that's just fool's hope.

It has to be good enough. He trudges forward, one laborious step at a time.

—

Many miles away, Lance is also very cold.

His iron-grey eyes are wide with hesitation as he stares down at the lakeshore. The toes of his boots are right in front of the transition point, where cold sand gradually gives way to sprawling ice. It's late enough in the fall season, and high enough in the mountains, that the freeze has already begun.

He was here earlier this year, too. He's spent several months since then beholding tales from the clan elders, about how his personal contact with the Dragon God meant he'd been 'chosen'. The elders had made him draw the Pokemon he'd seen, to the best of his ability – which as a three-year-old was rather limited, but enough.

Apparently, the Dragon he'd encountered had never been seen in the Blackthorn mountains before; when it chose to visit Johto, which it rarely did, it nested itself on the opposite side of the region in a very old tower built by people from another land. So Lance finding it where he had was downright miraculous.

Despite all of their talking, Lance is still a little confused. But he knows that today, because of his chosen status, is his trial.

Usually, young ones underwent their trials around age ten. That age was safer, and had a higher success rate. Even so, several other young ones in the clan still hadn't fulfilled their trials the first time. He remembers their defeated return to the city, the pained looks on their faces, the sheer exhaustion in their eyes.

Though he's trying his best not to show it, this makes Lance super nervous.

But all the elders are behind him, figuratively and literally, right now. Dozens of them, in their ceremonial blue, ocher, and black uniforms, dotted between the evergreen trees. He can feel their eyes on him. No one speaks. The Matron is singing a low, slow song in a language he only partially recognizes.

He hears the crunching of snow; though his gaze is fixated ahead, he senses Father beside him. A familiar low, quiet voice tells him:

"It's time."

Lance swallows hard, but he nods. Then, step by step, he walks onto the frozen lake, alone.

—

"It's time," the doctor is saying now. He pulls his stethoscope out of his ears and wraps it around his neck. All traces of his relaxed demeanor are gone; his puffy, red face is tense with urgency. "I'm sorry, Lorraine. She can't wait any longer."

The cool towel on her forehead is doing little to stem the sweat. Lorraine is grabbing fistfuls of the aseptic white sheet beneath her, twisting her hands until her knuckles are white, too. "My brother?" she manages, though it's more of a growl.

This time, it's not just the nurse's voice, but a small, kind hand on her shivering shoulder. "We're working on it, ma'am. It seems there was a freak snowstorm up on the mountain tonight. But I'm sure your brother is alright."

Why in all the hells would they tell her this now? As if labor alone in a room full of strangers isn't enough –

"Don't worry about that right now," comes the doctor's voice. Lorraine doesn't hate him as much anymore. "I need you to push."

With a scream, she does as she's told.

—

Blaine's legs are jelly. His jaw aches from chattering teeth.

I have to push on, he tells himself. There's a sense of tiredness in his bones that he didn't think could exist, like he's wearing a one-ton backpack. His eyes are heavy; he can't feel his fingers anymore. Either he's going deaf or the wind is dying down, he isn't sure which.

He forces his gaze upward, through the whirling snowflakes. He blinks. There are no stars, not even a moon, certainly not any comets – but just behind the edge of a distant peak, something starts to glow.

He blinks again, almost certain he's hallucinating. The glow remains. It's a reddish-orange, the color of flames.

Despite everything, Blaine smiles. It's goofy and lopsided. His brain isn't working too great right now and the only thought he can coherently form is I like flames. Just enough feeling returns to his legs for him to take more steps. The light is closer now, cutting though the cold darkness brilliantly; he finds himself reaching for it, with those fingers he can't feel.

"What are you?" He asks the flames. They're taking shape now - a pair of wings, a graceful neck, a long beak. They don't answer, but he still follows. "How much farther?"

They don't answer that, either. But their warmth is reason enough to keep going.

—

"How much farther?" Lance asks no one. He has to make it across the lake, by any means necessary. He's been walking for what feels like hours – it's really only a few minutes, but fear stretches time thin for a three year old. During the trial, you're not supposed to look back to the shore, so he doesn't.

Not when he starts hearing cracks in the ice. Not even when he dares to gaze down at his feet, only to see liquid water a few inches under a thin, glasslike casing. Slightly ahead of him, the water starts to ripple a little, like there's something swimming under there. A Pokemon?

Another step – the breath leaves his lungs. His eyes sting; up becomes down and he's plunged into a world of cold, senses bombarded on all sides with crushing, frigid water, colder than anything he's ever felt, slamming up his nose and down the back of his throat. Somewhere in a corner of his mind he remembers he should swim, but he can't breathe, and it's so dark here, and his feet are so far from the bottom. He coughs but all that does is release bubbles.

Bubbles float. Bubbles go up.

Chest burning, Lance tries to do the same.

—

Something soft is under Blaine's cheek, and heavenly warm. He pries his eyes open to see a blazing electric sign above him – "Hosp." What's a hosp? There's a plume of fiery feathers, and they move now, slightly – "ital" is behind them. Oh, okay. Hospital. That makes more sense.

What doesn't make any sense at all is that he's clearly on the back of a Moltres. A Moltres. It is looking back at him calmly, over one folded wing, now that they've landed. He feels paralyzed by its gaze, though there is no malice whatsoever in its ancient, sky-blue eyes. If it could talk, it looks like it would be saying, 'anytime now, strange human.'

"Ah, right," Blaine blurts, feeling his cheeks flush with embarrassment. Probably rude to keep laying on the back of a legendary Pokemon now that he's awake. He expects to feel sore as he slides to the ground, given he just nearly froze to death, but honestly there's not a single twinge of pain anywhere in his body.

He turns to face the Pokemon now, and reflexively puts a hand over his heart. It is no exaggeration to say he's waited his whole life for this sight. Every single depiction of the beast falls pathetically short. His other hand reaches out tentatively; he's a child again, petting a Growlithe for the first time. Moltres meets his palm with the side of its head, which makes Blaine weep openly. Twenty minutes ago he was fairly certain he was going to die. Now he's in front of a hospital with his fingers in those impossibly flaming feathers.

"Beauty," he mutters numbly.

When Moltres straightens its lithe neck again, he's left with one of those feathers, barely-there and gently warm in his hand. The bird looks past him, towards the building's entrance, and Blaine follows its gaze, clutching the feather protectively. Was he brought here because Moltres thought he needed medical attention? He felt fine though, but maybe the Pokemon hadn't known that.

"Thank y–"

It's that quick. In a shower of embers, drifting lazily towards the ground, the bird is gone.

Still clutching the feather to his heart, Blaine sinks to his knees. He feels wholly and completely unworthy, but just as grateful, and just as full of warm, thrumming life.

"Mister Katsura!"

Someone is shouting his name; his mind is like scorched earth right now, but the sheer urgency and panic in that shout brings him to his senses. He stands up just as he spots a nurse running towards him, pointing frantically towards the hospital entrance. "There you are! Please hurry! Your sister is having her baby!"

This does the opposite of what Blaine thinks it should, really. There's no fear, no surprise. Just a pleasant, quiet warmth, similar to that feather in his hand.

"Thank you," he says. "Please, take me."

—

The sunlight is just above Lance's head. He didn't know his muscles could hurt this much. He flails frantically upwards, towards what he hopes is the surface. His feet keep kicking; his winter clothes are so heavy, and they keep pulling him back faster than he can go up. There's black at the corners of his vision. His chest is burning. He kicks again, but his eyes are closing. One last kick, one last push -

His right foot finds purchase on something. Then his left. Something else - or maybe the same something? - wraps around his waist, not to hurt, but to lift. Lance explodes out of the water, coughs wracking his small body when his lungs realize air is available again. Just as quickly as he's out of the water, he slams back onto solid ice, turning over onto all fours, breath sawing in and out of his throat in great heaves.

He's soaked, obviously, and his red hair is swept all over his face and eyes. Shivering, he pulls it back with one hand and blinks rapidly, which is a weird feeling since his eyeballs are completely numb.

Coiled in front of him, the tip of its cerulean tail flicking curiously, is a young Dratini. Its wide, dark eyes blink at him, their edges glinting in the evening sunlight. Lance gapes at it in awe; he realizes absently this Pokemon really shouldn't be here, it's way too cold, but so is he, and he thinks he shouldn't be here, either. Already they have something in common.

With great difficulty due to all the shivers, Lance points to the shoreline, where he hopes his family is waiting.

"Thank you," he rasps, with one more cough. "Please, take me."

The blackness behind his eyes wins, now. As he passes out onto the ice, the Dratini catches him, easing his limp body onto his back. It leaves a winding trail in the snow as they head for the shore.

—

"Where the hell have you been?"

Blaine deserves that. Lorraine's words are mostly roars. This whole day is a blur; he doesn't have it in him to feel overwhelmed, or guilty, or useless. He observes the chaos of the delivery room in quiet veneration. Never before has he been so acutely aware of life itself, both its power and fragility. His sister is seething, but it's hard to tell what's anger and what's raw, unfiltered strength as his one and only niece enters the world.

"I'm here now," Blaine tells both of them. He's still holding Moltres' feather in one hand, and it's still flaming with an impossible gentleness. The other takes his sister's hand and squeezes.

Lorraine's head sags back onto the bed in pure relief. The hospital staff rush around in silent, rehearsed movements – scissors here, a blanket there. And with a sharp, ear-piercing wail, she is handed her tiny human, all wiggles and fussy fists popping in and out of the soft fabric.

"Hello, Cora," Lorraine says.

All traces of suffering have vanished from her face. She beams at her daughter through strands of strawberry hair, just beginning to catch the last rays of sunlight from the ward's one and only window.

"Cora?" Blaine echoes, testing the name's sound. He smiles as he says it.

"It means 'heart'," Lorraine tells him, proudly.

Considering his glasses are somewhere up on the mountain, Blaine squints a little as he leans down to see his niece. She is understandably upset, having just left the quiet confines of her one and only home to enter into this cold, loud new world, and she is unrestrained in telling everyone just how upset she is.

"Blaine," Lorraine says, a little warily, "is your hand on fire?"

He holds up the flaming, golden feather, turning it this way and that for all three of them to see. Well, just he and his sister, really. Cora hasn't opened her eyes yet.

It occurs to him in a crash: Moltres hadn't brought him here for medical attention.

No, he was here for a greater purpose, indeed.

"It's a gift," Blaine decides. Cora's itty bitty fingers are opening and closing; he slips the stem of the feather between them, when he can, and much to his delight, she holds onto it instantly, clutching it close to her chest. "A gift from a friend."

—

When Lance awakens, he sees fire.

Before him is a blazing stone hearth; he groggily recognizes it as the Elder's den, where the clan often gathers for meetings or meals. Lance, though, is lying on the floor, on a pile of blankets at least a foot thick, and beneath one of similar size. There's still a lingering cold in his fingers and toes, but it's so much less intense than before he'd passed out, before he'd been rescued–

The memory bursts to life like a firework, and despite his woozy head he shoots up straight, scanning the room with wide grey eyes. They soften a moment later, though, because stretched out around him, in a gentle curve, is the dratini from the lake. It looks like it's just waking up with him, slowly raising its head and swiveling the white fins at its cheeks. At Lance's gaze, it lets out a small, curious coo.

"He hasn't left your side once," Kaburagi is saying, strolling into the den barefoot, a broad smile beneath his white mustache. "Barely lets anyone get close to you, in fact. I've never seen such a remarkable bond before."

Lance meets the dratini's eyes, feeling his own start to well with tears of shame. "But I didn't finish the trial, Kabu. I failed."

"Failed?" The elder laughs, taking a seat in his favorite wooden rocking chair, the creaking noise instantly familiar and comforting. "My boy, you're now the youngest Blackthorn Clan member to ever bond with a Dragon. Why there was a lone dratini swimming in the lake this time of year is a complete mystery, but the Elder and Matron both believe your meeting was fated." He bows his head now, reverently. "The Dragon God's wisdom prevails. The two of you are destined for great things. If only your grandfather could see you now."

Slowly, Lance's sense of dark failure becomes alight with curiosity, then realization, then a spark of excitement. He shakes the hair from his eyes and smiles a little. "You mean, I– I've got a dratini now? Really?"

As if in confirmation, the pokemon's blue tail lifts up, then flops across his lap like a seatbelt, the very tip twirling contentedly.

"More accurately," Kaburagi is grinning again, "the dratini has you."

 

[Sastrei]

---

I'm taking it slow, feeding my flame - shuffling the cards of your game

And just in time, in just the right place - suddenly I will play my ace​

---

Cinnabar Island Gym

Spring 1997

"Well then," Blaine says, looking Lance up and down over the rim of his dark glasses. "You're the real deal, aren't you, boy?"

It's a little hard to hear him, because beneath the gym's battle floor is a literal volcano, and the bubbling, churning magma is making a steady, constant gurgle. "I'd like to think so. Thank you as well for arranging our accommodations for the evening. It was incredibly generous of you."

"Of course!" The older man says, a beaming grin beneath his salt-and-pepper mustache. "It's not every day we get challengers outside of Kanto. When I heard you were coming, I felt the most fired-up I have in… well, thirteen years," he finishes fondly. Cora is standing beside him, along with her small red-eyed charmander, and he claps her on the back. "Ready to see this old coot strut his stuff, Naughter?"

Lance's head cocks to one side. There it is again, that weird combination of words… he's about to ask what this one means, but he figures it out on his own this time: if Duncle is "dad" and "uncle," then Naughter must be "niece" and "daughter."

What a weird family. Wholesome, he'll admit, but weird.

Cora grins, then waves at Lance from across the battlefield. "Don't let your cape get burned!"

"It's so hot in here, Lance," Clair is whining, sagging into the back of her bench behind him. "Can you just beat this old geezer so we can leave, please?"

Lance cringes, shooting her a stern glare. "Blaine is our honored opponent, cousin. It's incredibly rude and inappropriate to insult someone you're about to battle. Grandfather would be very disappointed."

That seems to do the trick, because she goes from sulking to looking genuinely remorseful and guilty. "Sorry," she mumbles. "It's just… you get to do all this cool stuff, and I have to sit here and watch. It sucks."

He sighs, then pats her on the head affectionately, even though he knows she absolutely hates it. "Your time will come, sooner than you think. Be patient. Remember what Kaburagi says all the time?"

She rolls her eyes, but she's smiling a little as they quote him together: "'To acquire knowledge, one must study; to acquire wisdom, one must observe.'"

The battle officiant appears just then, in a crisp Pokemon League rep uniform; he's standing practically on the edge of the magma pit, so you'd think his discomfort would be obvious, but he appears calm and professional. Lance is mildly impressed.

"This will be a three-on-three challenge," comes the announcement, "for the Kanto Pokemon League's Volcanobadge. The challenger is Lance of Blackthorn City. Only the challenger will be allowed to substitute pokemon. Potions and other items may be used on either side at any time. The match is decided when one trainer has no pokemon left capable of battling."

Lance's fingers twitch at his sides. His heart thrums, proud and strong.

"Are the competitors ready?"

"Yes!" Both he and Blaine affirm simultaneously.

"Battle begin!"

Lance has studied for this; he always does, before a match. Blaine's rapidash appears first, all swift, lithe movements and shimmering white fur. He counters with aerodactyl; though there's not a lot of room to fly in this cave of a gym, Lance makes up for it easily with relentless rock-type attacks. Within minutes he's won the first round, though his aerodactyl is left with one burned wing. He recalls it and thanks it for a job well done.

Blaine strokes his chin thoughtfully, unperturbed. Next is a rhydon; its massive weight shakes the ground as it appears with a roar, jabbing its intimidating horn in the air. Lance smiles. Gyarados is next, his most recently evolved pokemon and a crucial addition to his team with its water-type attacks. The two massive beasts clash repeatedly, in great plumes of smoke and earth-rending roars. Gyarados sustains definite damage, but its doubly supereffective moves give Lance his second victory.

By this point Clair is standing up and pumping her fist as she cheers for him. Cora and Blaine give one another a wide-eyed, purse-lipped nod that wordlessly says 'well, damn.'

"We'll see this through to the end," Blaine announces, unperturbed. "Go, Magmar!"

Ah, this is what Lance was waiting for. Dragonite appears, standing tall on the stone floor, brow furrowed, wings flaring and stretching in anticipation.

Blaine goes on the offensive first, attempting a series of clever moves to restrict dragonite's movements; they're all dodged, almost. A patch of skin on the dragon's side is clearly burned, but it doesn't matter – Lance doesn't plan to attack with physical force, anyway. A swift Thunder Wave makes magmar flinch and struggle to move. There isn't even time for Blaine to use a full heal before Lance is shouting "Hyper Beam!" and magmar slumps to the ground, a small flame slowly petering out of its beak.

"Gym Leader Blaine is unable to battle! The winner of this match goes to Lance of Blackthorn City!"

"Duh!" Clair shouts, throwing her arms around him in a gleeful, rare hug. "They never stood a chance against us!" It's both grating and endearing hearing her say us, but Lance doesn't mention it. She's happy right now. Don't ruin it.

"Well, my boy," Blaine is saying, fishing around in one pocket of his pressed khaki pants. "I'd say you've earned this." He presents a small metal badge in the shape of a flame. Taking in a breath, Lance accepts it with a bow.

"It was a tremendous battle," Lance says.

"Bah." Blaine throws his head back and laughs. "You wiped the floor with me, tremendously, all right! Is it true you're slated to take your place as leader of the Elite Four?"

At this, Cora's jaw drops a little. She'd been scratching her charmander's head but pauses abruptly to stare at him. "Whoa, really?"

Lance nods, his stomach tensing. "That's the plan. I've been training for it since I was very young."

"A lofty goal, at any age. But for someone with your youth? You're something special, boy."

That tension tightens, but there's excitement there, too. It's a slightly nauseating, blurry mix of feelings Lance is well accustomed to now, when receiving praise about his exceptional abilities. "I truly appreciate it. I want to proudly represent my hometown in Kanto and Johto's largest platform."

"Then why do you look sick when you talk about it?" Cora blurts, with that same studying stare she'd given him yesterday.

Lance looks like someone just punched him right in the face. "I, uh- excuse me?"

"Annoyingly observant, isn't she?" Blaine chuckles. "Takes after her mom. You're off to Viridian City now, right?"

The abrupt subject change is exceedingly merciful, and Lance runs with it. "Yes, it's my final challenge before the Indigo Plateau. I've so far been unable to arrange a battle over the phone, so I was hoping to do so in person. I don't supposed it's closed down or relocated too, right?"

Blaine cringes a little. "Well, not exactly. The Leader is known for his unpredictable – and sometimes lengthy – absences. It's also been said that not a single trainer has won against him in the past six months. But people talk, you know."

Lance exchanges a glance with Clair. "I'll change that. Don't worry."

The older man laughs again. "Of that, I have no doubt. If I can help in your travels at all, please let me know." He hands Lance a small card, emblazoned with the Gym's symbol and a phone number. "Our home is your home from now on, my boy. You're always welcome. I make a mean Tamato berry chili if you ever want to drop by for dinner." He winks mischievously. "And if you don't mind burning off all your tastebuds."

"Ah, th-thanks," Lance manages, his thumb running over the embossed digits on the card. For whatever reason, this moment feels exceedingly overwhelming. His chest is full, and the back of his throat is tight. None of the other gym leaders in Kanto had been anywhere near this hospitable. The paper card feels valuable, worth its tiny weight in diamonds and gold.

Carefully, he eases it into the pocket at his hip. "Thank you," he says, with more certainty this time.

—

Lance expected a Gym attendant in Viridian City, maybe. Or at least an intercom, like Blaine's Gym had. The former would've been befitting of this grand entrance hall; the reception lobby looks more like a luxury hotel than a Gym, with tall, marble pillars and decorative gold accents.

He did not expect, however, a pissed-off, red-haired kid.

"You look ridiculous," said kid tells Lance, his feet propped up on the desk, arms reclined behind his head. "I should turn you away just for how dumb you look."

Honestly, Lance's primary emotion at this whole situation is genuine confusion – the same cannot be said for Clair, who shoves past him, eyes blazing, and slams her hands down on the desk. To her credit, the kid flinches.

"Take that back," she snarls. "Plus, it's not like you look any less dumb. What's with your hair? Ever heard of shampoo?"

"Enough, Clair," Lance hisses through gritted teeth. Takes a deliberate breath. "It seems there's been some confusion. What's your name?"

"None of your business," the kid says, giving Clair a wary glance. "And there's no confusion about anything. You're not going to win the Earthbadge, so just stop bothering me and go away."

"I'm afraid that's not your decision," Lance says, bristling. "Pokemon League rules demand a Gym leader accepts all challengers. I formally challenge this Gym."

Redhead's eyes flick tellingly upwards, for just a moment; Lance's gaze follows them, and that's when he notices the (pretty disturbing) array of security cameras dotting every corner of the ceiling.

This made more sense. Whoever actually made the decision sat at the other end of those cameras. This kid was probably just meant to scare away anyone not serious.

"I hold seven badges of Kanto, and all eight of Johto," Lance continues, brandishing his badge case from a back pocket. It's an intricately-carved mahogany wooden box gifted to him on his tenth birthday; he opens it and holds it up towards the cameras in proof, each badge glinting in the cold lights.

"From… Johto, too?" Redhead says, dropping his feet off the desk. "No one's ever come here with all of those."

"Don't you know who you're messing with?" Clair asks, smirking. "This is my cousin Lance, the most powerful Dragon Tamer in all of Blackthorn City, and all of Johto, too. If you keep pestering us, it's not gonna end well for you."

There's suddenly a crackling in the air, a brief sound of radio static – then a voice comes through from a small receiver on the desk.

"Silver," it says. It's low and smooth, like slick, ebony oil. "You're being meddlesome. Apologize, and let them in."

The look of raw terror that slams into the kid's face is transparently honest. Every shred of confidence and toughness has vanished. He's pale, ghostlike, sitting ramrod straight in the chair now, as if someone had just cracked a whip across his back.

Several seconds go by with him not moving at all; even Clair is apparently bothered by this abrupt change, because she leans closer to him and asks, "Hey, are you okay?"

That seems to snap him out of his own head. He stands up and nervously fumbles for a button on the far side of the desk, then pushes it. Behind him, a pair of grand, earthen doors begin to sway open with the sound of grinding earth.

"S-Sorry," the kid - Silver, apparently - is telling them. He keeps his lavender eyes trained on the ground, hands wringing behind his back. "Leader Giovanni will see you now."

Something dark crawls into Lance's stomach. He can tell Clair feels it too – as aggressive as she can be, her emotional intuition tends to be on point. She looks up at him, then back at Silver, who has not moved a hair's breadth even as she and Lance walk inside, those doors closing behind them with a rumbling slam.

The air here is unnaturally still. There's no noise, save for their boots on the beige stone floor. Steadfast marble ceilings arch high above them. To Lance's left is a balcony, lined with an elegant iron and wood railing; it's shrouded in shadow. The only light is from a single, blinding lamp directly above the center of the battlefield.

No directions, no signs. But there are traditional battlefield markings, and that's good enough for Lance. He takes his place on the far end, opposite that balcony. Clair follows, standing just behind him and to his left. She looks nervous. She's not alone.

More tense silence crawls by; Lance opens his mouth to once again announce his challenge, but another light suddenly turns on over the balcony. There's a figure standing there, features shrouded, dramatically backlit: broad, masculine shoulders, a short and tight haircut, the sharp edges of a tailored suit.

"Giovanni," Lance says, in both a greeting and a question.

"I like those who show me strength," comes the voice again. It's even smoother in person, and seems to slither through the stale air. "Show me what you can do."

Within the wall beneath his feet, a hidden, mechanically-powered door begins to slide open. The figure standing inside is one Lance almost mistakes for a human, at first – it's bipedal, and of similar height and build to a tall male. He can't see its eyes. Its head is encased in some sort of armor, as are its thin, white arms.

A decidedly inhuman violet-colored tail rests behind it, hovering a few inches off the floor, behind a pair of two-toed feet.

He hears Clair gasp behind him. "What the fu–"

"What are the battle terms, Giovanni?" Lance demands, holding his voice steady. Everything about this is wrong – there's no officiant, no acknowledgement before the match. "What are your rules in this Gym?"

The balcony figure's shoulders shake, and a deep, resounding laugh emanates from its shadow.

"Survive," the suited man says.

A pair of eyes flash to life from behind the pokemon's helmet.

Lance really doesn't want to go through with this – without an officiant or stated terms, the battle doesn't count, right? – but every Gym does operate independently, and this is the lair of the most powerful Leader in Kanto. It's possible there are exemptions?

"Gyarados," he decides, tossing his first pokeball, "let's go! Dragonbreath!"

The massive beast appears with a growl, which swiftly turns into its ordered attack - but it's like there's an invisible wall around his opponent, because the energy glances off in all directions instead of making an impact. Barrier? Light screen? Giovanni hadn't even said anything, how can it–

"Hyper Beam!" Lance shouts, throwing out an arm to point ahead. Gyarados obeys, its fins flashing brightly just before it unleashes the jet of searing energy.

This time, the armored pokemon simply holds out one hand - with only three, round fingers - and the beam halts in midair, shivering and flickering sparks in all directions, before turning directly around and impacting the gyarados right in its face.

Lance's jaw drops. So does his gyarados, straight to the floor, sending a crash echoing off those frigid marble walls.

"What was–" He's breathing hard, pulse racing. "That's not a fair attack–"

"Power isn't fair," Giovanni counters. "Power simply is. Show me your next pokemon."

"Lance," Clair is saying, shrinking back against the far wall. "This isn't right. Something's not right here."

Power. Fine. Lance knows power. He throws his next pokeball: "Dragonite! Outrage!"

The ultimate physical dragon attack. Lance rarely uses it, given the cost. Dragonite glows, his eyes whiting over, the edges of his frame radiating blue flame.

"Shadow Ball," Giovanni commands.

Dragonite is rushing forward now, roaring mightily, one clawed fist cocked - until the unknown pokemon's attack streaks through the air at near-impossible speed. There's no time to dodge. Dragonite's head whips back from the impact, arms and wings going limp. He cracks the ground when he crashes down, only to lie motionless and silent.

"Lance!" Clair is shouting at him now, gripping his wrist hard. "Stop battling! It's dangerous! This isn't right, we've got to go!"

She's right. He knows she's right; he can't stop staring at his fallen dragonite, a sight he's never once laid eyes on, but he forces himself to recall it. As he stares down at the pokeball in his hand, he realizes he's trembling.

"Mark my words," Giovanni declares. "This loss proves that you are still but a child. Leave if you wish."

The front doors open again. Clair is nearly dragging Lance past them, back into the open air outside. The red-haired boy, Silver, is still sitting at the reception desk. He huffs at their exit.

"Told you," he says quietly.

---

Lyrics: "Eyes on Fire (Skeler Remix)" by Skeler & Blue Foundation

 

[Sastrei]

We are designed to love and break, to rinse and repeat it all again

We were made to be nothing more than this, finding magic in all the smallest things​

---

Cora has always enjoyed cooking, even if she didn't consider herself particularly good at it. The simple act of creating something others could enjoy, and could find comfort in on ugly, shitty days, always felt like a small miracle. Evening had fallen; she and Blaine were alone in their home enjoying a quiet wind-down from the morning's battle.

A storm had brewed outside. Cora loved the sound the big, fat drops left on the broad leaves of the plants just outside the screened window. Plunk, plink, plunk. The noise soothed her mind. As a young girl, some of her absolute fondest memories of her mother involved nights just like this, snuggled under the covers, reading a storybook by the glow of a half-dead flashlight.

"Curry's almost done," she shouts to Blaine, who is down the hall in his office. He's been in there for a few hours now; after every Gym match, but particularly a loss - and even more particularly, a bad loss – the older man felt compelled to record and dissect every moment of the battle, in an attempt to learn from it.

"Mmhmm," comes the distracted reply. This will likely be another night of bringing a full plate to his desk, hearing a mumbled "You're fantastic, Naughter," only to retrieve it later after he falls asleep in the chair, one pen still in hand.

She admires this tenacity about him, truly, as she does countless other things – his wit, his humor, his complete and total acceptance of who she is, and whoever she would become. In her fourteen years of life, she'd learned that kind of parental love was a treasured rarity. So many others her age couldn't say or do a single genuine thing without pushback, without being shamed. Blaine just wanted her to be happy.

She inspects the simmering curry, its chunks of carrot, onion, parsnip and potato, steaming spices wafting up into her face. Her small smile fades. She wishes, secretly, for just a little more time with her uncle. Slices of life that involved mundane things – sharing popcorn buckets at the movies, fishing trips off the Island's inner coast. Things they could take pictures of, and hang around the house to make her smile and feel less alone when he was gone – which lately, was more and more often.

Cora stirs the large copper pot with a wooden spoon one more time before turning off the oven's burner. In setting down the spoon, she pointedly ignores the thin, faint scars lining her inner left forearm.

That was another time, when darkness reigned, and hope had died.

Cora brought her own light with her now. At times quite literally, thanks to the gleaming, golden feather in her hair. The past, her depression – all those dark things following her around like a sack of slithering shadows – they had to be kept at bay by force. Otherwise they'd tear her to pieces like a pack of rabid houndour.

The phone rings, interrupting the peaceful silence; "I'll get it, D," she announces, although that's already obvious. "Hello, Katsura residence."

"Cora?" It's Lance's voice, she thinks? "I-is that you?"

"Yep. Hey Lance. What's up?"

"I called the number on the card Blaine gave me," he continues. He sounds off; a tense urgency tinges his low voice. "I didn't know who else to call. I'm sorry. I need help."

Cora's eyes widen as she sinks into the teal armchair beside her. "Help? What's wrong?"

"It's my fault," and he pauses here, clearly trying to calm his breathing. "Two of my pokemon are seriously injured and the Viridian Pokemon Center doesn't think they're equipped to help enough." His voice catches, nearly breaking. "I don't know what to do. I'm so, so sorry to bother you. But there's no other pokemon hospitals around here for miles able to handle their injuries or their size, and-"

Alright. Business mode: activate.

Situation is clear: There's a crisis happening. Someone is unstable and needs direction.

Cora has trained for this. She stands up straight, alone in the living room, her emerald-green eyes firm as they stare ahead.

"I'm so sorry," she tells him gently. He's overwhelmed, needing validation - this much she's learned. "It's okay to be messed up right now, Lance. Just breathe for a minute, okay? What do the nurses at the Center say?"

"They're stable for now but it's not good. Gyarados, and dragonite – they took massive injuries in the Viridian gym battle, and I was so stupid and kept pushing them when I should've– I should've just–"

"Lance, it's okay," Cora tells him. "We're gonna figure this out. One step at a time." She starts moving now, swiftly darting to the pantry lined with dozens of thick glass jars, each one labeled meticulously. Carefully, she stacks them into a backpack hanging by a hook on the front door.

"Dragonite is worst," Lance is saying now; she can hear the tears straining his throat. "I've known him for twelve years, if he doesn't make it, I can't–"

"Duncle and his friend Mister Fuji make very powerful healing tonics and medicines," Cora interrupts intentionally. Redirect. Refocus. Be an anchor. "They're way stronger than any Pokemon Center would have, and the nurses there will know how administer them. I'm packing a bag right now. I can reach you by boat in less than an hour."

There's a slight pause. "This doesn't look like good boating weather, Cora."

"Don't worry about it," she says, slinging on the backpack, then a thick, oversized raincoat over that. "I've lived here my whole life, remember? A little water doesn't bother me in the slightest."

That wasn't true. At all. In fact she could already feel her hands shaking, her heart pounding. Dammit, it had to be water, and a boat, and a storm, didn't it? Just like the accident four years ago. Those shadows of the past claw at her back, but she ignores them.

There'd be a massive emotional fallout later – but that was a problem for future Cora. Current Cora had a friend to help.

"Alright," he says softly. "Thank you. Please be careful. But – also, please hurry."

"On my way."

She hangs up the phone, hoping Blaine remembers the curry before he falls asleep.

—

Lance is torn between remaining inside the hospital to be beside his pokemon and to stand outside watching the road leading to the boat dock. It's raining, still, but he doesn't really care about that. He squints his eyes through the mist, tucking his face into the collar of his cape.

Of his two injured pokemon, Clair had been fondest of gyarados; she always admired its raw power and constantly snarling face, so she hadn't left its side the entire time, one of her small hands gingerly petting the fin at the tip of its tail with earnest affection. Center staff were everywhere, in and out, wheeling this IV pole, that sonogram machine, that portable x-ray unit - controlled chaos. It didn't seem to matter to Clair, who just kept looking at gyarados. Lance was far enough away he couldn't hear her fully, but she rarely stopped talking to the pokemon, undoubtedly giving words of love and encouragement.

For all of her brash immaturity, her love for pokemon remained pure and genuine. For this reason alone Lance knew she would go far, even if she didn't yet.

Lance checks his watch. It's been forty-seven minutes. There's decent wind, enough to tug firmly on his cape. He starts walking to the boat dock; was Cora coming alone? That charmander of hers was far too small to do much, did she have any other pokemon to help?

He hears a grinding sound, and a motor sputtering off. His heart jumps. He runs forward with wide eyes; Cora is knee-deep in the water, a mooring rope over her shoulder and gripped in both fists as she drags the small dinghy onto the dock.

Relief. Or at the very least, hope, which has been in immensely short supply. "You made it."

"Early, even," she smiles at him, bangs falling in her face from the wind. "Lead the way."

He does, gladly. There's a crowd of people gathered to witness the commotion but he shoves through them all, to the nurse's desk. "Excuse me–"

"The charge nurse," Cora finishes, hefting her backpack onto the desk. "Please, it's very urgent. It's about Lance's pokemon."

The receptionist nods, then returns moments later with a different Nurse Joy, a broader, more deeply red cross on her white hat. She is followed closely behind by a chansey. "Are you here about the gyarados and dragonite?"

"I'm Blaine's niece, from Cinnabar," Cora says. She arranges a few of the jars on the desk. "If you know anything about my uncle's ecological work, you know he creates powerful medicinal remedies in his lab. What are the pokemon suffering from, chiefly?"

"The gyarados has severe energy burns to its eyes and mouth. We are treating with steroids and fluids for dehydration, but the deterioration is continuing rapidly." Her graceful face falls. "It will go blind at this rate."

Lance has to grip the desk to remain standing. Cora, however, evenly slides forward one of those jars. "This is a non-astringent aseptic poultice to drastically reduce inflammation. Dilute it in 50cc's of normal saline and apply once every hour."

Behind the Nurse, the chansey is taking notes somehow; it's not English, but it means enough to the staff.

"The dragonite?" Cora presses.

"Complicated," the Nurse frowns. "Multiple cervical spine fractures. Second degree burns to the neck and chest. And a dislocated right shoulder."

By this point Lance can't really listen; it's all excruciating jargon to him. He thinks he hears the Nurse say this should help, but "should" isn't a great word right now. Another exchange is made. Just off to his right he can see his dragonite on a gurney; the nurse closes the window, making him both relieved and angry.

"Hey," Cora is saying. She tentatively rests one hand on his wrist where he's still got a death grip on the desk. Staring at her fingers, he slowly lets go.

"Let's sit down, yeah?" She asks gently. He nods. They cross the lobby and plop down beside one another on a flat couch with cold steel rails. Her hands are fidgeting in her lap.

"How are you holding up?" she asks.

Lance shakes his head slowly. "I can't believe this. I can't believe that Gym. Everything was wrong right from the start. And that pokemon–" His hands are on his knees, and his fingers curl into them. "It just… destroyed us. Effortlessly."

"What did it look like?"

A flash of rage furrows Lance's brow. "Seriously? Why does that matter? It nearly killed my pokemon!"

Cora flinches, and is silent for a moment. But then she pulls back her shoulders and meets his eyes. "I just meant, if we could find out what it is, maybe ask around, we could figure out why it won so easily. Remember what Duncle said? That no one's won here the past six months? Isn't that kind of suspicious?"

Well, that does make sense. Annoyingly observant, isn't she? He hears Blaine echo in his head. Lance sighs again.

"I'm sorry," he mutters. "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that."

"It's okay," she says. It's intimidating, the way she doesn't flinch from his gaze. "Don't do it again, but it's okay."

"Alright." He stands up now, unable to control his nervous energy. "Well, whatever it was, it did look like it was wearing armor. I think we should report this to the police. There's no way that was a fair fight."

"Actually, I think there's someone else better equipped for this: the G-men."

Lance stops pacing. "Who?"

"The Pokemon G-Men. Duncle and Mister Fuji are both former members," she continues. "They still have ties to active agents. When we get back, we can ask them what they'd recommend."

"Excuse me, Mister Lance?" a nurse is saying, approaching them.

At once, he turns to face her, eyes wide. Cora is standing beside him.

"We've begun the treatments, and there seems to be some improvement, although it's still too early to tell for sure. Our doctors would like to keep both your gyarados and dragonite here at least for tonight, and possibly tomorrow, depending on how things progress."

Lance grips hard to one edge of his cape. "A-alright. Just, please, keep me updated of any changes."

"Of course, sir. Will you be needing accommodations for the evening?"

"Er, yes. For my cousin Clair and I–"

"And me," Cora interjects, earning her a baffled look from Lance. She smiles a little in response. "I have to see if Duncle's medicine worked. He's gonna want a full report."

Lance smiles back. "Alright, then. Accommodations for three, please."

—

Clair is the first to fall asleep. Getting her to leave gyarados' side nearly took an army, but her own sheer exhaustion won out in the end. The digital clock beside Lance's nightstand is casting an eerie emerald glow to an otherwise dark room, save for a bit of moonlight easing through the cracks of the blinds.

Sleep is elusive. He's staring at the ceiling. The window is opened a bit, as the night outside has become rather pleasant after the rain; a slight breeze ruffles his cape, hanging from a hook in the corner. Just that dumb little movement is enough to surprise him, to make his eyes widen, to make his heart jump. His body feels like a tensed string, vibrating ominously.

This is so stupid, he thinks to himself. He gets up, slowly, as to not wake Clair, who as usual is somehow sleeping with half her body hanging off one side of the bed. Pulls on his boots. Foregoes the cape, for once. And carefully opens the door to head outside. Maybe a walk will smother his simmering nerves.

A voice makes him pause; it's just through the back door, speaking low, calm words. He follows it, peering through the nearby window. Cora is sitting on top of one of the wooden picnic tables, her back to him. He can see her charmander's tail poking out over one knee as it rests in her lap; the feather in her hair is alight, but only just. Nowhere near as vivacious and powerful as he's seen before.

Her charmander raises its head now, just enough for Lance to see that it's crying – quite a lot, truthfully. Its little fingers are curling into her sleeve, and it nuzzles its head against her shoulder to wipe away its tears. She's hunched over, cradling its head like a small, disconsolate child, her shoulders slowly rocking back and forth.

The sight makes his breath catch. Maybe it's the aftershocks of this shitty day, maybe he feels like he owes Cora after her help earlier – or maybe it's his own personal sense of needing to help however he can – but before he can stop himself, he's out the door and heading towards the two of them, his steps quiet on the verdant, spring grass.

Charmander peers at him cautiously over the line of Cora's shoulder, its ruby-red eyes thin with suspicion and tears. It makes a soft growl and curls deeper into her lap.

"Oh," Cora exclaims, looking genuinely bewildered to see him. "Ah, hey. Couldn't sleep either, huh?"

"I, um-" he starts, suddenly feeling utterly useless, and he's overstepped everything, and he's making a huge idiot of himself– "Just wanted to help, if I could, I guess." He smiles sheepishly. "Which is kinda dumb, since I don't even know what's going on. I can leave if that's easier–"

"I'm glad you're here," Cora tells him, meeting his eyes. "Thank you. I could really use a friend right now."

A friend.

Is that what this is? What she is, now?

It feels beautiful – warm, cozy, like the fire in the hearth of the Elder's den. Despite everything, he smiles a little, gesturing to the empty seat on the other side of the table. "May I sit?"

She smiles back. "Of course." Then frowns, nuzzling her cheek on the charmander's head as it continues to seek comfort from her. "Ugh, I knew the fallout would come. Today was really hard for Draco. For both of us, really."

"You mean coming to the hospital?"

"No," she says quietly. "The boat ride, and the rain. There's just… a lot of bad memories around those things. For both us."

Lance studies her face, noting the clouded distance dulling her emerald eyes. "I'm sorry to hear that. Is it okay to ask what happened? I don't want to bring up anything you're uncomfortable with, if it's too sensitive right now."

Cora shrugs, breathing a watery laugh. "We've already been talking about it anyway. Sharing with you might help, actually." She smirks, wiping her eyes again. "Kinda depressing, just warning you."

"You helped me earlier. Lending a listening ear is the least I can do."

Cora is idly playing with her charmander's toes, enjoying the way it makes the pokemon smile, even through its tears. "I picked Draco here just like all other kids get their starter pokemon from Pallet on their tenth birthday. My mom came with me that day."

She pauses, swallowing. "Since my dad left, well, uh… Mom wasn't well in her head, ever again, really. So her coming with me was so, so good." The grin on her face here is radiant. "We sailed from Cinnabar. She was so happy for me. My room was ridiculous, Lance – covered in pictures of charizard, arcanine, ninetales, anything fiery. Didn't think twice about my first partner."

"I'd imagine your uncle had something to do with that," Lance smirks.

"Everything, really," Cora chuckles. "I was so happy. Draco and I got along great. We took the last boat back to the Island, just as the sun set. Then everything… everything changed."

Hearing her finish the story is excruciating, but he's enraptured at the way she speaks, with such genuine, unfiltered emotion.

When she mentions the unexpected whirlpool that capsized their ship home, he's there too, tumbling helplessly in the dark, churning water.

She can't recall Draco to his pokeball; she swims after him, his taillight only faintly glowing beneath the roaring ocean. He's using so much energy just to keep it lit, to stay alive – it drains his tiny body, leaving him small and fragile for years to come.

The water is too strong; she can't find her mom. At least, not until a few days later, when a rescue crew recovers the body.

Cora's thumb is tracing the edge of Draco's eyes now, wiping away the last of his tears. He's starting to fall asleep, bit by bit. "You see his eyes? They were blue, when we first met, like usual. But the doctors said he held his eyes open in the saltwater for so long, looking for me, that they became permanently damaged."

A small smile curls the edges of her lips. She scratches Draco's chin, watching him smile sleepily. "I think they look badass, though. 'Why's he got red eyes?' everyone asks. Well, he singlehandedly beat death as a baby. They're his badge of honor."

Lance doesn't know what to say.

He's dumbstruck, an infant again. To make matters worse: even after all of this, and her clear phobia of water and ships, Cora had just taken a boat by herself to come help him and his pokemon.

He sits in front of her silently. She's much smaller than him, given their slight age difference – but he's the tiny one here, vastly overshadowed by what he can now see is a pure, unbreakable spirit.

"You don't even need my apology," he tells her, eyes wide. "No, you're beyond that. You know. You know what you've survived. Both of you."

For what feels like a long, long time, she looks at him, into him. He's three again, crashing through the ice of the frozen lake, choking on water, crying tears of joy at the frozen air once it hits his lungs. He knew then. He knew then he was different.

"I see it in you," she whispers. "You know, too. I hope one day, I can hear your story, Lance."

He nods. There are a thousand feelings in his chest, way way more than he's used to. He stares down at his feet for a moment, shuffling them idly, then up at the sky, and finally back at her, wearing a slight blushing cringe. "Look, I'm – I'm not good at this, my family never ever does it, in fact I'm not even sure I've done it before, but today has been so awful, and I just really think that it would help if – uh – can we hug?"

To his immense surprise, she doesn't laugh, or insinuate he's weird, or ostracize him whatsoever. She gently shifts Draco out of her lap, plants her feet in the grass, puts her arms around his ribs, and squeezes.

He's about a foot taller than her; the golden feather in her hair is just tickling his chin. It's actually a little warm, a soft, gentle flame. He's not quite sure what to do with his arms, so they end up circling her shoulders, and he takes her small sigh as a signal he's not screwing it up too badly.

"I like hugs," Cora tells him, her voice muffled in his shirt. "They help."

"Yeah," he agrees, closing his eyes. "They do."

---

Lyrics: "Celestial" by Ed Sheeran, which is the song that plays at the endgame credits of Pokemon Violet :)

 

[Sastrei]

If I warned you that the fire's gonna burn,

Would you walk in, or would you let me do it first?​

---

"It worked," Nurse Joy tells them, her sapphire eyes positively alight with sparkling… well, joy. "Our resident physician has said it's nothing short of a miracle."

It's no exaggeration to say that Lance falls over at this news. Clair seems to have expected it, though, and she's got one arm around his waist to hold him steady as he doubles over in relief. "How?" he manages.

"Well, it helped tremendously that your pokemon were already exceptionally healthy," the nurse continues, flipping through a clipboard and some papers. "With healing abilities far above most others. But those medicines miss Cora brought facilitated the healing to new heights." She leans closer, towards Cora. "Would you be willing to sell the formula?"

"I'd tell you to call my uncle," Cora smirks, "but he'd just tell you no. So I'll do it for you: no."

A pair of double doors to their right hiss open; gyarados emerges first, awkwardly huge for the human-sized door, and then dragonite a moment later. Clair instantly clambers for gyarados, who nuzzles her enthusiastically, despite her entire body being the size of its fanged mouth.

Dragonite is walking a little stiffly, Lance can tell. Definitely still sore. He blinks away tears as he rests one hand on his partner's scaly shoulder, locking eyes with it sincerely. "I will never let that happen to you again. I'm so sorry."

The dragon makes a low, whooping sound, then returns Lance's gesture, putting its heavy three-clawed paw on Lance's own shoulder. The pokemon smiles at him then, its amber eyes glinting with that familiar, determined spark.

Lance then recalls them both, breathing a long sigh as he peers down at their pokeballs before attaching them to his belt once more.

He then immediately turns to Cora, and with zero hesitation slings his arms around her in a hug, lifting her several feet in the air, her heels swinging, a grin breaking out on her face as she laughs into the collar of his cape.

"Ewwww," Clair whines, shrinking back as if they have a plague, face contorted, tongue out. "What are you doing, Lance? Put her down, you weirdo!"

At twelve, Lance would've said the same thing. Clair probably hadn't ever hugged anyone before, either.

"Thank you," he tells Cora, once she's back on solid ground. Elation is making his whole body buzz. "I'm not sure I can possibly repay you, but I can try."

"Don't mention it," Cora shrugs, hands in her pockets, beaming brightly. "Now let's go see Duncle. We've gotta ask him about that pokemon you battled in Viridian."

—

---

Draco knows he's small. Most pokemon of his species are around eighteen pounds – he's only fourteen, and that's only after a big meal. He hasn't been in a lot of battles, but enough to understand that most of the time, he's at a disadvantage. He can't seem to move as fast as most other pokemon, and he gets out of breath easily, thanks to the damage to his lungs from that night a few years ago, the cold one he doesn't like to remember.

He's been around some other charmander since then. Every now and then one of the Gym's challengers will have one – and every time, Draco is always the outsider.

So when he gets to meet a dragonite, whose very existence represents everything about what Draco yearns to be: he's in awe.

Both of their trainers are inside, leaving Draco and the dragonite out by the garden to enjoy the evening sun. The latter is inspecting the massive array of fruit-bearing tropical plants around Blaine's house – "Have as much as you'd like, won't find better fruit in Kanto!" Blaine had said. Draco has seen the dragonite before, but never had a chance to talk to it. He has so many questions – what's it like to fly? Can it breathe fire, too?

That's a nanab berry, Draco tells the other pokemon, who has just plucked one from from a tall, bushy tree with a thin trunk. They're one of my favorites!

The dragonite holds it in front of its face – or, his face – Draco can tell it's a male, by the scent. He seems friendly enough, although a bit serious. His trainer is kind of the same way, though, so that makes sense to Draco.

What does it taste like? the dragonite asks.

Very sweet! But the ends get a little bitter.

That seems good enough for the dragon, because he's peeling the berry with his sharp claws now. Such a mundane act, but one that captivates the charmander, who can't keep himself from asking, what's it like to be so strong?

Dragonite's wings flutter a little in approval, one side of its large face poofing out as it chews a massive bite of berry. What makes you think I'm strong? I just lost a very important battle for Lance. It frowns as it takes another bite.

Yeah, but you must've won a lot of battles before that, right? Draco's ruby eyes widen. And you beat Uncle Blaine's magmar. You didn't even try hard. What makes you so strong?

The dragon quirks an eye-ridge now, the twin antennae on its head swaying. Why are you so eager to gain power, little one?

Draco pauses at this, digging into the grass with one of his toes. Ever since the accident, I've felt useless. I want to make Cora proud of me, like Lance is proud of you.

There's a rumbling, whooping sound from deep in the dragonite's belly - a small laugh. He smiles as he sits on the ground with a loud thump, just in front of Draco. I heard her tell your story last night. I hadn't fallen asleep in my pokeball yet.

This mortifies Draco, who cringes, his tiny hands wringing together. Then you also heard me cry, too. Ugh.

I've never beaten death, the dragonite states evenly. He taps on the charmander's head with the tip of one claw. At least, not like you have. That's one opponent I've never faced, yet you've faced it and won. I'd say that makes you much stronger than me.

Draco's crimson eyes fly open wide, in pure wonderment. His jaw drops a little; the flame on his tail brightens.

And any pokemon that thinks otherwise, or judges you unjustly? Those aren't your friends, the dragonite tells him. He's looking at the smaller pokemon gently, with a quiet, encouraging smile. You're powerful, little Draco. Otherwise you wouldn't bear the name of our god in the stars.

There's a thousand things Draco wants to say right now, but the only one he can manage successfully is to ask:

'Our'?

Dragonite raises its gaze to the sky. Of course. You're just as much of a dragon as I am. He smiles wider, standing up to pluck another berry. One day, I hope you will visit my home. Then, I think you will understand. He leans down and hands Draco a berry, too. We are all connected.

Draco has eaten hundreds of nanab berries. This is the best one, though. By far.

—

---

Blaine knows someone is calling his name, but he can't hear it. Not really. Not right now.

He's pacing around the far side of the living room, past statues of arcanine and ninetales. Hands behind his back, head hung low. A sick, haunted feeling chews at his stomach. The already-deep lines surrounding his mouth are like trenches now as he frowns.

A purple tail. Three fingers. Impossibly strong psychic powers.

There's no way it wasn't Mewtwo.

"Duncle," Cora is saying gently, sitting beside Lance on the nearby sofa. Her eyes are wide with concern. "I know it's loud in your head right now. But can you please tell us what's got you so upset?"

Blaine stops pacing, though it's a monumental effort to do so. He straightens his back and sighs, turning to face the two of them. He keeps his gaze trained on his scuffed brown boots.

"I helped create him," he says quietly.

Lance's iron eyes thin. "Create?"

"That pokemon would not exist if not for the genetic experiments that myself and my colleagues participated in over fifteen years ago."

"You…" Cora shifts in her seat. "You were a scientist? Why didn't you or Mom ever mention this?"

"Because it's not something I'm proud of," Blaine admits in a pained rush. "I was young, brash, overconfident. I allowed myself to get caught up in something I shouldn't have. Mewtwo was the result."

"Mewtwo?" Lance asks. "That's the pokemon's name?"

Acutely exhausted, Blaine now sags into the antique armchair across from them. "Please don't place blame on him. He only knows rage and pain because humanity showed it to him first."

"He nearly killed two of my pokemon!" Lance shouts, bristling. "We have to do something! Someone else is going to become a victim of his power before long, if they haven't already."

"Why does the Viridian Gym leader have Mewtwo?" Cora asks, quickly placing a comforting hand on Lance's shoulder.

"His name is Giovanni," Lance adds darkly. "He wore what looked like an expensive suit. The way he spoke made my skin crawl. He talked only about power."

Blaine pales, his glasses nearly tumbling from his face. There was only one Giovanni that Blaine knew of – reclusive, well-connected… and the leader of a new crime syndicate that had begun to make its presence known all thorough Kanto.

"This is worse than I thought," Blaine mutters. He gets up and heads for the telephone on the wall. "We're going to need backup."

Cora and Lance exchange a confused glance. "Backup?"

"Forgive me, both of you," Blaine is saying, shakily dialing a number, "but the world you know is about to get much, much more complicated."

—

---

It takes less than one hour from the time of Blaine's phone call for the Viridian City Gym to become completely surrounded.

Two dozen men in tactical, navy blue bodysuits, carrying sleek and clearly expensive tranquilizer guns. Armored vans with blacked-out windows and fortified steel cages in back. A pack of attentive, sharp-eyed arcanine, and a trio of hulking blastoise, gaping water cannons at the ready.

Blaine hadn't wanted Lance, Clair, or Cora here at all. This is not business for children, he'd said, putting on a too-big dusty combat jacket from some hidden corner of his closet. Cora's face at the sight of him wearing it had been priceless, Lance will admit – "where on earth did you get that Duncle, who even are you right now, what is even happening" – but Lance quite honestly hadn't given the older man a choice in the matter.

Neither had his dragonite.

Lance considered himself a decently intimidating figure for a teenager, but an eight foot tall dragon convinced people much faster than he himself ever could.

"Where did they all come from?" Clair is asking him in a hushed whisper. She, Lance and Cora have at least been coerced into staying a respectable distance from the Gym itself, crouching behind one wall of the nearby Pokemon Center. "And who are they? I've never seen anything like this in Johto. Kanto is weird."

"Duncle called them the 'G-Men'," Cora says. Blaine himself is among the crowd, conversing with a smaller team of men, likely the officers in charge.

"When I was a kid, I think I remember him telling Mom stories of how he used to be a G-Man. But I always thought he was exaggerating, or just plain making it up," Cora finishes. She smiles sheepishly. "He does that a lot, you know."

"Well, he wasn't this time," Lance says, surveying the crowd vigilantly. It's an impressive sight, made even moreso by the ease and coordination of their gathering. They didn't appear equipped for full-scale offense, but were rather a force focused singularly on protection and preservation. Lance feels drawn to that by an almost magnetic pull.

A sound of rushing footsteps approaches behind them, followed by frantic breaths; they turn just as Silver, the perfectly pleasant redheaded kid from before, skids to a halt in front of Lance, and demands: "What in the hell is going on?"

Cora pokes Clair in the shoulder, asking quietly: "Hey, who's this guy?"

Clair sighs and rolls her eyes. "Some loser who tried to keep us out of the Gym before. Just ignore him."

Silver's voice is unsteady, eyes wide and panicked. "Who are these people? Why are they surrounding my home?" Here, he stomps straight up to Lance, nose-to-nose, chest-to-chest, hissing through gritted teeth: "This is all your fault, isn't it? You couldn't just lose and go away like the rest of them?"

Lance doesn't flinch. "If you were aware of what's happening here, and did nothing about it, you are just as guilty as Giovanni."

"Don't–" Silver pauses, his hands curling into shivering fists, shoulders tensing. "Don't say his name!"

In front of the Gym's grand entrance, a great crash sounds – apparently unsuccessful in opening the doors via traditional methods, they are now being demolished into splinters by that trio of blastoise, one of the pokemon bashing first with its thick skull, the other two firing pressurized water jets at the weakened remains.

"Stop it!" Silver shouts, instantly darting forward, into the fray. "That's my home! Stop it!"

Lance thinks about sending dragonite after him, but Silver is immediately blocked by a pair of snarling arcanine, and just as quickly apprehended by a pair of G-Men, their faces hidden behind helmets and reflective visors. Struggling and kicking the entire time, he is hauled into one of those vans; he's still shouting and cursing even as they close the door on him. Repetitive bangs can be heard after as he tried futilely to free himself.

"Yikes," Clair says with a cringe. "I almost feel bad for him. Almost."

"He said this is his home," Cora mutters, concern darkening her emerald eyes. She peers up at Lance. "Are we doing the right thing? I didn't know we'd be taking someone's home away from them."

He hesitates, but only for a moment. "He can live somewhere else. That pokemon has to be stopped, for everyone's safety."

The doors are down now, reduced to chunks of rubble and wood. A dozen of those armored men advance inside, flanked by several arcanine, in blurs of orange, white and black.

Once the squad rounds the corner, into the battle arena, they're out of sight. Lance can hear some form of radio communication between them, but this far away it's garbled and unintelligible. He's holding his breath; he meets the gaze of his cousin and Cora, and they're in similar states of hesitant worry.

Surely, this army of trained soldiers is enough. The G-Men, as they're called, have likely trained for infiltration operations just like this – in and out, one and done, no worries.

The discord starts slow; a burst of noise from one of the radios. Excessive, prolonged static, and one of the G-Men commanders speaking in a steadily-louder voice at the continued lack of response. The remaining arcanine are whining, shifting from paw to paw, great white manes bristling.

Then – smoke, the sound of yelling cut sickeningly short, and a deafening crash as a massive hole explodes in the Gym's outer wall. At least half of the men who rounded that corner are now flung out into the courtyard, followed moments later by two arcanine and a blastoise, like toys carelessly tossed aside by a bored child.

"Oh, my god," Cora breathes. And she watches in disbelieving horror as Blaine, alone, surrounded by downed men writhing in pain, walks into the crumbling hole, disappearing slowly into the smoke.

She calls his name and starts to sprint after him – Lance immediately grabs her wrist: "What are you doing? It'll kill you!" But she jerks away, her legs eating up the ground as she shouts back, tearfully, "He's all I have left! I can't let him do this alone!"

Part of him hates himself for it, but Lance absolutely can't argue with that. He puts one hand on Clair's shoulder and squeezes: "Stay. Here." This is one of those times she knows better. She nods, and watches him leave, one hand in a fist over her heart.

—

---

Blaine hasn't ever been a man of intimidating stature – he's average height, at best. Most of the time this is a fact he happily ignores. But not now.

Not in the face of his past made flesh, standing impossibly tall, watching him silently from behind a dark, armored helmet.

That part was new. Blaine remembered Mewtwo's white skin, the violet hue of its tail, the intimidating twin horns jutting back from behind its eyes. Whatever this was, whatever Giovanni had outfitted it with, had to be making all of this worse.

"I know you," comes a voice from a balcony, at the far end of the room. Short brown hair, dusky eyes, and a smile like a gengar. "You're that Gym Leader from the Island. When we last met, however, you wore a white lab coat." Giovanni raises a hand to his face, stroking his chin with thumb and forefinger. "And as I recall, you worked for me. Remind me: what happened, Blaine?"

"I deserted you," Blaine says simply, squaring his shoulders. "Your lies wore too thin; I saw through them. You cared nothing for science or pokemon."

"Betrayed me, you mean," Giovanni corrects, his ghoulish smile slamming into a scowl. "You have a lot of nerve showing your face in front of me again. I'm not a man known for his kindness."

"I'm not here for you," Blaine declares. Giovanni, from this moment on, doesn't exist to him. Blaine slowly takes off his military jacket, folding it neatly and setting it on the floor. He's left in a plain, collared shirt and his usual boring slacks. He holds his arms out to his sides, elbows bent, palms out - the universal gesture of I mean you no harm.

"Mewtwo," he says softly. "You're being controlled. These things you're doing aren't you."

Giovanni's chuckle echoes through the cavernous room. "You're a fool. Mewtwo only obeys me now. We've made sure of that."

Blaine swallows hard and takes a step forward, towards that pair of glowing eyes in the shadows. He removes his glasses, easing them into one pocket. "What we humans have done to you is very, very wrong. But what this man has done is the even worse. He tricked you. He is not your friend, Mewtwo."

There's the slightest shift of an arm, a twitch of a shoulder – Blaine is now floating in midair, head craned back, an invisible force beginning to tighten around his throat.

Friend? A voice in his head says. It's soft at first, laden with sadness, but word by word turns into something seething. Am I to believe you are my friend?

"N-no," Blaine manages. "None of us are worthy of that title."

"Uncle!"

Blaine can't turn his head but he knows that's Cora's shrill, horrified voice. Breathing out slow, his eyes close. This wasn't how he pictured his death. She deserved so much better; she always had.

"Let him go," she sobs – she's standing in front of him, arms stretched wide. Just off to her side is Lance, his dragonite with him, as if their presence here could go any differently than it had last time.

"Please, Mewtwo – I know he might've hurt you, but he's my only family!" She steps forward, gingerly. Odd – the ever-present golden feather in her hair is blazing brightly, even though her pokemon are nowhere to be seen. "Just let him go, please."

I learned that word many years ago. 'Please,' Mewtwo says, in radiating, telepathic speech. Slowly, his head shakes from side to side. It never mattered when I used it. It is just as useless now.

Blaine chokes. He tries to grab at his neck but he can't move his arms, not that it would help. His feet twitch; Cora is screaming, sinking to her knees, and Giovanni is laughing at Lance as he and his dragon make a futile attempt to lower Blaine to the ground–

Everything goes white.

Silence blankets the air. The only sound, and the only color, come from the small flame on Cora's feather.

It erupts, behemoth vaults of twin flames slashing into the air in time with a transcendent, sublime shriek. A slender neck, a head maned with the purest fire, a long, pointed beak held open wide.

Moltres soars forward, wings spread wide. The heat it radiates is like that of a newborn star; as it crashes into Mewtwo, the shiny armor encasing its head and arms simply disintegrates. That crude metal cage surrounding it ceases to exist, melting instantly, and for one tiny, suspended moment, Mewtwo's true eyes, unobstructed by that clouded helmet, meet those of the ancient Legendary.

It's in this same moment that an understanding is established, a wordless and unbreakable pact:

They are protected.

The flames come full-circle, breaking through the far wall and then smashing through the ceiling back inside. Rubble rains down in chunks. Cora is still on her knees when the fire returns into its origin, disappearing once again into that singular golden feather. Only a frail, soft streak of smoke remains to ever speak of its existence.

Blaine sucks in a loud gasp. He's thankful for that Dragon Master and his pokemon because he's now in the arms of the dragonite, slowly but surely recovering his breath.

As it sets him on his feet, he sees Cora stand up. Piles of plaster and metal surround her on all sides; her black top is coated in dust, floating in the sunlight from the roof's yawning hole. Blaine blinks several times, half-convinced he's hallucinating – the feather remains in her hair, but the strands are not strawberry-blonde like her mother's anymore. The roots are now deep crimson, fading gradually into a bright blonde at their tips, like flames.

Like Moltres.

Cora's mouth is half open in disbelief when their eyes meet; dragonite sets him on his feet just in time for him to receive a crushing hug. He feels her hands grip the back of his shirt as she breaks, sobbing into his chest. Blaine gently eases one hand onto her head. His fingers tingle with warmth, just like they had the first time he'd been gifted Moltres' feather.

"I'm alright," he tells her softly. "It's okay, Cora. I'm here."

"Blaine," Lance is saying warily. He gestures his head forward, at the remains of Mewtwo's cage.

The pokemon stands there now, unrestrained. Its lavender eyes are locked onto them, tail swaying behind it in slow, sweeping arcs. It steps into the sunlight, creating a long, lone shadow on the empty battle arena.

You need not fear me, it tells the three of them. I will honor the ancient firebird's wishes.

Mewtwo rises into the air now, craning its sharp jaw to the blue sky above.

"What-" Blaine's voice is like sandpaper. He coughs. "What will you do now?"

I wish only for peace.

A gleaming bubble of cerulean light envelops its body. It gives Blaine one last glance, emotionless, thoughtful, before vanishing entirely.

Lance approaches the balcony above the cage's remains. In the chaos moments ago, Giovanni had apparently made a swift exit.

"If we hurry, the G-Men can catch up to him, can't they?"

"There's no need, son," Blaine sighs. "He's long gone, probably halfway to Johto by now. Man's like a bad penny – he turns up everywhere eventually." He looks at his niece now, who is wiping tears from face with the heel of one hand, and despite everything, he can't help but smile. "Naughter, I'm afraid your head is on fire."

"What–" Her hands pat at her hair frantically; she takes a few locks of hair in between her fingers and brings them before her eyes. "Whoa, what happened?And what was with all that fire and light?"

"Moltres saved our skins, that's what," Blaine says. He starts putting on his old G-Man jacket again. "Twice now, for me, matter of fact. Although I didn't get the cool dye job like you did."

Cora laughs, still inspecting those locks. "You didn't have hair back then, Duncle. Maybe you would have."

"Fair enough." Blaine glances at the ceiling when another piece of plaster starts to shift and crumble. "Let's make a hasty exit, eh? It'd be a shame to survive all that only to get squashed."

—

---

Outside, Clair huddles behind one of the large trashcans in the Gym's courtyard. Her cousin, Blaine, and Cora have all made it back outside, to her immense relief. One thing she can't forget, though, is that incessant banging from the back of one of those armored vans. And the cursing. So much cursing.

The remaining conscious G-Men are preoccupied with helping their injured comrades, and debriefing the team leaders on whatever had happened inside. No one is looking her way. Perfect.

To maintain her usual updo hairstyle requires several bobby pins; naturally, Clair has gotten pretty good at sneaking out of (or into) locked places over the years. Who knew this skill would come in handy as a rescue tool? She's giving her heroic cousin a run for his money right now.

She taps her knuckles lightly on the metal. Clair starts to speak but Silver beats her to it: "You let me out of here right now you bootlicking rat bastards, what gives you the right to–"

"Will you shut up for a second?" Clair hisses. "God, I'm trying to get you out of here. You could at least act grateful."

There's a long pause. Then: "Blue-haired mean girl?"

"My name is Clair," she corrects haughtily. Click. A grin blooms on her face, lock undone, and she opens the door. Silver stares at her in bafflement, wincing at the sudden sunlight.

"You're supposed to thank me," Clair tells him, sticking the bobby pin back in her hair. "Hurry, and stay low. No one's looking this way but not for long."

They successfully make it back to the nearby Pokemon Center. Silver pauses, turning to gaze back at what remains of the Gym. His face falls, one shoulder sagging against the Center's outer wall. "What am I… what should I do now?"

"You lived there?" Clair asks, half in genuine curiosity, half in degradation.

"Of course I did," he bites back. "It's where father–" He stops himself, looking suddenly sick. "Nevermind. I gotta get out of here."

He starts walking away, fists clenched at his sides. But for a second he stops, then turns back and meets Clair's eyes.

"Thanks, I guess," he mumbles.

"You owe me, Silver," Clair tells him cheerfully. "I won't forget it!"

At that, he turns around and approaches her again, clearly even more annoyed than before, if that were possible. He fishes around in one of the pockets of his blue pants, then pulls out a small, metal object, shaped like a tree branch.

"Here. The Earthbadge," he says, handing it to her. "Give this to that guy with the stupid cape. Now I don't owe you anything and you can leave me alone."

Clair takes it, admittedly a bit awed, since this is the one singular, penultimate thing she and Lance had come to this region for in the first place.

Silver is already gone before she can actually thank him sincerely, even though she probably wouldn't have done that anyway.

—

---

The return to the Katsura residence had been largely silent. Clair had at least given Lance his Earthbadge, although he'd gone on a passionate rant about how he didn't truly deserve it, hadn't won it legally, et cetera – in this particular case, though, Clair's logic won. The leader cheated and deserted them – and Lance now begrudgingly had earned his final piece of the puzzle on the climb to the Elite Four.

The remainder of his ride home was spent in quiet, deep contemplation. Clair took a nap.

Several hours had passed since they'd left Viridian; Cora had probably said three words. Mostly grunts or nods. Her entire body ached – not unpleasantly, entirely, but with a deep sense of heaviness. And there was still a subtle, warm tingling to the back of her neck that hadn't gone away.

She headed straight for the beach, pausing only to drop her bag at the front door. Something about the sound of the waves just seemed soothing right now. She kept running her hands through her hair – Cora rarely wore it down like it was now, opting for comfort and ease over fashion – and even the small glimpses of those new, inexplicably bright colors made her stomach clench.

In the span of less than twenty-four hours, she'd discovered not only that her uncle had a secret past life as both a heroic G-Man and a scientist of questionable morals – but that the feather she'd worn in her hair since birth was, actually, a vessel to summon the legendary fire incarnate itself, Moltres.

Blaine had neglected to mention that bit of information, too.

You'd think if one wanted to gift one's niece an object of potentially immeasurable power, one would include that fact as a disclaimer first. Then again, Blaine rarely operated by typical societal standards.

Cora sighed as she tossed off her shoes, sitting in the sand just close enough to allow the water to tickle her toes. An uncertain amount of time passed where she simply stared at the ocean. It felt good to let her mind go blank.

"Tea?" a voice asks.

Cora jerks her head up, blinking rapidly. Standing beside her is Lance, an awkward smile on his face, and two cups of steaming tea in his hands.

"Your uncle said you like, uh, chamomile. With mint," he adds, as if he'd forgotten a deadly serious bit of information. "He also said you probably want some time away from him to digest what happened today, and I would be less of a nuisance to you right now."

Unstoppably, Cora laughs. It starts slow, then gathers into a full-throated cackle that leaves tears in the corners of her eyes. Meanwhile Lance continues to stand there just holding the mugs, frowning.

"I'm sorry," she manages, waving at him dismissively. "It's not you, at all. It's just completely ridiculous how well he knows me. And I mean, this whole day is ridiculous." She locks eyes with him and points to her head. "Have you seen this? I look like I've dunked my head in a volcano, for god's sake."

Handing her a mug, Lance sits beside her. He shrugs. "I don't know. I think it looks kind of cool." He might be blushing a little, but it's hard to tell in the dim evening light. "Plus, it came from a legendary pokemon. Where I'm from, those kinds of encounters are considered blessings."

Cora sips her tea. Its warmth down her throat is soothing and welcome. "Blessings, huh?"

"I actually had one, once," Lance continues, staring out to sea. "When I was three. I barely remember it, but it's all the clan elders could talk about for years. They kept saying it meant I was chosen." He smiles sardonically. "Chosen for what, I still have no idea."

Cora keeps her eyes trained on the side of his face. The way his wavy red hair sways in the ocean breeze is nice to look at. "What Pokemon was it?" she asks quietly.

"No one was really sure, but the Elder believed it was Rayquaza. In our belief, he is our Dragon God in the flesh, the protector of the sky and stars. He's not from Johto, but he has a tower dedicated to him in the far west."

"Rayquaza," she repeats. The name is foreign on her tongue. "You really saw him?"

"I poked him in the eye with a stick."

Cora snorts, nearly inhaling hot tea up her nose. "That was dumb."

"I was three," he counters, unsuccessfully fighting off a smile. "In general, three year-olds are pretty dumb."

A bit of silence reigns, momentarily. Cora's thoughts are flying around in her head like a swarm of zubat. "Is that why you want to lead the Elite Four? Because your family says you're chosen?"

His whole body tenses at that question. An invisible shadow slowly looms over his frame, swallowing him whole.

"I don't know," Lance admits. "I enjoy battling, truly. It's an incredible rush. I take pride in my victories and my success. But sometimes I wonder how much of that is me, and how much is my clan."

Cora nods. "I think… you can do whatever you want, Lance." She smiles now, bright and genuine. "And no matter what you decide, I'll support you."

Alright, he's definitely blushing now, and he looks kind of stunned in a very uncharacteristic way for someone who presents themselves as a serious warrior 24/7.

"T-thank you," he manages, taking a long, and probably intentional sip of his tea. "Clair and I are leaving for the Indigo Plateau tomorrow afternoon."

It's a statement, but it's also a question. What will you do? This feels like an ending, of sorts. Cora doesn't entirely like it, and she thinks Lance doesn't, either.

"I don't think they even allow spectators, do they?" Cora asks.

Lance shakes his head. "Once I enter the Plateau, it's closed doors. League reps and my opponents only, from start to finish. No breaks or outside contact until I either win it all, or lose."

"That's intense," Cora breathes.

"Yeah," he agrees.

"Well," she turns back towards the Katsura house, with its bright, cheery plants. "You know where I'll be."

He nods again. There's a war of emotions on his face, but she doesn't pry. The sky glows with ribbons of vivid light, streaking between distant clouds.

Her shoulder brushes against his, on honest accident at first – but when he doesn't lean away, neither does she.

---

Lyrics: "In the Name of Love" by Martin Garrix and Bebe Rexha

 

[Sastrei]

Prelude: Lance​

---

Blackthorn City, 1994

---

Blackthorn Clan tradition dictates a trainer doesn't make their pokemon do anything they, themselves, are unwilling to do.

Within reason, obviously. It's not like a human could shoot a freezing beam of ice from their mouth, or fly, or attack an opponent with flesh-rending claws.

But a human can train, too, in their own way.

"Again," Lance's father tells him.

It's his eleventh birthday today. To the rest of the world, birthdays meant days of spoiling, of fun, of presents. Not so in Blackthorn, where Lance is currently on his knees in the mud, splatters of it dotting his face and crimson hair.

On the opposite side of the training grounds – a well-worn, mostly barren field to the west of the Dragon's Den – is his dragonair. Its large, obsidian eyes shine in the warm morning sun. It hovers effortlessly in the air, watching him with an unreadable expression.

"Your dragonair wouldn't give up this easily," his father continues. He's not a large man, but the edges of his frame are tough and sharp, just like his words. His eyes share many similarities to Lance's own – that same iron-grey, but darker, less forgiving, more intense. A thin, dark goatee frames his carved jaw – Lance got his red hair from his mother, much to his father's chagrin.

"Back on your feet," his father commands. "Try again."

Lance gulps down some air and does as he's told. There's a wooden pole beside him, about 30cm wide, and nearly three times his height. Between his hands he holds a sash of tough fabric; he swings it around the far side of the pole, pulls tight, and leans back, settling his weight into the grip of his fists and the tension of the sash.

Then he climbs. Barefoot, of course – pokemon couldn't wear shoes, so neither could he.

Making it to the top is the easy part. Lance has done this hundreds of times. Staying there, however, is another matter. He summits the pole in a few moments, breathing deep but evenly, and carefully wipes a mix of sweat and mud from his brow. He tries his left foot this time, balancing in the center of the pole with arms stretched out for steadiness.

There's a dense forest of trees in the distance; he picks the tallest one, and focuses on it with every drop of concentration his mind can muster.

"Dragonair are graceful," Father tells him from down below. "They are renowned throughout Kanto and Johto for their ability to sleekly dodge any attack with ease."

Taking its cue, Lance's own pokemon slides through the air in a graceful spiral, until it's level with him.

"You must do the same, son. Give the order."

Dragonair was bonded to Lance alone; not even his father could command it. Lance swallows hard. "Dragonair, use Swift."

The crystalline, round gem at the base of the dragon's throat begins to glow; all around its frame, sparks flicker in the air only to form tiny, blazing stars.

Lance holds his breath as those stars cut through the air straight at him. He's balancing on one foot; leaning too far to one side is not an option, but he can bend and sway, and if he concentrates hard enough: even jump without falling off. The attack isn't full force, but each impact on the thick material of his longsleeved training suit stings just enough that genuine fear of pain is solid motivation.

He's never missed all of them, not yet. Father says that's when his training will be complete. This time, he misses about half; he's wincing when it's over, struggling to maintain balance, a few new thin scratches across one cheek and a dozen new welts forming on his chest and abdomen.

"You're hesitating," Father scolds from down below. "I can see the fear in your movements."

"I'm sorry, Father," he manages, leg aching, arms tiring from being raised for so long. "It… it hurts."

"Your pokemon hurt when they battle for you. You must hurt for them to earn their respect. Again."

There's fresh, annoying tears building behind Lance's eyes, but he forces them back. The tree, in the distance. He stares at the tree and breathes. "Dragonair, use Swift."

The pokemon hesitates this time, tilting its slender head - are you sure? - but ultimately it obeys. Bursts of pain splatter all over Lance's body. His hands curl into fists; he tries to bend his knee to dodge low, but it's getting so hard to stand up straight again. The ground below looms, ready to smother him with mud and failure.

"Stiff," Father scoffs. "Slow. You look like a foundling. Where is the Survivor, Lance? Where is the boy the Dragon God chose?"

One of those tears behind Lance's eyes escapes. He grits his teeth and shakes his head. "I want to be worthy! Dragonair, Swift!"

The attack comes once more. Lance doesn't move at all this time. In fact he puts his other foot down, in the tiny amount of spare room on the pole, and braces for the pain.

And, oh, does it come.

Concentration vanishes. His feet slip, knees collapsing; he's flying through the air, crimson hair tossing in the wind, and for a brief, beautiful moment there's peace as he stares up into the endless, blue beyond.

Lance has been taught how to fall, how to land to not break his bones or tear his ligaments.

It most definitely didn't involve landing flat on one's back, as he's about to do.

There's no impact, though. At least, not in the way he expects. Dragonair coils around him in midair, like a gentle but scaly hug. Together, they float to the ground in a peaceful, serene descent.

For once, Lance's father looks shocked. They've done this drill dozens of times, but it's never ended this way before.

There's a tense silence. Lance is barely conscious from the pain, his head resting just beneath the gem on Dragonair's neck. It's comfortable, and he closes his eyes in contentment.

The last thing he hears before he passes out are his father's boots in the mud, slogging away.

"You coddle him, dragonair," the older man says thinly. "Just like his mother."

 

[Sastrei]

Everybody falls down, all the way down

You just gotta hold on tight​

---

Character ages for quick reference:

Blaine, 57 / Prof Oak, 58 / Lance, 16 / Cora, 13 / Ash, 8 / Draco, 4

---

Pallet Town, Kanto

Spring 1997

---

"Tofu's done!"

No matter the reason for the visit to his home, or the time of day, or what else he had going on – Professor Samuel Oak always made tofu for his guests. While he enjoyed new and upcoming technology like the pokedex and different types of pokeballs, he still kept a small, well-worn, handwritten book in his expansive kitchen listing each guest's tofu flavor preference, scrawled in his signature blocky lettering.

Blaine: half soy sauce, half sweet chili, topped with scallions.

Cora: a touch of soy, but fried, with crunchy edges.
Draco: smothered in eel sauce. (Most charmander, Oak found, didn't care for tofu – apparently Draco took after his trainer, though.)

Beaming, the grey-haired man in his proud white lab coat set all respective bowls down in front of his three guests before taking his place in his well-worn armchair.

"It smells amazing, as usual," Cora tells him, excitedly picking up her chopsticks. At a smaller table beside her – Oak had it made specifically for his frequent pokemon guests - Draco is already face-first into his own bowl.

"I thank you for the meal, old friend," Blaine says. Oak can tell he is trying to be cheerful, but something's off. After all, he's known the man for going on thirty years - a friendship like that teaches you something.

"You're not here just for my cooking, are you, Blaine?" he asks, leaning back in his chair.

Blaine sighs. "I have grave news. Mewtwo is back."

All traces of joviality vanish from the professor's face. "Where? When?"

"Viridian City," Cora says, much to Oak's surprise – he figured Blaine would've kept her far away from this.

As she retells the tale, Blaine reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. When she finishes, the air is heavy. Draco burps, which helps lighten the mood a little. The charmander smiles sheepishly afterwards, dabbing his face with his pokemon-sized napkin.

"So that feather summoned Moltres, did it?" Oak asks. "I remember when your uncle acquired it. Both of us knew it had some sort of special property, but not quite to that extent."

"You're telling me," Cora huffs, settling her chopsticks into her bowl. "I thought I'd died for a minute. Everything was so hot and white. It felt completely unreal."

"This most certainly warrants further research," Oak begins, "but the more dangerous matter here seems to be locating Mewtwo. Are there any hints of its whereabouts?"

Blaine is shaking his head slowly as he quotes: "'I wish only for peace.' That's the last thing it said before vanishing."

"Let's hope so," Oak sighs. "I suppose you've come here seeking advice on how to handle this?"

"If there is a way to handle it," Blaine retorts. "The G-Men are assuming Team Rocket and Giovanni will try to find it again. I'd say that's a safe assumption. I feel they are handling Kanto operations well."

"I'd agree. I'll send word to my contacts in Johto to keep an eye out. Until then -" He pauses to stand up, patting his belly and grinning. "We'd better leave the action to the young men, eh, Blaine? Now, before it gets too late – come see Professor Oak, little Draco. Let me take a look at you."

The charmander does as its told, smiling brightly, tail wagging and flaring up. With a slight groan, Oak settles onto his knees in front of the pokemon, grabbing a few tools from a nearby desk, including a stethoscope.

"Let's warm it up first," he tells Draco with a wink, momentarily gliding the cool, metallic end of the device through Draco's tail flame before placing it in the center of the charmander's chest.

A few seconds go by silently; Oak's other hand is pressing here and there on Draco's back and belly. His normally jovial expression hardens now, just a little, in the way it does for one who deeply cares about their actions. Draco stands perfectly still. He's used to these inspections; ever since the boat accident nearly four years ago now, Oak has worked diligently to assure the charmander would make a full recovery from his near-drowning.

The last step is to shine a light in Draco's eyes – Oak remembers when the injury first occurred, and how clouded, scarred, and swollen they'd been. Fire pokemon were already susceptible to the effects of salty, cold water – with the amount that Draco's eyes had been forced to endure while he swam for safety, the charmander is lucky he didn't go blind. Those leftover blood-red irises were now clear as glass, though, showing no signs of scarring. Draco blinks, his eyes glinting under the tool's clear, focused light.

"You've been following my instructions excellently, both of you," he tells them, putting away the pen. "I don't hear a single trace of wheezing, a single murmur of that fiery heart. And all the corneal scarring appears to have healed." He stands now, passing a hand over Draco's head. "I'd say you're both ready to start your journey now, if you wish."

Draco runs back to Cora excitedly, giving her a toothy smile and a questioning char?

"Very soon," Cora tells him. "Just a few more things to do first, little dragon."

A clock on the wall bursts to life – it's shaped like a birdhouse, with a wooden figure of a pidgey popping in and out of a small hole in time with the time's count. Noon. Which meant–

"The kids will be arriving shortly," Oak tells them, collecting his guests' empty bowls. "It's the start of summer camp today, you know. Two dozen attendees this time, from four different regions!"

"You're getting famous, Oak," Blaine chides, smirking. "Try not to corrupt any innocent minds."

"Where's the fun in that?"

As if on cue, the sound of a car pulling up out front, doors opening and closing, can be heard through the front door. There's several rushed, pounding footsteps, first up the stone path and then onto the wooden front porch – then a boy bursts inside, panting, his skin dark with the beginnings of a sunburn and fresh freckles on his cheeks. His black hair is a windswept mess but that doesn't dim the gigantic grin spread across his face.

"Summer camp time, aw yeah! Look, Professor Oak – I'm not late for once!" the boy says proudly.

"I think that's the first time in your eight young years, Ash Ketchum," Oak smirks. He is then promptly forgotten about because there's a pokemon in the room and that fact will always garner Ash's attention faster than any human ever could.

"Whoa, a charmander!" Ash bends forward, hands on his knees to lean closer. "Hi there, my name's Ash! It's nice to meet you." He realizes just now that Cora is standing next to him - one track mind, always. "Is this your charmander? It's so cool! And look, its tail even matches your hair, how awesome!"

"Hello, Ash," Cora says, obviously a little overwhelmed at his enthusiasm, but trying her best to go with it. "That's Draco. He'll shake your hand, if you want. He's a lot more grown-up than he looks."

The boy's brown eyes widen with glistening awe. Tentatively, he turns and holds out a hand towards Draco, who utters a chirping greeting before using his tiny fingers to grasp Ash's extended hand. Ash positively glows – "whoooahhh sooo coooooool" – as he returns the handshake, gently and with care. "I still haven't decided which pokemon I want, but charmander is definitely at the top of the list!"

Cora smiles now, too. "You'll get the perfect one for you, Ash. That's what I think."

"You think so?"

"Of course!" She and Blaine stand now, heading towards the door. Draco shakes Ash's hand one more time before following them. "It was nice meeting you, Ash. Have fun at summer camp!"

"I will!" He waves at them enthusiastically as they leave.

"Excitable little guy, isn't he," Blaine muses, adjusting his glasses from the sunlight. He elbows Cora in the ribs playfully. "Reminds me of someone, eh?"

Cora rolls her eyes. "I was never that loud, was I?"

"Well," Blaine strokes his chin, "not exactly. But you were just as excited to get your first pokemon." He pauses. "Are you going soon, then?"

Steadily, they both stop walking, pausing on the wooden bridge spanning the small stream beside Oak's lab.

"You don't mind?" Cora asks quietly.

"Mind?" Blaine echoes, scoffing. "I want you to have the time of your life. I want you to see and do everything you ever wanted." He pulls her in for a hug. "Everything your mom ever wanted, too."

"You've done so much for me," Cora mutters into his bright, tropical shirt. "I don't want to seem ungrateful by just, like… leaving."

"It's what children do," Blaine says simply. "I've always known this would happen eventually."

They stand there for a few moments, sharing a silent hug. Cora backs away first, surreptitiously wiping her eyes. "I have to do something first though. Or, I guess, wait for something."

"What's that?"

She smiles a little, looking northwest, towards the Indigo Plateau far in the distance. "I have to be there when Lance wins."

---

Kanto Indigo Plateau

Spring 1997

---

The midday sun blazes, unforgiving. No clouds shield the ground from its wrath. There are over three hundred steps to the summit of the Indigo Plateau; grand, stone pillars flank either side of the staircase, featuring intricate stone carvings of legendary and mythical pokemon, claws outstretched, wings flared, mouths open in silent, snarling roars.

Everything about the climb to the top is meant to make a trainer feel small, insignificant.

Lance climbs the stairs alone. There's no wind; the air seems to echo. His iron-eyed gaze is singularly focused on the front doors of the Plateau's entrance. He's breathing hard and steady from the exertion – but compared to his lifetime of training, three hundred steps is child's play.

When he crests the summit, there's a small swishing noise as a pair of electronic security cameras focus on him. He doesn't look at those, either. Forward. Forward, only.

Click. The entrance opens to reveal a grand hall: plush ochre and scarlet carpet. Golden sconces, trickling quiet flames. Obsidian floors that, if not for the reflection of those lights, would seem an endless void.

On the far side of the room is the point of no return. The Pokemon League representatives wait there, behind those heavy metal doors, to check his badges for fraudulence, to pat him down for the presence of cheating items, to intricately inspect his pokemon for false enhancements. It's a thorough stripping-down of Lance's entire existence, only for him to piece it together again and begin a nonstop trio of the most difficult battles of his life.

The weight of this moment sinks into him like a slow poison. He's here. This is it. This is what he's trained for, and failed for, his whole life. There's nausea, and joy, and elation, and confidence. It's everything at once. His mind races, but he's managing to keep it in thready check.

Lance straightens his back, perfectly aligning every bone in his honed body. He breathes in, walks forward–

Then stops. Because one of the side doors is hissing open to reveal, quite literally, his entire family.

The Matron, in her hand-woven, colorful shawl. The Elder, with his leather and dragonbone hat.

His Mother, her thick, burgundy hair hanging in a braid around her slim shoulders.

A dozen more of his clan brothers and sisters, all fixing their stares at him, all at once, in one overwhelming, smothering wave of attention.

"Son." It's his Father's voice now, from behind the rest, the last and the sharpest. "We have come to bear witness to your victory."

Something vital and deep inside of him cracks. Lance can't speak. They're all waiting for him to, which makes it worse.

"You represent Blackthorn, and all of Johto today," the Matron tells him, her wrinkled face in a kind but severe smile. "It's only right we stand with you, as our Clan's future leader."

"We have brought your ancestors' ceremonial totem," the Elder announces, brandishing an ancient wooden box Lance has only ever seen behind panes of glass on a pulpit.

There's no time, Lance keeps thinking. His heart keeps beating, faster and faster. No time, no time to think about this, no time for this pressure or this surprise. He has things to do, and this does not involve placating his family's wishes, or saying the right thing, or doing what they ask of him when he specifically told them not to be here–

"I–" His throat isn't working. Those obsidian floors are yawning, stretching, going to swallow him whole.

"Yes?" His father asks, in that tone always somehow tinged with disappointment.

The reflection of lights in the mirrorlike floor catches Lance's gaze. He looks up at one of those golden sconces, fists trembling.

Hope flickers, amid his raging pulse. Fire. He remembers the fire.

"Excuse me," he manages. And with two dozen pairs of eyes piercing holes in his back, he turns around, and walks down the hall to his right.

He doesn't know what's down here. Hell, he's never been here before in his life. But here is better than there, and he walks zombie-like until he finds an empty room labeled "Representative Offices."

On the desk is a telephone, thank all the gods. His heart won't slow down. Sweat pours down the back of his neck. He shuts the door, and he's shaking so bad he can barely pick up the phone. The number he dials is one he's already memorized, even after a few days. He squeezes his eyes closed, listening to that soft electronic chiming, until:

"Hello, Katsura residence."

Lance opens his mouth. Closes it.

"Uh," Cora says hesitantly, "hello?"

"It's me," he manages. "Hi."

"Oh, Lance?" There's genuine surprise in her voice. "Hi, wow, how the hell are you calling me? Not that I mind, it's just – where are you right now? "

"An office, or something," he says, "in the front lobby of the Indigo Plateau."

"Okay, um." A curious pause. "What's going on? Are you getting ready for your first match soon?"

He sits on the floor, back against the desk. "I– I don't know what's wrong with me. But something's really wrong with me."

Instantly, her voice changes. It's pointed, focused. "What do you mean?"

"Cora, I – I feel crazy –" He can hear his family in the lobby, a cloud of hushed words. "I'm dizzy. It's like I'm paralyzed, I can't – I can barely talk –"

"Hey, it's okay. It's okay." There's some rustling, presumably as she finds privacy. "Just… just tell me what you're feeling, alright? One thing at a time. Start with one emotion."

"Fear," he says quietly.

"That seems really normal given what you're about to do."

"But it's –" He drags one hand through his hair. "It's not the battles, or the challenge, it's – my family is here, all of them. My father, everyone."

"I'm guessing you didn't expect that?"

"No. I wanted to do this on my own." He's scowling now, that fear churning into rage. "I told them that. Specifically. And they showed up anyway. They all said they're here to support me, but…" He sighs unsteadily. "Now I'm pissed off, too. Should I be pissed off? Maybe I'm being a jerk. Maybe I should just be grateful they're here–"

"Don't," Cora cuts in fiercely. "Stop right there. Don't invalidate yourself. They didn't respect your wishes, Lance. What you want matters. You have every right to be upset right now."

She can't see it, but his jaw drops. "I- what? Really?" She sounds angry, protective. That's new. He's not used to receiving that, only giving it.

"What you're talking about, how you're feeling right now – it's called a panic attack," she explains calmly. "You probably felt like your thoughts were going a million miles an hour, and you couldn't focus, yeah?"

He's holding the phone with both hands now, practically smashing it into his face. "Yeah… exactly."

"It's okay. I have them too." There's a heaviness to her voice. "They happen when you lose control of a situation, when you feel trapped. They're normal for many people, actually."

"Not for my family," he mutters. "And not for me. No one talks about this stuff. Especially my parents."

"Just because they don't talk about it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. No one is immune."

His father being anything other than a bastion of strength is impossible to imagine right now. "I don't know. I just know I don't want them here. Even if they can't watch the battles, I'll know they're here, waiting. It's going to distract me. I can't afford that."

Lance swears he can hear her stand up and pace around the room. He can almost picture the way she's gesturing, pointing into the air, her face scrunched in determination. "This is your day, Lance, and your fight. You have every right to tell them to leave. Don't let anyone ruin this for you."

He swallows hard. "They wouldn't understand. That's the problem. They'd just take offense."

Cora pauses again, clearly considering her words. "So, there's two options for you. One, you directly tell them to leave, no room for argument, offense be damned."

That one makes him want to puke. "The second?"

"You go back out there, walk right past them, and battle like they don't exist."

That wouldn't work well either, but… it sparks an idea in his head. There's a third option she hadn't figured out – she couldn't, really, because she doesn't know his family well enough. But her encouragement has given him space to discover the solution for himself.

Lance suddenly surges with purpose and determination. He stands up.
"I know what to do," he says. "I figured it out. I got it."

"Good." The relief in her voice is contagious. "You sound like you again, Lance. I'm really glad you called."

God, his chest is warm. It aches, almost. Is this the anxiety? He flattens his palm against his sternum and closes his eyes, breathing deep. He misses her, he thinks? Or maybe he's just relieved? Ridiculously, he wants to hug the phone, too.

"Thank you, Cora," he decides to say, his throat tight with emotion.

He can hear her smile. "Let me tell you one last thing."

"Go for it."

"Duncle has a phrase he taught me, when I first started having panic attacks. I think it might help you. He told me: 'fear is just excitement without breath.' So maybe, if you feel afraid again, just breathe. And then all you'll be is excited."

He repeats the phrase. Once, twice. A grin blooms across his face, unstoppably.

"I'll remember that," he vows.

"Good. Now go win."

He hangs up the phone. He's not shaking anymore, not even when he walks back into the lobby, back into the middle of all of those studying, expectant eyes.

His father starts to talk to him. Lance holds up a hand directly in his face.

The silence in the room is utterly deafening. Lance drops his hand, walks past his stunned father, and approaches the Elder, who carries that mahogany relic box in a silk cloth.

In one swift, graceful motion, Lance drops to one knee and proffers both hands out before him.

"I need only the Dragon God's totem for this task," he announces sternly. "Clan intervention is unnecessary. Wait at home, and pray for me."

Option three: rely on something bigger than all of them. It's impossible to decline.

No one speaks. Lance hears the box open, its ancient brass hinges creaking. Wrapped in a worn, canvas cloth, the Elder places it in his hands. Lance uncovers it; it's an ancient tooth, the length of his finger, affixed to a copper chain.

He slips it around his neck. It rests just over his heart, a pleasant weight.

When Lance walks through those final doors of the Indigo Plateau, he doesn't look back.

---

Lyrics: "Falls (feat Sasha Alex Sloan), The Glitch Mob Remix" by ODESZA

 

[Sastrei]

I'm the strong one, I'm not nervous; I'm as tough as the crust of the earth is

Diamonds and platinum, I find them, I flatten them -

I take what I'm handed, I break what's demanded​

---

"You're not getting past me, you know."

The way Lorelei says is it so casual and mundane. Lance has studied her battle history and personal background extensively. She's in her early twenties, has an affinity for plushies and cute things (probably as a tactic to disarm her opponents), and comes from the faraway Sevii Islands. Her rise to power as the first of the Elite Four had been swift and well-earned.

"If I had anything to say about all this," she continues, casually inspecting her manicured nails, "our last leader would've put me in his place after his retirement. But the Pokemon League came up with this idea of hosting tryouts, to bring in 'new blood,' and…" she gestures to Lance. "Here you are, it seems. Welcome to the Indigo Plateau."

Lorelei is wearing an extremely short skirt and jet black high heels that make her toned legs look… well, very nice. Her businesslike collared shirt is unbuttoned at the top. Which also looks very nice.

Lance clears his throat, his face burning just slightly. He is, before anything else, a sixteen year-old young man.

Maybe she's studied him, too.

"I admire your confidence," he replies truthfully. He keeps his face expressionless as he brandishes his first pokeball. "Shall we begin?"

"Straight to the point, huh?" Lorelei muses, smirking her painted lips. Her heels click on the stone floor as she takes her place opposite him. "I like that. Let's see if your little dragons can withstand the cold."

There are four Pokemon League representatives for his next battles, one in each corner. Scrutiny like no other. They have earpieces and mutter constantly with thin, watchful eyes.

Lance hears them announce the rules but he doesn't need to listen. His vision greys at the edges. Sounds gloss over; his fingers twitch. He holds his breath right before the final word – "Begin!"

From this moment on, he's the Chosen One.

His gyarados meets her dewgong. Her attacks are graceful and lithe like she is, but with the sharpest, surprising edges. Even an ordered dodge manages to make a small impact, chipping away. Noted. But can be dealt with.

"Dragon Dance," Lance commands. Gyarados snakes around itself, spiraling into the air, the top of its head brushing against the ceiling. Dewgong's Aurora Beam leaves one of the fins on gyarados' face frozen, throwing off its balance; it's grimacing and snarling as it tries to recover, glancing at Lance whose posture alone is communication enough. It cranes its long neck back, coiled and rippling, as Lance finally shouts "Thunder Fang!"

Lorelei's eyes widen in the crackling electricity; gyarados crashes down on the dewgong, sinking its teeth into the sleek white pokemon's shoulder, making it howl in frustrated pain.

"Take Down!" she counters; dewgong manages to wriggle free just enough to crash its mighty tail into gyarados' face, a brutal slap echoing off the walls. Lorelei smiles. Lance doesn't, but his eyes are ablaze. She undid her own handiwork; the frozen fin is shattered free and gyarados strikes with a feral speed at the next command of "Thunder Fang," this time crushing the dewgong's neck from below. Its whole body seizes; it lets out a howl before falling limp to the floor.

"Dewgong is unable to battle! The first round is awarded to Lance of Blackthorn City."

Lorelei's nose wrinkles a little as she recalls her pokemon. She meets Lance's gaze. Her expression wordlessly asks you're serious, aren't you?

Her mistake. She should've sensed that from the beginning.

Cloyster is next, a near-impenetrable shell lined in pointed pain. Too high of a defense. Lance switches gyarados for his dragonite.

One of three, actually.

Depending on how the dragons were raised, their attack could reign, or their special moves could be equally boosted. This one, while smaller and not as physically powerful as his other two, has an arsenal of unusual attacks he saves for opponents just like this.

"Spike Cannon!" Lorelei says, an edge to her voice now. Her pokemon launches a pair of projectiles; they're fast, but so is his dragonite at his command of "Barrier." The dragon's eyes glow. It holds out both paws and forms a wall of pure energy that the spikes crash into, splintering into useless shards.

"Dragonite can't learn that move," Lorelei growls, gesturing to the reps in the corner frenetically. "Can they? Come on!"

"The move is entirely legal," the rep returns evenly. "Continue."

"Encore," Lance commands. Dragonite grins, making happy ah-whoops, flapping its wings excitedly, applauding the perturbed shellfish as it dares to peek out from between its clamped shell. Its small black face is frowning. Without prompting it fires off more spikes that are either dodged entirely or bounce off of dragonite's still-present barrier.

"Thunderbolt," Lance says now, tilting his chin a little higher. Dragonite slaps its paws together then holds them out wide, sparks crashing and snapping before arcing forward in a blinding line of energy. Cloyster don't make a lot of noise but Lance hears a struggled bubbling. It's still upright but listing to one side.

"Aurora beam, Cloyster!" Lorelei orders, futilely – encore is still in effect. Spikes, barrier, dodge, repeat. Dragonite's flamethrower attack, now, just to heat up the air and make it that much more uncomfortable for her next pokemon, because this one is definitely done for. It clacks to one side and opens its shell, releasing small trails of steam. The League rep announces Lance's second round win.

Lorelei recalls it, maintaining her composure well, all things considered. Her shoulders square. "Slowbro, teach them a lesson."

The large pink and grey pokemon appears, wearing its signature mysterious, permanent smile. High special defense. A good counter. It's also half psychic type, but Lance knows how to handle that. His first dragonite is switched out for aerodactyl, proudly screeching as it makes its entrance, hovering in midair.

"Yawn, Slowbro," Lorelei says. "Slow them down."

It opens its already-wide mouth and, well, yawns. Loudly. "Aerial Ace," Lance calls out – aerodactyl flips upside down in the air, dodging the invisible cloud. Lorelei is shouting "withdraw!" and before aerodactyl can land a hit, slowbro's covered in an expansion of that shell on its tail. Aerodactyl's fierce talons rake it, but end up glancing off with barely a scratch.

"Yawn, again!"

Lance's pokemon doesn't have time to dodge this time; the effect isn't instant, but aerodactyl's wings start to sag, its eyes growing heavy. He grits his teeth. "Crunch, now! Full power!"

The fossil pokemon twists in midair, sailing high before a steep dive to gain momentum. An air-rending shriek escapes its gaping mouth, fangs bared, coated in swirling black shadows – it bites the slowbro's thick neck, those shadows infecting the psychic type's pink skin and snaking into its eyes and round ears. It blinks slowly, flinching and unable to move for an extended moment – which is good timing, because aerodactyl has promptly fallen asleep with its fangs still wrapped around slowbro's throat.

An even trade. That was a supereffective attack and Lance can full-heal aerodactyl awake after the battle. He recalls it.

"Finally," Lorelei chuckles, crossing her arms. "Mystery man cracks a little–"

"Gyarados, Thunder Fang!"

It launches straight from its pokeball, not even touching the ground before its fangs now replace aerodactyl's. Lightning sizzles along slowbro's skin. It blinks again, otherwise bereft of reaction.

"Bind it, Gyarados!"

"Confusion, Slowbro!"

Those slow eyes now flash magenta-pink and gyarados stops moving instantly. Commanded by an unseen force, it releases slowbro before being slammed full-force into the gym's floor, once, twice-

"Break out of it!" Lance shouts. "Dragon Dance!"

"Withdraw, quickly!"

The water pokemon's enhanced speed wins out over the strength of slowbro's mind; one last Thunder Fang, shell-shield be damned, and slowbro ends up on its back with a tired sigh. It doesn't get up.

"Slowbro is unable to battle!"

Gyarados is still capable of continuing, but pushing it any farther gives Lance unpleasant flashbacks of battling Mewtwo. He recalls it, briefly touching his forehead to its pokeball with a small smile. "You were magnificent. Thank you, my friend."

"How dare you," Lorelei mutters, scowling. She pushes her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose. "Treating my cute slowbro with such aggression. You've got a little darkness in you, don't you?"

"Just enough," Lance counters, setting his jaw. "Don't we all?"

Oh, but she's fun to make angry, he has to admit.

"Jynx," she seethes, "show them what we're made of."

Finally, an ice-type without a second water-type. "Dragonite, you're up!"

Lorelei scoffs. "Again?

"You don't see the difference?" Lance asks, one corner of his mouth twitching in a smile. "Hmm. Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Ice Beam, Jynx!" The small, humanoid pokemon hums melodiously, firing its attack as it does. For its short stature it moves surprisingly quickly; this dragonite has sacrificed some speed for physical prowess, and as a result the tip of its tail gets coated in ice as it flies into the air. Its amber eyes harden and it huffs an annoyed breath, steam pouring from its nostrils.

"Don't worry about that," Lance assures. "Fire Punch, let's go!"

"Ice Beam, again!"

Dragonite's fist is meteoric in both temperature and impact. It barges the punch directly into Jynx's ice attack, turning it into a useless cloud, before impacting Jynx in the side of its blonde-haired head. It skids to one side, managing to keep its feet on the ground somehow, strands of its hair now smoldering cinders.

"Get your bearings," Lorelei growls. "Stop it with Psychic!"

"Swords Dance!"

It's a risky counter; if Jynx's mind is powerful enough, dragonite could easily be overtaken. Lance is counting on this stat-raising move to give his pokemon enough offensive strength to overcome that power. Jynx holds out its hands, channeling its energy forward just as dragonite settles its feet onto the gym floor, flexing its curved claws, wings spread wide.

Jynx lifts dragonite up, eyes aglow. A few seconds pass; Lance watches his pokemon's expression change, the slight shifting and bulging of its muscles beneath that scaly skin. "Fire Punch, again!"

It doesn't work. A few inches of movement, at most. Dragonite is baring its teeth.

"Break free! Don't stop!" Lance orders. Jynx's hands are trembling. It starts to wince. Lance glances at the end of dragonite's tail, still coated in a chunk of ice, and – "Use your whole body! Spin, and hit it with your tail, go!"

Momentum! It's just enough; Jynx's concentration slips and dragonite's next step cracks fearsome lines in the floor. It twists, pulling arms in close, and that heavy laden tail crashes into the Jynx's side, sending it sailing across the room and into the wall just beside Lorelei. She attends to it as the rep announces its defeat. Dragonite slams its tail against the ground again, removing the last flecks of ice.

"You think you've won already, don't you?" Lorelei asks, recalling Jynx. "You haven't seen anything yet."

Her words are intended as a threat, but to Lance they're hollow. He watches silently as she releases her final pokemon - a proud, stunningly beautiful lapras that sings a soft melody as it appears on the battlefield. Its expression radiates peace and a quiet, serene confidence.

Lance doesn't even consider changing pokemon. His dragonite's attack is already sharply raised, and it's taken only moderate damage.

"Final match, begin!"

"Thunderpunch," Lance orders; simultaneously Lorelei is shouting "Blizzard!" and lapras opens its mouth wide, calling forth a gale of freezing wind. The edges of dragonite's wings frost over. It squints through the snow, cocking one fist back and soaring forward. Lapras tries to slide out of the way but it's heavy, and dragonite's punch lands on its shoulder, above its fin. It recoils, eyes thinning - "Ice Beam, now!" Lorelei shouts, and the close range blast rakes dragonite's side, completely freezing one wing, arm and leg.

"Swords Dance, again!" Lance calls out.

"What? You can't be serious–"

Dragonite still has one good arm. As far as Lance is concerned, that's all it needs.

It boosts its attack again, using its free leg to step back – "Thunderpunch, one last time!" – and sways its tail to one side, twisting, before lurching forward without coordination, but with scathing raw power instead. That clawed, electric fist decimates lapras' lower jaw in a vicious uppercut. There's a mewling cry that's almost hard to hear. Lapras' eyes go wide before fluttering closed. It collapses in a great heap before Lance's dragonite.

Lorelei is in utter disbelief. She looks from Lance to her pokemon and back again. And then to his dragonite, who despite its injuries has its fangs bared, air huffing in and out of its nostrils in steaming bursts.

"Dragons are mythical pokemon," Lance tells her evenly, in between the League rep announcing his victory. "They're difficult to catch and raise, but they're virtually indestructible." He recalls his pokemon, noting with a smirk how the pokeball crackles with frost. "Your ice attacks were commendable, Lorelei. Thank you for the battle."

It takes her a moment, but she eventually recalls her lapras, closing her eyes and sighing. "I underestimated you. It's my own fault." She smiles sarcastically to herself. "When I heard you were just a teenager from a backwoods town in Johto, I wrote you off. I won't make that mistake again. You're something else, Lance of Blackthorn."

Lance meets her mid-battlefield. Up close like this, he can smell her faint perfume, like fresh water and sunlight. It swims in his head pleasantly. They lock eyes as she extends one hand; Lance shakes it.

"This place needs you," Lorelei tells him softly. "Don't lose, Lance."

"I don't intend to."

"This way, challenger," one of the League officiants is telling him, gesturing to a door on the far wall. "You will be allowed ten minutes to heal and restore your pokemon with any of your allotted items. There is a timer which will begin counting down as soon as you enter. Afterwards, your next battle will begin immediately."

Lance breathes deeply as he enters the vacant room. The door closes behind him. Those bright red digital numbers on the wall start their descent. Immediately, he releases all of his pokemon.

Aerodactyl is a limp heap of wings and talons on the floor, sound asleep. Gyarados is functional but clearly tired. Lance's smaller, special attack dragonite is fine; of the three he has, she generally is the least maintenance and maintains a perky personality with little effort. She is currently sitting by Aerodactyl, poking the side of its head curiously.

The second dragonite, a proud young male nearly twice the size of the female, is frowning deeply. Probably because one half of its body is still frozen.

And the third is his original partner, his lifesaver from childhood. A well-rounded balance of offense and defense, with a ton of stamina. He's more concerned about Lance than anything, hovering over his trainer's shoulder attentively.

Behind Lance's back, hanging from his belt and hidden by his cape, is a small satchel of items. In less than five minutes, all of his pokemon are back to full strength and staring at him.

Click. Click. That digital clock is making a soft noise with each passing second. Other than that, and the steady breathing of his dragons, there's no noise.

Historically, silence has not been kind to Lance. It's much easier to function when life has a clear purpose, when he needs to be something. Silence is when his head gets loud.

The Dragon God's tooth is around his neck. He hasn't forgotten about it. A few fingertips brush against its ancient, cratered surface. He closes his eyes.

What are his parents doing right now, after his choice to essentially tell them to screw off?

Was that the right thing to do?

Did he break his kind mother's heart?

Will his father seek to punish him somehow at their next meeting, regardless of his impending victory?

Loud, deafening questions in the silence.

After that first battle, nowhere in Lance's head is the question of 'can I do this?' The answer to that has become abundantly clear. Lorelei was actually his biggest worry of the three.

Bruno, while mighty and focused, will succumb easily to a flying-type and speed-based strategy led by Aerodactyl. Agatha's ghost-types will be tactful and tricky, but they lack strong defense, and both Gyarados' and Dragonite's (the biggest one) attack power will be enough to blast through any web she deigns to weave. He likely won't even need the backup of his childhood dragonite, who is currently nudging his shoulder with its nose, sensing his obvious tension.

He takes a breath, long and slow. That tense fear eases. He remembers a friend's voice over the phone. Just a little, he smiles.

"Thank you," Lance decides to say. He opens his eyes and meets those of his partners. "This is going to happen. I know you can all sense it."

A murmur of quiet agreement arises from each of them.

"We are going to make history today," he continues, half to his pokemon and half to himself. "I couldn't be here without you. Stay sharp. We're almost there. Thank you."

The female dragonite is the first to lean in, nudging her forehead right underneath his jaw, just as she used to do as a dratini. The floor shakes a bit as the large male joins, stepping forward, circling its beefy arms around the two of them. Next are Aerodactyl's wings with a shrill shriek Lance has learned actually indicates affection; Gyarados curls around the group with its long, scaly body and utters a purring growl.

His oldest friend is standing by the door, waiting for it to open.

—

---

It's hot. There are lots of bugs everywhere, probably – at least it sounds like it, from all the buzzing. The grass is making her ankles itch, and she feels utterly out of place among all the other kids joining her in Pallet Town.

Serena is not having a good day.

Pokemon summer camp? Was there anything more annoying or silly for her to do? Of course her mom would want to send her here, though – her mom was good at everything, especially Rhyhorn Racing, so that meant Serena could obviously also be good at everything. Even if the things Serena enjoyed were super different than her own mother. Who cared about that, though?

Turns out, Serena isn't even good at summer camp. In pausing to tie her shoe (and then scratch her stupid, itchy ankles), she'd lost sight of the rest of her hiking group. Then, in a futile attempt to find them, she'd wandered off into the probably-wrong direction and ended up stumbling through a prickly bush – ripping a few holes in her favorite pink dress, of course – and bashing her knee on a tree root.

So here she is, a complete mess. Sitting in a lump on the itchy grass, wiping away tears, asking herself, "Where is everyone?"

To make literally everything worse, the bushes beside her rustle and out jumps a pokemon right next to her – Serena shrieks, recoiling in fear and surprise. The pokemon is round and blue and looks pretty slimy. It has huge black and white eyes that stare right into hers for a moment before it thankfully heads off into the distance.

"I didn't even want to come here," Serena wails to herself, those combatted tears now openly spilling onto her face. "I just wanna go home!"
Those same bushes start rustling again. Serena's knee is throbbing and turning red; she scrambles to back up, expecting another pokemon, genuine fear making her pulse race – but instead it's… a head. A human boy's head, with black hair and brown eyes.

"Poliwag?" the boy says, looking around curiously. He's not very tall, and he's wearing a tank top and shorts – probably another kid from the camp? He then spots Serena, who is gazing up at him absolutely mortified.

"Hey, what are you doing out here?" he asks, smiling a little despite said obvious mortification. She can't really say anything right now so he just keeps talking, noticing her angry knee. "My name's Ash. Are you hurt?"

Oh great, now he's going to think she's some lame girl who can't even walk through the woods right–

"Here," he continues, still smiling. He pulls a handkerchief out from one pocket. Serena watches, baffled, as he ties it with surprising efficiency around her knee. Then his hands are waving around it in circles, his eyes lighting up. "It's magic. Now all the pain will go away!"

She tries to smile back but it comes off as a tilted grimace. "It… still hurts a lot."

"That's okay," he responds, holding out one hand. "I'll help you. Don't give up until the very end!"

Serena blinks. Then slowly reaches out to take his offered hand. He yanks her to her feet with enthusiasm. Her face erupts in a furious blush because for a second, the momentum makes them practically hug. Even though she's standing now, he's still holding her hand.

"Let's go back to the campsite," he suggests, pointing in a direction Serena totally wouldn't have even considered. "I know the way. Don't worry."

He walks her there, a bright smile still on his sun-darkened face. Weird, her knee doesn't seem to hurt as much, after all.

Maybe he is magic.

—

---

The trip from the Indigo Plateau to Blackthorn City, on the back of a dragon, takes about three hours. There are modern planes that can make the trip in a fraction of that time, but no self-respecting Dragon Tamer would dream of such a cheat.

Those hours aloft on her dragonair have given Hana quite awhile to think about her son. She has always tried to mother him without expectations, despite his inevitable inheritance of the Blackthorn Clan – it felt fairer that way. Lance was am individual, first, with his own will and desires. This same view wasn't often shared by Lance's father, but part of being a family meant dealing with clashing wills, and loving someone despite all differences.

At certain times, this felt a more difficult task than others. This latest surprise - and what her husband perceived as blatant disrespect against him - had left a deep cleft among the clan's ranks. Quiet and peaceful by nature, Hana tended to let the men of her clan handle the more intense disputes.

This one, though – she felt the need to raise her voice.

"You do not get to choose when and where your son relies on his faith instead of his clan," Hana speaks sharply into the rushing air.

Her husband slows his dragonite, his dark grey eyes widening in genuine surprise. "My own wife, accepting our son's mistreatment of his father?"

"You are not the one competing on a world stage for our City's sake," Hana continues, swiping strands of burgundy hair from her eyes. "If you choose to view his belief in the power of our God as an offense, perhaps it is you that needs a readjustment of your values, husband."

The faces of all listening in – though they try to hide it – all wordlessly show thoughtful consideration at least, and passionate agreement at most.

Silence reigns for several moments. The Elder, leading them all on his scarred, battle-worn gyarados, now pauses in midair and turns to face them.

"This is a time of contemplation and celebration," he says evenly in his low voice. "Regardless of the outcome, today is a day of joy for all of us. Hana is right. Put aside your personal feelings and take pride in your son."

Hana straightens her back, fighting off a victorious smile. They're nearly home. And hopefully, not long after landing, they will receive the phone call that will forever change the future of their clan.

For now, Hana can finish her flight in gratitude for her courage to speak up. It's a cherished rarity she could definitely get used to.

—

---

Though she is roughtly a third of Bruno's size, Agatha is easily twice as intimidating. The older woman positively radiates self-assurance, even as her sly gengar is declared unable to battle, and Lance is awarded his third and final victory. His longtime partner Dragonite delivered the final blow, and is now standing tall by his side.

"Child," Agatha is saying, as the four League reps meet in one corner to converse with one another. Her cane clicks as she walks up to him with studying eyes. "A word of advice, if it means anything from someone you just defeated."

"Always," Lance says earnestly. "No opinion is too invaluable to be considered."

Agatha cackles a little. "That's a bunch of hooey, if you ask me, but anyway. You must know your life is about to change, yes?"

Lance nods.

"Be careful who your friends are," she continues, her creaky voice a little softer now. "The whole world is going to want a piece of you after this. Not everyone deserves a piece, though. You'll see what I mean at the afterparty tonight."

Lance's stomach tightens. "A-afterparty?"

"You didn't know?" She cackles again. "Why, you're the official face of the Pokemon League from now on, child. Everyone who's anyone in Kanto and Johto has been awaiting this night since our last Leader stepped down. Pending your victory, of course." Agatha nudges his arm with her bony elbow. "I hope you're ready to schmooze your cute little heart out, young one."

"That's, uh," Lance mutters, "never been a particular talent of mine, unfortunately."

"Oh, I'll be there too, don't you worry. If anyone starts to give you hell, just find old Agatha. Gengar and I are pretty keen at scaring away the leeches."

That is, oddly enough, an extremely comforting thought. Lance sighs. "Thank you, Agatha. And for the battle as well."

She waves at him dismissively. "I became too old for formalities ages ago. You kicked my arse, and you deserve to celebrate." The League reps are waving him forward now. "Oh, one last thing – don't sign any papers before reading the fine print, either!"

"Signing…papers? For what?"

"You'll see! Keep those pretty eyes peeled!"

That is decidedly less comforting. Lance can still hear her laugh as he walks towards the far door, Dragonite floating beside him.

Once the last door opens, he is greeted by a sea of reporters.

The reps are now acting as a human shield, forming a barrier around Lance and his pokemon as they are swarmed by what appears to be a journalist from quite literally every news station in both Kanto and Johto. At least fifty people, all in suits with giant cameras, bright lights and microphones on sticks. Their voices blend together, as do the incessant snapping of their cameras, and it suddenly occurs to Lance that he should probably be looking like a professional, serious trainer for the now-dozens of photos he's apparently going to show up in.

He puts on his signature hard, emotionless expression. The same one he's put on for his father for his entire life. It's a little jarring how easy it is.

"You don't have to say anything," one of the reps is telling him, over the cacophony. "Don't feel obligated. This is just a teaser."

Not that Lance can really hear any questions clear enough to answer. Dragonite is squinting beside him, frowning. Someone is close enough to his ear now, and a phrase catches Lance's interest: "...to represent Blackthorn City?"

Lance turns in the voice's general direction. "Who just asked a question about Blackthorn?"

"Tony Hamada, Celadon News Hour," the man says, amid those constantly flashing lights. "Thank you for your time, Mister Lance. I wanted to ask how it feels to become the new leader of the Elite Four as a representative of your hometown of Blackthorn City?"

Finally, some silence. Clearly everyone in the room wants to hear this answer too. Sweat beads on the back of Lance's neck but he squares his shoulders.

"I would not be who I am without my clan," he says clearly. "I owe this victory to their guidance and knowledge, and to our Dragon God."

One of the reps winces a little. Lance wonders why until the immediate followup question: "So it's true that the Blackthorn Dragon Clan believes in a singular Dragon God? How do you feel this difference of religious belief will affect your relations with the general populace of Kanto and Johto, who hold very different views than yours?"

Oh, damn.

Lance balks. He hears Agatha's voice in his head: not everyone deserves a piece of you.

"I…" He swallows hard, that panic building in his chest. He breathes, slow and deep. "I need… to move on now. Excuse me."

The ocean of voices returns, but he ignores them. The reps are guiding him somewhere and he hopes to all the gods it's someplace away from this.

It is. And much more.

"The afterparty starts at eight sharp," Lance is told, as he enters a luxury suite, with an utterly gigantic banquet of food for both himself and his pokemon. "Should you need anything, we're right outside."

No reporters, and the reps even give him privacy. Lance releases his pokemon, encouraging them to eat the meal they've more than earned.

Off in one corner is a giant, plush armchair that looks soft enough to fall asleep in. Lance unbuttons his cape, takes it off, drapes it across the back of the chair. And promptly plops down in the cushions with a deep sigh.

Earning his spot as the leader of the Elite Four was, honestly, the easy part.

Now for the hard part: changing his entire life.

---

Lyrics: "Surface Pressure (Encanto Cover)" by Our Last Night

 

[Sastrei]

I'm not one to sharpen knives; I'm ready for some peace of mind

I'm standing at the edge tonight: brace for the fallout​

---

Cerulean City, Kanto

Summer 1994

There's a different receptionist at the Hypno Healing Clinic today. She looks innocent enough, with curly blonde hair and a pin with the name Laura affixed to the collar of her crisp sky-blue business shirt. All the employees at the clinic wore this color; it was supposed to promote a sense of 'calm and well-being,' which the Clinic promised its customers according to the wooden sign hanging out front.

Cora tries futilely to hide her frown when she opens the front door to see Laura instead of the usual Emily. Not that there's anything wrong with a new face, but it meant so much extra work that Cora really doesn't feel like doing today.

"Hey, Mom," she says, squeezing the woman's hand in her own. Lorraine is just behind her as they enter. Most days she walks fine on her own, and can converse with strangers in a coherent manner.

Today, though, is not most days.

"I need to talk to the front desk for a minute," Cora continues, guiding her mother to a teal couch up against the window. Lorraine likes to look outside while she's waiting. "Count the pidgey in the tree for me, okay? I'll be right back."

"Five," Lorraine says as she sits, beaming. She is careful to flatten and arrange the ends of her long grey dress to cover most of her legs. "Wait, there's a sixth."

Momentarily satisfied with this preoccupation, Cora approaches the front desk. "Hi, I'm here with my mom Lorraine Katsura. She has a followup appointment with Dr. Tomoko and a Healing session."

Laura smiles down at her but it falters a little. "Hi, uh – I'm afraid only adults are allowed into the appointments."

Be kind, Cora chastises herself when she wants to sigh. Her hands slide into the pockets of her shorts to stop them from fidgeting. "I've got special circumstances. I'm her legal guardian and I follow up personally at all her appointments. You're free to check her records."

"I'm sorry, that's not possible. Kanto healthcare laws prohibit minors from being classified as guardians for adults."

"Like I said, special circumstances. Please check Lorraine Katsura's file. Everything's there."

"Cora," Lorraine is saying, her voice starting to fill with worry. "The pidgey all flew away."

Laura is on the phone for some reason, apparently avoiding doing the singular thing Cora has asked of her. Yes, the receptionist is probably just following policy. Yes, it's weird that a 9 year-old is legal guardian of her mentally ill mother. Cora really doesn't need to be reminded of this. What she needs is for her mother to have her Healing session so that life can return to some semblance of normal for the next week, hopefully.

"Hello," Laura is saying into the phone, "I have a child here claiming to be her mother's guardian? She's asking for clearance to–"

"Cora, I can't see anymore pidgey – what if they–"

"It's okay Mom," Cora assures, turning around with a forced smile. "Maybe there's some caterpie? Or a metapod? Remember their hard shells and how good they are at protecting themselves?"

This calms Lorraine, who continues to smooth out her dress on the couch cushions. "Harden," she agrees. "So they can't break."

A few seconds of silence tick by. Then, Laura: "Ah – oh. Um, alright. Yes, at once." She hangs up the phone, smiling apologetically. "So sorry, miss Katsura. My manager has informed me of your circumstances. Please have a seat, and the doctor will be with you shortly."

"Ah, that's–" Cora clears her throat. Be kind. Be kind. "We, um, don't wait. Consider this a stat visit. Please show us to the room and alert the hypno specialist that we're here."

Laura isn't even trying to smile anymore as she gets up and buzzes open the inner door. "Yes, right away."

"Mom," Cora says, taking her hand with a light squeeze. "Ready to see the hypno?"

"I hope it's Clarence this time," Lorraine declares brightly. Due to his crooked nose, Clarence is her favorite of the Clinic's five available hypno, who work with their human clients on a rotating basis, so as not to fatigue their psychic abilities.

"Me too," Cora agrees. "But if it's not, it'll still be okay."

They enter a dimly-lit, relaxing room that smells of forest incense. In one corner is a small Zen garden with a few bansai trees and some carefully arranged rocks. Lorraine gracefully sits on her usual cushion on the floor, crossing her legs and smoothing the strawberry hair back from her face.

"I'm ready," she announces clearly.

Cora smiles warmly even though her stomach starts to clench. "I know you are. You can do anything, Mom. I'm super proud of you."

For a moment, pure lucidity crystallizes Lorraine's dark emerald eyes. She cups Cora's chin. "You are the absolute greatest daughter a mother could ever have."

"Th-thanks, Mom–"

"I just wish you didn't look so much like him."

You'd think after this long, Cora would've gotten used to the rollercoaster of emotions that came with living with her mother. But to experience a moment of pure love followed by a moment of such raw haunting pain still manages to make her nauseous.
It's not her fault, Cora reminds herself. It's not my fault either. This is just her brain. Her brain is different. That's all.

"I know, Mom," Cora says quietly.

Just in front of his trainer, Clarence the hypno enters, his golden fur glinting in the soft lights, that small metal pendant already swaying from one hand. Lorraine lets out a happy sound of agreement, having forgotten their conversation entirely.

"I'll be here when you come back," Cora tells her. She swiftly passes the back of her fingers over her eyes, trying to hide any errant, misty tears.

The session itself goes well, thankfully. Cora's mother has been to this Healing clinic twenty times as of today – each time, the hypno are able to take away another layer of mental protection, allowing their human client to properly confront and conquer their inner conflicts.

This can take shape in many forms – the human entering an almost catatonic state. Mental replays of past events that are guided to a different, more healthy ending.

Or sometimes unpleasant outcomes, like breakdowns, crying, or anxiety episodes. But the hypno are particularly good at staying calm in stressful scenarios - half due to their inherent nature, and half due to their professional training.

The pioneer here, Dr. Tomoko, is a world-renowned neurologist and expert on psychic pokemon; he's recruited the best hypno trainers from all over Kanto to devote their time to helping the locals with pretty much any psychological issue, from insomnia to complex cases like Lorraine's, where multiple conditions are involved. It isn't meant to cure anyone - current scientific consensus agrees that mental conditions aren't curable yet, just manageable.

But with continuous advances in researching the powers of psychic pokemon - who knows what's possible?

Cora somehow feels wrong for wanting her mother to change in this way, even though it's for her own good, and is really just a matter of healing. Hence the name 'Healing sessions.' The nine year-old can't hide the look of tense disdain on her face as she watches Lorraine ease out of her quiet half-asleep state, her thin shoulders beginning to straighten from their relaxed slump.

Blaine lives his life by the philosophy of 'radical acceptance' - meaning meeting someone, whether they're a stranger or a loved one, right where they're at without expectation. This way of life is now an indelible part of Cora, and even though there's no denying how much happier and calmer Lorraine is after these sessions, it still feels… off, somehow.

"Boop," Lorraine says with a grin, briefly touching the tip of her first finger to Clarence's rightward-deviating nose. The hypno's ears twitch in delight.

"Nice job, Mom," Cora says, that disdain momentarily replaced with simple joy. "Ready to see the doctor now?"

"Absolutely," Lorraine agrees, arising from the floor. When Cora walks past her into the hall, she puts a hand on her daughter's shoulder and asks, quietly, "...was it bad this time?"

Cora pauses. "Yeah. But it's okay."

"I'm sorry," Lorraine says earnestly. "I'm getting better. I know I am."

The flicker of hope in Cora's chest is dim, but it still burns. That's good enough. She continues down the hallway, motioning for her mother to follow.

"I know, too," Cora manages, a smile ghosting her lips. "Come on, we don't want to be late."

---

Lyrics: "Fallout" by Young Summer

 

[IFBench]

Here to review chapter 1 for our review exchange!

Seems like a lovely hotel room, though I dread how much it might have cost.

Interesting that regular animals seem to exist here! That's absolutely not bad, I have that in my fics, too! Just think it's neat!

Oh boy, seems like Clair was a rambunctious preteen.

Huh, seems like this is during Lance's trainer journey! Interesting!

Seems like Lance has been having some trouble with at least one prior gym.

Seems like he's also a bit egotistical, judging by the word "commoners".

...looks like it was a good idea to scout out the gym. It does not look to be in good shape whatsoever.

I wonder who that grave is for...

Huh, so this girl is related to Blaine!

Oh boy, culture shock! That's always neat to read about.

I wonder what connection this girl has to Moltres.

Giggled at "Lance the Cape Guy".

Oh dear. What kinds of trouble has Clair been in in the past?

This was a nice read! I'm intrigued by just who Cora is, and why she has a torch of Moltres.

Thank you for writing this!

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, sorry to keep you waiting. My original plan had been to do a review of both of my chapters assigned for Catnip in a straight shot, but in light of how overdue things were at the time, I figured I’d get them out chapter-by-chapter as soon as I got them wrapped up:

Chapter 1

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

Cinnabar Island Grand Resort Hotel

Spring 1997

Oh, so we’re doing real-world style dates, huh? So then this is like a year-ish before the events of Gold and Silver in this setting?

By all rights, this hotel room should [positively emanate soothing relaxation]. There's a beachfront view of Cinnabar Island's east side – the better one, with sugar-soft white sand and clear waters. The towels look so fluffy that one could sleep on them, and the room service menu – which Blaine had insisted upon paying for – left absolutely nothing to be desired. Lobster, filet mignon, crab legs–

Oh, so there’s normal animals as well in this setting, huh? Or at least I get the impression from the list of food available to order at this hotel. IMO, the “positively emanate soothing relaxation” part feels a bit clunky in phrasing. Something as simple as “feel soothing and relaxing” or for something closer to the present text: “be positively soothing and relaxing” might roll off the tongue a bit better.

That said, I do feel that the description did a good job at selling the idea that it was a plush and swanky place, so good work there.

"I want one of everything," Clair announces triumphantly. She's lying sprawled on one of two enormous beds, holding the menu above her head, swaying her boots up and down as they dangle off the mattress. "Although, what's a car-carpach–"

"Carpaccio," Lance corrects, dumping his travel bag loudly onto the dining table. "You probably wouldn't like it."

His cousin hadn't left their hometown much – in fact her presence here on Cinnabar was a direct request of the Elder, who wished for his granddaughter to experience new cultures now that she was twelve and might actually be able to absorb and appreciate some of them.

Oh, so we’re focusing on Lance and Clair right now, huh? I admittedly wasn’t expecting that given how Blaine got first billing in the summary, but noted. Though I would suggest splitting your second paragraph in two, since the portion consisting of Lance’s dialogue and the subsequent exposition are pretty distinct thoughts. That said, I do wonder if said exposition ought to have been handled with a past verb tense, since they describe events that have happened prior to the here and now in the hotel room at the moment.

Years eight through eleven were, to put it bluntly, a gratuitous disaster. Twelve had to be better. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen.

Did you mean “giant” there for disaster? Since “gratuitous” in meaning is closer to “unnecessary”, which I don’t think was the intent based off the surrounding context.

"Car-patch-yo," Clair repeats terribly, but with confidence. "When can we eat? I'm starving."

Lance sighs. He'd been doing that a lot today. Not only was his seventh Gym battle in Kanto tomorrow, which was stressful enough in and of itself, but he'd been tasked with watching over Clair the past several weeks. While she is family, and the Blackthorn Clan is as tight-knit as they come – he absolutely can't stand her sometimes.

Another spot where at least part of the paragraph would likely work better if framed in past verb tense.

There. He said it.

Or thought it, at least. Just that brief internal admittance is a welcome relief.

He's sixteen now – and more than anything, he just wants space, quiet, and time to train. Three things his cousin is extremely adept at ruining.

I can already see this guy’s

-face when Clair inevitably gets around to throwing her fit around the time of GS over taking an L to Ethan/Lyra/Kris.

"I'm going to the Gym to scout ahead," he tells her, already heading for the door. "Get whatever you want."

"Scout ahead?" Clair scoffs, sitting up on the bed to smirk at him. "You sound like a soldier talking about a warzone. It's just a Gym; they're all the same at the end of the day. No need to get so serious."

Clearly Clair never visited the Viridian Gym at this point in time, since that description… uh… didn’t hold up regarding it at the time of Gen 1.

"One day," Lance begins, opening the front door, "you'll see how wrong you are. Just try not to break anything, alright?"

"No promises! And don't expect any food left over when you get back."

I mean between her and her dragons… yeah. Even when younger and less experienced, I wouldn’t expect there to be any food leftover myself.

He rolls his eyes as the door closes behind him. Deliberately, He deliberately draws in a slow, deep breath and releases it as he heads downstairs to the lobby. The sun has just barely set, but this is the beginning of the Island's busy season, and tourists of all kinds are mulling about the entrance and front apiary. Bright, flowery shirts, khaki shorts, the lingering smell of sunscreen and saltwater. Laughter, occasionally, mostly from kids still wearing little floaties on their arms or flippers on their feet.

Well, that certainly sounds like a busy place. Shame that it’s all buried under volcanic rock these days. Though IMO, your second and third sentences could and probably should be reworked into a single, longer sentence. I left a suggestion as to one way to accomplish that.

Lance observes this silently, his iron steely eyes flicking from one face to the next. A crowd of strangers is guaranteed to bring on familiar feelings of displacement and detachment. You'd One would think that after nearly six months of travelling Kanto collecting Gym badges, that this would've at least eased slightly.

He catches a strange glance from a middle-aged man with a goatee, some tall, fruity cocktail in one hand – and Lance is reminded of how untrue that is. The cape probably doesn't help; he hasn't quite grown into it yet, and the accentuated collar hides half of his face.

… Blaine? Or is that someone else with a goatee there? Since I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have pegged Blaine as ‘middle aged’ with his hairline.

Whatever. They don't know his path, the power he wields in those pokeballs on his belt. He's going to fight for his place among the Elite Four soon – these people, these commoners don't know anything about what kind of sacrifice that entails.

Aaaaaand my sympathy for this Lance just went down the tubes. Anime!Lance he is not.

Now outside beneath the budding stars, he releases his dragonite. The Gym isn't far, but he doesn't feel like walking among people. The sky is a much better place for his head.

I mean, with a superiority complex like yours, it’s probably for the best since I kinda get the vibe this Lance wouldn’t get along well with most people on the street. Or at least not at this point in time.

"Let's head for the Gym," he tells his partner. "It'll probably be closed, but I want to see as much as I can before tomorrow."

… That actually makes me wonder if Lance is going to make it past Blaine’s gym relatively easily or not. Since while Dragon-typing would surely give him and his team an advantage, this sort of demeanor gives off strong “cocky overconfidence” vibes.

They take to the sky easily, with practiced movements; his dragonair had evolved nearly two years ago now, again earning him the title of "youngest" for some sort of accomplishment among his clan. Most members wouldn't see a fully evolved Dratini until their twenties, at least. Lance had been only fourteen.

I actually completely forgot until just now that it’s hard canon that there’s flatly a “clan” of Dragon Tamers in and around Blackthorn City canonically. It’ll be interesting to see how they’re portrayed in this story, since there’s a lot of potential ways of rendering and depicting that.

"I think that's it," Lance says, pointing to a large building below. "Maybe?"

They land swiftly, which makes it all the more apparent that this building was no longer an active gym, even if it still had signs saying otherwise. The front door had been nailed shut with wooden boards. Part of the roof was in disrepair and slouching to one side.

Oh, so Blaine quit the circuit even before Cinnabar Island was toast in this continuity, huh? Or at least, I think that that’s what this is hinting at here.

"Well, that's annoying," Lance grumbles, walking around to search for any sign of what might've happened. He hadn't received word his battle was cancelled, so maybe it was being held in another location?

Cue some cheeky troll leaving a fake summons pointing out to the Seafoam Islands.

There's a smaller house out back, clearly residential in nature. Several windchimes hang from the porch awning; a vast collection of vivid tropical plants surround the entire exterior, some bearing fruit Lance has never seen before. Lights are on inside. Clenching his jaw, he decides asking for help is his only option. Dragonite follows behind him closely.

I mean, I kinda gathered that this story’s Lance wasn’t a people person. The way he’s reacting like he’s sucking a lemon to the prospect of having to ask a stranger for directions all but confirms it. >:V

He doesn't make it halfway before he notices someone outside, in a small, fenced garden just beside the house. They are partially hidden behind leaves and branches; he realizes it's a girl, about Clair's age, maybe a bit older. Her back is to him as she kneels down before a gravestone.

Lance: “Oh. Well. That got morbid quickly. Uh… come on, Dragonite, let’s just quietly turn and-”

Dragonite: “*Come on, Lance. You need to get directions from somebody.*” -_-;

A gravestone. Lance pauses; he clearly can't interrupt someone kneeling in front of a grave. Literally nothing would be more inappropriate. On the other hand, he can't just stand here staring, either. Because that's weird. And not a thing normal people do.

>implying Lance is a normal person

Lance, you’re wearing a cape in public for crying out loud. Don’t worry too much about ‘normal people’.

God, he hates things like this. He really needs to find out about the Gym, but this stupid situation is so painfully uncomfortable. Cringing, he decides to turn around and make an attempt to return later–

"Can I help you?" comes a soft voice.

Dragonite: “*Yes, we were just wondering how to get into the gym-*”
Lance: “(Dragonite! Read a room!)” >.<

He turns around, begrudgingly. The girl has come closer; her hands are in her pockets casually. She has her reddish-blonde hair pulled up. A golden feather is stuck in between the strands, pointing back over the plume of her ponytail. And even though she's fresh from visiting a grave, there's only a small hint of sadness in her gaze. It's mostly curiosity and more than a little amusement.

… Don’t recognize this character reflexively, but I suppose we’ll be finding out more about her in short order.

"Nice cape," she says, smiling.

"Ah, th-thanks," Lance manages, clearing his throat. "I, er, didn't mean to interrupt. I apologize, truly."

So just how deeply was Lance blushing right there? Since I can see that awkward and flustered reaction. >:V

"It's okay," she shrugs. "I visit Mom every night at sunset, when I can. It was her favorite time of day. She always liked visitors, though, don't worry."

She peers past him now, at his dragonite, and her eyes light up.

"Whoa, is this your partner? He's so cool! What's his name?"

IMO, this paragraph of yours works better as two paragraphs of dialogue and one of description in between.

That is… a lot of personal information from a complete stranger, as well as a barrage of questions. Lance swallows hard, his discomfort doubling. "R-right. Yes, that's my dragonite. I, uh, just call him Dragonite."

Oh, so anime-style lack of nicknames is common in this setting, huh?

She purses her lips, then shrugs again. "Hmm. I like to nickname my Pokemon."

Or maybe not. Time to see how this one plays out.

Great. Wonderful. "I'm, uh, looking for the Cinnabar Gym, but it appears to be closed."

Oh come on, Lance. Are you really telling me that your odds with the ladies would be worse if you went around calling your star Dragonite ‘Puff’ or something like that? :V

The girl sighs now, with exasperation. "Yeah, that just happened a little while ago. Duncle said this place had become a 'tourist trap,' so he shut it down himself to scare away all the lame trainers."

… ‘Duncle’, huh?

Lance blinks. Did she just say – "'Duncle?' What is…?"

"Oh, right, sorry." She shakes her head, tapping her forehead with her knuckles. "I forget that's not a word normal people use. It's what I call my Uncle Blaine. Supposed to be a mix of dad and uncle. He sort of became both to me once Mom died."

Yeah, I kinda was suspecting it’d be that. Though where is Blaine right now anyways?

And: more personal information! Lance's social anxiety reaches a penultimate high. He wants to throw up. He's probably – no, definitely – sweating. Still, he retains enough awareness to realize this girl just called herself Blaine's niece – which means she would know where he is.

I think you want a different word than ‘penultimate’ there, since it means “second-to-last” semantically.

Lance: “(Good lord, I hope Blaine doesn’t walk in on me right now.)”

"I'm supposed to battle him tomorrow," Lance manages. "Could you tell me how to find him?"

Given that you wrote things as “Lance manages”, it might’ve sold the feeling of him being flustered and discombobulated as mentioned in the prior paragraph a bit harder had you had him trail off or hesitate in his speech or something like that.

"Sure! But it's easier if I take you there. Outsiders get lost all the time, even with directions," she says, her annoyance obvious. "Um, just one minute though. Just gotta say bye to Mom."

Lance: “I’m… just really going to sit here and watch this, aren’t I?” ._.;
Dragonite: “*Well? Are you?*”

Lance watches, dumbfounded, as she returns to the gravestone for a few moments. Every single inch moment of this interaction is entirely foreign to him. In Blackthorn, the dead were cremated and poured into the holy waters of the Dragon's Den. Gravestones were tantamount to sacrilege. Being trapped in one spot for all eternity? The thought made Lance shudder.

Huh. Nice bit of comparative worldbuilding there. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that Blackthorn and its surroundings might have noticeable local cultural quirks, but it feels fitting. Especially for a place that makes such a big deal out of its scaly fire-breathing lizards.

... Although, honestly, the idea of getting visits from loved ones every day didn't seem so bad. Clan rites largely forbade conversing with the dead – it was thought to keep their spirits from fully moving on.

Lance holds a hand to his suddenly aching head. He does not have time for an existential crisis.

Once again, nice worldbuilding by proxy for Blackthorn and its surroundings. Though I think that it might make sense to communicate more hesitation in Lance’s internal thought process here, since he’s basically having a moment of “... you know, something about this idea I was raised to believe to be socially taboo actually sounds kinda appealing” in live-time, so you’d think there’d be a bit more internal conflict going on.

Apparently, The girl apparently had a pokeball behind her waist, because there is now a small, young charmander standing on the grass between them. Its flaming tail swings happily, illuminating the rapidly darkening evening sky. Strangely, the irises of its eyes are tinged red – don't most charmander have blue eyes?

Tinged red, huh? Wonder if that’s a potential variant trait or else a sign of mixed-species parentage. Though IMO, your first sentence in this paragraph would benefit from a slight rearrangement, as well as being reworked to be two sentences instead of one since it’s on the long side.

Even more strangely, as soon as the fire pokemon materializes in front of them, that golden feather in the girl's hair bursts into flames, what is even happening? At once Lance pictures her whole head catching fire, Dragonite trying to hit her with a de-powered Hydro Pump as she runs around screaming –

… One of the girl or the Charmander or both are Moltres, huh?

"It's not a real fire," she says, obviously noticing his bewildered face. "Don't worry. It only happens when my pokemon are out. Besides, we'll need this and Draco's tail light to get through the cave to Duncle." She starts walking, the charmander beside her, motioning for Lance to follow.

It wasn’t “real fire”? Wait, is the Charmander a Ninetales pulling some Zoroark antics or something like that? Since I distinctly remember that there were a couple early anime episodes where they were portrayed as being capable of such things.

He exchanges glances with dragonite, who gives him a look of 'hey, why not,' and they head after her.

I kinda wonder if it’d have made sense to elaborate on the “hey, why not” look a bit. Especially if that’s noticeably different relative to human expectations coming from a Dragonite and Lance can interpret its meaning by virtue of being a Dragon Tamer and presumably raised to have an eye out for such things.

Finally, there's a little bit of silence. Lance's headache and nausea ease gradually. He keeps staring at that flaming feather in her hair; to his knowledge, there's only one other like it, and it's kept at the Indigo Plateau, to light the Pokemon League torch during the opening ceremonies every year.

Lance was never mentioned having a headache or nausea either during or after his vision involving the mysterious girl who may or may not be Moltres. It might make sense to drop an explicit mention or two of that at some point before this, since this is admittedly the first time it’s coming out.

That can't be right, though. The one in the Indigo Plateau is from Moltres, and it's incredibly rare and valuable. There's no way a girl from Cinnabar would be wearing one as a hair accessory.

Bold of you to assume that that’s just a normal girl, Lance. Especially since Legendaries having shapeshifting / illusionary abilities isn’t that alien of a premise in Pokémon fanfic.

"It's about a ten minute walk up the slope," she tells them. "There's a lot of annoying zubat, but once they see Draco's tail they usually stay away."

Lance: “... Is he higher leveled than he looks or something?”
Feather Girl: “Something like that, yeah.”

There's that name again, ‘Draco’. Through the fading tenseness, Lance's curiosity is piqued.

"Did you say your charmander's name is ‘Draco’?"

I kinda wonder if it’d have made sense to throw in an extra sentence where Lance lays out a bit more clearly why he finds the name so curious. Like I get that semantically, it means ‘dragon’, but in-setting, is there a specific reason why this is standing out to him more than the Charmeleon getting nicknamed ‘Ryu’ or ‘Draggy’ or something like that? If so, it might make sense to hint at it harder.

"Yep!" They cross into the mouth of aforementioned cave; it is indeed very dim. "Draco is the dragon god that lives in the stars. One day, my Draco will be a charizard, and then he'll really look like a dragon." The charmander growls a small sound of approval.

Yeah, this is admittedly why I thought it might make sense to hint harder at why Lance found things so curious. Since while it makes sense from an in-setting perspective, it might make sense to reveal whether or not Lance has any familiarity with the name. And if so, whether or not he finds it weird that someone outside of his social circle has heard of it.

"I'm from Blackthorn City in Johto," Lance says with pride. "We have lots of stories of Draco, too."

Yeah, I’ll bet. :V

Though that actually makes me wonder if the same is true in other Dragon Tamer hotspots in other regions like Opelucid City, or if Draco is a very “Kanto and Johto” deity and others fill the void elsewhere.

"Really?" She turns to face him, walking backwards, still expertly stepping over certain rocks and bumps. That flaming feather casts strange shadows on her smiling face. "We get a lot of travellers, but I've never met anyone from Blackthorn. That's really cool. What's it like there?"

Okay, yeah. This girl is Moltres. I’ll frankly be more surprised if it turns out that she isn’t one.

"Very different from this," he admits with a sardonic laugh. "I can see why your uncle Blaine wanted to shut down the old gym. There's so many tourists here."

To say nothing about the on-and-off volcanism elsewhere on the island. Unless this story is set in a continuity where Cinnabar never blows its top to the point that it gets reduced to the “rock with a Pokécenter” we see it as in Gen 2.

"They're annoying, aren't they?" she scoffs. "Every year, they come, they trash the beaches, they leave. I was born on this Island. I wish people realized this is a home, too."

My “girl is really Moltres all along” meter is beeping like crazy right now.

Lance feels that. "Blackthorn also gets tourists, sometimes. People like to come just to see where all the Dragon Tamers are from. We're pretty famous." His chest is puffing out now, with more pride.

I kinda feel that the parallelism of “Lance feels that” would be a bit stronger if there was more direct parallelism with Feather Girl’s complaint about obnoxious tourists. For instance, are there any concrete grievances that Lance has regarding outsiders and their conduct in Blackthorn City? Since that would help sell the ‘why and how’ of how Lance can apparently emphasize with feather girl here.

She gives him a studying stare for a moment. "Duncle says the only pokemon harder to train than Fire types are Dragon types. You must be pretty good if you've already got a dragonite at your age."

Ah yes, stroking Lance’s ego. What could possibly go wrong here?

Lance frowns. "'At my age'? I'm older than you, you know."

Aren’t you literally not even out of high school right now, Lance? I think that Feather Girl is onto something here.

"Only a little, and you're not a grown-up yet," she declares. "I've seen plenty of grown-ups lose to Duncle. When you battle him tomorrow you'd better be ready. He'll roast your pokemon alive!"

[ ] That last part was said with too much glee for Lance's comfort.

IMO, the last sentence feels like were it expanded slightly, that you could turn it into a standalone paragraph fairly easily. It might make sense to drop in some sort of funny reaction gag from some combination of Lance and his Dragonite there.

They round another corner, and now stand before a huge, heavy metal door. It's tall enough to reach the ceiling of the cave; beside it is a small plastic box that the girl now points to. "When you come tomorrow, just press the button here and say who you are. Duncle will open the doors for you."

Oh, so the Cinnabar Gym is laid out like it is in the anime in this setting, huh? Duly noted then, since you can’t say that it doesn’t have a bit more charm than the average depiction in the franchise.

Lance nods. Easy enough. "Thank you for your help, uh…?"

"Cora," she says, instantly holding out one hand in a greeting.

‘Cora’, huh? Filing that one away, though why do I suspect that that’s a clipping of something larger?

He shakes it, honestly a little surprised at the firmness of her small grip. "Lance."

"Ooh, cool name. Lance the Cape Guy."

"Just Lance is fine, thanks."

Live look at Lance rn:

"I can't wait to watch your battle tomorrow," she beams. "I'll make sure Duncle gets plenty of sleep tonight. He's not very good at sleeping."

"Ah, sounds good."

He hesitates here, brow furrowing even deeper than usual, wanting to do the most polite thing, but also not wanting to overstep anything. In his extremely brief knowledge of Cora, he has the sense she wouldn't mind, though.

Small recommendation to divide up this paragraph here, though it might make sense to be a bit more explicit about what Lance thinks Cora wouldn’t mind, since I admittedly think that I missed what the intent was there.

"And, uh, I'm sorry about your mother," he continues gently. "But I'm glad Blaine was a good enough man to step up and care for you. That takes strength, and I enjoy battles with strong-hearted trainers the most."

I… didn’t really get the vibe that Lance had come down from his earlier annoyance over being called ‘cape guy’. It might have made sense to throw in a sentence at some point earlier remarking that Lance lets the comment go or something like that.

To his immense relief, Cora smiles again, though it's wistful, and so strangely full of peace.

"Thanks, she says. “She was really strong. And Blaine is the best Duncle anyone could ask for. I'm really lucky."

Her charmander tugs on her shorts. She pats its head, scratching behind its jaw.

"Sorry, Draco. You're awesome too, of course."

This one paragraph IMO works significantly better as multiple. It doesn’t necessarily have to be four as suggested here, but it might make sense to put some thought into reflowing things here to make the lines and description stand out a bit more, which I didn’t feel they quite did when all attached to each other.

Lance gives one last look to the charmander's oddly red eyes, and that flaming feather lighting Cora's head. He honestly has so many other questions, but he really needs to return to the hotel to rest up.

And to make sure Clair hasn't conned the front desk staff into giving her champagne. Again.

Wew, so Clair’s got a bit of a wild side, huh? Though I hope she’s not the type to share her drinks with her dragons since otherwise… yeah, that’s going to be quite the bill the day after. o<o

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then," he says, waving over one shoulder.

"Best of luck to you, Cape Guy! You're gonna need it!"

Lance: “(Sure hope she didn’t get this from her ‘Duncle’.)”

<><><>

When he returns to the front lobby, there's still plenty of people milling about. He can hear a band playing on the restaurant deck around back. Clair has succeeded in making a rather large mess of their room, with a dozen half-empty food plates strewn on every flat surface, but she's thankfully already asleep in a food-coma. Nothing is on fire, and no security was called. Success.

Well, I suppose that that’s one way of finding out that she didn’t manage to trick room service into giving her champagne. Even if I’m really starting to suspect that she really did share her food with her dragons.

Though given how abruptly you change time and place, you might have wanted to consider dropping in a hard scene break.

He steps onto the patio for a moment, enjoying the soft night breeze and the ancient sound of waves. He's smiling a little, for once. Battle strategies dance in his head; he can feel his spine tingle, that electric excitement the night before a big match.

A little surprised that Lance’s frame of reference for ‘excited sensations’ isn’t something related to his lizards’ fire given how big Dragon Taming has been in his cultural background. But eh, ‘electric’ is a common enough comparison for that sort of anxious and “butterflies in moment”

Hiding underneath that, in a small corner of his thoughts, is peace. At sixteen, thanks to the solitary nature of Blackthorn's ways and his regimented training, Lance had yet to forge any connections outside of his clan, other than professional ones or mentors for battle. It's fair to say he's never had a friend before.

Maybe that can be different now.

Dragonite: “*What am I? Chopped liver?*” >_>;

Though while this feels decently plausible for a Lance, I kinda wonder if the first paragraph wasn’t quite built up as much throughout this chapter. Like we kinda got a glimpse at some of the things that make Blackthorn different from its surrounding peers, but we didn’t really get a good look at what made it isolating, or what this sort of ‘regimented training’ looked like up until it being mentioned just now.

He tells Dragonite goodnight, in his pokeball, then dreams of victory.

I’d raise a brow at Lance not being the type to be closer to his dragons… but Dragonite weigh a cool 300 kilos on average and Lance presumably doesn’t want to pay for a new bed frame the following morning, so I suppose I can’t really fault him there. :V

Alright, onto the summary where I try to distill a few thousand words of thoughts into something a bit more concise. Thus far, things seem to be taking the “easing into the world” tack at starting things up, and I thought you did a pretty good job both at characterizing figures like Lance and Clair through little things like their mannerisms or internal thoughts and also dangled some tantalizing worldbuilding regarding the world that Lance hailed from as a Dragon Tamer and the rest of the setting at large. All promising omens for things to come.

That said, I did get a distinct sense at times that there were parts of this chapter that could’ve used a bit more polish. The low-hanging fruit for room for improvement in my opinion would be simply nailing down your verb tenses. My assumption is that you’re having the narrator present things “as they happen”, and as such, only the things that are actively happening should be dealt with in present verb tense. Under such a setup, things that already happened in the past, whether five minutes or five years ago need to be explicitly described as happening with past verb tense, otherwise it reads a bit like those things in the past are occurring in the “here and now”. I also thought there were a couple of spots where things were a bit too densely packed for paragraph structure and would work better as multiple ones. As a general rule of thumb, every paragraph should be centered around one “idea” of its own, and whether for dialogue or description, whenever you have more than one in a paragraph, it’s generally for the best to divide things up.

The big area that would require a bit of a bigger lift for improvement would be describing things a bit more in your narration. There’s a number of points in the narration where Lance brings up things from his life as a point of reference that are kinda oblique or vague, and I’m not really sure it was to the chapter’s benefit. Especially since towards the very end, you have that one section where you mention that Blackthorn has cultural mores and training that are more solitary, to the point where Lance doesn’t see himself as having had a proper friend of his own all his life. Being more generous about describing some of those things here and there earlier in the chapter would’ve gone a long ways towards “showing” that dynamic play out and how it affects Lance instead of it feeling more “told” after the fact.

But altogether, I think that in spite of those weaker points, that your story in the end was an enjoyable read @Sastrei . It’s clearly got a lot of work put into it, as I can tell from the illustration you attached in the OP, and you’ve got me curious for what’ll be coming next in my Catnip readings, especially since the next chapter appears to be set further in the past relative to your opening.

Hope the feedback was helpful for you, and I’ll be looking forward to sending another review your way sometime in the near future. ^^

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, managed to get this done a bit faster than planned, but I’ve got my second Catnip Review of The Fire’s Wake up for your reading pleasure:

Chapter 2

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

Kanto Region, Cinnabar Island

Winter, 1985

Ah yes, jumping back in time, I see. I suppose this must be a bit more related to the process of how Blaine became an ‘uncle’. Though you’ve got me interested, so let’s see what that all entailed.

The mirror lies. Or at least that's what Blaine keeps telling himself.

Even though the day outside is overcast – typical of the Island's depressing, if brief, winter – enough evening sunlight is coming through the bathroom window to make his internal declaration words hard to believe. At forty-five years old, it's not like he's a dead man. Why, many of the Island's residents of similar age and gender have proudly stated, "fifty is the new thirty now!"

Oh, so at 45 years old, Blaine’s already a cue ball, huh?

Blaine pulls down on one of the bags hanging under his eyes. That's not entirely from age – he's historically been terrible at sleeping, with a brain that just doesn't seem to shut up, and never has even from childhood.

… Which is a terrible omen for the sorts of health problems this guy’s gonna have later in life.

The worst part of the mirror, though, is the shiny, conspicuous patch of bare skin smack on top of his head.

Yup, I knew it. Though I wonder if his hair’s already white at this point in time or else if it’s a different color.

Blaine hates being bald. With a disgruntled sigh, he palms a small glass bottle on the marble sink and splashes a few drops of tonic into one palm, only to begrudgingly rub it into that same bare patch of head-skin scalp a moment later. Mister Fuji – who of course has a full head of thick, wonderful hair still – says this stuff works miracles. Blaine is so far vehemently unimpressed.

Probably a sign that you should ask Mr. Fuji what else he does in his daily routine, since clearly it’s not just the tonic keeping his hair relatively full at this point in time.

Abruptly, there’s a knock at the front door — nearly causing the bottle of 'miracle' tonic to jostle loose from his hand — there's a knock at the front door. Blaine's charcoal eyes widen even as he frowns in curiosity, the lines around his mouth deepening.

IMO, your first sentence in this paragraph sounds quite a bit smoother with its contents and the emdash reordered a bit.

This is strange for two reasons: one, it's the off-season and hardly anyone visits the Cinnabar Gym in the winter, and two, well – there's not a whole lot of people Blaine talks to, in general. Other than his Pokemon of course, but he has yet to teach his Magmar how to knock prior to entering a room. Human manners are lost on most Pokemon, particularly Fire-types, that live with such vivacity and tenaciousness.

Wait… how would “vivacity and tenaciousness” prevent a Fire-type from picking up on human manners again? Since you’re basically saying that they’re lively and stubborn. It might make sense to throw in some sort of extension with a passing mention about what that looks like. Like are they particularly resistant to changing their own ways? If so, it might be an opportunity to add a parallel to Dragon-types if Blaine and Lance are meant to interact with each other a lot later on in the story.

"Coming," he announces, with a swift clear of his throat. He's still in his gold and red silk bathrobe but he doesn't care as he makes his way to the front door, past looming statues of majestic Fire pokemon from all over the world, their stances and bristling fur seeming to radiate heat.

When he opens the door, he completely forgets about his hair.

Can’t tell whether that’s a sign that Blaine’s surprised or else about to get really embarrassed really fast. Maybe both.

The woman in the entryway is about his height, if slightly shorter. She's wearing a lavender, wide-brimmed hat that hides her eyes. Her shoes were once nice, of the same color, but the scuffs at the toes tell of some recent neglect. Just peeking out beneath a long beige trenchcoat is a suitcase, with a bit of what looks like a sleeve is sticking out of the top of it haphazardly.

Some small suggestions for a rephrasing to make some parts flow a bit smoother. Though hello there, mystery woman.

The circular black glasses clinging to the bridge of Blaine's nose tumble to the ground, landing on the welcome mat. "Lor… Lorraine?"

No hits on Bulbapedia for this name, so I’m going to assume that it’s an OC specific to this story. Time to see what she’s like.

The woman lifts her head now, just enough to reveal a pair of emerald-green eyes, ashen skin and a desperate, if hopeful smile. "Hello, big brother. I hope I'm not bothering you."

Well, I suppose that would explain where Cora comes from. Maybe she’s not Moltres after all.

Blaine blinks, a thousand gears in his mind clinking at once, but he has the right of mind to at least step back and allow her inside.

"Ah, no, not at all. Not much going on around the Island these days, truthfully."

As she steps inside he notices she seems to be favoring one leg. There's also a small, but conspicuous rip in her pantyhose, just beneath the hem of her knee length skirt.

IMO, this one paragraph works better as three separate ones since the events both before and after Blaine’s line are both fairly self-contained.

Something dark sinks into Blaine's stomach. "Is everything alright, Lorraine?"

Obviously not if you’re getting a sinking feeling in your stomach just looking at the clothing damage on your brother, Blaine.

She shrugs as she sets down her suitcase beside the sofa. "Yes and no, I guess."

Blaine: “So in other words, ‘no’.”

Lorraine: “That’s not what I said, Blaine. Just… let me in for a moment and we’ll talk.”

"Not that I don't adore seeing you, sister, but you're not usually one for unannounced visits. Only reason I'm asking, honest," he continues, cementing her welcomed status as best he can.

That She hangs her lavender hat is hung on the series of hooks by the door. Now free, Lorraine shakes loose a head of thick, reddish-blonde hair (Blaine had always been jealous that she got the good-hair genes). She keeps her trenchcoat on though as she looks around the room, pursing her lips slightly, and nodding as if in approval at his decorative tastes.

"Do you have any chamomile tea, by chance?" she asks. A few of her slender fingers reverently trace a stone Arcanine's face as it guards the doorway.

Oh, so Lorraine is also into Fire-types too, huh? Though I left a few suggestions for smoothing out the second paragraph in this section a bit.

Blaine nods. Then waits. Then waits some more, only to finally realize there's no more conversation happening right now. At least, not until tea is involved.

Blaine: “... Well, she clearly can’t be in that much trouble to leave me hanging like this.”

"I'll make some right now!" he announces cheerfully, cutting the decidedly strange mood with forced alacrity. "You still like yours with honey?"

"You remembered," Lorraine says softly, a smile ghosting her lips. She still won't sit down and keeps idly wandering the room, her heels clicking on the tile. "You were always the softie out of the two of us."

Okay, now I’m curious as to whether or not Blaine was always the only Gym Leader of his family. Since this sis of his sure feels like she has a lot of shared interests with him.

"You're my little sister," Blaine intones proudly from the kitchen, putting the kettle on. "Plus, I might be 18 years older than you, but I haven't lost my wits yet. It's my job to take care of you, after all."

Which you’ve done a fantastic™ job at, if my present theory that Cora is Lorraine’s child winds up panning out.

He hears her footsteps follow him into the kitchen now, amid the clinking of porcelain mugs and the first hisses of boiling water. When he turns around she's right behind him in the doorway. He blinks, surprised.

Blaine: “... Lorraine, this isn’t going to lead to you revealing something like that you’re dying of cancer to me, is it?”

Lorraine: “Blaine, let me get to things. Seriously.” >_>;

"I… Well, I was hoping you'd say that," Lorraine all but whispers, her gaze dropping to the floor. Gingerly, she undoes the trio of buttons on her trenchcoat and beneath all that beige canvas fabric is a dark grey blouse that clearly doesn't fit. Why doesn't it fit? Blaine's eyes thin in confusion, it's like her proportions are off, or maybe she's just eaten a really big meal before she arrived –

Oh.

Oh.

Okay, yeah. Cora is Lorraine’s daughter. Though she’s clearly gotten around more than I expected right in the earliest years of adulthood.

"I wasn't showing this much until a few weeks ago, I swear," she continues, laughing a little as she peers down at her rounded stomach. "But you can only hide it so long, I'm afraid."

The kettle is screaming now, and Blaine nearly burns his hand fumbling to remove it from the stove. "I – Lori, I didn't even know. I'm so sorry. Holy jeez, congratulations!"

Blaine: “Also, who’s the father, anyways?” ^^;

That's what you're supposed to say, right? Blaine and Lorraine (yes their parents rhymed their names on purpose; trickery and irony runs in the family) haven't had a bad relationship per se, but they've never been what Blaine had considered close. He's trying his best to handle this like not only a big brother but a decent human being. What's a normal thing to say next? Um – "How far along…?"

"Three or four months, I think," she says, and the smile on her face now is genuine and kind. It makes that hollow look on the doorstep seem lightyears away.

Actually, now that you’re reminding me of that hollow look and the gravestone in the first chapter, that isn’t a good omen for how this pregnancy is going to turn out.

"That's wonderful," Blaine beams. This is his sister. He's going to be an uncle, and that's abruptly the single coolest, most exciting thing to ever happen to him, even if he didn't think it was possible.

"He left," Lorraine says flatly.

Blaine: “Oh. Uh. On second thought, maybe I don’t need to know who the father is.”

Blaine's elation deflates like a punctured balloon. "W-who? The father?"

"We were engaged," she continues, trying to hide her eyes behind her hair as they glisten with tears. "I lived with him, I– he was everything to me. But when I started showing, he left. He didn't want a baby."

Well, Lorraine obviously did given that we know that she winds up carrying her baby to term. But boy did she pick a “winner” of a father there. .-.

And now a new emotion surges in Blaine's chest – this is a veritable kaleidoscope right now, isn't it? It's white-hot, and simmering, even in his voice when he asks: "Why?"

"I don't know," Lorraine says, her voice cracking. She holds one hand to her mouth. "I don't know, Blaine. I feel so stupid. I'm so sorry to come here, I know you have your own life, but I didn't know where else to go, and I–"

I was going ask why Lorraine wouldn’t be looking into collecting child support, though from a casual bit of background searching, this would apparently be depressingly true to life if your Kanto takes after IRL Japan given that nonenforcement of child support payments is apparently rampant over there. TIL.

Her voice is like shards of glass and he silences it with a gentle, life-affirming hug. She instantly starts crying into his shoulder, and even though his brain is still reeling there is a definite grounding in the raw, human pain of her sobs. They stand there in the kitchen doorway. He's never been good at this. Should he say something? What can he say?

inb4 he says something that manages to make Lorraine feel worse.

He decides to just be a human with her, to share in this moment of darkness with no expectations. And he doesn't know how long passes before those sobs start to ease, but they do.

"I've got you, Lori," he manages hoarsely. "Both of you. Don't you worry about a thing."

Famous Last(-ish) Words, I can already tell.

She seems to only have the strength to nod against his shoulder. It's easy to guide her down the hall to the bed; he brings her suitcase with them, and leaves it in the room with her as he begins to close the door.

"Thank you, big brother," she whispers.

He smiles a little as he closes the door. "Get some rest. I'll be here when you wake up."

Live look at Blaine rn:

Click. Door closes. Blaine stares down at his bare feet, toes squishing into the grey carpet. Numbly, he manages to get to the living room couch and collapses into it like so much jam preserves. Apricot, likely – that's his favorite. He absently realizes he's hungry; his stomach groans at him like a perturbed frog.

"Well, shit," he declares, to no one. "Time to get to work."

inb4 Blaine cleans out the pantry out of stress.

Johto Region, Northern Blackthorn Mountains

Winter, 1985

Oh, so back to Lance and maybe Clair, huh? Time to see what they were like as little tykes.

Just because he's not four yet doesn't mean he can't be the leader.

"Come on!" Lance shouts, waving one arm with enthusiasm. His voice echoes through the trees and forms a huge puff of steam from his lips. The air up here this time of year is like breathing ice; Lance doesn't mind the cold, but it does mean he's bundled in about a half dozen layers of clothing his mother won a hard-fought battle to put on him ("Hold still, you wiggly Dratini," she'd told him through simultaneous laughs and sighs).

Though it keeps him warm, Lance feels slow and clunky as he clambers over piles of ancient boulders on all fours, his face beaming, gloved fingers fighting for purchase on the uneven granite surface.

IMO, your second paragraph is long enough that you should seriously consider making it two separate ones, especially since IMO, the bit from “Though it keeps [...]” on works pretty well standalone.

It's stupid he doesn't have wings. Dragonite have wings. Why can't he?

Assuming that this is about your Dratini, it technically has those things on the sides of its head that kinda look like wings? Clearly non-functional, but still.

This thought causes a momentary frown as he shoves his foot into a stony opening, using the leverage to launch himself up the last bit of hill and finally onto flat earth.

For a second, I thought that Lance was about to fall into a cave or something like that.

Behind him, the grown-up members of his clan have chosen to walk the premade, smooth dirt path to the same location, which isn't nearly as fun as what Lance has done. Grown-ups are so boring.

Dunno if Lance already has his Dratini at this point, but if it does, I suppose it’s a good thing that it’s not out in the open with him, since this weather seems like it’d be death for most Dragon-types.

All of that is quickly forgotten, though, when his wide eyes – an iron-grey his father has mentioned reflects his spirit well – land upon the still, half-frozen lake amid the clearing just in front of him. It's midday, and the sunlight makes the ice sparkle brilliantly.

"Whoa," Lance breathes, creating another puff of breath.

So, Lance is a stubborn type, huh? Or at least that’s what I assume is the implication of that throwaway bit there. I suppose you can’t say that it’s not fitting for a Lance or someone who will be calling the shots for a bunch of dragons later in life.

This is the first year he's been old enough to accompany the clan elders to this place. A Blackthorn clan tradition, the Midwinter Meet is held on the shortest day of the year, when sunlight holds the least sway – in order to honor the natural powers of cold and ice, one of the Dragon's most prolific weaknesses.

Baxcalibur:

Lance: “Yeah, yeah, go away. You’re not even native to this region.” >_>;

No one type of Pokemon is strongest; Lance has already learned from Kaburagi that nature keeps itself balanced that way, but both Pokemon and people can grow stronger over time by consciously acknowledging their weaknesses. This, he's learned from his father, who ruffles Lance's windswept reddish hair as he strides by.

Well there’s a bit of wisdom that Lance promptly chucked into the trash after he got older if some of his Gen 1 dialogue is anything to go by.

"Can we start th'fire yet?" Lance asks, jostling from one foot to the other to stay warm.

It's Kaburagi that answers; though in his early sixties now, the respected leader seems no worse for wear after the hour-long hike. He gives Lance a mischievous grin as they all head towards the lake.

"Already too cold, are we, young one?"

"Nuh-uh," Lance retorts promptly. "Not cold. But I want Matron to make stew. 'S lunchtime."

At first I was going to ask what was up with Lance’s dialogue, but then I realized that you mentioned earlier that he’s four at this point in time, and this is probably mimicking the speech patterns of a very young child. Nice touch there.

Kaburagi pats him on the back. "Then make yourself useful and gather firewood! We all have a part to play, including you!"

Lance's face becomes awash with singular, pointed determination. "Right!"

And with that, he's dashing into the woods, gaze scanning the ground for appropriately sized twigs and branches. Behind him, he hears the clan members conversing, dragging the old, worn wooden benches around the fire pit, setting up the cast iron pot. Excitement bubbles in his stomach. Or maybe that's just hunger.

My money’s on ‘hunger’, really.

Turns out that the trees right around the clearing are pretty skinny and useless – Lance had only managed to shove like about four twigs into his satchel, not nearly enough to impress anyone – so he presses onward. There probably should be a nagging thought in the back of his mind to not go too far – but at this point in his life, he's been reminded of safety less times than he's been reminded to show bravery and strength, so the latter wins easily.

Totally a good omen for how this firewood mission is going to go if even the narration itself is implying that Lance is starting to get into unsafe territory.

Eventually he finds it: the perfect pile of dead branches, nestled beside a sprawling, barren tree. It looks like a wooden mountain to him. In fact there are multiple mounds of dead wood here – they almost seem to form a line, or a fence that curves out of sight, beyond a stony outcrop nearby.

With is a sign that it didn’t form naturally since you should be turning around and leaving very very quickly, Lance.

Then Lance is instantly and haphazardly stuffing as many pieces of wood as he can into his satchel. He's humming a song to himself, the one his mother often sings while tending their garden in the summer.

When he picks up the last one – the bag is really heavy now – he stops humming.

Beneath the empty space left by the branch, something moves.

Lance: “Um… h-hello?”

Lance freezes in place. Sheer surprise wants him to stumble backwards but even being a kid still, he knows this is a wiser decision than turning tail and running.

What's sitting there is black, mostly. The longer he stares at it, he can see the black is surrounded by something green and… well, scaly, Lance thinks. It kind of reminds him of pictures of a Dragonair's skin. This thought instantly comforts him – Dragons are kind and strong protectors, after all – and any fear that remains now turns into sizzling curiosity.

Oh, so Lance found a Tyranitar, that’s just… lovely.

So he pokes it with a stick.

Beneath his boots, the ground thrums. Snow falls from the nearby trees. And in the middle of all that darkness he poked, a vibrant yellow eye twice the size of his head snaps open.

And thus, Lance developed a crippling fear of Tyranitar for the rest of his life.

Its pupil is round and so deeply black, he fears he might fall in and never come out. Those mounds of wood start to shift and shiver; their collapse sounds like a sudden rainstorm. He sees more green skin – it's everywhere among the grey, naked trees. Only now does Lance realize whatever is in front of him is also over there, which means this thing is huge, and maybe those aren't tree branches after all, but horns?

Run? Scream? Wet his pants? All three?

At this rate, it sounds like he’s on track to “all three”. Though I take that back about the Tyranitar with how big this thing sounds. What on earth is it? Rayquaza?

No, not an option. If this is a Dragon, he can't run.

I’ll admit that I didn’t see that one coming, but I suppose that’s very much in line with some of Lance’s canonical depictions later in life since… yeah, if nothing else, you can’t say that Lance isn’t ballsy at times.

Instead, Lance bows. So deeply his torso is parallel with the earth, and partially because if he just doesn't look at it, maybe it'll go away.
"S-sorry," he chitters; the cold and fear are combining to wage war with the steadiness of his voice and jaw. "For p-poking you, I mean. Hope it didn't hurt."

Rayquaza: “*It was less ‘hurt’ and more ‘uncomfortable annoyance’, really.*”

Also, can’t say I was ever expecting to get a chance to use that emote while being relatively in character in this story. :V

He keeps staring at the ground, eyes wide, listening. Possibly waiting to be devoured whole. There's more of that rainlike wood sound, more vibration beneath his boots, shaking his bones. And a slow, calm hiss like a sigh.

Only when silence remains does Lance look up. Through the falling snow, he barely catches a glimpse of flashing emerald green, smudges of yellow and red, before the thing's long body disappears above the low clouds.

Yup, I called it… eventually. Though thankfully Rayquaza in this setting is a much better sport than his Brawl counterpart, since that one probably would’ve eaten Young!Lance whole. ^^;

"Whoa," Lance says again. He's smiling as he picks up the last stick. The satchel is so heavy he has to drag it on the ground, leaving a trail in the snow.

Within a few minutes, he makes it back to the clearing, although he's calling out much sooner: "Kaburagi! Elder! Father!"

Lance: “Look up! Look up! There’s a giant green noodle thingy flying into space!”

All three men are seated in a semicircle around the stone pit. Kaburagi finishes sipping from a wooden mug, then flashes that bright, gap-toothed smile at Lance again. "That bag weighs more than you, boy! Well done–"

Lance: “You… didn’t… see it, did you?”

"I saw something!" Lance announces breathlessly, finally dropping the bag at the unlit fire pit. One hand is pointing furiously to the sky. "It was sooooo big, and it flew away when I poked its eye with my stick!"

This garners mixed reactions from the three men before him, ranging from mirth to keen interest. The Elder is first to respond, his long braided silver hair hanging down over his shoulders as he bends to more clearly see Lance's face. It's well known the Elder is going blind, although not completely. He motions Lance closer, who obeys, still gulping down breath.

"What did you see?" the Elder asks, his weathered voice intent. "And be specific."

Lance: “Am… I in trouble right now?”

Elder: “Not necessarily. Though I still need to know what on earth you saw.”

Honestly, this is more intimidating to Lance than that thing in the woods. He swallows hard, digging the toe of his boot into the snow.

"Um. It was real long. And green. And had a big yellow eye. I think its mouth was red. I thought it was gonna eat me, maybe," he finishes, somewhat sheepishly.

Lance: “You know. Green noodle. Giant. Flies up really, really high-?”
Elder: “Thank you, Lance. I think that that I’ve heard enough.”

Father, Kaburagi, and the Elder all exchange a tense, silent glance. Lance has that feeling he gets often, like the grown-ups are talking without talking.

"He's ready," Father finally says. He sounds sad, somehow.

… Wait, so not getting messily devoured after poking a dragon god in the eye is a potential rite of passage among Blackthorn’s Dragon Tamers? Remind me to stick to Joey’s Rattata fanclub.

Kaburagi breathes a huff of protest. "He's too young!"

"It's the Dragon's decision," the Elder interjects. "On today, of all days? No coincidences. We must obey."

- Meanwhile from 15,000 meters above -
Rayquaza: “*I’d like to just point out that I left because my eyes were irritated from getting poked with a stick. I didn’t exactly do cartwheels in the sky for this kid-*”

Elder: “We must obey. No questions asked.”

Their voices are so weird. Lance doesn't like it. Besides, he's even colder and hungrier than he was before the Big Yellow Eye. He starts stacking his branches in the stone pit, pretending not to listen. It's not the cold that makes him shiver this time.

"He's ready," he hears Father repeat.

Lance: “Wait, ready for what again?” ^^;

Kanto Region, Cinnabar Island

Fall, 1986

Ah yes, time to see how Cora’s been coming along, huh?

"She's ready," the doctor is saying. He sounds almost excited; Lorraine is anything but, sprawled on a small hospital bed in a messy tangle of limbs and wavy strawberry hair, breath hissing through gritted teeth. A stethoscope is being held to her bulging abdomen; she hopes her voice makes the man go deaf.

"She can't be ready," Lorraine growls, but she's also crying too, because of hormones, because of this shitty situation – "It's too early, isn't it?"

Ah yes, totally a good sign that Lorraine is totally going to survive this childbirth, I can already tell.

"Well, technically, yes," the doctor divulges. He's a portly man in his sixties, the only obstetric specialist on Cinnabar Island, or else Lorraine would've switched him out months ago. "Four weeks is just on the edge of preterm labor, but many infants do well at this stage."

I think that you’re missing an “early” here, since at 4 weeks total into pregnancy, a baby is still a clump of cells that is not viable outside the womb and Lorraine was already established as not being aware she was pregnant that early on. If you wanted to come down hard on a week of pregnancy to put down here “36” would tick off all the checkboxes for what your description is batting at here.

"'Many'?" She mocks incredulously. "This is my daughter, not a statistic! Has anyone found my brother?"

A nurse somewhere nearby speaks up, softly: "We're trying, ma'am, but it seems he hasn't returned from his trip as scheduled."

Ah yes, Blaine gets to be out of town while his sister goes through premature labor. Wonderful timing there. Though it makes me wonder what on earth happened to him, since based off his depiction in the last scene with Lorraine, Blaine seemed like the sort of person who would’ve move heaven and earth to attempt to be at Lorraine’s side at this moment, so I can only wonder what held him up.

Of course not, Lorraine thinks, her head sagging back against the stiff pillow with its crunchy paper case. Granted, labor four weeks early was not part of her or Blaine's plans, but he just had to go on that stupid expedition up Cinnabar's highest mountain with that friend of his, Mr. Fuji.

The timing is just right, he'd told her, that sparkly light of curiosity and discovery in his eyes that made him seem like a kid again. If we leave tomorrow, we can have a perfect view of the comet!

I can already tell that Blaine will wind up kicking himself for his decision to go on that trip for many years after this point. Though he didn’t even think of hiring a ride Charizard or something like that for the event that Lorraine went into labor unexpectedly? Since you’d think that it’d surely have crossed his mind as a possibility that something like this could happen.

"Her heartbeat is healthy and steady," the portly doctor is telling Lorraine, for once saying something she actually wants to hear. "Right now, there is no urgent rush. Might I suggest some controlled breathing? It may slow the contractions."

Doc, you realize that it was all but stated that Lorraine is dead in the present day, right? How is this not the definition of tempting fate here? ^^;

Controlled breathing. Okay. Lorraine can manage that. She purses her lips, brow furrowed, and inhales slowly.

It took a lot of controlled breathing when she first packed her suitcase, intending to head to Cinnabar.

Even more when she had walked aimlessly around her apartment back in Celadon – past gaping, haunted holes in the wall – desperately trying to believe she wasn't left alone, or there was a note somewhere, or that her fiance's departure was simply a mistake.

There hadn't been a note, and it wasn't a mistake.

Not really sure those are the sorts of things you want to be thinking about at a time when you need to control your breathing, but boy has this woman been through a lot. .-.

"I can do that," she whispers, the pain in her pelvis easing into a dull ache. "Just, please, someone find Blaine. He's up the mountain studying comets. He has to be here."

I was going to ask why on earth they didn’t just call him, but right. 1986. If personal electronics in Pokéworld tracked how they developed IRL, Blaine most likely wouldn’t have one with him at this point in time.

Her eyes are closed now, in meditative concentration, but she hears that same nurse with the sweet voice: "Yes, Ms. Katsura. I'll send someone right away."

Oh, I see you went with the “JPN Localization Name as Surname” naming route for this story. Though that now makes me wonder if Lance and Clair are the “Wataru”s (even if I can’t say I’ve ever heard of that being used as a surname) or the “Ibuki”s in this story.

This wasn't supposed to be happening.

Lorraine’s dying, isn’t she?

Blaine considered himself a man of above average intelligence. When planning this expedition – which had taken weeks – he and Mr. Fuji had been sure to check and double check every weather forecast. Clear skies, they said. At most, a stray cloud. Perfect comet-viewing conditions.

Definitely not sheets of biting snow.

Well, scratch that on Lorraine dying, just yet anyways. But yeah, weather forecasts be like that, Blaine.

"Fuji!" Blaine yells, but his voice is getting hoarse by now, and the wind's grown so loud he knows the sound probably isn't carrying that far anyway. Even though he's wearing thick, rugged boots, his toes are getting cold. And forget about his fingers, or rather, small icicles – his packing list had definitely not included gloves.

… Wait, why on earth does he not have his Pokémon out with him right now to press his fingers up against to try and stave off frostbite? Since Flame Body Magmar aren’t exactly rare...

About ten minutes ago he still had sight of the nearest trail marker. He doesn't know where Fuji is, and until now finding his friend had been his priority. But there's so much snow now – Blaine is squinting through it, his glasses having been tossed from his face by the wind ages ago – that he can't see the marker anymore.

- Meanwhile, Blaine’s Pokéball wiggles -
Blaine’s Magmar: “*Blaine, I’m literally right here!*” >_>;
Blaine: “Not now, Magmar, I’m trying to find Mr. Fuji before this winter storm gets to him!”

He pulls his arms inside his sweater vest for warmth. Vaguely, he senses the way he came from, but it's entirely possible that's just fool's hope.

It has to be good enough. He trudges forward, one laborious step at a time.

I’m… admittedly not sure why Blaine doesn’t have his Fire-types out at the moment here, since you’d think that a moment just like this would be where they’d be most needed. If for whatever reason, he doesn’t have said Fire-types with him for this trip or else they’re inadequate for the moment, it probably makes sense to explicitly say that in the narration in some capacity, since it feels a bit weird that we’re watching a guy who was explicitly stated as training a Magmar getting frostbitten in live-time.

Many miles away, Lance is also very cold.

His iron-grey eyes are wide with hesitation as he stares down at the lakeshore. The toes of his boots are right in front of the transition point the edge of the bank, where cold sand gradually gives way to sprawling ice. It's late enough in the fall season, and high enough in the mountains, that the freeze has already begun.

A small suggestion for rewording a small part of this paragraph, though I see Lance is a wee bit out of his element as a Dragon Tamer right now. :V

He was here earlier this year, too. He's spent several months since then beholding listening to tales from the clan elders, about how his personal contact with the Dragon God meant he'd been 'chosen'. The elders had made him draw the Pokemon he'd seen, to the best of his ability – which as a three-year-old was rather limited, but enough.

Why am I getting the distinct suspicion that Lance in this setting didn’t get to have a proper childhood? Since from the way his role is being thrust on him when he’s a toddler just barely capable of retaining long-term thoughts… yeah.

Apparently, the Dragon he'd encountered had never been seen in the Blackthorn mountains before; when it chose to visit Johto, which it rarely did, it nested itself on the opposite side of the region in a very old tower built by people from another land. So Lance finding it where he had was downright miraculous.

Rayquaza: “*What? The tower was drafty that day, okay?*”

Despite all of their talking, Lance is still a little confused. But he knows that today, because of his chosen status, is his trial.

I’m honestly somewhat surprised that Lance has any understanding of what he’s about to go to when he’s literally not even four at this point. Like a decent swath of kids aren’t fully potty-trained before they’re four. .-.

Usually, young ones underwent their trials around age ten. That age was safer, and had a higher success rate. Even so, several other young ones in the clan still hadn't fulfilled their trials the first time. He remembers their defeated returns to the city, the pained looks on their faces, the sheer exhaustion in their eyes.

… Sure is a good thing that the elders think it’s a good idea to subject a three-year old to this, huh?

Though he's trying his best not to show it, this makes Lance super nervous.

Yeah, I’ll bet if he somehow already has an understanding of what this is going to involve at his tender young age.

But all the elders are behind him, figuratively and literally, right now. Dozens of them, in their ceremonial blue, ocher, and black uniforms, dotted between the evergreen trees. He can feel their eyes on him. No one speaks. The Matron is singing a low, slow song in a language he only partially recognizes.

‘The Matron’, huh? Guess we’ll be finding a bit about who she is in short order, though if dragons in this setting take after the way a lot of reptiles IRL behave, I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising that there’d be women prominently in their ceremonial structure.

He hears the crunching of snow; though his gaze is fixated ahead, he senses Father beside him. A familiar low, quiet voice tells him:

"It's time."

Lance swallows hard, but he nods. Then, step by step, he walks onto the frozen lake, alone.

Lance: “... Boy do I sure hope that there wasn’t a warm snap anytime recently.”

"It's time," the doctor is saying now. He pulls his stethoscope out of his ears and wraps it around his neck. All traces of his relaxed demeanor are gone; his puffy, red face is tense with urgency. "I'm sorry, Lorraine. She can't wait any longer."

Lorraine’s not going to leave this hospital room alive, is she?

The cool towel on her forehead is doing little to stem the sweat. Lorraine is grabbing fistfuls of the aseptic white sheet beneath her, twisting her hands until her knuckles are white, too.

"My brother?" she manages, though it's more of a growl.

This time, it's not just the nurse's voice, but a small, kind hand on her shivering shoulder. "We're working on it, ma'am. It seems there was a freak snowstorm up on the mountain tonight. But I'm sure your brother is alright."

Lorraine: “You see, lady. The very fact that you’re saying this means that my brother’s probably not alright.” >_>;
Nurse: “He’s a Fire-type trainer, just how much trouble could he be in right now?”

Why in all the hells would they tell her this now? As if labor alone in a room full of strangers isn't enough –

Translation: Your life is in serious danger at the moment, Lorraine.

"Don't worry about that right now," comes the doctor's voice. Lorraine doesn't hate him as much anymore. "I need you to push."

With a scream, she does as she's told.

Let’s see how good ol’ Blaine’s been doing right about now anyways-

Blaine's legs are jelly. His jaw aches from chattering teeth.

I have to push on, he tells himself. There's a sense of tiredness in his bones that he didn't think could exist, like he's wearing a one-ton backpack. His eyes are heavy; he can't feel his fingers anymore. Either he's going deaf or the wind is dying down, he isn't sure which.

- Meanwhile, Blaine’s Pokéball holster rocks violently -
Magmar: “*Blaine! For crying out loud! I’m right here! (Or at least I am until the story explicitly says otherwise.)*” >.<

He forces his gaze upward, through the whirling snowflakes. He blinks. There are no stars, not even a moon, certainly not any comets – but just behind the edge of a distant peak, something starts to glow.

He blinks again, almost certain he's hallucinating. The glow remains. It's a reddish-orange, the color of flames.

Oh, so this is the Moltres who saved Blaine’s life-

… Waaaaaaaait, it’s that Charmander who’s really the Moltres in disguise, huh?

Despite everything, Blaine smiles. It's goofy and lopsided. His brain isn't working too great right now and the only thought he can coherently form is I like flames. Just enough feeling returns to his legs for him to take more steps. The light is closer now, cutting though the cold darkness brilliantly; he finds himself reaching for it, with those fingers he can't feel.

"What are you?" He asks the flames. They're taking shape now - a pair of wings, a graceful neck, a long beak. They don't answer, but he still follows. "How much farther?"

Moltres: “*... Bruh, have you seriously never cracked open a mythology text before? Big firebird, dazzling flash of flames with every beat of my wings…?*”

Blaine: “Look, I’m freezing to death as we speak, alright? Excuse me if I’m not making out fine details all that well.” >_>;
Blaine’s Magmar: “*Yeah, no thanks to your brilliant idea to not let me out to help you.*” >.<

They don't answer that, either. But their warmth is reason enough to keep going.

Moltres: “*Come on, old man. Before you become any more of a popsicle at this rate.*”

"How much farther?" Lance asks no one. He has to make it across the lake, by any means necessary. He's been walking for what feels like hours – it's really only a few minutes, but fear stretches time thin for a three year old. During the trial, you're not supposed to look back to the shore, so he doesn't.

Lance: “... I sure hope that someone brought a strong swimmer for if the ice breaks under my feet.”

Not when he starts hearing cracks in the ice. Not even when he dares to gaze down at his feet, only to see liquid water a few inches under a thin, glasslike casing. Slightly ahead of him, the water starts to ripple a little, like there's something swimming under there. A Pokemon?

Yeah, I see that Blackthorn’s Dragon Clan never updated their rites of passage for OSHA compliance.

Another step – the breath leaves his lungs. His eyes sting; up becomes down and he's plunged into a world of cold, senses bombarded on all sides with crushing, frigid water, colder than anything he's ever felt, slamming up his nose and down the back of his throat. Somewhere in a corner of his mind he remembers he should swim, but he can't breathe, and it's so dark here, and his feet are so far from the bottom. He coughs but all that does is release bubbles.

Well then. I should’ve expected this after the mention of the ice cracking last paragraph, but this still managed to catch me off guard.

Bubbles float. Bubbles go up.

Chest burning, Lance tries to do the same.

Lance: “Note to self: if I survive this, tell mom that dad’s not allowed to drag me along to any of these ‘trials’ for forever.” X_X

Something soft is under Blaine's cheek, and heavenly warm. He pries his eyes open to see a blazing electric sign above him – "Hosp." What's a hosp? There's a plume of fiery feathers, and they move now, slightly – "ital" is behind them. Oh, okay. Hospital. That makes more sense.

Oh the irony of Blaine getting hospitalized by a winter storm of all things. Even if I’m still not fully sure how he managed to get himself into this situation.

Also, yeah. I can already tell that Lorraine is going to die with him not being there for her and Blaine is going to take it hard and become a ‘duncle’ in the process.

What doesn't make any sense at all is that he's clearly on the back of a Moltres. A Moltres. It is looking back at him calmly, over one folded wing, now that they've landed. He feels paralyzed by its gaze, though there is no malice whatsoever in its ancient, sky-blue eyes. If it could talk, it looks like it would be saying, 'anytime now, strange human.'

Blaine: “... How on earth are you not drawing more attention right now?”

Moltres: “*Again, anytime now, human.*” >v>;

"Ah, right," Blaine blurts, feeling his cheeks flush with embarrassment. Probably rude to keep laying on the back of a legendary Pokemon now that he's awake. He expects to feel sore as he slides to the ground, given he just nearly froze to death, but honestly there's not a single twinge of pain anywhere in his body.

I kinda wonder if this would’ve worked better with a short speech tag for Blaine and then having the rest of the following paragraph cut off into its own, though admittedly this time around I was a bit short on concrete suggestions to make.

He turns to face the Pokemon now, and reflexively puts a hand over his heart. It is no exaggeration to say he's waited his whole life for this sight. Every single depiction of the beast falls pathetically short. His other hand reaches out tentatively; he's a child again, petting a Growlithe for the first time.

Moltres meets his palm with the side of its head, which makes Blaine weep openly. Twenty minutes ago he was fairly certain he was going to die. Now he's in front of a hospital with his fingers in those impossibly flaming feathers.

"Beauty," he mutters numbly.

I kiiiiinda wonder if this would’ve had more impact if we got to see more of Blaine’s longing to meet Moltres one day. Especially since it was mentioned earlier that he had a collection of statues of various Fire-types. It might have been cute to foreshadow this a bit by showing off that Blaine’s most prized one was his Moltres statue and have a little back and forth between him and Lorraine about how he hopes someday to just be able to see Moltres in person.

When Moltres straightens its lithe neck again, he's left with one of those feathers, barely-there and gently warm in his hand. The bird looks past him, towards the building's entrance, and Blaine follows its gaze, clutching the feather protectively. Was he brought here because Moltres thought he needed medical attention? He felt fine though, but maybe the Pokemon hadn't known that.

Oh, so that’s how Cora got her Moltres feather, huh?

"Thank y–"

It's that quick. In a shower of embers, drifting lazily towards the ground, the bird is gone.

Still clutching the feather to his heart, Blaine sinks to his knees. He feels wholly and completely unworthy, but just as grateful, and just as full of warm, thrumming life.

Blaine: “Whew. Talk about an act of divine intervention there. Absolutely nothing could ruin this moment-”

"Mister Katsura!"

Blaine: “... Dammit. I just had to tempt fate at the end there, huh?” >.<

Someone is shouting his name; his mind is like scorched earth right now, but the sheer urgency and panic in that shout brings him to his senses. He stands up just as he spots a nurse running towards him, pointing frantically towards the hospital entrance.

"There you are! Please hurry! Your sister is having her baby!"

Well, at least he made it in the end to see Cora’s birth. Even if in the end, I’m not really convinced that Lorraine is making it past this chapter in one piece.

This does the opposite of what Blaine thinks it should, really. There's no fear, no surprise. Just a pleasant, quiet warmth, similar to that feather in his hand.

"Thank you," he says. "Please, take me."

Time to see how fast that pleasant, quiet warmth goes swiftly out the window.

The sunlight is just above Lance's head. He didn't know his muscles could hurt this much. He flails frantically upwards, towards what he hopes is the surface. His feet keep kicking; his winter clothes are so heavy, and they keep pulling him back faster than he can go up. There's black at the corners of his vision. His chest is burning. He kicks again, but his eyes are closing. One last kick, one last push -

I can only imagine the incredibly awkward conversations that must’ve happened between Mr. and Mrs. Wataru/Ibuki/[whatever] after all of this, since how do you even begin to explain how you almost drowned your son as part of a traditional rite when he hasn’t even made it into preschool yet?

His right foot finds purchase on something. Then his left. Something else - or maybe the same something? - wraps around his waist, not to hurt, but to lift. Lance explodes out of the water, coughs wracking his small body when his lungs realize air is available again. Just as quickly as he's out of the water, he slams back onto solid ice, turning over onto all fours, breath sawing in and out of his throat in great heaves.

Oh, he got bailed out by a Dragonite trained by one of the others with him, huh?

He's soaked, obviously, and his red hair is swept all over his face and eyes. Shivering, he pulls it back with one hand and blinks rapidly, which is a weird feeling since his eyeballs are completely numb.

Coiled in front of him, the tip of its cerulean tail flicking curiously, is a young Dratini. Its wide, dark eyes blink at him, their edges glinting in the evening sunlight. Lance gapes at it in awe; he realizes absently this Pokemon really shouldn't be here, it's way too cold, but so is he, and he thinks he shouldn't be here, either. Already they have something in common.

Huh, wouldn’t have thought that a Dratini could manage this, but I suppose they’re nothing to scoff at in this setting even with 1.8m of length.

Lance’s Dad: “Wow, he really is just chosen for this.”

Lance: “Dad, seriously?! That’s what you’re worried about right now?!” >.<

With great difficulty due to all the shivers, Lance points to the shoreline, where he hopes his family is waiting.

"Thank you," he rasps, with one more cough. "Please, take me."

- Beat moment -

Lance: “... You do know where my family is, right?”

The blackness behind his eyes wins, now. As he passes out onto the ice, the Dratini catches him, easing his limp body onto his back. It leaves a winding trail in the snow as they head for the shore.

Wait, does this setting interpret Dratini’s dex measurement as being its height while standing in a neutral pose? Since I’d have never pegged Dratini as being big enough to carry a human child from its depictions in the anime.

"Where the hell have you been?!"

Blaine deserves that. Lorraine's words are mostly roars. This whole day is a blur; he doesn't have it in him to feel overwhelmed, or guilty, or useless. He observes the chaos of the delivery room in quiet veneration. Never before has he been so acutely aware of life itself, both its power and fragility. His sister is seething, but it's hard to tell what's anger and what's raw, unfiltered strength as his one and only niece enters the world.

Blaine: “In my defense, it’s 1986 and I didn’t exactly have a way of getting a message off the mountain quickly even if there weren’t a winter storm going on.”

Lorraine: “Seriously? What on earth even kept you out there?” [unimpressed]
Blaine: “Well, I was trying to find Mr. Fuji and being kept a bit busy freezing to death, so—”

- Beat moment -
Blaine: “... Right, Mr. Fuji’s still up there. Kinda forgot all about him until just now—”

Lorraine: “Blaine, don’t you dare!”

"I'm here now," Blaine tells both of them. He's still holding Moltres' feather in one hand, and it's still flaming with an impossible gentleness. The other takes his sister's hand and squeezes.

Blaine: “... I at least made it when it counted?” ^^;

Lorraine's head sags back onto the bed in pure relief. The hospital staff rush around in silent, rehearsed movements – scissors here, a blanket there. And with a sharp, ear-piercing wail, she is handed her tiny human, all wiggles and fussy fists popping in and out of the soft fabric.

"Hello, Cora," Lorraine says.

Blaine: “... Wait, you already had a name for her all ready to go all this time?” .-.
Lorraine: “Obviously, yes. What did you think I was doing other than compressions for the past half day?” >_>;

All traces of suffering have vanished from her face. She beams at her daughter through strands of strawberry hair, just beginning to catch the last rays of sunlight from the ward's one and only window.

"Cora?" Blaine echoes, testing the name's sound. He smiles as he says it.

"It means 'heart'," Lorraine tells him, proudly.

That one is news to me. Is this a clipping of something like ‘corazón’? Or else what language was this drawn from? Though hilariously enough, ‘cora’ itself fits the fire theming that Blaine’s got going on if you’re willing to get into more obscure Iberian languages.

Considering his glasses are somewhere up on the mountain, Blaine squints a little as he leans down to see his niece. She is understandably upset, having just left the quiet confines of her one and only home to enter into this cold, loud new world, and she is unrestrained in telling everyone just how upset she is.

"Blaine," Lorraine says, a little warily, "is your hand on fire?"

Blaine: “Wait, what-? No. Why on earth would my hand be on fire-?”

He holds up the flaming, golden feather, turning it this way and that for all three of them to see. Well, just he and his sister, really. Cora hasn't opened her eyes yet.

Blaine: “... Right, that’s a thing.”

It occurs to him in a crash: Moltres hadn't brought him here for medical attention.

No, he was here for a greater purpose, indeed.

- Meanwhile, up on the mountain in the winter storm -
Fuji: “Blaine? Hello? Are you out there?”

"It's a gift," Blaine decides. Cora's itty bitty fingers are opening and closing; he slips the stem of the feather between them, when he can, and much to his delight, she holds onto it instantly, clutching it close to her chest. "A gift from a friend."

Lorraine: “Blaine, what sort of friend just has something like this lying around?” .-.
Blaine: “A very, very unusual one. I’ll… explain a bit once you’re feeling a bit better.” ^^;

When Lance awakens, he sees fire.

Before him is a blazing stone hearth; he groggily recognizes it as the Elder's den, where the clan often gathers for meetings or meals. Lance, though, is lying on the floor, on a pile of blankets at least a foot thick, and beneath one of similar size. There's still a lingering cold in his fingers and toes, but it's so much less intense than before he'd passed out, before he'd been rescued–

… I just realized, but is the narration in this story meant to be written from a limited or omniscient perspective? Since if it’s specifically a limited perspective, Lance probably wouldn’t have known he was being carried along by Dratini unless he fully passed out while Dratini was carrying him.

The memory bursts to life like a firework, and despite his woozy head he shoots up straight, scanning the room with wide grey eyes. They soften a moment later, though, because stretched out around him, in a gentle curve, is the dratini from the lake. It looks like it's just waking up with him, slowly raising its head and swiveling the white fins at its cheeks. At Lance's gaze, it lets out a small, curious coo.

For both Lance and the Dratini, really.

"He hasn't left your side once," Kaburagi is saying, strolling into the den barefoot, a broad smile beneath his white mustache. "Barely lets anyone get close to you, in fact. I've never seen such a remarkable bond before."

Wow, maybe Lance really is chosen by Rayquaza or something, since he sure seems to have a lot of things breaking his way here.

Lance meets the dratini's eyes, feeling his own start to well with tears of shame. "But I didn't finish the trial, Kabu. I failed."

"Failed?" The elder laughs, taking a seat in his favorite wooden rocking chair, the creaking noise instantly familiar and comforting. "My boy, you're now the youngest Blackthorn Clan member to ever bond with a Dragon. Why there was a lone dratini swimming in the lake this time of year is a complete mystery, but the Elder and Matron both believe your meeting was fated."

He bows his head now, reverently. [ ]

"The Dragon God's wisdom prevails. The two of you are destined for great things. If only your grandfather could see you now."

I would suggest breaking up your second paragraph into at least two paragraphs of dialogue and one of description that would be expanded a bit relative to what you presently have.

Slowly, Lance's sense of dark failure becomes alight with curiosity, then realization, then a spark of excitement. He shakes the hair from his eyes and smiles a little.

"You mean, I– I've got a dratini now? Really?"

Lance: “Holy cow, I have a Dratini! This is the best day ever!”

As if in confirmation, the pokemon's blue tail lifts up, then flops across his lap like a seatbelt, the very tip twirling contentedly.

"More accurately," Kaburagi is grinning again, "the dratini has you."

Not the most common tack taken in Pokémon training dynamics, but considering how Pokémon are crazy powerful and Dratini and its evolutions specifically… yeah, I think Kaburagi’s probably onto something here.

Alright, onto those overall thoughts:

I wasn’t sure of what to make of how we were going back further in time relative to the beginning, but in the end, I think that it mostly works, especially since it helped to fill in some of the gaps from Chapter 1 that were still lingering. I liked the character development you gave to Lance and Blaine this chapter, and it was particularly fun to see them and how they ticked when they were younger

And while it pains me to be this critical, but there were a few issues that I felt held this chapter back. The same general issues that I noted in Chapter 1 are also here, so I won’t invest too much time and energy retreading ground and instead focus moreso on a couple additional structural issues that I noticed in my readthrough.

You have some issues with “tell and not show” this chapter. Like Blaine’s yearning to see Moltres basically only comes up the moment Moltres actually appears onscreen and isn’t built up at all, not even in an earlier scene where Lorraine is going around and admiring his collection of Fire-type statues, which you’d think would be a place where that longing to see a legend would manifest. Fortunately, much of this can probably be fixed with additive editing, but it is there in the present version of

The other big structural issue I see with Chatper 2 at the moment is that the Wwhole saga with Blaine almost freezing to death in the winter feels like it’s missing a couple steps to logically follow. I don’t disagree with the destination of Blaine getting bailed by Moltres since it’s kinda needed by later parts of your plot, but consider the following:

- Blaine’s entire conundrum only works if he’s in a situation where he doesn’t have his Fire-type Pokémon on-hand to help keep him from becoming a human popsicle, and it’s never really established why he can’t do that. Like if he was forbidden to take Pokémon with him to his campsite because “something something rules” or else he tried to have Magmar keep him warm but Magmar hurt from rocks falling on him, that’s one thing, but there’s not really a clear reason expressed for why Blaine doesn’t just break out his lava duck to keep him from freezing to death and ultimately needed Moltres to save the day.
- Blaine’s whole shtick about Mr. Fuji basically falls by the wayside once he’s rescued by Moltres. Like you’d think that if nothing else as a convenient handwave that you’d have it revealed that Mr. Fuji made it off the mountain already and to shelter and got into contact with everyone else. Otherwise, if Blaine almost froze to death up there, what logical reason does he have to not be extremely worried about Mr. Fuji’s well-being given that it was never established in any prior scene that Fuji wasn’t still trapped in that winter storm?

It’s a shame, since I think that the overall premise of “Blaine had an encounter with a divine firebird that changed the course of its life” actually isn’t all that bad of an idea, but the present execution frankly needs a bit of work to smooth out the edges since it kinda gave the unintentional effect of Blaine reading like he almost died from suddenly completely forgetting that he lived in a Pokémon setting and had Pokémon with him for a couple hours. Mind you, I don’t think that that plot hole is particularly hard to fix, and I gave a couple suggestions for ways you could do so, but I can’t comment on a version of this story from the future that I haven’t read yet.

Lastly, from an eyeballing, you had 12 scenes in this chapter, which made things read a bit long in spite of the overall chapter not being all that long in the grand scheme of things. I kinda wonder if this chapter would’ve worked a bit better as 2 chapters roughly 3k apiece with the events in 1985 being in their own chapter and the events in 1986 being in another, but eh. I understand the argument for sticking to one’s guns and letting things ride.

Sorry if the feedback turned out a bit more critical than you’d hoped this time, @Sastrei . I do think that you showed off quite a bit of talent at adding depth to canon characters in this chapter, even if I thought there were some noticeable flaws that got in the way of me being able to get into things. For what it's worth, I genuinely feel that the issues were the biggest sticking points that took me out of my read this time around are things that can be fixed with about an hour’s worth of editing without derailing later plot points, and I hope that the feedback that I left was helpful for if you decide to tackle them.

Best of luck writing, and hopefully we’ll be seeing each other’s stories again sometime soon.

 

[Sastrei]

Sorry if the feedback turned out a bit more critical than you’d hoped this time, @Sastrei . I do think that you showed off quite a bit of talent at adding depth to canon characters in this chapter, even if I thought there were some noticeable flaws that got in the way of me being able to get into things.

Hey, no worries at all, that's entirely why I'm here. Tbh other than random comments/reviews on AO3 and FFN over the years I've never had any kind of actual feedback on any of my writing, at least from a critical perspective or one to promote challenge and growth.

You are incredibly thorough and thoughtful, and I'm honestly floored at the time and effort you put into your reviews. It's truly a gift to others and I'm really grateful I ended up with you for my first ever catnip exchange here!

One thing I noticed in both of your reviews is something I'm still wondering about -- fanfic means that the reader already knows something about the characters, although that particular something can vary depending on each reader's knowledge of each character. And with how huge the Pokemon world is, I know the knowledge varies greatly from person to person.

I truly tend to always want to describe or "show" more instead of "tell", as you put it, but I hold back because otherwise I'd often be repeating information about a character that someone might already know (such as Blaine being saved by Moltres, although this was a small in-game canon reveal, it is canon, just not the specifics of when/how). And I fear sounding boring or unoriginal.

So I suppose this is why I didn't elaborate more on that specific subject, but as you mentioned there are indeed plotholes sticking out that I could fill in. And maybe I shouldn't assume what a reader knows, or find a balance of explaining existing information that doesn't seem overwhelming.

I'm also often worried about including too many characters in a scene or story, which I guess is why I kind of glossed over the fate of Mr. Fuji (at least for now), but I can see how not knowing that immediately would be distracting.

All of the things you've mentioned were indeed things I've wondered about myself but decided against for one reason or another (with the exception of messing up verb tenses, that was just poor editing on my part and the newness/lack of beta reading of this story showing), so this has been really helpful, and I just want to thank you again!