3.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE, 20/01/2024: pssst, ignore this one for now, it needs a little bit of revision to fit the needs of the rest of the story. shouldn't be more than five or six days, I'd imagine. ta)
Florence knew very few people who could afford optimism back home. Half the folks worked on rigs extracting oil from territory that had belonged to their families, then to private buyers and then fuel barons; in return, the oil went to the Indigo Alliance to satisfy the marriage between nations. Her father had been among them before his accident. The process, by his own admission, had turned him into an asshole. Meanwhile there were too few teachers to split the kids between them, too few schools to cover that much land, and most of the doctors went wherever there were hospitals to pay them; one or two more bad seasons of tourism stood between the gym and its relocation to Jubilife or one of the islands off the coast of Canalave. Once the gym went, so too did dozens of jobs and almost all the infrastructure for pokémon education up in the north of Sinnoh.
And folks were well-meaning, sure; there were enough folks worth keeping around. But traditions died hard, old habits harder, and enough forces kept both under threat that the lines had in places blurred in ensuring the preservation of heritage at all costs. Connor was one of maybe four people she knew who had asked no questions and raised no protests whatsoever about her coming out.
Now he was in a hospital bed, gaunt and sedated via IV drip with his wrists zip-tied to the bed while he stayed in the throes of a sleep too deep to fathom. She could do nothing about it, nothing to speed up his recovery and nothing to get back on the road.
The universe has no conscience, so I don’t think it can be cruel or uncaring, she imagined him saying if he could wake up without screaming.
But it’s being homophobic to me, specifically, right now.
She let the prickly stillness of the moment play out and entertained the illusion that her fortitude would earn her some favour. Time kept moving ceaselessly, yes, but maybe she could contain it in little rivulets here. She stayed vigilant over his body and told herself he’d be alright, he was still breathing, the cold still unmoving guy before her was not a corpse, and she stayed until the tension broke, until she felt it roll down her cheeks in singular slow droplets. She went to check with the attending doctor. Nothing happened under her watch. It never did.
The doctor looking over him looked at her clipboard and then at Florence in a slow careful fashion, making sure to regard her a very deliberate expression: mouth straight, eyebrows knitted in concern, looking at her through the fluorescent light reflected in her glasses as if to telegraph that Florence was not under interrogation. She could not possibly have rehearsed this look; she’d done this before, countless times, and had become well-versed in the delivery of bad news. “Is there anything you need?” asked Dr. Calchas.
“N-no, I’m fine, I think. I-I mean, at least as much as I could be given the situation,” Florence replied, trying to keep her voice straight, “or, well, I don’t really, er, have a frame of reference for this.”
“That’s an entirely reasonable response. This was an unforeseeable accident; things like this are just about unprecedented in this neck of the woods, as a matter of fact. Did your friend mention he was planning to do anything in there, just out of curiosity?”
“No, he, uh, he said he had to go take a walk. Which I didn’t take to mean anything unusual; he does this from time to time, it’s nothing unusual for him — taking a walk, getting some air, keeping his head clean and stuff. I’m assuming something came up, uh, given where they found him; I don’t think he’d planned this, and I don’t think he even wanted to do, you know, something stupid or anything. Sorry, I just, uh —” she tried not to curse and tried to figure out how to finish this thought — “don’t know much about all this.”
“There’s no need to apologise; your honesty is appreciated.”
“Right, right, I know, uh, thanks. Listen, um, do you know… uh… do you have a good idea of who or what could have done this, exactly?”
At this, the brief glimmer of a smile that had tricked its way onto Dr. Calchas’s face dissipated. In her frown there came a silence, another glance at her notes, and then she ran her fingers across her forehead. “The who is unclear at this juncture, if there is one at all. The what, however… I’m still trying to make sense of that part myself.”
“What do you mean, exactly? Like, uh, do you have a good idea at least?”
“I wouldn’t advise looking too far into it yourself. I don’t even know how much I’m at liberty to discuss, to be honest. I only have very good reason to believe this was the work of a very powerful, very careful pokémon that has no business here.”
She glanced back through the window in the door, at the machines hooked up to Connor, at all the resources that had gone into monitoring him and his cognitive activity, at the restraints that had been placed on him for his own wellbeing; he had been in such a state, she’d heard, thrashing and screaming while out stone cold. The medical team had to have done some sort of psionic or somnolent test, given the severity of the situation.
This was bad news, the sort that made her stomach sink. They’d often talked about how the journey would change them both, about how this was a road they would embark upon and never return in one sense. This was not the sense she had meant.
“What kind of pokémon are we talking about here? Like a gengar, or—”
“I would advise you not to investigate further,” Dr. Calchas firmly repeated. “There is nothing you of all people could do with this knowledge that would make this situation any easier, and I am almost certain you would end up worse off than your friend; it’s something of a miracle that we can expect him to recover and wake up within the week, to the point where I almost assume that the intent was to leave him alive. I’ve emailed one of my colleagues over in Canalave — Dr. Richard Mondeghast, runs a sleep clinic there, knows his stuff and has treated similar, less fortunate cases before — and he shares my suspicions.”
Canalave.
Which most likely meant…
Fuck.
“But how did—”
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I can’t explain how nobody else seems to have been affected as a result of this incident, either. There’s supposed to be cameras for this kind of thing.”
“…So is this, um… a, uh, an emergency or something? I mean, not just with Connor, but… uh, if, you know…”
“I don’t know. The town watch have started investigating what happened over at the Windworks immediately; all I can say is that I would expect them to ask you a few questions at the first possible opportunity. It’d probably be wise to cooperate with them, even if you don’t know anything. Once the League finds out about this, though… I don’t know what’ll happen next — hey!”
Florence had punched the wall. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to people like them. Not to Connor. The news made her body shake, made her convulse, and now she was making mistakes and now her knuckles were swelling and beset by a sharp pain. “Shit,” she said, “shit, uh, sorry, I wasn’t — dammit.”
Dr. Calchas still seemed on edge after yelping at her; her widened eyes drew attention to her stress lines. Still, she tried to raise a bare hand to keep her at ease. “It’s fine, I know this is a lot to process. Just — don’t do that, yeah?”
“I’m so sorry, I’m not usually…”
Trying to picture the future for a moment, she instead found herself coming up short and gasping for air. Was Connor going to be able to sleep normally going forward, or would the nightmares become part of his routine? Maybe this was a gradual thing, like a curse or a chronic illness, and it would sap him of his energy. Then what? That was a killer for the circuit, and everything depended on the circuit. What use was any of this if she couldn’t do it with her friend? Was that selfish to wonder? No, that felt selfish; he could have died. She shouldn’t have—
“Excuse me.” She raised a hand to apologise, though she could not bring herself to look up at the doctor who was not to blame for any of this. She couldn’t look at anything. There was nothing now or in the future onto which focus could be fixed. “I need to get some air, sorry.”
“I understand. Take all the time you need.”
She made her exit from this world and its sterile white tiles, all covered by this sense of absence from life itself; when outside, she didn’t feel all that much different. Everything was still the same out here. The world was, after all, still the world. The sun made its imperceptibly gradual ascent through the sky, like the cold white eyehole of a periscope, and looking up she couldn’t escape the sense of being watched.
The standoff dissolved beneath the flapping of wings. A family of starlies went east overhead. They had to leave town for a while for their own survival; they brought home with them wherever they went, she figured, and home lay in the connections they had forged as a family. They weren’t alone.
At least someone could say that, she thought, then she left and went to the river to throw her thoughts in with the magikarps and the watchful, hungry staravias.
Nothing came easy to her in the aftermath of the news, waiting least of all. She was locked in place and she had to break free, but there was nothing to break free from and no secret configuration of items or characters that would return things to their prior state.
Checking back into the centre, all the staff seemed to regard her with a newfound concern. Everyone wanted to know if she was alright, but she worried the way she carried herself deterred everyone not just from that question but from engaging with her in any meaningful way at all. At least they didn’t ask the question. It didn’t need an answer.
In the wide open plaza connected to the thin and transitory hall, she still could not shake the sense of being watched when she went to check in with the nurse at the front desk. The nurse was mid-enthusiastic conversation on the phone, but registered her approach and dropped a few registers. “…oh, um, do you mind if I call you back in a minute, actually? I’ve just got to — yeah, yeah. Cheers,” she said before putting down the office phone and clearing her throat once Florence stood before her. “Is there, uh, anything you need at all?”
“I want to see my friend’s pokémon,” Florence replied, before realising this hardly made a good impression. “You know, er, to see how they’re holding up and everything; a friendly face and all that.”
“Oh, yeah, no problem at all; I’m sure they’d appreciate that. That’s the staravia, isn’t it, and the aron? The poor dear, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”
“How is he?”
The nurse — Clancy, her badge read — sucked the air in through her teeth and knitted her fingers together, shoulders shifting in the process. “He’s being as friendly as he can and everything, and he does try to cooperate with us when we give him food and all, it’s just… you know how it is, unfamiliar surroundings and faces, his trainer’s gone all of a sudden, and I mean… I think he’s had a bit of a fright, you know?”
Ronnie might have seen the culprit. Most likely, he’d felt its presence; she’d heard rumours that animals were more sensitive to certain kinds of auras. That kind of talk mostly made her bristle — the basis for this assumption, that humans were some spiritually different and more-or-less attuned entity from every other living thing, felt strange to her — but the mere possibility of it in this instance twisted something in her stomach.
“Well, uh… hopefully a friendly face will do him some good, aye?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it will.”
“I just wish I could look after him myself for a bit, but, um… you know, hands are full with everything.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Clancy. “I’m sure you’re a good friend. Just follow me through here, I’ll take you to his pen.”
The two went through a door and down another corridor, where the fluorescent light reflected dimly on the laminate floor and the windows, which seemed to serve no real purpose except to make this interstitial space feel a little more homely, were being cleaned from inside. “Morning, Fred,” said Clancy, “how was the holiday?”
Fred kept at the windows as he turned, beaming around, with his tidy uniform and his name tag with its many decorations. Florence didn’t even know pokémon centres
had employees of the month. “Aye, it was grand! You can’t beat Blackthorn in spring, I tell you; took some photos, saw some dragons, and they had a new hotel open up there — great craic, they’ve got a buffet you won’t believe.”
“Oh, great! You’ll have to tell me about it in a bit, aye.”
“You know I will.” His attention shifted to Florence for a moment and he gave her a curt nod, then got to whistling a song — that old power pop group, Such Little Nonbelievers; she didn’t know the exact tune but her dad loved them — and he went to work. Then she kept walking.
“Sorry,” said Clancy, “we love Fred around here. Always nice to have a chat with him, you know?”
“No need to apologise. Always nice to have good colleagues.”
“He’s the best damn janitor I’ve ever known. Gonna miss him when he retires.”
Ronnie was staying in a fenced area out back, sandwiched between two wings of the building; he had plenty of room to dig and a miniature cave to hide away in, but none of it seemed to interest him. She saw him through the door that led out back, picking away in a state of disinterest at the food in his bowl while watching the clouds pass overhead. Was he shaking? She looked — no, yeah, he was, and that was his whining. Her heart sank. Poor guy.
Clancy took her through; his head turned as the door opened, and immediately he scuttled over to Florence with his eyes wide like telescopes. She dropped to one knee on the spot and held her arms out to him, bracing for his impact; he bundled up against her and she held him tight, running her hands across his metal hide and patting him as he negotiated as much space as he could take up. He chittered and chirped in position and, even when Florence pulled away into sitting position, he bundled up beside her just to keep close.
The experience hadn’t changed him too much, at least; he was still his old friendly self. He wasn’t too far off becoming a lairon, she thought; he was getting big for an aron and could handle himself in most of the battles he’d been in. She wondered if he would still be so affectionate and so keen on the people he knew as he grew; there was a chance that, by the end of the year if things went particularly well on the circuit, Connor would have Sinnoh’s biggest lap dog to work with.
But that was the thing, she supposed.
“Well,” said Clancy, “good for him; he looked like he was seeing ghosts this morning. He hasn’t been eating much, and we’ve not had luck getting him to drink either.”
“That’s definitely unusual for him, aye.” Florence looked at him, and in turn he looked at her with something approaching expectation; he was on all fours and holding his stare unblinkingly — until she ran her fingers behind his carapace, on the softer scales nearer the back of his head; he blinked hard and slow, but seemed to droop a little and lose his enthusiasm after a moment. “I don’t think he’s been away from Connor for more than a day or two in years, you know.”
“Yeah, I was wondering if that was the case… so he’s a long-time pet then, aye? It’s harder with them when something happens. The ones you catch on the routes, they’re less separation-averse — a little harder to train, at first, but they’re better equipped to handle themselves if anything happens. You know all about that, though, I’m guessing.”
“Yeah,” she said, “it’s a double-edged sword. I often wonder if this is the right thing for us all, you know, if this is good for him in the long-term. Same with my pokémon, too. I like to think we’re friends as well as partners, but, uh, if I wasn’t doing them right and I didn’t know, what would they do about it? Or if I got sick. I don’t know how fair that all feels.”
“It’s just one of those things, isn’t it? I don’t think they mind too much, as long as they’re fed and looked after, and battles are enriching for them — I think the science says it’s fine, and I’m sure he loves his trainer; he loves you, I can say that much. But they can’t really say much, can they? I wonder if they have lives outside of us. It’d be easier if they could just tell us about it, I mean.”
“Oh, for sure,” said Florence. She got up and went over to his bowl, and he followed her over to it. “Are you hungry, trooper? You’ve gotta eat; it’ll make you feel much better about everything.”
He followed her arm as she gestured at the ore in his bowl; he got to nudging it a bit more, then took some more bites out of it and put it on the floor to play around with like something unexpected and miraculous would happen. It didn’t. He just wasn’t interested.
“I know, I know, me too,” she sighed. “But you’ve gotta eat your food, yeah? Be your best for when he wakes up, because it won’t be too long, and you’ve gotta get strong with him for the big match soon. Hey?”
He responded only with a down-pitched, faint rumble and got back to taking each bite, slowly working his way through it; in response, she just got back to keeping a hand on his back and patting him.
Rottenhat, meanwhile, hopped around near his perch over at the back of the pen silently as if to keep himself entertained. He seemed his usual self, which was good.
Clancy’s eyes lit up as she pointed at him. “Oh, he scratched me bad earlier, while I was getting his food.”
“Ah, that’s normal for him; he’s a teenager. Glad someone’s doing fine, at least.”
“Better that he’s eating than the alternative, at least. It’s a wonderful line of work, this is.”
“How’s it pay?”
“I get by. Could be better. I wouldn’t want to do anything else, though.”
Florence supposed this was inoffensive work, great if you liked being around animals, although trainers could be pricks sometimes. Dealing with particularly sick patients must have been tough; she’d heard that if you spend any amount of time with animals who need support, even for just a short time, you’re bound to get used to worst-case scenarios and inexplicable loss. But someone had to do all this.
Back home, they were always in need of people to do this; there were nurses and there were rangers, but not enough of them. The harsh conditions, long hours and low pay for constant work led to burnout for all but the most passionate; Florence did not have the patience of a saint herself, but she didn’t foresee herself living anywhere else once all was said and done. Her grades weren’t great, and she didn’t have much choice.
Ronnie didn’t have much choice either, she supposed, although Connor tried to give him as much of a say in his own care as possible. He cared more for the wellbeing of his pokémon than his own sometimes, as though there was no correlation between the two; watching him keep this delicate balance had been watching a boy cross tightropes for a decade. All the mechanisms that kept him from falling receded further from sight, but they’d both been sure they still worked.
All it took was one foot wrong.
She stayed for a little longer to keep Ronnie company while he ate, just to make sure he was himself; he grew more comfortable as time went on, but did not find it in himself to say much nor was he in much mood to play even as Pont and Elsie investigated him with beaks and idle chatter. As much as she wanted to take him back to the room or invite him out to train, she doubted he would have found it much use. There was still something in the corner of his eye, something he turned around to look at from time to time, and occasionally he got real tense all of a sudden as though being alive was this chilling thing. But there was nobody there. Just the wind.
The world still moved, though; her deadlines had not budged, and her own team still demanded her attention. “You’ll be okay, little guy, alright?” she said, in the hopes he would understand. “I’ve gotta go now, but I’ll see you tomorrow. It’s going to be okay. I know, I know.”
Ronnie seemed to recede into the pen as she stood up, remaining static while somehow minimising a core part of himself. He didn’t try to follow her as she left and instead got back to sitting, waiting, watching the clouds move above the nearby forest as the silhouettes of the trees shifted to meet the demands of the day.
Clancy remained at the desk — how long was her shift? “How was training?”
“We got it done,” she replied with a shrug, “better than nothing.”
“That’s the spirit. I’m sure Gardenia won’t know what hit her, and every other gym leader in Sinnoh is going to stay on watch; it speaks volumes for your character that you’re still sticking with your routine under the circumstances.”
This came from out of nowhere. There was no way she knew that for sure; she probably said that to most trainers, in all honesty, and what was she going to say, that she was likely a flameout and wouldn’t even sniff Fantina? That wasn’t true, obviously, but neither was the alternative yet. “Uh, thanks, I guess,” she said, focusing on the wall because it was far more interesting than the situation at hand. (It wasn’t.) “Uh, has anything of note happened today? Are you not finished yet?”
“Ah, well, one of my colleagues isn’t well, apparently. Can’t get out of bed, I heard. Not like her. She’s barely lucid, so I’m covering her for the afternoon.”
“Oh.” Florence considered this for a moment. Was there any chance that this was related to… wait, no, did they know what had happened to Connor? She raised a finger—
“Oh, before I forget, uh, Ballard and Stirner from the town watch said they wanted to speak to you. They said to give them a call, or failing that, they’d be back later.”
Small-town cops. Florence’s eyes rolled back hard enough to take her head with them; the ceiling read like a ransom note in that moment, demanding her compliance. She sighed. A smidge over three thousand people lived here, and many of them were retirees or shop owners. These were the type of cops whose primary duties were to local housing prices —
“Alright, cool,” she said, “thanks for letting me know.”
— and whose jobs consisted primarily of yelling at drunks and the homeless, maybe even fumbling the odd murder case from time to time. They weren’t solving this one, and they probably knew it.
Clancy beamed back at her, anyway. “No problem! I don’t imagine they’ll give you too much trouble; they’re not bad guys, really. Just a little gruff.”
Why did she feel the need to specify that? “Oh, that’s good. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Let us know if there’s anything else you need, yeah?”
Florence gave a thumbs up to Clancy, who to her credit had been very kind today, and nodded. “Hope the rest of your shift goes well.”
The erstwhile nurse returned the gesture with a preternatural enthusiasm which concealed any irony it may have possessed.
En route to the room, Florence tried to take her mind off things by reminding herself she’d done brilliantly with training; all her pokémon, Elsie and Pont behind her while Bimp rested in her pokéball, had been fantastic, and she’d kept focused the whole time. It was hard work and it lasted until sunset, but it was forward momentum; it kept her occupied. Elsie even showed some real progress with dark-type moves today. These warranted treats, and then an evening of resting up with a movie…
She paused at her door. Sounds came from beyond the threshold, hushed mumbling and fiddling through belongings. She had locked it. She distinctly recalled having locked it. She jerked the handle.
Yes, she had locked it, and nobody had unlocked it.
Wh—
Oh, she thought, they
hadn’t.
She muttered half a curse, reeled back, swiped the card against the lock and forced the door open. She was greeted with the sight of two men in uniforms, one of whom was wiry and smiled like a car salesman while the other had handcuffs and a truncheon out on show. The wind blew in from an open window behind them; the curtains parted to reveal a snapshot of the world outside and a complete absence of shame.
“Evening, officers, mind explaining what the fuck you’re doing?”
“Language,” said the bald armed burly suit in his grim voice. “Police business.”
“You must be—” said the lankier one with his hair slicked back. He squinted for a moment and then pulled back, taking some mental notes. What was this about? “Okay, I see. So you’re Florence?”
She tried to hide the extent to which she was shaking, hiding her arms behind her back and clenching her fists while imagining she held the handles of, say, some wire cutters. She tried harder to keep her voice even, quiet and professional, not because she respected them — they didn’t respect her in the slightest — but because she couldn’t afford to make them angry. They were dangerous. Lunatics with badges.
“Do either of you have a warrant, or do I need to report you for breaking and entering?”
“Now, now, don’t be like that; you don’t own this room, after all, you’re just renting it — if you want to play it like that, we’ll just say you didn’t cooperate with our investigation and have you kicked out. We’re both on the same team here, I hope; we want to see whoever did this come to justice. Let’s be nice to each other, friendo. Alright?”
This detective spoke with a level of enthusiasm that seemed totally detached from the content or meaning of his words, or anything that actually existed. It made her skin crawl. If this was an intentional affect for unnerving, it worked perfectly; it also made her want to kill him in cold blood, but that was neither here nor there.
“Here, I’ll even introduce us,” he said, still beaming with his rows of white teeth bared, “I’m Detective Marc Stirner and this here is Sergeant Louis Ballard; we’re both with the Floaroma town watch, and we’re investigating what happened the other day over at the Windworks. We're here because your friend is a person of interest, and we just want to establish how much you know about it, yeah? You’re not a suspect yourself, so—”
“Sorry, what do you mean he’s a person of interest exactly?”
“Well, we’re just trying to establish what happened; obviously, we found him in the building not long after the power had gone. As of right now we’ve had difficulty establishing if anyone else was in there—”
“No, no, I’m sorry, you can’t be serious. He was fucking unconscious! He was a victim; what are you suggesting, that he did this?”
“Not until we have the evidence,” winked Stirner, “and it’ll do this town a great service if you just let us know what you know. We’ll even take a seat, look, and take notes if you just let us know what you can.”
“Unless you have a warrant—”
“Does your friend, uh, Connor, isn’t it, does he have a history of crime? Even just anything petty that you happen to know about, I mean, we won’t charge him for that, but even little things can mask the sort of impulse that leads a person towards… say, if it is him, maybe it’s vandalism, maybe it’s terrorism; both can have catastrophic consequences if left unchecked.”
This was unconscionable. Florence found it incredible that these people even existed, and if the universe was capable of possessing cruelty, it sure exhibited this impulse by insisting that she had to answer these people or else they could measurably make her life worse — maybe they’d arrest her on bullshit charges or something, maybe they’d just keep harassing her; this wouldn’t be their investigation for much longer anyway, but the dark shadows they were allowed to cast across the room filled her with utter, incandescent fury.
Pont had gone across the room to investigate these two intruders; he was slightly puffed up, yes, but showed no immediate signs of being prepared to attack. This was just caution, if anything.
“Control your pokémon,” said Ballard.
Stirner had reached into his pocket and gotten out a black-and-gold pokéball of his own. “Buddy, my arcanine, is in this ultra ball. I can and will let him out if I have reason to believe that you are threatening me with your piplup; I don’t believe you are right now, of course, but I suggest you ensure that your friend there keeps his distance so that we remain on good terms, capiche?”
“Get out of my room right now, or I will do everything in my power to ensure you never work again. I am being entirely serious, you have no legal right to be in here—”
“It’s your word against ours, Rosencrantz,” Stirner rebutted with a grin that crooked like a raptor’s beak, “and we’re men of the law; I don’t know if I’d risk that, especially if I was you.”
“Answer the question,” said Ballard, “this is an official investigation and refusal to cooperate is a punishable offence.”
That wasn’t even true, really; there was nothing backing up their authority to do this except for their badges, their occupational titles, and the various tools on Ballard’s belt that could be used for violence. The knotted rope of Florence’s stomach stretched out so hard that it strummed, and she still tried to remain calm even as she was filled with the urge to scream.
Connor had, in truth, shoplifted a few times before; he was never caught, and in her view it didn’t really count. No reasonable jury would convict him for that: a kid who’d spent all his money on food for his pokémon while his mother was unwell and had spent all her money on heating in the winter months. What else was he going to do?
“No,” she said, “he’s never done anything of the sort, obviously; do you think they would have let him become a trainer otherwise, hmm?”
She regretted answering, but in truth, she was scared. Yes, there was nothing good that came from speaking to cops; yes, they were looking for an excuse to bust Connor — in all likelihood, probably her too, they were doing nothing to mask their sheer revulsion towards her mere existence; besides, the one difference between a cop and a fascist was that one was on the clock — but there was a legitimate chance these men were spiteful enough that they would get her taken off the circuit for not going along with their little game. There would be nothing after that.
“Well, evidently, they’re letting anyone become trainers these days. You’re probably qualified, I’m sure, but I just don’t think you can be too careful with that kind of thing these days.” Stirner paused, raised a finger, and suddenly took on an expression of grave concern as though to reveal the truth and justification behind his cruelty. “I mean, look at what happened in Hoenn; many of those people were licensed trainers, too. Many of those cultists were, in fact, like you and your friend; many of their friends would have stuck up for them and many of them would have stuck up for each other if asked whether they were criminals or, you know… dissidents. The subversive types.”
“Where are you going with this, exactly?” said Florence. “Do you think we might be liable to terrorism just because I don’t trust you?”
“It’s not that at all. You see, the issue is that that kind of thing simply cannot be allowed to happen in Sinnoh. Not on my watch. What happened with the weather cults only happened because their government was a little, you know… lax. Tolerant, even, of some unsavoury behaviours. It all starts with that unhappiness, you know, that malaise certain people had with the way their lives had gone; it wasn’t their fault, they didn’t think, that they were broke and alone and impotent, so they went to protest, went on strikes, started organising against the government, and all of a sudden they decided the right thing to do was try to flood and burn the land just to vent their frustrations — tip the scales back in their favour, you know, get a taste for how it feels wielding the power of the gods just like the old champions. Hundreds died and people lost their homes, Rosencrantz, all because people didn’t know what to do with their emotions. They didn’t feel they were big enough. But we don’t do that here, especially not in this town. We’re a happy and beautiful people, you know that? The people of Floaroma don’t mean any harm. Naturally, we just want to protect our land and take care of our lots in life — nothing more, nothing less. You don’t want to get in the way of that, do you?”
Detective Stirner hardly blinked as he delivered his little speech, nor did he gesture or even emote except for an imposing smile as he asked his final question. He just stared as though this was the most natural thing in the world, as though the importance of his words removed the need for any additional whistles and bells. This was the most honest thing he had said all day.
It made her want to scream into the deepest mine in Oreburgh, then start throwing people into it until the vast emptiness gave or she did. Short of that, it made her want to burn down a building. Neither were feasible.
“No, and I never said I did,” said Florence, “and certainly neither does my friend. I don’t care about this town at all — even if I hated it with all my guts, do you think I could afford to get myself into trouble, hm? After how hard I worked to get here to begin with? All my life I’ve only tried my best, and look where it’s got me. Dealing with you fucking thugs. Are you proud of yourselves? Does this make you feel good?”
Elsie was silent and perched uneasy on the chair, her wings ruffling and her head hung low; meanwhile, Pont had almost vanished into some shadow in a corner of the kitchen. The two agents of terror sucked all the air out of the room in their sullenness, which Florence would not have minded if not for the fact that Ballard’s arm itched at his side, right above his truncheon and handcuffs. She felt reasonably confident in guessing he owned a gun, certain that he wished he had it on him, and relieved beyond belief that he didn’t; pistols were standard issue back home, at least.
Stirner, though, had the ball with his arcanine out in his hand and that grin back on his face. “Are you sure this is how you want to do it? We’re not asking for much — all you have to do is co-operate. Tell us what your friend was doing in that building and you’ll never have to see us again. It’s that easy.”
This was ridiculous; they had no evidence of anything. They were desperate. Florence tried to imagine how this would develop: he would get his giant hound out and keep threatening her until he either got bored or escalated the situation. Her blood ran cold. He wanted an excuse.
“I don’t know. That’s all I can tell you. Now, if you’d excuse me, I’ve got to go.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The two men rose high in the centre of the room and placed their long shadows across proceedings, casting an impermeable malice through all four corners of these lodgings. Florence turned away immediately and scrambled her hands across her belt, returning all her pokémon to safety outside the sight of her two enemies; she grabbed for the door and swung it open in the space of a few heartbeats and headed out to safety in the lobby, not daring to turn back and recognise the footsteps drawing nearer and nearer; if they got her, there would be no return.
She kept walking through the open lobby and out into the world. No destination lingered on her mind except for far, far away from Stirner and Ballard, from the investigation, from Connor and from everything. She crossed the bridge and headed off to the trees, eventually finding herself in the same clearing where the vespiquen had emerged.
Buzzing filled the air, the sound of the nearby sawmill turning dead things to lumber for cheap export; the forest’s vastness did not preclude it from its materiality or the growing needs of Sinnese commerce. Of course the combees still worked themselves on the other side of the grass, though many of them hid off behind the firs. They still had their home for now. They did not comprehend the serrated buzzing off in the distance, nor their proximity to the forces that could, in an instant, call for their expulsion to make way for a retail park or a new highway could be built. They lived in relative peace, their lives more complex than Florence would ever comprehend.
She caught a glimpse of their matriarch tending to her drones and sighed, slumping down to her seat and burying her forehead into her wrists. Everything remained in motion. There was more to the world than her issues, yes, but her issues were a part of the world nonetheless. The fresh air did not make her feel better, and despite the prying eyes and curious beaks of the pokémon on whom she depended, she felt alone and insignificant.
The clouds still moved overhead, after all, and the silhouettes of the trees now drowned her in shadow. Tomorrow, much of this would happen again. Grief, for all its power over her, was a man-made construct. Time would erode its effect; the gods decreed it thus.
Each repetition felt more hollow. The bounds of every day reminded her only that she was trapped, that she could not leave until her friend recovered, which would take a few days or all eternity. His attacker remained on the loose with no such ailment except guilt, maybe, if such an emotion registered; they were at once too distant to really comprehend and so inescapable that she could muster no response that would matter. Had they been alone? Were they back on their island, on Wilsing or Apollo or was it Plummer Isle, or did they linger nearby in the walls that humans had built to keep them out? Who could give them shelter?
Training occurred without interruption. Her pokémon continued to excel. Gardenia would stand no chance against Elsie’s wings and glowing talons, or failing that Bimp would finish them off. Even beyond the prep for that one battle, they all became stronger, more durable, more able to withstand long periods of exertion — physical practice kept everyone fit and sharp, holding off the rust and with it the threat of failure. Fatigue took longer and longer to set in, and yet she felt tired of it the whole time; she wondered if this was all there was to it, or if there were more meaningful lives that her team could lead beyond the rote world she had asked them to call home.
In an instant, she kept thinking, all of this could vanish. What would she say for herself after that? Who was she beyond all this? Was she funny? It felt vain to admit, but nobody had told her she was funny.
All her free time, of which there seemed to be less each day, went towards finding movies to watch more than it did actually watching them; there were only so many
Slaughter in Saffron knock-offs and sequels out there, while finding the decent ones felt even harder still. This was no way to pass the time. This did not aid her recovery, although she didn’t know what she had to recover from in the first place.
She still made sure to eat and drink and shower and shave each day. None of the basic needs in her control could go unmet; falling behind there would worsen her odds of success out on the circuit. The company of others, however, did not come so easily in her time of need. The empty bed opposite her own felt no more welcoming even with the knowledge that Connor would be soon be out of hospital.
With each visit he remained constant, occasionally shifting in his sleep but rarely thrashing anymore. She hoped this meant he was at greater peace, that sleep had come more easily to him. The doctor’s updates did not shed much more light on things: he remained in the thrall of nightmares, the physiological effect of which was akin to a prolonged panic attack, and though he would wake up soon the long-term effects would only reveal themselves in the subsequent days, weeks, months. The extent of his prior struggles with anxiety, depression or insomnia still needed to be determined to further paint a picture of his health and help chart out his roadmap towards recovery. None of this put Florence at ease; she had no idea what this would mean in the long run.
“…anyway, uh, did you say you wanted to come back to mine and have a few rounds?” asked Mia.
“Oh, uh, yeah, sorry. What?”
Florence looked around and took stock of her surroundings. This was the café she’d seen a few times; she’d never gone in before now. Her next-door neighbour from the centre sat across the table. Had she knocked on for her or something? The specifics of this meeting eluded her as she tried to think back on it.
“Sorry,” she continued, “I zoned out for a sec there — yeah, I’d be down, uh… what, uh, what were we talking about just now?”
Mia wore round gold-rimmed spectacles. Behind them, she blinked harder than usual a couple of times. Her eyes, striking and azure, telegraphed a sympathy Florence wasn’t sure she’d earned. “Um,” she began — Florence wasn’t sure how this had caught her off-guard — “we were talking about how you were the best
Stormgirls: Deluxe Tournament player in all of northern Sinnoh, by your account, and how you’d spent countless hours on it. Then, uh, before that you were saying what had happened to your friend.”
“Oh,” she said, “oh, right, yeah, uh — sorry if I was trauma-dumping or whatever.”
“Don’t even worry about it! Listen, we all have shit we need to unpack, you know; the world is a miserable place sometimes, and it sounds as though you’ve had a particularly rough run of it. I don’t know how I’d be holding up in your shoes, you know? Besides,” said Mia, oddly devoid of any discomfort at all, “all we have is each other. One person isn’t a community, after all, and we’re social creatures in the end. If things are to get better in this world, it will be because we all have each other.”
That came out of nowhere, Florence thought, but the sentiment was very nice. “Yeah,” she said, “I guess. Uh, thanks. I mean, I’ll feel better once he’s on his feet again; I just… it’s dawned on me that I gotta get out more, gotta make new friends, you know? Anything to take my mind off things.”
“You can’t outrun your problems forever,” said Mia with a grin, “but you can fight them. No army of one ever won a war.”
In truth, Florence didn’t even know there was a war on. It sounded convincing, though, so she went along with it.
