Persephone
Infinite Screms
- Pronouns
- her/hers
- Partners
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4.13: Unlikely Allies
Kekoa
April 4th, 2020
Your carbink races across the field with an angry miltank right behind them. “Keep going! Rock polish again!” you call out to Kapuna. The lights around the carbink distorts and they get a second wind right before Anueneu crashes into them. He stops his rollout and bellows while the carbink rights themself.
“Good job,” you tell him. “And you’re definitely getting faster, Kapuna. Do you want to keep going?”
They don’t say anything. Right. You glance up the hill at Cuicatl. Probably too far away to translate and you’re trying not to depend on her for everything. She’s with her metang and wimpod. The metang is shooting out ping pong balls into the grass while the wimpod dodges. You can’t actually see the bug so it just looks like a metang randomly shooting out small objects while a girl relaxes nearby.
Coco is sparring with your birds. Playing, really. Ihe tries to intimidate Mahina while the toucannon spreads her wings and shrieks back. Sometimes Ihe will jab and get parried and pushed back by Ihe’s massive bill. Coco alternates between wrestling with either of them. She goes easy enough on Ihe so no one gets seriously hurt. Coco’s almost as big as Mahina now. You don’t know exactly when they evolve but she might be getting close.
When that happens Cuicatl’s basically won the island challenge. Game over, proceed directly to the Elite Four. You wish you could trust her with the championship. She’s a good person, but she’s not from here. She doesn’t, no, she can’t understand. Still, her path to beating Selene is going to be easier than yours. If you fail despite your best efforts you might switch to helping Cuicatl train for her own challenge.
Lyra jogs over with her absol keeping pace beside her. “Wanna spar?” she asks. “Haven’t gotten a shot at your miltank yet.”
Anueneu breaks his rollout and snorts. He knows his species name at least. And from the way he’s almost hungrily eyeing the absol it’s clear that he knows what he wants.
“Alright, Kapuna. You can stop the speed exercises.” The carbink had been flying away even after their pursuer stopped. On your order they stop almost instantly and slowly turn around to stare at you. Not stare, exactly. They don’t have eyelids. But looking at you for hours without moving is still creepy. What is it with mineral pokémon and being weird little shits?
You look back at the battlers. Absol has a sharp blade, training and speed. Anuenue is way bigger and tougher.
“Alright. Anueneu.” You really need a shorter nickname. Neu? You’ll ask later through Cuicatl when you get some time alone. “Stay.” His eyes narrow and he paws the earth with a snort. He doesn’t move.
“Your move, Lyra.”
If you attacked first she’d just go for a dodge. Making the absol comes to you gives you a chance.
She snaps. Her code for quick attack. “Slash.”
“Headbutt!” Anueneu rears up as the absol rockets forward in a blur. She stops beside the miltank’s left flank as a dark aura flares around her horn. “Left!”
Lyra snaps twice just as the night slash carves a bloody line into Anueneu’s side. Just before his head crashes down onto the dark-type she jumps just out of the way and runs. Detect. Your Pokémon catches his balance and charges forward without your command. The absol just keeps running. She’s faster and fresher since she hasn’t been doing speed exercises for a half hour. Anuenue won’t be able to keep up.
“Stay!” You call. He ignores you. Fine. “Rollout?”
He at least slows down long enough to curl into a ball and chase the absol that way. It still won’t be enough. Damn it, you really need to get a bulldoze TM. But that’s money, and that requires relying on your brother, and you still don’t really want to do that if you don’t have to.
You hear two snaps and the absol pauses and turns around. Anueneu barrels straight forward and the absol dives away just in time. It takes a while for the miltank to bank back around. When he does Lyra snaps twice again and your pokémon misses. Again. This isn’t a winning strategy. Maybe he’ll listen now.
“Stay!”
He does, reluctantly, break out of his rollout an stare down the absol. “Wait for her to get close again.”
Lyra smirks. “Razor wind.”
Shit. Is that a new trick? She didn’t use it in the fire trial and you haven’t seen her practicing it. Maybe it’s just a bluff. Cuicatl talked about doing something similar against the totem toxapex. No. The air stirs around absol’s blade and your stomach drops. You’d hoped you could help Anuenue win this. Earn some loyalty. That’s not looking likely anymore. “Headbutt, fast.”
Anueneu gets down on all fours and charges straight into the blades of wind. They leave gashes on his skin but barely seem to bother him. Lyra snaps twice and absol dives out of the way with detect and precognition. This time the miltank’s caught on enough to lunge to the side after absol. He just misses and the dark-type scurries away as fast as he can.
He got close. Maybe as close as he can get right now. “Good job,” you call out. Hopefully he knows that. “Come back.”
The miltank snorts and glares at the absol. But he does turn around and walk back over. He doesn’t seem too angry, either.
“Good job,” you repeat. “Are you hurt?”
He shakes his head. Kanoa said she didn’t spend a lot of time with him, but he’s clearly picked up some words and gestures. Maybe it just wasn’t a lot of time by her standards.
You walk around her and look at her cuts. Nothing bad. Looks like the absol was pulling her punches at least a little bit. “Good job. We’ll talk more at dinner.” He moos in agreement before you withdraw him. It’ll make him more comfortable until a nurse can patch up his cuts.
“Excuse me?” Someone asks. You turn to see some dweeby haole tween walking your way. He’s wearing a vest over a button up with slacks in Alola. Who even does that? Even the rich haole walk around in tacky flower print half the time. “You’re Kekoa, right?”
“Depends who’s asking.” Which is a dumb expression since you’re giving the game away. Whatever. Sounds cool.
“I’m Levi. Genesis’s brother. I’m told she traveled with you?”
Now you can kind of see the resemblance. Same blonde hair, same thin nose, same blue eyes. He might look a little too much like his sister to be masculine. Who knows what’ll happen in five years, though. Testosterone is one hell of a drug.
Lyra walks over. She’s smiling but her eyes are slightly narrowed. Sizing up a threat. You’ve seen her do it in almost every battle she’s been in. She knew Genesis so there’s probably history between the two. Not really any of your business. “Hey, Levi,” she greets him. “Good to see you again.”
The boy’s eyes widen as he notices Lyra. A crush? Crushing on your sister’s ex-friend is awkward, but probably not any more awkward than crushing on your boss. Hormones gonna hormone.
“Oh, hi! I wasn’t expecting you to be traveling with him.” And now you’re curious what business he has with you but not with Lyra. “That actually helps things a lot. Is, uh, Cuicatl still with you?” You gesture at the metang up to the hill. “Can you get her? It would be easier to tell this to all of you at once.”
Lyra purses her lips. “Kekoa, can you go?”
There’s not really a need. You turn around and shout uphill. “Hey, Noci!”
{Greetings Returned;
Query:Purpose}
“Can you get Cuicatl down here?”
There’s a moment’s pause. {Affirmative. UD_Cuicatl Has Initiated Ramming.}
What a weird hunk of metal.
Cuicatl slowly makes her way down over the next minute. Levi greets her. “Hi, Cuicatl. I’m Levi. Genesis’s sister.”
She smiles. “Genesis told me about you.”
Yeah, she probably did. Not that you were paying attention.
“Good things, I hope?”
“Yup.” For a second Cuicatl’s smile falters. Then it’s back to full strength. “She loves you, you know.”
Levi looks down at the ground and takes a deep breath. Is he disagreeing with that? Guilty?
“What did you want to talk about?” Lyra asks. “I can’t imagine it’s anything good.”
“It isn’t,” Levi murmurs. “After Gen came home our parents hired this weird woman to try and make her straight.”
What the fuck. She’s gay? Or bi? How did you not notice that?
Lyra slowly inhales. Her shoulders rise up and her face is twisted. Probably trying not to scream. Screaming would be a good reaction. The right reaction. You don’t even like Genesis but that’s really messed up.
“She’s been going along with it because she’s stubborn. My other sister and I tried to talk her out of it but I don’t think it worked.”
Lyra pinches her nose and closes her eyes. “Worried about Yveltal?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn it. I love the girl but she can be so stupid.”
Love the girl? Wait. Have you, uh, been really misreading some stuff? That has to be one sided, right? Even if Gen’s gay, she’s way too into the deer cult to actually date another girl.
The kid, Levi, looks down and wraps a hand around his other elbow. Like his sister did when she was uncomfortable. Does when she’s uncomfortable. “That was bad enough But I’ve heard him talking about hiring a psychic to… fix her.”
You hear a clunk beside you. Lyra dropped the pokéball she was holding. She’s gone as pale as her crush and her hands are trembling. “That’s…” She trails off before she can finish the thought.
“Fucked up? Maybe illegal?” you finish for her.
“Definitely illegal,” she whispers. “But he sells silk armor to cops. They won’t want to turn around and arrest him.”
Shit. Then, uh. That’s bad. Not like you ever expected the cops to do anything to a rich haole. Too busy arresting your people for loitering.
The kid looks towards Cuicatl with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Could you fix that? They seemed to think that you made her gay.”
Lyra scoffs. “Oh, please. She was into girls way before she entered into the picture.”
“I couldn’t,” Cuicatl says. “To change something that deep you’d need a strong psychic and an alakazam. I’m not that strong and Noci works better with computers than brains.”
“There has to be something…” Levi says. It doesn’t sound like he believes his own words.
What to do, what to do. You could go to the media. Unless he owns the media? And even then it’s not like any of you are reliable sources.
“We could go to the press,” Lyra suggests. Even though it wouldn’t work. “Cuicatl gives interviews sometimes. She could bring it up live. Wouldn’t even need to find a reporter willing to take it.”
The psychic purses her lips. “VStar wouldn’t like that.” And she’s willing to put her mom’s pokémon over Genesis’s happiness. Disappointing, but not surprising. “I can talk to INTERPOL. One of their agents sort of looks after the psychics in the area. She might be able to do something.”
Maybe. Your guessing INTERPOL uses ariados silk as well. You doubt they’d bite the hand that feeds them.
“If everything else fails we could break her out.” Lyra’s hugging herself and still deathly pale. Pretty sure she should sit down so she doesn’t fall. Looks like she’s a gust away from keeling over. And she’s speaking absolute nonsense. Break into a billionaire’s home? With what? Your strongest pokémon are an absol, a metang, and a toucannon. Even if Coco evolved it would be pretty damn clear who broke in using a tyrantrum. Then they’d probably just track you down and arrest you when you’re asleep. Or kill you. The cops have killed for way less. Wouldn’t even be a stretch to say that tyrantrum girl made them afraid for their lives.
No one else bothers to tell her off. It’s a bad idea, but she looks like she needs at least some hope. Whatever keeps her going.
You won’t say it out loud, but you do have a card of your own to play. Maybe Plumeria will care enough to do something. Gen might not like what she does, but it’s better than getting torn apart and put back together into something else.
It started raining in the early afternoon. Its only picked up from there. April marks the changing of the seasons from wet to dry. The rain knows and seems to pour harder and harder every time it comes, not wanting to let the sun rule the skies.
When you were really young you used to love napping when the raindrops were pounding down on the roof loud enough to be heard. Now you can’t sleep without a fan or a show or something to drown it out. Kyogre’s asleep. The rain isn’t literally fighting against Groudon. You could walk outside and be fine, just wet. No raindrops like bullets. No cracked pavement. No fire and ash and thunder and tsunamis.
You know all of that.
But your feelings never got the memo.
There’s a knock on the door. Two knocks. Probably Cuicatl. You haul yourself out of bed and walk over. When you open it you see her in the hallway with her metang floating behind her. “Can I come in?” she asks.
You take a step back and wave into the room. Uh. Right. “Go for it.”
Her metang has to tilt to the side to fit in through the door. At least they have the decency to push it closed behind them. Shows that Noci does understand the concept of privacy, she just doesn’t care.
“How’s Lyra?” you ask.
“Bad.” Figures. She barely made it back to the Center without collapsing. “She’s had a bad run in with a psychic before. Scared for Genesis.”
You’d both kind of figured that. “Any details?”
She shakes her head. “There was an alakazam. She doesn’t know what she lost, just that she lost something.” Oh. That might actually be scarier than knowing you lost something big. Creeping doubt all the time… you can kind of see where she’s coming from, even if she’s being a dick about it to Cuicatl. “She fell asleep next to her absol. Thought I could sneak away.”
Almost like Lyra’s a toddler and Cuicatl’s her fed-up mother who just wants a break. She already cooks for the girl, might as well take another step towards babying her. “Well, you’re welcome to crash here for a bit. I was going to watch a movie or something.” Something loud. Something distracting. She doesn’t like loud, though.
“The nurse said I could use the garage for polishing Noci. You want to bring Kapuna? We could talk” {quietly.}
“Sure.” Kapuna would like that. And you can deal with the rain being louder if you have someone to talk to.
You pull out your oil and cloths and leave the room after Cuicatl. Noci closes the door behind you. Are they just interested in closing doors now? Someday they’re going to lock you or Cuicatl out if they keep this up. Assuming they can’t just unlock doors now like that ninetales did.
Nope. Not going down that road.
“You sure you couldn’t help Gen?” you ask on the way down the hallway. “That wasn’t just something you were saying for Lyra?”
“I wouldn’t know how to start.” {Every psychic is different. Some see minds as pictures or scans or something. I see them as words. I could maybe make her think different words for a few seconds? I don’t think that would help.}
“Probably not.” Could she do it with a metagross? Then again, if she had a metagross, all of you would have a much bigger problem to deal with. On the bright side, Noci might let Genesis die gay or something. That’s about as much mercy as she could hope for. No idea how that Daigo prick keeps his in line. Maybe he doesn’t and he’s just bleeding hush money. Wouldn’t surprise you. If rich assholes there are anything like rich assholes here he might not even care. He certainly didn’t go out of his way to stop Aqua-dan and Magma-dan from killing hundreds of thousands of his countrymen.
If Cuicatl hears any of that she doesn’t comment. Not until you’re in the garage. There’s an employee there to keep any eye on you, because of course they wouldn’t trust two kids of color to be unsupervised. Not like there’s anything important in the garage. A couple run down pieces of machinery, a tool bench, and a clunky van they probably bought in the 80s.
Noci floats out in front of Cuicatl and Kapuna drifts over to you. Whatever. You can ignore the haole bitch’s glares. You won’t break her shit, however much you’d like to. You pour a little water into the first rag and hold it out to the carbink. Need to get her cleaned and dried before you can polish.
{When did you start caring?} she asks you. {You wanted her gone the entire time she was here.}
Yes. Yes, you did. And you aren’t sure if you want her back. She should be out and no one should have to go through the kind of shit they’re threatening her with, but she can be someone else’s problem.
{You’re the one who wanted her to go back to her parents.}
She grimaces and doesn’t reply. By the time you’ve gently cleaned and dried Kapuna’s jewels Cuicatl is still washing her metang. Its strange how differently your polishing goes. She’s much rougher than Kapuna would ever allow. From the way her arms sometimes jerk it looks like Noci is using their powers to move the rag (and its holder) where they want. Kapuna stays still in midair through the entire thing. You wouldn’t even know if they loved or hated this if Cuicatl didn’t tell you.
As you get the duster out to clean the rest of Kapuna’s body, Cuicatl speaks out again. {I talked to your boss last night.} Your boss? How did she figure that out? Did Plumeria tell her? {Thanks. Wasn’t sure if that was a coincidence.} Damn it. Damn her. Damn psychics. You’re really starting to see where Lyra is coming from these days. {Fuck you. I was born like this.}
{A bitch?}
She drops the rag she was polishing Noci’s stomach with. It gets caught and rises right back up. Then she giggles. Your watcher looks up from her phone and looks on in confusion. “Remembered a joke, that’s all.” {You have one joke and I still didn’t expect it.}
Rude. You have at least two.
{I don’t care,} she tells you as she picks up a new cloth and starts drying off her metang. {I just wanted to know. You sent me to a weird spot, she shows up, seemed like you might’ve known something.}
You don’t give her a response. It was just a talk. You didn’t do anything wrong. Kapuna nudges away and you blink in confusion. Oh. Must’ve been a little too aggressive with the duster. Got close to the eyes or something. “Sorry.” You realize too late that Cuicatl might think you’re talking to her.
{She has the same ringtone as a cop.}
{There aren’t that many ringtones.}
She shrugs. {Just thought it was weird.}
It seems like she lets it go there. You finish dusting off Kapuna and they start to drift off towards some paint cans. You keep an eye on them and put a finger to the recall button on her ball. The Center employee watches the carbink even more intensely than you. Fuck them. Kapuna’s just a curious rock. They almost never break anything.
{I don’t think we’ll get along.} Her face is neutral but she’s really pushing down on the cloth as she polishes her pokémon. {I agree with her. Just can’t help.}
Typical. You’re surprised Plumeria even bothered to ask. She’s the public face of VStar.
…
Oh.
Was that Cuicatl’s one warning before Skull went after her?
You need to talk to Plumeria. You were going to because of the Genesis thing, but now it needs to happen soon.
Someone knocks gently on your door three times. Probably Lyra. Cuicatl has her pattern. Ugh. Fine. You get up and let her in. The girl looks like a mess. She has some of the worst bedhead you’ve seen from her (and you’ve camped with her for weeks) and her eyes are bloodshot. She tried to put on makeup but its smudged and sloppy enough that it just makes her look worse. This from a girl who spends way too long getting ready every time you’re going to be around other people. Her hands are rammed into the pockets of her tight blue jacket and her absol is standing at attention beside her.
“Hey,” she mutters. “Cuicatl’s working on her thesis. Want to go on a walk?”
Asking you for one-on-one time. Truly desperate. Whatever. She’s going through a lot and it would be rude to turn her down. And this lets Cuicatl study at least. You aren’t actually sure how far she’s into her paper (you need to ask her) but more work can’t help. You looked up the people on the Class V approval board and they’re almost all snotty old haole dweebs who are going to make her work ten times harder for it than usual.
“Where to?”
“Bakery in the east part of town,” she whispers. You lean in a little bit just to hear her. “They have good cupcakes.”
Good enough that she’ll walk halfway across town for one. You’ll go with her, but you might have to take the bus back. Heahea is… actually you don’t know how big it is. Always seemed endless when you visited as a child.
“Cool. Let me throw my shoes on.”
Her absol spends the walk pressed against Lyra’s side. Lyra keeps one hand on the absol’s neck at all times. Like Cuicatl does. Except this is more of a security blanket thing, probably. With all you’ve learned today you’re really not surprised she picked a dark-type starter. One who could sense disasters. You thought about seeking out an absol yourself at one point. If castform were any better in battle you might’ve picked one of them. Or if altaria lived here…
“I hate it,” she finally mumbles.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.” Even if you can guess what she’s talking about.
“Hate that psychics can just do this shit with no consequences.”
“There might be. For the psychic, not the Gages.” Even if they’re too late. You kept your eyes glued to the screen when they executed the leaders of Aqua and Magma-dan, but it didn’t bring anyone back.
“No. There has to be some way to…” Her expression darkens as you approach a crosswalk. “They’re monsters.”
You aren’t sure who she’s talking about. Psychics or the Gage clan. You’ll assume the rich assholes and not the minority group.
“They’re careless people. Smashing up things and going back to their money.”
She blinks and looks at you like you grew a second mouth. “I don’t think that’s the right quote. And I, uh, didn’t think you’d have read much.”
Racist and rude. Sure, that was one of two books you read to the end in Galarian last year. And you only read that one so you could rant to Manollo about it. It was weird at the end. Half the class was mad because somehow they’d lived thirteen years in this goddamned country without learning that rich people could do whatever the hell they wanted to. The other half knew. Always knew.
“I didn’t like it.” She doesn’t need a full lecture right now. You’ll save that for later, when you won’t feel as bad drilling her on why, exactly, she thinks you don’t read.
“Neither did I,” she says. “The ending. Gatsby did everything for Daisy and she just left and let him die.”
Oh. Oh hell. She sees herself in the slightly-less-rich-asshole with a one-sided crush on a vapid girl who doesn’t really care about him. And she doesn’t like the ending because she can imagine it for herself.
“Gen’s your Daisy?”
“Shut up.” She presses her free hand even deeper into her pocket until it leaves the whole thing unbalanced, horizontal lines tilting to the left. “She’s not like that, whatever you think of her.” Yup. She’s probably dumber than Daisy. “Why didn’t you like it?”
“Because it wasn’t realistic. The person who got screwed over was also rich and white. Would’ve been a better story if it was about all the servants at the parties that were never given names or faces. Come to work one day and find out you’re unemployed because your boss got shot in the pool you were supposed to clean.
“Did the worker still have to clean the pool afterwards? Did anyone pay him? The boss was dead so he probably couldn’t collect his last paycheck. Maybe he couldn’t pay rent that month and ended up homeless just off the page.”
She stiffens up. “I never thought about that.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
Lyra sighs but doesn’t answer. Neither of you talk until a car takes a hard turn in front of you while you’re on a crosswalk. It rushes by and accelerates off. Had you been three feet further it would have hit you.
“Watch where you’re going jackass!” you shout.
“Asshole,” Lyra agrees. Once you’ve reached the sidewalk she speaks up again. “There has to be something to do about it, right? Some way to stop them…”
Again, you’re not sure who ‘them’ is. Psychics, the Gage clan, rich assholes, shitty drivers. The answer is really all the same.
“Get more power.”
“Huh?”
“More power. We live in a world where the strong can do whatever they want to anyone else. Take over countries, rewrite minds, sink islands. Doesn’t matter. You can do what you want if you’re strong enough.”
Lyra sighs. “We do live in a society with rules, you know? It’s not always like that.”
“Rules that the powerful wrote. Get your own power and you can rewrite the rules until someone stronger comes along.” Like another challenger. Or… Heat. Rain. Death. “Like a god.”
Lyra stops suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk. A pedestrian behind you almost walks right into her before stepping around, throwing her a stink eye that she doesn’t notice. “Tapu Lele’s a psychic, right? We could ask her?” She pauses. “Do you know how to ask her things? I assume there’s some ritual.”
There probably is. You don’t know it. “I know someone who might.” Kanoa. Or Plumeria. You already have a meeting scheduled for the evening.
“Good. And I… I can try to sacrifice to Ho-Oh. She’s kind of gay.”
She’s smiling. Her eyes seem to be filled with fragile hope. You don’t want to dash it, but you doubt it works. Tapu Lele is seen less than any of the other Tapu. And if she won’t intervene to save your people, you doubt she steps up for a single haole brat. And Ho-Oh just drifts throughout the world as far as you can tell. If there’s a way to get her to reliably do something no one’s ever figured it out.
You reach her cupcake place soon after. There’s a rainbow flag out front and the door is decked out in trans pride colors. Huh. Weren’t expecting that in this part of town. Although you suppose these days it’s okay to be gay as long as you’re rich.
There’s a sylveon resting in a bed in the corner of the shop. Now you’re curious if the trans pride door was just an accident. You’d think not with the rainbow, but who knows.
“Holy crap, is that you, Lyra!” The girl at the counter asks. She seems about your age. Haole. Well put together. Probably a classmate of hers. Whatever. Lyra immediately brightens up (or pretends to) and starts excitedly talking to the girl who is, of course, named Tiffany. It takes five minutes just to get your cupcake (and with the prices you wouldn’t have gotten one at all unless Lyra offered to pay). It’s chocolate razzberry and really, really good. The frosting, anyway. Somehow sweet and a little savory at the same time. The chocolate cupcake is just normal good.
It's a nice enough distraction all the same.
By sundown it has started to drizzle again. Nothing too intense. Just enough that you have to throw on a raincoat before taking the bus out to the most remote beach the line goes to. You hear soft footsteps approaching from behind. You turn to see Plumeria in her own green rain jacket walking over. She seems surprisingly normal when she’s hunched over and hiding from the rain like anyone else.
“Alright, what have you got?” she asks. “And if you call me saying you have, quote, really good info, it had better be good or I’m not answering again.”
“The Gages hired a psychic to make their daughter straight. Should happen within a few weeks.”
Plumeria tilts her head. “Where’d you hear that from?”
“Genesis’s brother.”
“Shit.” That sums things up pretty well. “I can use that. Get at least one of the Six Families distracted.”
“You going to kidnap her?” you ask. It’s probably the best Gensis can hope for now.
Your boss just scoffs. “Yeah, no. Not picking that fight directly. But I’ll see what I can do. If the system is fighting itself that’s a win for us. No need to make it us v. them when it can be them v. them.”
That makes sense. Even if you don’t actually think the government will do anything at all to the Gages. Too many donations on the line. Now you can talk about the other thing. Hopefully she’ll listen.
“Cuicatl figured out I set things up last night.”
She just shrugs. “That was always going to happen, kid. Can’t be within fifteen feet of a psychic for months and expect to keep a secret from them.”
Oh.
“Kinda surprised it took that long. How’d she take it, anyway?”
“She said she liked you but couldn’t work with you.”
Its hard to read her two dozen feet away in the rain and dusk. Is she angry? Sad? Annoyed?
“Figures. I need her alive and on our side when shit gets rolling. I have some info she’d like. Just not right now. Hopefully by then she’ll have figured out her current puppeteers can’t give her what she wants.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kid,” and you really hate how condescending that sounds. “She’s not doing too well, is she?”
“Physically? Mentally? Uh, no to both.” You don’t see what that has to do with lying to her, though.
“Figured. She’s living on hope. I go and dash those hopes, well, she’ll hate someone. Might be me. Might be herself. Either way, threatens the whole ‘alive and on our side’ deal.”
She thinks she’d kill herself. The girl’s not in a great place, but you’re pretty sure its not that bad. She’s never told you about it, anyway. You’ve been traveling together for months. She would have told you about it.
“Give her a few weeks. She’s starting therapy soon.”
“Good.” She turns around and starts walking away. “Call me when you think she can take it. Or when she finds out on her own.”
“Wait!” Plumeria pauses and glances back. “Would Tapu Lele do anything about Genesis?”
The boss pivots around. “Tell me,” she asks, “about a story where Tapu Lele fought her enemies?”
Her enemies. She fought The Darkness, Necrozma, the first time with the other Tapu. And there are stories of her fighting in wars against her siblings. And the sun and moon. You can’t think of her ever fighting a mortal.
“She doesn’t,” Plumeria answers for you. “Tapu Koko fires off his lightning bolts. Tapu Bulu bats aside his foes with brute strength. Tapu Fini drowns hers.” She pauses for dramatic effect. Just like her speeches at the base of the mountain. “Tapu Lele doesn’t have enemies. Approach her with the intent to fight and she’ll make you into her servant. She won’t care about a psychic fucking with someone’s head because she does it whenever she wants.”
Because she’s a goddess. Because she can, and no one can stop her.
Thankfully she’s on your side.
Kekoa
April 4th, 2020
Your carbink races across the field with an angry miltank right behind them. “Keep going! Rock polish again!” you call out to Kapuna. The lights around the carbink distorts and they get a second wind right before Anueneu crashes into them. He stops his rollout and bellows while the carbink rights themself.
“Good job,” you tell him. “And you’re definitely getting faster, Kapuna. Do you want to keep going?”
They don’t say anything. Right. You glance up the hill at Cuicatl. Probably too far away to translate and you’re trying not to depend on her for everything. She’s with her metang and wimpod. The metang is shooting out ping pong balls into the grass while the wimpod dodges. You can’t actually see the bug so it just looks like a metang randomly shooting out small objects while a girl relaxes nearby.
Coco is sparring with your birds. Playing, really. Ihe tries to intimidate Mahina while the toucannon spreads her wings and shrieks back. Sometimes Ihe will jab and get parried and pushed back by Ihe’s massive bill. Coco alternates between wrestling with either of them. She goes easy enough on Ihe so no one gets seriously hurt. Coco’s almost as big as Mahina now. You don’t know exactly when they evolve but she might be getting close.
When that happens Cuicatl’s basically won the island challenge. Game over, proceed directly to the Elite Four. You wish you could trust her with the championship. She’s a good person, but she’s not from here. She doesn’t, no, she can’t understand. Still, her path to beating Selene is going to be easier than yours. If you fail despite your best efforts you might switch to helping Cuicatl train for her own challenge.
Lyra jogs over with her absol keeping pace beside her. “Wanna spar?” she asks. “Haven’t gotten a shot at your miltank yet.”
Anueneu breaks his rollout and snorts. He knows his species name at least. And from the way he’s almost hungrily eyeing the absol it’s clear that he knows what he wants.
“Alright, Kapuna. You can stop the speed exercises.” The carbink had been flying away even after their pursuer stopped. On your order they stop almost instantly and slowly turn around to stare at you. Not stare, exactly. They don’t have eyelids. But looking at you for hours without moving is still creepy. What is it with mineral pokémon and being weird little shits?
You look back at the battlers. Absol has a sharp blade, training and speed. Anuenue is way bigger and tougher.
“Alright. Anueneu.” You really need a shorter nickname. Neu? You’ll ask later through Cuicatl when you get some time alone. “Stay.” His eyes narrow and he paws the earth with a snort. He doesn’t move.
“Your move, Lyra.”
If you attacked first she’d just go for a dodge. Making the absol comes to you gives you a chance.
She snaps. Her code for quick attack. “Slash.”
“Headbutt!” Anueneu rears up as the absol rockets forward in a blur. She stops beside the miltank’s left flank as a dark aura flares around her horn. “Left!”
Lyra snaps twice just as the night slash carves a bloody line into Anueneu’s side. Just before his head crashes down onto the dark-type she jumps just out of the way and runs. Detect. Your Pokémon catches his balance and charges forward without your command. The absol just keeps running. She’s faster and fresher since she hasn’t been doing speed exercises for a half hour. Anuenue won’t be able to keep up.
“Stay!” You call. He ignores you. Fine. “Rollout?”
He at least slows down long enough to curl into a ball and chase the absol that way. It still won’t be enough. Damn it, you really need to get a bulldoze TM. But that’s money, and that requires relying on your brother, and you still don’t really want to do that if you don’t have to.
You hear two snaps and the absol pauses and turns around. Anueneu barrels straight forward and the absol dives away just in time. It takes a while for the miltank to bank back around. When he does Lyra snaps twice again and your pokémon misses. Again. This isn’t a winning strategy. Maybe he’ll listen now.
“Stay!”
He does, reluctantly, break out of his rollout an stare down the absol. “Wait for her to get close again.”
Lyra smirks. “Razor wind.”
Shit. Is that a new trick? She didn’t use it in the fire trial and you haven’t seen her practicing it. Maybe it’s just a bluff. Cuicatl talked about doing something similar against the totem toxapex. No. The air stirs around absol’s blade and your stomach drops. You’d hoped you could help Anuenue win this. Earn some loyalty. That’s not looking likely anymore. “Headbutt, fast.”
Anueneu gets down on all fours and charges straight into the blades of wind. They leave gashes on his skin but barely seem to bother him. Lyra snaps twice and absol dives out of the way with detect and precognition. This time the miltank’s caught on enough to lunge to the side after absol. He just misses and the dark-type scurries away as fast as he can.
He got close. Maybe as close as he can get right now. “Good job,” you call out. Hopefully he knows that. “Come back.”
The miltank snorts and glares at the absol. But he does turn around and walk back over. He doesn’t seem too angry, either.
“Good job,” you repeat. “Are you hurt?”
He shakes his head. Kanoa said she didn’t spend a lot of time with him, but he’s clearly picked up some words and gestures. Maybe it just wasn’t a lot of time by her standards.
You walk around her and look at her cuts. Nothing bad. Looks like the absol was pulling her punches at least a little bit. “Good job. We’ll talk more at dinner.” He moos in agreement before you withdraw him. It’ll make him more comfortable until a nurse can patch up his cuts.
“Excuse me?” Someone asks. You turn to see some dweeby haole tween walking your way. He’s wearing a vest over a button up with slacks in Alola. Who even does that? Even the rich haole walk around in tacky flower print half the time. “You’re Kekoa, right?”
“Depends who’s asking.” Which is a dumb expression since you’re giving the game away. Whatever. Sounds cool.
“I’m Levi. Genesis’s brother. I’m told she traveled with you?”
Now you can kind of see the resemblance. Same blonde hair, same thin nose, same blue eyes. He might look a little too much like his sister to be masculine. Who knows what’ll happen in five years, though. Testosterone is one hell of a drug.
Lyra walks over. She’s smiling but her eyes are slightly narrowed. Sizing up a threat. You’ve seen her do it in almost every battle she’s been in. She knew Genesis so there’s probably history between the two. Not really any of your business. “Hey, Levi,” she greets him. “Good to see you again.”
The boy’s eyes widen as he notices Lyra. A crush? Crushing on your sister’s ex-friend is awkward, but probably not any more awkward than crushing on your boss. Hormones gonna hormone.
“Oh, hi! I wasn’t expecting you to be traveling with him.” And now you’re curious what business he has with you but not with Lyra. “That actually helps things a lot. Is, uh, Cuicatl still with you?” You gesture at the metang up to the hill. “Can you get her? It would be easier to tell this to all of you at once.”
Lyra purses her lips. “Kekoa, can you go?”
There’s not really a need. You turn around and shout uphill. “Hey, Noci!”
{Greetings Returned;
Query:Purpose}
“Can you get Cuicatl down here?”
There’s a moment’s pause. {Affirmative. UD_Cuicatl Has Initiated Ramming.}
What a weird hunk of metal.
Cuicatl slowly makes her way down over the next minute. Levi greets her. “Hi, Cuicatl. I’m Levi. Genesis’s sister.”
She smiles. “Genesis told me about you.”
Yeah, she probably did. Not that you were paying attention.
“Good things, I hope?”
“Yup.” For a second Cuicatl’s smile falters. Then it’s back to full strength. “She loves you, you know.”
Levi looks down at the ground and takes a deep breath. Is he disagreeing with that? Guilty?
“What did you want to talk about?” Lyra asks. “I can’t imagine it’s anything good.”
“It isn’t,” Levi murmurs. “After Gen came home our parents hired this weird woman to try and make her straight.”
What the fuck. She’s gay? Or bi? How did you not notice that?
Lyra slowly inhales. Her shoulders rise up and her face is twisted. Probably trying not to scream. Screaming would be a good reaction. The right reaction. You don’t even like Genesis but that’s really messed up.
“She’s been going along with it because she’s stubborn. My other sister and I tried to talk her out of it but I don’t think it worked.”
Lyra pinches her nose and closes her eyes. “Worried about Yveltal?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn it. I love the girl but she can be so stupid.”
Love the girl? Wait. Have you, uh, been really misreading some stuff? That has to be one sided, right? Even if Gen’s gay, she’s way too into the deer cult to actually date another girl.
The kid, Levi, looks down and wraps a hand around his other elbow. Like his sister did when she was uncomfortable. Does when she’s uncomfortable. “That was bad enough But I’ve heard him talking about hiring a psychic to… fix her.”
You hear a clunk beside you. Lyra dropped the pokéball she was holding. She’s gone as pale as her crush and her hands are trembling. “That’s…” She trails off before she can finish the thought.
“Fucked up? Maybe illegal?” you finish for her.
“Definitely illegal,” she whispers. “But he sells silk armor to cops. They won’t want to turn around and arrest him.”
Shit. Then, uh. That’s bad. Not like you ever expected the cops to do anything to a rich haole. Too busy arresting your people for loitering.
The kid looks towards Cuicatl with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Could you fix that? They seemed to think that you made her gay.”
Lyra scoffs. “Oh, please. She was into girls way before she entered into the picture.”
“I couldn’t,” Cuicatl says. “To change something that deep you’d need a strong psychic and an alakazam. I’m not that strong and Noci works better with computers than brains.”
“There has to be something…” Levi says. It doesn’t sound like he believes his own words.
What to do, what to do. You could go to the media. Unless he owns the media? And even then it’s not like any of you are reliable sources.
“We could go to the press,” Lyra suggests. Even though it wouldn’t work. “Cuicatl gives interviews sometimes. She could bring it up live. Wouldn’t even need to find a reporter willing to take it.”
The psychic purses her lips. “VStar wouldn’t like that.” And she’s willing to put her mom’s pokémon over Genesis’s happiness. Disappointing, but not surprising. “I can talk to INTERPOL. One of their agents sort of looks after the psychics in the area. She might be able to do something.”
Maybe. Your guessing INTERPOL uses ariados silk as well. You doubt they’d bite the hand that feeds them.
“If everything else fails we could break her out.” Lyra’s hugging herself and still deathly pale. Pretty sure she should sit down so she doesn’t fall. Looks like she’s a gust away from keeling over. And she’s speaking absolute nonsense. Break into a billionaire’s home? With what? Your strongest pokémon are an absol, a metang, and a toucannon. Even if Coco evolved it would be pretty damn clear who broke in using a tyrantrum. Then they’d probably just track you down and arrest you when you’re asleep. Or kill you. The cops have killed for way less. Wouldn’t even be a stretch to say that tyrantrum girl made them afraid for their lives.
No one else bothers to tell her off. It’s a bad idea, but she looks like she needs at least some hope. Whatever keeps her going.
You won’t say it out loud, but you do have a card of your own to play. Maybe Plumeria will care enough to do something. Gen might not like what she does, but it’s better than getting torn apart and put back together into something else.
*
It started raining in the early afternoon. Its only picked up from there. April marks the changing of the seasons from wet to dry. The rain knows and seems to pour harder and harder every time it comes, not wanting to let the sun rule the skies.
When you were really young you used to love napping when the raindrops were pounding down on the roof loud enough to be heard. Now you can’t sleep without a fan or a show or something to drown it out. Kyogre’s asleep. The rain isn’t literally fighting against Groudon. You could walk outside and be fine, just wet. No raindrops like bullets. No cracked pavement. No fire and ash and thunder and tsunamis.
You know all of that.
But your feelings never got the memo.
There’s a knock on the door. Two knocks. Probably Cuicatl. You haul yourself out of bed and walk over. When you open it you see her in the hallway with her metang floating behind her. “Can I come in?” she asks.
You take a step back and wave into the room. Uh. Right. “Go for it.”
Her metang has to tilt to the side to fit in through the door. At least they have the decency to push it closed behind them. Shows that Noci does understand the concept of privacy, she just doesn’t care.
“How’s Lyra?” you ask.
“Bad.” Figures. She barely made it back to the Center without collapsing. “She’s had a bad run in with a psychic before. Scared for Genesis.”
You’d both kind of figured that. “Any details?”
She shakes her head. “There was an alakazam. She doesn’t know what she lost, just that she lost something.” Oh. That might actually be scarier than knowing you lost something big. Creeping doubt all the time… you can kind of see where she’s coming from, even if she’s being a dick about it to Cuicatl. “She fell asleep next to her absol. Thought I could sneak away.”
Almost like Lyra’s a toddler and Cuicatl’s her fed-up mother who just wants a break. She already cooks for the girl, might as well take another step towards babying her. “Well, you’re welcome to crash here for a bit. I was going to watch a movie or something.” Something loud. Something distracting. She doesn’t like loud, though.
“The nurse said I could use the garage for polishing Noci. You want to bring Kapuna? We could talk” {quietly.}
“Sure.” Kapuna would like that. And you can deal with the rain being louder if you have someone to talk to.
You pull out your oil and cloths and leave the room after Cuicatl. Noci closes the door behind you. Are they just interested in closing doors now? Someday they’re going to lock you or Cuicatl out if they keep this up. Assuming they can’t just unlock doors now like that ninetales did.
Nope. Not going down that road.
“You sure you couldn’t help Gen?” you ask on the way down the hallway. “That wasn’t just something you were saying for Lyra?”
“I wouldn’t know how to start.” {Every psychic is different. Some see minds as pictures or scans or something. I see them as words. I could maybe make her think different words for a few seconds? I don’t think that would help.}
“Probably not.” Could she do it with a metagross? Then again, if she had a metagross, all of you would have a much bigger problem to deal with. On the bright side, Noci might let Genesis die gay or something. That’s about as much mercy as she could hope for. No idea how that Daigo prick keeps his in line. Maybe he doesn’t and he’s just bleeding hush money. Wouldn’t surprise you. If rich assholes there are anything like rich assholes here he might not even care. He certainly didn’t go out of his way to stop Aqua-dan and Magma-dan from killing hundreds of thousands of his countrymen.
If Cuicatl hears any of that she doesn’t comment. Not until you’re in the garage. There’s an employee there to keep any eye on you, because of course they wouldn’t trust two kids of color to be unsupervised. Not like there’s anything important in the garage. A couple run down pieces of machinery, a tool bench, and a clunky van they probably bought in the 80s.
Noci floats out in front of Cuicatl and Kapuna drifts over to you. Whatever. You can ignore the haole bitch’s glares. You won’t break her shit, however much you’d like to. You pour a little water into the first rag and hold it out to the carbink. Need to get her cleaned and dried before you can polish.
{When did you start caring?} she asks you. {You wanted her gone the entire time she was here.}
Yes. Yes, you did. And you aren’t sure if you want her back. She should be out and no one should have to go through the kind of shit they’re threatening her with, but she can be someone else’s problem.
{You’re the one who wanted her to go back to her parents.}
She grimaces and doesn’t reply. By the time you’ve gently cleaned and dried Kapuna’s jewels Cuicatl is still washing her metang. Its strange how differently your polishing goes. She’s much rougher than Kapuna would ever allow. From the way her arms sometimes jerk it looks like Noci is using their powers to move the rag (and its holder) where they want. Kapuna stays still in midair through the entire thing. You wouldn’t even know if they loved or hated this if Cuicatl didn’t tell you.
As you get the duster out to clean the rest of Kapuna’s body, Cuicatl speaks out again. {I talked to your boss last night.} Your boss? How did she figure that out? Did Plumeria tell her? {Thanks. Wasn’t sure if that was a coincidence.} Damn it. Damn her. Damn psychics. You’re really starting to see where Lyra is coming from these days. {Fuck you. I was born like this.}
{A bitch?}
She drops the rag she was polishing Noci’s stomach with. It gets caught and rises right back up. Then she giggles. Your watcher looks up from her phone and looks on in confusion. “Remembered a joke, that’s all.” {You have one joke and I still didn’t expect it.}
Rude. You have at least two.
{I don’t care,} she tells you as she picks up a new cloth and starts drying off her metang. {I just wanted to know. You sent me to a weird spot, she shows up, seemed like you might’ve known something.}
You don’t give her a response. It was just a talk. You didn’t do anything wrong. Kapuna nudges away and you blink in confusion. Oh. Must’ve been a little too aggressive with the duster. Got close to the eyes or something. “Sorry.” You realize too late that Cuicatl might think you’re talking to her.
{She has the same ringtone as a cop.}
{There aren’t that many ringtones.}
She shrugs. {Just thought it was weird.}
It seems like she lets it go there. You finish dusting off Kapuna and they start to drift off towards some paint cans. You keep an eye on them and put a finger to the recall button on her ball. The Center employee watches the carbink even more intensely than you. Fuck them. Kapuna’s just a curious rock. They almost never break anything.
{I don’t think we’ll get along.} Her face is neutral but she’s really pushing down on the cloth as she polishes her pokémon. {I agree with her. Just can’t help.}
Typical. You’re surprised Plumeria even bothered to ask. She’s the public face of VStar.
…
Oh.
Was that Cuicatl’s one warning before Skull went after her?
You need to talk to Plumeria. You were going to because of the Genesis thing, but now it needs to happen soon.
*
Someone knocks gently on your door three times. Probably Lyra. Cuicatl has her pattern. Ugh. Fine. You get up and let her in. The girl looks like a mess. She has some of the worst bedhead you’ve seen from her (and you’ve camped with her for weeks) and her eyes are bloodshot. She tried to put on makeup but its smudged and sloppy enough that it just makes her look worse. This from a girl who spends way too long getting ready every time you’re going to be around other people. Her hands are rammed into the pockets of her tight blue jacket and her absol is standing at attention beside her.
“Hey,” she mutters. “Cuicatl’s working on her thesis. Want to go on a walk?”
Asking you for one-on-one time. Truly desperate. Whatever. She’s going through a lot and it would be rude to turn her down. And this lets Cuicatl study at least. You aren’t actually sure how far she’s into her paper (you need to ask her) but more work can’t help. You looked up the people on the Class V approval board and they’re almost all snotty old haole dweebs who are going to make her work ten times harder for it than usual.
“Where to?”
“Bakery in the east part of town,” she whispers. You lean in a little bit just to hear her. “They have good cupcakes.”
Good enough that she’ll walk halfway across town for one. You’ll go with her, but you might have to take the bus back. Heahea is… actually you don’t know how big it is. Always seemed endless when you visited as a child.
“Cool. Let me throw my shoes on.”
*
Her absol spends the walk pressed against Lyra’s side. Lyra keeps one hand on the absol’s neck at all times. Like Cuicatl does. Except this is more of a security blanket thing, probably. With all you’ve learned today you’re really not surprised she picked a dark-type starter. One who could sense disasters. You thought about seeking out an absol yourself at one point. If castform were any better in battle you might’ve picked one of them. Or if altaria lived here…
“I hate it,” she finally mumbles.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.” Even if you can guess what she’s talking about.
“Hate that psychics can just do this shit with no consequences.”
“There might be. For the psychic, not the Gages.” Even if they’re too late. You kept your eyes glued to the screen when they executed the leaders of Aqua and Magma-dan, but it didn’t bring anyone back.
“No. There has to be some way to…” Her expression darkens as you approach a crosswalk. “They’re monsters.”
You aren’t sure who she’s talking about. Psychics or the Gage clan. You’ll assume the rich assholes and not the minority group.
“They’re careless people. Smashing up things and going back to their money.”
She blinks and looks at you like you grew a second mouth. “I don’t think that’s the right quote. And I, uh, didn’t think you’d have read much.”
Racist and rude. Sure, that was one of two books you read to the end in Galarian last year. And you only read that one so you could rant to Manollo about it. It was weird at the end. Half the class was mad because somehow they’d lived thirteen years in this goddamned country without learning that rich people could do whatever the hell they wanted to. The other half knew. Always knew.
“I didn’t like it.” She doesn’t need a full lecture right now. You’ll save that for later, when you won’t feel as bad drilling her on why, exactly, she thinks you don’t read.
“Neither did I,” she says. “The ending. Gatsby did everything for Daisy and she just left and let him die.”
Oh. Oh hell. She sees herself in the slightly-less-rich-asshole with a one-sided crush on a vapid girl who doesn’t really care about him. And she doesn’t like the ending because she can imagine it for herself.
“Gen’s your Daisy?”
“Shut up.” She presses her free hand even deeper into her pocket until it leaves the whole thing unbalanced, horizontal lines tilting to the left. “She’s not like that, whatever you think of her.” Yup. She’s probably dumber than Daisy. “Why didn’t you like it?”
“Because it wasn’t realistic. The person who got screwed over was also rich and white. Would’ve been a better story if it was about all the servants at the parties that were never given names or faces. Come to work one day and find out you’re unemployed because your boss got shot in the pool you were supposed to clean.
“Did the worker still have to clean the pool afterwards? Did anyone pay him? The boss was dead so he probably couldn’t collect his last paycheck. Maybe he couldn’t pay rent that month and ended up homeless just off the page.”
She stiffens up. “I never thought about that.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
Lyra sighs but doesn’t answer. Neither of you talk until a car takes a hard turn in front of you while you’re on a crosswalk. It rushes by and accelerates off. Had you been three feet further it would have hit you.
“Watch where you’re going jackass!” you shout.
“Asshole,” Lyra agrees. Once you’ve reached the sidewalk she speaks up again. “There has to be something to do about it, right? Some way to stop them…”
Again, you’re not sure who ‘them’ is. Psychics, the Gage clan, rich assholes, shitty drivers. The answer is really all the same.
“Get more power.”
“Huh?”
“More power. We live in a world where the strong can do whatever they want to anyone else. Take over countries, rewrite minds, sink islands. Doesn’t matter. You can do what you want if you’re strong enough.”
Lyra sighs. “We do live in a society with rules, you know? It’s not always like that.”
“Rules that the powerful wrote. Get your own power and you can rewrite the rules until someone stronger comes along.” Like another challenger. Or… Heat. Rain. Death. “Like a god.”
Lyra stops suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk. A pedestrian behind you almost walks right into her before stepping around, throwing her a stink eye that she doesn’t notice. “Tapu Lele’s a psychic, right? We could ask her?” She pauses. “Do you know how to ask her things? I assume there’s some ritual.”
There probably is. You don’t know it. “I know someone who might.” Kanoa. Or Plumeria. You already have a meeting scheduled for the evening.
“Good. And I… I can try to sacrifice to Ho-Oh. She’s kind of gay.”
She’s smiling. Her eyes seem to be filled with fragile hope. You don’t want to dash it, but you doubt it works. Tapu Lele is seen less than any of the other Tapu. And if she won’t intervene to save your people, you doubt she steps up for a single haole brat. And Ho-Oh just drifts throughout the world as far as you can tell. If there’s a way to get her to reliably do something no one’s ever figured it out.
You reach her cupcake place soon after. There’s a rainbow flag out front and the door is decked out in trans pride colors. Huh. Weren’t expecting that in this part of town. Although you suppose these days it’s okay to be gay as long as you’re rich.
There’s a sylveon resting in a bed in the corner of the shop. Now you’re curious if the trans pride door was just an accident. You’d think not with the rainbow, but who knows.
“Holy crap, is that you, Lyra!” The girl at the counter asks. She seems about your age. Haole. Well put together. Probably a classmate of hers. Whatever. Lyra immediately brightens up (or pretends to) and starts excitedly talking to the girl who is, of course, named Tiffany. It takes five minutes just to get your cupcake (and with the prices you wouldn’t have gotten one at all unless Lyra offered to pay). It’s chocolate razzberry and really, really good. The frosting, anyway. Somehow sweet and a little savory at the same time. The chocolate cupcake is just normal good.
It's a nice enough distraction all the same.
*
By sundown it has started to drizzle again. Nothing too intense. Just enough that you have to throw on a raincoat before taking the bus out to the most remote beach the line goes to. You hear soft footsteps approaching from behind. You turn to see Plumeria in her own green rain jacket walking over. She seems surprisingly normal when she’s hunched over and hiding from the rain like anyone else.
“Alright, what have you got?” she asks. “And if you call me saying you have, quote, really good info, it had better be good or I’m not answering again.”
“The Gages hired a psychic to make their daughter straight. Should happen within a few weeks.”
Plumeria tilts her head. “Where’d you hear that from?”
“Genesis’s brother.”
“Shit.” That sums things up pretty well. “I can use that. Get at least one of the Six Families distracted.”
“You going to kidnap her?” you ask. It’s probably the best Gensis can hope for now.
Your boss just scoffs. “Yeah, no. Not picking that fight directly. But I’ll see what I can do. If the system is fighting itself that’s a win for us. No need to make it us v. them when it can be them v. them.”
That makes sense. Even if you don’t actually think the government will do anything at all to the Gages. Too many donations on the line. Now you can talk about the other thing. Hopefully she’ll listen.
“Cuicatl figured out I set things up last night.”
She just shrugs. “That was always going to happen, kid. Can’t be within fifteen feet of a psychic for months and expect to keep a secret from them.”
Oh.
“Kinda surprised it took that long. How’d she take it, anyway?”
“She said she liked you but couldn’t work with you.”
Its hard to read her two dozen feet away in the rain and dusk. Is she angry? Sad? Annoyed?
“Figures. I need her alive and on our side when shit gets rolling. I have some info she’d like. Just not right now. Hopefully by then she’ll have figured out her current puppeteers can’t give her what she wants.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kid,” and you really hate how condescending that sounds. “She’s not doing too well, is she?”
“Physically? Mentally? Uh, no to both.” You don’t see what that has to do with lying to her, though.
“Figured. She’s living on hope. I go and dash those hopes, well, she’ll hate someone. Might be me. Might be herself. Either way, threatens the whole ‘alive and on our side’ deal.”
She thinks she’d kill herself. The girl’s not in a great place, but you’re pretty sure its not that bad. She’s never told you about it, anyway. You’ve been traveling together for months. She would have told you about it.
“Give her a few weeks. She’s starting therapy soon.”
“Good.” She turns around and starts walking away. “Call me when you think she can take it. Or when she finds out on her own.”
“Wait!” Plumeria pauses and glances back. “Would Tapu Lele do anything about Genesis?”
The boss pivots around. “Tell me,” she asks, “about a story where Tapu Lele fought her enemies?”
Her enemies. She fought The Darkness, Necrozma, the first time with the other Tapu. And there are stories of her fighting in wars against her siblings. And the sun and moon. You can’t think of her ever fighting a mortal.
“She doesn’t,” Plumeria answers for you. “Tapu Koko fires off his lightning bolts. Tapu Bulu bats aside his foes with brute strength. Tapu Fini drowns hers.” She pauses for dramatic effect. Just like her speeches at the base of the mountain. “Tapu Lele doesn’t have enemies. Approach her with the intent to fight and she’ll make you into her servant. She won’t care about a psychic fucking with someone’s head because she does it whenever she wants.”
Because she’s a goddess. Because she can, and no one can stop her.
Thankfully she’s on your side.
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