Persephone
Infinite Screms
- Pronouns
- her/hers
- Partners
-
A response before the chapter;
Fairy 6.22: Unreality
Cuicatl
July 24, 2020
Gen guides you away. It takes a while but you can hear the formerly quiet crowd start to buzz again. Your girlfriend tries to reassure you and you ignore it. You both know how that went. You were there.
“They were so mean,” she huffs. “How is anyone supposed to pass? They’re mad at you because you work with VStar and then they’re mad at you because you don’t.”
VStar. Dr. Karashina and Lyra had argued over how to handle them and agreed that was the best way to handle it. So long as there weren’t any major scandals there were aware of (you’d told them they weren’t) it would gain you more votes than you’d lose.
It turns out the that Miss Bell is paid lots of money because she’s good at her job.
You don’t even remember why you lied. It must have been a thoughtless thing done in the spur of the moment. Just one, tiny little thing that might have doomed you. Did they even ask directly? Did you actually lie or just not volunteer information they didn’t ask for? Why would they even devote a question to asking that? They have limited space in—okay fine you don’t remember how long it took you to fill out the form. Just another careless moment from the careless girl who lost her passport and…
“We’re at the door. Want to go outside?”
“Yes,” you tell her, “Alone.”
Her concern and disappointment ripple out of her mind and through her body into yours.
“I’ll be fine.” You just want time alone with only one voice in your head.
“If you’re sure…”
“I won’t go far.”
“Okay.” She gives you a side hug and you lean in a little despite everything. “Just call if you need anything.”
“I will.”
She opens the door and you step out. You don’t know exactly where you’re going but you walk forward until you reach the softness of dirt and grass. It’s wet from recent rain. Not common in the summer. Grass got lucky. You would like to feel it. You like your sandals so much because you can feel the texture of the ground beneath the soles and the plants around them. When you had to replace them in April you made sure the new ones were the same. Now your feet are shoved into dress shoes that you can already feel giving you blisters. But Dr. Karashina insisted you needed something nicer. Something more formal, more American. Ended up being a dress and tights with blocky, hard-edged shoes and a face caked in powders or creams. At least the dress is flowy.
You flop down into the wet grass. Maybe it ruins the clothes. You don’t care. The people have already made up their minds about you. Seeing grass stains on you won’t change anything. You’d just like to feel something real.
You hear Pixie’s steady trot. Right. She’s out here. “Done with the ninetales?”
“Yes. Why are you sad?”
Right to the point. “I don’t think that went well.”
“You failed?” she asks as she climbs into your lap and curls up. Add white fur to the grass stains.
“I think so.”
“You don’t know?”
“Not yet.” You reach down and she presses her head into your hand. You idly scratch her ear. Her one remaining ear. You don’t think that’s your fault. Yes, you could have sent out Noci, Leo, or Coco, but they probably would’ve been killed. Yes, you could have waited for Dr. Karashina, but then you might not have made it in time to help. You tried to keep her from Kalani. That was a mistake. It’s unfortunate but not your fault. Just a dead fox’s. And maybe Dr. Kukui’s. Dr. Karashina blames him.
“You’re fine,” she says. “You’re smart. For a human.”
You raise an eyebrow. “And for a fox?”
“You would be a bad fox.”
“That’s probably true.”
At least she believes in you. And maybe you do have a chance. Dr. Karashina is in there. She’s persuasive. Chris can’t prove anything, either. Maybe they’re just this harsh to everyone. Lyra was harsh in her questions to you. And you do know a lot about hydreigon care. More than any of them. They couldn’t attack that at all, except to complain that you haven’t read theories by people who also probably know less than you. Dragons don’t even care about what this committee thinks. Alice never asked about licenses. Ellas would think they were silly, human things.
It’s not over yet. There’s still hope. You force out a small smile. Maybe you have this after all.
It takes a long time for the door to open again. You try to see that as not a bad thing. Gen calls out that it’s time to come in. You gently push Pixie out of your lap and rise to your feet, holding out a hand for guidance. She slides under it. At the door you turn down towards Pixie.
“Think they’ll let her in,” you ask your girlfriend.
“Probably not.”
“You want to go back outside or into your ball?”
She thinks for a moment. “Ball.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
You take Gen’s arm and she walks you back to your seat in the conference room. It’s quiet. Very quiet. You extend a small probe to Dr. Karashina and find her mind tightly sealed. Probably didn’t even notice you tried to ask a question.
“Miss Ichtaca,” the champion begins. “The council has considered your application for a Class V Pokémon Training license. And by a vote of 37 to 26 your application was denied. I’m sorry.”
Your heart falls. Your mind falls. The world falls. For a moment nothing exists at all.
“You can apply again in a year’s time…”
She says more things, probably. Your mind can’t understand them. Can’t understand anything. Gods. What happens to Coco? How do you tell her this? Aree you just going to abandon your own daughter to some stranger because you fucked up some paperwork a year ago and. It feels like your world ended again. Like you just flew home and father pulled you aside and you realized that you tore your family apart with a casual decision for the second time in two years.
Once can be a mistake. Everyone can make those. Twice is a pattern of carelessness. Of failure. Of failing everyone who though they could depend on you.
“Thank you everyone for coming. I look forward to seeing you again.”
You want to run. You can’t. The room is unfamiliar. Sending out Noci or Pixie would require answering questions and you don’t—can’t—
People are starting to crowd around you. It’s stuffier. Too many footsteps.
“I’m really sorry about that,” someone says. “Tried to argue for you. I’m Ryuki, by the way. The dragon gym leader. I have a ranch your tyrantrum can live on—”
“That’s quite enough,” Dr. Karashina says. Her voice is lower and icier than you’ve ever heard it. Even when she was discussing Kalani’s killing. A hand falls on your shoulder. “Can I help you get somewhere quieter, dear?”
Maybe you nod. Maybe you don’t. Your hand ends up on someone’s arm and your feet are moving and you’re guided down into a chair in a quieter space. Another chair pulls out. Someone sits down. For some reason you focus on their breathing. Slow. Steady. Wrong pitch for Lyra. Gen would be upset. You flick your mind out and find a solid wall. Dr. Karashina, then.
“This isn’t your fault but mine,” she finally says. “I assumed too much of others and failed to anticipate that proper documentation would be a problem.”
Oh.
She thought too highly of you.
You always knew she did. Just didn’t expect her to say it.
“Not you,” she interrupts. “I just told you that. Your case is…” She leans forward and rests a hand on one of yours. “There are things going on that they could not have known about. I will tell you as much as I can soon. I promise. In the meantime, there are steps we can take to minimize the damage.”
Straight to business. Ready to move on. You don’t think you can. Not yet. You still haven’t fully accepted what happened. A dream, maybe. Everything’s blurry, it could be—it’s a dream. You can wake up. You can learn.
“What should I have done better?”
“Nothing,” she says. “All of this was set in place as soon as you entered Alola. Others failed to care for you.”
“There had to have been something—”
She moves her chair closer to you and wraps an arm around your shoulder. “No. There wasn’t. Now, this isn’t ideal.” You snort at the understatement of the calendar round. Snot comes out. You don’t, can’t, won’t, lift a hand to remove it. “I can still promise that your worst fears will not come to pass. I’ll have to move some timeframes around and call in a few favors. It’s possible you’ll have to drop out of the island challenge. But I promise that things are going to be okay in the end, however hard it is to see that now.”
There are a few quick knocks at the door. Shirona says something in Sinnish under her breath. “Busy!” Something soft is pressed against the snot on your face and quickly moved away.
The door opens anyway. A few people walk in. Two, three, or four. The door is slammed shut behind them.
“Nanu, I swear up and down the pillar that if you’re going to take her pokémon right now I’m going to—”
“Calm down. This has nothing to do with that.”
Lila. And… the words don’t translate. That happened with the dark kahuna. His words sound similar. Probably him? Chairs are pulled out and pushed back in at… three different times.
“Nanu, are you really trying to do this now,” Dr. Karashina hisses. “Read the room.”
“Told you that I’d have everything ready by the conference. I can leave the stuff here and go home if you’d prefer. It’s already late and I don’t teleport. I’d really rather get on the road if it’s all the same to you.”
There’s a tense silence in the air. Someone finally breaks it with a sigh. Someone else. Male. Not Nanu. “I can stay and overtake the case if liked.”
It takes you a moment to understand. Even through your gift it’s… off. That almost never happens.
“No, he’s not getting out of this that easily. Tomorrow—”
“Golfing,” Nanu drawls. “Sorry, doc.”
“The day after.”
“Busy.”
“With. What?”
“Out of the country.”
Another tense pause. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”
It’s strange to hear Dr. Karashina swear. You don’t think you’d heard it before.
“Heard it all before. Now, do you want to do this now or later?”
“What are you talking about?” you finally ask. Dr. Karashina knows about this. It involves a kahuna for some reason. And Lila. Why are they here?
“Some other bad news. Mostly unrelated to this. It isn’t urgent but it is something you should know eventually. If you can’t handle anything else right now, we can wait.”
“Just tell me.” Not like things can get any worse.
“Cool. You’re a faller.”
Lila’s chair rapidly pulls away and they slam their hands on the table. Psychic energy flares against your defenses. “You sick fuck—"
“Calm down.”
“You promised that this wasn’t going to happen again.”
“I didn’t.”
“We had an understanding.”
“Tell that to Tapu Lele.”
“At the very least you could have told me.”
“You found out almost immediately.”
The onslaught of psychic power pauses. “What?”
“Tapu Lele mindwiped you.”
“Bastard,” they mutter. “Should have at least told me during The Blackout. What if she was attacked?”
“We had Reshiram on site within four hours. It was fine.”
Lila finally sits down. “When?”
“The wormhole storm back in September. She showed up on Ula’Ula while you were busy with the ‘cephs on Akala.
You once again have no idea what they’re talking about. “What’s a faller?”
“You know the wormholes that Ultra Beasts come from?”
“Yes?” Sort of. You’ve picked up some secondhand. Not like you’ve heard a full lecture or anything.
“Sometimes they connect to other Earths. Sometimes those other Earths have humans on them. Sometimes a human comes through from another Earth. Most of the time they’re fine. Just a little shaken. We get them a new ID and a place to stay for a few months. But psychics? You lot get fucked up in Ultra Space. Come out with minds torn to pieces. For centuries Tapu Lele’s been stitching their minds back together into something coherent. She likes to see how long it takes people to figure it out. How good her work was. Looker and I are just the saps who have to help her.”
You blink. Okay. Psychics. Ultra Space. He’s saying… you’re not from here? And your mind… your memories…
“Are my memories real?”
“Some of them,” Nanu says. “Some aren’t. Some are probably just close. She took the pieces and tried to complete the puzzle but some were missing and she likes to, well. You’re probably mostly the same person. Close enough for government work.”
You try to think through all of that and immediately fail. It’s. How do you even start to understand that? You find yourself focusing on the smaller things. If you’re not from here, if you’re from another dimension, that’s why Miss Bell couldn’t find your pokémon.
“My pokémon are in another universe?”
Nanu sighs. “No, kid. You had six apricorn pokéballs on you when you came through. Nothing in them. Their inhabitants had died.”
This isn’t real. You already thought you were dreaming and nothing after that has made any more sense. Something slides across the table and you reach out instinctively. A bag. Something hard in it. Are these—
You reach in. Grab one. It fits well in your palm. Wood. Smooth, mostly, with some uneven paint beneath the release. What pokéballs are supposed to feel like. Renfield’s. You reach in and grab one that gives you a tiny splinter just for touching it. The first. ‘Kovsky’s. Horror grows with each one you pull out. You know these instinctively. Better than you know your current set. These are real.
This is real.
The final one has little iron studs running along it in an x-pattern. The highest rated ball on the market.
This is Alice’s pokéball. A year has passed and you’ve finally found it again.
Ellas is dead.
They’re all dead.
You drop the ball and it starts rolling towards the edge of the table. Your hand clumsily shoots out to grab it but it just sends it flying off. No. This. No. Alice. Renfield. Searah. Coco. Everyone. Everything—
The fox snarls and spit flies onto your face. Her sharp claws easily shred through your top and dig into your chest. “You will die alone.” The ninetales’ curse. Dying alone with no way home. Did she cause this, somehow, or was she just unlucky enough to waste her final breath?
Two nightmares in an hour.
The first.
“The visa,” you somehow choke out. “It didn’t exist. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Had a week to get lots of shit in order and both Looker and I have jobs. State department wasn’t being helpful, didn’t have much time or the right connections to force something through. We can help you get a passport if you want one.”
“You could have said something! I could have passed.”
“Listen, kid, did you really want to have this conversation in front of dozens of people?”
“If I’d known sooner—” You whirl around to face Dr. Karashina. “You knew about this?”
“I found out shortly before you left for Poni,” she answers. “I’d thought it best not to stress you before the thesis defense. I was wrong.” Her usual level, imperious tone wavers. “I’m sorry. Truly.”
You remember the dragon gym leader who immediately wanted to take Coco. Was she just doing that with extra steps? You press your seat back and stand up, stuffing the apricorn balls into the holding bag. Something nudges your hand. Hard, round. Alice’s. You take it and put it in the bag, too, before sending out Noci. She’s less likely to ask questions—less likely to ask the wrong questions—than Pixie. You need to be somewhere else. Somewhere where the walls aren’t closing in and everyone hates you and it’s all so, so wrong.
{Take me. Somewhere else.}
{Query: status.}
{Somewhere else.}
{Query: Status:UD_Cuicatl_Ichtaca.}
{Somewhere. Else.} You send a scattershot of feelings of the wet grass and honestly you don’t know you just need need need to not be here.
You hear a door open in front of you and step through.
“Cuicatl, is everything alright? What—”
You step past Genesis. How do you explain this to her? She didn’t even know who she was dating. It’s all built on lies.
Someone reaches out to stop you and you just keep going. They don’t try to hold you back but they do walk behind you.
“Babe, we can talk about it—”
{Not now. Not yet.} The burst is harsher than it should have been. Maybe even a little painful. Good. It’s best if she just leaves now before you get her hurt, too.
Once you step through another door and finally feel moist, real air on your skin you signal Noci to dip lower.
“Cuicatl!”
You slip onto Noci’s back. {Somewhere we won’t be bothered. Please.}
She hesitates. She never hesitates. She’s betraying you, too. Not the best time for it but with your luck it makes sense. Three tragedies, one hour. Then she slowly begins to rise and your body gets telekinetically pulled down into hers.
Genesis keeps shouting beneath you and maybe Lyra says something but you don’t care. Can’t care. How do you deal with something, anything, else when you can’t even deal with half of what just happened?
It could be a minute or an hour or an eternity before Noci slows and descends to let you off. The ground is hard under your shoes but a little uneven. Natural rock. The winds aren’t much stronger so you aren’t too high up. You crash down onto the ground and sprawl out, back against the stone.
{Query: Status}
You sigh / sob. Probably no putting it off.
“I’m from some other world. Fell through a wormhole. Tapu Lele fucked all my memories up and. And. And…” No. You can’t do this. Not aloud. {My mom’s pokémon are all dead.}
In half a second Noci’s arm is pressed against your side. It’s warm. You lean into it. She wraps the other around you.
The dam breaks and you sob. Loudly. Constantly. Until you have no more tears left in your body. Even then you still heave and whimper to try and dig more up.
“And I didn’t get the Class V license,” you whisper in a cracked voice. “Dr. Karashina—Shirona—she knew and set me up to fail. Probably going to take Coco with her. Then Cuepiltia will go with Coco. I can’t evolve you so I can’t beat the League. Pixie will find someone who can. Sitrus will follow. Leo will get bored and go back to the ocean when the fights stop. You aren’t loyal to me in the first place. And when I have no pokémon I can’t protect Gen so she’ll leave. Probably date Lyra. Good. She deserves better. They both do. And then I’ll be alone, for real, even more than last time and I don’t think I can do that again.”
{Assessing Probability… Processing Large Amounts of Data… Querying Greater Network… Likelihood of Suggested Causal Chain Roughly 1.668%}
“How could you possibly know that?”
{Unit2_263 will not abandon UD_Cuicatl_Ichtaca}
Great. Because she’s totally incapable of lying.
“Did you know I was a faller?” You wouldn’t put it past her. She might have been keeping that secret, too.
{Negation.}
“So there was something you didn’t observe.”
{Unit2_263 has failed observational duties. Suggested action?
[] Decommission
[] Order Upgrades
[] Change Behavioral Programming
[] Initiate Ramming
[] Do Nothing}
It almost makes you laugh in the face of everything. You assume that was a joke. Should make sure of that. “Do nothing.”
{Orders received.}
The air grows colder and you can feel a new presence nearby. Breathing. About human volume and height. You thought you went pretty far. Why is someone bothering you out here? Who dares to bother you out here?
“Making yourself a little hard to find, princess.”
The voice is feminine. About your age. Mostly unfamiliar? Maybe you met her or heard her talk during the review.
“What do you want?”
Should you have Noci do something? She probably isn’t a threat but you don’t want her here. Not now. The metang pulls away on her own. Good. Makes responses faster.
“Heard you’d cut everyone off to mope on your own. Been there, done that, found that it never helps like you think it would. Wanted to make sure you had someone to talk to, princess to princess.”
“I don’t know you.” And that’s the second time she’s used that word. “And I’m not a princess.”
“You’re Unovan royalty, aren’t you? I like to think that royal lineages continue on after white people overthrow a kingdom. They would really like you to think otherwise, which probably means it’s a good idea.”
You stay silent. Who is this person and what does she want?
“Oh! How rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Acerola Aholo, great-granddaughter of Alola’s last queen and the rightful heir to the throne.”
“You were the ghost trial captain?”
“Yup! You just missed out on fighting me by the sounds of it.”
“Do you want Coco or something?” Still have no idea why she’s here. Or why she hasn’t left yet. You’ve been trying to keep any hint of friendliness out of your voice. It isn’t very hard.
“No. I really am here to just talk. You don’t end up as a ghost specialist without going through some hard times. Wanted to make sure you weren’t… doing something rash.”
“I’m not killing myself.” Yet. That will probably come when everyone’s left you and there’s no one around who would mourn. “I have Noci here. I’m fine.”
“Good to hear it. And she seems like a very nice metang.” You hear her settle in against the rocks. How do you make her leave? She has ghost-types. Noci couldn’t overpower her. Could Coco? You really don’t want to send her out yet. Haven’t even thought about how to explain everything. “Under Alolan law you wouldn’t have a license review, you know? Trainers were allowed to raise anything they could keep willingly serving alongside them and nothing they couldn’t.”
“American law applies now.” Maybe too harsh to tell to the lost princess or whatever but you really do just want her to leave.
“Yeah. Even though a lot of people have tried to change that.” She sighs. “America likes to talk about being a nation of free speech and peaceful protest and fair laws. That’s not how it works, though. My great-grandmother convinced the president that the takeover was wrong and Congress and the army just ignored it. Took us over without even passing a law. My mom went to the U.N. and the FBI shot her. Barely even tried to make it look like an accident. Declared the rest of my family unfit to raise me and shoved me in an orphanage just to show that they could. That there was no hope. That Alola was never coming back peacefully. And I did learn. You can’t win peacefully when the enemy won’t let you.”
That’s Skull rhetoric. Nahua rhetoric, even. “How did they let you get a Class V license?”
She laughs. It’s whimsical. Captivating. Deeply sad beneath it all. “I didn’t just come out and tell them all that! I learned to play the game. Got the kahuna to take me under his wing. Became a trial captain. Started making friends in the shadows and in the light. Read everything of my mother’s I could find. Have nothing but smiles for the Americans until it was too late to stop me. And I’ve found a lot of allies along the way! I’m hardly the only person the colonizers and their government have screwed over.”
The Gages getting away with everything. Kekoa growing up in an orphanage while his brother was away in their army. Now you losing Coco and being lied to for almost a year.
“I know.”
“See! When I was reading and exploring, I found something. Just cryptic mentions in a few books and on a gravestone, but I got Nanu to tell me a little and the ghosts to tell me a lot and I figured it out! One of Nanu’s ancestors was—they call them fallers, now, people from another world.” You freeze up. Does she know? How could she possibly know? She continues, though, like it shouldn’t mean anything to you. “They had a whole civilization with lots of magic. Set up a small city in the desert.”
“I think I stumbled into it.” The place with the golett and baltoy. They recognized you as a citizen. Is that when Shirona figured it all out?
“Cool! It’s buried pretty deep in there. Anyway, the spacefarers and the royals were friendly. Intermarried. Traded things. They gave us things we couldn’t find on Alola and we gave them some of our harvests when they didn’t have enough food. One of those gifts was this lovely obsidian dagger. I think it’s obsidian, anyway. Smooth black rock.”
“Sounds like obsidian.” You’ve held a few of those daggers. Old ones, mostly, when they let you into the temple for a little training.
“Yeah. Anyway, there’s an army of ghosts around Alola. My family can summon them. But we also need blood from a third person and, well, a faller. To make sure we didn’t use it against the spacefarers.”
Your blood stills again. You know why she’s here.
“You knew?”
“For a while, yeah. Had Plumeria reach out to you in Heahea. See if you’d be in a really bad place if we told you.” The Skull boss. She’d had a weird alarm, one you remembered from somewhere, and then asked what you would do if your mom’s pokémon never showed up. You thought she was threatening you. Might’ve threatened her. Probably threatened her. “Glad they’d told you about it. I saw Nanu and Lila go in after you so I figured you were about to find out, but, like, if they didn’t and you found out from me it would’ve been kind of awkward.”
You grip the bag in your hands a little tighter. You know why she’s here. It doesn’t sound good. {What pokémon does she have out?}
{One froslass. Five additional balls visible on belt. Initiate ramming?}
{No. Not yet.}
“Are you going to kill me? Take my blood?”
“Woah, no! Has to be consensual. And I need, like, two drops. Five, tops.”
“It’s not just blood, though, is it? I’m Nahua. I’ve heard things about blood magic.”
“A little bit of essence. You’ll be sluggish for a few days. Might feel a little colder than usual. The blood and essence aren’t powering the ritual, just removing the locks on it.”
You snort. A lot of snot comes out because of all the crying. You quickly wipe it up like that didn’t happen. Acerola doesn’t comment on it. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because you have a lot to gain?” The sing-song melody of her voice dips and levels out. “I told you, licenses aren’t a thing under Alolan law. You hate the Gages? I hate them, too. They won’t be able to hurt you or your girlfriend ever again. I can set aside some hunting lands for your tyrantrum. Even the florges your friend sold himself to is in on this. She’ll release him if you help us.”
“Fairies don’t give that kind of thing up without a price.” This is still too good to be true. You’ve heard enough stories to know that you don’t ever gain everything you want without losing everything you have.
“I’m paying it. Don’t worry. Didn’t take much to convince her, though. A white florges never saw a military occupation she liked.”
“And why would you pay?” Maybe you’re still mad she barged in. Maybe you’re mad she knew and didn’t tell you. Maybe you just can’t imagine anything ending this well for you. Whatever it is, you can’t bring yourself to trust her. Not yet.
“Girl, I’m getting my entire country back. I can afford to set aside some land and pass a law or two when we win if it gets your support.” She pauses and continues with a softer, less confident voice. “I really need you here. If you say no I’m back at square one. Might not get another chance in my life. Please. If there’s anything you want from me, I’ll do it.”
What do you even want? You can’t get your mom’s pokémon back. They’re…
You want to keep Coco. You want to stay with Genesis as long as she’ll let you. What you want most is what you have. But you can’t keep it. Not without making this deal. Even if this deal costs you everything you have, you’re already going to lose it.
“Will you kick all the Americans out?” you ask. For Gen’s sake. And Lyra’s.
“Not unless they fight us or ask to leave.”
“And there will be enough food for Coco?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Would you change your mind if I fought the Tapu?”
She shifts in place. “What?”
“The Tapu are preventing the vulpix from making a sanctuary. Pixie, my vulpix, she wants me to try and fight one of them so that the rejects can have a place. Would you stop me?”
“Huh. Didn’t know all of that.” There’s a long pause. Probably not, then. Maybe you couldn’t keep Pixie. But if it’s her or Coco—you don’t want to choose, you’ve made promises to both you want to keep—but if you have to, you’re siding with your daughter. “Wait until the war’s over, please. Or at least let me try and negotiate with them first.” She rests a hand on your thigh. You want to slap it away. Touch. Now. From a stranger. She removes it quickly and keeps talking like nothing had happened. “I have sympathies for them. Losing everything and being in an unfamiliar home. I will help if I can, but I need to secure our independence first.”
She sounds so confident she can beat the Americans. You’re less sure. Maybe she fails. Maybe they find out you helped. Maybe they kill you. If you do nothing and everyone leaves you might kill yourself. You wouldn’t have the goal of saving mom’s pokémon keeping you going. No home to return to someday. You’d have nothing. No one would even miss you.
Even if you don’t trust Acerola, your only glimmer of hope is in her hands.
{What do you think?}
{[X] Accept offer.}
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
End of Arc Six.
Broken Things will return Fall 2024.
Fun fact: I once read the first chapter of a web serial, then skipped to its most recent and read every other chapter in reverse order, then read the remaining updates as they were posted. It was definitely not meant to be read that way but it was very fun.
Maybe the real Broken Things were the friends we made along the way?
You're welcome! Have another.
Discussion of Suicide
Fairy 6.22: Unreality
Cuicatl
July 24, 2020
Gen guides you away. It takes a while but you can hear the formerly quiet crowd start to buzz again. Your girlfriend tries to reassure you and you ignore it. You both know how that went. You were there.
“They were so mean,” she huffs. “How is anyone supposed to pass? They’re mad at you because you work with VStar and then they’re mad at you because you don’t.”
VStar. Dr. Karashina and Lyra had argued over how to handle them and agreed that was the best way to handle it. So long as there weren’t any major scandals there were aware of (you’d told them they weren’t) it would gain you more votes than you’d lose.
It turns out the that Miss Bell is paid lots of money because she’s good at her job.
You don’t even remember why you lied. It must have been a thoughtless thing done in the spur of the moment. Just one, tiny little thing that might have doomed you. Did they even ask directly? Did you actually lie or just not volunteer information they didn’t ask for? Why would they even devote a question to asking that? They have limited space in—okay fine you don’t remember how long it took you to fill out the form. Just another careless moment from the careless girl who lost her passport and…
“We’re at the door. Want to go outside?”
“Yes,” you tell her, “Alone.”
Her concern and disappointment ripple out of her mind and through her body into yours.
“I’ll be fine.” You just want time alone with only one voice in your head.
“If you’re sure…”
“I won’t go far.”
“Okay.” She gives you a side hug and you lean in a little despite everything. “Just call if you need anything.”
“I will.”
She opens the door and you step out. You don’t know exactly where you’re going but you walk forward until you reach the softness of dirt and grass. It’s wet from recent rain. Not common in the summer. Grass got lucky. You would like to feel it. You like your sandals so much because you can feel the texture of the ground beneath the soles and the plants around them. When you had to replace them in April you made sure the new ones were the same. Now your feet are shoved into dress shoes that you can already feel giving you blisters. But Dr. Karashina insisted you needed something nicer. Something more formal, more American. Ended up being a dress and tights with blocky, hard-edged shoes and a face caked in powders or creams. At least the dress is flowy.
You flop down into the wet grass. Maybe it ruins the clothes. You don’t care. The people have already made up their minds about you. Seeing grass stains on you won’t change anything. You’d just like to feel something real.
You hear Pixie’s steady trot. Right. She’s out here. “Done with the ninetales?”
“Yes. Why are you sad?”
Right to the point. “I don’t think that went well.”
“You failed?” she asks as she climbs into your lap and curls up. Add white fur to the grass stains.
“I think so.”
“You don’t know?”
“Not yet.” You reach down and she presses her head into your hand. You idly scratch her ear. Her one remaining ear. You don’t think that’s your fault. Yes, you could have sent out Noci, Leo, or Coco, but they probably would’ve been killed. Yes, you could have waited for Dr. Karashina, but then you might not have made it in time to help. You tried to keep her from Kalani. That was a mistake. It’s unfortunate but not your fault. Just a dead fox’s. And maybe Dr. Kukui’s. Dr. Karashina blames him.
“You’re fine,” she says. “You’re smart. For a human.”
You raise an eyebrow. “And for a fox?”
“You would be a bad fox.”
“That’s probably true.”
At least she believes in you. And maybe you do have a chance. Dr. Karashina is in there. She’s persuasive. Chris can’t prove anything, either. Maybe they’re just this harsh to everyone. Lyra was harsh in her questions to you. And you do know a lot about hydreigon care. More than any of them. They couldn’t attack that at all, except to complain that you haven’t read theories by people who also probably know less than you. Dragons don’t even care about what this committee thinks. Alice never asked about licenses. Ellas would think they were silly, human things.
It’s not over yet. There’s still hope. You force out a small smile. Maybe you have this after all.
It takes a long time for the door to open again. You try to see that as not a bad thing. Gen calls out that it’s time to come in. You gently push Pixie out of your lap and rise to your feet, holding out a hand for guidance. She slides under it. At the door you turn down towards Pixie.
“Think they’ll let her in,” you ask your girlfriend.
“Probably not.”
“You want to go back outside or into your ball?”
She thinks for a moment. “Ball.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
You take Gen’s arm and she walks you back to your seat in the conference room. It’s quiet. Very quiet. You extend a small probe to Dr. Karashina and find her mind tightly sealed. Probably didn’t even notice you tried to ask a question.
“Miss Ichtaca,” the champion begins. “The council has considered your application for a Class V Pokémon Training license. And by a vote of 37 to 26 your application was denied. I’m sorry.”
Your heart falls. Your mind falls. The world falls. For a moment nothing exists at all.
“You can apply again in a year’s time…”
She says more things, probably. Your mind can’t understand them. Can’t understand anything. Gods. What happens to Coco? How do you tell her this? Aree you just going to abandon your own daughter to some stranger because you fucked up some paperwork a year ago and. It feels like your world ended again. Like you just flew home and father pulled you aside and you realized that you tore your family apart with a casual decision for the second time in two years.
Once can be a mistake. Everyone can make those. Twice is a pattern of carelessness. Of failure. Of failing everyone who though they could depend on you.
“Thank you everyone for coming. I look forward to seeing you again.”
You want to run. You can’t. The room is unfamiliar. Sending out Noci or Pixie would require answering questions and you don’t—can’t—
People are starting to crowd around you. It’s stuffier. Too many footsteps.
“I’m really sorry about that,” someone says. “Tried to argue for you. I’m Ryuki, by the way. The dragon gym leader. I have a ranch your tyrantrum can live on—”
“That’s quite enough,” Dr. Karashina says. Her voice is lower and icier than you’ve ever heard it. Even when she was discussing Kalani’s killing. A hand falls on your shoulder. “Can I help you get somewhere quieter, dear?”
Maybe you nod. Maybe you don’t. Your hand ends up on someone’s arm and your feet are moving and you’re guided down into a chair in a quieter space. Another chair pulls out. Someone sits down. For some reason you focus on their breathing. Slow. Steady. Wrong pitch for Lyra. Gen would be upset. You flick your mind out and find a solid wall. Dr. Karashina, then.
“This isn’t your fault but mine,” she finally says. “I assumed too much of others and failed to anticipate that proper documentation would be a problem.”
Oh.
She thought too highly of you.
You always knew she did. Just didn’t expect her to say it.
“Not you,” she interrupts. “I just told you that. Your case is…” She leans forward and rests a hand on one of yours. “There are things going on that they could not have known about. I will tell you as much as I can soon. I promise. In the meantime, there are steps we can take to minimize the damage.”
Straight to business. Ready to move on. You don’t think you can. Not yet. You still haven’t fully accepted what happened. A dream, maybe. Everything’s blurry, it could be—it’s a dream. You can wake up. You can learn.
“What should I have done better?”
“Nothing,” she says. “All of this was set in place as soon as you entered Alola. Others failed to care for you.”
“There had to have been something—”
She moves her chair closer to you and wraps an arm around your shoulder. “No. There wasn’t. Now, this isn’t ideal.” You snort at the understatement of the calendar round. Snot comes out. You don’t, can’t, won’t, lift a hand to remove it. “I can still promise that your worst fears will not come to pass. I’ll have to move some timeframes around and call in a few favors. It’s possible you’ll have to drop out of the island challenge. But I promise that things are going to be okay in the end, however hard it is to see that now.”
There are a few quick knocks at the door. Shirona says something in Sinnish under her breath. “Busy!” Something soft is pressed against the snot on your face and quickly moved away.
The door opens anyway. A few people walk in. Two, three, or four. The door is slammed shut behind them.
“Nanu, I swear up and down the pillar that if you’re going to take her pokémon right now I’m going to—”
“Calm down. This has nothing to do with that.”
Lila. And… the words don’t translate. That happened with the dark kahuna. His words sound similar. Probably him? Chairs are pulled out and pushed back in at… three different times.
“Nanu, are you really trying to do this now,” Dr. Karashina hisses. “Read the room.”
“Told you that I’d have everything ready by the conference. I can leave the stuff here and go home if you’d prefer. It’s already late and I don’t teleport. I’d really rather get on the road if it’s all the same to you.”
There’s a tense silence in the air. Someone finally breaks it with a sigh. Someone else. Male. Not Nanu. “I can stay and overtake the case if liked.”
It takes you a moment to understand. Even through your gift it’s… off. That almost never happens.
“No, he’s not getting out of this that easily. Tomorrow—”
“Golfing,” Nanu drawls. “Sorry, doc.”
“The day after.”
“Busy.”
“With. What?”
“Out of the country.”
Another tense pause. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”
It’s strange to hear Dr. Karashina swear. You don’t think you’d heard it before.
“Heard it all before. Now, do you want to do this now or later?”
“What are you talking about?” you finally ask. Dr. Karashina knows about this. It involves a kahuna for some reason. And Lila. Why are they here?
“Some other bad news. Mostly unrelated to this. It isn’t urgent but it is something you should know eventually. If you can’t handle anything else right now, we can wait.”
“Just tell me.” Not like things can get any worse.
“Cool. You’re a faller.”
Lila’s chair rapidly pulls away and they slam their hands on the table. Psychic energy flares against your defenses. “You sick fuck—"
“Calm down.”
“You promised that this wasn’t going to happen again.”
“I didn’t.”
“We had an understanding.”
“Tell that to Tapu Lele.”
“At the very least you could have told me.”
“You found out almost immediately.”
The onslaught of psychic power pauses. “What?”
“Tapu Lele mindwiped you.”
“Bastard,” they mutter. “Should have at least told me during The Blackout. What if she was attacked?”
“We had Reshiram on site within four hours. It was fine.”
Lila finally sits down. “When?”
“The wormhole storm back in September. She showed up on Ula’Ula while you were busy with the ‘cephs on Akala.
You once again have no idea what they’re talking about. “What’s a faller?”
“You know the wormholes that Ultra Beasts come from?”
“Yes?” Sort of. You’ve picked up some secondhand. Not like you’ve heard a full lecture or anything.
“Sometimes they connect to other Earths. Sometimes those other Earths have humans on them. Sometimes a human comes through from another Earth. Most of the time they’re fine. Just a little shaken. We get them a new ID and a place to stay for a few months. But psychics? You lot get fucked up in Ultra Space. Come out with minds torn to pieces. For centuries Tapu Lele’s been stitching their minds back together into something coherent. She likes to see how long it takes people to figure it out. How good her work was. Looker and I are just the saps who have to help her.”
You blink. Okay. Psychics. Ultra Space. He’s saying… you’re not from here? And your mind… your memories…
“Are my memories real?”
“Some of them,” Nanu says. “Some aren’t. Some are probably just close. She took the pieces and tried to complete the puzzle but some were missing and she likes to, well. You’re probably mostly the same person. Close enough for government work.”
You try to think through all of that and immediately fail. It’s. How do you even start to understand that? You find yourself focusing on the smaller things. If you’re not from here, if you’re from another dimension, that’s why Miss Bell couldn’t find your pokémon.
“My pokémon are in another universe?”
Nanu sighs. “No, kid. You had six apricorn pokéballs on you when you came through. Nothing in them. Their inhabitants had died.”
This isn’t real. You already thought you were dreaming and nothing after that has made any more sense. Something slides across the table and you reach out instinctively. A bag. Something hard in it. Are these—
You reach in. Grab one. It fits well in your palm. Wood. Smooth, mostly, with some uneven paint beneath the release. What pokéballs are supposed to feel like. Renfield’s. You reach in and grab one that gives you a tiny splinter just for touching it. The first. ‘Kovsky’s. Horror grows with each one you pull out. You know these instinctively. Better than you know your current set. These are real.
This is real.
The final one has little iron studs running along it in an x-pattern. The highest rated ball on the market.
This is Alice’s pokéball. A year has passed and you’ve finally found it again.
Ellas is dead.
They’re all dead.
You drop the ball and it starts rolling towards the edge of the table. Your hand clumsily shoots out to grab it but it just sends it flying off. No. This. No. Alice. Renfield. Searah. Coco. Everyone. Everything—
The fox snarls and spit flies onto your face. Her sharp claws easily shred through your top and dig into your chest. “You will die alone.” The ninetales’ curse. Dying alone with no way home. Did she cause this, somehow, or was she just unlucky enough to waste her final breath?
Two nightmares in an hour.
The first.
“The visa,” you somehow choke out. “It didn’t exist. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Had a week to get lots of shit in order and both Looker and I have jobs. State department wasn’t being helpful, didn’t have much time or the right connections to force something through. We can help you get a passport if you want one.”
“You could have said something! I could have passed.”
“Listen, kid, did you really want to have this conversation in front of dozens of people?”
“If I’d known sooner—” You whirl around to face Dr. Karashina. “You knew about this?”
“I found out shortly before you left for Poni,” she answers. “I’d thought it best not to stress you before the thesis defense. I was wrong.” Her usual level, imperious tone wavers. “I’m sorry. Truly.”
You remember the dragon gym leader who immediately wanted to take Coco. Was she just doing that with extra steps? You press your seat back and stand up, stuffing the apricorn balls into the holding bag. Something nudges your hand. Hard, round. Alice’s. You take it and put it in the bag, too, before sending out Noci. She’s less likely to ask questions—less likely to ask the wrong questions—than Pixie. You need to be somewhere else. Somewhere where the walls aren’t closing in and everyone hates you and it’s all so, so wrong.
{Take me. Somewhere else.}
{Query: status.}
{Somewhere else.}
{Query: Status:UD_Cuicatl_Ichtaca.}
{Somewhere. Else.} You send a scattershot of feelings of the wet grass and honestly you don’t know you just need need need to not be here.
You hear a door open in front of you and step through.
“Cuicatl, is everything alright? What—”
You step past Genesis. How do you explain this to her? She didn’t even know who she was dating. It’s all built on lies.
Someone reaches out to stop you and you just keep going. They don’t try to hold you back but they do walk behind you.
“Babe, we can talk about it—”
{Not now. Not yet.} The burst is harsher than it should have been. Maybe even a little painful. Good. It’s best if she just leaves now before you get her hurt, too.
Once you step through another door and finally feel moist, real air on your skin you signal Noci to dip lower.
“Cuicatl!”
You slip onto Noci’s back. {Somewhere we won’t be bothered. Please.}
She hesitates. She never hesitates. She’s betraying you, too. Not the best time for it but with your luck it makes sense. Three tragedies, one hour. Then she slowly begins to rise and your body gets telekinetically pulled down into hers.
Genesis keeps shouting beneath you and maybe Lyra says something but you don’t care. Can’t care. How do you deal with something, anything, else when you can’t even deal with half of what just happened?
It could be a minute or an hour or an eternity before Noci slows and descends to let you off. The ground is hard under your shoes but a little uneven. Natural rock. The winds aren’t much stronger so you aren’t too high up. You crash down onto the ground and sprawl out, back against the stone.
{Query: Status}
You sigh / sob. Probably no putting it off.
“I’m from some other world. Fell through a wormhole. Tapu Lele fucked all my memories up and. And. And…” No. You can’t do this. Not aloud. {My mom’s pokémon are all dead.}
In half a second Noci’s arm is pressed against your side. It’s warm. You lean into it. She wraps the other around you.
The dam breaks and you sob. Loudly. Constantly. Until you have no more tears left in your body. Even then you still heave and whimper to try and dig more up.
“And I didn’t get the Class V license,” you whisper in a cracked voice. “Dr. Karashina—Shirona—she knew and set me up to fail. Probably going to take Coco with her. Then Cuepiltia will go with Coco. I can’t evolve you so I can’t beat the League. Pixie will find someone who can. Sitrus will follow. Leo will get bored and go back to the ocean when the fights stop. You aren’t loyal to me in the first place. And when I have no pokémon I can’t protect Gen so she’ll leave. Probably date Lyra. Good. She deserves better. They both do. And then I’ll be alone, for real, even more than last time and I don’t think I can do that again.”
{Assessing Probability… Processing Large Amounts of Data… Querying Greater Network… Likelihood of Suggested Causal Chain Roughly 1.668%}
“How could you possibly know that?”
{Unit2_263 will not abandon UD_Cuicatl_Ichtaca}
Great. Because she’s totally incapable of lying.
“Did you know I was a faller?” You wouldn’t put it past her. She might have been keeping that secret, too.
{Negation.}
“So there was something you didn’t observe.”
{Unit2_263 has failed observational duties. Suggested action?
[] Decommission
[] Order Upgrades
[] Change Behavioral Programming
[] Initiate Ramming
[] Do Nothing}
It almost makes you laugh in the face of everything. You assume that was a joke. Should make sure of that. “Do nothing.”
{Orders received.}
The air grows colder and you can feel a new presence nearby. Breathing. About human volume and height. You thought you went pretty far. Why is someone bothering you out here? Who dares to bother you out here?
“Making yourself a little hard to find, princess.”
The voice is feminine. About your age. Mostly unfamiliar? Maybe you met her or heard her talk during the review.
“What do you want?”
Should you have Noci do something? She probably isn’t a threat but you don’t want her here. Not now. The metang pulls away on her own. Good. Makes responses faster.
“Heard you’d cut everyone off to mope on your own. Been there, done that, found that it never helps like you think it would. Wanted to make sure you had someone to talk to, princess to princess.”
“I don’t know you.” And that’s the second time she’s used that word. “And I’m not a princess.”
“You’re Unovan royalty, aren’t you? I like to think that royal lineages continue on after white people overthrow a kingdom. They would really like you to think otherwise, which probably means it’s a good idea.”
You stay silent. Who is this person and what does she want?
“Oh! How rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Acerola Aholo, great-granddaughter of Alola’s last queen and the rightful heir to the throne.”
“You were the ghost trial captain?”
“Yup! You just missed out on fighting me by the sounds of it.”
“Do you want Coco or something?” Still have no idea why she’s here. Or why she hasn’t left yet. You’ve been trying to keep any hint of friendliness out of your voice. It isn’t very hard.
“No. I really am here to just talk. You don’t end up as a ghost specialist without going through some hard times. Wanted to make sure you weren’t… doing something rash.”
“I’m not killing myself.” Yet. That will probably come when everyone’s left you and there’s no one around who would mourn. “I have Noci here. I’m fine.”
“Good to hear it. And she seems like a very nice metang.” You hear her settle in against the rocks. How do you make her leave? She has ghost-types. Noci couldn’t overpower her. Could Coco? You really don’t want to send her out yet. Haven’t even thought about how to explain everything. “Under Alolan law you wouldn’t have a license review, you know? Trainers were allowed to raise anything they could keep willingly serving alongside them and nothing they couldn’t.”
“American law applies now.” Maybe too harsh to tell to the lost princess or whatever but you really do just want her to leave.
“Yeah. Even though a lot of people have tried to change that.” She sighs. “America likes to talk about being a nation of free speech and peaceful protest and fair laws. That’s not how it works, though. My great-grandmother convinced the president that the takeover was wrong and Congress and the army just ignored it. Took us over without even passing a law. My mom went to the U.N. and the FBI shot her. Barely even tried to make it look like an accident. Declared the rest of my family unfit to raise me and shoved me in an orphanage just to show that they could. That there was no hope. That Alola was never coming back peacefully. And I did learn. You can’t win peacefully when the enemy won’t let you.”
That’s Skull rhetoric. Nahua rhetoric, even. “How did they let you get a Class V license?”
She laughs. It’s whimsical. Captivating. Deeply sad beneath it all. “I didn’t just come out and tell them all that! I learned to play the game. Got the kahuna to take me under his wing. Became a trial captain. Started making friends in the shadows and in the light. Read everything of my mother’s I could find. Have nothing but smiles for the Americans until it was too late to stop me. And I’ve found a lot of allies along the way! I’m hardly the only person the colonizers and their government have screwed over.”
The Gages getting away with everything. Kekoa growing up in an orphanage while his brother was away in their army. Now you losing Coco and being lied to for almost a year.
“I know.”
“See! When I was reading and exploring, I found something. Just cryptic mentions in a few books and on a gravestone, but I got Nanu to tell me a little and the ghosts to tell me a lot and I figured it out! One of Nanu’s ancestors was—they call them fallers, now, people from another world.” You freeze up. Does she know? How could she possibly know? She continues, though, like it shouldn’t mean anything to you. “They had a whole civilization with lots of magic. Set up a small city in the desert.”
“I think I stumbled into it.” The place with the golett and baltoy. They recognized you as a citizen. Is that when Shirona figured it all out?
“Cool! It’s buried pretty deep in there. Anyway, the spacefarers and the royals were friendly. Intermarried. Traded things. They gave us things we couldn’t find on Alola and we gave them some of our harvests when they didn’t have enough food. One of those gifts was this lovely obsidian dagger. I think it’s obsidian, anyway. Smooth black rock.”
“Sounds like obsidian.” You’ve held a few of those daggers. Old ones, mostly, when they let you into the temple for a little training.
“Yeah. Anyway, there’s an army of ghosts around Alola. My family can summon them. But we also need blood from a third person and, well, a faller. To make sure we didn’t use it against the spacefarers.”
Your blood stills again. You know why she’s here.
“You knew?”
“For a while, yeah. Had Plumeria reach out to you in Heahea. See if you’d be in a really bad place if we told you.” The Skull boss. She’d had a weird alarm, one you remembered from somewhere, and then asked what you would do if your mom’s pokémon never showed up. You thought she was threatening you. Might’ve threatened her. Probably threatened her. “Glad they’d told you about it. I saw Nanu and Lila go in after you so I figured you were about to find out, but, like, if they didn’t and you found out from me it would’ve been kind of awkward.”
You grip the bag in your hands a little tighter. You know why she’s here. It doesn’t sound good. {What pokémon does she have out?}
{One froslass. Five additional balls visible on belt. Initiate ramming?}
{No. Not yet.}
“Are you going to kill me? Take my blood?”
“Woah, no! Has to be consensual. And I need, like, two drops. Five, tops.”
“It’s not just blood, though, is it? I’m Nahua. I’ve heard things about blood magic.”
“A little bit of essence. You’ll be sluggish for a few days. Might feel a little colder than usual. The blood and essence aren’t powering the ritual, just removing the locks on it.”
You snort. A lot of snot comes out because of all the crying. You quickly wipe it up like that didn’t happen. Acerola doesn’t comment on it. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because you have a lot to gain?” The sing-song melody of her voice dips and levels out. “I told you, licenses aren’t a thing under Alolan law. You hate the Gages? I hate them, too. They won’t be able to hurt you or your girlfriend ever again. I can set aside some hunting lands for your tyrantrum. Even the florges your friend sold himself to is in on this. She’ll release him if you help us.”
“Fairies don’t give that kind of thing up without a price.” This is still too good to be true. You’ve heard enough stories to know that you don’t ever gain everything you want without losing everything you have.
“I’m paying it. Don’t worry. Didn’t take much to convince her, though. A white florges never saw a military occupation she liked.”
“And why would you pay?” Maybe you’re still mad she barged in. Maybe you’re mad she knew and didn’t tell you. Maybe you just can’t imagine anything ending this well for you. Whatever it is, you can’t bring yourself to trust her. Not yet.
“Girl, I’m getting my entire country back. I can afford to set aside some land and pass a law or two when we win if it gets your support.” She pauses and continues with a softer, less confident voice. “I really need you here. If you say no I’m back at square one. Might not get another chance in my life. Please. If there’s anything you want from me, I’ll do it.”
What do you even want? You can’t get your mom’s pokémon back. They’re…
You want to keep Coco. You want to stay with Genesis as long as she’ll let you. What you want most is what you have. But you can’t keep it. Not without making this deal. Even if this deal costs you everything you have, you’re already going to lose it.
“Will you kick all the Americans out?” you ask. For Gen’s sake. And Lyra’s.
“Not unless they fight us or ask to leave.”
“And there will be enough food for Coco?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Would you change your mind if I fought the Tapu?”
She shifts in place. “What?”
“The Tapu are preventing the vulpix from making a sanctuary. Pixie, my vulpix, she wants me to try and fight one of them so that the rejects can have a place. Would you stop me?”
“Huh. Didn’t know all of that.” There’s a long pause. Probably not, then. Maybe you couldn’t keep Pixie. But if it’s her or Coco—you don’t want to choose, you’ve made promises to both you want to keep—but if you have to, you’re siding with your daughter. “Wait until the war’s over, please. Or at least let me try and negotiate with them first.” She rests a hand on your thigh. You want to slap it away. Touch. Now. From a stranger. She removes it quickly and keeps talking like nothing had happened. “I have sympathies for them. Losing everything and being in an unfamiliar home. I will help if I can, but I need to secure our independence first.”
She sounds so confident she can beat the Americans. You’re less sure. Maybe she fails. Maybe they find out you helped. Maybe they kill you. If you do nothing and everyone leaves you might kill yourself. You wouldn’t have the goal of saving mom’s pokémon keeping you going. No home to return to someday. You’d have nothing. No one would even miss you.
Even if you don’t trust Acerola, your only glimmer of hope is in her hands.
{What do you think?}
{[X] Accept offer.}
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
*
End of Arc Six.
Broken Things will return Fall 2024.