Chapter 12: The Salt of the Earth
The morning was unseasonably warm, even for Hoenn. This time of year back in Unova, the gutters sometimes froze solid, trash and all. Today, Mark was already sweating under his hoodie, and the sky over Route 115 was a barren blue. He checked the time on his phone to confirm what he already knew by the position of the sun: it was almost time to go.
Mark scanned the crowd, trying to figure out if anyone indispensable was missing. Some of his teammates perched on the sun-dappled boulders, talking quietly. Others stood apart with their pokemon or, like Mark, with a cigarette. He silently listed off names to himself, simultaneously pleased to be able to recognize even those who'd already pulled up their bandanas … and uneasy at the reminder that hiding his face, even in a crowd, had its limits.
He spotted Eben passing out water bottles; he hadn't seen him since Ridge Access. When Mark caught his eye, Eben flashed a grin with something new in it. Maybe pride in their latest guerrilla news bulletin, in their success. Or maybe Eben was smiling at the memory of seeing Mark brought to Tabitha's heel. Mark found himself returning only a curt nod.
A few faces in the crowd were unfamiliar. As Mark watched some of the new kids, the memory of ORCA swarming Route 110 washed over him, how they'd known exactly when and where to seek out the pipeline team. Had someone here—?
No, he couldn't get swept up in that fear now, not if he was going to fight alongside the others. They needed each other—for strength and for safety. And anyway, he reminded himself, taking another drag on his cigarette, he wasn't the only one recruiting for Magma. They must be Cora's people.
And there she was, cutting towards him through the crowd. The pink had faded almost completely from her hair, leaving dull orange-blonde and dark roots, but her grin was bright as lightning. Manic. Cora always got like this before an action. Sometimes her excitement hit Mark like a caffeine buzz, an updraft, but this time he held tightly to his inner quiet and braced himself against her approach.
"I thought you quit," she said, smirking like she'd won something.
Mark couldn't keep the irritation from his face, but he finished off the cigarette with one final, slow drag. "I did," he agreed. "Years ago." He stubbed it out on the sole of his boot and then, because that shit would never biodegrade, he tucked the butt between his laces.
Before Cora could get in another jab, he shoved his own question through: "Do you know them? With the zangoose?"
She didn't even look. "That's Rudy. From Fallarbor."
Like Montag, she meant—as if that were a metric for trust. Well, he hoped her judgement was better than his: in another life, if things had gone differently in Rustboro, he would've brought Natalie the ORCA lackey as a plus-one.
Cora's smile tightened to a sliver. "You could, you know, talk to people instead of sulking over here by yourself."
"I've been clearing my head."
"Well, things are gonna kick off soon, and we've still got a hike."
"I know." He touched each of his pokeballs in turn, reassuring himself that they were still with him. That Gibs was still gone. "Are we waiting on any of your crew?" he asked.
"A couple," she said. "But too bad for them. Can't be late for our own party."
Then they were as ready as they'd ever be.
He unclipped Ore, his lifeline. He didn't expect to have room to send out more than one pokemon at a time: they'd be fighting in close quarters. Besides, this wouldn't be a short fight, and the last thing he wanted was to find himself in a corner with an empty belt, his team already worn down. That had been Natalie's biggest mistake, beyond stepping up to him at all. She was lucky to have walked away from that fight.
It had been over a week ago, but the memory of Ridge Access flared up so intensely that Mark paused for a moment, pokeball still in hand, and drew in a deep breath. The Route 115 air was sharp with pine and salt water, but he could almost swear he detected the phantom odor of burning oil.
Dropping his voice, he asked, "Did you see that last news blast?"
Cora folded her arms. "Yeah?"
"You don't think it's ...?"
Mark replayed the speech in his mind:
Events like this one will continue unless ... Montag had made Hoenn a bargaining chip, a unit of earth to be weighed against Hoenn-the-system.
"What?" she said.
Fucked up, Mark wanted to say, but the look on Cora's face stopped him. "Never mind."
Of course not. This wasn't her home either.
And that was a little fucked up, too, wasn't it? Sure, it was Montag's plan, but who were Mark and Cora to—?
"Oh, come on." She shoved him hard enough that he nearly dropped Ore's ball. "Don't go all limp dick on me now."
When she moved to push him again, he backed out of her reach. "Fuck off." But he said it without real animosity, so she bared a grin.
"You've been weird as fuck since you got back. Like,
extra Mark-y."
He shrugged. "Factory default."
"Seriously. What the fuck is up with you?"
Maybe if they were somewhere else, alone, he might've talked about Ridge Access. This week, a Slateport paper called
The Trumpet had published an article about the local gulpin population. How they lived on the Route 110 marsh and nowhere else in Hoenn, quietly eating the garbage that trainers left behind. How the grimer attracted to the spill were now out-competing the gulpin and rotting the grasses in their wake. Montag must've already known and factored it into his equation ... but Mark hadn't.
The stain kept spreading, across the marsh and across his thoughts.
Part of him wanted to ask Cora if she was aware the spill had been Magma's doing. Was it possible she didn't know? But she had him fixed in an impatient stare, one eyebrow raised. And behind her was the crowd waiting for Mark and Cora to lead them up the mountain, to strike the match.
So all he said was, "What do you want from me, Cora?"
She rolled her eyes. "I want you to say you've got my back, dude."
"Of course I have your fucking back. We're a team."
"Then stop with that sour-ass face." Smiling again, Cora gave his shoulder another push, but it was playful this time. "So you good to go or what?"
He allowed himself a small smile. "Yeah, it's time." He sent out Ore, who began to circle them, buzzing inquisitively. Then Mark tilted his head toward the crowd. "Let's get these guys moving."
"Oh, you know I will."
With that, she stepped back and tossed down a pokeball, giving it a little spin. Her pokemon was still a half-formed light when Cora swung her leg over—planting herself on its back with a triumphant shout just as the rapidash became a solid creature and rose to its full height. Mark had watched her do it dozens of times, but it was still hard not to be impressed by the sight of flames licking up her legs and arms without burning. And there was no denying it caught the crowd's attention.
An excited murmur rose up as she started off at a canter, bringing the rapidash around until the tiers of Meteor Falls were at her back. Cora threw her hands over her head and whooped a war cry. Grinning at the answering cheers, she leaned back to signal the rapidash to stop. Already panting from either exertion or excitement, she called, "Are you guys ready to kick some ass?"
A few voices scattered voices answered.
"Are you asleep? Wake the fuck up! I said
are you ready to kick ass?"
As a half-circle began to form around Cora, Mark hung back to take up his usual position as the rearguard. There were always a few people still getting their shit together: scrambling to lace their shoes, digging in their bags for a bandana, whispering admonishments at a pokemon that wanted to nap. For now, he let the stragglers finish what they were doing but kept his eye on them. In ones and twos, they joined the weave of bodies. He nodded to them as they passed, clapping a few of them on the back—grounding both them and himself.
"They've been up there
asking nicely for the construction crews to go home," Cora crowed, jabbing a finger toward the mountain. "For weeks! Fuck that!"
Cries of
fuck that shit rippled through the crowd.
Mark took a deep breath and reached out to grasp one of Ore's fins. It vibrated like a plucked string, an echo of the roaring crowd.
"We didn't come here to make nice. We came here to get shit done!" She set her rapidash pacing up and down the line. "And we're not gonna take shit from DevCo!"
The crowd hissed at the mention of the company's name.
"We don't take shit from
anyone!"
They howled in approval, and Mark grinned despite himself. Then he pulled his bandana up and his hood down, and he became anonymous.
The flickering fire made Cora's grin fearsome. "Are we going to let that construction crew past us?"
"No!"
"Fuck them!"
She raised a fist. "Let's burn that shit to the ground!"
All around were fierce grins and raised fists. "
Burn it down! Burn it down!"
As they chanted, Cora put on her Guy Fawkes mask and drew up her hood. She gave out one last cry of, "Burn it down!" The mask muffled her voice, but it didn't matter. She set her rapidash towards the slope at an easy stride, and the crowd rushed alongside her.
Mark cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Mask up, tighten up! Let's go!" The stragglers jumped: if they didn't recognize him by his voice, they recognized Ore. One of them hurriedly stamped out their cigarette butt and—"What are you doing? Fuck no. Pick it up and pack it out."
The stragglers trotted to catch up with the others, closing ranks, and Mark nodded in satisfaction. But when he paused to clip on the mic that would tether him to Cora, he spotted a girl still trailing behind with her baltoy. Raquel, he remembered. He opened his mouth to shout for her to get it in gear—but stopped. She was wringing her bandana in her hands, eyes darting between the crowd and the shadows beneath the trees.
Ah, hell. She was panicking.
He searched the crowd for someone who could reasonably—Julio. Good enough. Mark caught him by the shoulder. "You can lead a chant, right?"
His eyes lit up. "Sure! Which one should I—?"
"It doesn't matter. Just make it loud, get the others excited." Mark didn't wait for an answer before peeling off from the crowd; they'd be fine without him for a minute.
He jogged a few steps toward Raquel and called, "You're alright. Come on."
"I don't think I can do this."
When she shrank away, he took another step closer. "Bullshit. You already have. What about Rustboro?"
She hesitated. "There were a lot of cops in Rustboro." Her baltoy spun fast, wobbly circles around her. "They've been all over campus lately, too. And now with that anti-mask bill ..."
Ore was mirroring either the girl's anxiety or the baltoy's and dumping it directly into Mark's head with a steady whine. He stood straighter, projecting confidence and calm for all three of them. "If that's what you're worried about, you're safer with the group than by yourself," he said, aware that they'd just become a group of only four.
Behind them, a call and response rang out:
"They wanna build a pipeline. We say—"
"Burn it down!"
The crowd had already pulled far ahead of them, into the trees. He'd lose sight of them soon. Mark motioned Raquel forward, but she shook her head. He bit back an exasperated sigh.
Maybe he should let her go, but he felt responsible: she'd been on his crew in Rustboro, and he'd been too wrapped up in his own shit to check in on her after. And besides— "The rest of us will be safer with you there, too. Can never have enough teleporters when things get dicey. We're all looking out for each other."
At that, her baltoy stilled, but she continued to frown. "It's not just that."
"They wanna dig a coal mine. We say—"
"Burn it down!"
Raquel finally looked him in the face, her expression pained. "I mean … do we know us being there won't make things worse?"
Like Rustboro, she didn't have to add.
Ore shivered mid-air like one magnet passing near another.
Mark swallowed, glad his face was mostly hidden. When he trusted himself to speak he said, "You heard about Route 110, right?"
Her expression clouded. "I saw the news. It looked terrible."
"It was fucking awful." He stopped again, and for a moment the only sound was Ore's whirring. Repeating Montag's reassurance, he said, "But if we keep this pipeline from being finished, that can never happen here."
Raquel bit her lip and nodded.
Her nod bolstered him, and he continued with greater force. "No one else is gonna stop it. DevCo's got the courts and the League in their pocket—more than enough to clear out Root Revolution and the Draconids. They can protest all they want, but it's not gonna do shit." Bitterly, he added, "It never does."
"They wanna dig an oil well. We say—"
"Burn it down!"
He forced himself to look her in the eyes. "We can't let DevCo win."
Raquel turned toward her baltoy, as if in private conference. At last, she looked up and said, "You're right."
Relief swelled in his chest. "You good, then?" Another nod. Good enough. "Alright, let's go. Mask up."
—
They marched through the trees, over the crumbling gully ledge, and onto the main road. The former footpath had already been widened and smoothed out to accommodate construction vehicles. Steel stakes with day-glo flags marked the southern end of the trail, but the protesters had pulled them from the northern end, leaving behind only a line of evenly spaced holes. Through the dusty haze, the foothills were dotted with color where the protesters had made their camp. More dust clouds rose with each step down the road—another reason to be grateful for their face coverings despite the heat. Even so, the hike wasn't especially long or difficult, and the team was mostly in good spirits. They didn't have to reach the summit, only the battleground.
MetFalls jutted from the earth like a collection of block towers, each tier cartoonishly flat except where craters pitted the rock. The access road climbed only to the first, lowest step, where over the centuries the river had carved an opening into the cliff. Sometimes water ran from the cave entrance, but in the last few dry weeks, the eponymous falls had flowed only in the deepest recesses of the mountain—convenient for DevCo's diggers.
Even before Magma reached the plateau, warbling, distorted audio drifted down from above. The sound wasn't much clearer at the top. Someone with no experience addressing a crowd had nevertheless been given the megaphone, slogging through a poem they read off their smartwatch. Mark immediately saw why the organizers were letting it happen: a few protesters were still on their feet, but most sat or crouched, using their cardboard signs to shade their eyes or fan themselves. Saving their energy for a last stand.
But as Magma spread across the plateau, the protesters stood up, muttering. The poem-reader trailed off; in the ensuing quiet, distant nincada buzzed. The cliff was just wide enough to allow the two groups to stare each other down across a distance of several dozen yards.
The Roots Revolution crowd was thinner than it had been in Rustboro or even on the news only days before. Their banners had been visible from the road, a white tree on a green field. Up close, it became clear that Draconids made up a larger part of the crowd, their faces banded in green and black with fangs stenciled down their cheeks.
Mark thought suddenly of Zinnia but didn't see her among the Draconids, nor did he see either of her dragons overhead. Not entirely surprising: she skated on the surface of things, never getting too close. At times, it had made him question her loyalty, but it seemed her aloofness extended even to clan and kin.
He said into his mic, "Looks like the townies had enough."
Cora's voice crackled back, "Thoughts and prayers."
Another shape was rising alongside the crowd, slower and much, much larger. Gasps rang out. One moment, it had looked like another boulder; the next it loomed over their heads. At first, Mark couldn't process what he was seeing: it had no context in Hoenn or Unova or even this geologic period.
"Where did they get a fucking tyrantrum?" He doubted the government would've been experimenting with establishing a population, not even to draw tourists to the Safari Zone. Stolen, then. Good for them. That explained why the cops hadn't been able to drive them from the build site yet: dragons were better than thoughts and prayers.
"Goodra, too," Cora pointed out. "On the right."
He'd never seen one in person before—again, they weren't exactly common either here or back home—but this goodra had gone gray under a film of dust. Smaller than he would've expected, too. Shriveled. The fierce sun wasn't doing favors for any of them.
An upsurge of murmuring prompted Mark to turn. Erica Spitfire had emerged from the crowd of protesters. Her breloom squeezed through beside her, lashing its tail. Spitfire swept her wary gaze over Magma and said, "Haven't you already done enough?"
Enough? Mark almost laughed.
He shouted back, "Have
you?" That earned a fresh wave of cheers from his teammates. Spitfire turned his way, but he was in the thick of Magma's left flank now, and her eyes didn't land on him until he spoke again: "Enough is when DevCo is dead and buried!"
She crossed her arms and set her jaw. Too bad. Mark didn't especially want to make an enemy of Spitfire—she cared more and tried harder than most. But he didn't admire her enough to walk away and leave the outcome of this fight to ride on her passion.
"Then where were you before?" came another voice. It didn't take long to find the speaker: a Draconid woman took up a fistful of the tyrantrum's feathery mane and hoisted herself onto its haunch, her other arm dangling lazily. She wore stacked necklaces of metallic beads that rattled each time the tyrantrum swayed. "Where were you," she said, "when they clear-cut trees for their road? When they tried to bulldoze us off the mountain? When they kidnapped our pokemon partners?"
Mark winced. He hadn't failed to notice that, with the notable exceptions of the tyrantrum and the goodra, few pokemon stood with the Draconid crowd, just a handful of flitting swablu and toddling bagon—not much of a defense against Rustboro's finest. He'd assumed it was about pacifism, a rejection of competitive battling culture … but
of course the police would've seized their pokemon during the clashes throughout the past week.
And meanwhile, Mark had been biding his time in Rustboro, one eye on the news and one eye on his next paycheck. Sparring with Magma. Letting his pokemon rest. Waiting for Montag's orders. He opened his mouth—and realized he didn't have an answer.
It was Cora who shot back, half-laughing, "You gonna fight DevCo
and us? You'll just lose twice."
The Draconid woman waited for Magma's cheers to subside before she spoke again. "You can't fight us and still fight for Hoenn."
On all sides, his teammates shouted and jeered, but Mark remained silent. Like air pressure building before a storm, he felt the crowd straining forward; they'd come to brawl, and some of them wouldn't care who was on the receiving end.
He finally burst out, "Cool it, all of you!"
Cora's job was to hype them up, his to hold them back until the right moment. They weren't here to pick fights with the Draconids, particularly not with that tyrantrum—better to let it brutalize the bulldozers when they came. But it wasn't just that.
Hoenn isn't yours.
Somewhere down the line, a rapidash whinnied, and Mark clenched his teeth. "Don't," he said into the radio, praying Cora could hear him over the crowd. He couldn't see her from his vantage point. "It's not worth it."
"I know, I'm not stupid," Cora snapped. "But it wouldn't kill them to be a little more appreciative. We're risking our skins to—"
From behind came a sound like a string of firecrackers going off, the bursts of displaced air that signaled the first cops teleporting onto the flat portion of the access road. Only briefly shaking their heads to clear the vertigo, the officers stepped into formation one by one. Behind the shimmer of pokemon light shields, each cop also carried a riot shield.
Mark grinned as Ore cast his own shield over him.
Let's fucking go, assholes.
To the crowd of trainers in red, he called out, "Ruby Squad—to the front, shields up! Rowdy—get ready." The red bloc moved into position, shields of all colors springing up along the outside edges like panels of stained glass. Their backs were to the Draconids now, but Mark wasn't concerned about them anymore. He couldn't hear Cora, but he knew she'd be calling out similar orders to her two squads, Russet and Ruthless. All down the plateau as far as he could see, a rainbow of shields flickered on.
On the dirt road below, megaphone feedback squealed, then a voice boomed out, distorted through layers of light screens, "This is Rustboro PD Lieutenant Officer Dan Steelman. In the name of the Rustboro Greater Metropolitan Area, you are hereby ordered to disperse immediately."
As he spoke, officers continued to appear from thin air; most arrived arm-in-arm with a kadabra, but a few other pokemon were scattered among them as well: two alakazam, a flinching kirlia, a few natu pecking the ground, a slowbro, and a few magneton fizzling blue sparks. Behind them, a dust cloud stirred on the horizon, quickly growing larger. Mark didn't have to be able to see them to know that meant police vans and bulldozers. Two black specks appeared in the relentlessly blue sky: helicopters. But Mark wasn't worried. This was what Magma had expected.
"This is an unlawful assembly," continued Lieutenant Steelman. "Starting in five minutes, anyone remaining in the Meteor Falls area will be in violation of Penal Code 376, regardless of purpose or intent, and may be subject to arrest, pokemon seizure, or other police action as necessary."
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark glanced from one side to the other, the masked faces of his teammates melting into one red blur. Below, the cops were standing at attention, a mass of gray and black riot armor, tinted pinkish through his solrock's light screen. "Stick close. Watch each other's backs." He didn't raise his voice this time, trusting those nearest to repeat the message. They knew the drill. Ore floated at chest-height, its glow like a guiding light. "They can try, but they can't fuck with us. They're not taking MetFalls."
As the helicopters drew closer, one of the protesters took up the bullhorn again, perhaps trying to wrest back some degree of control from Magma, or maybe only digging in their heels as hard as they could. "We stand in defense of the sacred! We stand against corporate greed, and we will not stand down!"
Rustboro PD doesn't give a shit about sacred, Mark silently chided them.
Police vans and armored cars roared up the path ahead of a squadron of yellow bulldozers and excavators. Dust clouds swept behind them, obscuring the police line, and the smell of diesel carried all the way up to the plateau. Lieutenant Steelman's voice rang out one last time from within the haze. "This is your final warning. Disperse immediately."
Cora's laugh cut over the radio. "That was a short five minutes."
"They're all out of good cop," Mark answered. But by then, the first helicopter was circling overhead, so loud that he could barely hear himself, though Magma's light screens protected them from the buffeting winds.
Scattering dust, the second helicopter touched down to release another battalion of cops onto the road before it lifted into the air again. More cops poured from the vans and armored cars. They'd brought a lot of manpower, a sign they were expecting trouble.
And they'd get it. Magma was here to make sure of that.
Mark watched the vans, their edges rippling in that telltale way of manmade anti-pokemon barriers, and he wondered how many mobile healing machines they'd brought. He wished he could charge down the slope and lay waste to all those weaponized toys, but it would be more than stupid to do anything but let the cops come to them. Up here, protected behind interlocking shields, his team was in control.
For a few moments, clusters of cops put their heads together, pointing first at the dozers, then at their own ranks. Then, with a snort of diesel fumes, the first construction vehicles began chugging up the road, slowing at the steepest part of the incline but not stopping.
"What the fuck?" said Cora, echoing Mark's own thoughts.
The cops couldn't possibly think they could shovel Magma off the plateau that easily. They had to know those diggers were the prize: destroying equipment wouldn't stop the pipeline all by itself, but it would cost DevCo. Maybe it would even cost them enough time for the Root Revolution lawyers to complete their challenge to the original environmental impact assessment.
But they weren't coming for Magma. The construction crew turned off the path, away from the mountain. Instead, the machines jounced and growled towards the protester camp where cook fire smoke trailed into the sky. The protesters on the plateau howled in dismay, a few of them rushing forward, as if they could beat the bulldozers on foot.
Two of the armored police cars were tearing up the path, and these didn't veer towards the camp. The cops' plan was clear: they would press in from the access road and attack the other flank with a teleport team, trying to cleave them down the middle. That couldn't happen.
Mark turned away before the bulldozers tore into the first tents. He couldn't do anything about that now. They'd come to defend the build site, and that was what they'd do.
"Rowdy, let's go!"
After the words left his mouth came the inevitable fear that they would act too slowly or fail to act at all. But he couldn't be everywhere at once, and he couldn't manage his team's pokemon for them; as with his pokemon, he could only trust that they would hear and do what was needed.
A split second later, a grating and rumbling signaled the start of the rockslide, and he smiled. Behind them, the protesters cried out in surprise and leapt away from the crumbling wall, even as the tyrantrum swung around to shield them with its body. Stone chunks tumbled down the mountainside until the dust hung so thickly Mark could no longer see the falling rock, only feel the earth's trembling.
Finally, the mountain stilled and the dust began to settle, revealing the silhouette of a cop car half-buried under rubble. The second fishtailed over loose rock, skidding to a stop just shy of ramming the other. Boulders and rock fragments covered the access road, heaped high as the tyrantrum's back; above, a jagged gash ran up the rock face, exposing bands of gold, copper, and even green. The Rowdy squad whooped in triumph, human and pokemon both. The tyrantrum added its voice to the cacophony too, though it was hard to say whether in savage joy or protest.
The noise almost drowned out Ore's warning cry; Mark only heard it over the tyrantrum and the helicopter because it reverberated inside his head. He followed the solrock's urging and looked up. The constant clatter of the rotors had already become background noise he tuned out, so he was startled to realize that only one of the helicopters was still circling while the other hovered ominously in place.
Alright, and what about—? On the other side of the rubble, the cops had disembarked from their cars and each released several pokemon—machoke and manectric and weezing—but made no move to break through the barrier and advance.
Staying out of harm's way, huh?
"Look up!" he shouted to Cora. "They're getting ready for a drop."
Even with Ore boosting the connection, he could hardly make out her words: "Ha! They're scared of a long fight."
Mark only had time to shout into the crowd, "Tighten up! Close those gaps!"
And then came the explosions.
The concussive force sent him stumbling into his teammates, ears ringing, but he managed to stay on his feet. By the time the onslaught ended, his light screen was gone; Orwell had moved to shield Mark's head with its body instead, the beginnings of a new light screen wisping around its fins.
Gods—thank you, Ore. Mark brushed metal filings from his sleeves as he stood straight, but neither he nor Ore had actually been hurt as far as he could see.
Light screens flickered on and off above the crowd. Some of the others who'd been closer to the edges had been thrown to their knees, groaning as they stood—and at their feet, among pulverized rock and curved fragments of metal shells, lay voltorb that had yet to detonate.
Another trainer's sandslash hissed and drew back its paw to strike—
"Don't touch them! Ore, get rid of it!" Mark shouted, pointing towards the ledge. With invisible force, the solrock swept the voltorb out from under the sandslash's claws and over the cliff. It burst mid-air into red and white shrapnel that plinked off nearby light screens.
The others got the hint then, whether they'd actually heard Mark or not. In moments, the remaining voltorb were rolling or flying through the air. He hoped a few of them landed before they went off—let the cops have a taste of their own medicine.
Still, the explosions made him wince, not for the cops but for the voltorb. Supposedly, pain wasn't in their programming. What did bodily destruction mean to a being cached on the cloud, ready to be downloaded into a freshly assembled shell? But the voltorb's internal mechanisms strained against their fall, and it sounded too much like screams.
A burst of light down the plateau tore his attention away from the cliff edge. Gouts of flame stretched towards the helicopter, driving it up and out of reach. Cora and Ruthless. But the helicopter banked hard, leaving their attacks to dissipate into the air, and it arced away unscathed.
"Good try," Mark said into the mic. "You guys okay?"
As he looked the crowd over, ushering Rowdy and Ruby to pull in close and get their shields back up, he noticed the Draconids. A boy in green face paint lay on the ground, and a street medic crouched over him, pressing a bandana to his leg. And the Draconid boy wasn't the only one bleeding in the dirt.
The goodra ponderously stretched its neck over them all, lowing; a half-dome of blue light hung above it. The tyrantrum roared and swung its head in rage until one of the Draconids put a hand on its haunch, petting the scales there until it calmed enough to raise its own translucent red shield. Between the two dragons, the swablu were in a twittering tizzy and the bagon crouched in front of their trainers, heads lowered in readiness to smash into an enemy's knees. There were a few light screens and larger pokemon among them—but most of the crowd lay exposed. And the helicopter was looping back around.
"Here it comes again," Cora said. "Your flank is too loose. Better tighten them up."
That was the plan they'd agreed on: stick together and wall the cops out. But he could see now that the Draconids and activists would be even more exposed as Magma drew closer together. And they were already hurt. Each person here had come knowing the risks, but he was still responsible for keeping his crew safe however he could. So who was responsible for the Draconids? Montag hadn't asked him to do that, but—
Fuck it. Mark didn't waste time arguing with Cora. She could yell at him later if she wanted to. "Everyone take ten steps back!" he yelled, both gesturing and shoving them where he wanted. "Move! Shields up!"
The gap between his team and the protesters shrank, and then he found himself facing open air instead of a teammate.
The radio hissed, "Mark, what—!"
This time, he heard the whistle of the voltorb falling before the impact threw him down and blew out his shield. Metal bits rained from everywhere, forcing him to bury his face in the crook of his elbow. As long as Ore was still buzzing at the edges of his mind, he trusted that he was safe.
When the screeches of voltorb finally faded and shrapnel stopped falling, there came a crash from the direction of the access road. Mark raised his head to see a machoke smash through the rock barrier, followed by a stream of manectric and police officers. Before he could react, a snapping and popping prompted him to turn the other way. In the space between his crew and Cora's, Rustboro PD was teleporting onto the plateau.
Mark reached to his belt and then paused, torn between the impulses to protect and destroy. Hux or Rand? He didn't want to try to keep track of both of them at once unless he had to.
He climbed to his feet, trying to distill the chaos into a concrete answer. The cops ahead were stepping into formation, and he had to squint to see them through the glow of their light screens. Magma trainers climbed to their feet beside pokemon that still lay unmoving. A Draconid girl cradled a fluttering swablu to her chest—why didn't she just recall it? In front of the cops, a row of their manectric crouched, charging up an attack.
Huxley, then. The others needed cover while they got their shit together. With Ore guarding his back, he sent out his bastiodon, already reaching out with his free hand to pull a teammate behind the shelter of Hux's body.
He didn't recognize her until he caught sight of the baltoy painted in zigzag patterns. Raquel.
"You alright?"
A small cut on the exposed wedge of her cheek trickled blood, and she nodded dazedly. Had she hit her head or was she freaking out? He'd better keep an eye on her.
Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called to the others, "Let's go, Ruby! Hold that line! Rowdy, with me! Recall your pokemon if you have to and keep it moving!"
Camerupt and lairon joined Hux on the plateau, forming another wall against the police manectric where the plateau met the access road; on the other side, the Ruby crew pivoted to face off against the police line with their houndoom and ninetales.
Alright. Mark breathed in and out. Things were back under control.
His radio sputtered with static and the beginnings of a complaint from Cora—just as something slammed into Hux with enough force to knock Mark off balance, too. He whirled around, cursing at the sight of a police machoke, drawing its fist back again.
"Ore, get the machoke."
As his solrock tossed the machoke aside, Mark spoke into the mic again. "I didn't catch that. We're dealing with these fuckers on the—"
Ore pinged him with a spike of anxiety a split second before he spotted three mightyena running toward them. A cluster of police officers held their ground between his team and Cora's.
"Solar beam, Ore—"
A flicker of movement at his feet. His own shadow sprang up like a living thing—
Gibs! he thought for one wild, senseless moment—and then it clamped onto one of Ore's fins. The light screen disintegrated.
"Jin, help!"
Raquel's baltoy flung out its red light shield—which lasted only until the first mightyena reached them and ripped through like the shield was paper. But it bought Mark just enough time to send out Rand to cut in between. His darmanitan caught the mightyena by the throat and threw it into the path of the next one, leaving them to fall upon each other in a tangle. Rand reared up, pounded his chest, and barreled towards the last mightyena.
Mark's shadow lay flat again. He stared at it for a moment, rattled. "You okay, Ore?"
The solrock shivered, but it traced reassurance through Mark's thoughts. He squinted at Ore for a moment … but, really, there was no winning a staring contest with a solrock. Mark spared a glance at Raquel, who was trying to coax another light screen from her baltoy—at least not outright panicking. "Hey, thanks," he told her.
Then he turned his gaze to the helicopter circling overhead. He could feel its eye on him like a spotlight; they'd send something to target Rand next. And the endless droning was getting under his skin.
"We gotta ground those helicopters," he said to Cora.
This time her voice came through loud and clear: "I'm on it."
He couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not, but his attention was already skimming over the crowd. His teammates were easy to spot in their red jackets and bandanas. Also obvious was the fact that that they were spreading further and further apart by the minute, fighting in ones and twos now: their formation was fucked three ways to hell and out of his control.
Meanwhile, Mark had already sent out three of his pokemon, meaning he only had three left in reserve—fuck. No, only two.
Rustboro had been the same, he reminded himself, and Fortree before that and Lilycove before that, and on and on all the way back to his first protest in Virbank. No plan or structure could hold up forever … and it didn't matter. Magma would never be able to defeat Rustboro PD's pokemon in an out-and-out fight as long as they were running government-issue portable healers, but it wasn't about their pokemon. A healing machine couldn't fix destroyed machinery or mend human tissue, and it wouldn't hold a frightened cop in line when his self-preservation instincts kicked in. A cop fought on orders; Magma fought out of love and rage. Duty always lost that contest in the end. Montag wouldn't have sent them here if he didn't think it mattered, if he didn't think they could handle it. So they'd fucking handle it.
A few of the cops drew together, trying to reform their lines. Time to find out how strong their sense of duty was. "Charge, Hux!"
A bastiodon couldn't get up to a run very quickly, but Hux was hard to stop once he did. With a bellow, he plowed through the officers' machoke and manectric, driving both humans and pokemon towards the ledge. One of them teleported away, and then a shower of black Title 8 balls from nearby officers forced Mark to recall Hux mid-charge or lose him. None of the cops had been very close to dropping over the edge, but they looked shaken as they climbed to their feet.
Grinning, Mark released Hux in front of him again; the bastiodon pawed the ground and shook his massive head, and Mark patted his scaly hide. "Good work, Hux."
But where was—? He spotted the darmanitan knocking down one pokemon after another before tearing after the next, racing further and further away. "Rand!" Gods, would Rand even be able to hear him?
Thankfully, the darmanitan pulled up short, casually dropped the manectric it had snatched up, and loped back to Mark. He'd worked himself into a lather, but it didn't stop him from reaching up to grab the back of Mark's head to pull him closer for inspection, breathing hotly on his face. When he determined that nothing was wrong with his human, he dropped back to all fours and turned toward the crowd.
"Don't go so far," Mark told him. He whipped out a potion and sprayed Rand's cuts and bruises while they were still sheltered by Huxley. "You're gonna get hurt, and I won't be able to help."
Rand snorted in response.
Gravel crunched and shouts rang out on the access road. One of the armored cars lurched to one side and then the other. For a moment, it lifted a few inches off the ground, outlined in purple light, only to crash back down. Mark grinned again when he saw the culprits, a few of the Rowdy team with a claydol and a dusclops, taking cover behind a camerupt. That was a good idea—if they could get around the police kadabra that hunched together beside the car, drawing esoteric symbols in the air with their spoons.
If Gibs were here ….
Mark grimaced and shoved the thought away. "Ore," he said, "help them out."
Creaking, the car wrenched a foot off the ground but moved no further, invisibly anchored by the kadabra. Orwell's frustration thrummed in Mark's head.
He cast his eyes around for a teammate within shouting distance, but all the trainers around him were already locked in skirmishes with police. Finally, his gaze landed on Raquel, still leaning against Hux. Her baltoy bobbed at her side, nuzzling her shoulder. Had she moved from that spot at all? Goddamn it, he should've left her in the clearing. "Can your baltoy do something?" he said, exasperation bleeding into his voice.
To his surprise, she took a deep breath and straightened. "Go, Jin," she said, giving the baltoy a nudge. It rose up, spinning faster and faster—
The halo of purple light around the police car flared, and it jerked upward as if on a pulley. The kadabra screeched—the car wobbled—but they weren't able to pull the car back before it arced over the edge of the road. It tumbled end-over-end all the way down the slope, rock and dirt spilling in its wake.
Ore beamed pride into Mark's head as cheers rang out all around. "Yeah, you did good," he laughed. He called to Raquel, "You too. Come on, let's send these guys back to where they came from."
She nodded quickly. Her gaze was more focused and, since he couldn't read much else in her expression, he chose to take it as a good sign.
And then, like a comet dropping out of the sky, one of the helicopters screamed past, burning at one end and flying so low that officers broke ranks and scrambled out of its path; it clipped the cliff edge as it fell.
"Holy shit, you did it," he said to Cora, unsure if she'd hear him over the triumphant roar of the crowd.
"I wish. It was the goodra."
A roar shook the ground, and Mark looked up in time to see the tyrantrum sweep three cops off their feet with its tail. The nearby officers backed to a safe distance to throw eightballs. A Draconid swatted them out of the air with her cardboard sign while the tyrantrum bellowed until boulders crashed down from above, forcing the cops to crouch under their light screens. Even at a distance, Mark had to steady himself with a hand on Hux's back.
"Recall it!" he shouted at the Draconids.
Even as he spoke, one eightball flew less than an inch from the tyrantrum snout. But they either didn't hear him or wouldn't do it. The Draconids continued batting down eightballs with their signs.
Mark clenched his teeth. Protest signs would only hold them off for so long. "Ore, I need you to cover them."
Ore trilled, driving a sharp note of worry into him.
"I'll be fine. Rand and Hux are both here." He hesitated, speaking the next words less for Ore, who always understood him better and faster than language, than for himself. "I don't want RPD taking that tyrantrum. I—it's not right."
Hoenn might not belong to him, but it sure as hell didn't belong to the cops. It was the least he could do.
For a moment, the solrock only hovered in place, whirring, and then set off through the crowd; its presence in Mark's mind faded to a near-whisper, still there if he reached for it but only barely. He watched Ore long enough to see it sidle up to the enormous dragon and flick open a light shield—just in time to block a eightball that would've hit the tyrantrum square in the chest.
Good, Ore, he thought, hoping the solrock would hear.
Mark turned back to reorient himself—but the cops were backing away from the road. A grin began to edge onto his face. Was that all it took to scare them off?
A helicopter roared overhead. Without Ore's light shield, the wind threatened to rip Mark's hood back. That had been a low pass. He craned his neck back and jerked in surprise when he saw two helicopters skulking overhead instead of only one. When had the new one arrived? The sun glinting off the side momentarily obscured the logo painted on the doors, but as it turned toward the access road, the Devon logo shone clearly. A skarmory flew alongside it, open wings gleaming not red but deep green.
Mark couldn't help himself: he let out a laugh. No doubt Steven Stone could trounce him one-on-one in a stadium under the watchful eye of a referee … but what did the former League champion know about street fighting? What a golden fucking opportunity to land a solid hit on DevCo. Much better than wrecking a defunct digger.
"Cora, check it out. We've got a celebrity guest appearance."
"What?" Amid a backdrop of jumbled growls and shouts, she was clearly unamused.
He gave her the punchline anyway. "The prince of DevCo is here."
The League helicopter touched down on the access road, and a troop in unmarked, black uniforms climbed out. Then Stone hopped down like he was getting ready to greet the paparazzi. His hair shone white as salt under the intense sun and—Mark laughed again—he wore a full fucking three-piece suit and a tie, an assault vest thrown over it all.
Mark had known who would step out of that helicopter the second he'd seen the skarmory, but it was one thing to see that familiar face in the tabloids and another to see it in person. Part of him was caught in disbelief that the living symbol of indifferent opulence could also be a real person sharing the same piece of earth as him.
He shook off his amusement to shout, "Come on, guys. Tighten up!" He nudged Hux forward, motioning for Rand and his teammates to follow and press in; he wouldn't give Steven Stone an inch.
As Mark drew closer to the Draconids and their tyrantrum, Ore split off and floated back to him. "Ore, no," he started—but the cops had stopped throwing eightballs for now, and he couldn't help smiling at his solrock's return. "You worry too much."
The police had withdrawn into a knot at the mouth of the access road. As Steven Stone approached, one of the cops tried to pull him aside, his manner almost conspiratorial, but the former champion brushed him off with a careless wave and continued forward, his other hand falling to his belt. He threw his pokeball with the easy swagger someone used to being watched, more fit for a televised match than a scuffle in the dirt.
All the same, when the light cleared, Mark sucked in a breath. Each of the metagross's legs was taller than a person and looked heavy enough to smash him to pulp. As it shifted its weight from foot to foot, reflections of blue sky and green banners and red jackets flitted across its chrome carapace. Its red eyes flickered across the crowd, lingering for a few seconds on each one of them.
Magma's ranks drew closer together, and a prickly quiet set in. Raquel and her baltoy hung in Hux's shadow. Nearby, Mark spotted Eben, hunched beside his graveler. Rand panted, leaning forward on his knuckles and swaying like a runner readying for the starting gun. To the other side, the Draconids raised their fists one by one. None of them spoke.
Goosebumps ran down Mark's arms. "Hold your ground!" he shouted, trying to regain his earlier calm. "It's just another pokemon."
A faint humming rose in Mark's ears. He wasn't sure at first if it was real or coming from Ore, but the sound grew louder, drowning out even the chatter of the helicopter's blades. Loud enough that his head began to ache.
"Ore, it's okay—"
The radio crackled with Cora's voice. "Hey, Mark—" Her words dropped off into empty air.
"I didn't catch that. Hello?" But the flatness of his own voice confirmed that the radio was dead. "Fuck."
A burst of static and human voices ripped through his head.
—
all units.
Ten-four, standing—
He clamped his hands over his ears, but it did no good. "Ore, stop!"
The solrock vibrated violently in place as if an invisible hand were shaking it. Mark had never seen it behave like that before.
He turned towards the metagross. With a metallic grating that he did not hear but felt inside his skull, it swiveled to look back at him. Its gaze seemed to pierce through his skin, straight through to his skull.
"Ore?" His voice was shaking. Someone touched his back, but he hardly felt it, his eyes focused on his quavering solrock. "Ore, we need a light screen. Come on, you can do it."
Stone shouted something, and then, slowly and soundlessly, the metagross rose onto its rear legs, blotting out the light. When it smashed down, everything went sideways.
