The Challenger, Part Two
Hunching his shoulders, Lance slurped up another mouthful of noodles and winced as the hot broth stung his tongue. Despite the late hour, the soba shop was bustling, but the conversation wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out the radio.
“—we return with hustings highlights from today’s shocking upset. Master Jiro has lost his place on the Elite Four to seventeen-year-old unknown Fusube Lance. Their high-powered battle commenced with a rapid initial knock-out—”
“Is this seat taken?”
The restaurant was crowded, but not
that crowded. Lance looked up with a frown. The stranger couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Lance, but he was dressed like a middle-aged businessman. A growlithe sat at his feet, tail thumping energetically. Before Lance could say a word, he slid onto the opposite bench and set down an open notebook.
A reporter. Lance had thought he’d shaken them all. He transferred his gaze back to his dinner, hoping it was a coincidence. Reporters had to eat too, right?
“You’re a hard man to track down, Master Lance!”
Lance flinched slightly at the honorific, wondering if repetition would make it more or less strange. He wondered if he could convince the reporter he’d accosted the wrong person. But the growlithe looked smug at her trainer’s words, and Lance realized with an uneasy twinge that they’d probably followed his scent.
“No comment,” he said, a little too sharply. Jiro had taught him those words early on, though he seldom followed his own advice. Jiro liked talking to people.
Unfazed, the journalist beamed at him. “I’m Habiki, from the Saffron Sentinel. I’ve got to say, you took me by surprise. I thought, I mean, we all did, that you and Jiro were cooking up Kikuko’s defeat.”
Lance took another slurp of his noodles, ignoring him.
“—taking advantage of the soaked battlefield, the challenger’s gyarados covered itself in mud, handily insulating it from Jiro’s electric attacks—”
“So what happened?” the reporter continued. “That didn’t strike me as a torch-passing. Jiro looked like he’d smelled a muk. Of course, Kikuko’s people are saying it’s because you knew you didn’t have a chance against her.” He paused, waiting for a reaction, but Lance kept his head down. “I don’t think I buy that, though. I watched you at the Saffron town hall. You walked out right when Jiro began talking about loosening up the alcohol laws. And then, yesterday morning—”
He pulled out a thin broadsheet and spread it triumphantly out on the table. Lance didn’t mean to look, but the blaring caption drew the eye.
Another Night of Debauchery. The picture showed Jiro, bent over a roulette table. Even in the casino’s dim lighting, Lance could make out the unrestrained joy on his face.
Something must have slipped in his expression. The reporter sat back, satisfied. “Thought so. You were his protege, but you don’t like his politics. Well, now’s your chance. You’ve just taken center stage and everyone in Kanto wants to hear from you. What do you want to tell them?”
But Lance didn’t want to tell anyone anything. His body still rang with soreness from the night spent on the hard-packed autumn earth, and he couldn’t seem to look away from Jiro’s grinning paper facsimile.
When he’d realized what Lance intended, all the color had fled Jiro’s face. He’d stood up shakily, and the shakiness hadn’t left. It was there in every command he spoke, jerky and increasingly frantic. He’d pulled out every trick, threw down every ace from his deck, but it hadn’t been any use. Lance knew them all, and if he had wondered, as he stepped into the challenger’s diamond, just how much Jiro had held back from him, by the final match-up he knew that in this, at least, Jiro had been honest.
“—a spectacle that has not been witnessed in Kanto in living memory: two dragonite, tumbling through the sky. It was impossible to tell one from the other, until at last, with a trumpeting roar, Lance’s dragonite cast its opponent ditto down into the mud.”
And then it had been over, and the world had rushed back in.
A frown began to inch across the reporter’s face. Maybe it had occurred to him that if Jiro sat in Lance’s place, he’d be getting more than slurped noodles and mullish silence.
“I really thought Jiro was going to pull it off,” he said finally. “First serious challenge Kikuko’s seen in five years. I suppose she’s sailing to an uncontested reelection now, unless—will we be seeing you at the hustings tomorrow, Master Lance?”
“I told you,” Lance said stiffly. “No comment.”
There was still some broth left in his bowl, but abruptly, Lance decided he was done here. Thankful that he’d already paid at the counter, he stood up and pushed into the night.
The cold instantly set his teeth chattering. Longingly, Lance thought about a private hostel room, but he only had a few rolls of yen left in his backpack, and he couldn’t waste them. He needed gloves and a warmer change of clothes. His current ones were still clammy from Kaisho’s rainstorm—and the rest were back in Jiro’s hotel room.
The thought was still hard to wrap his head around. It had been a long time since he’d had to worry about having dry clothing or a soft place to sleep. With Jiro, he hadn’t had to think.
And that was just the problem, Lance reminded himself.
Not thinking.
He ducked into the first second-hand store he passed. The place was deserted, and the cashier ignored him, his nose tucked into a battered magazine. Maybe it was just his mood, but the racks of hanging clothes put Lance in mind of discarded miniryu skins, slowly decomposing.
He flicked through the clothing slowly. Despite himself, the reporter’s words nagged at him.
You were his protege, but you don’t like his politics. Was that really how people saw it? He wondered if he should tell someone the real reason but shied from the thought—it felt wrong somehow, like a second betrayal.
And he’d solved it, hadn’t he? Team Rocket had wanted something and he’d made sure they wouldn’t get it.
Mission accomplished, he thought to himself, aware of his own bitterness but unable to articulate its source.
Job well done.
As Lance reached the end of the rack, a flash of red caught his eye. A jacket, he assumed, but when he gave it a tug, the fabric kept coming.
It was a cape, red on one side and black on the other and smelling faintly of smoke. Lance turned it over in his hands. The fabric was sturdy and soft, but the cloth was marred with singes. One of the street performers must have used it, Lance speculated. One of the fire-eaters. He hesitated for a moment, then swung it on. The heavy fabric pressed down on his shoulders, but the sensation was comforting, like Kana’s wings braced against his back.
Reluctantly, Lance set the cape down. He couldn’t be reckless with the little money he had left. Archer and Ibuki still preferred to hunt for themselves, but the others would need more in their diets than the cheap, nutritionally-questionable food that the pokemon centers gave out for free.
And soon it would be winter.
Lance shivered slightly, feeling the loss of the cape’s warmth. The store smelled of dust-balls, and the weak light flickered erratically. Disorientation swept over him, so potent that his legs almost buckled. What was he
doing here?
He was a member of the Elite Four now. But if that meant stepping into Jiro’s shoes—the galas, the small talk, the bribes—Lance wanted nothing to do with it. He’d be eighteen in a few months. Maybe Noriko would take him seriously this time, when he told her he wanted to join the G-Force.
Only, Lance wasn’t sure he wanted that anymore. Noriko and the G-Force hadn’t been willing to raise a hand against Jiro. Whatever they had been once, these days they had no power to do anything about real problems.
The champion had some power. She must have—otherwise Archer wouldn’t have been wasting his time bribing Jiro to try and get it. Lance frowned, picking out a final pair of pants. He dumped the medley of clothes on the counter.
Kikuko had been champion for fifteen years, almost as long as Lance had been alive, but what had she got to show for it? She hadn’t fixed anything.
Maybe no one could. Maybe it was just all just rotten. His fingers tapped restlessly against the counter. He wanted to hit something. He wanted—
He wanted something that made him feel
real.
“Hold on,” Lance said to the cashier.
The old cape was sprawled where he’d left it. Lance pressed the fabric to his nose. Smoke. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure a bonfire, stars, all the things he had once known with a certainty that now seemed out of reach.
His footsteps were heavy as he returned to the counter, where the cashier was watching him with badly-concealed annoyance.
“I’ll take this too.”
He let another roll of yen fall onto the counter and for a brief moment, he thought of nothing at all.
~*~
The moon was full tonight. Cape wrapped around him like a blanket, Lance braced himself against Toku’s belly. Fatigue made his vision swim, turned the stars into darting light bugs, but he didn’t want to sleep yet. The day felt like an undigested meal.
“I could try for champion,” he said in a voice slurred at the edges with exhaustion. “It might mean something. It might make a difference.”
Toku’s snout settled on his shoulder. She rumbled, questioning.
“I don’t know. I feel . . . tired, I guess. Of trying. Of being wrong. And”—Lance dropped his voice—“there’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t gone to the Grand Royale at all. That I hadn’t seen Jiro there. That I hadn’t—” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t think I was such a coward.”
Toku snorted. The next instant, Lance’s face hit the dirt. He scrambled to his feet, wakefulness sparking down his veins.
“Hey, what was that for—”
Toku dove at him again. He jumped back just in time to avoid being clipped by her wing.
“Toku!”
But she was making a third lap, her eyes glinting a furious green. This time Lance feinted to the right and, as she sailed past, gripped the end of her tail, using the momentum to swing himself onto her back. Still shaking from the sudden shock of adrenaline, he inched forward into a more secure position.
“Toku—” he tried again.
She climbed higher. At this height and speed the night wind had a physical bite, but beneath him Toku’s body heat flamed like a torch. They had left the treetops behind: the whole country lay spread out in the moonlight. Toku let out a rumble laced with an imperative.
“I am looking. It’s Kanto. I don’t see—”
She whapped his back with the tip of her tail, so he shut his mouth and looked again. Below them, the lights of Celadon City shone like the thousand shards of a shattered gem. To the west, Mt. Moon stood tall, its rock-face flecked with the silver of early snows.
“It’s beautiful. Is that what you want me to say? And it's ours now. I know. I know.” He pressed his face against her scales. It was easier to be honest with only Toku and the night sky as his witnesses. “It’s just, I thought I’d found something. A place where we fit. But it’s gone now. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to try again.”
He felt her answer reverberate through his whole body.
He closed his eyes. “I’m cold, Toku,” he said. “Take me down.”
They couldn’t have been in the air for more than ten minutes, but when they landed he was numb all through. His legs wobbled beneath him as he slid from Toku’s back. Their impromptu flight had woken the rest of the team, who watched them curiously.
“Toku thinks we should fight,” he told them flatly. “To become champion. It’ll be weeks, you know. Weeks and weeks of fighting. I don’t know if it’s worth it. What do you think?”
Kana didn’t hesitate to let out an approving roar. Archer joined her a moment later. Their combined trumpeting and shrieking sent a harried hoothoot fluttering from the trees. Ibuki made the terrible choking sound that Lance had long ago learned to call a laugh and sent up a pillar of dragon fire. Like the rest, she’d been buoyant when he’d come back to pick them up from the pokemon center. To her, the victory against Jiro was uncomplicated. It was something to be worn with pride.
I betrayed him too, though. That was the thought that ambushed him in every quiet moment. The way Jiro had paled, the way his eyes kept seeking Lance across the battlefield—for some reason it made Lance think of Archer in the Grand Royale.
Your dragon-wielding prodigy, he’d said, disdain dripping from his voice. As if he’d never put his hand on Lance’s shoulder and smiled down at him with quiet approval.
How could so much be erased in a moment?
Blue light flared. Lance looked up to find Kaisho hovering close, worry coiled through his body. The safeguard attack washed over them all, quieting Kana and Archer. The forest returned to stillness as they watched the undulating light.
“We’ll do it your way, Toku,” Lance said at last. He smiled without humor. “My way hasn’t been going very well.”
~*~
At first, the guard stationed at the back door of the tournament hall refused to let Lance in. Even after he showed her his identification card, she continued to shoot him dubious looks.
“The restroom’s to your left if you want to . . . freshen up.”
Examining himself in the bathroom mirror, Lance had to concede her point. He looked awful. Bags had sprung up under his eyes; his hair was disheveled and still half sopping from his morning dunk in the freezing river water. He smelled like river too, but there wasn't much he could do about that.
“Look what the meowth dragged in,” Kikuko murmured when he walked into the ready room. He made her a stiff bow, unsure of what to say. He'd expected their next encounter to be at opposite ends of a battlefield, where words weren't needed. Her gaze followed him as he sat down on the farthest chair he could find.
Presently, she spoke again. “I was right about you.”
He didn’t know what she thought she’d been right about, but the flat disdain in her tone made clear that it wasn’t a compliment. Lance’s eyes found the floor and for several minutes they sat there in heavy silence.
Finally, a league official stepped in, slightly out-of-breath
“Challenger Lance, welcome,” he said with a perfunctory bow. “Welcome to the hustings. As I hope you’re aware, you are limited to five active pokemon for the full duration of the hustings, with a sixth held in reserve, in the event of any permanent incapacitation. That hasn't happened since the 30s, of course. Performance enhancing drugs, including those commonly referred to as “vitamins” and “x enhancements” are strictly prohibited and their detection will result in both your expulsion from contention for the championship and the revocation of your place on the Elite Four. Participation in each husting is mandatory; failure to attend is considered withdrawal from the championship race, though it will not impact your Elite Four position. This is the final day of the Celadon hustings. It will wrap up by four instead of five, leaving time for a town hall this evening at six. Tomorrow the hustings will move on to Cerulean. Do you have any questions?”
Overwhelmed, Lance shook his head.
“Well, if any occur to you, I'm sure Champion Kikuko would be delighted to fill you in on the more abstruse turns of this age-old rite.”
Kikuko scowled, not exactly looking the picture of delighted.
“We’ve had a few technical difficulties this morning—I apologize deeply for the delay. We’ll begin in just fifteen more minutes Champion, Challenger.”
It felt like a lot longer than fifteen minutes when the official returned to lead them out into the stadium. Kikuko moved with surprising speed for her age, but Lance still had to check his pace so that he fell into step behind her.
The day had dawned cold and wet. Moisture settled on Lance’s face as they stepped outside. A roar of applause greeted them, though Lance thought it sounded muted compared to yesterday’s.
Lance could hardly blame the crowd. At this moment, Jiro would have been raising his arms with a grin, his gold studs flashing, but Lance slunk after Kikuko and sat himself stiffly in the wooden chair next to hers. From this position he could see almost the whole amphitheater, though the faces of the crowd were obscured behind the psychic barrier. Inside the barrier camped a small contingent of battle photographers, armed with magnemite and abra. Right now their lenses were all pointed towards his face, which Lance tried to school into a neutral expression. Lance was horribly aware that his new clothing fit him badly and that he looked like a tauros had run him over. When he saw the photos, Jiro would have a fit—
Would have had a fit. Lance wrenched his mind away from an image of Jiro drinking his morning tea and crinkling his nose as he opened the newspaper.
“WELCOME”—Lance flinched as the announcer’s voice boomed from behind him, as if shouting into his ear—“to the final day of the Celadon hustings! You may have noticed a new face joining us. Challenger Lance has defeated Master Jiro of the Elite Four and will be taking his place in the hustings.”
The announcer’s words drew some scattered applause. Lance was grateful when it ended, and even more grateful when the first challenger named him. He hopped down from the dias, glad to escape the weight of a hundred anonymous eyes. At least during the battle, they’d be watching his pokemon, not him.
His opponent led with an onix. Lance’s first impulse was to send out Kana, for old time’s sake, but he caught himself at the last moment. This was the first battle of many—better to play it safe. He sent out Ibuki instead for the easy knock-out.
The second challenge was also for Lance and the third too, until Rule of Three forced the next one on Kikuko. As her haunter spun circles around a snapping arcanine, Lance leaned back in his chair, idly rubbing Toku’s snout. He’d probably pull the majority of the challenges today. After all, he was the newcomer, the easy target. Lance didn’t mind. He’d prove on the battlefield that his victory hadn’t been a fluke. And he had at least one advantage over Kikuko—nobody had entered the hustings planning to fight him.
After days of sitting on the sidelines, anticipating a fight and never knowing when it would come, the constant stream of hustings challengers came almost as a relief. Lance quickly taught himself to tune out the too-loud commentary, ignore the noise that filtered through the barrier, and pay no attention to Kikuko’s glare each time he returned to his seat. In the lulls between battles, he tended to his pokemon. There didn’t seem to be any rule against it, so they joined him on the dais—all except Ibuki, who coiled herself around it.
Lance had so sunk into the flow of the hustings that the end of the day caught him by surprise. Kaisho grounded a pidgeot with a bolt of lightning and then, instead of announcing the next challenger, the overhead voice was thanking all the participants for their fighting spirit.
Slightly at a loss, Lance wandered back to the dais.
“That’s it for today, I guess,” he told Toku. Kikuko was hobbling towards the exit and with the barrier down, Lance could see the crowd filing out of the bleachers. The battling had energized him, but now Lance felt the exhaustion of yesterday threatening to crash back down. He stifled a yawn.
A few reporters began to close in, but Archer interposed himself and let out a warning cry. Probably Lance shouldn’t have cracked a smile at the way that sent the reporters stumbling, but he seized upon their distraction to make his way out the back.
He had just enough time before the town hall to drop off his pokemon at the pokecenter and grab a quick bite to eat. He kept his head down, but even nestled into a corner table he was conscious of the eyes and whispers following him. Being at the center of a crowd wasn’t entirely new, but Jiro had always held the spotlight.
Lance hadn’t appreciated just how much of a gift that had been until it was taken away.
~*~
At the town hall, the spotlight was literal. Lance blinked against it, dazzled, as he and Kikuko were once again introduced to the crowd. His hand dropped reflexively to his belt, but his pokemon were still at the pokemon center. He’d have to face this one alone.
The first question was about pokemon importation laws. Kikuko answered crispy, defending the existing system as striking the right balance between restriction and exchange. Lance didn’t know if it was a good answer or a bad one. At the past town hall he’d judged answers by the crowd’s reaction and by the confidence in Jiro’s voice. Jiro had—Lance strained to remember—Jiro had favored loosening them. Because the current laws were out-of-date and . . . something.
“Challenger Lance?” the moderator said courteously. “You have two minutes, if you’d like to respond.”
Lance’s mouth had gone dry. The lights blinded him to everything except Kikuko’s burgeoning smirk. Even if he remembered Jiro’s view, how could he trust it? How was he supposed to know what Jiro had really believed and what he’d said because it was useful for him to say? Lance couldn’t know and if he said something now that was wrong—
“I don’t have anything to add,” he managed. The microphone clipped at his collar took his hushed words and amplified them so that his unsteady voice crashed through the stadium. He winced as Kikuko’s smirk widened.
The second question was the same story. And the third. A hot haze seemed to have settled on Lance, stuffing up his vision. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. He wished this were a nightmare—at least then he would be able to wake up. But the ordeal stretched on. There was nothing he knew, nothing he felt sure enough of to answer.
Then he heard it, a word like a lifeline.
The noise in his ears cleared. He listened hard as Kikuko spoke about the historic importance of gambling in Celadon City and reiterated her commitment to respecting that tradition. His hands tightened on the side of his chair, gripped with sudden excitement. He had an answer to this.
“Challenger Lance?”
By this point, the moderator’s tone had become perfunctory when she turned to him. He could already see her preparing to ask the next question, when he shifted forward in his seat and spoke in a rush.
“I have something to say.” Startled, her eyebrow rose, but she gestured for him to speak. He forced himself to take a breath before he continued. “Casinos are—out-of-control. It’s not just entertainment. Well, for some people, it’s just entertainment, but for others, it’s their whole lives. It controls their lives. It takes people’s hope and it turns that against them; it takes everything they have, until they don’t have anything, and so they don’t have any choice then but to come back again and again. It
hurts people,” Lance insisted. He wasn’t sure where he should be looking—when he looked out towards the crowd, the lights burned his eyes. “Anything that hurts people, you can’t give it a pass just because it’s hurt them for a long time. I think they should be shut down.”
He finished, breathing hard like he’d just been running. Kikuko watched him with an incredulous look on her face. His cheeks burned, but he kept his chin raised. Maybe he hadn’t put it well, but at least he knew he’d said what he meant. The glow of answering maintained him through the final, dragging half-hour. He didn’t speak up for any other questions, but his head had cleared and he was able to follow along.
Still, he had never been more relieved than when the moderator thanked them both and the lights dimmed. He bolted, knowing that it looked like he was running away but too desperate to care. Backstage, he took whichever turn led him somewhere emptier, until he was finally alone. He sank against the wall and groaned.
What had he been thinking? The husting battles were one thing. This was entirely another, and nothing he’d done with Jiro had remotely prepared him for it. He squeezed his eyes shut. There were seven towns left. Seven town halls. The best he could hope for was that someone would knock Kikuko out in battle. Otherwise—
A low trill interrupted his thoughts. Lance’s eyes snapped open and he stared in surprise at the miniryu crawling up to him—a pink miniryu.
“Gigaku?” he breathed. The ditto trilled an affirmative and began to snake down the corridor, her message clear: follow me.
Gigaku meant Jiro.
Lance hesitated, torn by two conflicting impulses. He wanted to talk to Jiro. He
really didn’t want to talk to Jiro.
Gigaku looked back at him and trilled an interrogative.
It didn’t matter what he wanted, Lance decided at last. He owed Jiro enough to listen to whatever he wanted to say.
“I’m coming,” Lance said. His fingers thumbed uneasily over his empty belt.
~*~
If Lance had passed Jiro on the street, he wouldn’t have recognized him: Jiro wore a wide-brimmed hat and a muted tan coat in the place of his usual bright yellows. The smile he drudged up for Lance was a poor mockery of his usual carefree grin and it didn’t show in his eyes.
“Lance,” he said, gesturing. “Have a seat.”
Lance sat quietly. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
“Before anything else, I need to know . . . was this your plan from the very start?”
“No!” Lance said indignantly, his head whipping up. “Of course not. How could you even—I
never planned—”
“All right, all right,” Jiro interrupted, some tension draining from his shoulders. “Don’t sputter. I had to ask, though your performance tonight was an answer in its own right.” His smile became simultaneously nastier and more genuine. “What was that, Lance? I mean, really. Tongue-tied silence is one thing, but bad-mouthing casinos in Celadon of all places? I can practically write the headlines.”
“I meant what I said about the casinos.”
“You meant—” Jiro passed a hand over his forehead. “It doesn’t matter what you mean, it matters what people hear and how they’ll vote. Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush. You need my endorsement. So let’s talk about what I’m going to get for it.”
Whatever Lance had expected, it wasn’t that.
“Your endorsement?” he repeated.
“I hope you’re not under the delusion that you have even a fraction of a chance at the champiancy without it.” Jiro’s tone was pleasant, but his eyes were hard. “I endorse you, we present a unified front, and that’s Saffron and Viridian. Celadon too, if you walk back your ridiculous casino statement. Getting to six from there won’t be easy, but there’s a path. Of course, I have conditions.”
Apparently mistaking Lance’s incredulous silence for acquiescence, he continued.
“First, everything I promised Executive Archer. I’ve already pledged the money he gave me—if I don’t convince him he’s getting his money’s worth, he’s going to get nasty. Second—”
“Jiro,” Lance interrupted. “You don’t—you don’t seem to get this. I didn’t fight you because I wanted to be champion. I didn’t want to fight you at all and I’m sorry that we had to, but I can’t change what happened. I told you to give back that money and you wouldn’t—”
“And I told you I didn’t have any choice,” Jiro snapped. “You didn’t want to fight me? You’re
sorry that we fought? Thanks for that, Lance. Thanks a lot. I’ve worked my whole life for this, I lifted you up from the gutter, and you think you have the right to stab me in the back? Not even for ambition, but because I offended your mystifying sense of propriety?”
“It’s not
mystifying.” Lance was hit with a sense of deja vu; they were back in Jiro’s hotel room, talking straight past each other. “Don’t pretend that taking bribes isn’t wrong, don’t pretend it doesn’t matter—”
“Give me a break. Fearow Hill matters. And if it had been your home on the line, you’d have done exactly the same.” Jiro’s lip curled. “But then, you don’t really have one, do you.”
“Shut up,” Lance said quietly.
But Jiro didn’t. His gaze floated past Lance’s shoulder, as if unwilling to meet his eyes. “It’s come to my attention,” he said flatly, “that there are some irregularities in your citizenship documentation. As I’m sure you’re aware, the hustings are reserved for bona fide citizens. If these irregularities are born out, your citizenship will be revoked, invalidating your position. I don’t want to report you, but it seems you’re determined to leave me no choice.”
Jiro kept talking, but Lance had stopped listening. The world seemed to have turned slow and viscous.
I refuse. The thought cut him like a glass shard. Kanto wasn’t perfect, but it was his. His home.
I refuse to do this. Not again.
He reached for anger, but there was nothing. He felt chilled all the way through.
“That would be too bad,” he said after a moment. He didn’t recognize his voice. It seemed to come from somewhere outside of him, soft and clipped and so very, very cold. “Too bad for you. I know a reporter on the Saffron Sentinel. Do you think he’d be interested in a recording I have? It’s of three men talking at the Grand Royale. You know them. One of them, you know really well.”
Jiro twitched, like a raticate run head-long into a sneasel. “There’s no way,” he said. And, more vigorously, “You’re bluffing.”
An extraordinary stillness possessed Lance. He met Jiro’s gaze without blinking. “I don’t tell lies. That’s what you do. So keep threatening me if you want. But when that tape is public, I won’t be the only one who doesn’t have a place here. It’s your choice.”
Jiro stared at him like he’d never seen him before in his life.
“My god,” he said, slumping back in his chair. “I weaned a little arbok.”
“It’s your choice,” Lance said again.
Jiro laughed bitterly and stood. “Fine. Looks like I’ve wasted both our time. Enjoy the Elite Four, Lance. Enjoy Kikuko’s shadow—I hope you choke on it.”
The door slammed behind him.
Still, Lance didn’t move. He wasn’t sure if he could. His bones seemed to have become stone, his blood ice.
That’s the only way kairyu learn, he thought nonsensically. They’d said that before they sent him away—
He didn’t want this lesson. He didn’t want this terrible stillness, this cold.
One thought looped through his mind, inescapable:
I sounded like Archer.
I sounded like Archer—and it worked.
~*~
Cerulean City received Lance with a hailstorm. At first it was just a few pellets, but the closer Toku flew the worse it got, as if the city was saying,
turn back.
We don’t want you here. Lance had gone numb a few minutes in, but even with the cold a distant burn in his extremities, the hail still hurt.
Toku endured the onslaught grimly, the only sign of her discomfort the increased pace of her flight. At last, the red roof of the Pokemon Center came into view. Toku banked down, snorting in disgust as an icy barrage fell on them like a parting shot.
The only silver lining was that the storm had cleared the streets of any lurking reporters. When Lance trudged inside the Pokemon Center, he garnered only a few anonymously sympathetic looks from the people in the waiting room. Soaked and shivering, he made his way to the front desk.
“I’m in town for the hustings,” he said. It was difficult with his teeth chattering, but he tried to speak the way Jiro always had, with a confidence that couldn’t be questioned. “I need a private room.”
The nurse’s eyes fluttered from his soaked clothing to his rain-slicked red hair. A spark of recognition lit in her eyes.
“Of course, Master Lance,” she said.
It was the biggest room he’d ever seen at a pokemon center, and it was still smaller than any hotel room he’d stayed at with Jiro. The windows faced toward the ocean, though in the current weather everything outside had been transmuted into the same relentless gray. Lance opened his pack. The clothes inside were only a little less wet than he was. He draped them awkwardly over the room’s heater and started to towel his hair, but it suddenly seemed useless, and he stopped.
Hail beat against the windowpane. Hot air rushed from an overhead vent. The heat made his hands tingle unpleasantly. He flexed them and noticed that his fingers had turned swollen and red. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he listened to the hail’s drumbeat, surrendering all sense of time.
A loud rapping at the door brought him back to himself.
Reporters, was his first, unhappy thought. He hunched over on the bed, determined to wait them out.
The rapping stopped.
“Lad,” the voice floated under the door, “if you don’t open this door, I’ll hyperbeam it.”
Lance flung the door open. Hamako looked back at him, one eyebrow raised.
”Well, you look terrible,” she said matter-of-a-factly. “Come on. You’re staying with me.”
They didn’t speak on the way over to her house. Hamako led him to a small bedroom, smelling of starched linen and dust.
“Here. My son’s old room. He’s a ship mechanic now. Took after me too much to stay in one place; didn’t take after me enough to come crawling back to Cerulean. There’s some clothes in the closet. They won’t be a perfect fit, but dry over wet, eh?”
Ten minutes later, and dry, he made his way cautiously into the kitchen, following the sound of a whistling kettle. When he tried to greet her and burst into a fit of sneezing instead, she clucked loudly and pushed a steaming cup into his hands.
“Ginger tea. Drink all of it.”
He did. The sharpness made his throat burn, but when he finished he almost felt awake.
“How did you know I was here?” he asked finally.
“I was storm-watching. Then I saw a miserable-looking dragonite.” She scooped some rice into bowls, poured over green tea, and set them down. “I didn’t realize perishing of frost-bite was a winning hustings strategy.”
Lance was spared answering by the spoonful of rice in his mouth.
“Congratulations,” Hamako added belatedly. “It was some fight. Not exactly the fight I was expecting, though.”
Her unspoken question hung in the air.
“You tried to warn me about him, didn’t you?” Lance said, putting down his spoon. “That night on the beach. I should have listened sooner. I—” His voice cracked. “I thought I knew him, but I really didn’t know him at all.”
“Knowing’s a tricky business,” Hamako said contemplatively. “I’ve found that sooner or later, people show you who they are. It’s quite often later, of course.”
They finished their meal in silence, broken only by Lance’s occasional sneezes. It was a good thing that no hustings were scheduled for the next day, because when Lance next woke up the sun was out in full force. His throat tickled and the sneezing had only gotten worse. After taking one look at him, Hamako returned with more ginger tea, as well as a plate of noxious-smelling sucking candies.
“I’m fine,” he protested, but Toku, obnoxiously well-rested, snorted and settled her head on his stomach. The others followed her cue. Resistance was futile; Lance lay trapped beneath a warm pile of pokemon for the rest of the day.
The sore throat lingered the next three days, not helped by the constant commands he had to shout during the hustings. By the morning of the town hall, his voice had been reduced to a croak.
He was dreading it. The feeling thickened as the day progressed, clamping down on him every time a break came in the battling. He’d tried to prepare, this time. He’d talked with Hamako about the local issues, tried to figure out what he thought about them and why. Strangely, the preparation just made him feel worse.
There was an hour’s respite between the end of the day’s hustings and the town hall’s start. He found a deserted room in the lower levels of the newly-refurbished Cerulean Gym and munched unenthusiastically at the onigiri Hamako had packed him, wishing he had something hot to drink. It was only as he wiped his hands clean that he became aware he was being watched.
A girl with hair the color of a koiking, tied back in two scruffy pig-tails, squinted at Lance from the doorway.
“You have a gyarados,” she announced when their eyes met.
A little taken aback, he nodded.
She seemed to take that as permission to wander further into the room.
“Leiko’s still a ‘karp, but she’s going to be the strongest gyarados when she’s evolved. Stronger than Hamako’s, even. My sisters don’t train koiking. So they’re not going to have gyarados. So that means I’ll be the real gym leader, ‘cause it used to be that you could only be a gym leader in Cerulean if you had a gyarados. That’s ‘cause the gyarados protect us, and when Hoenn tried to attack by sea, the gyarados ate up all their ships.”
She spoke very fast, like she was expecting to be cut off at any second.
“Gyarados protect their homes,” Lance agreed when she came to a breathless halt. “How long—” His voice cracked and he tried again. “How long have you and Leiko been together?”
“Since she hatched,” the girl answered promptly. “She was the best swimmer. Like me. I’m the best swimmer in my class, and I even go out where the rip currents form, even though my sisters scream at me.” Her face brightened. “Do you want to meet Leiko?”
“I’d love to,” Lance said with too much fervor. He followed the girl down the winding, seafoam-colored corridors until they came to a small pool room. A koiking and a goldeen were chasing each other in circles. They broke off when they saw the girl and darted to the side of the pool, gupping furiously. She laughed as the koiking swished its tail, splattering them with water.
“This is Leiko!” she declared, beaming with pride. Lance bent over the side of the pool and extended a finger for the koiking to nibble on.
“I’m Lance,” he said hoarsely. “I knew a koiking just like you. She beat up a charmeleon and climbed a waterfall.”
“A charmelon?” the girl repeated, her eyes wide. She and her koiking exchanged a look. “Leiko could beat a charmeleon too.”
Lance found himself smiling. Their easy back and forth reminded him of Toku, back when she was still a miniryu.
“Kasumi? Kasumi, I swear to Ho-oh’s high heavens—”
At the voice, the girl seemed to shrink several inches. Her grin dropped into a sullen frown. Footsteps slapped in the distance, and then a woman about Lance’s age in a lily-pad green kimono rushed in.
“There you are. Don’t you know what time—” She broke off to look at Lance. “Oh! You’re the challenger. Has Kasumi been bothering you? I am so,
so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Lance said, looking between the two of them. “She was just introducing me to Leiko.”
“You’re wet!” the woman said in horror, following his gaze to the skirt of Kasume’s kimono. “You can’t attend the town hall like that.” She grabbed Kasume by the wrist. “Change at once, young lady.”
“Don’t call me that!” Kasume spat back. “You’re only five years older. That doesn’t make you an adult. Stop pretending you’re Sakura.”
“Kasume!” The woman jerked at her arm. “You’re embarrassing yourself, and all of us, behaving like this.” In a much softer voice, she said to Lance, “The town hall will be starting in ten minutes. I think you may be expected soon.”
Just like that, the dread was back. Lance sketched a short bow and beat a retreat as the quarrel bloomed into a full-blown shouting match.
He set his shoulders and took his place onstage.
~*~
“Well,” Hamako said cheerily as they walked out from the stadium. “At least you talked this time.”
Lance said nothing. She patted his back roughly.
“Don’t be hard on yourself; you’ve been a politician less than a week.”
When he made a scratchy sound of protest she raised an eyebrow. “What else should I call it? The champion’s a politician, lad, and the sooner you get that fixed in your head the better. Siba of the Elite Four can get away with spending all his time meditating under waterfalls because he doesn’t have any interest in rising higher. But a champion has duties. You know it was only ten years ago that the law finally changed so that foreign ambassadors don’t all need to be presented directly to the champion? If, Ho-oh forbid, we got ourselves into a war, it’s the champion who’s responsible for leading us safely through it. You might get that position by being good at battling, but you won’t stay in it long if that’s the only thing you’re good at.”
“Should I stop, Hamako?”
She shot him a side-long look. “Can’t decide that for you, lad. It’s not the worst thing for Kikuko to have to fight for her throne for once. I don’t know why you’d want it, though. And I’m not sure you do, either.”
When they reached her apartment, Lance ate the food Hamako set in front of him without tasting it.
“I’m going to the beach,” he announced when his plate was clean.
Hamako glanced outside, where the cold rain had progressed into sleet. “Right,” she said with a crooked grin. “Never a bad time for the beach.”
Kana hissed and inched closer to Hamako’s fireplace, and Archer and Kaisho looked thoroughly unenthusiastic. Lance met Toku’s eyes. At his silent plea, she snorted and lumbered to her feet.
“Try not to get pneumonia,” Hamako muttered as they went out the door.
When Lance was twenty steps into the sleet and fully soaked, it occurred to him that this hadn’t been the best idea. But he pressed on until he reached the river where he’d met Ibuki and ducked into the shelter of the caverns.
They made their way in silence. Toku seemed to remember the path. All the while, Lance felt words building in his chest, but he didn’t speak until they had flown up the waterfall and entered the clearing. The pools were running over from the rain, spilling out over the cavern floor, and the water beat out a constant tempo.
Toku watched him patiently. She’d always been able to sense when he was trying and failing to put something into words. He was glad she was the only one that had come, glad no one else had to hear this.
“I can’t do it, Toku.”
Toku’s breath steamed in the cold air. Her tail whipped back and forth, but she waited for him to continue.
“You don’t know what it’s like. When we battle, we’re together. But with these town halls, it’s just me. And I don’t know who I am when I’m out there, Toku, I just. I don’t know who I
am.”
It was wrong to expect her to answer a question he could barely put into words. But he couldn’t help the plaintive catch in his voice.
Toku stepped behind him. He felt a tug at his backpack; a moment later soggy fabric fell over his back. He knew without looking that it was the cape he’d bought in Saffron. A kairyu master’s cape, or as close as he would get to one now.
Toku took to the air. She hovered for a few seconds, then dove into a tight loop. With a jolt, Lance recognized it as the opening step of the kairyu dance.
“Toku,” he said, startled. “Toku, we can’t. It’s—it’s not right. I can’t.”
Why not? Toku rumbled back, looping again.
Because I’m not worthy yet. The words were almost on his lips, but he’d never lied to Toku before and he didn’t plan to start now.
“Because I don’t remember,” he admitted.
He saw them sometimes in dreams, ready and waiting behind his closed eyes. But the images were blurred by time and distance, just flashes of color and a sensation of rightness so hazy that he wondered if it was a figment of his imagination.
All he had left were the memories, and memories faded. They weren’t enough to hold onto; they were a lighthouse that faltered in the dark.
“
I don’t know how,” he shouted above the crash of falling water, angry she was making him say it, making him strip away that last illusion.
But Toku only parrumphed, the same impatient sound she’d made as a miniryu when he was too slow to grasp something simple. She flared her wings and twisted, then banked, watching him expectantly. When he still didn’t move, she harrumped again and charted a looping arc around the room. It was a dance, but not one Lance remembered.
Could she really remember so well, when he didn’t?
And then he understood. It was in the name, after all. The
kairyu dance. The clan had never claimed to have taught it. The ryu had danced it first, and the first tamers had followed them.
Toku looped again in the air. Lance sucked in a breath and cartwheeled, the cavern floor hard under his palms. She rose in the air and he leaped. The simplicity of the revelation dizzied him. To dance the kairyu dance, all Lance had to do was follow his kairyu.
He wasn’t sure how long they danced together. At some point the rain subsided to a trickle. Toku fluttered down in front of him and licked him very precisely on the nose. He flung his arms around her belly and felt her low, pleased rumble.
“Wherever you are, that’s home, Toku,” he said softly. The rain chill had lifted as he danced. He felt warm inside and steady, like the world had kicked back into balance.
Hamako was still in her armchair when they returned to the house, but she was sleeping, her breathing coming in long, dry whistles. Lance draped a quilted blanket over her and saw himself to bed.
~*~
When Lance and Toku touched down in Pewter City, Muno met them in front of the pokecenter with a grin that seemed slightly strained. He batted away the reporters and hustled Lance into a quick march down Pewter’s dusty streets.
“You’ve sure put me in an awkward position, kid,” he said as they walked. “Jiro was going to help me make Pewter’s case to those damned Saffronites, you know. Cost me a lot of credibility, endorsing a cityslicker like him, and all for nothing now.”
“I’m sorry,” Lance said uncertainly. He didn’t know how to broach the topic of Jiro’s bribes, or if he should even try. “It was complicated.” He glanced behind him, where a few reporters were trailing at a distance. “Is there any place to stay around here that’s not the pokecenter?”
“Eh?” Muno followed Lance’s gaze. “Yeah, I suppose you wouldn’t want to hang around there, not with that beedrill hive about. Platinum Inn’s our nicest bed-and-breakfast. Jiro always stayed there.”
“I can’t afford that,” Lance said tightly.
Muno shot him a look tinged with incredulity. “They’d probably give you a discount, kid. It may not have sunk in yet, but you’re on the Elite Four now, and that means
perks.”
“Perks,” Lance repeated, the word tasting like ash. “You mean bribes. That’s what Jiro did, he took bribes.” When Muno didn’t react except for a slight grimace, Lance felt a stab of betrayal. “You knew that.”
“Not as such . . .” Muno scratched his head. “Look kid, you gotta understand, all the bigshots take bribes. It’s just how it works. Only reason I don’t is that I’m not worth anyone’s money.” He sighed at Lance’s frozen expression. “Believe it or not, I remember being your age. Things seemed pretty simple then. Right and wrong were something you could just see, like veins of ore in rock. But life’s really more like migmatite, all mixed up together. And when you’re between a rock and an onix, you take what you can get.”
Sooner or later, people show you who they are, Lance thought. He wondered if he’d ever stop being surprised by it.
“More hard-headed than a geodude,” Muno muttered to himself. “Listen, if you don’t mind roughing it, we’ve got open spots in the mine barracks—you and your pokemon could earn your keep hauling rocks, if you really insist. It’s not a pleasant place to stay, though. Lotta noise, and you won’t have hot water unless you heat it yourself—”
“I’ll take it,” Lance said instantly. “Thank you, Muno. It means a lot.”
“Not a problem. Not a problem. Heading back there now, if you want to tag along.”
They continued for fifteen minutes in tense silence.
“You know, of course,” Muno began without warning, “I truly like you a lot, kid, I admire your spunk, but you know I can’t endorse you, right? Kikuko’s gonna win, and I’ve already screwed myself backing Jiro. It won’t be pretty if I go against her twice.”
“I understand,” Lance said. He hadn’t exactly been planning to ask, but the rebuke still stung.
Muno wasn’t wrong, though. Hamako hadn’t minced words when she saw him off. Not everyone liked Kikuko, but at least they knew who she was.
Nobody knew Lance.
~*~
The mining barracks were everything Muno had promised: loud and dirty, with a sagging mattress and smelly shared restroom. Dust settled in Lance’s hair, his nose, his ears, and fingernails, reluctant to come out. He ate his meals with the miners, mostly ignored. A boy who Muno had introduced as his son Takeshi shot Lance the occasional curious glance, but kept his distance. They were opening a new shaft, and the whole camp was on edge until the passage was fully secured.
Pewter had three days of hustings. The morning of the first day, Lance hesitated, but pulled the red cape around his shoulders. He ignored Kikuko’s raised eyebrow and steady smirk at his new look. People didn’t know Lance—well, how could they, when he hadn’t known himself? He felt honest in the black and red of the not-quite-a-kairyu-cape, honest in a way he hadn’t felt for a long time. Kikuko could smirk all she wanted.
The morning of the third day—the town hall—he clasped the cape and ran a hand through his hair, frizzy from the spate of humid weather.
“How do I look?” he asked Toku.
She squinted at him, then took up a position behind his back and began to flatten his hair with her tongue.
“Who needs Kalosian pomade when you have kairyu spit?” Lance cracked. His face fell when he realized he’d made yet another joke meant for Jiro. Groaning, he turned and buried his head in Toku’s belly.
The ground trembled.
“Toku?” Lance lifted his head, but her confused expression mirrored his own.
Outside, people were beginning to shout.
Lance darted out the door, Toku close behind. The camp was abuzz, miners streaming out from the barracks, geodude filling the air.
“What’s happening?” Lance asked the nearest miner.
“Cave-in,” came the snapped response. The man’s face twisted. “Again.”
“Which way?”
He pointed up.
Then Lance saw it: a gray plume spiraling in the distance.
He whistled to Toku and swung onto her back. By air, they outpaced the rush of miners and mining pokemon. The site of the cave-in was mostly rubble, with a small opening held aloft by a straining onix. Nobody else was in sight. But if the onix was still holding up the tunnel—
“Are there people in there?” Lance called out, horrified. The onix wheezed a short affirmative. Lance drew in a breath and dropped his hand to Kaisho and Archer’s pokeballs.
“Cover me with protect!” he shouted to the hakuryru. “Toku, Archer, get ready. We’re going in.”
The shaft plunged steeply downwards. Soon the daylight cut out, leaving just the thin blue of Kaisho’s protective shield. The air was warm and stagnant, carrying an unpleasant acrid smell. In several places, rocks completely obstructed the path. Toku punched through them and they moved onwards, until Archer let out a shriek and dove ahead.
A few yards more, and Lance spotted the weak twinkle of headlights. A group of miners was huddled under the coils of another onix.
“How many?” Lance called out.
“Six! But some of us are injured. And Naozumi and Hirota are further in, they got cut off.”
“How long can your onix hold up the tunnel?”
There was a gaping silence. “Not long.”
Ignore the darkness, Lance told himself.
Ignore the closeness of the air, the intermittent crashes, the bitten-off moans of pain.
Ignore it. Think.
His voice echoing strangely in the cavern, he said, “Everyone who can walk, come over here. Kaisho’s protect will shield you. My aerodactyl can carry you up the shaft. Archer, you understand? You need to go with them and carry them out. When you’re done, come back.”
As Archer barked his agreement, four miners shuffled forward.
“Go,” Lance told them, moving with Toku into an open spot under the onix’s coils. In the receding light of Kaisho’s protect, he made out two prone forms.
“How badly are you hurt?” he asked.
“Leg,” came a muffled answer. “Setsuko got hit in the head, I think. She’s out entirely.”
“Okay. Hold on. I’m going to try and break through to the others.”
“Don’t!” His urgency stopped Lance short. “You’ll bring everything down again.”
In the distance a crash reverberated. The light was entirely gone now. Kana’s flame would give them visibility, but Lance had listened to the miners enough to know that underground, fire could sometimes mean instant death.
He stood paralyzed. Beyond those rocks, two people might be dying. But if he did anything rash, he could doom them all.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll wait.”
Thirty seconds passed in silence, a small eternity. Lance listened to the onix’s straining breath, the grinding of stones in the distance. He could feel Toku’s wings, spread out protectively over his back, but if the ceiling really came down on them, there wasn’t much she could do except summon a twister powerful enough to save herself. Toku had never mastered protect.
“What’s your name?” Lance said to the conscious miner, desperate to break the stifling silence.
“Shoko.”
“Do you have family?”
“A small army.” His voice was hoarse with pain but fond. “I married three years ago. We have two daughters and my Harumi’s five months pregnant now. A boy, the xatu-teller said.”
“Congratulations,” Lance said awkwardly. Under the circumstances, the words felt horribly inadequate.
“Harumi wants to leave Pewter. There’s construction jobs in Vermillion, she said. Longer hours, but the work’s safer. I told her not to be silly. Our families have lived here for—
aghhh.” He broke off. “Rock’s right on my fucking leg.”
Lance crouched down, feeling with his hands. “Toku, can you—”
They shifted it off.
“I still can’t move it. Must be broken. Don’t be a silly fool, that’s what I told her. Gods. Who’s the fool now?” He began to laugh unevenly. Suddenly his arm darted out and grasped the edge of Lance’s cape. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her she was right. Tell her—”
“You can tell her yourself,” Lance stopped him. “When we get out of here.”
Dust cascaded down on them as the onix shifted. Lance flinched, but no larger bits of cave followed the dust.
“Just a little longer,” he told the onix in a steady voice, hoping it was true. The weight must be almost unbearable.
What they needed was a distraction.
Lance started to hum one of the campfire songs the miners liked to sing in the evenings. Toku joined him and after a few bars so did Shoko, his words low and clipped, but audible. Lance closed his eyes—like that, he could pretend they were somewhere else. He focused on the melody, one note after the next.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a shriek interrupted them.
Archer!
The aerodactyl barreled into the chamber, Kaisho close on his tail. They weren’t alone. A squad of miners followed them, their headlights bright.
“Two injured here, two further in,” Lance called out.
“We’ve got an abra!” the leader of the group shouted back.
The next few moments passed in a blur. The abra teleported out Shoko and Setsuko. Kaisho and the miner’s sandslash maintained a protect while a group of graveler excavated into the blocked chamber. It was slow, careful going. Lance waited uselessly at the edge of the protective sphere, until one of the miners gently told him the fewer bodies in the tunnel, the better. He made sure Kaisho had the energy to continue, then gestured for Archer and Toku to follow him up.
The outside air hit like a cool spurt of water, gloriously clear and bracing. Lance gulped in a few heaving breaths. A passing breeze lifted up his hair and set it down. As his eyes readjusted to the daylight, the commotion filtered in. The area outside the shaft entrance swarmed with miners and mining pokemon. They had managed to prop the entrance, freeing the onix that had been holding it up. One of the miners came up to him with a bottle of water, which Lance downed greedily.
“Excuse me.” Lance turned around, swaying slightly on his feet. It wasn’t a miner addressing him—her clothes were too clean and too flowing for mine-work. A reporter, he realized, as a man with a camera stepped up behind her. Now that he was looking, he noticed a few sleek transport pidgeot grooming their feathers at the edges of the impromptu camp. “You’re Master Lance, right?”
“Yes,” he said scratchily. “Do you know what caused it?”
“Some kind of equipment breakdown. Everyone’s been too frantic to give me the details.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re covered in dirt—were you down there?”
“We got here first. Why don’t they have more
abra?” The question burst out of him. Psychics had issues teleporting into dark, unfixed locations like mining tunnels, Lance knew, but they should be able to reach the shaft entrances. He recalled a crash he’d witnessed in Saffron—abra and medics had been on the scene almost instantly.
“Trained abra are expensive. I don’t think they can afford them full-time.”
Lance blinked. The battle halls, the gyms, the hustings—they all had psychic teams maintaining the battle shields, a fixture so familiar that Lance had stopped noticing it. It was important to keep people safe during battles. But battle-goers were there for fun; the miners were here because they had to be.
The reporter was watching him with burgeoning interest. “Do you think the regional government should give Pewter more support?”
“More support?” Lance couldn’t help his snort. He gestured towards the shaft entrance. “How about
any support? There were eight people in that shaft when it collapsed and two of them are still inside. There’s a man, Shoko, the rock fell right on his legs. He might not be able to use them after this, and he’s got three kids depending on him. And if he can’t work, he’ll still be lucky, because he’ll be alive. His kids will grow up and he’ll still be there for them.
“I have a friend from Pewter. Both her parents worked in the mines and both of them died there. She didn’t have anyone growing up. She had to make her own way. But it shouldn’t have to be like that. These problems aren’t mysteries; they’re not sent by the gods. We can prevent this.”
“As champion, Pewter would be a priority for you, then?”
“It’s not just about Pewter. It’s about all of us. Hundreds of years ago, Kanto was just a collection of towns. Closed-off and vulnerable, because we didn’t help each other. If one town burned, what did that matter to anyone else? The war with Johto changed that. The first champion changed that. But if we’re willing to sit back and watch as Pewter suffers to provide Kanto with steel, then we learned nothing—nothing at all. If being champion’s good for anything, it’s to remind people of that.”
Lance broke off, realizing how much his voice had risen as he spoke, until he was almost shouting. A lull had fallen around him. Several more reporters had gathered, ringing around Lance in a loose circle. Beyond them, some of the miners had turned to stare.
Suddenly self-conscious, Lance took a small step back. Before he could take another, a calloused hand closed around his arm and hoisted it into the air.
“
You hear that?” Muno shouted, pumping Lance’s arm for emphasis. A crimson gash ran across his forehead, and his eyes were wild. “That’s our future champion. That’s Lance!”
His words had the effect of a second rockslide. Noise surged. The miners were clapping, the reporters shouting, the onix baying. Lance’s eyes went wide as the noise swept over him.
. . . They were all shouting his name.
