The Candidate, Part Two
Cinnabar Ferry cut across the waves.
“Hustings will be held in the resort area,” Kikuko said, joining Lance at the prow. “But I’ve got another stop to make first. And so do you, if you’ve got an ounce of respect.”
“Leader Isami’s gravesite,” Lance guessed. He enjoyed the look of monetary surprise on Kikuko’s face.
“Fiorelli tell you that?”
“No, I know—I knew someone from Cinnabar. What does Giovanni have to do with it?”
“There’s the ignorance I’ve come to expect,” Kikuko said with a smirk. “Fiorelli was Leader Isami’s last apprentice. When she passed, we thought he’d take up her place in Cinnabar, but he went back to Viridian instead.” Kikuko leaned against the railing. “Loyalty to his adopted home,
he said, but I have my doubts. Fiorelli’s never struck me as one for loyalty.”
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think,” Lance said, still smarting from Kikuko’s barb.
“And you do? Here’s some free advice for you. Keep your distance from Giovanni Fiorelli.”
Worried he’ll endorse me?
Lance bit back the retort. If their trip to the Sacred Flame had been an offer of cease-fire, he wasn't going to be the first to resume hostilities.
The ferry let out in the resort sector of the island, where throngs of brightly-dressed tourists ambled like migrating tauros between the hotels, the shopping strip, and the nearby beach-front. After forty five minutes of travel by ponyta taxi, the houses and road-side stalls gave way to thick vegetation. When they reached the cemetery, Kikuko set off at a brisk pace through the rows of grave markers.
Leader Isami’s resting place wasn’t any grander than the others, but it was the only grave adorned with multiple bunches of fresh flowers. Lance read the marker:
(1913-1975)
Here rests Isami, mistress of the earth. She died in our defense.
“Champion Kikuko!” A man approached from behind them, notebook in hand. Even without the notebook, Lance would have recognized a reporter’s wheedling tone. “Champion, it’s been nearly two decades since Cinnabar’s great disaster. Do you have a comment?”
Kikuko’s expression shuttered. “Yes, I have a comment. Show some respect for the dead.”
She turned on her heel and stalked away. When Lance made to follow, the reporter fastened on to him. “What about you, Master Lance? You spoke out last week about the mining accidents in Pewter. Do you have any words for the people of Cinnabar?”
“Champion Kikuko is right,” Lance said. “We need to respect the dead.”
He meant to leave it there. But when he looked down at the flowers, already wilting in the afternoon’s heat, he found himself saying, “But respect’s not enough. Our remembrances won’t bring ash back to life. They aren't anything but empty if we don’t also act to make a world where this never happens again.”
The reporter perked up like a growlithe thrown a bone. “Does that mean you support an inquiry?”
Kikuko didn’t. Jiro hadn’t, either.
It’s been twenty years, he’d said once, off-hand.
Nothing to be gained from digging up the past. Time for Cinnabar to move on.
Lance remembered Archer’s face, shadowed by the bonfire, the deliberate steadiness of his voice. How old had he been when the volcano erupted and turned a quarter of Cinnabar to ash?
Old enough to remember. Young enough not to forget.
“Cinnabar’s already waited too long for answers,” Lance said. “Yes, I support an inquiry. No, I don't have more to say.”
He gave the gravestone a last look before he left.
I’ll fight for this, he promised, and didn’t let himself dwell on who that promise was for.
Sevi Islands, Lavendar, Vermillion.
Lance counted off the remaining hustings as the ferry pulled into Three Island. The Sevis hustings should have been small, but the final hustings always drew the most ambitious trainers, the ones tactical and committed enough to delay their challenge until the contenders were at their most exhausted. Originally, Jiro had planned for Lance to do just that.
As Lance watched Kikuko’s gengar fend off a challenger with a half-formed shadow ball, he thought with a pang,
I could have beaten her here.
A day later, he nearly lost himself, fighting in the mid-morning gloom of Lavender. One challenger downed Ibuki with a surprise thunder attack and another managed to pick off both Archer and Kana before Toku swept through the remainder of her team like an avenging storm. He spent the rest of the hour on tenterhooks, alternating between Toku and Kaisho, and fighting as conservatively as he ever had. When the closing bell rang, he realized that he had sweat almost through to his cape.
He bowed for the crowd’s benefit, stayed long enough for the audience to give him a second round of cheers, even though the only place he wanted to be was the Pokemon Center, seeing with his own eyes that Archer’s uncharacteristically slow dodge had come from exhaustion and nothing more.
Smile and wave, Jiro’s voice ghosted over him, and he smiled, and he waved.
That evening he laid out a tatami mat on the floor of the Pokemon Center’s healing ward but couldn’t sleep. He listened to the steady rise and fall of his pokemon’s breath and watched the moonlight play against the shutters.
“One day left,” he announced in the morning, voice gravelly, and even Kana didn’t try to hide her relief.
Lavender had once been the final stop in the hustings, a show of respect for the resting place for the majority of Kanto’s dead. Fifteen years ago that honor had been passed to Vermillion City, the port that opened onto the world.
“The hustings, after all,” Kikuko said in dry tones, “are about beginnings. Vermillion is the future and Lavender is the graying, unwanted past.”
They’d been standing on stage for the past hour in the chilly November air while Vermillion’s mayor spoke at length about a new trade agreement with Galar and Unova. Vermillion’s gym leader Surge towered to Lance’s left—a yellow-maned monster of a man, his mouth tied up in a scowl, and his gloved hands jittering against his legs.
“Barely speaks a word of Kantonese,” Kikuko had hissed as they filed onto the stage. “A gym leader in name only.”
At the conclusion of the speeches, Surge offered them both a perfunctory nod, which Kikuko didn’t bother to return. Lance met his eyes and tapped the pokeballs on his waist, an invitation that didn’t need words, and Surge’s craggy face split into a grin.
Lance didn’t regret the offer, even though Surge’s raichu pressed Toku hard, hurling thunderbolt after thunderbolt with joyful abandon until Toku caught her on the chin with a punishing dragon claw.
“Good fight,” Surge said afterward. His accent was thick, but he shaped each syllable with clipped precision. “Why I never see you at my gym?”
“I’ve had more important things to do,” Lance answered, too exhausted to be tactful. The gym leader laughed, slapped his back with enough force to send him stumbling, and barked out an offer to visit anytime, for something stronger than the milk-and-water called alcohol in this country.
Lance and his pokemon slept that night in the woods outside Vermillion, building up a bonfire high enough to keep the cold at bay.
“It’s done,” Lance said, hardly able to believe it. “It’s over.”
Their celebration lasted until dawn, the roaring and shrieking so loud Lance was convinced the whole city heard them. But when he woke up the next morning and touched the burned-out wood, he knew it wasn’t over yet, not for him.
Voting day was in two week’s time.
“—there’s better sun on the east side, but the sunsets are marvelous on the west.”
The league official chattered on without pausing for breath. The rooms in Indigo Plateau were lushly furnished, and Lance’s for the choosing. Win or lose the championship election, he would remain the newest member of the Elite Four.
“—there’s a separate budget for redecorations, and I can tell you in confidence that it’s been growing for years from nonuse. Champion Kikuko’s the only one who spends any time here and her tastes are, that is to say—”
“Modest,” Lance rescued her, running his hand across the silk duvet. Nothing about this place was modest.
“Modest,” the league official agreed. They left the sleeping quarters.
“—you’ll want to speak with Chef Ogura as soon as you can. He’s never prepared meals for the dragonite line but he told me he’s eager to learn—”
From the kitchens they passed into a high-ceilinged dining room, the table large enough to seat twenty.
“—laundry service is every other day, and mail is delivered twice a day. As soon as you select your chambers, I’ll make sure your correspondence is delivered—”
“My correspondence?” Lance interrupted.
She showed him. It was hard to keep his mouth from dropping open.
He picked a few letters at random from the heap. A finely calligraphed letter from a Saffron politician, inviting him to lunch. A drawing of a stick figure man with a red triangle cape from a child in Pewter. A request from the Cerulean Magikarp Society for him to present the awards at their annual competition.
“All this,” he croaked, “since . . ?”
Since he defeated Jiro and the Indigo Plateau became his official address for league business, she told him.
The next morning, as his pokemon explored the sweeping plains and vistas of Indigo Plateau, Lance sat cross-legged on the floor and began to sort through his mail. On the second day, Kikuko walked in on him, chuckled, and left without a word. On the third day, the league official returned and suggested that he didn’t need to answer
every letter . . .
He did, though. He felt it with a conviction he couldn’t fully put into words, that anyone who addressed a letter here, to this place, up on the plateau that overlooked Kanto, deserved an answer and the time it took him to write it, scratched out laboriously in his suspect penmanship. He committed to attending three local tournaments and five award ceremonies, and signed enough requests for autographs that the gesture started to feel, if not natural, then automatic.
The work distracted him from the fact that each day was a count-down. He stopped reading the morning paper, sick of the speculation and his own face staring back at him.
On the tenth day since the hustings’ end, he returned to his room to find a blank envelope on his pillow. He picked it up like it was something he had been waiting for.
Lance, the note inside read.
It’s time we spoke. Tomorrow evening at the Ninetales Lounge in Saffron City, 7:00 p.m. sharp. I will come alone. I request you do the same.
-A
The Ninetales Lounge was a hostess club, cloistered in a discrete alley of Saffron’s second-most upscale neighborhood. It was the kind of place Jiro had liked to go, returning drunk and maudlin long after sundown. He’d never brought Lance.
Inside, venomoth perched in ceiling lamps, shedding slippery light. The lithe figures of hostesses weaved among the tables. Soft music blended with the low murmur of conversation. The greeter didn’t seem bothered by Lance’s all-black attire or the cap that kept his face in shadow. They were used to anonymous people here.
“Reservation?”
“I’m here to see Archer.”
It occurred to him, as he spoke, that Archer might have used an assumed name. But the greeter answered without consulting his list.
“He’s in Room 7, upstairs. I’ll have someone escort you.”
“No thanks. I see the stairs.”
Lance took them two at a time, then paused at the landing, listening to the hammer of his heart. He switched on the tape recorder in his jacket pocket and sent out Toku, who cast an unimpressed look around the dark corridor.
Lance opened the door without knocking. The private dining room inside was simply furnished. There were no windows; as in the main lounge, the only illumination came from a venomoth perched in the light fixture. A low wooden table was already set with small plates of appetizers.
Archer sat knelt on a floor cushion, Acova at his side. He rose fluidly to his feet when Lance stepped through the door. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, over a black dress shirt. The only spot of color was his tie. Red, of course. He wasn’t wearing pokeballs.
“You came alone,” Archer said. His voice was easy—conversational.
“So did you.” Lance couldn’t match the tone. The words came out clipped, and he felt his hands curling, trying to close into fists.
“I said I would, didn’t I? I am not in the habit of breaking my word.” Archer gestured at the table. “Please. Take a seat. Help yourself.”
Lance didn’t move from the doorway.
“Why am I here, Archer?” As soon as he spoke, Lance knew it was the wrong question. He tried again. “What does Team Rocket want with me now?”
Archer smiled thinly. “So eager to cut to the chase. I see you haven’t changed, Lance.”
“I haven’t,” Lance said. He meant it as a warning, but the words came out softer than intended—uncertain. “I’m not here to mess around, Archer. Tell me what you want, or I’m leaving.”
“What I want, at this moment, is for you to do me the courtesy of joining me at the table. I am inviting you to share a meal. Do I really need to explain the significance of the gesture?” Archer shook his head, a teacher let down by the slowness of his pupil. “Very well. Do you know how the Kanto-Johto war ended?”
As a matter of a fact, Lance did. He lifted his chin. “Champion Kazuki. He unified Kanto and led her armies to victory.”
Archer raised an eyebrow. Lance thought that he might have surprised him. “Indeed. But I didn’t ask you how the war was
won. I asked you how it
ended.”
Lance frowned. “What’s the difference?”
Archer smiled. “In the fifth year of the war, as you say, Champion Kizuki unified Kanto. By the end of the sixth, Kanto’s armies had pushed Johto’s forces back through the pass. The attackers became defenders as Kanto’s armies encamped the fief now known as Goldenrod.
“The seventh year of the war opened with a stalemate. Johto had lost the war, but had no path to retreat. She could not risk surrender with Kanto’s soldiers on her doorstep. As for Kanto, her people had suffered great losses in the seven years of war. Now, with the tables turned, they had no appetite to forfeit their advantage, even though they lacked the supplies and numbers to bring a true assault into the heart of Johto. Thus, both sides were locked into their positions. The war was won, but it was not ended.”
“So what changed?” Lance said, crossing his arms.
“One evening at dusk, a beggar approached Kanto’s encampment. He was filthy and dressed in rags, but those rags were colored red and white, the holy colors of Ho-oh. He fell before the soldiers’ feet and begged them for a few scraps to eat. The soldiers took pity on this holy man. They seated him at their table and brought him a portion of rice and pickled radishes.
“When the man had eaten his fill, he lowered his hood and called out, in a strong voice that didn’t match his destitute guise, ‘Take me to the Champion!’
With his hood down, and no longer feigning a hunch, the soldiers recognized him. The beggar was none other than Igarashi, the most cunning of Johto’s generals. This was a man who had managed to humiliate Kanto in many battles, even as the tides of war turned against Johto. The soldiers seized him and threw him onto the dirt. But as they made to strike at him, Champion Kazuki intervened.
“‘This man here is my greatest enemy,’ the champion said, ‘but he has eaten from my table. There are laws older and stronger than the laws of war. While he remains my guest, I may not harm him.’
“So General Igarashi was permitted to come before Champion Kazuki unharmed. That night, the two leaders forged a peace that holds to this day.”
The silence felt heavier when Archer finished his story. He met Lance’s eyes and gestured for a second time at the table.
“Keep guard, Toku,” Lance said quietly.
As Toku positioned herself in front of the door, Lance took a seat on the floor cushion opposite Archer and helped himself to the pickled daikon. Its vinegary sharpness woke up his stomach: he’d been too on edge to eat before coming.
This is a fight, Lance told himself, but if it was, he didn’t know the rules. He snuck quick glances at Archer as he ate. Archer’s face was placid. The soft light from the venemoth silvered his hair.
When their plates were clear, Archer finally spoke.
“Before we move on to business, I have something of yours to return.”
He stacked the emptied dishes neatly to the side and placed a cloth bundle on the table. Lance unknotted it to find his old badge case, Professor Okido’s worn encyclopedia, and beneath that—
Lance reached out, feeling as if he were dreaming. Ibuki’s cloak smelled like bonfire smoke, just the way he remembered it. His eyes stung as he pressed it to his face.
“Home-spun, I thought. Your work?”
“My cousin’s.”
Lance steadied himself with a breath. This wasn’t anything kinder than a tactic; he knew that.
It didn’t matter. No one beside Archer would have spared a second thought for a battered cloak—would have known Lance well enough to know that it meant far more to him than any of the shiny trinkets in his badge case.
“What do you
want, Archer?” he said again, but the fire had left his voice.
“The championship vote is in three days.”
“And?” But it hit him, then, the explanation he had failed to consider in all his sleepless pacing the night before. He spoke the thought slowly, like it might crumble once voice, “You think I might win.”
“You’ve performed better than I expected.”
From someone else, it would have been an insult. From Archer, it felt—
Lance controlled his expression. He wasn't here for Archer’s tutelage, his stories, his sparing approval. The desire for those things was a skin he’d long since shed.
“You should hope I don’t win.”
Archer’s lips turned faintly upward. “Are you threatening me?”
“I’m threatening Team Rocket.”
“Why?” Archer said blandly. “You agreed with our cause once.”
“I was fifteen. You lied to me.”
“I have
never lied to you, Lance. I meant every word I said. Kanto is sick, and Team Rocket is the medicine. Medicine is not always sweet. It is not always painless.”
“No.” Lance shook his head. “Save it, Archer. There’s no cause that justifies what you do. And you know it. That’s why you hide in the shadows. Secret bases, secret missions—if you had anything real to offer the world, you’d do it in the open.”
Archer was silent for a moment. “Is that really what you want, Lance? Everything in the open. Every card laid on the table. You became quite the hero overnight. How quickly would that adulation sour, when your admirers learned the truth?”
“What truth?”
Archer answered him by placing a second bundle on the table, smaller and thinner than the first. Inside was a pile of photographs. The first showed a large manor house. The second, Lance standing beside Toku—still a hakairyu—in a dimly-lit hallway. Lance froze as he lifted up the third photo.
He was somewhere else. The hallway was dark. The summer air was warm and humid, buzzing with words he didn’t understand. He watched as the claw came down, as the blood pooled, and didn’t move to stop it.
He didn’t move.
“Well, Lance?” Archer’s voice came as if from a very great distance. Lance blinked, and the dining room swam back into focus. “Kanto isn’t going to elect a murderer.”
“Don’t you
dare—”
Lance was halfway to his feet, fury tangling his words, when Toku moved. In the space of a breath she winged across the room and knocked Archer to the floor. Acova vanished. Instinct had Lance diving to the side as she reappeared in front of him. He backed up as she stalked forward, bladed tail whipping, but as he reached for Kaisho’s pokeball, Toku’s warning growl stopped both of them in their tracks. Archer lay prone, trapped beneath Toku’s bulk. Her claw was an inch from his neck.
“Down, Acova,” Archer said sharply.
Acova let out a whine. She sank down, her tail dipping between her legs, until her snout rested on the floor. Her eyes stayed fixed on Toku’s claws.
Lance’s vision blurred. For a moment, instead of Toku, he saw an ursaring, claws glinting silver in the light. It would only take a single blow. Lance imagined with preternatural clarity the power of Toku’s downward slash, Archer’s flinch, the blood.
Nausea rocked him.
“Toku,” he said. Her antennae were high and rigid. Her claws were steady against Archer’s neck, but the rest of her was trembling.
Lance stepped closer.
“Toku,” he said again, softly. She looked at him, only half seeing. She was somewhere else too, he thought.
He extended his right hand carefully and rested it against her flank.
“You're a kairyu, Toku. You're not a murderer.”
He put his other hand on her arm and gently pushed her claw down. Toku staggered back into Lance’s arms. He pressed his face into the dry warmth of her scales, feeling how she shuddered.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, “we’re okay.”
When he looked up, Archer had settled into a cross-legged position. Toku’s assault had disturbed the usual symmetry of his bangs, but he spoke like the conversation had never turned violent.
“Anger has its uses. But it doesn’t turn away lava, or bring ash back to life.”
Lance stared. “I said that in Cinnabar.”
“You’ll never get an inquiry, Lance. It’s been tried by people smarter and savvier than you.”
“That's not a reason to stop trying.”
“You mean that.” Archer pursed his lips. “You—have a good heart.”
Lance almost laughed. “You just called me a murderer.”
Archer’s face didn't change but his hand twitched. “I don’t choose the medicine, Lance. I just administer it.”
“I don’t want your
excuses. Was Proton acting on your orders when he—”
“No,” Archer said shortly.
“
Whose, then?
Why? Go ahead and tell me what matters so much a man had to die for it. He had a daughter, did you know that? She had a teddiursa—”
“What’s done is done, Lance. Answers won’t change it. The future is the only thing we can control. Once you understand that, the past can’t hurt you. Believe me. I know.”
The words sounded like comfort.
If you're here to blackmail me, you're not doing a very good job, Lance almost said. His gaze fell on Acova. She sat by Archer’s feet, docile, but the lash of her tail betrayed her unease—and Archer’s.
He doesn’t want to be doing this. Lance couldn't escape the thought.
Blackmailer wasn't the role Archer wanted to play and yet he was here, playing it. It didn't make sense. The four executives that ran Team Rocket were equals in theory, but everyone know Archer ran the show. Lance had never known him to take orders from anyone. The only time Lance had seen him even pretend to defer had been in the Grand Royale to Giovanni.
That memory stirred another: Giovanni smiling at him over a plate of cakes. What had he said?
In Etalia, we like the day to start off sweet.
Etalia . . . He'd heard that before. In that hallway, on that day.
I don’t know how it is in Etalia, the man had said, and Proton had hissed like a snake.
Archer was saying something about choices, something about swimming with the tide or sinking under it.
“Do you understand me, Lance?”
Lance blinked.
“It’s Giovanni,” he said.
He hadn’t been
sure. But when Archer flinched back as if struck, Lance knew.
“He’s the one giving you orders.”
Archer’s laugh sounded forced. “That gym leader? Spare me. He’s a canny businessman, but a fool, like they all are.”
But Lance had stopped listening. In a chilled, disbelieving haze, he thought of Giovanni toasting Jiro, Giovanni reclining in the sunlight of the conservatory, smiling just as he had smiled when his marowak snapped Kana’s wing-bones.
Truth be told, Lance, I’ve had my eye on you for a long time.
He didn’t know how it was possible, but it was true. Giovanni led Team Rocket. That was the secret they had killed to keep.
Toku’s grunt snapped him back into the moment.
Stun powder, he catalogued automatically as Toku doubled over. But how—
Too late, he looked up.
Koga would have spotted the trick from the start.
Hidden in plain sight. The venomoth descended from the overhead light to perch on Archer’s shoulder.
“You’ve made a dangerous accusation, Lance.” Archer’s face and tone were flat. “You understand precisely how dangerous.”
The venomoth’s eyes lit up, and Lance’s arms locked to his side. He strained for a pokeball, but his muscles refused to obey. Only his diaphragm still moved, and his heart rang, rang in his chest.
“Toku—” he bit out, but the stun powder had done its work. She lay immobile on the ground, wings limp and belly exposed.
She hadn't wanted to come here, but Lance had convinced her. And why? Because he hadn't been able to believe, after everything, that Archer would hurt them.
“You have placed me in a predicament,”Archer said. “I am an advocate of pressure. Everyone has their levers, the place where they will bend. But you, you stubborn boy—I told him this was a mistake. I told him. And now we are here, and I have my duty. I cannot let you leave.”
“The story,” Lance rasped. The invisible weight squeezed his throat. “You offered. Food. I ate.”
“Are you such a child, to believe in stories?”
“I believed. You.”
Archer’s jaw ground. Acova whined sharply at his feet.
“Foolish boy,” Archer whispered, but he didn’t move, and the weight on Lance’s neck did not increase or abate. Each second dragged out Archer’s indecision.
On the ground, Toku began to twitch. Lance tried desperately not to notice, but he knew Archer had seen it too. The stun spore would only last another minute.
“Your oath,” Archer said abruptly. “Your oath that you will repeat to no one what you have learned today.”
“I—”
“Now, Lance. Before I change my mind.”
“Can’t. Breath.”
Archer made a sign and the pressure relented slightly.
“I swear,” Lance said. “I swear by the kairyu. Please.”
Archer’s gaze bore into him. Then the pressure clamped down again and everything went dark.
Lance woke alone. Toku’s pokeball was clutched in his right hand. Ibuki’s cloak spilled out on the floor like ink. Archer was gone.
For a while, Lance did not move. His throat still screamed, but each breath of air was sweet. When he stumbled to his feet his hands touched empty pockets. The tape recorder was gone too.
They flew back to Indigo Plateau in silence. For the next two days, Lance huddled in bed with Toku and did not leave his room. Kaisho brought them food, trilled in various worried pitches, and left reluctantly when shooed.
On the third day, Lance rose, dressed, and made his way to the dining room, where Kikuko was finishing her breakfast porridge, the morning paper propped on her knees.
“Champion,” Lance said with a formal bow. “Do you have a moment? There’s something I'd like to discuss with you. Something important.”
“Oh?” Kikuko flicked the paper down. “Go on, then.”
She hadn't invited him to sit, but he took a seat anyway. He laid yesterday’s paper down on the table with the headline “The Case for an Activist Champion” facing up.
“Yesterday’s poll put me at 52%.”
“A nationwide poll. Don't get excited—the cities skew them.”
“It had me winning in Pewter, Cerulean, and Vermillion. Saffron, Viridian, Cinnabar, and Celadon are all close.”
“Your point."
“I have a path.”
“Anyone can have a path.”
“I’m willing to withdraw from the race. But I have conditions.”
Kikuko’s eyes narrowed. “And what would those be?”
He told her. She hummed to herself.
“So?” Lance said, after a few minutes had passed. “What do you say?”
“No,” said Kikuko.
The flatness of the refusal floored Lance. He sat back in his seat.
“No,” Kikuko continued thoughtfully. “I don't buy it. More support for the Pewter miners? Funds for the G-Force? And a Cinnabar inquiry that will never make it out of committee? If that's all you wanted out of this, you’d have played along with Jiro’s little scheme to oust me. Symbolic gestures and spending money are in his field of expertise, not mine.
“So what's the real reason for the cold feet? Paperwork finally starting to scare you? I have to admit, you've surprised me. I had the impression you were taking to it.”
So much for bargaining. He should have known that Kikuko would see through it.
Lance attempted a smile but it twisted into a grimace along the way. “The real reason, Champion? I know you've thought from the start that I’m not fit for the job. Well, you’re right. I'm ignorant, impulsive,
naive.”
It stung to say, to back down when he was so close, however Kikuko spun it. But the ache that hadn’t left his throat reminded him why he was here.
“That’s not a bad start, but if we’re listing your failings, don't forget your terrible taste in clothing.”
Kikuko sounded cheerful. And why shouldn't she? He was getting out of her way. He started to stand, but Kikuko’s cane shot out, pushing him back into his seat.
“We’re not done talking.”
“Aren’t we? I thought I was clear. I’ll drop out. You win.”
Kikuko grinned. “Since you’re in a forthright mood, answer me this: why did you challenge Jiro instead of me?”
“I caught him accepting a bribe. I thought—” It felt like something that had happened years ago. “I thought he wouldn’t act the way the champion should. Maybe I misjudged him.”
“Oh, you were right about that much,” Kikuko said blithely. “Jiro would have been a disaster. He thinks of Kanto as Saffron City, plus a few irritating appendages. A gym leader can think like that. A member of the Elite Four, if he likes. But not the champion. As for your new colleagues, Siba and Kanna—you haven’t met them, have you?”
Lance shook his head.
“Hah! Of course you haven’t. Siba would rather face a waterfall than a camera and Kanna refuses to leave the Sevi Islands for more than a handful of weeks. Then there’s our current crop of gym
leaders”—Kikuko spoke the word sardonically—“and the less said about that bunch the better. Koga’s the only one worth a damn, and this country will never accept a ninja as champion.”
Lance tensed. There would never be a better opening to ask, and he needed to know.
“What about Giovanni Fiorelli?”
Kikuko scoffed. “If you think that man’s a friend of yours or mine, you really are naive.”
“You’re friendly enough with him.”
“Of course I am. I prefer to keep venomous snakes where I can see them.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“When it comes to snakes, I’m willing to take Koga’s judgment into consideration.”
Koga? Lance frowned at the non-sequitur. Koga hadn’t endorsed Lance. All he’d done was invite him to dinner with Kikuko and his daughter.
His daughter, who he’d taken care to stress would one day succeed him. The dinner
had been a message — it just hadn’t been aimed at
Lance.
“He thinks you need to find a successor.”
“All but shouted it from the rooftops. He’s usually more subtle—then again, he’s never had a candidate before. I wasn’t in the mood to hear it that night, but the ninja has a point. I’m not getting any younger, and the world’s not getting any kinder. So are we going to talk, or am I wasting my breath?”
He could walk away, like he’d planned. Being on the Elite Four wasn’t nothing, and it would be on his terms, not Kikuko’s.
His throat twinged again. But it wasn't despondency he felt this time. There was a coal of anger, gathering heat in his chest.
You wanted to teach me, Archer? Fine.
I'll learn your lessons. I'll learn them and I'll use them, to bring Team Rocket to the ground.
He straightened and met Kikuko’s eyes. “I’m listening, Champion.”
