Pokémon Fighting Nature

[SparklingEspeon]

~Review of Chapters 1 - 8~

Alright Pokemon Fight Club let's go

So I just went through the entire published backlog and I have two main comments: The concept here reminds me a lot of the Roundhouse scene from Detective Pikachu (and also Ryme City's whole thing with 'no pokemon battles allowed in the city'), and also Sid the Quilava keeps giving me Toy Story flashbacks and it won't stop help me

Overall, I think this is a really interesting work! I knew to expect something smaller scale than the average PMD thing, but it surprised me how contained Fighting Nature seems to be--with Chapter Eight it already seems to be roughly halfway through the story/at the midpoint.

The premise and setting are very well done - Deepden is a flavour of pokemon society that I haven't really seen anywhere else, tbh. It's not exotic the way that you'd generally think a pokemon-run world would be, really quite close to our own, but there's just enough of a twist on it that it feels natural and not just "human society but we copypasted pokemon into here k bye". In particular the word substitutions here and there--den, for example--the manual pokemon rides, and the fact that quadrupeds need specific training to function in this society instead of having accomodations made directly for them were all things that stuck out to me. I also like how you capture the absolute monotony of society - how people just live their lives in endless, grating cycles of the same thing over and over,but they're comfortable and making ends meet (barely) so it's all worth it right? I think it struck a chord with me specifically because one of my fears is ending up part of a large societal machine and going through living hell every day just to keep the bills paid like Sid and Raskin, but even without that I think it still gets through pretty poignantly. At the end of the day they just don't have the time or the energy to do anything, and the street fight feels like a mystical bright spot that's forever forbidden and out of their reach. It's not surprising that Sid, Raskin, and Lyco form Fight Den at the end of the day. My biggest question is... why didn't someone else do it first?

The second thing I appreciated was the attention to detail and how well-thought out this premise seems to be--my first question regarding this would have been "Okay, so if pokemon are basically magical elemental creatures, then why is there the need for all this menial work?" and my second would have been "Okay, so if pokemon are basically magical creatures, then how come this very urban district hasn't been razed to the ground yet?" The first answer is provided by showing that the pokemon have regressed their instincts/abilities over time to adapt to being urban, and the second one is likely explained by the ban on fighting in the first place. Although I wonder what's the deal with Oldden and The Wilderness? It feels like Oldden is basically treated as the 'slums' outside Deepden, but "old den" suggests it was there before Deepden was. Also " the Wilderness" gives me post-apocalyptic vibes--somewhat like the Divergent city.

it seems like Fighting Nature is shaping up to be a Man ('Mon?) VS Society story, and in line with that the main antagonist here is a faceless, corporate machine, not any one pokemon. That said, I feel like that's going to change soon, though. I want to know exactly who is behind the No Fights law, and why it's enforced despite my theory. I want to know what happened to Oldden, and why Deepden was formed in the first place. I want to know who's raking in big money in the top brass while all these pokemon underneath are flailing around and barely getting by.

Athletics was a strange entity to him. It was tremendously popular throughout all of Deepden, and he understood why. There was usually at least one of each pokémon type competing per event, giving everyone someone to cheer on, even if the same types tended to dominate the events suiting them. The throwing events had genuinely astounding feats of strength, while running-focused ones often went right to wire, leaving emotions on a knife-edge between euphoria and despair.

So like the olympics, then? NGL it'd be interesting to see this on the page at some point. Maybe just to show the contrast of how fake it is compared to Fight Den.

The solution they came up with was to turn up the radio that normally played in the bar to an almost deafening noise, enough to drown out any loud bangs and crashes.

My first thought was "Sounds like a good way to lose your hearing :D".

...Although I guess if you can shrug off getting hit by a fireball or something, you probably don't actually get permanent hearing damage just from loud noises :V My main question is, if it's loud enough to drown out the sounds of the fighting, how can the pokemon in the fight den hear anything over it?

The first rule of Fight Den is: you do not talk about Fight Den.

:D

Also, quick note, but your threadmark index seems a bit messed up? Chapter One is sandwiched between Three and Four.

There's kind of one thing that bugs me here: It feels like the idea/plan to start up a fighting club comes along way too conveniently. I can understand that kind of thing from two, say, teenagers or young adults who haven't yet grasped the consequences of going against the law, and that fits Sid to some degree. But Raskin has a very good idea of what happens when you cross the law--his father's in prison for tax fraud, after all. Even if he hates his job, he knows that he's set up at least somewhat decently. And considering how hard he worked for that bank job and that he lost a family member because they were poor and blames himself, he'd be the last person to put himself at legal risk--especially not over something so heavily prosecuted. It feels weird to me that not only would he be like "Yo let's host an underground illegal fight", he'd be the first one to even bring it up. The second time, after both he and Sid are laid off, feels much more realistic to me. He's being pressured into it by losing his job and realizing his financial stability is threatened, and you play off his past to push him even further into the idea.

Second thing that's getting me is how utterly bad Sid and Raskin have been at keeping this quiet. If this were RL they would have been long imprisoned by now. Firstly, they're going around and telling people to "spread the word". Meaning, they blew the top off their whole operation right from the start. Once it's out, rumors spread far, no matter how much you try to control them--and with the sheer amount of pokemon who approach Raskin, it's no wonder his job found out stuff? Like, it was only a matter of time before the wrong person heard. Compounded by Sid getting drunk and telling like twenty other pokemon, because of course he did. This also happened in the prison--when Raskin told his father about the fight I went like "Did he seriously just talk about this supremely illegal thing in a prison room that's probably taped/with officers standing right outside?" I mean. They get better afterwards, but I still feel like they should have thought it out more carefully at first.

And even afterwards, they're not exactly with a watertight plan. Their current thing seems to be just "let's hide out under the White Entei twice a week, we say that a private party has booked the bar, play the music super loud to drown out any bangs and crashes and stuff, and hope that no-one looks through the windows and sees the empty bar. IMO, even with the codewords and post, there's still one big issue with this, and that's consistency. So Fight Dens are held Saturdays and Wednesdays; twice a week. That means that two times a week, Sid, Raskin, and co. are going to have to shutter the bar for a ""private gathering"", turn up the radio and stuff, and just kinda leave it empty while they have their fights downstairs. And as we've seen, pokemon don't generally leave unscathed. The issue here comes in when you have this happening so often, and it's not exactly subtle--Fight Den is a loud affair that needs an even louder distraction, and on top of that, the White Entei suddenly closing up and stuff twice a week out of nowhere is likely going to turn heads. I guess basically what I'm saying is that their diversions look pretty sus, and if they overuse them then it's probably going to turn heads sooner or later.

Another angle to this is that I'm wondering how they're going to keep a lid on all the money that's going to flow in from the Fight Club. Fighting is already illegal, but it looks like Deepden is pretty intense about tax/financial stuff too (and also there's a running theme of money, with Raskin's past, the bank, etc. - I wonder if this will be mined any further?). If we look at RL illegal operations that bring in Big Cash, they can't just walk away with all their money. They have to launder it first--in other words, make up a legal excuse for where all that money came from so that the paperwork doesn't look off. So if Sid, Raskin, and Lyco are going to hit the big time here, they can't just walk into town with piles of money and call it a day - even if they hide it all in a basement or something, two jobless pokemon with spending habits that don't match up will probably turn heads. I'm guessing you've already accounted for this, but I wanted to point it out just in case.

But overall, this is a really interesting story! There's a lot of dark themes floating around here, like money, industrialism, oppression, and regaining what society takes from you, but that's also combatted with its own charm with the Fight Den and all the smaller things. I'm aware that there's no way this continues to go on unchecked - Sid and Raskin are playing with fire, and as they stand all it's very easy for the police to knock the whole operation over and jail everyone there. That said, I also think they've started something that can't be checked with police oppression alone, and I feel like this story is going to end with the collapse of Deepden. Or at least, the corporate, anti-fighting Deepden.

Really well done! Now I disappear into the void until there are eight more chapters for me to binge read goodbye

Listening to: Isengard Theme - Howard Shore

 

[Ambyssin]

Merry reviewmas!

Ch 4
-Oh boy, a Bethesda chapter. This is gonna go great. [brick'd]
-Raskin's exhaustion reminds me of an adrenaline crash, so to speak. Nifty.
-Sid's right. The bait-and-switch letter thing seemed pretty obvious, though I think that's the point?
-Not sure if you were using any references in describing the prison. Though with how cold Raskin's inner voice makes the police sound I was expecting something a bit more… intimidating. Maybe it's my inner American talking, but bricks don't spell out intimidating for me. Could've probably used a bit more description.
-I don't know if I'd missed it before, but it's also interesting that Haikos was arrested for, essentially, white-collar crime. I know kintsugi discussed the logistics about tax crimes, but at least as far as realism goes, the American IRS has admitted it tends to go after smaller cases of tax fraud because of a lack of resources on its part. So, it’s conceivable that Haikos could get targeted if he was lying about his income. I was expecting something different for some reason, so now I can understand why Raskin mentally kicks himself so much. It also makes Haikos' outburst all the more interesting, since this all suggests that the rift between him and Raskin is mostly Raskin's own guilt eating away at him.
-Ah, well, and here I was wondering what outside of peer pressure would get another fight to potentially happen. Redundancy would certainly do it. This was, of course, before the double-whammy of Sid also getting fired. Without knowing any better, it almost sounds like some sort of conspiracy. Maybe I'm in that mindset because Raskin ruminates on Locki for a bit. In which case, congrats. You got me. I also like how descriptors for Sid's reaction to his dismissal illustrate the whole "erratic and unpredictable" claim Raskin had just made.

Ch 5
-Okay, yeah, similar circumstances. Tinfoil hat definitely on here. Blacklisting is totally a thing. Or, at least, it is in the media and that sounds like what's going on here.
-I shouldn't be surprised Sid's the one to suggest organizing more fights, but I was expecting it to be Raskin. I guess another "erratic and unpredictable" bit. In which case, nice show, not tell.
-"Faster than a pidgeot in flight" lol these pokémon metaphors are so delightfully cheesy.
-I’m sure the deja vu with Raskin meeting the same nidoran in order to locate Lyco was intentional. The post office stuff makes me think she’s, like, originally from the Wildlands or something and came to the city for… reasons that I’m presently unsure of.
-There’s something ironically hilarious about a fire-type giving an insult about baths.
-Tyler said a bad word! D:
-Oh, so trainers used to exist, then? Oh dear… wonder what happened to the humans, then, considering this world’s got tech equivalent to stuff humans used. And I wonder how weak it’s made pokémon in comparison to their past selves?
-Mmm, yeah, Lyco’s new ground rules make me think they’re gonna get caught this time around. Also that Raskin and Sid will get their asses beat. Badly. Unless Lyco decides to give them pointers or something. I’m really thinking that increasingly animated bit is, again, a suggestion she’s from those Wildlands or whatever. I know she brought up schools and stuff, but maybe it’s just something she heard at work or the streets or what have you.

Ch 6, but it’s 420 :P
-What’s that? The dark-type whose species name is nickit is getting good at lying? You don’t say.
-I see Lyco is a Costco aficionado. [am unsure of any British stores for bulk-buying purposes]
-Sorry, Lyco, I don’t see how ‘hangout’ is similar enough to ‘fight.’ Might as well have called it ‘debate club.’
-Also, plan-wise I feel like the bar basement rent would’ve had to be quite high considering Steela would be essentially turning customers away to go with the ‘private party’ cover.
-noo raskin it’s too early and this fic too grounded for you to have an “as god am i” moment.
-Yup, there it is. The memetic Fight Club line. This is… honestly faster than I was expecting to see this reference pop up.
-I’m not surprised Sid decides to fight Raskin first. Though the ten minutes ago claim got a laugh out of me.
-Ah, so there’s something more to Raskin’s relationship with the police beyond just watching his dad’s arrest. I’m wondering if there maybe should’ve been a line or two about that in earlier chapters? At least it gives more credence to Raskin’s nervousness about fighting despite the idea being exciting. Can’t uncouple the memory.
-I also find it a bit strange for Lyco to so casually drop that syndrome reveal to Raskin. I’d have expected her to lie instead or just issue some sort of sharp retort that’d shut Raskin out. Feels more in-character for her based on what we know so far.
-Sid’s Blaze reminded me a bit of the way the anime depicted it with Infernape in Sinnoh. Not sure if that was intentional, considering you’ve written a chimchar before.

Ch 7
-So the fights are spurring Sid to train in… his own Sidtastic way. Bless the silly baguette.
-At first I wasn’t really sure what the POV switch was about and was going to question its purpose. But it looks like it was just to get Sid considering that Raskin doesn’t have the fighting instinct, like Lyco already figured out. I suppose, in some respects, everything Sid’s doing is kind of illustrating that idea Lyco brought up about how energizing fights could be? At this point, it makes me wonder if the battles will have Sid get stronger — better moves, dare I suggest evolution? — with Raskin stagnating. It could generate a rift of sorts b/w them. Sorry, just pondering potential dramatic angles.
-Fs out for Aria. Victim of Tyler.
-Oof. So, this time it’s, like, a full-blown panic attack. That blow from the cops or whatever must’ve really fucked him up.

Ch 8
-Geez, Raskin’s gotta have no self-confidence to call this only worthwhile thing he’s done with his life. Oof.
-Ah, so it was repressed trauma and Sid’s hit dragged those memories back up? Mmm. Why didn’t that happen when Raskin got jumped by Tyler in Oldden, then? He got struck, if I remember correctly. The easy answer is plot convenience, I suppose? Anyway, now it seems more like he’s got a performance anxiety issue to deal with.
-Lyco’s strategy of just hitting him repeatedly sounded comical, so I guess it’s fitting that it totally didn’t work and arguably made things worse. Lyco also hesitating on her square root insult got a laugh out of me. Can’t speak with nuance indeed. But, yeah, I guess her angry little monologue to Raskin makes me wonder about a few things regarding the whole world here. How do pokémon end up evolving when they seem so weak? How do some of them even manage to learn any moves without any battles? And what about the police force? They seem strong, so how do pokémon enter it if there’s no fighting? Oh, maybe Lyco’s an ex-cop or something.
-Similarly, I don’t think I buy Lyco’s explanation about her parents teaching her. Even if there’s some truth behind it, it’s very… half-baked. This kind of dodginess is also what I expected of her with the EFS stuff earlier. Hell, this feels like it would’ve been a much more natural place to bring it up. She gets winded, Raskin gets confused and goes for the strike, then presses her on what happened. Something like that.
-I expect we’ll see the results of Raskin’s training on full display in chapter 9 or 10.

 

[kintsugi]

review for chapter 7!

On a holiday? Drinking, probably, Raskin thought, then smiled.

in which Raskin aggressively calls out my holiday activities

I liked this chapter--it focuses very tightly on the shattering team dynamic between our main trio, and reintroducing Tyler to stir up some issues was a great call. I like how you set up his introduction here, first with a description of the chaotic battles, then Tyler coming in and showing his prowess, and then him pointing and calling out Raskin. There are some nice crowd-fear parallels about "the one who told them how they were allowed to fight"; it's certainly not true yet, but it leans nicely into this idea that Raskin is just setting up a system that's identical to the one he tried to escape, except in this one he gets to call the shots. And again, that's not really what's happening here, but it's a realistic vague thought that a crowd could be having, and I like that Tyler leans into that. Very Tyler Durden of him.

There's still that looming undercurrent of weird stuff going around--why quilava take showers with water, why Sid doesn't question what a puppet president is for, how does Lyco have so much knowledge about what fighting wounds heal off, who told Tyler that they date got moved + did they mail him a letter???--anad I guess, yeah, putting my hat in with Negrek that I'm still really curious where that'll go and find myself asking that at the end of each of these chapters. Someone is shaping society and it's probably the Man, but it's a little jarring since none of the protagonists really know enough to question this or care--it's one of those weird Steven Universe things where I have just a hair more information/prescience than the protagonist but realistically that just means I'm confused about why they aren't asking questions.

I like the focus on art/community in this chapter though! I think it adds a lot of depth in making Fight Club feel like a space of creativity/expression--as a human I sort of inherently struggle with this idea that punching people could make them your friends, but I like that Raskin tries to bring a different type of expression into the space and that works out wonderfully for him. It also slots in nicely with this idea that this future is dull and neat, with everyone working in their assigned place--something definitely feels missing. Poor Raskin trying to get people to do murals when really they just want to watch him get punched in the face by Tyler. I thought this did tie in nicely with his observation that Steela's perfectly happy at the bar, doing her mundane job--not every character wants the same thing!

I think the ending line was really neat--will Lyco doing this really save him? I assume she's referring to a more metaphorical saving, since physically taking him out of the fight probably means he loses respect tbh, but I'm curious where that conversation will go.

some quick notes I had on specific lines:

The crowd was immaculately behaved after that.


The metal shower head spewed out steaming water.

Sid smiled sheepishly. "Gotcha."


Sid made sure to arrive at the White Entei just as it was opening

Your line breaks got eaten by the forums :(

"Did you not anticipate this?" Raskin gestured to the carbon whatever-gas-it-was around them.

I like that Raskin doesn't know what kind of gas this would be, because why would he, but this also felt a bit jarring since most of this scene is in close-third to Sid.

President announces new pharmaceutical investment', said another, next to a snap of the Flygon standing on some podium giving some speech, as she seemed to do.

I wasn't sure why "giving" was unitalicized here.

"Not paint paint them… I was thinking a bit like the murals you have on the exterior here. Only, things related to fighting. Like…" Sid tried gesturing, then gave up. "It'll be easier to show you."

This seems like a really bad idea tbh. Like won't that just be a massive red flag if they get caught?

One psyduck's use of water was successful only in making the poochyena it faced slip on the wet ground.

The use of "it" here felt a bit strange--usually I don't see that used as a pronoun for someone that the speaker sees as a person?

Even when the marshtomp landed a jet of icy water in his face—which Raskin himself winced at, knowing how painful that would be for Sid—the quilava battled on.

Is the main difference the water pressure, or the fact that it's water specifically? I thought the latter, but I struggled to reconcile this with quilava happily taking daily water showers.

 

[zion of arcadia]

And I’m back! I’ll be reviewing chapters 2-5.

The most interesting mystery presented throughout these four chapters seems to be Lyco. From not having a name in the directory to the way she ruthlessly asserts dominance over everyone--both Raskin and Sid as well as Tyler--she comes across as a very driven character with a major secret.

I wonder if she’s somehow linked to the police. Undercover cop, maybe? Loki’s been set up as the insider, but it seems too obvious, almost like a red herring. My other theory is that Lyco originates from whatever lies beyond the Wildness. If pokemon are being put under observation in some sort of experiment, it’d make sense for people aware of what’s going on mingling with the general populace. And since Lyco has a place in both Oldden and Deepden, she can pretty easily observe both worlds. The ultra conspiracist in me thinks they fired Raskin and Sid to nudge both toward continuing the fight club.

I liked how the second chapter was almost entirely build up to the fight. It made the actual event itself feel more like a true spectacle. And the fight itself was a lot of fun. You really captured the energy of the crowd and the cadence of the beating drum. Reminded me of the ultra sections at sporting events. It also reminded me of this poem:

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying,
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.

--First stanza of “Beat! Beat! Drums!” by Walt Whitman

Small character detail I loved: Raskin being all polite like a guy introducing a band recital or something, and then Sid follows it up with ridiculous amounts of energy. Very cute contrast.

With at least this first fight, using literal, physical catharsis as a means to work out issues seems to point toward fighting being a generally healthy coping mechanism. I’ll be curious to see if it continues in that direction or if things start spiraling out of control.

Soon they were back into inner Deepden. As they walked, Raskin realised he had been ever-so-slightly tense while they had been moving through Oldden. He felt much safer here among the well-lit streets and the orderly, secure concrete buildings. Bars were virtually the only commerce open at this hour, but the ones they passed were still lively, bringing a muffled ambience of laughing pokémon and acoustic music.

I like how this shows the subtle superiority Raskin feels toward people in Oldden. We see that again when Tyler reappears in later chapters, with everyone, including Lyco, treating him rather callously. Tyler is really the only true Oldden member we’ve interacted with, and it’d be interesting to see more crossover with them and Deepden citizens. One way things could potentially spiral out of control is if a turf war or something similar sparks as a result. Hmm. Lots of potential either way.

The fakeout with the letter was a clever way of a. showing more of Raskin and Sid’s rapport (Raskin is a natural worry wart who can get stuck in his own head; Sid thinks in a much more straightforward manner that lends itself to moments of common sense) b. Foreshadows later events where it seems someone, although we don’t know who, exactly, has figured out their secret and fired them and c. gives us a chance to meet Raskin’s father.

Everything involving the prison complex and the visit with Raskin’s father had a worn down, melancholic air. Definitely hits a little too close to home. I will echo my surprise that Raskin told Haikos, and while I’m not quite negative on how blunderingly obvious they’re being--it seems like set up for something, although I’m not quite sure what yet, and I also find their extremely awful attempts at secrecy entertaining--it did feel out of character for someone more cautious like Raskin to just blurt that out. And to react with surprise when Haikos got upset. Maybe it’s a sign Raskin is more sheltered than I thought.

I was initially surprised that they lost their jobs as fast as they did. In retrospect, though, it makes sense, and also gives them the impetus to keep up the fight club. I do wonder if we’ll see Haikos factor in once his six months are up. That could throw an interesting wrench into things if the project is still running. Or maybe someone threatens to extend his prison sentence to coerce them to stop.

Even though it all seems too coincidental to be a true coincidence, I enjoyed the inclusion of workers being replaced by machines and left without jobs. Another detail that mirrors the real world quite heavily.

"Word must have gotten out somehow that we were involved in something illegal, and the people in power decided from that that they couldn't employ us anymore."

Somehow, indeed. Truly a mystery for the ages.

"Sometimes, I dream of there just being…. somewhere else to go. Somewhere far from Deepden, where there isn't a police officer around every corner, and I don't spend every other waking second checking that I can still pay this month's rent."

He saw Sid frown in his periphery. "You mean like… the Wilderness?"

Foreshadowing for later down the line? I’m reminded a little of how, in FE, the major third act twist revealed Hoenn across the ocean from Kyunn. Could see something in a similar vein here.

The pacing dragged a little when Sid had to convince Raskin to continue the fight club. I’m not exactly sure how to manage it, but it felt like a foregone conclusion that he’d agree, and I was just waiting for Raskin to arrive at that point. Not really much in the way of tension, character, or intrigue, there.

I liked the character moment where Raskin pondered the idiom ‘to sleep on a thought’. It was a fun little aside.

Glad to see Tyler come back. I really like him and want to see more from him. Also, you do a good job with your speech patterns.Tyler, Lyco, Raskin, and Sid all sound very distinct from each other whenever they speak.

I don’t know Tyler that well yet, but I was surprised he didn’t demand at least half his payment before leading Raskin anywhere. He doesn’t seem the type to trust Deepden people blindly, and Raskin could’ve pretty easily screwed him over.

Everyone ganging up on Tyler makes me feel even more bad for him. Poor guy. :(

Everything had gained a slight yellow hue.

While I’m not sure if it’s intentional--it doesn’t necessarily seem like your style--I found it interesting that the color yellow was used to describe both the grass surrounding Deepden Prison and the area where Lyco works. I’m telling you, Lyco is the snitch. It’s basic math.

Also, curious that a safety net exists for pokemon like Tyler, but they choose not to take it. I wonder if there’s more to it than that.

Lyco’s job as a miner really suits the natural physicality she displays. Same with Sid now that I think about it. Raskin, meanwhile, contrasts them both with a desk job.

That meant she had a clear view of the 'mon at the window.

Her eyes shot open, then narrowed, then burned with fury.

I liked how well you conveyed her reaction with nonverbal cues. Honestly, could probably drop the ‘with fury’, as her mannerisms make it more than clear here.

Fighting is what we are as pokémon. Taking it away is like taking away our ability to speak, or mate. It's just pokémon nowadays don't realise that.

The central thesis/premise? Seems likely.

All in all, really enjoyable to read so far. There’s a lot of cool stuff being set up. My only major complaint is that you spend a lot of time talking your characters into doing something, and it can slow the pacing down a bit.

Some random stuff I made note of:

It would simply convince the pokémon coming, particularly those he didn’t know, that they were walking into something a little more professional than a loner’s wooden shed in the middle of a wastetown. Even though that was the truth.

Thought the last sentence was a little redundant, much like Raskin and Sid’s jobs. Hey-o!

Aster tried to shake Chaka off him, but the raticate held on. Aster was still for a moment, mouth pulled in a grimace, then he flung his body to the floor, taking Chaka with him. The raticate finally released his teeth, leaving a nasty-looking gash in Aster’s scales. But the ivysaur seemed not to feel it, for he jumped back up, facing Chaka.

While overall the pacing of the fight scene felt nice and clean, this could’ve been cleaned up a tad, imo. But you could’ve streamlined it more, cutting unnecessary phrases such as ‘for a moment’ and ‘seemed not to feel it’.

That impersonality would be fine if Haikos was superior to the entire Deepden police force, but as the opposite was true, it was difficult not to interpret the name as an insult.

While I get what you meant, the phrasing here was a little confusing.

“... Tyler—" She gestured to the door. "You can leave now…”

I can’t believe I’m somehow giving this speech again in the span of less than a week. But technically, if you interrupt dialogue with an action, the em dash should be outside the quotation mark. An example:

“... Tyler"—she gestured to the door—"You can leave now…”

Keep up the good work!

 

[cynsh]

Chapter 9: The Commander

For the first time in his life, Shadow was early for a meeting.

He hated meetings. Had he known how much police work involved sitting in those stuffy rooms, having to listen to a grizzled, grey-furred chief mumble on about this law and that protocol, he might have thought twice about devoting himself to the profession.

Then again, he thought as he entered the foyer of the Government Head Offices, all jobs have their necessary evils. There are worse ways to spend an hour or two… probably.

It was his first time in the private building, and so far he wasn't too impressed. This entrance room was nothing but a reception desk and an elevator on one side. Easy to navigate, perhaps, but about as much flair as a prison cell.

He strolled inside the elevator and searched for the right floor. Then he frowned.

"I need to access the President's floor," he said, addressing the receptionist as he stepped out. "Why is it locked?"

"It's only for authorised personnel," the kirlia replied sternly.

Shadow raised an eyebrow. "I'm already in your private building. Can you let me in?"

"I'll need identification."

Shadow gestured to the scarf around his neck—white, studded with flecks of gold. "This not enough?"

"Afraid not," the kirlia replied. She didn't seem fazed by him, annoyingly. "I require your name and stated business."

Shadow sighed. "Shadow Zoroark. The President invited me to a meeting. No details were given."

The kirlia tapped away at her computer screen, and finally was satisfied.

A minute later, Shadow stepped out of the elevator. The first thing he noticed were the tall portraits hanging either side of him. Previous presidents. All thirty-two of them, he realised, as he searched the hallway for the door he needed—no one had actually told him where to go other than this floor. The grand double-doors straight ahead looked the only possibility.

The portraits seemed to be ordered chronologically, going back in time the further along he walked. Shadow frowned—surely there had been access to neither painting materials nor talented artists in the early days of Deepden. Especially not for Grovyle, the very first president, whose portrait showed the wily smile that had supposedly inspired a whole city to form. Some nostalgic president wanted them all done, Shadow supposed.

Along with the portraits, this hall was a little more what Shadow had expected, boasting plush carpeting and white marbled walls. Yet the air of conventionality remained, which disappointed him. He would have plenty of changes to make.

He stopped in front of the double-doors, distracted by a long window to the side of it. The Head Office was not the tallest building in Deepden, but it had been built atop a wide mound in the centre of the city. Past the small grounds that fronted the Office, he could see practically an entire half of Deepden. He looked down at the little figures of civilians scurrying around in streets among the high-rises, and a small smile escaped his mouth.

Now, he felt ready to push open the double-doors.

"The ministry of health reports a rather concerning trend…"

The voice stopped at once as he entered the room, and what seemed like a thousand eyes fixed upon him. President Flygon sat at the end of a long conference table—again, lamentably ordinary—with an assortment of political bigwigs either side of her. She glanced at Shadow, then jabbed one of her arms to the left. "Over there. You're late."

Shadow blinked. "I'm not—"

He saw the clock above Flygon's head, showing three minutes past the hour, and stopped. Oh. Fuck. That damned receptionist…

To the side of the room were a handful of people Shadow was more familiar with—fellow Police Commanders, wearing the same gold-studded scarves as him. Most of them failed to keep the contempt out of their gazes, which made him smirk. Let them be jealous. They were probably still making tea at my age.

"Go on," Flygon said to a fidgety teddiursa standing nearby. The teddiursa resumed speaking.

"The ministry of health, President. They report that admissions for psychological issues such as depression and anxiety have increased thirty percent over the past year, and facilities are already pushing capacity. They wonder if perhaps—"

"I don't think now is the time for this discussion," Flygon interrupted harshly. "Come back in an hour, Simon. And make sure that statistic isn't reported for now."

"Y-yes President," the teddiursa said. He skittered out of the room, only slowing to make sure the doors closed quietly.

Flygon cleared her throat, then turned to the gathered commanders. "I am pleased you could all attend today. I apologise for the lack of notice, but the information I am about to provide is strictly confidential. It should not even leave this room.

"I recently received two pieces of concerning police reports, both from around the Harmony district. Firstly, several Pokémon have been having… unusual accidents. A sudden burst of water from a psyduck causing a machinery breakdown. A minor fire in a warehouse with a single growlithe present. It would seem from these that some pokémon have greater access to their fighting abilities than they should—and as a result, they do not know how to control them. Secondly, two patrols in the district, on different days, noted a small group of pokémon breaking curfew, being out of breath, and carrying minor injuries. When questioned by officers, they shied away from giving details."

"Now, there are a myriad of theories for why these events happened; indeed, it could be a coincidence that both occurred in the same area. But I will be assuming the most likely and, unfortunately, the worst case scenario. That is: there is an underground organisation, hidden away somewhere in the city, where pokémon come to fight each other."

A few gasps rose from the politicians' table. Shadow raised his eyebrows. A hidden fighting arena for civilians? Something about the idea struck a chord in him, but he couldn't place what.

"It should be obvious why such an organisation could be so damaging," Flygon continued. "Reported cases of street fights have been falling for many years now, to the point of… what was it, Dalbert?"

"One-hundred-and-seven incidents last year," someone at the table replied.

"One-hundred-and-seven! This organisation could contribute to half that number in a single night. So, it is imperative we find the cause of these incidents—and if it is the work of an organisation, it is even more imperative that we stop it growing further. That is why I want you all to increase the volume of officers on your patrols. All of them. Tell them to be especially alert for—"

Shadow scoffed. A little too loudly, it transpired, when Flygon abruptly stopped. "Yes, Zoroark?" she said harshly.

"Well… surely that's not going to work," Shadow said, quickly regaining his composure. "Whoever's behind this group wouldn't have gotten this far without a plan to keep it secret."

"And what would you have your forces do instead?"

Shadow wasn't expecting such a direct question from the most powerful pokémon in the known world. Still, he wouldn't be shown up on his first meeting with her. "Far more severity," he said. "Like… I dunno, stationing officers on every street, all hours of the day. Inspecting public spaces that look at all suspicious. Sending out a message to those fools that they won't get away from us."

"I take your point," Flygon said, "but we must avoid our city becoming one that lives in fear. The less subtle we are with police measures, the more people are likely to ask questions. Questions like 'What has the police so worried?' or 'Is something big happening under our noses?' We do not—no, we cannot afford to let people seek these answers for themselves, else this group may quickly become too powerful to control. So for now, be cautious. You may investigate this matter amongst yourselves, but do not let word of it escape to anyone else, not even your subordinates. With all being well, the problem will be over soon enough."

As Flygon dismissed the group of them, the link Shadow had been grasping at suddenly came to him. "Wait!" he exclaimed, just as the commanders started moving out. Once again, he held the room's confused attention.

"I know who might be behind it," he said.

Flygon's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"Obviously I can't be sure," he said calmly, realising how absurd his sudden prediction sounded. "But there's only one pokémon I know who would dare try something like this."

----

Raskin sat upstairs in the White Entei, twiddling his paws nervously. Three weeks had passed since Lyco had carried him out of Fight Den mid-session, and since then he had trained with her almost every evening—the only exceptions being when Lyco had Fight Den to attend. After having what he felt like was a breakthrough in their first session, Raskin wanted to return with her immediately, but Lyco had refused.

"Yes, you might have improved," she said one night, tired of batting away the question without any discourse. "But you're still terrible."

Raskin's ears dropped. "Oh. Thanks."

"Not that it's your fault exactly," Lyco added. "But… put it this way. It's obvious that these are movements your body has never made before."

"Doesn't that apply to almost everyone fighting?"

Lyco frowned. "Not to the same extent."

"Great," Raskin muttered. "So I'm not just bad, I'm really bad."

"Well, you were very bad," Lyco said. "Now I'd say you're just 'bad'. That's progress."

Sid sat down opposite him, cradling a copper-coloured drink. Raskin eyed the glass suspiciously. "That doesn't look like beer."

"It's cinnamon whiskey," Sid said cheerfully. "You wanna try some?"

"Um… I'll pass," Raskin said. "Can I ask… why you're drinking it?"

"It helps warm up my fire-chords," Sid said, as if 'fire-chords' was a perfectly common word. "Marginal gains, y'know?"

Raskin nodded slowly. "I see."

"Anyway, Rasky," Sid continued. "I owe you an apology."

Raskin raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

"I never expected this partnership between you and Crazy-Fur to work out."

"Right." Raskin smiled. "I remember you telling me so."

"You did WHAT?" Sid had exclaimed, once he had let Raskin into their apartment. "You trained with Lyco? Then you slept in the same room as her?!"

"Sid, she's not a psychopath," Raskin said wearily. He had expected this reaction; he'd probably react the same way if they were on opposite sides.

"Maybe not, a psychopath, but…" Sid scratched his head. "A something… path. A dangerous path. Look, are you sure you're safe with her?"

"Yes," Raskin said. "I understand her more than I did before."

"Oh? How much?" Sid asked.

Raskin threw up his arms in bemusement. "Enough?"

Sid took a sip of whiskey, wincing slightly as he swallowed, then shook his head vigorously. "Ahhh. You think you're gonna carry on training with her?"

"She wants me to," Raskin said. "I don't see why not. Apparently I've still got a long way to go on the fighting front."

Sid smiled. "I look forward to judging it."

Raskin was pleased to see no flickers of doubt in the quilava's contented eyes. Sid had predictably asked if he could join in their training sessions—like Raskin, he had heaps of free time now, and Raskin had already seen the lengths he would go to be able to practice. But Lyco had been firm, and in fairness Raskin agreed with her. Sid was too strong for Raskin to be able to spar properly with, and the sessions were often slow and repetitive. Sid would grow impatient very quickly.

Fortunately, he had found an alternative solution. By paying Steela a little bit extra—though not much, because she found the whole arrangement baffling—Sid used her basement to train in at night. Without any customers upstairs, no one would hear him banging about. He had even managed to get hold of a body-sized rucksack and stuff it with dirt and compost and heavens-knew what else to make it an appropriate training dummy.

The downsides were that, because of the midnight curfew and Steela owning the only set of keys to the pub, he had to stay in the basement until morning. Naturally, Sid had managed this by changing his sleep schedule to become virtually nocturnal.

With Raskin being absent from the last three weeks' worth of Fight Den, his only updates had been from Sid and Lyco. Both had been positive in their different ways.

"It's amazing!" Sid had exclaimed upon arriving late back at the apartment. "Every session there's new 'mon fighting, new attacks I've never seen before… you never know what's gonna happen next."

"It's fine," went Lyco's default response, usually with a shrug. "Haven't been any serious injuries or big fall-outs between pokémon yet, so I guess that's good."

Raskin was relieved to finally be back and able to see the Den's development for himself, having had to trust the two pokémon's words entirely. Well, that wasn't entirely true—watching their earnings grow was another good indicator of how it was going.

Raskin had even kept quiet about his absence from their other friends like Luis, not wanting to spread any gossip or rumours before he returned. Though it wasn't as if he missed out on lots of gatherings as a result. The Den seemed to have already become the place to be.

To avoid fielding the inevitable questions about where he had been, Raskin headed downstairs as soon as pokémon began arriving at the Entei. In the basement's torchlight, he noticed that more graffiti had already been added to the walls, just like Sid had envisioned. The quality of work was variable: alongside a genuinely impressive image of a snivy whipping its vines out were some indecipherable symbols, and even just words and nicknames written with fancy letters. Yet together, it all made Raskin smile—a joint expression of the joy and freedom that Fight Den gave these pokémon.

Lyco joined him on the upturned crates at the back. At least those were still familiar.

"Remember your legwork," she said, as they watched the gradual stream of pokémon come down the stairs. "Saves you a lot of needless diving around."

"I know," Raskin said, a tad irritably. He couldn't ignore the curious looks being directed his way from arriving pokémon, though they shouldn't have surprised him.

By the time Sid came down, the room was bustling with pokémon once again. Raskin estimated more heads than the fifty he'd taken in three weeks ago.

"All locked up and ready," Sid said to them, grinning. "Do you wanna introduce yourself, Rasky?"

Raskin hesitated, then shook his head. "You should do it." From the way Sid and Lyco had spoken, the quilava's word was gospel to these pokémon.

Sid nodded. He picked up a long, hollow object, shaped like a horn with holes at both ends.

Raskin stared. "What is that?"

"Something I dug up at Poké Pares. Not bad for one-fifty, eh?"

"But… what does it do?"

"Oh, right." Sid grinned, standing up on the crate. He put his mouth to the small end of the horn, and a low, booming note sounded. It reminded Raskin of the kind of thing pokémon had supposedly used when they worked in 'packs'. Sid immediately had the room's attention.

"Welcome to Fight Den, everyone!" he called. "Before we get brawling, as usual, we must run over the basic rules."

Sid had clearly revised Raskin's notebook well, reciting the rules flawlessly and even throwing a couple of jokes in.

"Next, as you might have noticed, we have an old face back with us today!" Sid gestured for Raskin to stand, and when the nickit did so, Sid flung an arm around him. "I know some of you have been concerned about what happened a few weeks ago, but Rasky is back with us now, and he's here to stay!"

The crowd gave a respectable, if not ecstatic level of applause and whoops.

"And to prove it to any of you still in doubt, he's pledged to take part in the first fight of the night. So…" Sid raised an eyebrow dramatically to his friend. "Is there anyone you have in mind, Rasky?"

This was a fight Raskin had been prepared for. He had kept an eye out for Tyler in the crowd—that seemed the rightest way to return, finishing the fight he had left before—but caught no sight of a nidoran. He'd have to pick someone else. Someone he trusted not to go easy on him, but to fight in good spirit…

His gaze found an ivysaur, looking bright-eyed and affable. Perfect!

"Aster!" he said. "Are you up for it?"

Though clearly surprised, the ivysaur grinned back at him. "I'd be honoured."

"Excellent!" Sid said. "Now lastly, before we get started, does anyone have any questions or feedback for us?"

An espurr's paw shot up at once. Raskin recognised her from previous Dens. "Aeris?" Sid asked, with a slight weariness.

"There are more people here than ever," the small pokémon said. "But still only one arena, and one block of time for us. I'm worried that eventually it's going to be hard to even find one fight before the night is up. Do you agree this is a problem? Do you have any solutions?"

Sid paled at the challenging tone in her voice. "Well, um… I think…"

"Maybe," Lyco said, stepping forwards, "you should be grateful for what we do have rather than demanding more already?"

Alarm bells rang in Raskin's head. He stepped forward onto Sid's opposite flank. "What Lyco means to say is… the volume of interest we've had the first three weeks has surprised all of us," he said. "Unfortunately, the illegality of what we're doing is a big constraint. Every change we make has to be carefully considered to make sure it keeps the whole operation safe. We all want Fight Den to become a huge success, but it can't happen overnight. For now, just try and be patient with us."

Aeris looked a little disgruntled, but nodded and gave no further reply. Sid glanced at Raskin, beaming. Raskin just let out a silent sigh of relief.

"Anything else?" Sid asked. "Yes, Luis?"

The zangoose was a regular and reassuring presence at the Den. "I was just thinking, when you addressed us at the start," he said. "It would be cool if we could have a collective name. Rather than just, 'welcome Fight Den', or 'welcome everyone', y'know?"

Sid nodded. "Sounds like a great idea! Did you have any names in mind?"

Luis shrugged. "There's 'fighters', but it seemed a bit too on-the-nose…"

"Battlers!" someone shouted from the crowd. The response was indifferent. Then suddenly names came from every direction.

"Warriors!"

"Heroes!"

"Brawlers!"

"Elementals!"

Lyco, frowning at the cacophony, stepped forwards and raised a paw commandingly. The room quietened.

"How about 'Rebels'?" she said. "After all, that's what we are. The government don't want us to fight, but they don't know what's good for us. We're doing what's right, not what's in their rulebook."

Luis nodded approvingly. "Rebels… I like it."

"I do too!" Sid said.

A wave of agreement spread across the room. Yet Raskin found himself frowning. It felt unusual for Lyco to make a suggestion like this—she normally stuck to logistical matters. But then, when it went down well with everyone, why should he care?

"Any more questions? No? Alright!" Sid grabbed Raskin and unceremoniously thrust him forwards. "Raskin, Aster, you're up!"

Raskin navigated through the crowd until he reached one end of the arena. At the start of his training with Lyco, he had struggled to get into what she called the 'fighting mindset'—the place where his worries and anxieties were discarded, his adolescent memories wouldn't hurt him, and all that mattered was the fight. He had needed to think angry thoughts, usually about Lyco, or even have Lyco do that work for him, as she had so spectacularly the first time.

Fortunately, this state of mind was starting to become second nature to him. It was especially a relief because he struggled to think about Lyco in such negative terms anymore. She had already put in an enormous amount of time on his behalf—for that, he could only be grateful.

He snapped his mind back to reality. Aster. Raskin remembered the 'mon's long vines from his first fight with the raticate, Chaka. He'd need to stay alert at all times. Perhaps he could take advantage of speed; Aster's body didn't look set up for running.

"On your marks," Sid announced. The drum—was it still Bushu playing it?—began beating an uncertain rhythm.

"I won't go easy on you," Aster said, shifting his feet.

"I wouldn't want you to," Raskin replied.

"Get set… FIGHT!"

The moment the word left Sid's mouth, Raskin found a vine shooting towards him. It slapped him into the ground before he even had time to yelp.

A mantra from Lyco's training shouted at him. Never stay on the ground. If you're still, you're an easy target. Don't expect pokémon to show mercy.

He leapt back up and started circling the arena. Aster, one vine hovering menacingly in front of him, started to do the same. Raskin recalled that last time, Aster held two vines in front of him. Did just the one make him more agile?

I'll have to catch him by surprise, Raskin thought as they moved. Wait for a moment where the distance between us is just a little closer… now!

He took two quick steps then launched towards the ivysaur. Aster didn't dodge but did throw his body around, swatting Raskin away with his pink bulb. Raskin skidded backwards and, seeing the white edges of the arena behind him, dug his claws into the stone floor. The screech it created made him want to remove his paws and shove them in his ears. But they created just enough friction to keep him in-bounds.

Mew, Aster's seriously better than I remember. Need to figure out—

He was still on the ground. He'd forgotten Lyco's golden rule.

A barrage of thin, thorny things shot out towards him. Each one stung like a giant swarm of fleas was on him.

Wincing, he rolled away from the missiles. They were leaves, he realised. Surely leaves couldn't hurt that much, even razor-sharp ones!

He rose to his feet once again. His muscles were already protesting. Aster was far too good; he was going to lose with a whimper if he didn't come up with something.

The vine whipped at him again. Simply dodging didn't deter Aster; as long as the ivysaur kept attacking, Raskin could do nothing but duck between blow after blow. An over-step made him stumble, and one whip caught the top of his ear, almost tipping him over. Raskin growled with frustration, and rashly threw up a paw to try swatting the next vine away.

Something amazing happened.

His paw's black colour seemed to glow; the white claws gained a dark sheen. His paw not only batted away Aster's vine, but it cut clean through the tip. The end of the vine dropped to the floor with barely a sound. It didn't look so threatening without a body.

Aster yelped, drawing back the rest of the vine at once. The crowd gave cries of surprise and approval, but it felt distant to Raskin, like he was in a bubble. Something else was happening to him. His vision had changed; the room became brighter and sharper. Like he'd put on those eye-glasses the old humans once wore.

He focused back on Aster. His paw still glowed. If this could slash through his vine, think of what it might do to his scales!

A brief wave of nausea hit him at that thought, but he managed to shake it off. As Lyco reminded him, fighting was a good thing.

He hurtled towards Aster, but then the ivysaur raised his bulb and loosed another flurry of leaves. Raskin tried to run through them, but they were like an avalanche of thorns. He felt himself weaken rapidly. By the time Aster had finished, Raskin had dropped to the floor.

He heard the crowd counting to five and willed himself to fight on, but it was no use. Even the brief flash of light in his paws—and apparently his mind too—had vanished. Damn it! he thought, wanting to pound the floor in frustration.

"All right, Aster is the winner!" Sid cried.

Raskin was grateful to Sid for not bringing attention to his defeat. The applause of the crowd was probably all for Aster, but that was fine. He was simply back amongst the club, accepted by them.

Aster held out a teal-coloured paw to help him up, which Raskin was more grateful for than he wished to let on.

"Will your vine be alright?" he asked. "Sorry about that…"

Aster laughed, sounding surprised. "Of course it will! They grow back in no time. I'd be seriously worried if they were that fragile."

"Oh… I suppose," Raskin said, a little embarrassed. "But hey, when did you get so good at this? That was really impressive."

Aster smiled bashfully. "Just been practicing, I guess."

"Even so, we've only run, what, eight Fight Dens so far."

"Oh, well, it's not just that," Aster said, shifting paws. "There's quite a lot Seria and I can do at home. Obviously, it's not the same as here, but—"

"What?" Raskin said, alarmed. He had Aster and his partner down as the careful types who just happened to enjoy fighting. "Isn't that risking a hell of a lot if someone finds out?"

"We're very careful," Aster said easily. Their attention was diverted then by the deciding of Aster's next opponent, and Raskin had no choice but to move away.

He had made it clear to Sid that practicing moves in the apartment was ill-advised. He thought most 'mon would have the common sense to already know that. But what if everyone in this room was risking themselves, and even Fight Den as whole, just to improve their skills?

He got back to the crates, sitting beside Lyco. Sid had disappeared somewhere into the crowd.

"Do you still think you don't have a long way to go?" she said. The question was smug, as she often was, but Raskin detected a hint of encouragement there as well.

"I didn't realise the standard had gotten so high," he admitted. "But listen: something happened to me in there. When I managed to slash off part of Aster's vine, I—"

"Your claws turned dark," Lyco said. "I saw."

"R-right! I've never felt anything like that before. Uh, is it good?"

"Of course it's good!" Lyco snapped, cuffing him around the ear. "Why wouldn't it be? You used your Energy, if only unintentionally. That's how I move rocks, or Sid breathes fire."

"My Energy..." Raskin recalled Lyco mentioning the term once before. He was excited for a moment, then frowned. "What does that mean for me, though?"

"Well, you're a dark-type, aren't you?"

Raskin nodded tentatively.

"Then I suppose you'll learn…" Lyco's expression suddenly dimmed.

"Hm?" Raskin said. "What is it?"

Lyco shrugged. "I don't really know what you can do. It's not obvious like it is with some other types."

"...Oh."

"But maybe it's better if you find out yourself. Gives you plenty of incentive to keep learning."

Raskin nodded, a little deflated. "Don't you know anything about it?"

"No!"

----

Raskin's eyes were watering. His tendons felt on the verge of snapping. But he couldn't stop now. He was so close…

He gritted his teeth and made one final push. Halfway through he worried he might pass out, but finally he reached the top of the apartment steps, and put down his shopping bags with an exhausted sigh. He dropped to all-fours, then the ground.

I hate this. Why can't Sid just do the shopping every week? He's clearly better equipped than me…

As it turned out, Sid had a good excuse this time. The quilava who greeted Raskin at the door had whitening fur on her front where it was once cream, and walked with a hunch so pronounced that it was as if she had never quite moved up from all-fours.

"Magasi!" Raskin said, surprised. "I didn't know you were coming round."

The old quilava laughed. "You know what my son is like. When he came to see me this afternoon, I was just as surprised."

At hearing Raskin's voice, Sid quickly stopped the washing up he was doing and came over to help carry the shopping bags in. He was never this helpful when it was just the two of them.

"So, what was the reason for your visit?" Raskin asked him once they had finished.

"Well, I—oh right, the gift!" Sid said. He took out a small, black box and passed it to Magasi. "Here. An early birthday present."

As Magasi unclipped the buckle and looked inside, her eyes lit up. "Sid!" she exclaimed. "I… oh, wow…"

She held up the item. It was a necklace, studded with red gems that seemed to shine a different hue every time they moved. Raskin was no jewellery connoisseur, but even he could see it was beautiful.

"This is… wonderful," Magasi said, holding a paw to her mouth, almost speechless.

"I wanted to do something special for your twentieth," Sid said proudly. "Ain't a lot of 'mon that reach that number, after all."

Magasi embraced him tearfully. "How could you afford this?" she said quietly.

Sid smiled. "It's like I was telling you earlier. This promotion is paying a lot better. It only took a bit of saving up."

"Oh, wonderful. Wonderful." Magasi put the necklace on. The gems made her pale fur look as bright as if she had just Shifted.

They chatted a little more while Magasi drank the tea Sid had made. Sid's siblings were doing fine, she said; two of them still lived with her, while her eldest was working long hours at one of the city's electrical plants. Sid managed to steer clear of questions about his own work.

"Well, I'd best be getting out of your hair," Magasi said, getting up from the table. "I hope your work is going well too, Raskin. Sorry; I feel like I've just been talking about myself."

Raskin had just enough control in him to smile and nod. "It's good, thank you."

Sid helped his mother to the door and bid her farewell. The moment she was gone, he turned around to find Raskin looking sternly at him.

"What?" Sid said. "You didn't expect me to tell her we made all this money from an illegal fight club, did you?"

"Probably not," Raskin admitted. "But lying about a promotion?"

"My mum knows me well, dude. She wouldn't have been convinced if I told her I'd just saved up. She knows I'm not good at that."

Raskin sighed. "Alright." He didn't want to interfere with his friend's private business.

He reached for the newspaper. The word 'police' on the front page gave him a brief spark of panic. Once he read the report though, it was clearly nothing important; just a feel-good story about an officer who had become the youngest ever to achieve some high rank.

There was a knock at the door. Raskin frowned. "Who is that now?"

Sid opened it. A scruffy-looking combusken stood there, a sofa balanced awkwardly behind him on the steps to their apartment. "This for you, mate?" he said, gesturing behind him.

"Oh! Yeah, come in, come in," Sid said.

The sofa they bought a few days ago had completely escaped Raskin's mind. The combusken and another worker from the furniture store set it down opposite their current one—they hadn't figured out how to get rid of the sofa yet, and in any case didn't want to go even a day or two without it, given the severe lack of any other furniture in the house.

When the workers had left, Sid beamed at Raskin. "See the difference already?" he said. "This sofa actually has padding. And it's so shiny!"

Raskin shook his head, laughing. "It does look good. You know what the real test is, though?"

Sid's ears twitched. "Go on…"

Raskin stood up in front of the new sofa. Then, he let himself fall backwards. The soft fabric enveloped his head, like the feeling of a hot bath. He couldn't help uttering a slight moan of delight.

Sid burst out laughing. "I can barely see you anymore."

"I never thought," Raskin mumbled, "that falling onto anything could feel so… orgasmic…"

Sid's response was to belly-flop onto the sofa right next to him, which was not quite so comforting.

----

Raskin and Sid headed to the White Entei that evening for the next Fight Den. They arrived twenty minutes or so before their usual 'private party' was scheduled. This wasn't normally much of an issue, as most of Steela's customers now took part in Dens as well, though Raskin did notice a group of males he didn't recognise as they entered. Steela caught their eye from behind the bar, and they went over to her.

"A couple of 'mon came in a little while ago," the raboot said. "Said you gave them permission to use the basement before opening time?"

"They what?" Raskin said. "I didn't give anyone permission! Did you?"

Sid shook his head, shrugging.

"Why didn't you stop them, Steela?" Raskin demanded.

Steela barely twitched an ear at his outrage. "It's hardly a big deal. If they were banging around I wouldn't let them in, but they said they wouldn't make any noise, and they haven't. I thought you'd be happy at the extra interest."

"It's not about that," Raskin said, letting his anger simmer. "I'll go and speak to them. Sid?"

Sid shrugged again. "Alright."

Halfway down the basement stairs, Raskin realised he hadn't asked Steela who the pokémon were. He had sudden visions of towering machoke and gurdurr, ready to tear his limbs off.

The reality couldn't be more different.

It was Aeris the espurr, who barely reached Raskin's head height, and a ralts who was only slightly taller. As he got a better view of them, he found an even more surprising sight. Aeris had her arms held in front of her, and they conjured a translucent white… bubble, it looked like, floating in the air.

She snapped her head up at the sound of their footsteps, and the bubble vanished at once.

"Oh, hi," she said casually. "Was it okay for me to be here?"

No, it wasn't! Raskin wanted to say. But the first words that came out of his mouth were, "What was that… thing you made?"

"Just something I've been working on," Aeris said. She put her arms out again, screwed her face up in concentration, and the bubble reappeared in a sudden vibration of air. "Try attacking me from this direction," she said, her voice suddenly muffled and quiet.

Raskin and Sid exchanged looks. "Sure," the quilava said.

He ran at Aeris for a standard tackle. But upon hitting the barrier, Sid fell abruptly to the ground, and though the barrier had also vanished, Aeris stood smugly over him, unharmed.

"Whoa…" Sid muttered, getting to his feet. "Can you do that again? I wanna try something else."

Aeris shrugged and created another barrier. This time Sid blew embers into it. The flames seemed to be absorbed harmlessly into the barrier, though its colour gradually faded, disappearing just as Sid ran out of breath.

Sid whistled admiringly. "Jeez, dude. That's so cool."

"Maybe," Aeris said, frowning. "Not sure what I can actually do with this yet. I can't move or anything while I'm keeping it up."

Finally, Raskin remembered what he'd come here for. "Forget about that. Aeris, Ralts, you shouldn't be coming down here early. Especially not by lying to Steela! There are people upstairs who don't know anything about Fight Den. Don't you see how dangerous that is?"

"Well, Zena and I can't practice at home," Aeris replied with sudden venom in her voice. "And I'm trying to teach her. I can't exactly do that while Fight Den's happening, can I?"

Raskin took a step back. For such a diminutive 'mon, Aeris was surprisingly aggressive. He wasn't sure how to respond, either. Her frustration certainly seemed valid.

"Sid and I will discuss those points with Lyco," he said at last. "For now, since you're already down here, and you weren't making noise… you might as well stay. But do not sneak in without our authority again."

Aeris shrugged. "Okay." She beckoned the ralts, Zena, over to her, and they started talking and gesturing, as if Raskin and Sid were already gone. With a sigh, Raskin left them to it.

Lyco arrived just before Steela shut the pub down to normal customers. She still was covered in a slight grey dust from the mine, and from the look on her face, Steela had made her a double whiskey before she could even ask. She sat down opposite Raskin and Sid. The quilava had his muzzle in a newspaper that had been left on the table.

"You okay?" Raskin asked.

Lyco grunted. "I had to work overtime 'cause we were short on workers today. Load of bollocks."

"Why are you still there?" Raskin asked. "Wouldn't it be easier to just quit?"

Lyco shook her head at once. "Can't raise suspicion like that."

Before Raskin could follow up on this, the lycanroc's gaze was suddenly drawn to Sid's newspaper. She craned her neck over the table to get a better look. "Sid, what's that?" she asked.

"Hm?" Sid looked up. "Attack of the Buibots? It's about this group of cybernetic buizel that are trying to take over the world. Thing is, their fusion with technology has made them weak to water, their natural element—"

"Not the comic, you imbecile," Lyco snapped. "The front page. What I can actually see."

Sid looked a little put out by her dismissal, but passed over the paper anyway. "What's so interesting about it?"

Lyco didn't answer. She stared at the front page, wide-eyed. Her paws even shook slightly. "Gods," she muttered. "Gods, this is bad…"

"What?" Raskin said sharply. "Why?"

Lyco looked at them. Raskin had never seen her so distressed. "This guy in the article, Shadow," she said, "I know him. Or used to, at least."

"You do?" Sid said. "How? Surely not since he joined the police."

Lyco breathed deeply. "It's… complicated."

"Is this why you never talk about your past?" Raskin asked. "Is this Shadow someone important?"

"Did you have a fling with him?" Sid put in.

"No!" Lyco said. "We… we did meet in the police. Because... I was in training to be an officer, like him."

Raskin stared at her in disbelief. Lyco, a member of the police? It couldn't be. She was the most anti-police person he had ever known.

"But… you don't just leave the police," he said slowly. "You can't. That's part of the agreement you sign up to, isn't it?"

"None of this matters right now!" Lyco snapped, her voice breaking. She put her paws to her head. "Look. Shadow knows me. He knows how I feel about the laws on fighting. Which means that, if the police get any kind of whiff of Fight Den's existence, as a commander... he has all the power he needs to come after us."

 

[Flyg0n]

The blitz beast within me is fed by this new chapter.

Good stuff, Really loving this fic. Did you know I shill it on other servers?

This chapter really moved the plot along. Things are heating up for our trio. I like the pacing of this fic, between the length and everything else, it feels like a good tv show.

I don't actually have any heavy critique. I love that Raskin finally got to make progress as a fighter, and come into his own more. Sid was pushed to the sidelines, but it worked well so that Raskin and Lyco could shine.

I think it was sweet too, for Sid to buy his mother such a nice gift, although I can't help but wonder if there could be consequences. Things are heating up and going well for our protags and I feel like they might be about to crumble.

Especially that Espurr. She seems really suspicious. Also, big exciting revelations happened this chapter, which is always great.

I'll move onto some line by lines now.

For the first time in his life, Shadow was early for a meeting.

OOOO new pov character?

He would have plenty of changes to make.

I sense some dark ambitions...

He looked down at the little figures of civilians scurrying around in streets among the high-rises, and a small smile escaped his mouth.

This little line of prose was really good. The way you have him think of the civilians as 'little' and 'scurrying' around gives insight into Shadow.

President Flygon

You passed the test, you're now on my gold star fic list because you have a Flygon.

A sudden burst of water from a psyduck causing a machinery breakdown. A minor fire in a warehouse with a single growlithe present. It would seem from these that some pokémon have greater access to their fighting abilities than they should—and as a result, they do not know how to control them. Secondly, two patrols in the district, on different days, noted a small group of pokémon breaking curfew, being out of breath, and carrying minor injuries. When questioned by officers, they shied away from giving details."

This is really neat. It also lends a lot of insight to why the government is doing this. Clearly, its been very easy to suppress these mons when their fighting instincts have been so dampened. Also, danger flags, the trio is close to being discovered.

That is: there is an underground organisation, hidden away somewhere in the city, where pokémon come to fight each other."

The fact that they jumped to this conclusion instead of floundering in the dark makes them seem much scarier and more competent. And I am all here for competent villains.

Shadow wasn't expecting such a direct question from the most powerful pokémon in the known world.

This statement makes me curious. How big is the city of Deepden, and is it the only real civilization, period? Because for President Flygon to be this highly regarded I guess there's no other options out there. Although you probably explained this earlier and maybe I forgot so that's on me.

The less subtle we are with police measures, the more people are likely to ask questions

This is terrifyingly smart. It also shows their two different approaches to policing and force. Shadow clear wants to rule by force, Flygon seems much wilier.

"But there's only one pokémon I know who would dare try something like this."

Uh oh...
My first thought here was 'omg how would he know Sid or Raskin though? Then I was like, ohhhh, Lyco. Duh

"It helps warm up my fire-chords," Sid said, as if 'fire-chords' was a perfectly common word. "Marginal gains, y'know?"

I love this little detail of sid mentioning 'fire-chords' cause he's learning more about himself

"A something… path. A dangerous path

lol. What an eloquent choice of words

Raskin threw up his arms in bemusement. "Enough?"

Trynna picture just how Raskin would throw up his arms like that is funny to me somehow.

"It's fine,"

These two contrasting outlooks and response is just. gr8

but caught no sight of a nidoran.

For some weird reason I spent this whole story thinking Tyler was a Nidorino?? ANyways flaw on me lol

For now, just try and be patient with us."

I do NOT trust this Espurr.

His paw's black colour seemed to glow; the white claws gained a dark sheen. His paw not only batted away Aster's vine, but it cut clean through the tip. The end of the vine dropped to the floor with barely a sound. It didn't look so threatening without a body.

HOORAY FOR SID!!

put down his shopping bags with an exhausted sigh. He dropped to all-fours, then the ground.

Ain't this the struggle though? smh

He was never this helpful when it was just the two of them.

lol. Sid is a mama's boy

feel-good story about an officer who had become the youngest ever to achieve some high rank.

Suspect

"Oh, hi," she said casually. "Was it okay for me to be here?"

Shady as heck if u ask me. I feel like she's playing innocent. Do not trust. She's bad news

"Attack of the Buibots? It's about this group of cybernetic buizel that are trying to take over the world. Thing is, their fusion with technology has made them weak to water, their natural element—"

"Not the comic, you imbecile," Lyco snapped. "The front page. What I can actually see."

What... what kinda of crazy comics they got in their world lol???

Because... I was in training to be an officer, like him."

:O!

Which means that, if the police get any kind of whiff of Fight Den's existence, as a commander... he has all the power he needs to come after us."

Big uh oh

So anyway, great chapter, many exciting new developments, really loving this so far. Shadow seems like he's really gonna be a problem, and I can't wait to see more tragic history with why Lyco was gonna be a cop and left.

 

[cynsh]

Aaaaaah so many reviews 😳 Thank you all! Sorry it took so long and you've probably forgotten everything you talked about.

If there was one thing I think felt a little bit weak in this chapter, it was the end scene, where we see Sid’s depressive moment. It’s not bad necessarily, but when we’re told that he’s not usually like this, but we’ve barely had time to see it for ourselves, I think it kind of lessens the impact. All we really have to go off of that this isn’t the “norm” is Raskin’s inner thoughts. If I were to change anything, I would have spent a bit more time with Sid at the beginning of the chapter establishing his norm.

Fair enough. There was a lot I wanted to get rolling in the first chapter. I hoped that Sid's brief cameo right at the start of the chapter would be a good snippet of what he's like on a 'normal' day.

I would have expected description by typing, but although later dialogue suggests theres some level of favoritism (and probably prejudice as well) based on type

Not sure where you're getting whiffs of favouritism/prejudice from?? That's not meant to be there.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m really curious about what your intention was with the nidoran fight. Obviously, there was the whole thing about just how unequiped for fighting these pokemon had become. But at the same time, the nidoran was at first acting sort of… feral, to use the traditional pmd term, to the point where I wasn’t really certain if it was sapient or not until it spoke later.

Yeah, one of my betas had the same reaction. Honestly think it might be better to have nidoran speak, before just snarling and attacking - the twist of 'oh he's not feral after all' isn't exactly a major one.

My main question is, if it's loud enough to drown out the sounds of the fighting, how can the pokemon in the fight den hear anything over it?

The radio is upstairs, the fights are happening in the basement :P The pokemon they don't want to overhear would be nearer the upstairs

Also, quick note, but your threadmark index seems a bit messed up? Chapter One is sandwiched between Three and Four.

Thanks! Have corrected it now.

Second thing that's getting me is how utterly bad Sid and Raskin have been at keeping this quiet.

You're not the first person to mention this kind of point. It worries me a little bit - obviously they shouldn't be perfect, but if I'm presenting them as hopeless and destined to be caught then I might have gone too far. I... might revisit some of this in the future.

If we look at RL illegal operations that bring in Big Cash, they can't just walk away with all their money. They have to launder it first--in other words, make up a legal excuse for where all that money came from so that the paperwork doesn't look off. So if Sid, Raskin, and Lyco are going to hit the big time here, they can't just walk into town with piles of money and call it a day - even if they hide it all in a basement or something, two jobless pokemon with spending habits that don't match up will probably turn heads. I'm guessing you've already accounted for this, but I wanted to point it out just in case.

Well... I guess it's something they'd have to account for eventually, but the timescale I'm working on is short enough that it won't need to be addressed... or I'm just ignoring it for convenience and simplicity ^^; you decide!

Sorry, Lyco, I don’t see how ‘hangout’ is similar enough to ‘fight.’ Might as well have called it ‘debate club.’

To be fair, it doesn't have to be analogous to fight, in fact that would probably be more suspicious. Just gotta be a word that those in the know will recognise.

Yup, there it is. The memetic Fight Club line. This is… honestly faster than I was expecting to see this reference pop up.

Probably the only Fight Club reference I'll make :P

I also find it a bit strange for Lyco to so casually drop that syndrome reveal to Raskin. I’d have expected her to lie instead or just issue some sort of sharp retort that’d shut Raskin out. Feels more in-character for her based on what we know so far.

I think she thought that there wasn't any real reason to hide it, it's not really sensitive information. Certainly less sensitive than other questions that she refuses to answer.

How do pokémon end up evolving when they seem so weak? How do some of them even manage to learn any moves without any battles? And what about the police force? They seem strong, so how do pokémon enter it if there’s no fighting?

If you'd been paying very close attention (but like, I don't blame you for not) you'd have noticed that there are lots of pokemon at 'adult' age that haven't evolved. Raskin is the obvious example, then there's Locki, Tyler, Aeris (the espurr), many Fight Den pokemon... etc.
As for moves, well, why would they need them if there's no fighting?
The police is different - more on that to come ;)

why do quilava take showers with water?

Is the main difference [in the marshtomp's water attack] the water pressure, or the fact that it's water specifically? I thought the latter, but I struggled to reconcile this with quilava happily taking daily water showers.

My reasoning is that the showers Sid takes use extremely hot water, more than a human would like. Coldness, plus water pressure too... now wondering if there could be something in the water pokemon spew that's different from the natural stuff, but that might be better suited to #worldbuilding

Your line breaks got eaten by the forums :(

:( have corrected now :)

I like that Raskin doesn't know what kind of gas this would be, because why would he, but this also felt a bit jarring since most of this scene is in close-third to Sid.

That was still meant to be in Sid's POV! (curious what made you think it wasn't?) I think Raskin probably would know, the big nerd.

I wasn't sure why "giving" was unitalicized here.

It seems okay to me? Sid's thought bubble is putting sarcastic emphasis on 'some speech' and 'some podium' because of how bored he is by the whole concept of it. Italicizing 'giving' too wouldn't make it work, I think?

I can’t believe I’m somehow giving this speech again in the span of less than a week. But technically, if you interrupt dialogue with an action, the em dash should be outside the quotation mark. An example:

“... Tyler"—she gestured to the door—"You can leave now…”

Honestly this doesn't look right to me... but I trust your judgement, so will correct it anyway. o7

 

[IFBench]

I'm finally here for my Secret Santa review on chapter 1 of this! I'm really sorry I took so long.

It's very interesting to see a Pokemon society where the Pokemon are still very Pokemon-like, but the society is extremely close to modern human-like. I'm interested to see how this came about!

I like Raskin already! You really sell the fact that they're really not happy with their life right at the very beginning of the story. Nicely done!

The bit about Nickit ancestors was a nice touch.

The interaction between Raskin and Locki further shows Raskin's tired, bitter, and just plain done internal attitude that they hide behind a mask of indifference. I like it!

I also really like the bit where Raskin internally insults the rich Grovyle.

I really like the description in the office scene! It really helps me visualize how mundane it all is.

The foreshadowing in the athletics part is really good! I can tell that this is setting up to the fighting that will happen later on.

Surely, these two won’t think that fighting is the best solution…?

Love this line.

Oh, boy, the no fighting rule is enforced. Can't wait to see how much trouble that'll give our protagonists.

“I would’ve paid to see how that ended.”

More foreshadowing!

And looks like Locki is going to be an antagonist in this fic! Very interesting.

I really like how you show Raski's slowly growing fascination with fights.

Interesting note with recipes not taking into account the size of Pokemon...I wonder if that'll come into play later.

Oh, huh. Sid's not happy with his life, either. Interesting.

That little bit where the Raski and Sid confided in each other was really good!

And oh boy. They're starting to plan out the fight club. I'm excited to see just how this turns out.

That ending line was really good.

Overall, I really enjoyed this chapter! It did a great job of setting up the setting, the characters, and the conflict, as well as leaving enough intrigue to keep the reader hooked. Great job!

I look forward to reading more!

 

[cynsh]

Chapter 10: Emergency Meeting

“There are... so many things I don’t understand right now,” Raskin began. “Why were you part of the police? How did you then leave? And why—”

“Pokémon will be arriving here in thirty minutes,” Lyco said through her teeth. “We will have to address them in ninety minutes. Now is really not the time to be asking me personal questions.”

“But these are important things! If you won’t tell us anything, how do we know we can trust you?”

“Oh, do me a fucking favour,” Lyco spat, her head snapping up at him. “Has the last month just erased itself from your memory?” The venom in her tone made Raskin and Sid veer away from her on their stools. Lyco looked at them for a moment, then exhaled heavily. She leant towards them and lowered her voice. “Look. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But only after we’ve figured this shit out tonight. Okay?”

Raskin glanced at Sid, and they nodded in unison. “So… all that’s important right now is that this ‘Shadow’ might come after us, because he knows you,” Raskin said. “And what we do about that.”

“Correct,” Lyco said. She seemed to have recovered her poise. “The threat is two-fold. Firstly—and really, we should have planned for this already—there’s what to do if he sends a task force to investigate this area. I don’t know if any Fight Den rumours have escaped these walls already, but we wouldn’t know if they had.”

“Um, hold on,” Sid put in. “I thought we’d already done all the safety stuff around that. With the loud music playing upstairs to make it look like people are in, locking the doors…”

“We’ve done the bare minimum,” Lyco said bluntly. “What happened if, tonight, while we’re all in the basement, the police picked up evidence leading to this building and they broke down the doors to enter? Every single pokémon in the basement, including us, would be fucked. There’d be no way out.”

“But the police wouldn’t do that—” Sid began.

“With Shadow leading them, they could do anything.”

“Okay, so that’s one problem,” Raskin said. Lyco’s words sent shivers through his bones, but he hoped that if they kept talking, it would put him more at ease. “What do you propose we do about it?”

“I think…” Lyco looked to the ceiling, then buried her head in her arms for the second time of the night. “We obviously need some sort of emergency exit.”

“An alarm system, too,” Raskin said. “There’s no use having an exit if the police all arrive before we can use it.”

“But we need to make sure there is an exit before thinking about that,” Sid said.

“Right,” Raskin said. He saw Steela in the corner of his vision. The raboot held a glass in her paw mid-polish, and was regarding the three of them, hunched as they were in a corner of the room, with an uneasy look.

“Steela, could you help us with something?” Raskin said, beckoning her. Steela paused, put down the glass carefully and walked over.

“In your basement,” Raskin said. “Is there any way out other than up the stairs?”

Steela hesitated, then shook her head. “Not that I know of. Why?”

The three partners exchanged looks.

“Just wondering,” Sid said innocently. “Thinking about more things we could do with the room.”

Steela nodded slowly. “Well, I can’t help you on that one.”

They waited until Steela had moved back to the bar, busy cleaning something again, before continuing.

“Well, now what?” Raskin said. “We can’t plan anything without an escape route.”

“Steela might be lying?” Sid said hopefully. “She didn’t answer straight away…”

Raskin frowned, unconvinced. Then, an idea hit him. “Lyco!” he said. “You’re a rock-type. You could check out the basement walls.”

Lyco gazed dimly at him. “What good would that do?”

“Well, there’s supposed to be loads of underground tunnels in the Harmony District—what if the basement was close enough that we’d be able to burrow into one? You’d be able to tell if there were any inconsistencies in the stone, wouldn’t you? With a room that big, we must be close to something.”

For a long moment, Lyco’s gaze remained vacantly distant. Then, as if the words had only just filtered through to her, she straightened up and nodded. “It’s worth a try,” she said quietly. “Come on, then. No use wasting time.”

----

Raskin couldn’t remember a more nervous wait since the morning of his exam results.

Lyco’s method was simple. She pressed her paws and head to the basement wall, starting with the back wall by the stairs, then sidestepped along it very slowly, feeling every crevice in the stone.

“If there is any inconsistency, I should be able to find it,” she had said. “I’ll just have to be thorough. These walls are thick.”

Thorough she most certainly was. Unfortunately, it meant that Raskin and Sid could do nothing but ruffle their fur impatiently while they watched the lycanroc search.

“Found anything?” Sid said hopefully after a while. Lyco had still only covered a fraction of the room.

“I’ll tell you if I do,” she growled. Then she paused. “What time is it?”

Raskin glanced at the watch on his foreleg and swore. It was almost eight o’clock already.

“People are going to start arriving any minute,” he said. “Maybe we should pick this up tomorrow?”

“No!” Lyco hissed. “This is too important to put off.”

Raskin looked bemusedly at her. Had Lyco gone mad? “Then… what are we supposed to do?” he said. “What do you want us to do?”

“Just… keep people upstairs for now. I’ll finish as fast as I can.”

“Should we tell them what’s going on?”

“Absolutely not! Just… I don’t know, just bullshit something!”

Raskin huffed. At least he had Sid with him. If Sid told people to stay upstairs, they would.

The first thing he saw upon clearing the steep staircase to the pub was Steela’s stern face in front of them.

“What is going on with you three?” she demanded. “First you talk all secretively in a corner, and now you leave me alone upstairs when it’s almost eight? You guys are in charge of this, remember!”

Raskin breathed deeply. Now was really not the time for Steela to wade into things. “It’s all good now,” he said. “Sorry to worry you.”

“Lyco’s still down there,” Steela pointed out.

“She’s just sorting a few things for tonight,” Raskin said, hoping their continued vagueness would stop Steela from pressing.

The raboot frowned, and opened her mouth to respond—but as she did, the front doors swung open. A group of six pokémon walked in, Luis among them. He raised a hand to Raskin in greeting.

Steela scowled at Raskin before turning and strolling back to the bar. Nothing could override her bar duty. “Evening folks!” she said to the arrivals, any animosity completely discarded. “Can I get you any drinks to start the night?”

Raskin tried at first to keep casual conversation with arriving pokémon, while steering them away from talk of heading downstairs. Sid was much better at this however, so he decided to leave the quilava to it and stand by the front door instead, making sure to check everyone who arrived.

Fortunately, no one seemed keen to head downstairs while the bar was still filling up. But despite Raskin’s continual glances at his watch, time kept moving, and it soon reached half-past eight, 30 minutes until Fight Den was supposed to begin.

----

“Oh—you can’t go down just yet,” Sid said, hurrying over to a litten and glameow who were about to set paw on the stairs. “Lyco’s busy setting things up. She doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

The litten frowned. Sid recognised them as friends of Luis, and he hoped the mutual connection would keep the ‘mon from getting uncivil. “What’s there to set up?” the litten asked. “We’ve never been asked to wait before.”

“All very secret, I’m afraid,” Sid said, giving them a reassuring grin. “But you won’t be kept in suspense for much longer!”

The two quadrupeds glanced at each other, then trudged back into the bar. Sid sighed, wiping his brow. Danger averted.

When he looked around the room though, the tightness in his chest returned. The floor was becoming dangerously crowded already. Plenty of ‘mon would usually be downstairs by now.

C’mon Lyco, Sid thought. Either find something or don’t; we can’t just keep everyone here!

Even worse, he saw the litten muttering to other pokémon on the floor, nods and looks coming in Sid’s direction. That pair weren’t the first pokémon Sid had pushed away already—news was probably spreading all around the room now. Why couldn’t they just be patient? He was as desperate to start fighting as anyone, but—

A paw tapped on his shoulder from behind, making him jump. Lyco narrowed her eyes at him.

“I think I’ve found something,” she said. “Where the fuck’s Raskin?”

“At the door,” Sid said.

Lyco opened her mouth to protest, then stopped. “And we can’t just leave that unmanned,” she muttered. “Okay, hold on.”

She stepped into the main room, cupped her paws to her mouth and roared, “OI!”

Even through the booming music from the radio, she immediately had every pokémon’s attention.

“Sid and I will be going downstairs,” she said. “No one is permitted to follow until we say so. Raskin!” The nickit’s eyes shot open at her glare. “Keep an eye on things.” Then she gave Sid a nudge. “Come on.”

Sid gave Raskin the most sympathetic look he could before disappearing. How was Rasky supposed to stay at the door, while keeping a packed room of impatient ‘mon under control? Sid just hoped that they respected Lyco enough not to question the bizarre order.

Then, he suddenly realised—Lyco said she had found something!

“What did you find?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet, so don’t get too excited,” the lycanroc grunted. “There’s a piece of the wall that feels much shallower than the rest. I think something’s behind it.”

“What—we’ll need to knock it down?”

Lyco gave him a withering look. “Did you expect a secret rock, that we push into a magic mechanism to move one of the walls aside?”

Sid folded his arms sullenly. That was exactly what he had hoped for, but he wouldn’t give Lyco the satisfaction of knowing.

Lyco took them to the very end of the room, just behind one of the crates. She placed her paws down a few times before stopping in one spot, a couple of feet from the ground. “It’s here.”

Sid nodded, uncertain. He couldn’t see anything amiss. “What’s the best way to break into it?”

Lyco answered a moment later, taking a few steps back before suddenly hurling herself at the wall. Sid gave an involuntary yelp—not least because the wall remained as solid as it looked, and Lyco’s effort was only met with a dull thud. She collapsed to the floor with a groan.

“I thought that would’ve done it,” she said, shaking her head. “Right, your turn.”

“What?!”

“Oh, come on Sid,” Lyco said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been watching you fight. You love throwing yourself at things.”

“I haven’t battled a wall-type before,” Sid retorted. Still, he knew it would be selfish not to follow Lyco’s lead. He moved to where Lyco had stood, and she helpfully pointed out the strip of wall he should aim for. He took a breath, imagining that he could already see the hidden treasures that lay behind the flimsy wall. Then, he lunged towards it.

The wall moved.

He didn’t push through it—the wall still stopped him in his tracks, with all the brutal density of a, well, wall—but something had weakened. He stood up and immediately winced. Mew did his shoulder ache! He might have to go easy on fighting later.

His feeling was correct. A couple of tiny holes in the wall had appeared, and around them there was a shallow indent. He glanced at Lyco excitedly.

“Good job,” she said, genuinely for once. “Now, I should be able to finish this…”

She walked up to the stone, held her arms in front of her and closed her eyes, shoulders swaying slightly. Then, she lunged forwards with a sudden yell. Rather than her body being stopped by the stone like before—like it should have been—the stone moved with her like a wave.

Rocks tumbled with a deafening crash. Sid couldn’t get a glance at what lay behind the mess before a mountain of grey smoke consumed them. He broke into a fit of coughs, glancing helplessly at Lyco. She just stood in front of the smoke, breathing heavily but apparently fine.

The clouds finally cleared. Where the piece of wall had once been was now a circular hole, big enough for a pokémon but little more than that. It stretched only a short distance before opening out into a… much bigger room, it seemed. He couldn’t tell from where they stood.

Sid gazed through the hole, scarcely able to believe his eyes. “What is this?” he said. “Some kind of underground base…? Lyco—”

He turned to her again, but Lyco was looking behind them. Only then did Sid hear the pounding of pawsteps, ‘mon practically falling over each other down the basement steps. And at the very front of the frenzy, her eyes blazing with fury, was Steela.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” she screamed at them. “When did I give you permission to tear down my building?!”

Sid shivered. He had never seen Steela so much as raise her voice in anger. This was bad.

“Why didn’t we just tell her what was going on?” he muttered to Lyco.

“Everything makes sense in hindsight,” Lyco snapped. But she seemed as lost for ideas as he did as Steela advanced on them.

“Steela, wait! We have some… important news that we need to tell everyone!”

Raskin’s voice. It came from the other end of the room, and sure enough there was the nickit at the bottom of the stairs, his face flustered. Sid imagined the flood of pokémon that must have run past him down the stairs as they heard the wall collapse. Sorry, Rasky…

Raskin hurried through the crowd towards Sid and Lyco. “Fight Den may be in more danger than before,” he continued, turning to face the group. “We need to tighten up our security and plans for if anything goes wrong. One part of that is finding an emergency exit from this room. And so, this…” He trailed off, looking at the hole in the wall with bemusement. He glanced at Sid and Lyco. “Uh, what is this?”

“We were just about to find out,” Lyco said. She glanced at Steela. “Do you know anything about this passage?”

Steela seemed frozen in time. “What… do you mean, Fight Den is in danger?” she said. “Are you saying that we’re in danger, too?”

Lyco scoffed. “We’ve always been in danger.”

“But we might be in more than we initially prepared for,” Raskin finished.

Steela nodded slowly. Then she snarled. “Of course I don’t know about this hole,” she said. “My family have owned this pub for generations, and no one’s ever mentioned it.”

Sid looked between Lyco, Raskin and Steela’s confused, anguished expressions. Mew, he hated situations like this. He was never any good with subtle words of wisdom. If only there was a way out of it…

He glanced behind them at the passage, and his eyes lit up.

“Say,” he said, giving Lyco a nudge. “Might be worth checking what’s inside this thing. Whether it’ll be any use to us after all.”

“Good idea,” Lyco said with barely a second’s hesitation.

Sid didn’t need to think twice. He got onto all-fours and began crawling through the hole—it wasn’t quite tall enough for him to stand up.

“Be careful, Sid,” he heard Raskin call after him.

“Oh, I will,” Sid said coolly. “I—”

The tunnel suddenly ended, which is what he had expected, seeing it ahead of him. What he hadn’t expected was for the floor to end too.

He let out a startled yelp, which was cut short the moment he hit the ground again. It was wet, covering most of his legs. And… thick.

He heard a flurry of limbs from above, then Raskin’s head peered over the side of what must have been the tunnel he had fallen down. The room was almost pitch-black—Sid could only tell who it was from the nickit’s distinctive silhouette. Once Raskin saw that Sid had only fallen a couple of metres, he visibly relaxed. “Why didn’t you look where you were going, you stupid slowpoke?” he said.

Sid smiled, but it disappeared the moment he moved to stand up. The muddy water practically stuck to him. Confused, he gave it a sniff.

Never had Sid ever wanted to undo a sensation so badly.

“Oh my god,” he said, reflexively spitting and sputtering like he’d just inhaled something poisonous. Oh god, the smell. His muzzle had never encountered something of this potency before. He could feel his eyes watering.

“Sid? What happened?” Raskin said. Then he heard a gagging sound—the poor nickit must have sniffed it too.

So much for this being some secret, underground hideout, Sid thought, stumbling his way to a wall to lean against. We only dug into a stupid sewer.

He looked up at the tunnel above him, well over twice his height. I ain’t getting back up there, either.

“Can you see anything ahead of you, Sid?” Raskin called overhead. “Any lights, perhaps?

Sid squinted, turning in all directions. Yes, there was something bright back the way he’d come, next to a wall underneath the tunnel. It wasn’t a long walk away, but the darkness and strong desire not to slip into the goop that covered his feet was enough for him to take it very slow. If only he had an easier way to see...

Eventually though, he could peer up at the fragmented light of a streetlamp. He never thought he would find the sight of one so welcoming.

“Looks like a manhole,” he reported, once he’d made his way back to where he’d fallen.

He heard Raskin let out a sigh of relief, then Lyco’s head appeared in the tunnel. “Right, Sid. I suggest you climb up out of there, figure out where you are, then run home and have a long shower. Forget about us for now.”

Sid grinned, safe in the knowledge that Lyco couldn’t see him. He had gotten out of the negotiating stuff, even if it wasn’t quite the route he had envisioned.

----

It quickly became clear to Raskin that Fight Den would not be happening today.

The mess that Sid had created wasn’t all his fault, but his antics in the sewer held everyone up for a good half hour. It might have been entertaining for the quilava, but no one on Raskin’s side of the room other than the nickit could even see him.

When a few pokémon started trudging towards the basement stairs, Lyco stopped them in their tracks. “We have the future of Fight Den to discuss, and no one is going anywhere until we figure it out,” she said sternly. “Unless, of course, you don’t give a shit about future Fight Dens.”

Then there was Steela. In all the time Raskin and Lyco spent faffing around with Sid, she had just stood behind them, stewing silently. When at last Sid looked to be on his way, and Raskin and Lyco turned back to the raboot, ready to resume their discussion, she wasted no time.

“I don’t see why I should ever let you in here again,” she said. “First, you tell me we’re all in danger of getting busted—”

“That’s not what we said,” Lyco interjected.

“Then you break down a piece of my wall—”

“Why do you care so much about that? We’ve put this basement to more use than you ever would have.”

“Then why do you pay me for it?”

“Good question. You should be paying us, the amount of trade we’ve given your struggling—”

“GUYS!” Raskin cried, darting between the two sides, standing on two legs so he could actually be between them. “No more petty arguing! Steela,” he turned to the fuming raboot, “we’re… sorry for doing this to your wall. We should have been clearer about everything. It won’t happen again.”

Of course it won’t happen again, idiot, he cursed. Steela sniffed, seemingly unconvinced, but at least she didn’t shout at him.

“This basement is, for the time being, still the best location we have for Fight Den,” Raskin went on. “We would really like to continue using it. Is there anything we can do that would make you change your mind about that?”

Steela scowled. “Convince me that you know how to keep us safe,” she said, then she wrinkled her nose. “And Mew, get that bloody hole boarded up. It’ll stink out the whole building if it’s left like this.”

Raskin nodded. That seemed conceivable enough. “Is it alright if we can discuss those things before coming back to you?”

“Do whatever you want with your…” Steela gestured vaguely for the right word. “…society here. I’ll be upstairs. I’ve got cleaning to do.”

She turned on her heel and stomped away. The gathered pokémon gave her a very wide berth to the basement stairs.

The door slammed shut, and a moment later, the sound of the blaring radio upstairs dimmed significantly. Raskin didn’t have it in him to protest to Steela about why the radio was on in the first place. Neither did Lyco, apparently.

He found himself facing fifty-odd sets of eyes, showing emotions from amusement, boredom, anxiety, to even hostility. All were clearly waiting for him and Lyco to do something.

Instinctively, Raskin moved towards the crates by the wall beside them. It would feel a lot better if half the room wasn’t looking down at him. Lyco followed his lead and sat on the crate next to the one he stood on.

“Sorry to keep you all waiting here,” he found himself saying. “I know this isn’t how you wanted tonight to play out.”

“You got that right,” a raticate from near the front of the room heckled. “Are we gonna fight now, or what?”

“No,” Lyco said strongly. Her voice seemed just about calm again. “You heard what Steela said. Things will have to change here if we are to stay. Whatever changes those are, you will need to know about them, and we may well need people’s help to work them out.”

“Uh, if I may.” A timburr raised his arm. Raskin frowned; he recognised the ‘mon from somewhere. “Is it essential that we stay here, rather than move somewhere else?”

Raskin’s eyes lit up. Moving? That could solve numerous problems. But quickly, the rational side of him raised concerns.

“It’s hard to say,” he said. “We got very lucky with this location. The basement is ideal for doing things in secret, and there’s much more space here than in most houses. Plus, it looks like we have an escape route, too.”

“Not enough space, though!” Aeris said, stepping forwards. “Like I told you, this place is already getting overrun with people during fighting hours.”

“And a sewer isn’t the kind of escape route I want to be part of,” a minccino added, whose fur was practically sparkling.

Yeah, no shit, Raskin thought. “Well, do you guys know of anywhere better?” he asked. Aeris scowled, but did not answer. Raskin looked to the whole room. “In fact, does anyone know of a location that can offer more than this?”

A low murmuring broke out in the room. Raskin glanced at Lyco as if to ask, Was that the right idea? She nodded in what he guessed was approval. Hopefully.

The room slowly quietened again. No one seemed brave enough to step forward. Raskin sighed. The timburr’s solution had seemed too good to be true.

He examined the timburr again. Then it came to him.

“Wait!” he exclaimed. “Timburr. Are you a builder?”

The timburr gave him a guarded look. “What makes you say that?”

He wasn’t very good at hiding the truth. Raskin had to hide a smile of relief. “I thought I’d seen you somewhere recently, that’s all.”

It was half-true—Raskin had certainly seen a timburr working recently, but had no idea if it was the same one. The truth was, he seldom saw timburr in any other profession.

The timburr shifted his feet. “Yes, I am.”

A machop to the timburr’s side gave the ‘mon a nudge. Raskin definitely recognised him. “We’ve been working on some apartments just over the road from here, but it’s all finished now. Is there something you need us for?”

Raskin’s eyes lit up. This was perfect. “Well, if you two are builders, maybe you could build us a new location?”

The timburr raised an eyebrow. “That’ll set you back quite a bit of money. And we’ll need a place to build it, of course.”

“We can afford it,” Raskin said at once. Or we’ll pay it back eventually. “And I’m sure we’ll be able to find somewhere, right?” He glanced at Lyco hopefully.

“I think so,” she said.

“Then… yeah, I don’t see why not,” the timburr said. “We’re pretty flexible. Just tell us what you want and we’ll see to it that it’s made. As long as I can be assured that we’ll be safe.”

“Of course, of course,” Raskin said. His mind was buzzing with excitement. Building a new Fight Den had never occurred to him before, but now it seemed like such an obvious solution to all their worries. A purpose-built location could have everything that everyone wanted: more space, more exits, greater protection from police. Plus, moving locations would throw any investigative trails right off.

“How long does a building project take you?” Lyco asked, taking Raskin out of his joyful daydreams.

“Depends, obviously,” the timburr said. “But at least a few weeks, depending on what you’re asking for.”

Ah. Leave it to Lyco to ask the practical questions.

Raskin turned to her, speaking quietly so they wouldn’t be overheard. “A few weeks isn’t terrible. We could always postpone Fight Den until a new place is finished.”

“No!” Lyco hissed. Raskin almost recoiled at the venom in her whisper. “We can’t postpone.”

“Why not? We’ve saved up a good amount of money.”

“Leave things a few weeks and half these pokémon will have forgotten we were ever here. We’re still growing. That could all be lost if we suddenly stop now.”

“But—”

“Also, what do you think I punched a hole in this wall for? Decoration? We need to make things work here, for as long as we have it.”

Raskin sighed. He knew she had a point, even if she made it a bit extreme. They had a good flow of business right now. And he didn’t fancy living off whatever meagre savings they’d have left from all this.

“What do you suggest, then?” he asked.

“We can still get this new building in motion. But while that’s happening, we stay here and make the best Fight Den we can.

Raskin nodded. That seemed like the best solution to him too. The only asterisk was working out how to make the best Fight Den.

If the volume of murmuring was anything to go by, the crowd in front of him were getting annoyed by his and Lyco’s whispers. Raskin turned back to them, eager to keep the ‘mon onside. They wouldn’t be so impatient if Sid was here, he thought with a sigh.

“Aeris has said that she feels Fight Dens are getting too crowded. Do others agree with that?”

Immediately the room broke into uproar. Oh, crap, bad question, Raskin thought. He put two digits of a paw in his mouth and whistled—finally, he could put that useless skill to work. The room quickly quietened.

“Raise a limb if you think it is not too crowded.”

One or two arms raised uncertainly.

“Raise a limb if you think it is.”

Nearly the whole room raised their arms. Raskin gulped. Everyone aside from Aeris must have been too nice to complain to them.

“Also,” a voice called out, “having fewer numbers in here will make it easier for us to hide from police, won’t it?”

That was a good point. Maybe just as important as keeping these fighters happy. Raskin chewed his mouth and turned to Lyco. “Surely reducing capacity is the opposite of achieving growth.”

“No shit, detective pikachu,” Lyco said. “Still, it’s much better than nothing. But we’d probably have to start a waiting list for people to sign up to, or some other kind of administration. Mew knows how that could be organised efficiently, especially in secret.”

Raskin nodded, frowning. They needed to cut down capacity, but they also didn’t want to restrict interest in Fight Den. The two were impossible to marry, weren’t they?

“What if we… just opened Fight Den for longer?” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could think.

Lyco entertained it for a moment, but then shook her head. “We already have Steela at her limit. She’d never allow it.”

“And…” Raskin sighed. “We’d need to pay her more for the time, and coupled with the reduced money we’d make from lower attendances…”

He rubbed his paws into his face. Operating in the basement of a pub was both a blessing and a curse. If only there was a way to run Fight Den while keeping the pub’s upstairs open for Steela’s regular business. If the bangs and crashes could be kept quiet, somehow…

“Are you two just going to gossip in private all evening?”

Raskin’s head shot up at the indignant tone. He and Lyco were losing this crowd more with every minute that passed.

The voice was Aeris’s. Raskin looked into the espurr’s piercing eyes, trying frantically to come up with an adequate response. “I think… that… we…”

Wait. Aeris!

He broke off. “Aeris,” he said. “The protection barrier you can create. Does it block out sound around it?”

Aeris looked at him, bewildered, but then nodded. “I think so.”

“And, how big can you make this barrier? Would it be able to fit around, say, the basement door?”

Aeris’s eyes widened, seemingly realising his intention. “Possibly. As long as it’s not disturbed, I can keep up a barrier for ages.”

“Right. Then we might have a solution. Aeris, if you make a barrier around the door frame, covering as much as possible, I’ll stand in the bar upstairs and see how much noise comes through. Everyone else…” He turned to the suddenly rapt crowd. “Make as much noise as possible. Like you’re watching the best fight you’ve seen in your lives.”

As Raskin was about to move, he caught Lyco’s gaze in the corner of his eye. She was smiling—not only that, but there was a hint of glee in it.

“What now?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She shook her head, as if in disbelief. “Just, finally, a good idea.”

 

[Adamhuarts]

I had free time to do one more review for the night before hitting the hay, and so I'm reviewing the third chapter of this fic of yours.

Starting off this chapter, we finally got to see the highly anticipated fight that Raskin and Sid had been organizing for the past two chapters. I must say, this was a pretty solid chapter in many respects and there were a lot of places that had me smiling, especially the small moments where the characters threw banter at each other.

It comes as no surprise to me that a lot more people showed up to watch the fight than the two had anticipated. Considering how starved pokemon in this world are for some violent stimulus, a chance to watch something like this is simply too good for anyone to pass up even if it came at a lot of risk for them.

The fight itself was pretty good. I enjoyed reading through it, and I think you made a clever use of the pokemons abilities. Like Chaka aiming for Aster's leg with what I assume to be hyper fang and Aster retaliating with a bullet seed. It's a shame the fight was cut abruptly from then on, though the fight was pretty much over by the time the rat got thrown out of the ring. Thankfully, no one died during the scuffle, and even the Deerling and Krokorok fight got broken up before it could get really heated.

We were also given some clues about Raskins past at the end of the chapter. From what I could tell, it seems his dad got arrested when he was a kid? That being a traumatic experience for a kid to witness aside, I wonder if his dad ended up behind bars because he fought someone or maybe he was evading taxes or something lol. There's probably an answer to this already in later chapters, but it's fun to speculate before getting there to know it for myself.

All in all, a pretty solid chapter. Didn't skip any beats. The next chapter's title looks pretty enticing, and I can't wait to see what it holds in the future.

 

[cynsh]

Chapter 11: Past and Future

By the end of the night, Raskin felt like he, Lyco and Sid deserved an award for managing everything they did.

Aeris' psychic barriers on the basement door worked a treat. Raskin could barely hear a thing when he was upstairs, even with the basement full of pokémon. Unfortunately, though there were a few other 'mon who could create a similar barrier to Aeris, none were as powerful. The espurr wasn't willing to offer her services for free, either, nor was she willing to work more than two nights a week.

So they compromised. On the two nights Aeris worked, up to thirty pokémon were allowed downstairs, making as much noise as they liked. On every other night, starting from six o'clock now rather than nine, the maximum capacity would be twenty, and pokémon had to stay quiet while fights were happening. This would make life easier for whoever was creating the barrier.

When they raised this idea to the basement, most seemed fine with it, to Raskin's surprise. He guessed that they came here for the fighting more than the atmosphere. The promise of a bigger and better Fight Den in just a few weeks probably helped, too.

With the new, much more frequent opening hours, Steela was concerned of there being unintended crossover between her regular customers and those there just for Fight Den. To solve the issue, they agreed to hire another 'mon to sit guard next to the basement steps, acting as if it led to a private, invite-only room. The guard would be given a list of trusted Fight Den 'members' to let inside, and anyone else would require the approval of Raskin, Sid or Lyco.

Finally, a helioptile helped them rig up a couple of alarms: one that could be activated from behind Steela's counter, and one within reach of the bouncer above the basement. They would bring drinks and cushions downstairs so that if anyone ignored the bouncer and came downstairs anyway, the alarms would give them enough time to stop fighting and look like nothing suspicious was happening. The sewer tunnel was also hidden behind a particularly thick, dense crate.

All of this meant that Sid's wall murals had to be painted over again too. The quilava accepted that it was necessary, even if he watched the paintings disappear like they were his children.

"I'll meet you tomorrow morning, then," Lyco said to Tyler. The nidoran was the last customer yet to leave the basement.

"Sure," Tyler said with a grin. "Think yous a' gonna like the place I got. Even if it's a bit rough on the edges."

Lyco watched him go, looking satisfied. "Right, fools, ready to clear up?" she said. "I don't think there'll be so much today, given we..."

She trailed off upon turning around. Raskin and Sid stood in the centre of the basement, the latter's arms folded and the former doing the sternest sitting pose he could.

Lyco squinted at them. "Can I help you?"

"You said earlier that you'd tell us what went on between you and this police officer," Raskin said. "I'm not letting you wriggle your way out of explaining things again. We have to know. Now."

Lyco visibly deflated. She looked exhausted, and no wonder—all night she had been barking orders and discussing security plans. Raskin felt a bit sorry for her. Just a bit, though.

"Alright, fine." Lyco sat down on the stairs. "Shadow. As I said, we know each other because we were both trainee police officers, assigned to the same unit. That's how the training system works—you have your unit, and they're the 'mon you train with, eat with, sleep with."

"That's um..." Sid exchanged an uncertain look with Raskin. "Okay, but before all of that. How did you ever join the police? You hate them!"

"Well, people change," Lyco said with a shrug. "Back when I left school, all I wanted to do was be part of the police. You know how they pitch it to you: saying how strong all the training will make you; the amazing friendships you'll form; the chance of being honoured by the president... at the time that really appealed to me."

Raskin remembered the assemblies at school where his year was given that exact presentation. They had gazed at the gallade towering over them with wonder and longing. It was no surprise a number of his classmates had been interested in the police too after that day.

The main thing that put Raskin off was the requirement that, once you joined the force, you had to stay there until you retired. Sure, there were different roles within the police and numerous districts you could rotate in. But the lack of choice the career presented had terrified Raskin. Fortunately, the qualification exams were notoriously selective, so even if he'd wanted to join, he doubted that he would have made it.

"So, what's it really like?" Sid asked eagerly. "Being on the inside."

Lyco sighed. "Not what I had hoped for. The training they put us through was gruelling; every day my joints ached. I didn't get on with the rest of my unit like I'd hoped. Especially Shadow. He was awful—so arrogant, cruel and self-centred. But the worst thing was that I started questioning the very way the police was run. The fact that we were allowed to fight in our training. In fact, we had to, because that's what makes officers Shift faster, and makes them stronger than regular civilians. But why should fighting be illegal to everyone, except the people whose job it is to make sure it's illegal? I didn't like it."

Raskin wasn't sure what to say. He had never thought about the dichotomy between the police and the rest of the city before, but it did seem strange.

"Was it in the police where you discovered your condition?" Sid asked suddenly.

For a moment, Lyco's eyes seemed to light up in surprise. But they quickly relaxed again. "That's right. One day I woke up incredibly breathless, even more sore than usual. I could hardly move. They took me to the medics and that's how I got diagnosed. It basically ended any hope I had of doing practical police work."

"Did you get kicked out?" Sid asked, sounding horrified.

Lyco shook her head. "They can't do that, unless you do something seriously bad. No, all they could offer me in practical terms was a role in a non-physical police department. Probably filing paperwork or something. They did give me some sort of honour for bravery as a sweetener, but I couldn't give less of a shit about that."

"So that's why you left," Sid said.

"Well, it certainly strengthened my resolve to."

"What happened when you left?" Raskin asked. "How did the police respond?"

"Well, they were furious with me, obviously. They threatened legal action. So in return, I threatened to spill the beans in court about my experiences in training—how I was bullied by my instructors and fellow trainees, and that's why I was desperate to get out. They didn't like that much. Eventually we settled on a deal. I would be left alone by the authorities, but if I ever went back to the police for help, they were free to bring up all my previous offenses again."

"Mew," Raskin muttered. "That's horrible."

"Well, you wondered why I hated them so much," Lyco said with a shrug. She got up wearily and started towards the long brooms in the corner of the room that they cleaned with.

"Hang on though," Raskin said. "This Shadow. Why is he so dangerous, again? Because he knows how you feel about fighting?"

"That's right," Lyco said, turning her head. "Not just that, though. He…"

She suddenly broke off into a volley of furious curses.

"W-what is it?" Raskin asked, bemused.

"I forgot!" Lyco said. "It's not just that Shadow has one of the most senior military positions in Deepden. But him, personally. It's no wonder he climbed the ranks so fast—he's a zoroark!"

Raskin and Sid looked at her blankly.

"He can make illusions!"

Raskin still didn't understand. But Sid murmured, "I thought that was a myth…"

"They probably tell you that," Lyco said. "But it's very real. He can make himself look like anyone he knows the appearance of. Do I need to spell out how dangerous that is? Anyone, anyone we know could be Shadow in disguise!"

Suddenly, the panic in her words did hit Raskin. "What are we supposed to do, then?" he spluttered.

Lyco shook her mane. "I know he can't keep up illusions while in a fight. Something to do with it not working with physical contact. But no one fights here until they're already inside, so…"

The three of them pondered for a moment. Raskin scratched his ear; Sid rubbed his paws together.

"Why don't we just tackle everyone when they arrive?" Raskin asked.

Lyco shot him a look. "How is that going to work?"

"Uh… make it a kind of greeting?"

Sid brightened. "We could say it's a way of proving your commitment to the Den! Don't wanna get tackled? Then Fight Den ain't for you."

Lyco frowned. "I'm not sure everyone will want to get tackled immediately. I know that espurr won't.

"Maybe not a tackle," Raskin agreed. "A mutual headbutt? That might go down better."

Lyco considered for a moment. "It would probably be effective," she admitted. "Even so, we'll have to be vigilant. Make sure—"

There came a sudden rumbling from upstairs, and Steela's angry eyes appeared in the hatch above them.

"Just because you're allowed to keep your fighting club down here doesn't mean you can have a sleepover too," she barked. "It's almost midnight already! Clean up and get out."

She slammed the hatch shut. Lyco gave them another tired look and moved towards the brooms. "We'll discuss this further tomorrow," she said.

Raskin had no reason to argue—the night had exhausted him. As he started sweeping fur, pieces of scales and other debris into the middle of the arena, though, he couldn't help dwelling on what Lyco had said. Why had she been so reluctant to tell them about her past before now? None of it seemed particularly bad in his eyes. It wasn't like she had murdered someone or burnt down the President's offices.

Perhaps she felt they wouldn't trust her if they had known she was formerly of the police. But Raskin had no doubt that whatever feelings she had had in the past were gone now. If she was undercover with the police, they would have been arrested long ago. She would also be an astounding actor.

He suddenly remembered something she had told him when they had first started training. She had learnt to fight from her parents, she said, who took her to Oldden to do it in secret. He had assumed that her parents had also taught Lyco the anti-police values she was bound so strongly to now.

But that didn't match up with her story, where she had initially been infatuated with the thought of police work. Could she have gone against her parents' wishes? It seemed unlikely.

"Lyco," he began, "I wondered—"

But the lycanroc had already left, leaving a hurriedly swept pile of dust behind for them.

****​

Shadow took his usual seat at the far end of the meeting room table. He liked that it let him see all the other police commanders at once—he felt more in control of matters. There was also the fact that none of the commanders would want to sit next to him, but he didn't care about that.

The commanders met biweekly in this room to discuss supposedly important matters. It was usually a snooze-fest of new procedures or upcoming meetings, but this time Shadow had an agenda.

"It's been two weeks since the President briefed us," he began, immediately drawing looks from the 'mon around him. "Have any of you been able to uncover more about secret fighting organisations?"

The commanders exchanged looks, a few of them appearing to hide smiles. Shadow gritted his teeth. Pompous brats.

"I certainly haven't," Nidoking said at last. "None of my increased patrols have come back with anything out of the ordinary."

"Okay," Shadow said. "What about those workplace accidents Flygon told us about? Has there been a further increase?"

"Nope," said Arcanine, performing a huge stretch against her padded chair. "They seem to have disappeared as quickly as they began. Either that, or no one's been reporting them."

"Well, have you checked up on it?" Shadow pressed.

"Tell me, Shadow," Nidoking said. "How's that lead of yours going? That lycanroc you met in… what was it, high school?"

A ripple of laughter spread through the table. Shadow clenched his fists underneath the table. "We met in police training. And she's proving difficult to pin down. Since she left the police, she seems to have wiped herself from every record we have."

"That, or she just never existed," Espeon muttered. "Perhaps you illusioned her in front of a mirror?"

"I would have thought he does that enough with Flygon," Nidoking added.

"Enough!" Shadow slammed his fist on the table, baring his teeth. That made them jump, and their laughter cease. He hid a smile of satisfaction.

"Why are none of you taking this seriously? Flygon told us this news in the strictest confidentiality—she thought it was that important. Think of what we could gain from uncovering the truth!"

The commanders exchanged looks again. "The problem, my dear," Espeon said, his eyes narrowing, "is that we have a feeling Flygon was getting all worked up over nothing. The evidence she gave us two weeks ago has dried up faster than a 'saur in the heat. No pokémon appearing out of breath in the streets. No workplace accidents. No unusual activity. What are we supposed to do about a case that doesn't exist?"

Shadow decided not to challenge them further. His frustration was partly down to his own investigations in the past fortnight. He had had just as little luck as the other commanders. He'd hoped this meeting would give them all something fresh to go on.

But is it any wonder we found nothing, he thought, as Nidoking started jabbering about something else unimportant, given the orders Flygon gave us? 'Be cautious.' 'Don't let the public start asking questions.' Why don't we just go in hard and sort out these wannabe rebels properly?

He did feel some grudging respect for the pokémon caught up in this, if Flygon's premonitions were true. It was bold, reckless even, opposing the police on a matter so hard-line as fighting.

He felt a kind of pity for them, too. Only police officers could fight; that was how it was, and how it had to be. Deepden would be chaos otherwise. These pokémon surely knew that. So why even try? Perhaps they were budding police officers who had failed the entrance exam, and just wanted to feel like they could still be who they wanted to.

He stewed on the little information he had. By the time the meeting had been adjourned, he had devised a new plan of action. Investigate those workplace accidents again. Question the pokémon involved—properly this time, not just to tick some regulatory boxes. Find answers, or failing that, at least some kind of lead.

But more than anything, he thought, stepping out into the hallway of the commanders' floor, I need to press Sergio to find out where that stupid—

"Commander Shadow?"

Shadow spun around. As if by magic, there was Sergio Ambipom, a wad of papers held in one of the computer scientist's tails.

"I think we've made a breakthrough, sir," Sergio said, smiling nervously. "We think your lycanroc has started living under a different name. That's why she had almost vanished from the records."

Shadow smiled. That made sense. "Do you have an address?"

"Yes, sir." Sergio nodded vigorously. "Perhaps if you come with me, we'll fill you in…"

****​

Raskin stood tensed, watching Lyco intently. The lycanroc crouched low, a small quarry of rocks surrounding her.

A small crowd of pokémon watched them spar. It was quiet enough in the early evenings at the Entei for them to train here now, which made life easier.

Raskin detected a slight ripple in the rock circle, which told him what was about to happen. It was invisible to the untrained eye—and might still be invisible had Lyco not let him know the secret—but when he was in combat and focusing his Energy, it sharpened his senses ever so slightly.

He dove to the side as the rocks flew forwards. A couple punched his side, but there was no time to wince. As Lyco ran at him, he brought up a paw covered with a murky, fog-like darkness. He swung it at Lyco, the dark Energy slicing her chest, and she grunted in pain.

She brought her fist down and slammed it into his head, shoving him backwards. It was denser than a limb had any right to be—she must have used some of her own rock Energy. Raskin grunted, kicking his legs upwards as Lyco tried to jump on him. They tussled on the ground for a few moments, Raskin fighting to manoeuvre his head far enough away from her. When at last Lyco hesitated, Raskin opened his mouth, needing a moment to prepare, then bit down on her thigh.

This time Lyco let out a yelp. She shoved him away with significantly less force than her punch, though it was still firm.

"That's… that's enough," she said, panting. "We'll call it a draw."

She offered a paw to him, the accepted etiquette for ending a fight. He took it, and the pokémon around them gave a smattering of applause. Given they weren't allowed to make much noise even if they had wanted to, Raskin checked the 'mon's faces too. They looked pleased, and a few even impressed. It gave him a warm glow in his chest.

He and Lyco stepped out of the arena together—even at this hour, there was no shortage of pokémon wanting a fight—and sat down on their usual crate at the back. A couple of 'mon had expressed their displeasure at only Fight Den's organisers having something chair-like to sit on, despite the cushions dotted around the edges of the room. Lyco had just shrugged. Any more would take up space and be a possible hazard.

"Raskin," Lyco said to him, a formal tint to her voice. "I think our training might be finished. There's not much more I can do for you."

Raskin could hardly believe his ears. "R-really?" he said.

Lyco snorted. "Don't sound so surprised. I can hardly manage one spar with you before needing a rest. I was always going to be limited by my condition."

Raskin's smile faded. "Oh. But… you could still help me out, couldn't you? I feel like…" He fiddled with his paws, unsure what to say. "I've enjoyed our training. I feel like I've learned so much."

"I think you have," Lyco said. She considered for a moment. "I can tell you if you've majorly fucked something up. But from what I can see, you're an Energy specialist more than a physical attacker like me. And I don't know much about dark-type attacks—no more than you, anyway. The best thing you can do now is just keep fighting."

Raskin nodded. Even though he was back 'in' amongst the pokémon of Fight Den, he didn't take such an active role as Sid. Perhaps he should change that.

"Actually, there is one other thing," Lyco said. "About your tail."

Raskin looked down at his tail, curled slightly around his leg. The black hairs at the end were longer than usual. "Huh. I forgot to shave it."

"So you do shave it," Lyco said, disapproval dripping from her voice.

Raskin looked up at her, bemused. "Yes? What's wrong with that?"

"Stop doing it."

"…What? Why?"

Lyco threw her arms up in exasperation. "Do you want to be intimidating?"

"I guess… yes? Yes."

"Then don't wilfully shorten parts of yourself that are designed to be!" She looked down at the tail, narrowing her eyes. "It must grow pretty long, right, if you're shaving it just to keep it above your feet?"

"Yes, it does," Raskin said grumpily. "It gets covered in dust and is a ballache to clean."

"Nonsense," Lyco scoffed. "Just grow it out. Why does it exist at all if you keep cutting it off?"

Raskin wanted to argue further—Lyco just didn't understand his troubles, with that speck of fluff on her back that she called a tail—but then he spotted Tyler at the bottom of the stairs, meeting his gaze. Tyler had agreed to take him and Sid to the building site of the 'new' Fight Den. It was two weeks into construction now, and Tyler was one of the only 'mon that knew where the place was—he had originally told them about it.

"I'll see you later," he said to Lyco, hurrying off to the nidoran before she could say, 'where do you think you're going?'

Tyler greeted him with a large grin. "Evenin', Wussky."

Wonderful, Raskin thought. A new nickname. "Remember that we're the ones paying you," he remarked. "Have you got cover for upstairs?"

"Ya, the shiny zangoose guy is on it," Tyler said. "You ready to go? Smoky's waiting."

"Let's do it."

They climbed the steps and knocked on the door of the hatch. Luis opened it up, smiled at them, then sat back on the single chair in the little hallway.

The 'shiny zangoose guy', Raskin thought in amusement. Despite Tyler working for them now and earning money, through the same job as Luis, he still liked to think of himself as the dirtiest, scruffiest 'mon in the room. At least his old scent was significantly more bearable since he had gotten access to clean water.

"We should be back in no longer than an hour," Raskin explained to Luis. "Thanks for helping us out."

Luis gave him a casual salute. "Anytime, brother."

Once they found Sid, who was fiddling impatiently at the nearest table to the door, Tyler led them out of the White Entei.

There was much to talk about, but these days they barely spoke a word if they weren't inside their apartment or the Entei. So Raskin and Sid walked behind Tyler in silence, following the nidoran through several tight alleyways and sparsely populated streets until he stopped suddenly.

"This is it," Tyler said, looking at the ground beneath his feet.

Raskin eyed it suspiciously. "A… hidden manhole cover?" he said. It looked like the ones he saw scattered throughout the city, only this plate seemed deliberately camouflaged, the same grey shade of concrete as the path surrounding. If it wasn't for the faint circular marks around the edges, he would have missed it for certain.

"Sure's what it looks like, huh?" Tyler said with a grin. "But here."

He had a quick look around them, then bent down and jammed one set of claws into the tiny gap around the plate. With a rusty squeak, the plate moved a few inches, just enough for their bodies to slip into. Tyler gestured for the two of them to go. "It ain't too deep," he reassured.

It was still deeper than what Raskin expected. He let out an involuntary 'yip' as he landed on a cold, hard surface.

He sniffed instinctively, then wrinkled his muzzle; it reminded him of the White Entei's hidden passage. Tyler had muttered something about this being part of a discontinued sewage plant. Raskin was glad it was only discontinued.

He scooted forwards so Sid could follow him down, then looked out ahead. It was pitch black.

Or… was it? Raskin squinted. There were definitely no lights in the distance. Yet something in his gut told him otherwise. Or… maybe…

Suddenly getting an idea, Raskin focused his Energy, imagining Lyco was standing opposite him in this tunnel, claws raised. The darkness dissolved into a sort of greyed out picture, like the ones that appeared in newspapers. It wasn't like seeing in daylight, but it was still… seeing.

A thump sounded behind him. Sid scrambled to his feet, rubbing the back of his head. Then his head and rear flame spots burst into life, almost blinding Raskin with the sudden light. He winced, looking away.

It was remarkable how quickly Sid's control of his flame spots had progressed. Before Fight Den, he had never been able to light them up intentionally—it only happened for a brief second when he was startled, or excited, or another sudden emotion. Now, he could turn them on and off like a lamp.

"That's better," Sid said breezily, looking around. His gaze froze on Raskin. "Whoa, dude! Your pupils have gotten huge! What's going on?"

Raskin assumed that something in his appearance would have changed. He found it faintly amusing that this new ability only worked in places where he couldn't look back at himself. "I think I can see in the dark now," he said.

"You… can?" Sid's face screwed up. "Since when?"

"I'm guessing it's related to the Energy I've been learning to channel. Maybe it's a dark-type thing?" Raskin paused, then nearly smacked his face with a paw. "Dark-type. Of course we can see in the dark."

"Huh. Awesome," Sid said, as Tyler landed rather more respectably on four legs, while simultaneously managing to squeeze the slate shut above him. "Makes you wonder why we pay so much for lighting, eh? I can just do it myself, and you don't even need it at all."

Tyler seemed a little disgruntled that both of the 'mon he was guiding could see better than him. He ended up sticking as closely to Sid as possible without risking his front horn getting singed.

"How did you ever discover this place?" Raskin asked after a while. They had trudged down several long, narrow corridors. There was occasionally a turning where two tunnels met, but Tyler chose their path without hesitation. Otherwise, the route was featureless.

Tyler laughed harshly. "Accidently. Shopkeeper was chasin' me down the street one time. Can't remember why. I saw one o' these suspicious looking covers and thought, hey, I ain't gonna outrun this dude anyhow. Got lucky that it actually opened."

"And you just… stumbled around in the dark?" Raskin frowned.

"I can see a little bit," Tyler grumbled. "So yeah, I kept exploring. Not like I had anything better to be doing. Found tons of different manholes leading to different parts of the city. And they all led to this place."

The tunnel suddenly turned sharply downhill, then it opened out at the bottom. And there, Raskin could hardly believe his eyes.

It wasn't a room but a cavern. A huge one. Greater than he could have wished for in his wildest dreams. He could see at least three arenas fitting in here, as well as everything else they had talked about wistfully—lounge areas, training areas, medical areas. Sure, there were big chunks of metal littering the ground, and the smell was still undesirable, but once it had all been cleaned, then… Raskin couldn't stop himself grinning.

Sid whistled. "Wow! Looks a lot better than two weeks ago. Smells a lot better, too."

Raskin turned to Tyler. "You told us about this location, didn't you?"

"Yeah." Tyler narrowed his eyes. "What, ya don't like it? Bit late for that, mate."

Raskin almost laughed. "Tyler, I love it! This will be perfect. And you say there are multiple tunnels to enter from?"

"Tha's right," the nidoran replied. He pointed behind them. "There's a crossroads a little way up where it all meets. Haven't explored most of the tunnels in a long time, though."

"That's okay," Raskin said. "Maybe we could create a map of access points. That should make it easily accessible."

They moved towards the side of the room. The timburr and machop builders, who were joined by a riolu and combusken, were busy filling in a long dip in the ground.

"Who are these guys?" Raskin asked Sid as they neared.

"Beck wasn't too happy with the amount of work that needed doing here," Sid explained, pointing to the timburr. "Said unless they had a couple more hands, there was no chance of it getting finished in four weeks."

Four weeks was Lyco's ambitious timeline. They had two to go.

As he saw more of the cavern, Raskin could see what Beck had meant. As well as the metal, the ground was sharply uneven in places and piled high with rubble at others.

He frowned at Sid. "Do we have the money to pay two extra sets of wages?"

"Sure, we'll find it," Sid said with a wave of a paw, then raised it to the builders. "Evenin' fellas! How's the work going?"

The timburr, Beck, wiped his brow and grimaced. "I've never done anything like this before. It's a challenge."

"But a worthy challenge, right?" Sid said.

"Oh, totally," the machop replied with a grin. "Fight Den is gonna be off the charts once it moves here. I can't wait."

Beck nodded, a little less eagerly. "We'll get it done," he said firmly.

Sid gave Raskin a look which said, "See? There's nothing to worry about, Rasky."

"Hey, Sid, do your flame trick for us?" the riolu said, in a high-pitched voice.

Sid smiled, scratching his chin. "I suppose I could…"

Raskin frowned at him. "Flame trick?"

"Just something I've been working on," Sid said, with a mischievous smile. "I ain't used it in battle yet. Still figuring it out."

Sid walked a few metres away from their group, turned side-on to them, then lit his flame sacs as bright as they could go. He took a few steps before suddenly breaking into a sprint, flames dancing wildly on his back. Then, he began breathing fire out of his mouth, and almost in the same motion leaped forwards into a somersault. The multiple flames engulfed him entirely, moving so fast that he became a red-and-white blur.

Sid landed a moment later. For a moment there was a track of fire left in the air behind him, before it sizzled and vanished. He looked back at the group, his flame sacs still lit, wearing a smile that was wide even by his standards.

When he asked Raskin what he thought, at first the nickit could only gape at him.

"You're a marvel, Sid," Raskin said. "How do you learn this stuff?"

Sid shrugged. "Doesn't feel like learning. I just do what feels right."

Raskin shook his head in amazement. "Well then, just… keep being right, won't you?"

****​

They had only been back at the Entei for a matter of minutes before a pokémon crashed clumsily down the basement stairs, throwing open the door. It was a growlithe—Raskin knew him as Finn, one of Luis's friends. The growlithe immediately looked to the back crates, where he and Lyco were sat, and scrambled through the throng of bodies around the arena, where a ralts and sneasel fought, until reaching the crates.

"The police came to my apartment," he said, breathless.

Raskin's ears shot up, and Lyco suddenly lurched forwards. "They did?" she hissed. "What did they want?"

"It was… about here!" Finn spluttered. "I think they wanted me because of what happened at work a few weeks ago, but that was such a minor thing and no one seemed to care at the time and it's not like they could ever prove anything since no one actually saw—"

"Slow down, Finn," Raskin said, detecting a glare from Lyco even as he said it. He ignored her. "We'll listen to you. Firstly, what happened at work?"

The growlithe nodded, taking a few deep breaths. "A few days after you first opened up, I had an accident there. I had only just started practising breathing fire. Something made me jump, then a jet of it just came out, and… kinda set a load of boxes alight. Luckily there was an extinguisher close by so nothing was seriously damaged."

"That's what the police asked you about?"

Finn nodded. "It was so sudden. This officer, once he checked who I was, immediately started asking 'have you been engaging in any fights recently?' I told him no, of course, but then he asked if I knew of anyone who was doing these fights, or any place where they were happening, and… obviously I said no as well, but…!"

Raskin exchanged looks with Lyco. This is bad, her eyes said.

"Did anything happen after that?" Raskin said.

Finn dragged his paws anxiously. "No… though the officer said they'll be monitoring me for a little while. I don't know exactly what that means, but—"

"Why would you come here, then?!" Lyco exploded. "How brain-dead are you!"

The room suddenly quietened. Even the ralts and sneasel in the arena stopped wrestling with each other to look at the crates. Lyco glared back at them. "What?" she snapped. "Carry on!"

The ralts and sneasel looked back at each other. They both hesitated a moment, then the sneasel lunged a paw forwards and the fight resumed.

Finn looked up at Lyco. The poor 'mon was practically quivering. "I thought you needed to know," he murmured.

"You were right," Raskin said, putting a reassuring paw on Finn's shoulder. He gave Lyco a glare, but her expression remained stony. "This information might be very important, Finn. Thanks for telling us. But for now, you should stay away from here. Maybe even go to other pubs. If the police track you and it leads them here, it could be game over for us. You understand that?"

Finn nodded obediently.

"Did you tell Steela about this?" Lyco said.

Finn shook his head. Raskin was relieved, but not surprised; they would already know about it if Steela did.

As the growlithe shuffled away, Raskin turned to Lyco, who was now looking irritably over the room. At least everyone had stopped looking at them.

"Why did you have to shout at him?" Raskin said.

Lyco blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Finn, Lyco. The poor guy was petrified of you."

"Oh…" Lyco shrugged. "Like I said, it was foolish to come straight here."

Raskin bristled at her nonchalance. "That's not good enough," he insisted. "You're always doing things like this. Can't you ever be nice to people? Or at least a bit more understanding? What is there to lose?"

He fully expected Lyco to snap back at him in typical style. So, it was to his immense surprise that her face softened as she turned to him, and she sighed.

"I'm nervous, Raskin. Incredibly nervous. Everything we've worked for still feels like it's balancing on a knife edge. Politeness is not at the front of my mind."

Raskin smiled. She was right about that. "If it helps, I'm virtually always nervous," he said.

"Oh, I know that," Lyco said with a smirk. "I've been trying to knock it out of you for weeks already."

"Well then, maybe I should help with your nervousness, too," he suggested.

Lyco looked dubiously at him. "If you have any ideas, I'm welcome to hearing them."

Raskin spotted a spearow perched on someone's shoulders in the crowd. It was Willow, a delivery 'mon at a nearby post office. She had volunteered to deliver letters for them directly, and even though she charged a small commission, it was well-worth it to avoid going through the government-owned postal service.

"We need to inform everyone about what happened to Finn," he said. "What should we tell them?"

"Well, we should assume that the police will be thorough," Lyco answered. "I don't know if there's been similar accidents to the one Finn mentioned, but if there are others, those people will get questioned too."

Raskin nodded. "So just tell anyone involved in an accident to stay away from here? Even if they haven't been questioned yet?"

"Yeah." Lyco scratched her mane. "However, if everyone just tells the officers that they have no idea about Fight Den, like Finn did, the police might get even more suspicious of them. Maybe we could create some false rumours."

"Direct the police somewhere else, you mean? Isn't that a bit risky?"

"Everything we do is risky," Lyco said. "It should buy us more time, at the very least. More time to get Fight Den 2.0 finished." She paused to glance at the arena, smiling thinly. "If we can reach that point… then things will really get started."

 

[DragonD]

Hello there!
Happy to deliver my review of your great story, so let's start from the beginning:

there were few sounds Raskin could imagine that were as dissonant and demonic as his alarm.

That, of course, was why it was exactly what he needed. Less focus on the tiresomeness of weekday existence, more focus on silencing the damned sound before he broke his clock.

Waking up is something common and easy to overlook, yet it's not bad as a starting point as long as you make it so it helps to weave your story rather than just being an entry at the start of it. And that's exactly the purpose it fulfills as it becomes an additional reason to explain Raskin's reasoning in the future. So well done!

The nickit slid out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen-living room, reaching up with his hind legs to flick on the light.

Slid is a good word for getting out of bed. However, in this scenario, it may not be the best. You are describing a quadrupedal character that needs to get on their feet parting from an actual bed (not a thatch or straw bed). If you picture the action in your head, you may notice that where a bipedal creature does the "slipping" action to get in a better position to stand up, someone that moves in four legs would find themselves crawling because of how their body structure is built, to not count how claws and such would easily get stuck in the bed's tissue. Is much more practical for them to directly stand on all fours, or even try to spin out of the bed (as long as they don't fall in the process).

“Sid?” Raskin called cautiously. The walls in the apartment were thin, so they could hear each other from practically anywhere.

Here is the first possible continuity problem I can notice. Raskin's alarm had just rung, and the noise was described as little less than demonic. Since it's mentioned that sounds travel easily across the building, it's a bit surprising that Sid didn't wake up because of it, but reacted with a call from the other. "Called cautiously" implies that Raskin spoke in a low voice, and he didn't knock on the door, so his presence would probably be harder to notice than the alarm. (then again, the "dissonant and demonic" can be just the nickit's usual reaction to waking up like that)

Then the quilava burst out, eyes bleary yet wide-open at once.

This sentence gets the meaning through, but the second part is a bit hard to read, another approach could be: "His eyes were wide open, yet one could see they were still bleary because of just having woken up" or in the opposite order.

He squealed. A second later his head reemerged, dripping wet. He shook himself like a meowth in the rain.

Raskin winced. “Why do you do this to yourself? That must be so painful…”

This scene was pretty good itself, but there is a problem later on; It's not the presence of something, but the lack of it. This accurate action and description have no effect outside of those two lines of conversation, and the second one is even a bit disconnected from the first, Sid has just shaken himself while soaking wet, but apparently, not a single water particle goes towards Raskin. In the case the nickit is not bothered, it's also a good idea to mention his lack of reaction to being splashed as an indicator that he is actually more worried about Sid's painful way of clearing his mind than getting wet himself.
This is something that I kept noticing many other times while reading; you have a good eye for small events but tend to not give them any effect outside the little section they had been introduced at. This may keep the reader focused on the plot, but the world feels just a little less alive in exchange.

“Right, see ya later. Make sure you’re around to let me in this evening, yeah?”

“You mean you still haven’t found your key-?”

The door slammed before he could finish. I guess not.

This is seemingly just a small, funny interaction. But when you look in retrospective it can show that either there is already a good level of trust between the two main characters, or that Sid is much more worried about arriving late to his job than about being left outside his house and having to wait for a long time before getting to eat and sleep. Maybe it is both, either way, it does a good job to build up the events later on.

He showered quickly, dried himself even quicker, then, noticing that his wet tail had been dripping copiously on the floor, gave it a quick trimming with his electric razor.-

...

-With that done, he grabbed his wallet and keys from his room and stuffed them in his bag.

The transition here is a little harsh because the way it's told makes it feel like the shower is in the living room, and that would be rather impractical. And this extends to the rest of the home. It feels a bit like the characters are teleporting around since there is little mention of their movement, jumping right into the actions. This was understandable with Sid since pretty much everything he did was in the same room, from grabbing the food to having that small encounter with the water tap.

The description of Raskin trimming his tail is a great detail, but a tail is a rather big appendage (especially that of a nickit) so if he is using an electric razor on a tail wet enough to be dripping like that, it could be a little troublesome to get rid of all the fur in the shower floor, a little quip to that would be enough of a detail. And it would also deal at the same time with the problem of any fur shedding that could have happened naturally.

the first thing he saw upon leaving his apartment was a familiar skitty across the street, who caught his eye at once. Raskin groaned inwardly.

“Raskin! Fancy seeing you here!” she said, cheerfully trotting over. Like him, she wore a small bag clipped around her middle.

Raskin forced a smile. “Morning, Locki.” She was a new face at work, and their manager had chosen Raskin to help show her the ropes for the first couple of weeks. Having gotten to know the skitty fairly well, Raskin was sure that the manager had done it purely to irritate him.

Here is a contrast between Locki's cheerful approach and Raskin's harsh reaction to it. It probably doesn't have to be with her alone, but with Raskin hating the changes on his job in general and Locki making it even harder for him, poor guy.

The other option was air taxis. A few lean flying pokémon were already waiting at the stop, ruffling their wings impatiently. These would take a ‘mon straight to anywhere in the city they pleased, much quicker than the predestined routes the ground rides followed. The downside was mostly the extortionate price. It would also be freezing in the wrong weather, Raskin imagined, though the air was pleasantly warm today.

Even as Raskin waited at the stop, an expertly groomed grovyle with an elaborately patterned scarf strolled up and spoke with a waiting staravia. After dropping a few coins into the pouch around the flyer’s neck, the grovyle climbed onto its back and soared away, rising above most of the surrounding apartment blocks and businesses in just a couple of wing beats.

Rich show-off, Raskin thought.

A plain description of the system followed by quick addressing of Raskin's thoughts at that moment. Gives the reader both the neutral point of view to help them understand how it works, before proceeding to keep building Raskin's mindset as preparation for the events and decisions later that day. Good job!

By the time three arcanine and a tropius arrived moments later

This here feels a little redundant, since both describe the passage of time, but I can get why you used both. It would be possible to make the sentence feel better without removing either if you tweak the description a bit; "Their rides -three arcanine and a tropius- arrived just a moment later, but by the time they did, more people had made their way to the transport stop, and there were now more pokémon waiting with Raskin than he was used to.

You may have noticed I cut out a little part, we'll get to that soon

His first thought was of how much low-brow banter Locki would give him once he arrived at work, then of what basic computer function she would forget today. Determined to fight that nightmare off, he mused over a logic puzzle that had been frustrating him the previous night. If four machamp can chop down four trees in four seconds, how many can twelve machamp chop down in twelve seconds? He wouldn’t check the answer until he was certain he had it right; and it definitely couldn’t be twelve.

At least one benefit of the rides were that they stopped practically on the doorstep of Pokémon Bank, his workplace.

This here is a good description regarding Raskin's thoughts, but it could be a good idea to introduce some additional content in the middle . As you can see, the transition to the bank feels almost instant. The trip itself has not been described yet, and as a reader I can think of various questions:
-Do the transport pokémon have any kind of seat where the passengers can be or do they have to balance on their backs?
-What is the size of the pokémon traveling with Raskin? One could assume that this particular service would be mostly used for smaller pokémon. Since some big´n´slow ones like snorlax would probably require a ride on their own, if not a completely different transport method. And in case they do travel with the smaller mons, it would be another annoyance on the nitckit's day.
-How fast do their rides travel? Does their movement cause a consistent bumping that may annoy Raskin further and prevent him from focusing on his riddle? or is it rather smooth and easy to forget about?
-How bad is the city's traffic? If there is some signalization, they may have to stop every few blocks, and that could give you the chance to describe how smaller pokémon can find a chance to slip through in openings the bigger pokes couldn't possibly use. This could be one of the reasons why Locki arrived before Raskin (aside from her being just fast I guess). As a counterpoint, there could also be a description of how smaller pokémon have to pause when a bigger one (aka the transport workers or similar) goes by, and that would further make Raskin think he made the right choice getting a ride. Also, in this very same line, you can introduce your idea of before; having the transport pokémon be on a higher priority or simply imposing more because of going in packs would further help to get the idea through.

He stepped between the stone columns marking the bank’s entrance, paws clicking lightly on the marble floor.

The word "clicking" may not be the best here, especially taking into account that nickit steps naturally produce little sound.

Before the computers, the bank had calculated everything by hand. It was repetitive, hand-aching work, yes, and it was almost as low-paying as Sid’s job on the farm—but it was at least a little stimulating. And he was good at maths; better than any of his co-workers, for sure.

Here is shown the main reason that triggers Raskin's negative reactions regarding his job. He felt stimulated at first because he had been doing something he was good at, but now he felt like he was wasting his life on his own words. This also explains why Raskin was relatively quick doing math, later on, it is literally his job to keep track of numbers.

However, there is the riddle about the machamps he had been given and he was thinking about during his trip to the bank. It seems like Raskin is good with plain numbers, but when rather than being shown a clear equation, he is confronted by rather abstract concepts, he suffers a little more to get a result. Wonder if this will be used more later.

Athletics was a strange entity to him. It was tremendously popular throughout all of Deepden, and he understood why. There was usually at least one of each pokémon type competing per event, giving everyone someone to cheer on, even if the same types tended to dominate the events suiting them. The throwing events had genuinely astounding feats of strength, while running-focused ones often went right to wire, leaving emotions on a knife-edge between euphoria and despair.

Even so, whenever he watched it, either with Sid or work colleagues, he felt like it was… incomplete, somehow. There was something crucial missing. That, or he just always inexplicably found his eyes drawn to the stewards scattered all around the stands, florescent-jacketed and grim-faced. Whatever it was, he could never get very excited about the athletics.

Not only serves to introduce the athletics but also establishes Raskin's feelings towards them and the lack of something to spark his attention, which is used later on when he is watching the streetfight. Good job with the timing of the events!

Though Raskin hesitated, nobody else seemed to, so he eventually followed the crowd, leaning his front paws on the window to get a better view, since most of his co-workers were bigger than him.

Here is a mention of Raskin's size, however, after it, the focus shifts completely to the fight, with only a thought from the nickit. This is valid, however, given that all of his coworkers are also trying to get a good view, he may have been accidentally shoved due to his small frame. And if not, then there could be a mention of his coworkers being careful not to do so.

But the raticate only took one more step forward before a sudden, horizontal blast of water pierced the air, slamming into the tawny ‘mon’s chest. The raticate stumbled backwards, mouth open in shock, before falling over onto his back.

A huge empoleon stepped out from behind the ivysaur, wearing the white scarf and badge of a police officer. It wiped its mouth with a vast flipper. “Stay right where you are, or you’ll get it too,” she warned the ivysaur, who unsurprisingly did as she ordered.

The empoleon looked around the gathered crowd dimly. “Show’s over, folks. Get back to work. You two.” She pointed to the ivysaur, then the raticate, who was slowly coming to. “Come with me.”

No one complained as she led them away, for the empoleon had only done the right thing. Still, Raskin could sense the air of deflation around the street even from where he stood.

The fight is pretty detailed and escalates well. However the way is shown makes the reader imagine it at ground level, but Raskin is watching from the top floor of a building instead. You narrate the story following Raskin and only Raskin, so you could introduce a few elements regarding his position, like being able to see where the water attack came from before the people down in the square, since he has an advantage regarding that due to the spot he has. Or how do the colors of both pokémon attack's contrast with that of the ground Also trying to follow the officer and the other two with his eyes before they get lost in the crowd/leave the street"

Regarding him perfectly hearing what they are saying... I just have to guess his nickit ears are sensitive enough to pick up the noise from that distance.

I guess a possible fight is just a distraction more than anything, he thought. Something to interrupt the predictable monotony of everyday life?

Mood

“After the warnings we were given, I might be more careful next time,” he said. “But if there had been no police? Why not. It could hit some sense into him.”

Already setting a precedent for the law enforcement to be rather harsh I see. And addressing that it's not only that people to see a fight, but they want to be part in one.

The combination of talking to the ivysaur and stopping to eat the sweet roll, which was delicious, made him miss his usual ride home, and the next one was running late. The air was significantly colder than it had been this morning. By the time he finally got off the ride and crossed the street to his flat, it was almost seven o’clock, and he felt weary.

May be worth mentioning the nightlife in the city, since there are several nocturnal pokémon. that could explain why there is transport at those hours (maybe 24-hour service?)

They had tried following a recipe a few nights ago for a ‘herby vegetable stew’. The recipe had served four, but even though they halved all the ingredients, it had been far too much for the two of them. It turned out that it had said ‘four large pokémon’, which made Raskin even more exasperated. Who decided what size was large?

Nice detail right here, "large" varies from relatively big pokémon like the Arcanine from earlier, who is mostly large due to Raskin's perspective, to wailords. So the lack of an actual scale is rather triggering.

Sid breathed heavily. “Nothing in particular,” he said, his gaze flitting unsuccessfully between Raskin and the floor. “I just… I’m struggling, Rasky.”

“How so? With work, or…?”

“Everything.” Sid’s voice cracked. “I slave away at this job six days a week. I come home exhausted, I want to go out but I need to save money as well, and keep myself fresh. But the thought of saving myself just for another day of picking berries is… oh, I hate it!”

He got up from the table and began pacing, rubbing his paws up and down his face. “I don’t know if I can keep this up, Rasky. I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life in a greenhouse, but… what else is there? What can I do?”

Worth to note that until that point, Raskin had only felt curiosity at most. But he began truly considering the idea when he noticed his friend was also struggling with his daily life.

That thought made Raskin pause; sent shivers down his spine. He remembered the stories he’d heard about life in the cells, of pokémon that picked fights with every newcomer, pokémon that could crush his little body in the snap of the wrist.

He recalled seeing his father in the visitors room, watching the hope slowly being crushed from him with each successive visit he made. “No matter what happens,” Raskin had said, “I’ll be here for you when you’re released. I’ll make something of my life. I promise.”

Reinforces the idea given by the Bulbasaur talk earlier, while showing why Raskin is so scared of being caught doing something illegal and why he goes above and beyond the c.all of duty to make sure no one finds out.

Things worth noting:

Sid apparently earns around 200-250 poke a week, basing on the talk about the fight income they had at the end of the chapter. And a small cinnamon roll costs half poke. Having into account that "small" probably refers to food made according to the pokémon size, let's say it's the rough equivalent of a normal-sized roll. On the other side, the pokémon transport service costs "a few poke" meaning that a good deal of Raskin's money may end up being used in going to and back from his job. Though, unlike Sid's earnings, we don't know how much Raskin is paid.

Locki apparently didn't go check what the noise was, staying in her desk instead. So she is probably the only mon in the office that doesn't know much about the fighters, aside from the sounds of their encounter.

Since Raskin trims his tail, he no longer erases his paw prints, wonder if someone might track him via those in the future.

If four machamp can chop down four trees in four seconds, how many can twelve machamp chop down in twelve seconds?

Assuming each machamp chops down their respective tree without having to do anything with those of the others, then a machamp cuts down a tree in four seconds. If we are given twelve machamp, in four seconds they cut down twelve trees, and since there are now twelve seconds, they can do the triple as that (assuming they waste no time moving from tree to tree). Let's see if Raskin arrives to the same answer of if I am wrong. Fun riddle either way.

Well, that concludes my review on your first chapter, hope you like it

 

[cynsh]

Chapter 12: Heating Up

Shadow checked the address he had written down one more time, then tossed the slip into a gutter. He shook himself as rain poured relentlessly from the sky. It was unfortunate that clothes and accessories compromised his illusions. The only object he’d manage to master working into them was his waist bag.

He rounded a corner where a small lake of rainwater had pooled on the downslope of the road. The lack of streetlights almost made him step right into a pile of foul-smelling rubbish that had been left on the pavement. He screwed his face up in disgust. In an ideal world, he could use a few of his grunts for a menial mission like this. But this specific task, he knew, was one only he could perform. His officers seemed to be finding new techniques by the day to be utterly useless.

He found the correct apartment tower, climbed several flights of stairs, and finally reached the door he was looking for. He pulled out a small, foldable mirror from his bag, checking his appearance. Tonight, he would be an electabuzz.

There was no doorbell, so he knocked vigorously on the windowless door. After a moment, it opened just a crack, and a lycanroc peered from behind the latch. “Hello?” she said, bleary-eyed and fur ruffled.

“Good evening Madam,” Shadow said, grinning triumphantly within his disguise. Finally, I’ve found you. “There’s been reports of electricity outages on your block. Blown fuses and all sorts.”

The lycanroc frowned. “I haven’t had any problems.”

“Regardless, I’ve been ordered to check your fuse box in case of a routing problem. Won’t take a minute.”

The ‘mon’s frown deepened. “Couldn’t you have done this before curfew?”

“Been a busy day, madam,” Shadow said cheerfully, wiping his brow for good measure. “Apologies for the inconvenience.”

The lycanroc sighed, then finally unlocked the latch. “I’ll show you where the box is.”

Shadow stepped inside. He wiped his wet feet at the door instinctively, before realising there was no mat.

In fact, there wasn’t much of anything. The apartment was even smaller than it looked from the outside. The door led straight into a living room, fitting only a coffee table and a small sofa, and a tiny kitchen was at the side of the room, almost as an afterthought. Even though there looked to be very little of value in the house, it was a mess: bins overflowed, and dust and cobwebs gathered in corners.

What a life, Shadow thought, shaking his head mentally. You could have been one of us. You could have been great.

One thing he couldn’t see amidst all the rubbish, however, were glass bottles. Shadow remembered how often the lycanroc had turned to whiskey in her later time at the academy. If he was banking on finding one thing inside this house—particularly given what a mess it was—it would be alcohol. Curious.

“Here,” the lycanroc said, opening a hatch in the wall next to the kitchen. Shadow closed the door behind him, and as the lycanroc still looked away, he let his illusion drop. He was excited to see her reaction. Both because it could give her away, and even if it didn’t… he just wanted to see it.

The lycanroc turned. And yelped.

She scrambled backwards for a moment, then seemed to think better of it. She gripped the side of the wall next to her tightly, paws trembling. She looked up at him, though couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Shadow,” she gasped.

Shadow grinned widely back. “It’s been a while, Alexia.”

Alexia slowly managed to distance herself from the wall. She straightened up. “What… what are you doing here?” she demanded. “Haven’t you got better things to do than break into my house in the dead of night?”

“Well…” Shadow spread his arms out. “As a matter of fact, I—or perhaps we—have been looking for you for some time. It’s been very hard to track you down, what with this new identity you’ve created. What is it they call you? Lyco? Very… imaginative choice.”

Alexia scowled at him, her arms folded.

“What do you get up to these days, anyway?” Shadow asked. He looked around the room deliberately. “I dare say it doesn’t pay too well…”

“Why should you care about how much I earn?” Alexia spat.

Shadow chuckled. “Good point. I didn’t spend this much time finding you just so we could have a catch up… fun as that may be. No, I’m inclined to believe you’ve been up to some illegal business, Alexia. And as a police commander, I don’t take too kindly to that.”

He watched the lycanroc’s eyes for a reaction, but there was little. It was hard to see when she still didn’t meet his gaze. She still fears me, Shadow thought, feeling a satisfied glow. Pathetic.

“What kind of business?” she said.

“Fighting,” Shadow said, spitting the word like it was a mouthful of sand. “Illegal fighting. Someone in this city is determined to run their own little enterprise, right under the police’s muzzles.”

“Really?” Alexia said idly. “Who would do that?”

“Interesting you should ask.” Shadow narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m not here to mess you around, Alexia. I know you’re involved in this. This… club is the kind of thing you always wanted. I should just arrest you right now.”

Alexia shook her head at him. “You’re making blind assumptions based on no evidence. You’re a commander now, right? I don’t think it would please the President to know one of her most trusted men was wasting his time past curfew, in a dingy apartment, arresting someone for no reason—all while pretending to be an electrician—”

“How I conduct my business is none of Flygon’s concern,” Shadow snapped. “Besides, my skills are unrivalled by anyone in this city.”

“Oh, really?” Alexia said. “What good has that done for you?”

Shadow squinted at her. “I’m the youngest commander in police history.”

“And does that make you happy?” she went on. “Or do you still resent everyone around you for not being as good as you are? Do they still resent you? It was always clear how lonely you were. Even though you tried hiding it by being this tough guy who trained relentlessly, and picked on anyone who wasn’t—”

“ENOUGH!” Shadow bellowed. He looked madly for an item to break—a glass on the coffee table, that would do—and smashed it on the ground between them. Alexia leapt back, her paws starting to shake again.

“I hold all the power here, Alexia,” Shadow snarled. “The government holds the power. Whatever puny protest you think you can make with this fighting club, it means nothing. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to keep it secret; I will track it down. And when I do, my men will rip through you so absolutely that no pokémon will ever dare question the fighting ban again.”

Alexia stood a few paces back, eyes around Shadow’s midriff.

“You can’t even bear looking at me, can you?” Shadow said. “Maybe this will do the trick.”

He drew his Dark energy into a sizzling ball and hurled it into Alexia. She screamed, the attack smashing her into the far apartment wall. She finally turned her eyes to his, wide and bloodshot, her mouth open, panting.

“Tell me what you know,” Shadow said, “and no one will get hurt. We’ll disband your little posse and nothing more will come of it.”

Alexia said nothing, jaw fixed resolutely. Shadow strode forward and picked her up by the back of her mane. He pressed his head against hers, pitiful and wincing. “But if you want to play this game, Alexia, then boy, I am ready to play. I think about our last fight a lot, you know. You still have that syndrome, don’t you? Energy Fatigue?”

Once again, Alexia didn’t answer.

Shadow took that as a yes. He growled. “A pity. I should have left you in a wheelchair.”

Suddenly there were movements outside. Someone banged on the door. Shadow heard a muffled, “Are you okay in there?”

He swore, spitting at Alexia’s feet. Idiot! I haven’t learnt a damned thing from her yet!

No… that wasn’t true. Alexia’s reaction to seeing him was too shocked, too terrified—he must have been on her mind already. Which was proof, if Shadow needed any, that she was mixed up in the fighting business.

What else? The lack of alcohol. She evidently still drank somewhere. Maybe at wherever this fighting club took place? He remembered seeing at least one pub in the list of possible locations they’d drawn up...

The door banged a second time. I can figure this out later.

Since leaving through the door would be awkward, he moved to the window just above the wall Alexia had hit. He swung it open and made his fur the colour of dusk, just in case anyone was watching.

“I’m sure we’ll meet again soon,” he said.

Just as he leapt off, he felt a sharp pain in his ankle. When he made the ten-foot landing, the impact made him wince. He activated his night vision and glanced at his foot. Three short gashes had been made in the side. They bled a little, but would heal quickly.

So you do have a little fight in you, Shadow thought, smiling. Still, it means nothing. You won’t defy me again, Alexia. I will succeed. And when I do, I’ll be one step closer to Flygon’s side.



Raskin shivered as he and Sid walked through the dark backstreets towards the White Entei. A chill had seeped into the air lately. Even though Raskin didn’t like the way his new thick, overgrown tail dragged over the ground, it did keep the cold off his back.

The pub was quiet when they entered—as usual, for Fight Den was yet to open. Steela stopped polishing her glass and looked to them at once, beckoning them over. Raskin did so, confused.

“Lyco is downstairs,” Steela told them. “Has been since the morning.”

“What?!” Raskin exclaimed in a half-whisper. “She has work, doesn’t she?”

Steela threw her paws up. “That’s what I thought. She came in through the sewer door. Won’t tell me a thing about what’s going on.”

Raskin exchanged an uneasy glance with Sid. “We’ll speak to her,” he said.

“You’d better,” Steela grumbled, going back to polishing her counter.

The basement lights were switched off as they entered. Flipping them revealed Lyco curled up on some cushions. If she had been sleeping, the sight of them roused her instantly.

“Oh, thank god you’re here,” she said hoarsely. “Did anything happen to you on the journey? Anything bad?”

“Uh… no,” Raskin said. “What happened to you?”

“Shadow found me,” Lyco said. “He knows where I live.”

Raskin and Sid paused, exchanging looks. Sid scratched his head. “That means…?”

“He suspects me, idiot!” Lyco snapped. “Now he knows where I am, there’s a high chance he’s got someone assigned to watch me right now.”

“Then how did you get here?” Raskin asked. And… why did it take him this long to find you, with all the police resources at his disposal? He sensed that wasn’t the most pressing question to ask.

“I went out in the morning, when the streets were heaving. Kept doubling back and following the biggest crowds. Got in here through the sewer tunnels. I think if they’d tracked me successfully, they would have broken in here by now. No sense in hiding anywhere else, right?”

Raskin nodded slowly. “So you’re safe in here,” he said. “But… only here.”

“Exactly,” Lyco said. “Sid, do you know how close New Fight Den is to being finished?”

Sid blinked. “Uh, at least a week going by my last check.”

“Well, go and see them again,” Lyco snapped. “Ask if they can do it faster. We need to move there as quickly as possible. I can live down there instead—it’ll be nicer than in here.”

“But, Lyco!” Raskin exclaimed. “You’re planning to just abandon your house? What about everything you own?”

Lyco snorted. “None of that matters. Here.” She rummaged inside her battered rucksack—the only possession she still had, it seemed—and pulled out a heavy pouch, tossing it to Sid. “If those builders aren’t having it, use this as a sweetener. It’s half of my savings.”

Sid looked at the bag between his paws, eyes wide with astonishment. “A-Are you sure?” he said.

“Yes!” Lyco said. “Now get on with it!”

----

Sid returned about an hour later. By now, Luis had arrived to guard the basement, a drowzee was on psychic barrier duty, and a handful of pokémon were crowded around the arena. Raskin and Lyco sat by the basement steps, in charge of exchanging the mutual headbutts that guarded them against Shadow.

Lyco had been reluctant to even open Fight Den tonight, but Raskin and Sid had talked her around. Even if Lyco herself was in hiding, there was no reason to believe that Fight Den was in any more danger than it had been the day before. Raskin was still a little nervous, though.

“What happened?” Lyco demanded, the moment Sid reappeared. The bag of her money was gone.

“Uh… do you want the good news or the bad news?” Sid asked.

“I want all the goddamn news, you stupid—!”

“Mew, alright!” Sid yelped, waving his arms frantically. “Well. They can’t get it ready for tomorrow. Even if they worked nonstop, Beck said it would be impossible. But they can open it the day after. So that’s what we agreed. I… hope that works?”

Lyco paused, then nodded slowly. “Two days. Okay. Let’s make an announcement once more people arrive.”

“We’ve told Steela and Luis on the door to be on particularly high alert,” Raskin told Sid. “That should go for us, too.”

Sid suddenly looked crestfallen. “Does that mean I can’t fight tonight?”

“Well—no, but… just when you’re not, keep an eye out, okay?”

“Hey!” Lyco barked suddenly, at a ‘mon entering the basement. “Come back! You don’t get out of a headbutt!”

“I already headbutted Raskin!” It was Aster, the ivysaur. He looked confused, and slightly scared, by Lyco’s outrage.

“I didn’t see it,” Lyco snapped. She jabbed a paw at Aster. “I’m not joking! Come here!”

“My head hurts!” Aster protested. “I’m not even here to fight, I just wanted to watch…”

“Lyco, it is him,” Raskin said, nudging her. “We butted just a few minutes ago.”

“Oh?” Lyco turned on him. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Lyco, I have to headbutt everyone! I can’t be lying!”

Lyco glared at him a moment longer, then back to Aster. Finally, she exhaled and took a step back. “Right. Sorry.”

“Maybe you should sit down for a bit,” Sid said. “You’ve had a pretty crazy day, right?”

He took her arm, and Raskin winced. But to his surprise, Lyco didn’t flinch. Sid led her over to the back crates with barely a complaint.

“Er… sorry about that,” Raskin said to Aster, who was regarding them all with looks of bemusement.

Aster nodded uncertainly. “Is… she okay?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean…uh… ” Raskin put his paws to his head, taking a heavy breath. “Honestly? I’m afraid to ask that.”

----

Shadow stood outside the building with Entei murals. The paint was starting to peel on a few of them, and even on the ones that weren’t, the once-bright colours had merged into a sorry jumble of beige.

An ageing, shoddy pub. Of all the links to fighting organisations his team had investigated over the past week—and there were a lot, since almost every ‘mon they interviewed seemed to have different rumours—this looked like a relatively plausible one.

He was wearing a minccino form, one of the forms he fell back on often. No one would ever suspect a minccino. Its fur was a perfectly innocuous grey; it was small, but not too small; and those bright eyes of theirs could never hurt a fly. Or so people thought.

He walked inside the pub. It should have been approaching peak business time, yet several tables were empty. And it was quiet, too. Sure, there were a couple of noisy groups, but the other occupied tables seemed subdued. Tired, even.

Well, people might just be tired, he reasoned. Maybe there’s a lot of shitty jobs in this area.

He bought a magoberry juice and sat down on a stool at the counter, overlooking most of the room. The raboot serving at the bar regarded him carefully, but didn’t make conversation. Even with a minccino’s innocent fur, people might get suspicious if Shadow very overtly started looking around. Fortunately, he could blend in with his behaviour just as well as his skin.

“I couldn’t help noticing the murals on your windows outside,” he said to the raboot, who was washing glasses. “How long have they been there?”

The raboot scoffed. “As long as it’s been called the White Entei, pal. Which goes beyond me and my parents, I’m pretty sure.”

“Ah,” Shadow said, glancing around the room again. “This is the family business?”

“Sure is,” the raboot said, shooting him a smile. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Just then, a nidoran came up to the bar beside Shadow. The zoroark blinked. He’d kept one eye on the door and had definitely not seen a nidoran enter. He could have sworn that there were no purple heads in the room when he’d come in, either.

“Evenin’, Tyler,” Steela said cordially. “What’s it gonna be?”

“Another HounBrew, please,” Tyler said, beaming back at her.

So he’s a regular, Shadow noted, as Steela poured the beer. He looked at the nidoran’s eyes. He looked suggestible. Maybe even stupid. And his fur was poorly washed. All the signs of a pokémon without much money. Perhaps an easy target.

It would have been much easier for Shadow to keep an eye on the pub from outside; there, he could blend into the shadows to the point where he was virtually invisible. But the horrible murals made it impossible to get a good view of the interior. So, he kept sipping at his juice, keeping Tyler close to his vision. He noticed the nidoran’s gaze kept darting away, towards something in the corner of the pub. Shadow frowned, unable to see what he meant—then a pair of pokémon suddenly appeared from the corner. A small room was hidden there, he realised. He didn’t recall seeing these two pokemon before, either.

As Steela’s attention was fixed on a couple of fire-types at the bar, Shadow slipped away. He pondered how to approach the hidden corner, then stopped himself. It was hardly hidden at all. Maybe it was just this easy to gain access to a criminal den Flygon was so worried over? He smirked to himself, not letting it show on the minccino.

Besides, even if this went wrong, he could always come back as someone else.

The corner opened out into a small room, with a wooden hatch in the centre and a zangoose sitting next to it, a clipboard in his paws.

He glanced up the approaching Shadow. “Sorry mate,” he said. “Downstairs bar is invite only.”

“Oh, I see,” Shadow said politely. “And… how does one get invited?”

The zangoose frowned at him. “I’m… not at liberty to say,” he said slowly. “The folks here value their privacy.”

Sure they do, Shadow thought. But a private bar in a shabby old pub like this? I don’t think so.

Still, he couldn’t be certain that there was a fighting society in that room. It could easily have been a prostitution ring, or an extortion racket. It would be easy to just flash his police badge and demand access to the room, but he didn’t know the level of this group’s secrecy—they might have a quick cover up should he muscle his way in. Besides, that was the boring, easy route. He wanted to see what was actually happening, when these pokémon had their guards down.

He nodded politely at the zangoose and left, then slipped out of the pub altogether. Finding a spot in the shadows of the street where no one was looking, he changed his disguise. Studies had proven that pokémon held an unconscious bias towards others of their type, and even more so towards their own species. Shadow had a good grasp of virtually all the species in Deepden, but he opted for nidorino above its lesser nidoran form—larger species were better at getting what they wanted.

He checked his appearance in his mirror, just to be sure. As well as the nidorino itself, he illusioned a bag onto its side, the way quadrupeds wore them. This way, if he pulled something from his real bag, he could make it appear to come from this one, rather than it suddenly appearing out of thin air.

Satisfied, he entered the White Entei again, bought another drink, this time a HounBrew like Tyler’s, and headed to the nidoran’s table.

The moment he put his glass on the table, Tyler’s head shot up. They widened at first, as if in surprise, then narrowed. “Do I know ya?” he asked.

Shadow laughed. “Doubt it, mate. I’m new to the area. Just lookin’ for some company.”

“Uh… right,” Tyler said, shifting uncertainly. He had another glance at the corner room, then moved to get up. “Well, sorry, I was actually just goin’—”

“Wait!” Shadow said. He withdrew a twenty poké note from his bag and laid it on the table, careful to make sure only Tyler could see it. “I actually was hoping to get downstairs here. You have access to the downstairs, don’t you? I saw you leave that way.”

Tyler stared at the note in astonishment. He looked back at Shadow, as if to ask, Are you offering? Shadow nodded, smiling.

“Right, downstairs,” Tyler said slowly. “I’m allowed down there, yeah.”

“Well, I don’t seem allowed,” Shadow said. “I hoped you might know how to rectify that.”

Tyler frowned. “’Cause ya don’t know anyone,” he said. “No connections.”

“What if you said I was your brother, would that work? They trust you, don’t they?”

Tyler thought for a moment. “It probably would, yeah. But… I’m not sure I should…”

“Look, I’m not here to cause any trouble,” Shadow said quickly, seeing the nidoran’s suspicions rising. “I just heard about what you do here, and want to experience it myself.” He withdrew a wad of notes from his bag and held them out to Tyler. “I can pay whatever it takes. Name your price.”

Tyler, it seemed, had never seen this much money in his life. “Uh… two hundred?” he squeaked.

Shadow snorted to himself. Idiot.

“Sure thing,” he said. He carefully peeled off the notes, rolled them up and put them in a front pocket of his bag. He gestured towards the corner room. “Shall we?”

Tyler started getting up, then frowned. “Pay half of it now,” he said. “So I know you ain’t swindlin’.”

Shadow smiled, both inwardly and outwardly. Maybe you’re not so foolish. “Sure,” he agreed. He passed over five of the notes, and Tyler stuffed them hurriedly into his own satchel, as if the money would disappear if he wasn’t fast enough.

They approached the zangoose in the small room again. He nodded to Tyler, but frowned at Shadow. “Who’s this?” he said.

“My brother,” Tyler said. “He hasn’t been here before.”

“I work six night shifts a week,” Shadow added, shrugging helplessly. “Shit sucks.”

The zangoose eyed him carefully. “I’m not to let anyone new in,” he said. “Even friends or relatives.”

This guy’s got more sense to him, Shadow noted. Offering money won’t be enough.

“Is there any point in keeping me out when I’m already here?” he said. “I already know what’s down there. And I can pay, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not gonna cause any disruption. Just want to check it out, y’know?”

The zangoose examined him for a long moment, perhaps weighing him up. Shadow put on his most innocent, polite face.

“Alright,” the zangoose said grudgingly. “I’ll have to examine your bags, then.”

As Tyler happily passed his over, Shadow felt a rare spike of panic. The zangoose couldn’t examine his bag—it didn’t exist. He could try and align the nidorino’s body with his own in such a way that passing his illusioned bag and his real bag overlapped seamlessly—but even then, his ID was in his bag!

There was a much simpler solution… if he could make it work.

“I’ll just leave mine at the bar,” he said to the zangoose, already half-turning away.

The zangoose looked puzzled. “Uh… sure,” he said slowly.

Shadow walked off to where he knew Tyler and the zangoose couldn’t see him. He checked around the room that he wasn’t being watched, then made the bag’s illusion disappear.

He returned to the corner, smiling innocently at the zangoose. Finally, the ‘mon lifted up the hatch on the floor. It revealed a set of stairs leading down. Bafflingly, a drowzee stood at the top of them, and he stared right up at them, saying nothing.

The zangoose waved an impatient paw at Shadow and Tyler. “Go on,” he said. “Now!”

At the same time, as he spoke, Shadow suddenly heard noises coming from below. It wasn’t anything riotous—he could only pick up snippets of conversation and the pattering of limbs—but it had appeared out of nowhere.

Confused, he did as the zangoose said, hopping down with Tyler onto the stair just below the drowzee. Then the psychic-mon tensed, and a pale, translucent screen appeared between him and the open hatch. When the hatch closed, it didn’t make a sound.

They’re using protect barriers to block out noise, Shadow thought, hiding a smirk. Not bad, civvies. But if they’re so keen to block out noise, that must mean...

He followed Tyler down the stairs. He only had the smallest glimpse at what lay inside the room beyond, before a quilava stood in front of them. His back flames were fully ignited, but the quilava didn’t seem at all riled up. Shadow had never seen a civvy fire-type have that kind of control.

Without speaking a word to either of them, the quilava turned to Tyler, and the two of them crouched opposite each other. They lunged forwards simultaneously, butting heads.

What? Shadow thought, baffled. Before he could think any more, the quilava turned his way. “You have to do that too,” he said helpfully.

“A headbutt?” Shadow said.

“That’s right!” the quilava beamed. “Gotta make sure everyone’s in the spirit of things. So, come on!”

If there was any doubt left in Shadow’s mind, this eliminated it. He was in the right place. But I can’t headbutt, he thought, mind racing. Not without my illusion slipping. I don’t understand—what kind of freaks would demand—

Just then, he spotted a shape right at the back of the room, sitting on a strange, tall box. That overgrown mane and dusty fur was unmistakable—particularly as he’d been up close to it the previous night. Alexia. Alexia! She knew I’d come here, the bastard.

“Um… hold on a moment,” Shadow said. He turned his head away for a second, and while the quilava couldn’t see his face, he made the horn on his disguise’s head just a little longer and sharper. He didn’t have time to check if it was convincing.

After what seemed like an eternity, he swivelled back to the quilava. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Thought I heard something behind me.”

“Right…” the quilava said, raising an eyebrow. “So, the headbutt?”

“Ah! Well, my horn here might be a hazard.” Shadow pointed to it. “Wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

The quilava frowned, evidently noticing the horn for the first time. “I see…”

“How about I headbutt you?” Shadow suggested. “I’ll go with the side of my head instead of the front. That way you shouldn’t get hurt.”

He knew his logic was tenuous at best. It wasn’t as if the quilava had headbutted Tyler—they had headbutted each other. There was no reason why the quilava couldn’t lead the headbutt anyway and merely target Shadow’s side.

But, miraculously, the quilava didn’t bring up either of these points. He nodded. “Okay, sure! Go ahead.”

They don’t know, Shadow thought, hiding a maniacal grin. Alexia must have told them that I lose my disguise when someone hits me… but the same isn’t true if I hit them. Foolish, foolish civvies.

The quilava kept his eyes on Shadow for the entire duration of the headbutt. The possibility that this nidorino could have been disguised didn’t seem to have even entered his mind, however. The moment they broke away, he asked, “So, you’re Tyler’s brother?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” Shadow said.

“So uh, what gives? You seem a bit more… well-mannered than him, y’know?”

Shadow smirked. “He had a rough upbringing. Best not to bring it up when he’s around. It was a difficult time.”

“Oh, okay.” The quilava turned away from him and looked to the centre of the room. Shadow did the same, finally getting a bearing of the place.

His initial thought was: This is it?

There was just one fighting space in the room—it was too small to fit any more. About twenty pokémon were scattered around the two in the arena. A few had Shifted, but most were still hatch forms, and even those who were bigger had soft muscles and blunt claws, compared to officers at least. In his early years at the police, Shadow remembered walking into the training grounds and feeling in awe of the pokémon around him. Not just in their size, but how they carried themselves: their poise, their efficiency.

But these pokémon? There was nothing scary about any of them.

Currently fighting were a nickit and growlithe. The growlithe did most of the attacking, though his fire-infused swings were haphazard at best. The nickit kept his distance, waiting for openings to use his dark Energy attacks. Shadow smirked at the memory of his own skill being at this level. It seemed impossibly far away now.

Still, the nickit was at least fighting to a strategy. A lot of ‘mon at the police were too boneheaded to acquire one of those.

The strategy paid off, as the growlithe tired faster, left more gaps in his defences, and the nickit finished him off with a final dark ball to the midriff.

As they slapped paws and left the arena, Shadow was surprised to see the quilava he had headbutted step into their place, along with a marshtomp who might have been the biggest ‘mon in the room.

The crowd around them suddenly hushed for the first time. The nickit stood up on his hind legs. “Alright, everyone!” he cried. “This is the fight you’ve been waiting for. Two of our strongest fighters, and a rivalry that just won’t stop running… Sid against Musa! Get ready!”

Shadow pushed himself into a dark corner of the room, between two torches—the flaming woodblocks were the only mildly impressive feature of the place he had seen. He dimmed the colour of the nidorino’s hide so it was practically invisible, then, from his hiding place, he watched the show unfold.

----

From the beginning of Fight Den, Sid had always won more fights than he’d lost. But in recent weeks his superiority had grown more and more pronounced, and now he had to pick his fights against the pokémon who would actually give him a challenge. There weren’t many of those.

Aster Ivysaur was supremely skilled with his vines, but one blast from Sid’s flames and he was almost out. Aeris Espurr used psychic attacks in ways no one else could match, but Sid’s resilience to them had grown, and he attacked too ferociously for Aeris to block consistently.

There was only one pokémon that he would class among the elites who he hadn’t defeated yet: Musa Marshtomp. It was obvious why, as Musa had reminded him with glee. Sid’s fire barely scalded his thick, rubbery skin; Musa’s water attacks burned his own fur like it was molten lava; and Musa was stronger and simply harder to move than anyone Sid had faced.

But if anything, those disadvantages just made Sid more determined. He would triumph, even against all odds. He was the strongest pokémon in Fight Den, and tonight he would prove it.

“It’s funny,” Raskin had remarked to him a few days ago. “I don’t think of you as a very competitive guy. Except maybe at beer pong. But you’ve really gotten into fighting.”

Sid laughed. “I… just love it, Rasky,” he said. “If there’s one thing in life that I want to perfect right now, it’s fighting.” He grinned, giving the nickit a nudge. “Fortunately, that’s about the only thing we can do right now.”

Musa suddenly charged forwards and spat a jet of water at Sid. He leapt away just in time, the water splashing the crowd behind him instead. Musa had almost caught him by surprise. But now he’ll be vulnerable.

Sid leapt back up, flared his fire sacs and lunged at Musa. The marshtomp took the tackle full in the chest with a grunt. He barely moved an inch. Sid followed up with a fiery punch, which Musa blocked with an arm. While the quilava was unbalanced, Musa fired a globule of thick mud into his face.

“AGHHH!” Sid cried. The only thing he hated more than a water attack was Musa’s mud shots. Mew knows where the stuff even came from—Sid would never look at Musa’s species in the same way again. It stung his fur, stuck to him like wet glue, and stank worse than Tyler had three weeks ago. He cleared enough of it from his face to be able to see, tried to shut out the stinging, and went in for another attack.

The fight dragged on, as the two exchanged attacks but couldn’t land decisive blows. Sid felt his limbs grow heavier, his reactions slow, but he knew that Musa was fighting the same battle. Finally, he managed to tackle Musa to the ground. He charged in to follow-up, but the marshtomp gave him a desperate, four-limbed shove before he could, almost throwing him out of the arena.

Then Musa followed up, tackling Sid hard when he was off-balance and firing a water jet into his face. Sid managed to push him backwards, creating a gap between them in the ring.

The quilava wobbled on his four feet. If he tried standing on two, he would fall straight back down. His fur was soaking and stinging from the wet mud that caked it. His ears rang from how many times he and Musa had collided. As water dripped down into his eyes, even his vision was failing.

But I can’t give in, he told himself. I am the strongest fighter. This is who I am. Who I’m meant to be!

He searched for every last bit of fire left in his body. When he had gathered all that he could, he gritted his teeth and pushed it into his fire sacs, bursting them alight once more.

He expected that to tire him all over again, but something strange happened instead. The nexus of fire energy he had just exhausted suddenly didn’t seem exhausted at all. There was more of it within him—a lot more.

Where did this come from? He was used to finding an extra reserve of energy—they called him ‘Second-Wind Sid’ for a reason—but this was something greater. The fire swelled within him, growing every second, begging to be released.

Sid looked up at Musa. The marshtomp had just raised himself back to full height, but looked weak and vulnerable. Sid knew that this was his chance, maybe the best he’d ever get. Mew was aligning the stars for him.

He started moving, concentrating on channelling this new energy. The moment he lunged at Musa, fire exploded around his body. He couldn’t see a thing through it, couldn’t hear, couldn’t even feel if his attack had landed.

None of that mattered though, because he realised suddenly exactly what was happening. It hadn’t been so explosive the first time, all those years ago, but he recognised the feelings and embraced them.

His torso almost doubled in size; limbs bulged with new muscle; fire sacs merged around his neck. His teeth grew sharper, eyes narrowed, and fur thickened. Finally, the haze that had surrounded him—it couldn’t be fire, he realised now—faded away.

His first thought was Musa. The marshtomp was on the floor, outside of the arena, being held up by two others. He looked small. Everyone looked small. They were all looking up at him with wide eyes and open mouths.

“The winner…” Sid swivelled around as Raskin’s voice failed him. The nickit’s eyes lit up when they met his. “The winner is Sid! And more importantly, he’s the first ever Fight Den pokémon to Shift!”

All of the rules about keeping noise down in the basement were forgotten. With a joyous roar, every pokémon Sid could see ran towards him, jumping and tackling him like he was an athletics champion. When their weight pushed him over, they piled on top of him on the ground.

When Sid was at last given a moment’s respite, he looked immediately for Raskin. The nickit was seemingly the only pokémon who hadn’t moved from his spot. He had tears in his eyes, and seeing that almost had the same effect on Sid.

“I didn’t know quilava even had another form,” Raskin said.

Sid laughed, then cleared his throat. Mew, even his laughter was at a lower pitch. “I never thought it was worth talking about before,” he said.

“Look at you,” Raskin said, shaking his head. “Look at you. God… imagine how much food I’ll have to carry now…”

Emotion overcame Sid. He practically swept the nickit into his paws. “This only happened because of you, Rasky,” he sniffed. “Without your idea, Fight Den would never have been born. It’s… it’s made me happier than I thought I would ever be.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Raskin chuckled. “But you’re the one who’s made Fight Den their own. You’re an inspiration to these pokémon.”

When Sid broke off their hug, Lyco had appeared in front of him. Even she was smiling.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You deserve this.”

“Oh, come here,” Sid said, and wrapped his arms around her before she could wriggle away. Raskin was laughing hysterically at the sight of them.

Sid was far too distracted in that moment to notice a flicker of moment by the torches next to the entrance. But, if he had looked, he would have seen a nidorino dart up the stairs, his face expressionless, as if he had never been there at all.

 

[cynsh]

Hi everyone. Unfortunately, these next two chapters are, in all likelihood, going to be the last you see of Fighting Nature. After publishing chapter 12 back in March, I hit a big wall with my plans for the story. I took some time off, and realised that writing this is not something I feel very passionate about anymore. I'm working on other pursuits that simply excite me much more. There is the possibility that in the future I have a change of heart, and come back to writing. But I wouldn't expect anything.

With this announcement, I'm uploading the last two chapters I wrote before things dried up. Unfortunately they don't close the story in any sort of way, but I worked hard on them and thought they were better off being published than staying in Google Docs purgatory forever.

Special thanks to my beta readers Talgoran and Shadow of Antioch, for their endless enthusiasm and willingness to help. Also, thanks to Flyg0n and Demi for being the story's biggest fans. And thanks to anyone else reading, for sticking around this long. Sorry that it ended this way.

CW: this chapter contains (OOC spoiler)

Spoiler

major character death

Chapter 13: Your Last Fight

Raskin reached for his usual box of Rice Snaps and started pouring. Amidst the maelstrom of fighting, organising, arguing and, after last night, incredible events that had consumed his last ten weeks or so, it was nice to have a few constants in life. And as far as cereal went, Rice Snaps remained undefeated.

As he ate, there was suddenly a thump from Sid’s bedroom. “Sid?” Raskin called through a mouthful of Snaps. “Oo awight?”

Sid emerged a moment later, rubbing his head with a paw. “The door is too low,” he mumbled, pointing.

Raskin saw what he meant and winced. “Did you sleep well, at least?”

Sid shrugged, getting out some bread and jam. “Okay, I guess. Kinda too long for the bed now, so I had to curl up a little bit. But I can get used to that.”

“We could always…” Raskin paused as Sid came to sit opposite him. Two enormous hunks of bread had been cut off. When Sid sat down, Raskin found himself facing a thick, cream-coloured neck.

“Something wrong?” Sid said from the skies. He leant over so that his face was inches away from Raskin’s, despite his torso remaining in the chair.

“Stop that!” Raskin said, waving his front paws. “It’s too weird.”

Sid chortled, moving back to his side of the table. “It’s gonna be hard to resist standing on tip-toes in front of everyone we meet now.”

“Please don’t,” Raskin said jokingly. Then, considering the idea again, his smile faded. “Actually, you are going to be pretty conspicuous now, Sid. There aren’t many typh… oonin?”

“Typhlosion.”

“There aren’t many typhlosion around Deepden, especially not amongst the regular civilians like us. We don’t want to be catching everyone’s eye.”

“Damn, you’re right,” Sid said. “That sucks. I wish I could flare my flame sacs all the time.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that at Fight Den,” Raskin pointed out.

Sid nodded, scratching his head. “Oh, I know!” he said. “I’ll walk on all-fours.”

Raskin raised an eyebrow. “You can still do that?”

“Sure! I think so…”

Indeed, Sid’s body seemed just as well-proportioned for four-legged movement than his previous forms had. Raskin was intrigued by how similar this typhlosion was, in many ways, to the quilava of old. A lot of pokémon seemed to sprout wings, or extra limbs, or just change shape entirely after Shifting. But Typhlosion was still unmistakeably Sid.

“This is convenient, actually,” Sid said from the ground. “This way, you’ll still be able to have normal conversations with me.”

He looked at Raskin gleefully, who sighed. “Wonderful.”

Sid sat back at the table and tore into one of his chunks of bread. “Excited for the leaving party tonight?” he asked.

“It’s not much of a party, is it?” Raskin said. “I was thinking more about the welcoming party for tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Sid said. “Well, I was planning on letting a few more people in tonight. All the loyal regulars, at least. It would be a disservice to the White Entei if we didn’t, y’know?”

Raskin frowned. “Lyco won’t be happy with that…”

“She’s not happy with anything,” Sid scoffed. “We’ll be fine. I asked Aeris and Zena to both be on Psychic duty, so even if we make more noise than usual, it’ll get blocked.”

Raskin didn’t feel like arguing. Deep down, he shared Sid’s sentiment; the White Entei deserved a proper send-off. They didn’t have much money to spare given all the guards and builders they were now employing, but they’d scrounged up enough to buy Steela a little present, as a thanks for being so accommodating of them.

Before that, however, they needed to travel through the tunnels to oversee the final preparations for New Fight Den; then check Lyco was still alive and that the Entei was still safe. Another normal day.

As they moved to the door, Raskin examined Sid’s quadrupedal body again. “You look a bit like an arcanine,” he remarked. “Hey! Maybe you could pose as a ride pokémon to be less conspicuous. It’s a win-win: you get by unnoticed, and I get free travel everywhere.”

Sid’s new eyes seemed a little more pinched than before, but they had not lost any emotion. “If you try riding me,” he said, “I will walk the entire way two-legged, waving my arms in the air, yelling, “Look at me! I’m a typhlosion! Aren’t I so conspicuous?!”



Shadow stood outside the double doors, fiddling impatiently with his mane. He had waited nearly ten minutes already. What could President Flygon possibly be doing that was so important? It wasn’t like anything properly bad ever happened in Deepden. There was a lot of huffing and puffing about health, or education, or the economy, but none of it ever seemed to matter. Not like his work.

He examined the double doors a little closer. They were made of pure, polished oak, and inset with an incredibly small, intricate pattern. Shadow couldn’t even make out what half of the shapes were. Typical. Even when someone here tried to be extravagant, they did it wrong.

The door opened a crack, and a flustered teddiursa scurried away without a backwards glance. Before Shadow could ask questions, Flygon’s voice called, “Next!”

He stepped through the doors immediately, not wanting to show any hesitation. Flygon sat at the back of the room behind a wide, mahogany desk, writing something with slow, deliberate strokes. The conference table in the middle of the room was empty. They were alone.

At first, Flygon merely kept her eyes on the paper in front of her. Shadow ground his teeth. He was on the verge of loudly clearing his throat when Flygon finally looked up at him.

“Commander Shadow,” she said with a hint of amusement. “What is it?”

“I have news regarding our meeting just over a fortnight ago,” Shadow said. “You were right: there is a fighting enterprise operating in the city’s underground. And yesterday, I managed to both locate and gain access to it.”

Flygon dropped her pen suddenly and stared at him. Shadow hid his smirk. Got your attention now, eh?

“I was starting to believe that spike of accidents had just been a coincidence,” Flygon murmured. “Excellent, most excellent… So, what is it like? Inside this place.”

“It’s nothing too threatening,” Shadow said with a shrug. “It’s down in the basement of a pub. It’s kept hidden with psychic noise barriers, and a guard turning people away as if it’s a private bar. About twenty pokémon were down there. Most of them hadn’t even Shifted.”

Flygon nodded. “I see.”

“I was planning to bring a police squad into the building,” Shadow continued. “Thirty officers. Just so we can be sure of shutting the place down. I require your permission to gather so many soldiers, however…”

“Permission granted,” Flygon said, smiling. “Do whatever it takes to put a stop to this enterprise.”

Shadow smiled back. “I hoped you would say that.”

“I am glad that at least one of my commanders did not forget what I told them,” Flygon added, nodding approvingly. “Perhaps, if you succeeded here, Shadow—which I have little doubt in—another honour might be in order?”

Shadow could hardly stop himself from grinning. This was exactly what he needed. Receiving an honour from the President granted you instant respect from colleagues and civvies alike. Those petty commanders would think twice about messing with him again. And the love of the public would only increase his future prospects.

“I won’t let you down, President,” he said nobly. “After tonight, Deepden will be free of street fighting for good.”



To Raskin’s relief, Lyco was still safe and well, as was the rest of the pub. Lyco was pleased to see them, too, particularly as they’d come through the back sewer entrance— though they had to ask Steela for a bucket and some sponges to clean off with. But it only took about five minutes for Lyco’s happiness to vanish.

“Why do we need a leaving party?” she demanded.

Sid sighed dramatically. “This will be good for you! Everyone’s been so stressed out, I thought that a look back on all the good things we’ve done would lift the mood. Right? Maybe you could do a speech! Rasky and I are both doing one.”

Lyco looked wearily between Sid and Raskin. “I take it that it’s too late to stop this now.”

“Probably!” Sid chirped.

“And you say you’ve upped the security just for tonight.”

“Sure have.”

“Well then…” Lyco sat back down on the pile of cushions that had been her home for the past two days. “Very well. Perhaps I will make a speech, just for you.”

Sid chuckled. “I knew you’d come around.” He turned to Raskin. “Steela?”

Raskin nodded, leading them upstairs. He had expected Steela to be behind the bar as she always was, but she was cleaning an empty table instead. The pub was almost empty—Sid had told Den-goers to arrive later than usual.

“Steela!” Sid called. “Could we get a couple of drinks?”

Steela scowled at them. “You’re lucky my parents ingrained such professionalism in me,” she said, trudging over to the counter. “What do you want?”

“All we would like,” Sid said, grinning, “is to say thank you.”

Steela blinked at them.

“You’ve had to put up with a lot of shit from us over the last two months,” Raskin said. “I know at times we haven’t been on the best of terms. But we want to forget all of that now. You let us use your basement all this time: Fight Den wouldn’t exist without that. And you never stopped being an amazing host to everyone. We couldn’t have achieved any of this without you.”

“Well…” Steela smiled, her eyes darting between them and the floor. “I’d say I was pretty mad that night you broke down part of the wall.”

“Oh!” Sid said. “I wanted to mention that. We’ve arranged to get the wall boarded up again. There’ll be some workers arriving on Monday. We explained the situation and paid for it all upfront, so you’ll hardly need to do a thing. It’s a little parting gift from us.”

Steela stared at them, her mouth very slightly open. “That’s…” She paused, straightening up. “That’s very kind of you. Though it’s the least I would have expected.”

Sid grinned. “We thought that too, which is why we got you something else! Here.”

Sid took a tightly rolled bundle out of his bag and passed it over. Steela eyed it suspiciously, though unrolled it anyway. It was a short, thick mat, patterned with almost the same shades of red and black as Steela’s lower half.

“It’s called a standing mat,” Raskin explained. “We figured, since you spend so much time standing where you are right now, it might be nice to do it in a bit more comfort. Try it out.”

Steela did as he said, placing the mat beneath her feet. She took a few careful steps side to side.

“This feels… nice. Really nice,” she admitted. She smiled at them. “Thank you. It’s not often I get meaningful presents from customers. Or… partners, as I suppose you’ve been.”

“I hope life gets easier for you once we’re out of your way,” Raskin said. “We’ve caused you more than enough trouble.”

Steela chuckled. “It’s been a blast, fellas.”



By eight o’clock, the basement was packed. Raskin counted at least thirty pokémon, far more than the limit of twenty that Lyco had enforced. He could see the lycanroc straining not to let her annoyances with Sid out in front of everyone.

It helped that Sid was the subject of fascination from almost everyone that arrived. He took great joy in igniting and reigniting his new, enlarged fire sac over and over. Clearly Raskin wasn’t the only one who had never seen a typhlosion before.

Finally, the time came. Sid stood on top of the back crate, grabbed his long, musical horn, and blew into it. The booming noise silenced the crowd at once.

“Welcome, rebels, to the very last Fight Den of this era!” he said. “We are extremely excited about what lies in store for the future. A few of you will have already seen New Fight Den, but for those who haven’t… let’s just say that it promises everything that this location has been restricting us to. Capacity limits? Long waits to have a fight? No space for socialising? New Fight Den will do away with it all.” He paused. “Can we get some excitement for New Fight Den?”

Lyco opened her mouth to protest, but whatever she said was immediately drowned out by the crowd. She quickly gave up.

“Before we focus on the future, though, let’s take a moment to appreciate the here and now.” Sid gestured to Raskin beside him. “Rasky and I started Fight Den on a whim. We had lost our jobs, felt pretty desperate. We certainly didn’t expect what has happened since. This place has been successful beyond our wildest dreams. But that’s only because of all of you that keep making it happen, day after day. For that, we are truly, eternally grateful.” Sid threw his arms into the air and flared his fire sacs. “And let’s keep on fighting, into New Fight Den!”

The crowd gave him another rapturous applause. Raskin had wanted to say something too, but now he couldn’t think of what could be added to Sid’s speech. It was perfect.

Then, to his surprise, Lyco stepped up beside Sid. She held up a paw for the room to quiet again.

“Rebels,” she said. “As I much as I agree with Sid’s message, I want to remind you all of something equally as important. What we are doing here fundamentally opposes one of the government’s most core policies. We’ve been lucky so far that Fight Den has never been compromised in a serious way. But that could all change in the future—even as we move to a more secure location. Fight Den is not just a fun, social event; it’s a way of showing that we are more than what the government wants us to be. Don’t ever forget that, no matter what the future holds.”

The crowd murmured, evidently unsure how to respond. Raskin wasn’t sure either. He exchanged a concerned look with Sid, and the typhlosion nodded assertively.

“Thanks Lyco!” Sid said, standing back up on the crate. “Now, we’ve kept you in suspense long enough—let’s get some fighting underway! Remember that if anyone still needs a pointer on where New Fight Den is, we’ll be around—”

He was cut off by a sudden high-pitched beeping sound. It was so out of the blue, Raskin took a second to remember what it meant. The alarm! The alarm that they had never needed to use.

It stopped quickly. But much of the room had already started muttering nervously, and everyone who wasn’t was looking imploringly at the three pokémon on the crates.

“That was Steela’s alarm,” Lyco said to them.

“What should we do?” Raskin asked. He felt stupid saying it, since they had rehearsed this situation many times. If Steela sounded the alarm, it had to be something serious. But he didn’t want to believe it.

Before Lyco or Sid could reply, a pokémon came sprinting down the basement steps. Musa, who was on guard duty.

“We need to leave right now!” he shouted. He turned behind him and said, “You too!”, as Aeris and Zena followed him into the entrance.

Raskin, Sid and Lyco leapt off the crate without a second’s more hesitation. Lyco and Raskin pushed the crate aside that concealed the hidden sewer tunnel, while Sid attempted to gather the crowd towards them.

“Nobody panic! This way, this way!” he called, unable to keep the shaking out of his voice. “Don’t go upstairs! This is the safest way out!”

“The nearest exit is to the right as you fall!” Lyco added, as the most alert pokémon in the crowd started gathering around them.

But the tunnel was small—Lyco hadn’t dared try to knock down even more stone. Even the smaller pokémon could hardly travel faster than a crawl.

Sid was finally directing the crowd with some success. It occurred to Raskin that he too could go through the tunnel and escape right now. Save himself. Standing next to the tunnel, he was already at the front of the queue.

No, he told himself furiously. You can’t. These pokémon are our responsibility. Besides, neither Sid nor Lyco looked ready to leave until everyone else was safe.

Suddenly, Raskin heard a crashing of feet above them. A moment later, the police arrived in the basement.

It was like an avalanche of monsters—twice the size of everyone else, with bulging muscles and razor-sharp teeth. At the head of them was a zoroark, whose white scarf stood out from the others, being spotted with gold. It could only be Shadow. His emerald eyes were crackling with fury.

“SEIZE THEM!” he roared, leading the charge of officers himself.

“Go, go, go!” Lyco ordered, shoving pokémon untidily into the tunnel. But they wouldn’t be fast enough, Raskin realised with horror. Maybe they would have if the room had been kept to Lyco’s capacity, but with a group this large—

“Now!” a cry came from nearby.

Aeris, Zena and three other psychics darted towards the officers at once, throwing their arms up. When Shadow lunged towards them a second later, his body bounced backwards off an invisible barrier. When two officers behind him followed, they collided with it too. A rippling wall of air stood across the whole width of the room.

Raskin stared at the psychics in wonder. This had never been planned to his knowledge. The fact that their psychic members were willing to put themselves in peril just to buy everyone else time to escape…

“Fools!” Shadow snarled. A dark ball of energy formed between his claws in an instant. The same energy as mine, Raskin thought with a jolt. But rather than throwing the ball immediately, Shadow ran to the side of the room. Then he threw the ball horizontally, almost parallel to the psychics, right through the line of their barriers. There was a slight ripping sound then, almost simultaneously, all five psychics staggered backwards in pain.

Sid scooped up Aeris and Zena in a paw each and practically dropped them into the tunnel, before rushing back to do the same for the others. The psychic distraction had only saved seconds, but it was crucial—almost everyone was through the tunnel now.

As Sid was helping the last psychic through, Shadow suddenly leapt forwards impossibly far, and jammed his claws into the typhlosion’s back, pulling him away. Sid yelped, releasing a drowzee who ran straight for the tunnel.

“Sid!” Raskin cried, as the ‘mon struggled in Shadow’s grip. Shadow punched him in the stomach with a shadow-enveloped fist, and Sid slumped forwards, gasping.

Then, Shadow made a slight nod to two pokémon standing either side of him. Before Raskin could react, a blinding light shot towards him. The white energy seemed to pierce through his fur and skin like he was nothing but a pile of bones. He let out a whimper, crumpling helplessly against the wall. An enormous pangoro—who must have had twice the muscle mass of the last pangoro he’d seen, his old boss—moved in to grab his legs and torso, though he couldn’t move them anyway.

Glancing to the side, Raskin saw that Lyco had met roughly the same fate, though her fur was dripping with water instead. However, the tunnel between them was now empty.

Shadow, still with his claws in Sid’s shoulders, whirled his head to the officers around him. “Well?” he snapped. “Is anyone going to go after them?”

A houndoom next to him frowned. “I’m… not sure many of us can fit in that hole, sir.”

Shadow snarled with frustration. “Many does not mean all! Not least you, houndoom. You, gardevoir, weavile, go! Find out where those pokémon are going! Now!”

The three pokémon, despite being evidently not enthused by this idea, hurried to the tunnel and started to squeeze inside, one by one. There were still at least a dozen officers left in the room.

“You.” Shadow jabbed a claw at the nearest pokémon to him, a golem. “Tell the officers outside to search the surrounding area for any pokémon fleeing.”

“Yes sir,” the golem said. He relayed the message into a radio, then hurried upstairs.

Shadow sighed wearily. Then he looked down at Lyco and Raskin and forced a grin. His teeth were crooked and irregular—Raskin would have flinched if he could move.

“In a strange way, I’m glad to have an audience alone with you three,” he said. “The perpetrators of this all. Alexia, who I already know well of course.” He narrowed his eyes at Raskin, who could only look back in confusion. Alexia? “You look pretty irrelevant, whoever you are. But this one here…”

Shadow yanked Sid’s head around so the typhlosion was facing him. Sid gritted his teeth back. “You’re a special one, aren’t you? Such a talented fighter. And evolving only yesterday.”

Sid’s face twisted in horror. “H-how do you know about that?”

Raskin had the same thought. Shadow was down here last night?

“Your friend, ah… Tyler,” Shadow said with a smile. “Poor chap. Easily swayed by a few notes.”

Sid’s mouth opened. Then he closed his eyes for a moment. “His brother,” he muttered. “That was you. Of course it was. That’s why I’d never seen him before…”

Shadow smirked. “As for your headbutting measures… that idea was most ingenious, I must say. If only you’d stuck to the rules, typhlosion, like I’m sure Alexia—oh, ah, Lyco told you to. But you let me take control of the headbutt. Even I was surprised that could work so easily.”

Sid said nothing. His face burned with an anger Raskin had seldom seen in all their years together. He actually looked pretty frightening, especially with his new brawn.

“It’s fun, isn’t it?” Shadow said. “Learning where exactly your carefully laid plans fell apart. Though in this case, it’s a wonder you managed to survive even this long, with a scrawny little hatchling, a bitter mess of a cripple, and a rash, flame-headed fool in charge—”

Sid suddenly roared, and his flame-spotted back simultaneously exploded with fire, blinding Raskin for a second time. He heard Shadow yelp in surprise. When the flames settled down and Raskin could see, Sid was standing up to the zoroark, out of his grip. Shadow was grimacing, the fur on both his arms charred black.

“My friends,” Sid hissed, “are worth more than you will ever be. You spineless, deceiving, evil, stupid CUNT!”

In one swift movement, he drew an enormous ball of flames into his fist and punched Shadow clean across the face. Shadow’s head jerked back and took the rest of him with it; he collapsed onto his paws, as a dislodged tooth bounced across the floor.

Immediately, two officers sprinted at Sid, both gathering crackling balls of energy in their paws.

“No!” Shadow shouted, stopping them in their tracks. “Don’t seize him just yet.” The zoroark stood up, wiping his bloody mouth. “Impressive speed, typhlosion. You caught me off-guard.”

Shadow’s face suddenly brightened. “Hey—why don’t we have a proper fight, right here? Just you and me. After all, this will be your last one… well, ever, and I know how much it means to you. Why not make it worthwhile?”

Sid hesitated, swaying on his feet a little. He kept glancing down at his paw, as if in wonder of the punch it had performed.

“It wasn’t an offer, typhlosion,” Shadow said, his smile vanishing. “I said, let’s fight.”

The zoroark’s body vanished in a wisp of black smoke; then it reappeared, crashing into Sid and throwing him to the ground.

Before Shadow could strike again, Sid blew a circle of fire around him from the floor. One of the nearest officers scrambled back in alarm. Sid slowly rose back to his feet, but continued the circle of flames, turning in circles with it, until he was barely visible behind the inferno.

Shadow scowled, though he still wore a hint of a smile. “You’ll have to do better than party tricks,” he said.

As if in response, the wall of fire suddenly parted and Sid lunged, more fire pouring from his mouth. Then there was a ripple in the air between them and Sid’s momentum slowed suddenly. His chest bounced off Shadow as if he were merely made of feathers, and all his fire dissipated into nothing.

A psychic barrier?! Raskin thought, confused. How can Shadow do that? And one so powerful…

Sid looked down at himself, confused, then swung another flaming fist at Shadow. The zoroark shimmered out of the way with lightning speed. Then, he summoned another dark ball into his paws and swept it into Sid’s side. It threw the typhlosion across the room like a ragdoll, and he crashed against the wall nearest Raskin.

“Sid!” Raskin cried despairingly, just before his captor jammed a slab of a paw over his mouth. Sid wheezed and coughed on the ground.

Shadow spat out a laugh. “Don’t think you can actually challenge me, typhlosion. It’s a few months of fighting in a dingy basement, compared to years training in the finest facilities Deepden has to offer.”

Sid looked up, and his eyes met Raskin’s.

“Give up!” Raskin said, but all that came out was muffled nonsense. He tried communicating it with his eyes alone. Please, Sid. Nothing good can come of you fighting Shadow. He just wants an excuse to hurt you!

“But I suppose you felt like a king in this place,” Shadow went on. “Surrounded by hatchlings and novices everywhere. Any half-competent amateur would.”

Sid nodded to Raskin. Understanding. Then, he turned back to Shadow and slowly got to his feet.

“You just never shut up, do you?” Sid said.

Shadow’s scoffed, sounding disbelieving. “Excuse me?”

“There was no need for any of this,” Sid said, gesturing vaguely around him. The arm movement almost made him fall over again, but he stumbled and kept his balance. “You could have taken us away as soon as we were down. Would have saved all your officers’ time. But you’re so desperate to boast and brag about how weak and foolish we are compared to you. It’s all you have to hold onto.”

Sid coughed out a laugh. “Does it keep you awake at night, knowing how despised you are, even by your own officers? How all the strength and arrogance and power in the world can never give you the most valuable things of all? Friends. Community. Happiness—"

“You have no idea what is valuable to me,” Shadow hissed through gritted teeth.

Sid grimaced, then with a sputter the flames along his shoulders burst up once more. “That’s what I thought you’d say,” he wheezed. “Shame. I guess you’ll never learn.”

Flames enveloping his body, he charged at Shadow once more and threw a fist. Shadow ducked easily away—but this time Sid was not caught off-balance. He stopped his swing midway through, swivelled and threw himself into where Shadow now stood.

The attack only made the zoroark stumble a little, but he growled with fury. He walked up to Sid and kicked him in the stomach again. This time, Sid did not move when he hit the floor.

Then, there were pawsteps from the tunnel beside Raskin, and the houndoom officer poked his head out. Raskin felt his own captor recoil slightly from the sewer's stench on the ‘mon.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the houndoom said to Shadow, “but we lost almost all of them.”

“WHAT?!” Shadow roared, with startling sudden rage. “How did you lose them?”

The houndoom scrambled the rest of the way out of the tunnel. “We saw the last of the group travelling up a manhole cover, via a ladder,” he said, his voice cracking and trembling. “We tried to follow, but they managed to delay us—you see, when your only route up is a thin, old ladder, whoever’s above you has a big advantage—”

“I didn’t ask for a surgical fucking dissection!” Shadow snapped. He took a deep, shuddering breath through his muzzle. “Did you capture anyone?”

“Just one,” the houndoom squeaked. “An ivysaur. But… he won’t say a thing.”

Raskin’s heart, having risen at this news, then felt like sinking even lower than before. Aster. Oh, you brave, brave soul…

“I don’t believe this,” Shadow muttered, pacing furiously left and right. “We had them cornered right here—every last one of them. Now, we might as well be back to square one again! After all my hard work… it’s like I’m the only one here who’s not useless!”

He paused mid-step. Then his gaze turned back to Sid. The typhlosion’s eyes were open, but barely. Shadow stomped over and yanked him up, holding him by the scruff of the neck.

“Let’s teach all these civvies a lesson,” he said. “Let’s teach them—you might have escaped us for now. You might have gotten lucky. But if you ever try and fight under the police’s noses again, this is what will happen.”

Shadow flicked the claws on one hand to the side and concentrated a crackling, purple-black Energy to their tips. Then, in one movement, he pulled back Sid’s head and sliced his claws across the typhlosion’s throat.

 

[cynsh]

This chapter contains (OOC spoiler)

Spoiler

depictions of death and death-related themes

Chapter 14: Survive

Raskin screamed.

He watched the blood pour from Sid’s neck, the typhlosion collapse onto his knees. This was a nightmare. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

“SID! SID!” He thrashed against the officer holding him and, somehow, the pangoro let him go. He ran to his friend’s side.

Sid had one paw on his throat, but it was impossible to stem the flow of blood. He looked up at Raskin. The nickit had never seen such sorrow, such anguish in a person’s eyes. Especially not from the one pokémon who was so often his shining beacon of joy and hope against this horrible world.

Sid opened his mouth. He seemed to suck in all the oxygen his body had left before saying, “I’m sorry, Rasky…”

“Sid, please! Please don’t go! Please—”

He was suddenly yanked backwards, away from Sid. But he recognised those paws—it wasn’t an officer. It was Lyco.

“Stop!” Raskin cried, still trying to look back at Sid. “Lyco—!”

In his periphery he saw the pangoro barrelling towards them, but Lyco miraculously managed to shove him away. Now they were at the tunnel. She practically hurled Raskin inside.

“Go!” she said. “If you want to live, go!”

That was enough to stir his legs into moving. He heard Lyco following after him, then she suddenly gave a howl like her fur was being ripped off.

Raskin looked back. Behind Lyco, where the tunnel entrance lay, the wall began to collapse, great chunks of rock falling over the hole they came through.

Then she was shoving him forwards again. As rocks started raining onto them he feared they might never reach the end of the tunnel, but then the ground suddenly disappeared and he hit the shallow water of the sewer with a thump.

A moment later, Lyco landed on top of him. “Sorry,” she gasped, scrambling off his back.

Raskin lifted his head out of the dirt to look at her, wincing as he picked up the sewer’s stench. “What’s happening?”

Lyco was already getting back to her feet. “I made the tunnel cave in,” she said. “It was always fragile. Now come on, we won’t have much time…”

Raskin could still hear Shadow’s muffled voice through the rocks, barking frenzied orders. He knew Lyco was right—Shadow wouldn’t let them escape this easily. But as he turned back to Lyco, she doubled over, gasping for breath.

“I’m fine,” she said, hobbling forwards again. “Just… used a lot of energy.”

Raskin looked behind him. They were moving the opposite way from the path he knew to the manhole cover. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“Wherever this path goes. Doesn’t matter as long as it’s away from them.”

“But…” Raskin trailed off. But what? He didn’t know. What was the point in trying to get away? What was the point in doing anything? They had killed Sid. Sid… his dearest friend in the whole world… he was gone forever…

“Raskin, come on!” Lyco tugged at his foreleg impatiently. “I know you’re upset, but if we don’t get moving then—”

“Oh, I’m upset!” Raskin spat, his voice quivering. “And you’re not? Do you ever feel anything?!”

“Of course I’m upset!” Lyco said. “But right now, unless we get out of here, our lives are as good as dead!”

Raskin blinked at her. Lyco was right: if they were caught, it would surely mean life imprisonment. Plus whatever other horrors Shadow would do with them…

His muscles were still on fire from that blinding attack the officer had used on him, but he could just about hobble through the sewer tunnel. Lyco looked in even more pain—every few steps she gave a quiet moan. Seeing her in such an awful state sparked something within Raskin. If she wasn’t giving up, neither could he.

So they limped through the sewer tunnel together. With his night vision, Raskin was the only one who could see in the tunnels, so Lyco held onto his tail with one paw to guide her. The noise from behind them slowly dissipated, though they weren’t taking that as any reassurance of safety.

Sometimes the tunnel split into diverging paths, and with neither of them having any idea where they might be, Lyco always took the path going straighter. Alternatively, if one path had a particularly rancid stench, the choice was more obvious. Occasionally the dim, fragmented light of a manhole passed above them, which they hurried past as quickly as they could.

For a while, moving forwards was the only thought, only instinct in Raskin’s mind. It was as if his body had shut down every function except the one that might help it survive.

He had no idea how long they had walked for when this started to recede. The thoughts in his head slowly grew, all screaming SID, SID, SID at him. The next thing he knew, he was on his knees.

Sid was dead.

How could Raskin’s world exist without him? It didn’t feel real. But he had seen it right there; watched Shadow cut his throat like it was just a piece of cloth.

Would Shadow have done what he did if Sid didn’t keep fighting back? Raskin thought back to when they had locked eyes. He had given Sid a look of desperation, attempting to say, ‘We’ve already lost. Don’t make things any worse for us.’

But Sid didn’t back down. He must have misunderstood. Oh, why didn’t he just try speaking? Even with a hand over his mouth, Sid would have gathered what he meant.

“Raskin?” Lyco said. He tensed, anticipating a yank upwards from her. But it didn’t come.

Raskin remembered the very first thing Sid had said when he’d raised the idea of staging a fight.

“It’s a brilliant idea. I bet every ‘mon in Deepden would pay for something like that. But it’s very illegal, bro. Being involved in a street fight is bad enough, but staging one, charging people to watch… what would the punishment even be for that?”

You were right, Sid, Raskin thought. I should have just listened to you from the start. But I didn’t. Losing dad wasn’t enough—I had to go and fuck up my best friend’s life, too…

“Raskin,” Lyco said gently, putting a paw on his head. “Raskin, whatever you’re thinking—”

“It’s all my fault!” Raskin burst out, and then he couldn’t stop the sobs coming. He felt Lyco’s paws around him and he squeezed them desperately. Lyco wasn’t Sid, but she was someone he could hold onto, at least for now.

“Of course it isn’t,” Lyco said. “You had no control over what happened down there.”

“But Fight Den was my idea, and without that he’d still be alive!”

“There is a difference between having an idea, and being responsible for everything that follows it,” Lyco said sternly. “Sid made his own decisions.”

Raskin said nothing. He wasn’t up for debating things.

“Sid was so happy,” he murmured after a while. “So proud of himself. I thought that nothing could bring him down.” He sniffed. “He’d only been a typhlosion for one day. There was so much he was excited about—that everyone was. So much that I’ll never see...”

“Raskin, I know how you feel,” Lyco said, “but we have to keep moving.”

“Oh, fuck off!” Raskin cried, shoving her away. “We’re standing in the middle of a fucking sewer! Where do we need to move to? What’s the point anymore? Might as well curl up and die right here.”

“Raskin, please! Listen to me!”

Raskin got a look at Lyco’s face and flinched. There were tears in her eyes.

“You must not give up,” she said slowly. “I’m not stupid, okay? I know where we are right now. But even this is better than being dead.”

Raskin he lowered his gaze to the tunnel beyond Lyco, staring into the abyss. “How’s it better?” he said, his voice raspy. “Everything I had is gone. My best friend, my family, my apartment, my savings.” He felt his chest tighten as all those things he sunk in, one after the other. “Everyone I know, except you.”

Lyco gave him a hurt look at that. He didn’t really care.

“We haven’t lost everything,” she insisted, running claws through her mane. “Not yet.”

“Oh? What’s your master plan, then?”

Lyco shut her eyes. “If my inner compass is correct, we’ve been travelling roughly towards Oldden. If we make it there, we’ll be able to find somewhere to hide. And rest.”

Raskin blinked. It would have been nice to know sooner that Lyco actually had a plan. “And then?” he said.

She gave him a tired look. “I don’t know. But that’s a good place to start. Next time we pass a manhole, let’s get out, find out where we are. It must be past curfew by now.”

She helped Raskin back to his paws and, slowly, they walked on. It wasn’t long before another manhole and ladder crossed their path. Raskin pointed it out, and Lyco stopped.

“You go first. Your night vision’s far more useful than I am out there,” she said.

Raskin understood, even though the thought of getting separated from Lyco made him tremble. Climbing up the ladder brought out even more aches in his body, but he reached the top and managed to shove the manhole cover to one side.

He poked his head out and looked around. It was hardly lighter than the tunnels, and there were no streetlights on, so it must have been past midnight. No signs of life at all.

“Looks safe,” he said. Lyco followed him up.

When Raskin heaved himself out of the manhole onto a road, he felt an unexpected wave of relief. The night sky above them, and the vague, non-offensive scents in the air didn’t feel like things he could take for granted anymore.

“Do you recognise this place?” he whispered.

Lyco stifled a snort. “Seeing as I can’t see anything… no.”

Raskin blinked. He’d been using night vision for so long, he’d forgotten it was on.

He walked to the side of the street, treading as lightly as possible, until he found a sign. “Blossom Street.”

Lyco thought for a second. “One of the tunnels into the new venue is in this street,” she said. “I’m pretty sure.”

Raskin frowned. “That’s not Oldden.”

“It’s probably better than Oldden,” Lyco said. “No one will be searching those tunnels, unless Shadow found out even more about us than I thought.” She hesitated. “No. He didn’t say anything about our planned move while he was gloating. Let’s go.”

Somehow, miraculously, Raskin spotted the manhole they were after. Lyco was correct—it was right on the doorstop of their huge underground space. The two of them trudged to a corner of the room, kicked the ground free of as many stones as they could, then collapsed into sleep.





When Raskin woke, he was still in the cavern. Still safe. That was something, at least.

He lit up his night vision again and looked around. Though he was grateful to be able to see at all, the relentless muted-grey colours of this dark world were starting to make him anxious. He wanted to see colour again. If only Sid were here, he could light up—

Raskin stopped, his mouth beginning to quiver. He took a deep breath. Hold it together.

“Raskin?” Lyco called from behind him, sounding hoarse. “You awake?”

“Yeah.”

The lycanroc was sitting up against the wall, eyes staring listlessly into the distance. She must have hardly seen a thing since they entered the tunnels, all that time ago. And I was feeling bad for not getting enough colour, Raskin thought shamefully.

Sid. He couldn’t think about Sid. Had to distract himself, somehow…

“Lyco?” he said.

“Mm.”

He opened his mouth, trying to find something to say. Nothing inspiring came to mind.

“Um… what do we do now?”

Lyco was silent for a while. “At some point, we’ll need to find food and water,” she said. “I think the Dividing River water is drinkable. Food-wise, it’ll be trickier. Showing our faces anywhere public is a no-go, so we’ll probably have to sneak out at night. If it isn’t night already.”

And… beyond that? Raskin thought.

But before he could raise the question, they heard pawsteps echo against the stone tunnels.

Neither of them moved. Please, Raskin thought, clenching his paws, not now, not after everything we went through last night…

A flashlight appeared in the cavern entrance. “Raskin? Lyco?”

Raskin exhaled. It was Tyler’s voice.

Wait. Tyler…

“What are you doing here?” Raskin demanded.

Unexpectedly, Tyler let out a yelp of surprise. “Rasky! I’m looking for you! In a good way!” he squeaked. “Is Lyco there too?”

“Answer the question,” Raskin growled.

“D-don’t worry, no one knows yer here. No one even knows yer alive, least as far as I know.” Tyler paused. “I was… really worried…”

Worried that you might have killed us as well as Sid? Raskin thought darkly.

He took a deep breath. There was no point exploding on Tyler now, not while he was their one potential ally.

“We’re on the left,” he said.

Tyler scuttled forwards, then stopped a few feet away once he located them. “Lyco!” he exclaimed. “You both made it…” The nidoran shifted his feet. “So, um… is Sid really dead?”

“Yes,” Lyco said. “Shadow cut his throat in front of us.”

Raskin winced. Did she have to describe it in such detail?

“He did?!” Tyler sounded shocked. “But… the story all over the city is that Sid was killed as like, an act of self-defence. They didn’t mean to kill ‘im, but he was attackin’ the officers so violent that they had to stop him however they could.”

Lyco growled under her breath. “No. He was barely breathing when Shadow killed him. Clearly Flygon thinks preserving that fuck’s name is more important than telling people the truth.”

Tyler gulped. “W-what about you two? How’d you end up here?”

“We escaped,” Lyco said. “Is that not obvious?”

“Well, the newspaper didn’t even mention you two!” Tyler stammered. “It said ‘several senior members of the cartel were arrested’. That’s it. Nothin’ about Fight Den, either. Just kept saying ‘cartel’, wha’ever that is.”

“The government must have covered it up,” Lyco murmured. “Makes sense.” She raised an eyebrow at Tyler. “But you can’t read.”

“I’m staying with Luis,” Tyler said. “He was kind enough to give me his sofa f’ now. And, um… read me the newspaper.”

Lyco nodded. “Anyone else from Fight Den living with you? Or easy to contact?”

Raskin groaned internally. What are you doing, Lyco?

Tyler hesitated. “Not sure.”

“Well, try and find out. Or maybe it would be easier to contact Willow. You know—”

“What are you talking about?” Raskin burst out. He turned on Lyco. “What are you still scheming for? Fight Den is over!”

Lyco blinked at him. Something passed across her face that Raskin couldn’t decipher, or he might have just been too tired to.

“Right. Sorry. Uh—did you bring anything else for us, Tyler?” she asked, keeping one eye on Raskin.

“N-no,” Tyler said. “Is there anything you need?”

“Food and water would be extremely appreciated,” Lyco said. “Lots of it. Some matches, too, so we can light the torches in here.”

Tyler nodded. “I’ll, um… come back soon then.”

“Oh, but leave the torch here,” Lyco said. “I’m blind without it.”

“But I can’t…” Tyler trailed off uncertainly. “Um. Right. Sure.”

He took a few slow steps into the darkness towards the cavern entrance, then spun around. “About last night… I think I know how—”

“Shadow explained it to us,” Lyco cut in. “You let him in, didn’t you?”

Suddenly, Tyler’s whole body was trembling. He couldn’t look at them. “I’m so, so sorry… I never thought—”

“Yes, we get it,” Lyco said. “But for now, the best thing you can do is make sure we don’t starve to death. Okay?”

Tyler gave a shaky nod without looking at them, then scurried out into the vast darkness once more. Lyco put the torch between her legs, lighting up her face and a few feet around them. Raskin switched off his night vision. It was nice to see Lyco in colour, at least.

“We shouldn’t have given him a job,” Raskin muttered, once all trace of the nidoran’s pawsteps had disappeared.

Lyco sighed heavily. “In hindsight. But he was also the easiest person to convince to work.”

Another silence stretched between them, until Lyco broke it suddenly.

“What makes you think that Fight Den is dead?” she asked.

Dead. The word alone sent a shiver down Raskin’s spine. “What makes you think that it isn’t?” he snapped. “Do I really have to spell all the reasons out for you?”

Lyco shrugged. “I’d like to hear your perspective on it.”

“My perspective?” Raskin jumped to his feet, anger coursing through him. “Oh, I don’t know. How about: my best friend is dead because of Fight Den? My friend who was the life and soul of everything Fight Den was about?”

“I understand that,” Lyco said. “But—"

“How about, Fight Den has ruined my life forever?!” Raskin shouted over her. “In fact, what the fuck were we even thinking? Was life really this bad before that we were willing to put everything, literally everything, on the line just to have a few dozen pokémon enjoy playing police officers in the basement of a pub?”

“We are not playing at being police officers!” Lyco hissed, standing too so she towered over him. “Is that what you thought all this was? The chance to live out some fantasy?”

It was Raskin’s turn to backpedal. “That was an exaggeration—”

“Fighting should never be a fantasy!” Lyco said. “It should be central to our lives, to who we are! Not something only a select few can indulge in, to help them control the rest of us!”

“I get it!” Raskin snapped. “I agree, alright? I’ve heard enough philosophy from you.”

Lyco huffed, though it seemed to be more in amusement.

“Go on, then,” Raskin said, when she didn’t respond. “Tell me why Fight Den should survive despite everything. I’m fascinated.”

Lyco thought for a long moment, sitting back down against the wall. She spoke slowly. “I agree that I have no appetite to try returning things to how they were before last night. But that doesn’t mean Fight Den should simply be disbanded. We're still a group of pokémon determined to oppose the fighting ban. Sid's death isn't going to make that determination vanish. In fact, think how angry people will be when they hear about how the government has covered it up.”

Raskin looked at her sceptically. “What are you proposing?”

“We give Fight Den a new purpose. To fight against that government.”

Raskin stared at her. Lyco’s face didn’t have a flicker of humour in it. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

“Why not? The police only have authority because they’re stronger than everyone else. Sid showed last night that we’re already close to—”

“Can you stop talking about Sid like he’s still in the room with us?” Raskin cried, tears suddenly welling in his eyes. All the despair he felt last night rose back to the surface. He put his head between his knees, trying to keep the sobs from escaping his throat.

There was another lengthy silence. “I know how much his death hurts you,” Lyco said. “I know it’s unfair, and really horrible, to have to confront it so immediately. But—Raskin, listen to me!” She put a paw on his face, just gently enough that he didn’t jerk away. He looked up reluctantly.

“We don’t have a choice,” Lyco said. “We have to react now, while we still can, while people still remember Fight Den. Remember, with this location, we can upscale everything—more members, more training, more strategy, even. We can make up the gap that separates us from the police, then use that power to pressure the government into reforming. We’ll use Fight Den to change Deepden for the better. Sid’s death won’t have been in vain.”

Raskin’s head was spinning. He couldn’t disagree with Lyco’s sentiment, but… could they really go up against the government? The all-powerful force that controlled what they could do, what they could think? To defy it seemed unthinkable.

As he tried pulling his emotions back together, he looked at Lyco again. Something suddenly clicked.

“This is what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?” he said. “This was always your plan for Fight Den. You came up with ‘rebels’ as the collective name… you were obsessed with never letting things close down, not wanting people to forget about us… even your speech last night was essentially propaganda.”

Lyco leaned back, considering him. Was Raskin imagining it, or was there a glint of admiration in her eyes?

“That’s all true,” she said. “Though of course, I didn’t want things to happen as they did… Now you know, is that a problem?”

Raskin hesitated. It felt wrong somehow, but no words came to him.

“I imagine you two would have stayed well away from me if I told you my ambitions,” Lyco went on. “Same reason I didn’t want to talk about my past until I thought I had your trust.”

Raskin’s mind latched onto something else. “Then there’s still something I don’t understand.”

Lyco nodded. “Go on.”

“You told me that your parents trained you to fight as a child. In Oldden, away from the police. Yet once you left school, you joined the police. Suddenly, you went from opposing them to wanting to be one of them. It doesn’t add up.”

Lyco sighed. “Well, that’s technically still true,” she said. “But I didn’t join the police because I wanted to be one of them. I still believed what I do now about fighting, I always have. I hoped, naively, that by joining the police I might be able to make other officers, important people, believe that too. Start a revolution internally.”

That… made sense. A lot of sense. Raskin felt a tinge of relief. Lyco really was good. If a little crazy.

“But it didn’t work,” he guessed.

Lyco shook her head. “Not in the slightest. I hoped that my cell would be open to different ideas, but they were all awful. As I’ve said before.”

“So—if the police is where you met Shadow, then—”

“It’s no wonder why he hates me so much?” Lyco grimaced. “It’s even worse than you think. You know my syndrome, my EFS? He did that to me. He attacked the night I escaped our compound. Never been able to figure out what exactly he did, or why I never fully recovered. Even then he was far too strong.”

Raskin stared at Lyco, stunned. Shadow… how could any person contain such evil? Such vicious contempt? And most importantly, how did a person like that climb to the very top of the government hierarchy in just a few years?

Because the government is the real problem.

He was beginning to come round to Lyco’s thinking.

“Is there anything else you haven’t been truthful about?” he asked.

“Hmm… I don’t think so. That should be everything.” A smile flickered across Lyco’s mouth. “What about you? Anything you’re hiding?”

Raskin thought for a moment. “No. Before I met you, I had nothing to worry about.”



Tyler returned a short while later with a much larger bag. All he could offer was a loaf of bread with jam and a canteen of water, but after nearly a day of deprivation, Raskin and Lyco wolfed the food down like it was peeled chestnuts and oranberry juice.

Tyler, still being oddly evasive towards them, was ready to leave as soon as they began, but Lyco waved a paw at him.

“Just wait f’ us to fimish first,” she said through a jawful of bread.

So, Tyler sat close but not too close, twiddling his claws awkwardly until they polished off the last of the bread.

“Right. We’re going to hold a funeral for Sid,” Lyco told him. “Two night’s time, eight PM, down here, since we obviously aren’t safe anywhere else. I need you to get in touch with everyone you know from Fight Den. Willow should be able to help, the delivery bird. You know where she works?”

Tyler shook his head, eyes wide.

Raskin wrote it down for him, along with the funeral details. Tyler might not be able to read, but at least Luis could.

“So, um… what message should I give everyone?” Tyler asked when he had finished.

Lyco opened her mouth to answer, but Raskin spoke first. “Tell them that we’ll be celebrating the life and soul of Fight Den. And we’ll be making it clear how he really died, rather than what the government wants you to believe.”



Shadow had not slept well last night.

That was in part because he hadn’t laid his head on the pillow until long past midnight. Somehow, improbably, Alexia and that runt of a nickit had escaped. He had ordered search parties for hours, scoured the police for every dark and fire type on duty, but even they had been no use. A crushing victory had been in the literal grasp of his men, and they’d let it slip. The only arrests they’d managed to secure were of the Entei’s bartender, and the ivysaur who had somehow stalled his men in the tunnels long enough for everyone else to escape.

The last thing he wanted, then, was to be woken at the crack of dawn and told that President Flygon demanded his presence.

As soon as he got up, he checked the morning paper, anxious what it would say about him. But, to his delight, the way his raid had been reported made it sound like a great success. The typhlosion’s death had not mentioned him, nor how that moment had triggered those two rats escaping.

As he hastily washed and smartened up, he wondered what kind of mood the President was in. Demanded didn’t seem a good omen, nor did an eight o’clock meeting. But had the newspaper been her call? If so, she had to be happy with him. And even if last night hadn’t gone perfectly to plan, the fight club as they knew it was dead in the water—all thanks to his hard work.

As he made his way through the Governmental District, he noticed several workers and ministers sneaking looks at him. As he crossed paths with another, they gave him a nod and a smile.

They must have read the news, Shadow thought with satisfaction. Maybe now I’ll finally get some respect around here.

He walked through the long hallway to the president’s office and knocked on the door. The answer was immediate. “Enter.”

To his surprise, Flygon wasn’t behind her desk, but standing right in the centre of the room. She held a thin file of papers in one hand. One look at her face told Shadow exactly how she felt.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she said.

“I…” Shadow paused. For once, he didn’t know how to respond. “Regarding… what exactly?” he tried.

Flygon made an exasperated roar and slammed her tail against the desk, throwing papers into the air. “Killing that typhlosion!” she said, jabbing a claw at him. “I’ve heard everything that happened. Your officers were so shocked that they lost concentration for a split-second. You don’t give a pair of wanted criminals a split-second to escape!”

“In fairness,” Shadow said, “no one could have foreseen the lycanroc collapsing the wall—”

“Don’t argue with me!” A pencil hurtled through the air, hitting the wall a few inches from Shadow’s ear. He froze.

“I should have been praising you this morning,” Flygon said. “You have demonstrated your competence so many times over. Even on this mission, you tracked down and infiltrated this fight gang flawlessly. But then, when there’s only the simplest job to finish, you get in over your head and somehow fuck it up!”

The words jolted Shadow. He had never heard the President swear. Though he’d never heard her raise her voice either before today.

“You’re lucky, Shadow,” Flygon went on. “If you were almost anyone else, I’d demote you several ranks immediately, if not throw you out of the force altogether. But since most of the people I must work with are so useless, you’re too valuable to throw into some menial labour. So, reluctantly, you will remain a commander for now.”

Shadow barely managed to contain his sigh of relief. “Thank you, President,” he said reverently. “I promise I will not give cause for you to regret—”

Flygon held up a hand. “I haven’t finished.” There was a glint in her dark grey eyes. “I know that it’s my job you’re really after, Shadow. Your craving of power is obvious.”

Shadow stared at her. How could she deduce that? I haven’t been that transparent, have I...? Flygon hardly even knows me!

“But unfortunately,” Flygon went on, “after last night… well, put it this way: I won’t have a murderer be my successor. Nor anyone’s successor, I should think. So you should consider that avenue closed. And, if you ever try anything to the contrary…” Flygon waved the file in her hand and smiled. “I’ll let the whole of Deepden know what really happened last night.”

Shadow was dumbstruck. It felt like pieces of his world were falling away. I’ll never be president. I’ll never reach the top. It couldn’t be true. He was the best president Deepden could ever have! Why wasn’t he saying anything? He had to do something!

But he knew Flygon would not be convinced, whatever he did. She controlled everything at this level, including who her successor would be. He was powerless.

“Shadow,” Flygon prompted. “You are dismissed. Go.”

Slowly, Shadow managed to back away, until the heavy doors slammed shut behind him. He walked trancelike through the long corridor, gazing at the portraits of past presidents along the wall.

Only the sight of Flygon at the end of the hall broke him from his stupor. He had to get out of here before he tore it apart.