※
“—and just let that wing rest up for a few days and your archen should be good as new, sweetie!”
Hilda’s looking you up and down, but you can’t pay attention to her. You’ve been in at least two pokécenters before, but you’ve never gotten over all the
things that happen in the background. So many colors. So many sounds. There are humans everywhere, framed by flat walls, and they all talk to one another. How can they do that? There’s so much to see. There’s a distant hum of machinery behind the doors to the treatment rooms, accompanied by the vague sounds of pokémon behind them, receiving treatment.
That’s the tricky part, you decide now that you’re no longer in the back room next to the venipede who hissed as an audino dabbed salve on his burnt thorax, now that you can’t hear the panicked shrieks of a simisage through the walls. The gyms are easier buildings to be in. You don’t like how you can’t see the sky there either, but at least the only cries of pain are your own.
“Hilda! Thank goodness I found you!”
The two of you spin around. The crest on her head is a brown blur. “N?” she says, and then catches herself. Her next words are much softer, like she’s hissing a secret to him. “What are you doing here?”
Oh. There’s a tall human. He’s looking a little more dishelved than a normal human. His coverings are all crinkled and it looks like he’s gotten water on them—probably from the bucket he’s got clutched in his hands? A bit tricky to tell.
He runs over to you both, and a bit more water sloshes out of the bucket and onto the carpet of the pokécenter. Ah. That’s why his coverings are wet. You can hear the nurse’s annoyed intake of breath from behind the counter.
“Oh, hi, Reylin!” he exclaims, shifting the bucket slightly to one side so he can look at you. “This is perfect, actually. You’re just who I was looking for. Do you have a second?”
You blink back up at him. You? He’s looking for
you?
“N, what are you doing here?” Hilda pitches her voice low, like she’s trying to keep it a secret. “I thought after what happened here you weren’t supposed to—”
But N isn’t really listening to her. He’s still staring intently at you, his brow furrowed, like he’s waiting for something very important. “Could I ask you a favor, Reylin?”
“N!” Hilda hisses sharply. She grabs his arm and tugs, albeit gently. He startles and spins his head to look at her. “We should go outside.” She casts a meaningful glance around the crowd of humans scattered around you. There’s a couple in the back that’s frowning at him now; one of them is looking at the phone in her hands and whispering intently. A trainer next to them looks up from the silence, and follows their gazes to look at N.
“Oh, sure, if you’d like,” N says, and ambles easily to the door. His head tilts up when he sees Hilda reach for a pokéball, and he adds quickly, “Actually, could Reylin stay? I was looking for him.”
In your most recent battle, the one that hurt your wing, the flying-leader had sent out a sweeping unfezant with gorgeous plumage and a wingspan that made you quail with envy for just a moment.
“Against a rock-type? Why wouldn’t you send out your swanna first?” Hilda had whispered under her breath, her head tilted to one side, her brow wrinkled, before shrugging and directing you to continue. She wears the same expression now, but she tilts her chin forward. “C’mon, Reylin.”
You hop after them.
Outside of the pokécenter is much nicer. The sky is cloudless above, so endless and blue that you’re sure that if you took off you’d tire long before you found the edge. The trees rustle gently in the breeze. A mechanical bird traces its way across the sky, leaving a puff of white trailing after it.
Closer to the ground, a few of N’s pokémon gather around him. A large pair of gears hovers over from the front of the building and clicks rhythmically behind his head. There’s a tiny yellow ball of fuzz that you recognize as a joltik—maybe a bit small, even for their species—that crawls up N’s shoulder and nestles in the fold of his collar. Across the street, a lumpy boldore is examining the cobblestone road intently, but looks up and scuttles carefully over when he notices N.
“What’s all this about?” Hilda’s got her arms folded across her chest, which you think is sad. It blocks the breeze. Today is the perfect day to ruffle out your feathers and warm them in the sun.
“I wanted to know if I could borrow Reylin for a while?” It’s a statement that he still manages to make sound like a question. “I have a favor I need to ask of him.”
“Borrow? Like, trade?”
“Oh, no, absolutely not. I—hmm. I think it’d be easier if—Zara, maybe you could try explaining?”
The bucket of water splashes a bit more, and N tilts it slightly forward just enough for you to see a familiar, craggy head peeking out just above the surface.
{TR-62?}
{AX-67?} the tirtouga squeaks on response, and beneath the surface you can see his flipper churning the water into a frenzy. {Oh, sorry. N says you go by Reylin now! How are you?}
His words. His
words. Nostalgia washes over you, drenches through your feathers and all the way down to your skin, and you’re just staring at him, eyes wide, those familiar syllables echoing in your ears. None of Hilda’s pokémon sounded like that. None of them knew what to say so you could understand them.
{I’m … good,} you manage to reply, but your mind isn’t here. You’re back in the lab. A wire around your ankle keeps you on your perch, but it’s really for show—your wings are too small for you to fly, of course. You get poked and prodded and hurt and healed, and—
“See, they know each other!” N exclaims, cutting into your thoughts.
“Who?” Hilda’s probably a little less confused than you, which at the moment makes her very bewildered. “N, what’s going on?”
“Is Reylin doing okay? With your other pokémon, I mean. Does he talk to them? Do they talk back? I was wondering. See, Zara—this tirtouga—happened into my care, and it turns out that he spoke an entirely different language than the other pokémon I’ve met. It’s a really, really weird dialect; some of the words don’t translate and they have this odd way of conjugating without tenses that I don’t fully—anyway, I managed to pick up a little bit, so we can talk, but I was telling him about you and your archen and he got really excited. I thought maybe they knew each other. And then I was trying to think of all the times I’ve seen Reylin, and he’s never really talked to any of the other pokémon you have, or the ones I’ve seen him meet. Maybe he’s shy, but—I know we don’t always get off on the right foot but I thought if it was for Reylin maybe we could make it work.”
He finally pauses for breath. You and Hilda blink back, perfectly synchronized.
That’s a lot to think about. He’s talked to TR-62? A human? And TR-62 talked back?
“Pokémon speak different languages?” Hilda asks, which you suppose is a good place to start if she didn’t know that already.
“Of course they do. Same as humans,” N says with a laugh. “Well, sort of. That actually reminds me of an interesting story about—”
“And you speak
all the languages?” Hilda’s a bit more dubious this time.
“Oh no, not all of them. I haven’t really picked up the sea dialect as much; it’s a bit harder to meet a native speaker, of course. At first I thought Zara was just using a more obscure dialect from there, maybe a deep-sea one, but then we tried talking to a basculin for a while, and she definitely didn’t know what was happening.”
“N.” Hilda sighs heavily. One of her hands snakes out from her crossed arms so she can rub her forehead. “You came back to Mistralton just for—never mind. What do you want me to do?”
“I just thought we could let them talk for a bit. Zara needs the socialization from someone who isn’t me, and, well, Reylin …” He trails off and looks at you. His eyes are a strange color for a human, a weird sort of slate grey. You’re reminded of the color of clouds before the storm. “Reylin might be lonely. Is all.”
“I look after my pokémon, N,” Hilda says. Her voice is carefully controlled now. You remember the time she had you do agility training, hopping from one branch to another, careful not to lose your balance and plunge into the undergrowth below.
N swallows, and you imagine him eating what he was going to say. He, like you, seems aware that it’s important not to lose his balance, but he doesn’t really know how to avoid the fall. “I didn’t come here for that. Um.” He hesitates. Another mistake. It’s a lot easier to keep your balance if you never stop moving. “If nothing else, do it for Zara?”
The tirtouga pokes his head out from the bucket and adds earnestly, {Please! It won’t take too long. I just wanted to catch up for a little while. AX-67 is a friend of mine!}
Where you always thought your form was a little mottled, a little monstrous, there was an undeniable vein of cuteness in TR-62 that the humans always seemed to appreciate. Something about the eyes, you think. The flippers, too, and how when he gets excited—which is often—he’ll curl and uncurl them like he’s clapping one-handed. Humans tend to like when alien behaviors mimic their own.
Hilda sighs. “I wanted to hit the road by this evening. You get one hour.” She squints. “N? Where are you going?”
The tall human is already walking down the road excitedly, his cohort of pokémon clouding around him. “There’s a park with a pond across from the airstrip. Zara can’t really go in freshwater ponds, but it’s quiet in midday and they won’t get interrupted.”
“You’re just going to leave them there? What if they wander off, or get stolen?” She half-jogs to keep up; his strides are incredibly long. If you thought Hilda sounded perplexed at his judgment before, this time she sounds downright lost.
“I thought Zara wouldn’t want me eavesdropping.” N starts to shrug, but then seems to think better of it. “There’s a bench across from the pond, if you wanted to keep an eye on them from a distance.”
This is how you end up perched on a rock next to the bucket, watching two humans watch you very intently. Hilda’s got a veiled look of curiosity in her eyes, like she’s still trying to unravel the knot of N’s strategy. N seems ecstatic. Both of them sit on opposite ends of the bench, as far apart from one another as possible.
Strange. Usually Hilda doesn’t sit like that.
{Reylin, how have you been?}
It’s hard to keep track of things that aren’t directly in front of you. That’s part of your nature, you think. Plus, you’re only used to seeing TR-62 in a clear tank; the steel walls of the bucket means that even if you perch on the rock and sit all the way up, you can barely see his head and neck before they fade away into the depths.
And besides—this is a happy reunion, but one that you’ve never let yourself imagine.
{Did he really tell you I go by Reylin now?} It’s hard to think of TR-62 as anything else, even though you’ve heard N drop the name so many times in conversation already. It takes practice to unlearn that.
{Yeah! He mentioned that his friend Hilda had a new friend, and when he described them it sounded just like you. Did you decide to run away as well?}
There it is. Two minutes into your conversation and the hard questions already come out.
The P2 Labs weren’t all that bad, especially now that you’ve seen what’s outside of it. From across the glass, TR-62 had always told you that there was a nicer place, somewhere with a wide open tank and an endless ceiling. You hadn’t believed him. Skies ended in right angles. Seas had clear walls. That was simply the way things were.
You were wrong about that, the same way that you were wrong about telling TR-62 that it wasn’t possible to escape. The tirtouga had decided one day to headbutt his tank until it shattered, and then he’d smashed a hole in the wall and clumsily scuttled down the hallway and out the door.
Watching it happen, it hadn’t actually been all that hard. You could’ve followed him, probably. You didn’t even have a real tank. Yours was in your mind. Because what would you have done next? Flown across the entire endless sea? What if you’d gotten tired, or there was a storm? You still weren’t the best at flying. And then once you crossed that chasm, what would come next? Would anything get better? P2 wasn’t that bad. The scientists were just curious. They taught you things, and you taught them things.
{No. P2 lost most of their funding after—}
after you ran away, you almost say, but you can’t bring yourself to hurt TR-62 like that so instead you say {—a few years. They sold off most of their assets. I ended up in a museum in Nacrene for a while, and then I was adopted out to a trainer. Hilda.} You gesture with your head to where the pair is still watching you from across the pond. {What happened to you?}
I was afraid—
{Oh, I see. That’s neat. Are you liking it so far? I just swam and swam for a very long time, and then I washed up near this ship harbor right when N was walking by. He seemed friendly, but he was talking to this strange pink pokémon and he seemed kind of busy, you know? But he understood her, which was really cool! I’ve never met a human who could do that. I think P2 tried really hard but they were going in the wrong direction,} TR-62 adds as an afterthought, and looks at his flippers self-consciously. {But that seemed special, so I trailed him around the shore for a while, and then he noticed me and we tried to talk for a bit. Did you know that most pokémon don’t speak our language? I wonder. N says that archen and tirtouga used to live in very faraway places and times, back when we used to, you know, have more of us. Did you know there used to be more of us? I saw a pidove that reminded me of you. I’m glad you’re okay.}
When the scientists had seen that you still weren’t adept at flying, even though all other signs showed that a bird of your age should be branching by then, they’d tried aiming strange, spinning metal crosses at you that generated huge streams of air. The wind had smashed into your face and ruffled your carefully-preened feathers and generally felt a lot like how talking to TR-62 does—quiet at first, and then all at once.
But it’s reassuring. TR-62 always talked enough for the two of you, in this strange language that only the inhabitants of P2 understood. You didn’t mind that. It reminds you of old times.
{I’m glad you’re okay too,} you say. You hesitate. You haven’t shaped words for so long that you’ve almost forgotten how. Back when you’d met Hilda and Vaselva, you’d tried to greet them—the servine’s demeanor reminded you of the purple, steely one in the P2 basement—but they had only stared quizzically back. The words had died in your throat.
{But can you believe it?} TR-62 asks, and his flippers make soft splashing sounds on the water’s surface. {We both did it! We crossed the ocean. I told you, right? No more ceilings and tanks for us. We get to see everything now! Have you seen the Driftveil Drawbridge? It’s so cool! It goes up and down and it lets people who can’t swim cross this really pretty river. N and I walked across it. He told me that in other languages it’s named after this big, fiery dragon called
charizard because they have the same color. Have you heard of dragons? N says Hilda is destined to meet a great dragon one day. And N says he has this dragon friend he thinks I would like.}
{How does he have so much time to tell you this?} you ask. A coo of amusement curls up the back of your throat, a feeling you haven’t felt in months. {After all, you talk so much, I’m surprised he gets a word in edgewise.}
{He’s a very good listener,} TR-62 says empathetically, which you can’t be sure of—by default anyone who listens to TR-62 for long enough becomes a listener. {And it’s because he listens so much that he knows so many interesting things to tell later! It’s quite clever. I’m sure you’re good at it too, Reylin! You listen all the time. Do you have any interesting stories?}
You wish he’d talk more so you could listen more. Asking questions is a new thing for him, maybe something he’s learned from N. But now you have to answer. {Mostly about battling.}
{Battling? Hilda lets you battle?}
{Lets?}
You both blink back at each other in surprise.
{You first,} you say. Not like you would’ve stopped him if he’d tried.
{N says I can’t battle until my shell is hard and I can walk on my own.} If you listen very, very carefully, there’s a hint of dismay in TR-62’s voice. It’s buried very deep. {Until then, I can watch.} He knocks his head against the rim of his bucket, and there’s a dull pinging sound. {He thinks it’ll be too dangerous for me to fight right now. Because of the whole swimming thing. But I’m ready! Maybe you could tell him. He let me try it once! But then my bucket tipped over and there was water everywhere and I sort of got stuck, and he looked really upset and forfeited the fight immediately, and then we had to run away really really fast—anyway, I don’t think he wants to try again. Until my shell is hard and I can walk on my own.} TR-62 nods to himself.
That’s a lot to take in. Hilda acted like N was some kind of criminal—that’s always the gist you get when you hear her talking about him. He was running away? From who?
{I’m surprised you like fighting now,} TR-62 adds, blunt as ever. {Since you seemed to hate it so much back at P2. That’s a good change! I’m happy for you.}
You’re suddenly very interested in a crack of dirt that’s wedged itself between your toes, and you pick at it with your beak. But TR-62 is still watching you expectantly; the one time he hasn’t ended up spouting off a whole new stream of information. {I still don’t like fighting.}
{Oh. So then you don’t battle very much, right?}
You aren’t like TR-62. You’d tried to be, once. You’d watched him swim stubbornly to the bottom of his tank and stay there for hours while scientists had to reach in up to their elbows, soaking their labcoats until they were plastered tightly to the skin. Once, he’d tugged on a scientist’s sleeve so hard that she’d fallen in the tank altogether and had spluttered, dripping wet, up to the surface.
You thought that was a great idea, so you’d copied it and tried to snap when they came to take readings from you as well. Your scientist smacked you on the beak. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to smart, and that had been the end of that.
{I battle some,} you say, and nod your head to yourself. {Not as much as the others, I guess.}
One of the P2 scientists had told you a story about a genetic descendant of tirtouga—squirtle, or something. When infant tirtouga hatched on the shores at night, they’d crawled towards the nearest light source they could see: the reflection of the moon on the sea. Far more adept in the waves than on the sand, those who could slip into the waters before dawn were the ones who would survive.
It wasn’t the same with squirtle. Millions of years had passed, and tirtouga’s children hadn’t learned to adapt with the times. Clutches of squirtle eggs used to hatch around the beaches in Castelia, but, drawn to the shimmering lights of the city, many of the hatchlings stranded themselves in the roads, and were crushed or devoured before their shells had time to harden. Now, squirtle are a rare sight in all of Unova. Perhaps, somewhere else, they’re common, and TR-62 can find more of his kind.
To you the lesson was clear enough: do not leave the nest without knowing which way is better than home.
Hilda had never hit you or anything, not even a smack, and you’re pretty sure she’s a good trainer who would never dream of doing that but—what if she did? Or what if she decided she was bored of you and mailed you back to P2? Best not to find out. Best to keep her happy so you can keep what you have.
{If she uses you to fight all of her battles and you don’t like it.} TR-62 doesn’t seem satisfied with your answer. {Why not tell her—}
{So N can talk to pokémon?} you say, a bit too quickly, a bit too loudly. Anything to change the subject.
{Oh yes.} TR-62 is never one to resist answering a question. The previous topic is immediately washed from his mind; you can almost see it happen on his face. {He tries very hard. He’s also trying to translate for me. A lot of his friends are from the sparkly cave to the north of here, so they all speak like each other, but they’re learning! It might take them a while. I think you didn’t talk to me for a few months, right?}
TR-62 had burbled to you from his tank for weeks, and splashed water over the glass wall, and squirted water at your perch—all until you’d finally found the words to shape into
what? what do you want?
You aren’t sure why you’d asked. TR-62 had wanted to talk to you for the same reason anyone talked to anyone else: to stop being alone.
{Can I tell you a story N told me?} TR-62 asks. {It’s about turtles. I think you’d like it.}
{Sure.}
The story talks the better part of thirty minutes to tell, since TR-62 gets distracted by a leaf that drifts into his bucket, and by trying to remember if the turtle in the story was green or blue, and because it reminds him of a different story he’d heard before, but the story went a little something like this:
Once upon a time, a human boy was walking on a beach when he stumbled upon a tirtouga that had washed ashore. She had gotten stuck in the sand and the sun had sapped her energy so that she was too exhausted to dig herself free. Struck by pity, the boy carefully scooped her out of the beach and dragged her to the spot where the tide met the sands. As she felt the water lapping over her fins, the tirtouga opened her eyes and looked up gratefully at the boy.
{You have shown me a great kindness today, dear boy,} said the tirtouga. {When the time comes and you need my aid, shout my name into the sea and I shall find you. Then I may pay back the gift you have given me.}
The boy waved farewell as the tide came in and carried the tirtouga out to sea.
Many years passed. The boy became a man. He spent most of his time on the water, helping ships navigate choppy seas and safeguarding the people inside. One day, an enormous storm brewed around his ship. He wrestled with the wheel and strained at the sails, but he could barely keep his vessel upright. Icy fear ate through his drenched clothes and settled into his bones.
When all hope seemed lost, the man remembered the tirtouga’s promise and clasped his hands together.
“Zaratan! Lend me your strength!”
It was like the eye of the hurricane had just passed overhead. The storm swirled around his boat, still dark and portending, but the seas directly above him were suddenly as calm as a summer’s day. A dark shadow loomed beneath the ship, slowly sharpening into the four-limbed silhouette of a carracosta that was easily as long as the boat was tall.
{Hello, dear boy,} said the carracosta warmly, slowly, snaking her head out of the surface. The words she spoke showered the entire deck in foam. {You’ve certainly grown. What is it that you desire?}
“Please,” said the man, gesturing to the storm raging around him. “Help us escape this storm.”
Zaratan’s craggy head was the size of a boulder, and when she nodded it sent a ripple of waves knocking against the boat. {This,} she said slowly, {is no normal storm. It comes from the heart of the Great Dragon, who birthed our world. I fear this storm may end it as well.}
The man’s heart sank deep into the bottom of the sea. “What should we do?”
Zaratan pondered this for a long while, as the storm began to pick up in intensity around her, even despite her presence. {Gather your people and hold fast to my shell,} she said at last, heavily. {You saved me from the sun, and now I will save you and yours from the rain.}
So the man and all of the passengers of his boat gathered themselves and clambered onto the carracosta’s craggy shell. And not a moment too soon, for as soon as the last human had climbed aboard, a wave lashed through the mast of the ship and splintered the deck. The depths devoured the wreckage, and the man watched with a sinking heart as the ship that had once been his home plunged into the depths.
Zaratan then tucked her head down and began to swim, plowing a powerful course through the roiling seas.
As they swam, and the storm worsened, the man noticed a collection of pokémon gathered on a nearby island. The waters here were rising too; the island was dwindling under the ever-rising tide. “Zaratan,” the man shouted, crawling across the carracosta’s shell and holding tightly to the plated armor around her neck. “Look at those people over there. They’ll drown if we don’t help them.”
{I see them,} Zaratan answered, and changed course to swim towards the island. When they were close enough, Zaratan called out to the land-dwellers: {Gather your people and hold fast to my shell. Otherwise, the storm will take you.}
Gratefully, the pokémon climbed onto Zaratan’s extended flipper and pulled themselves onto her shell. She rocked back and forth from the new weight, but she pressed onward.
The storm only worsened. As they pressed on, they passed a flock of bird pokémon clutching fast to the tallest trees in the forest; the rest had already been swallowed by the waves. Their wings were too wet to fly.
The man pointed, and Zaratan laboriously turned towards the underwater treetops. When she was close enough, she made the same offer, and the birds quickly took it.
But even though the birds were light, the man watched with widened eyes as the carracosta’s shell sank even further beneath the surface. “Zaratan!” he shouted in alarm. Her strokes, once powerful, were now weary.
{There are … too many … } she said in her slow, rumbling voice. {Forgive me, dear boy.} The rest of her words were swallowed up by the waters as her head sank beneath the surface, but the man knew in his heart what she meant to say next.
The man turned around. The pokémon and humans behind him were clutching tightly to one another, holding as closely to the center of her shell as possible—the edges were already succumbing to the waves. Above them, the storm showed no signs of stopping. His weight alone might’ve been the tipping point between if they floated or if they sank.
Without hesitation, the man leapt into the sea. He struggled against the current, which threw him again and again into Zaratan’s armor, until he made it up to the tip of her beak, and he held her fast until the water took them both.
The Great Dragon, heartbroken by the storm they had allowed to hurt so many, flew across the seas and found the last peoples of the world floating on Zaratan’s back. Touched by Zaratan and the man’s sacrifice, they exhaled a torrent of fire, thunder, and ice onto the pair; bathed in such power, the two turned to stone.
TR-62 finishes the rest of the story in a voice that is uncharacteristically solemn: {Do you know why the shining cities of Unova form such a round shape? Look carefully, and you will see Zaratan’s shell, and her human friend right beside her.}
For a moment you aren’t sure why TR-62 told you this story, or why he would like it. It is such a sad ending for such a happy person. He is no carracosta. N is the one protecting him, after all.
But perhaps this carracosta, this Zaratan, is how he wants to see himself one day.
Zaratan and her friend’s sacrifice is sad, somehow more sad to you than the wounds you’ve endured and inflicted every day. Did most pokémon fight for their humans expecting to receive something back? Perhaps when something good is given with the expectation of nothing in return … perhaps that is when it truly becomes valuable. For what could be worth so much that it could be exchanged for nothing?
{N,} Zara says, unusually careful, unusually slow, {is similar to you, in a sense. He hides away from conflict and assumes his battles are already lost, even when he could go on a while longer.} A shiver goes down your spine.
Defeatist, the scientists called it, when they saw it in you. {But he admires Zaratan, and he’s right to, you know?} His voice speeds up. {Zaratan is very brave. I want to be like her. When the storm comes, I want all of us to be able to rise to meet it.}
The hour passes. Hilda checks her wrist and then walks over to you. “Alright, Reylin! Did you have a good time?”
You wonder: in a different reality, Hilda might’ve been a better trainer for Zara, and N a better trainer for you. Then Zara could fight and you could fly and no one would have to feel uncomfortable with what they wanted to be.
Zara’s story fills you with a strange kind of courage, one you’ve never felt before. If Zaratan and her human could be so brave, maybe you could as well.
N trails behind her, and you fasten eyes with him. {Can you really talk to pokémon?} you ask.
“I can,” he answers.
{Can you ask her a question for me?}
“Of course.”
Hilda had mentioned something once that you’d thought was very strange. She was brave and hardy, you see, like Zara, like Zaratan, like the rest of the pokémon she raised. She never balked at a fight. But she’d told you she’d done something once that hadn’t made any sense—hiding away from a conflict was something you thought only you would do, not someone as courageous as her.
You tug gently on the leg of N’s pants with your beak, and you ask the question you’ve been meaning to ask Hilda this whole time.
His eyes widen. “You want me to say that?”
You tilt your entire head sideways so you can get a better look at him. You repeat your question.
This time the flinch is unmistakable. “Reylin, I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”
{Please ask her? I’ve been wondering for a while}
“What’s a good idea?” Hilda chimes in.
“I don’t think I’m understanding him correctly.” N nervously runs one hand through his crest of hair. “The conjugation thing I mentioned earlier, and—”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Hilda says placidly.
You repeat your question and bob your head up and down. {See? She won’t mind. I promise.}
“Reylin, I’m not sure if that’s what she wants to hear—”
“What
who wants to hear?” There’s a bit of cold in Hilda’s voice now. “N, I’ll always listen to my pokémon. Reylin knows that.”
You nod earnestly.
N swallows. He stares at his shoes while you count three of his breaths. His tongue snakes out and runs across his lips, and then he bites the bottom lip, and then, finally—“He says … if you didn’t like your family so much, why didn’t you just leave?”
Hilda turns to stone. You watch her shoulders freeze in place, raised up defensively around her ears like twin spikes of armor.
Mistake. {I didn’t mean it like that!} you chirp, but she’s not looking at you. Her smile is frozen, curdled on her face.
“Hilda—”
“Reylin didn’t tell you that,” Hilda says lowly. “What, did Ghetsis hire a PI to do some research on me and my homelife? You finally figured out that you can’t beat me on the battlefield so you have to resort to digging up dirt on me instead? Or, what, you finally put together what I told you in Castelia and you want to use it against me? It won’t work. You don’t know me. You might think you do, you might think that one kid with a shit dad can recognize another, that you
understand, but you grew up with so much that I didn’t. You don’t know the first thing about peasants like me,
Lord N.”
“Hilda, please—”
“Fight me.”
“What?” N inhales so sharply that you’ll afraid he’ll swallow his words instead. “Hilda, no, I’m not going to—”
“Take it back, or fight me.” There’s a flash of red. Vaselva emerges at Hilda’s feet. The servine sizes up the situation in a moment, and puffs up the leaves that run down her back so she appears twice as big.
“I didn’t come here to fight.” His hands curl protectively around Zara’s bucket and he takes half a step back.
It feels like a cold breeze has settled in around your wingtips, and you’re filled with the compulsion to fly far, far away from it. You were wrong. You aren’t brave like Zaratan. You’ve done it again, bitten a scientist, started a fight you can’t finish.
“I don’t care what you wanted to do. Reylin is my family. You don’t just get to—” She cuts herself off, breathing heavily. You think you can hear the dampness in her voice, but when she speaks again she’s as steady as the earth beneath your feet. “I’ll call the cops. They won’t be happy to see you in Mistralton, not after what happened last time.”
“Hilda,” N pleads one last time, but his voice splinters under its own weight, and you know that he can’t do all the talking for you. He can’t, and you can’t, but you have to try.
How did it even go wrong so quickly? You’d thought that you could tell Hilda anything, that she’d listen. Quickly, you hop between them and face Hilda and Vaselva, your wings outstretched. If they want to make themselves look big, you can as well. {Don’t be mad at him. He’s just repeating what I told him.}
Hilda looks at you with eyes so cold you think she’s about to go on a hunt. You’re so transfixed with the hatred on her face that you don’t even notice the hand reaching for the pokéball until the red light engulfs you.
“Leaf Blade, Vas,” she whispers as you dissolve, and that’s the last thing you hear.
