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0.
I’ve seen it all I’ve seen it all; every so often some poor soul will tell you they know everything there is to know like they’ve scouted out every angle and consulted every source and unearthed every secret in all the world but I believe I speak with authority when I say that I have seen it all: there is nobody else like me not anywhere, my level of expertise is unparalleled and my qualities are unshared by any life form in the universe, no life form’s not correct is it not anymore, some would tell you that I can’t speak in first person singular I am a sentence divisible by twelve: I came here centuries ago long before anyone else did before anyone else even knew I planted my flag here so it’s mine dammit mine, I am the ultimate authority on the matter and the matter is simple: there are no telic revelations in the great beyond, some people will give up everything anyway just to be validated who can blame them there is really no greater validation than permanent sleep, pure bliss no disturbances no questions, they say night is the time of monsters what do they know about monsters besides there are no monsters here look around you do you see any
wait no that’s not what I mean that was supposed to be a rhetorical question, who is this oaf what is he doing here does he not know what or where he is, he has flesh he has blood it’s currently dripping from a gaping hole beneath his shoulder you know I could tell you a few things about gaping holes there is a gaping hole where my body should be and there is a gaping hole in place of the eternal sleep I am owed, oh it’s horrible I tell you they look upon my form my concept my species call it monstrous, well we’re all monsters monsters without bodies bodies without organs, death itself is like that in a few ways you know the way it has no capacity to speak for itself no qualities to call its own, yet it stains every surface retools every device redefines every sentence even rewrites every personality like an airborne or digital virus; back to the dying man he’s going to find out sooner or later everyone always does, still unusual: none of them ever come in here with corporeal forms, his wounds are mortal there are no places to hide and he is dressed like a cowboy doesn’t he know what year it is, what year
is it time for this cowboy figure say, doesn’t he look a little familiar? no I swear I’ve seen him before how’s the saying go? you will see him once if you do good and twice if you do bad? who said that I can’t remember but I swear to you I’ve seen him knocking about maybe in a past life, does this mean I’ve done good or bad oh I can’t say, I don’t think I can anything with moral qualities, maybe in a past life, that shouldn’t matter anymore I’ve been wiped clean I’m an empty slate cognisant of my vacuity the ultimate punishment any being could ever hope to face I don’t have my own face, all I have is an aggregate of faces plus the contents of my soul, by now no scale could ever weigh them up in the air nobody could ever judge or discern purpose but what purpose could you reasonably expect I am my container I am a rock ungoverned, who wouldn’t want to die I prefer this to governance by pure feeling or analysis or thought derived from hesitation pointless inward interrogations, meanwhile intuition lies on a higher plane it’s as immutable as DNA every being has it even the bleeding dying cowboy all beings except me
oh where is he now I can’t see him that scoundrel he’s moved, let’s see where he goes, stumbling across the void making a final plea a final desperate gesture at nobody in particular well I suppose except you and I but really who’ll take our word, you know I could kill every human being if I wanted but that’s irrelevant, were you there when the beast came around and said it wanted to do just that? not a bad idea, no you weren’t? it was the funniest thing this wretched hulk born of mew said the humans made it forged it like marble that hairless skin it wanted answers, it said the world is a curtain that obfuscates reorders truth, I said that’s very good you’re very observant and it said don’t patronise me I’m not a child but we’re all children defined by our forebears every father devours his son eventually, then the man came and took it behind the curtain, you know the king in exile he surrendered his power over a country it was too tangible he wanted to look behind the curtain and now he rules the land of absence, his subjects all ghosts all haunt him until he’s happier he is missed but there will come a day when he
is he our cowboy actually? blond hair seems like the outdoors type keeps pokémon enjoys mastery over the world soul gone necrotic he wants sheer will to convert immaterial relations to material fact thinks he can live after death through hard bargaining but not here, I am the air omnipotent in this little fiefdom nobody else will ever see me nobody will ever ask me stupid questions I will never face change I will never face a demand, it’s much better than being human — I digress, I don’t think it is him ah well he is imminent always history cross-stitches across his opaque shadow looming overhead; I think we had a human once a trainer he’s long dead he’s here somewhere, I was human and now I’m this but my personhood continued uninterrupted not erased just exiled what’s the difference between them anyway, speaking of there’s two intruders now one’s a white fox two-legged its fangs bared bloody vengeful, it hunches stooping beneath morals, did the cowboy steal and eat its young, bravo if so, break his monopoly on the violent legitimate, now there’s two of him the bleeding one follows on all fours like a dog behind his false self, can’t see him anymore he’s not alive maybe he’s not dead yet he’ll die eventually
always eventual always more time you spend so much time waiting, don’t you, something big has to come along eventually blow everything else out the water and maybe just maybe this next action will not be the sum of all that come before it, sometimes you end up in the wrong place the wrong time you take a wrong turn just once and you never recover, kids go through doors little adventurers some of them fall through holes in the world dislocated from everything inexorably changed, their families the dissipating nuclei of society they drift or they rupture, you take family where you can find it you reproduce this model ad infinitum or else people disown you think you’re wasting everything, even pokémon are children limited by their guardians, animals are exterior foreign wild things unknown but pokémon they fit conveniently into mass production meet the needs of the trainer, say do you hear the mountain wind, the Sinnese mountain wind cold unforgiving they say it nurtures keeps out invaders, xerneas reanimates xir subjects, xir light glimmers like moonlight over blue runoff in the abandoned gold mines near Veilstone property of the Indigo Empire, Sinnoh the perpetual child squandered its potential I was forged there caught there trained there sent into exile and now there’s only
1.
Connor always insisted he didn’t have much cause to complain about how things had gone. Sure, he’d worked himself to sickness in and out of school, juggling his grades with one hand and his savings across four years of part-time retail work with the other; at least it all paid off in the end. He got his scholarship to join this year’s Sinnese gym circuit, one of two hundred rookie trainers and one-third of the Snowpoint caucus by himself. He’d succeeded where almost a thousand others across the country had failed. The task now was simple: sweep the gyms before the year went out, make enough money out of it to save his ma from eviction, and use whatever he had left over to help pay for college. This was obviously his only shot — not many of his colleagues would be back next year and barring a miracle he would not have the funds for a second attempt — but he preferred it to no shot at all; at least he still just about had a home, a supportive parent, his health, and a support network consisting of his childhood friend and his partner pokémon. All of these were better than nothing, and he’d walked the tightrope of the poverty line long enough to know that keeping this all intact was easier said than done.
He’d come to Floaroma alongside the rest of that network with the intent of staying for a couple of nights to train and rest his legs a little before concluding the long trek to Eterna, the second of his eight obstacles in his path towards meeting his needs. Sitting on his bed, he watched from behind the curtains as the white sun rose towards its periapsis like an omen of the cold, bright Sinnese spring. It was less hostile than winter, threatening only gradual change and unfulfilled promise as opposed to hypothermia and frostbite, but its arrival still demanded that all its subjects come out of hiding. Connor’s qualms with that were strong and ideological in nature.
“Connor,” said Florence from the bed opposite as she scrolled through her phone, “is it just me, or has this kind of lost its novelty by now?”
“In what way?”
“I mean, this is just kind of our job now, isn’t it? And I’m glad we’ve got our pokémon along with us, absolutely; I know it’s a pretty massive privilege that we get to do this for the time being, and for my money there’s not really better company anywhere than the sort I’ve made in here. I’d even go as far as to say I love doing the work, I love the process; I don’t think you really get to do this if you’re not passionate and serious about caring for your pokémon. It’s just…”
She paused in place for a moment to figure out the precise direction her follow-up would take, as she often did; one of the things he’d most come to appreciate about her friendship was that she always tried to speak on her feelings with accuracy and precision. Once she’d found her point she looked up at him; her eyes were always disarming not just for their greenness but their clarity, standing out from her unbrushed curls like flowers in bougainvillea.
“It just feels like we’re running from something,” she continued, “like if we stop for a moment we’ll drown or get swallowed up. I mean, it’s the money, yeah, and I would like the money a lot; gods know you can’t really get HRT or surgery up in Snowpoint unless you go private, as much as I’d like to fix that. But it’s also, uh, I just… I wish we could spend a little more time just existing, really, you know? Not worrying about falling behind on the badge deadline or about making sure we can feed our pokémon; if anything, you know, I wish we could just spend a little more time hanging out with them, getting to know them and stuff. Like what we’re doing now, you know. It’s nice, quiet. It doesn’t need to serve a purpose.”
“Oh,” said Connor, “I just try to take the good with the bad; I make the best of what I can control and try to ignore what I can’t.” Try was the operative word there, he thought out of instinct, but he digressed. “I just try to make the most of this and all those other little interludes where nothing happens; I like taking as many as I can afford with you, and I’m lucky I can afford a fair few. There’s certainly worse ways to survive, and I mean, once we’ve really made a name for ourselves on the circuit we’ll have less to worry about financially and stuff. Besides, at least we’re not cooped up at home or on one of those oil rigs—”
“You’re always such a fuckin’ optimist, man.” Florence craned her neck down and rested her head on her palm, her back forming a crescent. Connor always thought he could listen to her laughter for hours; she had a fantastic laugh, low, subtle and warm.
“Doctor’s orders,” he laughed back. “My happiness is clinically required.”
“Well, you’ve got a point in any case,” she said, “and I guess I can’t argue if it’s for the sake of your health. But you get what I mean, though, don’t you? It’s not just me losing my mind?”
“Oh, absolutely; a lot of this is just boring, even more of it is nerve-wracking, and I’m terrified that, if we lose even one gym battle, we’re off the circuit. I wish something exciting would happen along the way sometimes, or that something would really change my life a little to give it a more apparent sort of meaning than all this wandering around — but, I mean, that’s just how life is a lot of the time. The best thing we can do for ourselves is gradually build towards some kind of transformation, I tell myself, both in myself and in our circumstances; it won’t be immediate but so long as we keep at it, I like to think we’ll look back on this later, once it’s all gotten better, and we’ll realise it was just something minor in the grand upwards arc of our lives.”
Satisfied with his little speech, he stretched out and leaned backwards, extending his joints to the furthest of their mobility to stay limber for the upcoming day. He glanced at the clock, which denoted there was only a few minutes left before the two had to set off to the gym and train; in his brief moment of vulnerability his dearest Ronnie, the aron Connor had known for about thirteen of his eighteen years, stretched onto all-fours and nuzzled his hard carapace into his trainer’s torso.
“There you go again,” said Florence, “talking about those grand upwards arcs. Honestly, it’s unbearable that you’re so… content with mediocrity. Didn’t anyone tell you? We’re all doing malaise now.”
Connor focused his gaze and hands on returning the affection to his other travelling companion; with his left hand he scratched the soft obsidian-pitched scales around the back of Ronnie’s head, which received a high-pitched rumble of contentment, while he ran his right one over the steely shell on Ronnie’s back. “I didn’t say we’re not,” he said in feigned exasperated self-defence, “I just said I try to be content — didn’t I, Ronnie? Oh, you’re such a sweetheart… malaise, though, is really useful. I feel it often, even; my life does kinda suck a lot of the time, I just try and branch out into other feelings when I can.”
Florence made a sound in her throat that sounded phonetically like ‘kvetch’, before losing interest and standing up; she zipped up her coat, ensured her pokéballs were all on her, and returned two of her pokémon from their lazing spots in the kitchen to their miniature spherical transport carriers. “Well, Connor, as much as I love you and as much as I’d love to stay and chat about nothing at all forever, I do have to concede that you’re right; we probably should get to work if we want this to go anywhere.”
“Good call; love you too. I think I’ve got everything on me,” he said, reaching through his coat pockets: “wallet, keys, pokéballs, water bottle, knife… lure, camping gear and food’s in my bag… well, Ronnie, do you think we’re ready to hit the road?”
Ronnie’s chirrup seemed as affirmative as any other response he could have had.
“And Pont,” said Florence to the piplup waddling and flapping at knee-height, “how are you feeling? …You want them beheaded, you say? Why, Your Highness, I don’t think—”
“No! He would never say that!”
“And the orphans? Well, Young Pontgomery, I think that’s a little extreme myself, but as your trainer and your steward it is my solemn duty to ensure your every need is met.”
Florence opened the door and trailed out the room with the conversation, and Connor followed suit; their pokémon trailed behind, likely unaware of the elaborate structures behind this dumb bit and no worse off for it. He didn’t hate being dragged from his hiding place; the idea of existing in the world felt at least a little more bearable if he was allowed to indulge in the vice of a really terrible joke with no apparent punchline.
“Nooo…” he trailed down the corridor that led into the centre’s lobby. “Pont, you don’t believe in capital punishment; you’re a good little boy! This isn’t in your heart…”
At its heart, Floaroma felt less like a commune and more like a patchwork of a few streets differentiated only by the names and colours of their interminable greengrocers, cafés and florists. One place sold bicycles at a 50% discount to trainers with a valid rookie license; tragically for the frugal, Sinnoh’s mountainous terrain and long natural paths made this investment non-negotiable.
The thin streets snaked outwards towards the town’s limits with houses that all shared the same aesthetic: white walls with plain roofs and fenced gardens, each containing precise flower arrangements showing that the prettiest parts of nature could be owned and bent towards the exact, unvarying needs of a homeowner’s association — there were two schools in the town, a library, a leisure centre and a temple intermingled with these residential zones, and a few other small businesses that provided goods in less immediate demand than high street stores. The trains arrived on time at the station in the far north-east of town, while the long road west out of town snaked past the Windworks and rejoined the highways a few miles down the road; through all of this, the valley winds blew, and the sawmill off in the forest sang to the townsfolk through the trees.
There were probably worse places to get lonely in close proximity to a couple thousand identical souls, though there were more cost-effective ways of achieving that than paying these kinds of rents. On the other hand, Connor had no complaints at all spending just a few days in such close proximity to all this scenery. As far as his interests extended, the town’s pokémon training facilities lay across the street from Hollander Academy over near the train station; it didn’t take long to reach on bike, cycling through gradually shifting repetitions of the town’s monolithic rusticity. The receptionist was probably a couple of years older than him and half-focused on her book as she got the two trainers signed in for the day.
“How’s the book?” Connor asked in an effort to fill the air while she signed their names down on the register. “Any good?”
“No,” said the receptionist without looking up, “just college stuff.”
“Ah.”
“You’re all set, in any case. We close at 9; let the desk know when you’re done and we can sign you out.”
“Cool, thank you so much!”
The receptionist glanced up from her book to acknowledge him and nodded once before fixing her attention on her studies, which were hopefully more interesting. She had no real say in dealing with people like him and every other trainer all day, he thought; he could hardly begrudge her for making the most of her downtime.
The party headed up the stairs, down the corridor, and Connor got set up on one of four courts inside the main hall — Florence took the one on the opposite end of the room. He set his pokémon up between the jagged chalk lines that formed the boundaries of this little arena, made of slightly uneven clay that likely needed some resurfacing; this was hardly like those huge complexes that the pros and the big-name prospects trained in in Pastoria and Sunyshore, but he’d trained in similar or worse conditions all throughout school. These were merely the facilities available to him. He could hardly complain. With Florence, he hauled out the requisite amount of straw dummies and mannequins armoured with used batting helmets and elbow-guards; they wheeled over the two spare pitching machines, one for each court, and mapped out every obstacle alongside every target to ensure an evenly-spread and consistently engaging workload for their partners.
Once all the prep was done, they wished each other luck and then set timers for the next seven hours. Connor retreated into routine like a comfortable cloak and opted to let his instinct take control; overthinking was the silent killer of many a trainer.
Rottenhat came up first; he flew up to Connor’s falconry glove, which was thankfully just big enough to fit the newly-evolved staravia and did not require any costly upgrade, and in response Connor clicked his clicker with his free hand. He put the clicker in his coat pocket and knelt to the ground, slowly and carefully so as to not disturb the balance of his large bird with sharp talons for gripping tightly onto skittery ground-hugging prey; he picked up the lure, textured and coloured vaguely like a bunneary attached to a line, and swung it out into the open air between the walls of the cheap gym building. Rottenhat tore through the air with his talons outstretched and pointed, knife-sharp, at his target; they glowed bone white with elemental energy as he seized it in a matter of seconds, then brought his tango partner down to the floor with such momentum that it almost tugged the line out of Connor’s grip. For his effort, Connor summoned the scraggly teenage hunting machine with back to the glove and rewarded him with a chunk of the filleted magikarp Connor had bought and prepared the other night.
Connor repeated this in variations throughout the session, moving between the lure and stationary targets while trying out different angles or methods of attack: rising towards the lure, falling towards it, coming at it from the side, grabbing it and bringing it to the floor, grabbing it and then letting go, slashing at it, attacking it with wings, blowing it away with gusts of wind, attacking different vulnerable parts of each dummy, slashing with talons, crushing with beak, with each repetition adjusted to hone Rottenhat’s mechanisms or a specific one of his attacks where necessary. He knew what wing attack, aerial ace, protect, swift, and air slash all meant as commands and could execute each one reliably and consistently; he just needed some help fine-tuning his tempo and flight mechanics so as to expend no unnecessary energy and spend no more time vulnerable than needed.
Through it all, Connor found himself unable to escape the feeling that he’d lucked himself into befriending and working with such a fantastic bird; he’d come from the wild as opposed to a specific breeding program, and Connor had only been his partner for about a month now, but Connor swore he had a real natural talent that would serve him well on the circuit. He often wondered whether Rottenhat ever understood any of his gratitude, let alone reciprocated it; he always tried to keep his pokémon out of their pokéballs whenever necessary to allow them to live a little more like the animals that they were, to let them know that they could return to the wild if they ever felt that was what they preferred; there was always that species barrier, far greater than a mere cultural or linguistic one, that would guarantee something always got lost in translation despite their bond.
Once all was said and done, Rottenhat would eventually return to the wild anyways; it would be easier for Connor and likely healthier for the bird in the long run — Connor just hoped to give him shelter, food and training in exchange for his temporary service, so that he would one day become a mighty staraptor and live a lengthy, fulfilling life with a mate in the wild. Many young starlies did not survive in the wild, after all, and even the ones who evolved were not guaranteed to do so again. He told himself that this was ethical and in fact a service to Rottenhat so long as he did all he could as a trainer.
He just couldn’t tell if he lived up to these promises even half as much as he hoped.
Afterwards, there was time for a quick break, then his focus turned to working on Ronnie’s offence — close-quarters combat, ranged attacks, elemental attacks, traps; iron tail, heavy slam, metal claw, rock tomb; stealth rock, rock polish, screech, even some more work getting shock wave right. The little guy beat the ground with his forelimbs, focused hard — closed his eyes — but the ball of electricity crackling over his head always dissipated in a second or two every time. After twenty minutes, Connor decided he’d tried hard enough and called him over for pets, headscratches and treats. Ronnie doddled over with his head hung low and eyes half-shut like sad half-moons.
“Hey, don’t worry,” said Connor with Ronnie’s big head wedged tightly between his arms, “you’re doing fantastic! You made really good progress with everything else today, and we all start somewhere… don’t worry about it. We’ll get it eventually, hey?”
Ronnie perked up about it, chirping and purring with his head held higher as their little break drew to an end — then more work on defence for the two pokémon for the remainder of the session: dodging and deflecting balls from the pitching machine launched at a variety of speeds and angles, over and over until the two got into good patterns with consistency and ease like little tapdancers choreographing as they went.
Connor watched with pride, chest puffed out and arms triangular at each side, when the timer on his phone went off before he could call for a sparring session. Florence had stressed the importance of knowing his limits, not just for his own sake but for that of his pokémon; he equivocated for a moment, conscious that there was always more to do, before turning to Florence and deciding to wrap things up on her schedule. He’d have to make up for the lost sparring once they were in Eterna and ready to train in two days’ time — the sky had already gone dim and blood orange to signify that today was at its end.
The debrief was the same as usual: effervescent, non-stop praise for the two pokémon as they worked away on their treats. Connor explained that he had all the reason in the world to be grateful that his pokémon stuck by him and kept working hard, because he would be nothing without their help; he gave Ronnie another hug and ran the back of two fingers down Rottenhat’s crest, which was as much affection as Rottenhat enjoyed — his brain wasn’t wired that way. He closed his eyes and squawked like a chew toy. That was reciprocation in his own way, Connor supposed as he grinned despite himself. He put everything back where he’d found it with Florence just as a janitor came in; they each bade him a great night, and he returned the gesture.
Outside the hall, the two trainers exchanged their usual post-work niceties — she felt just as satisfied with her progress as he did; they were both ready for the fight against Gardenia, they just needed to keep fresh and sharp in the run-up to the match, and by the way, they’d both lucked out with their search for flying-type pokémon; Elsie, her murkrow, was fantastic — while they headed back through the hall. The receptionist, who was still on shift somehow, was in the midst of a long, seemingly terse conversation with Cam Hendricks and his hulking luxio.
Florence winced a little on instinct, then played it off like a sneeze.
Consensus both in print and online had Cam Hendricks ranked as the second best trainer among this year’s crop of rookies. He was as safe a bet as they came; the training program over at Sunyshore Regional churned out disciplined, versatile trainers at the same rate as the city’s giant factory churned out microchips, and he finished as the highest scorer in his class. His dad was an executive at a software engineering firm, with enough connections and wealth to pay for lessons in Kanto and Kalos over summer. The Pokétch Company gave him a top-of-the-line smartwatch to model with an eye for an ad deal a year or two down the line; his battle uniform had sponsorship patches from a printer company and some health food start-up. If anyone would become the first rookie to beat Volkner in four years, one columnist had written, Cam was almost the safest bet there was.
Connor had almost beaten him once at the round of 16 in a regional U-14 tournament a few years back. Each trainer worked with rental pokémon; Connor swore he had him on the ropes up two-against-one. Maybe if he’d called his toxicroak to attack Cam’s milotic more aggressively, maybe if he tried to bide his time a little more in that final stretch until the poison had worn down the glorious, mighty sea serpent, their lives would have turned out a little different — yes, Cam was always going to become a big deal, but Connor didn’t even have a battle uniform, let alone sponsorships.
Now they were in the same room, and the receptionist had given up on politely trying to explain to Cam that the facilities were about to close for the night, while Cam insisted that he was only going to be an hour or two and that he’d clean up after himself. It wasn’t a big deal, he kept saying. That receptionist didn’t get paid enough for this.
“Let’s go do something else,” Florence whispered. “You wanna get dinner?”
Connor nodded wordlessly and headed to the door to get some air while Cam’s thick, ballooning silence swallowed the room and overwhelmed its inhabitants. His plan seemed to constitute an impossible kind of magic, born from a desire to substitute the cold, hard reality of the facility’s operating hours with the atemporal world he wished to inhabit by force of sheer willpower.
Night fell over Sinnoh in increments; the last vestiges of sunlight faded and conversations across most official channels slowed to a halt. Nothing really replaced either of them save for creaking bugs and a wind chill caught in transition — too amicable for desolate Januaries, at least, but still far less jovial than the evenings in summer. The two trainers found a little part of the meadow in which to sit and steal a little fragment of time. They ate their pre-packed sandwiches, which had long since gone cold, and spoke at length with a distinct absence in meaning. Absence came in many forms with nightfall, after all.
A group of combees finished their work for the day amidst the ash trees and conifers over at the other side of the clearing, beyond the ornate floral compositions cordoned off by rope; their presence, when noticed, halted the idle chatter. “By gods,” Florence said, breathless. She took out her camera and grabbed a few pictures with the flashed turned off. “Look at them. They’re working so hard, aren’t they?”
They gathered their nectar and honey in tight communion with one another, each individual packed into a set of three and shaped in a honeycomb structure that allowed each unit to form a hive structure. They all inhabited the same wavelength, communicating wordlessly beyond the faint hum of their wings in unison. Each individual harboured countless secrets, Connor thought, and each was ceaselessly complex in its own right; he’d heard of combees making surprisingly lively and determined pokémon, popular among novice bug keepers. The sum total of relationships between each member of the hive likely contained more information than he would ever know.
“That’s awesome,” said Connor. “Wow. Yeah, they’re fantastic.”
“Aren’t they just? Aren’t they just — oh, holy shit, look.”
All of them stopped in the air and fell into a giant formation across space as their monarch emerged from the shadows in the woods. Connor had never actually seen a vespiquen in person before; he took out his phone and quickly logged her with the pokédex app on his phone before resuming. She carried herself in such a stately manner; her wings took up far more space and buzzed considerably louder than those of her drones, while her bulky abdomen formed a hexagonal structure similar to a ball gown in shape and a little airship in its bulky, imposing nature. “That’s where she keeps all her larvae,” Florence whispered, “and it’s more like a honeycomb structure than a dress… but isn’t she so elegant? And look at those big eyes, that jewel on her head… what a specimen. Oh, she’s wonderful…”
Connor did not think it was worth saying or doing anything except smiling sincerely at his enraptured friend as she stared at the vespiquen, who either did not know either of them were there or did not care in the slightest. He didn’t mind that at all, nor it didn’t seem to affect Florence’s undying admiration in the slightest. The world would have been a much more boring place to experience, Connor thought, if viewed solely through the relationship each of its constituents had with him — both real and hypothetical. Sure, training a combee or even a vespiquen would have been nice, but right now he didn’t need it, nor did these ones seem to have any interest in approaching or working with him. He was just glad he wasn’t disturbing them, if anything.
His pokémon both sat alongside him; Ronnie sat with his head on his trainer’s lap, staring off at the hive with a mild apprehension concealed somewhat by the width of his eyes and the natural curiosity they always seemed to contain. Rottenhat, on the other hand, perched on a branch in Connor’s eyeline. He kept the staravia’s pokéball on hand ready for a swift return just in case he decided to attack the countless bugs, which was always a possibility. Pont and Elsie rested at Florence’s side in an uncharacteristic quiet and stillness, while her other pokémon — her dustox, Bimpton III (more commonly Bimp; there had not been a Bimpton I or II, to his knowledge) — absent-mindedly crawled up a tree and chewed up its bark.
“This is all pretty wonderful,” he finally said, not fully voluntarily. “I mean, all of this; just hanging out with you and watching the world pass by. It always is. But that vespiquen… wow…”
“Hey,” she replied, nudging him, “you’re not so bad yourself.”
He couldn’t stop himself from glancing over as she looked up at him with a knowing grin, her lips slightly scrunched as if to conceal the full width of the expression; the whites of her eyes stuck out like little stars in their own right.
“Well, you know, uh,” he said, “neither are you.”
“I know. I mean, you said that yourself.”
“Well, I just like to repeat it.”
Connor figured it was better to say nothing and just laugh it off instead, because nothing more needed saying. She reciprocated the gesture, hung an arm around him and brought him in close before taking a few more pictures of the combees as they all retreated into the dark of the woods. They were followed eventually by their ever-vigilant leader, who scanned the horizon for threats and seemed to conclude that neither Connor nor Florence were among them; for a moment, Connor swore they each made eye contact with the glorious creature as she paused in place before retreating.
The moment played out just a little longer before Florence checked her watch. “Well, I should probably head back to the room now; I’ve gotta video call Vi and Syd at nine. Did you wanna come with?”
Connor thought about it for a moment. There was always so much going on as of late, he figured, and such little time to take in just how much there was beyond the confines of the circuit; he figured he needed to humble himself from time to time by taking in the nature and the quiet of the world at night. They’d be out of Floaroma the next day, and there was no saying if they’d ever be back — or, if they were, how much of it would have stayed the same in the time since their visit; again, Connor found himself starting to miss the moment as it dragged on. Besides, he needed to take a few pictures to send to his ma.
“Ah, I’ll go for a bit more of a wander,” he said. “I’ll probably join you when I’m ready for bed.”
“Fair enough!” she said as they both got up to wander. “I’ll leave you to it, in that case. See you then?”
“Yeah,” he said, “see you then. Tell them both I said hi, though; I’m looking forward to seeing them when we’re back in Snowpoint.”
“You got it.”
Bimp, Pont and Elsie all followed their trainer out of the meadow and out of sight, leaving Connor standing beneath the firmament with his pokémon, his thoughts, and some direction to find. Rottenhat looked up at the empty sky, stood up and honked — it was about that time. Connor took his pokéball out and extended it out to the staravia on the ground.
“You want back in, hey, pal?” he asked; the bird honked again as if to give an affirmative and, with a click of the button, dissipated into a trail of light. Ronnie, meanwhile, came from a species who dwelled in caves back in their natural habitat; nighttime walks suited him just fine, barring maybe his stubby little legs.
Connor’s own legs were moving now. He looked back at his seat, double-checked he’d left behind no litter — he hadn’t — and then cottoned onto the fact he was in motion with company. “Alright, little guy, let’s see where the night takes us.”
Ronnie affirmed and responded with rumbles and intermittent chitters, continuing as the sojourn took Connor down the east road out of town along the river current. The membranous dorsal fins of magikarps and a couple other species of fish rose out of the lazing water and glimmered white on orange as their owners passed him and Ronnie, keeping a distant sort of company that felt more symbolic than anything — there were fishermen down the stream and fishing boats at the end of the line, while the eyes of hungry birds overhead and predacious buizels, swimming in wait, fell upon the hapless fish. Connor couldn’t quite put his finger on what it symbolised, exactly.
His walk took him past the trees and along the ridged peaks of the Coronet mountain range, over towards the rhythmic spinning of the dozens of wind turbines standing like a little army guarding the big metallic fortress that housed the Valley Windworks. All these things reminded him of his own smallness.
The Windworks powered a good chunk of western Sinnoh, the counterpart of Sunyshore’s solar panels and the myriad oil and gas plants up in the north; every so often the government floated the cessation of drilling and the transition to nuclear, and every so often some drilling firm running on Galaxy Corps money threatened to fight any such effort in court. The national assembly debated the issue frequently and generally concluded that current practices facilitated crucial trade with Kanto while enabling Sinnoh’s own energy sovereignty, and things remained the same. The sovereignty of the Reranai nation over the territory it had lived on for millennia, even that which it had received in the Celestica Land Act of 1899, did not matter: that was where the rigs stood.
All of this had happened long since he’d been born, and all of it dictated his life in tangible ways. Energy sovereignty was apparently the most important thing in the world — it allowed Sinnoh to stay solvent and ensured people could afford to heat their homes, ostensibly, but when winter came around in Snowpoint it emptied the coffers of almost everyone he knew. Yes, it sucked, but freezing to death at home hardly seemed appealing either. Once-in-a-lifetime winters seemed to happen every three or four years now, which seemed attributable to the atmospheric prominence of greenhouse gases emitted in sites maybe an hour or two from where Connor lived.
In Floaroma, they sometimes complained that the turbines looked ugly.
Connor walked on, unable to shake the sensation that he was being haunted by a ghost.
This was not the first time he’d thought this. People often looked at history like some kind of nightmare from which they could not awaken; while he felt he owed it a bit more grace given his intent to study it in college, he understood the idea. Everything was defined by the social and material conditions that produced it, those conditions deriving shaping and in turn being shaped by an unending series of events, in which he, too, was both a hapless spectator and a potential agent at odds with, and unable to break from, a world-defining logic which had…
…was his head spinning, all of a sudden? Everything seemed distant; the world had become so dim, so fragile, as though it wasn’t really there. His vision blurred, his ears started to ring, and his knees buckled as he trembled forward — what was this falling sensation? Had he had been excised from his body? Was it his fault? No, he hadn’t slept that badly as of late; six hours was enough, even if it came spread across thin spurts; he was pretty sure he’d eaten enough lately, too. Even so, he kept falling as though caught in the pull of a black hole — and oblivion felt so comforting from a distance, devoid of all worry and all the threats of the world that exerted themselves on him in the present and the future; there was no need to worry about… about...
Connor blinked hard and looked around; Ronnie had positioned himself at his feet to prevent him from falling over, and his hand had scraped, splintering, across a wooden fence. He looked around and tried to recall where he was or how he’d gotten here, right outside a set of houses just a few hundred yards from the Windworks proper.
“Oh, uh, it’s okay, Ronnie; I think I’m fine,” he said, kneeling down and affording Ronnie as much affection as he could for the trouble—
“U-um, excuse me? S-sir? Are you a trainer?”
The voice belonged to a little girl, about six or seven, with tears in her eyes; she clutched a teddiursa plushie tight and had her hair done up in a neat little bow. She’d appeared in front of him at some point — had she seen him almost black out? He felt the chill of the wind on his back all of a sudden; he tried to check the time but couldn’t make heads or tails of it. No, that was rude. She was speaking to him, and there was a jackhammer between his ears.
“Sorry, um, yes, I’m a trainer; sorry about that… uh, um, is everything okay?”
She looked up at him as he approached, sniffing and screwing up her face as if to make her tears go back in; there was a moment of hesitation before she continued, and a strange clarity in her eyes that made the cavalcade of noise in his head fade. It was only here that Connor took note of the terrible churn in his gut. Looking around, he felt as if the trees and the concrete in the space around him had gone slanted beneath some great pressure — as if the world itself had been subjected to some great disorder.
For just a brief second, Connor swore he felt a ghost crawling up his back.
“C-can you help me, please?” asked the girl. “I c-can’t find my daddy.”
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