Chapter 13
Gifts / The Far Road / The Last Homely House
—July 27th-31st 128 CR
Matt saw the scavengers first: not the winners of a battle, but stragglers ready to take an extra bite of power from a beaten opponent. They could go too far, usually accidentally. Usually.
He followed the birds, a buzzurgh and a couple of magpyre, view ascending and descending as he crossed hills and slid into valleys. Maia led the way, frost crackling where her paws fell, the long grass bending and falling. The scavengers honked at her and hurled insults before flying off.
It was a pokémon, dirty and sodden, sprawled in a depression between drumlins. It was on the verge of that dissolution into energy that trainer slang called "fainting" for the physical collapse directly proceeding it; indeed, Matt wasn't sure why it hadn't already done so. His pokédex read its vitals as critically low. A fainted pokémon returned to energy and buried itself in some medium amenable to its elemental typing to regain strength, while one that remained in physical form felt its wounds, its stamina ebbing until it was forced to faint.
He sprayed its oozing wounds with a bit of potion and watched as they closed up. The pokémon stirred after a moment, blinking red eyes.
"Yo," Matt said. "Want some food?"
x.x.x.x.x
"Rufus! Counter!"
The oxhaust readied himself for the bosstrich's blow, only for it to dance out of the way again. Moriko sighed in annoyance, watching the wild pokémon bluff-charge and feint over and over.
"It probably wants to use counter," she muttered.
"This is worse than that restoruler-restoruler battle at the festival that time," Tarahn commented, swiping lazily at a passing dragonfly.
Moriko laughed. They'd walked out on that one, the healing and regenerating rate of those pokémon too high and their attack power too low. Whoever had organized those battles had to have been kicking themselves for not setting a time limit.
"Ember!" she called.
Rufus spat a burst of flame at the bosstrich; it was a weak attack but fast-moving. The embers connected and it squawked, leaping into the air dramatically. It kicked up a huge sand-attack as it landed, and then tore off and away over the prairie. They could see it run for a while before it disappeared behind the hills.
"Oof. So much for that," Rufus said. He smoldered gently, a wisp of smoke trailing out of the forest of metal tubes on his back.
"Did you take any damage?"
"Nope, just"—Rufus sneezed—"sand in my armor."
They headed back to the campsite. The mooskeg had found them a nice spot; it was near a river and lined with trees for shade. Matt had brought in a new pokémon, and all the others out of their pokéballs were giving it the usual polite I'm-not-looking-at-you-but-really-I'm-interested treatment. Moriko joined in by not staring as she brushed the sand out of the joints in Rufus's steel faceplate.
Dragoon, the baboon pokémon. A dragon-type, it evolves to drillgon near level 50. Raucous and violent, they have a well-developed sense of social standing and will battle in hopes of raising it. The leader has the brightest markings and the silkiest fur.
It had intensely colorful skin, but unlike the picture in the pokédex it was totally hairless. It had an apelike posture, but its clawed hands and feet, spined tail, and reptilian skull all pointed toward its dragon typing.
Matt had given the dragoon a can of coconut water, and it sipped awkwardly. Pokémon ate rarely, and they only had an 'in' tube and not an 'out' one, a feature that set them instantly apart from all but the most primitive animals, to say nothing of the whole elemental manipulation thing. Unlike the human animal, whose hunger was never-ending and who yet perversely grew tired of camping fare, pokémon seemed to gain vitality passively, from pokémon center healing and from resting after battles. But they often enjoyed treats, energy-dense food like sugary berries, butter, even insects.
Moriko glanced at Vleridin, her new ally. Their truce had held these last few days, the mooskeg's mercurial moods leading her to comment and complain about every new topological feature or ecological variation they encountered. She had walked the whole way with them, something Moriko had thought would waste energy needed for battling, but now wondered if it would benefit the other pokémon to do as well.
Vleridin had demanded they stop several times claiming that there was a "power" nearby that she could commune with. The areas were unremarkable: little grottoes or clearings or ponds in the forest, pretty to look at—they had snapped photos with their pokédexes—but surely not, what, an energy source? But Vleridin had shown Maia and Sylvia how to do the same, though she disdained the part-fire types, Matt's svarog and Russ's newly caught geysard. The tibyss and borfang had responded positively, so it seemed that there was something to it after all.
They were out of the mountains now, in foothills covered with grass and wildflowers that smelled of strawberry plants and catnip in the sunlight. The forest was behind them, although stands of trees persisted around the water-courses, dark smudges on the horizon that they stopped at cautiously to refill water bottles.
Soon this would be behind them too, the grass thinning and leaving only scrub and gravel. Moriko suspected that the mooskeg would leave them then as her plant- and water-type "sources" disappeared.
Russ was currying Keigan the springbuck, who stood lazily as the round brush massaged his blue and pink coat. Russ's geysard was nearby; it had joined on their last day in Russet Town after a short battle. Sauza was a typical catch, an adolescent pokémon leaving its place of birth and looking for a trainer to travel with. It occasionally hissed, steam escaping from its bright orange body.
"How are you doing?" Matt said to the dragoon later, as they prepared to hike out.
The dragoon sat sprawled with a profound tiredness, not the indolence of the other pokémon. The potion had taken care of its physical wounds, but there was something more. It turned to regard Matt and put its head on one side, as if considering.
"Were you hurt after a battle?"
The dragoon looked away.
"Do you need to rest here longer? … Is there a place you want to return to? Family? I can send a bird to meet them, call them here."
No response.
"Want me to leave you alone?"
The dragoon's breath caught, then it sighed. "Where are you going?" it whispered.
"Through the desert, to a town on the sea," Matt said.
It shook its head, as if to dislodge a fly or a trivial idea. "Anywhere but here. Take me away."
Matt's eyes searched the pokémon. "…What happened to you?"
The dragoon's head swiveled; its eyes met Matt's and held. It opened its mouth for a moment, teeth covered, in a gape of ironic amusement. "They gave me up. They beat me, called me baldy, and dumped me there. A gift. Take me away, trainer."
There was a silence; the other pokémon, not yet recalled, all stood or sat watching the exchange. The dragoon curled in on itself, hiding its eyes from all the stares.
Liona was the first to approach. "A gift for whom?" the nigriff asked, speaking softly, drawing close but not enough to be threatening.
The dragoon looked at her a moment, then smirked. "I think you know—I think you know better'n most."
Liona's head snapped up; she stood rigidly, her thin, scaled legs pressed together. "You are mistaken," she hissed.
Vleridin joined them. "It's true then? They are abroad?" she said, with great interest.
"What are we talking about?" Moriko said, looking from speaker to speaker.
The dragoon made a sound, then stopped and looked away.
"Seriously," Moriko said.
Liona shifted, uncomfortable, and preened her black and red-brown feathers briefly. "When we met, Moriko… My brother was…" She glanced around at the other pokémon.
Moriko went to the nigriff and patted her neck. "You can tell it to me, or to them, or not at all," she said quietly.
Liona considered a moment, and then she spoke. "We were forced to leave our home. Our parent… he was killed, and we had nowhere to go." She shook her wings angrily. "We had nothing!" she said. She looked around at the other pokémon, as if challenging them to say something, but only Tak squawked dismissively, and he didn't count.
"My brother heard… whispers. In the dark. We met loners who said… there was more power than just sources. More power than battling. The old masters, back again, and power for those who would serve them."
"Who are the old masters?" Moriko asked.
Liona trilled, uncertain, but Vleridin broke in: "Ha! They imagine the demons have returned?"
Scraps of old legends came back to Moriko: the dangers of Gaia, legendaries and ancient pokémon, ghosts and ronin. But everything lost its intrigue with study: ghosts and dark-types were just pokémon, and ronin were sad and friendless more often than not. Most of the legendaries had been tamed, and ancient pokémon were just part of nature, fatal if you were unlucky or in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Demons, though; demon pokémon were pokémon that couldn't be controlled or tamed, pokémon that preyed on humans as a matter of course, not aberrance.
"Uh, have they? Returned?" Moriko asked.
Vleridin tossed her head. "No, no. They're long gone."
Russ was listening with interest. "What are they?"
"Humans know nothing. How to explain… There are people like us," Vleridin said, "of great power and renown, of rare form."
Russell nodded. "Legendaries."
"And they are merely servants of greater powers, of gods and demons from a bygone age," said Vleridin, the rising sun streaming across her antlers as she warmed to her role. "They left us long ago. These are old tales, old lore; I heard it from my parent, who heard it from hers, who heard it from him who was her parent, and so on. Once, we were their servants, but the gods and the demons left, and left us choice—left us freedom to grow power, or to take it."
Russ: "To… grow power? Like from a seed?"
Vleridin tilted her antlers to one side and then the other, considering this. "Yes and no," she said, "to grow it within yourself through community with others, or with the earth and its places of power—or through battle and the exchange of blows, which sows yet more energy within you, even if you lose, and of foreign type, the better to become greater, to gain rare powers."
"Or you can kill your opponent," said Liona quietly, "and take all their energy for yourself."
"This takes a certain amount of power to be even able to do," said Vleridin professorially. "But from there the growth is fast indeed."
Moriko glanced between them, incredulous. "Why would—why would anyone kill, if you can get stronger by lying in a pond?"
"That way is wholesome, but it is slow," Vleridin explained. "And one can battle, but if one loses—can you trust your opponent not to kill you? How do you get strong enough to protect others? Where do you journey to seek new power when the forest ends, if the sources you need end with it? This one had evil done to her"—she jerked her head at Liona—"and had she not joined with you, where could she grow safely?"
Russ looked over at the dragoon. "And what happened to our new friend?"
"A gift for a servant," the dragoon said, huskily. "To suck up. To get rid of garbage."
"You were weakened," said Matt, "and ready to be consumed—when you turned to energy, it would have—"
"Strange thing," said the dragoon. "Strange to be so close to death. Nowhere to run." Its eyes focused on Matt, pupils narrowing. "Dangerous, what you did. The… servant had to be right there."
"I was right there," said Maia.
"What power, and what servants?" Moriko demanded. "Are we in danger?"
"Not… immediately, I judge," said Matt.
"We are too many and too strong for the single servant," Vleridin confirmed. "But we stole a gift. It will be remembered."
"If it is a power," Dzalar rumbled. Moriko jumped at the crackling bass voice from the constantly-smoking fire- and plant-type boar. "These are common rumors that appeal to those that lack strength. Youngsters dreaming of easy battles. Ronin dreaming of revenge. Rumors started by children who think that someone highly trained by humans is a god. They are passed around every year by the wind and the credulous. There are always those who will do evil without need of demons to walk the land in shadow."
Liona looked at the ground. "My brother believed such tales. One day he left… and when he returned, he was not the same. After each kill, he was stronger than ever… and he heard a voice in the dark, praising him."
"Did you help?" Vleridin asked, frank.
"No."
"When they… when they captured Liona's brother, the ranger-captain and the pokémon said that it was pointless for him to kill humans. Why'd he do it?" Moriko asked.
"Can you get power from killing humans?" Russ asked.
Liona grunted. "He claimed they gave the most energy. Or he'd be rewarded separately. I don't know."
Moriko shifted uncomfortably; she felt the eyes of the pokémon on her, appraising.
"Humans have no energy," Dzalar said, rising. Flame smoldered underneath the smoke streaming off her hindquarters. "It's why they can't perform attacks, why"—she turned her head, and engulfed Matt in red flame—"energetic attacks do nothing to them."
Indeed, the fire had left him quite unharmed, although it had looked very dramatic.
Matt waved smoke away from his face as if nothing had happened. "Only high-level pokémon can hurt humans with their special attacks—but even Celeste could hurt me very badly with a physical one," he said, referring to Russell's celestiule, who had hatched only a few weeks ago.
"No, no, it's like this," said Tarahn, sitting up, the bells on his mane and tail jangling. "See, humans have high special defense, right—they can't be hurt by low level attacks. But they have low defense, so you can weaken them easily with a blow."
"No."
"That's stupid."
Tarahn pouted. "Tough crowd."
"We're animals, not elementals—we don't dissipate or transform when we die. No energy," Matt said, shrugging.
"Exactly, it's pointless," said Vleridin. "You are soft and easy to kill—if it were that simple, everyone would do it. No offense."
"My people heard a voice, too," said the dragoon. It spread its claws, as if to say "and so". It grunted. "You helped me. You should know they might be angry."
"We should get moving," Matt suggested, after a silence.
"What do you think?" Moriko asked Vleridin later, hoisting her backpack onto her back and adjusting the straps. "Did they really sacrifice one of their own to a demon? Are there demons?"
"I think there are those who think they serve demons abroad in this country," said Vleridin, "and they are dangerous enough. But we have a strong party here—there would have to be more servants, more than mere whisperers to pose us harm." She sniffed. "The dragoon's people might have sympathies for the demons—or they were eager to be rid of him, and sought an excuse. We should watch for attack, and we should watch him. They might have outcast him for a better reason than hairlessness."
"I'm glad you're walking with us," Moriko said. "We needed your knowledge."
Vleridin whuffed. "Please, I am entirely immune to your flattery. Shall we?"
x.x.x.x.x
They had several of the pokémon out and walking with them, testing the benefits of such, when they were attacked by the dragoon troop. A disorganized charge from a hidden position behind a hill was preceded by screeching, roars and colorful insults regarding the identities of their opponents' major and minor parents.
Maia breathed an icy wind into the troop, which halted the charge comically: the dragoon attackers yipped and cried at the cold air. Keigan followed up with a few well-placed gust attacks that sent them screeching back up the hill, with Tarahn's electric arcs following them.
The defector dragoon didn't take part, pressing itself into the grass and trying to remain out of sight. The troop gathered at the top of the hill, clustered around a drillgon—the evolved form—that towered above the rest, armored with metal-shod arms and shoulders. It watched them for a moment before turning its back and walking away.
The troop chattered, some following the drillgon, others taking up lounging positions on the top of the hill. A few were inspired to throw stones that fell short of the trainers, and then called out insults to the hairless dragoon. Eventually they tired of the game and loped off into the grass, invisible except for their long tails, held straight up and slashed with bright colors.
"I'm sorry," said Matt, when the troop was out of sight. "I would like to be your friend. I'm Matt. Will you come with us?"
The dragoon shrugged. "Forget 'em," it said, and started knuckle-walking along their original path.
x.x.x.x.x
A few more days brought them to the edge of the desert. The plains had grown dryer, colors fading. Trees and stands of them by water were rarer, and finally the land dropped off into cliffs and scree, with pillars and tent rocks dotting the ground beyond, and dark sand between them. A trainer wayhouse marked the route boundary, and they stopped to replenish their supplies and water. Pokémon were waiting for a fight at the door, a dark- and poison-type buzzurgh and a couple of ground- and psychic-type soiote who ran off after a few moves.
The wayhouse was a half-cylinder half-buried well back from the cliffside; its locked door opened after a brief consultation and a scanned pokédex. A small foyer lay inside, with a healing machine and space for shoes and bags. Beyond was a kitchen and eating area, and then rows of bunks, and finally a storehouse and water tanks. It looked like it could sleep several groups of trainers at once, although it seemed sad and empty with just the three of them and Vleridin, and shortly they had most of the pokémon out to make it feel more lived-in.
"This would be a great base camp if we were hunting for pokémon out here," Russ commented as they filled up on water, and selected food and supplies from the storehouse.
According to the regulations posted, they were entitled to a certain amount per day and any extra would be charged against their accounts with the league, tracked with tags on the wrappers. Any tampering would be charged plus fines against their accounts the next time the house was visited or inspected, etc. etc.
"Lots of ground-types around here," Moriko said, selecting a roll of dried, pressed fruit. She twitched Tarahn's tail when he seemed to be getting too nosy into the wrapped and boxed stacks of cured food. "We'll probably see plenty in the desert too."
"Matt was saying we should probably avoid lingering there, so this might be a good place to train a bit before rushing through."
Moriko nodded absently. The storehouse had a good selection of the traveling food that she liked (that is, food didn't mind as much, or was as tired of), and they had other appalling luxuries tonight: pizzas from the deep freeze, cold sodas, and dessert. If Russ wanted to hang out here for a couple days it was all the same to her.
The wayhouse had full power in the sunlight, and they were running the oven and the AC at the same time while the smell of the pizzas cooking wafted through the rooms. The dragoon, Sai, was slowly inspecting the inside perimeter of the wayhouse—it might have been the first human building he'd ever been in—and Keigan and Celeste were curled up on the floor, dozing. Moriko brought out sodas briefly chilled in the deep freeze, while Matt showed Russ something on his pokédex.
"Check this out, Mor, Matt took a picture of the guestbook at each of the places we've stayed," Russ said.
It was strangely sobering. The pokémon center at Umber Village was sparse, and then Verdure Town's was busy, while Porphyry City's went on for several pages just for one day. Moriko saw familiar-looking names and profile pictures, trainers she'd battled or saw in passing. But at the wayhouse on the Lacuna Sea there were fewer names, and then in Russet Town still fewer, and now only a few scattered visitors here at the edge of the desert.
It was strange not to see Angela, Dave, Vic, and Kai just ahead of them, or the other faces they'd grown used to seeing again in the campgrounds. It was possible that they'd passed ahead of the pack, but Moriko couldn't shake the feeling that the others had gone home with good reason.
She thought of Angela back in Porphyry, confronting her, in what she only belatedly realized had been an attempt to convince herself to leave for home. After what had happened to Dave, it looked like her gut feeling had been right after all.
Moriko felt a little prickle run up her back. No, she still didn't care what had happened or was going to happen to that group, but… she did wish that Angela had gone home after Porphyry. If only for Ophelia's sake.
"These people were here quite early," Russ said. He was pointing to a pair of names with the same registration date on the wayhouse record panel. "Skipping school?"
"April is a good time to cross the desert," Matt said. "The days aren't as bad. They might be from another region—it's very convenient to go slightly off-season, you just make an appointment with the gym leader and there's no waiting. You could do all eight badges in three weeks if you were a professional and didn't stop for wild pokémon."
"Are we ahead, or are people dropping out?" Russ wondered, echoing Moriko's thought. "I don't blame them, it's hard to backpack for weeks and weeks."
"It's hard on the rest of us to withstand your stank," Sylvia said, wagging her dragon's tail and sniffing under Russ's shirt, who shrieked playfully. The borfang was just able to fit in the wayhouse; she'd have to learn how to shrink herself, as some pokémon could do, as she grew older and larger.
Moriko glanced at the photos again. "Lots of people not even doing the whole league, just hanging out in Porphyry."
"Most people in their own regions take like four or five summers, getting a couple badges at a time, before they head to the tournament and the elites," said Matt. He cracked a soda and went over to check on the pizzas. "We're kind of crazy to try to do it all in a couple months, to be honest," he called.
"They start going to gyms when they're twelve, though, and have their mom or dad in the stands," Moriko said.
"We probably won't finish, but we can give it until the end of the summer," Russ said. "After that I'm heading home to go to university in Hoenn," he said to Matt.
"Oh yeah? What field?"
"Forestry, and this girl is coming with me." Russell growled and scratched Sylvia's scale-covered forequarters; the borfang arched her back and pretended to try to bite him, bright yellow eyes wide. "I'd be able to come back to Gaiien for a career if I wanted, but we'll see."
Vleridin looked at them curiously. "Why would you stop? I thought you people were all battling, all traveling." She nudged Moriko with her snout. "Are you stopping?"
Moriko shook her head, sipping her cucumber soda. "I never liked school. Maybe when I'm starving in the streets, I'll sell you all and go to a technical school on the proceeds. This one will fetch a fine price," she added, putting one of Tarahn's paws over her shoulder like a fur stole.
The raigar purred and rasped his tongue across Moriko's face.
"Ow!"
"I never understood pokémon traders, considering pokémon are quite happy to join up with a trainer of their own accord and just as happy to leave again, regardless of whether you've paid or traded for them," Russ commented.
"It's complicated," Matt said, "you're paying for the license of the pokémon, trainer to trainer, or trainer to trader, or trainer to breeder, but that license is nullified instantly if the pokémon wants to leave. It's sort of a courtesy to the trader, a payment for their labor, but it doesn't constitute any kind of binding contract with the pokémon. I'm not a fan; it sort of sets up the idea that you can own a pokémon."
Uncomfortably aware of her own lapses recently in allowing a pokémon to do what it wished, Moriko stepped out of the wayhouse. The sun was a receding glow, and a warm wind pushed past her comfortably while the first stars were appearing at the horizon. "I'm sorry," she said, realizing Vleridin had followed her.
"We already had that discussion," Vleridin said, lying down on the warm stones at the wayhouse entrance. "Just remember what you owe me: power, and healing machines, and lands beyond the sea."
They were silent for a while as more stars appeared; chirruping grasshoppers buzzed in the grass, and the wind spun it into waves in the distance.
"Earlier, you said something about—sources. How you can't journey if they end," Moriko said.
Vleridin flicked an ear. "Well, yes. How could the geysard leave behind the fires that birthed it without a trainer? I need water, green things. I should turn around here, by any sane reckoning, but we are past sanity." She snorted, enjoying a joke. "Gods—you all need water. What happens when it runs out?"
"We have—you, we have water-types, and we can find oases."
"How do you know?"
"They're—they're on the map, and water-types can sense them, so we'll know if we're on the right track."
Vleridin snorted. "Ach, maps. My herd and all its young for a map. Not all sources can be sensed and not all people can do the sensing, and even with a destination—the way is long, and there be monsters. But, with these people"—she tossed her head to indicate the growing cacophony in the wayhouse—"with humans—"
Moriko smiled a little. "Together we're a team. A team can make it to the next oasis."
"That does appear to be an advantage of this arrangement, yes," Vleridin said dryly.
Inside, the pizzas were ready, and they let the pokémon try a little tomato sauce or soda. Even Sai, the sad outcast, looked like he was having a good time, and there was ice cream afterward. It was a good day.
x.x.x.x.x
Gifts / The Far Road / The Last Homely House
—July 27th-31st 128 CR
Matt saw the scavengers first: not the winners of a battle, but stragglers ready to take an extra bite of power from a beaten opponent. They could go too far, usually accidentally. Usually.
He followed the birds, a buzzurgh and a couple of magpyre, view ascending and descending as he crossed hills and slid into valleys. Maia led the way, frost crackling where her paws fell, the long grass bending and falling. The scavengers honked at her and hurled insults before flying off.
It was a pokémon, dirty and sodden, sprawled in a depression between drumlins. It was on the verge of that dissolution into energy that trainer slang called "fainting" for the physical collapse directly proceeding it; indeed, Matt wasn't sure why it hadn't already done so. His pokédex read its vitals as critically low. A fainted pokémon returned to energy and buried itself in some medium amenable to its elemental typing to regain strength, while one that remained in physical form felt its wounds, its stamina ebbing until it was forced to faint.
He sprayed its oozing wounds with a bit of potion and watched as they closed up. The pokémon stirred after a moment, blinking red eyes.
"Yo," Matt said. "Want some food?"
x.x.x.x.x
"Rufus! Counter!"
The oxhaust readied himself for the bosstrich's blow, only for it to dance out of the way again. Moriko sighed in annoyance, watching the wild pokémon bluff-charge and feint over and over.
"It probably wants to use counter," she muttered.
"This is worse than that restoruler-restoruler battle at the festival that time," Tarahn commented, swiping lazily at a passing dragonfly.
Moriko laughed. They'd walked out on that one, the healing and regenerating rate of those pokémon too high and their attack power too low. Whoever had organized those battles had to have been kicking themselves for not setting a time limit.
"Ember!" she called.
Rufus spat a burst of flame at the bosstrich; it was a weak attack but fast-moving. The embers connected and it squawked, leaping into the air dramatically. It kicked up a huge sand-attack as it landed, and then tore off and away over the prairie. They could see it run for a while before it disappeared behind the hills.
"Oof. So much for that," Rufus said. He smoldered gently, a wisp of smoke trailing out of the forest of metal tubes on his back.
"Did you take any damage?"
"Nope, just"—Rufus sneezed—"sand in my armor."
They headed back to the campsite. The mooskeg had found them a nice spot; it was near a river and lined with trees for shade. Matt had brought in a new pokémon, and all the others out of their pokéballs were giving it the usual polite I'm-not-looking-at-you-but-really-I'm-interested treatment. Moriko joined in by not staring as she brushed the sand out of the joints in Rufus's steel faceplate.
Dragoon, the baboon pokémon. A dragon-type, it evolves to drillgon near level 50. Raucous and violent, they have a well-developed sense of social standing and will battle in hopes of raising it. The leader has the brightest markings and the silkiest fur.
It had intensely colorful skin, but unlike the picture in the pokédex it was totally hairless. It had an apelike posture, but its clawed hands and feet, spined tail, and reptilian skull all pointed toward its dragon typing.
Matt had given the dragoon a can of coconut water, and it sipped awkwardly. Pokémon ate rarely, and they only had an 'in' tube and not an 'out' one, a feature that set them instantly apart from all but the most primitive animals, to say nothing of the whole elemental manipulation thing. Unlike the human animal, whose hunger was never-ending and who yet perversely grew tired of camping fare, pokémon seemed to gain vitality passively, from pokémon center healing and from resting after battles. But they often enjoyed treats, energy-dense food like sugary berries, butter, even insects.
Moriko glanced at Vleridin, her new ally. Their truce had held these last few days, the mooskeg's mercurial moods leading her to comment and complain about every new topological feature or ecological variation they encountered. She had walked the whole way with them, something Moriko had thought would waste energy needed for battling, but now wondered if it would benefit the other pokémon to do as well.
Vleridin had demanded they stop several times claiming that there was a "power" nearby that she could commune with. The areas were unremarkable: little grottoes or clearings or ponds in the forest, pretty to look at—they had snapped photos with their pokédexes—but surely not, what, an energy source? But Vleridin had shown Maia and Sylvia how to do the same, though she disdained the part-fire types, Matt's svarog and Russ's newly caught geysard. The tibyss and borfang had responded positively, so it seemed that there was something to it after all.
They were out of the mountains now, in foothills covered with grass and wildflowers that smelled of strawberry plants and catnip in the sunlight. The forest was behind them, although stands of trees persisted around the water-courses, dark smudges on the horizon that they stopped at cautiously to refill water bottles.
Soon this would be behind them too, the grass thinning and leaving only scrub and gravel. Moriko suspected that the mooskeg would leave them then as her plant- and water-type "sources" disappeared.
Russ was currying Keigan the springbuck, who stood lazily as the round brush massaged his blue and pink coat. Russ's geysard was nearby; it had joined on their last day in Russet Town after a short battle. Sauza was a typical catch, an adolescent pokémon leaving its place of birth and looking for a trainer to travel with. It occasionally hissed, steam escaping from its bright orange body.
"How are you doing?" Matt said to the dragoon later, as they prepared to hike out.
The dragoon sat sprawled with a profound tiredness, not the indolence of the other pokémon. The potion had taken care of its physical wounds, but there was something more. It turned to regard Matt and put its head on one side, as if considering.
"Were you hurt after a battle?"
The dragoon looked away.
"Do you need to rest here longer? … Is there a place you want to return to? Family? I can send a bird to meet them, call them here."
No response.
"Want me to leave you alone?"
The dragoon's breath caught, then it sighed. "Where are you going?" it whispered.
"Through the desert, to a town on the sea," Matt said.
It shook its head, as if to dislodge a fly or a trivial idea. "Anywhere but here. Take me away."
Matt's eyes searched the pokémon. "…What happened to you?"
The dragoon's head swiveled; its eyes met Matt's and held. It opened its mouth for a moment, teeth covered, in a gape of ironic amusement. "They gave me up. They beat me, called me baldy, and dumped me there. A gift. Take me away, trainer."
There was a silence; the other pokémon, not yet recalled, all stood or sat watching the exchange. The dragoon curled in on itself, hiding its eyes from all the stares.
Liona was the first to approach. "A gift for whom?" the nigriff asked, speaking softly, drawing close but not enough to be threatening.
The dragoon looked at her a moment, then smirked. "I think you know—I think you know better'n most."
Liona's head snapped up; she stood rigidly, her thin, scaled legs pressed together. "You are mistaken," she hissed.
Vleridin joined them. "It's true then? They are abroad?" she said, with great interest.
"What are we talking about?" Moriko said, looking from speaker to speaker.
The dragoon made a sound, then stopped and looked away.
"Seriously," Moriko said.
Liona shifted, uncomfortable, and preened her black and red-brown feathers briefly. "When we met, Moriko… My brother was…" She glanced around at the other pokémon.
Moriko went to the nigriff and patted her neck. "You can tell it to me, or to them, or not at all," she said quietly.
Liona considered a moment, and then she spoke. "We were forced to leave our home. Our parent… he was killed, and we had nowhere to go." She shook her wings angrily. "We had nothing!" she said. She looked around at the other pokémon, as if challenging them to say something, but only Tak squawked dismissively, and he didn't count.
"My brother heard… whispers. In the dark. We met loners who said… there was more power than just sources. More power than battling. The old masters, back again, and power for those who would serve them."
"Who are the old masters?" Moriko asked.
Liona trilled, uncertain, but Vleridin broke in: "Ha! They imagine the demons have returned?"
Scraps of old legends came back to Moriko: the dangers of Gaia, legendaries and ancient pokémon, ghosts and ronin. But everything lost its intrigue with study: ghosts and dark-types were just pokémon, and ronin were sad and friendless more often than not. Most of the legendaries had been tamed, and ancient pokémon were just part of nature, fatal if you were unlucky or in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Demons, though; demon pokémon were pokémon that couldn't be controlled or tamed, pokémon that preyed on humans as a matter of course, not aberrance.
"Uh, have they? Returned?" Moriko asked.
Vleridin tossed her head. "No, no. They're long gone."
Russ was listening with interest. "What are they?"
"Humans know nothing. How to explain… There are people like us," Vleridin said, "of great power and renown, of rare form."
Russell nodded. "Legendaries."
"And they are merely servants of greater powers, of gods and demons from a bygone age," said Vleridin, the rising sun streaming across her antlers as she warmed to her role. "They left us long ago. These are old tales, old lore; I heard it from my parent, who heard it from hers, who heard it from him who was her parent, and so on. Once, we were their servants, but the gods and the demons left, and left us choice—left us freedom to grow power, or to take it."
Russ: "To… grow power? Like from a seed?"
Vleridin tilted her antlers to one side and then the other, considering this. "Yes and no," she said, "to grow it within yourself through community with others, or with the earth and its places of power—or through battle and the exchange of blows, which sows yet more energy within you, even if you lose, and of foreign type, the better to become greater, to gain rare powers."
"Or you can kill your opponent," said Liona quietly, "and take all their energy for yourself."
"This takes a certain amount of power to be even able to do," said Vleridin professorially. "But from there the growth is fast indeed."
Moriko glanced between them, incredulous. "Why would—why would anyone kill, if you can get stronger by lying in a pond?"
"That way is wholesome, but it is slow," Vleridin explained. "And one can battle, but if one loses—can you trust your opponent not to kill you? How do you get strong enough to protect others? Where do you journey to seek new power when the forest ends, if the sources you need end with it? This one had evil done to her"—she jerked her head at Liona—"and had she not joined with you, where could she grow safely?"
Russ looked over at the dragoon. "And what happened to our new friend?"
"A gift for a servant," the dragoon said, huskily. "To suck up. To get rid of garbage."
"You were weakened," said Matt, "and ready to be consumed—when you turned to energy, it would have—"
"Strange thing," said the dragoon. "Strange to be so close to death. Nowhere to run." Its eyes focused on Matt, pupils narrowing. "Dangerous, what you did. The… servant had to be right there."
"I was right there," said Maia.
"What power, and what servants?" Moriko demanded. "Are we in danger?"
"Not… immediately, I judge," said Matt.
"We are too many and too strong for the single servant," Vleridin confirmed. "But we stole a gift. It will be remembered."
"If it is a power," Dzalar rumbled. Moriko jumped at the crackling bass voice from the constantly-smoking fire- and plant-type boar. "These are common rumors that appeal to those that lack strength. Youngsters dreaming of easy battles. Ronin dreaming of revenge. Rumors started by children who think that someone highly trained by humans is a god. They are passed around every year by the wind and the credulous. There are always those who will do evil without need of demons to walk the land in shadow."
Liona looked at the ground. "My brother believed such tales. One day he left… and when he returned, he was not the same. After each kill, he was stronger than ever… and he heard a voice in the dark, praising him."
"Did you help?" Vleridin asked, frank.
"No."
"When they… when they captured Liona's brother, the ranger-captain and the pokémon said that it was pointless for him to kill humans. Why'd he do it?" Moriko asked.
"Can you get power from killing humans?" Russ asked.
Liona grunted. "He claimed they gave the most energy. Or he'd be rewarded separately. I don't know."
Moriko shifted uncomfortably; she felt the eyes of the pokémon on her, appraising.
"Humans have no energy," Dzalar said, rising. Flame smoldered underneath the smoke streaming off her hindquarters. "It's why they can't perform attacks, why"—she turned her head, and engulfed Matt in red flame—"energetic attacks do nothing to them."
Indeed, the fire had left him quite unharmed, although it had looked very dramatic.
Matt waved smoke away from his face as if nothing had happened. "Only high-level pokémon can hurt humans with their special attacks—but even Celeste could hurt me very badly with a physical one," he said, referring to Russell's celestiule, who had hatched only a few weeks ago.
"No, no, it's like this," said Tarahn, sitting up, the bells on his mane and tail jangling. "See, humans have high special defense, right—they can't be hurt by low level attacks. But they have low defense, so you can weaken them easily with a blow."
"No."
"That's stupid."
Tarahn pouted. "Tough crowd."
"We're animals, not elementals—we don't dissipate or transform when we die. No energy," Matt said, shrugging.
"Exactly, it's pointless," said Vleridin. "You are soft and easy to kill—if it were that simple, everyone would do it. No offense."
"My people heard a voice, too," said the dragoon. It spread its claws, as if to say "and so". It grunted. "You helped me. You should know they might be angry."
"We should get moving," Matt suggested, after a silence.
"What do you think?" Moriko asked Vleridin later, hoisting her backpack onto her back and adjusting the straps. "Did they really sacrifice one of their own to a demon? Are there demons?"
"I think there are those who think they serve demons abroad in this country," said Vleridin, "and they are dangerous enough. But we have a strong party here—there would have to be more servants, more than mere whisperers to pose us harm." She sniffed. "The dragoon's people might have sympathies for the demons—or they were eager to be rid of him, and sought an excuse. We should watch for attack, and we should watch him. They might have outcast him for a better reason than hairlessness."
"I'm glad you're walking with us," Moriko said. "We needed your knowledge."
Vleridin whuffed. "Please, I am entirely immune to your flattery. Shall we?"
x.x.x.x.x
They had several of the pokémon out and walking with them, testing the benefits of such, when they were attacked by the dragoon troop. A disorganized charge from a hidden position behind a hill was preceded by screeching, roars and colorful insults regarding the identities of their opponents' major and minor parents.
Maia breathed an icy wind into the troop, which halted the charge comically: the dragoon attackers yipped and cried at the cold air. Keigan followed up with a few well-placed gust attacks that sent them screeching back up the hill, with Tarahn's electric arcs following them.
The defector dragoon didn't take part, pressing itself into the grass and trying to remain out of sight. The troop gathered at the top of the hill, clustered around a drillgon—the evolved form—that towered above the rest, armored with metal-shod arms and shoulders. It watched them for a moment before turning its back and walking away.
The troop chattered, some following the drillgon, others taking up lounging positions on the top of the hill. A few were inspired to throw stones that fell short of the trainers, and then called out insults to the hairless dragoon. Eventually they tired of the game and loped off into the grass, invisible except for their long tails, held straight up and slashed with bright colors.
"I'm sorry," said Matt, when the troop was out of sight. "I would like to be your friend. I'm Matt. Will you come with us?"
The dragoon shrugged. "Forget 'em," it said, and started knuckle-walking along their original path.
x.x.x.x.x
A few more days brought them to the edge of the desert. The plains had grown dryer, colors fading. Trees and stands of them by water were rarer, and finally the land dropped off into cliffs and scree, with pillars and tent rocks dotting the ground beyond, and dark sand between them. A trainer wayhouse marked the route boundary, and they stopped to replenish their supplies and water. Pokémon were waiting for a fight at the door, a dark- and poison-type buzzurgh and a couple of ground- and psychic-type soiote who ran off after a few moves.
The wayhouse was a half-cylinder half-buried well back from the cliffside; its locked door opened after a brief consultation and a scanned pokédex. A small foyer lay inside, with a healing machine and space for shoes and bags. Beyond was a kitchen and eating area, and then rows of bunks, and finally a storehouse and water tanks. It looked like it could sleep several groups of trainers at once, although it seemed sad and empty with just the three of them and Vleridin, and shortly they had most of the pokémon out to make it feel more lived-in.
"This would be a great base camp if we were hunting for pokémon out here," Russ commented as they filled up on water, and selected food and supplies from the storehouse.
According to the regulations posted, they were entitled to a certain amount per day and any extra would be charged against their accounts with the league, tracked with tags on the wrappers. Any tampering would be charged plus fines against their accounts the next time the house was visited or inspected, etc. etc.
"Lots of ground-types around here," Moriko said, selecting a roll of dried, pressed fruit. She twitched Tarahn's tail when he seemed to be getting too nosy into the wrapped and boxed stacks of cured food. "We'll probably see plenty in the desert too."
"Matt was saying we should probably avoid lingering there, so this might be a good place to train a bit before rushing through."
Moriko nodded absently. The storehouse had a good selection of the traveling food that she liked (that is, food didn't mind as much, or was as tired of), and they had other appalling luxuries tonight: pizzas from the deep freeze, cold sodas, and dessert. If Russ wanted to hang out here for a couple days it was all the same to her.
The wayhouse had full power in the sunlight, and they were running the oven and the AC at the same time while the smell of the pizzas cooking wafted through the rooms. The dragoon, Sai, was slowly inspecting the inside perimeter of the wayhouse—it might have been the first human building he'd ever been in—and Keigan and Celeste were curled up on the floor, dozing. Moriko brought out sodas briefly chilled in the deep freeze, while Matt showed Russ something on his pokédex.
"Check this out, Mor, Matt took a picture of the guestbook at each of the places we've stayed," Russ said.
It was strangely sobering. The pokémon center at Umber Village was sparse, and then Verdure Town's was busy, while Porphyry City's went on for several pages just for one day. Moriko saw familiar-looking names and profile pictures, trainers she'd battled or saw in passing. But at the wayhouse on the Lacuna Sea there were fewer names, and then in Russet Town still fewer, and now only a few scattered visitors here at the edge of the desert.
It was strange not to see Angela, Dave, Vic, and Kai just ahead of them, or the other faces they'd grown used to seeing again in the campgrounds. It was possible that they'd passed ahead of the pack, but Moriko couldn't shake the feeling that the others had gone home with good reason.
She thought of Angela back in Porphyry, confronting her, in what she only belatedly realized had been an attempt to convince herself to leave for home. After what had happened to Dave, it looked like her gut feeling had been right after all.
Moriko felt a little prickle run up her back. No, she still didn't care what had happened or was going to happen to that group, but… she did wish that Angela had gone home after Porphyry. If only for Ophelia's sake.
"These people were here quite early," Russ said. He was pointing to a pair of names with the same registration date on the wayhouse record panel. "Skipping school?"
"April is a good time to cross the desert," Matt said. "The days aren't as bad. They might be from another region—it's very convenient to go slightly off-season, you just make an appointment with the gym leader and there's no waiting. You could do all eight badges in three weeks if you were a professional and didn't stop for wild pokémon."
"Are we ahead, or are people dropping out?" Russ wondered, echoing Moriko's thought. "I don't blame them, it's hard to backpack for weeks and weeks."
"It's hard on the rest of us to withstand your stank," Sylvia said, wagging her dragon's tail and sniffing under Russ's shirt, who shrieked playfully. The borfang was just able to fit in the wayhouse; she'd have to learn how to shrink herself, as some pokémon could do, as she grew older and larger.
Moriko glanced at the photos again. "Lots of people not even doing the whole league, just hanging out in Porphyry."
"Most people in their own regions take like four or five summers, getting a couple badges at a time, before they head to the tournament and the elites," said Matt. He cracked a soda and went over to check on the pizzas. "We're kind of crazy to try to do it all in a couple months, to be honest," he called.
"They start going to gyms when they're twelve, though, and have their mom or dad in the stands," Moriko said.
"We probably won't finish, but we can give it until the end of the summer," Russ said. "After that I'm heading home to go to university in Hoenn," he said to Matt.
"Oh yeah? What field?"
"Forestry, and this girl is coming with me." Russell growled and scratched Sylvia's scale-covered forequarters; the borfang arched her back and pretended to try to bite him, bright yellow eyes wide. "I'd be able to come back to Gaiien for a career if I wanted, but we'll see."
Vleridin looked at them curiously. "Why would you stop? I thought you people were all battling, all traveling." She nudged Moriko with her snout. "Are you stopping?"
Moriko shook her head, sipping her cucumber soda. "I never liked school. Maybe when I'm starving in the streets, I'll sell you all and go to a technical school on the proceeds. This one will fetch a fine price," she added, putting one of Tarahn's paws over her shoulder like a fur stole.
The raigar purred and rasped his tongue across Moriko's face.
"Ow!"
"I never understood pokémon traders, considering pokémon are quite happy to join up with a trainer of their own accord and just as happy to leave again, regardless of whether you've paid or traded for them," Russ commented.
"It's complicated," Matt said, "you're paying for the license of the pokémon, trainer to trainer, or trainer to trader, or trainer to breeder, but that license is nullified instantly if the pokémon wants to leave. It's sort of a courtesy to the trader, a payment for their labor, but it doesn't constitute any kind of binding contract with the pokémon. I'm not a fan; it sort of sets up the idea that you can own a pokémon."
Uncomfortably aware of her own lapses recently in allowing a pokémon to do what it wished, Moriko stepped out of the wayhouse. The sun was a receding glow, and a warm wind pushed past her comfortably while the first stars were appearing at the horizon. "I'm sorry," she said, realizing Vleridin had followed her.
"We already had that discussion," Vleridin said, lying down on the warm stones at the wayhouse entrance. "Just remember what you owe me: power, and healing machines, and lands beyond the sea."
They were silent for a while as more stars appeared; chirruping grasshoppers buzzed in the grass, and the wind spun it into waves in the distance.
"Earlier, you said something about—sources. How you can't journey if they end," Moriko said.
Vleridin flicked an ear. "Well, yes. How could the geysard leave behind the fires that birthed it without a trainer? I need water, green things. I should turn around here, by any sane reckoning, but we are past sanity." She snorted, enjoying a joke. "Gods—you all need water. What happens when it runs out?"
"We have—you, we have water-types, and we can find oases."
"How do you know?"
"They're—they're on the map, and water-types can sense them, so we'll know if we're on the right track."
Vleridin snorted. "Ach, maps. My herd and all its young for a map. Not all sources can be sensed and not all people can do the sensing, and even with a destination—the way is long, and there be monsters. But, with these people"—she tossed her head to indicate the growing cacophony in the wayhouse—"with humans—"
Moriko smiled a little. "Together we're a team. A team can make it to the next oasis."
"That does appear to be an advantage of this arrangement, yes," Vleridin said dryly.
Inside, the pizzas were ready, and they let the pokémon try a little tomato sauce or soda. Even Sai, the sad outcast, looked like he was having a good time, and there was ice cream afterward. It was a good day.
x.x.x.x.x