Chapter 18
Ironhelm / that is a goddamn Rayquaza / Reversal
—August 4th-5th, 128 CR
Moriko woke several times in the night, dreaming of caves and graveyards and demon pokémon lurking at the edge of awareness, and then of ancient pokémon, giants that brought firestorms and tsunamis, and she forced herself awake for good.
She found herself in the pokémon center cafeteria, unrefreshed and drowsy despite clean clothes and a shower, and she picked at tofu and powdery scrambled eggs. Tarahn joined her, and she spread a bit of margarine onto his nose; he gave a big-cat groan, his purple tongue flashing out to lick it off.
"Hey! Mor!"
It was Russell. Moriko choked on her tea.
"Yikes, I need a better welcome than that," he said cheerfully, dropping down on the bench and helping himself to her toast. "Dry! The hospital breakfast was better than this."
"You had gaping wounds yesterday!" she sputtered. "What are you doing here?"
Russ shrugged. "Nice to see you too. The tissue treatments started working last night and I feel great. The doctor said I could go, but not to leave town for a couple days. Fair enough, I guess. Hey, Tarahn," he said, as the raigar started hitting him with his tail amid a clangor of bells.
"Scratch my butt. Scratch it," Tarahn commanded, and Russ obliged, setting him to furious purring.
Russ certainly looked much better: he was animated and a better color, a stark contrast to the ashy, waxen appearance of his infes—of his illness.
"Russ… how are you feeling?"
He shook his head. "I don't—it's fine now. Nothing's different. I made appointments at the gym for today."
"Oh! Great! Thanks for… doing that without asking…"
Russ pulled up the internet app on his pokédex, tabs for battle strategy popping up as he pulled up compiled information on Gaiien's gym leaders and elite four. "Check it out: Lord Ironhelm, steel-type specialist. It looks like he has pretty predictable pokémon: steelix, magnezone, dusquill, kodiaxe—"
"Oh nice, Russ—uh, listen, do you remember the woman who helped us when you were injured? She's trying to—Matt is… Matt was acting weird because—"
"Mor, I don't want to hear that stuff."
Her voice died at the interruption.
Russell scrolled through his pokédex, not looking at her. "I just got better, don't tell me that boring stuff, all right?"
Tarahn looked between them, his head on one side.
"Ah. Sorry," she managed to say.
"No problem," he said lightly. "So: Lord Ironhelm, real name Galen Richter, a former professional trainer from Kalos—"
Excited, he scrolled through stat sheets on the pokémon the gym leader commonly used, with candid fan photos from various battles. Kodiaxe was a favorite; he had at least three in rotation as well as a succession of soldant, the steel-type variant of the reginant ant pokémon line. There were reviews and comments from trainers who had fought him—or claimed to, you never knew with some of these sites.
Moriko read one account of a battle and then tried to forget it, wary of false information. "I kind of feel like this is cheating," she said.
"Look, we already have to waste time so you"—Moriko flinched—"can go back to Porphyry to rechallenge whatshername. The more information we have, the better position we're in to beat him. Gym leaders are on their home turf with well-trained pokémon. What?"
"You're kinda mean today, Russ," she heard herself saying.
Shadows of thoughts passed over Russell's face and her stomach dropped. Why had she said that? He'd just come out of the hospital—
But finally he grinned and tapped her shoulder playfully. "It's been a long week, right? Now, steel is a very defensive type so we really want to play up type advantages—"
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko's head whirled with the considerations for their battle as they headed over for their appointment. The gym was on the inland side of Port Brac, a recreation of a second-crossing Kalosian castle on top of an artificial hill. Old warbuildings of the sort would have had a castellan bonded to a guardian pokémon of a ground- or rock-type affinity, who would strengthen the building and wield its stones as weapons against invaders. A month ago she might have felt terribly excited to explore the gym, but now it served as an ugly reminder of warfare and fatal battles.
She thought of the gyms at Verdure and Porphyry, even Russet, and how those battles had exploded into violence, the gym leaders unconcerned and the referees not intervening or dithering uselessly, and her skin crawled with anxiety.
Battles had been—she'd been—she remembered time snatched here and there for street battles or training at the dojo, and she'd won more often than not, and that feeling of power and competence had kept her going in the midst of the whirlwind of suck that school had always been. When everything was terrible, Tarahn had been there, Rufus had been there, and in the glow of lightning or fire she could pretend that she could be more than she was.
And all Moriko could think about now was what could go wrong, who would have to be hastily recalled to dissolve profound injury, the gleeful malice of the gym leader—Belladonna's face flashed through her mind, and fury and sick dread rolled along after the memory—
She took a deep breath and followed along in Matt and Russ's wake, the two of them chatting easily about battle plans and scenarios.
Just stay alert, she thought. Recall them fast if it goes wrong. Behind her Vleridin trotted along, unconcerned; she didn't plan to use the mooskeg for this battle, since she didn't have an advantage against steel.
Inside, the gym was comfortably furnished, with modern amenities like air conditioning and elevators, and the attendant checked them in and directed them to the now-familiar waiting room before the arena. After a few minutes, they were escorted in.
The arena was circular in the traditional style, although the battle floor dropped into a substrate-filled depression for the benefit of ground-type moves. There were a few people in the stands, heads bowed and looking at their pokédexes or other mobile devices. A group of kids with a mawile and a magneton were probably the gym leader's students.
Lord Ironhelm was at his end of the arena; he was pale-skinned and gray-haired, an older middle-aged man with metallic leg prostheses.
"Welcome to Castle Brac," Ironhelm said over the sound system, "and welcome to the three challengers. We'll be doing double battles today. Trainer Russell, you're up first."
Russ darted forward to take his place opposite the gym leader.
Moriko and Matt sat near to the students, while Vleridin remained close to the arena for a better view. Moriko tossed Thanasanian's pokéball to her side; the oberant looked around the gym, curious, and asked for explanations about the various items of monitoring equipment set up around the arena.
The students looked at the oberant and commented admiringly, the mawile's sagittal mouth swinging to face them, but shortly they were watching the arena again as the shielding powered up for the imminent battle.
"Oh shit," Matt said. "He has a Silph Eyedex."
Moriko squinted at Ironhelm; he was wearing some kind of eyepiece. "What is it?"
"You didn't hear about it? It's a heads-up display that will display advanced pokédex data over the battle. They're banned from tournaments."
Moriko whistled. A constant feed of pokédex data—advanced data?—without looking away from a battle would be a big advantage—and harder to use moves that relied on feints or trickery, if the software could keep up.
At the referee's signal, four capture balls went out, energy flashing: Russ's selections were Conall the dirfox and Sauza the geysard, facing a now-familiar soldant and a dusquill, a porcupine-like pokémon with black- and white-striped quills.
Dusquill, the spike pokémon. A steel- and ground-type, it evolves from duspine near level 28. Its quills are a potent defense. They have fine, serrated edges that make them difficult to remove.
"Oh! That soldant is from Doronora hive," Thana whispered. "They do live closer to the human city. How useful, to train with an experienced human leader."
Russ had a renewed vigor after recovering from his injury, and it seemed to transfer to his pokémon: Conall had his tail up and looked confident for once, while Sauza looked relaxed rather than totally slothful.
The referee's hand dropped and the geysard shot forward, spitting embers at the soldant, but it turned the attack aside harmlessly on a protect shield. A reflect shimmered around Sauza and Conall as the sandy floor of the area swirled and then whipped into a sandstorm.
The barrier hummed on, protecting the stands and the trainer cages. Inset images flickered on the shield surface as energy-detecting cameras turned on, the automated attackdex helpfully naming the techniques in play for the audience. The students murmured to each other.
Conall followed up with sand tomb, dropping the soldant and dusquill into a pit. It was hard to see in the sandstorm, but their cursors on the shield dropped, tracking smoothly downward and then disappearing as they both dug into the sand to set up underground attacks.
Sauza spat out long clots of dark oil that ignited on contact with air, a firefield attack that shone through the whirling grit. His opponents burst out of the ground and dealt the geysard a couple of hard blows in spite of the reflect shield, and left him limping away with a collection of the dusquill's needles piercing his red hide.
Conall hit them with a confuse ray as they emerged—thank the battle system for that information, that technique had a subtle effect that was invisible in the sandstorm—and now they were staggering around drunkenly, swiping at nothing and recoiling from the firefield patches.
They could hear Ironhelm's bellowing. "Lance! Use needle barrage! Lance! Hista! Get it together!"
Sauza lurched forward and hit the soldant with a flamethrower—ooh, its health plummeted on the battle screen. Conall used sand whip on the dusquill, the rope of the attack buffeting it with quick successive hits. It shook its head and rallied, trying a magnitude attack that rippled through the substrate and pelted the geysard and dirfox with earth.
The sandstorm failed as the dusquill weakened, and the soldant tried a sand whip of its own.
"Flamethrower again!"
Sauza caught the sand whip across the face and was heaving on his belly in the sand, but managed to sear the soldant with a glob of smoky fire. They were both glittering with the faint; Sauza darted back to his pokéball while the soldant held on for a second or two longer—good discipline, good technique for scored matches.
Ironhelm recalled it without looking, watching the remaining pokémon. "Steamroller, Lance!"
The dusquill leapt into the air and spun, glowing yellow-green, and hit the ground to roll after the dirfox, who ran full-tilt for the other side of the area.
"Double team, Conall!"
"Follow the east copy, Lance!"
Moriko whistled. Confident—was that the Eyedex?
Matt snapped his fingers. "Cheating—oh, watch—"
The dusquill followed the real Conall, but it was hard to steer while rolling, and the dirfox was leading it through the firefield. Burning oil flew as the steamroller attack churned up the substrate and stuck to the dusquill. It slowed, the glow of the attack fading, and it finally dove under the surface to extinguish the fires.
"Sand wave!"
The dirfox's eyes glowed, and a huge ripple went through the arena sand. It flung the dusquill out and away, and it came to rest at Ironhelm's feet.
The gym leader nodded and recalled it.
"The match goes to trainer Russell!"
"So that's how the gym battle works," Moriko said to Thana, "we fight the leader and we get a badge as a token if we win, and we can go on to the next one. When you have eight you can fight in the league tournament in the fall."
"This building is quite pleasing," Thana said. "There is good earth and stone in it—but too much steel for my liking. That man is made of metal as well—humans don't have types, do they?"
Moriko shook her head. "He has a prosthesis—he lost his legs somehow."
"A dreadful injury, but it wasn't healed at a pokémon center?"
Matt laughed beside them. "That kind of healing doesn't work on humans. You can regrow a limb but it takes a long time. It might not have been available when he was injured, or it didn't take."
Russ rejoined them proudly, and Matt was the next up. The arena system repaired the battle floor, redistributing the sand.
"Russ! That was great," Moriko said. They tapped fists.
"Thanks! Sauza is a little banged up, but the match was fine. I was wondering, though—Ironhelm knew immediately which clone was Conall. I can't tell which one is the real one, so how—?"
"Matt says that he has a Silph Eyedex, it can recognize moves that rely on trickery."
"What? That's not fair," Russ said, looking annoyed. "What the fuck," he muttered.
Moriko raised her eyebrows. "Hey, no problem, it was to your advantage—the dusquill ate a bunch of fire, chasing him."
"Oh yeah, definitely," Russ said absently, watching the gym leader.
In the arena, Matt made his selections: Maia and Sai, the dragoon. Sai looked around uncertainly and a couple of people laughed; he didn't match the generic dragoon portrait the battle system threw up, lacking its shaggy gray fur.
"Is that a shiny?" one of Ironhelm's students muttered.
Maia stood poised, her fins raised. They faced a burnox and an acupeix, a lionfish-like pokémon covered in sharp spines. It levitated, floating above the sand in the dry arena.
Burnox, the fire ox pokémon. A fire- and steel-type, it evolves from volcalf near level 16 and to oxhaust near level 36. It uses its high vitality to charge up powerful physical attacks. They were used to help smelt steel before the modern era.
Acupeix, the needle pokémon. A water- and steel-type, it evolves to carchardax with age or with a deep sea tooth artifact. Its bright coloration, spines, and high defensive ability all say "don't touch me!"
"Trainers ready? Begin!"
Sai immediately ran forward, eager to put his fighting-type attacks to use. He howled after striking the acupeix, leaping away and shaking his stuck paws.
Ironhelm's students giggled.
"Idiot," Russ said quietly.
Maia surrounded herself in an aqua ring and sidestepped the burnox's flame charge, following up with a bubblebeam that hit it squarely, the orbs bursting with gunshot pops on the bull pokémon's armor.
Sai charged again, aiming for the burnox. It countered, slamming the dragoon right into Maia. The fighting-type energy made her stagger, and she snarled at Sai; he snarled back, exposing his wicked canine teeth.
Moriko winced as the students laughed at Matt, but he seemed pretty calm and asked the referee for a timeout.
"Saints, double battles are always a rollercoaster," one of the students said, groaning.
"You aren't happy the leader is winning?" Moriko asked.
She immediately regretted saying anything as the students flicked her over-the-shoulder glances, but one of the girls said, "Oh yeah, I mean, we're here to learn and we've seen Galen fight a million times. I want to see what the challengers do, right?"
"Are timeouts allowed in tournaments?" the mawile chirped. "I've never seen this on TV."
"Depends on the tournament," said one of the students, "but he'd have been finished at the Kanto Classic. A bad start can screw up your whole match."
"He wouldn't be using such a green pokémon if he was at a tournament, though."
"You'd be surprised—"
The pokémon approached the edge of the arena, and Matt knelt to speak to them quietly. Sai looked disheartened; Maia said something to him, her tail lashing, and the dragoon sulked further. Matt kept talking, and Sai seemed to perk up a little more. Maia's ruff settled down.
"Just work together," Russ said impatiently, his fingers drumming on his knees. "It's easy."
Time up, the referee called them back to battle.
And Sai just lurched in to attack the burnox again—
Russ actually yelled. "Seriously—"
—but Maia got there first with bubblebeam, ruining the counter.
"Better!" one of the students called, clapping.
Sai feinted, switching to a dragonbreath attack, but the teal flames didn't do much to the bull pokémon. The acupeix scrambled to act and fired a barrage of icicle spears at the dragoon, who scrabbled away inexpertly as chunks of ice flew.
The burnox headed for Sai with another flame charge, and he just barely got out of the way while Maia hit it with a hydro pump. The burnox staggered; it roared a flamethrower that didn't quite come together, the flames half-dissipating. Maia pushed it back with a bubblebeam, the attacks dueling briefly like in the movies.
There was a rumble as the acupeix summoned a swell of water, and Sai, mesmerized by the beam attacks, reacted too late and was knocked off his feet by the surge. The burnox held on for a moment before throwing itself away from Maia, and then charging forward and hitting the dragoon with a punishing body slam attack.
As they sprang apart the burnox stumbled, weakening in the rising water, but Sai was well out of the game. Matt recalled him, and Ironhelm held up the burnox's pokéball a heartbeat later.
The water was really coming into the arena, summoned from some reservoir beneath. The acupeix cruised around its edge, a V-shaped wake behind it and its dorsal fins jutting out of the water. It was far more in its element now, but so was Maia: she rose up on a surf swell, her spines up and intimidating.
"The type matchup isn't great," Russ commented. "The steel-type might win by attrition."
The tibyss's aqua ring still glittered in the light, orbiting her body.
"Get it, Maia," was all Matt said.
Maia roared, the luminescent patches on her body glowing, and the flooded arena began churning with a whirlpool attack. The acupeix levitated again, rising out of it, just in time to get hit with a huge hydro pump and tumble across the foaming surface of the water.
Maia stood on her hind legs, flexing her paws, and a huge swell of water gathered behind her and headed for the lionfish pokémon like a wall. It leapt forward, trying to cut through the wave, but Maia's body glowed with a painful brightness and the wave crested violently, crashing the acupeix up against the energy shield.
The acupeix recovered, spines flying off its back in a needle barrage, and Maia threw up another wave to slow and deflect them. The tibyss roared again and slammed the acupeix down with another surf attack, smaller waves tumbling and lashing through the pool. It rose out of the water but splashed back down, its gills working in silent gasps.
Ironhelm recalled the acupeix. "That will do," he declared. "Congratulations."
Maia relaxed, her spines falling flat on her back. She looked small, suddenly, letting herself sink into the water as it drained away.
Russ pointed at Maia's health bar, which was also flagging. "Nice of him," he said. "That could have gone either way. She might have tired herself out, in fact."
"Galen gets bored easily," one of the students said over his shoulder. "And he's… chivalrous," he added, gesturing around at the gym with its replica castle conceit and warbanners on the walls.
"Chivalrous with that illegal Eyedex?" Russ retorted.
The students laughed nervously. "Illegal in tournaments," one said, a little defensive.
"Oh man, we'd have been in the splash zone without the shield," another said.
"Imagine being down there with the attacks like in the old days."
Matt crouched at the side of the arena and threw his arms around Maia's neck as the shield came down; they could hear her growl from the stands, but her fins perked up a fraction. Matt recalled her and rejoined them.
"Whew!" Matt said. "That was a little rough."
"Not bad," Russ said. "You might have used your svarog for that one instead of Sai, she could attack indirectly—"
Moriko recalled Thana and left them to talk. The coaching from Russ was a little ungracious, but he was weird and voluble today.
"Interesting matches so far?" Moriko asked Vleridin as she passed.
"Well enough," the mooskeg said. "The tibyss has some skill," she added grudgingly.
Moriko tried not to grin and kept going. She took her place in the challenger's circle; Ironhelm was passing the pokéballs he'd used to an aide. He faced her and raised an ultra ball and a great ball in his hands, and she held up Liona and Rufus' pokéballs.
"Choose your pokémon!"
They threw down the pokéballs simultaneously, good battle etiquette. Ironhelm's picks were a kodiaxe, tall and armored and holding its signature hatchets, and a drillgon, dragoon's evolved form, its colored skin patches and steel armor bright against its white fur and black hide.
Kodiaxe, the polar pokémon. An ice- and steel-type, it evolves from falcub near level 30, and to ursabre near level 55. It is protected from extremes in temperature by a thick layer of fat. They train daily to become masters of weaponry.
Drillgon, the drill pokémon. A dragon- and steel-type, it evolves from dragoon near level 40. It protects its troop with powerful attacks and excavates small caves for them to shelter in.
Damn—thick fat was an ability that reduced fire-type damage; better stick with fighting-type attacks for that one.
"Trainers ready? Begin!"
"Flying press, Liona! Get 'em, Rufus!"
The nigriff launched into the air and aimed for the kodiaxe in a graceful arc. The bear pokémon raised its hatchets, firing off ice shards at her, but was stopped short by a punishing shoulder-first flame charge from Rufus. He drove it backward, its claws dragging through the arena floor, and Liona broke off, aiming gust attacks at it from range.
"You'll hit Rufus! Get the other one!"
Shortly the kodiaxe and Rufus were grappling, the bear pokémon smashing its axes against the oxhaust's armor with resounding clangs. Rufus struggled and breathed a flamethrower into its chest and neck at close range, and followed up with a sharp brick break technique. That drew a roar of pain from the kodiaxe and left it scrabbling backward on all fours—
—just in time for the drillgon to hit Rufus with an absolutely brutal attack. It sent him flying and he hit the ground hard, the soaked arena substrate flying up in clods around him as he skidded to a stop. He groaned, his arms shaking as he levered himself upwards.
Bone club—Moriko could see the spectral bone fading in the curve of the drillgon's prehensile tail. Gods all—
Ironhelm folded his arms, nodding silently.
The drillgon and the kodiaxe regrouped; the latter was worse off and the drillgon took the forward position, but the kodiaxe had its hatchets up and ready again.
"Flying press!"
Liona circled again and dove toward the drillgon, driving it into the ground with her forepaws, only to meet a force palm attack at the same instant. The nigriff went flying in a cloud of feathers, and she tumbled in the air, wings working as she tried to right herself.
Hoooooo boy. Moriko could see their health bars out of the corner of her eye, no need for fancy equipment, because everything was red and yellow on the pokédex screen.
Her legs shook, and she grit her teeth. I've lost before, she thought. Keep it together. No one's dead.
The drillgon raised its arms and screeched, its mouth full of jagged fangs. Liona and Rufus stumped toward each other, battered, Liona's wings fluttering out of concert. The kodiaxe had one more turn left in it, probably, but it could still hit hard.
The oxhaust and nigriff technique lists refused to appear in her mind—come on, she could turn this around!—could Rufus manage a double kick? What else could Liona do—
"Bone club, Marini," said Ironhelm.
The drillgon rushed Rufus, drills raised and spinning. Its tail snapped around, clutching the glowing shape of a dinosaur's thighbone. The oxhaust raised his arm guards, preparing to take the attack—
—Moriko saw a nigriff tentatively showing off her attacks to a new trainer—
"Revenge, Liona!"
—a clang from the spectral bone; smoke surged from Rufus' pipes, and he glittered as he fainted—
—Liona headbutted the drillgon, red-brown fighting-type energy exploding outward and sending it flying into the kodiaxe. They tumbled to an undignified stop; the drillgon was scintillating, dissolving into lightmotes, and the kodiaxe sprawled, motionless.
Ironhelm pursed his lips; he touched the Eyedex's arm briefly, then recalled both of his pokémon.
"I've seen enough," the gym leader said. "Thank you for the battle."
The referee's flags whipped. "The match goes to trainer Moriko!"
And that was it, the battle was over and she'd won and no one had nearly died and the gym leader was normal and gracious—
Moriko swayed, wishing the trainer's circle had a railing that she could grab on to, but her vision cleared as the shield came down and Liona approached her shyly, limping.
"Was that okay?"
"Better than okay!" Moriko said, and scratched the nigriff under the chin. "How are you feeling?"
"I thought the drillgon punched me so hard my eyeballs flew out, but it was just the world spinning."
"You've earned a big rest! You won with that revenge attack, that was so great." Moriko grinned. "One of the first attacks I saw you use."
Liona whistled. "I'm shredded, there was so much energy to turn back. She hit him so hard."
"Come on, then, we'll get you healed up and go down to the beach, or wherever you like."
Russ and Matt walked up to her as she recalled Liona; they congratulated her, and Russ started critiquing her battle.
"Nice one, but you should have been using revenge way earlier. It's a staple of double battles—"
Moriko smiled at him politely. Come on, dude, really—
"Trainers," Lord Ironhelm said. "Would you come with me?"
Moriko started and faced the gym leader. He was taller than Russ, long-featured and pale. The Eyedex looked rougher up close, with wires coming off of it and running under his clothes onto metallic contacts set into his arms. She struggled not to stare and make him feel self-conscious. It was a conspicuous bit of body modification, but between them and the leg prostheses he'd likely been in a horrifying accident.
"Is this for our badges?" Matt asked.
Ironhelm shook his head. The Eyedex gave him a dreamy, unfocused look. "My daughter and her friends asked to speak with you three."
The gym leader led them to the back of the arena. Vleridin looked over the narrow door and corridor and shook her head with its broad antlers, and she turned to energy in a blink of light and flew behind Moriko's collarbone.
Um—
Please, I shan't be left out due to a trick of human architecture.
Moriko blinked; the others were watching her.
"Everything all right?" Ironhelm asked.
"Yes. Sorry to interrupt."
They followed him through the doorway. Here the stone of the castle was less dressed up, with long mats to protect the floor. He walked quickly, the servos in his legs working, and Moriko felt faintly uneasy, like they were being spirited away to some isolated location.
"Where are we going?" Moriko asked.
Ironhelm blew out his breath. "The… I believe it is a matter related to the Black Queen, if you are familiar with such a person."
Matt's posture immediately grew stiff and defensive, but he kept walking. "Is she here?" he asked, just barely keeping his voice normal.
The gym leader shook his head. "A message for you, from some of her… associates." He sighed.
Shortly they came to a nicer area of the castle, a sitting room with wide windows showing a treed and manicured garden behind the building. There was a pond with a fountain at the center with flotillas of ducks and black swans arranged around it, as well as the pokémon ducklett and swanna gazing on serenely. The sitting room's floor was hardwood with unevenness that suggested real age, and there were old clan banners and warriors' nabori hung on the walls, interspersed with second-crossing-era steel-cult swords and naginata. They were probably mostly replicas, but here and there the fabric or metal betrayed actual use.
There was a long table at the center of the hall, and circles of armchairs at the corners. Potted plants and cabinets were arranged around the room. On a table spread with bright white hotel tablecloths was a tea service, and a tall stand covered in desserts: muffins and petits-fours, lemon bars, shortbread and scones, and candied fruit and nuts.
"My daughter, Axel, and her friends," Lord Ironhelm said.
Moriko managed to tear her eyes away from the teacakes and look: he was introducing a tall, pale woman and another, shorter and darker, and beside them was an extraordinarily tall and thin man whose yellow eyes stood out like beacons in his olive-toned face.
"I'm Axel," said the pale woman, approaching them and shaking hands. She was very pretty, with bright yellow and pink genehan hair, and a strong nose that nevertheless suited her. "The Black Queen asked us to speak with you."
"Ciaran," said the other woman. "I heard you all met the Gray Prince and the Wandering Fire?" she said, without preamble. She had black hair with a green streak that was probably dyed rather than a genehan, and was dressed more casually, in worn but clean traveling clothes.
"Is that what they're called?" Matt said, sarcastic, but he withered under unamused looks from the two of them.
"We have stuff to do too," Axel said tartly. "We'll keep this short. Do you want tea?"
There was a tense silence as they took white china cups and poured for themselves. There were several fragrant flavors that had been steeped precisely without bitterness, and real cream and milk as well as sugar and lemon. Moriko poured a half cup of coffee and loaded it with cream and sugar, and managed to restrain herself and only took about eight teacakes and a scone. And some almonds. And a muffin.
They sat down on the armchairs, perched on the edge of the cushions. Moriko looked up and over the others' heads at the walls, but Matt and Russ were staring at Axel and Ciaran and the tall man over their cups. It was straight out of a period drama like Windburn Hall, and she was unsure of the etiquette but had the vague feeling that once they got through a few sips or so, business would start.
The teacakes were amazing, buttery shortbread covered in powdered sugar and variously flavored with chopped nuts or dried fruit, and she tried to eat daintily but was probably failing. Yup, huge fall of icing sugar right onto her shirt. She tried to brush it away and made it worse.
Moriko was dizzy at the wealth on display; the other gym leaders had had nice facilities, but this seemed to go beyond Hawthorn's greenhouse and Belladonna's repurposed ruins. Maybe he really was a lord of something, although the third crossing had tried to reform a lot of those types of privileges.
Russ set down his tea, breaking the silence. "So… who are you, exactly?"
"Officially?" Axel said dryly.
"Or unofficially?" the tall man added, in a soft, breathy voice. He was slumped bonelessly over a chaise-longue, like he couldn't quite remember how to sit. He looked vaguely fullblood second crossing, but the luminousness of his eyes exceeded even their distinctive appearance.
Russ watched him. "I'm not sure if I caught your name…?"
"I didn't give it."
Ciaran smirked. "This is Ray," she said. "He's one of our allies."
"Officially, we're professional trainers," Axel said. "I'm a rich girl with a bunch of money who can go to tournaments all the time, and Ciaran is my sugar baby. That's all true."
"Excuse you," Ciaran said, but without rancor; it had the air of a call-and-response.
"Where do you get your money?" Matt asked, and Moriko nearly choked on her coffee. Wow, okay, if we're going to be belly-out rude here—
"Ant pokémon find all sorts of useless things when they're digging," Axel purred, and she rose and waved her pokédex at a cabinet whose display panels shifted from a convincing imitation of wood-grain to transparent, revealing huge chunks of colorful stone and crystals. "And they love to train them for rare candy and evo stones."
Moriko made encouraging noises. "Wow, is that a nearby hive—"
Matt scoffed. "Your quartz doesn't impress me, alright?—"
"Those are raw diamonds, opals, and noble metals, Matt," Axel said sweetly, "and that's just what we have on display. So we travel a lot. Sometimes to strange places. Next question."
"And you do what, exactly?" Russ asked.
"You've met the Black Queen. She has a mission to stop the Gray Prince from… cursing people. We look for people he's cursed, for signs that the Wandering Fire has been around, or the Spirit of Wrath, or the Night's Empress."
Moriko's head whirled. "Who? These are demon pokémon?"
Axel shrugged. "I'm not sure what the classifications really are, but they're powerful entities who feed off humans and powerful pokémon if they can get them. Tournaments are a great place to do that, but increasingly a great place to get caught by people like us."
"And tournaments are good to go to regularly when you have a bunch of high-level pokémon. Keeps 'em happy." Ciaran's eyes flicked over to Ray and he smiled; some private joke.
"What do you want from us? We don't have anything to report about... them. We just saw them. Sheknows more, she was there for more than us," Matt said, impatient.
Ciaran watched him, the hardness in her look making Matt subside a little. "The Gray Prince killed one of my pokémon a few years ago. Made me like you. A battery. A straw."
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees; Moriko shuffled away to get more teacakes and to maybe watch from behind a table.
Matt's face turned blotchy, and Ciaran waved a hand at him. "Don't try to talk about it, I know how it goes. You need her to… She can't fix it, not the state you're in now, but she can make it less. Do it for yourself, if no one else. It kills you but you turn inward, protecting it, no? That's him. That's him talking, kiddo."
"That's her talking," Matt managed to say, but he sounded tired. "So what, I go with her? I go back to Johto? I fight her battles, forever?"
Ciaran and Axel shifted; Ray watched him with a snakelike stillness.
"Until it's done, Matt," Ciaran said, finally.
There was a silence. Moriko wondered at Matt's stubbornness: there was something wrong with him, but the woman had to a way to fix it, and all that stood in the way was his petulant dislike of her? But then again... what else was he saying? That these three were beholden to her now, endlessly on call to scour tournaments for demons and their victims?
"You are feeding him," Ray whispered. "I see every soul's pulse, drawn in, drawn out. From you. From them," and he nodded at Moriko and Russ. What? "You steal and are stolen from, Matthew. Go to the many-souled woman. Break the link."
Matt drew a shuddering breath and drew a hand, hard, across his eyes. "Fine. Fine! Take me to her."
x.x.x.x.x
In the end they went back to the pokécenter, the Black Queen apparently being bad at responding to texts or answering her pokédex. She'd find them, Axel said.
They got their Gear Badges from the gym on the way out, silvery circular gears with square teeth, and Moriko pinned hers to her belt beside the Pyre Badge. Two and two now, with a blank spot between them, but she thought about Porphyry and felt tired, even on the high of winning against Lord Ironhelm. Even before the demons there had been too much violence.
She thought again of going home.
Moriko checked to see if there were any messages for them at the reception desk—maybe the woman in black would leave them a note there—but there was just a note for Russell. Moriko had to listen politely to the boy there trying to sell her a tour of the haunted keys around Sere Island before she could make her exit.
She opened the message for Russ and read it, and then she took it to him in the cafeteria straightaway.
"Russ, there's a message from the hospital—you missed your appointment with the counselor—"
"I didn't go." Russ frowned. "You read my mail? Please don't."
"Oh! Sorry." Moriko passed him the note, chastened.
Russ flicked his eyes over it and then folded up the paper to put in the recycling bin. He shook his head. "Yeah, not missing anything."
"You… you should go if the doctor ordered it," she said, uncertainly. "You need to recover before we can go on." If we go on.
"Stop it, Moriko. I only have one mom and she's in Port Littoral. I don't need it."
What? "Russ? You… that whole thing… it's good to—I don't know if you were aware of everything that was happening, that day, but—"
"Moriko." Russell whirled around, stood too close, loomed over her. "Stop. I remember it. I remember every moment, okay? I thought I was dying."
She froze in fascination. She could see him with terrible clarity, each freckle dusting pale skin, each crimson whisker emerging on the edge of his jaw, unshaven. She saw Sylvia behind him, her mouth open and wings raised, worried, and Tarahn with the fur lifting on his shoulders.
You were dying, she thought.
Russell's hands opened and closed, agitated. "Thank you for getting me out. Thank you for saving me. But I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to—to relive—ugh—"
Words tumbled: "Russ I'm sorry I'm so—"
Raised hand, silencing. "It's fine! It's fine. I'm fine. I just—let's just do fun things from here, okay? No more corpses, no more injuries, no more moping and hurt feelings, okay? Let's have a good time so I can go back to school with no regrets. We traveled and we saw Gaiien and we had a good time."
"Yes," she said, hearing herself as if from far away. "Of course."
"Great. I'm going out," Russell said, and whisked out of the pokémon center into the warm night, Sylvia trotting after him.
Moriko sat down carefully; everything seemed haloed and insubstantial. She petted Tarahn absently as he came over and bumped her cheek with his.
He's sick. He was sick. He was sick and I shouldn't have read his messages. I'm sorry. She tried it out in her head, what she'd say when he was back.
Matt came back to the pokémon center a couple of hours later, still damp from the ocean, Maia beside him. Russ wasn't back, and Moriko found herself telling Matt about what had happened.
"Ah," he said, as she related the story. "Well, he was… clear. At least."
"Yes."
"Are you mad at him?"
Yes. No. "No, how could—I was just… surprised. He's not—I've never—"
"He's different?"
"He's… been unkind." She shook her head. "He almost died. He's raw, everything's… it's easy to hit a nerve."
"I know what it's like in the hospital," Matt said. "You spend a lot of time thinking. Too much time—or, not enough, if they drug you up. He needs… to just do stuff and be healthy, and put something between him and—" Matt's voice caught. He gestured over one shoulder.
Demons. The desert.
"Yeah," Moriko said. "I think we all need that."
x.x.x.x.x
The message came the next day, and they met the woman in black on the plateau behind Port Brac. Her traveling clothes were newly repaired, and she had a camping bag in a style out of an old movie. The black charizard loomed behind her, a sentinel motionless but for its rippling spirit flames.
"Where's Russ?" Moriko asked, gut roiling as she remembered the fight the night before; she still hadn't had a chance to speak to him and apologize.
Matt shrugged. "I saw him at breakfast. He said he'd meet us here, but it's way past."
"I don't have time," the woman said. "The pokémon can teach others. Matt needs this as soon as possible."
Matt waved Maia forward, his face a mask.
"First, become energy," said the woman. "You'll be well defended."
The tibyss inclined her head, considering. She began to glow, her outline softening until she was a floating light, globular, that bubbled and stretched toward Matt.
"What does Matthew look like?"
Maia's voice: Gray. Wrapped.
"You have to let down your guard, Matthew," the woman in black said.
Matt exhaled and sat on the dirt; he started a few breaths of a mindfulness exercise. Maia's blue glow wove around him, trembling.
Ah, Vleridin said. She can't get through. Too much gray.
How can you tell? Moriko sent.
Let me—I'll come up a little—
Moriko felt a strand of Vleridin's energy rise, and suddenly the scene was covered in a tracery of glowing lines. The bare earth glittered here and there, like someone had shattered a mirror, while the scrubby grass seemed to be littered with strands of tinsel. Maia was water, burningly cold and pure, the sunlight striking and lancing off the blue glow. Matt—
Matt looked like a corpse, like a fly caught in a web, nothing left but brittle exoskeleton slowly turning to dust. Gray, sickly fibers overlaid him, choking him, and stretched out to steal the glow from the world nearby.
Do you see this all the time?
More and less, more if I focus.
The woman in black…
If Maia was a lamp, the woman was a bonfire. She roiled with color, purple and blue and red and gold flashing through her body; smoky, insubstantial wings and tails formed behind her and then faded. She hurt to look at. Moriko felt Vleridin's disgust.
What is she, Vleridin?
…Something old, was all she said.
The woman's arm was outstretched as she clutched at something—
It was a strand of gray, there and not-there, reaching out of Matthew's heart away into infinity, and the woman's gaze followed it, jaw and fingers flexing as it eluded her.
"I'm going to come closer, Matthew," the woman said, and as she approached the fibers around him shivered.
Matt grew paler beneath the swirling energies.
"Hold, Matthew, we need only the smallest space—"
Gold light spilled out from the woman's hand, swirling around the heart-fiber, and the gray surged out toward her as Matt gasped.
And suddenly the webs exploded outward, and Matt hung in the air, wreathed in blue.
The woman in black held something that writhed, and she looked east, hungrily. "There," she said, her voice lowering and then rumbling. "A relatively simple procedure. Be well, Matthew."
There was a clap of inrushing air, and the black charizard winged away, leaving them.
Moriko watched her go with some disdain. The gray fiber must be connected to the gray demon, and she wondered if the woman would have helped Matt if it didn't also help her.
"Wonder if we'll see her again—oof!"
Matt hugged her, quite unexpectedly. She patted his shoulder, unsure, but when he drew back he actually looked—happy, not darkly amused or guarded, for once. And Maia shone in him, a silvery blue light that crackled at his fingertips and glittered in his eyes.
"I need a swim," he said, Maia's energy rippling.
Moriko stared. "I—do you—do you need a flying pokémon?"
"No, no, I'll walk. See you back at the center." Matt trotted down the path, nearly skipping down the staircase despite the slope.
Moriko watched him go, not really sure what was real anymore.
She headed back to town, not rushing. Cafes were starting to look busy as it got closer to midday; she hoped someone would turn up for a battle, but she just saw junior trainers with their pets and tourists taking pictures of the sea on the heights.
At the pokémon center, she found Russell outside being spoken to by two rangers. She sped up when she saw him and ran in when she saw his black eye; he was holding tissues to his bleeding nose. Sylvia was nearby, whining and anxious.
"Russ! Are you okay? What happened?"
"Where were you?" he demanded.
"Russ—we—"
"This your friend?" one of the rangers said, eyeing her.
Russell nodded. "We're traveling, doing the gym circuit," he said, muffled.
The other ranger drew Moriko away. "Does he do this often?"
"Do what?"
"Drink too much? Get into fights?"
Moriko goggled at her. "Is this a joke?"
"I'm guessing that's a 'no'," the ranger said, swiping something onto her tablet. "You guys are doing the pokémon trainer thing? Sometimes kids get a little wild away from home—"
"I've never—Russell has never even pushed someone, let alone—he got in a fight? With punches?"
The ranger was trying not to smile at her. "Your friend was involved in an altercation at a somewhat seedy establishment. He's the worse off, and a lawyer could make a case for his actions being defensive, so we're probably just going to give him a warning. However, as a member of the community I'm concerned about him—nice kid, no record—going down an ugly path, so please try to look out for him. Is he doing okay? Something happen at home?"
"He… got hurt, while we were traveling. He just got out of the hospital. He's been a little weird."
"What did they give him? I hurt my back on a mission last year and I thought I was a potted plant until the doc reduced the dosage. Keep an eye on him, and I'm sure he'll be more normal in a couple days."
Moriko nodded, her head spinning. The ranger transferred her contact information to Moriko's pokédex.
They rejoined Russ and the other ranger, who seemed to be finishing up giving him hell.
"Run or settle it with a nice, safe pokémon battle in the future, alright? You don't want a citation for brawling on your record. And your doctor is going to yell at you for drinking while taking telexone, you complete idiot."
Russ looked like he wanted to argue further—possibly what had gotten him into the mess in the first place—but he looked tired and pale as well, and was agreeing more or less meekly.
Shortly the rangers had departed, and Russ was left standing with a wad of bloody tissues and a self-pitying air. He nearly fell over when Sylvia rushed into him to lick his face. She backed off, pressing herself to the ground in an agony of conflicting desires.
"You're hurt, you're hurt," the borfang whined.
"I'm fine," Russ said. "C'mon back in the ball now, right?"
Sylvia looked not at all ready to go back in her pokéball, with her wings mantling and her thorns all bristling, but she did anyway.
"Russ—"
"So where were you?" he said, rounding on her.
She stared at him. "Helping Matt, like we agreed, and not somewhere by the docks getting fucked up at eleven in the morning?"
Russell snapped his fingers. "Right, that thing. Well, whatever—sounds like you figured it out. What time are we going to Sere Island tomorrow?"
"We're not going to Sere Island tomorrow, the pokémon need to rest and you do too by the look of it."
"Don't lecture me, I just got done enough of that—"
"Stop it!" she spat. "I have never seen you like this, mean and ornery for two days—"
"Well I've never had my body cut open by an evil fucking pokémon in my entire life—"
"I'm sorry, Russ! I'm sorry that happened but you don't get act like this! Maybe you need to be back in the hospital—"
He laughed. "Typical. You'll snitch on me, throw me under the bus at the first sign of trouble, when shit isn't even my fault. Some friends, eh?"
That stung. That really fucking stung, even if it made no sense.
She covered her eyes, tired suddenly. "Russ, what even happened?"
"Some awful girl—Pippi Longstocking on anabolic steroids and a big chip on her shoulder, you should have seen this—threw a punch and I hit back and all of a sudden a couple of fighting-type pokémon are dragging us apart and the rangers are called." He snorted, blood spraying from his nose.
"Huh. Well, it sounds like you lucked out with just the warning—"
"Yeah, I'm super lucky getting clocked in the face for nothing," Russ snapped.
She took a deep breath, biting down on the anger. "….Russ, you've been acting really goddamn weird. Let's take a couple days to rest up, okay? You're not yourself."
"You're not yourself," Russ muttered, but he accepted being led to the pokécenter dorm. "I had one drink!" he protested.
"Yeah, on painkillers, you entire ass."
"…I knew that." He weaved. "You're a good friend, Mor, a good good friend."
"Are you gonna barf?"
"Extremely soon."
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko left Russ in his cot with Sylvia watching him. She headed to the laundry room in a spare shirt to put their clothes through the wash.
She found Matt in the pokécenter lounge, and he smiled and failed to make fun of her, which felt weird. Maia was in her physical form again, but beside Matt rather than encircling him as tight as a tiger with a single cub. He'd been crying; Moriko did a double-take and made to leave.
"Wait! Sorry," he said, dabbing at his eyes. "This keeps happening. A great—relief, to, to be able to think clearly again."
"Don't worry about it," she said, feeling awkward. She offered a hand to Maia, who rubbed her cheek on it.
"I… It's strange, to be able to leave a building without fear, to walk along the beach, without"—he drew a shuddery breath. "It's strange to talk about it, without my breath freezing, without panic taking me. To be able to say—I was cursed. By a demon." He exhaled; Maia whuffed and nosed him protectively.
Moriko watched him. "You can actually talk about it."
"Yeah, it's—it's still hard. Conditioned response. I would—when it first happened, I tried to tell my mom, the police, rangers, anyone, and the harder I tried, the more—the more he would punish me. I threw up, fainted, started screaming. I was in and out of the hospital. Nothing physically wrong."
"Seemed easy enough to do, to fix everything." She tried not to make it an accusation.
Matt shook his head. "It didn't. It's a… life vest. I'm still in the water. It's cold, raining. But I'm not drowning in it. And he… plays tricks on you. Tells you nothing will work, nothing will fix it. Makes you do what he wants while making you think you're not. It's ugly. But I can't hear him now."
She waited and finally, she said: "Matt. Who are you? Who is the woman in black?"
Matt flinched and drew a breath, and his expression turned inward. "Funny," he said, "to hear that question, and not feel the vise on my chest, the paralysis of my voice—"
"Matt."
"…I've never told anyone," he said, after a silence. "I've wanted to for so long and now I can and I… don't know where to start."
"Start at the beginning."
"Can you give me some time?"
Moriko sighed, hearing the plea in it, not just the usual slick evasion from him. "Please tell me, soon."
Matt nodded. "Moriko, when you… When Vleridin ensouls you, what does—what's it like?"
"It's… a thing, I guess. It doesn't really feel like anything. It's convenient, actually—it makes sense if this is what people did before pokéballs or apricorns."
"Is that all?"
"Well, she showed me what you looked like under an, energy vision, or whatever, and it was pretty cool. You were… you had the Gray Prince's energy on you, like a mummy wrap. And the woman opened it up and let Maia ensoul you, I guess, or whatever happened there." She looked at him. "Is that what happened? What does it feel like?"
"…It's the best. Everything is… delicious, right now." He flopped onto a couch and yelped as Maia licked his face.
Moriko smiled, regretful. "This is a change from how we usually talk," she said. "It's strange to hear something sincere instead of nasty."
Matt's mouth opened to add to it, but he grimaced and stopped for once. "I'm sorry. It's a failing."
Moriko looked away, spinning her pokédex in her hands. "Is that the first time you've ever apologized to me?" she asked quietly. "Not for flipping out over the storm, not for flipping out over Liona's brother, not for running into a forest fire to catch the pokémon that started it—"
"I apologize now. I was terrified of leaving Port Littoral, you know. I almost turned around after that thunderstorm, if mere weather was going to do that to me." He sighed. "I held on, somehow. Despite everything."
"You get a pass for stuff that happened before—you were unwell—but I have to tell you, dude, you were hard to be around."
"I wouldn't want to spend time with me, either," Matt said. "But I'm glad you are. Things will be different."
Ironhelm / that is a goddamn Rayquaza / Reversal
—August 4th-5th, 128 CR
Moriko woke several times in the night, dreaming of caves and graveyards and demon pokémon lurking at the edge of awareness, and then of ancient pokémon, giants that brought firestorms and tsunamis, and she forced herself awake for good.
She found herself in the pokémon center cafeteria, unrefreshed and drowsy despite clean clothes and a shower, and she picked at tofu and powdery scrambled eggs. Tarahn joined her, and she spread a bit of margarine onto his nose; he gave a big-cat groan, his purple tongue flashing out to lick it off.
"Hey! Mor!"
It was Russell. Moriko choked on her tea.
"Yikes, I need a better welcome than that," he said cheerfully, dropping down on the bench and helping himself to her toast. "Dry! The hospital breakfast was better than this."
"You had gaping wounds yesterday!" she sputtered. "What are you doing here?"
Russ shrugged. "Nice to see you too. The tissue treatments started working last night and I feel great. The doctor said I could go, but not to leave town for a couple days. Fair enough, I guess. Hey, Tarahn," he said, as the raigar started hitting him with his tail amid a clangor of bells.
"Scratch my butt. Scratch it," Tarahn commanded, and Russ obliged, setting him to furious purring.
Russ certainly looked much better: he was animated and a better color, a stark contrast to the ashy, waxen appearance of his infes—of his illness.
"Russ… how are you feeling?"
He shook his head. "I don't—it's fine now. Nothing's different. I made appointments at the gym for today."
"Oh! Great! Thanks for… doing that without asking…"
Russ pulled up the internet app on his pokédex, tabs for battle strategy popping up as he pulled up compiled information on Gaiien's gym leaders and elite four. "Check it out: Lord Ironhelm, steel-type specialist. It looks like he has pretty predictable pokémon: steelix, magnezone, dusquill, kodiaxe—"
"Oh nice, Russ—uh, listen, do you remember the woman who helped us when you were injured? She's trying to—Matt is… Matt was acting weird because—"
"Mor, I don't want to hear that stuff."
Her voice died at the interruption.
Russell scrolled through his pokédex, not looking at her. "I just got better, don't tell me that boring stuff, all right?"
Tarahn looked between them, his head on one side.
"Ah. Sorry," she managed to say.
"No problem," he said lightly. "So: Lord Ironhelm, real name Galen Richter, a former professional trainer from Kalos—"
Excited, he scrolled through stat sheets on the pokémon the gym leader commonly used, with candid fan photos from various battles. Kodiaxe was a favorite; he had at least three in rotation as well as a succession of soldant, the steel-type variant of the reginant ant pokémon line. There were reviews and comments from trainers who had fought him—or claimed to, you never knew with some of these sites.
Moriko read one account of a battle and then tried to forget it, wary of false information. "I kind of feel like this is cheating," she said.
"Look, we already have to waste time so you"—Moriko flinched—"can go back to Porphyry to rechallenge whatshername. The more information we have, the better position we're in to beat him. Gym leaders are on their home turf with well-trained pokémon. What?"
"You're kinda mean today, Russ," she heard herself saying.
Shadows of thoughts passed over Russell's face and her stomach dropped. Why had she said that? He'd just come out of the hospital—
But finally he grinned and tapped her shoulder playfully. "It's been a long week, right? Now, steel is a very defensive type so we really want to play up type advantages—"
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko's head whirled with the considerations for their battle as they headed over for their appointment. The gym was on the inland side of Port Brac, a recreation of a second-crossing Kalosian castle on top of an artificial hill. Old warbuildings of the sort would have had a castellan bonded to a guardian pokémon of a ground- or rock-type affinity, who would strengthen the building and wield its stones as weapons against invaders. A month ago she might have felt terribly excited to explore the gym, but now it served as an ugly reminder of warfare and fatal battles.
She thought of the gyms at Verdure and Porphyry, even Russet, and how those battles had exploded into violence, the gym leaders unconcerned and the referees not intervening or dithering uselessly, and her skin crawled with anxiety.
Battles had been—she'd been—she remembered time snatched here and there for street battles or training at the dojo, and she'd won more often than not, and that feeling of power and competence had kept her going in the midst of the whirlwind of suck that school had always been. When everything was terrible, Tarahn had been there, Rufus had been there, and in the glow of lightning or fire she could pretend that she could be more than she was.
And all Moriko could think about now was what could go wrong, who would have to be hastily recalled to dissolve profound injury, the gleeful malice of the gym leader—Belladonna's face flashed through her mind, and fury and sick dread rolled along after the memory—
She took a deep breath and followed along in Matt and Russ's wake, the two of them chatting easily about battle plans and scenarios.
Just stay alert, she thought. Recall them fast if it goes wrong. Behind her Vleridin trotted along, unconcerned; she didn't plan to use the mooskeg for this battle, since she didn't have an advantage against steel.
Inside, the gym was comfortably furnished, with modern amenities like air conditioning and elevators, and the attendant checked them in and directed them to the now-familiar waiting room before the arena. After a few minutes, they were escorted in.
The arena was circular in the traditional style, although the battle floor dropped into a substrate-filled depression for the benefit of ground-type moves. There were a few people in the stands, heads bowed and looking at their pokédexes or other mobile devices. A group of kids with a mawile and a magneton were probably the gym leader's students.
Lord Ironhelm was at his end of the arena; he was pale-skinned and gray-haired, an older middle-aged man with metallic leg prostheses.
"Welcome to Castle Brac," Ironhelm said over the sound system, "and welcome to the three challengers. We'll be doing double battles today. Trainer Russell, you're up first."
Russ darted forward to take his place opposite the gym leader.
Moriko and Matt sat near to the students, while Vleridin remained close to the arena for a better view. Moriko tossed Thanasanian's pokéball to her side; the oberant looked around the gym, curious, and asked for explanations about the various items of monitoring equipment set up around the arena.
The students looked at the oberant and commented admiringly, the mawile's sagittal mouth swinging to face them, but shortly they were watching the arena again as the shielding powered up for the imminent battle.
"Oh shit," Matt said. "He has a Silph Eyedex."
Moriko squinted at Ironhelm; he was wearing some kind of eyepiece. "What is it?"
"You didn't hear about it? It's a heads-up display that will display advanced pokédex data over the battle. They're banned from tournaments."
Moriko whistled. A constant feed of pokédex data—advanced data?—without looking away from a battle would be a big advantage—and harder to use moves that relied on feints or trickery, if the software could keep up.
At the referee's signal, four capture balls went out, energy flashing: Russ's selections were Conall the dirfox and Sauza the geysard, facing a now-familiar soldant and a dusquill, a porcupine-like pokémon with black- and white-striped quills.
Dusquill, the spike pokémon. A steel- and ground-type, it evolves from duspine near level 28. Its quills are a potent defense. They have fine, serrated edges that make them difficult to remove.
"Oh! That soldant is from Doronora hive," Thana whispered. "They do live closer to the human city. How useful, to train with an experienced human leader."
Russ had a renewed vigor after recovering from his injury, and it seemed to transfer to his pokémon: Conall had his tail up and looked confident for once, while Sauza looked relaxed rather than totally slothful.
The referee's hand dropped and the geysard shot forward, spitting embers at the soldant, but it turned the attack aside harmlessly on a protect shield. A reflect shimmered around Sauza and Conall as the sandy floor of the area swirled and then whipped into a sandstorm.
The barrier hummed on, protecting the stands and the trainer cages. Inset images flickered on the shield surface as energy-detecting cameras turned on, the automated attackdex helpfully naming the techniques in play for the audience. The students murmured to each other.
Conall followed up with sand tomb, dropping the soldant and dusquill into a pit. It was hard to see in the sandstorm, but their cursors on the shield dropped, tracking smoothly downward and then disappearing as they both dug into the sand to set up underground attacks.
Sauza spat out long clots of dark oil that ignited on contact with air, a firefield attack that shone through the whirling grit. His opponents burst out of the ground and dealt the geysard a couple of hard blows in spite of the reflect shield, and left him limping away with a collection of the dusquill's needles piercing his red hide.
Conall hit them with a confuse ray as they emerged—thank the battle system for that information, that technique had a subtle effect that was invisible in the sandstorm—and now they were staggering around drunkenly, swiping at nothing and recoiling from the firefield patches.
They could hear Ironhelm's bellowing. "Lance! Use needle barrage! Lance! Hista! Get it together!"
Sauza lurched forward and hit the soldant with a flamethrower—ooh, its health plummeted on the battle screen. Conall used sand whip on the dusquill, the rope of the attack buffeting it with quick successive hits. It shook its head and rallied, trying a magnitude attack that rippled through the substrate and pelted the geysard and dirfox with earth.
The sandstorm failed as the dusquill weakened, and the soldant tried a sand whip of its own.
"Flamethrower again!"
Sauza caught the sand whip across the face and was heaving on his belly in the sand, but managed to sear the soldant with a glob of smoky fire. They were both glittering with the faint; Sauza darted back to his pokéball while the soldant held on for a second or two longer—good discipline, good technique for scored matches.
Ironhelm recalled it without looking, watching the remaining pokémon. "Steamroller, Lance!"
The dusquill leapt into the air and spun, glowing yellow-green, and hit the ground to roll after the dirfox, who ran full-tilt for the other side of the area.
"Double team, Conall!"
"Follow the east copy, Lance!"
Moriko whistled. Confident—was that the Eyedex?
Matt snapped his fingers. "Cheating—oh, watch—"
The dusquill followed the real Conall, but it was hard to steer while rolling, and the dirfox was leading it through the firefield. Burning oil flew as the steamroller attack churned up the substrate and stuck to the dusquill. It slowed, the glow of the attack fading, and it finally dove under the surface to extinguish the fires.
"Sand wave!"
The dirfox's eyes glowed, and a huge ripple went through the arena sand. It flung the dusquill out and away, and it came to rest at Ironhelm's feet.
The gym leader nodded and recalled it.
"The match goes to trainer Russell!"
"So that's how the gym battle works," Moriko said to Thana, "we fight the leader and we get a badge as a token if we win, and we can go on to the next one. When you have eight you can fight in the league tournament in the fall."
"This building is quite pleasing," Thana said. "There is good earth and stone in it—but too much steel for my liking. That man is made of metal as well—humans don't have types, do they?"
Moriko shook her head. "He has a prosthesis—he lost his legs somehow."
"A dreadful injury, but it wasn't healed at a pokémon center?"
Matt laughed beside them. "That kind of healing doesn't work on humans. You can regrow a limb but it takes a long time. It might not have been available when he was injured, or it didn't take."
Russ rejoined them proudly, and Matt was the next up. The arena system repaired the battle floor, redistributing the sand.
"Russ! That was great," Moriko said. They tapped fists.
"Thanks! Sauza is a little banged up, but the match was fine. I was wondering, though—Ironhelm knew immediately which clone was Conall. I can't tell which one is the real one, so how—?"
"Matt says that he has a Silph Eyedex, it can recognize moves that rely on trickery."
"What? That's not fair," Russ said, looking annoyed. "What the fuck," he muttered.
Moriko raised her eyebrows. "Hey, no problem, it was to your advantage—the dusquill ate a bunch of fire, chasing him."
"Oh yeah, definitely," Russ said absently, watching the gym leader.
In the arena, Matt made his selections: Maia and Sai, the dragoon. Sai looked around uncertainly and a couple of people laughed; he didn't match the generic dragoon portrait the battle system threw up, lacking its shaggy gray fur.
"Is that a shiny?" one of Ironhelm's students muttered.
Maia stood poised, her fins raised. They faced a burnox and an acupeix, a lionfish-like pokémon covered in sharp spines. It levitated, floating above the sand in the dry arena.
Burnox, the fire ox pokémon. A fire- and steel-type, it evolves from volcalf near level 16 and to oxhaust near level 36. It uses its high vitality to charge up powerful physical attacks. They were used to help smelt steel before the modern era.
Acupeix, the needle pokémon. A water- and steel-type, it evolves to carchardax with age or with a deep sea tooth artifact. Its bright coloration, spines, and high defensive ability all say "don't touch me!"
"Trainers ready? Begin!"
Sai immediately ran forward, eager to put his fighting-type attacks to use. He howled after striking the acupeix, leaping away and shaking his stuck paws.
Ironhelm's students giggled.
"Idiot," Russ said quietly.
Maia surrounded herself in an aqua ring and sidestepped the burnox's flame charge, following up with a bubblebeam that hit it squarely, the orbs bursting with gunshot pops on the bull pokémon's armor.
Sai charged again, aiming for the burnox. It countered, slamming the dragoon right into Maia. The fighting-type energy made her stagger, and she snarled at Sai; he snarled back, exposing his wicked canine teeth.
Moriko winced as the students laughed at Matt, but he seemed pretty calm and asked the referee for a timeout.
"Saints, double battles are always a rollercoaster," one of the students said, groaning.
"You aren't happy the leader is winning?" Moriko asked.
She immediately regretted saying anything as the students flicked her over-the-shoulder glances, but one of the girls said, "Oh yeah, I mean, we're here to learn and we've seen Galen fight a million times. I want to see what the challengers do, right?"
"Are timeouts allowed in tournaments?" the mawile chirped. "I've never seen this on TV."
"Depends on the tournament," said one of the students, "but he'd have been finished at the Kanto Classic. A bad start can screw up your whole match."
"He wouldn't be using such a green pokémon if he was at a tournament, though."
"You'd be surprised—"
The pokémon approached the edge of the arena, and Matt knelt to speak to them quietly. Sai looked disheartened; Maia said something to him, her tail lashing, and the dragoon sulked further. Matt kept talking, and Sai seemed to perk up a little more. Maia's ruff settled down.
"Just work together," Russ said impatiently, his fingers drumming on his knees. "It's easy."
Time up, the referee called them back to battle.
And Sai just lurched in to attack the burnox again—
Russ actually yelled. "Seriously—"
—but Maia got there first with bubblebeam, ruining the counter.
"Better!" one of the students called, clapping.
Sai feinted, switching to a dragonbreath attack, but the teal flames didn't do much to the bull pokémon. The acupeix scrambled to act and fired a barrage of icicle spears at the dragoon, who scrabbled away inexpertly as chunks of ice flew.
The burnox headed for Sai with another flame charge, and he just barely got out of the way while Maia hit it with a hydro pump. The burnox staggered; it roared a flamethrower that didn't quite come together, the flames half-dissipating. Maia pushed it back with a bubblebeam, the attacks dueling briefly like in the movies.
There was a rumble as the acupeix summoned a swell of water, and Sai, mesmerized by the beam attacks, reacted too late and was knocked off his feet by the surge. The burnox held on for a moment before throwing itself away from Maia, and then charging forward and hitting the dragoon with a punishing body slam attack.
As they sprang apart the burnox stumbled, weakening in the rising water, but Sai was well out of the game. Matt recalled him, and Ironhelm held up the burnox's pokéball a heartbeat later.
The water was really coming into the arena, summoned from some reservoir beneath. The acupeix cruised around its edge, a V-shaped wake behind it and its dorsal fins jutting out of the water. It was far more in its element now, but so was Maia: she rose up on a surf swell, her spines up and intimidating.
"The type matchup isn't great," Russ commented. "The steel-type might win by attrition."
The tibyss's aqua ring still glittered in the light, orbiting her body.
"Get it, Maia," was all Matt said.
Maia roared, the luminescent patches on her body glowing, and the flooded arena began churning with a whirlpool attack. The acupeix levitated again, rising out of it, just in time to get hit with a huge hydro pump and tumble across the foaming surface of the water.
Maia stood on her hind legs, flexing her paws, and a huge swell of water gathered behind her and headed for the lionfish pokémon like a wall. It leapt forward, trying to cut through the wave, but Maia's body glowed with a painful brightness and the wave crested violently, crashing the acupeix up against the energy shield.
The acupeix recovered, spines flying off its back in a needle barrage, and Maia threw up another wave to slow and deflect them. The tibyss roared again and slammed the acupeix down with another surf attack, smaller waves tumbling and lashing through the pool. It rose out of the water but splashed back down, its gills working in silent gasps.
Ironhelm recalled the acupeix. "That will do," he declared. "Congratulations."
Maia relaxed, her spines falling flat on her back. She looked small, suddenly, letting herself sink into the water as it drained away.
Russ pointed at Maia's health bar, which was also flagging. "Nice of him," he said. "That could have gone either way. She might have tired herself out, in fact."
"Galen gets bored easily," one of the students said over his shoulder. "And he's… chivalrous," he added, gesturing around at the gym with its replica castle conceit and warbanners on the walls.
"Chivalrous with that illegal Eyedex?" Russ retorted.
The students laughed nervously. "Illegal in tournaments," one said, a little defensive.
"Oh man, we'd have been in the splash zone without the shield," another said.
"Imagine being down there with the attacks like in the old days."
Matt crouched at the side of the arena and threw his arms around Maia's neck as the shield came down; they could hear her growl from the stands, but her fins perked up a fraction. Matt recalled her and rejoined them.
"Whew!" Matt said. "That was a little rough."
"Not bad," Russ said. "You might have used your svarog for that one instead of Sai, she could attack indirectly—"
Moriko recalled Thana and left them to talk. The coaching from Russ was a little ungracious, but he was weird and voluble today.
"Interesting matches so far?" Moriko asked Vleridin as she passed.
"Well enough," the mooskeg said. "The tibyss has some skill," she added grudgingly.
Moriko tried not to grin and kept going. She took her place in the challenger's circle; Ironhelm was passing the pokéballs he'd used to an aide. He faced her and raised an ultra ball and a great ball in his hands, and she held up Liona and Rufus' pokéballs.
"Choose your pokémon!"
They threw down the pokéballs simultaneously, good battle etiquette. Ironhelm's picks were a kodiaxe, tall and armored and holding its signature hatchets, and a drillgon, dragoon's evolved form, its colored skin patches and steel armor bright against its white fur and black hide.
Kodiaxe, the polar pokémon. An ice- and steel-type, it evolves from falcub near level 30, and to ursabre near level 55. It is protected from extremes in temperature by a thick layer of fat. They train daily to become masters of weaponry.
Drillgon, the drill pokémon. A dragon- and steel-type, it evolves from dragoon near level 40. It protects its troop with powerful attacks and excavates small caves for them to shelter in.
Damn—thick fat was an ability that reduced fire-type damage; better stick with fighting-type attacks for that one.
"Trainers ready? Begin!"
"Flying press, Liona! Get 'em, Rufus!"
The nigriff launched into the air and aimed for the kodiaxe in a graceful arc. The bear pokémon raised its hatchets, firing off ice shards at her, but was stopped short by a punishing shoulder-first flame charge from Rufus. He drove it backward, its claws dragging through the arena floor, and Liona broke off, aiming gust attacks at it from range.
"You'll hit Rufus! Get the other one!"
Shortly the kodiaxe and Rufus were grappling, the bear pokémon smashing its axes against the oxhaust's armor with resounding clangs. Rufus struggled and breathed a flamethrower into its chest and neck at close range, and followed up with a sharp brick break technique. That drew a roar of pain from the kodiaxe and left it scrabbling backward on all fours—
—just in time for the drillgon to hit Rufus with an absolutely brutal attack. It sent him flying and he hit the ground hard, the soaked arena substrate flying up in clods around him as he skidded to a stop. He groaned, his arms shaking as he levered himself upwards.
Bone club—Moriko could see the spectral bone fading in the curve of the drillgon's prehensile tail. Gods all—
Ironhelm folded his arms, nodding silently.
The drillgon and the kodiaxe regrouped; the latter was worse off and the drillgon took the forward position, but the kodiaxe had its hatchets up and ready again.
"Flying press!"
Liona circled again and dove toward the drillgon, driving it into the ground with her forepaws, only to meet a force palm attack at the same instant. The nigriff went flying in a cloud of feathers, and she tumbled in the air, wings working as she tried to right herself.
Hoooooo boy. Moriko could see their health bars out of the corner of her eye, no need for fancy equipment, because everything was red and yellow on the pokédex screen.
Her legs shook, and she grit her teeth. I've lost before, she thought. Keep it together. No one's dead.
The drillgon raised its arms and screeched, its mouth full of jagged fangs. Liona and Rufus stumped toward each other, battered, Liona's wings fluttering out of concert. The kodiaxe had one more turn left in it, probably, but it could still hit hard.
The oxhaust and nigriff technique lists refused to appear in her mind—come on, she could turn this around!—could Rufus manage a double kick? What else could Liona do—
"Bone club, Marini," said Ironhelm.
The drillgon rushed Rufus, drills raised and spinning. Its tail snapped around, clutching the glowing shape of a dinosaur's thighbone. The oxhaust raised his arm guards, preparing to take the attack—
—Moriko saw a nigriff tentatively showing off her attacks to a new trainer—
"Revenge, Liona!"
—a clang from the spectral bone; smoke surged from Rufus' pipes, and he glittered as he fainted—
—Liona headbutted the drillgon, red-brown fighting-type energy exploding outward and sending it flying into the kodiaxe. They tumbled to an undignified stop; the drillgon was scintillating, dissolving into lightmotes, and the kodiaxe sprawled, motionless.
Ironhelm pursed his lips; he touched the Eyedex's arm briefly, then recalled both of his pokémon.
"I've seen enough," the gym leader said. "Thank you for the battle."
The referee's flags whipped. "The match goes to trainer Moriko!"
And that was it, the battle was over and she'd won and no one had nearly died and the gym leader was normal and gracious—
Moriko swayed, wishing the trainer's circle had a railing that she could grab on to, but her vision cleared as the shield came down and Liona approached her shyly, limping.
"Was that okay?"
"Better than okay!" Moriko said, and scratched the nigriff under the chin. "How are you feeling?"
"I thought the drillgon punched me so hard my eyeballs flew out, but it was just the world spinning."
"You've earned a big rest! You won with that revenge attack, that was so great." Moriko grinned. "One of the first attacks I saw you use."
Liona whistled. "I'm shredded, there was so much energy to turn back. She hit him so hard."
"Come on, then, we'll get you healed up and go down to the beach, or wherever you like."
Russ and Matt walked up to her as she recalled Liona; they congratulated her, and Russ started critiquing her battle.
"Nice one, but you should have been using revenge way earlier. It's a staple of double battles—"
Moriko smiled at him politely. Come on, dude, really—
"Trainers," Lord Ironhelm said. "Would you come with me?"
Moriko started and faced the gym leader. He was taller than Russ, long-featured and pale. The Eyedex looked rougher up close, with wires coming off of it and running under his clothes onto metallic contacts set into his arms. She struggled not to stare and make him feel self-conscious. It was a conspicuous bit of body modification, but between them and the leg prostheses he'd likely been in a horrifying accident.
"Is this for our badges?" Matt asked.
Ironhelm shook his head. The Eyedex gave him a dreamy, unfocused look. "My daughter and her friends asked to speak with you three."
The gym leader led them to the back of the arena. Vleridin looked over the narrow door and corridor and shook her head with its broad antlers, and she turned to energy in a blink of light and flew behind Moriko's collarbone.
Um—
Please, I shan't be left out due to a trick of human architecture.
Moriko blinked; the others were watching her.
"Everything all right?" Ironhelm asked.
"Yes. Sorry to interrupt."
They followed him through the doorway. Here the stone of the castle was less dressed up, with long mats to protect the floor. He walked quickly, the servos in his legs working, and Moriko felt faintly uneasy, like they were being spirited away to some isolated location.
"Where are we going?" Moriko asked.
Ironhelm blew out his breath. "The… I believe it is a matter related to the Black Queen, if you are familiar with such a person."
Matt's posture immediately grew stiff and defensive, but he kept walking. "Is she here?" he asked, just barely keeping his voice normal.
The gym leader shook his head. "A message for you, from some of her… associates." He sighed.
Shortly they came to a nicer area of the castle, a sitting room with wide windows showing a treed and manicured garden behind the building. There was a pond with a fountain at the center with flotillas of ducks and black swans arranged around it, as well as the pokémon ducklett and swanna gazing on serenely. The sitting room's floor was hardwood with unevenness that suggested real age, and there were old clan banners and warriors' nabori hung on the walls, interspersed with second-crossing-era steel-cult swords and naginata. They were probably mostly replicas, but here and there the fabric or metal betrayed actual use.
There was a long table at the center of the hall, and circles of armchairs at the corners. Potted plants and cabinets were arranged around the room. On a table spread with bright white hotel tablecloths was a tea service, and a tall stand covered in desserts: muffins and petits-fours, lemon bars, shortbread and scones, and candied fruit and nuts.
"My daughter, Axel, and her friends," Lord Ironhelm said.
Moriko managed to tear her eyes away from the teacakes and look: he was introducing a tall, pale woman and another, shorter and darker, and beside them was an extraordinarily tall and thin man whose yellow eyes stood out like beacons in his olive-toned face.
"I'm Axel," said the pale woman, approaching them and shaking hands. She was very pretty, with bright yellow and pink genehan hair, and a strong nose that nevertheless suited her. "The Black Queen asked us to speak with you."
"Ciaran," said the other woman. "I heard you all met the Gray Prince and the Wandering Fire?" she said, without preamble. She had black hair with a green streak that was probably dyed rather than a genehan, and was dressed more casually, in worn but clean traveling clothes.
"Is that what they're called?" Matt said, sarcastic, but he withered under unamused looks from the two of them.
"We have stuff to do too," Axel said tartly. "We'll keep this short. Do you want tea?"
There was a tense silence as they took white china cups and poured for themselves. There were several fragrant flavors that had been steeped precisely without bitterness, and real cream and milk as well as sugar and lemon. Moriko poured a half cup of coffee and loaded it with cream and sugar, and managed to restrain herself and only took about eight teacakes and a scone. And some almonds. And a muffin.
They sat down on the armchairs, perched on the edge of the cushions. Moriko looked up and over the others' heads at the walls, but Matt and Russ were staring at Axel and Ciaran and the tall man over their cups. It was straight out of a period drama like Windburn Hall, and she was unsure of the etiquette but had the vague feeling that once they got through a few sips or so, business would start.
The teacakes were amazing, buttery shortbread covered in powdered sugar and variously flavored with chopped nuts or dried fruit, and she tried to eat daintily but was probably failing. Yup, huge fall of icing sugar right onto her shirt. She tried to brush it away and made it worse.
Moriko was dizzy at the wealth on display; the other gym leaders had had nice facilities, but this seemed to go beyond Hawthorn's greenhouse and Belladonna's repurposed ruins. Maybe he really was a lord of something, although the third crossing had tried to reform a lot of those types of privileges.
Russ set down his tea, breaking the silence. "So… who are you, exactly?"
"Officially?" Axel said dryly.
"Or unofficially?" the tall man added, in a soft, breathy voice. He was slumped bonelessly over a chaise-longue, like he couldn't quite remember how to sit. He looked vaguely fullblood second crossing, but the luminousness of his eyes exceeded even their distinctive appearance.
Russ watched him. "I'm not sure if I caught your name…?"
"I didn't give it."
Ciaran smirked. "This is Ray," she said. "He's one of our allies."
"Officially, we're professional trainers," Axel said. "I'm a rich girl with a bunch of money who can go to tournaments all the time, and Ciaran is my sugar baby. That's all true."
"Excuse you," Ciaran said, but without rancor; it had the air of a call-and-response.
"Where do you get your money?" Matt asked, and Moriko nearly choked on her coffee. Wow, okay, if we're going to be belly-out rude here—
"Ant pokémon find all sorts of useless things when they're digging," Axel purred, and she rose and waved her pokédex at a cabinet whose display panels shifted from a convincing imitation of wood-grain to transparent, revealing huge chunks of colorful stone and crystals. "And they love to train them for rare candy and evo stones."
Moriko made encouraging noises. "Wow, is that a nearby hive—"
Matt scoffed. "Your quartz doesn't impress me, alright?—"
"Those are raw diamonds, opals, and noble metals, Matt," Axel said sweetly, "and that's just what we have on display. So we travel a lot. Sometimes to strange places. Next question."
"And you do what, exactly?" Russ asked.
"You've met the Black Queen. She has a mission to stop the Gray Prince from… cursing people. We look for people he's cursed, for signs that the Wandering Fire has been around, or the Spirit of Wrath, or the Night's Empress."
Moriko's head whirled. "Who? These are demon pokémon?"
Axel shrugged. "I'm not sure what the classifications really are, but they're powerful entities who feed off humans and powerful pokémon if they can get them. Tournaments are a great place to do that, but increasingly a great place to get caught by people like us."
"And tournaments are good to go to regularly when you have a bunch of high-level pokémon. Keeps 'em happy." Ciaran's eyes flicked over to Ray and he smiled; some private joke.
"What do you want from us? We don't have anything to report about... them. We just saw them. Sheknows more, she was there for more than us," Matt said, impatient.
Ciaran watched him, the hardness in her look making Matt subside a little. "The Gray Prince killed one of my pokémon a few years ago. Made me like you. A battery. A straw."
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees; Moriko shuffled away to get more teacakes and to maybe watch from behind a table.
Matt's face turned blotchy, and Ciaran waved a hand at him. "Don't try to talk about it, I know how it goes. You need her to… She can't fix it, not the state you're in now, but she can make it less. Do it for yourself, if no one else. It kills you but you turn inward, protecting it, no? That's him. That's him talking, kiddo."
"That's her talking," Matt managed to say, but he sounded tired. "So what, I go with her? I go back to Johto? I fight her battles, forever?"
Ciaran and Axel shifted; Ray watched him with a snakelike stillness.
"Until it's done, Matt," Ciaran said, finally.
There was a silence. Moriko wondered at Matt's stubbornness: there was something wrong with him, but the woman had to a way to fix it, and all that stood in the way was his petulant dislike of her? But then again... what else was he saying? That these three were beholden to her now, endlessly on call to scour tournaments for demons and their victims?
"You are feeding him," Ray whispered. "I see every soul's pulse, drawn in, drawn out. From you. From them," and he nodded at Moriko and Russ. What? "You steal and are stolen from, Matthew. Go to the many-souled woman. Break the link."
Matt drew a shuddering breath and drew a hand, hard, across his eyes. "Fine. Fine! Take me to her."
x.x.x.x.x
In the end they went back to the pokécenter, the Black Queen apparently being bad at responding to texts or answering her pokédex. She'd find them, Axel said.
They got their Gear Badges from the gym on the way out, silvery circular gears with square teeth, and Moriko pinned hers to her belt beside the Pyre Badge. Two and two now, with a blank spot between them, but she thought about Porphyry and felt tired, even on the high of winning against Lord Ironhelm. Even before the demons there had been too much violence.
She thought again of going home.
Moriko checked to see if there were any messages for them at the reception desk—maybe the woman in black would leave them a note there—but there was just a note for Russell. Moriko had to listen politely to the boy there trying to sell her a tour of the haunted keys around Sere Island before she could make her exit.
She opened the message for Russ and read it, and then she took it to him in the cafeteria straightaway.
"Russ, there's a message from the hospital—you missed your appointment with the counselor—"
"I didn't go." Russ frowned. "You read my mail? Please don't."
"Oh! Sorry." Moriko passed him the note, chastened.
Russ flicked his eyes over it and then folded up the paper to put in the recycling bin. He shook his head. "Yeah, not missing anything."
"You… you should go if the doctor ordered it," she said, uncertainly. "You need to recover before we can go on." If we go on.
"Stop it, Moriko. I only have one mom and she's in Port Littoral. I don't need it."
What? "Russ? You… that whole thing… it's good to—I don't know if you were aware of everything that was happening, that day, but—"
"Moriko." Russell whirled around, stood too close, loomed over her. "Stop. I remember it. I remember every moment, okay? I thought I was dying."
She froze in fascination. She could see him with terrible clarity, each freckle dusting pale skin, each crimson whisker emerging on the edge of his jaw, unshaven. She saw Sylvia behind him, her mouth open and wings raised, worried, and Tarahn with the fur lifting on his shoulders.
You were dying, she thought.
Russell's hands opened and closed, agitated. "Thank you for getting me out. Thank you for saving me. But I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to—to relive—ugh—"
Words tumbled: "Russ I'm sorry I'm so—"
Raised hand, silencing. "It's fine! It's fine. I'm fine. I just—let's just do fun things from here, okay? No more corpses, no more injuries, no more moping and hurt feelings, okay? Let's have a good time so I can go back to school with no regrets. We traveled and we saw Gaiien and we had a good time."
"Yes," she said, hearing herself as if from far away. "Of course."
"Great. I'm going out," Russell said, and whisked out of the pokémon center into the warm night, Sylvia trotting after him.
Moriko sat down carefully; everything seemed haloed and insubstantial. She petted Tarahn absently as he came over and bumped her cheek with his.
He's sick. He was sick. He was sick and I shouldn't have read his messages. I'm sorry. She tried it out in her head, what she'd say when he was back.
Matt came back to the pokémon center a couple of hours later, still damp from the ocean, Maia beside him. Russ wasn't back, and Moriko found herself telling Matt about what had happened.
"Ah," he said, as she related the story. "Well, he was… clear. At least."
"Yes."
"Are you mad at him?"
Yes. No. "No, how could—I was just… surprised. He's not—I've never—"
"He's different?"
"He's… been unkind." She shook her head. "He almost died. He's raw, everything's… it's easy to hit a nerve."
"I know what it's like in the hospital," Matt said. "You spend a lot of time thinking. Too much time—or, not enough, if they drug you up. He needs… to just do stuff and be healthy, and put something between him and—" Matt's voice caught. He gestured over one shoulder.
Demons. The desert.
"Yeah," Moriko said. "I think we all need that."
x.x.x.x.x
The message came the next day, and they met the woman in black on the plateau behind Port Brac. Her traveling clothes were newly repaired, and she had a camping bag in a style out of an old movie. The black charizard loomed behind her, a sentinel motionless but for its rippling spirit flames.
"Where's Russ?" Moriko asked, gut roiling as she remembered the fight the night before; she still hadn't had a chance to speak to him and apologize.
Matt shrugged. "I saw him at breakfast. He said he'd meet us here, but it's way past."
"I don't have time," the woman said. "The pokémon can teach others. Matt needs this as soon as possible."
Matt waved Maia forward, his face a mask.
"First, become energy," said the woman. "You'll be well defended."
The tibyss inclined her head, considering. She began to glow, her outline softening until she was a floating light, globular, that bubbled and stretched toward Matt.
"What does Matthew look like?"
Maia's voice: Gray. Wrapped.
"You have to let down your guard, Matthew," the woman in black said.
Matt exhaled and sat on the dirt; he started a few breaths of a mindfulness exercise. Maia's blue glow wove around him, trembling.
Ah, Vleridin said. She can't get through. Too much gray.
How can you tell? Moriko sent.
Let me—I'll come up a little—
Moriko felt a strand of Vleridin's energy rise, and suddenly the scene was covered in a tracery of glowing lines. The bare earth glittered here and there, like someone had shattered a mirror, while the scrubby grass seemed to be littered with strands of tinsel. Maia was water, burningly cold and pure, the sunlight striking and lancing off the blue glow. Matt—
Matt looked like a corpse, like a fly caught in a web, nothing left but brittle exoskeleton slowly turning to dust. Gray, sickly fibers overlaid him, choking him, and stretched out to steal the glow from the world nearby.
Do you see this all the time?
More and less, more if I focus.
The woman in black…
If Maia was a lamp, the woman was a bonfire. She roiled with color, purple and blue and red and gold flashing through her body; smoky, insubstantial wings and tails formed behind her and then faded. She hurt to look at. Moriko felt Vleridin's disgust.
What is she, Vleridin?
…Something old, was all she said.
The woman's arm was outstretched as she clutched at something—
It was a strand of gray, there and not-there, reaching out of Matthew's heart away into infinity, and the woman's gaze followed it, jaw and fingers flexing as it eluded her.
"I'm going to come closer, Matthew," the woman said, and as she approached the fibers around him shivered.
Matt grew paler beneath the swirling energies.
"Hold, Matthew, we need only the smallest space—"
Gold light spilled out from the woman's hand, swirling around the heart-fiber, and the gray surged out toward her as Matt gasped.
And suddenly the webs exploded outward, and Matt hung in the air, wreathed in blue.
The woman in black held something that writhed, and she looked east, hungrily. "There," she said, her voice lowering and then rumbling. "A relatively simple procedure. Be well, Matthew."
There was a clap of inrushing air, and the black charizard winged away, leaving them.
Moriko watched her go with some disdain. The gray fiber must be connected to the gray demon, and she wondered if the woman would have helped Matt if it didn't also help her.
"Wonder if we'll see her again—oof!"
Matt hugged her, quite unexpectedly. She patted his shoulder, unsure, but when he drew back he actually looked—happy, not darkly amused or guarded, for once. And Maia shone in him, a silvery blue light that crackled at his fingertips and glittered in his eyes.
"I need a swim," he said, Maia's energy rippling.
Moriko stared. "I—do you—do you need a flying pokémon?"
"No, no, I'll walk. See you back at the center." Matt trotted down the path, nearly skipping down the staircase despite the slope.
Moriko watched him go, not really sure what was real anymore.
She headed back to town, not rushing. Cafes were starting to look busy as it got closer to midday; she hoped someone would turn up for a battle, but she just saw junior trainers with their pets and tourists taking pictures of the sea on the heights.
At the pokémon center, she found Russell outside being spoken to by two rangers. She sped up when she saw him and ran in when she saw his black eye; he was holding tissues to his bleeding nose. Sylvia was nearby, whining and anxious.
"Russ! Are you okay? What happened?"
"Where were you?" he demanded.
"Russ—we—"
"This your friend?" one of the rangers said, eyeing her.
Russell nodded. "We're traveling, doing the gym circuit," he said, muffled.
The other ranger drew Moriko away. "Does he do this often?"
"Do what?"
"Drink too much? Get into fights?"
Moriko goggled at her. "Is this a joke?"
"I'm guessing that's a 'no'," the ranger said, swiping something onto her tablet. "You guys are doing the pokémon trainer thing? Sometimes kids get a little wild away from home—"
"I've never—Russell has never even pushed someone, let alone—he got in a fight? With punches?"
The ranger was trying not to smile at her. "Your friend was involved in an altercation at a somewhat seedy establishment. He's the worse off, and a lawyer could make a case for his actions being defensive, so we're probably just going to give him a warning. However, as a member of the community I'm concerned about him—nice kid, no record—going down an ugly path, so please try to look out for him. Is he doing okay? Something happen at home?"
"He… got hurt, while we were traveling. He just got out of the hospital. He's been a little weird."
"What did they give him? I hurt my back on a mission last year and I thought I was a potted plant until the doc reduced the dosage. Keep an eye on him, and I'm sure he'll be more normal in a couple days."
Moriko nodded, her head spinning. The ranger transferred her contact information to Moriko's pokédex.
They rejoined Russ and the other ranger, who seemed to be finishing up giving him hell.
"Run or settle it with a nice, safe pokémon battle in the future, alright? You don't want a citation for brawling on your record. And your doctor is going to yell at you for drinking while taking telexone, you complete idiot."
Russ looked like he wanted to argue further—possibly what had gotten him into the mess in the first place—but he looked tired and pale as well, and was agreeing more or less meekly.
Shortly the rangers had departed, and Russ was left standing with a wad of bloody tissues and a self-pitying air. He nearly fell over when Sylvia rushed into him to lick his face. She backed off, pressing herself to the ground in an agony of conflicting desires.
"You're hurt, you're hurt," the borfang whined.
"I'm fine," Russ said. "C'mon back in the ball now, right?"
Sylvia looked not at all ready to go back in her pokéball, with her wings mantling and her thorns all bristling, but she did anyway.
"Russ—"
"So where were you?" he said, rounding on her.
She stared at him. "Helping Matt, like we agreed, and not somewhere by the docks getting fucked up at eleven in the morning?"
Russell snapped his fingers. "Right, that thing. Well, whatever—sounds like you figured it out. What time are we going to Sere Island tomorrow?"
"We're not going to Sere Island tomorrow, the pokémon need to rest and you do too by the look of it."
"Don't lecture me, I just got done enough of that—"
"Stop it!" she spat. "I have never seen you like this, mean and ornery for two days—"
"Well I've never had my body cut open by an evil fucking pokémon in my entire life—"
"I'm sorry, Russ! I'm sorry that happened but you don't get act like this! Maybe you need to be back in the hospital—"
He laughed. "Typical. You'll snitch on me, throw me under the bus at the first sign of trouble, when shit isn't even my fault. Some friends, eh?"
That stung. That really fucking stung, even if it made no sense.
She covered her eyes, tired suddenly. "Russ, what even happened?"
"Some awful girl—Pippi Longstocking on anabolic steroids and a big chip on her shoulder, you should have seen this—threw a punch and I hit back and all of a sudden a couple of fighting-type pokémon are dragging us apart and the rangers are called." He snorted, blood spraying from his nose.
"Huh. Well, it sounds like you lucked out with just the warning—"
"Yeah, I'm super lucky getting clocked in the face for nothing," Russ snapped.
She took a deep breath, biting down on the anger. "….Russ, you've been acting really goddamn weird. Let's take a couple days to rest up, okay? You're not yourself."
"You're not yourself," Russ muttered, but he accepted being led to the pokécenter dorm. "I had one drink!" he protested.
"Yeah, on painkillers, you entire ass."
"…I knew that." He weaved. "You're a good friend, Mor, a good good friend."
"Are you gonna barf?"
"Extremely soon."
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko left Russ in his cot with Sylvia watching him. She headed to the laundry room in a spare shirt to put their clothes through the wash.
She found Matt in the pokécenter lounge, and he smiled and failed to make fun of her, which felt weird. Maia was in her physical form again, but beside Matt rather than encircling him as tight as a tiger with a single cub. He'd been crying; Moriko did a double-take and made to leave.
"Wait! Sorry," he said, dabbing at his eyes. "This keeps happening. A great—relief, to, to be able to think clearly again."
"Don't worry about it," she said, feeling awkward. She offered a hand to Maia, who rubbed her cheek on it.
"I… It's strange, to be able to leave a building without fear, to walk along the beach, without"—he drew a shuddery breath. "It's strange to talk about it, without my breath freezing, without panic taking me. To be able to say—I was cursed. By a demon." He exhaled; Maia whuffed and nosed him protectively.
Moriko watched him. "You can actually talk about it."
"Yeah, it's—it's still hard. Conditioned response. I would—when it first happened, I tried to tell my mom, the police, rangers, anyone, and the harder I tried, the more—the more he would punish me. I threw up, fainted, started screaming. I was in and out of the hospital. Nothing physically wrong."
"Seemed easy enough to do, to fix everything." She tried not to make it an accusation.
Matt shook his head. "It didn't. It's a… life vest. I'm still in the water. It's cold, raining. But I'm not drowning in it. And he… plays tricks on you. Tells you nothing will work, nothing will fix it. Makes you do what he wants while making you think you're not. It's ugly. But I can't hear him now."
She waited and finally, she said: "Matt. Who are you? Who is the woman in black?"
Matt flinched and drew a breath, and his expression turned inward. "Funny," he said, "to hear that question, and not feel the vise on my chest, the paralysis of my voice—"
"Matt."
"…I've never told anyone," he said, after a silence. "I've wanted to for so long and now I can and I… don't know where to start."
"Start at the beginning."
"Can you give me some time?"
Moriko sighed, hearing the plea in it, not just the usual slick evasion from him. "Please tell me, soon."
Matt nodded. "Moriko, when you… When Vleridin ensouls you, what does—what's it like?"
"It's… a thing, I guess. It doesn't really feel like anything. It's convenient, actually—it makes sense if this is what people did before pokéballs or apricorns."
"Is that all?"
"Well, she showed me what you looked like under an, energy vision, or whatever, and it was pretty cool. You were… you had the Gray Prince's energy on you, like a mummy wrap. And the woman opened it up and let Maia ensoul you, I guess, or whatever happened there." She looked at him. "Is that what happened? What does it feel like?"
"…It's the best. Everything is… delicious, right now." He flopped onto a couch and yelped as Maia licked his face.
Moriko smiled, regretful. "This is a change from how we usually talk," she said. "It's strange to hear something sincere instead of nasty."
Matt's mouth opened to add to it, but he grimaced and stopped for once. "I'm sorry. It's a failing."
Moriko looked away, spinning her pokédex in her hands. "Is that the first time you've ever apologized to me?" she asked quietly. "Not for flipping out over the storm, not for flipping out over Liona's brother, not for running into a forest fire to catch the pokémon that started it—"
"I apologize now. I was terrified of leaving Port Littoral, you know. I almost turned around after that thunderstorm, if mere weather was going to do that to me." He sighed. "I held on, somehow. Despite everything."
"You get a pass for stuff that happened before—you were unwell—but I have to tell you, dude, you were hard to be around."
"I wouldn't want to spend time with me, either," Matt said. "But I'm glad you are. Things will be different."
