Chapter 20
The Wild Youth / Follow me if you can / Endure / Red threads of destiny all fallen to gray / Things cannot be reversed / You shall not lose
—Aug 11th-16th, 128 CR
In Port Brac they had cameras shoved in their faces again, and again they put the pokémon in front as the heroes. It wasn't enough: the media wanted a human face for clips and articles. Technology for recording pokémon speech existed, but it was for depositions and historians, not the daily news.
Once their faces were known, they were noticed in town, and people wanted selfies or stories. Offers came to buy them food or drink or lots of drinks, and Moriko declined, anxiety warring with hunger, and Matt declined with what looked like indifference.
Russ indulged, and often. More than once, he came back into the center slumped over Sylvia's back, the borfang dancing with worry. On the final occasion, when they helped him down his face was crusted from a fantastic nosebleed and beer vomit. Matt half-carried him to the showers, and then back to their room.
Moriko paced and worried and considered drinking herself, but in the morning she confronted him, blocking his shuffling path to the pokécenter cafeteria.
She looked at his gray face with dark circles under his eyes, and she forgot her script.
"Russ… are you okay?"
"Are we seriously doing this?" Russ scoffed. He squinted at the light. "I'm great and I'm having a great time. This is everything I wanted. I'm making some great memories this summer to go to school with."
"Like what?"
Russ swayed gently. "The point—the point is, I'm having a great time, and you should be coming out too if you're so worried about missing out."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not, I'm worried about you, coming back unconscious every time or nearly. You're scaring Sylvia. If you keep this up, we're going to have to take you to a clinic some night or morning." Unless you want to die in your bed or on a street corner somewhere, she thought, stomach roiling.
"Don't—you don't—don't hide behind this veneer of concern anymore, Moriko," he said, suddenly angry. "You, always worrying about how it'll look—this is normal. I'm normal. You're hiding. I'm sick of it, trying to keep me isolated all the time."
"Russ, what? What the hell are you talking about?"
He talked over her, gaining momentum. "I'm taking control, no more games. We'll go to Porphyry, and you better be ready for your gym battle—you get a day. After that, we're going to Sunset Mountain. Maybe even Sastruga Fjord! But it'll be my decision. Get it?" He was too loud, his gestures broad and comical; he was a pantomime manager, incompetent and blustery.
She should be laughing. Was it a joke? Was he talking to her, really? But insight was swamped by hate, by a cold nothingness that went down and down and down.
Moriko felt her face settling into a familiar expression, one that she'd used many, many times at her aunt and uncle's house. "Yeah, I read you."
"Great!" he said, instantly pleased, thinking he'd won, that he'd cowed her. Russ? "I'm going out soon. See you guys at dinner."
x.x.x.x.x
She tried to find anger, but it slipped through her fingers like minnows, down in the icy dark beneath her heart. Nothing mattered. This summer was insane, it had turned insane at every opportunity, and just when she'd grown used to it, it found a way to turn insane again.
Moriko looked in the mirror and saw her cuts and bruises and peeling skin and chipped fingernails. She looked into her orange eyes that she hoped people thought were genehan. And she cursed all those trainer dramas for making it all look so easy.
They made losing look easy, made the mishaps look cute. Hell, they made being a winner look easy.
Fuck the cameras and the gawkers who had tainted their victories, made them cheap and fake and tawdry, made her anxious, made her doubt herself. All those victories eked out against bored gym leaders, who pulled out uncontrolled and dangerous pokémon just to see fear in a teenage challenger's eyes, or checked-out ones who tossed them a badge for a cut-off close match or a service to the gym.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
I won! I won and it was a triumph. Wasn't it?
She had felt triumph, surely. Once. More than once. When?
Five badges. One more in Porphyry. And they were going to Sunset Mountain, said the man in charge. Her face creased into a familiar sneer as she thought it.
Something's wrong. Something's wrong with him and we shouldn't go on, she thought, but she was too tired.
x.x.x.x.x
"I admit I haven't known you guys that long," Matt said, "and I'm certainly in no position to criticize, but yes, that does sound pretty unlike him. I can't remember him saying a single unkind thing to me, even when I was… acting up."
Moriko nodded, slumped in the pokécenter lounge chair. "I thought he was better after his regen completed, and he could stop taking the drugs for it." She frowned. "He did stop, right?"
Matt shook his head. "I haven't noticed him taking them, but it's not like I'm watching him at every moment, right?"
She shrugged.
"He had something… big and horrible happen to him," Matt said, contemplative. "It takes time to work through. You know? Especially when there are confounding factors, like demons and shit."
She laughed hollowly. Demons and shit indeed. "I guess he just had regen a week or two ago, too. Full of hormones and stimulants."
"Actually, that's an urban myth—you usually feel tired after re—"
Russell lurched through the lounge doorway, kissing another boy quite enthusiastically. Matt made a choking noise.
Moriko stared. "Uh. Russ?"
"Little busy," he said, pausing for breath. "This is, uh—give me an hour, alright?"
"Yes?" she said, as Russ and his paramour wove out of the room toward the stairs.
"He—was he—was he always—" Matt sputtered.
Moriko looked at him. "Always what?"
Matt gestured helplessly. "He just—that guy—"
"Right? Like, he was too shy to ask anyone to grad but then—"
"No, I mean—that's good to know—I didn't realize he was gay."
"Oh, yeah. Why? Is that a problem?"
"No! No. No. I have to go," Matt said, and darted out to the cafeteria.
Maia followed him and looked back at Moriko, and then padded off too.
x.x.x.x.x
Russell returned to their shared room later, his color high and bright. Matt greeted him, a little uncertainly.
"Whew!" Russ said, sitting down on his bunk. "I've been missing out—"
Moriko watched him. I should say something—it's none of my business—why do I care—
"Russ, you—you didn't even know that kid's name."
He cocked his head, good mood cooling. "Seriously? We're doing this? I didn't need to. Won't see him again. You're boring me."
She found the anger, and it flared up her sternum. At Russ. This was wrong, this was weird, he'd been in the hospital, they'd encountered another demon pokémon—she needed to walk away—
She couldn't stop. "Russ, this is a port town, you don't know—did you even—"
Matt shrieked and fairly leapt out of the room.
Moriko sputtered. "For someone who's twenty-six you sure act thirteen, Matt!" she yelled down the hall after him. She turned around and saw Russell looking at her, an ugly sly expression on his face.
"You're not… jealous?" he purred.
Red in her vision, schoolyard taunts ringing in her ears. "Fuck you."
Russell smirked harder. "Well, if asked—"
"Shut up. Shut up. Don't—don't you even—what is wrong with you?"
"What's right?" he snapped. "A new perspective. Priorities in order."
"Russ, why—" she said helplessly.
His expression softened. "I'm sorry, obviously you find this weird, but this is—me. This is the me that isn't afraid. I don't have to be restrained anymore. The worst happened. What is embarrassment, what is rejection, what is disappointment compared to what happened to me? What if I died wondering what I missed?"
"Russ," she heard herself say, "I quit. I'm going home."
"No, you're not," he said. He got up, stretched. "I'm not. I'm finishing this league. Run if you're scared. Follow me if you can."
x.x.x.x.x
Follow me if you can.
Russ's words whirled around in her head, seemed to leap out at her from text on her pokédex; the waves seemed to say "follow, follow" where they lapped at the shore; her footsteps said "if-you-can, if-you-can".
His words had left her staggering, bereft, and in the morning he smiled like nothing had even happened. How dare he? And yet it meant she could dismiss it; she, too, could join the lie and edit history…
Follow me if you can.
She thought of Prof. Willow, urging her to think about going home, and she thought of Captain Tanager begging them to put themselves under supervision. She remembered the reginant cave; she remembered Angela and her friends, Dave leaving them gravely wounded, and his traumatized pokémon surely a victim too.
Whose victim?
She thought of the dead kids that Liona's brother had killed, urged to by false promises from demon pokémon. On Sere Island, an entire town, hypnotized and energy-drained to feed a dark power under stone.
The Black Queen and the Gray Prince: an old, old grudge and its collateral damage.
There were wars, hidden ones, relentless, fought by mystics and legendaries, and you could be drafted, press-ganged by one side or the other. Perhaps it was naïve to think that going back to a city was any guarantee of safety; Tanager had said as much and yet he had begged them to stay somewhere, stay safe.
Moriko looked at transport back to Port Littoral.
She was thinking about it seriously, thinking about announcing it to Russell and Matt. She found them in the cafeteria, but Linden Jr. and her father turned up too.
"It's me!" Linden Jr. said cheerfully.
Prof. Linden had the look of someone trying to be stern, but aware that he really wasn't in control of where the car was headed, and there were cliffs up ahead.
"Linden…" Moriko said.
"What, are you all chickening out? Going back home?" Linden Jr. asked. Her face fell as she looked at Moriko. "Wait, really? Come on!"
"You three are still traveling? After all that's happened?" Prof. Linden said, wary, tired.
"I'm going to Sunset Mountain by way of Porphyry," Russell said smoothly. "Matt is coming with me"—Matt shifted a little at that—"but Moriko…?"
Prof. Linden stepped forward, putting himself between Linden Jr. and the three trainers. "Astrid—"
"Shh!"
"—I don't think"—he whispered something—"two boys you've just met—"
"Dad, it's fine! They're cool! And Moriko is going!" Linden Jr. grabbed Moriko's hand and pulled her over. "Right?"
Moriko smiled sadly. "Why do you want to leave the expedition? Somewhere there's a grad student crying into a big stack of journal articles because they couldn't go with one of the professors."
"I've been on five expeditions! They're all looking at chromatography and going 'oh yes look at this literal shit'!"
"Middens actually tell us a lot about past cultures," Prof. Linden said, "what they eat, what diseases they had, what broke and how they replaced—"
Linden Jr. groaned expressively. "They found an undocumented pokémon! And we found another one on Sere Island together!"
"See, right now you're making arguments against you going—"
Moriko watched Russ slowly grow bored with the discussion and pull out his pokédex. Matt was looking straight ahead, scratching Maia under the chin. Russ found something and got a sharp look on his face, turning his pokédex around so Moriko could see the photo.
It was an old one of a party in the tenth grade, with Angela and Dave and the rest all smiling for the camera, and Russ as well, they were playing a board game together—and Moriko was in the background, alone, looking at the TV. It was unflattering; she was slouching and looked angry, concentrating.
"Just like old times," Russell said lightly.
She found the anger; oh, she found it. It fell into her stomach and expanded outward, a fury that crackled in her spine and at the tips of her fingers, and she felt a wave of answering anger, green and wild. A memory—whose?—of battles, of red blood and black ichor, of challengers smashed beneath her hooves—
Follow me if you can.
She heard herself as if from far away. "There's some time left in the summer," she said, interrupting the two Lindens. "I think we can get one more badge."
Linden Jr. shrieked, gleeful, as Russ closed his pokédex with a little smirk.
Moriko almost changed her mind again, looking at Prof. Linden's face. He put out a hand to touch her shoulder but dropped it.
"You've seen two pokémon that should not exist, this summer," Prof. Linden said quietly. "Aren't you afraid what the third is going to look like?"
Two demons at least, not counting the gray man and the red one, and whatever the woman in black was—
"It's not that far to Sunset Mountain," Matt said. "The road is better-traveled."
"Better-traveled than Sere Island, where the whole town nearly went under?" Prof. Linden barked, a dad voice, but he looked away and waved a hand. He was silent a moment. "Take the train," he said. "Fast, to Porphyry, and then up the north arm to Sunset Mountain. Then come home. I'll pay for it, for the four of you. Deal?"
"Deal," Russ said, and they shook on it, and Matt as well, and finally Moriko.
Prof. Linden pulled out a pokédex; Linden Jr. snatched it from his hand almost before it was out of his pocket.
"Call me," he said. "Often. Trust Abram, trust Betsy."
"Yes yes yes thank you thank you thank you!" Linden Jr. hugged her father, and then surprised Moriko by hugging her too. "This is going to be so great! Let's do this!"
Moriko watched Linden and wondered where her own joy had gone. Stolen; at every inch it had been stolen, by her family, by killer pokémon, by gym leaders playing too hard and too violent, by demons.
Five badges. One more in Porphyry. One more at the mountain.
She was tired. She was so tired.
You can't win by not playing, but you can sure stop losing.
x.x.x.x.x
Matt found her packing up her bags, and he didn't say anything for a while. She kept packing, waiting.
"Are you still going? Or leaving?" he asked, and she had to look because it was the most uncertain she'd ever heard him.
She blinked. "Does it matter?"
His eyes dropped. "Maia will miss you," he said, and the tibyss nudged him with her head and he staggered.
Moriko smiled, despite everything. "I will miss Maia."
Matt shrugged and petted Maia, not looking at Moriko. "What… uh, last night… what did Russ say to you after I—when you spoke to him?"
"About haring off with strangers? He—he said"—oh shades and terrors, she felt it like a needle—"he asked if I was jealous, and I just—it was just like all the shits at school—"
"Ah—"
"Matt, I've told him so much, he's seen—I told him everything so he could save it up and—at the worst moment, say the worst thing—"
Matt smiled sadly. "That's how it goes."
"It is not, that's not him—" Isn't it? Isn't it? "It's not."
"He likes broken things, Moriko. He wants to take care of them. Hurt things. Like you."
Moriko's head whipped up and images flew behind her eyes: a runty sylpup, a scared dirfox, a hurt springbuck—
A weird half-second-crossing girl who no-one liked—
Moriko showed her teeth. "I wanted to kick you out of the group, Matt. He argued with me every time. What does that make you?"
Matt smiled—he didn't even have the decency to be stung—and raised his hands, a priest's gesture, proclaiming. "Can you guess?" He leaned forward. "We saw him hurt, Moriko. We took care of him." His eyes flicked away. "I don't know if he'll forgive us."
Moriko stared at him.
"He might not be able to bear it. If it ends, if the group ends," Matt said, trembling, half to himself, "you have to be ready to go on your own—"
Go alone: go alone to Port Littoral, go back, leave these two to their mad summer—
—but Vleridin, but Liona, but Thana—
Leave them, leave them with Matt, leave them with Russ, take Rufus and Tarahn and go home—
Home—
Where was home, really?
Not her aunt and uncle's. Not the house by the brook, long lost, where she'd met Tarahn. And… not Russ's house.
Her resolve wavered.
She remembered long summers with the wind a sickly body-temperature breath in their faces, and the cicadas all sawing away on tree trunks. She wanted to capture that feeling again, of idle holidays with nothing but joy ahead of her. She thought of dashing into the waves, the white sand swirling around her legs and the sun lancing off the water's surface; of biking in the city and ice cream on the boardwalk by the quay.
The pokémon had been happy, then, with junior trainer battles and rich environmental energy. She thought of Rufus baking in the sunlight and Tarahn out by the lighthouse, struck by lightning until he was giddy and laughing.
She thought of her friend, the shy boy who had been there, always been there, when she was too weird, too prickly—still too weird, too prickly—for anyone to concern themselves with her.
And she thought of the man who had recalled all of those moments of weakness, all of those schoolyard taunts that had festered in her heart, all those moments of wanting and loss—he had heard them, seen them, woven them around his fist and struck her with them.
Follow me if you can.
It was spoiled, it was all spoiled, it was rotten at its heart, it could not be saved—
"Moriko," Maia said.
She looked up.
The tibyss towered over her, enormous, midnight-blue, her green eyes unexpectedly kind, and Maia bumped her shoulder with her nose. Moriko reached out to scratch her cheeks, as Matt had always done, and she purred.
"Moriko, you can come with us. Always," Maia said.
Moriko hugged her around her neck, like Matt. She felt him put a hand on her shoulder, shyly, and she pulled him into the hug, impulsive.
We will make it, she thought. We will get through. I choose this. I choose to change it.
And she wondered at this kindness from the haughty, aloof man she'd regretted journeying with, and at the sudden cruelty of the one she would have named her best—only?—human friend. She wondered how many steps were left in this long, strange dance, and what would be at the end of it, where the mountain waited.
x.x.x.x.x
They took the train to Porphyry City.
A sleeper cabin for the four of them, spare and disinfectant-smelling, while steel clattered on rail below and the desert rushed by outside. No battles to be had in the cars, no large pokémon allowed out on the train; Vleridin lurked somewhere behind her sternum, watching the humans. A couple of steel-types in the conductor's cabin sensed the condition of the engine and the tracks ahead.
Wrong to skip the journey and opportunities to encounter wild pokémon, perhaps, but they'd seen enough of the desert.
Russ disappeared somewhere; there were TVs and computers, a restaurant car with packaged meals. He had the money to eat there, but Moriko had eaten her sack lunch from the pokémon center and was working on trail bars.
The sun went down, the sky turning pink and orange behind hills and stone pillars that slid past in the distance.
This is what I wanted, she thought. The freedom of the road, the independence of the traveling trainer. The wild earth and a friend to see it with.
She thought of Russ and the glint in his eye, his voice grown brittle and impatient, and all her secrets held in his hands like knives.
"Moriko," Maia said. "Come sit with me."
She was crammed into Matt's bunk; Moriko wasn't sure how she could fit without phasing into the wall.
Moriko hesitated. It was an intimacy, and Maia wasn't her pokémon.
Maia looked at her, expectant, imperious.
She got down, clambered onto the bunk in her sock feet. She sat in the curve of her body, like Matt did.
"Scratch my cheek," Maia commanded, and she obeyed, feeling the short, velvety fur, and shortly the deep thrumming purr.
Moriko relaxed; it was soothing, and the tibyss angled her head here and there to direct her hands.
The door to the compartment snicked open and Matt stood in the entryway, and Moriko jerked back her hands, like she'd been caught.
"Continue," Maia said, watching Matt.
Moriko looked between them. "Are you sure?"
Matt was amused. "Stealing my pokémon, I see."
"I am quite stolen," Maia rumbled. "Sit with us."
"I'll go—"
"Please stay, Moriko."
Matt raised his eyebrows, but he pulled off his boots and sat down on the bunk beside her, stiffly.
Moriko sat with her hands in her lap, glancing between the two of them, and finally she shook herself. I was invited. She leaned back, as if Maia was a couch, and she draped her arms on her long body.
And Matt sat back as well, and he let his shoulder and hip touch hers.
"Enjoying yourself, bad cat?" Matt said, and he stroked Maia's long tail, his hands drifting over the fur and the orange fin, and she laughed.
"I am quite content," Maia said.
Moriko felt the tibyss purring and Matt beside her, not quite leaning on her, and it was… nice. Nicer than she expected. It was perhaps a little opportunistic, to accept the contact from someone she certainly wasn't interested in. She thought of all the times Matt had been nasty to her but they seemed far away, now, obliterated behind the enormity of the things they'd seen.
And he'd been kind to her lately, where Russ had been unexpectedly sharp, like glass at the beach.
Matt sighed, bowing his head. "What are you going to do after Sunset Mountain?"
Moriko glanced at him, his arms folded tight on his chest and his ankles crossed; she couldn't see his face, just his dark blue hair grown overlong.
"I'll go back to Port Littoral. Won't you?"
"We'll see. I'm guessing you won't live with your aunt and uncle again?"
"No. No, I don't think so. I could stay at Prof. Willow's for a while, I guess. Sleeping in that trainer dorm at the pokécenter isn't easy if you aren't completely exhausted." Moriko thought for a moment. "Did you really live with your parents in Port Littoral, Matt?"
He stirred and then shook his head. "No, they're in Johto. They're divorced. I lived in a subsidized apartment."
"How did you get that? Did your parents—"
"I lied to you, I can't lie to the government. When you look me up, you see my real age. I applied for it myself."
"Oh. Right."
"You're eighteen, though. You could apply."
Matt had pretended to be the same age as them… and it had felt right, he was a sarcastic know-it-all who would have fit in at school, endlessly bickering and sniping and correcting. But he was twenty-five or twenty-six years old. He should have gone to college already, or risen through the ranks at a business or whatever you did after school.
"I might have to go back to Johto," Matt said. "She said I would need to… she would need to repeat that thing, whatever she did. Or it would be like how it was."
"You should come with us, Moriko," Maia said.
Moriko glanced at her. "Do you want me to?"
"You need a friend. He needs a friend; he doesn't have any human friends."
"I have lots of friends," Matt muttered. "I'm a delight."
"You were both friends with Russell," Maia said. "But… I think you will separate at the end of the summer. It's good to have allies, and you have the fewest obligations, Moriko. Come with us."
She felt the twist in her gut but she'd known, she'd known Russ would go to Kanto for school without her. She'd accepted it. This summer was the last great outing, with the enormity of the future in front of them. But there were cracks lancing back toward them, and she was afraid what would happen, what would be said when it all broke.
"Oh? And what can you offer me?" she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing.
"Whatever you want," Matt said, quietly, and she blushed, and she wasn't quite sure why.
Feeling reckless, Moriko shifted and dropped her arm around Matt's shoulders, and he gave a little sigh and put his head on her shoulder. She put her head on his and she felt Maia purring through her back.
"I'm so tired," Matt said suddenly. "I'm so tired of running."
Merciless, Moriko asked: "Who are you, Matt? Who is the woman? Why did you come here?"
She felt his breath catch; she felt his heart hammering, and he said nothing for a while.
"One summer's day," Matt said, "I left home with ten pokéballs and a packed lunch, and I would have gone home soggy and hungry and empty-handed if not for another trainer I met on the road. Sam taught me everything. She was my best friend, and the Gray Prince killed her." He reached up and scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of one hand.
It had not started in the desert: the Gray Prince had been with them the entire time, a shadow, a curse.
"I'm sorry, Matt," Moriko whispered.
"When he… takes something from you," Matt said eventually, his voice ragged, "it makes a link from you to him, and he can take your energy. The woman can try to break the link, narrow it. The woman is…" His hands worked, grasping; he let them fall. "She's some old mystic who hates him."
He's not sure. Maybe no-one is sure.
"The Gray Prince has popped up here and there over time, for decades, and she does too, and on and on and on until they kill each other or the world ends."
"Don't people know about him? About her?"
He shrugged. "People help her sometimes. Elites, rangers. Ranger-pokémon, powerful ones. But he disappears again, for years, and she does too, I heard. He hurts people once in a while, kills rarely—he can't, he can't do this to anyone, you have to have something, some aptitude, and there has to be… opportunity. What's that compared to ancient pokémon? What's that compared to plain accidents? More people die ten meters from the trail in the woods, and we who are left don't die, we just… get faded."
"Why did you come to Gaiien?"
"I thought it would be safe. He came from here, out of an old legend—this was always one of the wilder regions, even during the second crossing's era. I thought he'd found all the old tombs that he robs to get energy, and he'd leave me alone, but he was here and necessarily the woman too."
"So—what, you thought you could have a nice normal gym circuit summer?"
Matt laughed, ruefully. "He—you're valuable to him, when you're like this. A battery. You can't talk about it or tell anyone, and you can't do anything dangerous. And the definition of 'dangerous' can ratchet down very tightly if he senses that you're getting off-leash. I couldn't leave the house, sometimes. I thought if I finally, finally went out on a journey I could purge it. I wanted to talk to elders, maybe they'd seen this type of demon corruption before, maybe they'd know how to deal with it."
"The woman helped you, so easily. Why did you refuse that for so long?"
"I just… I hated her, for being so knowing and overbearing and secretive—"
"Like you?"
He coughed. "—I just… I don't trust her, she's been doing this for a hundred years, they say. She's so ineffective—what if she's in on it or something? I don't know… But it's happening anyway, I'll have to go sit in her stable in Johto like all the others who have to come when she calls, but aren't rich enough to fly in like Axel Richter and her girlfriend or whoever."
Moriko watched him. "Isn't it better than wandering all alone?"
"I will be alone," Matt said. "I will be alone with those other gray people in her crooked house, with her doctors and minders who know they can't do anything for us, just keep us comfortable and bored and ready to rush out after him when she wills it, with the league and the government not even needing to keep one more legend secret out of dozens and weirder ones happening all the time."
"Maybe she can teach me and Vleridin how to maintain the, the broken link," Moriko heard herself say. "And you can stay here with me, and we'll go to the dojo and the beach, and next summer we'll finish the gyms and go to the league."
And she heard him take a breath and she knew that he wanted that—he wanted anything but Johto—he wanted that very much.
"I wish this never happened," Matt said hoarsely. "I wish he'd never found us. I wish I could stop being sixteen. I wish Sam was still here. Sometimes"—he breathed, ragged—"sometimes I wish I'd died and not her. But then she'd be here, suffering—"
Moriko shifted, and she sat up and put her arms around him, and he clutched at her like he was drowning. She didn't know what to say.
Matt got a hold of himself, pulled away. "She was always smarter than me. Maybe she'd have figured it out earlier." He smiled brokenly. "She wouldn't have been in this mess in the first place."
Moriko hated the demons all anew. They had been careful, they had avoided risk, and still demons had found them, dabbled in their lives, used them. All their plans, all their hopes and dreams—mountains loomed over her, the dark trees like judges—all the demons' victims, all were casualties. Tell me, trainer, that they might not be lost.
"It's not your fault—it's his. We'll do something," she said, furious, full of bravado. "This might be the time they finally do something," she added, more realistic, thinking of the pokémon rangers who'd interviewed them and their allusions to other incidents. "Maybe the trap is closing."
x.x.x.x.x
In the morning, Russ was in a good mood and invited Moriko and Matt to the restaurant car. Moriko contemplated refusing, but her pride was bludgeoned into silence by her empty stomach.
They were enjoying the food, breakfast items coming to them on a cart pushed down the central isle, when a dissonant keening filled the car.
They looked around at each other, at other passengers all looking around at them, and finally someone pulled out their pokédex. Then they all did, and the sound grew tenfold.
On every screen flashed block letters and the gyarados-head emblem of the Pan-Regional Elemental Defense.
ANCIENT POKÉMON SIGHTED 50°23′N 149°44′W…EVACUATION ORDER 50 KM…PREPARATION ORDER 250 KM…AVOID COASTS…GET TO HIGH GROUND…STAY WITH POKÉMON…OBEY RANGER AND PRED INSTRUCTIONS
"Holy fuck," Russ said.
Matt stared at the screen, his pokédex loose in his hand. Moriko tried to call up the map—what on earth did those coordinates really mean—but the wi-fi on the train was at a crawl as everyone in the car—hell, everyone in the region—with a pokédex had the same idea.
"It's out in the sea," someone said from across the aisle, loudly. Everyone was speaking too loud, making too-sudden gestures.
The train conductor's voice came over the PA system, wobbling a little as she went off-script: they would be going on to Porphyry since it was not within the prep zone, but everyone should make plans to leave or take shelter further inland. The daikaiju was out in the northern Lacuna Sea, and it was likely the next few days would be chaotic.
"The Elite Four will take care of it," Moriko said. When it finally loaded, the red marker was blinking above the cluster of islands where the elite tournament was held at Thalassa Heights. "It's practically in their backyard, and they're there gearing up for the tournament in September."
"I'm sure it's fine," Russ said, paging through the PRED website and its logs of previous ancient pokémon sightings and neutralizations. "This is actually kind of exciting. When was the last one? I think we were in middle school."
"There was an ancient avalugg in Timau last year," Matt said quietly. "Almost nobody out there, though. They got on their boats and got well out of the way. Rangers just watched it on drones and satellite until it fell apart."
Russ snapped his fingers. "I remember that, there was a live stream of it from a ranger corsair, and the world's dumbest people were leaving comments at every time of day about catching it before someone else did."
"You laugh, but that's what they used to try to do. There's a photo of a giant pokéball they tried to use once," Matt said.
"…That's CGI. That's not real, it's a meme."
"Want to bet?"
They laughed about it, but Moriko found herself scrolling more and more urgently through the PRED website and finally had to turn off her pokédex. All that destruction, and the wild, lurching traces of the ancient pokémon's paths… this wouldn't be over for days, and it could cover hundreds of kilometers.
When Russ got up, moving down the aisle to speak with a worried-looking family, she glanced at Matt and saw him looking drawn and pale.
"…Hey," she said. "You're not in danger. We'll leave Porphyry as soon as possible."
Matt nodded, miserably, like he was thinking about vomiting, but a little color came back into his face. "Not until you get that badge," he said, a little of his old self back in the smirk, in the challenge.
"If I can."
"You will."
She smiled. "You're really warming up to this supportive friend thing."
"Glad you think so. It's different."
"You should give me your fruit cup, friend, to seal the deal."
Matt put on an air of genteel horror, holding the plastic cup with his little finger extended. "Too much, sera, you ask too much." He downed it in one go.
"That's a talent. I see a future for you in certain entertainments—ow!" she yelped, as Matt kicked her boot harmlessly.
The other passengers were calm, especially after some of the train staff moved through the cars with practiced assurances. The sense of wariness and high energy still grated on a few little kids, who had to cry as a stress reliever, and the three of them finished their meals hastily and moved to the entertainment car.
There were news programs and analysts on every screen, and clusters of passengers around each one. Matt and Russ moved to one TV that seemed to be playing the same four seconds of drone footage on a loop while experts' portraits cycled in the corner. Pokémon professors, ranger-captains, and miscellaneous analysts offered tidbits of information.
It was impossible to tell what the species was, only that it was huge and had tripped monitoring buoys for pokémon energy aura and wave height, among others: in the drone footage, a huge surf swell and churning multiple weather effects masked its identity.
"The aura analysis will tell us more," said Prof. Aspen III over video phone. "Giant elementals are accompanied by a large eruption of natural energy, so the type and identity cannot be immediately determined by raw sensor readings—"
The news chewed it over for a while before switching briefly to historical ancient pokémon footage: the Timau avalugg, an ancient golem in the deep mountains north of Kanto and Johto, an ancient vespiquen that had spawned millions of confused and dying combee.
Moriko vaguely remembered the golem from middle school; it had been terribly exciting at the time, a disaster thousands of kilometers away and ripe for feats of heroism. She didn't feel eager now, quite the opposite.
"I told you, dude," Russ said, pointing to an old photo of a car-sized pokéball that Silph Co. scientists had developed to try to contain an ancient haunter.
"You sure did," Matt said dryly.
Have you seen an ancient pokémon before, Vleridin? Moriko asked, while Matt and Russ and some other watchers laughed together and heckled the TV news.
The mooskeg had been a quiet passenger this trip, and she didn't answer immediately.
My parent's sire was from a northern herd, and she saw a giant upon the sea when she went out journeying. It was as tall as a mountain and wreathed with clouds and lightning, but it stank like sulfur and dead things, and in its wake it left unclean energy that people following behind nevertheless feasted upon.
She did not remain to see what became of those who ate.
Later, the news churning the same talking points, Russ approached her with a puzzled look on his face.
"Mor, have you seen Celeste?"
"No—why? Is she not in her pokéball?"
"It's empty," Russ said, flicking it open and exposing the mirror-bright interior briefly.
Moriko felt cold. "She can't—I guess she could be hiding—"
Celeste had grown near to adult size in weeks, as pokémon tended to do. She couldn't hide on the train unless she had phased into matter or was flitting about as energy, and the latter tended to attract attention. Moriko tried to think of a good hiding place for a light- or dark-type—a steel- or virtual-type would have no problem in machinery, but she wasn't sure where to find a nook in shadow or natural light.
Vleridin, have you seen Celeste?
No; I of course blame no one for escaping a pokéball—awful things, gritty and noisy—but… I can't say I saw her leave.
The three of them turned on their pokédex radar apps and walked from end to end of the train, together and then opposing to try to trap a hidden pokémon between them, but aside from a passenger's aquilux there were no light-type readings to be seen.
"When did you notice she was gone?" Matt asked.
"She was in her pokéball during that last heal in Port Brac," Russ said, calling up the log on his pokédex as proof. "After that, I'm not sure. I told everyone to try to sleep for a couple of days, there wouldn't be any room to let them out."
"That happens sometimes, pokémon aren't happy and they just leave. Not your fault," Matt said.
Russ frowned sadly. "She could've said." He shook himself. "That was a weird situation anyway, sending someone off with an egg and hoping it would work out when it hatched. Guess it didn't."
Russ and Matt headed back to the entertainment car and Moriko followed, intending to split off at their sleeper cabin.
Celeste was… odd. She seemed to know things that she shouldn't, not at her age. Pokémon were precocious out of the shell, but she seemed to know more, much more. And in battle… she'd used high-level attacks, some kind of light-type attack on the Wandering Fire that had devastated it and nearly defeated it. And a high-level one on the nosfearat, genesis lance, that was near the end of the light-type attack tree. There were odd readings when they turned the pokédex on her, fluctuations and stat glitches.
Vleridin… what is Celeste?
You don't know?
Vleridin was silent for a few moments. She is… I suspect, what we call an old-soul. An egg has a major parent, always, and one minor parent or several. Only those of substantial power can make an egg, and not often. It is easier to contribute a little toward someone's egg, and the young may get a little of your power.
She stopped, and Moriko could feel her step carefully around some topic, a queasy mix of fear and anticipation radiating outward from behind her sternum. I have heard that it is possible to… make an egg with only one parent. But it takes too much, you would need to be old, old and powerful, and you would… there would not be much left of you, afterward. The thinking is, you put everything into the egg, and you come back young.
You're reborn? You could be immortal!
Everyone would do it if it were that easy. It takes… power. A lot of power. It takes decades to get that old, that powerful. A century. Or you can do it, fast, the other way, if you're not mad at the end of it. And then… you're not the same, coming out of the shell.
Her mother—her previous self—she killed people?
A mental shrug. Her old herd might know, might have heard rumors, might still be resentful of her power if she ruled them as eldest.
Moriko didn't know; she supposed she could email the farmer family who'd given them Celeste's egg and ask them.
She opened the door to their sleeper cabin and stopped, shocked.
"Linden. What the fuck."
Russ and Matt turned around at her voice.
Linden had a locked ball on her cot, the black and red shell stark on the white sheets, and in her hands… in her hands like a pet—
It was the paraslit.
It squeaked, seeing them, and it dove at Linden's neck, and they all yelled and reached for pokéballs. But it just huddled under her jacket collar, antennae quivering as it peeped sadly.
"Lindenwhatdidyoudo?" tumbled out of Moriko's mouth as she stared at the ID tag and warning stickers on the locked ball.
"I can explain—I have—my dad gave it."
Russ: "What the fuck—"
"You stole it," Moriko said, "you stole it from—why would—after everything—"
"I didn't steal it," Linden said, the picture of the indignant 14-year-old.
"Then why—"
"Uh, it's an experiment? My dad gave me them—"
"Them?"
"You have the nosfearat." Matt swayed, clutched at the cabin doorframe. "I need an adult," he muttered.
"You're the adult," Moriko snapped.
"Linden," Russell said, and they all fell silent at the bite in it. "Why are they here?"
Linden was sheet-pale except for a couple of high, bright spots of color. "They can't train all alone. They can't use sources. They can only steal. So, what if they didn't have to?"
Moriko watched her guarding the bug, sitting up, putting herself between them and the pokémon. She felt sick, she thought of the caves, she tasted blood again, blood and grit, and she thought of Russ, dying, drained—and the darkwater, it had a smell, how had she not noticed, it had a smell—
She grabbed at the door frame too, head spinning.
"What in the ever-loving fuck is that supposed to mean?" Russ was demanding.
"If they could live like a regular pokémon, wouldn't they? But they can only live off human energy."
"So what? Do you think you're making a deal with a vampire? The human doesn't get anything out of it—"
"No! What? No, I mean, it's"—she grabbed Abram's pokéball and held it out. "We make a deal with them. They battle and they get stronger, we bond and we share energy and they really get stronger. You make a connection with them and it works. You know? What if they could do it, too? They wouldn't have to—"
"I'm calling your dad when we get to Porphyry," Russell said tightly. "Go home."
"Go ahead!" Linden said angrily. "My dad gave me them—"
"He wouldn't let you go with us yesterday!" Russ shouted, and Moriko jumped and shrank away. "You had to beg him! And somewhere in there he gave you dangerous and illegal pokémon?"
"I told you, it's—"
Russ whirled, stalking off, and Matt whistled quietly.
"You fucked up," he said, and followed Russ.
Moriko watched them go, and looked back at Linden, whose face was pink and blotchy, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. The paraslit squeaked sadly.
"You are not forgiven," she said sternly to the parasite pokémon. "Linden, please, keep them in the locked balls. This train is full of people and I don't know the right way to—if the paraslit—"
"It won't."
"Linden—" Moriko said desperately, "Russ hasn't been the same since he was attacked, okay? It was bad. He went to the hospital. Please protect these people. I gave Prof. Maple the paraslit to protect people—and to protect it," she added, lying. Whatever it took. "It's going to be destroyed when the rangers find it. If the professors have it they can study it."
"I can study it. I can control it. They don't—I have—"
"Please, Linden."
Linden sighed loudly, hurt, huffy, but she recalled the paraslit. She stuffed the pokéballs back into an inner pocket of her jacket, and Moriko nodded.
"Come on," she said, "come with us to the TV car. Did you get the PRED notification in here?"
"The what? I was sleeping."
"Have you never done an ancient pokémon drill in—Hoenn, or wherever? There's one north of Thalassa Heights."
"Are you serious? Yes! Yes!" Linden cheered, punching the air, good humor instantly returned. "I knew this trip was going to be worth it!"
x.x.x.x.x
They stood in Porphyry again, as they had a thousand years ago at the beginning of July. The air was even thicker and more humid, the bustle of the train station loud and driving them into a distant corner to get their bags in order.
Celeste was gone—disappeared, here at the city of her birth. Russell had already forgotten about her, it seemed.
The city was no different, but they were.
Vleridin reformed gratefully after the days on the train, impatient, and Moriko smiled, seeing her mossy coat and long legs and her antlers wreathed in waterweeds like a crown.
And she thought of what she did to a wild mooskeg a little less than a thousand years ago.
"Your forest is near," Moriko said. There was a rushing in her ears. She swallowed. "Do you want to go back there?"
Vleridin got still, considering this. People and pokémon went by, normal activity despite the ancient pokémon warnings.
"Show me the map again," the mooskeg said.
Moriko obeyed, pulling up the display on her pokédex: here was the city in brown, a polyhedron on the coastline, and little dots for villages north and west on the Lacuna Sea. She scrolled a little, calling up the river delta where she'd found Vleridin.
Weeks ago. Eons ago.
"Make it small. Show me more. More."
And Moriko zoomed the map out until they were looking at the whole world and all of its regions drawn out in blue and green and dark lines.
Vleridin sighed, a bellows sound in the bulk of her chest, and she raised her head to look out over the city, to look through it. "I knew every path and stone and stream in those woods, and I knew all the young pokémon who lived there, and of them I ranked myself strongest, or near enough, and if strangers or ronin came I knew what to do and who would fight at my side and who might kill me if they could. And one summer's day you stole me away, and showed me how strong strangers could be and how small my life was, and I wished for nothing more urgently than to be made more, to try to fill up that vast space.
"You showed me strange things, indeed, in barely a moon's turning, Moriko. My old home will be waiting for me—it scarcely changed in all the time I was there. I will be different, and maybe I will yet regret that. That there might be so many courses that I might choose one and see so much and yet wonder what lay down another road—I could not have imagined this. That there might be strange and beautiful people from distant lands, that I might see hundreds of them and test them and not fear death—I could not have imagined this.
"And so I might go back, someday. But today there's so much to see."
Moriko wiped at her eyes. "I'm sorry for our—my bad beginning. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad I'm seeing these things with you."
The mooskeg shifted, the broad muscles at her neck and shoulders moving, and she looked up the hill, with its stone buildings, and Moriko wondered what she was seeing under energy-sight.
"This is where you lost to that gym leader? The vile one?"
"Yes. I was… embarrassed. Matt and Russell both won. It made me desperate." Moriko swallowed nervously, remembering what ugliness—her ugliness—that desperation had inspired.
Vleridin whuffed quietly and touched Moriko's cheek with her nose. "You shall not lose again."
The Wild Youth / Follow me if you can / Endure / Red threads of destiny all fallen to gray / Things cannot be reversed / You shall not lose
—Aug 11th-16th, 128 CR
In Port Brac they had cameras shoved in their faces again, and again they put the pokémon in front as the heroes. It wasn't enough: the media wanted a human face for clips and articles. Technology for recording pokémon speech existed, but it was for depositions and historians, not the daily news.
Once their faces were known, they were noticed in town, and people wanted selfies or stories. Offers came to buy them food or drink or lots of drinks, and Moriko declined, anxiety warring with hunger, and Matt declined with what looked like indifference.
Russ indulged, and often. More than once, he came back into the center slumped over Sylvia's back, the borfang dancing with worry. On the final occasion, when they helped him down his face was crusted from a fantastic nosebleed and beer vomit. Matt half-carried him to the showers, and then back to their room.
Moriko paced and worried and considered drinking herself, but in the morning she confronted him, blocking his shuffling path to the pokécenter cafeteria.
She looked at his gray face with dark circles under his eyes, and she forgot her script.
"Russ… are you okay?"
"Are we seriously doing this?" Russ scoffed. He squinted at the light. "I'm great and I'm having a great time. This is everything I wanted. I'm making some great memories this summer to go to school with."
"Like what?"
Russ swayed gently. "The point—the point is, I'm having a great time, and you should be coming out too if you're so worried about missing out."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not, I'm worried about you, coming back unconscious every time or nearly. You're scaring Sylvia. If you keep this up, we're going to have to take you to a clinic some night or morning." Unless you want to die in your bed or on a street corner somewhere, she thought, stomach roiling.
"Don't—you don't—don't hide behind this veneer of concern anymore, Moriko," he said, suddenly angry. "You, always worrying about how it'll look—this is normal. I'm normal. You're hiding. I'm sick of it, trying to keep me isolated all the time."
"Russ, what? What the hell are you talking about?"
He talked over her, gaining momentum. "I'm taking control, no more games. We'll go to Porphyry, and you better be ready for your gym battle—you get a day. After that, we're going to Sunset Mountain. Maybe even Sastruga Fjord! But it'll be my decision. Get it?" He was too loud, his gestures broad and comical; he was a pantomime manager, incompetent and blustery.
She should be laughing. Was it a joke? Was he talking to her, really? But insight was swamped by hate, by a cold nothingness that went down and down and down.
Moriko felt her face settling into a familiar expression, one that she'd used many, many times at her aunt and uncle's house. "Yeah, I read you."
"Great!" he said, instantly pleased, thinking he'd won, that he'd cowed her. Russ? "I'm going out soon. See you guys at dinner."
x.x.x.x.x
She tried to find anger, but it slipped through her fingers like minnows, down in the icy dark beneath her heart. Nothing mattered. This summer was insane, it had turned insane at every opportunity, and just when she'd grown used to it, it found a way to turn insane again.
Moriko looked in the mirror and saw her cuts and bruises and peeling skin and chipped fingernails. She looked into her orange eyes that she hoped people thought were genehan. And she cursed all those trainer dramas for making it all look so easy.
They made losing look easy, made the mishaps look cute. Hell, they made being a winner look easy.
Fuck the cameras and the gawkers who had tainted their victories, made them cheap and fake and tawdry, made her anxious, made her doubt herself. All those victories eked out against bored gym leaders, who pulled out uncontrolled and dangerous pokémon just to see fear in a teenage challenger's eyes, or checked-out ones who tossed them a badge for a cut-off close match or a service to the gym.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
I won! I won and it was a triumph. Wasn't it?
She had felt triumph, surely. Once. More than once. When?
Five badges. One more in Porphyry. And they were going to Sunset Mountain, said the man in charge. Her face creased into a familiar sneer as she thought it.
Something's wrong. Something's wrong with him and we shouldn't go on, she thought, but she was too tired.
x.x.x.x.x
"I admit I haven't known you guys that long," Matt said, "and I'm certainly in no position to criticize, but yes, that does sound pretty unlike him. I can't remember him saying a single unkind thing to me, even when I was… acting up."
Moriko nodded, slumped in the pokécenter lounge chair. "I thought he was better after his regen completed, and he could stop taking the drugs for it." She frowned. "He did stop, right?"
Matt shook his head. "I haven't noticed him taking them, but it's not like I'm watching him at every moment, right?"
She shrugged.
"He had something… big and horrible happen to him," Matt said, contemplative. "It takes time to work through. You know? Especially when there are confounding factors, like demons and shit."
She laughed hollowly. Demons and shit indeed. "I guess he just had regen a week or two ago, too. Full of hormones and stimulants."
"Actually, that's an urban myth—you usually feel tired after re—"
Russell lurched through the lounge doorway, kissing another boy quite enthusiastically. Matt made a choking noise.
Moriko stared. "Uh. Russ?"
"Little busy," he said, pausing for breath. "This is, uh—give me an hour, alright?"
"Yes?" she said, as Russ and his paramour wove out of the room toward the stairs.
"He—was he—was he always—" Matt sputtered.
Moriko looked at him. "Always what?"
Matt gestured helplessly. "He just—that guy—"
"Right? Like, he was too shy to ask anyone to grad but then—"
"No, I mean—that's good to know—I didn't realize he was gay."
"Oh, yeah. Why? Is that a problem?"
"No! No. No. I have to go," Matt said, and darted out to the cafeteria.
Maia followed him and looked back at Moriko, and then padded off too.
x.x.x.x.x
Russell returned to their shared room later, his color high and bright. Matt greeted him, a little uncertainly.
"Whew!" Russ said, sitting down on his bunk. "I've been missing out—"
Moriko watched him. I should say something—it's none of my business—why do I care—
"Russ, you—you didn't even know that kid's name."
He cocked his head, good mood cooling. "Seriously? We're doing this? I didn't need to. Won't see him again. You're boring me."
She found the anger, and it flared up her sternum. At Russ. This was wrong, this was weird, he'd been in the hospital, they'd encountered another demon pokémon—she needed to walk away—
She couldn't stop. "Russ, this is a port town, you don't know—did you even—"
Matt shrieked and fairly leapt out of the room.
Moriko sputtered. "For someone who's twenty-six you sure act thirteen, Matt!" she yelled down the hall after him. She turned around and saw Russell looking at her, an ugly sly expression on his face.
"You're not… jealous?" he purred.
Red in her vision, schoolyard taunts ringing in her ears. "Fuck you."
Russell smirked harder. "Well, if asked—"
"Shut up. Shut up. Don't—don't you even—what is wrong with you?"
"What's right?" he snapped. "A new perspective. Priorities in order."
"Russ, why—" she said helplessly.
His expression softened. "I'm sorry, obviously you find this weird, but this is—me. This is the me that isn't afraid. I don't have to be restrained anymore. The worst happened. What is embarrassment, what is rejection, what is disappointment compared to what happened to me? What if I died wondering what I missed?"
"Russ," she heard herself say, "I quit. I'm going home."
"No, you're not," he said. He got up, stretched. "I'm not. I'm finishing this league. Run if you're scared. Follow me if you can."
x.x.x.x.x
Follow me if you can.
Russ's words whirled around in her head, seemed to leap out at her from text on her pokédex; the waves seemed to say "follow, follow" where they lapped at the shore; her footsteps said "if-you-can, if-you-can".
His words had left her staggering, bereft, and in the morning he smiled like nothing had even happened. How dare he? And yet it meant she could dismiss it; she, too, could join the lie and edit history…
Follow me if you can.
She thought of Prof. Willow, urging her to think about going home, and she thought of Captain Tanager begging them to put themselves under supervision. She remembered the reginant cave; she remembered Angela and her friends, Dave leaving them gravely wounded, and his traumatized pokémon surely a victim too.
Whose victim?
She thought of the dead kids that Liona's brother had killed, urged to by false promises from demon pokémon. On Sere Island, an entire town, hypnotized and energy-drained to feed a dark power under stone.
The Black Queen and the Gray Prince: an old, old grudge and its collateral damage.
There were wars, hidden ones, relentless, fought by mystics and legendaries, and you could be drafted, press-ganged by one side or the other. Perhaps it was naïve to think that going back to a city was any guarantee of safety; Tanager had said as much and yet he had begged them to stay somewhere, stay safe.
Moriko looked at transport back to Port Littoral.
She was thinking about it seriously, thinking about announcing it to Russell and Matt. She found them in the cafeteria, but Linden Jr. and her father turned up too.
"It's me!" Linden Jr. said cheerfully.
Prof. Linden had the look of someone trying to be stern, but aware that he really wasn't in control of where the car was headed, and there were cliffs up ahead.
"Linden…" Moriko said.
"What, are you all chickening out? Going back home?" Linden Jr. asked. Her face fell as she looked at Moriko. "Wait, really? Come on!"
"You three are still traveling? After all that's happened?" Prof. Linden said, wary, tired.
"I'm going to Sunset Mountain by way of Porphyry," Russell said smoothly. "Matt is coming with me"—Matt shifted a little at that—"but Moriko…?"
Prof. Linden stepped forward, putting himself between Linden Jr. and the three trainers. "Astrid—"
"Shh!"
"—I don't think"—he whispered something—"two boys you've just met—"
"Dad, it's fine! They're cool! And Moriko is going!" Linden Jr. grabbed Moriko's hand and pulled her over. "Right?"
Moriko smiled sadly. "Why do you want to leave the expedition? Somewhere there's a grad student crying into a big stack of journal articles because they couldn't go with one of the professors."
"I've been on five expeditions! They're all looking at chromatography and going 'oh yes look at this literal shit'!"
"Middens actually tell us a lot about past cultures," Prof. Linden said, "what they eat, what diseases they had, what broke and how they replaced—"
Linden Jr. groaned expressively. "They found an undocumented pokémon! And we found another one on Sere Island together!"
"See, right now you're making arguments against you going—"
Moriko watched Russ slowly grow bored with the discussion and pull out his pokédex. Matt was looking straight ahead, scratching Maia under the chin. Russ found something and got a sharp look on his face, turning his pokédex around so Moriko could see the photo.
It was an old one of a party in the tenth grade, with Angela and Dave and the rest all smiling for the camera, and Russ as well, they were playing a board game together—and Moriko was in the background, alone, looking at the TV. It was unflattering; she was slouching and looked angry, concentrating.
"Just like old times," Russell said lightly.
She found the anger; oh, she found it. It fell into her stomach and expanded outward, a fury that crackled in her spine and at the tips of her fingers, and she felt a wave of answering anger, green and wild. A memory—whose?—of battles, of red blood and black ichor, of challengers smashed beneath her hooves—
Follow me if you can.
She heard herself as if from far away. "There's some time left in the summer," she said, interrupting the two Lindens. "I think we can get one more badge."
Linden Jr. shrieked, gleeful, as Russ closed his pokédex with a little smirk.
Moriko almost changed her mind again, looking at Prof. Linden's face. He put out a hand to touch her shoulder but dropped it.
"You've seen two pokémon that should not exist, this summer," Prof. Linden said quietly. "Aren't you afraid what the third is going to look like?"
Two demons at least, not counting the gray man and the red one, and whatever the woman in black was—
"It's not that far to Sunset Mountain," Matt said. "The road is better-traveled."
"Better-traveled than Sere Island, where the whole town nearly went under?" Prof. Linden barked, a dad voice, but he looked away and waved a hand. He was silent a moment. "Take the train," he said. "Fast, to Porphyry, and then up the north arm to Sunset Mountain. Then come home. I'll pay for it, for the four of you. Deal?"
"Deal," Russ said, and they shook on it, and Matt as well, and finally Moriko.
Prof. Linden pulled out a pokédex; Linden Jr. snatched it from his hand almost before it was out of his pocket.
"Call me," he said. "Often. Trust Abram, trust Betsy."
"Yes yes yes thank you thank you thank you!" Linden Jr. hugged her father, and then surprised Moriko by hugging her too. "This is going to be so great! Let's do this!"
Moriko watched Linden and wondered where her own joy had gone. Stolen; at every inch it had been stolen, by her family, by killer pokémon, by gym leaders playing too hard and too violent, by demons.
Five badges. One more in Porphyry. One more at the mountain.
She was tired. She was so tired.
You can't win by not playing, but you can sure stop losing.
x.x.x.x.x
Matt found her packing up her bags, and he didn't say anything for a while. She kept packing, waiting.
"Are you still going? Or leaving?" he asked, and she had to look because it was the most uncertain she'd ever heard him.
She blinked. "Does it matter?"
His eyes dropped. "Maia will miss you," he said, and the tibyss nudged him with her head and he staggered.
Moriko smiled, despite everything. "I will miss Maia."
Matt shrugged and petted Maia, not looking at Moriko. "What… uh, last night… what did Russ say to you after I—when you spoke to him?"
"About haring off with strangers? He—he said"—oh shades and terrors, she felt it like a needle—"he asked if I was jealous, and I just—it was just like all the shits at school—"
"Ah—"
"Matt, I've told him so much, he's seen—I told him everything so he could save it up and—at the worst moment, say the worst thing—"
Matt smiled sadly. "That's how it goes."
"It is not, that's not him—" Isn't it? Isn't it? "It's not."
"He likes broken things, Moriko. He wants to take care of them. Hurt things. Like you."
Moriko's head whipped up and images flew behind her eyes: a runty sylpup, a scared dirfox, a hurt springbuck—
A weird half-second-crossing girl who no-one liked—
Moriko showed her teeth. "I wanted to kick you out of the group, Matt. He argued with me every time. What does that make you?"
Matt smiled—he didn't even have the decency to be stung—and raised his hands, a priest's gesture, proclaiming. "Can you guess?" He leaned forward. "We saw him hurt, Moriko. We took care of him." His eyes flicked away. "I don't know if he'll forgive us."
Moriko stared at him.
"He might not be able to bear it. If it ends, if the group ends," Matt said, trembling, half to himself, "you have to be ready to go on your own—"
Go alone: go alone to Port Littoral, go back, leave these two to their mad summer—
—but Vleridin, but Liona, but Thana—
Leave them, leave them with Matt, leave them with Russ, take Rufus and Tarahn and go home—
Home—
Where was home, really?
Not her aunt and uncle's. Not the house by the brook, long lost, where she'd met Tarahn. And… not Russ's house.
Her resolve wavered.
She remembered long summers with the wind a sickly body-temperature breath in their faces, and the cicadas all sawing away on tree trunks. She wanted to capture that feeling again, of idle holidays with nothing but joy ahead of her. She thought of dashing into the waves, the white sand swirling around her legs and the sun lancing off the water's surface; of biking in the city and ice cream on the boardwalk by the quay.
The pokémon had been happy, then, with junior trainer battles and rich environmental energy. She thought of Rufus baking in the sunlight and Tarahn out by the lighthouse, struck by lightning until he was giddy and laughing.
She thought of her friend, the shy boy who had been there, always been there, when she was too weird, too prickly—still too weird, too prickly—for anyone to concern themselves with her.
And she thought of the man who had recalled all of those moments of weakness, all of those schoolyard taunts that had festered in her heart, all those moments of wanting and loss—he had heard them, seen them, woven them around his fist and struck her with them.
Follow me if you can.
It was spoiled, it was all spoiled, it was rotten at its heart, it could not be saved—
"Moriko," Maia said.
She looked up.
The tibyss towered over her, enormous, midnight-blue, her green eyes unexpectedly kind, and Maia bumped her shoulder with her nose. Moriko reached out to scratch her cheeks, as Matt had always done, and she purred.
"Moriko, you can come with us. Always," Maia said.
Moriko hugged her around her neck, like Matt. She felt him put a hand on her shoulder, shyly, and she pulled him into the hug, impulsive.
We will make it, she thought. We will get through. I choose this. I choose to change it.
And she wondered at this kindness from the haughty, aloof man she'd regretted journeying with, and at the sudden cruelty of the one she would have named her best—only?—human friend. She wondered how many steps were left in this long, strange dance, and what would be at the end of it, where the mountain waited.
x.x.x.x.x
They took the train to Porphyry City.
A sleeper cabin for the four of them, spare and disinfectant-smelling, while steel clattered on rail below and the desert rushed by outside. No battles to be had in the cars, no large pokémon allowed out on the train; Vleridin lurked somewhere behind her sternum, watching the humans. A couple of steel-types in the conductor's cabin sensed the condition of the engine and the tracks ahead.
Wrong to skip the journey and opportunities to encounter wild pokémon, perhaps, but they'd seen enough of the desert.
Russ disappeared somewhere; there were TVs and computers, a restaurant car with packaged meals. He had the money to eat there, but Moriko had eaten her sack lunch from the pokémon center and was working on trail bars.
The sun went down, the sky turning pink and orange behind hills and stone pillars that slid past in the distance.
This is what I wanted, she thought. The freedom of the road, the independence of the traveling trainer. The wild earth and a friend to see it with.
She thought of Russ and the glint in his eye, his voice grown brittle and impatient, and all her secrets held in his hands like knives.
"Moriko," Maia said. "Come sit with me."
She was crammed into Matt's bunk; Moriko wasn't sure how she could fit without phasing into the wall.
Moriko hesitated. It was an intimacy, and Maia wasn't her pokémon.
Maia looked at her, expectant, imperious.
She got down, clambered onto the bunk in her sock feet. She sat in the curve of her body, like Matt did.
"Scratch my cheek," Maia commanded, and she obeyed, feeling the short, velvety fur, and shortly the deep thrumming purr.
Moriko relaxed; it was soothing, and the tibyss angled her head here and there to direct her hands.
The door to the compartment snicked open and Matt stood in the entryway, and Moriko jerked back her hands, like she'd been caught.
"Continue," Maia said, watching Matt.
Moriko looked between them. "Are you sure?"
Matt was amused. "Stealing my pokémon, I see."
"I am quite stolen," Maia rumbled. "Sit with us."
"I'll go—"
"Please stay, Moriko."
Matt raised his eyebrows, but he pulled off his boots and sat down on the bunk beside her, stiffly.
Moriko sat with her hands in her lap, glancing between the two of them, and finally she shook herself. I was invited. She leaned back, as if Maia was a couch, and she draped her arms on her long body.
And Matt sat back as well, and he let his shoulder and hip touch hers.
"Enjoying yourself, bad cat?" Matt said, and he stroked Maia's long tail, his hands drifting over the fur and the orange fin, and she laughed.
"I am quite content," Maia said.
Moriko felt the tibyss purring and Matt beside her, not quite leaning on her, and it was… nice. Nicer than she expected. It was perhaps a little opportunistic, to accept the contact from someone she certainly wasn't interested in. She thought of all the times Matt had been nasty to her but they seemed far away, now, obliterated behind the enormity of the things they'd seen.
And he'd been kind to her lately, where Russ had been unexpectedly sharp, like glass at the beach.
Matt sighed, bowing his head. "What are you going to do after Sunset Mountain?"
Moriko glanced at him, his arms folded tight on his chest and his ankles crossed; she couldn't see his face, just his dark blue hair grown overlong.
"I'll go back to Port Littoral. Won't you?"
"We'll see. I'm guessing you won't live with your aunt and uncle again?"
"No. No, I don't think so. I could stay at Prof. Willow's for a while, I guess. Sleeping in that trainer dorm at the pokécenter isn't easy if you aren't completely exhausted." Moriko thought for a moment. "Did you really live with your parents in Port Littoral, Matt?"
He stirred and then shook his head. "No, they're in Johto. They're divorced. I lived in a subsidized apartment."
"How did you get that? Did your parents—"
"I lied to you, I can't lie to the government. When you look me up, you see my real age. I applied for it myself."
"Oh. Right."
"You're eighteen, though. You could apply."
Matt had pretended to be the same age as them… and it had felt right, he was a sarcastic know-it-all who would have fit in at school, endlessly bickering and sniping and correcting. But he was twenty-five or twenty-six years old. He should have gone to college already, or risen through the ranks at a business or whatever you did after school.
"I might have to go back to Johto," Matt said. "She said I would need to… she would need to repeat that thing, whatever she did. Or it would be like how it was."
"You should come with us, Moriko," Maia said.
Moriko glanced at her. "Do you want me to?"
"You need a friend. He needs a friend; he doesn't have any human friends."
"I have lots of friends," Matt muttered. "I'm a delight."
"You were both friends with Russell," Maia said. "But… I think you will separate at the end of the summer. It's good to have allies, and you have the fewest obligations, Moriko. Come with us."
She felt the twist in her gut but she'd known, she'd known Russ would go to Kanto for school without her. She'd accepted it. This summer was the last great outing, with the enormity of the future in front of them. But there were cracks lancing back toward them, and she was afraid what would happen, what would be said when it all broke.
"Oh? And what can you offer me?" she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing.
"Whatever you want," Matt said, quietly, and she blushed, and she wasn't quite sure why.
Feeling reckless, Moriko shifted and dropped her arm around Matt's shoulders, and he gave a little sigh and put his head on her shoulder. She put her head on his and she felt Maia purring through her back.
"I'm so tired," Matt said suddenly. "I'm so tired of running."
Merciless, Moriko asked: "Who are you, Matt? Who is the woman? Why did you come here?"
She felt his breath catch; she felt his heart hammering, and he said nothing for a while.
"One summer's day," Matt said, "I left home with ten pokéballs and a packed lunch, and I would have gone home soggy and hungry and empty-handed if not for another trainer I met on the road. Sam taught me everything. She was my best friend, and the Gray Prince killed her." He reached up and scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of one hand.
It had not started in the desert: the Gray Prince had been with them the entire time, a shadow, a curse.
"I'm sorry, Matt," Moriko whispered.
"When he… takes something from you," Matt said eventually, his voice ragged, "it makes a link from you to him, and he can take your energy. The woman can try to break the link, narrow it. The woman is…" His hands worked, grasping; he let them fall. "She's some old mystic who hates him."
He's not sure. Maybe no-one is sure.
"The Gray Prince has popped up here and there over time, for decades, and she does too, and on and on and on until they kill each other or the world ends."
"Don't people know about him? About her?"
He shrugged. "People help her sometimes. Elites, rangers. Ranger-pokémon, powerful ones. But he disappears again, for years, and she does too, I heard. He hurts people once in a while, kills rarely—he can't, he can't do this to anyone, you have to have something, some aptitude, and there has to be… opportunity. What's that compared to ancient pokémon? What's that compared to plain accidents? More people die ten meters from the trail in the woods, and we who are left don't die, we just… get faded."
"Why did you come to Gaiien?"
"I thought it would be safe. He came from here, out of an old legend—this was always one of the wilder regions, even during the second crossing's era. I thought he'd found all the old tombs that he robs to get energy, and he'd leave me alone, but he was here and necessarily the woman too."
"So—what, you thought you could have a nice normal gym circuit summer?"
Matt laughed, ruefully. "He—you're valuable to him, when you're like this. A battery. You can't talk about it or tell anyone, and you can't do anything dangerous. And the definition of 'dangerous' can ratchet down very tightly if he senses that you're getting off-leash. I couldn't leave the house, sometimes. I thought if I finally, finally went out on a journey I could purge it. I wanted to talk to elders, maybe they'd seen this type of demon corruption before, maybe they'd know how to deal with it."
"The woman helped you, so easily. Why did you refuse that for so long?"
"I just… I hated her, for being so knowing and overbearing and secretive—"
"Like you?"
He coughed. "—I just… I don't trust her, she's been doing this for a hundred years, they say. She's so ineffective—what if she's in on it or something? I don't know… But it's happening anyway, I'll have to go sit in her stable in Johto like all the others who have to come when she calls, but aren't rich enough to fly in like Axel Richter and her girlfriend or whoever."
Moriko watched him. "Isn't it better than wandering all alone?"
"I will be alone," Matt said. "I will be alone with those other gray people in her crooked house, with her doctors and minders who know they can't do anything for us, just keep us comfortable and bored and ready to rush out after him when she wills it, with the league and the government not even needing to keep one more legend secret out of dozens and weirder ones happening all the time."
"Maybe she can teach me and Vleridin how to maintain the, the broken link," Moriko heard herself say. "And you can stay here with me, and we'll go to the dojo and the beach, and next summer we'll finish the gyms and go to the league."
And she heard him take a breath and she knew that he wanted that—he wanted anything but Johto—he wanted that very much.
"I wish this never happened," Matt said hoarsely. "I wish he'd never found us. I wish I could stop being sixteen. I wish Sam was still here. Sometimes"—he breathed, ragged—"sometimes I wish I'd died and not her. But then she'd be here, suffering—"
Moriko shifted, and she sat up and put her arms around him, and he clutched at her like he was drowning. She didn't know what to say.
Matt got a hold of himself, pulled away. "She was always smarter than me. Maybe she'd have figured it out earlier." He smiled brokenly. "She wouldn't have been in this mess in the first place."
Moriko hated the demons all anew. They had been careful, they had avoided risk, and still demons had found them, dabbled in their lives, used them. All their plans, all their hopes and dreams—mountains loomed over her, the dark trees like judges—all the demons' victims, all were casualties. Tell me, trainer, that they might not be lost.
"It's not your fault—it's his. We'll do something," she said, furious, full of bravado. "This might be the time they finally do something," she added, more realistic, thinking of the pokémon rangers who'd interviewed them and their allusions to other incidents. "Maybe the trap is closing."
x.x.x.x.x
In the morning, Russ was in a good mood and invited Moriko and Matt to the restaurant car. Moriko contemplated refusing, but her pride was bludgeoned into silence by her empty stomach.
They were enjoying the food, breakfast items coming to them on a cart pushed down the central isle, when a dissonant keening filled the car.
They looked around at each other, at other passengers all looking around at them, and finally someone pulled out their pokédex. Then they all did, and the sound grew tenfold.
On every screen flashed block letters and the gyarados-head emblem of the Pan-Regional Elemental Defense.
ANCIENT POKÉMON SIGHTED 50°23′N 149°44′W…EVACUATION ORDER 50 KM…PREPARATION ORDER 250 KM…AVOID COASTS…GET TO HIGH GROUND…STAY WITH POKÉMON…OBEY RANGER AND PRED INSTRUCTIONS
"Holy fuck," Russ said.
Matt stared at the screen, his pokédex loose in his hand. Moriko tried to call up the map—what on earth did those coordinates really mean—but the wi-fi on the train was at a crawl as everyone in the car—hell, everyone in the region—with a pokédex had the same idea.
"It's out in the sea," someone said from across the aisle, loudly. Everyone was speaking too loud, making too-sudden gestures.
The train conductor's voice came over the PA system, wobbling a little as she went off-script: they would be going on to Porphyry since it was not within the prep zone, but everyone should make plans to leave or take shelter further inland. The daikaiju was out in the northern Lacuna Sea, and it was likely the next few days would be chaotic.
"The Elite Four will take care of it," Moriko said. When it finally loaded, the red marker was blinking above the cluster of islands where the elite tournament was held at Thalassa Heights. "It's practically in their backyard, and they're there gearing up for the tournament in September."
"I'm sure it's fine," Russ said, paging through the PRED website and its logs of previous ancient pokémon sightings and neutralizations. "This is actually kind of exciting. When was the last one? I think we were in middle school."
"There was an ancient avalugg in Timau last year," Matt said quietly. "Almost nobody out there, though. They got on their boats and got well out of the way. Rangers just watched it on drones and satellite until it fell apart."
Russ snapped his fingers. "I remember that, there was a live stream of it from a ranger corsair, and the world's dumbest people were leaving comments at every time of day about catching it before someone else did."
"You laugh, but that's what they used to try to do. There's a photo of a giant pokéball they tried to use once," Matt said.
"…That's CGI. That's not real, it's a meme."
"Want to bet?"
They laughed about it, but Moriko found herself scrolling more and more urgently through the PRED website and finally had to turn off her pokédex. All that destruction, and the wild, lurching traces of the ancient pokémon's paths… this wouldn't be over for days, and it could cover hundreds of kilometers.
When Russ got up, moving down the aisle to speak with a worried-looking family, she glanced at Matt and saw him looking drawn and pale.
"…Hey," she said. "You're not in danger. We'll leave Porphyry as soon as possible."
Matt nodded, miserably, like he was thinking about vomiting, but a little color came back into his face. "Not until you get that badge," he said, a little of his old self back in the smirk, in the challenge.
"If I can."
"You will."
She smiled. "You're really warming up to this supportive friend thing."
"Glad you think so. It's different."
"You should give me your fruit cup, friend, to seal the deal."
Matt put on an air of genteel horror, holding the plastic cup with his little finger extended. "Too much, sera, you ask too much." He downed it in one go.
"That's a talent. I see a future for you in certain entertainments—ow!" she yelped, as Matt kicked her boot harmlessly.
The other passengers were calm, especially after some of the train staff moved through the cars with practiced assurances. The sense of wariness and high energy still grated on a few little kids, who had to cry as a stress reliever, and the three of them finished their meals hastily and moved to the entertainment car.
There were news programs and analysts on every screen, and clusters of passengers around each one. Matt and Russ moved to one TV that seemed to be playing the same four seconds of drone footage on a loop while experts' portraits cycled in the corner. Pokémon professors, ranger-captains, and miscellaneous analysts offered tidbits of information.
It was impossible to tell what the species was, only that it was huge and had tripped monitoring buoys for pokémon energy aura and wave height, among others: in the drone footage, a huge surf swell and churning multiple weather effects masked its identity.
"The aura analysis will tell us more," said Prof. Aspen III over video phone. "Giant elementals are accompanied by a large eruption of natural energy, so the type and identity cannot be immediately determined by raw sensor readings—"
The news chewed it over for a while before switching briefly to historical ancient pokémon footage: the Timau avalugg, an ancient golem in the deep mountains north of Kanto and Johto, an ancient vespiquen that had spawned millions of confused and dying combee.
Moriko vaguely remembered the golem from middle school; it had been terribly exciting at the time, a disaster thousands of kilometers away and ripe for feats of heroism. She didn't feel eager now, quite the opposite.
"I told you, dude," Russ said, pointing to an old photo of a car-sized pokéball that Silph Co. scientists had developed to try to contain an ancient haunter.
"You sure did," Matt said dryly.
Have you seen an ancient pokémon before, Vleridin? Moriko asked, while Matt and Russ and some other watchers laughed together and heckled the TV news.
The mooskeg had been a quiet passenger this trip, and she didn't answer immediately.
My parent's sire was from a northern herd, and she saw a giant upon the sea when she went out journeying. It was as tall as a mountain and wreathed with clouds and lightning, but it stank like sulfur and dead things, and in its wake it left unclean energy that people following behind nevertheless feasted upon.
She did not remain to see what became of those who ate.
Later, the news churning the same talking points, Russ approached her with a puzzled look on his face.
"Mor, have you seen Celeste?"
"No—why? Is she not in her pokéball?"
"It's empty," Russ said, flicking it open and exposing the mirror-bright interior briefly.
Moriko felt cold. "She can't—I guess she could be hiding—"
Celeste had grown near to adult size in weeks, as pokémon tended to do. She couldn't hide on the train unless she had phased into matter or was flitting about as energy, and the latter tended to attract attention. Moriko tried to think of a good hiding place for a light- or dark-type—a steel- or virtual-type would have no problem in machinery, but she wasn't sure where to find a nook in shadow or natural light.
Vleridin, have you seen Celeste?
No; I of course blame no one for escaping a pokéball—awful things, gritty and noisy—but… I can't say I saw her leave.
The three of them turned on their pokédex radar apps and walked from end to end of the train, together and then opposing to try to trap a hidden pokémon between them, but aside from a passenger's aquilux there were no light-type readings to be seen.
"When did you notice she was gone?" Matt asked.
"She was in her pokéball during that last heal in Port Brac," Russ said, calling up the log on his pokédex as proof. "After that, I'm not sure. I told everyone to try to sleep for a couple of days, there wouldn't be any room to let them out."
"That happens sometimes, pokémon aren't happy and they just leave. Not your fault," Matt said.
Russ frowned sadly. "She could've said." He shook himself. "That was a weird situation anyway, sending someone off with an egg and hoping it would work out when it hatched. Guess it didn't."
Russ and Matt headed back to the entertainment car and Moriko followed, intending to split off at their sleeper cabin.
Celeste was… odd. She seemed to know things that she shouldn't, not at her age. Pokémon were precocious out of the shell, but she seemed to know more, much more. And in battle… she'd used high-level attacks, some kind of light-type attack on the Wandering Fire that had devastated it and nearly defeated it. And a high-level one on the nosfearat, genesis lance, that was near the end of the light-type attack tree. There were odd readings when they turned the pokédex on her, fluctuations and stat glitches.
Vleridin… what is Celeste?
You don't know?
Vleridin was silent for a few moments. She is… I suspect, what we call an old-soul. An egg has a major parent, always, and one minor parent or several. Only those of substantial power can make an egg, and not often. It is easier to contribute a little toward someone's egg, and the young may get a little of your power.
She stopped, and Moriko could feel her step carefully around some topic, a queasy mix of fear and anticipation radiating outward from behind her sternum. I have heard that it is possible to… make an egg with only one parent. But it takes too much, you would need to be old, old and powerful, and you would… there would not be much left of you, afterward. The thinking is, you put everything into the egg, and you come back young.
You're reborn? You could be immortal!
Everyone would do it if it were that easy. It takes… power. A lot of power. It takes decades to get that old, that powerful. A century. Or you can do it, fast, the other way, if you're not mad at the end of it. And then… you're not the same, coming out of the shell.
Her mother—her previous self—she killed people?
A mental shrug. Her old herd might know, might have heard rumors, might still be resentful of her power if she ruled them as eldest.
Moriko didn't know; she supposed she could email the farmer family who'd given them Celeste's egg and ask them.
She opened the door to their sleeper cabin and stopped, shocked.
"Linden. What the fuck."
Russ and Matt turned around at her voice.
Linden had a locked ball on her cot, the black and red shell stark on the white sheets, and in her hands… in her hands like a pet—
It was the paraslit.
It squeaked, seeing them, and it dove at Linden's neck, and they all yelled and reached for pokéballs. But it just huddled under her jacket collar, antennae quivering as it peeped sadly.
"Lindenwhatdidyoudo?" tumbled out of Moriko's mouth as she stared at the ID tag and warning stickers on the locked ball.
"I can explain—I have—my dad gave it."
Russ: "What the fuck—"
"You stole it," Moriko said, "you stole it from—why would—after everything—"
"I didn't steal it," Linden said, the picture of the indignant 14-year-old.
"Then why—"
"Uh, it's an experiment? My dad gave me them—"
"Them?"
"You have the nosfearat." Matt swayed, clutched at the cabin doorframe. "I need an adult," he muttered.
"You're the adult," Moriko snapped.
"Linden," Russell said, and they all fell silent at the bite in it. "Why are they here?"
Linden was sheet-pale except for a couple of high, bright spots of color. "They can't train all alone. They can't use sources. They can only steal. So, what if they didn't have to?"
Moriko watched her guarding the bug, sitting up, putting herself between them and the pokémon. She felt sick, she thought of the caves, she tasted blood again, blood and grit, and she thought of Russ, dying, drained—and the darkwater, it had a smell, how had she not noticed, it had a smell—
She grabbed at the door frame too, head spinning.
"What in the ever-loving fuck is that supposed to mean?" Russ was demanding.
"If they could live like a regular pokémon, wouldn't they? But they can only live off human energy."
"So what? Do you think you're making a deal with a vampire? The human doesn't get anything out of it—"
"No! What? No, I mean, it's"—she grabbed Abram's pokéball and held it out. "We make a deal with them. They battle and they get stronger, we bond and we share energy and they really get stronger. You make a connection with them and it works. You know? What if they could do it, too? They wouldn't have to—"
"I'm calling your dad when we get to Porphyry," Russell said tightly. "Go home."
"Go ahead!" Linden said angrily. "My dad gave me them—"
"He wouldn't let you go with us yesterday!" Russ shouted, and Moriko jumped and shrank away. "You had to beg him! And somewhere in there he gave you dangerous and illegal pokémon?"
"I told you, it's—"
Russ whirled, stalking off, and Matt whistled quietly.
"You fucked up," he said, and followed Russ.
Moriko watched them go, and looked back at Linden, whose face was pink and blotchy, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. The paraslit squeaked sadly.
"You are not forgiven," she said sternly to the parasite pokémon. "Linden, please, keep them in the locked balls. This train is full of people and I don't know the right way to—if the paraslit—"
"It won't."
"Linden—" Moriko said desperately, "Russ hasn't been the same since he was attacked, okay? It was bad. He went to the hospital. Please protect these people. I gave Prof. Maple the paraslit to protect people—and to protect it," she added, lying. Whatever it took. "It's going to be destroyed when the rangers find it. If the professors have it they can study it."
"I can study it. I can control it. They don't—I have—"
"Please, Linden."
Linden sighed loudly, hurt, huffy, but she recalled the paraslit. She stuffed the pokéballs back into an inner pocket of her jacket, and Moriko nodded.
"Come on," she said, "come with us to the TV car. Did you get the PRED notification in here?"
"The what? I was sleeping."
"Have you never done an ancient pokémon drill in—Hoenn, or wherever? There's one north of Thalassa Heights."
"Are you serious? Yes! Yes!" Linden cheered, punching the air, good humor instantly returned. "I knew this trip was going to be worth it!"
x.x.x.x.x
They stood in Porphyry again, as they had a thousand years ago at the beginning of July. The air was even thicker and more humid, the bustle of the train station loud and driving them into a distant corner to get their bags in order.
Celeste was gone—disappeared, here at the city of her birth. Russell had already forgotten about her, it seemed.
The city was no different, but they were.
Vleridin reformed gratefully after the days on the train, impatient, and Moriko smiled, seeing her mossy coat and long legs and her antlers wreathed in waterweeds like a crown.
And she thought of what she did to a wild mooskeg a little less than a thousand years ago.
"Your forest is near," Moriko said. There was a rushing in her ears. She swallowed. "Do you want to go back there?"
Vleridin got still, considering this. People and pokémon went by, normal activity despite the ancient pokémon warnings.
"Show me the map again," the mooskeg said.
Moriko obeyed, pulling up the display on her pokédex: here was the city in brown, a polyhedron on the coastline, and little dots for villages north and west on the Lacuna Sea. She scrolled a little, calling up the river delta where she'd found Vleridin.
Weeks ago. Eons ago.
"Make it small. Show me more. More."
And Moriko zoomed the map out until they were looking at the whole world and all of its regions drawn out in blue and green and dark lines.
Vleridin sighed, a bellows sound in the bulk of her chest, and she raised her head to look out over the city, to look through it. "I knew every path and stone and stream in those woods, and I knew all the young pokémon who lived there, and of them I ranked myself strongest, or near enough, and if strangers or ronin came I knew what to do and who would fight at my side and who might kill me if they could. And one summer's day you stole me away, and showed me how strong strangers could be and how small my life was, and I wished for nothing more urgently than to be made more, to try to fill up that vast space.
"You showed me strange things, indeed, in barely a moon's turning, Moriko. My old home will be waiting for me—it scarcely changed in all the time I was there. I will be different, and maybe I will yet regret that. That there might be so many courses that I might choose one and see so much and yet wonder what lay down another road—I could not have imagined this. That there might be strange and beautiful people from distant lands, that I might see hundreds of them and test them and not fear death—I could not have imagined this.
"And so I might go back, someday. But today there's so much to see."
Moriko wiped at her eyes. "I'm sorry for our—my bad beginning. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad I'm seeing these things with you."
The mooskeg shifted, the broad muscles at her neck and shoulders moving, and she looked up the hill, with its stone buildings, and Moriko wondered what she was seeing under energy-sight.
"This is where you lost to that gym leader? The vile one?"
"Yes. I was… embarrassed. Matt and Russell both won. It made me desperate." Moriko swallowed nervously, remembering what ugliness—her ugliness—that desperation had inspired.
Vleridin whuffed quietly and touched Moriko's cheek with her nose. "You shall not lose again."