Wanderer

by Renaerys

Disgraced and ashamed, Alain drifts in self-imposed exile in the wake of a personal failure. But not all those who wander are lost, and those who listen may find something they never knew they were searching for. [Realistic Pokemon AU, post-Mega Evolution Specials]

1. Chapter 1

Wanderer
Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon
Rating: M
World: XY Gameverse; Post Mega Evolution Specials; Realistic Pokémon AU

Notes: This is a short giftfic for the wonderful Xxser3ndipityxX, who has been a source of constant support and enthusiasm as I sink deeper into the world of Realistic Pokémon AU fanfic. It was supposed to be a one-shot, but I got so into the story that it turned out longer, big surprise. I also give her credit for making me get off my lazy butt to find a way to incorporate Mega Evolution into the Realistic Pokémon AU I've created. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy this fic and my spin on the characters.

***If you are new to my Pokémon fics, check out the very short note in my profile about Tamers, what they are, why I decided to incorporate them, and how they fit into my interpretation of a Realistic Pokémon world.

---

"Not all those who wander are lost." - JRR Tolkien

---

Numb.

When you have your life planned out for you, from the shirt you'll wear that morning to the way you hold your fork to the person you'll be when you grow up, there's not much else worth feeling. Monotony deserves no attention other than the pretense of it—eyes open, a nod here and there, go where you're told. It'll all be okay. You're going to do great.

"You're going to be great one day."

Ten years old and Serena could hardly picture what great would feel like. One day. Someday. Days were all the same, one after another. What was the difference?

Today was the difference.

Today, she would pick her own shirt and she wouldn't use a fork. Today would be a great day. Today, she would run away. Run away to a place even her mother couldn't follow with her facial wipes and snap-ready tongue and vicarious dreams.

That's a big word, vicarious. Serena heard her father use it with her mother once, the day he left. Her mother, Grace, did a lot of things vicariously. She loved vicariously, which sounded like a good thing—a great thing, today is a great day—to Serena's ears at the time. But it wasn't good enough for her father, and he took his bolero and his briefcase and he slung his suit jacket over his shoulder to go to work, and he never came back.

If he could do it, so could Serena. She didn't have a briefcase, but she had a pink backpack with a Cleffa design embroidered into the top flap. She didn't have any hats, least of all boleros, but she'd seen them in the shop windows in Lumiose City, pinks and purples and yellows and browns, when her mother would take her to town and set her up with a daycare service while she competed in the regional Rhyhorn racing competition. Her mother was always racing—in the arena, washing the dishes, kissing Serena goodbye when she went to school. Never a slow moment, never time to breathe. Never time to listen to Serena's answer when she asked her young daughter a question.

Numb.

Just be numb, Mom will take care of the rest, anyway. You don't have to ask. You don't have to think.

Serena had a jacket, a light winter coat that was her favorite color, a soft, baby blue, just like her eyes. It had a hood, too, so even if she couldn't have a hat like the ones in the window in Lumiose, she could keep her hair dry if it rained. The next step was food. She wasn't dumb, food didn't grow on trees! Well, maybe it did, but she wouldn't know it if she saw it. Convinced, she headed downstairs to the kitchen. It was late, past her bedtime, and her mom was in the living room with the TV on and a glass of red wine. That meant she'd be too distracted to hear Serena rummaging around in the cupboards and the fridge, grabbing fruit and candy bars—she liked the sweet stuff—and just because she felt guilty, the bag of granola that was kind of sweet but fake sweet to cover up the healthy bits. She packed it all in her little pink Cleffa-print backpack and zipped it back up.

Then she went back upstairs because she wasn't stupid. The front door would alert her mom, and she wasn't supposed to be out of bed so late. But her room had a window, and that window opened up onto a sloping, shingled roof. And the edge of the roof was just close enough to a tree with thick branches that she could easily climb down, even with her pink Cleffa-print backpack on. She'd done it before. Tree climbing was fun because her mom couldn't do it, or wouldn't. No one followed her up a tree.

Serena had her jacket and her backpack and her yellow rubber boots, and she opened the window as slowly as she could. It still squeaked, and for a couple seconds she knew she was busted. But her mom didn't call out, shrill and suspicious like she usually would. Just silence and the low, distant hum of the TV in the living room.

Safe.

Serena opened the window the rest of the way and climbed out, down the awning, and onto the tree. She cast a last look back at her room. The night-light was on—she didn't turn on the regular lights because she wasn't stupid. It was one of those spinning ones with Pokémon shapes cut into the metal so the light would project their images on the wall and ceiling. Smiling Wailord, bouncing Spoink, singing Fletchling. She smiled and wished she could take the light with her, but there weren't any outlets in the woods. Duh.

She did have a flashlight, though. Her father had given it to her before he left, to find her way in the dark to wherever she wanted to go. It was small and yellow, like her boots, but she'd put in fresh batteries so she knew it would shine bright. Clutching it between her teeth, Serena nimbly climbed down the tree to the ground quick as an Aipom and just as quiet. Still no sign that her mom knew what she'd done.

Vaniville town was a small, sleepy place. She didn't mind it, preferring the quiet to the large, bustling chaos of city life, like when her mother took her to Lumiose every so often. But there was something about small towns that was louder than the big cities. People whispered here, all the time, to the point that all Serena ever heard were whispers, voices on top of voices, and shifty eyes. She got that creepy-crawly feeling like people were talking about her as she sat by herself at playtime and squished silly putty between her fingers until it burst, or about the kid sitting next to her in class who picked his nose, or about the dumpy teacher who wore the same outfit four days in a row and she was starting to smell. Creepy-crawly whispers that sank their little fish hooks into your ears and pulled, soft and slow so you wouldn't notice the ripped skin and the trickling blood under the hook.

There were no whispers in the woods, and to the woods she went. Vaniville was surrounded by woods, deep and dark and lovely. She'd always liked the woods, Serena. Looking into something that looked back at her, watching as she watched. Like a secret friendship that never expected anything, never demanded something in return. Quiet. She liked quiet. It was easier to reach out and feel something when there was no one telling her what to do, where to go. No little fish hooks in her ears pulling her this way and that way.

The woods opened their arms to her as if welcoming an old friend, she liked to think. It was so easy to step inside, leave her house and the town behind. Daring to smile, to laugh a little, she picked up speed and ran, jumping over roots and ducking branches. Thistle bushes scraped her legs, but her pants kept her from bleeding and she didn't mind, besides. This was freedom. The night air, the sap and the honey and moss and the musky, dank, loamy smell that was the essence of the forest. This was home, she was sure of it.

Panting and out of breath, she slowed to a stop and leaned her weight on her knees to catch her breath. The moon cut through the canopy overhead and offered some light, but Serena turned on her flashlight to help her see better. As soon as the beam flashed to life, something in the underbrush shied away and hid in the bushes.

"Hello," Serena said, tiptoeing to where she'd seen the movement. "I won't hurt you."

She checked the bushes, but there was no sign of whatever had been hiding there. A little disappointed, Serena stood up and looked around. It sure was dark in here...

Maybe if she just stuck closer to the edge of the woods. That way, she could go back if she wanted, if just to look at her house or the people walking around town. She wouldn't call out to them—she'd run away, that was the first rule, of course—but just to see them. Was it this way? She started walking in the direction she thought she'd come from, but after a few minutes, the woods were as thick and dark as they'd been before. Maybe she'd gone the wrong way. Turning around, she went left this time. But the woods were unchanging, thick and dark and labyrinthine. Was she going in deeper without knowing it?

Her throat clenched with the beginnings of a sob, but she refused to cry. No way, she'd come out here on her own. Nobody told her to, just her. She was here to stay, right? To run away? Then who cared if she couldn't find her way back to town? It was just trees out here, and the leaves, and the moss, and—

Something growled to her right, and Serena whipped around and clutched her flashlight with both hands like a laser that might melt whatever got caught up in its beam. There was no sign of anything in the underbrush. No movement, no reflection of eyes, nothing.

"Wh-Who's there?" she said, voice shaking.

Another growl rumbled somewhere to her left, behind her this time, and she whipped around again. Her yellow flashlight trembled in her hands, the beam shaking and making it hard to see through the gloom.

"H-Hello?"

Something shone in the corner of her eye, and she spun again. Eyes, like two mirrors that reflected her flashlight and blinded her momentarily. Squinting, she tried to make them out better. Not just two, but four. Then six. Ten. A pack of them, glowing red eyes that caught the light and reflected it back at her, impervious to the flashlight's magic. Fear began as a cold draft against the back of Serena's neck and spread down her spine even through her warm jacket. Try as she might, her grip would not remain steady and her flashlight shook ever harder. She took a step back, then another and another.

The eyes followed.

"No, stay away!"

One of them growled, this time more confident, and it lunged. Serena screamed and took off running in the only direction that made sense right now: away. Tears blurred her vision, and her flashlight plunged her into a strobe-lit world of light, dark, light, dark as she pumped her arms and waved the flashlight around. The growling grew louder, and the pack broke out into a run as they hunted her, barking.

"Leave me alone!"

But Serena's desperate pleas fell upon deaf ears as the pack of canines, hungry and better at seeing in the dark than she could, gnashed at her heels and drove her deeper and deeper into the forest. In her hysteria, she tripped over a gnarled tree root she hadn't seen in time and fell flat on her face. Her cheek stung, scraped up and bleeding, and her flashlight tumbled out of her hand. But there was no time to cry or scavenge the flashlight because the hounds were coming. Sobbing, Serena picked herself up and ran, now guided only by the light of the moon.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! She was so stupid. She'd planned it all out, but she never imagined she'd be mistaken for food. People weren't food, right? The salivating canines at her heels begged to differ, and for the first time in her life, she got a taste of real fear and it got a taste of her.

Something sharp closed around her calf, and she screamed. A bold Poochyena, perhaps the alpha of the pack, had broken off from the rest of the pack and run her down so it could sink its teeth into her first. Grunting in pain and eyes full of tears, Serena fell and caught herself on her hands. She flipped as best she could, but the pain in her calf was a zillion times worse than that time she cut her hand on an exacto knife helping her mom open up the moving boxes when they first got to Vaniville. Poochyena wasn't letting go, though, and she did the only thing her body knew to do: she kicked the pup.

Hard in the face, and her boots were hard rubber, too. Poochyena whined in pain, and she kicked it again, screaming as she felt its small teeth rip her flesh. The third kick shook it loose from her leg, and it turned tail and retreated, whining in pain where she'd smashed its head up good. Whimpering, Serena staggered to her feet and limped as fast as she could forward. Forward to where, she had no clue, but the Poochyena outnumbered her ten to one and she had to do something. No one was here to tell her what to do or where to go, no rot-rusted fish hooks in her ears to pull her this way and that, she was on her own.

The barking drew closer, faster and faster, and she reached for the thick vines ahead. They parted under her skinny arms and she fell forward. The ground dropped off and she kept going, tumbling over herself too fast and hard to cry out. She rolled over moss-covered rocks, dead branches, crunchy leaves, all wanting a piece of her as they bruised and battered her limp body.

She landed at the bottom of the hill with a thud and groaned, her whole body like one giant bruise and her leg still bleeding. But the barking followed her down, and the fear came alive within her heart once again. Terrified and weeping, Serena struggled to stand and limped forward, away from the advancing Poochyena, as fast as her little legs could carry her.

They drew closer, so close she was sure they were just playing with her, a game of tag that she would lose no matter what she did. A child discovering her own mortality is equally the most disappointing and the most horrific thing in the world. One minute she's invincible, the next she's the same as everybody else. Nothing special about her. Perhaps that is the saddest part, more than the dying.

Just ahead the trees and underbrush thinned, and Serena followed the pale moonlight toward the clearing. Something brushed her heel, the Poochyena perhaps taking another snap at her. Desperate to get to safety, she flung herself through the last mass of underbrush and into the clearing, where she skidded over the grass and mulch and stained her pretty, blue coat. Exhausted, shaking with fear, and in more pain than she'd been in all her life, she curled in on herself and waited to die.

The barking canines descended, but just as she squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the inevitable, it never came. Barking turned to shrill whining, and the dogs scrambled over each other to turn back the way they'd come in a hurry. Their cries grew fainter, and Serena still felt the throb in her leg. She couldn't be dead, right? Her mom told her that when Grandma Penelope died, she didn't feel any pain. So if Serena felt pain now, it had to mean she wasn't dead yet. But...why?

Cautiously, she opened her eyes and peered around. There was no immediate sign of the Poochyena that had chased her here, wherever here was. Gasping from the pain, she nonetheless pushed herself up into a sitting position and wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, more curious now than afraid.

She was in a clearing bisected by a wide but shallow stream. Its bubbling passage had a soothing effect even after the harrowing experience of getting here, and in the moonlight the water shined a deep, sapphire blue, crystal clear. The clearing stretched a long way, maybe five hundred yards, and no trees grew here in the lush, green grasses. Save for one.

One lone tree, thicker than the ones she'd seen running here and with many reaching, bent branches, sat on one side of the stream surrounded by moonflowers, pale and white and smiling as they bathed in the unobstructed moonlight. The tree's branches, though, were bare and white as alabaster, spindly as an old woman's fingers clutched in prayer. Eerie, but beautiful.

Serena crawled toward the odd tree, eyes wide and reflecting the moonlight just like the moonflowers around her. It seemed to hum, the tree. Or was that the wind? Now that she took a moment to breathe with her fears subsided, she realized how quiet it was here. Just the babbling stream, the light breeze in the grass, and the lonely tree that watched over them all.

Beautiful butterfly Pokémon perched on almost every empty space on the bare branches where flowers should have been. Vivillon in greens and violets and yellows and blues, their wings sparkling in the moonlight. Beautifly, their long tongues curling and uncurling as they cleaned themselves. Butterfree sleeping in clusters that resembled enormous, silver suns. Serena forgot her pain for a moment as she stared, awed as she'd never been before. Like magic. They paid her no mind.

So pretty...

But her leg still hurt and bled. She didn't know anything about first aid, but when she got that cut from the exacto knife, she remembered her mom washed it out with warm water and bandaged it so it wouldn't bleed anymore. Serena didn't bring any band aids, but there was at least water here. So she limped to the shore at the base of the tree, pulled off her yellow boot, and rolled up her pants. The bite was bad in her ten-year-old eyes, ugly and red and painful. Biting her lip, she dunked her leg in the stream and shivered at the cold. But the waters washed the wound clean, and she watched, a little mesmerized, as her blood diluted in the crystalline waters until it was no longer discernible. When she couldn't stand the cold any longer, she bravely forced herself to keep her leg submerged for another thirty seconds, then got out of the water. The bleeding had slowed to nothing more than a lazy trickle, so she rolled down her pant leg and pulled her boot back on. It still hurt, but the cold numbed it enough to deal with. She hoped it would be enough.

As she scooted back from the water's edge, something caught her ear over the pleasant bubbling of the stream. A cry, faint but noticeable if she stilled to listen, reached her ears. Startled and a little curious, Serena got up and rested some of her weight on the weird tree to walk better. The cry was coming from somewhere behind the tree, so she limped around the back of it. There was a shallow ditch behind the tree overgrown with grass, and in it lay a tiny creature, the source of the wailing.

"Oh," Serena said, momentarily forgetting her own plight as she focused on the little bird stranded at her feet.

It was small, no bigger than her two hands cupped together, but its fat, fluffy wings were twice the size of its powder blue body. Blue like the sky on a clear day, her favorite color. Its fluffy wings were white, kind of like someone had stuck a bunch of marshmallows on a stick until they smushed together. The feathers were thick and downy, awkward for the tiny creature's size. And its dark eyes were full of fear as it cried for its mother.

"Swablu?"

Serena thought she recognized the species from her classes. They were a rare Pokémon and weak as Torchick, easily targeted by larger birds like Pidgeotto or Fletchinder. This one was alone and scared, just like her. Emboldened, she kneeled down on her good leg and hunched over to get a better look.

"Hello, I'm Serena."

The Swablu chick chirped and chirped, terrified and shaking. She looked up, but there was no sign of its nest anywhere. It must have a nest somewhere. Maybe it had fallen and waddled into this ditch, unable to get out. Her shoulders fell. If that was the case, then maybe it had waddled a long way here, and then she'd never find its nest in the dark.

Swablu chirped and attempted to waddle out of the ditch, but the incline was causing it problems. Unthinking, Serena reached for it and earned herself a nip on the thumb.

"Ouch!"

She sucked on her abused thumb, and the Swablu stared up at her with its dark eyes, suddenly quiet as though she'd spooked it as much as it had spooked her. As much as her thumb hurt, it was nothing compared to the wounds on her leg from the wild Poochyena. Serena lowered her hand and cautiously reached out to Swablu again.

"It's okay, I can help you get outta that ditch. See?" She pointed to her leg. "I got hurt, too. Maybe... Maybe we can keep each other company?"

Swablu chirped again, dark eyes trained on her slowly encroaching hand, but it didn't lash out this time. Holding her breath, Serena gingerly touched Swablu's wing with her fingers, and it didn't try to bite her. A rush of elation the likes of which she'd hardly ever known swept through her, elemental. She smiled brightly, never having experienced such a simple, easy joy as making contact with a Pokémon that was just as afraid of her as she was of it. Discovering there was nothing to be afraid of. Swablu chirped again and waddled closer to her hand, and it was then that she felt it shaking with cold. It was a chilly night, not so bad with her jacket, but Swablu didn't have its own raincoat to keep it warm. Serena leaned over and scooped up Swablu in her hands and brought it to her chest. She unzipped her raincoat and swaddled the fledgling among the flaps, easing it into a cocoon. The little bluebird cooed, exhausted from the constant overload of fear and cold and solitude. Such a small thing...

"Can I keep you?" Serena whispered as she cradled the little bird.

She'd never kept anything before, not anything that mattered. Things were given to her. Her Cleffa-print backpack, the blue jacket, her yellow rubber boots, everything. She'd never found anything on her own that her mom would let her keep. But her mom wasn't here.

Swablu snuggled deeper into her arms, trusting. Serena smiled.

"I'll keep you safe, I promise." She meant it. "Forever and ever."

She leaned back and lay against the weird tree, finding it comfortable enough once she shrugged off her backpack and set it beside her. The moon flowers twinkled all around her, little nightlights to make up for the one she'd left behind in her room. And the butterflies above were the shapes that gave the moonlight life, dancing and fluttering and lulling her to sleep.

Scared and alone and hurt in the woods, far from everything she knew, Serena fell into a slumber deeper than any she'd ever had before. Here in the woods, under the branches that didn't blossom, in a field of pale flowers, with a tiny Swablu in her arms. Vulnerable to the cynical eye, but at peace.

She dreamed that night of her own mad flight through the forest. Except this time, the Poochyena were twice her size with teeth like knives and much, much faster. They chased her to the clearing again, but this time she fell over the edge of the world, only darkness below. A waterfall sprayed over the edge, and she reached for the falling water with her hand, so tiny and so helpless, and it didn't save her.

She landed at the foot of the tree, or at least, where the tree had been. The stream still rushed past her head, clear as day under the moonlight, but the butterflies were gone. The flowers were closed up tight. There was no light here, and she was alone.

That's okay, she thought. I don't mind...being alone.

She wasn't really alone. The moon was here. The stream whispered its secrets as it rushed past. Even the grass, if you listened, had its secrets to tell. Everything had a story. Everyone had a beginning. She was at her beginning, and the pain from the fall was merely ancillary to the fact.

Rolling over, Serena rubbed her eyes and looked around the dreamscape. Without the weird tree, the clearing was barren and lonely. She struggled to stand up and look around. Maybe she was in the wrong place, maybe she'd fallen too far. No, this was the right place. This was where she was, where she was supposed to be. That was her, sleeping there.

Gasping, she covered her mouth and looked down at the form of her sleeping self, hunched over and cradling something precious in her pale fingers, too white to be human any longer. Swablu, she remembered. She'd saved that Swablu from the cold.

Rustling in the grass behind her. Serena whipped around, her short, honey hair brushing her cheeks. There was the weird tree, just as she remembered it. Except not as she remembered it. It didn't move the last time she saw it. Moving toward her. Blue, like the sky, her favorite color...

What are you? she wanted to ask.

But why ask when there was no need to know? The tree, its branches golden like the sun and plated with rainbows, crept closer to her on slender legs. It could see her. Its eyes were kind, she wanted to think. Or maybe that was what it wanted her to see. Dark eyes that reflected every color imaginable, a prism in the sunlight. She stared, mesmerized.

"What do you want?" she heard her voice ask.

"I want you to listen."

Serena was listening, what else would she be doing? But the blue tree with the gold crown woven from leafless branches lowered its head.

"Listen to the life you gave yours to save."

Serena's mouth fell open, understanding somewhere in the darkest corner of her ten-year-old mind. She spun around, the fear returning, and spotted herself still curled up with Swablu, unmoving. Her pant leg was dark with blood, and it stained the grass and the moonflowers around her in a huge puddle, reflecting the moonlight in their stead. Tears stung her eyes.

What's going on? Whatsgoingon?!

But the breeze caressed her cheek and bade her look back. The tree, not a tree at all, stood just inches before her, its slender, flat face lowered to hers and its dark eyes deep with understanding.

"Listen,"it said again.

Serena choked on a sob and wiped her nose, afraid, but she wasn't stupid. Whatever it wanted, it would get it. She knew when to go numb after years of practice. So she closed her eyes and did her best to listen, really listen. Something cold pressed against her forehead, and she blinked up at the blue creature. It had kissed her gently, its soft command lingering—

"Listen."

But there's only so much you can expect of a ten-year-old girl who's run away from home, been attacked and fatally wounded, and left to find peace in the heart of a darkness that has nothing to do with her. Serena's eyes drooped, and she felt herself falling back. Dark eyes watched her, that golden crown beautiful like it had invented the term and shining down on her. Beautiful, and horrifying.

How often the two go hand in hand.

But these are thoughts no ten-year-old would ever bother with.

She fell back, and maybe she screamed, maybe she didn't. It made no difference. When she hit the ground, she was no longer falling, and the moon was no longer bright in her eyes. Something warm and soft squirmed in her arms, and shaking the last vestiges of sleep from her consciousness, Serena blinked blearily and yawned.

Swablu was curled up in her arms and chirping again. This time its dark eyes were trained on hers without fear, and its tiny beak hung open in between chirps, as if to suck in another breath and prepare for the next howling before it finished the last.

Serena rubbed her eyes with her sleeve and stretched out. It was then that she noticed something very wrong. Shifting, she bent over her left leg, which had been bitten and ripped up last night by the Poochyena chasing her. Today, there was no sign of any injury whatsoever. The holes in her pants remained, but her calf was intact as though nothing had pierced it. There wasn't even a scar. Staring, she tried to imagine what could have happened. Had she dreamed the whole thing? But if she had, why were there holes in her pant leg?

Swablu chirped again, and she leaned back against the weird tree that had been her pillow last night. The weird tree! She leaped to her feet, Swablu cradled in her skinny arms, and walked around the tree. The moonflowers were closed to shun the daylight, and the butterflies were gone to find flowers and suck the sweet nectar from them. But the weird tree remained, bare and white and twisted, just as she remembered it. Serena peered up at it and frowned.

"You... What did you do?"

There was no answer, of course. Who talks to trees? Not even a ten-year-old would make that mistake, and Serena wasn't stupid. She clutched Swablu closer, and the little bluebird attempted to crawl onto her shoulder.

"...What do you want?"

Again, no response. There was just the brook, babbling away as it rushed wherever it was going. The breeze, balmy and gentle, like a whisper from the south.

Listen.

The thought came to her, unbidden but not unwelcome. So she listened. All she heard was Swablu chirping forlornly, and she turned her head to look at it perched on her shoulder.

"Are you hungry?"

Swablu chirped again, sad and frantic, and Serena decided it must be hungry. She was hungry, too. Smiling a little, she walked back around the tree to her backpack only to find it missing. Dread cut her deep in the gut, and she looked around frantically for the Cleffa-print bag. She put it right there! Where did it go?

She almost called out to it, but that was stupid. Backpacks couldn't talk, you dummy. It was gone, and that was that. Serena sank to the ground and crossed her arms, feeling a hot wave of sobs coming on. It wasn't fair.

Swablu chirped again, still hungry. Didn't it understand that the food was gone? Didn't it understand that it was lost in the forest, alone without a mom to cry to, no one to help, no warm bed to crawl into...

Serena hiccupped, and tears stung her eyes. This was stupid, so stupid. She was stupid. Why did she come out here? Why would she leave? Was it so bad listening to her mom? Was it so bad doing what she was told, just so it would make her mom happy? Wasn't that enough?

Swablu chirped again and nudged her cheek with its tiny beak. Its fluffy wings were like a cloud against her neck, impossibly soft, better than any pillow.

"No," she said finally, wiping her nose. "If I didn't come, then you'd be gone."

Swablu cooed softly and peered at her with its big, black eyes. So small, so soft. So alone, save for her.

If I didn't come, then you'd be gone.

Serena bit her lip and tentatively reached for Swablu. It allowed her to pet its little head, soft, even if the blue feathers were coarse compared to its wings.

"Listen."

"Okay," Serena whispered. "I can listen."

She got up, determined, and set off along the stream with Swablu. Her little legs carried them a good distance, and soon they were at the edge of the woods again. The stream continued on, but the dense trees reminded her of the Poochyena that had attacked her unawares, and she hesitated.

I'm afraid.

"It's okay to be afraid," her father had told her when there was a bad thunderstorm one night and she was only six. "Fear makes you strong."

"How?"

Fear made her weak. She shook like a leaf, and she cried. Serena hated crying, but sometimes she couldn't help it. But her father knew the answer. He always knew the right thing to say.

"Because it shows you what you have to beat to keep going."

Serena took a deep breath and tried to calm the aggravated trembling in her hands. Swablu huddled into her short hair, also shaking. She reached up and patted its wing.

"Don't worry, Swablu," she said with as much confidence as she could muster. "I'll protect you, I promise."

She closed her eyes and tried to calm down. She was no good if she was shaking and scared. Listen, the dream that told her. So she did her best to listen. The stream, the rustling leaves, the whisper in the wind, Swablu's hungry cooing.

And when she opened her eyes, the world looked different.

Where the forest had been dark before, now there were threads, bright green lights, that flowed through the darkness like a hundred little rivers side by side and on top of each other, all tangled up in a bundle. They wended deeper into the woods like a path, and Serena blinked.

"This way."

Only a child would not question the questionable and laugh in the face of the fantastic. It was a good thing she was a child, then.

The threads of light were everywhere in many colors, even as she followed the thick bundle of them deeper into the forest. The green ones jumped in between the leaves overhead, the brown ones rose from the fleshy mushrooms buried under old, dead leaves, and even wrapped around Swablu, pale blue. She traced the threads from Swablu to herself, surprised to find herself swathed in the glistening strings, soft and pink and bundled over her heart.

Heartstrings, she thought.

They grew from her heart, wrapped around her fingers, and brushed the trees, the leaves, the ground underfoot. Heartstrings, connecting everything. Serena laughed to herself, and Swablu chirped, pleased that she was pleased.

The stream's heartstrings, a clear crystal like the water, led her to another clearing, this one filled with low shrubs that were dotted with fat, orange berries that looked like hearts. Others bore purple fruit, round and plump and juicy, and still others grew slender, red berries as long as her arm and just as skinny. Serena was so taken with them that she almost didn't notice the many Grotle munching on them.

Stout, short Pokémon but more than twice Serena's size, the herd of Grotle moved slowly in between the bushes and the stream, taking turns eating and drinking. The heartstrings swirled around them and took on an earthy, jade hue. The nearest Grotle eyed Serena askance and groaned as it munched on one of the heart-shaped berries—a Pecha berry, if she remembered right from her schooling. The viscous juice ran down its leathery chin and dripped on the grass, thick and succulent. Serena's mouth watered.

Wary of the Grotle but keeping her distance so they wouldn't spook, Serena approached the nearest berry bush and examined the plump, purple berries that hung heavy from the branches. Just the sight of them made her stomach grumble, and she reached for one. But just before she grabbed it, she hesitated.

The heartstrings pulsed a deep, simmering purple, nearly black. They moved with a slushy ebb and flow around the berries, like smoke. Blue eyes gazed longingly at the purple berries. So hungry.

Just colors, she thought, but as soon as it crossed her mind, she made a face.

"Listen."

The Grotle munched exclusively on the Pecha berries and filled their bellies in the stream. The red fruits were too high to reach, and the purple berries remained untouched. Serena wasn't stupid.

"They're poison," she said to no one in particular.

No one was here.

The nearest Grotle swallowed a chunk of Pecha berry and fixed her with a sleepy stare over its hooked beak.

"They're poison, aren't they?" she asked it.

Purple means poison.

Grotle licked the thick, fruity nectar from its lips and went back to pilfering more Pecha berries from the bush. Serena couldn't explain it, but she smiled anyway, somehow happy even though she couldn't eat those delicious-looking purple berries. Instead, she cautiously approached Grotle and reached for a Pecha berry hanging from the bush it hadn't gotten to yet. This earned her a growl of warning, and she froze.

Incredibly, it was Swablu that came to her rescue. The little bluebird shrieked and fluttered its wings—a fly throwing a high-pitched temper tantrum at a goliath that could have chomped it down for an after-lunch digestif. But Grotle grumbled low in its belly and lost interest in that particular Pecha berry. There were plenty more where it came from.

Serena plucked the fat fruit from its branch and greedily bit into it. The syrupy juice ran down her chin and onto the ground, cloyingly sweet. She gobbled up the fruit in seconds and sucked on her sticky fingers, ready for another. Swablu chirped on her shoulder again, though, and her spirits fell.

Right, you can't eat this stuff.

What did Swablu eat? Her mother had a Fletchling for a pet, and it ate pureed Wurmple and Caterpie and Scatterbug. Swablu was just a baby...

"I need to find some Bugs," she said aloud.

No way she was going to let Swablu go hungry. So she listened again, and the heartstrings throbbed with light. She looked up, following them to the trees where they grew fainter the farther away they got from the Grotle. But patches of chartreuse light glowed among the leaves overhead in the gloom. Something was up there. Determined, Serena approached the tree where she'd seen the glow and looked up. It didn't have as many branches as the one at her house, but she thought she might be able to climb it if she was careful.

"Hang on, Swablu."

Swablu, whether it understood her or not, nuzzled her neck and huddled close either way. Serena gauged the distance between the forest floor and the lowest branch. She would need a running start. Stepping back a few paces, she took off at a sprint and leaped at the trunk. She sprang off the trunk and reached with everything she had for the branch. Her fingers brushed the edges, and she closed them tight around the shaft. Her shoulder jostled painfully, but she held on, feet dangling, and reached with her other arm. Now it was just a matter of upper body strength, and Serena knew all the tricks from her time climbing the trees in her backyard and at school.

She swung her feet to get some momentum, and when she had enough she pulled up and wrapped her legs around the branch so she was hanging like a rotisserie. Giggling to herself, she looked down and spotted the Grotle that had let her partake of its Pecha berry feast staring up at her. She waved without thinking, and it continued to much on whatever it was eating.

Serena shimmied along the branch and hauled herself up. The cluster of yellowish light was just above, so she crouched and balanced on the balls of her feet and jumped again. The next few branches were close enough together to make the job easy, and soon she was where she needed to be. The little light was a sleeping Scatterbug in a fine, silken cocoon. Many others slept in similar states above and in the adjacent trees, their dull yellow heartstrings swaddling them in their beds. Swablu chirped and shook with hunger, its dark eyes wide as it stared at the Scatterbug.

"Okay, hold on, I'll get it."

Serena reached for the Scatterbug and hesitated. Her mother's Fletchling always ate pureed bug. Swablu was so tiny, it wouldn't be able to eat without help. Serena's stomach turned at the thought of what she would have to do, but between Swablu and this Scatterbug, she would choose Swablu any day. Gritting her teeth and telling herself to do it fast so the poor thing wouldn't feel pain, she snatched the Scatterbug and squeezed its black body with all her might.

The Bug didn't even know what hit it as its bulbous head popped and its carapace crunched in between Serena's fingers. A mushy, green goop pooled in her hands, and before Serena had a chance to be disgusted, Swablu chirped and hopped from her shoulder to her forearm and began to slurp up the mush.

"Oh..."

Serena stared as Swablu filled its tiny belly with Bug guts and preened, finally sated. Her hands were sticky with green slime, and she wiped them on the bark of the tree, unwilling to sully her blue jacket any more than it already was.

"So...you're okay now?"

Swablu hopped back up onto her shoulder and cooed. Serena let out a breath of relief, glad that was over for today. She sat back on the branch and looked about the canopy. The Grotle continued to eat down below, and above the sun filtered through the trees like rare whispers, only casting light enough to see in the gloom. Heartstrings filtered down through the sunbeams and fell upon the leaves of the canopy, golden, upon the stunted trees growing from the Grotle's backs, into the running stream.

"Listen," the voice had urged her.

"It's all the same," she said. "All one thing. All alive, together."

Serena stayed there in the tree for hours, letting time slip by, as she watched the threads that connected all life, hers and the forest's and even the sun and stars above, and she listened.

---

She was gone for five weeks. Five weeks of listening, really listening to what the world had to say when people weren't so busy talking over it. Five weeks in the quiet, solitude that wasn't solitude—because freedom and solitude are not the same thing, but sometimes, for the precious few who listen, they can be. Five weeks of agony and torture for a mother who had lost her only child for reasons unknown, to faceless culprits, and with no hope of making it right.

Serena didn't think much of it, going home. She woke up one day in her usual spot under the weird tree and watched the butterflies as they woke up and prepared to find the choicest flowers and blooms to feed on that day. And she decided that today, she would go home. Because this wasn't home, as much as it could have been. She had food, water, a place to sleep, protection from the weird tree that seemed to ward off anything that wasn't the butterflies or her. And more importantly, she'd run away not to run away, but to make a point. Even ten-year-olds can have a point, she thought proudly. She didn't want to be numb anymore, so she ran, got her blood pumping, and lived. And it was enough. For now.

The heartstrings led her wherever she wanted to go. If she wanted to find the Grotle, she could find them. If she wanted to see a secluded hill where rare, blue flowers with red stems grew, she could find it. If she wanted to go home and leave this place, she could find home, too. The beauty of children is not that they don't question—they do, and perhaps more readily than the rest of us—but that they don't ask the needless questions. If you want to go somewhere, go. What possible reason, in this life or the next, could there be not to?

So Serena went home, skipped along the path the heartstrings illuminated for her, and ended up at the edge of Vaniville Town. That was where the police found her. They'd been searching for weeks, sending search parties into the vast woods in droves. They had Pokémon, Mightyena for tracking and fighting and Fletchinder for aerial support, but there had been no sign of the little girl who'd wandered off one night with nowhere to go. She was lost, they told her mother. Lost without a trace.

Until one day, she wasn't.

Her hair was longer, past her shoulders now and tangled. There was dirt on her face and under her nails. Her baby blue jacket was ripped as though she'd been mauled, though there wasn't a scratch on her. She had a Pokémon with her, a Swablu that would squawk and peck at anyone who tried to get close to it or to Serena. She'd lost her shoes somewhere, or perhaps discarded them. Her pants were rolled up and her feet were filthy and calloused.

She was alive.

In the hospital, they gave her a sponge bath. It was strange, the sensation of warm water after so many days bathing in the cold stream, but not unpleasant. The nurse even set aside a small bowl for Swablu, and the bluebird happily bathed itself until it sparkled like a cloud on a bright, summer day.

The policeman came to ask her questions. He had a gold star on his shirt, shiny, and Swablu wanted to steal it.

"Don't steal it," Serena said.

The sheriff stopped what he was saying and stared at her. "I'm... I'm sorry? I was just asking you if you remember anybody with you in the woods. Maybe a man? Or a woman?"

Serena fixed him with an empty stare. No, she wasn't with anybody, just Swablu and the weird tree and the stream and the Grotle and the Pecha berries and all the rest. But he didn't hear her, didn't see the truth in her eyes. He didn't listen.

None of them did.

Grace, her mom, swept her into a fierce hug when she turned up at the hospital. She was crying and shaking, kind of like how Serena had been that first night. And because of that, Serena hugged her back. Being alone was hard, she'd learned, and some people didn't like it as much as she did.

Grace let her keep Swablu and didn't even try to contest it. For that, Serena was happy to hold her hand as they walked home. That night was odd, she remembered. Grace always had her glass of wine and the TV on this late at night, but tonight she brought Serena to her room, dressed her in a set of pajamas that looked new—blue, her favorite color—and curled up with her in bed. Grace said nothing about Swablu curled up next to them on the pillow, and Fletchling held its usual post on the swing next to the bed.

Serena was tired, she realized. It had been a long day, and she wasn't used to the softness of the bed. But for her mom's sake, for letting Swablu stay without a word and for not asking any more questions whose answers she wouldn't listen to anyway, Serena let herself drift off to sleep. She dreamed of the forest.

It didn't last. Swablu could stay, that was a subject Grace didn't even attempt to broach. Serena didn't ask why, not wanting to put it on the table for discussion. There was just...something when Grace looked at the bird in quiet, almost sad contemplation, something Serena's ten-year-old mind could not yet recognize, not until she was older. But Swablu stayed, and that was enough.

The problem was the silence. Serena never minded the quiet. She'd always loved it, and for weeks it had been all that occupied her mind. Her mother, not so much. She would stare at Serena, unsure what to say, then look away when Serena caught her eye.

"I'll listen," Serena said on the third day as Grace poured her a bowl of Cheerios. "If you wanna tell me."

Grace stopped mid pour and stared blankly at Serena. There was nothing there in that look, no empathy, no sadness, no happiness or anger or anything at all. For a split second, she was a statue, a shadow of a person jostled by the voice of a child that had lived more in five weeks than she had in her entire life.

"What?" Grace said finally.

"I'm good at listening."

Swablu waddled on the counter and pecked at the Cheerios, gobbling them up. Grace didn't bother to swat it away, so taken aback by her young daughter's offer.

"All right." Grace set down the box and forgot the milk as she crossed her arms. "Why did you come back? How?"

Serena looked up at her mother and noted how...wrinkled she looked. Her forehead was all scrunched up, there were folds around her eyes and mouth that hadn't been there before, and the blue eyes that matched her own were awash with fear, like she wouldn't like what she was about to hear but she was still asking. Serena had no reason to lie, so she didn't.

"I followed the Fairy lights home."

Silence stretched between them, and Grace appeared to have no intention of breaking it. Serena reached for the jug of milk on the counter and poured some into her cereal, which earned her an irritated squawk from Swablu, who'd been deprived of its free meal. Grace just stared.

"Fairies," she said, hoarse. "Right..."

In retrospect, Serena took that moment to be the turning point. 'Fairy' wasn't a word taken lightly, not a thousand years ago and not even now. In a way, maybe she was lucky that Grace, despite being an ordinary pleb with no strange powers or influence over Pokémon of any element, was an educated woman with enough sense to know to shut up when she heard her ten-year-old daughter talk about Fairies. The police never heard a word of it, the neighbors even less.

"Here." Grace pressed a Pokéball into Serena's small hands on her eleventh birthday, just weeks after her rediscovery. "Happy birthday, sweetie."

The Rhyhorn was small for its species, young and restless, but Grace's own Rhyhorn was quick to intimidate it into submission. Even plebs, those not gifted (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with Tamer abilities, could handle a Pokémon or two if they were careful.

"I don't wanna race."

The words came without thinking. Serena hadn't ever really thought about them, but as soon as she said them, she knew they were true. She didn't want to wear the shirts her mom picked out in the morning. She wanted a hat, a sky blue one with a yellow flower pin. She wanted to play outside, climb trees with Swablu, eat wild Pecha berries. She didn't want to follow in her mom's footsteps and race Rhyhorn.

"We'll talk about that when you're older," Grace said, tight-lipped.

Serena stared up at her mom with that hollow look she'd come out of the forest wearing. "I don't wanna race," she repeated.

Grace's calm façade she'd cultivated over the past weeks, to her credit, dissolved as the last straw broke. "You will race because I said so! I've had enough of your little rebellion. Ever since you came back from your little escapade, you've been the queen of this castle. Well, no more. You're in my house, and if I say you're going to race one day, you will!"

"This is Dad's house."

Grace turned beet red and shook with rage. She sputtered, but she couldn't find the words to rebut an eleven-year-old and still retain her dignity as a human being. So instead, she stormed off, grabbing the half-empty bottle of wine from the counter on her way but no glass. Serena watched her go. The Pokéball her mother had given her sat on the counter, shiny and new. She grabbed it and, with Swablu at her shoulder, went outside to the front yard. There, she tossed out the Pokéball and released the Rhyhorn Grace had gone through so much trouble to procure for her.

It was an immense thing, Rhyhorn. A squat but thick block of shale with eyes and a mouth. It almost didn't look real, more boulder than beast, but it was real enough to locate Serena and grunt in warning. Red eyes, shifty and afraid, peered at her. Afraid? Serena smiled. She was so small and puny compared to this creature.

"Hello," she said gently, reaching out a hand to it.

Rhyhorn's pupils narrowed and it backpedaled, wary, and Swablu chirped at it. The species was known for their small brains, unlike their more intelligent evolved forms, as Serena would learn in the years to come. It wasn't Rhyhorn's fault, really. One moment, it was sunning with its herd in the mountains north of Driftveil and the next it was in Serena's front yard a whole world away, alone and with no idea what had happened to it.

Serena bit her lip. "It's okay, you're not alone. I know you miss your herd, but...I'm here."

Rhyhorn blinked, its simple mind trying to process her words, and in its distraction, Serena reached out a hand and touched her fingers to its prominent nose horn. Instantly, the heartstrings that had led her home bloomed around Rhyhorn like a nest of light. Ruddy and gray-brown, they ran over its uneven skin and the grooves in its plated armor like falling rain.

"I'm here," she said again. "You're not alone."

Rhyhorn relaxed, growling low in the pit of its belly, and Serena gained enough courage to approach and scratch the leathery flesh at the base of its head. Rhyhorn slumped at the pleasant sensation and let its eyes drift closed to better enjoy the sensation. Serena giggled, while Swablu chirped and hopped onto Rhyhorn's head to explore.

All the while, Grace looked on from the second story bedroom window, face ashen and troubled. After weeks of research and subtle inquiry, she knew what her next move was. If she loved her daughter, and she did, she had to make the call. There was a time in every parent's life when they were no longer enough for their children. That point came at different times for different people, for different reasons, but Grace knew her time was up no matter how much she wanted to deny it. If she didn't act now, she could lose her daughter forever, and she was not going through that again. Not after what had happened with the girl's father. She knew when she was in over her head, and she was not about to let Serena suffer because of her fears.

So she picked up the phone and dialed the number she'd found weeks ago in her research, hoping for an answer to her prayers.

---

Her hair was long, far past her shoulders. Her mom had neglected to cut it for whatever reason, but Serena didn't mind. Swablu was always nuzzling it and tickling her, something it hadn't done when her hair was short. Serena tugged on a tress of honey hair and twirled it around her finger as she waited in the clean, white lobby of this very large, very empty building with her mom. It was a laboratory of some sort, her mom had explained, and the professor here could help Serena.

"Why do I need help?" Serena asked point blank.

Grace got that look like she was unsure. It was a look Serena often found directed at her. "He'll help you. You're different, remember? He'll help."

She said it like a mantra, and Serena just went with it. If her mom wanted to do something, she would do it. This was no different. Eleven-year-olds didn't have a whole lot of say, anyway. But she had an inkling of what her mom was getting at. The kids at school stayed away from Serena. They always had, to be fair, but now they stared while they stayed away. Something had irked them about her, something invisible that they couldn't explain, and she couldn't pinpoint what. It wasn't like that before.

Serena didn't mind, per se. Being alone meant having peace and quiet. There were plenty of trees to climb in the playground during recess. But sometimes the other kids would be in the sandbox building castles, and she wondered what they would think of a castle she built. Sometimes they would play Lava Monster, where the gravel was the lava and you had to be nimble and jump around the playground and surrounding trees to avoid it, or the Lava Monster would get you. She would've been good at that game, climbing trees and navigating the jungle gym. But they never asked her, and when she approached, they always moved the game somewhere else.

Grace tugged on her hand and pulled her from her thoughts. It was time for them to head upstairs to the lab, the professor was ready for them. The receptionist directed them to the elevator and buzzed them up. Serena held her mom's hand even though Swablu was perched on her shoulder for reassurance. Grace didn't have a Swablu to reassure her.

The elevator dinged on the third floor and opened up into a pristine, white laboratory filled with people in lab coats and blue jeans and flip flops bustling about, checking odd machines whose names Serena probably couldn't pronounce, and a few Pokémon. Machoke moved heavy objects, while Vivillon in various colors floated about, perched on some of the lab assistants' heads, or just minded their own business. A small, orange lizard with a flaming tail zeroed in on Serena and scampered toward her, double eyelids blinking up at her. Grace recoiled and pulled Serena back, but before she could do something to reassure her mom, a young man in a dark shirt and a white lab coat rushed toward them.

"Charmander!" he yelled.

The orange lizard shied and looked back at him over its shoulder.

"Hey, don't go scaring people, okay?"

He kneeled down and held out a hand for the Pokémon.

"He didn't scare me," Serena said.

The young man looked up, and when they locked eyes, Serena felt a surge of something, like someone had punched her in the gut. His heartstrings... They were all over the place. And red like blood. They flew out the back of him like wings almost. She was so taken aback that she couldn't speak. She'd never seen red ones before, not on a person, at least. Everyone in Vaniville town, even her mom, had the faintest white heartstrings, almost translucent and barely there.

The boy stood up, sparkling blue eyes trained on her, and made an effort to nod at Grace. "Sorry about that, ma'am. Charmander's just playful."

"It's fine," Grace said, tugging Serena closer. "I'm here to see Professor Sycamore?"

The boy blinked. "Oh, sure. I'll take you to him." His gaze shifted back to Serena, and he grinned. It was the prettiest grin she'd ever seen, and it made her stomach do a little flip. "I'm Alain. What's your name?"

"This is Serena, my daughter, and I'm Grace," Grace said curtly. "Professor Sycamore?"

"...Right, this way, Serena."

If Grace noticed his slip, she said nothing. Serena smiled and blushed. There was something about him...

"That's a good looking Swablu you've got, Serena," Alain said. "You know, when Swablu evolve, they become Dragons."

Serena looked up at him and his pretty grin that made her get all twisty inside. The red heartstrings circled him in a lazy arc, like wings floating on the clouds. "Really?"

"Yeah. And Charmander here, he's a descendant of Dragons, so he used to be one, just not anymore."

Charmander croaked from its place in Alain's arms.

"Used to be?"

How could something 'used to be' something else? Did she used to be something, too?

"Look, I don't want to be rude," Grace said in hushed tones, "but I'd rather you not speak to my daughter. We're here to see Professor Sycamore, that's it."

Alain sobered and nodded. "Sure, my apologies, ma'am. I didn't mean to offend you."

"Just take us to the professor, please."

Sycamore was a young man back then, his hair loose and his morals looser, a true child of the modern age. But in his sharp, grey eyes, there lay a frothing intelligence just below the surface that even Grace could not argue with, despite appearances.

"Ah, Mrs. Gabena! Welcome," Sycamore said, extending a hand with the same gusto and pomp he employed in all his interactions with people. "I've been looking forward to meeting you."

"It's Miss," Grace corrected him.

Sycamore didn't miss a beat and just smiled brighter. "Of course. May I call you Grace?"

"If you like."

"Well then, Grace, is this your lovely daughter whom we spoke about? Is this Serena?"

He bent down on one knee so he could look up at Serena, and she blinked at him. He didn't have the same feeling as Alain, and she looked to her left to catch Alain's eye as if to accuse him of this. He held her gaze, curious.

"Ah, I see you've met Alain," Sycamore said amiably. "He's what you'd call a Titan. Have you ever heard of that, Serena?"

She shook her head shyly.

"It's a type of Tamer, a person with a close affinity to a type of Pokémon." Sycamore smiled back at Alain. "Dragons like Titans best of all."

Grace tightened her grip on Serena's hand. "Professor, I'm not here to play house with your lab assistants. Excuse me, but I'm not. You have my correspondence. What do you recommend?"

Sycamore's expression hardened and he stood up. "Right. I've gone over everything we discussed, and coupled with my own research, I think it's best that Serena stay here for a while. I'd like to observe her, run some tests. Nothing invasive, I assure you." He put up his hands, both of which were covered in prayer beads and ratty, hand-woven bracelets halfway up his forearms where his lab coat had been hastily rolled up. "But I'd like to be sure, so you can be sure," he added quickly.

Grace was silent for a moment as she thought about that, while Serena kept her eyes on Alain and the red threads that danced around him.

Pretty.

Grace kneeled down and cupped Serena's face in her hands, tearing her eyes away from Alain. "Serena, sweetie? You're gonna stay here for a little while, okay? But I'll be back soon, I promise."

"Okay," Serena said softly.

Grace nodded and blinked back the tears from her eyes. "You can keep Rhyhorn with you, okay? You can practice riding him, so when I come pick you up, we can try riding around the yard together, okay?"

"No."

Grace blinked rapidly, her eyes flashing with something, but it was gone just as quick. She nodded again. "Okay, you practice, and I'll see you soon, sweetie."

Serena watched her stand and exchange a few hushed words with Sycamore. Frowning, she turned to see Alain watching her over her shoulder, his grin gone and expression unreadable. They held each other's gazes, neither willing to look away, until Sycamore clapped his hands together.

"Well! I think this calls for a proper celebration. Serena, I don't suppose you like cake, do you?"

Serena swallowed and looked up at Sycamore. He had a kind smile, she thought. "Yes."

"Excellent! It just so happens that I had a cake delivered this afternoon with your name on it. Come now, let's get you settled into your room and then you can have the first slice. How 'bout it?"

Serena cast another glance at Alain, whose hands were in his pockets, then back at Sycamore. Tentatively, she accepted his offered hand and let him lead her to the back of the lab, where another elevator was embedded in the wall that led to the living quarters. She looked back and caught a glimpse of Grace as the elevator doors closed, clutching her purse in a white-knuckled grip and shaking a little, her hair more frazzled than it would normally be for a trip to the fashionable Lumiose City.

"...and I know it doesn't seem like a fun place in here, but my neighbor happens to have a son about your age," Sycamore prattled on as he held Serena's hand and punched a button in the elevator wall. "You might get along with him, if you want?"

Serena watched the doors close and let her eyes fall to her feet. Swablu cooed and nuzzled her ear, while Rhyhorn's Pokéball sat in the pocket of her blue dress, a little heavy.

"Okay," she said numbly, not really hearing him.

The elevator dinged and they exited together into the living quarters, where Sycamore led her to the third room on the right. It was a spacious bedroom with a queen-sized bed, a blue comforter that matched the curtains, and a spectacular view of the lights of Lumiose City in the distance. Swablu chirped and hopped down from Serena's shoulder to waddle about the carpeted room and explore.

Sycamore kneeled down again and rested his hands on Serena's shoulders. "Hey, I know it must be hard to be apart from your mom."

Serena shook her head. "It's harder for her."

He blinked, somewhat taken aback at the hardness in her certainty and perhaps the echo of truth in it. Eleven-year-olds are not supposed to sound so sure of anything but candy and mischief. But to his credit, and perhaps to Serena's sanity, he took her seriously.

"I think you're right. You went away once before, right? Into the woods?"

Serena nodded.

"And you said the Fairies led you back home."

She frowned. "No, I didn't say that."

"You didn't?"

She shook her head.

"Then what was it?"

"It was the Fairy lights."

She lifted her hand and ran her fingers along a bundle of heartstrings that extended from her heart and wrapped around Sycamore, very faint and white just like they were around Grace and her classmates and almost everyone she passed, toward the sunlight pouring through the window behind him. He followed her small fingers with rapt attention.

"Fairy lights," he said. "And you can see them? Like a path? Can you see them now?"

He had a kind smile, the kind you could trust. Maybe...it was okay.

"Yes," she said.

Sycamore leaned closer, like they were sharing a secret. "And...can you tell me who, or what, taught you how to see them?"

Swablu had found the tag on the comforter and was making a game out of pulling on it, delighted at the crinkling sound it made.

"The weird tree," Serena said, keeping her eye on Swablu. "It was grateful for when I helped Swablu."

"The weird tree," Sycamore repeated. "Serena, can you describe this tree? Did... Did it speak to you? What did it look like?"

She thought about that. "It looked like a rainbow. And it kissed me, here." She pointed to her forehead.

Sycamore sat back, dumbstruck. "Did it, now?"

He looked funny like that, with his mouth open and his long, dark dreads limp around his chin and all those bracelets. So funny, in fact, she decided to share a secret with him.

"It told me something."

"Yes?"

Serena cupped her small hands around his cheeks, biting her lip not to giggle at the stubble that tickled her fingers. She leaned in close to his ear and whispered, "Listen."

She pulled back and smiled, maybe for the first time since she'd returned from the forest, and released him to play with Swablu. Sycamore watched her, a little star struck and at a loss for words.

"I'll get that cake," he said after a while, just watching her.

"Can Alain come? If... If he's hungry?"

Sycamore studied her for a moment. "Of course. I'm sure he'd be delighted."

---

Magus.

That was the word Sycamore whispered when he stole a glance at Serena. No longer a pleb, like her parents or her grandparents before them. Now, she was a Magus, one of three original Tamer classes created, not born and bred like the rest. It wouldn't be until years later that she understood the true ramifications of her transformation. The Fairy Tamers, the Magi of old, had died out centuries ago, or so the stories said. Suicide, every one of them, after they slaughtered as many of their loved ones as they could get their hands on in a paroxysm of unexplained cruelty. Nobody ever knew why. They'd just gone mad, maybe the power went to their heads, a bad trip. Maybe they just couldn't live with it anymore. There are some secrets of nature that were never meant for humans to comprehend.

Sycamore didn't tell Serena any of this.

Days of study slowly turned to weeks, months. He would ask her to show him the heartstrings, follow them, usually to find something or someone. Sometimes he asked her to find Alain, but that was cheating. He was easy to find, so red and loud and bright compared to the others.

"You always find me so fast," Alain said when she inevitably tracked him down to the second floor's cafeteria at lunch hour this time, his Charmander nibbling on his food while he was distracted.

Serena smiled shyly. "'Cause your wings stick out. There." She pointed at the red wings that grew from his back, invisible to all but her.

Alain followed her finger, but he couldn't see what she saw. "Wings, huh?" He ruffled her hair, a habit he'd gotten into whenever she said something odd but endearing. "Do you have wings, too?"

Serena shook her head. "Just you."

"But those heartstrings." He lowered his voice. Aside from Sycamore's personal lab assistant, Dexio, Alain was the only other person privy to the reason Serena was here at all. "Everybody's got them?"

She shook her head again. "Yes, but no. Ours are bright and pretty. You're red, and I'm pink. And Swablu's mostly blue, it's my favorite color. Charmander's orange, like his tail." She traced the looping heartstrings around Charmander's fiery tail as it chewed its food and watched her curiously. "Everybody else is hard to see. They're not bright."

Alain's eyes watched her with understanding, wondering a little at this sight she possessed, this odd synesthesia that let her see what he could only dream. It would take time to ease Serena into the nuances of natural classism, as the politicians liked to call it. Tamers and plebs, the ones with the gift, the ones without. Gift was a loaded word—to many, the Tamers were nothing but abominations, aberrant outliers allowed to coexist with the masses (most of the time). To some, they were the imperious overlords, unofficial kings and queens born to positions of prominence and power simply because of blood. It was easy to believe more often than not, when some could hold their breaths for an hour in a riptide, others could heal by absorbing an open flame, and still others could read minds, see the future in nebulous premonitions, or simply look into your very soul and rip it out with a glancing caress. But in every version, one truth stayed the same:

"We're different, you and me," Alain whispered. "And that's okay. Whatever happens, remember that you're not alone. I'm like you, and there's others like us, too. Maybe they have different colors?"

Serena frowned, and he blessed her with that grin that made her stomach do somersaults.

"It's okay to be different," he promised her.

It was a promise she would not soon forget.

---

One day, Sycamore asked her about a heart. No, not a 'heart'.

"Hart," he repeated. "A blue hart. It's like a deer, but bigger. And these." He picked up a pair of Sawsbuck antlers that someone had turned into a sculpture and lifted it over his head. "Antlers. They're the rainbow you saw, right?"

Serena frowned. "I don't remember a deer..."

Sycamore set down the antlers. "It's okay, Serena. I know it's hard to remember something from so long ago. But, if you can..." He drifted off and had an idea. He turned his computer screen toward her after typing something in. "Does this look familiar?"

There was a sketch done in pencil of a deer-like creature with antlers nearly half as big as it was. They curled and reached for the sky, and Serena smiled.

"The weird tree. It had branches like that."

Sycamore nodded. "Yes, that's what I've called Xerneas's Tree Form. Ah, that is, the tree's name is Xerneas. It's not really a tree, but a Pokémon, just like your Swablu. It only looks like a tree sometimes, but really it's a Fairy-type Pokémon. You see, Serena, I think you're a very special person because you met Xerneas. And Xerneas liked you so much that it turned you into a Magus, a person with very special abilities that hasn't been seen in hundreds of years. What do you think about that?"

Serena looked at him blankly. "...Xerneas?"

Sycamore shook his head. "This is all going in one ear and out the other for you, isn't it? Well, that's all right. You've done enough for one day."

"Is Alain here?"

Sycamore laughed. "You really get along with Alain, huh? Yes, he's here somewhere. Apparently, there was an incident with a very upset Gible, and he went to deal with it."

Serena didn't really know what that meant, but if Alain was here, then that was all that mattered.

"I believe he went to the terrace. You know the way, right?"

Serena nodded and headed for the elevator. Sycamore's lab took up four floors of a seven-story building on the outskirts of Lumiose City, just beyond where the suburbs gave way to the busy streets of downtown. The top floors were residential. Serena's room was on the sixth floor, in the same hallway as Alain's. He lived here, just as she did. Maybe his mom had dropped him off here one day and never came back, too. She'd never asked, and he'd never brought it up or asked about her mom. He was nice like that. Quiet, a little sad looking sometimes when he thought nobody was looking, but he never asked the questions Serena didn't want to answer. Maybe he just knew.

Serena hummed to herself as the punched the elevator button for the seventh floor. She'd never had a sibling. Was this what it was like to have a big brother? She'd seen some of the kids at school back in Vaniville walking home with their older siblings, but nobody ever walked her home. Would Alain have walked her home if she'd asked?

Swablu cooed and nuzzled her hair, and she smiled.

"He'd walk us both home," she assured the little bluebird.

The elevator opened up on to a covered foyer that led to the rooftop terrace. It was reserved for lab employees, so there were only a couple people here in the late afternoon having a smoke or catching up on company gossip. No one paid Serena any mind as she gave them a wide berth and got lost among the potted flowers and finely manicured trees. There was even a pond in the middle of the terrace filled with Magikarp you could feed.

She looked near the pond, but there was no sign of Alain anywhere. No trace of the red ribbons that flowed around him and peaked in those majestic wings, always in flight like each step he took could lift him into the sky and take him far from here. She could always follow them and find him, but he wasn't here now. Her shoulders slumped. Maybe Sycamore had forgotten where he went? He wouldn't make it up...

Serena sat down at the base of one of the trees overlooking the pond and hugged her knees to her chest. Swablu hopped off her shoulder and waddled to the water's edge to have a drink. The fat Magikarp watched it with wide, vacant eyes, glug glug glugging as they floated listlessly in the shallow water.

"Your hair's pretty."

Serena jumped and whipped her head around at the voice that had spoken too close for comfort. A boy about her age with dark hair and eyes and a round, upturned nose was kneeling just to her left near the lilac bushes. He had something in his lap, some kind of oversized, gilded dagger with a blue ribbon tied at the hilt. He stared openly at her, eyes wide with curiosity and a small smile tugging at his lips.

"Um..."

He stood up abruptly and took up the dagger in his hand, grinning brightly. The weapon was as long as his arm, but he didn't struggle to point it at her. "Can I cut it?"

Serena gasped as he brandished the sheathed sword at her, and a spike of fear struck her like lightning for the first time since her first night in the forest when she'd run away. She scrambled back and jostled Rhyhorn's Pokéball from her pocket, and it popped open with a flash of light. The squat rhinoceros towered over her at the shoulder while she was sprawled on the ground and growled. Swablu chirped frantically and half jumped, half fluttered onto Rhyhorn's head.

The boy stopped short at Rhyhorn's threatening growl and dropped his sword. But then, the strangest thing happened: the sword floated where he'd dropped it and didn't hit the ground. Serena's jaw dropped as the jewel on the sword's sheath opened up to reveal a spooky, blue eye that swiveled about to see better.

"Whoa! Whoa there, you don't wanna Stomp me, okay?" the boy said, putting up his hands.

The sentient sword floated to his eye level and began to emit an eerie, violet smoke. Rhyhorn growled in warning, but it advanced no further, uneasy as it kept a wary eye on the floating sword. Serena finally regained her bearings and got to her feet, a hand on Rhyhorn's rough shoulder.

"Who're you? Why'd you wanna cut me?" she demanded.

The boy shook his hands out at her. "Huh? No, not you, dummy. Your hair! It's pretty, I told you."

Serena made a sour face. "Then why'd you wanna cut it? If it's so pretty."

He looked at her funny. "What else d'you do with hair?"

To her embarrassment, Serena had no answer for him. He smiled again, and her blood boiled. He thought she was stupid, she was sure of it. Serena wasn't stupid.

"I'm Calem." He stuck out his hand, but before she had a chance to rebuff his politeness, he focused his attention on Rhyhorn. "Wow! Your Rhyhorn's so cool! Hey, can I pet him?"

He didn't wait for permission and reached out a hand to Rhyhorn.

"No, don't!" Serena tried to warn him.

Rhyhorn was still green and unused to people aside from her mom and her. That was why she kept it in its Pokéball and only let it out in her room to play. But Rhyhorn grumbled pleasantly when the boy ran his fingers over its nose horn, like it had known Calem all its life. Serena just stared.

"How...?"

"Oh, I'm Calem, by the way. Did I already say that? Who're you?"

Serena eyed the floating sword thing that hovered just behind Calem, its tattered, blue ribbon fluttering in the nonexistent wind. "Serena," she said.

"Serena, huh? Hey, my mom told me about you. You're Professor Sycamore's new friend, right? Oh, that's right! You're Grace Gabena's kid! The famous Rhyhorn racer! That's why you gotta Rhyhorn, right? Wow, so cool!"

There was more than one question in there, and as soon as he mentioned racing, Serena was prepared to not answer a single one. Instead, she pointed at the sword floating behind him and tried to ignore the sensation of her skin crawling as its eye blinked down at her.

"What's that?"

Calem followed her pointing finger and smiled. "Oh, that's Honedge. She's my Pokémon." He paused. "You do know Honedge, right?"

She remained silent, unwilling to admit that no, she'd never heard of such a Pokémon, but her silence gave her away.

"Oh, that's okay! Lotsa people don't know about it. Honedge's the best Pokémon ever." He looked around as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping and, satisfied, he gestured for her to come closer. "See, Honedge's a Ghost."

A Ghost?

Serena looked back up at the floating sword. The faint, purple smoke it emanated seemed to come from nowhere and disappeared into thin air. And she'd never seen a sword float on its own like that before...

"But she's also a Steel-type. That's why she likes me. My dad said Honedge were all real swords once, and great warriors used to fight with them and kill their enemies in battle, like this!" He struck his best swashbuckling stance and slashed the air with an invisible blade in hand. "But when the warriors all died, the swords still wanted to fight. So they got up and started fighting on their own."

Most kids her age didn't talk much to Serena when she was in school back in Vaniville, which was fine with her. But this kid wouldn't shut up, and she found herself a little bit at a loss for what to say to him. She was supposed to say something, right? What do you say to a kid whose best friend is a floating sword?

And then she remembered his name. "Calem... Professor Sycamore said you lived next door. Why're you here?"

Calem put his hands on his hips over his khaki shorts. "Yup, I'm his neighbor, all right. My mom works at the lab downstairs. My dad's away a lot for work, so I get to play up here every day after school till my mom's ready to go home."

"You're here by yourself every day?"

Maybe she'd said it wrong, because his smile faded a little. "Um, yeah. But Honedge keeps me company. We like to play tag and we swordfight, too. I guess you could join if you wanna. You know, since you're here and all. Um, do you wanna?"

Serena opened her mouth to reply, but he suddenly beamed with a new idea.

"Oh, I know! You could ride on Rhyhorn and try to catch us! How 'bout it? I bet you're a crazy good racer like your mom. My dad 'n me watch her races on TV when he's home."

The more he talked, the more she began to tremble with building rage. "I don't wanna race with you!" she shouted.

With that, Serena stalked off toward the pond and sat down with her knees to her chest and stared at the water. Rhyhorn grumbled and lumbered toward her, sensing her distress, and Swablu chirped.

Stupid Calem and his stupid game. I don't wanna play, I don't.

Movement behind her, then a shadow on her back. "Serena? Did I say something bad?"

She didn't reply and continued to glare at the water.

"Hey...if you don't wanna play, that's okay. I can just play by myself, like I always do."

They sat in silence for a moment, and still Serena said nothing. Eventually he got up.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "Don't be mad."

He backed off, and Serena turned to see him with Honedge. The sword floated before him, silent, and he drew a wooden stick he'd found somewhere. They faced off, and Calem slashed and spun enough to make himself dizzy, while Honedge dutifully parried and kept its swiveling eye on him.

Serena watched them from her vantage point by the pond next to Rhyhorn, who'd sat down and begun to drink, much to the Magikarp's dismay. Serena leaned against Rhyhorn's rough skin and watched Calem, her anger slowly ebbing.

He didn't know, she told herself. It's not his fault.

Nobody knew. How could she get mad at him for something everybody else did, too? But they were all so much bigger than her, and he was just a kid, like her. A kid with a flying sword. Honedge tapped him on the shoulder when he overshot a swing, and he grunted.

"Ow, you got me," he said with a laugh. "Gotta be faster, huh?"

He felt her eyes on him and turned to wave. Serena frowned and sat back down, but it was too late, he was already walking toward her.

"That's why you ran away, right?" he said.

Serena swallowed hard as he sat down next to her, his dark eyes on her profile and Honedge floating behind him. What was it with this kid? He couldn't be on his own for five minutes without bothering her?

"What?" she said.

"You don't wanna race. I heard my mom talking to Professor Sycamore about how you ran away to the woods. It's 'cause of your mom, right? 'Cause you didn't wanna race like her."

Slack-jawed, Serena turned to look at him and didn't have any words.

"It's cool. Sometimes I don't wanna do what my parents say, either. But mine listen mosta the time. Unless it's about broccoli, then I have to eat it when they say so, haha."

"How did you..."

Honedge's shifty eye blinked down at her. Just looking at it gave her a chill, but she couldn't place why. She'd never seen a Ghost before, but it didn't look like any Ghost she might have dreamed up in a nightmare. Just a rusty old sword...

"So why're you here, anyway?" Calem went on. "I mean, you came back to your mom, and now you're here and she's not. What's up with that?"

What a weirdo, she couldn't help but think. But no one else had asked her why she was here. Sycamore, Alain, her mother, everyone just adjusted to her presence here without question. Sycamore was interested in her, that much was certain, but she didn't know why, exactly. Except... Except that...

"...I'm different," she whispered.

Calem regarded her silently with a kind of wistful understanding only a child can grasp, unquestioning and trusting, nostalgically so. He blinked and fished around his blue jacket pocket for something. Serena peered, curious, and he produced a small pocketknife. With a click, he flipped open the knife and a small but sharp blade poked out from the handle.

"I'm different, too," he said, adopting that same conspiratorial whisper he'd used earlier when he told her about Honedge. "Wanna see?"

He pressed the knife into her hand to take, but she pushed back.

"Go on, take it. Cut me here." He spread his palm for her to see.

Serena shook her head, alarmed. "I'm not gonna cut you."

Sighing, Calem took back the knife and pressed the blade against his bare palm hard enough to draw blood. He dragged blade across the length of his hand to Serena's horror, and she recoiled.

"Stop!"

"No, look." He held out his palm to her. "See? No blood."

His palm was intact, a little red from the pressure of the blade, but uncut. Serena stared, not believing what she saw, and without thinking she traced her finger over his hand.

"You're not bleeding."

"Wanna try now?"

He held out the knife for her again, and this time she accepted it. Biting her cheek, she gently poked his offered palm with the point, but it didn't break the skin. Emboldened, she pressed harder and dragged the blade, but no matter how hard she pushed, the skin didn't break. Blue eyes wide with awe, she looked up at him again.

"How'd you do that?"

"Some Adamantines don't cut easy if we think about it real hard, like me," he explained as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

Adamantine?

"You do know what Adamantine is, doncha?"

Serena said nothing, but he took a deep breath and explained.

"It's why Honedge likes me so much. I'm like..." He struggled to find the right word. "I'm like her, Steel. Your Rhyhorn's kinda the same, too. All rocky and stuff. My dad likes the rocky Pokémon. But if you cut him, he'd bleed. But not me! Uh, I'm not s'posed to talk about it, so don't tell anybody, okay? Promise?"

She didn't quite follow, but she got the gist: he was different. Like her. She nodded, and he relaxed a little.

"So, what're you?"

Swablu chirped and hopped onto Serena's lap, its fluffy, marshmallow wings like a winter coat around its small body.

"I think you're a very special person because you met Xerneas."

She didn't know what it all meant, why he'd gotten so excited when she told him about the weird tree, but Sycamore had a kind smile.

"Magus," Serena whispered.

"Huh?" Calem looked at her funny. "What's that?"

"Listen."

She ran her fingers through Swablu's fluffy feathers and looked up at Calem, really looked at him. Heartstrings, shimmering silver like her mother's wedding wing, looped around him like platinum ribbons, ebbing and flowing. A bundle of the glistening threads bumped the pale pink threads that wrapped around her, and she felt a small jolt, like static electricity.

"Serena?" Calem said.

"It's okay to be different."

She smiled shyly. "You're pretty, too."

His heartstrings glowed softly in her eyes, rivers of silver that flowed around Honedge, too, and bound them in the same tide.

Calem got to his feet and dusted himself off. "You're weird, but I like you." He held out a hand for her. "Wanna play now? I could teach you how to sword fight if you want? Well, I mean, I'm still learning from Honedge, but I've been learning for a long time so I'm probably way better than you. Um...I can teach you if you want?" he repeated.

She eyed his hand, still unsure, but her eyes were drawn to the undulating, silver ribbons that encircled his hand, so much like Alain, but entirely different. She'd never had a big brother, but she'd never had a friend, either.

She took his hand, and he pulled her up with a smile.

"Uh, okay, stand over here. You can use my stick. Just, uh, swing it if you see me coming, okay?"

Serena let him guide her into position, while Swablu and Rhyhorn watched from the pond's shore. Some of the lab workers on their break noticed them as they began swinging sticks at each other, the sentient sword hovering protectively just behind them, and stopped to watch. But none of them approached.

Serena managed to whack Calem on the shoulder, startling him, and the look on his face was so ridiculous that she giggled.

"Oh, you think that's funny, huh? Then take this!"

Calem jabbed, and Serena did her best to dodge him. Swablu chirped in excitement, and Calem laughed as he stumbled, out of breath.

By the time Alain wandered onto the terrace in search of Serena hours later, her cheeks hurt from laughing so much. He watched them play, something inside him unwilling to end their fun, and watched them from a distance, smiling.

---

Twelve years later

---

Lips slick and sticky with blood and saliva, Alain ignored the rattling sound his breathing made as he struggled to stay on his feet. The smoke alone was enough to asphyxiate the room and everyone in it, but that Headbutt to Mega Charizard's gut hit harder than he predicted it would. Every crunch of bone, every burn, every shudder of fear that passed through the black Dragon crouched in front of him, Alain felt as acutely as if their positions were switched. The gash on his palm still bled, but his crimson handprint between Mega Charizard's wraith-like wings had dried and burned to nothing but a skid mark after that last Blast Burn.

They wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer. If he passed out now, Mega Charizard was done for. If that devil hound landed another direct hit, though, Alain would be done for either way. Mega Evolution, for all its power and glory, came at a steep price Alain was not ready to pay in full today.

"Inferno."

That woman, sleek as a serpent and with a taste for venom, thrived in the building heat that shimmered the air, while Alain only grew weaker. Her Mega Houndoom snarled, and the calcified horns that grew out of its head like a crown of melded swords began to leak fire tongues in response to its trainer's command.

More heat, Alain thought. And this woman, an Ignifera, a Fire Tamer born and bred, would only relish in it while he burned. Unless he stopped her right now, right here. Bracing himself for the flesh-eating heat, Alain backpedaled away from Mega Houndoom and Mega Charizard as far back as he could go without jumping the railing.

"Hurry! Dragon Claw!" he shouted.

Mega Charizard roared and lunged, a malevolent shadow fueled by fire and fury, just as Mega Houndoom released a heat wave that bent the metal railings and old grating out of shape. Alain covered his mouth as he felt Mega Charizard suck in the heat, impervious to it unlike him, and choked. Dark talons, aglow with a horrible crimson hue, reached for Mega Houndoom through the heat. The super-powered canine tried to leap to safety, but it was still in the throes of its attack and sluggish.

Sloppy, he remembered thinking.

But Malva, an elite among elites, had not achieved her household infamy by being sloppy. It was his last thought, abruptly silenced, before the heat became too overwhelming to remain standing and Mega Charizard sank its Dragon Claw into Mega Houndoom's belly, talons shattering the devil hound's sturdy bone armor and ripping into the coarse hide below.

Mega Houndoom roared in pain as it lost its balance under Mega Charizard's weight, and Malva cried out and clutched her belly with her searing hands, pumping herself full of even more heat. Mega Houndoom shrank as it fell, the temporary power borrowed from its Tamer-trainer reclaimed and with it, Malva's chance at survival.

Hands tugged at Alain's shoulders, so many hands, lifting him up, grabbing at him, knocking him out of his stupor and severing the blood connection with Mega Charizard. Before his eyes, Mega Charizard's razor scales bled from black to their original, sunburst orange and it shrank a foot, like someone had poked a hole in it and deflated it of whatever pumped it up. Not a bad way to think about it, Alain thought vaguely as he felt the rush of draconian power quicken his blood—Dragonsblood—once more.

It was like a reverse punch to the gut, and he could suddenly breathe in here again. The air cooled, the AC sucked up the excess smoke, and those disembodied hands carried him so he wouldn't have to do it himself. He wasn't sure he could after the beating he'd suffered vicariously through Mega Charizard. Stripped of its draconian transfusion, Charizard slumped and crawled toward Alain, one eye swollen shut and leaking blood, the rest of it as battered and burned as Alain.

But beyond Charizard, Alain's tired, blue eyes caught sight of Malva, also supported by hands attached to bodies he didn't recognize, all in white, as they strapped her to a gurney. One of them carried an electric torch with an open flame, which he held just over her bleeding belly. Houndoom lay unmoving on the arena's floor, its boiling blood dripping through the metal grating and pinging on the floor far below. There were no hands reaching for it.

Sloppy, he thought again as he watched the white smocks wheel Malva out and his own army of smocks pulled him toward his own gurney. Red eyes, dancing as they reflected the torch's fickle flame, caught Alain's gaze and held it.

He remembered squinting, trying to see better, ignoring the other pair of eyes that watched from on high, Lysandre in his luxury booth, the only spectator to this freak show. And even now, in the haze of a dream and delirium, he couldn't really be sure if he saw it because it was there or because he wanted it to be. Malva smiled at him, her painted lips glossy with blood and lipstick, kissable and pouty.

It was always then, that very moment, no matter how hard he tried to hold onto it. The smocks wheeled him out and maybe he shouted, maybe he called for Charizard to tear them all apart, it didn't matter. Malva and her painted smile faded behind a veil of disgust and self-loathing. The bile rose in Alain's throat and the wool was pulled over his eyes. Those damn, grabby hands, pulling him this way and that, didn't they understand that he had to remember what came next?

A full-body tremor forced his eyes open, as it always did after this dream, and Alain jolted awake in bed. A thin sheet barely kept him modest, and his bare chest rose but didn't seem to fall as he sucked in harsh, shallow breaths. The bile in his throat was real, and he pressed a clammy hand over his chest to ease the burn. Slowly, his body wound down from the high, the terror and anxiety diffusing like the light through the threadbare, brown curtain over the room's lone window. He whipped his head to the right, half seeing and half still in the dream, but when he saw them, the last of the hallucination ebbed from his mind. Three Pokéballs, all accounted for just where he'd left them. Next to them, a bottle of Jack with the cap missing, three-quarters of the way empty.

"Wow, never seen anyone wake up so strung out."

The voice came from the dip in the bed next to him, and Alain forced himself to breathe, in and out. He turned to his left and came face to face with a pair of sleepy, violet eyes that weren't sleepy at all. Blonde hair, tangled and mussed from sleep (or rather, the lack thereof after the previous night's prurient escapades) fell over her shoulders and pooled in between her bare breasts. A slender arm, tucked under the pillow, left little to the imagination as he followed the curve of her breasts down, but she didn't bat an eyelash at his wandering gaze.

"...Astrid," he managed sinking back into his pillow as flashes of the night before went off like bottle rockets in his mind's eye. Long, blonde hair he could really dig his fingers into, ass as tight as the grip she had on his wrist when he got just a little too close at the bar, a warning. That flicker of recognition—I've seen you before—and the Jack that erased all the time past.

It was the eyes, he remembered now as he looked into them. Eyes that could see in the dark, through the smoke and grime and haze of alcohol. Eyes that cut deep. He'd wanted to be cut last night. It had been a long time.

"You remembered my name." She quirked a perfectly shaped brow. "I guess I should reward you for that one."

She reached for him under the covers that might as well have not been there, useless as they were for warmth or coverage, and grabbed him before his mind could comprehend and tell his hand to move. Astrid was quick, and she was already rising on the bed, those blonde tresses shifting along her every curve and fuck, if there was ever a time to wallow in a hangover and just roll with it, this was it.

But in the haze of his building migraine, he could still see Malva's smirk out of the corner of his eye. Not sloppy at all, the sober part of his mind, long on a forced vacation, reminded him. And when he sucked in a sharp breath as Astrid shifted closer to him, it wasn't the obliviating escape only carnal pleasure could offer that sucked his lungs dry, but the too-familiar guilt stirring from slumber and rearing its ugly head. Never a moment's rest.

His hands got the message this time, and gently he took Astrid's arms and pushed back. She froze and looked up at him, quizzical. Quizzical. Mairin had always looked quizzical whenever he talked about anything other than food—

"Fuck," he hissed, ripping the image of the kid's scrunched up face from his mind in this extremely inappropriate situation. "Ah, sorry, not you, just my head—"

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Astrid put up her hands and said nothing, a silent understanding. Or maybe a calculated decision not to get dragged into whatever bullshit her temporary bedmate was snorting. Either way, good for her. He hated to see her slip away like that—last night really had been the best one he'd had in months, even discounting the Jack–—but the moment was ruined. His fault, again. The guilt liked reminding him.

But the guilt had nothing on that open bottle of Jack on the nightstand. Alain rolled over, careless of modesty and guessing Astrid cared even less, and took a swig from the cheap glass bottle. The liquor burned as it went down, and it mixed with the bile that still threatened to come up—hi, still here, buddy! But it went down with a hard swallow. By the time Astrid slipped out of bed and found her pants and bra, he was on his third swig.

She walked around the bed and tossed him his boxers, probably more for her sake than for his when he chanced a look down at his lap. God, you're pathetic. He offered the Jack as a silent thanks, but she declined. Another point for Astrid. He really did like her. Too bad.

"If you drink enough of that, will it dilute that precious Dragonsblood you Titans are so proud of?"

Alain let the bottle hang between his knees as he peered up at her. There was no malice in her question, just a passing curiosity. She had that ability, he'd noticed, to emotionally castrate and make it sound like a Sunday sermon. A quality he admired, if he was being honest and not on his way to getting wasted at nine in the goddamned morning. He frowned as his foggy mind tried to process her meaning. Dragonsblood. Titan.

"Leave?" His father's voice sounded hollow around the narrow neck of a bottle of whiskey, like talking out of a fishbowl. His laugh was worse, shaky and tinny, more like a cough to bury the sob somewhere underneath. "We can't leave. They'll never let us leave."

Shitty memories of a shitty life he'd turned his back on a long time ago. The whiskey was gone, then and now, and he missed it.

"Define enough."

He rolled to the side and set the empty bottle on the nightstand. His boxers still sat limp and sad in his lap.

Limp and sad. Nice, dude. You're really on a roll today. Nine in the goddamned morning.

Astrid kneeled down on the floor, her hair tied back and looked up at him with those eyes that cut. "I've got a minute if you need a hand to get to the shower."

He stared at her, unsure if he'd heard her right. It must have shown, because she made a face.

"You look like you need it," she said a little more softly.

Alain blinked and averted his gaze. "Huh. A Reaper who wants to help. Now I've seen everything."

Astrid got up and made a shallow huffing sound. "A Titan with two assholes. I've seen it all before."

She made her way back around the bed, rummaged around to collect her things, and slung her pack over her shoulder. Four Pokéballs clipped to her belt, at least one of which he was in no hurry to get acquainted with again. Breathing the same air as Mega Absol was like drinking acid from a champagne glass.

She was heading for the door, and that pathetic, sober part of his addled brain that still remembered he was a human being stoked the guilt in the pit of his belly, a last-ditch effort to remember that he wasn't as much of a dick as he liked to think. Rubbing his eyes, he called to her over his shoulder.

"Astrid, wait. I'm..."

Three words were all he could manage. God, just how far gone was he? Half a year since Malva got sloppy and he severed all ties with Lysandre, and he was still finding more dark holes to fall into.

Maybe Astrid felt sorry for him. Maybe she actually liked him a little, as much as you can learn to like someone beyond the excuse of anonymous sex. Or maybe she just wanted to screw with him. Reapers, the Dark Tamers, had a morbid sense of humor, he'd heard. Either way, he guessed he owed her one after this morning.

"Take it from a Reaper," she said, the edge of irritation gone from her raspy voice. He'd never heard her sound like that before, and he squinted to see her better. "When you're in a dark place, the best you can do is follow it to the bottom. The bottom's the best vantage you'll have to look up from."

For a blissful moment, he felt nothing. Thought of nothing. There was just Astrid and her sharp eyes that could see through the heavy shadows that piled on top of him, burying him and filling his mouth and ears with tar. All gone for that one, aching moment as she stripped him bare with a single look. No pity, no hope, just a confirmation that she saw it, too. He wasn't all alone here.

What must it be like, he thought, to see into the heart of darkness and be so unmoved? God, he envied her.

If Astrid had a thought on the subject, she didn't voice it. She didn't need to. Perhaps if you wallow in darkness too long, it no longer scares you. Alain didn't have her gift, though, and when she averted her gaze, it all came crashing back and he was drifting again.

By the time he'd gathered what was left of his composure, she was already gone. With a tired sigh, he glanced back at the nightstand. Yeah, the bottle was still empty and he still needed to shower. The window was closed to block out the cold, and the air in the wooden room hung stale with a faint stench of old cigarette smoke and sex and cheap detergent. At least the sheets had been washed recently. With great effort, he staggered to his feet and balanced with a hand on the wall in front. His boxers fell to the floor, but he stepped over them and stumbled toward the bathroom.

An old toothbrush he'd picked up the day he left Lumiose City hung in the porcelain holder, its bristles frayed and flattened. He ignored it in favor of the toilet and relieved himself. The shower was not the worst he'd ever seen. No curtain, but the water was hot enough. He let it wash over him, barely feeling when the hot turned to cold—the Jack kept him warm either way. And eventually, by some miracle, he was out, having kept his balance and now smelling vaguely of soap. The mirror was clear, and he stared at his dripping reflection for a moment.

Three-day-old stubble dusted his cheeks and chin, prickly and hiding an old scar on his jaw—another bottle of whiskey from long ago, his father's. There were bags under his brilliant, blue eyes, thick as shiners and giving him a ghastly look that aged him far beyond his twenty-seven years. No wonder Astrid had been moved to offer some help. His hair was a bit long, dark and curling in its damp state, but he barely noticed. It would do what it wanted. He reached for his toothbrush but had no toothpaste. Whatever. At least the water could get the sour taste of cheap whiskey out of his mouth until he could purchase more.

His belly sagged just a little, months of relative inactivity and too much booze taking their toll, but he couldn't be bothered to care much. Scars, thick and small and long and ugly, bisected his abdomen in places, most of them faint, one particularly nasty over his right pectoral. A shiny, angry gouge where Mega Charizard had taken a terrible blow to the chest from a monster Alain wasn't even sure he wanted to remember existed.

His stomach growled, demanding something other than alcohol, and he finished his business in the bathroom, toweled off, and dressed. The three Pokéballs on his nightstand he clipped to his belt. The empty bottle of Jack he left for the next person to discard. The migraine he'd been nursing since he woke up was in full swing now, and he downed a glass of water filled up from the bathroom sink. It didn't help, but it seemed like the right thing to do. With a final glance back at the messy bed, just a little disappointed, Alain hiked his pack over his shoulder and left the room.

The lobby had a small cafeteria, where he bought a couple sandwiches for the road, not bothering to dwell on the thought that they were undoubtedly days old and stale. The room he'd already paid for the night before, and good thing, too. He'd had enough trouble counting the change the cafeteria worker handed him back with his sandwiches.

Outside, the sun was up and the sky was clear. Spring had come early to western Kalos and brought with it the warm ocean currents from the Orange Islands far to the southeast. It was just after ten in the morning now, and of course the bars were closed. Didn't these people ever hear of day drinking? This town, if it could even be called that, was a traveler's thru point on Route Eleven. No one lived here aside from the owners and employees of the few inns, bars, and laundromats clustered together. Not even the whores stayed around much, preferring to follow the tide of travelers with the seasons.

"Hey, hon," a topless woman called from the second story of the local whorehouse. Her heavy breasts squished on the windowpane like they wanted to leap out and be free of this place. "Little early for a walk, why not come to bed?"

Alain spared her a passing glance. Redhead, round face, cute with a coy smile.

"I prefer blondes," he called back.

The whore gave him her best pouty face, but he tuned out whatever she said next to entice him. It wasn't a lie, he did like blondes. But he wasn't in the mood either way, and there were better things to spend money on. Except the damned bars were closed.

Food, the part of him that still made sense begged. Get some food.

The town that wasn't a town only stretched the equivalent of a couple city blocks, and soon Alain was back on the well-trodden path that was Route Eleven, headed northeast toward the coast. He didn't have a real destination in mind so long as his feet continued to carry him as far away from Lumiose as possible. More shitty memories of yet another shitty life he'd turned his back on not long ago. He seemed to do that a lot, turn his back on what wasn't working.

"Alain?"

He hissed and whipped his head around, following the phantom voice he was so sure he'd heard just as he had so many times before. His migraine rewarded him with the equivalent of a brick to the head, and there was no sign of another person in the thinning woods. Mairin wasn't here.

The woods opened up to a rolling series of rocky hills. Somewhere in there was a vast cavern known as Reflection Cave. Alain was not in the mood to reflect any further, at least not without some food in his stomach, so he wandered a good mile off the designated path and found a patch of fresh grass under a tree with enough leaves and spring blooms to offer some meager semblance of shade. Here, he sat down with a heavy sigh. He unclipped the three Pokéballs at his belt and released them all at once.

Charizard, blue wings folded, landed with a soft thud and snorted black smoke from its nostrils. Next to it and towering a staggering five feet over Charizard at the top of its shale-crusted crown and still growing, Tyrantrum bared yellowed teeth that were too big to fit inside its oversized jaw. Its ruddy, leathery skin was riddled with old scars and scuffs, but the mane of spiky, white feathers was puffed out and as clean as could be. It lowered its massive head toward Alain, tiny, two-toed front claws clacking, and fixed a beady, black eye on him.

But it was Heliolisk, the three-foot, frilled-neck lizard that boldly pushed past its behemoth brethren and poked its black-scaled snout into Alain's chest. The yellow lizard made a rhythmic clicking sound and peered up at Alain, a slimy, pink tongue slinking in between tiny, sharp teeth and licking its blue eye.

Alain cracked a smile. "How's that taste, girl?"

Heliolisk swished its yellow, lash-like tail and twitched its head. Alain usually took that as a sign that the strange pseudo-Dragon was pleased.

"Go find some breakfast, guys," he said to the three Pokémon. "I'll be here. Stay away from the town down south."

Tyrantrum made a snorting sound that could have passed for a laugh if it didn't sound so fucking terrifying. It lumbered about and peered into the thick of the woods to the west, sniffed the air, and headed toward them. Its massive hind legs, each as thick around as a tree trunk, boomed with each step. A flock of Fletchling squawked and fled a tree they'd been roosting in at the red dinosaur's passing.

Heliolisk scampered after it on its back legs, waddling and somehow able to remain balanced, but it moved fast and crawled up Tyrantrum's leg to ride on its thorny back.

"You going?" Alain looked up at Charizard, his oldest Pokémon.

The orange pseudo-Dragon watched him carefully, almost concerned, if Pokémon could look concerned. But with Charizard, it wasn't the look that gave it away. Alain reached out a hand, palm first, and Charizard touched its snout to his palm, silently communicating everything its look alone could not.

"I'm okay, just gonna rest here a bit," Alain reassured it. "Go on, before Tyrantrum cleans out the whole forest."

Charizard took that as reassurance enough and took off into the sky, floating in the direction Tyrantrum and Heliolisk had gone. Alone, Alain fished one of the sandwiches he'd purchased from his pack and bit into it. It was bland and stale, as he'd expected, but it went down without a fuss and his stomach thanked him with a satisfied rumble. He ended up wolfing down two of the three he'd purchased in about as many bites, then gulped down half his canteen of water. Somewhere in the distance, he heard Tyrantrum's mighty roar, and another group of birds shrieked and took to the skies en masse.

Always so dramatic, he thought to himself with a small smile.

Even as a Tyrunt, the ancient dinosaur had never been one to do anything quietly and without as much attention as it could gobble up. As one of a small group of its kind discovered living in seclusion in the mountains far to the north of Dendemille Town, attention was as precious a commodity as a bloody meal and a safe place to sleep. That was, until the Apep Dynasty's rangers discovered them.

Alain's stomach churned at the thought of his past familial ties. The Apep Dynasty, one of three great Dragon Tamer clans that had scattered from Sinnoh millennia ago, was a shadow that followed him wherever he went, even after all these years. No matter how far he ran, how strong he became, there was always that reminder that everything he was, from the Old Blood that coursed strong in his veins to the very personal, very intimate connection he'd learned to cultivate with Charizard that resulted in its Mega Evolution, all flowed back to that accursed clan. The control he exercised as easily as breathing over Dragons and their descendants, the name, the very presence he brought when he entered a room, those hushed whispers and the stares—he's one of them, right?—all of it belonged to the Apep Dynasty.

His father had known this, and now he belonged to them in death as he had all his life.

Sycamore had taken him in when he ran, a lost teenager trailing death and little else. Fifteen and alone in the world, that didn't sink in until days turned to weeks, then months. Years rolled by, and no one came for him. Titans didn't look for their own, he'd known this and Sycamore probably did, too. Otherwise, why risk harboring a vanither?

Deserter.

They may as well have branded the curse to his forehead, a scarlet letter to remind everyone who passed him that he was not to be trusted. Vanithers didn't stick around, didn't help when the going got tough. But Sycamore taught him how.

Those years, in many ways, were the best of Alain's life. A decade spent learning from Sycamore's wisdom, absorbing his enthusiasm for the unknown, the thirst for knowledge contagious the more time he spent assisting the eccentric professor. Alain caught a thirst of his own, or maybe it was one he'd always carried and learned to swallow while he still feared the fate his father had won. Even in his travels around Kalos, collecting data for Sycamore as his eyes and ears in the field, there was no quenching that thirst that was fast becoming a rapacious monster with a will of its own. He had to find another way.

Lysandre had offered that new way, a path to strength and power free from the yoke of blood ties and forced filial piety. Mega Evolution, he'd said, was the answer to Alain's prayers.

"You don't even know me. I don't pray."

Lysandre just smiled, the sage teacher savoring his student's proud insolence before the wool is lifted, the secret revealed, and the world of possibilities becomes just a little bit bigger. "Everybody prays, my boy. Only some of us get an answer."

The first time he'd seen it, Alain did get the sense that something was listening. Mega Evolution was a power he'd never dreamed of, beyond the beyond. With this kind of power, he could do something. Be something other than what he'd always been. No longer a perpetually wandering vanither, cast out and disgraced by virtue of his solitary existence, but something solid, real. Something his, to hold on to and to protect.

But whatever dreams he'd harbored, whatever new realities he'd fashioned for himself no longer mattered. They shattered, dashed upon the rocks of guilt and sucked down a dark void that ate into his flesh no matter how much distance he put between Lumiose and himself.

Mairin was probably still in Lumiose with Lysandre, her round face pressed against the glass as a team of highly educated nurses and doctors hunched over her comatose Chespin. High as Alain was—he'd even caught the ear of the Champion of Hoenn in his rise to power—a thirteen-year-old girl could still slash him down to size with one pitiful, accusatory look.

"You did this."

Where had he been when his father drank himself into a coma, alone in their empty house? Where had he been when the cargo hold of Steven Stone's private jet blasted open and Mairin nearly fell to her death? Where had he been when she was all alone, and her Chespin stumbled upon something no one was meant to see? What was the point of getting stronger when all it got him were tears and curses?

Running was what he did best. Run and hide, little Dragon. No one would shelter a dog that bites, especially one even the others didn't want. All those years, and he was back to square one. A wanderer with nowhere to go and nowhere to turn back to. And now, there didn't even seem to be a point in trying.

Hissing stirred him from his thoughts, and he realized he must have dozed off, half dreaming under that budding tree. The shade had shifted, the sun was high in the sky, and the smell of carrion and ego saturated the air. Sniffling, Alain shifted and cursed the numbness in his rear and back from sitting in the same position too long. He reached for his canteen and chugged down the rest of the water, spilling some on his jacket.

The hissing sound he'd heard was Heliolisk defending its share of the day's meal from its bulkier companions. Charizard curled back its lips, but it didn't attempt to snap at the thieving lizard. Tyrantrum didn't even care, it wasn't worth the effort. Two Gogoat carcasses lay on the ground in a pool of congealed blood. Tyrantrum was feasting on one, while Charizard went to town on the other and Heliolisk ripped off choice slices when Charizard wasn't looking. By the looks of it, they'd been at it for a while. Ribs had been stripped bare, soft internal organs were all but vanished, and the sky stalkers had already shown up.

A flock of Mandibuzz and Vullaby circled overhead, drawn by the scent of sunbaked blood. One bold Mandibuzz actually dared to land near Tyrantrum and waddled toward the broken Gogoat's head, perhaps looking to gouge out a soft, tender eyeball. Surprisingly, it was Heliolisk, the lone female of Alain's motley crew, that shrieked and leaped after the intruding buzzard in Tyrantrum's stead. Heliolisk extended its webbed collar, which began to spark with electricity, and screamed as it hurled itself toward Mandibuzz. The buzzard squawked in surprise and tripped over itself to get airborne. An arcing Thundershock followed it, barely grazing the puffy bird but getting the message across. No other birds dared to land while the three draconian Pokémon feasted. Tyrantrum barely even looked up at the commotion, instead shoving its bloody snout against Gogoat's side and turning it over to get to the uneaten meat there.

Alain yawned and stood up to stretch. His migraine had faded to a tolerable ache, and his stomach was no longer doing somersaults. He considered having another sandwich, but the smell of death was redolent enough to make him reconsider until after the Dragons were done.

He shouldered his pack, then headed toward the base of the rocky hills to the west. It felt good to get up and walk a bit now that he wasn't half drunk and starving. He briefly considered heading back to the thruway town for a fresh bottle of Jack, but decided against it. Something in him wanted to reach the top of this nearest hill first.

It was steeper than it looked, and the only paths were those frequented by nimble Skiddo and Gogoat that made the inhospitable terrain their home. None were about now, probably having learned their lesson to stay hidden while Tyrantrum was up and about. Alain's legs began to ache with the exertion after so long without much of it. The warm air soon became uncomfortably sticky, and his shirt stuck to his back. But each step brought him a little higher, a little closer to the open, blue sky.

After twenty minutes, he was at the apex of the rocky mound and out of breath. The hills went on and on, rolling like some gravelly, grey ocean frozen in time and space, and he just a lost soul treading water among them. Taking a deep breath and ignoring the phantom sensation of water under his boots, Alain looked to the sky. Endless blue, not a cloud in sight, stretched on forever on all sides. All these years under that same, unchanging sky. Did it mean anything at all? Was it even worth looking for?

"When you're in a dark place, the best you can do is follow it to the bottom."

He was at the bottom of the darkest pit of himself, mind and body and soul, lost and adrift with not a soul in sight to offer clemency. Not that he deserved it. But something, just to hold onto... Anything at all would do. Anything.

"The bottom's the best vantage you'll have to look up from."

Alain's shoulders slumped and he squeezed his eye closed, stinging from overexposure to sunlight. He rubbed them and shuffled his feet, shaking the vertigo from his limbs from staring up at the sky high above. And when he opened them, something in the distance made him stare.

A structure, tall and sprawling, stabbed the uninterrupted sky far to the north, where the grey sea bled into the blue. He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun, but it was hard to make out much detail from so far away. A castle, perhaps? The highest point glittered in the sunlight like the searchlight beacon of a lighthouse to guide sailors lost at sea back home.

A lighthouse...

He shrugged off his pack and unzipped the small, front pocket, which contained a map of Kalos worn at the edges and folded over itself a hundred times. He'd had this copy for years, scribbled notes about the various cities and regions he'd visited on missions first for Sycamore, then for Lysandre. He traced the winding, terrestrial path of Route Eleven north, east, north again with a finger until he landed on Shalour City, an old settlement and the last one remaining on the Gold Coast, the resting place of the setting sun. And that castle...

"The Tower of Mastery," he read the faded map marker.

It was familiar, maybe something he'd heard in passing in a conversation recently. Frowning, he suddenly thought of Lysandre. It was him that had mentioned the tower, he was sure of it. Why? Shalour was a coastal city, known sometimes for its fishing industry and always for its gold mines. Many said the Gold Coast was no pretty homage to nature, but to man's greed. Either way, the beaches were said to be littered with gold dust washed up on shore that shone under the light of the setting sun, turning the bay into a golden coast for true. Alain had never been.

But he had a mind to go now. Astrid's words lingered in his mind, probably unimportant but somehow persistent. Maybe it was just a coincidence, so many things were. She could have said it to anyone in a similar state and it could have meant something. But that wasn't the point. The point was she'd said it to him, and now he looked up from his lonely vantage, limbs aching with the weight of the guilt he carried and the trek to the top of this frozen ocean, and he saw something real.

The top of the Tower of Mastery glistened in the light of the setting sun, like someone had fitted a fat diamond on top of it precisely to reach out to anyone lost in the sea of despair or solitude, wanderers with nowhere else to go.

Come this way, it seemed to beckon.

He took a step forward without thinking before catching himself. It was a steep drop down to the valley between this hill and the next.

"Whoa there," he said to himself.

A low, rumbling growl answered him, and he was a little surprised to find Charizard standing behind him. Blood splattered its snout from its earlier feast, and it was almost a laughable sight with the way it cocked its head as if in question.

Alain turned to face Charizard and managed a shadow of a grin. He used to be good at smiling—smirking, really. He had it on good authority, mostly feminine in nature.

"Feel like flying today?" he ventured as he reached out and patted Charizard's long neck.

Charizard curled back its lips and growled softly, but it swept its leathery wings forward and nudged Alain in the side, a friendly gesture he'd learned to count on in their years together. Alain took a knee and fished out a set of leg bracers from his pack, then strapped them to his thighs one at a time. Charizard's scales could cut through human flesh if you looked at them the wrong way. His jeans would be little more than tissue paper after a couple minutes of flying without protection.

"Let's get the others first."

Though normally a violent and egotistical species, this Charizard had always been mellower than others Alain had come across. It was evident now by the way Charizard hunched over so Alain could swing a leg over its side and settle in safely. He patted Charizard's shoulder, and it took off in a blast of wind back down the side of the mountain, where Alain would recall Tyrantrum and Heliolisk before turning north toward Shalour City.

With the late afternoon sky and the balmy, spring breeze at his back, for the first time in a long time, Alain let himself enjoy the feel of Charizard's sinewy muscles pumping beneath him, climbing higher, as together they soared toward that beckoning beacon, a piece of home he'd never known before.