Chapter 2 – Energy Root
If I had to describe Professor Gregory Acacia in a single word, it would probably be an expletive. If I was to give a more traditional sketch of the man, I would say he was a fifty-something silver-haired stick-bug of a man wrapped up in the standards of a Pokémon professor, from the lab coat down to being named after a tree. He was intelligent, eccentric, and more than willing to have their aides, interns, or any convenient eleven year olds do all their legwork… and just as prickly as his namesake.
And, of course, all of that meant that his looking and coming across like Peter Capaldi trying to pull off both the Twelfth Doctor and Malcom Tucker at the same time was entirely hilarious, though the tall walking stick added a wizardly twist to the final product.
"Did you trade in your moped for a fucking tricycle or were you waylaid by fucking Dialga?" he snapped as I entered the lab. "Because there are only so many ways to account for you arriving two hours after you called me when it's only a fifteen minute drive to town."
The tirade was somewhat offset by the Trapinch rubbing its face against his calf, making a groaning purr all the while.
Acacia's lab, besides being a tangle of haphazard organization and absent-minded mess that recalled the Fallout games or Doc Brown's garage more than anything I'd remembered from the Pokémon series. And even without the stacks of boxes shoved into the corners, oddly placed writing boards – both white dry erase and old fashion black chalkboard, all covered with scrabbly scraps of data and irregular notes –, irregular patchwork spreads of sticky note wallpaper, and piles of paperwork and scientific hooha taking up the tables, the place was something of a zoo, with Pokémon often wandering in to see what was going on with their provider. Not that it seemed to bother the Professor much; he liked Pokémon better than people in most cases and most of his guests were small and well-behaved.
Another Trapinch wandered over to where an abandoned pencil lay on the floor and, after a moment of consideration, started chewing on it like it was a piece of pocky.
Well, mostly well-behaved. The fact that they mostly left his papers alone counted as that by most standards.
"The joy I feel during every one of our interactions aside, there are other people in the world than yourself with just as many problems that feel the need to call upon me to solve them," I replied with a roll of my eyes, pulling Barbara's Pokéball free of my belt. "And, as you know, solving problems takes time. Do the math from there."
"Oh, I seriously doubt that you know anyone with as many problems as me," Acacia muttered as he walked around a table loaded with folders, loose papers, and other scientific bric-a-brac, walking stick clacking against the hard floor tile as he went. "…It was that Myers bat again, wasn't it?"
"Twice in one day," I confirmed, wandering over to look at a map covered in colored pins and scribbled sticky notes. That wasn't even close to her highest record, though that day had likely been an honest mistake. Today, I couldn't tell if her second mishap was honest or not but it had been a quick enough fix. "Second time just after I called you."
He swore under his breath, the finer details of what he said lost to me as I focused my attention on the map.
Professor Acacia specialized in the study of wild Pokémon, specifically in the demographics, dimorphisms, and distributions of various species across different regions. Why he'd picked Orre of all places to set up shop in, I couldn't say, but I figured it was either because he was local and disinclined to move or maybe because people were almost as scarce on the ground as Pokémon.
The pins were fairly sparse, though there were enough to show that there were populations of wild Pokémon lurking around the area despite the common perception of Orre being completely devoid of them. Why Orre was like that was one of the great questions surrounding the region, one that wasn't often asked because it first required people actually remember that Orre existed in the first place.
Most agreed, based on archeological evidence and fossil record, that it hadn't just always been that way. Something had happened about 3,000 years ago. Whether that 'something' was a meteor, a war, or a Legendary deciding 'fuck this area in particular', it had taken out just about everything alive in a hundred thousand mile radius at the same time and left a desert and too many ruins to count behind as evidence to be completely uninhabited until someone had looked at it and said, "Hey, I bet there's some sweet ass rocks hidden somewhere in this dust bin."
A sharp snap drew my attention back to the lab.
"You said you had something to show me?" Acacia said, lowering his hand.
I lifted Barbara's Pokéball to where he could see it as I walked over to a clear table. "Yeah. A Noibat I caught in the cave by the wind farm."
His eyebrows lifted to meet his hairline. "Noibat? This far south? That's incredibly out of range."
"Considering that she was immediately clingy the moment we established I wasn't going to attack her, I figure she got separated from her group," I said. By what, I didn't say and didn't know. A particularly rough windstorm, an unexpected attack from another colony of Pokémon, or even something as mundane as a poacher might be the answer to the question but seeing as I couldn't exactly ask her for the story, it was entirely speculation on my part. "If you want to take a look…"
"Of fucking course I want to take a look," Acacia snapped, taking the ball out of my hand and pressing the release. The red energy that came out quickly gathered into a familiar shape before turning into matter proper, leaving a blinking Barbara sitting on the table, her big yellow eyes taking in the new location.
The professor circled her, his hand quickly taking position over his chin as he studied the Noibat.
"My mother gave her a basic checkup and said that she's in good shape, but we'd need a proper exam to know anything that isn't readily obvious," I explained so he didn't have to retread what I already knew.
The professor nodded. "A Pokémon nurse would know how to pick out the regular suspects. You just caught this Pokémon today?"
"Just about two and a half hours ago."
"And she was all alone?"
I shrugged as Barbara leapt off of the table to scramble up my sleeve and take up position on my head, the faint plop of her chin hitting my scalp confirmation of her exact location. "Apart from a few lowercase bugs, yeah."
"That is odd. Most Noibat are found in groups with adult Noivern for protection. They also keep pretty strict migratory patterns on account of that and while some of those paths might run over Orre, I've never heard of any hanging around. Not enough fruit trees."
Made sense. A big Pokémon would need a large amount of food to function and a whole colony of them would take a whole lot of food, which was rather hard to find in a region that was half desert and almost entirely shit.
"That's why I was thinking she was separated somehow, either by human or natural intervention. Maybe a storm or something." I raked my brain for recent weather events. "Wasn't there a pretty fierce windstorm from the north a few weeks ago? I remember I had to help recalibrate the blades at the wind farm after it."
Professor Acacia hmmed. "True, but it could have come from Holon and the Spires just as easily. The wind has always been a bit wild in that area, even without input from Kalos weather patterns. I might have to consult with another professor to get the specific data I need." The statement almost sounded pained.
"Sycamore?"
A shuffle of papers barely covered up the sound of a scornful laugh. "Fuck no. I wouldn't trust that scatterbrained ponce to tie his own shoes, much less read a fucking weather forecast. I'm going to call Krane."
"The boring one?" I'd never met the man, but from what I remembered from the games and Acacia's complaints, there wasn't too much to miss.
"The local boring one. Elm's a bland little shite too."
I rolled my eyes. "You must be so popular at the nerd conventions."
The professor grinned. "I'm banned from visiting seven different institutions and I tried to fist fight Oak the last time I saw him in person."
He made it sound like a point of honor.
My brain immediately went about the task of imagining how such a fight would go down, though my own mental sketch of Professor Acacia favored him exploiting the shepherd's crook shape of his staff alongside more traditional cheap shots. "Which one?" I asked, only after asking the question and watching the darkly smug expression that Acacia had turn sour did I realize that it was probably a mistake.
"Samson and Samuel can both fucking kiss my sweaty –"
I quickly tuned the tirade out in favor of playing with a Trapinch. While the little Antlion Pokémon weren't particularly fast little fellows, they were quick to come to a source of headscritches and I was soon surrounded by sawtoothed friends croaking for their turn in the scratching spotlight.
"– and I will personally unweave that fucking Alola shirt for the express purpose of making him eat it one fucking fiber at a time."
I looked up from a green Trapinch, the Pokémon giving a small squawk as it realized I'd stopped scratching its chin. "Y'done expounding your affection for your fellow man or should I go back to focusing on the Pokémon?"
"Seeing as my legitimate complaints about that pair would likely go over your head, yes," Professor Acacia said, rolling his eyes at me as he turned away. "Anyway, since I will be attending to that task immediately, you can do something for me."
I held a hand. "I can't dance for shit, I'm not good with babies, and I don't deliver pizza," I said, lowing a finger for each point.
He turned back around. "What the fuck does that have to do with anything?" he asked.
I waved off the question. "Just precluding some possible grunt work routes. What do you need?"
Acacia wandered over to a collection of local maps. "I'm between assistants at the moment…"
"Meaning you scared off the latest luckless bastard," I said, rolling my eyes. If Acacia had had any call in allocating his talents, charisma would have been his dump stat. "You'd think that anyone who's applying would have at least heard of your reputation by now."
"Shush. Anyway, the last weasel fucked the fuck off with about five minutes notice which, you can imagine, is a bit inconvenient considering I live and work in the arse-end of East Bumfuck, Nowhere, and I still need someone to do the running around portion of the program. That's where you come in."
"Joy. Do I get paid?"
"I'm looking into the history of one of your Pokémon. Combine that with the pleasure of my company and not inconsiderable charm, you should be paying me," the scientist replied before reaching into his coat pocket. "But I'm not above offering the odd service or material good in exchange for your services," he added as he tossed me something red and rectangular.
I grabbed it out of the air without thinking and almost dropped it as I processed its shape. A Gameboy Advance? The layout was just as I remembered, though I was pretty sure that they'd never come in red –
"It's a Pokédex," Acacia explained. "Hoenn model, so it should be able to take anything Orre can dish out. Not that I expect you to go around testing that theory, Murphy's Law and all that. It's pre-programmed and will keep track of the exact numbers of everything you come across, even if you don't care to use the camera function."
I looked up from the Dex to look at the professor. "Why are you giving me this?"
"Did I not just explain the whole 'payment in material goods' thing? Besides, it's easier to monitor that than to attempt to decipher the chicken scratch you call handwriting," he said before turning back to his pin board, long fingers tracing bits of colored string. "Besides, it'll be easier to get location data that way. Better than trying to figure out what you mean by 'three or flourish miles south-west from the dry ravine'. This is Orre; every fucking indent in the ground deep enough to fall into is a 'dry ravine'."
"It would be easier if we had clearly established routes like other regions," I agreed, fiddling with the Pokédex in an effort to understand the controls. Of course, the route system would have never worked with Orre – forget the lack of towns to interconnect the damn thing in the first place, the desert itself refused to be mapped, constantly covering up landmarks and unfortunates with dunes every time a sandstorm blew through. Putting the illusory safety of a formal route through it was just begging for something or someone to get destroyed. "So, what areas are you interested in?"
Professor Acacia gestured at the map with his index finger, indicating a large area that ran from about ten miles south of his lab to the edge of the badlands and then west onto the nearest river. "I'm not asking for a grid search, but a general coverage is fine," he added. "Just take a look around, point the Pokédex at any Pokémon you happen to see, and – if it isn't too much difficulty – don't capture the entire wild population."
Ha. Whoever heard of catching two Pokémon in one day in Orre? "I'm going to be out past dark, given a spread like that," I complained even as I made to get started. "Probably end up burning through half a tank of gas!"
"Yeah? I'd say that'd just about cover the cost of your favor and the Pokédex then!"
Orre is, to put it plainly, rough country. The desert was probably the worst of it – though the mountains that cut the region off from most land routes weren't exactly the portrait of benevolent geography either – and the rest… well. Let's say that when your region has impenetrable old-growth forest on one end that bleeds into scrubland that eventually turns into proper sunbaked badland before becoming proper sandy hellhole and all of that fits into a pattern like a goddamn impact crater of unlivability, the popular theory that something slammed into the place like the fist of a pissed off god a couple of thousand years ago holds more than a little water. That there were almost no extant Pokémon species exclusive to the region just reinforced that theory. Anything we had was either bleed over from our neighboring regions or species that people had brought over from somewhere else and released for some reason or another, though a few people had theories that placed a handful of species as Orre natives that got taken to some other region sometime before the Great Fuckening and then brought back over.
I couldn't really offer much to the speculation, though I had enough scraps of archeological experience under my belt to know that a number of Legendary Pokémon associated with other regions had held some significance to whatever people had originally lived in Orre. Rayquaza's presence in the 'pantheon' wasn't a terribly great surprise, given that the broad territory of 'sky' covered quite a bit of the planet, and Celebi fit with the forests in the area, but the marks of Alolan influence were weird, though the depictions were generally limited to Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma.
Maybe that was some evidence of cross-cultural exchange? Ea–
I shoved the harmless thought away before it could settle and tightened my grip on the handlebars of my motorcycle. That wasn't my business. I wasn't an archeologist and if I had ever had any ties in the archeological community of Orre – which was maybe ten people at best –, they were long gone now and I was in no position to be asking anyone questions.
Slowing my motorcycle down to a stop, I pulled out the Pokédex and – after a minute of fumbling with the half-familiar controls – snapped a picture of a wandering herd of Tauros and Bouffalant. I was far enough away that none of them were breaking away from the herd to throw down with me, but a few looked like they were considering the prospect.
The fact that I'd punched one out – forget guns, Aura was the great equalizer – the last time they tried was hopefully a deterrent, but Pokémon were unpredictable in that way. What might have inspired one to back off could strike another as a challenge or a training opportunity.
There was a peep from my right as a Fletchling popped its head out of a scrub brush tree to stare at me. Huh. I'd never seen one of them in Orre before. Maybe someone had brought it over and released it?
"Hey," I said as I snapped a pic. As I pulled the Pokédex away from my face, I pulled out a Pokéblock out of my pocket with my free hand. Breaking off a piece of it, I tossed it to the little bird Pokémon. "If you're not a wild Pokémon, there's a Pokémon professor that lives that way and a small Pokémon Center beyond that." I pointed in the direction of Professor Acacia's lab and Chrysoprase. "They'll make sure you get taken care of if Orre's too hard for you."
The Fletchling whistled at me, the shrill sound occasionally interrupted by even harsher vocalizations like punctuation. I couldn't understand the letter of what it was saying, but its Aura was definitely one of someone direly offended.
I crossed my arms. "I'm not saying you're weak, I'm just saying that this place is very different from Alola and that, if shit isn't working out here, you've got other options. Don't jump on me for offering help."
The Pokémon whistled at me again, its Aura no more friendly than it was before, and disappeared into its tree again.
Well, so much for that. I drove off, mentally mapping out where I'd been and where I still needed to go. I was maybe a third of the way done checking out the area the professor had requested and the sun was already beginning to set.
I'd called my mom before I'd set out, giving her a ballpark idea of when I'd be back home.
"Are you sure? It get dangerous after dark and you haven't refueled your motorcycle in the last week," she'd said.
I'd leaned back to look up into the sky. While the blue was almost painfully bright, there was no question that that light would only last for so long.
"Well, I replaced my headlight a few weeks ago, so there shouldn't be any problem on that end," I decided before checking my gas tank dial and then the tank itself when the number didn't make sense. Full, despite running around constantly and having no chance to refuel. Weird. "And I've actually got a full tank. Between that and the four or five hours before the sun starts to set, I'll probably be on the way home before it starts getting dark."
The follow-up of 'barring accidents or incidents' went unspoken but I had a feeling she'd heard it anyway.
"Well, drive safe," my mom said after a painful pause. "I'll leave some leftovers in the refrigerator that you can heat up when you get back."
"Thanks. Love you." Then I'd hung up, slinging the hold-fashioned phone receiver back into its holster on my bag. It was a clunky, almost ancient style of Pokégear, but it was one of the few designs that could physically hold up to almost everything Orre could throw at it and come out working on the other end. The fact that it was fairly easy to mod was convenient too, even if the trade-off was a system that had to be strapped and sewn into a carrying bag, which – thankfully – had some bigger on the inside property, though asking me to explain the physics was a bit much.
I was half tempted to pick up the phone again, to call anyone who could provide me with some companionship I could understand all of. This ride was long, hard, and boring, with little in the way of anything interesting to break up the tedium of dirt, dried sand, more dirt, half-dead tries, rocks, and – guess what – even more fucking dirt.
"At least I'm more than halfway done with this bullshit favor," I groused to the air, Leven making a sympathetic noise from where he was resting on the back of my bike.
There weren't that many Pokémon out here, which I wasn't surprised by. Most regions would have had a few colonies and swarms visible within a few dozen feet of a forest, but here? You'd lucky to see five Pidgeys in a single group. Over the course of this whole trip, I'd seen maybe forty Pokémon total and half of that number had been the collection of Tauros and Bouffalant from a few miles back.
There were even less to be seen in the desert proper. The Trapinch line and the various cactus knockoffs were about the only things that could really do anything in that place long term – and though I'd heard a few rumors about Sandiles, it was the sort of rumor that had the smack of urban legend.
A howl ripped across the empty plain, drawing an involuntary shiver from my spine even before the rest of the chorus chimed in.
The pack of Houndour and Houndoom were real, even if some might say that the Sandiles were more believable. While Professor Acacia had an idea that they were in the area, trail cams hadn't given him much of a number beyond a ballpark of five at minimum.
I had nothing against the species. Heck, they'd been one of my favorite Pokémon to draw as a kid in both lifetimes. But as someone who'd grown up with the threat of coyotes and the reality of 'guard dogs' that hated anything that breathed? Just the sound was enough to make me want to hightail it back home and lock the door behind me. The idea of running into a pack of five or more hellhounds wasn't exactly tempting with my father's past warning about coyotes ringing in my ear.
'They'll bite your hamstrings so you can't get away. Then, once you're down on the ground, they'll start eating your insides. And you'll be awake to feel it the whole time.'
And I was too close to comfort to that noise for that memory to be shoved aside easily.
I came to a stop and, after withdrawing my starter, pulled Barbara's Pokéball free of my belt. "Might be running into some trouble up ahead," I told the Noibat as she settled onto my hat after the initial startle of release. "You're a Dragon-type, so a Houndoom shouldn't be able to hurt you like they could Leven, but…"
I trailed off. But I don't know how many there are. I don't know if they're looking for a battle or a straight up kill. I don't –
Barbara chirped, drawing my attention back to reality.
Right. Standing still and mumbling about horrible ways to die wasn't exactly going to improve my odds of survival and I still had a favor to complete. I revved up my bike again and switched on the headlight.
"Once more unto the breach, you absolute fucking moron," I muttered under my breath before I started driving again, Barbara flying just above and behind me.
Gregory Acacia wasn't overly acquainted with sleep. It wasn't on account of his nigh-religious addiction to coffee – caffeine had stopped giving him a buzz decades ago and he mostly stuck with the habit because he liked the taste and hated the withdrawal symptoms – or even because of some of the shit he'd seen over the years. He'd just… never been good at it. Never been able to get his body to lie comfortably, never been able to stay down for more than three or four hours at a time, and never quite been able to shake the buzz of excess energy from whatever part of him wasn't demanding that he take a damn break.
But even if he was capable of getting in six or seven hours of oblivion, he wouldn't have been asleep by seven in the evening, which meant that not only was his phone close at hand, Acacia had it picked up and up to his ear by the second ring.
"What's the crisis?"
"I'm with the Houndoom pack right now," Delaine said immediately, her voice slightly distorted by the phone quality. Even through that, Acacia could hear a distinct shakiness to her tone, like the shadow of some immediate danger had passed over the girl a second ago.
That had him standing in a heartbeat. "What?"
"They're… they're not doing anything. Really, under the circumstances, they're being downright friendly. But there's something wrong with one of them. A Houndour. I don't… I don't know what to do with this, Professor," she said, before she pulled her head away from the receiver to say something he couldn't quite make out. Wait… was she was floating ideas of what that 'something' could be? "Rage Syndrome? No, it's been several minutes, would have seen a change by now. Rabies? Or... is it a Shadow–?"
Even if every single one of those ideas was wrong, the fact that they were being suggested told him plenty about the situation. "Delaine! If you're thinking what I think you're thinking –"
She quickly her ear to the phone again. "I'm going to try to capture it and bring it back to the lab."
Dammit. "Delaine, that is dangerous –"
"It's in a hole. It's not getting out of there without help and it can't get at me unless I let it."
"Don't–!" She hung up. "…do anything reckless," he finished.
Motherfucking teenagers.
He ran out of his lab and gave a loud whistle. A high pitched hum that almost sounded like singing immediately started up, its source making itself known against the silhouette of the moon; a Flygon. The Dragon-type settled to the ground in front of its master and, once Acacia was straddled on its back, it immediately took to the sky.
"Right. Houndoom pack around a hole. Probably around the badlands, seeing as that's where they always show up on the trail cams."
Shadow. Shadow. It didn't mean anything – unless she meant Shadow Ball? No, that didn't fit into the context of 'half-maddened beast'. He'd ask Delaine what she'd meant when he caught up to her… if the rabid Pokémon hadn't torn her apart first.
Orre's badlands passed beneath them quickly, the rocks and trees blurring as the Flygon ate up the distance between the lab and where he assumed Delaine would be. If she wasn't there, Acacia would correct course and look somewhere else. He hoped that his first guess would be correct.
It was. The Houndoom pack clustered around a hole in the ground was the first confirmation, with Delaine's motorcycle – where her Noibat was perched between the handlebars – being the second. The fact that Delaine herself was absent wasn't reassuring.
Before Acacia could bring himself to start scripting his apology to the girl's mother, a familiar face popped out of the hole.
"Delaine!"
The girl flopped forward, a loud whine coming out from under her before she managed to get another leg up out of the hole and stop squishing whatever she was carrying. "I'm fine, I'm fine."
She had the Houndour wrapped up in her arms, its legs bound up in her jacket while the carrying strap from her satchel was wrapped around its mouth to make an impromptu muzzle. It didn't stop it from growling and squirming, but it wasn't in much of a position to be doing much more than that.
It was a half-clever improvisation that didn't make up for the stupid decision she'd made in going after a potentially rabid Pokémon with her bare hands.
"You didn't think of trying to capture it with a ball?" Acacia snapped.
"It crunched the first one I tried," Delaine replied, making the action of adjusting her grip as the Houndour tried to squirm free again look like a shrug. "After that… well, my hands were full."
"Smartass."
"Better than being a dumbass."
"Oh, you're definitely one of those too," Acacia growled as he fished around in his pocket for a Pokéball. Producing a Great Ball, he tapped the Houndour on the leg, the Pokémon offering up a surprised yelp before it disintegrated into red light. As soon as the ball gave the tone of a successful capture, he clipped it to his belt. "Right. You are going back to the lab, right now. Both of you."
"Yeah. I'll… we've got to get my observations written down."
"That's hardly my first concern at the moment."
I didn't want to be here.
'Here' could have been anything from 'Acacia's lab' to 'this planet' or even the vague concept of 'consciousness', but I was pretty sure that I'd reached the point of exhaustion – mental, emotional, and physical – where the distinction didn't really matter.
Yet here I was, sitting in an office chair as Professor Acacia's tirade on recklessness coasted right past my ability to give a damn about the content but not past the anxiety that cared about authority figures liking me and wouldn't stop shrieking about how I was bound to die horribly if they didn't.
Did I want to go home so I could just want to fall asleep and not have to deal with any crises for a few hours? Probably, but here I was; awake, tired, and yo-yoing between boredom and internal screaming. Hopefully the only thing showing on my face was the tired part.
The Houndour was pacing the interior of an examination room turned isolation chamber, its frustration clear whenever it passed the window in the door. While there was food and water in there, it hadn't touched either yet. Professor Acacia had made reference to applying some Sleep Powder so he could hook up an IV to avoid dehydration, but it was clear that the option wasn't feasible in the long term.
If we couldn't make any headway with the Houndour, couldn't get it to give us the modicum of trust it would take to feed and water it, it would die. Slow, more than likely. Starving took time and was miserable for every second of it. Thankfully, I didn't have much of the same experience with dehydration.
The position of helplessness wasn't particular fun, especially when I was itching to do something. Offering comfort to the Pokémon was out of the question until it relaxed and while running laps around the lab was technically an option for burning off the nervous energy filling me, I doubted it would do anything about the source of my anxiety. Besides, I didn't feel much like confronting the Houndour's packmates outside without any sort of news. Maybe they wouldn't understand what I was saying, but I didn't feel right not saying anything to them at all.
Sleep, likewise, was out of the question. Too much going on, too many thoughts buzzing around in my head to remotely approach anything resembling 'calm'.
I sighed, letting my head fall into my hands. What was my life? Besides complicated, that part was already obvious. One big fat ball of stress, probably.
Thankfully, the professor came around to distract me from my overcomplicated thought process.
"Alright, tell me what your 'observations' are."
Taking a moment, I tried to organize my many, many misgivings into words. "Well, besides the obvious behavioral displays, there's something wrong with its Aura. Like… that Pokémon has been fundamentally warped on an emotional level. Whether that's by abuse or more arcane methods, I couldn't tell you, but it…," I turned my hand over in lazy circles as I fished around for the right words. "Hatred, fear, and anger are dominating its emotional processes at the moment and it only takes a little push to send it into a violent frenzy. It has no concern for its own wellbeing, no concept of mercy or rules. That Houndour is… I don't know what it's living for."
"So you're saying it's unsalvageable."
I sat up straight, any thoughts of falling asleep pushed far away by the immediate anger at the suggestion. "No. Never. It… it just needs a reminder that there's other things besides that. It'll take some work and more than a little time, but it can be saved."
It had to be. I'd been in that hole once, known what it felt like having nothing but negative feelings roiling around inside, always threatening to explode out at the lightest aggravation, and it had taken someone treating me like a human being to give me a reason to climb my way out. Besides, I knew how the games worked – abandoning a Pokémon just because it wasn't powerful or useful was never the right answer.
"You said something about Shadow earlier."
Did I? I'd been mumbling in between the snatches of phone conversation earlier, but it was hard to sort out what thoughts had escaped my mouth. Either way, I'd have to explain it now. "Cipher's been making Pokémon like this as weapons but the process…"
Acacia threw up a hand. "Back the fuck up for a second; Cipher?"
Was I supposed to know that? I think the answer was 'no'. "They're a Team," I explained. "Not like Snagem, but like Rocket, at least in terms of scale, ambition, and methodology. They're… I don't know what they want. World domination, maybe. I know that they're paying off Snagem to supply them with Pokémon and that they're turning those Pokémon into Shadow Pokémon…"
"Where did you hear about them?"
"Internet." If the excuse worked for Timmy Turner, it could work for me. "Chat forum rumor mills mostly, but they've apparently been doing a little recruiting around Pyrite Town along with distributing Shadow Pokémon through the local Colosseum as prizes… selling them as being more powerful than other Pokémon. Observations indicate a lack of self-preservation and berserker tendencies…"
Lies, lies, lies, lies, liiiieeees.
The professor fell quiet for a moment, his expression more serious than I'd seen it in a while. After a minute or so of silence, he finally spoke again. "I might need to call Eagun about this."
I stopped.
Eagun Logos was the Aura Guardian of Orre. Not just by default; the old man might have been mostly self-taught – it was an often overlooked ability and almost impossible for a person to learn anything about utilizing it without instruction –, but those homebrew skills were enough to make him the unquestionable authority on the subject in almost every region, which combined with his own archeological research, meant that his opinion was highly respected when it was offered, even if his duties kept him from going to any conferences that he'd been invited to.
He had also been my teacher. That wouldn't have been a problem if not for the fact that my apprenticeship hadn't so much ended as blown up spectacularly.
If I was being fair, sixth-tenths of the situation had probably been my fault. It had been me who'd found the poacher and it had been me who beaten the man half to death. I've always been a reactive personality, easily infuriated by injustice and blatant unfairness, regardless of if it was aimed at me or someone else. The sight of that Pokémon caught in the snare was more than enough to set me off and, with that intent to injure combined with my half-grasp of Aura, I was immediately at his throat.
There wasn't really an explanation for it. I'd wanted to hurt him and hurt him bad. Maybe so he'd understand what it felt like, maybe because I wanted to exact vengeance. But by the time Eagun had caught me and stopped me, the poacher had two black eyes, a broken arm, two broken legs, more busted ribs than whole ones, and more than a few teeth missing out of his skull.
The poacher had lived, even if they had to take him to a hospital down in one of the big cities. Nobody pressed charges against me or him, because I was a kid and Sherles figured the guy had received as good as lesson as he would have got with a prison sentence, but I didn't doubt that it made my reputation for those that paid attention to those things.
That didn't mean that I got off without any other consequences. Eagun had immediately terminated my apprenticeship and shoved me back to my mother, none too subtle about his desire to never see me again. There was no talking to, barely any explanations. Just 'pack up your bags, you're going home, you' can't be here anymore'. To a fourteen year old who had practically been a member of the man's family and didn't entirely understand what they had done so wrong as to deserve that treatment, it was tantamount to betrayal.
That had been a little under three years ago. The me who had lived through it was still bitter, still upset at being punished for something that wasn't even wrong – people that hurt others were supposed to get hurt right back, right? –, but the me who was new to the situation? I couldn't quite bring myself to feel anything more than resignation because that, right there, was the story of my life. Do my absolute best to succeed in whatever situation, disappoint anyway through a combination of bad luck, past trauma, and a complete failure of understanding some unwritten code of conduct nobody had ever cared to explain to me, and get discarded as soon as my deficits became clear. That was why I'd never been good at keeping friends or family members around; I just didn't have enough good points to make it a worthwhile effort to deal with the eternal problem child.
"Go ahead," I said, no emotion escaping into my tone. "He's the expert, after all."
"Delaine–"
"I'm –" an adult, "–mature enough to know when it's important to call in an expert, even if it's –" I cut myself off before trying again. "I can keep my bullshit under control. Hell, I can even disappear for a few days if that's what's what you need to get Eagun's help. He made it clear the last time he saw me that he never wanted my shadow darkening his door again. If that extends to any building he happens to be in…"
I let the sentence trail off, letting the silence supply the rest of the message – I'm willing to pay whatever price I have to pay if it gets us the help we need.
"I'm not going to mollycoddle the old goat just because he didn't know how to handle emotions, regardless of if they belong to himself or a child," Professor Acacia said flatly, crossing his arms, clearly having none of it. "If Eagun can't deal with your presence here, he won't be any help in the first place, seeing as you're the best way of measuring that Houndour's emotional state I've got. Besides, I'm only calling him because I don't have any better ideas and, seeing that I am a brilliant scientist, it's only a matter of time until one occurs to me. Either way, I'm not giving up my assistant to satisfy Eagun Logos's antiquated moral compass."
The indignation on my behalf was comforting, more than any empty platitudes could be, and I couldn't help smiling at it.
"Thanks, Professor."
Author's Notes
Edited 5/2/2018
Professor Acacia. Named after a particularly prickly tree species that never the less provides nourishment for animals, particularly insects (and that one herbivore jumping spider, Bagheera kiplingi) and has a few medicinal purposes. It's also a favorite meal for giraffes and gazelles, even if the thorns are supposed to act as a deterrent.
I picked out Acacia's Pokémon based on what sort of animals like acacia trees… and then redid it because a Girafarig isn't a practical ride Pokémon and the Trapinch line was already associated with him (also Flygon is awesome).
Instead of a generalist 'Pokémon expert' label, I decided to give Acacia a specialty that would be relatively easy and interesting to track in Orre – Pokémon distribution and demographics. After all, all the professors in the games have specialties in the field… and Professor Juniper's father is established to have a fairly similar focus (distribution and biology), as does Professor Willow from Pokémon Go (distribution and habitats).
The geography I'm working with for this fic is Kalos being to the north of Orre (separated by extensive mountain and forest ranges, where Holon and the Spires are located) and Unova to the east (also separated by a range of mountains). To the west is the ocean and to the south… a bit of ocean and then IDK what. Probably the ocean again, maybe a little bit more dirt. It's probably not much of anything worth mentioning. This is relevant to the story.
I gave Eagun the last name of 'Logos' because his name in the Japanese version is 'Logan' and it was too rhyme-y to feel right. Plus the fact that 'logos' means 'speech', 'plea', 'reason', or 'discourse' in Greek… Eagun is also an Aura guardian because of Rui's own ability with Aura in the game (which, admittedly, predates the other uses in the series and is somewhat different) and I figured that Delaine wouldn't just know how to do it on her own so... teacher/former student interpersonal drama.
Rage Syndrome is a real life condition in canines, mostly in English Cocker Spaniels.
