"Emily overcompensates because she doesn't yet feel she is part of the team. She needn't worry."
.
.
"Hello, pet. My, my, she's looking a lot better than the last time I saw her." The trainer they faced smiled, standing in the centre of the ice-strewn room, his expression as cold as the glistening metal floor beneath them. Hotch's boots slid on the slick surface as he stepped out onto the battlefield, his face burning from the cold. Behind him, Dave's claws clicked on the steel.
Emily bristled at his side, arching her cream-white back and snarling deeply at the man awaiting them. Red glinted in her eyes, the metal hissing and spitting around her delicate paws as she heated the air around them, easing the bitter cold.
"Ian Doyle, you are under arrest for multiple counts of international Pokémon dealing and five counts of murder," Hotch barked, sensing his team fanning out behind him, blocking the exit. "I don't recommend putting up a fight."
Emily growled louder.
Ian Doyle AKA 'Valhalla', hummed a throaty voice deep in the back of Hotch's mind. Spencer appeared with a thwop, hovering in the air just to the right of Hotch's bicep with his shoulder bag hanging awkwardly from one side. The Abra was barely the length of Hotch's arm, tail not included, but he didn't need size when he had his mind. IRA terrorist-turned-serial killer. Specializes in ice-types. Emily's not a good choice here though, Hotch. Dual typing means that most of his Pokémon will negate her double ice damage with a resistant water typing.
"Heh." Doyle shoved his hand into his pocket, withdrawing a black and yellow great ball and spinning it on his fingers. "Is that really why you're here, Aaron? Because of a pesky thing like those international treaties? Or are you here because of… her? Although I must say… I'm glad you taught that precocious little bitch how to be useful."
Emily roared, fur and tails prickling, and lunged at him. The great ball spun from his fingers, bursting into an undulating Dewgong that slammed to the ground in front of the slender Ninetales and rumbled out a booming call.
"She'll be fine," Hotch said, stepping onto the battlefield. Spencer tittered nervously, tail twitching. "She's never been one to be told no."
.
.
"There's been a mistake." Hotch stared down at the Pokémon sulking on his coach, her red coat fluffed up with anger and two tails trembling angrily. "I didn't approve this transfer."
"Hmm, I don't think so," Strauss said. Dave slipped past, talons scuffing the carpet in just the way that Strauss hated, clicking his beak as if to say here we go again. Shut up if you're not going to be helpful, Hotch wanted to snap at the arrogant Pidgeot. "I'll just leave you with your new team member, shall I?"
And she was gone. Hotch looked down at the Vulpix that stared back without fear, deep russet eyes narrowed with mistrust. "Spencer, can you tell—" He paused, glancing to the intake paper on his desk. Spencer appeared on the paper, obscuring the text as his front claws wrapped around the edge of the desk, peeking over at the Vulpix.
Her name is Emily, he sent helpfully, tail sweeping across the desk as he lost his balance, tumbling forward in a clatter of stationary and teleporting again to seat himself next to the fox Pokémon. She says there's been no mistake. She is supposed to begin with us today.
"I am sorry for the confusion, but you've been misinformed," Hotch said stiffly to Emily, turning and walking out. "Excuse me. Come with me, Spencer."
Spencer followed, levitating himself after Hotch with the focus sash he'd turned into a makeshift tie tucked neatly into his sweater. The only Pokémon in the office who felt the need to dress himself to his position. Besides Penelope, who dressed herself to… well, herself.
I like her, Spencer piped up nervously, large ears flattening backwards. I mean… she could be a good fit.
"No," Hotch said. "And that's final."
The last thing he needed was another unevolved, hot-heated member on his team. Not after Elle.
.
.
Reid whirled around Hotch as he tracked the Ninetales with his eyes, not showing any of the tension he was feeling in his body language. The Dewgong reared, throwing Emily into shadow as it loomed overhead, ready to slam into the smaller creature with a bone-breaking takedown. Emily leapt back, agile even on the treacherous floor, paws bloodied by the chips of ice scattered about from the Dewgong's destructive aurora beam attacks.
Faster than the unwieldy seal, she avoided the deadly take-down, landing with a satisfied huff out of range of the shockwave.
"Spencer," Hotch said softly, pacing to the side to lock his gaze with Doyle's. "Can she take a hit?"
Spencer rotated slowly in place, humming as he communicated with his friend. Yes, he responded finally, paws tucked against his chest as he curled into himself. Unhappy. Payback?
"Payback," Hotch agreed, and Emily roared with triumph at his reluctant permission.
Revenge was foremost on her mind, and he hoped he hadn't made a mistake by allowing her to extract it.
.
.
Being in any room with Derek out of his Pokéball was always an experience. Especially when the rest of his team was crammed in there with them, all peering down at the glowing screen of the laptop Spencer was helpfully levitating at an angle that allowed the Chansey's stubby arms to reach the keyboard easily, fingers darting over the keys.
Hotch leaned closer. From behind, a beak jabbed his shoulder. "Wait," he ordered, hearing a huff in reply. The beak jabbed again. "Damnit, Dave, I said wait! Spencer, what's he saying?"
The Abra looked up, head tilted. Ah. I don't really… he says 'no'.
Dave squalled angrily. "Did he really?" Hotch asked, hearing claws dragging against the carpet again. Derek turned his great head around to peer at them both, almost poking Hotch in the eye with his horn, far too unwieldly to fit easily into the cupboard Penelope had claimed as her 'tech space'. Nidokings were many things, but rarely 'cupboard sized'. At least JJ fit nicely; the Dragonite was curled neatly around the Nidoking's wide shoulders, with her narrow muzzle resting on Hotch's other shoulder.
I'm paraphrasing. The basic gist is 'no'.
Penelope trilled. As she craned her neck around to peer at him, the multiple beads and bangles decorating her jingled merrily, offsetting her pink fur with a multitude of colours. The laptop lifted slightly, a personnel file just visible from his angle.
She's from Interpol, Spencer said, startled, skittering up to stare at the screen. Oh. Oh… they sent her undercover as a gift to a arms dealer… it… it didn't go well, Hotch.
Hotch's stomach twisted painfully. "He murdered her trainer," he read from the screen, his fists clenching. "Used her as bait and then killed her trainer when he tried to rescue her…"
Standing here, surrounded by his Pokémon, he knew only too well how some people could mistreat those they were supposed to protect. But that didn't make it easier to swallow.
Spencer nodded sadly. It's very likely why she's still undeveloped, he added. Vulpixes form more tails as they grow to love their trainers. If Emily's been abused, well… Dave says we should take her on.
"Why?" Hotch turned to face his first Pokémon, the giant bird renowned for his battle abilities within the FBI. Hotch wasn't his first trainer, nor his greatest, and he loved reminding him of this. "She'll be skittish. Flighty. I'm not a therapist, Dave. I can't take her on purely because she was harmed in the past, no matter how many of you make sad eyes at me about it." At his words, Penelope and JJ both looked away guiltily.
A beat of silence, then, He says because she has more potential than she knows, Spencer relayed. She's of the Ninetales evolutionary line, Hotch. It says the man who killed her trainer… he's still out there.
"And?"
Ninetales never forget when they've been wronged. And they never forgive.
.
.
They all winced when the aurora beam slammed into Emily's flank in a fountain of rainbow heat, sending her hindquarters skidding out from under her and her body to tumble bonelessly to the ground.
At his hip, the three Pokéballs with Derek, JJ, and Penelope in them hummed with tension. By his arm, Spencer was frozen, muzzle tilted towards his friend.
Emily didn't get up. Hotch stared.
She said she could take it! Spencer breathed, almost quivering, flexing his claws out as though barely holding himself back from reaching out to the motionless creamy form on the metal floor.
And she didn't get up.
The Dewgong readied another attack. It opened its mouth. Colours glittered within.
Hotch grabbed a Pokéball, readied it. Within the ball, Derek was furious and ready. "Yeah, well," he said to Spencer, horror thudding through him. He should have known she was lying. He should have known! "When has Emily ever admitted needing help?"
The aurora beam hummed as the Pokéball left Hotch's hand and—
.
.
He found Spencer sitting in the centre of his study, paws working busily over the odd machine Penelope had given them. Scattered around him was a ridiculous amount of circular disks; some twisted and burnt, some cracked down the middle, some marred with scratches from his claws.
"What are you doing?" Hotch asked curiously, crouching to look. Spencer had worked out the TM maker months ago. Ever since, he'd managed to create a decent amount of training moves, even some for himself despite never battling.
It was probably really strange to have Pokémon that trained themselves, but Hotch didn't really give a shit. He trusted his team. He trusted Spencer.
Trying to make fire type moves, Spencer said after a long moment, claws clicking on the small buttons as he entered endless streams of complicated mathematical equations into the flickering screen. They're fiddlier than ground types. More… reactive.
"Explosive, by the look of it," Hotch commented, nudging a still-smouldering TM with his socked foot. "Why are you making fire moves? For Emily?"
Spencer nodded slowly, hunching into himself. I thought maybe… she'd like them, he said finally, shyly, ears lowering.
Hotch smiled. "I think she'll love them," he replied, reaching down to scratch the Abra behind his wide ears right in the spot that always coaxed a low hum of contentment from the small Pokémon.
And she did. But they only seemed to push her harder.
Three months later, he found Spencer perched on a fence post, watching in the gloomy dusk of a winter's night as Emily spat an endless stream of fire at a target, dancing around it on her dark paws to avoid any splashback. Her tails flowed behind her, four where there had been two.
"How long has she been practising?" Hotch asked, leaning on the post. Spencer looked tired, drooping. Hotch sidled up behind him, letting the Pokémon lean back into his chest and relax into his arms.
Hours, Spencer whispered. His tail waved slowly under him, the tip twitching. Why does she drive herself so hard? She has us. She doesn't need to be alone anymore.
Hotch wished he had an answer to that.
.
.
—Emily rolled out of the way, paws and eyes glimmering purple, and the dark move she was calling upon roiled up and out of her very self, feeding on the damage she'd taken from the first blast and growing.
She howled, the payback throbbing with the noise as it surged towards the Dewgong, slamming into it with all the force of the original beam combined with Emily's anger and sending the beast rolling back along the ground.
Dark pulse! Reid shouted. Derek roared in agreement, freed from his ball and poised with tension on the cusp of the battlefield. There was blood on the ice below Emily's paws, blood on her white fur, her tails dragging low to the ground and fur bristling in a dark ridge along her spine. She looked demonic. Manic.
Dangerous.
On the ground around her, summoned by the angry psychic power of the Ninetales' mind, bubbling circles made of purple-black light formed, gleaming sickly. They whirled around with Emily in the centre, feeding on her fury. They darkened. Tightened. She aimed, taking a single snarling step towards the wavering Dewgong. As though thrown, the circles vanished with a snick and snapped into creation again around the targeted Pokémon, bringing it down.
The Dewgong screamed with pain; the dark billowed around it, pulsed once, twice, and—
Vanished in a burst of clean white as Doyle recalled it. Hotch allowed himself a smile.
Fantastic, Emily! Reid cheered, pivoting in mid-air.
A Jynx replaced the Dewgong, hissing grossly as it lowered itself to the ground and slithered towards the panting Ninetales.
As one, Spencer and Emily looked at each other. Both looked smug. "What is she planning?" Hotch asked, cocking an eyebrow at their delight.
Flare blitz, Spencer hummed with a whoop, and Emily barked along, flames flickering in her throat. Fuck yes!
That last line was more Emily than Spencer, so Hotch allowed it.
.
.
Emily was benched.
Dave wants me to tell you that you might be overreacting a little, Spencer was relaying, looking supremely uncomfortable at being stuck between the angry Hotch and the equally angry Dave. Oh… he says I'm not allowed to paraphrase. His exact words were… 'tell Aaron to get the, um, goddamn stick out of his goddamn arse and apologise to her.' Sorry, Hotch.
Hotch seethed, hiding his anger by turning his back to them and busying himself with straightening the paperwork on his desk. "Tell him the day he's Team Leader, he can decide the proper disciplinary action for a team member putting herself in danger unduly."
Well… it wasn't really unduly… Reid hummed, tapping his claw against his foot. She thought JJ was cornered. And Dave says to tell you that he can hear you, he's old, not deaf. Oh. He didn't say old. He said 'older'. There's a difference, apparently.
"She's sidelined and that's final," Hotch ordered, turning on the two bickering Pokémon. They both quietened; Spencer cowering at his rare show of temper and even Dave silencing with a snick of his beak snapping shut. "I don't want her in the field until she follows procedure."
When he looked again, feeling almost guilty for yelling, the Pokémon were gone. He closed his eyes. Damn. Shouting… hadn't been the plan. It wasn't their fault, he'd just… he'd just had the shit scared out of him, seeing the wild Onix bearing down on the obscenely tiny Vulpix, ignoring her ineffective attempts at using ember to protect herself. If it hadn't been for Derek using roar…
Hotch? Spencer was at the door, peering around with barely the tips of his ears showing. Would you be this mad if it was Derek or JJ in the path of that Onix today?
Hotch didn't answer, not immediately. The problem with psychic Pokémon was that there was no lying to them.
The downside of having Spencer's genius on the team.
But his silence was answer enough. Spencer nodded slowly. Hotch could practically hear the cogs in his brain ticking as he puzzled that over. If it was me?
"It wouldn't be you," Hotch snapped, scrubbing a hand over his face. "You're not that stupid. You know your limitations."
Spencer's muzzle wrinkled. So, it's her limitations that bother you… He hummed once, tapped his claws on the doorframe, and vanished with a whumpth.
And that was the last they saw of him for two weeks.
.
.
"Are you really going to continue using a fire type against me?" Doyle spun his last Pokéball in his palm, eyes darting to the exit. Hotch jerked his head, an unspoken command, and Dave took off with a flurry of feathers and a low kee-yaah, blocking the door. The ball in Doyle's hands burst open with a cavernous growl, a Lapras landing heavily and skidding sideways towards the winded Ninetales. Emily's sides heaved with exertion, sweat foamy on her flanks and her eyes wide with strain.
But Hotch didn't call her back. He watched her carefully as her lips twitched back, curled, showing delicate white fangs and a pink tongue that darted along them.
She needed this.
"Yes." Hotch was blunt and allowed his hatred to show. For everything this man had done to Emily. For everything he'd done to everyone he'd ever harmed. This one time, Hotch allowed his voice to carry across the battlefield instead of using Spencer to mask his intentions. "Doyle. Last chance. Surrender."
Doyle laughed. "Use hydro pump," he said coldly to the Lapras, who opened its mouth to oblige. "And… aim for the trainer. Let's see how well she takes losing another. Just like Clyde."
There was a surge of noise as every one of Hotch's loose Pokémon roared in fury at the threat, but he flicked his hand at them, a command they all knew. They froze.
"Emily," he murmured, and the Ninetales readied herself. They trusted him. Unconditionally. "Incinerate."
.
.
JJ alerted him. He was sitting on the foot of his bed, head in his hands, lost and helpless to find his missing Pokémon. Two weeks. Two weeks Spencer had been gone, and they had bypassed frantic and gone on to numb.
Dave spent hours flying over the country, keen eyes scanning every road and tree for any sign of their friend. JJ did the same, spiralling through the air and trilling. Penelope combed the internet for any sightings of an Abra in a sweater vest and tie: checking security cameras, police reports, Pokémon forums, morgues…
Derek paced. Paced and paced and paced and refused to talk to Hotch beyond a furious grunt when Hotch walked into the room. They blamed him.
So they should.
And Emily. When Spencer hadn't come home that night, she'd vanished too. Gone looking. Hotch had almost gone mad knowing they were both out there; two unevolved Pokémon, one low-levelled, untrained in battle…
She'd come back. Alone. Done it again the next night. And every night since. She wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating, her russet fur dulling with exhaustion. They couldn't keep this up.
He had to tell them to stop pushing themselves so hard. But he knew that wasn't how they'd take it. They'd think he was telling them to stop looking. To give up.
Those were his thoughts when JJ burst through the window, whistling in fear with her blue scales rippling in bursts of white panic as lightning danced over them. Outside, clouds brewed, sensing her terror.
He couldn't understand her, not without Spencer there—and there was another thing he was horrified to realize; how much he'd taken their friend for granted—but he could understand this well enough.
We found him! she was crying with every iota of her delicate body, and he ran. Leapt down the stairs of the home he shared with them, burst out the door, sprinted down the gravelled drive towards the small figure limping along the roadside, head bowed and tail dragging. Not teleporting.
"Spencer!" Hotch shouted, as undone as he'd ever been around them. The Abra, shivered, slowing, paws cupped in front, hugging his bunched up sweater to himself. "Where were you? We were… worried." He winced, straightening. Put back on the 'Hotch' mask, instead of the 'frantic trainer' one.
Derek bounded up behind on all fours, shaking the ground with his bulk, Penelope on his back. JJ loomed overhead. Nearby, Dave watched silently. Emily slunk towards them, belly low to the ground.
Spencer ignored them all, limping his way towards Emily and holding out the bundled sweater. There was soot on his fur, grazes and bumps all over his arms and head, a tattered scratch across one ear. Here, he said, his voice a faint whisper. Found it for you.
Emily stared as the fire stone rolled from the wool, clattering to the ground between them. Heat billowed from it, and her as her body reacted to it, trying to coax her closer. They all froze. They all watched.
"Spencer…" Hotch breathed, stepping forward. Evolutionary stones were rare. Insanely rare. To find one he would have had to delve into the darkest parts of caves, where no trainers dared to venture. "Why?"
Spencer's shoulder bowed forwards, as though pushed towards the ground by the weight of his worries. His next words were for Hotch alone: You'll always see her as limited so long as she's unevolved. And she's not. She's powerful… she needs to be powerful to earn her place on this team.
"That's not true." He crouched next to the youngest of his team, too tense to reach out to brush the strain from the little Pokémon's shoulders, too wary of his injuries to try. "She'll always have a place on this team." Emily's eyes darted to him and back to the stone. Longing.
Maybe it's not true… Reid said eventually. But she believes it is. And a part of you does too.
Hotch stared at him. Then at the stone. Then, finally, at Emily.
And he nodded. Not for himself. No… he believed what he'd said. No matter what she was, Emily had earned her place with them.
But he also knew she wanted this.
She reached a paw to the stone.
.
.
"Are you okay?" he murmured to Emily as they walked from the room where Doyle had met his end. Hotch felt no grief for him. He'd seen the trail of shattered lives the man had left. The only grief he felt was that the man would never stand in front of a jury and face justice for his crimes.
Emily nodded, bulky mane shifting with the movement. She looked exhausted.
Hesitating for only a second, he let his hand slip down to rest on her fluffy shoulders. She tensed. Then relaxed, leaning into the touch. "You did good," he told her, completely truthfully. "I'm proud of you."
He always would be.