Gladion

"What?" Gladion pulled the drink back from his mouth. "Since when was Team Skull interested in helping lost kids?"

"I'm more benevolent than you think." Guzma knocked back another shot and quickly poured a fourth. His gold chains glittered in the low incandescent light of the bar.

There were several other Team Skull members here but most kept their distance, huddling around low wooden tables, talking and drinking. The low rumble of bass-heavy music rippled in the background. One particularly drunk woman was dancing badly, swinging her neon pink hair back and forth.

"Coming from the man who beats people up?" Gladion took another hesitant sip. Beer wasn't exactly his first choice, but he had to drink something when he was out with the boss. Guzma didn't give him the option not to.

"I swear to god," Guzma slammed down his shot and turned around towards the rest of the Team Skull goons, "do none of you idiots listen to me!?" He growled at their shocked expressions before turning back to Gladion. "I beat people down."

"Huh." Gladion grimaced at the taste of his beverage. Foul, like old bread and bitter fruit.

"Anyway," Guzma sighed, "she's around your age. All these other fuckers are liable to scare the shit out of her. Last thing I want to do is make her panic and shut down before I figure out what the hell we're gonna do with her."

"Why didn't you take her to the hospital when your boys picked her up?" Gladion glanced up at the bartender. Half his head was shaved, the other half left long and dyed in a myriad of neon colors, making a rainbow out of his head. One of the more flamboyant styles among Team Skull. "Didn't you say she was messed up?"

"I considered it." Guzma took another shot. What was that, six? "But none of the boys I trust to drop her in front of a hospital unharmed are ones I want to risk getting caught by Nanu. If I sent some of the idiot newbies, they might fuck something up."

"What, is she that pretty?" Gladion snickered.

Guzma whirled in his stool, grabbing Gladion by his front collar. "Don't joke about that shit, boy." His voice was like acid. "Whoever she is, she's a human being. The whole point of Team Skull is that we take care of our own. And I'm not risking her getting hurt by some hot blooded lowlifes."

"Your hot blooded lowlifes." Gladion pushed Guzma off him and turned away. He felt his muscles tense, his grip tightening around the aluminum can in front of him. "Even so, she should be taken to a hospital."

"Doc Turner took a look at her." Guzma threw back another shot as he settled into his seat again. "Said she was medically okay but that she can't remember jack shit. A bit cold when they picked her up apparently, but that happens when you're running around at night in a little white dress. Plumeria took care of her good, though. Didn't even need to dump any drugs to make room on the boat to get her here since it's been such a shit month."

Gladion hung his head. It was starting to look like he didn't have a choice about this.

"What's her name?" he grumbled.


Gladion brushed past the two guards standing outside Guzma's mansion. They were old regime, standing silently in standard uniform. No deviations. No colored hair or piercings either. Gladion recognized them both as members of Guzma's own inner circle, but he couldn't recall their names. They were men who had been with Guzma since the beginning, supposedly. The ones who helped clear out Po Town years ago.

The ones Nanu was really after.

There hadn't been many of them around for the past two years Gladion had been in Team Skull, but more and more were popping up every day.

The inside of Guzma's mansion was dimly lit. A few bare incandescent light bulbs were strung across the ceiling, the only source of illumination. Graffiti covered the walls – most of it old, stupid nonsense like "Kawika wuz here" or "suck deez nutz". One of the more notorious tags was in the center of the main staircase: a massive pink spraypainted penis with an obsessive attention to minute details, like the pores or the veins running along the shaft. At some point, someone had drawn a happy face on its head. Gladion grinned as he passed it.

Her room was on the second floor, close to the staircase. It wasn't far from his own room – Guzma seemed to like keeping his possessions close by. Gladion approached the slim girl guarding the captive's door. She was short, with fire-red hair covered by a black cap that was just a bit too big for her. She wore the uniform underneath a thick black jacket and she'd elected for white pants instead of white shorts. They were nice. She probably stole them from a raid on a store in Malie City.

The girl was one of the newer recruits, a runaway from the ruins of Tapu Village.

"Gladion." She grinned when she saw him. "Been a while."

"Lei." Gladion nodded. "How's your salandit?"

"Sissy evolved." Lei held up the ball holding her pokemon. "She's a salazzle now, and she's gotten really uppity since then." She cocked her head at him. "What're you… Oh! You're the new bodyguard for the girl, right?"

"Yeah, for now." Guzma hadn't given him a time limit on the assignment. There was no telling how long he'd be at this.

"Sweet, well, uh," she scratched her head, "she's supposed to see the Doc soon. How about you go introduce yourself to her?"

"Sure."

The interior of the room was dim the way all of Po Town was. The moon shone through an open window, illuminating a long rectangle along the floor with a bright white light and leaving the rest in a sepia tone. The prisoner girl was sitting on her bed, staring outside. One arm propped her head up, a bored expression on her face.

Gladion inhaled. He hadn't expected her to be pretty. Long black hair ran along a slender body, her eyes pale like the moon outside. She wore one of the Team Skull uniforms, except with blue jeans instead of shorts, the clothes fitting her poorly. Her hair swayed in the breeze. A girl fished out of the ocean by Team Skull drug runners hadn't exactly seemed the most appealing. But now that he'd seen her…

"Hi, uh," Gladion said from the doorway. She turned to him, her stare boring into him. "I'm… I'm Gladion."

She didn't respond.

"Alright, well," Lei stated, maneuvering around Gladion deftly. Gladion apologized, moving out of the doorway where he'd stood fixated. "We should get you down to the doctor's." Lei grabbed the captive's hand, gently drawing the girl to her feet.

Po Town at night always made him want to walk quickly, his head down. Most of the houses would be alight with partiers until early in the morning, and more than a few drunken Team Skull members roamed the streets. Two guys were shouting at each other in someone's lawn, a girl trying to hold back one of them. With no police supervision, the only thing keeping order was Guzma's fist, and the last thing Guzma cared about was the occasional midnight brawl.

If anything he encouraged it.

They walked three abreast, Lei holding the captive's hand. Gladion's eyes darted around the town as they walked, his shoulders tense. The pale-eyed girl hadn't said a word since they met, instead spending all her time looking around the town or staring up at the moon.

"Relax Gladion." Lei put her other hand on his shoulder, rubbing it slightly. "Po Town's not so bad since Plumeria took over administration. Nobody jumps anyone anymore. They cut down on drug use too. Anyone seen outside high on anything hard gets thrown in the pen now."

"Not sure if that's all Po Town needed to maintain order." Gladion glared up at the Team Skull members patrolling the walls surrounding the central part of town. They were all old regime, their belts full of pokemon that were likely trained for combat. Lei's gaze followed his. If Gladion's suspicion was true, they'd have firearms under their jackets as well.

"Yeah, that…"Lei paused. "Honestly I'm not sure where Guzma's getting these guys. They're spooky as fuck, but they're keeping the police off us for now. Nanu hasn't been stirring anything up."

"Guzma keeps this up and the military is gonna come down on us." Gladion gritted his teeth. "The more we look like a small army, the less safe we are from the government."

"Oh please." Lei laughed, but it was a touch uncertain. "Nanu wouldn't do that to us. He knows most of us out here are kids. You know how that guy is."

"We're kids with hard drugs, guns, and criminal leaders." Gladion glanced over at the girl he was escorting. And now human captives too.

Her gaze was fixated on the moon, not budging even slightly.

God I hope this is a short job.


Smoke rose from Doctor Turner's pipe, mixing with the elaborate drapery hanging from the ceiling. Try as he might, Gladion couldn't quite pin down a theme for the many decorations adorning the room. A thick red rug lay across the floor, its designs reminiscent of the kinds he'd see in textbooks for ancient desert tribes. A long painting draped on one wall of a many armed man with the face of a donphan, a long pipe hanging from its mouth while a few of its hands were turned up in prayer. Next to where Gladion sat, a massive Johtoan fan was mounted, depicting falling cherry blossoms on its many blades.

Gladion pulled at his shirt. The small rotating fan spinning in the corner wasn't nearly strong enough to dispel the heat in this small, cramped space. Doctor Turner leaned forward in his desk chair and the girl stared up at him from the floor. She sat cross-legged, her expression blank.

"What's your name?" Doctor Turner asked for perhaps the fifth time that night.

"I don't have a name," she said again.

"Then what should we call you?"

"I don't know yet."

It had taken two hours just to get that out of her the first time. Gladion was surprised she even said it again.

"Where are you from?" Doctor Turner had asked this question before too. If the girl was upset or annoyed at the repeated questions, she didn't show it. "Wait, one second," the professor said quickly, taking another long drag from his pipe. He blew out another profuse roil of smoke and Gladion turned up his nose. "Where are you from?" he asked again.

"Somewhere dark and cold."

Her expression didn't change by even a millimeter as she spoke, but Gladion perked up just a bit. She hadn't answered that question before. Doctor Turner's dark eyebrows furrowed at the thought. He pushed his circular glasses back up his long nose and stared intently at the young girl.

"How far away is home?" the Doctor asked, smoke billowing from his nostrils. Tendrils of it snaked up above his head, curling around his long, bedraggled hair. If the girl cared about the man filling the tiny room with the pungently aromatic smoke, she didn't show it. Gladion cared, but he held his tongue.

"Very far," she replied. She turned her head to look straight up. "Father than the moon."

"Where are your mother and father?" He asked. The girl stared back at him. No, she stared through him, as if he wasn't even there.

She turned suddenly, locking eyes with Gladion. He recoiled inwardly, but still managed to scowl at her. It was a personal talent, really. Being able to scowl at people whenever he wanted to.

Her pale eyes reflected the low candle light and the corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk.

"Where are your mother and father?" she asked Gladion.

He waved his hand and looked away. "None of your business."

"I wish it wasn't," the girl said, shaking her head. Gladion didn't respond, instead shifting on his chair so he didn't have to look at her.

For several more hours the questioning continued, until finally the night brightened into early morning. Birds chirped their morning songs and the froakie calls began to fade away. The girl was mute during most of the questioning and Gladion nodded in and out of sleep. The Doctor constantly pressed her about her history and background, getting nowhere.

The girl came from a place of darkness and cold, a place farther than the moon. It was all she'd said, though it was all nonsense. When he was awake, Gladion found himself staring at the girl often, though she never so much as glanced at him after the initial question about his parents.

She was very small and slender. Maybe a few years younger than he was, like… Gladion forced the thought from his mind, but the memory returned unbidden. The memory of a girl dancing in a field of flowers, singing at the top of her lungs, her ends of her simple white dress floating in the air around her. Vibrant green eyes stared up at him, her toothy smile shining in the morning light.

The last thing he needed were memories about her.

The sun had been in the sky for a while when the doctor changed his tactics. Gladion grimaced, turning over on the recliner in a vain attempt at getting more comfortable. His head dangled over one armrest, his feet over the other.

"Do you know why you're here?" Doctor Turner asked. Gladion roused slightly at the question.

"To learn," she responded.

"To learn what?" The doctor pressed and Gladion arced an eyebrow, confused.

The girl shivered despite the heat of the small room.

"What I need to do." She looked away.

"Sounds like she's nuts, doc." Gladion sighed, turning over. Doctor Turner shushed him.

"What you need to do?" Doctor Turner asked. She nodded. "What do you need to do?"

She stared at the ground, saying nothing.


"How'd it go?"

Lei yawned in the doorway to Doctor Turner's house. She'd changed clothes into something more casual: a maroon hoodie and dark blue jeans. Her ruffled red hair stuck out messily from under her Team Skull beret. Her green eyes looked up at him expectantly.

Gladion leaned in the doorway, the exhaustion from staying up all night seeping into him. He coughed into his black jacket, the annoyance of his unexpected overnight job not quite outweighing the relief of being finished. Outside the rain poured, muddying the main road running down the center of Po Town. Lei fit herself into the doorway with him.

"It was fucking boring," Gladion scowled and Lei chuckled. "I just sat there for hours while the Doctor asked her the same god damn questions over and over again. I don't see how any of that was useful, and because of all that god damn smoke I'm pretty sure I'm developing a cough."

"They've been doing that pretty much every night since we found her," Lei shrugged and straightened out the front of Gladion's jacket, zipping it up and patting down the front. Her hands rested against his chest for a long moment before she pulled them away.

"Oh god, you mean there's going to be more of this?"

"Yup!" Lei replied brightly. "Apparently she wouldn't say anything at all the first few sessions, but the Doctor insisted after he checked her health that she was hiding something important."

"About her health?" Lei shrugged. "None of the questions he asked her were about her health." Gladion rolled his eyes. "I thought he was a doctor, not a psychologist."

"Psychologists are doctors." Lei grinned at him. "Even so, aren't you stoked? This is the easiest assignment Guzma could possibly have put us on. It's so much better than trash duty or repainting walls or…"

"They're repainting the walls?" His mind immediately went to the image of the hyper-detailed penis in Guzma's mansion. Somehow he felt a tinge of regret that it might soon be gone.

"Mm-hmm!"

A few minutes more of idle conversation and Gladion stepped off the patio and into the muddy streets. He pulled his black hood over his head as Lei meandered inside the Doctor's house to start her shift. The sun was rising over the walls of Po Town. Gladion rubbed his eyes and yawned.

He knew he had a bed back at the mansion to get back to, but the thought of trekking all the way back there right now rang sour. Gladion got to the main road and instead turned the opposite direction. His boots sloshed through the mud, the rain soaking through his hoodie.

After repeating the questions all night, Doctor Turner's voice was burned into his brain.

What's your name?

What should we call you?

Where are you from?

How far away home?

Where are your mother and father?

All her cryptic answers struck him as the same brand of nonsense as he'd hear from a Team Skull junkie high on drugs. God knows why Doctor Turner entertained her mindless crap.

Do you know why you're here?

Gladion sighed and stuffed his hands in his jacket pocket. Null's pokeball rattled around inside. He hadn't let the pokemon out in a few days now. Maybe this afternoon he would, if he was even awake.

"Gladion!" A high pitched call dragged him from his thoughts. He spun about as the young girl barreled into him. Gladion yelped, nearly falling backwards as the girl latched onto his black jacket, starting up at him intensely.

For a long moment, the prisoner that Team Skull had taken stared at him silently. Gladion blushed, looking away. He would have shoved her off already, but he found himself somehow unable to respond.

"Your parents," Gladion snapped to attention, looking back at her when she spoke, "I know them."

Over her shoulder he could see Lei running towards them both, a confused expression on her face. Further back, on the patio, Doctor Turner watched their exchange.

"So what?" Gladion bit back at her, harsher than her intended. He pushed the girl off him and she stepped back. The ends of her jeans were brown with running through the mud. She didn't break eye contact with him.

"My name," she started saying. The girl gripped her fists tight, as if just saying the words was difficult. "My name is Luna."