Teleport

There was an event that used to happen in Natrium Village, pretty much on a weekly basis. If something happened that violated village statutes or affected the wellbeing of the villagers in any way, they held a meeting called a conclave to determine the appropriate course of action. Attendees were always people personally involved in whatever mishap occurred. Everyone in town had been part of it at least once. I came to know it as "Friday night." People yelled about things I broke or graffiti I left or violations they witnessed. My biggest antagonist was usually Craig, the neighbor who happened to catch me outside the Mermaid Temple and get me exiled from my home town. Being a few years older, he knew each and every transgression that ever came from me. According to his testimony, he always knew what I was thinking during the conclave and my violation of the rules. The conclave—also the word to describe the group of people involved in sentencing me—would establish order and demand everyone settle down so we could resolve the issues without emotions getting in the way.

My punishment hearing with Team Omega was pretty similar. The conclave was much smaller this time with only Valence making a decision, and the pro-Gus side was equal in size to the anti-Gus side for the first time in my life. I couldn't be more impressed with Lauren, a stout young woman who couldn't be older than twenty-one. It hadn't been even six hours since I met her—and we spent a total of thirty minutes together—but she already "knew" everything about me and my motives. She "knew" that I found out we were entering the Gnome Temple and conspired with my sister to steal the legendary pokémon within. She "knew" that I provided Brooke with the gas mask necessary for her to sneak in without standing out among the other archaeologists. She even "knew" that I staged that battle against Brooke to earn Team Omega's trust so they would lead me to another legendary pokémon and I could steal that, too.

The whole time she loosed her tirade, I stood there slurping on an empty soda bottle. All I could think was that her voice was so annoying. Was yelling her default volume? My throat would have been raw and scratchy if I'd carried on like that. Blade was in Lauren's corner as support, but the look on his face told me she had done this before. Caan, who supported me, smiled through the whole thing like he was ignoring her and thinking of something funny. Even Fey looked ready to fall asleep given the intense and cyclical accusations hurled my way. Lauren was a passionate woman. No one could accuse her otherwise. Valence was the only one I couldn't read, but I figured if General Caan was on my side, then the odds were in my favor, too.

"Thank you, Lauren," Valence said when she finally ran out of steam, two hours later. "We appreciate your enthusiasm on this issue. Regarding Gus's culpability with the abduction of Gnomoder from the Gnome Temple, we believe evidence is circumstantial at best."

I know he just said I wasn't guilty, but I couldn't get over the fact that Valence spoke in royal pronouns. I stopped sipping long enough to whisper to Fey, "Does he have a full jury of my peers in there?" She shushed me. She just couldn't take a joke.

Lauren couldn't take being told she was wrong. "But sir! How can you say the evidence is circumstantial when his sister took Gnomoder and got away?"

"That is not deductive reasoning," Valence explained to her. "You do not know Gus's history as you claim. We have rejected your claim that 'men are all the same.'"

"Sir, I didn't mean—"

"We understand it was a statement clouded by emotion. As such, we are inclined to believe Gus's sincerity when he claims not to be in contact with his sister. No punishment shall be levied against him."

Just when I thought I was ready to get a victory soda, Valence had to tack on an addendum: "As a compromise for those who do not trust our new recruit, he will have a traveling cohort as he continues his journey."

"You're just going to let him go?" Lauren screamed hysterically.

"He is already proving himself a valuable trainer. He will continue the gym circuit and shine a valuable light on our organization by association, plus he will continue to aid our excavation team when he is summoned. Because you feel so strongly about proving his guilt, your previous assignments are rescinded. You will escort Gus up the mountain to Argentum City."

"Me? Are you serious?"

"Yeah! Are you serious?" It was the first thing she and I agreed on. I'd had enough of her badgering.

Valence continued unfazed. "As his primary accuser, your word will carry the most clout when no further evidence arises. Blade, we will not force it, but we request you join them. As an impartial party, your word will be heard if Gus is found in cahoots with his sister."

Blade hadn't said anything until Valence finally called him out. He stood there with sunglasses and nonchalance on his face. He just nodded his consent.

"How is he unbiased?" I argued. "He's her partner. What if he says I'm guilty just because she asks him to? Or just to shut her up? I'll be honest: I'm tempted to cop to something I didn't do if it'll get her to shut up."

I probably shouldn't have said that, but I couldn't help myself. She was totally asking for it. Caan had to grab her by the shoulders to stop her from striking me, which was entertaining, at least. His hands were bigger than her head.

"Then it is decided. You three shall travel to Argentum City together. You may send reports to Fey regarding new evidence. We feel the need to repeat that term: new evidence. Do not occupy all of Fey's time with a conspiracy theory. Provide only real evidence. Is that understood?"

Lauren gritted her teeth hard enough to crack a walnut. "Yes, sir."

"Very good. Blade, you have been to Argentum City, have you not?"

"I have," the shady guy replied.

"Please help Gus secure the necessary precautions for the hike."

"Sure."

Valence looked from Blade to Lauren and then to me, staring at me for an extended period. "Despite losing Gnomoder, the expedition provided valuable technology we can use to further our understanding of the wonders history left behind; therefore, you should take some time to relax for a successful mission. Argentum City is a renowned ski resort. Enjoy the events and visit the hot springs to soothe the aches your bodies will doubtlessly acquire during your hike. We simply expect you to keep your Hermes on and with you at all times while on this journey. Are there any further comments or concerns?"

I shook my head and said, "Nah."

Blade shook his head wordlessly.

Lauren glared at me for a moment before finally answering with a grudging, "No, sir. Will that be all, sir?"

"Yes. You are dismissed."

"Thank you, sir." The way she said it, she wished she could replace "thank" with another word. Lauren practically stormed out of the conference room. Blade followed her silently. I waited a moment to see if Valence, Caan, or Fey would say anything after the harpy left, but when it became clear they wouldn't, I dropped my empty soda bottle in the trash and followed my two new partners.

"I can't believe he's forcing me to work with that thief!" Lauren shouted. I think it was directed at Blade, but it was loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Technically," Blade told her, "Valence isn't forcing anything from you. He gave you an order as a member of Team Omega. As a human being with free will, you're still free to make your own decisions."

"Oh, give it a rest," Lauren groaned. Seriously, how could everyone else just keep working without even looking up? Was Lauren really like this all the time? "You always take his side. You never take my side!"

"I side with the truth," he corrected her.

"See? You always take his side!"

The thick voice of Caan came behind us and said, "Don't be like that. You don't even know each other. This is an opportunity for you to become friends."

"Friends?" Lauren repeated in exasperated tones. She scoffed and walked away muttering, "Insufferable optimist."

Caan put a friendly hand across both of my shoulders simultaneously. "She's a nice girl when she's calm, but she's very passionate when she gets excited. Don't worry. You get used to it quickly."

"Ah, it can't be much worse than growing up with a sister." After I said it, I wondered if I should have avoided talking about my sister, especially with Caan and Fey both there. Most likely, neither of them was convinced of my innocence.

Fortunately, they didn't seem to notice. "Enjoy your trip to Argentum," Fey told me. "Like Valence said, you should spend some time skiing and relaxing in the hot springs while you have the chance. Make sure you try their Silver Cocoa."

"Silver Cocoa? Won't that give me heavy metal poisoning?"

She offered a smirk in reply. "It's some of the best hot chocolate in the world, especially after you've wiped out on the ski slopes a few times. Just try it. I promise you won't regret it. But don't forget you're also there to train. The gym there is intended to help train dragons. That makes Long a very tough opponent to beat."

"Long is also smart," Caan added. "You should stick around a few days and learn from him. He can help you make your dragmor really strong."

Actually, it occurred to me that Elly could use a little more attention than I'd been giving her. She put up a decent fight against Gnomoder and his Substitute, but overall, she was still very fresh out of the pokéball. And she was raised in captivity, which meant she didn't have the same fighting instinct that comes with catching a wild pokémon.

"That settles it," I said and popped open her pokéball. Out came my big, reptilian pokémon with the broad torso and the narrow haunches. Despite her red eyes, jagged teeth, and spiked cheek bones that made her look a little like a mantis, I couldn't help but love that puppy-like essence of hers. "Elly will escort me up the mountain." I turned to her and, in baby talk, said, "Won't you? You'll go with me up the mountains. Yes, you will."

Fey smiled at me, but she also shook her head as if realizing that I was still a kid. Caan was much more accepting of a boy's love for his dragmor. She was a pretty rare breed, too, judging from all the looks she got on the way out of the warehouse. Either that or she's just big-boned and everyone couldn't help but notice her taking up all that space. Maybe she did need a little more exercise.

Elly and I followed Blade and Lauren to the Pokémart and the sporting goods stores for supplies, jogging most of the way. According to them, I needed a full suit of winter gear. The mountain climate was supposed to be pretty killer so high into the atmosphere. I did like the way the midnight blue jacket felt. It was like wearing a cushy sleeping bag that was nearly skintight. Except it made me really hot. We weren't too far from the desert, after all. It seemed so odd that I would have made a few sarcastic comments about selling winter gear in the steppes—by which I mean, "I made a few sarcastic comments about selling winter gear in the steppes."

After buying a rather sizable lunch, in part thanks to Elly's big stomach, we took off for the mountains. The map app on my Hermes smart phone showed the mountain range being pretty wide and dense. Blade said it would take four days to walk to Argentum City on average—maybe less time if we kept a brisk pace. All in all, it sounded like a wonderful trip ahead of us getting to know Blade and Lauren.

"Here we go," I said when we started walking. It got no response. "Over the river and through the woods and up the mountains we go." There actually was no river and the woods were pretty sparse in this climate, but it was the rhythm of my singing that counted. And still evoked no responses. "Are we there yet?"

"How clumsy are you?" Lauren asked sharply.

"Me? Ha!" As I said that, I stumbled on a particularly round rock, but I never lost my footing. "Not that clumsy. Why?"

"I just wondered what the chances are I can shove you off a cliff and claim you tripped."

I hopped up on Elly's back to be harder for her to reach. "You want me to stop singing?"

"Gee. Am I that transparent?"

"Yep."

Blade chimed in with, "You're both going to drive me nuts." He walked at the front of our trio, stepping up the pace to get some distance. It was a little odd to me neither of them walked around with their pokémon by their sides. I had a blast riding Elly's back, and I wasn't even getting tired!

"That can't be your real name," I spoke up. "Blade, I mean. I don't doubt you, Lauren."

"Your faith is encouraging," she replied snidely.

"Just call me Blade," her partner insisted.

"Is that your real name?"

"No."

"What is?"

"I don't want to tell you."

"Really? But I thought you told Lauren you tell the truth all the time."

"There's a difference between lying and keeping a secret," Lauren replied.

Blade added, "I admitted Blade isn't my real name. And I admitted I don't want to tell you my real name. Neither of those is a lie. But that doesn't mean I can't inhibit what I say. If you ask a question that I'd be tempted to answer with a lie, I'll say something that's generic but honest, like 'I'm not comfortable answering that' or 'I will neither confirm nor deny that rumor.'"

"That sounds like a cop out. Why not just tell the truth all the time?"

"Does that mean you have no secrets at all?"

"We're not talking about me. What's your problem with lying?"

"People can usually tell, and lies always come back to bite you."

I paused for a beat while I decided which response I wanted to use. "You haven't had much luck dating, have you?" Three of them immediately swam into my mind. That one had the best funny-to-offensive ratio, which was important because I still didn't know if Blade was the type to hold a grudge.

Fortunately, he just sighed. Lauren smirked at him and said, "Not so much fun for you, either, now, is it?"

"If the request hadn't come from Valence directly, I'd probably just beat him up and leave him in the woods. You'd do even worse to him. Maybe we should set up camp. The sun won't be up much longer, anyway, and I imagine he'll need the sunlight for us to teach him how to camp."

"You know, I've camped before," I told them.

Lauren scoffed. She didn't believe me. "Oh, really? You know how to set up a tent?"

"You guys use tents?"

That got her laughing. Not a friendly laugh, either, but a harsh, mocking laugh. "Since you're so used to it, you can sleep out under the stars."

That suited me just fine. Odds were pretty slim of my mount fitting inside the tent anyway, and I wasn't eager to put her back in the pokéball yet. Blade and his blaziken built the tent while Lauren went to gather firewood. I offered to help, but they just told me to work with Elly and get her ready for the dragon gym. I found out two things while roughhousing with my young dragmor: It does not take a lot of effort for her to knock over a tree, and I should never try to wrestle with something that can easily knock over a tree.

By the time Blade got the tent built and Lauren returned with the firewood and I was all black and blue, I was ready to take a nap. We grilled basculin and corn on the cob for dinner. When all the digestion was over and settled, Lauren packed herself into the tent for the night, but Blade opted to stay outside with me.

"You really distrust me that much?"

He shrugged. "I don't think you're a bad guy. A little shortsighted, perhaps. Very clever. The kind of guy who might plan a heist for one of history's most powerful pokémon without knowing the consequences."

"You don't have to believe me, but I hate those legendary pokémon. I got kicked out of my home because someone stole a mermaid and I got the blame."

I probably could have skipped that part of my life. Blade raised an eyebrow at me. "So you've been blamed for the abduction of two legendary pokémon? Interesting." When he phrased it like that, I could see how it didn't help my credibility.

"Nothing you can do about it for now," Blade told me as he lay back in his sleeping bag. "Just take it one day at a time we'll see what happens."

"That's a lot easier to say when you're not the one being watched."

I had argued against getting a sleeping bag at the sporting goods store. Blade told me I'd regret it when we got near the mountains. We were still a fair distance from the path we were going to take, but it did get chilly even with the fire going. That's what Elly was for. My big, steel poochy helped preserve heat while I tucked myself next to her belly. I lay there thinking about how much fun this trip was going to be with two sets of eyes on me the whole time.

"No sleeping bag? Has it really been that long since you camped last?"

"Oh no."

With all the trouble I was in, Brooke had the nerve to sneak up on our campsite? Her blonde hair looked coppery in the fire light. She had a blue fur ball with skinny arms and legs standing by her side, half hiding behind her leg. (It really was nothing more than a walking hair ball.) Brooke had never been fun to wander with when we were kids because she always made too much noise and scared away whatever wild pokémon we were supposed to be stalking. There was no way she could sneak up on me there.

"How did you get here?"

"My kurigie teleported me. I had to ask you something."

"Really? Do you have any idea what I went through because of my affiliation with you? Because you stole a legendary pokémon? Why did you take it, anyway?"

"Do you trust them?"

She caught me off guard with that one.

"I'm asking: Do you trust Team Omega?"

"Sure. Why not? They seem like a good bunch. Odd people, to be sure. One guy only talks in plural pronouns, one guy's a giant, one lady's an albino, and this girl tucked in the tent reminds me a lot of those mythology stories about harpies." I paused and considered the fact that Brooke had been the only one to cause me grief lately. Team Omega wasn't the issue.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I don't trust them. You want to know why I took Gnomoder with me?" She leaned in real close and dropped the volume of her voice to a silent whisper. "I think they're rebuilding the Hydrogen Empire. Gus, promise me you'll be careful. You're my brother. I hate your guts sometimes, but I don't want anything bad to happen to you unless I'm the one to do it to you." She squeezed my forearm reassuringly, and then with a twitch of the kurigie, she vanished instantly. I held my position for a moment in stunned silence.

"That was unexpected." I never knew Brooke actually cared what happened to me. The thought occurred to me that she could be yanking my chain, but I felt like I would have noticed if she were lying to me, and I got no such impression from her.

Was Valence really trying to rebuild the Hydrogen Empire? All I really knew about the story was that the Hydrogen Emperor was the one who captured the legendary pokémon hidden in the temples around Perioble. The Elder back home had made it sound like he was a good guy, but Mr. Mohawk in Ferrum City said he was a paranoid man who fought against pokémon to secure his throne. Given that "mountain" of knowledge, the one thing sure was that I'd need to find out more about the Hydrogen Empire and their war before I could come to any clear conclusions.

As I settled back down with Elly, I looked over at Blade. He wore his sunglasses while he slept, giving the illusion he might still be awake. If he saw me talking to Brooke, he'd probably let Lauren push me off a mountain when no one was looking.

"Blade? Are you asleep?" No response. "Your sleeping bag's on fire." Still nothing. "So you didn't hear my sister teleport over here and tell me not to trust Valence?" He didn't even twitch. If I couldn't see the rising and falling of his sleeping bag, I might have thought he was dead.

"I'm still in the clear for now, I guess."

First off, thanks go to WolfSummoner93 and 1shot1bownty3 for contributing Fey and Blade, respectively. I'm enjoying divulging more quirks about these two characters as time goes by.

Next, apologies for taking some time off. I might be working on too much at once, but I'll make it work as best I can. I'm looking for one specific piece of feedback (in addition to anything else you'd like me to know about the story): Would it be helpful if I put a two- or three-sentence recap at the top of each chapter with relevant points from earlier in the story?

Trivia: Kurigie didn't get a lot of focus, but it's based on Kuriboh from Yu-Gi-Oh!, plus the word "shaggy," meant to describe its appearance. It won't get much of a part in the story because it's similar to focusing on abra, but it's evolutions will get some good screen time.