Pokémon Scarlet
Chapter 29: Stalemate
(Jason Fremont)
Jason rounded on Gav the moment Kaylee and he were back in the field. His gait was a little wobbly as he strode to the older Harrison sibling, his legs not wanting to hold him up after so many rapid teleportation hops, but he managed to stagger over, eyes searching his face for answers.
"My dad did what now?" he asked, and Gav held out a scrap of paper to him at once, thankfully not reprimanding Kaylee and him for running off before he cut to the chase.
"When I hit the first tele-warp pad to my next room, your dad was there." Jason took the paper, not even looking down at it yet as his eyes were still glued on Gav's face while he explained. "He didn't do anything—just gave me that phone number and said 'when you figure it out, have my kid call this number.'"
"Oh god," Kaylee said, putting a hand up over her face and staring at Gav like he'd emerged unscathed from a wildfire. "He didn't try to hurt you or anything? What did you even do after that?"
Jason was staring down at the messily-scrawled number on the paper, and Gav explained. "I didn't even get a chance to do anything other than take the paper before he tele-warped away. I thought about trying to retreat, but... I don't know, against my better judgment I tried to follow him. It didn't take me to wherever he went, though... the warp tiles must have been screwed up already by that point. I wound up in a room of Junior Trainers who started to attack me, but Jason and Kadabra got me out of there soon thereafter."
"Are you gonna call the number?" Gina asked, moving over to Jason's side, and he looked up at her, at a loss.
"I guess I have to. Orion's still in there and... I don't know, maybe dad can tell us what's going on."
Amaris snorted. "I wouldn't bet on that," he said critically, but Gina spoke up quickly after him.
"No, that's probably exactly what he's gonna do. I mean, he told us to call the number when... what, when we 'figured it out'? He needs to tell us—or tell Jason, at least—something. I think we should do it."
"Fine, go," Gav said, crossing his arms not in an angry way, but more like he was trying to constrain himself from moving around in some kind of random, impulsive way. "We don't really have any other options with the Gym sector blocked off this way."
Jason felt a cold sludge slow down his motions as he pulled his Dex out of his pocket, paper in one hand and device in the other. The hesitation could have easily stretched out into a flat-out refusal to act, but the idea of his brother still lost in the Gym somewhere, surrounded by enemies, got his creaky digits to behave long enough to punch the number in. He hit "send" before he could chicken out and held the Dex up to his ear.
It rang once before the call went through, and that one ring hadn't been enough to prepare him for this moment. In reality a thousand rings wouldn't have been enough time.
"Jason?" a gruff voice asked from the other end of the line, and Jason's voice got stuck on its way out of his throat.
He coughed and said, "Yeah. Where's my brother?" He tried to inject as much confidence and threat into those words as he could, trying to steer this conversation the way he wanted.
There was a slight, wry chuckle. "You've got backbone. I'm happy to hear that." Jason's head reeled as his father's voice truly washed over him in full. It was a vacuum-suction feeling of all the comfort and safety of his previous world being drained out of his center. Hearing his father speak for the first time since early childhood, a murky time Jason could barely recall, was the most exceptionally surreal thing he'd experienced since breaking and entering into the place where he lived. "Your brother is fine. If you're smart, you won't come back here."
Jason opened his mouth to say something, but to his horror, absolutely nothing occurred to him. Fremont seemed to take this as a sign of acceptance, because a second later he disconnected the call. A rush of heat and shock flushed across Jason's face and he frantically hit "redial" on his Dex to try to get through to him again.
"What happened?" Kaylee asked, her eyes wide. "That was the shortest conversation ever. Where's Orion?"
"He hung up. He said—Orion's fine, and not to come back there. If we're smart. I'm redialing." The words were tumbling out of Jason's mouth in whatever order they pleased, and with a slightly shaking hand he lifted the Dex to his ear again. Three shrill beeps sounded before an automated voice said, "We're sorry. Your call could not be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again."
"Dammit!" Jason shouted at the Dex, fighting the overwhelming urge to throw it. He redialed again and was rewarded with the same hatefully calm electronic voice message.
"That's all he said?" Gav prompted, and Jason snapped at him.
"Yes! That's all he said, and then he freaking hung up on me and now the number's out of service, here—" he shoved the Dex at Gav. "You can try and see for yourself." With that Jason stormed off through the woods, intent on walking his ass back into the psychically-blocked Gym district and dragging his brother out of there by force. He heard talking and confusion behind him, then people crashing through the tall weeds after him, but ignored them.
"Jason!" It was Gina, and Jason ground his teeth together, his face feeling too hot and his pulse too quick to deal with her right now. He didn't turn around or acknowledge her in any way, merely stomping his way back towards Saffron, and a moment later her hand was on his shoulder.
He threw it off and turned to face her like an incensed scorpion. "What?"
"Jason—you can't just—walk back there like this. You're going to be hopelessly overpowered. Almost the entire Gym seems like they're in on this, and we've only got us—"
"I know that, you don't think I know that?" Jason demanded. "But what else do we do? Just let them keep Orion there? Hell no, he wouldn't do that if it were one of us." To his horror Jason felt a prickling in his throat and his eyes and blinked furiously to keep it at bay. "We can't leave him there, with dad."
The last word was punched with enough spite and resentment to stop Gina mid-sentence, and the look on her face as she comprehended what, precisely, he was going through caused Jason so much discomfort that he turned away from her and started stalking off towards the Gym district again.
This time it was Amaris who caught up to him. "Fremont, don't be an idiot—"
"Don't call me that," Jason snapped, not even turning around to give Amaris the time of day. Amaris grabbed his shoulder, a lot harder than Gina had, and forcibly turned him around.
"Fine, Jason, don't be an idiot. Gina's right. You'll be hopelessly overpowered there and what's more, you'll get captured. Your father could very well be holding Orion to bait you to come after him, which is precisely what you're doing."
"No shit, he knows I won't leave him there," Jason said, tuning out most of what Amaris was saying, his brain fiercely firing on strange synapses.
"Exactly what I'm saying. You're playing right into his hands. You'll be captured and then the rest of us will have to figure out a way to not only get Orion back, but you as well. You are being extremely short-sighted right now and are endangering not only yourself, but all of the rest of us as well. Do you not see that?"
Jason told him in very strong wording to mind his own business and Amaris' grip tightened around his shoulders. "You might be okay with throwing the rest of us into this mess, but I beg to differ."
"Guys," Gina said, her voice strained and quiet, but managing to get both of their attentions. "Come on. Let's go back to the others and talk about this as a group. I don't want to leave Orion either. Obviously." Her voice choked off a little at the last word, her eyes alive with unshed tears that caused Jason's own close scrape with emotion to flare up again ferociously. "But whatever we do, we do it together, as a team. Come on."
Jason swallowed so hard it hurt and remained where he was, poised between his friends and his brother, and after a long moment Amaris let go of his shoulders and took a deliberate step back, letting him choose. This action broke through Jason's frustration and anger, and after letting out a terse, short sigh, he walked back with the other Initiates to the group in the field.
Blake was explaining more about his encounter with Zeke when the three got back, and the youngest Nakawa looked up at Jason with a tentative expression, like he was suddenly going to start screaming and sucker-punching everyone in vicinity. He looked away from him and back to Gav, who he had been speaking to earlier.
"I don't know why he told me that clue, about the League. If that's what it was. It felt more like a taunt. It's like he thought this was all funny." He paused and looked back at Jason, addressing him with his last line. "He clearly doesn't consider us a threat at all."
"I know, we're outnumbered," Jason groused, sitting down and immediately deciding he was too agitated to sit. He got back to his feet at once and Blake looked like he actually flinched a little from Jason's sudden movement. This annoyed Jason even more and he moved to the outskirts of the group to put some distance between himself and the others.
"I don't know why Zeke told you that, either. If he knew you had no intention of actually joining him, he basically just gave us a huge piece of information... what, for kicks?" Beth asked, shaking her head. "It makes no sense."
"We need to get Orion out," Gav said, and Jason could have hugged him if he hadn't been in such a towering bad temper. It was the first thing anyone had said all day that he agreed with wholeheartedly. "But we can't do it right now, not when they're on red alert and are expecting us."
Jason opened his mouth to argue, but Kaylee cut him off. "We can't just leave him there, who knows what the hell they'll do to him?" Her voice was a little shrill on the last few words and she cleared her throat, looking simultaneously mutinous and embarrassed at the display of raw emotion. Jason's heart went out to her, as she was voicing his exact sentiments.
"I understand," Gav said. "This is just about the worst situation we could be in. No one wants Orion to be at their mercy for any longer than he has to be."
"Just—" Jason said, frustration rearing its ugly head again. "Stop politicizing at us, we know the situation sucks, you know it sucks. What are we going to do about it?"
"Jason, please—" Gav said, an edge finally emerging from his doggedly calm composure. "Just sit down and calm down. This isn't helping at all. I know how you feel—"
"Yeah, right," Jason snapped. "Kaylee's sitting right there, she's fine. You don't know how I feel."
"Jason," Gina said, getting up and walking over to him. He glared at her, not wanting her compassion right now. He tried to walk away from her, skirting the circumference of the group, but she blocked him off. "Come on," she said, taking his hand in hers and giving it a squeeze. He blinked a few times, thrown off by this gesture, and in that moment of hesitation she was able to tug him down to sit beside her.
"We have to consider the fact that Fremont might have been genuinely warning us against returning to the Gym district," Amaris noted, rubbing his temples from where he was seated on the opposite end of their circle. "It might seem like an obvious ploy to get us to return for Orion, but he could also be genuinely telling us that returning is a bad idea."
"He did go out of his way to warn us on national television not to poison ourselves with the blue stuff," Victoria said, speaking up for one of the first times. "It's a possibility."
Jason remained quiet, his hand still feeling like a dead thing in Gina's, but Kaylee was once more channeling his brain and speaking on both of their behalves. "It doesn't really matter what Fremont wants or doesn't want us to do. We need to go back there because we need to get Orion."
"As admirable as your single-minded devotion is," Amaris began, and Kaylee cut off the rest of his sentence with "Don't you dare start with me!"
"Calm down!" Victoria snapped, and Amaris and Kaylee actually did. It seemed like no one really wanted to bite each other's heads off, but it was unavoidable.
Amaris seethed quietly and said, "I'm merely pointing out that the situation is much too complex to write off as an impromptu rescue mission. We are all in extreme danger right now."
Kaylee let that go unchallenged and stared off at the line of trees in the distance, surly and sullen. Jason was staring at a patch of grass, the sharp edges of his fear and anger starting to fade into a soul-crushing sense of helplessness and impotence. On some level he knew that Gav and Amaris were right. This wouldn't be solved by busting through the Gym doors, blasting anything they saw with Pokémon attacks and carrying Orion out over their heads. They were hopelessly overpowered, as had been pointed out time and time again, and a full siege of the Gym right now would only end in more of them getting captured or injured. Jason closed his eyes and replayed what his father had said to him in the shortest, least satisfying phone conversation he could ever imagine: Your brother is fine. If you're smart, you won't come back here.
"We also have to consider the fact that selecting Orion may not have been arbitrary," Victoria said, her voice low and exhausted. "It could have been any of us, but Fremont seemed to know that the goal was to capture Orion. He gave Gav the phone number and said, 'when you figure it out, have my kid call this number.' Kid in the singular, not kids. Taking Orion was the plan from the beginning. It had to have been."
"Why?" Kaylee asked, her voice frustrated. "Why just Orion? Why not Jason too, if Fremont wanted to get his sons back or something?"
The silence in the clearing gave them the answer. They all knew why Orion might have been targeted and captured first and foremost.
"Okay, can we talk about the elephant in the room?" Beth asked, pressing her palms into her forehead. "We've all been really worried about him lately, with all his symptoms and the weird stuff Fremont is mixed up in. It seems really unlikely that Orion was somehow exposed to the stuff, but if he was, we're thinking that's why he was taken?"
"... I don't know," Gav said, glancing to Zahlia. She looked perhaps a little pained at being looked to for more information, as if she hadn't already told them everything she knew.
"It's possible that, when I refused to report back honestly about Orion and the signs he may or may not be showing, Zeke and my father decided it was time to take matters into their own hands."
"And Fremont was in the Gym—that has to mean he's working with Zeke and your father," Beth added, shaking her head and trying to keep things straight. "All this time I thought they asked you to tail and watch Orion because the Fremonts were... I don't know, a threat to them or something, but if they're allies—"
"It's really impossible to draw any conclusions with what little information we have right now," Victoria said. "We need a plan of action."
Jason had been fiddling with his Dex this whole time, staring at a text he tried to send to his brother not long ago. Where are you? we'll come get you, give me coordinates. - J
The message had gone unanswered, and Jason lifted his Dex to his ear and dialed his brother's speed-dial command impulsively. His motion got the attention of the group, and Kaylee asked, "Are you trying your dad's number again?" Jason didn't reply, but a moment later another automated message notified him that Orion's number was out of service.
"Orion's phone is down," he said, hanging up and tossing his Dex to the grass in front of him. He didn't realize he was still holding Gina's hand, and gave it a squeeze before extricating himself. She looked into his face, worry clear on hers, but he just faced the group and took a deep breath.
"What can we do, realistically?" he asked, hoping against hope that someone would be able to supply a passable answer to that question. Silence met his ears, and though he'd been expecting it, he closed his eyes and let out a ragged, harried sigh.
"Realistically?" Amaris restated, eyes staring off at a point in the distance, face unreadable. "One of our members is in enemy territory. Our teams are exhausted from battling our way through Saffron's Gym. The district is being psychically blocked off so we'd have to get there on foot. Once we got there we would be promptly defeated. Your father has told us Orion is safe, and that's the only intell we have to go on." Amaris glanced over at Jason for the last part of his sentence. "Realistically, all we can do is go back to Edith's and regroup."
"What, and flat-out leave him here, leave Saffron altogether? Are you freaking serious?" Kaylee demanded, but Gav held up a hand to stop her.
"Amaris has a point. The last time we camped on the outskirts of Saffron after we attempted to infiltrate one of their establishments they were able to track us and attack the following morning."
Kaylee looked at her brother like he'd just thrown her to the wolves. "So we're going to just, go home? That's our plan?"
"What else can we do right now?" Blake asked her, tossing his hands up in the air. "Jason's dad, my crazy brother and Whittaker-Cheng are all working together and all of them have the Gym district blocked off from us. They clearly know who we are and they knew somehow before we even reached Whittaker-Cheng."
Gav lifted his hands and linked his fingers together in front of his forehead, closing his eyes. The motion caught Jason's eyes from where he was staring blankly at the ground, and a few others of their members looked up at him, too.
"It was our Pokémon," Gav said, his voice grim and his tone flat. He almost seemed vaguely amused, though the bitterness that tugged the corners of his mouth up into a wry, defeated smile contradicted that. "They recognized our Pokémon teams." Jason's heart sank the moment he said it; it had to be true. "I should have realized it before."
"No time to think about that now," Victoria said, though her tone was gentle. "For now we should just focus on getting somewhere safe and regrouping. It's clear we're in a stalemate here."
Jason was saying nothing, and it seemed to occur to the others that this was highly unusual. He could feel them turning to look at him, one at a time, and he had to fight the urge to get testy with them.
"What?" he said, failing in his attempt to keep his tone even. "We're in agreement, aren't we? There's nothing we can do right now. We're completely freaking helpless and we've got our hands tied. I get it."
"Jason—" Kaylee started to protest, but Jason lifted up his hand.
"Just—stop. No." Jason turned away from her and blinked through the tears that finally caught up with him. He had to face Gina in order to turn his back on the others, and she got a full view of the most emotion he'd shown in the entirety of the time she'd known him. Instead of staring at him or trying to distract him, Gina just put her hand on his knee and looked where he was looking, at a spot of patchy, dry grass between them. Grateful for the gesture and the fact that she wasn't calling attention to his moment of weakness, Jason let the sound of his father's voice, the automated messaging systems telling him Orion couldn't be reached, and their vulnerable, defenseless situation overwhelm him for a while as the others stood up and started to quickly pack up their sparse camp.
