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The Enigma Chronicles – Echoes
Chapter 29: What Remains
He lay flat near the edge of the cliff, where the lush, mounding grass folded over the abrupt stop from the coastal breeze. He inhaled the salt spray of the sea coming over the bluff, smiled, and slid his palms snugly beneath his sprawling green head of hair. He squinted into the sky where late sun hung, neither blistering nor dim, sitting on the perfect temperature between. Its gentle rays felt pleasant on his tan face, arms, and legs.
Each moment of this was paradise, each sweep of a breeze in his hair, each kiss of a fragile blade of grass on his skin. Moments like these came so few. It was a sappy thing to think, sure, but damn if it wasn't the truth. Sure, he'd spent years on the islands living in secret, hiding out in that fancy bachelor Metsuma had set him up in; but until now, he'd sort of taken it all for granted. It only took a hot, quirky dame with attitude to really open his eyes, show him how to live, to truly live. There was more to life than just getting laid and acting like a jerk, as she'd so nicely put it.
His gaze slipped from the gold and pink canvass above, downward, settling on Konani herself. She sat facing the sea, her back to him and her nose buried in her sketchbook. She tossed her hair over shoulder absently, and in doing so, caught his glance and waved at him from the cliff's end with a mischievous grin before going right back to scribbling.
He smirked, observing with cheeky interest, before asking in that blunt, direct fashion he knew got her all hot and bothered, "Since when the hell do you draw?"
"I'm not drawing, I'm sketching," she irately corrected with a slight emphasis on the last word.
"Big difference," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. "Since when do you sketch? I've known you for weeks now and I've never seen you sketch. Not once."
She kept looking up and down between the pad in her lap and the seascape in front of her, damn committed to not letting him distract her. "You get to do your bizarre blindfold regimens on the cape brink every morning," she reminded, absently. "I'm not allowed to have a hobby too?"
He leaned his head up and propped himself back on his elbows, letting his eyes drift as he plucked the grass beside him. "What I do isn't exactly a hobby," he muttered, purposely vague. "More like training."
This time she laughed. "Training for what?"
He pretended not to hear the question and sat himself up fully, scratching underneath the white and navy striped tank hanging off his mountainous shoulders as if to stress his boredom. "What are you drawing anyway?"
A spasm of frustration colored her voice as she again corrected, "Sketching, Cayman."
"Sure, sure, whatever," he said, and crawled his way over to her. He slipped his arms around her curved waist, leaning his chin over her shoulder to look upon her craftship. She quickly tried to conceal the drawing from him the moment she felt him hovering, and he wailed, "Aw, don't be like that!"
"It doesn't matter anyway," she grunted, pressing the pad to her chest whilst trying to shrug him off. He snaked his hands around her again, even as she closed herself off to him, and slid one hand down over her thigh, gently tugging at the fabric of her skirt. She swatted him away in short order.
"That won't work." She straightened herself, pulling her silky blouse back in place and compressing the pad harder between her knees and her chest. He sighed, giving to her wishes for a fooling second; but then just as she began to let her guard down again, he quickly snatched the sketchbook from her lap with the reflexes Metsuma had drilled into him.
"Hey, stop! Cayman!"
Hard as she tried to seize it back, he effortlessly faced away from her as he began flipping through the various sketches. "Damn," he said, the larkish smile returning to his face as he took in the detailed illustrations of Pokémon, flora, and landmarks native to their island habitat. "You know, these aren't half bad."
"I'll just take that." Before he could flip to the last the sketch, the book was plucked from his hands in the same way he'd swiped it. He beamed over his shoulder to find her settling back in her original spot, the sketch pad nestled in her lap again. He smirked, seeing her in a new light all of a sudden and taking it in with a foreign amount of excitement.
After a moment, he got up and found a cushiony spot in the grass beside her to plop down on. "So, you really like this shit, huh? Just sitting around, sketching the world?"
She looked up at the question, just staring off towards the orange horizon. The wind pushed at her chin-length curls playfully, and she brushed them behind her ear, seeming to take in the moment. "What can I say? The world's a beautiful place, Cayman."
"I guess," he muttered, supplementing his indifference with a shrug. The reaction only made her laugh though.
"I'm serious." Her voice was more mature all of a sudden, teasing surely, but it had a whole new layer to it; it was kind of mellifluous, full. "Anything can be beautiful, in the right light, in its own way."
"Whatever you say, babe," he sighed, lying back on the bed grass without paying much thought to the lousy proverb. He wasn't much for that kind of mushy talk anyway. He was finally loving life and where he was living it, yeah, but Metsuma had taught him to be above that sentimental crap.
She leaned in beside him and rested a hand on his knee, smiling. "You know," she whispered, "I think you're beautiful."
He practically choked on his laughter and flashed his left eye up at her through his mop of green spikes. "I'm a guy, in case you didn't notice."
"So?" was her only response, and she began to trace her finger along the patterns of his trunks. She was such complex company, even when she pretended not to be, and he both loved and hated it.
"So," he enunciated slowly, irritated that he needed to spell it out for her, "It's not something you say to a guy."
"According to who?"
"It's just—" He stopped short, unable to give a clear answer. Instead he just resolved to laughing and shaking his head. "It's just not done."
"Okay, then," she obliged, seeming to drop the matter with a shrug. This only made him more curious though.
"Nah, by all means, keep drawing," he teased, making a face at her. "If you're feeling inspired enough, I can always pose for you, since I'm so beautiful and all."
"You're making fun of me," she scoffed at him, though he could tell she was exaggerating. He didn't let that stop him though, and he teasingly grabbed the hem of his shirt while striking a pose.
"No one's around," he said, after glancing left and right. "Should I take off my clothes?" A firm, unamused frown tugged at her lips and he gave the grass a mighty smack to substitute laughter. "Aw, I'm only having fun with you, babe!"
She stood on her knees, arms crossed and brow raised in a skeptical arch. "Wanna bank on that?"
"Whoa, now." He bucked forward at the question and matched the shape of her brow. "You asking, or offering?"
She avoided his eyes, blushing as she clasped her hands close to her chest, before seductively touching her finger to her lips. "Maybe I'm a masochist. You don't know me."
A disappointed spurt of air left his lips when he realized she was toying with him. "Yeah, yeah, very funny."
She cocked her head, her expression an exaggerated pout. "What, that's not what you want?"
"Alright, now YOU'RE making fun of ME," he chuckled, tilting his head back on his forearms and closing his eyes, finding pleasure in the sun again. Soon autumn would steal away this easy warmth, rife with tropical storms; but for now, he was content to bask in it, to laze on his back in the sunshine with this bizarre but beautiful island girl for company.
Shade suddenly poured over him. When he cracked an eye open, Konani was next to him, one hand propping her head up and the other slinking absently along his shoulder. Her fingers danced over the dark, firm skin there in circular motions and he looked sideways to pinpoint what had her so fascinated.
"I like the freckles on your shoulders," she remarked on her actions, with a simple shrug and smile that did nothing to elaborate on anything.
Seeing this as a weak followup to her last performance, Cayman touched absently at his upper arm, and chuckled, "Really? That's the best you can come up with?"
She continued her examination, almost squinting this time, apparently not joking at all. "They're a bit hard to see, but I like them."
He couldn't make a lick of sense of anything coming out of her mouth anymore, so he just chuffed out a laugh when he knew no other reaction would do. "You're so fucking weird, babe."
Konani glanced up from his so-called freckles to meet his eyes, unflattered. "Gee, thanks."
"No, hey, I don't mean that in a bad way," he said, leaning up slightly in his hurry to correct his slip up. "What I'm saying is... you're not like other girls."
She laughed in a couple of little puffs and smoothed her hands further up his arms to squeeze his strong shoulders. Her lashes fluttered like wings upon cheeks. "What, not dumb and blonde enough for you?"
He shook his head. "Hey, come on, that isn't what I meant,"
"I know." She smiled, and this time the expression lit up her face. Her features went from sternly cogent to radiant, cosmic, shaving the maturity and the sharpness away. Her curly hair blew with the breeze in stunning golden waves, fluttering over the pale pink flower tucked behind her ear. She was perfect, all of this was perfect, everything around him. He didn't get how something so perfect could possibly be so harmful. This was one of those things Metsuma was way off-base about.
He considered what to say for a moment, and when he opened his mouth, he was drowned out by a miserable bellow from somewhere out on the water. Konani sat up abruptly at the sound and twisted back toward the sea. She snatched up her sketchbook and rushed to flip to a blank, white page. He sat up and peered past her shoulder to spot what she was doodling this time.
A large, blue lump coasted softly on the tides, weaving through a cluster of sea stacks and emitting a distressing moan like the one he'd heard a moment ago. When he squinted hard enough, he saw that it was a Wailmar.
"Poor thing," Konani lamented, pausing to look at the wallowing Pokémon. "I've seen it around the islands before, searching."
"Searching for what?" he asked.
"It's family," she explained. "The rest of its pod moved on some time ago, leaving the little guy behind. It just circles the islands, lost, afraid. It'll sometimes spend hours crying out for its mother, but she never comes. It's heartbreaking to listen to."
"Why?" he chuckled, remembering Metsuma's schooling. "It's just a Pokémon, isn't it?"
Her hand stopped scribbling, but she took a few moments to respond. She eventually set her sketchbook aside and leaned back into his arms, melting into him with a sigh that sounded pitying. As he held her, her fingers again traced nonsensical patterns over his arms. "To be unconnected, to feel alone in the world," she whispered. "That's something that no Pokémon or person should ever have to experience."
"I guess," was all he could think to answer with. He lacked her gift for saying deep, sage-like adages. He figured it was an islander thing.
"I hope he finds them," she murmured as the Pokémon's bellows fell quiet beneath the coming tides. "And if he doesn't, I hope he finds a good trainer." She giggled to herself, adding, "Actually, I know he will."
He quirked a brow at the baseless statement. "How?"
"I just do."
He didn't argue with her, but a faint smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth at how damn cute her optimism was. She was definitely something else, unlike anyone he'd ever been with. So full of hope. So full of life.
When he was silent too long, she sat up in his lap and turned to face him with a concerned pout. "What is it?"
He shook off his daze, feeling like an idiot. "I can't explain it."
"Can't explain what?" she laughed. As soon as she asked it, he let his shoulders sag in defeat because he didn't want to have to answer it.
"I just... feel safe with you," he grumbled, and immediately felt his cheeks turn bright red for doing so. "I know, I know, it's a dumb thing for a guy to say to a chick. I'd probably punch me in the face if I were you."
"It isn't dumb, you dummy."
He could do little more than stare at her, his lips moving wordlessly before he managed to organize his thoughts and reply, "It isn't?"
"No," she said, touching his face. "I feel safe with you too." She traced his tan features, mapping out the laugh lines and the dimple on his left cheek that comprised his smile. "I know you don't like to put labels on things, but this—right here, right now. It's—"
"It's perfect," he finished for her, unable to keep the boyish grin off his face once he said it. It felt right to admit it, to have certainty that there was more to life than what Metsuma had laid out for him. This was living, growing up, enjoying youth, experiencing the world like a normal kid. His mom had wanted all this for him when she gave him up and he wasn't going to take it for granted. As long as he was meant to blend in anyway, he knew Metsuma wouldn't mind.
Konani's hand drifted to his chest, resting over his heartbeat. "And you know what? I think it's only going to get better."
He nodded, gazing up at the palm trees swaying in the breeze, then to the ocean glittering in the sunset, then finally upon Konani. She blinked up at him, through long dark lashes, and giggled when his lips made contact with the bridge of her nose. He pulled back for a second, waiting until her eyes fluttered shut, lips pursed in a pout. Soft, pink, lips.
He kissed her softly, quickly, just the brush of lips against another. When he parted, he fell back into the grass and she fell with him. Her head landed on his shoulder and her limbs tangled into his. He draped an arm over her, releasing a triumphant exhale as he watched the stars assemble over his island paradise. He was content to stay like this forever. He would never be alone as long as he had all of this. He would never be unconnected.
"It's only going to get better," she whispered again, the words playing like a musical promise in his ears.
…...
The words from that distant past pounded in Cayman's ears, a blighting echo, no longer so distant. He couldn't remember to whom these words belonged, but all the same, he let them trample across the muck of his memory with total indifference. The scars on the inside felt no different than the scars he bore on his sunken face, on his brittle bones, or anywhere else his fading skin showed. Everything was pain now, every day and every waking moment. He'd become accustomed to it. Metsuma had compared him to a creature waiting for death, and he'd been right.
He uncurled himself from the floor of the chamber and sat forward, the chains on his feet refracting the dim light above. With weak eyes, he stared into the iron cuff around his left ankle and saw the hideous face staring back at him. Thin, colorless hair and a vast, dirty beard covered his face in a greasy mane stiff with blood and sweat. He might as well have been looking at a caveman. So many knots and so many snarls that no brush or knife could ever break through. Nor soap or tears could ever wash away.
He tried to remember what his old face looked like, how many months it had been since. He'd spent so, so long confined and cramped in darkness that the passage of time didn't feel real or tangible anymore. It could have been years, for all he knew or cared. The days all melded together since he rarely slept anymore. And that was the most excruciating part. He didn't know how to shut his eyes anymore. He feared he would be punished if he ever learned how again. He'd been repurposed into a machine, and machines didn't require sleep.
Even so, he tried to recall what his face was like before becoming a creature, a machine. It had been a handsome face once, white teeth, sea blue eyes full of confidence and dreams. Now taken its place was a gaunt visage, feral with fear etched in his bones and cracked bloody lips that would never know what a smile felt like ever again. Why would he ever wish to show his shattered, stained teeth? And his eyes? Once blue as the sky, now faded and sleepless and bulging... always bulging now, as if the last shock or beating he'd taken stayed frozen in them.
Then, a sound that he feared terribly, his Master's boots coming towards him. Trembling, whimpering, he gazed weakly across the chamber and through the thick, impervious glass cutting him off from the rest of the world. It wasn't his usual torturer that appeared to him though. In Azrael's place stood Difo, with an escort of Bisharps planted behind him. The scientist smirked at him through the glass, drunk on pride and pomposity; these were emotions he himself once felt but was now utterly numb to.
"Morning, specimen," the scientist sneered from behind the glass. "On your feet, please."
Cayman did as commanded and stood, his back hunching and his knees crouching to hold up what remained of his shriveled form. It took too much out of him to stand straight anymore, let alone stand at all. He was never scolded for it though. His Master and Difo had always told him his energy was better spent powering the drills than powering his own functions. They'd always meant it as an insult, but it never wounded him. Only men carried integrity and he was no longer a man nor anything of the like.
One of the glass walls snapped into the ceiling, vanishing with a flick of a switch on Difo's remote. The scientist swaggered into the chamber with Azreal's Bisharps in tow but stopped to take a whiff of the stale, musky air, his features scrunching in repulsion. Cayman knew he had offended the scientist with his foul odor and wondered briefly if it might serve him best to affect embarrassment. He wasn't sure he could find the strength to make those facial muscles though.
"You reek like a dead Pidgey," Difo remarked after a stretch of silence. Cayman nodded his agreement, fast and repeatedly, careful not to make any noise unless desired. When enough was apparently enough, Difo turned back towards the exitway and waved at his two Pokémon escorts. Cayman flinched as the pair came towards him and he lowered his head, anticipating a vicious strike across the face or a shattering jab to the ribs. He wasn't sure he would he feel it either way. Azrael had already tortured his body beyond repair. He couldn't feel pain when he already felt it all the time.
Rather than beat him, though, the two bladed Pokémon removed his shackles and shoved him towards the exit after Difo. He kept at the pace set for him, stumbling somewhat at first but eventually finding a viable rhythm that didn't put too much strain on his body. It felt surreal walking about again, outside his den for the first time in Legendaries knew how long, without a chain tethering him to a metal floor and without cuffs gnawing into his ankles.
He looked down toward his scuzzy feet as he walked, seeing the raw red bands around his tendons where the squeezing metal had bitten into his skin. He felt them burn with every step, yet not a whimper or grunt dared leave his lips. Those noises had done him little good in the past. Nowadays he welcomed the sensations like any other pain. They all brought him a little bit closer to the end, to eternal peace. If he only had the strength to end things himself, his wait would have been over long ago.
"I'm sure you're aware of the steel and titanium deficient," Difo muttered in front of him as they crossed through the depot, past the finished lineup of tanker drills. Hearing this, Cayman couldn't help but immediately assume he was at fault, even if he wasn't. He knew it didn't matter either way. His jaw worked as he stuttered to make human words, to vocalize an apology.
"I'm—I'm sorry—"
"Quiet," the scientist silenced him. "You're not to blame for that, you creature. You're just the power source after all. And yet... assembly of the tankers cannot continue without the proper building materials. And I have deadlines to meet."
Cayman nodded, not asking questions, keeping his eyes to his plodding feet as he was marched into a new locale adjacent to the depot. The sound of shearing plasma elapsed into that of thick, smoldering liquid and a sudden spike in temperature burned the bottoms of his soles as he stepped onto a suspended catwalk. He dared not lift his head though, not until told to.
"This is where the magic happens, specimen," Difo said, inviting him to look with a sweeping hand gesture. Cayman wisely took the invitation as an order and brought his deadened face to peer over the rail and squint down into the source of sweltering heat. There were more catwalks criss-crossing the foundry below. Pickups manned by Magmars or lugged by Houndooms cruised atop them, carrying metal slabs or raw ore in their cargo beds. He wondered if he would be put to work alongside them.
Beneath those walkways, titanic vats of molten metal stood vigil all across the floor of the metal-working plant, occasionally being lifted and moved by a giant crane. There even more Fire-Type Pokémon busying away, yet Cayman had to wonder the point. He didn't know why he was being shown any of this, why it mattered, why Difo and the other couldn't just toss him into one of the molten vats and be done with it.
"The assassin made an interesting proposition to me before his departure," Difo began, turning to face Cayman. "And while I'm usually inclined to dismiss any advice from that bionic brute, I'm afraid time has forced my hand."
Cayman said nothing, reacted with nothing. He didn't even have the will to be confused or curious or interested. He was past those things. He just stared at Difo with his big, bulging eyes, waiting for some kind of instruction or some kind of punishment. He didn't care about anything else. He didn't even care that the grate underneath him was roasting his poor feet, verging on melting them to the bone.
Then, a rough, rumbling groan down below.
Cayman turned his head just barely, enough for his eyes to peer into the depths of the foundry once more. There he saw the crane moving into position over one of the vats, and in its metal clutches, Steelix. His Steelix.
"Ah, pure chromium steel," Difo announced, smiling so widely that Cayman could spot it in his periphery. "This will surely shore up the tanker numbers." He leaned in towards Cayman, cackling over the foreboding hum of the crane below, "I brought you here so you could be reunited with your oldest companion one last time. See? I'm not entirely heartless."
Cayman did not shudder nor cry. It wouldn't have mattered, he thought to himself. This was supposed to wound him where it hurt most, but that place had already long ago been viciously gutted out, depraved, stripped down like everything on the outside.
"Melt the beast down!" Difo hollered, before waving a wagging digit at Cayman's face. "And don't you dare look away."
Obediently, Cayman heeded the warning and stared numbly at the spectacle below. The mighty serpent writhed and bellowed as the crane began to lower it into the molten pool, calling out desperately for someone, anyone. It was a sound that disturbed all but Cayman, and he noticed many on the catwalks clearing away, the first of them being an engineer in a hazmat suit peering in from the door to the depot. The faceless worker almost seemed to stare at him a long moment before leaving, though Cayman didn't care enough to acknowledge him and forced his eyes back where they'd been ordered.
Then, his Pokémon's eyes flashed to his in the final seconds, and all went silent, and Cayman could see the sheer terror and misery now filling those fierce red irises he'd known in a lifetime past. He could do nothing to help them, and watched the great, stalwart warrior of steel he'd raised from an Onix disappear into the smoldering metal and melt from existence, head to tail, before his deadened eyes.
The steady hiss of the boiling slag was all that remained, yet even then, Cayman felt no tears come to him. No anger. No sorrow. Nothing at all. He was weak, and tired, and too broken and exhausted to feel those things anymore. He was defunct inside—the closest he could come to the real thing, and even that wasn't enough.
…...
Viper didn't waste a moment and fled out of the foundry and back into the depot whilst everyone was distracted by Difo's exhibition. He felt so void of breath as he beelined for the facility exit, so mortified by what he'd just seen that it took all his willpower not to prematurely rip off the hazmat suit disguising him and gasp for breath. The image of Steelix scorching away on the crane was practically branded into his brain now. He wished he could unsee it. Psychotic brutality, that's what it was. He'd doled out his own share of brutality before, but never for the pleasure or sport of it—and never to that degree. It was just as he'd feared: Metsuma's ways were rubbing off on the rest of them.
And then there was the matter of Cayman, who apparently was alive, if only just barely. Azrael had reported him dead several months back, and Viper felt foolish now for ever having believed it. He'd barely recognized his old friend back there, and it wasn't because of the respirator mask blurring his vision. He'd stared long enough to know it wasn't a trick of the heat. He could still see it fresh in his mind, that creature Difo was parading around—frail, slumped, and putrefying. It all made sense now why Difo and Azrael had kept the special weapons facility under such strict quarantine. It was to hide someone, not something.
It didn't matter anymore though. He had the information he'd snuck in to retrieve and now he needed to act on it accordingly. Cayman was a lost cause, but Joy wasn't.
As he approached magnetic doors leading out of the main facility, two Torino soldiers converged on his limited vision. He wordlessly flashed the stolen I.D. card hanging around his neck and the two grunts stepped aside without argument, permitting his exit. The doors slid apart and he strode through them with the same cool and apathetic gait he'd often observed in Difo's personnel. He then waited for the doors to shut behind him before dropping the act altogether.
He hurried across the weapons vault once certain he was in the clear and slipped behind the barricade of shipping crates assembled in the far corner. The first thing he did once sheltered behind their cover was tear the respirator from his face, taking that deep gulp of breath he'd been holding in since bearing witness to the slaughter in the foundry. The Pokémon's guttural cries still echoed faintly in his ears, reminding him how precarious life on the island had become since Torino's inception. Joy wouldn't survive long through these conditions and he knew he'd be a fool to keep believing otherwise.
Finding his breath and pulling back to his senses, Viper moved to the container he'd marked earlier and quietly opened the top. Inside he found the facility worker right as he'd left him—stripped down to his unmentionables and soundly unconscious, courtesy of Venomoth's Sleep Power. The fool would wake up with some vague recollection of his circumstances but with no face to hold accountable.
"Thanks for the duds," he muttered, tossing the oxygen mask on top of the sleeping body before proceeding to shed the rest of his disguise.
…...
"Look at me."
I didn't know the voice. I couldn't place whom it belonged to or where it was coming from. It was more like a whispered thought, really, licking across the planes of my consciousness. It was as though my mind was now entertaining someone else's mind, someone else's thoughts.
"Look at me."
A part of me wanted to disobey, but something stronger bid that I look up. The world above illuminated as a shooting star fell through black yonder, belting past my eyes at tremendous speed. This was the exact same meteorite that haunted me regularly in recent weeks, more irritating than cryptic after so many sleepless nights. If this was Darukai playing god, my dreams might as well have been his playground.
The meteorite hit some solid, unseen surface far away, its impact coughing a wall of flames at me. I didn't feel any sensation as the embers burned through and about me. In fact, they dispelled as quickly as they had surged, leaving me unharmed and standing in the center of some kind of chapel the following instant.
Stained glass windows depicting the Trine of Arceus lined the walls, each shard reflecting a different light. This was a Seer dwelling, to be sure, but not one that struck me as familiar or meaningful. I could have been glimpsing into my future, maybe someone else's past, there was no way of knowing for sure. If this was a metaphor, it lacked Darukai's usual symmetry.
I had little time to ponder it though. The holy shards above grew brighter and I wisely stepped back at the sound of cracking glass. Before I could I retreat far enough away, the windows shattered against the uncontainable light and the room flooded like a crumbling dam. Through the blinding, blighting onslaught emerged a bombardment of images, too numerous to count or comprehend on a whim. The deities of time and space, Dialga and Palkia, passed me by, hazy at first glance but circling above the silhouettes of what appeared to be Alamos Town's Spacetime Towers.
I blinked, and in another image, there was the Maestro standing before the altar on which he'd intended to offer me as a sacrifice to Giratina. The memory dissolved into the light too quickly to mark, and the first verse of the Maestro's winning piece, 'Fire and Flesh', lulled me through a sequence of more disjointed puzzle pieces reeling across my vision by the hundreds. The familiar Kaiser psalm oozed from unseen lips that sounded so close to my ear, the Maestro's voice just as powerful and true to the lyrics as it had been in my boyhood.
"A flicker in the wind, a tremor in the Earth..."
A vision of Mount Moon beneath a cosmic shower bloomed in my mind. Meteorites fell like froth against the stalwart mountainside, gently clasping to the landmark as though beckoned there. It was a curious anomaly, watching these cosmic giants rain down upon the fragile landscape to the tune of utter silence, stillness.
"We march as brothers, not as soldiers."
The words flew by my ears and I was suddenly elsewhere again, this time standing before a stone that dwarfed me. It sparkled in the pale blue moonlight, too flawless to be natural. It hummed with power that was extraordinary. I dared to reach forward and press the flat of my palm against its surface, to feel its energy.
The moment I touched it, however, I was again thrust into another landscape. The lyrics amplified in tandem.
"A spark of fury, a blaze of red..."
Finding my bearings, the world spinning around me froze into focus. I found myself caught between a familiar cluster of lotus trees, each of them rustling in the frigid night air. It took a second for me to register that I'd lived this dream before, years back when Darkrai first came to me.
To make certain of it, I spun round to take stock of the homely cottage that lunatic Wade had raised me in. Sure enough, there it was, camouflaged deep in the darkness of the lotus forest and only marginally visible beneath the moonlight's scrutiny. Indeed, this was the very same dream in which Darkrai first visited me. That time, he'd warned me of a perilous danger, which was just moments before...
A twig snapped behind me and the rest came rushing back. Careful not to repeat the mistake made last time, I conjured a wall of psychic energy to ward off the foreseen ambush. I stood my ground as the strange monks emerged from the surrounding wilderness, cloaked and hooded all in black, silent in their steps. The first time I'd dreamt this I lacked any appraisal of the enemy, but that wasn't the case now. I now recognized these creatures of the night belonged to the same creed that slaughtered the Maestro after our infiltration of their shrine. Wade had rescued me from sharing that fate and now these fanatics were back to finish the job.
Even with my defenses ripe, the converging assailants lunged towards me from every direction.
"We take what is ours, what is pure, what is lost."
The lyrics stopped time and space alike, and everything became utterly still, from the attackers now suspended mid-lunge to the tree branches frozen in the static wind.
Then, they started to float away, all of them, one by one, as though a divine, invisible hand were lifting them up and releasing them into space. I cautiously retired the psychic barrier in front me, watching the dangers gravitate away from me, the assailants and the trees and cottage all blown like leaves in the wind and fragmenting back into the ever-growing mass of images, visions, voices, and memories flooding back into me.
I was the next to ascend from the forest, though it was no leisure voyage. I felt myself ripped from the dream one instant and smacked into another the next, my face planting into a hardwood floor. Fortunately, the absence of pain reminded me I was asleep, evidently deeply and by will that was not my own.
I climbed up on groggy feet, coming to face an ajar door. I gently pushed on it when I heard frantic whispering coming from the other side, leaning in enough to peer through the resulting crack. I recognized the room at first glance: it was the parlor room of the Kyden home, still yet to be burned down at the hands of my boyhood self.
The whispering turned to a sound akin to silent sobbing and I pressed on the door a little harder, gaining a better vantage of the scene. Across the room, my biological father, Raile, was collapsed to his knees and desperately yanking at the sleeve of someone whose face I could not see without opening the door even further.
"Raile," the tender voice of the unseen gentlemen spoke, "you must help me to understand."
My father had tears gushing down his face, a sight that might have amused me if not for the questions nagging at the back my brain. He clutched the hand with a firmer grip. "I'm running out of time," he wept. "You have to help me! You have to finish the project!"
I could no longer bear the suspense, nor the questions. I stepped through the door, certain I would go unnoticed. I laid eyes on the man, fiercely scrutinizing his short grey beard, his tiny spectacles, his formal posture. I knew his face, but from where, I could not place. He was a close colleague of my father, I remembered that much. Someone who had his ear, his trust.
I started to inch closer for a more vivid inspection but stopped when I saw that, impossibly, my presence had been acknowledged. The man in spectacles never turned, never once noticed me; no, it was my father kneeling before the said man who met my eyes, slowly rising to face me with that shaming, condescending look he often wore for me.
Once on his feet, he turned his body fully toward me and froze. I froze with him, feeling my breath fall short at the sight of half his body consumed by shadow. I had forgotten all about his incurable condition until seeing him now, half-human and half-monster, his right appendages gnarled and wispy like Darkrai's. I almost felt cheated. I'd entered the room hoping for answers and insights only to end up staring an even bigger unresolved question blank in the face. It occurred to me that Darukai had never told me the truth of the bodily corrosion that surely would have ended my father's life if I had not ended it first.
If my ancestor was indeed pulling all the strings here as I suspected, this was undoubtedly his way of enticing me back to him, by filling me with questions only he had the answers to.
I opened my mouth to shout the dreamweaver's name when a gunshot rang through the air, pounding into my skull. My eyes clenched shut reflexively.
"We take it with flesh."
The verse throbbed in my ears until I heard sobbing again, though not my father's this time. I opened my eyes. This time I'd been placed inside the crypt beneath Alamos Town. Peer's corpse bled out on the floor in front of me, a pool of red unfolding toward my feet. Past the slain body stood Anna, her gun slipping from her hand and clattering to the stone floor.
The evening continued to play out as it originally had from thereon, taking no creative liberties. Anna fell atop her lifeless mentor, tearfully shaking his body, trying to awaken him from his permanent rest, trying to turn back time. I'd lived this night so many time I practically had every detail memorized. This was the night her life was reborn for the worse and mind for the better, at least for a time.
I looked down solemnly at my blood-soaked shoes, understanding what a fool I'd been to think she would move on from this. In the eight months since this night, she'd fallen hard and I'd been blind to it up until our confrontation at the lighthouse. There she unwittingly opened my eyes to the damage, to the unstable vortex of emotions that had grown unchecked for months and now threatened to swallow me and my plans whole.
And, of course, there was the child. Our unborn child. Not even that had been enough to reign her in, something she'd made clear enough with her suicide attempt.
I glanced up from my thoughtful state to behold the birthplace of those disastrous consequences haunting me in the present. I gazed dismally at Anna, at the body in her arms, at the bloodbath that would lead to an irreversible chain reaction in which all my secrets hinged on an unstable, drug-addled woman with no self-control and nothing but pure disgust for me.
"We take it with fire."
The blood on the floor ignited in flames, almost as though the lyrics had been uttered as a spell. Bright, scorching yellow flourished about me before blackening to smoke. Once it cleared, I was standing on a mountain ridge, blue as frost and touching the clouds. Several more like it stretched in sequence left and right of me, snaking across the land like stitching. This visual alone was enough for me to gather I was on Mount Coronet. The lack of cities and towns to be spotted from my vantage, however, told me this was a point in time long before mine.
The ponderous sound of stumbling footfalls further down the mount prompted me to peer over the ledge of my rocky perch. I wasn't sure whom I was staring at until I squinted and realized it was Eldar, of all people, gimping up the incline on a cane that looked like it had seen better days.
A voice called out behind him, "We could have ruled the Brethren Kingdoms, father! I could have been King!"
Eldar either didn't hear the voice or was purposely ignoring it, though I was leaning toward the latter. He was muttering something that was audibly unintelligible at the height I was listening from. He was no manifestation as he had been the last time he appeared to me; I understood this simply from how utterly broken he looked, how miserably he carried himself, even for a man well into old age. This was a king who had truly lost everything, and I already knew why.
"Father!" the voice called out again, which I noted to be hailing from a distant silhouette in the glow of the sunrise. "This obsession of yours must end before it consumes your sanity!"
Eldar again ignored the pleas and stopped to lean heavily on his staff, now planted firmly in the gravel as he struggled to catch his breath. "They are here," he declared in a spent voice just loud enough to be overhead. "They are here. I will find them!"
"Father, stop this!" the silhouette further down the slope cried out once more. Even if Eldar wasn't paying him any mind, I certainly was curious.
"They are here," the former king snorted inelegantly, then his eyelids fluttered and he sank limply to the ground. The staff landed with a dull thud and rolled to a stop against a rock. He collapsed against said rock, but even then, kept on repeating the same words in a delirious chant. "They are here and I will find them! They are here! I will find them! They are here… I will… find them…"
The words began to trail off, but I was quick to make sense of them, which easily put the entire scene before me into context. Eldar was hunting Aura Guardians; this was the obsession in question that had plagued the tail end years of his life. I knew this only because he'd told me himself during the Fire Chasm trial.
The silhouette of the one pleading with him to stop, however, was a piece to this puzzle I wasn't sure what to make of. Before I could think to climb down and solve that mystery, a harsh light blinded me and I lost my footing. I stumbled forward, falling straight down the ledge.
Rather than crash onto a hard gravel, however, a black, ominous portal ripped open below me and gobbled me up. The Kaiser hymn played louder on the Maestro's lips, wherever he was in this chaotic mess.
"We take it with vengeance."
I dropped, at the speed of lightning, through a thin velvet veil on the edge of a violent explosion in a distant galaxy, as stars being born, reborn, and dying hurled thousands of colors in my direction.
Then, stillness. I was floating in a speckled vacuum of nothing, floating soundlessly through a fog of images and voices weaving about me. They were pulling me under, to an unseeable abyss, towards the depths of my blackened soul. In that same darkness, I saw my father's mysterious colleague.
"Raile, you must help me to understand—"
Then, in the next image to bubble from the shallow depth, I saw my father again.
"I'm running out of time! You have to finish it! You have to help me!"
Then there was Eldar.
"They are here! I will find them!"
Then there was the silhouette calling out to him.
"Father, stop this at once!"
Then there was Anna.
Then Peer's body in the crypts.
Then Mount Moon.
Then the meteorite again.
Then the chapel.
Then the hooded monks.
Then Giratina.
Then Dialga, Palkia, and Alamos Town.
It was too much to absorb, and when I clenched my eyes shut to block it all out, Raile was right there in front of me anyway. He looked as real and tangible as flesh and as twisted as flesh made shadow. Indeed, shadow away at him like a parasite; it split him down the middle, sparing the right side of his body and reducing the other half to a shriveled, black outline. He screamed, a sound so deeply agonized it set my teeth on edge and arched his back as his whole body convulsed. His hands, one normal and the other shaped like a wispy claw, raked down his face as if to tear off the gnarly black substance corroding his features.
I tore my head away from the disturbing apparition, yet the same images and voices that preceded it flooded my senses again. Screaming. Gunshots. Church bells. I plugged my ears. I couldn't hear myself think anymore.
Finally, a voice broke through the clutter. That whisper of a voice from earlier.
"Everything is connected."
…
Consciousness slammed back into me with a painful thrust, dropping like a stone inside my chest. I surged forward in bed, heaving for breath, feeling very much like I'd just been possessed. My throat, dry and contracting, filled with a quick spurt of air. I felt unbidden beads of sweat glide down my face, neck, and torso as the real world seeped back into my being. I curled my fingers into the sheets, trying to solidify my surroundings, to make certain I was indeed back. I gazed across the penthouse, towards the balcony, where a cold breeze blew in. The sun was nearly gone; I'd wasted an entire afternoon trying and failing to recover lost sleep.
The face of Raile's screaming, half-deformed visage sat heavy on my memory. I rubbed a hand over my face in an effort to stave it off, and then another through my sleep-mussed, sweat-matted hair. These incessant nightmares were shaving too many nights too many off of my calendar, and worst of all, they'd become progressively worse ever since that meteorite first appeared to me while meditating a month ago. I'd initially blamed Darukai for that as well. Ever since experiencing that vision, I could seldom close my eyes and slip into a trance without seeing or hearing strange, unwanted things. Tonight's visions, however, took the cake. The Maestro… Raile… Eldar… these were all puzzle pieces that did not link together. Being denied sleep was like a curse, and the only way to break the curse was to solve this damned puzzle, apparently.
I twisted off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom. I ran the faucet and splashed water on my face, then braced my hands on the cold porcelain of the basin and leaned in close to the mirror to study my reflection. Bags hung thick under my eyes. Even the color in my face was ebbing. I wasn't sure how many more nights I could weather without uninterrupted sleep before either going mad or going madly ill. If the nightmares kept escalating, I imagined not very many. I was a man in my prime, and a powerful psychic to boot, yet even those attributes did not exonerate me from the most essential human needs. If anything, I required them to a more pressing degree than others. Without sleep or meditation, I wasn't as sharp or focused during the day, which was a necessary component to someone whose mind was the source of their power. Refining that power was impossible in the face of night terrors routinely ripping me away from even a moment of peaceful shuteye.
Of course, there wasn't much peace to be found while awake either, I'd found. The nightmares only came second to what terrorized me during the days. If I wasn't sleeping, I was thinking about her. And when I was thinking about her, I couldn't focus on anything else. The honest truth was I was coming undone. In the month since finding out I had an unborn son, I'd been at war with my own mind. And I wasn't winning that war either.
I needed a drink.
I picked up the watch I'd left on the sink earlier and whacked my fingertip against the face of it. Seven o'clock. I could still make it downstairs for the superfluous company cocktail party Kade was hosting. As Briskomy's president I was expected to make an appearance, and so long as I had a glass of something strong to numb my thoughts, I would meet those expectations. Sleep deprivation had left me bereft of the energy needed to act like a phony in front of a bunch of other phonies; drinking profusely seemed like as good a substitute as any to blend in with them.
I as began to reapply my watch, another object on the sink caught my eye. A tiny hourglass.
It hadn't been there a moment prior. I considered maybe I was just groggy and had failed to notice it the first time. Regardless, I plucked it with two fingers and dangled it in front of my eyes for inspection. A notion of emptiness and forgotten feelings became lost as I stared into the depths of the glass vial, watching the grains of sand trickle down its slender neck to settle at the bottom. I wasn't sure what about it fascinated me, but I was at peace, and time seemed to escape me.
Then, as the last grain fell, I snapped out of it. I understood as I took stock of the object's signature shape that I hadn't woken up at all. This was still a dream, dammit. This was the work of Darkrai.
I turned my head up to once again look at my reflection. When I saw that it was Raile standing in the mirror, the hourglass slipped from my hand, shattering at my feet. He didn't startle though. He didn't blink. He just stood there, half-rotting and silent as a grave, watching me take in the ghastly sight of him.
There was something else about him though, something different. It began as a creeping suspicion in the pit of my stomach, but once it ran deeper than, I willed myself to look more thoroughly over the grotesque visage reflecting back at me. I came to discover it wasn't my father I was staring at. What remained of the monster's human attributes was a piercing yellow eye and few curly black locks fading into darkness.
That's when the harsh veracity set in, and even then, I was set on denying it. I slowly began to raise a hand to the mirror to make certain it wasn't as I was fearing in the back of my mind, and to my disappointment, the corrupted reflection raised its deformed claw in flawless tandem with my own movement. When I saw this, I yelped involuntarily and the shadow let out an insufferable scream that cracked the mirror.
I dropped to my knees with a wince and clapped my hands over my ears, staying that way just long enough for the noise to dissipate. Once it did, a heavy fog rolled over my thoughts, heaving over my body until my hearing and vision filled with static and the only thing that broke through was the final verse of the Maestro's hymn.
"We take it naturally."
As soon as I heard this, I rose readily to my feet, anticipating some kind of danger. My fist came close to colliding with the mirror but stopped a hair's breadth away from the glass when I saw that there was no deformed version of myself mimicking the movement. There was no reflection of me at all, in fact. I could only see bathroom door behind me, the penthouse floor beyond it, and the balcony entrance just past that.
I started to turn away when, in the reflection, the night sky visible through the balcony suddenly lit up. I froze on my heels mid-rotation, observing through the mirror as magnificent, cosmic light poured into the penthouse. The floor and walls began to shudder next, and in front of me, the mirror fractured. I spun around just as the light came full bloom, and before I knew what was what anymore, the roof above my head burned away in a fiery scourge. I squinted up to look upon the source of the invasive light that had sent my shadow scurrying.
It was the meteorite, larger and more intense than in any other dream—and it was hurtling straight toward me. The floors began to cave in and the walls of the penthouse began toppling. The tower beneath me wobbled precariously, its many beams and joints all casualties of this symbolic yet destructive force that had, once again, come solely to claim me.
I chose not to flee as it beared down on me, instead opening my arms to it in invitation. I simply wanted to wake up at this point, and being incinerated seemed the quickest, most surefire way.
"You are the connection, Daruka," that disembodied voice close to my ear whispered, just as the flesh was scorched clean off my bones and I felt an immense pressure on me.
...
I came back to myself slowly, for real this time, limbs tingling as if my whole body were still on fire. I gritted my teeth and slammed my fist down on the mattress in frustration as the words echoed back and forth in my ears. I was the connection, apparently—I was the common factor shared by all the visions. That was hardly a clue to anything though since most of said visions conveyed little to me. If anything, I was more lost now than before.
I sat up rigidly and felt around my face for any gnarly, ghoulish deformities. When there was none to be found, I relaxed my tense muscles. I felt even worse waking up now than I had waking up in the dream inside my dream. For all I knew, I was trapped in yet another lucid nightmare and the penthouse around me was but another convincing fabrication. Just considering that possibility had me breaking into a sweat.
Legendaries, I just wanted this lunacy to stop.
I knew the ideal course was to seek out Darukai for guidance, though it occurred to me that that was probably exactly what he wanted—for me to go crawling back to him. That was, of course, assuming he was indeed responsible for this madness. The hourglass had been enough evidence to suggest that he was, at the very least, connected in some way. It wasn't like he'd ever tried to hide his power over sleep from me.
A pounding on the door across the penthouse interrupted my musings. I climbed out of bed, walked sluggishly across the suite towards the obnoxious sound. As I approached the door, the rapping became an endless loop. Each thud was like a hammer to my skull and I felt a migraine rapidly coming on.
"Mr. Rocket?" A voice behind the door, clearly female, yet bearing the slightest lisp when she spoke. It took my groggy mind a moment to register it was Valerie, my secretary.
"I'm here," I answered, my voice hoarse and scratchy.
"The party has started, you know," her muffled voice lectured. "Everyone's expecting you."
I looked across the room, out the balcony. The stars were already massing in the sky, which meant I was well past being even fashionably late anymore. I briefly considered cancelling entirely in order to save face. Unfortunately I wasn't even sure I wanted an excuse to stay in bed. I was an insomniac that neither wished to fall asleep nor stay awake.
The party seemed like the better option, ultimately, when I remembered there would be booze. It wouldn't be permanent fix, but it was something.
"I hope you're at least dressed," Val called out. I glanced down and saw that nothing was covering me but a pair of drawers. No, that wouldn't do.
I gathered my voice, and lied through the door, "I just have to put on my tie, Val. I'll be right down."
That seemed to satisfy her, and I heard her heels clacking off toward the elevators. I then twisted around, flattened myself against the door, and sank down against it until I was crouched on the hard marble floor in a tired heap. I smacked my face a few times to deny myself the chance to doze off; it was hard to believe that something as stupid as this might be my downfall. I needed to get my game back, somehow.
…...
After suiting up and smacking myself about the face a few more times, I departed for the party downstairs. I sighed as I rode the elevator, trying to loosen the collar of my tuxedo. This marked the first occasion in weeks since I'd decked myself out in more than just a casual business suit. I felt strangled, weighed down wearing it though. I wanted to tear it off and shred it up, and I wasn't even sure why either; I'd worn this tux on several occasions past and had managed to endure it just fine. This must have been my taxed, weary brain expressing disappoint in me. Even the smallest things were setting me off now.
The elevator pulled to a stop after moving at what had felt like a glacial pace. Valerie was already there waiting for me when the doors opened, boasting a spangled pink and purple ensemble. Briskomy' colors. Even when she was off the clock, she was still showing team spirit. I'd clearly picked the right person to help Kade handle my meetings and press conferences ever since these erratic sleep patterns began prying me away from work.
"Where have you been?" she demanded, her hands planted firmly on her hips and her foot tapping away at the floor. With each day, she became bolder than the last.
"Trying to catch up on some sleep," I confessed, rubbing a hand over my tired face as I stepped out from the elevator. She gave me a look that made her resemble a stern mother.
"In other words, finally taking my advice for a change?" she pressed her interrogation. I nodded, deciding that I didn't want to be sent back to my room if I told her I was running on almost no sleep. I then quickly sidestepped around her before she could ask anything more. The sprawling corporate office floor was remarkably dark, empty; I wasn't accustomed to seeing it after hours. Music, however, played faint and muffled from behind closed doors.
As I grudgingly forced my feet to start carrying me toward the sound, Val kept in stride beside me with that same penetrating look of her. It occurred to me I hadn't exactly gone the extra mile to look my best. I'd forgone shaving my facial hair, which had been fine in moderation but now hid my strong jaw. I didn't even style my curly hair for the occasion, and in the weeks past, had let it grow somewhat unruly. These things could only have been more noticeable now while contrasting my posh tuxedo, I realized.
"How do I look?" I asked for the fun of it, with a light smirk that let her know I knew that she was staring. After inspecting me a moment longer, she just sort of shrugged her shoulders in resignation.
"Doesn't really matter," she huffed, turning her head forward. "It's your party."
"Could have fooled me," I mumbled out loud as we approached the doors to my office, the volume of the music and laughter inside building with each step. She didn't find the remark amusing, instead stopping me at the doors and quickly smoothing away wrinkles in my tuxedo. Once finished, she gave my sleeve an encouraging tug.
"Go on inside," she said, motioning me. "Have some fun and go fraternize."
"You and I have very different definitions of fun," I sounded petulant even to my own ears. I thought I'd grumbled it under my breath until she glanced at me.
"Did you say something?"
"No, nothing at all," I fibbed, quickly slipping past her and pushing open the doors. The volume reached its peak the moment I stepped foot into my stately office, now transformed beyond recognition and evidently large enough to accommodate the entire guest list. The party was a mixed roar of cheeky laughter, tinkling martini glasses, and live jazz music. Smug, lofty men in monkey suits mingled with beautiful dames in low-cut dresses. I recognized almost no one in attendance, save for Kade and the other company executives chatting up their respective cliques.
I looked up at the enormous chandeliers hanging from the ridiculously high ceilings, the lavish furniture where my desk had been, and the caterers and waitresses serving flutes of champagne. The funds wasted on all of this extravagance probably could have fed an orphanage. Such charity would have been good for Briskomy's image if only I had cared enough to stop Kade from throwing company profits into these needless functions. I was starting to realize the more days I spent distracted or locked away in my penthouse, the more freedom I'd unwittingly given him to do as he pleased.
I sighed, and fiddled with my tie, and tried to look as though loitering near the door was a completely, absolutely dignified way to spend the evening. I normally had the stamina to fake smiles and socialize, but tonight I was in no condition for any of that. Assuming the role of an observer instead, I promptly noticed Rita some feet away, surrounded by a handful of doters laughing at her awful jokes. She wore a dress that no other in the room rivaled. Her hair—ever changing like night and day—was in an elegant updo, curling sections hanging loosely over the ears. It gave her an air of refinement, counteracting her otherwise flagrant ego.
"Oh, gentlemen, do go on!", I overhead her giggle, probably in reply to a flirtatious compliment. When her many suitors all shared in her contagious laughter, she suddenly went serious. "No, I'm serious, go on."
When that one-way conversation failed to hold my interest, I remembered the primary reason for my coming down in the first place and looked across the room toward the bar that was set up in the corner. There I spotted another familiar face, Sa'lu, sitting alone and nursing a brandy cocktail with a sullen look on her face. I watched her with maybe half of the interest I normally would until it hit me that her visit was likely a result of her many attempts to reach out to me gone ignored for the past month. Fortunately, she wasn't the kind of person to take that sort of thing personally, even if she was unaware of the specifics. I doubted she cared to hear about my crisis with Anna anymore than I cared to open up about it anyway.
I weaved through the crowd towards her, being quick about it so that I didn't have to stop for any tedious meet-and-greets. Fortunately, everyone seemed too intoxicated or caught up in their droll jabbering sessions to notice me passing through. This was one of the perks of arriving late to my own party, I realized. I knew well enough that even if the event was in my honor, that didn't make it about me; at the end of the day, these inane company mixers were just excuses for company shareholders and social climbers to drink my booze and eat my food.
Though the bar was mostly deserted, Sa'lu didn't immediately notice me enter her presence, her focus instead drawn to a waiter offering her a selection of appetizers. She gave the plate an unfavorable appraisal before waving the boy off, and even when she glanced up under long lashes to find me standing before her, her expression remained largely impassive. She simply took a swig from her glass as I moved to stand closer.
"Horderves are overcooked," the dragon master said by way of greeting, her voice barely a low hum over the band that was playing. She was hardly looking me in the eye.
I let the playful remark slide as she'd intended. "Don't seem to recall inviting you," I said bluntly, as if I didn't know why she was there.
"Your secretary invited members of the PLC to join in on the festivities," she explained, leaning herself back against the bar and crossing one leg over the other. "I generously decided to take a bullet for the team."
I smirked, and dropped into the empty stool beside her. "Well," I sighed, "at least I have someone to be unsociable with."
She heaved a dispassionate sigh of her own. "Yes, though I suppose that defeats the purpose, doesn't it?"
I elected to be silent as the bartender approached from behind the counter, serving me a glass from one of those meaningless, vintage bottles adorning the wall behind him. The odor of champagne filled my nostrils as he poured, and while I considered asking for a stronger substitute, I ultimately thought it wiser to start out slow. I strained a polite smile for as long as it took him to leave, earning a snark laugh from Sa'lu.
"Impressive," she noted with little heart, raising her glass to me in a mock toast. I drank from my own glass rather than indulge her by returning the gesture.
"Putting on smiles gets tiring, Sa'lu," I grunted when I came up for breath, looking across the room at all the phonies and showboaters. "Especially when your chief commercial officer insists on throwing a lavish party at the end of every quarter. People who spend their money on this kind of nonsense tend not to have it very long."
"You poor thing," she pouted, again pouring on the sarcasm. When I realized it wasn't unwarranted, I drew out a breath and found myself nodding.
"I know," I relented quietly. "I shouldn't be complaining, especially considering the circumstances. All of this is good for Briskomy's image." I took a solemn pause to stare into my glass. "I've just been... distracted."
"Is that why all my attempts to contact you have failed up until now?" she inquired, taking a half sip of her cocktail and barely masking the frustration on her face. As I'd suspected, her visit was strictly business. I summoned my smirk back into place and looked up towards her as though someone else was sitting in her place.
"Ah, so there's an ulterior motive for your presence tonight after all," I announced the obvious, lifting one brow. "Does this motive benefit me in some way, I wonder?"
"I wouldn't be wasting my time here if it didn't," she muttered back, becoming blunter and more to the point. "I need to be certain, however, that what I have to say won't fall on deaf ears."
I set my champagne down on the counter, rotated in my seat to face her, and folded my hands patiently in my lap. She correctly took my silence as an invitation to share whatever was so damned important and leaned in towards me. Her eyes cautiously flicked left and right before the words finally left her lips.
"What if told you we could have the Shadow Dragon within our clutches in just a few weeks' time?"
My brows shot up until it felt like they touched my hairline. By the time the words fully registered as absurd, however, I laughed them off. "I would say you've had one too many drinks."
She shrugged a shoulder, as though she'd anticipated the slight. "I don't malign your skepticism. I'm still struggling to fully believe it myself. But it's happening."
I wrinkled my nose at her words. I needed stronger liquor to even entertain the nonsense she was spouting, so I waved the bartender over and ordered a shot of saké before I bothered looking back at her to reply. "The next Shadow Moon is still years away, Sa'lu."
She smirked vaguely at my perfectly valid point, as if smirking somehow negated it, and brushed long flowing hair out of her eyes. "It is, yes."
I bit back a snarl, unsatisfied with the evasive reply and sensing she was toying with me for her own amusement. I downed the shot in front of me and slammed down the glass, and muttered in her direction, "I hope you're going to be arriving at a point sometime soon."
She scanned around the room again before answering. "I can't get into all the details, not now and certainly not here," she explained, using a hushed tone. "Let's just say I have... an acquaintance who knows of an alternative method." Her eyes slid back to me. "And we can't attempt it without help."
I drew my brows together. "What kind of help?"
"The armed and battle-ready kind."
I produced a chuckle, now certain she was tipsy, and a little jealous that I wasn't at her level. Regardless, I indulged her. "There's going to be a battle now, is there?"
"That depends on you," she replied, again smirking as she took a small, measured sip from her glass. She wasn't actually intoxicated, it seemed, though I didn't let that belie my continuing amusement at the outlandish prospects floating through her mind. She was trying very hard to pretend like she wasn't insulting my intelligence.
"What, dare I ask, is the estimated scope of this battle?" I inquired on a sigh, deciding I wanted to be humored some more. It was a welcome change from being so grouchy and tired.
"The Dragon Holy Lands," she murmured over the rim of her glass, easily and without hesitation. "Perhaps even the entirety of Mount Silver."
I met her eyes, the solemnity in them suggesting her words hadn't been made in jest. It was slowly dawning on me that she was, in fact, very much serious. This wasn't just some unfledged idea she was bouncing off of me for fun; this was an invitation to a plot already mapped to completion. Her desire to draw out Giratina evidently ran as deep as mine and, apparently, she was willing to take shortcuts to satisfy it.
The shortcut in question, however, was Torino. I would have been a fool not to recognize it, even with two shots of alcohol dulling my senses.
"It's a risky operation, I don't deny it," she spoke up after failing to detect any enthusiasm in my face. "One that could cost us dearly."
"One that could cost me dearly," I corrected readily. When she rose offended brows at me, I stood my ground. "You're asking me to send my men into a war you're not prepared to win."
She frowned and gently swirled her glass, seeming to contemplate the accusation for a moment. "From my perspective, the potential reward far outweighs the potential cost."
The flimsy rationalization had me shaking my head. "Of course you would see it like that," I blew out in a winded, if not agitated, breath. "Unlike you, I don't gamble though."
She laughed, a small, almost fake sound. "Every move is a gamble, Metsuma. You gambled when you chose me as an ally. That all worked out well, didn't it?"
"Hard to say," I answered with an honest shrug. "Here you are, trying to pull me into a needless war that could jeopardize all my meticulous planning." She was still watching me expectantly as if I might change my mind on a whim. I shook my head, letting her know she might as well be waiting for hell to freeze over. "To be a gambler, anyone can manage," I stated coolly. "But to be a smart gambler, I've found, takes more than just luck. You may not want to hear this, but I don't take chances anymore, Sa'lu."
She glared at me and arched her neck, and I had the uneasy feeling I was looking at a serpent ready to strike. "Have you so easily forgotten all the chances I've taken to help you?" she reminded, which I regretted not seeing coming. "More than once I put my own subordinates on the line to ensure you got your way. I had my G-men storm Calypso's warehouse when you needed him to cooperate, if you'll recall. I also had them capture Cayman for you before he could supply your secrets to the International Police."
"I haven't forgotten," I muttered, quieting my voice out of respect for the subject matter and hoping she might follow my example. "But there's a correct way to do this. I have to stand by it."
She tilted her head sideways at me, unwilling to trust my reasoning. "Might I ask what this correct way is?"
"You might," I said simply, shutting down the conversation in its crib. Sleepless nights were making me crabbier than usual, it seemed, yet even that didn't invalidate my decision to keep her nose out of my personal business.
She didn't appear satisfied with the answer, indicated as much by her glare. I didn't much care. I saw no point in explaining my intent to simply wait for the next Black Moon; she would end up wasting both her breath and my time trying to sway me from what I saw as the safest and most guaranteed option. Patience was one of my better virtues and I wasn't about to betray that. Darukai, for all his miscalculations, had coached me better than to succumb to rashness and undo the progress I'd made in refining my ways.
Surprisingly, she put up no further argument, nor did she pose any further inquiries. She finished her cocktail without a word, set the empty glass down behind her, and gave a resigned huff. "I can't force you to change your mind," she said, getting up from her bar stool. "But my offer still stands. I do hope you'll sleep on it."
"I'll try," I said, if only to appease her. I probably might have meant it too if I were even capable of her suggestion anymore.
She left the bar without another word. I relished the half second of peace that followed before a pair of hands seized my arm from behind. I took a second too long looking for an escape route, and by then I was already being spun around my chair.
"Metsuma, there you are!" It was Kade that was trying to tear me away from my seat, an effort which I promptly cooperated with when I saw he had company and decided it wasn't in my best interest to look like the schmuck drinking alone at the bar. I straightened my posture and I smiled cordially at the stuffy-looking socialite beside my number two; his face, angular and ruddy, was just one more in the bunch I couldn't even begin to recognize.
"I'd like you to meet Yancy Vanderley, a bureaucrat in the National Diet and an old friend of my family's," Kade introduced, and I followed this by extending my hand in greeting towards the newcomer.
"Charmed," the bureaucrat said, shaking my hand with only a trace of a grin on his sharp, skinny face. "I've been watching your company prosper with a close eye these past months. I regulate all business influence in the government."
"Suppresses it, is more accurate," Kade murmured into his drink, not even quietly. This earned a narrowed glance from Vanderley, but he swiftly shifted his focus back to me upon deciding Kade wasn't worth his time. The tension between the two of them wasn't difficult to notice, and I'd only been in their company less than a minute.
"You might say I'm something of a political rival to your suck-up here," Vanderley explained to me. I was about to finally get a word in when Kade, thankfully, spared me the trouble by busting out laughing at the statement.
"'Rival'?" he exclaimed. "That's a bit generous, wouldn't you say?"
Again he ignored Kade in favor of me. "Where corporate slogging is concerned, your track record thus far is impressive, Mr. Rocket. You must be so proud of your achievements as chairman."
The sarcasm wasn't lost on me. I retained a healthy, steadfast smile though. Even where slights were concerned, appearances still mattered. Despite this, I plucked a flute of champagne from one of the passing caterers and took a deep gulp, once again wishing I was hitting something harder as he launched into a sarcastic rant about Briskomy's successes and my role spearheading them.
"Better it is you leading Briskomy than Sorhagen, I suppose," he remarked afterward, indicating Kade with a hitchhiking thumb gesture. "Not so many in the Diet would feel all that comfortable having a big-shot, company moneybags holding an elected position in our carefully structured government."
With that barely passive insult, the rivalry in front of me now made a touch more sense; it was purely political. Kade's government ties evidently didn't sit well with anti-corporation purists like Vanderley, and this was Kade's way of showcasing Briskomy's troublesome opposition in the senate. I knew I'd have to thank him later for so kindly throwing me in the middle of the crossfire.
Kade vouchsafed a tight smile against the other man's relentless put-downs. "Your prejudice against big business is concerning," he feigned melancholy, pulling out all the stops to defend his mantle. "I hope you don't feel threatened by me, Yancy. Besides, there's no law forbidding an elected official such as myself from holding a corporate position outside of my political service. And by the way, I'm enjoying a very distinguished career on both fronts."
Yancy returned the smarmy look aimed at him, finally taking Kade's bait. "Your family name and influence can only get you so far," he sniffed. "The Diet has no room for greedy, corrupt politicians who only serve their own agendas. When your term expires, your agenda will follow."
"You'd be surprised," Kade said confidently with a simple smirk and a shrug. "Briskomy is a profitable company now. The Diet is more than welcome to some of that profit, assuming I can secure a platform for Briskomy and full representation along with it."
The bureaucrat came close to sneering, under the guise of a politely incredulous smile. "Do I smell a scandal in the works? How curious. Last I checked, Briskomy was a business, not a special interest group to your administration."
"I don't see why it can't be both," Kade challenged innocently. That threat was a bold one, hardly something Vanderley could let stand. I could see the alarm flicker through his face.
Rather than give voice to that alarm, Yancy straightened and waved his hand around as if to dispel Kade's statement. "It doesn't take a Mankey to figure out business and politics don't mix. Unless, of course, you're lobbying for some pro-enterprise agenda? Honestly, you're wasting everyone's time, including your own."
"The FEO might think otherwise," Kade countered, even though I wasn't precisely sure what he was going off about anymore. "I will represent Briskomy's interests. That was my pledge when I was elected to the cabinet and I intend to follow through with it, at all costs. More importantly, I can guarantee Briskomy's contribution to our nation's prosperity." He gestured at me, and continued, to Yancy, "I'll even make Prime Minister Shivu wet his pants once he sees what my friend here is capable of."
I wasn't sure what that meant, or why he'd indicated me while saying it, but I simply nodded when I found I was too fatigued from just listening to push the conversation any further than necessary. Politics weren't my forte.
Vanderley scowled at the both of us. "Best of luck with that," he said, cold and pronounced, before turning away in retreat and disappearing into the mass of milling bodies.
Once he was gone, I glanced inquisitively at Kade, who was sporting a triumphant grin. "The FEO?"
"Federation of the Economic Organizations," he clarified, meeting my gaze through his sunglasses. "It's what's going to allow Briskomy a voice in the government after I've pulled all the necessary strings. Though, to Yancy's credit, the Federation is not very well respected among the Diet's purist parties, particularly the Pokémon League."
The information struck me as odd, and I accordingly pointed out, "Clint never showed any resentment towards Briskomy."
"Because Clint was a kiss-up," he laughed, swirling his martini glass. "He didn't want enemies so he had to be everyone's friend. The rest of his kind, however, aren't so fond of us. They're too suspicious of us for their own good."
"I've noticed," I muttered, the reality not lost on me. Since Daken's death, I'd made it a prerogative that Briskomy's merchandise and services be marketed at the Pokémon Training Community. Though the strategy worked wonders through trainers competing in the league, it clearly wasn't winning any approvals from the ones sitting at the top. It was no wonder no one in the committee besides Sa'lu had even bothered attending tonight.
"It's very rare for the FEO to give businesses a voice in the government," Kade yammered on, much to my dwindling concern for the subject. "I think we stand a chance though. I've worked miracles before."
"I have every confidence in you, Kade," I said, if just to say something, my mind more elsewhere than in the present. He didn't fail to notice though.
"You don't have to feign interest," he reprimanded, and I waved at the statement when I found I didn't have the time or patience for him.
"I've just got a lot to mull over," I explained without really explaining. He took stock of my champagne flute and indicated it.
"Well wash it away with another drink or something." He reached for my sleeve, intent on dragging me all over the room and showing me off like some kind of trophy. "There's a few of Yancy's colleagues you simply must meet. We can ruffle a few more feathers while we're at it."
"I think you can accomplish that without me," I said, dislodging his hand from the cuff of my tux. I simply didn't have it in me to work the room like he wanted me to, not while more pressing matters occupied my thoughts.
Naturally, he waved off my efforts to send him away. "Would it really kill you to socialize a little?"
"I just…" I looked around desperately, for an escape, feeling trapped by all the noise and people pressing in around me. When I spotted the door leading to the balcony outside, I started towards it, leaving a bemused Kade with simply, "I just need some air, is all."
I beelined through the clusters aristocrats and plutocrats, stealthily ghosting a path between those with their backs turned so that I wouldn't be noticed. I ducked my head as I passed in front of the band and grabbed another champagne flute as I approached the balcony entrance. I was going to need several more before the night was over and done.
I slid apart the glass doors separating me from my safe zone, and upon stepping outdoors, I nearly gasped out. The music behind me lingered until I shut the doors and dragged myself across the terrace to the low stone rail overlooking Fuschia City. The peace was nice, barring the usual urban buzz below. I did feel just a little foolish for fleeing from my own guests, but at the same time, I realized my absence was likely to go unnoticed anyway. I wasn't concerned either way. What I needed was rest, but since that wasn't an option anymore, solitude was the next best thing.
The moon was barely a sliver in the sky and the wind from the southern coast was warm, and slightly wet, promising rain. It was on nights like this my mind rewound, reeling backward to that stormy day at the lighthouse when Anna had viciously cursed me out. It'd been nearly a month now since I stopped her from jumping to her death, and in the days since, I routinely felt regret nagging at me. In truth, that day was all I could dwell on anymore. I couldn't focus on Briskomy. I couldn't focus on Sa'lu or her foolhardy schemes. I couldn't even think about my nightmares or what they signified.
I could only think of her. Just her.
Whenever she appeared in the landscape of my mind, it was just as I'd found her at the lighthouse: broken, unraveling, pregnant with a byproduct of a passionate relationship I'd stupidly thought sustainable. She was more than just a liability now, she was my responsibility. She knew all my secrets—an error that was irreversible. I couldn't talk her down, not anymore, not while she loathed me with every fiber of her being. I couldn't reason with her or negotiate with her. I couldn't control her. None of those old tricks would work anymore, and even if by some miracle they did, I knew it wouldn't be permanent. The only reason she was spiraling now was because of how much toxic emotion she'd kept bottled inside for so long.
She'd said I was lost. She'd called me scum. She'd blamed me for Peer, for her pain, for everything. Every day since, those words perpetually bounced around in my ears, disrupting every quiet, like haunting echoes. Whenever I recounted those unnerving accusations she'd leveled at me, I spoke little and drank much. I hated myself for it. I'd always regarded drinking as a vice for the weak-willed, yet somehow Anna drove me right to the bottle. She truly did bring out the worst in me—the human in me. I just wanted it to stop.
In wrestling with these thoughts, I made quick work of draining the rest of my glass like the hypocrite I was. Even now Anna was the center of all my focus when said focus was needed back inside, among my patrons, camouflaging and building my image; instead, I was sulking and tired and shutting myself off. She was taking me down with her without even knowing it, I realized. And it all traced back to my stupid decision to get involved with her again. In those eight months of not speaking to her, I'd been more productive and focused than ever before. I foolishly set it all aside for her and now I was reaping it. Even though we hadn't spoken since that day in the lighthouse, I knew I couldn't just go on normally as I had following Peer's death. I couldn't simply ignore what an unprecedented mess she'd become. I couldn't ignore that she was nine months pregnant with our boy. I couldn't ignore the daunting reality that she could spill all my secrets on a whim.
I took another swig as these ghastly prospects flooded me, leaning forward with one hand resting on the railing. The city below gleamed in the night, lights in windows and on rooftops illuminating the sky, blotting out the stars overhead. A Jigglypuff sang lullabies somewhere in the distance, and I sighed, wishing it were closer. I took a final mouthful of champagne, letting the last of it wash over my tongue for a moment before swallowing it down. The music and laughter swelled behind me, without me.
This was a mistake. Briskomy and success didn't matter when all the rest was stripped away. Torno didn't matter. The end game didn't matter. This was my mindset now, and as much as I wanted to break free of it, I was powerless to do so. Because of her.
I tossed the champagne glass to the concrete when I heard the doors slide open behind me, the music from the band pouring into the night air. I glanced over my shoulder with middling interest. Kade already had his arms folded, as was his pose rife with sass, but his mouth was set in amusement as he stared me down from the balcony entrance. I turned forward again, and I heard him shut the doors, effectively muffling the merriment inside. His approaching footsteps followed suit.
"Alright," he sighed, coming to stand next to me. "You've successfully spirited me away from an otherwise fun evening. What is it that needs to be discussed so privately?"
I paid him little mind and leaned forward, resting my forearms on the railing. "Nothing, Kade. I just needed some air."
"Oh." He actually sounded astonished and took a shrugging pause. "I just assumed that was one of your inconspicuous ways of pulling me aside so that we could discuss top-secret information."
Though I wished that were the case, I slowly shook my head. "Not this time, no"
He looked me up and down. The sweep of his eyes behind those sunglasses was subtle enough, but I felt pierced through, as though he was looking at something obvious about me I wasn't already aware of. "You're troubled," he guessed, accurately, though it wasn't exactly something I'd gone to great lengths to hide. "Well seeing as how I've already gone to the trouble of following you out here, you may as well—"
"It's not something that would concern nor interest you," I declined halfway through his offer, even though the words lacked my usual firmness. I couldn't say I was determined to hold my tongue in front of him. That crucial ability meant less and less to me, much like all the rest, through so many sleepless nights and despairing memories.
A soft, musical giggle escaped his throat. "Something juicy about you that I don't already know not interesting me? It's like you hardly knew me at all, Metsuma! I live for gossip and dirty little secrets!" He leaned into the rail beside me as he continued to make his case. "Besides, I have yet to forsake your confidence."
I glanced at him, reading his expression for any betrayal of his words. His shades hid his eyes well enough, so I focused using my Aura, combing for any erratic tremors or heartbeats. When I detected nothing of the like, I set my eyes forward again. After a few quiet beats, I muttered into the brisk, night air, "You remember Anna."
"Ah, yes," he eagerly, snarkily recalled. "The foulmouthed tootsie you were cheating on Maria with."
I frowned at him. "She's gone off the deep end," I confessed, looking to him for reaction or some sign of judgment.
He just tossed a smile up at me. "Sounds like your type."
I shook my head. "You don't understand," I said, narrowing my eyes. "She knows all my secrets."
"Well that's hardly news," he clucked in humor, not even the slightest bit concerned as he suckled from of his martini glass. "As I recall, though, you assured Rita and I she wouldn't pose any problems."
I took a deep, laborious breath but couldn't manage to expel more than that. Here I was with rattled nerves and him utterly calm to it. The irony was so blatant as to be almost laughable. I tried to speak, but my throat was dry and all that came out was a croak. He couldn't possibly understand my position. He'd never been in it.
He eyed me prudently when I didn't speak up. "You told us you had her under control," he said, the same words as before but paraphrased and a touch more serious.
"Things have changed since then," I explained, wetting my lips as the rest started to bubble to the surface. "The last time I spoke to her, she flat out told me she hated me, that wished she could take everything back."
He made a clicking sound with his tongue and turned his head forward. "Ouch," was his less-than-reassuring response. It didn't give me much to ponder, and I leaned away from the balustrade and straightened my back to take in the city lights from a different angle.
"For the longest time, I thought I could trust her," I mused out loud, more for me than for him, as if retreading my steps somehow could have helped. "Then, something happened between us... I won't go into the details. And now I'm not sure where, or even if, she fits into my life anymore." I gently brought a fist down on the rail, and still, it felt brittle beneath all my focused frustration. "Even with all the good that's happened these past several months, she's the one loose end that hasn't corrected itself."
He turned his head to look where my fist had landed, then to my face. "Loose ends tend not to be good for business, Metsuma," he remarked over the rim of his glass, and I detected a note of disappointment in his tone. He was the last person I wanted lecturing me.
"I'm aware," I grumbled, curling both hands around the stone, my knuckles going white. I was just one fit away from pulling down the entire balcony with my mind, brick by brick. I had to fight off the urge, keep reminding myself it was the fatigue getting to me again. I glanced toward Kade, who just stood peacefully as he was, staring down at Fuchsia's vast arteries stretching all the way to Route 19's coastal road.
"Have I ever told you the story of how I secured my father's position in the government?" he asked absentmindedly after some silence, gaze still sweeping over everything below.
"You mentioned it once," I acknowledged, and he hummed, twirling his cocktail in the crook of his hand.
"But did I ever tell you the full version?"
"No," I huffed. "Why? Am I about to hear it?"
His gaze had wandered skyward, and I followed it to the clouds moving to cover the constellations above. He was dwelling on events past, much as I was minutes before he arrived. "My father was a councilman with a broad, progressive vision," he began his tale, and I mustered the focal will to listen. "He always played by the books. This was before he moved our family out of Kalos, of course." Exhaling with either hesitation to continue or relief that he was getting the past off his chest, he pressed on, "Well one day a better position with better money came along, and we found ourselves drawn into a different political body, one so piddling it would have been foolish not to exploit."
"The Diet," I assessed without difficulty. It was no secret Kanto and Johto survived politically on an otherwise lax government. Even the Pokémon League wasn't exempt from this, given how far and effortlessly Sa'lu had slithered her way to the top. Kade's rise to power within his own political branch had been similar to hers, although up until now, he'd always been rather mum about it.
"My father learned to use his influence unsparingly to get what he wanted," Kade went on, flashing a wolfish smile. "Lying, cheating, scheming—these became the new tools of his trade. He taught me that trade in return when I was old enough, even as I began to take my first steps into the corporate world. The family legacy had always been his number one priority, and as his only son, it became mine as well."
I frowned involuntarily, relating on some level. My own biological father had always been adamant about furthering the Kyen legacy and reputation—right up until the day I killed him. Even Wade had sought to immortalize himself through his research, despite his best efforts to hide the fact. He'd only adopted me to groom me for his prophetic experiment—until a better alternative came along in the form of someone I'd falsely named 'best friend'.
"It was one thing being born into wealth and power," he continued over my line of thought, and I cleared my head to listen. "It was another trying to use it to further my career, which I successfully did under my father's tutelage. He was grooming me, you see, to be his successor. And I didn't particularly mind. I was never closer to my father than when he was molding me in the art of dirty politics. He taught me every trick in his book: how to sway minds with words, how to win smiles and favors, how to outmaneuver stubborn, soft-principled political opponents and how to make allies of the tougher, more profitable ones. And whenever the stronger opponents didn't bend, he trained me in the craft of blackmail."
"Sounds like quite a man," I noted, genuinely impressed. He bobbed his head up and down, gaze still drifting with the clouds.
"He was indeed, make no mistake," he chuckled, before slipping into a more pensive state that not even his shades could fully mask. "There was one essential talent of his, however, that I never fully mastered: the poker face. According to him, it was always my one tell, therefore my one weakness. 'Your eyes betray everything you say', he'd scold me. 'They give away the game. Your opponents will exploit it, the masses will eat you alive'."
He went quiet, perching his martini glass on the rail and slowly removing the cheap, plastic frames covering his eyes. He turned them about in his fingers, pawing at them, much like someone might hold a sentimental heirloom.
Rather than speak in regards to his actions, he carried on with his story as if he'd never stopped. "I often shrugged it off his words, perhaps out of my own pride, and continued to climb the latter both politically and in the business world using the skill set taught to me. Of course, that all changed when my father learned about Isaac."
"Isaac?" I parroted the name, to which he nodded.
"He was my..." His mouth froze, splitting into a smile that was actually earnest and unlike him. I could have sworn I saw him blush. "Let's just say he was a very close associate of mine." I understood well enough once he said that. "At the time, for him to be anything else was... frowned upon."
"I see," I reaffirmed, nodding.
"We'd met at university," he recounted with a dreamy gaze, "and managed to keep our liaisons discreet for as long as possible. When my father eventually found out, he was furious. He threatened to disinherit me, disown me, and publicly slander me so that I could neither run for government election or secure a respectable standing in the industry."
Again I found myself able to relate. Raile had threatened to disinherit me, to ship me off to an insane asylum, to isolate me from the family and take away my future. It seemed like I was going through this again with Anna, to a certain extent. Though she had not explicitly threatened to expose my plans to the world, the likelihood grew with each day that passed, with each moment her hatred for me boiled hotter.
"He was holding my future hostage," Kade declared, as if gleaning into my thoughts. "He was using his own dirty tricks against me—his own son, his legacy." He chuckled as if to himself, tapping his prized shades gently against his jaw. "He'd taught me better than to admit defeat though, so I resolved to give him a taste of his own medicine. You see, my father was seeking reelection as government commissioner at the time. And through a rather inconvenient anonymous tip, his rival candidate caught wind that he was sleeping around with his secretary behind my mother's back."
"Your doing," I surmised, which drew a silent nod from him as he again fixated on the array of city lights beneath us.
"He threatened to make light of this information unless my father dropped out of the election and resigned," he expounded.
"Did he?"
"Of course not," he laughed, short and hard. "My father was far too proud for his own good, more so than I, even with his career caught in the shadow of scandal and disrepute. More importantly, he pieced together that I was the one responsible for his damaging secrets falling into rival hands. And he wasn't prepared to lose without taking me down with him."
He fell short of words again, perhaps sorting through his memories, and I bored into the side of his face in unspoken fascination. It was one thing to listen to him babble endlessly, but him opening up like this was something new entirely. He was sharing a very vulnerable, personal side to him and I wasn't sure to whose benefit it was for anymore.
Before I could invite him to continue, he was already back at it. "I urged my father to cooperate, to play his cards wisely and not allow either of our sordid secrets to hang over our family like a curse. He didn't listen." He looked down at his shades again with a huff. "It was then I realized that a man with too much pride and not enough shame is a man who can't be bought, blackmailed, or even reasoned with. I'd outgrown him." His eyes—twin bright blue pools of brimming emotion—flicked up to me and it was easy to see in them what his father had. "Curious, isn't it, how we only think highly of our teachers until they have nothing more to offer us?"
It was a fact I knew all too well, and while I could have shared stories of my own to that extent, I was more invested in his tale. I asked, "What did you do?"
His jaw muscles tightened, but when he replied, his voice was measured. "I did exactly what needed to be done," he said. "He was a liability, Metsuma. He was going to ruin my career, my reputation, my very future—and he needed to be dealt with."
I nodded, pretending like it was equally obvious to me.
"We were on our annual hunting trip in the mountains, just the two of us." With a look of disgust, he added, "He must have thought it would make me more manly, more robust." He shook it off, continuing, "We came upon a pasture of Tauros. And Tauros, as you know, are easy to agitate in the wild. He'd meant for us to creep around them and forage the woods beyond for a better target." He was cut off by a lump in his throat, but he swallowed and digressed anyway. "Tragically, we never made it to the woods."
I narrowed my eyes, comprehending, but fascinated all the same.
"We walked a few yards up the field before I worked up my courage," he said, softly. Too soft I almost did not hear him. "I stopped him in his tracks, pulled him aside. I politely asked him one last time to reconsider his position so that our family legacy could survive." I caught a slight tremor in his voice as he recounted this. Many thoughts seemed to flash across his mind. After some moments, he pressed on, "He looked at me, long and quiet, a look I can still see every time I close my eyes. He surely must have realized it was neither the time nor place for such talk. He must have known something was amiss. He was so intuitive like that, my father. But it wasn't the sweat pouring down my face as I clenched the shotgun that gave the game away. No, no, that was something that could have easily been chalked up to the sun beating down on us."
I was now very intrigued. "What, then?"
He gazed down at his shades once more, mocha fingers brushing quietly over the plastic as if polishing a trophy. "It was this very pair of sunglasses I was wearing over my eyes that rendered him silent," he confided. "I was not wearing them to deflect the sun, despite my best efforts to pretend otherwise. He knew that as well as I did." A frown. "He… tore the shades right off my nose, and thereupon gazed into my treacherous eyes… and saw the game, plain and naked."
Another pause, but even as I understood where the story was going, he didn't stop. "I didn't give him long to absorb the situation," he murmured. "I wanted it done with. I made sure to look away when I drove the bullet through his leg."
I tensed completely for a moment, and it wasn't because of the graphic image that came to mind; it was the fact that he wasn't lying. He'd murdered his own father, and while I was no stranger to the concept, it made me consider who I once was versus who I was now. As Daruka, I'd killed Raile to protect my interests, yet I couldn't bring myself do the same now. In fact, I was utterly paralyzed to do anything about Anna. I was weaker now than ever before.
"The gunfire, as you'd expect, spooked the nearby Tauros," he went on, bringing me back to focus. "They came charging, and I left my father as he was, thrashing and screaming and bleeding on the glade." As if in answer to my unspoken question, he concluded, "He was trampled and gored beyond recognition, so much so that by the time the paramedics recovered his body, there was no gunshot wound to be found." He arched his head as began wiping down his sunglasses with the hem of his waistcoat. "I made certain to wear these when the authorities questioned me about his death. My eyes didn't betray me that time, nor any time after. I've seldom taken them off since that incident. It was that decision, you see, that put me a tier above my father and shaped who I am."
Watching him slide the lenses back in their proper place, I bit my lip to keep from smirking. "I never took you for the violent type. You always talk about not wanting to dirty your hands."
When he lifted his head, the moonlight made his afro into a halo. He regarded me as if suddenly remembering I was with him and smiled deeply from under those symbolic shades I'd long judged as silly. "As you once told me, we go to extremes when we're backed into corners."
I validated the memory with a nod, then quirked a brow at him. "And Isaac?"
There was a pause, and he shrugged his shoulders. "He wasn't career material," he lamented simply, with a smirk beholden to fond times. He fleetingly shook away the daze though. "Besides, even if things had turned out differently and my father had somehow won his election, he would have held Isaac over me for the rest of his days. And I wasn't going to live on his terms. He was my father, yes, but he was a problem and a victim of his own making. He knew his career was going to crumble and I saved him from that humiliation. I put him out of his misery, if anything. I saved the family legacy, just like he wanted." He took his glass and brought it to his lips, chuckling into it, "I even used the public sentiment from his tragic, untimely demise to run for his vacant seat in the government."
"And you won," I stated more than asked. It would have been a stupid question.
"Unopposed," he gloatingly confirmed, tilting his head back and downing the last of his drink. I couldn't deny I thought more highly of him now than before. Even for a functioning alcoholic, he was ambitious and driven and a survivor in his own right. I suspected he might even outlast me if I didn't get my own act together.
What it came down too, ultimately, was my own survival versus my relationship with Anna. They could not coincide, and unfortunately, the latter of the two had never felt more like a lost cause than now.
I was so caught up in my wondering that Kade's voice startled me. "Sacrifices, Metsuma," he sighed. "They're rarely easy, but almost always necessary, no matter how horrifying or unseemly. When a blood sucking leech sinks its teeth into you, you simply rip it off quick and be done with it. The pain is irrelevant."
I said nothing, but I knew he was right. I knew I had to choose, and that once I chose, I would have to act accordingly. I just didn't want to know what that looked like. I didn't want to think of Anna as a leech. I wanted to stay in denial all the way till a reckoning came. I was weak, pathetic.
Beside me, Kade made a failed attempt to suppress a giggle, covering his mouth with his hand. "Listen to me giving advice to my own superior. What a delightfully cosmic twist!" He nudged me with his elbow, whispering, "If someone caught us right now, I dare say they might mistake us for each other."
I smirked feebly. "You're the one who just opened up about some very telling, even incriminating information"
He gave me an assessing look, as if silently wondering what I would do with said information, then just as quickly laughed it off. "You wouldn't tell a soul. You need me. Besides, that memory isn't a burden for me to bear. It's a reminder of how far I've come."
"Good," I commended. "It's important to have that."
He shrugged. "Still, for a son to have to put down his own father out of self-preservation," he dwelt out loud, the scenario hitting a few familiar chords with me. "I don't imagine you would understand."
I smiled wider. He had no idea.
After a few seconds of comfortable silence, I piped up, "I can imagine."
He patted me daintily on the shoulder. "Fortunately for you, Anna is not my father."
I could've laughed if the situation wasn't so daunting. "You're right," I murmured, leaning more heavily against the balustrade. "She's worse." I turned my head to him, making no effort to filter myself. "Did I happen to mention she's pregnant with my child?"
He pulled down his shades an inch and gawked at me a second. When I offered no reaction to trade, he rolled his eyes dismissively on the assumption I was joking. "Oh, you cruel, cruel man," he heaved, with a return to his typical carefree manner. "Now you're just mocking me. Just because you can seamlessly pull off a poker face doesn't make you extraordinary, you know."
"I know," I sighed, playing along with his skewed inference. "You're right. You caught me."
He waved off the distraction to continue his earlier thought. "The point is, if I hadn't done what I did, I probably wouldn't be standing here with you now. I took responsibility for my future, for my own survival." Curiosity filled his expression, and he aligned his body with his face in regarding me expectantly. "Are you prepared to take that same responsibility, I wonder, for Briskomy's future?"
"If it comes to it," I said, hoping it would be enough to let his poorly veiled worries slide. He'd already pestered me before about the threat in Orre, but this was a more personal matter. His mouth moved like he was going to say something more, but he stayed quiet. I sighed. "Go ahead, speak some more truth to me."
"It hurts my tongue to confess it..." he began, with a hesitance to finish the thought "...but without you, this company would surely be lost. It's a simple fact. Are you really willing to gamble it all for an unstable woman with a dangerously loud mouth?"
"I could ask you the same about Rita," I joked, trying to veer the conversation to safer waters. He clasped both hands over his heart in a melodramatic pose.
"Oh my, kitty can scratch," he teased, making a clawing gesture in my direction. When I didn't laugh, he pushed away from the balustrade and turned back towards the party with a mischievous smirk. "I'd better get back to entertaining your guests. Don't let the leech bite down for too long, Metsuma."
He'd spoken the metaphor so casually, I nearly missed it. I didn't deem it worthy of a reply though. I remained at my post, opting to be alone with my thoughts a little longer. I was about to take in the sights again when I spotted Kade stop suddenly at the door and then immediately pull back towards me.
"Oh, I nearly forgot," he snickered, the promise of good news coloring his tone. "This may cheer you up."
The odds of that were slim, but even so, I waited patiently to hear him out.
He shrunk his voice down to a whisper, even with all the noise behind him. "You'll recall you once tasked me with unraveling the identity of the man who supposedly sent Eden to Unova." I nodded, but he took the time to specify further, "The one she claimed to my former confidante was her father."
"What of it?" It was only a low growl, though not necessarily directed at him. I could only juggle so much information in my overtired mind at a given time.
"Well," he dawdled, "I reached out to Arlon and the Creedo Five regarding these reports and they claim to know nothing of the sort."
I blinked at him. "Which part of this is supposed to cheer me up?"
Despite my shortage of enthusiasm, he still looked quite pleased with himself. "I inquired about Rasmus too," he uttered, leaning in conspiratorially.
"Rasmus," I repeated the name back, tasting it in my mouth. It rang a bell, just as it had the last time we'd discussed it, but I still couldn't put a face to it.
"The mysteriously missing member of the Acolytes Guild," he reminded me of what didn't need reminding. "The same guild responsible for the Giant Pokémon, not to mention that alleged dimensional rift canon."
"And?" I demanded, aching for new information in favor of the same old bullet points. His smile deepened, and even though he thought he was keeping me in suspense, I really could have just as easily fallen asleep waiting for him.
"Arlon is open to sharing what he knows," he said finally, voice low, "but only so as long as we contribute to undermining Eden's rule and ensuring she never returns home."
It took me a moment for me to remember that I'd already dispatched Azrael to Orre to resolve the problem in question. I found it amusing too; Arlon didn't have to trouble himself negotiating with us when Eden's demise was already a priority of mine. He thought he had leverage when, in truth, it was me doing him and his corrupt sycophants a favor.
"No need to worry though," Kade dismissed the thoughtful look on my face, mistaking it for concern. "I've already taken the appropriate measures."
"Have you?" I humored him, letting him feel like he accomplished something.
"You once told me that without her advisers, Eden would unravel, didn't you?" He smirked one last smirk rather than finish the implication, and started back towards the door. "In the meantime, I'll keep prying Arlon for whatever juicy whispers I can get out of him."
I just nodded, and once he stepped back inside to rejoin the festivities, I rested myself against the balustrade without further intrusion. "I'm sending you my regards, Ms. Fabula," I whispered with a thick throat. "At least you'll be one less complication to rob me of a good night's sleep."
…...
Saar Luca's long, slender fingers spidered along the base of Noivern's bulbous ear, locating the itch and scratching away. The Pokémon in his lap was thrumming with deep, contented purrs. It flapped its tiny, bat-like wings and turned its head up in pleasure as the gloved fingers traced a path under its chin. Luca chuckled.
"You're daddy's little treasure, aren't you?"
"Noi, Noi!" the Pokémon squealed from the affection, and Luca was again fraught with laughter. Even though the Black Vise was in shambles, he at least had his prized pet back in his possession. Eden had returned Noibat to him after he'd agreed to travel to the Realgam Outpost to negotiate a truce with the other Saars. The diplomatic mission proved to be a resounding success, thankfully, and now he was returning to Agate to deliver the good news. He wondered if Eden might reward him for his service. Thus far his track record converting many of Orre's elite to the new order was spotless, and he hoped it finally went recognized.
Before he could root out the next itch lurking underneath Noibat's fur, the litter beneath him dropped to the rough terrain and he bounced roughly in his seat. The thud threw open the shutters beside him and the hot, morning sun caught his face, making him wince and raise his hand to swat away the intrusive rays. He delicately set Noibat aside and stood up, muttering curses under his breath.
He poked his head out the side of the box to find that the Aura Adepts escorting him were standing about, gazing across the sandy flatlands. "Why have we stopped?" he demanded.
"Sandstorm incoming," one of them said, pointing. Luca looked in the indicated direction and squinted over the horizon. He'd lived in Orre's arid climates long enough to recognize a sandstorm, but what he saw approaching was not a sandstorm, at least not an ordinary one. The undulating sea of desert seemed to have risen up like a wall and was now blowing towards them as if targeting them specifically.
This wasn't the work of nature. While he didn't consider himself the most learned man, he was smart enough to know when foul play was afoot.
The mountain of dust and sand ate up the distance between them in a matter of moments, catching up the all dancing debris in its path and casting a thick shadow over the former slaver and his escorts. He noticed the Adepts all closing their eyes in focus, inexplicably calm in the face of the incoming obstruction. When it occurred to him he lacked their baffling ability to see without eyes, he clambered back towards the litter as fast he his cleated feet could plod through the cumbersome sand.
He dove headfirst into the box just as the storm crashed down on him, and quickly closed the shutters before Noibat could be sucked out by the air currents. Sand and debris viciously battered the cart and almost knocked him loose, but he remained pressed against the pane, holding it shut with all his might. He heard the blood rushing through his skull, as well as the muffled screams coming from outside the litter, each of an Aura Adept, before fading abruptly beneath the earthen wind.
When his arms began to give, he abandoned the window and hunched himself protectively over Noibat. The gale burst through the door the following instant, whipping at them and threatening to rip the litter from the earth and send them flying into oblivion. As long as he died with Noibat, he didn't care how brutal his end was.
Then, silence.
The dust storm left as quickly as it had come, the howl dying down once more to a soft breeze. When Luca lifted his head up, he found himself covered in a small hill of sand, which he shook off, spitting out the grains that had managed to lodge between his lips. The sun was shining down on him and, glancing up, he saw the roof of the carriage had been ripped clean off.
Coughing up sand into his fist, he stood up on wobbly legs, beating at his baggy garments and releasing clouds of dust into the air. He scooped up Noibat, clutching the Pokemon close to his vest, and stumbled out of the wreckage. He faced northward where the storm had blown in, and once the last of the dust in that direction began to lift, he spotted the bodies of his escorts lifeless and half-buried in sand across an exceedingly bloody terrain.
He let out a sharp gasp that could have been his last breath, but barely had time to process the death toll once the soft, nearly inaudible crunching of hooves onto smooth untrodden sand had him squinting up towards the hazy horizon. Several silhouettes materialized from inside a dust cloud just past the bodies, looming closer and closer until the sun finally burned away the haze shrouding them. Once they stepped into the sunlight, Luca found himself clutching Noibat even tighter.
The leader of the group emerged mounted atop a Camerupt, her identity hidden behind a dark, tinted visor. Light armor plating fashioned much like a costume covered her surprisingly brawny physique in a shiny sheen of purple. Those standing behind her appeared to be primarily men, though it was difficult to say for sure. They, too, were outfitted in armor ranging from all different colors, though unlike their leader, they each wore something resembling a scarf around their necks, perhaps to distinguish their lower rank.
Sandslashes, Donphans, and some other Pokémon too obscured by the dust in the air to properly identify, stood in their company. Blood that matched the red oozing from the bodies of the Adepts coated their claws and tusks, confirming his earlier suspicion. They'd attacked under the cover of a sandstorm, but as to why, he was much too petrified to ask.
The leader pulled on the reigns of her mount, closing more distance between herself and Luca. The former slaver sank into his shoulders as she approached him. He noticed that her lips were now set into a deep scowl and decided he didn't need to glimpse her eyes to understand he was dead where he stood. Noibat fidgeted squeamishly in his arms, sensing the danger, but he gave the Pokémon no quarter for its own good.
Trapped in the menacing shadow of this hulking, scowling maiden perched before him, Luca opened and closed his mouth, the instinct to beg for his life welling in his throat but suppressed by the good sense to not overstep his bounds. He didn't know who these people were, he'd never encountered their likes while he was running his Pokémon trafficking ring and competing with other syndicates. Whoever they were, they were clearly unfriendly and more than capable of removing his head from his shoulders without a second thought.
That in mind, he realized they had yet to kill him for a reason. He swallowed his fear and forced out the questions on his dithering tongue. "Wh—Who are you? What do you want with me?"
"You're going to deliver a message for us," the masked woman spoke down to him, cold, commanding. Something curled in her voice, a darkness that crawled through Luca like sweet sleep and bitter poison. "When you return to Agate, tell Lady Eden of what you saw here today. Tell her royal florist that a gale is coming, one that will tear out her tyranny by its roots."
Luca stood silent, stunned. He felt sweat surfing along the hairline of his disgruntled bronze hair, and while he wished it was from the heat, it wasn't. These extremists were vying to oppose Eden's rule, and now in accordance with his usual hapless luck, he was to be the messenger boy. Oh, how pathetically far he'd fallen.
"Tell her Orre belongs to Greevil," she continued, the aforementioned name flooring Luca. "Tell her it belongs to Greevil and no one else."
"I… I don't understand—"
"Will you tell her this for us?" she repeated in a tone that tolerated no argument, and he shuddered.
"Wh—Who is Greevil?" he asked daringly in a cracked whisper. There was a decisive pause from the opposing party, only punctuated by the desert wind.
Then, she responded, "I am Greevil." Luca cocked his head to one side, but she simply gestured to one of the men behind her. "He is Greevil," she said, before motioning to one of the girls next. "And she is Greevil." Finally, she leveled a mauve gloved finger at him. "And you, Saar Luca: you've chosen the wrong side."
The accusation chilled him like the very clear threat it was. Before he could pose another question, she reached into the saddlebag hanging from Camerupt's volcanic hump and pulled from it a bloodied handkerchief. She balled it up into her fist and then tossed it at Luca's feet.
"Saar Vega," he recognized in a gasp, his throat going tight at the sight. He distinctly recalled the prominent slaver donning the article when he'd been to visit him just a day ago on Eden's behalf. Now, he was dead. These people had viciously executed him for conforming to Eden's rule. This was more than just a threat, it was a declaration of war.
"Go," she commanded, making Luca look up in horror. "Go tell her."
He took a startled step backward, almost tripping over his own feet. A whimper from his arms brought him back into focus, and he looked down at Noibat, then forward again. When he saw the aggressors were still staring him and his Pokemon down like vultures, he cautiously circled around their group and broke into a mad sprint northward as instructed of him. The mounding sand gobbled up one of his cleats in his stumbling hurry, but he refused to turn back for it. He just kept running, afraid for his life, unable to focus on anything but delivering the message.
…...
A blush of weak sunlight glittered through the canopies, prisms flowing dreamlike over the log council table before Eden. She drew out a tenuous sigh. Here she was indoors, hosting yet another dull, mandatory council meeting and wishing very much she was outdoors with the Pokémon basking in the fresh morning air. She'd restored Agate to its lush, beautiful state, yet rarely ever found a chance to leave the tree fortress to properly appreciate it. She didn't like being caged up in the throne room day after day, listening to hundreds of supplicants from every corner of Orre talk her ear off about problems that needed fixing. It was a tiring, seemingly endless cycle, and she was starting to wonder if she would ever return to Tatto.
Along the council table stood her immediate advisers. Closest to her was Aurora, silent but attentive as always. Next was Asher, prudent in expression as the one posted directly beside him, Rook Finley, talked regulation of Orre's wealth and resources in his dreary, dull monotone. He was a former macroeconomist within the Pokémon Association, having budgeted the Pokémon League's many events and conferences and organizing their merchandise distribution. He was an expert in his field, and while she valued his help in stabilizing Orre's economy, she'd really only welcomed him into her service as a means of building stronger ties with the Pokémon League. Their support was a necessity, one she hadn't fully grown accustomed to but understood was vital to Orre's longevity.
As Rook droned on and on, pointing to various markers on the map splayed before her, a sound ratcheted her head up. She looked beyond the pool of the faint sunlight from overhead to the entrance of the council room. A lantern entered ahead of Eisen, the mute Aura Adept, and his loyal Breloom. She smiled, and gestured to an empty space at the table for them to stand.
He did so, and Rook carried on with his proposal. He dragged his index finger along the oasis settlement marked on the map. "Here," he indicated, drawing Eden's focus. "Phenac City would be an ideal location for a Pokémon Center."
"I agree," said Asher, bobbing his head. "Crossing the desert takes its toll. You wouldn't believe the number of weary travelers and their Pokémon that stop to rest in the city on a daily basis."
Eden held her chin high, her spine firm with a resolve she fought to hold on to every day she remained in Orre. "If it can be done, do it," she consented, more impatiently than she'd intended.
Asher nodded eagerly, and proclaimed, "I'll draw up a formal proposal for the mayor and the city planners."
Eisen lifted his hands, catching everyone off guard, and began to sign what Eden surmised was a suggestion. She looked to Aurora for translation.
The Riolu watched the Aura Adept's hand gestures astutely, nodding at what she understood and appearing to use the Aura to fill in the rest of the blanks. "He says that you might also consider opening some shops in various locations across Orre," she voiced for the silent warrior.
Rook hummed appreciatively at the observation. "He's got a good mind for economics, this one." He looked back down at the table, brushing aside some leaves that had fallen on the map. "In fact, a few Poké Marts might help return some of that much-needed commerce to the markets. There are several locations in Orre ripe for business."
Eden couldn't help but frown when she heard this. "I suppose you would have these shops stock their shelves with Pokéballs," she accused more than inquired.
Rook shook his head. "Those things wouldn't turn a profit. There's hardly any need for them in this wasteland."
Eden glanced at Asher next, whose brow stood high. The young man in the wool cap inquired of Rook, "Other merchandise would sell though, wouldn't it?"
"It would," Rook replied, gaze shifting to Eden again. "And it would deal a crushing blow to the last of the black market peddlers and vendors still resisting your rule."
"Good," she snapped coldly, firming her jaw. "Let them reap the consequences for being slow learners."
Asher cleared his throat at that. "My Lady," he said, holding up a finger as to be recognized. "If I could have a word with you privately?"
The urge to decline him was strong, but she knew better. She understood why he took issue with her comment, and even though she had no wish to justify her position to him in regards to the region's lawbreakers, she had to remind herself that he was her most tactful adviser in Sadow's absence.
The request lingered over the table some moments longer until Eden inhaled through her nostrils, deep and chafed. A whiff of the floral fragrance hanging thickly in the air helped to cleanse that tension, and she honored the request with a nod. Everyone but Asher immediately dismissed themselves from the council table and filed out of the room.
Once alone with her, Asher wasted no time voicing his concerns. "My Lady," he began, the title sounding more and more tired and repetitive each time she heard it. "I understand your aversion towards the Orre Region's less upstanding citizens. I know many of them have done shameful and unforgivable things, none of which I would ever personally condone."
She paced around the table toward him, lifting an expectant brow.
"But..?"
He frowned. "But… Orre cannot be nursed back to prosperity if it is divided in two."
She looked him over in earnest, wondering if he was perhaps suffering memory loss. "That is why you and I are establishing a new system, remember?"
"Yes..." he granted, if only for a beat "...but a system that doesn't benefit everyone is a flawed one."
Eden huffed and extended her arm to the edge of the table, drumming her fingers on the cool, polished wood. "If the Saars would simply conform to my laws and shed their sinful avarice already, the Orre Region would not be divided."
He didn't protest. He just fell quiet, looking down at his feet. She was quick to see this was a disagreeing silence rather than a conceding one.
"Speak freely, Asher," she exhaled forcefully, mustering patience as she leaned into the table. She preferred that he speak up now than later when she was much less likely to desire the conversation.
"Forgive me, my lady, but your presence in Orre has divided the people just as much as the Saars have," he said, carefully, yet still leaving her a bit stunned and regretful for permitting him to speak without reserve. "I understand your intentions and I support what you wish to accomplish here. Your good will mission to liberate slave Pokémon and pacify the less the fortunate is one of unspeakable compassion; but what many might see as compassion and goodwill, others might see as... discrimination and favoritism."
"Is that so?" she huffed, crossing her arms. Even now, at his bluntest, these pesky lectures from him were so cleverly disguised as sagely wisdom. Still, she admired that he was among the few in her circle unafraid to speak truth to her. As a man of the people, she supposed he had a right to it.
"You are targeting and profiling people for certain behaviors and practices when they do not know any better," he continued to push his point. "Until you arrived, law and authority were concepts foreign to them, just as their ways were foreign to you."
She rolled her eyes at what she saw as a poor attempt to justify crime. "So I should leave them to putrefy? I should stand idly by and allow them to further taint this land with violence and slavery and corruption?"
"You would sooner treat them as your mother treated the lawbreakers of Cosma Point?" he retorted in a way phrased more as a genuine question than a painful reminder. She opened her mouth halfway in protest before suddenly snapping it shut. Legendaries, she thought. That was a fair point, and one she deserved; she couldn't fault him for throwing it in her face. Sadow had done the same when she'd contemplated executing Luca.
On the other hand, this was entirely different. Even though she had forgone the way in which she'd dealt with Dozla, that didn't mean she had to bend the rules to accommodate the rest of his filth. There had to be a law in place and there had to be consequences for violating it. If she let dissidents undermine her, what kind of ruler would she be?
She cleared her throat, and tugged at the sleeves of her willow green dress until she realized how self-conscious that looked. "I will never become my mother," she croaked, forcing the tight clench of her jaw muscles to loosen. "I spared Saar Luca, didn't I? I permitted him to serve as my envoy and offer peace to his former associates. Why, only recently I sent him to negotiate the surrender of the Pokémon slavers at the Realgam Outpost when I could have just as easily ordered them all killed. That should prove I'm merciful."
"This isn't just about mercy, it's about compromise," he countered in that steady, diplomatic tone of his. "I only ask that you have an open mind. Demonstrate that you are here to nourish, not punish."
There was desire to protest again on her tongue but she bit it down, willing to hear him out fully. Part of her dearly wanted to have this made sense to her, and she knew there was no better man than him to accomplish this. He knew the insides and outs of Orre far better than she did; that was why she'd welcomed him into her service in the first place. She'd be foolish to spurn advice from someone whose job it was to advise her on matters such as these.
When she invited him to continue speaking with her silence alone, he stepped up to the table and motioned to the western portion of the map. "You'll recall that Pyrite Town is the last opposition to your rule. The pirates, peddlers, and rogue trainers that have all taken up sanctuary there do not and will not submit to a way of life that is foreign to them. They require... concessions."
"Concessions?" she parroted the word, tasting its bitter implications in her mouth and looking up at him distrustfully. "You've reached out to them."
"On your behalf, yes," he explained. "Politics is the art of compromise after all."
"I'm not a politician," she countered sharply, and he nodded as if he knew that would be the answer all along.
"Still," he began, with a wan shrug that did little to placate her nerves, "it's preferable to rule happy subjects than angry ones."
She scowled, skimming her index finger along the map as she paced along the table again. She located Pyrite Town's marker and jabbed indignantly at it. "I don't care if neither the wicked lowlifes or corrupt elite are happy. The trafficking and slavery of Pokémon is what made them happy. And I put an end to those sins."
"They do not ask for the return of those things, my lady," he stated, and she looked up. "They ask for the reopening of the colosseums."
The words had her scowling, and while she knew he wasn't jesting, she hoped he wasn't actually in favor of such a ludicrous idea. The colosseums were where gamblers and criminals had, until recently, registered Pokémon to mercilessly savage each other. They were fouler than Gyms or conferences because they were for money, not just sport. She viewed these venues to be as mindlessly barbaric as gladiatorial fights, which was why she'd outlawed them across the land.
Asher seemed to recognize he'd touched a nerve, and attempted again, even more graciously, "I understand your reservations, but this your opportunity to win favor with those in Orre who feel they've been misjudged and mistreated. You can make peace with them by reinstating the colosseum games."
"The colosseums." She spoke it is as if clearing her mouth of something nasty. "You mean where Pokémon fought Pokémon, often to the death and against their will, for the pleasure of gambling? I've already explained to you once before why I closed those wretched arenas. If anything, it wasn't enough ordering they be closed. I should have sent my kaiju to tear them all down."
He held his stringy palms up as if to ease her. "In the new world that you've brought to us, trained and willing Pokémon would battle against trained and willing Pokémon, for simple sport and harmless prize money. If I may say so, now is the perfect opportunity too. We've reopened the borders and invited trainers worldwide to aid in rebuilding this land. While we don't have any official Pokémon League, the colosseums would function very similarly to gyms in that they would entertain and accommodate trainers and spectators alike and bring everyone together."
She glared. "I didn't travel to this land to entertain."
Asher took a deep breath. He let it out slowly. "Opening them would show the people of Orre that you respect their traditions. And speaking from experience, it is not a tradition exclusive to the criminal population. It is a tradition shared by many in the region."
"I do not respect the tradition of Pokémon cockfighting," she gritted, becoming more and more exasperated. She expected they would spend the day talking in circles like this unless either she gave in or he backed down, though the latter didn't seem very plausible at this point. She'd made an effort to hear him out, but now she wasn't sure what to think of his pleas anymore, regardless of his noble intentions.
"The Orre Region will never be whole until Pyrite Town returns to the fold," he pointed out, always so frustratingly quick to press the advantage. "I know the people you're fighting against, Lady Eden. I know how they operate, how they think, and what it is they want. It's one of the reasons you welcomed me into your service. And as a representative of ALL the people, I implore you to consider these terms."
Eden's mind was running in circles and she felt a familiar melancholy pinch her heart. He was making some rather reasonable points, and she feared she wouldn't be able to satisfyingly argue them even if she tried. What she feared more, however, was submitting to the demands of the nonconformists and looking weak in the eyes of those whose freedoms and rights she'd fought for since arriving in Orre. Even if these barbaric customs were respected by many in the region, only the lawless stood to gain the most from them. She feared if she gave her opponents even an inch, they'd take a mile. In her eyes, reopening the colosseums would not only be betraying her values as a Seer but betraying everything she was fighting for.
When she couldn't supply a response, Asher leaned over the table, placing his palms down to rest his weight on them. "We both harbor the same fear that the Orre Region might relapse when you and your armies depart," he reminded, his voice laden down and heavy this time. "Mistrust, unrest, and resentment are what will remain if all of this falls apart. Believe me when I tell you that this is another step in ensuring that won't happen. It will ease tensions and smooth Orre's transition into a new age of prosperity."
She closed her eyes to take stock, to think, possibly even to pray if neither of those worked. It was times like these she wished Sadow were present. His wisdom always came from a deeper place, one she needed desperately right now. She owed the vast majority of her informed decisions to him. He was her dearest friend, yes, but also her crutch whenever she found herself faced with a seemingly impossible predicament like this.
"My Lady?"
She glanced up at Asher, who stood waiting for her verdict. When she felt pressured by this, she decided on a whim, "I should like to confer with Sadow on this matter."
He made a strained faced, eyes pleading with her again. "Forgive me, Lady Eden, but your immediate adviser is not here to counsel you and there is no telling when he'll return."
The valid reminder had her gazing down at the map again, combing every inch of it as though she might find her friend somewhere on it. "He's been gone too long," she murmured to the table, frowning. "He should have at least sent word by now regarding his progress. I do hope Gaius hasn't slowed him down."
…...
The sun moved higher in the sky and Sadow and Gaius walked with heavy steps parallel to the train tracks, which felt monolithic. Eternal. The metal beams were so singular and solid against the endless yellow waste that they seemed to only ever move in one direction. This did little to burden Sadow's disposition, as he'd expected a taxing journey from the moment they left Agate. Now they were as far south as Orre went, and while Gaius never ceased to run his mouth with whining complaints about the heat or the sand, Sadow favored long sullen silences to make it abundantly clear he had no compassion for the mollycoddled prince. He'd only brought him along because Eden commanded it.
The simple fact was, this was for the best. Though he'd initially been skeptical of the pairing, he actually preferred that Gaius be in his company than alone in Eden's. It wasn't because he viewed the exile as a threat to Eden; if he was a threat to anyone, it was to him and his place in Eden's life. The clever little ponce knew all of his secrets—about his former ties with Briskomy, about his espionage, even his private feelings for Eden. For that reason only second to the obvious one, he couldn't let Gaius out of his sight.
After another handful of miles trudging through perpetual desert, the train tracks veered off their vertical path and up to small settlement in the distance. Sadow thought it to be trick of the heat until he lumbered further along the bend and saw otherwise. He could see a dilapidated, squat looking gasoline stand, and just past that, a bronzed locomotive sparkling in the sun and pulling a string of passenger cars behind it. It wasn't their destination, but it was a step closer and an opportunity to take shelter from the hot sun and wash their parched throats.
"You took us days out of the way when we could have traveled by locomotive this entire time?" he heard Gaius groan from the rear.
He pretended not to notice though and smoothed the sand out of his beard before continuing onward toward the train station. He'd spent the entire journey on foot answering many questions with silence and wasn't prepared to stop now. He'd purposely neglected to tell Gaius their true destination because the damned fool possessed too talkative a mouth for both their own good. As far as Gaius was aware, they were bound for Phenac City to collect supplies; and now anytime the prince ran his mouth about it in the open, Sadow rested easy knowing any unworthy ears would be misled. The last thing he wanted was nosy scavengers beating them to Eclo Canyon and making off with the valuables he'd been tasked with salvaging. He knew how important this mission was to Eden, and the less Gaius knew until they reached Eclo Canyon, the better for everyone.
They approached the rust stand, where the desert wind blew tumbleweeds to the tune of a stuttering harmonica. There really was little to see and even less worth mention. The locale was as humdrum as one would expect of a train station in the middle of nowhere. There were a few harmless loafers and roughriders loitering around the stand, waiting for the train's engine to whistle them back. Fortunately, none of them cared to pay any mind to him or Gaius as they passed through. This came as a relief, and he suspected he'd been wise to hold his tongue in public about Eclo Canyon and what resided there. It also helped, in retrospect, that he'd sent away the Aura Adepts charged with escorting them; as he saw it, large traveling groups attracted unwanted attention. He and Gaius alone, however, rarely ever drew the interest of onlookers they encountered in their stops, including this one. He was so cautious about being trailed, in fact, that he'd taken Gaius through several detours all across Orre instead of marching a straight path from Agate to Eclo Canyon. The one benefit of being a retired spy was that he knew how spies thought, and thus, how to lose them.
They came upon a rundown drugstore past the filling station, just adjacent to the tracks where the locomotive sat, and Sadow realized the stand doubled as a watering hole when he noticed a roughneck traveler stumble drunkenly out of the establishment. He took stock of the man's bulky size and wisely stepped out of his way, uneager to be pulled into a brawl. When the saloon looked clear to enter, he glanced back at Gaius, whom still stood facing the train. Apparently, he'd totally misinterpreted their business there.
"If you meant for us to ride by train to our destination, you might have thought better than to take us to the station furthest away from Agate," the younger man remarked with a distinctive whiff of smug satisfaction. "Booking passage this late into our journey is pointless. On foot, Phenac City is only a few hours west from here."
"We're not here to book passage," Sadow responded, his voice rough from disuse.
"Then why ARE we here?"
"Refreshment," he muttered, glancing away from the tracks and indicating the saloon. He started towards the doors before Gaius could either object or ridicule. Fortunately, the smarmier man minded his tongue for change and followed him inside without argument.
He gently pushed through the doors, finding more patrons than expected lounging inside the cramped space. Some heads swiveled to them, which struck Sadow as odd until he took note of his clothes and realized the both of them looked a right mess, caked in sand and dust. He ignored the glances from the bar and pointed Gaius to the empty, ripped leather booth unoccupied in the very back.
They sat down across from one another, and Sadow kept his head low in light of the unwanted attention, which was slowly abating. The scruffy barkeep moseyed up to them after some minutes and cleared off their table with a single, lazy swipe of his rag. He then tossed it over his shoulder and treated them each to a fleeting a glance. "You two look like you've been in a marathon race," he chuckled, deep and rattling, and planted both palms on the tabletop. "What'll you have?"
Sadow opened his mouth to speak, but that was as far as he came to answering before Gaius blurted out, "A shot of your strongest liquor." The unsanctioned outburst drew a hard glare from Sadow, but Gaius just sighed and muttered to the barkeep, "After what this one's put me through, I'd say it's well-earned."
"Water is fine," Sadow growled, more in warning to Gaius than anything else. The barkeep cooperated with a nod before lumbering off, and Sadow slouched forward a little, letting the weary morning escape on a gruff exhale. When he glanced up across the table, he found the other man shaking his head with a look caught between surprise and amusement.
"You're a hard man, to be certain," the former prince paused, traces of a grin on his dark lips. "But I've never heard of a hard man who doesn't drink."
Sadow snorted. "You would like that, wouldn't you? I get boozed up and then you sneak away while my senses are dulled."
Gaius touched a finger to his chin. "You know, it hadn't occurred to me until now," he teased, and Sadow sighed, regretting having ever acknowledged the pompous fool sitting opposite of him. Now he would never stop talking.
The bartender returned with their beverages quick enough, slamming the two glasses to the table so hard Sadow thought they might shatter. "There ya go, two iced waters," he sniffed, undoubtedly resentful at the lack of income on their account. "If you fellas ain't buying tickets, I wouldn't suggest sticking around too long. The sandstorms that blow through these parts can be nasty. Hell, these railroad tracks are just waiting to be buried."
"We won't be long," Sadow heeded the warning, nodding. The man went back to his other patrons and Sadow hoisted up his glass, taking a drink. He washed down the drought in his throat with several eager gulps before setting the beverage down. Across from him, Gaius just winced at his own water rather than drink from it, evidently stubborn enough to dehydrate.
After staring long enough the former prince pushed the glass aside and regarded Sadow, speaking off what the barkeep had said, "He has a point, old sport. Why risk getting caught in a storm when we could reach Phenac City much more quickly and comfortably by train?"
Sadow brought his beverage back to his mouth to bide his time, the rim clinking against his teeth, and hoped Gaius would just get carried away on whatever thought might pop into his head next.
That didn't happen though, and the other man continued pressing his suspicions. "We are going to Phenac City, aren't we? You told me so yourself."
"I did," Sadow said, relenting. "Often and loudly."
When the implication registered, Gaius's lips pressed into a firm smile. "Clever." He chuckled, deep and soft, and rubbed his hands over his pretty, bronzed face before giving Sadow a commending nod. "Very, very clever. I suppose that's also why you had us split off from the Adepts Eden ordered to accompany us." Sadow chose not to speak to that, but even so, Gaius raised his water glass, as if in a toast. "Good call, to your credit. Men wearing exorbitant, green tights in a hot, barren region certainly do stand out."
"Not as much WE stand out, ironically," he mumbled, raking a hand through his wild, dirty hair. More sand fell to the table.
"And I assume by we, you mean me," Gaius said evenly, not appearing offended by the fact. "That would explain why you had us wander the desert for Legendaries knows how long—to throw off whoever might think to follow us."
Sadow opted not to answer and instead chugged more water, sip by sip, until he drained the glass.
At the typical lack of response, Gaius exhaled, looking away. "Wherever we're going, it must be important to warrant all this caution and secrecy."
Sadow heaved, this time in annoyance. "Don't worry about where we're going," he said, giving the words some edge on the slim hope it might end the discussion.
No such luck. The other man lifted his flaxen white brow, grinning in a way that challenged Sadow to try harder. He snickered, naturally, "You telling me not to worry is in itself a bit worrying."
Sadow held his gaze for a long while before surrendering the desired answer in a quiet, frustrated breath, "Eclo Canyon."
"Might I ask why?"
"No," he snapped, curtly. He'd already given more than enough information needed to satisfy him. Besides, the further they discussed it, the more they ran the risk of being overheard.
Unsurprisingly, Gaius didn't seem to appreciate this as much as he did. "Suspicious," he noted, an assessing look on his face. "You've lured me out into the middle of the desert. You instructed our escorts to travel separately from us, ergo no witnesses. You've avoided taking the shortest route possible to Eclo Canyon. Does this have anything to do with the fact that I'm the only breathing soul that knows your dark secret?"
"Don't speak so loudly," Sadow hissed, glancing toward the bar to ensure none of its patrons were eavesdropping.
The phony prince had the gall to cast him a deprecating, distrusting glance. "How do I know this field trip you've taken us on isn't some trick that's going to conveniently end up with me dead in a dune somewhere?"
Though the scenario was a tempting one, Sadow narrowed his eyes in steely reprimand. "You don't. But you don't have a say, either way, so best keep your mouth shut."
Gaius shook his head in amusement. "You can't blame me for being a little skeptical of your reasons. We both know there's nothing to be found in Eclo Canyon, considering there's nothing left of it."
Glancing away, Sadow mumbled in defiance, "You don't know that."
"What are you—" The question froze on the younger man's lips, abruptly, and Sadow turned his head forward. Gaius was staring him down in quiet assessment, and then his brows shot up, a broad white grin splitting his face. "Ah, now I see. Eden sent us on a top-secret assignment... to collect scrap for her."
"Quiet," Sadow gritted out, but Gaius just emitted another chuckle and leaned back into the booth with a derogatory huff.
"Finally taking a liking to the untapped wonders and sciences of the world, is she?" When Sadow did not confirm or deny the inquiry, Gaius instead inferred what he needed from the silence between them. "A bit late for that. If she's so concerned with Orre's welfare, she should have thought twice before laying waste to Dozla's exhibition."
"Lower your voice before I lower it for you," Sadow hissed across the table, wondering how many more times he would have to repeat himself again. Gaius stopped talking, if only for one blessed moment, and Sadow was glad to just listen to the dull sounds of the saloon in place of the usual banter for just that short lapse of words.
Then, ending Sadow's short-lived paradise, the merchant prince murmured, "We won't find anything there, you know." Sadow opened his mouth to scold him again, but he was cut off, "If what she seeks is a fresh, preserved inventory of Pokémopolitan technology and artifacts, she needn't look any further. I could easily supply her with what she wants."
Sadow let out a snorting, humorless laugh. "What, you mean more illusions and fakes? Like the ones that comprised your estate in Unova?"
Gaius shook his head, smiling, convivial. "No illusions this time. No fakes. Those were Shyla Vexx's doing if you'll recall."
"And you were happy to go along with her deceptions," Sadow quickly pointed out in reminder.
"Of course I was," he admitted without difficulty, confounding the older man somewhat. "I had to protect my investments. You really think I would be brainless enough to display ancient technology and architecture from a lost civilization in broad daylight?"
"You were brainless enough to sell it to Dozla," Sadow countered without much difficulty of his own, using actual evidence for his part.
"But smart enough not to sell all of it," Gaius uttered, enigmatically. The words had come out too quickly to be a lie on the spot, drawing a scoff out of Sadow before he could stop himself.
"Cut the riddles," he warned, propping an elbow up on the table so he could lean some of his weight onto it. "What is it you're trying to say? That you have some hidden cache that no one knows about?" When Gaius didn't answer, Sadow clicked his tongue and growled. "If you know what's good for you, you just might consider talking."
Gaius didn't seem perturbed by the threat at all. On the contrary, he gave an almost teasing shrug. "I'd be happy to discuss it with Eden..." he hummed, letting the offer dangle, before revealing the expected catch, "in exchange for my freedom, that is."
Hearing this, Sadow leaned more of his weight forward and brought his face in threatening distance from Gaius. He regarded the conniving conman with a heated expression, fully understanding his game now. He wouldn't be so easily duped though.
Gaius held up his dirt-caked palms, acting as if his proposal was truly so harmless. "It's a perfectly fair tradeoff, old sport. What's one poor fool's freedom against the world's most valuable secrets? You know the answer to that already, though I'm not sure the same can be said for your lady love. That being said, maybe I could count on you to put in a good word me?"
"Forget it," Sadow spat without delay, slamming back down into his seat to punctuate his refusal. Across the table, the other man huffed quietly to himself.
"Shame," the prince crooned, running a hand lazily through his white-blonde hair, now greasy and mottled from long travels. Sadow thought that to be the end of that until a grin suddenly supplanted the frown on Gaius's lips, which then parted to whisper, "If I can't share my secret with her, perhaps I'll share yours."
Sadow internally froze. Dammit, he was good.
Gaius must have caught the flicker of surprise in his face, too, because he was cackling his threats now, more loudly and freely than needed. "I wonder which of your secrets she'll be more interested to hear first? Your amorous feelings for her? That might soften the blow before I explain how you only came into her service so that you could spy on her."
Sadow, for his part, pretended not to hear the words. He knew if he didn't, he would have to acknowledge the subject.
"What? Nothing so say? No more warnings for me?"
The older man cursed himself mentally as he felt his cheeks heat up. "You gave me your word you wouldn't tell her," he husked across the table, feeling rightly betrayed and backed into a corner now.
"That was before this glorious opportunity presented itself to me," Gaius answered, leaning forward again, lips quirking up on one side in a smirk. "And I've often observed that secrets can be used as the best kind of leverage."
Sadow lunged forward, grabbing the other man's wrists and throwing them down onto the table. Even as some heads turned, he didn't care, and growled, "You're a man without honor, Gaius Endo."
Gaius raised his eyebrows, perhaps calling his bluff. "If that's the case, we're more alike than you think."
The very suggestion doubled as an open invitation for Sadow to break the other's jaw, but he curbed the impulse and slowly released his grip on the defiant, fearless ponce before he could do something he would regret. He reclined back into his seat, forcing himself to untense. He wasn't going let a man so lowly and unworthy of his time keep provoking him to anger, especially when they needed to keep a low profile.
"Come now, Sadow," Gaius kept on goading anyway, even as Sadow tried his damndest to look away. "She's bound to discover the truth sooner or later. Why wait around for that inevitable disaster?" He glanced discreetly over his shoulder, to the saloon doors, "I see no reason the two of us shouldn't take that train outside to Gateon Port, hop on a ship, and sail away from it all."
The hairs on the back of Sadow's neck pricked at that proposition, the words touching off his most fundamental, self-serving instincts. He realized Gaius was playing his mind games from a new angle entirely, one that wasn't completely dishonest either. The opportunity being presented to him was a perfectly legitimate out; it was one he'd considered before, but not like this. Because like this, Gaius was coaxing him to sink to his level.
The prince's bronzed face creased into something just short of a grin, revealing those boyish dimples he'd used to lull Eden and others into a false sense of security back in Unova. "Think about it, Sadow," he implored, his hands gesturing plainly as if to make his point. "Just imagine us, two honorless wayfarers venturing the globe with no loyalties, no obligations, no troubles whatsoever. You can't say it isn't tempting."
Sadow shook his head, dispelling said temptation before it could seep in. He wouldn't bring himself to succumb. He wouldn't turn his back on Eden, not again.
"Sorry to disappoint you," he snorted his reply, at last, "but I'm not that sort of man. Not anymore."
At that, Gaius's features had taken on a rather brooding appearance, but one corner of his mouth pulled back. "Pity."
…...
Azrael scanned the perimeter of the outskirt bar. The area looked secure enough, and he headed towards the building, his boots disturbing the red dust as he walked through the station grounds. He came to pass the train and stopped to fix it with a stare. It looked fast enough, exceptional enough. It would get him where he needed.
That assured, he proceeded inside the tavern and removed his helmet, letting his titian hair fall like embers about his face. He thudded down the bar in search of an empty stool. The clank of his boots hitting the rickety floorboards caused some to stare in his direction. He stared back, unimpressed. No threats detected among the rabble.
He found and claimed an unoccupied barstool at the very end, slammed his helmet down in front of him once seated. This sent the ruffian beside him scurrying out the door. He hardly noticed though.
"Scotch," he said simply, holding up a gauntleted finger. The one operating the counter took stock of him, swallowed, and rushed over to pour the desired drink.
"You, eh, looking to buy a ticket, stranger?" the bartender asked timidly as he pulled out a shot glass and filled it. Azrael nodded in silence, uninterested in idle chitchat. He inspected the prepared glass in front of him, then downed it in one go. The barkeep nervously refilled the glass. "Got a destination in mind?"
"Agate," he answered flatly, leaving no pause after the question. Even so the man kept flapping his lips.
"Is that right? You have important business with that Fabula girl, eh?"
"Something like that." He downed the next shot effortlessly and slammed the glass to the rusty counter. The uninteresting man serving him chuckled.
"Getting an audience with her is grueling, I hear. Not to mention intimidating. She's got Pokémon the size of skyscrapers guarding that place."
"So I hear," the assassin remarked, the man's words meaning little to him. A job was a job.
"Well," the barkeep pointlessly buzzed on, "the closest stop between here and Agate is the Mount Doom tourist spot, though I'm told a lot of new trainers coming in from the other regions wanna turn that whole landmark into a battle site or something. You ought to check it out when you arrive there."
"I'm on a fixed schedule," Azrael declined. The man attempted to refill his glass but he waved in negation. "No more. I'll need my focus."
The barkeep stared, nodded, then slowly backed up. His gaze slanted and Azrael saw he was scrutinizing the Pokéballs and weaponry along his belt, as well as the rifle slung over his plated shoulder.
"You sure are packing a lot of heat," the man observed in an uneasy murmur.
Azrael offered a pointed look. "You sure are asking a lot of questions."
The man's eyes went wide. "Tr—Train leaves in an hour," he stammered, before whisking off, a true coward.
Azrael exhaled out his nose, a fleeting thing. He scanned up the length of the bar. Ramshackle and full of degenerates. He had half a mind to blow the place up, do them all a kindness, save the local sandstorms some trouble.
"Have I persuaded you yet?" asked a voice from the booth behind him. Loud enough to hear, not interesting enough to care.
"There's nothing more to talk about," a different voice answered back, harsh and whispering.
Slightly more intrigued, Azrael twisted his head halfway. He counted two men in his periphery. One older and grizzled; and the other younger, dapper. He then turned his head forward again before he could stand out, but kept his ears vigilant to their conversation.
"I'm just saying," the prettier one droned, "the materials and artifacts Eden sent us to recover won't be found in Eclo Canyon, not intact anyway. Why would we waste our time picking through rubble when I have an entire cache of what she asks for still hidden in Unova, undamaged and untouched?"
"I told you to lower your voice," scoffed the other. "No one can know where we're going."
A sigh. "Well if we're going to get there by sundown, better we leave now."
"First smart thing you've said all day," the elder of the two grunted, and Azrael next heard them get up from their booth. He ducked his head as they passed behind him. He had to tread extra carefully now. These two were the potential key to a new prize.
The sound of his new targets exiting through the doors roused him and he unfolded from his perch on the bar stool. He stood and rolled out his shoulders as he stretched, his armor creaking with the motion. He glanced toward the barkeep.
"I won't be needing that train ticket after all," he said, paying his tab and shoving his crimson helmet back on. His plans had changed. The Fabula girl would get hers, but Eclo Canyon deserved a visit first.
…...
Anna eased her foot off the pedal, the loaner car pulling into the parking space with a lurching cough of exhaust. She'd come without calling, not even checking to see if her criminal lawyer and boss was at the office yet. A glance towards Sunyshore's faintly glowing horizon told her it was too early, but across the lot, a shiny Celica Sunchaser convertible told her that she hadn't struck out. Good thing, too.
She stared out the windshield for a dragging moment, watching the neon letters of the 'Phate and Suffrin & Associates' sign flicker undecidedly. She then glanced over her shoulder, to the four black travel bags loaded in the back seat. Combined they contained all the cash she hadn't spent on drugs and booze, which crazily enough was still a lot. Working as a fixer paid well, but it healed no wounds. The money had never mattered to her in the first place. She'd taken the job to distract herself, but even that was stupid. She'd come to that realization shortly before attempting to fling herself from the Olivine lighthouse nearly a month back.
She faced forward in her seat, dismissing the memory and mentally bracing herself. Her fingers drifted from the wheel to her stomach, now nine months round, carrying the spawn of two evil, reprehensible people. She winced when she felt it squirm inside her; it just made her want to get this over with more quickly. To get that cash in the backseat as far away from her as possible.
She realized that her hands were shaking a little now, so she grabbed the steering wheel tight and just sat for one final minute, trying to get her breathing even. She just had to go in there and talk to Celia, that was it. It wasn't even the hard part either. The hardest part was still to come. The law firm was just the first of many stops in righting so many fucking wrongs.
She pulled the keys from the ignition and shoved them into one of her pockets. She unbuckled her seatbelt and twisted around, grabbing a fistful of one of the travel bags.
…...
Celia rose from her desk when she noticed Anna moseying into her office. The girl looked sullen, as per usual, but with a large bulge jutting from her midsection—bigger than last time, by far. Pity, she thought. She'd had a good a figure, but whatever. Who was she to judge; Anna was her employee, not her daughter.
"Hey, there's my favorite fixer!" she regarded the prego at the door, putting excess excitement into the greeting. "Come on down, pull up a seat, help yourself to some nonexistent coffee because Payne here fired our assistant."
Beside her, her partner at law shook his head. "I told you," he mewled, wagging his meaty sausage of a finger, "she was being very rude to me!"
Ceia waved him off, looking toward her blue-haired firecracker at the door. "Ignore the drama queen," she sighed. "Look, I already know why you're here. You've got a baby on the way and you need time off."
Anna was quiet for a moment. "You noticed," she rasped, voice rough from sleep or drugs or whatever. Her pale hands came to rest on her distended stomach.
Celia choked on the laugh that piled in her throat. "Yeah, just like I noticed that big yellow ball of fire in the sky called the sun!" She reached across the desk, giving Anna's arm a few conciliatory pats. "Don't worry, hon, I'm not going to ask who the baby daddy is. Don't ask, don't tell, am I right? It's one of my many interchangeable mottos." She again invited Anna to sit with a gesture. "Come on, hon, get off your hooves and take a load off. Trust me, I've been where you are. When I was still carrying my little girl Ariana, my feet swelled up to the size of Drifblims."
Anna apparently didn't find humor in the anecdote, but sat down as prompted. Celia observed to make sure the expensive chair didn't collapse under her weight before carrying on. "Anyhow, being the generous employer that I am, I thought I'd give you a little advance on your salary since you've been on your A-game lately. And as you know, when you're on your A-game out there in the muck and dirt, I'm on my A-game inside the courtroom."
Anna looked momentarily confused for a moment until Celia snapped her fingers. Payne, with one hand covering his eyes like the crook in denial he was, reached under the desk and dragged out a duffle bag stuffed with Pokedollars. That would smack the mopey look off her mug, Celia thought with a smirk.
Payne set the bag at Anna's feet before quickly backing away, wiping his hands down on his pants. "I didn't see it, I didn't touch it."
Celia set her hands proudly on her hips, expecting an enthusiastic reaction where none had been before. She was flashing some big bucks after all.
Instead, Anna just lolled her head back and let out a loose breath. Ms. Exasperated.
Celia put on a pout. "Don't thank me all at once," she sassed, putting her palms up in sarcasm. "Normally when someone sees a duffle bag full of cash, they're... what's the word?"
"Grateful?" Payne piped up next to her, but she waved at the suggestion in negation.
"Nope, nope, that's not a word I'd ever use."
"I didn't come here for that," said Anna, coming to stand, her hand on her lower back as she steadied herself. She reached into her pocket and tossed the keys to the loaner car the law firm had given her on Celia's desk. "I came here to quit."
Celia stared gobsmacked at the keys, then up at Anna, an unbidden laugh springing from the back of her throat. When the other woman's stark expression told no jokes, however, she held a hand to her ear. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that, please? Except, this time, I don't know, say the exact opposite?"
Anna's mouth twisted into an ugly scowl. "I'm done, Celia."
Celia tried a scowl of her own, but it was too much work, so she instead settled on massaging her temples. There was no working out this silly logic. "Okay, hon," she huffed, patience expended, "cut the rebellious teenage angst bullshit now because you're really starting to freak me out. Are you high right now? Are you using? I can't have you dropping dead in my office, okay? I don't have the insurance and—"
"I'm not high," Anna muttered, and Celia wasn't sure if she was lying; didn't really matter much either way. "I'm being honest. I'm done. I'm out."
"'Out' as in… getting out of town for a little bit?"
"'Out'," Anna repeated, emphasizing the word, "as in permanently out."
Glancing sideways at Payne, Celia saw that her partner was paralyzed with concern, fear even. What a surprise. Then, turning her chin back to her now former private detective, she sighed and leaned into the desk. "I don't know what to say, Anna. You're the best I've got. It was bad enough when Dalton walked out on us—or at least it seemed bad until you picked up the slack for the both of you and started winning me case after case. You showed me you're worth two of him. No one can compete with you."
"You'll find someone else," the pregnant enigma said simply, and began to turn to leave. Celia had seen this coming though and hurried around the desk, shoving Payne out of her way. She wasn't going to let the best thing to happen to her career in recent memory just waltz out the door.
"Woah, Woah, hold your Ponytas!" she laughed, placing herself between Anna and the door. She held up her hands in a diplomatic manner; if it worked on tentative clients, it could work on a druggie. "Alright, sure, I get that you want to leave. But could you at least not leave me reeling here and tell me why?" She pointed a thumb at her partner. "Is it Payne? Because I can get rid of Payne."
"Come again?" squeaked the waste of space still standing near her desk, but she ignored him. She was desperately racking her brain for ways to make this career-making goddess stay with the firm. The most obvious offer popped into her head first.
"What, do you want more money? Is that it?"
Anna, still just as aloof as the moment she'd walked in, shouldered past Celia and yanked open the door. She stepped halfway into the hall and squatted down, reaching around the corner for something. Celia folded her arms patiently and tilted her head to one the side, hoping to catch a peek at whatever shadiness she was up to.
Then, Anna came scooting back into the office, pulling along two very large and very full duffle bags of her own. Unmarked bills protruded out the top corners, threatening to break the zippers holding them all in. Payne choked on a gasp behind Celia after a delay, apparently having taken his sweet time piecing together what the two bags contained.
Celia stared hard at the cash, wondering why she was even looking at it in the first place. Nothing came to her, so she glanced up at Anna with one brow raised warily, "Unless I'm misinterpreting the unspoken implication here, you want... less money?" It sounded stupid to her own ears, but with a girl like as erratic Anna, she didn't want to rule anything out.
She didn't get an answer though. Not a helpful one, anyway. Anna stepped out the door once more, then reemerged with another two loaded bags in tow. Four bags total. Celia practically had to fight to keep her jaw from dropping to the rug. She wagered Payne was probably having a stroke behind her.
When still no explanation came, Celia cleared her throat, tapped her index finger to her lips a few times, just to have Anna believe she was keeping calm and diplomatic. Then she levered that same finger to the bags on the floor, remarking casually, "That's, uh, that's quite a pile there."
"They're all full," Payne croaked, eyes bulging and every inch of him shaking as he came to stand next to her. "They're all full, Celia."
Celia resisted the urge to sigh. As if talking to a kindergartner, she replied, "Yeah, I gathered that, professor panic." She pushed him out of her space and took a step closer to inspect the serious bank occupying her floor. "All this combined... it's about as much as we've been paying you since you first started here." When Anna neither confirmed nor denied the estimate, Celia let out an uneasy chuckle. "And... I'm going to go on a hunch here and assume this is all the money you've been collecting from this job since you first got here."
"One million Pokedollars each," Anna murmured, emotionlessly, and Celia gaped at her. "I want it distributed evenly and anonymously to multiple beneficiaries. I don't care how you get it done. You're both lawyers, you'll make it work." She then indicated the lone duffle bag still sitting near the desk—the 'advance' Celia had offered her and until now forgotten about. "You can even keep my cut for your trouble."
"Are you off your nut, lady?" Payne exclaimed, his voice more fraught with anxiety than animosity, of course. "This is blood money! We can't just—"
"Who are these beneficiaries you had in mind?" Celia gently spoke over him, letting her demeanor soften. She wanted answers, so she had to play her cards right. Make Anna think she was on the same page.
Of the four bags, Anna first pointed to the one closest to her feet. Her finger trembled as she did so, curiously. "This one goes to the widow of Spade Bitumen."
"Spade Bitumen," Celia tested the name on her tongue, cross-checking it with the records filed neatly away in her memory. When it came to her, she cocked her head at Anna. "The mining foreman from Oreburg that was killed a few years back? Okay, but why would you, uh—" Checking herself, she threw her hands up and let the question go. "Scratch that. I don't know, and I don't wanna know."
Anna stepped over the bag, moving on to the next one and bunting it with her heel. "Have this one sent to the family of Konani Haiku."
Celia scrunched her face when a connection stood out to her. "Unless I'm misreading a pattern here, both of these beneficiaries are family of Soul Robber victims."
Anna said nothing to that, because that would have been too easy and reasonable, as Celia saw it. Instead, she moved to focus on the next bag. "This one goes to the father of Simon Mosely in Willowmoss Town," she uttered, hoarsely.
Celia was about to pose a question, for whatever it was worth, but stopped when Payne leaned in toward her ear to inform her, "There was a boy reported missing from that town some time ago."
Alarms were finally going off in Celia's brain. This was dangerous turf now. She glanced up to glean Anna's expression—or lack of, rather—and asked straightaway, "Is this true?"
There was the expected silence from Anna's end, which failed to reject or accept the accusation. Which, in Celia's book, most likely meant the latter. And if that was the case—well, crap.
After a short pause to sort out this mess in her head, Celia blew out a tense breath and forced a smile to her lips. "Anna, honey," she said, sweet and benign as to not set the other woman off. "Uh, thing is, what the father is going to want to know is what happened to his boy. A sack full of cash on his doorstep—on all of these people's doorsteps, in fact—is just going to raise more questions. And the ones asking questions are going to start looking for patterns. And the ones that find those patterns are going to be your worst nightmare."
"Lastly," Anna grunted, ignoring Celia altogether and pointing to the last duffel bag. "Giovanni Ketchum."
Celia needed a moment. "Rita's son," it came to her, slowly. It made her rethink everything, and she asked, with a spark of hope, "So this is Rita's money?"
Anna rigidly shook her head, her matted blue hair hanging in limp strands around her face, making her look appropriately kooky. "It's mine," she uttered. "Rita can't know about it though. Only Giovanni."
"It is your money?" A vague and unexplained nod from Anna, but Celia just went with it because, at this point, what the hell. "Okay, and you're giving Giovanni Ketchum all your money because..."
"Because it's what his father would want."
Celia pressed her fist against the underside of her chin in a dramatic facade of contemplation—a common lawyer put-on to ease clients. She studied Anna closely, then the cash even more closely. "So, really, this is all just charity."
"Sure," the other woman muttered, shrugging. At this point, Celia suspected it would be easier striking up conversation with a Cascoon; at least a Cascoon had the foresight to make smart decisions.
Celia cleared her throat. "So, you understand the potential consequences here, right? I mean, do I have to pull out a handbook for you or something?"
"I know exactly what I'm doing," the other murmured, eyes downcast. Hardly reassuring.
Sheesh, Celia thought. For a former cop, Anna was as dim as a Quagsire, not to mention as blue as one. This was probably what came from killing all so many brain cells because this mopy narc sure wasn't using her brain right now. Leaving big chunks of dirty dough on people's porches wasn't like dropping gift-wrapped toys through a chimney; this would raise questions and leave a big, fat trace. She saw this sort of thing in court all the time. Anything that traced back to Anna would trace back to her and Payne. And that was a big no-no.
After using another pause to consider her strategy going forward, Celia breathed a quiet little laugh, even though the situation was actually very icky. "Okay, Anna, look," she began, playing the concerned friend card again, anything to knock sense into her. "You know, um, shelling out money to the son of a late friend—I kind of get it. I mean, kind of. But shelling out money to the grieving kin of murder victims? It's a bridge too far and it borders on suspicious. Not that I'm suspicious or even judging, but I just want you to be prepared for if or when the big bad wolves from the Global Police come a-knocking. And if they do decide that something's fishy, they are going to confiscate this money as evidence, in which case nobody wins. I mean, what are you going to do for a hat trick if that should happen?"
"Forget it, Celia," Anna blew up at her, finally losing her cool. She reached to grab the nearest bag. "I'll fucking do it myself."
Quick on her feet, Celia stepped toward Anna, gesturing placatingly. "No, no, don't do that! I was just—I was thinking out loud. Relax."
Anna froze, glaring. "Are you going to do this or not?"
"Yes, yes, absolutely," Celia told her what she wanted to hear. "I live to serve, hon. You know that." The other woman didn't say anything, but to Celia's relief, let go of the bag and turned toward the door. Celia cleared her throat again, "And, hon, you might want to think about cleaning up a little, getting some rest. If not for your sake, then for the kid's. No offense, but you've looked better."
"Just get it done," Anna grunted. Celia nodded, and when she saw Payne open his mouth to make panicked ramblings, she flicked him in the ear to keep his trap shut. She then moved to walk Anna out.
"And... regarding a reason for your sudden resignation?" she inquired, as innocently as possible. When Anna shot her dirty look, Celia forced a chuckle, attempting to lighten the mood. "Nothing serious, hon. I just need something for the exit paperwork. Formalities are a bitch."
Anna's expression switched from grumpy to menacing, in a way Celia wasn't expecting. "Let's just say there's something I need to do," her mouth tightened, eyes flaring. "Something long overdue."
"Oh, sweet goodness!" Payne raised his hand to his lips as if he could still stifle the startled gasp which had already escaped him. Celia quickly downplayed it with a beaming smile, waving her fingers genially at her former employee gone loony.
"We wish you all the happiness in the world, honey," she bid in a forked tongue. Anna bought it, and stormed out of the office without another word, slamming the door shut behind her. Rude, Celia thought, but at least she had fooled the other woman for the time being. She glanced narrowly at her partner once they were alone.
The nervous ninny was shaking in his ugly, bargain-counter shoes like a damn leaf. He met her gaze slowly, eyes just about bugging out of his skull. "What did she mean by that, Celia?" he wheezed at her, and she swore she whiffed a Skuntank on his breath. "What did she mean by 'overdue'?"
"Shut up and let me think," she snapped, going back to her desk. He pattered after her, still yapping away.
"She's connected to something big and bad, Celia, and she's going to come clean about it!" He was hyperventilating now, and she thought about doping him up on the sedatives she kept stashed in her bottom drawer for her days off. There was even sweat dripping down his face and neck, soaking his collar. "That's what all this is for! To clear her conscience! I just know it! She's going to spill her guts about everything, including us and what we do!"
"Will you step back and let me handle this?" she said, shooing him away when she felt his breath on her again. "And while you're stepping back, maybe have mint?"
He did as he was told—the stepping back part, anyway. Once he was out of her space, she sank into her leather chair and let out a soothing breath, remaining cool and centered enough for the both of them in light of this jam Anna had left them in. Her lawyer instincts knew Anna would have to gather as much evidence as possible to support a conscience-clearing confession. Even so, by making a promise to Anna to distribute the money, Celia knew she had bought Payne and herself some immunity for a short time.
What they needed was to call in backup. Her top clients were in just as much a pickle as them now without even knowing it.
Picking up the phone on her desk, she dialed the number of the Ketchum residence. It rang a few times before Rita's voice answered, perky and peppy. "The one and only Rita Ketchum speaking! And you caught me in a fabulous mood!"
Celia dug her nails into her forehead. Oh, this was gonna be hard.
"Hello? Anyone there? If this that greedy Pokémon shelter asking for a donation again, you'll get that money when you pry it from my cold, dead—"
"Rita, my darling!" Celia greeted pleasantly into the phone, easing into it, giving a little zing before the sting. "It's Celia Phate! Listen, eh… as my favorite and most well-paying client, you probably deserve to know that… we might have a problem."
"Not just one problem!" Payne hollered, leaning in over Celia. "Try about four million of them right here on the floor of our office!"
Celia elbowed him off her seat with a hard jab, but still spoke buoyantly into the phone. "Listen, hon, you really should get down here as soon as you get a chance," she advised, glancing at the money piled in front of her desk, knowing Payne wasn't wrong. "Scratch that, you probably should just get over here right now. And don't worry, I'll give Metsuma the head's up too. This involves him every bit as much as it does you."
…...
I felt like I was swimming through thick, muddy water. My body was heavy, clumsy, as though I were tangled in kelp and being dragged down to the bottom of the sea. It took a great effort just to inhale and exhale. It was so tempting to let go, though; to give up the arduous task, but as I began to fall into the darkness, King Eldar's voice off to my right hollered out.
"Aura Guardians! You cannot escape me! I will find you!"
I looked for the sound and found the source immediately. Eldar was falling beside me, his body dissolving into an inky fluid—the same monstrous substance that had haunted me in an earlier nightmare. The skin on his frail, veiny hands peeled away and unearthly, black claws sprouted in their place. The Mad King stared in horror at his malformed appendages and let out an earsplitting shriek, much like Raile's.
"You have given your heart to shadow, King Eldar," a woman's voice called down to him, soft and unplaceable. "May it taint your blood, time and time again, until that shadow is brought to the light and atoned for."
The mutant king screamed louder until the shadow spread over his face and rendered the sound beastly and baritone.
To my left, a voice that sounded like Raile's husked, "I'm drowning."
I twisted my head in the given direction, indeed finding my father descending with us. He, too, was an unrecognizable and unseemly sight. He was a nightmare incarnate. He was Darkrai, just as Eldar was to my right. And here I was between them, still human, still intact, though for how much longer I couldn't guess.
"Legendaries," my father called out, as if in prayer, "if you're out there, I beg of you to save me. I don't know what affliction this is or how it befell me. I only want to be healed. Whatever it is I've done, I repent. I… I beg of you to heal me!"
"My body has become discarnate, spectral even," Eldar bellowed from the right, the words coming out slurred and distorted. The shadows must have claimed his vocal chords.
"And my mind," Raile hissed into my other ear, dragging his claws down where his cranium had been. "It slips further away with each day!"
"This is what remains," the woman's voice whispered from the void somewhere. "May it taint your blood time and time again!"
I quickly gazed down at my hands. They were still of human flesh, thankfully. What did this mean it me though? Was there hope for me yet?
"This is what remains…"
Everything blurred faster. I wasn't just drowning anymore, I was plummeting. I swung my legs out wildly, trying to break out of the dream until everything ceased moving and I hit a surface with a painless thud. I lay sprawled on a cracked, aged floor. I coughed, sputtering dust, and brought myself to my feet.
Then, a tiny wail split the air.
I spun toward the noise, coming to face an altar. Two statues stood vigil on either side of it, one in the likeness of Dialga and the other in Palkia's. I knew where I was. I often dreamt of this place. This was where the Maestro had brought me. This was where Daruka had died and Metsuma was born.
The sacrificial offering on the sacred altar, however, was a bundle of swaddling cloth in place of my younger self. This wasn't a vision of the past as it had been so many times before. No, this was something else, something more.
The bundle emitted the wail of a newborn, and every part of me shuddered. It was a child, I realized. And I knew damn well whose, too. A single tuft of hair peeked from the hood of the fabric—pronged, and blue like Anna's. His face remained well concealed, however.
Daunting as this image before me was, I regained sensitivity in my extremities. Curiosity besting me, I reached for the altar with both hands and took the sheathed infant into my arms. I plucked at the string binding the bundle together, letting the edges of the swaddling cloth fall away.
I expected to find a face like mine gaze upon me, my own blood, but what I saw instead was a cruel joke. The wailing newborn was twisted in shadow, like his grandfather, like his ancestor. His face was monstrous, grotesque, with beady yellow eyes serving as the only needed proof he was his father's son. All of the air rushed out of my lungs, but before I could do anything else, I felt the cold metal of a revolver flush against the base of my skull.
There was a click, and I dragged my eyes up from the heinous creature in my arms to meet Anna's cold, hard gaze. She looked exactly like she did the last time she'd pointed a gun at me. Except this time there was no emotion in her face, no fear, no pain. Just a pair of dead, ruthless eyes.
"Anna," I whispered, hoarsely, trying to talk her down. "Anna, please, don't—"
She pulled the trigger, no hesitation.
…...
The blast roused me conscious, if nothing else, and I tossed my head up to squint into the blinding sun. It sat hot and heavy on me, and I raised my hand to the obnoxious light, letting my eyes adjust. My head throbbed from the familiar dull ache that was a hangover, made worse by the hum of city activity buzzing in my ears. I peeked over the balustrade with half-lidded eyes and gazed down several stories below, counting the tiny specs of the pedestrians and Pokémon walking the streets around Briskomy Tower. It took me a second to register or even care that I was still slumped against the balcony railing, apparently having passed out that way the night before.
I turned my head back up, dragging my gaze to the sound of some closeby rustling. I discovered a flock of Pidgeys perched along the rail immediately to my right, some pecking at traces of spilled champagne and others just gawking at me, totally still, their heads cocked in bemusement. It was a sad day indeed when even filthy, wild Pokémon were judging me.
"What are you looking at?" I mumbled in their direction, a bit incoherently. This must have set them off because they flapped their wings, showering me with feathers in the process, and took to the skies all at once. I spat up one of the feathers, and pushed myself off the concrete support, standing up on unsure feet.
"Mr. Rocket?"
Hearing the voice of my assistant, I swiveled around clumsily, overshooting it a bit but quickly straightening myself out. I blinked a couple times before spotting her across the balcony, standing in the doorway to my office. Her expression wasn't much different than that of the Pidgeys before her.
"What is it, Val?" I huffed, vigorously rubbing my forehead.
"Celia Phate is on line one," she said, slowly. "I've been trying to get through to you on the intercom, you know."
I cleared my throat, nodding. "Thank you, I'll see to it."
"Did you spend all night out here?" she interrogated, staring at me like I might pass out again at any given second. It wasn't an impossible scenario.
"No, of course not," I lied, stumbling toward her. I opened my mouth to supply a more detailed excuse but lost the thought in the dredges of my hangover. She took a step back, giving me room to enter my office. I followed her inside and found that the entire room had been miraculously reverted back to the way it was before. The desk was returned to its rightful place, the furniture was spotless, the bar was cleared out. The only evidence that a party had taken place was me, hungover and staggering to stay balanced on my feet was, which was ironic in itself, considering I had spent the night away from the festivities.
I came to my desk and collapsed into my big chair, much more comfortable than the hard, concrete outside. I caught sight of the telephone's blinking red light across the desk, but let it be for a moment. The last thing I needed while I was battling a throbbing migraine was the world's most verbose lawyer yakking my ear off.
"You have a meeting scheduled for eleven," Val read from her clipboard, standing post in front of my desk. I sighed.
"What time is it right now?" I dared to ask, groggily.
"Eleven."
"Push it back."
She bit her lip. "I've already pushed this one back three times already."
"Then you hold the meeting in my place," I decided, unconcerned with something so trivial at the moment. Business meetings and appointments were the furthest thing from my mind.
"Yes, sir," she conceded without protest, wisely, and then promptly showed herself out the office to carry out the task. The door shut behind her and I tilted my head back against the chair, relishing the silence but careful not to slip back into another vexing slumber. Even though I felt I was drifting closer to the truth of these nightmares, they still took a lot out of me. I wasn't sure what would remain before long.
That question fresh in my mind, I looked back on the nightmare I had just woken out of, making a mental list of everything it had shown me. I saw Eldar. I saw Raile. I saw my son Anna was to birth. I had watched each of them become Darkrai, all in the same dream, much as I had watched my own reflection become that same monster the dream before that. Darkrai was the connecting factor here, I realized. If I was skeptical before, I was all but certain now that this was my ancestor trying to contact me. He had something to say to me and I apparently wasn't listening well enough.
There was more to it than just Darukai, however. Even if I was encountering Darkrai in many of my dreams, there were still so many other unanswered visions that I wasn't sure my ancestor's magic could account for. The meteorite. The Maestro. The spacetime duo. The chapel. Where was the connecting thread in all of that?
Pondering too hard on this just put an extra strain on my already dizzy brain, and I leaned forward, reaching across the desk for the blinking phone. I'd kept Celia waiting long enough, and needed to get my thoughts away from the nightmares before I ended up flipping the desk over in frustration.
I jabbed the button on the receiver, not even bothering with the phone. "What can I do for you, Celia?"
"Look, slick," her voice shot out of the speaker, "I'm going to cut straight to the chase. We got ourselves one colossal quandary in the making."
I grunted my irritation, running a hand through my tangled hair. "What could possibly be so 'colossal' that you'd need to contact me of all people?"
"Because this quandary goes by the name of Anna," she answered, snapping me out of my haze with just that mention of the name. "Friend of yours. Blue hair. Mouth like a sailor. Maybe you've heard of her?"
I rose out of my sea, recognizing the problem without any explanation needed. I'd long suspected Anna's spiraling would come to a head, and it seemed that time was now, in a way I wasn't prepared for. If she was jeopardizing the likes of a mere shady law firm, I didn't even want to begin to guess what she had in store for me and all my indiscretions. Kade had been right to make light of just how much a liability she was. I needed to get out of the rut I was in and control this situation before it was too late.
"I'll be there shortly," I said, before quickly hanging up the line. I hurried towards the door where the coat rack hung on the wall, grabbing my jacket. There was no time or patience to head up to the suite and change out of my soiled, rumpled clothes that very likely reeked of alcohol. No time to sober up some more or worry about the nightmares. I knew if I didn't act on this reality check, and ceased caring altogether, I would descend lower into stagnation and allow Briskomy, Torino, and everything else I'd worked so hard for to crumble before my very eyes.
…...
Resting her face against the bus window, Anna watched quietly through the smudged glass as the ponds and honey trees passed her by like a movie reel. Her cheek buzzed as the bus jumped up and down Route 214's dirt road, but the sprawling urban landscape underneath her jaded gaze was therapeutic, numbing her mind in a way no amount of spores could. Maybe this was the Legendaries or even nature throwing her one last bone because she knew after today she would never see such beauty again.
She blew out a hard breath, shutting her eyes. This was the right thing, she told herself as she held her stomach, feeling the roundness and firmness there. This was the answer. It had taken a suicide attempt and a hell of a lot of drugs and alcohol to push her to this one right decision—one she should have made long ago when she had the chance.
Fuck, it killed her just thinking about it. Everything that had led her to this point. She'd lost her way when she shot Peer in cold blood. She'd lost her way when she didn't turn Metsuma in after discovering the monster behind the mask. Hell, even before that she'd lost herself, way back when she was just her father's understudy desperately seeking approval. She'd set herself up to fail as a cop from the start.
Looking back now, she remembered the very day the universe saw fit to test her, to really test her. It was almost decade ago, back when she was just an intern who only ever thought about what she wanted and never about what she had. She was so damn concerned with winning her father's love and respect, and that was her mistake...
She'd arrived at the precinct that morning in optimistic spirits, dressed in a pantsuit better suited for someone interning at a bank, and doling out coffees and donuts to all the cops on the floor like a glorified errand girl. She didn't complain though. Being under the same roof of so many brave men and women in blue was rewarding in its own way. She had begged her father just for this internship months back, for the chance to get one step closer to becoming the real deal.
After finishing her morning duties, she found herself lingering outside the lieutenant's office holding a hot mug of her superior's favorite coffee. She saw through his window that he was hung up on the phone, his fist pounding on the desk several times. He looked pretty ticked off with whomever he was speaking to and, for that reason, she chose not to knock on the door. When he acknowledged her with a fleeting glance and held up a finger for patience, she figured that was all she needed.
She didn't mind waiting. He was a busy man, after all, being the head honcho and everything. Plus waiting gave her time to rehearse what she wanted to say in her head. Today was the day she was finally going to demonstrate initiative and ask to be placed in the police training program. It was well past time for it, she knew it in her gut. Interning during the days and training relentlessly every night would be overwhelming, sure, but she was up to the challenge. If her father and so many others had gotten to where they were through hard work and determination, she didn't see why she needed to be the exception.
"Looking energetic as always, Anna," a perky male voice remarked over her shoulder, and she spun. Yep, there was Officer Jordie, goofy smile on his face and looking peppy as usual in his pressed uniform and shined shoes. He'd just been bumped up a rank recently, and while everyone else on the floor couldn't stomach him, she found his humor and good spirits to be a fresh of breath air around the station.
"Thanks, Jordie," she returned breezily, smiling back.
"You really ought to put that energy to the test though," he chuckled, pointing to the closed door behind her. "I thought you said you were going enter the academy this year."
She sighed. "I thought I was too, but my dad didn't think I was ready yet." She glanced over her shoulder, "I think today's the day I change his mind though."
He splayed his hands in front of him, his grin going lopsided. "Hey, I'd put in a good word for you and all... but I'm just rookie. He'd probably just shrug it off."
"Don't sweat it," she laughed, knowing better than to send him in her place. "Good things come to those who wait, I guess."
She heard the door open behind her and watched Jordie's expression whiten before he suddenly bolted in the other direction in a not so discreet fashion.
"Anna," the deep, masculine voice named her, sending goosebumps throughout. The tone sounded neither pleased nor upset—perfectly impassive, as always.
She turned about to face the owner of the voice but didn't know where to look at first. He always looked so damn tall and imposing in his office doorway. She saw the strapping uniform, but only after she saw the stretch of the fabric across his broad shoulders and the scarred knuckles of his hands gripping his coat. The cobalt hair that tapered to the darkest ultramarine around his ears and the nape of his neck made the white of his face shine.
Her gaze swooped down to the metal-plated name tag that read 'Gunner Lafleur', glistening on his chest light like a prized jewel. She hoped to have a badge of her own in good time. The idea of fighting crime beside her father was one she'd always hoped would become a reality, and she hoped he felt the same.
"Sorry for the wait, spark plug," he said, addressing her by the nickname he'd given her, even in his flat, professional voice. He stepped into his office and she entered behind him, careful not to spill the hot coffee mug in her hands.
"It's completely fine," she said in a forced chuckle, gently kicking the door closed behind her as she held the mug toward him. "I get it. You're lieutenant, you're busy."
He said nothing to that, instead taking the offered mug. He let it hover over his lips, testing the temperature, before deeming in a bored monotone, "Cold."
She let her smile waver in apology. "Well, I was sort of waiting outside your office for a while. Ten minutes, at least."
"Eight", he deadpanned, taking a sip of the apparently lukewarm coffee. "Doesn't matter now though. You'll get it right next time."
She nodded at the subtle dig, unwilling to argue, and quickly dredged up the courage to state her business before she could chicken out. "Dad, look, I was just talking to Jordie outside—"
"Huh," he vocalized, and she realized he wasn't even listening to her words. His eyes swept over her, from the blue hair she could never get to behave and downwards. "Your posture."
"What?"
He hadn't stopped looking at her, not once. "Your posture is too slouchy. Even interns shouldn't slouch."
She checked herself, finding no glaring issues, yet tried to keep her voice casual. "I'm hardly slouching, dad," she chuckled in attempted innocence.
"Okay," he pretended to agree, shrugging. "Don't say I didn't warn you. The academy instructors are going to be looking for good presentation."
That was enough to make her roll her shoulders a bit and straighten her spine. "Actually," she attempted again, using the topic to her advantage, "the academy is what I wanted to talk to you—"
"Why are you wearing your hair like that?"
Her mouth felt dry. "Well… mom always liked when I wore it down."
"Well she isn't here," he informed, icily, wagging his index finger in that way always meant to make her feel so small. "Professional, Anna. You have to look professional! How many times must I tell you these things!"
She didn't delay in following orders, fishing a hair tie out of her pocket and reaching behind her head to tie up her flowing river of hair. No cop in the force was anal as Gunner Lafleur, and she had to live with that.
"Military bun at all times," he scolded in reminder, watching her motions carefully, and she nodded yet again without objection. He rotated slightly to set the barely drank coffee on his desk and she saw this as an opening to finally spit out what she'd been trying to say.
"Dad," she started, still while fixing her into the requested style, "I think I'm ready for the academy. I want to go for it."
His head spun back toward her and there was a frown etched deeply into his forehead, squashing the hope within her. His jaw was clenched tightly, muscles ticking high on his cheekbone. "I don't think that's wise," he replied simply, though it almost sounded more like a decree than a suggestion.
"Oh," she croaked, swallowing, before working up some more courage. "Well... why not?"
He blinked, revealing nothing. "I just don't think you have the discipline, spark plug," was the vague excuse she'd expected, and she couldn't help an involuntary laugh from slipping out.
"Come on, dad. You made Jordie a cop and he's dumber than a Wormadam." He gave her a frigid, unamused look for that and she cringed, wishing very much she'd chosen better words. "I'm sorry, I know that was disrespectful. I just... I've been wanting to be a part of this team ever since I started here. I want to show you how good I am!"
His head lowered; his face had darkened a considerable amount. She knew he wasn't as confident as she was in what she was telling him. She understood his reservations, to some level, but hoped he might take her feelings into account. She'd done everything in her power to measure up to his expectations, all her life. She never once questioned him. For once, she just wanted him to smile down on her.
He made no move to say anything, giving her space to go on. She stared up at him, blinking, waiting for a heartbeat before continuing. "Making you proud is the only thing I've ever wanted for as long as I've wanted anything," she poured her heart out, smiling, hoping it might move him enough to do the same. "I want to help you clean up in Veilstone, dad. I want to help you fight crime. Let me enter the program and I'll show you what I can do. I wouldn't even have to rely on my... abilities. All I need is Jolteon by my side and I can pass the training with flying—"
"Jolteon?" he inquired, brow arched high and poignantly. She cocked her head, a bit miffed that her Pokémon was his big takeaway from everything that had just come gushing out of her.
Nevertheless, she answered the question like the obedient daughter he'd raised her to be, "I evolved Eevee with a Thunder Stone."
"Shame," he chastised; his voice was all gravel. "A Flareon would have been preferable."
"Dad," she said, a little desperately this time. He was trying to change course but she wasn't going to let him. "I know I can do this. I know I can make you proud. Please, just give me a chance!"
"Fine."
She balked at him, her lips twitching. "R—Really."
He nodded, though the sterility in his expression betrayed the gesture. He was giving her permission, yes, but not his approval. And the latter was what she really cared the most about.
"Dad," she said again, determined. "I want you to want this for me."
He shrugged. "If you want to blindly rush into this, don't let me stop you."
The tone in his voice made her feel like the worst person in the world. She didn't hide her frown, murmuring, "I was… hoping you would be a bit more supportive."
He didn't seem fazed by her defeated response. "If you want my support, then you should first get your priorities straight," he retorted, and left her to stew over that as he marched back to his post behind his desk. She looked down at her feet and swallowed thickly, a tightness in her throat.
"Yes, sir."
"I have a lot of work to do, spark plug, and I'm sure you do too," he huffed, and she peeked up at him. He was already plopped back in his seat and stacking papers on his desk. She may as well have not existed anymore. She may as well have never walked into his office.
When it became clear he was done with her, she resigned with an exhale. "Yes, sir," she murmured a final time, before turning back toward the door, back to carry out the dull day-to-day chores of an intern.
"Anna," her father said from his desk, with a shadow of emotion in his voice. He almost never called her by her actual name, and for that reason, she reeled back around to regard him.
He spoke again, then, without looking up from his paperwork, "You should know that I don't mean to keep brushing you off."
Biting her bottom lip, and rubbing her arm nervously, she didn't know what else to say except, "It's... not your fault."
"Of course it is," he effortlessly rejected, finally gazing up at her. His eyes darkened so they appeared to be black, bottomless pits. "A man knows when to admit to his mistakes."
"It's okay, dad, really," she muttered, slightly uncomfortable by his direct stare. He was being fatherly, affectionate. She wasn't used to it, even though she'd always wanted to be.
He rose from his chair, leaning over his desk in contemplation. He exhaled in a long, slow gust of breath. "I know I'm not always the most attentive father, especially with how hectic things can get around here." His jaw tightened a pained cast to his features. He blinked several times, smearing his free hand over his face. "It's time like this I wish your mother were still..."
She knew he couldn't finish the thought, so she quickly spoke up, feeling a little guilty now. "No, dad, don't say that. I understand."
"No," his voice was hoarse, tensed. "You don't"
She swallowed. "Dad?"
His brow furrowed in thought, his mouth flattening into a hard line. Then, he circled the desk and stepped toward her, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes. She could see the almost strained expression on his own as he met her gaze again.
"Can I trust you, spark plug?"
Her throat felt clogged as she stared into his deep stare, but, she nodded a little in response.
"Good," he said. She didn't expect him to smile, but he did; and not even unkindly, spreading his lips and allowing a very pleasant, almost approving expression to cross his face. "I want to show you something."
Reluctantly, she nodded again...
The memory slipped away to the chastising sound of the bus honking its obnoxious horn, and Anna blinked back to the present.
"We're coming up on Veilstone City," the bus driver up front hollered, and she peered out the window at the familiar goliath of a city gate peeking over the trees. Panic rumbled in her gut. This was it. This was her stop.
She leaned her head back, hands still clasping her curved stomach, silently dreading the decision before her. It was for the best, she kept telling herself. It was poetic too, in a sense, that she was coming back to this city after so many months out of dodge. She was returning to her roots. What had all begun that day at the precinct with her father all those years ago, a memory which she couldn't bring herself to finish, was now going to end in the same place.
She stared up at the roof of the bus, watching the lights flicker, squinting into the fluorescent tubes until her eyes burned. It wasn't just from the light, but also the fatigue and throes racking her body, dripping from every pore. The spawn inside her was due to arrive any day now, maybe any hour. Fuck, if she knew anymore. What she did know was that he was just one more reason she couldn't turn back now.
…...
Viper found Joy in the infirmary treating a Sandshrew, relief on his breath at the sight of her safely and soundly going about her routine practice. She didn't notice him enter the room, her focus on her work as she fed the little shrew an elixir from a bottle, humming a soothing tune as she did so. She was the image purity and, in too many ways, he felt so unworthy of her.
It wasn't until he remembered what he'd witnessed back in the weapons depot did that familiar urgency fill him again, and he hurriedly closed the doors behind him. The noise caused Joy to pivot from the examination table and present him with that sweet, sinless smile of hers.
"Wonderful timing," she noted gaily, beckoning him over before turning back towards her patient on the table. "This little Sandshew's been fighting a fever all morning. Can you prop his head up while I give him his medicine drops? Chansey's resting, so I've been a little shorthanded this morning—"
"That can wait," he cut her off, taking her by the hand with a gentle grip and leading her behind the nearby curtain. She didn't struggle, but her cheerful, smiley demeanor slowly began to peel away into a worried pout.
"What is it?" she asked once they were alone, staring deep into eyes he wagered looked haunted after seeing a Steelix smelted alive. "Why do you look as though you've just seen a Ghost Pokémon?"
He couldn't be bothered to answer that, nor could he be bothered to deny the panic apparently coloring his features. He could only voice the one intention on his mind now.
"I'm getting you out of here," he muttered. "Tonight."
She was quiet at first, and then her lips twitched into a humorous smile, a gentle laugh surfacing at the tail end of it. She must have thought he was joking. He didn't blame her though; he'd never once even offered to help her escape the island until now. Skepticism was to be expected.
Fortunately, he only needed to maintain his stark expression to remind her he was never one to joke. It was then that her own expression began to lapse, and when it finally appeared to sink in that he hadn't gone mad, only shock marked her features. Her mouth opened and closed with a hundred questions unasked.
"Mos Vinci's crew is scheduled to make drop-off tonight," he briefed straightaway before she could start tripping over her tongue. "I'm going to smuggle you onto one of their helicopters without them knowing. You can hide in one of the supply crates."
"I… I don't understand." Her small, delicate hands came to rest on his barrel chest, which felt like it had a brace around it, making it harder to breathe. Her eyes continued to search his for answers. "Has something happened?"
He swallowed hard. "No," he husked. "At least, not yet."
She pawed at the front of his uniform in a coaxing manner. "You know you can tell me any—"
"It just isn't safe here," he growled, determined to make her cooperate. "You want to be reunited with your sisters, don't you? You want to have a life and a future away from this floating rock?"
She blinked at him. "Well… of course I do, but—"
"Then now is the time," he said, his voice dropping, on the slim chance someone were right outside the door. "Azrael is away and so is the Boss. And Difo is too busy with his toys to focus on anything else. We may not get this chance again."
"But…" she started hesitantly, indicating behind the curtain, "there are sick Pokémon that need my attention and—"
"Listen to me, woman," he attempted in a firmer tone, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders. "The Boss isn't keeping you around to play nurse. He's keeping you around so that he can use you as leverage against me. And he has a reason to do that now. He hasn't forgotten the role I played in Cayman's coup. I know how this game works and I won't have you paying for my mistakes, do you hear me?"
A flinch passed through her jaw, something hurt rather than healed. He understood this wasn't what she wanted to hear—him trying to ship her off. That was only how it sounded though, and he had to make it clear somehow that this was to protect her from Metsuma and every other sadistic creep in this blasted place.
"Cayman didn't get Simon out of here when he had the chance and look what happened," he said, softly, willing through guilt and pain to dig up the scarring memory. He had to make her see, even if by example. "If you stay here, you will die," he warned her; then his mind briefly flashed to the creature that had once been his friend now slaving away in Difo's laboratory, and he added, "Or worse."
She looked at him curiously rather than in horror. It looked like she was trying to bore into his brain, suss out what was going on in there. He wished her luck. The images branded into his mind weren't going to be leaving anytime soon. He didn't want to tell her about Cayman or Difo's facility anyway. The fewer people that knew he'd been down there, the more easily he could suppress the memory.
Hesitantly, she placed her hand on his head, stroking his mauve hair with a gentleness he had witnessed in her too many times before. Even if she couldn't read what was going on his head, she could evidently read the distress it was bringing to the surface. She smoothed away the frown creases on his forehead with the pad of her thumb. He closed his eyes for the briefest moment, relaxing as her nurturing fingers roamed his temples, chiseling away at the tough exterior that became harder and harder to bear as the days went by.
"Oliver," she whispered the name he never thought he'd hear on her lips. "It isn't any safer here for you than it is for me."
He opened his eyes and worked his jaw, calculating her words. He knew immediately what she was asking of him, something that was impossible. He started to turn his head away, to pretend like he hadn't heard it. Her hand slipped down the side of his face though, cupping his cheekbone and stopping any attempt on his part to flee her gaze.
"If I do this," she said, "you're coming with me."
"Joy—"
"Do you love me?"
He glared, a little scandalized by the question. "Why would you even ask that?"
She met his glare with a clear, undeterred gaze. "What you and I have isn't a secret, not anymore," she explained. "When they find out I escaped, they'll know who to hold accountable."
Trying to act unaffected, he muttered, "I'm ready to live with that."
She stubbornly shook her head. "Well I'm sorry, but I'm not. I won't let them hurt you."
"No, Joy," he rejected, caught between bitter and sad. He tugged his head free of her hand, glaring off into the patterns of the curtain beside them. "It's all wrong."
Her mouth pulled down at the corners, and when he realized he might have inadvertently wounded her with his words, his hand flew out without even making a choice and fingers wrapped around her arm. He held her in place, no words coming to him. Inwardly, he cursed himself for his poor handling of the situation. This was a far cry from the person he had been a year ago who wouldn't have cared at all if he had hurt some girl's feelings.
When he felt some of the tension leave her body, he grasped her hands in both of his and sank to his knees. "It's all wrong because I'm old-fashioned enough to believe the man should protect his lady, not the other way 'round," he said, his repressed Texan accent slipping out in the heat of his emotion. "I just… don't want you hurt, is all."
Her eyes widened, and a slow smile began to spread across her beaming face. "Oliver," she said, his true name on her tongue sounding something more like a prayer this time. "You'll only be hurting me if you stay behind." She laced her fingers with his and pulled him back up to his feet, her voice barely above a whisper. "Please. You don't belong on this island any more than I do. You know it's true."
He stared at her for a long, pleading moment. When nothing changed, he gave a small, accepting smile that tore him in new ways. He pushed past the fear to strengthen his voice, and earnestly asked, "You... really want to take this chance?"
She gave a slow, defined nod. "As long as we're taking it together, then yes, I do."
At those words, the impossible suddenly seemed possible, and he regarded her smiling face quietly. The overhead lamp caught her luscious pink locks, making the ends glow in a soft, radiant light. He found himself reaching for her slowly, skimming her neck without touching the delicate, creamy white expanse of her skin.
"Joy," he said a gentle voice he never knew he had, as if rousing from a dream, "I think I'm in love with you."
Her face paled, and he wondered if he'd errored in professing his love so bluntly. This was all so new to him, unfamiliar still. He felt vulnerable and even a little embarrassed, like he was standing naked on the edge of a cliff. He knew it was silly to feel so vulnerable too; he'd always made himself out to be such a tough, domineering force. When he was with Joy, however, all of that was magically stripped away.
Before he could take back his confession in a rushed apology, and probably end up choking on that too, Joy stopped his lips with her finger. She smiled an enormous smile. "Don't take this the wrong way..." she began, making him fear the worst for a fraction of a second, "...but it certainly took you long enough to actually say it."
He blinked at her for several beats until the tension bled from his shoulders on a long, winded breath. She giggled at his display of relief, her cheeks glowing with a light blush.
"Did you really doubt I felt the same about you?" she asked with a wink. She moved her hands over his, fingertips feather-light over the bones in his hand. Her fingers were cool as they walked over his calloused knuckles. "You don't give me enough credit, commandant."
He felt a smile fight its way to his mouth, something he knew was rare for him. He never imagined himself falling for someone like Joy, much less anyone at all. Though he'd felt something for Joy since the start, he'd always given it lots of careful names; admiration, respect, trust. And those weren't easy to get from him as it was. He never considered, never even entertained the idea that he was meant for other things.
"It's strange," he uttered, hoarsely, his heart feeling like it no longer had any coherent rhythm. Now that he knew he had nothing to fear, he didn't care what came oozing out of his mouth anymore. "I'm not sure I know what love is, but I know you're the only person I've ever known that I wanted to find out for." He chuckled and shook his head at how ridiculous the words were upon playing them over in his head. "That must have sounded hokey, I know—"
Her lips smothered his as fast as a thought, shutting him up before he could stumble over his tongue anymore. He was grateful for it too. He closed his arms around her small body, squeezing her tight, protecting her against anyone who would pry them apart. He could feel his heart hammering, trying to crawl up his throat. Surely she had to be able to feel it too, pressed so tight in his arms, her lips so tight against his.
He found himself clinging to her like a lifeline. Once he would have berated himself for his pathetic nature, but this time, he was unable to move. He didn't want to move. This was what he wanted, what he'd always wanted without ever knowing. Someone who understood him, listened to him, made him feel like more than a scary face or a stain on the world. Until Joy, he'd been searching for himself in the all the wrong places, trying to scratch an unscratchable itch. Now he could finally leave Viper behind. He could leave Oliver behind. He knew he could be a different man with her, and once they left the island together, they could live any kind of life they wanted.
Her head drew away from his, and without fully realizing, he reflexively leaned inward to keep his lips pressed to hers. Only when she giggled did he come to and pull away, bashfully, hoping he hadn't come off as too clingy. Her fingers still woven through his, she took a step backwards, tugged gently at his knuckles.
"Tonight, then?" she whispered, softly. He nodded in rapid succession.
"Tonight," he repeated back to her in a subdued voice, trying to curb his own excitement. He tilted his chin to the curtain next to them. "Finish up here and then pack your things. I'll do the same. I'll check up on you later so we can talk specifics. If we're going to do this, we'll have to carefully plan out every step."
She smiled, almost tearfully, as though she hadn't heard a word beyond the one he'd repeated back to her. "I can't wait to take this step with you," she said, letting go of his hand slowly. "I can't wait."
He grinned back, a natural thing now, he found. She raised her sleeves, readying to return to her work; but even as she began to step back behind the curtain to treat her patient, her bright, shimmering gaze never left his. He felt complete, in a way, that she was so filled with joy and enthusiasm at the prospect of them running off together. What surprised him most, however, was that he was too. Their new life, away from the island, away from Torino, was right around the corner waiting.
He left the infirmary in several absent strides, his thoughts now focused solely on getting himself and Joy safely off Savile Island in one piece. No matter what measures they took, the risk was bound to be an immense one all the same. The last thing he wanted was for their love to have been in vain if they ended up caught and executed for desertion.
No. He was going to do right by her. No matter what. He would make every effort to keep her alive and safe, and even if they came to stare death in the face, he was going to make sure it wouldn't be for nothing. He would make sure that something remained even if they didn't. He knew exactly how, too. It would be quick, perhaps sudden, but he knew he had to be that man in case the chance never came again. The question now was how to go about it in what precious little time they had left.
…...
I stared quietly at the four duffle bags presented at my feet, counting the crisp Pokedollars peeking out from the gaps in each zipper. It was superfluous doing so because I already knew how much each bag contained; what I didn't understand was why it had been dumped here on the floor of Celia's office in the first place. If what Celia claimed was true and the money was indeed meant for the families of those I'd wronged in the past, it stood to reason this was Anna's way of trying to atone for her own sins.
That possibility in itself raised a more pressing question though: why was Anna only just now deciding to right the wrongs of the past? What was she preparing to do?
These questions weren't just plaguing me, I noticed; they were written on the faces of everyone else standing around the office. Rita. Kade. Celia. Payne. Each of them shared a part in the foreboding silence choking the room, and for good reason. They were all either accessories to my crimes or potential casualties of whatever shit storm Anna was cooking up. And I knew if my secrets somehow fell into the wrong hands because of her stupidity, even more of my many co-conspirators would become compromised.
Beside me Celia Phate was in a deep state of the thought, leaning back against her desk, once again proving herself to be the more rational, levelheaded of the law firm's two managing members. Her billowing red hair hung around her face in curtains as she bent her head down, seeming to weigh the options, which I myself might have been doing if not for the exhaustion and the hangover and just about every other crippling vice the universe seemed to like throwing at me these days. If nothing else, I could at least depend on Celia to competently represent me if it ever came to incarceration, assuming she and others didn't go down with me.
Her less able partner, Payne Suffrin, stood trembling in his corner with a look that screamed dread. He'd spent his entire career turning a blind eye to the firm's indiscretions, pretending to have no knowledge of them. He certainly wasn't pretending now though. He was a coward, a poor excuse for a lawyer, and, from my perspective, a potential liability. I suspected if he ever fell into police custody, he'd probably play the plea deal card and sell out the rest of us to save his own skin.
I shifted my gaze to Kade, who stood with his back to the door. His expression was inscrutable beneath his sunglasses, which I now couldn't look at without remembering his story and the value to be found within it. For that reason, I imaged he wasn't pleased with the dilemma before him, before all of us. He'd gone to extremes to secure his position and was now going to have to fight harder to hold on to it because of my carelessness in reigning in Anna. He'd handled his father when push came to shove, and though he'd never outright said it, he was perhaps my biggest advocate for giving Anna that same treatment.
"This is outrageous!" A voice shrilled, and I my eyes snapped to the beholder. Rita was visibly fuming, arms crossed and one foot tapping impatiently as she glared so heatedly at the duffle bags, I thought they might shrivel up and burn. "Why in flying Feraligators would that nosy tramp want to give money to my son?"
For once she'd asked a perfectly reasonable question, and I looked back down at the money. "Because she feels like she's responsible for Clint," I ventured, even though I knew it to be more than just a guess. I turned my head to Celia, glancing up at her. "Just like she feels responsible for all the other names she gave you."
The crooked lawyer hunched her shoulders, drumming her painted nails against the edge of the mahogany desk. "Well that was definitely the impression she gave," he sighed. "I felt uncomfortable broaching her privacy though. It seemed better to do it behind her back like a decent person."
"And yet she wasn't responsible for any of those things she told you about," noted Kade, and I gazed his way. He'd parted from the door, coming to join us in the center of the office. "That's where this logic falls short."
It didn't fall short. She felt responsible for me. It was as simple as that.
Off Kade's point, Celia nodded. "So, there's that. Then there's one small detail," she continued. "She mentioned that she had... business to take care of.
"'Long overdue business', was how she put it!" Payne specified in a panicky squeal. I steeled hearing this, my head respectfully hung low as I slowly paced a full path around the bags of blood money.
A concurring chuckle came out of Celia. "And if that wasn't some kind of threat or warning, then I'm the Clefairy queen."
I rubbed a hand over my face, but the reality slid off my tongue easily. "She's not in the right state of mind," I breathed, perhaps a bit tensely, causing all head to turn toward me. "She's unstable, she's spiraling—"
"She knows too much," Payne cut me off, stepping out of his corner to regurgitate the same old talking points. "She wanted to confess! In fact she probably already has!"
I shook my head, stroking my chin. "If she had, we'd all be in handcuffs right now."
"Who's to say that still won't happen?" Payne challenged, and I paused to compose, process. "You said it yourself, she's spiraling!"
My teeth ground. I fucking knew well what was at stake.
"Metsuma," Rita's voice cracked, and I glanced up to find her staring me down with a glower that rivaled my own. "How much did you tell her, exactly?"
"She's not a threat to me, Rita," I assured her in a voice so firm, I almost believed the words myself. I knew better than that deep down though.
She clenched her fists. She looked torn between crying and socking me in the nose. "I'm not talking about you! I want to know how much dirt she has on me! You said she feels responsible for Clint, right? That in itself means she knows how he died!"
I shook my head in the negative, fruitless as it was. "That's not—"
"Does she also know the role I played in what happened that night?"
"Rita—"
"Does she also know about Calypso? About Cosma Point?"
I said nothing, regretting it a moment later. While she didn't try throwing a punch my way, she favored something equally melodramatic; she clutched at her heart with one hand and pressed the back of the other to her forehead. It was one thing to fake dizziness, but this was an absurd exaggeration.
Celia rushed to Rita's side just as any paid lawyer would tend to their most profitable client. "Rita, hon, calm down."
"I think I'm having palpitations," Rita gasped, slowly starting to sink to her knees in affected faintheartedness. Kade joined Celia in easing Rita down to the carpet, expectantly. Even if he was smart enough to see her through the performance, he was far more loyal to her than he would ever be to me.
Holding Rita's head in her lap, Celia grabbed a handful of cash sticking out from one of the bags nearby her and began to fan Rita's face with it. So clever.
"Oh, that's so much better," Rita heaved in a breath, one so deep and guttural it almost resembled an orgasm. Perhaps she hadn't been faking after all.
"I think I'm having palpitations too," Payne choked out, stumbling toward us and desperately clawing at his own chest; I could sense he was actually telling the truth. "My chest feels so tight. Celia, I... I think I might be having a heart—"
Celia didn't even seem to notice her partner though, continuing to fan Rita with the wad of money in her hand. "Rita, honey, stay with me. Just relax. Want me to tell you look pretty?"
"Yes, very much," the other woman murmured.
"Well, you don't look pretty. You look drop-dead gorgeous!" Celia finally looked up toward her partner, who was genuinely struggling to stay standing beside me. "Doesn't she look drop-dead gorgeous, Payne?"
"Yes," he wheezed, face red and swelling. "But in all seriousness, I think I might need an ambulance—"
"Tell her she looks drop-dead gorgeous."
Payne looked down weakly toward Rita. "You look gorgeous," he managed over a broken exhale, then clutched at his chest again as another pain racked through him. I might have considered helping him if I didn't remember that I'd considered him a potential threat just minutes ago.
Celia rolled her eyes, evidently unsatisfied with his response. "I'm sorry, am I speaking Bayleef over here? Tell her she looks drop-dead gorgeous!"
"I just did!"
"You said gorgeous, not drop-dead gorgeous!"
"There's no difference!" A ragged breath punctuated his every word, and while I was no doctor, it was safe to say he was actually suffering a very serious heart attack. Celia ignored it, once again, and I still wasn't any more interested playing the hero than I had been moments prior.
"I am THIS close to smacking you, Payne!" Celia shouted. "Just say it!
"Rita, you look drop-dead gorgeous!"
Rita smiled at that, delirious, the words apparently music to her ears even if she didn't know whom or where they had come from. She reached for the ceiling, as though the words had been sung from above.
"Good," Celia approved, leaving Rita's in Kade's care so that she could stand up. "Now keep telling her that while I step into the other room and make a quick phone call." She beelined for the door, and I found it strange she wouldn't use the phone on her desk. She was going to try and take matters into her own hands, I realized.
I stepped after her, voicing my suspicion. "Who are you calling?"
"An ambulance, I beg you," Payne suggested weakly behind us, having collapsed to the floor, but neither of us so much as glanced at him.
Celia beamed bleached teeth at me behind heavily glossed lips, trying to act sympathetic but failing. "Look, my hands are tied, Metsuma. Anna's a sweet girl, really, but... she also happens to a crazy wack job. And I happen to know a guy who can make crazy wack jobs ... you know... take vacations."
I furrowed a brow, suspecting what her wordplay meant, but not certain.
"Permanent vacations," she specified, and I held up a hand, understanding.
"Not necessary."
This time it was her arching a brow. "What are you saying?"
Angling my stare, I answered simply, "I'm saying I'm going to take care of this."
She tilted her head, looking at me in confusion for a second before it finally clicked. She made no attempt to protest once it did.
I frowned. At least it was clicking for one of us.
"So be it," she said, letting the matter drop. Then, she caught something past my shoulder and stepped around me to tend to it with a roll of her eyes. "Oh for the love of Articuno, Payne, would you quit making love to the carpet already? I mean, come on! It's just a little heart attack!"
I didn't stick around to watch her kick Payne off the floor. I progressed into the empty waiting room instead, taking comfort in its peace and quiet so that I could clear my head. It quickly proved to be a short-lived endeavor, however.
"Planning a good ol' fashioned hunting trip with your gal?"
I turned to find Kade standing in the doorway behind me and sporting a fiendish grin. I knew what he'd insinuated, but replied without truly answering the question, "I said I'd do what needs to be done."
He nodded in smug satisfaction and plugged his hands into his jacket pockets, stepping back into the office to rejoin Rita and the others. Whether he had believed me or not was a mystery I wasn't too concerned about. I had bigger Feebas to fry.
I stormed out of the building with one hand already gripping Abra's Pokéball, the other reaching for Gengar's. I'd told Celia and Kade what they wanted to hear, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to take necessary steps to stop Anna from surrendering to a guilty conscience. If going before the police to turn herself in and confess was indeed her intention, I knew exactly where to intercept her.
…...
The police precinct rose eerily into view as Anna came up the bend of the road, the gravel crunching beneath determined steps. She'd walked the entire distance from the bus stop, willing through the excruciating pain of her swelling feet carrying for two, but none of that mattered now. What mattered was the destination mere yards ahead, the end of the road. If all went as planned, nightfall would see both her and Metsuma in handcuffs.
The station she had long served stood tall and magnificent, a mainspring of Sinnoh's law and order. Her career had begun here and so, too, would it end here, in a sense. She'd come back to bring one last crime to justice, not to take a stroll down memory lane. There were no memories to look back on with pride anyway. As a sergeant and then as a lieutenant, she'd betrayed her badge by abetting Metsuma's crimes; and even before learning about his true nature, while she was still fresh in uniform, she was too fucking naive. Her first mistake as a cop still traced all the way back to that day she'd stepped into her father's office. He'd offered to show her something, a secret she now regretted ever keeping to herself.
The memory began to guide her feet, though not toward the station entrance. The baby inside her kicked and pummeled to be free with each step she took, but the memory of that dark secret in her brain thrashed even harder. She had to revisit that secret, bring it into the world one last time instead of leaving it repressed. She knew she would have no wish to reflect on past wounds while behind bars. She had to face the pain she deserved so much for all her sins.
She detoured the glistering police station, coming upon the building behind it that stood out like an eyesore in contrast, ramshackle and overrun by graffiti. The science intelligence facility had long since been abandoned, now a dark and drab husk of a vision left unrealized. It had been functional once as a subdivision to the precinct, a place that specialized in restricted police matters and testing. She never once glimpsed the inside of it during its glory days; the building had been shut down shortly before her internship. The facility's programs had apparently been deemed too extreme; they were focused on developing and advancing unorthodox procedures and serums meant for interrogations and torture, to force confessions and information out of criminals through police brainwashing.
Her father, however, had kept the place standing for something unorthodox of his own. He'd offered to show her that something, and after she blindly accepted on the hope he might look more favorably upon her, he brought her to the ruins of the forgotten facility. He'd showed her through the dank, dusty foyers and the dingy, forgotten laboratories and chambers once used for mind control experiments on humans and disobliging Pokémon. She'd thought it all to be a learning experience at first, an innocent walk through a dark chapter in the police department's history; Legendaries, how naive she'd been.
Her father had brought her to a holding cell at the end of the tour, one still operation for his sole usage. It was there he introduced Project Orphan to her—a covert, self-made initiative to train and program human subjects and plant them inside crime circles for information extraction. He'd even presented the precursor experiment to her. The prototype. The first ever sleeper agent. The orphan. Even now, she remembered the bloodcurdling chill that ran up her spine when she first set eyes upon her father's creation, a sensation she only ever felt one other time: the day she discovered the truth about Metsuma with her own eyes.
She had stupidly kept quiet about what she saw in the months following, letting it remain a secret between father and daughter. In retrospect, he might as well have brainwashed her too. She'd been so damn desperate to secure his trust and his approval that she had somehow convinced herself the program was in the best interest of the law. It even appealed to her on some personal level—to the caring friend in her that had wanted to ensure Metsuma put his vendettas with Clint and Wade behind him and moved on with his life.
So much for that.
There was a time she nearly came to her senses regarding Project Orphan though. The program had begun to change her father in ways she didn't like, making him obsessive and paranoid and nasty in personality. The noble, righteous man of justice she'd idolized for so long became something she wasn't sure she wanted to see in herself anymore. She remembered the day she glimpsed that side of him in all its ugliness…
She'd entered the basement level of the facility, hoping to confront her father about her concerns. Mildew and mold filled the cracks in the walls on either side of her as she stepped carefully down the narrow hall. The damp atmosphere was stifling, suffocating, choking. Cold tile, flickered in an off set black and white checkerboard pattern against off-white wall, fittingly gave the hall a feeling of sterilization and abandonment. Yellow fluorescent bulbs sputtered and sparked, willing the electricity to cooperate with aged wires and decaying circuits.
The sound of a struggle echoed from further down the foyer, and the holler of a young boy from behind closed doors ripped through the silence of the basement passages. She froze in her steps, the noise chilling her to her core. Once when the institute was still up and running she might have heard the soft muddling of Pokémon test subjects instead, or even the chatter of technicians and forensic workers, but not anymore. Ever since its shutdown, the building had been repurposed into a torture house for her father's off-the-books thought control experiments. For her to go on thinking it was anything other than that was just lying to herself, and that was something she could no longer go on doing, not even for her old man.
She came to the door where the screams were caged, hesitating to enter. The holding cell for the precursor was just a door's knock away. Her father kept the room sealed at all times, even while he was inside with the boy, as was the case now. In truth, she didn't even want to go in. She had no desire to look upon that poor kid pent up inside. No desire to look into those lethal blue eyes, so dead and cold, his youth and innocence and free will trapped behind them. Each time she'd been to see him, he was a little bit less. What was remarkable progress in her father's eyes was a cruel and unethical treatment in hers, though she'd never let him know this.
Even if by some miracle Project Orphan proved to be a resounding success, she wasn't sure she wanted any piece of that success. She was a police officer in training, yet here she was, a conspirator in her father's unlawful and immoral brainchild. She'd let him fool her into thinking it was an ambitious measure necessary to combat crime, but it was now becoming clear who the real criminal was in all of this, even though it killed her to admit it.
Another scream erupted from inside the room, and the door rattled in front of her. She jumped back, her breath drawing up short and her hand reaching for her nightstick. There was a scraping sound. Fingernails against metal. She heard her father's voice calmly calling out over the sound, unintelligible, and the scraping turned to vicious banging. She took a cautious step forward and brought her ear just shy of the shuddering door, listening. The boy inside let out another yelp, but was quickly silenced by three simple words from her father.
"Orphans never sleep," she heard him mutter, and suddenly, the door stopped shaking and she heard the thud of a body collapsing to the floor on the other side. All went quiet for several tense moments, though it felt like more like an hour in her mind as she stood there against the door, waiting for something to happen.
Her ears pricked up at the sound of the magnetic lock clicking over and she stepped back as the door opened ajar. Her father slipped through the crack of the door and then swiftly locked it shut behind him, denying her a view of the inside. She let out a relieved strand of breath at the sight of her father unharmed and smiling down on her, something he had never given her prior to sharing this terrible secret with her.
"That didn't sound good in there, dad," she said, her voice cracking. He shook his head, unconcerned.
"He's coming around," he justified simply. "The trigger phrase worked, didn't you hear it? He'll be ready for his first assignment soon."
She bit down on her bottom lip. He was getting too ahead of himself. The project hadn't even been approved yet and here he was acting as like it was already fully endorsed or even lawful. Just as concerning as his preconceived notions was his physical appearance too. She studied his unshaven face, his rumpled police uniform, the heavy sweat stains spreading around his collar. He spent more days in this dark, depressing ruin than he did at the station anymore.
He leveled a finger at the steel door behind him, his bloodshot eyes wide. "He's just the first of many, spark plug. The brass wanted me to decommission this project before I even had it up off the ground, but they'll see. I'll make all of them see that this is the future of law enforcement."
She freed the lip she had been chewing. "I don't know if this is the right to do, dad." She straightened her shoulders, finding better judgment than to back down. "The whole reason this place was shut down was because of inhumane stuff like this. I mean, this isn't a Pokémon or some volunteer test subject we're experimenting on."
"No," he said, smiling still, "he most certainly isn't. He's better."
Unsettled by that response, she frowned. "He's just a kid. You took him away from his mother."
The grin dissolved from his lips, and he stared at her as though insulted. "I didn't take him away from anyone." His voice seemed to roll, like a hiss through bared teeth, almost rattling, somehow. "His mother wanted a better life for her son and I'm going to provide that for him. I'm going to give his life meaning."
She shook her head before she could buy into the lie as she had too many times already. "No, dad," she protested. "She didn't consent to this. She wanted him in a foster home and you gave her your word."
"And again, I'll follow through," he sniped back, glaring. "But before that, there's more work to be done."
She pushed a frustrated breath out through her nostrils as he turned away, pacing back and forth in front of her, plans already writing themselves up in his mind. She could tell by the way his eyes crinkled, like he was thinking too hard, too caught up in the future to dwell on the present. That had always been his way; it was simultaneously his leading strength and weakness as a cop.
When he noticed her silently assessing him, he shook his head. "Don't give me that look, Anna," he said in a voice so sharp she jumped a little. "All the progress I've made—and will continue to make—is for the greater good. I shouldn't have to lecture you about priorities, not again." He indicated the sealed-off room behind him once more. "He is the one, Anna. You yourself confirmed that his Aura levels were tremendous, unlike anything you've ever felt. Imagine how many others like him there are out in the world, their potential undiscovered. I came upon this one by sheer luck, but with your aura sensitivities, you could help me root out even stronger contenders."
Anna wanted to spit, she was so upset. He'd said it all without emotion, as if he were talking about the weather. The lack of censure in his tone and little respect he had for her or her abilities said it all. He was at the point now where he just expected her to along with his plans, and it wounded her that this was the only way he could ever appreciate her. It wasn't genuine at all.
Keeping her feelings on the matter bottled inside wasn't doing her any favors, and she folded her arms over her chest and replied, "I'm starting to think that's the only reason you brought me on board with this plan: to be your personal Aura gauger." He raised offended brows at her, but she pressed on. "I think you just wanted me to be a part of this so that I could pick out the most powerful candidates for your little brainwashing program."
"Don't be ridiculous," he said, indifferent, continuing his pacing in long strides now. "If this initiative takes off like I think it will, it will render crime obsolete on a global scale. We'd finally be able to right so many wrongs. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why your mother should rot in a grave when the men who took her from us are free to roam the streets?"
Anna felt her forehead bunch, but couldn't find words to that. She understood how much he missed her mother, missed their family being whole. She missed it too, even though it had been too long ago to remember. He'd been a much happier though when her mom was still alive. She'd find him smiling in all the family albums, a different person almost. She longed to connect with that person.
He stopped his pacing, facing her. "It's sickening," he muttered, startling her, and he dropped his chin to make eye contact. He didn't break it even as his finger yet again pointed to the door to the holding cell. "My sleeper agent, and the many who will follow him, will succeed where so many lazy, inept cops in this city failed. I'll finally be able to rest easy knowing I'm not the only one doing anything about the injustices of this world."
She stuck her lip out, but then thought of something. "You don't have to be the only one, dad," she pleaded in a whisper, giving him a proud and loving smile she yearned to see reflected back at her. "My training at the academy is nearly over. I'll be on the force soon. You don't need sleeper agents, not when you have me. I'll do you proud."
His lips twitched at the corners and then parted, yet he didn't speak. A flicker played across his steely features though, and for a moment, she thought she had gotten through to him. She thought maybe, just maybe, he was going to come to his senses and leave this all behind.
Then, he blinked rapidly, that familiar narrowed look resurfacing.
"Anna, please," his nostrils flared, stubborn pride winning out over affection. "Don't act like you didn't once see the potential in this project. I know for a fact that you did. If you hadn't, you would not have asked me to deploy the precursor to spy on your friend—the one you suspect of being a danger to society."
She squeezed her eyes shut against the truth of the words. He just had to bring up Metsuma. She regretted ever confiding that childhood friendship in him, though thankfully he only knew Metsuma by reputation and not by name. Back when Project Orphan still intrigued her, she'd opened up to him about her troubled, lost friend and how concerned she was for his well being. She'd told him about Metsuma's upbringing, his powers, his anarchistic tendencies. She'd been careful not to share anything else though.
"I gave you my word," he reminded, making one last play to get back into her good graces. "And I'll keep to, it if you so wish. Say the word and I'll make shadowing your friend the precursor's first assignment."
Anna trembled all over, but it was no longer from fear. "Things have changed," she uttered, unwilling to let him use that argument to tempt her, not again. "My friend doesn't need to be watched. He's moving on with his life. I really think I got through to him at the lighthouse that day."
His brow wrinkled and then shot up. "You think, or you know?"
"It's not about that," she replied, her words honest. "As it is, Project Orphan is in direct violation of the justice system you are I are supposed to uphold. I just... I wouldn't feel right going behind your superiors' backs."
He made light of the concern with a negligent wave, glancing off. "Nonsense. It's how things have to be."
"Please," she begged. "There has to be another way."
His eyes flicked over her face. "This is the only way, Anna," he spoke in a deep baritone, the harsh light from the overhead bulb playing frightening shadows on his scowling face. "If you haven't accepted that by now, I don't think you have what it takes to be a real cop."
Though his expressed doubts stung, Anna inhaled deeply, bracing herself. "Well, I disagree. As your daughter, I think you're way too obsessed with this and I think it's affecting your well-being."
His nose twitched. As he assessed her, his chin drifted upwards. He then appeared to make a decision. "You disappoint me, once again," he muttered, not even under his breath. Her lashes lowered, and she drew toward him, finding empty eyes staring back at her. He snarled, "I should never have brought you in on this secret."
"Dad," she tried again, desperation lacing through her diplomatic tone, "please, just listen to me—"
He turned his back to her, cutting her off, "I hope when you have a child one day, they have more respect for you than you have for me."
Conveying the emotions that thundered in her chest was difficult to put into words. Tears welled in her eyes, unbidden. She couldn't have stopped them if she had tried. "That is not fair," she found herself raising her voice to him, felt her nostrils flaring as she hollered to his broad back. "I have always tried my hardest to make you proud, to make you love me!"
"You're right," he laughed, humorless and frightening again. "I misspoke. You're not worthy of a child, not if you're unwilling to show them the way things are." The words slowly cracked her open, spilling out something precious, ripping her stomach and digging into her lungs. He then glared over his shoulder, adding coldly, "Your eyes are open but you're still too blind."
She glowered, tears still stinging in her eyes. "You're a monster," she choked out. "Mom would hate you if she saw you right now!"
To that, he sniffed, "If that's true, then why did I even bring you into the world?"
Her heart skidded to a stop in her chest and cold washed over her flesh. She began to pant as she tried to control her emotions, to handle this outright rejection of the one person in her life who mattered most.
She pivoted, and bolted down the musty hall, getting herself as far away from him as possible.
"Anna," she heard his voice call out to her dully, but she didn't care. He'd said what he meant and nothing could change that. She was a failure...
Ten years later and she was just as much a failure as she'd been then. She tore her gaze from the front of the abandoned facility, unwilling to unlock the next memory. Her falling out with her father didn't end that day in the institute basement, but she couldn't find the strength to reflect any further than that. It was too painful, and the more pain she felt, the greater the urge was to take her own life rather than turn herself in. She couldn't let herself take the easy way out. She had to punish herself the correct way.
She gasped in a breath. Her stomach contracted in her belly. She started back toward the precinct, short on time but determined to see this through. Her heart beat so frenetically as she stepped, she could feel her pulse in her face. The baby wasn't about to deter her though, nor were memories of her father. She was going to bring herself to justice. She had to this for Peer and for Jordie, for all the Soul Robber victims, for all the lives she and Metsuma had destroyed.
Fuck, she didn't know who she had to do this for anymore. She just knew she had to do it.
…..
I spotted her before she spotted me, her signature blue hair rippling behind her as she cut across the precinct lot as fast as woman nine months into her pregnancy could run. She was making a straight path to the station entrance, and her eyes were set in a fierce glare, no longer bleary from incessant drug and alcohol abuse. That didn't mean she was in the right state of mind though, not if she was about to do as I suspected.
I quickly scanned my surroundings, making certain no cops or pedestrians were close by, then ducked my head and scuttled across the lot like a madman to intercept her before she could reach the building. I calculated the timing and moved to crouch down in front of an unoccupied patrol car adjacent to her path, waiting patiently for her to approach. I didn't care the risk I was taking anymore; in light of every debacle imaginable besetting me from both within and without in the span of a single month, I was long past precaution.
I listened for the heaviest of her approaching footfalls and then stepped out to block her path when the moment came. She must have detected me through the Aura beforehand because she barely threw a glance my way, instead trying to step around me in her hellbent effort to bring us both down. I looked down at her baby bump, considerably larger than a month ago, and brought a hand over it to stop her in her tracks.
"Get out of my way, Metsuma," she growled, stepping forward again, intending to push me aside. I didn't budge, and she bared her teeth, "I'm warning you."
I took her gently by the shoulders, bringing my winded voice down to a whisper. "We need to talk about this together before you do something that you might regret."
"Regret?" she sputtered the word back at me, and while I gestured her to lower her volume, she wasn't having any of it. "I have a shit ton of regrets, but this isn't going to be one them!"
"Anna—"
"No, I'm done with this!" Tears sprung to her eyes and she viciously shoved past me while my guard was down, her voice now echoing clear across the lot. I reached out to grab her, to silence her, but she was already sprinting toward the doors. "There's no stopping this," she hissed over her shoulder at me. "I'm telling everything! I'm telling the whole fucking truth! There's nothing you can do to stop—"
I was nearly ready to dash forward and tackle her to the pavement when Gengar ascended from the ground in front of her, knocking her out cold with a Hypnosis attack. I rushed forward and caught her as she began to collapse, and wasted no time dragging her unconscious body back behind the car while Gengar performed surveillance.
I knelt down with her, holding her head in my arms. The longer I stared at her gentle, sleeping face, the more real she became. The more real all of this became. Of all the nightmares to desecrate me, this was the worst because I was actually living it, powerless to wake from it or wish it away. This woman in my arms was my enemy, I realized, and I'd foolishly let it come to this point. I'd been blind, ignorant. What she'd said at the lighthouse was true, in fact—that I was lost.
Now, looking down upon her face so tranquilly frozen in a deep slumber, I saw there was only one way to be found again. I shut my eyes and took a slow, deep breath, bracing myself to face the terrifying option remaining in my deck of cards. It was a card I never hoped I would have to draw, but I had to take responsibility for my future, for my own survival.
….
I ordered Abra to teleport us to Anna's old apartment across the city, now being used as storage space for Miles' latest floundering business. He seldom visited by the residence, as far as I knew, other than to occasionally add to the mountain of unpacked boxes occupying the place in his absence. It seemed like a fitting place to leave Anna for the time being—somewhere familiar for her to wake up to and, more importantly, secluded and out of the way.
I emptied a box full of furniture bedding and spread it out neatly over the cold, hard tiles. I expected this would be her last stay anyway, and I decided she and the child ought to be at least somewhat comfortable. I gingerly laid her down on the soft couch cushions piled on the floor, and took a moment. I brushed a hand over her lump, communicating with my offspring growing inside it, feeling his Aura warm my palm. It was nearly identical my own, as if I needed any further convincing.
Legendaries, what a mess this was.
She stirred, just slightly, her head tossing to its other side as she murmured unintelligibly in her sleep. I smoothed my other hand over her forehead, brushing a few errant strands of blue out of her face. She looked serene now, at peace, reasonable and free from strife in a way only sleep could bring. I might have envied her in that moment if not for the choice thrust upon my shoulders.
"Forgive me," I whispered to her, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment to ward off any second thoughts. I then slowly rose to my feet and spotted Gengar enter from the wall, coming to linger before me. I reached for the second Pokéball clinging to the inside of my jacket and tossed it forward.
Zangoose materialized beside the other Pokémon. I motioned to the pair and indicated Anna with two fingers.
"Watch her," I stated coldly. "If she leaves, follow her. If she tries to go back to the police station, bring her right back here."
They nodded at the orders, and I stepped over Anna and past the two of them to leave the apartment. I was walking away a coward, perhaps, but I certainly wasn't fleeing from this. I couldn't anymore. It was either her or me now, and I knew what my choice was. First, there was closure to be found in Alamos Town. I needed to finish what I'd started with Darukai, to become desensitized to my own humanity as he'd wanted. Then, and only then, would it be possible to go through with this.
In hindsight, it had all been counterproductive—all my efforts to stay in her good graces. I'd done more harm than help in trying to keep the pieces together. There was simply no way to do right by someone who despised me, someone whose mind was in such a tumultuous, unsound state because of me. We were both suffering for it now, each day endured unkinder than the last. We were two chemicals that did not mix, and as such, could not coexist. If I couldn't change for Anna, there was no point letting this delusion for a perfect future together continue destroying my own perfect future.
In truth, though, it was always going to end with one of us dead.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
A/N: This was MUCH longer originally, but since I wanted to update the story as soon possible, I ended up cutting this chapter in half rather than rushing to finish it. That being said, the next chapter will pick up exactly where this one left off. The story will ultimately round out to about 35 chapters, with a possible 36th serving as an epilogue leading into the Giovanni Chronicles. The last few are mostly action-oriented, so they shouldn't take me as long to draft and write.
Sa'lu is a character from the 'Inheritance' series and belongs to Nafa-Tali.
Next Chapter: Metsuma discovers what is causing his nightmares and comes to learn of a horrifying truth regarding his family line; more of Anna's complicated past is revealed, more secrets are unraveled and more connections come to light; Viper and Joy set their escape plan into motion.
