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Level 100
Part II

She and Shadow were together, side by side; every other human had long since evolved, as Pokémon did, but she remained. Having never become a champion, she abandoned human life and returned to her earliest wish, to become a Pokémon. The Clefairy arrived: people were turning Pokémon all over the world: the age of training ended, the age of sport battling began, as every trainer turned athlete, students of their own mon, the Academy flipped over. Shadow looked at her—too much time, she said, with David their son, and you know how psychics and fairies are: so she became a Mewtwo, emerged from the tank. They were a family, all turned together by the disease. The Clefairy was incurable, they said, and the world was changed forever, and Runa said it was good. Manda said she was no one to decide what was good for everyone. (She was immune to the Clefairy, of course: all the doctors and scientists clicked their spoons and said some fraction of a percent were made that way, without possibility of changing.)

Shadow said, I'm an athlete. Gaia thumped him in the stomach. But, Shadow said, he would be an athlete: it was his dream. Runa said dreams were for people themselves to decide, but Gaia thumped him in the stomach. David's head now rested on Runa's. [Are you sure that's your dream?] he said. He gave Shadow a cake. [Fill that hole,] he said. Gaia punched in further and said, Not until I'm through. But, Shadow thought, it was cheating for an athlete to eat cake.

The head of Torus appeared and said, [Do not interfere.] He looked, Shadow thought, like one of those artworks that David enjoyed, all flattened out so that you could see his mouth from straight ahead. And David's head fell off and floated away, his tail now lashing about—impossible to control now that he was grown and clever.

Gaia said that if he wasn't going to keep still then he could at least do some sort of exercise. Then she put back the heart, and it all rushed back, everything turning white and black as David said, [There, you see? He figured it out.]

It was one of the stranger dreams he could recall, and it kept returning, this brief impression, surely no more than a minute or so before he'd woken up again. But David liked it—broke some rule intruding in it, he knew, so that Torus came and berated him. There he was, across the hall, he saw, and David waved, returned to his fellows, whoever made him conversation. Runa talked to men and women; Gaia talked to students and friends; David talked to fellows, whether they were just a boy like that trainer or, as he saw now, Cynthia herself. And it was not as if he did any harm, intruding, since he woke just the same; still, he thought, he ought not.

But now that whole group of humans looked at him, he felt: eyes turning toward him, peering round the pillars, the adults and children looked. Not that they weren't permitted—he would have looked, if it were some human on recent news—but he never liked it, and it wasn't right. He was not, after all, unusually different—knocked out a Lugia, perhaps, but what was that? Maxis would have won if not for ignoring Manda's command. But he did bring it on, he thought, by standing in the open … There was Dyna, he saw, sitting by the wall. He went toward her.

The trouble with these afterparties, he thought, as he passed through the crowd, was that although only one team won victorious, every competing trainer was invited, all who had lost in the tournament, and nearly all of them attended: so there were cases like this, where nearly everyone was nursing some sort of raw feeling yet were expected to feel well for the victors, whatever their tactics in battle, which privately they'd grumble about, let show their thinking. (That thing about the Destiny Bond, Iris said—dreadful! It was beneath Manda to have done it; it was horrible to see Gaia fall that way, she said. Her Dragonite folded his arms and agreed.) But these were largely his own objections, he knew, cast onto others: few had actually expected to win the tournament, and the rest were just delighted to be there, even if many felt out of place, even if some felt like impostors. Still, he thought, why expect them to come? Why, in their case, did they even have to battle—shut out all those dreams on the way? It was only the press, and a title. There was one, he saw, by the door—that reporter, Marjorie, who was always at tournaments, wanting to lay hands on somebody famous, perhaps Lance, perhaps David, and get an exclusive, even though they'd all be let in soon to have their way. And was Manda here yet? No, she kept them waiting, even now. And where was Runa? Still at the table, he saw. He went to the wall.

Dyna sat against the wall with her tail tucked forward; he sat beside her the same. "What are you doing?" he said.

She looked at him and held her hands to her face. "[Wha-a-at am I do-o-oing, Mister Poké-man?]" she said.

He hadn't realised that he used the human voice; but no one else noticed, he saw. He looked away and said, "[Wh— What are you doing, I mean.]"

"[I'm waiting,]" she said, pointing at the catering table nearby, where waiters had laid out platters of fruit to distribute. "[They're bringing more. When the waiter comes I'm gonna get the limes.]"

Wasn't there a whole basket at Runa's table? he thought, totally ignored, he saw, by Leo and Ken. Beside them, Torus translated for Hestia, who appeared to be questioning Steven Stone.

Dyna said, "[Do you remember those stupid talking heads, you know, last time we were here? The ones who said things about Runa, and like how you belonged in a Miltank farm.]"

He looked down, played with his claws. He did not remember the Miltank part, but of course he remembered the people—like a girls' club in Pokémon Tech, the man said, Runa treated Pokémon. And they weren't unusual: there were those who came to her and David after Ever Grande, after the Academy, those friends, they called themselves, who knew her as a daughter of the Pondelores, and each of them wanting something; others who felt, as Runa became more substantial in the world's eyes, she owed more of her time. That was fair, Runa said; the Pondelores would not exist if not for the society which let them proliferate; but the ones who thought themselves so grand that, as Runa needed them, as they had the power to ruin her, she ought to solicit them for favours, or do them hers—they were rots. They were like that man, talking.

He said, "[I remember. Why? Are they here?]"

Dyna said, "[That's the limes are for.]"

He looked away. He didn't dislike the image, he admitted, of limes braining a man or two, but she ought not. He wouldn't tell on her, but still, what would Gaia say to dissuade her, or Runa?

He said, "[You know, there's some tonic over on Runa's table …]"

Dyna said, "[You didn't see all the clips. That one guy—yesterday before the battle he's talking again, and I saw him, and he's hating on us and Runa, saying we'd be out two for six. And now he's all singing her praises, you know, just 'cause everyone else is! And he says he really thought so all along, and that you were super fit. You know, basically lying about everything! It got on my wick.]"

"[Maybe he really changed his mind,]" he said; but he remembered the man—Dorian, the same one who later tricked Runa into defending him, what lead to the battle at Snowpoint. Perhaps he wouldn't stop Dyna … but Runa wouldn't want it, he knew. "[I mean, people can do that … even if they are rots. It's better they change than stay that way.]"

"[They're balls of rot,]" Dyna said, scowling and folding her arms—"[they deserve everything.]" But she had changed her mind, he knew she was thinking, and would not throw the limes, but wouldn't admit if he asked; so he said nothing.

The humans looked back at him, turned away as he looked, as his eyes were near level to theirs. There was something less tolerable, he felt, in looking squarely in the eyes. From above he could pretend that he was looking at something else in the distance; from below, he imagined, nobody looked back. Then every now and then came the thought, again: it was him, the Dragonite; him, who flattened the Lugia. When David wanted he could put out an aura of being inaccessible—exerting pressure, he called it—just as easily as he attracted, and none but the most forward would approach him. Mightn't he learn the same? It wasn't likely, but as Torus said, the growth of his power exceeded first projections. Foreign thoughts came more frequently, now, even several times in a conversation if he paid attention. Just that evening a human had looked at him—a male trainer!—and turned and blushed at the thought, perfectly clear, of holding him, pressing his cheek to his. He had turned away; the boy was on the far side of the room now, avoiding him; but statistically, there was probably one or two more in the room, particularly as these were mostly trainers, and weren't there more among trainers than not, drawn as they were to Pokémon? He would see them all the time before long, have that responsibility, to keep it secret, even if they weren't like Runa but their Pokémon feared them. And hadn't he always seen it in Runa, too, only confused it with his own feelings? Really it was all a joke, that it took so long: years wasted in ignorance, his failure to read the psychic—but he could not be too unhappy how it turned out. Dyna beside him wondered—and did he think about it too by chance, or by influence? such things through the psychic affecting him, perhaps—how things might have turned out differently, the first team succeeding, perhaps, her two years in Hoenn unnecessary, as she never left. Every now and then she worked herself up to nearly blaming Runa, again, but then lost it—just as she ought, he'd say. Rolling the dice again, he felt, it was possible that things turned out much worse, after all, than how things now became. Just a few small changes … But there was no point in wondering, he said.

Dyna began to pick herself up, now, unfold her arms, as if she herself was affected; for seeing that he was the focus of such attention and yet only came to sit beside her, his old friend, she felt grateful, and decided she ought to speak.

She said, "[So, um … how are things with you and Runa?]"

What a gump he had to look, he thought, and how fat around the middle, sitting with his tail right out! He straightened and said, "[She wants me to talk. For the cameras,]" he said.

"[Really?]" Dyna said. "[She's not, uh, going public or anything. You know, about … you know.]"

He turned, and she looked away. Some interview, he thought, where a calm and understanding lady asked him what were his favourite things about Runa, as he squirmed in a chair a foot too narrow for him, scratching the arms to pieces. He said, "[N— No. It's just, we figure people ought to know about talking. Since everyone's watching.]"

Across the room the next round of music started, one of the softer styles with many people working to perform it, to remind that it was after all an important function, he thought, and to add a little poise to their posture; so every human moved a little faster, laughed a little louder, and through the room, he felt, there passed a sense that things began a higher turn, a new stage in the party, and the press grew excited.

Dyna looked around for a moment at all the well-dressed humans. Then she leaned toward him and said, "[How's it even work with you and Runa? Humans don't even breed like mon, I thought—and they've got all these things, you know, about it. Look—I'm not calling you weird, okay? I'm just asking.]"

He did not want this conversation, he thought; but neither did Dyna, he knew, and she wouldn't talk long, but only couldn't think of other topics to discuss with him, as had lately been the case with most of them. He said, "[It's, um, it's probably, uh, the same as mon—the feeling, I mean. Like when a mon wants to get along with you, if, if you've ever had that—]"

Dyna sneered at him. "[You don't think I've had mon who wanted to get along with me?]" she said. "[I've had mon who wanted. Shinies and everything—more than you, I bet! I was hot stuff in Hoenn. But I didn't let them. You ever seen the nurseries?]"

She knew that he had, he thought, but he'd answer the question. "[Not like you,]" he said.

"[That's right,]" she said. "[From the mon I've seen, they either turn into like a conveyor belt with all that rubbing, or they're cured right quick of all that. They just lay about and make eggs their whole lives—gross. I saved some, you know—this one guy. And then, get this, he wanted to get along with me! Like he wanted my egg! Imagine seeing mon all the time and there's that! But I guess you get what that's like. You've got like the, the Inner Focus for humans, or something. I bet it's just as weird to you too.]"

"[Well, most mon never do breed,]" he said, poking his claws, "[or, or love, and that's okay.]"

Did she really mean, he wondered, that she never felt the least attraction in her life? Knowing her as he did it would seem absurd, really, if Dyna fell in love—but ever? It sounded horrible, he felt; but then, she would think the same of him, feeling attraction to humans, and after all wasn't she very comfortable? Presumably she'd feel that to suffer changing after so long, after the formative evolutions when one was meant to grow and get used to such feelings were over, wasn't worth the addition—imagine gaining that attraction then! Humans adapted, but it started early, quite early even in them. Well then, he thought; Dyna didn't love. Perhaps that was better, if one never felt attractions. If he would love, best by far he found Runa; but were he incapable, better to live like Dyna than to act out the motions, as many humans did, he saw, pretending to love just to fit in with others, which Dyna would never do.

He didn't know why, but he felt a sudden want to hug Dyna, and say she was a good friend. After Gaia, and Torus (though he did not really know Torus then), he'd known the sassy Ampharos longer than any other mon; without her he would not have taken up battling at all, would not have been with Runa. But it was embarrassing to say it, he thought, when all she would feel—But that was the waiter, he saw, holding a platter of fruit.

"[I really like you, Dyna,]" he said. She looked at him. "[N— Not like that! I mean, I'm glad you're my friend.]"

"[Uh huh,]" she said. "[Like your friend you can talk about love-stuff to. Spare me.]"

He looked away; but she appreciated it, he knew, as she folded her arms. Then she looked aside and grinned.

"[One thing I never got,]" she said, "[you know, in the shows—two humans start out touching, then kissing, and rubbing really hard, then suddenly,]"—she flicked her arm—"[they're in bed, waking up. What's up with that? 'Cause I know Runa does everything to you. She cuddles you right up, I bet.]"

He began to turn pink, no doubt, and Dyna grinned. He said, "[W-w-well, those shows also make Pokémon look like sidekicks, or, or pets, or villains, too, and you know that's not right.]"

And Dyna said, "[Yeah, yeah. She's rubbing all over you, probably. Wasn't there that show you couldn't stop watching about old Sinnoh Pokémon, and this one who bred with—]"

"[L— Look, the limes,]" he said. The second waiter had just arrived to take the platter of fruit, now left to distribute it.

"Pharos!" Dyna said, and glared at him. It was for the best, he thought. "[Did you know I know Dragon Punch?]" she said, getting up and brushing herself. "[Don't think I won't clock you. Don't tell Runa or you'll regret it!]" She walked away.

He stood up and went back toward the middle, and everyone looked—hopeless, he thought, trying to avoid it, at two or three feet taller than most humans, all clearing a circle around him. To be seen with Shadow, the Lugia-squasher, to be near, they wanted. And the rank—but that was nonsense. Oh, he thought, if only there weren't such a fuss about ranks! Gaia would be happier— there she sat across the hall, just listening as Clair's Dragonite talked. It became a thing, as Runa said, that took away rather than added: a Pokémon defined by their statistics, numbers on a card, rather than their own character. (She looked across, still talking with Lance and Iris and Clair; but she looked, and smiled.)

He hadn't the least idea what he'd say, once she called on him, once she told the cameras that he wanted to speak, and they all gathered and tittered for some carefully enunciated fragment of a name, like some radio show, not expecting what would happen. What was his ridiculous notion for a speech—I love you? Nothing would harm Runa more; yet nothing else he could think to say. (He confessed it to her; she thought it sweet; she said perhaps it wasn't appropriate.) Yet it seemed, as like Torus said, a perfectly engineered moment, a time when anything may be forgiven: a Pokémon revealed as having learned to speak, incidentally who loved his trainer, a human, but still, who spoke! The press would forgive it, for the night. Then come morning they would look out of the screens and say, By now half the world has heard the story about Runa and her talking Dragonite, confessing his love for humans, but the question remains, What does Runa think? (But he worried for nothing: of course he wouldn't say it.)

One more of these functions, he thought, he could do without if he lived to be three hundred. But many, he knew, did enjoy them: to some, such parties were the highlight of the year; and there he felt the little pleasures, felt in others, as they looked and saw one of the champions, or the battlers, himself even (and wasn't that absurd?), or Gaia, a Charizard—Polo! he saw. He had just gotten through the press at the door: Apollo. Then had Manda arrived?

But Apollo saw him, and waved—nearly knocked someone over as his wings flew out. But this, he thought, as Apollo came over, he wasn't prepared for. What could he say? What did Apollo think, now that the battle was over, and there was all of that between their friendship?

"[O, lovely music,]" Apollo said, as if he stepped back into his home, and found it just as he remembered, a dozen times already in this hall. He had an empty bottle in his hand, he saw, which he gave to a passing waiter. Then he looked at him and smiled. "[Hullo, Shadow! Would you like to dance?]"

"[O— Oh!]" he said. What kind of a request was that? But there was something off about him; he stood very close and pressed into his side. "[But, I can't dance,]" he said.

"[O,]" Apollo said, leaning into him—"['s that so? Well if that wasn't dancing I saw earlier, did any'un ever tell you you're a wonderful stumbler?]"

There was some sweet scent on the Charizard's breath, he thought, that he couldn't identify; and his face was redder than usual. "[Come on,]" Apollo said, reaching for and missing his hand—"[le's dance. Being as I think you owe me. Don't you owe me, Shadow?]"

And what could he say? Everyone was looking, he felt, or at any rate would soon look, wondering what Manda's Charizard wanted with the Dragonite. But if it would keep them friends, he thought, anything. He took Apollo's hand; and Apollo only laughed and pulled him aside, up toward one of the pillars surrounding the central floor.

"[Let's just talk,]" Apollo said. "[Wasn't that a fun battle?]"

He couldn't answer; his throat felt very dry. Why did he have to do this? he thought. Weren't they still friends?

"[Won't you talk, Shadow?]" Apollo said, leaning against him as if he were some Machamp hired to stand perfectly still in a hall. Then Apollo poked one of the folds in his stomach with a claw, and he jumped.

"[I— Please,]" he said, holding up his hands.

Apollo took one and began to swing it from side to side. "[Oh, don't feel bad about it, Shadow,]" he said. "[It was fun. It was a very close thing!]"

(It was only a surface change, of course: if a mon could completely restore with just a little Rest, there would be no Pokémon Centres. All minds needed sleep to restore their thinking, or something like it, as Torus said, to reset certain potential energies in their brain; so all the flickers that went with it, old and new memories stimulated and hardened, were what became a dream, built on the fly into a story. Drowzee and Snorlax went further, as through a latent psychic power they ate others' dreams, mining them for new associations to incorporate in their own, really not sleeping properly without. (That was why both had to sleep so long every day.) So a moment's rest, Torus said, was enough to restore the stamina, the immediate energy of a battle, no matter how short or unusual the dream; yet waking up now, he felt, he seemed to disprove it, as every pain came anew, yet in different places, as if they moved about. Or was that how the revival shard left you? he thought. Was that what Gaia and the rest had to suffer? Where was Runa, if she said that she would be there?

But the crowd, he heard, and he understood; felt an incredible urge, a collective will from thousands, it seemed, to wake from Rest and continue; and as what felt like a smothering cold subsided and thawed again, he felt that he could move, concentrating on one hand. He pressed his arm: he pushed off the ground.

Far away on the field with ice all between them, Jeanmarie knelt with one hand: seconds from fainting, he knew, the Toxic nearly done with her, her own strength fading, she believed. The grid of the Trick Room was still about them, but on the verge, it seemed, of collapsing.

Manda said, "One more time—Ice Beam!"

So Jeanmarie would faint, he thought, and Jeanie knew it, even if she finished him—and she would finish him—unless he somehow moved before her. With the Trick Room she still had her advantage; all of his heightened energies seemed lost; but perhaps, he felt, there was another mechanism, as even in the Room certain things took priority, and once accessing the energies, as he had with Nero, as they seemed again within reach, he need only rush forward again and

he slid on the dirt, free of ice, what had been behind her; he saw the trail of dust that followed, Jeanmarie flying away as the Room collapsed around her, as if she broke the barrier. She plunged into the boundary lake: a Lapras ducked in after her.

All the crowd went mad; Manda looked at him without moving. This was what David called a rude health: after multiple strikes, at least two, he figured, Jeanie could not put him into a true unconsciousness; and there, after fifteen years of competitive battling, for the very first time she fainted.

Manda withdrew her without looking, once she was above the water; and were Manda a Pokémon, he imagined, her look alone might have affected his energies. That was the last ball in her hand. "Apollo," she said.

The Charizard had always looked so grim in battle, on the replays—never did he look so alarmed, not even in Black City! Did he remember carrying a certain stuffed Dragonite through the halls? he thought; Has it really come to this? Apollo seemed to wonder.

Manda said, "Dragon Claw!"

The Charizard still looked raw from the Belly Drum, but he had nothing, he felt, nothing strong enough to finish Apollo in one, even if he were the faster, which he didn't know. But he must react: Apollo was already charging, and his claws turned green. But what did Runa always say, when he despaired at what he took to be the minimum breadth of training?

—Just start with the basics. Everything else is detail.

He threw up the green shield; it survived almost anything, once, gave a moment to think, but that was all. Apollo's Claw crashed against it, not two feet from his nose; the energy splashed over halfway down the arena, until at last Apollo backed off, ready to attack, and this from point-blank; and now the shield would fail him, he knew, and he still had not a scrap of a plan.

"Giga Impact!" Manda said. "Now!"

In her anger, he imagined, she meant to obliterate him—burst him to pieces, raining over Runa and the rest of them, Apollo striking again and again even after he fainted, on her command, until Jennys flew in to stop her. And still he had nothing, still needed time. Why couldn't he think? He flew back toward the middle—how could he dodge it?—but Apollo already came from high above, the orange streaks surrounding him, the purple sphere. As Jeanie said, it was one thing to defeat an entire gym: they weren't meant to stop champion mon.

—As, as far as I'm concerned, Dorian, as far as I know him, he could defeat an entire gym.

—So you're— An entire gym?

—Yes. If he can endure what he's already endured, it wouldn't be a problem.

Runa always felt that he was special, since before he had even evolved, for showing that he could endure what others did not even just by keeping up with them, so that when he even slightly surpassed them, she said, he was special—the big part in her falling in love with him. So it was in Snowpoint, holding on through the Sheer Cold, which final display finally persuaded her to bridge the final distance: just to know that Runa was near, to feel her nearby (so she thought of him: the thoughts rejoined, mixed into the connection) and focus on her was enough to endure, at least the once, any kind of blow.

Then as Apollo struck him right in the middle, as his whole body launched upward and down to the ground, he hardly felt it—felt himself at the point of the faint, of course, as if wind and water tore away a Charizard's tail, left it the tiniest flicker of flame, but there was the flicker, protected in glass.

He couldn't see, dust in all directions; heard what sounded like the report of an explosion, echoing back across the stadium perimeter, and then the crowd, all bursting as something became clear, that he had turned over, perhaps. But there was the light of Apollo's tail, only feet away as the dust parted, for a minute too stunned by the backflush of energies to move. And what a rotten thing! he thought, crawling up on a friend like this, the one who saved his life! Was that Manda calling out on the screens to Slash, and Slash again? If it were up to him he would only give him a hug; were he a Dragonair—that time long ago in Saffron City, when Runa returned and Apollo wrapped him round his middle—were he again he would wrap him up and simply refuse to let go till it ended. Now he had arms, and a body, and Apollo was beginning to stir, to get his bearings; so he picked up Apollo, pulled him into a hug. And for an instant, as if he forgot he was in battle, Apollo felt warm and happy; and then he seemed to realise where he was, and tried to look.

"[I— I'm sorry,]" he said. He let off the Thunderbolt.)

[continues in next]