Warnings: friendship, family-friendship, really uncomfortable family situations, a lot of implications, Keta, anxiety attack
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Good
Ion Mettle apparently was a man in his late thirties that looked at most thirteen and if you asked anyone else it was his own fault. If you asked him, he claimed he was hungry, whatever that meant.
His nephew was fifteen and for some reason refused to put Aya down until they were set up to camp. "She's hurting," he told them all in this plaintive voice that should have sounded whiny but sounded like air instead. But Aya didn't seem to mind him doing this. In fact, she seemed to approve.
"He's not wrong," Aya told them with a smirk.
"I'm also a noodle," Rua said helpfully, despite looking like he wasn't even strained by her in the slightest. "So she's carrying me next."
"What kind of friend do you take me for of course I am." She looked at Aelita with a smirk. "I have to be his shower guard."
"The best knight-princess ever!"
They were all soon settled on the ground with tents and sleeping bags. Rua hurried off with a bundle in his hands. Aya hesitated. Then she got up and pulled a large sheet out of Rua's heavy looking bag. "I'll cover you," she called.
"Thank you!"
"Isn't she gonna shower?" Aelita asked, noticing the small bag left on her sleeping bag.
"She'll probably use dry stuff since most of her toiletries are likely back at the center." Ion yawned a bit. "Rua wouldn't bother but if his hair isn't washed and brushed daily it gets gnarly really fast and as you can see he refuses to cut it."
"I think it's pretty," she said before her brain caught up with her.
The man looked at her, or up at her. He was terribly short. He looked younger than his nephew. Then he barked out a laugh. "Don't worry, he'll preen all over that. Rua loves to be pretty."
Aelita's shoulders relaxed. "Oh, uh, all right. Sorry, my home's a little… weird? No one cares out loud but it's all a bunch of muscle heads or retired people. There aren't many kids around anymore. People go there or the Teila Resort to die."
Ion's eyes narrowed at her. Then he relaxed, chugging something from his water. "Interesting. Tell me about your hometown."
Aelita's first instinct was to tell him that Sheridan was great and wonderful and everyone there looked out for one another. But that was the Sheridan that she wanted to exist, the one where her f- Keta, Keta, he was Keta now, he was not that person anymore, he'd ensured she'd remembered that- sensei looked out for everyone and even smiled once in a while.
She admitted after a moment, "It's terrible."
When she didn't elaborate for a minute or two, Ion cleared his throat.
And like water from a cracked dam, it all burst out.
"Physically it's fine, it's beautiful! The apprentices all know how to build from woodwork and scratch and the pokemon help and so every house is built by hand, even the furniture is hand crafted, and there's lots of herbal medicines. The Help Center is always open, always needing people for transportation and minor tasks and everything! But there are no families with kids, there are two couples there that are under thirty-five, and one vacant house we all think is haunted. No one has kids, the school was burned down and replaced with the pokemon center and no one bothers anymore. Goldenleaf often steals supplies and no one stops them. Trainers pass in and out as fast as possible and usually stay in the waypoint gate because everyone's so fighting manic. We have extra money from filming a crappy soap opera TV show about a gay Throh and Sawk that fight each other but they keep threatening to cut it which would defund the old breeder couple who can't take any apprentices because of sensei and-"
She stopped to take a breath. "Sensei isn't doing any of his job and we're supposed to be okay with it!" A sob the force of a hurricane threatened to come out of her mouth but she swallowed it because if she didn't say it now she was going to snap. "He hasn't been willing to fight a gym challenge in three months and that was someone with five lopunny and some other pokemon I missed and he got laughed at and ignored it. Maybe he'll just hand them the badge or leave them dangling in a pouch on his locked door but he doesn't come here and check the trainer resources or help clean up the caves or talk to Narcissa about her stupid jerk kids vandalizing our house or stealing from the pokemart and spooking the worker nearly into packing her bags and he's terrible but there's no one to replace him and everyone's talking about moving somewhere else and the Eldest just waves it off like it's fine! It's not fine! It hasn't been fine in years and I don't know why and he won't let me help him."
She was sure there was more, she was sure she could dig up so much dirt it would hurt like hell but she knew so much about this city, her home, her loving place, but it was suddenly so hard to fucking breathe, and she felt like there was a seviper coiling around her lungs one at a time and squeezing in sharp intervals to play with her.
Ion's hands, small and stocky and firm, placed themselves on her shoulders. She was forced to look at forest green eyes and not her own eyelids, breathing hard. "Breathe in," he said softly. "Follow me. Breathe in, then out. In, then out."
She did so. It was like breathing water instead of air and Aelita kept imagining choking on her own breath, until she could hear a taillow chirping overhead.
"Sorry," she finally said. "I've never done that before."
"Then you probably need to get upset more often." He looked at her with a baby face and eyes that could melt steel. "It's all right. You were upset and you should be. That all sounds terrible."
Aelita thought she could cry. Someone was listening to her.
"As soon as we get there," he said in that same steady voice that was still helping her breathe. "Could you take me to your sensei? I'd like to have a word with him."
If he'll listen to you. No, no she would not squash that hope, she would not give up. "Yeah! Of course."
"Good." He patted her shoulders and let her go. "Do me a favor and swap with Aya, she's too short for my beanpole of a nephew to preserve any modesty. He'll return the favor and not look."
"Are… are you telling me to ogle your nephew?"
Ion snorted. "Please gods no. He's not gonna be sixteen for another six months. He will however, like a friend who can keep up with him being a chatterbox. Aya cannot, though she loves him anyway."
Translation, I need to talk to Aya alone. Okay she could work with that. "Sure no problem. But uh… isn't she your niece?"
Ion laughed again. "No, but I've known her since she was a toddler. She's Rua's future wife."
Uh… what.
"Long story," he told her, not unkindly, but something told Aelita she wouldn't get any more answers today anyhow. So she left, feeling his eyes on her back as she went. Still, she felt hope, she felt like there was maybe a chance.
Maybe that person could talk some sense into sensei and Sheridan could be a community again.
Sometimes Uncle Ion could be nosy.
It came from his job being in the International Police and inspecting the Pokemon League. He had to know things, to burrow around and get the entire story on something and then move in and either fix it or uproot it. So he dug around and asked a lot of questions and sometimes (a lot of the time) took matters into his own hands because his boss gave him a terribly long leash on the promise he did not go and mess up Unova because he had a hard-on on prodding Ghetsis Harmonia until he snapped and hated the bureaucracy that had kept him from his homeland that had ended up needing it to be saved by a child.
In an official capacity he got away with a lot. Off work, sometimes his being nosy, like with his mom and all three of her uncle's spouses, had the worst timing. Or he just kept prodding and it sounded like an interrogation.
Aya wasn't sure id his prodding Aelita had been an interrogation or not. Her face had been suspiciously red.
"I'm not sure that I want you facing him in a gym battle." He told her this between scribbling and turning the dinner.
She wanted to tell her Uncle that Keta was going to die anyway, that everyone was acting like it was a certainty so a little more lost pride was kind of irrelevant aside from the blood on her hands. "Why?" she decided to ask because he might take her silence for defiance. He had done that with her mum all the time, apparently. (Rua remembered Torren better than she did. She just remembered a lot of teleporting, tears and it being stupidly cold in Other Home, as Uncle Pharos referred to it.)
"He sounds unstable." Her uncle answered seriously. "Like he's just waiting for an excuse to die."
"He might be," Aya said. Not as flippantly as it would have come out of her mouth when she was eight and Joy impulses of 'he's in pain I need to heal him and make him better' had warred less with the practicality of 'your duty is not to every failed human who was not prepared for the harshness of life. There are specialists for that.' "I walked with him to Sheridan. He didn't talk much. He was smart, kinda rude, but he was empty too. You know?"
"I have a good idea, yes." Uncle poked the imitation sausages on the fire. "I need proof he won't just keel over after you destroy him. His pokemon are probably in poor health and it'll be a gruesome, ugly, humiliating fight and no one will care. And the city will suffer."
"You mean like you with Xavier?"
"... Yes. Sure, why not."
Aya had not been around for that fight, but like it or not that had caused a lot of problems and rifts that were only just now getting handled.
Again. Her uncle was nosy.
"Anyway, I'll come up with something. Tell me about the staff you did not have when you left Kalos not even a month ago." He gestured to the staff and its purple gem.
Aya regarded her uncle thoughtfully. Then she said. "It's supposed to hold freshly dead ghosts."
"You have your cousin for that." He still had an edge when he talked about Delila. Hah!
"No I mean an actual object that's built for that."
Ion looked at the staff again. "Where did you get that from?"
"Sensei's humanity."
Ion stared at her for a few moments more. Then. "Why don't we start from the beginning?"
That didn't sound like a question. So she did. Somewhat. Uncle was super observant, but all you had to do was give him enough of the truth and he'd leave you alone for a couple hours.
Aelita and Rua came back to Ion muttering and taking notes and Aya playing with Ai's budding leaves. Her swoobat sat on her shoulders like he belonged there and the sheer size of his wings (and the fact that the weight wasn't knocking Aya over) made Aelita wonder how the inevitable gym match was gonna go.
"You're not fighting this gym leader, Rua," Ion said without looking up.
Rua, who had his hair in the fluffiest towel that Aelita had ever seen, only shrugged. "I'll live."
Aelita liked Rua. They were close in age (she was a year and a handful of months older) and he was more than happy to talk about Johto and its politics or how they learned to fight on mountains and in caves and in the dark. He could walk super quietly and never did. Also he had all sorts of pokemon, including a horsea that had looked down its spout at her until she'd returned to her ball.
"Don't mind Silvy," he'd said with a grin. "She's protective for such a tiny thing."
Aelita could appreciate that. Even when he flopped beside Aya, who rolled her eyes at him and held out a hand for the brush.
"Hey I can do it myself."
"That doesn't mean I want to be up all night with you fussing over every tangle. Let me do it."
He sighed and handed it over. "Drama queen."
"Speak for yourself."
Something in Aelita burned. She dismissed it and went to look at what Ion was doing.
"Mr. Mettle, what are you doing?"
"Drafting a proposal to confront this league. " He wet his lips. "This is the second one I've come to where the second gym is a shit show. I'd hate to see them at eight."
"Eight or eighteen?" Aelita couldn't help but ask.
Ion put down his notebook slowly. "Eighteen what?"
"Aevium requires one badge per type up to eighteen, depending on new discoveries because monotype are the most common trainers in these parts and their survival is paramount for the economy. There are a lot of places where people live and die by one or two types. It's supposed to teach creativity with a lack of versatility," Aelita said. Her face flushed. "That's what I've read anyway."
"You can do the same with eight, " Ion said with an irritable scowl. "It sounds more like a way to avoid people challenging the full league."
"There's a loophole that you can skip all the gym leaders and go straight to the league if you win the Tournament of Dreams in Grand Dream City," Aelita said with a grimace. "But there's so few people who come back after losing to the Elites after that, it's not viable."
"I see."
Aya made a sighing sound from where she was carefully curling Rua's hair up into rollers. "Uncle, you're off duty…"
"A true inspector never turns in his badge."
Aya made another sound that sounded like "Coby and Clair wish you would" but more like "mmphrggrgg", so it went ignored.
Aelita laughed through the burn in her gut. Why couldn't Keta be this way?
"Aelita."
Aelita jumped to attention. "Y-Yeah?"
"Tell me all you can about the gym functions in each city in relation to regional management." The man sounded calm, but she was already starting not to trust it.
Aelita blinked. "I mean… I can try. It's more of disaster relief than anything but…" It wasn't like she was willing to talk about it.
She was so distracted by Ion she missed Aya looking at the strangest staff that had not been in her hand a moment ago, its purple stone shining softly in the dusk light.
But Ion saw it.
Aya once again dreamed of the lake and the moonlit night. It was waxing and the sight of it sent a chill racing down her spine. "Okay, who summoned me this time?"
No immediate answer, which wasn't too surprising. She didn't think she'd ever been brought here without someone needing something from her, but there could be a first time for everything.
She called again.
Silence.
Aya sat down in the grass and stared up at the sky. "There are some new stars," she murmured to herself. She wished at least someone else would come here that wasn't a messenger or something.
… If she was honest, she wished she could see Rua in here. He'd love the clear skies and brilliant moon, the lake where fish swam and the world seemed like it stood still.
His hand would be nice and cool and he knew how to tell her about the constellations and astronomy she wouldn't know.
"It would be a different place entirely if Rua was here," said a soft familiar voice. "The same with all of your friends."
Aya turned her head. "Michi." She didn't mean to feel relieved. She didn't want to feel relieved, but the sight of the softer, longer purple hair and the darker hands hung loose atlanky sides caused her heart to slow. "Where were you?"
"Talking, mostly." She, of course, could never see the girl's face beyond the thin smile, no matter how much the shadows moved. "I've been trying to convince her to join the dream but she's still reluctant." The smile turned low and soft. "Some dead are not interested in waking up."
"I… Huh." Michi didn't visit very often. Aya had figured it was just because she was more interested in sleeping. But here was an actual answer, not that she knew who it was about. "Where were you when those two women were here?"
"Keeping them from going too deep in," she replied at once. "They wanted to see things they shouldn't, things that are yours."
Something in Aya's being hurled at the thought, burned at the soles of her feet because how could they, how dare they-
"Wait." Aya frowned. "Then how can you be there?"
"I can't." Michi's smile did not change, ever gentle, ever patient. "I just know where they are, because I know where you are. Because I was asked to know. I am your guidepost, after all."
Aya huffed, puffing up her face and blowing out the air in a burst. "Why can't you just tell me things upfront?"
"It's better if I don't. For me anyway. There's only so many explanations I'm willing to give without losing a piece of myself. And I'm not ready for that. There's still a tether for me somewhere else. I don't want to go there without helping you all that I can, little as it is." She sat down beside Aya and smiled and Aya saw a hint of violet in the dark. "It's selfish but I have my reasons."
"At least you were honest about it." Aya sat up a bit, resting her chin in between her knees. "Why are you here now?"
"To check on you. Those two ran rampant in here a bit and I've been trying to shore up so you can handle things."
"Mm."
Aya sank further into the grass, into her presence. Maybe it was dangerous, but if this really was her own head, at least her head was smarter in her sleep. "I don't want to let Keta die. What good does he do dead?"
"What good will he do alive?" Michi asked her. "What use is a man who hurts love? A man whose ideals broke and he won't pick up."
"Do-" Aya chewed her lip until it bled. "Do you think he deserves to die?"
"No one deserves to die, Ayame," Michi said. "But everyone dies in the end. It's just a matter of what dies first." She traced a path in the grass. "I think the question you want answered is: am I making the right choice? And no one can answer that. Not even me. You can only choose and live with your choices. And you haven't chosen yet. They are trying to choose for you. And that is why I shooed them out. It's always meant to be your choice, Aya. Even when it feels like it isn't. You must simply choose with the wisdom you have."
Aya sat in silence for a long time. Then she whispered, almost to herself. "The hero my friends need wouldn't do that. The line wouldn't be "because he does a bad job, he's not worth saving"."
"What would your hero do?" Michi asked. "What would the hero you need do?"
Aya did not respond. She sat and stared at the lake, until she faded into wakefulness once more.
Michi sighed and laid down on the grass. "You shouldn't be so conceited little Ayame. You are merely a shade of a deity. You refuse to be a god. You refuse to choose. You must choose. You must. No one can choose for you."
Ion, as low as his expectations were of Sheridan, could at least acknowledge the place was pretty. The greenery was healthy, he could smell it, the pokemon were pleased enough. The people seemed… well unwilling to kick up a fuss at least. That could indicate a whole host of things. But for now he wasn't going to pay attention to it. He had a gym leader to deal with.
He strode through the city with a determined gait which thankfully forestalled all possible cooing, happy noises and 'cute!' heading his way. He had never regretted saving himself from thirst so hard in his life as he did in new places with thousands of grandma eyes acting like he was seven.
Still, he was going to get this done as soon as possible. Aya was not talking. Which… wasn't uncommon nowadays but that didn't mean it didn't scare him. He really regretted not going in a little harder on that Venam kid. They were too young to be a gym leader aka money provider to their family. Orion had also been too young but he'd only been providing for himself and had a support system of a bunch of cult children. That entire thing was a disaster. But they'd have talked to Aya and the look on their face during Rua's battle was something. But he'd told himself he was supposed to guard his nephew, not dive head first into more conspiracies. Damn him. He really needed to learn not to jinx himself.
He would not let his niece sink into the hellish mindset that'd nearly killed half her family. He could do something about it. And to start he was diving into this damn shitty league.
He clipped the spare badge he always carried to the strap of his bag as he walked. Oh yes, he could practically smell the misery the further he got into it. An elderly woman sat pleasantly in front of a smaller waterfall, sipping tea and looking serene and looking sharp as nails.
"Can I help you?" she asked with a pleasant smile and narrowed eyes and Ion had to shake off the desire to think of Agatha Kitsunebi. The staff was much more ornate for one thing. "I'm the eldest of this village. Are you looking for a gym challenge young man?"
"I'm looking for the gym leader, if that counts, ma'am." Still she could get some of his respect.
Eldest looked at him with eyes gray as stone. "For what, exactly? He's very busy."
"I'm sure." Okay, little too sarcastic there Ion. Settle down. "I'll be very quick, I promise. I'll even schedule my niece's gym fight."
The woman's eyes crinkled shut. "I see. Well, that seems fair enough." He's up there in that building with the swablu."
"Thank you very much." He went up the hill, watching a nidoking and a ninetales dance across one side of an island battlefield, their trainers jeering and cheering alike.
Someone really ought to supervise that. Especially for such young stone evolutions. Something else to ding this guy on.
Up the steps, knock on the door.
He was met by a tall (of fucking course) guy who looked like he ate once every six months and showered once every three, if he was being generous.
"Kenneth Royer?" he said by way of greeting.
"Keta, actually," the man said with about as much interest as a ducklett in rotten apples. "And you are….?"
"Ion Mettle," he said with the sureness of a man ready to ruin another's entire life. "And you're under arrest for putting a minor under the influence of a mystical object and mishandled League funding."
