Chapter 8 - Baton Pass

There were many advantages to being the mayor of the most orderly city in Orre, one of which was that he had incredibly flexible hours that could be spent doing practically anything so long as it didn't attract too much attention or interfere with the workings of the rest of Phenac. That meant that the moment those children were out of town, Backley S. Cade was free to retreat to his home office and open up the encrypted communications channel that connected him to the Cipher executives under him.

Turning on the voice scrambler, he settled into his chair and into his most authoritative pose. Even though there would be no visual transmission coming through from his end, it still paid to play the part to the hilt. Mystery had its uses, but the authenticity of authority was priceless.

"This is Evice," he said, enunciating each sound clearly so the voice scrambler would produce an understandable version of his words. Immediately, the comms picked up, video jumping into place with only the slightest fuzz of interference. "The situation that Mirror and Ein brought to my attention yesterday has become further complicated."

There was a faint sputter from one of the four lines. "How?" Mirror asked, the man's ridiculous red-and-white afro bobbing as he slammed his hands down on his desk. "I had two agents on it!"

"I've seen what sort of underlings you attract," Venus added, the Under's idol sniffing at her cohort's misfortune as she went through the motions of a beauty routine. The woman pulled her file away from her nails, inspecting them with a disdain that came nowhere close to that which her tone held for her cohort. "I have no doubts about their ability to fail abysmally."

"Questions of capability aside, those two specimens weren't a match for the girl's protector," Backley said, pulling up a video from a security camera that had managed to catch the last part of the fight. While the quality and angle could have been better, the clip of the teenager chasing after the two would-be-kidnappers with a singularly bloody-minded purpose was more than enough to illustrate the point. "One was able to escape under his own power and the other is being questioned by the in-house agents here. Once we're done, we'll be sending him back your way, Mirror."

"Doesn't look like anyone from the Battlus clan," Dakim noted, the hulking mountain of a man then grimacing before adding, "Though you never know when someone's going to get adopted in. Girl certainly has the strength to get that kind of attention."

That would be an interesting connection, one that he was inclined to consider thanks to Dakim's experience on that subject, but Backley S. Cade the Third hadn't gotten this far by making unwarranted assumptions. "Records will be checked and intelligence will be collected, but Phenac City surveillance indicates that both girls are Aura sensitive."

Now it was Venus's turn to sound shocked. "Another Aura user? I thought that Eagun Logos was the only one in the region."

"If that was the case, do you think we'd be having this conversation?" Ein pointed out unhelpfully. The video from the secret laboratory showed a scientist clearly more interested in getting back to his latest experiment rather than the conversation at hand, but he was paying attention.

"The only fully realized one, perhaps," Backley said, taking back the reins. It wouldn't do to let the executives forget who was in charge here, even if their idea of his true identity was that of a coerced lackey in the same vein as that musclebound oaf in Pyrite Town. "But simple Aura sensing seems to be more common than we were initially led to believe. The younger one, with the red hair, has been careless, but the other one is much shrewder… yes, she's the one to look out for."

If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the older girl actually knew about his… extracurricular activities. More likely, she had enough sense to beware of older politicians taking a personal interest in teenage girls and accordingly keep both herself and her charge distance. Hah. If the residents of Phenac were so savvy, he might have actually been forced to put actual effort into keeping his criminal activities concealed.

But, entertaining as the interaction might have been, that intelligence combined with the inherent power associated with Aura could prove problematic to Cipher's goals.

"Should we deal with them while it's possible to nip the situation in the bud then?" Dakim asked.

"I haven't decided." Taking advantage of the pause in conversation, the mayor continued on to his explanation. "Both have ties to Eagun and Acacia and are sure to communicate their concerns to them soon, if they haven't already, but their abrupt disappearances might draw more attention than their voiced concerns. People tend to dismiss children after all, even when they speak the truth. Observe them for now. When you have more data, report back. We will decide in a course of action then."

He cut the communications before leaning back in the chair. Yes, there was a sense of destiny around that conversation. What kind of destiny, he couldn't say, but there was no question about it being present. That was probably why he reached out to turn on the communicator again, this time to contact his superior.

Regardless of what moves were made in the interim, the true mastermind behind Cipher needed to know about the changes on the board so he could correspondingly adjust his strategy.

As we pulled into Pyrite Town - this time with my full attention attached instead of shoved off to the side of worrying -, I was forced to once again be impressed by how well my bike had stood up to my bullshit this last week. Yes, it had lost a bit of paint and got roughed up a touch, but considering I'd deliberately crashed it into a sand dune instead of using those things called 'brakes'…

Well, I wasn't going to complain about not having to fix all the guts or, god forbid, shell out for an entire new ride. No, I was going to wait for a slow weekend - if those existed now that I'd gotten myself tangled up in a whole 'take down Evil Team' plot - and give the bike a bit of TLC in the paint department while counting my lucky stars that I hadn't fucked up yet another perfectly good part of my life.

On an odd feeling, I checked my gas tank - first through the dial, and then by unscrewing the lid. Still full, well past the point where it felt natural.

Once could be an error, twice a case of forgetting something obvious – the old routine of 'did I take my pills' comes to mind right behind 'where's my keys' –, but I'd never looked at a gas gauge after a week's neglect and been pleasantly surprised with what I'd seen reflected there.

So what did that mean?

It didn't mean 'ridiculously efficient' because even the most efficient engines ran on something and there wasn't any sign of that something being removed from the tank. A random good Samaritan following me around Orre with gas canisters to fill up my gas tank whenever it stopped being full? Not only stupid and creepy, but impossible when lined up with my rate of speed and pattern of movement.

So that left the answer of 'magic ever-full gas tank', likely the courtesy of my 'patron' for the sake of reducing the amount of time wasted on boring things like refills.

… misgivings about that whole thing aside, I could work with that.

"You need a top off?" I asked Wes as I kicked a little more sand out of my bike. There'd be more to find when I got time to look for it, but for now, I'd settle for that much being gone.

"They've got a station around here?"

"No clue, but my tank's full and I've got a siphon pump in my kit."

Wes made the sort of disgusted face that belonged to that particular class of people who were familiar with at the least fun and most unhealthy method of siphoning gas. "I'm good."

"Aight," I said before looking around. "Got any preferences on where to park or is here fine?"

"Safe as anywhere else around here; Pyrite's got a worse reputation than it deserves, but it doesn't hurt to use common sense, if you got any to spare," the kid said as he twisted his key and then pulled out what looked like his entire ignition matrix before popping a dummy cover over the hole and locking it in with a different key.

…okay, now I had no idea how this kid was getting off on calling me nuts, with that kind of security system.

Not that I could blame him - Pyrite Town was about the closest you could get in Orre to finding a polar opposite to Phenac City without going underground. Not that I'd actually ever been to the Under yet, but my vague memories of the Orre games were enough to provide a sketch.

But to someone who didn't have that contrast in mind, Pyrite Town was more than likely baby's first brush with sandpaper.

Where Phenac was a textbook example of city planning taken to ridiculous levels, all buildings straight-lined and unified in their pursuit of the crisp-lined aesthetic, Pyrite Town looked like someone had taken a handful or two of buildings from seven or eight different miniature sets and thrown them into the far corner of a sandbox before moving on to some other project.

Adobe huts, layered stone buildings, and repurposed shipping containers lined the streets, the odd fusion between the various categories – and the even more common oddball that fell under none of the above – making it impossible for anyone to give a name to its particular style beyond 'doing the best with what we have, stop bitching'.

What might have been mistaken for pastel paint in other cities was just the end result of sun and desert weathering and on some of the older structures, that steady looking brown was actually a single solid layer of rust. Broken windows weren't so much a guarantee of abandonment as they were the vague suggestion of it, though one could check to see if there was some kind of boarding put up behind the shattered glass for a better idea of what was going on.

At the furthest end of the town, where the canyon around it finally closed into a solid wall of rock, sat the old Pyrite Mining Building and a huge weathered dome littered with cracks and broken panels that allowed just a glimpse of what was going on inside. Once, it had been some sort of storage facility for the mining company that had owned the town. Now, it was the Pyrite Colosseum, practically the only form of entertainment available that the residents didn't make themselves.

The whole place looked like post-apocalyptic wreckage and might have even passed for a properly abandoned ghost town if not for the many motorcycles parked around town and the people milling around the streets. The end result was a study in opportunism, the sort of place that sprang into being just because it was the best chance you could get out here. The canyon surrounding it protected the town from the worst of the desert winds, the leftovers of industry gave the people their starting capital and the means to shelter themselves, and the people themselves?

I gave a punk with purple hair and a battered jumpsuit a sidelong look as we passed him on the street, only relaxing my shoulders once the guy broke eye contact to shuffle off in another direction.

There were worse places than this, but… even if it wasn't the criminal paradise other people from other, better-off towns might have thought it was, the people who lived there weren't the soft and meek sorts you could just trust to mind their own business.

I still liked it better than Phenac, but that was mostly cause overly cultivated environments made my skin crawl a lot more than naturalistic chaos did.

Rui and Wes didn't seem quite sure what to make of each other yet, having that sort of early-stage uncomfortable awkwardness that wasn't a proper dislike still hanging over them, but it was still the first week. I imagined things would be awkward for a little while more yet, especially with my eternally socially clumsy ass thrown into the mix.

Eventually, one of them would do something that would make an impact on the other - in both cases, my feeling towards that impact felt positive; both were good kids.

I sighed, trying to get my brain together. Our first stop in Pyrite had been quick, messy, and not much worth commenting on beyond the fact that we'd left the place after collecting a Shadow Pokémon and making a grown-ass man almost piss himself. Unfortunately, now I had to play the part of adult and talk to Sherles again - this time not as someone filing a complaint, but as someone bringing forward evidence of a conspiracy a whole lot harder to prove than a foiled kidnapping.

Joy.

"Are you sure about going to the police with this whole Cipher thing?" Wes asked, as if hearing my thoughts. "I mean, you've already got Eagun and Acacia."

Leading the gang back to the battered green building that bore no other trappings of its nature beyond a few barred windows and a faded emblem next to the door, I had to laugh. "To be honest? No, but fuck if I have any better ideas."

Pyrite Town's police station might not have been much to look at from the outside – or, Wes corrected as he looked at the cramped and dusty office, from the inside – but it was the official police headquarters of Orre. If that was because Phenac had eschewed regular police for a privately employed security force, with Neogate following close behind with its cadres of personal enforcers and subdivided police precincts that had more gaps than coverage, or because the Chief simply decided that he liked Pyrite Town better, taking the designation with him when he settled down there, Wes couldn't say. He had very little personal experience with Chief Hercule Sherles, which was better than expected, given his career and the fact that he'd literally lived under the man's nose for years… although the last also featured a massive amount of stone keeping them apart and the fact that the Under was technically outside of the man's jurisdiction.

Still, an entire life spent engaging in criminal behavior meant that he had an instinctual discomfort when presented with the law, leaving him to fidget nervously while Delaine spilled what information she had… more information than Wes suspected, enough to send a minor chill shivering down his spine, even though almost all of it was technically on a shaking foundation.

Apparently, the Chief could tell that too. "Now, with the attempted kidnapping, I could do something; put out a bulletin, arrest the culprit that got away - which I have - you had enough evidence to prove something had happened and direct witness testimony," he said. "This? This is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, Delaine."

"I know. And I'm not…" the girl grimaced. "I'm not telling you this to pass the buck, Chief; I know you don't have the manpower for it unless you pull some favors or this shit goes international, but I figured I'd at least owed you a head's up on what we're going to do here."

"And it sounds a hell of a lot like vigilantism," Sherles pointed out, sharp blue eyes fixing on Delaine's face. The man might have been old with the silver hair to prove it, but there was clearly a wealth of experience and intelligence to the man's name. "So what's the plan for when you find Shadow Pokémon that aren't in the hands of 'bad guys', hmm? You just gonna take those too?"

Delaine sighed as she sunk into a chair, head in her hands. "No. I don't have a full plan yet but… doing it like that just isn't feasible. Best route I can see with that is giving a support system for those trainers; if they want to try working with their Pokémon, they can get resources to do that, and if they don't think they can handle it or don't want to, we can take the Pokémon off their hands and take a direct role in helping them recover instead of having people get hurt or ditch the Pokémon in places where they can't get any help."

The Chief sat there for a moment, staring at his desk as he apparently weighed his options. "Well, I'll grant that it's a better plan than I expected from the kid who came in after sending a poacher to the emergency room, but I suppose three years is a lot of time for someone to grow and change, especially at your age."

Oh, there was a story there, one that Wes somehow knew the general shape of despite having almost no context for it, and it didn't exactly inspire confidence in a kid who was maybe one or two steps under a poacher by most criminal standards.

A moment or two of near silence passed, the seconds measured out by the tapping of that pen.

"Fine - I'll do what I can to help you with this," Sherles finally said, turning to a fresh page of paperwork. "No hospitalizations though."

"I can settle for minor abrasions, loss of dignity, and mild terror."

The police chief gave her a withering look.

Delaine held up her hands in mock surrender. "Fine, fine. Just trying to be funny."
"You aren't. Now get out and don't be responsible for putting anymore paperwork on my desk for at least a day."

As soon as we were clear of the door, I let go of the pressure that had been building in my lungs, the air hissing out over my teeth like steam hissing from an overworked train or, as some people in my first life had liked to point out because it was a cheap and easy joke, like an angry cat. I'd never understood that, but maybe it made more sense to people with no experience with cats or trains. "I can't believe that worked."

Rui immediately spun around to stare at me. "You didn't think that would work?!"

"Rui, you have to understand that I don't expect anything I go out on a limb for to work out," I pointed out, trying not to give in to hysterical laughter. "Life has dicked me over too many times for me to be an optimist, even if I am an idealist."

"Then why do you even try?" Wes asked.

"Because I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't." Even without the threat of non-existence hanging vaguely over my head if I dared be 'boring', I probably wouldn't have been able to just let the Shadow Pokémon thing go without at least trying to help. I was the person who'd repeatedly run into traffic for regular turtles in my first life - and Pokémon… Pokémon were more than that.

I sighed, taking one more minute to indulge in helplessness before shoving it in a box for later. Time to be a responsible adult, even if it sucked. "Okay, Wes, Rui, if you were going to distribute fucked up, ultra-violence Pokémon for fun and profit, where would you do it?"

Author's Notes

Okay, massive delay for a rather short chapter on this one - reasons? Well there are a few.

I got stalled out doing edits/rewrites of the chapters back in 2018. Originally? A lot of this sucker was a replacement for chapter 6, but I just hit a wall on it, then shit went to hell IRL, and then when that smoothed out, I ended up getting distracted by different fandoms soon after.

One of the distractions? A big fic thing for One Piece which is a combo-platter of a bunch of older fics/characters/concepts I'd failed with long ago that I decided to bring back instead of just making new ones, which then picked up a friend helping me with the whole process. Literally, I spent an entire year just on planning and character redesigns… which is still technically going, even if that fic is going to be taking a mild hiatus soon.

Why is that hiatus coinciding with this revival? Because I'm now helping Monica with one of her fic things… which is Pokémon based and related to this fic - mostly in that my trainer crosses over a bit. So I'm getting back into this to help get my own brain in the Pokémon Zone but also other more serious writer reasons.

Monica's help with writing and working on the other fic have helped me evolve my planning and pacing abilities, so I hope that'll help this work speed up more than it originally was going and be a bit clearer on its direction, along with making more headway now that I've learned to not be so dependent on getting things /perfect/. Again, sorry about the long wait and thank you for your patience - I hope that I'm able to compare to and surpass to what you expected from this story starting out!