Oscar and Cinder joined the main group after taking a detour to collect the bottle of alcohol and found a seat by Stumpy. He was talking to Luxio and Espeon, filling them in on what had happened since they last left. Gaia was talking with Boss, the Servine, Machoke and Sableye in a group slightly off to the side. They were all sitting around platters of food and drink on the ground; fruits meat and juices. All raw. As the latecomers sat, Luxio broke off from the conversation to address Oscar.

"Hey, Boss wanted me to give you this." He slid over the Efficient bandana and two Poke. "He won't tell you to your face because he is still a little sore about it, but he was impressed with your performance. Especially after hearing you were a nerd not even a month ago." Oscar hadn't been called that in some time, he was surprised Pokémon had a word for it. "Taking your stuff was just a test to see if you would throw a fit or not, you came to us after all. You passed, congratulations."

"Thanks." He said, feeling a little better. "What's up?" he asked colloquially.

"Mighty here was just filling us in on what you were up to while you were gone." Luxio said. "Dragon Den, huh?"

"And how you all met." Espeon added, "Precious." She pretended not to be amused, hiding he smirk with a glass of juice.

"C'mon, you told them that?" Cinder protested to Stumpy, who simply shrugged.

"Didn't seem like that big a deal." Cinder moved to complain again, before he was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. He turned his head to see Oscar offering him a shot.

"Hey. Do not worry about it." The Fennekin turned to pour his own glass after Cinder grabbed the shot from him.

"Is that what I think it is?" Luxio asked.

"Yup." Oscar said after downing the shot, followed shortly by Cinder. "Want some?"

"Do I look stupid?" Oscar turned to the Espeon and asked out loud,

"Should I answer that, or…" Oscar dodged a wooden cup aimed at his head by the Luxio, and Espeon couldn't contain her laughter anymore.

"Don't get smart, newbie. I like you, but not that much."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He held his paws up defensively and let out a short chuckle. "So, what do you all do here? Do you just form groups and maraud or there some kind of organization?" He was hoping this outfit was more than a simple group of thugs, but more often than not smaller groups of criminals like this amounted to nothing more than that.

"Now's a good a time as any to fill you in I guess." Luxio began. "I am Boss' second, and I handle most of the day-to-day running of the group. Delegating chores, assigning guard rotation, that kind of thing. Boss decides what we hit and when, and picks the groups for that. They're out on a job right now, but usually it's Team Venom. Sometimes he mixes and matches groups for more specific jobs. I also go with Servine to fence the more valuable goods. We have friendly faces and the townsfolk like us." He did his best impression of an innocent smile, it was actually pretty good. Espeon spoke next.

"I don't have a specific job, and I'm usually attached to groups whenever they need raw psychic might." Luxio suppressed his laugh, and Espeon pretended to look offended. "Okay, I'm no slouch but I'm usually brought along to act as psychic scout. See who is suspicious of our group, who is hiding valuable items and where, etcetera. I almost always go when we set up a roadblock, to see if the incoming group has enough valuables to merit revealing ourselves. No point ambushing a Rookie team and stealing some berries and a hundred Poké, right?" That made sense to Oscar, at least these outlaws put some thought into their work. "Other than that, I guard and often roam around the hideout looking for potential scouts and get some hunting in."

Luxio spoke up again after Espeon finished. "Machoke over there bounces between fixing our stuff and guard duty. He goes out when we need some muscle to carry heavy things back. I know what you're thinking, no he isn't a weak fighter. Boss just thinks he is best used this way, and Machoke prefers it anyway. Sableye is a beancounter. He is a weak fighter, but he has a lot of contacts and get us good leads on top of managing our finances and supplies. He's kindof and introvert, but he's good folk when you get to know him. More importantly he doesn't steal from the coffers, which is probably the most important quality you can have for someone in his position."

"Servine can with me when we joined this group, oh, five years ago. She manages the food and supplies for our hush-hush projects."

She gets the stuff to make the potions from the human machine. We use it ourselves and sell some for supplemental income. Espeon told him.

Curious/trust/conflict He returned.

Indifferent/inevitable/trusting

She was probably just happy to have someone around who didn't mind psychic snooping.

"Aside from that like I said she joins me when we go to fence goods, and goes out on jobs whenever we think we need a grass type. She is very good at holding down Pokémon with her vines, useful for ganging up on dangerous targets. She can use them for other things, too."

"Yes I can well imagine. Tell me, what did Char and Mighty do before we came along?"

"The previous newbies were mostly just training. I would put them out on small jobs, and get them familiar with the territory we patrol. I planned on doing this until they evolved, then they would join us on normal jobs."

"Wait." Cinder spoke up, "If it was your idea to put us up on all those low-value jobs, then why did Boss give us so much grief for them? I thought it was his idea and he was messing with us."

"Boss believes in tough love, thinking he could push you to evolving faster if you thought your performance wasn't good enough. I tried telling him that only works for Dragon types, and even then notsomuch, but he was insistent. Since I happen to know you are going on a real job tomorrow, I think it's fine to tell you that you were doing fine. We never expected much from the jobs we sent you out on, just that you succeeded. Which you mostly did." Stumpy was pleased to hear this.

"Oh that's a relief! I was worried we were going to get kicked out for a little while there." Cinder didn't respond, and he was sending off many conflicting emotions. Relief that he wasn't as bad as he thought he was, and anger at being treated poorly to 'make him stronger', the situation was remind him too much of his father.

Just then, a whistle from Machamp got the group's attention. He waived them over to join the main group. After they sat down, Boss addressed the group.

"We have two newbloods joining today, give a cheer for Gaia and Fennekin!" There was a mix of clapping and stomping as the various Pokémon gave their cheers. "They will be joining Team Placeholder Name" he chuckled as he recalled the story behind the name Gaia gave him, "and I'm sure they will do well. Just make sure to give our two little runts a lot of love and attention, they have a lot of growing to do!"

"Now," Boss said, changing subjects, "I know you lot had a long trip and need to rest up, be we have lots of jobs lined up and have many things that need to get done. So you are going to eat and rest up tonight, and first thing tomorrow I'm sending you back out to pick up some cherry, pristine kit. But before that, Gaia has been telling me some pretty wild things, Fennekin. Things I'm not sure I believe."

"That's odd, Gaia is not usually so open."

"What can I say, I'm real charming. So, is it true?"

"Why don't you just ask Espeon?" He thought that would make things a lot easier.

"Eh, I will. But I know psychics can alter their memories, and if what Gaia said about you is true I wouldn't put it past you. I want to hear it from your mouth first."

"Unfortunately, I misplaced my ID and can't prove I am who I say I am, you will have to use your judgement." Boss snorted. Oscar was slipping into contractions, what a perfect time for the alcohol to kick in.

"What are you talking about, Boss? What about Fennekin?" Luxio asked, not part of the conversation with Gaia.

"It looks like we have ourselves our very own human, if Gaia is to be believed. Just like Guilds have been finding the last hundred years or so." Luxio and Espeon were startled, looking at Oscar oddly now. "C'mon, use that big brain. There must be something you can say that only a human would know?" Boss egged him on.

Oscar thought for a moment, before coming up with a reply. "Do you know what that building behind you is?" Boss let the humor fall from his face.

"Maybe."

"It is called a Pokémon center. Trainers, humans who capture and mentor or direct Pokémon to battle for them, take their injured Pokémon to places like this to be healed. Like a hospital, you have those here, right?" He took a half-shot before continuing, he was going to need it. "It also serves as a local trade hub, where you could buy various Pokémon-related items like Pokéballs, TMs, rare candies or Pokémon themselves if you desired." The Pokémon around him seemed confused at this, believing he misspoke. "It also had limited fabrication facilities, usually lesser convenience items like the potion you have been spritzing yourself with, some could make candies."

Boss turned to Espeon, and after a moment turned back to Oscar. "Espeon tells me you haven't been snooping around in our heads, so you couldn't have learned about the potions that way. We play that pretty close to the chest." He thought for a moment. "What else can you tell me about this Pokémon center?"

"Not much more than what I already said. I got a good look around as we went to the manager's office, ah, your den?" The Gabite nodded, "It looks pretty beat up, and I don't understand how it still has power. Without the staff and supplies it normally has, I can't see much use in it other than for making potions. If there were other functioning centers that were linked here, you could teleport back and forth if you were in a Pokéball. But it sounds like those are rare items here, and I personally wouldn't risk it even if this place was running properly without the supercomputers, er, the machines required to make sure the goods -that is Pokémon- are not damaged in transit."

"Huh." Boss said after a moment. "Well that sounds both confusing and convincing, but just to be sure…" he gestured to Espeon.

"Can you show us too?" Servine asked "Sounds like a trip." Several others nodded in agreement.

"Sure," she said, "but I'll need to borrow some of Fennekin's Aura if Mightyena wants to join. And you have to want it, Mightyena, or you'll mess it up for everyone else too." Oscar just shrugged at the request, better to get this out of the sooner rather than later.

"Sure, sounds fun." Stumpy said, it's not like they were going to peer into his head, after all. After a moment, Espeon began. She let out a psychic ping.

Orders/desire/curious life/history/origin

This process did not require words, only feelings, concepts and images.

Amused/accepting/welcoming, reciprocation/quo-pro-quo/curios/need

Espeon saw flashes of his life, from his earliest memories to this very moment. It was not chronological, one thought being tied to another in seemingly random ways. Sometimes a single word or smell could link memories decades apart, and usually these memories would branch out like fractals. This was an intimate psychic link, and Espeon did not experience these things as a movie or series of images. She was there. She tasted the finest wines and gazed on an endless cityscape from the top of crystal towers touching the sky. She flew in metal machines across the world, seeing the gentle curve of the world and the snowcapped mountains blanketed by clouds.

She read from a terminal detailing the results of the latest test. Improvement. Marginal, but progress is made on the margins. With a grunt she poured over the readings again. Silencing that cluster of genes had added 30% to the Furret's lifespan, but their development had suffered and an unacceptable number had devolved deformities. There were downstream consequences that the models had missed, but her assistants were already at work integrating the new data. What if she…

She watched from the spectators booth at the Viridan city gym as Geovanni sent an eight-badge trainer running with his tail between his legs. Giovanni's Nidoking was a terror, and nearly ran the challenger's team by itself. She sipped the whiskey, savoring its flavor, the bite of the alcohol and the pleasant numbing it brought. She would meet with her employer in a few minutes, after he finished up with the trainer. Something about a needing a custom Gyarados to distract some foreign port authority…

Her hands traced over the warm shell of the Treecko egg, a gift from Giovanni. She was more excited than she thought she would be, having spent most of her life avoiding the trainers' call. Most Professors had been trainers at some point, seeing the experience as necessary to be taken seriously. She had cleverly picked a different route to establish her credentials, and never had they need for babysitting Pokémon before. She didn't have a need now, of course, but this presented an opportunity. Even as it was, this Treecko was likely to be a superior specimen just given its parentage. She had looked at her genes, and she had all the markings for greatness in her. Still, there was always room for improvement. It looks like she will develop arthritis near old age, that wouldn't do. And that high likelihood for neurosis? A little was always important she admitted, but she would bring that down just a bit. She was a grass type, but fire was the spirits' gift to humanity, along with creativity. She couldn't allow her partner to have a fear of or weakness to fire. Some resistances from the Charmander line, then. It was important to stay in the same egg group, she didn't want any nasty consequences. A little tougher, a little stronger, a little faster, yes she would round out this little Treecko's genes and make her the best should could while still being stable. But the Treecko needed a little something else, something to make her worthy of being a partner to Team Rocket's chief biologist. Pokemon were in theory smart enough to be the intellectual equals of most humans. Not her! But still. They were missing something, that spark that set humans apart from the beasts. She wasn't a philosopher, and wasn't going to find the answer to this question on her own. Still, her new Treecko partner could stand to be a little more creative than the average Pokémon. A little sharper in the mind. She knew the genes that played a that role in humans, and they should in theory play nice with the Pokémon's existing genes. Yes, she would run a few simulations. If they worked, she had just the source for these genes in mind. The obvious choice, really, she wanted the best.

Samuel was the best in his admittedly niche field, she knew, but she couldn't shake the feeling the man was mad. He chattered nonsensically about the exciting implications of this artefact delivered to them. He needed to chill, she thought. The artefact attributed to Dialga was impressive and would probably get the job done, but they were still a far cry from usurping control of space from the dragon. She didn't doubt that humanity would eventually, it was inevitable at the rate they were moving, but what was the rush? She had ensured that the physicist now had all the time in the world to pursue his work. He had just finished setting the artefact into its containment cell went the alarm went off.

"I think you get the point." Oscar said, cutting them off. "Satisfied?" The group took several moments to process what they saw. They experienced it from Espeon's point of view, and she seemed the worst hit by the revelations. Oscar had experienced Espeon's life in the same way she had his, but being only 15 years old he had less material to sort through. She had chosen this life of banditry for much the same reason he had chosen his; society preventing her from researching the more esoteric or forbidden psychic arts. She otherwise had a very tame and laid back life, she hid no great tragedy or terrible secrets save her willingness to see a question through no matter what it took. He liked her, a kindred spirit.

Gaia was the first to recover. "Was just an experiment to you? A prize to parade around." Oscar had thought these feelings were resolved in the woods, didn't he make it clear the first time?

"Did we not experience the same memory? I was excited to try something new, of course, but who wouldn't be? I wanted to make a worthy partner, and I succeeded. Don't you agree?"

"So I wasn't good enough for you as I was?" She didn't look distraught, but there were tears forming in her eyes.

"No one is good enough. Ever. You can always be better. If there is one concept Pokémon can understand it should be that you can always be better. Don't forget I modified myself just as much -more- than I did you. Am I not good enough?"

"I know. I know! It's just, I feel. Ugh! I'm just confused, I think I want to be alone to think." She got up and walked up the stairs to the rooms above before stopping, forgetting something.

"You can rest in my room." Boss said sullenly. He waited for her to disappear before speaking again. "You're a piece of work, you know that?" He said to Oscar.

"Says the outlaw boss, who are you to judge?"

"I haven't murdered hundreds of Pokémon! I don't see Pokémon as tools and, and, property to be traded like common goods!" All but Cinder and Stumpy had scooted a bit away from the former human. The two knew some of this story and were a little more familiar with Oscar's motivations after spending time with him. Still, to experience those things firsthand, to feel the callousness as if they themselves felt it…

"You kill all the time to eat, no doubt more than I have over your life. You kill to live longer, as I did. You rob and terrorize intelligent Pokémon, and you take joy out of beating those small, weak 'runts'." Oscar retorted. "Well, where I am from, Pokémon are the runts. Even the legendries are largely tamed. You saw my memories. If you were in my position, would you care about the feelings of a beast too stupid not to shit where it eats?" No reply came immediately. Gabite was a dragon, and dragons were proud creatures before anything. He imagined tasting that sublime whiskey, sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned room at the top of a crystal tower after just travelling halfway across the world in hours. Beds so luxurious it was like sleeping on clouds. Foods so exotic and so decadent they were almost painful to indulge in. He looked to the raw berries and meat before him, to the crude wooden cups and thought about the hay beds most Pokémon slept on, if they were lucky. He was a proud creature, and he understood why the human had cut the memories off when he did. He didn't want to know what he thought of their living conditions, he could well imagine.

The rest of the group seemed to be coming to similar conclusions, suddenly looking a little ashamed of the 'fine feast' they had been enjoying. Servine especially seemed disappointed now. The memories otherworldly extravagance still fresh in their minds, the juxtaposition was almost painful to experience.

Oscar could read the room, he had an opportunity to turn this around. "It's not all bad. This place, your world. There is a lot of potential here, and you Pokémon have a drive I don't think the one's from my home had. After all, no Pokémon made a civilization where I came from, yet here you are." He gestured around the room. "Besides, human lived like this not too long ago, and I think of them the same way." The faint praise lifted the mood of the room a bit, but just a bit.

"You aren't going to do any experiments like that here." Luxio said, it wasn't a question.

"No." He agreed. "There is no need."

"I'm still not sure I could ever do what you did, even if we switched places." Boss said, "But I guess I can see where you are coming from." Oscar suspected that their previous objections were more due to empathy than morality. After putting the situation in terms of his perceptive, Boss at least seemed more understanding.

"Makes sense to me. I would have done the same thing." Espeon said. Good girl, she gets it.

"It's rotten." Machoke said, "The whole thing. But it makes sense. I can't say the Guild or the Guardians would be any different if they had that kind of power, and lived so apart from the rest of us. Which begs the question, what are we to you? Tools? Comrades? Property?"

"It's complicated." Oscar said, where should he take this?

"Isn't it obvious?" Espeon said, "he already showed us everything we need to know."

"Well I guess I'm a little slow." Machoke said, direction his attention to Espeon.

"He sees us like hatchlings. Full of potential but largely unrealized, and not to be taken too seriously. Why do you think I, he was so excited when he gave Treecko those human genes for creativity? He wanted to see what she was capable of." That sounded about right, Oscar thought. But from her slip it sounded like Espeon went a little too deep in the mind meld.

"I am not a hatchling." Boss stated, he was not petulant but his displeasure at being likened to such was obvious.

"That's why I said it was complicated. You, Boss, are far from a hatchling. But Pokémon, in general, have a lot of unrealized potential and don't have a very high standard of living." Boss hated that he knew what that meant now.

"Fine. Whatever. But if you do anything to my f-team, you'll wish you were those Furret."

"Oh for-" Oscar sat up straight and put a paw over his heart. "I, Dr. Oscar Vant, swear that I will not, without informed consent, experiment on you or your team, nor any Pokémon of this world, and will not perform experiments that carry risk of grievous bodily injury or death, if given constant. I will not capture Pokémon, nor will I work to create devices to capture Pokémon, nor trade or traffic in their persons. I will treat Pokémon, now counting myself among their number, as I treated humans, and will afford them all due considerations of dignity such association entitles them do, notwithstanding the execution of my duties as a bandit and a villain. On my honor, I swear this." He let his paw down and looked to Boss. "Satisfied?" Boss hated that he knew what all of that meant, hopefully it would wear off in time. He needed a nap.

"Yeah. Good enough. I think we have all had a long night. I'm sure we all have a lot of questions, but those can wait. Finish the," he trailed off "raw meat, so it doesn't spoil, and get to bed. We have lots to do tomorrow." The group dispersed, and made for their rooms. Cinder and Stumpy guided Oscar to the room they had been staying in. Yellow and black walls, two hay beds and several papers that looked like maps littered the floor. Two hay beds were on the floor, and their owners worked to divide the two beds up to make three smaller beds. After this was done they all sat down for a moment before Stumpy spoke.

"Oscar, are you evil?" He left the insinuation that they all were evil by association unsaid.

"The ignorant would call me that." He admitted. Stumpy's ears drooped and he looked more than a little guilty. Cinder just looked contemplative, as he had ever since the memory share had ended.

"Are we-" Stumpy began, but was interrupted by Oscar.

"There are no evil Pokémon." He said definitively. "There are mean Pokémon, violent Pokémon, dangerous Pokémon, but no evil Pokémon. If Pokémon commit evil acts, it is either because they are acting on instincts or were instructed by humans to do so. Only humans can be truly evil. It takes more than petty thievery or criminality to be evil. That takes malicious intent, a desire to destroy those around you and watch the world burn. Are you like that?" Even after his time here, he was still not even sure if Pokémon could be considered moral agents in the first place, he would need to think on it.

"No! Yeah I steal stuff and sometimes I hurt Pokémon to do it but it's not like I have a lot of options and I don't want to do it forever it's just that-"

"There you go, criminal but not evil. People throw the word around too cavalierly."

"Would it matter if we were evil?" Cinder asked, coming out of his contemplation. "If that's what it takes to win, to be strong, then is being evil really wrong?"

"Be careful, Cinder. You are falling into nihilism, and that is a doom few escape." Oscar warned.

"But what about you? The things you did to get what you wanted? Why is it okay for you but not for me?"

"I know when to stop. And the context is different, anyway. How would raging against the world and being 'evil' help you, anyway? Can you evolve on hate alone?"

"I haven't tried yet, maybe that will work this time!" Cinder said, growing angry. "Stumpy didn't even want to evolve, and he did. We were even in the same situation, getting beat on by three dragons! And he did, and I didn't. And Gaia hasn't even been in a proper battle since before two weeks ago, and she just up and evolves and even gave the Boss a run for his Poke!" He was breathing heavy now, the flame on his tale growing large. "And you! Sure you haven't evolved, but you aren't even a month old as a Pokémon so of course you haven't. And you were a human! Five times my age with access to knowledge Alakazam couldn't imagine and living a life even most legendaries can't have. You made the strongest Pokémon in the world stronger and you were bored doing it. Me? I'm just, just the runt." He sighed. "I shouldn't be here."

"No Cinder, don't say that! You'll evolve soon, you'll see!" Stumpy moved to embrace Cinder, but was pushed away. Oscar had an idea.

He started to send images into the Charmander's mind. Cinder resisted at first, but Oscar just pushed through.

Important/insight/knowledge/watch

Cinder relented, and Oscar proceeded to paint a picture in Cinder's head. It was of the encounter with the kid's Charizard. The beast stared down imperiously at the quaking Cinder, who in a moment of epiphany pulled a Pokémon sized gun from his bag and shot the Charizard in the eye; the powerful Pokémon killed with a twitch of Cinder's claws. Oscar sent another image, of Cinder as a Charizard this time. A little small, a little scrawny, sure. But this Charizard was covered in glistening steel plate, inlayed with swirling gold patterns and accented in a regal purple tabard. He held a starburst patterned sword in one claw and drove it through a larger, more bestial Charizard as its claws bounced harmlessly off Cinder's armor.

Oscar showed himself as a human, he was well muscled for his age but still diminutive compared to the Pokémon the mental projection compared the human to. Oscar's mental projection stared at a rampaging Garchomp, and simply threw a Master ball at it. And just like that the beast was contained, neutralized. Oscar thought this would be enough, and spoke.

"You will evolve, eventually. It is almost unheard of for Pokémon to be unable to evolve, it just doesn't happen. The kind of sickness that would prevent you from evolving would have killed you by now, so have no fear of not making it to a Charizard one day. You will. However," he added with a paw up in the air, "you have no hope of being the strongest Charizard around. A Pokémon's Aura can grow almost arbitrarily strong, you may very well one day have the hottest Flamethrower in the world, but you will never match the Charizard you met at the tavern in pure strength. But you don't need too." Cinder perked up at this, still processing the mental images and the words he just heard. "There are plenty of ways to grow stronger that don't involve your body. You can do as humans do, and use weapons and armor to take yourself beyond what your body would normally be capable of. You can fight smarter, as we did in the Dragon Den, and you can fight dirty. You were right in spirit before about the evil thing, you should do whatever it takes to win. You just don't need to be evil to win."

Cinder seemed to take to this new angle well, but already thoughts were creeping in to undermine his hope. Isn't that cowardly? Isn't that cheating? Am I strong if I need to use tools to do my fighting for me?

Oscar interrupted these thoughts with another mental projection. It was of Knight Cinder again, standing over his defeated opponent. The bleeding Charizard repeating all the same things Cinder's subconscious had, and spat blood at the ground before Cinder, disgusted. Knight Cinder smiled and cut off the Charizard's head. "You're dead and I'm not. I win." This worked, and Cinder let out a content sigh after the symbolic victory over his subconscious.

"Thanks. I see what you mean. Yeah, I like that." Stumpy just looked at them for a moment, bewildered. He pointed his paw to his head and wiggled it around.

"Did you…" he said skeptically.

"No, just showed him stuff. You want to see?" He asked. Cinder nodded his head eagerly to encourage the Mightyena on.

"Uh, sure. No funny business." He warned.

"I literally couldn't if I wanted to." Oscar said and tried to show Stumpy what he showed Cinder. His lack of true psychic typing was showing here, and even with Stumpy actively letting him in Oscar couldn't get a good 'hold' on the Dark types mind. He couldn't show everything, so he settled for a still image of Knight Cinder standing triumphantly over his larger but very dead rival. Stumpy laughed at the image.

"Yeah, that looks cool. Can I have some of that armor too?" He joked.

"Maybe tomorrow I'll make some." Oscar joked, "I'll need to sleep on it." The others agreed, and the three settled into sleep for the night.