CHAPTER 35

Condensation beaded under Alex's hands and dripped slowly down to the cardboard coaster, already liquefying on the old wooden table. Alex had never been one for drinking, but he figured he could nurse a beer or two at O'Flanagan's to while away a few hours, and maybe watch a few pokemon battles on the courtyard patio. O'Flanagan's Pangoro lounged in the shade, sprawled on its back with one paw outstretched. A few smaller pokemon squabbled in the center of the packed-earth patio while their trainers drank and chatted. The small pokemon weren't really battling, just blowing off steam, but Alex carefully tracked their movements all the same. A few larger pokemon skulked around the fringes of the courtyard; Alex saw a regular's Slowbro, along with a Heracross, an old scarred Charizard, a Poliwrath, and a Lurantis, a rare sight that definitely belonged to a tourist.

The sun was past its zenith, and the shadows in the courtyard were lengthening as the afternoon dragged on. Alex sank listlessly back in his chair, doing the mental arithmetic to see how long he could reasonably stay at O'Flanagan's and still have money to pick up groceries on the way home. After leaving the hospital a week and a half ago, he had withdrawn from his classes at AIT, ostensibly to return home to Icirrus City in Unova. The registrar had been understanding, letting him know that his scholarships would still be available to him if he were to re-enroll in the future.

With the war in the underworld building to a fever pitch, many of those who could afford to leave Clarus were jumping ship, at least until the dust settled, and Clarus's various universities and colleges were the hardest hit. Even so, plenty of people were willing to stick it out, and if one were to walk down the streets of any borough in the city, life would seem to be going on more or less as normal. Long-time residents had seen underworld shake ups and slugfests between criminals and the city's defenders before.

In any event, Alex wasn't about to turn tail and run home to Unova. He had only withdrawn from his classes because trying to juggle his academic responsibilities with his physical well-being as Hawlucha Man had become untenable, and his stint in the hospital only served to drive that point home. Jiro had never removed him from the Sasaki Industries payroll even after his internship ended, so even with the loss of his academic funding, the small stipend that dropped into his bank account every two weeks had been enough to keep a roof over his head and food on his plate. When it came down to it, if he had to pick between being Alex Alvarez, student, and Hawlucha Man, hero, he would pick Hawlucha Man every time.

If only he could actually be Hawlucha Man.

Hierro was still laid up in the hospital in a medically-induced coma to prevent any further damage to his body if he tried to move. According to Hierro's doctors, it seemed that Pride had fed her Seviper a specially-designed diet that made the serpent's venom incredibly potent and dangerous. That, coupled with the other wounds Hierro had suffered in the fighting, had nearly killed him, and the Hawlucha's scrappy attitude meant that each time he woke he tried to get up and seek Alex out to get back in the game, even though his body wasn't sufficiently healed.

But even if his partner had been in fighting trim and perfect health, Alex couldn't be Hawlucha Man. The suit that Jiro had designed for him had been damaged beyond repair by Pride's Pyroar. Alex worried that now that the underworld had entered into a virtual arms race, if he went back to the materials he used to design his original suit, the next time he wound up in dire straits, the suit would fail him, and he probably wouldn't escape with his life. Until he could figure out a solution, Hawlucha Man was indefinitely benched.

Alex downed the last of his beer and was about to wave over a server to order another when a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a battered leather jacket pulled out the chair across from Alex with his foot. He plunked down two shot glasses and a bottle of O'Flanagan's top-shelf whiskey. "This seat taken?" Before Alex could respond, the man sat down, grabbed the bottle poured a generous measure into both glasses. He slid one across the tabletop to Alex and raised the other to his lips. "Drink up, Hawlucha Man."

Alex's chair scraped against the ground as he started to rise, but the strange man raised his hand in a placating gesture. "Take it easy. I'm just here for a chat and some company. I get too maudlin when I drink alone. I'm in Clarus on a little personal business, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to say hello."

"Who are you?" Alex hissed. "How do you know who I am?"

"Well, I've got two good eyes in my head, that's how. I've seen you masked up in the papers, and it didn't take much to match up your body type and face shape with your civilian identity after I catalogued the recorded sightings of Hawlucha Man around Avenbrooke and noted that he's usually spotted in this neighborhood early in the evening and late at night. I figured your home base would be around here, and that narrowed my search quite a bit. I staked things out for a day or two, and voila! It wasn't too hard to arrange to run into you."

Alex was still braced against the table, ready to fight or run. "You still haven't told me who you are."

"The name's Cole Culain. You're probably too young to remember when I was in the papers, but maybe I was in your history books at school."

Alex fell back into his chair. "The Cole Culain? From the Skirmishes? You're the freaking Firebra—"

Cole cut Alex off. "I've been called a lot of things," he said. "War hero, war criminal, traitor, coward. But I'd rather not be called that name again."

"Right. Sorry. Uh, sir." Alex glanced at the Charizard lounging some ways distant. "If you're you, does that mean he's…"

Cole snapped his fingers. The Charizard looked up and lumbered over, resting his head on Cole's shoulder. The older man reached up and scratched the orange dragon's jaw. "Say hello to Prometheus." Prometheus huffed out a plume of smoke, and rumbled deep enough to shake the glasses on nearby tables in what seemed to Alex like a draconian purr.

Alex could tell his eyes were as wide as saucers. "Wow…" All throughout his childhood, he had heard stories of the semi-legendary Cole Culain, the war hero who had appeared about twenty years before Alex was born to defend Unova in the series of brief and brutal conflicts now known as the Skirmishes that tore across the region. The Kantonian had decisively turned the tide of many battles as he and his Charizard had streaked down from the sky like a pair of avenging angels. Unova's Kantonian aggressors had done their best to slander his name as a traitor to his country of birth, but Unova had hailed him as their adopted hero.

But once the fighting had ended, the Firebrand had vanished just as quickly as he had appeared. The rumor was that he had retired to a quiet life in some small town in Sinnoh, or at least that was the cover he used while he continued to fly missions for some sort of global peacekeeping outfit. But he had vanished from Sinnoh too, and for years after that, everyone assumed that this time Cole Culain was gone for good, and possibly even dead.

"Are you here to help us fight Dominion?" Alex asked.

Cole shook his head and poured another shot of whiskey. "I gave all that up a long time ago." He said it with such finality that Alex didn't dare to press further. "It was time to pass on the torch. My hero days are behind me. I'm just another rootless now."

The rootless movement had sprung up when Alex was young, mostly among veterans of the Skirmishes. After experiencing the horrors of war, many of the men and women on the front lines had found it impossible to settle back into civilian life, so they packed their bags and wandered around the world with their surviving pokemon partners, in what some said was a misguided attempt to recapture the innocence of their childhood pokemon journeys. By now, the term had come to apply to any adult pokemon trainer who gave into their wanderlust and decided to have a second adventure with pokemon in their middle age.

Alex periodically saw some rootless adults loitering around Clarus City while they restocked on supplies, and they generally were better groomed and less vacant-eyed than the usual transient population. But to think that Cole Culain himself had been hiding in plain sight among the rootless for all these years!

Alex raised his glass and tapped it to the older man's. "Well, it's an honor to meet you all the same, sir. And you too, Prometheus. I, uh, had a poster of you two in my room as a kid."

Cole laughed and threw back another shot. "What kid in Unova doesn't?" He sighed and set his glass down, making no move to pour himself any more. "I had hoped to catch you and your partner together, but I heard what happened. Is he…?"

"He'll pull through," Alex managed to say. "It's taking a while, and there have been complications, but he'll… he'll make it. Hierro's tough. He's a fighter."

"He's your best friend, huh?"

"Yeah."

Cole ran his hand along Prometheus's neck. "I know what it's like when your partner's gotten hurt taking a hit for you, and the guilt that comes with feeling like you got off easy." The Charizard pressed his bulk closer to his trainer, and Alex could feel the heat radiating off the dragon's body even from across the table. If Cole was at all uncomfortable, he didn't let it show, and Alex assumed that after all of the years of their partnership, Cole had grown accustomed to the heat the same way Alex could respond to the slightest twitch of Hierro's muscles when they sparred. Their bond ran so deep as to be almost telepathic and symbiotic.

And that just made Hierro's absence hurt all the more.

Prometheus rumbled something deep in his throat, and Cole nodded. "Yeah, I know we're burning daylight." He dropped the whiskey bottle into his backpack and stood, slinging the bag over his shoulder. Prometheus growled again and cast a significant glance at Alex. Cole shrugged and turned back to the younger man. "You know how I mentioned I'm in the city on some personal business? I'm trying to reconnect with someone I used to know. Prometheus says I ought to invite you along for, uh, moral support." Prometheus growled and narrowed his eyes. "Well, okay, more like to make sure I don't flake out. Truth be told, I was only staking you out because I was putting this meeting off. Now that we've had a chance to meet up, I guess I'm all out of excuses."

Alex shrugged. "Sure, I'll come along. Where are we headed?"

"Downtown." Cole fished in his pocket and drew a few crumpled bills from a cracked leather wallet. He set the money down on the table and gestured for Alex to follow with a jerk of his chin. "I'll have to put Prometheus in his ball while we're on the subway, and I think he's worried I'll try to sneak off before I see this through."

"Is he right?"

Cole considered this as they stepped out of O'Flanagan's, pausing just long enough to tip his head at O'Flanagan behind the bar. The burly proprietor nodded back, and then they were out in the afternoon sun and walking towards the closest subway entrance. "I don't know if I would," Cole finally said. He palmed a pokeball, and Prometheus disappeared in a beam of red light. They descended into the oppressively hot subway tunnel and took their place among the press of people waiting on the platform. "I've been putting this off for a while, but I finally worked up the nerve to come to Clarus and settle accounts. I'd like to think that I've got the guts to face this, but I've been known to cut my losses and run before."

The train arrived in a rush of hot wind and screeching brakes. They boarded and took hold of hanging straps as the subway shot off to the west. As they burst from the subterranean tunnel and began their ascent up the Concord Bridge, Alex turned his attention from the wine-dark smear of the Umber River below them to Cole, expecting the man to say more. But the man had lapsed into a pensive silence. The jovial mien he had affected at O'Flanagan's had evaporated, and all that was left was the weary man behind the mask. Now Alex could see how deeply Cole's face was carved with graven lines, and how old his eyes seemed. Cole leaned heavily on the subway strap, his shoulders slumped as though carrying a heavy burden.

The train rattled its way across the Concord Bridge on its lowest tier, while automobiles and foot traffic crossed above them, all under the shadow of the Concord's sweeping suspension cables. Then they were underground again, hurtling through a tunnel lit only by the harsh fluorescents inside the train. After a few stops, Cole seemed to rouse himself, and the mask slid back on. "Come on, we'll need to transfer here," he said.

As they waited on a lower platform, Alex turned to his companion. "You seem to know your way around the city pretty well. Have you been to Clarus before?"

"Twice. Once was a long, long time ago; I was probably younger than you are now. And then again a few years back. I was trying to have this same meeting, but I lost my nerve and ran off." He ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair and flashed a sheepish grin. "Prometheus was pretty pissed at me for dragging him all this way for nothing, which is why he's being so insistent this time."

The second train arrived, and after a shorter ride, Cole once again signaled for them to get off, leading Alex into one of the few residential neighborhoods left in the downtown sprawl. Once they were back out in the sun, Cole tossed out Prometheus's ball, and the Charizard fell into step just behind them, taking care to keep his flaming tail clear of the flowerbeds that lined the street.

After walking a few blocks, Cole drew up short and stared up at the door of an apartment building that had once been rather grand and fashionable but, like so many things in Clarus City, had declined as the rest of the city had been built up. Alex saw a sign fixed underneath the street number and peered at the logo. "Wait a minute," he said. "Aegis Security? You're here to talk to the Iron Maiden?"

Cole swallowed and nodded. Prometheus huffed out a smoke ring.

"You really need this much backup for a meeting? You know she's going to charge you an arm and a leg, right?"

"No, kid. This is the meeting." Prometheus pushed Cole forward, and he slowly walked up the steps. He pressed the doorbell for Aegis Security and stepped back. After waiting a few seconds he turned around. "She must not be here. It's probably for the best. Why don't we just—"

The door to the building swung inward, revealing the scowling proprietor of Aegis Security.

Cole smiled and opened his arms. "Hi Gwen."

"Dad?" Gwen gasped.

"Dad?!" Alex cried.

Gwen reared back and decked Cole across the face. "'Hi Gwen'? I don't see you for over ten goddamn years and you think you can just show up on my doorstep with a fucking 'Hi Gwen'?"

"I see you're still a little sore over how we left things," Cole said.

"Still a little… you're damn right I am!" Gwen roared. Prometheus rumbled, and Gwen glanced over her father's shoulder and waved. "Prometheus, it's nice to see you, but Dad and I have a few things to sort out before I come give you a hug, okay?" The Charizard seemed appeased by this, and sank back on his haunches.

Gwen seized the front of Cole's shirt and hefted him up. "The last time I saw you, Mom had just fucking died, you tried to leave me the house so you could go off on some pilgrimage to Arceus knows where, I'd just washed out of the Sinnoh league because I got too caught up in your secret agent bullshit, and…" She pushed her father away and shook her head before dashing the tears from her eyes. "And I was just sixteen, Dad. I was sixteen and I didn't know how any of this shit worked, and you just left me to fend for myself."

Cole took her into his arms and patted her back. "I know. I should have been there for you, and all I could do was run away. I'm sorry, Gwen. I can't go back go back in time and fix what went wrong, but—"

"Why not?" Gwen demanded. "Why the fuck not? I thought the fucking Firebrand could do anything!"

"Turns out there's a lot I can't do," Cole replied. "But I can face the things I did wrong all those years ago and try to set them right."

"How?" Gwen rasped.

"I thought we could start by talking?"

"I don't want—"

"I brought a bottle of whiskey."

"Okay, maybe we can talk."

Cole let her go, and Gwen staggered down the stairs to throw her arms around Prometheus's neck. The Charizard flared out his wings and wrapped them around her in a protective cocoon. From within the embrace, Alex heard Gwen mutter, "I've missed you, big guy." Prometheus responded with a deep, rumbling purr that made Alex's teeth rattle. When Gwen finally pulled away, she drew up short. "Hawlucha Man? What the—"

"I, uh, kind of ran into your dad earlier," Alex said. "I mean, I didn't know he was your dad. Or that we were coming here. I don't want to intrude or anything, so I can just…"

"Oh Arceus, just come in and have a fucking drink," Gwen said. "If he dragged you this far, you might as well."

As they walked up the stairs, Cole raised an eyebrow. "You two know each other?"

"We're professionally acquainted," Gwen said. She led them through a dimly lit hallway and past a stairway. "My office is a little cramped, so why don't we chat back here? The only reason I stay in this dump is because it's the one place in the city that has a damn back yard." They emerged in a small courtyard behind the tenement building, where a hulking Aggron slept in a carefully manicured rock garden.

Prometheus perked up immediately, and Cole spread his arms wide. "Maximus!" The Aggron roused himself and blinked in disbelief before letting forth a grating roar and charging forward. Alex winced and shrank back, but the gigantic steel type pulled up to a stop just short of Cole and the older man threw his arms around Maximus's neck. Prometheus's tail thumped against the ground as he and Maximus regarded each other. Cole circled the steel type, running his hands along Maximus's armor. "Why, he's looking incredible! His plating is as lustrous as ever, and his body," he rapped a knuckle against Maximus's stony flank. "So tough!" He smiled. "Thanks for looking after him, Gwen."

The mercenary shrugged. "Yeah, well, he was Mom's, after all. The last thing of hers I have left."

"She'd be proud of you."

Gwen scoffed. "Dad, have you seen how I live? I'd be lucky if she was only mildly disappointed."

"Well, I'm proud of you."

Gwen looked like she was ready to come back with a snarky comment to deflect the praise, but she drew up short and was, for once, speechless. "I… really?" She shook herself and gestured towards a slightly rusted wrought iron table and a few wobbly chairs. "Why don't you sit down? I'll get some glasses for us and, uh, we'll talk, I guess."

Cole and Alex sat down as Gwen disappeared inside. Prometheus and Maximus circled and playfully snapped at each other before settling down to compare old battle scars. "You could have told me we were coming to see your daughter," Alex said. "Hell, you could have told me Gwen Culain was your daughter."

"We do have the same last name. That's never been a secret."

"Well, yeah, but I always figured it was, like, some different Culain."

Cole's eyes twinkled, but he said nothing. When Gwen reappeared with three glasses, he reached into his bag and plunked the whiskey bottle from O'Flanagan's down on the table. Gwen glanced at the label and whistled through her teeth. "That's a bit fancier than my usual cheap swill, old man."

"I figured I'd pick up something worth celebrating with, provided everything went well."

"Yeah? And if it didn't go so well?"

"Then I could console myself with the best booze I can afford."

"I'm starting to remember why I didn't bother talking to you for so long." But Gwen smiled as she said it and poured out three glasses. She raised hers and tilted it towards Cole. "For… something, I guess."

Cole nodded. "For something."

The three of them clinked the glasses together and drank. For a time, they just watched Prometheus and Maximus as the shadows in the courtyard lengthened, and the silence changed from tense to companionable. Cole refilled their glasses, but Alex was already starting to feel a little lightheaded. After drinking a few sips to be polite, he quickly made his exit to allow Cole and Gwen some time to themselves as they made tentative small talk.

As he made his way back to the subway, he stopped to rest on a bench in a nearby park to gather his composure. A gaggle of school kids raced past, and Alex found himself smiling. Even the city teetering on the brink of an all-out gang war wasn't enough to stop these kids playing. As Alex tried to stop the world from spinning, he let their voices filter over to him.

"Let's play heroes!"

"Yeah!"

"I'll be Echo!"

"I'm Blaziken Man!"

"I call Hawlucha Man!"

"No fair! You were Hawlucha Man last time!"

"Why don't you be his partner?"

"Fine, but I get to be Hawlucha Man next time."

Alex leaned forward and watched one of the kids hold his arms out at his sides and run around making whoosh noises while another girl ran behind him flapping her arms like wings. He found he had a lump in his throat, and had to try hard to swallow it down and take a deep breath.

He was tired of moping, he realized. He wasn't going to let himself be like Cole, and run from his problems. The Firebrand might be retired, but Hawlucha Man sure as hell wasn't. Hierro or no Hierro, it was time Hawlucha Man took to the rooftops again and got back to protecting the city.

He had been beaten down, but Hawlucha Man wasn't done yet. As he thought about it, he realized that he could bring hope back not just to Avenbrooke, but to all of Clarus City too.

But to do that, he was going to need a new suit, some help, and all the favors he had left to cash in. It was time to make some phone calls.

A/N: Cole Culain was a quasi-self insert character from the first few serious Pokemon fics I wrote, back in circa 2010. Those fics still exist somewhere out on the internet, though I think you would be hard pressed to find them (and equally hard pressed to find any literary merit to them). I had at one point in the early 2010s planned to do a few more fics starring Cole and his myriad adventures detailing what he means when he talks about being a "war hero, war criminal, traitor and coward", but I came to realize I wasn't actually that interested in writing them after all. Then he was going to be Gwen's father, back when Gwen was the protagonist of a Diamond Nuzlocke run I never quite felt like writing up.

The tl;dr here is that Cole is something of a legacy character for me, and while I doubt any reader of Hawlucha Man (are there even readers of Hawlucha Man? I suspect not many) would be familiar with him, he represents a certain point in my writing journey that I look back on fondly, and I wanted to give him a proper send-off in at least some fashion, and this seemed a good place to do it. This chapter was really just a bit of self-indulgence for me (perhaps more apt to say more self-indulgent than usual), so if this fic actually does have readers, I can only hope you allow me to indulge myself.