"Everywhere I go in this city, I hear about you," Flint said as we headed across town. "'Hey Flint, someone came by asking for Volkner again. Have you seen him?' Seems you've been pretty relentless."

"That's right," I said nervously.

Flint nodded. "Good. You'll need to be."

Nervousness gave way to determination as I followed him all the way to the Vista Lighthouse on the far end of town. A few leads had brought me and my team here, but we kept having to call it a dead end.

Flint entered the elevator in the center of the lighthouse and pressed an unmarked button past the one for the observation deck. He keyed in a passcode, and the doors shut. "You ready?" he asked as we began to rise.

I nodded firmly.

The elevator doors pinged open, revealing a circular room of glass walls. Flint strode out and around the the back of the elevator.

"Hey, V," he said. "I brought someone."

Exiting the elevator, I squinted against the light reflecting off of the dazzling blue sea. As I walked around to join Flint, the view of the ocean was replaced by that of the city – the pier and the warehouse sector and the downtown skyscrapers and the theater district and the gym on the far end of the city and every vast and varied piece of Sunyshore that had taken me a month and a half to see some of was all sprawled out below me.

Perched atop it all was a burgundy armchair, regal as a throne. Hunched atop that, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, was the man I'd been hunting for the last two weeks.

Volkner turned his head to the side a little, just barely acknowledging my presence. The words "I challenge you to a pokemon battle" faded from my tongue. Flint looked at me expectantly.

"Why haven't you been at the gym?" I demanded.

Volkner shrugged. "I'm there sometimes."

"No, you're not," I insisted. "I've been waiting outside the gym every day for the past two weeks."

"I've been out of town," he said.

"If that's your excuse, then why aren't you at the gym right now? It's Monday morning. It should be open."

Volkner turned his head forward again. "I'll be there eventually."

The pent-up frustration in me snapped. "No, you're going to battle me now. I'm not gonna wait until you decide to be responsible."

At this, Volkner turned to look at me fully. There was a mild irritation in his deep blue eyes, and the fact that it wasn't anything stronger infuriated me even more.

"Are you calling me negligent?" he asked quietly. It was the kind of quiet that was meant to be dangerous, but I was past caring.

"I am," I concurred. "I'm saying you should either do your job or get out of the way for someone who will."

Volkner stood, and I realized I'd pissed him off more than I thought I had (and still didn't care). "I have rewired half this city," he hissed. "I have modernized its infrastructure, renovated countless buildings into regionwide landmarks, and revitalized the identity of Sunyshore City itself, and you dare claim I'm failing to do my job?"

"Yes," I said without hesitation. "None of that is in the job description of a gym leader. Your job consists of things like showing up to your posted hours, interacting with trainers who want to challenge you, actually battling with them–"

"No one's beaten me in half a year!" Volkner exclaimed. "The few times I have shown up and fought challengers, I've swept them out of the water with a single pokemon! You'll have to forgive me if I've focused my attention on projects that aren't mind-numbingly dull!"

"Don't any of your challengers deserve the eighth badge, though?" I pointed out. "Weren't they strong enough?"

"If they weren't strong enough to defeat the eighth gym leader, then by definition, no."

I thought about what Ashley had said about good gym leaders knowing when to throw a match to honor a trainer's skills.

"Listen, you're good at many things," I said. "I think you know this. Maybe too good at some things, like battling. But that is not an excuse to stop allowing challengers."

Volkner scoffed and turned away. "Did you honestly come here just to yell at me?"

"I came to challenge you," I said.

"And if I refuse?"

I stared at him. If he broke the age-old tradition of honoring battle challenges. "Then... I'll report your refusal and inability to do your job to Cynthia."

Volkner frowned. "You know Cynthia?"

"Looker and I have been working with her," I said.

It took him a moment, but all at once the confusion cleared from Volkner's face. "You're the trainer who's been helping him."

"I mean, there's a few of us," I said.

"Mm," he said, suddenly deep in thought. I glanced at Flint, who'd been watching us with interest. He shrugged.

"All right, here's the deal," Volkner finally said. "One week from today, you and I will battle. Six-on-six. If I win, you'll leave me alone for three months."

I grimaced. A full six on six – including my water type and flying type. And three months from now meant I'd be a seven-badge trainer for the entirety of the spring tournament season. I'd be entering the Pokemon League tournament in June having earned zero new badges since January.

"One month," I bargained.

"Two," he said.

Still not great. "Okay, but if I win, you have to attend your regular hours at the gym and accept all challengers, even if they don't have seven badges. And you have to officially challenge the Elite Four."

"Deal," Volkner said grimly. He extended his hand and I shook it. "Now get out of here."


The countdown started the instant I left the tower. Ashley de Leon was outside the Sunyshore gym, waiting to keep me company. I explained the deal Volkner and I had made, and immediately she contacted every trainer she knew.

Between her contacts list and mine, we managed to create a training plan that filled every hour I could have hoped to fill with activity and training partners. All day I felt guilty, hyperaware of taking up everyone's time.

"You don't have to do this," I kept saying.

"Stop that," said Ashley. "We all want Volkner to get off his ass. You don't have to apologize to us."

"He only gets off his ass if I win," I said. "I'm not even the strongest trainer who could challenge him."

I expected her to argue that I was plenty strong, even though she and Sean both got further than me in the Valor Tournament and could have challenged Volkner too, but instead Ashley said, "Maybe not, but you're the one who wouldn't give up on challenging him. And that's more important than you think."

So I trained with her, and with Axel Tokuyama, and Etana Bing, and Omar Knight, and all these people who were willing to help me get Volkner back for everyone. In the coming week, I got to learn AJ Kaur's method of creating a lightning rod, discuss Renée Fournier's strategies for pushing through paralysis, review principles of electromagnetism with Kyle Nguyen (we weren't sure it would be necessary, but it couldn't hurt).

At the end of each day of training, I gathered with several other trainers to simulate a 6-on-6 battle against an all-electric team. My pokemon battled a rotating mix of Ashley's ampharos and electivire, Sean's jolteon, Axel's pikachu, Kyle's magnezone, Dawn's electivire… Every electric type I'd encountered and every electric type I'd never met came to help my team and me prepare for Volkner. And so every night, I put in my all, and my team did their absolute best, and even when we lost I felt like we'd learned something.

With all these people putting their faith in me, I should have been terrified of failure. Instead, I felt alive, and strong, and supported, and failure was an option I wouldn't even consider.

Coeur and Def, I realized early on, were both quieter than usual. At first I thought maybe the two of them were fighting. As it turned out, their joint timing was a coincidence.

"Def and I are doing fine," Coeur said when I pulled her aside and asked her about it.

"That's good. What's up, then?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she said stiffly.

I gave her a look.

"What about you?"

"Me? I'm doing okay right now."

"What about last week?"

"Last week… I was doing less well."

"But you didn't want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

Coeur's voice was quiet in my head. "You could," she said, and her words seemed softer. "I'd listen."

"I know you wou– wait, is that what's wrong?"

Coeur stared at the ground beside us. "It's not a big deal."

"If you're this upset about it, then of course it is."

Coeur's shoulders drooped. "I don't want it to be. It's so… I feel really dumb being sad that you don't confide in me. It's just you helped me out, you listened and you gave advice, and I want to return the favor… But it's not like you're obligated to. You don't owe me your secrets. And now I'm making it about me. I'm sorry."

I scratched behind her ears. "No worries. It's not that I don't trust you. I think I'm just not used to confiding in you, so I haven't been. Do you want to talk now?"

"I don't want to force you to tell me things."

"You're not. I'm offering."

"You didn't want to when I asked."

I remembered the times she'd tried to support me, over the last few weeks, and I'd pushed her away.

"Oh, I've… I've just been going through a rough time," I said haltingly. "I don't… I haven't been talking about a lot of things to anyone."

"You don't think it would help?"

"I'm not sure. I've been trying to avoid thinking about… um, certain things."

Coeur nodded. "When you're ready to talk…"

"I'll let you know," I said.

Def, surprisingly, had a very similar problem? In a very different way.

"Je me sens inutile," he told me.

"Useless? Why?"

"Tu n'as pas besoin de moi."

I wasn't sure what "besoin" was. "I don't what?"

"Tous les autres, they all know communication d'aura. I no longer have to communicate for them."

"Oh!" I'd been so excited for everyone else's new abilities, I hadn't even realized that Def's job as communications hub was now down to a sixth of what it used to be. "That's okay. That doesn't make you useless."

"Mais, communication is my primary role in the team. Without it, je ne suis que our worst close-range combatant."

"That's not true," I protested. "And even if it was, I don't need you to be the world's most useful pokemon, I just need…" I gestured aimlessly, looking for a word that didn't have unfortunate implications on my tendency to withdraw from people. "…I just need a friend. I just need you."

Def nodded, looking down. He'd gotten into the habit of fidgeting with his psychic abilities, and there were some stray concrete-crack dandelions glowing pink and braiding themselves together next to us. "I just wanted to be useful."

"And you are. And you're already everything I could want of you – and I mean that, I'm not just saying it – and even if you were 'useless,' you'd still matter to me. Your value has nothing to do with your 'usefulness'…" I gave an exasperated huff, and he looked at me. "Sorry, I know I'm spouting platitudes, but I really do feel this way… we can also work on your healing abilities, if that helps you feel better, but I don't need you to do that to–"

Def laughed, and I could tell he was feeling better.


Dawn came up to me on Friday. "So, I know this isn't the most effective training strategy," she said, "but I was wondering if you'd want to battle this afternoon? It could simulate a 6-on-6 against a team you know? I really just wanted to battle, since we haven't in a while, but we could still save it til after you battle Volkner–"

I shook my head. "Nah, we're overdue. Let's go for it."

We headed out to the training field for our battle at last. Part of me remembered the tarot reading and the lady saying we'd have a confrontation, but almost all of me had stopped viewing Dawn as an adversary. A rival, in a purely pokemon-trainer way, but otherwise a friend.

Which isn't to say I didn't really want to win.