23.

Lectro Psycho

You are... my light in the dark
You are the beating in my heart

There had been no blow to the head. No period of unconsciousness. No rude awakenings, but certainly a rude reaction, as Roark immediately summoned his Golem and told it to crush each of Marcell's wrists in its enormous rocky paws, drawing a grunt as he was drawn to his feet and stumbled inwards.

He looked up and was blinded by the circle of white light beaming from the lamp affixed to the front of Roark's helmet. The foreman stood with his arms crossed. No pinched brows. No quivering lips. Just a hard stare from a face caked in charcoal and dirt. Muddy-red stayed dark and hidden beneath the shadows of his glasses.

"Did the paralysis wear off that quickly?"

"My body is a rock."

"Okay, well, let me go."

"No."

Marcell huffed. "Fair enough."

But even as a dull silhouette, his captor shivered. Rock-Type? Ground-Type? Not a chance. That Electric attack had hit hard, and Roark's whole body was reeling. He'd be sore in the morning… whenever that was. They'd tumbled into an immense underground cavern, ancient pillars of rock grown as thick as a man from the delicate process of dripping minerals. Roark coughed, and a single Zubat squeaked and fluttered off into uncertain shadows.

"There's a variant of Golem in Alola that's a Rock- and Electric-Type," Marcell said. "It coats its body in iron shavings and can shoot like a stun gun."

"I've never been to Alola."

"It's nice. Lotta good stuff going on there with ecology research, and fantastic solar farms."

"I don't care."

"Well I just thought you should know, in case you'd wanna steal the panels."

Roark sat himself down against the nearest rock pillar and hugged his knees. His jersey was blasted with a thick, drying layer of mud that ran all along his arms and up his neck. His hair was dripping. Had they gotten wet? There was that sudden chasm, and then… another rocky fall, the mud puddles, crawling, struggling, falling again and tumbling… and then here…

Marcell shimmied his hips and breathed a sigh of relief at the weight of Raichu's Poké Ball in his pocket. He'd returned it just in time.

"I do care," Roark said quietly. "Ya know what, Gordie said when I care I need to say it, so… don't think I don't know about the smoke. I don't need somebody who hasn't breathed it his whole life telling me it's there and something needs to be done about it. 'Cause you think we'd have done something by now, don't you? If it was that important to us?"

Under the mud and the beard, his cheeks were turning deep rose. He sniffled. The beam of light wavered when it caught the sparkling blue beneath Marcell's glasses.

"The morning after Vermilion, I was in my office on my computer, watching my equity evolve over the third cup o' coffee, and something didn't feel right. It was like the prices knew something was gonna change for the worse. Providence was peekin' out from behind the curtain and makin' 'em slump too early in the day. So I opened another tab to look at the news, and there was his face. The grunts said it was rumored Marcell was a renegade from Sunyshore. One even said he was the Sunyshore Gym Leader himself. And I thought he's got me there too."

"So you thought he was your nemesis, even though you never even met him."

"I did meet him. Once, at a League gala. He told me wearing my helmet in the building he designed made me look like a 'weak-minded individual.' I know he wanted to say something worse. 'Dumbass' probably. But we were in public, in his city. I saw the robots everywhere. And that too-green foliage. I remember it was deathly quiet, and all the people hanging around the Ginterson Building looked at me funny. I found the solar panels interesting only 'til I realized they were the only interesting things, and nobody there even seemed interested in 'em. Nothing else was unique. All that prefab housing on the beach screamed, 'You just wait 'til erosion kicks in and rips half your back garden into the sea…' Ugh, and the coffee shop. I went in there."

A sneer slowly spread on Marcell's face. He relaxed his shoulders, twisting his wrists in Golem's grip until Roark gave the gesture for their release. Then he crossed the darkness, extending the hand without the glove to the muddied man below. The gloved one slipped off the safety glasses, letting the blue shine its electric truth.

"Let's get one thing clear. Ginty drank his coffee black. Just like you. And if he got what he wanted from the start, Sunyshore would be a… it'd be pretty unique, let's put it that way…"

He then sucked in a breath through his teeth, both hands suddenly fast against his heaving chest. A series of coughs wracked the whole cavern before he stumbled before his nemesis, fingers sinking into wet earth.

"Something wrong?"

"Nah, it's just my damn erratic heartbeat. If we're gonna tell secrets down here I need a pacemaker. But then I'd have to stay away from training and tinkering, so…"

"Volkner?"

His head snapped up to where Roark sat his chin on his knees.

"Did you leave because you're embarrassed of your city?"

He let out a long sigh — something of a signature long forgotten.

"They were embarrassed of me."

"I'm embarrassed of you. A Gym Leader's supposed to be more than his own ego."

"Don't talk to me about my ego."

"Oh sorry. I forgot you speak urbanite. Your privilege, Ginty. Check it."

"What I even got privilege for?"

Roark snorted. Then he hit both muddy fists against his helmet with a dull thock-thock and spread his arms wide to emphasize their predicament.

"This — this is my life."

"Then quit your life."

"No, that's what you don't understand. You quit your life. You're a quitter."

"S'not that hard to quit, Roark. No one thinks you're interesting just 'cause you run a coal mine. That can't be your whole personality."

"I actually care about my home having power."

The engineer laughed. A loud, slow HA-HA-HA that echoed off the walls and caused a whole cascade of mineral water to splash down on Roark's helmet.

"Then don't. Stop caring. You don't owe them anything. They think you're nothing but the dirt you play in anyway."

"Actually no. I know my neighbors. I go to the fall cake walks to raise money so we can repair the stucco crumbling off the sides of the church. I teach kids during fossil day at the museum and see their smiles. Monday nights are municipal band practice. We decided to do 'Bugler's Holiday' as a tuba feature so now I'm learning how to double-tongue."

"Do you like that? That's an extra two hours away from dinner and bed every week. Your spine's gonna snap before you turn thirty."

"Then at least I'll die with honor."

"No you won't. Nobody will remember you outside this town. Nobody looks up who the Oreburgh foremen were. Or even the past Gym Leaders. And if that bothers you maybe it's time to live for yourself. Live on the edge. Get struck by lightning and show the world who you really are."

"Who I really am? No, I don't think about who I really am. I don't have to. That's the point. Volkner Ginterson is a raging narcissist."

The Rocket seemed hurt by this. He folded a bit of earth between his fingers and scowled at the particles caught under his nails. Something flashed through his mind. Gray-or-red-or-gold. Hotter than he could handle, yet duller than dead gray stone. A sharp stone. A sparking stone.

Burning out on the hot white sand. Eclipsed in the shadow of a much brighter man.

"I thought it'd be funny to say I joined the Rockets. Put some real bad in me. Make the scorn worth it. Fulfill my own prophecy. All the way bad. I can't go back. Only forward and down. Or… up, I suppose. If I'm successful here, I'll be an Elite engineer, overseeing my own directives on all fronts. I won't be contained. Not by anyone. Not by this frail human body. Sunyshore can blow its last fuse. And Oreburgh too. Once I'm Elite I'll renovate the whole damn world."

He rambled like it was a humble brag at a business party. Roark reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

"The Rockets aren't your friends. Giovanni is using you. He knows who you are."

"Those are rumors."

"Rumors, yeah. But why do you think you got sent here to deal with me? Why's that your big test?"

"Your noncompliance is troubling. Until you desist, you're hostile to us."

"It's not about me. I'd be a Bidoof for any agent to deal with. But there's a reason why it has to be you. This mission could go three ways for you. One, I give in to your temptations and strip the mountain, causing landslides that devastate the ecosystem. Two, I resist and you blow up the mine, sending Oreburgh City into a massive polluted sinkhole. Now, neither of those sound good to your greenwashed brain, do they, Ginty."

"You think I'm fooled by greenwashing? Wrong again."

"Your finger was shaking on the trigger of that gun. Giovanni knows it would break you. He wants it to break you. But if it doesn't… he's got a third option, too."

"I'm not Volkner anymore."

"Then can Volkner hear us from the afterlife?"

"Why do you care?"

"Ya wanna know why those protesters up there were chanting Flint Perilla? Do you have any idea what's going on in Sinnoh right now?"

The question burned. Scorched the white sand. Asked of a pathetic little man who couldn't even rise to meet the power of the sun above him.

"Flint did something, didn't he. Did he try to apologize for my disappearance? Did he start crying? I bet the media just ate that up."

"They didn't get the chance. Couple days after you started that fire Flint was reported missing from his summer home in Sunyshore, and the Four found a black bracelet and a rope in the Sunyshore Tower after it went up in flames. And I thought that could be you, too. With what you've told me now, I know it could've been you. Or could it?"

"That's… nothing I know about."

"So your head's in the sand after all."

"Flint got murdered."

"They haven't found his body yet. But if I'm gonna take a leap I'd say that's related to the third option. You fail this mission? Rocket boss lets you know your friend Flint is about to burn it up in a whole new way. Gym Leaders can't join Team Rocket to get out with souvenirs and anecdotes. There's collateral. For the Shining, Shocking Star? Breathing, human collateral."

"I've been his top-paid Beta ever since that fire. He trusts me."

"He won't trust you until you're broken, Volkner! The agents at the bottom are idiots! Not the boss at the top! What's Team Rocket's goal?"

"We seek total control of the world."

"Which is a huge undertaking, so you gotta manage resources wisely. If you're smart, you take your pickaxe and start chipping at the world's weak places. Like Sunyshore, a gimmicky resort town whose chief engineer and Gym Leader just asked you for a hug because he hates his city and he hates himself. You make him love himself. You load him up with all the solar panels and screwdrivers he's ever wanted. You pay him for wrecking stuff when he's angry. You make him identify with you, convince him he can't go back. And behind the scenes you make it so he really can't go back. You make him break himself, or you break him by force."

"Flint's the strongest of the Four. There's no way they got him."

"Would you care if they did?"

"I got no reason to."

Roark stood up and dusted himself off, turning away from where Volkner still sat hunched in the dirt. The beam of light swept away, leaving shadows to close in on his form. The foreman then walked deeper into the cavern. A flick of the wrist brought Golem trundling along behind.

"Traitor. I prayed for you. I was gonna forgive you right after I forgave myself. But maybe it's pointless."

Volkner tore himself up from the ground, running after to where Roark was headed. A gloved hand brought Golem turning back and roaring. He stumbled backwards, then kept on, until he was almost on-pace with the foreman.

"Where are you going? We don't even know where we are."

"We're in the Grand Underground. It's a massive cave system that runs beneath the whole region. As chief of ancient Pokémon expedition operations I helped write the safety codes for the recreational tunnels, which should connect to this cavern since we can't be far from Oreburgh on the surface. Or… not."

Soon enough they'd circled the whole cavern, finding holes only large enough for Zubat to fly through and the crack in the ceiling where they'd tumbled from, now filled in with debris. Roark withdrew Golem, then pressed both gloves up against the surface of one moist wall. He wiped them off on his pants and looked to his unfortunate companion.

"I can have Onix burrow a way out, but it'll be dangerous without any survey tech. Y'ave shielding moves?"

"My Raichu has Reflect."

"Reflect could help, but it's the difference between a broken bone and a shattered one."

"We got Iron Tail for offense."

"Risky in the dark. That's just my safety guy talking."

"I guess… how about Psychic?"

"Who on your team knows Psychic?"

"I do. Kinna. When I merge with my Rotom, we gain Psychic Typing and can use that move. I have to trust Rotom with my motor skills for a bit, which I'd rather not do when we're both pissed off, but it's an option. Plus we'd have a lot more light, and the plasma claws are actually pretty strong."

Roark's nose crinkled up at the suggestion. Volkner crossed his arms, shrugging. He then ran a hand through his hair — still staticky despite the dankness of the rocky cavern — and wiggled two sparkling fingers in the shape of a V until a blue-white ball of lightning zipped across the darkness like a bug to a lamp. Emitter buzzed happily and kissed his forehead with tingling tendrils.

"Found me," he told it with a smile.

"You… merge… with that thing. That's how you get those powers."

"Well, merge is generous. This parasite's dangerous. If I just go ahead and let it possess me, I got no control over my body at all. It's just zapping my muscles all confused until it gets bored. We've agreed it must be a consensual merging — and not when it's had too much to eat beforehand."

"You let a Rotom play with your body like you're a machine."

"Have you heard the idea that Electric specialists are all a little crazy? That microwave did stop my heart."

"You grabbed live wires with your bare hands, and that's why you need a fuckin' pacemaker."

"Thank you, Roark the Rock. How's it feel to be the company store at age twenty-four?"

"You are a coastal cuckwad."

"You drink cheri kool-aid."

"Jim Beam, actually. It tastes more final."

"You should put some coffee in there. Tastes like battery acid."

"Does it?"

"It's called a Sunyshore Screwdriver. One part bourbon, one part orange juice, a shot of espresso and a splash o' motor oil."

"I can see how you'd invent that."

"Flint's brother came up with it. It was for my twenty-first birthday. The same party where Flint got everyone he knew to give me a hex nut just so he could say I had more nuts than everyone in the room combined. He thought it was hilarious."

"Was it hilarious?"

"It was pretty hilarious. His real present was a two-week Alolan cruise and a meeting with the owner of a solar farm up on Mount Lanakila. Flint always pulls stunts like that. He picks up connections everywhere he goes."

"Sounds like he was a really good friend."

"Yeah…"

"Sounds like you'd even care if he were hurt."

"He's not hurt. He's an overdramatic little Bidoof who gets everything handed to him."

"Like what?"

There was a buzzing silence.

"I mean it. What gets handed to him? Popularity? Money? What?"

Volkner licked his lips.

"That seat," he said in the lowest voice he could muster. "With the Four."

"His place among the Elite Four?"

"Flint shouldn't be an Elite."

"You just said he's the strongest."

"Flint's got problems nobody in the media likes to talk about. He's always had 'em. There's something wrong with his brain. He's a lit fuse."

"Seems pretty natural. Lightning strikes one tree and then a fire takes out the whole forest. Flint's heart was open. That's why the Four chose him and not you."

"I've had enOUGH OF YOUR ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ME!]

The cavern flashed and glittered white, then melted gray, inverting and oscillating and collapsing into itself until the hazy glowing tunnel vision stabilized into a vibrating soup of plasma on his retinas. Slowly, he opened the palm where he'd snatched and crushed the Rotom. Only a wisp of smoke remained, while patches of cyan were spreading like a siliconic rash beneath the skin.

He shrugged, rolled his shoulders back and interlaced his fingers while the purple aura flared up fully from his follicles. His muscles loosened — died — slackened — liquified into numb tingling conduits pulsing on the periphery.

He breathed.

[We breathe now.]

The phantom hands coated the physical, ending in ten deadly electric claws. He flexed his fingers and felt the cold dance beyond the nails, reaching further, to the air, to the wall in front of him. He let the power swell until he could sense the metals frozen in the earth. Iron, tangy. Silicon.

Silicon?

[Silicon, that's the good one.]

[Silicon!] he cackled. Lightning shot up his throat and out his mouth like a stun gun, so close to Roark the other man crossed his chest and threw himself into a crouch below.

"God, that's terrifying."

[I feel nothing. It feelzzz good.]

"It's Electric."

His entire nervous system buzzed in agreement, cells churning to bursting with energy. His claws jerked inward, hugging around his chest to try and contain it all. The heart rate was rising. Spiking. Spiking too high.

[We need that to live.]

Plateauing at a number that would kill a man and letting warmth back into his ribs, bubbling and flowing around his chest like lubricant while his brain was left icy cool and humming.

His fizzly vision focused on the closed circuit huddled beneath him. The biorhythm was so soft and delicate and complicated — humans were like that — not like the programmed perfection of metal.

A zap sent one twitching hand searching, then the other, grasping for the current. What did that one feel like?

[No. Quit that,] he barked, fighting to jerk his own arm back while the plasma thrust it forward, claws almost scraping the chest of Roark's jersey.

"Who's in control in there?" Roark asked.

[It'sz too primitive to utilize my frontal lobe for szpeech and processing. But the merge is more complete now. It'zz learning to reroute neural signalz. Will you sztop!? You touch him, he getzz fried!]

Rotom responded with an impulse to the brain that sent him levitating… literally. His head was in the clouds and his boots left the ground, high-pitched squeak of pleasure and another wisp of smoke puffing from his lips.

[Rebuild. Renovate. Recreate. Revolutionizzze… Like that, haha!]

"Before you do that, you wanna help me out of this cave?"

[Sure, friend! I am AMPED UP!]

Roark enlarged a Poké Ball. The ground rumbled as Onix erupted into a towering coil around his body, shuddering and roaring in the darkness. Its beady eyes clamped shut at the blinding purple-white light floating in the center of the cavern, but Roark quickly climbed up on its back, placing two firm hands around the base of the horn on its head. He jerked back, forcing the rock snake's head upward toward the cavern ceiling.

"Up and out, Gaddy."

The Onix grunted, then thrust itself upward. Stone jaws bit and chewed at the ceiling until a rain of rocks came tumbling down all around.

The Man Rotom threw both hands forward, eyes and claws gleaming an even brighter violet as he focused in on the falling earth. The headache was instant. He was feeling every grainy, dusty, moist surface at once, with not a single nerve receptor touching it. Even closing his eyes, he could tell where the rocks were headed toward crushing Roark's soft body. Crushing his claws into glittering fists, he imagined all the gravel scattering, and watched, and felt it caving to his command. Onix disappeared, wriggling up through the ceiling while the ceiling hollowed out above it, aided by the psychic light.

[Let'zz go!] he buzzed, cheerful smile stretching even further. The plasma spread between the fibers of his muscles, grabbing and manipulating and tugging him forward through the air, while his mind was kept weightless and free. Like a firework, he shot up after the rumbling rock snake, merely touching falling gravel to vaporize it. His hands itched. The claws scraped at the sides of the burrow, blackening the ancient clay.

The moon was nothing but a yellow smudge on gray-green haze when the two emerged in the main yard of the Oreburgh Mine. With only a few dents in his helmet and clods in his hair, Roark hopped off Onix and watched the godlike being ascending far up into the atmosphere.

[What do you want to do?]

Intuition said it. A pulse to the spinal cord. Auxiliary servo of the mind beginning to spin.

Weightless. Free.

[Why not this?]

He thrust his hands forward, curling the claws until he felt the creases between the rocky spine. Onix became enveloped in a purple aura, and with a swing of his arms he slammed its head into the rust-toothed shovel of an excavator. It growled and fell limp, out cold in one hit, while the dust kicked up frantically around it.

"Fuck," Roark barked. "Fuck. Fuck!"

The pale blue fingers stretched to their full length. A pulse of energy built between them. Squeeze the muscles. Agitate the orbitals. Charge the potential. Release the kinetic current! A blast of violet lightning shot from both palms and shattered all the windows on the upper floor of the main complex. Now it was more than the shattered black glass wedged in the dirt.

"Gotta be fucking kidding me… Golem! Go! Who else I got? Dammit, Gordie really is stronger than me. Nobody else can fight."

Another blazing purple pillar struck the shards of solar panel inches from where he stood. Roark threw himself into the mud, crawling, until he was flush with the side of the building.

"Use Stone Edge!"

Golem spread its paws apart, ripping up chunks of the yard and shaping them into sharpened discs of earth. With a roar it launched them toward the Man Rotom, hovering casually above.

ZAP! ZAP!

The plasma claws shredded right through the attack in seconds. Debris rained down to pelt his Pokémon and Roark thumbed his helmet, hunching to avoid the blinding flash. Cold laughter twisted in pitch. "No pain." Right. That monster was playing with him.

"He's Lectro-Psycho, he levitates… GOLEM! LET'S GO FULL THROTTLE!"

Golem looked back in horror at the thought of attacking a human like that, but Roark thumbed the helmet again. His partner dug all ten claws into the earth, then held up its arms. Its body began to glow a dull orange between the cracks of its rocky shell. Heat built up within, spiraling outward as a shimmering mist of sparks. Its jaws erupted in crimson flame. So hot and bright its stony skull was white beneath the skin of hardened clay.

"ULTIMATE MOVE! BAD TO THE BONE SKULL SHIFTER!"

From the fangs poured fire. A superpowered Flamethrower attack that poured into the night like a livid plume straight up from hell. The Man Rotom blinked, then in another blink turned and shot left, just missing the flames by mere inches. A sharp hiss broke from his throat. Neither component liked to be jerked through the air so quickly. Not the human whose body was a plaything. Not the formless creature reaching into the brain of a genius.

He steadied himself, holding his arms out to balance, though it was really the creature keeping him airborne, seizing the fibers of his arms and legs and twisting them tighter and tighter.

[Let go! Listen!]

He felt something stir inside his body. The fluid, flowing warmth in his chest began to cool. Nausea pooled beneath his ribs and his form flickered, growing tense.

Another flying burst of flame came forth with a roar and enveloped him. He hunched inward, or tried — the creature didn't understand the human's need to hide from fire or cover his eyes. Instead it made the claws grow longer and thicker and darker and stronger. It now poked and jabbed and manipulated the glowing hands around a sphere of air, as if forming an orb. The fire swirled around them like volatile leaves in the wind. It shuddered. Popped. Thinned. Fizzled out into showers of sparks that gently floated lifelessly to ash.

And immediately Golem belched fire again. The plasma sought his body like a magnet, swirling inward. Kissing skin. Flying out from skin as the lightning intensified. Purple spikes of lightning stretched out from every pore.

The night flickered like shadows didn't matter. Black on dark. Light on galaxies.

[Shock me. Another shock. Hit me. THRILL ME! WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS POWER!?]

A great flash and a thunderous boom split the air. The thunder god exploded with light. Some part of him let out a horrible scream that ripped through Roark far below. It was a human scream — terrified and giddy at once. And then there came a wondrous and pitiful sigh, and the voice was not human. It was even more cunning and buzzing than before. Disconnected. Disbelieving.

There was no more purple aura over bluish skin. Now the purple coated the skin completely, seething and bubbling like a living coat of armor. The purple thing's eyes were bulging and white like blazing stars. His teeth were jagged. His world was glitter and color and energy. Potential. So much potential that he ached to change it.

You're… fantastic… W-we… is it we now…?

Thrill us more.

"Golem! Keep using Flamethrower! Just normal-sized ones!" Roark called.

Golem was tired. The recoil from the repeated use of Fire moves was charring its shell. It wobbled where it stood.

"Roark!"

"Gordie!?"

Gordie was running toward him from the outer rim of the yard, his Coalossal all healed up and trailing close behind.

"What hole'd ye pop out of, cheeky son-of-a—"

"Gordie, there's no time for reunions. That thing is—"

That "thing" merely cocked its head, and Golem, in a sudden flash of light, blasted backwards straight through the wall of the building. It lay in a dusty pile of rubble with its shell cracked straight down the belly and its claws all hanging limp.

It merely twitched its fingers, and from the tip of each claw burst a thunderbolt the size of the ones before. Three connected with the silicon in the dirt, blasting holes not far from where the men stood. Two more feasted on the engines of an excavator and a backhoe, animating them and sending them rolling dangerously toward the main complex. One shot straight upward, becoming a crash of thunder when it disturbed the scattered ions in the clouds.

The right hand swung up with the claws facing behind. The final four thunderbolts snaked and lengthened, stretched and separated into hundreds. They zinged miles up through the valley to Oreburgh City, where they reached into every home and building and overloaded the circuits and Shut.

The.

Lights.

Off.

The clawed fist clenched.

All the solar panels shattered.

The fangs curled into a smirk, then a sneer and finally an evil snarl. He felt the copper going cold, kinetic converting back to potential. As if touching thousands of wires with his bare hands he folded them between his fingers, letting the static dance within his blood. Cool and new and spinning in his stomach. Twisting in his mind. That auxiliary servo reinstalling itself into the mainframe and coming alive.

You wanna let me… take over?

Forever?

Just for a little while. If you tap out now you'll be in pain.

Yeah, sorry I'm not made of metal.

I hurt you.

Don't feel bad.

I hurt you!

You thrilled me. Feel that rush? I call it my spark.

"GOLEM! Gordie, no, don't give a command! It's not a Pokémon!"

"What is it, then!? Some kinna super-psychic Ultra Beast?" Gordie cried.

"That is a Rotom possessing a human," Roark said.

"Wha— Rotom can only possess machines!"

"And humans. If they're already half-dead."

"Roark…"

"What."

"Laser eyes and blade fingers."

"Shut the fuck up."

What's this impulse? Describe it to me. I can't see.

Ow. Don't.

It keeps coming back. What is it?

It's a memory, and it's not important.

Why do you hesitate? We're free to do whatever, aren't we?

Yeah, it's just Roark said some confusing things down there, and I'm not sure I wanna think about them yet.

It was about something Roark said. Why is your heart getting faster?

Ow! Ow, do not touch that!

Tell me what it is.

Hatred, probably.

Does it thrill you to hate?

Thrills me to think of the possibilities. A pin on my breast. A purple tower.

Your spark is getting brighter.

Of course it is.

Roark leapt out of the rubble carrying something in his cut and dirty hands. Gordie's Coalossal had reduced the rampaging machines to twisted scraps of metal, and their eerie shine died away as the thunder god floated dazed above them, threateningly goofy smile on his face.

"Poor blighter," said Gordie. "A Rotomic possession. Gotta be almost unheard of. Looks like he's in a kind of trance. I wonder if the thing short-circuited his brain."

"He called it a 'merge.' He knows he's crazy."

"He's that Marcell, then."

Roark paused, his hands squeezing tighter around the box and his shoulders starting to shake. His lips pouted beneath the beard. He looked at the ground — at the shattered black glass and the felled Pokémon and the shredded, singed yellow flag blowing away in the night wind. Then up at the moon faintly gleaming through the clouds of smoke. He closed his eyes and breathed it in. His heart relaxed. His nerves were still on fire.

"I conspired with Team Rocket, and I'm going to turn myself in," he said to Gordon, muddy-red meeting steely-blue in the moonlight.

"No yer not. Marcell didn't force ye to do anything."

Roark opened the box. Inside were the Rocket bombs, still packed in neatly despite the office falling apart around them where they still sat untouched on the desk. He'd thought about grabbing the revolver, but the bullets were at home, and it wouldn't have helped.

Slipping it under his left arm, he used the right to uncinch the red helmet from his chin. By the brim, he lifted it off his head and pressed it into Gordie's chubby hands.

"You wanted the gym to protect me in case I got caught. Take it."

"I didn't beat ye."

"I felled four of your Pokémon. Call that your sixth," Roark said, pointing at the thunder god. "You're the new Oreburgh Gym Leader. I'm telling the police I bought these bombs. It's the right thing to do."

"Don't let that guy control ye—"

"He'd be controlling me if I used them. All I can do is confess."

He turned back, and Gordie could see the hurt in his face. The shadows under his eyes said it all.

"Roark, I can't take this helmet. You're stronger than me. It's yours."

"I'm strong without it."

He then steeled his shoulders and recalled his fallen partners. As the two of them walked back toward Oreburgh — (walked, because Gordie had run all that way at the sight of the lightning while the police were busy with the outages) — Roark told Gordie the whole story. Or perhaps not all of it. Not the part about the conversation down in the cavern, and Volkner, dead or alive somewhere inside the monster of Marcell.

He was ready to collapse by the time they traipsed up his driveway, deciding to at least hide the bombs in the trunk of his car until morning. Byron was there, and both their mothers, and those two kids Ash and Goh, who insisted on staying, though somehow Gordie tricked them into staying out of danger. While washing his face in the water from the rain barrel Roark heard them talking excitedly about how they would defeat Marcell and the other Rockets the next time they showed their faces.

He toweled off, chewed the dirt out from under his nails, and slipped on his favorite oversized black hoodie with all the want of a proper shower.

Tomorrow was Tuesday. He'd have to get back to work, and…

Roark's muscles felt like potato sacks. His spine felt ready to snap in half. He collapsed on his bed face-first and groaned at the thought of work tomorrow.

Tomorrow was Tuesday, and…

"Fuck. I can't."

Nor did he very well sleep that night. The Oreburgh smog was a sea of purple as a Rotom in its Man form zipped around constructing the tallest solar-powered streetlight in Sinnoh out of excavator arms.

The renovation had begun.

~N~

Extra long chapter since the last two months were spent on an even longer original story for class involving blueberries and all of galactic twitter getting mad at a talking pool toy while the protagonist remembers that time he tried turning himself into a tapeworm.

After all this time I finally watched the Journeys episode that inspired me to write this fic in the first place. (Well, that episode and the Senirasu fic Impulse by ILikeShorts.) ^^' They cast the PERFECT English voice for Volkner! He legit sounds like he's about to hop in the DJ booth and start singing in Swedish about a late-night LAN party in the mid-aughties. Totally gonna add frosted tips to his live-action vision board.

Published by Syntax-N on Fanfiction . net October 21st, 2022. Reposting is not permitted. Can we get to fifty reviews? :D