Interlude – Old Maud

Junior Ranger Alicia Fennel carefully tweaked the folds out of her sweater vest. Her sergeant was a stickler for neatness in office uniform and was not above sending her back to the locker room to redress. She checked her shoulder boards one last time – patrol station ID on the right, name and rank insignia on the left.

Fennel sighed, just a little resentfully. She was outside Interview 2, one of Bluefinland Patrol Station's small suite of interview rooms. She quietly entered Observation 2 next door. The room was dimly lit, dominated by the one-way mirror looking into Interview 2.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Fennel said. Sergeant Harlow gave her an appraising look, no doubt searching for something to upbraid her on. Her sergeant had no double standards, every bit as neat and orderly as he expected her to be. He always reminded Fennel of an action figure fresh out of the box.

"Fennel. Take a look," he said. Fennel obediently looked through into the interview room. It had the air of a very dull office, apart from the Area Captain conducting the interview and the stony faced suspect in prison fatigues cuffed to his chair.

"Another poacher?" she asked.

"Not just a poacher. That's pokémon hunter Piers," Harlow said solemnly. "We've been after him for a while. About a week ago he washed up below Giant's Leap. Finally took on more than he could handle."

"What's he being charged with?"

Harlow ignored this. "There are some things a Junior Ranger ought to be told before she earns her laurel," he said. "Do you remember when you asked me if I believe in Lugia?"

"Yes sir. You said you didn't."

"Right. What I didn't tell you was why," Harlow continued. "And that is because there is no point in believing in things that exist."

"But … I thought Lugia was a legend," Fennel said tentatively.

"And? That doesn't mean it can't also exist. There are five of them that we know of. A mother, and her four children. Oh, don't look so astonished," he said, catching Fennel's expression. "Lugia is still a pokémon. Pokémon breed and die same as everything else."

Fennel said nothing. She was sensitive enough to her sergeant's moods to know when to shut up and listen.

"Some of the legends may be true, for all we know. They usually live in the open ocean, down near the abyssal plain. Try studying a pokémon that can cruise at twelve knots two miles below the sea. The mother lugia is about two hundred years old, we think. Who knows what she calls herself, but we call her Old Maud. Each spring she brings her children to the islands, for the sardine boom. Sometimes she stays for the summer, sometimes not," Harlow paused, a faraway look in his eye. "I saw her once. I was a Junior Ranger not much older than you … she was with her eldest son just off the Lariggan Rocks. She doesn't often let herself be seen, but I think it was her way of letting the Union know they were ok."

Fennel glanced back at the stony faced pokémon hunter. Sergeant Harlow liked to keep testing her.

"He was trying to capture her, wasn't he?"

"No. Piers isn't that stupid. It was the young ones he was after."

"... what for?" Fennel asked, with some trepidation. Most poachers at least had a grudging respect for the pokémon they captured, but hunters … they were different.

"Perhaps his client wants to find out just how many of the legends are true," Harlow said. "I doubt that is Piers' style though. More likely he'd sell one to some dictator. There are plenty of despots in the world that would pay handsomely for the ultimate counter-rebellion weapon."

Pokémon hunter Piers stared stonily back at the Captain. The worst part about all this was how normal he looked. A pokémon hunter ought to have some sort of facial scar, or a steely gaze, at least a threatening tattoo or something. But Piers, well, Piers looked like the kind of guy you'd see in an office cubicle somewhere, not in a Ranger Patrol Station. This was the kind of guy who would sell a lugia to be used as a terror weapon. Against civilians. Fennel tried and failed to suppress a shudder.

"So what do you think, Fennel?" Sergeant Harlow said quietly. "This is as high as the stakes go. Do you still want to earn your laurel?"

"More than ever."