Chapter Seven - The Initiation

The tall house stood alone where the cliff came to a point. Ivy climbed the black-scaled siding. Thick fog draped over the roof.

Haru paused in front of the iron gate. The curved arches depicted Hoenn's titans locked in a ceaseless battle. Groudon's jasper eyes gleamed; Kyogre's tail flared out in blue lapis. If the gate had been shut, Haru would have turned back then and there, but it was propped loosely open.

Beyond, a cobblestone path wandered through an overgrown yard. Bugloss plants grown to monstrous heights criss-crossed past thorny bluk berry and silver-edged goutweed. One bugloss shoot curved directly over the path. Haru stopped to run a finger along its thick, fuzzy stem, still wet from the morning's rain shower. Either this yard was abandoned, he thought, or the owner didn't accept the premise of weeds.

As he approached the door, Haru checked the address one more time against the one Maliki had given him. He'd found her already seated at the table when he came into the kitchen that morning. She'd shot him a small smile and pulled out the chair next to her. Hoping to forestall any discussion of the night before, Haru had seized onto the first safe topic he could think of.

"I looked up that researcher you mentioned. Doctor Qian."

Maliki set down her chopsticks, smile growing. "Did you now! What did you think of her work?"

"I couldn't find much," Haru admitted as he rummaged around in the fridge. His hand closed around the seaweed shell of a leftover rice ball. "Just an abstract. Too bad—it looked like an interesting read."

"I know her," Maliki said, "if you're interested in hearing about her research first-hand."

Haru had almost fumbled his rice-ball. "What, really?"

"Sure. She lives just outside the city, overlooking the water. I bet she'd be in today, if you want to stop by."

"Just like that? Shouldn't I call first—"

Maliki had waved a dismissive hand. "Best not to. Doctor Qian's a spontaneous sort of person."

Swallowing, Haru pushed back his rain slicker and pressed the doorbell lightly, flinching at the imperious bong that rang out. He gazed up at the black-scaled house with growing skepticism. This couldn't be a researcher's house. For one thing, it was simply too huge. If his mother had managed to impress anything on Haru in the past year, it was that a researcher's salary didn't stretch very far. He must have written the address down wrong.

Just as Haru was turning back down the cobblestone path, the door swung open behind him.

"Well?" demanded a voice from the doorway.

Haru bowed hastily, the gesture made awkward as he turned. "Doctor Qian?" he said hesitantly.

"In the flesh." The figure shuffled forward, into the foggy light. She was a petite Hoennese woman, her hair gone a dark gray. The plum-colored sleeves of her house robe hung down past her hands. "Well?"

"My name's Haru Watanabe. I'm a friend of Maliki . . ?"

"Oh." An unreadable expression crossed the old woman's face. "The islander? One of her rag-tag crew, are you? Well, what does she want now? I've already told her I can't help."

"I was hoping to talk to you about one of your papers," Haru plunged on. Why hadn't he called first? There'd clearly been some kind of miscommunication. "I'm an intern, at the Mirage Desert laboratory—"

"You want to talk research!" The old woman cut him off, a smile blooming startlingly on her face. "What are you waiting for, then? Come in, come in."

Slightly dazed, Haru allowed himself to be ushered into a vast, shadowy anteroom. A tall wooden coat rack stood to one side, a shoe rack to the other. Haru removed his muddy boots hastily.

"Mirage Desert, hm?" the old woman said. Her house robe dragged against the floor of the hallway, which was paneled with fine bamboo, but dusty. Haru watched the hem move, half-tempted to lift it off the ground. "What a bunch of blithering idiots. Still, I hear they're choosy when it comes to interns. How do you know Maliki, then?"

"I'm renting a room with her."

"Hmph. And what paper would it be, that's brought you all the way out here to me?"

"'The Impact of High-Stress Voltage Extraction on Electric Pokemon,'" Haru recited.

"Ah, my recent work."

They had entered a large dining room. One glass-windowed wall looked directly out onto the sea. In the distance, a flock of wingull roosted on a raised rock, safe above the white-breaking waves.

"Sit tight, I'll put on tea."

Haru lowered himself gingerly onto one plump floor cushion. An elaborate blue-crystal chandelier cast soft light from the ceiling, though he noticed that several bulbs had burnt out.

Doctor Qian bustled back in a moment later, setting down two cups of dark oolong. The cups let off a faint earthy smell, which mixed pleasantly with the bitter scent of the tea. As Doctor Qian gazed at him expectantly, Haru said, "I was only able to find the abstract, not the whole paper. So I was hoping you could—"

The old woman sprang to her feet before he'd finished speaking.

"Easily remedied."

She vanished down another winding hallway.

As he waited, Haru sipped at his tea, enjoying its smooth, articulated taste. Aristocrat tea, his grandmother would have called it. Tea fit for royalty—and priests, of course.

"Here!" The leather-bound manuscript hit the table with a smack. Haru flipped the cover open to find the title, "The Impact of High-Stress Voltage Extraction on Electric Pokemon."

Haru began to read. At first, he was uncomfortably aware of Doctor Qian's gaze, fixed on him as she slurped noisily at her tea. But soon, the article took up his entire focus. The study examined the short-term and long-term health impacts of voltage-extraction on the electric-type pokemon that worked at the Mauville Power Plant.

Electric-type pokemon naturally built up stores of electricity in their bodies, Haru read. These stores fluctuated by age, season, battling frequency, and other stressors, with a certain baseline required to maintain the pokemon's health. The electricity extraction method used at the Mauville power plant Doctor Qian termed "high-stress" voltage extraction, because it drained the pokemon of enough electricity in a single session that they fell below their baseline. This triggered a stress response that excited the pokemon's electricity production, causing the worker pokemon to replenish their electric stores in a matter of days, rather than weeks. Doctor Qian didn't dwell much more on what she labeled the "stress-production cycle." Her paper measured its impact on the pokemon's health. And the numbers from her study were grim. Haru's gut was churning by the time he set the paper down.

"Finished, are you?" Doctor Qian said. The rain was a growing drumbeat against the window; Haru hadn't noticed when it first began.

He nodded.

"And what do you think?" the old woman demanded.

Haru was reminded of Doctor Ogletree turning to question him in the hallway. Another test, he thought. "It's a very compelling study. I thought the health metrics were well chosen, very concrete. And the disparity's just extreme, I mean, the charge degeneration rate alone—"

"Criticism?" Doctor Qian said, her eyes not moving from Haru's face.

He hesitated.

"The sample size," he said at last. "You say one hundred, but that hundred is drawn from three species of pokemon. You compare them within the species groups, but then present those results as combined. I'm not sure that extrapolation is entirely justified. I think it would be more accurate to say you compared twenty sets of voltorb, twenty-four sets of magnemite, and fifty-six sets of electrike, rather than claiming you compared a hundred sets of electric-type pokemon, as if there wasn't species variation."

Haru drew in a nervous breath when he had finished, unsure how this would be received, but Doctor Qian's low chuckle surprised him.

"Well spotted. Yes, I fudged it there, no doubt. Why do you think I did that? Why not just study one hundred each?"

"There weren't that many available of each species?" Haru guessed.

"No, no, the power plant employs a thousand electric pokemon at least, with hundreds in turn-over each year. So why didn't I get myself some more respectable numbers, hm?" Before Haru could attempt an answer, she continued, "Simple enough. Didn't have the resources. I self-fund all my work, you know. Take a look around—I can afford it. But my resources do have a limit. I've got my own lab built into the back, but it's not set up to process that many pokemon. I'd need a bigger space and several additional hands to produce some really decent numbers."

"Why not work with the Mirage Desert lab?" Haru said. "Or get a grant to hire some lab assistants and rent out—"

Doctor Qian's disdainful laugh rang through the room. "Get a grant? Ah, my boy, the funders wouldn't touch this one with a ten-foot elastic pole. And neither would the brown-nosers at the labs. They know where their bread is buttered."

"Why wouldn't it get funded?" Haru shot back, his voice rising. "This is an important issue. If voltage extraction is killing pokemon early—I mean, electrike only live fifteen to twenty years if they don't evolve. So that's cutting their lifespans by a third or even a half—"

"I know." Doctor Qian cut him off. "That's why I started this research project, you know. All the electrike corpses washing up on my little beach down there were difficult to ignore." A tremor entered her voice as she jerked a finger towards the rain-streaked window and the ocean beyond it. "All of them with those damn worker chips. But Mauville won't fund anything that endangers their precious electricity. Our power is electric power, one of our mayors used to say. Hah!"

"But if I understood your paper correctly, it's the high-stress extraction method that's causing the issue," Haru said. "If the plant sets their specialists on finding a different method, maybe graduating the extraction—"

Doctor Qian shook her head. "They won't. First, it would cost extra money, and when do the corps like to cough that up? But second, what if the solution turns out not to be so easy? What if the method's not the problem, just the extraction? Then they'd have admitted to the world there was a problem, see? Admitted it was a bigger issue than the babbling of old kooks like me and those crazy fundamentalist kids. Given it legitimacy. So these companies, the government—they'd sooner touch a gulpin than my research." She snorted. "A gulpin would make them look a lot less dirty."

Outside, the waves churned. A storm was brewing on the water. Haru tried to collect his thoughts. Companies were money grubbing, but they wouldn't condone electric pokemon dying just to save a few yuans. Would they?

Doctor Qian studied him, a knowing look on her face. "Not an easy pill to swallow, is it," she said quietly.

"If pokemon are dying to power Hoenn—that's unjust."

The word came out a hiss between his teeth.

For some time, the only sound was the rain beating on the window. Haru stared out at the sea, unable to wipe the image of electrike corpses from his mind. He'd almost trained an electrike. Befriended a one under the bike-path, smiled at the way it jumped among the patches of clover, chasing its own electric sparks. He felt sick to his stomach.

"Are you religious, boy?"

Haru blinked at Doctor Qian's sudden question. He supposed the short answer was yes. But yes didn't encompass a childhood spent learning at Grandmother's feet, or that dark, cruel year in Rustboro, when he cried every time he tried to pray. It didn't encompass his years on the road as a trainer, the silent prayers he made each day, even though he never crossed the threshold of a prayer house. It didn't encompass the feeling he'd experienced, alone on the rainswept path of Route 119—the sudden, absolute certainty that had crystallized inside his heart.

"My father's family were priests," he offered at last. Maybe less an explanation than an excuse.

Doctor Qian raised an eyebrow, setting down her cup of tea. "Were they now? I come from a line of priests myself, as it happens. From Mossdeep. Were your family the rich kind of priests?"

"Not rich," Haru said, looking up at the blue-crystal chandelier. His family's home back in Ecruteak had wide rooms and well-polished floors, but never anything that extravagant. "We were comfortable."

Doctor Qian snorted. "Well, mine were rich. Received a handsome stipend from the local government for doing a few dances at the appropriate time of years. To ward off the wrath of the ancient ones, you know. Mossdeep was born in the clash between the Land-Maker and the Sea-Spreader and we've always been a bit paranoid about that. Worried a second clash would come and unmake us as thoughtlessly as we were once made. Thus the dances."

She paused to take a sip of tea.

"I don't think my parents really believed, you know. It was their day job. Most of what they did was city politics anyway—endless development planning meetings, endless fights with the space station. I'm pretty sure they took bribes, too. Oh, you want to build your luxury mansion only a few meters from the sea-side? Very dangerous, very provocative towards the Great Sea-Spreader. But we can ease the way for you—at the all important planning meetings, as well as with the gods. You can fill in the rest, I'm sure. Well, I didn't want any part of it—split off, got my degree. The money was a nice surprise, when they finally passed. I was sure I'd be disinherited.

"And then—" The rain was coming down in sheets now. Doctor Qian turned to stare out at the blurred seascape, her voice distant. "Then the world ended. Just the way it went in the stories. Do you remember? You would have been too young, I suppose. It began with a rain storm, not too different than today's. But that rain didn't stop.

"The skies were so thick with storm clouds that day seemed like night. And the water rose here in Mauville, so high that I could dangle my feet over the cliff-edge and get them wet. Hard to remember what I was thinking at the time. I rummaged through the chests in the attic like a woman possessed, until I found my mother's old robes, still smelling of sandalwood and cinnamon. I draped them over my scrawny body and stood out there in the rain, wondering if I should do some kind of dance." She let out a quiet, bitter laugh. "All I managed to do was get myself soaked all through and a nasty case of pneumonia a few days later.

"But the rain did end, eventually, and the world didn't. The titans retreated into their dens. And that's when I realized. We aren't going to get justice. There won't be a final reckoning, where the worthy rise and the unworthy sink beneath the waves."

Doctor Qian's voice hardly shook, but her hands trembled as she clasped her tea cup. Outside, the rain dropped off. The clouds shifted, and a beam of sunlight fell suddenly across the bamboo floor.

"Maybe it was a warning." Haru hadn't intended to speak. The words came from nowhere—he found them waiting ready on his tongue. "Maybe we only get one."

The doctor stared at him, her face gone pale. All at once she seemed very old and very frail in her over-sized robe.

Hoenn's gods had made the land shake and the seas rise. But the people hadn't heeded the sign. They'd continued to build their towers, spit in their seas. Electrike corpses on the beach.

"Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, Doctor," Haru said into the silence. He needed to get somewhere he could think. When he stood and made a deep bow, Doctor Qian rose as well. They passed down the shadowed hallway without speaking. As Haru slipped on his boots, Doctor Qian's voice startled him. It echoed loudly off the wood walls.

"You can tell your islander friend I'm in."

Haru glanced over at her in confusion. Doctor Qian's chin was set firmly and her eyes glittered in the dark entry hall.

"In?" Haru repeated.

"Yes, in. Whatever it is. You think they've told me the details? I'm the establishment!" She let out a short, humorless chuckle. "Though, believe me, that would be news to the establishment."

"I—I'll pass that on to Maliki," Haru said at last. He stepped out into a light drizzle and made his way down the cobblestone path, out the gate. The groudon's jasper eyes burned into his back.

.

Maliki's smile lit her whole face, when Haru told her what Doctor Qian had said. Before he could react, she'd reached out and pressed him into a quick hug, even though his jacket was soaking wet. "That's wonderful news. Thank you, Haru."

Haru drew in a deep breath. He'd felt jumpy and unsettled the whole way home.

"Maybe you can thank me by telling me what she meant by that," he said. The words came out more sharply than he'd intended.

"Well, you heard the doctor's research. What do you think of it all?"

"It's wrong." It was as if Haru had been waiting for the question. Every swirling thought from the walk home poured out in a confused, emphatic torrent. "This voltage extraction method, it's wrong, and even if more studies need to be done, they should be calling a moratorium on it, the funding should be pouring in for more experiments. I'd always heard it's healthy for electric types to let off excess energy, but this isn't that. It's a complete perversion of a natural stress mechanism. And if it's killing them or worsening their quality of life to that extent—do the pokemon know what they're getting into? I mean, they can't know, right? So it's our responsibility to make the work safe for them. That's our duty."

Maliki nodded, a solemn look on her face. "You're right, it is our duty. But you think a company cares about that? They think their duty is to their bottom line. You think the city of Mauville cares? The people might, if they knew. But the politicos sure don't. Their power's proportional to the power coming out of that damn plant and they know it. Oh, they know it." Maliki paused for a moment, as if waiting to see if Haru had a counter-argument prepared. "So where does that leave us?" she continued when he stayed quiet. "If we know about this and we've got a duty. Well, we have to let people know, don't we?"

"There was an article," Haru said. "When I looked Doctor Qian up. In some paper—I forget the name . . ."

"Rewire? Yeah, Rewire's great. A real decent, hard-working alt, surviving by the skin of their teeth. But they've hardly got any circulation. Besides, anyone picking up that paper already knows this city has some problems. But how do we reach the ones who don't? How do we make it so this can't be ignored?"

Another test. But not one Haru knew how to answer. They stared at each other in silence. A few drops of rain-water ran down Haru's sopping bangs and fell to the kitchen floor in a series of plonks.

"Sunday night," Maliki said slowly, "we're going to make some news they can't ignore."

What did that mean? Who was we? And why was Maliki looking at him like she expected—the same way she'd looked at him last night in the shrine room, a gaze that asked, which kind of person are you?

The cowardly kind, Haru thought, letting his eyes fall to the increasingly wet floor. His nav rested like a hot coal in his pocket.

"I've got to put on something dry," he said at last.

"Sure," Maliki answered, her tone impenetrable. "Just think about it, will you?"

.

Early Sunday morning, Haru returned to the Mirage Desert lab. He desperately wanted some time alone with Damascus, but his heart sank when Doctor Ogletree's gruff voice answered the buzzer.

"It's Haru Watanabe, Sir," he said. "I was here Friday? I was hoping to visit my cradily again, but if it's too much trouble I can wait until—"

"Watanabe? No, no, come in. That damn expedition was delayed another night and I need a second pair of hands."

"I haven't had an orientation yet—"

"A trained chimcharr could handle this work, and you're smarter than that, aren't you?"

The door buzzed without waiting for Haru's answer. He found Doctor Ogletree in one of the smaller lab rooms, the door propped open. The man reeled off some rapid fire instructions before leading Haru over to a set of petri dishes.

"Doctor," Haru said, as the man turned to leave. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Hm?" Doctor Ogletree's mustache twitched in irritation. "What part of that's unclear?"

"Not about the samples. Um." Haru swallowed. He didn't want to waste the head researcher's time, but there was no one better to ask. Doctor Qian clearly had some grudge against the Mirage lab. She might have completely misread the situation. "I was wondering how projects get funded. How is that determined? Where does the money come from?"

Doctor Ogletree's hearty laugh made Haru flinch. "Lad, it will be a good five years before you have to trouble yourself with questions like that! If you think labeling samples is tedious, try writing grant proposals!"

Which didn't exactly answer the question. Haru tried a different tact, remembering the way Doctor Ogletree had paused to lecture in the corridor when the topic turned to his own research.

"Your own work, for example. How do you fund it?"

Doctor Ogletree's hand rose to his bushy mustache. Its red color was really very striking, especially since, Haru couldn't help but notice, his eyebrows were completely gray.

"Well, this is a government lab. We get a set sum each year out of the federal budget, to divy up among our internal projects as we wish. It's not enough, obviously. Government always underfunds us. So that's when we turn to corporate. DevCo's a massive funder, of course. Been very generous with my research. That Steven Stone's a good influence—appreciates a good archeological dig, that man. I met him myself, actually, last year at the annual meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Prehistoric Pokemon." The pause Doctor Ogletree inserted here had an expectant air.

Erika's advice echoed through Haru's mind: a delicate balance between hard work, skill, and sucking up.

"Wow," Haru said. "Did you really?"

"Indeed." Doctor Ogletree gave a satisfied nod. "So rest assured, lad, this is a very well-respected lab. We don't suffer from the funding troubles some other places do."

Haru chose his next words carefully. "I can see that, Sir. But what if—what if, say, your research began to indicate that the despeciation problem is being caused by human activity? By the same companies giving you money? Would they still fund you?"

Ogletree furrowed his eyebrow. "Ah, well, you have put your finger there on one extremely thorny funding problem. The media and some ridiculous non-profits are always trying to politicize my research. Use it to justify their policy programs. That kind of thing is very toxic, lad, very toxic. Not much to do about it, unfortunately, except try to keep your work out of the popular domain as much as possible."

Had he heard that correctly?

"I don't understand," Haru said, before he could stop to think. "Once the research is out there, why wouldn't people try to find solutions? How is that bad? Isn't that the whole point of diagnosing problems?"'

Doctor Ogletree's face creased into a heavy frown. "Lad, you seem to be operating under a fundamental misapprehension here. It's called the despeciation problem because we don't understand it, not because it's our job to solve it."

Haru blinked. "Whose job is it, then?"

"Hm?" Doctor Ogletree's mustache gave a twitch. "Well, society's, perhaps. But not us. We are researchers, compilers of knowledge, clean fact and theory, not activists."

"But how is society supposed to know what needs fixing without our work to tell them?" Haru demanded.

A thick silence fell. Haru realized he'd raised his voice into just short of a shout.

"I have work to get back to," Doctor Ogletree said finally, his voice cold. "Working here, young man, you'll have to learn that there's a time for asking questions and a time for bucking down and doing what you're told."

Haru sunk into a rigid, Johtoan bow. "Of course, Sir. Please accept my apology."

He turned to the samples, fighting to keep his mind blank. Sample 1. Divide into five dishes. Sample 1 Test 1, he marked on the first plastic surface. Whose job is it to decide? Not mine, Doctor Ogletree had said. Not ours.

But who did that leave?

As Haru worked his way mechanically through the sample plates, a memory rose in his mind of a dimly-lit room, the warm puff of alcohol against his face.

Who is it all working for and who is going to stop me?

The words circled through Haru's head as he bent over the lab table. When his stomach grumbled, Haru took a short break. He didn't see Doctor Ogletree, but he did find a drawer of power bars in the lobby room. The sweet, nutty bar didn't do much to clear his head, but it did give him the energy to return to the lab room.

The sun was setting when Haru set down the last labeled test sample. His back ached from the awkward way he'd been bending and his stomach felt cramped and empty. The lab seemed deserted. In the lobby, the electric lights were off, though they flickered back to life when Haru walked in. Had Doctor Ogletree already gone home?

Haru knew he should leave as well, but his feet led him back down the hallway towards the thick door of the terrarium. Inside, the terrarium was cooler now, faithfully mimicking the weather patterns of the desert. Haru shivered in his light jacket as he crossed the sand. The moonlight made the terrarium into a shifting sea of silver and black. All was silent except for the faint scratching of trapinch tunneling somewhere below.

"Damascus?" Haru called out in a whisper. Was she already sleeping? Cradily were strictly diurnal, but Haru had known Damascus to keep him company late into the night. Then again, that had been on the road. The pull of her native environment might have made her revert to her usual biological rhythms.

As Haru stood uncertainly by the edge of the still oasis, he caught a glint of red above, too static to be the roving eye of a baltoy. All at once, his stomach sinking, Haru realized his mistake. Of course the terrarium would be under surveillance! It was an observation room, after all.

Even if he managed to wake Damascus, he wouldn't be able to tell her anything, not with a camera listening in. He was probably in trouble already just for having entered the terrarium unsupervised. He hurried out, down the long hallway.

When he stepped outside, the night was still and dry, without a trace of yesterday's rains. Haru stood motionless for a moment, fighting the urge to cry.

If only Nya-Nya were here. The delcatty would curl up with him, a warm weight in his lap as she kneaded rhythmically against his legs. But to see Nya-Nya he'd have to face Mother or Father. And Haru didn't think he could stand to look at either of them right now, not with the memories of Grandmother still so close.

Erika had always been the one to have flaming rows with their parents. She and Mother could go back and forth for hours, but they made up as quickly as they fought. Haru, in contrast, never raised his voice. If he was angry, he'd clam up until the anger fell to a low simmer. But right now, Haru thought if he were to see his parents he'd begin to scream and not stop.

For a moment, he was tempted to turn back towards the lab, walk past it, out into Mirage Desert. No one would be out there to take offense if he poured all the grief, all the fear, all the anger of the past week into one long scream.

That would be stupid, though. The dust storms of Mirage Desert could whip up in an instant. Even close to the edge, it was possible to completely lose your way.

So Haru wiped his eyes and set off towards Mauville in silence. Above, the stars wavered like guttering candle-lights.

.

When Haru pushed back the faded curtain, he found the shrine room a bustling hive. Maliki stood at the center of it all, conferring with one person, then the next. But when she caught sight of Haru, she cut across the room.

"Tonight," Haru said, before she could speak. "You said you're doing something they can't ignore, right?"

Maliki studied him carefully. She was dressed in dark, muted clothing and she'd removed her bright orange earrings. "Yes," she said. "That's right."

Haru sucked in a breath. His stomach was cramping, his eyes stung, and the inside of his head was thumping and stamping loudly, like a slaking gone berserk. When he opened his mouth, instead of a scream, he heard himself say, "Count me in."