This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose.

[3-4] Write My Life For You

Saber took his time on the way through the castle, still prodding the failing walls. And for the first time in a little while, he was completely alone. Just for a little while.

When he finally found his way upstairs, he crept into the dark suite. Nothing had changed since that afternoon. Kris hadn't yet escaped her room.

Saber sat down on the couch with the notebook dead-center in front of him. His hand hovered over the cover, unable to lift it for the longest time. With delicate fingers, he peeled it open and explored the opening pages. It lacked a table of contents. That was annoyingly uncharacteristic of her. She was the type of person to rigidly structure a book even while the pages looked like a children's playground.

Excitement bubbled in his stomach. No matter the circumstance, he was genuinely thrilled at the prospect of digging into all this pure, unfiltered information. His area of specialty or not, his mother is one of the world's foremost researchers, and he'd be mental to pass up an opportunity to see what only her eyes could see.

But first, he wanted to know why.

Why would his mother give him all of this despite that? Why not give everything to Dr. Cassius, who most certainly could derive more use from it?

His answer came when an electronic bell rang from the door of the suite. Saber whirled around to see Redwood enter through the paneled doorway. He held a sheet of documents in his hands.

"Here you are, sir. The clerk took your signature," he said, handing them to Saber. "And I'm sorry, but your father didn't have a will of his own. All his sole assets are now strictly property of the Blackthorn Dragon Clan."

That was about what Saber expected. He'd have to settle for his mother's will as his window to both of their hidden lives. As he flipped through the stapled stack with his pinky, Redwood took a long step back to place himself on the opposite side of the doors again.

"I'll be here," he said. Then he pulled the suite closed and left the two inhabitants to their privacy.

Saber took to scanning the dense record. His parents' sizable assets lent themselves to tens of pages of sharp legalese. Due to the protection of the Dragon Clan, it seemed like every property they owned was signed to his mother.

A smorgasbord of names appeared on each page. Stone. Rowan. Terminus. Cassius. Masuta. They received everything from vacation villas—one in Unova was returned to Mrs. Caitlyn Perenus, its original owner—to small souvenirs from diplomatic missions. Some distributions seemed to be favors, others gifts.

The will had no true organization, something she and the League's bureaucracy apparently had in common, so he was forced to drain the clock and digest its entirety.

None of the distributions had personalized messages, and without them he could only speculate their purpose. What did Dr. Rowan need with a first-generation Poké Ball from the 1980s? The one that originally held her starter Pokémon, perhaps?

There on the seventeenth page, the conditions of her and her husband's Pokémon were outlined. Saber was solely responsible for them, and Kris only if he was somehow incapacitated. He supposed he should write something of his own, so they wouldn't be surrendered to the Pokémon League in a worst-case scenario.

Each page was a new disappointment. Nothing. Still nothing. Why was one of her private estates being given to the Orran government? Nothing. Nothing. He wasn't even impressed by the sum of money passed onto himself and his sister. Sure, the number was absolutely mind-numbing for most people, but he'd never exactly known the grips of poverty.

There it was on the forty-first page. The inheritance of her research materials.

"All surplus research documentation will be divided based on content to these listed. To Cornelius Rowan goes all documentation on Pokémon evolution," he read aloud. Obviously not much since it wasn't her field. "To Sebastian Masuta goes all materials related to the Unown Pokémon species and the language derived thereof. And to Albert Cassius goes all remaining materials."

That was all. It was just a footnote in a page overflowing with paid dues and multimillion Pokedollar exchanges. Saber flipped the stack closed on the desk and stared. No answers, no guidance. This was all he had to work with.

Something caught his eye. He leaned forward to the small, red print on the front page's header, which was the date the document was filed with the Sinnoh League. 290811-1144. August 29th, just sixteen minutes shy of midnight.

That was… the same night.

He grabbed at the pages, splitting open a finger in his hurry, and flipped through it. Nothing had changed, of course, but he couldn't stop himself. He scanned through all the information yet again before slamming it closed again and staring at that fresh red epitaph. Dr. Cassius claimed that he was the only inheritor in the last update of the document, but that changed on August 29th.

His eyes drifted to that black box, which lay untouched since he received it. In his fidgeting, Saber slipped off the cover. Nestled within velvet folds was a white stone cross, crowned with a radiant gemstone in its center.

It was the gift his father presented to her as sign of their union. He couldn't access many of his father's belongings, but this was one link to his father that had been passed onto him.

His eyes drifted between them. The ink. The stone.

"Mr. Redwood!" he shouted.

The doors slammed open behind him and the man rushed inside, hand on the holster on his belt. His head twitched about the suite. "Reporting. What's the trouble?"

"No trouble!" said Saber, who put up two flat hands to calm him. The agent's hand slipped from his waist and he stood uneasy. "I just need your escort. I'm going to be in the grand library for a long while."

"Of course, sir."

Saber hastily collected what he had thrown across the table, feeling more like his mother every second. Something had happened. Someone was guilty. He was sure that they left this to him for a reason.

And now he knew where to start.

This volume was fun, but definitely a struggle! Kris had ten times less focus than Ciel in previous stories, and Saber had ten times less focus than Kris, so I think I struggled nailing down his character and giving him a whole volume to himself to boot. He was always supposed to be big and hammy, but this story introduces him being more subdued in pursuit of intellectual fashions, which I think is a neat contrast.

Next time is Volume 4. Part 1 is The Next Step is in the Sky. See you someday!