This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose.
[4-1] The Next Step Is in the Sky
"You didn't find anything? How is that possible?" Ciel asked.
The nurse's scrub dress pulled tight as she bartered a deep bow for the services she couldn't provide. He wasn't exactly angry. More so completely mystified. She said, "That's just it. There's nothing physically wrong with your Pokémon."
"Aren't you guys the best veterinary center in Sinnoh? Canalave referred me to you." Ciel scratched the back of his head, vaguely aware of the rudeness of his words.
He looked around the Pokémon Center, which definitely looked the part. Clean panel walls, state-of-the-art digital indicators, including a holographic vital display projected onto the window of the patient room. Yet with all this technology, and undoubtedly the human talent to back it, they couldn't determine what was wrong with Raven.
"Unfortunately, Absol are relatively rare, especially outside of Hoenn. What we can diagnose is bound by the limits of current study," she said.
Ciel followed a motion of her arm through the window, where Raven's dreams were wracked not by nightmares but the physical convulsions beneath her fur. They kept the lights low, something akin to her natural cave habitat, in the hopes it would help her stay comfortable.
"Even knowing that something is disturbing her," continued the nurse, "there isn't much more that we can do aside from assuring you that it's probably not fatal."
"Probably?" His brow creased.
"Probably," she repeated.
His mind took a walk. With that book closed, all he had was a suspicion. A wild one, but it was the only thing he could think of. Absol were known for an uncanny ability, simultaneously well-documented but unsupported by scientific evidence.
They could predict disaster.
It was the timing of her first spasms with the news on the radio that tipped him off. That said, he couldn't rely on anecdotal evidence. It really could just be a freak coincidence that his living problem sensor got sick the moment the world learned of the greatest tragedy of the century. A note for later was all it was. He scratched it in a journal and left it be.
Ciel thanked the nurse for her help—minimal as it was—and answered some questions so she could verify the release paperwork. She told him to wait a few moments for her to get everything notarized, so he slowly pushed open the patient room door to slip inside.
"Ciel!" said Laina, who split herself from Raven after having been fused since morning. She looked to her brother for the good news.
He gave a shake of the head and an offer to leave. Laina slumped over and brushed past him towards the doorway. All that remained in the room was a suffering Raven and the gentle crackling flames trying to comfort her.
Arden stood bedside as well, curled above his teammate. His mentor. His friend. He arched over her like a burning shield, and evidently, his radiating life found its way to her. The convulsions lessened, and though they didn't disappear, but Ciel felt at least some relief in watching her descend to a gentle rumble. Though he wanted to turn tail from the Pokémon Center, he spared a few moments to mirror his Typhlosion by the bed.
Ciel looked at the wicked scar across Arden's abdomen. Though he wasn't big on superstition, it was one reason he'd come to believe in his Raven's ability. If he had listened to her sense then, the scar wouldn't be there to remind him.
Arden pleaded with him to ward away the problem. Ciel had enough heart not to shake his head, but not enough to lie. "You're doing more for her than I am right about now."
He took in the scene before him. The defensive posture, the low growl he gave in response, the refusal to leave his friend's side. It was exactly like Crystal once described. Arden returned a debt he owed from the Pokémon Center in Olivine, but Ciel knew it wasn't about getting even.
They were family.
"Do you want to get going?" he asked.
Arden's determined non-answer, unfortunately, put Ciel on the podium. Taking undemocratic control hurt him, but he couldn't see any benefit to keeping Raven in this sterile prison any longer. She was healthy. She was suffering. And that wasn't changing for a while.
Ciel raised two capsules and pressed their buttons. The patient room was red, and then it was empty.
Ciel immortalized his steps in the fresh snow of Jubilife, and Laina duplicated each by stepping in his larger prints. They weren't the only ones on the sidewalk, but still they plowed a new path through empty wonderland.
Every single window of the building above them burst with light, and he heard a news report on a waylaid radio about a massive surge in employees calling in sick. It was so massive, said the newscaster, that the Sinnoh League's Department of Economics was predicting a shock with lasting consequences. The Region was hurting. Ciel thought about what that man had said, the one with the brick, about just feeling like throwing. So far, it seemed most didn't feel like doing anything at all.
The buildings, a sleek black metal. Veins of ashen particles spidered through the white, winter covering, falling like meteors from clouds above. Ciel had read up on the city since he first prepared for the trip six months ago, so he knew it was coal dust. What was most worrying was the matching color of his breath leaving his lungs. On cue, he hacked something up.
"Ciel, honey, are you okay?" asked his mother through the Poké GEAR. She was still in her Gym attire, evidently not yet settled in for the weekend. They were hours behind them, so it was sometime in the evening in Johto.
"I'm fine, fine. Just trying to keep moving so we can get to the airport."
"Why not hail a taxi?" she asked.
"I would," he said, "but I'm already going to be paying for two plane tickets. I don't want to burn through all the Showdown money so quickly."
"Ciel, we said that we could cover this. The whole purpose of this was for you to take on the Gym Challenge, so I'm not about to leave you on your own." Ciel tried to parse the curved, yet still razor-thin edge of her tone. Maybe his mother was just restless about him being so far away. Even when he was traveling in Johto, he was close enough that she could fly out if worse came to worst, but half a world away, there wasn't much she could do to insure him. At least she hadn't gone "full parent" yet.
Ciel's sigh transformed into a blackened wisp. "I put away my tournament earnings specifically for this. I didn't come out here to leech off you," he said.
That being true, he withheld saying his mind about the plan. Even if he booked airfare, even if he gained audience with the Sinnoh League, even if he explained his plight to the Viceroy or whoever, he had no reservations about what might happen. It's doubtful he was the first person to try, and the Pokémon League wasn't the most cooperative establishment. His dad had the sobriety medallions to prove it.
He and Laina passed under a building sporting a wide jumbotron on its facade. It displayed a silent memorial to Cynthia and Lance, their faces looming large over the city.
His father cut into the call, voice raised somewhere offscreen. "Any problems on the trip so far?"
"Aside from Raven and the tunnel? Nope." Ciel grabbed the lapels of his outer jacket, open above a second, zipped jacket underneath. "You were right when you said it'd keep me warm."
His father stuck himself in frame, wearing an apron and mixing something in a saucepan. It looked like some type of beef broth, and Ciel could see vegetables leaping about the mixture. He could smell it all the way from Sinnoh.
"No problems with wild Pokémon? No traffic?" he asked.
Ciel shook his head. "Nope. We had to ward away some Stantler and I got a massive headache, but no hordes of birds or anything, thankfully. It's been pretty easy after Canalave."
His mother's face inverted. Oh. Oh no. She cleared her throat. "What happened in Canalave?"
Ciel looked at his sister to keep from meeting her eye. She shrugged. Unfortunately, it may have just made him seem even more suspicious. "Uhh, not much! There was just a little... event downtown."
"A riot," said Laina. "It's called a riot. A guy had a knife."
Ciel slammed a finger against his lips and shushed her all the way to tomorrow, but it was too late. An unholy maternal fury ripped apart the chains that had held it dormant, and it reached through the Poké GEAR screen to grab him by the throat. He felt his breath leave his body.
"How could you get involved in a riot!?" she shouted. The words bubbled like her husband's boiling pain. "You're supposed to stay out of trouble, not find it!"
"I stopped the guy! Threw him on the concrete and everything!"
His father said, "We know he can defend himself."
"It's not about him! It's about Laina! How could you put her in danger like that? And someone had a knife?" his mom shouted.
Ciel looked frantically between his parents. His mother steamed like the broth in his father's pan. The man seemed to get an idea in his head and disappeared from the frame, leaving Ciel to take the full brunt of the unleashed rage. She ranted about how she was calling them back, sending Pryce to haul them out of Sinnoh since he was retired and obviously had nothing better to do. Her words slurred together until he could understand her even less than the Sinnohan he'd been surrounded by since he got here.
A few seconds from detonation, a soup cup was shoved to her mouth. Her father held it there, pumping it down her throat until she finally relaxed. A demon dove into the soup, then a slightly less agitated demon surfaced.
His father asked, "Like it?"
"I always like your cooking," she said, wiping a trail of broth sliding down her chin. "What's your point?"
"The condition we sent them on was that Ciel could protect her. Then, something bad happened, and he protected her," his father said.
"Yeah, and it was kinda cool. It was like watching Brycen Man in real life," Laina added, exaggerating some karate motions.
His mother narrowed her eyes at him. Then, after a moment, she snatched the soup from him and turned away, leaving him in control of the camera. The cracked screen flashed black until Ciel tapped it with his fingers. When it returned, all he saw was his father's tight-muscled face.
"Anyway, I'm glad you're both okay. But your mother's right. You need to stay out of trouble the best you can, and… knowing what's happened, be more careful than usual."
"Is… are people acting crazy at home?" Ciel asked.
"From what I hear, not as much as in Sinnoh, but we've definitely had some trouble. Someone here in Mahogany had a breakdown." The man aimed his gaze downward and crossed his arms. "It's hitting people hard."
"Well, uhh, you can count on me," said Ciel. "No matter what happens I'll, what's the phrase, keep my eyes on the prize?"
"I know you will. And when you do get your Sinnoh Challenge Sigil, I expect another battle from you. See if I can't win my badge back."
Now that put a smirk on Ciel's face. "You got it, Dad."
"Well, I have to finish preparing dinner for us and the Pokémon. Call us when you get to the Sinnoh League so we know you're safe," he said. He cut the call before Ciel's mother could wind up to shout again, cutting her off mid-sentence.
Ciel let out another smoke breath. That went about as well as expected. For someone who was so gung-ho about letting him adventure away from home, she certainly had her objections with the process. Laina just shrugged.
"Can we hurry? I'm cold," she said.
"We can, but you should probably try getting used to the temperature," he replied.
"Hmph. Yeah, right."
He pulled up a map application on his Poké GEAR, loaded with data for the Sinnoh Region before his trip. With a few clicks and search terms, a path was carved straight to the airfield on the southwest side of town, nearby a large international communication center. Not a long walk at all.
Unless he collapsed from black lung or lost some fingers on the way, they were all set. Their next stop was Jubilife International Airport.
I feel as if in this story I have a lot less time going forward to really focus on Pokémon characters than I did in some of my previous stories, so I feel like the individual moments need to mean a lot more. Found family is certainly a trope, and I will lean into it as hard as I can without falling over.
Next is Part 2: Paging Ground Control, so I'll see you someday!