This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
[13-3] Games From Above
"Christine, this is Looker of the International Police," Lucian began, with the grandeur of a university lecture. "He's cooperating with me on a small investigative matter."
International Police. She sneered at him, visibly and without shame.
"Ah, please offer him the benefit of the doubt. I consider him a confidant, and I have full confidence that he's not working in the Viceroy's interests."
Convinced wasn't an apt way to describe herself. Neither was receptive. After what just happened, and especially after weeks of nonconsensual stalking, she wasn't in a mood to extend any branches to the IP, no matter how thin and easily snapped.
"And what is that?" She raised a finger to the terrified man in the chair, wondering if Lucian was secretly a mustache-twirling villain.
Looker pulled the curtain fully, his coat trailing him as if a straight-line wind and cut directly through Lucian's office and stood aside the bound man. "This man, he is a clue. He potentially could hold the key to the Galactic Company, and yes, what they could want! Dr. Furutre is a key component in this endeavor."
"A therapist," said Kris.
"A psychic," corrected Lucian.
Why hadn't she heard about mind-readers being employed for detective agencies before? It's not like they couldn't solve crimes on their own, and extract confessions with or without suspects' consents.
Lucian continued, "However, I believe we're done here anyway. It's ultimately the same as last time."
"Uh, yes! Of course!" said Looker. "After he is returned to proper custody, the questioning for any remaining clues will continue at a later juncture."
He untied the man in short order, though he retained the handcuffs beneath the major bindings. Looker dragged him to his feet, but didn't lead him from the room, and instead left him to be handled by… something else.
A Croagunk peeked out from behind the chair, grinning permanently. Soft croaks accompanied each pulse of its cheek pouches, and she could outright smell the sour toxin coating its skin. It prodded the back of the man's leg, and he stumbled forward in shock, out the open door, to wherever the detective wanted him to go next. The Pokémon even had the courtesy to pull shut the door behind it. How thoughtful.
Lucian rearranged the room with her help—he hadn't asked, but she butt in regardless, and quickly relinquished the large, stained table when he realized she could pull it easily on her own. He instead cleaned up the remains of the metal interrogation chair, leaving it suspiciously out of place in one corner of the room. It was the only piece of furniture that wasn't a shade between mahogany and crimson. The detective just stood by, waiting, almost offering to help but not quite in his element with the suspect gone. He kept his hands in his oversized coat pockets.
Kris kept an arched eyebrow, pushing her luck on what they were willing to tell her. "The same as last time?"
"You're aware of the recent wave of crimes attributed to the Galactic Company?" Lucian looked displeased, and tired to boot, which was no doubt why he was so willing to talk.
She tossed a few waylaid pillows on the couch without caring where they landed, though she noticed how symmetrical Lucian's arrangement was on the opposite side. "They're copycat crimes."
"False. Barring a select few actual copycats, nearly all were hired. Many were recently released from prison, and afterward offered a lump sum and requisite clothing."
"By whom?" she asked.
"Unknown!" said Looker
"We don't know," said Lucian. "I've found no further luck reading them either. Those that have outright confessed have said their only contact was over the phone, and that the voice was modified."
After they were finished redecorating, they reclaimed their usual positions, but not their usual roles.
"Some new cult leader wants to take over and is inflating their membership?" proposed Kris.
"Recent investigations don't assume it to be belief driven. Whoever is masterminding this, they want something," he replied.
Looker coughed loudly, beckoning both of their attention. He was clearly rocking on his feet.
"Detective, you're dismissed. We have nothing more to discuss here," said Lucian.
"However, the truly despicable, the extraordinarily diabolical forces at play, they must be explained in full. This girl is part of your informative network, Doctor. Is she not?"
"No, Looker, she's merely—"
"You are aware of Team Aqua and Team Magma, yes?" he shot at her.
Kris felt like she was about to get run over. Rather than carrying on Lucian's protest—she was the one who started it, anyway—all she said was, "Y-yeah. In Hoenn."
"I am of personal experience with them. I was active on the ground there shortly after I awoke ("Awoke?" asked Kris) and had time to study their motions before I was enlisted as part of a top-secret investigative unit in Alola. Wait. You did not hear that."
"Hear what?" asked Kris, who had blanked for a moment.
"Excellent! You make a fine informant!"
Lucian held his chin in his palm and made no further attempts to stop his storytelling. Either it wasn't too sensitive, or he wasn't lying when he said he didn't care about the Viceroy's authority anymore.
"Aqua and Magma were once a single nonviolent environmentalist group, yet so, they found power by engaging local governments to enact fishing regulations and energy reforms. Eventually, they ballooned in scale, tackling regional subunits, and then the Hoenn Pokémon League itself. Their Viceroy was quite cooperative to their whim. Think of them as an intriguing lobbyist group—ethically ambiguous, a moneyed interest no doubt, but arguably, possibly, moral." Looker paced around the room, guiding his thoughts with a stiff point. Occasionally he flicked his gaze to her to ensure she was following along, so she held the notebook and sat on a stiff spine. "However, they splintered. I suspect unsavory no-gooders within had disagreements with the leadership about their methods. When Aqua was birthed, a sinister extremist front was exposed. They stole shipments of goods, and yet more, they threatened civilians because the Pokémon League failed to work fast enough for what they desired."
Kris worked up the gall to interrupt his spell. "Which was?"
"The functional annihilation of human life. It is unimportant."
"I'd say it's kind of—"
"Yes, their modus operandi was based on guerilla tactics! Their aim was never to fight the Pokémon League directly, because they would certainly lose, but could they poke the beast, they could distract it from strategic operations. They raid the Weather Institute and attract the cameras when they actually have diabolical business in other key locations."
"You're saying this is the same M.O.?"
"This is an identical—Oh, yes. You are correct!"
"And all of this means… what?
"The missing documents," Lucian said, finally, and she politely nodded. "I personally wanted to believe this to be true, but not the Viceroy nor anyone close to him is responsible. His mind was erratic because he wants to know the culprit as much as we do."
"Then all this is sabotage," she said.
"The timing was too impeccable. And without any other strong leads, Looker and I choose that assumption."
Weight lifted in full, she finally took in a clean, cold breath. It shouldn't have been so relieving, considering they were talking about an intentional attack on the government, but nonetheless she was personally free now that her cards were flipped for all to see. "What's his reason for not just fudging the exam and community service records for someone they knew was already cleared before?"
"I respect the Viceroy," Lucian answered immediately. After the show of egos in the training room yesterday, and after the man's borderline criminal aura speaking to Terminus, she found that hard to believe. "I find him to be… genuine. He does believe, from the bottom of his heart, that he must do the best for the Sinnoh Region. I think he wants to maintain the legitimacy of the process as proof of his own dedication to the people."
"But he's also scared out of his pants at publicly admitting the mistake and looking weak."
"Because it might hurt the Region, in his mind."
Something like legal ambiguity shouldn't have been so much of a blow to the Pokémon League's regular operation, but if Lucian was right about the Viceroy's personality, they were playing him like nothing more than a game piece. His ego, his devotion, his everything, it was Sinnoh's fatal flaw that led to months of gridlock without a symbol of peace to show for it.
"Are we going to out him or what?"
Lucian blanked for a moment, his glasses flashing when he shifted the glare of the room's light across them. Rick's watercolor wonderland must have rubbed off on her, because she swore she could feel his aura wavering. "We aren't."
"Why?" she pressed.
"Sinnoh does not need more uncertainty. If the Viceroy truly values his reputation, and if he understands the state of the Region as well as his employees do, he'll be forced to promote Ms. Kikuko as if she was his hand-picked choice."
She disturbed the table with her swinging feet. "You're a therapist. You should value honesty."
Only after his face twisted did she realize the implications of her statement, and she was torn between two dueling emotions. The child in her enjoyed paying him back for his piercing questions and for using her against the Viceroy for his own gain. But the adult, which she refused to believe she wasn't, knew she had stepped over the crevice despite the warning signs. Their edges dulled against each other and distracted her from a formal apology, shouldering Lucian with another surface-level truth. This, like the previous, passed his inspection.
"I'm not acting as a therapist. I'm acting as myself. And be it hypocritical, I cannot imagine the future unless I put the people's hope first," said Lucian.
"Yeah. Sure," she replied.
Kris wasn't one for politics. For that matter, neither were her parents, despite their close association. They were far more interested in being manifestations of confidence than toying with the decision of whether to deliver bad news or worse news first, which is probably why they put up with the Pokémon League—lack of anyone more suited for such a dirty job.
Why should she have to choose whether to be honest or to be safe, and why were safety and honesty not wed by default? Pokémon battling was so simple in comparison, where speaking honestly about your intentions and ensuring safety in dangerous tasks was the beginning and end of it. Just yesterday she struggled to maintain the truth, yet here she was party to another lie.
Oh well, she supposed. She'd gotten pretty good at lying.
Lucian finally managed to expel the detective from the room, but it didn't feel like therapy again. It was unsettling beyond words to be in the plushy office as a guest but not a patient. Without probes to her psyche or spears to her heart, all that remained was an empty oppressive aura, and just having seen him in full force against the guards and ultimately dominating a prisoner amplified he.
She looked at him differently, and he stood differently. His chin was sharper, both from a lack of fat and from the perpetual tense angle he held his head at. Kris absentmindedly tried to squeeze a few more drops from the glass he'd given her, as she had nothing else to touch but it and the notebook sitting beside her on the couch.
"I feel like I've got more questions than you have answers," she said, bluntly. "You're not a cop, are you?"
He read her thoughts sitting on her face, so epidermal he didn't need to look further. "The problem of extrasensory skills in investigative work is… storied, to be blunt. Essentially, it's a problem of subjectivity."
He pointed to his own head, and she felt her skull buzz after she nodded. It felt noisier, cutting in and out, and it sent her sinuses into disarray. He winced.
"The most present thought in your mind is, well, your mother's Garchomp. You're… disheartened. Regretful. Desperate."
She held her arms by the biceps, looking at the floor.
"If I were to request another psychically attuned individual to read you, even at the same time, they may interpret it differently. Body language can only assist so far as a telegraph of the mind, and my familiarity with you lends me to a more detailed observance of her psychic patterns and outward personality. Beyond a certain point, it's almost interpretive," he said. "Justice rests its decisions in the hands of objective evidence. If I am the only person who claims you think a specific way with a specific motive, am I really telling the truth?"
"Oh." She thought for a moment. "I suppose not."
"As you might imagine, my cooperation with Looker is not especially rooted in the realm of legality."
She shrugged. "My brother's a national fugitive."
"I'm well aware."
When she leaned in close, he raised a brow above his tinted specs. "You still haven't explained what happened when you read The Viceroy's mind though. How did it hurt you?"
"That was not the Viceroy." Lucian crossed and then uncrossed his legs. "It was Steven Stone. I took a chance to read him. He clearly didn't appreciate that."
"Again, how?"
"Just as we can be trained to invade the thoughts of others, we can also be trained to guard our own. Steven Stone has the most terrifying mental block I've ever encountered."
He didn't react to his own hand snaking up to massage his forehead, implying that he'd been doing it for a while, and the still-scrambled state of his mind was carried to her tactile senses when he read her. Whatever Stone did must have done real damage.
His primary Pokémon was a hyper-intelligent Psychic-type Pokémon, so it didn't really come as a surprise. However, she couldn't deny how suspicious it was that he considered his secrets worth an explosive lock and key. She hadn't really had the opportunity to speak with him since, well, the funeral. He supposedly helped arrange her current living situation, so friend of her parents or not, she wasn't going to spend the emotional currency to call him an ally.
"What if he's partly responsible for this?" she asked suddenly.
He pressed his glasses up his nose, as if he'd exercised the thought before. "For his role in the selection process?"
"When I was eavesdropping—accidentally listening—I couldn't hear Terminus, but the Viceroy seemed like he wasn't happy with Stone's performance. And I heard Dr. Rowan say something about Stone being the IPL's choice pick for the job, but that means Terminus would just remove him if they really thought that."
"Unless," mused Lucian, "Terminus himself is complicit."
The red room ticked with a silent clock, their conversation feeling like hours when it had only been six minutes according to the digital display on Lucian's desk. She played piano with her left hand, feeling out the notes of half a concerto, while her right hand was off to her side with the notebook.
The IPL couldn't have any desire to see its Regions—its assets—become liabilities, so it didn't seem rational to suspect the problem came from above. That said, possibilities filled her mind.
"Why would they act so buddy-buddy in public?" she asked. "Is this some weird political power play?"
He adjusted his turtleneck sweater. "Impossible to confirm. I couldn't read anything of the sort, but I only received tantamount to a snapshot."
"Is there really nothing we can do but wait for you to run your campaign?" she asked, still grasping for some guide rail to stumble forward. Her eyes wandered lazily about the room.
"That's the most we can do. But the most you can do is use this opportunity to help yourself and your Pokémon."
Her eyes snapped to him, furious. She wasn't going to let him try to deflect this again. "I already told you. I am doing this for myself."
"I'm not sure I believe that."
"Please, Lucian. How many times do I have to say it?"
"You've been writing something in that notebook this whole time."
Her left hand slammed on the keys while her right went limp, the pencil tumbling softly from between her index and middle fingers to the floor below. She slowly craned her head down to the book beside her. She already had nearly a page of scribbled lines, which had waterfalled directly from her pool of consciousness without her knowledge.
Slowly, she ratcheted her right hand to join her left on her lap. His eyes lingered on the page and then found hers.
"Ms. Masuta. I care about you," he said.
"No. You're just paying something back," she countered.
"Your mother has nothing to do with this." His voice kicked up in pitch, before settling back when he contained himself. It's as if he tried himself to be a book, relegating the tone of his speech to others' imagination. For some reason, he surrendered his glasses to the table, and allowed her to once again see the decrepit pinch of his eyes and cheeks. "I help people write their own stories. It's who I am."
"I'd like to go back to the suite now," she said, and he agreed not to carry on their quarrel any further.
Lucian led her to the door in a way that felt eerily familiar, like she was weeks behind in time. He didn't hold the door open for her, instead letting the handle gather dust while he waited for her to take the step.
"I have to ask," she said, when her fist wrapped tightly around it. "You're doing this campaign no matter what the Viceroy said?"
He nodded stiffly. "Of course."
"You're gonna lose your job for it, aren't you?"
Another, slower nod.
"And you're," she paused, "okay with that? Straight up?"
The same instability that he was trying to avoid by dancing this waltz of truth with the Viceroy was the only reason he hadn't been booted for his disobedience. But once it was over? Once it was easy to dump him and earn no more than a few groans and shrugs? He was done. They both knew that.
"Think about where we live, Ms. Masuta." He motioned with his hands, calm enough that his sleeves didn't shift on his arms, at the imaginary space beyond his crimson box. "I took this office so I could maintain my business while I was accepting duties as Elite Four, but what kind of clients do I get here?"
"Cronies."
"The wealthy. I understand that everyone has personal demons, but most living on this island have the stability and the means to heal themselves. I'd like to reopen my practice somewhere where I know my words can change someone's life."
A snort ripped through her nose. "Cheesy. And what does your darling think about that?"
"Ah, erm, we live apart right now, but Johanne—sorry, Mr. Sylvester—was very… ecstatic when I suggested we find a house together in Jubilife." He shrugged, a surprisingly casual gesture from him. In fact, his entire demeanor had flipped for a split-second. The angled chin he let wander, the gentle twitching of his lips, it signaled that his mind momentarily jumped elsewhere before he returned to a static face.
"Do you want to marry him?" She put a finger to her cheek.
The heat in his face camouflaged him with the room until only his specs and waving curls stood out on the crimson backdrop. The former slid off his nose, and he jerked his hands to set them back in place. "That's a private subject."
"Whoops, I'm a natural mind-reader," she teased.
"I'm not yet willing to ask that question," he insisted, after he had tightened himself back up.
"You should go for it." Kris said it as seriously as she delivered her graduation speech, with only a fraction of the practice. "Someone once told me I should start thinking about what it is I really want."
He went silent for a moment. "Funny. Someone once told me that too."
She was once again alone in the hall, alone with the nobodies in armored vests. She treated them as they were, and when a cold draft barreled through the castle hall and polished the stone, it was as if it passed right through them.
Her wrist was still barren, waiting for a shipment of a Pokétch, even though she could have asked for a phone from someone at any time. Only a single item on her calendar was waiting for her.
"What I want. What I want. What I want," she repeated.
Strangely, it's almost easy to forget that this series is canon-derived, at least to a broad-strokes version of it. Especially since political gridlock or the social interrogation of this story aren't themes normally delved into by the main media, it's often felt like this story is off in its own little world, and then characters like Looker appear and remind me that the events of the games are still the deciding factor behind how this story was developed.
In some ways, it's my philosophy behind canon characters. I primarily write with original characters, and one main benefit to that is that it allows canon characters to feel like their weight is thrown around. Their relative sparsity makes them more valuable as emotional pieces, and their connection to canon almost makes them seem mysterious from the perspective of OCs who are sometimes only tangentially related to canon events at best. A canon character appearing is a big deal.
Anyway, next part is the last part of Volume 13. Part 4 is Break the Cycle. See you someday!