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

[14-1] Mountain Rider

Fuck.

Shit.

Ass.

Bitch!

Cheryl wasn't expressing frustration. No no no, she was just internally reciting every officially censored print word each time a branch swung from halfway across the forest to sign her face. They'd never cross her lips, not when she had journalistic integrity to uphold, but she certainly knew their meanings, their connotations, their uses, by heart.

"I just… want to get out… of this stupid… forest…" she muttered.

She thought the nostalgic opportunity to stop by her cabin, trace the old typewriter's keys, and fog the window with coffee steam would make this a memorable trip. In many ways, it was, and it reproachfully informed her that nostalgia was a coping mechanism against childhood tedium. Her scraped and aching legs represented the worst parts of her snotty young life—the parts where she wasn't pounding away at a front-page hit.

Her Chansey chirped and consoled her with an egg. Another egg, after the hundreds she'd had to eat already. Just her luck.

Blondie needed to be somewhere close and soon or else she was going to lose both her mind and, more importantly, her regular source of income. After his big blow-up in Floaroma, there were only so many places he could go, and her eyes in Jubilife confirmed that he hadn't come back through the city. Mira's investigations on Route 206 were equally sparse, ruling that direction out. Her only remaining option was to track his path through Eterna and hope he hadn't already tossed himself down the side of Mt. Epaulette into the world's most disrespectful grave.

By simply emphasizing the curves of her cheeks, twirling her hair, and wobbling on her coordinated feet, Cheryl could usually get anything she wanted. A lost, enchanted maiden could rob fools of their favors like loose coins. Out by her lonesome, however, there was no one to cash in but herself, and she was lousy at self-care. She hadn't had a meal in days beyond Soft-Boiled and carbs suffocating in plastic.

The blackened greens parted by the evening, and she collapsed on the first street Eterna sent her way. Sweet pavement, sweet dreams. She imagined finding Blondie passed out in a city dumpster, and then enjoying a classy meal, a tinted, tangy bath, and maybe even a date after her article threw some weight into her pockets.

"Ma'am? Are you okay down there?"

The pumpkin strands on the woman's head opened to a face ripe with shining youth. It was a headline-worthy face, one she imagined TV anchors might leave on screen a few seconds too long to divorce their viewers from their channel buttons (and possibly their spouses). In the evening glow she was just about the hottest person Cheryl had ever seen, just as she imagined she would be in the day and morning. Oh, and she was a Gym Leader too, that much she had done her homework on. Cheryl gathered herself for parley, tried not to wince at the pine nuts in her boots, and said, "Cheryl Post, independent reporter. Might you tell me where I could find him?"

The woman examined the photograph Cheryl handed her with a stupefied smile. "You actually just missed him. He and his sister went on their way from here only yesterday."

"Oh, that's fine." Cheryl then turned to the forest and screamed, turning back only when her frustration had finally drained from her voicebox. That entire trip up the forest was for nothing. No man, no meal, no bath, and no… wait. She eyed the woman from her barren fingers up. "Would you like to go out for dinner?"

The woman laughed off the sudden invitation. "Taken, sorry! But I'll keep your offer in mind."

Okay, now it was for nothing. She stomped to a wallpaper motel on the overgrown side of town and set an alarm stricter than all her publishers combined. Others were bound to be clawing for the same story, and she couldn't afford to be a step or a wink behind.

She would chase Blondie to the ends of Kibra if she had to.

Ciel was alive, like the raging water hundreds of meters below that coughed up tingling mist to the bridge. The crystal air bit at him. Every flake of skin from his splitting hands and chapped lips reminded him that he had cells to lose and regrow. He wheezed, he pedaled, he gripped the handles, he kept forward, because he was truly, and undeniably, alive.

"I'm gonna slip and fall if you don't stop shaking the bridge, dork!" shouted his sister. It took swinging all her weight to rebalance her bike each time it tipped, and not because she couldn't ride it. She was a cannonball back in the streets of Goldenrod, easily outpacing other cyclists, Pokémon, and sometimes cars with her low patience for obstacles and lower patience for street signs, but that was on poorly—always poorly—paved roads. Even the most cratered asphalt got better traction than wood that dressed its rotting scars with ice and mud.

"S-Sorry!" He was facing his own ordeal and trying to keep his movement to a minimum, really his only option with only a single functional arm to balance. The gaps in the logs became chatter between his teeth.

At the end of the bridge crossing, a mountain rose from the canyon to reunite with them, and he lept off to confirm that the solid ground wasn't just a creation of his frazzled mind. Laina chose her face instead of her feet for a more intimate measure.

They sucked in clouded breaths together. He told her, "When I say, 'hey, I researched the route and found the safest path up the mountain', I usually mean something by it."

"Shut it. We got here, didn't we? And it was way faster," she replied.

"Missing a pretty obvious point here."

She sat up and explored the contents of her bag, filled with trip supplies they grabbed before they left. "I'm surprised you wanted to head up towards Veilstone so soon."

"Wanted to get out after being cooped up," he reasoned to himself.

Every time he saw her, she was glowing. At him. She'd quickly pretend there were more interesting sights, and there were tons, so it puzzled him why he continued to magnetize her eyes.

Apparently deciding that this was their stopping point on this leg of the trip, Laina unceremoniously flipped her bag on its head and spilled its contents onto the snow. As well, she removed her hair band and let red fall around her ears, which he'd recommended to help keep warm.

"I know that face," she said, reading his introspection. "You're thinking about things."

"Hey, not all of us are blessed with such gifts," he said in Johtoan. She huffed at him, and he watched the gears turn in her head just a bit slower than his speaking speed. "I think I want to do some training."

She didn't bother to conceal the glow. "Really?"

She told him she didn't even like Pokémon battling, but when she looked so genuinely happy, he didn't feel up to questioning it and crushing her smile. He was a little put off by it all, in truth. The stares, the overt politeness, the unnecessary distance she put between their bikes on the way up Route 211. She was acting like everything was moments away from collapse if it wasn't treated with stiff care.

He shook some nasty thoughts out of his ears. Keep it together.

It felt like there was a dusty century between him and his last training session. Ciel cleared away some snow with his boot and plopped himself in a cold, horrible puddle. He hesitated in withdrawing his notebook from his bag and slipped it right back where it belonged. The last few pages, he knew he couldn't read them, so he didn't see much point in trying.

A flash atop a nearby spire revealed a battle already in progress, from the two of his Pokémon that were already active. The world's canvas was brushed in chiaroscuro, Raven brushing white against Brisa's black slashes. His partner hopped clear of the hill, easily leaping to another outcropping, to avoid an obviously telegraphed divebomb. She didn't offer the courtesy of fighting back and it was all the more humiliating, to the point that she was playing the instrument of Brisa's frustrated squawks.

His mind went to his notes. Brisa still hadn't come to recognize that blowing out her lungs before each attack only prepared her opponents to counter, and no matter how many times he'd offered the rational approach to her, she always spat in his face—sometimes literally.

Then again, her predictability was in itself unpredictable. Her foes could easily fall into a rhythm by underestimating her, and any one trip would send their cultivated routine sprawling. If she could only learn enough finesse to lead her partner in the ballroom, she could be a real heartbreaker once their feet began to move. It was a note for later, at least.

Brisa reared up again and screamed, urging Ciel to cover his eyes in shame. She dove and clawed the air, and he watched for the embarrassing slam through his fingers. For some reason, though, Raven went slack. She wobbled on the mountainside and the uninterrupted tackle sent her tumbling limp down the mountain.

"Raven!" Ciel maximized a Poké Ball and released Mantis to the clearing. His wings calibrated flight parameters to the wind speed, temperature, and air pressure, and then he launched on Ciel's command.

He caught Raven halfway down the mountain and descended with her gently in his pincers. He set her down in the snow and Ciel rushed to her side.

She was bruised all over from the slide and breathing heavily. It was all interspersed with more jerks and spasms, and she couldn't even control the muscles in her neck enough to nuzzle into his hand.

Wordlessly, he proceeded through patching her up from some bandages and potions he'd bought before leaving Eterna. They dulled the pain enough to draw her breathing down, but it wasn't her only problem.

Laina hovered overhead. "Is she… okay?"

"I don't know. She was stable at the Center, but it keeps coming back." He swallowed the contents of his dry throat. "I think it's getting worse."

"But there's nothing wrong with her, still?"

He shook his head and tried to hide how much it unsettled him. "Nothing vets can identify."

"Let me take care of her! You go train with your other ones. I can deliver, uhh, first aid!

Though he was hesitant—and still weirded out by her aggressive positivity—he didn't have much in the way of options. He called Mantis back over so they could set up, glancing at Raven every so often as if she might slip away.

Ciel admired his Scizor's unarmored shoulder for a moment. It was the result of a permanent injury past his juvenile stage which left most of his chest and his right arm defenseless. They learned to be optimistic about it. Blemished asymmetry meant he could manipulate his own uneven weight distribution to build momentum, and that was worth far more than what nature planned for him.

"We really should send you back to Brent sometime, huh?" he asked. The sudden realization that he was holding joint custody of a child—with the worse ruling—drew a snort through his lungs. The creature didn't outright agree with his notion or his unsaid joke, not that he usually could convey that anyway, but he certainly didn't recoil. "Wouldn't want to keep you from your mate if I don't have to. So, let's make this a good one before you head back, right?"

Afterwards he expelled Arden from stasis, who was barely awake in comparison. Standing painfully stiff and with no heat erupting from his neck, he fell into his position across the way. Routine, and nothing more. The sight of his fur made him hesitate.

It was… gray. In a few select patches, it was actually a berry purple. Ciel maneuvered around him to take in his slumping form, and Arden never once met his eyes.

"So, is he like, purple now?" asked Laina, still pouring over Raven with medicine and affection.

"And his fur is getting curly," he replied.

"Why?"

"I… have no clue."

His Pokedex app was only oriented towards Johto-native Pokémon, because info like that was arm-and-a-leg expensive and he was eternally thankful his mother went that far to prepare him for his trip in Johto. So he couldn't get more info on this unless he found it in his analog bestiary, and it'd take him forever to translate. Unlike Raven, it didn't visibly impair him in any way, so he hypothesized a weird molting and marked it as a note for later.

The Typhlosion lit up weak flames. They were supposed to emerge from the back of his neck, but one stray flame looked like it was sprouting from his collarbone. Mantis across the way was prepared for a fight, but Ciel grabbed Arden by the paw and pulled him away. There was a coldness beneath his fur and an emptiness in his eyes.

"No, Arden." He held in his breath, trying not to breach a subject he wasn't ready for. "I'll just set you up doing more exercises for Thunder Punch. I don't think I want to put you against Mantis."

Mantis had faced his share of Fire-type moves before. A risky decision against Clair of Blackthorn Village is ultimately what earned him his Legend Badge and Challenge Sigil, but he was willing then to risk the critical Type weakness because they'd immobilized her Turtonator to prevent it from doing much harm. This shouldn't have been any different, really. But everything was different now.

Instead, he offered his Lilligant from the digital red. Mint was her name. Laina told that to him on the trip, and with a firm and egotistical denial of constructive criticism, it was decided. Ciel couldn't determine what fruits or seeds or flowers her air resembled, even as its sweetness and tang danced all around him. It certainly wasn't mint, that much was certain.

Laina helped Raven to the edge of the clearing, pulled out some homework that she would only pretend to glance at, and waited. Raven awkwardly curled up and tucked in her spasming paws, also focusing on him.

"Well, uhh," Ciel looked around his team, "I guess we'll get started."

Without any language training, he wouldn't make much progress trying to command Mint directly. Instead, he took Mantis as his perspective, and ordered with the intent of learning more about his new teammate.

"Metal Claw," he ordered from his spot on the ground.

Mantis powered up his left pincer, crossed the distance with a boost from his wings, and threw a haymaker towards empty air as she twirled away, trailing sparkles. A second try was no more successful as the dancer's moves melted like liquid around each strike. She was fast for barely coming up to Ciel's waist.

After juking another attack, she tossed a puff of spores from somewhere within her petal gown, completely painting Mantis's torso. His joints locked stiff, and she was free to continue gyrating to the beat of her personal drum.

"Stun spore," he said, feeling a tingle the wind carried to his nose and writing it on a fresh page. Then, he repeated it again for association. "Stun Spore!"

Although fluency was widely preferred for Pokémon to work best alongside their Trainers—and best accomplished by someone smarter than him—simple conditioning was effective enough for main battle commands and helped recently wild Pokémon get a head-start on language. By repeating the command after she used a move, she'd come to link the two sounds, priming her for solo Training sessions where he could directly reward her for meeting his orders.

"Bullet Punch, Mantis!" Ciel called.

His Scizor shot across the arena, shrugging off his paralysis temporarily to drive a closed pinser into Mint's body. She bounced along the ground before rolling to a stop, and after brushing her dress free of debris, took back up her dance routine as if nothing had happened at all.

Ciel noticed the swirling particles. It wasn't just the natural emission of her oddly-reflective body—Mint was releasing runoff with each of her dances.

Quiver Dance! He had a few notes about natural moves jotted down in his explorations of the Pokémon. So far, she'd only used status moves, not yet taking the offensive. At first he began to wonder if she even knew any combat moves at all, but after a direct hit Slash tore some of the cellulose off her chest, she proved him wrong.

She shined.

Mantis, Ciel, and everyone else in the clearing were blinded by the sudden flash. All of it concentrated ahead of Mint in a glob of pure sunlight, which burst like a supernova and showered Mantis in bit after endless bit of solar power. The increased power flow brought about by Quiver Dance meant even Mantis's resistant Steel typing couldn't stand firm under the onslaught, and though his clatter on the rocky ground wasn't visible, it was audible.

The moment Ciel's eyes started seeing more colors than white again, he flipped through his copy of the ESM for answers. It couldn't be the now-classed-as-Light-type Solar Beam because it didn't require a charge period. Flash wasn't offensive like that, and Signal Beam wasn't nearly as chaotic.

"Sunburst," he read from a paragraph, tracing it with his finger just to keep his spot-seeing eyes on track. "What was previously assumed to be a variation of Solar Beam that metabolized internal reserves rather than external sunlight is actually a separate move in its entirety, expressed as an imprecise burst of Light-type energy that's effective in battle for close-range damage and also employed in the wild to summon dispersed members of a social group, similar to a signal flare."

Content after mentally logging Mint's use of the move, and distracted from the battle by the tangent, he watched Arden in his training exile. Like before, he built up static on the fur of his arms, and then he punched the air like he was expecting something to happen. He was still no closer to natural discharge than before, which wasn't too unexpected. It took Raven a solid month or two of continuous work to learn Psychic-type energy for Psycho Cut, and that was with his dad's help.

His weak flails lost focus fast. Though Arden tried to keep himself invested in his training, he was so quickly drained of energy that he merely dropped and stared at the snow. His neck flames were burnt out.

Ciel found himself unable to return attention anywhere useful. Mint and Mantis threw moves at each other. Bullet Punch, Iron Head, X-Scissor met with Energy Ball, Quiver Dance, and Sunburst. It was all exciting. They were learning to dance in pairs. But a lump grew in his throat that was getting hard to ignore, as he looked around at his Pokémon—including Brisa watching indignantly on a high ledge—and kept noticing the negative space. Raven was seeing it too.

"Ciel?" Laina had wandered over and left her papers behind, just like he predicted. "You good?"

He was shaking. It wasn't from the cold. "I can't keep this up. I'm trying to act like everything is back to normal. But it's not."

His arm swayed in its cast, reinforced to prevent additional damage. The doctor told him that the re-fracturing he experienced tore his muscles to shreds. Ciel couldn't even feel it, so dulled on a mixer of nerve damage, exhaustion, and painkillers that spared him the agony.

It was a perfect symbol. Ciel tried to ignore it, tried to send his brain every which way but there, yet he still couldn't escape it. Not carrying it wasn't an option, and it weighed a ton no matter what, just like the Trainer Card in his pocket and the empty slot on his boot clip.

He couldn't ignore Raven's condition either. After Floaroma, her sickness lingered. Each lazy hop was a hollow echo of the muscle beneath her fur and her gallant mind for battle. She didn't refuse to fight not because it pissed Brisa off, though that was probably a bonus, but because she simply couldn't fight like she used to. He might have to bench her for good if this kept up, but he was imagining the worst-case scenario—that this was temporary.

If he wasn't convinced before, he was certain now: it was her disaster sense. On the plane and during an anxious crisis, it had abated and allowed her to fight. But every time it returned, like in Floaroma, and something else followed. Disaster was everywhere.

If something happened again?

When it happened again?

He had no delusions he could act the part of the hero.

Laina met his stupor with begging eyes and a bit of her lower lip. Ciel rubbed off whatever mist he was leaking and said, "Sorry. I know you probably want to talk about anything else."

She threw herself to her knees and sputtered an objection at eye-level. "No! No. No! Just keep doing whatever, uhh, keep that up. Keep doing that."

Watching her trip over syllables like speed bumps twisted his brain matter so much he couldn't do what she wanted. He had to suppress a depressive laugh with a fist, hoping he'd learned enough performance arts from Zuki to convincingly act like it was a hiccup. Laina just fumbled with every part of herself.

"Ciel, pal, bro, guy," she started, like she opened her mouth too early and was stalling for a direction. "I want to know more about you."

He froze. That was putting him way too much on the spot. "I like watching nature documentaries?"

"Yeah, you would."

"Hey."

"No, I mean, you've told me all these things, all these adventures and whatever you do. You battle with Pokémon and you… fight crime? I guess?" He felt personally connected to her pint-sized struggle. Talking was hard. "And isn't that who you are?"

"I guess. But more so it just kind of happened this way."

"Right! Right," she exclaimed, waving a pointed finger at him to convince herself that she understood. "That's not it. There's more. And you have specific filos— philopos— attitude about it? Do you get what I'm saying?"

"I have absolutely no clue."

She grabbed the sides of her head and screamed into her own closed lips. It would've been pathetic if she wasn't such an adorable baby.

"Like, I just wanna figure out why you do the things you do. I think it's why I came with you on the trip, just to hang out with you more. I've known you my whole life and somehow I—"

He watched her fold in on herself. There seemed to be so much more she wanted to ask, so much he couldn't tell her, but she narrowed it down to one, pathetic plea.

"I feel like a stranger."

Ciel felt his heart shatter at the image in her eyes. How many years had he lived with his own father, not speaking, not laughing, not caring, before he finally grew the courage to want his life to change? He knew what it felt like to know someone just enough—to understand that he'd never really met them at all.

He couldn't put her through that and lose something else he thought would last forever.

Ciel clapped a gloved hand on his thigh, releasing a puff of snow from particles. He drew a smile on his face so poor it was like he'd never held a paintbrush before. "Alright. What do you want to know?"

She pondered for only a second. "Teach me how to catch a Pokémon. You kept leaving me at camp when you were out training, so I never saw anything."

"You think training is stupid," he said, bluntly.

"Yeah. But you don't."

Ciel shifted his leg from beneath himself and braved looking at the empty Poké Ball clip. He wasn't ready to fill that empty space but hearing the conviction in her voice helped him to stash that notion for just a little while.

He was doing this for her. Her, and everyone he could still make smile. No matter what, he couldn't let go of that.

Ciel hobbled to his feet, getting enough momentum by pushing off his good arm to put him upright. He gathered his bike, called his Pokémon, and made sure his jacket was zipped up tight. "Come on. We'll find more wilds further up Mt. Coronet."

Phew! I decided to just not wait and publish this chapter as soon as I was able, even though I was only finally able to reformat this story on this site yesterday. I realize it may cause a few mistakes, like people missing elements of Volume 13, but I just wanted it to be up to speed with what I'm currently working on.

Anyway, I actually didn't like this chapter much when I initially wrote it, but it grew on me as I reread it because of the banter and understanding between the Fauder siblings. It really does feel like it reconverges Ciel and Laina after chapters of turmoil, and there's more to come.

Thanks for reading, and come back next time for Volume 14, Part 2: Homeschooling. See you someday!