Chapter 13

Victor was still at the stage of examining everything that Yang's scroll thing was capable of. In so many ways it was obscenely more versatile than anything else he'd ever gotten his hands on.

When he'd been transferred to work with Professor Oak he wasn't expecting he'd run into anything like this. The professor had just needed an electronics expert to help him do the finishing touches to the first model of pokédex, and start brainstorming what changes they wanted to implement when it went beyond the prototype stage. A brilliant man, and he had a nice idea, but technology wasn't his specialty.

As fun as it was tinkering with the prototype pokédexes, that was all he absolutely needed to do here. Oak just didn't have the facilities for anything too in-depth. Just make sure everything worked and fit properly, make sure they were using the storage space as best as they could, and then transfer over to the Cerulean lighthouse for the item transference project.

But then Yang showed up out of nowhere, the item transference project was on indefinite hold, and he was doing everything he could outside of taking the thing apart to see how it worked.

The memory storage on it was insane, somewhere in the several gigabyte range at least. That beat out the few dozen megabytes of the dex by far. The number of pictures alone, much less the text files, and even games with 'very' stunning graphics would have overloaded over a dozen pokedexes. And that was what he could tell at a glance. He had no idea how much space all that really took up, or what the upper limits the device's processing power looked like.

There was a camera on the back. Small lense, certainly had to be since the whole scroll could seem to slide into itself for easier storage. Guess that was why Yang called it a scroll, not a tablet or some other rigid flat surface. And while a very expensive professional camera could probably get more detail than the one on the scroll, it beat the cheap cameras with ease.

Not much he could do to check how the wireless connection worked. He couldn't even begin to guess what kind of signals it would try to receive. Hell, he just barely had a handle on how its battery received energy.

Sure, get the right kind of wire and plug it into a wall and that would get the job done, though he'd had to jury-rig an adaptor and attach 'that' to the convenient charger the scroll came with. And he had no idea just how much electricity it consumed. But when he didn't have it plugged in then after extended periods of time it somehow kept a steady stream of power. Though he would get an inexplicable amount of fatigue..unless there was a pokemon present. Or even just a few people in the same room. So, it somehow drew energy from anything surrounding it, somehow wasn't even noticeable if there were two humans or a pokemon but very noticeable if he was alone for an hour with it..

It was just so 'alien', even the touch-screen interface was fascinating to him. A corner of his brain wondered why something so remarkably advanced still had a recognizable language that he could read, but the rest of him wanted to see what else he could find out about it before he grabbed a screwdriver and started examining its physical insides. Hell, he was worried that when he got to 'that' stage he'd do something to screw up a critical piece in an irreparable way.

With his pokemon Dunglord out and about to keep himself from being drained, he was trying to jury rig a wire to try connecting the device to a desktop computer. Sure, he didn't have any software to try doing anything from one machine to another, but he'd noticed a small port that wasn't connected with power. And maybe he was wrong but it 'might' have been a more secure way to transfer data than a wireless connection.

Not that he had the right kind of wire on hand for that sort of thing. Hell, he doubted 'anyone' did. So he had Dunglord stick his mucky finger into that socket as part of making a mold he could either do something with himself or get someone else to make something less messy. Victor was pretty sure that if Yang saw that happen she'd have been disgusted. But she wasn't, and since she gave him the password in order to play around with her scroll and didn't even give it a second look when she hit the road..

Something caught his ear as he was trying to figure out if he 'could' actually make anything using the mold he'd cleverly gotten or if he'd have to call someone at Silph to custom make a wire that might not even work the way he wanted even if it fit the port perfectly. Buzzing, like something plastic vibrating against a wooden surface. The buzzing was soon followed by..music.

He wasn't even paying attention to the song, something about burning. He just stared dumbly at the screen. It was also a phone. On top of everything else it was capable of, it could call people. A wireless phone. That was currently ringing.

Picking it up, his eyes skimmed the background image, a pair of crossed axes and some leaves, then focused on two bars on the bottom.

[Refuse]

[Answer]

He poked answer. No response, it just kept ringing. Ah, another of those sliding things. Should he go up or..ah, so it didn't matter what direction so long as he dragged his finger, okay then.

The screen was then consumed by a pair of familiar faces, the red headed girl and blond haired man who were in a number of pictures.

The man looked a combination of ecstatic and disappointed. Understandable. On one hand Victor had absolutely no idea how there was any connection at all. The fact that a call had come through had to be a miracle. On the other, there was absolutely no way an unkempt scientist man was going to be confused for a very muscular, long blonde haired girl.

The red headed girl, however, didn't let anything bring her down. "Hello!"

And Victor was himself was more fascinated by the fact he was somehow having a video call with so much detail his cutting edge computer wouldn't have been able to throw down that many pixels, and there didn't seem to be any lag. Even if he had months to consider he wouldn't have been able to decide what was more mind blowing. He didn't even see a camera on the screen side of the thing, but they could clearly see him. "Um, hi?"

And here it was. Yang had somehow managed to make it to the final match of the tournament. Granted, it wasn't anything all that brag worthy, she was just a spectator. But good god, definitely felt awkward when you're the only person in a stadium with tens of thousands of people who just didn't feel into the show.

Still, she felt at least a little sorry for Katsumi. Poor kid got all the way to the semifinals and got taken down by some girl named Candezia. That Azul kid from the start was eliminated by her in the previous round, and that was with a type disadvantage. Funny how this tournament was showing her that even when the odds were against you, if you were smart then you could overcome it.

Not that Yang felt like an idiot, she did reasonably well in class and had enough technical knowhow to both build her gauntlets and keep her bike in good shape. She just had the distinct feeling that her brand of intelligence was a bit..iffy to apply here.

Now it was down to Candezia and Masamune. In terms of fighting styles, Cand felt pretty good. No complicated orders or micromanaging, just some quick yells and letting her team fight for themselves. Kind of a shame she wasn't audible. Still, it's not like too many people in the audience at the Vale festival could hear what the participants were saying. Probably a good thing with some of the frustrated or enthusiastic cussing that went around.

Masamune was solid but not quite as good as a leader, taking more time to say what he wanted done and occasionally correcting one of his team mid-attack. So far he hadn't run into anyone who could make him pay for that, but she had a feeling that might come into play here. Still, in terms of leadership they'd both left all the competition in the dust. And again Yang couldn't help wondering how Ruby would have held up in something like this. Give her maybe two months and she'd probably do better than people who'd been at it for years at the very least.

In terms of team composition, Cand had some issues. Two fires, one of which was also a fighting type, and a ground/poison. Whereas Masa had a psychic, a dragon/ice with water moves, and a steel. Fire beat steel type, understandable considering how metals were easier to reshape in a forge, and it beat ice. But shouldn't melted ice beat fire? Water beats fire, obvious and easy to remember, and beats ground for some reason. When she thought of mud she didn't imagine the water or dirt really "won" anything, it just looked like a mess. Psychic beating fighting made sense, but why poison too? Why was dragon weak to either itself or ice? Did the two type thing mean it was now resistant to ice? She probably 'should' have been asking these questions to the old man, but it felt like such basic knowledge that she'd probably come across as an idiot!

Part of her wanted to root for Masamune. He'd been fun to talk to, even if some hallucination of Blake convinced her to try. And yeah, that still felt creepy, but she was almost 'hoping' some other phantom would show up to drive her to do something. It's not like she had the energy to do anything other than barebones essentials since..

Taking another moment to glance at Phyllis and Duncan, she could barely hold in her sigh. Yeah, the two of them were still pretty enraptured by the tournament. Phyllis was practically vibrating in place, eager to see the final match. And while Duncan was more restrained, he had gotten a 'lot' closer to the window, as if the extra few feet would somehow give him a better view. Not that she could blame them. It's not like they'd seen better. Hell, she'd been pretty enraptured by the Vytal festival before she'd been put under house arrest, the city was attacked, and holy shit was she getting sick of 'thinking' about that.

And the old man, who Yang should 'really' have figured out the name of by now, was grinning near constantly. She could practically see memories zipping through his head, probably tournaments he'd gone through earlier in life. Glorious victories, instructive defeats, friends made and rivalries burning strong. He'd had fewer and fewer critiques of the competitors the closer to the end they got, coinciding with the increasing intensity and skill shown.

So it was positively infuriating to Yang that she couldn't get into it. Hell, she'd felt more interested in the weapon conventions Ruby occasionally dragged her to when they were growing up. Though that probably had to do with the fact Yang was at least peripherally interested in it all. Sure, Ruby was far more into all the little details but Yang 'was' planning to be a huntress, and she 'was' proud of Ember Celica.

Not that she had her gauntlets anymore. One of them was downright gone with her right arm, and who knew where either of those were? The other was back at Oak's place. There just..didn't feel like there was a point bringing it when she only had the one and none of her dust shells did anything for some reason. Hell, there wasn't even anything to warrant shooting at, anyway.

If nothing else, watching the various matches had convinced her that yes, despite all the "monsters" around, there was very little to be afraid of. Seeing a massive rock snake thing collapse because a literal fish out of water spat twice its own bodyweight at the behemoth made it tough to feel intimidated. Granted, she didn't really know what it would be like to personally fight most of these things..not that she could ever fight at her best again.

Yang gave herself a phantom slap to the face with her nonexistent arm. It didn't cause any noise, didn't attract any attention, though it probably wasn't the best habit to get into. It was almost like she was having a harder and harder time paying attention to the things around her. Was that because the newness of everything was growing thin, or her depression was getting worse?

If anyone asked her for a play by play of the match, Yang wouldn't have been able to tell them much of anything. It was close, Masamune got the first elimination, Candezia got the second and third, then it was down to their last one and Cand got the win. But she couldn't remember the names of the creatures, not with the absurd amount of other information piling up on her. Didn't remember any of the specific moves, or what she and the old man said while it happened.

She couldn't find it in her to care that the guy she'd talked to lost. Or even that the tournament was over. She just wanted to get all the little things that felt absolutely necessary done, eat dinner, and then get to sleep. She didn't even want to think about what she'd do when she woke up.

Another workout routine with Phyllis and Duncan, something she'd convinced herself she 'needed' to do so she wouldn't get into any habit of ignoring the little guys. Yang was doing one handed push-ups with Phyllis on her back, Duncan was looping from under Yang at her highest point to over a tree branch about ten feet up while carrying about three pounds, and Phyllis was alternating between shooting those leech seed things at a hand drawn bullseye and tagging the weight Duncan had with her vines.

Again, Yang had absolutely no idea if this sort of thing was all that acceptable around here as pokémon training, or if it was doing any of them any good at all. At the very least at this point she was sure nobody was going to just walk up to her and say she was somehow failing her little buddies. It just didn't feel like the kind of training thing that would have translated all that well into a tournament environment.

Not that she was in any way interested in actually participating in a tournament like that. Not even if some hallucination of Pyrrha showed up and tried to drag her into it. Though she certainly wouldn't mind if Pyrrha was around to give that Kenshin guy a humbling and show him how a 'real' champ..

The sound of someone clapping cut off her thoughts, though she didn't let it slow down her push-ups. It didn't sound like a sarcastic clap, not at that speed. Apparently her two buddies decided that was as good a reason as any to stop their own exercises to turn and see who was clapping.

Masamune's voice came after the clapping was done. "Wow. Think I'm breaking a sweat just watching you."

Yang chuckled a little at that. "Well, the more you sweat, the less likely you'll bleed later."

He smiled in return. "There's probably a very interesting story behind that."

Not really. It was just a generic thing one of the teachers at Signal liked to say when trying to motivate some of the lazier students. The only reason 'she' said it was because she couldn't find it in her to playfully flirt. "Maybe. Nice job making it to the finals, by the way."

Whatever worry she had about him taking that the wrong way disappeared when he just shrugged. "Yeah, that last match was fun. Could have gone either way, I got some good moves in, and that girl had plenty of surprises for me. I just wish the other matches felt as challenging."

Part of Yang wanted to point out his 'team' pulled some good moves, not Masamune personally. Then she imagined the average trainer going hand to hand with a fire throwing monkey. Yeah, that would get messy fast. Yet somehow the mental image of Blake dodging fireballs and lightning was several times more awesome than anything else she'd imagined since coming here. "I know what you mean. After a while, knocking down someone with ease stops feeling awesome and just makes you feel like a glorified bully."

Of course then Yang started to wonder if it was really a good thing if the person she was most comfortable talking to so far wasn't getting the whole truth. He was definitely under the impression she was just another trainer, didn't have any idea what a huntress was. But because she was keeping things 'just' vague enough that it 'felt' like they had more in common, it made the differences stick out more in her mind.

What made it worse was he couldn't tell there was any disconnect. He just filled in the blanks. "Yeah. I get that some of these people haven't been trainers for long, or have other obligations that make it tough to get their skills up, but still. It's more fun to take on someone close to your level, where it isn't absurdly one sided."

Did Blake ever feel guilty about lying like this? If she didn't, did that make it wrong for Yang to feel that way? "It can get pretty tough trying to tell before you really get into it, though. There was this pair of twins I ended up running into, so seamlessly coordinated it was freaky. But get 'em one on one and they felt like they barely knew what they were doing."

"Coordinated as in a dance routine?"

"Nope. Coordinated fighting, though they 'were' kind of dressed as dancers so maybe that as well?"

"Huh, so a two on one match. Sounds pretty bold of you."

"Yeah. I could keep pace with both of them at once. Not too sure I could take either of them one on one 'now', but.."

Yang wasn't sure what was more depressing, the fact that she had an easier time talking to this guy than her bookworm of a partner right off the bat or the fact that she sounded like a washed up old woman. She wasn't even twenty yet, it should be completely physically impossible to feel this 'tired'. Was tired even the right word when it had nothing to do with your muscles?

"Yeah, I kind of noticed your pokémon look pretty fresh. Like you haven't had them for more than a month. If you don't mind me asking, does it have anything to do with.."

He gestured to her arm stump, and she couldn't help giving a laugh completely devoid of humor. It was only a matter of time before someone asked about that. "Yeah."

She didn't say anything more, and he didn't have anything to say in response. What 'could' be said after that? At most his lone eye had a combination of sympathy and understanding. Yang wasn't sure how much that meant to her. Sure, he lost an eye at some point in his life, probably a very traumatic event. But she lost her 'home', her friends and family could even be 'dead' after that disaster and she'd have no way of knowing.

The awkward silence was interrupted by someone politely coughing, drawing Yang's attention to the same guy who escorted her to the VIP lounge at the start of the tournament. He was in a business suit, not the uniform for the officials, but it didn't make her feel any less creeped out. It gave her the impression that 'maybe' that Oak guy was keeping her under observation or something. "Forgive me Ms Xiao Long. An urgent package from Professor Oak has arrived for you, and I was told to bring you to it as quickly as possible."

Half of Yang wanted to be just as cautious as the first time this guy led her somewhere. If this was such an important package, why didn't the guy bring it to her? Why bring her to it? The other half? She wanted to thank the guy's timing. The conversation was about to go in a direction she wasn't really eager to go through, and it was bad enough the kind of crap her head wandered through. No need to get hit by depression from the outside as well if she could help it.

Plastering a smile on her face, she took a quick glance at her little buddies and felt the smile turn more genuine. Duncan was outright pruning himself out of boredom, or maybe an exaggeration of it. Guess he wasn't a fan of the conversation even if he'd been polite enough to not interrupt. Phyllis on the other hand was focused entirely on Yang. Maybe she could sense something was off about the mood, or maybe she was wondering if they'd get back to the exercise routine they'd interrupted.

It was amazing how two completely different attitudes could spark the same warm feelings in her. Finally stopping her pushups, Yang got to her feet and said, "Right. Guess it's time to go."

Masamune didn't seem all that bummed out she was leaving, though he asked, "Are you 'always' going to get pulled away by this guy?"

It felt a bit forced, but Yang still found it in her to make a joke. "Oh I hope not. Maybe next time it'll be a new guy, or a bunch of girls."

The paranoid part of Yang couldn't really feel that worried anymore when she was led to a residential area. Some apartment buildings about five stories high on one side of the street, some two story houses on the other. Too nice to be a slum, not nice enough to be considered a fancy area.

It was still a little iffy when the guy opened the door to one of the houses and held it open for her. What the hell kind of "package" couldn't be either handed to her back at the park or at a post office? This world 'did' have post offices,right? Or was that just as alien an idea to these people as real danger and guns? Was alien even the right word when the entire world was so bizarre?

She didn't really pay attention to the layout of the house, it seemed pretty normal when she went in. She didn't start relaxing, even when she walked into a room where her scroll was propped up on a table. Okay, weird image she'd never seen before on it, and she wasn't expecting to see the thing again, but..

..huh. For some reason when she walked closer, a text popped up that said [Connection Established]. Then pictures of each member of her team showed up on three corners, clockwise Ruby, Weiss, and Blake. Under each picture was an option to call, and at the center, an option to call all of them at once.

How the hell was there a connection? What was with that background image? And assuming this wasn't the single cruelest prank she'd ever come across..who should she call first?

Walking towards it almost in a daze, she tried angling herself to avoid letting the screen have a good view of her right side. She didn't hear whatever the guy who brought her in said, didn't even register she wasn't alone as her left hand hovered near the screen. She could call..they were..alright? No, just because she had a connection with them, which she hadn't actually confirmed yet, didn't mean they were fine.

It didn't feel right to call everyone at once, she had the distinct feeling the first one she talked to would make her break down. She 'had' to call, yes, both for their sake and her own, but..well, she had always been the 'strong' one for her sister. She tried to be confident and relaxed whenever she wasn't arguing with Weiss. And..oh god, if she called Blake then 'both' of them would be crying, probably incoherent and..well, that sort of mutual breakdown thing was best done in hugging range. Not that she didn't want to call Blake at all, just not 'first'.

So her hand hovered between Ruby and Weiss. Who was the one she wanted to test the connection out on? Who was she most willing to use as a pillar of strength before calling the other two?

Almost before she finished her thought, her finger hit one of them, and the phone started to ring.

Author's Note: Right. It's probably fairly easy to guess who I want Yang to talk to first. As much as I like the idea of Yang getting over her depression and confusion alone in this journey, I couldn't help noticing that I just couldn't find a believable way for her to get her act together on her own. And it didn't feel right for her to latch onto anyone new she met in the new world, either. At least not yet.

For those of you who don't like the fact that I took Blake off the options for first call, please don't construe this as me not liking Bumblebee. Hell, I'm kind of a Pollination shipper, enjoying the idea of the bonds between the entire team (platonic in the case of Ruby and Yang..usually at any rate). Hard to hate the Black and Yellow pair when it's part of the whole web of connections.

But point 1: volume 6 felt downright 'strangled' by the whole Yang/Blake pairing. And not the aspects of it I like where the characters bounce off eachother, contrasting and complementing one another and feeling like a healthy couple that can support and occasionally reign in the other. This was "oh look, drama" where things were suffocatingly tense between them until suddenly they weren't and I couldn't find it in me to give a shit. Meanwhile Yang barely acknowledges her own sister, the Weiss connection from the previous volume felt forgotten, and Blake felt 'more' isolated despite reuniting with her team.

Aside from some of the world building with Salem and Atlas, I felt 'nothing' for what the volume brought to the table. I've read countless Yang/Blake stories that pull it off better, Adam dying felt more like removing an inconvenience than anything that resolved issues with any real weight, and..

..and I should probably drop this line of thought before I go on and on about everything that's pissed me off about the writing as of Volume 4. I still enjoy the characters and world, even if I can't stand the show itself anymore. Sort of like I enjoy the fanfiction of Ranma ½ without actually being able to enjoy watching the anime or read the manga past a certain point.

And point 2, the occasional person has mentioned that they don't like how directionless Yang is. Funnily enough that was one of the reasons I decided to do this fic.

Ruby only ever wanted to be a hero. Weiss wants to honor and clean up her family legacy. Blake wants to remove injustice from the world. Whereas Yang at her best was looking for her mother with no idea what to do if she ever found her. If I threw any of the other three into the Pokémon world, they would try to shift their goals into something that would fit in this new environment, whereas Yang is freefloating at the best of times. And these aren't her best of times.

As much as it's part of her character now and part of the point of this story, it feels like her inability to 'stop' reliving and thinking about what happened to her is slowing things down more than I expected. Sure, it's part of how PTSD works but thirteen chapters of it being the single biggest factor has been getting tiring. Hopefully a phone connection with her team will change things up enough that she isn't just living debris.

By the way, does anyone have any suggestions for actual training for her Pokémon at this point? As someone who usually chooses a fire type and builds my team around that, it's hard for me to visualize how one might raise a bulbasaur and any pokemon meant to compliment it on a team. I'm more used to imagining a team make-up with a charmander since that's what I typically choose whenever I do a game set in Kanto.

We'll see how long it takes for me to pump out the next chapter. Until next time.