Sol was being very careful not to look to her right. Left wasn't much better. Through the glass on her left was a room where the Pokémon of the local police department went about their business, consulting with their fellows or working independently at their desks. Eevee was in there, near the back, seated in front of one of the many desks.

Something was off about this whole thing. As clueless as Sol was feeling, even she could tell without a doubt that this was being blown way out of proportion. Did a scuffle at a museum really warrant them being dragged down to the station? Really, by the time the officers had arrived all the fighting was long done with it was nothing more than a bunch of idiots screaming at each other. They immediately focused their attention on the Flareon, seeming certain that he was behind the whole thing. Sol didn't have a problem letting them think that. But then they got a better look at Eevee. Then the two of them were the criminals shamelessly harassing a group of Riolu from the clans.

Two hours later and the story still wasn't completely straight no matter how loudly Sol protested that no, Eevee wasn't a criminal and why the hell would anyone think that? Well, yeah, he had started the fight unprovoked, but it wasn't like they knew that!

Looking left pissed Sol off. Looking right felt like giving up. So she kept her gaze focused forwards with a few glances left to keep her anger at just the right level to fend off the sick feeling steadily growing in her gut.

Sol had made her decision in the Shaymin Village, something that was much more difficult than it should have been but she had felt much better after it was done. She had thought it was done with but new clauses had rendered her previous decison void and she hated the idea of having to go through the whole process again.

An officer approached to speak with the person sitting on Sol's right. Sol gripped the armrests of her chair like someone trying to squeeze out the last bit of toothpaste from the tube. No one in Pokémon Square wanted trouble with the Lucario clans and everyone here was bending over backwards to appeal to their defacto representative. Sol was doing her best to ignore everything happening on her right, but little phrases broke through her mental wall and were churned up with her already chaotic thoughts. When she heard herself assumed to be a Cheynin she ground her teeth hard enough to cause herself pain. When she heard Eevee referred to as a thug from a family of thugs, she felt her stomach churn and nausea rise. When no one immediately corrected any of this Sol began to feel dizzy. When she realized that she hadn't immediately piped up to correct any of this she was hit with a feeling of lightheadedness and her surroundings became nothing more then colours bleeding into each other and a buzzing in the back of her skull.

It wasn't until a few moments later after running for the nearest trashcan followed by lying on the floor until the spinning stopped that Sol considered that maybe those events were unrelated.

...

Eevee wanted to join an exploration team for as long as he could remember. He had said that to Sol, his guild mates, his friends, to anyone who asked him about why he had joined the guild. It was a lie. It was a long time ago when he was just a little kid, the memories a little foggy and incomplete, but they were there.

He remembered playing in the street with the neighborhood kids, the surge of excitement he felt when he heard someone call "Hey, Vee!" from behind him. It always made Eevee important when his brother came to find him. Someone bigger and older than him wanted to hang out and Eevee was sure the other kids had to be impressed. "E!" he would call back and run to meet him. What would happen after that ranged from skipping rocks at the pond to shoplifting at the market. E always decided, not that it mattered to Eevee. He happily went along with whatever his older brother wanted. Eevee was just happy to be there.

He remembered his father, the coolest person in the world. He let Eevee do anything he wanted, laughed whenever Eevee accidentally broke a neighbor's window or got caught stealing, and never got mad at him for anything. He would tell the brothers stories of things that happened during his job at a bar outside of town, of the brawls and shifty trades and how only tough guys like him could last there for long. Eevee believed every word of it and often felt envious of his brother who actually got to live with Dad. Sure, their home was small and often messy, but no one ever told E to do chores or when his bed time was.

Eevee's mother did not approve of him spending time with that side of his family. She tried to limit the time Eevee spent with them, called him into the house and made up chores to keep him from playing with E, and whenever the two got in trouble she would outright ban the brothers from hanging around each other.

"Eevee, listen to me," she would say. She was the only one who called him that. To everyone else he was Vee and his brother was E, the two sharing a name but finding some way to make them different. "There are people out there just waiting for you turn out just like your father. They expect you to be rotten and you have to be careful that that never happens. You have a good soul, Eevee, and I don't want anything to spoil that, least of all that boy."

Eevee didn't see how being like his father was anything but a good thing. Dad was the best and coolest and no one told him what to do. Eevee also didn't understand how she could dislike E that much. She only ever called him 'that boy', always looked at him with the same distateful stare. Was it all because she didn't like Dad?

"You had to like him before," Eevee said once.

"Falling for someone is different and than falling for a person's charm," was her reply.

Eevee hadn't understood what she meant nor did he see what she saw. He wanted to be exactly like his father and follow in his footprints in every way possible. Whenever anyone asked him what he wanted to evolve into, Eevee would proudly declare "An Umbreon!". And then he would look at his father and see the amused glint in his red eyes and the smirk on his lips, or at his mother and her weary expression though she never tried to convince him to evolve into anything else. It wasn't like he could take after her and become an Absol.

The thing Eevee remembered the clearest about that time in his life, however, was the day his brother evolved. It was late in the day, almost dusk, and Eevee knew he didn't have much time before his mother called him back inside for the night. He wasn't allowed outside after dark. He was in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek with the other kids on his street when, like so many times before that day, he heard someone call "Hey, Vee!".

The voice had a lilt to it that was unfamiliar to Eevee and carried a level of smugness that E had never reached before. Red, orange and yellow, the Flareon strutting down the street looked like a candle flame fighting off the approaching night. It took a moment for it to click in Eevee's mind. E had known for just as long as Eevee had what he wanted to be when he evolved. That side of the family was filled with Umbreons and Flareons and both of the brothers were happy to continue the tradition.

"E! You evolved!" Eevee exclaimed and ran up to him. He had known it was coming, E had been trying for months, but to a child the world is a static place and every change is something that happens in a distant future that is expected but never comes.

E shook himself and his fur glowed sunrise golden. He wasn't looking at Eevee, instead grinning at the group of kids that had forgotten their game and were now staring.

"It's Adren now," he said with that same smugness that would become his constant companion. He wasn't an Eevee anymore so of course he would choose an adult name. Eevee felt embarrassed to have forgotten that.

As it always was, it took exactly no effort to for Eevee to be convinced into following his brother into trouble.

Sorry for the long wait. After several rewrites and fiddling with this chapter it's finally finished.

In other news, I just finished the main game of Super Mystery Dungeon. It was a good game and I liked it, but did anyone else have a serious sense of deja vu while playing it? It kind of felt like they took Gates to Infinity and mashed in some Explorers of Sky. This game also gave me trust issues and whiplash (how many times can characters switch sides?! Is he a villain? A hero? I sure don't know!)