9.

Streetlight

Half psychotic, sick, hypnotic
Got my blueprint electronic

Years before, when she was sixteen and still had those bangs and he was twenty-one and stubbly, Candice came to challenge Volkner at his gym. She only had one badge, she told him. She'd never journeyed. Snowpoint City was so cold and isolated the League didn't care as much who became its Gym Leader. The Trainer School was her home. She thought she'd be a teacher. But teaching involved battling, and she loved battling, and Gym Leaders battled a lot, and she could teach on the side, and she'd already finished her studies and was just the girl the gym was looking for when the job opened up, but she didn't feel sure of herself yet, so she needed training, and she'd heard Volkner was tough, like super tough, like you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a real Beacon Badge all polished up and shining in a case…

Volkner rubbed his eyes and took the wrench out from between his teeth, pressing the socket end against her lips to quiet her.

"Do you think you can defeat me?" he asked, chilling her heart with that ultra-blue glare. "If you don't, then it's not worth my time. Go get some other badges."

"Hmph! And what'll you do in the meantime? Just plug away at that machine?"

"Probably."

He was dismissive. She was persistent. And in less than ten minutes she'd dragged him away from the gears and onto the battlefield. Abomasnow's wintry fury froze Raichu right over, but Luxray's lightning speed and stamina were unmatched. Volkner finished her off without breaking a sweat, and despite his lethargy, Candice still drank in everything about him. The solid stance. The practiced, flat-handed gestures. The firm and confident tone of voice. He had the same uncanniness as the former Snowpoint Leader. Did the title have something to do with it? Did it bestow a power? A vibe? Some kind of sixth sense?

"I'm not a real Gym Leader," she muttered when they shook hands and he glanced longingly back toward the stairwell.

"What did you expect? One of us has to lose. I'm not gonna deny you're a Gym Leader. I just won't give you a badge."

"Oh, I knew I wouldn't get one."

He tried jerking away, and she gripped his right hand in both of hers, digging her nails into the stiff gray cuff of his sleeve.

"You're different from other trainers. It's not just that you're tough to beat. You've got this coolness. You battle like you're so much more than your strength or strategy. Tell me about the Gym Leader secret. I don't like feeling lost like this."

Volkner pried her off with his free hand and escorted her to the stairs, pausing only for a stifled yawn. "There's no secret," he told her. "Gym Leaders are people. You try to be a person on the battlefield, not just a robot programmed to win. See, I like talking about robots because when I'm not battling I'm building them. That's what I'm doing upstairs. Call it an obsession of mine. I like tinkering with all sorts of machines."

"Yeah, but the man I just battled was the Shining, Shocking Star, not a tinkerer. Tell me why you look so cool when you do that arm-sweep thing. Or how you and Luxray move as one!"

"Just a lot of training, I guess. I really gotta get back to work now… "

"Don't tell me the Shining, Shocking Star of Sunyshore thinks twisting wrenches is more fun than his own gym battles. You might as well give out badges for free then."

He sighed at the accusation, shuffling his feet as they made their way through another darkened hallway.

"This isn't exactly a job where you have fun all the time. You're gonna get tired, you're gonna get sore, you're gonna win back-to-back-to-back until you've hit the ceiling. You're gonna have that one incredible soul-food battle and then spend a month wondering if it mattered when all the challengers afterward don't stand a chance. But your spark's still inside you. It tells you there's a reason why you stay where you are and you actually like doing what you do. You're the Shining, Shocking Star of Sunyshore. And you're losing your mind."

"Well, sorry I came on the wrong day, you dark and brooding mystery man."

He shrugged, but in the corner of his eye she was smiling.

"I… I'm sorry if that was harsh. I haven't slept in three damn days. They're letting me build this big generator tower, and it's the coolest ugly project I've ever gotten to work on. Look, Candice. I know what you're talking about with Gym Leaders. Here's the secret. You need something that sets you apart. Some call it a quirk. Some call it a gimmick. It's something that makes you seem larger-than-life. Kind of more-than-human. Me? I can turn toothpicks into tesla coils. Not really. But big techy brain. That's my deal. That's who I become when things are complicated. That's who the Shining, Shocking Star really is."

"There's more to your story. You're actually a genius."

"I'm just a person who loves his gym and his city."

The automatic steel doors slid open, and they broke out into the Sunyshore sunlight. Candice looked him over. Slouching when standing, barely awake, the pallor of his hands making faint and fibrous pink scars all the more visible. Yet the vibe was still there. The drive. The "spark," he'd called it. Glowing within, or maybe radiating like something plasma-hot and volatile.

"Is it nap time now?" she asked, noticing him rocking on his feet a bit.

"No, right now I'm getting myself a tall black coffee and a vanilla éclair. I can get you one too, as a consolation prize. You're going to the Pokémon Center, right?"

Candice realized she was. She also realized, soon after and without much trouble, that she was the girl who wore skirts to school on blizzard days, and it was her own kind of crazy.

The man in the gray jumpsuit had torn apart the pylon outside the Vermilion Gym seven times now, turning over every component in his hands and in his mind like it was a puzzle that grew more complex at every level. It was more complex. He kept adding bits. He kept changing the shape and the color. Three iterations used the best energy-saving LED bulbs until the stronger couplings he installed buzzed to life and shattered them. Back to the drawing board. The sketch pad, rather. One crude drawing of a duck and a charcoal sketch of Jessie and a hundred torn and graphite-smeared drawings of the same squiggly streetlight because he didn't have a protractor, and now another filled with lightbulbs. A list of all the bulbs he'd used before — the serial numbers — (if this were Sunyshore, he wouldn't have to start from scratch) — and all the bulbs he'd never even tried. Bulbs? Were bulbs even sustainable? Yes. Probably. But let's just say… No, he was not going to rebuild the pylon as a purple plasma globe.

He rebuilt the pylon as a purple plasma globe. He stared at it for a couple minutes, face unchanging.

He tore it down and ripped it up again. That was stupid. Everything was stupid.

The Vermilion Gym got renovated. It was stupid now. He'd seen the sustainable certification plaque in the dark from three blocks away. It was affixed proudly to the base of one sloping wall, under one of those wedgy ceilings all the sports arenas had now. Tilted wedges supported by wedgy beams on a building shaped like a child's most ambitious irregular polygon. They thought laziness was original, didn't they? They thought formlessness was innovation. One glimpse through the windows at the stainless steel stairway railings and the gray-tiled, high-ceilinged blankness of the lobby and he knew what was in the architect's email signature.

So he stabbed the glass plaque through the center with a screwdriver, watched it crack and fall to three pieces on the concrete below, went back and rebuilt the pylon using untwisted bike racks for metal because there wasn't much left of the original, and then he suddenly remembered some kid's graffiti back home, with a kind of squashed, loopy lettering and an Octillery squishing itself into a human skull? Yeah, it was the kid who painted while he sat on the curb and watched, mouth overflowing with éclair. Must've had another crazy night because he told the kid it was a masterpiece.

He tore down the pylon and uprooted another bike rack. Electivire burst forth from its Poké Ball in a flash of blue. "Make this," he told it, holding up a drawing of the letter V. His partner bent the rusted red pipe into a skinny teardrop. Good enough. He drilled some holes and wired a line of LEDs inside, then reassembled the whole thing with the curved end of the teardrop blooming straight out of a twenty-foot corkscrew of half-melted piping. Where one bit of pipe ended, it jutted out to the side, making the whole thing like a thick and fraying rope of tentacles, frozen in time before it could fall and coil up on the ground.

Around eye-level, he installed the motion sensors, then reattached the charged solar panels. The lights came on. Five silvery LED pillars descended from the holes in the piping, slowly brightening to small blinding stars when he and Electivire waved their arms around.

"What even is that?" he asked, shielding his eyes with one gloved elbow.

Electivire grunted. You're the one who made it.

"It's not me, though. My style is all neon and geometric. Not that the city ever let me do neon streetlights, but… you know what I mean? I don't like it. The plasma globe was cooler. I should go back to that."

But his partner growled in protest, a noise it never made unless there was something terribly amiss. He screwed up his face and looked it in the eyes. It glared back, placing both huge hands on his shoulders and squeezing until the muscles popped. He gasped. Soreness spiked down his spine and radiated outward to every part of his back. Just his luck to fall out of the sky and land safely on top of Wobbuffet, only for the squishy blue body to bounce and send both of them back-first into a boulder.

"You're right. I need to unplug."

Easing up, he nuzzled his face into Electivire's warm furry chest and listened to the heartbeat within. A soft smile teased at his lips. The pulsing was metallic, and perfectly paced with the liquid flow of electrons in the blood. Slowly, the man's eyes drooped shut, and he let his body grow heavy and loose, leaning further into his Pokémon's body to ease the stress on his back. He was a twig compared to Electivire, who carefully scooped him up and cradled him in its tree-trunk arms. He shifted for a few seconds, then grew still and silent.

One lumbering step after another, he was carried away from the renovated streetlight, which dimmed, dimmed, fell off, and went dark.

"Electivire. Take me back."

Electivire stopped. It bared its blocky teeth in a frown, but its trainer was awake and grasping along its chest for an anchor point to hop down again. It pressed him into its left arm with a jolt, but he kept grasping, eventually getting hold of the two spherical horns and swinging down to land ungracefully on the pavement.

The Pokémon gave a questioning grunt.

"It's not me. It's not me!? Who I am doesn't even matter right now, does it!?"

The hands descended to squeeze his shoulders again. He swatted them away.

"Even tinkering isn't as fun as it should be. It's like I need a more potent distraction. I've hit the ceiling and all the walls... and the ground, says my back."

Electivire sighed. It had listened to the man in the gray jumpsuit speak like this before. Usually before launching himself into another night of mutilating pylons. No stopping him now. He was already traipsing back toward the metal tentacles, which lit up again as they sensed his approach. He raised his right hand as if to plunge it into the tangled mass of wires lurking between two pipes. Electivire jerked him back. With an earnest grin, it offered him a thin and silvery filament — the basis for the earlier plasma globe.

"Thanks, buddy. But I don't want this. It's only gonna stress me out more. I'll start a new project tomorrow when I can focus on it."

Electivire gave him a proud pat on the head and offered its cuddly arms again. But the man didn't see them. He only dropped the filament, then crouched before the vinyl duffel bag lying idle under the pylon. Unzipping it, he removed a hard black case, and from that, a two-handed plasma rifle. He slipped on his safety glasses and hoisted the gun to his waist, then approached the sleeping Vermilion Gym, nitrogen cartridge loaded and finger on the trigger.

"Once we're inside, I want you to light up and blow everything. Trip every breaker in the building with one move, just like your training."

He inhaled. Shrugged his shoulders. Hitched up his weapon and aimed at the nearest concrete wall. His finger tugged the trigger. Just a hair. Keep it steady. Breaking and entering was simple enough, James had said.

A searing hot gush of flames exploded from the barrel with the sound of thunder, and he felt the skin of his cheeks instantly start to flake. The man in the gray jumpsuit dropped the gun, shaking and hacking and sputtering out smoke, while a small bubbling pustule of concrete before him melted into crimson ceramic.

"Okay, forget that," he stammered, quickly snatching up his screwdriver and stabbing it straight through the center of one of the front doors. He forced his way through the half-shattered glass into the angular atrium, furnished with the stiffest-looking formless gray furniture. The arena was hidden behind the wall and all its stainless steel staircases leading to seating.

Crunching shards and grating alarms were the pulse of the old Sunyshore, he thought with a shiver. But no time for nostalgia. With grace and precision, he pointed flat hands to every camera now fixed on his position. Electivire's tails stiffened into steel, whacking them to the floor. At its master's command, its hulking body flashed and sparked. The metallic pulse accelerated. The lightning within boiled to life and erupted. Hundreds of thunderbolts grew and stretched like sentient vines, leaching into every outlet available. Electivire roared, glowing like a star, and the alarm fell silent. Everything fell silent, save for the swish of exploding sparks and the pop of melting metal and the faint crackle of one too many electrical fires coming alive in the walls.

"ELECTIVIRE! I said trip the breakers, not start fires! It was a mistake teaching you anything other than punches!"

A tired grunt answered.

"Don't worry about it. Just cover me. I can't see a damn thing."

He really couldn't. The brief detonation of lightning only left inverted shadows floating in his vision before he ultimately had to feel along the walls and try not to trip up sudden stairs. Electivire couldn't see either. It viewed the world in infrared to better seek out the hottest and tastiest plasma. All it could see now were the swelling blobs of heat and the trembling human, plunging head-on into further darkness. Windows lined all sides of the atrium, but the moon was hidden tonight, leaving no light at all for when they sprinted down one arm. The two wire-like tails whipped about, correcting the human's course, at least until he hurried out of range and a nasty smack had his nose meeting a metal door.

Growling, he clambered to his feet and grabbed the handle, only to be immediately blasted backwards from the lingering electric charge and land groaning on the gray-tiled floor twenty feet away. Weakly, he raised his head.

"Bash it in with Fire Punch."

Electivire reeled back both arms, swinging them and concentrating all the heat it could into its fists. Twin balls of flame erupted over the fingers, and it launched them toward the door. The metal collapsed and flew inward with a mighty and fiery bang, coming to rest only when it hit something softer.

"GAH!" screeched a human voice. The flaming metal showed a figure now lying on the floor of a pitch-black hallway. A body that quickly wrenched the door away and sat up, panting.

The man in the gray jumpsuit raised himself unsteadily to his feet. He squinted at the figure on the floor, then assessed the whole hallway ahead of him. Too narrow. He'd have to go in alone. Steeling every muscle, he pressed the safety glasses tightly to his nose and forced himself to ignore the furniture suddenly exploding behind him.

"Use Iron Tail on the nearest window, then return!" he called, raising a Poké Ball.

He ducked as the stiffened tails struck. Broken glass rained down to skitter all over where he'd just fallen. Then in a flash of red light, Electivire disappeared, and he clutched the ball close to his heart before slipping it into one of his deep pockets.

Now he rushed in, cringing at the new pain shooting through his limbs and condensing in his back. The figure, body, man, a rather muscular man, he could see now, was whimpering and clutching at his knee. He wore only a wrinkled pair of pajama pants, battered and torn by the impact.

"I need help," he moaned. "Are you a firefighter?"

"Somewhat. Where's your Gym Leader?"

"W-what? Visquez… She was with me in the barracks. On the women's side. It's just us here tonight. She went to the other hallway to find a way out. The power got cut. We need help."

"Can you move?"

"I'd like some help moving, if that's what you mean," the man spat.

"Not a chance. You're one of Surge's men. Get up and haul yourself through that window."

Both of them coughed. Smoke was soaking up the hall, flowing in from deeper within the hallway. Gritting his teeth, the man in the gray jumpsuit rushed past the other and ran, hunched over. No time for further arguing. Surge's men were tough… he thought… he couldn't think… tears… no, that was sweat…

"Visquez!" he called.

Her name tasted acrid, like static and smoke. Like fear. Like the future. Like an old life smoldering.

"VISQUEZ!"

"WHAT!?"

A hot, steely hand suddenly gripped his right wrist in the darkness. He twisted, then blocked a punch to the gut. Sparks dribbled from the ceiling. He saw her face contoured in shadows. Her skin was dark and caked with grime and sweat. Her hair was white as lightning, the front cropped short and the back all pulled into a ponytail shaped like a cord and plug. Her eyes were a fierce, electric aquamarine. She grit her teeth and landed a kick to his gut while he was distracted, forcing him to fold.

"Why would you be so crazy!?" she demanded.

He raised himself up and looked her straight in the eyes. "Don't ask."

"You shut your mouth. I don't need some maintenance man running into a burning gym to save me. Now I have to save you, too. How long does it take you to fix a broken streetlight bulb, anyway!? It was just after dark when you showed up!"

"Give me your Pokémon."

"Excuse me!?"

She pressed forward. He threw a punch. She blocked again, then grabbed for his forearms. He kicked. She blocked with her knee, then struck him hard in the side. He gasped, then roared and tackled her head on. They collapsed to the floor just in time for a flaming ceiling tile to come crashing down right where she'd been standing.

"Get off me! What is your problem!?"

He gripped her shoulders hard, forcing his knee deep into her stomach. She struggled, easily overpowering his trembling hands, but he was so much stronger and heavier, and he pressed her down again.

"I'm not here to fight you. I can help you escape. Just give me your Pokémon, and I'll let you go. You have to have them on you. You wouldn't let Electrode out when it could explode in the heat."

"How do you know I have Electrode? Who are you?"

His throat clenched. "I am Marcell of Team Rocket. Give me your Pokémon, Gym Leader Visquez. They're mine now."

The flames descended behind him like curtains. He saw the terror sparking in her eyes. She could've been younger than Candice. What was Surge thinking?

What was he thinking?

Panting, he lifted her up over one shoulder and sprinted back the way he'd come. Visquez screamed and clawed at the back of his jumpsuit. She cursed and called him names he never imagined would ever reach his ears. He ignored the worst of it, focusing instead on the path of the flames and the smell of the smoke, while with his free hand, he searched her form. She was only in a t-shirt and gym shorts. He easily fished two Poké Balls out of one pocket and slipped them into his own. Electrode and Raichu. Those were the two Flint had mentioned.

Flint? Who the hell was Flint? Someone fiery. Someone best forgotten.

Marcell jumped with flying force through the broken window. The cool, fresh night air burned his skin more than the inferno inside the gym, but he drank it in, sputtering and reeling when his body flooded once again with oxygen.

The injured gym trainer had managed to limp himself across the street, where a medical team waited. Marcell raced toward the nurses, Visquez still over his shoulder. When he reached the flashing lights, he felt her teeth close around one arm and shook her to the ground. She slammed back-first into the pavement and groaned, reaching both her arms out to feel for where he'd gone. She was blind with tears, he realized, and he looked away.

Two whole squads had shown up to fight the appropriately vermilion blaze. They were assisted by a herd of Wooper and Quagsire in helmets, blasting the burning building with Muddy Waters. It wasn't the worst. Too much concrete and stainless steel to take it completely to the ground. But all that furniture was toast, for sure.

"HE STOLE MY POKÉMON!" Visquez shrieked. She forced herself up and stumbled forward, but nurses held her back from tackling him again.

"She's delirious," said Marcell. "Get her some water."

"Sir, are you hurt?"

"You have to stay here. We need eyewitness reports."

"Give us your name."

"Will you let us check you over for injuries?"

"You managed to rescue the Gym Leader, sir. Can you tell me about that powerful act of heroism?"

"What does Visquez mean? She claims you stole her Pokémon."

Marcell continued walking away. "Means exactly what you think it means, dingus. It means I'm no hero."

He tore off the jumpsuit to reveal his Team Rocket uniform and pocketed both Poké Balls in his breeches. Then, without looking at anyone, he hooked both hands around the rope ladder that dropped down for him and skittered up into the basket of the Meowth balloon, where his teammates were waiting in shock.

No one chastised him for forgetting to say the motto. No one mentioned his twerpish insult or lamented his lack of rhymes. Jessie was already dabbing ointment on his cheeks, and James was peeling off his vest and turtleneck to get him cool. Meowth was steering them out of the city, too stunned to even look in their direction.

"We heard the beacon go off and thought you were pranking us again. James forced us to investigate," Jessie whispered, her voice quivering. "Don't you ever go off on your own without telling us."

"Uh oh, I think someone likes me," Marcell whispered back.

James had gone totally pale. "In all honesty, what were you thinking? You set fire to a gym!?"

"Yeah, I set fire to that ugly gym. I almost wish it was on purpose."

Jessie sighed in relief. "It was an accident, then. Giovanni won't have our heads for stepping outside our prerogative. Still, Marcell, what were you doing down there!?"

"I redesigned a pylon. And then I pilfered a Gym Leader's Pokémon, like a total Elite," he said, showing them his pickings up close.

Now they were even more stunned. Afraid, even. Then proud. Then jealous. Intensely jealous. Jessie turned her gaze to the stars, and James chewed on his own discarded gloves.

Marcell laughed. "So that was Visquez. She was pretty shocking. Though she'd never defeat Electivire in battle. Not when we've got all the speed we need."

He closed his eyes and let his sore muscles loosen, only flexing his right wrist a bit so he could gently pat the pocket containing Electivire's Poké Ball.

Except the pocket was empty.

~N~

Intense, hehe. This was conceived as a two-part chapter, but the first part was chapter-length already, so part two coming very soon!

My face went totally fire-red when I saw FLINT WAS ACTUALLY GIVEN SCREENTIME IN JOURNEYS!? AND HE'S IN MASTER CLASS!? I'm so damn proud. Maybe he won't stay in the 8, but he's a character who deserves so much more love and exposure and I'm happy he was chosen to be featured so highly! Maybe we'll get Flint vs Volkner in a future ep? The ultimate bro battle? Just bros being bros on screen together?

I love how the new art style just gives Flint rounder features but Volkner got turned into a wide-eyed wonky dork. :DDD ("Flint" has been my first Wordle guess for a straight month, my dudes, and it was only correct once, in a dream.)

Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net March 6, 2022. Reposters Sunyshore-cURSSEDDD!