Sometimes in your life you had to take a step back and say "what am I willing to put up with today?" And sometimes the answer to that is quite a lot—sometimes it has to be. People will always be assholes when you're standing behind a register, and there will always be some dick who shoves in front of you when you go to hop on the bus. You have to put up with these things, because if you lost it at every little slight you were faced with, there would be nothing left of your world beyond the smoldering ruins left behind by rage.

On the other hand, sometimes the answer to that is actually you don't have the patience to put up with anything at all. Even the everyday bullshit will wear you thin after a while, and the more you push those bitter feelings down the more they boil under the pressure. All the bad shit seems to happen on those sorts of days, until the rage exhausts you and you finally crawl back under sheets to wait the world out.

Proton wished he'd crawled back under his sheets. It would be a world better than whatever the fuck was going on at that moment.

It was supposed to be easy—follow the convoy out, take out whatever squad cars or stupid vigilantes were tailing them, and drag someone back to figure out who was organizing the interceptions of their shipments. Hell, it was supposed to be cathartic, a way to keep his mind off the fact that he'd walked in on Petrel knee-deep in heroin that morning.

What was not supposed to happen was the Hyper Beam he had narrowly avoided on the road.

Now, Proton was out in the woodland that pressed in towards the highway from both sides. He sped around tree trunks and shrubs, ducked under low branches, squeezed every last mote of speed as he could out of his motorcycle's engine as he heard the massive wings flap dangerously overhead. The night air rushed around him, and Proton leaned hard and swerved as a massive blast of energy crashed into the ground ahead of him. Hot air rushed towards him from the impact, but his leather bike jacket and full-faced helmet kept it from singeing him too badly.

He had no idea where he was in relation to the road anymore, because they had been doing this for at least five—ten minutes? Maybe even more. Every time he felt like he was putting any significant distance between him and the beast overhead, the Hyper Beam would come and force him off-course. The convoy was long behind them both, and now Proton could only hope it would make the shipment without any further delay, because he sure as hell wasn't going to have a good time.

Another Hyper Beam whizzed by him, and this time as he swerved the front wheel of his bike slammed into something solid and both he and the bike went flying. He flung his arms out instinctively to break the fall, but he hit the dirt and rolled, a shock of pain shooting up one forearm as rocks and wayward twigs battered his body before he came to an abrupt stop.

"Fuck!" he groaned. The whole world was spinning, but in the dark he could see the beast high over him—the dragonite. It was massive, hulking, with huge wings and eyes that glowed like a meowth's in the dark. There was a trainer on its back who hollered orders over the wind and the beating wings, and Proton didn't need to see him to know who it was. Lance. Fucking Lance. Of course it would be him. The dragon tamer of the Indigo Plateau had been a thorn in his side for over a year now—albeit usually a passive one.

Now he was more of a danger than ever, and for once Proton desperately wished he wasn't alone out here.

The dragonite dived and landed heavily on the ground, and the shape of Lance shifted on the pokémon's back.

"You're outgunned," Lance said to him, "so stay down. I'm not afraid to blast you to hell."

Proton didn't answer him. Instead, he looked to the sky and whistled sharply. There was the rustling of wings again, but much smaller ones, and the three of them eyed the skies. Suddenly Twitch burst from the trees, flitting swiftly towards the dragonite to clip it with a wing. The dragon seemed more irritated by the attack than anything else, batting at the zubat with one massive claw. Twitch was quick and nimble, reacting to the sounds and the feel of the air around him, and with each swipe flitted out of the way.

"Abraxas, Iron Tail!" Lance shouted, and the whole dragonite whipped in a circle, lashing its long and suddenly very heavy tail to catch Twitch across the middle. It sent the zubat flying, and Proton quickly hopped back out of the way as the pokémon smashed hard into a tree trunk, then fell unmoving to the ground. He yanked Twitch's ball from his belt and recalled him in a flash of ultraviolet light that briefly illuminated Lance's face. It was quiet for a moment. You could have heard a single pin fall. Proton was tense, his muscles coiled as he prepared himself to dodge out of the way of another Hyper Beam, but it didn't come.

Lance spoke again.

"I know who you are," he announced, "you can't fool me with that helmet. I've got questions for you." He hopped down with practiced ease from his dragonite's back, and the beast kept its head lowered in preparation for its master's orders. Lance strode across the battlefield, stopping only yards away from Proton. "What I can't decide is whether or not it was just you."

Proton yanked his stun baton from his other hip, flicking it out and throwing the switch as he readied himself for a scuffle. Lance sized him up, and seeming to decide he wasn't a threat, took another few steps forward. Proton's lips curled into a sneer. It was a bad mistake to make. If he could just get him a little further from that stupid dragon of his...

"There were four of you," Lance continued. "At the cabin. You... Aisling... Terenti... Kane. I thought it was a coincidence. I wouldn't have been surprised that Team Rocket took an interest in Giovanni's companies—thought maybe they had a few fingers in the pie and he was trying to keep them close. But it's more than that, isn't it? Because you were all at Cinnabar, too."

Proton let out a heavy sigh, but didn't lower his baton. Yes, that sounded about right. They had all been on-edge, and caution had been thrown to the wind. Of course they would have been spotted. Maybe even shown up in a few reporters' photos. It was his job to ensure those sorts of things didn't happen: when the four of them were to meet in public, he was always the one to scout and determine a secure location, but there just hadn't been time. The ramen house had been a great short-notice choice, because it had been busy and it was always easier to blend into a crowd, but they had all been too busy trying to decide whose fault it was to actually do much blending.

Still, that was no reason to let Lance know he was right. Whatever evidence he had was circumstantial. Proton kept his mouth shut and charged, swinging the baton through the air, but Lance leaped back.

"Abraxas, Fire Punch!" he ordered. The dragonite charged forward, flames exploding around its claws, and it swung its heavy fist like a bewear throwing a tantrum. Proton skidded, his eyes blown wide as the beast came straight at him, and he fell back on his ass in his haste to scramble the other way. He threw his arm up, ready to smack at the dragonite's vulnerable belly with his baton when something suddenly came charging from the corner of his eye.

It was much smaller than the dragonite, but crashed into it all the same, the fire burning at the end of its long tail casting equally long shadows twisting over the space. Abraxas bellowed and smacked the newcomer with the Fire Punch, but it hardly seemed to slow the pokémon down, and the dragonite recoiled as though burnt—and as Proton recognized the bulbous head and body of Archer's magmar, he realized it probably had been.

"Thunder Punch," Archer's proper voice rang out from behind him, and electricity crackled down the magmar's arm as it threw a wild haymaker straight back at Abraxas. The dragonite pulled its wings around itself protectively just before the strike hit, then batted them hard, sending the magmar stumbling back.

"Took you long enough!" Proton hissed. Archer darted ahead of him, for once decked out in dark yet still neat and pristine clothing instead of his usual white uniform.

"I didn't expect you to get yourself in a situation as stupid as this!" Archer hissed back at him. His magmar tucked itself down, exposing the sharp spines on its back as the dragonite beat at it again. Its attacks were much weaker than before as it fought through the fresh and tender pain of the waxy burn the magmar had left up its arm, but it was still a powerhouse, and the magmar bellowed its own pain into the night air, its tail whipping anxiously through the air. "Ifrit, use Smokescreen!"

Ifrit sucked a huge breath through its beak, then hissed as smoke billowed up from its lungs and flooded the area. Lance's dragonite beat its wings and swiftly lifted into the air, well over the thick smoke cloud. It began to circle overhead, its fierce roars shaking the air around them.

"Go," Archer said over his shoulder, his eyes trained intensely on the vague shape of Lance through the oppressing cloud, "follow the convoy. You'll only get in the way, here."

"Don't gotta tell me twice," Proton answered him. He grabbed his bike and hefted it back up onto its wheels, grunting and wheezing under its weight, then flung one leg over the seat and settled himself in. The dragonite overhead bellowed, flapping its massive wings to dispel the smoke, but the magmar aimed its beak towards the air and let loose a long stream of fire, forcing the beast to swoop back.

Archer was probably the best trainer Proton had met in his life, and often he thought if the man wasn't stuck doing Giovanni's dirty work, he could have gone pro. The real question was, would his skill be enough to keep an Elite at bay? And how had he gotten here, anyways? Proton glanced left, right, then back through the trees, but he couldn't spot Archer's car. "Apparently I do," Archer snapped back at Proton as he paused for a second too long. "You're in the way."

He would just have to hope luck was on their side and come back to grab him, later. Proton twisted the throttle harshly, bursting off with such speed and torque his front wheel lifted from the ground like a bucking rapidash, but he leaned low over the handlebars and floored it back towards the direction of the road.

"Oh no you don't!" came Lance's voice from somewhere in the distance, "Abraxas, after him!"

"Ifrit—"

"Jaculus, Rock Slide!"

There was the unmistakable pop of a pokéball and a crackle of energy, and as Proton glanced into his mirror he saw the shape of some strange wyvern high in the air over the lingering smoke, but it wasn't until he felt the air rush past him in a great burst that he realized the dragonite was still on his ass.

"Shit," he growled to himself, "shit, shit, shit, shit."

He weaved his way around trees hunkering lower and lower over the handlebars as though that would somehow make the stupid dragon loose sight of him. How well could dragonite see in the dark? Did it know where he was? Was it playing with him? There were no Hyper Beams to dodge—did it not attack unless its stupid fucking twunk of a trainer give it an order? Every now and then he would hear the beating of its wings or the guttural cry of its roar, and he would flinch instinctively and jerk his bike right or left, but beyond narrowly avoiding hitting a tree a killing himself, nothing else came.

The road wasn't as far away as he remembered it being. It was funny how time and space could warp itself so terribly when you were being chased by certain death. Proton zipped straight up the embankment and onto the highway, and the instant he cleared the treeline of the dense woods he felt heat and energy blast by him. The hyper beam flew over his helmet, impacting in a cluster of trees on the other side of the highway and exploding in an eruption of splinters, branches, and earth tossed high into the air.

Free of the constraint of the woods, Proton pulled the throttle back harder and harder until he was squeezing every possible inch of speed out of his bike. No matter how fast he went, the dragonite remained flying overhead, following him with the intensity of a hunting dog caught on the smell of a lame hare. Light would flash from somewhere behind him, and Proton would swerve and swerve and swerve, giving no thought to the lane markers or to how dangerously close he edged to the shoulder as the hyper beams would hurl past his wheels, over his head, explode on the asphalt or in the trees or fly off into the night. He felt rigid, stiff, leaning and lurching around each one with some weird kind of sixth-sense that couldn't possibly hold up, he was toast, he was dead, he'd come so far but ultimately he would be reduced to burning ashes on the pavement, something for a clean-up crew to scrape off the road in the morning sun while they shook their heads and lamented how far gone the cities were becoming.

The convoy was in the distance, now, and he was rapidly gaining on them. One big truck, two smaller jeeps at either end filled with grunts. They would be able to handle cops. They wouldn't be able to handle a fucking dragon. Proton flashed his headlight at them and swerved hard into the oncoming lane, blasting past he may as well have been using Extreme Speed. One of them laid on the horn until the shadow of the dragonite fell over them, so loud in his ear he barely heard as the next Hyper Beam fired after him and struck one of the safety rails of a winding curve.

Lance wouldn't have been the only one out tonight. Not if this was planned—and it had to be planned. He'd just been skulking around in their security cameras and Proton was supposed to believe it was a coincidence? Nothing doing. No way, no how. If the Dragon Tamer of the hill was out, then he would have a crew with him. A squad. A snare. So Proton didn't have to evade the stupid fucking dragonite forever: just long enough to make it work to his advantage, so he rode harder and harder, coaxed every last bit of power as he could from his engine until he could see flashing lights in the distance. Waiting, just as he expected. The dragonite roared. The hyper beam flashed.

Proton braked so hard he almost went flying a second time.

This time when the attack landed there was more than stone or cement or woods. There was a horrible creaking of metal as the Hyper Beam exploded on the road just ahead of the blockade, and squad cars went flying in the blast. Abraxas, too, came to a screeching halt, hovering in the air as he watched the explosion with confusion, then looked left, right, down. Proton revved the bike's engine and started off again with the terrible squeal of tire on pavement and the overwhelming stench of burning rubber, but before he could shoot off again the dragon dropped and landed heavily in the smoldering and flaming wreckage, bellowing from the bottom of its lungs as it just dared him to try. Proton, wide-eyed, swallowed hard, feeling the collar of his jacket and uniform tighten around his throat uncomfortably.

Abraxas charged forward, swiping one great arm forward and this time Proton couldn't dislodge himself quick enough and it caught him across the middle, battering him comically to the side all the same as it had his zubat. He went tumbling and sprawling along the pavement, wheezed as his vision swam and his breath escape him, and frantically he scrambled for the embankment to throw himself over and roll to the safety of the woodlands, but suddenly a big, thick tail swept from the side and slammed into him again. His shock baton had landed only feet away, and desperately Proton began to crawl towards it as though it would do much more than pester the great beast when this time the tail came from overhead and he rolled out of the way just in time to watch it slam down onto the road with a resounding, shattering crack.

Proton threw his hands over his face in some attempt to shield himself from the flying debris. Abraxas bellowed, and he could feel the rush of air as the Hyper Beam charged in its mouth. It was over. It was the end. He wasn't just dead, he was DEAD, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pokén, make peace with your gods, all that bullshit.

Except then he wasn't.

Confused, Proton lowered his hands, his own confused and rough breaths ringing in his ears. Abraxas was turned the other way, whipping its tail around at something much smaller than even Archer's magmar. The thing was nimble, fast, leaping out of the way of the hyper beam and then the dragonite's tail like an acrobat. Proton watched, wide-eyed, as the pokémon bashed it and bashed it with splintered bits of the cracked asphalt. Twice. Twice today someone had bailed his ass. The stress bubbled up from his chest as hysterical laughter and he trembled from the adrenaline. How could his luck be so good someone bailed him out twice? Shakily, he began to push himself to his feet, only for a pair of rough hands to grab him around the middle and physically throw him to the shoulder of the road just in time for the convoy to go sailing past, narrowly avoiding the two pokémon duking it out in the middle of the highway.

"Fuck!" Proton swore as he struggled to regain his balance, his ears ringing. The man who had grabbed him pushed him upright, holding him at an arm's length to look him over, then gave a note of approval.

"Good work, Executive," came Sotiris' tired and sandpaper voice, "if I bring you back scratched I'm sure I'll get all sorts of hell for it."

"What are you doing here?" Proton asked him, grabbing onto his arms in return, "Petrel, is he—"

"Fine!" Sotiris said, "he's fine." He looked up, then yanked Proton to the side again as Abraxas stumbled backwards, slapping his tail defensively into the ground to rupture the other pokémon's foothold. It looked human-shape in the dark, with long ears and a long tail, and Sotiris whistled sharply. The pokémon grabbed Abraxas by the tail and in one swift motion whipped around and threw the entire damn dragon over its shoulder.

"Holy shit!" Proton swore. The dragonite twitched and twitched and didn't get back up. Sotiris clapped his hands together.

"Good work, Toni!" he told his pokémon, "c'mere, boy!" Toni hopped over the dragonite's body and came running straight up to them, his long tail wagging—a lucario, Proton recognized. He'd only seen them in documentaries on TV before, but they were a lot smaller than he'd expected, standing maybe a couple feet total shorter than himself. Sotiris patted his pokémon between the ears, then turned to observe the damage. The squad cars of the blockade were burning, smoldering in the night, and from what either could see, there was no one moving in any of them. Proton's bike laid nearby, and he realized with a sinking feeling it was completely totaled, half-crushed from one Abraxas' many attacks.

"You gotta be jokin'!" he groaned, "fuckin' hell. Look at this!" He went to nudge at the wreckage with his toes. Now he just felt stupid wearing his helmet, and with a pout, he yanked it off his head, running one hand back through his sweat-matted hair to fluff it back up. "Bullshit. I ain't walkin' the rest of the fuckin' way back. Godsdammit." He gathered his bag, then searched the space until he found his shock baton and stuffed it back into its clip at his waist.

"Better the bike than you," Sotiris pointed out. "Trust me—not everyone's able to walk away from something like that. Damn things are deathtraps." He motioned off down the road, towards a billboard towering just at the edge of their vision. "I'm parked just off the highway. I'll give you a ride back. C'mon, Toni!"

They walked in silence back towards Sotiris' car. Out in the woods Proton could hear the faint sounds of pokémon battling—Archer was still out there somewhere. They needed to pick him up, too. Didn't they? Energy flashed in the distance. There was the sound of earth shuddering, then fire burst up over the trees in a great and towering inferno. Sotiris glanced out towards it, then back to Proton.

"Archer's fucking crazy," Proton grumbled.

"Sounds like he's having fun to me," Sotiris answered, and when Proton shot him an incredulous look, he only shrugged. "Kid's a bit scrappy. He'll be fine. Needs to let loose once in a while."

It turned out it was the eldorado that Sotiris had taken, and the instant Proton saw the familiar soft top relief washed over him. He ran for the passenger door and let himself in, flopping into his seat with a huge sigh and reclining it back until his back settled heavily against the leather and he could stop supporting his own weight. His sore bones and muscles immediately thanked him for his endless mercy—it was still too early for him to be pulling stupid stunts like this. He set his helmet on the floorboard between his boots and just decompressed as Sotiris put his lucario back in its pokéball and slid into the driver's seat to start the engine.

They were half-way back down the road when Proton pulled out his Pokégear to check his messages. Decarli had gotten everything prepared for him, both with Kei and with Kei's cute little boyfriend. The Game Corner was under control. Ariana was waiting in Fuschia for the convoy, and Proton quickly texted her a string of kaomojis to let her know what had happened to which her only response was "I'll feed you to my arbok if you don't speak like a fucking person," which earned a tired little smirk from him as he read it. Petrel hadn't texted. Of course Petrel hadn't texted.

"Is he still stoned?" he asked, and Sotiris glanced to him and shrugged one shoulder.

"He'd come down a little by the time I left," he sighed heavily. "I confiscated what I could, but it's possible he's hidden a bit somewhere. Dipshit's gotten good at that." He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, contemplating his next words very, very carefully. He always looked grumpy, and he was always stand-offish. From the few interactions they'd had over the year, Proton was pretty certain Sotiris didn't really like him much at all. It took him by surprise a little bit when the man grudgingly said, "I appreciate you calling me about this. I'm sorry I called you a whore when we met."

Proton raised a brow. "You what?" he prompted flatly, and Sotiris hummed.

"I forget how much of that conversation you actually understood," he mused more to himself than to Proton. He shrugged again. "Well, it is what it is. Either way, you did a good thing, and I owe you for that."

"Nah, we're even, trust me," Proton snorted back. "You saved my ass. That dragonite was about to swallow me whole. Hell, I'd say I owe you."

"Then will you do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"Please continue to take care of my son."

He looked tired. Sounded tired. Proton studied Sotiris carefully, recalling the days well over a year ago when they had all been at Giovanni's mountain cabin for something much cheerier than his last visit there. He didn't interact with Sotiris much during that visit, but Petrel had been completely set on-edge by his mere presence alone. Any time Proton caught them together they were having it out over something or other. Once he supposed must have been over the drugs, because he'd caught them yelling about medicine or not medicine while they were cooking and Proton was sitting on the porch just outside the kitchen. It had seemed too familiar a conversation to have been the first time. He wondered how long this fight had been dragging on.

Petrel was gonna be so fucking pissed with him when he got back. He could probably kiss that fancy date goodbye right now. Looking again at Sotiris' weary, worry-lined face, however, he couldn't bring himself to feel too bad about it.

"My ma was a crackhead," he said into the silence, and Sotiris glanced at him again. "We were always broke. Once I came to Rocket and started havin' some cash, I tried to get her into rehab when I could. That's where she was supposed to be when she died. Ain't no happy ending there. I can't go through that again. I won't. So..." He sighed again, one hand resting on his stomach as he threw the other dramatically over his forehead. "I'll do what I can. I know you an' me ain't on good terms, but I don't want you to go through that, either."

"Thank you. I appreciate that." They were getting closer to Celadon. Sotiris turned onto their exit and sped towards the scattered city lights in the distance, his fingers still drumming against the wheel and shooting Proton more and more small looks every few seconds. "I'm sorry about your mom," he said when they reached the city limits. "Was it an overdose?"

Proton opened his mouth to answer.

Nothing came out.

He frowned, thought, closed his mouth. Thought some more.

"It must have been," he mumbled. "Must have been an overdose. What else could it have been...?" Yes, the more he thought about it, the more that made sense. His friends had all been very sad to hear the news. Kept telling him how sorry they were to hear she'd overdosed like that, terrible way to go. It made the most sense. He'd always been coming home to her passed out in her nose candy. His face scrunched up as he thought harder. There was a sharp pain in the side of his head as he thought and thought and thought, coming up with only blank static and white noise.

That was wrong, wasn't it? Something about saying it felt wrong.

"No," he corrected himself, "actually, no, she... She was..." He dragged a hand down his face. "I think she was murdered. I think—I think someone stabbed her." Sotiris' brow raised at that, but he didn't say a word. "Someone stabbed her, but... I don't think anyone ever caught them."

The more he thought the more he remembered the eldorado and Petrel sitting next to him. One of them was driving—must have been Petrel, because he would never let Proton drive. They had gone to check on her because... why, again? Proton swallowed hard.

"She checked herself out of rehab," he stumbled through his hazy memories, "and... and it was too soon. So I went to check on her and..." She was dead. Had she been dead? "We called an ambulance, but we were in uniform so we couldn't stay..." Maybe she hadn't been dead. Maybe she passed at the hospital. But they hadn't gone to the hospital. She could have died waiting for the ambulance to show up. Come to think of it, did he actually see her dead at all? Had he just left her there to suffer and never thought to check back? She must have passed away scared and alone and in pain—that was why she haunted him, now. Because he had left her for dead. Because he hadn't avenged her. He was a horrible son.

Something wretched settled in his stomach and threatened to climb its way out his throat, and all the while the pain in his head grew sharper and sharper. It hurt too badly. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting the struggle and the haze slip through his fingers like sand.

"Petrel will remember better than me," he finally settled on, "but I think someone killed her. Probably borrowed cash from some gangster in the city. Goldenrod's crawling with sharpedo."

"I'm sorry," Sotiris said again, "that's awful." Proton shrugged. It was what it was.

...Wasn't it?