Chapter 18: Brain Burn

"Who are you?" Risa asked, her heart twisting in fear. In front of her stood the largest, strangest creature she'd ever seen, one that reminded her strongly of...something. But she just couldn't place that something.

The creature stared down at her, showing no clear emotion. "I am Beatrice."

"B-Beatrice?"

"Do you know how to read the book?"

Risa looked down at her hands. She was holding the grimoire, though she hadn't noticed she was. "Um...no. It's in a weird, um, a weird language I don't know how to read."

Beatrice narrowed her eyes. "You do not know how to read it?"

"That's...what I said?" Risa asked, trying to edge away, but her feet wouldn't move. "Um, I'm sorry, but I don't know -"

"Then know. Or it will be your undoing."

Then the grimoire burst into flames, the burning red gem on its cover flying up and sinking into Risa's forehead. She only had time to scream before the flames consumed her and destroyed her body.

---

Risa woke with a start, her hands flying to her forehead. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt her cool skin beneath her bangs, and slumped back against her sleeping bag's built-in pillow. When her heartbeat slowed to a more normal rate, she reached over and opened the flap on her tent to look out at the sunrise across the river.

Sleeping on the docks had been pretty peaceful, not counting her nightmare, and the view of the sunrise over the mountains in the east and the water below was definitely worth something. Risa couldn't help but smile - some of the views along her journey were gorgeous.

Her pokemon, though, were not gorgeous. Not in appearance nor, unfortunately, in personality.

Which was why they didn't sleep in the tent with her - no, no. They stayed in their pokeballs all night long, giving Risa her eight solid hours of peace, quiet, and uninterrupted sleep.

Or, at least, the chance to have eight solid hours of peace, quiet, and uninterrupted sleep. This new trend of nightmares every single night was starting to wear thin on Risa. She never had nightmares. Maybe a couple bad-ish dreams, but never anything in nightmare territory.

Sighing, the girl decided to eschew any chances of getting back to sleep, and began to shrug off her pajamas so she could pull on her shorts, t-shirt, socks, and shoes for the day ahead. After she was properly dressed for the world outside her camping tent, she packed away all her sleep ware (tent included) into the mess of item capsules in her backpack, then went about eating breakfast.

After breakfast, she took out her phone and decided to catch up on answering messages (since there happened to be service on Route 32), calling her parents to check in. When she hung up with them, she realized it had been over a month since she last spoke to her best friend from back home, so she called her up, too, though she had to leave a message.

Only after another hour of sitting at the dock, dangling her feet over the edge and staring at the scenery, did she even think of letting her pokemon out.

The docks were so peaceful. Why would she want to completely destroy that peace by letting Heat and Nanimo see the light of day?

Why?

Why would she do that to herself?

But, nevertheless, she did, because they did have to eat. (Or, at least, Heat did. Risa wasn't exactly sure how or if Nanimo actually consumed the food she gave her.)

Risa sighed as both her pokemon appeared and almost immediately starting bickering. It would be another long day.

---

"Okay! You two! SHUT UP!" Risa yelled, glaring at Heat and Nanimo who had been - surprise, surprise - fighting over whether or not Nanimo had a gender. "Heat! You need to stop saying that Nanimo isn't a girl! It's not nice. And Nanimo! You need to stop fighting with Heat - I saw you throw that first hidden power."

Heat sniffed. "Yeah, she started it."

"Uh, no, Heat, you did. When you said she wasn't a girl."

"Actually, he said that I didn't know anything about being a trained pokemon," Nanimo said icily, shooting a one-eyed glare down at the cyndaquil. "He also added that I would never be much use in a 'real battle'. It devolved from there."

"What? She won't! All she'll ever be able to do is that stupid icy-thing - ow!" He glared back at Nanimo, rubbing his head where she hit him with an energy sphere.

Risa groaned. "Okay, you know what? There aren't any wild pokemon on these stupid docks, so I think it'll be waaay faster if I just put you two back in your pokeballs and walk by myself."

"WHAT?" Heat growled. "No! That's stupid! I should get to stay out - put that stupid letter-thing away, not me!"

The unown moved up and down in what Risa had come to view as a shoulderless shrug. "I have no problems with this plan. I value efficiency," she added, giving Risa a knowing look. Risa shifted her weight uncomfortably, trying to figure out what sort of thing Nanimo was alluding to. She figured it had something to do with the vague "saving the world" thing she had to do, but other than that...

She had no idea.

"Well, I guess I'll see you two later," she said before Heat could cut in, zapping both of her pokemon back into their respective holding capsules. Sighing, she minimized both of the balls and put them back into her backpack, brushing her hand against the remains of one of the pockets. She thought back to how Nanimo had destroyed the pocket and its contents - all of her empty pokeballs - and shuddered. Would her unown do that to her if she failed to do follow instructions?

"Really super vague instructions," Risa muttered to herself as she resumed walking down the docks. "Seriously, what does she -"

She stopped when she realized there was a fisherman sitting a few yards in front of her, completely within earshot of a majority of the previous squabble between her and her pokemon.

He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties, with a somewhat muscular body underneath waterproof khaki cargo pants and a white sun shirt. On his head sat a weathered old baseball cap, and in his hands was a fishing rod whose line sunk deep into the river below.

Once he realized Risa was staring at him, he glanced over at her and smiled sheepishly. "I guess you're realizing that I heard that."

"A-all of that?"

"Pretty much all of that," he said with a grin. "Having team troubles?"

Risa snorted. "Um, yeah, that's kind of putting it lightly." She paused, then added, "really lightly."

The fisherman chuckled. "Well, I'm glad you decided to zap 'em back into their pokeballs, because their yelling was scaring away all the fish."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Risa said, feeling a bit embarrassed. As a trainer, she should have been able to keep them under control - oh, who was she kidding with the whole trainer thing?She didn't even want to be a trainer. The only reason she wasn't back in New Bark Town was her parents, who decided that all kids should have to go out and fight for badges. She never liked badges. She never wanted to get them - they were so stupid! All she wanted to do was stay in school with her friends and learn about science. She liked science. Science didn't involve dealing with annoying cyndaquils and unowns.

"What about annoying science professors?" the fisherman asked with a wry grin.

Risa blanched. "Did - did I say all that out loud?"

"Sure did. So, uh, you're a science kid?" he asked, glancing up at her.

She nodded. "Yeah, it was always my best subject back in elementary school. I mean - it's not like we did anything big, but I thought it was, um, kinda cool. Like learning about how the world works, and stuff."

"I have heard that pokemon training can be more art than science."

"I hate art."

"Ah, that might be a problem, then," the fisherman said as he tugged a bit on his fishing line. "Maybe you aren't flexible enough."

Frowning, Risa stepped over to the side of the dock and sat down a little bit away from the fisherman, to his right. Just because he seemed nice didn't mean he was a nice person. Just to be safe, she made sure both of her pokeballs were in her right hand. "What do you mean, 'not flexible enough'?"

He shrugged, pulling back his line and casting it out again, causing a small explosion of ripples in the water. "Just that sometimes, pokemon don't work the way you think they will. What kinda science do you like? Psychology?"

"Um, I'm in middle school. I don't think you get to do that until, like, high school..."

"Heh. Well, maybe you ought to look into it once you get there, then. Might do you some good to see where your teammates are coming from."

Risa glanced down at the minimized pokeballs in her hand, turning them over. "But they're pokemon. They don't think like us, right?"

The fisherman gave her the kind of sidelong glance that one gives when alluding to an inside joke. "What do you mean by 'us', exactly?"

Frowning, Risa tried to find the inside joke. "Um, humans?"

"Humans? Really?" He still had that look on his face, and Risa couldn't find the joke.

"Well, yeah. Pokemon and humans. What else would I mean?"

The fisherman chuckled. "I guess you're right. But are pokemon and humans really that different?"

"Yeah...I mean, you don't see any pokemon as trainers, right?"

"You don't?"

"No..." Risa frowned. "Or, at least, I've never..."

The man to her left looked up at the sky, watching the breezy summer clouds float by. "Do you have any goals? Goals that you would never want to give up on?"

Risa chewed her bottom lip for a moment, trying to think. "Well, I guess I really want to graduate high school and go to college. And become a scientist."

"That's very broad. There are many fields of science."

"Yeah, but - I dunno, I'm just a seventh grader! I don't know what kind of science to go into."

He nodded. "But you'll figure it out, right?"

"Right."

"Now, I want you to think about your two pokemon, the ones that were arguing."

Looking back down at the pokeballs in her hand, Risa said, "you mean Heat and Nanimo?"

"Yes - I assume Heat is the cyndaquil?"

"Yeah, and Nanimo's the unown."

"Huh, interesting names," the fisherman mused, dragging his fishing line a bit to the side. "Well, let's start with Heat. What goals do you think he has?"

"Oh, that's easy. He wants to become the Johto champion, or something like that."

"The way you say it makes you sound like you don't believe his goal can come true."

"Well, yeah! I can't go to the Pokemon League!" Risa exclaimed, making wild hand motions in the air. "I don't even want to."

"Hm," Risa's companion nodded sagely, "and your other pokemon?"

"Um, she thinks I have to save the world, but she won't tell me what I have to save it from."

This seemed to surprise the fisherman somewhat, as he lifted an eyebrow and looked back over at the younger trainer. "Save the world?"

"Yep."

"I'm assuming that her goal of saving the world and your cyndaquil's goal of being a champion aren't exactly compatible."

"Um, no...I don't think so. Or, at least, they don't think so," Risa groaned, leaning back. "Which is the big problem. They're so annoying and stubborn!"

"Is your goal compatible with their goals?"

Risa opened her mouth, then closed it. "Um...no."

"You don't sound particularly sure of yourself."

"I mean," Risa started, trying to form words from her feelings. "I don't think so. I don't want to be a trainer - I just want to go into science."

"Are you planning on going back to school once the summer is over?"

"Yeah."

The fisherman turned to give her a serious, unblinking stare, one that made Risa shrink back and try to look away. "Then what will you do with your pokemon?"

Risa blinked a few times. She really hadn't thought of that. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"Will you get rid of them? You say you don't want to be a trainer. Your cyndaquil sounds like he won't stand for being with a person that won't train him. Your unown might be fine with it, but her goal poses its own problems, anyway. Will you keep them?"

"Y-yeah, I mean - they're my pokemon, I have to, right?"

The fisherman shook his head. "You do not. Very rarely do you have to do anything. But you need to keep in mind that there are consequences to every decision, even if that decision is to do nothing. At the end of your summer vacation, you will need to make a choice about what to do with your team." He peered down at her, and Risa could have sworn his eyes turned a darker, more intense brown than they had been before. "I strongly advise you to keep in mind those that might be hurt by your choice. This goes with your choice of what to do with your life after this summer - who will be hurt by your decision?"

"My decision?"

"To stay in school and become a scientist."

"Heat," Risa said glumly. "And probably Nanimo, too. Unless she wants me to save the world through science."

"She might," the fisherman said with a shrug. "But your cyndaquil might not want to stay cooped up in a laboratory all day. Perhaps," he added with a slight smile, "you might want to think about compromising."

"Compromising?"

"Finding a solution that will allow you to achieve your goal as well as letting your teammates achieve theirs. It might, after all, give them a reason not to bicker as much."

Risa thought for a moment. "Um, I don't think I can study hard to be a scientist, be a pokemon trainer, and save the world."

"Maybe. But you might need to think outside the box," he said, gesturing towards his fishing line. "Very rarely is there only one way to catch a fish."

Risa watched as he discreetly dropped a pokemon food pellet into the water directly under him, and almost a second later, a quagsire came to the surface to eat it. All the fisherman had to do was put more food on the docks, and the quagsire slowly climbed up, sitting down next to the fisherman to eat it. He smiled at Risa, who watched in awe as he patted the wild quagsire on the head. "I do not actually want a quagsire, but you get the idea. Sometimes you have to compromise and adjust the specifics of your goals. Don't you think it would be better to have your cyndaquil and your unown by your side? Or would you like to be alone when you study science?"

The little girl sighed. "I don't want to be alone."

The three of them sat for awhile, staring out towards the water (or eating the food, in the case of the quagsire). When the quagsire finished and dove back into the water, Risa stood up, pocketing the minimized pokeballs. "Um, thanks. You know...for - for the advice."

Her companion waved it off. "It was nothing. You looked like you could use some advice."

"Well, yeah," Risa muttered, "I guess I did. Um, but yeah...thanks."

She began to walk away down the docks, but the fisherman stopped her. "Wait - what was your name?" the fisherman called.

Risa turned. "Risa Miyamoto."

"Ah," the fisherman replied, frowning. "Do you have an English name?"

"Uh, I just use 'Lisa'."

The fisherman seemed to mull this over for a moment. "I don't mean to pry, but have you met anyone named Gold?"

Risa shook her head. She turned to leave, then remembered something. "Um, hey...do - do you know somebody named Giovanni?"

"Yes - isn't he one of the Kanto gym leaders? In Viridian City?"

"He is?" Risa frowned. That seemed correct to her, but... "Um...when? When did he become gym leader?"

"A few days ago, according to the news," the fisherman said with a slight smile. "Why?"

"N-nothing," Risa muttered, "it's nothing." She turned to leave again, but once again, stopped. "What - what about Beatrice?"

She cringed when she saw the suspicious glare she got in return from the fisherman. "Why?"

"Um - n-nothing," Risa said as she began to edge away down the docks. "I just heard somebody say that name - I think. Somewhere. Just - just wondering if you knew."

The fisherman frowned. "I do know someone named Beatrice, but I don't think - I doubt it's the one you're thinking of."

Risa nodded, thanked the fisherman for his time, and began to walk down the docks.

Once she was out of earshot, the fisherman checked to see if anyone else was around. Nobody - the docks were empty. He glanced back at Risa's retreating figure, then disappeared.

In his place hovered a small, shriveled, pink, embryo-like creature with barely-open blue eyes and no arms. She - because the creature was, in fact, biologically female - flew across the water to the grassy path that Risa had opted not to take.

When she landed, she immediately felt herself transform into a purple mammal, one that she instantly recognized. "Mara," she said through her newfound telepathy, glancing to her right as the espeon in question stepped out from behind a bush.

"That was incredibly dangerous, Lyrisa," the espeon said coldly. "Someone could have seen you."

"Nobody saw," the copy-espeon replied. "But I did meet that girl you've been following."

Mara flicked her split tail angrily. "I fail to understand why exactly Beatrice trusts her.'

"Maybe Beatrice knows something you don't."

The espeon hissed angrily, causing a few weeds near her feet to shrivel and die. "That is impossible! You forget, Lyrisa, that I am primary of the outsides. Beatrice is your ANCHOR."

Lyrisa shrugged, glancing back in the direction Risa had gone off in. "I highly doubt it is impossible. Power and knowledge aren't always the same thing."

Mara bore her teeth, but said nothing more on the subject. "Well?"

"Well...what?"

"Is she?"

"I doubt it. At least, not now." Lyrisa sighed. "Maybe that is why Beatrice -"

"Or it could be because she has the grimoire."

"Yes. I suppose." The copier looked up at the sky. "I do not like this."

"What?"

The copied espeon shivered. "There is something wrong. I think Beatrice knows. I think - I think something bad will happen."

Mara rolled her eyes. "You are just reacting to my clairvoyance."

"Maybe." Lyrisa glanced back at her original. "Darcy hasn't been able to leave the Distortion World in months, you know."

"Huh. I am not jealous."

"At least she has Georgiana to help her stay sane. I do feel very bad for her."

"Don't," Mara said with a flick of her tail. "Focus less on others' welfare and more on your job."

Lyrisa sighed, shaking her head. "You know why I can't."

"And it vexes me." Mara walked past Lyrisa and off towards Union Cave. "Do your job, Lyrisa. Nothing too bad has happened yet. Don't let it."

As she left, Lyrisa felt herself changing into a copy of a nearby female ekans, though she couldn't actually see the snake in question. She sighed, flicking out her tongue to taste the air. "I wish I could go back to Sinnoh," she whispered before slithering off. "But if the grimoire stays out of Sinnoh, then that might be best for the stability of it all."

---

"Two, please," Risa said as she pushed two filled pokeballs across the counter towards the Pokemon Center nurse. "And, um, I need a room for the night."

The nurse, a youngish woman with black hair and dark eyes, nodded, slipping her pokeballs into the healing machine and placing a room key on the counter. "You'll be rooming with two other girls tonight," she told Risa in a scratchy voice. "We're a bit short on rooms, seeing as we're an outpost Center."

Risa took the key. "N-no, it's not a problem." As long as she had a bed to sleep in, Risa was fine with anything.

As she padded up the stairs to put her things away before picking up Heat and Nanimo, she thought back to the fisherman she met the day before.

"Compromise," she muttered. "Yeah, right. I might be able to compromise, but they won't."

It hadn't - she had camped out at the end of the docks after talking to the fisherman (and had another nightmare about the grimoire eating her), then tried to work things out with Heat and Nanimo the following day as they hiked the remainder of the trail to the mouth of Union Cave.

Neither of them were keen on "goal sharing". Nanimo said they had to save the world as soon as possible, ignoring any other goal to do it, and Heat wouldn't let Risa be a scientist because he claimed it was stupid.

Which didn't exactly make Risa want to compromise with them, either.

She sighed. She really didn't want to just get rid of them at the end of her journey, because that just felt really mean. But she didn't want to have to deal with them harping on her for the rest of her life because she wanted to continue with school instead of going back out to train.

"Maybe I'll just make a decision when I go home," she said to herself as she unlocked the door to her room for the night. Her two roommates had their things on two of the beds, so Risa assumed they were downstairs eating dinner. Throwing her stuff on the remaining bed, she realized she had to make the decision about Heat and Nanimo's fate in eight days...

"A week and a day," she told herself. "I have a week and a day to decide."

---

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Author's Note: Mostly dialogue...sorry if that's not your thing. It was weird writing a chapter in which Heat barely appeared. He'll be back with a vengeance, though. :) Next chapter will be the start of the two-part Union Cave arc, which I hope everyone will enjoy.