"Are you still aiming for the Piece Keepers?" Steven asks.

I pause, his shirt still half way up his back. The wounds are healing and the stitches are apparently self-dissolving; they'll be gone in another week. I touch the small puckers of skin and the string they're bound with. Rings of bruises bloom from the wounds, like ripples from a pond. They look so small, but the real damage was inside. Broken ribs that needed to be wired together, and a punctured lung that collapsed while I was carrying him. At least there isn't a tube going into his body anymore. He has old scars that go up and down his back in sweeping strokes. It almost looks like as word, but the blue and purple that spreads across his skin and the ashy burn marks make it hard to tell.

He tries to look over his shoulder, and winces, trapped in his shirt.

"Yeah." I respond, pulling it down the rest of the way. He has trouble lifting his arms, but that will get better with time. "I am. Why?"

"I was thinking that you should go on without me."

I pause while he painfully gets off the hospital bed. He breathes in shallow gasps.

"Why?"

"Well, it's September now. And October is coming soon. It's going to get cold, unless you go to Mossdeep. Not cold enough to snow, of course. We're too near to the equator for that. But you might get sick. It's good to travel in summer."

"You haven't kissed me since you had surgery."

That throws him off. He stops walking slowly to the door, rolling along his IV rack, and turns to face me. He doesn't look that bad now. But he also doesn't look like the steel-eyed Ex-Champion who battled Wynne under a full moon.

He just looks like Steven. Not Dr. Stone. Not Steven Stone. Just Steven, with soft hair and flannel pajama pants.

"It's a bit painful to bend down to your mouth level. You're pretty short."

"I'll kick you in between the legs. Let's see how fast you bend down then."

"What kind of things are you learning from Stavros?" he grins. But I don't smile. I look away.

As he limps toward me, clutching the pole of his IV rack as a makeshift walker, my heart suddenly doubles in rhythm. I stay still. He brushes away my hair with a couple fingers, then touches the back of my neck. He glances at my mouth.

"Well?" I say, as bravely as I can.

"Impatient," he smiles. He kisses me and he tastes like toothpaste. His lips are chapped. Then, I lick the roof of his mouth and he breaks away, laughing and trying not to, because it hurts.

"Where did you learn that?" he asks.

"Torrent."

"Water-types," he says and shakes his head, smoothing my hair. The burning feeling in my stomach warms me down to my toes. "I try not to kiss you too much. People will think I'm a pedophile."

"You're are a pedophile."

"You are legal in my universe."

"And illegal in mine."

"What an unhappy in-between that is," he murmurs, looking idly out a window into the dense forest that surrounds Fortree. "I feel like I should know better." I look at him curiously.

"It's alright. I'm almost eighteen. Just over a year left."

"Are you telling me," he says, looking straight back at me, "that in one year, your mental and emotional age will be eighteen?" I don't answer. "Anyway, I'd rather you ask me if you want anything. It's safer that way."

"I wanna go swimming."

He looks as me, startled, and then laughs again, holding his sides gingerly.

"That's not what I was talking about, although I think we'll only be talking about those kinds of things for a long time."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," he says, pulling me close enough to hear his heartbeat, "that swimming is okay. And if it's just swimming for the rest of forever, that's okay, too."

"I... I mean, okay? I know swimming is okay. I don't know if I just wanna swim, though. Fishing is really nice, too."

"You should go without me, Alexa. You can fish and swim when you get to Mossdeep and by the time you're there, I'll have recovered enough to go with you."

"I don't want to leave you."

"I'll see you again in Mossdeep. There's no reason to -"

"I don't want to leave you," I repeat. He is silent. "I don't want to let you out of my sight. I don't want you to disappear and find that you disappeared forever. I don't want to. I want you to stay here and maybe if you stay here long enough, I'll start to feel again. If I stay next to you, maybe I'll stop feeling just sad and scared and start feeling happ-"

"I am not your medicine," Steven cuts in, firmly. I step back but he matches with a step forward and holds my face in his hands. "I am not your dopamine. You cannot inject me into your bloodstream like morphine. Do you understand? All the medicine you need is in yourself. I can only help you. I prescribed you anti-depressants. I set up appointments with psychiatrists and therapists. I am here to help you in any way I can. But if you do nothing, nothing will happen. I am not your panacea and no one else will ever be. Not Torrent, not Skyra. Not Brendan. People are not supposed to be chemotherapy, Alexa. You will save yourself so much heartache if you understand this now."

I start to step away, but he stops me.

"Are you going to run away?" he asks. "I'd rather you eventually run towards me than away from anything."

I shake off his hands and go to find Torrent.

The next morning, I wake up without Torrent singing me awake. (I argue with the Steven in my head, listing excuses. He wins.)

When the sun slides across the sky and the shadows shrink, I walk outside.

"Alright, I think we got everything," Torrent says, sifting through my backpack. He slings it effortlessly over his shoulders; he'll let me take it later, when I am warmed up with walking. Skyra is already floating in the velvet circle of blue we can see through the ring of trees that surround Fortree. Skye is with her, slower, smaller. "I'm glad we're leaving."

I know why he doesn't like it here. Too many trees, not enough water. He wants oceans and rivers. But Fortree isn't a bad town. It's looks rustic, but inside the houses are gilded electronics and monitors instead of windows. It's a facade, with its wooden ladders and swinging bridges hiding computers the size of closets. After all, this is Wynne Lytton's town. At least it isn't like Mauville, or how Mauville was. I wouldn't live here (I would live near an ocean), but I understand those who do. It looks natural, but isn't. That takes a certain kind of skill to build.

Briar and Capala walk out of the Piece Center.

"You're all checked out," he says, handing me Steven's ring. One of Capala's face plates orbits near me and shocks me slightly, like a kiss.

"We go," she sings through the phone in my pocket and floats down the road to where Aiden is waiting.

"I'm gonna go say bye to Steven," I say quietly. Torrent moves to go with me, but stops, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. Briar nods.

He's reading a book underneath a huge tree. He's not allowed to sit on the ground, so a plastic lawn chair is his throne for today. When he sees me coming, he closes the book.

"I'm leaving," I state.

"That's good," he stands up, slowly. I resist the urge to help him. I'm still… annoyed? Angry? In denial? "Lilycove should be a week and a half away if you walk fast. There's no gym, but it's a nice place to visit, with its department store and Contest Hall. Lots of things to eat and buy there. Do you have my ring? Credit card?" I nod. "Alright. Stay safe."

And that's that.

He's tall. I come up to his collarbones, barely, and he narrows his eyes against the sun that filters in through the gaps in the trees. He's smiling. I take a step away. And then another. I turn and start to walk back to where my Pieces are waiting for me. When I look back, he's lowering himself into the chair like an old man, grey hair ruffling in the breeze.

I stop.

And run back to him. He looks up, surprised.

"Did you forget something?" he asks.

"I forgot my kiss."

It takes him a while to process that. But when he does, he grins, teeth white.

I have never felt anything as devoted, as intimate, as his hands around the back of my neck.

"I won't go away," I say. "Even though I'm leaving, I won't go away, okay?"

Emerald, shimmering eyes. I see plants reflected in them. Trees. Life.

"You will find your medicine," he murmurs, his face much closer and much farther than I would like. And the words have a different feeling to them, different than the antiseptic, stainless-steel lexicon Steven usually unfolds from his teeth. They sound familiar, old, smooth. Like the stones you find in oceans, polished round by the tide. Those words do not belong in this town.

So I tuck them in my heart and take them away.

The days melt away into each other.

Did you know Torrent can make bathtubs? At the end of each day, he makes a deep depression in the ground, lines it with stones to keep the mud out, and guides the water that is hiding underground into the makeshift spring. Aiden heats the water, because it's getting cold at night now. Then, Torrent lies on his stomach beside me, head in his arms. Sometimes, he washes my hair for me. He says it relaxes him.

All the mornings are quiet, and the afternoons quieter. It is only the nights that are loud from laughing and sparring and chasing. Sometimes, Capala will shock Torrent with a ThunderBolt that makes my hair stand up and he'll leap up and run after her while she floats around in rings. Skyra always flinches at the sudden electricity. It sets her on edge, but less and less every time Capala does it.

When we arrive at Lilycove, it feels like an endless rush of noise. It's a change. It looks and feels like New York, but shorter and spaced out. All the crowded walkways are in place, though, and the food vendors, and both people and Pieces wander the side walks. And beyond, is the glittering sea.

"We need to buy you new shoes," Skyra say, looking around. Skye is clutching her hand tightly. Briar ticks off the points with his hand as she says them. "And clothes, because it's getting cold. We should also find a place to stay. We're probably staying here for a while, right? So a hotel that accepts PEN-caught Pieces."

"I'm hungry," I say.

"Yeah, food first," Torrent agrees, lifting me up and putting me on the tops of his feet. He walks, stiff-legged, moving me as well. "And then what, Alexa?"

"Well," I grab his hands to keep myself from falling off his shoes. "Then you and Aiden and Skye need to evolve."

"Hell yeah," says Aiden and scoops me up to put me on his feet. He waltzes with me in a big circle and Skye flutters in to join. "Hey, we should split up. Evolved Pieces should go do boring stuff, and non-evolved Pieces should go training."

Briar and Skyra look at each other and shrug. Capala spins around with Skye.

"Yeah, I'm okay with that," Skyra says. "We can call you with the hotel phone when we find a place. Eat first, though. Give us Steven's ring."

I slide it off my finger and toss it to Skyra. Capala twirls away from Skye with a bow and joins Briar and Skyra as they walk down the street, in search of shelter.

We try everything from all the vendors on one side of the street and then reach the intersection to find another huge street that branches off into stores and restaurants and even more vendors. Street performers gather groups of people around them, serenading or entertaining. Torrent keeps my bag; he would catch any looter before I did. Most of the Pieces here are PAL caught, but nobody spares us a second glance. It's a busy place, a busy world.

Eventually, we head to the outskirts of the city, and find C-Keys honing their Piece's skills in the tall grass. I've never seen so many people training before, or grinding, as it would be called in the video games.

"You ready?" I call to the three. Skye spreads her wings, still smaller than my arm span, and the air around her shimmers, as it does with weaponless Pieces (it's the energy gathering, I've been told). Torrent smirks, holds out his hands, and grabs the guns that appear in golden sparks. And Aiden, Aiden grins wide, a turtle no longer marking him as hated or self-hating, the seven red lines shining underneath his sleeve. "Alright." I whisper, proud of my team, proud of my friends. There's a lump in my throat. "Alright."

The blood that splashes out of the wild Pieces dissolves and makes the sky look like stars are ascending to their home. I wonder at this energy. It makes up blood, weapons, water… everything? I don't know, but I don't feel the need to know. Right now, as I run around in the grass with the hot sun against my back, dodging Pieces and occasionally other C-Keys, the darkness that had seemed to sit heavily on my heart starts to shift, like curtains over an open window.

Skye evolves first. The golden flares swirl around her Emblem, a small earring I never knew she had until Torrent pointed it out a week after we caught her. I brace myself, because I know what is coming. And it does come. She screams. Some of the trainers in my area turn to look, confused, but shake their heads when they see the white glow. I know why they disapprove. PAL-caught Pieces don't scream.

We watch helplessly as her bones crack and meld. She cries that it hurts but not once does she beg for it to stop. I want to put my hands on her, hold her, but I don't. I know what that does now. It stops the process, and whatever pain she endured up to now would have been for nothing. So I bite my nails and wait.

The first thing she does when she stands up is run to me. Before I can get a good look at her, she throws herself into my arms and I notice she's the same height as me now, not an inch more, or an inch less. I hug her, too, never having hugged someone my own size, and it feels very nice. She smells like morning mist and a bit like coals. Maybe that's the dragon in her. She hops back and looks down at herself. Her hair is sky blue now, her bangs arched across her forehead with a bun in the back, tied with streaming, blue ribbons. Blue leggings are under a chunky, soft-looking white sweater that has blue clouds across it. When I look carefully, I realize the clouds are drifting slowly across.

"I'm glad I didn't get a dress," she laughs. Her voice is beautiful. She stretches her snowy wings, which are now wider than I am tall. "I was afraid I was gonna, but it seems I worried for nothing."

"You look about Lexa's age in human years," Torrent comments, pinching and stretching her cheeks, "You must be pretty young in Piece years."

"Yup! I'm only two years old." She puts her hand on my shoulders. "Let me look at you!"

"I should be saying that!" I exclaim, and her round face smiles like it was meant to forever. We could have gone to school together. We could have grown up together. Her eyes are a beautiful, rich brown.

"I'm so glad," she sings, actually sings. "There were words trapped in my heart and hearts locked in my head and I never knew how to sing them out. I'm so glad I know enough now. I'm so glad I met you."

"Do you have a weapon now, Skye?" Aiden asks.

"I don't think so," she responds. Taking her hands off my shoulders, she concentrates for a second. Slowly, patches of energy shimmer bright and fade in her hands and after a while, she is left holding a sleek electric guitar as white as her sweater. "Well, I could use this as my weapon!" she laughs, "but I think this is my emblem. I wonder if…" She concentrates again and this time, much faster, the guitar shrinks into a wristwatch. "Yup! My brothers' emblems did this, too." When I take a look at it, I realize it doesn't have an hour or minute hand. It just tick, tick, tick, ticks out a beat.

A metronome.

All through Aiden's and Torrent's training, Skye keeps her hand in mine, and we swing our arms occasionally. She doesn't talk, and neither do I, but I feel as comfortable as her sweater looks.

"I think," I say, and Skye cocks her head towards me. "I think if I had friends in school, this is what it would have felt like." And I know she knows my heart better than I do; it's one of the strange powers that some Pieces possess. But when she squeezes my hand, I am given a flash of her heart, of compassion, pity, and hope, mixed into one jolt that travels up my arm. "I am glad I met you, too."

And as if to mark off the end of an era, Aiden and Torrent evolve at the same time. Neither of them scream. Aiden falls, but Torrent doesn't, standing straight up, even as I hear his bones cracking to arrange themselves differently.

Aiden stops glowing first. He stands up and he's tall, gigantic. Taller than Steven. His skin is the color of mahogany, dark and deep, and his eyes looks like they've been touched by fire. Even in the daylight, they glow. Orange hair, cut close to his skull, matches his orange tank top. He has on dark grey capris that come to his shin and when he turns around to test his legs, I realize he has two stone circles embedding into the material of his top, as if they had grown there. It's simple, as far as final evolution clothes go, but what more than makes up for it are the tattoos that travel up his right arm, cerulean against chocolate skin, weaving and circling until they reach the seven red lines that stand out sharply. Immediately, he thrusts out his hands, and a heavy sword that looks vaguely like an abnormally large knife materializes with the energy.

"Hm," he says, and then starts at the sound of his deeper voice, "Alexa, this thing is taller than you."

"Aiden, you look so cute," I blurt out and I can't help but run to him. Right as I reach his arms, which are held out for me, Torrent stops flickering.

And I stare.

His hair is still blue, but longer now. The right side falls across his face until he rakes it out of the way, but the left side is pulled back behind his ear and held flat against his skull with three orange pins. He's dark, too. Not as dark as Aiden, but more cinnamon-colored, sun-kissed. He has on a navy long-sleeved shirt, wide cut, and a grey sleeveless cardigan that looks velvety thin. The navy skinny jeans. The three earrings on his left ear that look like they're made from solid topaz. The way his height seems to line up perfectly with Steven's now. None of it matters.

What matters is the way he cautiously taps his ear with his finger.

"Lexa?" he calls, voice smoother, but unchanged in pitch. Same eyes, as grey as river rocks.

"Torr—"

He lunges at me. As soon as we touch hands, there's a bright white glare, like the evolution light, and a stinging pain in my right hand.

We both look down and see letters, gold, glittering, that circle our middle fingers like rings. "COVENANT," it says. Torrent falls to his knees and buries his face in my stomach, his arms wrapping around me. I pet him with trembling hands. He smells like a storm over sea, like earth after rain.

"Say my name, Lexa. I can hear you. Say my name."

"Torr…" my voice fades out. I try again. "Torrent. Torrent."

"I don't want you to stop talking," he says, laughing, but my shirt is wet. "I don't want you to ever stop."

We stay like that for a very long time.

"Torrent," I ask when he stands up, much taller than me now, than Briar (as we predicted), "Torrent, what about your disability? What is it?"

"I don't know," he responds, flexing his fingers. "I can taste, I can see, I can smell and hear and feel. And everything seems okay in my head. I really don't know."

"Maybe it skipped you," Skye says, bouncing up to us. "Does that happen for starters?"

"I've never heard of it happening, but there's a first to everything," he grins, then looks at Aiden. "Holy shit, you're tall."

"Yeah. I'm trying to get used to it. How's the weather down there?"

Torrent shakes his hand and calls his weapons. Two circles blades flash in, large enough so that I could fit through them if he dropped them on top of me. The edges look sharp; they seem to disappear into each other.

"You get a big ass sword and I get spinny thingys?" Torrent complains. "These are hella cool, though."

"Hella," Aiden deadpans, and then bites his tongue, grinning. There's a small stud fixed into the center of it. It looks like a turtle. But before I can point it out, something buzzes.

"Found you," says Capala's voice in my pocket. I look around for her, but only see trainers and a sinking sun.

"Where are you?" I ask.

"I am at the hotel. We tried to call you several times, but you did not answer. So I used the cables underground to find you."

"Sorry, Capala. I was focusing really hard on evolving these guys."

"It is fine. But Briar wants me to tell you that he saw Yin and Yang. He asked me to eavesdrop so I did. They are going to Mt. Pyre." Torrent reaches over and shakes me gently, loosening the sudden tension in my shoulders. "Briar says if we start early tomorrow, we can still make it before late afternoon."

"I'm going now," I say, and Torrent's eyebrows quirk into a worried question mark. "We're pretty far out. It'll be better if we start now."

"Briar says you can't because you'll be traveling in the dark and you need to sleep."

"He can stop me if he wants. But he's going to have to come and get me. And I'm moving towards Mt. Pyre starting now."

Silence.

"Briar cracked a glass cup with his hands and said fine. Skyra asks if Skye is okay"

"I'm okay," Skye says.

The water is pitch-black.

I do my best to suppress a shiver, but Torrent puts an arm around my waist and pulls me closer to him.

"Sorry I'm not that warm, Lexa. I don't even have a jacket to give you anymore. But it's just a little bit further."

"It's not that bad," is all I can manage without my teeth chattering. He snorts. Even with Skye's sweater on, the chill seeps through my thin dress and shorts and into my bones. It doesn't help that the surfboard we're sitting on is metal. Maybe Briar was right.

No, Briar was definitely right. But I wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. To confront my dad about what he was doing, what was going on, to ask him why he had left Ash and mom and me at home. I wanted fuel for my hatred.

"Yin and Yang are… bad, right?" My voice travels in the still air. It's hard to see the rocks that blend into the night, but Torrent can see fine.

"I don't know, Lexa. They don't give me a bad feeling. Your dad makes me fucking angry, but other than that, I don't know."

"Do you feel different? After evolving? You had a personality change last time, but you seem pretty similar this time."

"I feel like someone removed a handicap I never knew I was wearing. That's always what evolution feels like. But I do have a headache. Maybe that's my disability. Maybe I'll be stuck with a semi-mild headache for the rest of my life."

We both giggle quietly.

"Steven told me not to use people as medicine."

"He's right," Torrent says. I look behind me to squint at Torrent. He grins. "Look, I hate to agree with him, but trying to find salvation in other people won't work. They aren't the vaccine. They're more like the needle to give the vaccine. A vessel. A helper. Something like that."

"I saw you and Aiden talking a lot before you evolved."

"Yeah." His voice is quiet, different. I don't know what changed about it. Is it sufficient to say it got smoother? It isn't just that, though. There's a certain quality to it. Experience? "Aiden's pretty funny. He can't sleep at night, so I talk to him. But he's been sleeping soundly ever since Fortree."

"He doesn't hate himself anymore."

"He doesn't."

"Why?"

"I think it's because he killed someone without any anger over it. He's been so scared his fear and anger are going to get someone hurt. He's afraid to touch people, because he might set them on fire. But when he thought that you were going to die, well, love can kill, too. I think he realized he does have the capacity to love and the ability to choose to harm someone or not. That he can control himself."

"I was saved, and in return, save."

"It's a complicated feeling, isn't it?"

I nod.

"Do you love Aiden?"

"I love you," he answers. But I don't push it.

When we finally land on base of Mt. Pyre, I let Aiden and Skye out of their PENs. I struggle out of her sweater and hand it back to her.

"Are you sure you don't want it longer?" she asks, standing in the moonlight with only her leggings on. She's completely flat-chested.

"You don't have boobs," I state. She looks down at her own smooth chest and then up.

"Yeah. Pieces don't. We don't breast feed our kids, so we don't need any of the tissues associated with it. But we still have these useless nipples. I'm not sure why. Then again, human males have them, too. Are you sure you don't want my sweater longer? I'm much better at tolerating cold than you."

"Useless nipples," I giggle. "And I'm fine. Walking will warm me up."

I'm wrong again. It's Aiden that warms me up. At the first sign of a shiver, which happens as soon as we walk through the heavy stone doors, he picks me up wordlessly and cuddles me to his chest like a child. I feel sleepy in the surrounding warmth.

"You're quiet," I mention, burying my cold nose into the crook of his neck.

"My mind is usually so noisy," he replies. "I'm enjoying the silence. Do you want me to talk?"

"I want you to be happy."

He knows what I mean.

There are jars all over the floor made of white ceramic, painted with flowers in pale colors. They stand in lines and rows, like gravestones, like soldiers. The only light comes from half-burned candles that drip wax on dusty floors.

"Ashes," Skye says, looking at the jars, "I'd rather be planted in the ground." (Burned or buried? What would have Ash wanted?)

There's a stairway winding up a beam to another floor, but the starlight comes in through a side door. I hear voices. From the corner of my eye, I see Torrent bring a fast hand to his temple and then away. I feel a faint pain where he touches.

"Torrent, you okay?" I ask. He jerks, startled, and then looks at me. His face is sharper now, lean.

"You felt that, too, huh?" he smiles, "It's alright. It's better now. I think I just overexerted myself while training. But do you hear the voices?"

I nod.

"You can put me down now," I say to Aiden. He places me gently and I am warm enough to move towards the door. The building opens up to the mountain side and a sky peppered with stars. With Lilycove nearby, I can't see the Milky Way, but many of the constellations still swing in that slow, heavenly circle.

"That's a long walk," Skye whistles, looking up the mountain path. Her eyes aren't simply brown any longer. Around the dilated pupils is a thick ring of yellow. Is that the dragon in her? A thick mist shrouds the road after a couple hundred feet. Dim figures fade further into it. Voices.

"It's better if I carry you, I think," Aiden says, "It'll be warmer." I don't resist when he picks me up. He's a mountain himself.

We move into the fog.

It's eerie. It's bizarre.

Thicker and thicker it swirls around until we can't see anything anymore. Then, Skye has to walk in the front, pushing it back so we can at least follow the white-stone path. I'm near Aiden, so the heat keeps me warm, but Torrent's hair is strung with dew and every couple of minutes, Skye gives her wings a shake, throwing soft patters onto the ground.

"Ghosts," Torrent mutters. Shades deep inside the fog seem to move in and out of sight. "Children, mostly. Poor bastards. They'll find their way home, soon."

"Where is home for them?" I ask.

"The earth or sky or ocean or forest. They'll find a home in many places. And when their time comes, they'll see the world again. Perhaps in better circumstances."

"Do you know for sure?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Do you want it to be true?"

"Yes."

"Then it will be true. The world will grant you everything. You merely have to open your hands and ask."

"Not everything," I correct, worried.

"Everything," he insists. I realize the tattoos on Aiden's arm are glowing neon blue. The ghosts don't pause for us; they always pass beyond our reach.

"A lullaby. Can I have a lullaby?"

(Children love lullabies, don't they?)

"Of course," Torrent agrees, "Skye?"

She taps her wrist and the electric guitar materializes. I expect a clean, metallic sound, but she plucks a couple of notes that sound like water drops. Even though it isn't plugged into anything, it carries. Torrent hums something, voice rich. The guitar purrs a melody.

"I'll set my sail,

Fly the wind it will take me,

Back to my home, sweet home.

Lie on my back,

Clouds are making way for me.

I'm welcome home, sweet home.

I see your star,

You left it burning for me.

Mother, I'm here."

Skye joins in on the second verse, singing the harmony of a song that must be familiar.

(The children are listening.)

"Lie on my back,

Clouds are making way for me.

I'm coming home, sweet home.

I take your hand,

Now you'll never be lonely

Not when I'm home, sweet home.

I see your star,

You left it burning for me.

Mother, I'm here."

"And so you are," a creaky voice answers back. We step into a little clearing where the fog seems to have lightened. There is an polished granite altar with two depressions on the top. Both of them are empty. On either side stand two small figures. When we approach, they become clearer and clearer, until they are two wrinkly elders.

I feel the pain again in my temple. This time, it's also behind my eyes. I glance at Torrent, but he doesn't react.

The man and woman are both hunched over, hands and faces dotted with liver spots. They sit on little benches, each holding a lantern. Their eyes and hair are as milky as the fog.

"Grandfather, grandmother." I address them how Grandpa had taught me to address all elders in the Chinese and non-Chinese community. Being half-Chinese, I was expected to have perfect manners. Aiden puts me down. "Where are the Orbs? That's what they came for, right?"

"Begone, evil spirit," the man says to me, waving his lantern in a dismissive motion. "Wicked souls like you deserve no answer."

An angry coil in the back of my head. Then nothing.

(Am I wicked? Am I wicked?)

"I'm human, Grandfather. The relics. They're gone."

"I said begone! There is nothing for the likes of such blackness here."

Skye grips my hand. Torrent narrows his eyes.

"Am I wicked?" I ask. "Have I done something wrong?"

"No, no," the woman chants, "there is a soul of light here. Half-vision. Half-vision."

"Darkness, darkness," the man disagrees.

"Then, two as one."

"And one as two."

There is only me and you.

"Where are the relics?" I interrupt, shoving the voice in my head away. I should have gotten that checked out at the hospital, but I had forgotten it in its absence. "They're gone. Someone took them. Where?"

"Those who came had pure heart," the women says, her lantern moving like a pendulum. "Pure of heart may come and go. This is not their final home."

"They took it. You let them."

"The Combs cannot be touched by you, sinner," the man asserts, swaying.

Torrent snaps his fingers, a look of insight on his face.

"This story. I know this legend."

"It's not a legend, lab-born rat," the man intones. Aiden's eyes flare but Torrent waves his comment away.

"I only know the water side of it."

"But I know the fire side of it," Aiden says. "A Comb, like a hair ornament, that belongs to the God of Volcanos."

"And a Comb that belongs to the God of Water. I wonder why we are never told both."

"Because they fought," Skye answers, "And the God of the Sky had to stop them. The humans were dying."

"Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza. I guess Team Magma and Aqua are still trying to wake them up. That hasn't changed." I turn back to the elders. "Grandmother, Grandfather, where have they gone?"

"Home," they reply at the same time.

"But where is that?" I question, patient. Torrent and Aiden both turn their head to the right, feeling or hearing something I and Skye cannot.

Then, slowly, it comes rolling on its side, emerging from the fog and making the faintest metallic clink when it settles at my feet. I pick up a red and blue medallion that swirls together like the yin and yang symbol. Printed in the middle of the circle in gold font is the word "YIN". I look up to see the fog darker in the distance, as if something was gathering.

"…agged… Pass…" I hear. "Jagged… Pass… Jagged… Pass…"

They shift, as if waiting for a response.

"Thank you," I call out, hesitantly.

They stay for a moment longer, then disappear.

"I have to make a call to President Lytton."

On the way back down the mountain, Torrent trips and falls.

Pain. My entire head and my eyes feel hot. Torrent is clutching his head as the tip of his toes dig furrows into the dirt. I stumble my way over to him but Skye keeps me back. Aiden leaps next to him, rolling him over.

Then, as soon as it came, it's gone. We both gasp in breaths. It must have been agonizing for him, to make him writhe like that.

"Torrent?" I call. "Torrent? Are you okay?"

He turns in my direction, but he's not looking at me. It's like he's searching for me. Like he can't see me.

(But they say if you're spared when you're young, you develop a much harsher disability when you evolve.)

He shrieks with enough pain and anger to make me flinch back. The sound echoes up the mountain, multiplying the noise until tears well up in my eyes.

"Torrent, what's wrong?!" I cry. "Torrent!"

He doesn't stop screaming, crawling to me in a shaking line, finally buckling under soul-shattering sobs.

"Lexa, I can't see you," he howls and he can barely get the words out through his heaving lungs. "Lexa, I can't see. I can't see you. It's dark."

I don't answer. I can't answer. I'm frozen.

"LEXA!" He screams.