Autumn came to Trichroma Town in bursts of orange and red bright enough to fight the chill of the approaching winter. The passing weeks did little to curb the energy generated by the return of the Mystic, Valor, and Instinct leaders. Every café conversation seemed to loop back around to the topic, every edition of the local paper carried some mention of the mysterious adventure of Professor Willow's assistants. Bakeries decorated cookies to resemble legendary birds. Children scoured the town for fallen plumage, looking for a trophy to take home and hide among their treasures.
And yet, when pressed, nobody could say for sure what happened to Blanche, Candela, and Spark.
One of the bakers behind the legendary cookie craze took up telling absurd stories about how the leaders found a lost civilization and battled terrifying abominations and defeated an evil organization that was out to take over the world. He said the leader of Team Instinct told him about it one morning when he was picking up bagels for Professor Willow's lab.
Nobody believed him. It was too ridiculous a story to be true.
Plus, the leaders refused to give details about their adventure. They stuck to the story that they'd gotten lost in the wilderness for a week, and that was as much as they'd say. That explanation raised more questions than it answered, and soon, everyone had their own private theories about what really happened.
The one thing everyone could agree on, however, was that the team leaders had changed.
Blanche appeared around town with more frequency than ever before. They would stop and converse with strangers, sometimes even with a smile. The Mystic trainers murmured to each other about them, agreeing that it felt like they were truly meeting their leader for the first time.
Something was different about the way Candela interacted with her trainers, too. She was as bold and colorful and passionate as ever, but there was an element of restraint about her now. She seemed older since she'd come home, and perhaps sadder. The trainers of Team Valor found something heartbreaking in the way she looked toward the mountains as she walked the streets of Trichroma Town.
The least changed seemed to be Spark. After a few weeks in the hospital, he returned to the outside world, his face glowing. He laughed and chatted with curious townsfolk as he picked out sweaters and costumes for his pokémon, but refused to share any real information about what happened to him out in the mountains. Though most folks saw nothing new about Spark's eccentric behavior, the consensus among the Instinct trainers was that a weight had been lifted from their leader, and he was finally at peace.
Since the leaders and the poker-faced Professor Willow wouldn't budge, the more persistent citizens of Trichroma Town went to Dr. Davies in search of the inside scoop. She shut them down. It wasn't her story to tell, and shame on them for asking anyway. She was, however, quick to show off the newest addition to the ranks of medical pokémon: a small hypno who could put anxious minds at ease with the gentle swing of his pendulum.
So Trichroma Town was kept in the dark, despite the crazy stories the baker insisted were true. There could be no underground society, no half-pokémon, half-human monsters. And if there were evil organizations afoot, wouldn't more people know by now?
But then again, no one seemed to notice the extremely pale woman who had taken to walking the border of the town every night. She kept herself well-covered with a decimated, dirt-smeared coat that had once been puffy and orange. She'd found it on her way to the portal, abandoned by panicked strangers fleeing from the Lost.
Who would believe a story like hers? That she'd been the leader of a village deep within a mountain, untouched by the sun for generations upon generations? And now, she'd stepped into an alien world, a place with a green ground and a blue ceiling that wasn't really a ceiling. Sky, just like she'd seen in the minds of the three reincarnated royals. Waik couldn't forget that. She had to see it again.
She'd covered up the absence of the royals with lies. She told her people that there had been a mistake, that the people who had visited their village were from a neighboring town, pulling a cruel prank. They'd disguised the color of their skin and hair, and the creatures with them were wounded Lost, costumed to look peculiar. There was outrage. There was heartbreak. There was riotous disbelief.
And there was an opportunity to slip away.
So she did. When she reached the cone of the volcano, she found a catastrophe. The scene was quiet, abandoned, so she hoped there had been survivors, and that they'd moved on. She picked her way around the edge to get to the trail leading up. She climbed, unsure of herself, of her choices, her future. Then the Lost that wasn't lost flew past her, carrying something, someone. This was normal for the not-royal royals. She wanted to know what it was like to live in a world like theirs, the world she'd seen in their heads.
She saw the blood in the trail, and thought it was all over, that she was too late. But Waik continued forward, because she'd already resolved to leave her previous life behind. By the time she reached the top, Spark and Candela were disappearing into the door. Time stopped for her. The universe as she knew it hung in the balance, and any move she made would be irreversible. The weight of that decision threatened to crush her.
But it didn't. She moved swiftly, but the door was already closing. Waik's body spun for a while through the void, and then the brightest light she'd ever seen blinded her. She lay on something soft, like moss, but not moss. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a blue even more vibrant than the blue of the crystals she had grown up with.
She'd been deposited away from the others, her trajectory altered by the closing portal. She wandered for several weeks, hiding in any dark space she could find while the sun was out, traveling by night. She'd learned the concept of these periods of time from Blanche, Candela, and Spark. She knew no words that could compare.
When Waik finally found Trichroma Town, she could hardly believe her eyes. The diversity of the buildings, the sheer amount of color that flooded her senses… it staggered her. For the first time, it occurred to her that she was the only one who spoke her language here. She'd packed as much food as she could manage, but the lonely weeks had obliterated her supply. She'd have to interact with these up-world humans at some point.
In the meantime, she could resort to thievery, if she had to. No one seemed to see her, after all. She'd do what she had to in order to survive this strange new land, just until she knew what she was doing.
It was odd, but Waik could sense the three would-be royals. Something deep in her brain told her they were nearby, but she hadn't seen them. Not until they entered her territory one night.
She watched them from afar, drawn to the light of their fire amid the thin trees of the forest outside of town. They were laughing and cooking food over the flames. They'd lived. Before then, she wasn't sure they had, despite how near they felt.
They were camping, like they'd done as children. It had been Spark's idea to do it as soon as he was well enough to get away with spending a night in the woods. They'd all needed something to lift their spirits. Their days had been filled with the rehabilitation of the dozens of Team Rocket pokémon they'd saved from the mountain. It was emotionally draining work, but nothing could beat the gratification that came from seeing an mistreated pokémon bond with a loving new trainer.
The trainers didn't know where their new companions had come from, only that they'd been rescued from abusive masters and required special care. Professor Willow had insisted on locking down as much information as possible. The public didn't need to be set into a panic over Team Rocket. Spark had impishly shared part of his story at the bakery once, just to prove his point to the others that no one would believe their tale anyway.
The night was cold and clear, and when the team leaders tilted their heads back, it felt like the stars above were shining just for them.
Waik couldn't know what they were feeling, what they were thinking when they looked to the sky. She didn't know that Blanche found themself frozen in place on some mornings, paralyzed by the knowledge that when their friends had needed them, they had retreated into themself instead. They stared at their reflection for long minutes, wondering what kind of human could abandon their loved ones so easily. They feared that Articuno had revealed a dark and ugly version of themself, and perhaps that selfish, cowardly, saturnine entity was their truest iteration.
Waik didn't know about Spark's dark dreams, how his memories haunted him and refused to let him rest. He told himself the story of his survival over and over, and he still couldn't believe it, even when he touched his fingers to the angry, healing wound in his gut. But it wasn't just the past that plagued him. In his dreams, he saw a darkness growing on the horizon, like the falling of night. Every so often, he would see figures through the veil of sleep and hear distant, whispering voices. They escaped the mountain, the voices would murmur. Giovanni… what do we do? Is it time?
Waik didn't know that Candela was starting to remember. When Candela closed her eyes, she saw terrified faces plunging into a shadowy pit. No matter what Spark and Blanche said, she couldn't deny that she sent those people to their deaths. And the worst part? Remembering how good it had felt. I'll roast her from the inside out, she'd said. Because she was ready to burn away the small, weak, wounded person she'd been before. She was ready to succumb to that delicious power, to trade everything for it. She could never let her friends know. What would they think? What would Joule have thought?
Waik knew none of these secrets, but she knew that she couldn't approach the trio now. Something in her heart told her it wasn't the time to reenter their lives. She had a brand new world to explore, and when the time was right, maybe she'd meet them again.
She tightened the coat around her small body and wandered into the night, seeking a new adventure, ready to meet more of the not-Lost. Pokémon. That's what they'd been called before. There was so much to learn.
Back at the fire, Spark lifted his head, listening. Someone was out there, walking between the shadows of trees. He didn't hear footsteps. He simply knew.
"Something wrong, Spark?" Candela asked.
"Nah, nothing," Spark said, grinning and skewering a marshmallow to hold over the flames. Whoever was out there wasn't a threat. Not like the menacing voices in his dreams.
But those dreams weren't really dreams, and those voices belonged to a group of strangers miles and miles away. Men and women in crisp red and black uniforms whispered among themselves about the failed mission into Akanoir Mountain and the missing scientists who had been lost within it. Most thought it was a catastrophe, and they weren't wrong. However, there were some who knew of Team Rocket's ace in the hole.
The Jewel of Team Rocket dwelled apart from the others, near the ruins of an ancient tower. He liked it that way, just him and his golden-plumed companion on the edge of the wild. There was something soothing about living so close to the wilderness from which he'd come. Perhaps he thought living there could help reconnect him with his memories. There had to have been a time in his life when he wasn't in the wild with the great bird, or wasn't under the care of the Rockets, who had welcomed him as a loving family after they found him as a child.
He harbored vague memories of his time in the forest, protected by the huge pokémon with the rainbow feathers. The other Rockets called it Ho-Oh, or the Guardian of the Sky, or the Golden Twin, or sometimes, the Bird of Resurrection. He simply called it a friend.
It had taken his friend quite a while to accept the Rockets, but it had seen how well they cared for the young boy it had salvaged from the edge of oblivion. It watched him grow into a young man among them. The boy's trust had entwined with the bird's spirit. And so, when the grim-faced leader of the Rockets approached the tower, the bird and its boy listened to his request.
"It's time to seek out the beasts."
The Jewel of Team Rocket smiled. His friend had shared thoughts with him about the pokémon it had brought back to life long ago, and he had always wished to see the noble beasts. He didn't know much about the disaster in the Akanoir Mountains, but he did know that whoever had harmed his friends and their pokémon would pay for their cruelty.
He and the Golden Twin would make sure of it.
The Silver Twin, then, had no choice but to intervene.
After the campfire on the outskirts of Trichroma Town had been doused and the lights of the village had all turned low, a lone figure stood outside of his laboratory, shivering in the autumn air. Professor Willow found sleep to be elusive these days. Every time his head hit the pillow, all he could think about was Joan Dillinger. He should have kept closer tabs on her. He knew how dangerous she was, and yet he had continued to treat her more or less amicably over the years. He shouldn't have told her about his assistants.
Hell, it went deeper than that. Willow should never have hired assistants in the first place, or at least not those three. He knew they were special, that they were destined for great things. He knew it couldn't all be coincidence. He couldn't help himself. Maybe if he hadn't invited them into his lab, none of this would have happened.
A dark shape came between Willow and the waxing moon above. He recognized the silhouette instantly. The last time he'd seen it, he had been a young boy, clinging to a battered boat in a stormy sea. He still feared the open water and the fury of storms.
His heart raced and his palms turned slick with sweat, but Willow refused to cower as Lugia landed before him. It wasn't like the other birds, the ones Willow had met on the hospital roof. Though he'd only encountered it once, it was immediately familiar to him. Its eyes bore through him, looking into the corners of his mind.
Lugia seemed satisfied by what it found there. Its vast, hand-like wings carried it back into the sky, and Willow felt in his soul that he'd see the bird again all too soon. It had left behind a message, one that Willow couldn't put into words. A map had been charted within his brain, and he knew it was meant to be shared with his assistants.
The sun would soon rise over the town of secrets. The townsfolk would resume their gossiping. Professor Willow would start another pot of coffee and begin sketching the map with which he'd been entrusted. The leaders would wake up next to each other and listen to the soft hush of their synchronized breathing and the patter of dew dripping on their tent.
They would stay there as the sun climbed higher, bound tightly within their sleeping bags, their noses ice-cold in the autumn morning. Blanche would be the first to rise, tugging at Candela's hair, coaxing her to get up. Spark would grab for them both, urging them to stay just a while longer, but would eventually lose the battle.
Together, they would step into the sunlight of a new day, stronger and wiser than before, and unafraid of the dark.
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AN: It's done, y'all. I'm so happy that we went on this adventure together! I hope it brought a little sunshine into your life, despite all the darkness. I know writing it and hearing your feedback brought me brightness. I can't thank you enough for your kind words!
Now, I mentioned before that I still have more stories in me for our leaders… I should note that there's a caveat. At first, I was going to give you a big ol' backstory about how I wound up here, and what my motivations were for writing this. I'll sum up: I came from a very dark place, wrote this trio of stories to process some heavy stuff in my quirky brain, and then became addicted to it. I have prioritized writing this over many other things in my life, including writing my own original fiction. I've published one novel, and I want to produce more. I also have been using fanfic as a means of avoiding studying to be a financial planner. I've made myself irrationally anxious about pumping out chapters, when my original purpose was to reduce my anxiety via writing.
So, consider this a season finale. The series will return eventually, but I want to give myself at least a couple months to decompress and come up with a schedule that will make it possible for me to balance my original fiction (I'm Abi G. Douglas on Facebook and Amazon, by the way, if you want to check out my first book, Necessaries, or just be buds or whatevs), my CFP studies, my actual job, my other artsy hobbies/commissions, my political activities, and so on. I'm gonna come up with a reasonable schedule, and will return with FANFARE, but with a slower, more regular pace.
Because I've been waiting a long time to get to the Jewel, Ho-Oh, and Lugia, and I have some big, adventurous plans for our leaders.
Thank you again, everyone, and I hope this story put a little sunshine in your day!