chapter five: unbeliever
"She's already proven herself."
I sat quietly at the dining room table in the house I had ransacked and stole from not even an hour prior, whose inhabitants I considered murdering in the process, with the man I physically assaulted using an illegal firearm, and contemplated how my decisions led me to this point.
The old man and the young man were "quietly" having an argument in the bedroom. The old lady had just fixed me some tea, and she was now sitting across the table from me, staring at me awkwardly with gray eyes that matched the color of her thinning hair. She held an uncertain expression, like she was actually terrified of me but she couldn't do anything about it because she was just doing her job.
The young man, still gushing blood, introduced himself as Aimé. Outside, he explained to me that this was his grandparents' house, that they were pokémon breeders, and that the three of them were collectively apart of a resistance.
And that was all he had the chance to tell me before he was taken away by his grandfather and reprimanded in hushed tones.
I gently took a sip of my tea and fixated my eyes to a spot on the table.
After a few minutes of hushed arguing, they finally stopped.
"I'm calling Korrina," the old man said. Aimé came out of the room in a huff. He took a seat next to me. I tensed up as he leaned in.
I tried to avoid his gaze, but the more I did, the more it felt like he was boring into me. He was kind of intense, I came to realize. I didn't like him at first.
"So you must be Moira," he said.
I snapped my head up to meet his gaze, a light frown furrowing my brow. "How do you know me?"
He leaned back in his chair, but he still didn't look relaxed. "You're all over the news, of course, and I've been looking for you." He blinked slowly and shrugged. "Well, I've been looking for Ampharos, honestly. Speaking of, he seems to have taken quite a liking to you."
The old lady shot her eyes back and forth between us as we talked. The entire situation made me uncomfortable, which was ironic considering this was the first chance I really had to rest safely in almost an entire day.
"Well, I did save his life," I said flatly.
Aimé pulled the corner of his mouth up into a slight smirk, still not tearing his eyes away from me. It felt like he was afraid I would try and run away again or something. No matter how uncomfortable the situation was for me, I realized that this was my best chance at survival, unless this was some elaborate hoax set up by the government in order to corner me. I knew better, though. If these people were government officials they would have killed me by now.
Aimé averted his gaze for the first time in the conversation.
"I have a proposition for you," he said slowly. His grandmother's eyes were trained intensely on him at this point. "The way you fought for your own survival over the past day is astounding. Not many people would still be alive in your position. You're a fighter, and I want you to join our resistance."
"Aimé!" I heard his grandfather yell from the other room. I met the young man's eyes.
"Sounds like some people disagree with you."
His mouth widened, lips narrowed. He showed me his teeth and his dimples and grabbed my hand gently. It took a lot for me not to react violently, to suppress my instinct to protect myself.
"The good news is, it's not up to them." He leaned forward on and rested his elbows on the table. "I'm going to take you to the Believers, the people who lead our resistance. They are seasoned fighters and their level of experience predates the oligarchy's rule. After a couple of tests, they will determine if you're fit to join us."
"And then what?" I asked flatly.
"We can sort that out when the time comes." He saw the doubt in my eyes. "I promise, the resistance is very open to newcomers, people who have been turned away by the oligarchy."
It all seemed surreal to me. This is the first I'd ever heard of any such resistance in my entire life. This so called acceptance concerned me. How could they be so sure all their members were against the government? But the fact that I had never heard of them was slightly reassuring, even though I grew up in the middle of no where.
To me, this acceptance-discretion paradox spoke of either their confidence or their delusion.
"What makes you so sure I'm going to come with you?" I asked. I wanted to test him, to see how safe this was, but all my cards had been layed out on the table since last night. I couldn't front. I couldn't lie about my condition. I couldn't say I had gotten any better offers or that I was about to be rescued. All of Kalos knew now that I was against my very own government. I didn't have anything else up my sleeve.
He gave me a slight smirk. "You can either trust me, or die out in the wilderness alone. But trust me when I say that you have potential to be a fighter. I saw it out there when you were about to kill me. You'll be safer with us."
In the same way Aimé felt some twisted reassurance in me attempting to murder him, I felt the same kind of feeling when he told me that without him, I would die.
"Your decision is very important to us, Moira. We can help you, and you can help us."
His grandfather came back into the front room with a clear expression.
"Korrina has agreed to see her."
After learning the news, the old couple began treating me like guests instead of like someone who had just almost killed them. They gave me a clean towel and allowed me to use their shower to properly wash up. While I was in there, the old woman began to make a home-cooked meal.
My sister was never good at cooking, so after my parents died, we basically survived off of anything we could eat raw. Fruits and vegetables were a major staple for me. Anything we could buy packaged was also a viable option, but we were extremely poor.
I turned the shower off and heard bits and pieces of their conversation through the door.
"This goes against every protocol we've ever taken. How you can just blindly trust this – this inexperienced girl astounds me," the old man said confidently.
"Papa," Aimé said. "What we just saw in her is more than we've ever seen in any of the other candidates right from the beginning. Actions speak so much louder than words. I have faith in her."
"You've known her for two hours," the woman said. "Besides, you can't compare them. The others had their chance under different circumstances. You don't know that her recklessness won't get us all discovered and killed."
"It doesn't matter," he replied hotly. "Korrina has given her blessing."
"Well we all know how jaded Korrina can be, just like you," the old man grumbled.
I dressed quickly and stepped out the door, if only for them to stop talking about me. It worked, because as soon as I stepped into the front room, they all shut up.
Aimé and his grandfather were sitting across from each other at the table. The grandmother had her back turned to me for a second, but she abruptly faced me and set the dish on the table.
"Come sit, Girl," she commanded. I walked over and sat down gently. She gave each one of us a plate, and set one down for herself before she dished for us. "Now listen closely, my husband and I may not agree with it," she said as she finished piling food onto our plate and sat down, "but Aimé has seen something in you, something to which Korrina has decided to humor. It is a great honor to go in front of the Believers and present yourself, an honor which does not happen to just anyone.
"Me and my husband run this day care facility for all trainers in Kalos, law-abiding or not, but for the most part, without the support of the resistance, trainers don't tend to do as well. The truth is, we have a lot of abandoned pokémon, and you can't use Ampharos in public. Regardless of if Korrina accepts you, there will still be a spot for you in the resistance, and either way, you will need a pokémon. We are going to provide one for you."
She began eating.
"For now," Aimé said. "We're going to assume you make it into the division of the resistance you are auditioning for. I am in the same division. We're called the Soldiers."
"I don't know if I want to be a Soldier," I said.
Aimé gave me a concerned look. He was putting a lot of stock into this. "And it's fine if you don't, but only Soldiers and Believers are granted the use of mega pokémon because of scarcity. If you make the position though, I hope you will consider taking it. We could definitely use you since we lost Matthieu, Ampharos' trainer before you."
That statement definitely did not inspire any profound sense of anarchism inside me, considering it was easy to guess what he died from after I heard the barrage of gunfire and found Ampharos' poké ball in a forest.
"If you do not become a Soldier, there is still widespread acceptance for you as a Worker. Workers provide for the resistance, like my grandparents. They give money, offer safe housing, and do anything the resistance as a whole needs to thrive. It will be considerably harder for you to find a niche as a Worker though, considering you don't have much to provide, and the entire country is looking for you. Also, we would have to give Ampharos to a different trainer."
When he mentioned that, I felt a little defensive. Before, giving up Ampharos to someone else seemed like a reasonable idea. Now that it was an actual possibility, I was less than eager to comply. My life hadn't almost ended countless times in the past day just for me to end up following another set of laws. I let out an incredulous laugh and the whole table looked at me.
"The way I'm hearing it is that anyway this breaks down I still have to join you guys. You're just as bad as the oligarchy, and in case you didn't notice, they didn't do such a great job controlling me in the past few days either."
The table was silent.
"Well," the old man muttered, "she's certainly headstrong enough for this job."
"Don't think of yourself with so much importance, Girl," the woman shouted sternly, the wrinkles around her eyes contorting into something that appeared to be a frown. "You are more than welcome to walk out that door and get yourself killed, but I promise, none of us will bat an eye. What we are offering you is indisputable. You get salvation."
As much as I didn't like it, I couldn't argue with that logic.
"Alright," I said with a sigh. "Give me a pokémon."