Chapter Twenty-Four

As Seven mulled over her loss against Kenny, she caught a flash of blue and green out of the corner of her eye. Turning her head, she saw a blue-furred Pokémon in a green t-shirt. The Pokémon pointed towards her. A tall, muscular man in an orange shirt, who stood next to it, headed her way. His stride had a predatory efficiency that put her on edge.

Seven rose, dusted off her jeans to suppress the shaking in her arms and legs, and started down a path out of the park. She turned sharply at the gate and saw the same blue-green blur in her peripheral vision, next to a flash of orange.

Specialty shops and restaurants dotted the city streets outside the parks. Traffic was light enough on and off the streets for Seven to zigzag through crosswalks without breaking stride, but heavy enough to put small crowds and buses between her and the unknown pursuers.

The street she walked down ended in a clothing boutique with giant storefront windows. She stopped in front of them and stroked her hair while she watched the murky reflections in the glass. After a minute, the blue-green blob reappeared, drawn to her as if by a magnet.

An alley next to the boutique caught her eye. She waited for a clump of people to pass behind her, mingled with them, and darted down the alley. Puddles splashed, and newspapers fluttered as she sprinted by half a dozen streets. A nook in one building offered shelter from onlookers with a vantage point down the path she took.

Moments later, the Pokémon went down the alley. She dug her fingers into the mortar on the back wall and scrambled up the building. Once on the roof, she took off at a dead run. Leaping across alleys and clambering up fire escapes, Seven ran until her lungs burned and her legs trembled. She sat against a wall on top of a high-rise apartment complex, twenty stories up, with a vantage point over the surrounding buildings.

Moments later, the blue Pokémon vaulted up a ladder and walked towards her. Her first instinct was to run. Instead, she sat where she was and studied it. The green t-shirt had a hole cut through the middle for the spike on the Pokémon's chest, and a belt with pouches was wrapped around its waist. The black appendages, which Seven had thought were its mane, waved in a phantom wind.

As it drew closer, her skin burned as though held near a candle flame. She pressed herself against the brick behind her, but its chill held no relief. Her head throbbed, and holding together her illusion took all the concentration she had.

The pokemon barked held out one paw. Seven waited for it to do anything else, and a minute passed in silence..

"I – I don't understand," she said. "Why are you following me?"

The Pokémon cocked its head to one side. Then it took a notepad off of its shirt and started writing. Despite its thick fingers, its manuscript had the orderly rows and straight lettering of a typewriter.

The note read, "You don't understand me?"

"No, I don't, not when you bark like that."

The Pokémon seemed even more confused. It tore the page out and handed it to her. Seven debated crumpling up the paper and tossing it off the building, but with the Pokemon watching, she tucked it into a pocket in her jacket.

Its next message read, "I'm sorry. I never met a Pokémon that could only speak like a human. My name is Bruno. What is yours?"

Seven hastily glanced down. Her illusion was still in place. She stifled the urge to deny being a Pokémon, and without thinking, said her name was Steven.

"What is your name? My name's Bruno."

"Steven?" Bruno confirmed on a piece of paper. A section that started, "Aren't you a–" was struck out, and after came, "I'm sorry if I startled you. I just wanted to meet you, since I first saw you." The Pokémon looked away when she read the note. For a moment, Seven imagined it was blushing beneath the blue fur on its cheeks.

"When did you see me? I've never seen you before."

Bruno looked even more abashed as he wrote a reply. "It was a few months ago, when we were chasing a Rocket Grunt. I saw you in an alley from a rooftop. Some Knights were talking to you, and then they ran off towards the criminal." He tapped the notebook with his pen a couple times and wrote another note. "Where is your trainer?"

Seven felt her stomach twisting itself into knots. She wasn't sure she could deny having a trainer, so she went with the first story on her tongue.

"My trainer sends me out to do errands, sometimes He doesn't like leaving home." Then she thought over Bruno's words, and an unsettling question came to mind. The man looked like a security guard stalking her through Harmonia Labs.

"And what does your trainer have you do?"

Bruno wrote quickly and handed her the paper. "My trainer's a police officer, and I help him catch criminals. It gets dangerous, sometimes, but I like protecting everyone."

Seven wanted nothing more than to run away, but with sheer force of will, she kept her feet rooted to the concrete. "Why were you following after me?"

Bruno's pen paused over the paper. The fur on top of his head scrunched up, and after a few fitful starts, he handed her a message. Three rows of strike-outs topped the paper, followed by, "I just wanted to talk."

Seven felt her chest loosen up, but her skin felt clammy and her mouth, dry. She swallowed and asked, "What do you do as an officer? Do you get stuck on guard jobs?"

"No, I get sent out on patrols, where my ability to sense Aura proves more useful. Your Aura is amazing, by the way. I've never felt anything like it. It's like the sun. Even among countless stars, it burns so brightly it obscures them." Again, Bruno's eyes shied away from her gaze, and then he wrote another message. "I guess I also wanted to meet you because your Aura's making me distracted. It's hard to get out of my head."

That last note of his made Seven's skin crawl. If Giovanni learned the police had a Pokémon that could track her anywhere… "Are there other Pokémon like you? I've never seen a Pokémon like you either."

"Some," Bruno answered. "A few more work for the police like me, but I'm the only one here in Palsitore. Most Lucario don't do well in cities. There's too much Aura to read, but I was trained for it."

Bruno glanced down, and his ears stood up. "I have to go. Is there a way that we could meet again? I would like to talk to you again."

Seven wasn't sure her nerves would last another conversation like this. "I don't know," she said. "I tend to stay at home a lot, and my trainer doesn't like strangers."

The Pokémon looked crestfallen as he barked a goodbye and leapt over the side of the building. Seven watched him glide down a fire escape and dart through the alleyway fast enough to kick up papers in his wake. Taking a deep breath, Seven slumped against a wall and took out the pile of papers sitting in her pocket. She wanted to scatter them to the wind and forget this ever happened, but Giovanni needed to know. Giovanni would know what to do.

Seven looked one last time at Bruno as he vanished around a corner, frowned, and walked back to Rocket HQ.

Bruno tried to hide his frown as he took off shirt. The sleeves caught on the spikes jutting from the tops of his hands, and he absently shrugged them free. It had taken a few months for the patrols to quiet down since the Warehouse Attack, as the raid on the White Knight base was called. Today was their first day off in nine weeks, and as Peter promised, they decided to search for the mystery Pokémon.

Bruno had trouble keeping his thoughts off the blazing aura at first, but it got easier to ignore as the weeks went on. He still found himself staring towards it at odd times, and he spent a few sleepless nights clutching his blankets as if trying to strangle his insomnia.

"How did it go?" Peter asked.

"Her name is Steven," Bruno answered with a paper. "Weird name. She was… fascinating."

"What was she like?"

Bruno scratched at his head with one hand as he wrote with the other. "I don't know how to put it. She seemed quiet and tense, and I had no idea how to talk to her. She seemed afraid." Bruno gave a bark like a laugh and wrote, "I guess I did chase her down an alley."

The smile on Bruno's face vanished, replaced with dread heavy as an ocean over his back. "Oh god," he wrote, "I chased her down an alley like she was some criminal. No wonder why she told me she didn't want to see me again."

Peter grimaced as he read the paper. "Ouch. She said it like that?"

"No, not directly," Bruno answered. "She said her trainer wouldn't like it, but I get the feeling she was making an excuse not to see me."

Peter laughed, and Bruno glared at him. "Sorry," he said, "I couldn't help myself. It sounds a lot like human relationships, when a guy gets…" His voice trailed off, and Bruno sensed a flicker of concern in Peter's aura, like a scarlet fish darting through a pond. Just as quickly, the concern was ruthlessly smothered, and Peter's soul was a calm, clear blue pool once again. He had the Sudoku book out, and he was filling in numbers so quickly his hand never stopped moving.

Once Peter was done with the puzzle, he tucked the book back in his pocket, and then he said, "Whatever happens, happens. Don't get hung up on the result, because before you know it, you'll find someone else." Then he stretched his arms and looked up at the clock. "Alright, let's get to bed. They're going to work us to the bone tomorrow to make up for the day off."

Bruno didn't think he would be able to sleep that night, not with all the thoughts scrambling through his head. Snippets of his conversations with Steven and Peter raced through his head until sleep snuck up on him.

Changelog

10/27/2018 - I pretty much rewrote the first half of this chapter. I was unhappy with how it turned out the first time - a lot of weak descriptions in the chase scene and some awkward dialogue. The second half got some touch-ups, but that's largely the same.