Chapter 25 – Complications

"Silas, where are you?" I called out as I stuck my very aching head – courtesy of drinking just a couple of hours ago - into the kitchen. "Oh! Good morning, Mrs. Harding."

"Ah, you're an early bird!" she replied, as she buttered a slice of toast. "And what's this about Silas?"

I frowned. "He was in the room when I fell asleep last night, but now he's missing! And shellder can't exactly walk around, can they?"

"Hmm, that they can't," Mrs. Harding nodded. "Toast, dear? You look a little thin."

"No thanks, ma'am – I'll be going to look for Silas now," I said, shaking my head.

She sighed, "Once you find him, do grab some breakfast, then! You young people are absolutely horrible when it comes to eating breakfast, you know..."

After quickly assuring her that I would indeed have something for breakfast once I had found my missing starter, I headed into the living room, where I found General Harding watching the six a.m. news bulletin. He was slumped in one of the misshapen, ancient sofas along the living room wall, and blinked like a noctowl when he saw me.

A quick once-over told me all I needed to know; there were bags under his eyes and his hair was all over the place. Sure signs of him being hung-over if there ever were any.

"Having my mother as an early riser is bad enough, but you, too?" he groaned. "What is it with you people and waking up early?"

"My head hurts," I sighed, as I sank down into the unoccupied sofa set. "So, what's on the news?"

He snorted, and waved at the television set. "They're making the announcement for the first batches of new trainers. Apparently, starters will be assigned at the military bases of the selected cities and towns. So guess who'll have extra work to do when we get back to Canalave?"

"Gods be damned," I muttered. "We'll be the ones screening them, I take it?"

"Bingo and a hole-in-one," he answered with a grunt. "And my head isn't any better than yours, kiddo... it feels like a fucking snorlax is having explosive diarrhoea in my there."

We sat there in relative silence for a few moments, watching the groggy-looking newscaster read out the names of the cities and townships that had been selected as starting points for the newly-restarted pokemon league. Supposedly, there would be twenty gyms per region now, so that all seventeen types would be represented, and the remainder three would have the option of reusing a type or running mixed species.

Just why the government was broadcasting all that at slightly past six in the morning was beyond me. Maybe they were trying to get people to listen to the news before leaving for work or something.

Out of nowhere, General Harding got up, shut the television off, and stalked across the living room. Throwing open the window that faced the main road, he let out a sort of animalistic cry before sticking his entire upper torso out of the window.

"ARGH... MY FUCKING HEAD!" he half-shouted, half-moaned, even as he let loose with a terrific flatulent blast that very nearly sent me reeling. "MY HOLY FUCKING HELL!"

I coughed feebly, even as I waved my hands about to try and dispel the fart's lingering smell. "Sir, what the- how the- why did you fart at me? And did you just use 'holy' and 'fucking' next to each other in the same sentence?"

"It's all in the mind... All in the fucking mind!" he rasped, as he swayed drunkenly and made his way back to the sofa. With a loud grunt, he crashed into the sagging chair, causing it to become even more scruffy-looking. "Oh, my fucking gods..."

"... I'm pretty sure that language is blasphemous to the extreme."

"Blasphemy my sweaty, hairy, dick... Say, where's Ben, anyway? Was he in the kitchen when you went there?" General Harding said, tilting his head back and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Ben? I didn't see him..." I replied, my voice trailing off as I realized something. "Sweet Arceus, he took Silas!"

"Say what say when say how?" mumbled my boss, squinting in the window's general direction. "Why is the window open again?"

I got up from the sofa, felt unsteady on my feet for a bit, and finally regained my bearings. "Silas is missing, and so is Ben. I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Go and find them, then. Meanwhile, I've got some sleeping to do."

With that, he stretched out on the sofa and hugged one of the ratty-looking cushions. It didn't take more than a few seconds for the soft sound of snoring to fill the air, which surprised me – I hadn't thought he was that busted by last night's drinking binge.

Shaking my head a little to clear things up – why, the floor seemed to be moving of its own accord – I slowly made my way to the living room window, and took a look out at the road. A divermon was walking by, harpoon propped up on a shoulder, whistling as it made its way down the street.

The street itself was only barely visible, since the walls of Sootopolis blocked the sun from illuminating the city until about noon. But the light from the living room spilled out of the window and onto the street, making the area slightly more than a mass of shadows.

And then I saw Ben.

The gardevoir in question was hovering somewhere near the neighbor's house, and was waving about at something. He continued to do so for several moments, before settling back down onto the ground and walking up to the house and knocking on the front door.

"Oi, Ben!" I called out to him. "What are you doing?"

He whipped about, and for a brief moment, his eyes glowed red in the darkness. "Oh, it's you. Up early, I see."

"Never mind that – what are you up to, Ben? I've got a feeling it isn't anything good."

The two reddish spots that were his eyes flickered several times as he blinked and replied in a voice that was too clueless to be genuine. "I'm just going to say good morning to the neighbours. It's called being neighbourly, you know."

I let out a snort of laughter at that. "You, neighbourly? I'm coming over to see just what's going on... and I've got a feeling Silas is involved, somehow."

"You don't have to do that!" Ben's telepathic voice said hurriedly as I headed over to the house's main door, and unbolted it – yes, it was only secured with a single bolt. "Nothing going on here, you doofus!"

"For a psychic, Ben, you really are dense about lying to people," I said, as I descended the stairs leading down to the road. "Now, where's Silas, and who do I have to apologize to?"

Right at that moment, as if the universe had decided to make things happen using my words as karmic cues of some sort, the window of the house that Ben had been trying to enter exploded outwards in a noisy shower of glass.

"My goodness..." he said, whipping about to survey the destruction with a wide-eyed, slack-jawed look. "Silas really blew that one, didn't he?"

"What did you teach him how to do?" I groaned, cradling my head in my hands. "Explosion?"

"I'm worried about just where he is now, sweetie," Ben waved a claw at me dismissively, even as the shards of glass from the window flew up in a massive, tinkling cloud and reassembled themselves into a flat, pane-like form.

A snap of his claws sent a Will-O-Wisp at the glassy mass, the minute fireballs seemingly glancing off the surface of the glass in mid-air. With that, the reformed window pane floated over back to the frame, and slotted itself back in.

"As awesome as that was, I'm still going to hate you for teaching him whatever that was. Just why are you worried about where-" I stopped talking abruptly as I finally realized what Ben was hinting at. "Oh, fucking hell – you didn't!"

"I did, darling," he chirped happily, as he stalked off down the dark street. "And he's right this way, so if you'll just follow me, we'll see where he landed."

"You fucking moron!" I snapped. "What in the seven circles of Hell possessed you when you taught Silas how to teleport?"

General Harding's bastardized nuisance of a gardevoir shrugged. "Hey, he asked politely. And he's... oh. Perhaps you might want to call out to him."

"Silas?" I said, raising my voice a little. "Where are you?"

"I'm here, Trainer!" was Silas' reply, sounding somewhat distant yet near at the same time. "Might need Ben to give me some instructions, though... I'm stuck."

"Just where are you, you crazy idiot? Are you halfway stuck in a wall or something?" I asked, as I headed towards the sound of his voice. "And why the heck did you ask for teleportation lessons at the ass crack of dawn..."

"I'm on a roof, and some shingles are holding me in place!" Silas declared happily. "So I'm not quite sure how I'm to teleport out without taking the shingles with me!"

Smacking myself in the forehead as the image of Silas wrecking someone's roof came to mind, I sighed. "Ben, could you teleport me up there? Looks like I'll need to pry him out."

"You two are too cute," Ben smirked, flashing his fangs at me, mere seconds before I was tossed up into the air like a ragdoll. "Land carefully, dear!"

"MOTHER-" was all I got out before I crashed down onto some random house's roof, causing a few of the shingles to crack and slide off. "Ben, you fucking prick!"

"Shut up and retrieve your shellder. Wouldn't want the homeowners to wake up and see a man on their roof in only his cargo pants, now, would we?"

Muttering a whole string of curses under my breath, I picked myself up with a wince, and stood up on the roof. Before I could even glance around, a jet of ice-cold water blasted me in the back.

"Trainer, you came for me!" said Silas, amidst laughs. "You really are a crazy one, yes you are!"

"Shut up, Silas!" I grumbled, as I made my way over to him. Somehow, he'd teleported between two rows of shingles. "I'm just going to yank you out now, alright?"

It didn't take long to pull out from between the shingles – thank goodness he hadn't teleported into the shingles and gotten them merged into parts of his body. However, some loud thumping sounds started up somewhere beneath our feet, causing his eyes to go wide.

"That'll be the house's owners, methinks!" he whispered. "No time to lose, Trainer, so hold on!"

"Let Ben do it-" I started, only to feel the rooftop beneath my feet start to swirl about. "Silas, no!"

With that, he teleported us off the roof.

xxx

By the time I got back to the Harding family home, the three of them and Ben were waiting in the living room, watching some morning cartoons while eating breakfast. Mrs. Harding stared at me as I walked into the house with seaweed still stuck in my hair, whereas her husband merely broke out into a round of really loud guffawing. Their horrible, horrible son took one look at me, and offered Ben a high five.

"Good one, Ben!" he laughed. "So, just where did Silas take you? I heard his targeting skills are still a little shaky."

"We took a trip into a fisherman's net," I replied waspishly. "Thank goodness it was already on land, though. I might've drowned, otherwise."

Ben shook his head, giggling uncontrollably. "Nah, Silas would've saved you. For all the hatred you two have between you, he still looks up to you, I think."

"Bullshit," scoffed my starter, blowing a raspberry at Ben. "I'd have let him drown, I'll have you know!"

"That's what she said," sang Ben, as he sat bolt upright. "Oh, watch out, Jerry!"

On the television screen, Tom the cat nearly got beheaded as Jerry the mouse slammed a window shut on his neck. Several feet away on the sofa, perched precariously on Mrs. Harding's knee, the Harding family's teddy bear shook violently and nearly fell to the floor as the three of them broke out into a laughing fit.

"You are most definitely an interesting family..." I said weakly, as I headed to the bathroom. "I'll just... leave you to your Tom and Jerry, then."

"Don't throw that seaweed away, son!" Mr. Harding said, as I made my way to get cleaned up. "Ben does love to nibble on fresh seaweed, for some odd reason or another."

For the love of all that was remotely holy, didn't these people do anything normally?

... But then again, General Harding had to have gotten all his insanity from somebody.

xxx

That night, after dinner and several dramatic recounts of Silas' adventures in teleportation lessons, General Harding told me that we were going on a little trip. It wasn't something entirely unexpected given his history of stalking the streets of Canalave at night, but something just didn't feel right about the whole thing.

"Just where are we going, sir?" I asked him as we made our way to the small submarine pier that was nestled among the fishing docks. "Is this on official business?"

"Not really," he said, as he practically pranced down the street. "But then again, yes to an extent!"

"Sir, you aren't making any sense whatsoever."

"Just shut up and follow me!"

It didn't take us long to get to the submarine pier, where three compact submarines were docked. They were all built for a crew of four at most, and couldn't travel more than two hundred miles in a single trip. From what I knew about them, though, the compact submarines were highly resistant to damage, and could even withstand a sharpedo ramming into them head-on at full speed.

"Good evening, gentlemen!" said General Harding brightly as he sprang up to the control booth, containing a cadaverous-looking pier operator and his two bodyguards – a one-eyed divermon and a muscular old poliwrath. "I'm going to need to borrow one of the compact subs for a bit!"

"General Harding, we don't usually let officers take them out just like that," the man behind the bulletproof glass deadpanned. "May I inquire as to why you need a submarine at this time of day?"

My boss leaned against the glass, and rapped his knuckles on the counter-top. "We're going to inspect the mining bases. Surprise them a little, you know? See, I'm not just back here on vacation."

The operator raised an eyebrow, and pressed several keys on a pad built into the surface of his workstation. "I'll have to confirm this with the chain of command, then."

"Go ahead and confirm it all you want," huffed General Harding. "But it's all a mighty waste of time, I tell you. Sootopolis is one of the most secure locations on Earth!"

"I'm sure of that, sir. Now please hold on while I get port control on the line."

We stood there for a while, the pier being quiet save for the sound of waves lapping against its support pylons. The pier operator's two guards had stepped out from the control booth through a side door and were now eyeballing us, with the divermon leaning against its harpoon casually and the poliwrath cracking its massive knuckles.

"I see," said the operator suddenly, even though no one had said anything to him. "Alright, then – I'll clear them for the night."

"Told you so, didn't I?" General Harding smiled sweetly at the man as he opened a safe built into the booth's wall. "Now, which sub are we getting?"

"I'll be entrusting the third submarine for you, sir," answered the operator blandly as he passed General Harding a set of keys. "Do try not to get it damaged if possible; we just had them repainted recently."

As the two of us made our way towards the gangway to the submarines, I nudged General Harding in the shoulder. "How does he do that?"

"Do what?" he asked me blankly. "He's the pier operator, so of course he's able to clear us to use the submarines."

I rolled my eyes. "He didn't even talk to anyone, and he got clearance from port control? How's that possible?"

"Oh, that," my boss snapped his fingers. "Well, he's got cochlear implants similar to yours, but his receive transmitted signals or something like that without translation abilities... or whatever. Here we are!"

The small, snub-nosed submarine bobbed about in the water not three feet away from us. General Harding used one of the keys the operator had given to him to unlock some kind of panel on the pier itself, and a narrow gangplank slowly extended out of the pier towards the submarine. He walked down the gangplank, and somehow made the submarine's hatch open up.

"Hop in, kid!"

With a strange, sinking feeling in my gut, I stepped into the submarine's cramped interior, followed by General Harding. The insides of the submarine were all painted white, and its controls were all labelled with the same, cramped black printing. Four transparisteel viewports made up the front of the submarine, providing us with a perfectly hemispherical view of the world outside the submersible.

He fired up the controls within several minutes, while I ran some checks on the submarine's critical functions. Fuel supplies, oxygen tanks, ballast, emergency weapons systems, external illumination, and all internal systems checked out fine, and so we sealed the hatch, and started up the submarine's engines.

"Want to drive, rookie?" General Harding asked me with a smirk. "This part of the trip's simple enough for you to do it, but later on, I'll take over once we're at the mining facilities."

"It's been a while since I handled one of these..." I fidgeted a little in my seat, feeling the crash webbing digging into my ribs a little. "But you can take over if anything goes wrong, right?"

"Yup, got the main piloting controls here," he tapped the control console before him. "Yours are secondary controls, so take her out, my good man!"

Swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat, I revved the submarine's engines a little, and put its propeller in gear. I eased the clutch pedal out a little – I couldn't recall why they modelled the submarine's controls after those of a manual transmission car – and sure enough, the submarine glided forward slowly. All it took was some gentle pressure on the accelerator for the submarine to pick up speed, and we were off into the dark waters.

"Good starting, kid," General Harding nodded approvingly from his seat at the primary control console. "You can start taking her down under now."

"Got it, sir," I replied as I flipped the switches that opened the ballast tanks and slanted the submarine's lateral fins downwards. Sure enough, we began descending into the depths at a steady rate as the ballast tanks filled up and the lateral fins angled our nose down.

After some time spent cruising through the darkness of the ocean's depths along the bearings he'd provided me with, he finally spoke up. "I'm starting external illumination. We should be approaching the mining facilities soon."

Several switches were flicked and dials turned, resulting in the black waters around us being lit up by powerful halogen lamps mounted on the submarine's hull. Various water pokemon began swimming right up next to us, drawn by the light, even as General Harding called for me to take us down deeper, to the point that we were practically skimming along the bottom of the seabed.

"The GPS says we're drawing up to the trench... right about now," he said, looking at the tiny monitor on his control console.

As if on cue, the ground beneath us gave way into nothingness. The massive ocean trench was like a colossal mouth, lined with jagged rocks that resembled gigantic teeth. Down in the trench, at the edges of visibility, were several clusters of glassy-looking domes connected by what looked like wide pipes – we had located the deep-sea mining facilities.

"Take us down to that dome there," General Harding directed me, pointing to a dome whose external lights had suddenly flickered on, followed by a line of undersea lights that seemed to trace a path between us and them. "Just follow those docking lights, and take us in slowly."

Our approach to the dome was only made eventful by several curious cradily that probed at our hull with their tentacles as we passed over them. They were all clustered about the docking lights for some reason, and seemed to have a skin that was colored a murky grey as opposed to their usual shade of green.

"What's with the cradily, sir?" I asked my boss as we pulled up to a sizeable blast door that had slid open along the side of the dome. "Are they sick, or something?"

He shook his head, as we passed through the opening and entered the dome. "Nah, they're just adapted to their barnacle nature as opposed to their grass nature – like gastrodon, remember?"

I nodded and murmured in affirmation as I recalled the obscure mechanisms that defined a gastrodon's skin color. If I remembered my lessons correctly, gastrodon who thrived in salt water tended to have blue skin, whereas those that lived in fresh water had pinkish skin.

"So these cradily don't photosynthesize? Then why are they all clustered near the lights?" I asked as I brought the submarine to a stop in a cage-like structure that was actually a sort of submarine parking lot. "I mean, they'd have stronger suction cups and longer tentacles, but wouldn't being adapted to perpetual immersion make them independent of light?"

"I can't recall all the details, kid, but apparently they do need some light periodically," General Harding said, as the cage clamped onto us and the chamber began emptying itself of water. "Probably they can't eliminate their grass nature completely, or something. Ask Gary when we get back – I'm sure he knows the answer."

A rapping sound came from somewhere on the hull, making us both jump a little. We looked out of the viewports, and saw three men in overalls standing next to the submarine, looking quite haggard.

"And it looks like we have a welcoming committee," remarked my commanding officer, as he unbuckled his crash webbing. "Come on, kiddo – let's not make this last any longer than it has to."

With that, we got out of the submarine, and went up to the miners, who weren't looking too happy about the surprise inspection.

"Why do you people do this?" asked the oldest of the three miners, looking supremely grumpy. "We're all busy down here, and we don't exactly have time to deal with you folks from the surface."

"Just sign the forms, and I'll be off," said General Harding, rolling his eyes at the old miner. "I trust everything's all right?"

The miner stared at him. "You aren't going to check anything before we sign off on this?"

"Look," General Harding sighed, "I don't like these inspections any more than you do, and I have faith in your competence. If there's really anything wrong, you wouldn't even have let me in, would you now?"

One of the two other miners chuckled. "Smart man, this one is. Just sign off and let him go, boss."

"I must say, this is unexpected," commented the old miner as he began signing the inspection forms. "But anyway, thanks for trusting us on our work. You want a cup of coffee or something before you leave?"

"Nah, I'm sure you guys are tight on supplies. So, sorry to disturb you, and goodbye," said General Harding as he turned and hopped back into the submarine. "Come along, rookie!"

"Keep an eye on your boss, boy!" said the old miner as I got into the submarine. "Be more like him and you'll go far, mark my words!"

I laughed at the thought of being more like General Harding – the very idea of it was ridiculous. "I'll keep that in mind, mister."

"Hurry up, kid!" urged General Harding as the submarine hatch sealed itself and the three miners left the docking chamber. "We've got one more stop to make, and I'm not the fastest submarine pilot out there... so move it!"

"Where are we going?" I asked him, as he reversed the submarine out of the docking dome and began emptying out the ballast tanks. "Aren't we going back now that the inspection's done?"

He smiled, but I didn't miss the brief shadow that fell over his expression. "Oh, we've got a stop to make then we'll go back. Just another inspection of sorts, you'll see."

The submarine stopped losing depth as he closed the ballast tanks, and began plotting a new course to some coordinates that he apparently knew by heart. We passed through surprisingly empty waters, and eventually came to a dead end – a wall of rock rose up before us, indicating that we'd come up against Sootopolis itself.

I opened my mouth to say something, but ended up remaining silent as he brought the submarine into a cave whose entrance had been concealed by a massive rocky outcropping. We passed through a spacious, submerged cavern, and eventually emerged into a massive chamber whose walls were beyond our lights' reach.

"We'll go ashore here, and then wrap up our business for tonight," General Harding said, as he raised us up to the water's surface. "Follow me closely, you hear? Got lots of slippery stepping stones to navigate on the way to where we're going."

More confused than ever, I nodded mutely and followed him out of the submarine. As he'd said, there were plenty of stepping stones dotting the surface around the submarine – just how he'd managed to bring it up right between the masses of rocks was beyond me. I nearly slipped several times, but managed to avoid falling into the eerily placid waters. Above us was the open sky, but around us were towering cliffs that seemed to be part of the more treacherous portions of Sootopolis' exterior.

We walked along the stones, eventually reaching a sandy stretch of land that wound, snake-like, through the rocky walls. Every so often, we would come to a crossroads, but General Harding seemed to know where he was going. It didn't take long for me to get completely lost, and I hurried to keep up with him as he scurried through the labyrinth of rocks and sand.

After what seemed like hours, we finally left the rocky maze, and made it out onto a rocky shore overlooking a large lagoon. However, it wasn't the large, cliff-enclosed lagoon that immediately caught my attention.

It was all the milotic.

They seemed to be there by the dozen, both on the land and in the water. Some were swimming about in the moonlit water, whereas others were coiled up on land or on the rocky ledges near the water. Little groups of feebas could be seen flocking about some of the larger milotic, particularly near the edges of the lagoon.

"Wow," I exhaled, unable to articulate a full sentence out of sheer wonder. Milotic were incredibly rare in the wild, and here we were, looking at an entire nest of them!

"Beautiful, aren't they?" General Harding grinned at me. "Only we locals know about this place, and only we can find it. If you tried climbing over the cliffs, you'd be killed by wild pokemon, and the waters outside the lagoon are too hazardous for travel."

"They're... so peaceful," I said, still awestruck by the sight before my eyes. As I stepped towards the edge of the lagoon, one of the milotic that had been coiled on the shore reared up and blinked its long-lashed eyes at me.

"Be careful, they can hypnotize people, you know," warned my boss, even as I approached the serpentine pokemon and reached out to touch it.

Just as I was about to lay my hand on its hair, though, the milotic let out a shrill cry, and rapidly slithered off into the water. Puzzled, I looked around, and saw that almost all of them were now looking at me. Some were rushing into the water, some were herding the schools of feebas towards deeper waters, and the rest were coiling into what looked like striking positions.

"What-" I began, only to be interrupted by the distinctive sound of a pokemon being let out of a pokeball. I froze for a moment, and slowly turned around to face what I was sure to be the source of the milotics' sudden panic.

General Harding stood several feet away from me, Adrienne standing next to him. He had drawn his sidearm, and had drawn a bead on me with it. As I watched, he flicked the safety off, and fixed a steely-eyed glare at me.

"Sir, why-" I said, right before all my muscles went numb, causing me to fall to the ground in a boneless heap. Unspoken words echoed loudly in my head as my mind went berserk trying to figure out what was going on.

Adrienne stepped up to me, eyes glowing, and I realized that my sudden paralysis was due to her actions. Meanwhile, her trainer leisurely ambled up to my side, and waved his pistol in my direction.

"Now, rookie, we're going to have some truths," he drawled. "Specifically, the reasons why you tried to have me arrested for murder."