Chapter 30 – Renewal

"Your attention please – the next station is Canalave City. End of the line. All passengers are to disembark."

I looked disinterestedly out of the train's windows, and saw that we were indeed about to stop at the Canalave terminal station. It couldn't have been more than a year since I first arrived at Canalave, and there it was to greet me, that same announcement as the train pulled up to the terminal. Little seemed to have changed around the place; it was still a glass-fronted building held up over the water on supports that looked much too fragile to suspend such a structure.

Of course, the digimon troops at their posts served as a very visible reminder that we had been threatened by some terrorists not too long ago. Down on the water's surface, I could see a few small boats bobbing about, apparently occupied by humans and pokemon. Several dark shadows near the boats made me wonder if there were submerged digimon in the vicinity.

As the train came to a gradual stop, I turned to wake General Harding up. Since we left Jubilife, he'd sprawled out over an entire row of seats and proceeded to have a nap. A few people and pokemon had given us dirty looks for his hogging of the seats, but all I could do was to shrug and offer a mumbled apology.

After all, the man was one hell of an incorrigible bastard when it came to matters such as this.

I gave him a few taps on the shoulder to wake him up, and turned my attention to Silas. Like General Harding, he'd decided to take a nap once we were on the train. Fortunately, he dozed off while on my lap, which spared me from the seat-hogging stigma.

"Wake up, Silas. We're back at Canalave," I said, tapping him on the shell, just as the doors slid open. "Time to get off the train, Silas."

"... Say what?" came a groggy voice from General Harding's direction. "What's this about getting off on a train with Silas?"

All I could do was to roll my eyes at him, even as I got out of my seat and recalled my awakening shellder into his pokeball. "Nice to see you too, sir. And yes, we were being grossly inappropriate on a train."

General Harding stood up and grabbed his bag, stretching as he did so. "Whatever, kiddo. I highly suspect that this is all Ben's fault, you know? What with his species and their human fetish, stuff like that."

Briefly, I felt a chill settling down over me as I remembered the midnight conversation I'd had with Allan in the den. Quickly shaking my head to clear my thoughts a little, I slung my backpack over my shoulder, and headed for the door. "If you say so, sir."

"Ah, it's good to be back here again!" my boss declared happily, as he practically pranced out onto the platform. "Not as nice as Sootopolis, of course, but it's by the sea, and that's what counts, right?"

I nodded to his back, wondering how he'd suddenly become so energetic when just minutes ago, he had been snoozing like a snorlax. "I'm sure you'll make do."

"Damned straight I will," he said, as we headed towards the immigration checkpoint. "Now, keep an eye out for our ride. It most probably resembles a military jeep."

That little bit of information made me hesitate for a moment. "Wait, we aren't going back with Aunty Moira, are we?"

"Of course not!" General Harding huffed, as he handed his identification to an immigration officer. "That woman's as mad as a stoned smeargle, she is! We're going back with Fen."

Somehow, I had a bad feeling about the whole situation at hand.

xxx

"HOLY FUCK!"

General Harding and I almost screamed like a pair of schoolgirls as General Fen went around a corner at what felt like the fifth gear. As it turned out, he was worse than even Aunty Moira behind the wheel, despite his docile demeanor – maybe it was something to do with the steel department.

"Can it, you two!" said Asian general snapped, as he swerved to avoid running over a mushroomon on the sidewalk. "Can't you see I'm trying to drive?"

"Exactly!" his mawile screeched from the passenger seat, as it held on tight to the headrest with its jaw-like horns. "Trainer's driving is horrible enough without the drama!"

"Bite your tongue, Bruce!"

"Bite me!"

"Fen, you're a god-damned maniac!" groaned General Harding, as we bounced over a speed bump like a beer can off a frat boy's forehead. "When you said you'd gotten your license back, I thought you'd improved!"

General Fen snorted disdainfully at that and floored the brakes, bringing us to a dead stop and jerking everyone forwards right in front of the port control guard post. The passenger seat's headrest got ripped cleanly off as Bruce the mawile got thrown into the windscreen, and my backpack flew right out of the jeep.

Seriously, that was even more messed up than Aunty Moira's driving could have ever been.

My commanding officer threw the door open and jumped out of the jeep, landing on the pavement in a heap. Even as some pedestrians and port control personnel gave him odd looks for doing so, he proceeded to prostrate himself on the ground, almost as if he was praying to some pagan deity.

"Sir, don't you think this is a little dramatic?" I asked him, nudging him with my foot as I picked up my backpack from where it had landed on the sidewalk.

"That was some pretty horrible driving, it was," he retorted, as he got up and brushed off his pants. "Fen, do me a favour and never let me get in any car that you're driving, will you? I'm hoping to live to a ripe old age."

"Oh, shut up, will you?" General Fen responded, as he handed the jeep's keys to one of the port control sentries. "I got us all here, didn't I? And you don't hear Bruce complaining."

"That's because I'm trying to get all that seat padding out of my horns, you twit!" snapped the mawile, as his horns moved about like a living pair of pliers. "You're brushing them down tonight!"

"Says who?" sniffed the bespectacled steel specialist, as he glared at his starter. "Get Anubis to do it."

General Harding grabbed my upper arm and practically hauled me away from the two of them. "Let's get out of here, kid, before those two get into a massive brawl."

I could only stare at him out of disbelief. "A human against a mawile?"

"Eh, Fen's got some nasty moves on him," he said dismissively.

As if on cue, there was a loud crashing sound somewhere behind us. Both of us turned to take a look, and saw that General Fen had apparently thrown Bruce into the guard post. Even as we watched, he picked up a traffic cone, and headed towards the guard post. Before he could get within a meter of it, though, a streamer of flame burst out of the window, which missed him by a hair.

"Crazy bastard," General Harding said, not without a note of amusement in his voice.

"For once, I find myself agreeing with you, sir," I muttered, wondering just how I'd ended up with this particular bunch of lunatics.

"Oi!" my boss snapped, as he clouted my across my head.

"What was that for?" I blinked like a noctowl as I rubbed the back of my head.

"Stop calling me 'sir'!"

Fen's mawile chose that moment to go stumbling across port control's compound, with a traffic cone jammed over his head. If the muffled sounds coming from under the cone were what I thought they were Bruce seemed to have an impressive command of English, as far as profanity was concerned.

Thank goodness he and Silas weren't acquainted.

xxx

Once General Harding and I had gone our separate ways – well, it was really just a matter of me walking a little further down the road – I found myself running into none other than Dolph, the don of Canalave's Underground.

"Mister Dolph?" I asked incredulously, as he waved and approached me. "What on earth are you doing topside?"

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. "Just call me Dolph, kid. Have you seen Zachary Harding anywhere about? I've been looking for him since your train got in at the terminal."

I pointed towards his apartment. "Oh, he's back at his place. And you still haven't answered my question."

"Testy, aren't we?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "What business is it of yours if I decide to come up here?"

"If it is actually related to our... common interests, then the question is completely necessary," I shrugged. "Could save us a trip down under, can't it? Save everyone's time, really."

Dolph smirked at that, and nodded approvingly. "You're a sharp one, and you've got some balls – I can see why Zachary's so fond of you, hah! But really, I'm just looking for him to settle some... old stuff. It's nothing that you'd be involved in, so just relax and let me go without an interrogation, would you?"

"Very well, then," I nodded. "Good day to you, sir."

He shook his head upon hearing that. "My, my. Zachary was right about you being an uptight little one, eh? Don't worry, though! Someday you'll be able to call others by their first names without feeling like you ought to be punished, hah!"

With that, he turned and walked off towards General Harding's apartment. I just stood there for a while, looking at his retreating back until he rounded a corner and vanished out of my sight.

Something just didn't feel right about the whole deal, really. Dolph may have been a powerful man in the Underground, but that was really the limit of his domain; topside was under governmental control. Seeing him strolling casually down the street as if he owned the place was suspicious, to say the least.

Eventually, I gave up on trying to think of a logical reason for his presence topside, and continued walking back to my own quarters.

xxx

Several hours after our return to Canalave found me getting ready to turn in for the night, along with Silas. General Harding's week of leave had been timed quite nicely, really – we'd returned to Canalave on Sunday afternoon, giving us just enough time to get back to our respective living quarters and having a short break before the next working week began. While the seven days away from work had been refreshing in themselves, the train ride back to Canalave most certainly hadn't been.

Admittedly, that was probably because I'd been thinking about how to tell Silas about that night at the milotic lagoon.

So there we were, in my room, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling and waiting to fall asleep. Silas was more likely staring at the wall given his physical limitations, though. The two of us were rather comfortable like that, especially since there was a pleasant little breeze blowing into the room thanks to the open window. From the coolness of the air, it seemed that we had rain incoming.

After some time in the quiet, I decided to bring up my encounter with a homicidal Zachary Harding.

"So, Silas..." I hesitantly spoke up, "did Ben say anything to you before we left Sootopolis?"

He sat there silently for a while, before sticking out his tongue and flexing it thoughtfully. "Not really, no. Should he have?"

I sighed – well, it looked like my only easy way out of the whole situation was gone. "I need to tell you something, Silas. Something private."

"Trainer, I don't like the sound of this," Silas said warily. "Just what did you do this time?"

"Swear you'll keep it between us?" I asked him, trying my best to sound firm despite the nervousness that was threatening to overwhelm me.

"What-"

"Either swear it or forget it, Silas!" I snapped, effectively shutting him up.

When he spoke up again, he sounded distinctly uneasy. "Oh... Well... All right, then.

"Now, just what is this earth-shattering piece of news?"

Exhaling once to gather my thoughts and keep them in some form of order, I blurted out the secret that Allan had so freely pried out of my mind. "General Harding tried to kill me."

Earlier, the room had been silent, but comfortably so. As soon as those words left my mouth, however, the silence felt suffocating rather than soothing. Hell, the room felt too small of a sudden, as if the walls were closing in on us.

Silas' next words were barely audible. "What happened?"

"We went out that night," I replied, my own voice sounding unusually calm – eerily so, almost. "It was supposed to be a surprise inspection of one of the deep sea mining facilities around the city, so we took a two-man submarine out.

"I was the one who piloted it to the facility, but he insisted on taking over for the journey back. It seems we had another stop to make – somewhere which I couldn't navigate the submarine through.

For a moment, the image of the mining facility and its blind cradily sentries flashed through my mind's eye. Those barnacle-crusted, anemone-like creatures with their sightless eyes and long, probing tentacles...

"Trainer?" my starter quietly broke me out of my little trance of sorts. "Where did he take you after that?"

"Eh?" I briefly stared at him, only partially understanding his words. "Oh, that. Yes, well, I'm getting there, just you see.

"So he takes us right up to the edge of the volcano itself, and into some undersea caverns. He was at least right about that much, you know? I don't think I'd have been able to pilot the sub through all those caves without crashing it into some dead end. Hell, I didn't even know the way!

"And then there were the milotic."

A sharp intake of breath from Silas startled me, and my right hand reflexively shot out for my sidearm. Naturally, it wasn't far from me; hadn't been, ever since that night at the lagoon.

"Sorry for shocking you, Trainer," Silas whistled. "But let me get this straight; you actually went to the milotic lagoon?"

I raised an eyebrow at that. "Oh?"

"Only a handful of people have ever been there!" he chirped, eyes widening. "Some even claim that it was nothing more than an urban legend. But do go on..."

A few blinks helped to get my train of thought back in its original direction. "Where was I, again? Ah, yes – the lagoon. So we got down and took a look at the milotic. Believe me, Silas, they were beautiful.

"And that was when I heard the safety being switched off. He got Adrienne to hold me still, and then..."

Words failed me just about then. My mouth remained open, but no sound came out of it. Feeling utterly boneless, I sagged back against my pillow, and stared at the ceiling once again. At least the pillow still felt the same right at that moment.

It took him a while to come up with something to say, but when he did speak up Silas hit the nail on the head, as he tended to do. "I take it that our esteemed commanding officer found out about your little conspiracy?"

"Got it in one," I sighed. "If Ben hadn't intervened, he would've had Adrienne kill me by giving me a stroke, or something. Whatever he was going to do, it would have looked like a sudden death by natural causes."

Silas let out a soft whistle upon hearing that. "So... how exactly did Ben stop him from offing you?"

"Ben wiped their memories. And he said that..." my voice trailed off as I recalled Ben's request. "He asked me to save him."

"Say what?" Silas now sounded confused. "Why would Ben need saving? I'm sure he's strong enough to take care of himself..."

"He asked me to save his trainer, Silas. From what, he wouldn't say," I replied simply. "Or maybe he couldn't."

Silas huffed at that. "What is it with those damned psychics and never talking in straightforward language?"

"You've got me there," I shook my head. "Ben did seem really upset about the whole thing, though. And if Allan was telling the truth, he even took the trouble to put a trace on me before we left."

"Wait a minute, you mean our boss now has a means of constantly monitoring our every move?" Silas narrowed his eyes. "That's definitely something dangerous, given the situation."

I sighed, and ran a hand through my hair. "Tell me about it. At least the trace is on me, and doesn't extent to you."

"At least that's something I could be thankful for, I suppose. Psychics generally tend to creep me out, anyway."

At that, we settled down into silence once again. This time, the silence wasn't the choking type that had lingered earlier; it felt more like the sluggish thoughtfulness of a lazy afternoon.

Maybe it was because I had finally gotten that little episode off my chest, so to speak. Or maybe it was because Silas had taken the news rather well. Whatever it was, I felt... a strange sense of peaceful resignation coming over me. It really had this... feel to it, quite like the feeling you'd get when you were sleep-deprived and yet happy as a muk in raw sewage.

It wasn't long, though, before the two of us found ourselves being jolted out of our thoughts by the pattering sound of raindrops. We turned, nearly as one, to take a look at the window, and sure enough there was a cheerful little drizzle starting out there.

"Nice timing on the rain, huh?" I said absently, as I gave Silas a shell-rubbing. "Goes with the mood of the whole damn, fucked up situation."

"Well, you did bring this on yourself," Silas pointed out. "But... for what it's worth, I appreciate it."

"Eh?"

He let out a low whistle. "You trusted me enough to bring it up, Trainer. And I guess... For that, you have my respect."

I didn't know what to say in response to that, so I did the next best thing; just keeping quiet.

Some raindrops blew in through the window as a gust went through the rain, giving us an impromptu shower. I just continued to lie there, with Silas on my stomach and one of my arms draped over him.

After a while, Silas spoke up once again. "This may sound like a whole load of mushy bullshit and all that, Trainer, but... I'm glad that you of all people became my trainer."

Those words, spoken out of nowhere, hit me like a truck. All I could do was to sit up slightly and gape at my starter, even as my eyes started to feel suspiciously moist.

"What? I tried to boil you!" I reminded him.

He flicked his tongue about. "Well, you did what you thought was necessary. I know I'm not the easiest pokemon to be around, so... you've done alright, so far."

"Silas, I..." I swallowed hard, finding myself speechless once again.

"It's alright, Trainer," he said, sounding uncharacteristically downbeat. "Let's just... put this all behind us, can we? You said that Ben wiped their memories, and that he himself didn't know what his trainer needed saving from, right? Fuck them, fuck the prophecies, and fuck all this conspiracy crap."

He paused for a few moments, and when he had his last word, it sounded heart-wrenchingly desperate. "Please."

I blinked, feeling a tear make its way down my cheek as I looked at him. Silas looked utterly miserable – well, as miserable as a shellfish could look. His eyes seemed wetter than usual, and he had even retracted his entire tongue back into his shell.

Somehow, I managed to give him a nod. And when he stuck his tongue out to give me his equivalent of a handshake, I felt like it was the first time I'd ever had a sincere conversation with him.

It took a few minutes for my thoughts to clear, but when they did, I decided that what I- no, we needed right then was get out of that damned room.

"Let's go for a walk, Silas," I said, as I lifted him off my body and sat upright. "I don't know about you, but I need some air."

He gave me a surprised look. "In case you haven't noticed, it's raining. Or have you gone soft in the head thanks to all that mushy stuff?"

"Fuck that," I sniffed. "You're a water-type, and I'm adapted to water. Are you going to come or not?"

He let out a soft trilling sound. "Oh, fine. Could you at least put on a shirt, then?"

I shrugged, as I shut the window. "Pants are fine - who's going to complain, really? I don't think anyone's going to be out there aside from me, anyway."

"You shameless bastard."

All it took was thirty seconds for me to grab my keys and leave the room, holding Silas in my arms. The next minute of walking got us to the stairs, and three flights later, there we were on the roof, getting thoroughly soaked.

"Lovely night, isn't it?" I asked Silas, as I sat down next to the edge of the roof.

"That it is," he agreed, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the rain. "I can see the city lights!"

I took a look, and saw that he was speaking the truth – Canalave's night lights were just visible through the curtain of rain that was coming down over the city. Out in the canal's general direction, I thought I saw the lights of a docked ship, but really, I couldn't be sure. All I knew was that the rain-blurred landscape just looked... timeless.

Somewhere in the distance, a foghorn was blown, echoing through the wet night. The lights which I had earlier thought to be from a ship moved after that, confirming they were indeed from a ship. We watched them moving sideways, and gradually became indistinct as the ship moved out of the harbour.

"You were right, Trainer," my partner said, from where he lay, next to me. "It does feel nice, being out here."

"The rain doesn't remember anything, does it?" I asked in reply, as I revelled in the feeling of being in the rain. "It... has no memory."

And so we just sat there, two guys on a rooftop, enjoying the feeling of just being drenched in the rain. Right then, all that seemed to matter was the feeling of being there, of being happy, and just being free.

Thunder rumbled overhead as we basked in the rain.

xxx

"... Trainer?"

I was all but asleep by then – a quick shower after the rain had apparently signalled my brain to shut down for the day – but I somehow found the energy and coherence of thought to respond to Silas.

"Uh... Say what?"

As I groggily opened my eyes and quickly glanced about, I saw that he was still very much awake, and that the rain had stopped. Moonlight was shining in through the window and reflecting off his eyes.

"We'll make it there, someday," he said, as he nudged my side with his shell. "Wherever we have to go, however long it takes... we'll make it together."

"What the..." I yawned. "And this couldn't wait till morning?"

Silas chirped. "I'm willing to promise to follow you on whatever path you choose, but... could you promise me that you'll take care of yourself?"

"... I promise."

He let out a soft whistle. "It's nice to finally meet you, Trainer."

"It's nice to finally meet you too, Silas."

For the first time in what felt like ages, I slept.