XXIII

Obstruct

After Ashton left, the silence between Shiri and her mother felt like it stretched for eons. Then Boltund bumped Shiri's hand, shaking her out of her head.

"Your pokémon," Elise said, looking down at Boltund. She put out a hand for him to sniff.

"Yeah," Shiri said with a nervous laugh. "Late bloomer here." She bit her lip, wringing her hands together. "I'm sorry."

Elise let out a breath, still smiling. "It's about time for those braids to come out, isn't it?" Shiri ran a hand over her crown, feeling the new hair growth at her scalp. "Come on, let's take care of that."

Shiri sat on her mother's bed, Elise behind her, and Elise gradually began to remove the braids. It would be a long, slow process, which gave them more than plenty of time to talk.

"I'm not upset at you," Elise said.

Shiri let out a long breath. "You sounded like it. Not that I'd blame you."

"I was when you told me, yes," Elise clarified. "Mostly because of how sudden it was. But you are an adult, Shiri, and you can make your own decisions."

"That's the sort of thing parents say to their kids when they make bad ones," Shiri said, trying not to sound as sulky as she felt.

Elise laughed, the sound light. "I don't think you're making a bad decision. I think you're finally making the decision you should have some time ago."

"What do you mean?"

"You've been at that Pokémart job for far too long." Elise said gently. She was being cautious; they'd tread this path before. "And while I understand why you remained there, as it was steady work and half-decent paycheck, I've always felt like that company was taking advantage of you. You should have stuck it to them by now."

Shiri hated this topic. She knew she should have quit the Pokémart. The thing that always stopped her was she didn't know what the next step would be. She'd been adrift in her life ever since her mother had gotten her good job and Shiri's hard work was no longer necessary. She'd always felt too old for a pokemon journey and she'd never thought she'd get to have a career, so she had never tried to imagine one.

Encountering Celebi had been the first time Shiri had a sense of purpose, and that remained. Shiri just had to figure out the next steps.

"Mom, I," Shiri began, her stomach clenching as she spoke, "I didn't tell you the whole reason why I'm doing this."

Elise's steady hands paused at this. She was waiting for Shiri to continue. She wasn't sure where to start, so she launched forward like a tauros in a crockery shop.

"Mom, I can see pokémon auras."

The words were met with another silence. Elise's hands, however, went back to their task of unbraiding Shiri's hair. As the weave fell away, Shiri felt the weight of the hair unburden her neck.

"Your father could, too," she finally said. Elise knew her daughter well, because she let go of her hair just a split second before Shiri whipped around to meet her eyes.

"He could? He–how, did he tell you about it?" Shiri's words fell out of her mouth at once, and she was surprised Elise could find meaning in them.

"He used to point them out to me," Elise said, her gaze shifting downward as she saw the memories in her mind. "He would tell me what color they were, and how that said something about their temperament. He said he would catch a pokémon with a pink aura for me, because that would suit me best. Something about passion and energy." Shiri glanced at Briony who was stretched out on the bed beside them. Sure enough, she had a pink aura.

Shiri's hands were shaking, so she sat on them. Elise had seldom spoken of Shiri's father since he left. She'd never shared their tender moments with Shiri; Shiri often wondered if they had ever shared any.

"How long have you been able to see them?" Elise asked.

"Just a few days," Shiri said. "I, that is, Ashton and I…" her voice trailed off. Where should she start?

"Take your time," Elise said, turning Shiri back around, and she resumed her task.

Shiri took some deep breaths and began at the beginning with the battle in the Pewter City Gym, and she told her mother everything that had happened since then, including Simon.

When she was at last done, Elise had removed most of the weave from Shiri's hair. Shiri gazed at the long, loosely wavy strands of false black hair that ran down the length of the bed. Her natural hair, hanging in beautiful tight curls that crowned her head and reached halfway down to her shoulders, tickled her neck with familiarity.

"There's danger in this," Elise said at last.

"Yes," Shiri said. "I know. But I'm not alone. I have Ashton and Boltund and–and Simon." She pictured Houndoom, who was in the backyard with Boltund. She didn't want to conjure a picture of Simon, because the last one she had seen of him–commanding a sylveon to use a strange, unnatural move–was too painful.

Was her faith in Simon misplaced? It was a question which had been haunting her. She declared her trust in Simon out loud, but privately she could only wonder. If only she could talk to him.

Elise gripped Shiri's shoulders. "There's something else about your father I never told you." Shiri faced her mother again, met her eyes which were growing red with unshed tears. "The last couple years of our marriage were not healthy. I know that. But when he left, I was completely blindsided. We fought, but I didn't think we were in such bad shape that he would completely abandon us. Not his children, at the least.

"I had gone to the police when he first left because it didn't make sense. I thought he must have gone missing. But the police couldn't–wouldn't–do anything. Said a grown man can choose to come and go as he pleases, and I didn't have any proof of foul play. Hell, he'd packed a bag. That was enough for the police to completely disregard my concerns." Elise paused, sighing, and Shiri's hands shook again.

"Do you–do you still think he went missing?" Shiri asked, cautious because she didn't know if she wanted the answer.

"Oh, I don't know," Elise said, standing up now. "After all that, and scrambling to keep us afloat, I told myself the very same thing the police did–that he did leave on his own accord. That we were too much or I was too much or anything else, because what could I do?" At last Elise's tears fell down her cheeks, and she quickly wiped them away. "But you reminded me of something he said a couple weeks before he left."

Shiri leaned forward, her whole body going cold as her mother spoke the next few words.

"He had been out and saw a pokémon with a black aura. 'It ain't right, it ain't right,' he said for days. He was deeply disturbed by it. I didn't understand what it had to do with anything, and you were in the middle of a tantrum phase, so I didn't have the energy to worry about it. I'd forgotten about it until just now."

Shiri shot to her feet and wrapped her mother in a hug. They held each other for some time, Elise's body occasionally shaken by a sob. "It's okay, Mom," Shiri whispered. "You couldn't have known."

Elise squeezed Shiri tightly. "Oh, baby, if your father did disappear because of these pokémon, I don't know if I can bear you going out against them too."

Truth be told, Shiri wasn't sure she should either. But when she thought of Boltund and how he had been suffering, and what Celebi had asked of her, Shiri knew she couldn't refuse.

"I'll be fine, Mom," Shiri said. "Remember, I'm not alone."

Ashton departed from Shiri and Elise and returned to his studio apartment in the central part of Viridian City. It wasn't a glamorous place. The windows weren't glazed, so the cold late fall air had long invaded the corners of the single room. The walls were thin, so Ashton could hear his neighbors' every movement, and they his in turn. There was always a lingering musty smell, no matter how clean Ashton kept the place.

None of that mattered to him, because it was his, paid for by the money he made from his blog. He was quite proud of that. But in his heart of hearts, he did want more. Not materially, but something else, something deeper. He wanted to be remembered.

He dropped his backpack of clothes on his bed, threw a scoop of pokemon food into Patches' bowl which she scurried to, and sat down at the folding card table that served as his desk and workstation. Most of the table was taken up by his sewing machine, supplies, and several pieces of half-modified clothing. But there was a small space he kept clear for his laptop, which he set down in its usual position and opened. He fired up a new word document.

He began to write.

Ashton knew from the moment he'd witnessed Simon in action in Pewter City that he was witnessing something remarkable, something scandalous, something which could make him. He'd been compiling notes, pictures, and voice memos over the last four days, his mind working on the structure of the story as his body was busy helping Shiri.

Wherever they would go after tonight, he would be ready. In the meantime, he would put up the first part of their epic journey for his readers.

The hours fell away, his apartment illuminated only by the weak lightbulb in the ceiling, and Ashton hardly noticed until his first draft was finished. Only then did he look up and realize how singularly focused he had been. His stomach growled, his eyes burned, and his hands were trembling.

For the first time in his life, despite his pokémon journey, despite his family history, he finally felt like he was fulfilling his purpose. This was what he was put on the planet to do.

Ashton took a few minutes for the jitters to pass. Then he ordered delivery from the first place still open he found, changed into some fresh, loose clothes, and laid out in his narrow sleeping mat as he waited for dinner to arrive.

Checking his email on his phone, Ashton saw he had received an email from an address he did not recognize. No name was attached to the email address, and it sounded quite generic. That was fairly common in Ashton's work; he got a lot of anonymous messages, from people sending in gossip, to pretending to be gym leaders and Elite Four members for clout, to your household scam attempts.

He opened the email without much of a thought, and so he wasn't ready for the message within.

Ashton,

I'm quite sure you've seen the bit of trouble I've caused. That's not the half of it. I think I'm quite done contributing to this problem. Do let me know where I might find you; I'll be sure to make my way to you. In the meantime, I believe you could put these to good use.

-Simon

Attached were several documents: lists, with the names and ID numbers of trainers and pokémon. A few species stood out to him: magmar, raichu, persian. But there were dozens and dozens more besides those Ashton had seen with his eyes. A chill ran down Ashton's spine as he sat forward on his bed, his eyes scanning over the information. Was this real? Was he dreaming?

Simon just leaked the shadow pokémon lists he'd been working from. Shiri had been right. Simon was with them.

A knock on his door nearly made Ashton jump out of his skin, and a drop of paranoia invaded his thoughts as he wondered if the police were at his door. It was just Ashton's dinner, however, and after thanking the driver and closing his door, Ashton abandoned the food on his table and typed out a reply to Simon.

Erring on the side of caution, he told Simon his own address, then wondered what else he should tell him over email. He opted to summarize their journey to the Ilex Forest along with the phrase Don't worry about Boltund; he's all better now. He was sure that would get Simon's curiosity going.

With that email sent, Ashton dialed Shiri's number, only for his call to go to voicemail. Of course it did; it was nearly one o'clock in the morning. He left a quick message, his voice coming out frantic and breathless as he told her Simon had contacted him and to call him back as soon as she woke up.

With that done, Ashton paused, letting all of this settle in his mind. Then he laughed. Loud. So loud a neighbor pounded on their shared wall, so Ashton got ahold of himself and settled back on his bed.

He knew he wouldn't be sleeping that night, so he ate the food he'd ordered, edited the first part of his new story and set the post to go live at mid-day. He included the lists of shadow pokémon along with an invitation to their trainers to contact him. Perhaps they could recover some more shadow pokémon that way, remove whatever had been done to them like Boltund. It was a beacon of hope.

Settling back on his bed, Ashton rested his laptop in his lap to start scouring his research leads. He wanted to have plenty of fresh information for Shiri and Simon. He wanted to be ready.

By the time the sun began to rise, however, Ashton had remarkably little to show for his manic all-nighter. He had begun with the video of Simon battling with the sylveon. He'd found the video reposted several times across social media, and delving into comments revealed the identity of the young man standing with Simon in that video: Verity Kaliber, the son of Vance Kaliber. The owner of the sylveon.

It was an intriguing piece of information: Simon had been with the young man he'd stolen from publicly. And it was Simon who was commanding the sylveon, not Verity, in the video. Had Verity gifted the pokemon to Simon, and this was all a misunderstanding?

Ashton had found Verity's social media with ease; he had a decently large following, although he wasn't an influencer nor seemed to make his social media his primary means of making money. Most of his posts before this week were the usual casual user fare: aesthetic fashion shoots, beautiful meals, image posts with generic life and business advice typed out in obnoxious fonts.

Verity's last post, which was made the day the news of the theft broke, was a screenshot of a notes app page containing a message that Verity was planning to take a social media break to "manage some difficulties in my life." It was astoundingly generic and vague. It was public knowledge that Verity Kaliber was the victim of the theft; why not say that?

There was something amiss here, and Ashton was determined to figure it out.

But Ashton quickly became distracted as he continued to scroll deep into Verity's post history. He paused at each image of Verity's outfits of the day, fascinated by a man so comfortable with a feminine aesthetic which he made entirely his own. It was like he experimented on himself, changing his hair from long, curly locks to an asymmetrical cut to shaved on the sides, and in all sorts of colors. His makeup changed with the seasons and styles, yet never seemed tied to trends. His voice, which Ashton heard in the occasional video, was high and melodic. Verity spoke quickly, affecting a soft spokenness that always seemed to break down in every video, making Ashton feel like he was seeing a glimpse of the "real" Verity behind the social media presentation. He was unlike anyone Ashton encountered in his day-to-day existence, a kindred spirit on the other side of the aesthetic spectrum.

When dawn broke, Ashton had been finally close to the verge of sleep. His eyelids were drooping, his computer's battery was perilously close to zero, and he would have fallen into a dreamworld of pinks and lilacs had not a firm knock on his door aroused him.

At first, Ashton had forgotten the events of that manic night and wondered who could be at his door, but his heart rate raced and his adrenaline rushed anew when he opened his door and saw Simon standing before him.