There was a night when the boy dreamed.
The ground beneath his feet was firm despite the constant obsidian sea spray. There was nothing within that earth but minerals. Plants had no hope of taking root beneath a sky only illuminated by lightning. Between flashes, his shadow abandoned him and left him standing alone on the island of his soul.
He took a deep breath and took note of how the downpour clung his airways and lungs. More vivid than usual- he could feel the individual droplets instead of a constant pressure spread across his entire body.
Golett emerged from the earth, their interior glowing like a white hole rather than a dying dwarf star. There was no pressure on his spirit from their independent movement, as in his heart, the hole still remained.
The boy took another breath, allowing himself to relax for a split second.
Thunder boomed as a nightmare struck his spirit.
The Lights in the Sky Are Thunderbolts - XXIII - I Wonder
Rather than cutting out immediately, the sound of storms breaching the coast echoed and slowly faded as Hilbert bolted upwards.
The members of Shuppet's quartet tumbled off of his torso and scattered across the sheets before each of them began stumbling around dizzily.
He recognized that he wouldn't have been able to see them without light. The lamp was on, and sitting next to it along with two steaming mugs of tea was Marley, who, though she was holding a book, seemed more intent on getting a read on him.
The little green menace was in her lap as usual, though while they were snoozing he was able to ignore them for the moment.
"I thought that you might not wake up. Your night terrors are usually more mild." She looked back to her book and flipped a page back. "Would you like some tea?"
Hilbert tapped through his nightshirt at his chest and felt that his heart had grown outwards a half inch. It would recede soon enough, though the idea that they could lose control so easily was troubling. His hands moved to the sheets bunched up over his waistband.
"You've noticed," Hilbert said slowly, blinking the bleariness out of his eyes before glaring at Marley.
"They're not very subtle," she said. "Tossing and turning, I believe the phrase is."
He let Shuppet tug at his arms in an attempt to get him back to sleep, though by the way the conversation was going, it wasn't going to be effective.
"I can't help it. Sorry," he offered.
Though maybe this time was different than usual. Yuki had commandeered the other full bed and left Hilbert to ask for a pop-up trundle bed from the front desk, which had naturally been quite squeaky. The Ice-type was still 'asleep,' ensconced in so many blankets that Hilbert was briefly tempted to hide a pea under the mattress to see if she'd notice.
"It is of little consequence." She took a sip of tea, looked over the rim at him, then gestured to the other cup. "I prepared a second in the event that you did awaken."
"I don't think caffeine will make me sleep better."
"Oh? It's a Coumarine chamomile blend."
Hilbert stared at her, betraying no emotion.
She smirked. "It's imported from Kalos, a special blend grown under the supervision of their Grass-type gym leader, if you weren't aware. It's quite good at relieving anxiety."
Hilbert thought about that for a moment.
"You're offering so I'll be grateful," Hilbert said.
Rather than defending herself, she took another sip. "Yes," she said afterwards, still savoring the taste of the tea.
"Seriously?"
"Well, I had considered letting you oversleep, which you might also be grateful for, or waking you up in the event you slept through your alarm in the morning." She took another sip. "There are many ways to obtain Gratitude. This one happens to be the most beneficial."
He supposed he had to appreciate the gesture for what it was, even if it was motivated by a twisted sort of greed.
Hilbert gathered up Shuppet and set them on the mattress before slipping off the trundle and shuffling towards the chair opposite Marley. His steps were slow, as if the soles of his feet were lined with lead. He then slumped into the chair and grabbed the offered mug.
Marley shut her book and silently placed it on the table. "Do you walk to talk about it? It may help you sleep a little lighter."
Hilbert was focused very intently on the corner even as he took a cautious sip. Hot, but not scaldingly so. He'd never acquired a taste for tea, but even he could feel the liquid's richness on his tongue.
"No," he said.
She hummed and took a sip.
"Should we talk about it?"
Maybe it would be good with honey? He'd only ever had Alolan Cutiefly honey from the supermarket, but how different could Combee honey be?
He didn't answer Marley's question.
"I'm thinking about signing up for the tag battle tournament," Hilbert said after the moment passed. "I don't want to wait around any longer than I have to."
"Hm. The tag battle tournament?"
"Yeah."
"In the tag battle format."
"Yep."
"The format in which participants can sign up with a partner or be assigned one randomly?"
"That's the one," Hilbert said.
She took a sip of tea. "You know, I am a capable trainer in my own right," she said finally, an eyebrow raised.
"Well, see, that's true," Hilbert said, nodding along. "The thing is, I know you'd only partner with me because it'll make me owe you one and I kind of feel like denying you and the shrub-shrew the satisfaction." He drank from his mug.
"I see. Would you really rather leave it up to chance?" she asked, sounding more curious than anything else.
"I don't like the way you do things," Hilbert said. "Helping people isn't about the Gratitude you get from it."
"Yes, it is," she said blankly. "When there's only a temporary tangible benefit, there's no other point besides Gratitude. And it's not like they're always grateful."
Hilbert scoffed. "We've been here before and we're coming from opposite directions. Listen, you ever hear of the Revavroom problem?"
She shook her head.
"Revavroom are these car engine kinda Pokémon from Paldea," Hilbert said, trying to recall it correctly. "In the problem, there's a charging Revavroom in a tunnel that branches off in two directions. In one tunnel, there are five people weighted to the floor. The Revavroom will go down that tunnel unless you flip a switch and send it down a different one. The thing is, there's one person in the other tunnel, and they can't move. Everyone in whichever group the Revavroom hits will die."
"I see. And the dilemma is whether or not I should pull the switch?"
"Right," Hilbert said. "Let five people die by inaction and save one person or make one person die to save the other five."
"Hm. It's rare for there to be Gratitude towards someone that doesn't act. I suppose I would switch the tracks so that the five people are grateful that I saved them. They would have more Gratitude in their hearts than the person I saved by doing nothing."
"Alright. That's your final answer?" Hilbert asked.
She nodded.
Hilbert swirled his tea. "See, that's exactly the thing. You're looking inside the situation for what gets you the most gratitude and not at the moral question."
"Oh? And what would you do?"
"I wouldn't see five and one on the tracks," Hilbert said. "I would see six and save all of them, even if they never knew I did. I have to follow my Ideals."
"That's not fair," she said, her eyebrows knitting together. "You didn't say that was an option."
"You didn't look for it," he said. "I'm not saying I'm a good person or nothing, that's just what I'd try to do. I'm not sure if it would work."
"It's worked so far for you, hasn't it?" she asked.
His heart pulsed.
He clenched the mug so hard it began to warp.
"No," he said, imagining the scent of flower fields and petrichor whipped away by the wind. "Not always."
There was silence for a minute.
"I will be your partner," Marley said finally, taking hold of her cup with both hands. "If the third option is available, then I suppose we ought to take it."
"Really?" Hilbert asked, his eyebrows inching upwards.
"For the people's Gratitude, I will assist you. The best outcome is one where everyone is grateful to be alive."
Hilbert sighed. "Close enough."
The next morning, though it was closer to noon, Hilbert decided to head down to the Pokémon fan clubhouse he'd read about on the GTS. He didn't think they got to see Ghost-types very often since many of the species with the typing could be volatile without a lot of negotiation.
From what he'd heard, the Ghost-type gym leader, Fantina, traveled often and probably didn't have time to contribute. As long as they were doing their job, he didn't think he would have a problem with them.
The clubhouse wasn't an actual house; rather, it was more of an art or fitness studio crammed in between buildings downtown. Through the floor to ceiling windows inside, he could see Meowth, Shinx, and more Pokémon too cute for their own good running around while people sat at bars and drank coffee. The sign above the windows was painted pastel blue with Pokémon peeking out from behind the lettering. Luckily for him, it was subtitled in Unovan-Galarian, but it still looked more like a Delcatty cafe than a place for serious hobbyists.
He would have prayed for his masculinity to remain intact, but after enduring an hour-long lecture on how to wear a scarf fashionably from Yuki, a few days prior, he was fairly certain that it had already been beaten out of him.
The inside was lit like a sunroom, though the only windows were on the street-facing walls. Past rows of folding tables and chairs, he saw a proper wooden desk with a man in an orange button-up sitting behind it. Assuming that only the president would dress in semi-formal wear on a normal weekday, he went to speak with him.
"Excuse me," Hilbert said.
The man looked up from his laptop, blinked, and smiled. "Ah, greetings. I don't think I've seen you around here before. Welcome to the Pokémon Fan Club's Hearthome City Clubhouse. What can I do for you?"
Ignoring the deluge of audibly proper nouns, Hilbert said, "I saw on the GTS that you all are working on an encyclopedia or a Pokédex or something. I'm a Ground-type specialist-" who was he kidding, "A Ghost-type specialist and I thought you wouldn't get too many of those around."
"That'd be great." The man stood up. "I'm the manager of this clubhouse- Reggie Ikari. It's a pleasure."
Hilbert shook the man's hand. Reggie had a few years on him, along with swaths of stubble on his jaw and the sort of ponytail that made him look ruggedly practical rather than girly.
He'd be jealous if he had the time to care about that sort of thing. Hilda had once said that he was too ugly to have a chance with anyone but her, and even then, it would be out of pity. He had assumed that last part, but in his defense, it was incredibly obvious that was what she meant.
"Hilbert Kuroiwa," he said, before shaking himself out of his thoughts. "Call me that, I mean."
Reggie laughed it off. "Right. Take a seat, let's talk."
Hilbert pulled up a folding chair and Reggie settled back into his cushioned seat.
"You don't hear about too many Ghost-type specialists," Reggie said. "I'll admit, they're a pretty hard-to-care-for sort of Pokémon."
"You have experience?" Hilbert asked.
Reggie waved vaguely. "I've been to all kinds of places. If you're able to avoid it, don't interact with Froslass. If they don't try to kill you outright…"
"I'll keep that in mind." He scratched the star-shaped scar on his forehead.
Reggie blinked. "Well, I'm sure you'd know better than me as a specialist. I'm afraid we can't make entries on untamed Pokémon, and Ghost-types are generally resistant to domestication."
Psh, Hilbert thought. No way.
Machamp. The Wind. Fuego. Spiritomb. Yuki.
"I've done an alright job with them," Hilbert said.
The scarf hanging around Hilbert's neck tightened.
"Some more than others."
It tightened further. Yuki transparently appeared over his shoulder just to glare at him with a human face.
If Reggie felt the sudden chill, he didn't react to it. "That's good. Perhaps we could start with your better trained Pokémon?"
Over the next minute or so, they moved to stand around an unoccupied bit of floor space after Reggie grabbed a legal pad and pen.
Hilbert sent out Shuppet, figuring that they were the least likely to cause anybody harm, intentionally or not.
The quartet appeared in a clump before tumbling apart. Tedd stood in a rigid salute, Teri scrambled around for a minute before bending over like a drinking bird toy and swiveling their head towards Hilbert and Reggie, Zealy followed her and somersaulted into a roll before squeaking to a stop, and Pouty immediately went off to find a way to off himself.
Reggie raised an eyebrow as Hilbert tapped the Dark-type plush with his foot until they trudged over with the rest of them. "Are those the Tedd E. Ursa's mascots? I haven't been to one of those in forever."
"It's a Shuppet," Hilbert said. "They were possessing the restaurant in Jubilife before I… well, that's not important. I convinced them to come with me for the brand recognition. They have one spirit between them but it manifests differently for each like they're actually those Pokémon. Spiritual power is weird like that."
Reggie frowned at his notes. "You mean Ghost-type energy."
"No," Hilbert explained.
Reggie looked up at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
"Anyway," Hilbert said, sticking his hands in his pockets, "They're all pretty friendly so they won't mind if you poke them a bit. Ah, be careful with Pouty though, he has a thing about sharp objects."
After that, Reggie poked and prodded at the Pokémon, who responded as Hilbert suggested. Pouty seemed to think that Reggie's pen was a needle and tried to stab himself in the neck with it, but that was par for the course.
Hilbert heard a nasally voice cut in.
"Playing with dolls, Mr. Ikari? Tsk. Well, I suppose that's to be expected from such a pedestrian organization."
The boy adjusted his glasses with one hand while keeping the other on his hip. Neck-length midnight green hair, rectangular glasses, and a dark vest over a lime green tee shirt.
Now, it wasn't the weirdest choice in clothing he'd ever seen. He'd known Hilda to wear something similar during the summer. The difference was that when Hilda cussed him out for not grokking women's fashion, she actually had something of a point.
His heart pulsed. Don't, Golett seemed to say.
"How many body pillows do you own?" he asked.
Exasperation flowed through his veins.
"A normal amount," the boy said. "Who are you supposed to be?"
The immediacy of the answer threw him off so much that he couldn't answer.
"A fan of these plebeians' Pokémon?" The boy seemed to try and scoff, but it just sounded like a cough. "Please. What's going on over here, then?"
Hilbert side eyed Shuppet and saw that they had all collapsed to the floor as if dead. Their spirit was normal, and they had never been shy. Weird.
Reggie was still poking them with a pen, so maybe they were just trying to be helpful.
He recalled the Ghost-type and looked back at the super nerd in front of him. "Research. And they're not dolls, they're action figures."
The boy tsked again. "How trite. I suppose that-"
"Excuse me, Conway," Reggie said, standing up with an even expression. "Was there anything you actually needed?"
The boy identified as Conway made a face at being interrupted. "I believe that you may want to take a closer look at my Pokémon."
"I've raised an Aggron before," Reggie said. "Yours is nothing special."
Conway tsked. "Anyone can tell you that a good trainer doesn't keep just one ace up your sleeve. No, I have other specimens you would benefit from examining."
"Right," Reggie said, rolling his eyes.
Conway either didn't care to notice or ignored the gesture. "Now, if you're done playing with dolls, I believe-"
"Hey, don't diss my Pokémon," Hilbert cut in with a glare. "They've worked hard to get us where we are. Cut it out."
Conway clicked his tongue. "Really? Do you really think earning two badges is the result of hard work?" He pointed at the pins on Hilbert's jacket and looked up at him smugly. "The first four badges are participation trophies. Everybody knows that."
"I don't see your badges," Hilbert shot back.
Conway leaned back and adjusted his glasses. "Of course not. I'm not so brash and arrogant that I pin my accomplishments to my clothing. My intelligence and my team's strength are self-evident. With those, I'll go all the way to the conference, but I somehow doubt that you can do the same." He looked Hilbert up and down, not intimidated by the height difference. "I bet you're just a foreigner that couldn't cut it in your home region."
Hilbert's knuckles twitched as his face went blank.
"You're very good at getting on people's nerves," he said. "I'm guessing high IQ, probably rich since it sounds like you've got an Aggron. Those two things go together pretty often. Shit at socializing, unless it's a character you're putting on to throw off your opponents and piss them off. Not a disorder, probably isolated from classmates by your intelligence and chose contempt instead of trying to make friends."
Conway's expression tightened. "I have better things to do than engage in social games of chess with imbeciles who can't even understand checkers."
"Yeah?" Hilbert crossed his arms. "What are you doing right now, then?"
Conway pushed up his glasses. "If you're so tough, then let's have a battle," he said, his lenses catching the light such that they became opaque. "Surely you're not opposed? Your type is obsessed with proving themselves."
Hilbert's brow furrowed.
They moved out to the street. Reggie followed with the notepad despite his earlier dismissal of Conway. As Hilbert and Conway took their paces to set the arena's width in the side street, the families and Pokémon passing by began walking closer to the walls of the surrounding shops. The sun blazed bright overhead but the early Spring chill remained.
Seeing the spacing of the surroundings and the street's other occupants, Hilbert decided that his usual strategy would work just fine.
Sinistea popped into the air with a small flash of light. They turned to Hilbert with a quizzical look painted on their porcelain surface.
"Take it easy, alright?" Hilbert said. He eyed the umbrellas of the outdoor cafe tables and free-standing chalkboards. "We don't want collateral damage."
Sinistea warbled and turned around towards Conway.
The other boy threw a Pokéball in a perfect arc. "Aggron!"
Cobblestones were shaken loose from the ground before the light subsided.
Two stubby stone-gray legs, thick like marble pillars, plunged into the road. A tail wide like the pipes of an aircraft carrier slammed against the ground, scattering gravel as it idly scraped through the street. The Pokémon's torso may well have been a boulder, leading into pauldrons and its neck. Along clawed limbs were metal plates like protrusions of bone. As it reared its head at being summoned, its sword-like horns reflected the sunlight and its skull clanged against the lesser plates.
At a word from Conway, it turned back towards Hilbert. Its metal jaw unhinged as their eyes, blue like burning barium, turned to slits.
"Are you serious?" Hilbert demanded. "There are kids around!"
Punctuating his point, a baby's cry filled the air and was quickly followed by a mother's shushing.
Conway pushed up his glasses and smirked. "What's your point? The sooner they grow up, the better. The real world isn't as safe and sanitized as this city makes it seem. If you have a problem with that, you can forfeit."
Hibert glared. "Sinistea, do you want to keep going?" he asked.
The spirit metaphorically gulped, but they bobbed up and down in the affirmative.
"Are you done delaying?" Conway called before adjusting his glasses. "There's no point in fighting off the inevitable."
Electricity bounced around inside of Hilbert's corneas.
"You're wrong!" Hilbert shouted. "Let's go, Sinistea!"
The tea cup warbled again and began using Withdraw as their usual strategy demanded.
"Aggron, Taunt!" Conway called.
Hilbert's eyes widened.
Aggron sat up on its haunches, pretending to laze about though the tension never left their cable-like muscles. It snored mockingly.
Sinistea dropped the small amount of water they had formed around them and swooped down towards Aggron, screeching.
"Hey, snap out of it!" Hilbert shouted, pushing out his spirit.
But Sinistea and their spirit were focused solely on the Aggron, and it only approached closer.
Conway smirked. "Let it get in close then use Head Smash!"
That didn't sound good to Hilbert. That really didn't sound good.
"Sinistea! Wait, wait, wait!"
Sinistea continued on its course, leaping out of its cup and swinging itself around by the handle.
Hilbert fumbled for the Pokéball, pulling it from its clip and nearly dropping it. He couldn't stop the attack, but maybe-
The air was filled with the sound of splashing water and shattering ceramics.
A stone dropped in Hilbert's stomach.
Aggron, its helmet slick and shiny with liquid, threw its head back and roared.
The Pokéball creaked as his knuckles turned white.
"Golett!" Hilbert screamed.
His heart pulsed, tearing out of his chest like a shooting star as he ran towards the battle.
A pillar of earth exploded out of the road, revealing stones and gravel along with the concrete foundations laid beneath it. It slammed into Aggron's jaw and forced the Pokémon a step back with a dulled crack of dislocating bone.
Hilbert slid to the stop next to Sinistea's shards, barely feeling the tiny stones that tore through his pants and his knees. The liquid was already soaking into the ground, losing its form even as it tried to cling to the scattered bits of porcelain.
Hilbert drove his fists into the ground like twin spears, feeling the searing pain of his skin scraping away but looking past that.
The spirit was scattered. He remembered what he had recorded in his Pokédex after first meeting Sinistea; just fifty one percent of their mass was all he needed to keep them from moving on.
He solidified a solid metal shell in the ground like clay, making it dense enough that nothing could seep through, before willing the dirt and gravel out of his way.
As the bowl revealed itself, his hopes dwindled further and further. Nothing but dirt.
But just then, as he was left with nothing else, he saw a small bit of purple alcohol swirling at the bottom.
He choked. The spirit was still there, but it was weak.
"Looks like somebody couldn't take the heat," Conway declared. "Well? Giving up?"
Hilbert looked over his shoulder, pupils open wide and his entire body shivering, but he said nothing.
"That's what I thought," Conway said with a smirk. "You can talk big, but really, you can't anticipate even the simplest strategies.
Hilbert's fists shook.
He shook his head, picked up what he could of Sinistea, and ran.
Tiny scraps of rubber bounced off the street behind Hilbert as he skidded around corners, trying to get back to the hotel as fast as he could. A Pokémon Center, especially one in Sinnoh, wouldn't have a clue how to treat a species like Sinistea. His best bet was to get them somewhere safe and try to work from there.
As he got to the main street with the hotel just down the street, he found himself in the midst of a crowd.
The question of why there was such a crowd in the middle of the day didn't occur to him. He resigned himself to shame and had Golett shrink back into his chest as he started pushing past people, hugging Sinistea's container close to his chest. Their roaring cheers sounded dulled to him, almost quiet compared to the blood rushing by his ears.
Someone pushed him back, and as off balance as he already was, he fell flat on his ass.
Sinistea's bowl spun on the ground, wobbling around and threatening to spill out at any moment.
Hilbert reached for it, only for some kid to step on it and send it flipping over.
"Get the hell out of my way!" Hilbert roared.
Like a sea before the strike of staff, the people around him grew quiet and cleared out around him. The air was filled with a spirit of shared nervous caution.
Hilbert made a new bowl, trying to catch as much of Sinistea as he could. They were only growing weaker and he still couldn't stop shaking, he needed to go, he needed to-
"Just what is going on here, monsieur?" a woman asked.
Hilbert looked up, his face falling further though he couldn't recognize the blob of purple through his blurry vision. "Please, just let me through, I need to-"
"A Pokémon thief?" And maybe, with his clothes torn and dirtied, he may well have had the look of one. "In my city? Hon hon, this is not allowed."
"I'm not a thief!" Hilbert cried. "My Pokémon just got hurt."
"You missed the Pokémon Center, then, garçon," she said. "Because you don't seem to recognize me, allow me to introduce myself. I am-"
"I don't care!" Hilbert shouted, pulling the bowl into his arms before he managed to stand. "Please, I need to go."
Someone tugged on Sinistea's container. "I believe it would be best if I watched over this Pokémon while we sort things out."
Hilbert yanked it away and took a few steps back, folding into himself. "No, no, no. Get away, get-"
The woman reached out to him.
Hilbert smacked the hand aside.
And with his spirit already as frenzied and wild as it was, it should have been no surprise that he entered Communion with the woman in front of him.
Her spirit was much hazier and more condensed than the lingering spirits and Pokémon he had met previously. In life, one very rarely knew what exactly they clung to for their purpose.
Hilbert stood on a circular wooden stage. Hundreds of thousands of seats lined the rows that layered on themselves and reached towards the ceiling. THe only light was a spotlight overhead, one that burned his eyes to look too closely at.
There was a girl on the stage, young. Her purple hair was tied into a loose ponytail which flowed in the air behind her as she danced.
Writing like permanent marker faded into view, scribbled onto the stage's polish.
Foreigner. Bitch. Attention whore.
There was applause and mocking jeers as white lilies dropped all around the stage.
Hilbert blinked.
The girl was as tall as he was. Her hair had grown into bulbous pods which bounced behind her as she danced alone, her body framed by a brilliant ball gown.
The stage was layered with newspaper like paper mâché. No soul, no talent, no connection.
The spirit weakened.
An egg flew across the stage and rolled to her feet. It cracked and collapsed inwards when it made contact with her skin.
A purple balloon floated out of it.
The girl looked shocked for a moment, but then there was something else.
There was a commitment, he felt. An affirmation.
This would be her ticket. The souls of others would become her soul. She would achieve her artistic ambitions and carve a success out of a world that otherwise didn't care.
The seats started surging with the faceless and the doubtful.
More spirits appeared around her, though inside of her soul, they were mere illusions compared to the real things. A Gastly, a Misdreavus, a couple of others.
It didn't matter to her why they lingered on as long as they helped grant her wish. She would give them the same comforts that she enjoyed when they did. Wasn't that fair?
Success started pouring in. All that concerned her was her world, the inside of that concert hall. Her stage was not the world, but rather, her world was the stage.
She was Top Coordinator. She was Hearthome Gym Leader. She was Fantina.
Her dance would go on until the end of time.
Hilbert and Fantina mirrored each other as they stepped away as if shocked by lightning. In his eyes was trepidation, in hers… something else.
"You became a Ghost-type trainer as a gimmick," Hilbert said, swallowing. His mouth felt dry like sandpaper. "You're the Ghost-type Gym Leader."
Fantina seemed to throw off her shock. As his vision cleared, he could see that she looked in reality as she did in spirit, though perhaps somewhat older, somewhat more ragged, as if she had seen things she had no wish to.
That didn't make sense, Hilbert thought. Communion couldn't be lied to. What could have changed?
"I am, oui," she said, placing a hand on her hip and rolling her neck. "And you're…"
Had she seen the world inside of his heart? He hugged Sinistea's bowl tighter. "You're responsible for everything with spirits in this region."
"Yes," she said, before faking a smile for the confused people around them, "I'm quite good at it as well."
He became strikingly aware of a tension that existed in the back of his mind, hundreds of metal twines that had been twisting together ever since he'd arrived in Sinnoh. The beings that resided in the lakes, Sinistea hidden and isolated within his childhood home, Machamp beneath Oreburgh and their malice, the haunting of Shuppet's restaurant in Jubilife, the Wind's carelessness just beyond Floaroma, the fires of Fuego and their namesake's ironworks, the walls of cutting frost that Yuki had built up around herself, the sheer anger and malice that Cynthia's Spiritomb had revealed-
The spirit that flowed through Sinnoh itself that few knew of, let alone acknowledged, the leviathan that stirred underground seas as wide as the region itself, a flame that refused to go out, a tyrant like a sun within Mount Coronet that treated people and Pokémon like chattel, the demons of the mind that plagued him in both his dreams and nightmares-
A heat poured through his veins like flames along explosive fuses.
"You call yourself a specialist?" Hilbert hissed.
In the back of his mind, that metal wire snapped. A relaxed sort of cold settled over his mind, clearing his thoughts and vision even as his body shook.
"Screw you," Hilbert spat. "I'm going to win that tournament and challenge you. I don't care about the badge, but that position doesn't belong to you. I hope you've enjoyed the perks of being a gym leader, because you're not going to be one for much longer."