Fairy 6.5 Balance of Debts
Kekoa

June 20, 2023

You're surprised how normal life in Skull can be. And how boring. There haven't been any missions since you joined up a week ago. Just hanging around a house as Plumeria makes the calls behind the scenes. Can't even walk outside without drawing suspicion.

Even if you hadn't been assigned your share of chores you probably would've done them out of boredom. They rotated you around a few before you took up cleaning. The others just didn't understand when you asked them if things were maybe too messy. The floors were still walkable and they could usually find what they needed when they needed it.

So now you're the janitor. Maybe they'll rename you grimer or something. You'd take it over fucking Jigglypuff.

Your job is made harder by some things apparently not having a "right" place to put them. So you had to figure out how much space you had on the closet shelves and make labels for them so the others wouldn't mess up your scheme. They still did, so you rewrote the labels with bigger font. They only respected them when Machoke warned them all that Jigglypuff would yell at them so loud the neighbors would hear. He still found a way to tease you while taking your side.

Three days into the cleaning quest and the house is almost acceptable. The floors are even clear enough to vacuum and mop. Kapuna hovers over your shoulder the entire time. Cleaning is fascinating to the carbink. Maybe because it's like polishing. Are they asking for a polish? You can do that in the afternoon. You didn't know how much you missed Cuicatl and her ability to instantly clear up misunderstandings. An ability that she uses for poaching.

Some nights you wonder how much she hates you now.

You press that thought down and put more force into the mop than you need to. The strokes become short and fast, like you're trying to power wash the floor.

"Something wrong?"

Machoke's over your shoulder. Damn. How's a guy that big sneak up on you?

"No. Why?"

He shrugs. "You just seemed out of it all of a sudden is all."

"Oh. No. I'm not."

He lets you finish the room before he talks again.

"It's fine if something is bothering you. None of us are here because our lives were going great."

You tried to ask Loudred a question once. Why her team were so scary. She just met your gaze, shook her head, and walked away. Simisear had pulled you aside and told you that if you wanted Loudred's trust—any of their trust, really—you'd have to show that you could be trusted.

That has to start somewhere.

"I traveled with a girl for seven months. Left for Skull without telling her. Think she might hate me for it." You leave out some of the details. Her brother, Shirona, all the little complications. Still have enough for him to get it.

"Huh," Machoke says. "That was a dick move."

His tone doesn't carry judgment. The words do. You make eye contact and try to figure out what he wants from you.

"I think you know it, too, if you're guilty about it. Why'd you do it?"

"She wouldn't have wanted me to leave. Might've forced me to stay."

Machoke raises an eyebrow. "Forced you how?"

You try to think of a way to simplify this. Because her life got really complicated really fast recently and telling him the details would defeat the entire point of the codenames. "Her guardian's a cop."

"And you'd think she'd get the cops involved if she found out you were joining Skull?"

"Yup."

"Okay, so, just spit balling here, but, lie to her? Tell her you're dropping out of the island challenge for literally any other reason, say goodbye, join Skull. She gets closure, you don't draw too much attention, things work out."

Oh shit. You hadn't even thought about that. It would've made everything smoother.

"See? That's why I'm in charge around here. I have good ideas every now and then."

You look down in shame. There was an easy answer and you never even thought about it. And now she hates you and there's probably no coming back from that, even when everything's worked out for Alola.

A heavy hand falls on your shoulder. "Look, you fucked up. Sucks. Everyone does. Nothing you can do about it now but try not fuck up as much tomorrow."

Or you could contact her. Talk. But you can't think of a way to talk to her that doesn't risk compromising Skull.

Damn it. Next time you'll think of everything.


Turns out there's an abandoned park in the village you never knew existed. It's an overgrown golf course in a subdivision abandoned mid-construction. A good space for birds to fly without drawing too much attention. Anuenue can also graze. Don't see why Hatterene was making such a big deal about it. Sure, you can't come here every day, but it's something.

None of your birds are actually flying. Mahina is napping in the sun. Ihe is playing with Simisear's murkrow. Well, both playing in their own ways. Ihe is chasing the murkrow around as best he can with short hops and the dark-type is doing everything he can to mess with your bird. Feinted attacks towards his eyes, feather dance, even sneaking behind Ihe and pecking his back. The murkrow never gets hit. You aren't sure if he's just that good or if Ihe isn't trying to hit in the first place.

Moe floats beside you. He can't roam anymore so you have to do weird stuff to feed him. Reading books works, yeah, but you only have trashy romance novels lying around and you can only read about so many luminous orbs shining in the night and girls who say they aren't like other girls without actually doing anything a cartoon princess wouldn't. You were a girl who wasn't like other girls, so you became a boy. Still waiting on that twist in these books. Loudred of all people helped you out. Or her froslass did and Loudred relayed it. No idea how they can speak to each other. You asked, neither answered. She recommended more passive things like bingeing cancelled TV shows, listening through all the albums from dead artists, anything where you get to the end and realize there won't be anything more. Drifblim literally eat that shit up.

You're sitting with an earbud in listening to some rock star from the early 90s. You'd heard his name and song titles but never really knew what they were. Turns out you had heard the songs all the time on the radio and just never put two and two together. And then he died. Suicide or overdose, people disagree on if it was intentional or not. You wouldn't call him young. Late 20s. He still had time left to live.

You don't really get all the lyrics. The feeling behind it, though? It's a really solid mix of anger, boredom, and despair that hits you deep. Music has never really been your thing before. Just something playing on the bus or in a public place, and that was usually some sappy watered-down shit about love and flowers or heartbreak or other relationship issues. Boring. Never been there before, might never be.

You think you could get into this shit, though. You'll have to thank Gumshoos for the rec.

Someone taps you on the shoulder and you almost jolt out of your skeleton. You turn to see Simisear stifling a laugh. "Hey, uh, time to go."

Ihe is standing beside her and glaring up at you. Still mad you took him away from his friend, even if you brought him to a new one. Not like you could've told him what you were doing.

"Aight. Let me call everyone back."


There's a knock on the door to the bedroom you're cleaning. It swings open immediately after, before you could give any kind of an answer or prepare yourself. You look up at Golbat's scarred face and relax. You're probably closest to her these days. Nice to know another trans person. You help her with cooking where you can, even if you're not that good, and she sometimes at least talks to you while you work.

"Some of us were gonna watch a video if you want to."

You glance up. "What video?"

"Some vlogger does a weekly recap on the island challenge. Big trials, grand trials, who to watch." She shrugs. "Most of us did the island challenge at some point. We like to keep up with it."

Might be worth it. Could pick up a trick or two for your own battling, even if the contexts and strategies are going to be different from now on. And maybe it'll help you integrate better. "Sure. One minute."

There are already three other people in the lounge when you walk in. Loudred, Machoke, Cranidos. Loudred reminds you uncomfortably of Cuicatl sometimes. She's only a little bit taller and has a similar hair style, just black instead of green. Then there's her team. Scyther, froslass, and houndoom. She used to have more at some point in the past. Haven't been able to find out what. Her pokémon feel like the kind of things Cuicatl would happily add to her squad. And then there's the movement. Loudred moves with a quiet, fluid grace. Right now she's curled up on the couch with her legs pulled against her chest to take up as little space as possible. It reminds you a little of Cuicatl's more military style walk and movement. They aren't normal for girls their age. And Loudred always has an intensity around her like she expects she's going to fight you someday and is confident she will win. Cuicatl's aura felt similar when you did see her in a rage. They would either be best friends or literally kill each other. Not that they'll ever meet.

Cranidos is heavyset and generally cheerful. He doesn't mind your presence. Invited you out to a game of football at the golf course a few days back. You didn't do great. Barely anyone did. Either they didn't really care or they just weren't bag or fast enough to be good. It was really just Crandios and Machoke facing down Golbat and Gumshoos while everyone else did some light jogging around them. Never really seen any depth from Cranidos, don't know why he's here, but you doubt he shows that side of him very much. He reminds you of your brother in just enough ways that you'll probably never be close.

(You've barely thought about him at all in the last week. Hard to figure out how he'd feel about all this. Not great, but there are dozens of feelings crammed under "not great." You would know: you've experienced most of them.)

And Machoke is leaned back with the same relaxed look as always. Still stupidly tall and stupidly buff and very much unlike the body you ended up with because the universe decided to misfile you as something you weren't.

You sit down between him and Golbat before Cranidos hits 'play' on his phone. The video is some Haole kid named Austin talking about this week's island challenge news. You always dismissed his kind of show. Not enough happens in a week (some do shows every day) to justify an hour-long video on it.

He starts by talking about the weather of all things. Hot and dry and getting hotter and drier every week. Better than rain, sometimes, but he still spends a few minutes talking about how to avoid dehydration. Turns out that was just building to a sponsorship for some fancy canteen that's just a ridiculously overpriced water bottle. There's some idle chatter around you during that part. Golbat asks for suggestions for the next week's food since she has to throw in a shopping list soon. Apparently, some people help out Skull by being normal, law-abiding citizens who can walk into a bulk grocery store and deliver it to predetermined locations where an abra moves it to the field teams. Gets them reward points on their credit card and helps out the cause. If you stayed in one place long enough then maybe you could've done that. No. You're young. You're good at fighting. And Plumeria was dismissive of that kind of thing. This was the right choice.

The guy on the screen shifts to talking about how few people are taking the island challenge this year. Shows some footage of Olivia talking to a camera with no context about her plan to further subsidize pokémon food or offer extra classes at Pokémon Centers on basic life skills. Cranidos snorts. "Yeah, and then what happens when it ends? Money goes away and you have to go home with your giant pokémon and shitty parents?"

Machoke and Golbat murmur their support. Loudred says nothing. You'd imagine she has thoughts on this since two of her pokémon are carnivores and the last, what, eats souls or something? You don't know how froslass work.

"And now we go back to this year's most exciting prospect, Cuicatl Ichtaca." That snaps you to full attention. Not sure where they got the photo. It's very cheery for her. Even forced. You've seen her when she's actually happy. She has a self-assured smirk or a small smile. Not a wide thing meant to be seen. Never with teeth. The picture is definitely airbrushed. Her skin usually isn't picture perfect. Still a whole lot better than yours and she's good at not picking at it so there aren't really scars, but she's still a teenager. Being psychic doesn't make you immune to acne. And her teeth in the picture are straighter than they really are. Hers are fine. She's never had braces and at least two are cracked. Not ugly by any means. Just. Human. She is what she is. That's all you're going to get. Usually that's enough.

(It seems that it wasn't for you.)

"Miss Ichtaca cleared her second grand trial back in April and has been on hiatus ever since. Now, there's been a lot of speculation as to why. It was heavily rumored that Dr. Shirona Karashina, champion of Sinnoh, was tutoring her in preparation for her Class V license. Those rumors were confirmed this week when Dr. Karashina was seen at her protégé's Grand Trial battle with Nanu. Now, if you're wondering why her two most recent appearances were back-to-back grand trials, keep in mind that she beat the electric trial back in December and was probably just biding her time for Acerola to retire.

"Enough talking, though. Let's see the footage."

Cuicatl sends out her metang against a grimer and they go back and forth for a while. Truth be told you aren't really watching the battle. Your eyes are constantly drawn back to her every time she's on screen. She looks tense. Angrier than usual. At points she even appears to be in pain. Psychic tricks of some kind. Maybe bad enough to be rulebreaking, maybe not. It's an island challenge. No one really cares. Someone might break her arm if she tries that in the pros.

Coco comes out after the first round and just wrecks a raticate and persian. You knew the dino had been training hard with Shirona's garchomp but this is ridiculous. Machoke whistles after the first knockout and you get snapped back to the present. Loudred is leaning forward, eyes flickering over the screen to take in everything. Cranidos is watching with keen interest but still leaning back. Golbat is scrolling her phone but occasionally looking up. And Machoke is leaning back with an unreadable expression.

Her golisopod gets the final round and dukes it out with an incineroar. It's pretty close even with the type advantage and the bug's armor. Cuicatl still ekes out the win with three pokémon. Doesn't even have to use a Z-move. Good for her. Those never seemed healthy. Like, you're not judging the girl for chasing her dream but it's further than you might've gone, but it seemed painful.

The video flicks back to the announcer who just starts summarizing what happened. Some of it's about how to plan for Nanu, Something about the persian he used. Most is about Cuicatl's play in general and Coco in particular. She still doesn't give many orders. Audibly, at least. They're surprised that her vulpix wasn't back. You're not. Poor fox looked like a chew toy at the end of its life. Cuicatl's protective of her pokémon. She probably won't allow Pixie to battle again.

Eventually Cranidos gets bored and pauses the video. He leans over to face Loudred. "Still want to fight her?"

"We will eventually," she grumbles.

What? Why? You get that she's with VStar. And also their only employee with a high license. And does whatever her employer tells her to do. And is probably mad at you over joining Team Skull. Okay. Fine. You get it. But she's never attacked them before.

"See that eviolite?" Golbat asks. "Thing's ready to evolve. You put her at risk and you're facing down a tyrantrum. What's your plan, then?"

Loudred scoffs. "She's blind. No situational awareness. Useless if attacked directly. Distract her pokémon, sneak up, knock her out, use the balls to withdraw her team."

"Uh huh. And do you want to distract a tyrantrum?"

"We could." No further explanation is given.

"Doesn't matter," Machoke says. "Boss wants us to stay away from her."

"Why?" you ask. Worried about pissing off Anahuac? Shirona? No. They left her alone long before Shirona came into the picture.

"Boss wants her to join on her own terms. That's all I've been told."

You snort. Yeah, no. Not unless they can fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars. Anyone that buys her hydreigon will also buy her loyalty. Until then she's renting it out to the highest bidder.

In the end you decide not to argue with Loudred about how you'd fight her. But it isn't necessary. It seems like Skull isn't going after her and she has no reason to go after them. Unless she's coming after you. She probably wouldn't. She left Genesis leave into a bad situation. This can't be any worse than that. Besides, she's too smart to just attack random Skull grunts until one knows where you are and is willing to tell her.

"Why do you think you'll have to fight her? Doesn't seem like she's the type of person to care about us." You try to come off like you don't care. This is just bros talking about sports or whatever.

"Selene did," Loudred hisses. "They will make her, too. Make her prove that she's loyal enough to their government to be champion. Make her useful. If she is not useful, she will find her path blocked every step of the way by people who want to use her."

She sounds very confident about that. Confident and bitter. You look at her. Really look at her. Did that happen to her? Was she a rising star who wouldn't do what the colonizers wanted? What happened? Have you heard of her? You only really started paying attention once you got to Aether House. Then.

It was a good place for the kids who didn't cross their lines. And you knew that every night you slept in one of their beds was a night that some other kid would have to spend getting bounced around foster care. And you weren't even happy with the place once you figured out who you were. It was just easier to leave. To try and do something with your life. Be the person you wanted to be. You spent a year researching the challenge and hormones and deciding that this was definitely who you were and you wouldn't be happy going back. And then you left.

"Still not sure I wanna piss off tyrantrum girl without a good reason," Golbat says.

"She wouldn't be close to having one if we'd drove her off months ago."

Drove her off? If it was anyone else that would sound good. Don't kill or maim. Just annoy them until they leave Alola. The kind of things the old Skull did. But it wouldn't have worked with her. She's stubborn and desperate and she would have fought. Things would escalate. She wouldn't back down until she was dead.

You're suddenly really, really glad that Plumeria wants her left alone.

Machoke lifts the remote and lets the video play.

"Lyra Miura won her third grand trial around the same time. It seems like the group's third member has changed, though. Miss Ichtaca's old traveling companion, Genesis Gage, was seen at the grand trial. For those unaware, Miss Gage has made headlines lately. Won't get into details because I don't want to get sued but do look into it on your own." He laughs like it's a joke. What a fucking coward. "I did try to get my own answers. It just didn't go very well."

A video starts playing of that asshole shoving a microphone towards Gen while she was huddled near Lyra and Cuicatl. "Miss Gage—you are Genesis Gage, right?" She turns around and blinks in confusion at the camera. "Rumors have been circulating about where you've been over the last few months. Your father has sued—"

"No comment," Lyra interrupts.

"—the international police over allegedly libelous statements. What's your reaction? What is—"

"She has no comment you daft son of a bitch," Lyra grumbles as she stalks over to the camera.

"Excuse me, I was trying—"

She reaches towards the camera and the video ends.

It cuts back to the smarmy cunt's face. "Seems that Ms. Miura doesn't like me much. With a new, or old, member gained, another was lost. There was no sign of Kekoa Mahi'ai at either of the girls' grand trials and no one had a good explanation as to why. It's possible he was just sick, those kinds of things have happened before, but he also hasn't had a public appearance in a long time. That was after a fairly impressive win in the Akala grand trial where his almost mono-flying team managed to score a win against the rock kahuna. Let's take a look back."

Your moment of pride blinds you just long enough that you don't realize what's about to happen until it does. The video opens with Moe facing down Olivia's cranidos and you freeze up. Video. Fuck. Recent, too. If he just flashed your license, it wouldn't really matter. That was taken two weeks on hormones and you looked different. Not, like. Super girly or anything. Just androgynous. Sometimes when you start to slip into dysphoria you look between your license and the mirror and tally all the changes.

Machoke's hand settles onto your shoulder. "Don't worry. You're still just Jigglypuff to me."

You glance towards Loudred. Did she know about this before? If he's been covering Cuicatl, you probably came up when you battled Olivia. Yeah, her win was impressive with the last second evolution, but you had a team of birds (and a carbink and miltank) and pulled off a win. "Would she attack you if it came down to it?" Loudred asks.

You don't know. She can be scarier than you'd think when she's mad. But you've never seen her attack another human before. Much less someone she liked. Still. Your thoughts drift back to Paniola. You were being an ass to her about, well, you don't even remember what, and she outed you to Genesis and threatened to have her hydreigon murder you. That was before she liked you, though. You aren't sure if she still likes you now.

"I don't think she would," you settle on. "My pokémon, yes. You, definitely. Me? No. If she ever shows up get as far away as you can and let me handle it." Right now you could even beat her, easy. Her scariest pokémon is a bug-type. Moe takes Noci. You can just play around Coco like you did Olivia's cranidos: keep airborne when you can and wait for it to get impatient and give you an opening. The problem comes in when either of those pokémon evolve. Even a small tyrantrum would be really hard to beat. You'd need cheap shots or a Z-move even if Cuicatl wasn't giving orders, and Coco already handled Nanu easily enough.

There isn't anything you or anyone else here could do about a metagross. If all of you were attacking together with all your pokémon, maybe? Houndoom and froslass could damage it. But the metagross would know that and plan around it. Plumeria can't even help because all of her pokémon are poison-types. There's really only one silver lining.

"She says she isn't going to evolve her metang. I didn't believe her before, but she might not take the risk now." Unless she was desperate. You haven't heard from her yet. You're guessing she's not that desperate about you leaving.

Everything goes dead silent.

"We… didn't actually think there was a chance of her evolving the metang. She might?"

You shrug. "Probably not? She has a girlfriend now. I don't think she really cared about her own safety. Maybe she'll care about her partner's." Okay. You're losing ground here. "She doesn't actually like the American government. At all. They probably couldn't get her to turn against Skull or anything."

Unless she was paid a life changing amount of money. Unless her Class V or visa were held hostage over it. Then? Maybe. But you don't actually want Loudred trying to kill Cuicatl or get her or go home or whatever. You've already betrayed her. Don't need to twist the fucking knife.

"You want to prove your loyalty?" Loudred asks. "This is how. What guard pokémon do she and her partners leave out at night? What hostages would infuriate her? Which would cause her to stand down? What are any limits we should know about? I assume she has self-defense training from Anahuac: how much? When are her pokémon usually the farthest from her?" She drones on. It's the most you've ever heard her talk. And it's about hurting someone you care about.

"You won't ever need any of this. She won't fight us."

"Then there's no harm in telling me."

You meet her gaze. Cranidos shifts uncomfortably beside her. Machoke looks as impassive as ever. You think Golbat's sympathetic. That might be pity, though. Or maybe even judgment. Damn it. You left her. You knew she might see you as a brother and you left her. And now you might turn around and actually hurt her like her brother and father did. She wants you to choose between this life and your old one and you can't, doesn't she get that?

Cranidos clears his throat. Great. He's going to come after you, too. "If he was willing to sell her out like that, would we want him here?"

Machoke grunts. "Agreed. Unless Big Sis changes her mind, we don't need to press it."

You look at Golbat and she looks away. You were supposed to be more open. You couldn't be. You'd do everything else. And now… and now no one is going to trust you here. Even if you could go back no one would trust you there, either.


Arson turns out to be a great distraction from your thoughts.

"Alright, here's our target." Machoke hits a button on his phone and the TV shifts to the next slide. It shows a big house of some kind. "This used to be a bed and breakfast owned by a kanaka family. They left during The Blackout and sold it to a mainland development company who's using it as a short-term rental. Big Sis has confirmed that no one's staying there in two nights so we're free to burn it. Everyone, same roles as usual. Jigglypuff!" It's very dumb that he knows your name and still calls you Jigglypuff. He's not keeping any information from himself. You'll talk to him about it later. You just. Don't feel like you've earned it yet. "Can your drifblim help spread the flames?"

"She doesn't like fire." Or have a flying move stronger than gust. "My rufflet knows tailwind. I can boost it with a Z-crystal if you want."

"Good, good." He's genuinely smiling and for a moment you can almost believe that he isn't disappointed in you. "Gumshoos and Loudred will break in and start the fire. You and Simisear will be fanning the flames. I'll cause a distraction down the beach. Hatterene, Golbat, and Cranidos will keep an eye on things. Goal is to get out of there before anyone notices anything's wrong. We'll have two abra helping with that…"

You hope you don't need to memorize all of this now. You could try but it's a lot.

Right now you're just glad to have some other way to prove yourself.