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04.

INCONVENIENT

Everyone has someone like Dot the latios in their life. You know them when you see them, or rather when you hear them, because they will take the opportunity to argue with you every chance they get and they will never stop. Dot is one of those people. He's the kind of person to order a sixteen inch-pizza with five-minute delivery, time the delivery, and then measure the pizza with a ruler when it gets there. I haven't talked to him in a while. Guess why.

Technically the reason why is that he never shows up to the Hall of Origin, because he's persnickety about how he runs his day and can't be assed to take detours. It's convenient. He doesn't have to waste his time, and I don't have to listen to him argue with me.

Anyways, here was Dot the Latios in front of my desk, arguing with me. Which is inconvenient. Something else about Dot, he's like an inconvenient grimer. He always shows up when I need him the least.

"Look," Dot said. "You're Mew. You know things."

"And for the last time," I began, masking my annoyance with the tone used by all those pokemon center nurses who stopped caring long ago and learned to take rude, medically misinformed customers like a champ, "In this case I don't know things. If I suddenly have my two-o-clock period of omniscience or, better, learn something about all this, then I will let you know."

It was catty (har har, yes pun), but we'd been over this five times already.

Dot sighed. I could see him simmering, and somehow, I'd lost the ability to care. Stick a hat on me and call me Nurse Joy, I guess.

"If you really don't know anything, why can't you just fire up that thingamabob—" Dot gestured with a blue back fin towards the clear chutes that paperwork came down in from. "that tells you where all the Legends are at any time?"

"That's not how it works," I said.

"What happened to your system being 'all knowing'?"

"The system captures events of note, not every random flight you take in the woods," I said. Now I was getting irritable. "Do you know how much paperwork I'd be drowning in if this thing actually catalogued everything?"

"Well, how much paperwork do you do each day? Maybe you missed something."

"Look," I said, dropping the pokemon center nurse act. "If I had a paper to give you, I would have given it to you the first time. I just don't."

Technically, I was telling the truth. When the paper detailing Cherry's location in a Team Rocket base came in through the chute, I destroyed it so thoroughly that no-one, not even another Legend, would be able to put it back together again. And that was if they found it first. Good luck, because I fed it to a convenient grimer and then chucked the remains into Mt. Chimney.

That made three crimes I was guilty of now. Breaking council code, collaborating with humans, and now destruction of information. A couple more and I'd be setting records.

I could see the worry on Dot's face. Dot was aggressive and could argue in circles to no end, but he did look out for Cherry even during her most reckless stunts. Lying to his face didn't feel great, but what choice did I have? The more pokemon knew, the more pokemon I had to worry about. And the more likely it'd become that Cherry would be killed.

"Look…" Dot began. I breathed a deep breath, stirring myself up to cut a sixth round of the same argument short, but what he said was different this time. "I know you and Cherry have your thing going on. If you two got into trouble or something, or if she got into trouble, then just, let me know! I can help. I'm not going to rat on you or anything, just let me help out. I care too."

What I had to tell him next made me feel like I'd swallowed both a convenient and inconvenient grimer: "I'm sorry, Dot, but you're reading way too much into this. If I see something, I'll tell you. I promise."

I could see Dot's fins droop a little. He was finally realizing there was nothing I was going to tell him.

"Hey, why don't you go sweep Alola?" I weakly offered. "I heard she was chasing wingull there a day ago."

"Wasn't she doing that in Alto Ma—"

"She chased it to Alola soon after," I interrupted. "It's a small commute."

"It's really not."

I shrugged. "It's what the machine says."

"I want to see the re—"

"You're not seeing the receipts."

Sad time over. It was not what the machine said. But I needed to keep him out of my hackles until I could figure out how to fix all this. Which would be very inconvenient to do if I let him keep arguing at me.

Dot sighed. It was a sigh that said "I don't believe you, and I know you're lying to me, but I'm going to back off for now and give us both some time to think".

That's a mouthful. He has very expressive sighs.

With a shrug and a reluctant "thanks for the help", he turned around and flew at a steady, reasonable pace through the hall and out.

Once I was sure he was gone, I collapsed against my desk and let out a huge, dramatic sigh of relief. I hadn't felt that backed up against a wall since the time I nearly got licked to death by a horde of lickitung while backed up against a wall. Long story.

The day was spent doing what I usually did. File paperwork, dust up around the place when I wasn't busy with paperwork, try to ignore the big problem in the room. Just, normal day stuff. We couldn't get wandering hikers in here, but we apparently could get wandering mountain dust and snow. My mind was two regions over as I did the menial work.

I hadn't even figured out a plan yet. Cherry was suffering down there in a cell, all locked up and waiting for me to figure out how to get her out… and here I was, dusting floors up here like nothing was wrong.

But on the other paw… what was I going to do? Stomp in there and demand they gave her back? Granted, there were a thousand ways to do that, but none that weren't risky, and none that wouldn't end with an interrogation from Arceus. And my death, soon after.

There was something else stuffed back in the desk I was idly dusting. I recognized what it was immediately: the black phone Team Rocket had given me a couple of days ago. It hadn't rung at all since I'd been given it, and I'd been letting it collect dust in a dark place where I didn't have to think about it.

Guess I didn't stuff it back far enough, because I was thinking about it anyway.

I reached a paw in, letting the joints grow just dexterous and opposable enough to grab the phone and manipulate it the way a pair of human hands would.

It had a hinge that flipped up, and the top half was a shiny black screen. The bottom half had buttons with numbers from one to ten, and green and red buttons on the very end. It was completely dead. I looked at my reflection on the smooth black screen, studying it idly as my mind wandered in thought. This thing was the cause of so much of my problems, and I kept it in my desk like it was no big deal.

I had the sudden urge to chuck it out the window.

Then it suddenly lit up and buzzed.

I, the fearless secretary, yelped, letting it slip out of my paws. It nearly hit the floor before my tail morphed into an aipom's hand and caught it. I raised it to my face, watching as it continued to buzz and light up like a charjabug tangled in several party lights. I guessed I was supposed to press the green button at the bottom.

Once I did, the buzzing stopped, and a voice came through the speakers: "Mew?"

"That's me," I said, somehow keeping my voice stable. Inwardly, I gulped. Was I really doing this?

"Splendid," the voice came back through the phone. Even through the line that was fuzzy this high up on the mountains, I could tell it was Giovanni speaking to me.

"I have your first task ready for you," he said, sounding perfectly relaxed. Like this was just another Tuesday for him. Or whatever day it was, I think Tuesday was yesterday. I guess he didn't get the memo.

"What is it?" I asked reluctantly after a period of silence. He wanted me to play along.

"Go into your room of records, and get me the location of Keldeo," Giovanni said.

I wanted to ask him how he knew about the Room of Records, but he already knew a lot of things that he shouldn't. In comparison to what he knew already, what was this?

More importantly, he'd just demanded the location of another legendary. That could only mean one thing: he was after more of us. Was two not enough? Was he collecting us?

Man, that's weird. I didn't peg him as some kind of depraved antique collector, but there have been weirder rich people. Cue Vermillion Taxidermy Guy.

"It'll take me a while to get that information," I said.

"I expect a call before the end of the day," Giovanni said. There was a click, and the phone hung up.

I stared at my reflection in the black glass of the phone once more, a defeated look on my face. Then my tail suddenly cramped, and the aipom fingers on the end spasmed, before slowly beginning to retreat back into my tail. I flipped forward in midair, once again catching the phone with my own two paws before it hit the ground. I could never hold a transformation for too long before that happened, no matter how I tried.

Grabbing a few of the rolled-up papers that had come out through the chute while I was on the phone, I quickly stuffed them in their respective folders without reading them and went back into the Room of Records. They'd be flattened, but still readable if anyone actually cared, which I didn't.

In all my three years of working at the Hall of Origin, I had never actually seen Keldeo. It was that way for most of the Legends—I read about what the more active smaller ones did by the papers that came through the chute, and heard about the inactive larger ones because those were the ones that could destroy an eighth of the world if they ever woke up. But inactive smaller Legends were a grey area.

Keldeo was one of the lower legends who was… inactive. Or at least, well-behaved enough that stuff on them never turned up in the chutes. That meant that after I'd finished zipping around the massive room and stuffing things in their respective cabinets, the next stop was Keldeo's personal cabinet section, which, according to the "helpful" color-code directory next to the door that I swear likes to look at me when I'm not looking at it, was colored a deep cobalt.

Apparently Keldeo had a whole aisle of cabinets. They were near the back of the room where I never went unless I fancied taking long, five-minute glides in a room that gave me the creeps. It's very atmospheric, I do it never. But holy shit, whoever Keldeo was, they were almost as bad as Vic. Almost.

With so many cabinets, it didn't matter which one I pulled open, though I went for the drawer closest to the aisle. If the room was creepy, the aisles were straight up convenient murder spots. I don't go any further into those than I have to.

I pulled out one of the cobalt folders, feeling its unfamiliar surface in my paws. My predecessor had filed these. With so many filings and then a sudden cutoff, I wondered if Keldeo got fired and the replacement was just well-behaved or something. Either way, this was the last one in the drawer. The last thing he'd filed for Keldeo.

Flipping it open, I read the information on the page—Keldeo had been involved in some berserk feud between several powerful forest pokemon, and the resulting battle wasn't good for the forest. He didn't walk away unscathed—that explained the sudden cutoff. Probably.

There wasn't any information about his current location, but after reading to the end of the file I found the report that stated his last sighting was near a forest-bound Pokemon Ranger ranch in Unova. Which was better than nothing, but life kept leading me back to Unova and I was ready to file a complaint with… myself, I guess. Complaints don't make it past the secretary.

I took the paper out of the file, stuffed everything else back into the cabinet, and let it roll shut with a click. It echoed out through the endless room, the sound growing fainter as it went. It was almost a moment before my ears didn't pick it up again.

\|o|/

Unova in the fall is like a half-cooked freezer biscuit. It somehow manages to be warm and chilly at once, and lacks natural splendor and flavor in the way only freezer biscuits do, but most importantly the analogy works because my hate for Unova and my hate for freezer biscuits is equal.

One toilet flush later, and I was surrounded by the continental personification of freezer biscuit. Keeping to the intermittent clouds in the sky as cover, I flew over flat woodland forests, following the river below. The sun shone down through the clouds and warmed my back, but the wind that flew in my face chilled me through my fur. Another thing about Unova, it really makes you feel like a half-cooked freezer biscuit.

I looked down, recognizing a patch of the river that I was flying over. If I knew my maps right, I was supposed to be near that ranger ranch down below, but that was… Hey… that was where Vic had asked to be teleported!

Typical Vic. Of course he'd want to be in the place where they pampered you for being fluffy. At least if he was in the area, I could ask him if he knew anything. I flew down, following the river until I could touch the tops of the pine trees as I flew past. They were prickly.

After another minute of flying, I slowed down and used the trees as cover. I could see my destination up ahead: A massive clearing where the trees let up. It was surrounded by an idyllic wooden fence, and there were at least a hundred pokemon who were lounging around in the sun and the shade of the trees. A bit further in, there were a few log houses that sat silent on the other side of the plantation. The lights were on in some of the windows, and I could see a human or two lounging around near the cabins.

I scanned the area, looking for anything that looked like a growlithe amongst the other 'mon in the area. Growlithe weren't native to Unova, so if Vic was here, he'd stick out like a ditto in a swarm of golbat.

That analogy makes more sense once you see one.

It didn't take long before I spotted him. He was lazily sunning himself near the middle of the clearing, surrounded by a few of the smaller pokemon in the area. Jackpot. I lowered myself to the forest, and let my form ripple away. Ten seconds later, I squeezed between the cracks in the fence and trotted out into the clearing as a normal espeon. Many of the pokemon in the area were looking at me funny as I walked through. I tried my best to put on a face that said I belonged here—after all, I was a pokemon. It was being a pokemon not native to Unova that was the inconvenient part.

Getting within earshot of Vic meant hearing Vic, and I could hear him telling some tall tale that was unfortunately not made up to a group of very young pokemon who sat in front of him.

I cleared my throat, catching Vic's attention. He stopped talking and glanced at me.

"Do you need something?" he asked. "I'm in the middle of telling a story!"

I gave him my best blank stare and waited for him to figure it out. If that gave him any idea, then he didn't show it. Disappointing—he'd seen it enough times by now for sure.

The silence continued. I used some Transformation to make my stare even blanker. He just blinked. One of the very young pokemon laughed.

"Vic," I finally admitted defeat. "It's me."

It was still a moment before he caught on. His face lit up with shock and realization.

"Oh," he choked out. "Ann. It's you. Uhh…" he looked at all the kids who were expectantly sitting in front of him. "Uhh… storytime's over! I have to do, uh, adult things."

We went to a place in the clearing that was secluded enough from the rest of the pokemon in the area that we could talk in peace.

"Is my week up already?" Vic asked. "It's only been two days."

"Not quite," I said. "I'm here on… high council business." The words felt dirty in my mouth.

Vic suddenly looked spooked.

"It's not about you," I clarified immediately. He looked a lot more relaxed.

That was probably pretty telling about our relationship.

"I'm looking for Keldeo," I said without mincing any more words.

"Keldeo?" Vic asked, tilting his head and scratching his mane with a hind leg. He sounded surprised. "What did Keldeo do?"

"Keldeo didn't do anything," I said, nonchalantly waving it off. It was time to see how well I could bluff this. "We're just doing… high council check-ins. We do them roughly every three years."

Vic looked nonplussed. "Well, I've been around for six years, and no-one ever did one of those for me…"

"Maybe we'd do one if I wasn't chasing you down for something every other month," I pointed out. "There just wasn't ever a need."

"Touché…"

"So, do you know anything?" I asked, steering the conversation back on track. Vic puffed out his cheeks. Some steam puffed out of his ears.

"I'll take that for… not no?" I prompted after a minute of him standing there. Eventually, Vic had held his breath for too long and needed to get more air.

"Yeah, I know him," Vic said. "We hang out. He doesn't go out much anymore, so I go to him. But you're not gonna probate me longer for this, right? I know we're not supposed to do the whole socializing with other Legends thi—"

"Look, I don't care about that," I said, cutting him off. "I just need to see him, and because he doesn't do anything ever I have no idea where he's at. Can you take me there?"

Vic pretended to think about it for a moment. I fought the urge to wilt. He was going to try being coy, was he.

"Hmm…" he said, drawing out the mock thinking process. "What's in it for me?"

"Not getting three more days lumped onto your probation for being difficult about a high council matter." I wasn't here for joking right now.

Vic puffed out his cheeks again, then made a 'pffbt' sound with them.

"You drive a cruel bargain," he admitted.

"It's what I do."

Vic got up from where he was sitting, stretched, then waved me on with his golden growlithe head fluff as he began to walk towards the west side of the clearing. "Come on," he said. "Keldeo's this way."

Vic led me into the trees, down a couple of slopes, over the stream that flowed by the ranger ranch, and then into a small alcove that sheltered a mossy cave. Vic stopped there, and swung his bushy tail to block me from going forward. "He doesn't like unannounced visitors."

The growlithe cleared his throat, then barked into the cave. "Yo, Keldeo! It's me again!"

It was a moment before there was a response. But soon enough, a shaky voice with a strong galarian accent floated out of the cave.

"V-vic? Is that you, my friend?"

"Yeah!" Vic yelled back. "And I brought a guest!"

"A guest?!" the voice floated back, sounding alarmed. "You know I don't like guests…"

"It wasn't up to me," Vic said. "Your cue," he said in a lower voice to me.

I rose up off the ground, letting the pink light of my orb overtake me until I was Mew once again.

"Keldeo?" I said, putting on my best business voice and letting it echo into the cavern. "This is Mew, from the Legendarian High Council."

"T-the High Council?" the voice drifted back, but I still didn't see Keldeo. "W-well, what do they want?"

"Oh, nothing major," I replied back. "We're just doing a checkup."

"O-oh? Well, if a checkup truly is all…"

Keldeo was then silent.

"I think we can go in," Vic said. I just shrugged and floated in after him.

Keldeo's cave was surprisingly very little like a cave and a lot like an apartment in the city. Keldeo seemed to collect a lot of comic books, which sat in neat little stacks near the back of the cave. Somehow an entire sofa had been teleported into the cave, and there was a television with an antenna to the left that was currently dead. I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the sight. Of all things, that was… not what I had been expecting.

The horse legend himself stood near the back. He looked a lot like a ponyta, if ponyta were blue and tan all over and had multicolored manes. Something stuck out of his forehead. It looked like a horn, but it was way too small and blunt to be one. When I got closer, I saw that it was… ouch. That must have been what the file meant when it said he hadn't walked away unscathed.

Keldeo stirred the ground with a hoof and nervously tried to get my attention.

"S-so you've seen what you need to, yes?" he asked. I had, but I still had to come up with something.

"If you don't have any feedback for us, then yes," I said. "Do you?"

Keldeo eagerly shook his head. It was probably for the best. It would never go anywhere.

"That's the pokemon who's supposed to settle conflicts in this region?" I asked Vic once we were far enough from his cave that Keldeo wouldn't hear. "He's so… nervous."

"Keldeo's a hermit," Vic said. "Ever since he broke his horn, he hasn't been able to muster up the courage to do his job. Took a while for him to be comfortable even around me, and that's just 'cause I brought him comics."

I nodded. That explained all the strange things in that cave. Somehow I couldn't imagine Keldeo like I'd seen him going out and getting those things himself.

We walked back through the river, up several slopes, and into the trees. I hung back for a second to shift back into an espeon before following Vic out into the ranch area.

"You're going to be here until your week is up?" I said once we returned to the spot where Vic had been originally. The kids he'd been entertaining were busy playing in the background, but there were a few loose ends to tie up before their attention was caught again.

"It's not like I have anywhere else to be," Vic said, rolling over. "Why?"

"Just so I can find you," I said. "Tracking people down is time-consuming."

Vic, flopped down and rolled over on his back, gave his best attempt at a shrug. "I'm here if you need me. They treat a 'mon well here."

"Got it," I said, and then in a flush I teleported out of there. It later struck me that a lot of pokemon in the area must have seen an espeon teleporting when that wasn't supposed to be possible. But espeon weren't native to unova, so I was counting on them being ignorant. A convenient pass.

My eyes swam with light—toilet flush—and when it dissolved a second later, I was standing in the Hall of Origin again. It was just as empty as it had always been—Arceus basically never came down here, and I didn't seem to have any visitors at the moment. Dot was probably still busy combing Alola.

Glancing around both ways to make sure I really wasn't being watched, I floated over to my desk with all the energy of a limp pyukumuku. My stomach did a flip, then another as I reached into my desk and pulled out the black phone that lay there. Giovanni wanted it by the end of the day. Well… I looked out the window, where the sun was beginning to set. The end of the day was nearly here.

A tap of the green button, and the phone began to call probably the only number it was able to. There was a click, and I could tell that the line had been opened. But no voice came out.

Figuring I was supposed to speak first, I opened my mouth and spoke into the microphone:

"Keldeo's location is a cave to the south of the Pokemon Ranger Ranch in Unova."

Silence. I sent one more cursory glance around to make sure that no-one had heard me. Then, the voice I had heard from the microphone before began speaking.

"Excellent. A drone is being sent to verify your information as we speak. Please stay on the line until we can confirm your information."

Of course he'd be checking to see if I was pulling a fast one on him. That was another Grade A Villain thing.

They were sending a team over there right now to extract Keldeo, the meek horse who lived out in the middle of the woods all on his own and had never even done anything to warrant a filing in three years, and he placed his trust in me, and Vic placed his trust in me, and Dot grudgingly placed his trust in me, and I let them all down. And now Team Rocket was going to…

"Your information is confirmed. Thank you for your assistance."

That quick? What had they done to him?

"I want my friend back," I said into the microphone. It was all I could think to say. A laugh met my ears.

"Oh, but we haven't reached the end of our little agreement yet. I still have need for you."

"At least let me see her. I need to know she's safe."

"Rest assured she is being treated with as much hospitality as any of our other hostages. Which is to say that her safety is guaranteed… as long as you continue to follow orders."

I couldn't keep myself restrained anymore. "Well let me see her, you—"

"Goodbye, Mew."

The line hung up. Everything went quiet, including me.

I didn't dare call it again.

\|R|/

Giovanni flipped the phone closed, cutting the bothersome mew off mid-sentence. He flipped a switch, and the phone lost power completely. If she called him back, he wouldn't see it. They wouldn't have contact again until he needed her once more.

The drone on his computer was surveying the cave Mew had talked about right now. He could, sure enough, see the secluded alcove she was talking about. And within, the sleeping form of the legendary horse. It was a shame they didn't yet have the technology to extract the pokemon automatically.

He pressed a button, and spoke into the microphone that stuck up out of his desk.

"Bring me Executive Petrel, please."

There was a click, and he removed a gloved finger from the button. Only a few minutes later, the door opened, and a lanky man with pointy purple hair walked in. He was hunched over, and stared out at Giovanni through droopy eyes.

"You called?" he asked. His voice sounded gravelly.

"Petrel," Giovanni said. "Petrel, Petrel, Petrel."

"That is my name, Boss."

"I've got an assignment for you."

Petrel had already been standing to attention, but he looked a little less droopy after that.

"Well, go on," he said.

"We've located our target," Giovanni said. "I'll forward you the main location and co-ordinates. This will be a unique extraction mission that will require talents specifically suited to your toolkit."

"Oh?" Petrel asked. "Stealth mission, I assume?"

"The target is located near a pokemon ranger ranch on protected Unovan woodlands," Giovanni said. "Our objective is to get in and out without anyone noticing. Rangers are a very pesky and persistent lot. The last thing Team Rocket needs is our faces plastered on the Castella City Times if they find us. It would be disruptive to our smuggling operations there. You'll need to operate under their noses, gain access to the property somehow. Stop them from interfering. You will have Team Rocket's full resources at your fingertips. Are you up to the task?"

Petrel shrugged. "I'm not the head of disguise for nothing. When do we head out?"

"Tonight," Giovanni said. "At your earliest convenience. We don't know if this target is stationary."

\|M|/

The claims had been filed with Arceus, and my job was done for the day. I carefully left out everything he wasn't supposed to hear, like the fact that I'd jaunted off to a pokemon ranch for the day and visited Keldeo. Did he suspect me? If he did, he was keeping his cards close to his chest. Considering what he had done to the one who came before me, that didn't seem like his style. And Arceus never shook it up.

I lay on my small hammock in a nook near the back of the hall, staring at the glittering stars in the night sky above and trying not to think about what I had just done. I'd sentenced an innocent legend, one who hadn't done anything wrong, to become the latest piece in the gallery of Kanto's most deranged collector. Who would he ask for next? Maybe Vic. Maybe Dot. And whatever he wanted with the other legends… I was handing it all to him on a silver platter. And the worst part was that there was nothing that I could do.

Shuffling over to the side of the hammock. Suddenly I wasn't in the mood for stars. I tried to convince myself that I couldn't do anything anyway, and what point was there in trying? If I interfered, I'd just risk Cherry's life. But how many other legends had to die or suffer for Cherry to live? And what guarantee was there on when I'd see her again? After two? After three? After ten?

Deep down, I knew the answer: Never. I'd never see her again, not if I played by Team Rocket's rules. They were trying to get their hands on Legends, why would they ever willingly release one? I couldn't help but let out a morbid chuckle at the idea. They were just leading me on. They'd use me to get as many Legends as they could, and once I outlived my usefulness, they'd take Cherry and capture me too.

I really didn't have anything to lose, did I? If I did nothing, it was all downhill from here for me. And I could consider Cherry gone either way. There was no good answer. Ugh, why did everything have to be so… inconvenient?

But if I had nothing to lose, then… I found myself floating upright off my hammock. That meant I stood everything to gain. A sudden adrenaline began to flow through my body, making me feel as alert as ever.

I could give this crazy collector guy a dose of his own medicine. I couldn't stop them out in the open, but I sure could make things very… inconvenient for them. I just had to make sure they didn't see me doing it.

I rose up out of my hammock and into the air, preparing to toilet flush myself all the way to Unova. I didn't have time to waste.

It was time to fix my mistake.