Once again, Looker couldn't help but wonder if the life beyond the cloudy, unbreachable veil in his mind had been as chaotic as this one. With how much he had bore witness to, it certainly wouldn't surprise him if it had been.
KRAKOOM!
The group around Looker barely flinched at the echoing sound, so he didn't either. His aging bones didn't like the tension his decision to stay stock still put them under, but they knew better than to do more than painfully groan in his ears.
On the other hand, if his life was as chaotic before he'd lost his memory as it had been after, then he was certain, should he finally get his memory back, that it wouldn't live up to what he'd been through since losing it. After sixty years of working for the International Police, he'd seen everything.
"GRRRRAAAAAH!"
FSSSSSH!
Looker grimaced as yet more waves lapped at the sides of the ship he was on. He'd thought he'd seen everything, anyway.
"Do you know them?"
Though he frowned at the question, he didn't spare a glance to the woman to his right. Looking at her would just remind himself of just how old he was getting. Even though it had been well over forty years now, it felt like it was only last week that he'd parted with the young orphan after bequeathing the building they'd shared in Lumiose, her voiced dream to keep the city safe ringing in his ears.
His protege didn't comment on his refusal to look away from the battle taking place a mile away from the deck of the deck of the French military ship they were standing on. Looker might not have been one for battle even decades after his first partner had died, but he'd been around enough battles to know when they were impressive.
This one counted.
"Not Justin or Eratos," he answered. "Elio, on the other hand… I met him at the beginning of his reign as the Champion of Alola."
Looker assumed she had nodded. Under ordinary circumstances, he might have heard the rustle of fabric as she did so, but with the wind blowing across the deck of the ship and the conversations taking place around them, his hearing just wasn't good enough to pick it out.
He didn't really care about his inability to gauge her response, though. Remembering Elio inevitably brought memories of the mission he'd accomplished with the Champion in his region.
CRASH!
Water was sent up and into the air in a great column, and Looker couldn't help but wince at the again.
This was not the most destructive thing he'd brushed against in his career working for Interpol. Undoubtedly, the near-catastrophe with Team Galactic was the worst by far, though the debacle on Krakatoa came a close second.
Alola was probably third.
A pair of twin roars rended the air, and their boat shook again. Again, the people around him broke out into whispers.
Looker could only grimace at the lack of terror, trepidation, or even the tiniest morsel of timidity. They were only a mile away from five legendary Pokemon fighting, and most of the people around him couldn't sound happier.
There were a few not looking forward to the possibility of a fight. The few functionaries and pencil pushers on the ship, mostly from Interpol and the United Nations, probably just wanted the whole ordeal to be over. He doubted they had a single champion-level Pokemon between them… although Looker had been surprised before, so maybe, if things somehow got worse, they might have the chance to prove him wrong.
He assumed most of the remaining crew of the ship had no desire to go anywhere near the battle of titans, figuratively in the case of four of the Legendaries and literally in the case of Eratos's Pokemon from Achea, that would undoubtedly see their drone carrier sent to the bottom of the Pacific to join a dozen comrades-in-arms that had been sunk across the last century.
The members of the apocalyptic climate cult locked in the bottom of the ship they had managed to hijack, were they not locked up, might have wanted to get involved, though not on the side of the three Champions, their Legendaries, and the other heavy-hitting trainers that were running support and interference, but on the side of the two Pokemon the International Pokemon League Federation, Interpol, and the United Nations were trying to stop from killing each other.
He obviously didn't want to do it, and Emma wouldn't-
"Do you think I might stand a chance against him?"
Looker's aged countenance soured considerably. Right. Little Emma-
He cut that thought off with a sigh. No, little Emma was not so little anymore, and though he couldn't remember the first decades of his life, he should have remembered that much at least. She'd become a Champion-level battler in her own right, during her crusade to solve mysteries and stop crime in Lumiose, and though she possessed no Legendary Pokemon of her own, her Essentia suit ensured she could go toe-to-toe with the best.
Even still. Elio had held onto his seat for nearly half a century. "Probably not, but I must confess that it has been a decade since I've been to Alola."
He could hear her pout, but Looker wasn't going to lie to Emma and tell her she might.
Emma was good.
She was not 'beat a legendary' good.
Looker's earbud crackled, and he winced in response. His creaking bones decided that yes, they would be betraying him today, and he felt his steely stature begin to shake. He kept his face set in a grimace, even as he felt himself losing his balance.
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as Justin shouting in his ear that his Pokemon, a hulking, cactus-like Pokemon Looker couldn't remember anything else about because the pain in his body had pushed the ever-present fog from the beginning of his memory outwards across the whole of it, was down and that he was retreating.
"You okay, boss?"
A steady hand pressed under one of his arms, anticipating the single shake of Looker's head. He wished, more than he had for anything else, that someone had thought to bring up a few chairs.
"I'm coming in."
Looker's pained grimace, mostly unphased the entire time he'd been there, suddenly became very phased. The cacophony of voices erupting over his earbud and atop the French ship, all fighting in response to the declaration, echoed through the air and expressed identical surprise, indignation, skepticism, and shock to Looker's own.
Almost a mile and a half away, on one of the Chilean destroyers that had been tailing the French drone carrier for the two weeks it had been hijacked, a short woman wearing all black with silvery-blonde hair launched into the air atop a Pokemon three times her size.
Looker could only gape as the woman took off, while an appreciative whistle sounded in his ear and cheers erupted from the crowd around him. He understood she was unquestionably powerful, with true challenges to her reign as Sinnoh's champion being countable on one hand. He understood that even though most of the Pokemon she'd started her reign with were dead and gone, that did not diminish her ability to train new Pokemon.
He also understood that she was here as an advisor as a favor to the IPLF's president, and he also understood that she was over a hundred!
Uncaring of the incredulous staring and pointing and shouting pointed at her, the woman flew atop her Garchomp and entered the fray, sending out-
The world changed.
For a moment, Looker felt compressed as the world inverted on itself. Surrounding him on all sides, the vast horizon of the Pacific, an unending lighter and darker blue dotted with nothing but clouds and waves, crushed him with its sudden proximity, liquifying him and delicately pouring the resulting slush into a Pokeball. Looker's gut twisted as he was seized by the feeling that the environment and faces and bodies and souls around him were painted onto the inside of his own eyelids.
Then the world unchanged, and Giratina, the Renegade Pokemon, let out a single, terrible cry.
Below it, atop an iceberg of monstrous proportion only outdone in its size by the massive Pokemon that sat on it, Archassis, the Polar Specter Pokemon, roared in response.
The fight continued, and Looker continued to look on.
Quaetoalser echoed the cry of Archassis, and Looker could only watch as the now-airbourne serpent, wreathed in a fire as brilliant and colorful as its glittering scales, attempted to juke past the Legendaries commanded by Elio and Erotas. The titanic stone golem and the stellar lion worked in tandem to contain and constrain it and keep it from meeting the half-dead bear from the north pole.
Looker felt his stony exterior beginning to falter. Even pushing eighty, it seemed, his work would never be done. Would he ever get a break?
Slowly, the pair of Pokemon were being pushed apart.
Despite its type disadvantage, Giratina was making headway against its opponent. Giratina dodged out of reality to avoid a vast beam of ice and slipped back into reality behind the bear, striking at its icy hindquarters with three of its spectral appendages and staving off the shadowy figure that flared up in a burst of miasmic darkness with another.
Quaetoalser spun through the air, bombarding the titanic Brhoditan with great gouts of flame that caused the bright paint on its body to bubble and blacken. It waded through the fire, the ocean, and the pain in an attempt to grapple it, while Solgaleo chased the serpent's fiery tail.
Bit by little bit, they were being pushed apart.
It was not just the physical fight that was being won, Looker knew, but the mental battle as well. Every trainer with a Legendary useful in a fight like this had instructed their Legendaries to try and convince the two enraged Pokemon to calm down, but they were not the only ones attempting such. Around Archassis, among the dozen trainers supporting Giratina and the other Pokemon Cynthia had released, was a woman riding atop a polar Corviknight, desperately pleading with it to return to its home in the Arctic. A man from Samoa was among the trainers supporting the fight against Quaetoalser and similarly pleading that it calm down and listen to reason.
Their fury was slowly calming, and Looker couldn't help but smile as the ferocity of their attacks, of their cries, began to lessen. It seemed this was another disaster averted.
He hadn't had much of anything to do with it, this time, though it wasn't like that wasn't something he was used to at this point.
Looker had long since retired from fieldwork and worked at Interpol's headquarters these days, and was instead present merely as a representative of Interpol's Law Enforcement Division, much like how Cynthia was supposed to just be an advisor from the IPLF.
No, his presence there was mostly as a matter of convenience. Interpol wanted someone high-ranking there to inspire confidence, and he'd been on his way to Interpol's base in Alola, to rejoin the Ultra Beast Task Force.
Not that there was much to rejoin, since it had never technically dissolved, but-
"You sure I couldn't take him? You haven't seen me battle in quite a while, boss."
Finally, Looker finally looked to his right.
The Emma he had first met, who had gotten caught up in the dying Team Flare's machinations following the foiling of its leader's attempt at destroying the world, was long gone. She was no longer dressed in hand-me-downs that she'd patched up herself or stick-thin as a result of starving herself in an attempt to keep her Pokemon partner fed.
The Emma he had encountered later in life, with a burning fury in her eyes stoked by over a decade of fighting against the problems of society without its root being addressed, also wasn't there. The anguish that had convinced him to briefly resign from Interpol was long gone.
No, the Emma that stood before him was wholly different. Her skin was a shade darker from working in the harsh Pacific sun for months infiltrating Team Collapse. Decades of fighting to make the world a better place, most often literally, had turned the slip of a girl he'd become the guardian of into a healthy, confident trainer and fighter. The comfy purple sweater and bright orange slacks didn't not hide the black boots and gloves hiding her feet and hands, and the helmet resting on one hip was mirrored by a full belt of six Pokemon on the other.
Just about the only thing that remained consistent was her hair, and even that was at least two feet longer than she'd worn it when they'd first met.
Her hair, and her eyes. Those, despite how much she'd changed, still held an innate kindness in them.
He sniffed once and allowed himself to smile in remembrance. Part of him was still shocked, whenever they met for holidays or birthdays or any old occasion, that he'd had a hand in how she'd turned out.
"Yes, Emma. Though I'm sure you can ask him yourself, if not have a battle," he said, a slight growl at the end of his sentence.
He really was turning into Nanu.
She tilted her head, and then she grinned wolfishly. "That's where my next mission is?"
He shook his head once. "You don't want any time off?"
She scoffed. "Only if you do, boss."
He shook his head. Once, he'd thought he would finally rest if his memory ever came back to him. Now, he was certain not even that would make him take more than a weekend off. "Well, we'll be stopping in Alola for a little while. We'll need to get reacquainted with the new case – if the damn pencil pushers had listened to me and installed those extra sensors, we wouldn't have to bother-"
"Wait," she said, cutting him off. "'We?'"
He grinned. "If you accept the mission. I've still got some things to teach you, and for this mission, they wanted as many people with experience with the Ultra Wormhole phenomena as possible on the case." He smiled bitterly.
He'd also asked to be on the case. He knew he needed to take things easy in his old age, but…
Well, it had been a long time since he'd seen her. Working together again…
He cleared his throat, idly watching as the fighting ended, with the legendaries pausing their fighting and staring each other down warily. "I'll explain the details later, but the gist of it is that the old sensors picked up an extremely aberrant manifestation. We're to go over everything in Alola and familiarize ourselves with what we might find, and then we're headed to East Asia."
She raised an eyebrow. "Nothing more specific?"
He grimaced again. "No. If the bureaucrats had listened to our suggestions, we might have a better idea-"
Looker's Poryphone pinged, and he looked down at it in surprise. He'd put the thing on silent.
Opening it quickly, Looker's grimace faded. "Well, at least they were fast about putting up new ones after it would have been most useful. It happened…"
He frowned again. "It took over a week, but we've got a report about a second new Ultra Wormhole. The new sensors in Alola, Australia, Tibet, and Siberia have narrowed things down."
He smiled sardonically. "Instead of all of East Asia, the second one appeared somewhere in the southern half of Japan or Korea, or in the land around the Yellow Sea. Instead of billions of people, we've only got to sift through a few hundred million!"
Emma was undaunted. "Then let's get going! No better time-"
"Not so fast," he replied. "We've got to go through the cleanup here."
"I hate the cleanup," she muttered, and Looker shook his head in amusement.
-OxOxO-
"We have with us Michelle Gauzze, the leader of the Seafoam City Gym, who assisted Cynthia in calming the Legendary Pokemon. Miss Gauzze, thank you for joining us."
"No problem! It's important that we don't leave people in the dark about something like this, especially with the fate of the world in the balance."
"Indeed. Now, Miss Gauzze, what was it like to…"
Tanya tuned out the rest of the news report blaring in some room neighboring the small one she currently resided in. It seemed even decades into the future, the news couldn't help but to sensationalize every little bit of news that came its way. Even if she had been interested in that kind of drivel, or if something more interesting than verbalized gossip rags had been playing, Tanya would have tuned it out anyway.
She was in the middle of her katas.
Tanya, dressed in a hakama rather than literally anything more practical, swung her weapon downwards, aiming for the legs of her opponent.
Tanya had been disappointed by the gym, at first. Oh, the facilities for keeping in shape were undoubtedly top of the line, and she used them for a full hour every day. No, her disappointment had been the so-called self-defense classes.
They were not useful to her.
As they had practiced, her 'blow' was 'blocked,' and her opponent advanced towards her, aiming their weapon towards Tanya's head.
Not initially, anyway. The first 'class' had been about the mindset of learning a martial art and what would be expected of them in the class. Three people hadn't shown up to the second class, which saw them all sitting ramrod straight and watching their teacher demonstrate their basic katas.
Another two dropped in the next class, while the last one switched over to a different class, meaning Tanya was being taught one-on-one.
Even though there was absolutely no force behind the attack, Tanya 'blocked' the 'blow' in turn and then swung it overhead. She paused right before touching the head of her motionless opponent, and then they went back to rest, their weapons blades separated by perhaps two inches of air.
Tanya might have decried driving away customers and the fallacies of such a business model ordinarily, but the Fighting dojo basically seemed to have a monopoly on martial arts in most of Autumna, with the scant other options Tanya had managed to track down online seeming exceedingly shady.
That monopoly, combined with the up front cost and the reputation of the dojo, ensured that the dojo made a higher profit for providing less of a service at a higher quality to the remaining students. The teachers were happy because they had to do less overall, the remaining students were happy because they got higher quality training, and the dojo was happy with the profit.
Those who flunked out would not be that thrilled about the wasted money, but any fuss they tried to raise would break against the impeccable reputation and the testimony of the students that were still being taught. Even that assumed they would raise a fuss, when most who decided not to come back likely made excuses about their inability to succeed: They didn't have the right mindset; They weren't born gifted; They'd only done it for fun; The teacher had been incapable of teaching them.
It was always easier to blame others than oneself, after all.
The pair remained silently staring at each other, then Tanya's teacher smiled, and they disengaged. "Wonderful, Tanya. Truly, you are a natural," he complimented.
Tanya bowed deeply towards her teacher. "Nonsense, sir. You are just a gifted teacher."
The man, Kiei Ikube, tutted. "If I were that good at teaching, I do not think quite so many would have bowed out of the class," he replied. "You have a knack for it."
"As you say, teacher," she replied. They walked towards one of the walls of the small, more personal room in the Fighting dojo and placed their wooden naginatas along the wall.
When Tanya had first looked into learning at the gym, she'd barely considered learning about the naginata. It wasn't that the knowledge couldn't be useful, of course. If Being X decided to send her back in time to a period before guns were around, spears and swords would probably be the most common weapons.
However, spears and swords being the most common weapon assumed Being X would give her the opportunity to obtain a weapon, which was why she'd wanted to focus on something like jujutsu, or perhaps a class that focused on improvised weaponry.
Unfortunately, Tanya had to learn about how to use a naginata first because she was in something of a… predicament.
They walked towards the changing rooms, and her teacher decided to break the companionable silence and ask her one more question. "Tanya, I do not mean to pry," he asked gently, "but what and where did you practice before? It is clear from your stance and control that this is not new to you."
Tanya reeled back just the smallest bit, as if she hadn't been expecting the question after days of him attempting to gently tease the answer out of her without asking directly. "I…"
In reality, Tanya's skill was not 'natural.' The Empire taught the smallest bit about how to use one's rifle's bayonet effectively, but the katas and logic of an actual fight with blades rather than simply running an opponent through was divorced from that teaching. No, Tanya's excellence was down to the drive and work-ethic she'd built in her first life and the experience with military training she'd accrued in the second.
Not that any of that sounded the least bit believable.
She cleared her throat and averted her gaze. "I grew up in Pommern," she lied. "It's apparently not as bad as it used to be, but… I had to be strong to get through it."
As morbid as it sounded, Tanya had been relieved to learn the end of the third world war had heralded mass unrest on a scale that was hardly conceivable, which had inevitably begat quite a lot of fighting and killing. Considering how this world viewed the maturation of its young, with ten-year-olds being allowed to go on journeys as a right of passage into adulthood, child soldiers wielding guns or Pokemon were well-documented occurrences, even in the developed world.
Decades may have passed, but there were apparently places that even today hadn't recovered from the turmoil completely. A region called Orre in the southwestern United States, which was infamous for outputting a steady stream of bizarre news stories about its inhabitants, immediately came to mind, while Pommern wasn't far behind.
Despite being relatively close to Germany's capital, the Pommern region was predominantly a swamp-infested hellhole that man-eating Pokemon, uneducated and inbred hillbillies with more fingers than teeth, and, if the rumors were to be believed, the remnants of the fucking communist nazis that had taken over parts of eastern Germany after the end of the war all called home.
The few cities were little better, being wracked with violence, drugs, gangs, corporate goons, an unexpectedly respectable agriculture sector centered around gardens growing niche 'berries' for Pokemon battling, and ghost-inhabited ex-khrushchyovkas whose residents would murder you for fun, but only if you were lucky.
She allowed her corners to begin to feel the sting of tears, something she'd learned how to fake at the orphanage of her second life, and her teacher's expression only deepened in sadness.
"I… you have my apologies, Miss Degurechaff. That any child should have to suffer through such is horrendous," he said, his mind's eye undoubtedly conjuring images of her being subjected to the depredations of that region without her having to say a word and bowing deeply to her.
Tanya almost raised an eyebrow at how deeply he'd bowed. Perhaps she was better at this than she'd thought?
Instead, she gave the man a slightly wet smile and a sniffle. "I would not have it any other way," she lied again. "I wouldn't have come to Kanto otherwise and met… so many wonderful people."
He raised himself up again, and they shook hands. "You speak the truth, Miss Degurechaff. Would you perhaps be open to continuing our personal classes? Your zeal for learning and fighting has convinced me that, if we work at it, I can have you working at a much more advanced level than the intermediate class."
Tanya allowed herself to smile just a tad, rather than the shark-like grin her vindication demanded she show after convincing him she somehow enjoyed fighting despite it being literally one of the most wasteful uses of her time without even trying.
Kiei was not yet a master, as his teaching this class was one of the prerequisites for proving he knew enough to be considered such, but he was damn close! Personal classes from him would ensure she got better much faster…
Though they would demand a higher price, of course. "I… would love to, teacher, but… I am not sure I could afford it."
Determination steeled the man's gaze, and Tanya's vindication grew. "I'm sure we can work something out. How about we discuss it tomorrow?"
Tanya nodded once. "I… yes, teacher. Th- thank you."
Parting took a good five minutes longer as they went back and forth complimenting each other and musing about the future, and Tanya loved every second. Things were continuing to look up.
Then they actually parted ways, and as Tanya got dressed, she remembered what awaited her at home, and the buoyant mood she'd been put in dampened.
-OxOxO-
"Have fun, Tanya?"
"I had a very productive day, thank you."
Tanya breezed past the front desk, and, instead of immediately turning right, she instead jiggled the handle on the door of the supplies closet. It came open after a few moments, just as the cleaning crew that came through once a week had shown her, and Tanya nodded.
Good. The longest broom was still there. She hadn't expected anything to the contrary, but it was nice that more and more of her life seemed to be becoming routine.
Taking the broom in hand and pacing evenly down the hallway, she left the supplies door slightly ajar to be refilled later, walked down the right hallway towards her door, and then, as quietly as she possibly could, she inserted the key into the lock.
Tanya really focused on her surroundings. She could hear the whirring of the air conditioning unit for the apartment echoing down the cold, echoing halls of the building. Towards the left, the member of some pop-metal band was practicing, the racket slipping past what he'd assured everyone who bothered to ask was the best soundproofing in Kanto. Angela was filing her nails, pretending not to be listening to Tanya in turn, wondering how this latest match would go.
From behind her door was the sound of something rooting through something in Tanya's room.
Tanya flung open the door and brought her broom around, pointing the bristled end towards the burglar. Her eyes narrowed as it spun around, surprised.
Tanya couldn't help but grin as she advanced and jabbed the interloper with the broom.
"Brrruurrrrer!" It cried out, but Tanya remained steadfast, poking and prodding it until she'd successfully maneuvered the stunned thing out of the trashcan. She raised the broom to the side, preparing to sweep it out of the open doorway.
"Weeweedledlewee!" It cried out, and a glowing purple light enveloped both ends of its stingers. Tanya remained still, backing up a single foot to give her just that bit more room to react to the Pokemon's attack.
Tanya had expected to have to grow accustomed to cockroaches or silverfish in her apartment. In her first life, she hadn't been able to avoid the occasional insectoid invader, despite the higher end place she had lived. She had thought it logical to assume that there would be something similar here. She had been pleasantly surprised when no such thing had happened.
Initially, anyway.
On the day after New Years, instead of finding a few dozen roaches and having to find some bug spray, she'd instead found a single foot long insect with a stinger on its head and tail.
The yellow bug jabbed its tail towards her, and she ducked her head to the right to avoid the poisonous emission. She remained where she had been, waiting for the energy around its head to charge towards her.
Instead of attacking her with the horn on its head, however, her assailant's tail began to glow again.
Tanya's eyes narrowed. It seemed the defensive strategy she'd used the past two days to send the insect packing would be viable any longer. She advanced towards it.
The animal panicked, its red, stumpy legs undulating as the purple glow around its cranial horn fired off and missed without Tanya having to dodge. She poked it with her broom once more, battering its nose with the bristles and pushing it further from the cabinet her trashcan had been attached too. It cried out again, stabbing her broom with its tail.
Tanya brushed it to the side. It was almost out the door-
The beady eyes of the bug, closed shut from her barrage, snapped open, and the thing jumped towards Tanya's face, head first.
Tanya jerked to the side and brought the broom around, swinging it through the air, brushing the ceiling of her apartment, and, as the Pokemon bounced off of the wall of her room, drove it into the ground with the head of the broom.
It bounced off of the floor once and then remained motionless, repeating its name a few times. Moving swiftly, Tanya pushed the insect out of her room with the broom and slammed the door shut.
From behind the door, she could hear it recover and then, after repeating its name a few times more, the rapid skittering of its feet as it left.
Finally, Tanya took a deep breath and sighed in relief, setting down the broom, her bag, and taking a seat at the desk beneath her bed.
When she'd first found the insect in her home, after a brief spell of entomophobia at the sight of a foot long bug, she'd slammed the door and asked an amused Angela what the hell she was supposed to do, as well as how the hell the thing had gotten into her apartment.
'Easily' was her answer to the second question. Tanya might have brought it in by accident, if a Weedle had somehow fainted, shrunk, and wound up in her hair, bag, or clothing, and most Pokemon were apparently smart enough to be able to open windows if they felt like it.
Most wouldn't let themselves into any random house where other Pokemon were living, unless they were desperate, but Tanya's decision not to obtain a Pokemon was having more adverse knock on effects.
As for the first, she'd been advised to catch it and then release it, as waiting for it to go through her room and then leave on its own might take a few hours.
Tanya had been and still was… unwilling to use the only Pokeball she had on her. Mostly, it was because doing so would impart the 'scent' of the Pokemon it caught onto that ball and ensure it couldn't be used for any other Pokemon. A small part of her also didn't want to have to explain to Ichigo that she'd used his gift to her as a tool for pest control, which sounded like an expeditious way to sour their relationship.
Beyond that, however, was that if Tanya did catch it, even for a moment, her pokedex app would register the capture, automatically report it to Kanto's Trainer Registry, and report her as violating her Basic Trainer's License by capturing a Poison-type Pokemon. She would, of course, have a week to get a more expansive license, which would cost Tanya money, time, and effort that was much better spent on her other pursuits.
Tanya could try to kill it, but in all likelihood, she would just knock it out, forcing it to shrink down and become invisible to the unaided human eye, at which point she wouldn't know whether she managed to sweep it out of the room or not.
If she did manage to kill it, she would have to call the city government to get someone to remove it and whatever poison leaked out safely. In that same vein, Tanya could technically hire someone to capture and get rid of it, but having to do such a thing every time a Pokemon got into her apartment from the expansive forest to the east of Autumna was a recurring expense she was equally unwilling to shoulder.
The only other reliable method would be to use a Repel, a spray-can concoction of aerosolized irritants that drove away weaker Pokemon. Unfortunately, they wore off rather quickly, which would mean buying a contraption to constantly emit the stuff. Besides undoubtedly making Tanya's room stink to high hell, using Repels in the apartment was actually against her lease due to how many people had Pokemon, as Angela had so helpfully reminded her.
So, left with no other option, Tanya had grabbed a broom from the supplies closet and pushed the Weedle out. It hadn't even resisted the first day she'd done it, and Tanya had assumed that the brief violation of her desire not to interact with Pokemon would end there.
The second day it had broken in, it had resisted fiercely, and Tanya had decided that learning how to use a naginata would be prudent.
As Tanya rose from her seat to prepare a simple meal for an early dinner, she supposed that at the very least, it was helping to keep her old skills sharp and practice her old ones. Its Poison Sting attack didn't have anything on using magic to dodge bullets in the air above the Rhine, but it was better than nothing.
Noticing something off in the corner of her vision, she turned her head to find that the wall the Weedle had crashed into had a deep scuff in the wall from where the Weedle had crashed into it and an outright hole where its Poison Sting had hit.
Tanya frowned deeply and added another item to her shopping list for the week.
-OxOxO-
The next day, Tanya came home and fought with the Weedle.
A String Shot fired at the bristles of the broom actually helped her get it out, as she'd stuck the bug to its own webs and shook them until the insect had flown off just outside her door.
After spending fifteen minutes painstakingly removing the crumbling, sticky web from the broom and placing it in the trash can, she got to work improving the other languages she had once known, looking into how the French, Danish, and Polish she had known had changed between her last life and this one.
-OxOxO-
The next day, Tanya came home and fought with the Weedle.
Its attempt to restrict her movement with a String Shot aimed to pin the broom to the wall was foiled by a shoe-clad foot kicking it in the face and bowling it out the door.
After removing the strings from the wall and broom, Tanya dedicated some time to connecting with her coworkers and the staff of the Fighting dojo online. Tanya was far from a social butterfly, but everyone expected at least a modicum of effort in maintaining relationships, and Tanya would not allow useful connections, inside or outside of work, to wither due to excessive paranoia about her past.
-OxOxO-
Another day, Tanya came home and fought with the Weedle.
She managed to predict the precise moment the Weedle would fire off a Poison Sting based on how it reeled back, and she managed to end the encounter in a record amount of time by blocking the attack with the body of the broom.
Afterwards, she continued her research on how to improve memory over the long term. Most of it was related to living healthily, though she noted down a few studies about the efficacy of repetition, mnemonics, 'memory palaces,' and more.
-OxOxO-
Yet another day, Tanya came home and fought with the Weedle.
She was distracted by an apparently upright and rustling trash can and barely avoided the blows of the Weedle hiding in a corner of the ceiling, moving the bin with a String Shot. As trying to whack it out of the corner with her broom would leave her overextended, Tanya yanked on the String Shot, only to dive roughly into one of the walls as it used the yank to try and skewer her. It managed to stick itself into the floor, and, with the aid of a specially made leather glove, she picked up the bug and threw it out of her room.
After again cleaning up the mess left by the fight, Tanya allowed herself to relax for a few moments. She wondered if getting a Pokemon simply to make her days slightly less annoying would be worth it, though she supposed she would also lose out on some daily practical experience.
Besides that perennial thorn in her side, however, her life seemed to be getting better and better. Her savings, while meager, were growing slowly. She was learning skills that would be useful in her lives to come, should Being X seek to continue testing her.
A part of her expected the rug to be pulled out from under her any day now. At work, or perhaps at the dojo, Being X would show up and ruin everything.
With every day that passed, however, she felt just the smallest bit more hopeful for her future.
With a contented sigh, Tanya looked down at her phone and responded positively to the invitation to the company's monthly trip to a venue in the southwest of the Central Saffron Ward. A dozen of the employees had already responded positively, and considering her inability to join her coworkers in relaxing and building their relationship at a bar, Tanya wouldn't miss out on an opportunity to network.
-OxOxO-
He'd known this was coming.
From his time as a child, he'd known something was… wrong, that things weren't as they had once been. It was in the tightness of the eyes of the adults around him as they assured him that everything would be alright, that things might be difficult now, but that they would improve in time. It was in the shouted arguing of his great grandfather, his father, and his great aunt that talked in circles around problems he couldn't perceive.
It had been in the sneers and jeering of the people around him as he attended school. People who called his family's company 'Rocket Fuel,' called his great grandfather either a stooge or a senile fool and called his great aunt, a gym leader, a wallflower.
At university, things had been much less subtle, and he'd been called a cocksucking heir of a cocksucking old man, among other things.
Now, the wrongness was in the reports sitting on the former desk of his great grandfather, staring up at him and laid out plainly for him to see. Report after report he'd ordered done now that he'd ascended to the top of his family's company.
The wrongness was the truth.
Frederick Kayano, the newly inducted President of the Silph Company, could see the truth now.
The Silph Company was in danger.
Well, to be more precise, everyone was in danger, but the crisis applied doubly so for the Silph Company, because it had been in danger before this latest crisis.
He ruffled his jet-black hair, leaning into his hands and he stared into the empty space between his troubled expression and the papers.
Once, once would have been bad enough.
On September twenty-third, there had been a blip. For a period of a bit over eight minutes, every single Psychic with any capacity for precognition or divination had found their abilities completely and utterly blinded. As far as the egg-heads in the Research Center had been able to tell, the blip hadn't impacted any of the few crises in progress at the time, which was a minor miracle.
It had caused several.
The world over, governments, companies, religious organizations, and just about anyone and everyone who even knew a Psychic had panicked briefly.
The one most important to him, to the Silph Company, was the panic the inability to see the future had caused and the inherent instability. Stock traders in the stock exchanges that were open, either unable to consult Psychics to see how the market or specific stocks would trend or, for those stock traders that were Psychics, unable to see the future themselves, went into a frenzy that caused every stock market to hemorrhage value when they opened. The Dow had dropped a full thousand points, and a month-long recession had burst into existence.
He looked up at the ceiling, again staring into empty space.
It hadn't happened just once.
Fortunately, the second one had been on Christmas, which meant not quite as much damage had been done overall.
However, the Tokyo Stock Exchange did not close on Christmas Day.
The second blip occurred right as it closed, and the Silph Company, already in a bad position compared to its main rival, had nosedived further, right along with everyone else, except worse.
After the Rocket Takeover, Silph had never regained the full confidence of its investors or the public. Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for terrorists to take over a building or be found within the staff or for a branch in some boondock in Siberia to get appropriated by the local government or for corporate espionage to reveal that the whole thing was a rotten house of cards.
His great grandfather's decades-long attempt to pivot towards Pokemon products exclusively and away from technology had ended in abject failure. Devon Corporation had filled the gap they left, and Silph had floundered. Pouring more money into the Porygon project in an attempt to make it capable of travel through space had wasted billions on a project that had grown and grown and grown in scope despite never achieving its original goal. They'd joined the item-making fray in earnest and had pushed down the price of product after product that they couldn't profit from the efficiency they'd invested yet more billions into devising. His great grandfather had poured millions into 'improving' his daughter's gym in Celadon without realizing she was fudging the numbers, always sure it was for a good cause or reason.
All because his great grandfather got saved by some teenage punk after the goddamn Rockets had come for what they were owed.
He took a shaky breath. While he'd been fighting the North Koreans, his great grandfather had been refusing to accept military contracts for Porygon and Porygon2, giving the government all the reason it required to hack into their code, reverse engineer everything, and then give it all to Devon Corporation and every other company capable of making them, with the help of a former goddamned employee.
They'd even 'perfected' the project with the creation of Porygon3. Who wanted an offense-focused piece of shit that could barely digitize itself without bricking whatever it was sent into when you could get a defensive wall to rival the likes of the nearly extinct Chansey and Blissey that could also do cyberwarfare?
While he'd watched men and women get obliterated by drones and artillery and tanks, his great grandfather had preached that if they just talked things out the fighting could stop, and then, when the bombs had stopped falling and the whole world went to shit, his father tried to sell out the company to the goddamn yakuza, just to get back at his great grandfather.
Now, after a decade-long legal battle he'd had with Erika's lineage over their 'right' to the company and a fat fucking payout to keep them from coming back again, he was in control and could see just how bad things had been. Licensing the technology behind the Master Ball and Silph Scope to other companies that would actually use them was the only reason they were still making a profit.
Frederick snarled and slammed his hands into the desk.
"No!"
He slammed them again.
"NO!"
He slammed the desk over and over and over.
"NO NO NO!"
He couldn't get off this sinking ship. It was his family's goddamn legacy, he would not jump ship! Silph had to succeed.
How the hell would they recover? There was no investment. There was no trust. Everyone held their past against them and used it to extract cuts to their products they tried to sell, because who knew if it would get taken over by the mob or toss away perfectly good contracts or implode over legal trouble!
Forcefully, he calmed himself. This… he wouldn't fix anything by shouting, and if word got out about his lack of confidence and trust, that might actually doom the company.
He looked back down at the papers, scanning them to remind himself what he'd already memorized. They were getting back into technology, they were going to crush Devon into the ground, they were going to get back on top, and they WERE going to inspire confidence again.
He nodded to himself. Yes, confidence was key. He'd figure out how to get it back, to do what Devon did but better, and…
He blinked, and then he looked at the newspaper beneath all the reports, and a grin grew on his face. Yes, the Pokemon World Tournament. If they got it in Saffron for the second time ever, helped organize it, and everything went off without a hitch…
He grit his teeth. Devon would undoubtedly want the same thing, and topping the last two would be… very difficult. He vaguely remembered the hype surrounding the one ten years ago due to the novelty of its return to a city it had already been held in, and he distinctly remembered the fanfare surrounding the one from five years ago, considering it had been held on the moon across New Houston, Chang'e, Nieuw Lothridge, and Kaguya.
Working together might be possible to make it even better, but the government would probably send the APCC after them if it looked like they were 'colluding.'
He grit his teeth even harder. No, he wouldn't work with them. The possibility of getting dinged was too high, and it was certain that they would deflect public backlash onto Silph if they did.
Silph would do it alone, it would rise.
He nodded to himself again. Yes, Silph would rise and be reborn. Besides, a downturn in the economy just meant it was a buyers market… though he would have to be careful not to seem like a fool. Confidence, not recklessness; trust, not blind loyalty; that was what he, what Silph, needed to exemplify.
-OxOxO-
Tanya had not expected to enjoy the outing. She was not a social butterfly, or, as it were, a social Butterfree, and was going mostly in order to network with her coworkers and superiors, mixed with the possibility that her not being there would be viewed with the suspicion that she wasn't committed enough to the company.
Despite her expectations, the experience had somehow fallen below her worst expectations, because the 'venue' was not, as she had assumed from the description, a restaurant.
Yes, Kazuki's Place had a kitchen, but it was shoved out of the way, confined to a small portion of the establishment and kept out of the way of the central draw of the location: A large court in the center where Pokemon could fight.
The eponymous Kazuki stood to one side of the court, with his back to the aforementioned kitchen and an unsettling creature called Mr. Mime at his side , while two trainers stood in small, painted boxes at either end of the court, which seemed about as large as a tennis court. Inside, the Pokemon fought at the command of their trainers.
"Hypno, Hypnosis!"
"Ignore it, Lapras! Liquidation!"
Glowing, purpley waves emanated from the swinging pendulum of the bipedal yellow monster and pulsed through the squall of rain present within the court and nowhere else towards the blue creature that seemed to be some kind of aquatic reptile or dinosaur with a shell on its back. It did as its trainer commanded, its eyes closing for only a moment and then, with a surprising amount of speed for a creature almost twice Tanya's height and at least three times as heavy, it crashed into the yellow monster, sending it flying into one of the nearly-invisible walls the disconcerting Mr. Mime had summoned into being before the battle.
Her coworkers, scattered all around the place, were picking at their food, just as Tanya was, though she was doing so morosely and lamenting the waste of time and resources the fight in front of her and her presence there were rather than vigorously discussing…
"Limiting battle is an insult to the art, and if you don't agree with me, you're just a poser! How could you possibly call a ruleset that limits what a trainer and a Pokemon can do 'art'?!"
"Battle is only an art when it has limits! When you can't just default to the highest possible base power move or spend a minute setting up, when you can only use a few moves out of a choice between potential dozens, that is when battle is truly an art!"
Tanya tuned the discussion back out. Perhaps Tanya's experience was being colored by the fact that she'd been abandoned by the rest of her coworkers to sit between Hideyoshi and Jamal, who spent every lunch break arguing nonstop about the latest in Pokemon battling. Tanya was usually able to avoid it because she worked in the morning.
Not this time.
Below them, the two monsters continued to fight – the Lapras shot a glowing ball of light that made Tanya's growing headache shoot a round of pain through her eyes, while the Hypno's eyes were glowing a white-pink light that made Tanya feel apprehensive, especially since nothing else seemed to be happening because of it.
Tanya continued to pick at her food, desperately trying to focus on the fact that she had been specifically picked out for her work and given a pay raise, which meant she was now making what a new hire that wasn't a young girl with few other options would have been making. Others might have been unhappy that they were only now being paid what their work was due, but Tanya had already grown accustomed to the feeling that she could be doing work much farther above her current station and get paid better for it.
Though something felt… off. Any step forward was an excellent one, no matter how small, and while she did not like the animal violence taking place only a few meters from her food, shouldn't she feel more thrilled?
Fingers snapped in her face, and Tanya blinked and shook her head, glaring at the dark-skinned Hideyoshi. She was losing her edge.
Or these two were just that annoying.
"What do you think Tanya?"
Jamal spun her around and nodded. "Indeed. Don't you think battle should be wholly unencumbered-"
Tanya was forcibly spun around again, and she fought down a snarl as Hideyoshi glared into Jamal's eyes. "Of course she doesn't- she's not an idiot, after all."
They started bickering, ignoring Tanya, and Tanya noted that the pair seemed to have gotten truly drunk, if their flushed faces and empty glasses were anything to go by.
Her gaze lingered on the glasses. She still had several years to go before she could even think about-
"So? Which do you think is better?"
Tanya held up her hands, a pair of chopsticks in one. "Look, you know me, I don't do Pokemon battling."
Jamal quieted, but Hideyoshi continued speaking. "Eh? How can't you do Pokemon battling?! It's battling! You must know at least a little."
Tanya pulled out one of her excuses. "I don't have the time or desire to pursue such activities," she said to him. Tanya looked back to her meal-
"Sure you do! You were… just told us about your martial arts classes or whatever, right? You could totally-"
"I want a career in business, which is incompatible with training Pokemon," she said. Now-
"Pft, they totally can be!"
Tanya raised an eyebrow, a kernel of curiosity piqued, and Jamal stopped looking quite as downtrodden.
"No it isn't. Name one person," he challenged.
Hideyoshi just grinned. "Yeah, it's totally possible, or have you forgotten the president of the IPLF?"
Jamal raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, I'm unfamiliar-"
"Larry motherfucking García," he replied. Jamal nodded, apparently remembering the man linked with the name. "Right," he said, turning his head to Tanya as the crowd cheered the Pokemon below on, "I guess you don't know who that is?"
"I haven't the foggiest," Tanya replied, her focus firmly on the food in front of her. She didn't want-
Hideyoshi spun her back around again. "Yeah, man. Dude's from Paldea. He was a gym leader, a member of their Elite Four, and a successful middle manager, all in his late thirties! He's only the president of the IPLF now, but if he could do all that, you can try battling. Or going on your journey!"
Tanya waved a hand, her headache from the noise and fighting and racket building. "I'm already too old to go on-"
"Ha!" he laughed. "That's no excuse either! You can still go on one until you turn nineteen! And don't," he said, a disgusting, wet burp interrupting his sentence and forcing Tanya backwards, "don't worry about your age. Paldea's current champion, Poppy, became a member of their Elite Four when she was seven! Or something."
Tanya raised an eyebrow incredulously. She would ordinarily argue that any organization that handed out two senior positions to someone who already had a full time job and another senior position to a seven-year-old, no matter their abilities, had to be corrupt, negligent, desperate, or incredibly understaffed… although she couldn't exactly say any of that, because the Empire's army had let her in when she was still a preteen and the company she was now working for had hired a thirteen-year-old.
"I don't have any Pokemon," she bit out. Would that finally-
Apparently not. "Not a problem! Kanto might not have any battle towers or battle tents, but I'm sure there's somewhere you can rent some-"
Jamal tried to interject, but Hideyoshi continued to prattle on and on and-
She snapped. "I," she bit out, "am not interested."
She got up from where her coworkers had stuck her, grabbed her food, and headed for the balcony overlooking the street. It might have been colder and wetter thanks to the snow, but at least she would be alone, and it seemed like the appropriate response to a jackass that wouldn't quit pestering a poor orphan child whose parents had supposedly been killed by rampaging Pokemon.
The moment she sat down, however, she already regretted it. She wanted to look like an adult, and she'd stormed out like a child. These people weren't going to respect her as a coworker if she constantly acted like a whiny brat. Perhaps she should go back in…
Tanya did not. She sat, cold and alone, away from the people that gave her headaches and the wasteful Pokemon battling that did the same, and ate her food without another word.
Perhaps…
Tanya frowned, and then she shrugged. Of course the thought of going home lit a brief flicker of anticipation in her brain. Getting rid of the pest would be annoying, of course.
It would not be as annoying as having to deal with Pokemon battling and people obsessed with it.
-OxOxO-
A/N 1: The Zygarde Sweep has pushed this chapter ahead by a day – don't worry about the quality, I spent the same amount of time on it as I would have if I were posting it a day later.
A/N 2: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.
Thank you to WarmasterOku, Afforess, UNSC_Kawakaze, and Theewizzz for supporting this story and everything else I write. Make sure to vote if you haven't yet!