Lucas's battle had gone well, but he hadn't won. "Cause two thirds of my team is water and grass," he told me.

We were eating dinner in the Pokemon Center cafeteria. All of our pokemon were out next to our table, with Lucas's grotle and psyduck being our subject of conversation. I periodically kept zoning out while looking at Kenna or Alan.

"Brave of you to try," I said. He shrugged.

"I probably should have trained Kadabra more," he admitted.

The kadabra in question was chasing his food around the table. "Faith, be nice," I said sternly. The bowl stopped abruptly, and Lucas's kadabra ran straight into it. I heard a giggle.

"If you want a flying type, there's starlies everywhere," Dawn said, taking a bite of salad.

Lucas stabbed a piece of meat without replying. I looked at them both. Had something happened between them?

When Dawn got up to bus her dishes, Lucas asked me something.

"Hm?" I looked away from the growlithe, who was running in circles around Lucas's grotle.

"What's it like traveling alone?"

I contemplated the question. "What part of it?"

"I dunno, everything."

"Um… it's definitely more dangerous, but it's also kind of nice. You get to set the pace you walk at, when and where you travel or stop. You don't get to talk to anyone, unless you're in the habit of talking to your pokemon. But it's not really lonely, either, because your pokemon are there."

Lucas nodded thoughtfully.

"Are you thinking of doing that?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

Dawn returned to the table at that point. "I'm gonna battle the gym right after this," she said, "So that we can move quickly in the morning."

Lucas caught my eye and briefly raised his eyebrows.

"Are you guys moving on to Veilstone after this?" I asked Dawn, glancing at Lucas.

"Yeah. Another reason why a flying type would be useful," she said, nudging him.

Lucas stood, picked up his somewhat-eaten plate, and dumped it in the dirty dishes area. He left to go upstairs.

Dawn stared. "What was that for?"

I was in the shower when I realized: How the heck were we gonna get out of town quickly if Lucas didn't have his badge?

I nearly ran back to our room, hair a wild wet medusa mess. "So I didn't realize this before, for whatever reason," I said to Lucas, who was sitting on the bottom bunk, "But how–" How are you gonna get out of town when you lost your battle? "What's your plan for the gym?"

"Battling tomorrow," he said, unfazed.

"Yes, but before or after the HQ?"

He shrugged. "Whichever."

"Lucas, you can't stay after going into the HQ. They'll be targeting you, it's dangerous."

He flopped down. "That'll be a nice change," he muttered.

"Not that kind of dangerous," I pleaded. "Not the adrenaline type. The type where ten grunts gang up on you before you can get a pokemon out, and before you know it you're dead in the streets. You can't."

He looked tiredly at me, telling me how tired he was of hearing what he could or couldn't, what he should or shouldn't or just was going to do. And I got it, I really did, but the memory of his death resonated too damn strong within me for me to let him take that risk.

I breathed. "Okay. I mean, you could, but it wouldn't be the best idea. Is there any way you could battle beforehand?"

"I never said I wouldn't."

True.

"Could you try to?"

He shrugged, still lying down. "I dunno, what with my pokemon lineup and all."

"Hey, my buizel beat her roserade. It isn't impossible."

"That's one pokemon. She has three."

"Will you at least try to get it done before we go to the HQ?"

He groaned in his throat.

"Please?"

Lucas rolled over, facing his back to me. "Fiiiine," he grumbled.

I exhaled. "Thank you," I said softly.

I woke up to the sound of wild rustling on the other side of the room. Sitting up, I found my flashlight and shone it over. Lucas's face was a ravaged crimson mess.

"Sneasel!" The pokemon standing over him hissed at me and lunged before I could do more than gasp

loudly as I awoke. I fumbled for my bag and pulled out my flashlight before realizing I could see perfectly fine in the moonlit dark. Lucas was fine.

I groaned in annoyance as I lay back down, dropping the flashlight into my bag. It hit something solid – my water bottle? – with a sharp thud. I cringed, but Lucas and Dawn didn't stir.

Trust did.

"Mon?" His tailflame lit up, and he looked questioningly at me.

"Shh," I whispered, "It's nothing. Go back to sleep."

Instead, he extinguished his tailflame and leaped onto my knees, facing me expectantly.

"Mon," he repeated.

I sighed. "Bad dream."

He nodded sympathetically.

"It was about–" I looked up to check that no one else was awake. "–Lucas. A sneasel attacked him."

Trust nodded again. I think he knew there was more to it than that.

"It was Jirra," I said. "One of my pokemon… from the last time around. You know about the whole time travel deal, right?"

He nodded. I figured they'd overheard through their pokeballs when I told Megan.

"Jirra was my sixth. I only caught him a month before coming back to September. It was after Lucas died. A psychic type killed him, so I wanted a dark type. As if it would help post-mortem." I paused, thinking about my old sneasel.

"Jirra was mean. He was just… a lot more vengeful than the rest. The others could get angry sometimes – well, except Emmy – but no one was downright mean. He'd overreact easily and attack them. I put up with it cause he was still my dark type. And it didn't bother me, cause I told myself they could handle it. I think he was a bad decision, but he was a good fighter."

I patted Trust's shoulder. "Thanks for caring. I guess I'm just worried about what that mean sneasel is doing in the present."

Then, "If I said we were going back to Jubilife to track down Liana… How would you feel?"

"Monferno." He nodded acceptingly.

"Mkay." We kind of sat there looking at each other. I smiled.

"You used to be Lucas's. I didn't know you very well. He didn't nickname his pokemon, so you were just Infernape, or I guess at this point Monferno."

He nodded again. I felt calm enough to go to sleep.

"Go get some rest now. Big day ahead. HQ invasion, the usual drill."

Trust smiled and leaped soundlessly to the floor. In minutes, we were both asleep.

Lucas wasn't there when we woke up. He hadn't returned by noon. In the early afternoon, I finally got around to teaching my pokemon to break out of their pokeballs. Faith mastered it instantly, Trust got it sometimes, and Promise managed to do it once or twice. At that point I let them rest, not wanting to push Promise to the point of frustration.

"You're sure we shouldn't look for him?" Dawn said again.

"He should be fine," I said once again. "He's got the gym to deal with, and possibly some training beforehand. Plus it's not logical to spring into a battle right after training, so he'll have to rest and heal them up."

"Kay," she said. She would ask again within thirty minutes.

But even I was getting worried. It was getting later and later – if he didn't get back soon, we'd have to escape the city at night. Worse yet, what if he didn't come back? I wasn't worried (at least, not compared to what I'd be if this had happened after we went to the HQ) but… still.

It was four twenty-two when he returned. Dawn and I were checked out of the pokemon center, with our backpacks stuffed full of pokeballs and the empty knapsack on the bedroom floor.

"Tell us a story," I requested.

"In short, a snorunt and a badge," he said, tapping his belt and pocket respectively.

"Great. Let's talk while they get healed."

The three of us sat down on the edge of the empty practice battlefield outside the Center. "We've got the joltiks and the bike store owner to take care of," I began. "Our best bet is to go together at first, and then split up – one or two dealing with the power rods, the others continuing to the admin's office. That's where the bike shop guy should be."

"You and I can go release the joltiks, and Lucas could deal with the admin," Dawn said. "Since we already have them all."

I glanced at Lucas. "I can go either way. Lucas, what do you want to do?"

His eyes subtly smiled. "I'll take the joltiks. I have a pretty good idea where the rods would be."

That was true. Last time around, he'd pointed it out as we ran through. Just in passing.

"You can take my joltiks, then. Dawn, you're with him?" I slid my backpack off to transfer the pokeballs.

"Yep."

"Kay. There's no guarantees what'll happen in there, but hopefully things will just go as planned."

I gave Lucas his joltiks, and we picked up Lucas's pokemon and headed north.

The receptionist looked at us over his glasses. "Hello. I'm afraid we are not accepting visitors at the moment."

"Sorry, just returned from a mission," I said smoothly. "Have to go change. Lost our uniforms. Complications."

He frowned as we passed by him. "But your IDs… And your hair isn't even standard."

"Again, complications."

We must have made it through half of the building before anyone realized we probably shouldn't be there. There were five different battles with grunts of one pokemon each, and one tag battle that Lucas and Dawn handled. We reached the point where we would have to split up.

Lucas pulled out his kadabra. "Go ahead and mess with the cameras," he said. Kadabra closed his eyes, and I heard a faint screech echo within the building.

"See you soon," Lucas said, heading off down a corridor. Dawn and Kadabra followed him, the kadabra's eyes still closed.

I took a quick, deep breath and dashed off in the opposite direction. It took me a few portals and flights of stairs and backtracks to get there, but I did.

Jupiter turned. She was flanked by four grunts. "May I help you?"

I looked around the room and frowned. "I'm here for the bike shop man," I said. Where was he?

"Mr. Dupont is downstairs at the moment," she said. "We couldn't risk him informing the general public. Come to think of it," she added, pulling out a pokeball, "Your knowledge of him makes you a risk, too."

"Okay, back up," I said. "You could have pretended he was here on a visit. But you jumped right into assuming I already know everything. What's up with that?"

"You and I both know that you already know we kidnapped him. Zubat, supersonic!"

"Faith, hypnosis!"

Faith's invisibility worked to her definite advantage; believe it or not, supersonic is directional. A stream of yellow rings shot into Zubat's back, and the bat sank down, asleep.

"Nightshade!"

An easy defeat. Faith battered the zubat with the dark-type move until it was clear she wouldn't get up again.

"Skuntank, smokescreen!"

I coughed as the air filled with thick grey smoke. "Faith, confuse ray."

"Night slash."

Through the smoke I saw a flurry of black-violet slashes in the air. No confuse ray twinkled through. Bad sign. I heard Faith start to cry and then abruptly stop.

"Faith, return." The red light found its target, and I put away her pokeball. "Trust, it's yours. Flame wheel."

He came out somewhere in the haze and lit up the smoke with his fire. All I could really see was an orange glow zooming around, not accompanied by the crashes I was hoping for. Then there was a shout from Trust.

"Flamethrower!"

"Night slash!"

The tense chaos of close-quarters combat, with none of the visuals. When the clashes ceased and the smoke slowly faded, it turned out Trust, covered in a combination of little cuts and deep gashes, had come out on top of the singed skuntank.

Okay. This is going okay. Was that her last pokemon?

She wasn't; there was a bronzor. But its psychic moves were weak, and the bronzor had clearly not been trained very well, and Trust got by with fire moves quite well.

Jupiter recalled her last pokemon, looking stunned. "How…"

"Well?" I said to the other grunts in the room, "Are any of you going to follow up?"

"They don't carry…" Jupiter came to a realization. "Are you the one who beat Mars at the Windworks?"

"Possibly. Now if you're not going to keep fighting, kindly release Mr. Dupont."

Grimacing, Jupiter handed a key to the grunt next to her. "Bring her downstairs. What's your name?"

"Evelyn," I said with a smart-alecky wave, "And I'll be seeing you around."

Trust and I followed the grunt out. I waited until we had made our way through two or three hallways and a room before saying, "I'll take it from here. Hand me the keys."

The grunt frowned. "I was told to lead you."

"Thank you very much," I said, holding out my hand. Trust jumped on my shoulder in support, though he was a lot heavier than he was the last time he'd done that.

Eyeing Trust, the grunt handed me the key and suddenly sprinted back down the hall. I ran in the opposite direction. Trust jumped down from my shoulder and monkey-ran alongside me.

We were almost there, I think, when Trust gave a sudden yell and disappeared from my view. Turning around, I saw him lying on the ground before something smashed into my forehead. The world turned black.

Oops I didn't realize I had enough text to publish another chapter this week.

In other words, yeah, the publishing has caught up to my writing. Things may or may not be every week anymore, though I'll try to keep up. Most of chapter 13 was written within about a day or so.

I know the battle with the Galactic peeps have been easy so far; just consider what that means for the future (spoiler? maybe.)