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Chapter 90

Part 1

I

Can't

Do

This

Anymore.

…

I can't.

I just. Can't.

I'm done.

I can't.

…

I'm done.

I'm just done.

…

And on, and on, I went. Day in, day out.

That's what I told myself as I just continued to do the same old things I always did.

…

"I can't do this, I just can't," as I took the seismic pressure readings from the north side of the base.

…

"I can't keep going," as I checked for cracks and shifts in sector forty.

…

"I'm done, I'm just done, I can't do this," as I re-seeded the fifty thousand torches in the meeting hall.

…

Oh, did I say fifty thousand? Yeah, I exaggerate a bit. It's not that much. The actual number is one hundred and twenty-six. Go ahead and take a wild guess how I know that exact number. TAKE A FLIPPING GUESS.

Was your guess "Because you have to personally check all of them about a hundred times a year"? Was that it? DING DING DING. Congratulations, you get five points. And that number ain't exaggerated either. I may not know much, but I know how to keep track of some numbers.

So, as it turns out, if you tell yourself "I can't, I can't," over and over again, for long enough, it starts to become part of your identity. Absorbs itself into the darkfires. Once it does that…

It's hard to describe what it actually means anymore.

"I can't" calibrate and seed torches? Well. That's blatantly not true. I literally watched myself doing the stupid job, half the time while muttering "I can't" to myself.

"I can't" stay sane for much longer if I keep this up? Yeah, no. I think I'm as insane as I'm ever going to get. Part of me snapped a long time ago and the other part just keeps me anchored to boring old reality. I can't tell whether that's a good or a bad thing, if I'm gonna be honest.

Some days I wish I would go a little more insane. To make life more fun. But nah, my dumb brain won't let me. Despite my best efforts, the other half of me cares too much.

You can't, you can't. And yet you keep going. Why? What are you even trying to prove?

Eventually just kind of turns into a cantation. A mantra. Something that just sounds good to tell yourself.

But why? Why don't I just hum "Will 'O the Willow" or some other folk song while I keep busy?

After a long while of this, I had to have a nice sitdown with myself, and ask: I can't what?

"I can't" keep going at this job? Well, what's the big problem, then? I could literally quit Team Cog anytime I wanted. I could leave the base if I wanted. Nobody would miss me if I left the resistance. Or as the old ghost saying goes, I could "drift off into the sky."

"I can't" keep being the person everyone wants me to be? That sounded closer, but then I realized I already don't care what people think of me. I already let myself become a jerk long ago. And if some Pokémon still put up with me, great. I can call them friends and partners. But I didn't change myself to suit their liking. I just didn't care.

So… Before I go even deeper into this maniacal rant of mine, let me tell you a little something about ghosts.

Every type has their special little quirks. Groundlings have their urge to build things and their excellent sense of direction. Flamies have their passion and their ego. Buzzies have their limitless optimism and their energy. Dragons are literally gods. The talking vegetables can practically talk to non-talking vegetables. Everyone is different. No two Charizards are not on fire.

And then there's ghosts. Ghosts have attachment issues. We can't let go of things. That's one of our special quirks. We form attachments so deep and hard, it's shameful. That's why every ghost story is about a haunting. Ghosts love haunting places… and sometimes people. Because they mean too much to us. We learn all about them. Inside and out. We memorize them. We know every little cranny. We internalize things until we can't fathom a world outside what we know.

Us ghosts… we linger, you could say.

That's why us ghosts love working on the base. It's like we're haunting, but we can feel good about it. We're useful. Productively haunting. Satisfies our nature and keeps us busy all at once.

But I didn't love it, for some reason.

I should have loved it. I'm a ghost. Not just a ghost, but a dark-type. Dark-types have their special little quirks too. We're sadists and we're masochists. We're all dark and edgy. We don't feel less pain, we're just better at finding ways of enjoying the pain. We find delight in the worst things. That includes the pain of having to endure monotonous tasks.

I should have hated it, and I should have loved it because I hated it. And maybe for a while, I did love it.

Until I found myself muttering "I can't do this" to myself, randomly throughout the day. So somewhere, deep inside, I knew something was wrong.

They say hatred isn't the opposite of love… they say it's apathy that's the opposite of love. Lack of passion. And I was starting to feel the apathy. My darkfire was trying to tell me something, I got that much. Figured it was about time to see a psychic to dig out my mental issues for me.

OH WAIT. GUESS WHAT DARK-TYPES CAN'T DO.

So I did the next best thing. I decided I was going to start making changes to my life. Cutting things out one by one. See if that helped or just made things worse. Decided one day I'd ask to be assigned to another branch of the base. Maybe ask to get into spell-maintenance instead of structural engineering. Maybe work my way up to the best job on Team Cog – The "Hole in the Wall" (which, if you don't know what that is, good). Maybe change my diet from emeralds to rubies. Maybe find some new friends or pick up a new hobby. I could think of at least ten distinct things I could test out. I knew it would be a long process. It'd take years of trial and error. But eh. I was a patient Pokémon, and it would be annoying, but I just didn't care anymore. When you don't care, you can put up with a lot.

The day after I came up with that little plan, I was checking the post-boards in the Cog basement to see where I was assigned for the day, when I was approached by my boss, Ether the Frosslass.

"Kerzek," she said, "We need to talk about your numbers."

"What'd I do wrong now?" I said. I never stopped to look at her, even. But I pretended to care.

"You were assigned to the mess hall last week, I believe? You were a bit sloppy with your work. We had overflickering on six of the torches, and it seems you missed one of them entirely, and it burned out."

I said, "Why do you care? Who cares if a torch flickers a little bit more?"

Actually, I lied. I didn't say that. Because I know she'd just answer with, "Miscalibration decreases the lifespan of the torch. Wastes power. Can cause loss of signal. Also, inconsistent lighting brings undue stress to the Pokémon in the room. They rely on us to maintain a secure and consistent environment so they can carry out resistance operations without hassle." And she was right, and I knew she was right. So I didn't say anything. I mean, the teams were the ones who went on missions and found the emeralds I loved so much, so it's not like I didn't respect the teams who kept messing up the base we worked so hard to maintain.

Sometimes you have to just stay quiet because if you don't, you know you'll get called out on your nonsense. I hate that.

"Yeah, okay," I said. "I'll do better. You don't have to lecture me. I already know."

"You say that, but then we just end up having this conversation again," says Ether, which I figured she'd say. "Look, Kerzek, you do good work. Most of your calibrations and measurements are impeccable. But your work just needs to be more consistent."

"Last time you said I do good work, but I just need to do it faster," I replied, still ignoring her and pretending to be super focused on the post-board. "You said I wasn't finishing my tasks in a reasonable timeframe. Ever think that I'm being less consistent because I'm trying to work faster, huh? That ever cross your mind, boss? Think maybe I just don't belong on this team? Team Ember put out a call, maybe I'll go join them."

"Now, we don't need this kind of self-deprecation," she told me, trying to be encouraging. "I'm going to be completely clear: if you want to stay with us, I believe you absolutely belong on Team Cog. There's no doubt in my mind."

"That just a nice way of saying I'm not fit for anything else?" I grumbled.

Actually, I lied. I didn't say that. But I wanted to. I really wanted to. Ether doesn't fall for that nonsense, though, and I knew it, so again I stayed quiet and didn't bother.

She kept going. "You are one of our best, and we rely on you," she tried. "You're in the top fifty of Team Cog. Not just members we have now, but all time. That's why it bothers me to see you faltering like this. I'm harder on you than on the others, because I have to be. You understand me, don't you?"

"Oh, I understand. I just don't agree," I growled. "How about you show me the respect I deserve and leave me alone and stop nitpicking everything I do? If I'm one of your top-fifty, then maybe you should just be happy with the work I get right. Just send some of your other peons to correct my mistakes, and quit making a big deal out of it. Great Arceus, you're annoying."

And yeah, you guessed it, I didn't say that out loud either. I just scowled at her and I hoped she would get the message. I don't think she did.

"Now, I know you have work to do," she said, pointing at my name on the board. "Try to get a perfect performance record for the day, okay, Kerzek? Maybe what you need is an incentive. Tell you what: if you do your job today with zero mistakes, I'll give you three days off with pay. How does that sound? Go and show me what you can do."

I looked at the chart again. Training team sector. That wasn't too bad. Only a few hours of work there. Plenty of time to munch an emerald and catch up on the book of secrets. I felt confident enough.

"Yeah, alright. I'll get a perfect score," I assured her. "I'll show you. By-Giratina's-wrath I'll show you."

But somewhere after leaving the Cog basement, I suddenly knew I wasn't going to the training team hall.

I suddenly just knew I wouldn't be getting that perfect score. I wasn't even going to be touching that job.

Without even telling anyone, I suddenly knew that I had just quit Team Cog. Just a flicker in my darkfires told me. Ether offered me a day off? I didn't need to earn it. I could take a day off whenever I wanted. And that's what I was going to do.

That whole ten-step plan that I came up with yesterday? To systematically get rid of things from my life until I felt something change? Yeah, I threw it all out. Decided I'd get rid of everything all at once. Try something new. Start something else.

For some reason I decided I wanted to go outside. I climbed the inside of the base walls, found the ward pinhole, and surfaced at the top of the Great Plateau.

Didn't realize how late it had gotten. It was nearly red-time already.

Red-time. Was that sad or what? I spent so much time sheltered in the base that I started thinking about the times of day in terms of the torch color cycle, instead of the sun. No, I told myself. Not red-time. Sundown.

Stood on the plateau and watched the sun set for the rest of the day.

And not once did I tell myself "I can't." I can, and I did. I felt free. That meant something was working. I was on the right path.

…

Naturally, I then asked myself the question: what now? I just quit my team. I needed to be on a team, if I wanted to stay in the base. And like I said, I was attached to the base. I wasn't just going to leave, and I knew it.

So you probably know what I did next. I showed up for the team tryouts at Team Ember, and I got in. The prospect of joining a team with the human-turned-Charmander who had the Call, and the superpowered Raichu with residual Pokérus, and the Espeon who used to serve the Master. Team Ember, the rivals to Team X, short for Team Executor, with that Seviper who was madly in love with that Zangoose from Team Carrier.

In case you're wondering, yuup. I already knew all that. Of course I did. It's Team Cog's job to know everything. If someone has a secret, and they utter that secret even once somewhere in the base, we probably know about it. That's what the book of secrets is for. Keeps us up-to-date with all the juicy gossip. And it's necessary. Part of maintaining the base means preventing mass panic. But we also have honor codes about it. It means that if we know something incriminating, like say, a Pokémon is about to betray their team, we can't do anything with that information. If a Pokémon is going to sell us out to the Master, then we make an effort to prevent it from happening, or at worst we tell High Intelligence about it, but we still can't let the information get out. Knowing everyone's secrets is fun, I won't lie. But after a while, secrets start to become mundane and it takes a lot to really shock you.

Now I might be reckless, and I might be a dark-type, but I'm not stupid. I wasn't going to completely burn bridges with Team Cog for the sake of joining Team Ember. And besides, Char might not have even let me in, if he or his Espeon lapcat heard about how I threw my silent tantrum and abandoned my duties on my old team. So… ugh. FINE. I had to actually go do the torches in the training wing. And I had to get the perfect record I said I'd get, so I could use the paid days off to attend the tryouts for Char's team. I hated it. I thought it would have been so much more satisfying to just storm away.

But fine, whatever. Sometimes life doesn't work like that. Sometimes you have to be responsible. I hate it, but that's how things are.

Was joining Team Ember all the change that I wanted? Yeah, I thought so. Setting up the hideout base was fun. Programming the portal was fun. Helping Arcana to keep disguised as a Noctowl is fun. Conspiring against Aster – I'm sorry, Eva – to get Scarlet out on a date with Char? I'm… not even going to begin to admit how fun that was, kekeke. And thanks to all the new members, we were able to find the Gemporium cave, and now I can gorge myself on whatever flavor of gemstone I want.

It was a good gig. I wondered why it took me so long to try something new. Now I was utilizing my technical talents and being paid more for my effort. Made some new friends. I got to see more of the sun, enough that I finally stopped calling the times of day by their torch colors.

One day there was a freak earthquake that made the Gemporium collapse, and almost squished Nincada to death. And it was really just that: a fault line thing. Not a burrowing Steelix or an indoor explosion or a curse. It was disappointing, to be honest. But I checked it out and it was seriously just a structural integrity issue. Now the entrance was blocked. And it was gonna take a hot minute to clear it out. Normally we'd just hire a competent team to do it, but we didn't want anyone else knowing about the Gemporium, so it was gonna stay like that for the foreseeable future.

But I wanted my gems. A little cave-in wasn't going to keep me out. So me and Watcher took regular trips there, whenever my talents weren't required on other missions.

You could say I got to know Watcher pretty well. That's wild how he's an actual clone of Nincada. I didn't know Pokémon could actually evolve that way, probably because it never happened in the base before. He seems to really like being a ghost. He loves turning invisible and phasing through walls. I'd almost call it cute, to be honest. And it's made a big difference to him. He's a different Pokémon now; he's not afraid of being looked down on or being crushed anymore. He commands more respect. He's actually proud of himself now.

I get the way he feels because I've been there. I know that when you're lacking in self-esteem, you waste all your time looking for distractions from your fears instead of doing things that actually make your life better. Then you forget there's even a difference. You forget that self-improvement actually exists as a concept. And everything becomes about validation. People should validate you just because. Just for existing. And when they try to criticize you, it's the end of the world because, what exactly are you supposed to do? Self-improvement doesn't exist as a concept anymore. So what do they expect?! They should know there's nothing you can do. So they must just hate you. If they didn't hate you, they wouldn't criticize you. You spend all your time avoiding your insecurity and you forget that's not the same thing as pride and self-respect.

(Sound familiar? Like how I snapped at Ether when she criticized me? Well, there's a reason that future-me is writing this story about past-me, I'll say that much.)

Watcher got over it. He spent his whole life afraid of getting squashed and now that wasn't a problem anymore. He finally had self-respect and he could show the world who he really was.

I thought I'd gotten over it too. My job was rewarding and my co-workers were interesting. And I was far away from Ether, which was clearly the most important part.

I thought I was on the right path.

Then it came back. Just out of nowhere. I was deep in the third floor of the Gemporium and it suddenly compelled me to punch the wall and scream, "I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE! I CAN'T!"

The whole chamber collapsed. I just stood there in the middle of the solid rocks, I looked at my own claws for a moment, and I thought… what?! I thought I fixed the problems and stopped doing the things that I "couldn't keep doing." So what cemetery did that ghost crawl out of? What was wrong with me?

Now, I won't admit this in public, but I was rattled. I had thought that part of my life was over with. I tried to downplay it, as you do. Watcher kept asking if I was OK. Kept trying to get me to tell the things I was hiding. And that's fine, he thought he was trying to be a good friend. But as you know, you don't tell the truth to people who you know can't help you. There's no point. So I just dropped hints that he should back off, until he did.

That night, I closed myself up in the wall of the secret hideout and I had a good look into my darkfire. I looked at myself and I asked: am I looking at this wrong?

Was I trying to accept something? Was this a "you can't change the past" sort of thing? Maybe I was trying to accept that I couldn't change something. But… there wasn't anything I wanted to change.

Or maybe "I can't" wasn't a silent cry for help. Maybe it was supposed to be a constant reminder to myself? Something was a certain way and I just had to accept it. I can't change it. I can't, I can't. I'm done trying to change it. A constant reminder-type thing.

Was that it? It had to be something important to me, if it still wasn't going away.

What was so important to me? What was haunting me? I hated that something was haunting me. I'm the ghost. I should be the one doing the haunting. It's the principle of the matter. If there was a ghost of "I can't" taking up residence in my darkfire, and it was going to keep making a fool out of me in front of my co-workers, I needed it gone.

I clung to the dilemma for a few days. Convinced everyone I was OK. Made sure to meditate about it after the mission every night. Holed myself up in the wall and demanded answers out of my darkfire. Predictably, it didn't give me much to work with, sort of gave me the same stoic non-response I gave everyone else. Started to consider going to Dr. Orde and asking him to get Alakazam or Xatu to Miracle Eye me and pull the demon out of my body, but I wasn't thrilled about High Intelligence getting to see all the rest of the secrets I kept.

Kept things all to myself, until about four days later when I stepped out from my meditative trance and found someone waiting for me.

Hunter was stalking me. That prying little fox, I didn't know whether to respect him or resent him. Kept so many delicious secrets of his own, I'm sure, yet nothing was good enough. He still wanted to know all of ours.

"Ah! Kerzek, I knew I'd find you here," he said all nonchalantly like this was a regular chitchat between co-workers.

"Yeah, because you were stalking me," I snapped. Wasn't in the mood for arguing. Figured I'd stonewall him until he got the hint to go away. Standard procedure I use with every Pokémon I don't like. So I walked across the room and back to the portal like I didn't even care he was in the room. "How's Arcana?" I decided to shoot at him. "Haven't seen much of her since she started working with you."

"Oh, she's progressing quite well; we've made such good progress together," Hunter assured me. Then he waited until I was about to go back through the portal and he said: "Say, I had a strange question I think you could answer for me."

I said nothing, but I hesitated my next step for a moment. Implicit permission to continue, if he wanted to interpret it that way. But taking the hint and shutting up would have been a welcome response, too.

And so he hit me with: "What, exactly, is a 'hole-in-the-wall,' if you don't mind me asking?"

Oh, no. No, no. No. He did not just say that.

Already I did not like where this was going. Some Pokémon value their privacy. Some, like me and most other dark-types, value the privacy of the secrets of their mind. They do not appreciate meddling Pokémon poking at memories and ideas they have no right get their grubby little paws on.

But yes. Leave it to Hunter to find something that gets a Pokémon to stop in their tracks. I didn't know how to respond at first. Knew I'd need my best poker face for this. Good thing Sableye are naturally hard to read.

Started with Plan A: Act stupid. He'd probably see through it, but maybe he'd spill a bit more of his context.

"You mean the place I was hiding so I wouldn't have to talk to you?" I said.

He ignored my reply the same way I was trying to ignore him. Clearly sending a confrontational message. "Heard Team Cog use the phrase… oh, three times now," he mentioned. "Started giving me the impression it was some kind of ghosts' cant. Almost as though you're trying to hide something important by calling it something mundane. Now, you were with Team Cog a while back, if I've heard correctly? Would you know anything about the particular slang they use?"

Really? Fuzzball thought I was going to be so easy to break?

I groaned at him. "Oh, so I suppose it's no coincidence you're asking me this in the secret hideout where they can't hear us," I muttered.

Looked around the place for a moment, pondering my next move. Decided I'd go with Plan B: Pretend to stop acting stupid, while still playing stupid: "Yeah, y'know, Team Cog is made of ghosts. We live in holes in the walls. So it's just… that's how we talk about our home base, or, bases, I guess you could say. The places most Pokémon can't see. Why? Why are you asking this?"

"What's the point of the ghosts' cant, then?" was the reply. "If you're talking about something so mundane as the places inside the walls where you live, why go through all the trouble of inventing slang for throwing off eavesdroppers?"

I clawed at my face. "Alright, seems there's no getting through to you. Look. Yes. I'll save you the headache and a half hour's worth of argument and tell you that yeah, it is a ghosts' cant. But you're gonna have to really sell me on why you need to know. And while you're at it, how about convincing me that Ether's not going to stuff me into a disintegration chamber when she finds out I broke the sworn secrecy of Team Cog."

"Because you can trust me," he said with a wry smile. "I know how to keep a secret. And I know how to weave a narrative that I found the secret another way which doesn't involve you."

"I know secrets that not even High Intelligence knows," I said with a nice and dark snarl. "What makes you think you can tell a believable story about how you figured out something that Alakazam hasn't even figured out yet?"

His response: "Alakazam doesn't even know about the portal to the hideout, which we are both complicit in. There's plenty he doesn't know. It's not that difficult of a story to tell."

I glared at him for a moment. Looked at that stupid smug Flareon smile of his. The smile that said "We both know I'm gonna get the secret out of you one way or another, it's just a matter of how easily you break." And I resented that. I gave him another nice snarl. I told him to go eat a wet rag, and I stormed out of the hideout. Needed to go on an evening walk. Maybe was in the mood to claw some Watchers to death now that I knew a few more tricks to use against 'em.

"I'm not in the mood to play mind games," I shouted as I ran through the wall. "I'm already going through my own existential dilemmas right now, thank you. I don't have the energy for this."

So there, I went Plan C: Exit Stage Left.

I had a feeling he'd be stupid enough to follow me, even if the Watchers were about to come out. If he was dumb enough for that, I'd let him. But leaving me alone to stew in my madness was another very welcome option.

Took a nice dash into the woods out back to run away from my thoughts and my problems. Honestly considered letting a Watcher catch me, to be honest, because there's at least a chance that would have fixed my darkfire. Everyone talks about Watcher curses, but nobody mentions that Watcher effects can be positive too. Watcher curses are random, and sometimes the "curse" benefits you. They can give you superpowers. You don't hear about those often, but there's a chance it can happen. And the insane part of me was almost ready to resort to that, or at least that's what I told myself.

The night walk didn't last very long because I took ten steps into the woods and I stumbled upon a cabin. A little building, way too close to our supposedly secret team hideout. I didn't feel comfortable with it, if only because I'd scouted these acres less than a season ago and this cabin wasn't here.

So I did what any respectable ghost would do. Decided I'd haunt the house. Slipped into the walls, tested for weird wards and force fields and stuff to keep my kind of Pokémon out, and once I was sure there was nothing there, I slipped into the wall and took a look around, ready to scare the daylights out of whoever was in there for my own amusement, and demand some answers out of them.

Inside was… now I'm not proud to admit this in public, but it was honestly heartwarming. Whoever lived here honestly took great care with their space. The kind of care that a ghost living in the walls would notice. Three neatly organized desks, a clean bed-nest that actually looked like it might be comfortable (to a mammalian Pokémon, at least), a bookshelf arranged in alphabetical order. A little chest of berries that actually didn't smell like compost, which is rare. A line of clothing scraps and enchanted items hung neatly from a rack. A small table with some gold pieces stacked in small rows, with a ledger of transactions next to them written in claw marks.

Laughably, my first instinct was, "Less maintenance work for me."

Picked up the scent of some gemstones in the tiny chest in the corner. Decided I wasn't going to eat them. I wasn't that stupid.

Then I picked up on a spirit-scent. There were ghost torches here. The kind from the base. Took me a moment to spot them hiding in plain sight, from little candle-holders in the walls. (Most Pokémon probably would have noticed them right away, but ghosts see light and color differently. We're so used to seeing in the dark, we sometimes don't notice if there's light there.)

I inspected the nearest candle. The color-spell didn't affect the flame since this was nowhere near the Gold Division base, but the candlesticks gave them a warm red color. I touched them with my darkfires. Found out the aura signature was the same. They were definitely stolen from the Gold Division. I stuck a finger into the flame, testing for a ghost-print. It would help me figure out the last ghost who touched the flame. It was a trick I used everyday in Team Cog, whenever a torch was messed up, to pin the blame on whoever messed with the torch last.

Found my own ghost-print. I was the thief. I stole them from the Gold Division.

Then it clicked into place. These were candles I set up in the hideout. Someone had stolen them from the hideout and taken them here.

Hunter. He lived here. I figured that out the moment I peered down to the nearest desktop and actually tried reading the claw-marks on the papers. They were lists of notes. Mostly about Adron the Terrible. Some about members of the Gold Division base.

Huh. Hunter had his own personal Book of Secrets.

Around that moment, he ducked in through a flap in the wall. I noticed there was no proper doorway. He seemed mildly surprised to see me, but he hid his surprise and pretended like he'd expected me to come here all along.

"Nice place," I told him. "Didn't even know it was here."

"Had it built about two weeks ago," he explained. "When the trail for Adron started picking up. I have a good memory, but not nearly as good as Sabertooth, especially not when information pours in as fast as it has been pouring, as of late. While I appreciate the accommodations of your base, I needed somewhere to store my thoughts… and, at times, to be alone with them. I shouldn't need it for very long, only long enough to finish the job… and then decide upon where to retire."

Ah, right. Sabertooth. The Seviper from Team X in puppy-love with Zachel. Honestly hated his new name so I got used to ignoring it completely. But then again I hate most cute things.

He swaggered right past me and shut the open book on the table. "You seem to be forgetting something, Kerzek…"

"What am I forgetting," I returned as flatly as I could.

"I'm on your side," he said, shuffling the papers with his front paws into some neat little stacks and tucking them under the book. "I'm quite literally your teammate. Your hired help. I fly the banner of Team Ember, as it were. While I know that doesn't make me automatically trustworthy – I can count at least two members of Team Ember I'm not quite sure I trust – I hope that at least makes me a candidate."

"Let me guess, one of them is Eva," I groaned. "In that case, I'd have to agree. I don't like her, even if I don't have to constantly keep her out of my mind like everyone else. Who's the other one? Me, I'm guessing?"

"Do you really want to know?" he challenged.

OK. Sure. I'd play this game. I gave him a wicked grin and said, "Tell me."

"Char. For the same reasons, more or less, as Eva," he admitted.

Ooh, now this caught my attention. "Really? You don't trust Char?" I asked, making sure I heard correctly.

"Not entirely. There's been something – off – with his demeanor," Hunter commented. "It's not something easy to explain, but it's something you might notice after you spend a long time paying attention to the… minutia of Pokémon behavior. Char has been growing distant from his team. I get the impression that he is wrestling with some conflict of interest between himself and his team… and may soon might be forced to make a choice based upon that conflict of interest."

Now I gave him an evil grin. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I knew things about Char, and what his true motives were. Like how he was preparing for the possibility that he might need to leave his team. I even had some theories as to who was becoming the new team leader when he was gone.

"You know something, don't you?" Hunter said with a gleam in his eye. "That smile is not difficult to read."

"Keke. And what if I do?"

"Is it something I need to worry about?"

I shrugged. "Nah. Not you. In fact, I don't think that's going to be much of a problem until after your work is done," I told him.

"Ah. At least that disproves my first theory," he said.

I eyed him funny. "Your first theory? About Char being dishonest?"

He scoffed. "If you must know, my first theory – the simplest and most likely explanation – is that Char was falling too far into a mind-meld with Eva. Thought perhaps it was just her – questionable signals – leaking through him."

Then he grinned at me – a genuine, candid grin, as though he was enjoying this talk for its own sake.

Oh. Oh. I saw where he was going with this, now. Nice social engineering ploy, buddy. Bonding with me by talking smack about Char's girlfriend behind his back. I bet myself he was already on 'Plan F' trying to get what he wants from me. Though, I'm fairly sure I wasn't the only one talking about Eva behind Char's back. Most of us didn't exactly like Eva, especially as of late. We put up with her because we liked Char and because Eva had kind of scary good performance at her job (Which, yeah, makes sense because I'd probably be good at basic things too if I lived for a thousand years.)

This Flareon was good. Unfortunately for him, now I was in the mood to play my own games.

"So you really don't like Eva, huh?" I pressed. "Nice to actually hear someone else say it out loud. If you're such a psychologist, what's your profile on her? Genuinely curious. I mean, I already hate her, but it would be nice to have some validation to back up what I already know to be true."

Hunter tilted his head in thought. "Eva… she is a simple-minded creature," Hunter explained. "I find it hard to believe she loves Char, by any definition of the word. She merely… possesses him. Like a trophy."

Oh, this was rich. "Kekeke. And why do you think Char puts up with her?"

"Char… I think it's quite clear, this is his first relationship of this nature," Hunter theorized. "He is spellbound by Eva's devotion, which blinds him to its toxicity. He is unfortunately naïve, and completely under her spell. If he knew how easily these kinds of relationships break, and how explosively they break, he wouldn't act so comfortable around her. He would be stepping on eggshells whenever she's in the same room. In my experience, the moment he begins to realize the truth, and show fear or hesitance around her, she will reciprocate it with desperation and hostility."

"Oh, is that something you know from experience? Ever had a girlfriend?"

"No, but in several of my jobs, I've turned lovers against one another to make steps towards my targets. I'm… I have enough experience using love as a weapon. Which is why I recognize Eva's behavior."

"Well, maybe you can do that kind of thing again," I challenged him, giving him my evilest grin and pointing a claw at his eye. "I'll make a deal with you. If you find a way to break up Char and Eva, I'll tell you everything you've never wanted to know about holes in the walls. Give that stupid lapcat what's coming to her, get her off the team, and give us some fireworks to watch in the process. What do you say? Up to the task?"

Interestingly, his smile faded the moment I said that. I wasn't sure if I was hoping he would agree to the deal, or if he would turn it down. Honestly it was a little of both. So either way I'd be disappointed. But meh, whatever, it was worth a try.

"Absolutely not," he said plainly. "I don't… I don't conspire against my allies. Only my targets. Never… my allies. And in saying this, I only just now realize you were testing me. Well-played."

Whelp. Yep. He got it. The fox got it. That was the little plan of mine. In one breath, he says "you can trust me because I fly the banner of Team Ember" and in the next breath I thought I could get him to say "Yeah I'll totally drive a wedge between my actual boss who's paying me on commission, and the Pokémon he loves most in the world, just so this psycho Sableye can get some laughs out of it."

"Kerzek… I do not conspire against my own teammates," he said again, softer this time. "Not Char, and not you."

"What about Arcana? You tore her disguise to shreds," I growled.

"Last I checked, I am conspiring with Arcana, not against her," he replied simply. "I have helped progress her training, helped her contact her mother, and I've utilized her talents to find more information I'm after."

"Conspiring with Arcana? Yeah, against who? The rest of the team, right? Keeping them all in the dark that she's a Zoroark? How can you say you haven't been conspiring against Team Ember? Where are your mental gymnastics now?"

Hunter had to think about that for a minute, but then he shook his head. "I tell lies about Arcana, yes, but I would not call that a conspiracy. A conspiracy is a plan, something that is… plotted and executed at a victim's expense. With Arcana, I merely help to keep her secrets, and for that, I need to tell lies. That is what it means to keep a secret. One cannot agree to keep a secret if one is not willing to tell lies to protect it. I'm certain you know that already, from your time on Team Cog. And I… I keep many, many secrets from a great many Pokémon. I'd like to think I'm good at it. Especially seeing as though my entire job is to know things that I am not meant to know, in order to find things I am not meant to find. Although… with allies in the know, inventing a cant is also an option. I'd say that's an effective substitute for telling blatant outright lies."

I realized, just then, that Hunter used… I guess you could call it "fox cant" literally all the time. Arcana would be standing in the room with the rest of us disguised as a Noctowl, and Hunter would say something like, "It's time for all the little foxes to wait in the shadows for the right time to strike." And everyone would assume he'd be talking about himself in the third person… and only I knew it was a message meant for Arcana.

"But back to business," he said, walking across the room and curling up on his bed-pad, "I'm more than willing to strike a deal with you in exchange for the information I want. Just… not something which would force me to take sides against my own client. If you ask me, I think Char and Eva are hurtling toward their own painful breakup all on their own, no manipulation necessary. But feel free to name any price you'd like, Kerzek. I'm more than willing to negotiate."

I shrugged. "Yeah… OK. I guess a professional secret-keeper can be trusted with a secret," I sighed in admission. "And… I guess I already betrayed High Intelligence by helping to install that portal anyway, so fear of retribution isn't really a valid excuse either. Alright, foxy. I got a price for you. Do a little something for me, and I'll tell you what you want to know."

He shifted his tail and smiled the most sickeningly candid smile I've ever seen in my life. "I'm listening," he nearly purred.

I crossed my arms. "You're a psychologist. So play psychologist for me," I commanded, flashing my eyes menacingly at him. "I've got a little mental tic I've been wrestling with for a time now. Help me make peace with it."

He blinked. Like, really blinked. He really wasn't expecting that request. Gods, sometimes it's just so satisfying to really, actually shock someone. No wonder ghosts love doing it.

"OK," I started. "So… I have this thing… where I'll be minding my own business, life will be all fine, and sometimes I'll be in the middle of a job or whatever, but suddenly I'll just yell at myself. 'I can't do it. I can't do this. I'm done. I'm just done.' And uh… I have no idea what it means. I don't know what my darkfires are trying to tell me."

And so I spent the next hour spilling my darkfires out to him, explaining in detail every time it's ever happened, according to my memory. I was honestly surprised at how attentively Hunter listened. I would accuse him of pretending, except that psychologically profiling Pokémon is his job.

When I was done talking, he looked unfazed, like this was just garden-school trivia. "Some Pokémon… I can get them to spill their secrets just by threatening their lives. Other Pokémon won't speak a word when you threaten their lives, but… threaten their lover, or their children, and they'll break down into a blabbering hatchling. We all respond to different triggers. We are all motivated by different things. Light a fire under a Flareon's tail, and they'll snuggle into it. Light one under a Bulbasaur, and they'll jump up and scream. Follow so far?"

"You're saying, something's triggering me to jump up and scream?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Quite the opposite; they are happening because you are starved for something. Your outbursts are your dark-ember's way of getting your attention and telling you that you're missing something. Something you badly need for personal growth, something you aren't receiving from the Pokémon around you. The way you've described, they only happen when you endure long periods of time without it."

"Yeah, I figure I'm missing something I'm not getting," I grumbled. "So what is it? What am I missing?"

"Well, like I said before, different Pokémon are motivated by different stimulus. It so happens, you're motivated most by negative reinforcement," he explained as though it were the simplest concept. "You're surrounded by positive, optimistic Pokémon. Team Ember is full of them. Happy, bubbly Pokémon who fight until the last ember fades, right? And the Gold Division itself is full of them!"

He stood up from his bed and looked me in the eye. "But that's not what actually drives you. You're only driven by Pokémon who criticize you, tell you that what you're doing isn't good enough. Pokémon who tell you that you're a failure. That's what lights the fire under you. That's the real stimulus you need. Your dark-ember knows it. Since you've been starved of negative reinforcement, your dark-fire is trying to supply its own."

He gave me a cocky grin. "That's what your outbursts are. You're trying to self-motivate by negatively reinforcing yourself. Because all the Pokémon around you are too full of positivity and too afraid of hurting your feelings to do it themselves. And that's my analysis! Thoughts?"

I looked at my claws, and absentmindedly tried to count the occurrences I could remember. "I don't think that's quite right," I said, blabbering a bit. "Like… I can't even stand Ether anymore. I never want to see her again. I'd rather be on the opposite end of the Earth from her."

"And yet, her criticism of your work is what inspired you to move teams," he pressed. "It inspired you to quit being complacent and improve your circumstances. Remember, the things I notice most are the things which motivate Pokémon to act. Say what you want about Ether, but she motivated you to act."

"B-but I…" I tried to say, searching desperately for a comeback. "I hate her. I wouldn't take my old job back, even if my life depended on it."

"Just because you hate something, doesn't mean you don't need it," Hunter told me plainly. "You're very good at running from negative reinforcement. But you need it, if you want to grow stronger. If I were to guess, you don't want to grow stronger. You think you're fine the way you are. But your dark-ember thinks otherwise. It's been begging you for more. It can't keep going like this. It can't."

Yeah… that resonated with me.

I can't keep doing this. I can't keep lying to myself and telling myself this is okay.

Too much positivity. I needed the negativity too. Pokémon who tell you that you're doing great, it doesn't mean anything unless they can also tell you when you're doing terrible.

I'm done. I'm done being weak. I need to be better.

I need Pokémon to actually push me to be better. Like Ether. Or Tallie. Pokémon who have the guts to tell me I'm a failure, so I can prove them wrong. Pokémon who are willing to hurt my feelings because they know they need to tell the truth to my face, and not just ambiguously dance around it.

That's what my darkfire was saying. Too bad I didn't want that. I didn't want criticism to the face. That's why it was so motivational – it motivated me to get as far away as possible.

What a dilemma.

And this flame-fox was going to have to help me solve the dilemma if he wanted the information he was asking for. And for good reason. He didn't know what he was asking for, but opening the so-called "hole-in-the-wall" was going to involve me marching right back up to Ether's face and making certain demands of her.

I crossed my arms and issued the challenge: "If your job depended on it… That in order to get closer to your target, you needed to convince me to face up against Ether again, and get be back on speaking terms with her… how would you go about doing that, I wonder?"

The Flareon said, "You speak as though my job actually does depend on it."

I returned with, "…Yeah, obviously it does. So what's your move?"

The Flareon took a quick glance at the little door-flap as though afraid someone would suddenly barge in. He trotted his big bushy tail across the cabin to the little box that held all the gemstones I was smelling earlier. Oh, that's the best he could do? Bribe me with gemstones? Doesn't he know I already have enough of those?

But then he ruffled through the box and pulled out something that wasn't exactly a gemstone. It was some sort of talisman. Soon as he pulled it out of the box, I smelled a strong vapor coming off this rock. I felt drawn to it… but not to eat it.

"Your Mawile friend was right about something, Kerzek," said Hunter, flashing me the most sinister smile. "In fact, I thought about giving this to her… but I think, in both of our best interests, you should have it instead."

He tossed me the stone. It nearly electrified me when I just brushed my claw against it. Incredible power in this thing. And it wasn't like the power in a feral-shard or reviver seed or all the usual enchanted items we use everyday. This power tasted… esoteric. And extreme.

The way it glinted in the red firelight… I saw rainbows under the surface. That was not natural. Everything about this stone gave me the chills.

"What… is this, exactly?" I demanded of him, pretending I wasn't impressed. "And why should I care?"

"That," he said pointedly, "is an evolution stone. But it's not a feral-shard like the kind they dug out of Basin Canyon. As far as I can tell, it came from space. I've never seen another one like it on the whole face of Ambera, but when I found this one, I knew I had to keep it, in case it ever were to become useful to me."

I knew what he was going to say before he said it, but there was no way in all the hallowed halls of origin that I believed it.

And so he said, "What you're holding right now is a working, real-life mega stone."