#8 Stranger than Fiction
"You have too many Pokemon, so of course… you can't train all of them to maximize their strengths…"
The man with the cross spoke with a surprisingly conceited tone considering he was half-collapsed against his side of the cage, dripping blood from a few superficial cuts and burns. His Scyther lay next to him in a similar state, completely out of it.
"If you p-paid attention to them individually…" he continued."If you trained them properly, they would be much stronger."
Though she would've liked to tell him where he could stick his advice, Sabrina wasn't in much better shape. Her fingers held onto the bars of her side of the cage so strongly her knuckles were white, her weak arm trying to keep her from collapsing to the ground. Her breathing was hard and labored. A Noctowl stood on one of her shoulders, his feathers covered in blood and dirt.
"The loser… shouldn't be giving advice to the winner," she said after a couple inhales, forming a mocking smile.
"W-what!? You know full well that I could've killed you if I wanted to, just like-Agh…!"
Despite his wounds, the man reacted with a burst of energy as he suddenly stood up, his wild mane of ebon hair seemingly sticking up by indignation alone.
"Yeah, and that makes you even stupider," Sabrina said. "Besides, these Pokemon aren't mine. I didn't train or nurture them. I just use them for fighting."
"...Really. I see…"
His anger suddenly placated by those words, the man turned to look at his unconscious partner, his Scyther, and placed a soft, careful hand on his forehead. A smile formed on his lips.
"That'd explain why you use such reckless tactics," he whispered, turning to look at her. "Then, those Pokemon… it's a little sad, don't you think? That you're not able to call them your friends."
Sabrina let out a despective snort. "Don't misunderstand me. Even though they don't belong to me, we've been through thick and thin together. Whether I like it or not, these Pokemon are my partners, and…"
Only then realizing what she was saying, Sabrina's eyes went wide and she opened her mouth to quickly change the topic, but it was too late.
"HA!" The man exclaimed, pointing at her with a victorious smile. "I knew it!"
"S-SHUT UP!" Sabrina barked, crimson rising to her cheeks.
#9 Come Join Us
"...Hey, Azure," Sabrina said absentmindedly, gaze lost in her drink. "Who do we work for?"
It was a miracle Azure heard her considering how noisy the bar was. The two sat next to each other around the VIP table overlooking the Gym arena, accompanied by a handful of older men wearing expensive-looking suits, talking and laughing amongst themselves. Each of them some flavor of gang leader or low-ranking government official.
Said bar, though quite big, wasn't exactly what one would call extravagant, but this night was special. The furniture had been polished. The cups had been washed (with soap, even!) and there were hardly any cockroaches to be seen.
Sabrina, of course, had been practically dragged here by Azure so she could rub shoulders with the leaders of Saffron's dirty underbelly, unpleasant though the idea was to her. It came naturally to him, of course. With his perfectly ironed black suit, shirt and tie and that tiny white triangle insignia on his lapel, you couldn't pick him out of a crowd amidst all these people. Sabrina, on the other hand, was the very embodiment of the idiom: 'like a Magikarp out of water'.
Mew bless his heart, Azure had tried. He'd ordered her to take that dingy hat off and had even given her some not-torn clothes, but even then it was clear how uncomfortable and out of place the girl was amidst this crowd, to the point she barely said a word for what felt like hours. Until, at last, she broke that silence.
"Oh?" Azure lifted an eyebrow, putting down his glass of wine. "It's odd to hear you ask questions; you never were the curious type. That's why the higher-ups liked you so much, haha."
"Don't dodge the question," she replied, cutting. "Not that I care much. I just… after so long, I'd like to know. This guy… What are we to him? What are these Gyms to him?"
Azure let out a hearty laugh, reaching with one hand to pat Sabrina on the head, playfully ruffling her hair. An insult usually prevented by her trusty hat. Sabrina glared daggers at him from under his hand.
After a moment, however, he answered.
"You eight Gym leaders are… valuable trainers. That's all you need to know," he said, and a second later lifted his hand and raised it over his head, asking the bartender for a round of tequila shots. "But… who knows? Maybe you'll meet him in person one day."
He left a pause, a sinister smile frozen on his lips.
"Maybe he's even sitting alongside us right now."
The two shot glasses -one Sabrina's, one Azure's- hit the table in unison, followed by a sharp, pleasured sigh from their owners. It was four or five in the morning, neither of them were sure anymore.
The mafiovernment officials around them kept chatting amongst themselves, mostly about trivial stuff. The tone and volume of their voice, however, changed dramatically in pitch here and there when a certain something was brought up, but to Sabrina it was nothing more than background noise.
Something did catch her attention, though. Hushed, furtive whispers; mentions of a certain someone coming back to Saffron… judging by the tone of their voice, they must've been both admired and feared by them. But who-?
"Since you asked me a question before…" Azure's voice dragged her out of her thoughts. He was refilling the glasses as he spoke. Sabrina winced, preparing for the worst, and she wasn't wrong. "...I believe it's my turn now. What do you think about that man with the cross?"
There was a *tonk* as both glasses were slammed down again, followed by identical sighs.
"Why do you ask?" Sabrina formed a mocking smile as she refilled the glasses again, giving one to Azure. "Are you jealous or som-?"
" Yes ."
Sabrina's reaction was immediate; she choked on the tequila shot, coughing and spluttering it all over the table, earning the displeased eyes of all around her and practically burning her throat.
All she could hear was Azure's lively laugh. When she finally composed herself, she glanced at him off the corner of her eye. He was playing with her, surely. It was true he showed an unusual level of interest in her person, but to her… it looked like the same type of interest a Meowth showed a Rattata it had caught.
"...My turn," she said, trying to ignore what had just happened. "How…?"
As she refilled the glasses again, she thought she'd heard a commotion in the distance. Screams, chairs and people being thrown around. Nothing unusual there. Once more, the two of them drank the shot and slammed the glasses down on the table.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Eh? That's your question?" Azure smiled, genuinely surprised. "You're simpler than I thought, haha."
"Don't-"
It was then that they found the source of the commotion below. Or, more accurately, said source found them; pushing his way past the numerous guards standing at the end of the staircase leading toward the first floor, a tall, black-haired man made straight for the VIP table, stopping only when she found Sabrina.
A silver cross hung from his neck, resting against his chest.
"I… I came to challenge the Gym leader to a battle!" he screamed, raising a Pokeball toward her.
A long, ominous silence stretched for what felt like hours.
Then, when Sabrina's mind managed to comprehend the stupidity she'd just witnessed, she closed her eyes and let out a sigh, loudly slapping her palm against her forehead.
#10 Infected
A small can flew toward Sabrina's face who, exhausted, barely managed to catch it with one hand.
"What's this?" she asked. The can was pleasantly warm.
"It's called coffee," replied the man with the cross, sitting alongside her on one of the hanging steel beams, struggling to open his own. They were alone in an abandoned construction site west of the Gym. The sun was starting to rise. "You're drunk. No wonder you're often mistaken for a man; you drink more than one."
"That can be fixed," Sabrina muttered, warming her hands with the can. Autumn kept trudging on, promising a winter more ruthless than any before. "Your stupidity, on the other hand…"
The man was a complete mess. Drenched in blood, clothes torn and cut in various places and sporting a split lip and a black eye he'd surely be unable to open in a few hours.
Yet that stupid smile was still stuck to his face, only hidden when he raised the can to take a sip of his coffee.
"...Why did you do that?" Sabrina finally asked. "Sneaking into a party packed full of the most important and dangerous people in Saffron… just to fight me? I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here; I want to believe you had some other reason for such idiocy."
A shrug was the man's simple response.
"I couldn't attend our duel today," he explained. "And I promised I'd challenge you every day, didn't I?"
Sabrina stared at him, dumbfounded.
"...God."
"He's a great guy, yeah," he sighed dreamily.
"In any case… Why didn't you defend yourself?" she asked. "You obviously weren't going to win against such numbers, but with Pokemon like yours you could've taken down a few of them before they beat the shit out of you like that."
"Hm… I wonder why," he whispered, scratching his bruised cheek with a finger. "Maybe because I knew you'd stop them before they killed me. I knew you'd intervene, hehe."
Sabrina's eyes grew wide, and she immediately looked away with a 'Tch!', setting her eyes on the fire of the rising sun.
"I just felt sorry for you, like one does for a lame Growlithe. Don't get any ideas."
"Ha… bit late for that, I'm afraid."
#11 When?
"Sooo… you're supposed to be 'Sabrina', right?" the man with the cross asked, trying (and failing) to open a mustard packet for his tasteless lunch while they walked together through Saffron's black market.
Both of them were covered in cuts and bruises of varying severity, living proof of the Pokemon battle they'd had in the Gym only minutes before. Sabrina had mentioned something about buying potions and a TM that was for sale, as well as a bag of fertilizer for her garden, and her rival decided to accompany her on her shopping trip, ignoring all complaints on the matter.
"That's what they call me," she answered reluctantly, both hands in her pockets.
"Then that means… you can, y'know…"
He pressed a finger against his temple, screwing up his face like a prune; an expression so stupid and childish that the Gym leader could barely keep the corners of her mouth from perking up.
To answer his question, Sabrina narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, fixing them on the mustard packet the man held in his other hand. A moment passed, then two. Then, so suddenly that the man almost dropped his lunch, she squeezed her hand and the packet exploded violently, staining the man's jacket.
"Perhaps," the girl said, trying not to smile.
"WH-!?" The man blinked gormlessly, looking between her and his stained hand. "Y-you fucking-!"
"Well, hello there!"
He wasn't there one moment, and then there the next. Like a passing mirage, Azure appeared out of the corner of one of the stalls in the moment they weren't looking, hands held behind his back and a listless, cold smile on his lips. The complete lack of blemish on his person contrasted sharply with the filth around him. Sabrina couldn't believe they didn't see him coming a mile away.
As soon as he appeared, both trainers froze in their spot, unconsciously holding their breath.
"Having fun?" Azure asked with a small rise of the eyebrow. "It's not the place I'd choose as a spot for a first date, but eh… To each their own."
All color drained from Sabrina's face. Like the flash of lightning before thunder, she felt a horrible ominousness fall over her. Beside her, the man with the cross looked at Azure with wide eyes.
"What's with those faces?" Azure shrugged. "It's not strange for me to be here. I need to buy groceries just like any other citizen, don't I?"
The Gym leader opened her mouth to say something, but was just as swiftly interrupted.
"Oh, by the way, Sabrina… You have another challenger at the Gym. He's been waiting for you for the past, oh…" Azure stole a glance at his expensive watch, an unnecessary if not pointed gesture. "...40 minutes, exactly."
Sabrina let out a tired sigh. This would be her fourth battle of the day, and in all honesty she didn't see herself or her Pokemon having the energy to win. Then again, she had a nagging feeling that this challenger didn't actually exist, and that Azure simply wanted time alone with… the man with the cross. She reminded herself to ask him for his name at some point.
"...Right."
As she turned around to head back, Sabrina couldn't help but catch the moment both men's eyes crossed. Something… Something in Azure's bi-colored gaze… He was smiling, but…
Sabrina shook her head, and simply kept walking.
Must just be her imagination.
#12 Doing Time
Dragging a shovel across the pavement with one hand, a bag of fertilizer with the other and carrying a sleepy Abra atop her head, Sabrina emerged from her ever-filthier shed of a home. Instead of heading for the street, however, she scooted through a hole in the tall fence, into what one might charitably call a garden.
With a deep, tired sigh, she carelessly put down everything she was holding -including the Abra- with a deaf thump.
The place was a mess. The dry, sickly yellow grass reached up to her waist in the few patches where it grew, and the rest was covered in little shrubs, flowers and trees, all of them dried up, having died very shortly after she'd planted them. The mess of skeletal, blackened branches was sad to behold.
The only sign of healthy plant life was the tall, robust oak growing in the very middle of the 'garden'. Its leafy, vibrant crown contrasted sharply with everything around it.
The young woman stared ahead silently, her expression unreadable.
Then, with a quieter sigh, she rolled up her sleeves to the elbow and picked the shovel off the ground, ready to get to work.
#13 Empty Causes
"So, how did you end up here?"
The young man with the cross threw the question at Sabrina only moments after throwing himself to the ground, barely avoiding an Ice Beam from her Starmie that would've frozen him solid, and only moments before ordering a counter-attack of his own, which his Scyther executed swiftly.
"Here?" Sabrina repeated, eyes struggling to follow the two Pokemon's dizzying battle.
"Here, yes. Yours isn't a particularly common… nor a healthy profession." He pushed himself up, following the battle just as intently. "Not to mention illegal."
Sabrina scoffed. "I could ask you the same. Why do you waste your time coming here every single day?" She paused for a moment to bellow an order, then sighed. "Don't you have a hobby or something?"
"I asked first," the man replied with an annoyingly childish tone of voice.
Their Pokemon exchanged blows for a few unbearable long seconds; Scyther had split himself into countless mirages of himself, and Starmie-
"Psych Up!"
-alternated between short electric bursts to keep its foe at bay and beams of pressurized cold to catch him in between dodges. Neither of the trainers spoke for a few breaths.
"It's good money," Sabrina finally said. "I've got some debts, my mom… she's got medical issues that aren't cheap to deal with. Not the kind of money I could earn doing a normal-"
She choked on her words suddenly, at the realization that her opponent was looking at her with tears slowly forming in his eyes, lower lip trembling.
"Wh-Wait. Stop. Why are you-?"
"I KNEW IT!" The man bellowed, seemingly forgetting about the battle, his voice fraught with emotion. "The devoted daughter who sells her soul to the devil in order to save her mother… What a beautiful tale! See? Do you see now that God's love still lives inside y-!"
BANG!
A bolt of lightning the width of a person fell upon the man with ruthless speed, and he would have certainly been carbonized were it not for his Scyther jumping at the last moment to take the hit for him. He hit the ground with a deaf thump an instant later, smoking from head to toe, completely out of it.
"Tsk. I missed."
#14 Struck a Nerve
Afternoon was slowly giving way to night, the last orange rays of sunlight filtering through the leaves of the only tree in Sabrina's pitiful attempt at a garden. And there, resting against the trunk, the young Gym leader read a small, worn book. Her breathing was slow and automatic, thin wisps of cold vapor leaving her lips every time she exhaled.
The oak behind her remained as strong and healthy as ever despite the coming winter. A handful of Pokemon (both wild and belonging to the Gym) rested atop its many branches, including the infamous Abra who only knew Teleport, the first Pokemon she'd ever fought with in this place.
So immersed was she in the book that she didn't notice the man's presence until he knelt in front of her, peering over the book curiously.
"WH-!?"
Sabrina instinctively jumped, slamming the back of her head against the sturdy oak.
"Fuck! W-what… what the hell are you doing here!?" she sputtered out, rising to her feet in a panic. "There's… people guarding both entrances, how…!?"
The man with the cross formed a careless smile, arms resting over his knees as he looked up at her.
"I have my methods," he shrugged.
"What are you, a ninja?"
"Hehe."
After looking around for a moment, the man let out a whistle and pushed himself to his feet, dusting off his knees. "Anyway, what's this supposed to be? A setting for a horror movie? And what are you reading?"
Before Sabrina could stop him, the man was rifling through the small pile of books next to where she'd been sitting, inspecting the covers and authors.
"Robert Frost, Neruda, Stephen Crane…"
"T-that's none of your business, bastard!"
Only then did the man turn to look at her, and the little O that his mouth became told Sabrina she'd forgotten a very important detail.
"Hey, aren't your eyes a bit wet?" he said with sudden glee in his voice. "What, did one of these mean old books make the heartless Gym leader tear up?"
Sabrina's reaction was as swift as it was predictable.
"Shut up! This is… I got some dust on…" Seeing that her excuses were pointless, each one only widening her rival's amused smile, she decided to change her approach. "Bah! As if a brainless idiot like you could understand the beauty that lies in these-"
"Then teach me."
The man wasn't smiling anymore as he took a step toward her, staring straight into her eyes. And in that breathless moment, his usual childishness fell from his expression like a mask cracking, and beneath was the face of a more mature, deathly serious man.
"I want to see it too," he said. "If what your eyes see is truly that beautiful… then I too…"
The Gym leader's brain had turned off completely. It wasn't until the man spoke again, that listless smile of him returning that she could even take a breath.
"What's wrong?" he said, tone teasing. "Your face is all red."
#15 New Leaf
"You didn't answer me, in any case," the man said once Sabrina managed to compose herself. "What's this place meant to be?"
"A garden. What else?"
The man with the cross looked around more carefully this time, taking in the dry shrubbery, the sun-burnt flowers and the dried up trees that were never able to grow. And if that wasn't enough, he then glanced at Sabrina and raised an eyebrow to drive the point home.
"I'm trying, okay?" she complained, grabbing a cigarette from her pack. "I never said I was good at this."
"You clearly aren't," he said, immediately swiping the cig from her mouth.
"Those cost money, bastard."
"I already told you, you're too young to be smoking," he sighed, half concerned and half annoyed. "Anyway, how come the whole place is dead and dried up… except for this?"
He rapped his knuckles against the hardy bark of the oak giving them shadow. Sabrina was silent for a moment. The crease in her forehead was no longer due to anger, but something else.
"This one… I planted the day I got here," she said. "I don't know why, but it never dried up or got sick. I tried to plant some other stuff, and they grew well at first but… the more time passed, the harder it got to keep them alive." There was a pause. "Nowadays I can't make a sprout last longer than a few hours. It's like…"
"...Scary," the man whispered after a short, uncomfortable silence. "Maybe we're on top of an ancient burial ground or something."
Sabrina didn't hear him. Her gaze was a million years away, sad, so terribly sad. The man with the cross glanced at her again, his eyes momentarily losing that childish spark of theirs.
A cold gust of wind battered them from the side.
"Should we go inside?" he whispered, offering Sabrina a hand.
"Don't act like you own the place, dickhead."
#16 Marked
"We're gonna have a winter like salt on a wound, huh?"
The man with the cross looked at the inside of the Gym through the frosty, grimy windows outside while Sabrina finished locking up the front doors.
"Weren't you leaving?" she asked, exhausted. "We already fought today -another humiliating defeat, by the way- and I have other things to do."
"You fucking brat…"
Already narrowing his black eyes with anger, producing a Pokeball in one hand, the man paused all of a sudden as he noticed the dirty-looking bandage on the Gym leader's hand, uselessly trying to hide a nasty-looking burn mark. A product of one of her most recent battles.
"...What, you don't like the cold?" he finally asked, voice softer.
With a final click and a lock, Sabrina stood in place, pensive. Then, with some doubt in her voice, she answered.
"It'd be nice if it snowed. Then again, it hasn't snowed in Saffron for over fifty years, so…" She realized what she was saying and tensed up. "Not like it makes any difference to me," she quickly added.
"Ha! You are a brat, see? You wanna play in the snow, don't you?"
"Shut the fuck up."
With a gesture so casual it took Sabrina's brain a while to process, the man laughed and patted her on the head, rubbing her frazzled wool hat before turning and walking away. By which point, of course, he was too far away for Sabrina to insult him.
The Gym leader saw him slowly disappear, and a minuscule, almost invisible smile formed on her lips as one of her hands went to her hat.
"Wow! Are you really Sabrina!?"
"W-wh…!?"
Once again, just like a whisper, like a sudden winter chill. Sabrina turned around on a dime, and found Azure's face only inches from hers, those bicolor eyes of him drilling into her very soul.
"A-Azure…"
The smile on his lips didn't extend to his eyes. "You were running late, so I came to check on you… Hehehe…"
"Don't… Don't 'hehe' me," she sharply answered, pushing him away with a hand. Her expression had quickly hardened again. "And don't act like you're my nanny. You don't have to worry about me."
She dug her hands into her pockets and started walking away from the Gym, its shadow giving way to the last of the day's sunlight. Azure followed, of course, his footsteps as quiet as the grave.
"I'm afraid I can't help it. You've changed a lot, you know?" Azure commented with a singsong-y voice. "Those eyes of yours aren't the same as when you showed up here three years ago… there was a certain sharpness to them. But now they're more… human."
And as he said that last sentence, though his expression didn't change in the slightest, his voice dropped an octave or two. It was enough to send a chill down Sabrina's spine.
"Stop wasting my time," she said. "My shift's already over, but you need something from me, don't you? What's the job gonna be this time?"
"Hehe, but of course." There was a pause as Azure inhaled. Sabrina didn't know why the gesture felt so out of the ordinary. "I'll get to the point; there's a certain… favor we'd like to ask of you. A new facet of the job, you could call it.
"We… want you to help us kill someone."
And Azure's smile, in that moment, was wider and colder than ever before.