Chapter Eight: And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

Ever since the day the very first fire had risen into the sky, ever since the night the very first Litten had hatched into the world, there had been one protocol passed down from parent to kitten. A law older than the universe itself, ingrained in every level of the burning ones' society:

The white kittens were to die.

Of course, it hadn't always been written in the blood and violence and fury it had come to be - once upon a time it had been permitted for the kittens to be simply exiled, thrown away on the side of a mountain moments after birth, to be made a Stufful's meal. To spare the parents the trauma of their kitten's blood on their claws. But never, in all of history, had they been permitted to live amongst the Incineroar in civilized society. For they were made not of ash, not of fire, but of snow, of weakness, of deception revealing itself, turning to water against the sun's splendor.

(And as the heretics who disobeyed soon came to discover, there was a practical purpose as well - the white fur stuck out against the jungle darkness, and would reveal their hunting parties to prey, thwarting their hunts. Starvation was as good a punishment as any for doubting the ancestors.)

But times had come to change. Not enough to subvert the natural laws, but enough to sow seeds of doubt and dissent and dissatisfaction among the burning ones' community. Once, thousands of them had roamed these forests, now, there were only about forty-five of them left. Smoke - not their own holy smoke, but the demons' artificial mockeries - choked the air, stealing their breath. Sickness descended upon them.

So there was a need for a hero and a tyrant. (Among Incineroar, these have always been one and the same.) The one fated to lead them to paradise.

They called him He-Who-Wears-Flame-As-Shadow. The name given at birth had been lost to time, and as was customary in their culture, this moniker had come to replace it. He had come to the congress of the seven clans, and with charisma and honeyed words, had outlined his plan. Their salvation, he claimed, lay with whom until now they had believed to be their enemies. A ranch on the pink island.

The idea was controversial at first. Controversial enough to push two of the clans to storm out of the meeting right there and then, and to the present day no one knew what had become of them. But the five that stayed, as desperately independent as they may have been, had been also worn down by their tribulations, and accepted the offer of unity - with the qualifying mantra:

"Never shall we let them cage us; never shall we let them break our spirits."

Now, on this fateful night, He-Who-Wears paced around a patch of sickly yellow grass behind the ranch, his muscles rippling under his dark coat. On all fours now, as it exhausted him to tread on two paws, and the burden upon his mind was enough to bear as it was.

He had tucked the kitten under the bush. The kit's eyes still were closed, and would stay as such in the weeks to come. His paws had pressed through his eggshell before his time, shocking his poor mother. No mewls came from him in his ignorant slumber.

But He-Who-Wears could not bring himself to celebrate the coming of this Litten, his first son, into the world. For his kitten had come bearing a coat of white.

And so Aldina and Kirikai returned to the garden of the dead.

Aldina was... different. Pensive. Harmony - Kirikai - Harmony-as-Kirikai, Kirikai-as-Harmony, the actor had become the part - could only wonder what change had come about in her to make her frigid in this way. The summer of her soul giving to the winds of autumn. Perhaps it was the dreary atmosphere in the compound; sleeping on an inflatable cot with a hole in it which screeched bloody murder when either of them dared move atop it. Certainly neither of them had slept a wink.

Aldina wept. For what, Kirikai didn't know. But he had never seen her - or any god apart from the clockwork doll - display vulnerability to such a degree. It wasn't in their nature.

She didn't even crack a smile when the goddess she called an enemy fell onto her knees in despair upon her loss. The battle had not been difficult for Kirikai, but he still found himself exhausted - while her scaly green Metapod may not have had any tooth or claw to strike him with, its bursts of sticky white string had turned his every attempt at movement into a struggle. Afterwards, Aldina tried to simply brush the cords off him, but they clung to his fur and tugged at his skin, sending sharp, tingling spikes of pain up and down his body. In response, she cursed the other goddess for being a nuisance, a pest, a cockroach, not fit to tread upon the same ground as her, et cetera et cetera ad infinitum.

She did not acknowledge her Pokémon further. A bit of praise for his good work, Kirikai knew, was far too much to ask for. Instead Aldina hissed her grievances under her breath, too low for the other goddess to hear.

C:\gods\aldina: 'A Metapod. A friggin' Metapod. Now I think I see what Ilima meant.'

This was not a forgiveness. She looked off into the distance, searching for the next challenge. The next victory.

The flow of energy between them wasn't a rushing river as it should have been, but a mere trickle, a remnant of a rain shower pouring down a storm drain. Aldina was a miser when it came to sharing her power, and even more so when her heart was dark.

She was still kneeling by his side in the dust when they saw three others approaching over the horizon. One held some sort of controlled flame, casting a whitish light onto the ground and the gravestones they passed. The others still silhouettes in shadow.

Aldina took in a sharp breath.

C:\gods\aldina: 'Sun.'

It wasn't a question. Because Sun was aflame.

Radiant. Cloying packets of bright orange orbited him, bursting from him like solar flares. His cheeks. His shoulders. The tips of his fingers. As if he could live up to his namesake and birth into the world endless light with only a single thought. His own partner Pokémon, the little Litten who had spurned Kirikai in the past, strode by his side, amber eyes alight with an arrogant glee. Kirikai shivered.

Aldina, always one to play the lionheart, rose to her feet.

C:\gods\aldina: 'So there you are, Sun. Took you long enough. And you, Keon.'

There was a rumble of disgust audible in the latter name, but it went unacknowledged. Sun stepped forward, performing the Alola hand gesture.

C:\gods\sun: 'Alola, [Aldina]. I hope you didn't end up encountering any spirit Pokémon, either.'

C:\gods\aldina: 'Shut your trap and let's get to battling. Fire versus Water, is it? Doesn't exactly take a genius to predict the outcome of that matchup.'

C:\gods\sun: 'Wait, how did you know I -'

C:\gods\aldina: 'Your power. I can smell it on you.'

She was right. It was like ozone: acrid and slightly tart.

C:\gods\aldina: 'Are you even using a proxy? You're showing.'

C:\gods\sun: 'Of course I am.'

Sun held up something long and thin Kirikai could not make out through the darkness. But his attention was ripped away - without any further motion from the boy, Frostfire bounded forward and crouched into a fighting stance, beckoning Kirikai to do the same.

Kirikai had a cursory understanding of Litten-speak. His father dealt with their kind quite regularly, and Primarina voiceboxes were more suited to the sounds of their language than vice versa, so their species had to shoulder the burden of learning it. Kirikai found the finer details and divergences in other Pokémon's cultures and languages fascinating, so he had never minded. And it wasn't truly so unfamiliar - like in his own native tongue, the meanings of its words relied on the speaker's intonation. He closed his eyes, rummaging deep through his memories for the relevant words.

"I... am... ready," he said at last, clenching his muscles.

Frostfire didn't respond or show even the slightest sign he had heard. Surely, Kirikai thought, his pronunciation had been off: until he remembered he'd never heard Frostfire speak anything more than throaty snarls and muted growls. Even Lālā the Rowlet had attempted to communicate with him despite their language barrier, and so had Mizuki's mother's Azurill.

Those eyes, those amber eyes: a cold abyss, a gaping cavern. He wouldn't look.

A series of dull but undeniable aches rippled through him, and his tongue lolled out. Marion gasped.

C:\gods\marion: 'Are you sure you should even be letting Harmony fight? She looks positively ex-haw-sted.'

Aldina's reply came swift and absolute:

C:\gods\aldina: 'I don't have a choice.'

Kirikai could feel her eyes on his back, sharp and judgemental. Her thought nearly audible in his mind - showing weakness. Weakness accumulated over the past few days like impurities in a gemstone - the flow stopped once more. Refused. Locked out.

You're letting me down.

No. No, she couldn't lock him out, not now, not now, he begged her, don't be stubborn, please. He wasn't weak. He wasn't weak, if only she'd let him show her - !

C:\gods\keon: 'Sun's got this in the bag. I'd be willing to bet money on it.'

More doubt, a poison-tipped arrow in Kirikai's side. Sun furrowed his brow.

C:\gods\sun: 'Don't jinx it.'

Again and again Kirikai tugged, pleading, don't shut me out, don't shut me out, don't do this to me. A spurt of anger, too, arose in him - if you lose because of this, you only have yourself to blame.

He reached deep into himself, into his hydrant glands to suck the water into his throat - nothing came. She'd spoiled him too much. A Trainer offered their Pokemon their surplus energy, far more energy than a Pokemon could ever create by themself. But there was a trade-off: over time, the Pokemon lost the ability to harness energy by themselves. Without all three members, there was no triad.

Frostfire prowled, tail trembling with intrepid anticipation. Lithe legs and swift paws that could outmaneuver Kirikai with ease. A stray glimmer of starlight catching on his keen canines. Flame sparking in a flicker of a moment, poised to singe the fur off the Popplio's body. To expose the tender pink below; to wrinkle it to deep red, to necrotic black.

Kirikai's eyes went wide with explosive reckoning:

This is how I pay for my weakness.

The demons wouldn't permit them to practice their traditions. Even the more benign ones who had taken them in wished, deep in some cruel corridor of their hearts, to stamp out the burning ones' flame. They defied the natural laws decreeing only the strong should survive. Under their reign of terror, the white-furred kittens would live.

It had been a week He-Who-Wears-Flame-As-Shadow's son had been living under that bush when the truce was called. A negotiation between two feuding clans, Clan Tykaa and Clan Gryaan - the respective clans of He-Who-Wears and the kitten's mother, Rezaa. He-Who-Wears suspected Clan Gryaan had always been irritated their savior had come from the clan who, in history, had been their fiercest rivals, and over their time at the ranch, they had made themselves a constant thorn in his side. To them, each of his orders were mere suggestions.

The quarrel was over the fact a Gryaan member had mistakenly (or purposely - that was the trick, wasn't it? certainly they must have noticed the scent markings) trespassed onto Clan Tykaa's designated square of the ranch without permission. Territorial disputes seemed so silly now: a mere charade. This was not their land. This land was strange and flat, marred with dying grass, void of the beautiful variety of life found in their jungles on the red island. But the jungles no longer sang to their kind, and the charade was a necessity. The charade was survival.

In regards to their son, He-Who-Wears had had his words for Rezaa, a diminutive, soft-spoken Incineroar who wept pearls of weakness at the prospect of her son's death. The certainty of her son's death.

"Flame-Wearer-inya," she yowled, calling him by a love name only permitted to be spoken by one of his many mates, "I did not choose this any more than you did..."

Rezaa was correct. Fate struck callously, indiscriminately; each white one's coming was its collusion. Fate, and nothing more. He had accepted this and apologized to her.

The clans had always feuded. Violence was their calling, their existence, their truth. Peace was an artifice foisted upon them by those with no knowledge or respect for their traditions. The sky-fire burns to feed the grass, the grass grows to feed the Tauros, the Tauros roam to feed the Incineroar. This was the way of nature.

Yet, here on this ranch, there were tame ones. The Primarina especially had curled up right in the demons' lap, and one of them, their leader Timbira, had insisted on acting as mediator to the clan leaders' meeting. Keeping his eye on them, to ensure they would not plot against the demons' rule.

It was only natural those duplicitous Water-Types would see fit to do as such. Water was a necessary evil, created to be sipped of and bathed in, and nothing more.

Nothing more.

On the day of the meeting, the resentment He-Who-Wears had been stewing in still radiated off him in waves, even as he led the members of Clan Tykaa to the pasture where they had been meant to meet. Thick slats of wood marked the boundaries, their height up to about his waist. Usually, this pasture was home to a flock of Mareep and Flaaffy; they crowded in the corner furthest from the burning ones' gathering, fear in their eyes. Rezaa loomed at his back, jittery and slightly aloof.

"Take into consideration, Flame-Wearer-inya, that our clan burns fire just as yours does," she said.

"Of course, my Rezaa-ikya," he replied, his eyes intent on Clan Gryaan's leader: the honorable Uyuu-shazaa, who had ascended to the position quite recently and was far more charitable towards Clan Tykaa than his forebears. "If you will be willing to consider the same of mine."

The only one to overhear their exchange was the water-lover. Timbira's tail lay fleshy and bloated upon the ground, shaped like one of the seashell pastries his masters fed him. It disquieted He-Who-Wears to see his azure eyes lacked all light. A subtle squeak accompanied every breath he took, as if coming to settle himself here in the pasture had been a herculean effort. In his broken approximation of the burning ones' speech, he began his introduction to the leaders and their clans.

"And here," he said, his voice not strong enough to carry far, "is the most distinguished leader of Clan Gryaan, Uyuu-shazaa of the Moon's Shadow."

In response, Uyuu bowed his head. Timbira's beady, myopic eyes settled on He-Who-Wears.

"And this in concord with the celebrated one, leader of Clan Tykaa, known only as Flame-Wearer-inya."

At once an uproar arose amongst the gathered clans. The water-lover had called him by his secret name.

Perhaps if He-Who-Wears-Flame-As-Shadow had been able to see past the inferno of anger which enveloped him then, he would have considered that no one had ever told Timbira of the name's meaning. But the shock of the insult left him blind to sense. He thought not of how unbecoming it would be for a clan leader to give in to violence at a peace talk: had Timbira been one of their kind, of equal standing, it would be unthinkable.

But Timbira radiated what the burning ones loathed - weakness. He was less than.

An aura of thick shadow arose from He-Who-Wears' claws, and he bared his fangs. Uyuu, too, moved into an offensive stance, summoning a dark gauntlet of his own. Rezaa and the other Incineroar stayed a distance behind, wisely recognizing this as the leaders' battle to fight.

It seemed for a moment Timbira did not understand they meant to target him. He blinked slowly, sleepily, his eyes shifting from one to the other and back. Then the tendrils of his head-fur began to curl into themselves and rise up off his scalp, and pearls of moisture swelled in the air from nothing, gargantuan dewdrops sagging with their own weight.

"Stand down, my friends," he said, voice low. "If you do not, I will not hesitate to attack."

"It appears you have misunderstood our intentions, Timbira-vasaa," Uyuu hissed, drawing his claw in front of his throat to mimic what he intended to do to the Primarina. "Our kind may have our squabbles among each other, but we all burn with fire..."

(They all burned, He-Who-Wears thought then, even the white ones. And deep in his soul something fractured.)

Timbira opened his mouth to deliver his reply, but neither leader would stand for it.

"Unlike you, Timbira-vasaa, we will not stand to be their slaves. No matter how you seek to break us down. We will never..." He-Who-Wears motioned for the clans to finish the phrase.

"- LET THEM CAGE US!"

Timbira shook his head with vigor. "I believe you may be the ones misunderstanding my intentions, Flame-Wear-"

At once - twin sets of claws swiping at the Primarina's flesh, raking his tail up from the tip to the ring of pink spikes. In his shock Timbira could not retain the floating dewdrops, and they disintegrated, falling to the dirt with a mighty splash and soaking into the dust. He-Who-Wears and Uyuu, made one in shared bloodlust, gnashed their teeth and grinned. Scattered voices fought one another to be heard: the burning ones' various shouts of triumph overtaking the water-lover's shrieks.

Then their attention snapped to the farmhouse adjacent to the pasture. The water-lover's screams had managed to shatter a window, and a demon burst from the front door, tan and lanky, spewing words in its infernal language. In one great bound it leaped over the corral perimeter and released one of its slaves, a Flying-Type with a pair of sprawling black wings. The shadow descended over the crowd of burning ones, coming to circle over the clan leaders. Just out of reach of their itching claws.

Uyuu whipped back to Timbira. "The demon. What's it saying, myaaa? What's it saying?"

"'What's that noise', it is," the water-lover sniveled. "You hurt me. I hurt him. Now, he'll hurt you. That's what it is..."

The mantra. The mantra. They needed to remember - He-Who-Wears glanced over his shoulder to discover the rest of his kind had already scattered. The cowards. Self-made slaves, the lot of them. And yet he could not wipe the grin from his face.

More demons. Some wild-eyed and confined in terror; others pointing in delight at the rapture, at the spectacle of it all. He felt the urge to posture and take a bow to the adoring crowd, to force away the thought of the white kitten still looming in his mind. How wonderful it was to return to his theater again after so long away.

He couldn't clear the ecstasy of battle even when the first demon shouted and the Toucannon, alive with energy, slammed the brunt of its body into his. An odd sheet of distortion settled over his vision, and still he smiled.

Only when He-Who-Wears curled up in the straw pile in the stable stall they had forced him into did he come down from his high. The embers in his soul slowly withered, and in their place a frost seeped from the fracture, chilling him from his paws to the tips of his ears and tail. He leaned back, fading.

An odd noise from outside enticed him, and he angled his ears in its direction. The demons were rummaging through the bushes: the bushes that didn't belong to him or his clan or to Clan Gryaan. They belonged only to the demons and always would.

He didn't have to know their language to understand the meaning of their screeches of surprise. Tonight, he'd lose two things at once: his son and his pride.

The moment, the anticipation of the inevitable, was agony.

Frostfire was reveling in it.

The Fire Cat Pokémon circled the stone-still Kirikai, drawing his tongue across his fangs. The fur on his back poked up in clumpy spikes, revealing the red-hot fire glands at the tips. Aldina's lips curled into a wicked grin.

C:\gods\aldina: 'Sun, we're going to destroy you so utterly you're gonna sink below the ground and lie here among the corpses. There could be a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE tomorrow, and all the other dead people could rise up out of the dirt again, and you'd still stay there. That's how utterly annihilated you're both gonna be.'

Her energy had risen to a boil. Kirikai could sense its mighty tremble - and yet she still would not allow him even the slightest sip. The swagger was plastered on, all for show, and all of them knew it. Frostfire most of all.

C:\gods\sun: 'No reason to get so agitated. It's just a battle.'

C:\gods\aldina: 'I just was being hyper-bowl-ic. Calm your tits. Now, Harmony -'

Frostfire's fangs in his flipper. Kirikai rattled backwards, desperately attempting to shake him off. It didn't work - the force of Frostfire's bite was quite impressive, and as the Litten hung on his disgusting sandpapery tongue lapped over the skin his fangs had pinched. Again Kirikai begged for something from Aldina: even the mere trickle she had given before would suffice. His stomach rippled with a budding queasiness, and he pleaded with his own body not to give out on him now.

C:\gods\aldina: 'Harmony.'

The disappointment in her voice killed him.

Even when Frostfire released his grip a few moments later, the sting still persevered. Kirikai blinked at the punctures, hoping what he was seeing was but a trick of the moonlight - gleaming drops of liquid welling up to stain his fur. Breathe, he reminded himself. Breathe. You need to calm down. You need to calm down you need to calm down you need to - it wasn't working. It wasn't working, it wasn't working it wasn't wasn't wasn't wasn't

"Stay strong. Stand unyielding. Do not be afraid to show the world your true power."

Tauros' words. Who he was. He knew who he was, or at least believed he did, and he knew he wasn't weak.

To his back there was Frostfire. To his front there was Frostfire. He saw double, triple, a thousandfold. Frostfire was everywhere at once, and he was but a Pichu caught in his paws, helplessly awaiting the snap of his neck. It would be a mercy.

Claws now, raking his side. Another image, a recollection of the week before - his bones slamming against the headstone, the clockwork doll standing over him in triumph. Vision out of focus. Blood the same. Blood all the same, fuzzy, flickering, flecked with eigengrau.

Claws, fuzzy, red. Fangs, fuzzy, red. The energy as still as one of those corpses' hearts. Even if Aldina did change her mind now, he doubted he possessed the strength to harness it. From what he could make out from the light of the concealed flame, the proxy in her hair, a stunning yellow hibiscus, had yet to show any sign of decay. Not that he could get a good look, anyway - one of Frostfire's attacks had grazed his forehead, and he closed it eyes to prevent the ooze from trickling into his eyes.

C:\gods\unknown_location: 'I didn't even know they could bleed.'

Kirikai didn't recognize the voice speaking, but he did detect the mockery in their tone. He found it easy to reconcile it if he imagined it coming from Frostfire's jaws.

C:\gods\sun: 'Of course they can. They're alive, too. What did you think?'

Fuzzy, fuzzy, slick, glistening. Fuzzy, fuzzy, crackling, static...

At last, as if to answer Kirikai's prayers, Frostfire stopped and sat in the dust. His whole body rumbled with short purrs between panting breaths. A rack of ribs jutted from his chest, and even the outline of his own fire-producing gland was visible just above where his heart should be, swollen from repeated use. The edges of his mouth curled into a sly smirk.

"Who," he said in broken, garbled gasps, "are you really fight-ing, naaa? Harmony-vasaa?"

So he could speak. Just not well - his intonation was even worse than Kirikai's. And Kirikai understood the insult embedded within the honorific -vasaa. 'Water-lover', in a culture where water was sin.

"I'm fighting you," Kirikai said. Had he been aware of its equivalent word, he would have thrown in an 'obviously'.

Frostfire guffawed. "Naaa... na, not you would like to be activated, Harmony-vasaa?"

"Um... pardon?"

"FASS-ILL-IT-TATED," Frostfire yelled loud enough to startle the gathered gods. Spurts of cinder escaped his nostrils, and he leapt to his paws, re-energized.

Kirikai reflexively shut his eyes at Keon's awful screech of a giggle.

C:\gods\keon: 'What was that, its war cry?'

Sun shrugged. He shifted his feet, seemingly as antsy as the others, but still had yet to verbalize a single command to Frostfire.

C:\gods\sun: 'Wish I knew.'

Frostfire continued to pace a ring around Kirikai, his flanks swaying from side to side. Now he slipped behind the Popplio's back and into his blind spot, and in any normal circumstance, Kirikai would have moved to cover his vulnerability. But his curiosity gave him pause.

"What are you asking?"

"A puff of air only feeds a spark so long, yaaa," Frostfire said. "Something you want, I have; something you have, I want. Simple."

"...And that is...?"

"Demons, naaa," Frostfire said. "Masters. Switch."

The demons had found the white kitten, and now they all knew.

It had never been in the burning ones' tradition to punish the ones who spawned a white kitten, so long as they did not attempt to spare its life. It hadn't even been unheard of for legendary leaders themselves to have them. He-Who-Swims-Through-Fire-Like-Rivers had also had a white-furred kit, and his name was remembered fondly even a hundred years after his death. So it wasn't that He-Who-Wears would be seen as lesser for having one - at least not among those who already respected him.

But as a consequence of his hesitation (for, as he pleaded to the others, it was hesitation, and not unwillingness), He-Who-Wears had ensured his son would live. And not only would he live, but he would live as the demons' slave.

In other words, he had condemned him to a fate worse than death.

No. A fate worse than death would be to remain in the jungle. To lie catatonic atop a bed of foliage, coughing your lungs out from the noxious fumes choking the air, helpless to prevent your tongue and the underside of your paw-pads from spoiling a putrid yellow. To watch all those you've ever dared to love suffer the same fate.

This was... marginally better than death. Marginally.

Timbira boasted his idiosyncrasies; lounging around the ranch in mid-morning when the sky-fire was kindest; or at midnight, soaking up the moonlight his Fairy-Type deified so much. No matter what hour of the day it was, every time He-Who-Wears caught sight of him, his body shape seemed more and more to take on the roundness of a Sealeo's.

Now, He-Who-Wears did not seek him out intentionally. This was what he told both Timbira and himself. Timbira, for his part, was much more kindly and eloquent when he was faced with only one Incineroar and not fifty.

The kitten was his favorite topic of conversation. He-Who-Wears never was able to determine whether his nearsighted little eyes truly were blind to all the Incineroar's squirming. Rattata cloaked themselves against the darkness of jungle detritus; Timbira opted instead for his shroud of joviality.

"It is ice you loathe," Timbira said one particular morning. "I heard one of your Torracats curse on its name."

The two were out in the field, by rows of a newly sown crop neither of them knew the name of but, like most things on the ranch, was not endemic to this place. Murkrow circled high above, wishing to peck at the seeds, but the fully-developed Pokémon's presence cowed them, and they dared not descend. Behind the fences hung many trees of a variety Timbira called kamani. Their bark was quite dark; even darker than He-Who-Wears' own coat.

He-Who-Wears huffed and turned his head to the side. He knew precisely who Timbira was referring to - those delinquents, who had taken all the wrong lessons from his deferral. The ones who cursed him, too.

"Ice is a rarity," Timbira continued. "A treasure, made in the Above, by the gods. Not these gods, but our gods' gods. It is holier than holy. This is truth," he insisted. "Look inside yourself. It is there... or is it that you believe no truth exists in you?"

"You know nothing, Timbira-vasaa," He-Who-Wears said, and permitted a wayward naaa to trail his words.

Timbira nodded, quite nonchalant. "I know. I am forced to wonder why it is I find your kind so fascinating. It seems to me you have meticulously crafted your values to be as opposed to the gods' as possible."

"We hold to nature," He-Who-Wears said, puffing up with pride. "Nature crafted us. We are in its debt."

Timbira let out an odd little high-pitched squeal. "Foolish He-Who-Wears… do you not understand that the gods are nature?"

"So are we. And you."

Something out in the meadow caught Timbira's attention, and he turned away, silent. He-Who-Wears chuckled in triumph - his thoughts, so easily stolen. How pathetic.

Although, perhaps he couldn't blame him. At this time of year, the kamani bore large globes of ripening fruit, which hung tantalizingly over the fences. The maroon skin of the fruit shimmered with morning dew. Sometimes the littlest Littens and the foolhardiest Torracats would come here to bat at them, like they once had with the thick threads of ivy winding around slabs of bark.

Passing by a river, catching a glimpse of a shimmering Milotic warbling in its too-sweet siren-speak. The Milotic were creatures of legend to the burning ones; even their mere presence, they said, could calm a restless heart. His mother told her kittens stories of one that had seduced a clan leader and enticed him to fall into the river with it. On that day, the river had been swollen from a fading tempest; its rapids irate. The leader lacked even the ability to tread water, and the Milotic had rippled away, leaving him to his fate.

They called him a fool. The greatest fool to ever walk the jungle.

But something had driven He-Who-Wears to wonder: had he been happy in death? Perhaps even the brush of his lover's cream scales on his soaked skin, even her snippets of song struggling through the thickness of the water, would have been enough to drown his fears. He hadn't known where these questions came from, and he didn't want them rattling around in his brain. But it seemed any attempt to evade these thoughts only incited more to invade.

The tale had been with him the day he'd come across the thickest vine he'd ever seen, its end splitting into four leafy cords like a drooping flower's petals. He remembered pouncing and biting down and expecting sharp scales to pierce the inside of his cheek. He remembered his eyes trailing the sickly green scores and looking down to the plant matter on his claws, and padding away, abashed.

The fences kept them from really getting to know the taste of the kamani's fruit. He'd had to break up a scuffle between two Torracats from Clan Gryaan who had been arguing over which one would get to have the only one they had been able to paw out from under the fence. His mere presence had been enough to make them stop, but not for the reason he'd prefer.

"He won't even obey the natural laws himself. And he has the gall to tell us to? Our savior is a hypocrite."

He-Who-Wears let out a hefty sigh, arose onto two paws, and left Timbira to his ruminating.

At first Kirikai latched onto Frostfire's blasphemy, searching greedily for the perfect biting retort he knew lay within the annals of his mind.

Demons? he thought. The only demon here is you. And he smiled at his own wit.

Then he registered what exactly his opponent was proposing. His jaw fell open.

"That - that isn't possible," he stammered. "How would we ever pull it off? They won't know what we want."

"I am fass-ill-it-tated," Frostfire yowled again, his eyes closing in self-satisfaction. A shooting star's tail of sparks flew past him. "It is my weight to carry. He will know."

"You know that won't last forever. It won't last after the battle."

Frostfire cocked his head. "After battle? Why us need wait?"

He wanted to switch right this moment? For all of Kirikai's fears, he couldn't gather why Frostfire would find it so urgent, especially now that he...

He will know. Sun, across the strip, still alive with energy. Energy going nowhere as Frostfire stayed his claws. Sun... why Sun? What did Sun have to offer him that Aldina couldn't?

The answer slipped in at once, swift and unbidden: Love.

Aldina - no. Mizuki. Her Name was Mizuki and she wasn't his creator, she wasn't a goddess, she was a person. And not even a fully grown person. A mere pup. She hurt and hated and blamed others for her own flaws. Perhaps the Incineroars' name for her kind truly was more apt. Demons.

But the word demon implied an evil she simply did not possess. Would a demon be able to feed Kirikai, and give him shelter, and grant him their energy without requiring something in return? The Incineroars did not know what demons were. Demons only had the capacity to take, and take, and take.

But, he considered then, Mizuki knew exactly how to take. The cost of her energy was life. A flower wilts. Beauty dies against them.

Didn't she love him? Perhaps not enough to respect who he was, but - but, maybe she had been right all along. He was a weapon. He had been born a weapon, a tool, the same as the Litten facing him now. They were the same soul in different skins. If he couldn't act as what he had been created to be, he didn't deserve love or grace. For her to afford him her power would be for her to waste it.

"We have no voices," he protested, resigning to his fate. To his emptiness. The end was in sight, and he could nearly feel its embrace. Aldina - Mizuki - would take him to the Pokémon Center, and she'd forgive him and tell him it was alright and she loved him. And maybe, just maybe, he'd rediscover some once-lost strength inside himself to squeak to her the same.

Frostfire smiled sadly. "Not as they do, naaa. But you have many feelings... that's what matters right here, right now. Not good form to give up."

Kirikai's eyes wandered to the red, which had come to wind down his flipper and stain the ground. In the corner of his eye lurked the clockwork doll's shadow. The spikes of fur on Frostfire's back had flattened, making him appear much softer. The river of moonlight warped around him, as if he were but a pebble in its way.

"You must be..." he paused, searching for 'deceiving' and settling on the closest approximation he knew. "...Doing wrong... to me. I don't think you would give up 'facilitated'. I know I wouldn't."

"You know not me," Frostfire said. "You know not my life, my past. You know not my want."

Not for certain. But Kirikai did believe he had an idea.

"You have always been... wanted," Frostfire continued. "My kind kills us white ones. Only demons stop them. You know not what it is to be not wanted anywhere. But her wants me. Sun not want: he think me bad. He think himself bad too."

"Bad? Why?"

"Do not know. Demons demons for a reason. They no know laws of nature. They make selves complex and world is simple." Frostfire smirked again. "Stupid demons. Stupid Sun."

The excitement of the gathered children had come to wane over the course of the battle, and now they started to simmer with actual anger. Mizuki clenched her jaw and dug her heel into the ground. The sandy-haired boy had taken a seat against one of the headstones and appeared to be dozing. Marion, too, a little ways off from him.

The only one to retain their focus was Sun. He was... elsewhere, Kirikai thought. Beyond. He felt if he were to look into his eyes he might be able to steal a glimpse of some higher plane.

C:\humans\keon: 'Holy shit, when is one of them going to do something?'

Sun rolled his tongue, mulling over his response to Keon's words. But Mizuki beat him to the punch.

C:\humans\mizuki: 'Harmony's got a lot left in the tank. Don't underestimate her.'

Kirikai struggled upright, gritting and gnashing his rows of flat teeth. An odd sensation came over him, as if he had become the axis of the Earth's orbit and could feel the stars spinning around him in the Above. And their eyes.

Oh, their eyes.

C:\humans\sun: 'You're bluffing. There's no way you honestly believe that. You'd have to be blind not to see she's this close to fainting.'

(So that was what the spinning meant. Their eyes, so eager to bear witness to his glorious defeat.)

C:\humans\sun: 'You've been overworking her, haven't you? She couldn't have gotten this way from only one or two battles.'

C:\humans\mizuki: 'It's true we've been training a ton. But I wouldn't call it overwork. It was only a little more than I do on the regular.'

C:\humans\sun: 'But Harmony isn't used to your schedule. She isn't used to training for hours and hours on end.'

Kirikai shut his eyes. I am not weak, he thought, trying to will it straight into Sun's mind. Imagining it as an arrow aimed to pierce the veil of flame surrounding him. I am not weak.

C:\humans\mizuki: 'Well, she oughtta get used to it. A Pokémon's a reflection of her Trainer. Everyone knows that. Even you.'

The sparks around Sun seemed to gain minds of their own: they swirled around him, shielding him like a curtain. A few stragglers blasted straight into the dust, persisting for a few moments longer before finally dying out. Sun arched his shoulders and raised his balled fists. Mizuki stumbled backwards, spooked by his sudden animation.

C:\humans\sun: 'No, no, no, they aren't! That's not how this works. That's not how ANY of this works. She's not a toy for you to play with or a screen for you to project what you like onto. And - and, yes, neither is Frostfire. They are what they are. Not what we are.'

C:\humans\mizuki: 'You aren't even proud of him, are you? You can't even appreciate what you've got right in front of you. That's pretty damn sad.'

Sun softened, but disappointment marred his voice.

C:\humans\sun: 'That's rich, coming from you. Don't think I don't remember what you were going to say back at the malasada shop.'

What Mizuki had been intending to say. Kirikai had tried to shove it away into the back corner of his mind, where he could safely forget all about it and call that forgiveness. He ought to curse Sun for picking at the scab. For making it real. His heart cratered.

With a single sentence, she had let her mask slip. Shown him a glimpse of some shadow-creature underneath, rumbling with unspoken loathing. He could call it a trick of the light, or a fault of his vision, or a nightmare his mind had made a memory. But the memory would always linger.

C:\humans\mizuki: 'If I hadn't been so set on getting a Popplio, one of you'd be stuck with...'

C:\humans\mizuki: 'stuck with'

C:\humans\mizuki: 'stuck with'

stuck with him.

But she hadn't really meant that -

Don't kid yourself.

Eyes on his back again - Mizuki's, Sun's, Frostfire's, all the others'; those of the god living in the moon, those of the stars, and those of the dead under his flippers. He wanted to crawl into the earth and join them down there forever. Then they'd really be stuck with him.

He recalled Mizuki wild and manic, ordering him to slam his flippers against an unlocked door. Remembering the fluid, her wails, his wails, vision going black. Why had that happened? This world puzzled him at every turn and she wouldn't be the one to help him solve it. She wouldn't care for the answer. If anything, she was the question.

What had Frostfire said? The world was simple? What a joke.

When he turned back to him, Frostfire dipped his head, his mouth still cut into a smile. "Not worth it," he said. "Better this way. I didn't get before, but now I respect."

Kirikai drew in a breath. Find his strength. Find his strength. It was in there somewhere: he was a fount of it. Why had he ever allowed her to plant those insidious seeds of doubt in his mind? "I... I respect you as well."

"We both respect," Frostfire said. "Let us do it."

He wound his agile body into a ball, his mouth moving. No sound came to accompany it apart from his ragged breaths. The world paused under Kirikai's flippers.

Nothing moved.

Then -

Mizuki, Frostfire, proxy. Triad, activated.

Sun, Kirikai, proxy, and her. Tetrad, activated.

Who was that? By his side now. Orange sparks of light orbited him, too. There was a woman dancing around the edges of the strip, and the shape of her was blue fire. The word goddess, Kirikai thought, might not be such an exaggeration now. She waltzed to his side, picked him up in her elegant arms, and pointed to a tower of water, reaching to the sky, past the clouds, to the edges of the ever expanding universe. Like a mighty Milotic from one of the old legends, said to be the only Pokémon with beauty comparable to the gods'.

This was it. This was facilitation. Kirikai stared at the tower, transfixed. With each beat of his heart it grew taller and wider and he could feel its ocean spray on his face and a hand on his back, stroking his fur the way the clockwork doll had. But with feeling. He blinked and he and the goddess were standing at its apex and Sun and Mizuki and Frostfire and all the others were ants and out in the distance Hau'oli was nirvana, teeming with a swirling neon luminosity. From this angle, he could cobble together an image of the whole shape of this island.

Below him, the world was revolving.

The two of them slid down the liquid tower wall, him tangled in her arms, her chuckling in his ear. Sun and Mizuki still stood deadlocked, still as statues and seeming just as tall, and neither spoke. The connection transfer was subtle to the outside observer and obvious to the both of them. Mizuki's eyes had gone wide. Sun...

Sun was dazzling as he never had before.

"You're a very kind-hearted little one," the facilitator said. She had no breath, and yet he swore he still could feel it on his ear. He imagined the lushness of her voice would make even a Primarina prickle with envy. "Aren't you? You are. Now, tell me: what's your name, little one?"

A Name. What an odd little thing a Name was. A Name made something real, didn't it? Kirikai, 'revolution', around his Sun. How fitting.

But... he wasn't meant to revolve, and he didn't want to be revolved around. He understood his father had intended only good when he'd selected his name, but he'd risen above the need for it, like a Metapod evolving, escaping its chrysalis. Sodden wings drying and unfolding to take to the sky: his birthright.

No, the two of them should ought to live in peace, waltzing to the same tempo, the beat of their hearts in synchrony. This decision was the both of theirs, and theirs alone.

That was how it was meant to be.

So let it now be reclaimed:

C:\humans\sun: 'Harmony.'

Harmony resolved.

And she was at his back, the boy's mother, petting him, stroking his fur, whispering encouragements like incantations to stir his soul. Harmony, show yourself. Your very very truest self.

C:\humans\sun: 'Harmony. Water Gun.'

"I hear you loud and clear."

Frostfire froze; then deftly juked aside to dodge Harmony's incoming spurt, his tail whipping away like a ribbon in a zephyr. But his eyes had gone to slits, and his smile faded.

I've got you now.

Harmony couldn't avoid another slash. As powerful as the energy was, it couldn't overcome his lack of mobility. But it could aid him in his recovery, and he leaped to the side, hydrant glands ballooning again. In his chest this time: there was a subtle burble as it expanded against his other tissues. In his excitement and his overflowing he hiccupped a bubble.

C:\humans\sun: 'That's my Harmony.'

"We are on equal ground now," he said in his own language. "We are -" another spurt - "One and the same."

Frostfire shut his eyes against his water. At the points where it struck his fur, bursts of steam arose and snaked off into the gloom. "Of course," he said, catching Harmony off-guard. It hadn't been him he had intended to address.

"You can speak Popplio? Why didn't you say anything?"

"All the same to me," Frostfire said in between pants. "Language never come natural. Nothing ever do. Only battle."

He stretched his legs, his tail winding upwards, his joints giving an audible pop - then dropped into the hunting crouch. The sound of his steps escaped Harmony's ear, but the blades of dead grass rustled slightly.

The inevitable pounce wasn't as fluid - Frostfire stumbled, leaving an opening for Harmony to sweep him off his paws and onto the green. His flippers slapped against him in repetitive taps, tap, tap, slap, thwapp, thwapp, until Frostfire let out a tortured growl, sprung back to his paws, and tackled him. The both of them toppled over, tumbling and tussling.

This was what it had come down to: a steam-powered catfight.

And a catfight it was. The sparks flew to Harmony's aid, shielding his eyes from Frostfire's wanton slashes. He could only force one back open, and when he did he saw his water had a fresh tint of red. Or perhaps it was only the faint luminescence of the Litten's stripes bronzing it.

Fluid erupted from Harmony's throat, and he couldn't recall ever having been able to produce so much of it. He was the ocean, long and deep and vast, carrying all Alola in his safety. There was no need for him to spare a thought to aiming with Frostfire this close; close enough for their ribcages to touch. By this point, Frostfire's eyes had gone crossed, and he returned to speaking in tongues:

"Grra... rrnya... frrygraa... paa-shaa... aaaaa... vsaaa..."*

And in a flicker it was over.

The tide receded, and the pain rolled in, seizing Harmony's muscles. He peeled off Frostfire, and Frostfire off him, and the two collapsed in tandem. Puffs of steam still blew from the spot where they had met, languidly rising, curling around the shape of the full moon in the Above. If he focused his good eye straight on it, on that island in the sea of dark, Harmony could almost believe he was okay.

The two lay side by side, heads aching, bodies aching, souls aching. The kids trembled closer, and dared to peer through the light of the controlled flame. Chatter overlapped, and somehow, the children spoke in Harmony's language, soothing him. For the very first time, they were knowable.

"- they were so close -"

"...but what are we going to do? What's Ilima going to..."

"...just downright evil, you know, to let him go for the eyes..."

"We were so close."

Mizuki.

"We are so close."

And Sun.

A blur spindled around the edges of Harmony's vision, like the old Tauros' cataracts. He blinked over and over again but still it loomed there, a prophecy of coming silence. A dark little respite.

You fought hard. You fought well. I'm proud of you, Harmony. You've got a lot to be proud of.

The world revolved under him, and a faint nausea arose in the pit of his stomach. The blur deepened, cut apart to black threads.

What did you think of... my true self? Did you like me?

I did, Sun thought to him. I do.

The Spinarak-veins took over, and Harmony's world gave to shadow.

The kit was right in front of him. Eyes open now, and like mirrors, reflecting his own amber stare. The cut of his jaw defined in a way only the two of them shared.

"Papa-shazaa," the Litten said. "Papa!" And he ran into He-Who-Wears' embrace. "Papa, when I can come home with you? Want meet everyone! Timbi-vasaa tell me all 'bout Clan Tykaa." He took a deep, sharp inhale, puffing out his chest. "Gonna be greatest warrior! To ever live ever! 'Cept you, of course. But me great too."

His words were… nigh unintelligible. His motions slow and sluggish, like Timbira's. There was a transparency, a wet glimmer in his eyes - had Timbira been lying to him when he had said his son wasn't emotional? He thought, how exhausting it must be to be measured by such arbitrary standards. How crushing.

"Papa-shazaa? Alright you?"

He-Who-Wears snapped out of his trance. The kitten was frozen.

"Perhaps someday you will, my kit," he managed, a purr rumbling in his throat. "It isn't good form to give up. We are called the burning ones for a reason. Our souls..."

He couldn't continue. But the Litten smiled.

"Souls burn brightly," he said. "All of us. Thank you, Papa."

"Yes; I thank you as well," He-Who-Wears said. "Now, you, um... why don't you go..." He cleared his throat, coughing out a bit of ash that had escaped into his windpipe. "Ah, ugh, 'Timbi-vasaa' and I have much to talk about, and we'd like to be alone together. Why don't you go off to play over by the fence?"

The Litten's eyes lit up. "Yeah, yeah! Let play!"

He dashed off towards the edge of the corral, whooping and hollering. A flock of Trumbeak soared overhead, the sound of their wing flaps nostalgic to He-Who-Wears' ears. Even after they made their diving descent and the woods swallowed them up, his son sprung into the air, his tail a zigzag.

"Hi, Trumbeak-rrnya! Got to meet me Papa-shazaa today! Bye, Trumbeak-rrnya!"

"And there he is," Timbira said. A purr rumbled from his throat, natural in a way He-Who-Wears had not heard from an outsider before. Perhaps having the Litten bumbling around his fancy living quarters had stirred him to brush up on his Incineroar. The gesture might have made him feel honored if it weren't Timbira. "Your son. He doesn't have a name as of now - I assume that's your job?"

He-Who-Wears cast him a slanted look. How like Timbira to assume the customs of his kind were the customs of the world. "He will not receive a name. Not from me."

The Primarina squeaked, "Why not?"

"Not now," He-Who-Wears said, casting his gaze to his son. The Litten pranced around, his tail high in the air, his paws crusted with mud from a recent rain. His white fur as well, in speckles and streaks and uneven-edged splotches. The earth suited him, He-Who-Wears thought. Accentuated him.

Timbira cocked his head. "No name at all? Not even as a parting gift?"

The shock in He-Who-Wears' features was more than adequate as a reply.

"He will be going away soon," Timbira explained. "The gods plan to take him and train him as their own, as they did me. It is not normally in their nature to give away an oddly-colored Pokémon; but since he is less wild-natured than the others, I find it likely they will see fit to send him."

He-Who-Wears shifted his weight. "And why do you believe that? You know little of our clans' Littens."

"One of them scratched one of their pups. They consider the rest of them feral."

"That's all? That's typical of our young ones."

"I know these things," Timbira asserted. This was the sort of maddening thing he said when intending to shut down all further conversation. He-Who-Wears pressed on through his irritation and bowed his head.

"I am in your debt, Timbira-shazaa," he said slyly.

Timbira's eyes turned to slits. "As you should be, Flame-Wearer-inya."

He spoke it as if it were a joke, but there was no humor in his expression.

He-Who-Wears took a step back and settled down onto his paws. "There was once a theory among our kind," he said, "that no matter how or when or where a Litten was raised, in their hearts, they would still always hold true to our values. They still would know our words from birth. If nothing else, Timbira-vasaa, I thank you for fully killing this belief."

A yell sounded from out at the edge of the corral: a kit's roar of triumph. The two turned to see He-Who-Wears' son chasing his own tail, stepping in a puddle of sticky juices from a fallen ballnut nearby. He paused and stuck out his tongue to reveal the fruit's pit, which he'd pinched through its flesh with his needles of fangs to retrieve.

"Got one," he said, the presence of the stone garbling his words. "Got one! Got a fruit, got a fruit, got a fruit!"

The ballnut at his paws yet to ripen, but it had fermented in the heat and the exposure. Several spots of gray marred its skin, and one side had almost collapsed into itself, forming a blackening, squelching, almost waxy mass. The Litten gave one of his hind paws an eager lick, and his face scrunched up.

"Kyuhhh... Guhh! Bitter, bitter, bitter! Not good! Don't want!"

He flailed his body and tail about, as if the fruit had engaged him in some kind of full-bodied assault; in his distraction, he stumbled and smacked his head right into the side of the fencepost. He spat out an array of sparks (clear evidence of a lack of control) and scratched his ear. Timbira called out to him in his language - in their language - and he perked up, his eyes still crossed.

"Papa-shazaa," he said, shaking his chin. "Got a fruit?"

"Eh?"

The Litten angled his tail towards the mushy, flaccid drupe. "Ever had?"

"No, I've never had one," He-Who-Wears said. "Our kind wasn't made to eat fruit... we should be eating meat. It's what fuels our flame best."

"Never eated meat," the Litten said flatly. "Only other. Like Berries 'n Poffins 'n things."

"But, but," he continued in response to his papa's fallen face, "I do it. Like to try."

"Soon," He-Who-Wears promised, with a Xatu's confidence.

Well, it was no wonder, then, the kit was so thin and bony. A Litten who had never tasted meat before. What had this world come to?

"I think Poffins are delicious," Timbira agreed. "Can you believe your father's never had a Poffin either, kit?"

The Litten nearly rocketed into the air. "Can't believe! Poffins best of all! Can't live without!"

"Well," He-Who-Wears said, "my son, could you believe there's a meadow where Poffins grow on trees, and on vines, and under bushes?"

Timbira turned to him, perplexed. By contrast, his son's eyes had gone wild with wonder. "Poffins grow?"

"Past the top of Mount Lanakila is a place where anything you believe in will come to pass," He-Who-Wears told him. "You wander past slicks of ice and through drifts of snow and you look to the horizon - boop! Blam! There it is. Good things always hide where you least expect to find them."

The Litten frowned. "That truth? Doesn't sound truth."

He-Who-Wears smiled. "It's all true. The truest thing you'll ever hear. The very first one of us to walk this earth, He-Who-Dreams-Of-What-Is-Beyond-The-Mountain, found it, and it gave him the power to make us what we are. And..."

If anyone overheard what he was to say next - anyone from Clan Gryaan, from Clan Tykaa, from any of the clans, even his beloved Rezaa - he would be dead. The burning ones would dare slaughter even their savior for such blasphemy, and slaughter him gladly.

He-Who-Wears took a breath.

"They say he bore a coat of white."

It was likely to be at least a week before they finally took him away, Timbira assured him. Ten days. A fortnight. He had nothing to worry about.

But it was the very next morning that Timbira glanced into the makeshift Litten-bed they'd given him, come to sing him his daily morning-lullaby, and found nothing there.

The shadow of the trial captain descended over the clearing. Ilima stood in the corner behind Mizuki and Marion, his Smeargle at his side; no one had noticed his arrival, or seen from which direction he had come. His mouth was cut into an impartial V.

"A mid-battle trade," he said. "I've never seen that with my own eyes before. How intriguing indeed."

"I didn't even know that was possible," Mizuki said, breathless. She bent down to take Frostfire's fallen form into her arms, and gently ran her fingers down the length of his body. His skin was like burlap, wrinkling and folding against her.

Ilima smiled. "There are a great many things, my dears, that you have yet to learn are possible. But it won't be long before you have the opportunity to discover them for yourself."

A moment passed before Sun caught on to Ilima's implication. He squinted, searching through the eigengrau for evidence of the captain's sincerity - then a grin overtook him.

"Wait! Does that mean, even though we tied..."

"Yes," Ilima said. "Yes, Sun. You will both be receiving your island challenge amulets tonight. You've both done very well."

Euphoria. Perhaps it was only her by his side, but Sun swore it had never come to him with such intensity before. He couldn't even find it in himself to care that Mizuki didn't share his smile. She closed her eyes and put her palm on Frostfire's cheek, brushing his whiskers to one side.

"Frostfire," she said. "That's his name, correct?"

He hardly realized she was addressing him - it seemed so trivial now, with Ilima taking the others aside into the darkness. Yes, he mumbled, that was what he had called him, and she could change it if she wanted - but she said it again. Frostfire. Coming from her it sounded natural.

"Hey, Mizuki," he said, a blush painting his cheeks, "why did you call Harmony a girl all this time?"

"Hmm?" Mizuki buried her nose in Frostfire's fur. "Oh, that? Well, I mean... I guess... I know, like, Primarina, and stuff... I mean, I always thought about having a Popplio, and in my mind it was always a girl Popplio. Hau said he always had wanted a Rowlet, too, so..."

She wisely cut herself off and procured a shrunken Poke Ball. It rolled pathetically around her sweat-covered palm. "It doesn't matter. She's all yours now."

The protocol to make the transfer official was simple. The two both recalled their new Pokémon, and pressed their thumbs onto their respective Poke Balls. A voice erupted from Sun's Pokedex:

"Registered to Trainer no. 9981527: Harmony. This Pokémon's Original Trainer is Trainer no. 9945162. This Pokémon's data has been added to the Pokedex."

The two let out synchronized sighs. Exchanged glances.

"Well, that's it," Mizuki said, clutching the strap of her purse closer to her side. The motion didn't escape Sun's notice: it comforted him to believe Lillie's habits had persevered at the Children's compound long enough for Mizuki to mimic them. "Um, see you soon. On the island challenge, I guess."

She wore the shadows as her cloak. Before Sun could respond, she turned and marched away, allowing them to swallow her. He stared out after her for a heartbeat... then grabbed the brim of his cap and settled down, pivoting on his heels to where he knew it awaited.

"Hey."

The voice was gravelly, like the roll of steps over cobblestone. He'd never heard it before in this way, with the only sound in concord being the distant chirps of Zubat answering other Zubat, conductors and performers of their own perpetual night symphony.

No, he'd never heard it before at all.

"Hey, Mom?"

He stood there bathing in the darkness, the stillness, the chill of the night, and he had to wonder whether this life was nothing more than a series of sufferings, razor blades strung along a wire. But his voice stayed with him.

"Thank you. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for helping us find each other. I love you. Forever."

The sparks around him at last drifted to the ground. He sought to cup one in his palm, but there was nothing material in it for him to hold. So he just stood back and watched them sizzle and shrink. Fade into wisps and then into nothing. Fading, fading, fading, and the afterimages too, wobbling and indecisive, like a toddler taking its first steps. Before realizing what he'd done, he wiped his forehead, thinking he might have felt a pressure there. A kiss from the beyond.

Then - a crunching of leaves. He turned around to see a figure emerge from behind the curtain of shadow. Mizuki.

"Sun! I, I..." she panted, taking a moment to catch her breath, and held something out to him: a gallon-size plastic bag. "This. We still had a few from when my - my sister, and..."

Sun took the bag. He pressed his fingers into the bottom, and its contents had the texture of one of those toy rolling pins made to mash putty, odd and spiky. "Your sister?"

Mizuki went flush. "I - ugh. Your stupid star candy! Just take it already."

The star candy? Konpeitō. Bits of crystalline sugar, red and blue and green and yellow. They were translucent in the midnight, like tiles on a stained-glass window.

"Oh, I don't..." he stopped himself and took a step back. It couldn't hurt to have. "Um, thank you. Seriously, thank you, for this, for Harmony, for..."

The two of them. They'd connected during that battle too, hadn't they? There was, he supposed, a sort of tenderness to be found in the relationship between two rivals. An odd camaraderie. Like Red and Blue.

No. His lip curled at the thought. No way in hell he would ever think about marrying Mizuki. It wasn't like that.

"Oh," Mizuki said, impassive. "It's fine. It was nothing. Nothing at all."

Through the trees, the wind picked up, tousling both of their mops of black hair and forcing Sun to hold his cap steady.

"It was Frostfire," Mizuki said. "Frostfire, you know? I think I was right all along. You were so concerned with yourself, you never thought at all of him." She shook her head. "Play with Harmony a lot, okay? Read him books. He likes those. Fiction more than strategy guides."

"I... I can do that."

"I know you can." She brought her face close enough to his for him to make out her playful smile. "I don't want a rival I know I can't lose to. I've got enough to worry about already. You can be my barometer." She chuckled, her features softening. "Yeah, my thermometer! I'm going to blaze brighter than you, Sun!"

Sun stood there open-mouthed, scrambling to think of another word ending in "-ometer"... but her two-fingered poke to his forehead tore him back.

"Tag, you're it!"

Mizuki skipped back across the strip, her hair bouncing with each step. Sun broke into a peal of laughter and took off after her, and the night and the garden and the stones faded around them, blurring, with only the moon and stars as their constant. The air smelled of fresh rain and ripened fruit.

It feels good to at last be with the right person. It feels good to be seen as an equal, and not a tool. It feels good to be facilitated.

That's what it is, isn't it? The humans say, "love conquers all". Love perseveres. Love can bind us all together. If only we'll have it.

I don't know. I don't really see myself as 'male' or 'female', to be honest. Our species doesn't see it in such black and white terms. In fact, when I think of 'me', I don't think of a Popplio at all. I see a nascent sunrise sweeping over a valley. I see my friends and my family, lounging by a lakeshore and enjoying each other's company. I touch and hear and taste of all the world has to offer. I feel much more of a connection to these images than I ever will to my body. Is that strange?

It's hard, because I don't feel as if anyone would understand. Not even Sun. And that's lonely.

What the old Tauros said, about 'paradise'. Even my father calls these islands paradise. But this isn't paradise, is it? Even if we could create peace on earth in this lifetime, it wouldn't be paradise. Not when we're still stuck in these arbitrary bodies with arbitrary boundaries. People and Pokémon look at me, and they see a Popplio. They don't see all the emotions and desires and ideas making up Harmony.

That is my name. Harmony. This is the name you have given me, and this is the name I will accept. I will follow you. But I will not allow you to bend me to your will. I will not permit you to make me your weapon.

Never.

*Litten-speak for "Screw you bastard water-lovers; Papa-shazaa was right about you all along."

If you're reading this, I want you to know that you are loved; and I also want you to know, no matter what is eating away at you, it will be okay. (The world) is an evil, evil place and we have to resist it. Don't let it make you its plaything. Don't let it wear you away. I deeply, deeply appreciate you, and I want you to be safe.

That doesn't have anything to do with the chapter, but I know the people who require it will find it. It will reach them.