The Agent
The koiking grass is blooming in the five valleys.
The thought dogged Lance as he hiked up Rabenda Mountain. Shoots of lavender sprang from every dip and crevice off the rocky path. But Lance's mind transformed the sweet-smelling sprigs into the gape-mouthed flowers that shot up each April in the Ryu's Gift, a dazzling sweep of orange, gold, and red, until the open circle of each valley became like a lake teeming with koiking.
"Back home," Lance murmured. When he didn't finish the sentence, Kaisho let out a tremulous trill from Lance's shoulder. What would be the point of describing it? "You'll see it for yourself one day," he told the miniryu.
To his left the air burst into fiery blossom as Kana soared by with a pleased roar. But Toku was silent. Lance had noticed her silence more and more these past weeks, her mouth set grimly and her body tensed as she fought. That was why he had chosen to spend his day off on the mountain, hoping the open sky and clear air would bring her some ease. But as Lance crested an intermediary peak, where the ground smoothed and leveled, Toku let out a sharp cry.
Surprised, Lance turned to the hakuryu. Her gaze was already fixed on Kana, who flew forward to answer Toku's challenge. Their opening exchanges followed a familiar sequence: Toku's blue-edged tail countered by Kana's iron tail, Kana's flamethrower dissipated by Toku's twister. Since Kana had come into her wings, the two had battled countless times, at last equally matched. But something felt different today.
Toku's angry. The thought took on hard edge of certainty in Lance's mind.
As the hakuryu hovered in the air, the sun flashed red off her eyes. Lance blinked, and the phosphorescent red tinge seemed to spread, engulfing Toku's whole body. The air around her distorted, as if around a hot flame.
When she shot forward, Kana released a gushing flamethrower, but the hakuryu didn't swerve. She passed through the fire as if passing through morning mist, and slammed into Kana with terrible force. As the charizard buckled, Toku executed a tight somersault and bore down with an aqua tail. Kana hit the rocks with a heavy thud.
It's over.
But the red hadn't left Toku's eyes. Her tail began to whip, stirring the air into a massive twister attack. Loose rocks were drawn upwards, the lavender swayed and unrooted, and the miniryu clung tight enough to strangle around Lance's neck, whining—
"Enough, Toku."
His words didn't seem to register. A buffet pushed Lance only inches from the cliffside, and he threw himself to the ground before he was sent over the edge. Kana pressed herself low against the rocks, shielding her face with her wings. Around Toku, boulders danced weightless as sheets of paper. Lance lifted himself into a crouch and drew in a breath.
"You're scaring the miniryu!" he screamed over the rushing wind. His voice cracked mid-sentence.
The winds slackened, and the rocks crashed back down, bringing up clouds of dust. Toku turned, the red light gone. Her eyes were dark and startled.
Gently, Lance unwound the miniryu from his shoulder. Toku soared down to them and let out an anxious, apologetic trill. But the miniryu kept his head buried in Lance's sleeve. His body was still trembling.
"It's all right, Kaisho. Toku was just—"
Their eyes met. The koiking grass is blooming in the five valleys. Lance swallowed.
"Toku's just missing home."
And we won't see home until she becomes a kairyu.
Toku had trained hard in the months since the training camp. She'd fought with Kana, raced with her in the air, and perhaps with each beat of the charizard's wings, she'd wondered, why hasn't my time come? Lance didn't have any reassurance to offer her. The elders said, A hakuryu is like a furled bud in spring. She blossoms in her own time, or not at all.
"I know," Lance said softly.
When he held out his arms, Toku draped herself over him. She spanned four feet—too big now to wind herself comfortably around Lance, and her weight almost made him stagger. But it felt good to be close like this.
It felt, if only for a moment, like home.
If Toku was concerned that change wasn't coming quickly enough, these days, Lance felt as if his body was changing too fast. Every time he looked into the mirror he seemed to have added another inch. I bet I'm taller than Ibuki now, Lance thought one morning, but the idea brought a pang to his chest. Seemingly overnight, Lance's voice had transformed into a wild ponyta, jumping and rearing unexpectedly as he spoke. It was worst during battles, when his voice would crack unexpectedly as if he had lost his nerve. His muscles ached, he felt as sleepy as a hibernating kairyu, and after work-outs he stank.
"You're evolving," his bunk-mate, a bushy-bearded agent in his mid-thirties, liked to crack. It had not been funny the first time, and was certainly not funny the eleventh time.
Still, life at Rocket HQ kept Lance busy. From 0800 to 1200 he held court in Battle Hall No 6. His job had seemed simple when the training instructor first explained it—beat everyone. But gradually, Lance realized there was more to it than that. Agent Katana, the training instructor, watched each battle and at the end gave the defeated agent a rapid-fire breakdown of their battling flaws. Just like Hunter, Lance thought the first time, his chest twisting. Hunter must have been assigned to a different base: Lance hadn't seen her since the training camp.
Watching Agent Katana, Lance learned how to extend his battles in order to probe the other agent's weak points. There was skill not just in winning a battle quickly, but in controlling its flow, knowing you could end it at any time. Katana began to ask him to give his own feedback after the battle. Three months in, he informed Lance that he could now carry on the assessment battles alone.
Mornings were for battling. Afternoons were for training. Lance's first assignment had been to teach a nervy raticate hyper fang. He'd been stumped initially. The raticate lacked Toku's focus, Kana's battle-fire, and Ibuki's determination. The pokemon's first instinct was to dodge, and he bit only at last resort. Lance had been at his wit's end, until he chanced to see the raticate during feeding hour, a blur of brown fur and flashing fangs. After that, Lance requisitioned a metal cube, which he stuffed with berries. The raticate broke the cube with a hyper fang after only a week.
Kaisho, at least, was eager to learn. Ever since he'd set eyes on Toku, the miniryu's desire to become a hakuryu had been obvious. But the miniryu was frailer than Toku had ever been. His wrap attack was closer to a cuddle, and try as he might, he couldn't summon a red-eyed leer.
Lance and Toku had met when he was seven and she was just a year old, still living with her fellow hatchlings. When the elders had led Lance into the nursery, she hadn't looked up. Her focus had been exclusively on digesting a very ripe berry. As another miniryu clambered over her, in hopes of stealing a bite, she'd flicked her tail and sent her sibling flying. Lance's laugh made her raise her dark eyes. He'd offered her another berry and his arm, and that had been that.
Kaisho reminded Lance of the miniryu Toku had batted away. But what Kaisho lacked in physical strength, he made up for in speed. The confinement in the tank had left its mark: Kaisho hated to be still. Left unattended, he climbed, he weaved, he chased determinedly after Toku as she outpaced him in the air.
One night, Lance was woken by flickering light. Rolling over in bed, he saw Kaisho dangling from the room's overhead lamp, where the magneton belonging to Lance's roommate liked to hover. As Lance watched, a spark ran down Kaisho's back to the tip of his tail and leaped towards the magneton. The magneton's one open eye swiveled, and it sent back an electric spark. A conversation! Lance thought, wondering if he was dreaming. Kaisho was too in awe of Toku to speak much to her, and he shied away from Ibuki and especially from Kana, who'd made the mistake of greeting the miniryu with a friendly fire blast. He was glad Kaisho had made a friend—he just hadn't expected that friend to be an impassive metal automaton.
The next day, Lance had Toku demonstrate a thunder wave. He hadn't bothered trying to teach Kaisho that attack before, thinking it too advanced, but the miniryu copied Toku almost instantly. He didn't seem to need to make friction against the ground the way Toku did. The static energy came to him effortlessly, as if drawn out of the air.
Watching, Lance finally understood what should have been clear from the first. Kaisho wasn't Toku. Lance would have to train him differently.
Lance was finishing his dinner in the cafeteria when the intercom rang out, Agent Lance to Room 304. Repeat, Agent Lance to room 304. He'd never been summoned like that before.
When he had found his way to the correct room, in a wing of HQ he'd never been to before, Archer was waiting. Lance halted in the doorway, a greeting catching on his tongue.
In Lance's first week at HQ, he'd been told all about the 'Elite Four,' what the agents jestingly called the four executives. Athena ran Strategic Communications, Petrel Espionage, Proton Security, and Archer the largest section of all—Operations. If anyone ranked higher than him, Lance hadn't heard of them.
Archer was dressed formally today—a slim gray vest over a crisp white shirt, and gray pants that fell in a tight crease. The white shirt emphasized the sharp, tanned lines of his face.
"Lance," he said neutrally. "I trust you still have your winter clothes from training camp? You will need them for this mission. That is—" A smile tugged at his lips as his gaze trailed over Lance. "If you haven't outgrown them, that is."
Lance flushed hotly. It was the same teasing he got from everyone, only this was Archer. His palms were wet, and his tongue lay in his mouth like a sluggish miniryu. He managed to nod.
"Good. You will meet me at the helipad at promptly 0630 tomorrow, dressed for the cold. You are excused from your duties for that day. Any questions?"
Lance shook his head. He was going on a mission? With Archer?
He hardly slept that night. His heart was pounding, and anticipation streaked hotly down his arms and legs. Archer met him alone on the helipad the next morning, and gestured him into a two-person copter without a word. After several hours, a mountain loomed ahead. Archer cut downwards, and they landed in a sparsely wooded area towards the base. Snow still clung thickly here. When Lance stepped out, his boot sank down a foot.
"Mt Silver," Archer said, Acova already out by his side. "Known to produce especially strong and vicious pokemon. This is mainly due to the inhospitable nature of the area. Very few species of pokemon are obligate carnivores. In more bountiful ecosystems, most subsist on berries, nuts, and other vegetation. Here, that hardly an option. The pokemon here will not hesitate before attacking a human. Follow me closely and do not stray."
Acova led the way with her nose pressed to the snowy ground. After fifteen minutes of walking, Archer said, "Halt." He pointed his finger to the right, at an uneven patch of snow. At first, Lance saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then all at once he noticed texture, coils of blue and grey that faded seamlessly into the snow.
"An arctic arbok," Archer said. "Most are still hibernating this time of year, but they can move extremely quickly if disturbed. Give it a wide berth. We're not dressed for snake-wrangling: I leave that to Athena."
"You can learn a lot out here," he said, as they continued upwards. "Arbok are predators, but they do not lower themselves to proactive hunting." A smile softened his face for a moment. "They wait for their prey. Ursaring, on the other hand, and contrary to common belief, are not predators. Their nature is gentle, but they are fierce if their homes come under threat."
"Like kairyu," Lance interrupted, flushing when Archer turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "D-dragonite. They could defeat anyone, but they choose peace."
"Like kairyu," Archer agreed after a moment.
"Take sneasel, now," he continued. "They are solitary and cunning hunters, able to bring down ponyta in a single blow. But lone ponyta are rare. They have learned to group in herds. Sneasel have gained a reputation as cruel for the way they fight. But that reputation is ill-deserved. Efficiency is not cruelty—" Archer paused as Acova halted. "You've caught the scent? Solitary? Excellent." He turned back to Lance. "We are hunting sneasel today."
When he released a fat raticate onto the snow, Acova let out a pleased growl and leaped forward. Lance expected the raticate to flinch away, but it chittered happily and pressed its nose to Acova's.
"Blitz will play the bait in this game," Archer said. "Acova will follow in parallel, and you will follow by air. When the sneasel realizes it is being hunted, it will climb uphill. You are to cut it off and capture it."
Lance eyed the raticate dubiously. It looked chubby—and slow. "Are you sure . . ."
"Blitz can take care of himself. Ready your charizard."
Once Lance and Kana had taken off, the raticate began to meander through the trees. Occasionally it stopped to lick its paw. Injured, Lance would have thought, if he hadn't known better.
Lance didn't notice the sneasel until it leaped. Blitz had already shot forward. The raticate became a brown blur against the snow as it weaved through the trees, the sneasel following like a deadly shadow, until at last the pair broke out into a clear run of snow.
That was their cue. Lance nudged Kana downwards. She aimed a flamethrower at the sneasel's back, but it leaped aside a moment before the attack landed. Closer now, Lance could see the pokemon was lean and glossy, with arms that ended in massive claws. Her wary eyes took in the warning orange of Kana's leathery skin and the fire gathering in her mouth. The sneasel turned—in three jumps, she was already yards away, heading straight for the place the mountain curved most steeply.
"After her, Kana!"
Acova swept in from the left. As the sneasel veered, Kana landed in front of her. Lance read the flash of panic in the sneasel's eyes. Trapped!
For a minute, Kana and the sneasel traded metal-fisted blows. A single flamethrower would end the fight. Only, the sneasel moved so quickly . . .
At that moment, the sneasel leaped forward, her eyes scrunched shut and her outline seeming somehow smudged. Lance frowned as Kana flamed. He'd seen something like that before—
Cold, sharp pain cut into his back. An instant later, he was slammed into the snow. Ice bit into his face. He rolled over and opened his eyes in time to see Acova slamming into the sneasel's side with a fire-ringed mouth.
His back stung. Somehow, the sneasel had gotten behind him, but how . . ?
Sluggishly, his hand closed around the pokeball Archer had given him. He tossed it at the sneasel's still form and stared at the dancing black and yellow sphere until a sharp click cut the air.
Archer found them ten minutes later. He must have been running to catch up so fast, and Lance could see a glimmer of sweat on his temple, but his voice sounded as mild as ever when he spoke.
"Ah. It got behind you."
Lance nodded. "I don't know—"
"Demonstrate, Acova," Archer said shortly. The houndoom raced straight at Kana. Just as the charizard lunged to meet her with a metal-claw, the houndoom's form seemed to flicker. A moment later, she bit in hard against Kana's back. "The maneuver is generally called a feint attack. A useful and subtle move, though not undetectable. It can be identified through . . ." His eyes landed expectantly on Lance, who straightened.
"There's a fuzziness before the pokemon vanishes."
"Correct. With training, you and your pokemon can identify the maneuver and defend against it. Those using feint attack can lapse into overconfidence. In that way, the feinter can fall victim."
He stepped behind Lance and examined the cut from the sneasel's claw.
"Not serious, but I'll treat it before we continue. My intention is to catch at least five before we return. I trust you'll be more careful next time?"
"Of course," Lance said, stiffening. "I know what to expect now."
They took shelter in a small alcove. Archer instructed Kana and Acova to heat the rocks, warming the air enough that Lance didn't shiver when he removed his heavy jacket and thermal undershirt. He did shiver when Archer's cool hand traced clinically around the wound. He ducked his head, conscious suddenly of how scrawny his back must look. Archer's back was probably muscled like Lance's bunkmate, who spent several minutes each morning solemnly examining his abs in the mirror. Lance had never meant to stare, but it was a small room. He hadn't been able to help it.
Lance clenched his teeth as a cold sting hit his back. The pain only lasted a minute, and his head felt clearer when he put his layers back on. They stayed on the mountain until dusk turned the snow gold. In the end, they captured seven sneasel, though Archer released two—one was still juvenile, the other had already mated.
"I'm told you're progressing well in the Training Division," Archer said, as they made their way back to the helicopter.
A minute passed before Lance worked up the courage to say, "I like the training. But, I'd like to do a real mission."
Archer halted. "A 'real' mission?" he said sharply. "Agents are not assigned unreal tasks."
Lance's face burned at the rebuke.
"Agents are assigned according to their capabilities," Archer continued. "You have not to my knowledge demonstrated any great proficiency in the domains of say, subterfuge, or savvy political reasoning. But please correct me if I'm in error." Lance held his silence. "Such proficiencies can be developed, of course, if you apply yourself. Take this." He tossed a pokeball to Lance. "The first sneasel. Train her. She will give you quite the education in stealth and cunning, if you are prepared to learn."
Lance kept silent for the rest of the journey back. But when the helicopter landed in HQ, Lance caught Archer's sleeve before he could disembark and met his surprised gaze steadily.
"I know I have a lot to learn. But I'm going to learn it."
The surprise in Archer's eyes leveled out into satisfaction.
"Excellent," he said. And added in a crisp imperative, "Impress me."
Impress me.
Those words drummed against Lance's mind waking and sleeping. He trained the sneasel late into the night. She learned quickly, but shunned his other pokemon, watching them with a suspicious gaze from where she lurked in the corner. Her expression reminded Lance so strongly of Hunter's demeanor during training camp dinners that he took to calling the sneasel Hunter. Her other habit was less pleasantly nostalgic. The sneasel made a point of touching her claw against Lance's back whenever he let down his guard, a nasty grin playing on her face. Somehow, she always managed to find the very same place she'd cut him.
At last, Lance got fed up enough to play a trick of his own. The feinter can fall victim, Archer had said. Lance planned to test that himself. He hunched over his backpack, making a show of engaging in a deep and concentrated search. In reality, though, his eyes were fixed on the small mirror that he'd propped to show the area behind him. When the sneasel padded soundlessly forward, Lance tensed. He dropped flat to the floor as she lunged, catching her leg as she sailed over him, carried forward by the momentum of her leap. He slammed her down against the floor, and as she lay dazed, he jabbed his finger triumphantly into her back.
"Got you! How do you like that?"
Silence at first. Then Hunter's back began to shake with huffing laughter. She squirmed out from under him, but didn't dart away. Her eyes were alight with grudging humor.
After that, her gaze was less forboding and she began to spar with his other pokemon. She seemed to particularly enjoy practicing with Kaisho, aiming swipe after swipe at the miniryu as he frantically snaked between her claws. Whether that was really friendliness, or a kind of sadistic enjoyment, Lance didn't know, but the miniryu seemed to appreciate the attention.
Impress me.
But as Lance attended sessions led by the Espionage team on lockpicking, stealth, and disguise, an irrational guilt began to take over his chest. It only grew each time he watched Toku slam an opponent to the ground, her triumphant trill always slightly stained with expectation.
They said, back home, that a kairyu and her tamer had to be of one mind. But Lance felt split. He wanted Toku to evolve, of course, to become a kairyu and fly him home—but he also wanted to earn his second star as an agent, to participate in a real mission, with stealth, and danger, and Archer's approving nod when Lance saved the whole operation.
His ambivalence couldn't really be keeping Toku from evolution, Lance told himself. But at the end of a long day, when the hakuryu wound herself into a tight ball at the foot of his bed, Lance's certainty evaporated. He slept uneasily.
When the door to the training room opened, Lance didn't look up to see who else had chosen to spend the 0100 hour training. Kaisho had just tripped the sneasel with his tail and paralyzed her with a static burst.
"Wrap her now," Lance urged, but the miniryu hesitated long enough for the sneasel to jump back to her feet, snickering.
Footsteps clapped behind him. Then a female voice spoke curtly.
"Are gyarados intelligent?"
Lance spun around, entirely baffled. A woman dressed in all-white was watching him, her arms crossed. A massive arctic arbok towered behind her, its chest gleaming with a red warning pattern. The woman's hair was the same blood-red shade.
"You train one, don't you?" the woman demanded, stepping forward. "So answer me. Are gyarados intelligent?"
"Yes," Lance said finally, as the final piece clicked. Executive Athena. Her mind moves even quicker than her arbok, the other agents said. But neither's as quick as her temper, someone would add to hushed laughter.
"Hmph. That will need to be demonstrated. Report to Strategic Communications tomorrow."
She left without waiting for Lance's hurried nod.
To his bemusement, Lance spent the next week assigned to the seaside, running bizarre tests with Ibuki and an agent from SC. They tested everything from Ibuki's time perception (accurate to the quarter hour) to her ability to swim out of sight. The next week, Lance received instructions to attend an SC briefing in Conference Room 08. He sat awkwardly in a rolling chair off of the main table, trying to follow the rapid discussion pinging from one side of the table to another, with Athena occasionally injecting a quick comment from her seat at the table's head.
"It's crucial that there are no casualties, though."
"Agreed. Would send the wrong message entirely."
"Particularly with Assemblyman Nakamura's licensing bill—"
"If it goes on a rampage—"
"—Better have the trainer on hand."
Athena nodded, and with her gesture that line of discussion to end. Five minutes later, something beeped from Athena's pocket. She glanced down, cursed, and then shot from the room. The other agents filed out in a more leisurely fashion. The SC agent who had spent the past week with Lance lingered.
"Did you catch all that?" she asked, a sympathetic smile lighting her face when Lance vigorously shook his head. "In two weeks, you and your gyarados will be shipping out to Cerulean. We'll rehearse a few times before then, of course."
"But what is Ibuki going to do?" Lance asked.
The agent grinned. "Scare the shit out of a politician. That's really all you need to know."
Two weeks later, Lance stood at the center of a packed crowd on Cerulean Beach. He felt odd without his uniform. Before leaving HQ, Espionage had given him what the SC agent referred to as a "makeover." Blue jeans, a flimsy t-shirt with 'I Love the League' emblazoned over the chest, and black dye that chased all the red from his hair. The crowd swirled with stray limbs and noise, a far contrast from the controlled, way agents moved in HQ.
"Can I squeeze in front of you, please?" a girl asked Lance suddenly. "I can't see over you."
"Sure," he mumbled, stepping aside. His focus wasn't on the podium, but on the still, serene waters of Cerulean Bay, dazzling in the afternoon sun. Ibuki would begin her swim any second now. She'd reach the shore in thirty minutes and then wait for the signal, an under-water bubble-beam from a krabby somewhere on the same beach, watching the same podium.
The crowd was beginning to settle. A woman stepped up to the podium and tapped the mic twice. "Thank you so much for coming out on this gorgeous day. My name's Sakura, and I serve on Cerulean's Beautification Commission. It's my honor to introduce the president of the Pokemon League—"
Lance's eyes caught on a flash of bright blue from the front of the crowd. Hamako! He ducked his head hastily, even though there was no reason she'd notice him with this many people around. But would she recognize Ibuki? Lance wondered suddenly. No, there was no way. The gyarados had grown since Cerulean Cave and Hamako had only seen her the one time anyway.
"—please welcome to the stage, President Fugino!"
There were two machamp flanking the stage now. Machamp were just for show, though. Lance remembered that much from the casino. Real security required a psychic pokemon.
The crowd burst into applause. Lance flapped his hands together, gaze drifting back to the water. If something went wrong, if Ibuki entered some kind of fury, Lance was supposed to calm her down. But if the crowd panicked, would he even be able to reach her? He should have found a place closer to the edge.
Mr. Fugino was speaking now. The sun beat down on Lance's neck. Sweat glued the thin t-shirt onto his back. Any moment now—
But when Ibuki burst bellowing from the water, Lance gaped together with the rest of the crowd. The light flashed silver off Ibuki's scales. Her mouth hung open, slaver dripping, and her eyes shone red as she lunged towards the podium.
Mr. Fugino's voice failed. He backed away, step by step, his face a pale rictus of sudden terror. A scream shot from the crowd, and then everything was in motion. The crowd developed a current: Lance was pushed inextricably away from the water, caught in a jostle of backs and elbows.
By the time Lance was able to break away, he'd been pushed to the edge of the beach, where the sand was subsumed by jade plant. His gaze tore back across the beach. Ibuki had vanished, sunk safely back under the waves. Mr. Fugino was being escorted into a helicopter, cameras clicking behind him. A few trainers were bunched by the shoreline, their pokemon out at their sides in battle-ready postures.
Hamako stood apart, an island of stillness on the turbulent beach. She was staring out at the water with a furrowed brow.
An arm fell over Lance's shoulders.
"Time to go," hissed the SC agent, ridiculous in a starmie-patterned shirt and pink skirt. "Come on."
They fell back in with the retreating crowd.
"But wild gyarados never come in this far," the man ahead of them was insisting to his companion. "They stop at the sandbar."
"Must have gotten hungry," someone else cracked, and nervous laughter wafted into the air.
Gyarados don't eat humans. But Lance knew enough now to hold his tongue.
He wasn't invited to the post-operation briefing, if there was one. But two days later, Lance found an article clipping from some paper called "The Beacon" slipped under his door.
Cerulean Fiasco! proclaimed the paper in bright red letters. PokeLeague President Runs Like Scared Meowth. Below, in smaller letters: Time to Retire? Gyarados Crashes Gyarados-'Expert' Hamako's Party.
On Monday, PokeLeague President Fugino's tired pablum about universal pokemon training and Kantonian democracy was brought to a crashing halt when a full-size, rabid gyarados burst out of the waters of Cerulean Bay, to general panic and confusion. Faced with this twenty-foot water demon, our brave league president put his philosophy into practice—that is to say, he turned tail and ran, not sparing a thought to the crowd who'd unwisely assembled to soak in his sage words.
"It just left me wondering why we have bureaucrats running the league instead of trainers," commented Yoshioka Yoshi, a seven-badge trainer on the Indigo Conference run. "They clearly have no idea. And no guts."
Ryo and Rei Morimoto, who run a local Cerulean eatery, said they were grateful to the trainers who had stepped in. "No hesitation at all," Morimoto said. "I really admire that spirit and boldness in our youth."
Notably slow on the draw was Cerulean Gym Leader Hamako, who turned seventy last spring. Hamako rose to prominence as a water-type specialist with an emphasis on training gyarados. When asked why she didn't step in at once, the gym leader delivered this baffling response, "The gyarados clearly didn't mean any harm."
Unfortunately, age appears to have caught up with Cerulean's gym leader, who most recently embarrassed herself by opposing the sale of slowpoke tail popsicles, a harmless treat for children that consists of no actual slowpoke meat.
No casualties resulted from the gyarados attack, except for the emotional damages President Fugino is sure to deduct from tax-payers' wallets come fall. The president's address had been rescheduled to June 28th. It will take place in Cerulean's main square, far from the waterside. Whether that will be enough to shield our beleaguered president from further embarrassment remains to be seen.
'Congrats!' someone had scrawled in the margins.
Lance set the clipping down on his bed-side table. He didn't think the article had been very fair to Hamako. After all, she'd been right—Ibuki hadn't meant any harm. Didn't the fact that no one was attacked prove that? The article's writer had all but called her senile.
Hamako aside, Lance couldn't find fault with the article's general gist. Someone who ran away from a gyarados clearly wasn't qualified to lead anyone.
Congrats. Lance wasn't entirely sure just what he and Ibuki had achieved. But it had been a mission, and apparently a successful one. He wondered if Archer had heard.
"Shit," groaned Lance's bunkmate, as the intercom cried out, "Security Squad Seven. Report to helipad at 0755. Code Red. Repeat, Security Squad Seven. Report to helipad at 0755. Code Red."
Lance shot him a sympathetic look. The summer solstice had been yesterday, and the carousing had stretched into the early morning. Lance's bunkmate must have drunk too much. He'd been vomiting since he woke up and still looked terribly pale.
"Shit, shit shit," he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He was only wearing boxers. Lance hastily averted his eyes. "Code yellow, I'd skip. Code orange, maybe. Code red, though . . ."
"What does it mean?"
"Means there's been an f-up," the man said bluntly. "And Proton does not like f-ups."
As he stared at his pants like they'd just transformed into a rampaging gyarados, Lance was hit with an idea. "What if I went in your place?"
His bunkmate blinked. "Don't you have assignments?"
"Just training this morning. I can do it in the evening if I have to."
"Dragon-boy, have you ever been on a security mission?"
"No," Lance said, figuring honesty was the better approach. "But my team can handle anything. I want to help."
Code red. This was a real mission. His chance to prove himself.
"I can't believe I'm even—" The agent broke off as a new wave of pain twisted his face. "Okay. Do everything Proton says. Instantly. I'm talking instantly, do you understand? Hesitation will get you killed, if not right away, then at HQ when Proton fucking decapitates you. When in doubt, stick with the group. Got it?"
"Got it," Lance said, his heart soaring. He recalled Toku and Kaisho, and clipped their pokeballs onto his belt next to Toku and Ibuki's. Hunter's pokeball lived in the training room, since she was only temporarily assigned to him. If he ran there quickly—
The clock read 0749. No, no time to bring Hunter along. Lance adjusted his cap and ran out into the corridor. He reached the helipad with two minutes to spare. A group was gathered by a large helicopter. Slowing his pace to a walk, Lance crossed over, making sure to hold his back straight. An agent at the edge of the group squinted at him.
"Rigel is sick," he whispered to her. "I'm subbing in for him."
Her expression cleared. "Oh, you're his little punk bunkmate," she said. "Have you been on a security mission before?"
"Yes," Lance lied. At that moment, the agent at the center of the crowd, who wore a black blazer and no tie in the place of a uniform, clapped his hands together.
"Move out!" he called in a voice that carried across the whole helipad.
The agents filed into the back of the copter. There were no seats. Lance pressed himself against the curved wall and drew his knees to his chest. The whir of the rotors above made it impossible for him to catch the other agents' low conversation.
It seemed to Lance that no time passed at all before the sound cut and the door swung open. They had landed in a wooded area, though the regularity of the trees and absence of brush all suggested cultivation. In the distance, Lance made out the roof of a large house. The summer air was warm and muggy.
"Perimeter squad, places. The rest of you, with me."
Five agents broke away. Lance and four others followed the man in the blazer—Proton—towards the house. They passed under an ornamental gate and walked up a paved path lined with neatly trimmed hedges. Two butterfree passed in fluttering circles around a red-leafed maple tree.
Proton flicked a pokeball, and a kadabra appeared in a flash.
"Standard protocol," he said. When the kadabra had teleported away, Proton glanced disdainfully around the garden and aimed a kick at the hedge. "Cutting sticks into shapes. How about a moat or a lava pit if this house is so fucking precious?" He grinned. "Moat filled with goddamn gyarados."
His head tilted to the side suddenly, as if listening to an invisible voice. "All right, that's the all clear. Front, back, two ground-level windows. Cover them."
The words had hardly left his mouth before the remaining agents scattered. Lance resisted the urge to shuffle as Proton's gaze fell on him. He didn't expect to be recognized. With his hair dyed black, people in HQ had stopped identifying him as "flamer," "dragon-boy," and "Archer's pet" in the corridors.
"Do I know you?" Proton asked.
"Rigel asked me to sub for him," Lance said, which was close to the truth. And then, without meaning to say more—"He was vomiting his face off."
Proton's laugh rose from deep in his belly. "That shit. Boozed himself up, did he? Listen up, then. We get inside, you don't talk. No threatening moves. No pokemon, till I say so. Got it? I need to check the lay of the land."
The kadabra teleported them to just inside the door. Proton straightened his blazer and stepped forward, Lance at his heels.
They met the man in the hall-way. He wore a robe of rich red velvet, sashed sloppily, and held a steaming cup of tea and a bun. When he saw them, his face turned the same pale color as the bun.
"The door was open," Proton said breezily. "Sorry to burst in on you, sir. Won't take more than a minute of your time."
"The door was not—" The man visibly recalibrated. "Is this about the business with the contract? I made perfectly clear—"
"We can talk in your study." Proton swept forward without waiting for a response. After a moment's hesitation, the man followed.
The study was a tall room, lined floor to ceiling with thick-bound books. Two claw-footed chairs faced each other, separated by a mahogany desk. A crystal pitcher on a side-table was filled with dark amber liquid.
"Wait outside," Proton told Lance. In a lower voice, he added, "Stop him if he bolts."
His heart thudding, Lance nodded and stepped outside the room. He released Toku, clasping his hand over her mouth before she could let out a questioning trill.
"We're on a mission," he whispered. "If anyone leaves the room, wrap them."
The hakuryu bobbed her head silently. She took up a position on the left side of the doorway, Lance to the right. He wasn't trying to listen in, but they hadn't shut the door, and the words floated out into the hallway.
"Do have a seat," the man said in a cold voice.
"How gracious." A pause that contained the scrape of wood on wood. "You know why I'm here?"
"I will not be renewing the contract. I have business standards to maintain."
"I would appreciate if you could elaborate, sir."
Lance wondered if the man heard the anger sloshing under the surface of Proton's lazy tone.
"I received some very disturbing information about how your boss conducts his affairs. I'm as aware as anyone that a certain level of compensation is necessary to get anything done around here, but there are places I draw the line. I don't know what it's like in Etalia, but here in Kanto—"
Proton's voice slithered between his words. "What did you say?"
"I said, here in Kanto businessmen aren't in the habit of commissioning private militias!"
A tense silence fell. Lance resisted the urge to peek into the room. His high-necked uniform felt stifling in the warm air.
"I see," Proton said at length. "And you can't be persuaded."
"Correct."
"Well, I suppose we don't have much more to say to each other."
"Indeed."
"I'll be taking my leave then. My best to you and—you have a daughter, don't you?"
"If you intend to make any kind of ridiculous threats—"
"Sir, you completely mistake me. I'm just asking out of personal curiosity. I heard you got your daughter a sweet little teddiursa for her birthday when she was a kid. And then she raised it up into a big bad ursaring, didn't she."
"I think you've outstayed your welcome, sir."
"An ursaring like this."
The click of a pokeball punctured the air. Lance heard a thump, as if something heavy had emerged. He turned and looked into the room.
An ursaring towered at Proton's side, seven-feet tall and covered in thick brown fur. The man behind the desk had blanched. He hovered half-risen from his chair, as if frozen. But ursaring were gentle like ryu, Lance remembered. There was no reason for him to look so frightened.
"Kill him," Proton said.
The ursaring lunged forward. The man bolted to the side as the pokemon vaulted over the desk. His hand closed around the crystal pitcher on the side-table. It shattered against the ursaring's claw. Step by step, the man backed away from the advancing pokemon, until with a cry he spun around. His gaze locked on Lance.
He saw a dark uniform, a pale face, a red R. And a blocked exit.
Lance saw a neat beard, laugh-lined skin, blown pupils in a bloodless face.
It couldn't have been more than a second, but it seemed to Lance they stared at each other for hours. Then the ursaring's claw cleaved down. The man fell forward onto his knees, his eyes still fixed on Lance even as they bulged. Even as his mouth gaped open—
"Again."
The lazy voice seemed to drift in from somewhere far away.
A second blow knocked the man onto his back. A third ripped through the white shirt under his robe, spilled out a purple-red, brighter than the red velvet of the robe, wetter.
The ursaring withdrew its dripping red claw slowly and held it out, away from its body, as if troubled by either the color or the smell.
Lance hadn't moved. Hadn't even breathed. The air was hot enough to suffocate, and his ears buzzed like a hoard of beedrill had been set loose inside. Proton recalled the ursaring and stepped over the bloodied body.
"Idiot." To Lance, he said, "Time to move-out."
The hallway moved past him. The stairs under him. And then they came to the door. Sunlight spilled in, warm and yellow, from the garden. The butterfree were still circling delicately through the air.
"Automatic lock," Proton muttered, examining the doorknob. "Makes my life easier. They'll probably go with 'tragic accident,' but maybe someone will get creative and pin it on the daughter. She'll be inheriting the big bucks, that's for sure."
He shut the door and let out a sharp whistle. Dark shapes emerged from the sides of the house. Like sneasel, Lance thought. His mind was occupied by a vivid sequence: Blitz the raticate running across the snow. A bright claw stabbed out suddenly. The raticate's mouth opened. His eyes bulged. A red stream wound down the snowy slope. Blitz the raticate, running—
He staggered and nearly fell onto the grass. Toku. She'd rammed her head into his side. She was trembling. He was trembling. The agents were passing under the gate. Nobody had noticed yet that he hadn't followed.
He needed to—
"Run."
Toku shot forward at the whispered word. They passed under the gate, veered left where the agents veered right. Brittle twigs snapped under his feet.
"Hey," someone called out. "You're going the wrong—"
Run. His legs wheeled to the heavy thump of his pulse. They were going to catch him. Their pokemon, or the helicopter, and his breath was already ragged, his lungs were fire, and ahead the trees thinned out, into wide, open grassland. That's where you trap the prey.
Ahead of him, Toku dipped down, offering the long, blue curve of her back. As he swung his leg over, her body flared white. Blue burst into golden yellow like a rising sun. His arms wrapped around Toku's neck and she rose, above the tips of the trees behind them, above the white fluff of the low-lying clouds.
"Run," Lance whispered, and the world fell away.
The stars were out when Lance woke up. He had slept curled into Toku's belly. A willow tree leaned over them; a creek gurgled somewhere in the distance. His clothes were wet, but the night air was warm and dry. He peeled off his tight turtleneck, undid his belt, and kicked off his boots, until he stood, shivering gently in the summer breeze.
Toku blinked open one dark, beautiful eye. She watched him, but said nothing. The pokeballs were all there. Kana, Ibuki, Kaisho. He'd have to let them out. He'd have to explain—
Not yet. Just the purple-black sweep of the night and the steady hum of Toku's breathing. I saw and I did nothing—
He met Toku's gaze again. We did nothing.
"Toku," he began quietly. The scales around her eyes were damp under his palm.
A week after the summer solstice, the benibana plants opened in golden puffs across the five valleys. The flower only bloomed briefly, so the next morning the whole village woke early, when the dew softened the plants' thorns. The elders washed the flowers and gave the barrels to the children to stomp. After three days soaking, the crushed petals darkened from yellow into red. That dye made the red cape of a kairyu master.
"We would kneel," Lance whispered. He could see it in his mind. The bright red fabric on his back. Toku's golden head bent next to his own. "A master would sprinkle the water that passed over Sho's Tooth on our heads. Just as if the great kairyu were breathing on us, blessing us." And he would say, "I am a kairyu. Proud, yet humble. Powerful, yet kind. All of these are mine: the broad sky, the running stream, the green earth. Wherever the strong trouble the weak, I am there. So do I—"
Swear.
Lance faltered on the final word. Toku pressed her head heavily into his shoulder. His tears, when they came, were almost soundless. A passing rattata might have imagined it was the willow crying. He cried until his eyes were dry, and still his shoulders shook.
Toku was a kairyu now. But while Team Rocket stood, until he could wash that stain away—Lance knew he could never go home.
~End of Part One~