TEEN: The Long Walk

[Beth Pavell]

And response time

Beautiful chapter. I love Eve's faith (and the contrast with Josh's non-faith), it's so refreshing to read about this sort of thing in the Pokémon world... too many writers just take Sinnoh mythology for granted and I think that's a shame...

Thank you kindly, sir ^^ The generic Sinnoh mythology is something of a pet peeve of mine, I'll admit. I won't reprise my argument as to why Arceus doesn't really fit the Abrahamic God mould (At least in canon) - suffice to say I wanted to go for a more rounded approach to religion. Also it gave me an excuse to have a couple of nuns participate in the Tourney, which I think is just amusing. I actually enjoyed writing about Eve more than Josh in this one. Josh has a vaguely antagonistic attitude towards the gods - he believes in them, he just doesn't like them very much. As for this:

I also wonder why she was "born" a Roselia rather than a Budew

It's a matter of practicality, frankly. I didn't want to be stuck with having to write a green football until I could come up with an excuse to evolve. Besides, I thought a baby Roselia to be far more adorable

I've only heard of May Day before (I'm assuming it's a strictly European thing), so I must ask if this is based on actual celebrations

Yes and no. I don't think May Day really found it's way over to the US - if I were to speculate, it's probably because the Puritans didn't like those kinds of celebrations very much. They're fun, for a start. This version of May Day, as Flaze-kun noticed, is something of a pastiche. May Day is mostly a Christian folk festival these days (And therefore mostly celebrated because it's quaint), but it has a lot of the trappings of other ancient celebrations. Historically it is very much a celebration for the commoners, and as such always had plenty of dubiously-Christian symbols wrapped up in it. Because, frankly, humans have always wanted a way to celebrate that time of the year when things are growing again and with any luck everyone will have enough to eat.

I've based May Day and Eostre largely on Neopagan celebrations of May Day, or Beltane. The headdresses (Especially the horns), the drums and the bonfires are all very Neopagan. So is the lamb (Symbol of new life) and the circle, more or less. The sexual imagery linked to the new season, that too. The layout of the shrine is pretty much Shinto. I think I made up that bit about the handmaiden's kisses. Oh, yeah, and the Horned King isn't much different from the archetypal Horned God/Green Man, though I personally suspect that that archetype is quite a young one.

really really liked the Clefairy variation you thought up, it was actually kind of unsettling to imagine too.

Thank you, though I can't really claim much credit. It's based on a series of Clefable subspecies I found on tumblr. I had originally adapted a lot more from that art, but ironically the one I didn't change much made it's way in.

Eve's are more subtle about

Haha, well, she got interrupted, now, didn't she

though maybe you had it go for a bit too long

That was a concern, believe me. Originally I had the battle run from start to finish - at that rate I was going to end up with a chapter verging on 8,000 words. I didn't really want to cop out and rush the May Day celebrations since that forms a break in the relentless battles, so, there it is. In hindsight I'm not so sure as to whether I really should have done the May Circle, but as you say, it does bring the focus firmly on Eve

Right now I can't think of anything that bothers me (I'm not much of a mechanics reviewer), so I'll continue reading as you continue.

Thank you, and thank you! For the record, I really do find all comments useful, praise or criticism, so really don't worry

 

[Sike Saner]

The green light of Overgrow was flickering faintly from the base of his flower.

I like the idea of it having a visual indicator like that.

Clefairy had a diverse movepool at the best of times – there was no knowing what this one might do.

Apart from being pretty, of course.

“Destiny Bond.”

“What? No -”

At the exact time Fionn shrieked her last for the battle, Ouranos keeled over in a dead faint.

“Clefairy and Misdreavus are unable to battle! This battle between Dione Page and Melissa Evans is a draw!”

Eve started to laugh softly. It wasn't a win, but he had stolen the victory from Dione nevertheless.

Josh, you cheeky thing you.

“These damn tits are getting on my nerves,”

Well there's a sentence you don't read every day!

“Evelina?” someone said.

“Nothing!” Eve shouted guiltily.

Always a funny response.

The seed started glowing with a constant brightness. Eve laid a steadying hand on Josh's arm. A pulse of light burst from its surface. It split smoothly down the middle, the seedcoat peeling away to reveal a tiny, curled up humanoid. It gently unfurled itself, legs and stems unrolling to form a perfect roselia seedling. The light faded. The little roselia, its eyes and flowers still closed, wobbled unsteadily and fell over.

Cute!

 

[Beth Pavell]

I like the idea of it having a visual indicator like that.

I ummed and hummed about that a fair bit. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine that the later anime does - everything glows. Including teeth, for some reason, as if we can't be expected to understand it's a Bite attack unless there's something glowing bright white. But then, I couldn't think of how else to show it and it does kind of share a similarity with the way I describe Growth.

Always a funny response.

I've been saving that little joke for about a year now. One of those that would work better in a visual medium, but oh well, I can wait for the anime.

And responding to @Juliko here rather than on fanfiction.net:

I suppose I'll make my excuses. The first five chapters are still a bit ropy, even now. You see, way back then I was trying to reboot an unplanned story, which has left it's mark on the current version. I've done rewrites and edits before now, but honestly I think the only way I could really solve the problems is with a really, really big rewrite. On the whole I decided to steam ahead rather than take months writing behind.

Yeah, I like writing about young adults, an awful lot more than I would like to write about kids, anyway. The story very much focuses on them, so I'm sure you'll be learning a lot about them as the chapters wear on.

As for the setting, thanks, because I really rather like building this world. I'm only passingly familiar with Pittsburgh, but I'm pretty sure it fits the general concept of Mulberry Town.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Note:Halfway point bookmark: XXIII-2

Credit for one of the jokes in this chapter goes to AetherX - I'll let you guess which one ...

Spoiler: Version History

1.2 : "Tuesday" is now "Rheday". "Saturday" is now "Esteday"

Special Chapter – Into the Wild (Version 1.2)

Joshua​

Josh inexpertly tied his hair back, half-listening to Eve huskily singing in the shower. She was spending an awful lot of time in there tonight. He paced vaguely back and forth, with little Meg's Poké Ball in hand. He still felt apprehensive about raising her from a seedling despite all the preparatory reading he'd done. For now, at least, it was a relief that she had germinated safe and healthy.

“- When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,
I'll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair!”

Oh how I love that she knows that song, Josh thought. He was glad, too, that she was in higher spirits. In the face of all the feuds, he was pretty sure she was missing her family tonight.

When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold - “Ack!”

Josh almost tripped over what turned out to be a discarded pair of Eve's underwear. He growled at them cursorily. Something strange had happened to her since he'd started wearing girl's clothes; for some bizarre reason she'd become steadily more careless about her underwear, and with properly shutting the door when she changed. He unceremoniously kicked them under the bed.

He was trying to read when Eve finally came out of the shower. Eve with her hair down was still an odd sight. She flopped down onto her bunk with an exaggerated huff. “Come lie with me!”

“Would you like to review that sentence?” Josh said drily.

“Pervert. Come on, lie with me!” Eve insisted.

“Alright, ye big babby,” he said. “Move over, I'm not clambering over you.”

Josh lay back next to her and tried to let the tension out of his muscles. It had been another long day.

“Can I have a story,” Eve said.

“What kind of story.”

“Tell me about that deer you caught,” she mumbled.

“It's a long story,” he warned.

“I'm not tired yet,” Eve obviously lied.

Josh smiled at the bunk above. Eve could be such a child when she was tired.

“Well … it happened when I was sixteen, I think.”

I​

Glasswater River, Misho Region
Esteday 18th August 2007

The air of Misho was crisp and clear, tasting of pine needles and summer. The river was like a ribbon of blue winding through endless leagues of wild forest. Throughout these long leagues the greenwood ruled, maples and pines and balletically straight Godwood cedars. The land beneath the trees was hilly, rough, and lonely. Between Route 53 in the north and the Lake of Rage the Glasswater River flowed through a near wilderness. Towns along the river were rare before the Johto border. Maybe, in the distant past when Misho had once been part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, the river had been a busy trade route, but now, no-one travelled the Glasswater.

- almost no-one. A canoe glided downstream, cutting a glittering wake in the mirror-like surface of the water. It was piloted by a pair of teenagers. The girl in the stern was short for her age, with a round face bedashed with freckles under her eyes. Her long black hair lay like a sable sheet over her short grey dress, cinched at the waist with a belt threaded with a variety of canvas pouches.

Joshua Cook sat at the bow of the canoe, trying to just enjoy the moment. This was the first time either of them had been entrusted to an unsupervised wilderness journey of this length. Well, reluctantly entrusted. There had been plenty of scepticism from his dad and her dad, but between the two of them they were more resourceful, more knowledgeable and better navigators than anyone else of the younger generation. Not that there was much to navigate. The plan was simply to follow the river south to Brandonburgh at the Lake of Rage, about a seven day journey. They'd need to stop at Thain's Hill before nightfall tomorrow to resupply, since there'd be no more villages till the burgh.

Glasswater was a broad, peaceful river, about two hundred feet across from bank to bank. Supposedly it was near seven fathoms deep, but who knew what lay beneath that mirror surface, reflecting green forest and blue sky? There weren't many pokémon in this part of the world, either. From the canoe they could see small tribes of aipom in the trees or the odd shadow of a wooper swimming under the bow. Once, Josh was sure he spotted a pidgeot soaring high above, flying towards the peak of Duncrag Pike.

Singing helped pass the time. “J'ai récontré, trois joile demoisel-le!
J'ai pas choisi, mais j'ai pris le plus bel-le!” Josh sang.

“C'est l'aviron, qui nous mène, qui nous mène,
C'est l'aviron, qui nous mène en haut!” Linda finished.

And that was the reason Josh couldn't settle, right there. Seven days alone with Linda was both blessing and curse. There was no-one he'd rather spend a week with, that was the blessing of it. For so long now he'd felt like there was a warm compass lodged somewhere in his chest, and the needle always pointed due Linda. Linda made the most beautiful baskets, and that was cool. She could make the most tasty food from whatever was around, whatever the environment, and that was cool. She was powerfully curious about apparently everything, and that was cool. And despite all that she never made him feel small or out of place and so he couldn't help but want to be near her. The curse of it was that Josh couldn't help but wonder what they could get up to if he'd actually had the bloody courage to ask her out. Ah, what am I thinking? She wouldn't have said yes.

Josh twisted round in his seat, intending to ask her a question. Linda was singing tunelessly. Whatever the question was, it was immediately replaced by an appreciation of the view; river, forest and Linda together.

“Woss wrong with your fizzog?” she said, her accent endearingly full of Mulberry Town smoke.

“What?”

“Ye look happy,” she smirked.

Josh never quite understood why Linda wasn't rated among the royalty of locker room pin-ups at school. She had a figure he privately thought of as callipygian; a figure he was well acquainted with by way of stolen glances, though he would never admit it.

The canoe subtly lurched as a swell passed beneath. “Did ye feel that?” Linda said.

“Ah …” Josh confirmed with a note of uncertainty.

“Where the hell is that a-coming from?” The boat lurched a second time, slightly more vigorously. Josh let his mind wander again. Linda Callipyge, that's got a good ring to it, he thought, wondering what she'd look like in a peplos.

He only got a moment to imagine it before havoc reigned.

II
​

The river erupted. Something huge and serpentine and scaly rose from the river, water cascading from its flanks. Its hollow, guttural roar thundered in his ears. Surging waves contemptuously spun the canoe around like a plastic bottle.

“Fucking hell!” Linda screamed, desperately paddling to stop the canoe from capsizing.

Josh's blood ran cold. That powerful scale-armoured body towered eight feet above, surmounted by a large, brutal head, its face twisted into a permanent snarl. A pervasive musky, piscine smell wafted from it. Its maw gaped improbably wide, incongruously flanked by pectoral fins and barbels.

Gyarados … Josh froze, transfixed by terror, his paddle completely forgotten. Another, leaner gyarados rose from the water with murder in its eyes. The first monster lunged, seizing the smaller gyarados below the head and mercilessly biting down. Huge plate-like scales crunched and ground in its jaws. It screamed, flailing ferociously in anguish. The thrashing monsters churned the river into a cauldron of whitewater.

Something warm that smelled of salty iron splashed Josh's cheek. He automatically touched his face – his hand came away bloody. The canoe pitched so violently that the gunwale nearly went under. Josh suddenly remembered his paddle and started slashing inelegantly at the water.

“Make fer the eastern shore!” Linda yelled. “We'll ride the surf out!”

“What the hell are gyarados doing in the Glasswater!”

“Shut up and paddle!”

An indigo fireball blazed by at head height and incinerated the treeline. The heat wash rippled back across the river, carrying an acrid smell of charcoal and boiling sap. Linda swore vehemently and kept on going regardless. Josh just paddled as hard as he could, hoping that she knew what she was doing.

The flight to the shore seemed to take forever, and at every moment he expected a Dragon Rage to come flaming across the stern. The noise was awful. Agonised roars, the crash and spume of water, visceral tearing … Josh risked a glance over his shoulder. The foaming waters were turning pink.

When he looked back the canoe was rapidly approaching the eastern shore, driven by the surf thrown up by the battle. Mud and gravel scraped against the keel. Heart pounding, he piled out, pausing just long enough to haul Linda out when she tripped at the gunwale. Indigo fire still burned smokily off to the left.

They fled up into the forest, two woodsmen slipping and stumbling like daytrippers out of Saffron. Linda was faster than he was, and usually she had the sharper eyes. But this time Josh saw the parasect in the leaf litter before she did.

“Linda, wait!”

“Parasect!”

A cloud of ochre spores mushroomed into the air. Linda ran right into it, her curse cut off by a bout of volcanic coughing. Josh grabbed her at arm's length and pulled her away from the spore cloud while she re-oriented herself. She coughed out thanks as they ran, and kept on running till the sounds of battle faded away.

III​

Only when they were a good half mile into the greenwood did they dare to stop running. Linda slumped down against a tree, gasping down lungfuls of air. “Fuck … fuck me. Bastard bloody fish.”

Josh didn't say anything. He realised his hands were shaking; his heart felt like it was trying to beat clean out of his chest. The forest seemed safe and familiar, softly lit by the August sun filtering down through the green summer leaves. The wholesome smells of earth, pine needles and warm leaves almost masked the tang of gyarados blood; he wiped his bloody hand on his jacket sleeve. Damnit, the forest was safe and familiar. But the river was now closed to them – he didn't want to think about how lucky they were. Whichever way you sliced it, gyarados were savage pokémon. If one of them took it into their head to overturn the canoe, well, that would be it.

“Thass it fer our journey, Lin,” he managed. “I'm a-calling for help.”

Linda just grunted. Josh studied his map for a moment before dialling. The stiff paper rattled in his shaking hand.

“Ranger Union, what's your emergency?” the operator recited.

“Hello, we've been stranded on Glasswater River. We were heading downstream by canoe, we were forced to the bank by a couple of battling gyarados.”

Josh more than half-expected the operator to react with surprise. Instead he asked, “Do you know where you are on the river, where's the nearest landmark?”

“We're at grid reference MRSO, two-six-one, four-four-two.”

“Okay … do you have any supplies with you?”

“What?” Josh said. He was getting a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What's going on?”

The operator went quiet for a moment. “There's been a gyarados outbreak at the Lake of Rage. I'm afraid we are extremely busy.”

“Oh … er. We have two day's worth of food, but I'm more worried about my friend. She's inhaled a lot of parasect spores.”

“Parasect spores, okay, how is she, what are her symptoms?”

“Violent, dry cough, breathing troubles.”

“Not that bad!” Linda claimed.

“Okay,” the operator said. “I'm really sorry, but it's going to take a few days to get you out of there. If your friend gets any worse, or if you change location, you must call nine-nine-nine, okay?”

“Right. Er, thank you,” Josh said, hanging up. “Well. We're on our own for a few days. There's been an outbreak of gyarados at the Lake of Rage.”

“That explains a lot,” Linda said sourly.

“Ah,” Josh replied. Gyarados weren't sociable pokémon at the best of times – the two monsters in the Glasswater must be exiles from the Lake. “We're a-going te need the stuff from the canoe.”

“I know …” Linda said. She pulled herself to her feet. “Right, then.”

“Hang on, hang on, you stay here, you're chuffing like a damn chimney.”

“Woss that gotta do with anything?” Linda asked challengingly.

“Everything! If those two gyarados are still there we don't want them te see or hear us!”

“Are ye -” Linda suddenly doubled over coughing. “Oh, fine! Be careful!”

“Obviously.”

“I mean it. Don't be taking any risks.”

“I won't,” Josh insisted, wondering why on earth Linda thought he would.

Josh stalked back down to the river with almost exaggerated patience. He placed each footfall carefully, pausing every few yards to listen.

Nothing.

Trees still smouldered sulkily where the Dragon Rage had hit; waves rippled slowly in to the shore and slopped down onto the mud. He lurked behind a hawthorn bush, just in case, but there was no sign of the gyarados. Something floating in the shallows caught his eye, thin and filmy like a discarded trash bag. Bits of stringy flesh clung to it.

It was a severed pectoral fin.

Well, that's a disquieting sight, Josh thought, wondering which gyarados the fin belonged to and trying not to think about the fate of the loser.

Their canoe was still intact, luckily. All of the absolute essentials they kept on their person – their knives, firesteels, maps and compasses, Linda carrying the folding saw, Josh carrying the axe. Most of the equipment they could do without if push really came to shove, or replace with a natural substitute. That brand of self-reliance was the whole point of woodcraft, after all. Even so, considering the situation he was in no mood to make do if he didn't have to. He started to unload as swiftly as possible, starting with relaying the sleeping equipment up the hill.

Josh was just hauling out some of the food when he caught sound of an innocently soft rush of water. So innocently soft that he almost ignored it at first – but then, a strange, deep, croaking roar seemed to echo across the river. Something in the timbre slid right down into the primitive reaches of his brain and compelled him to pay very immediate attention.

Gyarados was back, and it was glaring right at him.

Josh didn't even curse. He simply fled, the fear-induced flush of adrenaline overruling his tired muscles' protests to drive him away from the canoe. The greedy crackling sound of a charging Dragon Rage helped. Hardly a second later the bow of the canoe ricocheted crazily off a tree, trailing a banner of indigo flame.

The river was definitely closed to them.

IV​

Linda was getting worse.

The river had become suspiciously quiet, though a few scraps and scales had floated ashore. They set up camp in a sheltered hollow next to a narrow glade at the corner of 261 442. With their hammocks slung beneath the low crowns of a couple of linden trees, tarps pitched close above to keep off rain and honeydew, it was remarkably snug for hilly, chilly Misho.

Over the northern lip of the hollow the land fell away into a soggy dell inhabited by a slow-running burn. Water loving weeds thronged the mud; marsh marigold, watercress, saxifrage – but unfortunately no bullrushes. The western side was dense and thickety, with thorny coils of bramble shielding the campsite from the wind. Josh liked brambles. They were working-class plants, unmistakably weeds, thriving even in grey, graffitied corners of the urban maze. And from those woody, thorny, barbed wire tangles they put forth the most glorious crop of blukberries.

But Linda's cough was getting worse. She headed off into the hills with her pikachu to get a look at the land while Josh stayed near the camp, taking advantage of the daylight and downtime to ferociously study the map. South away in the direction of Brandonburgh the river described a long, meandering arc circling the rugged, obstreperous highlands around Duncrag Pike. North, back towards Route 53, the land was considerably smoother.

Linda was gone for a few hours, not nearly as long as he expected. Usually, he'd see Lin's pikachu long before he saw or heard her. This time he swore he could hear her dry, racking coughs from a mile away. By nightfall she'd withdrawn to her hammock; her breathing was noticeably more difficult, and she'd coughed her throat raw. Josh was making tea from blukberries in the vague hope that it would make a difference. It was a decent remedy for colds but he had no idea if it would work on a fungal infection. Probably it wouldn't do any more good than soothe a sore throat.

He ducked under Linda's tarp, steaming mug in hand. “Lin,” he said gently. “Tea.”

She rolled over and made a nondescript moan. “Ye don't have te look after me.”

“Yes I do,” he said flatly. He laid his hand on her forehead. “You'm definitely running a temperature.”

“Mmpfh,” she said, waving him away. He sat back down by the fire, to think.

Josh could feel the frustration welling up. That figure of two day's food he'd given to the Ranger Union would have been accurate enough, had the canoe not ended up as so much charred matchwood. Now he was rapidly revising that estimate down. A wait of a few days before rescue could mean anything. Under “normal” circumstances it would take at least two days to make him feel concerned, but … Linda's symptoms changed everything.

The key problem was, there weren't really any high-calorie wild foods around. There was no way he would let Linda go short while she was ill. And how am I supposed to find enough to feed us both while fasting? Brandonburgh was out of the question. That was the best part of four days away by canoe – it would take at least that long on foot, even without the Pike in the way. Thain's Hill though … that was only a day's journey away. But on the wrong side of the damn river.

“What am ye thinking about?”

“Nothing really,” Josh said lightly. “Don't worry.”

“Oi! I am not some urban! Don't you lie to me,” Linda growled dangerously.

Josh didn't dare push his luck. “I'm a-thinking I need te go hunting tomorrow.”

V​

Sunday 19th August

The morning's hunt took Josh north. It had rained during the night, turning the earth beneath his feet dark and squidgy. He was travelling as light as possible, carrying just the minimum tools and a bit of bannock in his jacket pocket. Linda's pikachu scurried alongside him, occasionally scrambling up the trees in search of bird's eggs. Pikachu was no chubby scamp from Viridian Forest but a belligerent Mulberry-chu, and had been living in a bin till Linda caught her. She was part of his toolkit, too. Her sense of smell was better than his, of course, but without a bow Pikachu would have to bring the quarry down.

Josh made a laconic notation on his map, marking the direction of some tracks. The area to the northeast was spotted with light green, indicating open meadows and sparser woodland, good deer habitat on paper. He chewed a scrap of bannock pensively. The plan was to scout it out in a circuitous fashion, approaching from the southwest to stay downwind. In theory, assuming there was enough evidence of cervine activity, he could then find somewhere quiet to wait in ambush.

In theory. Two words he wished he didn't have to use. Truth was, he'd never actually been on a hunt, per se. Oh, he knew how to move quietly in the woods, how to interpret tracks, how to butcher a carcass, but -

“Piiika!” Pikachu squeaked impatiently.

“Sh,” Josh said sharply, for what good it would do.

There were two prevailing views in the community in regards to hunting. One side held the view that they should emulate their hunter-gatherer ancestors in every way possible, and that included hunting for meat. It was a stance Josh didn't entirely agree with. He wouldn't take a life unless he needed to. The irony of that wasn't lost on him – he wouldn't hunt unless he really needed to, and now he really needed to he didn't have that critical experience.

He painstakingly circled round west-northwest, pausing frequently to listen. Nothing. Even the pidgey were quiet. A shallow slope ran up to the meadow, a babbling burn running on the western side. He was pretty sure at least two deer had been here since the morning, based on tracks approaching from the north and heading off in roughly the same direction.

What now?

Josh stood in an agony of indecision. Stantler would probably return at dusk, but was that true of red or sika deer? Damnit. Josh had no idea whether there was a better hunting ground further north. He wondered if this was how most people felt when lost in the woods – not daring to make a mistake but completely unsure about what the mistakes were.

Damn it. Damn and blast it. It could take hours to find a better hunting ground, and he didn't have hours. He would just have to wait in ambush and hope for the best. He chose a tree as his hiding place. An oak, with the oak's characteristic low, twisty branches, growing usefully at the south side of the meadow. Finally, some bloody luck. About eight feet up there was a point where two branches formed a natural crook, close enough to make a reasonably comfortable seat.

On any other day it would have been an entirely pleasant place to sit. The day was warming up, the sun breaking through a grey blanket of cloud. A persistent east wind rattled the leaves and sighed through the grass, a lullaby sussuration whispering about summer. Then there was the odd sensation from knowing the absolute certainty that the only other person around for leagues and leagues was Linda, trying in vain to cough her own lungs up.

Linda … he was starting to feel like an emotional tangle on that count. Hardly twenty-four hours ago, he'd been pointlessly crushing and indulging in his own social cowardice. Now he was crushing good and hard, but the focus of it all was – well, he didn't know how ill she was, which was worrying in itself.

Time drew out mercilessly. There was nothing to do but watch, listen, and worry, and no way to mark time but by the slow, slow ticking of his Pokégear. There were no new sights, no new sounds but the waving leaves and whispering in the grass. The rough gnarl of the oak's branch steadily ceased to be comfortable, developing into a constant ache in his arse. He didn't dare shuffle around – too much noise, and the meat was more important.

Time drew out mercilessly. Pikachu scampered off, the treacherous rat, though she at least had the decency to stay in sight. She scrabbled around in the leaf litter looking for gods-knew-what. Nuts, fruit, carrion, it was all the same to her. The old habits of a street-chu die hard.

Time drew out mercilessly. Frustration rose in him like a hot cloud. The light changed from gold to grey as the late afternoon wore on to evening. Intrusive thoughts of the food he didn't have and couldn't leave the tree to find added to the worry and the uncertainty and the damn ache in his arse. And still nothing changed. Maybe he was wrong about ordinary deer being at all like stantler. Probably he was wrong about ordinary deer being at all like stantler. Damn, blast and curse that bastard gyarados. This forest was making a fool of him.

That night he returned to camp empty-handed.

VI​

Sleep did not come easily that night. Josh lay awake in his hammock, tired but not sleeping. And hungry, too. Dinner had been what amounted to a light wild salad, since he didn't dare eat any more of the packed food, not yet.

Linda was worse. Probably. Her cough had abated somewhat, but now she was shivering and mumbling cryptically to herself.

Josh curled up guiltily. What he really wanted to do was climb in the hammock with her; for her comfort, was the reason he told himself. Ah, but that wasn't entirely true now, was it? The other reason was not the sort of thing to be thinking of while Lin was ill, damn it. The dishonourable thought squatted smirking at the back of his mind like a palpitoad at the bottom of a pond.

The Ranger Union wasn't any more help, either. So much for 'calling them back if Linda got worse'. All he got was generic advice for treating fevers.

Something dashed along his hammock and sat on his midriff. “Pi.”

“What dun ye want,” he mumbled.

“Pika.”

It wasn't too hard to guess what she was trying to say. “Don't know. But if ye want to help, behave yourself tomorrow. For her sake.”

VII​

Monday 20th August

“Yoink,” Josh murmured, thieving an egg from the nest in the reeds. “Sorry, absent birdie, but I'm ravenous.”

And if there were more he would have pinched them all. He immediately stopped to cook the egg in embers, simply pushing it right into the hot ash. Thankfully it hadn't 'babbied', as they said in Mulberry Town – no half-developed chick, just a perfectly good egg.

“Go find your own,” he told Pikachu, “I know ye can.”

The day unfolded much as it had done yesterday, except with added hunger and anxiety. Anxiety, hah. Fear, more like it. Linda was still burning up. For reasons he didn't really understand, she'd flown into a fury just before he left camp that morning, then just as inexplicably burst into tears when he did leave.

Tears, of all things, from Linda! The fever must be getting to her.

From his uncomfortable oaken seat Josh found himself focusing on every sound and sight. Anxiety turned every meaningless rustle and flicker into phantom quarry, for hour after hour.

The day was tending towards evening when a twig almost coquettishly snapped. Josh's head whipped round. East-northeast. Upwind, directly upwind at that. There was too much waving foliage and branch in the way to see what had made the noise. Sunlight scattered off flecks of dust on the lenses of his glasses, which didn't help. Had he imagined it?

“Pikachu,” Pikachu said quietly. Josh gave her a warning tap on the head.

There were a few more rustles of leaves that could not be blamed on the wind. Come on. Show me what you are.

A slender head appeared among the bushy undergrowth, followed by the graceful ruddy-brown body of a red deer. Josh felt his heart leap sharply – he stifled a gasp of surprise. The doe was young, perhaps thirty inches at the shoulder. She picked her way across the meadow with an apparent lack of concern, which he took as a sign that she couldn't smell him.

Come here … come a little closer. I'm not here.

I'm not here. He mentally chanted the words like a lucky charm. He could almost smell her now with his inferior, human nose.

Go. He gave the order with an urgent wave of the hand. Pikachu shot down the tree head-first and raced through the undergrowth like a yellow streak. One moment the doe was looking up suspiciously, the next a flash of silver and she collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. Silence.

“Pi-kachu! Pika!”

Josh awkwardly clambered down from the oak, limbs stiff from long hours of inactivity. The doe was lying like a discarded plushie with no obvious injuries. Pikachu's Iron Tail had efficiently broken her neck. The sight seemed to drive the implications of what had just happened into his mind. Relief, blesséd cool relief, washed over him like a wave. He dropped to his knees and passed his hands across his face.

He stroked the doe's pelt with a certain reverence. “Thank ye for the gift of your life,” he told her. “Oh … neatly done, Pikachu.”

“Pi.”

Now. How best to divvy her up? One of the older guys in the community had been something of a traveller, in the sixties, when the Empire was still Imperial. He'd told Josh once that when the hunters in northernmost Haakono brought down a reindeer or a great elk-like hjórþr, the first thing they'd do is drink a cupful of the blood, like warm instant soup. He'd seen it done, apparently.

Josh had reason to take the old man's story with a pinch of salt. But then, as he recalled, he was also an excellent hunter. And well, he usually told very obviously tall stories. He drew his fine aron steel knife and drew it smoothly across the doe's throat, hastily catching the spurting blood in a cup from his stripped-down pack. Hmm.

Josh usually had a neutral attitude towards blood, but still, there was something sort of grim about drinking a cup of scarlet vitae. Pikachu had no such reservations, however, cheerfully lapping at the growing pool in the grass. Well, I'm not going to be outdone by a pikachu. He took a small, cautious sip. Then he took a rather larger one. Maybe it was due to hunger, but the salty, coppery taste was at least agreeable – his body's way of saying 'More of that!' he supposed.

He worked quickly, feeling vastly more confident with a familiar task before him. He warded the area with Super Repel and lit a cooking fire before starting the hard work of the butchery. Always hard work, even with good tools, he thought, patiently peeling back the skin. The liver went on to the fire as soon as it was hot enough, for a wolfed-down lunch. In the end he had most of the meat bound into a cannibalised rain poncho with everything else fair game for man or monster. Including Pikachu, face deep in the heart.

Super Repel would be wearing off soon. Josh washed his bloody hands in the burn and went to retrieve Pikachu. “Come on, you yellow rat.”

“Chu,” she said dismissively.

“Your loyal concern for your trainer is so heartwarming,” Josh said sourly, stepping over the discarded skin. He'd removed it neatly, out of habit. Shame to leave it really, it was a beautiful pelt. But … it was extra weight to carry.

The doe's severed head seemed to stare reproachfully. You'll drink my blood and eat my flesh but you won't do me the courtesy of using my skin?

Damn it. “I'm going to regret giving in to you,” he told it.

VIII​

“You came back!” Linda sobbed, desperately clinging to him like a remoraid.

“Linnie, where's your dress?” Josh managed. For some reason she'd stripped down to her underwear. The girl was burning up, she felt like she'd spent an hour in a hot spring.

“Hot,” she said shortly, “the, the shaymin said that ye weren't coming back, that you'd gone to Brandonburgh -”

“Shaymin?”

“Yes. He had nettles,” she said cryptically.

Feeling scared and flustered, there's a lovely new experience, Josh thought, in a rather brittle frame of mind. He gently extricated himself from her grip. “I went hunting, remember? Linnie, I need ye to put your dress back on -”

“But -”

“Linnie. And then ye can tell me how to cook this venison, ok?”

“Um. Shaymin said -”

“I won't leave you.”

Smoke and fire, she's delirious. But she put her dress back on, slowly, as if she didn't really understand why. Thank whatever gods were listening – at least now he could concentrate on looking after her. With food, useless bloody food that wouldn't cure whatever the hell she was ill with.

Gods he was scared. Scared, and out of ideas. Nothing left now but hope.

Keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it together.

IX​

Rhreday 21st August

Ranger John Rosenberg shifted position on Lapras' back, standing upright braced with one hand on her neck as they cruised steadily upstream – on the hunt for rogue gyarados, primarily. Westwards on the left bank of the river Ranger Fisher was patrolling on foot, likewise Sergeant Jensen on the right. They were all dog-tired from long days of active duty without much real sleep. Finally reinforcements were beginning to flow in from neighbouring Reserves and the Misho Union, but not so many that anyone could be rotated off. So many magikarp had evolved so quickly, that no-one knew how they were going to control them all. The Rocket's evolution machine had wreaked havoc with the ecology of the Lake.

Such a bland way of describing it. The sheer callous disregard for human life was breathtaking – filling the Lake of Rage, with all its lakeside villages, with bewildered new gyarados that would inevitably have to battle for their own survival. And when gyarados were feeling bewildered and threatened they tended to spread the violence around.

Rosenberg tapped his free hand restlessly against the UD6 submachine gun holstered at his thigh. It wasn't just gyarados they were patrolling for. Some of the Rockets – no-one knew how many – had fled into the wilderness to escape arrest. Which was the specific reason why Rosenberg was here. His rank was technically Constable-at-Arms, a firearms officer, insurance against any especially violent Rockets.

“Keep it sharp, lads,” Marshal Henley radioed from astride his pidgeot. They banked out of the thermal they had been riding and glided back north towards the rest of the patrol. He kept an eye out for any signs of a camp. They were coming up on 261 442, and he was keen to get those stranded hikers located and rescued as soon as possible.

“Gyarados surfacing,” Rosenberg radioed calmly. It burst from the mirror surface of the river in a spume of foam, roaring. “She's a new one.”

“Engage,” Henley ordered.

Rosenberg's lapras hit it with a sustained Ice Beam, aiming for the head. With a flash and a splash Jensen unleashed his feraligatr.

“Rosenberg, hold fire. Fly, Anemos.”

Anemos gained speed with a few strong wingbeats, lined himself up on target and plunged into a dive. As Anemos leaned forward, Henley leaned back, remaining poised and upright in the saddle as the wind rushed in his ears and the river rushed up to meet them. Anemos' wings flared, talons presented -

- impact. The gyarados thrashed its head violently, trying to throw them off – Henley seized the grab rails in front of the saddle – but Anemos took no notice and tore at the flesh between its scales with his beak.

“Back to the sky,” Henley said. Gyarados tried to snap at Anemos as he took off, only to find that Feraligatr had chosen that moment to drag it back down. It turned to bite, and took an Ice Beam to the face. The two pokémon tenaciously harassed the gyarados, goading it into exhausting itself with useless thrashing and snarling.

“I'm going for the catch,” Henley said.

“Right, sir.”

“A slow circle, Anemos.” His pidgeot swooped low and banked slowly round Gyarados, giving Henley ample time to pull a Dive Ball from the saddlebag. A nice, easy throw. The Dive Ball engulfed Gyarados and dropped down into the water. After about half a minute of inactivity Rosenberg went in for a closer look.

“Capture confirmed, Marshal.”

“Good. You take custody, Rosenberg. Someone, give me a grid reference.”

“Er … north side of two-six four-three, sir,” Fisher said.

“Right. Nice, wide search, gentlemen, we need to -” he broke off abruptly. He could see a figure desperately trying to get his attention. “Forget that. Quarter mile upstream, eastern shore. I've found our hikers.”

*​

“I don't remember much about that day,” Josh said. “There was a lot of first aid – Heal Bell, Aromatherapy … they got her out by air ambulance, but there wasn't room for me in the helicopter, so I stayed behind. Two days of, I don't know. Faffing around with crafts to try and take my mind off it.”

“Was Linda ok?” Eve asked.

“Eventually. She was in hospital for nearly three weeks in the end. The parasect spores had caused a form of aspergillosis, apparently. That explained her fever and delirium … the doctors told me that keeping her fed had tipped the balance, but I'm not sure I believe them.”

Eve sighed thoughtfully. “You should tell Mum that story.”

What, including that bit where I get distracted by Linda's butt? Besides, that story wasn't anywhere near impressive enough to get Gabriella Joy to like him.

“I was lucky,” Josh insisted. “I later found out that red deer aren't usually active till dusk. Apparently that little doe was an adventurous one.”

“I think I might tell her,” Eve said as if she hadn't heard him.

Josh scowled up at the underside of his bunk, remembering the frustration and the gnawing anxiety. “Stupid bastards. They almost killed Linda with that vile machine. And the worst of it is that none of them would have even known if they had.”

Eve laid a hand on his chest. “Maybe you should believe the doctors,” she said. Her expression turned mischievous. “Don't think I don't know what 'callipygian' means, sweetling.”

“Ah …” Josh said, realising he'd got a bit carried away in the storytelling.

“Aww. Iron boy has red blood in his veins after all,” Eve teased.

“You shut up, you.”

“Do you want me to leave while you think about her some more?”

“You have a filthy mind, Evelina Joy,” Josh said accusingly.

“No I don't. I'm a young woman with a healthy sexual appetite,” she said with a saucy wink.

“I'm going to my own bunk,” Josh said flatly.

“Aww, stay here!”

“No! You've had your chance to make fun of me.”

Next Chapter: The Balance of Power

 

[Jersey Jimmy]

Sorry for the short reply, I'm on my phone, but the feeling of danger in this chapter was captured pretty much perfectly. The reader is really able to tell just how hopeless the situation was at times, and I did have a nagging suspicion Linda wasn't gonna make it for a while. Also, Eve teasing Josh. Always fun. More of that.

 

[Flaze]

Well there's actually something that made me laugh about this chapter. I've been playing this survival video game lately and it's gotten really stressful to pass through it and everything Josh went through reminded me of the game.

But anyways aside from that, it was an interesting look into Josh's character, though we didn't really get to know a lot about Linda (I know she's not really important but you know) but it was a good way to get some more of his past clear up, though I do want to learn when this takes place when compared with the other side story whose name I totally didn't forget (I'm sorry).

Also couldn't the Ranger Union just use an electric Pokemon and shock the gyarados half to death and get them back? xD probably not, just had that thought.

 

[kintsugi]

Whoops I missed the chapter update + never reviewed the Interlude I SUCK.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I... hmmm. It's actually quite refreshing to see a tournament arc handled this way. The battles aren't even remotely the focus, to the point that I find myself caring more about literally everything else. The interactions between Eve and Josh are basically as on-point as they've ever been, and it's overall quite refreshing to get re-immersed back into this universe.

Overall high point of this chapter was the excessive care that you've put into making individual Pokemon species with quirks. The different color Clefairy, for example, or Fionn's weird tactics while battling -- these are all really cool, really interesting itsy-bits that I especially enjoyed. Framing it through Eve's mind in particular was a great way to get the details through in a believable fashion: my favorite lines in this chapter were the end bits, where she was describing the traits of the newborn Roselia. It was just so darn clever: you were sneaking in more worldbuilding while establishing Eve as a character who knows her shit about Pokemon.

As far as slice of life goes, I can't complain. There were just enough mild conflicts (lol Pokecenter throwdown) to keep things interesting without resorting to "and then the building exploded", so I think this was a solid chapter.

Into the Wild

Flashbacks are... difficult, I guess, and I don't really know if this was handled in the best way. As always, there was lavish attention to worldbuilding and survival skills and typical things that I would expect from this story at this point, but it seemed... off, I guess?

Like. You can have a much more mundane plot or not give a fuck about worldbuilding or have the absolute worst style in the world, but the one thing that a story needs to function is some sort of character development. At the end of each chapter, I should be able to look back on the events of each chapter and see that the characters have gone moved down their paths than they were before, or at the very least set themselves up for some movement in the future. It doesn't have to be a world-altering "everything I am as a human being is fundamentally different now" realization, but there has to be something.

So seeing Josh acting in very much the same way as he would respond now to these situations is a little jarring. He's sixteen (I think?) in this, but he behaves just like his adult self does, and to me, that seems like a wasted opportunity and just drags the story down. On one hand, slice of life/real life is fun because every event doesn't have to spell out some traumatic/dramatic shift in paradigm for your characters, but on the other, if you devote ~6.5k words to an event happening nearly a decade ago, it would be nice to see some signs that this happened nearly a decade ago. I feel like there's a lot of growth you could build in to this interlude, but here, it kind of just feels like you slapped a "ten years ago" sticker on things and then continued telling your story in the present day.

 

[Beth Pavell]

And it's about time for responses, methinks:

the feeling of danger in this chapter was captured pretty much perfectly.

Thank you, for that, although I have to say that I'm not so sure I like it, myself. Perhaps that's down to what a damn struggle it was to get this finished and looking alright. Ironically it was supposed to be a bit of a break to beat writer's block.

though I do want to learn when this takes place when compared with the other side story whose name I totally didn't forget (I'm sorry)

A Da Vinci Smile, you mean? This takes place a couple of years beforehand. As far as the Rangers are concerned, I reckon in normal circumstances they would use Electric-types. I'm not sure how well it came across in the end, but I was trying to imply that this particular outbreak has been all but overwhelming, so they're all having to make do with what they have.

@kintsugi : I'm mostly just glad that I'm still getting away with it, particularly with the Tourney. I don't think I've done so much planning and fretting about one arc before. I do think you're giving me a bit too much credit though ^^' I mean with Roselia, for instance, all I did was look up diseases of roses and work backwards from there.

(lol Pokecenter throwdown)

Hooray, I finally wrote an interpersonal conflict good enough to escape dissection! xD

As far as the Special Chapter is concerned, yeah, I do see your point. I suppose I couldn't figure out how Josh at sixteen would be noticeably different in this situation to Josh at twenty-one. I suspect that the chapter's going to bug me till I find some way to polish it up. You mentioned that it felt like a wasted opportunity - and feel free to ignore this, 'cause it does look rather like a "write my story for me" - but was there something specific that you thought I'd missed in there?

 

[kintsugi]

Hooray, I finally wrote an interpersonal conflict good enough to escape dissection! xD

In all fairness, the only arguments I recall being more critical of are the ones between Eve and Josh. I think you do most of the ones between Josh/Eve's family and Eve/mostly everyone else pretty okay -- might have something to do with the level of familiarity between characters + how arguments (or heated discussions that pretend to be civil) develop different between people who are close versus semi-strangers (and your/my perceptions of them, too).

As far as the Special Chapter is concerned, yeah, I do see your point. I suppose I couldn't figure out how Josh at sixteen would be noticeably different in this situation to Josh at twenty-one. I suspect that the chapter's going to bug me till I find some way to polish it up. You mentioned that it felt like a wasted opportunity - and feel free to ignore this, 'cause it does look rather like a "write my story for me" - but was there something specific that you thought I'd missed in there?

...for the oddest reason, I thought for sure that Josh was twenty-four in this story. I have no idea why and I'm sorry for dropping the term "decade" so much before, although I'd argue that 16 vs 21 is still a huge enough maturity difference for this to stand.

Hmmmm how to word this correctly. A word of forewarning: I've mostly been caught looking critically on why certain scenes are involved in stories versus our experiences in real life, because that's a long-going real-life conversation I've been having with a friend as of late, so feel free to dismiss this as overlong ramblings. The gist is that, while things in our (real) lives happen seemingly randomly and stories should seek to emulate real life as accurately as possible, there's still a strong degree of selection that goes into picking how/what is told in a story. What this means is that even though you can't pick over every event in your life and say "X happened to me, and from that I took away Y" (where Y is an object/understanding/lesson learned), this is actually the case in most stories. Everything may not happen to us for a reason, but everything is told in a story for a reason, and that distinction is why we can extrapolate meaning out of fiction and so forth. When you're remembering an arbitrary event in your life, you probably can't pinpoint it as the absolute time that you started learning lesson Y, but fiction cheats those edges a little -- or in other words, every scene has some sort of takeaway. Like I mentioned before, it doesn't have to be huge, or even tangible at all, but it's always there.

The way I see flashbacks most commonly used in fiction is to describe how characters got a "thing" -- ie character has been introduced with some sort of object/tangible that they've been using in the main story for quite some time now, and the flashback shows whatever backstory led them to get that. How Kakashi got his Sharingan, how Batman got his parents dead/his costume. The point is that, in this example, the flashback somehow improves the quality of the present storyline and lets you see the current characters in a different light.

Granted, the "this is how I obtained my sword/magic eye/cool mask" doesn't fit the feel of TLW in the slightest, but replace "thing" with some sort of character development/personal quirk and I think you'll have a much more effective narrative. Um. Going with an arbitrary thing/maybe what I would've written/feel free to approach this however. For example, the present Josh is really good at keeping his head in pressure/analyzing a situation well. That's the gist behind his battle strategies and his general approach to life, but it's safe to assume that he didn't pop out from the womb being able to read any situation at the drop of the hat; rather, this was something that he learned over the course of time, and this flashback would've been an interesting way to show it. This isn't to say that you would tell it as "this is Josh when he is sixteen. He is hotheaded, oblivious, and utterly incompetent so the natural question is why his parents would let him go out into the woods with one other teenager for a few days," but maybe a slightly less-confident Josh is on his first trip into the wilderness without an adult/some mentor there to lead him through it, and that's when everything falls to shit. He starts off the trip not being very used to having a lot of responsibility/uncertain with what he should be doing here, but because a lot of unfortunate things happen at once and maybe he doesn't deal with the situation as rationally as he should've (add that second half in because, this is a teenager and not adult Josh), he's stuck with a delirious girl, a rampaging gyarados, and not many supplies to go off of. It doesn't have to be all drama/teenage angst, but this is the time where he sits down and realizes that, while he's pretty unprepared for this, he can either keep panicking until the rangers show up for his corpse, or he can combine all of the survival knowledge he has to get them out alive. And it's hard at first, because he hasn't ever had to do this before, and maybe he fucks up a bit and doesn't know the coordinates of his location or can't start a fire because the ground is wet, or has no fucking clue how to deal with a parasect poisoning his friend. And he hasn't learned how to deal with that, but because he will one day grow up into adult-Josh, whom the readers know as a really good survivalist/strategist, he's able to think his way out of the things he does, but it doesn't all go his way at first. Bonus points if it comes with callbacks to the main story (ie I seem to recall Josh making Eve eggs for breakfast or something -- there was clearly a point in time where Josh learned that eggs are a valid source of food in the wild, and this may as well be that time).

It wouldn't so much be a change in the entire story as it is a change in tone. The way I read this draft, it was trying to be an exercise in suspense: "what if Linda and Josh don't make it out alive?" sort of thing, even though Josh clearly lives and doesn't act like he let one of his friends poison to death in his arms a few years back. I would approach it more as a miniature origin story: "this is how Josh started learning to be more of himself." Again, it doesn't have to be treated as the dramatic snapping point with huge neon signs everywhere screaming "CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IS HAPPENING HERE LOOK HOW DIFFERENT JOSH USED TO BE BUT HE GREW UP ENTIRELY IN SIX THOUSAND WORDS", but I do think writing younger Josh as a unique character from adult Josh would've really sold this flashback in the end.

...yeah. I hope this was coherently presented and made sense.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Ok ... well I held off on this response because I thought it really warranted some time to think. I mean, I do see the point. I had thought that Josh's reactions here would compare with the incidents in the Ilex Forest, getting lost in the Deepwood, specifically. Having thought about it I suppose it doesn't really tie in as well as it needs to - and yeah, I was focusing on the tension. I was trying to use that to emphasise that Josh isn't Aragorn, and that he's running off educated guesswork here. Just goes to show that you can't see your own story the way a reader will see it.

The upshot is that I reckon I shall have to come back to the chapter and give it a re-edit

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Twenty Four - The Balance of Power (Version 1.0)

Evelina​

Block B, Day 3
Joslyn Singer: 0
Evelina Joy: 5
Asma Jameel: 4

Block K, Day 3
Melissa Evans: 7
Florianne Favager: 0
Dionne Page: 6

Eve had been waiting on Court 2 for more than ten minutes. She glanced up into the stands, where Josh was lurking in his guise as Melissa, his infant roselia securely nestled into the crook of his arm. He gave her a girly little wave. Eve raised a fist in mock defiance, trying to appear completely fearless. She'd recently cottoned on to his admiration of her as a trainer. Oh, alright. Aunt Immey had cottoned her on to that, with an expression that radiated 'I'm so proud of you'. That was Immey displaying that peculiar kind of Joy family girl power, right there. The kind of girl power you can't help but want to live up to, Eevee-girl.

Her opponent was late. This was supposed to be the last battle of the round-robin – the last chance, in fact, to earn enough points to get into the Quarter Finals. She needed a win. The certainty of that fact made her nervous, more nervous than she would care to admit.

The referee approached with a tired look on his face. “If she isn't here in the next five minutes I'll have to award you a three point win by default,” he said.

“Alright,” Eve said reluctantly. Winning because she had better timekeeping didn't feel much like a win at all.

Fortunately it didn't come to that. She turned up a couple of minutes later, frantically apologising.

“Sorry … sorry I'm late … I can start,” she huffed breathlessly.

“Take a couple of minutes to catch your breath. Don't you even think about disqualifying her!” she told the referee. There was a flurry of spectator laughter at his expression.

The girl clutched her thighs while she caught her breath. She was an awkward-looking teenager, somewhat skinny with overlarge front teeth she'd probably grow into. The black trilby perched atop her flyaway hair didn't suit her at all.

She suddenly pointed challengingly at Eve. “Now I'm ready! You'd better brace yourself, Joy!”

“Oh, sweetling, I'm always braced.”

“If I might get a word in edgeways?” the referee said testily. “This Block B battle between Evelina Joy of Cherrygrove City and Asma Jameel of Fuchsia City is about to begin! You know the rules. Begin!”

“Pineco, you have the honour!” Eve started.

“Arcanine, let's go!” Asma yelled.

Oh, bloody hell.

Arcanine always seemed to know how majestic they were. This one sat back proudly on its haunches, its lustrous mane rippling in the breeze. It was on the small side, perhaps – a premature evolution? The obvious thing to do would be to switch out. Hopefully Asma didn't know switching out would be a useless move, so … she would probably switch out in anticipation.

She took a chance. “Spike Cannon!”

“Dodge it, Arcanine!”

Bollocks. Out-gambitted. Arcanine casually dodged the attack, flowing easily around the flying spikes. Pin Missile would be more accurate but nowhere near powerful enough -

“Fire Spin, go!”

“Protect!”

Flames splashed around the Protect bubble and enveloped Pineco in a cloak of fire. The flames twisted into a hollow cyclone – Eve could see her hazy silhouette among the smoke.

“Return, Pineco!” Eve commanded. The recall beam split apart in a flickering red lightning-flash. Eve tried recalling her pokémon again with exactly the same result. She didn't really expect anything else. The Fire Spin was good and tight, no gaps to squirt a recall beam through. “Rapid Spin, as quick as you can Pineco!”

Fire Spin bulged out at the base, palpitating fretfully. The cyclone throbbed uncertainly and squeezed close again. Damnit. Damnit, damnit. Eve's mind was an uncharacteristic blank; for once she had no idea what to do next. Damnit. She might have got me here.

Well, she wasn't going to just do nothing. “Spike Cannon!” she ordered for what it was worth. Pineco did her best, firing a spread of spikes in Arcanine's general direction. Not one hit. The obscuring swirl of Fire Spin ruined her aim.

“Ha ha ha!” Asma declared triumphantly. “In me trap! Arcanine, finish it with Flame Wheel!”

With a sonorous, lingering howl, Arcanine enveloped itself in fire. Eve suddenly realised: she did have one option left. Arcanine charged, streaming a glowing trail of cinders behind it. Thirty feet away. Asma was grinning, totally assured of an easy victory.

Ten feet away. Close enough.

“Self-Destruct!”

The middle of the battlefield erupted in a ball of smoke and flame. The hard thump of the passing shockwave slapped into Eve. A hot wind blasted past, driving the shredded remnants of Fire Spin before it. Smoke stung her eyes, making them run with tears.

When she managed to clear her vision the smoke had mostly cleared. The Self-Destruct had punched a neat crater in the field with Pineco lying at the bottom, scorched back, her ablative bark armour scattered in a ragged flaming halo. Arcanine had been thrown into a crumpled heap, its tongue lolling out comically.

“No-oo!” Asma howled dramatically over the referee's judgement.

“- to battle! This match is a draw! Evelina, select your next pokémon.”

“Return, Pineco. Rest well, huh?” she told her. She deserved it. That was a narrow, narrow escape – Arcanine could have swept most of her team by itself. “Alright Meowth! You have the honour!”

[What's up, boss?] Meowth said, as if he didn't know. He washed himself fetchingly while he was the centre of attention.

“Ha. Ha ha ha! Ha hahaha! Your second mistake, Joy! Go for it, Sneasel!” Asma yelled, a triumphant declaration that baffled Eve. Her sneasel flexed his claws, a constant wavering condensation cloud rising from his fur.

A disc of water rapidly formed in front of Meowth's face and fired off at Sneasel, bursting on impact into a wave of spray that crystallised almost instantly into hail.

“Since when can you use Water Pulse!” Eve yelled in an affronted fury.

[I'm a cat that knows where it's at.]

“That's not an answer you rotten moggy!”

“Ice Shard, Sneasel, let's go!” Asma ordered. Meowth tried to dodge off to the right, Ice Shards shattering on the field behind him. A brace of razor-edged darts sliced shallowly across his hindquarters.

“Get in there!” Eve snapped. Meowth fell upon Sneasel with savage gusto, pouncing on him claws-first. [Alright, let's have iiit!]

Dark fur flew as he ripped into his opponent. Sneasel's claw flicked out – and missed – in retaliation. The sudden fury and complete lack of finesse in Meowth's assault caught the weasel by surprise, Fury Swipes raining down on any body part that looked momentarily unguarded.

[I'll gut yer, you greasy -]

“Uh, try a Metal Claw!”

With a slightly desperate effort Sneasel created an opening, batting a paw aside with Metal Claw and knocking Meowth off on the return swing; Meowth simply dropped to his back and raked at Sneasel's belly with his hind claws. The combat devolved into a demented brawl, Meowth's black fur and Sneasel's dark blue fur blending into a chaotic blur, set to a soundtrack of hissing, snarling and yowling. Asma kept giving orders, to no noticeable effect.

Abruptly they broke apart, each circling the other warily as they fought to catch their breath. Eve couldn't tell who had come off the loser from that. Alright then, time to gain the edge.

“Flash. Hone your claws!”

“Go for it, Metal Claw!”

Flashing clouds of shifting light obscured the battlefield, the white magnesium-glare of Flash reflecting harshly off Sneasel's Metal Claws and searing after-images across both trainer's vision. Eve blinked furiously, catching incomplete glimpses of the second brawl. Meowth's howling and cursing intermingled with Sneasel's high-pitched snarling. The combatants rolled back and forth in a ball of flying claws, slashing, biting and struggling.

“Come on! Tear that sly devil to bits!” Eve yelled encouragingly. This match was rapidly turning into a battle of bloody-minded aggression. Eve wasn't sure whether Sneasel could keep this up longer than Meowth and she didn't want to find out either. If Meowth lost this one -

Somehow Meowth managed to seize the upper hand, trapping Sneasel beneath him with his hind claws digging into his lumbar and arms firmly pinned. With all his other weapons thus occupied Meowth settled for sinking his teeth into his opponent's neck. Sneasel struggled and let out strangled cries of rage and pain.

“Try to get free, Sneasel!” Asma yelled redundantly.

“Snea-arg,” he snarled. Ice Shards formed above them and stabbed down into Meowth's back, the sudden sharp pain forcing him to momentarily loosen his grip. The two pokémon slowly retreated to their own sides of the field. Oh, boy. Another stalemate. Although … I'll bet my Meowth's got more vinegar.

“Your meowth's like a furry blender, it's pretty awesome,” Asma called.

“Thank you, girl,” Eve called back. “I have to admit, your sneasel's a tough one.”

“Thank you girl,” Asma said, doffing her hat with surprising elegance for a teenager. “He's tough enough to beat you! Double Team, go!”

Sneasel's Double Team was a pack of a dozen copies deployed in a neat semi-circle. An unsubtle smirk appeared on Eve's face. “We can play that game better. Double Team!”

Meowth's Double Team clowder was faster, realer, arranged not in a regular formation but in a deliberately confusing swarm. A furious mêlée broke out with over two dozen dark shapes tearing in to one another. Eve quickly lost sight of the real Meowth in the chaos. Double Teams sporadically vanished like flickering shadows. One by one the sneasel copies disappeared but for some reason the meowth clowder was undiminished.

One of the cats slunk discreetly at the edge of the field. There's my sneaky bastard. A couple of Double Teams split off him, and he dived back into the fray. That's how he managed it – hold on, that's two tricks he's thought up now. Really ought to have a word with him about that -

“Find the real one, you can do it! Ice Shard, again!”

Sodding concentrate, Eve! A flurry of Ice Shards ripped through the middle of the field, destroying meowth and sneasel copies alike. One of them yowled, staggering under the impact; the entire clowder instantly vanished.

“Arrgh!” Eve yelled in frustration.

“Ouch! Ouch, ouch, ouch,” Asma said sympathetically as Meowth slipped off his feet, groaning.

“Hey! You alright, cat?” Eve called.

[Yeah, yeah, boss. I'm fine,] he said, pulling himself back to his feet. [Just caught me sharp.]

There were still remnants of Sneasel's Double Team on the field. For a brief moment Eve considered having Meowth repeat his Double Team – Hmm, no, not aggressive enough.

“Water Pulse! In fact,” Eve ordered, “make it a barrage and close in!”

The first Water Pulse smashed down without hitting anything, splattering a fat wet V across the concrete. Hardly a second later another Water Pulse flattened a Double Team followed by another and another. Water fountained up in sheets, twisted into weird shapes by the competing pressure-waves of the bursting Pulses. What was left of Sneasel's Double Team vanished in the onslaught. Sneasel dodged around the Water Pulses with determined focus. Blasts of spray spontaneously froze around him, shattering delicately on the concrete or standing like abstract ice sculptures. He dodged beneath a rearing wave that froze into a perfect moment in time only to be immediately annihilated by a rogue pressure-wave.

“Come on, bring it back with Metal Claw!” Asma ordered.

Sneasel seemed to have trouble focusing, darting in completely the wrong direction before realising what he was doing and charging Meowth. Eve opened her mouth to give an order – too late and unnecessary – Sneasel whipped a Metal Claw at him, Meowth ducked under the attack and Slashed back with an uppercut.

Blood droplets flew, twinkling in the sun. Sneasel staggered, an unfocused, confused look on his face.

“Come on, Sneasel, I know you can do it! Asma yelled. “Sneasel!”

Meowth paced back and forth, anxious to unsheath his claws again, his tail lashing pugnaciously.

“Snea,” Sneasel said thickly. He dropped heavily to one knee.

“Sneasel is unable to battle!” the referee ruled. “Meowth wins!”

“Oh, darn it. Come on back, Sneasel,” Asma said resignedly.

“Whew,” Eve said lightly, and giggled. Now there was a lull in the battle the jitters were rising again. The balance of power was in her favour, just about. She looked up into the stands, searched for a moment, and spotted Josh watching the battle with a thoughtful expression. She raised a fist in defiance again, rather more seriously this time. He half-smiled at her, not looking at all worried.

[Give him a kiss after,] Meowth said, contemplating his claws.

“Shut up, cat.”

“Hey, Joy,” Asma called, tossing a Great Ball up and down. “I gotcha no-ow! Let's go!” she flung the Ball at the middle of the field. “Hitmonchan!”

“Huh? Alright, fine,” Eve said, recalling Meowth. “Lyra, you have the honour!”

As soon as she materialised Lyra buzzed up and out of Hitmonchan's reach. He guarded himself warily, never taking his eyes off her.

“But … what? Ledian? But, I thought …” Asma stammered like she'd been hit by Thunder Wave.

“Well, sure, why not?” Eve said, baffled.

“But, I thought you'd have a chansey … oh, bollocks.”

“Yes, bollocks!” Eve barked. “Bollocks is the word! Lyra, Air Cutter!”

With a deft flick of her wings Lyra attacked; Hitmonchan hardly slipped aside before he was smashed off his feet in a cloud of dust.

“Uh, hit it with Close Combat!” Asma yelled desperately. Her hitmonchan earnestly essayed a leap and a swipe, but Lyra simply backed away, tracked his trajectory, and slammed down a third Air Cutter.

“Wait!” Asma shouted. “Stop. I admit defeat.”

“Are you sure?” the referee asked.

“Yes. I forfeit.”

“Ok, then. Asma Jameel has forfeit the battle! Evelina Joy is the winner!” he announced.

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Her fists slowly unballed. She forfeit. Eve giggled with relief and rubbed her eyes. The moment wasn't nearly as satisfying as fighting a battle to the absolute end, but – well, it was still a victory, fair and square.

[I reckon the charm worked, huh, Eve?] Lyra said, trying to land on her head.

“Hey, get off,” Eve laughed, shoving her away. “You're too big for that since you evolved.”

[I wanted to fight for this one. A clean sweep win!]

“Sixteen points – it's a good result for the Heats, Lyra.”

[Will it be enough?]

People were leaving the stands now that the battle was over. Eve hung around her trainer's box while she looked for Josh. Lyra alighted next to her, folding her wings away with a snap. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Josh was one of the last to descend, behind a couple of reporters tapping at their tablets. He was still cradling little Megaera in the crook of one arm, lovingly feeding her from a bottle half-full of yellow juice. You could almost see the pastel pink bubbles.

Eve collapsed into a gale of laughter.

“What?” Josh protested, aggrieved.

“Y-you should have said, I'd have thrown you a shower!” Eve teased. He made a contemptuous gesture at her with the bottle.

“Look out boys, there's a new yummy mummy in the Sunshine City!” she giggled.

Josh waited stoically for her giggle fit to die down. “Finished yet?”

“For now,” she said coyly.

“You fought a good battle,” Josh said as they made their way from Court 2.

“I fought a lucky battle,” Eve countered. “Nothing to do now but wait for the result, sweetling.”

*​

Ten thousand people were crowded into Bywater Amphitheatre again; this time, for the announcement of the quarter finalists. More than seventy Tigerlilies were standing in front of an empty podium and blank scoreboard. The occasional camera flash flickered from the stands. Whitney was in the front row again, fidgeting and chatting animatedly, like an athletic princess surrounded by her equally restless ladies-in-waiting. They look as fidgety as I feel, Eve thought. She checked the time on her phone, yet again. The wait was becoming intolerable.

The big scoreboard above the podium was blank, idling, blazoned only with the bold orange flower logo of the Tourney. Not, unfortunately, with the names of the quarter finalists. Even the journalists had run out of notes to take – one of the press photographers in the second row was idly taking extra photos.

Josh resettled his cloche on his head for the umpteenth time, trying to hide more of his face beneath the bell brim. He glanced surreptitiously at the incessant photographer.

“Shall we just slip off after the announcement?” Eve said quietly.

“Thanks,” he answered tersely. “Sorry I didn't win yesterday,” he continued, feminising his voice somewhat.

Eve squeezed his hand briefly. “Stop apologising or I'll have to hurt you, sweetling.”

About ten minutes later Victoria Pemberton took the podium to a round of sincere applause. In that moment Eve instantly forgave the Imperial Champion for the wait. She raised her hands for quiet, a patrician smile on her face.

“I can scarcely believe that it was a mere three days ago that I last stood here, tasting the anticipation of a new tournament. Girls, you do not disappoint. In the three days since you have brought hour after hour of fierce, determined, passionate battles to Bywater Courts – the like of which would hardly have been imagined when I first took up the mantle of pokémon trainer. Today, you fierce, passionate Tigerlilies will be pruned to just sixteen blooms! For those sixteen, the fiercest battles await. But I will not keep you waiting any longer!”

The big scoreboard blinked, the Tourney logo disappearing, replaced with two columns of eight smaller logos, like bullet points. Ahhh, this is it! Eve's heart promptly skipped a beat or three; she focused ferociously on the scoreboard, mouth half-open.

“These trainers will be progressing from the Heats to the Quarter Finals -”

Laura Winters and Georgia Lovelace

Bonnie Blackwood and Ailsa Craig

Casey Lynwood and Morgan Harwich

Libby Berkowicz and Emily Warbeck

Tabitha Cheesewright and Rowan Morrison

Evelina Joy -
​

“Yes!” Eve roared, pumping her fist savagely. Yells and whoops of jubilation rang in her ears, along with a few despondent shouts and disappointed tears.

Evelina Joy and Melissa Evans​

I made it! She grabbed Josh round the neck and hugged him tight. She realised she was squeeing incoherently, and didn't care.

“Alright, alright, stop trying to throttle me!” Josh protested. Eve let him go, reluctantly.

“I'm pleased now,” she said.

“Really,” Josh said. “Eye eye, Lovelace at five.”

Georgia Lovelace sidled up with absurd conspicuousness. “Evelina? And Melissa Evans, right?”

“What gave me away,” Eve said sardonically, tugging at her hair and smiling.

“Congratulations, you made the cut!” Lovelace said cheerfully. “Laura and me, we're getting the quarter finalists together tomorrow, 'cause it's the rest day. You guys game?”

“Yeah, sounds good, we'll be there!” Eve answered, hardly thinking about it.

Josh didn't say anything while they exchanged phone numbers. When Lovelace moved on, he took a very deliberate breath. “In hindsight, not one of your most brilliant ideas, I think.”

Through the happy victory-haze Eve suddenly realised that a night out as Melissa would also mean a night of constantly keeping his guard up. “… oops. Uh. Well, it would be more suspicious if I showed up without you, right?” she said lamely.

“Well, how could I deny the Sunshine City another yummy mummy,” he said drily.

“Sweetling.”

“Yes?”

“We're in the Quarter Finals!”

“Yes, Eevee.”

*​

Along Brightwater Mile, the electric night was brighter than the day. Brightwater used to be a trade artery in the Grand Trunk canal system, linking Goldenrod City to towns in the east – Cherrygrove, Blackthorn, and Mulberry. Now it was the heart of the city's eccentric culinary scene. The light from hundreds of lampposts, restaurant frontages, plasma billboards and neon signage reflected scintillantly off the waters of the canal. The narrow streets on either side were crowded with the odd denizens of the Mile, the assorted tourists, hipsterish nightclubbers and food connoisseurs. Flashily-decalled food trucks were parked up in almost every available space, selling cuisines from around the world: Olivine mussels, stir-fried chestnuts, baklava, panipura, hóngdòutāng. A multitude of equally endecalled narrowboats lined the towpath. Most of them were the riverine equivalent of the food truck, converted into floating bars and canal pubs.

Eve cheerily wove her way down the Mile, sharing a long skewer of fried crickets with Lyra. She watched with mild interest as four officers struggled to arrest an especially belligerent drunk. Now … where's the Sunshine Pavillion? she thought, checking Lovelace's instructions on her phone.

“I still don't like this,” Josh said as Melissa.

“Will you relax?” Eve said. “You're like, the least interesting sight on this street.”

“You have a leg between your teeth,” he replied sourly.

“Stop scowling. It's not a good look on Melissa.”

“This was your idea.”

“Sweetling,” she warned him, putting a little iron into her tone.

The Sunshine Pavillion was moored further down the towpath. The proprietor had crammed a few tables onto his pitch, which were forming the focus of the narrowboat's customers. Some of the Tigerlilies were there, Sister Ginnie and her partner obvious in their black habits.

“Oh, heyy, hey again Eve!” Ginnie trilled. “And, Melissa, right? Oh, this is my buddy Mara.”

Mara didn't really say 'hi' so much as vaguely nod and smile while avoiding eye contact. There was a somewhat anaemic, translucent quality to the girl, like someone had painted her in watercolours. An irate-looking murkrow perched on her shoulder, feathers all fluffed up.

The other two Tigerlilies were both teenagers, about sixteen or so. One of them wore a Girl Guide's neckerchief; the other was a Dragon Tamer, red cloaked, with a juvenile dratini coiled around her arm.

“How betide ye, Eve? I'm Bonnie,” the Guide said. “From Frazerburgh. The dragon girl's my battle partner.”

“Aye, aye. Ailsa Craig, from Frazerburgh too,” the Dragon Tamer said, tickling her dratini under the chin. “Now. Here's a question – what are a couple of nuns doing out on Brightwater Mile at night? Sounds like there should be something scandalous in that,” she jested.

“We're Municipal Sisters, we're allowed to go out! Actually, we kinda have to,” Ginnie mused. “We're still forbidden to drink, mind.”

“Well, I want a drink,” Eve told Josh as an aside. He shrugged shallowly. Eve hopped down onto the deck of the Sunshine Pavillion – just wide enough for a row of patrons to stand at the bar – and ordered a couple of glasses of merlot. Is a glass still a glass when it's made of plastic? she wondered.

With a glass in each hand, Eve turned round and came face-to-face with a large pair of tits.

“Um … hi?” Eve said.

“Cute, aren't they?” said Georgia Lovelace. She was standing up on the edge of the towpath.

“Um, yeah, I suppose so.” Eve pulled herself together and jumped back onto the street.

“Yours are pretty pretty, too,” Lovelace continued relentlessly. “Hi again, Melissa!”

Eve recognised the expression Josh very carefully wasn't displaying. “Don't you say a word,” she warned.

Lovelace was as talkative as Winters was quiet, eagerly engaging with all the other Tigerlilies, charming them with her Unovan accent. Ten of the quarter finalists were there, all told: Lovelace and Winters, Sister Ginnie and Mara, Bonnie Blackwood and the Dragon Tamer Ailsa Craig. The last two Tigerlilies appeared about half an hour after Eve and Josh. Eve sort-of remembered Emily Warbeck, dirty blonde with a squint in one eye, dressed in a crisp white blazer. She liked Warbeck's partner. Libby Berkowicz was delightfully, distractingly eccentric – like the parody of a film noir character, with her bright gold-blonde hair and scarlet dress, constantly wreathed in a grey haze of cigarette smoke.

“Why the white coat, by the way?” Bonnie asked Warbeck.

“Because she's a freak,” Berkowicz immediately answered.

“Some people would say 'gifted' or 'different',” Warbeck said mildly.

“What's the difference?”

“It's my school uniform,” Warbeck explained to Bonnie, apparently brushing that off.

“Oh, which school?” Lovelace asked.

“Saffron City Gym.”

“A gifted school,” Berkowicz said pointedly, taking a drag on her cigarette.

Warbeck made a snatching gesture at the air – the cigarette detached itself from Berkowicz's lips mid-puff and flew to Warbeck's hand. She examined it critically for a moment, then tossed it over her shoulder into the canal.

“Whoops,” she said.

“Ah, ye're a psychic!” Ailsa exclaimed redundantly. There was a burst of appreciative chatter, Warbeck giggling amiably while Berkowicz lit another cigarette.

“How do psychic powers, like, work? I've always wondered,” Lovelace said.

“Hmm, you probably knew you have to be born with them. Psychics aren't as rare as you might think, though. It's quite common for people to not realise they have latent Potential. Write off a short-period premonition as intuition, that kind of thing …”

Eve glanced sidelong at Josh, apparently shyly listening to the conversation. He hadn't said a word since they'd arrived, letting the bigger personalities dominate the centre of attention. He'd hardly touched his wine, either.

“- um, it's hard to describe what Manifesting feels like. It's, it's like dreaming – no, it's like … making your imagination real, but. You're meditating …” she trailed off helplessly.

“Where do gestures come in to it?” Josh unexpectedly piped up.

“Aha, well,” Warbeck said, giggling, “strictly speaking only the mind is needed to Manifest. The somatic components … they're props, really, to help focus the imagination. Every school has its own somatic tradition -”

“It's all rather mystical, really,” Berkowicz broke in dreamily.

There was an awkward silence.

“So. Er …” Bonnie said. “I cannae quite believe we've made it to the Quarter Finals.”

“Official Tigerlilies now,” Ailsa added. Her dratini keened in agreement.

“Aye, aye, aye. Are ye excited, Libby?”

Berkowicz exhaled a plume of smoke. “Oh, yes, I've been dreaming of this moment since I was a little girl.” She paused to let that sarky comment sink in. “I'm in it for the gifted girl.”

Warbeck just laughed indulgently, as if she had said something adorably precocious. “She's cranky without her vodka. You stay put, I'll get you a drink.”

“ … she's my freak,” Berkowicz said defensively.

“Me and Laura, we've been dreaming of this moment since last year,” Lovelace said. The others gave her a questioning look. “We were Tigerlilies last year too.”

“Whaaat, I don't remember that!” Ginnie blurted out. “How'd you do?”

“We got to the finals,” Lovelace said, smirking.

“And this time we're gonna win,” Winters put in resolutely.

Eve really couldn't help herself. She couldn't let Winters' adamant tone stand unchallenged, nor Lovelace's confident smirk. “Wrong! The next Tigerlily Champion will be a Cherrygrove City girl!”

Lovelace's smirk deepened slightly. “I'm not, uh, sure your lineage is like, applicable here?” she said.

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“No offence, but your family doesn't exactly have a proud tradition of turning out great pokémon trainers,” Winters replied brusquely.

“Is that so,” Eve said coldly. There was a subtle change in the atmosphere. Smiles became decidedly fixed.

“- being a nurse is ok and all, but it's really domestic,” Lovelace commented. “A ton of feminist glory in that.”

“I can't think of any elite Joys, I suppose,” Warbeck said carefully.

“There's always a first time,” Eve growled, though she was looking at Lovelace. “My predecessors are no reason why I can't beat you.”

“Well, we're better than you,” Winters said bluntly. “Better tactics, better teams -”

Josh laid a steadying hand on Eve's arm before she could rebut. “Nice try, Winters. You won't get tactical information that way.”

“Shut up Mel, no-one talks to me like that!” Eve snapped, refusing to be pacified. “I – mnphf!”

Her nascent tirade was abruptly cut short by Josh's hand deftly placed over her mouth. “Excuse us!” he said brightly, towing her – too shocked to fight him – well out of earshot.

“Eevee -” he started, letting her go. He shut you up! He bloody well shut you up!

“This had better be good,” she growled.

“All that's just a tactic, you know,” he said, subtly nodding at Lovelace and Winters.

“I don't bloody care!”

“Will you listen? What's going to make your point better, breathing fire now or crushing them in battle?”

“Why can't I have both?” Eve said stubbornly.

“Eevee,” Josh said with glacial patience, “if they want to play games, then play that game better. Let them think you're just a mediocre trainer with a hot temper, and give nothing away.”

Eve scowled at him, but said nothing. That made perfect sense, damnit. “You're a cunning little bastard, at least.”

“Don't you compare me to that cat,” Josh retaliated. She wasn't sure whether that was a joke or not.

Eve drained her glass, and silently reminded herself that Josh was on her side. “Behave,” she said diplomatically.

*​

In the very earliest hours of the morning, a freshly-showered Eve yawned hugely and tied her hair back. Josh's Pokégear radio was on – it was her turn to choose the station. Probably Lovelace and Winters are gonna be the Tigerlilies to beat, she thought muzzily. Six Gym Badges between them, finalists last year … maybe that should make her feel nervous – it put Josh on guard at least – but instead it simply made her more eager to beat them.

Eve pushed her hands into the pouch of her hoodie dress and yawned again, feeling entirely ready for bed. Actually she was beginning to think she'd had one too many glasses of wine on the Mile tonight. Pineco was sitting quietly out of the way, completely devoid of ablative armour for the first time since she'd caught her. She seemed to like hanging around outside the Ball, just to do nothing, apparently.

“Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun,
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around.”

Josh was standing in front of the open window, gazing out west.

“Whatcha doing, Mel?” Eve asked curiously.

“… can you feel it?” he said cryptically.

“What?”

“The sea.”

“I don't understand, sweetling.”

“Never mind … just preoccupied,” he said unhelpfully.

“Ready for bed?” she asked, deciding she felt too tipsy to figure all that out.

“Yeah, I suppose so. For the record, you're not putting me through something like that again -”

A bright light suddenly glimmered off Josh's glasses. There was no mistaking that glow.

Pineco was starting to evolve. She glowed steadily without metamorphosing. For a moment Eve worried that something was wrong – then Pineco swelled into a knurled sphere. Four stubby siphons extruded from the waist.

The new-evolved Forretress was still small for her species, hardly bigger than she'd been as a pineco. She didn't react to her transformation, staring blankly off into space.

“Are you ok?” Eve asked her. Her body language was completely inscrutable. Suddenly, she slammed her shell closed with a clang, and sat there silent, like a giant steel oak gall.

“What was that about?” Josh said from the top bunk.

“I think she needs time to adjust,” she replied. Evolution seemed to have come as a bit of a shock. Eve wasn't sure why she'd evolved now; Pineco – Forretress – had been eating a rich diet, but she didn't think it was that rich.

Eve picked a leaflet off her bunk and tossed it to the floor before getting in. It landed face up, displaying the fixtures for the Quarter Finals to the ceiling:

Libby Berkowicz and Emily Warbeck
vs
Tabitha Cheesewright and Rowan Morrison

Laura Winters and Georgia Lovelace
vs
Casey Lynwood and Morgan Harwich

Bonnie Blackwood and Ailsa Craig
vs
Katie Merry and Marika Spicer

Evelina Joy and Melissa Evans
vs
Sister Guinevere and Sister Mara
​

Next Chapter: Evelina's Anvil

 

[Lugion]

Ok, now that I've had some time to really digest the new chapter, here are my thoughts:

The battle was underwhelming. There was an odd lack of tension despite Eve's initial disadvantage, and, even moreso, it's a bit odd that she ends up winning so easily despite having to struggle at first. Things just sort of happen without any buildup. Meowth was great, though, and definitely livened up that second matchup.

But the later scenes really shine. The interactions between all the girls (and Josh) are solid, as is Josh's (understandable) utter discomfort with being in his situation. The tension between Eve and Lovelace was deliciously palpable, too.

Interested to see how Josh and Eve vs. the nuns goes. They're fairly likeable minor characters, so it'll be a nice match.

 

[Jersey Jimmy]

I'm going to have to disagree with Lugion about the battle, I thought it was pretty good. See, the thing I like about your battles is that you know how to make them seem close, even if they really aren't. The first two matchups felt like they could've gone either way (and the first one technically did), and it was believable that Eve's opponent would forfeit after making a terribly wrong prediction like that. I saw Josh and Eve being paired together from a mile away, but... eh, that's really the only way the plot's gonna progress, so I can't complain. The Sunshine Pavilion scene really set the stage for the knockout rounds, and should they win the whole thing over Georgia, it'd definitely be a satisfying finish.

 

[Beth Pavell]

@Lugion As usual, I had my doubts about the battle. I won't go through the usual excuses, suffice to say it may well be something I end up coming back to look at again. I am glad that the "rival" scene on Brightwater Mile worked though - that one took a lot of planning and thinking about

@Jersey Jimmy Well, yeah, I was going for a different kind of battle narrative, but I think I lost some of the tension I intended to be there as a result. Honestly, the event I thought I'd have trouble selling was the Self Destruct

 

[System Error]

All right. So I know I said I was going to hold off until this arc had finished, to read it all at once. But it's the awards and I was reading all the Journey stuff, even the stuff I didn't have to like this one. And it seems I've gotten in at a good place, seemingly the halfway mark of this.

So let's go. And,..we're actually going to post this here, for once, if only for consistency with the others even though it's not consistent to what I did before/usually do!

Spoiler: C22

- Insults for Cynthia? Always fun.
- Heats being capitalized made me think of HEATS more than ever. Which is ironic, as this song embodies more or less the opposite of the fic's current themes.
- Very interesting tournament setup. Better than the usual "one loss you're out".
- Camouflage, woo. Always good to see an oddball move thrown into the mix with battles.
- You know, it occurs to me. While using the French names is cool, being in a world where Pokemon say their own names kind of screws that up to some degree.
- Science rules.
- The Hail rains down only above the battlefield, and yet it somehow manages to obscure Eve's view of Winters. Or if they're on opposite sides of the battlefield...all parties involved must have some pretty insane vision.
- Sister Ginnie will get a divine thunderbolt if she doesn't try to convert Eve, but only will do so if Eve wants her to? A bit confused there.
- Josh x Eve. O. T. P.
- For being vehemently against being a nurse, Eve sure is eager to show a lot of knowledge in the field in this chapter
- trying to obey two orders at once her lopunny took Thunderpunch full on <- Felt this line was a bit awkward.

Battles!! ...for some reason, I didn't write down general chapter comments for this one like I did with the others.

Spoiler: C23

- You really seemed to have a thing for alternate colors here...
- Eve seems sure to use mostly proper spelling and capitalization in text messages. Sheesh.
- Where'd the Future Sight bolt even come from?
- If I wanted to be a stickler, could say that the name of the place you had in mind is the Night Sky's Edge, not the Night Sky Edge.
- For whatever reason, imagined Eve saying "tight" in sort of a sexually suggestive way.
- Riley would have to lionise her <- Too much Super Robot Wars lately, I thought about GaoGaiGar. Or maybe Golion/Voltron.
- Jesus. Josh and Eve really seem like a married couple.
- Regular animals, eh?
- ...Josh said, tearing off a large morsel. “Open,” he commanded, holding it to her mouth. Eve happily accepted it <- Slightly confusing line, since it's referring to a 'her' without saying it's Eve.
- I actually literally slammed my palms on my desk and went "JUST KISS ALREADY". And said/thought that multiple times.
- What's with the random accent from Josh?
- Eve with her magical ability to tell an ability right away...

Few odd phrase choices here. The battles here are kind of hit and miss, really. They hold up their end of the bargain at times, but falter in others. The setup of the tournament helps a bit with the tension in these early rounds, as mentioned.

Spoiler: C23-Special

- Bizarre reason? Or PURPOSEFUL?
- Now this is a story all about how / My life got flipped turned upside down / And I'd like to take a minute, just listen to me / I'll tell you how I became the prince of a Town called Mulberry
- And we have a new region?!
- Well, this Linda's existence explains why Josh won't kiss her, the fool.
- Gyarados cannibalism!?
- Noted there was no real description of Josh calling the Ranger's Union.
- Hm. An outbreak of Gyarados at the Lake of Rage? Guessing that's from GSC. So this takes place five or six years or so after that?
- Pikachu was no chubby scamp from Viridian Forest <- Shoutouts to Gen 1 phat Pikachu.
- Hunting with...a Pikachu's Iron Tail?! Sick, dude.
- Huh, actual use of Repels in a fanfic. Dayum.
- And Linda goes completely insane. A bit humorous how she rambles on about Shaymin and such.
- Yup, we got an accurate timeline on this fic now. How...interesting...
- Ranger justice on wild Pokemon! Booya!
- Er, random. Josh freaking out over doctors and machines? It's been so long, I forget. Was this hinted at before, or was this outburst/distrust of them a new revelation?

I did like this one, and in contrast, I found it interesting in a weird way to see how little Josh has changed. Although perhaps even better, would've been showing that this incident directly shaped who he is today. It's also a nice break from the tournament.

Spoiler: C24

- Catfight!! Literally!! Like something out of a cartoon.
- Well, get destroyed random person we'll never see again. Self-ownage.
- “I still don't like this” Josh said as Melissa. <- Missing comma?
- Shoutouts to semirandom evolutions.

For some reason, didn't have a lot to comment on here...

-----

Most of my earlier review...from nearly a year ago, wat. How time flies. Most of it still applies, and jeez - hope it's not another year before this arc finishes.

I guess I'll just comment on it, since it's all that's really been going on. I'll be honest, I think this has objectively broken up the flow of the fic. We've gone from having a long walk and being on a traditional journey, to this popping up and sticking out like a sore thumb in contrast with the rest of the fic. It's taking quite a while to resolve - both in writing and fic time. And unless there's some random twist, it's going to go on for even longer. I'm not exactly sure where this fic is going, besides deepening and demonstrating the relationship between the O.T.P.

Still, on its own, there's nothing too wrong with it - besides the possible predictably at where it's going. There's really only a couple outcomes I can see at this point, most of which will make this feel like a waste of time. I may be pleasantly surprised, though! And at heart, it's really just that a long tournament arc in a fic of this nature is kind of disruptive - especially considering its pace.

The characters introduced of this arc are holding up their end of the bargain. There's just enough to make them interesting, while not spending too much time on them that's going to be effectively wasted when the arc ends.

This fic is always an enjoyable read, that said - even in these situations. Anything that gets me invested enough to actually be yelling at my computer screen has to be good. Keep it up!

 

[Beth Pavell]

Some tidying up still to do then - I can't say I'm hugely surprised by that, given how many blasted technical errors I spotted a couple of weeks ago > > I swear they breed by themselves, or something. Picking up a couple of points not related to that then:

Insults for Cynthia? Always fun.

I couldn't help it. I actually don't mind Cynthia, per se, it's just those stupid Ice Cream Koans she comes out with during the DP anime that bug me. I mean, sure, her speech does make some sense, but what sense it does make is possibly the most banal observation of life you could make

While using the French names is cool, being in a world where Pokemon say their own names kind of screws that up to some degree.

I hadn't thought about that, but now you mention it, I'm going to keep it as it is, because it's amusing.

I think the "science rules" comment is referring to the permeable skin bit - in which case, yes it does, because I didn't make that up. Amphibians really are vulnerable to infection, especially fungal infections, for that reason. Who says realism is boring!

For whatever reason, imagined Eve saying "tight" in sort of a sexually suggestive way.

Oh, good, because that was deliberate. Partly because of the nature of the daydream, of course, and partly because I wanted to make a head start on setting up May Day. I will say I'm quite pleased with that daydream, it was a difficult balance to strike (What with the rating, and, frankly, some sense of decency)

Animals, yes. The long story short here is that logically I don't see why animals shouldn't exist alongside pokémon. There are several reasons as to why I'd argue this, but it boils down to two ideas: the first being that there aren't anywhere near enough pokémon species to fill the niches available in pokémon world ecosystems. The second is that if we can accept trees and grass not being outcompeted to extinction by Grass-types, why is it that we won't accept the same of animals?

What's with the random accent from Josh?

A little quirk I intend to bring up again later. I was originally going to rewrite all of his dialogue to be more strongly dialectic, but it didn't work as well as I'd hoped in practice. So the idea I settled on is that, like a lot of people, he moderates his dialect when speaking to most people, including Eve. When he gets really upset is when it comes out more strongly. I think it needs to be a little stronger in the special chapter - I've had edits for that on the books for a few weeks now

And we have a new region?!

Sort of, yes. Misho would fill that area of space directly to the north of Kanto and Johto - both the maps show the land fading off into space. The idea is that wouldn't be a large region - as a working size I have it at 2,400 square miles

An outbreak of Gyarados at the Lake of Rage? Guessing that's from GSC. So this takes place five or six years or so after that?

More or less, yes. It would be more accurate to say that The Long Walk takes place five years after Team Rocket built a forced evolution machine. I don't intend to adapt all of the events of the games into the Long Verse, you see

Huh, actual use of Repels in a fanfic. Dayum.

I know. Mainly because I knew damn well that @AetherX would pounce if I didn't mention something like that

Although perhaps even better, would've been showing that this incident directly shaped who he is today

Yes, you're not the first person to say that - kintsugi said something of that kidney as well. Another edit for the cards - well, a revision, I suppose

hope it's not another year before this arc finishes.

Yes, well, you and me both. The Goldenrod arc has proven to be taking a lot longer than I expected. I didn't realise just how much more planning would be required relative to wordcount, and as you know I've had trouble really getting the battles down. None of them are really as good as I wanted them to be. I'd like to go back and give them a really thorough polishing, but given how long the arc is taking me in general, I think I would be better served using that time to push out the next few chapters.

That being said, I'm still reasonably confident that it'll all come out ok in the wash - and, for that matter, it should be expected that I have some troubles when writing a tournament arc for the first time. As it stands, we're looking at four, maybe five chapters till the complete end of the arc, which will also be the end of Part 1. I am eager to get onto Part 2, so that's my motivation for getting the bloody battles done

And lastly:

Anything that gets me invested enough to actually be yelling at my computer screen

Job done, as far as I'm concerned

 

[Flaze]

Okay, I read this like two weeks ago but I held off on reviewing so that I could just add it to my review spree after the awards ended. So if there's something I missed just chalk it up to the two weeks after reading it.

So, I'm really glad the prelims are finally over because it kind of feels like we've been on them for a while, it's the most annoying parts about tournaments cause you can't exactly skip the whole process right off the gate. That being said, it is a little odd how Eve's battle just gets cut short in the middle of it, kind of feels like you just wanted to end the fight and move on to the next part xD

Also I wonder how long Josh's little game will last, he made it into the finals but the jig's gonna have to be up at some point. Aside from that seeing all the other finalists first hand was interesting, they all seemed to have varied personalities in their own right and you get props for showcasing nuns (nun-ish?) as strong battlers. That being said Eve's rivalry with Lovelace is interesting but I'm worried it might be exxagerated a little too much.

There's not much to really add aside from that just yet except that it seems like the finals will be a really interesting event, plus Eve's gonna have to proof herself as a Joy too.

 

[Lugion]

Ding dong guess who

Plot- Unlike many journey fics, there's not entirely a lot going on here. I can't really knock the story much for that, however, as the rather slice-of-life mundanity of the story is simply how it's all framed. Though some might find the lack of a clear epic myth arc a drawback, here it allows other aspects of the story to flourish.

Setting- This is probably the story's greatest strength. Johto as seen through the eyes of Josh Cook and Evelina Joy is truly unique, seamlessly blending elements of the games, the anime, and real life to great effect. The world truly comes alive through its fictional history and culture. In particular, the protagonists' journey through the Ilex Forest and the surrounding wooded areas is so detailed the surreal images bloom in the mind effortlessly.

Characterisation- The characterisation here is deeply informed by the setting and the style. Josh and Eve are both products of their cultures, even as they rebel against those cultures in their own ways. Eve really shines, as we regularly encounter elements of her native culture and her reactions and relationships with those elements. Josh, on the other hand, has little to go on in that regard. The story thus far has been far removed from Josh's native culture. We are given a good idea of his relationship to his family and hometown, and his reasons for leaving, but so far we've only seen him immersed in Eve's territory. We know his interests and much of his past, but we see little of his inner workings, which largely seem to run on a working-class masculine sort of pride. He's a highly relateable character, but his reactions to various situations often feel highly robotic, at least until the most recent tournament arc. Seeing Josh struggling to maintain his facade has given him some much-needed humanity, so I'm definitely watching to see how he develops going forward.

Style- The style here is very consistent and immersive. Chapters alternate POVs between the protagonists, giving us a good sense of who they are. The descriptions are fantastic, the dialogue feels natural for each character, and the narration appropriately differs stylistically between POVs. Occasionally there is an odd word or two that causes me to stop and have to look up the definition, breaking the immersion (*cough*callypigian*cough*), and that's definitely something to avoid going forward. Say what you mean as simply as you can.

Technical- Nearly flawless.


Joshua Cook from The Long Walk
Depth- Josh Cooke is a bit of an everyman character. He has a very relatable motivation for leaving home and a very relatable world view. That said, Josh is not a particularly layered character as of yet. We've largely seen him within his comfort zone, and he has a conveniently very large comfort zone. The Goldenrod tournament arc has seen him beginning to get out of that comfort zone, however, allowing us to see more of who he is. I'd also like to mention that he actually learns from his failures and adjusts accordingly, which is rather rare in Pokémon fan fiction.

Development- At this early point in the story, Josh hasn't changed all that much. His successes in battle have made him more confident, however, and his friendship with Eve has seen him soften and open up a bit (see the Goldenrod tournament arc).

Originality- I can't say Josh is particularly original, but it's interesting seeing a fairly realistic character navigating the world of the Pokémon animé.

Entertainment Value- I honestly have to say I prefer Eve's POV chapters. Josh's steadfastness and predictability are not exactly character flaws, but his character is just as well-communicated from Eve's POV.

Contribution to the Story- Well, without Josh, there wouldn't be a story. He's a young man trying to find his place in a crazy fantasy world, and though he hasn't made much progress on that front, it IS a long walk.



Meowth from The Long Walk
Depth- Little of Meowth is communicated directly to the reader. Rather, much is learned from Eve's thoughts during her POV chapters. This is a clever approach that keeps the proper characters (in this case, Eve) in the spotlight while still developing side-characters who don't get much attention. He's very much an old alley cat.

Development- I can't say Meowth has evolved much as a character. However, his relationship with Eve has developed a bit as we have learned more about them.

Originality- Though Meowth is largely based on a real-world trope, it's rare to see such a realistic animal character in Pokémon fan fiction, so I have to give props for that. Meowth doesn't feel quite human, but not quite an animal either, and that's what a Meowth really should be.

Entertainment Value- Meowth is always hella fun to read. He's smart and sassy, and the contrast between his wily antics and his genuine loyalty to his trainer make for an interesting read every time.

Contribution to the Story- Unfortunately, Meowth features very little in the story, being a secondary Pokémon to the deuteragonist. That said, he lends a certain humanity to his trainer, being (one of?) Eve's first Pokémon.



Beth, I'll be honest with you here. I tried to be tough on this story. I really did, with as much as it's won in past Awards cycles. But damn it, the actual foundation of the story is so solid my "harsh" review turned out rather glowing...

 

[Beth Pavell]

I do look forward to response time

That being said, it is a little odd how Eve's battle just gets cut short in the middle of it, kind of feels like you just wanted to end the fight and move on to the next part

Yeah, this partly down to a bit of experimenting with the battles. What I didn't want was up to nine battles that were all shown in their entirety, all following the same structure. What I'm hoping is that the logic behind this will prove to be sound by the end of the arc.

props for showcasing nuns (nun-ish?) as strong battlers.

Bit of a fun fact here - the nuns were inspired from watching the classic Irish sitcom Father Ted. Father Ted was about three Catholic priests (An embezzeler, an idiot, and a drunk) exiled by the bishop to a windswept parish on a tiny island. The thing I love about that show is that most of the supporting cast (Other priests, and the nuns) aren't so much scathing critiques of the Catholic church, as merely being a bit weird. Well, I couldn't leave that alone, so I thought I'd have a go myself with these two slightly odd urban nuns.

Beth, I'll be honest with you here. I tried to be tough on this story. I really did, with as much as it's won in past Awards cycles. But damn it, the actual foundation of the story is so solid my "harsh" review turned out rather glowing...

Well, first of all thank you, because I have been feeling less than confident in what I've been turning out lately. I'm especially glad you liked the description in the Ilex Forest arc - so far that's been my favourite location to write (And Goldenrod my least favourite. I'm really tired of the city now)

He's a highly relateable character, but his reactions to various situations often feel highly robotic

I don't suppose you would you mind elaborating on that a bit?

I'll admit that Josh's character has always been a bit of a pain to get right. The start of the story doesn't really do me much favours there ... and I think everyone prefers Eve's perspective. I still maintain that if the whole story was from her perspective it would end up a bit irritating, but there we are.

(*cough*callypigian*cough*)

I'll hold up my hands to that one - I've been looking for a reason to use that word for years, I just couldn't help it > <

You know, I don't know who nominated Meowth for Best Pokémon Character, but I do find it amusing that of all pokémon he finds his way on to the list. I don't even like cats very much, you know. Half of what I have Meowth do is my little backlash against the fluffy kawaii plush toy cats that you see in anime. I still remember when Mother's little bastards used to disembowel things on the doorstep!

 

[Beth Pavell]

An edit - on second thoughts, I've decided to keep this thread free of anything other than the story and comments relating to that.

But still. I do appreciate the comments posted here, the short ones and the in-depth reviews